Middle finger drawn with text

TLDR; My boyfriend is mad at me for wanting to go out with friends after I received a mild concussion earlier this week
We have great communication but I’m really curious on the advice of an outsider. We’ve been together for 4 years.
Earlier this week I got a mild concussion, light symptoms and everything is fine mostly besides some brain fog. My boyfriend and I were texting tonight. I was in the middle of being super loving towards him, also mentioning that today had been a pretty rough day for me due to some personal issues, and I told him my plan tomorrow was to go out to late dinner and drinks with some friends. He disregarded me saying today was rough and then proceeded to go off on me saying that I need to take better care of myself. Despite me telling him that my symptoms were only ever mild and I feel better now, he told me that he feels frustrated, defeated, and that what he says must “mean nothing” to me. I just feel like what I said doesn’t warrant a response like this. He was practically begging me to stay home after work tomorrow so I can take care of myself “for once”. Am I wrong in thinking he just needs to trust me to go out? I feel like I know my body best and I trust myself enough to make a decision like that.
I’d also like to mention that I truly do not believe this is a jealousy issue on his part. I feel like he worries about me too much maybe? He went to bed upset and I just feel really confused by his reaction.

I slept fine, I didn’t fall asleep so nicely. I don’t know why, I felt perfectly adequate all evening and then bam I cry myself to sleep. I don’t know how or why, and I didn’t even cry over anything in particular it was just any and everything. And I just kept crying and crying, like a baby. I had to switch pillows twice because I drenched it, but I got to sleep on my favourite pillow by the time I was almost asleep thankfully. I can be so picky with pillows, another thing mum tends to call me, even to this day - the princess and the pea. Or rather she likens me to her… I can’t entirely say I disagree tbh. I just like things a particular way, not all things, I can be relaxed about plenty, but there are some things I just to be just so. My pillows when I sleep for example, how the dishwasher top rack is stacked etc. Entirely inconsequential things really. But anyway. I didn’t fall asleep so nicely. I woke up feeling better, still a bit sad but nothing I couldn’t ignore.
It’s now 12:58pm and I’ve done next to nothing. I’ve been watching BT, I’m not writing the name of the show because I feel like that might be search heavy at the moment? So I’ve been watching that, I’m midway through the third episode now and there are four out so far. I’ve also painted some of my lil clay things with primer. And that’s about it. I really need to clean and tidy my room but the idea of it… ugh. I don’t want to :(
I’m loving BT so much. I like the stories and characters and stuff, but I mostly love the sets and costumes. They’re just so luxuriously opulent and uggghhhhhhh I want to just stare it all. Sometimes I wish they would clear out the cast and just give us a tour of the rooms and show all the details of the gowns. But like I learned in therapy, beauty is something I value highly, not in a vain way but in the way I utterly adore beautiful things whether it be a stunningly ornate wallpaper, a sparkly bead encrusted gown or even a leaf that is the perfect shade of green. I just love it all and it brings me so much joy, more than I realised now that I’m conscious of this value of mine. But the BT house itself, particularly the drawing room ommmmgggg. The blue? I think it’s called wedgewood blue from memory, with the creamy/white detailing. And all the light streaming through. It’s so dreamy. And it makes me love my blue and white bedroom more. And the gowns!!!!!!! I wish I could roll around in them, they’re so sparkly and detailed and beyond beautiful. Particularly the ones crusted in beading and with the luxurious silks and satins and velvets and taffetas and organza and all of it. And the colours! It’s all so dreamy. I don’t overly love the style of a lot of the gowns, that sort of empire line, mainly because it only looks good on women with fewer curves and a flatter chest, they can look gorrrrrrrgeous in them. But otherwise if you have any kind of cleavage it looks so weird and bleh. I love Penelope so much, she’s always been a favourite character and she honestly deserves the very best. And Colin definitely got a glow up prior to this season. His brown coat is so delicious. I’m beginning to wonder if I should read the series…? I do love a lil historical romance. Anyway I don’t even Penelope and Colin to end up together, I mean Lord Debling is so lovely and Colin is off sleeping with hookers… like? Then again I know I am wrong in how I think and feel about all of this. I know I have expectations ghat are unfair, I mean maybe not for everyone but if I’m nothing special and therefore not enough then can I criticise. This doesn’t make sense. Anyway. Actually nevermind I just watched the fourth episode and I am very much Team Colin. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!!!!!! But now I have to wait for part two in mid June :(
I’m going to the office tomorrow. I don’t want to. But oh well. I’m going to make a concerted effort to get back in twice a week - I’ve been slack with it and it doesn’t help me become better. Leaving the house more is important, so this shall be one of the ways. I’m also going to get some new sneakers and a walking jacket so I can go for walks more regularly. I’d like to go several times a week, but I’ll work up to that. I love my walks, I love them a lot but I just get filled with every negative emotion when I go for them around my house, to the point I’ll start having tears running down my cheeks or shaky trembly hands - it’s pathetic. I think environment is everything, and purpose. When I walk pups at my parents I don’t feel these things, I’ll be a little anxy but nothing I can’t manage. But here? It’s so hard. It’s so stupid I know. But I love walking, I feel better when I do it regularly, so I shall keep forcing myself to do it until I feel okay about it. I know this is what I have to do, but the way it makes me feel inside… it never feels worth it. To be 20 minutes walk from home and feel on the verge of a panic attack is NOT a good feeling and it only makes my panic worsen. So baby steps. I’ve been considering on and off moving to a different area, I think I would feel more comfortable in other areas, I don’t know why I don’t here but I don’t. But moving elsewhere is no different to running from problems so I will sort it out here.
I broke his little bowl. I didn’t mean to :( I feel kind of upset about it, it’s been two weeks in the making with time to shape, dry, prime and I was doing a final layer of primer pre paint and my stupid finger went through the base. So I guess it would never have been a good present anyway because it broke so easily. But I bought a really pretty coloured paint because I thought he might like it and I just feel upset. I showed him it, idk why, I just messaged him a picture of it now and I already wish I hadn’t. I shouldn’t have even made anything for him in the first place, he’s made it abundantly clear he doesn’t care for homemade things - cards, presents, whatever. If he did like them he would comment on them, and he never does, so maybe it’s a good thing this broke. I just like sharing things with him, like when I draw and I like a tree I’ve drawn I want to show him, except I don’t because I’m utterly rubbish at drawing and it makes me look like a five year old. I at least appreciate his honesty, or transparency rather. It means I can understand what he does and doesn’t like. I just think his likes don’t mesh with my like of making homemade cards and presents. It’s not like I only give him that though. Anyway it doesn’t matter, plus it’s probably better for me to not share things like this given I don’t have any skill or natural talent with it. Just because you enjoy something doesn’t make you good at it.
I don’t feel so great this afternoon, mood wise.
I’ve done the absolute bare minimum with my room, and the bar was set very, very low today. I tidied the floor up a bit, I made my bed, did a lazy tidy of my vanity desk thing.. that’s about it. I’ll do more across the week.
I feel.. detached today. This afternoon, rather. I know I love my family, Andy, puppy… etc. I just can’t feel it. I know it’s all in there, but I feel detached and I can’t reach it. This isn’t unusual, I just always try to describe the feeling and always fail. I think knowing I care but not being able to feel myself care sums it up as well as I’ll ever be able to.
I found a little notebook of my early days of therapy, well with this current one, maybe not that early actually but idk. It was just me writing down who I am. The first is “I am a human” because I had to start with the basics. The last line is “I try my best to be friendly” - I think I will continue with this. No one really comments much on me so I will just write it as things feel write. From memory it was also a way to force myself to speak more kindly to myself, ie I am a woman vs I am a monster. And things like I’m generous, I love animals, I am quiet, I try to be patient, I love romance, I appreciate attention to detail, I like to care for others, I am a homebody, I love reading etc. And then scattered amongst it was some honesty, like I can be a control freak, I am quite particular about some things, I am indecisive, I am sensitive etc. And then next to I am a friend I have a question mark. But I want to continue writing these things, I think it’s helpful when I feel lost in myself to be able to read through a list of things I’ve written and be reminded. That sounds so silly to not know who you are sometimes, but sometimes I just feel so unbelievably lost and unmoored from everything, even myself. So I’ll write all the good things, and the bad. I’ll write things that I like, things that I don’t. I’ll write things I want in my life, things I feel like I should want but don’t, things I shouldn’t want but do etc etc etc. It’ll be a little tiny notebook of everything me. I wonder if sometimes it’s possible for me to get any lamer? Unlikely.
I’ve been thinking about stopping journaling here more and more. I get more out of posting it here, it feels like a release, like I’m letting all the thoughts go which is especially helpful with my negative ones, I don’t know.
It’s 5:23pm. I need to wash and blowdry my hair, as it’s still damp in the morning lately. I need to have something for dinner, I guess. I’ve been struggling with eating lately, I feel so ugly and it makes me not want to eat and then that sets off a bad string of things. I’ll have something little, vegemite toast maybe. I need to pack my bag for tomorrow. And that’s it.
I feel better after a shower and chat with Andy, I still feel not good but he perked me up on the outside. He makes me laugh so much :) It’s kind of weird to think I’ll be living long term in Australia, like I’ve always intended on living there - until my mental health and covid messed things up a little for me timeline wise. But to think I’ll maybe say Australian things…? That I’ll say thongs? And I definitely will because I cave quickly, like I was only in the UK two years and I said crisps and trainers and I still do to this day, which I’m actively trying to stop. I wonder what my accent would sound like after like ten years… I really doubt I’d ever lose my accent. It’s funny how I do probably sound a bit different when talking to him versus my mum. I just talk more softly with him, I naturally do anyway to the point I have people comment semi regularly on how soft spoken I am, but idk, I don’t even mean to speak to him a certain way, I just do? And then he hears me talking to mum and I probably sound like I’m wearing Jandals and stubbies while loading up the ute as I prepare for a tramp in the bush. Christ. I do love being from here though, in theory I would rather we live here than Australia, and never say never… but it makes more sense to be there. I don’t really have anyone here other than my parents whereas he has family and friends and his payments and all of it. I don’t really have any ties here. Anyway.
I get to spend time with him tonight :) Night night

