Unblockers which no one knows

2 Month ago, a friend of my class at school suddenly disappeared and all my class noticed it. This friend was absent in class for more than 1 month and half. We thought he had gone on vacation and was coming back later or that he had moved. Until he came back to high school super-weak, he barely spoke and we were really worried about his health. One day someone in the class decides to cheer him up, to support him. This friend therefore decided to ask the vast majority of the class to chip in to give him a gift. So, we all scrambled to find the money needed to buy the gift. And today, we gave this gift to a friend in great difficulty. He was moved, he didn't have the words to thank us all for giving him this gift so that he could fight his illness which was slowly weakening him until he was no longer with us. We all gave him a collective hug, tons of handshakes. 1 Hour ago, he messages us via voice messages where he thanked us for everything we had done for him. His words were more than moving. He told us all about his illness, how this gift touched him deeply in "the depths of his heart."
So, I'm posting this message here to just say something important that we may not know. A friend is a friend and nothing can replace him, even if he is absent most of the time from our lives, this friend will always be there for his loved ones. And we must not neglect the small differences that can separate us. Even a gift, big or not can change someone forever. So everyone who reads this message, never hating someone means that that person has good inside. So, say "I love you" to this person even after a quarrel or an argument. Because you may never see this person ever again in your life.

A couple of days ago I got a text from an unknown number on WhatsApp, usually they're people I know and I just haven't got their number until then, but this time it wasn't anyone I could envision. It was a foreign number with the +2-- something. I assume it was African as I had seen multiple country code numbers start with a 2 and the country's name sounded like it was from there(I am African by the way). I was given a welcome text that you usually get from a service related to forex and crypto. The text wasn't for me as the name wasn't mine and I had made no account with the service details. The person who sent it got the wrong number (somehow) and didn't send any additional information or P.S'. At first I thought it was complete bull as I actually got into forex through Meta trader (MT5) and ever since my phone's personalized ads have added it to the content I see. I waited until I got to a focused space to investigate.
To crush my hopes it wasn't login details for MT5 which I have gotten to know quite well, but there was the website to log into included. I typed it in, used the details and without much barriers, Login Successful, I was allowed in, no two factor authentication or nothing, I thought it was quite a quite lousy way of security but I wasn't going to complain.
Just to be clear, I will not say every little detail so I won't get finessed by a hacker smarter than I, as I believe just bits and pieces of information is all someone needs to pinpoint the details for themselves, yes what I did could be depicted as stealing but it is what it is.
I proceeded to navigate through the site, finding out this person who the details were meant to be for had not only 2.69 Million dollars worth of a crypto and around more than half a mill in USDT. With prior knowledge I knew the layout would have a withdrawal option and a crypto wallet to send to the section. So I got one of them that was connected to my bank for quick and easy withdrawals. I decided to do some rounding, and do little mercy and take +98% of the money in there, although I know I'm on the way to get rich on my own, I'll choose a shortcut over a hardworking and persevering story any day, I'm clearly not an Anime MC. It was all going well, a little too well, there had to be a catch, there was!
A Key, a digital key, I could not find it in the text or the website, the key was a passcode that only the original creator knows, I did some research and found not even the hash method would work, only he has it, but I was determined... kinda. I replied back to the original text asking how to use my key and precisely sent it in a way I believed the owner would have said it in; And in the meantime while waiting on the reply I took to google and researched how to use password hackers. I came across Passgan but none of the sites had any download options and I was losing motivation, I had work coming up. I had attempted the key many times already seeing if I could guess some obvious ones but it wouldn't budge, but I knew the brute force method was sure to work eventually. I found a software that did what I expected, so I had put in who what when where and why's type of whatnot of the password I needed unlocked, and good thing there was somehow seemingly unlimited attempts.
I activated it, put my device away and let it do its work. I had gone to make some cordial and run random quick errands out of excitement, weird what humans do when they feel like something will go their way for once. When I returned to my device it had shown the funds at a different balance to pre withdrawing, I couldn't believe it wasn't there. I waited another span of time, a bit longer than the first time because I assumed a transfer of that size would take a couple of hours at least. I checked the wallet I sent it to. It was 7 figures higher than what I had before.
In around 2 seconds, thoughts of how my life would change flooded my head more than any fantasy I could ever have connected. I've seen enough movies to know 1 mistake could make the whole operation topple down so I continued to keep it in until the job was actually done. The last step was to have it go from my digital crypto wallet to my bank account. I knew sending 7 figures to my bank would trigger suspicion for sure so I decided to only send feeble amounts at a time, but even this method wouldn't be enough for me. In the country I'm in, unexplained wealth is grounds for arrest as I've seen on the news a few times.
I thought to just do my whole thing real slow, I wanted nothing more than to quit my job, but hadn't yet found a suitable alibi to unexplained wealth. You don't just go from the lowest tax bracket to the largest in a few days.
I decided I will withdraw just around a band or two to a high interest savings account every week and have it make me money. The one I settled with which I was already familiar with had a rate of +4%. I decided that I would quit work and just say my family had been supporting me while I study something that pays really nicely, a ticket in advanced construction and some aged care or disability work and claim to have simply been working a fuck ton saving almost every possibly dime using some nonsense Andrew Tate motivation, they would surely buy that story, well for anyone who came looking. Then I should be able to sneak in my money and the other money together and hide it once more within a family business that would gladly help me out.
The things in the last paragraph haven't happened yet but so far it looks like it is going to go my way,
Why would a millionaire take to reddit and not twitter or something? Again I'm trying to hide this money but I so badly want to tell the story and I need to make a lot of money fast, I won't jeopardize myself that stupidly, even this story could mess things up but I doubt it. Just making this, using Ai to make a brain rot video out of it should bring in a couple thousand views to add to the money. So that basically 3 Million in a year or so can be justified on paper if it comes to it.
I don't even use reddit like that, but I had known most of the stories on my tik tok come from her, it was the first thing to come to my mind. My phone is dead too and the charger was bugging, so somehow as a millennial or Gen Z whatever or the fuck I'm in am able to sit and write this down in 1 Sitting is wild. I will write part two if it is interesting enough to y'all. (May 2024 is where this all unfolded.)

10 hours in and it´s nice. The whole thing grew one me, wasn’t excited at first but the new mechanics make it fun. Still sucks not being in the original areas
My questions:

1. Do I need a full squad? Got 2 recruited already and not really interested in getting more, wanna continue the main story. Got Zulu, Vano and Sokolov. Not sure I can get Strider cause I sold all the PDAs to Owl earlier in the game. Got a Duty PDA during that mission at the cooling tower with that big anomaly bubble which spit out the corpses. I know I need to sell 2 PDAs to Duty or Freedom so they trust me and I can make the Ex-Monolith Team join one of them.
   
2. Is that the whole map? I already explored the upper part and bottom left, only Pripyat left. Is there anything after or only the ending part?
   
3. How will I fill the void in my heart after finishing the trilogy for the first time?
   

FYI: Playing on the Xbox Series X so no mods or anything

one thing i love about this game is how fixated it made me on incorrect solutions. sometimes through overthinking, but mostly by just being dumb. here's a few i remember:
main game
1) landing on the sun station - not that this is an 'incorrect' solution but i spent a good while trying to land on this. i know it's possible but when i found the warp it was a relief!
2) anglerfish - i thought perhaps the way to avoid these was to not be close, which works up until that last section before the vessel, at which point i really had no clue! thought maybe it was a matter of speed, so tried to approach dark bramble with insane amounts of thrust, and bullseye the entrance. that is sort of how you solve the problem, but you only need a bit of momentum. i also didn't realise you can get as close as you like to them, as long as you're silent - i was trying to make tiny micro adjustments to avoid coming close to the three, which was setting them off.
3) the 'in the ancient glade' forest on timber hearth - i really thought this was some kind of puzzle i needed to solve, so spent ages taking probe photos of the signs to keep them in certain place, trying different orders of the poem.
echoes of the eye:
1) the bridge/alarm puzzle - for a good few loops i thought they key was somehow disabling whatever was creating the shaft of light from above. since the 'lake' area was reached by lifts from above, i thought perhaps it was one of the 'extinguish' actions from the areas above that cause it. rushing around the dream world turning things off and coming back only to see the light still there
2) slide burning room machine - after seeing you could put slides on this, i thought perhaps putting the 'right' slides on it would trigger something
3) i took the artefact into the quantum moon to try and show it to solanum. i feel like this should have done something but he was entirely unbothered
4) the broken bridge that takes you to (i think) the slide-burning temple - for a while i thought that i could ride the dam-tidal wave and then boost off on the way round. maybe you can? but there's a back door...
5) the 'vector' world you get when you drop the artefact in the dream world - i discovered this before the relevant slide and became convinced it was the key to EVERYTHING. i didn't appreciate that the hidden bridges were also accessible to you when holding the artefact (if invisible), so i wasted a lot of time.
6) the endless canyon light 'puzzle' - i thought perhaps you had to enter the canyon building from the riverside lift, rather than the temple above - that way you'd got there before turning the bridge lights on, and maybe that meant the doors would be open? nope..
i'm sure there's many more i can't remember. what about you?

