Beautiful words that start with k
Words that start with t
2016.12.16 02:25 Lil_Bits Words that start with t
Words that begin with the letter t.
2018.05.12 01:36 LoafsWords Blessed + Cursed = Blursed
blursed
2008.06.19 07:23 Dark Netflix Original Series
A subreddit for the Netflix sci-fi thriller series Dark. When two children go missing in a small German town, its sinful past is exposed along with the double lives and fractured relationships that exist among four families as they search for the kids.
2024.05.19 08:10 nomorelandfills California rescuers clamoring for adoption of AB 2265, Animal Shelter Transparency Act cheerfully agree to remove the bit about mandatory spay/neuter before a dog or cat is released to foster. Also, the law is another gateway for release of dangerous dogs.
 | https://preview.redd.it/8wd5vanfrb1d1.png?width=536&format=png&auto=webp&s=4348ee55b7aa2fd3a7d70737d11ffd1979b19f61 submitted by nomorelandfills to PetRescueExposed [link] [comments] To be honest, I didn't read the dangerous dog part as thoroughly as I should. I think I may be somewhat burnt out on the recklessness and coldness shown by rescuers to others in their willingness to prioritize dangerous or marginal ownerless dogs over beloved pets and over people. The spay/neuter part, that just galls me. It should gall anyone. This crisis, this hellscape of pit bull overpopulation that exists clearly calls for sterilization of any shelter dog in California. Shrugging off that as a lesser priority than rehoming existing dogs blows the whole deal. Any animal rescue plan that removes, downgrades or fails to prioritize spay/neuter for pit bulls is worthless. It's just a smokescreen, a way to play with puppies and posture as saviors without doing anything to improve the situation. Status quo, nothing to see here, #adoptdontshop. https://preview.redd.it/if3jg07kpb1d1.png?width=873&format=png&auto=webp&s=bde9e6f11f3311da914d8c76a66d3907e0118374 SUMMARY: Under existing law, it is the policy of the state that no adoptable animal should be euthanized if it can be adopted into a suitable home, as provided. This bill declares it the policy of the state that no animal be euthanized by a public animal control agency, shelter, or a private entity that contracts with a public animal control agency or shelter for animal care and control services (collectively, “eligible agency”). This bill requires an eligible agency to post, 24 to 72 hours before a scheduled euthanasia of a dog or cat, a daily list of any cat or dog scheduled for euthanasia on its public website or social media page and to post a physical notice on the kennel of a dog or cat scheduled to be euthanized. This bill requires a public animal control agency or shelter that seeks to adopt a policy, practice, or protocol that may conflict with Hayden’s Law to give notice regarding the policy, practice, or protocol, as specified, and requires the city or county to schedule a public hearing regarding the policy, practice, or protocol. https://preview.redd.it/r6ett982nb1d1.png?width=701&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a4b03df0544234fd1c1a32dc1ad2396314d7a75 And the sheer chutzpah of this https://preview.redd.it/6jzq88epob1d1.png?width=588&format=png&auto=webp&s=01830f3ea95e94084d4bd927d96ba33fc7732b24 Rescuers - we will advocate for violent dogs and fund their owners' fights to keep them from being designated dangerous and harass communities into being extremely afraid of even starting a dangerous dog investigation. Also rescuers - our new legislation to require more marketing of unadoptable dogs won't include dangerous dogs! Silly! There's no risk to the public! Although I will say I had no idea that rescuers knew of the existence of the word 'transparency' so good for them. Perhaps this knowledge could be turned inward sometimes? The CityWatch article ANIMAL WATCH - An increasing number of reported vicious and fatal dog attacks across California, as reported by the L.A. Times—and worldwide—are ignored by AB 2265 (2024) authored by Assembly Member Kevin McCarthy and introduced in the CA Assembly—and, instead, it prohibits euthanasia of any dangerous animals, including dogs impounded in shelters for violent behavior. AB 2265, (which has so far been amended twice, the latest change being when it was introduced in the Assembly on 3/18/2024) wants California legislators to assure that NO dog (or other aggressive animal) in a shelter can be euthanized, other than if it is irremediably suffering, regardless of its violent or even deadly behavioral history. However, it is the goal and purpose of shelters to place as many animals as possible directly into homes with families. This bill went far beyond the purpose of the 1998 Hayden bill which had the intent to restrict euthanasia of healthy and adoptable animals. No one with knowledge of the devastating outcome of attacks by currently popular Pit Bulls, XL and XXL Bullys, now banned in the UK, Wales, Scotland and India, along with other aggressive breeds, nor anyone who has been the victim of any vicious dog attack, could plausibly agree that this risk should be encouraged or can be afforded by the State of California or any governmental jurisdiction. So far, it appears other legislators are skeptical of this bill. The only positive change with which some CA animal control agencies and legislators have expressed mutual agreement is the increase in spay/neuter deposits for dogs and cats being raised to $200 to match the much higher rates for surgical sterilization in today’s economy. A CLOSER LOOK AT AB 2265 In the past few weeks we have seen countries such as England, Wales, Scotland and India joining those which ban Pit Bull, XL and XXL Bullys and other dangerous dogs in order to stop the trafficking of dangerous breeds, provide safety for communities and stop the horrific attacks and deaths of innocent children and adults whose lives are ended by other people’s “protection dogs” or “rescued” pets with a known history of violent behavior. AB 2265 – A RISK CALIFORNIA CANNOT TAKE There is value in telling the truth about dog behavior and the greatest is in public and personal safety. What weird whim—other than personal aggrandizement or a strong campaign supporter—would cause Senator McCarthy to encourage ignoring violent past history and risk human and animal lives on a gamble that a dog with a known history of unprovoked aggression will suddenly act differently? If we want canines to continue to be known as man’s (or woman’s) best friends, we need—just as we do with humans—to assure they have earned that trust by not misusing their innate strength and survival skills to harm those who trust and love them. CHANGING THE STATE’S EUTHANASIA GOAL This bill, AB 2265, introduced on February 8, 2024, drastically changes the State’s animal shelter euthanasia goal—from ending euthanasia of adoptable animals to ending euthanasia of any animal. That includes vicious dogs, wild and/or dangerous animals, prohibited animals and regulated animals. This would create chaotic danger for adopters and pet owners and innocent residents/neighbors throughout California, while ALSO negatively and disastrously affecting the insurance and veterinary industries, according to experts. The only exceptions in the bill that allow a dangerous animal to be euthanized are very narrow categories for medical and behavior issues: 1) those that are irremediably suffering, which is defined as those for which “severe, unremitting physical pain” cannot be relieved by any medical means without regard to cost or local availability of that level of care; and 2) Those that have been declared “vicious” under the State’s regulatory scheme, which few agencies use, and which assumes that a hearing was held after an owner contested that declaration. According to Fast Track Democracy, “Existing law prohibits animals that are irremediably suffering from a serious illness or severe injury from being held for owner redemption or adoption. This bill would instead declare it the policy of the state that no animal be euthanized by a public animal control agency or shelter or a private entity that contracts with a public animal control agency or shelter for animal care and control services, except as provided.” “Existing law prohibits a stray dog or cat impounded by a public or private shelter from being euthanized before 6 business days after the stray dog or cat is impounded, not including the day of impoundment, and requires that the stray dog or cat, except those irremediably suffering, be released to a nonprofit animal rescue or adoption organization before the scheduled euthanasia of the stray dog or cat if requested by the organization, as specified.” The analysis summarizes the Bill (see Fast Track Democracy). Existing law prohibits a stray dog or cat impounded by a public or private shelter from being euthanized before 6 business days after the stray dog or cat is impounded, not including the day of impoundment, and requires that the stray dog or cat, except those irremediably suffering, be released to a nonprofit animal rescue or adoption organization before the scheduled euthanasia of the stray dog or cat if requested by the organization, as specified. WARNINGS ABOUT THIS ‘NO KILL’ PLAN FOR DANGEROUS DOGS A California animal-control specialist offered the following thoughts based on his personal and professional experience. (The following is not to be taken as legal advice, but merely as guidance in further considering some issues that appear to not have been considered in pursuing these severe changes to animal sheltering under existing California laws and practices.) “This Bill would absolutely eviscerate Food and Agricultural Code Section 31683, which allows counties and cities to have their own regulatory process for dangerous dogs, and it would force everyone to use the very-flawed State process.” AND he summarized that:
FUNDRAISING – THE POWER OF THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR There is no better way to reach the wallets of animal lovers than through their heart strings, and sadly millions of dollars are going into pockets of executives in organizations that do not directly care for or protect animals and, of course, nothing speaks louder than donations at the lobbying and legislative level. But, the needs of homeless animals should not be creating slush funds for campaigns nor playing on the emotions of those who are continually confronted by TV commercials and mailers, saying that just a few more dollars will save them all. There are also human lives and safety to be considered and this is a primary responsibility of animal shelters and humane societies. It is important that they are asked what will help them do this thankless and seemingly hopeless job. Pets are too often obtained as a short-term experience with little commitment and then abandoned within or outside these facilities that do not benefit from the money that is raised by large organizations or politicians ostensibly to help them. Instead, these promises set unreachable goals and promote “feel-good” programs that overburden their staffing and emotions, without asking what they need to do this very difficult job from a realistic perspective. THE BEST INDICATOR OF AN ANIMAL’S FUTURE BEHAVIOR IS ITS PAST Not all animals are adoptable, nor should they be placed in homes where they are likely to harm, or be harmed because certain behavior is endemic to the breed. The AKC thrives on the fact that bloodlines of dogs determine or influence their predictable behavior. Why is it this is so clear that it causes millions of people to buy purebreds for certain reasons; yet, animal shelters are expected to take in dogs with documented histories of anti-social behavior and attacks and rehome them with promises they will be “good family members” just to keep them alive? LISTEN BEFORE VOTING, SACRAMENTO Legislators need to listen to experts in animal control—not self-appointed voices for animals—many of whom have never worked in a shelter, before even considering new legislation. They also need to ask their own community, “Do you feel safe from dog attacks? And/or “have you been a victim of an attack or live in fear of neighborhood animals?” They may be surprised at the number of injuries that have been suffered but didn’t make the press and how many victims may have permanent, life-limiting, disabilities for which they were never compensated. Assembly Member McCarthy needs to walk through animal shelters in his district and ask those who work there or have been long-term volunteers, and those who take the responsibility for determining policies and the endless, sad challenges of management, “what will help you help them?” DON’T WAIT FOR AN IRREVERSIBLE TRAGEDY California has been very liberal (or very foolish) in allowing dogs known to have a history of aggression to be removed from shelters for adoption, but lawsuits and tragic, injuries or deaths of innocent victims have imposed limitations as to what can be tolerated philosophically and financially. The safety of the dog itself must also be a consideration. People understandably react violently to dog attacks, using any weapon to inflict sufficient injury to stop the dog and save their own or another’s life. Euthanasia can be the most humane option when it is indicated or determined that the animal poses a consistent threat to humans or animals in general, or poses a recurrent uncontrollable risk to the public’s and its own safety. (Author’s note: If anyone would like to see more of the informal critique of the proposed CA law AB 2265, quoted in part in this article, you can contact me through the editor of CityWatchLA: ([jim@citywatchla.com](mailto:jim@citywatchla.com).) (Phyllis M. Daugherty is a former Los Angeles City employee, an animal activist and a contributor to CityWatch. |
2024.05.19 08:08 Iam-scared-of-myself Venting about people, systems, racism, the world in general. NO HATE TOWARDS ANYONE, THIS IS JUST VENTING FRUSTRATION
*CONTAINS SWEARING*
This is gonna be a hefty and most likely triggering post for specific groups of people out there (meaning people who struggle with anger, people who don't want poltical content/opinions etc), so please stop reading and leave if you figure this is gonna be rough for you. This will (mainly) be about the conflict between Palestine and Israel. (and apparently a long one) No hate towards any specific groups of people, but I do have a lot of *frustration regarding behaviours*.
Before I start, I want you to remember some facts about me as you read;
I am autistic
I am heavily influenced by world peace, hate, racism and other unfair situations
I have incredibly high standards for myself that I strive to not break, including, but not limited to, being kind and respectful *always*, despite being in a bad mood, not liking someone, or disagreeing, especially political disagreements
I have always, and will always, stand against widespread hate, racism and other discrimination towards any specific religions, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, etc.
I also want you to know that I named this throwaway accordingly.
So let's get this shitshow started then, shall we.
As the details of the conflict stands, it is beyond obvious to me that this is racism and, literally, a Holocaust. Not *the* Holocaust, but *a* Holocaust. Oxford Languages has the term defined as a destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war . I'd say that's very much accurate. Proof to come.
Regardless, this situation has had me very pressed the last almost 8 months, as I know most other people have been too. Without getting too much into the conflict itself, I want to talk a little about what I've seen from the Jewish community.
This is where I advise anyone who struggles with anger especially to leave and try to keep your day positive. If you have a magical potion to stay stable after this, who am I to stop you...
Alright, onto the dreaded part. And yes, I am stalling.
I have never, and I truly mean *never* had any hateful thoughts or opinions about religions (other than Christianity but that's one for another time), and as we are all aware of, The Holocaust had massive effect on the world some 80 years ago. I have always seen Jews as victims due to this, but in recent times I've realised that a lot of them, too, see themselves as victims. The issue is that they aren't the victims right now. They (Israel) aren't defending themselves, they have nothing to defend themselves against. Israel is currently doing the exact same thing as Germany did to them, to Palestine. Sure, maybe at some point who knows when, Palestine *was* the land of Jews, but since then, multiple religions have been thriving together on that land, including Jews. They were never excluded. From what I've understood, there weren't any wars or conflicts going on within the country that didn't happen elsewhere. The issue began when in the late 1940's zionists brutally murdered families to steal their homes. I'm sure the situation was so much more complex than that, but in a nutshell that is basically it. The fact that everyone today have been so desensitized from the travesties happening around the world is depressing and hope-killing. I truly am well on the way to giving up, and at this point in time I'm so angry all the time due to the Middle East's situation.
So a few weeks ago, probably closing in on months at this point, I randomly got a notification from reddit about someone posting on /Jewish. They didn't say anything explicit, so I pressed the notification and I was met with the worst victimization and ignorance I've ever seen. I truly believed most jews would see this for what it is, and not let some racist maniac spoon-feed them propaganda and hate, but I was brutally and humbly proven wrong. They were mocking proPAL parades, hating on news anchors and civilians alike calling this a genocide, insisting that Israel has no other choice, saying "casualties happens in war", convincing each other that zionism is a good thing, and feeling sorry for themselves when friends and families cut contact because they said they supported Israel and saw this as the only solution. Some might have been genuine problems, idk, but for the most part, that subreddit seems to only be about hating the rest of the world because their great grandparents were killed. I know I sound like a complete asshole, but the world isn't antisemetic anymore - they are actively looking for it and then using that one person telling them to stop feeling so sorry for themselves as proof that everybody in the world wants to throw them back in gas chambers.
I commented on my personal once where I mentioned that judaism and zionism are two separate things and got downvoted to oblivion. Someone replied saying that my comment was very much exactly what they too feel, but I got downvoted *simply because* I referred to them as separate entities. That is another criticism they've recieved lately; the pure idea of zionism is on the complete opposite side from what Judaism stands for. I've seen so many of the members there calling Jews protesting against Israel "self-hating" and traitors.
I've also made so many replies that I never sent because I know for a fact they would do anything in their power to ban me from ever using reddit again, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got doxxed and harrassed IRL from it. I saved them all, though. I found that it was kind of therapeutic to get it out, but it still bugs me that I never found a way to say it to them. I once also made a post about my rage for their behaviour connected to this genocide, but I thankfully stopped myself before I posted it. I'm so enraged by their sheer ignorance and hypocritical behaviour, all the while Gaza is still being eradicated and slaughtered, war crimes happening day in-day out, inhumane atrocities by the IOF being posted and hailed, and they have the audacity to say that they are the victims? That Israel has no other choice but martyring tens of thousands of CHILDREN? Starving the entire Gaza Strip, segregating West Bank, literally teaching their young in school to hate and attack arabs? That last one might not be true as I don't speak Hebrew or Arabic, so anyone could've just made up the translation, but I still feel it's worth mentioning in case it actually *is* real.
My point is that the guts they have to claim to be so moral, yet still be so unfaced from what's happening in Gaza is beside me. Sure, for those living near the Gaza wall, I'm positive that hearing bombs and screams were traumatizing as fuck, but to then leave for work the next day and claim that "shit happens"? It's insane! It's inhumane. They can leave whenever they like, children can play football (soccer) in the streets and not having to worry about shit, hotels and restaurants with 5-star ratings thriving, plants and flowers still blooming, absolutely no threats on a daily basis. The fact that people are still calling this a war, something necessary, is beyond devastating to me. There are millions still siding with zionism, claiming there's nothing wrong with the belief that you have an innate right to some dirt simply because your holy book says that thousands of years ago, your religion lived there, and simply because of that religious fact you are rightfully owed thousands of young lives, the death of an entire country with its own culture, just to feed the irrational religious political system? How in God's name has that ever, *IS* that still okay? If Muslims were the ones saying that shit, they would've been completely destroyed by now, today's generation wouldn't know what the fuck Islam was. They are still being slaughtered though, because they're saying it's *not* okay. How is that not racist again?
My brother and I got into a heated argument a few days ago about this. I am very much *for* Palestine to have human rights and to own their own land - he is very much *against* "ugly blackies" having any rights because they're *not* human. Boi when I tell you I got so angry I started crying. And the worst part about that fight? He claims that Jews aren't any better, however they still deserve to defend themselves against children running on the beach. "But Hamas-" is so over-used and outdated by now, it just proves that he doesn't follow up on statistics and evidence. Even if there only were one-sided news (from Gaza), the fact that the ICJ ruled Israel's actions a genocide and war crimes still proves everything he claims to be "n*****'s propaganda". And the fact that he so underminds my autism and *need* for factual evidence before discussing it also goes to show that he genuinely does not care about anything other than the black "terrorists" being eradicated. I said "So you're not just a racist, you're just plain racist?" he just scoffed and looked at me as if I just said the most nonsensical bullshit gibberish ever, practically saying "I'm not gonna say anything, but it really took you that long to realise?" Either that, or he actually didn't comprehend the words coming out of my mouth, like it was a foreign language or something. Because he genuinely does not have a single reason to be racist.
He can't even blame suicide attacks because 1) not all are carried by muslims, and 2) between 1981-2015 around 45,000 were killed by suicide attacks worldwide, where in 2019 the total death toll was only 1,699 more than amount of attacks; whereas in Gaza, between Oct 7 to present there are about 34,000 confirmed palestinian deaths, and assumed around 42,000 with unconfirmed deaths. If, in 36 years, "muslim terrorism" killed about the same amount as Israel has in almost 8 months, how on earth are Arabs the terrorists?
And I've also seen the argument that 30,000 is nothing compared to the total population in Gaza, as if that makes it okay. I will, again, make example of The Holocaust. When 30,000 Jews were martyred, people were already catching on, and this was without the technology we have today.
How have we been allowing this to happen to Palestinians *with* our technology today? Why haven't people been doing more; striking our jobs, cummute chauffeurs striking, proper permanent boycotts, more coverage from news anchors and private people alike? Even if it is to officially reclaim your love for white supremacy, you're still talking about it. Why are people still not reading up on this? Why does millions still not know that this *didn't* begin on October 7th? And why are there still those who claim that the past doesn't matter today? I have so many questions, and if I do get an answer I will only end up with more questions. How hasn't the world stopped over this? Why are people so okay knowing that there are children being intentionally murdered every single day? How can you go to work and talk about Dave's new tie? Or your 6 year old's birthday party with 15 other 6 year olds? Hasn't it crossed your mind that if the roles were reversed, your precious princess would be the one burried under tons of rubble, dying slowly while simontaniously starving, dehydrating, suffocating and crushing, and *knowing* that absolutely no one cares because you're [skin color] and it's normal for your kids to be horrendously massacred? "Oh but the Taliban-ISIS-Al Qaeda" OKAY so what are you gonna do to help save innocent lives and suffering??? How are you gonna contribute to STOP these organizations that have manipulated and murdered to rule their country and are intentionally making the citicens miserable? Are you even aware that your own govurnment is essentially the same fucking thing, just disguised as a well dressed, polite gentleman? Aren't you sick of all those ads on TV showing brown children with flies in their eyes? Or your mama telling you to think about the starving children in Africa? Because I am.
I am so sick and tired of how inhumane humans have come to be. You don't see animals (and I'm trying my best to not mention how humans *are* animals, guess I failed) intentionally kill another animal simply because they're that animal. They kill prey; polar bears kill seals, seals kill penguins, penguins kill fish, fish kill amoebas, and you can get to that result from absolutely everything. What you don't find as a natural event is a golden, brown mane lion attack and kill an albino lion simply because it's albino. You don't see a school of fish swim away from one with two heads, because "*omg Jared is such a freak with his two heads*." So why the FUCK DID WE START DOING THAT? Where did this hunger for power come from? You *will* see a female lion tell the king that enough is enough, and he *will* accept that. I could go on and on for DAYS if I got the chance, but I don't wanna get too off topic here.
I've started a list of all the universally illegal shit Israel has done, and once I'm satisfied with it, I'll make one comparing Israel to Palestine, and then Arabs/Muslims as a whole. I can guarantee that I will still hear "on-sided sources" still, or "You can't trust Wikipedia!" Have you ever tried to edit or create an article on Wikipedia? I have, and I had to confirm that I had a degree or a current valid work ID to prove that I was elgible to speak on the topic. I tried to make a site for myself... Sure, there are more trustworthy sites, but even in a discussion about wether or not being trans is a mental illness, where I quoted and linked all of the most well known official sources like WHO, I was still slapped with "but this shady ass article from a random Deutch website that explicitly says everything I've said, yet still isn't actually saying the same thing because I misquoted and mixed the words to form my own sentence says that it is" when they literally linked a website called "disabled world". I will say though, I agree with that name. Today's world is so non-funtional for neurotypical, hetero, white MEN, it's no fucking wonder everyone else are classified as disabled or whatever. Also, on that disabled topic, if you've made it this far, please don't say "differently abled". A quote unquote quote (heh geddit? cuz it's rephrased and I don't have the book near me rn to directly quote) from Devon Price's "Unmasking Autism" that I really like: "You wouldn't say "a person with Asianness", you'd say "an Asian person"." We are disabled because today's world isn't made for us, and for the most part isn't even accomodated or accessible to us. We are different, yeah, but literally everyone is. We just got that term because we can't do the same things as you (assuming you're neurotypical) without aid. We are able, just not like you. Of course, if an autistic person tells you they prefer "person with autism", listen to them! But most of us embrace it as a part of us because we can't just get rid of it. Autism is what make me me, I wouldn't be me without my autism, so I *am* autistic, for better or for worse. :)
I find it kinda ironic that I started this as a venting about a lot of Jews' hypocritical behaviour, and now ending up on autism. Yaknow, cuz Dr. Asperger during WW2 experimented and tortured autistic people, and found out that some where more alike him than others, which then coined the term Aspergers for the Autistic Community.
Anywho, I feel better now, so thanks for letting me vent a little (a lot). I want to finish off by restating my intro; I have not, and will not tolerate any hate, racism or discrimination towards any religion, ethnicity, nationality, culture etc. This post is not intended as a rant about how aweful jews are, because they're not. I just wanted to air some frustration over their behaviour regarding I/P genocide. This is also not about *all* Jews, but that's the same discussion as "not all men" so I'll leave it at that.
I will delete this account in a week, so if you have any questions, be fast ig. If you find I've mis-phrased, used irrationally insensitive wording or any other complaints that calls for a repost, I will fix it and post an updated version. My DMs will also be available if that should be of interest, but I will not be responding to hate or personal attacks for my opinions. If the issue is my wording, again, tell me and I'll fix it.
At this point I've written so much that I don't remember if I found anything myself that I figured was worth fixing, and I've proof read it so many times that my eyes are crossing and giving me a headache lol
Gosh I'm scared of posting this. I don't want anyone to read this and think I support what A. H. did in 1940 cuz I cannot begin to describe my hatred for that man
submitted by Iam-scared-of-myself to confessions [link] [comments]
This is gonna be a hefty and most likely triggering post for specific groups of people out there (meaning people who struggle with anger, people who don't want poltical content/opinions etc), so please stop reading and leave if you figure this is gonna be rough for you. This will (mainly) be about the conflict between Palestine and Israel. (and apparently a long one) No hate towards any specific groups of people, but I do have a lot of *frustration regarding behaviours*.
Before I start, I want you to remember some facts about me as you read;
I am autistic
I am heavily influenced by world peace, hate, racism and other unfair situations
I have incredibly high standards for myself that I strive to not break, including, but not limited to, being kind and respectful *always*, despite being in a bad mood, not liking someone, or disagreeing, especially political disagreements
I have always, and will always, stand against widespread hate, racism and other discrimination towards any specific religions, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, etc.
I also want you to know that I named this throwaway accordingly.
So let's get this shitshow started then, shall we.
As the details of the conflict stands, it is beyond obvious to me that this is racism and, literally, a Holocaust. Not *the* Holocaust, but *a* Holocaust. Oxford Languages has the term defined as a destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war . I'd say that's very much accurate. Proof to come.
Regardless, this situation has had me very pressed the last almost 8 months, as I know most other people have been too. Without getting too much into the conflict itself, I want to talk a little about what I've seen from the Jewish community.
This is where I advise anyone who struggles with anger especially to leave and try to keep your day positive. If you have a magical potion to stay stable after this, who am I to stop you...