TLDR; My boyfriend is mad at me for wanting to go out with friends after I received a mild concussion earlier this week
We have great communication but I’m really curious on the advice of an outsider. We’ve been together for 4 years.
Earlier this week I got a mild concussion, light symptoms and everything is fine mostly besides some brain fog. My boyfriend and I were texting tonight. I was in the middle of being super loving towards him, also mentioning that today had been a pretty rough day for me due to some personal issues, and I told him my plan tomorrow was to go out to late dinner and drinks with some friends. He disregarded me saying today was rough and then proceeded to go off on me saying that I need to take better care of myself. Despite me telling him that my symptoms were only ever mild and I feel better now, he told me that he feels frustrated, defeated, and that what he says must “mean nothing” to me. I just feel like what I said doesn’t warrant a response like this. He was practically begging me to stay home after work tomorrow so I can take care of myself “for once”. Am I wrong in thinking he just needs to trust me to go out? I feel like I know my body best and I trust myself enough to make a decision like that.
I’d also like to mention that I truly do not believe this is a jealousy issue on his part. I feel like he worries about me too much maybe? He went to bed upset and I just feel really confused by his reaction.

The events from April 2023, while "A" went on vacation and the following aftermath!
1st off, the skateboard that she bought her son was brand new as she posted it in her channel. The boys saw it, spent the night at Adrielle's Mom's house. The next morning, "S" went home to grab a few things and it's pretty clear that her door was purposely left unlocked.
The part that wasn't clear was the damage that was done to the home as the video she posted only shows a broken mirror.
Now this part pissed me off when "A" decided to stay in CA an extra week after finding out her home was "ransacked" while showing no worry towards the situation. Her family cleaned up her home, while she was on vaca, as well! She didn't lift a finger to clean her place!!
Fast forward to her coming back from vacation and she says, "I can't find my period blanket" and claims Noah stole it, humiliating him on her platform, saying, "What kind of kid wants a period blanket?" (Blanket she free bled on). She egg'd on that situation and it eventually resulted in her tires being slashed!
She then shows the security camera footage of 3 kids walking down the street with only their hoodies visible, blasting Noah again as the person slashing her tires. This antagonizes him even more and her tires got slashed again.
Then she went to Noah's probation officer who also told "A" she hasn't any proof nor any reason to be speaking with her about this child.
That's when the kid threw a rock through her window and the Property Manager was pissed with Adrielle because they knew this happened because she couldn't keep her mouth shut, as i explained above. They specifically texted "A" that ended with "Do Better!"
She knows her son's Air Pods were only stolen twice and the 2nd time was due to "S" leaving them on a desk at school, which were then taken!
At no time did she ever know that both boys and girls broke into the home during her vacation. She's trying renarrate the situation to make it appear that the same kids have always been victimizing her and her son.
Plus, the girlfriend "S" dated was Noah's ex in the 1st place.
Here is the unnerving part of the situation.
"A" allows her son to spend the night with the girlfriend, while the girlfriend's parents were out of town, saying, "I trust my son with a girl alone" when he was only 12 years old! 😳