*If anyone takes the time to read and would like to share, feel free to repost and accept the credit, I don't have enough karma to share anywhere else relevant and could care less. All I ask is that you repost it in full and not cherry pick the information you agree or disagree with or whatever will get the most karma. I would like to avoid exactly what I'm describing in the post below. If any claims I make turn out to be false, I'll update and eat my words.*
(I obscured celebrity and influencer names to prevent fans from seeing the post and flagging it)
I saw someone posted an interview with (O *rlando Brow *n) from the channel Real life street Stars and wanted to put out a little PSA for this community. The channel has recently been growing in subscribers because of a 2020 interview with a 90's R&B artist named (J -aguar W r:ight ), who claims to have suffered abuse of all types that she during her time in the industry, and claims she was blacklisted for fighting back. Now she claims she's been on a mission for the last 20 years to bring down the vast networks of famous sex criminals she has firsthand knowledge of. In her first two interviews she speaks pretty eloquently and drops a lot of facts about the industry. Enough to get people sucked in. You'll see in her latest interviews the lady is clearly struggling heavily with some serious mental health and rumored substance issues.
I truly have empathy for her and (O rland,o B row-n,) because they are obvious examples of the Hollywood machine chewing up celebrities, especially with mental illness, and spitting them out. Both of them have publicly struggled for years, and around 2020, were both homeless and started doing YouTube interviews with obscure content creators where they were paid next to nothing to share their traumas with their viewers and creators who use these traumas to form false narratives and clickbait video titles that either are completely false or that are buried in an 8 hour live stream containing a thirty second audio clip that was stolen and reposted from another exploitative content creator's interview. Not only is it taking money out of their pockets, but also monetizing off their trauma, stealing their content and viewers, and harming their credibility even further due to them being blatantly false or misleading the viewers into thinking their all day live stream talking about the aforementioned video and accompanied by a slideshow is the primary source. One thing I've learned is most people will believe or immediately dismiss most information without even trying to read it. If you choose to go down this rabbit hole you should definitely start with their Insta pages and check out the last couple months. Without people majorly censoring and heavily editing their content, you can tell that they are doing this intentionally to hide the fact they are exploiting trauma survivors for petty cash. If you're still not wary, start with their latest interviews they're both total shit shows. Recently with the (Di +ddy stuff and Ka;tt William ,s) interview going viral, the channel "real life street stars" has blown up. Even more so in the last couple weeks with all the K- Anon stuff attracting people to their channels. If you choose to go down the rabbit hole I just beg you to please research ANY claims from ANY content creator and find a source before sharing. A lot of the time they are spitting celebrity fan fiction juxtaposed with occasional pieces of truth and (Jagua /r Wri /ght) was pretty damn convincing until about a year ago.
A lot of people get sucked in with ( Jag !uar W !right's ) first two interviews because she clearly had them prepared for a long time and was reading from a script. Now she's just exploiting the algorithm and spamming clickbait interviews with the craziest titles possible, thus contributing to the same exploitation she claims to be fighting against. This is not to say all her claims are bullshit, both most are recycled 90s and early 2000's gossip that is new to Gen z mixed with any breaking celebrity news or gossip that is big in the media. To make her stories sound more legit she'll Forrest Gump her way into every story and leading people into believing she was a big time celebrity, but these interviews and her instragram scamming are what she's most known for. The last interview she claims to have taken a boat to Epstein Island where she rescued two young girls who were trafficked and then talks about the Dark Web, "Red Rooms," that are pretty well known to be internet myths because if they were real they'd be invite only and require blackmail to access so no one is gonna talk about it even if they do exist. It amazed how many videos popped up overnight repeating her claims as facts and spreading the virus of media manipulation. If you're still thinking, "Hey, you never know!" She also claims these snuf. f videos and videos of celebrity orgies sell for 500 million dollars, which would be enough to build a whole chain of your own red rooms or throw your own Hollywood sex parties and join the fun. I know some people will probably still be curious, but just watch her 2020 interview the rest are trash, also anything with (O r.lando B,rown) is recycled lies mixed with more lies, with a couple buzzwords he's probably required to say so they can add trending topics to their video tags and get a lascivious title.
Another recent example of blatant manipulation is all the shit with (D j A ^kademics) the past couple days. His court records have been public for months with a vivid description of him and two friends drugging and raping a girl that was obviously premeditated and not his first rodeo. He is also now being sued for defamation because he pretty much told his fans she was drunk and asking for it then regretted it later and went on to say he didn't even know she was at the house until the next morning and blamed it on his friends. Meanwhile the court documents clearly show a rap with an e kit being administered and them finding his spermicide which was the same type found in the r word kit. They also describe video evidence of his two friends doing the same thing while she was unconscious, but he screenshotted a section and posted it in his defense saying clearly she was down. There are also identical allegations to the ones made against (D-rake) stating he has a history of hitting up sixteen year olds and grooming them until they turn eighteen and repeated history of similar drug related s. crimes. It took one post on his twitter and his fans started harassing the poor girl for months. The same thing happened to the lady who was a victim of (N$icki Min _aj's) husband who was doxxed by her fans for not dropping the charges. The next day AK was acting like it was all gravy and if anything gained even more followers. This is a brilliant example of why (Dra! ke's) line about being too famous to be a predator is so stupid. Almost as stupid as blatantly defaming the woman who appears to have more the enough evidence to beat him in a civil suit. Which is almost as stupid as he pretended to be during the (e- bony kin g) livestream where he was obviously ignoring the thousands of comments mentioning anything related to sexual crimes, while talking shit on the guy who successfully blackmailed his handler even after possibly being blackmailed himself on the same stream. This stupidity can only be surpassed by the millions of fans who are still watching his content instead of the news and continue regurgitating the lies of someone so fucking stupid who is most likely a s offender. These are the same ones who automatically dismissed the rumors and instantly believed the dog in the kennel story, the same who believed his alibi, and the same people who are the reason most survivors don't come forward and choose not to accept inconvenient truths right in front of their eyes.
Interestingly enough the portal.njcourts.gov site containing A.k's full court documents were offline for hours last night and a certain sight has banned reposting it for fear of doxxing, another great way to quell any dissent amongst the the ranks. Server's crashing often happens when there is a huge influx of web traffic or a site has been a victim of a DDOS attack, which is just an artificial version of the former that uses bots instead of people. I could talk forever about how fucked things are, but this is simply the world we live in. I really want to drive home the point that in order for any movement to retain credibility, everyone needs to stop sharing any type of info unless they're from a verified, reputable source and define the difference between facts and your opinions as clearly as possible. A couple million hits on youtube, twitter memes and tiktoks, and gossip blogs with broad information being deciphered by mostly idiots don't count as credible. Most of these influencers and blogs have been bought and paid for years ago and usually are biased toward certain celebrities based on the perception of whoever's sharing or whoever pays them the most. For a while now rumors have been circulating of influencers doing shady shit in Dubai for the ultra wealthy. Lot's of ties were made to Dra .ke, but have very little supporting evidence. The blind items containing the rumors also made it so anyone could decode the clues, and as soon as these posts made it on to the Kendric kl amar the moderator crew began the "conspiracy," crackdown. It took one mention of q-anon and the majority of the community jumped ship out of fear of association because "Q-anon bad, they're all scizophrenic." Overnight theories that once had been consensus were completely dismissed after being deemed conspiratorial. A couple of days later, the were forced to place a blanket ban on anything them deem, "conspiracies," regardless of it's validity due to their inability to moderate the amount of incoming posts which are almost always spammed at least ten times a day for the next week. This is the exact thing that was done with q, anon and pizzagat, e stuff back in the day. They'd find the nuttiest people to use as an example so they could paint the whole movement in the same light, then dismissed all related information, and completely censored any discussion on most major platforms. I don't subscribe to either, but they were undeniably on to something. The problem was the disinformation campaigns and general stupidity. One was quashed almost overnight because a crazy guy shot into the front window of a pizza shop and it somehow hit their computer and obliterate their hard drive containing possible evidence. The lessons is truth in every lie and it's not hard to find if you know where to look, it's what you do with it that defines who you are as a person. Some people can't handle the truth because it conflict's with their world view and those who do usually suffer because of it. If everyone does their part though, no one would have to die a martyr in its pursuit.
I've noticed a recent pattern of influencers proliferating the spread of false information especially in relation to any sa allegations. This trend really took off when (Kat -t Will/iams's) interview went viral and helped to revitalize his career and reputation. Since then many copycats have come out of the woodworks, hoping to cash in on the trend. Some other common media suppression trends and manipulation tactics to watch out for are synthetic smear campaigns dedicated to destroying the credibility of anyone with alternative beliefs, and it's gotten exponentially worse throughout the years. A great example is all the shit (Y,e). had to deal with through the years, even prior to his antisemitic remarks and all the other famous people who spoke up about their industries and were silenced. (D av+e Chapp? elle) used to talk a lot about the tactics used to humiliate and destroy many influential black men who dared to challenge the system. Another case that's similar to Ak's is the (T/or y La^ne z and M ,egan T (hee Stallio, n) trial. If you look at the court records, it's obvious the shooting was part of a larger altercation. He still might have shot her, but she at the least totally lied her ass off about the actual story to avoid incriminating friends while ensuring they could hit him with a ten year sentence. Not long after (Me ..gan THE" E S !tallion) won three Grammy's and was voted woman of the year, then disappeared off the face of the earth until her manager sued her a couple weeks ago for having sex in front of him and threatening his job over it. There are countless other celebrities and influencers who are clearly wiling to say anything for money, and those who aren't usually have some blackmail on them. There is such an abundance of glaringly obvious disinformation campaigns in the media and most are accepted as gospel without question or are suppressed if they reveal too much, raise too many questions, or start to sway public opinion. Another very common example of this phenomena is the mass release of information that paints a positive image of the celebrity while containing the same buzzwords related to controversies they don't want popping up on anywhere near the top of Google. This keeps any relevant information limited to the most recent AI generated bullshit that plays the algorithm game the best. While doing my investigation, it was unbelievably difficult finding any relevant information from before 2020, and often had to use Duckduckgo to filter out any articles written after 2023. Even then every search engine required extremely specific search terms, which would often still provide me with the exact same results. It got so bad I considered switching to Yandex.
Recently all the things I've discussed have seemingly been kicked into overdrive, especially over the last few weeks. This leads me to believe that a lot more is going down behind the scenes than most realize. I believe the day will come soon when everyone who actively fought to dismiss peoples opinions out of ignorance will be forced to accept these truths whether they like it or not I was a victim myself last week when I shared a detailed, neutral commentary on a rap feud and was shadow banned from a popular subreddit and ignored by it's moderators. This same subreddit is currently deleting any and all information related to the subject I covered. This is why I wanted to raise awareness if this doesn't get suppressed as well. Karma requirements and shadow bans that can sometimes circumvent the use of Vpn's on all connect devices, lead me to believe Reddit as a whole may also be at least partially compromised.
Chances are the same people who promote biased garbage and obvious lies are the same ones who will scroll right past any post containing more then three sentences and the ones who spread any lie they are told without question and accept everything at face value. My personal favorites are the ones who don't read past the title and clog up the comments while obscuring valuable information because they want the spark note version. This is all by design. They are the sheep the government count on to help them consolidate their wealth and power. More and more people are waking every day though. I encourage anyone new to conspiracies to really keep all this in mind going forward, especially with the proliferation of AI powered disinformation bots that dominate your front pages and control the majority of content. If you want to fight against this and keep your freedom of speech, this is a call to arms. To anyone who values the truth, the powers that be will do anything they can to try to censor any public dissidence. Remain steady in your search for truth, and learn how to effectively help other join you in lifting the veil. Stay strong in your convictions and don't allow other's to moderate your options, your beliefs, or your truth.
Thanks for Reading
-The Original Random Moniker

Yes another dog post... I don't know where this one is starting or going, but here it goes. The whole story.
When I met my wife and she had a dog, I had previously never allowed dogs inside my house. I had remodeled it myself.. a complete gut job and had take over a year of hard work. Her dog was short hair and well behaved, figured perhaps I was being unreasonable and allowed said dog in my house.
While we were still dating I watched her dog while she was out of town. The dog is unfriendly towards new people, so while I was having a friend over for a little bit I shut him in the bedroom as she didn't leave me with a crate. It chewed through my solid wood door, which I was then had to repair with wood filler and then paint..
At this point she's basically moved in with me.
A compromise she made while staying with me, is I would not allow the dog on my bed with us. She sleeps with the dog in her bed. The dog is around 70lbs. I build a raised dog bed so it can sleep nearly next to her on her side of the bed.
The dog begins to throw up often. Often times on my new carpet or on my new rugs.
The dog has an incident overnight one night, it diarrhea-ed all over my entire downstairs while we were sleeping upstairs. When I say everywhere... I mean every square foot. It was up some of the walls. We spent the next half day cleaning and bleaching. It was not good. So for the next 1-2 weeks it lived in a kennel shitting all over itself. She handled that mostly.
Girlfriend at the time, then got a new job in a new town and was making a long commute. I was beginning to be unhappy at my job at the time so I looked for a job in her hometown where she was now working. I got a new job, we moved. I sold my house.
We move into the new house and immediately put up a fence, which was a compromise for buying this house over others. I like to garden and enjoy my time outside in the yard. However, this dog shits massive piles that I have to nag my wife to clean up.. We try a weekly schedule, she puts it on her colandetask lists, but never follows through. I have to nag and eventually she picks up the dogs poop. I don't enjoy being outside in our yard. No matter how careful I am while walking I still end up stepping in poop. Mowing is gross running over poop. I used to enjoy mowing.
We get married, I proposed the day we moved into the new house. Signaling the start of a new life together. At this point I don't like the dog, but I'm managing, I know it's older and on limited time, maybe there is some relief at the end.
The dog now needs to go undertreatment and is on heavy dose of steroids. Which means it pisses all the time. We setup barriers in our kitchen (tile floor) and laid out towels and blankets so we could sleep overnight and contain the piss. Every day, when we wake up or get home from work we have to deal with piss. Eventually the dose is reduced.
Time goes by, nearly a year, without too much extra drama, just occasional stuff (couple times monthly at a minimum) from dealing with a critically ill dog. Pissing on hardwood floors in our new home, pissing shitting, puking on are new rugs.. etc.
We now have a newborn, and when our newborn was about a month old she had to put her dog down.
We are now at about the 3 month age with our newborn and my wife is crying for a new dog. She is now sending me rescues several times a week. I have expressed how hard her previous dog was on me, and how I would love if we could go some time without one, at least until our daughter is a little older. Any time she sends me a dog it starts a fight, because I do not want a dog. She says and has said many times "I do not respect her, because I don't care how important owning a dog is to her.". The newest one is "I do not care about her because owning a dog is good for her mental health". It's hard to tell from being on the inside, but this feels like manipulation to me.
She has a horse which she boards somewhere else.. I don't like horses, but mostly I don't have to do much with that other than the occasional horse show or trail riding trip.
I am completely traumatized by this dog experience. I do not want a dog. I do not want a bully breed around my infant. I do not want my house to smell like dog. I am completely over it. I have made every sacrifice in dealing with the previous dog.
Her persistence on a new dog, if anything, feels disrespectful towards me. I don't know what to do. Considering suggesting therapy. But I feel like she's becoming unhinged and suggesting therapy will just start a fight.
I just want my old life back, I want my old house back, I moved here for her, this is her home town her parents are here, her old high school friends are here, I moved two hours away from my parents, an hour from my friends, I dealt with a dog for her, I'm really just feeling just over it all, feeling defeated.
I don't know if I want suggestions.. at this point I'm just continuing writing for therapies sake..
tl:dr I didn't like dogs, met a girl that had a dog. Thought I could deal. Dog was ill and extremely messy. Got married and had a kid. Dog dies. Wife is hysterical about getting a new dog within 8 weeks.

