Since the June DSAT is coming up I thought I'd make a post on tips and resources I used to help me study for the May 4th sat. This post goes into decent depth so read it all carefully and remember what worked for me might not work for you.
If you're like me and procrastinated studying until now then this post is definitely for you. All my prep for the May 4th test was done in like 14 days and I expect a score of 1540 or above.
My scores for the college board practice tests:
Practice Test 1: 1220
Practice Test 2: 1190
Practice Test 3: 1530
Practice Test 4: 1360
Practice Test 5: 1460
Practice Test 6: 1530
PRACTICE TESTS EXPERIENCE: Practice Test 1 and 2 were done without desmos since I didn't even know I could use it, so I basically wasted those two. I did test 2 after doing khan academy, test 3 was done using desmos and I did it after I grinded through like 80% of khan academy. Practice Test 4 truly humbled me and I realized how unprepared I really was which was when I started watching more youtube videos. I took the practice test 5 only 2 days after test 4 and my score increased like crazy which made me confident again.
NOTE: PRACTICE TEST 4, 5, AND 6 ARE THE CLOSEST IN DIFFICULTY TO THE REAL DEAL, TEST 1, 2 AND 3 ARE VERY EASY COMPARED TO THE REAL THING.
BASICS FOR BEGINNERS: If you have not studied yet at all you should start with basic concepts on Khan academy, grind through the lessons and videos, do the practice questions in the foundation section and medium section. Also learn how to use desmos, I used desmos for things I didn't even know was possible. Learning how to use desmos got rid of easy constant questions, inequalities, system of equations. Make sure to watch the 3 part desmos videos I talked about below in the youtubers section, it truly helped me a lot.
YOUTUBE: Youtube was one of the key reasons my score increased, I watched videos on the dsat constantly, while I ate food, even on my breaks I just watched videos running through the practice test I had already taken over and over again. I went over each practice test and the mistakes I made probably like 3 - 4 times throughout the 15 days.
QUESTION BANK: After I finished every practice test provided by the college board, ONLY THEN did I go to the college board question bank. This is because a good amount of the questions off of the practice tests are in this bank so without knowing it your brain could memorize how to do it and recognize it when doing the practice test which would inflate your marks. I probably went through hundreds of questions from the question bank (English and math) within the last 3 days before the may 4th test.
EXTRA TIPS: Sleep and exercise are also very important and something that I think isn't talked about enough, this applies more to people who are in my boat and are studying last minute and want a really high score. I slept crazy every night and it really helped me retain more information. Exercise is an amazing break even a walk works, anytime I hit a wall during my study periods I'd just go to the gym for 45 minutes to and hour and I would always come back refreshed ready to study again.
Youtubers I used:
Not promoting these guys in any way but they're just the only youtubers I used and I think other people here would probably find them useful.
Here are all the youtubers I used, Scalar Learning, Settele Tutoring, Tutorllini Test Prep, Strategic Test Prep, Method Learning.
Scalar Learning: He has some decent videos teaching basic concepts and his shorts have some good practice questions that he goes through.
Settele Tutoring: Settele was the one I watched the most, he went through every single question (in separate videos) on every single practice test given by the college board, I also watched some of his free concept learning videos on english, I think he explains a lot of the stuff pretty well. He’s amazing at english and helping you learn english, he made something called a “dumb summary” which I actually used a lot on my may 4th sat, it’s essentially a method where you can summarize a massive paragraph in like 30-40 seconds easily.
Tutorllini Test Prep: Has some good concept videos and also goes through all the math questions on all the practice tests really well, sometimes giving like 2-3 different methods you can use to solve a single question. He also goes through some of his own worksheets that he’s made and some of them are pretty good practice.
Strategic Test Prep: She gives some good test day tips and tips and shortcuts in general for the SAT, her explanations on the practice tests are also pretty decent.
Method Learning: Method Learning is what I’d say really boosted my score in the very beginning stages of my studying. This is only because of his 3 part desmos videos, I didn’t watch any of his other videos but that 3 part seriously was a game changer. The desmos tips he gives are amazing. An example is if a question gives you a linear or quadratic equation and then a constant in it, you can plug that exact equation into desmos and move the slider around to find what the constant is, this takes no more than 30 seconds.
Formulas I memorized for the DSAT:
You will have to memorize some formulas for the DSAT and some will make your life easier.
Sum of interior angles in a polygon: 180(n-2)
Area of a sector: πr^2 ⋅ θ/360
Arc Length: 2πr ⋅ θ/360
Mass/Volume/Density: m = v(d)
X cord. of vertex: -b/2a
Sum of solutions: -b/a
Product of solutions: c/a
If anyone needs any tips or anything just let me know I'll try my best to respond.
Whatever score you want is possible if you're willing to put in the work and time.

Since the June DSAT is coming up I thought I'd make a post on tips and resources I used to help me study for the May 4th sat. This post goes into decent depth so read it all carefully and remember what worked for me might not work for you.
If you're like me and procrastinated studying until now then this post is definitely for you. All my prep for the May 4th test was done in like 15 days and I expect a score of 1540 or above.
My scores for the college board practice tests:
Practice Test 1: 1220
Practice Test 2: 1190
Practice Test 3: 1530
Practice Test 4: 1360
Practice Test 5: 1460
Practice Test 6: 1530
PRACTICE TESTS EXPERIENCE: Practice Test 1 and 2 were done without desmos since I didn't even know I could use it, so I basically wasted those two. I did test 2 after doing khan academy, test 3 was done using desmos and I did it after I grinded through like 80% of khan academy. Practice Test 4 truly humbled me and I realized how unprepared I really was which was when I started watching more youtube videos. I took the practice test 5 only 2 days after test 4 and my score increased like crazy which made me confident again.
NOTE: PRACTICE TEST 4, 5, AND 6 ARE THE CLOSEST IN DIFFICULTY TO THE REAL DEAL, TEST 1, 2 AND 3 ARE VERY EASY COMPARED TO THE REAL THING.
BASICS FOR BEGINNERS: If you have not studied yet at all you should start with basic concepts on Khan academy, grind through the lessons and videos, do the practice questions in the foundation section and medium section. Also learn how to use desmos, I used desmos for things I didn't even know was possible. Learning how to use desmos got rid of easy constant questions, inequalities, system of equations. Make sure to watch the 3 part desmos videos I talked about below in the youtubers section, it truly helped me a lot.
YOUTUBE: Youtube was one of the key reasons my score increased, I watched videos on the dsat constantly, while I ate food, even on my breaks I just watched videos running through the practice test I had already taken over and over again. I went over each practice test and the mistakes I made probably like 3 - 4 times throughout the 15 days.
QUESTION BANK: After I finished every practice test provided by the college board, ONLY THEN did I go to the college board question bank. This is because a good amount of the questions off of the practice tests are in this bank so without knowing it your brain could memorize how to do it and recognize it when doing the practice test which would inflate your marks. I probably went through hundreds of questions from the question bank (English and math) within the last 3 days before the may 4th test.
EXTRA TIPS: Sleep and exercise are also very important and something that I think isn't talked about enough, this applies more to people who are in my boat and are studying last minute and want a really high score. I slept crazy every night and it really helped me retain more information. Exercise is an amazing break even a walk works, anytime I hit a wall during my study periods I'd just go to the gym for 45 minutes to and hour and I would always come back refreshed ready to study again.
Youtubers I used:
Not promoting these guys in any way but they're just the only youtubers I used and I think other people here would probably find them useful.
Here are all the youtubers I used, Scalar Learning, Settele Tutoring, Tutorllini Test Prep, Strategic Test Prep, Method Learning.
Scalar Learning: He has some decent videos teaching basic concepts and his shorts have some good practice questions that he goes through.
Settele Tutoring: Settele was the one I watched the most, he went through every single question (in separate videos) on every single practice test given by the college board, I also watched some of his free concept learning videos on english, I think he explains a lot of the stuff pretty well. He’s amazing at english and helping you learn english, he made something called a “dumb summary” which I actually used a lot on my may 4th sat, it’s essentially a method where you can summarize a massive paragraph in like 30-40 seconds easily.
Tutorllini Test Prep: Has some good concept videos and also goes through all the math questions on all the practice tests really well, sometimes giving like 2-3 different methods you can use to solve a single question. He also goes through some of his own worksheets that he’s made and some of them are pretty good practice.
Strategic Test Prep: She gives some good test day tips and tips and shortcuts in general for the SAT, her explanations on the practice tests are also pretty decent.
Method Learning: Method Learning is what I’d say really boosted my score in the very beginning stages of my studying. This is only because of his 3 part desmos videos, I didn’t watch any of his other videos but that 3 part seriously was a game changer. The desmos tips he gives are amazing. An example is if a question gives you a linear or quadratic equation and then a constant in it, you can plug that exact equation into desmos and move the slider around to find what the constant is, this takes no more than 30 seconds.
Formulas I memorized for the DSAT:
You will have to memorize some formulas for the DSAT and some will make your life easier.
Sum of interior angles in a polygon: 180(n-2)
Area of a sector: πr^2 ⋅ θ/360
Arc Length: 2πr ⋅ θ/360
Mass/Volume/Density: m = v(d)
X cord. of vertex: -b/2a
Sum of solutions: -b/a
Product of solutions: c/a
If anyone needs any tips or anything just let me know I'll try my best to respond.
Whatever score you want is possible if you're willing to put in the work and time.

So, first some context. For a long time, I have always thought about what it would be like to have a story about vampires in which the antagonist is the god of the sun. I think the first time I thought about it was when watching Blade when I was little. In this film, the main villain, Deacon Frost, wanted to awaken the Blood God La Magra, who was said to be the God of Vampires. In Blade Trinity, the first vampire was often refered to as the Vampire God, if I'm not wrong. So, I always thought how obvious it was and yet why no one ever wrote anything similar. There are even a feel stories with vampires involving gods or mentioning them, like Castlevania Nocturne, but I've never seen a mention of a sun god in vampire-related media.
Added to all that, I started thinking about having a story with a moon god related to werewolves. Now, this is not common at all in offical media, but fanfic and overall amateur original fiction that deal with the werewolf genre does mention lunar deities quite often. Most of the times, the moon god is presented as simply part of werewolf culture and beliefs, but not necessarily real, and sometimes even as real, but not a very present force.
Then I was told Legacies were introducing gods and I got excited.
Now, I have to be honest with you. I kinda hated Legacies. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of it, and I love many of the characters. But, damn, this show was a mess. So bad. I hated the idea of Mallivore. I liked the idea of a past in which other supernatural beings existed, but they handled it in a way that made Supernatural and even my beloved, yet very weird show, SyFy's The Magicians look mature in comparison. Like, the way it handled magic in the TVD universe broke me (what basically amounted to becoming invisible being the flashiest thing you can do with magic became Winx-level "shooting magic beams at each other"). And the way it handled gods in the TVD universe was so frustrating.
First, Ken's armor looked wackier than Thor Love and Thunder. For real. Then the whole "the gods were afraid of Mallivore" thing. Nah, pass. One thing I actually expected them to do (because I had been thinking about it for ages), but they didn't, was to break our expectations and make the gods actually immortal. Now, not every god in every culture is immortal, but many are, and TVD had already nailed in our heads the notion that "nothing completely immortal can exist" for so long that I thought it would be a great subversion. But no.
Anyway, I was thinking about how gods could be handled in the TVD universe and I started writing some ideas and I came up with something, maybe I'll write a fanfic or something. First of all, I would have the story be more spread out. It would focus on many settings. In this case, Mystic Falls with the TVD cast, New Orleans with The Originals cast, and the Salvatore School with the Legacies cast. Most of the canon would follow, but somethings would be different. For instance, Klaus and Elijah are not dead, in their family, only Finn is not among us anymore. From Legacies, I would salvage only the setting and most of the characters, but they would follow completely different paths. The story will jump characters between three main settings, Mystic Falls, New Orleans, and the Salvatore School. Each will live their lives and uncover mysteries separately, which will gradually mix together (think Stranger Things).
>>>>>
So, the story would start in New Orleans. Haley (who is alive), would be investigating something weird that is happening with the werewolf packs of the Southern US. Many are fleeing, others are expanding, and odd alliances are being formed. Among all that, she finds that many packs started following and revering a mysterious leader that most only know as The Lady of the Night, or just The Lady. She finds that those werewolves have somehow developed the ability to stay in human form during the full moon and retain their physical prowess without needing to wear a moonlight ring. In Mystic Falls, a gang of witches have established themselves in the town and started coersing the local witches to join and hunting the local vampires, and the TVD cast has to investigate. All they know is that they are led by a someone refered to as Lightbringer (Sorry, that is the one setting among the three that I haven't thought much about). In Legacies, the cast finds a teenage boy like them that have been chased by werewolves all the way from somewhere in the South. Initially, they think he is Human, but they see the guy kill a few wolves with his bare hands before collapsing. They bring him to the school and find out that, not only is he amnesiac, but he only remembers his life up to a year before, when he was found and put in the foster system and was given a new name by the state, Malek. They don't know what he is and a good portion of his arc would be they trying to find out (he would take Landon's place in the story).
>>>>>
As you may have realized, these new characters are gods. So, I actually like Legacies' idea of not tying the gods to any specific culture (like having the literal Greek gods or many patheons and stuff). Instead they implied that all those cultures' beliefs, or at least a lot of them, were inspired by this one family of real gods.
In my story, this is basically what happened. There is the real gods and then there is the things that people all over the world believed, which often was based on a limited understanding of the real gods or a cultural memory of then mixed in with made-up stuff that developed over time. One example of this is the "Storm God vs Serpent" archetype, which I will talk about later.
Anyway, the gods in this version will be loosely based on our reconstructed understanding of the Proto-Indo-European religion that gave origin to the Greek, Slavic, Celtic, and Norse gods among other in Europe, and the Persian and Vedic gods in Asia. But there will also be tie-ins with Mesoamerica, Africa, Japan, etc.
The main antagonists of the first phase are two individuals known as The Twins. Elio (Lightbringer) and Selina (The Lady). They are actually the twin gods of the Sun and the Moon, who woke up from a centuries-long slumber to wake the rest of their their family.
Selina has the power to bend werewolves to her will, though it is easier for hybrids to resist. Though Selina has nothing to do with werewolves' creation, as they were created by Inadu (The Hollow) in America half a millennium after she was put to sleep, she still has power over them, being the personification of the Moon. That is because Inadu's curse made them "slaves to the moon", which she did not know would tie them to Selina herself. Selina has the power of forcible truning a wolf to torture them when in her presence, as well as preventing them from doing so in the full moon. She uses that as a control mechanism for her followers, torturing them with untimely shifting or rewarding them with the ability to resist shifting during the full moon.
Elio, on the other hand, is being slowly revealed in Mystic Falls, where they first hear of the Twins. Unlike his sister, who has power and influence over werewolves, Elio has no power over vampires. Instead, he is only very dangerous to them. Elio has the power to have vampires feel the effects of being under the sun when in his presence, even if they are wearing a daylight ring. He can make them feel mild discomfort, make their skin blister, or even have them spontaneously combust to death in his presence. His very presence is also all the way from unsetlling to irrationally terrifying to vampires and hybrids. Unlike Selina, who is being literraly worshipped by the werewolves, Elio is pretending to be a very powerful witch and will not be discovered to be the sun god until later.
Finally, we have Malek. Because he is initially not as powerful as The Twins are portrayed to be, we would think he is a demigod or something else. Eventually, it will be revealed that he is actually the archetypical storm god, with powers related to lightning, thurder and the weather, like Thor or Zeus or Indra (but he is not the archetypical Sky Father, which was often mixed with the Storm God in subsequent religions, like with Zeus). He was the first one of the gods to be woken up, but the process was done wrong, and it hurt him, left him weaker.
The gods are a family of supernatural beings with power over nature and abstract concepts, representing many archetypical aspects of more imediately identifiable with the Proto-Indo European religion. They are both magical and the source of magic, and they have been living since at least 10,000 BC. They do not follow the exact canon of a specific religion, but some aspects of their lives may have been remembered as specific stories in many different cultures. Elio and Selina are both Helios and Selene, as well as Apollo and Artemis, Ra and Khonsu, and many other aspects. The family is formed by the Sky Father, the Earth Mother, and all their sons and daughters. These are the greater gods, but there are also a number of minor gods that descend from the core family.
The gods are immortal, as in completely indestructible. Nature's "no immortality" rule doesn't apply to them because they are the ones who created that rule in the first place (which forced any attempt of recreating the gods' immortality with magic always ending in a halfway success at best). It will take time for the main cast to come to terms with this fact and understand that they can't kill the gods, just put them back to sleep. Even in their sleep, the gods were somewhat conscious. They are aware of the changes in the Human world and could whisper in the ears of mortals (thin Silas).
It will be revealed that Malek, being one of the gods that loved Humanity the most, was the one who put his siblings to sleep (his parents, the Sky and the Earth, are more metaphysical and don't interfere much, as they exist in a more immaterial state). The gods were in the brink of war among each other about 2000 years ago, and a war of the gods would be extremely harmful to Humanity. Small skirmishes among them had caused civilization-ending catastrophes before, such as the Bronze Age Collapse, the Middle Eastern Deluge, and an earlier small war had been fought in India millennia before, giving origin of Indian myths of basically "nuclear"-level wars between the gods in the past.
So, to prevent this from happening, Malek enlisted the assistance of Alyta, the Goddess of the Dead, and Fae, the Smith Goddess of Fire, to put his family to sleep. A lot of his character arc will be his conflict between his old family and his new family at the Salvatore School. Elio and Selina want to find him because he is the only one who knows where the other gods are being kept (well, he doesn't for a while, due to his memory loss). Alyta is a mix of Hades, Persephone, Osiris, Thanatos, and other death-related gods. She helped Malek because she knew a war of the gods would be a pain for her. She rules over the Land of the Dead, a realm that encompasses Limbo, The Bright World (Peace), and from which small artificial realms such as Qetsyah's Other Side, Cade's Hell, and the Ancestral Plane were temporarily carved out (alowed by her). Furthermore, she never leaves completely (though she does harvest the souls of the living) and is the only god that was not put to sleep and was active for all thistime.
Now, a lot of the first portion of the story would follow Elio and Selina's machinations and Malek's new life. The Twins want to bring their family back and take back ruleship of the world. For that they want to find Malek, and they (and presumably the other gods still sleeping) are pissed at him. However, there is also disagreement among The Twins. Their family is just as disfunctional as The Originals, and the only thing that used to keep The Twins specifically from jumping at their throats was their little sister, Rory, Goddess of the Dawn. But she is sleeping, and though they made this alliance to release the others, they are gradually losing patience with one another. Other gods that could be mentioned or would appear are a Smith Goddess of Fire (Fae), a God of Beauty and Love (Deon), a God of War (Martino), a Goddess of the Sea (Yara), a God of Time, a Goddess of Agriculture...
Finally, by the last third of the story, the final enemy would be revealed, a being that even the gods fear. The Great Old One. It is the archetypical "serpent" or "monster", a lovecraftian horror and the monstrous firstborn child of the Sky and the Earth. It was defeated by Malek over ten-thousand years ago. However, being of the same nature of the gods and, thus, immortal, Malek could not kill it, only chain it beneath the earth. This battle was felt all over the world and gave origin to many myths. The archetype of the storm god vs the serpent would become the myth of Zeus and Typhon and Apollo and Python in Greece, of Indra and Vritra in India, of Thor in Jormungandr in Scandinavia, and of Susanoo and Yamata-no-Orochi in Japan, for instance. Before their battle, the monster kidnapped the moon (Selina) and tried to eat the sun (Elio), giving origin to myths like Apophis trying to eat Ra in Egypt, or Yamata-no-Orochi kidnapping a princess in Japan. After their first battle, monster tried to rule Mesoamerica, were it ruled as a bloody god that gave origin to the archetype of the Feathered Serpent god and introduced human sacrifice to saciate its hunger for blood. Its defeat was remembered in Mesopotamia as the gods defeating Tiamat, or as the killing of Ymir in Scandinavia.
Bascically, it is a lovecraftian god of chaos of immense power and unsatiable hunger. Malek's battle with it was so traumatic to him, that even in his amnesiac state he displayed a phobia of serpents and snake-like lizards. This being is the one that, after millennia unwatched, managed to free up a part of its essence from its prison and attack Malek in his sleep, which led to him being awoken and severely weakened for a long while. After the other gods realize that it is slowly breaking away from its chains, it becomes a race against time to put it back to its cage, with gods, vampires, witches, and werewolves working together to do so.

