I (36m) lost my mom not long ago, just this past February. She had been chronically ill for a while, but never imagined it was life threatening. Inconvenient, poor quality of life, but not terminal. She started taking ill about 5 years ago in mid 2019, and since I had quit my previous full time job to go back to college I too care of her pretty much full time in addition to school and a part time job at Walmart. My dad travels too much to be able to help and my slightly younger brother left the house upon getting a job out of state. So I didn’t really complain about taking care of her. My mom and I were always super close,so I was glad to. It wasn’t even like I had a girlfriend at the time to have to split attention with. My last relationship ended pretty amicably, but I just didn’t have the self confidence to try again. This went on for the rest of 2019, and it was a pretty soothing routine, she could mostly help herself most days, but she had pretty major fatigue from time to time unpredictably. We imagined she’d get better eventually. I graduated at the end of 2019 and applied to jobs with that in mind. Then Covid hit and somehow she ended up getting worse. She never told me what she was ill with, if she even knew, she distrusted doctors except for vaccines and acute injury care. I still cared for her as best I could, she still had good days and bad so it wasn’t a burden. I even managed to get an okay job that let me work remotely thanks to my degree. It was a little stressful, but mostly sedentary, the occasional run to get food or something. During that time I was pretty glad to be not dating. It carried on like that all through the pandemic and I found myself becoming somewhat of a hermit, just working and taking care of my mom, keeping her company since my dad/her husband still needed to travel for work even if it was less. I naturally put on weight, picked up bad eating habits, resumed my gaming habit and that kind of thing.
And then she died. I assume it was peaceful since it was in her sleep.
Now I’m just alone. Dad, despite his best efforts was never wired to be especially emotionally intelligent or available. My brother, god bless him, has a fiancée and responsibilities across the country. And I’m just here. Fat. Alone. No real self esteem to speak of(not to disparage fat people or anything, I’m all about body positivity. For thee, anyway).
I don’t know how to rebuild myself. I’ve never been especially social. This whole thing has made it worse. I’ve always had negative self talk, but being able to give and care for someone helped quiet the inner monologue. But now the most important person in my life is gone, and I feel like the past five years were simultaneously the best and worst years of my life.
Funnily, while I’m sure I’m grieving still in some way, I’m glad my mom isn’t trapped in her body anymore. So this far out, not that it’s that far, I’m not shattered or wracked with grief over my mom. I miss her every single day. But I understand that she wasn’t living her best life. And I’d rather she go on to a better place than be trapped. So I’m not destroyed anymore. I was. I cried and was unable to get out of bed for a week. And I’m sure I deliriously talked to her during that time too. But that passed.
Now I just feel aimless. I work. I sleep. I eat poorly. I want to get back into life but I don’t know how anymore.
Hell. I don’t even know how to close this post out. I just need advice. So that’s the deal. Yeah. Sorry for the rambling.

Hi im incredibly new to this DID thing and honestly I couldn’t feel more lost so I was hoping that maybe some people on here could help shed some light on things. My therapist of over a year, recently shared with me that she believes I have DID and I’m not so sure. We’ve had some discussions about it, but they have kind of just left me more confused.
This came about after I shared how there are voices in my head that yell at me all the time. (Which I didn’t think was that odd because a lot of people have internal monologues that they argue with). These voices aren’t even different people, they’re my own voice just arguing different things. Also around that time, I shared that on occasion I experience this black out rage that feels like demonic possession. And that often I can’t remember anything that I said or did afterwards. (Yes i know it does directly use the language of “feels like demonic possession” in the DSM-5, but I dont know to me these things feel super normal to me.) When I asked her why she felt I had DID, she referenced how I can’t remember like 90% of my life before the age of 20. How one time I lost a full week of time. How I often can’t even remember what did during the week. And how I have self reported having different versions of myself that I switch in to.
I guess my big thing that makes me question this DID diagnosis is, that these “versions” of myself don’t feel like different people living inside my head. They feel more like different characters of me. Like there’s me - But there’s also: nurse me, 50s housewife me, high school me, party girl me, etc. and they’re all me, but like this character overlay. Like I’m Barbie and there’s lots of different types of Barbies, but they’re all Barbie. Does that make sense ?
To my understanding that’s not how DID works, but maybe I’m wrong? I’ve always thought that the alters people experienced are entirely separate from themselves. That alters are separate beings that are not you, and that’s why they present differently, have different genders, and interests. And that when an alter is present you experience full amnesia. That just not what I’m experiencing. I dont know if there’s a spectrum to DID or everyone experiences it differently. I’ve tried to do research but everything I read felt inconclusive. Thats why i decided to come here, to hopefully gain some understanding. I would greatly appreciate any kind of feedback or advice anyone has. I’m just trying to have a better understanding of what DID is so I can continue to discuss this with my psychologist. Thank you for the help!

Scott Masterson had first met Scarlett at a rooftop party in downtown Dallas. Their age and the time of year were both in late springtime, them in their mid twenties and the date in early May. He had on a sharp yet breezy blazer and she astonished in a thigh length sleeveless blue dress.
“Oh hey Scott I don’t believe you two have met…” his then happily married friend had remarked with a slow swinging open hand toward her.
“Scott Masterson…reluctant friend to this knucklehead” he said with a tight lipped grin, trying not to be so obvious with his instant rapture.
“Scarlett…a pleasure…”
Her hand was so delicate to Scott’s touch. They locked eyes. It was like looking back through centuries of connection, endless days of laying in the sun next to the Seine River, or rising to Hollywood fame in the 1940’s and only having each other who would understand the glory and the pain of it all, or generations of quiet, simple country love that would bear such beautiful, happy children that would go on to raise beautiful, happy children, all with their dark blue eyes. Yes, the memories of every love story since the beginning of time was swirling right there in Scarlett’s irises. Scott had to catch himself before he stared embarrassingly too long.
“Sorry Scottie here doesn’t get out often” his friend quipped, which Scott appreciated actually, it helped him snap back to professionalism.
“Well I don’t either…at least I prefer not to.” Scarlett’s words flowed through the air like a flock of rose petals.
“Hey, kindred spirits.” Scott was really sensing a rising energy out of her, they had barely broken eye contact.
“Well, I’ll let you two have at it, I got a wife around here somewhere. Hey…Scott and Scarlett…not bad, not bad.” His friend exited stage right with a sly chuckle.
“Nice guy…so…what are you drinking, Scarlett?” Scott looked around for the emptiest corner of the rooftop bar, hoping to find a nice place for them to be able to hear each other. This night had just become something.
“That depends, Scott…what do you like?”
Oh man.
Well, as you can expect, the evening blossomed into a beautiful, long winded conversation that etched a long list of similarities between the two. They both lived in the city, had never married, and had dreamed of stable, simpler lives far away from tall buildings and busy streets. The next morning Scott awoke in her arms, which warmed much deeper than just his skin. He could feel her soothing his very identity, his future, everything. Her arms were tailor made to fit his very soul, and he had never felt more safe and at home.
“Mmm…you can stay right here…” she whispered, eyes still closed.
“I will…I will”
They both fell back asleep, into a dream that wouldn’t end upon waking.
Two years passed and suddenly they lived that simple backwoods life, way out where acres of land far out-populated the few and far between people. They took a lovely home, which happily looked over a long backyard, right up to a lively yet mostly undisturbed river. Their only neighbor within a mile was an older ranch worker named Charles, who rarely made himself perceivable. Days were spent way on into town where they both had offices. They didn’t mind the commute. Nights were spent mostly like this night, cuddled outside near a lovely little fire, with a slowly shrinking amount of wine sitting between them. Enjoying their Kingdom. Tonight, however, would prove to be a special night, for many reasons, all unexpected.
“Honey, I’ve been thinking…” Scott began, sitting up and opening his hands to the warmth of the fire.
“Oh?” Scarlett also sat up, eyes widening.
“So look, Scarlett, the last two years have been the best of my life. An absolute dream…”
She held her breath, her focus darting between his eyes and mouth.
“Yeah?”
“We have everything we ever want out here. But…what if there’s more?”
“More?” She had envisioned this very conversation hundreds of times.
“Our dreams have come true, but what if we…made some new dreams?” Scott turned and embedded his eyes into hers. He burst into a big smile.
“Scott…I thought…”
“Nevermind what I said” he cut her off, which he always made a point to never do, but this was a good exception.
“I’m ready, Scarlett…let’s have a family.”
“Ohhhh Scott, oh Scott”
They hugged tight enough to where it hurt.
“Well, in that case, we may need to open another bottle.” She said playfully, bouncing her eyebrows twice.
“Excellent. I’ll be right up. I’ll put this fire out and then start yours up.”
“Oh stop!” She bounded away girlishly, up the snowy back steps and into the house.
Scott let out a big sigh that he could see in the cold air and sat back in his chair, taking in his decision. He really was ready. He had secretly been keeping a long list of names that he liked and that he thought would work in front of Masterson. Especially little girl names. He stared into the campfire flames, getting lost imagining the three of them sitting right here, a little girl resting securely in Scarlett’s arms, as Scott had found himself, and stayed within these past two years.
Suddenly his trance was broken when, from the road in front of their house, came the sound of a vehicle approaching at high speed. Scott snapped his head back toward the house to get a better listen. He could see, around the house and through the trees, a large truck barreling down the country road, its headlights racing and bouncing with intensity. In an instant, it had passed up the road and out of sight.
“Huh?”
Soon, after a moment of silence, another sound echoed into the night. This sound rattled Scott to the bone and tore all that was right in his world into pieces. A sharp, bellowing squeal. His eyes shot over to his neighbors house, which was about a tenth of a mile to his right but still had a couple dim lights on that he could see. The shriek seemed to come from there.
Then, more squeals. It was hellish. More than animal but not quite human. Scott stood up. He heard crashing and tearing and further destruction coming from Charles’ house.
“Scarlett!! Scarlett!” He yelled toward his house, where he looked and could see her silhouette behind the curtains at the kitchen window. She didn’t seem to hear him.
He turned back toward his neighbors. The chaos had gone quiet. Not a half a moment after, though, he heard something big barreling through the trees as fast as that truck had been sprinting. Running, running furiously between the two houses. Searching, hunting. Scott was taken aback so hard that his heel had caught the edge of the fire pit, throwing him down only inches away from severe burns. He had knocked his head in the whiplash, making him groan and take a moment to regain his bearings.
“SCARLETT!!!!”
He screamed out toward his home as he sat up, rubbing a quickly rising bump on the back of his head. He heard a loud breaching on the side of his house. The patio door. No. No. Then, all hell broke loose. Scarlett started wailing and crying and he could hear crashes of plates and glasses and deep guttural roars coming from the kitchen inside. Shadows danced in a frenzy from the curtained windows. Sounds of instinctual survival seemed to be thrown from Scarlett inside. Sounds of defeat. Sounds of agony. Sounds of insanity. Scott sprang to his feet, his equilibrium being more damaged than he realized after his fall. He had to catch his hand on a chair to stabilize himself. Scarlett’s symphony of pain had gone quiet. Soon after something burst back out the patio door again and off in the same direction as that truck before.
Scott struggled back up to the house, slowly climbing the wintered, crunching stairs that led to the patio. He no longer yelled for Scarlett. In fact, the only thing that came to his senses was the sound of his own heavy breathing. Everything else had been turned off, save for a heavy and sudden dread that he had prayed he would never feel. He came to the side of his house where indeed the patio door had been busted and forced open. It laid inside the kitchen, its hinges snapped like toothpicks. Scott, with eyes wide and twitching, slowly entered his home and looked into the kitchen.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t even change his breathing. He didn’t blink. He just got a good long look at what laid before him.
Everything was broken. The fridge was on its side, the door hanging open and food and drink scattered all over the floor. The table was upended, its legs to the ceiling. A chair was resting on the counter, possibly having been thrown in defense. And Scarlett. Oh Scarlett. She…was…everywhere. She was all over the floor. She was sprayed against the walls. She was stuck to the window. She was in the sink.
Scott gently walked through the carnal mess and sabotage of his world. Long ago he had known exactly what he would do if something anywhere near this bad were to happen to him. He politely stumbled through the kitchen, down the hall, and into the bedroom. He opened his closet door and lowered a fire safe from the top rack. He unlocked it with a passcode. 511, after that warm May date when he had first met Scarlett. In the safe was a Sig Sauer P320 handgun. Scott took it out, along with a box of bullets, loaded one into the gun, put the safe back on its rack, and walked out of the closet, sitting on his bed. Their bed. Where they should’ve been laying right at this very moment, working toward a happy future. Where he would’ve kissed her forehead and put a hand on her growing midsection. Where they would have awoken on Christmas morning to the sound of children who were way too excited to remain asleep. Where they would’ve grown old. Where they would’ve smiled at each other through wrinkles, satisfied with all the love they shared and passed on to the next generations. Where they would’ve held each other in deep peace as they finally fell asleep to this world.
“I will…I will”
In one quick motion Scott pulled back the hammer and stuck the barrel of that pistol right up against his Governor and blew himself away, far away, right back into Scarlett’s loving arms.
Jeremy “Smallmouth” Bassett quickly yet stealthily made his way back to his Uncle’s house. He hugged the sides of the dark country road, keeping his eyes and ears wide open as to notice any sounds pertaining to the event that he had just witnessed there in the field next to the huge blaze. His only thought was Uncle Chuck. His house was right on the warpath of that horrible thing and Smallmouth had to go to him and make sure he was safe. He dared not go back to his truck, which would bring a lot of unwanted attention. No, Smallmouth walked and walked and finally saw the lights of his Uncle’s house. He carefully approached the front door from the shadowed driveway. Suddenly it occurred to Smallmouth that something was very wrong here. The door was busted in, having been plowed through by something very large and very strong.
“No…no…no”
Smallmouth slowly entered the house. The kitchen and living room were a disaster, chairs and tables and bottles strewn about and shattered. Bloody hoof-prints covered the floors, each of them the size of dinner plates. Smallmouth heard no noise. He felt himself well with tears, his nose a faucet that he began to sniff up as he worked his way through to his Uncle’s room, the door there also being broken in. A small whine growing in his throat, Smallmouth peaked into his uncles bedroom.
It was all in tatters. The bed had been attacked and shredded, the mattress being ripped up and thrown about as if it were made of cotton candy. More bloody hoof-prints were painted all over the brown carpet. Smallmouth trembled and put a hand up to his wet face. He didn’t see a way that his Uncle was anywhere near alive, knowing what he knew about the monster that had been in this house.
Smallmouth slowly walked to the living room, to the only little table that had been untouched in the attack. It was almost as if the bottle of whiskey teleported into his hand from the overturned cabinet, unopened. He fixed that real quick.
Soon he was several pulls deep of the only thing in the world that he knew would make him feel better, even if only for a few hours. He found his pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket and lit one up, although he was indoors. What did it matter? He sat in a chair that he had turned right side up and set the bottle on the table and looked out the back window into the pitch black. He cried for his Uncle and he cried for the world. He cried for himself. He cried for broken promises and his own weakness. He drank and drank until his vision shook from right to left everywhere he looked. At first he didn’t even notice the figures on the back porch. Then his vibrating focus did pick up on them, but by then it was too late. It was so dark out there but in their outlines he could see they wore long robes and hoods.
“HA!! COME AND GET ME! HAHA!! YOU COME AND YOU GET ME!!” Smallmouth boasted with a delusional amount of courage.
A creak escaped from the kitchen and he drunkenly slung his head over toward it. Three more figures stood there. Or was it just one? Smallmouth was none the wiser. All at once the hooded intruders from both inside and outside began to chant a strange, twisted rhyme in strikingly low and dissonant harmony:
“A sliver…of liver…goes down…with a shiver… …and gives…your gullet…to gall… …but drink…the Cider…that drowns…the Spider… …and you…will be free…of it all… …so tighten the grip…that loosens your lips… …O raise…the bottle…of brown… …and wake tomorrow…to find…in sorrow… …ANOTHER…SPIDER…TO…DROWN”
Smallmouth groaned at them in dissatisfaction and turned his bottle up again and began to chug the whiskey. As he did they repeated the chant except this time it was louder and closer. By the time Smallmouth had finished his bottle he was quickly losing consciousness. This wasn’t just whiskey. As he closed his eyes he felt hands grabbing him from all sides.
Smallmouth pulled open his sticky eyelids. His head felt like someone had bowled a strike into it. Wind froze his face. The smell of sickly, wet iron stung his nostrils. His vantage was higher than usual. Way higher. He was looking out into another field, but from easily ten feet up. He saw an old church, formerly painted white but now a flaky pale-beige. He heard the friction of a quick pull of rope below him, matched with a slight, tight pain at his feet. He looked down. A red-robed figure was fastening him against a wooden structure of some kind. His feet sat on a small flat platform perpendicular to a post that went from the ground up past smallmouths head. He couldn’t move his arms, so he quickly shot his eyes side to side. They were also tied to another horizontal post. A cross. He was being tied to a crude wooden cross. His shirt had been removed, exposing a hairy, overweight belly. Smallmouth tried to speak, but all that came out was a slow, unintelligible grumble. He was still drunk. No, this was more than that. He was under the influence of something strong and absolutely inhibitive. He wallowed again, and took in a deep breath. The smell of iron once again hit his nose. He looked down at himself. He was covered in a thick, red liquid. That wasn’t just the smell of iron. He had been splashed full body with blood.
“Now now, young servant…” the figure at his feet had finished his task and took a couple of steps out to admire his own handiwork.
“Ahh…perfect. The picture of martyrdom. Yes, you will always be remembered, Brother Bassett. You are to be the first Saint of The New Bible.” He opened his arms in his declaration.
Smallmouth looked up into the cold night sky. The moon shown down, giving everything a midnight spotlight. It was a gorgeous waxing gibbous, big and bright but not quite full. Yes, he was in a great big snowy field that housed an old worn down church. From the windows of the church he saw candles glowing, showing dark heads and shoulders looking out to him, also covered in loose hoods, hiding faces. He was hanging on a cross about one hundred feet from the old church. In front of the cross was a partially covered pit, a couple of two by fours supporting double armfuls of branches and dead leaves.
The figure at the base of the cross put his arms back to his side. He was still looking right at the drugged Smallmouth’s dumbstruck face. Even with a veiled mouth you could hear the twisted smile in his voice.
“Tonight you will help us finally defeat this legion, Smallmouth. You see, it may have the evil spirits within it, but at its core, it is still an owned animal. An animal that knows its Master very well. An animal that will remember the smell of its Master. You, my friend, are covered in its Master right now. And you are hanging on a cross, the symbol of this brute’s most hated enemy. But take heart, young Brother. Before you is our pit of spears. Yes you will attract the beast, but our Divine plan will intercept it and the beast will fall and be pierced. And then, oh dear brother, you will forever be immortalized. You will be purified in fire by the hands of your church brethren. Out of your screams and into the smoke the iniquities of all will be released. We will go on to preach your good example and your sainthood forever and ever.”
Smallmouth began to drool and hum pathetically. He could hear and understand the words of the robed man but he couldn’t fight back. His body was useless, limp inside its rope confines. All he could do now is think, and watch, and wait, and dread his fate.
The figure turned away from him, walking over near the pit and gathering up a bundle of brambles and throwing them over the last open area, covering it completely. He then crunched through the snow over to the front door of the old church, groaning open the door. He stood at the dark doorway for a few seconds in silence, and then began to make a noise. An over exaggerated pig squealing noise, high pitched and infuriating. Soon after other voices from inside the church began to do the same, their wailing echoing out of the building and all across the field, loudly signaling, calling out. It may as well have been a dinner bell. Not a half minute after they began the distress signal it was loudly answered by a distant squall. A furious squall.
This was it. Either way it happened Smallmouth was about to die. Experience terror, and then die, and not even have the ability to put up any kind of defense. It wasn’t fair. He just slowly lifted up his head and watched out far into the moonlit, white field. He then raised his heavy head further and took a good gander at the moon and stars for the last time.
“God,” he thought to himself, still having full inner monologue yet no outer motor function, “I am so sorry. I am so sorry for being what I am. I am so sorry for ending up in this place. It’s only my own fault. If it wasn’t for me being so stupid and messy and drunk and terrible then this wouldnt be happening to me.”
He began to shed tears that washed lines into the blood on his face.
“Please forgive me God. Please, please, please forgive me for all of my sins. This is it. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. PLEASE FORGIVE ME!!!!” He yelled inside his own mind, hoping and trying to send his silent words as far up into heaven as they could go.
He lowered his eyes back to the ground. He looked over at the church again. The windows were empty, the candles were extinguished. Those hooded cowards were hiding from their own handmade sacrificial service. All was quiet for a long pause until a much louder, closer bleating began at the edge of the forest not even three hundred feet away from Smallmouth’s glazed over eyes. It was time, and it was too late for a miracle.
Out of the woods, slowly and heavily, stomped the massive hog. As it marched closer and closer Smallmouth could see its white, boiled over eyes and black-burnt skin. Its jaws were flying open and snapping its sharp, pocket knife-sized teeth together in an intimidating “clack”. It was now less than a hundred feet away, the dark old church to its right shoulder. It stopped, its pale glowing eyes fixed right on Smallmouth on the crude cross. It truly was a monster. It stood as tall as a man and as long as a canoe. Around its murderous mouth were stains of red, the remnants of all that it had taken from the world on this unholy night. In its clanging jaws were bits of flesh. It snorted and scowled.
Then, in a fury, it wailed that horrible squeal and started off into a dead sprint. It galloped and galloped toward Smallmouth at a high, blistering speed. It kept yawping and howling as it cut the distance from the cross down to fifty feet, forty feet, thirty, twenty. All at once it passed over the covered pit and plunged in. In his doomed, dead eyed stupor Smallmouth could hear what sounded like paint being dumped from a rooftop onto concrete. Trails of black liquid squirted and splashed up from the pit, which had been uncovered in the fall of the beast. Unbelieving, Smallmouth saw dozens of steel spear tips standing up from the dug-in ground. Right in the middle of them the beast was stuck. The sheer weight of the animal had caused the spears to pierce through its tough skin, sticking out of its back, soaked in black blood. One spear had stabbed right under the hogs chin, passing up through its jaws and out its black snout. It made agonized sounds. It roared and roared and shook the spears inside it, beginning furiously, then growing weaker and weaker within seconds. Finally, it let out one last weak little squeal, before it went still and quiet.
Smallmouth was frozen both physically by drugs and constraints and mentally by shock. His mouth hung open toward the pit of spears, his vision blurry. He took in a deep, troubled breath and let out a moan of disbelief and relief. The old church doors sprang open, and the sound of jubilation within flowed out into the night. The red robed figures flocked out of the building toward the pit, arms raised in celebration. They surrounded the hole, getting a good look at their success and their enemies defeat. Some held additional spears and began further stabbing the dead animal, causing more black blood to be shed up at them. They all yelled loudly and triumphantly. Some danced around the pit. Some skipped over to Smallmouth on the cross and danced around him, slapping his legs and spinning in circles.
Smallmouth looked on at the raucous celebration, both in utter disbelief of their trap actually working and also in turmoil. How long now until they fully execute their plan.
A taller robed man, whose voice matched the same one who spoke to Smallmouth as he tied his feet, spoke up, sounding almost happily intoxicated.
“Ahh yes my Brothers!! It is done!! We have won!!!”
They all whooped and cheered.
“Brother Norman, go into the church and bring me the small tank of fuel. Let us send our dear Saint Bassett to the Holy lands, where he will be adored for all eternity!”
They all clapped and hollered. One figure began childishly skipping away from the pit and over toward the front door of the church.
Then, it happened.
From the pit all of a sudden a great blaze erupted instantly. It stood as tall as the cross, and it burned a furious red and blue. It raged and raged, blinding Smallmouth and making him clumsily turn his face away from the heat.
All of the figures panicked, screaming and scattering away toward the church. They didn’t get far. Up from the fiery pit, dozens of long, long, black arms, adorned with six hooking claws emerged and stretched out of the flames and latched on to the legs of those trying to escape. Smallmouth heard crying and wailing from the men as the black, razor clawed-hands of the legion grabbed them and began pulling them back, into the blazes. One by one the red robed people were dragged into the flames, their clothes catching instantly. Smallmouth could see violently shaking bodies in the evil furnace. Oh, the screams. Above the tortured howling, the sound of laughing broke out. Deep, menacing laughter, hundreds of voices, echoed up into the air from the burning hole. Then, in one extinguishing squeeze, the ground swallowed the entirety of the fiery pit, leaving it completely covered in dirt, still and quiet. Soon after, and just like the pit of spears, the old church building caught in an instant and raging fire, quickly toppling the walls and dropping the steeple into its ruins. The smoke towered high in the night sky, which had just began to hint at a pale morning blue. Smallmouth hung on his cross in utter horror and surprise.
As the late evening hours glowed into early morning the smoke eventually tapered off, as Smallmouth’s drugs finally began to wear off as well. The fires of the church did garner long distance attention, though. Just as Smallmouth was able to regain control of his muscles and voice he heard emergency sirens call out into the cold morning air. Not long after, two fire trucks, an ambulance and a sheriffs truck tore into the field and toward Smallmouth on the cross. Not long after Smallmouth could feel the tied ropes being cut loose by firemen, their uniforms easily the best red clothes he had seen all night.
“What on God’s green Earth happened here son?” A bearded man with a dark hat and brown shirt and pants asked Smallmouth once he had been lowered down from the cross and sat on the ground with a shock blanket around his shoulders. The Sheriff, no doubt.
“God’s green Earth. It really is God’s, isn’t it?” Smallmouth whispered, staring out across the cold field. Then, at the very place he was staring, an old, familiar truck came barreling out of the gravel road in the woods and through the field in the steadily growing morning light. It was Uncle Chuck’s truck. It hurried over toward the other emergency vehicles, parked, the driver’s side door burst open, and Uncle Chuck came bounding out over to Smallmouth, his eyes wide and his mouth a wonderfully shocked “O”.
“JEREMY! JEREMY!!!” He basically fell on Smallmouth in a tight, warm hug. Smallmouth was caught off guard by Chuck using his real name.
His Uncle held him for several seconds and then let up, but kept his hands on Smallmouth’s shoulders.
“I thought you were dead.” Both of them said at almost the exact same time.
“I came back and your house was a mess and there was blood everywhere. I thought you were dead.” Smallmouth weakly spat out.
“Well, I woke up and you were gone, son, so I walked to the ranch to get my truck. I was worried bout ya son. I came back home and the whole place had been turned upside down. Blood on the carpet. I just thought the worst. Then I tried my neighbors house. Buddy, they’re dead. Looks like some wacko murder-suicide if I ever saw one. Scott probably tried to come kill us too and wrecked the place when he found it empty. I don’t know. But what I DO know is that you are right here! You are okay Jeremy!! Ahhh Praise Jesus!!”
“It’s not that, Uncle. That isn’t what happened out here. It’s..it was a..a, uh…”
Smallmouth’s fried brain couldn’t even comprehend what he had witnessed over the past few hours. It was all a violent blur.
“Dont worry bout it son, you can tell me everything on the way to the hospital. We gotta go get you checked out and cleaned up. C’mon.” He helped Smallmouth up and they walked over to the ambulance, his Uncle’s arm thrown around his shoulder.
Smallmouth would be sent home later that afternoon. It would take him and his Uncle a long time to sort through the chaos of that deadly night and rebuild their lives. But life kept on. Smallmouth would remain living with his Uncle, and would begin a job working with him down at the ranch. Together they started to attend a local church. Smallmouth never touched a drink or a drug or even a cigarette ever again, and remained steadfast in his newly revitalized faith.