Me Height is 168 cm but don't worry I'll still protect you. Weight can fluctuate. Been wanting someone who motivates me to be better. Going to the gym is like a punishment tbh. I walk daily. I am a student. Used to be a med student so I will help you in your studies. I game too. I watch movies. My favorite movi3 would be the A team. Most impactful movie would be Schindlers list. Best war movie would be saving private Ryan. All quite on western front. Best series I watched would be breaking bad. Best anime I've watched is death note and steins gate. Loved artists are Edward hopper. Caravaggio. Vincent van Gough. Rembrandt. I forget a female artist but I loved her too.
I am loyal, let's just say I don't talk to anyone if I talk to you. Old values. Family oriented. Living with mom whom I have taken care of. Spiritual, will teach you. I wann empower my lady. Discuss with her daily things about life. Establish a deep deep bond with her. Not borne out of loneliness or need to settle down cause everyone else is. I don't work like that. That's shallow to me. However, it proves love is free.
I am respectful. You say no. I'll go away. I have boundaries too. I reciprocate whatever you give. I make extra effort to show you that I care and want the best for you. I give 100% attention and when I don't I communicate and speak about why and what's bothering me. You'll never be in the dark about me. I listen to you as well. Your input is very valuable for me. Especially when I know you love me.
I have traumas and pains. Single parent. Been through abuse. Both with family and outside. So can be a complicated person at times but I have noticed that assurance and validation helps me alot. Especially when you mean it. Someone I met here told me they'd be my baby and love me. But they left. The others left too. She said I could talk to her and she left anyway. Cause Maybe she didn't like how I looked. (Which is subject to change)
I love cuddles and hugs and being all romantic and soft. The world outside us harsh at least here I want to be soft and baby you and speak to softly and be genuine, to you. Making you happy makes me very happy. I apologize too I don't have a ego as most would. If it's my fault I wanna fix it. I am mature like that.
Money's not everything. I'd appreciate if you shared the same ideal. We are looking for love not buying it. It's about building and growing not applying for a job.
I am moving on to a new phase in my life. I need someone open minded. Open as in serious about having a relationship and not a situationship or a having a option. To me it doesn't matter where one is from as long as you are recognizing of the qualities within a person. Such as loyalty, respect, responsibility and the ability to appreciate and understand- Pain, fear, love and care and truly want it for themselves, to learn and establish a bond through effort.
I need someone the same. Who puts in effort. Willing to give and get. Love and be loved. Who will give me the time of day and reciprocate the feelings and emotions and value them.
Thanks for the read. Please msg me on Instagram- freshbreadb