I was originally going to post this is dating_advice but I kept going on into my problems so I think I need some different kind of help (i copy pasted the text I was writing there here, but also kept typing on it.) Halfway through I start talking a lot about my family so that’s not as relevant. Also this is an alt account because I wanted to be anonymous while posting this. I tried formatting it by different issues I guess. I formatted it after writing and i’m on phone (i’m trying to follow the community rules. Lemme know if this is acceptable or not):
(Intro and main topic) ———————————— • As of last year i’m a freshman in college just finishing up the second semester and I haven’t even made a single friend in college. Well I have met and talked to some people but the connection isn’t all too deep. It’s like we would call each other friends because we see each other “sometimes” but it’s not like we hang out for the sake of hanging out if that makes sense. So this entire year of college I haven’t made a single friend. This problem of not being able to approach people extends to my inability to find a girlfriend. I’ve never been in a relationship like that so i’m not even sure I would make a good boyfriend. But I know i’m longing for deeper connections with new friends or a girlfriend. I’ve never tried approaching someone or asking someone to go on a date. Except one time in high school where I thought I had feelings for someone but I’m still unsure I even did. I texted them asking them on a movie date but they said no. It was upsetting a little bit and made things awkward because I was unsure how to talk to them after that but I also wasn’t that worried about it later.
(Why approaching people is hard) ———————————— • Sometimes I think about approaching someone but then I think that there’s no point. The interaction won’t go anywhere besides a couple little back and forths and then we’ll never talk again. Or lots of times never see each other again. Why should I say anything. I end up overthinking like this until the chance is gone. I tend to keep to myself a lot.
(Personal issues I guess) ———————————— • I think I have social anxiety. I don’t like places with a lot of people so it makes approaching even harder because if I say something stupid other people will hear. Since middle school i’ve been conscious of my volume thinking other people might listen in on my conversations with others. It’s easier to talk to people one on one. It made it hard to be myself to the point I didn’t know how to be myself. I acted like other people. Adopting their mannerisms because I thought it would help me fit in. One time I got called out on it and I felt.. despair I guess. They didn’t directly say why I acted like that but they did point out that I acted like someone else specifically they said “you’re not (person’s name)”. I try not to act like others. I feel like I’m a boring person to others because I can be very quiet. I try and balance this by speaking confidently on the rare times I use my voice.
(Why I don’t think I can get a girlfriend or be a good boyfriend) ———————————— • Back tracking to the relationship thing. I also don’t know if i’m even worthy of having a girlfriend. As i’m writing this i’m trying to find the words to defend that sentence because I know everyone is worthy of love and I know that what I wrote is wrong but all I have is the reasons I feel like this. I’m already 18 and I don’t feel like i’ve matured enough to deserve a girlfriend. I’ve never had a job, I don’t have my license, and it’s embarrassing to admit but I live with my grandparents because they live 10 min away from campus. Maybe if I was really good looking or something none of that stuff would matter but i’m just average. Not fat, not muscular, just skinny and kind of short but I am pretty athletic actually but I have asthma (my body is a system of checks and balances). I’m taller than my dad who’s kind of my role-model so that gives me a confidence boost.
(Why i’m grateful for my family/not as relevant) ———————————— • I don’t see my dad a lot (only in the summers) but he’s an amazing father and I want to be just like him when have children someday. I can’t help crying right now. I’m very thankful to all of my caring family. Even if I can’t make friends I know every single one of them will always be there for me. I know not everyone is as lucky with the family they are born into and I cherish the connections I have with them. I’ve been told many times by them that they’d accept me for who I am no matter what. Just recently I had some awful news that was difficult to tell my mother but she didn’t get angry like I thought. She just said calmly that she’s glad I told her and then she comforted me about it. I’m so glad my dad taught me the importance of honesty and owning up to my mistakes quickly. I’m sorry if this is off topic but I just suddenly feel like I need to give them thanks. I will always be connected to my brothers and sisters as we grow older. When I lived with my mom over the school years I always had a best friend but when we drifted more and more apart I felt more alone. I couldn’t make that connection with anyone else again. We’re still friends but I can’t honestly call him my best friend. We were friends in elementary and middle school is when we drifted apart. Still close then but not as close as I thought especially because now we went to the same school(in elementary we didn’t). So i’m very grateful for being able to understand the experience of being an only child when I lived with my mother and the experience of having siblings when I was with my dad. It makes me grateful for my siblings because i know i’ll never be alone in the world. Not truly. My mom eventually gave me sisters when I was 12 and I love them to death.