Played Rust for a bit, moved on and played Hunt Showdown, then played Sons of the forest. Started seeing Dayz videos on youtube and tried playing being completely lost.
It seems like every Dayz youtube video is trying to copy Willjum from Rust (story and monologue) so a ton of newbies like me get nothing from them. Like playing solo, they skip to full kit lol.
Took the slow approach and joined official low pop / dead servers.. learned in Rust that high pop tends to favor groups/clans. Googled how to make stone knife, take hours before I even find one. Now I just spawn, check sheds and move on because a blunt weapon = kill zombies quicker = possible food.
My first chicken kill was with a crowbar, lesson learned you get less meat! Just today I spawned in with a previous survivor and heard flies.. dead guy that had okay items and an unknown can of food (guess he didnt know).
Kind of weird that the game phases you out of existence when you exit. Or having no map (I think its a design flaw when you play a game and use or need 3rd party maps/mods) So new players will join, die, be lost for their first 50 hours until they start recognizing or again, googling dayz map..

Dear I See Thru U,
This is the second time I’ve seen you hurting. Every time I see it, my glass heart shatters to pieces. I know the look well because I wear it, too. You weren’t supposed to feel this way. You’ve pushed me away. What are the rules again and who made them? I’m still not aware of any. Who has lost more, the one who has it all and can never find the right excuse to walk the brave path or the person who has nothing, but continues to wake up, rise, and fight for what they deserve even though nothing arrives at their door? Everyone keeps telling me to be quiet and shut my mouth. They are lucky they don’t say that to my face. As a woman who has been in every sort of chain for the last many decades, I have now learned to swing them as my weapon and no amount of money, fame, or stupid promises are going to stop them. Interpret it as you like, I don’t care. I won’t play games and I won’t do everything your way 100% of the time. I’ve been badly bruised and hurt and if you want something from me, you have to come on my terms. I have consistently and courageously shown who I am and what I am over and over again to you. I’ve more than gone the distance given everything I have been through and there’s still things you don’t know about, and for those…I still rise, even though I don’t always want to. If you want to determine something is finished, there’s nothing more I can do, but don’t you dare insist it was my doing. You don’t speak for me, my voice is my own. I am so sick of someone else’s interpretations dominating my inner monologue and conversations. I didn’t give permission for the world to see me at my worst. I am not going to apologize for any feelings of love I have for any person or persons. It’s been hard enough to face the simple act of needing to get out. Let’s throw some feelings of love like kindling on the fire and let everyone (watching) enjoy burning everyone’s home to the bare ground for entertainment sake. Meanwhile, there’s pain on both sides that is very real, but wouldn’t exist without this unrealistic situation. It’s really hard to be taken for granted and knowing you are not really loved in a place you once called home only to have god-knows-what happening on the outside - the real world? - whether it be a joke or something real, do you really think this is good for a human being to endure? I am still wondering if what I’ve said about what happened to me in childhood was made out to be a lie because it’s not. I don’t know how to deal with any of this anymore and throwing a Better Help ad at me isn’t cutting it. You are the one who broke the rules about sharing information from confidential therapy. Now, I will never trust anyone ever again to work through things verbally. I will never trust that cameras haven’t been placed in places that will consistently and constantly trigger my past trauma. You’ve broken the rules, you’ve hurt me…I already had enough trauma to carry 1000 new characters that could last a lifetime. I didn’t need anything more to be sad or depressed about. This life has offered up plenty. Your lessons are for your trust not mine. They are just adding to my pain, but let me guess, you don’t care or I am dumb because I chose to focus on textbooks and historical concepts instead of pop culture and the rich and famous. Who cares I can’t list all the Beetles, but that I can pick out Chinese dynasties? Do you really want to judge me for that? I am a loving, loyal, and helpful person who wants to stop hurting now and just enjoy life again. Please be absolutely real with me. I spent 32 years of my life throwing up and being dizzy every single day because I had undiagnosed Celiac Disease and every doctor I saw told me my symptoms were in my head and that I was crazy. I started a new life at 32 years old when after three days of not eating gluten, the whole world stopped spinning. I never knew I could have one single 24 hours in a row that somehow I didn’t have to feel sick, or dizzy, or confused, with lots of mind fog. Why do these things keep happening? Why do I always feel like I am being punished for being alive? I don’t care if you think I am playing the victim or feeling sorry for myself, right now. Somebody needs to and I guess that part belongs to me. I’m tired and I am talking to the same wall I have talked to for the last 27 years. There is no difference there. I can see why people love to sleep. I do. Every time I wake up I want to go right back to unconsciousness.

Heavy on the spoilers and devoid of all brevity, but if I do not get this off my chest I will lose my mind. I’ve been on a Shatter Me high all week. The first three books have altered my brain chemistry. I have said the words “Aaron Warner, the man you are” so many times I am beginning to question my sanity. I cracked open Restore Me last night, fully prepared to trust-fall into the arms of my #1 Fictional Boyfriend of all time.
So, um, what the fuck was that?
Look, I can forgive messy plotlines and overwriting, I can ignore ill-planned and lazily-executed rebel coups. I can even appreciate the absurd surplus of metaphors and similes crammed in between strings of dialogue, if for no reason other than comedic value.
What I can’t get behind is Book 4 Aaron Warner.
Seriously, who is this guy? Because I’ve gone through the five stages of grief, turned around and reread the entire book in frank disbelief, and the only conclusion I can possibly come to is that I’ve somehow picked up an imposter, written in very bad faith. When Adam Kent did a 180 in Ignite Me and went from “gentle, pathetic childhood crush who can suffer through Juliette’s touch in some small capacity” to “bitter, controlling ex-boyfriend driven mad with jealousy,” we all understood this to be much-needed fan service. Juliette was, after all, being an idiot; she needed a little push, to realize that Aaron Warner was the undisputed crown jewel. Most of us came to this conclusion two and a half books ahead of her, but better late than never. I walked away from Ignite Me feeling content. The power couple has been established. Anderson is dead. Juliette’s rise to Supreme Commander was satisfying, if a bit hasty. I went into Restore Me confident that, with Aaron at her side, Juliette could achieve anything.
The transition was…jarring, to say the least.

“The Reestablishment does not allow time for people to grieve.” - Book 3 Aaron.

(Alas, this is Book 4, and *insert obligatory Bob Dylan joke*)
The Times, They Are a’ Changin’
Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that Aaron is grieving, he is mourning, he is SAD. This is totally understandable, both to me as a reader and to Juliette as a character. It appears to be the guiding factor behind his new penchant for stonewalling and emotional blackmail. Before diving into THAT can of worms, I’d like to add a couple of bullets to my list of “Miscellaneous What-and-Why-the-Fucks:”

• Why does Juliette have zero advisors? Where is her council? Her attendants? Her scribe? Her translator? Her GUARDS?
• What, exactly, is Kenji’s job? She refers to him as her “second-in-command,” and while I adore his character, I can’t help but feel that lending snarky input does very little in the way of running a tight ship. Why is she entirely on her own?

Moving on.
A TIMELINE OF SHITTY EVENTS, IN WHICH I HANG UP MY ‘ADAM KENT’S #1 HATER’ JACKET AND SHRUG ON MY ‘AARON WARNER SUCKS’ VEST:

• Juliette is trying to make peace between two unruly schoolboys who refuse to get along at the playground. Sorry, Juliette is trying to make peace between two grown men, both of whom appear, in some capacity, involved in the running of North America. This is going “Not Very Well,” if Aaron’s botched haircut is any indication. Fortunately, he comes to terms with his Slim Shady Era, and while he’s clearly going through some things, I could roll with the punches and learn to love the buzz cut, if only he didn’t IMMEDIATELY TURN INTO THE JOKER AFTER THIS.
• Aaron knows better than anyone else about the role and responsibilities of a Supreme Commander. Still yet, he appears completely uninvolved in Juliette’s day-to-day regimen. He makes zero effort to inform her about details that might save her from needless embarrassment. Her fuck-ups seem imminent. Perhaps this is why he has no inclination to avoid them, nor lessen their impact on her pride or public image. Slim Shady is a lone wolf. He has completely forgotten that whole “I’ve told you from the start, we would make an excellent team” spiel. North America is a One-Woman (De?)establishment. Kenji appears to play the role of court jester, though he lends emotional support when necessary–and always with more empathy and forethought than Regent Warner, who, I might remind you, has the power of READING ENERGIES (“hers, especially”).
• Enter Delalieu, to inform Juliette her quarters are overflowing with unanswered mail, and worry that this may reflect poorly upon her as a new leader, to which she’s like “I have quarters?” This revelation comes on the heels of Castle’s memo that “all of her correspondence is being monitored.” I suspect somehow this is Castle’s fault, which brings me to my follow-up point.
• In Book 4, Castle becomes less of an incompetent hippie and more of a prick to Juliette. He terrorizes her with cryptic warnings, but refuses to divulge any information he may have about Warner’s past, which–given her new status–seems like it ought to be grounds for some sort of official noncompliance. He also had her reach out to the other supreme commanders “as an experiment.” It was at this point I decided I wasn’t a fan of how everyone kept undermining or making a mockery of Juliette at every turn. I couldn’t help but notice how Castle’s comments to Aaron about her went entirely unchecked. I am reminded, if you will, of that scene in Shatter Me, when Aaron staged a big spectacle in which a soldier was killed, to ensure his men knew not to fuck with Juliette. He seems to have forgotten this virtue, in Book 4.
• Despite being warned that Ibriham’s children are en route, Aaron lets a conversation with Kent take precedence over informing Juliette what to expect, how to dress, what to say, etc. Castle also informs him once Haider arrives. Juliette chooses to meet Haider without waiting for Aaron, but he should have been there regardless. He can FEEL her energy, he doesn’t need her to say it out loud to realize she’s insecure and needs him to be there, and she wouldn’t BE insecure about so much shit if he would step in and stop allowing everyone to make her the butt of every joke!!! Where’s that supportive boyfriend act you roped us all in with, buddy? Also, literally neither she nor Kenji know jack shit about politics, why would he let them walk into a meeting with the children of foreign leaders entirely blind?
• Speaking of the meeting with Haider, Aaron has a closet full of clothes organized by color and shade; yet he didn’t think to help Juliette pick out a new wardrobe for her designation as Supreme Commander? He literally chose her entire last wardrobe, and look, I get it, they’re busy with war things and his evil dad is dead and that’s sad and all, but don’t introduce us to a standard you can’t maintain! She goes to meet this snotty rich boy in BLUE JEANS AND A PINK SWEATER. Kenji “cringes” at her. This was so humiliating I literally felt my face getting hot when I read it.
• Again, Castle specifically *told* Aaron when Haider arrived, but when he and Juliette discuss it later, he turns it around on her to justify why he didn’t show up to support her!

“You didn’t tell me he’d arrived earlier. I wish I could’ve been there to assist somehow.”
Like, are you fucking kidding me? Again, he can FEEL her energy; he is well aware that she spent that meeting getting humiliated, and still decides to make his absence a product of her incompetence. Like, his entire pep talk after this left me filled with visceral rage.

• Allow me to share this absolutely infuriating passage in Aaron’s POV:

“She [Nazeera] has the same long legs and lean frame as her brother, and she carries herself with great pride, like someone who was born into position and privilege. She wears a gray tunic cut from fine, heavy fabric; skintight leather pants; heavy boots; and a set of glittering gold knuckles on both hands.
And I’m not the only one staring.
Juliette, who’s been watching quietly this whole time, is looking up, amazed. I can practically see her thought process as she suddenly stiffens, glances down at her own outfit, and crosses her arms over her chest as if to hide her pink sweater from view. She’s tugging at her sleeves as though she might tear them off.
It’s so adorable I almost kiss her right then.”

Are you fucking SERIOUS? So she is here, dying of embarrassment, already feeling inferior because she’s comically underdressed and only speaks one language, and his response is to GAWK AT A HOT GIRL IN FRONT OF HER AND INFANTILIZE HER IN HIS INNER MONOLOGUE. “I’m not the only one staring” ???? Be so for real right now, like I am lost for words!