Alright, onto the dreaded part. And yes, I am stalling.
I have never, and I truly mean *never* had any hateful thoughts or opinions about religions (other than Christianity but that's one for another time), and as we are all aware of, The Holocaust had massive effect on the world some 80 years ago. I have always seen Jews as victims due to this, but in recent times I've realised that a lot of them, too, see themselves as victims. The issue is that they aren't the victims right now. They (Israel) aren't defending themselves, they have nothing to defend themselves against. Israel is currently doing the exact same thing as Germany did to them, to Palestine. Sure, maybe at some point who knows when, Palestine *was* the land of Jews, but since then, multiple religions have been thriving together on that land, including Jews. They were never excluded. From what I've understood, there weren't any wars or conflicts going on within the country that didn't happen elsewhere. The issue began when in the late 1940's zionists brutally murdered families to steal their homes. I'm sure the situation was so much more complex than that, but in a nutshell that is basically it. The fact that everyone today have been so desensitized from the travesties happening around the world is depressing and hope-killing. I truly am well on the way to giving up, and at this point in time I'm so angry all the time due to the Middle East's situation.
So a few weeks ago, probably closing in on months at this point, I randomly got a notification from reddit about someone posting on /Jewish. They didn't say anything explicit, so I pressed the notification and I was met with the worst victimization and ignorance I've ever seen. I truly believed most jews would see this for what it is, and not let some racist maniac spoon-feed them propaganda and hate, but I was brutally and humbly proven wrong. They were mocking proPAL parades, hating on news anchors and civilians alike calling this a genocide, insisting that Israel has no other choice, saying "casualties happens in war", convincing each other that zionism is a good thing, and feeling sorry for themselves when friends and families cut contact because they said they supported Israel and saw this as the only solution. Some might have been genuine problems, idk, but for the most part, that subreddit seems to only be about hating the rest of the world because their great grandparents were killed. I know I sound like a complete asshole, but the world isn't antisemetic anymore - they are actively looking for it and then using that one person telling them to stop feeling so sorry for themselves as proof that everybody in the world wants to throw them back in gas chambers.
I commented on my personal once where I mentioned that judaism and zionism are two separate things and got downvoted to oblivion. Someone replied saying that my comment was very much exactly what they too feel, but I got downvoted *simply because* I referred to them as separate entities. That is another criticism they've recieved lately; the pure idea of zionism is on the complete opposite side from what Judaism stands for. I've seen so many of the members there calling Jews protesting against Israel "self-hating" and traitors.
I've also made so many replies that I never sent because I know for a fact they would do anything in their power to ban me from ever using reddit again, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got doxxed and harrassed IRL from it. I saved them all, though. I found that it was kind of therapeutic to get it out, but it still bugs me that I never found a way to say it to them. I once also made a post about my rage for their behaviour connected to this genocide, but I thankfully stopped myself before I posted it. I'm so enraged by their sheer ignorance and hypocritical behaviour, all the while Gaza is still being eradicated and slaughtered, war crimes happening day in-day out, inhumane atrocities by the IOF being posted and hailed, and they have the audacity to say that they are the victims? That Israel has no other choice but martyring tens of thousands of CHILDREN? Starving the entire Gaza Strip, segregating West Bank, literally teaching their young in school to hate and attack arabs? That last one might not be true as I don't speak Hebrew or Arabic, so anyone could've just made up the translation, but I still feel it's worth mentioning in case it actually *is* real.
My point is that the guts they have to claim to be so moral, yet still be so unfaced from what's happening in Gaza is beside me. Sure, for those living near the Gaza wall, I'm positive that hearing bombs and screams were traumatizing as fuck, but to then leave for work the next day and claim that "shit happens"? It's insane! It's inhumane. They can leave whenever they like, children can play football (soccer) in the streets and not having to worry about shit, hotels and restaurants with 5-star ratings thriving, plants and flowers still blooming, absolutely no threats on a daily basis. The fact that people are still calling this a war, something necessary, is beyond devastating to me. There are millions still siding with zionism, claiming there's nothing wrong with the belief that you have an innate right to some dirt simply because your holy book says that thousands of years ago, your religion lived there, and simply because of that religious fact you are rightfully owed thousands of young lives, the death of an entire country with its own culture, just to feed the irrational religious political system? How in God's name has that ever, *IS* that still okay? If Muslims were the ones saying that shit, they would've been completely destroyed by now, today's generation wouldn't know what the fuck Islam was. They are still being slaughtered though, because they're saying it's *not* okay. How is that not racist again?
My brother and I got into a heated argument a few days ago about this. I am very much *for* Palestine to have human rights and to own their own land - he is very much *against* "ugly blackies" having any rights because they're *not* human. Boi when I tell you I got so angry I started crying. And the worst part about that fight? He claims that Jews aren't any better, however they still deserve to defend themselves against children running on the beach. "But Hamas-" is so over-used and outdated by now, it just proves that he doesn't follow up on statistics and evidence. Even if there only were one-sided news (from Gaza), the fact that the ICJ ruled Israel's actions a genocide and war crimes still proves everything he claims to be "n*****'s propaganda". And the fact that he so underminds my autism and *need* for factual evidence before discussing it also goes to show that he genuinely does not care about anything other than the black "terrorists" being eradicated. I said "So you're not just a racist, you're just plain racist?" he just scoffed and looked at me as if I just said the most nonsensical bullshit gibberish ever, practically saying "I'm not gonna say anything, but it really took you that long to realise?" Either that, or he actually didn't comprehend the words coming out of my mouth, like it was a foreign language or something. Because he genuinely does not have a single reason to be racist.
He can't even blame suicide attacks because 1) not all are carried by muslims, and 2) between 1981-2015 around 45,000 were killed by suicide attacks worldwide, where in 2019 the total death toll was only 1,699 more than amount of attacks; whereas in Gaza, between Oct 7 to present there are about 34,000 confirmed palestinian deaths, and assumed around 42,000 with unconfirmed deaths. If, in 36 years, "muslim terrorism" killed about the same amount as Israel has in almost 8 months, how on earth are Arabs the terrorists?
And I've also seen the argument that 30,000 is nothing compared to the total population in Gaza, as if that makes it okay. I will, again, make example of The Holocaust. When 30,000 Jews were martyred, people were already catching on, and this was without the technology we have today.
How have we been allowing this to happen to Palestinians *with* our technology today? Why haven't people been doing more; striking our jobs, cummute chauffeurs striking, proper permanent boycotts, more coverage from news anchors and private people alike? Even if it is to officially reclaim your love for white supremacy, you're still talking about it. Why are people still not reading up on this? Why does millions still not know that this *didn't* begin on October 7th? And why are there still those who claim that the past doesn't matter today? I have so many questions, and if I do get an answer I will only end up with more questions. How hasn't the world stopped over this? Why are people so okay knowing that there are children being intentionally murdered every single day? How can you go to work and talk about Dave's new tie? Or your 6 year old's birthday party with 15 other 6 year olds? Hasn't it crossed your mind that if the roles were reversed, your precious princess would be the one burried under tons of rubble, dying slowly while simontaniously starving, dehydrating, suffocating and crushing, and *knowing* that absolutely no one cares because you're [skin color] and it's normal for your kids to be horrendously massacred? "Oh but the Taliban-ISIS-Al Qaeda" OKAY so what are you gonna do to help save innocent lives and suffering??? How are you gonna contribute to STOP these organizations that have manipulated and murdered to rule their country and are intentionally making the citicens miserable? Are you even aware that your own govurnment is essentially the same fucking thing, just disguised as a well dressed, polite gentleman? Aren't you sick of all those ads on TV showing brown children with flies in their eyes? Or your mama telling you to think about the starving children in Africa? Because I am.
I am so sick and tired of how inhumane humans have come to be. You don't see animals (and I'm trying my best to not mention how humans *are* animals, guess I failed) intentionally kill another animal simply because they're that animal. They kill prey; polar bears kill seals, seals kill penguins, penguins kill fish, fish kill amoebas, and you can get to that result from absolutely everything. What you don't find as a natural event is a golden, brown mane lion attack and kill an albino lion simply because it's albino. You don't see a school of fish swim away from one with two heads, because "*omg Jared is such a freak with his two heads*." So why the FUCK DID WE START DOING THAT? Where did this hunger for power come from? You *will* see a female lion tell the king that enough is enough, and he *will* accept that. I could go on and on for DAYS if I got the chance, but I don't wanna get too off topic here.
I've started a list of all the universally illegal shit Israel has done, and once I'm satisfied with it, I'll make one comparing Israel to Palestine, and then Arabs/Muslims as a whole. I can guarantee that I will still hear "on-sided sources" still, or "You can't trust Wikipedia!" Have you ever tried to edit or create an article on Wikipedia? I have, and I had to confirm that I had a degree or a current valid work ID to prove that I was elgible to speak on the topic. I tried to make a site for myself... Sure, there are more trustworthy sites, but even in a discussion about wether or not being trans is a mental illness, where I quoted and linked all of the most well known official sources like WHO, I was still slapped with "but this shady ass article from a random Deutch website that explicitly says everything I've said, yet still isn't actually saying the same thing because I misquoted and mixed the words to form my own sentence says that it is" when they literally linked a website called "disabled world". I will say though, I agree with that name. Today's world is so non-funtional for neurotypical, hetero, white MEN, it's no fucking wonder everyone else are classified as disabled or whatever. Also, on that disabled topic, if you've made it this far, please don't say "differently abled". A quote unquote quote (heh geddit? cuz it's rephrased and I don't have the book near me rn to directly quote) from Devon Price's "Unmasking Autism" that I really like: "You wouldn't say "a person with Asianness", you'd say "an Asian person"." We are disabled because today's world isn't made for us, and for the most part isn't even accomodated or accessible to us. We are different, yeah, but literally everyone is. We just got that term because we can't do the same things as you (assuming you're neurotypical) without aid. We are able, just not like you. Of course, if an autistic person tells you they prefer "person with autism", listen to them! But most of us embrace it as a part of us because we can't just get rid of it. Autism is what make me me, I wouldn't be me without my autism, so I *am* autistic, for better or for worse. :)
I find it kinda ironic that I started this as a venting about a lot of Jews' hypocritical behaviour, and now ending up on autism. Yaknow, cuz Dr. Asperger during WW2 experimented and tortured autistic people, and found out that some where more alike him than others, which then coined the term Aspergers for the Autistic Community.
Anywho, I feel better now, so thanks for letting me vent a little (a lot). I want to finish off by restating my intro; I have not, and will not tolerate any hate, racism or discrimination towards any religion, ethnicity, nationality, culture etc. This post is not intended as a rant about how aweful jews are, because they're not. I just wanted to air some frustration over their behaviour regarding I/P genocide. This is also not about *all* Jews, but that's the same discussion as "not all men" so I'll leave it at that.
I will delete this account in a week, so if you have any questions, be fast ig. If you find I've mis-phrased, used irrationally insensitive wording or any other complaints that calls for a repost, I will fix it and post an updated version. My DMs will also be available if that should be of interest, but I will not be responding to hate or personal attacks for my opinions. If the issue is my wording, again, tell me and I'll fix it.
At this point I've written so much that I don't remember if I found anything myself that I figured was worth fixing, and I've proof read it so many times that my eyes are crossing and giving me a headache lol
Gosh I'm scared of posting this. I don't want anyone to read this and think I support what A. H. did in 1940 cuz I cannot begin to describe my hatred for that man
2024.05.19 08:07 Adventurous-Wrap-640 I hate my best friend rn
I want to cut off my best friend i hate her
I’ve known my friend for 2 years through college, the first year was amazing and she was one of the best people to come into my life. She introduced me to so many new things and really made me feel comfortable in a friendship. We saw each other every day for hours. This year, we had different classes and couldn’t really see each other. She began hanging out with a guy classmate and spending a lot of time with him, leaving me behind. This whole time for a few months I hit my lowest because of this. She made me feel worthless and unneeded. I began ignoring her and separating myself but eventually she pulled me aside and tries to reassure me. But it’s mainly just empty promises and words. Her actions never changed and she just leaves me out and hangs out with this guy she doesn’t even like (but eventually dates). This goes back and forth for awhile and when they break up, she (wow) has time for me now and spends time with me. Stupidly i let my guard down i thought i had my best friend back. When he started talking to her again it happened all over again. She leaves me behind, does things without me, hardly talks to me. we bought games to play with each other and she plays them with him and never with me. idk what to do anymore. I’m tired of feeling this worthless to someone. I distanced myself before school got out and she tried to talk it though with me again. She just doesn’t like being alone (but apparently she’s fine leaving me behind). I can’t trust her anymore. She only is around me when her other friends can’t hang out. It’s now the summer and i haven’t seen her since graduation. The last time i hung out with her, her other friend is the one that invited me. She said we should hang out this week and i heard nothing back but she went and hung out with her ex. My birthday passed a few days ago and i heard nothing from her but she was online with her ex and played games w him all night. im so fucking alone i can’t trust anyone anymore. I shouldn’t even let it upset me anymore i promised myself i wouldn’t. I’m going to try and separate myself and never talk to her again she’s so emotionally draining. Idk if i’m overthinking it all or being dramatic and being to harsh on her but i’ve never had my friends treat me like this before. This is horribly written but i’m upset and need to know if this is just me being insecure and paranoid. Maybe she just forgot or didn’t realize what she was doing but i’ve talked to her so many times about it. I think i just cared about her way to much and she liked the attention but doesn’t give it. It feels so onesided. all these emotions over the year make me feel nothing but bitterness towards her now idk if i could even go back to being friends with her.
submitted by Adventurous-Wrap-640 to offmychest [link] [comments]
I’ve known my friend for 2 years through college, the first year was amazing and she was one of the best people to come into my life. She introduced me to so many new things and really made me feel comfortable in a friendship. We saw each other every day for hours. This year, we had different classes and couldn’t really see each other. She began hanging out with a guy classmate and spending a lot of time with him, leaving me behind. This whole time for a few months I hit my lowest because of this. She made me feel worthless and unneeded. I began ignoring her and separating myself but eventually she pulled me aside and tries to reassure me. But it’s mainly just empty promises and words. Her actions never changed and she just leaves me out and hangs out with this guy she doesn’t even like (but eventually dates). This goes back and forth for awhile and when they break up, she (wow) has time for me now and spends time with me. Stupidly i let my guard down i thought i had my best friend back. When he started talking to her again it happened all over again. She leaves me behind, does things without me, hardly talks to me. we bought games to play with each other and she plays them with him and never with me. idk what to do anymore. I’m tired of feeling this worthless to someone. I distanced myself before school got out and she tried to talk it though with me again. She just doesn’t like being alone (but apparently she’s fine leaving me behind). I can’t trust her anymore. She only is around me when her other friends can’t hang out. It’s now the summer and i haven’t seen her since graduation. The last time i hung out with her, her other friend is the one that invited me. She said we should hang out this week and i heard nothing back but she went and hung out with her ex. My birthday passed a few days ago and i heard nothing from her but she was online with her ex and played games w him all night. im so fucking alone i can’t trust anyone anymore. I shouldn’t even let it upset me anymore i promised myself i wouldn’t. I’m going to try and separate myself and never talk to her again she’s so emotionally draining. Idk if i’m overthinking it all or being dramatic and being to harsh on her but i’ve never had my friends treat me like this before. This is horribly written but i’m upset and need to know if this is just me being insecure and paranoid. Maybe she just forgot or didn’t realize what she was doing but i’ve talked to her so many times about it. I think i just cared about her way to much and she liked the attention but doesn’t give it. It feels so onesided. all these emotions over the year make me feel nothing but bitterness towards her now idk if i could even go back to being friends with her.
2024.05.19 08:06 QueenOfTheVikings Separation anxiety?
 | Hi all!! I posted our beautiful rescue Dane Noodle about a month ago. She has been such a fabulous addition to our family. We are first time Dane owners, but did a lot of research and really feel well prepared and she’s melded into our family so perfectly, it feels like we’ve had her forever! submitted by QueenOfTheVikings to greatdanes [link] [comments] I’ve had dogs my entire life. My dog that just passed was absolutely my soul dog, but noodle is so affectionate, sweet, and goofy that she’s already giving him a run for his money. I’m just smitten with her. The only issue we’re having is that she has super separation anxiety. If she’s home for more than an hour alone she starts getting in the trash, tearing up books, and generally causing mayhem. We don’t really mind - she’s so precious that the material things don’t matter - but we want to help her for her sake so she’s more comfortable. Here’s what we’ve tried: - leaving her clothes that smell like us - treat cameras to divert her attention - giving her a “room” because I know some dogs feel more comfortable in more confined dedicated spaces. - calming treats (these yielded the best results but I don’t feel great essentially drugging her every day) Our other dog, a Boston terrier, is on Prozac for his PCD (pupsessive compulsive disorder) but I don’t think we’ve done enough with noodle to explore that option. I’d love to hear what you’ve done to help with separation anxiety! Thanks in advance! |
2024.05.19 08:06 Mantis_Shrimp47 The monster in the sand dunes turned my brother into a bird
"You gotta know that there's an art to it, Ezra," Hitch said, cutting another piece of duct tape.
The sleeves of his weather-beaten coat were shoved all the way up his arms, to stop the fabric from falling over his knuckles while he was working, and goosebumps lined his skin. He was strapping a rubber chicken to the back of his truck, over the lens of the shattered backup camera, with the legs pointing down so that they hung a couple inches above the ground. There were dents in the hood from the crash last week, and scratches along the door from scraping into a curb. The chicken, hopefully, would keep him from breaking anything else.
"You can't go cheap," Hitch said. "The cheap rubber chickens only make noise when pressure lets go. That's no good. As soon as I back up into something, I want this chicken to be screaming like it’s in the depths of hell."
“Sure thing,” I said in a monotone, leaning against the side of the truck.
There were scrambled electronic parts piled in the back of the truck, the innards of a radio, a broken computer, tangled wires, a couple loose pairs of earbuds. He found the parts in alleyways or bummed them off his friends for a couple bucks or stole them from the vacation homes that were left empty for most of the year. Then he sold them for a profit at the scrapyard. Hitch had bounced between minimum-wage jobs for a while after high school, spending a couple months as a bagger at the grocery store or as a seasonal worker at the farm two hours down the highway. He'd never stuck with it. At the very least, the scrapyard got him enough money to eat and occasionally spend a night in a motel when he got tired of sleeping in his car.
Hitch pressed the last piece of tape in place and grinned up at me. "I've got something for you, duck."
The nickname came from when I’d broken my leg as a child and waddled around in a cast until it was healed. I hated it with a burning passion, and I glared at Hitch with the ease of twenty-one years of practice. He had a duck tattoo at the base of his thumb that he’d gotten in a back-alley shop as a teenager. He said that he’d gotten it to remind him of me, and the fact that I hated the nickname was just a bonus. It was shaky-lined, with an uneven face, but he loved it anyway.
The handle stuck when Hitch tried to open the door, a consequence of the rust collecting in the crevices of the car and running down the sides like blood from a cut. The car groaned when the door finally popped open, a metal against metal screech that had me flinching away. Hitch dug through the cluttered fast food containers in the passenger-side footwell, eventually coming up with a crinkly paper bag. He waved away the flies buzzing around the opening of the bag and held it out to me.
The last time Hitch had brought me food, I’d gotten food poisoning because he’d left it out in the midday sun for two days. The donut was squished slightly, and the icing was stuck to the bag. I still ate it, grimacing at the harsh citrus flavor. Taking Hitch’s food was an instinct engraved from the days when Dad had given us a can of kidney beans for dinner and Hitch had drank the juice, leaving the beans for me.
I rarely went hungry anymore, three mostly square meals a day and granola in my pockets just in case, but habits didn’t die easy.
These days, Hitch only brought me food when he wanted my help, like when he saw a place he wanted to hit but was worried about doing it alone.
I got in the car, like I always did.
We drove past the cluster of seafood-themed restaurants with chipped paint decks, the beachfront park where there were always shifty-eyed men sitting under the slide, the single room library where all the books had been water damaged in the flood last year. The change was quick as we drove across Main Street, heading closer to the beach. The roads were freshly paved, the concrete a smooth black except where the sun had already started to pick away at it. The three-story homes lining the sides of the street were crouched on elegant stilts, with space underneath for a car or three. Most of the garages were empty, with the lights off and curtains drawn in the house. Come summer, the streets would be swarming with tourists and vacationers, but until then, most of the buildings nearest to the beach were unoccupied.
Hitch stopped as the sun started to go down at a house that was leaning precariously out towards the beach, tilted ever so slightly, the edge of its foundation buried in the shifting sand of the beach. It certainly looked deserted, with an overgrown yard and blue paint peeling off the door in sheets.
Hitch took his hammer out of the backseat, hoisting it over his shoulder. It was two feet of solid metal with rags wrapped around the head to muffle the sound of the hits. Hitch squared up, bending his knees and holding the hammer like a baseball bat. Before he could swing, though, the door creaked open on its own, the hinges squeaking. The house beyond was dark enough that I could only make out general shapes, glimpsing the curve of a sofa to the left, what was maybe the shimmer of a chandelier on the other side.
Hitch lowered his hammer, looking vaguely disappointed that he didn’t get to use it. “That’s…weird as hell.”
“Maybe the deadbolt broke, maybe they forgot to lock it, it doesn’t matter,” I hissed, checking our surroundings for other people again. “Just hurry up and get inside before someone calls the cops.”
Hitch flicked the lightswitch on the wall, and the lights flickered on. They were dim, buzzing audibly and blinking off occasionally. The walls were plastered with contrasting swatches of wallpaper and splattered with random colors. There was neon orange behind the dining table, a galaxy swirl in the kitchen, and on the ceiling there was a repeating floral pattern covered in nametag stickers. Each of the stickers was filled out with The Erlking. Chandeliers hung in every room, three or four for each, and rubber ducks sat on every table. A miniature carousel sat in the corner along with a towering model rocket.
Sand was heaped on every surface, at least a couple inches everywhere. It was piled in the corners and stuck to the walls, and it covered the floor in a thick blanket. Our hesitant steps into the house left footprints clearly outlined in the sand.
Hitch took a cursory look around and headed immediately for the TV mounted on the wall. “Look out the windows and tell me if anyone is coming.”
I shook the sand out of the blinds and pulled them open, then had to brush sand off of the window before I could see anything.
Hitch was quick, practiced at finding and appropriating the things that were worth taking. He came back to me with an armful of electronics and chandeliers, dumping it at my feet before turning to head deeper into the house again.
There was a thump, somewhere upstairs, and then footsteps, slow and deliberate. Hitch froze at the threshold of the room, then ran for the door with me just ahead of him, sand flying out from under our feet.
My hand was almost brushing the doorknob, close enough that I could see the light from the streetlamp outside streaming in through the cracks in the door. My fingers touched the wood and it gave under my touch, becoming malleable and warm. I yelped, stumbling backwards, and the door started to melt. The paint ran down in thick drops, pooling at the bottom of the door, and the wood warped like metal being welded. The soft edges of the door ran into the walls until there was no sign of an exit ever being there.
“Well, well, well,” said a cultured voice with just an edge of snooty elitism. “What do we have here?”
The man was well over eight feet tall, with long black hair covering his eyes. He was wearing a yellow raincoat with holes cut out of the hood to accommodate the deer antlers jutting upwards from his head. There was sand settled on his shoulders and hovering around his head like a halo.
“Who the fuck are you?” Hitch said, inching towards a window.
He smiled, just a little bit, and his teeth shone in the dim light. “I am the Erlking.”
Hitch nodded, and seemed about to respond. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the window. I could feel sand in the wind roaring against my back as the Erlking growled in anger, the grains scraping harshly against my cheeks.
We were almost to the window when Hitch was ripped away from me, and I came to a startled halt. The sand had formed long grasping arms that pressed Hitch against the floral wallpaper. His wrists were held tight, and as I watched, a sandy hand wrapped around his mouth and forced its way between his teeth. He gagged, and sand trickled out of the corners of his mouth.
The Erlking strolled towards him, not seeming to be in any sort of rush. “You know, I’m not very fond of your yapping.”
He made an idle gesture and the sand wrapped around my ankles, tethering me in place.
“I yap all the time,” Hitch said. “Three-time olympic yapper, that’s me. Best to just let me go now and save yourself some trouble.”
The Erlking tapped a manicured nail against Hitch’s mouth, hard enough to hurt, judging by the way he flinched away. “But why would I ever let you go when I’ve gone to this much trouble to catch you and your sister? It’s so hard, these days, to find people that no one will miss.”
Hitch struggled against the sand, trying to escape and failing. “What do you want with us, then? You just said it, we’re nobody.”
“I’m fae, dear one,” the Erlking said. “I get my power from my followers. And I think that you two will make lovely additions to my flock.”
He flicked Hitch's nose and Hitch gasped. Feathers started to form on his arms, popping out from under his skin in a spray of blood.
Hitch pushed off the wall, using his bound hands as a fulcrum, and his knees crashed into the Erlking’s stomach. The Erlking fell backwards, wheezing, and the sand around my ankles loosened.
Hitch made desperate eye contact with me as feathers shot up his neck and jerked his head towards the window. The message was obvious. Run.
The last thing I saw before crashing out the window and into freedom was Hitch’s body twisting, his arms wrenching into wings and feathers covering every inch of his skin. By the time I landed on the concrete outside, he was a small black bird, held tightly in the Erlking’s hands. The whole building was sinking into the ground, burnished-gold sand piling up over top and streaming from the windows.
