Pardon me if the wording is bad. I wrote and rewrote this like 100 times and never quite made it able to make sense. This is essentially just word vomiting shit.
I am starting to piece together how my shit childhood turned me into a shit person as most of my bad behaviors are reactions to this shit, and my god did my childhood suck.
My dad was an Iran-Iraq war veteran on the side of Iraq. Due to the things he saw and experienced, he became super disillusioned with life there. He found himself in some hot water when he talked about god not existing, but later found a woman who was also losing her faith and they came to America in the 80s.
He got into real estate and made a pretty penny. He and his wife agreed they didn't want kids, but then in 1995 I was born. So what is being raised by Arab atheists like? I'll give you an idea, BAD!
I've seen a lot of people talk about this like fake, controlling love people got from their parents and I never got that. I got raw dogged with hatred at every possible second. My parents NEVER missed a chance to tell me how much I ruined their childless life, how embarrassed I made them, how stupid I was, how I was never going to amount to anything, how they were obligated to care for me due to the law, and how I shouldn't exist. My very BEING is a burden to them. My dad was, and I think still is, like a millionaire due to real estate. They went on vacation like once a year, but never took me. They'd usually have a babysitter look after me, but stopped doing that after I turned 13 and said I could babysit myself.
Also, being as they were atheists, I never once had a period of magical thinking of childhood innocence. I never believed in santa, the easter bunny, the tooth fairy, god, or shit like that. I even remember being in school and making kids cry and getting into trouble for telling like 6 year olds there is no santa. I also remember getting into trouble AGAIN in middle school for making a kid cry by saying there is no god and no afterlife.
For the longest fucking time I thought shit like parents hugging or cuddling you, reading bed time stories, or eating meals together was just a thing that happened on TV. When I found out that was a thing that happened it made my chest sink. To realize just how fucked over you got. How different things could have been had my parents liked me. I guess at least I never got grounded or shit taken from me because their main method of punishing me was yelling at me, hitting me, or usually both. I fucking HATE the sound of opening doors because I think my mom or dad are coming to beat my ass.
Oh yeah, how about we deal with the elephant in the room? I'm an Arab. I grew up in Texas, do you know what being an ARAB after 2001 was like? Part of the reason I never made friends was just fucking 9/11. I remember almost making a friend when I was like 7 and his mom dragged him away from me when I told her my arabic name. The amount of times I got called "suicide bomber" or "school shooter" or "terrorist" growing up just made me hate everything. Really reminds you of how much you stick out.
But now how about the Atheist thing? I did meet other Arabs from time to time, but they all assumed I was a muslim. When I told them I didn't believe in god they got weirded out by me and then avoided me. So you know what this did? It made me feel like all the details about me as a person just lead me to get fucked over. White people hated me because I'm an Arab but all the Arabs I met hated me because I'm not a muslim.
I also just got straight up hated by my teachers. Yeah, we don't give them enough credit, but they can be good bullies too. One of my worst memories regarding teacher is when I had to write a book report about some book called Cracker which was about a dog in vietnam or something. When the teacher read my shit, she held it up in front of the class and called me stupid. Saying this is how NOT to do media analysis and straight up told the other kids to laugh at me. No really, I am not kidding. She told them to laugh at me for how stupid I am. Being 13 was rough, man.
Something similar happened to me in high school when we had to write a book report about The Illustrated Man, good book btw, and I was given an assignment. We had to write about The Long Rain and I wrote about it. When we came up to get our shit, the teacher straight up said loudly to the entire class I got an F. He then said to the entire class, "Don't be like her." So whenever I think of that whole media analysis shit and how much it bothers me, I think of them. How I got publicly shamed twice for daring to think of media in a particular way.
I should also note at this point that I have PCOS, so I have more testosterone than the average woman. Never had a period. Guess what, now I feel like I can't really relate to women. I even remember after my diagnosis, my dad mocked me and said that I was not really a woman or a man now. Thanks dad. I also wound up a lot taller and beefier than other women. Boys in high school were often scared of me because I'm like 6'0.
There was this one time a boy asked me on a date. He was cute and said he liked how tall and powerful I looked. It was one of the nicest things I ever heard. He said he wanted to spend time with me by the creek. I went with him and when I got there, he pantsed me and a group of his friends came out and I was pushed into the creek. They all stood around and laughed at me. The guy then said, "You think anyone would like a weird girl like you?" And yeah. That shit also made me paranoid to even try to love. I never downloaded any dating apps, because I worried I'd go on a date with a guy and it would be a trap like that.
All of this just led to me feeling like a fucking burden. That the best I can hope for is to NOT be seen. If my parents saw me, I'm getting mocked or yelled at. I once told my mother I was depressed and feel worthless, to which she told me to maybe consider killing myself. I remember another moment akin to this happened. I came home from school one day and there was this scene on the TV of a man pressing a gun to his chin. My mom then looked at me and told me if I was ever going to kill myself to put the gun in my mouth because sometimes people who press the gun to their chin can survive it, but eating your gun guarantees you'll die.
Fuck. Yeah, dunno. It just makes me feel like I am not supposed to be here. These were the moments people saw me. In truth, like 90% of my time was spent alone. I think back to it and so much of my time was just me wandering town aimlessly. I walked a lot and far! One time, I literally spent 6 hours just walking. Again, by myself. My parents didn't care if I never came home. How do I know? They told me. I did consider running away a few times, but never mustered up the gall to do it. Being alone and lonely is just the status quo for me. You're either invisible or you're a BOTHER! Be invisible. It hurts, but it's better than being seen.
I guess the last thing I wanna say is TV fucked my head too. TV tells you that jerks and assholes have a hidden heart of gold. You see terrible characters secretly turned out to care all along. I guess I assumed that about my parents. They're traumatized Iraqis, so they're just hurt! One day, they'll show you their hidden heart of gold. It's sucks but that's not true. A lot of time awful people are just awful all the way. And fuck man, to this day I still think it. How often I assume I can "know someone's suffering," but what does that mean? Your feelings are valid, but your behavior isn't. My mother and father's trauma of the Iran-Iraq war is valid. Them spending 18 fucking years tormenting me? Not valid.
Yeah, kinda felt nice to word vomit my childhood trauma. If you took the time to read it, thanks. If not... valid.
TL;DR: my parents hit me and now I'm a 28 year old femcel who can't get a boyfriend.

Hi, I just wanted to see if anyone could help me process this and what steps I can take.
My son (M9), came home walking past me and my wife and then just sat there looking dazed and confused, his eyes a bit red. This is a kid who usually has a smile and will immediately go to play his videogames as soon as he can or says hi and will give us a hug. Immediately noticing something was off I stopped what I was doing and got close and asked him, "Hey buddy, whats going on, everything okay?". He blubbered a bit and told me he feels hungry. I asked him if anything happened seeing his eyes a bit red and poofy like if he'd recently cried. He managed to quiveringly push out the words "A kid choked me".
I got mad, I will raise hell for my kid but for his sake and my wife, I breathed and asked him to tell me what happened. He told me he was playing with his friends when they suddenly got too crazy and dragged him under the steps of the playground. 4 kids. They thought it'd be funny to take his shoes off as they dragged him, then one of the kids got wierd and put his hands over my kid's neck. My son told me he couldn't breathe and yelled for them to stop. I looked him in the eyes and told him, "those are not friends, those are bullies". My son shook and quivered and I just hugged him tightly. My wife was irate and started e-mailing his teacher. My youngest (M7) added to the story saying that a kid was going around bragging that he choked a kid.
That was Thursday, today friday, we gave them the day off. I'm leaving work early and going to the school to request a meeting with the parents and talk to the principal. I want to talk to the class and shame them for their bullying. My kid is on the spectrum, he a high functioning kid and probably didn't realize these are not his friends.
I guess what I'm asking for is, what else can I do. I keep imagining beating the ever loving shit out of the kid who choked my kid but I need to stay level headed. How can I address the class and the school so this doesn't happen again? Cause that kid may have out his hands on my kid, but there are 3 more who need to be punished and I'm wondering who was the ring leader. This isn't the first time my kids have been bullied. My youngest was shamed and was pantsed while the bully peed on my kid. We immediately pulled them the day we found out before their spring break week.
TIA. For any advice.

I have been writing fanfiction novels for years and have been desperately trying to write a publishable work for a couple years now. The idea is something born from my crippling fear of death, about a sci-fi universe where gods and the afterlife do exist, but it is the worst possible scenario awaiting all living things after they die, and what that newfound knowledge does to the main characters. I am 94,000 words in and in the climax, yet I am extremely displeased with how my first draft has turned out.
Writing is the only thing I'm good at at 25, the only thing my stupid self decided to pursue as a hobby while all my friends went off to work toward actual careers and became successful for it. I feel that not finishing this story, which is planned to split into two books, means I have wasted all this time while my friends have almost all achieved great success long before now. Telling stories is the one thing in the world I am passionate about, and I admit that is intrinsically linked to my sense of identity and self-worth, especially compared to others.
But this story has been hard. So much world building required, and I admit that I have pantsed much of it. I have a clear idea for the conflict, for the themes, and the entire ending of both books firmly set in my head along with all the different ways my main characters interact with these themes and the often grisly fates they meet along the way, but getting to that finale has been so taxing lately. I can write thousands of words in my ongoing 400,000 word fanfiction series in a week, but I struggle to write 500 words a day in my actual novel, the one that could actually be wroth something, without getting distracted or stumped.
I admit that it has been more difficult for me to get into that hopeless, terrified mindset that inspired this book in the first place recently. Life has been stable, I'm back on antidepressants, I start therapy again in five days, and the feelings that inspired this story seem to be mostly... gone. Which makes me feel worse. More feelings, more hours, more inspiration rendered worthless while most of my former friends can afford houses and kids at my same age. I wanted to be a filmmaker but had no opportunities in my little city. I have no artistic talent beyond writing, so I settled on it, and I know I am good at it. But I feel no more inspiration for this damn story most of the time and more like I'm fighting with it rather than cultivating it.
I don't want to give up on all this work. I want to see it through; I promise myself it would be done two years ago and now I really want to say the first draft is done soon. But fighting my own creativity is tiring, depressing, and numbing at this point. I will continue to try, though whether it is out inspiration or obstinance at this point is becoming unknowable.

I get really excited about concepts like "what if this happened" or "x meets y" or "this story, but in space", however, when i start pinning down the genre, tone, character arcs, structure, etc. it starts to feel like a chore. Pantsing hasn't worked for me either. I've never been able to get past the first act.
At first, I thought I could regain my excitement by including tropes I liked, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I don't really have any favorites. As long as its done well I like it.
My working hypothesis is, if I can come up with isolated scenes that I can look forward to, I'd regain the excitement. the problem is, scenes don't come easy to me. I've tried listening to music or daydreaming, but my mind always wonders off to fantasizing about the stories I've watched/read. Like I just finished Percy Jackson: the lightning thief, I watched Dune in the theater, I've been obsessed with Voltron for months nmow... you get it. So, I need advice about how to come up with exciting isolated scenes or how to generate exactment in other ways.

