Yesterday, Ethernet completely stopped working. I was already about to reset windows for a quarterly purge (joke) so I went ahead and reset windows fresh with a new ISO and all thinking that would fix it (it didn't)
So, I'm using Windows 11 Pro. I still do not have Ethernet despite it showing up as having some data usage, but my Wi-Fi works fine. Here's the list of all the things I've done to troubleshoot myself so far:

• Reset my modem & router (as per another post on here)
  
• Reset the switch that my Ethernet is connected to
  
• Used two different Ethernet cables (in case the cable was the issue)
  
• Cleared CMOS on my BIOS
  
• Double-checked to make sure LAN was enabled in BIOS
  
• Updated my BIOS on my motherboard (ROG STRIX Z690-E LGA1700)
  
• Manually reinstalled my Intel Wired Driver to v29.1
  

https://imgur.com/a/dA9pZpg
If it helps, the ISO I used was the English International version.
Thanks, I hope somebody can help.

hey, i'm new to this subreddit. english is not my first language so sorry for the weird grammar.
some background: i've been diagnosed with anxiety and depression 6 years ago and have been on anti depressants ever since. honestly i have not been keeping up with taking my meds regularly these days (I either forget or straight up skip on taking them so I could drink alcohol), and I do feel like it made my anxiety worse. I have not consulted my doctor about this yet and haven't been properly visiting her. yes I am aware of how dangerous that is, it's just that I can never find the time to make an appointment (and if i'm being honest it's just not at the top of my priorities right now). I'm also trans (ftm) and been on testosterone since january 2020.
anyway, I was going to go to a few meeting about a gender reaffirming surgery im really interested in. the night before i got so anxious I thought i was having a heart attack, and could only sleep for less than 2 hours. I stayed up until my body was finally exhausted, which was around 7am. this caused me to skip all of my classes for the day, and at the end of it all I chickened out completely and cancelled my meetings even though I know how important they are. I feel absolutely awful, not only because of the horrible night I had, but also because I feel like I took the easy way out and gave out way too easily. i always catch cold feet right at the last minute and is a common pattern in my behavior. it's gotten to the point where my friends even joke about it and don't bother on inviting me to things because I either decline them or just bail at the last moment.
I don't know how to overcome this habit and I feel really lost. I'd appreciate any sort of help or advice on how to tackle this problem.
thank you for you time and have a good day!

Second shift here is a massive fucking joke. It’s horrific. We come in to a massive disaster. Orders are not done right. The stuff that is done is laughable. Our equipment is broken or not charged so we can do our jobs in the morning. People are being trained by people who make constant mistakes. They have begun hiring people who can barely read English or speak English and then these people make a massive amount of mistakes and get no correction AND WE ARE THE INES WHO ARE FORCED TO FIX THEIR MISTAKES. Their supervisor lets them get away with EVERYTHING. They’re on the floor 20 mins or more before their shift starts hoarding all the small orders so we have nothing to do before the end of our shift as well as blocking us from doing our job. Then they take extra long lunch breaks. They take an hour and 30 mins breaks at a time when they get 15, 30 and 15. Then they leave a bunch of stuff that they were supposed to do for us the next day. One of the lady’s that just retired from that shift went and told HR about all this bullshit. She even said that a particular few people purposefully unplug shit and fuck with things and made life hell for her and another lady that just retired as well when they were just trying to do work. I could keep going. My boss and I worked 10’s all 7 days in one week to catch us up and correct things which gets all fucked up in one night of second shift being there. We literally had a mental break down together. Rules for us but not for them. Btw. The numbers reflect all of this but nobody is doing shit about it. Then both first and second get talked to and mandated for Friday bc we are “not enough putting out enough work”. Like. EXCUSE ME?!?! We are all constantly working. And we know for a fact all second does is fuck around bc the only honest people on second told us how bad it is. Rant over. I could go on for hours… im just sick of us getting paid almost 2 bucks less for doing all the work while second fucks around.

About me: 25 yrs old
5'5
Bit on the bulky side but has a home gym or go to the gym if gusto
Likes to watch movies series or kdramas pwede tayo magdiscord watch together
has 3 cute pomeranian dogs
likes to jog and walk on beaches I love the beach
loves to game any game g cant play LOL willing to learn naman since nagdota dati (di magaling 😅)
sense of humor dark jokes anything
About you: 20-30 yrs old
normal bmi
Loves dogs
preferably chinita pero kung hndi oks lang pag gusto gusto talaga
humorous kaya sumabay sa trip and loves me sending memes I find
speaks good english

Hi all, first I want to apologize for my english as this is my 3rd language.
I have been on a trip to Japan from 19th of april till 4th of May with my(24) husband(30). We were excited to go there and see some culture. But when we arrived there, my husband was negative about everything in Japan, and he was annoyed the whole time being there. Almost every day, he scolded me (on the streets). He picked a fight frequently and got mad at me for no reason. One day in Japan, I lost my metrocard. He, obviously, got mad again. So, instead of listening to him belittling me, I just went straight to a machine to get another card. In the metro he was really quiet and when we got out, he got mad at me saying why I didn't day sorry to him. Of course, this conversation was on the street. He got so mad that he broke his umbrella and went away by saying,'I can't deal with you'. He came back and said sorry to me, but this was really hardbreaking and humiliating to me. The rest of the vacation he went on with scolding and getting mad. We got to tokyo after our trip in kyoto. I washed all the clothes the day before because in Tokyo, our hotel didn't have washing machines. All of our clothes were still a bit wet and smelled. I wanted to help by giving some solution about giving the clothes to the hotel desk or going to a washstore. But he went mad again, screaming, scolding... he kicked the luggage a few times, which was his father's luggage, said to me to go downstairs. I waited for him and when he got down, he blamed me about the clothes and got mad at me instead of finding a solution together. This broke me alot, my whole trip to Japan was a trip I never wanted to have again. The whole time, I tried to talk everything out, but it was obvious he didn't want to. Because he joked while I tried.
A week before, we had a few fights again. But the fights we have are not normal like everyone has. Whenever he is really mad, he talks in a way that breaks my heart. He said he got me out of trash and gave me a good life. He said he didn't see me as a woman because he felt like he had to coach me. In this fight, he threw his phone at me, which got to my elbow. Now my elbow is hurting and has a bruise on it. And now he says he loves me and I'm his everything and all. But this sounds like a joke to me as he doesn't respect me at all.
There is much more I could say what happened, but I think this is enough for now. I was wondering if this is abusive behavior or not.. because I'm lost.

Question aint for me but a friend - no joke, they won`t pay for a tax lawyer and I`m a member of reddit so asking for them on this sub. I asked a lawyer I`ve had some dealings with but he said he won`t give him free advice.
He`s working in the English industry and hit a very bad patch during the Covid pandemic in terms of loss of income and had help from their parents in Australia. His income dropped to well below half of what it was and he was given the runaround for the 1 million yen payment for those in better financial circumstances than him. Had outstanding health insurance and was denied the payment tho it wasn`t given by city hall.
Basically his parents sent money each month for about two years to help cover his rent etc because his savings were getting very low and the assholes at their local city hall insisted he pay his full residence tax and health insurance tho his income dropped like a stone. He was literally not eating sometimes because of that and I bought him groceries before he swallowed his pride and asked his parents for help.
He ended up getting around 1.1 million yen in the currency exchange in total from his parents spread over around 2 years. He got the payments thru western union and never declared them on his tax filings. His job income during that time was between 1.7 million yen and 1.5 million yen. Now he`s been asked by his local tax office - not city hall - to discuss his tax filing from those years. Should he have declared that money from abroad - he said it wasn`t a gift but expenses money so he didn`t have to.
Anybody know? I`ve got a feeling things are going to get complicated for him, anybody know what he can expect?

Hello, I just watched LEMMINO's video and began to do some stuff with "EAST NORTHEAST" and "BERLIN CLOCK". This could be me just connecting dots, where there are no dots.
So the name "Kryptos" itself is German for "cryptos" (I learned this by trying to find a Kryptos subreddit, but instead I found a German cryptocurrency subreddit). Clearly some translating might be involved then. So I had an idea that maybe "EAST NORTHEAST" and "BERLIN CLOCK" aren't really part of the true answer, but rather almost there. This doesn't mean that they aren't part of the plain text, but maybe the text is comprised of individual letters, then the above two iconic pair are just shoehorned in. Kinda like how the morse code has "EE SHADOW EE". Basically its individual letters, that you can translate into German, along with words that you can translate. Now translating the letters just gives you the same letters, but why not? "E E VIRTUALLY E" can become in German "e e praktisch e" (used google translate). Note, these maybe the only actual English words in K4, so that's why Mr. Sanborn won't give out anymore clues as per an NPR interview, or he may have one or two more in there.
So, I translate "EAST NORTHEAST" and "BERLIN CLOCK" and got "Ostnordost" (google translate) and "Berlin-Uhr" (NOT google translate, but Wikipedia and in general). Now this does introduce a big headache to me, which is that technically the translation of "Berlin Clock" in google translate is "Berliner Uhr", but I am going to go with a not literal translation here, but what maybe the more organic one.
Now, I am pretty sure most here know of the question mark "?", that maybe part of K3 or K4. Well, in one of the comments of LEMMINO's video, which he hearted, a person had a great idea that "CAN YOU SEE Q" has its Q actually working as a "?" in its own right. In K2 "X" can be used as a period, so this can be used in the same way. Q or a question mark. This then means the actual "?" is part of K4, or can be. Another great realization was another comment that LEMMINO hearted, being that in the morse code "CQ CQ" is a common alert for "Can anyone hear me?" and SOS is of course "I need help!". Ther are some other great comments int hat thread too. Someone realized "Can you see Q?" can be "Can you CQ?" thus "Can you hear me?". Since K3 is about King Tut (the mummy), "CQ CQ SOS" could be a joke regarding that King Tut is trying to communicate with us, and the similarities is the way to confirm you got it right (this maybe proof that the morse code was supposed to get you to King Tut).
Another good comment was CQ = SeekYou, and maybe another in a different comment thread relating that with "T is your position E" but I think that just has stuff to do with the morse code only.
So back on track, this shows that Ancient Egypt may matter, K4 is likely a question that is flipped, and something German very likely is present, and finally the answer is likely to be a joke which is a possible rhetorical question (Kryptos has jokes in it).
So because of this, I took the German phrases "Ostnordost" and "Berlin-Uhr" and flipped them to become "tsodrontso" and "rhunilreb". From these I found two words, but frankly now I am kinda lost. "tsodrontso" has dront in it which is the Swedish word for the dodo. In fact if you search dront into google (English), you immediately get info on the dodo nicely presented. But dront isn't a word in German or English though. In "rhunilreb" I can isolate out UNIL, which is an acronym for the University of Lausanne. From a simple google search, Mr. Sanborn seems to have no relation with them.
How any of this connects to anything else for Kryptos, I have no clue. But, I still feel this is a valid way to at least be creative. Mr. Sanborn did say we really have to look into that clock, and I am looking into it. Plus there is PALIMPSEST, which may indicate that K4 has two things at once going on, and the idea of translating the plaintext to German, and then flipping it and finding an English question, kind of works (though not literally like a palimpsest actually is). Plus if it is really as simple as ABC, well constantly looping abc gives abcabcabcabcab... which has cab, which in German is taxi (yeah), which can then be looped to be I X AT I X AT I X AT I X... which means not only are the letters Q, U, X, and C important, but also "I", which may become for us you. Still no clue how this relates with Swedish dodo and a Swiss university though. I will say though that East Northeast from the coordinates in K2 seems to go to Sweeden.
Thanks for the read y'all.

Although there is a joke about Americans saying Spanish is from Mexico and English is from America, how many people do you think know the actual origins of the Spanish language?

RANT!!!!
i work in a dominos and oh my god do i hate it there, i’ve only worked there for 7 months but it’s awful, my coworkers can be so horrible same with customers (ik it’s like that everywhere tho) i literally had a guy on the phone complain EVEN THO our driver when getting to his door, he did not answer the door, the drivers calls or the calls i made through the store, AND THEN had the audacity to complain and demand a fresh pizza because ‘the driver might tamper with it’?????? why would our driver do that im sorry what ? and then after his little hissy fit he called back and said he complained to the higher ups and will never be ordering here again and i literally said ‘that’s fine’ AND THEN HE PROCEEDED TO MAKE A COMPLAINT ABOUT US AND CALLED ME OIT FOR SAYING ‘THATS FINE’ i’m sorrh what did u want me to say ‘awhh i’m so sad that a prick like you will never order from us again’ anyway i got a bit carried away there, i also have a coworker who is CONSTANTLY creepy about me (im 17) he’s 20 i have had a boyfriend for well over a year and he is well aware of this, yet he proceeds to pay for my food, tell me he’s learning to drive and he’s gonna pick me up for work, call me to make sure i go to school etc etc, and the whole workplace is finding it funny and a joke, i just found it so overwhelming to the point i started crying and i haven’t spoken to him since even though he keeps nagging me and asking why im ignoring him, it’s just horrible to deal with as if that place isn’t bad enough, and sometimes i feel aswell that my coworkers are judt plain stupid like im 17 and am having to help a 40 year old on the simplist of things while running around doing everything because they keep hiring people who (it obviously isn’t their fault where they’re from) don’t speak clear english, which i do not care where you’re from it’s just i wish my manager would hire someone who can speak fluent english so i can stop staying there till 11pm on school nights just because she has no one else to do the costumer work, it’s just exhausting and im going to quit soon but every shift is horrible and i dread it so much SORRU THIS WAS SO LONG I JUST HAD TO GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM

Last week on my podcast, I took a shallow dive into the major problems I see in the Kemetic/Polytheistic communities at large. One of those problems prompted some interesting discussion already, specifically surrounding the superstitious fear of saying/writing the name “Apep,” or an obsessive need to immediately censor the word, in such communities. I wanted to explicitly look at why this completely misunderstands Egyptian religion in favor of contemporary superstition, why it could be considered legitimately dangerous to modern practitioners, and why it sums up the problems I see at large.
EDIT: two more important things have come up, better points than any of mine tbh. If these names had an inherent power of invocation tean anyone who ever wrote about the gods would now be polytheists. One needs the intent to invoke/evoke a god, and you simply shouldn't ever have that when writing Apep. Second, we can see lots of images of Apep drawn and written by the Egyptians in painstaking detail, and compare these to the desecration of gods like Set or hated Pharaohs. Heck by this logic Set is even worse to write than Apep as it was actually removed rather than part of the art.

