I’m 29.
Backstory - Mom and dad separated when I was 6. Brother and I were allowed to see dad on weekends but dad was hardly ever around because he was addicted to drugs. He lived with my grandma so we really spent the time with her and my uncle and aunt. My dad didn’t get sober and his shit together until I was around 16. By this time the relationship was hardly there. Today I see him on holidays and family stuff, and he checks in, but we definitely don’t have a real father daughter relationship. He married about 6 years ago and the woman has 4 daughters.
Side note / He owed my mom about $40,000 in child support for me and he was paying it and my mom was giving me the money every month. Before he got married he asked my mom if she would write off the child support because it was messing with him being eligible to buy. She hesitated cause she was like that money helps your daughter. He promised he would continue to help me. So she wrote it off but I never saw any help lol
So he was able to buy his house and give his wife and his new kids everything they want (yes I’m salty)
So today I was talking to my mom about how it’s hard for me and my husband to find a new place to live. Our current apt is really old and we’ve had a bad roach problem we can’t get control of. Unfortunately our credit isn’t too good so it’s been hard trying to find a place that would accept us and that’s in our budget. My mom suggested getting a co signer and said my dad. I said no way I’m asking him he’ll say no anyways. I asked to borrow money about 6 months ago and he said no.
She took it upon herself and called him and asked him. He said he couldn’t or something and that he had to do something for his wife’s daughter. My mom lost it and started telling him how he’s never done anything for me or my brother but he does everything for her daughters. I don’t blame my mom because it’s all true.
My dad texted me and was like what’s going on your mom is tripping. I told him that I wasn’t even planning on asking him so idk why she told you anything. But this whole thing brought up other feelings that I’ve had for a long time now.
It hurts me and makes me jealous that his step daughters are getting the dad we never had. They have a nice house, he buys them cars, throws parties, takes them to Disney land, goes on trips, does things for them that I never got. And it’s not just the financial aspect either. He spends time with them and has more of a parent/kid relationship than I’ve ever had.
And I don’t think his wife likes me or my brother either. She always “forgets” to invite us to parties and gatherings that they have. Like twice my dad has texted me like are you coming tomorrow? And I’m like to what. He’s like oops she must have forgot. Last weekend they had something for Mother’s Day and my aunt asked me days before if I was going I was like to what I didn’t get invited. My dad invited me the night before..
I feel like telling him these things but idk if it’s dumb because I’m an adult now. Like should I be upset that he’s doing things for his step kids. Idk? But it’s not like he ever puts in any effort in trying to have a relationship with me or my brother too.

Has anyone had a C&P exam where it contradicts itself, the examiners notes, and veterans personal statement?
I just looked at the examiner notes and the actual DBQ and I don’t even understand how she got to some answers. In one section she would write that I am a great sleeper, then a few lines down wrote that I wake up every 2 hours and don’t sleep well. Then she wrote no suicidal ideation even though I’m medicated through the VA for suicidal ideation, I told her personally I’m suicidal, and my personal statement says I’m suicidal.
Will the rater catch this or will they just accept what she wrote? I know I should request a new exam but I waited 10 months for an exam, so I’m really stressed out about it taking even longer.

Marx in Barbieland
In Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie (2023)’, Barbie lives in Barbieland, which is not the ‘real world’. Barbieland is a plastic utopia where every idea of a barbie ever conceived lives as a person. We have a physicist barbie, a physician barbie, a pilot barbie and so on. The protagonist is simply the stereotypical barbie. She is the first barbie ever made whom we shall refer to as Barbie. We also have a barbie in a wheelchair, a fat barbie and a pregnant barbie. But here’s the kicker: in this utopia, we still have a president barbie and a lawyer barbie. This utopia of Barbieland still has courts, court cases and hierarchical governance.
Let’s think about it for a second. Barbieland is a cheerful place where every Barbie has her own home, has infinite supply of food, water and electricity. Some of them have jobs which they enjoy doing and others simply don’t need jobs. All barbies love and support each other except for the weird barbie, who scares them. What are they even arguing about in the court? We never see a police barbie or a soldier barbie, in that case who is upholding the rulings of the court or the laws by the senate? Political power after all flows through the barrel of a gun and there aren’t any guns here.
They all have their own homes, no property disputes. Commodities never expire or get over, hence no production and hence no business disputes. None of them are married, hence no family disputes. There is no money in this world, hence no wage disputes. It is essentially a classless society. Nobody has any reason to go to court against another person. Barbies do not need to steal and there are no murderer barbies.
Despite this, there are courts, lawyers and presidents. The writers must believe that state appartuses are a vital and eternal part of human society. That the state is as necessary to human society as are nurses and cleaners. But is that true? Why do we have these people in the real world whose job is to quell conflicts and maintain order? That is because there exist contradictions in human society. People have opposing interests. More precisely, a nation in today’s world is broadly comprised of two classes who are at odds. Two people sitting across an interview table have opposing interests. One class enjoys higher unemployment since that means cheaper labour while the other is mortified at the thought of losing their livelihood. The state exists to contain the conflict, to keep it in check. It exists to suppress the lower class from revolting or stealing. When you think of a classless society, that tension is gone. That inherent contradiction in the society is gone. Then we should not need a state, a government, courts, the police and the miltary. That’s communism. A classless, moneyless and stateless society.
If Barbieland has state machinery, it should also have a suppressed class. Can it be the kens? I did not mention the kens. The kens are counter-parts to each barbie. They are always at the beach and don’t have special jobs. They are essentially ‘himbos’. The barbies are so busy in their parties that they are not even aware of whether kens have a place to sleep. However, the kens do have voting rights, which they do not apparently exercise. In the opening scene where we see a lawyer barbie make an outstanding speech at the court, we see one ken amongst dozens of barbies. The barbies’ applause at the lawyer’s speech and in general a unity can signify a class unity over the lower ken class.
When Ken travels to the real world and finds that the downtrodden people like kens in Barbieland can actually run the world and do whatever they please; he takes the masculine manifesto with him to Barbieland, unites the other kens in overthrowing the feminine rule and establishing a Kendom where Barbieland once stood.
When Barbie returns to now Kenland, she discovers that the lower ken class has seized the previous owners’ private property such as their dream houses in an apparent revolution and made servants out of the barbies. Then conspiring with two humans, Barbie and the weird barbie make a plan for a coup d’etat. They use two tactics of the ruling classes to achieve this: sowing hatred and division, and voter suppression. They are able to form a majority at the senate and everything magically goes back to normal. Later we see a ken asking whether he can be made a part of the new government, the barbie president tells him that he can have a small administrative role in a corner somewhere.
If you reverse the genders for a bit, it makes a little sense. In a final scene, Ken struggles to know who he is if not attached to Barbie. He has always seen himself through her gaze and does not know how to exist as an independent person. He decides to finally be free from that shackle and find himself along with all the other kens. Barbie on the other hand decides to be a mother. It makes sense because ‘Man’ has been running the world, and ‘woman’ is a secondary gender who is written by men. Women must find themselves not as wo-men but as independent entities, and more men should be able to take up fatherhood as an occupation. But this interpretation may be quite a reach.
What prompted me to write this essay was that the filmmakers could not imagine a utopia without courts and presidents. Who wants to be ruled and governed in their fantasy? You might say that since the president barbie was made by Mattel in the real world, she should also exist in Barbieland and that is why the filmmakers put her there. However, Mattel also gives jobs to kens and they don’t really exist in the movie, so the status quo enforcing barbie was entirely optional for Gerwig.
The end.

PART ONE THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
Lucas tapped the flat of his finger twice on the partially open door, more to let Boyd know he was coming than actually requesting permission to enter. He pushed it open and strode through as the somewhat welcoming grunt came from within.
“Hey, sexy,” he said, crossing the two rooms to zoom in on Boyd sitting at his bench. On the spinner before Boyd was a larger figure than he had ever done before: an eighteen-inch figure of a woman with an hourglass figure wearing a form-fitting formal gown that flowed to the floor, swaying as if she’d just stepped to her right. Her hands were curled as if she were holding something or someone, but that part was missing.
“Ooooh,” Lucas said, resting his head on Boyd’s shoulder to examine the piece closer. “She’s pretty.”
“She’s also the viscount’s granddaughter, who I think is married to a prince somewhere in Eastern Europe. I’d have to pull out her details again, but she’s already got two kids, and she still looks this good.”
“She doesn’t look old enough to have two kids.”
“That’s what happens when you marry when you’re still a teenager.”
“Please tell me it wasn’t an arranged marriage.”
Boyd did a slow pan to level an annoyed look at him.
“What? They used to.”
“Slavery was a thing in America back in the day, too.”
Lucas made a deflating raspberry. “If you want to get technical,” he grumbled.
Boyd twisted his seat to face him, loosely curling his arms around Lucas’ waist. “Where are you off to, Mister Soon-To-Be-Masters?”
Oh-ho. Someone’s feeling playful. “I thought you were going to become a Dobson,” Lucas countered, leaning in to give him a quick morning kiss.
“Yeah, but then I was reminded I do have family that I care about.”
“None of which are Masters. Your mom and Aunt Judy are sisters who changed their names when they married. If you were going to take any of their names, we’d both be changing to Davenport.”
Boyd looked down at where their abdomens rested against each other.
“Hey,” Lucas said, sliding his hand under Boyd’s chin and lifting it so he could see those beautiful baby blues focusing on him. “What’s going on, love?”
Boyd opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He tried twice more. “Ten years,” he finally croaked. “They took me in and gave me a home within the family for nearly two years, and I repaid them by cutting them out of my life the second I could. Who does that to their own?”
“Somebody with a lot of fear,” Lucas answered honestly. "And that somebody isn’t you anymore. You’ve invited Emily to be our accountant, and personally, I hope you know what you’re doing there…”
“Emily has always been good with money. The only time she’s ever been off is when she borrows money from you, and you go to get it back. By the time she’s finished explaining all the financial movement around the transaction, you end up owing her twice as much, and she’s really convincing. Computerised flow charts and everything.”
Lucas hoped he was exaggerating. If Emily had been that quick and deceptive to separate Boyd from his money when she was a teenager, she might have been even more cunning now. Lucas would remain attentive until she proved herself because the love of his life had earned this break. “Okay,” was all he said since he didn’t want to argue.
Boyd nipped the tip of his nose. “Don’t you ‘okay’ me in that tone of voice.”
Lucas pulled back and rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. It hadn’t hurt, but it was weird. No one had ever done that before. “I’m a cop, love. In my world, it’s guilty until proven innocent.”
“Getting back to my original question. Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go and get some supplies for Levi and Maddy. The dumbass has been worrying himself sick over where he can leave Maddy on short notice if he and Austin get called out to a fire together. They can’t waste up to an hour each way getting over to Queens and Brooklyn.”
“Tell him she can stay with us,” Boyd said without hesitation. I’ll be here all the time, and if I’m out and it’s an emergency dump-and-run, I can drop whatever I’m doing and call someone to teleport me back.”
Lucas leaned in and kissed him again. “And that’s just one of the many reasons I love you,” he said once they parted. “Charlie will be here too, which means Robbie won’t be far away either. Levi still wants to run it past Llyr since it’s his place, but so long as we keep her on our side and away from Miss W, it won’t be a problem.”
“You’ll need to remember to lock up your guns when she’s here.”
Lucas nodded thoughtfully in agreement without speaking. It would devastate everyone if Maddy somehow managed to get her hands on one of his work firearms and fire it. He’d need to get a thumbprint safe – something that he could get at very quickly in a crisis.
“How is she with beds?”
“What?”
“Don’t little kids have those hospital guardrail things, so they don’t roll out of bed and hurt themselves? I mean, your bed isn’t that far from the floor, but if you’re getting supplies, you might want to think about some of those things to keep her in.”
Lucas hadn’t thought about that. “Okay, then it’s going to be a bigger shopping trip than I thought, but that’s alright. Levi and Maddy are going to chill in the apartment until I get back.”
“Do you want me to check in on them?”
“Nah, it should be fine. Levi knows where Charlie’s office is, and if he’s going to annoy anyone while they’re at work, it should be our sister.” Lucas turned Boyd back to his carving and leaned his head on Boyd’s shoulder. “You keep outdoing yourself, you know that, right?”
“These tools are magic. I can’t do a thing wrong with them.” With a slight grimace, he added, “Hey, have you ever heard the story about the kid who gets the magic piano?”
Lucas squinted warily. “Am I going to like this story?”
“It’s a cautionary tale. This kid finds a magic piano, and all he has to do is work the pedals, and the piano plays itself. No one notices it’s not the kid, and the kid’s ego grows with each performance until he’s an international sensation. Then, he has a fight with the piano over who the star really is. The following night, the piano refuses to play, and the kid is booed off the stage. His family is left financially ruined.”
“I will beat you within an inch of your life if you equate that to you.”
Boyd looked at him. “How can I not? I mean, when I relax and just let the tools do what they’re made to do, the pieces come out flawlessly—every time. But the second I worry, minor defects creep in. Nothing I can’t counter and fix, but still…”
“If it concerns you that much, why not do a piece every now and then without the divine tools to prove to yourself that the skill is yours and the tools are just tools?”
Boyd looked over the divine toolset, then back up at the shelf where his older tools were. “That’s a good idea,” he admitted.
Lucas lightly kissed him on the lips and stepped out of his grasp. “I’ve been known to have them now and again. Oh, and don’t forget we’re going to Angus’ this afternoon. Just the six of us.”
Boyd raised his left hand in acknowledgment, but his focus was back on the carving even as his right hand picked up a scalpel of some kind and drove it across the carving’s middle. The blade was then smoothly passed to his left hand to make an incision from that side while his right reached for a new tool.
As he’d said, his motions were flawless, with chips and shavings flying at the speed of a professional wood chopper. Lucas could watch him work all day, but if he was going to make it to Angus’, he needed to leave now.
He let himself out and headed for the main front door to the level.
A little over an hour later, after grabbing several sets of clothes in his brother’s size, Lucas was standing in the middle of the children’s clothing section, blinking in confusion at all the options. He would go to touch one, then back away, unsure.
He must have looked pitiful because a staff member in her mid-thirties took pity on him and approached with a warm smile. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, this is crazy,” he answered, gesturing to the millions of clothes options before them. “My brother asked me to look after my niece in an emergency, and I want her to have whatever she’ll need at my place in case he doesn’t have time to take her home.” He looked at all the clothes. “Whatever that entails.”
“That’s really sweet. Is your brother a doctor?”
“Fireman.”
The woman gave Lucas the once over. “I can see that.”
Lucas chuckled. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. Between him, Levi and Mav all sharing their dad’s muscle, they’d always caught people’s eye. “Anyway,” he said, wanting to move this along. “My niece is three going on four, and she’s about this high,” he said, showing her height as an inch or two under his hip.
“Does she have any favourite TV shows?”
“Spongebob,” Lucas said, incredibly grateful for his conversation with Levi over breakfast. He’d have never had that answer otherwise. “And if you’re not doing anything after we get her clothes sorted, my fiancé mentioned something about bed rails since she’ll be sleeping in my old queen-sized bed. This is an all-in shopping trip for her, and I have no idea what to get.”
“Do you have any toys for her? And no, I’m not pushing for a commission here. Little minds need to be kept stimulated, or little hands will end up in places they have no business being. If this is your first time looking after her, you’re going to want a few toys, books, and things to keep her busy.”
“My brother is already nagging me about buying her the basics. What would you recommend that won’t make it seem like I’m trying to buy her affection?”
“Are you okay with electronics, or are you trying to steer her away from that?”
“It doesn’t faze me. It’s more the cost. I don’t want to buy her what my brother hasn’t or can’t afford. I’ve been into too many households where kids have every version of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo and every known game that goes with them. Those kids appreciate nothing, and that’s not something I’m okay with.”
“You see a lot of people’s houses?”
“I was a beat cop for over eight years before my promotion.”
“A policeman and a fireman? I’m sure there's a joke involving a bar in there somewhere.”
“If there were, the third person would be an ice hockey player,” Lucas chuckled again, already liking this woman. As they wandered through the aisles, she added things to his cart. Clothes were first, but they quickly moved on to toys. A couple of generic soft toys. and the board game “Candyland”. Lucas grabbed ‘Hungry, Hungry Hippos’, as that was one he and his brothers had played when he’d been Maddy’s age. Then came two large boxes of Duplo.
Not once did it feel like the sales assistant was pushing an agenda. She even paused to consider the options as if she were buying them for her own kids. Lucas really appreciated that.
As they were walking the isles, Lucas came to a screeching halt and stared at a range of doctor, nurse and vet play sets. Two jumped out at him. One had a plastic pet carrier with a handful of bulky instruments, and the other came in a bright blue bag with red handles and a white pawprint on the side. It had a comprehensive range, including toy bandages, pill bottles, cream jars, syringes, a stethoscope and even a cone of shame. Both went into the cart after he checked to make sure the two soft animals would fit in the carrier.
Mason’ll have a field day showing her exactly how to simulate using all this stuff, he thought to himself with a grin.
“You’re really very thoughtful,” the woman said after he explained why they both had to be purchased.
Lucas specifically asked for books after that. Real books with paper pages. He was sure his mother (as a high school English teacher) would murder him in his sleep if he didn’t buy Maddy at least ten books ranging from ones she could memorise and pretend to read (which, in her grandmother’s eyes, taught her word structure and was the first step in learning to read), with ones he could read to her. And that, of course, required Spongebob bookends to hold them together.
“Your fiancé is a lucky woman if you’re willing to do all of this for your niece,” she said once the cart was full and they were heading back to the checkouts.
“Yes, he is,” Lucas agreed, deliberately sliding in Boyd’s gender without making a huge issue of it.
Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Wow, I really shouldn’t make that assumption anymore, and I apologise.”
Because this was New York. “Apology accepted,” Lucas said, waving it aside. Boyd might have been embarrassed, but thankfully, he wasn’t here. “Thanks again for all your help.”
* * *
((Author's extra-long note:
Heya guys! Just letting you know I need to take a week off. [It’s nothing to do with the community here, I promise! I love writing this, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.]
In fact it's … you know what? Stuff it. You guys might as well know. Remember how I mentioned earlier this year we were fighting for more care for my special needs daughter?
That’s the issue.
Our support coordinator has our written authority to act on our behalf. Yet we’ve been told in writing from the government department that if she doesn’t back off, the whole request, including thousands of dollars of specialists interviewing our daughter and reporting their findings, will be deleted, and our request, including all-new interviews and reports, will have to start all over again.
I’m almost at the point where I’m not sleeping, but our support coordinator has promised us to fight because, in her words, “This is getting ridiculous.”
I’ve been really struggling to write this week with everything going on in the background. I’ve finally admitted I need to pull back (just for one week—I mean it when I say how much I love this writing and the little community we’ve formed) to focus on sorting out the mess, so that my writing isn’t tarnished by the battlelines that are being drawn up in the background.
(I already scrapped a page and a half because my anger at things [I bounce between anger and depression] had people who were usually very chill (Robbie) acting in a very aggressive manner that simply wasn’t them. Because of this, I’ve already used up several of my backlog this week and I loathe to lose any more, given how hard they were to build up. (The thought of using them up without others to take their place was also adding to my stress.)
And I was told by my beta reader, ‘Given you’ve been doing this for over three years, and you’ve only had the occasional day off due to sickness, take the week and regroup, stronger than ever.
I agreed. This means my next post will be on Monday, the 27th, Australian Time.
This means my next post will be on Monday, the 27th, Australian Time.
I hope with all my heart that you’ll all still be with me when I return next week.
Karen. ))
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