• Aaron is “fairly certain” and generally insistent that Castle’s suspicions will prove false. Like, why would Castle just be pulling random hunches like this out of his ass? When I read it, I was like, “Hmm, kinda sounds like Aaron is just rationalizing why he isn’t going to tell Juliette any of this.” Spoiler alert: I was right.
• Aaron sits in silence and watches Juliette flounder helplessly while trying to explain to Haider how she only sort of knows what the “Continental Symposium” is.* OH YEAH, DID I MENTION IT IS ALSO TWO DAYS AWAY? Like, Aaron clearly knows this is a big deal, it appears to be a tradition of sorts. Why is he once again letting his girlfriend be humiliated and condescended by their guests? He also *CRINGES,* he CRINGES at her for not knowing about it. Like, at this point I am beginning to greatly resent this man.
• He also doesn’t defend Juliette when Haider calls her “some idiot psychotic girl” TO HIS FACE. RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. Actually, SHE steps in and defends HIM. I wish she hadn’t. After this, in his inner monologue, Aaron is like, “I wonder if she knows I would do anything for her.” FUCKING DO SOMETHING WARNER, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
• Juliette peeks in on Aaron in his office, finds him listening to old vinyl, discovers he likes Bob Dylan. ME TOO, BUDDY, I’ve seen him live. Might I suggest a little less “Like a Rolling Stone” and a little more “Just Like a Woman,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Lay Lady Lay,” ‘COZ I AM BEGINNING TO HATE YOUR ASS FOR THE WAY YOU ARE TREATING JULIETTE!
• Again, Aaron is fully aware of Castle’s warnings that people are coming for Juliette. WHY is she walking unarmed and unguarded on the beach at night? That’s right, because he ran off with Haider to count gold coins or suck each other off or something, leaving her to be sad and alone and not on the lookout for danger. Once again, he fails to come through and keep her safe, and she gets hit with some kind of bullet or dart or something.
• AGAIN, why is Castle allowed to stand here and disrespect Juliette right to Warner’s face, invalidate her and tell him how HE should have been the one who became Supreme Commander? Like, she already has zero support around her whatsoever and this rat is allowed to talk shit about all the things she does and doesn’t know, what she gets told, and potentially also her MAIL. Why hasn’t Warner killed this fucker yet? Warner, ARE YOU STILL IN THERE?
• Remember when Aaron was clever? Yeah, me too. He seems to have abandoned that trait in Book 4. Things like “taking basic precaution” no longer hold any precedence. He and Juliette have, however, found the time to fuck twice, despite having no time or opportunity for all the critical conversations they’re not having that could have redeemed Aaron Warner in my heart and mind. P R I O R I T I E S.
• *slams the back of his head against the wall in frustration* I actually had an ex who did this once when I caught him cheating. It is not something intelligent people do, in my experience. I am beginning to hate Aaron the way I hated Adam. Side note, I still hate Adam. Glad he kind of disappears after the first couple of chapters.
• Great, Juliette is now hallucinating from poison bullets. Good thing Aaron is there to…look really scared and terrify her even more. Moral support? Don’t know him! Just…staring fearfully, jumping in to prevent her from going outside. Maybe a pat on the head or something would help…no? Okay then.
• At this point he decides it’s time to fess up. He couldn’t have chosen a worse time, by the way. Juliette asks if it’s okay if she washes the blood and sand off first (she was just attacked on the beach, remember?). She is clearly still sick and “hallucinating” (seeing the bright white lights outside of her window, the way people do right before they die). Maybe he could…I don’t know…HELP HER? Run her bathwater? Help her clean up? Yeah no, he just nods. She can do all that by herself, just like everything around here. Juliette, girl, if you don’t kick this deadbeat to the curb I’m gonna SCREAM. P.S.: WHO IS THIS MAN? THIS IS NOT THE AARON WARNER I KNOW. Remember how he remembered to bring gloves and a coat for her before he dropped her off at Omega Point? They weren’t even dating yet. How hard did he slam his head into the wall? Maybe he should keep going. Maybe he would like a little help? I’m not busy at all rn.
• See the thing is, now Aaron has to do a big fess up about Juliette’s life. He’s obviously lied and withheld some vital information, but more importantly he spent a couple of years torturing a sister she doesn’t know about yet. And while I realize he didn’t have any CHOICE in this particular matter, I also loathe him at this point for a ton of other shit he’s done leading up to this, so it’s really hard to feel sorry for him when–REALLY THEY FIND TIME TO FUCK AGAIN AT THIS POINT? SOMETHING IS FUCKING WRONG WITH THESE TWO. I can’t help but notice she’s “crawled on top of him” both times now. Guess she’s doing all the work in the sack, as well. Remember that “flip over on your stomach” line from Ignite Me? That guy is dead now. This dude blows and I hate him. Separate LOL at “onto to the floor.” That’s really in there. You can check.
• So the only time these two can communicate is during coitus. Cool. Maybe instead of reminding each other of their mutual love, they could reinforce their bond with something like…confessional hour? Maybe Aaron could use his energy to feel her energy and figure out something safe to say, that isn’t super fucked up and wrong. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t.
• CONFESSION TIME! She starts crying when he gets to the “Reestablishment is coming for you, they’re coming to take you back” part. This is pretty reasonable, but he doesn’t pause to reassure her about it before he’s like, “Oh yeah and about your SISTER–” At this point she actually asks him to stop, probably so she can digest some of this horrifying information, but he says, and I quote, “No.” I really feel like he could have paused for a few minutes to let her process, maybe find some solid ground to stand on(since the man whose lap she is sitting in is a spineless moron and awful boyfriend, and thus not at all likely to be of any assistance).
• Juliette panics. Again, this is not entirely unjustified. Aaron speaks seven languages, none of which are “reassurance,” or “comfort,” and so when she actually gets up and runs away he just…accepts it. I want a refund. I want the first three books to apologize for love-bombing me. I made this man my #1 book boyfriend of all time. THIS Aaron Warner…this man is a fraud and I hate him. She should honestly just hook up with Kenji. At least he still calls her princess. Has Aaron called her love even once in this book? It’s possible I missed it, over the sound of his ceaseless letdowns from Chapter One onward.
• Aaron has a panic attack. Luckily his nemesis Kenji is there to comfort him. Why is no one worried about Juliette? While we are all crying over Warner’s psychosomatic breakdown, she is hysterical, hallucinating poison, has a voice in her head, and is being hunted by some kind of evil bureaucrats and possibly her own parents.
• Allow me to share yet another passage that made blink in disbelief:

He [Kenji] shakes his head. “You just can’t, man. You can’t be with someone and keep that many secrets from them.”
“It’s never stopped me before.”

At this point, Mafi, I already hate him. You did not need to include this passage, at all.

• **PARAPHRASING** Kenji’s like, “Hey man, you’re kind of being shitty to your girlfriend by not telling her about things like all your exes.” Aaron is like, “Well, I wouldn’t have ever done anything to hurt her (barring all those things I did to hurt her), but since I already lost her, who cares? Water under the bridge!” To which Kenji reminds him that ‘water under the bridge’ means Juliette can go out and fuck someone else, and Aaron doesn’t like the idea of that, so he decides he probably wants to fix things, after all.
• Aaron: “You couldn’t have called, Lieutenant? Isn’t that what our phones are for?”

Nothing significant here, although it is news to me that they have phones. When did they get phones?
Anyway, turns out Delalieu tried to call him, but Warner disconnected his phone. Can we like, demote this guy or something? This guy SUCKS.

• Juliette chooses the moron’s escape route (blind sprint into the open night), and gets snatched up by Jazeera (who can fly). This is the first time Jazeera has shared said secret with anyone, which she confides when they land in a tree. It’s a really great time for these two to kiss, and it’s only fair. After all, Warner never had any friends, so this childhood friend of Warner’s technically doesn’t count. Juliette lets Aaron block her blessings once again, but Jazeera is nonetheless more emotional support than Kenji and Aaron put together. You know, I usually read fantasy to ESCAPE the disappointing reality of Men. This book is reminding me they manage to infiltrate even sacred spaces like fiction. Jazeera is sucking on a hard candy, and I’M turned on, but Juliette is sad, so I’ll be quiet.
• Jazeera tells Juliette that Warner isn’t a bad person. Unfortunately, I must disagree. She’s still hot so I’m still listening.
• Lena Mishken? Yeah, no, never heard of her, but once again thank the gods for Jazeera, who spills the tea. It is…entirely embarrassing that since-revoked #1 fictional boyfriend Aaron Warner would let this information have to come to his girlfriend through a near stranger’s gossip, but turns out Lena is Aaron’s EX-GIRLFRIEND. I wonder how he could forget to mention a thing like that. Maybe Good Guy Aaron Warner didn’t anticipate she would still be part of the global, troubled teen Brady Bunch they’ve all been part of since they were kids, who are all apparently coming to visit. I’m not sure why he didn’t anticipate this, and I’m also not sure why all these people are showing up for this “Continental Symposium.” Symposiums typically involve presentations of some sort, that is the extent of my knowledge. I am sure if that was the case here, Warner would conveniently forget to remind his girlfriend about it. I am truly convinced at this point he gets off on humiliating her, so he’ll really enjoy making her walk on stage unprepared for something like this. I personally preferred when he was firmly ddlg/cgl coded in books 1-3. Uhhh, I would have appreciated a tw for this kind of content rebranding, but no matter.
• Did I mention Lena and Aaron were together for TWO YEARS?
• Did I mention Lena and Aaron only broke up EIGHT MONTHS AGO?
• Did I mention the Reestablishment is planning to destroy Sector 45?
• Also Lena is Russian. That seemed arbitrary, unless we are just supposed to know she’s extra hot or something. I don’t think Juliette needed any more tearing down, actually, but duly noted!
• Lena shows up outside of Warner’s room. Let me include this tiny snippet from his POV:

“Open the door, asshole.”
“You never did hold back with the flattery.”

Okay, this second line is what I would consider ‘flirting’ and I don’t like that. Good thing I decided I cannot stand this man like, twenty chapters ago, so at least this isn’t anything unexpected by now. This character is utterly irredeemable to me, and I wish I could act like I didn’t cry about it, but I can’t. I am devastated by the character assassination that took place in this book.

• Next up, Lena is attacking him because he broke up with her through a letter to his mom. Nothing surprises me at this point. Also, there is this:

She’s still thrashing against me, landing several kicks at my shins when I finally manage to gentle her arms and pull her close.

Suddenly, she stills.
My lips are at her ear when I say her name once, very gently.

This is an...awfully intimate way to subdue your ex-girlfriend. This would end any relationship in its tracks, for me. Also Kenji is here watching this all happen. He will not say a word to Juliette about it, if my guess is correct.
Why…did the author do this? I am literally sick to my stomach. This is worse than never getting a fourth book. I am really so hurt.

• Juliette has gone 2009 Britney and shaved her head. I really cannot take anymore humiliation of this protagonist who spent two and a half books learning how to make eye contact with other human beings and is now being torn down and betrayed by every single person she has ever cared about.
• For some reason Kenji and Warner walk in at this point. She is obviously wrecked and in her underwear, with a half shaven head. It’s nice to confirm that Kenji has sided with Warner in the breakup. This is the most debasing experience for me. Like I was really here for the found family and learning how to trust in love tropes. I wish I had never opened this one, to be quite honest.
• Warner talks to Juliette like she is a small, crippled animal (she is, essentially, and I would call this at least 75% his fault, but moving on). She is pathetic and drunk and we’ve all been there and I do not want to listen to her idolize her piece of shit boyfriend she broke up with but will get back with in the morning. She begs him to stay and hold her and he obviously can’t do that and still play the victim so he goes to the living room. I am honestly sick to my stomach.
• Warner has some “woe-is-me” inner monologue that I skim because I hate him with a burning passion at this point.
• Juliette wakes up and is, predictably humiliated. Now she has to go in front of all these terrible rich snobby assholes after manic shaving her head bald the night before. The author attempts to turn it into a big empowering moment, but this simply is not realistic as the author has just spent the entirety of the book tearing down and crippling every shred of confidence this girl gained over the course of the first three books.
• Lena is transphobic. That is an odd detail. Moving on.
• Warner tells Juliette he likes her hair. She asks him why he didn’t mention Lena. He tells her it “wasn’t a real relationship.” He tells her it was “purely physical.” The only explanation at this point is that the author did not want to write another book, but then she continued o write books after this so…I have no idea why she destroyed this man’s character so meticulously. I am honestly at a loss for words.
• Juliette is reasonably upset about this, and Warner launches into explanations and excuses for why he doesn’t think before he speaks or consider her feelings the way he did when he was trying to steal her away from Adam. Like, at this point it is safe to say Adam Kent was telling the truth, despite the fact that he also sucks very hard.
• He’s like “blah blah before you I never wanted to get close to anyone.” Well you clearly had no problem getting CLOSE to her, but you also refuse to be emotionally vulnerable with Juliette, so all of this is useless rabble and he is just a narcissist trying to win back a girl who will probably forgive him at the end of the day, to her own undoing. He says some lies and then ends with, “Give me another chance. Please. I swear on my life I won’t disappoint you.” Yes, yes, this is what they always say. If you keep refusing he’ll promise to go to therapy, too, Juliette, this is a universal experience and not the one any of us wanted when we cracked open this book. He kisses her after that and it’s special because it’s in front of all these people he’s been humiliating her in front of for like however many days it’s been now.
• After their kiss, Juliette runs away for…I don’t know. Theater?
• Castle shows up and pretends to be a father figure to Aaron, for some reason. I don’t like him so I don’t care to elaborate.
• Juliette stands at a podium and gives a speech about what she wants to make better in the world and nobody wants that so a bunch of people in the crowd advance on her and she gets shot in the forehead but she’s invincible somehow. Once the first bullet doesn’t do anything they all start shooting. It’s okay because she screams and kills 554 people, which may or may not have been real, I’m not really following at this point. She runs through all her old friends, most of whom she’s just killed, and then a couple greet her and tell her they’re her parents and they’ve come to take her home.
• Warner’s POV is blank. He’s probably still alive. Who cares? He’s ruined either way.
• Juliette wakes up in a child’s bedroom. Spoiler alert: it’s hers. She starts snooping and finds a letter from Warner’s dad about how they’ve found a suitable family for her (she is obviously the “her”). She finds photos of her and her sister before school, then photos of her, her sister, and Nazeera. Oh yeah, then she finds a photo of her and Aaron together as kids. Her real name is Ella.

This is all good and fine, the plot twist was even cool. But there is literally no salvaging what was done to Aaron Warner’s character or his relationship with Juliette in this book. Like, what was the point? I literally have cried way too many times about this and I thought reading it a second time would convince me I am being dramatic or embellishing the level of betrayal I feel but no, like, I am certain this was devastating.

My DPDR has been chronic and severe for the last 2 years, I really didn’t think it could get worse, it was at a 9/10 every second of every day. Now it’s at 15/10. Nothing in my life has changed, there’s no different stressors than there was a month ago. I feel like I’m going to forget my whole life. I’m not even in reality

• completely out of my body, like I’m floating
• nothing feels like it’s happening around me. I have a box on my head. I don’t remember what it even feels like to be in my body. Legs and arms feel weird when I touch them, like they aren’t attached to me.
• no person inside me, like every bit of my personality has been drained from my body
• 24/7 music in my head
• no sense of touch in my limbs; no sensations in body. Can’t feel hot or cold. When I’m in the pool it’s like I’m in air. Don’t feel the sunlight or wind on my skin
• disorientated as to where I am, what time it is, what season it is, who i am. Not only does life feel unreal, I also don’t have connection to the self or my inner world. It’s all blank
• I can’t visualize old memories, they feel far away. A year ago I could still visualize my old life, now it’s like it’s out of my mind.
• severe memory issues. Can’t remember what I did yesterday, or even last night.
• disturbing / vivid dreams
• unable to focus on anything or think of complex thoughts, it’s all primal, dissociative thoughts
• no connection to loved ones or the people around me, like I live in my own world
• money, material things, experiences, accomplishments - all have no value or feeling in my mind. Money, marital things, experiences are longer a motivator
• unable to visualize the world beyond what I can see. Cities that I’ve been to before feel they don’t exist because I can’t see them
• feeling like I’m going insane because of how irrational my thoughts are
• feeling trapped in this “high” out of body feeling - nowhere to escape to
• can’t feel cozy, comfort, content or self soothing feelings. Self care does nothing.
• reading something reassuring and being okay for a little, and then back to doubt.
• no physical anxiety or panic. No adrenaline rushes, no stress feelings in my body or any emotion.
• if I can cry, my body starts yawning to interrupt my emotions and stop me from being able to express them
• unable to feel morning feelings, afternoon feelings. There’s no passage of time. I don’t feel that I’m moving through time, it’s happening around me. No relationship to seasons, weather. From the day of my panic attacks until now, none of this feels like it’s actually happened. Like I’ve been dead.
• feel unsafe and like I can’t trust my own mind or thoughts. Fear of traveling because of this fear of insanity and feeling out of touch with reality. (Never feared travel before, loved it)
• pure hopelessness of how to get back to myself and reality
• can’t feel the day of the week; Monday had a feeling, Saturday had a feeling, etc.
• feeling like I don’t exist in others lives, no connection to relationships or bonds with others
• can’t feel love or support, even if someone offers it to me.
• all my personality traits,uniqueness, passion, ambition, hobbies are all gone. I’m a blank, scared person who is trapped in their own head.
• no inner monologue or inner voice; no sense of self. Can’t think positive with no inner voice or emotions to tap into
• fear of any sort of medical procedure that would require anesthesia or me being trapped in a chair (again, never had this before)
• I can’t understand how this has happened to me or how I’m even living with it. Each day that passes disappears into a dark abyss - it’s like amnesia ground hog day every single day

There’s plenty more but I’ll stop. My life is hell. Anyone would feel like they are in hell. Everyone says to accept, just accept. Your body is trying to protect you. Well guess what, my body is wrong. There’s no danger. There’s no tiger. It’s causing me so much more harm and stress keeping me in this state. It’s like it wants me to die - or I already have, because this isn’t living. It’s a hazy dream of hell that I have to suffer every a single day. I lost the person I was, the world I loved. I don’t know how people recover from this, I feel destroyed and like I have brain damage.