I get that title gives off vibes of "I'm not like the other girls" and I fucking hate it too. I hate myself for being like that too but I can't really get away from it.
When I've chatted with other women, they give me this image of all eyes are on them. They get stalked, harassed, catcalled, watched, and glared at by everyone. I didn't my entire 28 years of my life. I was just neglected and overlooked.
As a kid, I was neglected by my fucking parents and elementary school had me alone and avoided by other kids. I never made friends. Middle school came, and guess what? Same story. My parents avoided me, and the other kids just hated me and avoided me too. Most of my memories are just walking around alone and playing fucking Mario games. Super Mario Advance and Super Mario Advance 2 got me through all this loneliness.
Then high school came and I guess I got some socialization, but for the most part I was still alone. I ONCE A-FUCKING-GAIN failed to make friends and was avoided. One time, some boy asked me out and, given that I spent over 15 years alone, took him up. He took me on a date to the creek in town. Soon, a group of his friends came out and I was pantsed, and pushed into the creek. I remember them laughing at me and him telling me, "You think I'd like a weird girl like you?" The rest of high school was just me being mocked and alone. No friends. No one liked me. And outside of high school? I was just alone.
Then at age 18, I joined the Army. Why? I just NEEDED to get away from it all. But I served 8 fucking years and never made friends. I tried to set myself apart by being the go-getter. But I never got anything. I tried out for Ranger school and failed. I tried out for the best squad competition and hurt my shoulder. I tried to be the BOSS rep and kept showing up late. I tried out for TAC and got yelled at by sergeant major for being out of regs for whatever reason.
More time went on in the fucking Army and I was stuck in Fort Hood as that cursed fucking post is a sinkhole and you NEVER leave it. You heard the horror stories on it, guess what? Never applied to me. I would take a walk at night every fucking day at 8:45pm. Nothing ever happened to me. I was so fucking alone, I'd often give into delusions that I don't exist. That I'm just a random consciousness that tricked itself into thinking it's a person.
I'd see my fellow soldiers going to barracks parties, hanging out, being social, doing things, and what about me? I was left behind. No one EVER invited me to do things. No one ever wanted to spend time with me. And not just that, I never even had a roommate. I was often the only woman in my unit and I was just overlooked. I never made friends. I could be friendly with people, but never cross that line into being friends. I was just alone and ignored.
Sometimes I wondered if its my PCOS. I have higher than average levels of testosterone for a woman, so I am more masculine than others. I'm a lot taller at 6'0. I also tend to be heavier, so am I just ugly? Is it because I'm not fertile? I can't have kids and have never had a period. I could if I took t-blockers like my doctor said, but I'd be a shit mom and no man wants me anyways, so what's the point?
But it sucks. No other woman seems to have related to me. The story they tell me is they have all eyes on them, but for me? No eyes were on me. I was ignored, overlooked, and neglected. I hate it because then it makes me feel like I'm not really a woman. And fuck, I have PCOS and also never experienced a key woman thing.
So I often feel like this disgusting THING that's not really a woman, but definitely not a man either and I hate it.
I dunno... are any women out there feeling the same? Any relate to me? If not, at least I finally got to rant about this. At least I finally spilled me guts about this. Thanks.

I’ve had the dev edits back for my cozy fantasy romance novel and while they have been helpful, I feel like I’m drowning in what to do.
I fully pantsed this book (I just wrote it and it snowballed from there lol) and there have been so many chances in the various iterations that I’m at the point of not knowing what is benefitting the story and what is busywork.
Do any of you have tips on how to handle rewrites and/or add depth into the romance of a book. I feel like I’m pummelling my potential readers over the head with longing glances and fluttering stomachs, and I can’t tell if it’s paying off or not.
Thanks in advance from a reformed pantser.

