I (25 female) and my husband (29 male) have been together 6 years and married for one. It has been a long going issue for me feeling like I am inadequate. Example, minimal quality time spent together, he prefers to hand out with his friends leaving me home alone regularly, and one of the biggest of all… he doesn’t find me funny. I know the last one seems childish but I pride myself about being funny. Joking and playing was a big part of my childhood and bonding with my family so it sometimes feels like a slap in the face. He has no issue laughing, playing, and joking around with his friends which is fine, that’s why they are his friends but I become jealous at times because of that.
He had 2 woman friends when we met, one his still around and she is great, I’ve never had any issues with her. The other is still partly around but I do not approve of due to an issue of her trying to force me to have an abortion with our child (now 3 years old). I bothered me that he is still in contact with her and will defend not cutting her off tooth and nail. Most would say he’s cheating but I genuinely have full faith in him that he is not cheating on me with her.
The real issues have started with a new female friend his has acquired through motorcycle riding. For privacy we will call this friend Jenny (female between 25-30). Jenny is a rider who he’s met within the past 2 years of riding. I expressed my disapproval early on because typically a single woman rider in a group of only men is grounds for concern. She only dates within that group which raises my concern even more. I have met her 2 times within the past 4 months and neither time has she even acknowledged my existence. My husband does message back and forth with her, maybe 1-2 times every other week.
Two days ago we went to our local motorcycle track where they were hosting a casual track day. The bikers ride the track in groups at their own paces, if they choose to race another rider that’s on them when it’s their groups turn. Everything started well my husband and I watching the other riders, sharing options and talking about the sport. The group got off and we went to the waiting area where they park their bikes in-between sessions as he said a couple people he knew were getting off. The moment we walk up I see Jenny and she is already in a sprint towards us (I’m being a bit dramatic, it was more of a jog but it felt as though she was sprinting). She gets to us and immediately starts jumping around excited and talking about the track and how her bike felt with my husband. I was standing right next to my husband and not once did she look at me or acknowledge I was there. He became smiley and his tone changed from casual to excited with her.
She finally retreated and we continued to walk over to the rest of the group. To preface I am an introvert and have some issues going conversations with people I am not familiar with. In the 30 minute I stood there awkwardly Jenny proceeded to run up to my husband and additional 4 times all the same with me being invisible. After 30 minutes I retreated to our vehicle which was parked directly behind where they were. I sat there for the remainder of the 2 hours we were there on my phone. Occasionally looking up to see she was still doing the same back and forth with my husband and the same big smile on his face.
On our way home I brought up the conversation of how I was even more uncomfortable with her now, what I saw the 2 hours we were there, and how I would like him to stop communicating with her. He immediately got defensive and angry.
A little background, my parents have been dealing with a nasty affair (my dad) for the past 6 months and marriage issues for the past 1 1/2 years in which the affair was happening that entire time. I was caught in the middle of this drama trying to help them and was the one who aired the affair because my dad confessed to me. All that being said has caused some of my own trust issues within my own marriage.
He continued to fight for her until I finally backed up realized I was not getting through to him. The entire time I was level headed and calm while he was upset and angry. Now currently 2 days later he is acting as if nothing happened and my defenses are now up. I guess my question is what do you think of this? Am I in the wrong?

I'm actually playing in a campaign where my Pandaren is the team's cook. After speaking with my DM, he gave me the opportunity to prepare some special funny recipes to flavor up the downtime activities. Here are some of my ideas.
Look at me stew
This magic mushroom stew makes you get the best out of the shroom. After eating this glowing delicacy, you slowly start to glow, shedding dim light in a 20-foot radius and dim-light for an additional 20 feet. The effect lasts for 1 hour.
Divorce snail soup
When you eat this dish, you grow two snail antennas and are able to see through them. After 10 minute your skin starts to get slimy and wet. The effect lasts for 24 hours.
Aphrodite’s berries
These berries make you shine like the most good-looking being in the house! Most people want to flirt with you but you cannot understand their language while they’re flirting with you. It lasts 3 hours.
Hush Hush broth
This broth is made of chamomile and other herbs. It makes you relax and you cannot speak at a normal tone anymore, since you’re forced to whisper. It lasts 3 hours.