What started as a panicked attempt to get her over-intoxicated friend to a hospital ended up in a disastrous car crash that claimed the lives of her friends... and a careless God crossing the street. But Sammi's adventure wasn't about to end there. In her dying breath, the God curses Sammi to take up her mantel. Now with her three friends resurrected as ghosts, Sammi has to navigate the tricky world of godhood.
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I love houses. House flipping, house hunting, crazy properties in town, gorgeous exotic vacation destinations. I think in a past life I was a real estate agent. Or a carpenter. Interior designer, actually, probably. Maybe just rich?
Doesn’t matter. I love houses, and I was gonna get myself the best digs in town.
“Best digs in town might be a liiiiittle suspicious?” Joni said as I began adjusting the filters of my favorite search: Lottery houses.
“So do you… we’re looking for a house?” Cara was leaning over my shoulder, watching as I pushed the Rooms, Cost, Square Footage, and Bathrooms options as high as I could. “Cause if you don’t even own a place, I feel like saying you’d answer my questions when we got to New Olympia is kinda a blow off.”
“Not a blow off,” I said. “This probably won’t take too too long. I just don’t want to kick anyone out of their house that, like, is a regular person living their life.”
“Kick them out?”
I paused and looked up at Cara, eyes serious. “Please. The parroting. It’s making me nervous.” Then I looked back down and began sifting through various mansions, penthouses, lake houses, villas. “For sale or for rent?”
“For rent,” Blair said immediately. She propped her head up on her chin as she watched me scroll. “Then you don’t gotta kick anyone out.”
“She’s got a point,” Christopher said. “Both from a, like, humanitarian point of view but also from a logistical point of view. Whoever’s moving needs the money pronto to buy a new house and they’re gonna constantly be dealing with banks and shit. You’d need a new lie a day just to keep them off you. But with rentals and all, first off, landlords renting out ten grand a month properties are already making bank off other units. Yeah you’re screwing them over, but not as bad. They got a buncha others. Second, you pay monthly, so you really only gotta fend them off once a month.”
My thumb jammed the “For Rent/For Sale” switch, and I cranked up the rental price. “What else are we thinking for criteria?”
“Middle of town’s a bad idea,” Joni said. “Too easy to find us.”
“We don’t have to, like, hide though,” Christopher said. “Just say you’re both out on bail. I mean, the point is to find Miller and bring him to justice, right? That’s gonna take time. There’s no place far enough out of town that we could hide in for long.”
I squinted at him, tearing my eyes away from a sexy seven bedroom manor with two pools. “What?”
He sighed, as if convinced that I was in the wrong for not understanding what fuck he just said. “Like, think about it Sammi. We’re not actually gonna be able to hide. Or if we are, it’s gonna be in an alley or some shit.” He wrinkled his nose at the same time I did. “They’re cops with detectives and shit, and they think we shot someone and broke someone else out of jail. They’re gonna find us. We’ll have to lie, not hide, to avoid being put back. So may as well be local to all the action.” With this, he pointed directly at a lofty unit in the center of town.
Hmm. He brought up a valid point, so I checked it out.
A five bedroom penthouse with three terraces giving outdoor views of the entire city. Bathrooms that put the hotel to shame. Closets the size of my old bedroom. A pool deck. Appliances with fancy brand names I only ever heard on episodes of “Dream House” and hadn’t actually realized existed in the real world. Enough bedrooms for me, Cara, and the ghosts to each sleep separately.
For a moment, the enormity of it washed over me. Not just the enormity of the house, though it was enormous, but the reality of what I could accomplish. This apartment was twenty five thousand dollars a month. I’m not entirely sure I’ve made that much money in my life. Or, okay, probably around that, but that’s my point. This was the kind of unit rich people showed off in out-of-touch blogs or escapist shows about the lifestyles of famous people. And it could literally be mine if I could play my cards right. Or not even right. Just not catastrophically wrong.
Cause I was a God. And for the first time since becoming a God, I was using my abilities, my status, my familiars and shit to do something cool. Not rob a TechShack of some earpods or break in or out of a hospital.
This was a big yield.
As I had my little epiphany, Cara had taken over scrolling my phone, much to the relief of my ghosts, who’d started grumbling about the static screen while I zoned out.
“Okay.” Cara looked at me. “I’m not gonna ask any of the questions you know I want to ask, cause that’ll just piss you off.” Thank God she was learning. “So we’ll skip that for now and ask the really important question. How are you gonna get your hands on this place?”
–
Step 1 was to get to the place, which kinda sucked, given we were still at Pizza Dogs. It just wasn’t a very cool start to the coolest scheme I’d ever pulled off. Luckily Pizza Dogs closed at 9, so a solid number of people were leaving the restaurant. I was able to wave down a waitress who’d just checked off of her shift and convince her she was a taxi driver.
“You’re really loving this whole taxiing thing, huh?” Christopher said.
“At least she’s not talking like a robot trying to use slang.” I grit my teeth at the memory of Cops Cop and Taxi Service.
“No, you just told her she was mute.” Blair stuck her lip out. “That’s mean, Sammi.”
“I told her she couldn’t talk. That’s different.” I gave Cara a weak smile, but she hadn’t even commented on my ghost talking. She just buried her face in her hands. See? Learning.
Step 2 was gonna be actually getting in the unit. The listing on HouzeHunting didn’t exactly have the name of the landlord on it, so I was gonna have to get creative getting in touch with them. What it did have was ‘24 hour doorman service,’ which meant getting in would be easy peasy.
Finally we pulled up to the address I’d given our driver. 1732 East Windham Street. She leaned out the window, looking up the seventy story building.
“It’s totally appropriate for you to talk now,” I said as I scrambled out, towing Cara with me. No sense in actually making her mute for life.
The woman nodded. “You, uh, live here or visiting? If you don’t mind me asking.”
I flipped my wad of black hair over my shoulder, wincing at how singularly it moved. I shoulda combed it after my bath yesterday.
“Live here, obviously.” I gave a rich person kinda snort, nose in the air and all.
“Huh.” She looked back at me, rubbing the back of her neck as if it was sore from craning up so high. “But you needed a taxi to get here?”
“Uh.” Rich people used taxis, right? On the ladder from Sammi to Bill Gates, someone had to use them, and if I couldn’t afford a taxi normally, then the typical passenger must exist somewhere above me. “My fancy personal car got towed cause I was parking it in a fire lane.”
The woman didn’t look convinced. Not that she thought I was lying, but she still looked at me like I was dumb as dirt. “You don’t have, like, a personal driver?”
I cocked my head at her, trying to mirror Joni’s sassy tilt but probably just looking confused. “Are you offering?”
Her lips parted, and I could see her brain chewing on this question. “What do you… wait, are you being serious?”
Was I? Suddenly I wasn’t sure. Having a personal chauffeur could be kinda great. Someone always available to text or call when I needed a ride so I wouldn’t have to keep remembering where I left my car. Besides, driving made me nervous. I’d never been a particularly bad driver, no prior accidents, never really hit anything in the past, unless we’re counting bumper cars. Which we’re not, cause I’m a menace in bumper cars. But that’s like the point.
Or, no, the point was, I wanted to minimize driving, and this woman could be key. Of course, I knew nothing about her. What if she had a family at home and I told a too strong lie and she never saw them again?
But then, she wouldn’t be offering if she wasn’t serious, right? Sure I’d lied and told her she was a taxi driver, but the average every day taxi driver didn’t just ditch their families to be rich people’s chauffeur’s.
“Uh. Yeah.” I looked at the ghosts. Two thumbs up from Christopher, one from Blair, and two thumbs down from Joni. That was a total of one thumbs up, if my math was right. “Yeah, I pay ten thousand a month.” We could figure that out later.
The woman’s eyes shot open. “Okay, you’re actually fucking with me. You’re actually offering to hire me for ten thousand a month.”
I nodded. “Yeah. And you can… I mean, if you got your own place, you can stay there obviously but you could also stay in one of my bedrooms. I got some extra ones I was gonna give to the gho–uh, dogs. But I don’t have dogs, so you were next on the list. Well, a chauffeur was next on the list. But also if you’ve got–do you have a family?”
Each of my statements plunked out of my mouth like gumballs out of a broken candy machine. But she just kept nodding like this was a normal proposal.
“I mean, I had a boyfriend.” Her face flushed crimson. “Kinda embarrassing to say at my age. Thought we were–” She took a deep breath. “Thought he was the one. I’m not gonna say I was looking to have kids or anything, so I suppose age doesn’t matter, but that doesn’t mean I really want to start over. Five years wasted is all, and at my age, the well starts to dry up a bit. People look at you a bit…” She blinked. “I’m sorry, that’s not really what you asked, was it.”
It wasn’t entirely, but I was kinda hooked on the story now. “Yeah it was,” I said. “It was the first question in the interview, and you’re nailing it. Uh, you actually already passed the first round. Let’s take the rest inside.”
The woman let out a shaky breath and smoothed her frizzled hair. “Right, of course. Thank you so much!”
Cara had, thank God, kept her mouth shut this whole interview process, so I just towed my newly formed posse towards the doorman.
“My key got lost,” I said confidently and too quickly, noticing way late that there weren’t any visible keyholes anywhere on the door. “Uh…” I looked nervously at the ghosts.
“Just tell him someone said he should let you in,” Joni said.
“Yeah.” Blair smiled. “Carl from management.”
“No–”
“Carl from management said you should let me in,” I said, bowling over Joni’s protests. “I own that top penthouse suite. Suite 72. The one for rent. Or, not for rent cause I’m renting it now. And I called earlier because my key is broken and Carl your manager said–”
I stopped finally because the doorman had long since stopped frowning perplexedly at me and had just tapped his card against the door.
“Haha,” I said, verbalizing the laugh a little too hard. “Look at me, talking too much as always.”
He frowned again, but nodded nonetheless, before holding the door open for me. “Here you are.”
“Thank you so much,” I said, stepping in like a real fancy lady. “I’ve got it from here.”
And, because I was stupid and always spoke without thinking, he nodded and shut the door behind me.
So technically Step 2 ‘get in’ was done, but it was like, barely done. Like when your mom says ‘go to your room’ so you sit in the doorway. Cause I wasn’t really close to my new apartment yet, which meant a new step on the list. Step 3? Get into New Olympia.
Somehow a little sneaky ‘Step 3b, interview your new chauffeur’ had snuck on the list too, but that would be easy to finish once I got to the actual unit.
It was literally impossible to keep my jaw in its socket as we walked through the lobby. I was actually straight up speechless at how fancy it all was. There was a bar in the lobby, like this was some hotel! Given my experience with rich people things, it was either totally free or thirty bucks a glass. Still, it was pricey enough that I should probably have been charged just for looking at it. Even Cara and the driver had their mouths gaping open as they looked around, taking in the mirror shiny marbely floors and columns.
I closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath, and really tried to capture this moment of peace and quiet inside the lobby of my new home.
“Blair stop humming, they’ll be able to hear you.”
“I’m using my regular humming, not my banshee humming.”
“My bad, shoulda clarified. I’m able to hear you, and you’re annoying me.”
“Joni, why are you always so mean.”
“She’s, like, kinda got a point. You need to get that stick out of your ass.”
“I’ll get the stick out of my ass when Blair stops humming.”
“Bro, it’s totally more than the humming, and you know it.”
“Is singing okay?”
“No.”
“What about–”
“Why don’t you just whistle, Blair?”
“That’s not nice. You know I can’t whistle.”
“Kinda my point.”
“Hey, be nice to Blair, Joni.”
Peace and quiet were overrated anyway. We were here for schemes.
My eyelids snapped open. In front of me was a big old reddish wood desk. The sign on it said “Main desk, open 7AM to 9 PM.” Next to it was another, more temporary sign, “Partial Service After Hours. Ring Bell For Assisance.”
My eyes drifted hungrily to the shiny golden bell. It was the kind you see in movies and shows, you press down a few times to summon the waiter or whoever sits behind the desk.
“Just once, Sammi,” Joni said, already reading my mind. “You ring it once.”
“But Joni,” I whispered, hand hovering over it, “I’m a God.”
DING DING DING DING DING DING DING
Seven was overkill. The man was there after the first two rings. But I couldn’t stop. It was too satisfying.
He regarded me with pained eyes. “Ma’am, you didn’t have to ring it that many times.”
“I didn’t,” I said confidently. And just like that, the pained look vanished. He didn’t look comfortable though, probably because I didn’t look like I should be there. Time to fix that.
I jutted my chin out. “Is there, like, a master key to all the elevators and units you can give me.”
The guy blinked rapidly. “I’m… sorry, you want what?”
“Lies, Sammi. That was a request!”
This is why we needed Joni and the stick up her ass.
“Uh.”
“Tell him that… I don’t know, someone from management said you could borrow a skeleton key.”
I smiled. “Carl from management told me I could have a skeleton key. A, you know, a key that opens all the doors.” I gave Joni a panicked glance.
She motioned her finger in a repeating loop and mouthed ‘go on.’
“And.” I swallowed. “You said you would give us one.”
The concierge sighed. “I know. I know. I just.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Carl doesn’t manage my department, so if this isn’t the right call, Sandy’s gonna have my head.”
I eyed the ghosts nervously. The lie had worked but it didn’t seem to fully convince him. “Sandy said…”
“Keep it simple,” Joni hissed.
“...that you would give me a key to let me in?”
“Right, please hold a moment, it’s almost done transferring.” The concierge paused and looked at a key card on his desk. He squinted before picking it up and beeping it against a little card pad. It flashed red. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The transfer didn’t go through right. One moment please.” Then he typed on his computer for a few very long minutes while Cara, the driver, and I all stood frozen by the elevator. After several breath-holding moments of silence (yeah, now the ghosts decide to shut up) he tapped the card again and it flashed green. “There we go.”
I let out a long breath before scuttling over to pick up my card. “Thank you!” I said, a cheery forced grin on my face. “Thank you so much! Remember, this came from, uh, Sandy’s boss, and she told you not to tell Sandy, so keep it zipped!”
He mimed zipping his lips as I waved again before rushing to the elevator.
Soon we were zooming up dozens and dozens of levels as my breathing came more and more naturally. Even the elevator was fancy. All golden mirrors, which Blair was staring at, disappointed that she couldn’t see her reflection in them.
There was no one on the seventy second story and ther was only one door, at the end of a gleaming hardwood hallway. My black boots clomped awkwardly as I escorted the driver–still in a bright orange shirt with a barking dog and a slice of pizza on it–and Cara–still in an orange jumpsuit–towards the door at the end.
Once I got there, I tapped my card, and we were in.
I don’t really have good words to describe the place. Huge, for one. Empty for another. Those were the two big ones. I could have gawked at it all, but I was a little tired of gawking, so I filed away ‘tour my house and get it fitted out’ for later. Besides, I had all my gear and shit still in my car… somewhere. I’d get it up here eventually and then the real decorating could start.
But there was a first step. Well two first steps. Okay, technically only one could be the first step, so we’ll do that first.
I waved Cara to join me in one of the bedrooms.
“I’ll finish your interview in like, fifteen minutes,” I said to the driver. She nodded.
“Okay,” I said, closing the door behind me and plopping down on the ground.
Cara stood awkwardly, eyeing the big ass empty room with a big ass empty bathroom off to the side. “Okay,” she said, still standing. “Do I need to–”
“No no, I said I would…” I trailed off, lips pursed and confused. “You wanted… Or… I was gonna tell you–”
“Oh shit yeah.” Now suddenly Cara was on the floor across from me, leaning in. “You’re telling me what the fuck is going on.”
My breath rushed out in a long woosh as I contemplated how to start this. Joni had made a snarky comment at one point like ‘pushing this off won’t make it easier’ and I’d responded with a ‘I’ll come up with a plan while I delay’ which of course I hadn’t, and now I was angry cause Joni was right.
“So the problem is,” I said, starting slowly. “Everything I tell you, you’ll believe.”
“Obviously,” Cara said, believing me instantly.
“But no one else but me knows what’s going on. So I can’t help but…” I trailed off again, noticing Cara nodding animatedly. This wasn’t working. I wanted her to believe me cause she fully understood and accepted my story, not cause of magic. But to get that, I couldn’t be the one to tell her, and the only other people who knew about my godliness were the ghosts and–
I smacked myself on the face. Sammi, you’re a genius. An actual, mensa accredited whiz kid.
“Blair,” I said, smiling. “I think I’ll offload this to you.”
Blair frowned, scrunching her nose up for a moment, before pointing at herself. “Me?”
I nodded confidently. Blair knew everything but lacked the Verity Tongue. This would be a sinch.
“Cara, how do you feel about a little ghost story?” I shivered a bit, getting goosebumps at my own words. Now that lead-in was brilliant. ‘A little ghost story’, who came up with that? I was getting smarter by the minute.
“Oooooooooooooh.” Blair zoomed around the room, and Cara leapt to her feet.
“What the fuck?”
“Bewaaaaare moooooortal,” Blair droned, pitching her voice low. “For the story you’re about to hear is both dreadful and awwwwwful. Fear for your soul for those who hear this story are cursed and will find themselves in an early–”
“Blair!” I shouted. “Stop that. What the fuck? Literally not like that. Like literally anything but that. You need to start with–”
“Yo, Sammi, dawg, chill.” Christopher patted my back. “We’ll help her out.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to taint the story with your god powers,” Joni said. “We’ll sort Blair. You interview the pizza waitress.”
Suddenly my genius felt like the opposite of genius. Yeah, delegation was important, but I did want to hear what the ghosts were telling Cara. Didn’t I need to know? What if they told her something totally wrong and stupid? Or what if they said something mean? Like what if they really played up the part about my reckless speeding? What if they lied about something? Made me look incompetent.
I opened my mouth to protest, but Christopher just gave me an icy pat again.
“Look, you’re gonna jump in to correct something we say, and it’s just gonna fuck up Cara.” He gave me a serious look, one of the most serious looks he’d given me since this whole ordeal. Which was honestly kinda stupid cause of all the times to pull out there ‘seriously, Sammi’ face, he was picking now? Was this really the right time for this? “Seriously, Sammi. We got this.”
I didn’t believe him at all, but they were absolutely right about me likely fucking this up with my motor mouth. No way was I sitting still while Joni made snarky comments about me, like, eating gross bagels or telling cops to steal poop.
“All right,” I said. “Come out when you’re done. Or if you need hands at all. Like if she passes out and you need to check for a pulse.”
“Are you talking to me?” Cara said.
“No. I’m talking to the ghosts.” And with that I closed the door.
Looks like Sammi's got a house! And maybe a minion or two on top of her familiars. Let's see how Cara takes all of this...