1. The name for the force of primordial chaos we now call “Apep” is long lost. “Apep” is an English, best guess transliteration of the long dead hieroglyphic language. A language where we have literally no idea how it was supposed to sound. A language that was far more complex and spiritually charged than our joke of a language will ever be. So writing “Apep” or “Apophis” is not even close to invoking the force, unless you INTENTIONALLY go out of your way to invoke it. This is what matters, intention, which is why calling gods by their names in English still works out for us, we intend to invoke them, it is not the words or letters themselves.
   
2. As pointed out by a fellow practitioner (I will leave it to them to decide if they want to jump in), the very fear of the name is itself superstition rather than Kemeticism, indeed the latter had no fear of writing it, which they did often before destruction of the name in ritual. There is a serious superstitious fear in people that if they write the name and don’t cross it out, or write it at all, bad things will happen to them. It is the same paranoid, Christian-inspired, self-induced fear that we see with creeds like “harm ye none” when honestly the problem with Egypt was they were often quick to harm, or the fear that looking into anything outside of monotheism will lead to demon possession. This just is not how it worked, writing the name of a primordial force in a gross modern language is never going to have any impact on that force (nothing will, but more on that below). Further, I doubt this is ever seen through to its conclusion. For instance if you own any books on Egypt, the word Apep or other forms of it, maybe even the hieroglyphics, are already written in your home, oh no! Shall we cross out his name in all our books? Should we avoid websites that mention the name since we cannot desecrate it? Of course not.
   
3. Speaking of actual Egyptian practices, one must understand the effort behind ritual, and how that compares to ctrl+v-ing a crossed out name or putting slashes through it. Like if you were going to desecrate a name you'd make a pot, carve the name in, let it dry, smash it, etc. Or make sandals with the name embroidered on them. And note that the desecration would only come later on, it was meant to be desecrated in the future in such contexts, or over time. These are active ritual processes and I'd guess were often in response to something, not just out of habit or social signaling. One act is actual magic, the other is a lazy habit. And when those names were written there was no fear of them, or they would not have been written in the first place, even to be crossed out.
   
4. Continuing with historical Egypt, if the point of slashing-out “Apep” is to insult or attack the force, this completely misunderstands how names worked for our ancestors. The actual insult would be to not use the name at all, not even just its name (which again was not in English), but references to it, nicknames, etc., to not even think about it. But again this is not how Egypt saw Apep, they wrote about him, drew him, and SOMETIMES desecrated the name or image in rituals, which were significant events built on great effort, and not a simple keyboard habit. And it is precisely because Apep is weak that we can write about and depict him without fear.
   
5. This treatment of the name Apep misunderstands both what that force is, and how much power it has. For instance, as pointed out by my aforementioned peer, it makes us wary of an inaccurate name for the force, but not the force itself. To elaborate…
   

5a. One way to see Apep is as an always present force no matter how often you desecrate its name. You can see Apep in entropy, or in the chaos of a plagued mind, or a deteriorating body. This will literally never change, and desecrating the name Apep will have no effect on it, this is a symbolic act we as humans do to say “screw you,” not to eliminate some threat. And these are everyday threats that must be watched for, you cannot just cross out the name Apep and think you are good for the day, it remains a threat in this sense. Just take the association between Apep and entropy to its conclusion: do we also need to edit and censor the word “entropy?” Of course not!
5b. The other way to view Apep, what I lean towards, is as nothing. It is not some willful god or entity, it is just a mindless force of material nature (meaning its influence is always limited to the material realm, rather than the spiritual). In billions and billions of years Apep has not destroyed one thing, has not defeated one god (who we really should think more highly of than that they need us to cross out an english word to survive), has not ruined one life. To even suggest it does cause our problems (in my opinion since I pick 5b over 5a) not only gives Apep way more power and fear than it deserves, but takes the blame off of us when we mess things up and don’t feel like owning up to it. Apep is not our devil, is not some malevolent Abrahamic boogeyman, it is just a recognized force of nature with no will and that will never change or be influenced by the acts of humans.

1. Finally, the very idea of non-existence, of a god or individual returning to a state of primordial chaos, is a complete impossibility. Self-existence, such as that of our own and the gods, is a simple, axiomatic fact. For there to even being Apep, there must also be non-Apep, and it can never be otherwise. The very statement “I do not exist” cannot even be argued or conceived. This means that any fear of Apep, even historically speaking, is misplaced, a lack of understanding about the nature of the soul, a superstition. And that's okay, knowledge grows over time, just like we now know retainer sacrifices were wrong, and mummification/materialism is not needed for life after death. Honestly, not allowing knowledge to evolve in such a way gives Apep more praise than writing its name ever could.

Interestingly in this one topic we can see a lot of the problems I brought up manifested: the influence of Christian-based new ageism and superstition, the lack of objective/academic investigation into Egyptian belief and practices, unfamiliarity with even the basics of Egyptian beliefs and practices, the need for validation (such as a virtual pat on the back for slashing out Apep), and honestly just a plain laziness and desire to be handed everything on a silver platter immediately and without effort. These superstitious fears of Apep grant it more power over our lives than it ever could naturally have.
Edit: I agree with the below discussion that I've overstepped to some extent perhaps, but have chosen to leave this up to see if it spawns further discussion. That's not a recant, mind you lol.

Last week on my podcast, I took a shallow dive into the major problems I see in the Kemetic/Polytheistic communities at large. One of those problems prompted some interesting discussion already, specifically surrounding the superstitious fear of saying/writing the name “Apep,” or an obsessive need to immediately censor the word, in such communities. I wanted to explicitly look at why this completely misunderstands Egyptian religion in favor of contemporary superstition, why it could be considered legitimately dangerous to modern practitioners, and why it sums up the problems I see at large.
EDIT: two more important things have come up, better points than any of mine tbh. If these names had an inherent power of invocation tean anyone who ever wrote about the gods would now be polytheists. One needs the intent to invoke/evoke a god, and you simply shouldn't ever have that when writing Apep. Second, we can see lots of images of Apep drawn and written by the Egyptians in painstaking detail, and compare these to the desecration of gods like Set or hated Pharaohs. Heck by this logic Set is even worse to write than Apep as it was actually removed rather than part of the art.

1. The name for the force of primordial chaos we now call “Apep” is long lost. “Apep” is an English, best guess transliteration of the long dead hieroglyphic language. A language where we have literally no idea how it was supposed to sound. A language that was far more complex and spiritually charged than our joke of a language will ever be. So writing “Apep” or “Apophis” is not even close to invoking the force, unless you INTENTIONALLY go out of your way to invoke it. This is what matters, intention, which is why calling gods by their names in English still works out for us, we intend to invoke them, it is not the words or letters themselves.
   
2. As pointed out by a fellow practitioner (I will leave it to them to decide if they want to jump in), the very fear of the name is itself superstition rather than Kemeticism, indeed the latter had no fear of writing it, which they did often before destruction of the name in ritual. There is a serious superstitious fear in people that if they write the name and don’t cross it out, or write it at all, bad things will happen to them. It is the same paranoid, Christian-inspired, self-induced fear that we see with creeds like “harm ye none” when honestly the problem with Egypt was they were often quick to harm, or the fear that looking into anything outside of monotheism will lead to demon possession. This just is not how it worked, writing the name of a primordial force in a gross modern language is never going to have any impact on that force (nothing will, but more on that below). Further, I doubt this is ever seen through to its conclusion. For instance if you own any books on Egypt, the word Apep or other forms of it, maybe even the hieroglyphics, are already written in your home, oh no! Shall we cross out his name in all our books? Should we avoid websites that mention the name since we cannot desecrate it? Of course not.
   
3. Speaking of actual Egyptian practices, one must understand the effort behind ritual, and how that compares to ctrl+v-ing a crossed out name or putting slashes through it. Like if you were going to desecrate a name you'd make a pot, carve the name in, let it dry, smash it, etc. Or make sandals with the name embroidered on them. And note that the desecration would only come later on, it was meant to be desecrated in the future in such contexts, or over time. These are active ritual processes and I'd guess were often in response to something, not just out of habit or social signaling. One act is actual magic, the other is a lazy habit. And when those names were written there was no fear of them, or they would not have been written in the first place, even to be crossed out.
   
4. Continuing with historical Egypt, if the point of slashing-out “Apep” is to insult or attack the force, this completely misunderstands how names worked for our ancestors. The actual insult would be to not use the name at all, not even just its name (which again was not in English), but references to it, nicknames, etc., to not even think about it. But again this is not how Egypt saw Apep, they wrote about him, drew him, and SOMETIMES desecrated the name or image in rituals, which were significant events built on great effort, and not a simple keyboard habit. And it is precisely because Apep is weak that we can write about and depict him without fear.
   
5. This treatment of the name Apep misunderstands both what that force is, and how much power it has. For instance, as pointed out by my aforementioned peer, it makes us wary of an inaccurate name for the force, but not the force itself. To elaborate…
   

5a. One way to see Apep is as an always present force no matter how often you desecrate its name. You can see Apep in entropy, or in the chaos of a plagued mind, or a deteriorating body. This will literally never change, and desecrating the name Apep will have no effect on it, this is a symbolic act we as humans do to say “screw you,” not to eliminate some threat. And these are everyday threats that must be watched for, you cannot just cross out the name Apep and think you are good for the day, it remains a threat in this sense. Just take the association between Apep and entropy to its conclusion: do we also need to edit and censor the word “entropy?” Of course not!
5b. The other way to view Apep, what I lean towards, is as nothing. It is not some willful god or entity, it is just a mindless force of material nature (meaning its influence is always limited to the material realm, rather than the spiritual). In billions and billions of years Apep has not destroyed one thing, has not defeated one god (who we really should think more highly of than that they need us to cross out an english word to survive), has not ruined one life. To even suggest it does cause our problems (in my opinion since I pick 5b over 5a) not only gives Apep way more power and fear than it deserves, but takes the blame off of us when we mess things up and don’t feel like owning up to it. Apep is not our devil, is not some malevolent Abrahamic boogeyman, it is just a recognized force of nature with no will and that will never change or be influenced by the acts of humans.

1. Finally, the very idea of non-existence, of a god or individual returning to a state of primordial chaos, is a complete impossibility. Self-existence, such as that of our own and the gods, is a simple, axiomatic fact. For there to even being Apep, there must also be non-Apep, and it can never be otherwise. The very statement “I do not exist” cannot even be argued or conceived. This means that any fear of Apep, even historically speaking, is misplaced, a lack of understanding about the nature of the soul, a superstition. And that's okay, knowledge grows over time, just like we now know retainer sacrifices were wrong, and mummification/materialism is not needed for life after death. Honestly, not allowing knowledge to evolve in such a way gives Apep more praise than writing its name ever could.

Interestingly in this one topic we can see a lot of the problems I brought up manifested: the influence of Christian-based new ageism and superstition, the lack of objective/academic investigation into Egyptian belief and practices, unfamiliarity with even the basics of Egyptian beliefs and practices, the need for validation (such as a virtual pat on the back for slashing out Apep), and honestly just a plain laziness and desire to be handed everything on a silver platter immediately and without effort. These superstitious fears of Apep grant it more power over our lives than it ever could naturally have.

Last week on my podcast, I took a shallow dive into the major problems I see in the Kemetic/Polytheistic communities at large. One of those problems prompted some interesting discussion already, specifically surrounding the superstitious fear of saying/writing the name “Apep,” or an obsessive need to immediately censor the word, in such communities. I wanted to explicitly look at why this completely misunderstands Egyptian religion in favor of contemporary superstition, why it could be considered legitimately dangerous to modern practitioners, and why it sums up the problems I see at large.
EDIT: two more important things have come up, better points than any of mine tbh. If these names had an inherent power of invocation tean anyone who ever wrote about the gods would now be polytheists. One needs the intent to invoke/evoke a god, and you simply shouldn't ever have that when writing Apep. Second, we can see lots of images of Apep drawn and written by the Egyptians in painstaking detail, and compare these to the desecration of gods like Set or hated Pharaohs. Heck by this logic Set is even worse to write than Apep as it was actually removed rather than part of the art.

1. The name for the force of primordial chaos we now call “Apep” is long lost. “Apep” is an English, best guess transliteration of the long dead hieroglyphic language. A language where we have literally no idea how it was supposed to sound. A language that was far more complex and spiritually charged than our joke of a language will ever be. So writing “Apep” or “Apophis” is not even close to invoking the force, unless you INTENTIONALLY go out of your way to invoke it. This is what matters, intention, which is why calling gods by their names in English still works out for us, we intend to invoke them, it is not the words or letters themselves.
   