Punch that stuffed chili
This super spicy stuffed chili is the best for a tavern brawl. When you eat this chili, its spiciness makes you want to punch everybody and start a brawl. It last 30 minutes.
Plant-man
This soup is prepared with a special mixture of herbs from a very far and remote land. After eating it, your hairs becomes little leaves and you turn into a plant-like being. It lasts 24 hours.
Sleeping walnuts
These little walnuts are a must-use for everyone who’s suffering from Insomnia. Mixed with beef or other kind of meat, they’re a cure-all for your non-sleeping disorders. After eating them, you just want to sleep. It lasts 30 minutes.
Show me your inside
This multicolor soup reveals all your emotions. When you finish your last sip, your skin changes its color based on your current emotion, as shown in the table below. It lasts 24 hours.
Red: anger
Orange: excitment
Yellow: happiness
Green: boredom
Blue: sadness
Purple: anxiety
Polyglot tofu
Wanna learn new languages but got no time to learn? Here we are! When you finish this dish, you forget a language you know and must roll 2d6 to determine which new languages you learn. It lasts 24 hours.
1: Celestial
2: Draconic
3: Infernal
4: Deep Speech
5: Primordial
6: Sylvan
Dwarf me more
This hot stew lets you become a dwarf for an hour. After finishing this delicacy, you can speak dwarvish and grow a long black beard. Roll a d20, if it’s a 20, you mantain the beard for a month.
Smiley lime
Got a beef with a stranger? Got divorced recently? Got fired by your badass boss? No problem. After you finish this dish, you become happy, your mouth starts to bend upwards and you are forced to smile. It lasts 24 hours.
I just want to add some more recipes but I cannot think of anything else. Everything is welcomed. thank you in advance.

Hi, I know some of you have been interested in Joost’s written stuff, so this is one of them. It’s a short story that Joost wrote for Boekenweek voor Jongeren (Book Week for Young People) in 2019. There’s more info about it here (in Dutch) https://www.vice.com/nl/article/qvgzpv/joost-klein-schreef-een-kort-verhaal-over-een-wilde-nacht-in-berlijn and there was also this promo video for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx7wxnpxps0. It's been translated from Dutch - maybe not the most perfect translation but it's readable. Original in Dutch here. Enjoy

"How come he suddenly has cash?" I looked at Gurb, but he avoided my gaze. Louis never had money and yet he was buying another round. Meanwhile, a Moby song was playing and nothing made sense. "If he has money for drinks, he can surely pay me back, right?"
Just a few hours ago, I was alone in Berlin. Now, ten hours later, I'm standing in some obscure techno club with my best friends. Loud rock music with drunken shouting. "Hey, Miss Murder, can I make beauty stay if I take my life?" I woke up that day with a mild hangover from the lonely yet people-filled night before. Perfect conditions for a 20-year-old dropout.
The Hard Rock Café was the most beautifully ugly place in Berlin. Gurb had driven for seven hours straight in his mother's car, but we didn't notice. An iconic black Mini Cooper. Your body leads your mind, the beat never stops, and you can conquer the world. Louis threw in another crazy dance move. We were happy.
"Do you want another drink, brother?" Gurb asked me, half shouting. An evening filled with rhetorical questions. He saw me dancing and already knew the answer.
Gurb always had money. Louis, on the other hand, never did. Louis was also the youngest of us three. He had just turned 18. I wouldn't call him a cunning fox. More like a jack-of-all-trades. Like the time he made a lot of money on a Wadden Island with a group of boys. They sold large blocks of hash.
"Crazy dude!" I shouted at him. He yelled something back.
"Do you remember back then?" Louis said.
"Back then? Back then? Yeah man, of course!" I had no idea what he meant. "Do you mean the party?"
"Do you mean the party, he says! This guy. When I look at you like this, it makes me happy. The exact same kid is here letting loose just like back in high school!"
We knew each other from secondary school. He joined when I was in the second grade. He was very intelligent. Too young, too much knowledge of the world. His mother is from Brazil. We often went to his mother's place to play on the Playstation Louis and I had bought together.