Thirty years later, I saw Sam’s Supernatural Consultation and Neutralization written in neat, looping handwriting on a piece of paper taped to the door. The tape was peeling at the corners and the paper was yellowed with age, but there was obviously care put into the sign, in its perfectly centered text and looping floral designs drawn over the edges in gold marker.
I knocked, hesitantly, drawing my woolen coat closer around my shoulders. I’d bought it as a fiftieth birthday gift for myself, and I took comfort in the heavy weight of it over my shoulders.
“Coming!” someone called from within the depths of the office.
There were a couple crashes, and the sound of paper shuffling. Eventually, the door was opened by a young woman with ketchup stains on her shirt and pencils stuck through her hair.
“Hi, I’m Sam, I specialize in supernatural consultation and hunting, how may I help you today?” Sam said, customer-service pep in her voice. She stood in the doorway, solidly blocking entry into the office.
“My name is Ezra, I’m for a consultation. I emailed you but you didn’t respond?” I shifted in place, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Oh! Yeah, I lost the password for the email ages ago. Sorry for the bad welcome, I get lots of people thinking I’m crazy or pulling a prank and harassing me.”
She ushered me into the office, clearing papers off one of the chairs to make room for me to sit down. There was a collection of swords along one wall, all of them polished to perfection, several with deep knicks in the metal which indicated that they’d been used heavily.
“So what can I help you with?” Sam asked again, more sincere this time.
“Thirty years ago, my brother was turned into a bird,” I started. I’d told this story so many times that it barely felt ridiculous to say anymore. I was used to the disbelieving looks, the careful pity. But Sam just nodded along, face open and welcoming.
“I’ve almost given up on finding him, at this point,” I said. “But I saw your ad in the newspaper, and…here I am, I suppose.”
“Here you are,” Sam echoed, smiling. She pulled one of the pencils out of her hair and took a bit of paperwork off of one of her stacks, turning it over so that the blank side sat neatly in front of her. “Tell me everything.”
I told Sam everything, and she wrote it all down, pencil scratching along the paper.
The last part of the story was always the hardest to tell. “I left him there. I ran and I didn’t look back.”
I had been to dozens of detectives and investigators over the years, once the police had dropped Hitch’s case. I’d been to professional offices with smartly-dressed secretaries and met scraggly men in coffee shops. All of them had given me the same look, pity and annoyance all mixed up into a humor-the-crazy-lady soup. Sam, though, just seemed thoughtful.
Sam leaned forward and put a hand over mine, carefully, like she thought that I would pull away. “Sometimes you have to leave people behind.”
I tightened her hold on Sam’s hand and drew it towards me, like I could make Sam listen if only I squeezed tight enough. “But that’s why I’m here. I don’t want to leave him behind.”
“Okay then. I’ll do my best to help you.” Sam agreed, finally. Then she paused, and said softly, “You know…I think I met your brother once. He might have saved my life. He’s certainly why I started in this business.”
“Really? What happened?” I asked.
This is the story that Sam told me, related to the best of my abilities:
It was a new moon, so the only illumination came from the stars gazing idly down and distant porch lights shining across the scraggly brush of the dunes. Sam’s neighbors were decent people who cared about baby turtles, so the lights were a low, unobtrusive red, and the ocean sloshed like blood. Sam walked on the beach almost every night, drawing back the gauzy pink curtains and clambering out her bedroom window. She didn’t often bother to be quiet; her mama worked the late shift and came home exhausted. As long as Sam got home before the sun, her mama would never find out that she paced the shoreline and dreamed of inhaling sand until her lungs became their own beach.
The sky was lightening. The sun would come up soon, and that meant Sam’s time on the beach was over. She needed to get back to her real life, go to her fifth grade class and stop that nonsense, as her mother would say. Her mother loved to say things like that, pushing Sam into her proper place by implication alone.
“She’s a good kid, of course, but she’s a bit…” Her mother would trail off there, usually getting a commiserating expression from whoever she was talking to. Sam always wondered how that sentence would have finished. She’s a bit strange, maybe. She’s a bit intense. She’s a bit abrasive. She’s quiet enough but when Jason tried to steal her pencil in math class, she stabbed him in the hand so hard that the lead tattooed him.
Her mother was better, for the most part. The days of her stocking up the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the counter, and leaving for days at a time were gone. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen tile where her mother had collapsed and caved her head in, even though the bloodstains had been replaced with new tile.
“Your auntie got an abortion, you know,” her mother had said from her place on the couch, slurring her words. “Pill in the mail and then bam, no more baby.”
She had clapped her hands together to illustrate her point. Her mother jerked forward and grabbed Sam by the wrist, then, staring up at her until Sam met her eyes.
“I love you, you know? But sometimes I wonder…” She settled back onto the couch. “Yeah. I wonder.”
She’d gotten up, then, back to the kitchen. She’d been stumbling, a shambling zombie of a woman. The ground in the entryway of the kitchen was raised, ever so slightly, and her mother went down hard. Her head cracked against the tile, chin first, and she didn’t move.
Sam had been the one to call the ambulance. She had stared at the scattering of loose teeth on the ground while she waited, and considered what her life would be like with a dead mom. Not so bad, she thought, and immediately felt guilty for it.
Her mom was better, now, for the most part. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed. There was still a matchbox hidden under her bed with the gleaming shine of her mother’s lost teeth, two canines and a molar. It was nice, having a piece of her mom to keep. Even if she left again, Sam would still have part of her.
Sam sighed, and turned away from the ocean. As she faced towards the low dunes further up the beach, she saw a sandcastle sitting nestled among them. It was such a strange sight that her eyes skipped over it at first, almost automatically, disregarding it because it was so out of place.
Sam found sandcastles out on the beach sometimes, usually half-collapsed and on the verge of being washed away by the waves, but she had never seen anything like the sandcastle in front of her. It was life-sized, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Scottish highlands, with spires shooting up above her head and carefully etched out bricks lining each side. The front wall was dominated by an arched set of double doors, twice her height, with a portcullis nestled at the top, ready to be dropped. All of it was lovingly detailed, down to the rust on the tips of the towers and the wood grain of the door. It was made out of wet, densely-packed sand, held together impossibly. It had not been there two hours ago, when she had come to the beach.
There was a bird sitting on the overhang of the door, small and black.
As soon as she took a step towards the sandcastle, the bird shook out its feathers and swooped down towards Sam, landing at her feet with a little stumble.
“Hey, kid, get out of here,” said the bird.
Sam closed her eyes, very deliberately. When she opened them, the bird was still there. Sam considered herself a very reasonable person, so she immediately drew the most logical conclusion. The bird was, she was almost certain, a demon.
“Trust me, you don’t want to run into Mr. Salty, the queen bitch himself,” the bird said.
“Mr. Salty?” Sam inquired, polite as she knew how to be. She edged to the side, trying to get a good angle to kick the bird like a soccer ball.
The bird did something similar to a wince, all its feathers fluffing up then settling back down. “Ah, don’t call him that. He’d turn you into a toad.”
The bird gestured with its head, towards the looming sand structure. “That’s his castle. He’s in there, probably scuttling along the ceiling or some shit because that’s the sort of weirdo he is.”
Sam nodded, encouraging. She pulled back her foot and lined up her shot, the way she’d seen athletes do on TV. She aimed right for its sharp beak and let loose. The bird saw it coming, its beady eyes widening, and it cawed in distress. It flapped away, avoiding her kick only to fall backward into the sand in a scramble of wings.
“What’s your fucking problem?” it squawked. “I was trying to help you!”
“I don’t need the help of a demon,” Sam yelled, trying to remember the exorcism that her mama had taught her once, because her mama believed in being prepared for anything.
“I’m not a demon,” the bird said indignantly.
It was at about that moment that Sam gave up and just decided to roll with it.
“What are you, then?” Sam asked.
The bird shuffled its clawed feet, looking about as awkward as it could, given that it didn’t really have recognizable facial expressions. “Technically I’m a familiar of the Erlking, prince of the fae, but I prefer to be called Hitch.”
“You can’t blame me for assuming, though,” Sam said. “Ravens do tend to be associated with murder.”
“Hey, excuse you,” Hitch said. “I’m a rook, not a raven. Ravens are way bigger.”
“Sure,” Sam said, not really paying attention. Her eyes had caught on the details of the sandcastle, and she was transfixed by the slow spirals of the sand, the strange beauty of it. She found herself stepping towards the great doors, lifting a hand to knock, and as she did, the sand warped in front of her eyes, heaving itself towards her with bulging slowness. The door creaked open before her, revealing a vast, empty room. Just before she stepped inside, she felt a piercing pain in her foot, and she yelped, leaping backwards.
Hitch pecked her again, really digging his beak in. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Sam glared at him, rubbing her foot. About to retort, she finally really took in the room inside the sandcastle, and her words died in her throat.
There was a body just past the threshold of the door, face down and limbs hanging limp at its sides. Long hair splayed out in a halo around its head.
“Don’t,” Hitch warned, suddenly serious. “Just leave, kid, I mean it. I’ve seen too many people go down this road and you don’t want to be one of them.”
Sam ignored him. She made her way across the beach, slipping with every step. The sand felt deeper, piling up around her feet in silent drifts. She picked up the nearest stick and poked the body with it through the door, ready to leap back if anything went wrong, staying firmly outside of the sandcastle.
This close, Sam could tell that it used to be a woman. Her head wasn’t attached to her body. It hadn’t been a clean amputation, either. Her upper body was bruised, with chunks taken out of it, and the bones in her neck hung mangled, not connected to anything.
“Well, I warned you,” Hitch said, defeated. “I did warn you.”
Sam nudged the head with the end of the stick, nudging it over so that she could see the face. Her mother stared back at her, torn to pieces, breath still wheezing from her lungs. She wasn’t blinking, just gazing forward with glazed eyes. Sweat dripped down from her hairline.
Sam screamed and dropped the stick, tripping over herself in her haste to get away.
Her mother’s eyes were wide and pleading, and she was mouthing desperate words at Sam. Her vocal cords were broken to bits, and the only sound that came out was a strained groan.
The head rolled, inching closer to Sam like a grotesque caterpillar.
Her mother gasped for air, torn lips fluttering. Finally, comprehensible words came out. “Help. Help me, daughter.”
“That’s not your mother,” Hitch said, quiet.
Sam knew that. Her mother was sleeping back at home, and anyways her mom had never asked for her help. She had an aversion to accepting charity, as she put it.
“Okay,” Sam said, shaking all over. “Okay.”
She backed away from the sandcastle, not looking away.
“Failure,” her mother hissed as she stepped away. “I never wanted a daughter like you.”
The sun came up over the horizon. The sandcastle, Hitch, and her mom all disintegrated into sand as the light hit them.
The beach, the next night, was almost exactly how I remembered it. The beams of our flashlights sent light bouncing across the dunes, illuminating the waves, and I imagined faces in the foam of the waves.
“I’ve been back here a hundred times. There’s nothing left,” I said.
Sam took the car key out of her purse and pointed it at the sand, adjusting the sword slung over her shoulder in order to do it. The key had belonged to Hitch; Sam had requested an item of his, and it was the only thing I had left. She rested the key on the sand and drew a circle around it, inscribing symbols around the borders.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “Not much, really. I’m…I guess you could say that I’m knocking.”
The key laid inert on the sand for long enough that I was just about to give up and go home, admit to myself that Hitch was dead and that I was a fool to believe that Sam could actually help me. Then a building started to take shape, flickering in and out like it was struggling to get away. With a pop of displaced air, the sandcastle settled into existence.
Sam banged on the entryway. Nothing happened. She did it again, harder, and scowled when the door still didn’t open.
“We demand entrance, under your honor,” Sam yelled. There was a hard rush of wind, and I gripped Sam’s arm to keep my balance, but the doors cracked open reluctantly.
The inside of the sandcastle consisted of one enormous hall, the roof arching up out of sight. Rafters crisscrossed from wall to wall, and a cobbled path led further into the building, but other than that, it was completely empty, except for the birds. There were thousands of them, perched on the rafters or hopping along the ground. They parted in front of Sam and I, and reformed behind us, leaving us in a small pocket of open space. They were all black-feathered, with sharp beaks and beady eyes.
The Erlking sat on a throne at the end of the hall, lounging across it with his feet up on the armrest. He watched them as they came forward, the soft caw of the birds the only sound.
“I am here to bargain for the life of my brother,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, before the Erlking could say anything.
The Erlking ignored her, tilting his head to look at Sam. “I remember you. I almost got you, once.”
Sam glared at him but didn’t respond.
“You want your brother,” The Erlking said to me, and he almost sounded amused. “Then go get him.”
As if by some sort of silent signal, every bird in the room took flight at once, and their cawing made me think of screams. I covered my head against the flapping of their wings, and my vision was quickly obscured by the chaotic movement of them. I found myself on my knees, just trying to escape them.
A hand met my shoulder. Sam urged me to my feet, and together we ran for the edge of the room, where the swarm was the thinnest. We pressed ourselves into the corner and the swarm spiraled tighter and tighter at the center of the room. It went on until there seemed to be no differentiation between the birds, all of them fused together into one creature.
When the chaos died down, the birds had become one mass, with wings and eyes and talons sticking out of its flesh, thrashing and chirping. Human body parts stuck out of it, bulging out from the feathers. It was hands, mostly, with a couple knees or staring eyes. The bird amalgamation had no recognizable facial features, but there was one long beak extending from the front of its head. Most of the body parts were concentrated around the beak, and they peeked out from where the beak connected with muscle, or grew from the tongue, nestled between the two crushing halves of the beak.
It turned its beak down and crawled forward, using the hands to balance. The fingers scrambled over the ground. I was afraid of centipedes as a child, and I felt that same crawling dread when it started moving.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispered, which was rather disappointing, because I had been hoping that at least one of us knew what to do.
The creature turned, a lurching movement that crushed some of the hands underneath it, and started heaving itself slowly towards our corner.
“Better hurry up!” the Erlking called from his throne.
It was blocking the exit, by then. The shifting body of it had moved to block us off. It ambled towards us and I tried to sink further into the corner.
As it approached, getting close enough that I could smell the stink of it, I saw a flash of a tattoo on one of the hands. I leaned in, trying to find it again, like looking for dolphins surfacing in the ocean. And again, I caught a glimpse of a duck tattoo, the tattoo that Hitch had gotten on his hand as a teenager.
I ripped away from Sam’s death grip and ran for the monster.
I fell to my knees in front of it, wincing as I impacted the ground, and reached into the nest of hands. I could feel them tearing at my forearms and ripping into me with their sharp nails, but I kept going. I pressed further in, up to my shoulder in a writhing mass of limbs, aiming for the spot where I had last seen that tattoo.
The hands were tugging at me, wrapping around my back and hair. They were pulling together, trying to draw me completely into the mass of them. I was aware of Sam at my side, anchoring me in place and bashing any hand that got too close with her sword or the sparks that leapt from her hands with muttered words. But I didn’t think it would be enough. They were too strong, and there were too many of them.
I was up to my waist in the hands when something grabbed my palm. I felt the way it clung to me, and the calluses on its palm, and I knew that I had found my brother.
I flung herself back. The hands didn’t want to let me go, and they fought the whole way, but slowly, I made progress. I kept hold of Hitch’s hand in mine the whole time, gripping it as hard as I could. I finally broke free, Hitch with me, and Sam was immediately charging the creature, able to use her sword with much greater strength without being worried about injuring Hitch. She swung it forward, and it sliced through the wrist of one of the hands. It fell without a sound, red sand flowing out of it. It deflated until it looked like dirty laundry, just a piece of limp flesh. The creature shrieked, scuttling away enough that the door was finally accessible. The three of us ran for it, Sam and I supporting Hitch between us.
I looked back as I left and found the Erlking staring right at me.
“Interesting,” he murmured, his voice carrying impossibly across the vast space between us.
The sandcastle collapsed behind us, the great walls falling in on themselves. We were out in the morning sun, the sandcastle disappearing as we watched. Hitch was on the ground in front of me, as young as he’d been thirty years ago, when he was captured. He started laughing, feathers puffing out of his mouth. He laughed until he cried and I hugged him in the way that he’d held me when I was young, in the times when my life had been defined by hunger and fear.
Hitch left, afterwards. He scratched at the pinhole scars covering his body, where feathers burst through his skin, and pulled his long sleeves down around his wrists. He didn’t know where he was going but he told me that he needed time
I had spent thirty years worth of time without him. I wanted to grab my brother by the shoulders and beg him to stay. But he flinched when I hugged him goodbye and he refused to go near sand and he stared distrustfully at the birds chirping in the trees. Hitch needed to go away and I loved him too much to stop him.
I sat out on the beach every morning. I felt the sun on my face and I waited for Hitch to come home.
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The sleeves of his weather-beaten coat were shoved all the way up his arms, to stop the fabric from falling over his knuckles while he was working, and goosebumps lined his skin. He was strapping a rubber chicken to the back of his truck, over the lens of the shattered backup camera, with the legs pointing down so that they hung a couple inches above the ground. There were dents in the hood from the crash last week, and scratches along the door from scraping into a curb. The chicken, hopefully, would keep him from breaking anything else.
"You can't go cheap," Hitch said. "The cheap rubber chickens only make noise when pressure lets go. That's no good. As soon as I back up into something, I want this chicken to be screaming like it’s in the depths of hell."
“Sure thing,” I said in a monotone, leaning against the side of the truck.
There were scrambled electronic parts piled in the back of the truck, the innards of a radio, a broken computer, tangled wires, a couple loose pairs of earbuds. He found the parts in alleyways or bummed them off his friends for a couple bucks or stole them from the vacation homes that were left empty for most of the year. Then he sold them for a profit at the scrapyard. Hitch had bounced between minimum-wage jobs for a while after high school, spending a couple months as a bagger at the grocery store or as a seasonal worker at the farm two hours down the highway. He'd never stuck with it. At the very least, the scrapyard got him enough money to eat and occasionally spend a night in a motel when he got tired of sleeping in his car.
Hitch pressed the last piece of tape in place and grinned up at me. "I've got something for you, duck."
The nickname came from when I’d broken my leg as a child and waddled around in a cast until it was healed. I hated it with a burning passion, and I glared at Hitch with the ease of twenty-one years of practice. He had a duck tattoo at the base of his thumb that he’d gotten in a back-alley shop as a teenager. He said that he’d gotten it to remind him of me, and the fact that I hated the nickname was just a bonus. It was shaky-lined, with an uneven face, but he loved it anyway.
The handle stuck when Hitch tried to open the door, a consequence of the rust collecting in the crevices of the car and running down the sides like blood from a cut. The car groaned when the door finally popped open, a metal against metal screech that had me flinching away. Hitch dug through the cluttered fast food containers in the passenger-side footwell, eventually coming up with a crinkly paper bag. He waved away the flies buzzing around the opening of the bag and held it out to me.
The last time Hitch had brought me food, I’d gotten food poisoning because he’d left it out in the midday sun for two days. The donut was squished slightly, and the icing was stuck to the bag. I still ate it, grimacing at the harsh citrus flavor. Taking Hitch’s food was an instinct engraved from the days when Dad had given us a can of kidney beans for dinner and Hitch had drank the juice, leaving the beans for me.
I rarely went hungry anymore, three mostly square meals a day and granola in my pockets just in case, but habits didn’t die easy.
These days, Hitch only brought me food when he wanted my help, like when he saw a place he wanted to hit but was worried about doing it alone.
I got in the car, like I always did.
We drove past the cluster of seafood-themed restaurants with chipped paint decks, the beachfront park where there were always shifty-eyed men sitting under the slide, the single room library where all the books had been water damaged in the flood last year. The change was quick as we drove across Main Street, heading closer to the beach. The roads were freshly paved, the concrete a smooth black except where the sun had already started to pick away at it. The three-story homes lining the sides of the street were crouched on elegant stilts, with space underneath for a car or three. Most of the garages were empty, with the lights off and curtains drawn in the house. Come summer, the streets would be swarming with tourists and vacationers, but until then, most of the buildings nearest to the beach were unoccupied.
Hitch stopped as the sun started to go down at a house that was leaning precariously out towards the beach, tilted ever so slightly, the edge of its foundation buried in the shifting sand of the beach. It certainly looked deserted, with an overgrown yard and blue paint peeling off the door in sheets.
Hitch took his hammer out of the backseat, hoisting it over his shoulder. It was two feet of solid metal with rags wrapped around the head to muffle the sound of the hits. Hitch squared up, bending his knees and holding the hammer like a baseball bat. Before he could swing, though, the door creaked open on its own, the hinges squeaking. The house beyond was dark enough that I could only make out general shapes, glimpsing the curve of a sofa to the left, what was maybe the shimmer of a chandelier on the other side.
Hitch lowered his hammer, looking vaguely disappointed that he didn’t get to use it. “That’s…weird as hell.”
“Maybe the deadbolt broke, maybe they forgot to lock it, it doesn’t matter,” I hissed, checking our surroundings for other people again. “Just hurry up and get inside before someone calls the cops.”
Hitch flicked the lightswitch on the wall, and the lights flickered on. They were dim, buzzing audibly and blinking off occasionally. The walls were plastered with contrasting swatches of wallpaper and splattered with random colors. There was neon orange behind the dining table, a galaxy swirl in the kitchen, and on the ceiling there was a repeating floral pattern covered in nametag stickers. Each of the stickers was filled out with The Erlking. Chandeliers hung in every room, three or four for each, and rubber ducks sat on every table. A miniature carousel sat in the corner along with a towering model rocket.
Sand was heaped on every surface, at least a couple inches everywhere. It was piled in the corners and stuck to the walls, and it covered the floor in a thick blanket. Our hesitant steps into the house left footprints clearly outlined in the sand.
Hitch took a cursory look around and headed immediately for the TV mounted on the wall. “Look out the windows and tell me if anyone is coming.”
I shook the sand out of the blinds and pulled them open, then had to brush sand off of the window before I could see anything.
Hitch was quick, practiced at finding and appropriating the things that were worth taking. He came back to me with an armful of electronics and chandeliers, dumping it at my feet before turning to head deeper into the house again.
There was a thump, somewhere upstairs, and then footsteps, slow and deliberate. Hitch froze at the threshold of the room, then ran for the door with me just ahead of him, sand flying out from under our feet.
My hand was almost brushing the doorknob, close enough that I could see the light from the streetlamp outside streaming in through the cracks in the door. My fingers touched the wood and it gave under my touch, becoming malleable and warm. I yelped, stumbling backwards, and the door started to melt. The paint ran down in thick drops, pooling at the bottom of the door, and the wood warped like metal being welded. The soft edges of the door ran into the walls until there was no sign of an exit ever being there.
“Well, well, well,” said a cultured voice with just an edge of snooty elitism. “What do we have here?”
The man was well over eight feet tall, with long black hair covering his eyes. He was wearing a yellow raincoat with holes cut out of the hood to accommodate the deer antlers jutting upwards from his head. There was sand settled on his shoulders and hovering around his head like a halo.
“Who the fuck are you?” Hitch said, inching towards a window.
He smiled, just a little bit, and his teeth shone in the dim light. “I am the Erlking.”
Hitch nodded, and seemed about to respond. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him towards the window. I could feel sand in the wind roaring against my back as the Erlking growled in anger, the grains scraping harshly against my cheeks.
We were almost to the window when Hitch was ripped away from me, and I came to a startled halt. The sand had formed long grasping arms that pressed Hitch against the floral wallpaper. His wrists were held tight, and as I watched, a sandy hand wrapped around his mouth and forced its way between his teeth. He gagged, and sand trickled out of the corners of his mouth.
The Erlking strolled towards him, not seeming to be in any sort of rush. “You know, I’m not very fond of your yapping.”
He made an idle gesture and the sand wrapped around my ankles, tethering me in place.
“I yap all the time,” Hitch said. “Three-time olympic yapper, that’s me. Best to just let me go now and save yourself some trouble.”
The Erlking tapped a manicured nail against Hitch’s mouth, hard enough to hurt, judging by the way he flinched away. “But why would I ever let you go when I’ve gone to this much trouble to catch you and your sister? It’s so hard, these days, to find people that no one will miss.”
Hitch struggled against the sand, trying to escape and failing. “What do you want with us, then? You just said it, we’re nobody.”
“I’m fae, dear one,” the Erlking said. “I get my power from my followers. And I think that you two will make lovely additions to my flock.”
He flicked Hitch's nose and Hitch gasped. Feathers started to form on his arms, popping out from under his skin in a spray of blood.
Hitch pushed off the wall, using his bound hands as a fulcrum, and his knees crashed into the Erlking’s stomach. The Erlking fell backwards, wheezing, and the sand around my ankles loosened.
Hitch made desperate eye contact with me as feathers shot up his neck and jerked his head towards the window. The message was obvious. Run.
The last thing I saw before crashing out the window and into freedom was Hitch’s body twisting, his arms wrenching into wings and feathers covering every inch of his skin. By the time I landed on the concrete outside, he was a small black bird, held tightly in the Erlking’s hands. The whole building was sinking into the ground, burnished-gold sand piling up over top and streaming from the windows.
Thirty years later, I saw Sam’s Supernatural Consultation and Neutralization written in neat, looping handwriting on a piece of paper taped to the door. The tape was peeling at the corners and the paper was yellowed with age, but there was obviously care put into the sign, in its perfectly centered text and looping floral designs drawn over the edges in gold marker.
I knocked, hesitantly, drawing my woolen coat closer around my shoulders. I’d bought it as a fiftieth birthday gift for myself, and I took comfort in the heavy weight of it over my shoulders.
“Coming!” someone called from within the depths of the office.