My friend group consists of 4 people, including me. Now, they're not bad people really and i talk okay-ish with one of them, but my god are they childish, immature and overly clingy.
(I'll be referring to them by nicknames) We met in 10th grade by connecting through hardship, i had just moved to this school with zero friends and very depressed, one of them, Fin let's call her, was in a really bad situation at home, another one, Enzo, had really bad social anxiety and the third one, Eve, had recently went through a breakup and had lost all her friends from it.
When the next school year started (11th grade) some things that happened in my personal life had really changed the way i perceive people and slowly i started to get bothered by my friends' communication skills and maturity levels. Enzo's only communication is through shows and games, Fin can only flaunt her biology knowledge and constantly interrupts and always tries to purposefully make you feel like she knows more than you in every subject, Eve is ok but sometimes speaks too much about dumb tik tok news.
Enzo and Fin are really the ones i can't stand any longer, they are immature, Enzo is 18 and cannot talk to a cashier to buy her food (i get social anxiety but she just doesn't try nor want to try!), she doesn't study AT ALL, can barely hold a conversation that's not an exchange of information on what game she's playing, Fin has insane self esteem problems so she's constantly trying to one up me, i started reading more books and she started LYING about reading books LMAO, every conversation with her turns into her giving you a lecture on how she's a know-it-all on every subject (which you almost never asked for), she's a terrible listener, makes childish jokes, cannot for one second be on her own, someone has always got to be with her wherever she goes (Enzo is the same so at least they cling to each other). I mean practically ANY conversation i have with them drives me NUTS i can't stand it, i get angry and just feel like yelling at them. Fin has a terrible temper so everything is constantly always bothering her. Like today, they had to ask me what outfit i want to be drawn in for a project so i said what i wore yesterday to the show we were hosts of and she started getting angry "how would i know what she wore yesterday" BYOU WERE THERE LMAO. AND THEY TOOK PICTURES. ARE YOU THAT DUMB??? Like CLEARLY she's getting pissed at me just because I've been bothering her ego by not talking to her for the entire last week. Good. I didnt even argue. And i know damn well that argument would have turned into how i "treat them like shit" (i simply have been ignoring them for a week, nothing more or less) and how I'm a horrible friend yada yada bullshit.
Currently i was on a vacation 2 weeks ago for a week which was the most amazing week of my whole life in which i had A TON of meaningful and interesting conversations with adults. That vacation made me realize EVEN MORE just how much i can no longer stand my friends so ever since i came back i have just been ignoring them completely (except Eve she's ok) and while I have no issues with it because anyway i have subtly been doing that even before the vacation, it's them forcing me to speak to them and being annoying brats what bothers me and even more so that i have to stand them one more stupid year!
Anyway after this long rant, i need advice. Do i continue to ignore them completely (the only reason I'm not a fan of this is because it gets awkward sometimes, but i definitely feel better this way) or do i try some way to find friends outside of school so it's easier to deal with this (i mean.. I want this but i have to see exactly how, it's a little difficult to pull off) or something else, i dont know! Just tired of them and want new friends.