I lived everywhere at that time. In the crisis shelter where I stayed for a while, for example, I wasn't allowed to have a Playstation. So we set it up in an accessible place, near school. It was always fun with Louis. Going together to the Apple Store. Taking all kinds of photos with all the webcams, posting them on Hyves, and then leaving. Louis always knew how to cheer me up.
"Aaaaaaaaaa!" There was Gurb with five drinks in his hands. Gurb was wearing a blue checkered shirt. Two buttons undone. Hair slicked back. "You look good, brother!"
"You look fresh too! We all look fresh!" Gurb said enthusiastically. Louis was wearing a completely white outfit. We quickly bought this before going out. He also bleached his hair.
"You look like the Brazilian cousin of James Dean in these clothes," I said. Louis laughed. "Let me take a picture."
Suddenly, the DJ switched to some kind of techno. "Ah, here Berlin briefly takes off its mask." I was fine with it all. Louis was talking to a lady.
Voluptuous breasts, I thought to myself. He gave her one of his two drinks.
"He's with a girl and he's thinking with his dick," I said to Gurb. "Let him be, tonight Berlin is ours!"
The bass kept pounding. "I simply don't have the patience for the club," I said to Gurb. He looked surprised. Like a sweet dog, tilting his head. "I'm just waiting for tomorrow. Can't do my thing here. Don't have patience for the already known. I want adventure and I want it now!"
Gurb started laughing. "Patience is a virtue." Yes. Patience is all well and good, but I think it's a waste of my time. Gurb grabbed my shoulder.
"I think it's time for another beer."
Louis and I were walking through Leeuwarden a year ago when suddenly a red Ford Ka stopped in front of us. It was Gurb, casually driving around the city. He invited us into his car. We hopped in. Since that afternoon, the three of us were together. A few months later, Louis got a tattoo on his ribs in honor of our friendship. It was the name of our group chat. Braddar Force Indigo.
There were also days when Gurb would take me for a drive around Friesland. He reminded me how beautiful Friesland is. The world doesn't spin there. The newspapers I threw away in the Stiens forest in 2011 could still be lying in the same spot, so to speak.
Just before midnight, I found myself in line for the restroom. My eyes fell on a pair of striking shoes. Cigarette smoke invaded my nose for the fourth time. "Müssen Sie eine Zigarette haben?" a female voice spoke to me. I felt like Tom Hanks in the final scene of Angels & Demons, where the new pope first steps onto the balcony. The curtains opened. There I was, witnessing an important moment in history. I was just told how I was sent by God, but my ears didn't want to hear any of it. At least that's how I felt. My mouth was empty. I had no words left. That's when I knew for sure. Berlin might really be as crazy as literally everyone says.
Dark blond, silky hair. Was this real beauty then? She wouldn't look 40, but I think she was. A true woman. Beautiful in all her elegance. I always joked about being interested in older women, but tonight one stood in front of me. "I don't smoke," I said to her.
Someone tapped me. "Please, just go to the toilet!" He was right. I hadn't peed in a while either. My urine was cloudy. "Glomerulonephritis," I said to myself on the toilet. This is an unusual condition. It's an inflammation in the kidneys, I thought I remembered. They should never have given me access to Google.
The evening progressed, and Louis kept buying rounds. "But seriously now. How does Louis suddenly have all that money for drinks?" I asked Gurb. He was outside smoking with a group of Swiss girls. I had strategically positioned myself so that I could always leave the crime scene if necessary.
"You shouldn't ask me," said Gurb. He was laughing with the temporary girlfriend group of Louis. Gurb has a beard. A lot of chicks like that. I get it too.
As much as I enjoyed Louis and Gurb being here for me, something didn't sit right with me. It couldn't just be about the money. "What's up with him?" I heard one of the Swiss girls say to Gurb.
Those kinds of questions really tire me out. "Not much, with you?" I replied.
They all started laughing. "That's not what she meant, brother," said Gurb.
"I couldn't care less whether she meant it or not. Send that brace-face back to Switzerland. Don't drive me crazy, alright!"