(I've also posted this to ao3 if you'd rather read it on a website dedicated to this kind of thing. Here is the link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55075546/chapters/139634302 )
With a flash of white light, he appeared in the center of the main dirt road that defined Pallet Town, frightening a local house-wife out on an early morning stroll in the process.
The man, for a moment, was disoriented, not entirely sure of his surroundings. Fortunately, that initial state of disorientation did not last. Quickly, he realized just where he was; he was in Pallet Town.
He looked at his hands for a moment, and was struck by vertigo. His hands were a warm caramel brown, a color defined by a certain sense of vitality that he hadn’t had since his first life. But what set him off was that they were not familiar.
His hands- the ones he had grown up with- the ones that he had used to raise a family in life and the ones he used to kill in hell- they were smaller, and covered in healed scars, and pale knuckles, and perpetually reddenned.
These hands were broad and thick, visibly heavy ham-hocks that looked purpose built for heavy labor.
The man shook it off. The angel said that he would have a new body. And this body is definitely new.
He rolled his broad shoulders in an old habit that arose from an old body that had worn out shoulders and collar bones that had been repeatedly broken, shifting the large white backpack he wore.
Lacking any real instruction on what was where or where he was supposed to go, he instead went to grab at his belt, where his six pokeballs were mounted magnetically, hoping to call out his starters.
But the distinct lack of warmth that indicated a pokemon within the spheres told him that he had not a single pokemon.
So, lacking any concrete direction, he decided to simply walk down the dirt road before him.
As he walked, he took in the surroundings.
Despite the ostensibly urban nature of his surroundings, the air had a certain freshness to it that the man had never felt before, but he knew that he’d never be able to forget. And there was a certain sense of serenity in the way that the early morning sky was painted with the colors of dawn.
As he approached the building down at the end of the road, he saw a huge crowd of people gathered around a large yellow building.
Just as he entered the crowd, and began wading through to the front, the huge front door opened, and a single brown haired boy walked through.
He was fairly small in stature, as was standard for a boy his age; he couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen. But you wouldn’t have thought that with the way his strut made him seem a thousand feet tall.
And beside him was an older man in a lab coat, with tanned wrinkled skin, gray hair, and thick bushy eyebrows. .
‘This must be Professor Oak,’ he thought, ‘and if that is Professor Oak, then that is probably Gary. Or maybe Blue.’
His assumptions were correct. The older man was Professor Oak, and the boy beside him was Gary ‘Blue’ Oak, though nobody aside from his family ever called him Blue.
Once Professor Oak caught sight of him, he smiled welcomingly. “Ah, Reginald Cromwell. It’s nice to finally meet you.” He greeted him warmly.
Reginald, for his part, was a little caught off guard. He didn’t know the Professor, and he certainly had never met him. Still, something inside him said to play along, and Reginald knew to trust his instincts.
“And it’s nice to meet you, Professor.” He responded, without missing a beat, as he extended a hand in greeting.
“Please,” Professor Oak said, as he shook Reginald's hand, “Head inside. My assistants will attend to you while I send off my baby boy Blue out onto his first journey.”
Reginald nodded, and continued into the building, where a harried looking young woman in a lab coat visibly jumped once she noticed his presence.
“Ah!” She squeaked, “M-Mister Cromwell- Sir, um, right this way.” She then abruptly turned, and started walking, guiding him through the lab, where dozens of other people in lab coats seemed to be hard at work.
And then she guided him out the back door of the lab, and into the field. Then, out in the middle of the field, she glanced back at me, and squared her shoulders. Then, with a sharp whistle, she called out for squirtles and eevees. And more than a dozen pokemon in total answered the call.
“Um… Professor Oak said that you get two, uh, starters.” She said, “One squirtle and one eevee. He also said to let you choose.”
“Yes,” He responded, not really paying attention to her, his attention almost entirely on the pokemon before him.
He knew the two that he had defined to the angel were among them. But which one were they…
Look as he might, he couldn’t discern just which ones were his starters.
So instead, he took a step towards the pokemon, and then took a knee, getting closer. Most of them took a step back. All except for two.
One squirtle, who remained stalwart, standing in front of a particularly small eevee protectively.
“I want those two,” he said, while pointing at them.
Her eyes widened, “Professor was right…” She said under her breath. “Um, I’ll go get their pokeballs.”
She then scurried off, leaving Reginald alone with his two starters. He turned down to them, and they both cowered.
“My name is Reginald Cromwell,” He said to them, “And I intend to make you two the foundation of the most powerful team this world has ever seen. And I have no interest in pokemon who do not share my dream. Say the word, and I’ll choose another pokemon instead.”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“This is the chance we’ve been waiting for.” said the squirtle to the eevee, “And we get to stay together!”
“...Alright.” Said the eevee. “I’ll do it.”
A smile stretched over Reginald's face,
“I’m back,” Announced the young lady in the lab coat, two pokeballs in hand. “Here are their pokeballs. You’ll have to wait until the Professor gets back to sync the pokeballs to you, though.”
“It’s fine,” He replied, “I need a little bit of time to get to know these pokemon anyway.”
He then turned his attention back to the pokemon. “So, Squirtle, Eevee, you guys mind if I check you guys out? To see what we’re working with?”
“Yeah,” Squirtle responded, as he stepped forward,
Reginald reached out, and picked up the squirtle by the sides of his shell, and hefted him into the air, judging his weight by hand.
“A little smaller than I’d like, but we can work with it.” Reginald said,
“Really?” Professor Oak interjected, evidently having approached while Reginald hadn’t been paying attention, “that squirtle is actually quite large for his age and species.”
“I can already tell that this little guy uses mostly physical attacks,” I said, “And for that kind of fighting bigger is better.”
“I wouldn’t go so far,” said the Professor, “I’ve seen trainer and pokemon alike make the mistake of overfeeding.”
“Doesn’t Waterboy here know a speed move?” Reginald said, after a moment of consideration, “If he’s got a speed move, then it’s fine if he gets fat, he’ll still be fast.”
“True,” Professor Oak just smiled, “If I might ask, how did you know?”
“Look at his shell and his foot claws,” He said, “See those uniform scratches, those are only from scraping in a single direction, head on, and doing it hard. Those kinds of scratching only come from a high speed head on impact. And that sort of speed isn’t coming from his feet. His foot claws aren’t right for that speed.”
Professor Oak laughed, “You’re an observant one, aren’t you.”
“I damn well should be,” Reginald said, “These two are going to be the foundation of my team. I gotta know what I’m working with.”
“Fair enough,” replied the Professor, “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you pick these two?”
“All of them were afraid of me.” He said, “But only two were willing to fight me. That tells me that they got what it takes.”
“True enough for the squirtle,” Professor Oak said, “He’s a troublemaker, I’ve seen him try to fight my Gyarados before. But the Eevee? She’s the runt of the litter.”
“She was hiding behind the squirtle, but I saw the glow of a charging normal type energy move. If I had started a fight, she would have at least tried to fight me.”
“Perhaps you see something I don’t,” He conceded. “In any case, we should head inside, to get you a pokedex.”
Professor Oak, with two pokeballs in a single hand, sucked both the squirtle and the eevee into electronic storage.
The two men then headed back into the lab, where Professor Oak grabbed a pokedex off of a counter, and handed it to Reginald.
“Here’s your pokedex, it’s already loaded with all the bits and bobs that a pokedex usually has, and has both the squirtle and eevee synced to its account. All you have to do is let it scan you, so it can have your biometrics.”
With a flick of the wrist, the pokedex snapped open, and with a flash of white light, the futuristic device scanned him.
“Biometrics complete.” A computerized voice said, “Synchronizing user information. Synchronization complete. Device ready to use.”
“Good, good,” Professor Oak said, “Now then, all that is left to do is to go over your contract as a lab-sponsored trainer.”
Instantly Reginald was on guard. Contracts were never good news.
“It's nothing to worry about. Legally speaking, your only real obligation is that you must add any new discoveries to the Pokedex’ database.” said the Professor, “Besides that, there are a number of benefits available to you.”
Professor Oak then went on to list a number of benefits, including such things as a monthly stipend, a cash bonus for each new trainer defeated in a League regulation battle, and free access to Pokecenters.
But Reginald was mostly interested in the fact that he is now legally allowed to own literally any pokemon.
That and the fact that if he ever goes rogue, or becomes a criminal it’ll be Professor Oak’s personal responsibility to come for him.
But once he was through with the contract, Professor Oak sent Reginald on his way.
Reginald, now fully ready to begin his Pokemon Journey, set off onto Route One, directly from Pallet Town’s main road.
And then he immediately took a left, and walked into the brush.
A few hours later, Reginald came across a fairly large opening in the forest, and decided that it would make a good place for him to set up to train his pokemon.
He set his bag down against a tree, and called out both Squirtle and Eevee. And got to the very first order of business.
“First things first,” He said, “Do you two have names?”
“Yes,” answered the Squirtle, “The other pokemon would call me Rock. I don’t like that name, however. I would prefer it if you called me Squirtle instead.”
“Why did they call you rock?” Reginald asked, curiously.
“Because, until I learned Aqua Ring, I could not swim.” He replied.
“Ah.” Reginald said, “Would you prefer a different name? Because it seems odd to me that the default is to name you after your species.”
Squirtle thought for a moment, “How is that strange?”
“It’s the name of your species. It would be as if you called me Human exclusively.” Reginald responded.
“I don’t follow.”
Reginald shrugged, “it’s your name.” He then turned to the eevee. “What about you? You want a name?”
“N-no.” she replied shyly, struggling a little bit to speak to Reginald.
“Suit yourself.” He replied, “Now then, training. So here’s my plan: I know the moves Heal Bell and Wish. Which means that you two can train to complete failure, and then I can heal you two into top condition, and then you’ll do it again. Sound good?”
They didn’t reply, though.
“So, let's start off with sprints, ‘Get you guys nice and warm to start off with,” Reginald said, “Run down to the other end of the clearing, and then run back. We are starting off pretty slow, but each time I want you guys to go a little faster until you are going at your top speed. Now then. Ready? Go.”
Later, in the night, while both his pokemon slept, Reginald decided to test a hypothesis of his.
Heal Bell could cure all status effects. And sleep is a status effect. Theoretically, Heal Bell should completely remove his need to sleep.
With a thought, a glowing golden bell manifested in front of him, and tinkled gently.
Reginald felt no different, but he already was wide awake. Only time will tell if he would need to sleep later. Which is why he was going to try and stay awake all night.
Now, with some time on his hands, he decided to do some good old fashioned research on pokemon moves, searching through the Pokedex’ database for information.
And what he found was fascinating. So much so that he spent the whole night reading the various published papers stored in the Pokedex’ database.
And as he read, a plan began to formulate in his mind.
Pokemon moves were the basis of any pokemon’s combat style. And it is easy to see why. A Move was far more powerful than what a pokemon would be capable of doing without one. Not to mention Moves can be capable of far more exotic effects that a pokemon would normally never be capable of.
Reginald personally had a dozen different examples of moves that gave him abilities that he’d normally never have. Abilities that he honestly was comparing to magic spells in his mind.
And he had ideas as to how to effectively increase the power of the moves in his pokemon.
The first one was based on a well established fact. Pokemon grow far more powerful in environments that match their type. Water Pokemon in the ocean are known to be monstrous, as are Ground and Rock type pokemon found in deep cave systems.
But the cause is up to debate.
Scholars believe that the cause is simply environmental factors. Water Pokemon in the ocean grow large and powerful because of plentiful food and competition, and so on.
Reginald, however, has a different hypothesis, centered on a single fact. Elemental Energy Stones demonstrably add power to pokemon who exist near them, so much that it can even induce evolution in pokemon from contact alone. But only to pokemon whose elements correspond with the stone.
So, if his theory is correct, simply by exposing his pokemon to elemental energy of their type, they will become far more powerful than they would have otherwise been.
Exposing Eevee to Normal Type energy should be easy enough, considering Reginald's long list of powerful normal type moves, as was Squirtle, since Eevee knew Rainy Day.
As such, the next day he would be putting his theory to the test.
Nearly a full week into his new journey, Reginald was thoroughly satisfied with the progress that they’ve made.
His personal training is going great, and so has Squirtle’s.
Squirtle was already very proficient with Aqua Jet, but with my instruction, he’s starting to get scary fast with it, using it to rocket all around like a watery meteorite, and even using it to fly. And while the actual raw impact of the move still leaves a bit to be desired, he is also still only a Squirtle. With an evolution or two, Reginald is sure that his Aqua Jet will be as scary as he hoped.
Not to mention, Squirtle is also starting to get very good with his reaction time for Mirror Coat. His accuracy with Hydro Pump, which is already a naturally powerful move, is also starting to get to the point where the main limitation on if he’ll hit something is how fast the water from Hydro Pump can travel.
Eevee, however… Eevee simply didn’t have the move loadout to keep up with Squirtle.
Facade and Weather Ball, Eevee’s only moves to attack with were both pretty powerful, but Mirror Coat completely countered Weather Ball, which was the more powerful of the two moves. Facade, Eevee’s only real usable move against Squirtle was hard to use, for the sole reason that Eevee wasn’t fast enough to keep up with Squirtle’s Aqua Jet
Even when Eevee used Sunny Day to turn Weather Ball into a fire type move, and then used it to burn herself to power up Facade, she still wouldn’t ever land a single blow.
So, with that in mind, Reginald had put Eevee on learning Quick Attack. At which point he learned that Eevee already knew that move.
Something that came as a bit of a surprise to him, but it was a pleasant surprise.
What was less of a pleasant surprise was the fact that Eevee had pulled a runner on Reginald.
While Reginald had been preparing their dinner, Eevee snatched her pokeball, and disappeared into the brush.
Reginald wished it had come as a surprise, but, honestly, he probably should have seen it coming.
While Squirtle took to the training like a fish took to water, Eevee had been more reluctant to truly push her limits, and had always been slower to tire. Not to mention she would never really want to talk with him.
At the time Reginald probably should have seen it as a sign that Eevee wasn’t exactly a fan of the sort of pace he was putting on his two pokemon, but he had merely attributed it to the pokemon’s inferior vitality.
And beyond that, he should have been used to people just ditching him whenever things got hard anyway.
When it became clear that Eevee wasn’t going to return, Reginald was left at a crossroads. Or more accurately, he and Squirtle were having a disagreement.
“So Eevee’s not comin’ back.” Reginald said, with a forced sense of calm, “Damn shame.” He said, anger boiling just under the surface.
Reginald, recognizing that he was starting to get visibly angry, he took a calming breath, and turned to Squirtle.
“So, today’s a conditioning day-” Reginald began, in a clear dismissal of the matter,
“Wait,” Squirtle interrupted, “We aren’t going looking for her?”
“For what?” Reginald responded callously, “She made her choice. If she doesn’t want to be on my team, then there is no place for her here.”
“We have to go look for her,” Squirtle insisted,
“Even if we find her, what do you think we are going to do,” Reginald questioned, “Chain her up, and make her train and fight against her will?”
“I’ll convince her to rejoin the team,” Squirtle asserted, “She’ll listen to me,”
Reginald sighed, as he looked down at Squirtle in his big brown eyes, “She chose to leave. She made the conscious choice to run away. She decided that whatever was waiting out there for her was more important than either of us. Even if you convince her to rejoin us, she’ll leave again when it gets hard,”
“...We promised that we’d stay together forever, even after our old trainer released us.” Squirtle said, “She wouldn’t just leave me like that. Eevee, I’m sure we could work it out, once we find her.”
In that moment, Reginald was reminded of things that he had chosen to forget.