This is probably a longer story than it really is, but I am just trying to give as much context as I can.
In grade 11, me (F16-17) and my ex-friend (F16-17) were best friends. For some context, we both became friends fairly early in high school. In my country high school is from grade 8-grade 12. I joined the high school in grade 8 from out of city, the high school is just closer to me than the one in my city, so I was a new kid. I made some friends in grade 8 as a new kid but those friendships did end in grade 9. Grade 9 is when my best friend, we'll call her Emily, transferred to the school. And we formed a friendship. Through grade 9 we had formed our own little friend group with 2 other girls, we'll name them Clara and Sabrina. It was the 4 of us through majority of high school. We would always text each other, always hang out after school, spend any break we had at school together and had as much fun as any girls in high school could have (minus the partying because my school is not a partying school).
Emily and I were the closet in the friend group, afterall we were pretty similar and come from similar backgrounds (We're both a type of asian). We both would be described as the smart kids. We both would end up getting high grades in all of our classes. In grade 9, when we met, she told the friend group her dream was to become a doctor like her parents were, so she studied extra hard in high school to keep her grades high. I, on the other hand, did not really have any specific dreams. I wanted to become a writer or even a lawyer (but was worried because I'm not the best speaker). Due to that, I never tried that hard at school. Like i care about grades, my parents cared a lot about me getting high grades, but I wasn't studying for anything. And with that I never really studied either, I would do my homework and pay attention in class and take pretty notes but I was not spending any real time after class to do work Which is something that Emily would do. She would spend hours and hours a day just studying. If she wasn't studying she would be doing some volunterring or some club stuff.
Fast forward to grade 11. Right from the beginning of the year something just felt odd about our relationship. She seemed distant. Which I chalked up to it being we were now considered seniors at our high school so she was starting to stress about universities already, but it was still whatever. My school worked in semesters, so for half of the year we would have 4 specific classes which would then switch to different classes in second semester. During first semester I didn't have any classes with any of my friends. I was just chilling in all of my classess and getting adopted into different group friends in those classes. I was always well-liked in high school, I was not a popular kid. But compared to all the smart kids in the school, I was deemed the nicest so because of that everyone would be nice to me and friendly (even though I know for some of them it was so they could get hw answers out of me, but they were still very nice to me).
During this time, my friends and I would make up plans to hang out. We always made it a point to hang out at least once a week outside of school. It was always after school, we would usually study, walk around or go to the mall. In our gc on insta we would always double check with one another on which days to do it. Clara, Sabrina and I would always talk in the gc and were always the ones initiating the plans. Emily was also in the gc but would rarely reply to anything. Any times we would make plans to hang out, Emily would either not reply (which would then lead us to asking her during lunch the next day if she was free, where she would barely talk) or she would just say no to all plans. The few times she would say yes, she would always cancel the day of. Which would be annoying, and Clara, Sabrina and I would talk amongst ourselves that we found it odd she would always cancel and never want to hang out outside of school, but we were like it's not that big of a deal. She could just be busy.
We then just ahead to my birthday. Now i have an early birthday and it falls around the time that we come back to school after the winter break. Now during the winter break, Clara, Sabrina and I formed a seperate gc as it would just be the three of us talking and making plans. We also always took so many pictures and felt bad about sending it into the gc with the four of us in it as we didnt want Emily to feel bad about not coming. So we figured it was better if we kept it seperate. But in the main gc, I just ask when is everyone free to do something small. I'm not really a birthday person. Since high school, all my birthdays include going to some cozy restauraunt with my 4 closest friends and just having a casual dinner. So I ask and everyone leaves their responses, including Emily. We decide on a day, it would be after school just a day or two after my actual birthday and we would be going to a restuarunt and an arcade nearby (I have strict parents so I really wasn't allowed to go out late or really go out anywhere far). The plan is made and everything is set. When the day comes for the dinnearcade, we all meet up by our lockers to go take the bus together.
The 3 of us are there waiting for Emily to come and she does just a few minutes late. That is when she tells us she can't come because she has a club meeting today, and she told us it was mandatory for us to attend. Now of course my friends and I tried to convince her to blow it off just this one time, but she was adamant about going. So, whatever. We say bye to her and start walking to the bus. While walking there we bump into a mutual friend, also waiting for the bus. She is also in the same club, so we confused why she was here. We do ask her, saying "hey isn't there something happening with the club today?" That is when she tells us there was just this small meeting recapping what had happened in last weeks meeting for the people who missed it. Meaning the meeting was not madatory at all, especially when Emily had cancelled our plans last week to go to this said meeting. Meaning she did sort of lie to get out of going to my birthday party. I of course was hurt by this. When she told us she had to go to the meeting, I didn't think much of it as I knew how much school mattered to her and how much doing this club stuff mattered. But she had the choice to come, and she decided to just blow me off. We went out and had fun and didn't bring the matter up with her. We figured it was just her caring a bit too much about school.
Anyways this whole cancelling plans last minute, ghosting the main gc thing happened more and more. It also got to the point where if I wanted to talk to her, whether that was through text or in real life I would always have to approach her first. As this carried on for a while, i of course was getting a bit annoyed about where this friendship was going.
We now get to Emily's birthday a month later. Now Emily decided to plan her birthday, very last minute. I am just pointing this out as i am not a person who can do spontaneous plans, one because i have this need to plan properly and two because I do have strict parents. So i can't just spring a plan on them the day of and expect to go. Which is something Emily knows. Anyways she makes the plan and i tell my mom about it to ask if i can go and she says yes. The day before, Emily then decides to change the plan entirely. We were going to go into downtown city (for context, it's roughly 2 hours transit from our neighborhood). I obviously had to ask permission as she wanted to stay out late which is not something my parents would like, so when Emily told us at lunch the change in plans, Clara, Sabrina I told her we had to double check if we can still go as we all have strict parents, but our extended friend group were all down to go.
After school, the four of us head into the bathroom, which is a toally normal thing for high school girls to do before we headed out. While there Emily then decides to start a fight with me about not going to her birthday, which hasn't happened yet. She starts yelling at me about how Im mad that she didn't go to my birthday and am not going to hers as revenge (I'll be honest, I kinda forgot she didn't go). And starts yelling at me about how I'm being a bad friend and frankly a b*tch. And when I say she is screaming at me, I mean there is the largest echo circling our bathroom as she yells at me. Now I'm just standing there, trying to reason with her. I'm just trying to explain to her that i didn't say i wasn't coming, i just needed to get permission to go, which is something that Clara and Sarbina said as well but Emily wasn't saying anything about them. She proceeded to just yell at me for a solid 5 minutes. Another girl did walk into the bathroom, saw Emily yelling and just left, which I feel bad about. I do not do well with someone yelling at me, so I just tell her that I'm leaving now and we can talk later. I practically run out of the bathroom and out of school. Clara runs up to me and says i can't go home feeling like this. I felt horrible, i felt like throwing up. So Clara makes it her job to cheer me up as Sabrina is trying to calm Emily down. Clara takes me to Mcdonalds, where we split a meal as that became a tradition of ours and she bought me ice-cream to make me feel better. We end up spending roughly and hour and half there before starting to walk back to our houses. I did feel a lot better and I was smiling. Clara didn't really say much about what happened as she knew it would upset me. She just said that Emily was being mean and left it at that. At some point during our walk, Emily calls Clara and starts screaming at Clara over the phone about choosing "my side". I only know it was Emily because I can hear her screaming through the phone and Clara is trying to be nice to her and say she was comforting her friend like a good one would do. Emily continues screaming and Clara just hangs up on her.
We don't talk about it. Now the next day, at school, is Emily's birthday. I feel so awkward. Because i'm still upset about what happened. When I see her, I'm not sure if I should wish her a happy birthday. I feel like I am owed an apology first. so i don't really say anything to her. and we don't really talk. Now we are in the same Chemistry honours class together and are lab partners. So we have to talk. I ask her, if we're going to talk about what happened. And she just says, no, it's my birthday. I just say really but she doesn't say anything after. So Im just like, fine, whatever. We spend the entire class in awkward silence, and I do not see her again the entire day. Even at lunch because she has a club meeting or something. Clara, Sabrina and I all agree that we don't want to talk about it. Clara got an apology text last night but she was still mad about being yelled at over the phone. Sabrina asked us if we wanted to know what her and Emily talked about yesterday but i said no. I was frankly too mad and knew if anything was said, I would be upset. Emily did not end up having a birthday party. and there is now an awkward silence between the 4 of us. it's like a horror movie, where the music is playing and you just know something bad is coming and you have to wait for it.
A few days later, I know i have to say something. I can feel that our friendship is hanging by a thread and I want my best friend back. So at lunch, while we're all sitting by our lockers I bring up the topic. I do not remember the conversation that took place. All I know was that Emily was practically screaming in my face, in front of all our friends (Clara, Sabrina and 5 of our other friends). Everyone is trying to get her to stop, but she keeps yelling at me. At some point I just start crying. Now this is the first time, that someone outside of my family, has ever made me cry. Its the first time I have ever cried at school too. The tears are flowing down my face as I just say "i'm sorry i cant do this" to the rest of our friends as i had off to the bathroom to calm down. Clara and one of our other friends rush off with me to try to calm me down and stop the tears. But they keep coming. I can't stop them and am now in the bathroom splashing my face with water and doing my best to wipe them all away. Clara, this other friend and i all have the same class next. So they have to literally drag me to class as I'm sort of paralyzed about whats happening. When we get to the classroom, everyone there, which was half of the class is looking at me and seeing my red, teared-up face. Our seats are at the very back corner of the classroom, on the very opposite side from the door. So i have to walk past the entire face as they all stare at me and wonder whats happening. the entire time im not really paying any attention. during little work periods in the class, my fellow classmates would walk up to me and ask if im okay. which i would say yes, i was even though i wasnt because what else could i say. I ended up powering through the rest of the day before going home and wonderign what to do.
In the secret gc, I text with Clara and Sabrina about what my next steps should be. They suggest we have an actual therapy session as a friend group to discuss if we even want to be friends at this point. I agree to this. I even start writing up my own speech I am going to tell Emily when i see her.
So I'm just going to jump ahead to whenever this happens. It's during lunch, outside on the grass field. I am calm, I know what to say and everything. I'm sitting there with Clara and Sabrina has to literally drag Emily out of school to come and talk. I kid you not. We have like an hour for lunch. It takes 20 minutes for Emily to finally show up. And she shows up like, "ugh what are we even doing here? im kinda busy" and just acts like there is nothing at all wrong. I start to calmly explain to her how ive been feeling the entire year. I do not remmeber the conversation. But what I remember talking about is how i feel like she's distant, she's always cancelling plans, im always the one texting her first, about how she gets mad at me for small little things, how she yells at me, etc. My whole speech was about how "i don't want to feel like sh*t for trying to continue this friendship". Because even after the first time she yelled at me, I just wanted an apology and we could move on and that didn't happen. And now Im just like I don't want to cry again and don't want my tears to come from someone who's supposed to be my best friend. She does argue her case in this. Her whole thing is how "i'm being clingy and annoying and controlling".
Now for her arguement, I think it should be known more about my persoanlity type. I am not the best people person. I have social anxiety and how that manifests in me is that i can't really talk to people that well. I don't know how to converse and get incredibly nervous to talk to anyone new. So when I do become friends with someone, I do latch on to them. I talk to them all the time, when i can, and they become my person. I think that is where the clingy party comes from. For the controlling/annoying thing, I can only chalk it up to me always texting her. Like i said, i would always have to be the one initating our conversations and plans. So our chats always look like 5 bubbles of text from me (because i am the person that types in multiple bubbles rather than one large text bubble) and her short responses. When it comes to plans, as I said i do not do spontaenous plans. I need to have them properly organized for both my parents sakes and my sake. I'm not someone who plans everything out minute by minute, I just need to know times and places. And if you are actually free.
Thankfully this time, Emily isn't yelling at me however she is talkimg a bit loudly. Now at this point we have spent 25ish minutes talking about this when she suddently gets up and says "i have to go otherwise i'll be late for my class and get in trouble". Which there is still 15 minutes before lunch ends. And her classroom is across the hallway from my next class with Clara. The walk from the grass field was literally 2 minutes. Our coversation wasn;t done. There was no convlusion and no real understanding on either part. So all of us get up as Emily starts speed walking and we all chase her. We're all telling her there is still so much time left, but she doesn't listen and still carries on. So then I say, "i don't want to be friends anymore if this is what it's going to be like". and she says "fine." and walks away. and that was the end of our friendship.
It was almost spring break and our friends were doing their best to navigate the situation. I think they believed we both needed time to cool down and we can all be friends again. However that didn;t happen. Emily and i agreed to be civil as we still had the same friend group but she never really hung out with us in the next couple days, or talked during lunch and that was it.
The two of us did not talk at all. The only times we did was in our Chemistry class, where she did the most un-civil thing ever. As I said we were lab partners. Anytime we had any lab, involing the microscope, I would always be the person doing the microscope work as Emily writes down the results of what I found. I would then get the numbers or obersations from her and add them to my worksheet as our teacher wanted us to work in partners but submit our own work. This one lab went off for too long and the bell rung. So as we are packing up quickly, I ask Emily for the numbers she wrote down. She said she's late for something and will send me the numbers later today. And I'm like fine. She never did. It was also a Friday so we went into the weekend and she never sent me anything. I did text her once on Saturday and another time on Sunday if she could send it. but she never replied and i just asked another classmate if they could send me their answers. If our teacher asked why did we as partners have different answers, I was going to tell him Emily wouldn't give them to me. He never did ask and that was the last time we really talked.
We then headed into spring break which ended up turning into the pandemic lockdown. Now I feel so bad when saying this, as i know this was a difficult time for so many people. But me as a 17-year-old high school studnet, loved the first few weeks of lockdown. I saw it as a mental health break as all the stuff that went down with Emily did in fact put me into a depression phase (I actually do have depression and i do end up in mini-phases where its really bad). The lockdown gave me time to breathe as it felt like i was holding my breath for so long and i could relax. Now in the fall, our school did a hybrid for our last year. Which was fine, it was weird but managable. Emily did not talk to me, Clara or Sabrina at all during our seniour year. We graduated and my friends and I had the best time we could under pandemic restrictions.
Current day, I (21) am now in university. Clara and Sabrina and I are as close as ever and have managed to keep our friendship alive and strong even 3-4 years outside of high school and while all attending different universities. We still hang out regularly (once every week or so) and text all the time. And would you believe it, Emily goes to my university. Remember, how I said she wanted to become a doctor. Yeah so her plan was to go to university in Toronto for some medicine thing. I don't really know. She didn't do that. Instead she stayed in our city and decided to do business instead. What am I doing, you ask? Also business. Now I know I can't claim a school, or a major or anything like that. But i can't lie, im a little annoyed that she decided to swtich her career path to the same as mine. Thankfully Ive only had one class with her and it was one of those big lecture halls so i didn't have to talk with her. Just seeing her tho reminds me of high school and i can feel my blood pressure rising and me sweating as all the nerves and stress come back.
Anyways Clara and Sabrina's birthdays are coming up. Their birthdays are within the same week so since high school, they've always just done one big combined party. The two of them are both really chill people, they are friends with everyone and anyone. So as their coming up with their birthday plans, they are thinking of their guest list and Emily is on it. Now, Clara and Sabrina did ask me beforehand if they could invite her. They do want to make sure I am comfortable. They both tell me that they don't really talk to her anymore, maybe once every 3 months or something. They also haven't hung out since high school. But for their 21st birthday they are thinking of inviting everyone from our high school friend group to have sort of a mini-reuinion. I am down for it, I do think i have moved on, in the sense that I know I do not want Emily in my life. I do tell them I will probably feel awkwad but I can manage for one night for their birthday.
As I'm telling my sister (F16) about Clara and Sabrina's party and who's coming, she asks me about Emily. She basically says if Clara and Sabrina are fine with inviting her, that means they have forgiven her for high school stuff, so am I not being a bit mean for holding on to my feelings? I am a person who believes there is no expirational date on any pain caused by a person. I should not have to "forgive and forget" a person, who has not asked for it and who caused me so much pain just because that is how the world has worked. But it go me thinking, am i being a bit rude?
So, two questions: AITA for what happened in high-school? (am i in the wrong for the friendship breakup) and AITA for not wanting to forgive her?
A FEW NOTES: (i'll add more when i think of it)
I have not spoken to Emily since grade 12. Not in person, not through people, not through text. We have had no contact with one another and i am fine with that. I do not want any relationship with her.
Clara and Sabrina are two of the sweetest people in my life. It does not hurt me at all they have the odd interaction with Emily at all. Afterall they do say its very minimal contact and the few times they have made plans with Emily included, they let me know well in advance, ask if its okay to invite her and all that. Each time I say its fine because I know Im in a good place to not feel bad.
I have never yelled at Emily. Nor have I ever spoken badly about her. With our mutual friends I might complain about the situation, but I never say anything bad about her. I should also say, Emily i don't think was well-liked. As I said the two of are good students, the smart kids, whatever else you want to say. However Emily is what would be described as a "teacher's pet" and does give off an arrogant vibe at times towards others. Some of my other friends/classmates would sometimes make comments about this to me, but i would always sort of downplay it. Like, oh that's not how she really is, she just cares a lot about school. A few times I would say the comments are harsh to some of the classmates. Her, on the other hand, has called me a controlling b*tch to several people. who have all told me about it. She did bad-mouth to quite a few people.
At some point in grade 11 (not really relevant to the main story, but might be part of the reason Emily's always made at me), but I was blamed for a rumour going around that Emily had a crush on this guy in our grade. Emily and I had to go to this one teacher's class for some notes or something. And in the class was this girl who I didn;t really like. So before we walk in I whisper to her, no one can hear, that "hey there's that girl i don't like". Emily then makes it so obvious that she is looking at this girl. And next to her is one of the popular boys in our class. Emily makes it so obvious that shes looking in his direction and does it a few times, that the rumour she likes this guy becomes a huge joke in our grade. She does not like this guy, never has liked this guy, but it is a joke that him and his friends carry on. This continues for the entire year, and Emily in our therapy session does mention this fact. She says its my fault that this joke has gone around. I don't see how.