As always, thank you to u/SpacePaladin15 for the wonderful universe that is NoP! Thank you to u/cruisingNW for proof reading and helping me make this chapter as good as it can be, you're the man! Honestly LoM wouldn't have gone very far without him! If you haven't you should absolutely go read Foundations of Humanity! It's very good AND it just updated!
A big thanks to u/Saint-Andros for helping with proofreading! He writes Out of Our Elements which is a very good one! If you like a good fic in the wilderness and a pair of cute 'friends' ;) you'll love OOE!
Also thank you to u/brotanics! For this wonderful fanart of Taisa. And this one! She's so cute I'm gonna die
And thank you to u/Jimdandy117! For this adorable fanart of Chris and Renkel! Dear god help he's adorable I love him so much
Thank you u/SlimyRage, or AsciiSquid on Discord, for makin' Vengineer Taisa Gamin'. She's absolutely adorable, I love her lil' workers apron. She looks so excited to get to work!
Thank you u/Braquen! For this astounding Pixel Art of Taisa after a few range day dates with Chris! Her little hat and gunbelt are absolutely astounding!
Thank you u/VeryUnluckyDice! For this Artwork of Taisa and Chris as characters from One Piece! I've never seen or read it before but it's incredibly cute!
Thank you to u/creditmission for their wonderful work of several LoM fanfics!
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Memory Transcription Subject: Taisa, Venlil Starship Engineer, Crystal Star Shipping Co-Owner
Date [Standardized Human Time]: October 16th, 2136
Stars… doom or not, that moon is beautiful.
Earth’s own spotlight still hung in the sky, creeping ever higher backlight more and more of the fleet waiting in anticipation. The moon’s pure white light scattered aimlessly across the mountains, shimmering like liquid silver on the surface of the river flowing through the valley far below us. Slinking dark forms of ships that slipped beyond her light made their presence known through the trailing wisps their ion thrusters jetted out behind them; painting the soil-black sky with twisting, swirling hues of blue amongst the shimmering stars.
A warm and weighty hand pulled me close as the cool night air of the mountains flowed through my wool, coaxing a contended purr to build and blossom in my chest as I pressed into Chris’ side, stretching up to nuzzle into his neck before leaning forward and snatching another ‘hummus’ covered carrot from the tray to pop it into my mouth. The delicious, savory smoothness of the hummus accompanied the sweet harshness of the carrot perfectly, sending a trill of pleasure through my chest before I continued my story.
“Anyhow, Quilleth and I, despite her continuous protests, get assigned to the same design herd for one of our final projects. We had an old Triconn Drive Systems TC-547 Jump drive and one of their ‘standard’ fusion cores to go with it, one of the worst pairs of speh-stacks ever built if you ask me, that we needed to rebuild and get working again, and she wanted no part of having to ‘deal’ with me for any extended period of time. Tavareth, my jump-drive maintenance and design professor, was adamant that,” I stopped, pulling in a breath and puffing out my chest, doing my best to mimic the old, gray trunked Mazic. “Ahem, ‘In a work environment you’ll have to work past your differences to make the herd stronger.’ and all kinds of other speh that amounted to ‘I need to fill out this herd the rest of the way and you two are who’s left.’”
“They both sound so pleasant.” Chris rumbled, a chuckle in his voice as he grinned, handing me another of his ‘cracker sandwiches’ before turning his eyes back to the stars high above.
“That’s a word for it.” I agreed, giving a jovial whistle past the crumbling cracker and deliciously smooth nut-spread. “But she dropped that tune real fast the second we came up to a real problem in the project trying to source a new, or at least rebuildable, primary magnetic accelerator. I called Parnel and had a brand new one, that was well past any spec we were expected to meet, in our workshop and installed within the paw. After that I checked the drive’s Tritium levels, rerouted every coolant line, field flow point and magnetic induction coil so they actually worked right, stars forbid those wool brains at Triconn ever design something right the first time, to get everything I could out of the new accelerator assembly.”
“Now why does that sound familiar?” Chris mused, a sly smile on his face as scooped a fistful of crunchy chips into his mouth.
“You can shush Captain ‘try his damnedest to burn out every subsystem he can find’, half the re-routing I have to do now is your fault!” I replied with an amused whistle, paffing the back of his head with my tail-tuft before continuing. “Now, after I’d… dove into the ove-”
“As you often do.” Chris cut in, a smile on his face as he prodded my side with a burbling laugh in his voice.
“Shush!” I bleated in return, the warmth of a spreading bloom driving the sneaking cold of the mountain air from my wool. “As I was saying, after I dove into the drive, Quilleth and our other partners, mostly Quilleth, had taken it on themselves to handle the core’s overhaul and refueling. Leave it to most herds to take the easy route and not learn something if they can get away with it, you can damn well bet they made sure to document that I was the one who worked on the drive and that the, far easier, core was all them. The work on the drive took a while by myself but I still managed to get everything done and put together before we had to spin it up for the test-paw.”
“How do you test a drive and a core if it's not on a ship? Feels like a fast way to make a problem for yourself.” Chris asked, his eyes focused on me, interest plain on his face as his hand wrapped around my side to pull me close.
“Well the drives physically can’t engage if they’re in a sufficient gravity well, and VP is well beyond that threshold, so we just spin them up, take readings to ‘prove’ that they’d work in a real application. I argued we should have had a few shuttles with remote diagnostics and control systems, like we used during your flight training, to do the tests to show they actually did work since correct readings in a gravity well and correct readings in applied use can be different and you wouldn’t know until you were in orbit and getting ready to jump. Tavareth said he’d have ‘loved to give us the chance but the university didn’t have the funds to allocate’ or some other excuse the faculty always used to avoid doing things the right way.” I replied, waving my paws in frustration at the amount of projects that were only given a curled tail of thought before being dumped on us to complete, real world applications or not.
“Sounds a lot like Trepassy’s parent company, unless it was a ‘mission critical component’ as they put it, then they didn’t much care to fix it if it didn’t keep her stuck in port. Always made the excuse that the repairs weren’t in the budget while posting ten plus percent margins. Didn’t matter how much me and the cap’ called and bitched them out for busted Air-con or the rec-room being entirely bare they always said the same damned thing. Bunch of assholes.”
My tail set to wagging at the idea of Chris and his captain shouting into a phone at some other Human half the world away about something that felt all too familiar. “Anyways, we get everything set up on the testing field outside of Dayside, get the systems mounted into their cooling and fuel channels before we start spooling the core up and putting power to the drive. Before too long Tavareth announces that everything looks stable and we can begin putting load onto the system, everything climbs their scales well. The warp field levels off with the expected fluctuations of a drive being operated way too far into a gravity well to maintain any real stability and the core temperature looks good. Everything’s holding steady, Tavareth looks pleased, the rest of my project-herd is congratulating each other on a project completed.”
“Then the core temp starts climbing, blooming well beyond any ‘acceptable’ overheating limiter Quilleth, Uderek or Ofent could have seen fit to set. I looked over and found all three of them watching the core start to melt down in disbelief as Tavereth slams down every single E-stop he can find on the command console. Suddenly everything stops, the room goes quiet as the distant, now glowing white core is dumped straight into an abort tank to expend its… energy somewhere a bit safer. ”
“Tavereth whipped around faster than I’d ever seen that big old Mazic move and oh stars was he furious!” I bleated, tossing my paws in the air at the memory of him studying each of us in turn before launching into an angry tirade. “That core was as bright as the stars themselves but it had nothing on the bloom positively glowing beneath Quilleth’s coat! He laid into all of us for a solid five minutes, calling out everything that could have gone wrong under Sollaglick’s light and I didn’t say a thing until she tried to blame me for forgetting to install the limiters!”
I saw the corner of Chris’ mouth curl in a tight smile, he knew what was coming but it still felt so good to be able to revel in it with my own herd, pack or whatever we should have been called. “Then I threw her own write up right back at her! Pointed out every note that explicitly called out that I only worked on the drive and that the core was all them, more specifically that SHE was supposed to have installed the limiters almost a herd before according to their schedule!”
“Uderek, Ofent and I all got a stern warning about why you should always check your herd-mates’ work and I got a gruff ‘good work’ for the drive before Tavereth positively berated Quilleth for the next quarter claw! Those two were good to me for the tail end of the semester, I’d hoped they’d try to keep in touch after we went our separate ways but… well they really didn’t.” I sighed with a shrug, the sun falling from my field at the memory of the last time I’d seen the chipper Gojid and our Tilfish friend.
“Well, hopefully things are going good for them, sometimes folks get busy… maybe they figure they don’t wanna bother you! ‘Specially now that you got your own ship and whatnot!” Chris comforted, his hands tracing wonderfully comforting circles through my wool.
Could always try to get in contact again if we make it through this.
>Agreed.< “Maybe I should, would be nice to have even more paws onto look at any of the problems Darno and I can’t… Stars above what is that?!”
My breath hitched in my throat as I looked to the stars, watching as the fleets high above began to exchange zipping tails of blue and green. A horrid, deadly light show filled the void high above earth, ships on both sides taking and serving hits with the fervor only people fighting for their lives, and the lives of everyone they’d ever known, could truly muster. The blazing trails of plasma slammed into the distant motes, scattering their vibrant colors in globs across the tapestry of the stars before some of them were joined by the flash of critical reactors and munition blowouts.
But amongst it all that wasn’t even the most of it.
For a brief moment I had thought the U.N. had decided to throw their entire moon at the fleet, another break-tail juke to smash as much of the fleet as they could; but the vectors were all wrong. They weren’t propelling here, they were taking off from her. The light of the moon was ablaze, obscured with towering pillars of smoke and fire, cacophonous trails of burnt oxygen and hydrogen traced a stampede directly to the extermination fleet. No, what they had actually chosen to do was far worse.
They’d stowed what looked like a never ending salvo of gargantuan missiles waiting for the exact moment to drop everything they had on the extermination fleet. A thought crossed my mind, a display from some stars-forsaken exhibit in the capital’s museum called ‘true evil’, its content was positively laughable now, about how many atomics humanity had made before they’d ’annihilated’ themselves. I think the curator had harvested the numbers a shear or two short. The sky lit up like a battery of strobes, the constant cracking light of splitting atoms nearly turning night to day as they spread like a blight through the assaulting fleet.
I couldn’t help but pull my lips back in a smile as my tail thumped rapidly against the stone beneath me. That mote of hope in my chest grew, watching the burning hulks full of people who wanted nothing more than to destroy everything about this world I’d come to love break apart, venting atmosphere as they sat, hanging in the void. Some tried to turn tail and limp away, some slipped into Earth’s gravity, their battered hull sections turning to voracious fireballs as they plummeted toward the hard, unforgiving dirt below.
Should’ve stayed home.
The thunk and twang of Chris’ instrument slipping from its case harvested my attention, my eyes sliding from the battle high above to the glowing white instrument resting in his hands. His own eyes turned to the sky, hovering for a moment as he plucked a few discordant notes from the instrument before looking back down and over to me, meeting my gaze.
“‘Suppose now’s as good a time as any.” He shrugged, giving me a small smile as I nodded, wrapping my tail around his wrist before gently nuzzling into his neck and turning my eyes back to the battle.
The sharp, plucky, barking twang of the banjo called out across the mountain tops, echoing back to us like a distant friend as Chris’ voice filled the air, joining the banjo in its reprise. The slow, wavering song danced between us just as the violence for the stars above, weaving amongs the whispering chorus of the trees and the chattering, throaty backing of evening insects.
“But I want to be where all the stupid shit I say Sounds so romantic and true.
Cause I'd rot in hell with you,
If you'd just ask me to.
I love the shitty things we do together,
Live with me in this sin forever.”
Memories flooded my mind with the words and hanging notes that echoed across the valley before us. The panic of our first solo flight as Chris pushed Shamrock for everything she’d had to give us, trying desperately to keep her in one piece as he blew past every limiter to get Maeve to the hospital as fast as we could. Concern roiling in my chest as I helped him to the truck after he’d dove into the river after, soaked to the bone, shivering and frozen but still so proud. The frustration of the two of us hard at work on Polani the paw after we’d gotten her, tail, and elbow, deep in carbon, grease and oil as we cursed everything under the stars. The fear of the cradle as the thunder of shells slamming into Polani’s hull filled her halls, the horror as one stalked me within my home…
“Cause home is the last place that I'd stand to be with anyone but you.
I'd rot in hell with you, If you'd just ask me to.
I love the shitty things we do together, Live with me in this sin forever.
Hell and you, I know you want it too.
I hope you take the shot, see this chance.
Feel the fire, and let me have this dance with you.”
I pressed into his side with a contented sigh, listening to the last echoing twangs of the Banjo and his voice as they called back across the great expanse before us. A long, cool breath filled my lungs before I leaned up to give his cheek a small, loving lick as a purr rolled through my chest. “I love everything we do together too, Love. Almost as much as I love just having you in my life at all.”
His mouth split into that broad, goofy grin as his hand pulled me just a little closer, his heavy voice rolling through me, just as comforting as always. “I love you too, Darlin’.”
“So…” I whistled, my tail twitching back and forth with amusement as I spoke into his neck. “About that dan-”
The words faltered in my mouth as a building light caught my eye, harvesting my attention skyward.
There, seemingly hanging in the sky, a pair of ships were tangled, no speared together. Both of them were burning fuel as munitions explosions wracked their hulls and trailing plumes of wispy atmosphere vented from their hulls as they plummeted to earth together, locked in their own deadly dance. The fires of re-entry blazed across both of their hulls as parts, pods and melted trails of slag broke away from both of them. The rammer’s guns opened up, sending round after round out after the escape pods that had bailed from the other ship, turning scores of them into little more than puffs of smoke that never had a chance.
As the pair grew closer I could finally make out what they were, or at least who the aggressor was. A Federation light cruiser was speared dead in her midship by the unmistakable, sleek curves of a Venlil Destroyer ending in a hextet of thrusters that still belched plumes of burning hydrogen fuel into the sky as she drove her opponent towards the certain death of the mountains below them with everything they had. The screaming roar of the ship reached my ears, their cacophonous echos casting across the mountain range like the angered, belligerent wails of someone defending everything they held dear.
That ship doesn’t have U.N. markings… Stars above that ship… those are Venlil.
“Damn…”
“Stars above…”
Chris and I watched what amounted to a grand, defiant headbutt as it traced its path down from the stars above. The pair of dancing ships continued their descent, pirouetting to the mountains below them like experienced partners just as their arms and thrusters screamed at each other like enemies with a centuries old grudge to settle.
“Shit… they’re comin’ down on Salt Pond.” Chris whispered, his eyes tracking the pair as they plummeted.
Mountains rose into sight beneath them, the distant mountain’s peak reaching into the sky like it was anticipating, just hoping for the chance to dash the interloper across its face.
“H-How far is that?”
“‘Bout twenty miles as the crow flies. ‘Least no one lives on that one I think, ‘sides maybe the rangers.”
The fleets far above them were still locked in a furious fight, the monstrous flanks of the federation ships pushed on, crashing through the defenders like a harvester through wool-grass. Ships of both sides fell from their formations, ablaze like the stars around them, only growing brighter before flaring into catastrophic explosions that cast them into incalculable pieces that fell to the ground below like a meteor shower.
“Think they’ll manage?” I whispered, a sprout of fear and doubt managing to push past the stone of hope I’d done my best to embed in my heart.
“I hope so, Darlin’. I ho-“
The cacophonous screech and cavernous boom of metal crashing into stone, trees and dirt filled the air, drowning his voice out and sending birds scattering from the trees around us as the ground beneath us shuddered from the impact.
Then everything went whi-
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ERROR: REMAINDER OF LOADED TRANSCRIPT CORRUPTED.
ERROR CODE: 47846-MD-EF-RI. MEMORY DAMAGED BY ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS: RADIOLOGICAL INFLUENCE.
SOLUTION: ATTEMPT RECOVERY? Y/N
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ATTEMPTING…
ATTEMPTING…
ATTEMPT FAILED.
SOLUTION: LOAD NEXT TRANSCRIPT IN QUEUE FOR ‘THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE BLACKSBURG BURNER AND THE SKALGAN SHOWSTOPPER’? Y/N
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SOLUTION ACCEPTED. LOADING NEXT TRANSCRIPT.
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First Prev. Next