There were a couple crashes, and the sound of paper shuffling. Eventually, the door was opened by a young woman with ketchup stains on her shirt and pencils stuck through her hair.
“Hi, I’m Sam, I specialize in supernatural consultation and hunting, how may I help you today?” Sam said, customer-service pep in her voice. She stood in the doorway, solidly blocking entry into the office.
“My name is Ezra, I’m for a consultation. I emailed you but you didn’t respond?” I shifted in place, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Oh! Yeah, I lost the password for the email ages ago. Sorry for the bad welcome, I get lots of people thinking I’m crazy or pulling a prank and harassing me.”
She ushered me into the office, clearing papers off one of the chairs to make room for me to sit down. There was a collection of swords along one wall, all of them polished to perfection, several with deep knicks in the metal which indicated that they’d been used heavily.
“So what can I help you with?” Sam asked again, more sincere this time.
“Thirty years ago, my brother was turned into a bird,” I started. I’d told this story so many times that it barely felt ridiculous to say anymore. I was used to the disbelieving looks, the careful pity. But Sam just nodded along, face open and welcoming.
“I’ve almost given up on finding him, at this point,” I said. “But I saw your ad in the newspaper, and…here I am, I suppose.”
“Here you are,” Sam echoed, smiling. She pulled one of the pencils out of her hair and took a bit of paperwork off of one of her stacks, turning it over so that the blank side sat neatly in front of her. “Tell me everything.”
I told Sam everything, and she wrote it all down, pencil scratching along the paper.
The last part of the story was always the hardest to tell. “I left him there. I ran and I didn’t look back.”
I had been to dozens of detectives and investigators over the years, once the police had dropped Hitch’s case. I’d been to professional offices with smartly-dressed secretaries and met scraggly men in coffee shops. All of them had given me the same look, pity and annoyance all mixed up into a humor-the-crazy-lady soup. Sam, though, just seemed thoughtful.
Sam leaned forward and put a hand over mine, carefully, like she thought that I would pull away. “Sometimes you have to leave people behind.”
I tightened her hold on Sam’s hand and drew it towards me, like I could make Sam listen if only I squeezed tight enough. “But that’s why I’m here. I don’t want to leave him behind.”
“Okay then. I’ll do my best to help you.” Sam agreed, finally. Then she paused, and said softly, “You know…I think I met your brother once. He might have saved my life. He’s certainly why I started in this business.”
“Really? What happened?” I asked.
This is the story that Sam told me, related to the best of my abilities:
It was a new moon, so the only illumination came from the stars gazing idly down and distant porch lights shining across the scraggly brush of the dunes. Sam’s neighbors were decent people who cared about baby turtles, so the lights were a low, unobtrusive red, and the ocean sloshed like blood. Sam walked on the beach almost every night, drawing back the gauzy pink curtains and clambering out her bedroom window. She didn’t often bother to be quiet; her mama worked the late shift and came home exhausted. As long as Sam got home before the sun, her mama would never find out that she paced the shoreline and dreamed of inhaling sand until her lungs became their own beach.
The sky was lightening. The sun would come up soon, and that meant Sam’s time on the beach was over. She needed to get back to her real life, go to her fifth grade class and stop that nonsense, as her mother would say. Her mother loved to say things like that, pushing Sam into her proper place by implication alone.
“She’s a good kid, of course, but she’s a bit…” Her mother would trail off there, usually getting a commiserating expression from whoever she was talking to. Sam always wondered how that sentence would have finished. She’s a bit strange, maybe. She’s a bit intense. She’s a bit abrasive. She’s quiet enough but when Jason tried to steal her pencil in math class, she stabbed him in the hand so hard that the lead tattooed him.
Her mother was better, for the most part. The days of her stocking up the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the counter, and leaving for days at a time were gone. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen tile where her mother had collapsed and caved her head in, even though the bloodstains had been replaced with new tile.
“Your auntie got an abortion, you know,” her mother had said from her place on the couch, slurring her words. “Pill in the mail and then bam, no more baby.”
She had clapped her hands together to illustrate her point. Her mother jerked forward and grabbed Sam by the wrist, then, staring up at her until Sam met her eyes.
“I love you, you know? But sometimes I wonder…” She settled back onto the couch. “Yeah. I wonder.”
She’d gotten up, then, back to the kitchen. She’d been stumbling, a shambling zombie of a woman. The ground in the entryway of the kitchen was raised, ever so slightly, and her mother went down hard. Her head cracked against the tile, chin first, and she didn’t move.
Sam had been the one to call the ambulance. She had stared at the scattering of loose teeth on the ground while she waited, and considered what her life would be like with a dead mom. Not so bad, she thought, and immediately felt guilty for it.
Her mom was better, now, for the most part. But Sam still stepped around the place on the kitchen floor where she had collapsed. There was still a matchbox hidden under her bed with the gleaming shine of her mother’s lost teeth, two canines and a molar. It was nice, having a piece of her mom to keep. Even if she left again, Sam would still have part of her.
Sam sighed, and turned away from the ocean. As she faced towards the low dunes further up the beach, she saw a sandcastle sitting nestled among them. It was such a strange sight that her eyes skipped over it at first, almost automatically, disregarding it because it was so out of place.
Sam found sandcastles out on the beach sometimes, usually half-collapsed and on the verge of being washed away by the waves, but she had never seen anything like the sandcastle in front of her. It was life-sized, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Scottish highlands, with spires shooting up above her head and carefully etched out bricks lining each side. The front wall was dominated by an arched set of double doors, twice her height, with a portcullis nestled at the top, ready to be dropped. All of it was lovingly detailed, down to the rust on the tips of the towers and the wood grain of the door. It was made out of wet, densely-packed sand, held together impossibly. It had not been there two hours ago, when she had come to the beach.
There was a bird sitting on the overhang of the door, small and black.
As soon as she took a step towards the sandcastle, the bird shook out its feathers and swooped down towards Sam, landing at her feet with a little stumble.
“Hey, kid, get out of here,” said the bird.
Sam closed her eyes, very deliberately. When she opened them, the bird was still there. Sam considered herself a very reasonable person, so she immediately drew the most logical conclusion. The bird was, she was almost certain, a demon.
“Trust me, you don’t want to run into Mr. Salty, the queen bitch himself,” the bird said.
“Mr. Salty?” Sam inquired, polite as she knew how to be. She edged to the side, trying to get a good angle to kick the bird like a soccer ball.
The bird did something similar to a wince, all its feathers fluffing up then settling back down. “Ah, don’t call him that. He’d turn you into a toad.”
The bird gestured with its head, towards the looming sand structure. “That’s his castle. He’s in there, probably scuttling along the ceiling or some shit because that’s the sort of weirdo he is.”
Sam nodded, encouraging. She pulled back her foot and lined up her shot, the way she’d seen athletes do on TV. She aimed right for its sharp beak and let loose. The bird saw it coming, its beady eyes widening, and it cawed in distress. It flapped away, avoiding her kick only to fall backward into the sand in a scramble of wings.
“What’s your fucking problem?” it squawked. “I was trying to help you!”
“I don’t need the help of a demon,” Sam yelled, trying to remember the exorcism that her mama had taught her once, because her mama believed in being prepared for anything.
“I’m not a demon,” the bird said indignantly.
It was at about that moment that Sam gave up and just decided to roll with it.
“What are you, then?” Sam asked.
The bird shuffled its clawed feet, looking about as awkward as it could, given that it didn’t really have recognizable facial expressions. “Technically I’m a familiar of the Erlking, prince of the fae, but I prefer to be called Hitch.”
“You can’t blame me for assuming, though,” Sam said. “Ravens do tend to be associated with murder.”
“Hey, excuse you,” Hitch said. “I’m a rook, not a raven. Ravens are way bigger.”
“Sure,” Sam said, not really paying attention. Her eyes had caught on the details of the sandcastle, and she was transfixed by the slow spirals of the sand, the strange beauty of it. She found herself stepping towards the great doors, lifting a hand to knock, and as she did, the sand warped in front of her eyes, heaving itself towards her with bulging slowness. The door creaked open before her, revealing a vast, empty room. Just before she stepped inside, she felt a piercing pain in her foot, and she yelped, leaping backwards.
Hitch pecked her again, really digging his beak in. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Sam glared at him, rubbing her foot. About to retort, she finally really took in the room inside the sandcastle, and her words died in her throat.
There was a body just past the threshold of the door, face down and limbs hanging limp at its sides. Long hair splayed out in a halo around its head.
“Don’t,” Hitch warned, suddenly serious. “Just leave, kid, I mean it. I’ve seen too many people go down this road and you don’t want to be one of them.”
Sam ignored him. She made her way across the beach, slipping with every step. The sand felt deeper, piling up around her feet in silent drifts. She picked up the nearest stick and poked the body with it through the door, ready to leap back if anything went wrong, staying firmly outside of the sandcastle.
This close, Sam could tell that it used to be a woman. Her head wasn’t attached to her body. It hadn’t been a clean amputation, either. Her upper body was bruised, with chunks taken out of it, and the bones in her neck hung mangled, not connected to anything.
“Well, I warned you,” Hitch said, defeated. “I did warn you.”
Sam nudged the head with the end of the stick, nudging it over so that she could see the face. Her mother stared back at her, torn to pieces, breath still wheezing from her lungs. She wasn’t blinking, just gazing forward with glazed eyes. Sweat dripped down from her hairline.
Sam screamed and dropped the stick, tripping over herself in her haste to get away.
Her mother’s eyes were wide and pleading, and she was mouthing desperate words at Sam. Her vocal cords were broken to bits, and the only sound that came out was a strained groan.
The head rolled, inching closer to Sam like a grotesque caterpillar.
Her mother gasped for air, torn lips fluttering. Finally, comprehensible words came out. “Help. Help me, daughter.”
“That’s not your mother,” Hitch said, quiet.
Sam knew that. Her mother was sleeping back at home, and anyways her mom had never asked for her help. She had an aversion to accepting charity, as she put it.
“Okay,” Sam said, shaking all over. “Okay.”
She backed away from the sandcastle, not looking away.
“Failure,” her mother hissed as she stepped away. “I never wanted a daughter like you.”
The sun came up over the horizon. The sandcastle, Hitch, and her mom all disintegrated into sand as the light hit them.
The beach, the next night, was almost exactly how I remembered it. The beams of our flashlights sent light bouncing across the dunes, illuminating the waves, and I imagined faces in the foam of the waves.
“I’ve been back here a hundred times. There’s nothing left,” I said.
Sam took the car key out of her purse and pointed it at the sand, adjusting the sword slung over her shoulder in order to do it. The key had belonged to Hitch; Sam had requested an item of his, and it was the only thing I had left. She rested the key on the sand and drew a circle around it, inscribing symbols around the borders.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Sam shrugged. “Not much, really. I’m…I guess you could say that I’m knocking.”
The key laid inert on the sand for long enough that I was just about to give up and go home, admit to myself that Hitch was dead and that I was a fool to believe that Sam could actually help me. Then a building started to take shape, flickering in and out like it was struggling to get away. With a pop of displaced air, the sandcastle settled into existence.
Sam banged on the entryway. Nothing happened. She did it again, harder, and scowled when the door still didn’t open.
“We demand entrance, under your honor,” Sam yelled. There was a hard rush of wind, and I gripped Sam’s arm to keep my balance, but the doors cracked open reluctantly.
The inside of the sandcastle consisted of one enormous hall, the roof arching up out of sight. Rafters crisscrossed from wall to wall, and a cobbled path led further into the building, but other than that, it was completely empty, except for the birds. There were thousands of them, perched on the rafters or hopping along the ground. They parted in front of Sam and I, and reformed behind us, leaving us in a small pocket of open space. They were all black-feathered, with sharp beaks and beady eyes.
The Erlking sat on a throne at the end of the hall, lounging across it with his feet up on the armrest. He watched them as they came forward, the soft caw of the birds the only sound.
“I am here to bargain for the life of my brother,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, before the Erlking could say anything.
The Erlking ignored her, tilting his head to look at Sam. “I remember you. I almost got you, once.”
Sam glared at him but didn’t respond.
“You want your brother,” The Erlking said to me, and he almost sounded amused. “Then go get him.”
As if by some sort of silent signal, every bird in the room took flight at once, and their cawing made me think of screams. I covered my head against the flapping of their wings, and my vision was quickly obscured by the chaotic movement of them. I found myself on my knees, just trying to escape them.
A hand met my shoulder. Sam urged me to my feet, and together we ran for the edge of the room, where the swarm was the thinnest. We pressed ourselves into the corner and the swarm spiraled tighter and tighter at the center of the room. It went on until there seemed to be no differentiation between the birds, all of them fused together into one creature.
When the chaos died down, the birds had become one mass, with wings and eyes and talons sticking out of its flesh, thrashing and chirping. Human body parts stuck out of it, bulging out from the feathers. It was hands, mostly, with a couple knees or staring eyes. The bird amalgamation had no recognizable facial features, but there was one long beak extending from the front of its head. Most of the body parts were concentrated around the beak, and they peeked out from where the beak connected with muscle, or grew from the tongue, nestled between the two crushing halves of the beak.
It turned its beak down and crawled forward, using the hands to balance. The fingers scrambled over the ground. I was afraid of centipedes as a child, and I felt that same crawling dread when it started moving.
“Holy shit,” Sam whispered, which was rather disappointing, because I had been hoping that at least one of us knew what to do.
The creature turned, a lurching movement that crushed some of the hands underneath it, and started heaving itself slowly towards our corner.
“Better hurry up!” the Erlking called from his throne.
It was blocking the exit, by then. The shifting body of it had moved to block us off. It ambled towards us and I tried to sink further into the corner.
As it approached, getting close enough that I could smell the stink of it, I saw a flash of a tattoo on one of the hands. I leaned in, trying to find it again, like looking for dolphins surfacing in the ocean. And again, I caught a glimpse of a duck tattoo, the tattoo that Hitch had gotten on his hand as a teenager.
I ripped away from Sam’s death grip and ran for the monster.
I fell to my knees in front of it, wincing as I impacted the ground, and reached into the nest of hands. I could feel them tearing at my forearms and ripping into me with their sharp nails, but I kept going. I pressed further in, up to my shoulder in a writhing mass of limbs, aiming for the spot where I had last seen that tattoo.
The hands were tugging at me, wrapping around my back and hair. They were pulling together, trying to draw me completely into the mass of them. I was aware of Sam at my side, anchoring me in place and bashing any hand that got too close with her sword or the sparks that leapt from her hands with muttered words. But I didn’t think it would be enough. They were too strong, and there were too many of them.
I was up to my waist in the hands when something grabbed my palm. I felt the way it clung to me, and the calluses on its palm, and I knew that I had found my brother.
I flung herself back. The hands didn’t want to let me go, and they fought the whole way, but slowly, I made progress. I kept hold of Hitch’s hand in mine the whole time, gripping it as hard as I could. I finally broke free, Hitch with me, and Sam was immediately charging the creature, able to use her sword with much greater strength without being worried about injuring Hitch. She swung it forward, and it sliced through the wrist of one of the hands. It fell without a sound, red sand flowing out of it. It deflated until it looked like dirty laundry, just a piece of limp flesh. The creature shrieked, scuttling away enough that the door was finally accessible. The three of us ran for it, Sam and I supporting Hitch between us.
I looked back as I left and found the Erlking staring right at me.
“Interesting,” he murmured, his voice carrying impossibly across the vast space between us.
The sandcastle collapsed behind us, the great walls falling in on themselves. We were out in the morning sun, the sandcastle disappearing as we watched. Hitch was on the ground in front of me, as young as he’d been thirty years ago, when he was captured. He started laughing, feathers puffing out of his mouth. He laughed until he cried and I hugged him in the way that he’d held me when I was young, in the times when my life had been defined by hunger and fear.
Hitch left, afterwards. He scratched at the pinhole scars covering his body, where feathers burst through his skin, and pulled his long sleeves down around his wrists. He didn’t know where he was going but he told me that he needed time
I had spent thirty years worth of time without him. I wanted to grab my brother by the shoulders and beg him to stay. But he flinched when I hugged him goodbye and he refused to go near sand and he stared distrustfully at the birds chirping in the trees. Hitch needed to go away and I loved him too much to stop him.
I sat out on the beach every morning. I felt the sun on my face and I waited for Hitch to come home.
2024.05.19 08:05 Kookie2023 Murasaki in the novel (what a lot of people probably didn’t know…)
I recently managed to get a text copy of Hannibal Rising and found that a lot of people don’t know the actual ending to Murasaki and Hannibal’s relationship because they refer more frequently to the movie.
The ending to their relationship in the movie is Murasaki rejecting Hannibal after seeing that his monstrosity couldn’t be contained. Her famous last words being “What is left in you to love?” before abandoning him. Imagine my shock when I read the novel to find this was not their last interaction.
The last few pages of the novel actually has Murasaki visiting Hannibal and jail where he’s being held. Their conversation is casual, but with slight tension. Murasaki tells him that Chiyoh is engaged to a young graduate who’s starting a small motorcycle business, but sends her good wishes. She and Hannibal share a moment of poetry from the Murasaki Shikubu (who is by the way her ancestor):
Hannibal’s last words to Murasaki are “You are my favorite person in the world”. She responds with a bow and leaves him, but admits to Dr. Rufin that she loves him, but can’t find him. No one can. He is a lost cause. Murasaki later packs up all of her things in the Place de Vosges and disconnects her phone. When Hannibal goes looking for her, he finds a note saying she had returned to Hiroshima and bids him goodbye with a burnt tree branch from the atomic explosion.
And Hannibal never sought her out ever again. And possibly never vowed to ever love again. Not if this is how it will always end.
submitted by Kookie2023 to HannibalTV [link] [comments]
The ending to their relationship in the movie is Murasaki rejecting Hannibal after seeing that his monstrosity couldn’t be contained. Her famous last words being “What is left in you to love?” before abandoning him. Imagine my shock when I read the novel to find this was not their last interaction.
The last few pages of the novel actually has Murasaki visiting Hannibal and jail where he’s being held. Their conversation is casual, but with slight tension. Murasaki tells him that Chiyoh is engaged to a young graduate who’s starting a small motorcycle business, but sends her good wishes. She and Hannibal share a moment of poetry from the Murasaki Shikubu (who is by the way her ancestor):
The words of her ancestor Murasaki Shikibu came to her and she said them: “The troubled waters Are frozen fast. Under clear heaven Moonlight and shadow Ebb and flow."Murasaki responds to Hannibal’s part that there is no snow and only ice remains. It’s far gone, a clear symbolism that their love is over.
Hannibal made Prince Genji's classic reply: “The memories of long love Gather like drifting snow. Poignant as the mandarin ducks Who float side by side in sleep."
Hannibal’s last words to Murasaki are “You are my favorite person in the world”. She responds with a bow and leaves him, but admits to Dr. Rufin that she loves him, but can’t find him. No one can. He is a lost cause. Murasaki later packs up all of her things in the Place de Vosges and disconnects her phone. When Hannibal goes looking for her, he finds a note saying she had returned to Hiroshima and bids him goodbye with a burnt tree branch from the atomic explosion.
And Hannibal never sought her out ever again. And possibly never vowed to ever love again. Not if this is how it will always end.
2024.05.19 08:05 AtasoyDi Best 10 Online Clothing Stores in the UK [2024]
The United Kingdom boasts the most lucrative ecommerce market in Europe, with the ecommerce industry reaching £103 billion in revenue in 2023. Over 27 million people made online clothing purchases last year, contributing significantly to this growth. ,
We explored the best online clothing stores in the UK, covering product ranges, best sellers, and prices in our article.
Here is a quick summary of the full post:
If you want to explore statistics or ecommerce-related content, you can browse the pieces we have crafted earlier:
submitted by AtasoyDi to Analyzify [link] [comments]
We explored the best online clothing stores in the UK, covering product ranges, best sellers, and prices in our article.
Here is a quick summary of the full post:
Gymshark
- Overview: Renowned as one of the best ecommerce companies in the UK, Gymshark stands out as a top online sportswear store built on Shopify. The Gymshark products are designed to help and encourage customers to perform at their best and achieve their fitness goals.
- Product Range: Fitness apparel for men and women, including t-shirts, leggings, shorts, hoodies, and sports bras.
- Best Sellers: Adapt Fleck Seamless Shorts, Crest Tank
- Price Range: £20 - £120
Oh Polly
- Overview: Oh Polly is a premium women’s fashion brand offering trendy and flattering clothing. It began by selling clothes on eBay and has grown into aone of the leading DTC brands, designing and producing its own garments.
- Product Range: Dresses, trousers, swimwear, beachwear, and accessories.
- Best Sellers: CALI, ELLI
- Price Range: £17 - £220
ASOS
- Overview: ASOS aims to provide young adults with a wide variety of high-quality clothing, accessories, and beauty products. The brand stands out for its vast product lineup, featuring premium brands alongside its own range of clothing and accessories.
- Product Range: Clothing, accessories, footwear, and beauty items.
- Best Sellers: ASOS DESIGN denim jacket, Levi’s t-shirt
- Price Range: Under £20 to over £200
Boohoo
- Overview: Boohoo is known for trendy, affordable fashion targeted at young adults. The brand leverages a strong social media presence to engage with its audience, particularly through platforms like Instagram.
- Product Range: Dresses, tops, shoes, and accessories.
- Best Sellers: LINEN PINSTRIPE PUFF SLEEVE CROP TOP, TONAL STRIPE LINEN LOOK SHORTS
- Price Range: £24 - £44
Club L London
- Overview: Club L London offers “accessible luxury” through its distinctive range of apparel aimed at forward-thinking women. The brand emphasizes quality and unique design, catering to sizes UK 4-24 and US 0-20.
- Product Range: Dresses, tailored suits, jumpsuits, accessories.
- Best Sellers: EVA, LAW OF ATTRACTION
- Price Range: £20 - £200
Represent
- Overview: Represent is a British luxury streetwear brand known for its distinctive approach to fashion that merges street style with high-end craftsmanship. The brand is acclaimed for its meticulous attention to detail and the use of premium materials.
- Product Range: T-shirts, hoodies, pants, outerwear, accessories.
- Best Sellers: REPRESENT OWNERS CLUB HOODIE, REPRESENT OWNERS CLUB T-SHIRT
- Price Range: £20 - £900
Motel
- Overview: Motel is a vibrant and trendy fashion brand known for its eclectic and vintage-inspired fashion that resonates with young, style-conscious individuals. The brand works with a global team to create trendy, expressive pieces for its core collections.
- Product Range: Dresses, trousers, skirts, swimwear, knitwear, accessories.
- Best Sellers: Pami Bikini Top, Jarli Hot Pants
- Price Range: £22 - £60
Chi Chi London
- Overview: Chi Chi London is a vibrant and fashion-forward brand known for its unique, trend-setting designs. The brand prides itself on bringing catwalk-inspired fashion directly to the high street, offering exclusive styles that celebrate individuality.
- Product Range: Dresses for various occasions, tops, trousers, skirts, outerwear.
- Best Sellers: V Neck Floral Embroidered Lace Midi Dress, Knot Detail Maxi Dress in Champagne
- Price Range: Under £50 to around £200
Pretty Little Thing
- Overview: Part of the Boohoo Group, PrettyLittleThing is a UK-based fast-fashion brand targeting young women, emphasizing trend-driven styles. The brand operates internationally, focusing on affordable fashion to ensure style accessibility across budgets.
- Product Range: Dresses, tops, shoes, accessories, beauty products.
- Best Sellers: Petite Basic Grey Cotton Blend Cycle Shorts, Cream Contour Sculpt Short Sleeve T Shirt
- Price Range: Starting at £9
Glamorous
- Overview: Glamorous offers contemporary and affordable fashion, available in over 30 countries. Known for its contemporary and affordable fashion, the brand thrives on being at the forefront of fashion trends.
- Product Range: Dresses, jeans, coats, jackets, shoes, accessories.
- Best Sellers: Apple-Green Pink Lace Trim Mini-Dress, Fuchsia Ruffle Halterneck Mini-Dress
- Price Range: Tops for under £30 to mini dresses over £150
Statistics of Online Clothing Stores in the UK
- Current Buyers: Over 27 million UK residents purchased clothing online in 2023, expected to increase to over 32 million by 2028.
- Ecommerce Revenue from Fashion: In 2023, sales from apparel, shoes, handbags, and accessories contributed nearly one-third of the ecommerce revenue in the UK, surpassing £35 billion.
- Revenue Forecast: The fashion ecommerce market is projected to grow by £14.3 billion by 2029, reaching nearly £47 billion.
- Market Penetration: The penetration rate of apparel ecommerce stood at 15.2%.
Demographics & Shopping Trends
- Millennials (Ages 27-42): 70% reported primarily shopping online for clothing and footwear in Q2 2023.
- Generation Z: 50% preferred online shopping for apparel.
- Primary Age Groups & Gender Differences: The largest segment of mobile clothing shoppers was those aged 25-34, accounting for 52.3%. Men were 4% more likely than women to shop online for apparel.