So of course this is about a girl. She is in my class (3rd year) and I really like her, and we text each other like almost every evening until sleep. She often asks me for help in subjects like maths and physics, and I do have good grades but she knows I never study. so I asked her why she wouldn't ask someone else, like the dude who has good grades in every subject (i would say nerd but hes a cool guy, one of my best friends). of course I told her that I wasn't asking because I didn't want her to ask me, but just out of curiosity, and I told her that I'm happy when she texts me. she responded telling me that she likes how I explain things, which is quite confusing since I'm bad at saying what I think, but I didn't ask further Couse i didn't want to make her uncomfortable. she often texts me first and at school she always tries to have some conversations with me, and also the while fucking class keeps telling us that know we like each other, and thank god (or maybe that wouldnt be that bad, its either a super good thing or super bad imo) that never happened when we were together. So, I know I should tell her my feelings and I'm pretty sure she likes me back, but there's a problem. I'm really bad at having conversations. like, I never know what to talk about, even with some of my friends, unless they keep up the conversation, and we end up in that weird state of silence not knowing what to say,but we end up laughing cuz we know its embarrassing but we accepted it for how it is. But even if I asked her and she said yes, then we would have to hang out toghether, and i would realky like it. but i know that probably, if she isnt the best talker, we would end up being silent and that would ruin it all. I get that if that happens it's both's fault, but I wouldn't surely blame her. also, I've been in relationships before, but well last one it was middle school so ye not something to talk about ig. Anyway, even in those relationships, I've always felt like I had to be perfect for her, even if she was the one that asked me out. I feel like if I'm not always perfect I couldn't be at her same level, even though she doesn't even have to try for me to like her. what is my problem, and is there any way I could avoid that weird silence and not get both of us embarrassed? also, sorry if my English was bad but I'm not a native

Hi all! Just celebrated my 1 year anniversary of my LDR relationship a couple days ago! I feel really proud of getting this far, we plan on meeting again this July! But man, it's been a bit of a battle. Especially because of this:
My GF seems to have a really weird sleeping problem. Basically, we can be chatting at some point during the night, perfectly fine, she shows no signs of drowsiness at all. Then all of a sudden mid conversation, she just dissappears... (she falls asleep)
It's really become a pain point for me, and last night after it happened at a particularly bad time I finally gathered the courage to tell her just how much it bothers me.
She tells me that my assumption is true: She doesn't feel tired even in the slightest, but she can be writing to me and then blink and she falls asleep uncontrollably, instantly. Trying to search for this problem just gives a bunch of results for narcolepsy (which I don't think she has, she doesn't fall asleep during the day) and insomnia.
She was once diagnosed with insomnia, since she used to feel tired during the day and not get quality sleep, but she eventually went back and the doctoe told her she was no longer presenting symptoms. (This problem doesn't seem to be a symptom from what I've read on the internet.)
She can also seemingly only stay awake for a MAXIMUM of like, 15 hours. It wouldn't be such a big problem if we weren't long distance, but that's not the case. Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this? Anyone here experienced this before? Please, we need help with this, because this totally killing me...
TL;DR: GF falls asleep instantly and without warning in the middle of our texting at night. She says she doesn't feel sleepy at all, but she just blinks and she's gone. What could be the cause of this and how do we fix it??

This is an update to Ximenes088's fillable character sheet. I added a few things my DM and I thought would be useful:

• Added a small section for "Alienation".
• Discrete input boxes for some additional values like Encumbrance, cyberdeck stats, system strain from cyberware, cyber maintenance, weapon shock values, etc.
• Attribute modifiers can go to +3.
• The second boxes for Background and Money will now scroll instead of shrink the font.
• All the sections in the second page also scroll instead of shrink the font when reaching the text limit.
• A few tooltips added to some values when you hover over them, but only a few, I don't know how many others would be needed.
• And more importantly, all the input boxes were stretched so they sit flush with the borders drawn, so you get way more space to write all your values and text.

If you want to be able to add an image to the character portrait, you're gonna have to use Adobe Acrobat, that feature doesn't work on Chrome or Firefox. Firefox also doesn't handle the placeholder text well. Anyway, here it is, enjoy it:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BYw-pd1toAWkcaAzRN9wbc9rMYiMn9j_/view?usp=sharing