Hey all!
Okay, so I discovered ASMR about three/four months ago and... wow! So much content and it has been quite a nice thing for me to get into when life gets a bit tricky. After reading/listening to a lot of people's work, I decided to write a script. I do not intend to record this myself - nobody needs to hear my voice lol!!
I'm not expecting anyone to read, or comment - I wrote this for fun and curious to see what people think! However, if you do, thankyou!! Please feel free to leave a comment, and constructive feedback. Still learning the ropes, so to speak.
I'm definitely not expecting any voice artists to want to pick this up, but again, if you do, thankyou so much!! Feel free to post on Youtube, Patreon etc and I'm fine with monetization. Just please provide full credit to me and a link to the script :)
Also, I know I include a lot of directions on background noise, but I leave that entirely up to the artist! It's mainly to break up big blocks of exposition, but from the stuff I've listened to, I do prefer background noises. I just find it much more immersive.
As put in the title, I've deliberately kept both Yandere and listener gender neutral. Both Yandere and listener can be any gender! I wrote this for everyone! My personal preference would be Yandere girl, listener boy, but again, I'm not fussed if that's not your thing!
Finally, and I hope she doesn't mind me doing this, but I wanted to do a little plug to HuskyWolfGirl's YT channel. She was one of the first ASMR channels I found and really helped influence me in seeking out other content, both on Reddit and YouTube, and wanting to write my own stuff. Her work is really good and she deserves a much bigger following. Link here https://www.youtube.com/@huskywolfgirlasmr
So, the premise is you've been dating someone for a couple of weeks and you're starting to really like them. You've even been thinking that things could get pretty serious. That said, they are a bit odd, only ever meeting up with you at night, not eating a huge amount, and always being cold. One night, you finally get intimate with each other and something happens. They change into a strange creature right in front of you, with wings, big fangs and red eyes. The last thing you see is them coming at you, and everything goes dark...
Muffled noises. Fire crackling in a grate. Maybe some distant wind through the window.
A chair creaking. The sound of straining rope, which starts soft and then increases in volume. Someone has been restrained and is trying to free themselves.
Footsteps, loud and clunky as someone approaches.

Yandere
Thank God! You’re awake. Finally! You’ve been asleep ages.

More staining rope noises, increasing in intensity.

Yandere
(sounding worried)
Please don’t struggle. You’re only going to hurt yourself. I’ve been around a while. I know my way around a knot. Please. I said STOP.

The word ‘stop’ is echoey. It has power in it. The noises stop.

Yandere
Okay. Thankyou.

Noise of a chair being pulled across the room.

Yandere
Look, I’m sorry, okay. This was not the plan. I just want you to know that. I’m not going to hurt you, or do anything bad. I mean yeah, okay, tying you up isn’t great, I admit. But I just want to sit and talk with you for a little bit. If that’s okay.

Sound of Yandere sitting down. A slight rope strain.


Yandere
Ah, you don’t think it’s okay. I get that. Honest, I’m sorry for having to restrain you like this. I tried not to make it too tight. Are you in pain? You are? Damn. I’ll try to keep this quick. I really am not going to hurt you. I promise.
(sighs)
I only had to tie you up because I need you to listen to me. And after what happened last night, I figured you’d only run if you saw me again. I wouldn’t blame you. But if you did try to get away before we’ve spoken, and I had to stop you, I could hurt you. Not intentionally or anything, but… ah, now you look even more confused.
(sighs again)
You want to say something to me. I’ll take the gag out in a minute, I promise. I know you probably hate me right now. This is all just typical me. Diving in head first, not thinking things through! And now we’re…I… I’m in trouble.
Don’t look at me like that!

The rope straining sounds start again. The listener really wants to get free.

Yandere
Trust me when I say you’re not going anywhere. I’m hundreds of years old and you’re not the first person I’ve had to tie up in my time. Oh Jesus, that sounds so wrong.

At that, the straining stops. The listener is probably trying to get their head around what was just said.

Yandere
Ahh yeah, urm, so that was a slip. I guess I just better get to it. Fact is, I know we’ve only been on a few dates, but things have been so good so far. You’re just so cool to hang out with. I really loved spending time with you, and I think you felt the same.
(beat, Yandere is studying the listener for an answer, but they are keeping still for now)
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you before. You make me feel something I haven’t felt in years. Decades. I’ve been alone a while, you know? I was kind of happy to be, until I saw you. I remember seeing you with your friends in the restaurant. Remember, the one I work at? You looked so happy, so full of life. You remember the first night we met? How you spilt a drink on me? Well, that wasn’t actually your fault. I just wanted an excuse to talk to you, so I tripped up near you. I’m pretty clumsy at the best of times, but I didn’t exactly put on an Oscar winning performance.
(yandere chuckles)
I kinda got the impression you figured that out to be honest. But you didn’t seem to care. I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me the way you did. I felt like the most special person in the room. In the whole universe. Are you cold? I’ll put more wood on the fire.

Sound of wood being added to the fire, and flames. Yandere sits down, hissing.

Yandere
Shit, burned my hand! Typical. Is that better though? Don’t worry. I heal quickly, trust me. See? Ah damn, you look so pale. Please believe me. I won’t do anything to you. You’re everything to me. I know it’s fast. I know it’s odd! But you’re wonderful, and amazing, and beautiful and… I’m in love with you.
Remember what you kept saying to me? That you wanted to wait before we spent a night together until it was the right time? That we should get to know each other properly first? Well last night was just… wow. Being with you made it feel like my heart was beating again. It’s probably why… well, what happened last night happened.
What you saw was my true form. It happens sometimes when we lose control of our emotions. I’m usually so good at keeping myself in check. Lots of practice, you know? But I couldn’t help it. And once things got, urm, good last night…
(beat)
I’m such an idiot. I shouldn’t have let it happen. But I was just enjoying it so much.
Oh my, you’re crying. Please stop.
(echoey)
Stop!
Thankyou. Oh, now you look confused. When I want to, I can compel people to do things. Well, kind of. It doesn’t always work. Never really something I mastered, you know? I don’t like doing it anyway. I just don’t want you to be scared. I need you calm. I can hear your heart beating and it’s… distracting.
(beat)
I can see you really want that gag out. I suppose I can do. Just don’t scream. Nobody is going to hear you.

Sounds of material as the gag is removed.

Yandere
There we go. Oh, no, honey, please don’t… I said there’s no point screaming. Oh, go on then. May as well get it out your system, I guess.

Sounds of strained rope, a creaking chair and footsteps as the listener struggles and Yandere walks to the other end of the room. We hear water being poured into a glass and more footsteps as Yandere comes back.