Actually, I hadn't drunk that much that evening. "Two vodka Sprites, please!" It's rare for me to get just one drink. "I always get two drinks, then you have to wait shorter for the third one!" Maybe the alcohol was affecting me more than I wanted to admit. Oh well, it was still the three of us against the world.
"Nice shoes, are those Prada?" I asked a random girl at the bar.
"No, these are fake. Why would I buy real ones for 600 dollars if I could just buy these for 20?"
"..."
I'm not very good at that. Talking. To women.
Louis and Gurb were in the smoking area now. It was less blue than the dance floor itself. My clothes already stank, so a visit to the smoking area couldn't hurt. "These people are so underground!" Gurb shouted. Louis was filming him with his phone. "These people..." There was a brief pause. As if Gurb forgot the only line he had. "...so underground!" All three of us burst into laughter. The alcohol flowed through our veins as if it came from the purest mountains. People seemed doubled and the room was full. We had been in the same club in Berlin for several hours.
"Leonardo! What are you hiding from the big boss?" I sometimes called Louis ‘DiCaprio.’ "You a rich guy, now?" I said, with an accent as if I were from the Bronx.
Louis started laughing. "Eh, you know nothing. Bullshit talk."
I had to laugh too. What was I even worried about? Friends are friends, with or without money. That shouldn't matter. Louis probably just worked for that money. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought. Maybe he just had enough to buy rounds. But what if my gut feeling was right? That feeling was never wrong. Except for that one time at the Holland Casino in Groningen. Even the best of us have slip-ups. I was just getting worked up again. When it comes down to it, Louis is one of the sweetest guys I know. I had to let it go. After all, it's still Louis.
"I think I'm going to have sex soon, man," Louis said.
"With who?" I asked immediately.
"That one girl."
"Which one?"
"The one with the boobs."
"Oh, her. Just be careful."
"What kind of reaction is that?" Louis asked indignantly.
I'd only had four drinks, but I was acting like a mess. Louis was right. I didn't understand myself. Where was my head at? I'm here in Berlin, supposed to be having the time of my life, but here I am feeling lonely and sad again. Joost once again couldn't control his emotions.
"Sorry," I suddenly said to Louis. "Sorry for my behavior. Been acting dumb towards you all night. It's unnecessary." Sometimes I have that. Mood swings. "Know that crime is never the solution. We've talked about this so many times. Yes, it's tempting and sometimes easy money. I sometimes find it amusing too, but it's always hypothetical. Ask me for help. I can help you, even with illegal things. I'll always have your back." The dancing was kind of over.
The words I had just placed on Louis's plate came from my heart. My Frisian, irregular boys' heart.
Crying in the club. I had never seen myself like that. Crying, yes. In the club, no. I never understood the taboo around crying. Or emotions in general. I saw myself in the mirror. They weren't tears of joy. They weren't tears of sadness either. It was me letting everything go. All the emotions I had ever felt. The emotions I felt between my brother and sister and myself because they wanted to take on a parental role over me, but I was in puberty, so I pushed them away. The emotions I felt when my old neighbors were supposed to take care of my dog, but didn't tell me that he was bitten by one of their dogs. They didn't have money for the surgery, they later told me. They were ashamed of their lack of money. My dog died from this injury. Even the emotions that were all jumping at once during the retake for my swimming diploma A, I let go of.
No emotions. Just for a moment, not feeling anything. Is that too much to ask for?
"You still don’t smoke?"
It had to be the voice of the woman with the cigarettes. I looked over my shoulder through the mirror. It was her. The one with dark blond, silky hair.
"Not to be rude, but this is the men’s room," I said. She took a step closer and kissed me on my lips. It tasted like more. We started kissing. It had been a while since I had had female contact at this level. It probably didn't look good and it didn't feel good either. She started kissing my neck. Slowly, I noticed the pressure in the erectile tissues of my penis starting to increase. "I really don't have time for this!" I thought to myself. The woman with the cigarettes started to slowly sink down until she was on her knees. I didn't want this. Not now, not like this. She unraveled my penis from my Polo Ralph Lauren underwear. Her tongue was blue. It was probably from cheap shots of alcohol.
Was this real beauty then? Was this the beginning or the end of her story? And had I become the boy my parents hoped I would be? I thought about the fact that this was once someone's little daughter. Somewhere in the world, an old man might be wondering what his daughter is doing. Am I really putting pleasure above my own morals and values?