Conclusion: Leading Online Stores in the UK
The UK’s top online clothing stores are reshaping how we think about fashion shopping. From impressive growth in the overall UK ecommerce sector to distinctive shopping preferences and options, online stores are meeting and often exceeding customer expectations. Whether seeking the latest trends, best deals, or most sustainable choices, online clothing shopping offers many options and benefits.If you want to explore statistics or ecommerce-related content, you can browse the pieces we have crafted earlier:
2024.05.19 08:04 DanielShehu The Virgin Harry Potter vs The Chad Earthsea Saga
 | submitted by DanielShehu to virginvschad [link] [comments] |
2024.05.19 08:03 hypikachu Tyrion's Paternity: An open question? [Spoilers Extended]
![Tyrion's Paternity: An open question? [Spoilers Extended]](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/C_Ank7yZVlyY16294VGT7gHQM3FmsLmsOrjJwK7PWpk.jpg "Tyrion's Paternity: An open question? [Spoilers Extended]") | Listen. I know "Tyrion Targaryen" is a divisive topic. I don't think there's any theory that gets more vehement criticism. I understand why it gets the ire it does, and don't even wholly disagree. submitted by hypikachu to asoiaf [link] [comments] Buuuut, if I can play 1. "It hurts the story" I'll admit it. I (kinda) agree with this assessment. A "Tyrion's a secret Targ" reveal threatens to undermine other big elements of the story. One secret orphaned prince is a tragedy, but a dozen is a farce. It also arguably hurts the Tyrion-Tywin relationship. I don't think it'd be ruinous as many of the critics do. But even if it were, that still wouldn't affect whether or not it's canon. This argument really doesn't address "what is or is not," but rather "what should or shouldn't be." But writers do stuff they arguably shouldn't all the time. Fans of Star Wars will gladly tell you that midi-chlorians undermine the Force. But they're still canon, bc George said so. Martin is no more infallible than Lucas. I love these books, and I think GRRM's the bee's knees. But can you tell me with a straight face that "Joffrey sent the catspaw" was perfectly executed storytelling? Whether something's good or not is a subjective matter for the audience. But whether something's canon is wholly at the whims of the author. And it definitely seems like GRRM's whims are pointing towards A+J. 2. "GRRM was setting it up in the early books, but abandoned the idea at some point." Yes, George is a gardener and doesn't necessarily stick to a rigid story plan. He's removed or changed big elements of the story, like the 5 year gap or the Brightflame cloth dragons. It's definitely possible that Tyrion Targaryen might have been a similarly scrapped plan. (Small Tangent: I'm even pretty open to the idea that it was scrapped in the show. It's totally the kind of thing D&D would hate. But you can ask Griff & Stoneheart if show canon = book canon.) The problem is, there's no clear point where GRRM stopped dropping hints that align with A+J. It still seems front and center in ASOS (2000), when Tywin makes his last on-page appearance. He explicitly calls Tyrion's paternity (and the fidelity of his beloved cousinwife) into question twice in that book, down to his last breath. Bookending Tyrion's first speaking appearance (AGOT Jon I). The very first thing Tyrion says about Tywin is "he thinks of me as a bastard." The idea of Tyrion's paternity being in doubt hangs over the Tyrion-Tywin relationship from the first moments to the last. The relevant characters' most recent book appearance was the worldbook in 2014. (The same year GRRM gave his now famous explanation of why abandoning setup makes for bad storytelling.) Even then, GRRM was obliquely pointing to the possibility of A+J=T with relentless determination. Every single mention of Joanna is attached directly to a note about how much Aerys pursued her. Tyrion's birth is one paragraph after the tourney of 272. Where the only notable event was Aerys lusting after Joanna, deepening the rift with Tywin. Which moves us nicely from the meta-textual arguments into the in-universe "evidence." 3. "[Pycelle said] Tywin wouldn't have married Joanna if she'd been with Aerys" Pycelle sure did say that. Pycelle is wrong. That's the point. How can we tell? GRRM's choice of wording in Pycelle's rebuttal. As Pycelle insists in his letters, Tywin Lannister would scarce have taken his cousin to wife if that had been true, “for he was ever a proud man and not one accustomed to feasting upon another man’s leavings.”Pictured: Pycelle's wrongness. The 2014 audience already knows Tywin absolutely would do that. The climax of his conflict with Tyrion was him bedding Shae. "Feasting on another man's leavings" is already a defining part of Tywin's relationship with Tyrion. GRRM wrote Pycelle huffing copium. Conspicuously. The fanboy maester's denial depends on a claim the audience explicitly knows is false. It's just basic dramatic irony: the audience knows something the characters don't. If Pycelle's claims rests on false evidence, what is the author saying about the claim? 4. "If Tywin knew/suspected, why didn't he do anything more than try to resign?" I'll be honest, this one blows my mind. The man sacked King's Landing and killed every Targaryen he could find. Tywin's big defining pre-stories action was brutally overthrowing Aerys' whole family. Sure he didn't do it immediately. But when circumstances permitted, Tywin took extreme vengeance. 5. "Tyrion's dragon dreams aren't Dragon Dreams" Why the hell not? Symbolically heavy. Seemingly prophetic. Showing a destiny of magical conflict, with stakes as intimate as family identity, and as broad as globe-spanning war. Tyrion’s dreams check all the boxes for what makes up a Dragon Dream. (Or should I say, “They meet any cry-Tyrion?”) When Tyrion first mentions dreaming of dragons, he’s telling Jon “I know your secret. You dream the same kind of dreams.” Again, dramatic irony time. Tyrion’s saying it as “I know you secretly feel alienation.” But a reader who knows Jon’s lineage knows the real secret is why Jon’s magic dreams fixate on family alienation. Because they’re Dragon Dreams. The very first thing GRRM tells us about Tyrion’s dragon dreams is that they’re comparable to Jon’s Dragon Dreams. And Tyrion’s have actual dragons in them. Oh, and very non-coincidentally, this scene happens only 20ish pages after Dany has the first confirmed on-page Dragon Dream. Which hits all the same elements. Prophesymbolic vision of a buried dragon identity. Which emerges through the crucible of sibling struggle. GRRM returns focus to Tyrion’s dragon dreams in ADWD. He has two such dreams during his journey east from Illyrio’s manse as part of a plot to marry Dany to a guy with a big fighting force behind him. Eagle eyed observers will note that this is exact same setup Dany herself had in AGOT when her Dragon Dreams started. In both the earliest and latest books in the series, GRRM draws immediate parallels between Tyrion’s dragon dreams and Targaryen Dragon Dreams. Just from an economy of storytelling perspective, it would be weird to have Tyrion’s special important dreams-w/dragons-in-them that just happen to be totally unrelated to Jon & Dany’s Special Important Magic Dragon Dreams™️. Caveat: Schrodinger’s Targaryen Despite all of this, I do not think GRRM’s endgame is as simple as “And then we learn Tyrion is 100% definitely Aerys’ son and not Tywin’s.” My strongest hunch is that the plan is for the story to end without a definitive answer, but a pointedly open question. Compare it to other “unresolved Targaryen/dragonrider ancestry mysteries” like Nettles and Daeron T vs Daemon B. GRRM loves this “the mystery is more valuable than the answer” approach to storytelling. In AGOT and ASOS we’re told “Tywin thinks of Tyrion as not his.” In TWOIAF we see maesters publicly speculating about Aerys & Joanna’s relations. I think the in-universe uncertainty is the plotline here. The speculation already exists in Tyrion’s plot, which will come to a fever pitch when (not if) he saddles Viserion. I don’t think there’ll be any raunchy Bran-vision or tearstained secret letter from Joanna that definitively confirms Tyrion’s parentage one way or the other. Tyrion seizes Casterly Rock and there’s a hubbub about legality. Is he a golden trueborn lion, Tywin’s legal heir? Is he the red of a Targaryen dragon and/or a color-inverted Lannister bastard? Who the hell knows? What does it matter? All the truth Tyrion knows is his mother was a lioness, making him a cat regardless of coat. That, plus he has a dragon, with sharp long claws. The dragon reins are all he needs to reign from This deliberate open-endedness leaves room for a lot of options. I’m very open to chimera theory. Nerd Tangent: In myth, the chimera is literally a fire-breathing lion-serpent hybrid. All Tyrion needs is some goat imagery and he’s got the whole animal. Plus GRRM keeps making the lady of Casterly Rock mother twins at every point in the timeline. Joanna’s were even fraternal. GRRM even wrote an unpublished conversation whereTyrion talks about Maelys the Monstrous (to whom Tyrion repeatedly compares himself) absorbing his twin in-utero, and imagines the same thing happening in his own mother’s womb. George is doing everything a writer setting up a “genetic chimera” twist reveal would do. Separately, I really like the idea of Tywin misinterpreting prophecy and dooming himself to the fate he was trying to avoid. In perfect parallel to Cersei’s experience with Maggy. Tywin gets some kind of cryptic warning about Aerys’ bloodline displacing his own. Just like Cersei’s valonqar, he jumps to a misplaced suspicion of Tyrion, when he should be examining Jaime and/or Cersei. When TWOIAF bundles the tourney of 272, Tyrion’s birth/Joanna’s death in 273, and Tywin’s role in the Targaryen downfall together, it’s entirely possible that the point is the same as AFFC Cersei constantly telling us “valonqar = Tyrion.” A red herring; there to prompt the audience into thinking about the question. But preserving mystery by laying the false answer on thick while the true answer is surreptitiously sprinkled in. Maybe there’s even in-universe discussion about how an AJT reveal makes a farce of RLJ? “Diluting the reveal by flooding the spot with something similar but even more outlandish” was Tyrion’s own in-universe strategy for dealing with the reveal of Cersei’s royal bastards. This could be GRRM going full circle. “Oh, Ned Stark’s other closely guarded secret about royal bastardy just came out? Well, this counterstory from Tyrion about royal bastards has juicy stuff like clowns and sex with a crazy guy and kids w/physical abnormalities. Once this story spreads, no one’ll know what to believe!” It could even go the same direction the show went for Theon’s identity dualism. Tangent: (Theon is kinda directly connected to Tyrion already, having inherited the “burn Winterfell, torn between Starks & birth family” plotline originally meant for Tyrion.) You can be both a furry apex predator on 4 legs and a mythical beast with long wriggly appendages. Lizard & lion at once. GRRM might even be highlighting this Schrodinger-esque superstate of “both one and the other simultaneously” with Tyrion’s ADWD intro. The first time we see the cat-man after he kills Tywin, he’s drunk himself half to death in a box while on his way to Illyrio. It's the moment when he’s most in limbo– after killing the lion Tywin, but before joining sides with Aerys’ dragonspawn – he’s a half-alive half-dead cat in a box. All I'm saying is that I think, for George, the point is the duality. The uncertainty. The multiplicity of options. Tbh, I’m not arguing that “Aerys is the father” = The Answer™️. I’m just arguing that the story is designed to set up the question. From Tyrion’s first lines to Tywin’s last, GRRM insistently raises the notion of Tyrion not being Tywin’s son. The most recently published account of A, J, T, & T deals heavily with the contentious love triangle. I’m not saying you have to like it. I’m just saying you can’t pretend it’s not there. |
2024.05.19 08:01 pink8340 did i ghost her or did it just end naturally????
So, I met this girl briefly at a show in March and she was so beautiful and then I saw her again like 3 weeks later at a dj set and we made out and she gave me her insta and told me to text her when we were sober. we run into each other the next day at another show but i lowkey ran away 😭😭😭 i was super drunk and by myself and she was with friends anyway. she texts me after being like “i was looking for you where did u go?” so i invite her on an actual coffee date. we meet up at like 4 at the coffee shop, end up walking all around town, going back to my apartment to roll a joint, getting munchies, and our first date ended at 12am it was so cute. then she went out of town for the week and then i went out of town for the weekend and then when we finally were both in town again i invite her to dinner. at this point, i start going through a life crisis. i realized my best friend/roommate was lowkey abusing me, turned all our friends against me, needed to move outdesperately. i’m also failing my classes, i’m starting to realize that maybe i need to move back home. i’m having a really really hard time with my mental illness and everything was just a lot at the same time. it was really hard to go on that date with her. even though she’s amazing and we have sm chemistry. i cant be confident and i don’t feel like myself and i think it was too much to develop feelings for someone while my life was falling apart. anyway, the date goes really well despite my turmoil and i tell her i will reach out to her after the weekend because my mom was going to be in town to help me move. my mom ends up staying for 2 weeks because of my mental health crisis. i considered just going back home with her. but i decided to stay. it’s been about 3 weeks since all of that. i haven’t texted her, she hasn’t texted me. but i feel like i’m responsible bc i told her i would text her??? should i text her before i leave forever??? idk what this meaaaaaannnnsssss
submitted by pink8340 to dating_advice [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 08:00 ThrowRA-OkayTurtle How do I (F20) break up with my boyfriend (M20) of two years?
I feel as if this page is for fixing a problem in a relationship but I need to use this page to end mine. Yes, my boyfriend (m20) loves me a lot, but him and I (f20) don't see eye to eye. We have been together for a little less than 2 years and we argue all the time and he says he need to fix it but instead of trying to see my point of view, he drops the argument or downgrades me.
Here is some insight on our relationship. We were so good the first year of our relationship. We were best friends for months before our relationship and in the first year we hardly fought. We would call all the time and talk about the most random things. He used to write me huge paragraphs for me to wake up to. Now he plays video games every single night and I never get calls from him. He hasn't written me a paragraph about how much he loves me in forever. When we are together in person we don't talk much anymore. He gets upset that I fall asleep whenever we are together, but honestly I am bored. If I bring up anything he finds a way to argue about it. He gets upset if I am on my phone when we are together and his argument is "if he is watching videos while we are together why should I get my phone out to watch other videos if we could watch them together on his phone?" My argument back is that I don't like watching his videos because I don't really find clips of army movies, motorcycles, or educational videos on stocks interesting. I also suggest that maybe we can watch videos on my phone and he says that my videos are stupid.
It's hard to let go because sometimes we are good and I love his sister. I have already tried breaking up with him and it didn't work. I tried to bring up the conversation three times and I couldn't get the words to come out my mouth so I sent him a text while he was with his friends at frisbee golf saying that it was over and that we need to move on for the good of us as individuals. He replied right away saying that it wasn't over and that he was going to come over whenever he was done with the game. I sent the text at 3pm, he didn't come over until 8:15 to 8:30pm. We both were bawling our eyes out and I kept telling him it was over and it wasn't up for discussion. When he drove off I was heart broken and I am upset that it hurt so bad so when he texted me I came crawling back to him after only 30 minutes from him leaving my house.
This "breakup" happened about a month ago. We were good for about 2 weeks until we started arguing again. We argued about him getting upset that I mentioned a boy I "dated" when I was in elementary school to a group of my old friends in-front of him and he said it was disrespectful. We also argued because I said I wasn't ready to move into a house with him (his requirements for a house was that it had to have two bedrooms so he could use one for his games, 2 bathrooms, and a garage. if you know anything about todays house prices, I wouldn't be able to afford that while going to Nursing school and he said that I should take my money that I have been saving for tuition for the house and that he will save up too but it will take longer because he doesn't make as much as I do)and he is ready to move into a house and I am not at all. He was also saying how he is ready to have a kid i and be married before I finish school but I am not ready at all and every time he brings up our future, we argue.
Breaking up over text didn't work because he showed up to my house, I can't get the words out whenever I try in person. Can I get some advice or pointers on how to do it or start the conversation?
submitted by ThrowRA-OkayTurtle to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
Here is some insight on our relationship. We were so good the first year of our relationship. We were best friends for months before our relationship and in the first year we hardly fought. We would call all the time and talk about the most random things. He used to write me huge paragraphs for me to wake up to. Now he plays video games every single night and I never get calls from him. He hasn't written me a paragraph about how much he loves me in forever. When we are together in person we don't talk much anymore. He gets upset that I fall asleep whenever we are together, but honestly I am bored. If I bring up anything he finds a way to argue about it. He gets upset if I am on my phone when we are together and his argument is "if he is watching videos while we are together why should I get my phone out to watch other videos if we could watch them together on his phone?" My argument back is that I don't like watching his videos because I don't really find clips of army movies, motorcycles, or educational videos on stocks interesting. I also suggest that maybe we can watch videos on my phone and he says that my videos are stupid.
It's hard to let go because sometimes we are good and I love his sister. I have already tried breaking up with him and it didn't work. I tried to bring up the conversation three times and I couldn't get the words to come out my mouth so I sent him a text while he was with his friends at frisbee golf saying that it was over and that we need to move on for the good of us as individuals. He replied right away saying that it wasn't over and that he was going to come over whenever he was done with the game. I sent the text at 3pm, he didn't come over until 8:15 to 8:30pm. We both were bawling our eyes out and I kept telling him it was over and it wasn't up for discussion. When he drove off I was heart broken and I am upset that it hurt so bad so when he texted me I came crawling back to him after only 30 minutes from him leaving my house.
This "breakup" happened about a month ago. We were good for about 2 weeks until we started arguing again. We argued about him getting upset that I mentioned a boy I "dated" when I was in elementary school to a group of my old friends in-front of him and he said it was disrespectful. We also argued because I said I wasn't ready to move into a house with him (his requirements for a house was that it had to have two bedrooms so he could use one for his games, 2 bathrooms, and a garage. if you know anything about todays house prices, I wouldn't be able to afford that while going to Nursing school and he said that I should take my money that I have been saving for tuition for the house and that he will save up too but it will take longer because he doesn't make as much as I do)and he is ready to move into a house and I am not at all. He was also saying how he is ready to have a kid i and be married before I finish school but I am not ready at all and every time he brings up our future, we argue.
Breaking up over text didn't work because he showed up to my house, I can't get the words out whenever I try in person. Can I get some advice or pointers on how to do it or start the conversation?
2024.05.19 08:00 LacMegantikAce Could the emergence of life be a consequence of the universe's drive towards maximum entropy?
First off, my understanding of physics is limited since I'm studying biology, but it's always been something I found interesting. I know this is a huge question to ask and I will be adding several details as to clarify what I mean, but if this isn't the right place for such a question, I'm sorry and feel free to point that out to me.
Context
For years now, I've been pretty familiar with the concept of abiogenosis (emergence of life from non-life) from a biological angle, we have several ideas, but we still don't know what the exact conditions necessary are, or even how with the exact conditions necessary, it could "become alive".
Unfortunately, physics is even less helpful in that case. Physical phenomena themselves don't seem to have much correlation with biology, despite their obligatory involvement in its emergence. I know a thing or two about biology, but I can't possibly verify the veracity of any classical mechanics or fundamental properties of the universe, which is what brings me here. Let's start with my reasoning:
Life as a More Energy-Efficient State
The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of a given isolated system always tends to increase overtime, but that this does not prevent local decreases in entropy. A really great example of this is living organisms. Indeed, life is remarkably effective at using energy from its environment to build and maintain complex structures, therefore reducing local entropy.
However, while life decreases entropy locally (within the organism), it can only do so by increasing the overall entropy of its environment. For example, absorbing sunlight or food (low entropy energy) also means the release of high-entropy energy (i.e., heat and biological waste). Therefore, life absorbs and releases energy, contributing to an overall increase in entropy.
The Emergence of Life
If it turns out this is true and that physical properties of the universe fundamentaly "strive" for maximum entropy and that life indeed accelerates the rate by which entropy increase, then abiogenosis and evolution might be consequences of the universe's trend towards reaching maximum entropy. If life is really a more energy-efficient state of matter, then under the exact right conditions, it's possible that it could spontaneously arise (become alive) as part of the universe's progression towards more energy-efficient states that are better at efficiently dissipating energy (increasing entropy). Billions of years ago, on Earth, basic molecules that used energy more efficiently might have formed more complex structures that eventually lead to life, which is simply a better way of increasing entropy than non-living
Therefore, the emergence of life might possibly not be the miraculous anomaly we all think it is, but an incredibly rare and natural phenomenon caused by the fundamental physical law of increasing entropy in the universe.
Conclusion
I have no idea if any of what I just said made any sense to anyone out there, but at least I hope I've made something that's readable. In no way do I think that if true, it takes away from the significance and incredible beauty of life or even impact its rarity. This is just a potential explanation of (or one of) the fundamental purpose that life has within our universe, based on a more physical approach that still holds up and correlates with what biology has taught us.
If anyone out here is aware of a similar theory or research about a physical explanation of life, please tell me! I definitely know I'm not the first one to think about this, I'm not special, just obsessed with the universe and life, lol.
Thanks.
submitted by LacMegantikAce to AskPhysics [link] [comments]
Context
For years now, I've been pretty familiar with the concept of abiogenosis (emergence of life from non-life) from a biological angle, we have several ideas, but we still don't know what the exact conditions necessary are, or even how with the exact conditions necessary, it could "become alive".
Unfortunately, physics is even less helpful in that case. Physical phenomena themselves don't seem to have much correlation with biology, despite their obligatory involvement in its emergence. I know a thing or two about biology, but I can't possibly verify the veracity of any classical mechanics or fundamental properties of the universe, which is what brings me here. Let's start with my reasoning:
Life as a More Energy-Efficient State
The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of a given isolated system always tends to increase overtime, but that this does not prevent local decreases in entropy. A really great example of this is living organisms. Indeed, life is remarkably effective at using energy from its environment to build and maintain complex structures, therefore reducing local entropy.
However, while life decreases entropy locally (within the organism), it can only do so by increasing the overall entropy of its environment. For example, absorbing sunlight or food (low entropy energy) also means the release of high-entropy energy (i.e., heat and biological waste). Therefore, life absorbs and releases energy, contributing to an overall increase in entropy.
The Emergence of Life
If it turns out this is true and that physical properties of the universe fundamentaly "strive" for maximum entropy and that life indeed accelerates the rate by which entropy increase, then abiogenosis and evolution might be consequences of the universe's trend towards reaching maximum entropy. If life is really a more energy-efficient state of matter, then under the exact right conditions, it's possible that it could spontaneously arise (become alive) as part of the universe's progression towards more energy-efficient states that are better at efficiently dissipating energy (increasing entropy). Billions of years ago, on Earth, basic molecules that used energy more efficiently might have formed more complex structures that eventually lead to life, which is simply a better way of increasing entropy than non-living
Therefore, the emergence of life might possibly not be the miraculous anomaly we all think it is, but an incredibly rare and natural phenomenon caused by the fundamental physical law of increasing entropy in the universe.
Conclusion
I have no idea if any of what I just said made any sense to anyone out there, but at least I hope I've made something that's readable. In no way do I think that if true, it takes away from the significance and incredible beauty of life or even impact its rarity. This is just a potential explanation of (or one of) the fundamental purpose that life has within our universe, based on a more physical approach that still holds up and correlates with what biology has taught us.
If anyone out here is aware of a similar theory or research about a physical explanation of life, please tell me! I definitely know I'm not the first one to think about this, I'm not special, just obsessed with the universe and life, lol.
Thanks.
2024.05.19 08:00 redbird180 Is there such thing as an inpatient program, "camp," or some kind of intensive training for adults with ASD to learn basic life skills? Im a NT (F, 54) married to a ND (M, 56) @ wits end.
TLDR: Is there such thing as a life boot camp with ppl with high-functioning ASD? An intensive, hands on, and or immersive type "experience" where one could learn "simple" things like how to open your mail, pay bills on time, make checklists for yourself, keep your room clean (make a bed, fold laundry), etc? It would be such a great bonus if there was ANYTHING that could teach basic intimate relationship skills too either in addition or separately. I have been overcompensating for my husband for almost a decade and a half and Im getting worn out. I don't want to do it bc not only do I think it wouldn't work but it would have me "playing mommy" and no one wants to f*ck their mother. At least they are not supposed to ;)
My apologies if I am in the wrong place.
I love my husband, I do. I don't want to get divorced, we have 2 kids F 13 and M 12. Our parents got divorced and we never want to do that our kids. That said, I have been pretty unhappy for YEARS. I posted in the deadbedroom bc our sex life ground down to a halt and someone there thought my hubby sounded ASD. It made so much sense the more I looked into it. Both of our kids have been diagnosed ASD and ADHD (both my hubby and I are diagnosed ADHD-He takes meds and sees a psch, I don't bc I don't feel the need). Ive told him many times you are either ASD or an a$$hole? Which is it or is it both?
ITB his parents got divorced when he was 6 months old, he never had a romantic relationship that lasted longer than 5 months, and the fact that he is a "geek" (works in tech and has a master's in Physics-he got on a full merit scholarship), he has little to no life skills and or understands what is involved in a healthy happy intimate relationship.
When we 1st met, he was living in squalor. Like never cleaned his bathroom for 13 yrs, only owned 1 fork, had only a bed, a desk, and a book shelf in a 1200 sq ft apt. Stacks of books everywhere and piles of old clothes, shoes, etc. I tend to be a fairly "dynamic" person and had owned my own company for almost a decade. My profession requires a HUGE level of organization, people skills, etc and utilizes all my positive attributes of ADHD. It seemed at the time I could take the guy out of the squalor, give him a beautiful home, children and a great life. But I guess I did not understand that you cant take the squalor out of the guy?!?!
We met when I was turning 40 and he was 42 going on 43. I got pregnant the 1st time we had sex, so we got married, bought our 1st home and other amazing milestones happened easily and quickly for us. For the 1st 5 yrs we were married, it wasn't perfect but things worked and I was happy. I now realize that I just overcompensated for him in MANY ways, thinking that he would get the hang of SOME things and learn how to pitch in and or be more of a partner. We have tried marriage counseling through the yrs but nothing seems to have any effect on him. He goes through the movements or just says what sounds good at the time but just reverts back or doesn't do anything that would be or lead to meaningful change.
He operates on this lvl where if he thinks things are fair or good, they are...even though they so arent. He LOVES playing the semantics game where he will claim things like he IS "trying" bc he does X (that is a very small baby step type thing) for X amount of time and I guess I am supposed to understand and take whatever he is doing bc....reasons and he is "trying."