^{you always were special
always special to me
all of you
every
last
one
of
you}
[First Contact] [Dark Ages] [First] [Prev] [Next] [wiki]
Sacajawea leaned back, staring at the hologram in the middle of the table.
"I fled the Glassing. I asked Luke to rebirth my people, help me get the colony ships working, then ran for it," she said. "Twelve ships lifted off, escorted by light attack and defense craft," she closed her eyes. "Only four made it. The Mantid boarded two of the ships," she swallowed thickly. "I could hear them scream as the Mantid killed them."
Legion squeezed her hand gently.
N'Skrek could see the pain in her features.
For her, it may be thousands of years ago, but it still brings pain, he thought to himself. For me, for all of us at this table, this is an event tens of thousands of years ago. Barely remembered history.
"We stayed in jumpspace for months, years, pushing at the upper bands," she shook her head. "We eventually hit the point where the ships were pushed back down by the pressure."
N'Skrek nodded. The upper jumpspace bands required specialized engines and jumpcores.
"We used cryogenics to make the trips," she said. "We would exit jumpspace, refuel at a far orbit gas giant that was not frozen, then jump again," she shook her head. "All I could think of was to run as far and as fast as I could, and bring my people with me."
She began drawing lines.
"Hundreds of years passed while we slept, a dreamless sleep," Sacajawea said. "We ran until the ships could run no more. Two of them failed exiting jumpspace, but we were lucky. By that time I understood that each jump could be our last, so I ensured that we headed toward stellar systems that had a high probability of a planet we could survive on."
She shook her head.
"I never entered cryo-sleep. I stayed awake, guiding our path," she inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly. "I could feel our path. I knew which way to go."
Luke held up one finger, getting everyone's attention.
"The Digital Omnimessiah, he changed us with his touch. Each of us with our own part to play to save humanity," he said. He glanced at Sacajawea. "She can see, feel probabilities and adjust to a shifting situation with nearly precognizant accuracy."
Sacajawea rolled her eyes and sniffed, pursing her lips. "You make it sound so pedestrian."
Luke just smiled.
"For hundreds of years I stood on the bridge of a damaged colony ship, my pointing finger our only guide," she said.
N'Skrek noted that her voice had fallen into a sing-song cadence.
"Finally I saw the six suns, arranged in the shape of an eagle," she said. "I knew, at that moment, that this would be as far as we could go. Our ships were failing, but they could make this last leg of our journey. I chose the best one for my people. It was nearly paradise, just needing a little bit of tweaking. No life higher than plant life and simple insects, perfect to live away from hatred, war, and slaughter."
She looked down.
"I led them to their doom," she said softly. "We had to rely on high technology at first. Terraformers, the gene banks that Luke had acquired, orbital lift capacity."
She shook her head. "Little did we know that the technology would attract what you call the Mar-gite."
N'Skrek shook his head. "No. You were just in the way," he said.
She looked startled.
"If the planet had carbon based life or an oxygen heavy atmosphere, they would have devoured it," N'Skrek said. He shrugged. "It's what they do. Before recently, we thought they were some kind of locust that just denuded planets and moved on."
"Now we know that they're a weapon, being driven in front of another species," Admiral Breakheader said.
She blinked several times, then turned to Luke.
"True story," Luke shrugged.
Sacajawea was silent for a long moment, then she shivered and touched the hologram again.
"I guided my people along the True Path, the one that promised the most happiness and most reward," she said. She glanced at Luke. "Those who wished to embrace more technology had their own spaces, although I did not dwell with them."
She looked down at where Luke was still holding her hand.
"For thousands of years, six thousand of our years," she said. "Then the Outsiders came."
"How long Confederate Standard?" Admiral Breakheader asked, rubbing his chin.
N'Skrek could hear the rustle of bristles from the Vice-Admiral's five-o-clock shadow.
Sacajawea closed her eyes. "Almost six thousand to the day."
Breakheader nodded, making a note.
"At first, they just appeared in out of the way locations. Someone would see them and they'd flee, move away, and eventually they started to show up more and more near the technological enclaves," Sacajawea shook her head. "It was the technology that they were attracted to."
N'Skrek just nodded.
"Then came the attacks. Our superluminal communication links went first, but not before we learned that we were being attacked on all six worlds simultaneously. We held them off for years, protecting ourselves. No matter what path I looked at, I could see no path that had a statistically viable path to victory, I could only minimize their victories," she closed her eyes. "They began capturing my people, abducting whole villages."
"Then came the Devouring Ones," she said. "Two years later, and we were gone."
Breakheader nodded.
"Initial scouting, followed by an assault, then research, then finished with an extermination attack," he said. He looked up. "Standard xenocide tactics."
Sacajawea looked way.
"He's right," Luke said. She looked at him, surprised. "You put up too stiff of a fight so they brought in their heavy hitters after getting a good look at how we worked."
There was silence for a moment, then Commander Hentrill looked up from her datapad. "How did you die?" she asked.
"What difference does it make?" Sacajawea asked.
Hentrill looked unfazed by the glare that Sacajawea aimed down her nose at her. "It makes a lot of difference, Ma'am," she said cooly.
N'Skrek could feel that Hentrill had developed a dislike for the Immortal over the course of the conversation.
"When they came for me, when I was the last, I stepped from the cliff and fell to the rocks below, where the waves washed against the shore. By the time they reached me, I had died from my injuries," Sacajawea said. "I sang as I fell so that..."
"Suicide. They gathered your lifeless corpse," Hentrill said. She narrowed her eyes. "You have a standard datalink for the Glassing Era. Did you have one when you fell?"
Sacajawea nodded. "It was on piece of technology that I felt was necessary to embrace," she said.
"So, you killed yourself and the enemy obtained your datalink and your brain," Hentrill said. "What about your leaders? You did have military leaders, yes?"
Sacajawea glanced at Luke, who nodded. "Yes. I convinced Luke to bring back great leaders of my people and I nurtured their spirits as I raised them during the trip."
"Did they have datalinks?" Hentrill asked.
Sacajawea nodded. "Yes. I had been told, repeatedly, that effective communication was vital to winning a war."
"Daxin," Luke interjected.
Sacajawea sniffed. "Yes."
Hentrill made a note. "Were your leaders targeted early in the conflict?" she asked.
"Of course," Sacajawea said. "Many were killed, but the technology we had allowed them to return within days, only missing a few days of their previous life. Luke had convinced Peter to ensure we had a version of the SUDS, which we only used for critically important people."
N'Skrek saw a muscle twitch next to Luke's eye, but he stayed smiling.
"But it was destroyed before the Devourers came," Sacajawea said. "It could not be helped. There was almost no path I could take that would prevent it from being destroyed, so I chose the path that would result in the least casualties for my people."
N'Skrek was not that familiar with Terrans, but he could tell that Commander Hentrill was rubbed the wrong way by that statement.
"I think we should take a break," N'Skrek said. He nodded toward Luke. "I am sure both of you are fatigued from being brought back from the dead."
"Yes," Sacajawea said before Luke could do much more than open his mouth. "I would prefer to have privacy to rest and perform necessary rites."
N'Skrek just nodded. "I'll be sure you get privacy."
0-0-0-0-0
Legion stood next to the tank, one hand on the heavily armored skirt, staring at the black metal the tank was made from.
"Warsteel Mark-IV," he whispered to himself. He shook his head. "We are old friends, you and I," he said softly, running one hand across the metal. "Later superseded by arcanochromium for the Mark-V."
He didn't care if anyone heard him talking to the tank. There was just a single Telkan in the vehicle bay, running diagnostic checks on one of the big Telkan armored transports used for power armor troops.
^{your name is luke}
He shook his head, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He kept hearing slight buzzing whispers.
He felt her before he could see her. Felt her leave the lift, the warsteel doors pulling open and letting her presence roll out to fill the vehicle bay.
He heard her shoes clicking and closed his eyes, sighing.
It's not her. Not the one you knew. It's Tiffany, not Sacajawea, he thought to himself.
^{your name is luke}
He looked up just in time to see a green mantid wave shyly at him.
He smiled at it and waved back just as Sacajawea stopped next to him.
"A green mantid?" she said, her voice slightly fearful.
"Engineer caste," Luke said. "They like me."
"They are Mantid," Sacajawea said, her voice cold and hard.
"The war was thousands of years ago, and even if it wasn't, he is blameless in it," Luke said.
"But it is a Mantid," Sacajawea said. She watched coldly as the little green mantid waved and rushed away.
"I have more in common with him than I do with the majority of humanity," Luke said softly.
Sacajawea scoffed. "Surely not."
Luke nodded. "His kind was trapped inside their own minds. Capable of thought, artistic expression, fear, love, affection, all of it," he ran one finger along the armored track skirt of the tank, a fat purple spark jumping from between his finger and the black armor. "The whole war, until the Mechakrautlanders killed that Overqueen, they were inside their own little heads, screaming endlessly."
He ran his finger again, watching another spark jump out.
"When green mantids cluster up, their intelligence increases. Not by leaps and bounds, just slightly, but the bigger part is, they could feel the ones around them screaming but were unable to reach out and touch them," he said. He was silent a moment. "I understand them, they understand me. Both of us, bred and created to merely serve, without any thought as to our souls."
He turned arounds, looking at Sacajawea.
"They are among the Digital Omnimessiah's most fervent believers, and one of humanity's staunchest allies," he said. He motioned at the tanks around them. "You have been gone a long time, little sister."
"And you, did you live through the forty-thousand years? What did you do?" Sacajawea asked.
Luke shook his head. "I retreated. After the War in Heaven and in Hell, after the Flashbang, I retreated," he said. "I spent most of my time at Atlantis, which led to me being more or less imprisoned, away from the galaxy."
He flashed a smile.
"At least I had the Detainee for company. She's an interesting conversationalist."
Sacajawea just sniffed, looking around. "What is that?" she asked, pointing at the lone Telkan, who had just straightened up from the tracks and was wiping his hands off with a rag.
"A Telkan. An full member species of the Confederacy, an ally to humanity, who took part in the War in Heaven," Luke said. He waved at the Telkan, who waved back, and went back to inspecting the vehicle.
"It looks like a fox," Sacajawea said.
Luke cut her off with a motion of his hand. "I swear to God, you start talking to me about how they obviously embody the trickster spirit of the fox and thus are untrustworthy I'll put you right back where I found you," he said sharply.
Sacajawea pursed her lips in irritation.
"You have to let go. Let go of your preconceived notions. Let go of all the old hurts. It's been eight-thousand years for you and forty-thousand for the universe," Luke said softly, turning back to running his hand over the armor on the tank. "Even Daxin could see that."
Sacajawea snorted. "Like Daxin ever saw anything that wasn't in the sights of his guns."
Luke turned around, his jaw clenched. "You don't speak bad about him in my presence again," he snapped, drawing himself up to full height. "Not now, not ever again," he leaned forward slightly. "You weren't here. You left us, the Digital Omnimessiah was dead, and we were all bereft," sparks jumped out from under his boots and under the palm that rested on the tank's armor. "True, I spent over a thousand years running from him, but he was still my brother. It hurt more than anything not to be at his side when he died."
Sacajawea looked around at the tanks and armored vehicles. "He fell on some battlefield," she said. It was less a question and more a statement.
Luke shook his head. "No. He died, in his sleep, surrounded by his family. His children, grand-children, and great-grand children. He was finally at peace," he sighed. "When he arrived in Afterlife, he waited patiently for his wife and even though I wanted to spend time with him," he sighed again. "It was time to let the Walking War Crime rest."
Luke turned and faced Sacajawea. "In your mind, we are still the same as we were," he said gently. He reached out and took her hand in his. "But that is no longer true. We grew, we set aside old differences, we set aside old hatreds, and we moved forward rather than holding tight to the past."
She sniffed, looking away, but not pulling her hand away. "I have seen the history. A history of lies that glosses over the crimes and bloodshed."
"Temporal warfare counter-measures," Luke said. "After The Glassing, history and culture was lost. It was rebuilt from oral tales and fragmented records."
"Lies," she said again.
"Weaponized," Luke said. He pulled his hand free, jamming both hands into his pockets. "It's protected Terra, protected everyone, even your people, more than once. When the Atrekna came, that was probably the only thing that saved our people," he stared at her. "Saved humanity."
"So they don't care about the truth?" she asked.
"What truth? That thousands of years ago an aggressive Mantid hive wrecked up Earth? Nobody cares any more," he said. "That's the thing about them. They aren't like us. We can easily remember the Glassing. For them, it's a few paragraphs in a history book they read in school. Maybe some scholars look at that era," he looked up at the lights. "For the majority of humanity, the Glassing is as far and remote as the light of the stars in the sky," he looked back down. "And that's a good thing."
"I do not understand you," Sacajawea said.
^{she never did
not like i do
luke}
"You never did," Luke said. "You never did. She eventually understood me."
^{that's right
i understand you}
"You cloned me without my consent," she accused. She crossed her arms. "I await your justifications."
Luke just smiled. "I did. I cloned you without your consent. I told your clone that it was a clone," he looked up. "Then the Imperium caught us, turned us into the Immortals. Used her as a seer to determine how to reach victory, but she held information back and Daxin, at the head of the Martial Orders of Terra, broke the Imperium over his knee."
He looked back down. "Afterwards, she worked tirelessly on the Terra Restoration Project. While I was busy running, she returned to Terra, sought out the survivors of her people, and helped them restore their lands and way of life."
Sacajawea looked away. "As did I."
Luke chuckled. "She used temporal lensing to look back into the past, see the reality of the old ways, watch the rituals and daily life of the ancestors, and restored them."
"Yet, the history books are full of lies," Sacajawea sniffed.
"After the Second Temporal War, she understood and embraced the counter-warfare protocols. She helped interweave your people into the tales," Luke said. "Was it all lies? Partly. Like the best ones, it had good heaping helping of truth hidden inside the metaphors and personifications of events."
"And where is she now?" Sacajawea asked, watching the Telkan inspect the running gears of the armored vehicle.
"She led the Sky Nebula Alignment fleet. She led our peoples, all our peoples, to someplace where our enemies would not find us," Luke said. He turned and ran his hand over the armor again. "I stayed behind. I never lost faith that the Digital Omnimessiah would return."
He lifted his palm and made small figure eights on the armor with his fingertips.
"I loved her, so I let her go," he said softly. "She had seen it was the only way our people would survive a coming darkness."
He looked at Sacajawea. "She was right."
Sacajawea looked at where Luke was making small figure eights with his fingers on the armor. "There is no good path for me to take. All of them are risky, most of them I will perish," she said. She reached out and took his hand. "My best chances for survival is to flee," she lifted his hand and grasped it with both of hers.
"Come with me. Let us leave. You can take us elsewhere, where we have a chance of survival," she tilted her head to encompass the vehicle bay. "Too many of these paths lead to both our deaths. There are too few that lead to a place where we both survive."
Luke delicately removed his hand from hers, using one hand to lift her fingers from her grip on his hand one by one.
"No."
Sacajawea frowned. "No? Together, we can go somewhere else where we have a better chance to stand up to whatever comes and have a possibility of triumphing at a later date," she waved at the armored vehicles. "This way, the way that Treana'ad commander is taking us, is rife with nothing but death and destruction."
Luke stared at her for a long moment.
"You never understood," he said softly. "Your desire, your drive, to save your people, and yourself, blind you to the things that must be done," he put one hand on the tank again. "That sometimes the only path forward to success is the one fraught with the most danger, hardship, and suffering."
He turned away and started walking deeper into the vehicle bay.
"She understood," he said softly.
"I am not her," Sacajawea said.
"Obviously."
Sacajawea just sniffed and turned away, leaving the bay.
^{your name is luke}
By the tank, Jaskel wondered why the hell they'd chosen that particular bay for their little spat.
He looked at 8814, who was still practially hopping from foot to foot with happiness.
"I'm glad you got to meet him," Jaskel said honestly.
--yes ┏(＾0＾)┛┗(＾0＾) ┓ yes--
0-0-0-0-0
Dhruv sat in the shadowy room, wearing a pair of exercise shorts, waiting.
Finally, he could smell cigarette smoke and a presence filled the room.
"What?" a voice asked from the shadows. The end of a cigarette brightened as a drag was taken off of it, briefly illuminating gun-metal gray eyes and severe cheekbones.
"I want a favor," Dhruv said.
He could feel the smile even if he couldn't see it.
"People in my care want ice water," the woman's voice commanded.
"I want you to look up SUDS records for me. I need you to process some of them so I can either talk to them or see their last moments," Luke said. He looked away from the glow of the cigarette. "Records from a long time ago."
"If I decide to do this, I'll need specifics," the woman said, exhaling smoke that curled into the figure of a man on his knees, face in his hand, sobbing.
"I'll provide them. They should be easy to find via their x, y, z, q coordinates," Luke said.
"Now for the big question," the woman said, chuckling.
"What?" Luke asked.
"Why should I help you?" the woman asked.
"Because I'm willing to make a deal with the Devil," Legion said.
This time he could see the glint of teeth in the smile.
^{your name is legion}
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I've recently completed my third year of computer engineering at UofT, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the courses I've taken. I hope this will be beneficial to incoming first, second, and third-year engineering students. My area of depth is 6 (Software) and my areas of breadth are 4 (Control) and 5 (Computer hardware/networks).
Difficulty: How hard it was to comprehend course material and/or complete practice problems accurately. Keep in mind that difficulty is subjective but I tried to eliminate personal bias and be as objective as possible.
Workload: The amount of work to complete outside of lectures (labs, assignments, homework, studying for tests/exams).
All engineers take the exact same courses in their first year first semester and similar ones in second semester. I took these courses in 2021 during covid so some information might be outdated.