Reginald was raised in an old-fashioned home, with a stoic and bearded blue-collared father who worked himself half to death, and drank himself the rest of the way when he got home from work, and a mother who really didn’t care about him or his three other siblings.
As such, Reginald found no comfort in his home. There was nothing for him there; he barely tolerated his siblings, his mother who did the bare minimum, and when his father was home, he was drinking alone and in silence in the basement.
And the rest of the world was no better.
Nobody really cared about him. His ‘friends’ were there as long as they were having fun, and not a second longer. And those adults who supposedly cared about him at school didn’t give a single fuck about what happened to him when they weren’t legally responsible.
When a group of boys decided that they’d make him their dedicated object of amusement, willing or not, Reginald tried to fight back.
Verbally, of course.
Reginald knew that if it ever made it back to his parents that he got into a fight, he’d be in for the beating of his life. .
And considering that Reginald had both a stutter and a lisp, he would never manage to properly retaliate against this mockery.
After a particularly vicious bout of mockery involving a picture of Reginald's penis taken after he was dumped with a bucket of ice water and pantsed, Reginald had reached his limit and challenged him to a fight after school in the nearby park.
Later that day, Reginald received a particularly unlucky left hook to the jaw during that fight, and was left completely unconscious, on the grass in that park, and didn’t wake up for several hours.
That night, when he finally made it home, he dimly realized that nobody at home noticed that he wasn’t there.
The next day, he left to go to school like normal, but instead of going to school, he simply went to the city library, where he passed the time drawing.
It was there that he met Anne Hall, another highschooler skipping class.
She just happened to be walking by, when she peeked over his shoulder and saw a particularly impressive drawing of his, depicting a skeletal woman in black robes lined with glimmering obsidian.
The two of them became fast friends, and soon, even more than that.
And how could they not. Unlike anyone else he’s ever known, she well and truly cared about him. And to her, Reginald was an escape from her own terrible home life. Of course they would form a relationship.
It was based around Anne Hall speaking about all those things that bothered her, about her own abusive father, about her drug addict older brother, and about how as soon as she turned eighteen, she’s going to take that beat up 2001 honda she bought with her money from working as a barista and drive them both all over the country.
In the end, that dream came true much sooner than they expected, when a sixteen year old Reginald got a seventeen year old Anne pregnant.
Anne was swiftly disowned by her own religious parents, and Reginald's parents were no more inclined to take her in.
And so, for a time, it was them against the world.
Anne had already dropped out of school, and Reginald soon followed, choosing to go work, to try and support his soon to be family. And, for a time, they were almost happy.
Sure, they were sleeping in that 2001 Honda, and eating exclusively gas station food, and they had nowhere for the baby to stay, but at least they had each other.
When their child, a boy they named James, was born with severe complications, and passed after spending several months in and out of life support.
In the months that followed, Anne nearly gave up, and followed her baby boy to the grave.
But they promised that they’d stay together forever.
And, years later, a twenty three year old Anne decided that she wanted to have another baby. And Reginald, finally having a well paying enough job, agreed to it.
And so, they had their second child, a healthy baby girl they named Riley.
Reginald was over the moon, he loved his baby girl more than anything else.
And then, one day, without warning, Anne hopped up into that old rust bucket of a honda that they kept for sentimental reasons, and left behind both a husband and a daughter.
All that was left was a piece of paper, where she told Reginald that she’s leaving, and that she’s not coming back, and to take care of Riley.
To a barely two year old Riley, all that changed was that there was one less chair around the dinner table.
It was all he would allow to change.
To Reginald, there was nothing more important to him than his baby girl. Not even the love of his life.
And he would never allow her to know that she was missing the warmth of a mother’s touch.
But Reginald was but a man.
How could he remain strong, when his very heart and soul had been ripped out, when his wife had abandoned him?
In private, behind locked doors, alone, and so far away from the daughter he treasured so much, he raged.
He raged against her, for abandoning him.
He raged against her, for abandoning their daughter.
He raged against her, for abandoning the life they built together.
Beyond that, he raged at himself, for allowing himself to fall for a woman who evidently never even really loved him.
And, beyond even that, he raged at God and the world, for allowing him to be betrayed in such a way.
But, most of all, he raged because he was alone. So very alone.
In the end, no matter how much he raged, and screamed, and begged, the sun still crossed the horizon, and Anne never returned.
Days turned into weeks, and months, and, eventually, years.
And then Riley left him too.
At the young age of nine years old, Riley was diagnosed with a terminal disease.
A genetic disorder, the doctor said. A hereditary condition that she inherited from her mother.
It was at then that Reginald learned that Anne had been declared terminal three days before her disappearance.
Painfully, Reginald recollected his last conversation with Anne, about how she would that if she died, she’d want him to move on, and to not just die too, and about how Reginald would deny it, saying that if she died, he’d die with her, so he’d be buried next to her, and about how she’d laugh along, but the laugh would not quite reach her eyes.
It was that point that it had all made sense. Anne never really wanted to leave him. She just decided to leave so he wouldn’t know she died, so he’d keep living.
But, in the end, all Reginald could think about was the fact that she spent the last days of her life penniless and alone, withering away without even so much as a blanket or a warm good-night.
Reginald was forced to watch as his baby girl desperately clung to life, unable to do a thing but watch as her very being withered away over the course of almost a year.
Once Reginald was well and truly alone, all he could think about was what he promised Anne all those years ago, when they first found out that she was pregnant.
That they would be forever together.
And about how he promised a seven year old Riley the same thing, when she put together that her mother ‘abandoned’ them.
And about how he was a goddamn liar.
“Let's go,” Reginald said, after a moment passed, “I’ll boost you with Acupressure, so you’ll be faster, and then we’ll split up to cover more ground.”
Eevee panted, as she desperately scrambled to her feet, only to nearly fall over again, as pain lanced through her body. She had tried to stand on a broken leg, in her panic, and she was paying for it.
Crooning laughs rang through the air, as a particularly large Fearow watched on, a sadistic glint in his eye.
Despite herself, she began to cry. “Why!” She pleaded, as she painfully tried to retreat.
The Fearow, and the Spearow that formed its entourage laughed some more.
“You know why, bootlicker,” He said, “You’re tamed. By those filthy humans. It’ll be better for us all if you just died.”
“I left!” She begged, “I escaped! I’m not tamed!”
The Spearow scoffed, “Your kind, Eevee,” He spat out, “Should have died out long ago. They have no place in this land, except to serve as slaves for humans.”
The Spearow’s began to glow, as three different glowing balls appeared in front of it, one a glowing ball of fire, another a tightly restrained ball of lightning, and the third a ball of cold energy.
Eevee simply looked away, accepting that she was going to die.
“Squirtle!” A pokemon shouted, in a meaningless declaration of presence.
Eevee looked back, and was staring up into the big brown eyes of Squirtle, as he glowed a simmering silver.
The roar of burning fire, and roaring thunder, and crackling ice, told her that he was taking an attack that would have been her death.
Squirtle, though, knew Mirror Coat.
And so, Eevee only watched on in awe, as Squirtle cast back the very same attack, the three beams dwarfing their predecessors, and thundering down range with such force and potency that Eevee’s fur was forcibly flattened by the wind the beams caused.
And yet, when the roar died down, the Fearow was still there, having dodged the move.
Squirtle turned, was enveloped in a glowing pale water.
Aqua Ring, Eevee distantly thought, as she watched the scorch marks and charred flesh dissipate into healthy shell and scale.
“Another bootlicker,” the Fearow said, disdain thick in his voice, “I suppose I can end you first.”
With a cold anger that Eevee never thought Squirtle to be capable of, he spoke, “I’m going to rip off your wings, and beat you to death with them.”
As Squirtle stared down the Fearow, Eevee pushed herself, and summoned up the strength to cast Rainy Day, in the hopes of giving Squirtle an extra edge in what would no doubt be a difficult battle.
Abruptly, the glowing blue water that enveloped the tiny turtle pokemon shifted, darkening, matching the cold black water of the deep ocean. Without even so much as a foot step, Squirtle erupted into movement, chasing down Fearow like a water type version of Draco Meteor.
She could only watch, as Squirtle rocketted through the air, chasing down the Fearow over and over again, matching the Fearow’s brutal Fury Attacks and Drill Pecks with Aqua Jet propelled Tackles.
Distantly, Eevee thought that it was amazing that Squirtle could fight a flying type in the air, as if he was a flying type too. And then, she thought about how it was Reginald who taught him to do that.
Immediately, her burgeoning hope was dimmed by the thought of that human.
He was exactly the sort of man that pokemon like Fearow thought of when they thought of pokemon trainers. Brutal and callous slave drivers, without a thought for the suffering of their pokemon, pushing them to their limits again and again, fuelled only by greed for more power.
And yet, even the most hateful pokemon could not deny that Pokemon Trainers truly produced powerful pokemon.
That strength that Squirtle was showing, clashing with an Alpha Spearow on equal terms, and even battling it backwards. It was monstrous.
No, more than that, it was unnatural.
Squirtle was a baby pokemon, merely in the first stage of three evolutions. Baby pokemon like him should not be so powerful. He had no business battling a pokemon like Fearow.
And yet there he was.
And then, it seems that order reasserted itself, as Squirtle abruptly slowed, and then, received another Fury Attack, and where he would have once merely trucked right through it, he was now sent crashing back down into the ground.
Eevee watched on sadly, as Fearow charged up one last Drill Peck, ready to end her old friend once and for all.
Without warning, an absolutely titanic beam of raw psychic might roared through the forest, obliterating Fearow, along with everything else in its general direction, carving a massive tench through the forest.
In the deafening silence that followed, the man responsible for Squirtle’s unnatural strength touched down a few feet away from Eevee.
Wordlessly, he walked over to Eevee, and kneeled down over her, as glowing golden light enveloped them both.
And then, a twinkling bell pierced the silence, and the glowing golden light surged.
Eevee could only sigh as the dull roar of her wounds, and broken limbs disappeared, healed by Reginald's Wish and Heal Bell.
“Squirtle.” He called out to the tiny turtle pokemon, who was busy staring down the trail of obliteration that Reginald's Stored Power left behind. “Here’s your pokeball.” He said, “If you decide that it’s best for you both to leave me, I will not object.”
He then turned, and walked away.
“There’s a creek not far away,” He called back over his shoulder, “I’ll be waiting there. If you two are leaving, at least let me know.”
Eevee and Squirtle both watched in silence as his broad back retreated into the brush. And once he was gone, the two of them were forced to face each other.
Eevee opened her mouth to talk, to try and explain, but the words just didn’t come out.
Fortunately for her, Squirtle decided to initiate the conversation for her. “Why?” He croaked out,
Now, with the floodgates opened, Eevee poured out her heart, “I… I can’t do it.” She said, as tears began to flow, “I never wanted to battle. I just- it was what I was supposed to do!”
Squirtle looked up and away, “Eevee… Do you know why I wanted to battle?” He asked rhetorically, “It was because I wanted to be able to protect you, and all the other pokemon on my team. So that our trainer would send me out first every time, and no one else would need to fight.”
Squirtle looked back down at Eevee.
“Trust me.” He said, “I’ll convince Reginald to go easy on your training.”
“...Alright,” She said, “I’ll do it. I’ll go back to the trainer.”
Squirtle smiled at her gently, “Thank you for trusting me.” He said, “Now, come on, he’s waiting for us over at the creek.”
Eevee just followed behind the pokemon, as he led them over to the man.
The two pokemon found the man in question sitting in the dirt, leaning against the trunk of a tree, and looking off into the distance.
“Reginald,” Squirtle said, “I’ve decided to stay.” Reginald's face remained completely neutral, “And so has Eevee.” Eevee licked his nonexistent lips nervously, “But she doesn’t want to train.”
Reginald's reply was interrupted by a distant feeling of alarm, a sort of primal sensation that something wasn’t right.
He came to his feet, just as an absolutely monolithic Charizard came to a stop before them, followed by an immense roaring wind. Distantly.
Reginald squared his shoulders to the beast, instinctively preparing for a battle.
He eyed the beast, as a blast of hot wind buffeted him, coming from the raw heat of the fire-type. And the beast eyed him back, and it took all of Reginald's strength to not immediately initiate combat against the beast.
“Reginald,” Professor Oak said, as he hopped off the back of Charizard, “Did you see the pokemon that used that move?”
“Which move?” Reginald said,
“Come now!” Professor Oak said reproachfully, “This is no time for jokes. I am asking about the pokemon that used that Psybeam.”
“Oh,” Reginald said, “That was me.” He said casually, “And it wasn’t Psybeam. It was Stored Power.”
Professor Oak just looked at Reginald, annoyance clear on his face. “I’m not going to ask you again. Where is that pokemon?”
Reginald, being thoroughly done with the whole situation, decided that right then and there was the time to transform into his Hydreigon form.
With a thought, the transformation had begun. Reginald's tanned skin darkened to a navy blue, as he grew taller and taller, and his torso thickened and widened, stretching until he tore out of his clothes with his growth. His backpack was thrown to the side, as six large and ragged wings burst from his back, and pulled him into the air.
Reginald, now in the form of a Dragon, and bearing raw might of one, reared his largest head back, and once more cast Stored Power, except this time it was a beam forced all the way up into the sky, punching a hole in the sky.
If before, Reginald's Stored Power could carve its way through a forest, the new version could punch a hole through a mountain.
“It was me.” He said,
Professor Oak, awed by the borderline Legendary display of raw power, asked “Who… What are you?”
“I am Reginald Cromwell.” He said, “And I may not be human, but I still intend on being a pokemon trainer.”
Professor Oak forcibly recomposed himself, “...If that suits your desires.” He said calmly.
“It does.” He reasserted.
Professor Oak then hopped onto the back of his Charizard, and, with a haste that betrayed his fear, the two flew far away.
Reginald then turned to the two pokemon that were on his team. With a sigh, he said, “Eevee, I’ll allow you to stay on my team, as a companion only. But… once I have my other five pokeballs filled, and I am about to add my final battle pokemon to my team, I will be sending you back to Professor Oak’s farm. My only demand is that you aid in Squirtle’s training by contributing your Rainy Day. Are those terms acceptable?”
“Yes.” She answered.
“Now then,” Reginald said, “I’ll be taking us to a beach for the next training site.”
Ring. Ring. Ring. Click.
“What is it, old man?”
“Listen, Lance, we have a situation.”
“Shit. What the hell happened?”
“One of my sponsored trainers is a disguised Legendary. I don’t know what happened, but something made him use a move powerful enough to spook my pokemon all the way over here in Pallet Town. When I went over there, he demonstrated his power with another move powerful enough to scare my Charizard.”
“Bullshit. I’ve seen that thing pick a fight with fucking Moltres.”
“I’m dead serious.”
“...Alright, I’m heading over. But… be honest, how fucked are we?”
“...He isn’t actively violent, but if he becomes violent… Our best bet is for us to get Blaine’s dusty ass out there to help us hold him off while Steven and Cynthia get over here.”
“...Fuck. Alright. I’m on my way.”
Click.
(Post Note: The move that Reginald used against Fearow and then demonstrated to Professor Oak was Stored Power.
Stored Power is a move that increases in power the more buffs you have active. In the game, with the theoretical maximum amount of buffs you could get in the game, which you can get using Acupressure, its power is 860. For reference Hyper Beam’s power is 150. And that power stat is further amplified by the user’s special attack stat which in this case was already very high, and then boosted greatly.
And the scary part is that Stored Power doesn’t have a cooldown like Hyper Beam, and it doesn’t remove the buffs. You could just spam that shit.
Additionally, Reginald knows Psychic Terrain, so he could amp its power by another 50% if he had to.
Do with that information what you will.)
Preface