Besides doing his job that he was doing for years before we met (he is the same "lvl" and has not taken on ANY advancement in his career) to earn the $ that supports our family (we agreed I would give up my company and career until our youngest went to the 1st grade and I have made some savvy investments to bring in considerable $) he does practically NOTHING. He works from home since 2020/Covid and at 1st it was good bc it offered us more freedom in where we could live but now he is around 24/7. I would LOVE to return to my beloved career, but I have nothing left energy and time wise between our kids, the house, and him. He wont even get our mail out of the mailbox, let alone open it and or deal with LIFE.
He is seeing a psychiatrist and says he doesn't suffer from depression. He has terrible sleep hygiene and we sleep in separate rooms. We have cleaning people in once a week but his room is almost constantly dirty, disorganized, and cluttered. He constantly maintains that he doesn't really see what the problem is and plays the "semantics game" like "I empty out the dishwasher" ( a task that I have timed myself doing in less than 2 min) or "I take out the trash" when I bring up that I feel like Im drowning in a sea of tasks.
I have told him that I am unhappy. I have screamed and yelled. I have tried being sweet and accommodating to ask that he be at least semi-accommodating in return but he doesn't seem to care that our relationship is not mitigated. I have tried letting things get so bad that he would HAVE to do more but he just lets things get so bad like when our water gets turned off due to lack of payment, he goes to the store and bought a few gallons of water so "it buys us some time" getting the water bill paid the next day. It is NOT like we don't have the $, he just doesn't "like" paying bills and or "dealing with drudgery" LIKE I DO!?!?!
I have asked him to live in a hotel bc I told him that if he didn't, I would go to a hotel bc I need a break from him AND I want him to know I am SO SICK OF HIS SH*T. He agreed and is supposed to be trying to find help. He has tried life coaches (he simply did not do any work that they gave him to do and they charge 1k a month) and allegedly is trying procrastinators anonymous but I see no real effort. I have asked him to get diagnosed with ASD but he claims he spoke with a therapist that specializes in ppl with ASD and the therapist said that "it wouldn't matter" if he got a diagnosis. I asked if he is telling ppl that his marriage is on the rocks and he told me that he did say that his "lack of effort has put some strife in his marriage." Some strife in his marriage?!?! Did he elaborate and or tell them about how unhappy I am? No. He is "concentrating" his efforts on improving "executive functioning" and I guess this is supposed to help make the MEANINGFUL CHANGE I so desperately want and need him to make.
I think that something like boot camp or a life skill clinic or a halfway house for separated/divorced dads would stand the best chance of having him make the changes to his life he DESPERATELY needs to make. If not for me or even more for him but for our kids. They are picking up his bad and destructive habits. In his defense, he doesn't know how to do most things. Both of his parents were highly toxic ppl. His father died in his apt and it wasn't until his body started to smell that anyone noticed. The fire dept had to climb in through the window-fire escape bc the apt was so cluttered/hoarded. His mother is anorexic, keeps no food in the house, will sleep in her clothes on top of a made bed rather than "do all that laundry," and lives in squalor. So, he never learned it at home.
Is there anything where a grown man could learn basic life skills and or how to be a halfway (Id take 1/8) decent partner? Maybe if he could gain some life skills and or the ability to deal with life's demands, he would be happier, healthier in mind, body, and spirit, and in turn me and our family.
ANY suggestions besides "just get a divorce" or "put up with it bc you have for over a decade" it would be helpful. Thanks for reading my BOOK.
submitted by redbird180 to autism [link] [comments]
My apologies if I am in the wrong place.
I love my husband, I do. I don't want to get divorced, we have 2 kids F 13 and M 12. Our parents got divorced and we never want to do that our kids. That said, I have been pretty unhappy for YEARS. I posted in the deadbedroom bc our sex life ground down to a halt and someone there thought my hubby sounded ASD. It made so much sense the more I looked into it. Both of our kids have been diagnosed ASD and ADHD (both my hubby and I are diagnosed ADHD-He takes meds and sees a psch, I don't bc I don't feel the need). Ive told him many times you are either ASD or an a$$hole? Which is it or is it both?
ITB his parents got divorced when he was 6 months old, he never had a romantic relationship that lasted longer than 5 months, and the fact that he is a "geek" (works in tech and has a master's in Physics-he got on a full merit scholarship), he has little to no life skills and or understands what is involved in a healthy happy intimate relationship.
When we 1st met, he was living in squalor. Like never cleaned his bathroom for 13 yrs, only owned 1 fork, had only a bed, a desk, and a book shelf in a 1200 sq ft apt. Stacks of books everywhere and piles of old clothes, shoes, etc. I tend to be a fairly "dynamic" person and had owned my own company for almost a decade. My profession requires a HUGE level of organization, people skills, etc and utilizes all my positive attributes of ADHD. It seemed at the time I could take the guy out of the squalor, give him a beautiful home, children and a great life. But I guess I did not understand that you cant take the squalor out of the guy?!?!
We met when I was turning 40 and he was 42 going on 43. I got pregnant the 1st time we had sex, so we got married, bought our 1st home and other amazing milestones happened easily and quickly for us. For the 1st 5 yrs we were married, it wasn't perfect but things worked and I was happy. I now realize that I just overcompensated for him in MANY ways, thinking that he would get the hang of SOME things and learn how to pitch in and or be more of a partner. We have tried marriage counseling through the yrs but nothing seems to have any effect on him. He goes through the movements or just says what sounds good at the time but just reverts back or doesn't do anything that would be or lead to meaningful change.
He operates on this lvl where if he thinks things are fair or good, they are...even though they so arent. He LOVES playing the semantics game where he will claim things like he IS "trying" bc he does X (that is a very small baby step type thing) for X amount of time and I guess I am supposed to understand and take whatever he is doing bc....reasons and he is "trying."
Besides doing his job that he was doing for years before we met (he is the same "lvl" and has not taken on ANY advancement in his career) to earn the $ that supports our family (we agreed I would give up my company and career until our youngest went to the 1st grade and I have made some savvy investments to bring in considerable $) he does practically NOTHING. He works from home since 2020/Covid and at 1st it was good bc it offered us more freedom in where we could live but now he is around 24/7. I would LOVE to return to my beloved career, but I have nothing left energy and time wise between our kids, the house, and him. He wont even get our mail out of the mailbox, let alone open it and or deal with LIFE.
He is seeing a psychiatrist and says he doesn't suffer from depression. He has terrible sleep hygiene and we sleep in separate rooms. We have cleaning people in once a week but his room is almost constantly dirty, disorganized, and cluttered. He constantly maintains that he doesn't really see what the problem is and plays the "semantics game" like "I empty out the dishwasher" ( a task that I have timed myself doing in less than 2 min) or "I take out the trash" when I bring up that I feel like Im drowning in a sea of tasks.
I have told him that I am unhappy. I have screamed and yelled. I have tried being sweet and accommodating to ask that he be at least semi-accommodating in return but he doesn't seem to care that our relationship is not mitigated. I have tried letting things get so bad that he would HAVE to do more but he just lets things get so bad like when our water gets turned off due to lack of payment, he goes to the store and bought a few gallons of water so "it buys us some time" getting the water bill paid the next day. It is NOT like we don't have the $, he just doesn't "like" paying bills and or "dealing with drudgery" LIKE I DO!?!?!
I have asked him to live in a hotel bc I told him that if he didn't, I would go to a hotel bc I need a break from him AND I want him to know I am SO SICK OF HIS SH*T. He agreed and is supposed to be trying to find help. He has tried life coaches (he simply did not do any work that they gave him to do and they charge 1k a month) and allegedly is trying procrastinators anonymous but I see no real effort. I have asked him to get diagnosed with ASD but he claims he spoke with a therapist that specializes in ppl with ASD and the therapist said that "it wouldn't matter" if he got a diagnosis. I asked if he is telling ppl that his marriage is on the rocks and he told me that he did say that his "lack of effort has put some strife in his marriage." Some strife in his marriage?!?! Did he elaborate and or tell them about how unhappy I am? No. He is "concentrating" his efforts on improving "executive functioning" and I guess this is supposed to help make the MEANINGFUL CHANGE I so desperately want and need him to make.
I think that something like boot camp or a life skill clinic or a halfway house for separated/divorced dads would stand the best chance of having him make the changes to his life he DESPERATELY needs to make. If not for me or even more for him but for our kids. They are picking up his bad and destructive habits. In his defense, he doesn't know how to do most things. Both of his parents were highly toxic ppl. His father died in his apt and it wasn't until his body started to smell that anyone noticed. The fire dept had to climb in through the window-fire escape bc the apt was so cluttered/hoarded. His mother is anorexic, keeps no food in the house, will sleep in her clothes on top of a made bed rather than "do all that laundry," and lives in squalor. So, he never learned it at home.
Is there anything where a grown man could learn basic life skills and or how to be a halfway (Id take 1/8) decent partner? Maybe if he could gain some life skills and or the ability to deal with life's demands, he would be happier, healthier in mind, body, and spirit, and in turn me and our family.
ANY suggestions besides "just get a divorce" or "put up with it bc you have for over a decade" it would be helpful. Thanks for reading my BOOK.
2024.05.19 08:00 GwenLury AITAH for Helping my "room mates" dog thrive?
A year and half ago one of my sons childhood friends was in a very difficult situation. She had two teenage children, a dog, two cats and had no where to go. I'll refer to her has Sheila. I'm “retired” while my husband says he's retired ( but never stopped) and we have grandkids; when my son was complaining about how he wished he had space for this friend ...I volunteered. We had the extra rooms for her and the kids, we also had the acreage for additional animals except for the cats. My husband is deathly allergic to cats. Regardless, I talked to my husband, and we then offered her the extra rooms for free. So long as Sheila finds someplace else for the cats. She agreed and she was very appreciative while also being honest with us. She has an autoimmune disease (JRA) and the youngest is autistic while her oldest is trans; she’s a chef at heart and we're retired so she'll take care of the meals. As she already had a job to work from home, those checks would go into savings.
We had a few weeks of near daily talks hashing out how this would work. I'll give the highpoints but these were the general rules:
Her rent is paid via meals. Her children do chores as they’re capable of doing them (cleaning their bathroom, vacuuming, dishes, keeping their room clean, and helping my husband to maintain the main lawn [which is maybe 1000sf] and help as requested with the farm.) She had 1 year to save up for a place of her own. To be rediscussed every 6 months.
We’ve had 3 discussions since, and no she doesn't have the money to move out in this economy. Most of this is due to the 3 hospitalizations through no fault of her own (and the way the economy keeps raw dogging everyone who doesn't have a 6 digit bank account)...we are fine with her and her kids being here. I managed to help the autistic one get into general Ed and he's on his way to graduating. I'm so extremely proud of him, he entered my house as creature who did everything he could to make himself small and acceptable to everyone else. Today, me and him can argue about moral ideologies in an heated manner and after the cool down still wants to sit with me while I watch my brain watch TV. Just the fact that he’s willing to be vocal is my pride in him; he's worked hard to get here and I'm so happy for him. I'll answer questions about that relationship if needed as I'm rambling.
After 3 months of Sheila being here I cook all the meals. She in effort at the start but now after a year and half, I'm do all the meals myself. In the times where I just can't my husband does. I think the last meal she put into this house was for the day after new years which was warming up left overs. Which is what's contributing to my attrition and may make the asshole.
My AITA is about her damn dog. I told Sheila not to give her dog a specific food. Bunny is now older and I just burried my baby boy at 20 years; 7 years after the vet said he'd live a month, I went psycho on his diet and kept him going happy and energetic for 7 years. Sheila has been fine in letting me control the animals diets. And I have become a but of a Nazi; there are some foods that a dog can have young that they can't have when they're older. Garlic is one of them. Bunny is now 7 years, I nevere let her have garlic. Sheila dropped some garlic pita chips into the flow tonight and called Bunny to eat them to clean it up. I screamed
It's a great Dane and Belgium Malinos mix and was 5 years old when I first met it. It's father was a Great Dane and the mother a Malnous-(I'm not spelling it right but I cannot get autocorrect to make it correct)-a bug lazy giant mixed with a hyper working dog. It's friggin neurotic. The first day I met it it jumped up into my face and broke my nose. To be honest she warned me it was a jumper and I didn't respect that warning.
I don't want to be disrespectful but...I broke that dog of jumping in a month of it being in my house. Not because I'd make it negative, but because I’d say no and crowd her her immediately and when she greeted people without jumping I'd get excited and give treats. As my son says, “It's the smartest dumb dog I've ever met.” It is extremely intelligent but...I feel bad for saying this-Sheila has only ever had cats. She doesn't give it direction or jobs beyond sleeping with her. When it doesn't have a job it is loud and destructive, giving itself guidance that it wants from Sheila.
In the first 6 months it destroyed our back yard fence every time Sheila left the property. I feel the behavior is because she's trained it to be by her side at all times. When she wasn't near, the Dog (named Bunny) didn't know what to do with herself and attacked the fence to try to find her. I've managed to get the dog contained, compliant, and sweet.....when Sheila is not around. If she wasn't so big I'd make her my own.
I know there are two sides of a story and I will try to account for Sheila’s but I am going to advocate for my side.
This dog entered my house barking, jumping, chewing, and spazzing as a puppy would but was actually 5 years old. Shiela just told me Bunny is now 8 years old. As long as Sheila is not around Bunny is calm, response, nondestructive, she has jobs in the house (specifically to chase squirrels out of the garden) until Sheila returns and then no matter what is going on Bunny will scream and cry to get close to Sheila.
Sheila works from home and it's generally fine except for the times when Sheila chooses that Bunny should be outside (arbitrarily). I have to deal with Bunny crying and screaming: Sheila is inside, Bunny is out, I think Bunny is neurotic because she knows Sheila is home and that her job is to be BY Sheila. Sheila’s response to this is to either ignore, scream at her, or give treats-but leave bunny outside while Sheila returns to work. Sheila is very talented at focusing on work regardless of what's going on out side. While Bunny is loosing her mind to get close to Sheila, Sheila doesn't doesn't notice unless I interrupt.
The whole goal of Sheila working is for her to save enough to get a house. I'm committed to this, so I've taken over Bunny during work hours which means two of three meals I feed Bunny. I've been feeding bunny for past year while Sheila works.
Today is apart of a two week vacation Sheila has taken for her oldest graduation. Sheila made food for bunny with Garlic in it. I saw it, and I told Sheila that Bunny is too old to have anything with garlic in it as Bunny is now 7 years old (70 years old in human years, they don't deal with toxins like they used to). Sheila got very upset with me and was very verbal that Bunny was not my dog and I had no voice it what bunny ate.
I feel that Sheila has only said this because I have spent so much time in the last year working with her dog, correcting Bunny to get positive behaviors. This summer Bunny has become very nervous about the new automatic sprinklera we have and I've been the one working Bunny through the fear she has darn near sun up to sun down.
Let me be clear, I'm only doing this now because Sheila simply removes bunny from the yard when the sprinklers start, while I have been sitting in the patio (that the sprinklers don't touch) and been trying to get her comfortable with them. They are new and scary for a dog-Sheila is too busy on the computer to work Bunny through her fears so I'm doing it.
When I work through the day with Bunny, by the afternoon timer that sets the sprinklers off Bunny is having a blast chasing and jumping through the sprinklers.
I'm a bit PO’d at Sheila's outrage and need to assert control over Bunny when I said the dog couldn't have garlic any more. I've shared my house for a year an half with 3 people and dog who all seem to have some sort of behavioral issues. I've exterted control where I can with Bunny to have nice days with own my home with her, her children, and her animals. But Bunny is Sheila's dog so....I don't have a voice.
Please don't placate or disparage; AITA and how do I move through this? It's not my dog, they’re not “famil”y, but I honestly want to continue to help all of them. Including Bunny. I need to find a way to get Sheila on board; she doesn't seem to have the time or patience for Bunny beyond bedtime.
P.S. knowing how reddit commentors can go: I don't argue structure or consequences in regards to her children and I've adapted as Sheila has requested. She simply doesn't have any structure for Bunny, while she enjoys the consequences my structure on Bunny.....she now seems to resent that. As it's only resently she's been putting her foot down about Bunny.
While I'm of the mindset: Bunny is her very first dog, her words, she had only had cats before hand. Sheila did pick a mixed breed but...my god did she pick an unpredictable mix. I've adapted as much as I can to help this dog find calm and connectedness. I love Bunny and I've spent so long working on her poor behaviors, editing her diet, giving her a job and a space that belongs to her inside and outside the house. I just want Bunny to live as long and happy as possible but feel if I put my foot down, I'm the asshole.
Mind the Autocorrect. I've re-read 3 times now and still find crappy misspelling and worse grammar as I've only used Reddit on mobile and make a mash of it every time I do. My apologies.
Edit: I'm sorry, I wrote this while having an argument with Sheila. Bunny is 7-8 years old per Sheila just a it ago; she's unsure of the digs age and has only guessed when talking about Bunny. Sheila said she thinks Bunny was 1 to 2 years old when she got her. My jumping in ages of 7 to 8 to 7 is just me being inaccurate as me and Sheila yell at each other and me typing In here in the lulls.
This is a very active argument. That does NOT end in be evicting them.
submitted by GwenLury to AITAH [link] [comments]
We had a few weeks of near daily talks hashing out how this would work. I'll give the highpoints but these were the general rules:
Her rent is paid via meals. Her children do chores as they’re capable of doing them (cleaning their bathroom, vacuuming, dishes, keeping their room clean, and helping my husband to maintain the main lawn [which is maybe 1000sf] and help as requested with the farm.) She had 1 year to save up for a place of her own. To be rediscussed every 6 months.
We’ve had 3 discussions since, and no she doesn't have the money to move out in this economy. Most of this is due to the 3 hospitalizations through no fault of her own (and the way the economy keeps raw dogging everyone who doesn't have a 6 digit bank account)...we are fine with her and her kids being here. I managed to help the autistic one get into general Ed and he's on his way to graduating. I'm so extremely proud of him, he entered my house as creature who did everything he could to make himself small and acceptable to everyone else. Today, me and him can argue about moral ideologies in an heated manner and after the cool down still wants to sit with me while I watch my brain watch TV. Just the fact that he’s willing to be vocal is my pride in him; he's worked hard to get here and I'm so happy for him. I'll answer questions about that relationship if needed as I'm rambling.
After 3 months of Sheila being here I cook all the meals. She in effort at the start but now after a year and half, I'm do all the meals myself. In the times where I just can't my husband does. I think the last meal she put into this house was for the day after new years which was warming up left overs. Which is what's contributing to my attrition and may make the asshole.
My AITA is about her damn dog. I told Sheila not to give her dog a specific food. Bunny is now older and I just burried my baby boy at 20 years; 7 years after the vet said he'd live a month, I went psycho on his diet and kept him going happy and energetic for 7 years. Sheila has been fine in letting me control the animals diets. And I have become a but of a Nazi; there are some foods that a dog can have young that they can't have when they're older. Garlic is one of them. Bunny is now 7 years, I nevere let her have garlic. Sheila dropped some garlic pita chips into the flow tonight and called Bunny to eat them to clean it up. I screamed
It's a great Dane and Belgium Malinos mix and was 5 years old when I first met it. It's father was a Great Dane and the mother a Malnous-(I'm not spelling it right but I cannot get autocorrect to make it correct)-a bug lazy giant mixed with a hyper working dog. It's friggin neurotic. The first day I met it it jumped up into my face and broke my nose. To be honest she warned me it was a jumper and I didn't respect that warning.
I don't want to be disrespectful but...I broke that dog of jumping in a month of it being in my house. Not because I'd make it negative, but because I’d say no and crowd her her immediately and when she greeted people without jumping I'd get excited and give treats. As my son says, “It's the smartest dumb dog I've ever met.” It is extremely intelligent but...I feel bad for saying this-Sheila has only ever had cats. She doesn't give it direction or jobs beyond sleeping with her. When it doesn't have a job it is loud and destructive, giving itself guidance that it wants from Sheila.
In the first 6 months it destroyed our back yard fence every time Sheila left the property. I feel the behavior is because she's trained it to be by her side at all times. When she wasn't near, the Dog (named Bunny) didn't know what to do with herself and attacked the fence to try to find her. I've managed to get the dog contained, compliant, and sweet.....when Sheila is not around. If she wasn't so big I'd make her my own.
I know there are two sides of a story and I will try to account for Sheila’s but I am going to advocate for my side.
This dog entered my house barking, jumping, chewing, and spazzing as a puppy would but was actually 5 years old. Shiela just told me Bunny is now 8 years old. As long as Sheila is not around Bunny is calm, response, nondestructive, she has jobs in the house (specifically to chase squirrels out of the garden) until Sheila returns and then no matter what is going on Bunny will scream and cry to get close to Sheila.
Sheila works from home and it's generally fine except for the times when Sheila chooses that Bunny should be outside (arbitrarily). I have to deal with Bunny crying and screaming: Sheila is inside, Bunny is out, I think Bunny is neurotic because she knows Sheila is home and that her job is to be BY Sheila. Sheila’s response to this is to either ignore, scream at her, or give treats-but leave bunny outside while Sheila returns to work. Sheila is very talented at focusing on work regardless of what's going on out side. While Bunny is loosing her mind to get close to Sheila, Sheila doesn't doesn't notice unless I interrupt.
The whole goal of Sheila working is for her to save enough to get a house. I'm committed to this, so I've taken over Bunny during work hours which means two of three meals I feed Bunny. I've been feeding bunny for past year while Sheila works.
Today is apart of a two week vacation Sheila has taken for her oldest graduation. Sheila made food for bunny with Garlic in it. I saw it, and I told Sheila that Bunny is too old to have anything with garlic in it as Bunny is now 7 years old (70 years old in human years, they don't deal with toxins like they used to). Sheila got very upset with me and was very verbal that Bunny was not my dog and I had no voice it what bunny ate.
I feel that Sheila has only said this because I have spent so much time in the last year working with her dog, correcting Bunny to get positive behaviors. This summer Bunny has become very nervous about the new automatic sprinklera we have and I've been the one working Bunny through the fear she has darn near sun up to sun down.
Let me be clear, I'm only doing this now because Sheila simply removes bunny from the yard when the sprinklers start, while I have been sitting in the patio (that the sprinklers don't touch) and been trying to get her comfortable with them. They are new and scary for a dog-Sheila is too busy on the computer to work Bunny through her fears so I'm doing it.
When I work through the day with Bunny, by the afternoon timer that sets the sprinklers off Bunny is having a blast chasing and jumping through the sprinklers.
I'm a bit PO’d at Sheila's outrage and need to assert control over Bunny when I said the dog couldn't have garlic any more. I've shared my house for a year an half with 3 people and dog who all seem to have some sort of behavioral issues. I've exterted control where I can with Bunny to have nice days with own my home with her, her children, and her animals. But Bunny is Sheila's dog so....I don't have a voice.
Please don't placate or disparage; AITA and how do I move through this? It's not my dog, they’re not “famil”y, but I honestly want to continue to help all of them. Including Bunny. I need to find a way to get Sheila on board; she doesn't seem to have the time or patience for Bunny beyond bedtime.
P.S. knowing how reddit commentors can go: I don't argue structure or consequences in regards to her children and I've adapted as Sheila has requested. She simply doesn't have any structure for Bunny, while she enjoys the consequences my structure on Bunny.....she now seems to resent that. As it's only resently she's been putting her foot down about Bunny.
While I'm of the mindset: Bunny is her very first dog, her words, she had only had cats before hand. Sheila did pick a mixed breed but...my god did she pick an unpredictable mix. I've adapted as much as I can to help this dog find calm and connectedness. I love Bunny and I've spent so long working on her poor behaviors, editing her diet, giving her a job and a space that belongs to her inside and outside the house. I just want Bunny to live as long and happy as possible but feel if I put my foot down, I'm the asshole.
Mind the Autocorrect. I've re-read 3 times now and still find crappy misspelling and worse grammar as I've only used Reddit on mobile and make a mash of it every time I do. My apologies.
Edit: I'm sorry, I wrote this while having an argument with Sheila. Bunny is 7-8 years old per Sheila just a it ago; she's unsure of the digs age and has only guessed when talking about Bunny. Sheila said she thinks Bunny was 1 to 2 years old when she got her. My jumping in ages of 7 to 8 to 7 is just me being inaccurate as me and Sheila yell at each other and me typing In here in the lulls.
This is a very active argument. That does NOT end in be evicting them.
2024.05.19 08:00 EJC28 Chargers 2024 Draft Analysis Compilation
Round 1, Pick 5 - Joe Alt, OT, Notre Dame:
NFL: Head coach Jim Harbaugh is set on building an offensive bully and that starts with the offensive line. Alt comes in as a polished tackle who’ll step in and immediately boost the unit and protect Justin Herbert.
CBS Sports: B. He is the best in this class, but now he has to make the transition to right tackle for Jim Harbaugh. That can be tough to do. But taking a lineman makes sense, I just might have taken J.C. Latham as a better fit.
ESPN: Chargers general manager Joe Hortiz said they would stick to the process of picking the best player available, a strategy he learned from 26 years in the Baltimore Ravens personnel department that won him two Super Bowls. Selecting Alt on Thursday night supports this theory. The Chargers currently employ only four receivers -- none of whom has a season over 800 yards in the NFL -- and passed on taking the second-best receiver in the class. The Chargers are returning four of their five offensive line starters from last season and signed center Bradley Bozeman in free agency, but stuck to their strategy despite much bigger needs on the roster.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: His Skyrim character is Thad: The High King of Skyrim.
Round 2, Pick 34 - Ladd McConkey, WR, Georgia:
NFL: Our second pick, second receiver and first trade of the night. The Patriots slide back a few spots, and the Chargers get a receiver who should be thrust right into the mix. Although McConkey had injury issues at Georgia, if he's able to stay healthy, he could be Justin Herbert's favorite target in due time. With great route-running skills and impressive separation ability, McConkey could be an 80-catch player one day.