I don’t even know where to start. From the first day that I met my in-laws a decade ago, they have been entitled, demanding and generally very difficult and frustrating to deal with. I love my husband very much, and we very rarely have problems or fights unless it’s concerning his parents and his sister.
Some back story, my husband and his mom are Eastern European, while my husband’s stepdad and I are Chinese, and we all live in China. His half-sister is mixed European and Chinese. I can barely believe that he’s related to these people: he’s independent, competent, helpful, generous and logical, whereas they are none of these things.
Even before we got married, my in-laws constantly asked me to do favors for them, and I think they treat me like a servant. They’ve even ruined two of my birthdays in a row with some demanding tantrums over stupid shit, and my MIL tried to commandeer my wedding, she even called it her wedding.
One of the problems is that both of them are terrible communicators: my MIL, despite having lived in China for three decades, does not speak Chinese, whereas I don’t speak her mother tongue. Her English is quite poor and she constantly misunderstands me when we try to communicate in English. Even something as simple as organizing a meet up is riddled with frustrations because she has absolutely no communication skills, and she doesn’t even know how to use GPS or other basic Chinese apps. She is the most helpless person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. She hasn’t had a job since she came to China and she is incompetency personified.
On top of that she is snobby, she looks down on most Chinese people and whenever we socialize she is always complaining about something or someone, and she thinks all Chinese people are out of scam her. She lives in a total expat bubble and does not understand most Chinese customs or way of life. My FIL, ironically being Chinese himself, is also a terrible communicator and has a bad case of untreated adult ADD. He’s always spewing bullshit conspiracies at me, or putting me down, or going on about some complete non-sequitur. They’re both demanding and entitled, and if you help them with one favor, they’ll ask for ten more immediately, they’re both total choosing beggars.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was that about 2 years ago, my sister-in-law was getting ready to apply for university in the US. Since I had gone to college in the US, they both asked my husband to make me help her with her college application and SATs. I didn’t want to do it, because I knew there would be communication problems and misunderstandings galore, but after much pleading from my husband, acquiesced in the end.
From the get-go, it was a total nightmare. They both knew absolutely nothing about the US university application process, but whenever I tried to explain it they both talked over me and didn’t listen at all. On top of that they were delusional about my sister-in-law’s grades. She is a mediocre student at best and has absolutely no hobbies or extracurricular interests other than video games, and she acts bratty and immature for her age. Despite this, they thought she could get into Colombia or NYU. Eventually I found them an agency to help them, but as usual my MIL thought the agency was out to scam her and started complaining about them to me and my FIL right away. He, being the entitled twat that he is, told me he was going to sue them for not delivering, even though he didn’t even bother to read the contract he signed with them, and told me to read it, and resolve the situation otherwise he will sue.
On top of this, my SIL, being lazy and spoiled, hated going to them and took it out on me personally by being excessively rude to me everyone I saw her. She would often roll her eyes at me, complain about the agency loudly, or otherwise pretend that I didn’t exist. She has also taken to texting me 40 messages in a row on WeChat in the middle of the night, demanding help with her college application. My MIL witnessed some of this behavior and said nothing. I got so fed up that I started to avoid them completely, and quit our group chats. After a few months they realized I was avoiding them, and started complaining about me and badmouthing me to my husband for “disrespecting” them.
Last September, my husband forced me to go to a dinner with them, after I had managed to avoid them for half a year. My MIL and SIL were both incredibly rude to me and cold-shouldered me all night. I was very upset and honestly didn’t want to ever see them again. Around Thanksgiving they decided it was time to “forgive” me, and I was forced into another dinner with them. The favor-asking started again after this, this time my MIL wanted help changing the wallpapers in her house, which I had done for them before. I was honestly beyond done with them at this point and never wanted to help them with anything again, but as usual my husband begged and pleaded. After I helped them, my husband told his mom to text me to thank me and tell me she was satisfied with the result. Instead she texts (the first time she has texted me in over a year) that she wants to change the wallpaper in every room of their house and wants me to find her new wallpaper books, and help them some more with this.
At this point I am furious. I honestly don’t ever want to see or talk to them again. They never apologized for any of their behavior, never even realized how awful they have been to me over the years, and have gotten comfortable enough to demand favors again. I want my husband to tell them that it’s not okay to treat me this way, and how their past behavior hurt my feelings, but my husband thinks his mom is too sensitive, will misunderstand, and doesn’t want to hurt her feelings. I also offered a face-to-face meeting with her to tell her myself how offensive I find her and my FIL and SIL’s behavior to be, but my husband thinks that her English isn’t strong enough for this and thinks I will offend her and she will misunderstand as usual.
I don’t know what to do at this point, all I know is I can’t stand any of them and can barely bring myself to be civil at this point. I feel allergic to them. I’ve talked about this endlessly to my husband, but he thinks I’m overreacting and that they aren’t that bad to me. He thinks I should just take it. He works for my FIL, and he’s used to them badgering him to help them with basic things. He thinks it’s okay that they treat me like an extension of him, but I’m not okay with it anymore.
I cut ties with my own mother a decade again for abuse, controlling behavior and treating me like a servant. I honestly can’t believe I’m experiencing this with my in-laws all over again, it triggers me like nothing else. I don’t want to leave my husband, and we have a very happy life together otherwise. He’s such a good person, but he’s also caught in the middle. I know my thoughts and complaints about his family hurts him a lot.
I’ve tried searching online for advice on how to deal with entitled and demanding in-laws, but I can’t find any specific to my case. They don’t interfere with my life otherwise, they only reach out when they want me to do something for them. I feel like they only value me for what I can do for them, and I’m hurt that my husband thinks his mom’s feelings are more important than mine. Every time we talk about them it leads to a massive fight between us. He simply cannot see it from my point of view, and constantly tells me to get over it, and that their behavior isn’t a big deal. What do I do?

Obviously paragraphs and paragraphs of explaining the lore of your world is considered infodumping, but where would you draw the line?
I don't know if what I try to do is considered infodumping. Basically, I insert one paragraph of a character using their knowledge of the world to explain something in the middle of your usual descriptory prose.
For example (an excerpt of chapter 4 from my first attempt at writing a full length novel. I'm about 11k words in):
Despite the boy standing at least two dozen paces away from her, Emily felt like he had drilled stakes into her eyes with his gaze. They were green-within-green without any trace of human white in them. They weren’t natural. They weren’t human. Her heart raced. Foreboding trepidation rushed through her veins. She became aware of her panting and her sweat inching down her forehead. She trembled, all of a sudden warming up despite the stale, cold air in the great hall.
She lowered her head, realising that she had torn holes into her gloves from balling her fists.
Before her stood a Roamer. Samira had taught her about them in her lessons. She was told the last of them died a century ago. A race of mutants created to serve as the personal bodyguards of lords and kings centuries ago, one of them served the Embelwoods of the past. Along with her great-grandfathers, they built the great duchy of New Calinthia on the backs of honour and virtue.
Her right palm throbbed. Pulling off her glove, Emily looked at the angular birthmark on her right palm again, and she noticed that it glowed gently with the same shade of green from the boy-Roamer’s eyes.
From under the boy’s coat, the characteristic Roamer’s dark-veins crept up his pale-skinned neck, stopping short of his jaw like serpents slithering through snow. He took off his hat, revealing a head of black hair. As he made his way through the great hall, nobody spoke a word. She saw tense looks on many soldiers’ faces, the look of shock given by bystanders witnessing a murder.
I've italicised the paragraph in question. It's not really describing action and feelings like the other paragraphs around it, but it also isn't a large wall of text describing the lore and such–that would be an obvious infodump. How large of a break from the flow of action to describe something about the world would you consider an infodump?
Edit: The paragraph also doesn't fully explain what they are fyi. I'm planning to explore the Roamers' abilities later in the story and sprinkle in more tidbits of lore throughout. I can add the premise of the story here for context if someone requests it.