While writing my current long fic I started to feel like something was off, and came to the conclusion that the reason why was due to how the story had changed from it's original idea. The tone had become darker, and there were a lot of ideas that I wanted to use that won't work with where the fic is currently going. Though I still like the main fic, and I want to continue to work on it. To deal with this I decide that I would write a spin off of this fic, so whenever I get bored or stuck in the main fic I can take a break by working on the spin off.
I plan to only post the main fic after it has been finished, and considering how slow of a writer I am it could be a while. Despite this I really want to post something from this AU, so I was thinking about posting the spin off. It's a bit episodic with each chapter (or chapters depending on how long it takes to resolve the conflict) being it's own little story. I'm also pantsing it, and not writing it in chronologic order (there is a vague order to the ideas I have currently).
The fic that it's a spin off of won't be done for years, and I was thinking about making it a series in Ao3 but I don't know if their is a better format to use. How should I go about this?

I've tried outlining many a time, but I have always deviated and gone back to what I do best: pantsing until I figure the story out and outline after.
But for those planners/outliners that think things through, and figure out the details before they write the story to completion, successfully: what goes into it?
How do you know what scene goes best, what location, what characters are involved? Do you even know that until you start writing? How basic do you keep things, how detailed are you? What research and tinkering do you do? How do you research and tinker?
Are there any detailed planners out there at all, who have managed to get to the end of their first draft whilst sticking mostly to the script?

Hello all,
psychopathy just hit 20 thousand members. Thank you very much for subscribing. Here’s a stupidly violent story to help kick off the new era and complicate all of our discussions.

On June 11th of 1955, a car at the French racetrack Le Mans rear ended a competitor turning onto the main straight and ricocheted off the track going around 150 mph. Driver Pierre Levegh was flung from his car. Landing in the middle of the racetrack in front of the main grandstand and actively on fire, Levegh’s final screaming moments played out in front of thousands of onlookers—except that the crowd was distracted. The car, also on fire, had mounted the retaining wall and was ploughing through the grandstand, “decapitating tightly jammed spectators like a guillotine.”
83 affluent French racing fans met their end more or less instantly, and 120 more were injured. That makes the Le Mans disaster, to this day, the biggest racing catastrophe in history.
Logically, the marshals immediately red flagged the race. And then Le Mans was closed forever in memoriam and nobody ever raced there again—
No, wait, that’s not what happened at all. The race was restarted, even as authorities spent the next few hours digging severed heads and injured fans from the wreckage of the grandstand. Levegh’s body was left on the track, though someone covered it with a flag after a while—possibly because his car appeared to have pantsed him on his way out.
Race director Charles Faroux, who saw everything and could have called it all off, later simply said by way of explanation, “the rough law of sport dictates that the race shall go on.”
So, getting around to the point… that’s pretty callous and unemotional. Faroux was a psychopath, wasn’t he? Is that where this is all going?
Not exactly. If Faroux was a psychopath, how about Jaguar’s race-winning team, photographed that evening hanging out on the podium and drinking their rightfully earned cava? Or any of the other drivers, who lap after lap had to evade their friend’s corpse, and yet continued to chop and change until the finish line? Or the fans who stayed til the end of the race to see it?
It seems unlikely that this many psychopaths would ever gather in one place like that, I mean the internet wouldn’t even be invented for decades. What’s much more likely is that Faroux, the drivers, and the fans were simply products of their time. And so—importantly—was psychopathy researcher Hervey Cleckley, born just two years before Levegh.
We often note here, with puzzlement, that Cleckley’s psychopaths were not defined centrally by violence or serious crime, but rather for their hapless social deviance. But consider the era he lived in, and his unique angle begins to make sense—in 1950, the year of Cleckley’s second and definitive edition of The Mask of Sanity, most well adjusted men over the age of 25 had just put in a few years killing Nazis. Nobody was going to be phased by an errant act of violence, any more than they were going to stop a race just because there was a burning corpse in the track.
In fact, violence was so normalized during that time that psychopaths were noted for being less good at violence than they should be. That’s right. Cleckley himself spent much of the 1940s helping the military figure out how to exclude psychopaths from the draft. This isn’t because they were ultraviolent killing machines, but because he felt they’d be disorganized and sloppy ones, and their shenanigans would hold up the other soldiers.

But how about 30 years of peacetime later? That’s when Robert Hare was researching psychopathy in prison inmates and compiling the PCL and PCL-R checklists, which define psychopathy largely in terms of violent crime and would be released in 1980. In contrast to Cleckley, who seemed to feel his generation of American culture was not existentially threatened by violence, Hare’s work is all about it. If Hare, like Cleckley, was a product of his time, then what kind of violence had been happening in North American culture that could so thoroughly capture his imagination?
Well… serial killing. Lots and lots of it. The 1970s is known in the US as the serial killer decade, in fact, and while nobody really knows why the hell that would be, once the trend had begun it didn’t let up until well into the 90s. The following familiar names were all murdering the shit out of strangers throughout the 70s, in a very high-profile way that ruled the news cycle and would have been well known to Hare as he was developing the PCL test series:
​

• the Zodiac Killer
• John Wayne Gacy
• Ted Bundy
• David Berkowitz
• the Hillside Strangler
• Ed Kemper
• Rodney Alcala
• Coral Eugene Watts
• Vaughan Greenwood
• Patrick Kearney
• Richard Cottingham

Serial killers were probably uniquely interesting specifically because society was, mostly, peaceful. Your average middle manager would have been too young to have been to Europe and killed anyone, so violence once more was a spooky unknown. That would have made violence and crime fascinating—to average people as something to watch on the news, to Hare as a telltale sign of derangement, and maybe even to the killers themselves. The biggest threat to society was no longer having the disorganized soldier in your war, but rather having a too-efficient soldier invade your peacetime. And somehow, because psychopathy is such a shifty construct, it was able to end up looking like both things.

That brings us to the present day.
Check out the following passage in David Cooke and Martin Sellbom’s manual for scoring the CAPP, the latest hot shit in psychopathy testing and first fully published in 2020:

Symptoms of PPD (Psychopathic Personality Disorder) should belong to the domain of personal deviance, not social or cultural deviance; that is, the symptoms belong to the domain of pathological personality traits not to the domain of acts that violate social norms e.g., sexual promiscuity or criminal behaviour.

Sounds like David Cooke and his team have finally solved the puzzle. By defining psychopathy purely in terms of ‘personal deviance,’ they’ve taken Cleckley’s and Hare’s cultural biases into account. Job done. We’ll get a clear picture now, right?
Yeah, right. Just like Cleckley’s and Hare’s, this era probably has a flavor, a set of broad, dumb cultural assumptions that always seem obvious until the times change and prove they were anything but--think, Millennials and skinny jeans. We just don’t see ours yet because, unfortunately, we’re in it.
So with each new measurement scale--Cleckley's, then the PCL series, then the CAPP (not to mention the Tri-PM and other contemporary measures)--are we making progress?
Is Cooke, in other words, getting closer to a definition for psychopathy by making the ratings scale ignore specific behaviors and focus on personality alone? Or is that focus simply reflective of a current hyper-individualistic approach to mental health?
Let's hear it.

So I'm kinda just writing for my own enjoyment. I make better stories by observing a story structure take place as I go. But I don't know what is going to happen later on. So I'm kinda just going along and reminding myself of the structure when it's time for the next plot point. Is this plotting or pantsing? Or both?

I was wondering if anyone else has ever dealt with this problem I'm facing in my urban fantasy story. As I've been pantsing my way through I've realized that the villain, while he wants to kill the hero, doesn't really have any particular reason to interact with or explain his motivations to the hero.
Beyond that, the villain is working alone, and anyone the protagonist knows who's actually met the villain wouldn't have seen him for at least a decade, and wouldn't have a clue about his current goals.
The hero and villain do initially encounter each other at a time when the villain knows the hero hasn't even heard of him, but once the hero's journey is underway the villain isn't going to let himself be within melee range of the hero if he can avoid it.
Should I still try to develop the villain, or should I make the hero's feelings towards him the point?

It’s time to hand out the last set of quarterly awards!
For this article, we’re counting the third quarter as the ~20 games played since Jan 18th, so the statistics cited have been pulled from that sample whenever possible.
[Thanks for reading! As always, I've included a bunch of illustrative GIFs that can be viewed in-context here or at the links embedded in the article. If you're curious, here are my Q1 and Q2 awards.]

Most Improved Player of the Quarter: Donte DiVincenzo, New York Knicks

My Most Improved Player of the Quarter is given to the player who improved the most from the first half of the season to the third quarter; this is not a reflection of the actual award, which looks at play this year compared to last year.
Usually, I try not to put too much weight on someone who simply plays more minutes and, therefore, puts up bigger numbers. Sometimes, though, those numbers get so big they can’t be ignored. In that spirit, I want to acknowledge The Big Ragu himself, Mr. Donte DiVincenzo.
DiVincenzo averaged 11/3/2 in his 22 minutes per game for the first 41 games of the season. But trading away Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes, and RJ Barrett and injuries to OG Anunoby and Julius Randle opened up both minutes and shots for the taking, and DiVincenzo was ready to swipe them. His role started to expand in January before exploding in February.
For the third quarter, DiVincenzo averaged 21 points (!) in 35 minutes (!!), but that doesn’t tell the full story. DiVincenzo ramped up his three-point shooting to an absurd degree, hitting 39% of his 11.6 triples per game.
To put that in context, Steph Curry is averaging 12.1 triples per game for the season on 41% accuracy; Luka Doncic is second, putting up 10.2 attempts on 38% shooting. In other words, if DiVincenzo had been doing this all year, he’d be the second-best three-point shooter in the league. Nobody else is even close to that level of volume and accuracy.
Three-point shooting quality rarely holds as sample sizes get bigger. As someone starts jacking up more and more triples, the difficulty of those shots increases, which should drive down percentages. Not so in DiVincenzo’s case.
He is hunting triples with abandon. They’re rarely bad shots, but they certainly are aggressive. Look at him shake Herb Jones (a feat in itself!) and put up a moonball that soars juuuust past Jones’ lengthy fingertips: [video here]
DiVincenzo’s playing with the confidence of a high school Mean Girl, and he’s just as ruthless. Is he pulling up for three in a 1-on-5 situation with 21 seconds on the shot clock in the third quarter? Hell yeah, he is: [video here]
The Knicks have some fascinating rotation questions to answer when everyone returns to full health.
Shoutout to Deni Avdija, who also garnered consideration for this award (along with many others). I’ve got a lot more coming on him soon, in case you’re a sicko who wants to read about the Wizards.

Perimeter Defensive Player of the Quarter: Kris Dunn, Utah Jazz

All season, I’ve broken the Defensive Player award into perimeter and interior categories. This reflects my belief that, while interior defensive players are way more important in the aggregate, perimeter guys deserve some shine, too.
(I have no idea what will happen with positionless All-Defensive teams this season, but there will be a lot of centers involved, I suspect.)
Perimeter defense, more than any other awards, is about feel and eye test. Box score metrics are inadequate, and advanced stats haven’t advanced our understanding of perimeter defense nearly as much as interior defense.
So if you want to pick Herb Jones, or Jalen Suggs, or Derrick White, or Alex Caruso (my winner last quarter), or any other number of worthy defensive options, be my guest. There’s little tangible ammo to argue with, much less to mount a winning campaign. And to be entirely honest, I’ve talked about most of those guys this season; I wanted to highlight the fearsome Dunn.
The on-ball stuff is what makes highlight reels. Many players pretend to play full-court defense; Dunn doesn’t pretend or play. Watch him strip De’Aaron Fox one-on-one in the backcourt here: [video here]
Dunn might be the league’s best transition defender (he inherits the crown from Draymond Green). He has an uncanny ability to get his hands on the rock as opponents start to gather, knocking it out of bounds and allowing the Jazz to set up their defense. Look at him blow up this transition play twice while his fellow Jazzmen casually jog back: [video here]
He’s one of the best at chasing foes around picks and staying attached to shooters’ hips. Watch Klay Thompson be the tail to Dunn’s dog here, as Dunn refuses to lose him around two different screens: [video here]
Outside of the occasional shoutout on The Lowe Post, Dunn doesn’t get nearly as much national recognition as his peers. Let’s all try to change that.