Yandere
Would you like some water? I can hold it up to… there you go. Not too fast! You’ve spilt it all down yourself now! I know it’s kind of cold in here for you. I can’t really feel it, you know? The cold, I mean. Well, my body is always cold. Kind of comes with the territory of… What? Let you go? I promise, I will do, okay? But there’s just a few things I need to discuss with you first.
(beat)
I won’t hurt you! I would never… why don’t you believe… okay, yeah, I know it looks bad I tied you up like this.
(beat)
Okay, no need to be rude. I know you’re upset and…
(echoey)
That’s enough!
(beat)
Now, I took your gag out because you asked me to, but you will listen to me. Neither of us have a choice in that now. I was gonna wait to tell you this, you know? I mean, I don’t even know when I was gonna tell you. I hadn’t made my mind up. It’s kind of a hard thing to bring up, believe me. Like when do you do it? Third date? Just before I meet your parents? Wedding night? Honeymoon? Kinda hard to jump on a plane to the sunny Amalfi Coast if you run the risk of bursting into flame. But…
Ah, I’m rambling. Okay, I’m just gonna say it. Thing is, well the truth is, I… I’m a Vampire.
(beat)
Okay, so now you think I’m crazy, wonderful. What? That ship had already… okay, you’re being rude again.

Sound of strained ropes again.

Yandere
If you keep struggling like that you’re going to start bleeding. Not a very good idea, you think, given what I’ve just told you? Oh, there’s no such thing huh? Well then. Ask yourself if you can explain what you saw last night. My wings, my hair… my fangs. Like my entire body changed in front of you. I know you saw it.
(beat)
Wait… no, you weren’t drunk.
(beat)
And I certainly did not put anything in your drink! I mean, I did have to knock you out but that was just a small bump on the head! I didn’t plan this, you know! This isn’t some Baby Reindeer rip-off.
(beat)
What? You hated that show? Me too, to be honest. Kind of creeped me out. I mean, how pathetic is that? I’m a 700 year old Vampire who kidnaps and ties up the person I’m in love with, and a crazy Scottish gal is too much for me. I mean, what the actual hell. You probably think I’m the worst Vampire ever.
(beat)
I’m not lying to you. I promise. I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this. Here, feel my skin! It’s room temp, it’s always room temp! You always used to comment on how cold I was. Didn’t you ever wonder why we only ever met up at night? Why I never really ate that much when we went out to dinner? What, you think I live for Caesar Salad without dressing? Why do you think my face is always white?
(beat)
Yeah, I knew you thought it was weird. But I knew you never wanted to say anything. I think I loved you for that even more. Despite everything, you still wanted to know me. Do you know how rare it is to find someone you really click with? Someone who sparkles for you like the brightest star, and the way they look at you means they might, just might, feel the same way? I mean, I thought you did.
(hopeful)
Do you?
(beat)
If you say yes, will I let you go? I don’t want you to say yes because you’re scared of me!
(beat)
If I loved you, I’d untie your hands? Are they hurting? I… look, okay, I’ll untie you if it’ll make you feel better. But please don’t try anything. Please don’t. Thing is, the main thing I need to tell you is that you’re in danger. We both are, now you know what I am. Stay still.

Sound of rope being untangled.

Yandere
Okay, there you go. Oh, your wrists look sore. I told you not to struggle too much! I can give you something for that. Okay, sorry, I know you’re still a bit nervous. I won’t try to touch you again unless I have to, so please stay in the chair. The ropes can go back on if they need to.
(beat)
Why are we in danger? Well, it’s a bit complicated. Trying to condense two thousand years of Vampire lore into one conversation is a little hard, you know? I mean, there’s so much crap out there about Vampires. Half the stuff paints us as some sort of wild animal, whilst the other half… I swear I wanted to bite Stephanie Myer. But through all the literal shit they do get some things right. We exist. We live in secret in the human world. We used to be human, until another of our kind turned us, and we became what we are. We drink blood to survive.
(beat)
Okay, I’ll ignore your sarcastic tone. How many are there of us? I’m really not sure, you know? Less than there was when I was first turned, I think. We spend a lot of time in hiding. We really don’t want the human world knowing about us. That part is true as well.
(beat)
Because we are better off! When I was first turned, humans did know about us, and they hunted us. We Vampires, we are stronger than the average human. We also have faster instincts, and we’re very good at hiding. I don’t know for sure, but I think we kind of evolved to be really good at hunting, well… humans. No, please don’t move! I don’t do that anymore! I haven’t fed… I mean, I don’t drink human blood. That’s not what this is about! No…

Sound of running, and a whooshing sound like material flying through the air. Then creaks as the listener is sat in the chair, followed by the sound of rope.

Yandere
I told you not to try anything! I’m going to have to tie you up again now! How am I so fast? Have you not been listening? What? You think I want to keep you tied up? You promise you won’t try that again? Fine, I won't put the ropes back on, but please don’t.
(beat)
I know this sounds crazy, but trust me, it’s real. I’m real. Vampires are real! I’m standing right in front of you! Can you not see me?
(beat)
Where are we all? Well that’s the thing. Most of us tend to keep to ourselves. A while back now, I’m not sure when exactly, a decision was kind of made that we would avoid contact with humans. For every human we hunted, ten would spring up to hunt us back and it looked like it was to be all out war. So, we hid. Got the blood we need from animals. Only some of the bad ones still feed on humans, and even then they do it stealthily. They’re very smart. They use human laws and influence to hide themselves. It’s easy to get very rich when you’ve been around for hundreds of years. They’re the really bad ones.
(beat)
Yeah, quite a few famous people are Vampires. But not all of us are like that. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Most of us try to live with humans. We get our blood from butchers, or hunting wild animals, and we just get by.
(beat)
No. I haven’t seen any of my kind for a long time. Not directly anyway. I’m alone.
(beat)
That’s a very long story. I will tell you, but I first need you to decide something. The thing is, the decision to keep away from humans and to hide, well, it was more than a decision. It was a general order. The accepted nature of a Vampire is that we do not reveal ourselves to humans unless… well unless we plan to make them one of us.
(beat)
Please don’t move. I need to explain… don’t even think about it.
(echoey)
STOP!
(beat)
Don’t you understand? I can’t let you go because you know about us now! And you shouldn’t do. Sit down, please, or I will have to make you.

A chair creaks as the listener sits back down.

Yandere
If we come into contact with humans, we take a lot of steps to avoid revealing who we really are. What we are. Most of us don’t risk getting close to anyone in case they figure it out. We can blend in, but the closer someone gets, the more they see us. Like you were starting to. And in moments of heightened emotion… well, you saw what happened.
(beat)
Why am I telling you now? Because you saw me. You may not have known what I was, but you saw enough. And if you told someone, and they told someone… before you know it someone hears who we don’t want to hear. And then, they’d come for you. They’d come for both of us.
(beat)
Remember I mentioned there are some powerful famous ones amongst us? Well, they like their lives. Exposing Vampires to the world could jeopardize that. And that is something that they won’t… believe me, you don’t want to piss them off.
(beat)
I’m sorry, it’s not that I didn’t trust you, but I couldn’t take that chance. As long as you knew about me, you’d be in danger. Anyone you told would be in danger. Anyone who you might have told. Leaving you free, knowing about me… I just couldn’t do it. It’s why I had to kidnap you. I didn’t really have a lot of time to think.
(emotionally, like Yandere is holding back tears)
And now we’re done, aren’t we? I can see it in the way you’re looking at me. Please believe me. I would never have done this to you. I had no choice. I really didn’t. I swear. Being with you has been the best time in my life. And I’ve lived forever. It’s a long time to be alone.
(beat)
Please say something.
(beat)
What happens now? Well, this is where it gets a bit, urm, complicated.
(beat)
I get it, you won’t tell anyone. And I believe you, I do. But it goes beyond that now. You know about us, and that knowledge is a curse. I know you, I know how conscientious you are. You’ll see Vampires in everything now. What if someone goes missing and you think a Vampire did it? What if you tell the wrong person? You’ll be dooming yourself, and you wouldn’t even know it.
(beat)
Yeah, I said I’ll let you go, and I will do. Well, that’s kind of up to you. You’ve seen that I have the power of compulsion. Vampires can use this to alter memories. It’s hard, and we avoid doing it unless we absolutely have to, but we can. If you want to leave, right now, then you can. But I would need to remove from your mind any memory of me. All the times we spent together would need to go.
(beat)
I could just try to remove what happened last night, yeah. But if I just disappear, you’ll look for me. Better you never met me. Better that I never existed for you.
(Yandere sniffs)
That is the price for your freedom, and for your safety. I will let you go, but you will go forever. We will never see each other again.
(beat)
The process won’t harm you! I have done it before. You would simply go to sleep, and wake up at home. You could get on with your life.
(beat)
Yes, I did mention you have a choice. The other option is that you don’t leave. You stay here with me.
(beat)
No, not as my prisoner. Haven’t I told you I don’t want to hurt you? I have no interest in holding you against your will. If you were to stay, it would be your own choice. But the only way to guarantee your safety would be, well, the thing is, I would need to… you would need to become like me. A Vampire.
(beat)
I’m afraid there isn’t another way. If you were to become a Vampire, you would be safe. Nobody would come after you. It would be in your best interests to not tell others about us. About what you were. But it’s more than that.
When I first entered into a relationship with you, I knew that if we were going to get serious, I would need to have this conversation eventually. I hoped we would be much further along than this, but there we go. It’s a lot to put on you, especially from someone you’ve not known that long.
If you were to become a Vampire, you could stay with me. Forever if you wanted. We could share eternity. Watch as this world grows and changes. There’s a lot of bad in it, but a lot of good as well. I could show it to you. We could see it together. For hundreds and hundreds of years.
There’s props to being a Vampire too. As I said, you have increased strength, and agility. You never get sick. Your body never changes, or ages. As long as you consume the blood you need, you don’t need any other form of sustenance. We don’t even need toilets! If nobody harms you, you can go on forever.
(beat)
Yes. I’m serious. I’m offering you the world, if you want to take it.
(Yandere’s voice quivers. This next bit is hard for them to say)
Of course, you wouldn’t have to stay with me forever. Once fully turned, if you wanted to, you could leave. Make your own way in the world. But this couldn’t happen straight away. Becoming a Vampire is an intense experience that I can’t even begin to describe to you. Everything is turned up like 1,000 percent. It’s a lot, and it can be very hard to get used to. If I were to change you, you would need to stay with me and learn how to control this power. And it could take a while. You would not be able to even think about returning to your old life for months, possibly years. If you went back too soon, you would run the risk of hurting those you loved.
(beat)
Yes. You would need to disappear. You would not be able to speak to your family, your friends, or anyone, for a long time.
(beat)
Yeah, I already said you can stay with me. I would help you, and bring you anything you needed. In time, there’s no reason why you could not reconnect with your old life. But you would have to be so careful. No matter how well you manage to integrate, or how well you hide who you really are, you would be a Vampire. Always.

The fire crackles in the grate as the listener takes all of this in.

Yandere
I know this is a lot, so I have one more thing I want to offer you. Stay with me, here in my home. Let me show you my world over the next few days. What it really means to be like me. You would not be allowed to leave here without me, and if you tried I would need to tie you up again, but if you promised me not to, then you can stay as long as you like. Or at least, until you make your final decision. Become a Vampire and accept a whole new life, or let me take your memories and return home. You can decide whenever you like, but just know that once you do, whenever that is, there is no going back.
(beat)
So. My love. What would you like to do?

And that's it! I leave the ending open really. Either it can end here, or I write more!
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and have a good day!!