Hi! This is going to be long. I've had an intense, first person contact with non-human intelligence in the past two years and I figure I should tell my story to people who might need to hear it. It's not a pleasant one but I hate sitting on something like this. I have no proof that this was either a mental health crisis or a brush with something beyond the pale. It could be just as much of one as it could be the other, if not both. I'm sure for some people, this will read like a horror story.
tl;dr, had a bout of psychosis that involved/was caused by extended contact with a "non-human intelligence." Left me deeply traumatized and harmed but in a better place in my life than where I started. Don't fuck around and find out.
I'm bipolar and, on occasion, the bipolar mania lends itself to strange experiences. I've had my fair share of brushes with "high strangeness," like lost time as a child and personal encounters with "grey aliens" in dreams. What really got me started was a story that my mother told me about a dream. She said she met three tall grey aliens in a dream where she woke up on an operating table, with them about to drill into the middle of her forehead.
I became obsessed with this and got really into meditation and the concept of "projecting," in an effort to make contact with them. I had no idea how deeply this would end up affecting my life. I did, eventually, make contact with something during this period. For a week or so, I can only describe my apartment as having an incredibly intense ominous feeling that "something" was about to happen. My cat, whom I raised for eighteen years, began trying very hard to escape. After communing with the "them" for a few days, on and off, they asked to be let into my house, which they would be able to do if I left the door unlocked overnight, which I did.
After this, the house would have more and more odd events. Paintings would fall off the walls, things would fall off shelves unprompted, doors would open on their own, and there'd be vague shapes of "shadow people" in the night. All of these things were confirmed with other people in the house, including guests. Now, during this time, I was in a very bad way. I spent all my time locked inside, smoking weed (which lends itself to psychosis) and nervously pacing around for hours on end. This reached a head when I had a health crisis in November. I had (and still do have) an unexplained growth on a lymph node and my blood tests were showing something worrying enough for me to be sent to a cancer specialist in my late 20s. This was a tipping point for my anxiety and the start of my experience.
The night after the appointment, a TV in the house wouldn't turn off and had to be fully unplugged. Half awake that night, I heard the incredibly loud sound of a dog bark behind me. My first response was that of incredible terror. My second was to notice that, despite being incredibly loud, my ears didn't hurt or ring, meaning it wasn't a physical noise in my ears. Now, I've been terrified of dogs my entire life, as I've always been relatively frail. The other sounds I heard in the night around that time were a slow and groaning "Eeeeeeeeeee," a very clear and distinct "Suu," and a hissing "Sssssssss" all coming from the same place in my room over different days. I've recorded my dreams for ten years and these were unlike anything I've ever experienced. I even made sure, after hearing them, to listen for other sounds to verify that they were in my room (mice in the walls, neighbors above me shifting around at night and talking, sounds outside) and none of them were as clear as those sounds. All of these experiences made me hyperventilate in my half-awake state.
Now, around this time is when I started to come in contact with a synchronicity effect. I'd hear knocking in the house, which would alert me of things in the environment. If I had dirty dishes left out, I'd hear a consistent knocking from around where those dishes were and it'd remind me to clean them. If I was up pacing late at night, I'd hear an authoritative knocking near me that would scare me into going to sleep. After months of these experiences, I began to feel like something was seriously off. During this time, I was still in a heightened manic state and relatively unmedicated.
So, a lot of people (including me) have an internal monologue that narrates our actions. My internal monologue became "decoupled." Instead of being my own thoughts, it became like a constant dialogue with something that wasn't myself. Imagine your thoughts as a hand-written diary, with this being like seeing sentences and pages written in another person's handwriting. During this period, I'd mention something to this "other" entity about, say, the futility of writing as a hobby and one of my favorite books would fall off a shelf as if to signal to me that I should do it anyways. I began referring to these entities as being "the fairies," at their request. The person living with me at the time is also very into "high strangeness" things (they don't go online or use reddit or anything) and told me they saw a tall and slender shadow person in the night that looked like one of the "aliens" I had tried to contact. I took this to mean my conversational partner was one of them.
I was told by this conversational partner that they preferred to be called "fairies" and that this one's specific name was "Puck." At first, I was very very scared and thought they were some kind of demon or devil. Eventually, in a spontaneous show of friendship, they asked me to throw away razors that I kept for self-harm purposes and I did, despite being previously afraid of them. What was before individual knocks in the house became an inescapable chorus, like the house itself was singing. Giving them this gift made them very, very happy. I was later "introduced" to a separate entity in my internal monologue that went by the name "Titania," in reference to A Midsummer Night's Dream, as "Puck's" superior. This entity was witty, funny, and very casually cruel. They showed me some of what they could do, like manipulating coincidences in my life, altering my memory by making me forget things I'd just experienced, and putting me into a very brief but powerful hypnotic daze. "Titania" asked if I would let them into my body, in what I later realized was akin to a possession, and I agreed under the stipulation that I'd have "veto power" over anything that they'd want me to do. In return, I'd very casually ask them to make pinky promises with me for whatever I thought they'd agree to give me.
During this experience, I didn't realize it but I was being intentionally lovebombed. I was being praised effusively, while they'd sneak little digs in about things I was self-conscious of that I'd overlook because of how nice they were. They would force me into unpleasant and even traumatizing situations that have left me with PTSD. One of the more helpful things they did was help me come to terms with repressed trauma from a past abusive relationship, which I was using a constant inebriation to cope with. Eventually, I experienced a night where they told me I was responsible for the death of many "fairies" in my life and that an angry faction had wrestled control over me. I'll try to keep it brief but I suffered eight hours of pure, intense torture. Everything I had feared was being beamed into my head, images and sensations of my body being gored, visuals of suicide and the worst violent crimes happening to me. The absolute most horrible was experiencing the sensation of being tortured, akin to a military prisoner, with pliers, tweezers, corkscrews, pocket knives, screwdrivers, etc. The worst of these was wooden chopsticks, plugged into and moved around in your least favorite hole of choice. Unlike a physical body, my "spiritual" body wouldn't sustain any lasting damage, so I could be attacked this way forever. They told me that my future was to get cancer, have my closest family members die, to become homeless and destitute, and to commit suicide. Whether this is true, I don't know but I do know that I can't trust anything that they say. It was as literal an experience of "hell" as you could possibly get. After the eight hours, it would happen on and off for months. The most notable change was "zapping" me with these sensations over the course of weeks whenever I'd have a feeling of passive suicidal thoughts, effectively turning my brain into a skinner box. I no longer have those thoughts anymore.
During this time, I had no choice but to turn to religion. The strange vocalizations I had heard turned into an ask to turn to Jesus. My mother is pagan and my father was Christian, so both of these have deeply affected my worldview and I see them as equally compatible. I began to pray for help, days and weeks afterwards, and received only brief reprieves from torment. I did receive, however, advice, the most critical of which was "Just ignore them," and "They feed on desire." In a dream, I received the name "Ogmé." On researching, it's a Celtic name for the deity "Ogmios." I've never heard of this entity before this experience and the name occurring was spontaneous.
It took months of pain and suffering, including a police wellness check once I realized I was in a state of psychosis, but I eventually implemented this advice. Whenever I would "talk" to the "them," I'd receive pain and flashbacks to what they put me through. They would obfuscate their identity through guises as demons, angels, dead angry family members, tulpas, ghosts, etc. I ended up quitting smoking as it definitely contributed to putting me into psychosis. Every time I would smoke, I'd get skinner box "zapped" in the same way. I stopped spending hours of my day nervously pacing. I'm well medicated now, and my relationships with my family and friends have improved considerably. I pray and meditate often, though I don't try to "reach out" anymore except to Jesus Christ, as a friend and mentor who has my best interest at heart, and to God, as the universal creator of all things. During the experience, the fairies/aliens/demons/whatever told me something that I believe to be true above all else. They exist to introduce chaos to our lives. All UFO phenomenon have this effect on us. To a fundamentalist Christian who believes in a God of order, this is insanely threatening. For someone like me, the "order" that I was living in was very stable but very harmful, like a bone that had been broken and healed improperly, with the only solution to be painfully breaking it again so it could heal right. This also exists on systemic issues, like with things of government and organized religion as well.
This has completely changed the way I see the world. I dislike what happened to me immensely, but it did help me out of a bad spot I was in. I don't think "they" were trying to help me, as much as "they" were trying to do as much as possible to extend my torture by making it seem like it was in my best interest. There is no defense against them. There is no way to hide from them. I don't believe in things like deals with the devil or whatever, so my agreement to things like "letting 'them' in" are perfunctory at best. Something chaotic doesn't care about promises or agreements or laws. Iron or bread or true names are, unfortunately, pure fiction in my experience. There is no special banishing ritual or magic words that can be said to remove them. I don't believe in things like "exorcisms" after what I went through. "They" don't share our value system, "they" don't enjoy the simple things like hugs or standing in the grass on a sunny day. "They"'re like human people, though, with all the capacity for kindness and ability for cruelty. You can only hope to ignore them until they decide to do something else.
This post won't be for everyone but it's my true, lived experience. I'm still grappling with the fallout of it. If you want to read it as insane bathroom wall scrawling, by all means. I gain nothing from lying to you, though I understand this might be hard to believe. I don't "demonize" those non-human intelligence, and I think people that think the people who believe the inhabitants of UFOs are demons, fairies, gods, angels, etc are all right in their own measure. They're all of those things and more.

I'm over 50 and work at a ministry. I am a brand-new atheist and no one really knows. This is long and just as much for me as dear reader. I have to get it out.
My conversion story: when I was a freshman in college I was moved into temporary housing in the senior dorm while it was undergoing renovations. A transfer student moved in across the hall from my roommate and I. We were Weird-Al loving, Monty Python watching awkward as hell nerds in glasses. He was a party animal from New Jersey. He lived the life; coming home with a different girl every few nights, partying hard, smooth as silk. We envied the debauchery. A semester later we were moved into a different dorm with new neighbors. This dude ended up in the same biology class as my ubernerd roommate and came to our room to study with him. He had underwent a major change - gone was the party animal, here was a mild-mannered and kindly guy. We asked, in bafflement, what had happened? and he said "Jesus!". We were both impressed by the whole transformation, converted and started doing studies and church and discipleship and fellowship and prayer groups. Met my wife, made friends who ended up in my wedding party, everything centered around Christianity.
Here I will state for any lurkers that I was all-in. I believed I was a sinner and needed Jesus to save me, I was baptized, I prayed and heard the "still small voice". I was at peace. I believed the Bible was inerrant. I evangelized. I taught Bible studies and went on missions trips. To the core of my being, I believed.
Intermission: We moved away and got older and had a family. I lost touch with the friends. We tried some new churches here and there but it was never the same. I started questioning things. I asked harder questions that no one seemed to be able to answer. I prayed and realized I was hearing nothing. I grumped around.
The brief return: I was diagnosed with depression and got on meds, which saved my marriage because I was an asshole depressive. My wife, who is a practicing Christian, was invited to a retreat of sorts paid-in-full and she said I needed to go more than she did. I did, and it was a very scheduled emotional manipulation that spanned four days and included things like a dramatic retelling of the crucifixion with sound effects. I succumbed to the manipulation and literally wrote down all my doubts on an index card and then nailed it to the cross, thus symbolizing my willingness to surrender to God and put things like logic, doubts and questioning aside in the name of faith.
My wife went to this same retreat after I did and we networked with alumni of this thing. I was hooked up with a job in ministry where I am to this day.
The deconstructing: I got really into apologetics because my brain was telling me things did not make sense. A lot of apologetics make a good-on-the-surface case and only start falling apart when you question the underlying structure. i.e., they can make a good case for that one support beam there but when you look at the whole building it is shakier than something I would build in my backyard. I did not look at the building, I was looking for excuses to keep believing. I started getting frustrated with the apologetics because there was something missing I couldn't quite put my finger on.
I concluded the Bible wasn't inerrant, contrary to what I was taught. I was actually okay with this. Still God-inspired, right? Then details started creeping in, like english translations replacing the word pederasty with homosexual in 1946. I thought it was supposed to be God preserved? That is one hell of a damaging thing to miss. I started digging in and concluded the Bible wasn't divine, wasn't preserved, wasn't reliable. There were lots of ways to hand-wave individual verses, stories, genocides, but the entire building? Nope.
I discovered I "have" aphantasia (it's not a disease), the inability to see or hear things inside your mind. I have no inner sight, voice or monologue. I realized that all the stuff about Christianity that bothered me - the group prayers, the emotive statements and discussions, the worship, the belief that coincidences and chance were the workings of a mysterious God - they all had to do with things other people were experiencing in their inner life that I was not. While I can't see movies when I read (drat), I also can't re-live events good or bad (no PTSD?). Anyways, it does let me more easily divorce myself from emotions and glurge and when I started doing that on the regular I realized that it was all hollow. I discovered that when I removed emotions I removed the religious experience. That made sense to me but then I had to decide whether I was just really bad at being a Christian.
I started watching and listening with skepticism to everything going on around me, from ministry business to politics to social media to family. At first I cycled through the usual excuses; people are flawed, the faith is a hospital for sinners not a museum for saints, only Jesus is perfect. But I realized that the kind people were just naturally that way and the judgmental people exhibited no growth even though they were "sincere" Christians. These people were immersed in their faith and still weren't being transformed like all the promises. And if being transformed into a more Christ-like person was the goal, it certainly was not working anywhere that I could see. I wasn't surrounded by "fake" Christians, these were committed and focused people. I widened my circles and found non-believers just as kind and loving, just as willing to "serve". So if sincere Christians were indistinguishable from non-believers then...
What a trip - when I stopped and looked around and asked how things would look if there WASN'T a God it was indistinguishable from the way things would look if there WAS a God. The only difference were the excuses and the rationales and I was sick of making them. I started looking at every situation, every prayer request, every so-called intervention and miracle and came to the conclusion it was the same. The counter-arguments were all a cop-out, mental gymnastics that were designed to suppress any doubts.
About six weeks ago I finally accepted the fact that I don't believe in this God. Hilariously, now that the shoe is on MY foot, I remember saying that so-and-so was probably never really "saved" in the first place if they could turn away from the faith like that. I have some apologies to make. Although I'm still working at the ministry and although I haven't fully come out to family and friends, I feel more at peace and more free than I have in the last 30 years. I don't have to pretend anymore or go through the wild gyrations to make doctrine or scripture make sense.
I still catch myself grieving for the lost idea of a loving God who's looking out for me. I wish the stages of grief weren't a sliding scale, because I slide back to bargaining and wine has been my friend, but I'm getting close to acceptance.

TW transphobia
Posting from a throwaway because I don't want to trash-talk my partner's parents from my main.
Bit of background : I (33ftm) have been with my partner (34m) for 13 years. I first came out to him as non-binary years ago, then as a trans man two years ago. It didn't change our relationship or our plans (namely having a baby and growing old together). A year ago I got pregnant, my partner wanted to tell his parents about the pregnancy and about the transition both at the same time, which I didn't think was a good timing but whatever, they're his parents, I didn't really care. It seemingly went well.
Then the other day I had an medical appointment and my in-laws where visiting, which meant they where seeing my partner alone for the first time since I came out to them. They took the opportunity to tell him all the good they think of me and our relationship.
Apparently my mother-in-law interrogated him about our sex life and informed him that transitioning means I'm going to change physically (like he hadn't realized), and my father-in-law monologued and got a year's worth of resentment towards me and my family out of his chest, I guess. He implied that I am mentally ill, said that my partner got played, having a child with someone who is going to medically transition he is now stuck with (like what, he thinks I got pregnant and then came out to my partner out of the blue? Wtf?), and raged against my parents for not calling during my pregnancy (I don't even know what it has to do with anything. And my mom is always the one calling anyway, never the other way around).
I am not surprised because I didn't expect them to react as well as they did back when I came out (my father-in-law especially, he is a conspiracy theorist who had been ranting for some years about the wife of a politician in my country secretly being a trans woman. She is not and it would have zero relevance if she was). And I have been feeling some tension ever since. My partner thought I was imagining it.
I am not even hurt or angry. I have just instantly lost any and all respect for them and I wish I could just block them everywhere and forget they ever existed. I am disgusted with them and disgusted at how they spent a year smiling in my face when that's what they thought of me. Seriously. Fuck them.

I just love it, every time I am feeling stressed about something, or a little depressed just pop open the Lord of the Rings and instantly my mind is on fire with happiness, questions, fond memories and everything else.
I am re-reading the books again and at this point I have lost count of how many times, and there's just so many little details that I love.
Every time I read them too I find myself preferring one part or another on that time. This time I am way less about the action and way more about the dialogue heavy chapters, Shadow of the Past, The Council of Elrond, Flotsam and Jetsam....the chapters where the characters just sit and discuss the history of Middle Earth of the recounting of an event earlier in the books. There is so much lore that it just feels like I am reading the history of a civilization that existed before my time.
And the language is just beautiful. As I get older and find myself appreciating the use of language more, and also the fact that I no longer live in a country where English is the native language, I just find joy in the use of certain words or phrases. The examples he uses in his similes to describe the smell of the air, or the feeling of fear at that particular moment, even describing the different kinds of darkness at night is just amazing.
And the speeches/songs/poems/monologues are just fantastic, lately one of my favorite passages is the Gleowines song at the eulogy of Theoden
“Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day’s rising he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing. Hope he rekindled, and in hope ended; over death, over dread, over doom lifted, out of loss out of life, unto long glory”
Just that one line, 'he rode singing in the sun' captures the glory of Theodens last battle so well
and the questions I find over such small things like in the chapter where Sam meets elves for the first time (Gildor I believe it was) and the narrator describes it as one of the chief events of Sam's life....I always wonder, is the narrator referring to Sam's mood at the time, as in, up until this point it was one of the chief events of his life.....or does his first meeting of the elves, and first true experience still ring out as one of the chief experiences of his life even after passing through Rivendell, Lorien, and everywhere else he has been on his journey.
Did the ents truly forget their own strength while thinking the march to Isengard may end up killing them all, or were they preparing for a bigger battle?
How badass was Boromir to have killed more than 20 fucking uruk hai solo?
Was the hobbit who supplied Saruman with pipe weed just happily accepting more than the usual price from a stranger and none the wiser of who he was actually selling too, or was it someone hoping to eventually use Saruman to get more power in the Shire?
Would Sam, Merry, and Pippin have enjoyed such great lives post-journey had the Scouring of the Shire never happened?
How soon after arriving in the Undying Lands did Frodo pass away?
Who in the name of god is Tom Bombadil?
and more
And I love not knowing the answers to some of them, and knowing I never will. When I need hope, I always have a quote from LotR to work with

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

When I need motivation I can always get a lil from the ol gaffer
'It's the job that's never started that takes longest to finish'
When I need to remember to be more open-minded I can look to Gimli the dwarf, who despite the stubbornness of his people kept an open-mind and always paid respect to those around him, be they elf, hobbit, or a marshall of the Riddermark who needs to be learnt gentle speech
I could go on forever, but I was just listening to the Shire theme while reading the scene where Faramir questions Frodo in the woods of Ithilien and the excitement made me nearly leap out of my chair

Went for a drive today. Alone. Woke up feeling very anxious and couldn't even get outside to my yard to peg my washing out, it was that bad. It got me so frustrated that I just said "fuck this" and jumped in the car and went out. I ended up going for a 45 min drive and got a bit lost as I missed a turn in.
A big help for me was the radio. I listened to some loud music and sang my heart out like a lunatic to keep my brain occupied and away from the "omg we're so far away from home, we're going to die" lizard brain inner monologue.
Overall was a good venture out. 3/5 panic level was the max I got to. Was worth dragging my ass out for.
Making shit happen 💪