2. As pointed out by a fellow practitioner (I will leave it to them to decide if they want to jump in), the very fear of the name is itself superstition rather than Kemeticism, indeed the latter had no fear of writing it, which they did often before destruction of the name in ritual. There is a serious superstitious fear in people that if they write the name and don’t cross it out, or write it at all, bad things will happen to them. It is the same paranoid, Christian-inspired, self-induced fear that we see with creeds like “harm ye none” when honestly the problem with Egypt was they were often quick to harm, or the fear that looking into anything outside of monotheism will lead to demon possession. This just is not how it worked, writing the name of a primordial force in a gross modern language is never going to have any impact on that force (nothing will, but more on that below). Further, I doubt this is ever seen through to its conclusion. For instance if you own any books on Egypt, the word Apep or other forms of it, maybe even the hieroglyphics, are already written in your home, oh no! Shall we cross out his name in all our books? Should we avoid websites that mention the name since we cannot desecrate it? Of course not.
   
3. Speaking of actual Egyptian practices, one must understand the effort behind ritual, and how that compares to ctrl+v-ing a crossed out name or putting slashes through it. Like if you were going to desecrate a name you'd make a pot, carve the name in, let it dry, smash it, etc. Or make sandals with the name embroidered on them. And note that the desecration would only come later on, it was meant to be desecrated in the future in such contexts, or over time. These are active ritual processes and I'd guess were often in response to something, not just out of habit or social signaling. One act is actual magic, the other is a lazy habit. And when those names were written there was no fear of them, or they would not have been written in the first place, even to be crossed out.
   
4. Continuing with historical Egypt, if the point of slashing-out “Apep” is to insult or attack the force, this completely misunderstands how names worked for our ancestors. The actual insult would be to not use the name at all, not even just its name (which again was not in English), but references to it, nicknames, etc., to not even think about it. But again this is not how Egypt saw Apep, they wrote about him, drew him, and SOMETIMES desecrated the name or image in rituals, which were significant events built on great effort, and not a simple keyboard habit. And it is precisely because Apep is weak that we can write about and depict him without fear.
   
5. This treatment of the name Apep misunderstands both what that force is, and how much power it has. For instance, as pointed out by my aforementioned peer, it makes us wary of an inaccurate name for the force, but not the force itself. To elaborate…
   

5a. One way to see Apep is as an always present force no matter how often you desecrate its name. You can see Apep in entropy, or in the chaos of a plagued mind, or a deteriorating body. This will literally never change, and desecrating the name Apep will have no effect on it, this is a symbolic act we as humans do to say “screw you,” not to eliminate some threat. And these are everyday threats that must be watched for, you cannot just cross out the name Apep and think you are good for the day, it remains a threat in this sense. Just take the association between Apep and entropy to its conclusion: do we also need to edit and censor the word “entropy?” Of course not!
5b. The other way to view Apep, what I lean towards, is as nothing. It is not some willful god or entity, it is just a mindless force of material nature (meaning its influence is always limited to the material realm, rather than the spiritual). In billions and billions of years Apep has not destroyed one thing, has not defeated one god (who we really should think more highly of than that they need us to cross out an english word to survive), has not ruined one life. To even suggest it does cause our problems (in my opinion since I pick 5b over 5a) not only gives Apep way more power and fear than it deserves, but takes the blame off of us when we mess things up and don’t feel like owning up to it. Apep is not our devil, is not some malevolent Abrahamic boogeyman, it is just a recognized force of nature with no will and that will never change or be influenced by the acts of humans.

1. Finally, the very idea of non-existence, of a god or individual returning to a state of primordial chaos, is a complete impossibility. Self-existence, such as that of our own and the gods, is a simple, axiomatic fact. For there to even being Apep, there must also be non-Apep, and it can never be otherwise. The very statement “I do not exist” cannot even be argued or conceived. This means that any fear of Apep, even historically speaking, is misplaced, a lack of understanding about the nature of the soul, a superstition. And that's okay, knowledge grows over time, just like we now know retainer sacrifices were wrong, and mummification/materialism is not needed for life after death. Honestly, not allowing knowledge to evolve in such a way gives Apep more praise than writing its name ever could.

Interestingly in this one topic we can see a lot of the problems I brought up manifested: the influence of Christian-based new ageism and superstition, the lack of objective/academic investigation into Egyptian belief and practices, unfamiliarity with even the basics of Egyptian beliefs and practices, the need for validation (such as a virtual pat on the back for slashing out Apep), and honestly just a plain laziness and desire to be handed everything on a silver platter immediately and without effort. These superstitious fears of Apep grant it more power over our lives than it ever could naturally have.

Last week on my podcast, I took a shallow dive into the major problems I see in the Kemetic/Polytheistic communities at large. One of those problems prompted some interesting discussion already, specifically surrounding the superstitious fear of saying/writing the name “Apep,” or an obsessive need to immediately censor the word, in such communities. I wanted to explicitly look at why this completely misunderstands Egyptian religion in favor of contemporary superstition, why it could be considered legitimately dangerous to modern practitioners, and why it sums up the problems I see at large.
EDIT: two more important things have come up, better points than any of mine tbh. If these names had an inherent power of invocation tean anyone who ever wrote about the gods would now be polytheists. One needs the intent to invoke/evoke a god, and you simply shouldn't ever have that when writing Apep. Second, we can see lots of images of Apep drawn and written by the Egyptians in painstaking detail, and compare these to the desecration of gods like Set or hated Pharaohs. Heck by this logic Set is even worse to write than Apep as it was actually removed rather than part of the art.

1. The name for the force of primordial chaos we now call “Apep” is long lost. “Apep” is an English, best guess transliteration of the long dead hieroglyphic language. A language where we have literally no idea how it was supposed to sound. A language that was far more complex and spiritually charged than our joke of a language will ever be. So writing “Apep” or “Apophis” is not even close to invoking the force, unless you INTENTIONALLY go out of your way to invoke it. This is what matters, intention, which is why calling gods by their names in English still works out for us, we intend to invoke them, it is not the words or letters themselves.
   
2. As pointed out by a fellow practitioner (I will leave it to them to decide if they want to jump in), the very fear of the name is itself superstition rather than Kemeticism, indeed the latter had no fear of writing it, which they did often before destruction of the name in ritual. There is a serious superstitious fear in people that if they write the name and don’t cross it out, or write it at all, bad things will happen to them. It is the same paranoid, Christian-inspired, self-induced fear that we see with creeds like “harm ye none” when honestly the problem with Egypt was they were often quick to harm, or the fear that looking into anything outside of monotheism will lead to demon possession. This just is not how it worked, writing the name of a primordial force in a gross modern language is never going to have any impact on that force (nothing will, but more on that below). Further, I doubt this is ever seen through to its conclusion. For instance if you own any books on Egypt, the word Apep or other forms of it, maybe even the hieroglyphics, are already written in your home, oh no! Shall we cross out his name in all our books? Should we avoid websites that mention the name since we cannot desecrate it? Of course not.
   
3. Speaking of actual Egyptian practices, one must understand the effort behind ritual, and how that compares to ctrl+v-ing a crossed out name or putting slashes through it. Like if you were going to desecrate a name you'd make a pot, carve the name in, let it dry, smash it, etc. Or make sandals with the name embroidered on them. And note that the desecration would only come later on, it was meant to be desecrated in the future in such contexts, or over time. These are active ritual processes and I'd guess were often in response to something, not just out of habit or social signaling. One act is actual magic, the other is a lazy habit. And when those names were written there was no fear of them, or they would not have been written in the first place, even to be crossed out.
   
4. Continuing with historical Egypt, if the point of slashing-out “Apep” is to insult or attack the force, this completely misunderstands how names worked for our ancestors. The actual insult would be to not use the name at all, not even just its name (which again was not in English), but references to it, nicknames, etc., to not even think about it. But again this is not how Egypt saw Apep, they wrote about him, drew him, and SOMETIMES desecrated the name or image in rituals, which were significant events built on great effort, and not a simple keyboard habit. And it is precisely because Apep is weak that we can write about and depict him without fear.
   
5. This treatment of the name Apep misunderstands both what that force is, and how much power it has. For instance, as pointed out by my aforementioned peer, it makes us wary of an inaccurate name for the force, but not the force itself. To elaborate…
   

5a. One way to see Apep is as an always present force no matter how often you desecrate its name. You can see Apep in entropy, or in the chaos of a plagued mind, or a deteriorating body. This will literally never change, and desecrating the name Apep will have no effect on it, this is a symbolic act we as humans do to say “screw you,” not to eliminate some threat. And these are everyday threats that must be watched for, you cannot just cross out the name Apep and think you are good for the day, it remains a threat in this sense. Just take the association between Apep and entropy to its conclusion: do we also need to edit and censor the word “entropy?” Of course not!
5b. The other way to view Apep, what I lean towards, is as nothing. It is not some willful god or entity, it is just a mindless force of material nature (meaning its influence is always limited to the material realm, rather than the spiritual). In billions and billions of years Apep has not destroyed one thing, has not defeated one god (who we really should think more highly of than that they need us to cross out an english word to survive), has not ruined one life. To even suggest it does cause our problems (in my opinion since I pick 5b over 5a) not only gives Apep way more power and fear than it deserves, but takes the blame off of us when we mess things up and don’t feel like owning up to it. Apep is not our devil, is not some malevolent Abrahamic boogeyman, it is just a recognized force of nature with no will and that will never change or be influenced by the acts of humans.

1. Finally, the very idea of non-existence, of a god or individual returning to a state of primordial chaos, is a complete impossibility. Self-existence, such as that of our own and the gods, is a simple, axiomatic fact. For there to even being Apep, there must also be non-Apep, and it can never be otherwise. The very statement “I do not exist” cannot even be argued or conceived. This means that any fear of Apep, even historically speaking, is misplaced, a lack of understanding about the nature of the soul, a superstition. And that's okay, knowledge grows over time, just like we now know retainer sacrifices were wrong, and mummification/materialism is not needed for life after death. Honestly, not allowing knowledge to evolve in such a way gives Apep more praise than writing its name ever could.

Interestingly in this one topic we can see a lot of the problems I brought up manifested: the influence of Christian-based new ageism and superstition, the lack of objective/academic investigation into Egyptian belief and practices, unfamiliarity with even the basics of Egyptian beliefs and practices, the need for validation (such as a virtual pat on the back for slashing out Apep), and honestly just a plain laziness and desire to be handed everything on a silver platter immediately and without effort. These superstitious fears of Apep grant it more power over our lives than it ever could naturally have.

First, let's have a brief descriptions of Jung's concept.
https://www.thecollector.com/carl-jung-controversial-idea-what-is-collective-unconscious/
From the page...

In psychology, there is no topic more controversial than Carl Jung’s collective unconscious. This idea suggests that all humans share a common psychic realm, where instincts and memories are stored.
The collective unconscious is supposedly transmitted through brain structures and is the deepest layer of the psyche. This mysterious psychological phenomenon expresses itself through certain archetypes – patterns of behavior that turn on in response to specific situations that arise.

So remember, this concept is an Idealist one by default, since it involves a non-physical conscious link between individual minds. What does that mean?
It means, if you're a Materialist, you'll have great difficulty reconciling Jung's concept with the Materialist model of consciousness.
But if you're an Idealist, Jung's theories are a interesting and not that hard to get.
It's like the collective unconscious is a platform, and individual identities are programs running on that platform. Any "computer person" should easily be able to grasp the analogy.
So we've got our own individual conscious experience. How does that relate to a Collective Unconscious? In plain English, if there is such a thing, how do I connect to it? And if there is such a connection, people would know about it.
So I wondered about this briefly. Maybe it's the Subconscious? It's not exactly well defined and it often acts as Psychology's equivalent of a Black Box for various aspects of mental function that aren't well understood. "Subconscious" acts more like a category than a specific thing.
So "subconscious" isn't really suitable as a term for describing Jung's collective unconscious. The term is so overused, it's become vague.
To me, Jung's Collective Unconscious is acting like a source of something. The earlier description from the article points in the right direction:
"phenomenon expresses itself through certain archetypes – patterns of behavior that turn on in response to specific situations that arise."
There you go. Anyone can relate to this. You're minding your own business and suddenly circumstances change. You find yourself faced with a completely novel situation... yet you know exactly what to do.
The everyday expression of this is simply called the imagination. But think about how powerful the imagination can be.
Someone who's imaginative and good at writing can become a famous author. Someone who's imaginative and good at making jokes can become a famous comedian. If you were imaginative and a diagnostic thinker, you'd be a great doctor.
If you're a Materialist, you believe that your imagination is contained (and functions) entirely inside your own brain. But if you're an Idealist, it's possible that your imagination represents all or part of your connection to the Collective Unconscious.
If you're a Materialist, there's no such thing. But to an Idealist? Part of your mental function could involve receiving imagination/inspiration/realization from the Collective Unconscious.
And that's what Jung described. He used different terms and was a bit more specific, but he's talking about a source of inspiration. The way he describes it does a great job of showing the tremendous value and power of the connection to the Collective Unconscious.
We're familiar with the concept of imagination. But we just don't see it for what it's truly worth.
tldr; Imagination as the connection between the conscious individual and Jung's Collective Unconscious... as explained from an Idealist perspective.