First Year Semester 1:
APS100 Orientation to Engineering:
Difficulty: 1/10 Workload: 3/10 Course Average: N/A
There is no technical material in this course. All coursework consists of Ethics analysis, creating a schedule for time management, creating your resume, and discussion board participation. During tutorials, the TA typically asks behavioral questions to the class and covers slides pertaining to engineering principles, the learning environment, test readiness, and related topics.
APS110 Engineering Chemistry and Materials Science
Difficulty: 6/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: B
This course blends elements of chemistry, physics, and mathematics, requiring lots of formulas and memorization. The assignments and online quizzes were moderately difficult. Not sure if he’s still teaching but Scott Ramsay was a really good professor. Really enjoyed watching his video demonstrations.
APS111 Engineering Strategies and Practices I
Difficulty: 3/10 Workload: 6/10 (Variable) Course Average: B
Students are organized into groups of 5-6 and are assigned the task of developing a solution for a client, following the engineering design process. Success in this course heavily relies on your team. Throughout the semester, there are several milestones where you need to submit large reports with your team, making it crucial to have capable teammates. Many teams resorted to last-minute cramming the night before each milestone (not a good idea). Additionally, there are two peer reviews, so make sure you contribute to avoid being perceived as an unproductive member. In most cases, you don’t need to worry about this though. You’d likely all be good friends by that point (and give each other a perfect review).
CIV100 Mechanics
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload: 9/10 Course Average: C+
The consensus among most students in my year was that this was the toughest first year course. It's incredibly calculation heavy, with questions that may appear straightforward in theory but require multiple steps to solve. Even a minor error can screw up your entire calculation process. The assignments are extremely time-consuming, and the quizzes pose significant challenges. I suggest you work in a group for the assignments. Furthermore, both the final exam and midterm were exceptionally difficult.
MAT186 Calculus I
Difficulty: 4/10 Workload: 4/10 Course Average: B
If you’ve taken IB or AP this course will be a breeze. Even without that background, it's still relatively straightforward. Very little on integrals, mostly derivatives, rates of change, and graphs. PCEs and WebWorks were trivial, and the midterm and exam were easy.
MAT188 Linear Algebra
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: B-
The majority of the course revolves around relatively straightforward operations on matrices and vectors. However, it does introduce abstract concepts like higher-order dimensions, which may require some deeper thinking to fully grasp. Webwork assignments were slightly more challenging compared to MAT186's, and completing assignments took a while. Once again, you should work with a partner or as a group. Pay attention in the MATLAB practicals because you’ll be using MATLAB pretty often in future courses.
First Year Semester 2:
APS105 Computer Fundamentals
Difficulty: 6/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: B-
If you’ve taken programming in high school, you will likely find this course very easy (2/10 difficulty). The course covers simple programming syntax, along with basic sorting algorithms, without delving into more advanced concepts beyond linked lists and binary trees. I think that this was one of the more enjoyable courses of first year.
APS112 Engineering Strategies and Practices II
Difficulty: 5/10 Workload: 7/10 (Variable) Course Average: B+
This course is essentially a continuation of APS111, but with the added component of being assigned an actual client with a real-world problem statement. Each group works with a unique client, and at the end of the term, you present your final report directly to them, along with your supervisors. As with APS111, the quality of your team plays a crucial role in your success. Another thing to note is that unlike APS111, there were multiple individual assignments to complete on top of your team reports.
ECE110 Electrical Fundamentals
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 6/10 Course Average: C+
Definitely one of the harder first year courses. This course marks your introduction to circuits. Topics covered include capacitors, Ampere's law, Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's laws, AC/DC circuits, magnetism, Thevenin and Norton equivalents, and more. The material is extensive and requires thorough understanding, as many future courses will build upon its concepts. Make sure that you understand the content well, given its foundational importance in subsequent courses.
ECE191 Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering
Difficulty: 0/10 Workload: 1/10 Course Average: N/A
Seminar course. You just need to show up to the lectures (one per week) and submit a 100-ish word report about what you learned.
MAT187 Calculus II
Difficulty: 6/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: C+
The workload in this course is comparable to Calc I, but the content is more challenging (obviously). It delves deeper into integrals and introduces concepts like ordinary differential equations and polar coordinates. But again, you’ll manage just fine if you did decently in Calc 1, and especially if you’ve taken AP math or IB HL math.
MIE100 Dynamics
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload 4/10 Course Average: C+
I personally found this to be the most challenging course in first year, but it seems that most people disagree with me. It shares similarities with CIV100, but you’re instead dealing with dynamic systems (moving) rather than static ones (not moving). Some concepts may prove difficult to grasp initially. However, if you focus on memorizing the relevant formulas and understanding when to apply them, you should be okay. Expect an emphasis on physics in this course.
Second year was the worst (for ECE) and a very big step up from first year. If you struggled in first year, you better lock in for second year.
Second Year Semester 1:
ECE201 ECE Seminar Course
Difficulty: 0/10 Workload: 0/10 Course Average: N/A
Another seminar course, except you just need to attend 7/10 lectures to pass. Most students just scan their Tcard at the entrance then leave right after. The lectures are pretty useless except the Magellan one where they show you how to choose courses for 3rd and 4th year.
ECE212 Circuit Analysis
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 8/10 Course Average: B+
This course provides a deeper exploration of circuits, extending beyond circuit solving to include frequency and sinusoidal analysis. Questions tend to be long so careless errors will cost you. Personally, I found the labs challenging, particularly because they required working with oscilloscopes at a higher level than I was used to, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to use that thing.
ECE241 Digital Systems
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 8/10 Course Average: B-
This hardware course focuses on the foundation of hardware. A lot of the content is at the fundamental level so it’s not too hard to comprehend. However, the main challenge lies in learning Verilog, a hardware description language. I hate Verilog. All the labs are done using Verilog, and frustratingly, the course provides no instruction on the language, nor are there many helpful resources available online. This lack of guidance made what should have been straightforward labs much more difficult. Thankfully if you are in CE, you’ll never need to take another course with Verilog again. The midterm was easy but the final was borderline impossible.
ECE244 Programming Fundamentals
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: B-
This course is the sequel to APS105, delving into more advanced concepts like pointers, constructors, polymorphism, and inheritance. Many of these topics may feel familiar if you have prior programming experience, particularly from high school. Consequently, if you're already proficient in programming, as many computer engineering students are, you should be able to navigate through this course well. The labs were generally manageable, although a couple of them were time-consuming.
MAT290 Advanced Engineering Mathematics
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload 8/10 Course Average: B
In this course, you’ll learn a lot of miscellaneous mathematical concepts that will be relevant in future courses. The goal is to establish a strong foundation to facilitate understanding in third and fourth-year courses. There is also a quiz every week. They were terrible from a time management standpoint, but as long as you spent 3-4 hours per week completing the assigned textbook questions, you should be alright since one (out of two) of the questions on the quiz is guaranteed to be an assigned textbook question (at least, that was the case when I took the course).
MAT291 Calculus III
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload 9/10 Course Average: B-
The entire workload comes from studying for those damn weekly quizzes, much like MAT290. Personally, I found it to be one of the most difficult courses I've ever taken. Think of calculus 2, but now everything is in three dimensions, encompassing concepts like surface integrals, flux integrals, and more. Additionally, the course introduces abstract topics that I still struggle to grasp. Balancing the demands of this course alongside everything else was an incredibly stressful experience.
Second Year Semester 2:
ECE216 Signals and Systems
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload:7/10 Course Average: C+
I think everyone hated this course. It was so poorly taught and the midterms felt haphazard and unpredictable. I relied on the power of BS to pass (worked surprisingly). Other than working with many graphs and MATLAB, I don’t remember much about this course because it was so uninteresting.
ECE221 Electric and Magnetic Fields
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: C+
This course serves as an introduction to fields, while also expanding on the principles covered in ECE110. Many concepts build upon intuitive ideas, such as the repulsion of identical charges and attraction of opposite charges, which can make seemingly complex topics less intimidating. There are also many procedures that you need to know to solve specific types of questions. The labs are generally straightforward. You just need to follow the steps on the lab worksheet and answer a few simple questions from the TA.
ECE231 Intro to Electronics
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: C+
This course is basically circuit analysis but significantly harder. It combines everything you've learned about circuits thus far, introducing new topics on top of that foundation. There are so many new concepts to learn and the final pretty much tests you on all of them. I’ve encountered multiple scenarios where I saw two concepts that I thought were completely separate from each other being integrated into a single question on an exam. Also very calculation heavy. Despite my experience in this course, I must admit Khoman Fang was a great professor.
ECE243 Computer Organization
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 6/10 Course Average: B
This course is a direct continuation of ECE241, and surprisingly, I found it a lot more enjoyable than its prerequisite. The focus is on Assembly language programming, which I found to be way more understandable compared to Verilog. Assembly operates at a fundamental level, so you’re technically working with the most basic building blocks in programming. The labs often involved seemingly simple tasks like counting to 10 on a HEX display, but the nature of Assembly meant that achieving this could require hundreds of lines of code. I appreciated these labs as they provided a refreshing change from the usual programming tasks. Final and midterm exams were relatively easy.
ECE297 Software communication and design
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 9/10 (Variable) Course Average: B+
Despite the demanding workload, this course was one of my favorites. The main project involved collaborating in teams of three to develop a geographical information system (similar to Google Maps). Unlike other courses where teams are assigned, here you have the freedom to choose your own teammates. Starting off, your team is given only the OpenStreetMap database, and the APIs, granting you complete control over your project's design, functionality, and optimization. Performance enhancement and pathfinding algorithms were key components of the project. It's crucial for all team members to contribute effectively for success in this course; And trust me, this is not a one or two person project. To succeed in this course, all three members must be doing their share.
Third Year:
They say that third year is the easiest year for ECE, but that depends on what courses you choose. For me, it was only slightly easier than second year but still significantly harder than first year.
APS360 Fundamentals of Deep Learning
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload : 8/10 Course Average: B+
This course felt fundamentally very different compared to the other programming related courses. If you’re unfamiliar with deep learning, the content can be overwhelming but the inner workings behind AI are both fascinating and challenging to grasp. Fortunately, much of the coding in the course revolves around preparing data, setting up AI architectures, and training/testing models, rather than building an AI from scratch. While the labs are manageable, the final project can be very time consuming, particularly as training a single model can require hours or even days. Regarding this aspect, make sure you start early. Both the midterm and final exams were quite difficult.
ECE302 Probability and Applications
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 3/10 Course Average: B-
The first half of this course is very straightforward. Just an introduction to probability. The second half is where the difficulty quickly ramps up. Make sure you don’t underestimate the second half of the course. I made the mistake of assuming the material was easy after performing well on both midterms (midterms were very easy), leading me to neglect the final third of the course so I flunked the final. FYI, our marks were determined solely by the 2 midterms and the final.
ECE344 Operating Systems
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 10/10 Course Average: B
This course had the most difficult and demanding labs I’ve ever seen in my life. They are due every two weeks and some of them took most students more than 15 hours to complete. I’ve seen people staying up all night in the GB computer rooms to finish these labs. One positive aspect of the course if Jon Eyolfson is your professor, is that all lectures are both recorded and live-streamed, allowing attendance in person, online synchronously, or asynchronously. But if you have Ding Yuan, good luck. I heard he is not only bad at teaching, but also makes you program an operating system from scratch. The course content is quite interesting and the Midterm and final exams were fair.
ECE345 Algorithms and Data Structures
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: B+
If you're one of those programming geniuses who have been doing Leetcode since like 3 years old, you’d have likely already learned all course content before you’ve even started the course. You could probably write midterm and final exams without attending any lectures. However, if you're not as experienced, attending every lecture, taking detailed notes, and staying focused is crucial. Personally speaking, some algorithms were incredibly difficult for me to grasp, while others were simple. Assignments typically include both coding and long-answer components, which can be time-consuming, but you can work with a partner.
TEP444 Positive Psychology for Engineers
Difficulty: 1/10 Workload: 3/10 Course Average: A-
This course overall was very enjoyable and a nice refreshing experience from the other technical courses. You go on excursions to various locations with your group and write reports. It's an excellent opportunity to expand your social circle and make new friends. If you aim for an A- grade (80-85), you can breeze through with minimal effort. However, achieving a higher grade (A or A+) would require significantly more work (like 5 times more, no joke), which is not worth the extra effort in my opinion.
CSC343 Introduction to Databases
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 10/10 Course Average: Unreleased
The content of this course is actually pretty interesting and is taught well. But the assignments were excessively time consuming. There are only three in total, but each one demanded such a significant investment of time to the point where I contemplated dropping the course altogether. You do work with a partner (going solo isn’t even an option if you want to complete the assignments) but even so, be prepared to invest 15-30 hours per person, per assignment (they also mark hard). Despite the workload, I do recommend taking this course because knowing SQL can substantially benefit you in the future. Just start the assignments early. On a positive note, the midterm and final were relatively straightforward.
ECE311 Introduction to Control Systems
Difficulty: 10/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: C+
This course didn't come with a heavy workload, consisting only of three labs and two midterms. However, I found the content to be very challenging. It felt like they condensed and combined every concept from every engineering math and physics course into one. Topics ranged from circuits and dynamics to Laplace transforms, matrices, Bode plots, and more. It didn’t help that Prof Scardovi didn’t record any lectures, has messy handwriting, and uses a damn chalkboard instead of modern technology like other profs do. The midterms and final were somewhat lenient compared to the lectures, but this course still ended up being my lowest mark.
ECE361 Computer networks I
Difficulty: 8/10 Workload: 9/10 Course Average: B
This course requires a lot of memorization compared to other courses. You’ll have to understand calculation processes but also memorize a lot of general knowledge about networks. A problem with this course is that some concepts that show up in tests are not adequately explained in lectures. By far the best way to study is to do past exams. Professor Valaee often recycles questions, sometimes even directly copying past midterms and finals (like he did in my cohort). Unlike other courses, there is no big assignment/lab for this course, but it makes up for it with quantity. There’s a quiz every week, a wireshark lab every 2 weeks, a programming lab every 2 weeks, and a midterm. The programming labs are already difficult by themselves, but this cumulative workload felt very overwhelming.
ECE472 Engineering Economics and Entrepreneurship
Difficulty: 7/10 Workload: 5/10 Course Average: B+
This is straight up an economics course, no engineering at all. You’ll learn about investments, equity, financing, and related areas. There are 4 quizzes throughout the semester, with quiz 3 (quiz 3 specifically) being by far the hardest (average in the 50s). Since you're able to bring your textbook to the quizzes and exam, my biggest tip is to write past quiz and exam solutions in your textbook, as there's a limited pool of questions, and new questions often resemble some kind of variation of past ones.
ECE421 Introduction to Machine Learning
Difficulty: 9/10 Workload: 7/10 Course Average: unreleased
While the course content itself may be challenging, surprisingly, the midterm and final exams were pretty easy. There's a slight discorrelation between the lecture material and what appears on the exams, but relying on past exams for preparation should be enough. The course leans heavily on mathematical concepts, much more so than APS360. The assignments were difficult and tedious but I recommend you work with others to complete it.
With that, I've covered my thoughts and tips for all the engineering courses I've completed. Transitioning into your next year in engineering, particularly if you’re transitioning from high school, can feel daunting. However, remember that you're not alone in this experience – many of your peers are facing similar challenges. If you need any more advice or have questions, feel free to reach out to me via DMs!