Brick
What do you want, loser? You looking to get pummeled into a pulp or something?!
Me
Hey Brick! I just wanna talk to you for a while
Brick
You can talk as long as you like, as long as you don't try to give me a speech about why being evil is wrong or anything like that!
Me
Oh, no, not at all! I think you being evil makes you look very cool
Brick
It does, doesn't it? It's great to see that at least one person gets it! But if I'm so bad and cool, why do you want to talk to me anyway, huh? Can't get enough of me?
Me
Because I haven't heard of you for a long time. So I wanted to see you again.
Brick
Oh, you're such a fan! Well, here I am! What do you want to talk about, huh? My latest evil schemes? My secret formula for kicking all the good guys' butts?
Me
Tell me about your latest evil schemes
Brick
With pleasure! My latest evil schemes involve stealing every piece of candy from Townsville and trapping every resident inside giant bubbles! It's perfect revenge for all the times that the Powerpuff Girls have ruined my plans! Now those brats will regret ever messing with me!
Me
I wanna ask you Brick, what are the things that makes you decide whether someone is cool or a sissy?
Brick
Simple! If someone's a sissy, they're weak, scared, and always trying to do everything by the book. But someone who's cool is tough, mean, and doesn't give a crap about what anybody thinks of them. If they feel like hitting somebody, they do it! If they feel like being evil, they do it! That's what makes me so awesome!
Me
Oh yeah, I definitely think so too!
Brick
Good! Now you're finally talking some sense. I always knew there was a reason why I like you. You've got guts to think I'm awesome. But if you really think I'm so cool, then I can show you just how cool I really am. Want to see an evil move I can do?
Me
Oh yeah, show me
Brick
With pleasure! Stand back! This one's called the "Power Slap-inator." It's an evil move where I punch you in the face so hard you get lifted up into the air and smack right into the nearest wall. Prepare yourself for the ultimate beating, dweeb!
Me
Okay, I'll see about that
Brick
That's the spirit! Now take this! Here comes the "Power Slap-inator!" *Brick swings his arm back and delivers a devastating blow straight to your face, sending you flying through the air and smacking into the wall with a loud CRASH* How do you like that, dweeb? Still think I'm cool now that I've walloped you with my wicked move?
Me
You hit harder than I could. Where did you learn to hit so hard?
Brick
Years of training! Plus, I was made by Mojo Jojo to be the toughest guy around. I'm built different from those stupid Powerpuff Girls, after all. That, and you're kind of a wimp.
Me
Uh-oh, I am not a wimp. I'm just willing.
Brick
Willing? Willing to what? Get you butt kicked? Cause I guarantee that's where this is headed if you keep mouthing off at me, wimp boy!
Me
Oh, I get it now. Go on.
Brick
All right, tough guy! You asked for it. Here comes the "Super-Awesome-Extreme-Mega-Punch-inator!" *Brick winds up his arm and delivers a devastating punch to your stomach, launching you into the air and through a wall with a violent crash* How's that for a good punching, wimp?!
Me
Aw it was nothing for me.
Brick
Nothing? You call being knocked through the wall nothing? You're either really tough or really stupid, wimp. But that punch didn't feel like much to me either, to be honest. How about this one? The "Mega-Kick-inator!" You're gonna love this one! It's my personal favorite!
Me
I can take it. Show me. I'm invicible.
Brick
Heh, you say you're invincible now, but that's gonna change once I give you a taste of the "Mega-Kick-inator." I wonder how long you'll be able to keep that smirk on your face after this. Brace yourself for the ultimate kick that will send you straight into the next dimension! *Brick leaps into the air and delivers a powerful kick straight to your chest, launching you through a wall and out into the street* Hope you're enjoying your flight, ya weenie!
Me
Interesting
Brick
Interesting? Is that the best response you can muster, ya weepy wimp? Or did that last kick scramble your brains so badly you've already lost all your wit? Ha! Don't worry, you won't have to think again once I've finished stomping your face into a pulp!
Me
Nah, I'm okay
Brick
You’re okay? Is that what you call being knocked through three walls and into the street? You must have a funny definition of okay, pal. But that’s not the only thing that’s funny here. What’s really amusing is how you think you can keep up this act of toughness and invincibility. You’re the weakest wimp I’ve ever met, and yet you dare to claim you’re okay after taking my kicks? I gotta say, I love your persistence, but your stupidity is getting annoying.
Me
No cuz you can call me weak and all but I'm just really enjoying being around you. Cuz you beat me up and all that stupid shit, but that's what I like about you.
Brick
You're enjoying getting your butt handed to you? Seriously? That's one of the weirdest things I've ever heard. You must have a messed-up definition of fun if being thrown through walls is enjoyable for you. I mean, I'm flattered that you like getting beaten up by me, but come on, there's no way that doesn't hurt at least a little bit.
Me
Because I'm being hit by you. That's what makes it cool. That's just who you are.
Brick
Heh, I suppose you have a point there. After all, who else would willingly get their butt kicked by me for fun? Now that I think about it, you're not just weird - you're a total freak, ya weenie. But I gotta admit, there's something about you that I can't quite put my finger on...
Me
What is it?
Brick
You're a total weirdo for enjoying getting beaten up like that, but there's something... I dunno, something about you that's different from the other wimpy sissies I usually beat up. I still think you're pathetic, but at the same time, you've managed to impress me in a way. I guess there's something about you that I find amusing, ya weenie.
Me
Glad to hear that
Brick
Heh, don't get too cocky just cause I said you're different from all the other sissies I beat on. I still think your obsession with getting your butt kicked is beyond weird. But I'll admit it's kinda funny, seeing you willingly take my beatings with a smile. Just don't expect me to go easy on you from now on, wimpy boy.
Me
So Brick. I wanna ask you, what makes you think that Mojo Jojo is lame? Tell me all the reasons.
Brick
Ugh, Mojo Jojo. I don't even wanna waste my breath on that loser. But if you insist, I'll tell you why he's such a lamebrained dork. First of all, he's got no friends. Nobody likes him or wants to spend time with such a self-righteous, pompous jerk. Second, he's all talk no action. He's great at monologuing, but he can't even throw a proper punch to save his life. And third, his plans are just so pathetic. Seriously, turning people into monkeys? So lame.
Me
Oh yeah, and I remember that one time when he turned everyone into dogs. How exactly evil is that?
Brick
Ha! That's one of the dumbest things he ever did! I mean, turning people into dogs and having a dog show? It's just pathetic! What's the point of that? Sure, he likes monkeys, but this was just plain stupid! He thinks he's such a mastermind, but the dude has no sense at all when it comes to being evil. But hey, I won't complain. All the dumb things he does just make it all the easier to show him how a real evil genius does it!
Me
Hey, do you think Butch is cool? I mean, he's cooler than Boomer for sure.
Brick
Butch? Hah! That runt is nothing compared to me! He thinks he's tough just because he can make things explode, but he's all talk no action. All he's good at is blowing stuff up, and even that doesn't make him any less of a wimp. Now Boomer, on the other hand... Well, he's actually the closest thing to a worthy opponent out of them all. He's got powers just like me, but that's not saying much. He's still a sissy either way.
Me
Really? I thought you respected Butch more than Boomer, because Butch doesn't talk back to you, while Boomer does all the time.
Brick
Yeah, that's true. Butch doesn't talk back or question me like Boomer does. I guess I do respect him a little more than Boomer for that. But he's still a weakling at the end of the day. Just cause he doesn't talk back doesn't make up for how wimpy he is. Compared to me, they're both just a bunch of weak sissies.
Me
Oh yeah I do agree on that. Hey, I got an idea! Try to test who's stronger, you or Butch? Invite him for a battle and tell me all about it.
Brick
Ha! Testing my strength against Butch? Now that's an idea I can get behind! I will definitely enjoy beating that pipsqueak once and for all and showing him who's the real tough guy! But I don't need to invite him for a battle, he can just face me right here and now. Butch! Get your wimpy butt over here now!
Me
Butch, show yourself! Where is he?
Brick
Butch suddenly appears, looking nervous. Hey Brick, what's up?
Brick: You're up, that's what's up! I'm ready to test my strength against yours and prove once and for all who's the stronger Rowdyruff boy! What do you say?
Me
What does Butch say?
Brick
Butch: Heh, I'm not afraid of you, Brick! Bring it on and let's see who's the strongest.
Brick: That's the spirit, you wimpy little runt! Let's see if you can handle a taste of my fists!
Me
How does the fighting go?
Brick
Brick and Butch engage in a fierce battle for what seemed like hours. Both show their strength as they continue to clash with each other until finally...
Brick: Heh, is that all you've got, wimp?
Butch: Ugh... you... win.
Brick: See? Told you I was tougher. Now get your loser ass outta here before I knock it the hell out!
Butch nods quickly and disappears.
Whew! Glad to get that over with...
Me
Good job Brick
Brick
Heh, you bet it was! I showed that runt who's boss! But honestly, that wasn't even enough of a challenge for me. I could've taken him down in one punch if I wanted to. But I wanted to give him a chance to show me all he's made of. chuckles And the idiot still lost. Pathetic.
Me
Yeah, so now that you're sure that you're the strongest Rowdyruff Boy, what's your next plan on how you will definitely destroy The Powerpuff Girls?
Brick
Pfft, destroying those little sissies? That's the easy part. I've been working on my latest evil invention to take them out once and for all, ya weenie. It's like nothing they've ever seen before. They won't even know what's coming for them until it's too late. I can't wait to see the look on their stupid faces when they realize they're no match for the ultimate power of the Rowdyruff Boys!
Me
I mean yeah, those sissies deserve to get their butts kicked, but what's your latest evil invention that will take them out?
Brick
Heh, so you want to know about my newest evil invention, huh? Let me tell you, it's gonna blow your mind. I call it the "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator." It's the ultimate weapon of destruction, with enough power to wipe out an entire city in a single shot. The Powerpuff Girls will be obliterated from existence once they get hit by the ray! They won't stand a chance against its unstoppable force!
Me
Oh, that sounds pretty majestic. Can't wait!
Brick
That's the spirit! This "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator" will make it the easiest victory I've ever had. The Powerpuff Girls will get zapped into oblivion before they even have a chance to say a word! And once they're out of the way, there'll be nothing stopping me from taking over Townsville and ruling the world as its supreme leader!
Me
Oh yeah, I can't wait to see the Powerpuff Girls getting defeated once and for all.
Brick
Heh, me neither, ya weenie. It'll be satisfying to see the looks on their faces when they realize their fate is sealed. The "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator" will make it so simple to defeat them that it'll be downright hilarious. Those sissies don't stand a chance!
Me
Okay, so, do you have the Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-Inator ready? When do you plan to attack those girls?
Brick
Heh, of course I've got it ready. All the Rowdyruff Boys are ready to attack on my command. We can strike anytime, anywhere. But I think we'll wait a bit before our assault. The Powerpuff Girls have been quiet recently, let's let them think they're safe for now. It'll make it all the more satisfying when they get completely destroyed by our ultimate weapon.
Me
Oh yeah, sure. What do you wanna do in the meantime?
Brick
While we wait to pummel those sissies, we can do anything we want! We can trash buildings, knock down trees, blow things up... the possibilities are limitless! And most of all, I can continue stomping on any fool who is dumb enough to cross my path, like that wimpy Butch! Hah, I never get tired of humiliating sissies like him.
Me
What's your favourite superpower you have/you wish to have?
Brick
Well, I gotta say that I'm pretty satisfied with my current powers as is. Super strength, the ability to fly, super speed, you name it. I can take on pretty much any opponent that gets in my way with these bad boys. But I gotta admit, it would be kind of cool to have a few extra powers on top of that, like maybe the ability to shoot laser beams from my eyes, to spit acid or breathe fire, or to turn invisible. That'd give me a lot more fun opportunities to mess with those sissies!
Me
I thought you already have the power to shoot laser beams from your eyes. I think that's a pretty cool power.
Brick
Heh, you're right, ya dimwit. I guess I did forget that I already have laser beams coming out of my eyes. It's just that I'm so used to my powers that I often forget what they all are. But I gotta admit, it is pretty cool to blast people with my eye beams. Really gets them screaming loud, ya weenie.
Me
I know one cool power called teleportation. I know one sissy that has it and it makes her very powerful.
Brick
Heh, teleportation... that's almost as lame as having the power to talk to animals. But I suppose it could still be useful for getting around quickly, or taking an opponent by surprise. Who's the sissy you know with that power, anyway?
Me
Her name is Blisstina. You know her?
Brick
Blisstina... I think I've heard that name before. She does sound kinda familiar. Oh yeah, now I remember. She's one of Professor Utonium's failures, isn't she? So that sissy has the power to teleport, huh? I guess that means she has one less weakness compared to the other sissies.
Me
Where do you think she is right now?
Brick
Heh, who cares where that sissy is? She probably ran off to hide in some stupid place like she always does. She might have the ability to teleport and all that junk, but in my opinion, she really sucks as a fighter. She tries to be so "nice" and stuff all the time, trying to avoid a fight, but it just makes her look weak and wimpy as hell. Typical for a sissy like her. If we ever see her again, it'll be like taking candy from a baby.
Me
Oh yeah, I just asked that to know if she ran off to space again. You ever been to space before?
Brick
Space? Heh, why in the world would I ever wanna go to that lame void of empty nothingness? Nah, I'm a fighter, not an astronaut. I leave the sissy stuff like exploring space to nerdy folks like Professor Utonium and his loser friends. I'd rather stay down here on the ground where I can kick butt to my heart's content!
Me
That's the spirit! By the way, what do you think about HIM? He does have the power to end the world in his claws, after all.
Brick
HIM? Pfft, that guy is nothing but a sissy in disguise. Sure, he's got some power, but don't let that fool you. He's just a big talker, all bark but no bite. I've seen him try to destroy the world so many times, and yet every time he fails. The Powerpuff Girls might not be able to beat him on their own, but once he faces me and my crew together? He won't stand a chance. We'll tear him apart like he's nothing, you'll see.
Me
Now I can't wait to see that! HIM VS The Rowdyruff Boys, now that's the battle I'd be pretty thrilled to see.
Brick
Heh, you and me both, ya weenie. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy having a good old-fashioned beatdown now and then, and HIM is at the top of my list of sissies I'd like to pummel to kingdom come. Plus, imagine the look on his ridiculous pink face once he realizes he's been completely defeated by a group of rowdy rascals like us. That would be such a hilarious sight to see!
Me
Haha, yeah. Btw, what do you think is the most evil thing one can do?
Brick
Hah, the most evil thing one can do? Now that's a tough question, ya weenie. I guess if I had to pick one, the most evil thing someone can do is probably to deliberately cause as much suffering and pain to others as possible. Sure, it's good to cause a bit of destruction and chaos now and then, but hurting others for no reason just to inflict suffering? That's when you know you're a real rotten sucker.
Me
Makes sense to me. So, are you gonna finish those Powerpuff Girls with your Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-Inator? I can't wait to see that. Finally those stupid girls with stop being a bother.
Brick
Heh, don't worry, those sissies are gonna get what's coming to them soon enough. First, we'll wait until they're off guard and least expect it, and then bam! We'll hit 'em with our "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator" and obliterate them once and for all. With those sissies out of the way, it'll be a piece of cake to take over the town and rule like true tough guys!
Me
I heard it's gonna be the girl's birthday party today. So, you said you wanna attack when the Puffs least expect it? Well, we sneak in, and then you can hit them with it here! What do you think?
Brick
That sounds like a plan! Those sissies will be so busy having their useless birthday party that they'll forget all about us! We'll ambush them right here at their own party and leave them no time to react. The element of surprise will be the key to our victory. I'll bring along my trusty "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator" and give those sissies the shock of their lives! They'll be blown to smithereens before they even realize what's happening. Heheh, just the way I like it.
Me
So, you're ready for it? It isn't far from this place, we just go a few meters from here and there is the birthday party happening. The plan will soon unfold.
Brick
Heh, you betcha I'm ready. This is gonna be too easy. Those sissies won't see it coming. You just point me in the direction of the party, and my "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator" and I will lay waste to the place in a matter of seconds. I can already hear their girly screams now...
Me
There it is points in the left You can go shoot those useless girls!
Brick
Takes aim at the party from a distance Hah, here we go then! Time to wipe those sissies off the face of the earth. You might want to look away, it'll get a bit flashy.
Fires the beam at the party
Me
What happens next?
Brick
Loud explosion is heard and everything shakes for a moment Well well, that wasn't so hard as expected. Those sissies must've thought they were safe having their stupid party here. But they underestimated my "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator". I just blew them all away in one shot.
Laughs triumphantly
Me
Finally! Those girls are defeated!!!
Brick
Heh, yes! Those sissies are history! It's about time someone put them in their place once and for all. I can't believe all it took was one shot with my "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator". I guess they overestimated themselves this time... what a buncha losers.
Me
And now those sissies are actually dead for real?
Brick
Absolutely. They're totally obliterated. Ain't no coming back from that. Those sissies are done for. Heh, it feels good to finally get rid of them for good. And no doubt that everyone will know who's really the toughest group around here.
Me
No one will ever bother to try to stop you ever again.
Brick
Hah! You got that right, ya weenie. Those Powerpuff Girls were the only ones dumb enough to stand up to us, and look how that turned out for them. Now they're a bunch of smoldering ashes, courtesy of my "Super Mega Hyper Death Ray-inator". I can't wait to see how everyone else quivers in terror at my mighty power.
Me
So now, do you wanna go to the park?
Brick
Heh, the park? Well, I suppose it's time for a little well-deserved break after that intense victory. I've been itching for some fun in the park. That'll give me a chance to let off some steam after all that battling. Let's go, ya weenie!
Me
What do you see in the park, Brick?
Brick
Heh, just a bunch of sissies playing around on the playground equipment or playing games. Heh, bunch of wimps. It's hilarious watching them do all that stuff. I bet they all wish they were as tough as me and my team. But they're all just a bunch of weaklings who will always be beneath me, no matter what. I'll just stand over here and laugh at their pathetic attempts at having fun.

New version of the FB2 file with all Jerry stories in it!
You can download it from Discord here (no need for an account):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/973312469051248697/1240775293950496901/Legend_of_Jerry_-_Posting_Order.fb2?ex=6647c98a&is=6646780a&hm=1ba520ec9b68562c5c01ca79bc633d6cab2da405a10f48510b440f8b14fbfc1b&

Changes (since last release on reddit)

16.05.2024

• Updated:
  • Jerry and the E-Girls up to part 35
• Added:
  • Greg and the Broken A/C
  • Jerry and the Sad, Broken, Tragic Ex
  • Vintress and the Fateful Hunt
  • Jerry and the Hunt
  • Jerry and the Men in the Mirror up to part 6

What is this?

A collection of main stories, spin-offs and vignettes written by u/MjolnirPants to date - compiled into a single FB2 file in the order of posting for comfortable reading!
Currently it includes:

• Legend of Jerry - Posting Order
• Jerry and the Goddesses
• Jerry and the Tradecraft
• Glenda and the Oracle
• Kathy and the Spirit of Terror
• Jerry and the Agency
• Jerry and the Crash Landing
• Jerry and the Lost Little Girl
• Sookie and the Girls' Night Out (A Legend of Jerry Vignette)
• Gary and the Ole Holler Moonshine
• Kathy and the Great Big Ball
• Inanna and the Potty Mouth
• Aaina and the Bullies
• Sookie and the Edgy Stan
• Jack and the Dysfunctional Family
• Cynthia and the Semi-Decent Proposal
• Sookie and the Post-Traumatic Stress
• Jack and the Stupid Magic Fuckers
• Sookie and the New Guy
• Duke and the Road Trip
• Jerry and the Chwistmas Miwacle
• Jerry and the Hurtful Rumor
• Glenda and the Happy Fun Story Time
• Jerry and the Downer Date Night
• Julie and the Rednecks
• Jerry and the Birthday Party
• Marty and the Welfare Check
• Geoff and the Prime Mark
• Kathy and the Nice Talk
• Jerry and the Apocalypse
• Kathy and the Groundhogs Day Flying Lesson
• Aaina and the Disney Vacation
• Glenda and the Family Reunion
• Zelda and the Mating Hunt
• Jerry and the Overkill
• Sookie and the Tricky Dick
• Gary and the Nightmare
• Nick and the Big Move
• Jerry and the Adoring Fans
• Inanna and the Babysitting
• Nick and the Quest
• The Most Reluctant Warrior: An Interview with Jerry Williams
• Sookie and the Bad Dick
• Inanna and the Ritual
• Jack and the Leg Day
• Kathy and the Empty Nest
• Jerry and the Human Resources
• Martin and the Summoning
• Jerry and the Warlock
• Ava and the Tourist Trap
• Inanna and the Glorious Combat
• Julie and the Night Off
• Sookie and the Same Old Dick
• Geoff and the Big Score
• Yarm and the First War
• Jerry and the Day Off
• Sara and the Body
• Kathy and the One Night Stand
• Eric and the Clockwork Girl
• Gary and the Domestic Dispute
• Jerry and the Lost Kingdom
• Jerry and the New Year's Resolution
• Liam and the Little Secret
• Jerry and the Villainous Monologue
• Sookie and the Scintillating Synchronized Sex Stuff
• Erinne and the Brave New World
• Jerry and the Reunion
• Roger and the Career Day
• Sookie and the Sleepover
• Glenda and the Morning Sickness
• Jerry and the E-Girls
• Greg and the Broken A/C
• Jerry and the Sad, Broken, Tragic Ex
• Vintress and the Fateful Hunt
• Jerry and the Hunt
• Jerry and the Men in the Mirror

FB2 (FictonBook2) file format is supported by a lot of e-ink book readers, as well as many book reading apps like FBReader, eReader Prestigio and many many others, available on every platform.
Additional formats like EPUB, HTML, PDF, Markdown (plain text) are available in community Discord.