Interior Defensive Player of the Quarter: Victor Wembanyama

I just wrote a whole bunch about Wemby’s unheralded case for Defensive Player of the Year, so you should have seen this coming if you saw that post a few weeks back. One quick updated stat: Wembanyama averaged 3.9 blocks and 1.7 steals per game in the third quarter, for a total of 5.6 stocks.
The players in second — Walker Kessler and Chet Holmgren — are only averaging 3.4 stocks. To be fair, Kessler played just 23 minutes per game, while Holmgren and Wemby hovered around 30. He’s had an underrated defensive season off Utah’s bench. But even normalizing for minutes, nobody is within Wemby’s zip code as a defensive playmaker.
While box-score stats aren’t everything, they sure are something when the gulf is this wide. Rudy Gobert remains the overwhelming frontrunner for the award, given his dominance and Wembanyama’s acclimatization to NBA action, but this might be the last year that anyone besides the Spur wins for a long, long time.

Rookie of the Quarter: Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

Rookie I’m Talking About Instead: Brandin Podziemski, Golden State Warriors

Like I said, I’ve talkeda metric ton about Victor Wembanyama this season. What seemed like a close two-man race to start the year between Wemby and the (outrageously good!) Chet Holmgren has become a blowout, and Wemby is getting better by the minute. Brandon Miller is a distant but deserving third.
But since we’ve already discussed many of the most deserving rookies, I want to highlight Brandin Podziemski, Golden State’s bulldog guard.
Before Podziemski’s back injury last week, he had usurped Klay Thompson’s place in the starting lineup. He’s certainly not the triggerman Thompson is from deep, but he stays within the offense without being gun-shy, an important distinction.
Of note: Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, and Draymond Green have played approximately 300 possessions each with Klay Thompson and Podziemski — a small sample, but not nothing. In those ~300 with Klay, the lineup has a net rating of +8.6 points per 100 possessions — not bad! In the ~300 with Podziemski, the lineup is +21.2, an elite mark. Much more goes into that than Podz’s mere presence, of course, but it’s at least a directional sign that the lineup switch has been successful.
Podziemski is a ridiculous rebounder for his size. His ability to control the glass as a guard (5.8 rebounds per game and a ridiculous 15.3% defensive rebounding rate that looks more like a power forward's stat) are part of the reason the Warriors have successfully been able to run out more lineups with Draymond Green at center this quarter. When a shot goes up, Podziemski is an attentive boxer-outer and aggressive high-pointer: [boring-ass video here]
Is that rebounding clip the lamest “highlight” I’ve ever embedded? Undoubtedly. But it’s illustrative! Look at how he checks his man, Scoot Henderson, to make sure Henderson’s not crashing the glass before ripping the ball out of the air in traffic. Textbook.
Podz is smart, feisty defensively, and an effective secondary playmaker. He can play either guard position, but he’s physically strong enough to play some small forward in a pinch. That positional versatility is important for a Warriors team that thrives on flexibility.

Sixth Man of the Quarter: Naz Reid, Minnesota Timberwolves

Honestly, it’s an underwhelming crop of Sixth Men this quarter. My pick would have been Bogdan Bogdanovic, except he started in 10 of 20 games this quarter. The rule is that a player has to come off the bench in >50% of games played to qualify for the real award, and that’s what we’ll hold to here.
Therefore, my Sixth Man of the Quarter is Wolves big man Naz Reid.
Reid’s ability to shapeshift gives the Wolves more lineup flexibility than people realize. He can replace either Karl-Anthony Towns or Rudy Gobert, and his shooting (43% from deep on more than four attempts per game) ensures that the team can keep two bigs on the floor at all times without sacrificing spacing. Big men with legitimate shooting — not just decent accuracy on two attempts per game — are extremely rare. Big men who can shoot and hold up defensively are rarer still.
The stat line for the quarter of 12/5/1 and a block doesn’t pop, but it undersells how useful his skillset is for this Wolves team. Reid has dramatically improved defensively this season. He’s become quicker on the perimeter and a legitimate shotblocking threat in the paint. He gives the Wolves some switchability, something they don’t like to do with Gobert or Towns as often.
Reid also loves to push the ball in transition, something the Wolves don’t do a lot of otherwise (they are last in the league in transition frequency). At times, the Wolves’ sometimes-stagnant offense needs his jolt of adrenaline. Reid has a nifty handle for a 6’10” guy, and he’s eager to use it: [video here]
The ideal Sixth Man is someone who can both slot into his team’s existing strengths and provide an off-speed pitch. Reid’s improved defense and aggressive mindset check both those boxes, and he takes the quarterly crown.

Coach of the Quarter: Joe Mazzulla, Boston Celtics

The Celtics were a league-leading 16-3 in this timeframe. It was a relatively easy schedule, but the Celtics’ +14.6 net rating in this timespan is half again as good as second-place Minnesota’s +9.3.
There were statement games aplenty. Boston pantsed Golden State the other night in an epic demolition, obliterated Dallas, and even beat Miami twice. The only bad loss was to a then-surging Clippers team.
Boston has had good health and boasts the most talented rotation in the league. The latter, in particular, almost guarantees that Mazzulla won’t win the Coach of the Year award — there’s a sense from many that any Joe could have these guys atop the league. But this specific Joe’s third quarter deserves love.
Mazzulla is coaching. From bespoke offensive game plans to take advantage of individual defenses to wild Jrue-Holiday-at-center defensive lineups to some of the most elaborate switching schemes in the league, Mazzulla isn’t just sitting on his hands and watching his dudes play. He’s even calling the occasional timeout!
Most real coaching happens behind closed doors; a big part of it is personnel management and personal touch. On the outside, we can only judge coaches by results and what snippets of process we can glean. It would have been easy for the Celtics players and management to quit on Mazzulla after last season (and maybe they would have if the Heat had finished them off in four or five games). Instead, the rotation improved, the players bought in, and Mazzulla has the Celtics miles and miles ahead of the rest of the pack.
Players aren’t the only ones who improve; coaches do, too. Mazzulla has shown greater flexibility and more creativity in his second season at the helm. The playoffs, of course, are the ultimate test, but it’s hard to ask for much more from a regular season performance.

Clutch Player of the Quarter: Max Strus, Cleveland Cavaliers

Listen, I did zero research for this. You can save all your arguments about FG% in the last few minutes of five-point games, etc. The answer is Max Strus.
And while the half-court game-winner rightfully gets all the attention, he also went five-for-five from deep in the last four minutes to cap off a ridiculous Cavaliers comeback.
That’s clutch.

Most Valuable Player of the Quarter: Luka Doncic, Dallas Mavericks

People have very strong opinions about MVP, and that’s great! Despite the plethora of statistical evidence people have to back their preferred candidate, at this point, it’s largely down to a matter of taste. If you’d prefer the metronomic dominance of Jokic and his eye-popping box scores, Shai’s slicing and dicing (32 points on 50/50/85 percent shooting is ridiculous), or Giannis’ steady two-way play (30 points on Shaq-like shooting while regaining his defensive form since Doc took over), that’s fine. The fun of MVP is that everyone can look at the same candidates and come to different conclusions. Jokic was my Q1 MVP, and SGA was my choice in Q2.
But in the third quarter, Doncic averaged a silly 36 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists on 52/39/79 percent shooting splits. WTF is that? While he’s comfortably the worst defender of the top MVP candidates, he even averaged 1.6 steals per game.
Advanced stats are similarly rosy. Out of the four major MVP candidates (Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Nikola Jokic), he had thebest Estimated Plus/Minus for the quarter, although SGA was close behind. I asked Neil Paine to help me find Wins Above Replacement over this period, and he was gracious enough to oblige: Doncic slightly edges everyone else in WAR per game, too. Both the traditional and advanced stats usually favor Doncic for this period.
Other teams won more games during this stretch. But none of the other candidates had to deal with the bevy of injuries and trades upending half of the rotation like Dallas did.
Doncic whines too much to officials and teammates and still takes the occasional play off. It’s distasteful, at best. His 15 technical fouls this season mean he’s one away from a suspension (with more suspensions for subsequent techs a looming threat). The Mavericks, as a whole, have felt disjointed of late while losing four of their last five following a seven-game winning streak.
But Doncic is also putting up a historic combination of efficiency and volume while rebounding like prime Westbrook and putting forth career-best defensive efforts. It’s hard to put too much blame on him.
Luka is the least likely of this foursome to actually win the award for a variety of reasons, but his incredible third quarter deserves acknowledgment.
That's all I've got. Who would you have picked?

It’s time to hand out the last set of quarterly awards!
For this article, we’re counting the third quarter as the ~20 games played since Jan 18th, so the statistics cited have been pulled from that sample whenever possible.
[Thanks for reading! As always, I've included a bunch of illustrative GIFs that can be viewed in-context here or at the links embedded in the article. If you're curious, here are my Q1 and Q2 awards.]

Most Improved Player of the Quarter: Donte DiVincenzo, New York Knicks

My Most Improved Player of the Quarter is given to the player who improved the most from the first half of the season to the third quarter; this is not a reflection of the actual award, which looks at play this year compared to last year.
Usually, I try not to put too much weight on someone who simply plays more minutes and, therefore, puts up bigger numbers. Sometimes, though, those numbers get so big they can’t be ignored. In that spirit, I want to acknowledge The Big Ragu himself, Mr. Donte DiVincenzo.
DiVincenzo averaged 11/3/2 in his 22 minutes per game for the first 41 games of the season. But trading away Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes, and RJ Barrett and injuries to OG Anunoby and Julius Randle opened up both minutes and shots for the taking, and DiVincenzo was ready to swipe them. His role started to expand in January before exploding in February.
For the third quarter, DiVincenzo averaged 21 points (!) in 35 minutes (!!), but that doesn’t tell the full story. DiVincenzo ramped up his three-point shooting to an absurd degree, hitting 39% of his 11.6 triples per game.
To put that in context, Steph Curry is averaging 12.1 triples per game for the season on 41% accuracy; Luka Doncic is second, putting up 10.2 attempts on 38% shooting. In other words, if DiVincenzo had been doing this all year, he’d be the second-best three-point shooter in the league. Nobody else is even close to that level of volume and accuracy.
Three-point shooting quality rarely holds as sample sizes get bigger. As someone starts jacking up more and more triples, the difficulty of those shots increases, which should drive down percentages. Not so in DiVincenzo’s case.
He is hunting triples with abandon. They’re rarely bad shots, but they certainly are aggressive. Look at him shake Herb Jones (a feat in itself!) and put up a moonball that soars juuuust past Jones’ lengthy fingertips: [video here]
DiVincenzo’s playing with the confidence of a high school Mean Girl, and he’s just as ruthless. Is he pulling up for three in a 1-on-5 situation with 21 seconds on the shot clock in the third quarter? Hell yeah, he is: [video here]
The Knicks have some fascinating rotation questions to answer when everyone returns to full health.
Shoutout to Deni Avdija, who also garnered consideration for this award (along with many others). I’ve got a lot more coming on him soon, in case you’re a sicko who wants to read about the Wizards.