1. Imagery: Prompt: Dive into a character's mind as they recall a significant memory. Use vivid imagery in their inner dialogue to recreate the sights, sounds, and emotions of that moment.
   
2. Metaphor: Prompt: Explore a character's internal struggles by employing metaphors in their thoughts. Compare their inner conflicts to natural phenomena or objects, providing readers with a metaphorical window into their psyche.
   
3. Simile: Prompt: Develop a character's self-reflection using similes to describe their own attributes or emotional state. Compare aspects of their personality or feelings to familiar elements to enhance reader understanding.
   
4. Rhyme: Prompt: Craft an internal monologue where a character's thoughts unintentionally rhyme. Experiment with the natural flow of their inner dialogue, adding a poetic touch to their self-reflection.
   
5. Meter: Prompt: Create an introspective moment for your character with a specific meter in their inner dialogue. Pay attention to the rhythmic beats to emphasize the cadence of their thoughts.
   
6. Alliteration: Prompt: Convey a character's heightened emotions through alliteration in their inner thoughts. Use the repetition of consonant sounds to mirror the intensity of their feelings.
   
7. Assonance: Prompt: Explore a character's internal emotional landscape using assonance. Focus on the repetition of vowel sounds within their thoughts to evoke a particular mood.
   
8. Personification: Prompt: Infuse life into a character's internal struggles by personifying their emotions. Describe these emotional states as if they have distinct personalities, lending depth to the character's introspection.
   
9. Symbolism: Prompt: Integrate symbolic elements into a character's inner dialogue. Have them reflect on objects or concepts that represent deeper meaning in their personal journey.
   
10. Enjambment: Prompt: Develop a stream-of-consciousness moment in a character's inner dialogue. Allow their thoughts to flow seamlessly from one idea to the next without interruption, capturing the fluidity of their mind.
    
11. Repetition: Prompt: Convey a character's inner turmoil through the repetition of a key word or phrase in their thoughts. Explore how this repetition amplifies the intensity of their internal struggles.
    
12. Free Verse: Prompt: Break away from structured thought patterns in a character's internal monologue. Write without constraints, allowing the character's emotions and reflections to guide the form and flow of their inner dialogue.
    
13. Stanza: Prompt: Divide a character's inner thoughts into stanzas, with each representing a distinct facet of their emotions or reflections. Explore how this organizational structure enhances the depth of their self-exploration.
    
14. Theme: Prompt: Have a character delve into their thoughts on a central theme of the story. Ensure that their internal dialogue contributes to the exploration and expression of that theme.
    
15. Tone: Prompt: Shift the tone within a character's inner dialogue to reflect their changing emotions. Guide readers through the character's internal journey by altering the emotional atmosphere as their thoughts evolve.
    
16. Connotation: Prompt: Introduce a word with strong connotations into a character's internal dialogue. Explore the nuanced emotions and associations tied to the word within the context of their thoughts.
    
17. Irony: Prompt: Create an internal dialogue where irony plays a crucial role in the character's self-reflection. Showcase situations where the character's intended and actual understanding of a situation diverge, adding complexity to their thoughts.
    
18. Allusion: Prompt: Incorporate an allusion to a well-known literary work or historical event into a character's inner dialogue. Explore how this reference enriches the depth and meaning of their introspection.
    
19. Syntax: Prompt: Experiment with sentence structure in a character's internal monologue. Use varied syntax to convey the ebb and flow of their thoughts, mirroring the complexity of their inner world.
    
20. Diction: Prompt: Shape the mood of a character's internal dialogue by carefully selecting their inner thoughts. Choose words that align with the desired emotional atmosphere, influencing the overall tone of their introspection.
    

The article is intended primarily for Game Masters who play games in settings inspired by Lovecraft’s works. However, I hope that other fans of cosmic horror will also find something for themselves here. The interesting facts presented here may also be entertaining for people who do not know the work of The Loner of Providence, but some of the references may be unclear to them. The article contains several anecdotes – either from real history or from beliefs that exist in the real world, and suggestions on how they can be related to the Cthulhu mythology. So read about:

• Sea Peoples, bane of ancient civilizations,
• a forgotten Eldritch abomination from Greek mythology,
• Jan Twardowski, the first man on the Moon,
• mathematicians and physicists who wanted to know the structure of reality and lost their minds,
• one of the most mysterious characters from the Bible and a dark, occult ritual that underlies monotheism.

Invasion of the Sea Peoples
Ancient, super-advanced, fallen civilizations are one of the favorite motifs of fantasy. And truth be told, something similar happened in real history. Of course, in reality, the fallen civilizations did not have sci-fi supertechnology at their disposal, but their collapse still led to great destabilization. We are talking about the invasion of the so-called Sea Peoples, which took place at the turn of the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Sea Peoples are mobile and warlike groups of people of unknown origin. They caused the collapse of several advanced cultures, including: Mycenaean and Hittite. Only the Egyptians managed to defeat them in a great battle. Well, the material for Lovecraftian inspiration is obvious. A mysterious army, coming out of nowhere, called the „Sea Peoples”, leading to the fall of the most powerful human civilizations at that time? Let us add that, according to some historians, the descendants of the Sea Peoples destroyed by the Egyptians were the Philistines. Yes, the same Philistines, one of whose main deities was the well-known Dagon to Lovecraftomaniacs… Deep Ones say hello. Let us also add that, according to Egyptian records, the tribes of the Sea Peoples had names such as Ekvesh, Teresh, Lucki, Sherden, Shekelesh, Tekel and Peleset. Sounds suitably dark, blasphemous and filthy? If we want to dig deeper, one of the pharaohs who ruled Egypt was Akhenaten – yes, that heretic who tried to replace the worship of traditional Egyptian gods with the religion of the Aten and who is very much liked by conspiracy theorists. Let’s add to the mix that Middle Eastern cultures had quite a negative attitude towards the sea as such. Babylonian Marduk had to defeat the giant monsters of Chaos – Apsu and Tiamat, personifications of fresh and salt waters, respectively. The Bible also contains traces of the myth about the fight between Yahweh and Leviathan, and the Book of Revelation, describing the new, ideal world, emphasizes that „I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” Let’s assume that the players are researchers of an antiquity – historians, archaeologists, etc. They conduct research on the Sea Peoples. Of course, as common sense dictates, they assume that these were human warriors. However, as time goes on, more and more evidence appears that they were not completely human again, and the evidence of their monstrosity becomes increasingly difficult to put down to the demonization that Egyptian chroniclers used against their enemies… It becomes clear that an onslaught of inhuman and semi-human monsters came from the sea. , trying to conquer the world of that time. Moreover, after their defeat at the hands of the Egyptians, this species did not become extinct, but instead of open conquest it switched to cautious infiltration. Perhaps the Deep Ones have spies in academia who are tasked with eliminating historians who find the trail of truth…
Oh, one more interesting fact connecting the history of the Sea Peoples with Lovecraft. Well, as we know, HPL liked to use the term „Cyclopean” for huge, monumental buildings. At least he didn’t come up with it himself. Well, when the later (and at first more primitive) inhabitants, the Dorians, saw the ruins of destroyed castles left by the Mycenaean culture, they came to the conclusion that such huge buildings could not have been built by human hands, so they were probably the work of mythical giants – cyclopes.
Typhon – a classic but forgotten abomination
Modern works drawing on Greek mythology usually make Hades (completely senseless) or Kronos (a little more) the Big Bad, but they forget about Zeus’s greatest enemy – Typhon. After defeating the titans and then the gigants, the Olympian gods had to face the main boss on the way to dominating the world – Typhon. Here is an example of its description: It was larger than the largest mountains, its head touched the stars. When he stretched out his hands, one reached the eastern ends of the world and the other reached the western ends. Instead of fingers, he had a hundred dragon heads. From the waist down he had a tangle of vipers (yay, tentacles!) and wings at his shoulders. His eyes were shooting out flames. In other versions of the myth, Typhon was a flying, hundred-headed dragon. In any case – appearance and stature worthy of the Great Old One. Typhon attacked Olympus, and all the gods except Zeus fled in panic. The supreme god took up the fight… and lost it. Only in the second duel did he manage to defeat Typhon, but not kill him – he only imprisoned him, hitting him with Etna. In the sense of a mountain. A volcano – and volcanic activity is the result of Typhon’s anger, trying to break free. Typhon equaled the lord of heaven not only in strength, but in fertility. His wife was Echidna, about whom Hesiod wrote: „She also gave birth to another creature, invincible, huge, unlike neither men nor immortal gods, in a hollow cave – the divine violent Echidna, half a sharp-eyed young girl, with beautiful cheeks, half a huge snake, a great and powerful, spotted, cruel – in the depths of the holy land. This pair spawned many, if not most, of the monsters found in Greek mythology. Their offspring were very diverse and strange, as befits the spawn of enemies of the divine order, including: – Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon who never slept and guarded the apples that gave immortality, – Cerberus – we all know the dog guarding the gates of hell… but not all of us know that, according to some accounts, it had not three heads, but as many as 50, it was also covered with scales, and it had a snake by its tail… so what does this have to do with a dog? – Scylla – this lady inherited the most from the human, beautiful part of Echidna… at least initially, but eventually, as a result of various perturbations, she turned from a beautiful nymph to her siblings, becoming a six-headed sea beast, so hideous, according to Homer, that even the gods could not stand sight of her – she dwelt in a cave, from where she opened her mouth to devour the crews of ships, – Gorgons – I mean, those ladies with snake hair, not monstrous bulls. Medusa was one of them – the story that Athena turned her priestess into a monster as punishment for being raped by Poseidon is an invention of later poets, – Lernaean Hydra – a multi-headed monster with many reptilian or human heads. In place of each severed head, two others grew, and in addition, the main head was completely immortal – therefore, after chopping off the mortal heads, Heracles had to burn the stumps and bury the immortal, still hissing head underground. Hydra’s breath was poisonous. – various other creatures, such as the Sphinx, the dog Ortus, the Nemean Lion or the Chimera. Each of these descendants has the potential to be portrayed as an Eldritch abomination in its own right. To be precise – according to some accounts, the father of these creatures (and Echidna herself) was Typhon, but a monstrous, ancient (older than Poseidon) sea god, Phorcys. How to use Typhon? Well, Typhon clearly has the potential to be a Great Old One, imprisoned by… Nodens? Some other Elder God? Weak gods of humanity? Maybe his cult is trying to free him from Etna? What if he succeeds? What might distinguish Typhon from many other Great Old Ones? I would recommend focusing on his monster progenitor aspect – if he manages to reunite with Echidna, they will immediately start spawning various blasphemous beasts in series.
Jan Twardowski – the first man on the Moon
Jan (John) Twardowski, the hero of the legend, a Polish nobleman who allegedly sold his soul to the devil and became a sorcerer. Probably a historical figure, according to legend he lived in the 16th century and became famous for summoning the spirit of the deceased queen for King Sigismund Augustus. The ghost allegedly appeared in the mirror. This mirror is still kept in the church in Węgrów. According to legend, when the terms of the pact were fulfilled, devils came to kidnap Twardowski to hell. Interestingly, instead of taking the sorcerer’s soul after death, the most material demons appeared and grabbed Twardowski in order to kidnap him bodily, alive… and instead of heading towards the underground, which in legends is considered the traditional place of residence of demons and damned souls, they began to carry away up with him. At some point, Twardowski started singing religious songs, which caused the demons to escape, leaving him on the Moon, where he is said to have stayed ever since. Could the “demons” actually be extraterrestrials? Maybe mi-go? Maybe Twardowski was their agent and obtained secret knowledge and technology from them that gave him the fame of a sorcerer? As part of his studies, did he acquire knowledge of a system of sounds („religious songs”) that was able to drive away his masters when they decided that his usefulness on Earth had ended and it was time to transport him to a space base where he would be transformed into a brain in jar? Or was transportation to the Moon part of the deal from the beginning? Oh, one more interesting fact – according to legends, Twardowski used to use a rooster as a horse, which he enlarged with his magic. It’s easy to imagine an abomination that, in the eyes of laymen, might have resembled a large rooster… Examples of scenario hooks: – Twardowski’s secret mirror is still in the church in Węgrów. The local priest thinks it is just other „pagan” superstitions, but in fact it is a tool enabling contact with cosmic beings and higher realities. It may prove useful to players if they convince the priest to give it back or simply steal it. – Players are looking for Twardowski’s notes to gain knowledge about the „song” thanks to which he drove away mi-go (or other creatures that became the prototype of the „devils” from the legend). The so-called Twardowski’s „School” or „Cathedral” was located in a quarry near Kraków. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, during the construction of the church of St. Józef, a cave showing traces of alchemical experiments was discovered… And it was destroyed. But perhaps there is a second, secret laboratory under the cave that escaped destruction? And there lie Twardowski’s secrets… And again, potential obstacles may be placed by the local parish priest. But not only him. Maybe Twardowski’s legendary „rooster” lies dormant in the laboratory and was left by the sorcerer as a guard? – players are astronauts on the Moon. However, it turns out that someone lives here, someone who was not detected by previous expeditions and probes. Will Twardowski prove to be an ally in the fight against cosmic horrors? Or maybe their agent, or an independent villain? If he survived this long on the Moon thanks to blasphemous secrets, it’s possible that he had little humanity left…
The rest of the text is avalaible (of course, for free) here: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2024/05/13/some-lovecraftian-inspiration-form-real-life-and-beliefs/

This batch from Tokyo Jon's is another aggravating, "Then why did you put up with this?" venture.