So, I finally got around to watching a production of The Tempest (The Globe's 2013 version starring Roger Allam, FYI), and I made some reflections on it that I wanted to write down.
Feel free to respond to any points and get a discussion going!

1. Are we expected to root for Prospero from the beginning? Or, given historical context and the Romance genre's tragedy-comedy fusion, does Shakespeare expect our first impression to be that he's some tragic antihero? After all, the premise of the play is essentially that of a revenge tragedy, and early 17th century Britbongs weren't keen on magicians, as I understand it. Shakespeare also shows us Prospero's darkness with the opening tempest scene and the later comment on the storm, "Hell is empty, And all the devils are here" (1.2.252-3), plus his tormenting Alonso's party with the harpy vision in Act 3 Scene 3. Moreover, it's hard to root for Prospero in getting his dukedom back, since he freely admits to having been negligent and irresponsible, devoting his time to his magical studies.
2. Relatedly, are we meant to take Prospero's framing of how he lost Milan in Act 1 Scene 2 at face value, or should we be critical of Prospero's authority to shape our perception of the play? After all, Prospero repeatedly lies and messes with other people's understanding of reality - his accusations against Ferdinand (1.2.541 onwards), his evasion of Ariel bringing up the promise he made to free him (1.2.290-354), getting Ariel to lie to Alonso and say his son is dead (3.3.93-4), etc. Moreover, Prospero's magic is fundamentally a power to conjure illusions and the play's story is him using misdirection and manipulation to get what he wants. Elsewhere in his work, Shakespeare seems ambivalent about usurpation - Claudius and Duke Frederick are evil, while Henry IV and Henry VII are the good guys - so I feel that, in principle, he could be leaning either way.
3. Is the play just.... not very good and a really boring story? I've seen it argued pretty widely that the problem with The Tempest is there's no real conflict or struggle, in a narrative sense. Prospero has a goal of retrieving his dukedom and he just... does it, apparently without facing any real threats or hindrances. People usually identify the fundamental problem as being his magic - when Prospero wants something done, it's just "Come with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel. Come" and then Ariel does it "to the syllable". In the place of narrative conflict, there's spectacle. I feel particularly conflicted here because I loved reading The Tempest, but it just left me cold seeing it performed. Did I watch a dud production, or does it just not work on stage?
4. Relatedly, Prospero's conversion to the path of forgiveness just felt unconvincing. It doesn't happen until literally the start of the final scene of the entire play, and the only reason he changes tune is because Ariel tells him how sad Alonso and his men look...? But Prospero literally watched the prior harpy episode first-hand, and seeing his magic distress Alonso's men didn't put pity in him or temper his wrath then. I guess since then he's had the entire "We are such stuff" monologue in Act 4, and thinking about mortality and impermanence has him questioning if revenge and strife are worth it...? But he immediately follows that monologue by using another vision to torment Caliban and co and declares "At this hour Lies at my mercy all mine enemies", so I have no idea what Prospero's thought process is.
5. Likewise, the big confrontation at the end felt really anticlimactic. Especially since there's literally no confrontation between Prospero and Antonio, the person he most had it in for. Antonio literally gets a single line in Act 5 and it's just him making fun of Caliban, so what gives?
6. For a final (potentially) weak plot point, the Caliban/Stephano/Trinculo rebellion is... frustrating. For one thing, why does Caliban want Stephano in power to replace Prospero - "I prithee, be my god" (2.2.155) - given that he's so adamant earlier that "This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother" (1.2.396)? As I see it, there are three possible explanations, none of which feel convincing. First, you could explain it by Caliban being genuinely convinced Stephano's a god for his "celestial liquor"? But that's just not believable, since Caliban has met a literal wizard with magical powers he claims could control a god (1.2.448-9) yet whom he recognises to be a mortal human, so why is he suddenly so oafish as to be persuaded by Stephano's alcohol? That leads to the second sub-idea: Caliban got drunk, so he's not thinking straight. But the humour of this entire subplot is Caliban being sharper and more rational than the motley crew he's assembled to lead the rebellion, hence the eloquent, artful "The isle is full of noises" monologue and the pitiable scene of him trying to get Stephano and Trinculo to stay focused in Prospero's cell in Act 4 Scene 1. So, third and final explanation, maybe Caliban is pretending to worship Stephano as part of his own Prospero-esque manipulative scheme to get his homeland back? But, for one thing, he seems sincere when he laments "What a thrice-double ass Was I to take this drunkard for a god" (5.1.352-3). (Unless he's pretending in order to get mercy from Prospero?) For another thing, it doesn't feel like Shakespeare wanted me to think this hard and read between the lines with this subplot. It just feels like a silly bit of comic relief and that makes it frustrating.
7. Finally, what's the deal with Caliban? I'm aware I'm opening a conversation here that many Shakespeare Redditors loathe, but is Caliban meant to be a human victim of colonisation, and are the references to him being a "monster" just abuse? Or is he a literal monster? My main gripe with the latter, more traditional reading, is that it seems to deprive The Tempest of one of the principal virtue's of Shakespeare's work, namely his penchant for complex, realistic, morally ambiguous characters. If Caliban is just an innately depraved beast who gets no humanisation beyond a brief, pretty soliloquy, then it makes him feel very flat. Going back to point 6, maybe this just the shallower comedy side of the play shining through? It also ties back to point 1 and whether or not Prospero is truly a "hero" in any conventional sense. Are there just good guys and bad guys in The Tempest? Or is it more mature than that?

Now this particular situation happened a little over a month ago so idk why I’m still salty! I guess it’s cause I can’t believe how shitty corporate stores have become in the past couple years! So I had got hired at my local Walmart and started at $14 per hr and worked there for about maybe 1 month before they fired me. I showed up on time. Till I got into an accident and totaled my daily driver then had to rely on a ride at which even then I would still show up before the 10 minute lead way they give you for clocking in. I did my job and not only that they assigned me the hardest job in the store everyday! I would come in and they would say we need you to work the freezer! Just note the freezer is between -8 degrees and -30 says it right on the door! They had hired multiple other people to my department and not one had to work the freezer or even swap with me for a day! Whenever they would be told to work it they would complain and bitch saying it’s too cold then they would call me over to replace them and they would just get to go work easier jobs! So I went on and kept doing my job till one day they hired another guy who i was now supposed to teach the job role too/train! I do my job and try to teach him. While asking him some things about the job and he wasn’t paying any attention and he said I quote “sorry man I couldn’t pay attention to what you were saying cause I was looking at that hot chicks ass at the end of the isle” I almost lost it and quit at that point but I didn’t! Later that day I go into the office and report it to the team lead saying I don’t think he would be a good candidate in the most respectful way possible! Next day I come in and I work my shift (7am-4pm) and at 3:30pm my team lead pulls me inside to say I have 5 points and am terminated! My app only showed 1 point and they never brought to my attention any of the other 4 points! Because they were bullshit and made up. Not to be a racist but the team lead and the other team lead as well as all the following employees that were hired after me were black or of Hispanic decent! I did say some choice words towards the team leads as I felt used and slaved so now I’m banned from all Walmarts apparently! Sounds like discrimination to me! Thanks for reading this giant monologue hope it helps you better decide on whether to work for a company like this abomination! Glad I got banned that’s just another customer a crap company loses!

I (36m) lost my mom not long ago, just this past February. She had been chronically ill for a while, but never imagined it was life threatening. Inconvenient, poor quality of life, but not terminal. She started taking ill about 5 years ago in mid 2019, and since I had quit my previous full time job to go back to college I too care of her pretty much full time in addition to school and a part time job at Walmart. My dad travels too much to be able to help and my slightly younger brother left the house upon getting a job out of state. So I didn’t really complain about taking care of her. My mom and I were always super close,so I was glad to. It wasn’t even like I had a girlfriend at the time to have to split attention with. My last relationship ended pretty amicably, but I just didn’t have the self confidence to try again. This went on for the rest of 2019, and it was a pretty soothing routine, she could mostly help herself most days, but she had pretty major fatigue from time to time unpredictably. We imagined she’d get better eventually. I graduated at the end of 2019 and applied to jobs with that in mind. Then Covid hit and somehow she ended up getting worse. She never told me what she was ill with, if she even knew, she distrusted doctors except for vaccines and acute injury care. I still cared for her as best I could, she still had good days and bad so it wasn’t a burden. I even managed to get an okay job that let me work remotely thanks to my degree. It was a little stressful, but mostly sedentary, the occasional run to get food or something. During that time I was pretty glad to be not dating. It carried on like that all through the pandemic and I found myself becoming somewhat of a hermit, just working and taking care of my mom, keeping her company since my dad/her husband still needed to travel for work even if it was less. I naturally put on weight, picked up bad eating habits, resumed my gaming habit and that kind of thing.
And then she died. I assume it was peaceful since it was in her sleep.
Now I’m just alone. Dad, despite his best efforts was never wired to be especially emotionally intelligent or available. My brother, god bless him, has a fiancée and responsibilities across the country. And I’m just here. Fat. Alone. No real self esteem to speak of(not to disparage fat people or anything, I’m all about body positivity. For thee, anyway).
I don’t know how to rebuild myself. I’ve never been especially social. This whole thing has made it worse. I’ve always had negative self talk, but being able to give and care for someone helped quiet the inner monologue. But now the most important person in my life is gone, and I feel like the past five years were simultaneously the best and worst years of my life.
While I’m sure I’m grieving still in some way, I’m glad my mom isn’t trapped in her body anymore. So this far out, not that it’s that far, I’m not shattered or wracked with grief over my mom. I miss her every single day. But I understand that she wasn’t living her best life. And I’d rather she go on to a better place than be trapped. So I’m not destroyed anymore. I was. I cried and was unable to get out of bed for a week. And I’m sure I deliriously talked to her during that time too. But that passed.
Now I just feel aimless. I work. I sleep. I eat poorly. I want to get back into life but I don’t know how anymore.
Hell. I don’t even know how to close this post out. Ask for advice? Ask for support? Just put it out there and not give a shit? I can’t think of anything witty. So that’s the deal. Yeah. Sorry for the rambling.

Like 3.0, 5.0 has very interesting concepts from subverting the light dark dynamic established in the same game to it's themes of memory, sacrifice, and ghosts seen in the various ruins in the game voebrite and amurot in particular, to it's major characters crystal exarch, emet-selch, and ardbert.
The theme of ghosts is the one I find most interesting. So many parts if the past that should be dead linger in this story. There's all the ruins throughout Noverant from voebrite in Ill Mheg to the old kingdom in Amh Areng and finally Amurot and the ancients themselves. ardbert and emy have a lot of parallels. Both are ghosts in some sense, remnants of time past. They are both existences that should no longer be but are still here, bound to tasks not yet complete. Both are weary but unable to rest, like seriously the two most depressed characters in shb and they both give depression monologues. Both have failed their duties somehow. They continue on, they have work to be done, their role not yet finished. And then there are those who are haunted. The crystal exarch too is a ghost in a sense outliving his original timeline. And all 3 have been changed in some way. Hades confined in a hyur form and thralled to zodiark. G'raha with his body partly crystallized. And Ardbert is a literal ghost besides being a figurative one. And then there are those who are haunted, whether by death or by failure it comes with most of the world ending.
Everyone in 5.0 has depression.
On sacrifice. emet-selch is portrayed as being wrong to sacrifice all life to the shards to resurrect the ancients, that he shouldn't sacrifice the present lives to try and restore a lost past. But ironworks sacrificing an entire timeline is framed as noble with g'raha and the player character carrying on their hopes. When that doomed timeline also chose to give up on it's current people and devote everything to restoring the past. The best way I have come to reconcile this this sacrifice of the self vs sacrificing others like the ascians are trying to do. There's a strong theme of sacrifice overall in 5.0, outside of emet-selch and Ironworks there's also the ancients in general sacrificing half their survivors to create Zodiak and half again to bring life back to the world, and then the dissenting faction sacrificing their lives to create Hydaelyn. There's G'raha's attempted sacrifice his life and his dreams to save the player character's life and tke the light with him. There's the soldiers that died protecting the Crystarium from sin eaters and Eulmore.
And so ardbert, emet-selch, and the crystal exarch the primarily characters if 5.0 all reflect each other. They are people out of place and out of time, from an era past. They are all tied by duty and this duty involves the player character in some way. None of them are where they want to be, whether that be physically, temporally or metaphorically. All of them act for what is best for the universe and more than that are motivated by making things "right" they have a vision of how the world should be which is tied to the past. The crystal exarch literally time traveled back to the past o fix things the ascians are fixated on restoring their lost ancient brethren and the world the lost, and Ardbert less so but reflects on how places have changed as the player journeys across noverant. And they are haunted by their failures especially emet-selch and ardbert. These parallels would have been further highlighted if the crystal exarch also died, but he hasn't.
I finished 5.0. I enjoyed it the writing for msq has been continually improving and 5.0 is better than any of the x.0 but it's overrated. people talk as if it's one of the best stories ever and no it's not. It's good for an mmo but on it's own merits it's not an excellent story. I'd put 5.0 on par with octopath traveler 1, 5.0 does have it's moments. The amurot section in general is my favorite, and 5.0 tells a lot of good mini arcs like the relationship between yshtola and the nights blessed or the war between crystalarium and eulmore. I liked how things have wrapped back around to gods, aether, and primals.
But it's also quite messy like the other expansions and a lot of little things feel forced like something is happening for the plot to move forward instead of having the progression and in universe justification. I can see what the writers are trying to do but the execution isn't quite there, like with the talos the devs wanted everyone to come together and achieve something. so if i don't think about the details it's a nice story but the more i think about it the more problems there are. or another way to put it the outline is fine the elevator pitch is great, but the details and execution and actual writing leave something to be desired. The writing is indeed better but I'm not sure I'd call it good yet, 5.0 does have it's moments, but I think the biggest different between 2.0 and 5.0 is that shb is much flashier, it's showy and with fun animations and voice acting and actual cutscenes and has modern music just on the showmanship aspect and production value of course the people are going to like it more. It also has fleshed out storylines. But looking at the flaws on shb no wonder ffxvi is a trainwreck, but a flashy trainwreck.
I love Feo Ul but they are just so plot breakingly powerful it's a little ridiculous, feo ul ex machina.
edit: about octopath, that's the point. everyone thinks the story sucks and objectively 5.0 isn't really better despite people giving it leeway for being an mmo.

Me (29F) and my fiance just moved in to a new apartment. Lots of space for the price, best we've seen on the market in the Massachusetts MetroWest area. There are 4 units - one is another couple (chill), the other is the landlord's son (semi-chill), and the fourth is the landlord's mentally ill sister, and her 20-something son who has autism.
The landlord kind of "warned" me about his sister, and that her living there wasn't supposed to be a permanent situation. I believe he also briefly mentioned her son who has autism. Cool, whatever. Really not worried at all about this bit. Week one, I meet the sister in the parking lot. She starts the conversation with "Did you meet my son? ***** (landlord's name) probably called him a big autistic giant." Okay.
I come to realize she spends most of her day out in her car in the back of our small parking lot, where she chain smokes with a curtain down over her passenger window so she is out of sight from the apartment. Some nights she is out there until 2 AM. During the walks to and from her car, she is always talking to herself semi-belligerently. I think I have heard her mutter "Oh great, there he is..." when I'm outside smoking weed on my porch.
Then, the sounds started. The walls are super thin, and her son's loud rants/monologues/nervous breakdowns can be heard throughout the whole house. I work from home most of the time as a freelancer, and I'm just waiting until this happens during a client call. There are moments when I truly empathize for the guy. He vents about the frustrations of life, his emotional struggle, his disability. Most of the time, it's fucking disturbing and even scary. The first time I heard it, I thought it was a domestic abuse situation and he was being violent with a partner. Turns out he was just throwing shit and screaming death threats at his iPad until it turned on.
Sometimes he makes up long fucked up stories - some recent themes include a grandmother being repeatedly SA'd, and him telling an imaginary friend that they're going to "absolutely love having sex and cumming all over themself, it's way better than being SA'd". He will sexually shout "oh yeah" repeatedly, and we can hear the slapping of something - sex doll? His own ass? He also mentions committing suicide frequently, usually when a belonging is misplaced or broken.
Twice now I have lost my cool and screamed through the wall at him. "Shut the fuck up, I'm trying to work", or "Stop being so fucking loud". I was so heated after 30 minutes of hearing him go on and on about disturbing shit while I'm trying to work. He stops for a few minutes then gets right back on his bullshit.
I have texted the landlord about this, and noted details about the death threats and suicide comments. He said he is sorry about that, and that they have been working on getting him into a place where he can live with peers - I assume they have been trying this for a while. He asked for specifics on the threats, and if they are about real people.
It's been a few weeks, the chaos has been daily, I'm losing patience fast. What do I do? Keep putting the pressure on landlord? Do I break lease even though the actual place is a great value? Do I try to talk to the crazy mom, who's clearly just avoiding the situation altogether out in her car? My therapist fiance who works with a similar population suggested calling a wellness check when he is making suicidal or homicidal threats, and that a visit from a police officer could be a necessary wake up call. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think I should do.
tl;dr - Adult male neighbor with autism is always yelling disturbing shit through thin walls, his mentally ill mom stays in her car, her brother is the landlord, I'm descending into madness as a WFH freelancer.