Mark as you can tell the situation at work has been growing increasingly more tense day by day. You have expressed concern with my performance, I have been making attempts to improve. Yet I see a lack of concern with the issues I have expressed to you. At the moment of writing this latter I have been operating for 2 months with Frank and Devin as members of my WR team. I have expressed concern about having Mike taken away from WR before this has become “the norm”. As you know he is a valuable team member due to the knowledge he accumulated from working with the company for a long period of time. I found it acceptable for Jack to barrow him on an occasion for help when needed (now I understand that perhaps I have been way to linnet when it comes to this). You have expressed that there were days when you had only 3 team members (perhaps you were including yourself in the count). I can see how complaining about a lack of team members for 2-4 days can seem childish, 1 week can be written off as an unfortunate set of circumstances (maybe there is an audit coming up, maybe a higher up visitor from the company). At 2 weeks this begins to raise some concern (perhaps the buys season is upon us and we are training up new team members that we just hired). 3 weeks a MONTH is getting very frustrating (at this point all kinds of explanations are rapidly deteriorating). One would begin to ask himself “why has this been happening for so long?” or “Am I being taken advantage off”. I see the XDock team expand, I see yours and Bella’s team expand, but there isn’t even a whisper of my team expanding or even returning to the usual size. I have been working as a Supervisor and a Bagger with no compensation for the fact that I am preforming a job 2 people. It is only now that my base pay has risen 10 cents above what is offered to new team members who join with no experience. There are people on 1st shift making 22.50$/hr. Working 3rd shift should have a significantly larger compensation (working 3rd is unnatural, not only dose it derail a person’s day to day life, but it is also more stressful). You wouldn’t want nor be able to work 3rd shift. (As a man with a family) At the same time whilst I’m down a team member you have made strides to expand my responsibility as a supervisor (I understand where you are coming from, the buys season is here, the workload for everyone has expanded, you are not able to complete tasks leftover by me or anyone else) But I believe that the timing of this is wrong, you should not have thrown more responsibly on me as a supervisor while I’m already doing the workload of 2 people for a prolonged period of time. I would like to remind you that unlike Bella or Tim I didn’t spend 1-2 weeks shadowing a person in this position. I was thrusted into working as Supervisor with no prior training. You have taken time to show me how to bill out SunSets, kick out an empty flatbed, call in a compactor exchange etc… But learning a task is better done in person (what I mean is this should be done when I can see it happen, not a hypothetical scenario of billing out a flatbed which I never see picked up, I see what I’m supposed to do on my end but I can’t tell if it is done correctly because I have no interaction with a person on the other end) All the tasks like billing out a partial pallet or Dock 69/72, which involve using AniTa(which is outdated and not intuitive program) should be in a binder as a step by step guide for a new or existing supervisors as a reference point .(Like we have done with Sunset, and PRA allocations). I feel that there is a lack of understanding when it comes to expectations. I am held to the same standards as 1st and 2nd shift whilst having a considerably worse team and less resources. What I mean by less resources? I am not completely sure how accurate my information is, but during 3rd shift the number of departments that are operational is cut in half, I believe that there is us the WR, Xdock, Block and Bagging. For a long period of time, we didn’t have a maintenance team (now that we have CJ it is better, but there are still nights when we have issues and he is nowhere to be found, you can ask Scott from bagging about this). We didn’t have a Yard horse driver until recently (although we do have one now, the WR is always last on his priority list, there have been nights where move on a Sunset has been put in before I even got here and wasn’t touched all night) In general, there is a feeling that WR is not important in comparison to other areas on the plant. We are the ones who have to give up the things that we have to others, be it team members, lifts, access to assistance from maintenance team, we always seem to come last. What I mean by a considerably worse team? Me and you had a conversation about this outside couple of months ago. I believe I used an expression “I am given everyone’s bad Appels but expected to make orange juice” I believe you laughed when I said that maybe you didn’t understand what I meant. First Mike while he is useful and knowledgeable when it comes to Bagging, he is very difficult to work with. He has gone from one site to another because of that reason. He drags his feet when asked to do something, or avoids doing it all together, or assigns other team members to do the tasks for him. He leaves the plant without letting me know to complete other tasks instead of cleaning. Recently with him coming to stay 10:30pm-12:00am to join his brother outside he has gotten even worse. He will come and spent 30 minutes talking to Devin then to Rob then to other team members, he might complete 1 bagging load. When asked to do anything else he takes a 10-minute break by that time it is already 11:40pm and he leaves. (At this point I would rather not have him here; he would be way more useful if he was outside taking mulch pallets left by 2nd shift or Clamp Hand Staking on Xdock). Second Frank. We had many conversations about him and his performance. To give you credit you have been very tolerant of him and when asked you did help(example being the new cameras, potential improvement coming to the Pallet Sorter). I have spoken to you about him falling asleep for 2-5 seconds at a time. I believe that I have told you that he expressed to me that he is suffering from Narcolepsy (A chronic sleep disorder that causes overwhelming drowsiness). We have already seen consciences of that. Most of his accidents involving the Forklift were caused by it. There were multiple times when he has been kicked of the lift for weeks on Xdock. I see this as a very dangerous situation not only for him but the safety of other team members, yet I have not seen any attempts to get this addressed. (He could fall asleep, fall down and hit his head on something) He has been sleeping before heading home as a safety measure to prevent himself from getting into an accident (I believe that’s why he had issues with his previous vehicle and doesn’t wish the same thing to happen to his new one). Devin. I am satisfied with him. He has good communication skills; he completes the tasks assigned to him in a reasonable amount of time. He has expressed to me that he is looking for other jobs (more in the tech sector to match his education). We have been fortunate that he hasn’t left us yet. I have been doing my very best to teach him how to preform different tasks, but I strongly believe that we are starting to push him too far. Now that we don’t have Mike and I have to run the bagging plant. Devin had to step up to pallet sorting during Franks lunch everyday (previously we had a rotation between me, Mike and, Devin). He has been a very good team member but I believe that he had picked up some bad habits primarily from Mike . Recently when I asked him to give me a hand with a clan up in bagging he has avoided coming, and began taking breaks to postpone it until I had no choice to do it all alone (whilst I might have been upset with him at the moment I understood that he has already been doing a lot) Backhallers. They are not backhallers they are Xdock team members which Jack uses to do backhalls. They might complete 4-6 backhalls in a given amount of time, but if Jack needs them for something else they have to do the work he assigns them (because there is an understating that Xdock work is more important). When I ask them to do something they don’t take me seriously unlike you and Bella I have almost no authority over them. If I ask them complete a task and Jack askes them to do something else they have to listen to him as his authority supersedes my (same if you asked me to do something nut if Neel asked me to do something else I would have to listen to him). Between running the bagger and keeping an eye on Frank and Devin and doing the clean up I have no time to watch over them, I have no way of reprimanding them if they do something wrong, but yet I am held accountable for the actions of people I have no power to influence. I can see how I can come off aggressive in this letter, but I am trying to communicate my frustrations with the current state of affairs. This is not an attack on you mark. The only reason I haven’t walked away from this, is out of my respect for you and understanding how difficult of a situation I would be putting the WR plant in. I often find myself asking one question. Why did you make me a supervisor and not someone else? (As I recall Mike was offered this position too). Maybe you chose me because of my good work at the Pallet Sorter, maybe because of my communication skills. But now I find myself pulled by the thought that in me you saw an individual who would do more for less, a sucker who is fine getting pushed around and will do more than what he is getting paid for. Perhaps I am wrong to think in this manner, but as time goes on and I see no attempts to improve this situation I grow increasing more frustrated.

I (21F) have been in a relationship with my boyfriend (20M) for 2 years. We are French, so this might be hard to explain for people who don’t live there, but both my boyfriend and I went to study in a CPGE, which is basically a selective 2 year program you can enter after high school if you have good grades. During CPGE, you are supposed to study extremely hard and then take a competitive exam to get into France’s Grandes Écoles (« The Grandes écoles in France are extremely selective higher education establishments which admit students on the basis of competitive exams » according to WordReference). We also have selective and good Universities but usually, Grandes Écoles are considered better. Anyway, I am one year older than my bf and when we met, I was in my last year of CPGE. I basically hated the highly competitive system and got so depressed I had to go on antidepressants. I didn’t study for the competitive exams because I just wanted to go to uni and be over with this part of my life. My boyfriend has a very different view on CPGE : he seems to like it and really wants to join a Grande École (let’s call them GE). He even repeated his second year of CPGE last September because he wasn’t accepted to the GE he wanted. I respected his decision even though I thought it was a bad idea. I have always encouraged him to make the decisions he wanted to make, but objectively, I can see he is really struggling. He is very bright and smart, but competitive exams are meant to be taken by people who are quick, effective, and who can handle stress. My bf works very slowly and even though he won’t admit it, he does seem quite depressed and anxious. It has taken a toll on our relationship because we can hardly see each other because he has to study all the time. He also refuses to allow me to sleep over at his place because me being here reminds him of all the work he has to get done and then he gets more stressed and starts acting coldly towards me. I have been patient because CPGE only last 2-3 years and I was also depressed and anxious all the time because of similar reasons. Now, I am getting my master’s degree in a good university, and I have regained my ability to study without getting anxious. I have been waiting for him to finish his CPGE so we can finally enjoy life together and be happy. Right now, my boyfriend is taking his competitive exams. He finished the writing sections yesterday. He told me he failed even though he doesn’t have the results yet. I asked why he though that and he told me he screwed everything up and hadn’t been studying for the last 2 months. To be honest, I don’t care if he goes to some prestigious school or not. But I know he does want to get into one, and so, I want him to be happy and to get what he wants. But knowing he hasn’t been studying for two months really pissed me off. I know he is depressed and stressed but I feel like I have been waiting for him and I have been encouraging and trying to motivate him to study with me, and yet, he just abandoned after 3 years of « can’t see you, have to study » that kept us apart. Sometimes, it feels like I want him to achieve his dreams more than he does. But here is what really made me mad. He told me he had applied to GE also through another route : by having to send a cover letter + recommendation + CV / resume. I thought it was such a good idea, better fitted for someone like him who likes to take his time and not rush through a timer. I asked him multiple times to send me his CV + cover letter so I could review them (I tend to be very good at making those and language is definitely my forte). He sent me his CV, we corrected it together, and today he sent me his cover letter. It was full of awkward phrases and stuff so I told him how to make it better and was very happy I could finally be of help. Then, he told me that actually, he had already sent his version of the cover letter yesterday night, so he couldn’t change it and add the modifications I advised to add. He told me he wrote it one hour before the deadline and asked a discord server of people who are in GE to help him write it. He never mentioned it to me last night, and I wasn’t busy whatsoever. It’s hard to explain but I feel betrayed and I am really mad at him. I feel like he is purposefully screwing up his life and I don’t understand why. I keep offering him support and help and he keeps denying it or takes it when it’s too late. Also, I am annoyed that he is not taking his future seriously, and that I am more invested into it than he is. It’s annoying that he made me wait for 2 years because he wanted to go into a top tier GE, but now, he is screwing up everything almost on purpose. I feel like I have been waiting for nothing, he didn’t have to retake a year if it was to just slack off and fail his exams. I know I shouldn’t make it about me, and I want to be sad for him, and to comfort him, but to be fair, I’m not even sure I can right now. I want to help him improve, not to watch him acting like an idiot. When I ask him why he doesn’t study he says « because I’m a dummy ». I’m starting to find him pathetic and I hate that. I love him, but it’s hard to respect him when he doesn’t even try. It’s exhausting having to always worry about him. I don’t know what to do, and I’m looking for advice on how to approach this situation, deal with it, etc.
Tldr : my boyfriend failed his competitive exams because he hasn’t been studying for 2 months even though it has been 2 years of not being able to see each other that frequently because he « had to study ». I keep offering my help and trying to motivate him to study with me but he turns me down all the time. I feel more invested in his dream than he is. I am mad at him for not putting more effort into his dream, and don’t know what to do about this whole situation.

Prayer or Pride?
Did you pray today, this morning?
A life without prayer is a life of pride.
A life without prayer is a life that relies on our flesh.
In my flesh dwells NO good thing.
I’m not much of a prayer warrior. Oh, I can talk a good game, but if you lived with me for a while, aside from wondering how a guy can eat that much cake and go through that many pairs of socks in a day (and leave them scattered like some weird bread trail for Mrs Fred to follow) you’d soon find that I’m a guy who does things on his own steam. I’m a self made kind of guy. Proud independent American. Protestant work ethic and all that.
The best thing about that attitude is that it doesn’t work. It’s a life of disappointment and procrastination and frustration. I’m a slow learner when it comes to things spiritual.
As such, I often have a God of last resort. And God, in His wisdom, lets me flail around and fail until I give up. God knows that if He intervened any sooner, I would take all the credit. Sure, I’ll mention God in my acceptance speech (I’d like to thank my mom and dad, my no good brother, and especially God! Thank you and good night!).
One of the reasons you’re here is that you’ve reached the end of your rope as concerns porn and masturbation. Maybe your penis is sore from the 8 times you abused yourself yesterday. Maybe your mom caught you. Or your no good kid brother saw your history, perhaps your wife wants to know what those charges are on the credit card. Or you can’t believe you crossed THAT line, the one you said you would never cross.
You’ve done pretty much every thing you could think of to quit on your own power. And here you are, with the rest of us misfits, losers, hypocrites, sinners, and failures. Guess what, you’re right where God wants you.
Step one of AA is realizing you’re powerless over porn and masturbation, over your fleshly sex sin, and that your life has become unmanageable. If you’re not there yet, rest assured, you’ll get there, we all do. You can see it from here.
Step two is “came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” AA has to be vague so that they don’t chase off the atheists but we know better.
Do you believe that God can restore you to sanity?
If not, if you’re still doing this on your own, then you’re not there yet. It’s ok. We will wait. Pride has to run its full course.
However, if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, if you’re ready to give it up, then come along for the ride. Your Prodigal days are over. Give up. Come home.
A best of Fred from four years ago

I 22M have been with my girlfriend 22F for almost 2 years now, it's been the happiest two years of my life and I genuinely want to marry her someday
for context: we live in a middle-eastern muslim country where there isn't much freedom of speech or even beliefs, she wears hijab, I respect her religious belief and it doesn't change how I feel about her whatsoever, she's a great person. But I don't share the same beliefs, and I keep it to myself because if I let it be known, it could literally endanger my life, and I will be ousted from everything at best.
I know for a fact she will not accept me for who I am and she has the right to be with someone like herself and the religion enforces that muslim women can only marry muslim men
AITA for being with her while I don't share the same beliefs? and considering I can't tell her the truth, how should I breakup with her (if that's the right thing to do)? and when will this end? I'm not gonna find someone who fits me better
TL;DR My girlfriend is muslim and she doesn't know I'm not, because I can't be honest about my beliefs in this country, AITA?

All the polytechnics are doing stuff to educate students on how to write up your EAE well so that they can excel and get accepted into the course that they are interested in. But it seems like they’re taking up a lot of resources to do this. Why bother though? Don’t they only want students who are genuinely interested and passionate for the course?