British Education Korea (BEK) Apr 16. 2024

...unprofessional and incompetent staff, unqualified bilingual teachers and toxic atmosphere. Worst experience of my life. Waste of time and energy. Extremely low pay and imposed additional (unpaid) roles.

--That's really the key elements that never seem to go away:

1. Unprofessional.
2. Unorganized.
3. Incompetent.
4. Catty, petty, gossipy, abusive.

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JESSICA ENGLISH - ILSAN Apr 16. 2024

Last year they fired 6 people and claimed financial reasons. On top of this they continued to hire foreign workers from overseas despite claiming financial troubles. Because management was so poor the place is leaking students and so the ones that stay get away with anything.

--The first mistake is to trust anything that comes out of their mouths. If they tell me it's raining, I head for a window, open it, stick my hand out before I believe anything from these buffoons and their constant lies, misdirection, and propaganda. Find 5 things that you already know the answers to and that anyone in management / education ought to know, ask in a meeting, see what they say. It's fun, they know nothing about anything.
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iGarten Seocho Banpo Apr 23. 2024

From the moment I signed with this school, warning signs were glaringly evident, but I was optimistic and brushed them off. However, in hindsight, those warning signals were clear indicators of what was to come. 2. Lack of leadership. 3. Lack of Communication breakdowns 4. Incoherent curriculum 7. Dishonesty and manipulation

--Yup! That sounds like a Hagwon alright.

2. Lack of Leadership ...with those in charge either physically absent or lacking the awareness needed to foster accountability, communication, and organization.
Many times, Korean teachers are found either sitting in a corner of the room on their phones, taking selfies, or shopping, or they're outside the classroom engaging in gossip with the front desk or lunch staff.

--This happens everywhere. The laziness is profound. Search bar: Hagwon Life:The Day They Refused to Pay Me. Floor manager playing games on computer, university students playing on their phones in the break room instead of working, and everything else wrong, broken, incomplete, wrong levels, bratty / undisciplined children, no one cares. Let the foreigners pull their hair out and deal with all the issues, the rest will sit back and do like the prisoners say, "Get over, get by." The answer is, follow them right out the door no matter what the reason is, stay with them until they come back. They leave, you leave.

3. Lack of communication (School Events) Even when management does inform us of an event, it's usually with minimal notice, often just a week or two in advance... (Science Fair) It's frustrating that management only takes action when faced with the threat of embarrassment, leaving teachers to pick up the slack with little support or guidance. (Report cards) The lack of communication extends to the crucial task of writing end-of-year report card comments. Shockingly, this important information was only relayed in the last week of school, not by management, but through hearsay from a veteran teacher.* This last-minute notification left teachers with minimal time to prepare thoughtful and personalized comments for each student.

--The answer is, THEN DON'T DO IT! Why do the foreigners care more than the people who own the place? All you are teaching them when you put in double-overtime, scramble around like crazy, frantically quick-time it to get things done, don't get enough sleep or proper exercise/nutrition, do it for free at home, is that they learn to expect it from you again and again without consequences. They are as bad at education than anyone you will ever encounter on the planet. They have no idea about anything, ESPECIALLY how long it takes to plan and put together a good result. You can ask any one of them, "How long do you THINK it takes to add a worksheet or construct a lesson plan from scratch? And when do you think I will have time to finish it?" As the OP said, they don't do anything until there is a threat of embarrassment. Well then? Embarrass them and keep giving them the same talking points right from the beginning, "I don't have enough time, I don't work at home for free, everyone ignored my request for resources etc." In many cases, they do this out of disrespect to the foreigners, also they don't want to hear foreigners complain or adjust the instructions so they purposely try to run out the clock on them to keep them busy and quiet. A part of it is to see the foreigners stressed and fail. Yeah, really. They want it to fail. Give them what they want and let it collapse. Of course they blame it all on the foreigners, but just repeat your talking points and keep on repeating them. You get off topic, they'll keep jabbering in your face, you stay on topic they'll get frustrated and give up.....eventually.
iGarten Creverse, April, CDI, are all basically the Chungdahm umbrella, I don't know why anyone hasn't figured out not to work for any of these places.
Search bar: iGarten Seocho Branch DO NOT DO IT!
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You wanted to be a teacher? Well then TEACH. Students and everyone else learn a lot from failure. You can talk / complain all day long--ears closed. As soon as there are consequences for failure, leaving the classroom with a room full of naughty children, deadlines are not reached, parents are put off by poor results, management is caught with their pants down--ears open.
Now, do you have the spine inside you to reject punishment? Are you going to reject it and walk out the door, fight back, keep on with your talking points? To SAVE FACE, management will undoubtedly:
a) have a meeting in which they emote all over you, blame you for everything.
b) demand you come to work early/stay late to get said work done, without pay of course.
c) demand you go home and come back with the work completed, without sleep or pay of course.
d) threaten to withhold salary until objective is completed?
e) stink-eyes, sneers, passive-aggressive pouty behavior?
You don't need to throw chairs and getting into a big donnybrook about it (thank you Thesaurus.com). Stick to your talking points, "I'm not doing that, you didn't give us proper notice, there is no time in the day to do it, you aren't paying us overtime or actually anything at all" etc etc.. and if you really need to "Cross the Rubicon" (Thank you Wikipedia), you may have to go full Willy Wonka on their ass:
Wrong, sir! Wrong! Under section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that all offers shall become null and void if - and you can read it for yourself in this photostatic copy:
I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained, et cetera, et cetera... Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum, et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum!
It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal! You stole fizzy lifting drinks! You bumped into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized, so you get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!

tl;dr: Guts, to Griffith, is the personification of his humanity. Only if Guts‘ only reason to live is to get revenge on Griffith can Griffith hold onto his wish for true human connection.
Hey everyone!
As someone who’s only gotten into Berserk pretty recently and has pretty much read it all back-to-back in one go, I’ve had a few thoughts on what I think Griffith’s current (as of Chapter 373, which is how far I’ve read since I only read paperback lol) intentions and motivations are. I’m also a psychology student which, as you will probably notice, influences a lot of my thoughts on the matter. I’d like to share those thoughts with you and hear your opinions.
There are two main chapters I’m basing this „theory“ on, though I will probably refer to some other scenes here and there. The main chapters I want to talk about are Ch. 28 and Ch. 373 (it’s worth mentioning that I’ve only read the English and German translations, so if anyone’s got further input based on the original text, please feel free to share).
So, to reiterate, in Ch. 28 Griffith shares a conversation with Lady Charlotte about who he would consider a friend, which Guts overhears. Griffith states that he’d only consider someone a friend who, like him, lives and dies only for their own dream instead of following someone elses dream. Only then would he consider them an equal and with that, a friend. It is implied that so far, he’s never met someone like that. This of course is the moment Guts decices to leave the Hawks to look for his own dream, so that one day Griffith may consider him his equal and friend.
A few chapters earlier, in the aftermath of the Hawks‘ fight against Zodd, Guts asks Griffith why he would do something so illogical as to risk his own life to save him. Griffith replies along the lines of „Do I need a reason?“ and leaves it at that.
I believe that, at this point, Griffith sees himself as being above others (shocker, I know). What’s important to note here is that being above others is not necessarily a good thing for the psyche. Humans are a social species and have a fundamental, inherent need to belong. If you consider yourself above all others, you’re alone, and that need is not met. I believe that is the reason Griffith at this point is known for acting logically, cold and calculating. By parting from his vulnerable emotions and desires, and thus his humanity, he avoids the agony of loneliness. However, parting with ones humanity is not something you can just… do. What I’m saying is that consciously, he copes by denying himself his own humanity, however subconsciously, he still feels the human need to belong and the loneliness of being ‚the only one on his level‘. That’s why his cryptic response to Guts is essentially an expression of his denial of his own humanity. Deep down, he knows the reason for risking his life for Guts is that he wants to consider Guts a friend. But if he were to admit that, he would also admit his humanity, which to him is a contradiction in his identity: he’s above all others and he will take everything he pleases because of that. If he were human, he could not achieve his dream.
Here is where I posit the main idea of my theory: Guts, to Griffith, is the personification of his humanity.
When Griffith fights Guts as he leaves the Hawks, he’s essentially fighting for his subconscious hope that one day he will find a way to reunite his humanity and his dream. As Guts leaves, Griffiths hope to reunite with his humanity leaves with him. Griffith’s smart; he knows that for a human, conquering everything and everyone is not a valid path to achieve long-term happiness and contentment. This is what Griffith breaks down about: his only hope to one day be truly content as a human being ripped away from him.
Now, there are a LOT of scenes that you could analyze from this perspective, but for this post, I want to skip straight to Ch. 373. In this Chapter, Griffith talks about how, as the Moonlight Boy, he felt a warm nostalgia, which turned into a vague sense of longing as he woke. The warm nostalgia of course being the need to belong, which was finally met for him as he could exist within a new identity that’s not built on being above all others. Here, he experienced all he ever subconsciously dreamed of as a human: being part of a family, and the warmth of human connection. The „sense of longing as he woke“ that he talks about is of course waking up as Griffith and realizing that the Moonlight Boy is not him. He’s Griffith, and he’s given up on his humanity long ago. Everything he ever really wanted deep down is something that he can never achieve. This is what he sheds his single tear about.
But there is one last hope for him. One last possible way to reunite his wish for humanity with his dream: Guts. As Griffith, he still believes that he cannot consider someone a friend who doesn’t have a dream that they live and die for so adamantly as he does for his. But here’s the „loophole“ (which he may or may not have had already realized at the point of the eclipse, which led him to… do what he did to Casca): If Guts finds his ‚dream‘, Griffith will be able to consider him a true friend, and thus have a true human connection while still holding onto his own dream of conquering everything. But there is only one ‚dream‘ that would motivate Guts to live his life only and only for that dream. And that dream is getting revenge on Griffith. For Guts to give his life to this dream, Griffith has to continuously fuel Guts‘ hatred for him. Only if Guts‘ only reason to live is killing Griffith can he consider Guts a friend and hold onto his humanity, buried somewhere deep down inside of him.
As the Moonlight Boy, especially in Elfheim, Griffith realizes that Guts is considering to give up on getting revenge – as Casca is healed and he found a bunch of new friends, Guts is considering to just settle down and live happily ever after. If he were to do that, to Griffith, he would give up on his dream once and for all. And Griffith can’t let that happen – if he did, by his logic, he would give up on his only friend, and thus, his own humanity, which he still longs for even now. That is why he steals Casca. To motivate Guts to once again live and die only by his hatred for Griffith and his ‚dream‘ of revenge.
Whew, that was quite a lot of text now that I look back at it. But yeah, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten in my 'theory', if you wanna call it that. As I‘ve said, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for reading!

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Hola, ¿qué tal? My name is Jhon Pérez, a native Spanish tutor with over 10 years of experience in Spanish homework. I can help you with any type of Spanish assignments: exams, quizzes, tests, worksheets and essays.
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Discord: jperez
Email: [jperezonline@outlook.com](mailto:jperezonline@outlook.com)
Hola, ¿qué tal? My name is Jhon Pérez, a native Spanish tutor with over 10 years of experience in Spanish homework. I can help you with any type of Spanish assignments: exams, quizzes, tests, worksheets and essays.
I've done many accounts on VHL Central, McGraw Hill, Blackboard, Canvas, MyLabs, Cengage, Desire2Learn, ELEteca, Edgenuity, Contraseña, WileyPlus and more.
Besides being a native Spanish speaker, I have knowledge of vocabulary, functional grammar and the functions of all levels of Spanish (Beginners A1-A2, Intermediate B1-B2 and Advanced C1-C2.)
I can work with login, TeamViewer and screenshots. If you choose the latter I will make sure to be online at the agreed time to work with you (you send the screenshots and I send the answers.)
This is not an agency. It's just me, the Spanish tutor, so you don't have to pay double fees (one to the agency owner and another to the tutor.)
Unlike other Spanish tutors, I will provide you with safe, untraceable VPN connection to your closest location and follow your instruction(s) to deliver plagiarism-free Spanish papers.
For tight deadlines I can deliver the same day as long as I am contacted at least 4 hours before deadline.
My rates are pocket-friendly and flexible to fit your budget. You can use milestone payments or pay as you go.
Proof and vouches can be seen on my profile.
Send your prompt and get a quote today!
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Hello everyone! I've created a board of resources for AP Physics 1 where you can review specific topics, find worksheets, flashcards, and much more. Everything is completely free and you don't have to log in. Here is the link: https://padlet.com/jacobemilheldt/ap-physics-1-learning-path-tyf666qilcb4lmke . Please leave your feedback by messaging me or liking specific resources. Hope this helps, good luck on your exam!

The article is intended primarily for Game Masters who play games in systems inspired by Lovecraft’s works, such as Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. However, I hope that other fans of cosmic horror will also find something for themselves here. The interesting facts presented here may also be entertaining for people who do not know the work of The Loner of Providence, but some of the references may be unclear to them. The article contains several anecdotes – either from real history or from beliefs that exist in the real world, and suggestions on how they can be related to the Cthulhu mythology. So read about:

• Sea Peoples, bane of ancient civilizations,
• a forgotten Eldritch abomination from Greek mythology,
• Jan Twardowski, the first man on the Moon,
• mathematicians and physicists who wanted to know the structure of reality and lost their minds,
• one of the most mysterious characters from the Bible and a dark, occult ritual that underlies monotheism.