With my semi-erect circumcised penis still exposed, I lifted her up. After giving her a kiss on her forehead, I pulled up my pants and left the toilets.
It was the usual last hour in any club ever. I met Louis and Gurb at the bar. "Should we have another drink?" I asked Gurb. "I feel like having a cocktail. Something sweet. Lots of sugar. What about you?"
Gurb looked at the menu. "A cognac would go down well right now."
"A cognac? You're only nineteen!" Gurb and Louis laughed. "Two Tequila Sunrises please!" I called to the bartender. "Also, two beers! Thanks!" I also got a beer for Louis. At first, I didn't want to, but I didn't want to spoil the mood either. Besides, I didn't want to show too much that it bothered me so much.
We danced away the last minutes. The club closed, and we decided to walk with the group of Swiss girls. Apparently, they were staying nearby.
As I lagged behind the group, one of them tried to start a conversation with me. "Are you okay?" she asked kindly.
"I'm fine. Just had too much beer. Makes me sleepy." Not true at all, but I've heard people say that.
"You’re tired? The fun has only just began!" And as she said this, she pulled something out of her inner pocket. Her clenched fist, shielded by a half jacket. Who is this girl, anyway? I thought to myself. She opened her hand flat, and right in the center of her palm lay two small pills with a smiley face on them. At least, they looked like it.
"Oh, I don’t do drugs. Sorry."
"Me neither!" And she swallowed a pill. "Now it’s your turn... Or are you scared?"
Scared? Who did this crazy Swiss witch (with really beautiful eyes) think she was. With her "are you scared". I'll show her who's scared.
"Scared? I’m not scared." I picked up the remaining pill and swallowed it.
Everything went in slow motion. Was this who I had become? Was this the same boy from high school? And just before I could swallow, I spat out the pill. She was shocked. I picked up the pill again, dried it with my jacket, and put it back in her fist. "Maybe later!" I shouted, running back to the group, over my shoulder.
I have nothing to say to 9 out of 10 peers I come across. Of course, I can be social. I can also have fun with random people in random situations, but that night, it just tired me out. I also didn't understand what we were doing there. Those girls found me strange anyway. Suddenly, I was the fifth wheel.
"We know this place where they go until 7 in the morning!" The girl leader of the group spoke. I wanted to go home. "If you guys want, you can go. Don't worry about me," I said to Gurb and Louis. The boys had a brief discussion. We agreed to stay for just a little while longer for some drinks. I consented. I was thirsty. "I'll have a Fanta, Louis."
Gurb had reached the last cigarette in his pack. Louis and a girl from the group were nowhere to be found. It didn't even bother me. This guy just walks around with some cash in his pocket and all hell breaks loose. After a night full of stimuli, I understood Louis. Of course, I understood Louis. He's a young god. Handsome, smart guy. But that didn't make me any less angry. It was purely about trust for me. Something inside me said I should stop subconsciously expecting things from people too. It prevents disappointment.
"Hotel please!" I jokingly suggested to Gurb. "Should you call Louis or should I?" I added. Gurb immediately grabbed his Android smartphone and called Louis. He put the call on speaker.
"Are you ready?" Gurb asked.
"Yeah. Sort of."
"What do you mean?"
"We didn't have sex."
"That's fine, right? Tomorrow's a new day!"
"I think I'm in love, man," Louis said.
"...," Gurb said, chuckling as he let out a sigh.
Once we arrived at the girls' hostel, it was already getting light. Louis was thankfully back. There were stains on his pants, around his knees. My focus was solely on arranging a taxi. Although the boys were still flirting, I was really done now. "How are we going to pay for this taxi?" I said a bit too loudly.
There was a silence. "Don't worry. I still have cash," Gurb said.
"Yeah, I knew you would," I replied.
My words clearly hit Louis. "What do you mean by that?" he said.
It was as if time stood still for a few seconds. "Exactly what I said. Better listen." Louis pulled out a small wad of green bills from his pocket. At least 400 euros. "I don't even want to see that money," I reacted. I walked away.