CBS Sports: A. Crafty, athletic, polished WR who can win on the boundary and in the slot. Releases are great. Route-running nuance also there. Deceptive speed and YAC skills.
ESPN: After trading Keenan Allen and releasing Mike Williams, the Chargers came into the draft with just four receivers on the roster. None among that receiving group of Joshua Palmer, Quentin Johnston, Derius Davis and Simi Fehoko had ever topped 800 yards in an NFL season. Since Herbert entered the league in 2020, he has always had a coterie of reliable pass-catchers, including players like running back Austin Ekeler and tight end Gerald Everett, who both left in free agency. McConkey, the Chargers hope, gives Herbert another player he can count on in the passing offense after many key departures.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Cannot stand The Office save for Scott’s Tots.
Round 3, Pick 69 - Junior Colson, LB, Michigan:
NFL: If there was one player I would have bet would follow Jim Harbaugh to the Chargers, it would have been Mike Sainristil or Colson. The latter was the emotional heartbeat of a championship Michigan defense, as Colson is a full-tilt competitor who brings his all to every game and every practice. He's a tackling machine whose coverage limitations were likely what caused him to fall out of the top 50 picks.
CBS Sports: B. Ties to Jim Harbaugh and addresses a need at off-ball LB. Best tackling linebacker in the class by a wide margin. Flashed some coverage chops in 2023 but not a speciality. I didn’t see premier range or speed to the football. Beats blocks with decent regularly and ball skills must show up more in NFL. Very young.
ESPN: This was a position of need for the Chargers and Colson, who was a second-team Big Ten selection and led the team with 95 tackles last season, will bring necessary competition to a mostly unproven group. Both of the Chargers' starting outside linebackers in 2023 won't be back next season, as Kenneth Murray Jr. signed with the Tennessee Titans in free agency and Eric Kendricks was released in March. Linebackers Daiyan Henley (51 defensive snaps in 2023) and Nick Niemann (238 defensive snaps in 2023) are the Chargers' lone returning linebackers from last season, but they also signed Denzel Perryman and Troy Dye.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: We all know what pick this is so make with the ‘nice’ jokes.
Round 4, Pick 105 - Justin Eboigbe, DT, Alabama:
NFL: Jim Harbaugh keeps beefing up both fronts. Eboigbe played well in Bama's Rose Bowl loss to Harbaugh's Wolverines, so this pick isn't a shock. The Chargers are adding toughness in Eboigbe, assuming his health improves. He had a breakout season in 2023.
CBS Sports: C+. Classic Nick Saban defensive lineman. Two-gapping extraordinaire with thick, powerful frame. Good first-step quickness but won’t be a calling card to win as a pass rusher consistently in the NFL. Not a pass-rush move type. Higher floor than upside. Limited role.
ESPN: The Chargers begin Day 3 by filling another of the team's most significant needs. L.A. is set at outside linebacker on their defensive line with Khalil Mack, Joey Bosa and Tuli Tuipulotu, but they are largely unproven in the interior. Some of the Chargers' best interior defenders from last season, defensive tackle Sebastian Joseph-Day and defensive tackle Austin Johnson, won't be back in 2024. Eboigbe, 6-foot-4, 275 pounds, was a first-team All-SEC selection last season, finishing with a caterer-high seven sacks.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Has been known to run around banging coconuts together simulating a horse.
Round 5, Pick 137 - Tarheeb Still, CB, Maryland:
NFL: The first tape I watched of Still, coincidentally, was against Michigan -- and he looked good. Jim Harbaugh clearly agreed, although Still's lack of elite speed or size might make him more of a candidate to kick inside as a nickel.
CBS Sports: C+. Chippy, fluid CB who wants to come up and hit people. Super-smooth hips. Doesn’t have the length or pure speed to be lockdown type but gets the most out of his athletic skill set. Won’t follow routes perfectly at the next level. Can be too grabby in man. Infectious energy on the field. Just lacks premier traits.
ESPN: The Chargers' pass defense was abysmal last season, allowing 249.6 yards per game, which ranked 30th in the NFL. So they had to address their secondary in the draft. Still, who is 6-foot and 189 pounds, ran a 4.52 in the 40-yard dash at the combine and finished with five interceptions last season, which tied for sixth in the FBS. He has lined up primarily outside (77% of his snaps came from out wide), but he can also play in the slot.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: His favorite operating system is Windows XP.
Round 5, Pick 140 - Cam Hart, CB, Notre Dame:
NFL: The Chargers double up on long DBs to help combat the AFC West's playmakers. Hart has a strong athletic profile, and he has the perfect makeup to be a special teams coverage standout as well.
CBS Sports: B-. Old-school, long outside CB. Huge with extreme length. Moves well for his size but probably won’t be able to stay with quick separators in the NFL on a regular basis. Last-resort grabbing gets him into trouble during the route. Speed is average and didn’t make many plays on the ball but not tested often. Maybe move to safety?
ESPN: Cornerback is the first position where the Chargers have drafted multiple players so far, proving that the group was one Hortiz knew needed improvement and competition. Cornerback may also be Hortiz's favorite position. He told reporters that he "never feels full at corner. That is a position that you never stop chasing," he said. The Chargers now have six cornerbacks on the active roster, including the 6-3, 202-pound Hart.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Takes three to five business days to reply to an email.
Round 6, Pick 181 - Kimani Vidal, RB, Troy:
NFL: I'm a bit surprised the Chargers didn't take a back before this, but Vidal has a chance to join the RB rotation for Jim Harbaugh. Vidal's profile reads similarly to Blake Corum, so it's easy to see why Harbaugh might view him favorably.
CBS Sports: A. This is a future feature back. Stocky, well-built frame. Between the tackles experience and can blend slashing and multi-cut style together. Elusive, sets up blockers well and has effortless power through contact at times. Not a true burner.
ESPN: Since the Jim Harbaugh era began in February, the theme for the Chargers has been on running the football. Vidal gives them depth at a position that will be one of the most important on the team. Considering the talent in the Chargers' running back room, which includes J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards, Vidal likely projects to be mainly a special teams contributor in his first year. Vidal set the Troy career (4,010), single-season (1,661), and single-game (248) rushing records, and his great-uncle is Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Spreads his love of Frito Pie eaten out of the little bag, like God intended.
Round 7, Pick 225 - Brenden Rice, WR, USC:
NFL: Jerry Rice's son and Caleb Williams' go-to guy figured to go a few rounds higher than this, but it's possible scouts felt there was more development needed in his game. With the Chargers, there are WR jobs open for Rice to make the roster early on.
CBS Sports: B+. Downfield specimen with quality size. Didn’t test amazingly but was a vertical weapon for Caleb Williams at USC. Stiff routes and only glimmers of YAC but has the power to run through some tackles. Fun fit with Justin Herbert. Son of NFL legend Jerry Rice.
ESPN: Only four receivers were on the Chargers roster before the draft, so drafting a second receiver seemed inevitable. Rice, 6-3, 208 pounds, is the son of Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice. He played his final two seasons for the Trojans, where he was the primary deep target for No. 1 pick Caleb Williams. Rice led the team with a 14.6 air yards per target average in 2023, and 7 of his 12 TD receptions were on vertical routes -- tied for the sixth-most in the FBS.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: After adjusting the other picks & removing outliers he regresses to 1st overall.
Round 7, Pick 253 - Cornelius Johnson, WR, Michigan:
NFL: Another Michigan player for Jim Harbaugh. Johnson rarely was featured in Michigan's run-heavy system, but he made his mark as a blocker and occasional big-play receiver. His hands are inconsistent, but Johnson could find footing in L.A.
CBS Sports: C+. Sizable receiver who can deceive CBs with his long-striding speed when given a runaway. Inflexible movements will keep him from getting open on regular basis or winning against press. Ball skills are good in traffic.
ESPN: The more, the merrier in the Chargers receiving room. Johnson is their third pick at receiver, and for good reason. Johnson is also a familiar face, playing under Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan and the many other Michigan coaches on the Chargers staff. Johnson, 6-foot-3, 212 pounds, was a four-year starter at receiver and had 119 receptions since the start of 2021, the sixth most in the Big Ten. Johnson mainly played out wide in his career, with 84% of his snaps over the last three seasons coming lined up on the outside.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Upset with the rising price of cheese and cheese related goods.
submitted by EJC28 to Chargers [link] [comments]
NFL: Head coach Jim Harbaugh is set on building an offensive bully and that starts with the offensive line. Alt comes in as a polished tackle who’ll step in and immediately boost the unit and protect Justin Herbert.
CBS Sports: B. He is the best in this class, but now he has to make the transition to right tackle for Jim Harbaugh. That can be tough to do. But taking a lineman makes sense, I just might have taken J.C. Latham as a better fit.
ESPN: Chargers general manager Joe Hortiz said they would stick to the process of picking the best player available, a strategy he learned from 26 years in the Baltimore Ravens personnel department that won him two Super Bowls. Selecting Alt on Thursday night supports this theory. The Chargers currently employ only four receivers -- none of whom has a season over 800 yards in the NFL -- and passed on taking the second-best receiver in the class. The Chargers are returning four of their five offensive line starters from last season and signed center Bradley Bozeman in free agency, but stuck to their strategy despite much bigger needs on the roster.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: His Skyrim character is Thad: The High King of Skyrim.
Round 2, Pick 34 - Ladd McConkey, WR, Georgia:
NFL: Our second pick, second receiver and first trade of the night. The Patriots slide back a few spots, and the Chargers get a receiver who should be thrust right into the mix. Although McConkey had injury issues at Georgia, if he's able to stay healthy, he could be Justin Herbert's favorite target in due time. With great route-running skills and impressive separation ability, McConkey could be an 80-catch player one day.
CBS Sports: A. Crafty, athletic, polished WR who can win on the boundary and in the slot. Releases are great. Route-running nuance also there. Deceptive speed and YAC skills.
ESPN: After trading Keenan Allen and releasing Mike Williams, the Chargers came into the draft with just four receivers on the roster. None among that receiving group of Joshua Palmer, Quentin Johnston, Derius Davis and Simi Fehoko had ever topped 800 yards in an NFL season. Since Herbert entered the league in 2020, he has always had a coterie of reliable pass-catchers, including players like running back Austin Ekeler and tight end Gerald Everett, who both left in free agency. McConkey, the Chargers hope, gives Herbert another player he can count on in the passing offense after many key departures.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Cannot stand The Office save for Scott’s Tots.
Round 3, Pick 69 - Junior Colson, LB, Michigan:
NFL: If there was one player I would have bet would follow Jim Harbaugh to the Chargers, it would have been Mike Sainristil or Colson. The latter was the emotional heartbeat of a championship Michigan defense, as Colson is a full-tilt competitor who brings his all to every game and every practice. He's a tackling machine whose coverage limitations were likely what caused him to fall out of the top 50 picks.
CBS Sports: B. Ties to Jim Harbaugh and addresses a need at off-ball LB. Best tackling linebacker in the class by a wide margin. Flashed some coverage chops in 2023 but not a speciality. I didn’t see premier range or speed to the football. Beats blocks with decent regularly and ball skills must show up more in NFL. Very young.
ESPN: This was a position of need for the Chargers and Colson, who was a second-team Big Ten selection and led the team with 95 tackles last season, will bring necessary competition to a mostly unproven group. Both of the Chargers' starting outside linebackers in 2023 won't be back next season, as Kenneth Murray Jr. signed with the Tennessee Titans in free agency and Eric Kendricks was released in March. Linebackers Daiyan Henley (51 defensive snaps in 2023) and Nick Niemann (238 defensive snaps in 2023) are the Chargers' lone returning linebackers from last season, but they also signed Denzel Perryman and Troy Dye.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: We all know what pick this is so make with the ‘nice’ jokes.
Round 4, Pick 105 - Justin Eboigbe, DT, Alabama:
NFL: Jim Harbaugh keeps beefing up both fronts. Eboigbe played well in Bama's Rose Bowl loss to Harbaugh's Wolverines, so this pick isn't a shock. The Chargers are adding toughness in Eboigbe, assuming his health improves. He had a breakout season in 2023.
CBS Sports: C+. Classic Nick Saban defensive lineman. Two-gapping extraordinaire with thick, powerful frame. Good first-step quickness but won’t be a calling card to win as a pass rusher consistently in the NFL. Not a pass-rush move type. Higher floor than upside. Limited role.
ESPN: The Chargers begin Day 3 by filling another of the team's most significant needs. L.A. is set at outside linebacker on their defensive line with Khalil Mack, Joey Bosa and Tuli Tuipulotu, but they are largely unproven in the interior. Some of the Chargers' best interior defenders from last season, defensive tackle Sebastian Joseph-Day and defensive tackle Austin Johnson, won't be back in 2024. Eboigbe, 6-foot-4, 275 pounds, was a first-team All-SEC selection last season, finishing with a caterer-high seven sacks.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Has been known to run around banging coconuts together simulating a horse.
Round 5, Pick 137 - Tarheeb Still, CB, Maryland:
NFL: The first tape I watched of Still, coincidentally, was against Michigan -- and he looked good. Jim Harbaugh clearly agreed, although Still's lack of elite speed or size might make him more of a candidate to kick inside as a nickel.
CBS Sports: C+. Chippy, fluid CB who wants to come up and hit people. Super-smooth hips. Doesn’t have the length or pure speed to be lockdown type but gets the most out of his athletic skill set. Won’t follow routes perfectly at the next level. Can be too grabby in man. Infectious energy on the field. Just lacks premier traits.
ESPN: The Chargers' pass defense was abysmal last season, allowing 249.6 yards per game, which ranked 30th in the NFL. So they had to address their secondary in the draft. Still, who is 6-foot and 189 pounds, ran a 4.52 in the 40-yard dash at the combine and finished with five interceptions last season, which tied for sixth in the FBS. He has lined up primarily outside (77% of his snaps came from out wide), but he can also play in the slot.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: His favorite operating system is Windows XP.
Round 5, Pick 140 - Cam Hart, CB, Notre Dame:
NFL: The Chargers double up on long DBs to help combat the AFC West's playmakers. Hart has a strong athletic profile, and he has the perfect makeup to be a special teams coverage standout as well.
CBS Sports: B-. Old-school, long outside CB. Huge with extreme length. Moves well for his size but probably won’t be able to stay with quick separators in the NFL on a regular basis. Last-resort grabbing gets him into trouble during the route. Speed is average and didn’t make many plays on the ball but not tested often. Maybe move to safety?
ESPN: Cornerback is the first position where the Chargers have drafted multiple players so far, proving that the group was one Hortiz knew needed improvement and competition. Cornerback may also be Hortiz's favorite position. He told reporters that he "never feels full at corner. That is a position that you never stop chasing," he said. The Chargers now have six cornerbacks on the active roster, including the 6-3, 202-pound Hart.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Takes three to five business days to reply to an email.
Round 6, Pick 181 - Kimani Vidal, RB, Troy:
NFL: I'm a bit surprised the Chargers didn't take a back before this, but Vidal has a chance to join the RB rotation for Jim Harbaugh. Vidal's profile reads similarly to Blake Corum, so it's easy to see why Harbaugh might view him favorably.
CBS Sports: A. This is a future feature back. Stocky, well-built frame. Between the tackles experience and can blend slashing and multi-cut style together. Elusive, sets up blockers well and has effortless power through contact at times. Not a true burner.
ESPN: Since the Jim Harbaugh era began in February, the theme for the Chargers has been on running the football. Vidal gives them depth at a position that will be one of the most important on the team. Considering the talent in the Chargers' running back room, which includes J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards, Vidal likely projects to be mainly a special teams contributor in his first year. Vidal set the Troy career (4,010), single-season (1,661), and single-game (248) rushing records, and his great-uncle is Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Spreads his love of Frito Pie eaten out of the little bag, like God intended.
Round 7, Pick 225 - Brenden Rice, WR, USC:
NFL: Jerry Rice's son and Caleb Williams' go-to guy figured to go a few rounds higher than this, but it's possible scouts felt there was more development needed in his game. With the Chargers, there are WR jobs open for Rice to make the roster early on.
CBS Sports: B+. Downfield specimen with quality size. Didn’t test amazingly but was a vertical weapon for Caleb Williams at USC. Stiff routes and only glimmers of YAC but has the power to run through some tackles. Fun fit with Justin Herbert. Son of NFL legend Jerry Rice.
ESPN: Only four receivers were on the Chargers roster before the draft, so drafting a second receiver seemed inevitable. Rice, 6-3, 208 pounds, is the son of Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice. He played his final two seasons for the Trojans, where he was the primary deep target for No. 1 pick Caleb Williams. Rice led the team with a 14.6 air yards per target average in 2023, and 7 of his 12 TD receptions were on vertical routes -- tied for the sixth-most in the FBS.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: After adjusting the other picks & removing outliers he regresses to 1st overall.
Round 7, Pick 253 - Cornelius Johnson, WR, Michigan:
NFL: Another Michigan player for Jim Harbaugh. Johnson rarely was featured in Michigan's run-heavy system, but he made his mark as a blocker and occasional big-play receiver. His hands are inconsistent, but Johnson could find footing in L.A.
CBS Sports: C+. Sizable receiver who can deceive CBs with his long-striding speed when given a runaway. Inflexible movements will keep him from getting open on regular basis or winning against press. Ball skills are good in traffic.
ESPN: The more, the merrier in the Chargers receiving room. Johnson is their third pick at receiver, and for good reason. Johnson is also a familiar face, playing under Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan and the many other Michigan coaches on the Chargers staff. Johnson, 6-foot-3, 212 pounds, was a four-year starter at receiver and had 119 receptions since the start of 2021, the sixth most in the Big Ten. Johnson mainly played out wide in his career, with 84% of his snaps over the last three seasons coming lined up on the outside.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Upset with the rising price of cheese and cheese related goods.
2024.05.19 08:00 OkBig54 I fear that I may have fatal insomnia, but…
This is kinda long so
TL;DR: I developed derealization in November, and since it has made me hallucinate, delusional at times, disassociate from reality, paranoid, made me sometimes forget how to do simple tasks, draw blanks when having a conversation, and overall making me feel like there’s something not right neurologically. Last night I did not feel tired, even thought it was late at night, and a thought came to mind that I was developing fatal insomnia. Fatal insomnia doesn’t start with sleeplessness, it starts with symptoms like the ones I had prior. I’m terrified, and I can’t get medical attention rn. Help.
Alright, here we go. (Keep in mind that I have posted here before, just on another account)
Last night I was not tired at all. I already have the conventional insomnia, but most of the time I still felt tired, with an unquenchable desire to sleep, just not being able to. However, last night, I was completely tireless, but I still wanted to sleep, no longer because I was tired, but because I should have been asleep at the time. Eventually I just closed my eyes for a few minutes and I was asleep. Months before that, on the night of November 18, 2023, I closed my eyes to sleep, when I saw a green orb on the side of my vision. It moved almost like it was alive, and then left my field of view. I opened my eyes to a world that felt a lot more fabricated than before, physically. I felt realization before in those small doses that everyone has once in a while. But this time, it was here to stay. The next day, everything felt unreal, and the it was terrifying. Thankfully, if I stopped thinking about it and distracted myself, I would feel better. Two months later, it got worse. Things started feeling really blurry, and any artificial light (especially at night) looked saturated and was almost painful to look at. I began to not recognize everyday things, like my own face, and it would almost scare me. I would be in a constant state of paranoia. My (regular) insomnia, that I had prior, got to me, and I would wake up in the middle of the night, completely delusional, believing I’m a different person. I thought I was a soldier in war, and a character in an FPS game, and some more that I forgot. After a few minutes though at most, I would slap some sense into myself. I started hallucinating too, seeing dark figures, glowing dots, and faces. It only got worse, so awful that the only place I felt I were in, were my thoughts, which were often negative at this point. I don’t know what would warrant such a state of mind; My life has been going relatively well, so there would be no reason for me to go into derealization. I started feeling dizzy often, My head sometimes hurt, and starting last month, I noticed what I can only assume to be a cognitive decline. I’ve always been a little half witted, Having a bad memory and learning things very slowly, but my communication skills were getting worse as I was struggling to find words in conversations. I also started messing up on routine things, often because I was overthinking them. My delusions were slipping into daytime too, where my derealization would disassociate me from the world so much that I would believe I was somewhere else doing something else, but the duration of this would be a fraction of a second. Oddly enough, I don’t seem to develop ataxia. This ties into fatal insomnia considering that the condition often doesn’t start with the lack of sleep, but a mental decline, not necessarily a severe one (I’m not an expert obviously) And up until last night, I may have been in that stage. This is the start of the insomnia, I’m scared. The youngest person to die from sporadic fatal insomnia was the same age I am (16) I would drive to a doctor, but my parents aren’t allowing me to get a drivers license until i’m 18. I also cannot convince my parents to take me to the doctors because it’s a “waste of their time.” At this point the only thing I can do is exaggerate the symptoms now. As of typing this I don’t even feel like I truly am. I just feel like a jumble of thoughts watching something moving.
submitted by OkBig54 to insomnia [link] [comments]
TL;DR: I developed derealization in November, and since it has made me hallucinate, delusional at times, disassociate from reality, paranoid, made me sometimes forget how to do simple tasks, draw blanks when having a conversation, and overall making me feel like there’s something not right neurologically. Last night I did not feel tired, even thought it was late at night, and a thought came to mind that I was developing fatal insomnia. Fatal insomnia doesn’t start with sleeplessness, it starts with symptoms like the ones I had prior. I’m terrified, and I can’t get medical attention rn. Help.
Alright, here we go. (Keep in mind that I have posted here before, just on another account)
Last night I was not tired at all. I already have the conventional insomnia, but most of the time I still felt tired, with an unquenchable desire to sleep, just not being able to. However, last night, I was completely tireless, but I still wanted to sleep, no longer because I was tired, but because I should have been asleep at the time. Eventually I just closed my eyes for a few minutes and I was asleep. Months before that, on the night of November 18, 2023, I closed my eyes to sleep, when I saw a green orb on the side of my vision. It moved almost like it was alive, and then left my field of view. I opened my eyes to a world that felt a lot more fabricated than before, physically. I felt realization before in those small doses that everyone has once in a while. But this time, it was here to stay. The next day, everything felt unreal, and the it was terrifying. Thankfully, if I stopped thinking about it and distracted myself, I would feel better. Two months later, it got worse. Things started feeling really blurry, and any artificial light (especially at night) looked saturated and was almost painful to look at. I began to not recognize everyday things, like my own face, and it would almost scare me. I would be in a constant state of paranoia. My (regular) insomnia, that I had prior, got to me, and I would wake up in the middle of the night, completely delusional, believing I’m a different person. I thought I was a soldier in war, and a character in an FPS game, and some more that I forgot. After a few minutes though at most, I would slap some sense into myself. I started hallucinating too, seeing dark figures, glowing dots, and faces. It only got worse, so awful that the only place I felt I were in, were my thoughts, which were often negative at this point. I don’t know what would warrant such a state of mind; My life has been going relatively well, so there would be no reason for me to go into derealization. I started feeling dizzy often, My head sometimes hurt, and starting last month, I noticed what I can only assume to be a cognitive decline. I’ve always been a little half witted, Having a bad memory and learning things very slowly, but my communication skills were getting worse as I was struggling to find words in conversations. I also started messing up on routine things, often because I was overthinking them. My delusions were slipping into daytime too, where my derealization would disassociate me from the world so much that I would believe I was somewhere else doing something else, but the duration of this would be a fraction of a second. Oddly enough, I don’t seem to develop ataxia. This ties into fatal insomnia considering that the condition often doesn’t start with the lack of sleep, but a mental decline, not necessarily a severe one (I’m not an expert obviously) And up until last night, I may have been in that stage. This is the start of the insomnia, I’m scared. The youngest person to die from sporadic fatal insomnia was the same age I am (16) I would drive to a doctor, but my parents aren’t allowing me to get a drivers license until i’m 18. I also cannot convince my parents to take me to the doctors because it’s a “waste of their time.” At this point the only thing I can do is exaggerate the symptoms now. As of typing this I don’t even feel like I truly am. I just feel like a jumble of thoughts watching something moving.
2024.05.19 07:57 pink8340 did i ghost her or did it just end naturally????
So, I met this girl briefly at a show in March and she was so beautiful and then I saw her again like 3 weeks later at a dj set and we made out and she gave me her insta and told me to text her when we were sober. we run into each other the next day at another show but i lowkey ran away 😭😭😭 i was super drunk and by myself and she was with friends anyway. she texts me after being like “i was looking for you where did u go?” so i invite her on an actual coffee date. we meet up at like 4 at the coffee shop, end up walking all around town, going back to my apartment to roll a joint, getting munchies, and our first date ended at 12am it was so cute. then she went out of town for the week and then i went out of town for the weekend and then when we finally were both in town again i invite her to dinner. at this point, i start going through a life crisis. i realized my best friend/roommate was lowkey abusing me, turned all our friends against me, needed to move outdesperately. i’m also failing my classes, i’m starting to realize that maybe i need to move back home. i’m having a really really hard time with my mental illness and everything was just a lot at the same time. it was really hard to go on that date with her. even though she’s amazing and we have sm chemistry. i cant be confident and i don’t feel like myself and i think it was too much to develop feelings for someone while my life was falling apart. anyway, the date goes really well despite my turmoil and i tell her i will reach out to her after the weekend because my mom was going to be in town to help me move. my mom ends up staying for 2 weeks because of my mental health crisis. i considered just going back home with her. but i decided to stay. it’s been about 3 weeks since all of that. i haven’t texted her, she hasn’t texted me. but i feel like i’m responsible bc i told her i would text her??? should i text her before i leave forever??? idk what this meaaaaaannnnsssss
submitted by pink8340 to LesbianActually [link] [comments]
2024.05.19 07:57 codingsoft How the Show Ended Tonight
 | An hour and a half into the show (with only like 1-2 songs left), wind flew around everywhere, and it ended up getting like 4 times worse than this video. After finishing the song Jack said they were abruptly getting kicked off stage since it wasn’t safe to play up there (there were a couple songs where you could see the dust blowing around onstage). Last words he said were “I’m sorry guys” and that was it, crew came in and started taking everything down. submitted by codingsoft to bleachers [link] [comments] Ending aside, the show was still great! Jack is great at working a crowd a hyping everyone up, everyone going to the later tour dates are going to experience something special. |
2024.05.19 07:56 trumparegis The anti-Fun Pak cult must be stopped!