First / Previous
Back on the job, my eyes kept going to the camera that was on enclosure one. Andrew told me its real name, but I think that’d be a step too far, putting that out on the internet. I’d just stick with ‘Steve the bear’. Whatever it was, I just knew I’d have a nightmare about it eventually. Last night I slept fitfully but okay. But I know my brain, and I’d already had a nightmare about Yui stabbing me with one of her legs (they are not needle-sharp in real life, this was dream logic) and walking around, having not noticed I was a Ripley-kebab on her leg. I kept trying to get her attention but for some reason I’d been worried about sounding rude.
On my third walk around the zoo, at about 12 a.m. I saw Leila again, who I’d been noticing more and more often. She never looked interested in talking, only walking through the enclosures, and by that I meant any and all of them. She didn’t seem to have a favorite. I assume that however much of her mind that was left over from being alive still gravitated toward looking at the animals, since getting too close was what killed her in the first place.
Then, in enclosure eight, I saw a new creature and stopped abruptly. This one looked chill, but I wasn’t about to make any assumptions. It looked unique in a strange way, shaped like a giant lizard but built like a big cat of some sort. It had an uncanny valley human face, green hair for a mane, and also a horn like a unicorn. It felt like something drawn by an imaginative five-year-old brought to life, but was still somehow oddly endearing.
“Hello,” she spoke, noticing me noticing her. Her voice was distinctly female and oddly deep.
“Hello,” I responded with false cheer.
She pushed herself to her feet and I took an instinctive step back, but she seem to notice, much less take offense. “You’re the guard here?”
“Yup. That’s me.”
“Thank you.”
I blinked, taken aback. “Ah…you’re welcome. For what?”
She cocked her head. “For guarding me.”
That was different. Most of the impressions I had gotten from the animals so far were that they wanted to eat me. And the idea that this one was thankful for me doing my job was refreshing, don’t get me wrong, but made me wary. Call me a cynic, I guess.
“My name is tàiyang. You can call me Sun,” she told me.
“Hi, Sun. I’m Ripley.”
Then she looked toward the sky. “It’s going to rain tonight.”
After a thoughtful moment, I asked, “Does that make you sad?”
“Why would it make you sad?”
I smiled. “Because your name is Sun.”
She paused and then said, “I don’t understand.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, telling a pun to one of the animals. “Never mind.” I glanced up at the sky. “I thought the rain is supposed to stay away from here. Are the ones who told me that wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Well that’s good to know,” I murmured to myself, thinking of my raincoat hanging in the security office closet. It wasn’t that surprising, honestly. Sometimes I felt like the meteorologists in Arkansas try to read the entrails of goats to figure out the weather. It’s all a mess and it’s all made up.
At that, the animal looked to the sky and fell silent. She appeared to be the most uneventful introduction I’d had so far, and I was incredibly grateful for it. Except then the animal kept talking. “He’s under a spell.”
I blinked. “What?”
She looked back to me. “Andrew. He’s under a spell. He’s very unhappy.”
I had no idea how to react to that. For a second I just stared. The sudden jolt of being told my boss was currently being afflicted by magic left me floundering. “He… What?” I finally asked. “Where is he?”
“In his office.”
Oh shit. My eyes instinctively darted in the direction of the main office. I always just entered through the door on the west side of the building, of course, since it led to the security room. It was unnecessary for me to go through the door that first led into the lobby-slash-office Andrew worked out of. Sometimes he even left early, so it was locked anyway. I had the key, but again, it was unnecessary.
Whatever had happened, assuming this animal wasn’t joking around (she seemed completely serious), I needed to establish whether she was right. Leaving the enclosure of the animal I’d just met, I quickly walked back to the small building.
Taking a deep breath, I knocked loudly. “Andrew, are you in there?”
The only reply was silence. I stood there until enough time had passed that it was obvious that no one was coming to answer the door. Taking out my phone, I dialed his cell number and wait as it rang. Then I grimaced when I heard it ringing inside.
Hanging up and shoving the phone back in my pocket, I stared at the closed door.
Trying the doorknob, I found that it was unlocked, and my heart skipped a beat. Andrew always locked his office before leaving. Opening the door slowly, the lights were off in the room, leaving only the faint red glow of the lights outside peeking around his curtains, so I turned on a light. Then my heart plummeted into my stomach, because there was Andrew, splayed limply on the ground, his eyes only half open.
I bolted to him and dropped to his side as he let out a whimper.
“Andrew,” I said, putting two fingers to the side of his neck. He remained silent, and despite his relaxed, wilted appearance, his heart was racing, and I wondered if he was in pain. The room smelled, and it was clear to me that he’d lost control of his bowels. I couldn’t believe I’d been working here for hours without knowing he was in the next room like this.
“Fucking hell. I’m so sorry it took me so long to find you. Can you hear me? What happened?” He made a small sound, unfocused eyes attempting to meet mine, but it was as if he were severely deprived of sleep or something, unable to focus. His mouth opened and he tried to say something, but he couldn’t speak. All I got was halting words mushed into each other. I felt for him; he must’ve been mortified by his condition. I would’ve been, at least.
The obvious solution would be to get Suzanne’s number from Andrew’s phone, so I searched him for it and found it in his right jacket pocket. I pressed the button the iPhone, swiped, and let out a sigh of frustration. He was security conscious enough to lock his phone with a code, of course.
“Can you… You can’t tell me the code,” I said knowing. He grunted quietly.
“What happened?”
I shrieked and jumped to my feet. Leila stood in the doorway, staring in shock at Andrew’s body. “You scared the bejesus out of me,” I exclaimed. I stopped myself before asking if she could make some noise when she moved or if I could put a bell on her. “What does it look like happened? Someone put a spell on him.” Abruptly, my stance changed, standing up straight. “Wait. Do you know how to get in touch with…anyone?” I asked desperately.
“I know Ms. Cooper’s phone number,” she said frankly.
My eyes widened. “Seriously? How?”
“Andrew gave it to me after I worked here for three months.”
That stopped my brain dead in its tracks. “You…used to work here?” I whispered. I remembered Andrew telling me that one of the night shift managers had been killed, but he hadn’t told me it was Leila. Whether it was for her own privacy or her dignity or some other reason, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that I could call Suzanne.
“I worked here for three months,” Leila confirmed as I took out my own phone.
“Okay…what’s her number?” I asked, ready to dial. She rattled off the number and dialed it.
The phone rang twice times before someone answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, is this Suzanne?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
She had a British accent like Andrew did. I took a deep breath and said, “It’s Ripley Mason. I got your number from Leila. I’m here in Andrew’s office and he’s in really bad shape. Someone cast a spell on him and it’s like he’s lost control of the part of his brain that lets him move around and speak.”
“What?” she snapped. “What happened?”
“I-I don’t know,” I said, glancing back to Andrew. He actually looked calmer now, and I hoped that was because he knew Suzanne could fix this. “I was doing my rounds and I met Sun; she’s the one that told me and that’s why I came into his office. I don’t- Who would do this? What do I do?”
“It’s okay, Ripley. I’ll leaving now and will be there soon,” she told me. I heard rustling in the background, the sounds of getting out of a chair and footsteps. “Did you check the security cameras?”
My eyes shut in irritation against my stupidity. It hadn’t even occurred to me. “I’m sorry. Of course, I’ll do that right away.” Proof positive that I was completely out of it. Some security guard I was, not even able to keep my head in an emergency.
“Don’t apologize, Ripley, you’re quite within your rights to be discombobulated at the moment,” she said. “And I’d like you stay with Andrew, but I would prefer to know what happened. Leave his side just for a second to check the footage.
“Okay.” I crouched down to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” His eyes flicked to me, but he didn’t make a sound. Getting back to my feet and walking over to the security room door, I went in and sat at my desk, putting the phone on speaker so I could more easily navigate the footage.
After fidgeting around with the unfamiliar aspect of the program, since I’d never needed to look back before and Andrew only showed me how to do it once, I finally went back to the point where the spell had been cast. “Okay, he walked into his office with two men at…4:08 p.m. and it looks like he was fine with it. He wasn’t under duress, from what I can see.”
“That’s likely Michael Wise and Eric Henry,” Suzanne told me. “They were allegedly making a donation, a herd of Bagot goats.”
“Allegedly?”
“Well, I’m operating under the assumption that they lied if Andrew is spelled.”
I grimaced. That was a good point. Watching them have a conversation, I saw Andrew tense, and then turn to dart toward his desk, but he only made it two steps before one of the men raised what looked like a wand, snapping it in my late boss’s direction, speaking something. As I saw Andrew’s body seize like he’d been hit with a taser and collapse, I hissed in a sharp breath. “Cripes.”
“What is it?”
“One of them had a wand,” I managed. “He-He did something with it.”
“I’m here, Ripley. Come back to the office.”
My eyes widened and I did as I was told, stunned to see her opening the front door. “How did you get here so fast?” I asked.
The woman gave me a small smile, rendered grim by the situation. “Call it a trick of the trade.”
“Oh. Gotcha.”
Suzanne was all hard edges, her pin-straight blond hair cut at an angle just below her ears, and she wore a smart blue pants suit with matching pumps. But then she looked to Andrew and her face softened, despair and fury flashing across it as she quickly walked to him and knelt at his side, taking his weak hand in hers.
“Oh, Andrew,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry. You’ll be okay. I already texted a healer and asked her to come by. A friend of mine named Janine.”
I looked back to Andrew’s face, his eyes open and his expression one of exhaustion, but then quickly looked to Suzanne. “Why would someone do this?” I asked.
“I have a feeling at least one of our animals is missing,” she told me, her voice low and hard.
Anger flared up in me. “What?” I asked tersely. I glanced back in the direction of the cameras. “Should we check the cameras to see which enclosure they went to? Do we- Are there cops you can call for this? What do we do?”
Suzanne’s face slowly faded to sadness. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. “You’re accurate in that I do have a different police I’ll call about this. But there’s a good chance we won’t get the animal back.”
“Wait, why? Come on, there’s got to be magic you could do, right?” I asked anxiously.
“The animal will have been warded and sold to someone immediately,” she explained. “They would’ve had a buyer set up, and gone straight there to reduce the risk of being caught with it. Anyone who is buying an animal like this is extremely powerful, which means that even if we catch the men who stole it, they’d go to prison, but they wouldn’t risk angering the buyer. They won’t tell the authorities who it was, even for a lesser sentence. Losing an animal to robbery has only happened twice in the zoo’s history, this is the third time, but that’s how it played out both times. Actually, in the first instance, the police didn’t even catch the people who took it, since they were wearing masks.”
Just then, there was a knock at the door, and Suzanne pushed herself to her feet, walking over and opening it without hesitation. “He’s in here.” I took the opportunity to open the windows and turned down the thermostat so it would start displacing the smelly air.
A woman walked in, Janine presumably. “Oh, goodness,” she breathed, going quickly to Andrew. She took his pulse with one hand as she pulled a wand out from her purse with the other. “It’s good he’s staying calm. Redire orior can be terrifying to be subjected to.”
“He wasn’t calm when I got here,” I told her quietly. “I’ve been here for hours and didn’t know he was here until just a few minutes ago.”
Janine swore softly. “All right. Let me get started.”
I didn’t know what that meant, so I turned to Suzanne. “What did she call this?”
“The spell is ‘redire orior’. It’s a regression of part of the mind, basically all the way back to when we were first born,” she said tightly, anger flickering across her face. “He has no more control over his body than he did when he was a newborn baby.”
I grimaced, looking back to him. “Oh my god,” I whispered. It meant exactly what it had looked like when I’d walked in: Andrew had been rendered completely helpless. Rage welled up inside me, despising the men who’d done this and wishing desperately that Suzanne had been more confident in finding them.
Suzanne took the opportunity to walk into the security office and I heard her sit in my chair. Janine put down her wand to have both hands free and told Andrew, “Just relax, concentrate on breathing slowly,” she said, carefully pulling both of his legs out and rolling him onto his back. She then put his arms at his sides and, picking up her wand, pointed it at his forehead.
I took in a sharp breath of surprise as I saw a faint glow coming from the wand, through the top of it and then to Andrew’s forehead. She held that position for a while, muttering under her breath.
A few minutes later, Suzanne came out and took her phone from her pocket, saying, “I don’t recognize either of the men in the footage. But they seemed distressed, particularly the one that didn’t hurt Andrew. I don’t think that’s what was meant to happen.”
“Meant to or not, it happened,” I muttered through clenched teeth. I’d already decided that my new to-do list every day included first checking the office cameras.
“Andrew,” Janine said, letting the glow fade. “Can you speak?”
“I…yeah,” he whispered.
Suzanne came over to my side. “Thank goodness. How are you feeling? How’s the vertigo?”
“Pretty much gone,” he said, closing his eyes for a long moment, though he didn’t try to stand up.
“Andrew, I pulled up the cameras in the office and listened to the audio,” she told him. “I know what happened.”
My eyebrows furrowed. “The cameras have audio?”
“It’s under admin privileges, but yes. Andrew, you should have known better,” she said softly, looking back to him. “The gun in one of the desk drawers? I presume that’s what you were lunging for, because those two men had just made it clear they were here for an animal.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I just…” He looked distraught.
“They told you to just let them get what they came for,” Suzanne said. “Why didn’t you?” My lips parted in shock.
“The last time this happened, I cooperated, but…I regretted it,” he growled. “We never saw Harriet again. I couldn’t just stand here and let them do whatever they wanted. Not again.” I assumed Harriet was one of their animals, but I didn’t ask.
“Don’t ever do something so foolish again,” she told him, on the verge of being upset, her emotions likely tempered by his condition. “I want to make it clear to you that this job, these animals, they’re immensely important, but they are not worth your life. He could have killed you. If someone gains access to the zoo again to steal an animal I want you to cooperate fully. Understood?”
“Yeah,” Andrew muttered.
The idea that Andrew had tried to bring a gun to a wand fight was staggering. Something heavy curled in my stomach at the thought. It was clear he cared about the wellbeing of the animals to a degree I hadn’t comprehended.
Janine took one of the small pillows from the couch and tucked it under Andrew’s head as Suzanne continued. “All right,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll go through the footage to determine what they stole and then call the authorities to report the theft. Janine, can you continue to treat him?”
I wasn’t sure what that entailed, but Janine apparently did, since she nodded and knelt back down as Suzanne went back into the security office. Janine did the same thing that she’d done before, that soft glow channeling light into Andrew’s head. Obviously, I wanted to ask what she was doing, but I knew better than to think I’d get an answer. Instead, I sat in one of the loveseats in front of Andrew’s desk, turning it to face them.
I heard Suzanne’s voice faintly speaking to someone on the phone and the minutes ticked by. Eventually, Suzanne came back out again and she stood next to me for a long moment, watching the healing process before turning to me.
“Andrew told me you were attempting to create some enrichment activities for the animals?” asked my boss.
“Oh, uh…yeah, I am,” I answered. I assumed she was trying to make small talk to distract me from the current situation, and I appreciated it. “The first one went well. Spike loves artichokes, pecans, and hazelnuts. I went with things that made it a challenge to eat, like it’s a challenge to pull out fingernails of its prey.”
Suzanne’s expression brightened just enough for me to notice. “Ripley, that’s wonderful. Very clever.” She let out a breath. “It’s becoming more and more obvious to me that Andrew chose well in hiring you.” I gave her a small smile. “Listen, I’m going to hire someone else to be here with you on duty,” Suzanne told me, “and by that, I mean someone from my neck of the woods. Andrew explained that to you, correct?”
“Not much. Just that you’re not from Earth.”
Suzanne smiled. “That makes me sound like an alien, but yes, I’m not from this dimension. I can hire someone who has similar abilities to mine, who can check in every few hours, make sure everything’s all right, but generally make themselves scarce unless there’s an emergency. He wouldn’t have been able to do much if he’d already been here, but he’d have known what was going on. Andrew would have received assistance immediately.”
I was curious of what those abilities were, aside from being able to see the animals, but I wasn’t bold enough to ask. Also, I was curious about who this new ‘employee’ would be, but presumably I’d find out sooner or later. “That would make me feel a little better,” I said, nodding. “Knowing there was someone else here.”
She nodded once. “It’s as good as done, then. As for Andrew, he’ll need to take a few days off to recover. Would you be willing to give the tours until he’s back in ship-shape?”
My eyes bugged out of my skull. “Wait, what? I can’t even see all the animals!”
Suzanne chuckled at my expression and shook her head. “I can enchant a pair of specs for you to wear,” she told me. “It’ll give you a bit of a headache, but you’ll be able to see all of the animals. Also, I’ll give you the background for each of them, because you’ll be speaking about them to the tourists.”
I blinked, thinking of how awesome it would be to finally know all about them all. And it was flattering, the fact that she had such confidence in me that, without hesitation, she asked if I could take over for Andrew. The best thing for me to do, of course, was to be confident and assure her that I could take any temporary promotion in stride. “I’m…I’m not great with people,” I managed.
Yup. Nailed it.
“You can be a little harsh with them if you need to,” she said with a small, knowing smile. “I assumed that signing up for a job where you interact with a screen of cameras the whole time means you aren’t great with people. And Andrew did brief me on you when he hired you. How good are you at couching your insults in polite talk? The British are quite skilled, but I know Americans aren’t too bad at it.”
I smirked, remembering how a coworker friend of mine once told a customer, “Oh, bless your heart,” in her thick southern accent and it sounded like the worst insult. “I can manage that, I think.”
A buzz from the gate that went to the panel on the wall drew our attention and Suzanne walked over to let the visitors in. It was three people, a man and two women, with a gurney.
Walking over to Andrew, I folded my arms with a small smile as Janine released his head from the glow the wand was emitting. “Hey. Sorry you had to lay on the floor for so long knowing I was cluelessly reading a book in the next room.”
“Eh, not the end of the world,” he whispered. “I’ll be back on my feet soon. So, no parties while I’m gone.”
I snorted and my smile widened, and he returned it.
Going back into the security room, I pulled the system back to the multi-camera exterior view, and I sat there and listened to Suzanne talk to one of the medics, explaining everything that had happened in detail. Once she’d done that and they brought Andrew outside on the gurney, presumably to a waiting ambulance, I gave my statement, and then…it was back to work.
Obviously going back to work like nothing had changed felt weird, but Suzanne stayed, letting me know that she would get some work done at Andrew’s desk until my shift was over. It was likely the opposite of necessary, the robbers were gone, but it did make me feel a tiny bit better knowing that she was in the next room with her wand.
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I(20F) have been feeling lately like I've never had a real friend. Everyone's moving on with their lives, but I feel stuck in my city, especially when even my friends who stay here have new friends and have new lives in their uni.
The other day, I went to my friend's home,it was her birthday but she kept me waiting for two hours, which made me feel humiliated, I was about to cry but kept myself controlled. She came to the city after a few months and brought her new friend here..the friend was ok...but I realised how my best friend was now closer with this new person whom I barely know but this new girl knows everything about me..it was quite a surreal feeling to experience in a bad way..
Don't get me wrong I have a new uni and new life too but the problem is my uni is a shithole of a place where everyone is a conservative, a sexist, racist or a drug addict there's litreally no in between...or they're just bad people.
Atleast once in my life I want to stop feeling that I am always the one making plans and being there for others, but I don't feel like anyone cares about me as much as I care about them. I just want a friend who's as excited to spend time with me as I am with them, as excited to take cute pictures and post them as I am, as excited to make elaborate plans as I am...I am so envious on how life just happens and happens good to some people whereas no matter how hard I try I'm still back to square one..I want someone who takes the initiative I'm tired of the being the one always taking that first step.
It's tiring always giving and not getting much back. I wonder if I'm just not good at making friends or if I let people walk all over me. Either way, I'm tired of feeling like this and just want a real connection.
Sometimes I just wonder if I am cursed.. truly...