I don’t even know where to start. From the first day that I met my in-laws a decade ago, they have been entitled, demanding and generally very difficult and frustrating to deal with. I love my husband very much, and we very rarely have problems or fights unless it’s concerning his parents and his sister.
Some back story, my husband and his mom are Eastern European, while my husband’s stepdad and I are Chinese, and we all live in China. His half-sister is mixed European and Chinese. I can barely believe that he’s related to these people: he’s independent, competent, helpful, generous and logical, whereas they are none of these things.
Even before we got married, my in-laws constantly asked me to do favors for them, and I think they treat me like a servant. They’ve even ruined two of my birthdays in a row with some demanding tantrums over stupid shit, and my MIL tried to commandeer my wedding, she even called it her wedding.
One of the problems is that both of them are terrible communicators: my MIL, despite having lived in China for three decades, does not speak Chinese, whereas I don’t speak her mother tongue. Her English is quite poor and she constantly misunderstands me when we try to communicate in English. Even something as simple as organizing a meet up is riddled with frustrations because she has absolutely no communication skills, and she doesn’t even know how to use GPS or other basic Chinese apps. She is the most helpless person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. She hasn’t had a job since she came to China and she is incompetency personified.
On top of that she is snobby, she looks down on most Chinese people and whenever we socialize she is always complaining about something or someone, and she thinks all Chinese people are out of scam her. She lives in a total expat bubble and does not understand most Chinese customs or way of life. My FIL, ironically being Chinese himself, is also a terrible communicator and has a bad case of untreated adult ADD. He’s always spewing bullshit conspiracies at me, or putting me down, or going on about some complete non-sequitur. They’re both demanding and entitled, and if you help them with one favor, they’ll ask for ten more immediately, they’re both total choosing beggars.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was that about 2 years ago, my sister-in-law was getting ready to apply for university in the US. Since I had gone to college in the US, they both asked my husband to make me help her with her college application and SATs. I didn’t want to do it, because I knew there would be communication problems and misunderstandings galore, but after much pleading from my husband, acquiesced in the end.
From the get-go, it was a total nightmare. They both knew absolutely nothing about the US university application process, but whenever I tried to explain it they both talked over me and didn’t listen at all. On top of that they were delusional about my sister-in-law’s grades. She is a mediocre student at best and has absolutely no hobbies or extracurricular interests other than video games, and she acts bratty and immature for her age. Despite this, they thought she could get into Colombia or NYU. Eventually I found them an agency to help them, but as usual my MIL thought the agency was out to scam her and started complaining about them to me and my FIL right away. He, being the entitled twat that he is, told me he was going to sue them for not delivering, even though he didn’t even bother to read the contract he signed with them, and told me to read it, and resolve the situation otherwise he will sue.
On top of this, my SIL, being lazy and spoiled, hated going to them and took it out on me personally by being excessively rude to me everyone I saw her. She would often roll her eyes at me, complain about the agency loudly, or otherwise pretend that I didn’t exist. She has also taken to texting me 40 messages in a row on WeChat in the middle of the night, demanding help with her college application. My MIL witnessed some of this behavior and said nothing. I got so fed up that I started to avoid them completely, and quit our group chats. After a few months they realized I was avoiding them, and started complaining about me and badmouthing me to my husband for “disrespecting” them.
Last September, my husband forced me to go to a dinner with them, after I had managed to avoid them for half a year. My MIL and SIL were both incredibly rude to me and cold-shouldered me all night. I was very upset and honestly didn’t want to ever see them again. Around Thanksgiving they decided it was time to “forgive” me, and I was forced into another dinner with them. The favor-asking started again after this, this time my MIL wanted help changing the wallpapers in her house, which I had done for them before. I was honestly beyond done with them at this point and never wanted to help them with anything again, but as usual my husband begged and pleaded. After I helped them, my husband told his mom to text me to thank me and tell me she was satisfied with the result. Instead she texts (the first time she has texted me in over a year) that she wants to change the wallpaper in every room of their house and wants me to find her new wallpaper books, and help them some more with this.
At this point I am furious. I honestly don’t ever want to see or talk to them again. They never apologized for any of their behavior, never even realized how awful they have been to me over the years, and have gotten comfortable enough to demand favors again. I want my husband to tell them that it’s not okay to treat me this way, and how their past behavior hurt my feelings, but my husband thinks his mom is too sensitive, will misunderstand, and doesn’t want to hurt her feelings. I also offered a face-to-face meeting with her to tell her myself how offensive I find her and my FIL and SIL’s behavior to be, but my husband thinks that her English isn’t strong enough for this and thinks I will offend her and she will misunderstand as usual.
I don’t know what to do at this point, all I know is I can’t stand any of them and can barely bring myself to be civil at this point. I feel allergic to them. I’ve talked about this endlessly to my husband, but he thinks I’m overreacting and that they aren’t that bad to me. He thinks I should just take it. He works for my FIL, and he’s used to them badgering him to help them with basic things. He thinks it’s okay that they treat me like an extension of him, but I’m not okay with it anymore.
I cut ties with my own mother a decade again for abuse, controlling behavior and treating me like a servant. I honestly can’t believe I’m experiencing this with my in-laws all over again, it triggers me like nothing else. I don’t want to leave my husband, and we have a very happy life together otherwise. He’s such a good person, but he’s also caught in the middle. I know my thoughts and complaints about his family hurts him a lot.
I’ve tried searching online for advice on how to deal with entitled and demanding in-laws, but I can’t find any specific to my case. They don’t interfere with my life otherwise, they only reach out when they want me to do something for them. I feel like they only value me for what I can do for them, and I’m hurt that my husband thinks his mom’s feelings are more important than mine. Every time we talk about them it leads to a massive fight between us. He simply cannot see it from my point of view, and constantly tells me to get over it, and that their behavior isn’t a big deal. What do I do?

As the title suggests my S22 Ultra (Freedom Mobile, Ontario Canada) has recently updated to One UI 6.1 and after a few days I have noticed a few things.
First and most noticeable is the extremely fast battery draining. I have always used battery protect (85%) and had no problem getting through my day without NEEDING to plug in. I do plug in in my car for Android auto when driving though. But after the update I find I am forced to plug in or use my wireless charger to make it to bed time.
Second I now see that battery protect is reduced to 80%. I know it is only 5% difference, but with the new massive battery drain why make it worse?
Third my phone app previously used Bixby for call screening when I wanted it. Now it is no longer Bixby but it is called "Text Call" Bixby is no longer available. Unless they moved it somewhere not intuitive. I liked Bixby and it was fairly accurate. Why change it?
Fourth, I was used to the hidden navigation gestures and could swipe up accurately to go home, bring up open apps (left of center) and go back (right of center) but after the update can not get it to work at all. The direction in the settings seems to indicate that it is now a swipe IN from the sides? With the curves of the screen and a robust case (Otterbox) and fat fingers forget it.
I do like some of the new Ai uses and I am sure I will learn more as the days go on. But these are my first thoughts.