Perimeter Defensive Player of the Quarter: Kris Dunn, Utah Jazz

All season, I’ve broken the Defensive Player award into perimeter and interior categories. This reflects my belief that, while interior defensive players are way more important in the aggregate, perimeter guys deserve some shine, too.
(I have no idea what will happen with positionless All-Defensive teams this season, but there will be a lot of centers involved, I suspect.)
Perimeter defense, more than any other awards, is about feel and eye test. Box score metrics are inadequate, and advanced stats haven’t advanced our understanding of perimeter defense nearly as much as interior defense.
So if you want to pick Herb Jones, or Jalen Suggs, or Derrick White, or Alex Caruso (my winner last quarter), or any other number of worthy defensive options, be my guest. There’s little tangible ammo to argue with, much less to mount a winning campaign. And to be entirely honest, I’ve talked about most of those guys this season; I wanted to highlight the fearsome Dunn.
The on-ball stuff is what makes highlight reels. Many players pretend to play full-court defense; Dunn doesn’t pretend or play. Watch him strip De’Aaron Fox one-on-one in the backcourt here: [video here]
Dunn might be the league’s best transition defender (he inherits the crown from Draymond Green). He has an uncanny ability to get his hands on the rock as opponents start to gather, knocking it out of bounds and allowing the Jazz to set up their defense. Look at him blow up this transition play twice while his fellow Jazzmen casually jog back: [video here]
He’s one of the best at chasing foes around picks and staying attached to shooters’ hips. Watch Klay Thompson be the tail to Dunn’s dog here, as Dunn refuses to lose him around two different screens: [video here]
Outside of the occasional shoutout on The Lowe Post, Dunn doesn’t get nearly as much national recognition as his peers. Let’s all try to change that.

Interior Defensive Player of the Quarter: Victor Wembanyama

I just wrote a whole bunch about Wemby’s unheralded case for Defensive Player of the Year, so you should have seen this coming if you saw that post a few weeks back. One quick updated stat: Wembanyama averaged 3.9 blocks and 1.7 steals per game in the third quarter, for a total of 5.6 stocks.
The players in second — Walker Kessler and Chet Holmgren — are only averaging 3.4 stocks. To be fair, Kessler played just 23 minutes per game, while Holmgren and Wemby hovered around 30. He’s had an underrated defensive season off Utah’s bench. But even normalizing for minutes, nobody is within Wemby’s zip code as a defensive playmaker.
While box-score stats aren’t everything, they sure are something when the gulf is this wide. Rudy Gobert remains the overwhelming frontrunner for the award, given his dominance and Wembanyama’s acclimatization to NBA action, but this might be the last year that anyone besides the Spur wins for a long, long time.

Rookie of the Quarter: Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

Rookie I’m Talking About Instead: Brandin Podziemski, Golden State Warriors

Like I said, I’ve talked a metric ton about Victor Wembanyama this season. What seemed like a close two-man race to start the year between Wemby and the (outrageously good!) Chet Holmgren has become a blowout, and Wemby is getting better by the minute. Brandon Miller is a distant but deserving third.
But since we’ve already discussed many of the most deserving rookies, I want to highlight Brandin Podziemski, Golden State’s bulldog guard.
Before Podziemski’s back injury last week, he had usurped Klay Thompson’s place in the starting lineup. He’s certainly not the triggerman Thompson is from deep, but he stays within the offense without being gun-shy, an important distinction.
Of note: Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, and Draymond Green have played approximately 300 possessions each with Klay Thompson and Podziemski — a small sample, but not nothing. In those ~300 with Klay, the lineup has a net rating of +8.6 points per 100 possessions — not bad! In the ~300 with Podziemski, the lineup is +21.2, an elite mark. Much more goes into that than Podz’s mere presence, of course, but it’s at least a directional sign that the lineup switch has been successful.
Podziemski is a ridiculous rebounder for his size. His ability to control the glass as a guard (5.8 rebounds per game and a ridiculous 15.3% defensive rebounding rate that looks more like a power forward's stat) are part of the reason the Warriors have successfully been able to run out more lineups with Draymond Green at center this quarter. When a shot goes up, Podziemski is an attentive boxer-outer and aggressive high-pointer: [boring-ass video here]
Is that rebounding clip the lamest “highlight” I’ve ever embedded? Undoubtedly. But it’s illustrative! Look at how he checks his man, Scoot Henderson, to make sure Henderson’s not crashing the glass before ripping the ball out of the air in traffic. Textbook.
Podz is smart, feisty defensively, and an effective secondary playmaker. He can play either guard position, but he’s physically strong enough to play some small forward in a pinch. That positional versatility is important for a Warriors team that thrives on flexibility.

Sixth Man of the Quarter: Naz Reid, Minnesota Timberwolves

Honestly, it’s an underwhelming crop of Sixth Men this quarter. My pick would have been Bogdan Bogdanovic, except he started in 10 of 20 games this quarter. The rule is that a player has to come off the bench in >50% of games played to qualify for the real award, and that’s what we’ll hold to here.
Therefore, my Sixth Man of the Quarter is Wolves big man Naz Reid.
Reid’s ability to shapeshift gives the Wolves more lineup flexibility than people realize. He can replace either Karl-Anthony Towns or Rudy Gobert, and his shooting (43% from deep on more than four attempts per game) ensures that the team can keep two bigs on the floor at all times without sacrificing spacing. Big men with legitimate shooting — not just decent accuracy on two attempts per game — are extremely rare. Big men who can shoot and hold up defensively are rarer still.
The stat line for the quarter of 12/5/1 and a block doesn’t pop, but it undersells how useful his skillset is for this Wolves team. Reid has dramatically improved defensively this season. He’s become fleeter on the perimeter and a legitimate shotblocking threat in the paint. He gives the Wolves some switchability, something they don’t like to do with Gobert or Towns as often.
Reid also loves to push the ball in transition, something the Wolves don’t do a lot of otherwise (they are last in the league in transition frequency). At times, the Wolves’ sometimes-stagnant offense needs his jolt of adrenaline. Reid has a nifty handle for a 6’10” guy, and he’s eager to use it: [video here]
The ideal Sixth Man is someone who can both slot into his team’s existing strengths and provide an off-speed pitch. Reid’s improved defense and aggressive mindset check both those boxes, and he takes the quarterly crown.

Coach of the Quarter: Joe Mazzulla, Boston Celtics

The Celtics were a league-leading 16-3 in this timeframe. It was a relatively easy schedule, but the Celtics’ +14.6 net rating in this timespan is half again as good as second-place Minnesota’s +9.3.
There were statement games aplenty. Boston pantsed Golden State the other night in an epic demolition, obliterated Dallas, and even beat Miami twice. The only bad loss was to a then-surging Clippers team.
Boston has had good health and boasts the most talented rotation in the league. The latter, in particular, almost guarantees that Mazzulla won’t win the Coach of the Year award — there’s a sense from many that any Joe could have these guys atop the league. But this specific Joe’s third quarter deserves love.
Mazzulla is coaching. From bespoke offensive game plans to take advantage of individual defenses to wild Jrue-Holiday-at-center defensive lineups to some of the most elaborate switching schemes in the league, Mazzulla isn’t just sitting on his hands and watching his dudes play. He’s even calling the occasional timeout!
Most real coaching happens behind closed doors; a big part of it is personnel management and personal touch. On the outside, we can only judge coaches by results and what snippets of process we can glean. It would have been easy for the Celtics players and management to quit on Mazzulla after last season (and maybe they would have if the Heat had finished them off in four or five games). Instead, the rotation improved, the players bought in, and Mazzulla has the Celtics miles and miles ahead of the rest of the pack.
Players aren’t the only ones who improve; coaches do, too. Mazzulla has shown greater flexibility and more creativity in his second season at the helm. The playoffs, of course, are the ultimate test, but it’s hard to ask for much more from a regular season performance.

Clutch Player of the Quarter: Max Strus, Cleveland Cavaliers

Listen, I did zero research for this. You can save all your arguments about FG% in the last few minutes of five-point games, etc. The answer is Max Strus.
And while the half-court game-winner rightfully gets all the attention, he also went five-for-five from deep in the last four minutes to cap off a ridiculous Cavaliers comeback.
That’s clutch.

Most Valuable Player of the Quarter: Luka Doncic, Dallas Mavericks

People have very strong opinions about MVP, and that’s great! Despite the plethora of statistical evidence people have to back their preferred candidate, at this point, it’s largely down to a matter of taste. If you’d prefer the metronomic dominance of Jokic and his eye-popping box scores, Shai’s slicing and dicing (32 points on 50/50/85 percent shooting is ridiculous), or Giannis’ steady two-way play (30 points on Shaq-like shooting while regaining his defensive form since Doc took over), that’s fine. The fun of MVP is that everyone can look at the same candidates and come to different conclusions. Jokic was my Q1 MVP, and SGA was my choice in Q2.
But in the third quarter, Doncic averaged a silly 36 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists on 52/39/79 percent shooting splits. WTF is that? While he’s comfortably the worst defender of the top MVP candidates, he even averaged 1.6 steals per game.
Advanced stats are similarly rosy. Out of the four major MVP candidates (Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Nikola Jokic), he had the best Estimated Plus/Minus for the quarter, although SGA was close behind. I asked Neil Paine to help me find Wins Above Replacement over this period, and he was gracious enough to oblige: Doncic slightly edges everyone else in WAR per game, too. Both the traditional and advanced stats usually favor Doncic for this period.
Other teams won more games during this stretch. But none of the other candidates had to deal with the bevy of injuries and trades upending half of the rotation like Dallas did.
Doncic whines too much to officials and teammates and still takes the occasional play off. It’s distasteful, at best. His 15 technical fouls this season mean he’s one away from a suspension (with more suspensions for subsequent techs a looming threat). The Mavericks, as a whole, have felt disjointed of late while losing four of their last five following a seven-game winning streak.
But Doncic is also putting up a historic combination of efficiency and volume while rebounding like prime Westbrook and putting forth career-best defensive efforts. It’s hard to put too much blame on him.
Luka is the least likely of this foursome to actually win the award for a variety of reasons, but his incredible third quarter deserves acknowledgment.
That's all I've got. Who would you have picked?
​

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a probably obscure film that I watched when I was a kid on the Internet. I don't really remember the plot nor the year of release (but it was probably in the 2000s or the 1990s), also because it was produced in a European country which wasn't my own (Italy) so I didn't really understand the dialogues (could probably be French tho). I just remember it was about a little kid (around 9-10 yrs old?) (NOT Le Petit Nicolas) and his little love story with a classmate, and a particular scene in which he got pantsed in the pool as a joke and then his little girlfriend gave him his swimsuit back. I remember it as very sweet. Thanks in advance!!

1 u/Champagne_Candles - Machitto sounds like such a cutie pie! Love the name. :) Love the ponyo washi!! The gold glittery pen is so pretty. <3
2 u/redbloodqueen - Booby card!! What a cute illustration. They look so goofy and cute. Haha. Thank you!
3 u/ridethatbridge - Mmmn the cannoli dip is the best cheesy pick up line tho! Thank you for the recipe. :)
4 u/pinkpothospuppy - Awww. What a good moment to choose to write about. Sounds serene! I'm nowhere near a beach, but I'm sure there are some creeks around here I could walk by!
5 u/maiiiu - Sooo omany extra stickers!! Thank you so much! Your penmanship is so pretty! Thank you for writting about that sweet moment. Ramen and smiles sounds like a lovely afternoon. <3
6 u/mtlsmom86 - Beautiful card! Love the affirmation and the black cat stickers. Sushi is sooo good. Salmon is my favorite too!
7 u/mediocre_radish_7216 - Sparky! He sounds like he was quite the handful. I also have a dog 'pantsing' me in front of people story. Haha. My mom and I moved into my stepdad's house and he had a dog named Toby. Probably my first week of living there, I come out in my pj's and my mom and stepdad are just chilling on the couch. Toby, very excited to see me awake, runs over to me, jumps up and pants me in front of them. Needless to say I just went back to bed. xD Thank you for sharing your story.

1. u/grasshopper2231 - Such a cute card and envelope! Lovely penmanship!