I just received a pelvic MRI results from the hospital. The test showed that I had a slight dilatation of the venous plexuses of the pelvic floor. Could this be directly responsible for erectile dysfunction? I have already discussed this with my urologist and he said that even if it is, there is not much that can be done about it but he said I could discuss it with an angiologist.
I read on the Internet that various surgical procedures can be used to narrow the dilated venous plexuses of the pelvic floor. One option is a procedure called internal saphenous vein embolization, which involves blocking or narrowing dilated venous plexuses using small catheters inserted through blood vessels. Another option is to surgically remove the dilated vessels.
Does anyone know this area or have any experience? Can this even be the cause of my ED?
I have been dealing with pretty bad ED for 11 years. I am still young - 29 years old, but at the moment I have no morning wood, I can only achieve an erection while taking a pde5 inhibitor but only really big doses work on me, and not always. Big doses I mean 200 mg of sildenafil sometimes mixed with tadalafil - 20 mg or 40 mg and even that gives me up to 80% of erection. 10 years ago PDE5 was way more effective for me, but now it barely works, and pretty often my penis still needs physical stimulation.
Expect pelvic MRI, I did :

• Hormones, morphology, glucose blood tests
• Doppler ultrasound
• Spine and brain MRI
• Testicular ultrasound
• Neurological examination MNC - Perineal - Bulbo-Cavernous Reflex
• Semen and urine culture
• Heart ultrasound, heart ECG

All the above tests were good and did not indicate any abnormalities.
I’ve also tried shockwave therapy, PRP, and stem cells but without any effects.
I am fit and healthy, I sleep well, I eat well and I do not stress much. I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs and I drink occasionally. Psychological factors were also ruled out by doctors. I take and I took loads of supplements helping for ED, I don’t even want to list them because it would be too long

All right, so some context here. I live in a house that is an exact mirror of the house next door, and we have a shared driveway. Yards are pretty close, it's close quarters, so I always expected some minor issues with a new neighbor simply because it would be difficult not to be in each other's space. However, the situation as it stands is...well, here goes:
Bought a house 2 years ago. A year later, someone buys the newly-renovated twin house next door. They have several kids I see the first couple days they're moving in. I think great, my kiddos will have someone to play with.
I get to know the neighbors and find out they're from the Congo and several of them don't speak english (I'm in USA). Ok, no problem, we can work with that. However, within weeks of moving in, several things occur:

• Their kids, aged between 2 and 6 (there are 4 total that live permanently there, many more when relatives visit) start running rampant. They're knocking on my windows and pissing off my dog, taking toys from my garage, wandering into my garage while I'm using tools, and just generally unsupervised. The one kid likes to take his pants down wherever he pleases and piss everywhere, including in my yard, on my house, and in my plants. Just the other day, those kids opened the back door and went wandering around the neighborhood. I saw them in the street, took them home, and no one answered the door. I'm pretty sure they were just left home by themselves.
• The kids themselves are aggressive; biting, hitting, scratching, taking toys right out of my kids' hands.
• The adults burn trash freely in a pile in the backyard. I'm talking full plastic trash bags, PVC pipe, and more. There's a pile of debris that just lives in the backyard now.
• They keep live chickens in their garaage tied to a chair, which they then slaughter in a kiddie pool (I'm not making this up lol) in the garage for food. I'm assuming they're just dumping the blood down the garage drain.
• They constantly block the driveway with their vehicles so I can't get in or out, and they have a total of 5-6 vehicles because there are anywhere from 10-12 people living in the single-family home.

This is really just the main stuff I could think of. During the course of them living there, I have attempted several times to be the caring neighbor.

• I've talked to one of the moms of the kids about letting really young kids run free like that. I mean sometimes they're just in the street, no supervision, no adults around. I've tried to explain that A) It could be dangerous because people fly down our road, and B) They can't just be in peoples' yards unsupervised.
• I've tried to initiate conversation about the trash burning, and even gave them some cinderblocks and helped them build a fire ring for wood. They promptly disassembled it and repurposed the cinder blocks for a sort of pathway.
• I've called Children's Services to see if they had the resources to help bridge the language gap and maybe provide some resources or information about how things work here, but not sure what happened there. This was out of genuine concern, since the mom I talked to either didn't understand what I was saying or just didn't care, because the behavior has continued with no change.
• I've created a sort of working relationship with the patriarch of the family, but he speaks very little english and so the language gap prevents us from communicating effectively. That being said, he always says hi, we chat sometimes, but it's hard to really explain or converse about anything in depth.
• I've given them seeds for their garden, let them use my bike pump, my lawnmower, and other tools.
• I'm always courteous about the driveway, their space, and make sure my kids don't hang out in their yard or mess with their things.

Some of the family members give me dirty looks or flat out won't speak to me, and I don't understand why they feel that way when up to this point, I've been nothing but nice.
Now, I've tried my best to keep this relationship tenable because we have to live next to each other, but I'm at my wits end here. I understand there's a cultural and language gap, but they don't even seem interested in trying to integrate a little bit into the societal expectations we have, like at the very least supervising your 2 year old outside, or y'know not letting your kid piss on my house and not slaughtering fucking chickens in the garage.
I'm getting to the point where I'm just going to start calling the police every time I see those kids running around unsupervised, because I know damn well when one of those poor kiddos gets splattered by the idiots flying down my street, everyone's gonna turn their heads and wonder what happened. Then I'm going to feel guilty because I can't jump every time I see these kids running around the neighborhood potentially putting themselves in danger.
Not to mention, now there's a rat living in my garage drain and I've seen the damn thing running back and forth between houses. Luckily I think one of the neighborhood's feral cats actually killed the rat, but when I told the neighbors about it, they didn't seem the least bit interested. Am I the asshole here? I don't know what to do but I know I'm pretty sick of being worried about other peoples' kids destroying my property or getting killed because of neglect.

Last summer I broke things off with my ex gf and I am still really struggling to move on.
I’m in my mid-20s, but I didn’t really date much in my teens or early 20s because I was always just too busy to. She was the first woman I’ve ever really felt a special connection with, and she’s the only woman, that isn’t a family member, that I’ve ever genuinely loved with my whole heart. Because she was my first love, I don’t really have a frame of reference for how this process of moving on is supposed to go.
After I broke up with her, I cut ties completely. All of our texts gone, gifts and keepsakes tossed in the trash, all pictures of her deleted. I haven’t even seen a photo of her since we split. I tried to make a very clean break. No-contact was broken once, around my birthday, so she could apologize for the things she said leading up to the breakup. And that’s all I’ve seen or heard from her in a year.
The problem is that I’m still very in love with her somehow and I just can’t stop thinking about her. Either missing her so much or hating her for how much pain she put me through. It makes me sick that I still feel this way. I wanted to dump her for over a month before I finally did it. I know it was the right choice because my quality of life has been much better since leaving. I really would just like to stop thinking about her. It makes me feel gross and obsessive to still be having these thought. It feels like I’ve done all the right things to move on, but I just haven’t yet.
I’ve tried to get back out there and date after the breakup, but it just hasn’t been working and I feel like a lot of that is my fault because I just can’t get over my ex. Whenever I’m getting to know a new potential partner, it always feels extremely overwhelming. It’s hard to put into words, but especially texting back and forth seems like a huge task and gives me major anxiety. I sometimes feel that I can’t put aside the energy to send those texts unless I’m alone and somewhere where I feel fully relaxed. It never used to be like this. The relationship did have a bit of a verbally abusive element to it, which probably left an impact on me in this way.
There was one girl I was really starting to like and who I hit it off with well, but it didn’t work out and looking back, I found that I was constantly comparing her to my ex without realizing it, like “my ex would have said this” or “this date would be way more fun with my ex”, etc. I’ve heard from a mutual that she’s been in and out of a relationship since our breakup, which makes me feel like she’s been able to move on while I’m stuck.
Do I just need to keep doing me and let it fade? Is it a good idea for me to be dating or is it unfair for me to see someone while I’m still hung up on someone else? At 27, with many o my friends locking down and getting engaged, it’s starting to feel like the pressure is on for me to find my person.

I had my gallbladder removed yesterday (good riddance!) and recovery has been okay so far.
The strange thing is that I have several incision sites which don't hurt very much, but I have very severe stabbing pain in my left lower abdomen in the section about 2-3 inches to the left and below my belly button, and then a bit below that. There are no incisions there (closest is the one under my belly button), and most of the incisions are on the right upper abdomen. When I stand up, bend forwards or try to move at all, I have to hold this area or I am in extreme pain. It has been the only real pain I've had since I've woken up yesterday. I have a pretty high pain threshold so I know it's pretty bad if I'm bothered by it.
Is this weird? I know to expect pain but it seems like it's in an odd place, far away from where I know my gallbladder was and not seemingly related to the incision sites. And it's especially odd since all the incision sites are basically just a bit sore but absolutely nothing in comparison to this pain.
Did anyone else experience this? Should I be worried?

I have a Hiboy S2 Pro that I bought new in spring 2021. I know there's a lot of hate for Hiboy. However....
I just have this unit for fun, and sometimes darting over to another location 2 miles away. Very occasional use.
I used it for a year, then picked up an Apollo Ghost for the speed, air filled tires and suspension. So the Hiboy sat in my dry basement for about 1.5 years, I kept the battery up. It was working as late as Nov-Dec 2023.
I went to use it a couple weeks ago, and now it doesn't go. The dashboard comes on, all the lights work, the brakelights, etc. But pushing the throttle gets nothing, no motion. So I communicated with Hiboy and they said I need to replace BOTH the controller and the motor which will cost about $140 together.
Surely both can't have gone bad just sitting in the basement? I am not going to replace this scooter outright. Would you replace just one thing first and if so, which one?

I know there's millions of parents out there struggling with the same problem having a drug addicted child and I'm one of them. My son is 23 and his drug of choice is CRACK. He's constantly asking me for money and saying its for going on a date which I know is bullshit.It's killing both his mother and myself and I have no fucking clue what to do to stop it. I know there's plenty of programs out there that he could go to but from being an recovering addict myself I know he wouldn't be able to handle it. Just for the simple fact that he's a really good kid and I know that he'd get picked on and maybe get his ass kicked because he wouldn't be able to live with others because he's not clean and that's a big deal being in a program and living with others. As parents it's so fucking hard to see your child struggling with an addiction. I feel like it's payback for what I put my family through. Its like how can you even focus on your work or daily activities worrying about your child either overdosing or getting beat up or even killed. I don't really like to post personal stuff like this but I have no fucking clue on what I can do to help him. Not to mention all the money I have giving him for his so called "Going on a date". He just lost his job because of this and now he thinks his mother and I are an ATM. Any advice would help. Thank you and God Bless.