For context I am now 17 F but at the time of this I was around the age of 12 or 13. Around this time my family moved into a new state and we were far from all other family. I also have had other paranormal experiences but only one other was this extreme.
Sometime after moving into this new state, we got the news that my grandparents were visiting from Mexico and they were going to be staying in California with my aunt. We barely get to see our grandparents and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see them so we decided to pack enough clothes for a week and drive to California. This was kind of a big deal since we live in the mid south so this was going to be a 2 day drive. Fast forward during our visit to my aunts house in California, My dad discovered that the truck he used to own back in the 90's was parked in her garage. My aunt agreed to let him take it home and he decided he was gonna drive with my little brother in the passenger seat, and my mom, my sister, my baby brother and me were all gonna drive in our other car. On the last day there we packed our stuff and we started our drive in our separate cars. We had been driving for about 5 hours and my dad called and told my mom saying he was gonna pull over to rest because he wasn't feeling well. My mom decides we're gonna pull over at the very next stop we saw even though we were in the middle of the Arizona desert. In the area that we were driving in there was a lot of signs that advertised native shopping centers and like little tour areas. We ended up pulling over in front of a huge canyon were we saw a very old gas station, an abandoned building that said saloon and an enormous tipi. My and my sister asked my mom if we could walk around and stretch our legs and she agreed and said she would come with us. My mom, me and all my siblings are walking around taking pictures and we end up in front of this huge tipi. This tipi had doors like the ones at a regular corner store so we walk in and see it is a whole gift shop. They sold everything from cactuses, wooden toys, bow and arrows, stones, different kinds of sands, traditional clothing, necklaces, like the whole 9 yards. And of course there are natives that are running the store watching us walk around since we were the only ones inside and outside of the store. This place was completely isolated and we really thought it was all abandoned at first but we ended up being pretty amazed by everything they had on display. I ended up walking into the middle of the store were they sold these beautiful dream catchers and I was immediately obsessed. I didn't suffer from nightmares or anything like that but they just looked so beautiful and I had never seen one in person. I convinced my mom to get me and my sister one of the smaller ones are she agreed even though they were pricey. When we get to the register the lady starts scanning our stuff like normal and she is gushing about how cute the dream catcher I chose is in broken English.Before she hands it to me in a bag she leans over the counter and tells me that I needed to do a ritual to get it started and she could help me if I wanted to, and once the dream catcher was done collecting my nightmares I needed to do another ritual to cleanse it so it could work like normal again. This caught me very off guard and I looked up at my mom who was just as confused as me and she told the lady, no, it's okay, just for decoration. (Also in broken English), and the native lady purses her lips and doesn't say anything else and we walk back to the car. My dad says he's well enough to continue until it gets dark so we did just that and everything was normal until we made it back home. Once I was back home and got settled in, I tried to follow the instructions I could make out from her broken English and hung it over my bed. I decided it looked too plain and put LEDs around it- in a triangle... Yes I see that wasn't the smartest idea but I was 12 give me a break. I'm going to say that for the first 2 or 3 weeks I have the best sleep of my life and I am starting to belive that maybe the dream catcher does work and it isn't just a some kind of myth for kids to shut up and go to bed. Until the nightmares began. My nightmares started to get to intense that I would jolt awake, breathing heavily and sweating and I would have to keep the lights on to even be able to lay back down on my bed. I seriously never suspected anything from the dream catcher. I was dreaming I was getting chased by huge creatures, I was getting shot, I was being abused, assaulted, and just things a 12 year old shouldn't be dreaming about. Eventually these dreams began to feel so real I had no idea what was real and what was a dream. I would wake up in my dream to see lights being flickered, things being thrown, doors opening, and when I closed my eyes I would be back in the position I had previously woken up in the dream. I began to stay awake at night with the lights on, and one night my sister had fallen asleep against the wall in my room and the painting hung above her began to swing until one fell on top of her. After that, I began to see things while I was awake. And I knew I was awake because I could no longer sleep, and when I did sleep I would have sleep paralysis episodes where I felt someone on top of me or someone sitting next to me. And one day, I had another smart idea to watch this movie on Netflix called Come Play( I think). And in this movie there is this creature that torments a child. A tall bony creature with sulken eyes named Larry. And this specific night, I could not sleep (wow, surprise surprise). I ended up getting so fed up about not sleeping that I got up, grapped my blanket and a pillow and walked over to the couch and lied down facing the door to my bedroom. In my living room there is a movement detecting light thing that plugs into the wall, but it remains dim even if there isn't any movement. So here I was in the dim light looking around, waiting for sleep to maybe even cross through my mind. I'm looking towards the ceiling and my eyes drift to the area above my bedroom door. And I see Larry. No joke. I really can't make this stuff up. There he was just poking his head out of my room. I could only see the top of his hear and his eyes, looking at me. I saw his long bony fingers holding the wall and he is almost touching the ceiling, he is about 7 feet tall and he's just there chillin. If I am being completely honest, I wasn't scared of him. I was mad. I was mad he wouldn't let me sleep, I was mad he had the nerve to show himself after keeping me up and paralyzing me T night I was so angry he wouldn't leave me alone. So look at him dead in the eyes, and out loud I say, "leave me alone, wtf do you want?". He slowly moved his head inside the room without making any noise and I just lay there, so fed up until I end up falling asleep. When I wake up it is around dawn so I go into my own room and fall asleep. What pushed me over the edge was when I had a horrible nightmare that I couldn't wake up from and I was screaming and and shaking my sister awake and she was screaming at me to cut it out and I felt so much despair in that moment that I ended up waking up, just to have another sleep paralysis episode. The second I was able to move I ran out of the room and into my parents room. I told my dad everything I and he let me sleep next to my mom for the night, the whole night i saw a mini Larry walking around the room and staring at me and I began to be scared. I didn't get a wink of sleep and I was beginning to deteriorate in physical appearance. In the morning, my mom storms into my room and tears down all of my red bracelets I had for "protection" any zodiac sign design, any stones and she took one look at my dream catcher and ripped it off the wall. She walked in literally a minute later and replaced it with a cross ( which is still there) and puts a rosary under my pillow. She tells me that's what I get for buying things from people I don't know and watching things I shouldn't be watching. Although I was startled, I listened to her and recited the prayers she taught before going to bed. Believe it or not, that was the first time in months I had a full night's rest. I slept like a baby and I had the most beautiful calming dreams. I dont know how to explain the peace and quiet in my mind that night. I felt at peace. This went on for a couple of weeks until I decide to clean my room. I'm going through my drawers and low and behold, what do I find? The darn dream catcher. I grab it, run to the trash can and throw it out. After this everything has been calm and I've been able to sleep peacefully. I sometimes see things in the dark but I know how to put my mind at ease now. But I just wanted to share this story since I saw a video on tiktok about a native lady warning people about these kinds of things.
Also, a couple things: 1. This is NOT a racist post 2. I understand this was my fault for being ignorant 3. I am not blaming ANYTHING on ANYONE other than just saying this is what happened in these sequence of events
Thanks for reading :) (Sorry for the spelling, I had limited time)

Eivor is a bit of a strange protagonist.
She’s basically flawless and without blame. She’s brash and bold, proud and unashamed — brave and wise far beyond her years, yet able to be soft and compassionate when not brandishing spears. She’s got a knack for leadership, a strong moral compass and an even stronger muscular system with which to enact justice.
And she’s got bars?
As someone not deeply versed in medieval European histories, imagine my shock and confusion upon discovering that Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla included rap battling.
My first experience with Flyting had me asking so many questions about what I just witnessed that I couldn’t wait to begin Googling. I figured flyting probably was historically accurate, but if that’s the case, then what else can it tells us about the medieval warrior and about Eivor’s characterization?
I set off to find out.
--
Wikipedia and howstuffworks combined gave me a robust definition of flyting.
A ritual, poetic exchange of insults practiced mainly between the 5th and 16th centuries. Examples of flyting are found throughout Scots, Ancient, Medieval and Modern Celtic, Old English, Middle English and Norse literature involving both historical and mythological figures. The exchanges would become extremely provocative, often involving accusations of cowardice or sexual perversion.
The idea behind flyting was to influence public opinion of the participants and raise both of their profiles. And each participant wanted to make himself look better than the other, even if they were friendly.
Not only that, but flyting’s also the first recorded use of shit as an insult. That right there is worth this whole essay and then some.
--
I came away from those definitions with some small Euphoria, as they reinforce what I already expected from Ubisoft — historically accurate and (arguably) immersive side activities grounded in realism.
Unfortunately, none of the flyting foes that Eivor faces in this fantasy are founded in any real-world flyters. I was particularly frustrated when I realized Fergal the Faceless and Borghild the Alewife’s Bane were fictional features, not real historical fiends of rhythm and rhyme.
Two of Eivor’s syntax competitors are “real” in some sense, however.
In Norse mythos, Odin, Thor, Loki, Freyja and more would handle their Family Matters over a flyte from time to time, dueling wits and words as competition and entertainment.
In fact, one flyte we do see in game — Odin as he flytes over the river with Thor in the Asgard Arc — is likely a reference to a real medieval Norse poem; The Hárbarðsljóð.
In it, Thor jaunts back to Asgard after a journey in Jötunheim. He comes to a junction in which he must jump a large river, and thus hunts down a ferryman to shepherd him across. The ferryman, Hárbarðr, is Odin in disguise. He then begins to diss guys.
Ahem. ‘Guys’ being Thor, obviously.
First, Odin drops a yo-mama joke:

Of thy morning feats art thou proud, but the future thou knowest not wholly; Doleful thine home-coming is: thy mother, me thinks, is dead.

He keeps going, taking more shots than a First Person Shooter, this time saying Thor dresses like a girl:

Three good dwellings methinks, thou hast not; Barefoot thou standest and wearest a beggar’s dress; Not even hose dost thou have.

Thor says watch your mouth before I clap back:

Ill for thee comes thy keenness of tongue, if the water I choose to wade; Louder, I ween, than a wolf thou cryest, if a blow of my hammer thou hast.

Odin replies by saying Thor’s wife is fucking another dude:

Sif has a lover at home, and him shouldst thou meet; More fitting it were on him to put forth thy strength.

The version we play out in game isn’t identical to the real-world poem, but carries some similarities; Thor’s threatening to cross the river to fight Odin as well as his boasting of slaying giants are present in each.
Ratatosk is the only other ‘real’ flyting enemy in Valhalla. While Odin doesn’t flyte with Ratatosk in Norse myth to my knowledge, the flyting against the squirrel is thematically accurate, at least.
Ratatosk’s purpose is to scramble up and down Yggdrasil, scurrying spoken messages from the eagle that sits at its peaks to the snake that slithers at its base. The nature of Ratatosk’s messages is in line with the act of flyting — the mischievous rodent carries falsehoods and aggressive statements to stir up drama and distrust between bird and serpent.
Flyting took place not only in poems and folklore, but in town squares and royal court. It was a facet of medieval life and social interaction. This weaving of prose then, in this time period, seemingly was just about as much of an admired skill as the swinging of a sword. It’s no wonder our unbreakable warrior Eivor is so proficient with word.
--
Like, really proficient with word.
I mean, I know it’s me choosing the dialogue options, but sheesh, is there anything she can’t do?
Actually, Eivor’s expertise in flyting is strange to me. It feels random and unearned — out of character, even. It comes more unexpectedly than Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us.
It probably only feels out of character, however, due to our modern understanding of proficiency with words versus proficiency with might. Our current interpretation of verbal ability compared to physical ability would perceive verbal ability as the ‘softer’ of the two skillsets. Physical strength is typically interpreted as tough and more dominant. You don’t expect to see an MMA fighter composing poetry, do you? The qualities that modern thought attributes to writing and physicality don’t mesh.
But in reality — and historically accurately in Valhalla — medieval warriors weren’t just blind berserkers. They were actually artists, poets and writers.
We’ve already demonstrated how Odin and Thor — Norse myth’s most famous warriors — carried out flyting. There are plenty more examples of the burly and the brawn, the Viking and the warrior breaking out poetry and song. Other poems and sagas include the same thing, among the most famous of which is Egil’s Saga — Egil, a tough Viking warrior, would frequently break out into prose throughout the saga’s telling.
Beyond Vikings though lie other other examples from around the world. The Illiad contains instances of public, ritualized abuse. Taunting songs are present in Inuit culture while Arabic poetry contains a form of flyting called naqa’id. Further, Japanese Samurai were known to be frequent composers of haiku, while Japanese culture also gave birth to Haikai, poetry in which vulgar satire and puns were wielded.
This historical accuracy ends up eliminating the randomness of Eivor’s flyting ability. Despite her verbal finesse feeling unearned, we can surmise historically that Eivor has practiced the wielding of words plenty in her life before we take over as the player. She’s dedicated time to this.
Now that we know why she has it, we can take a closer look at what it does for her.
--
So, Eivor can rap. She can match you with her axe or she can match you with her words. She’s just about unbeatable.
Her mastery of words demonstrates on some level that she’s not all Push Ups and might is right. She’s not all bruiser and bluster, burn and berserk. She’s an appreciator of the finer things — the more abstract, mental skills that require brain power, deftness and finesse.
This duality of strength and genius rounds out Eivor into a deeper, richer, more admirable character. More than just raw muscle in pursuit of glory, Eivor’s mastery of verse demonstrates her prioritizing not just her body, but her mind.
And it goes a long way for her.
Eivor can use her prowess with prose to progress past pointless plot points throughout Valhalla’s plethora of arcs and missions. It’s just a stat check in the end, but with enough practice flyting and enough charisma gained, Eivor unlocks new dialogue options that bend the world around her to her will.
Witch hunters in Eurvicscire on the brink of terrorizing Moira can be dispersed verbally rather than brawled or killed. There’s an entire riddle-solving fetch quest in Wincestre that can be skipped completely by telling King Aelfred’s abbot fuck off (figuratively). Eivor’s sharpening of her mind protects her body, saves her time, and allows her to frictionlessly fell her endeavors.
Her articulate advances don’t just alter her into admirability, they allow her to influence people and progression. With semantics from her mouth and twists from her tongue, Eivor can have her way whenever she wishes. In a game this large, I’m only left longing that the opportunity to make use of this charisma wasn’t relegated to niches.
Regardless, if medieval England is butter, Eivor’s tongue is the hot knife that behooves her move through her subduing more smoothly.
It all just goes to show that ̶m̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ flyte is right.