I'll just order a taxi myself.
"Why are you walking away now?" Gurb said.
"Twelve hours ago, I was alone too, and I had a lot more fun then."
"Do you really want to know how I got this money?" Louis said.
Yes, I did want to know. My whole evening revolved around that damn money.
He took a second of pause before he began speaking. "The answer lies in the Mini."
What on earth could be in Gurb's mother's car? Louis was trying to get into my head. "Taxi!"
Once in the taxi, the division was clear. Gurb was upfront, chatting animatedly with the driver. All adventures ever were recounted. Louis and I in the back. One of my best friends since I was thirteen. Funny how things turn out. It was quiet between us. I was in my head, rehearsing how I would bring up the money again. It didn't add up, and he knew it himself. "I don't care, you know," I said, hoping he'd break.
"What don't you care about?"
"About that money."
"What money? You're really a crazy woozy man." Louis burst out laughing again.
On the other hand, it was silent. Gurb had started talking about the driver's family. The driver didn't appreciate it. Gurb meant well. The driver smelled of alcohol. Or was it me? His nails were polished. Maybe his wife was a specialist. I bite my nails myself. Like now.
"In the Mini, oh yeah."
"Shut up. Illegal man."
"You'll never know."
"Stop playing. Just say it!"
Louis grabbed my head, pulled himself towards me, and brought his mouth to my right ear. "Why so serious?" he whispered. He didn't want to tell me.
"But always with this damn money, huh?" I almost shouted at Louis. I broke every silence within a radius of 10 kilometers.
"I'm trying my best, bro. It is what it is. I can't make it any different," he replied. It was clearly bothering him deeply. He ran his hands through his hair. "Sometimes people have to do things. And you know that better than anyone. Sometimes they have to do things they don't really want to or aren't supposed to do."
I knew this spiel all too well. Through all the drunken haziness, I suddenly saw a small glimmer of light. A tiny spark of sincerity. Louis was serious this time.
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to involve you in this. I'm sorry," sweat dripped from his forehead.
"You're serious, huh? Damn, man. What mess have you gotten yourself into now? Worse than Terschelling?" Worse than Terschelling would mean stolen goods. Maybe even violence.
"It's not what you think."
"The Adlon Hotel, right?" the driver chimed in. Always saved by the bell, that Louis.
Suddenly I hit my head against the seat in front of me. Of course, I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. The last thing I saw was Gurb waking up in panic from his drunken stupor. One by one, I started losing my senses. It started with the feeling in my fingers. For a brief moment, everything wasn't quite black, and I could only see a vague pattern of colors repeating inside my eyelids. You could compare it to the brief moment after the commercial break before the movie starts in the cinema. The movie was about to begin.
I knew I wasn't dying. At least not yet. Not like this. Not after an overall mediocre night out in Berlin. I found comfort in the image I forced myself to see. It was all in my head. There I was, unconscious.
I saw myself in a third-person point of view. It wasn't like I was actually leaving my body. More like there was a webcam hanging in one of the upper corners of the taxi.
As a child, I used to dream a lot about death. Nights spent awake.
At some point, I developed a kind of compulsive behavior. I kept swaying my torso from left to right with my hands under my head. It became almost like a workout before bedtime. Every night.
I called it dream shuffling. Just like I had learned to shuffle puzzle pieces or playing cards. Making things a little exciting for yourself. But what I almost never told anyone was that I was scared. I was afraid of burglars, who were very agile and muscular.
Especially afraid that they would murder me. I really wanted to know what death was like. It scared me.