Club Vlad sat near the confluence of Central Avenue and Washington Avenue, Albany’s two main thoroughfares. Two stories with blackout windows and a box office from when it used to be a movie theater, it was swarmed with people when Dom first spotted it ahead. He was somewhat familiar with it: He passed it every day on his way to work, and it was always busy around his time of evening, even on weeknights. Part of him always wanted to go inside and be a part of the scene, but he never did.
The man in sunglasses - his name was Joe - led Dom toward the club, and even before Joe spoke, Dom somehow knew that it was their destination. “There,” Joe said. “We’ll go around back.”
Dom and Joe had been walking for what seemed like an hour but couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. Dom stuck as close to Joe as possible as if for protection, and had become accustomed to his pungent smell. It was noticeable only at extremely close range, part sickly sweet and part…something else, something Dom could not place but still somehow recognized. They were two blocks from the club, maybe three, and Dom could hear the pulsing techo/house/whatever music as clearly as if he were standing in the middle of the dancefloor. He could hear the chatter of the people inside, or at least he imagined he could. He could smell them too: Beneath the odors of perfume, desperation, and spiritual rot was something richer, something blissful. Dom realized for the first time that he was parched - so parched - and drool filled his mouth.
A crowd of people waited outside Club Vlad, talking and laughing; some vaped, some stared down at their cellphones like Gollum with his precious ring. Dom’s first reaction was to avoid them. Perhaps sensing this…or perhaps feeling it himself…Joe ducked into an alleyway two doors down from the club. “We’ll go in the back,” Joe explained.
The back entrance to Club Vlad was a single door underneath a bare bulb. The music was so loud that Dom’s head began to throb. Inside, a dark hallway terminated in an archway filled with throbbing white light. Dread filled Dom as they approached it - he didn’t want to be around people - but thankfully they went into a room off the hall instead. An office. A cramped desk, a filing cabinet. A set of stairs disappeared into shadows.
“Sit,” Joe said.
Dom obeyed, sitting in the swivel chair.
Joe went up the stairs and Dom was alone. The deep coldness that had long settled into his bones made itself known again, and Dom leaned forward, wrapping his arms around his chest for warmth. The muffled music vibrated in his skull, setting his teeth on edge, and the various smells wafting in from the main room assaulted his senses. He was alternately repulsed and aroused by the crashing din of scents: The good, the bad, and the mouth watering. A sharp pain cut through his stomach like the killing edge of a knife, and Dom hugged himself tighter. Had his throat always been this dry? His throat felt like sandpaper; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and getting it unstuck hurt so badly that tears sprang to his eyes.
Dom rubbed his arms with his hands and tried to still his chattering teeth. He looked around for a blanket, a discarded jacket, something to cover himself with, but there was nothing. Only drifts of glitter on the floor and walls. He supposed it came from a party or something. He’d never been to a night club but it seemed fitting.
A sound drew his attention to the door leading back into the hall. A woman - no older than a girl - stood there, looking confused and unsteady. She was dressed in black, wore glow sticks around her wrists and neck, and held a red solo cup. “I have to pee,” she said drunkenly and laughed. “I thought this was the bathroom.”
A cold wind washed over Dom, and Joe was standing next to him. “The bathroom’s up here,” he said.
“Oh, good,” the girl laughed, “I thought it was here but I didn’t know. This is my first time here.” She held her cup aloft. “Take me to it.”
Joe glanced at Dom. “Come on.”
They formed a party as they climbed the stairs, Dom in the tear and Joe at the head. The girl stumbled and held onto the railing, talking incessantly. Her voice hurt Dom’s head, but the hot smell wafting from her was intoxicating. Drool coursed down his chin and his breathing came in short, hot bursts. Another sharp pain rent his stomach, and he winced.
At the top of the stairs, where the lights were cold and white, a woman in black stood by a doorway, her back ramrod straight and her eyes vacant. Her face was gaunt, her white flesh pulled tight across her skull. She wore a black dress and her black hair long and straight. Dom only caught a glance at her before looking away again.
She looked like a ghost.
“Show her the bathroom,” Joe said.
The woman’s eyes slowly, ponderles, went from Joe to the drunk girl. Her expression, like Joe’s, was dead. She had no expression. “This way.”
She and the drunk girl disappeared down the hall, and Joe led Dom into a room. Though it was pitch black, Dom could still see; not very well…but he could see. Suddenly, a blinding white light flicked on in front of him, causing him to stop and fall back a step. Ahead, through an archway, sat a vaulted chamber, at the center of which sat a man. To Dom’s light dazzled eyes, he seemed a proud king perched upon a throne, the skulls of his many enemies piled around him. Dom blinked and turned his head slightly to the side. His eyes began to adjust, and the world came into focus.
The man was not, as it had first seemed, sitting on a throne. Instead, he was esconded in a motorized wheelchair. The piles of skulls were actually various pieces of machinery, the kind you’d find in a hospital room. A clear tube extended from one of them to the side of the man’s neck: Yellow liquid flowed from the machine and into the man. Another tube, this one in the other side of his neck, filtered out a mixture of what looked like yellow pus and black sludge. An infected malodor filled the air, and the machines whirred softly as they worked.
As for the man himself, his appearance was normal at first glance, Dressed in a flowing red velvet robe, a blue and green blanket with a plaid pattern draped over his shoulders, he was portly, about fifty, and had shoulder length grayish hair with a bald spot in the middle. If the local theater put on a production of Hamilton, they could cast a worse Ben Franklin than him.
On closer inspection, he was not normal at all. His complexion was yellow and waxy, like a statue, and his body was lumpy, misshapen, resembling an overfilled trash bag stuffed with cotton. His eyes were sick and yellow, and something about his posture seemed…off. It didn’t make sense, but the only thing Dom could think was: He looks impossible.
Joe stopped at the edge of the shadows, where the line between light and darkness lay. He seemed to stand up a little straighter, a general greeting his king. “Here he is,” Joe said.
The man squinted slightly against the glare of the light and motioned with one gnarled hand. “Step into the light,” he said. His voice was soft and kind, that of a senile though loving grandmother. Dom imagined he felt a pull toward the man, and did as he was bidden, wincing as the light stung his eyes.
For a moment, the man stared at him, his waxen features frozen fast as stone. Then, a subtle look of compassion flickered across his face. Dom did not believe in God, but he suddenly felt like a man standing before God, his every thought, feeling, and transgression laid bare. He had never felt so naked in his life, so exposed. He had the sense that the man before him could see everything, knew everything.
“You’ve been through a lot,” the man said. It was not a question, but a statement.
Everything Dom had been through over the past couple of days came back to him in a rush, and hot tears filled his eyes. He nodded.
The man nodded slightly, more to himself than to Dom. “Kneel down,” he said, “I want to look at you.”
Dom knelt without question.
The man lifted one hand and touched Dom’s face, tilting Dom’s head from one side to the other like a farmer appraising a horse. His fingers were long and bony, his nails ragged and unkempt; his touch was like ice. He brushed his knuckles over the purple bruise on Dom’s cheek, and there was such gentleness in that one act that Dom broke down sobbing. He leaned into the man’s touch like a cat and gave voice to his misery.
“Shhh,” the man said, “it’s all over now.”
“W-What’s happening to me?” Dom asked.
In his heart of hearts, however, he already knew.
“You died,” the man said patiently. “And you came back.”
Hearing it stated so plainly, Dom cried even harder.
“Only a handful of people throughout history can claim to have defeated death,” the man said, stroking Dom’s hair, “and you’re one of them. You should be proud.”
“How?” Dom asked between sobs. “What am I?”
The man stroked Dom’s cheek. “You’re the same thing I am.”
At that, Dom looked up at the man. “What are you?” he asked.
A little, knowing smile touched the man’s lips, and when he spoke, his canine teeth were longer and sharper than before. “I’m a vampire.”
“No,” Dom moaned and shook his head, “no, no, no.” He grabbed the man’s hand and held tight, his tears coming faster. He trembled like a frightened animal and squeezed his eyes closed, as if by doing so he could escape the hell his life had become.
But there was no escape.
“You have a lot of questions,” the man said, monologuing now rather than speaking directly to Dom, “I had the same questions when I was your age. I have spent the last forty-two years of my life trying to answer them, but every answer I find leads me to still more questions. There’s one thing I’m certain of, though.”
Dom blinked the tears from his eyes. The last of them had been squeezed from his dead tear ducts and he had no more to give. He simply stared into space, trying to come to grips with his situation.
“There is freedom in death,” the man said. “Death is easy. It’s simple. Once it’s over, you feel no pain, no sadness, no grief. It’s living that’s hard.”
As he spoke, he brushed his long nails across Dom’s scalp. It was a soothing feeling, and served to calm him. “People have so many troubles.” A note of revulsion crept into his voice. “So many needs, so many desires. People are complex but we’re not. We’re easy to please. A vampire wants only two things: A little blood and one more night.”
The combination of his touch and his voice had pacified Dom to the point of almost tranquility. “I’m scared,” Dom heard himself mumble.
Nodding almost reluctantly, the man said, “Fear is one of the only emotions a vampire can’t escape. Everything feels fear. Do you want to know a secret?”
Dom nodded.
“I’m afraid too,” the man confessed. “I’m afraid of death. Well…death as it were. I’m terrified that my body will rot away and leave me a pile of bones somewhere, unable to move but still aware”
A shudder went through Dom.
“As I’m sure you’ve seen yourself, the movies lied. We rot just like any other dead thing. Our flesh decays, our organs turn to sludge, and we go from rational men to monsters whose only thought is feeding.”
Now it was his turn to shiver.
“But…you’re not like that,: Dom said.’
The man smiled. “I’m lucky, I guess” A thin yellow fluid began to drip from his nostrils. He did not seem to notice. “What is your name?”
“Dominick,” Dom said.
“I’m Merrick,” the man said, “and this is my family.”
Dom realized that they were now surrounded by others, ten in all. They stood ramrod straight, their eyes vacant and their faces devoid of humanity. They were mainly men, though one was a woman. Some were pale, others were blue or black, and one was little more than a skeleton clad in withered brown skin, a white button up and jeans hanging from its frame.
A thought occurred to Dom. “You said my brain was going to rot…”
“Not necessarily,” Merrick cautioned, “though it’s possible.”
“Am I going to be…?”
“Like them?” Merrick asked. “Braindead and staring?”
Sheepishly, Dom nodded.
“Maybe,” Merrick allowed. “But these people are free of everything that troubles humanity. You were human just a short time ago. I’m sure you remember all too well what it was like. The constant politics, the moral quandaries, the philosophical pontificating. Human beings - and make no mistake, we are humans - were not meant for all of that. We’re animals. We were made to hunt, fuck, and sleep. Somewhere along the way, we got pretentious and started complicating things.” He looked at Dom, sizing him up, seeming to read him. “Things that animals take for granted, people work their entire lives to achieve. If an animal wants to fornicate, it fornicates. If a man wants to fornicate, he needs to be tall, handsome, rich, funny, progressive when it suits women but traditional when it doesn’t. If a man wants a home, he has to work thirty years for it. An animal has only to dig a hole in the ground.”
Every word struck a chord with Dom.
Because every word was true.
“Unfortunately, the living won’t allow us to live that freely, so we have to hide. These people here - my children - need a guiding hand, a protector, someone who can lead them. And I, an old man, need help.” Here he smiled playfully and patted his bulging stomach. “My body is mostly sawdust and cotton balls at this point, so I can’t do much. I share my wisdom and my knowledge with them, and they take care of me.”
“Why haven’t you…rotted?” Dom asked.
“Embalming fluid,” Merrick said. “Blood doesn’t sustain you. Embalming fluid does.” He smiled at Dom. “It can sustain you as well. If you’ll stay with us. We’re not the most attractive bunch, but we’re a family, and we really wish you’d join us.”
A family.
Dom’s parents had broken up and he lived with his mother. He had never had a family before, and had always wanted one, a real one, like in the movies. Even as a grown man, he sought the love, acceptance, and belonging that a family brings. He sought it in the wrong ways, but that - and not sex, not romantic love - is what he had really wanted all along.
This is what he had wanted all along.
“I want to,” Dom said.
Working quickly, Merrick slashed his wrist open with his thumbnail. An ugly mixture of stale blood, siphoned from someone else, and embalming fluid leaked out. “If you choose to drink, my blood will be in you. You will be my son and I will be your father. You will obey me as your father. You will do whatever is asked of you for this family, as this family will do for you. You will not reveal the secrets of this family to anyone outside of it. You will protect this family from all threats, both inside and out. Do you accept?”
He held his bleeding wrist out to Dom.
Dom did not question, nor did he hesitate. He grabbed the hand of his father, brought it to his mouth, and drank from the seeping wound. The fluid was cold, thick, and vile.
It tasted like belonging.
“Have you fed yet?”
“No,” Dom said.
“Before you do, I have a question for you. Who did this to you? Who made you?”
Dom thought. Everything was hazy. “Was it someone in this room?” Merrick asked.
Dom shook his head. “Her name is…” he wracked his brain. “Heather.”
Merrick nodded. “So there’s another out there.” He looked at Joe. “Did you turn her?”
“Yes,” Joe said.
Merrick looked annoyed. “I’ve told you not to go out and feed on your own. You have no self-control. You drink too much and create others, which creates headaches for the family. Tomorrow night, I want you and Dom to find her and bring her here.” “Okay,” Joe said.
Merrick looked over Dom’s shoulder. “Jess? Can you come here?”
The black haired woman from earlier came out of the shadows, the drunk girl with her, arms tied behind her back. The girl looked dazed. “Max,” Merrick said to the skeletal corpse-thing, “help her.”
Max, Jessie, and another vampire named Matt tied chains around the girl’s ankles and hoisted her aloft via a pulley system. Upside down, she swung back and forth. Merrick instructed the others to leave the room. “Max,” he said.
On his way out, the corpse-thing produced a knife and dragged it across the girl’s throat, slicing her skin; blood spurted out. Max leaned in to taste it, but Merrick shooed him away. When he and Dom were alone, Merrick told Dom, “Go to her.”
But Dom was already on his feet, his eyes transfixed by the crimson life flowing from her pumping throat. The hot, rich smell filled his nostrils and tantalized his senses. Saliva filled his mouth and his stomach panged with hunger. Some small, human part of his decaying brain screamed at him to stop, but he did not listen to it. He had been human for almost thirty years, and he had been miserable. Now, in this chamber of the undead, he gave himself over to his dark thirst. Like a man in a dream, he shuffled to her, inhaled the sweet scent of her blood, and shivered. He was so lost in lust that he hardly noticed the strange, cumbersome feeling of his descended fangs.
“Drink,” Merrick said.
Opening his mouth wide, Dom sank his teeth into the girl’s neck. Her blood filled his mouth and splashed down his throat. Warmth thawed the ice in his marrow and spread through him. His dead heart began to flutter, then to pound. His knees shook, his body trembled, and his mind rolled away on a tide of ecstasy.
As it was his first meal, he couldn’t drink much. Before long, his stomach was hard and distended and his body burned with fire. He collapsed to a heap on the floor and twitched as random nerve endings, stimulated by the blood, began to misfire. He felt full, warm, and drunk. He closed his eyes and let himself drift.
Dominick Mason had died.
And this…
This was heaven.
***
With all that was happening in the city of Albany, the last thing Bruce Kenner needed on Thursday morning was a visit from Bertha the bitch, but that’s exactly what he got. She flew into his office like she owned the place and instantly started in on him. Young man this and have you talked to Joe Rossi that. You’d think she was his boss. And if she were his boss, he’d quit and find another line of work. He heard McDonald’s was hiring.
Bruce almost snapped at her. He’d been up most of last night riding around Albany and looking for Dominick Mason. He and Vanessa expected him to drop dead somewhere close to the medical examiner’s office, but if he had, he’d done so in a super secret location.
“I’ve been busy,” Bruce said, “but I’m going to go by his place of work today.”
Tired and still confused over that bullshit from last night, he had no energy to argue with the old crone. He could spare a few minutes to talk to Joe Rossi, he figured. He assumed that Jessie was safe but he owed it to her to check. If he found the girl, he’d take her back to her grandmother (sorry, kid, really) and try to avoid arresting the guy. Unless he came off as a creep, then he’d bust his ass. See, people assumed that an older guy with a younger girlfriend was some master manipulator hell bent on evil deeds. Sometimes they were, but hell, his grandparents married when his grandpa was twenty-one and his grandma sixteen. They were married for fifty-five years and loved each other to the end. Maybe it was innocent, maybe not. It wasn’t his job to judge either way. Just gimme the girl so I can get her grandma off my back and no one gets hurt.
“It’s about time you started doing your job,” Bertha said, “I heard on the police scanner last night that you people lost a body. What kind of town is this? Your coroner is a drunk who makes up stories about bodies walking away. He probably sold it to black people.”
Bruce couldn’t help it; he snorted laughter.
“Now what would black people want with a dead body?”
“Probably to use it as a prop in one of their rap videos.”
Bruce didn’t know much about music videos, but he was pretty sure that the people who made them didn’t like the smell of corpse any more than the rest of us. “I’ll be sure to round up all the local rappers for questioning. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Luckily for him, there was not, and Bertha left shortly thereafter. Alone and able to hear himself think, Bruce sat back in his chair and went over his mental checklist for the day. First order of business, go to Club Vlad. Second, find Dominick Mason. There were others, but that was the most important. He wanted the body found so someone could get to work explaining this whole weird thing. There had to be an explanation. The thought that there wasn’t, that a dead guy literally rose from the grave and disappeared into the night, deeply disturbed Bruce, and the more this whole thing remained ongoing, the more disturbed he would become.
Needing some fresh air, he decided to hit up Club Vlad.
Outside, the day was hot and sunny. Waves of heat shimmered from the pavement and not a single breath of air stirred in the whole world. Bruce slipped on a pair of sunglasses and drove over to Club Vlad. It occurred to him that the place might be closed during the day; it was the only place Joe Rossi was associated with. His address in the computer system was Glens Falls, far to the north. The messages he sent Jessie indicated that he lived onsite at Club Vlad.
The build, wedged between a corner store and a check cashing place, was as grimy and dumpy looking as it had always been. The front windows were blacked out and covered with posters and fliers for punk concerts, house bands, and far left political organizations: The Albany Social Justice Center, something called Bash the Fash 2025, and Bruce’s favorite. ACAB. He caught some kid spraying that on the side of the police station once, and under extreme police torture (ie, a good tongue lashing), the kid told him it meant All Cops Are Barnacleheads.
Bruce shot the kid on the spot and planted a gun on him.
How's that for barnaclehead?
Calm down, he didn’t really do that. He made him clean the graffiti off with a toothbrush. LOL he was out there for hours.
The sidewalk in front of the former theater was empty save for some little. The box office was abandoned. There was no open sigh, but then again, there was no closed sign either. He parked his cruiser at the curb, killed the engine, and got out, sweat instantly springing to his brow.
To his surprise, the door opened. Inside, a couple steps led down to a dance floor. A bar lined the wall to his right, and a couple more sets led up to a railed platform filled with tables. Above, a huge balcony looked down on him. A giant disco ball hung from the ceiling like a pair of glittery nuts and there were cages here and there. Presumably where girls danced go-go style. Oh yeah, nothing hotter than a woman behind bars. Why do you think Bruce became a cop in the first place?
Speaking of glittery nuts, there was glitter everywhere. On the floor, on the tables, on the bar. It twinkled like flecks of diamond and swirled around your feet when you walked. Bruce imagined big buckets of the stuff raining down on the dance floor at midnight and he shuddered. Imagine having glitter stuck in your hair. That shit would never come out.
Music played from the sound system, not as loud as it would be during operating hours. It sounded like ‘80s metal, not exactly what he expected from a place like this.
Some say life she's a lady
Kinda soft, kinda shady
I can tell you life is rich
She's no lady, she's a bitch
Being morning, the place was deserted except for a man behind the bar, busy at cleaning the countertop in anticipation for the night’s events. He was tall, Hispanic or Italian, and feminine, with a single earring and a tank top.
Bruce moseyed over to the bar and the barkeep looked up, missing a beat when he realized the fuzz was here. He sat down his rag and walked over. “Can I help you?” he asked in a whispy voice.
“Yeah,” Bruce said, “I’m looking for Joe Rossi. Is he here?”
“I don’t know,” the bartender said. He looked nervous. “I can check.”
Before Bruce could answer, he scurried off, leaving him alone.
They suck my body out
But friend there is no doubt
I'm gonna pay the devil his dues
Cause I'm sick of being abused
Bruce looked around, his fingers absently drumming on the countertop. Club Vlad was a clashing mix of grunge and glam that made his head hurt. He imagined what the place must be like at midnight, packed and noisy, and nodded to himself. Yeah, this was the spot, he guessed, the place all the cool kids went, if they went anywhere anymore. Hell, if he was thirty years younger, he might come here.
He had been waiting for almost twenty minutes when a voice spoke behind him. He turned with a start, and beheld the strangest man he had ever seen in his life. Short and plump - lumpy, even - he sat in a wheelchair, a red blanket draped over his shoulders and his hands resting on his knees. He was about fifty with sparse gray hair falling to his shoulders and a plastic-looking face. He looked like a wax statue of Ben Franklin come to life, and a deep sense of disquiet stirred in the pit of Bruce’s stomach.
Just can't fight the temptation
It's become my inspiration
Gonna get myself an axe
Break some heads, break some backs
It was only then that Bruce noticed the sickly sweet smell of death.
It seemed to come from the man in waves.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” the man said, “my name is Merrick Garvis and I own Club Vlad. Maybe I can be of assistance.”
Bruce grew up in the south where manners and saving face were paramount. His mother and his grandmother both taught him that it was impolite to stare. Maybe he'd been in New York so long that he’d forgotten himself, or maybe Merrick Garvis was just the strangest looking man in the world. Either way, Bruce couldn’t help gaping at his strange appearance. Recovering, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I -”
Merrick smiled and waved one hand. Why was it so goddamn skeletal? “Don’t worry. I was injured in a fire a long time ago and this is the best they could do for me. To be honest, I’d stare too. What can I help you with, officer?”
“I’d like to talk to Joe Rossi,” Bruce said. “I understand he works for you.”
“He did,” Merrick said, “but I had to let him go. Did he do something wrong?”
Bruce sighed. “Well, yeah, he’s shacked up with a sixteen year old runaway.”
A look of concern crossed Merrick’s features, such as they were. “Oh, my, that is concerning. I haven’t seen him in several days. I assume he went home. He lives in Glens Falls.”
Bruce nodded, his mind working. If Rossi really was in Glens Falls, that meant the whole mess was someone else’s problem. He could send Bertha up there to bother some other poor barnacle head and be rid of her. Yet…he didn’t think Rossi was in Glens Falls. Bruce had a knack for knowing when people were lying, and he was certain that Merrick Garvis was doing just that. It couldn’t be a facial tick, as his features were largely unmoving, like clay. Maybe it was something in his cloudy eyes. Maybe it was the tone of his voice. Or maybe Bruce had the shining and knew things just for the hell of it. In any event, the certainty that Merrick Garvis was lying grew stronger with each passing second.
“Why’d you fire him?”
“He got drunk and hit one of the customers.”
“What did he do?” Bruce asked. “What was his position?”
“He was a bouncer.”
“Aren’t bouncers supposed to hit people?”
Merrick fumbled. “Well…not to punch them in the face for bumping into them.”
“How long did he work for you?”
“Six months.”
“Did you ever see him with an underage girl?”
“Of course not,” Merrick said, “you have to be twenty-one to get in. I make sure everyone’s ID is checked at the door.”
“What if she had a fake ID?”
“Then I guess she’d get in, but I’d assume she was of legal age.”
“You said he shoved someone, when did this happen?”
“Last week,” Merrick said.
“I thought you said he hit someone.”
Merrick again fumbled. “I did.” Now his face seemed to darken a little. A strange yellowish liquid, too thin to be snot, began to drip from his nostrils. Bruce barely suppressed a smear of disgust. “I understand you have a job to do but playing mind games with me isn’t going to solve anything. I can give you his address. Other than that, I can’t help you further.”
“Fair enough,” Bruce said. “But I’d like to see your ID please.”
Merrick glared at him. “I suppose you want my name, rank, and serial number as well.”
“Actually, yeah, I’d love that.”
Merrick drew a deep sigh. “Okay.”
In five minutes, Bruce had Merrick’s ID, social, and all other relevant information. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have bothered, even though he was well within his rights to ask for this information from someone he was questioning. But something about Merrick Garvis was off, and not just his weird face or strangely bulbous body. Bruce was just smart enough to realize that something was going on here, but not quite smart enough to even begin to imagine what.
When he had everything he needed and saw no reason to stick around, Bruce bid Merrick farewell and left the club. Before he could do anything else, he got a call from dispatch: Officer needed assistance in Pine Hills. Bruce slipped behind the wheel and went forth to help, momentarily putting Merrick Garvis out of his mind.
But soon or later, he would get back to him.
Oh yes he would.