[ First / Previous ]
Memory Transcript Subject: Vili, Venlil Citizen
Date [standardized human time]: December 1st, 2136
The absent adults were due to arrive any time by now. I navigated the crowd of children who milled about the field, taking a head count to ensure everyone was in sight.
Those who had family attending the excursion were bubbling with excitement to see their relatives while a couple others trailed behind me, asking me yet more banal questions about venlil society and how it feels to have fur and a tail.
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” I had told April once. “It’s really, really… itchy. Have you ever had a bug crawling on you? Feels just like that. All the time.”
Chihiro didn’t approve as much of me saying that but Mercy seemed to enjoy the reaction I managed to get from the other kids. While I felt bad for exploiting the apparent human fear of insects, they were quick to forgive me, citing they “couldn't stay mad at a face like mine.”
Truthfully, I too began to enjoy seeing the children react to the things I'd tell them; the genuine nature in everything they did was more than I'd have expected from humans when I first arrived. Some of them would watch me with curiosity and wonder as we spoke, reminding me that this was a species who had only just been introduced onto the galactic stage and still had cause to gawk at the aliens.
Well, most of them.
Toward the edge of the gaggle of children was Lukas, moping away while trying to hide the black eye Amber had given him. A part of me was - flattered - disappointed that she'd risk herself to enact retaliation on my behalf, but I knew she wouldn't understand me were I to even tell her off about it.
Over the last few weeks, I'd gotten to know many of the children, though Lukas remained as distant as ever. In a way, I felt pity to see him so small even after witnessing the pleasure he got from putting others down and how infuriating I found his antics. He was full of anger and clearly had it misdirected at all non-humans for the actions of those who participated in the extermination fleet - at least he has reason.
I brushed at my ear to ward off the tingling sensation and let out an irritated growl. My hackles raised when I heard a sympathetic growl come from behind.
Turning about, I found that the source was Amber, also swiping at her ear in a mimicry of my action. I was far less bothered by her giddy snarl after having her do it every time she approached me, though it didn't make the itch at my back from almost jumping in fear go away.
“You do that a lot,” Amber giggled. “Is your ear itchy? Wait, don't answer that because I won't understand it.”
My ears whirled about and I tilted my head slightly to look directly at the strange little girl who'd been so eager to make friends with me from the very beginning. I'd accepted that, at least in her eyes, I was “Luka” and that I existed for her to talk to endlessly about her favorite hobbies despite her knowing she wouldn't understand anything I said in response.
Even then, I was still rather worried that I'd been so frequent with admonishing the more - sensible - pushy one that Amber had taken note. How many others could have noticed? I wasn't even sure how humans viewed me, but it wouldn't matter so much now that I was getting ready to return home to Luka.
I took a seat on the grass and found myself surrounded by a small following of kids that did the same. Amber, too, took a seat, but directly on my lap instead. I grunted as the surprisingly heavy child settled and I brought her head upon my scruff, allowing her to play with my paw.
“You only have three fingers and a thumb. That's pretty weird.”
“And you only have hair on the top of your head, that’s pretty weird too.”
“I’ll assume you were giving me a compliment…”
The other of the kids understood me and giggled at the back and forth as Amber raked a nail under my claws. While I was certain they were clean, Amber's scrutinizing stare felt as if I was being judged by my mother again.
“Your nails feel like a dog's. Maybe not as sharp.”
My translator interpreted that word as a “domesticated Terran predator” and I flicked my tail in indignation. I'd tried to shut out those who claimed I had traits akin to Earth fauna, though the accusations kept coming regardless.
From what I'd gathered, they believed my fur resembled that of a “sheep”, my tail and paws resembled a “cat”, and my ears were that of a “bunny”; now, I could add claws of a “dog” to that list. I had to keep reminding myself these humans didn't grow up knowing any other metric than that of the creatures from their home planet.
I knew the Terran Richard would return in the group that was due to arrive - Ma had made a point to inform me of such. The mention of the human's name spoiled my mood each time he was mentioned, and yet the Blackfox women continued to speak of him as though he was the most harmless thing.
I was not over the way he seemed to look down on my brother as an obedient servant, laying hands on him as though he were a dumb animal rather than a person. Luka had been the pillar that held me up since we were barely able to walk and talk, and it burned me up inside to see him crave the validation of predators when I knew he didn’t need it.
Amber, seemingly bored with one paw, grabbed the other as I let my arm remain limp. At first, I felt only the tickle as she played at the knuckles on this one as well, but there was a pause as she turned it over to face the palm outwards.
“Where'd you get this?”
I looked at my own palm and felt my heart skip a beat as Amber's claw pointed directly at the cut in my paw. I'd thought she had noticed it before, but the fact she'd call attention to it now when I was surrounded by the other children made a chill run up my back. I was still uncertain if bloodlust was a learned trait, and so being surrounded by juvenile predators at a moment like this did not sit well with me.
Trying to retract my paw, a lump raised in my throat as the human child’s grip hardened on my wrist. The other children watched with curiosity and neither of my assistants nor Martha were around to call for advice. I was to settle this on my own.
I asked with a shaky tone, “Amber?”
She rolled her head back until the tip of my snout brushed against her forehead. I got to look into the depths of her arboreal eyes, letting me see every red-blooded vein, every muscle twitch, every flash as they glistened in the red sun's light while the predator gave me her full, undivided attention. She even offered me her usual flash of the teeth. “Yeah?”
“Pah… Per… Pwers?”
I wiggled my arm in an attempt to indicate what I was asking to have released.
“Hold on, I'll let go in a sec.”
She understood me this time, but I sighed as she promptly ignored my request. She once again played with my claws, twisting them back and forth gently as she hummed to herself.
“Looks like it was made by your claws,” she concluded while continuing to toy with them. “This is why my momma always had us trim Butterscotch's claws, because she kept scratching me up when we played.”
The name once again tripped up my translator, describing it as a candy made from melted sugar and congealed milk fat. I tried to suppress the bile that built in my throat as I considered that worse than the item's description was the fact that she'd named an animal which had a reputation for scratching her after it.
Please, please don't throw away everything we'd built in this one moment.
“I miss Butterscotch,” she muttered. “But now I have new friends! Alien-friends!”
She rolled her head back again and looked back up at me.
“Like you! We're friends, right Luka?”
Her eyes shone with bright innocence and juvenile glee, making my fears melt away.
“Ie-e… I’ezz, frn'dz,” I confirmed. Apparently, my vocals didn't lend themselves to speaking Amber's tongue any better than hers did mine. Every word I spoke felt as though I needed to clear my throat after.
“Cool!”
With that conclusion, the dark-haired girl snapped back to my arm and pressed her lips to the back of my paw. I went slack as she did so and it felt as though all of my muscles had lost their function at once as I sat motionless and silent. I could see and hear the world around me and yet it didn't register that anything existed.
I felt her face lift from my flesh and Amber proclaimed proudly, “Momma did that every time I got bruised up and told me it helped with healing! So maybe you'll get better too!”
“Ah-hah,” was the only response I could manage, made on impulse as the rest of my brain felt a million light years away.
“Alright, everyone,” a voice called from behind us. “They're here, so clear out so they have somewhere to park!”
There was a commotion as the children all scrambled to their feet, including Amber, and they rushed with zealous squeals back toward the body of the camp. But not me.
My jaw remained slack as I stared at the back of my paw, focusing on the wet spot imprinted in my fur. It was a bite of sorts, described exactly as Tac had told me, and yet not a mark was left on my flesh save for the tingling of nerves as I seized up.
My back hit the grass and I let my tail curl around my leg as I held my paw to the sky. “Wuh…”
Something approached and kicked up the grass as I laid still and glared at my decidedly unharmed paw. My eyes traveled up to find Mercy standing over me with the corners of her mouth turned downwards.
“You good?”
“Why did you bite Tac?”
“Lord help us all,” she mumbled while rolling her eyes. “C'mon, let's get you outta here before you’re turned into ven-paté under some truck.”
“Uh huh.”
The elder teen’s grip helped me to my feet as I regained faculties, though I still felt weak. “It was a legitimate question, though,” I told her.
“It's just a sign of affection, I guess. I never really considered it so much before, y’know? It's not like you really think about why everything is when it's so normal, right?”
Speak for yourself, I wanted to tell her, though I held my tongue.
As I took a seat, the thrumming of engines could be heard coming from over the brow of the hill. Apparating as though it were a giant, segmented insect were the adult humans in their ramshackle vehicles, rattling down the hill with each occupied by at least five or six bodies in each of the dozen autos.
The children and elders alike rushed to greet their family as they parked and disembarked from the chain of gas guzzlers. Parents lifted their children in the air and hugged them while the elders chatted with them. But among the troupe of humans that had arrived, I knew something felt off.
“They’re one vehicle short,” I noted to Mercy.
“Hm?”
“I counted them when they left. They’re one short.”
Her piercing gaze scanned the fleet herself before she nodded. “Mike’s missing.”
Michael was the driver that Richard had departed with and so that helped explain the deadpan Terran’s absence. Luka and Hileen both recounted the same human by name when talking of their experiences with them, with both drawing the conclusion that he had to be the worst driver on Venlil Prime.
“Psst,” came a voice hissing from behind. “Mercy.”
Mercy turned to give attention to Tac as he sulked away from the crowd as usual, though I remained with my back turned to him while watching the humans interact.
The tip of my tail tickled at the grass watching children get smothered in affection by their parents, and they in turn received hugs from their elders as others chattered. I itched at the back of my palm where Amber's mouth had been as Johnny's parents each planted a similar bite on his cheek and forehead. Chihiro carried her brother on her shoulders as she chatted with her own parents with brimming snarls.
“Looks like Mike had a bit too much fun and ran his truck off the road,” Mercy told me as she came back from talking with Tac. “They're on their way.”
“I can do without seeing Crow.”
“Yeah, well, I could do with a place to practice rock climbing, but we can't always get what we want.”
“You humans really are strange for wanting to climb stuff.”
“It's in our nature, no matter how deeply buried.”
She playfully bumped me on the shoulder and I returned with a gentle lashing of my tail against her ankle to which she welcomed with hissing laughter. The teenager wandered off in the direction of her family's tent.
The crowd that had gathered to greet the returning humans was slowly beginning to disperse as the vehicles were unloaded of a variety of equipment. I was relieved to find that there were no signs of blood or death to be seen, assuaging the deep-seated worry that I had of the humans being on the hunt. As little trust as I had for Crow, there'd be no redeeming one so sordid as himself were he to be everything he was as well as a murderer.
I looked forward to seeing Luka again, even if the only thing he had to tell me was stories of his human coworkers. Perhaps now I had stories of my own experiences with humans to tell him and maybe I'd get to see that glimmer in his eye once again that had so long ago been tarnished.
Amber's delighted shrieks were heard over the commotion and I could spot her being held in the air above her father's head as her toothy snarl became somehow wider. Her legs kicked while she wriggled in the hefty human’s embrace and turned attention to her mother as she was lowered into her grasp.
Even here amongst predators, thoughts of home still hounded me. The closest I could recall mom or dad ever coming to that was when they brought me along to one of their outings for dinner where I was allowed to pick the venue. I was still not permitted to talk to other people even then, but I didn't mind at the time.
The gurgle of another gas-powered engine roared over the brow of the hill, prompting a few others and I to turn our attention upwards.
Breaching the horizon came the last truck, though I was curious to note that it appeared to be driving backwards. Tilting my head didn't give me any more of a vantage to figure out why the truck backed up down the hill, nor did it help decipher the mindless chanting that ramped up as the vehicle closed the distance.
“John Wayne's teeth, hey-a
John Wayne's teeth, hey-a
Are they plastic, are they steel-a”
A claw tapping me on the shoulder spooked me, though I had grown to suppress the instinct to jump and make a fuss. “Momma would like to talk before we send you off,” Mercy told me. “She's in our tent.”
I obeyed the summons, almost forgetting how to navigate the maze of rickety shacks and tents to find the Blackfoxes’ residence. It was a simple task, though, once I remembered that the elder sibling had given it a “groovy” paint job.
Approaching the government-issued yurt that had been painted with vivid flowers, I found it odd for it to not have a horde of humans gathered around. They'd typically mill about Martha's tent while she spoke with each of them about their concerns, though what became of their talks was beyond my knowledge.
I ducked inside without notifying Martha, finding her seated at the squat table that was situated in the middle of the tent. The matriarch turned her eyes up to face me and she happily set her insulated cup down.
“There's not really any room for more chairs,” she told me. “But feel free to take a seat anywhere.”
My ears gently brushed against the top of the tent before I sat down just to the right of where she rested. In this claustrophobic environment, I'd have assumed I was being lured into a trap before. At the very least, I still kept my ears on a swivel for signs of trouble, but now confidence outweighed caution.
We sat for a moment without saying anything as Ma adjusted her seat to look at me directly, leaning an elbow against the table as she reclined.
She asked, “Enjoy your stay?”
I scratched the scruff on my neck as I wondered that myself.
“No. Not at first.”
“But now you can say you did?”
“Everything here is a new experience. For me, and possibly every other person who'd have grown up under the Federation.”
“You pulled through, despite being surrounded by predators. That's more than can be said for the lady who stabbed a guy in panic on the first day of the Exchange Program.”
My ear waggled in entertainment to think someone had set the bar so low. What fool would brazenly assault a predator to begin with?
“There were a few times where I thought I'd need to run for the hills,” I explained. “The children you raise are an unadulterated look into what life was like back on Earth, if nothing else.”
Martha chuckled and covered her snarl with a palm as she spoke, “I will choose to believe that's a compliment, given your opinion on us before.”
“I'd say it's a stellar review in the face of almost drowning while under your employment.”
Her face fell a bit and she rubbed the back of her neck while averting her eyes. “Yeah…”
“That is to say!” I blurted out hastily. “Th-that everything else has made it worth my time.”
My desperation to clarify myself felt embarrassing and my ears turned warm as they went flush. Martha sat still for a moment before she spoke again.
“When Richard hired you, he told me you wanted to up your price. 1200 credits?”
“It's a big ask in hindsight, I know. I didn't realize how tight your budget was at the time and I'm grateful that you've offered me—”
She waved a hand with a shushing hiss.
“We don't need to worry so much about that now. Where I was going with that was, that you agreed to our terms yourself, and accepted with only a reasonable upcharge. No other local would've been so quick to take on this job for even quadruple the price!”
“Brashness is a quality of mine I'm becoming more familiar with,” I joked.
“Must be something in the water. But payment is why I summoned you here, actually. We have only a few members who were on board with having an ‘alien’ presiding over the children, and fewer still who contributed any funds.”
“So what you're offering is out of the pocket of only a couple of contributors. I see.”
“I hope it doesn't lessen your opinion of us to tell you that.”
I scratched my snout and exhaled, shaking free the impulse to inquire any further with a flick of my ear.
“So I suppose all there is left to do is arrange payment, and I'll be on my way?”
“It would seem so.”
Heavy footsteps shuffled across the grass outside though conversation from the crowd remained distant. They stopped right outside of the entrance and the canvas foyer rattled as knuckles rapped against the cloth.
“Martha, it's me,” growled a familiar voice. “Everyone decent?”
“You’re clear, come on in.”
The flap shot open and my paw balled into a fist as Richard froze upon spotting me. The predator’s blank gaze didn’t hide their confusion when I could clearly spot their eyes flicking between Martha and I.
“Sorry, am I interrupting something?” Crow asked.
“We were just finishing up,” I responded, making no effort to hide my contempt for the interloper's presence.
Martha waved a hand to one of the chairs. “Have a seat, and I'll be right with you.”
Richard seemed almost deflated as he sulked over to the table. I resisted the opportunity to trip him with my tail in front of Martha to humiliate him, instead glowering at him as he afforded me a quick glance. I turned my attention back to the leader figure that was present while he took a seat.
“So 1100 credits was the agreed upon price, yes?”
“It was, though if there's anything else you desire outside the monetary value, you need only ask. We can't offer much, but I'm sure I have the ear of someone who can.”
“Hopefully you don't mean that literally,” I jested, putting on a facade of worry.
I could spot Crow watching Martha chuckle at my quip. His miserable expression was almost unreadable, save for the furrowing of the pelts on his brow.
Let him watch me charm his kind as easily as he thinks he can mine.
I raised my tail behind my head while I leaned against the table and curled the end loosely to convey appreciation. It was a sign that was rarely used outside of close bonding - that is to say, it'd been a while since I had been able to use it.
Recognition didn't light up in Martha's expression but I was content with projecting affection in any way I could. Understanding wasn't as important as the gesture itself.
“So might I at least know the names of those who did contribute? I'd like to express my thanks to them.”
Richard was the one who responded, “I wouldn't ask questions I wouldn't want the answers—”
“What he means,” Martha interjected. “Is that most contributors wouldn't like being mentioned by name. Aliens are still a polarizing subject and can crop up arguments that others may be obligated to avoid.”
My ears and tail sagged a bit. “Did my presence bring up that much of a problem?”
“More like it's one of a million other things these people can't agree about. But of those who I think would enjoy a bit of gratitude, you may already know some of them.”
“Oh? Tell me!”
I made eye contact with Crow who remained quiet as he cradled his chin in his palm against the table. His bored demeanor irked me in ways I couldn't describe.
“The Ito family, of whom you're already familiar with their daughter Chihiro, were the first to pledge. They're good folk and will happily accept your thanks. Next was myself, though I didn't give much. One of our cooks, Raksh, also contributed a bit, though that may have been more out of courtesy than anything else. And lastly…”
She lazily extended a claw toward Richard.
“... is Mister Crow here, your biggest donor who paid damn near half of your wage!”
Slowly, I felt myself deflate as enthusiasm made way for disappointment. I gritted my teeth to keep any brash words from escaping my lips.
“Closer to a third, actually,” he corrected her. “And with me already having the contact details of your brother, that means I can help set up the rest of the transaction.”
Even when I think I'm winning, he finds a way to one-up me.
“Would you mind giving us a moment, Vili? I think Mister Crow came here to say something and I’d hate to keep you from saying your goodbyes.”
Obliging her request, Martha and Richard waited patiently as I shuffled out of the tent. I hadn't realized how tightly my paw was clenched before reaching the outside where I felt my joints creak with relief as the fist unballed.
In the short time I'd been away, I secretly began to crave interaction from any of the humans I'd become acquainted with. My mind drifted to the slop that Big Joe always served, and how he always laughed every time I tried to inquire as to his full name. It wasn't quite dinner time, though, and so I then considered if any of the kids were still roaming about for me to tell stories to.
Whispers came from the tent before I could set a destination and my ears immediately perked up. I'd found that the humans’ ears were not nearly as effective as mine and so I found it easy to go unnoticed around them. I assumed they thought I was out of earshot by now.
I crouched on one knee and raised an ear to listen, though it was garbled hisses from this far. Curiosity got the better of me and I shuffled on my knees toward the tent, hiding in the shadow cast by an adjacent tent to mask my presence.
“... playing games with the lives of children,” came the low growl of Crow.
“Miss Ito and my own daughter are both very capable of defending themselves and the children from a venlil, Richard. You need to have faith that things can turn out alright.”
“Faith! She wanted to—”
There was a pause before I heard heavy stomping through the canvas. The mesh flaps that acted as windows were quickly torn shut one by one. I feared Crow would spot me, but he seemed too focused on hiding whatever it was he was talking about.
“She told me that she would've used my brains to add character development to a fucking snowglobe. Faith wouldn't have saved me if she carried through.”
“The fact that she informed you of her plot should be some small comfort that there's a piece of her that trusts you.”
“We don't know how many pieces there are! Should we wait for her to try to gore me on the street a second time? Perhaps you’ll get some insight if she sticks a claw through my eye?”
“I'd never let it come to that. I do wonder why it is that you're so worried about her. Did you not tell me you knew someone in her position?”
I heard a huff leave Richard before he spoke, “That was while she was getting help from professionals! What, do you hope to get her the therapy she needs from some squalid nowhere shantytown when we're eating out of the aliens’ trough ourselves?”
“It's a preferable alternative to leaving her at the mercy of the Federation's methods of ‘healing’. At least this way, she's getting help that matters.”
By this point, their voices had lowered into hissing whispers that even I strained to hear.
“I expect that you'll be more open with the others about your motives in the future, Martha. Maybe I have no rock to stand on when I say this, but your actions could very well draw the UN's eye, and the last thing I want is to have the Blues down here.”
“Is it related to your incarceration? Perhaps you were on parole before the bombing and fear the UN will be after you?”
I listened to rustling coming from my left and the conversation grew quiet. I turned to see Tac trotting along, surprisingly unaccompanied by Mercy as he shoveled a bowl of stew into his maw. He stopped mid-bite to look at me hunched over next to the Blackfoxes’ tent and narrowed his eyes in suspicion.
Shove off, I signaled to him. Come back later.
Weird, he replied before trotting off without fuss, thankfully.
There was something of a release from within the tent as I heard Crow and Blackfox alike exhale.
“I assure you, Richard,” Martha started again. “Whatever fears you have, you're protected by venlil laws of asylum as well as having the backing of myself-”
“We can do therapy later,” Crow butted in. “I'll take Vili home. I hope you're prepared to explain to your son that this mission we've embarked on wasn't the quest for glory he thought it'd be.”
“I've tried my best to tamp his expectations down, but I was hoping that Kanek would be open to publishing our actions. The bus that is taking the ones you rescued into town should be arriving shortly, and Kanek will be here soon after she's shushed them.”
I scampered off when I heard Crow trudge out of the tent, using my paws to crawl as quietly as I could manage out of sight. Blowing dirt off of the scab on my punctured paw, I walked off to find people I wanted to say goodbye to.