Kirby's Fun Pak is the most hated Kirby game at this point. People don't want to understand that opinions exist and act like thinking that KFP is the best Kirby game or better than the remake is a sin. Every review screams how bad it is and how "it's archaic", usually praising the "P E R F E C T" modern Kirby games or KDL3/K64 for being "better". People who like Mouse Attack are more respected here than any KFP fan and KSSU being "better" is treated like God's words.
It got to the point where because of a bunch of reviewers like AntDude trashing KFP literally almost NOBODY is allowed to say it's the best game in the franchise. People say that PINBALL LAND is the best game of the franchise and everyone is fine with that, but because of reviewers saying "nonono, this game is overrated!" people have started repeating THEIR opinions instead to the point of absurdity! Even really popular people in the fandom, like PaintraSeaPea, said things like "you can like KFP more all you want, but it's just nostalgia", acting like it's not a valid opinion and that if you even DARE to like KFP, you're just blinded with nostalgia!
KFP is treated like the only game in the franchise you shouldn't play, it's treated like Kirby's Toy Box for Satellaview or the Kirby Right Back At 'Ya Picture Puzzle flash game, there's almost no people who even accept it as a game at this point.
submitted by trumparegis to Kirby [link] [comments]
It got to the point where because of a bunch of reviewers like AntDude trashing KFP literally almost NOBODY is allowed to say it's the best game in the franchise. People say that PINBALL LAND is the best game of the franchise and everyone is fine with that, but because of reviewers saying "nonono, this game is overrated!" people have started repeating THEIR opinions instead to the point of absurdity! Even really popular people in the fandom, like PaintraSeaPea, said things like "you can like KFP more all you want, but it's just nostalgia", acting like it's not a valid opinion and that if you even DARE to like KFP, you're just blinded with nostalgia!
KFP is treated like the only game in the franchise you shouldn't play, it's treated like Kirby's Toy Box for Satellaview or the Kirby Right Back At 'Ya Picture Puzzle flash game, there's almost no people who even accept it as a game at this point.
2024.05.19 07:56 ANGRY_CENT_MAIN The Last Flash in the Night
The shuttle rocked in the rain as it approached the surface. The last bastion. The place where she awaited
You heard stories. Hell, youd been present for some, seen things that would have broken any mortals mind as it had done so many others. And while you were just a mere mortal you endured for one reason.
Love.
How ironic that they decided it must be you to take her life
"Entered through the atmosphere, we seem to be undetected" the pilot lies, you know your night and know that she probably saw you enter the system "ETA 1 hour to drop point" you don't dignify him with a response, you've barely talked to anyone sense the order
Your wargear clatters as the shuttle shakes in the wind. Special gear, that of an elite assassin, second probably only to hers in stealth and lethality. Dozens of blades and poisons so toxic you were told to leave any of the adamantite shells after an hour on the planet. Your every move planned and thought out for weeks
None of it would matter. She told you herself how this would end. Your blade, her body. How there would be no fight even if she wanted to
You recall that day, it was in all honesty the most stable you had seen her ever. It was twilight, she refused to go out in the day, the two of you were sitting on a balcony. The two of you were sewing
Purple cloth lay in your lap. Golden thread hanging from your needle. You looked over at a curse, seeing her struggle to thread her needle
"Here, let me help" you gently rech over and guide her ever shakey hands through the eye. A brief smile, almost resembling a predator baring their teeth "thank you" she whispers "what would I do without you" she leans onto your shoulder, hands working on her project
"It doesn't matter love" you wrap your arm around her, surprisingly she accepts. "I'm not going anywhere, no matter what you see"
"I saw you leaving so many times" she starts to tremble as tears form in the corners of her eyes "so many have turned away from me. Even my sisters" she grabs tightly to your arm as she quietly sobs
You hold reach over and pat her back as she sobs into you "Sanguinia doesn't. Remember when she took you out to try that wine?" You reminder her
"I didn't like any of them, I finished the tasting in minutes and ruined the whole thing" the words come in between the sobs
"And then she took you around untill she sound something you liked, remember what it was?" You reach into your bag and produce a flask, uncorking it and waving it around the sobbing slows as she looks up through her fallen hair
You gently move your arm and she pushes into you. Taking the flask you hold it to her lips "what did you find out that day?" You hold the flask away, waiting for her answer
"That I liked hot chocolate" she mumbles as you reward her with the sugary treat, you feel her start to relax as you keep giving her sips
"That's right. And your sister found that out, one that didn't leave you" you say. Getting only a unidentifiable mumble in response "and ill always have some ready for you, I promise" feeling her tense up at your words
"Did I ever tell you about promises on my home world?" You cut off whatever she was about to say "back home they used to say that there were spirits that lived on promises. And that when you made one you made them happy, and as long as you kept their promise they'd help you in little ways." Between the chocolate and story she remains quiet
"And they'd say the bigger promise you made that the more they'd help you. Maybe only once, but you would know that they did" finishing your story "and I promise to you. I will be there for you. And I will have some ready for you" she sighs and takes the flask from your hands. Turning away from you she drinks it at her own pace.
Knowing she needs to process you return to your work. Finishing the last few stitches before turning "Kassandra" seeing her turn, drawing her needle with her teeth "I've got this for you" you hold up a simple scarf, made for someone of her size
She let's you wrap it around her neck, as you explain "I know it's cold sometimes when you go out in the night. And I know you get cold often so I figured I'd make this to keep you warm" taking the end of the scarf in her hands she sees a small golden heart with your initials in it "and that's so you remember who's waiting at home for you" you say with a kiss on her check
She doesn't move for a few minutes, before offering a simple shirt, one made of cloth and not flesh. "I made this after the last one" she mumbles out, her hair hiding most of her face "I know you didn't like it much"
Brushing the hair out of her glowing purple eyes you accept the shirt lovingly, before swapping your shirt out for it, it fits perfectly "I love it dear" you look into her eyes as she ducks her head
A faint smile visible
"DROP IN 10 SECONDS" the pilots voice snaps you out of your memories as you check and make sure everything is in place
"GO FOR DROP" the voice roars our over the engines as you jump from the shuttle. Grav shoot kicking in as you aproch the ground, landing in the courtyard. Looking back as the shuttle flys off, you steel yourself and approach the doors
They open as you approach, leading you into the hall where she sits at the end. "I knew they'd send you" her voice comes with a tone of a dead woman walking "the only one I couldn't bring myself to hurt" you see angry red lines all over her body as you approach
"Did they tell you what I did? How I ripped apart Regalia? How mich flesh I flensed from her?" Her voice rises in anger st the memory
You reach her as she looks up at you. A woman with nothing left "do it" she spits, directed at the ones who sent you here "kill me and be done with it" she looks down, not able to meet your eyes "please just make it quick" you faintly make out
Your heart weaps as your dagger raises, you look down upon your love. She doesn't move, resigned to her fate. Her hair flowing down covering her face "im sorry" you whisper as your arm falls forward...
You catch a flash of purple and gold between strands of her hair
Your dagger plunges into your chest. Right through the camera that you wore, a scream comes from Kassandra as she rushes to catch your falling body "no, no, no ,No" she repeats over and over, "I was the one to die not you" she starts desperately trying to stop the bleeding but has no knowledge
"You did die here" no pain in your voice, forced back for her sake "that's what they'll belive" you cough, blood splattering on your chest, your armor pried off by her hands to reveal the shirt she made for you and...
"Is that..." a sob breaks her sentence. Seeing the flask you always wore steaming in the cool air "I made a promise didn't I?" You grin turning into a wince as pain shoots through you "you know how promises are" you take the flask reach up, determind to have her drink
Only for your limbs to disobey you, the flask falling to the floor
Check out my other works here
submitted by ANGRY_CENT_MAIN to PrimarchGFs [link] [comments]
You heard stories. Hell, youd been present for some, seen things that would have broken any mortals mind as it had done so many others. And while you were just a mere mortal you endured for one reason.
Love.
How ironic that they decided it must be you to take her life
"Entered through the atmosphere, we seem to be undetected" the pilot lies, you know your night and know that she probably saw you enter the system "ETA 1 hour to drop point" you don't dignify him with a response, you've barely talked to anyone sense the order
Your wargear clatters as the shuttle shakes in the wind. Special gear, that of an elite assassin, second probably only to hers in stealth and lethality. Dozens of blades and poisons so toxic you were told to leave any of the adamantite shells after an hour on the planet. Your every move planned and thought out for weeks
None of it would matter. She told you herself how this would end. Your blade, her body. How there would be no fight even if she wanted to
You recall that day, it was in all honesty the most stable you had seen her ever. It was twilight, she refused to go out in the day, the two of you were sitting on a balcony. The two of you were sewing
Purple cloth lay in your lap. Golden thread hanging from your needle. You looked over at a curse, seeing her struggle to thread her needle
"Here, let me help" you gently rech over and guide her ever shakey hands through the eye. A brief smile, almost resembling a predator baring their teeth "thank you" she whispers "what would I do without you" she leans onto your shoulder, hands working on her project
"It doesn't matter love" you wrap your arm around her, surprisingly she accepts. "I'm not going anywhere, no matter what you see"
"I saw you leaving so many times" she starts to tremble as tears form in the corners of her eyes "so many have turned away from me. Even my sisters" she grabs tightly to your arm as she quietly sobs
You hold reach over and pat her back as she sobs into you "Sanguinia doesn't. Remember when she took you out to try that wine?" You reminder her
"I didn't like any of them, I finished the tasting in minutes and ruined the whole thing" the words come in between the sobs
"And then she took you around untill she sound something you liked, remember what it was?" You reach into your bag and produce a flask, uncorking it and waving it around the sobbing slows as she looks up through her fallen hair
You gently move your arm and she pushes into you. Taking the flask you hold it to her lips "what did you find out that day?" You hold the flask away, waiting for her answer
"That I liked hot chocolate" she mumbles as you reward her with the sugary treat, you feel her start to relax as you keep giving her sips
"That's right. And your sister found that out, one that didn't leave you" you say. Getting only a unidentifiable mumble in response "and ill always have some ready for you, I promise" feeling her tense up at your words
"Did I ever tell you about promises on my home world?" You cut off whatever she was about to say "back home they used to say that there were spirits that lived on promises. And that when you made one you made them happy, and as long as you kept their promise they'd help you in little ways." Between the chocolate and story she remains quiet
"And they'd say the bigger promise you made that the more they'd help you. Maybe only once, but you would know that they did" finishing your story "and I promise to you. I will be there for you. And I will have some ready for you" she sighs and takes the flask from your hands. Turning away from you she drinks it at her own pace.
Knowing she needs to process you return to your work. Finishing the last few stitches before turning "Kassandra" seeing her turn, drawing her needle with her teeth "I've got this for you" you hold up a simple scarf, made for someone of her size
She let's you wrap it around her neck, as you explain "I know it's cold sometimes when you go out in the night. And I know you get cold often so I figured I'd make this to keep you warm" taking the end of the scarf in her hands she sees a small golden heart with your initials in it "and that's so you remember who's waiting at home for you" you say with a kiss on her check
She doesn't move for a few minutes, before offering a simple shirt, one made of cloth and not flesh. "I made this after the last one" she mumbles out, her hair hiding most of her face "I know you didn't like it much"
Brushing the hair out of her glowing purple eyes you accept the shirt lovingly, before swapping your shirt out for it, it fits perfectly "I love it dear" you look into her eyes as she ducks her head
A faint smile visible
"DROP IN 10 SECONDS" the pilots voice snaps you out of your memories as you check and make sure everything is in place
"GO FOR DROP" the voice roars our over the engines as you jump from the shuttle. Grav shoot kicking in as you aproch the ground, landing in the courtyard. Looking back as the shuttle flys off, you steel yourself and approach the doors
They open as you approach, leading you into the hall where she sits at the end. "I knew they'd send you" her voice comes with a tone of a dead woman walking "the only one I couldn't bring myself to hurt" you see angry red lines all over her body as you approach
"Did they tell you what I did? How I ripped apart Regalia? How mich flesh I flensed from her?" Her voice rises in anger st the memory
You reach her as she looks up at you. A woman with nothing left "do it" she spits, directed at the ones who sent you here "kill me and be done with it" she looks down, not able to meet your eyes "please just make it quick" you faintly make out
Your heart weaps as your dagger raises, you look down upon your love. She doesn't move, resigned to her fate. Her hair flowing down covering her face "im sorry" you whisper as your arm falls forward...
You catch a flash of purple and gold between strands of her hair
Your dagger plunges into your chest. Right through the camera that you wore, a scream comes from Kassandra as she rushes to catch your falling body "no, no, no ,No" she repeats over and over, "I was the one to die not you" she starts desperately trying to stop the bleeding but has no knowledge
"You did die here" no pain in your voice, forced back for her sake "that's what they'll belive" you cough, blood splattering on your chest, your armor pried off by her hands to reveal the shirt she made for you and...
"Is that..." a sob breaks her sentence. Seeing the flask you always wore steaming in the cool air "I made a promise didn't I?" You grin turning into a wince as pain shoots through you "you know how promises are" you take the flask reach up, determind to have her drink
Only for your limbs to disobey you, the flask falling to the floor
Check out my other works here
2024.05.19 07:55 drakeredflame ROH MONTH 5 WEEK 1
ROH Month 5 Week 1
GM Nigel McGuiness welcomes us to tonight's show. He thanks everyone for making Revolution the most successful PPV in the new Ring of Honor's history!! He says that the guys and girls of this company have done things that he never thought possible.
…..
FTR vs ??
The debuting tag team known as FTR get the opening match tonight and quickly take down two local talents. A Shatter Machine finisher inside of five mimutes makes a very decisive win for them.
Cash and Dax show respect to their opponents by checking on them and helping them to their feet afterwards.
…..
Dax grabs a mic and thanks ROH for giving them a chance to remind everyone what they are capable of. Cash said its once again time to show that they are the best in the world!!
…..
Nic Nemeth with Robert Stone. vs Chad Gable
Two former amateur champions here, and they let it all hang out. The fans eat it up, taking turns chanting for both men. Chad's youth does seem to give him the edge.
The match begins to turn in his favor and that's when Nemeth starts cutting corners. Bending the rules gets him back in the match. A distraction by Robert Stone gives Nemeth a chance to try to steal another one, but never gets the chance.
Rey Fenix slides into the ring and nails him with a Fenix Driver!! Chad Gable smiles as Fenix rolls back out. He quickly goes for the cover and picks up a big win!!
…..
Renée Paquette stops Fenix backstage and asks what he is doing here. Fenix tells her that sftrr his brother left here, he realized that he had left unfinished business. So, he came to ROH to finish business with Nic Nemeth and anyone else that wants to get in his way!!
…..
Austin Theory is lounging in a Sky box, surrounded by beautiful women. One of them is actually feeding him grapes by hand. He glances to his phone when it rings. He shoos the women out, and answers it.
After a few moments of silence on his end, where he is clearly thinking about what he is being told, he agrees to meet someone after the show.
…..
Gunther walks to the ring unannounced, and asks for a microphone. He looks around at the crowd and smiles darkly.
“I have been around the world, and have seen many things. I have won and lost many many Championships. I founded both Ringkampf and Imperium. I have seen that now my two creations are at odds, and that will be dealt with in short order.
But I have seen what disrespect of the Sacred Mat has also accomplished here recently. Damian Priest, you have no Honor.. and this is the home of Honor!! Let me put this simply - I am calling for you to put the International Title on the line against me!!
…..
ROH International Title Match Champ: Damian Priest vs Claudio Castagnoli
A brief shake of hands as this highly anticipated showdown starts. Claudio's techniques and raw power matches up nicely with Damian's strength and martial arts prowess.
Neither man wants to give an inch and the battle is on!! As commentary mentions that this match up could Main Event a PPV anywhere in the world, things begin to break down. Gunther storms to the ring and attacks both men!!
The referee throws out the match, but the three men don't even notice. They are way too busy throwing fists with each other.. it is a pier 6 brawl as they used to say!! Security plays hell trying to separate them.
…..
Video from after the Revolution PPV is shown. It shows Malakai Black and friends celebrating his World Title victory! A congratulatory phone call from his wife, who's working in another company, makes him even happier!!
Tony Schiavone says we will be hearing from Malakai at the beginning of the next episode of Ring of Honor.
…..
As the credits roll, we see Austin Theory getting into a long white limousine. Soon as he closes the door, it drives away.
…..
submitted by drakeredflame to RedflamesBookingNow [link] [comments]
GM Nigel McGuiness welcomes us to tonight's show. He thanks everyone for making Revolution the most successful PPV in the new Ring of Honor's history!! He says that the guys and girls of this company have done things that he never thought possible.
…..
FTR vs ??
The debuting tag team known as FTR get the opening match tonight and quickly take down two local talents. A Shatter Machine finisher inside of five mimutes makes a very decisive win for them.
Cash and Dax show respect to their opponents by checking on them and helping them to their feet afterwards.
…..
Dax grabs a mic and thanks ROH for giving them a chance to remind everyone what they are capable of. Cash said its once again time to show that they are the best in the world!!
…..
Nic Nemeth with Robert Stone. vs Chad Gable
Two former amateur champions here, and they let it all hang out. The fans eat it up, taking turns chanting for both men. Chad's youth does seem to give him the edge.
The match begins to turn in his favor and that's when Nemeth starts cutting corners. Bending the rules gets him back in the match. A distraction by Robert Stone gives Nemeth a chance to try to steal another one, but never gets the chance.
Rey Fenix slides into the ring and nails him with a Fenix Driver!! Chad Gable smiles as Fenix rolls back out. He quickly goes for the cover and picks up a big win!!
…..
Renée Paquette stops Fenix backstage and asks what he is doing here. Fenix tells her that sftrr his brother left here, he realized that he had left unfinished business. So, he came to ROH to finish business with Nic Nemeth and anyone else that wants to get in his way!!
…..
Austin Theory is lounging in a Sky box, surrounded by beautiful women. One of them is actually feeding him grapes by hand. He glances to his phone when it rings. He shoos the women out, and answers it.
After a few moments of silence on his end, where he is clearly thinking about what he is being told, he agrees to meet someone after the show.
…..
Gunther walks to the ring unannounced, and asks for a microphone. He looks around at the crowd and smiles darkly.
“I have been around the world, and have seen many things. I have won and lost many many Championships. I founded both Ringkampf and Imperium. I have seen that now my two creations are at odds, and that will be dealt with in short order.
But I have seen what disrespect of the Sacred Mat has also accomplished here recently. Damian Priest, you have no Honor.. and this is the home of Honor!! Let me put this simply - I am calling for you to put the International Title on the line against me!!
…..
ROH International Title Match Champ: Damian Priest vs Claudio Castagnoli
A brief shake of hands as this highly anticipated showdown starts. Claudio's techniques and raw power matches up nicely with Damian's strength and martial arts prowess.
Neither man wants to give an inch and the battle is on!! As commentary mentions that this match up could Main Event a PPV anywhere in the world, things begin to break down. Gunther storms to the ring and attacks both men!!
The referee throws out the match, but the three men don't even notice. They are way too busy throwing fists with each other.. it is a pier 6 brawl as they used to say!! Security plays hell trying to separate them.
…..
Video from after the Revolution PPV is shown. It shows Malakai Black and friends celebrating his World Title victory! A congratulatory phone call from his wife, who's working in another company, makes him even happier!!
Tony Schiavone says we will be hearing from Malakai at the beginning of the next episode of Ring of Honor.
…..
As the credits roll, we see Austin Theory getting into a long white limousine. Soon as he closes the door, it drives away.
…..
2024.05.19 07:55 Outrageous-Quail5891 My wife of ten years is devorcing me and I don't know why this is happening!
My wife of 10 years is devorcing me and I don't understand the reasons!
Burner account for obvious reasons.
I've been married for 10 years, and in the relationship for another 5. I thought that I have a perfect marriage: one beautiful child, good career both of us, no financial problems at all, good sex life. Now I am getting a divorce and I don't understand why, what I did wrong, what could I do next, what the hell is happening!
The story goes like this. My wife always said that I am an excelent husband. I always took care of the family, we had decent social life (going out at a restaurant at least every two weeks), vacations, staying evening watching TV together. I always said to her that I love her, she said back. About a month ago, after a business trip, she even bought me as a gift a sticker saying that she loves me.
Two weeks ago I started to feel something was off. I started to see some changes in her interactions with me. At first I did not pay too much attention, but more and more signs started to show: hiding her phone screen from me when using it, using the phone late in the night, using the phone (chatting) as soon as she woke up and immediately going out of bed when I woke up. I started d more and more to suspect what you are already probably thinking and eventually I found "proof". She had sex with another man. He is 15 years older than us.
I was devastated but I thought it was a one-night-thing and we will get over it together. I started to cry one night, she heard me and I confronted her. She admitted and quite fast, less than 5 minutes in the conversation, she dropped the bomb: "I want to divorce" . It was as fast as lightning to me. I tried multiple times to make her change her mind. I said that I will do anything to make the marriage work. I suggested we at least not make a decision now, but analyze what wen't wrong and try to fix things. She does not want it, she sais that she is unhappy for some time now.
She said that for a few months she's been asking questions, trying to prove herself that things are actually good, but (in her own words) "I always kept thinking that this is it? This is the highest of my life and it will be like this for ever? I want more, something exciting. I've always been the perfect pupil, the perfect student, marrying my university boyfriend, having a child, having a career. Is this it?". And yes, she plans to move with the other man eventually and said that she only sees him making her happy.
I am devastated. I can't wrap my head around the situation. How could she been so unhappy and there were no signs. Nobody knew anything. Not her closest friends, not her parents, not me. I don't know what I did wrong and even now she sais that I was a good husband. Even now she sais that she never lied when she said she loved me. Still, she does not budge and won't change her mind. I don't know how things degraded in less than a month this bad.
I have now idea how to fix things, what I should have done different, what is wrong with me and so on. I talked with other friends and even though they agree that she should have told me sooner, all said that "if she is not happy?" and I get it. Happyness is extremely important, but I don't know what is she looking for and even she can't tell me specific things.
I am lost and I have lost the love of my life! And don't even know how this will effect our child.
submitted by Outrageous-Quail5891 to Marriage [link] [comments]
Burner account for obvious reasons.
I've been married for 10 years, and in the relationship for another 5. I thought that I have a perfect marriage: one beautiful child, good career both of us, no financial problems at all, good sex life. Now I am getting a divorce and I don't understand why, what I did wrong, what could I do next, what the hell is happening!
The story goes like this. My wife always said that I am an excelent husband. I always took care of the family, we had decent social life (going out at a restaurant at least every two weeks), vacations, staying evening watching TV together. I always said to her that I love her, she said back. About a month ago, after a business trip, she even bought me as a gift a sticker saying that she loves me.
Two weeks ago I started to feel something was off. I started to see some changes in her interactions with me. At first I did not pay too much attention, but more and more signs started to show: hiding her phone screen from me when using it, using the phone late in the night, using the phone (chatting) as soon as she woke up and immediately going out of bed when I woke up. I started d more and more to suspect what you are already probably thinking and eventually I found "proof". She had sex with another man. He is 15 years older than us.
I was devastated but I thought it was a one-night-thing and we will get over it together. I started to cry one night, she heard me and I confronted her. She admitted and quite fast, less than 5 minutes in the conversation, she dropped the bomb: "I want to divorce" . It was as fast as lightning to me. I tried multiple times to make her change her mind. I said that I will do anything to make the marriage work. I suggested we at least not make a decision now, but analyze what wen't wrong and try to fix things. She does not want it, she sais that she is unhappy for some time now.
She said that for a few months she's been asking questions, trying to prove herself that things are actually good, but (in her own words) "I always kept thinking that this is it? This is the highest of my life and it will be like this for ever? I want more, something exciting. I've always been the perfect pupil, the perfect student, marrying my university boyfriend, having a child, having a career. Is this it?". And yes, she plans to move with the other man eventually and said that she only sees him making her happy.
I am devastated. I can't wrap my head around the situation. How could she been so unhappy and there were no signs. Nobody knew anything. Not her closest friends, not her parents, not me. I don't know what I did wrong and even now she sais that I was a good husband. Even now she sais that she never lied when she said she loved me. Still, she does not budge and won't change her mind. I don't know how things degraded in less than a month this bad.
I have now idea how to fix things, what I should have done different, what is wrong with me and so on. I talked with other friends and even though they agree that she should have told me sooner, all said that "if she is not happy?" and I get it. Happyness is extremely important, but I don't know what is she looking for and even she can't tell me specific things.
I am lost and I have lost the love of my life! And don't even know how this will effect our child.