I'm not sure how helpful it will be to post here because I think my issue goes far beyond the usual conflicts one might find in a traditional dnd campaign. So before anyone reads this I wants to emphasise that 1. this was my very first dnd campaign and I joined it without any prior knowledge, and 2. this campaign was never intended to be a traditional "we're heroes and trying to save the world while fighting monsters left and right" campaign. I hope this answers any questions along the lines of "Well, why did you create this kind of character in the first place?" and "Why do your characters spend so much time talking about stuff, don't you have some beholders to fight?". I also cannot explain the whole situation without writing a literal 20 page long essay, so I'll try to keep it as short as possible and only give two examples. I'm definitely leaving a lot of details out here, so please let me know if clarifications or futher information is needed.
To preface what this is all about: I was a player in a very roleplay focused campaign and my character basically turned into the problem child of this campaign. I never intended for my character to be the focus, was never interested in him being the focus, but nothing I ever did suceeded in solving the issues at hand and taking the focus away from him. I constantly got accused of "making my character suffer", whereas from my perspective I was constantly trying to keep this character safe from the constant attacks he had to endure. It was like no matter what I did, no matter what I let this character do, it was never right. I think everyone in this group makes an effort to play their characters realistically, I defininitely do. And yet it was never me going "I know exactly what my character has to do to fix this but I'll REFUSE to do it because I don't like it" but me literally having no clue what people wanted from this character. The dm repeatedly said that nothing they tried to fix this character was helping. Whereas from my perspective these things that were supposed to "help" my character were the exact things that my character was struggling with. So it turned into a constant stream of something happening, my character then feeling bad, then everyone focusing on my character feeling bad, then my character trying to fix things, everyone telling him that he's doing it wrong, my character feeling even worse.... and me wondering why my character cannot just exist in peace, why we constantly have to focus on him instead of the "plot". I don't think anyone was interested in constantly discussing my character's mental state, I definitely wasn't interested in doing that, and yet we kept doing it. But I also did not know how to have him react differently to the constant shit getting thrown at him.
______
So, basically:
Around three years ago a friend of mine told me about this new dnd campaign they were starting and asked me to join. I've known this friend for half my life but we never lived close to each other, maintaining loose contact over Twitter and me visisting them every two or three years. I had never played dnd before, which they didn't think would be a problem, calling the campaign "very beginner friendly". The whole point behind this campaign was that both this friend (the dm) and two of the players from the main campaign they were playing wanted to play more regularly, so my friend/dm came up with this campaign which was basically a prequel to that main campaign. That main campaign was a more "traditional" dnd campaign with a quest to save the world and regular combat. Meanwhile this new campaign was supposed to be focused on roleplay. There was no overarching plot or quest and the setting was an arcane school and our characters were supposed to be students at said school, just starting their first semester.
When creating our characters the dm asked us to include at least one character in the backstory that was important for our character, and also an objective for our character, something they wanted to achieve. The character I came up with was a young half-elf wizard specialising in abjuration. The gist of his story was that his parents had been arrested and executed for high treason when he was very young and that he grew up rather isolated with his older brother in a place they were not allowed to leave before coming off age. When my character was 14 he woke up one morning to find his brother gone. He had left him only a cryptic letter, hinting at wanting to find out what had really happened to their parents, telling my character that he was sorry and that he would come back. When his brother had not come back after several months, my character too ran away and made his way to Candlekeep, which he had visited many times with his parents (who had been scholars) as a child. He tried to find answers in Candlekeep and spent the following three years hiding in the library before something prompted him to leave and travel to the aforementioned arcane school in order to study there. His objective was to find out why his parents had to die, what happened to his brother, and adjusting to normal life after years of isolation.
Personality wise this character was supposed to be very kind, very gentle, quite naive, honest, and at the beginning of the campaign rather anxious. My assumption was that after growing up in isolation he would need some time to get acclimatised and would be anxious and overwhelmed in the beginning but would loosen up with time and become more self-confident. Some bad stuff happened early on in the campaign and he reacted to it in a rather not healthy way (withdrawing, refusing to eat, but also not talking about what was going on because he didn't want to put the focus on himself). I messed up here, I realised that later. I assumed the other characters would sit him down and ask him what was going on, leading to some kind of cathartic conversation, my character then revealing his past, and him becoming more confident and positive through it, completely resolving this issue. I didn't realise that introducing these kind of psychological issues into the story would be an issue, simply because I wasn't planning on making it a big thing. I thought it would be realistic for him to react this way and I thought it was something that could easily be resolved. Nowadays I would approach this completely differently: if I were to play this character now I would make this whole "accepting his past, becoming more self-confident and open" thing part of his backstory and would start him off as being confident and in tune with his emotions, instead of trying to quickly get through this development at the start of the campaign. So I think I know what I SHOULD have done to prevent this from escalating. What I am trying to figure out is what I could have done to fix it AFTER realising my mistake. Because we spent months and months trying to resolve this issue and never really got anywhere. Despite me trying my best to keep the focus away from my character, despite me trying to turn him into someone more confident and happy, despite me NOT WANTING him to be the focus of the story and doing my best to keep him out of the spotlight.
______
Here is an example of the things going on in the story, to which my character reacted badly and me not knowing how else I could have had him react that would not have caused further conflict:
Over the course of the campaign L. figured out what his brother was up to after him and his friends getting intro trouble and a mysterious stranger helping them get out of there and that stranger then revealing himself to be A.'s husband (and therefore my character's brother-in-law). L. had a lenghty discussion with this person and after that I basically viewed L.'s conflict as resolved: he now knew why his brother had left, he knew that it had not been his fault, and he knew that his brother had found someone who loved him and was not alone. L. still hoped to be able to see his brother again to get to say goodbye properly. Because in L.'s mind there was no other possibility but this being a goodbye: his brother had a new life now that he, L., was not part of anymore. And L. accepted that. There was no anger, no resentment, only relief knowing that his brother was not alone, had someone by his side who loved him, and that he still cared about L. and that L. had not - as he had feared - done anything that had caused his brother to not want to be near him anymore. He had finally gotten the closure he had needed, he was feeling okay and I viewed this whole conflict as resolved.
Fast forward a few weeks: A. finally suceeded in doing what he had been working on these past few years and returned to L., just like he had promised in the letter he had left him all that time ago. When talking to him, L. realised that A. was not actually planning on leaving, like L. had assumed. Instead A. told him that he and his husband would stay and look for a new home near L.'s school. L. was very surprised by this but of course he was also happy. He hadn't even considered that his brother would stay. His biggest hope had been that his brother would occasionally send him a letter from whereever he was. Him actually wanting to stay was very unexpected for L. but of course he was very happy about it. They also had some good conversations during that time, which not only brought L. further closure but also revealed connections between several past plot points.
About a week after A.'s return L. went to visit him. He just wanted to spend some time with his brother and also ask him for advice. The semester was coming to an end and everyone was busy preparing for the final exams and L. also still needed to find an internship placement for the summer break. L. wanted to do his internship in Candlekeep but was unsure on how to approach this, who to contact, how to phrase his request, so he thought asking his eloquent and knowledgable brother for advice would be a good idea. This conversation quickly went downhill with A. accusing L. of not respecting the people working at Candlekeep enough to do proper research beforehand and L. ending up feeling like he didn't deserve doing an internship there and ending up feeling even more stressed out about the whole thing than he had already been beforehand. They changed the topic and at some point A. started to jokingly fighting L. and putting him in a headlock. L. had no interest in fighting his brother, even as a joke, and reacted by going limp so he could slip away. A. then asked something along the lines of "So that's how you react in a fight? You just give up?" and L. said "Well, I know you would never intentionally hurt me with no good reason". The next second L. was falling. He was up in the sky, the ground many meters below him, and he was falling. L. immediately deduced that this must be some kind of enchantment and tried to fight it, but neither acknowledging that this wasn't real nor trying to shake it off did anything. He did not know any flying or hovering spells, nothing that would help him stop the fall, and ended up crashing into the ground. The next moment he was in some kind of water pool inside a cave that he struggled to get out of. A. was waiting by the cave entrance and offered L. his hand when he got out. L. refused to take it. A. then left and L. eventually followed, finding himself back in the room they had been in before. Either in the cave or shortly afterwards A. asked L. why he hadn't just used a spell to stop his fall, being surprised by L.'s statement that he had not yet learned an appropriate spell. L. eventually sat down at the table and did some exam preparation. A. made some food and put some in front of L. which L. ignored. Eventually L. looked up and asked A. what his biggest fear was. A. had just put L. through several of his biggest fears - falling, drowning, not being able to trust the ones he loves, and getting his control taken away - so he wanted to know what A. was scared of most. A. the told L. that his biggest fear was someone using his abilities to do something bad. And then he explained to L. that he had come to the conclusion that he would not be able to stay after all. That while he was able to defend himself, L. was not, and anyone wanting to get to A. would have an easy time doing so through L. who was evidently not able to defend himself. L. did not take that well and asked A. why he couldn't just train L. so he would get better at defending himself but A. refused. A. then said he would take a walk and allowed L. to come with him. They walked for several hours without talking, ending up in the middle of a forest where some ancient creature appeared that A. had helped several years ago and that was now nearing the end of its life and had called A. there to say goodbye. A. also explained to L. that he did not actually want to stay. That he - A. - had been naive in thinking that he could just live a normal life and that it had been nothing but a dream and that he simply wasn't made for that kind of life. Some time during that conversation A. also told L. that he was convinced that he would end up in the Nine Hells for the things he had done. They spent the night in the woods and the next morning L. realised that all his things had been stolen by some fey creatures, including his spell book. After searching for several hours they were able to find his spellbook, which had been smeared with insults. A. managed to clean it up and they returned back home and L. was reuinted with the rest of the group. Before L. left A. also gifted him an indestructable spellbook. A few days after these events L. went to the temple and addressed Mystra, telling her how lost he was feeling and how worried he was about his brother. He told her that he wanted nothing more than to protect the ones around him but how he was constantly failing in doing so. And how he just wanted his brother to be safe and how he was worried he would really eventually end up in the Nine Hells and how he didn't think A. deserved that but that he didn't know how to prevent that from happening. The next morning L. found some strange piece of cloth on his face which after some examination was revealed to be an item belonging to Mystra which she had used to hide something in the past. The very condensed explanation of what that item does is that when attuned to it one cannot be found through any kind of traditional divination magic, making one basically undetectable. The next time L. saw A. he told him about this item and A. was basically like "Oh cool, well in that case we can actually stay here". L.'s reaction was to start crying and A. asked him why he was so upset and why everything was always the end of the world to him.
The way I see this whole situation: I simply wanted L. to spend some time with his brother, hopefully get some advice from him regarding that internship and then going back to the rest of the group. Instead what happened was that A. first called him disrespectful for wanting to do an internship at a place and not having done enough research beforehand. Then taking L.'s statement "you wouldn't hurt me with no good reason" to assault L. Then telling L. that he would not stay after all due to L. apparently not being able to defend himself. Then explaining to him that "actually, I didn't want to stay in the first place", and then a few days later telling him he WILL stay after all. So basically, L. had accepted that his brother would not come back to him for good, he had accepted this and had found closure. Then his brother told him he WOULD stay and L. was of course happy about this surprising turn of events. Then his brother told him that due to L. not being able to defend himself he CANNOT stay. Then he tells him he doesn't WANT to stay anyway, confirming the exact reasoning behind L.'s initial assumption that A. would not stay. And then after realising the threat was eliminated, decided to stay afterall, despite having it made very clear that he did not actually WANT to stay... and apparently only staying because he thought that's what L. wants, despite L. repeatedly explaining that his priority is for A. to be happy and that he does not want A. to stay if that's not what makes him happy and A. just completely ignoring that? Am I really the only person who thinks that it's understandable why L. is confused and upset in this situation? Plus the constant "What do you mean, you don't know [this one simple thing]?" when L. is already barely able to get a regular long rest in between trying to keep up with school work and all the stuff that's going on at the side, like a literal war for example, and constantly feeling that no matter what he decides it's always wrong and he never has enough time to do the things he is supposed to do, let alone the things he wants to do? Plus him wanting to spend the afternoon with his brother turning into a 36 hour long event and him having to spend half a day looking for his spellbook, only to find it smeared with insults?
Am I being dense for not understanding what the whole point of this was? Trying to make it clear to L. that his brother is a powerful and dangerous person? He was already very aware of that and did not need a reminder. Proving to L. that he shouldn't trust his brother? Why even associate with him in the first place if you don't want him to trust you? Giving him the indestructable spellbook was nice. But was having some fey creatures steal his original one and smear insults all over it and him having to spend hours searching for it really necessary?
Whatever the hell it is the dm was trying to do here, I think a simple, calm conversation between those two would have been a lot more effective.
But maybe it's clearer from the outside, so if someone else understands what happened here, please help me understand.
______
Another situation was that due to his struggles early on in the campaign my character was supposed to see the school's healer once a week so she could make sure that he was okay. My character went there once a week, feeling more or less okay when entering her office, and coming out feeling confused and upset after having his mental state analysed and picked apart. Neither did my character enjoy this nor did I think that any of the players (including myself) had any interest in listening to my character discuss his emotions every week. So eventually I had my character write a letter to the headmistress, explaning that he wanted to stop doing these weekly check-ins. Upon being asked why, he explained that these appointments actively made him feel bad and that he would do a lot better if he didn't constantly feel pressured into talking about things he didn't want to talk about. The reaction was that he was told that if he cannot handle simply being asked how he was doing once a week, then he wasn't stable enough to go to school, and consequently got kicked out. Leading to us spending two sessions trying to resolve this and my character eventually being allowed back into the school. ______
The situations I described are the kind of thing that constantly happened to my character.
We had a calendar where we wrote down short descriptions of what happened each day. I once went through this calendar with a friend (who does not play dnd) and it basically went like this: "So that day this traumatic thing happened to L., and the next day this happened, and two days later this happened, then the next day he almost died, then three days later he discovered this, the next day this other thing happened,....", and my friend just went "Holy shit, it's no surprise that this kid is losing his marmbles."
So I keep alternating between "I messed up this whole campaign by creating a problematic character" and the feeling that the dm had it out for specifically my character and it didn't matter what I did, nothing could have solved this.
Some constructive ideas on what I did wrong and what I could have done to fix things would be appreciated. (And yes, we did talk about this in the group. I eventually got tired of talking about it because it never lead anywhere.