Most of the kids were already spending time with their families, but the few who still milled about and played were happy to give one last goodbye. Riley broke down in tears while we embraced and I now had a stain on the fur of my belly where her tears had soaked through.
I tried shifting by a group of the adults that were celebrating their return around a campfire. The looks I got as I did so were unnerving now that I understood the discourse that my presence had caused.
Approaching Crow, I pretended I didn’t know why he was slinking between groups and milling wanderers with a leering eye. He turned about to the sounds of my paws shuffling across the grass and threw his head backwards in a lazy greeting similar to how Mercy would.
“Are you ready to head back home?”
“I'm sure Luka has held the place down on his own… but yes.”
“Good, I'll bring the truck around for you and we'll be on our way.”
“Richa-a-a-a-ard!”
My ears perked up and I snapped my head about to meet the approaching Amber with her arms outstretched. Her voice bounced with each step as she rushed toward the towering Terran. Crow let out a grunt as she forced her arms around his waist and jumped about with glee.
“Mama said you were a party pooper! You told me you'd stay cool!”
“Aw, I'm sure you can forgive me for keeping to myself, Amber. Did you enjoy your time alone?”
Amber turned the corners of her mouth down in a pouty expression. “No, I didn't have anyone to help me with my homework!”
Richard patted the young girl on the back and began trying to pry her arms from him.
“I'm sure you managed just fine, you're smarter than the average second grader. And how did Vili treat you?”
I folded my ears back when Crow's eyes turned back to me.
“Vili? That's Luka!”
Amber finally unlatched herself from Crow and rushed over to my side, jabbing a claw toward me.
“See? The ear is the same color! And she knows when I say her name! Mercy told me venlil don't have boobies like human girls do but she's a girl! You were wrong!”
A couple of the voices closest to us erupted in the familiar, grating laughter that accompanied humans everywhere. I tilted my head while trying to grasp what it was Amber said that had earned such a response. Human and venlil physiology was different for sure, but I'd never considered it so entertaining.
Perhaps it's some in-joke that I'm not knowledgeable on, I thought, humans seem to like those.
Crow lowered his eyes to the ground and pursed his lips before squatting down and beckoning Amber toward him. She obeyed and the taller Terran cupped a hand over her ear, whispering quietly.
Amber's eyes lit up as Crow continued and her mouth hung agape. “Lu- ah, er…you're a twin?!”
In a rush, Amber grasped the fur around my ribs and began shaking me back and forth. “You were hiding it from me-e-e!”
Given this small child was still two-thirds my weight, I wobbled like a sapling in the wind as I tried to grab for the scolding child's wrists.
“Please. Stop. Gonna hurl.”
The little girl groaned and buried her face in my stomach. “You must think I'm pretty stupid too, huh?”
Mustering as much of my understanding of English, I belched out, “No.”
Amber buried her face deeper into my pelt while exhaling.
“l'ou… no donb.”
She raised her head to look me head-on, something which I couldn't return in full for the placement of my eyes.
“I'ou's… Zm’rd. Kappy. Ngai'z.”
“You stink at English,” Amber giggled while shooting me one last face-splitting snarl. I mashed her cheeks between my paws and she relented her grasp.
“I neeb go, fr'nd! O’gee?”
“Okay! I promise I'll try to know how to say ‘hi’ next time! And more.”
Richard butted in, “I'm sure she'll hold you to that promise, but I think it's time we got going.”
As soon as he had suggested as much, I caught sight of a human who was only covered in pelts from the waist down stagger into view. The glassy eyed stare and uncoordinated movement were all too familiar to me even without knowing where they were before.
They growled, “Fucks the alien still doing here?”
“Just about to get going, Paul,” Richard shot back. “Don't concern yourself with her.”
“It has been here long enough! Move along, little lambchop!”
“Man, lay off,” another human intervened. “She's as welcome here as any other guest.”
“Nah, Paul has a point. How do we know she ain't some Baby Burner spy or some shit? Get the xeno outta here!”
The humans quickly began bickering amongst themselves and I felt the firm grasp of Crow on my shoulder tug me away from the commotion. Amber trailed behind, watching the debates unfold behind us while we made our way along.
Crow opened the door in a raggedy truck in even worse condition than the others, standing aside for me to enter. While I didn't want to test the predator's patience in light of the tension behind us, I whirled about to give Amber one last goodbye hug. Her grasp around my neck was like iron though the wet streams on her face were all I needed to know that I should let her have this.
“You're gonna come back, right? You and your brother are gonna come and say hi?”
I saw no point in trying to cobble together an articulate sentence in her own language that'd fall flat as soon as I spoke. I considered my words carefully while I clasped her hands in my paws.
“I want to, but I have class that I need to catch up with, as well as I'm in need of a stable job once I'm through with this one. I don't know when I'll be back, but I want you to know that you've made this the best two weeks I've had in a long time, Amber. I don't know how much of my language you understand, but your enthusiasm has surpassed all barriers.”
She stared back up at me with her lips locked in an “oh” pose before turning to Richard who still watched with a lazy gaze.
“She said ‘maybe’.”
That seemed to suffice for Amber as she broke free and ran off squealing with her arms in the air as she always did when she was excited. I'd gotten used to the ear-splitting shrieks of the kids, and my ears didn't even fold back on reflex anymore.
“That's not what I said,” I grumbled to Crow.
He clicked his tongue as he held the door open for me. “Less is more. She's a kid, so she may not fully grasp your struggles anyway.”
With a huff, I crawled into the truck and kicked my feet up onto the dashboard while Crow ducked in behind the wheel. He twisted the key and the vehicle gurgled to life.
Strangely enough, I found that instead of the truck lurching forward, Crow put the vehicle into reverse, using the mirror to navigate up the hill. The truck seemed to make sure we felt every rock and bump that it struck, and I eventually decided to straighten out my posture so that I didn't get folded in half by a particularly bad bump.
Richard seemed unfazed by the sickness-inducing commotion, guiding the truck up the hill with a steady gaze. Stopping at the top, he whipped out his holopad and tapped away while quietly mumbling to himself.
“... hundred-fifty year-old country shit, sure why not.”
He tapped once more and the truck's audio system whirred with the melodic twang of a stringed instrument accompanied by simple percussion. A human's strange croon came over the speaker in a curious tune.
“You held me up, held me down
Made me crazy, then turned me around…”
Richard twisted the knob to bring the volume down to a more agreeable level and I caught a glimpse down at the camp. A group of humans were now gathered where I'd been talking with Amber just moments before.
Now, I could spot the human Paul bumping chests with a human much larger than he, noses almost touching in a clear display of aggression as they howled at each other. Humans pointed claws at one another and argued while yet more flocked to the scene of the commotion. Whether their motives were to disperse or exacerbate was yet to be seen.
“You were my shelter and my storm
Made me cold, then you made me warm…”
Crow finally put the truck in gear and we rolled backwards yet again, leaving the only sight before me the peaks of the Belimal retreating beneath the grassy brow.
As I let the truck shuttle me back to my brother, I yearned for the comfort of my own bed and blankets, for the soft hum of my own air conditioning unit, and for the obnoxious snoring and sleep-talking of my own flesh and blood.
From here, one might even be able to see the highest of the foothills from which my roots would lay betwixt, a reminder that the pangs of home weren't just knots in my stomach. Luka and I had a long way to go to get away from home, and even longer to be rid of it.
“One step forward and two steps back, nobody gets too far like that
One step forward and two steps back, this kind of dance can never last.”
[ First / Previous ]