Invasion of the Sea Peoples
Ancient, super-advanced, fallen civilizations are one of the favorite motifs of fantasy. And truth be told, something similar happened in real history. Of course, in reality, the fallen civilizations did not have sci-fi supertechnology at their disposal, but their collapse still led to great destabilization. We are talking about the invasion of the so-called Sea Peoples, which took place at the turn of the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Sea Peoples are mobile and warlike groups of people of unknown origin. They caused the collapse of several advanced cultures, including: Mycenaean and Hittite. Only the Egyptians managed to defeat them in a great battle. Well, the material for Lovecraftian inspiration is obvious. A mysterious army, coming out of nowhere, called the „Sea Peoples”, leading to the fall of the most powerful human civilizations at that time? Let us add that, according to some historians, the descendants of the Sea Peoples destroyed by the Egyptians were the Philistines. Yes, the same Philistines, one of whose main deities was the well-known Dagon to Lovecraftomaniacs… Deep Ones say hello. Let us also add that, according to Egyptian records, the tribes of the Sea Peoples had names such as Ekvesh, Teresh, Lucki, Sherden, Shekelesh, Tekel and Peleset. Sounds suitably dark, blasphemous and filthy? If we want to dig deeper, one of the pharaohs who ruled Egypt was Akhenaten – yes, that heretic who tried to replace the worship of traditional Egyptian gods with the religion of the Aten and who is very much liked by conspiracy theorists. Let’s add to the mix that Middle Eastern cultures had quite a negative attitude towards the sea as such. Babylonian Marduk had to defeat the giant monsters of Chaos – Apsu and Tiamat, personifications of fresh and salt waters, respectively. The Bible also contains traces of the myth about the fight between Yahweh and Leviathan, and the Book of Revelation, describing the new, ideal world, emphasizes that „I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” Let’s assume that the players are researchers of an antiquity – historians, archaeologists, etc. They conduct research on the Sea Peoples. Of course, as common sense dictates, they assume that these were human warriors. However, as time goes on, more and more evidence appears that they were not completely human again, and the evidence of their monstrosity becomes increasingly difficult to put down to the demonization that Egyptian chroniclers used against their enemies… It becomes clear that an onslaught of inhuman and semi-human monsters came from the sea. , trying to conquer the world of that time. Moreover, after their defeat at the hands of the Egyptians, this species did not become extinct, but instead of open conquest it switched to cautious infiltration. Perhaps the Deep Ones have spies in academia who are tasked with eliminating historians who find the trail of truth…
Oh, one more interesting fact connecting the history of the Sea Peoples with Lovecraft. Well, as we know, HPL liked to use the term „Cyclopean” for huge, monumental buildings. At least he didn’t come up with it himself. Well, when the later (and at first more primitive) inhabitants, the Dorians, saw the ruins of destroyed castles left by the Mycenaean culture, they came to the conclusion that such huge buildings could not have been built by human hands, so they were probably the work of mythical giants – cyclopes.
Typhon – a classic but forgotten abomination
Modern works drawing on Greek mythology usually make Hades (completely senseless) or Kronos (a little more) the Big Bad, but they forget about Zeus’s greatest enemy – Typhon. After defeating the titans and then the gigants, the Olympian gods had to face the main boss on the way to dominating the world – Typhon. Here is an example of its description: It was larger than the largest mountains, its head touched the stars. When he stretched out his hands, one reached the eastern ends of the world and the other reached the western ends. Instead of fingers, he had a hundred dragon heads. From the waist down he had a tangle of vipers (yay, tentacles!) and wings at his shoulders. His eyes were shooting out flames. In other versions of the myth, Typhon was a flying, hundred-headed dragon. In any case – appearance and stature worthy of the Great Old One. Typhon attacked Olympus, and all the gods except Zeus fled in panic. The supreme god took up the fight… and lost it. Only in the second duel did he manage to defeat Typhon, but not kill him – he only imprisoned him, hitting him with Etna. In the sense of a mountain. A volcano – and volcanic activity is the result of Typhon’s anger, trying to break free. Typhon equaled the lord of heaven not only in strength, but in fertility. His wife was Echidna, about whom Hesiod wrote: „She also gave birth to another creature, invincible, huge, unlike neither men nor immortal gods, in a hollow cave – the divine violent Echidna, half a sharp-eyed young girl, with beautiful cheeks, half a huge snake, a great and powerful, spotted, cruel – in the depths of the holy land. This pair spawned many, if not most, of the monsters found in Greek mythology. Their offspring were very diverse and strange, as befits the spawn of enemies of the divine order, including: – Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon who never slept and guarded the apples that gave immortality, – Cerberus – we all know the dog guarding the gates of hell… but not all of us know that, according to some accounts, it had not three heads, but as many as 50, it was also covered with scales, and it had a snake by its tail… so what does this have to do with a dog? – Scylla – this lady inherited the most from the human, beautiful part of Echidna… at least initially, but eventually, as a result of various perturbations, she turned from a beautiful nymph to her siblings, becoming a six-headed sea beast, so hideous, according to Homer, that even the gods could not stand sight of her – she dwelt in a cave, from where she opened her mouth to devour the crews of ships, – Gorgons – I mean, those ladies with snake hair, not monstrous bulls. Medusa was one of them – the story that Athena turned her priestess into a monster as punishment for being raped by Poseidon is an invention of later poets, – Lernaean Hydra – a multi-headed monster with many reptilian or human heads. In place of each severed head, two others grew, and in addition, the main head was completely immortal – therefore, after chopping off the mortal heads, Heracles had to burn the stumps and bury the immortal, still hissing head underground. Hydra’s breath was poisonous. – various other creatures, such as the Sphinx, the dog Ortus, the Nemean Lion or the Chimera. Each of these descendants has the potential to be portrayed as an Eldritch abomination in its own right. To be precise – according to some accounts, the father of these creatures (and Echidna herself) was Typhon, but a monstrous, ancient (older than Poseidon) sea god, Phorcys. How to use Typhon? Well, Typhon clearly has the potential to be a Great Old One, imprisoned by… Nodens? Some other Elder God? Weak gods of humanity? Maybe his cult is trying to free him from Etna? What if he succeeds? What might distinguish Typhon from many other Great Old Ones? I would recommend focusing on his monster progenitor aspect – if he manages to reunite with Echidna, they will immediately start spawning various blasphemous beasts in series.
Jan Twardowski – the first man on the Moon
Jan (John) Twardowski, the hero of the legend, a Polish nobleman who allegedly sold his soul to the devil and became a sorcerer. Probably a historical figure, according to legend he lived in the 16th century and became famous for summoning the spirit of the deceased queen for King Sigismund Augustus. The ghost allegedly appeared in the mirror. This mirror is still kept in the church in Węgrów. According to legend, when the terms of the pact were fulfilled, devils came to kidnap Twardowski to hell. Interestingly, instead of taking the sorcerer’s soul after death, the most material demons appeared and grabbed Twardowski in order to kidnap him bodily, alive… and instead of heading towards the underground, which in legends is considered the traditional place of residence of demons and damned souls, they began to carry away up with him. At some point, Twardowski started singing religious songs, which caused the demons to escape, leaving him on the Moon, where he is said to have stayed ever since. Could the “demons” actually be extraterrestrials? Maybe mi-go? Maybe Twardowski was their agent and obtained secret knowledge and technology from them that gave him the fame of a sorcerer? As part of his studies, did he acquire knowledge of a system of sounds („religious songs”) that was able to drive away his masters when they decided that his usefulness on Earth had ended and it was time to transport him to a space base where he would be transformed into a brain in jar? Or was transportation to the Moon part of the deal from the beginning? Oh, one more interesting fact – according to legends, Twardowski used to use a rooster as a horse, which he enlarged with his magic. It’s easy to imagine an abomination that, in the eyes of laymen, might have resembled a large rooster… Examples of scenario hooks: – Twardowski’s secret mirror is still in the church in Węgrów. The local priest thinks it is just other „pagan” superstitions, but in fact it is a tool enabling contact with cosmic beings and higher realities. It may prove useful to players if they convince the priest to give it back or simply steal it. – Players are looking for Twardowski’s notes to gain knowledge about the „song” thanks to which he drove away mi-go (or other creatures that became the prototype of the „devils” from the legend). The so-called Twardowski’s „School” or „Cathedral” was located in a quarry near Kraków. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, during the construction of the church of St. Józef, a cave showing traces of alchemical experiments was discovered… And it was destroyed. But perhaps there is a second, secret laboratory under the cave that escaped destruction? And there lie Twardowski’s secrets… And again, potential obstacles may be placed by the local parish priest. But not only him. Maybe Twardowski’s legendary „rooster” lies dormant in the laboratory and was left by the sorcerer as a guard? – players are astronauts on the Moon. However, it turns out that someone lives here, someone who was not detected by previous expeditions and probes. Will Twardowski prove to be an ally in the fight against cosmic horrors? Or maybe their agent, or an independent villain? If he survived this long on the Moon thanks to blasphemous secrets, it’s possible that he had little humanity left…
The rest of the text is avalaible (of course, for free) here: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2024/05/13/some-lovecraftian-inspiration-form-real-life-and-beliefs/

1. Imagery: Prompt: Develop a subplot by immersing readers in a secondary storyline. Use vivid imagery to describe the new setting, characters, and events, providing a rich backdrop that enhances the overall narrative.
   
2. Metaphor: Prompt: Introduce a metaphorical element into a subplot, comparing it to the main storyline. Explore how this metaphorical connection adds depth and resonance to both narrative threads.
   
3. Simile: Prompt: Expand a subplot by using similes to draw comparisons between the challenges faced by secondary characters and those in the main plot. Highlight similarities and differences to create a nuanced subplot.
   
4. Rhyme: Prompt: Craft a subplot where characters communicate or navigate conflicts using rhyming elements. Explore how the use of rhyme within the subplot adds a distinctive and memorable quality to the secondary storyline.
   
5. Meter: Prompt: Develop a subplot with a specific meter, creating a unique rhythm that distinguishes it from the main narrative. Pay attention to the pacing and syllabic beats to emphasize the subplot's significance.
   
6. Alliteration: Prompt: Add a layer of intrigue to a subplot by incorporating alliteration in the dialogue or events. Experiment with repeated consonant sounds to create a sense of cohesion within the secondary storyline.
   
7. Assonance: Prompt: Enhance the emotional resonance of a subplot using assonance. Focus on the repetition of vowel sounds to evoke specific moods or atmospheres within the secondary narrative.
   
8. Personification: Prompt: Infuse life into elements of a subplot by personifying them. Explore how assigning human qualities to aspects of the secondary storyline adds depth and emotional connection for readers.
   
9. Symbolism: Prompt: Integrate symbolic elements into a subplot that parallel or contrast with symbols in the main plot. Explore how these symbols enrich the overall thematic development of the narrative.
   
10. Enjambment: Prompt: Develop a subplot with enjambment in the characters' interactions or events. Allow the subplot's elements to flow seamlessly, creating a sense of continuity and interconnectedness with the main storyline.
    
11. Repetition: Prompt: Establish a recurring motif or theme within a subplot. Explore how repetition can reinforce key elements, creating a sense of unity and importance in the development of the secondary narrative.
    
12. Free Verse: Prompt: Break away from traditional narrative structures in a subplot. Allow the events and character arcs within the secondary storyline to unfold organically, guided by the natural flow of the subplot's development.
    
13. Stanza: Prompt: Divide the development of a subplot into stanzas, with each representing a significant phase or perspective. Explore how this organizational structure enhances the pacing and thematic evolution of the secondary storyline.
    
14. Theme: Prompt: Develop a subplot that explores a thematic element distinct from the main plot. Ensure that the secondary narrative contributes to the overall thematic richness of the story.
    
15. Tone: Prompt: Shift the tone within a subplot to evoke different emotions. Guide readers through a range of feelings within the secondary storyline, creating a layered and dynamic narrative experience.
    
16. Connotation: Prompt: Introduce a word with strong connotations into the dialogue or descriptions within a subplot. Explore the nuanced emotions and associations tied to the word within the context of the secondary narrative.
    
17. Irony: Prompt: Create a subplot where elements of irony play a significant role. Showcase situations where the intended and actual outcomes within the secondary storyline diverge, adding complexity and depth.
    
18. Allusion: Prompt: Integrate an allusion to a well-known literary work or historical event into a subplot. Explore how this reference enhances the depth and meaning of the secondary narrative for readers familiar with the source material.
    
19. Syntax: Prompt: Experiment with sentence structure in the development of a subplot. Use varied syntax to convey the unique rhythm and flow of the secondary narrative, mirroring its distinct characteristics.
    
20. Diction: Prompt: Shape the mood of a subplot by carefully selecting the language used within its development. Choose words that align with the desired emotional atmosphere, influencing the overall tone of the secondary storyline.
    

The article is intended primarily for Game Masters who play games in systems inspired by Lovecraft’s works, such as Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. However, I hope that other fans of cosmic horror will also find something for themselves here. The interesting facts presented here may also be entertaining for people who do not know the work of The Loner of Providence, but some of the references may be unclear to them. The article contains several anecdotes – either from real history or from beliefs that exist in the real world, and suggestions on how they can be related to the Cthulhu mythology. So read about:

• Sea Peoples, bane of ancient civilizations,
• a forgotten Eldritch abomination from Greek mythology,
• Jan Twardowski, the first man on the Moon,
• mathematicians and physicists who wanted to know the structure of reality and lost their minds,
• one of the most mysterious characters from the Bible and a dark, occult ritual that underlies monotheism.

Invasion of the Sea Peoples
Ancient, super-advanced, fallen civilizations are one of the favorite motifs of fantasy. And truth be told, something similar happened in real history. Of course, in reality, the fallen civilizations did not have sci-fi supertechnology at their disposal, but their collapse still led to great destabilization. We are talking about the invasion of the so-called Sea Peoples, which took place at the turn of the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Sea Peoples are mobile and warlike groups of people of unknown origin. They caused the collapse of several advanced cultures, including: Mycenaean and Hittite. Only the Egyptians managed to defeat them in a great battle. Well, the material for Lovecraftian inspiration is obvious. A mysterious army, coming out of nowhere, called the „Sea Peoples”, leading to the fall of the most powerful human civilizations at that time? Let us add that, according to some historians, the descendants of the Sea Peoples destroyed by the Egyptians were the Philistines. Yes, the same Philistines, one of whose main deities was the well-known Dagon to Lovecraftomaniacs… Deep Ones say hello. Let us also add that, according to Egyptian records, the tribes of the Sea Peoples had names such as Ekvesh, Teresh, Lucki, Sherden, Shekelesh, Tekel and Peleset. Sounds suitably dark, blasphemous and filthy? If we want to dig deeper, one of the pharaohs who ruled Egypt was Akhenaten – yes, that heretic who tried to replace the worship of traditional Egyptian gods with the religion of the Aten and who is very much liked by conspiracy theorists. Let’s add to the mix that Middle Eastern cultures had quite a negative attitude towards the sea as such. Babylonian Marduk had to defeat the giant monsters of Chaos – Apsu and Tiamat, personifications of fresh and salt waters, respectively. The Bible also contains traces of the myth about the fight between Yahweh and Leviathan, and the Book of Revelation, describing the new, ideal world, emphasizes that „I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” Let’s assume that the players are researchers of an antiquity – historians, archaeologists, etc. They conduct research on the Sea Peoples. Of course, as common sense dictates, they assume that these were human warriors. However, as time goes on, more and more evidence appears that they were not completely human again, and the evidence of their monstrosity becomes increasingly difficult to put down to the demonization that Egyptian chroniclers used against their enemies… It becomes clear that an onslaught of inhuman and semi-human monsters came from the sea. , trying to conquer the world of that time. Moreover, after their defeat at the hands of the Egyptians, this species did not become extinct, but instead of open conquest it switched to cautious infiltration. Perhaps the Deep Ones have spies in academia who are tasked with eliminating historians who find the trail of truth…
Oh, one more interesting fact connecting the history of the Sea Peoples with Lovecraft. Well, as we know, HPL liked to use the term „Cyclopean” for huge, monumental buildings. At least he didn’t come up with it himself. Well, when the later (and at first more primitive) inhabitants, the Dorians, saw the ruins of destroyed castles left by the Mycenaean culture, they came to the conclusion that such huge buildings could not have been built by human hands, so they were probably the work of mythical giants – cyclopes.
Typhon – a classic but forgotten abomination
Modern works drawing on Greek mythology usually make Hades (completely senseless) or Kronos (a little more) the Big Bad, but they forget about Zeus’s greatest enemy – Typhon. After defeating the titans and then the gigants, the Olympian gods had to face the main boss on the way to dominating the world – Typhon. Here is an example of its description: It was larger than the largest mountains, its head touched the stars. When he stretched out his hands, one reached the eastern ends of the world and the other reached the western ends. Instead of fingers, he had a hundred dragon heads. From the waist down he had a tangle of vipers (yay, tentacles!) and wings at his shoulders. His eyes were shooting out flames. In other versions of the myth, Typhon was a flying, hundred-headed dragon. In any case – appearance and stature worthy of the Great Old One. Typhon attacked Olympus, and all the gods except Zeus fled in panic. The supreme god took up the fight… and lost it. Only in the second duel did he manage to defeat Typhon, but not kill him – he only imprisoned him, hitting him with Etna. In the sense of a mountain. A volcano – and volcanic activity is the result of Typhon’s anger, trying to break free. Typhon equaled the lord of heaven not only in strength, but in fertility. His wife was Echidna, about whom Hesiod wrote: „She also gave birth to another creature, invincible, huge, unlike neither men nor immortal gods, in a hollow cave – the divine violent Echidna, half a sharp-eyed young girl, with beautiful cheeks, half a huge snake, a great and powerful, spotted, cruel – in the depths of the holy land. This pair spawned many, if not most, of the monsters found in Greek mythology. Their offspring were very diverse and strange, as befits the spawn of enemies of the divine order, including: – Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon who never slept and guarded the apples that gave immortality, – Cerberus – we all know the dog guarding the gates of hell… but not all of us know that, according to some accounts, it had not three heads, but as many as 50, it was also covered with scales, and it had a snake by its tail… so what does this have to do with a dog? – Scylla – this lady inherited the most from the human, beautiful part of Echidna… at least initially, but eventually, as a result of various perturbations, she turned from a beautiful nymph to her siblings, becoming a six-headed sea beast, so hideous, according to Homer, that even the gods could not stand sight of her – she dwelt in a cave, from where she opened her mouth to devour the crews of ships, – Gorgons – I mean, those ladies with snake hair, not monstrous bulls. Medusa was one of them – the story that Athena turned her priestess into a monster as punishment for being raped by Poseidon is an invention of later poets, – Lernaean Hydra – a multi-headed monster with many reptilian or human heads. In place of each severed head, two others grew, and in addition, the main head was completely immortal – therefore, after chopping off the mortal heads, Heracles had to burn the stumps and bury the immortal, still hissing head underground. Hydra’s breath was poisonous. – various other creatures, such as the Sphinx, the dog Ortus, the Nemean Lion or the Chimera. Each of these descendants has the potential to be portrayed as an Eldritch abomination in its own right. To be precise – according to some accounts, the father of these creatures (and Echidna herself) was Typhon, but a monstrous, ancient (older than Poseidon) sea god, Phorcys. How to use Typhon? Well, Typhon clearly has the potential to be a Great Old One, imprisoned by… Nodens? Some other Elder God? Weak gods of humanity? Maybe his cult is trying to free him from Etna? What if he succeeds? What might distinguish Typhon from many other Great Old Ones? I would recommend focusing on his monster progenitor aspect – if he manages to reunite with Echidna, they will immediately start spawning various blasphemous beasts in series.
Jan Twardowski – the first man on the Moon
Jan (John) Twardowski, the hero of the legend, a Polish nobleman who allegedly sold his soul to the devil and became a sorcerer. Probably a historical figure, according to legend he lived in the 16th century and became famous for summoning the spirit of the deceased queen for King Sigismund Augustus. The ghost allegedly appeared in the mirror. This mirror is still kept in the church in Węgrów. According to legend, when the terms of the pact were fulfilled, devils came to kidnap Twardowski to hell. Interestingly, instead of taking the sorcerer’s soul after death, the most material demons appeared and grabbed Twardowski in order to kidnap him bodily, alive… and instead of heading towards the underground, which in legends is considered the traditional place of residence of demons and damned souls, they began to carry away up with him. At some point, Twardowski started singing religious songs, which caused the demons to escape, leaving him on the Moon, where he is said to have stayed ever since. Could the “demons” actually be extraterrestrials? Maybe mi-go? Maybe Twardowski was their agent and obtained secret knowledge and technology from them that gave him the fame of a sorcerer? As part of his studies, did he acquire knowledge of a system of sounds („religious songs”) that was able to drive away his masters when they decided that his usefulness on Earth had ended and it was time to transport him to a space base where he would be transformed into a brain in jar? Or was transportation to the Moon part of the deal from the beginning? Oh, one more interesting fact – according to legends, Twardowski used to use a rooster as a horse, which he enlarged with his magic. It’s easy to imagine an abomination that, in the eyes of laymen, might have resembled a large rooster… Examples of scenario hooks: – Twardowski’s secret mirror is still in the church in Węgrów. The local priest thinks it is just other „pagan” superstitions, but in fact it is a tool enabling contact with cosmic beings and higher realities. It may prove useful to players if they convince the priest to give it back or simply steal it. – Players are looking for Twardowski’s notes to gain knowledge about the „song” thanks to which he drove away mi-go (or other creatures that became the prototype of the „devils” from the legend). The so-called Twardowski’s „School” or „Cathedral” was located in a quarry near Kraków. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, during the construction of the church of St. Józef, a cave showing traces of alchemical experiments was discovered… And it was destroyed. But perhaps there is a second, secret laboratory under the cave that escaped destruction? And there lie Twardowski’s secrets… And again, potential obstacles may be placed by the local parish priest. But not only him. Maybe Twardowski’s legendary „rooster” lies dormant in the laboratory and was left by the sorcerer as a guard? – players are astronauts on the Moon. However, it turns out that someone lives here, someone who was not detected by previous expeditions and probes. Will Twardowski prove to be an ally in the fight against cosmic horrors? Or maybe their agent, or an independent villain? If he survived this long on the Moon thanks to blasphemous secrets, it’s possible that he had little humanity left…
The rest of the text is avalaible (of course, for free) here: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2024/05/13/some-lovecraftian-inspiration-form-real-life-and-beliefs/