-Jack
Every kid growing up in Gympie in the early 90- 2000s knew about the Love Tunnel.
The love tunnel was located over the hill from the skatepark on the Riverbank. It was a massive storm water drain filled with spray paint and lore unbound throughout the generations; the glowing dick, whose name is the furthest in, the people who live inside, the bull shark that lived under the bridge just outside, all that fun stuff.
It collapsed in the late 2000’s in a flood and was eventually rebuilt, but it was all fancy, modern, safe and not the same. Back in the day it had decades of graffiti, crumbling cement, jagged metal pole framing bent and jutting out from the sides. You know, real character.
I remember when I was just a kid at the skatepark and I spotted a bunch of other kids at the metal grating of a drain. I joined them and gazed down a few metres to some older teenagers, they had trekked through this “love tunnel” under the massive hill all this way. Badass I thought. LEGENDARY.
I talked about it at school, about this mysterious “love tunnel”. It was in view from the road when I crossed the bridge everyday on my daily commutes from the backseat of mums car.
I would gaze down at the weir and see the top of the love tunnel, sliightly hidden from view by a hill. It fascinated me.
I learned all these mysterious tales; this person slept with this person there, someone took a dump at the entrance and some other girl stood in it and now she had a nickname, someone found needles, another found a homeless woman and she screamed at them. I was pumped for the next weekend. I was going to go see it for myself.
I saw too much.
Early Saturday morning I was riding my push bike through town and toward destination adventure! I started out at the skatepark, met up with a few of the regulars, a mix of 5-19y/o everyone on the half pipes and ramps had a code of comrady that I've never found in a public place anywhere else and you always had someone to hang with.
My usual crew slowly arrived through the morning, a bunch of other 10/11 year old misfits like myself and we headed on our first place on our journey, Hungry Jacks. Now we never technically stole, we found a loophole…
One or two would order a stunner meal, then we'd take privilege of the free refills and fill up the empty plastic 4L juice jugs that we all had prepped in our backpacks. Coke and red Fanta for days.
So we got our supplies and headed behind HJ, past the volleyball courts and headed down a bush track down to the river.
We walked along the banks to loop back down to where the bridge was, we passed a few teenagers fishing and a couple other groups of kids swinging from rope swings into the water or huddled in groups smoking things they shouldn't.
We eventually arrived at the weir and the stormwater drain that I had been so intrigued by. The Love Tunnel.
Climbing up the hill and seeing it up close when you were just a tiny human. It was like staring into the dark abyss of hell.
There was a small stream of water flowing out of the big grey cylinder and it was covered in multicolored quotes and crude pictures that was very eye opening at the time.
Our voices echoed as one by one we climbed up the grassy, eroding clay edging that was the makeshift path into the mouth that probably changed each time it rained. Each of us had pulled out clumps of grass that we thought were handholds. If you fell, you fell down an embankment of slippery jagged rocks poking out from the fast flowing river.
So were inside and began to walk a couple of metres in then around us the light abruptly disappeared into complete darkness. And I remember the way the sounds traveled you could feel it through your chest it was mesmerizing.
I remember bravely stepping into the darkness and taking five or six steps in. That thick darkness was something else, I ran myself back to that entrance and light, heart pounding from the adrenaline.
This turned into a game of who could go in the furthest. This stopped when one of the boys screamed out from the darkness in pain.
He was back in the light teary eyed a few moments later wet on one side and feigning a laugh. He'd slipped down and cut open his knee, it was hilarious. We teased him saying he was going to get gangrene and leprosy and a myriad of other ailments we had no idea actually was.
We decided to bail, we forgot torches, we didn't plan that part out too well, and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon being little menaces.
We met the next day with a game plan, we had an array of various sized torches, from small ones that didn't do anything, one of those giant rectangle ones that was our main light source, a couple of handheld ones, one which flickered and the other stopped working before we even got into the tunnel.
We got in safely and tested out our torches and began walking into the unknown. It was pretty much the same as before, but there were strange things, old makeshift bongs, shopping bags, random shoes, a shopping trolley, a mattress that was all moldy and rotted. I still to this day do not understand how people managed to get that shit in there.
We passed a section where someone had thrown a can of red paint all over the walls, the amount of those ‘S’ symbols was more terrifying.
We saw light up ahead, we were passing our first grate. It was kind of daunting looking up towards it. Even getting on each other's shoulders we couldn't reach. There was an array of broken beer bottles and glass was everywhere, under the grate was a dead snake amongst some debris.
We had a debate whether to go further, we ended up going on at least until the next grate, we came to a fork, one seemed like a smaller offshoot so we stuck to the bigger side.
There were more offshoots and we came to a part where the big pipes split off into three under another grate. We gazed up hoping to get an identifier of our location, but all we could see was blue. We called out to see if we could get anyone's attention.
“Cooooweeee” we shouted in unison, the sound echoing in all directions.
We were laughing and having a grand time until something shouted back, something that still shakes me to my core to this day.
Some yobbo crackhead chick in her fifties with this ratty pink tank top that was all stretched half showing her saggy titties. “What the fuck you think you little cunts doing down here.” This chick screeched at us through her few teeth or something along the lines of that. She just exploded at us with a barrage of threats.
We were shocked silenced moving together to make one mass.
One of the boys screamed when a skinny guy emerged from the darkness. He was covered in tattoos with scraggly hair and a beard, he was all crazy eyed and pantless.
Someone yelled out to run and it was all the motivation we needed.
We could hear them screaming and the guy ran after us, we heard glass shattering behind us, they must have thrown a bottle. We were legging it.
We got split up in our running, I fell down, tripping over some rubbish, one mate stayed back to help me, this left us without a torch. We came across the same kid who slipped over yesterday, he had slipped down again cutting open his other knee. He wore those with badges of honor at school, but he was blubbering like a baby at this point.
He had the flickering torch and it disoriented us more than helped, as it turned on and off every time he took a step. I thought we were lost but we found the other grate, then eventually the entrance.
The others were already climbed down, we were soon by their side panting in the grass and wiping away our tears so the others couldn't see.
We ran back over to the skatepark and immediately told every kid we saw.
That was the wildest shit we had ever experienced. Sure we’d seen crazy up on the street but to have it jump out at you from the shadows in a storm water drain was next level.
By that night one of the other boys had spilled to his parents about our escapades and a couple of other mums got phone calls, three got in trouble, two of us didn't, including me.
I never stepped foot back in that tunnel, I swam at the weir more times than I could count afterwards though and never encountered anyone else too sketchy.
I think only a year or two later I saw on the news people dying in storm water drains somewhere else in Aus, we never realized how dangerous they could be back then. Lol.
Every party or get together afterwards it was a crowd favorite to bring up. It was a good conversation starter and joined the tales amongst my friends of the weird shit that happens in ‘Helltown’.
Growing up and looking back they were probably just homeless drug addicts freaked out from a bunch of children's voices yelling out coooweee from the underground where they thought they were alone. That would have scared the shit outta me if I was them.
Good times.
.VJ - in 2012 two women tragically passed away when they were exploring the tunnels and got swept away when a wild storm cell hit. Pictures of the upgraded version of the 'love tunnel' can be found in corresponding news articles.

So we have a Germany teacher which is the worst teacher that ever taught me (she can't even do that). We have germany 3 years (this is the 3rd year) and every single year we didn't have this teacher I had straight A's and the second this teacher came I have the worst grades I ever had, the entire Germany and that teacher ruined my grades and everything (same for other classmates of course).
She legit said she can't scream and that she isn't an "Official Teacher" and that she will be only here till Summer Break. She legit gives grades for "Silence in Germany" basically grades based on how much u talk etc in class everyone been getting F's she said that we need to learn to "Think Silently" and that we're unresponsible kids.
Today she gave us test that nobody knew and expected, wanna know what's the best part? The test was about what she wrote on the whiteboard that she deleted like 3 minutes later and gave us words that no one knew that existed. Previous teachers that gave us test were based on what was in the book and every was getting good grades, etc... But this teacher is a different breed. After she gets angry she puts on School Site for our parents and for us some nonsense and annoying thing last time she said "Dear XXXX and XXXXXXX , I'm sorry that my nerves broke today and that I was banging on the table like a tornado, I didn't know how much I was going to spit out on the volcanic lava." SHE POSTED THAT LIKE A LITTLE GIRL. She then posts some useless stuff about her personal life, like what the heck is that kind of a teacher?.....
She is like a crazy psycho that ran out of mental hospital, she looks like 20 years old but she is 50 something. Every single student is welp, how to say it like protesting against her they, everyone is mad that she is giving grades like that and etc and everyone is angry at her. I've been talking with other classes and students and they said the same, she is legit giving bad grades for nothing. The best thing is that she told us after summer break she wont be there because she isn't "Official Teacher" and bla bla bla.
What can I do to report her or something?
Thx.

I read it maybe five years ago so maybe not all of these details are accurate
The fic started with Izuku finding the OC (can't remember the name) on the beach nearly dead, which was loosely based off Garou from what I remember, and nursing him back to health. The OC reveals that he was an assassin from the Americas, but got betrayed by his partners, and seeing how Izuku saved his life he’ll be under his protection. Izuku of course tries to persuade him not to keep killing, but seeing how OC’s a criminal and Izuku has no way of proving he’s even real they eventually compromise on only killing villains.
The first two chapters gloss over Izuku’s early life, the only interesting part being Izuku desperately trying to ignore news reports of a brand new villain who is exterminating local gangs and seizing their territory. The main meat of the fanfic is when Izuku grows up, he joins the HPSC. Because Izuku wasn’t part of the normal plot, many of the canon villains are much stronger, and as they struggle on it eventually becomes more and more tempting to unleash the OC on the likes of Tomura and LOV. The breaking point comes when Kai Chisaki enters the fic, and Izuku finally gives in and tells him to go to Yakuza HQ to save Eri and kill anything that tries to stop him. The last chapter I read ends on a cliffhanger, because its revealed that the OC killed Kirishima and Fatgum as well, since they tried to stop him taking Eri.
Anyone know which one this is?

I'm sorry if this feels like a soap opera, but please hear me out:
Three years ago, I broke up with my alcoholic ex-girlfriend of four years due to her alcoholism and constant blacking out. A year later, I met Sarah (24F), who was completely opposite of Emily (26F). Sarah didn’t drink, treated me better, was better at communicating, and overall was a good girlfriend, but she was very needy. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out because of our communication issues. There was nothing wrong with either of us; we just had different needs that couldn’t be fulfilled by each other. The breakup was amicable, and we went our separate ways. I should note that I did not spoil her or spend a lot of money on her as we weren’t really dating; it was more like a situationship.
Moving on, I know this sounds really bad and there’s no way to prove myself, but during my situationship, I bought a ring (size 7) and decided to give it to the one I really wanted to marry. I did not give the ring to Sarah; I kept it for myself because I didn’t know if we were going to make it due to our communication issues. She wanted me to text her when I was working, wanted to know my location, and so on. I have to make it very clear: she was a good girlfriend overall, but those things made it hard to see a future with her. A few months later, I found my current girlfriend, Rachel (proper girlfriend). We talked and had a lot in common; our future goals and values aligned more, and we were from the same culture, which made dating a lot easier. It was easier to date Rachel because she had a huge understanding of my work, and we had much better communication. All this, along with the fact that she tried her best every day, made me want to do the same. Our relationship blossomed into a very give-and-take dynamic without going outside our means. I took her on many dates, always planning ones that were tailored to our needs.
Here is where I messed up:
I gave her the ring very early and told her a silly story to make it look better than what it actually was. I was so stupid, and I promise this is the only time I’ve lied to her. I’ve never lied to her before. I told her that I got the ring from Latvia and that it reminded me of her and was so hard to find, so I bought it for her. In reality, the ring represented that I could see a future with her, but I didn’t tell her that because I didn’t want to sound like a fool and rather wanted to sound like a romantic. Well, when I gave her the ring, it didn’t fit. So, I figured I could just take it and go to the nearest Pandora to trade it in for a smaller size. Well, I couldn’t because it was bought in Latvia instead of our home country. Anyway, I went back to Rachel and told her it wasn’t possible to exchange it since it was bought in another country. I still had my receipt (which stated it was bought in another country) in my wallet. A few months later, she checked my wallet and found the receipt, seeing that it was bought long before we met. Understandably, she was livid. I tried to explain it to her, but before I could, she told me that if I could lie about something as small as this, then I could definitely do something a lot bigger, like cheating or talking to other girls behind her back. I could never do that, but that didn’t matter. I hurt her and broke her trust. It’s so sad, and the fact that I hurt her makes me feel terrible. My intentions weren’t to hurt her; it wasn’t meant to be like this. I just happened to be so dumb. I tried telling her that the ring wasn’t meant for my situationship specifically, but she doesn’t trust me. I don’t know how to fix this, but I want to. As corny as it sounds, I feel like she is my soulmate. So I don’t want to give up and want to try. Do you guys have any suggestions?
TLDR: Three years ago, I broke up with my alcoholic ex. A year later, I met Sarah, who was a good but needy girlfriend. It didn’t work out due to communication issues. During that time, I bought a ring for my future wife, not specifically for Sarah. Later, I met Rachel, and we had a great relationship. I gave Rachel the ring but lied about its origin, saying I bought it in Latvia because I wanted to sound romantic. She later found the receipt, realized it was bought before we met, and lost trust in me. Now she’s hurt and thinks I could lie about bigger things. I feel terrible and want to rebuild our relationship. Any advice?