I’m new to reddit, so Im still getting used to things. I also needed relationship advice in general, but ended up asking here bc the topic is mostly over this so I hope that’s ok! (Also English isn’t my first language so bear with me if I make grammar mistakes and stuff.)
I’ve been with my girlfriend for 5 months now. Basic info, she’s poly and i’m not. But we went over that before we became official so that wasn’t much of a problem. But towards our 3rdish month together, I noticed she started to talk a lot to this one person. (I have never met them, I only know because they post about eachother) I didn’t care at first, I mean why would I be so against over my girlfriend meeting new people. But this one time, she didn’t reply to any of my messages. Like I messaged her in the morning and afternoon, she did end up replying at night and she was like “i was busy sorry” so I thought no big deal since im busy too sometimes and can’t reply. Until I found that she had been online in an other app talking to that person I mentioned earlier. I was upset about that, but didn’t really care because what if she just didn’t saw my messages and thought I wasn’t texting her. But what did upset me though I noticed she was like “jokingly” flirting with that person, and that person didn’t seem to have anything wrong with it. I did become a little paranoid after that, but also thought I might be overthinking. But at the same time, I don’t know what’s going in their DMs or other private messages. (Just mentioning this, my gf also has a alt account, which is private but for some reason she won’t tell me what it is, but apparently that other person knows?) So again, I don’t know what they’re talking/posting about in that account either. Also, like I said earlier they post about eachother a lot, like saying things like “I love you so much.” “This is so us” as captions. My gf never posts about me by the way. But even till now, I hadn’t confronted her because again, I think im just being too sensitive. About the main topic, few days ago she asked me she wanted to try her luck to get in a queerplatonic relationship with someone. She didn’t tell me who, but it’s pretty obvious it’s that one person that I was talking about earlier. I did say it was fine, but then I didn’t want to sound mean too. So, I just need advice in general! If you guys want I can also give more like details and stuff.

The YouTube Teen changed the rules. We are still earning $1,000 a day to stay in the insolvent, decaying galleria mall that has even the gigantic central skylight boarded up so we have no idea what time of day it is—part of the “social experiment,” according to the YouTube Teen.
Micah, who lost tenure track at SUNY Binghampton because of “a dalliance with a matriculated temptress from Hong Kong,” says the YouTube Teen is not using the term “social experiment” correctly.
Still, the YouTube Teen told us he’s going broke due to our astounding okay-ness with surviving on rank fountain water and rock-hard Mrs. Fields’ oatmeal cookies. Since we signed the four total pounds of legal waivers and were sealed inside the Walden Galleria, just two of the original six have dropped out: Lawrence, because he earned enough money to get his lupus properly treated, and Jessica, whose mind broke.
To date, the YouTube Teen told us—giggling, hair freshly permed, eyes substance-glazed, palm trees swaying lazily in the background on the giant monitor set up in the food court just for these check-ins—we have personally cost him $725,000. Which would be “valid as fuck,” except the Views have gone down and the various memory foam mattress and ejaculate-volume-enhancing supplement sponsors are grumbling. Viewers are becoming bored with the highlight reels edited together from the three hundred GoPro cameras bracketed throughout the mall above us inside small plexiglass boxes.
In the end, The YouTube Teen tells us, he is as beholden to the algorithm as we are to him. And so now, the snakes.
Non-venomous, mostly (the copperheads representing the BIG exception), and—the YouTube teen has assured us—all species native to the region. The YouTube Teen is committed to the Environment and will not upset the local ecosystem by losing track of an invasive snake. Should an eastern hognosed or striped racer escape the confines of the mall, it will be happy and healthy and find plenty of its preferred prey in the drainage ditches and fallow farmland surrounding the mall.
Micah has called bullshit on this, too. He is positive he saw a desert king snake, native to the Southwest, casually contorting its body up a slicker-wearing toddler mannequin inside GAPKids.
But the answer is yes: we have been bitten. A lot. Which is the point, I guess. Any rustling through the Mrs. Fields’ wrappers sends us running—usually into another angry snake’s hiding place, which, of course: more bites. Because of the highly-aggressive northern water snake, we don’t go near the fountain anymore except to risk a quick dip with our filthy TGI Friday’s pint glasses for a gagged-down gulp of gray-green water.
On a positive note, the views are up—not to their peak, when Jessica went into the eerily pristine Lids store on the second level and started setting Florida Marlins Official New Era fitted caps on fire before flinging them like frisbees into the Fredericks of Hollywood beneath the mezzanine on the level below, setting ablaze several plus-size Lara May Lace Babydoll Sleep Dresses that put off smoke so black and acrid that air quality and general visibility both went to zero for hours.
Susan, a single mother to two spectrum-diagnosed precious angels, was overtaken by the flames while holding her drinking cup—a giant plastic wine glass from Spenser’s Gifts reading I’M THE FUCKING BIRTHDAY BITCH—and it was melted more or less permanently to her hand. She has chosen to stay, though, despite the pain and embarrassment—“at least it will make sense one day a year!” Susan says, brandishing the blackened novelty cup and mangled, terrifying hand at us.
Jessica had to go, is the upshot. She also had to forfeit her earnings—attempted involuntary manslaughter of the other participants being one of the disqualifying circumstances outlined in the four total pounds of legal waivers. But it was far and away the best week views-wise, and we each got a large bunch of rubber-banded beet greens as a reward which we immediately devoured raw, sitting hunched on the dead escalator, our deepening anemia making us ravenous for the iron.
This is all to say, the snakebite highlight reels have “revitalized the channel” (Re: the YouTube Teen).
We all hate the snakes but Sylvie talks the most about how much she hates the snakes. She calls me “Kyle” but that’s not my name—I don’t tell her because I don’t want to embarrass her and I am in love with her.
Sylvie is not here for the money—Sylvie has a lot of money because she shares frequent online photos of her large and unique ass, which has had several popular songs written about it—but to pay penance and rehabilitate her image after she used some slurs when she assumed she was free to do so.
It’s unfair, Sylvie says. She would not have said those slurs if she knew there were any type of video or sound recording devices around. Plus, South Asian people should be able to take a joke. No sense of humor—that was another thing that was wrong with them.
I don’t tell her my granddad was from Lahore. Me and my sister called him Nana. He called me Chotu and would cut up mango slices for me until my hands were slick with juice.
But he’s dead now and he didn’t speak English (another thing Sylvie hates) and Sylvie is committed to being a Good Person. Also, I think she believes I am South American or Mexican based on her habit of calling me “Papi” when she occasionally forgets my name is Kyle (it’s not). It’s fine, though, because her heart is in the right place and it’s the least I can do to keep her spirits up while she “really does some listening and reflecting.”
One of the things I do with that in mind is assure Sylvie that you can barely see the snakebites on her large ass, which she also fears is getting smaller due to lack of proper nutrition. A little secret is that I would love her if her ass was even just a quarter its current size. And one day I’ll tell her that and she’ll look into my eyes and smile, and then I’ll tell her my name is Kader, not Kyle, and I don’t think she’ll even get that angry, like when I disagreed with her about the Moon Landing (I still basically think it was real).
Before Sylvie, I didn’t have a purpose of any kind. I came to be sealed inside the Walden Galleria in the same way everything happens to me: first something isn’t happening, and then it is, and I can’t really untangle the millions of decisions and non-decisions in my life that led me to any particular time or place. But I usually don’t feel any kind of way about why one thing happens and another doesn’t, unless something hurts me or makes me uncomfortable. Like snake bites, for example, which sometimes make me wish I was back at the apartment with my mom and my sister. Not that we really saw each other or talked much, except when we ran into each other in the kitchen while grabbing toaster strudels or a can of peaches before scurrying back to our separate little blanket nests and preferred online videos.
So when Micah asked me what sort of “outdated social mores” brought me to the mall, I didn’t have a good answer. The only thing I know for sure is that before the mall I wasn’t anybody and you have to have a lot of people know who you are or your life is bad.
This made Micah quiet (rare) and then he asked me what I liked to do in my life before the mall. I told him I liked to watch videos of crayons being made. Over and over again, I would replay the part when the still-warm, rubbery sheets of colored wax are scraped out of their troughs and forced through the metal, crayon-shaped molds. I told Micah I like to watch orange crayons get made best even though green is my favorite color. I don’t know why.
Micah said entropy is the natural state of the universe and the making of crayons flies in the face of entropy by creating order out of chaos, and this makes me briefly forget about my own mortality.
Probably? Micah’s smart so I believe whatever he says. Even when he talks (all the time) about how it should be totally fine for people in positions of authority to have sexual relationships with younger women who take their Intro To Natural Sciences course, even if these women’s command of English is not one-hundred-percent, and how that sort of thing is very normal because women are attracted to power and have been for millennia and it’s these later-in-life sexual conquests that people with minds like Micah’s are owed when everyone finally realizes how great and smart they are, especially after they had dog shit put in their backpacks pretty much every single day in seventh grade.
Micah also says it’s winter now. The owls that made their way into the mall in order to eat snakes have started nesting (having snake blood dripped on you from the track lighting above is pretty common). Nesting is a winter-time occurrence, according to Micah, instinct forcing its way through the temperature-controlled bubble of the mall.
After one of the owls attempts to make a nest inside a large fuse box and is electrocuted, we know it’s winter. The Macy’s end of the mall stinks of burned owl for three days and the heat and electricity are “completely donezo,” according to a text we receive from the YouTube Teen on the Communal Phone. But the YouTube Teen is very excited about the new dynamics below-zero cold will add to the social experiment. He also told us we can breathe a sigh of relief due to the long battery life and night-vision capabilities of the GoPro cameras, assuring us that the Channel will not experience any disruptions despite the pitch dark and intense cold that have settled in.
Also, we will still be delivered a freshly-charged Communal Phone every few days when the YouTube Teen’s Street Team comes to collect and replace the GoPros before delivering the spent ones to the overnight editorial crew. So we will still get our one hour of Internet access per day, per person, ideally to be spent in part or in whole on updating our social media and “driving engagement.”
Sylvie uses her time to share photos of her ass and also to monitor the activity of her competitors in the large-and-unique-ass influencer space. I usually give Sylvie my hour of Internet time so she has extra, even though lately I’d really like to see a crayon video so I can forget about the cold and dark. Instead, I watch Micah snap wooden Banana Republic clothes hangers over his knee in order to burn them in Sur La Table soup pots to stay warm. He struggles with this due to the dozen or so XXL Nike Dri-FIT athletic shirts he’s wearing, layered one on top the next, the combined girth of the jerseys preventing him from being able to touch one baseball-gloved hand to the other and get a good grip on the hangers for snapping.
It’s funny to watch, and I understand why the edits of Micah falling down while attempting simple tasks are gaining in popularity, but I don’t laugh. Micah didn’t laugh when I broke my nose after I tripped over the poncho I made from a Martha Stewart California King Duvet I found in Bed, Bath & Beyond.
The toilets have frozen solid and the Yankee Candle has become the new bathroom, the theory being that the Sweet Vanilla Horchata and Fresh Cut Rose candles, among thousands of others, would cover the smell. Nope. Instead, these aromas have combined with the odor of our waste to create a stench so overpowering and unique that none of us has the words to describe it. Susan came closest when she said it smelled like someone dumped a million of gallons of perfume into a sewage treatment plant
One day during Sylvie’s (my) Internet time, she lets out a howl. When I rush over to see if one of the snakes managed to somehow survive the owls or freezing temperatures and sink their fangs into Sylvie’s ass, she brandishes the Communal Phone at me and scrolls through photo after photo of gigantic-assed women enjoying a special, head-sized fried chicken sandwich.
Sylvie begins to weep with despair. The sandwich—a Limited Edition Drop from Arby’s that comes in a hand-hewn mahogany box emblazoned with the familiar cowboy hat logo—is so desirable that at least twenty people to date have been murdered during disputes in the massive lines snaking for miles outside the restaurants. Obtaining one is currently the greatest indicator of power, with various dictators from around the globe sharing photos of themselves enjoying the coveted sandwich.
Sylvie says she needs one of those sandwiches more than anything she has ever needed, and I tell her right then and there that I’m going to get one for her. She hugs me and kisses me on the cheek, and it is the best thing that has happened to me in my life.
Susan, waiting for her turn on the Communal Phone so she can video chat with her non-verbal precious angels, points her melted Birthday Bitch cup hand at me and reminds me that if I get caught sneaking out and back in, I forfeit my earnings like Jessica did. Attempted manslaughter and cheating are given equal weight in the four total pounds of legal waivers.
The Street Team is coming soon for a camera swap, so the next day I use my Internet time to look up directions to Arby’s—six miles if I cut through frozen fields and drainage culverts.
During the swap, a piece of plywood is usually left unscrewed at the doors near the carousel and the unblinking plastic horses watch me slip out as the Street Team removes the spent GoPros, creating a momentary video blackout.
It’s nighttime and the snow comes down not in gentle feathers but in tiny knives, given a painful velocity by the wind. The snow is in uneven drifts stretching out beyond the short distance I can see. I discard my Martha Stewart duvet-poncho after I trip for about the tenth time while crossing a corn-stubbled field.
After hours of leaning into the wind and snow, my steps slow to a frozen crawl. But finally, between a Valvoline and a Dollar Tree, the familiar glowing red cowboy hat shines through the slanted snowfall.
I fall through the doors and there is no one inside but a single, furious, pockmarked 20-something behind the counter. He glares hate at me and recoils from the smell of my unwashed body as I crawl up to the counter and order the special chicken sandwich.
Smiling for the first time, thin lips pulling up shittily around ratty teeth, he tells me they sold out days ago, and that I smell like shit. Which is true, but rude.
As I uncoil the Forever 21 Active Seamless Flare Leggings from around my face, though, Rat Teeth recognizes me—he is a fan of the YouTube Teen’s channel. He excitedly tells me he stole a sandwich that he has already promised to sell to the current Burmese dictator, but instead he’ll let me have it for free.
I think maybe I cry a little from gratitude as he goes out to his car to retrieve the mahogany box. But as he shakes off the snow back in the restaurant and I take the sandwich from him, Rat Teeth suddenly puts his arm around me and takes a photo of the both of us with his phone.
I ask him what he plans on doing with the photo. He says he will post it on every platform known to man so he can get “two truckloads of pussy” which he says will back up to his house now that he has proof he met me. I beg him not to—I tell him I’ll lose my earnings and be banished from the Walden Galleria and lose Sylvie if he posts the photo.
Rat teeth tells me tough shit, and I lunge for his phone. We struggle until I bash him in the head with the mahogany box and he has a really bad seizure, a halo of blood spreading across the bleach-smelling tile floor.
I grab the bloody sandwich box and run out into a corn field and back toward the mall. But I’m not sure which way it is, and the storm is way worse. I go slower and slower and I finally sit down and can’t go any more.
After a bit, I see Nana. He’s super pissed and he doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then:
“I think you would have benefited from some structure in your life,” Nana finally says without moving his mouth—he somehow puts the hot words right into my brain.
Yeah, probably. But I tell him that’s not really important right now because I’m gonna die.
“Eat the sandwich, Chotu.” Nana urges.
I tell him the sandwich is for Sylvie. When they find me, they will find the sandwich pristine and untouched and perfect. Then Sylvie will know what I did and she will love me. I tell Nana I need her to love me or everything will be pointless and so fucking stupid.
Nana shakes his head and clucks his tongue like he used to when he read his squiggly Urdu newspapers. And then I don’t see him anymore.