I started touching my hair in 7th grade constantly, just by putting my finger on my middle part to feel the texture. I got bullied for it almost daily. I gradually began playing with it by twisting it with my fingers over time. Then some time later I began twisting it untill it became knotted and then pulling it out all at once. Then I began putting it in my mouth and all over my face because it felt nice. Then I began chewing the roots of my hair and somtimes eating it. Then I began putting my hair into my ear because it feels nice. I now have to go to school bathrooms to eat and pull my hair for a couple minutes. I just have to sleep with my hair in my mouth somtimes. So idk what is going on right now.
Idk if This is my adhd or somthing deeper is going on here
A little context:
I’m diagnosed with adhd but my parents always get mad and disappointed at me for eating through my shirts, my pens, bottle caps, pieces of plastic, my blankets, etc.And when I was little my dad would yell at me for hours because I would eat and chew my pencils and eat the lead. I’ve suffered for a lot of years because of this and was so ashamed of it since it’s been happening since I was a little girl. It’s so gross to do in public and I’ve been publicly shamed by teachers for chewing pencils. all of my school supplies look like trash, and it’s so tiring to be eating my hair while doing homework every day.
It just helps calm me down, and I’m on anziety and adhd meds, and my chewing will not go away, it’s always been a thing but gradually it’s just moved to more harmful things like my hair this year which I’m destroying. I’m worried my chewing habit will just continue to get worse. I value my hair and I have had to cut it so many times now, and I use to have such soft and long hair. It was somthing I loved dearly and seeing it lost breaks my heart, and it breaks my moms heart too. Not sure if this is just stimming or somthing else?

my 8 month old cat is extremely protective over food and treats. she growls when my other cat approaches her bowl while eating, and when i feed them treats she gets extremely aggressive—she often bites my fingers while hand feeding and has even drawn blood. if i’m feeding them a churu, she will try to grab the entire stick and take it away. i try to pull it back before she can steal it, but she often leaves bite marks on the end and doesn’t seem to realize that she can lick it to eat it instead of tearing apart the entire tube. she is otherwise extremely gentle and sweet, and there’s a stark difference between her play bites and when she bites when food is involved. she is also very smart—she knows “sit” and will sit for treats, then bite the shit out of my fingers. i’m getting frustrated with it all, partially because i know she is trainable but i don’t really know how to correct this behavior, which i assume she learned while she was in the street as a kitten. does anyone have any advice?

Ok a little background: I have epilepsy with 99% of my seizures are nocturnal TC but I have had auras while awake and maybe 10 generalized seizures after an aura, over 20 years with epilepsy.
I’ll provide more detail below but my question summarized: has anyone ever had a (unique for them) generalized seizure and lost memories preceding it with no post-ictal period?
The situation: I got evacuated from a hotel during a fire alarm in the middle of the night. I woke up fine and made it downstairs 5 floors all good. Was thinking clearly, texting family and friends complaining about it. I decide to walk a little away from the fire exit where most of the people were huddled together. I texted again.
Next thing I remember I’m deciding to sit on the ground and I’m annoyed because it’s cold. Then I notice there’s a guy asking me if I’m okay. Yeah why? And he told me they found me on the ground and “my eye”. I didn’t feel anything but when I touched my face it was numb and I got blood all over my hand. Turns out I had a broken eye socket which can break the nerve and that side of your face will go numb. Meanwhile I looked around and realized I’m much further away from the crowd than I was before. Actually I’m close to my car. I don’t feel post ictal but something ain’t right. (Thinking pretty clearly actually for having been unconscious with a broken eye socket!) So I look in my cars mirror and it’s bad. Had to go to the hospital and got 11 stitches. Face was numb for months. But as the ambulance is taking me away some guy starts yelling that I broke his mirror on his car. I wasn’t sitting near his car and the guy who helped me up didn’t know what he was talking about either. But the ambulance gave him my phone number. Found out later that he had a broken mirror on his car that was supposedly nearby in the parking lot but it wasn’t near me as far as I remember. And I remember exactly where I was in relation to my car. His wasn’t parked in front of mine. It wasn’t there when I got back from the hospital either.
Later on he admitted there was no blood on the mirror and he didn’t see me there either but he said there was blood on the ground. I don’t think I was there long enough for blood to pool on the ground but I dunno. Based on the texts and police report etc, this all took place in like 3-5 minutes. From me texting family to the ambulance being called on site. So I walked across a big parking lot, something happened, somebody saw me on the ground and walked across the parking lot too, woke me up and called 911.
So it’s a mystery. I made the mistake of mentioning I have epilepsy but that I didn’t feel like I had a seizure. I was brainstorming what could have happened. Another indication I didn’t have a seizure. 🤣 normally after a seizure I’d probably have laid down on the ground and tried to sleep.
The police didn’t investigate because the witness said I said I had epilepsy (apparently that means a seizure happened to them). They wouldn’t go back and try to talk to other witnesses or anything. They would try to look at video footage though but there were no security cameras at the hotel except one on a conference center door. In that footage, he said someone that might be me walked in frame, stop, turn around and start to run off. (Supposedly it’s hard to tell bc it’s low quality video). But it was the right time frame and general location.
I’m just wondering what you all think. A very odd type of seizure? Or was it a mugging in a dark parking lot during a false fire alarm? (Btw there was no fire in the hotel. Someone pulled the alarm)
What I decided was someone was messing with that guys car and I saw them. They popped me in the eye. I collapsed straight down (I didn’t have any other injuries besides the eye. No bruises or scratches). Hotel tried to cover the incident up so I got nowhere further in my investigation.
But a possible but unlikely situation is a new type of seizure for me with no post ictal recovery period that made me fall forward hitting just my left eye socket on a cars mirror and broke it off without any other injury. With amnesia for a few minutes before the seizure took place and it was a very short seizure with a fast recovery.
What’s the consensus? It’s already been a year or two at this point so I don’t care but I figured I’d ask. If that is a feasible seizure situation I’d like to know. Stress and sleep are two of my triggers but I’ve never had a seizure like that before. Oh and there was no warning aura or anything that I remember. Thanks! It’s a good story right!? And if someone is considering a stay in Tigard, OR I don’t recommend Embassy Suites! 🤣

Hello. I am new to graphology and am quite interested in it. However, currently I possess meagre knowledge in this field and my query is just fueled by interest and small observations in daily life. So, I noticed that, on a whole, there are two types of ways in which people write the number '7'. One is simply like how you see in this text, and the other involves a similar procedure, only at the end, a line is drawn through the slant part. I write the 7 with the little line through the middle, whereas almosr everyone else in my family and friend circle, writes it without the line. I am particularly interested in what could be the graphological inferences drawn from this?