9 u/stormiiclouds77 - Chickens, ducks and a dog! What a fun group of pets you have and I love all their names! Thank you! <3

Question at end of description. Takes place in Colorado. All names are fake.
INITIAL STORY
I was throwing a party for folks in my neighborhood in my garage bar. I do this often, I pour drinks for folks and we all enjoy the evening/music/game/whatever.
After a pretty fun game of darts my neighbor (let's call him Kevin, maybe 40 years old) was pretty liquored up. His young Son (maybe 8 years old) comes in and talks to him. Kid is crying. Kevin bends down, listens to what the kid is saying, and immediately stands up with purpose and marches out.
I'm sitting over at the bar when I see this happen. I think nothing of it. Maybe the kid peed on the floor in my bathroom or something. No big deal.
A few minutes later another neighbor comes in and says to me "something's going down in the street outside". So I walk out to have a look see. I had a few beers, but I am definitely not blotto (probably too drunk to drive, but not slurring or staggering).
I walk out to see Kevin SCREAMING at the group of teenage boys (Jimmy, Tom, and my Son who is off to the side). Tom is not a resident of the street, he is just Jimmy's friend. All these kids are about 15-ish years old.
They are standing across the street from me in front of neighbor "Jenny's" house. Like, running at them and yelling things like "I'll F**ing kill you!" and "You better get the F*** out of here before I kick your ass!"
Another neighbor just happened to be checking her mailbox at the time and beat me to the scene by maybe 30 seconds. She's saying "Kevin, calm down!"
I walk up and Kevin takes a run at the kids. I immediately place myself between them, look at Kevin, and say (loudly) "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DO WHATEVER YOU ARE THINKING RIGHT NOW. GO SIT DOWN". Kevin backs down, continuing to scream at the kids. I'm a bit taller than Kevin.
My Son is standing on the sidewalk, motionless, watching this completely frozen. I go to him and tell him "Go home now. NOW. I will handle this". He goes home, no complaints.
We talk Kevin down and he eventually staggers home screaming "They pantsed my Son!!!"
NEXT DAY
I hear from the lady who's house they were in front of. She is the Mom of one of the kids (Jimmy) Kevin was screaming at. She tells me she has a security cam of the whole thing and needs me to see it because my Son is in it. So I watch.
Kids are standing out front (apparently waiting for a Lyft ride somewhere) and Kevin walks up, screams at them, then tackles Tom in the front yard of Jenny. Jimmy jumps on Kevin's back and it doesn't do much good. Kevin grabs Tom and hurls him into the suburban street. Tom lands on his rear and gets up, not very injured at all, but shaken up.
About 15 seconds pass with Kevin screaming, then you see my neighbor approach, than I get there.
I had missed the entire physical altercation, I only saw it on the security cam.
BACK STORY
According to my Son, they were playing video games in our house when Kevin's young Son comes in to "hang with the big kids". They hang out for a while and nobody things much of it (never had an issue before...)
The big kids get tired of the little kid hanging around, so they tell him to leave. He doesn't, so (according to my Son) they go out into the living room (empty because everyone is in the garage) and my Son closes his door and keeps playing video games. My Son hears commotion, so he opens his door and sees Tom lying on the ground holding his privates. Apparently, Kevin's Son punched him in the crotch.
The big kids (according to the story) then told the little kid to leave or they would take him to the bridge and throw him over. That's when he starts crying and comes out to the garage to talk to his Dad. That's where this story begins above.
My Son never mentioned anyone pantsing Kevin's Son. In fact, I have not heard that accusation from anyone other than Kevin.
EPILOGUE
Tom's Dad has seen the security video (I have not met him ever and I have not spoken with him at all). Jenny (the one with the footage) tells me Tom's Dad will be filing a police report and that I may need to expect an officer to take a statement (or something to that effect - I have never had a run-in with the police, I don't really know how it works).
QUESTIONS:

1. If Kevin gets in trouble for assaulting a minor, he will likely hire an attorney (if he is smart). If he does that, is it safe to assume that attorney will, in an effort to cast Kevin in a favorable light, make me look bad for this happening outside of my house and for me handing out the liquor?
2. If a law enforcement officer approaches my Son at school for questioning, what are my Son's rights? Can he tell the officer something to the effect of "My Dad told me not to talk to you, you will need to contact him directly"? (at which time I would hire my own attorney).
3. Is there a way I should be handling this if law enforcement contacts me (in person or via phone) or my Son?

Thank you very much for your time.

Does anybody have any alternatives to outlining for someone whose brain apparently can’t see into the future?
Context: I have tried so very hard to outline. I have spent hours upon hours researching different methods, but nothing I try works. It doesn’t matter if I use a flowchart, or index cards, or what. I sit down with a nice pen and my index cards or whatever, but my brain simply cannot think of what happens in the story ahead of time in order for me to write it down on the card. Everyone I know and talk to about it has a preference for planning, pantsing, or plantsing, but nobody I’ve ever talked to has ever mentioned that they literally cannot outline for the life of them, they just don’t like it or it just doesn’t suit them or whatever.
I can only ever see about five minutes ahead of whatever I’m writing. I literally don’t know what’s going to happen until I’m writing the story down. But in one series of mine, I’ve written as much as I know and hit a wall, so I skip to somewhere else in the story and write until I hit another wall. But now I’ve got a bunch of unconnected stories and plots spread across several books, and I don’t know how to connect them together or how they end. Book 1 is finished and I’m working on editing it, but there’s about 6 other books in the series that I just don’t know what to do with them. No matter how hard I try, I can’t come out with an outline to figure it out.
I was lamenting about this to my mother, who said something that finally made it click in my brain. It’s not just that I’m bad at outlining and need to work harder at it or research even more techniques, because I’ve already done that so much and it still hasn’t helped. I’m neurodivergent and it’s just that my brain simply doesn’t work that way, and trying to force my brain to think differently isn’t going to change that fact. I just can’t think that far ahead in the story, and since outlining relies on that, I’ve just gotta figure out a different way to do this besides outlining.
So are there any others out there who have the same problem as me, and if so, do you have any tricks that work for you? I’m really hoping that I’m not going to have to sit down and write out every single option in every single scene that I’m stuck in in order to find out what works out best 😅
Edit: it kinda seems like people are getting confused. I’m a pantser. I know I’m a pantser, and I’m okay with this. I don’t feel the need to outline or anything. However, in the series I’m currently writing, I wrote book 1 all the way through beginning to end, and about a quarter of book 2 before I got stuck and didn’t know where to go next. So I just skipped ahead to the next thing I knew, some of which is still in book 2 but some of which are parts of other books later on in the series. Did that several times, and now I’ve got 600k words worth of random scenes and snippets and bits of plot that are all completely unconnected and there’s not one entire complete book out of all of it (except for book 1). So I asked a zillion different people for advice on how to get it all into one coherent storyline, and I’ve gotten only one answer, repeated a zillion times: “make an outline.” Well I’ve tried that. A lot. I can’t do it. But my series is still one big unconnected mess and I’ve gotta figure out how to fix it when apparently the only solution is impossible. I’m looking for other ways to get it into some sort of coherent story that don’t include outlining.

...is that the story will still have a mind it's own.
I've been doing great with this scene up until a point, and I realized I now have to scrap half the dialogue because it wasn't working and felt so ham-fisted. This happened to me last chapter too, and at the time it felt devastating, like I'd never recover. And I know that I will but I also kinda hate it that things don't just always go according to plan!
I mean, sometimes it's great, exploring new avenues and finding something better. But because I'm writing on a self imposed schedule (and deadline), I'm pulling on the wheel like "no we don't have time for detours-- stop that!" Hence my new rule for my next multichapter fic is to have it 90% done before I start posting.
What frustrates you most about your method, be it plotting or pantsing?

Hello fellow writers,
I come with what is probably the millionth question about plotting vs pantsing. I haven't found many posts that address my situation specifically so hopefully not being too repetitive.
Basically, I've always been a pantser just because I've never known there was another option until recently when I started reading books on outlining, plot structure, etc. I've never finished a novel because I inevitably write myself into a plot that I no longer like and it makes me want to drop the whole project.
The last six months or so I've tried out plotting (I'm a very type A person, so I thought this would work perfectly for me) but for the life of me, I can't "see" a story in my head start to finish like that. I sit down to hit the Save the Cat beats (which is my favorite writing book so far) and my brain just goes "bzzzzzz". There was one time when I did this and knocked it out in like an hour, but then realized when I started writing that it was a super boring/lifeless story. I'm tempted to go back to pantsing (but still take with me all that I've learned about story structure, character arcs, scene structure, etc.)
tl;dr For those who are pansters (of any degree) who tried plotting, when did you throw in the towel on writing detailed outlines? Or conversely, if you used to be a pantser who then turned into a plotter, when did something click in your brain that made you more of a plotter, and if so, what was it?
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I had a great group when I was younger, with a DM that took on the responsibility of teaching 5 new players (including myself) how to play.
Daniel was awesome. He patiently taught us rules and spent several years running a long term game for us. We explored a homebrew world fighting a group of BBEGs that frequently caused trouble around the world. We entertained the Fey Courts and a co-player even ended a duel to the death by pantsing the aggressive noble. Daniel built sprawling storylines that delved into character backstory and helped us find our voices as characters. Dude was cool as hell.
The horror story here was us players. Daniel gave subtle and not so subtle hints that he was burning out before the group just fell apart. We, as a group, ignored his needs. We never gave him a break, expecting a new fun session every week. Sure we made half ass attempts at one shots, not really putting in the effort (and honestly hindering ourselves trying to be like him).
Our last session ended with us fighting against time to solve a puzzle before an elder white dragon could reach us. In true burnout fashion, Daniel couldn't even describe the puzzle enough for us to understand how to attempt to solve it. He sat there for 30 minutes while we rolled and discussed it before declaring the dragon was upon us breathing ice. The old "rocks fall, everyone dies".
No description of our deaths, no wrap up before session end. Daniel just grabbed his stuff, said sorry and walked away from being our DM. I miss playing with that guy every time I think about DnD. He really made those few years special.
So take care of your DMs. Let them play. Give their brain a break. Understand when they need more time to prepare and don't be a dick about it. DMing is rough sometimes, and everyone needs a breather. Jump in and offer to run a short campaign during acts. You'd be surprised how helpful having someone else to entertain the party for a few sessions can be, and might give your special DM inspiration for your next adventure.

For context, these two are power gaming murderhoboes who create the most powerful characters they can with nonexistent backstory,(chaotic neutral of course) assault npcs who aren’t even involved in the conflict they start, (one pantsed and tried to pick up a kobold who was related but not directly involved with his two other brothers who were telling the other player to leave the tavern due to multiple awful performance rolls for telling wild made up stories) and during the time they play with anyone else they spend half of our very time limited sessions (30 minutes a week every minute counts) they spend half of it rolling damage on their ridiculously overpowered characters because i thought it would be fun to have them fight a small group of lowish level creatures to introduce the others to combat (this is the first time one of them is playing and had been reluctant to play beforehand but was now excited I even helped make his first characters), overall im about at my limit for them because at the beginning of this weeks session since there were only the two of them and i was not really in a decent headspace for high energy dnd (unmedicated adhd go Brrrrrrrr) It was just going to be a chill session where they talk to npcs, go shopping, and gather intel for their next quest whatever it may be. First thing they do is go to the largest tavern and cause trouble, im not going to go into detail but they went chaotic stupid and ended with the half ork barkeep laying on the ground in a pool of blood from a stab wound in the spine that will leave him permanently paralyzed, The entire bar ready to throw hands, and One really poed giant of a dragonborn in full plate (significant other of the barkeep and also ready to kill the two of them, i did repeatedly warn them that they should leave before things got violent). so, with all this in mind, how should i go about this? my current plan is to create a homebrew monster or use the dragonborn as a hostile dmpc thats actually powerful enough to beat them, because they’ve already killed a mindflayer hitless at LVL 3.