Hey everyone!
First of all, I sought approval from the moderators to post this announcement and they gave their consent, so thank you very much for allowing me to share this with you all!
I just wanted to share some exciting news for anyone involved in learning or teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). UsingEnglish.com, a leading resource for English language learners and teachers, has recently launched a brand-new section dedicated to ESL worksheets and printables! 🎉
You can check it out here: https://www.usingenglish.com/handouts/
This new section is packed with printable worksheets that cover all sorts of topics, from grammar and vocabulary to pronunciation and practical English usage. Whether you're teaching beginners or an advanced learners, there's something here for you.
Here's what I think makes this new section so great:

• Launching with 518 ESL Worksheets: These worksheets were painstakingly written by Richard Flynn, co-founder of UsingEnglish.com, who sadly passed away in February. This is a fitting tribute to him and a great example of some of his work that’s available on this site.
• A Diverse Range of Topics: Whether it's grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or practical English usage, our worksheets cover the essential skills needed for effective communication in English.
• Ease of Navigation: The section is organised to help you find exactly what you need quickly, whether looking for something specific or browsing for inspiration.
• Presented as Printable PDFs: Each worksheet is available as a PDF for convenient printing, perfect for classroom activities or home practice.
• Corresponding Online Quizzes: Every worksheet is also presented as an online quiz, meaning that learners can practise their skills interactively and get immediate feedback, making the learning process even more effective and engaging.
• Corresponding Answer Sheets: To enhance the learning and teaching experience, every worksheet comes with a PDF answer sheet - ideal for self-checking or facilitating classroom discussions.
• Free Access: True to our commitment to the ESL community, these invaluable resources are offered completely free of charge.

We are excited to launch the ESL Worksheets section. We look forward to it continuing to grow and become an indispensable tool for English language learners and educators worldwide (if you like what you see, please consider helping us by sharing it with interested friends and colleagues).
So, if you're an ESL teacher looking for new materials for your students, head over to https://www.usingenglish.com/handouts/ and explore this new section. It's live now and ready for you to dive in!
Happy teaching!

I want to apply to top schools but I’m curious would these stats get me in? My counselor last year had a talk with me and said I had no chance for dropping a math course because of medical reasons at the time and a lot of work (that class ended up being dropped due to complains of several students). She told me after a year though that I might have a chance. this year I’m working hard in making a difference but I’m rlly unsure due to the competitive top 20 class, they have limited and almost no ecs but still. If anyone does reply I would like to get some tips Ofcourse no one knows what exactly gets anyone in but any suggestions for ecs and what to improve?
For context my school is very low income and it does reflect in the education and state tests
Taking all IB senior year + top 5% of my class, 3.98 gpa/4.0
Also: Every Stanford student from my school majors into law or engineering never Econ or finance I’m considering Econ + poli sci
Sat planning on getting more than a 1400 gonna grind all summer possibly getting a tutor to get a 1500+
Ecs: Business club president + deca president for this fall, made a project website for 1000+ students and the college and career center to gain access to resources related to business and scholarships in general
Women in corporate related Organization co founder- making resources accessible, one one one help creating a college profile and ecs, tips for classes and more and more than 500+ ppl
Volunteer at a global law related organization where I write articles, possibly editor in chief board position if accepted
Volunteer (completed some research related to corporate and mental health) & internship -> PVSA award
Teacher assistant for 3 years where I created worksheets for middle schoolers that were simplified in the fields of economics, history mainly, and ELA. Did a lot of grading aswell and provided feedback to students
GWC alumni this summer (SIP awarded)
Data analysis internship & marketing aswell, found CDS of several colleges to create stats for a website and created content for a popular platform
Mock trial for two years, planning on running this fall for a board position
Career fellowship for this summer where the company funds a project (paid)
A writer of a economics related book publishing soon where students state how they became interested in the field and a specific event they applied economics, changing their POV
Also dual enrollment: Econ course & criminal justice course
Expected this fall: democracy related fellowship for women stipend provided, UCLA business program for free, a college mentee program guiding students into top schools if I do become accepted, and other scholarships and essay contests

There have been an increasing number of juniors visiting this sub asking for advice about writing essays. Below are some tips and advice for making your essay stand out as excellent. Feel free to ask questions because I will answer every single question in the comments.
I know from experience that many of you are struggling to identify a good topic for your essay. Conventional wisdom says to start by brainstorming a list of potential topics, and chances are, you have already started a mental list of ideas. You might think you only have a few choices for topics, based on your activities or experiences, or essay examples you read, or the rough draft you already started (or worse, that GPT started...). I advise, however, that you put down your list of topics and back away from it. Forget that exists for a moment. Seriously - thinking about this initial list tethers you to certain ideas that might not actually be your best options.
Now you can begin brainstorming with a clean slate.
Start with thinking about what you want to show in your entire application, not just one essay. Every single component in your app has one purpose – to tell more about YOU. Filling out the rest of the application by rote and focusing solely on the essay is short-sighted and will leave so much potential untapped in your application.

It's About You. Tell Your Story - And Be The Protagonist

An admissions officer’s goal is to understand you fully, in the context of your background and the rest of the applicant pool. They will begin this with assessing your academic abilities and potential. Then they will evaluate how you will fit into the student body they’re trying to curate. All of this can be somewhat broad and diverse and touch on several institutional goals. But they will dig deep to find out what each applicant is like, what your core values and motivations are, what kind of student you will be, how you will contribute to the vibrant and intellectual campus community they’re building, etc.
Your goal with essay brainstorming is to ascertain how to powerfully tell your story in a manner that will fit these criteria. The entirety of your application (again, not just one essay) aims to showcase your abilities, qualifications, and uncommon attributes as a person in a positive way. Before you begin outlining or writing your application, you must determine what is unique about you that will stand out to an admissions panel. All students are truly unique. Not one other student has the same combination of life experiences, personality, passions, or goals as you do. Your job in your application is to frame your unique personal attributes in a positive and compelling way. How will you fit on campus? What personal qualities, strengths, core values, talents, or different perspectives do you bring to the table? What stories, deeper motivations/beliefs, or formative experiences can you use to illustrate all of this?
It is always helpful to start with some soul-searching or self-examination. You might not immediately know what you want to share about yourself. It’s not a simple task to decide how to summarize your whole life and being in a powerful and eloquent way on your application. Introspection prior to starting your application takes additional time and effort rather than jumping straight into your first draft. But it is also a valuable method to start writing a winning application that stands out from the stack.
You'll see the advice everywhere that all essay prompts are really about the same thing - you. The goal of each essay then is to showcase who you are, what matters to you, and how you think. I guarantee if you're on this sub enough, you'll hear the advice to "show, don't tell" when writing about yourself. But what does this mean really, and how do you do it well? How do you even get started on an essay that does this?

Introspection Questions

It’s often easiest to start thinking in terms of superlatives, especially those related to personal insights -- what are the most meaningful things about you, and what do you value the most? Here is a list of questions to help you brainstorm broadly before you narrow down your focus for writing:

• What are your interests?
  
• What sparks your curiosity?
  
• About what topics do you enjoy reading?
  
• With whom do you enjoy spending time? Who has impacted your life the most?
  
• Reflect upon “superlatives” in your life. What moments were most memorable, formative, enlightening, enjoyable, or valuable? What physical possessions, experiences, dreams, or lessons could make your superlatives list?
  
• Stop and think about what things, people, or circumstances in your life are really unique, fascinating, or outlandish. Are there any that really have a lot of "cultural flavor" (whatever your culture is)?
  

I have a free introspection worksheet with over 100 questions like this designed to help you find ideas worth exploring in your essays. You can find it on the A2C Discord or download it directly here.

Find Your Story And Arc

Think of a small anecdote or story from your life that you could share that serves as a microcosm of who you are and what is important to you. It will massively help you narrow this down and find a gem of a story if you first start by thinking about your application arc or theme. This is the one-phrase summary of your entire application. It could be "brilliant entrepreneur who started her own successful business" or "talented athlete who wants to study economics and finance as they pertain to sports", or even "avid baker whose hobby sparked an interest in chemistry". It doesn't have to be related to your intended major, but it can help your arc be stronger and clearer if it is.
Once you have an arc determined and a story to share, think about what you want that story to say about you. This is where it can help to think of this as something you would share on a date - what impression does it make about you to the reader? Once you know this, start showing, not telling this attribute of yourself through your story. For example, instead of saying that you're compassionate toward others, you show an example of a time you were compassionate, then elaborate on why, and what it means to you.

Essay Brainstorming Techniques

If you are having trouble finding a story, or simply have writer’s block once you have picked your topic, here are some ideas to get your juices flowing:

• Stream of consciousness writing -- Start writing whatever is in your head, and don’t stop for 30 minutes. You probably won’t use what you just wrote for your essay, but it will help you find a starting point.
  
• Journaling -- Answer the prompt as if you were writing in a journal. This will get you in the habit of writing about yourself and establish comfort with the concept. It will also take you to a new level of introspection and self-awareness.
  
• Twitter X style -- Write several rapid-fire responses to the prompt in 280 characters or less. Choose an idea from these responses to expound upon in your essay.
  
• Read each essay prompt, then go through your introspection worksheet responses and connect the stories and insights to one or more of the prompts. Some students like using color coding to visually see how their different ideas might work together.
  

Why Essays Matter

Here's the thing a lot of people don't realize about college admission: it's not an award for being the smartest, most accomplished, or most impressive. It's an invitation to join a community. Far too many students think that if they can just show that they're smart enough, they'll get in. Yale even says right on their admissions website that 75% of their applicants are academically qualified to succeed at Yale. But only ~4% are getting in. That should tell you that they're looking for more than just top tier test scores and grades. To be perfectly clear, you will need top tier grades and (optionally) test scores to show that you're qualified, and the vast majority of my students come to me with this part already in the bank. But what sets the admits apart? It's personal insight - sharing who you are, how you think, what matters to you, and how you engage community. You can't just say "/IAmVerySmart, please admit me," or even "I did a cool thing guys! Isn't that neat!" You need to go deeper and show them your core values, personal strengths, motivations, aspirations, character traits, foundational beliefs, personality, etc. And you need to do it in a charming, winsome way that makes them like you and want to invite you to join their community.
So how do I get students to do this? All of my students complete that introspection worksheet. We go through it and find the stories, examples, anecdotes, conversations, memories, relationships, and other things from their life that will help us craft a strong and personally insightful narrative. We also make lists of the values, strengths, and key personal qualities we want to showcase. Once we have some topics, outlines, abstracts, or rough drafts, we talk about which stories to tell where, how to tell them well, and what details to include to present the best they have to offer. Then we refine, edit, polish, and enhance over and over until the story sings, but more importantly shows their heart and soul. We also go through all the other application components to ensure consistency, quality, and distinctiveness.
Here's why this works so well: at most highly selective colleges there is a primary reader (or 2-3) who will review everything first and then present it to the admissions committee, who then votes on whether to admit you. That presentation typically goes one of three ways:

1. Total enthusiasm, energy, and excitement. They strongly advocate for admission and paint a clear picture of how you will contribute to their goals and community. Everyone in the room picks up on that energy and is leaning forward in their chairs, looking for reasons to admit you. This is quite rare, generally less than 5 out of every 100 applications, even among those which are "fully qualified." When you do this right, you show depth, meaning, and valuable personal insights so the reviewer is learning about who you are and how you might engage the community they're curating. You come alive off the page as a person, not just another file.
   
2. Business as usual. You're another great applicant in a pile of great applicants. They share a basic review of the facts, your profile, stats, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Maybe someone on the committee finds something they love, and they really push for admission. More likely, not and you get deferred/waitlisted even though there wasn't anything "wrong" with your application. They just didn't love you enough to commit.
   
3. "Here's a stack of 20 applications that I didn't find all that compelling, so we won't present them individually, but you guys are the committee and you make the decisions. So let me know if there are any you want to talk about." In this case, unless there's a letter of endorsement from an athletics coach or your last name matches several buildings on campus, you're probably not getting additional consideration, much less admission. They will regret to inform you.
   

Everything we're doing is designed to help them get to know themselves, present the best they have to offer, and land in that first group. Having top tier essays is the single best way to get there. Get started on brainstorming in the next few weeks so you'll have time to get a few essays completed over the summer.