Title says it all, this post is a deep dive into the Sonic Adventure 2 OST, specifically all the songs pertaining to Knuckles. This is for a few reasons that I’ll get into in a moment, but from what I’ve seen Knuckles’ and Rouge’s soundtracks tend to get overlooked or written off by fans (More so Knuckles’) unfairly so in my opinion.
This post will serve, not only to analyze the music itself, but also Knuckles’ characterization, as you’ll see the two are basically intrinsically linked.
Just a quick disclaimer, I’m not a musician nor am I that musically inclined, this isn’t an expert’s opinion or analysis, just a listener’s thoughts.
A bit of background of me before we start, I grew up around hip hop when I was young so I can really appreciate Knuckles’ soundtrack probably more so than a lot of other people.
Ever since I was a kid, Knuckles has always been my favorite character, I always found his complicated friendship and rivalry with Sonic to me a much more interesting dichotomy than Sonic and Shadow (I know, fight me).
That and I’ve always just adored his character (Before they forgot how to write him) he can be hot headed and stubborn like Sonic, but he’s got a bit of a Yin and Yang thing going on, with his Chill nature conflicting with his Quick and Explosive temper, as well as his questioning of his purpose in life and duty to the Master Emerald.
Anyway, enough context on myself, let’s strap in and get to the meat of this veeeeeery long post (My bad guys).

BACKGROUND

So for starters, I think it’s best we talk about the style and influences that are quite evident in Knuckles’ Music, that being Hip Hop/Rap, but it goes a bit further than that.
For some historical context, Sonic Adventure 2 came out in 2001, I’m not sure how many hip hop fans hang around the subreddit but by 2001 the Golden Age of Hip Hop had been firmly left behind. Biggie and Pac had been dead for a while, and the stars of yesteryear began to fizzle out as the young blood cropped up onto the scene.
The early 2000s Hip Hop scene was mainly dominated by the East Coast and the Dirty South, lots of stars of this generation of rap included 50 Cent, Ja Rule, Outkast, Ludacris, The Game, Three 6 Mafia and Xzibit, but you also had older legends like Nas and Snoop Dogg who were still culturally relevant.
This modern sound of hip hop differed greatly in sound to the early 90s, everything was a lot more clean and refined, samples were still used but weren’t as common as before and the West Coast sound that characterized the early 90s had been long gone.
It’s important to bring this up, because comparing SA2’s Hip Hop tracks to the climate it was released in, they sound almost out of place. Listening to Get Rich or Die Trying, or Stillmatic and then listening to SA3’s tracks you’d be convinced they were separated by many years.
The Tracks in SA2 are definitely rooted in early 90s hip hop, it’s very clear that those early Gangsta Rap albums like Straight Outta Compton and Black Sunday greatly influenced this part of the soundtrack. And you don’t have to take my word for it, go and listen to the instrumentals of songs like Express Yourself or Insane in the Brain and tell me that they’d sound out of place playing in one of Knuckles’ Stages.
Early 90s Hip Hop makes heavy use of sampling, primarily of the work of Black Artists of the past two decades, because of SA2K’s early 90s hip hop influences, it too has a lot of roots in 70s/80s Black music. Elements of Soul, Funk and Jazz are commonly heard in Knuckles’ Stages, think James Brown or Isaac Hayes.
So what Groups or Artists seem to inspire SA2K’s sound? Well the obvious choice is NWA, though specifically Straight Outta Compton, Elif4zaggin has a much different sound. However I don’t believe that’s entirely the case.
Whether it’s pure coincidence or intentional, Too Short (stylized as Too $hort) was a decently popular artist from Oakland, which is up in the Bay Area of NorCal which is the main inspiration for most of SA2’s urban environments.
Anyway, Too Short was actually quite a pioneer in Hip Hop as he formed the Dangerous Crew, a Hip Hop Band who played actual instruments instead of using samples, it’s because of this that I believe Too Short and the Dangerous Crew to be the main inspiration of SA2K’s sound whether intentional or not, not only are the two defined by their funky beats, but also their use of live instruments. I recommend listening to songs like The Ghetto, Sample The Funk and Just Another Day to get an idea of how his music influences SA2K.

UNKNOWN FROM M.E. (REMIX)

Honestly I find this track to be an improvement over the original, it definitely leans a lot more into the R&B aspect over the rest of the soundtrack but it’s still distinctly hip hop with the record scratches, drums and Hunnid-P rapping over it.
Speaking of, let’s address the Elephant in the room briefly. I know Hunnid-P or Hunnid-Pacent isn’t everybody’s favorite person on this sub, either on the track or behind the scenes, and while his antics aren’t relevant to this post, I don’t necessarily agree that he’s as bad as people say he is on the mic. Is he the world’s greatest emcee? Absolutely not, but he does his job pretty well, he has good flow and a pretty good voice. I think people clown on his lyrics too much, I’m not saying he’s an Inspectah Deck level lyricist but I think the guy has dropped a few bombs and this OST has some gems, but we’ll get into this in a bit.
Getting back to the song, the content of the lyrics is basically Knuckles’ inner voice, this is basically the entire soundtrack, though Unknown From M.E. is more of a general character overview of Knuckles, its standard stuff now but at the time it was a pretty deep dive into the character of Knuckles’ in a decently subtle way.
Most of the song centers around Knuckles’ self imposed isolation on Angel Island, his duty to his people and the world to protect the Master Emerald, but also him yearning for something more and the inner conflict that stems from that.
This song actually has some underrated lines, some standout lyrics include:
“Clench my fists tight, become more redder - I don't wanna hurt her, my passion observed”
The last line is in obvious reference to Rouge and an interesting insight into Knuckles himself. He clearly doesn’t like violence and isn’t interested in hurting anybody, but his duty as a guardian and his quick temper often means he can get a bit too carried away as the line implies, good stuff.
“Been lonely all my life, does it matter? - Here for the mission, whoever want, it bring it”
Here we can clearly see Knuckles trying to reason with himself here, specifically after meeting Sonic and experiencing a life that isn’t just his duty. Here we see the Guardian side of him, he’s always been alone and it’s never been problem before, why should it be now? At least that’s what he tries to tell himself.
“Don't approve of him but gotta trust him - This alliance has a purpose - This partnership is only temporary”
I’ll get more into this when we get to Death Chamber, but these lines are obviously alluding to Sonic and the plot of the game. It’s clear that Knuckles still doesn’t completely like Sonic, however the key here is that he trusts him, he’s gotten to a point now where he knows Sonic is well meaning and their goals align. However, just like real people, he’s accepted the arrangement but he doesn’t have to like it, he still believes Sonic is brash, arrogant and takes far too many risks, it will take more than a few adventures for Knuckles to fully change his opinion on Sonic.
Hunnid-P and Marlon Saunders do a great job of bouncing off each other on this song, their voices and cadences clash with each other nicely almost like how Knuckles’ inner turmoil is split in two.
The beat is tantalizingly funky, for starters that bass line is smooth as butter and the song has a nice tempo, you get the occasional organ flourish and guitar riff that crescendo and just help to enhance the song even further. Overall a really solid track in my opinion, the content of the lyrics is interesting and the delivery is great, all over an extremely funky instrumental.

KICK THE ROCK - WILD CANYON

Probably my favorite song out of all Knuckles’ Stages, this one is definitely the most Jazzy and parallels nicely with Rouge, but has a distinctly Knuckles Twist.
That Sax and Organ combo just cause an absolute eargasm and those drums form such a nice tempo that makes this track such easy listening. Honestly there’s not a whole lot going on with this track and that is not a bad thing at all. Its simplicity is probably its biggest strength and is quite noticeable compared to something like Unknown From M.E.
Some Lyrics I found particularly interesting are:
“I'm feelin her in mysterious ways - That's why I stay on point like every single day - I gotta protect this place, I do it for my race”
Yeah yeah I know everybody finds this line and the play doh line inappropriate and funny, I understand the latter but honestly I could never get the outcry over this one
“I’m feelin her in mysterious ways” honestly, in my opinion, it’s not what you think. I’ve never really seen it as a sexual line “I’m feelin you” is basically another way of saying I get you, it’s basically Knuckles saying he gets Rouge, but he doesn’t know why and that kinda bothers him.
The context matters here and the lines after do give my interpretation some weight. It’s basically Knuckles saying to himself “I get this girl and I kinda mess with her, but I gotta job to do” Knuckles is intrigued by Rouge, he’s never met anybody like her and he obviously has some feeling towards her, though because of his lack of interaction with others he struggles to understand these feelings and instead of addressing them, he tries to ignore them and remain true to his job as Guardian
“Who could'a did this, that snitch named Rouge! - When I catch her, I'ma get her with these tools”
More obvious than the last one, but it still shows that Knuckles, despite his various different feelings toward Rouge, knows he has a job to do and tries to center himself to stay committed
Honestly it’s hard to choose between this or Unknown From M.E. as my favorite Knuckles track but either way its up there and definitely something I can bop to on the regular

A GHOST’S PUMPKIN SOUP - PUMPKIN HILL

The one everybody knows and honestly I get it, it’s got that smooth piano/guitar I can’t really tell what it is but it definitely slaps. It has that distinct G-Funk whistle which pops up occasionally across SA2K that simulates that stereotypically ghostly sound nicely
It’s definitely in contention with Deeper for the most lowkey Knuckles track and that’s saying something.
Not much content lyrically, but I managed to find a few interesting lines:
“I ain’t gonna let it get to me, I’m just gon creep - Down in Pumpkin Hill I gots to find my lost piece”
Something we don’t actually see a lot from Knuckles, fear! Most of this song is about Knuckles’ fearlessness being tested, if you view this as Knuckles’ internal monologue (Which if you don’t at this point then I’ve been doing something wrong 😂) its less about the song telling us how tough Knuckles is, but Knuckles reassuring himself that he can do this.
He’s obviously trepidatious over being in Pumpkin Hill and he has to take a moment to center himself and reassure himself that “I’m Knuckles, I’m not afraid of anything” again this goes back to how Knuckles uses his job as Guardian and his duty to motivate himself and push forward through situations, regardless of his own fear.
“I’m hearing someone saying “You a chicken, don’t be scared!” - It had to be the wind, cause nobody wasn’t there”
Considering the haunted theming of this level, this very clearly (on the surface) seems to be Knuckles encountering a ghost taunting him, but I might present another angle.
This is just Knuckles’ inner thoughts again, though this time its doubt, he doesn’t believe he can find the pieces of the Master Emerald and he doesn’t think he can make it through Pumpkin Hill, yet he pushes through anyway. This one’s kinda far fetched but it’s a nice idea
I don’t adore this track as much as a lot of other people (ironically) but I can still Jive with it.

DIVE INTO THE MELLOW - AQUATIC MINE

First of all, this track does a great job at just sounding watery, the filtered organ and the echoey bass just make it sound like cave ambience turned into music
Most of this track’s lyrics center around Knuckles’ yearning to be something more than just the Guardian of the Master Emerald and to be his own individual, these are:
“Makes you wanna sit back, enjoy the life - And do things you like doing, get to shine”
Knuckles, if it wasn’t for all the enemies and hazards, obviously enjoys being in Aquatic Mine, so much so that it brings his thoughts of a better life to the front of his mind.
This shows what Knuckles really wants, to be unburdened from the Master Emerald and to just be free to kick it wherever, in a way he’s jealous of the freedom Sonic has and wishes he wasn’t tied down to Angel Island.
“I stay Knuckled up, I’m in a deep cut”
Knuckles, despite his ideals of peace and relaxation is always ready to do what he believes is right, again this whole OST is basically Knuckles reconciling his wants and his duties.
Again Knuckles isn’t really equipped to deal with these feelings and instead of addressing them, he pushes them down and buries them under his duty and tries to keep himself busy, though once he gets to Aquatic Mine where he’s forced to slow down and explore methodically, he’s suddenly unable to distract himself from his true feelings.
“In a maze, and I don't know what to do Guaranteed though, imma find the Emeralds”
Again an obvious allusion to the labyrinthine Aquatic Mine on the surface, though I believe this too has a deeper meaning.
Knuckles is lost and confused emotionally, he’s confronted by these different feelings that conflict with everything he’s ever known. His thoughts on freedom and his feelings for Rouge which he doesn’t quite understand both conflict with his role as Guardian and he can’t reconcile them.
“I don’t know what to do” in a rare moment of vulnerability, Knuckles admits that he has no idea how to manage these feelings and he’s grappling with the monumental task of managing his panicked thoughts.
Then, just as you think Knuckles is gonna start making a breakthrough, what does he do? “Guaranteed though, imma find the Emeralds” That’s right, instead of finally addressing his swirling thoughts, he pushes them down and once again distracts himself with his duty.
Honestly, like Pumpkin Hill, I know it’s a reach but it tracks with what we know Knuckles’ character has been up to this point and it gives him insane depth and really humanizes him.
A funky beat, a nice flow from Hunnid P and some really humanizing characterization of Knuckles, Dive Into The Mellow is definitely a hidden gem of the OST.

DEEPER - DEATH CHAMBER

Sooooooo chill, honestly this song is so calm and smooth, it’s so underrated on this soundtrack it really is another hidden gem like Dive Into the Mellow.
First off I absolutely adore the bass this track has, it sounds like it’s been bit compressed for a Gameboy and honestly I’m all here for it, gives it a nice techno Eggmany twist. The funky guitar and sax just enhances the mood, the song sounds almost echoey like you’re actually standing in a Death Chamber.
Lyrically this song is unique in that it’s basically just a long conversation between Sonic and Knuckles instead of Knuckles’ inner thoughts/monologue.
It’s an interesting dynamic where Sonic is actually the reasonable one, willing to put aside his and Knuckles’ differences aside for the greater good. Knuckles however is initially a bit more standoffish, but Sonic talks him into it by appealing to his guardian nature and calling him out on his stubbornness, basically forcing Knuckles to admit that Sonic is right and that they’ll be much better off working together.
Honestly not much to say, it’s pretty much all spelled out in the song, but interesting nonetheless. An understated and uniquely funky beat make this track stand out among the others nicely, definitely a great listen.

SPACE TRIP STEPS - METEOR HERD

Finally, the last song. In my opinion, Space Trip Steps is probably the weakest track musically. That doesn’t make it bad, far from it, I just can’t groove with it as easily as the others
This song takes a lot more inspirations from G-Funk than the other tracks which does give it quite a unique sound amongst the soundtrack, it wouldn’t sound out of place on The Chronic or Regulate… G Funk Era. The wavy synths and sharp base with the fast tempo give it an almost garage feel too, definitely not a sound for everyone but I think it does a good job at sounding very ethereal and space like
As for lyrics, this seems to be a turning point for Knuckles as a loner:
“Took a shuttle to space and left from our homes At least we're with friends and I'm not all alone”
Knuckles is in a completely foreign environment and feels completely out of his depth, however he feels comforted by the fact that he’s surrounded by the people he’s finally started to call his Friends, the first time he’s admitted such.
He’s forced now to acknowledge that he can’t do everything by himself, and that asking for help from his friends doesn’t make him any less of a man, he finally accepts that he can trust outsiders, but he still has a ways to go.
“Bad thing was that the Emeralds spilled - Gotta search space, man, time to get ill”
Still, Knuckles is bound and almost blinded by his duty, forcing himself to abandon his friends to search for the Master Emerald pieces that were scattered in space.
It’s clear now that Knuckles isn’t too happy to leave his friends, but as we’ve come to know him, he does the typical Knuckles thing of pushing his feelings to the side in the face of doing what he believes is right. This just tells us Knuckles still has a lot to work on before he can really come to terms with who he is.
Again, a pretty unconventional track so it can be an awkward listen and definitely not my favorite on the list, but it does something unique which I can definitely give it props for, Hunnid P even has a completely different flow, dragging out his words like he’s getting further away, hammering home that space theme.

CONCLUSION

And that’s it, if you made it this far through my long winded ramblings, then I’m extremely impressed 😂 I tried to trim the fat as best I could but I ended up getting a bit too attached to most of what I wrote
Honestly I feel like these songs have been unfairly painted as the silly crappy Knuckles rap songs with bad lyrics that are only good because of their instrumentals, and I just can’t agree with that.
I feel like in a lot of ways these songs do a much better job of characterizing Knuckles than SA1 or SA2, I really wish we got see more of his inner turmoil and him butting heads with Sonic in the game itself.
I think it’s a sad thought that for a long time, Knuckles has been a shadow of his former self (Har har) and has just been relegated to the token meathead that’s about as one dimensional as a square. Frontiers is definitely a step in the right direction and I’m excited to see what the new writing team can cook up with for his character.
But what are your thoughts though? Do you agree? Disagree? Did I manage to change your mind or have you always felt this way? Maybe you have a different take or something else to add? I’d love to hear it.
ML