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
Rev. 1:8
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. In order for someone to be the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, he would have to know every little thing from eternity, and also every little thing from eternity. the future, including eternity, who can know such a thing but God? Of course, someone could say that it is, but that would be a lie and it would not be true and only God can claim: "I am the Alpha and the Omega the Beginning and the End" because:
God is omniscient
“Lord! You taste me and know when I sit down and when I stand up; You know my thoughts from afar; When I walk and when I rest, You are around me, and you see all my ways on my tongue, but You, Lord, see, You have already covered me behind and in front and placed Your hand on me. Your knowledge is strange to me, I cannot understand from Your spirit, and where would I flee from Your face, You are there. To descend into hell, to rise on the wings of the dawn, and to move to the end of the sea: And there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me darkness hides me; but even the night is like light around me. Even the darkness will not be eclipsed by you, and the night is as bright as the day: darkness is like light, you created me in my mother's womb, that I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and not a single bone of mine hid from You, although I was woven in the depths of the earth, she saw my embryo all written, and the days were recorded, when they were not yet, how unfathomable are Your thoughts, God! How great are their numbers”
Psalm 139:1-17
In this psalm we see how many facts God knows about us, but that is only a small part because God has far more knowledge about us, but it is practically impossible to express it in words, and here we see that God knows when we sit down, when we stand up, what we do, how we work, he knows all our ways, all our words that we have spoken, he writes that he knows even our thoughts, we can further see that God knows the past, present and future, knows everything about us even before our birth, etc. This clearly indicates that we cannot do anything without God's knowledge, and this applies only to us humans, who are only a small part of God's omniscience.
Here are a few examples that are close to us from life, something that everyone can understand because not all people are scientists or academic citizens, there are far more "ordinary" people, especially throughout history, and the Bible is written in simple understandable language so that everyone can understand him.
And from this it is clearly seen and everyone can understand that God is omniscient.
"There is none holy like the Lord; for there is none other than Thee; and there is no rock like our God. Speak no more haughtily, and let it not come out of your haughty mouth. for the Lord is God who knows everything, and he executes the purposes."
1 Sam.2:2-3
Here, these verses confirm again that the Omniscient God had a practical lesson here, a friendly advice from God, and it applies to our life, it applies to what we do, how we do and what we say, because God knows everything he does to me, so if we persist, we refuse to live according to the will of God, it is our own fault and one day we will bear the consequences for it. Of course, God does not want to force us to do something, it is our choice, but it is great wisdom to listen to the advice that God gives us because God does not want us to perish so that all may live, and that is the meaning of the word "repentance" from 2 Peter.
"The Lord is not late with His promise, as some think He is late, but He is patient with us, because He does not want anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
God is present everywhere
We said that God is not limited by earthly laws, nor can the essence of God be fathomed. creation, knowledge, giving, forgiveness, salvation, etc.
"But will God really live on earth? Here, the sky and the heavens above the heavens cannot contain You, let alone this home that I am building".
1 Kings 8:27
"For His eyes are turned to the ways of men and He sees all their steps. There is no darkness or shadow of death where those who do iniquity can hide."
Job 34:21-22
"Where would I go from Your spirit, and where would I flee from Your face? If I go to heaven, You are there. To go down to hell, there you are. To rise on the wings of the dawn, and move to the end of the sea: And there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will hold me. To say: Yes if the darkness hides me; but the night is also like light around me. Even the darkness will not be darkened by You, and the night is as bright as the day: darkness is like light. For You created what is in me, you formed me in my mother's womb. I praise You, that I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and my soul knows it well. Not a single bone of mine has hid from You, even though I was created in secret, woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my embryo, in Your book it was all written, and the days were recorded, when there were none of them yet."
Ps. 139:7-16
"The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, seeing the bad and the good."
Proverbs 15:3
"Am I God from near, says the Lord, and am I not God from afar?" Can someone hide in a secret place so I don't see them? Speaks the Lord; do I not fill heaven and earth? Speaks the Lord.”
Jer. 23:23-24
"If they bury themselves in the lowest part of the earth, from there my hand will take them; and if they go up to heaven, I will take them down from there; And if they hide on the top of Carmel, I will find them and take them from there; and to hide before my eyes at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent to bite them"
Amos 9:2-3
"And there is no substance unknown before Him, but everything is naked and exposed before the eyes of the One to whom we speak."
Hebrews 4:13
God is almighty
In the Bible, we find through different time periods and different manifestations of God's omnipotence, so we will mention some.
We see from the Bible that Abraham was 99 years old, but that he had no offspring, and on one occasion God appeared to Abraham and said:
"And when Abraham was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said to him: I am God Almighty, live according to my will, and be honest. And I will make a covenant between me and you, and I will greatly multiply you. And Abraham fell prostrate. And the Lord spoke to him again and said: From me here is my covenant with you that you will be the father of many nations."
Gen.17:1-4
We further see that Avram was not really sure about that, so he thought that he would never have children with his wife Sarah
"Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, saying in his heart: When will a son be born to a man of a hundred years? And Sarah? Will a ninety-year-old woman give birth?"
Gen.17:17
And here we can see God's omnipotence, because he told Abraham something that was not very clear to the human mind, but it was very clear to God, that's why he said it to Abraham. We later see from the Bible that this promise was fulfilled, and it was fulfilled because God is omnipotent because He possesses all the knowledge and then it is no problem to fulfill the given promise. This or a similar promise can only be given by God because he is omnipotent, and let's imagine that now we humans make a promise about something that will happen in the future. That promise may happen by chance, or only one part of it may come true, or it may not happen at all, we don't know, but God is omniscient and omnipotent, and when he makes promises, he fulfills them.
We can see the fulfillment through the Bible, but here is just one verse.
"The tribe of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham"
Mtt. 1:1
Next we have the event when the Lord sent Moses to Egypt to lead the people of Israel out of slavery.
Here we can see that God appears to Moses as God Almighty and not under some other name.
"God is still speaking to Moses and said to him: I am the Lord. And I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by the name God Almighty, but by my own name, Lord, I would not be known to them."
Exod.6:2-3
The next example is from John's revelation, where we have a scene in heaven where four living beings praise the Almighty God, and in order for someone to be omnipotent, he must possess the power that sustains everything, and such power is possessed only by the Almighty God.
"And after this I heard a great voice of many people in heaven saying: Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power to our Lord;
Rev. 19:1
,, And I heard as the voice of many people, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of strong thunders, saying: Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns."
Rev. 19:6
It says that the Lord God is glorified in heaven, who is omnipotent and who reigns, and in the Gospel of Luke we can see from where the Lord reigns.
"The Son of Man will sit at the right hand of the power of God."
Luke 22:69
Therefore, the Lord is on the right side of the power of God and reigns from there, it is written about this:
"...All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."
Matt. 28:18
The Lord reigns because He is El Shaddai or God Almighty. God possesses infinite power or power that is eternal and has no end, and the part of the prayer "Our Father" reminds us of this.
,,...Because Your kingdom, power, and glory are yours forever. Amen"
Matt. 6:13
God can use this force at his discretion without any trouble or difficulty to create something as in the past when he created the earth and everything living on it or as he is creating today or as he will create in the future.
"Ah, Lord, Lord! Behold, You created the heavens and the earth with Your great power and Your uplifted arm; nothing is difficult for You."
Jer. 32:17
,,He made the earth by his power, established the world with his wisdom, and scattered the heavens with his understanding; When he utters his voice, the waters roar in the heavens, he raises steam from the ends of the earth, he sends lightnings with rain, and he brings forth the wind from his stables."
Jer. 10:12-13
Humans are very intelligent beings and practically they can create anything they want up to certain limits, but in creation we read that God used only a word and it was created, he did not need any material like we need to create something and there is another proof that God is almighty.
,, And God said: Let there be light. And there would be light"
Gen.1:3
"By the word of the Lord the heavens were created, and by the spirit of His mouth all their hosts"
Psalm 33:6
In the Gospel according to Matthew, we read about how only the word of God is needed to heal a person and the disease is defeated, God does not need to be
,,.And the captain answered and said: Lord! I am not worthy that you enter under my roof; but just say the word, and my servant will be healed"
Matt. 8:8
Although God with his power has unlimited possibilities, he will never use his power in such a way as to be in conflict with other attributes of God. We have an example in the confrontation of the Lord Jesus with the cross where Jesus could only say a word and angels would be there who could destroy the whole world and not just the enemies who nailed him to the cross.
"Or do you think that I cannot now beg my Father to send me more than twelve legions of angels?"
Mtt. 26:53
If it had happened that way, it would have contradicted the Father's will and the intention with which the Lord Jesus came to earth, and then Jesus would not have been able to say:
"I glorified You on earth; I've done the job you gave me to do"
John 17:4
Here we see that God uses his almighty power for his glory to fulfill God's plan because what he intended must be and nothing but the will of God can change that plan.
"The Lord of hosts swore, saying: Indeed, it will be as I have planned, and as I have planned it will be done."
Isaiah 14:24
God has planned in advance how the nations will receive the Word of God and it is written about in the Acts of the Apostles where it is said that the evangelizers will receive the power of the Holy Spirit and then practically no one will be able to stop them in that work until they fulfill the activities that God has planned.
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit descends on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and there to the ends of the earth."
Acts 1:8
And finally, let's mention something that hasn't happened yet, but it will happen when the Almighty God will say the Word again and it will be what is written in the revelation and after that what we read in Isaiah.
"And out of His mouth came a sharp sword, to slay the Gentiles with it; and He will strike them down with a rod of iron; and He treads on the cauldron of wine and hearts and the wrath of God Almighty."
Rev. 19:15
"For, behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth,"
Isa. 65:17
Let us also mention that with this power the Lord Jesus defeated Satan in the desert
"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting for forty days and forty nights, he finally got hungry. And the tempter approached Him and said: If You are the Son of God, say that these stones become bread. And He answered and said: It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took Him to the holy city and placed Him on top of the church; So he said to him: If you are the Son of God, jump down, because it is written that he will command his angels for you, and he will take you in his hands, so that you do not trip over a stone with your foot. And Jesus said to him: But it is also written: Do not tempt the Lord your God. Again the devil took Him and took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of this world and their glory; And he said to him: I will give you all this if you fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him: Get away from me, Satan; because it is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone. Then the devil left Him, and behold, the angels approached and served Him."
Mtt. 4:1-11
Finally, here are a few more verses that confirm that God is almighty:
,, And God said to him: I am God Almighty; grow and multiply; a nation and many nations will become of you, and kings will come from your loins."
Gen.35:11
"For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a great, mighty and terrible God, who does not look at who is who, nor does he accept gifts;"
Deut.10:17
,,And said, O LORD God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?"
2 Chron. 20:6
"From the north it comes like gold; but in God there is a more terrible glory. He is Almighty, we cannot reach Him; he is of great power, but with judgment and great justice he does not torment anyone"
Job 37:22-23
"Look, I am the Lord God of all flesh, is there anything difficult for me?"
Jer. 32:27
"And Jesus looked at them and said to them: With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
Matt. 19:26
,,And Jesus looked at them and said: With men it is impossible, but not with God: for all things are possible with God."
Mark 10:27
"Because with God everything is possible that he says."
Luke 1:37
We have seen several examples of God's qualities that confirm the verses that the Lord Jesus gave John to write down. The only "Someone" who possesses the qualities that we have studied can say that he is the Almighty, and that is God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
"I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord, Who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."
Rev. 1:8
The verses we have studied should strengthen us in our faith because if God promises something, He surely fulfills it, and in this case it refers to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory.
God reveals the fulfillment to us in 21 chapters where he says:
,, And he said to me: It is finished. I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give the thirsty from the spring of living water forever."
Rev. 21:6

My GP mentioned her concerns re over-diagnosis in the private sector and specified the assessment should be done by a psychiatrist. Her exact words on my NHS record were then "you need an ongoing shared care agreement with a Psychiatrist on the GMC register if we are to prescribe medication here".
I then found out about Right To Choose and decided to go through that route as felt more aligned with the NHS and so it's free.
I now finally have an assessment date with Dr J & Colleagues. However I noted the assessor is a 'Neurodevelopmental clinical nurse specialist', rather than a psychiatrist.
I e-mailed them to explain the convo I had with my GP. The response just said they provide shared care. Nothing else - didn't really respond to what I was actually asking. So I asked again who the psychiatrist would be who would provide the shared care, given my GP wouldn't accept otherwise. They said the shared care would be authorised by a Psychiatrist available at their service.
The responses were quick but vague and my gut is saying their lack of addressing my questions in full feels evasive and uncaring. Some of the reviews on Google also aren't great.
I'm now wondering whether to switch to ProblemShared who provided a much more comprehensive answer when I asked about who undertakes the diagnosis, where they explained the NICE guidelines and how they're regulated by CQC - though still wouldn't be with a psychiatrist. But it felt like they were thorough, reassuring and knew what they were talking about. However this means that I'd probably need to wait another 4 months or more to get my GP to write another referral and be back at the bottom of a waiting list.
I also feel like I can't raise this with my GP incase they refuse shared care if I do go ahead with Dr J. It just all feels a bit dodgy.
My current thinking is to go ahead with the assessment, and if I get a diagnosis, the medication will soon demonstrate if the diagnosis is accurate or not. I guess I'm just worried that a) Dr J might be difficult to work with including how they manage securing shared care with my GP based on interactions so far and Google reviews and b) my NHS ICB will be paying for this so I feel like it's my one shot - surely they're not going to pay for another RTC provider if this goes wrong somehow?
Note - I am still on waiting list for NHS assessment, but that's 2+ years away, and that's if they even accept my referral case which is still yet to be reviewed. I wonder if I'll be knocked off the waiting list if my ICB pays for this private assessment too?
I'm really worried about getting this right so any guidance would be HUGELY appreciated. Is it worth me reaching out to ADHDUK the org for advice? Do they provide that?
Thanks so much in advance. I may delete this post after a week or so as I'm scared Dr J might see it and treat me differently...

As someone who worked in prevention of sexual violence for the catholic church in Germany, let me tell you, what the fucking catholic church (at least in Germany) has, what leftist spaces usually miss: Institutionalised concepts of child protection and protection against sexual violence in general.
I know, it is harder, when you can't decree those things, one of the wonderful aspects of leftist spaces is their freedom of association, their anonymity and their openness to all. But as leftists, we should be able to accept, that this is important to protect children. And perpetrators look for spaces where they have the ability to enter the lives of children with little (enforced) rules on the contact.
But here could be a way, to institutionalise protection of children as a grassroots effort:
(1) General accord on the principal: Talk about it in a general assembly of your organisation/group, depending on your level of formal institutions, that might be an organised body, or just the people that are in the space at that time. Your aim is to get to stage 2, a risk analysis of your space.
Picking a situation where many people are there raises the option that people will reject the idea, but it is worth it, since you will need a lot of acceptance in the group for what you are doing. Think beforehand about the dangers, talk about it, as a measure to support the open nature of the movement and the group.
You will get backlash. People will deny that it could happen in your group, they will bring personal arguments (we know and trust each other), political arguments (this will sow discord, distract us from the mission), they will deflect (it's the priest diddling kids [yeah, that was very common within the church itself]). Be patient with those people. Have answers, to the obvious questions, be honest if you don't have them, but be forceful, that you want to look into those questions, within your risk analysis. Note them down for the risk analysis.
Even if your group doesn't need consent from all to reach a decision, look for it. If you got a tiny number of stragglers and your group works on majority based principle, this is okay in the end, but look for broad support and keep in contact with the people that didn't support this.
Then have a volunteer comittee put together for the risk analysis. The group/general assembly should consent over the members of the comitee, motivate the people that were against it, but came around, to participate, you will need them for the hard part.
(2) Training for the group: Find an expert. Someone with experience in the field, that will
(a) give you some basic training, like at least 6 hours. This is a must for the committee working on the risk analysis, but should be open to all.
(b) has materials about this, and
(c) can look over your work in the end and may have ideas what you missed.
This will cost money, so have an idea how to raise it. It is often hard for leftist spaces to raise money, but it is dangerous, doing it without someone who had at least done this before. I volunteer to be an expert, but only in Germany, and even I would want my train ticket paid for, and some free food.
(3) The risk analysis: You go through your availability spaces with a fine comb, ask questions like the following questions, and more, if you can think of more. For every question you go through subgroups, rooms, days, even time slots:
(a) Which group might be vulnerable to sexual violence? Where and when are children (anyone under 18) present.
(b) Where do adults spend time alone with children?
(c) Are there hierarchies or power imbalances that would obfuscate reporting of sexual violence?
(d) Do children stay overnight and sleep on the premises?
(e) In which situation are children without supervision?
(f) To whom could children report sexual misconduct to make a difference and do the children know the person?
(g) Are children informed about their rights?
(h) Is there transparency about adults in your group convicted of or even charged with crimes against the sexual self-determination minors?
(i) Are there information about sexual violence against children, its prevention and steps to take when witnessing it available and broadly understood in your group?
Answer those questions with all parties involved, don't quizz them, ask the questions together. Be open about what you do, but also have understanding with people that feel attacked. It can feel like an attack, so be prepared to explain over and over again, but also to the people the person is most likely to talk about it.
Now think how committed perpetrators could use those situations. Don't craft them too much, just think how a perpetrator might use the situations you found.
(4) Writing guidelines: After you did the risk analysis, your committee should draft a report, with
(a) The risks you found in (3) (b) The way you came to the risks (c) What you think your group should change to do better
Important: Never attack anyone personally, it I'd important, to keep the whole process blameless. We'll, except child predators, they can fuck off.
(5) The hard part. Convince the general asselmby/group as a whole, that your conclusions are valid, and that you should make rules about them, together. Don't give them a prepared draft, if they don't want one, but have them in your mind. Draft them together, this will take time, but it is worth it. Come to a consensus, even if it means softening some rules, ypu thought of, as lomg as the rule does help to mitigate the risk.
(6) Now the hardest part: Living and reviewing the rules. The group must not only accept the rules, they must live them. You shouldn't be the enforcer of the rules, the community must become it. They have to take them to heart and live by them. After some time, maybe 6 months, maybe a year, review and revise the rules:
(a) Are there any we ignore? Why do we ignore it? Can we craft better rules?
(b) Do we think our rules mitigate the original risks?
(c) Are there new risks, that we forgot the first time around, or did new risks arise in the meantime?
(d) Could we simplify some rules?
Keeping that alive is the hardest part.
If you have questions or concerns, please contact me. And I'm sorry for the horrible grammar, English is my second language, and it is nor easy, writing about a thing in English, I have only thought about in german until know.