Hello!
Today I felt like telling my story that don’t matter but actually does because it really built my character haha when I was 13 years old I had a Facebook profile from a character that I like, Zack Fair from Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, at the beginning I didn’t even know what role play was, just that I really wanted to play as him. I added a bunch of people roleplaying as other characters from that game in particular and later on just random accounts from other games, I was very shy and didn’t actually role play that much because I was insecure about my English since it’s not my mother tongue, so I kinda just saw everything from the sidelines, with kinda no popular status I got a real life friend to join me as Aerith side note she didn’t even play the game or knew anything from it but went ahead and created an account to role play with me who was my character’s love interest and we would play as a couple. Nothing really happened at the beginning, until it did.
I added a profile playing as Ike from Fire Emblem and we started talking, only thing I know is that he’s a guy haha so we started talking and I explained him about my character and the game which got him interested about it, I really liked him he was cool at that time. He even left his Ike account to make one for Cloud Strife, a character from Final Fantasy VII. My character’s life was started to progress since he was being so extrovert, loud, cringy haha I made friends from role playing like Xion from Kingdom Hearts who I believe was a girl, Roxas from Kingdom Hearts who was a girl too, shout out to my girl! We still talk to this day.
Zack and Aerith got engaged after a while and we adopted Xion as our daughter, but little did they know I was having an affair with Cloud.
Cloud and I got closer and closer by talking I swear everyday after school, next fact I unlocked from him was that he was from the UK, we would talk about our interests and how was our day without revealing our names, to this day I don’t know his, but I would feel like we were actually friends on the start, he would tell me I play the best as my character, even saying I was actually him so I think that started to mess with my head, what was really aimed at my character and my real identity? Because it felt like we were in a relationship, he would say he liked me and that we should be together, so we started talking more flirty and couple like, even role play smut but it would be so awkward like *moan* and stuff haha nothing graphic, I don’t know why I didn’t tell my wife, to the outside we were this happy family, even my daughter had a crush on Cloud and I would discourage to pursue him, my thinking was he’s gay you don’t have a chance but with me it’s different.
I am Zack Fair.
The way I would role play was using fanarts, I would make albums from the characters and post a bunch of cute fanart and go from there, since it was easier to describe the scenery because of my English. I made albums from most of the characters of my game, even albums titled as family and it would be crossovers from Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy. Other people used this method I am not claiming it as my own, but overall this life was competitive I remember another Zack Fair named with the Japanese pronunciation Zakkusu Fea and I was totally jealous of him, he was so popular he had his Aerith and his family, their profile pictures were pretty so that made him pretty in my head, there was also this other Cloud Strife but named Cloud NotaChocobo something among those lines and he was a very cute boy, he always pick the cutest fanart of Cloud, but I never spoke with any of them I was shy and I tried to expand my social circle.
But Aerith disliked Cloud to the point she deleted him from Facebook, I don’t remember the motives but he would be sarcastically rude to her, it wasn’t really just one big event and I was really a coward to not defend my wife, instead I wouldn’t really interact in public with him, it was all on private messages, one day Aerith suggested we should switch accounts for a day and I accepted because I thought it would be fun to play as her. Big mistake.
She saw,
everything.
She posted on my wall saying what she found out, would copy paste fragment of what we told each other, our professions of love, I tried to warn Cloud but I was not on his friend list, soon enough friends started to notice the posts on my profile and got involved, I was rightfully the bad guy in all this, my daughter hated me because here I was breaking the family apart and engaging with the guy she wanted. I immediately apologized to my friend in real life playing as Aerith and she just lol’d telling me it was okay it was just a joke but in my mind it wasn’t. We got a divorce after that and she kept engaging on role playing as a single mom, later on I saw she remarried but then she really wasn’t much online anymore. For myself I grow out a mustache, a friend drew one from one of my profile pictures, it was popular back in 2008, haha, this face was even my signature :{D.
I went back to Cloud, we were apologetic of what had happened and soon enough it was like before, only this time I would tell him that I wanted our relationship to be public but he wasn’t ready yet, so I waited and waited but deep inside I felt hurt because I thought he didn’t love me in real life, he would then tell me his problems from his day, that he was at a friend’s house playing spin the bottle and he had to kiss a guy but didn’t because he was shy about it and I was so jealous about it I thought we broke up in that moment but didn’t say nothing, he would give me a few hints here and there about his personal life, I only know he has his mother and a big brother and were from India, he would send me links to Indian songs and dramas from Bollywood, that made him happy. One time while looking at profiles to add from mutual friends I saw an account named after my character and the profile was a real photo of an Indian guy, I looked through his profile and I got the vibe it was him, but to this day I don’t know since I never told him and the account was soon deleted or maybe he changed the profile picture since there were so many accounts with the same name.
We kept our relationship private until one day he said he was ready to make it public I was very excited about it, our friends congratulated us and I thought this new step would be so much fun but it went downhill from here. I don’t really remember anything from here I think because it were the days that I really struggled with balancing this persona and my own, the friends I made here would vent to me about their real life problems and I would try to help them as much as a 13 year old can, later I fell sick to the stomach turns out I had gastritis from all the stress, I remember leaving the Doctor with my mom telling her “So it’s because of the stress? But I like helping people, they tell me their problems…” and she said something among the lines of how they wouldn’t help me back, it sucked.
Tumblr was a miracle, I got my blog and I got obsessed with it, since I loved many tv shoes back in the day I enjoyed the content that people were posting, the images, the gifsets, the audios, the videos, the memes we got from that like the Mishapocalypse haha. Again I don’t really remember how Cloud and I broke up but I’m pretty sure he broke up with me, I told my friend Roxas about it and we decided to have a public relationship but really we were just friends, in my head I tried to make Cloud jealous but later on I didn't even care he had changed and I disliked this new persona and speaking of people they were not getting online as much anymore, so leaving was easy, I added Roxas to my real account and didn't look back.
I would only get online from time to time since I was afraid my account could get hacked or deleted for inactivity, but when I was logged I could say hi to all my friends and I got some juicy gossip, remember Cloud? He was in distress telling me that he was role playing with a mutual friend of us, a Genesis from Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, and boy they were role playing smut and Genesis’ mother caught a glimpse or something but she read all that and grounded him from his computer, I was indifferent from it I recall only saying him something like: Too bad. To this day I have the gut feeling that he was cheating on me, not with Genesis but I recall him interacting in a suspicious way with other Zacks, oh yeah he only liked Zack Fair.
Later on I saw that Cloud changed again his behavior, he was like a role play police if he didn’t like how you act he would let you know about it, he made a lot of accounts like a second Cloud Strife, a Genesis Rhapsodos one, one of my character Zack Fair. Until I logged one day and I couldn’t find him on my friend list until I realized he deleted me, with time I never found his account, maybe he deleted them all, I don’t know since roleplaying on Facebook wasn’t as popular.
That is all I have to say, I might have little stories here and there about these time but overall it really messed with my reality of how I view these friendships… relationships… I don’t regret it much, it was a fun escape since I hated my middle school haha but super cringe it let’s be real, I don’t really remember much apart from minor details or fun stuff that happened but shoutout to that other Zack Fair from Italy on his mid 20’s who told me he was in a metal band and learnt German from metal music who got stabbed in a bar I don’t remember why but when I told him I was a girl he wanted to be in a relationship with me and come visit me, I shut that shit down. But hi bro o/

Hi, before I start getting into it just know english is not my first language. So I am currently in a situation, I don't know how to navigate and I decided to turn to reddit for some help.
First to understand my situation better I need to explain this. I chose a certain "option" in school which means I'll spend my highschool with the same class (3 years), right now the first year is ending and since I'll still be with the same people for 2 more years this isn't something that will end in a month.
At the start of the school year everything was fine and all, but a few months in and people started hating me (I did self reflect a lot and changed behaviors which I thought could be the cause). It became obvious when a girl, stopped talking or interacting all together with me. She didn't want to tell me why, and after a month of this came to me and accepted to explain to me what I did wrong, so let me recap :

• I jolt when someone makes a big noise and I'm "faking it" (explanation: I am very sensitive to loud noises and if I don't see it coming yes it will scare me.)
  
• I made a joke about my self harm and I'm "faking it" because nobody who self harms would talk about it that way (explanation: I do struggle with self harm, and I made a joke who was not meant for her to hear about it, the joke was made to a friend which knew about it and she overheard it) Also I apologized for the joke because it obviously hurt her, and honestly I get why some people don't want to hear those kinds of jokes.
  

That was pretty much it and after this we started talking again.
Later (around 1 or 2 months after the ordeal) I learned a girl said some really nasty things behind my back, so that might be one cause of why everyone hates me (just know that the things she said about me were so wrong she was kicked out of school).
I do suspect I might have autism, which led to me making jokes about it and I think people didn't like this. I know I shouldn't have made jokes about it (just know it wasn't discriminatory jokes, just me pointing out my behavior and being like welp that's a symptom) and I have since stopped making jokes or even talking about it.
In all this I do have a friend group who supports me but knowing so many people hate me is hard and I don't know if I should continue changing myself for them or just be myself. Also therapy is sadly not an option.
TLDR : my class hates me and I don't know what to do