Any one had any experience with the NSW mental health team... I'm going through some stuff and doctor sent a referral about 3 months back and I haven't had a call or text ... He sent a different one in at the same time for my finger and I got a reply in a few weeks ...

my boyfriend ( 20M ) has cheated on me ( 20M ) 3 times so far. but not physically. basically the first time he did, we were a month into our relationship (1.5 years now) and we were in first year university so we spent a lot of time together and basically lived in eachothers dorms. he had his own dorm, and i had a roommate. so later on i moved into his dorm. i found out that he had been texting his ex girlfriend that he broke up with not too long before he went to university, id say a couple weeks maybe a month. he had been texting her saying that he loves her but that he has a new gf. she was mad because she assumed that they would get back together during the winter break (assuming he wouldn’t have gotten with anyone else i guess?) i dont exactly remember details because it was a year ago but it was cheating.
we had been saying i love you to eachother at that point and i saw their messages by sheer coincidence on his phone. so i broke up with him, but he was crying and hadn’t left his room / eaten in days and told me and convinced me he was different and learned his lesson. since then he has never talked to another girl or had any issues like that. recently, id say about 2-3 months ago he confessed to me that he has been watching p0rn.
now, i know a lot of people dont consider p0rn cheating and are okay with it, but i had talked to him multiple times and set my boundaries about this and we both had agreed it was cheating. so when he told me i was crushed. i felt i wasn’t good enough and that he needed to look at other women to actually feel satisfied. he assured me against it and that it was a p0rn addiction and that he wouldn’t do it again and he’s stopping cold turkey. recently i found out he had lied quite a lot about the p0rn he was watching.
i saw he had been watching joi p0rn and things that i know he liked in bed, he watched in p0rn. from a year ago. now he told me about him watching p0rn so it wasnt that bad, but i saw he had been searching up where to get a pr0stitute and details of it in our area while in the middle of all his p0rn search history, as well as omegle and where to find best girls noodes and leaked noodes of famous girls and s3xting snapchats and “why is ___ so hot” (some instagram 0nlyfans famous girl)
he was asleep next to me at the moment so i woke him up and asked if there’s anything he needs to tell me. now ik people will say “ don’t look through his phone that’s private “ but he tells me all the time that he doesn’t care what i do on his phone and that i can look through anything i want. because of the cheating in the past. so when i asked of course he acted all confused and when i brought up p0rn he told me that he slipped up and watched p0rn recently. i didnt know this at the time but just went with it.
so basically he says he’s changed and that after it he as going to tell me but didn’t know how blah blah blah but he’s changed and he’s never going to do it again. crying and begging at my feet not to leave him. now i know im the dumbass in this. i keep letting him get away with stuff and there also a lot i’m leaving out of the sake of summary. but i can’t leave him, im too invested and he’s an amazing man and boyfriend to me.
i just don’t know if i’m over reacting or if maybe i’m just under reacting. i just don’t know what to think or even how im feeling. i feel more self conscious than i’ve ever felt in my life , and im a very confident person. i know that im a relatively good looking person, so i can’t really understand how to deal with the feeling of being less than and not being able to satisfy someone i thought i knew so well. i feel like i don’t know him anymore. any advice? i’ll answer questions too.
TL;DR my boyfriend has a p0rn addiction that he says is done with but i don’t believe him cuz he’s cheated in the past.

Hey there just wanted to share my experience a week later to show people what to expect and how I’ve handled my situation
7 days ago I was messaged from an account with 400 followers and roughly 200 following, account was on Instagram and was supposedly a 19 year old girl from Nevada with bible verses in her bio
She texted me, I was suspicious and somehow she managed to convince me it was really her and even sent photos holding up 4 fingers which I thought for sure would let me know I was being scammed - but after asking a few ways of photo verification I was convinced as my requests were fulfilled
Yada yada yada we exchange pics and I get hit with the ultimatum of send $800 or have my pictures sent to my family and friends (they had screenshots of my following from tiktok, Facebook and instagram).
I’ve never been in this situation before so of course I was frightened but I felt the best thing to do was convince them I genuinely had no money, I managed to convince the scammer I only had $150 in my account (I have 2 bank accounts and this one had $200 in it so I transferred $150 into an empty savings account to show) and I stupidly sent the money. If I knew then what I know now I would not have sent the money. After sending the money my phone died and when I turned it on I came back to multiple threats and more screenshots of the scammer making group chats with many family members and friends. After reading up on what to do and looking through this subreddit I decided to block on both instagram and my phone number (I gave them my phone number as they wanted to talk over messenger instead)
After blocking, I changed my profile picture to black, changed my account name and deleted my bio, I also deleted my tiktok as I don’t really have a need for it anyways
It took 4 days for them to reach out again over a different phone number except it was a different person and they had no clue about my situation as they thought I was still in school and they were threatening things to do with the principal of the school (I’m 22 lol)
I immediately blocked and haven’t responded - I went to instagram to check if I’d been messaged again there and turns out the original account that scammed me had been deleted so that was a plus
I asked some friends who were supposedly in the group chats and they said they never saw a request so I believe somehow they fake the group chats even if it’s on instagram
But yeah it’s now been 7 days since the initial text, it took about 4 days for me to realise they have nothing over me and if I don’t comply there’s a very high chance they’ll do fuck all so even though I can’t be 100%, I feel 99% certain they won’t do anything
TL-DR ;
I sent $150, blocked and reported and nothing came from it Was messaged days later from a different scammer with my pictures and immediately blocked The people they made group chats with to threaten me have assured me they haven’t even seen a message request As stressful as the situation is, these people think of us as dollar signs and if we block them and give them no feedback - we turn into question marks and question marks are worth fuck all to these people so they move on
My best piece of advice I can give after doing research and experiencing it myself ; Block, report and don’t even respond to the messages I sent them money, I also blocked them and will continue to do so with confidence they won’t do anything
Stay safe everyone and trust me when I say no girl just wants to exchange nudes for nothing, it’s either a scammer or it’s a cruel prank xoxo

"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.