So I created a single-header message-passing library.
http://github.com/gamblevore/picomsg
I use it myself, and it works well for my needs.
The reason I created it, is because I couldn't find any that were small. For example there is MPI, but it is huge and complex. For certain people (me) this is a problem.
For example, you might want to create a small program that does a lot of things. If you need to include only a few large components, like a compression lib, a message-passing lib, maybe a XML/JSON parser, and each one takes 1MB, now you have a 3MB program, but your code might only take 50KB. It just seems wrong.
To many people this isn't an issue, but to some of us, its either something we do for fun, or an obsession. Not sure which. But there can be practical needs too, such as creating many small programs that run on low-end hardware.
If you are making a programming language and want to include PicoMsg as it's default message-passer, that is another good use-case. You don't want your language to get bloated by dependancies.
PicoMsg has C interface, but the internals are all C++. I had to write my own "ring buffer" memory system, as I was getting some kinda memory-corruption bugs I couldn't solve as it was buried under C++ vector classes somewhere. Once I managed memory myself, I was able to find the problem and solve it. In fact the C++ Vector classes would have been just fine. They are useful, but the abstraction can make diagnosing issues more difficult.
Anyhow... I hope someone likes it or finds it useful. I have this licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ as I feel unknown or unappreciated and it would be nice if... people with a positive attitude knew about me.
The source code's internals is a little wierd as I kind of went mad while writing it. Which is a common thing as writing message-passing code can drive anyone mad. For example I renamed my "locks" to "trousers" (because it is something only one person can wear at at ime, haha). I also inserted spiders into my comments.
I probably had too much fun making this thing. Or perhaps I needed to make it fun to counter how awful it was (at times) to debug the concurrency issues.
It is about 1000 lines of code, and probably under 500 lines of significant code. (excluding headers, the C-API wrapper, empty-lines, comments, etc). Would be nice to find users who appreciate it.
I'm happy for contributions... if anyone wants to add features. I'd be interested in a speed comparison... I could improve it's speed if it doesnt compare well. But my tests seem to show it running fast. Im not an expert in this area actually so Im sure people can do better.
The main limitation (At the moment) is that this runs only locally. It doesn't know how to connect across a network (just yet). It already uses socketpair() to create sockets to communicate locally, and send()/recv() so extending PicoMsg to work across a network won't be too hard to do. But I won't add this until either I need it myself, or if I had a lot of users... (or I got paid?). But I'm happy to accept this feature added by any contributors.
Thats all bye!

The problem

~15 years ago, my mother downsized her house. Prior to this, after my dad had passed away, my sibling and I had been left his share of the house. This meant my mum had a 50% share and my sibling and I had a 25% share each.
For the new downsized house, we discussed with the lawyer how to proportion the ownership for the new house. We all agreed that my sibling and I would put 100% of our equity from the first house into the second house with the result that my sibling and I would each own 40%, whilst my mum would own 20%.
The lawyer confirmed via email sent to the 3 of us describing the above and said they they would record this in the title deeds.
It turned out this didn't happen. I checked this week, and the ownership in the title deeds are Mum 50%, me 25%, sibling 25%.

Potential Financial Consequences

My mum's getting on and her health is deteriorating. If she ends up in long term care the council will, quite rightly, want her to use up most of her assets to help pay for it. This means she will have to sell her house and use up her share of it.
In this scenario, her 50% vs 20% ownership will cost somewhere in the region of £150k+.
Note: As far as I can recall, all of this plan for the 20%/40%/40% split was worked out before the whole discussions on means testing by councils for care costs and the concept of "deprivation of assets" had started.

What should we do?

I've just found out this out and haven't told my mother yet, this will put her into a complete tail spin of panic and worry.
Before I do I'm just trying to gather information to understand where we're at, what the implications are and what can be done about it.
Some thoughts/questions that spring to mind:

1. Title deeds: these need updating ASAP. If either my sibling or I were to pass away, this would affect any inheritence for our spouses/children.
   
2. Complain: Obviously I want to record a complaint against the solicitor. According to scottishlegalcomplaints.org.uk I have to complain first to them in writing and allow them 28 days to resolve it. Would it make sense for me to get on and do this, or would it make more sense getting a new lawyer involved first?
   
3. Can the deeds be updated retrospectively as if ownership were as intended when the property was purchased (presumably not).
   
4. If not, will the council accept that the intended ownership only being updated now rather than 15 years ago was due to solicitor error and will be happy to go on the basis that she only owns 20% (presumably not).
   
5. If not, can we seek financial recompense from the solicitor? If so what's the best way to do this, presumably with advice from another solicitor?
   

Any other suggestions on things I need to do/consider?

I've been looking for something like this for a long time and I am astounded and frustrated nobody has made anything like this. I found plenty of people asking for this, but no one actually showed a solution.
I stream with friends on twitch as we are in a discord call, and they will often post pictures in discord, but there was no way for me to easily show the picture on stream without toggling the entire discord window so twitch chat can actually see what we are talking about. What I wanted was some way for it to be automated, at least as much as possible.
Through the use of a custom discord bot, I was able to make something work.
Before I get into how to make this work, let me briefly explain how it works so you can tell if this is something you're willing to do. I will be highlighting all areas you need to fill out. The rest is mostly copy paste.
Discord Bot has reading access to a discord channel of your choice>a code tells the bot to monitor this discord channel for image links and image attachments>Upon detecting a new image, the bot will edit an HTML file somewhere on your computer with the link to the image along with some other things to make it readable for OBS>OBS uses that HTML file as a local browser source.
The only potential issue here that can benefit from some improvements is the source will not properly update unless you hide and then unhide the source. If its already hidden, simply unhiding it will prompt the correct image. (Just be sure the source has "Shutdown source when not visible" enabled, to allow it to update and take less resources while not visible) I simply made this a hotkey to easily toggle the source, however there is a way to create an OBS script that will automatically hide the source after a period of time, and reveal it upon updating, I was unsuccessful in this though.
To get this to work, you will only need to create 2 text files, paste some code, and change 3 lines to match your details so it properly links to the correct channel, bot, files, etc. I will highlight these things so you wont have to go searching.
1. CREATE YOUR DISCORD BOT
-Go to https://discord.com/developers/applications -Hit "New Application" at the top right, accept terms and name it whatever you want. -On the left under Settings/Installation be sure User Install and Guild Install are checked. -Navigate to the "Bot" tab on the left and turn OFF "Public Bot" and turn ON "Message Content Intent" -Head over to the "OAuth2" tab on the left. -Under "OAuth2 URL Generator" You will see a big list of "scopes" All you need is to check "bot" -A new portion will be revealed called "Bot Permissions". For simplicity sake since you can give it "Administrator". If you are concerned about security, you can check off only what would be needed like read messages and maybe read message history. This area you will have to experiment to see what is absolutely needed. -Copy the generated URL and paste it into your browser and select what server you would like to add it to. -Once added it should have all the needed permissions to do its job, but double check roles and default permissions to make sure its not conflicting with anything on your server. -Go back to the "Bot" tab on the left and hit the "Reset Token" button. You will be given a code. (Copy and paste this somewhere for you to refer to later.)
2. PYTHON (DONT PANIC) You barely need to mess with it.
-Head over to https://www.python.org/downloads/ and download the latest version. -When installing, make sure to check the box that says "Add Python X.X to PATH" during the installation process. This ensures that Python is added to your system's PATH environment variable, allowing you to run Python from the command line. (Just stay with me here, its not as bad as it sounds) Otherwise if you don't see this, its fine.
-Open Command Prompt as an administrator.

• Enter the following command: pip install discord
• That's about it for python.

3. CREATE THE CODE (PASTE IT)
-Create a new text file and name it "discord_bot.py" (Be sure to change the file extension from .txt to .py) -Right click the file and hit "open with" and select notepad. -Go ahead and paste the following code into the file:

import discord import os import time import re TOKEN = 'YOUR BOT TOKEN HERE' CHANNEL_ID = 'YOUR CHANNEL ID HERE' TEXT_FILE_PATH = 'YOUR TEXT FILE PATH' # Create an instance of discord.Intents intents = discord.Intents.default() intents.messages = True intents.guilds = True intents.message_content = True # Pass intents to the discord.Client() constructor client = discord.Client(intents=intents) # CSS style to limit image dimensions CSS_STYLE = """  """ .event async def on_ready(): print(f'Logged in as {client.user}') .event async def on_message(message): if == int(CHANNEL_ID): print(f'Message received in correct channel: {message.content}') print(f'Attachments: {message.attachments}') if message.attachments or any(re.findall(r'(http[s]?:\/\/[^\s]+(\.jpg\.png\.jpeg))', message.content)): image_url = message.attachments[0].url if message.attachments else re.findall(r'(http[s]?:\/\/[^\s]+(\.jpg\.png\.jpeg))', message.content)[0][0] try: # Generate HTML content with image URL embedded in an  tag html_content = f"""     {CSS_STYLE} Include CSS style      """ # Update the HTML file with the generated HTML content with open(TEXT_FILE_PATH, 'w') as file: file.write(html_content) print(f'HTML file updated with image URL: {image_url}') except Exception as e: print(f'Error updating HTML file: {e}') else: print('No attachments or image links found in the message') client.run(TOKEN)message.channel.id 

-A few lines into the code you will see three lines that read:
'YOUR BOT TOKEN HERE' 'YOUR CHANNEL ID HERE' -and- 'YOUR TEXT FILE PATH'
-You need to replace these. Refer to your token you saved earlier and paste it in place of YOUR BOT TOKEN HERE. When you replace it, it should still have the (') at each end. Example: TOKEN = 'adnlkn34okln2oinmfdksanf342'
-For the Channel ID, head over to Discord>Settings(cogwheel bottom left)>advanced and turn on Developer Mode. -Head over to the Server where you want OBS to grab from and where you invited the bot. -Right click the text Channel you want OBS to grab pictures from and hit "Copy Channel ID" -Go back to the text file with the code and paste the ID you just copied place of YOUR CHANNEL ID HERE. (again make sure not to delete ' ' in the process.
So far we have the Bot Token and the Channel ID done.
-We need to create another text file. Create one and find a place to save it where you'll remember it. Somewhere like your documents folder will work fine. -Name it whatever you want, but be sure to save it as a .HTML file, rather than a .txt file. (for the sake of the tutorial, lets assume you named it "showimage.html" ) *-*Right click the html file you just made and click properties -Here you can see the file "Location". Go ahead and copy it. -Go back to that discord_bot.py file and replace YOUR TEXT FILE PATH with the address you just copied.
HOWEVER: BE SURE TO ADD EXTRA SLASHES TO THIS. I DONT KNOW WHY BUT ITS NEEDED. Example: TEXT_FILE_PATH = 'C:\\Users\\YOURNAME\\OneDrive\\Desktop'
There. The code is finished so go ahead and save it. Now you need to implement it into OBS
4. OBS BROWSER SOURCE
-Go ahead and open OBS. Go to your desired Scene and create a new Source, and make it a Browser Source. -I made the width and height 600x600, but you can adjust it once we get a picture on screen. -Toggle ON "Local File" and "Shutdown source when not visible" -For the local file, browse your computer for that "showimage.html" file we made earlier and select it.
5. (FINAL) LAUNCH THE BOT
We are almost done. You will have to launch this bot every time you want this image thing to work, so maybe save this last part on a note.
-Type CMD in your start menu on windows. -Right click "Command Prompt" and hit "Run as administrator" -Navigate to where the discord_bot.py file you made was saved. You can do this by typing "cd" followed by the address and hitting enter
Example: cd C:\Users\YOURNAME\OneDrive\Desktop Enter\*
-Then type: python discord_bot.py Enter\*
You should see a few lines of text that say: "Logged in as (whatever your bot name is)"
You're done!
When someone posts a link to an image, or uploads one directly to your desired channel, the bot will create a link for the obs source to refer to, and it should pop up in your scene, assuming its visible. If you still dont see anything, try restarting OBS and or go into the source properties, scroll down, and click the "refresh cache of current page" button at the bottom. Keep in mind the picture will not update unless you force the source to refresh somehow. If you dont want to keep going back to obs to hide/unhide the source to update it, you can set a hotkey to it, create an OBS script, or use a separate program like streamerbot to automate the process to your liking.
This was a huge pain in the ass to do, and I dont want anyone to go through what I did, so I wanted to have it all in a janky guide to get people started. Also I made it so the pictures have a minimum and maximum w/h size so small images arent so darn small, and big ones dont take up so much space. You can adjust this in the .py file, just be sure to close command prompt and start the bot again for the changes to go through.
Please let me know if you guys have any questions or suggestions, and Ill try my best to help/ respond. I hope someone makes use of this and it pops up in search results because I couldnt find anything like this anywhere.

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