These fear visions originated during an all-inclusive vacation in Turkey. I was 6 years old and already in bed. There was a big old TV in our hotel room, so I could secretly watch TV from bed. Every evening, my parents sat on the balcony. Here they discussed their day while enjoying a glass of alcohol. There was a Japanese animated series on TV. In the few seconds that I watched, I saw a scary creature climbing a sort of apartment complex via the balconies. The creature had hundreds of teeth and blond hair. It quickly entered to decapitate the people, then drained them and, as a final insult, robbed them. Dozens of carcasses of dead people were scattered around the apartment complex. The complex on TV resembled the resort where we were in reality, and the TV world merged with my surroundings. I became part of it. I saw people watching. No matter how loudly I screamed for help, they didn't react. The sun became very bright, and the people turned into nothing more than shadows. As the intensity of the sun increased, something became clear to me. These were not people. They had a sort of orange skin. Where I had previously thought it was their nose and mouth, it turned out that these shadowy figures did not have such physical features. They simply had three holes in their heads. The police tried to do something, but in vain. Since then, we always kept the light on in the hallway outside my bedroom. By rocking back and forth, from left to right, I could glance fleetingly at the beam of light under the door. That bit of light, escaping from the hallway into my room, gave me an advantage. It allowed me to stay one step ahead of the burglars. Pretty smart, right?
"From Jamaica to the world!
It’s just love. Why must the children play in the street?"
It was Bob Sinclar with "Love Generation" speaking to us through the taxi's speakers. We were stationary. I was conscious again, but I didn't feel alive at all. "How long was I out?" I asked Louis.
I could tell by his expression that he was relieved. Relieved that I was back. "One minute," he almost apologized. Louis gave me a pat on the shoulder. Gurb, on the other hand, was sleeping. He slept like a baby cub.
I put my right index finger on my forehead. It felt wet, but it wasn't blood. Blood feels different. Meanwhile, I kept hearing whistling.
"Be the love generation! Oh yeah!" It was still that same song by Bob Sinclar.
The earlier scent of alcohol had now been replaced by the smell of incense. It smelled like the same incense I had in my room. Sold to me as Tibetan 39 incense. I had bought it at a coffee shop in Rotterdam. I pulled up my notes on my phone. "Who lights incense in a CAR????" I let Louis read from my screen. He took the phone from my hands and started typing as well.
"Look at Gurb >>>" Gurb was so deeply asleep that his head drooped. His seatbelt held his torso in place, but his head ended up on the driver's shoulder. The man didn't mind. He didn't move. I made eye contact with the driver through the rearview mirror, and soon I found him. He winked at me.
We arrived at the hotel. Gurb awakened from his alcoholic hibernation. "Who's going to pay for the taxi?" I asked. Clearly rhetorical. I already knew I would take this one for the team, as usual. I refused to use Louis's money. It was uncomfortably quiet. "By card please," I said.
"I'll always protect you, Louis. You really need to know that. I care about you like my own little brother. I'll always try to help you. But you have to be honest with me. Can you do that?" Louis didn't hesitate.
"Yes. Yes, I can. I'll show you. It's really in the Mini." Meanwhile, the taxi driver's card machine indicated that I had insufficient funds. That couldn't be right. Maybe I had withdrawn too much that evening.
"I have cash in the hotel room," Gurb said to me. Gurb informed the driver in broken English that he would go get his cash. The driver agreed. Money is money, whether it comes now or later. As long as it feels good in your hands.
Louis and I got out of the taxi. "You're not going to light a cigarette now, are you?" Louis wanted to smoke. "Especially for stress. That's really for people who can't handle pain. You need to feel pain. Pain needs to brand you for the rest of your life so you finally learn not to do such stupid things." It fell silent again. My blood boiled. All pots were on the stove. I felt like Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen. "Show me then. Do it."
Louis remained silent and walked around the corner of the hotel. Towards the parking lot. I followed him. "You're not going to find much," said Louis.
"Why not? Are you a magician?"
"No. Just. Not much."
"So there's suddenly magically nothing in Gurb's car?"
"Stop. Get out. Get out of my head!" Louis shouted. Louis had had enough. He was done with the parade. Normally we dealt with hypothetical stories. Only this time it wasn't a joke. I was sure now. Louis had dropped his mask. The revolution had begun. The government had fallen and the dikes had broken. The people were in charge. "You shouldn't freak out like this. Always wanting more. Sweet boy, think about yourself."
After Gurb gave the money to the driver, he came to us. He had a smile on his face, lit a cigarette, and exclaimed, "Brothers!" Once with us, he hugged me. He started laughing. "Maybe I haven't been entirely honest either." Sometimes Gurb seemed like a 38-year-old man. In a positive way. He exuded confidence in a way I didn't often see. Affectionate, with a hint of authority.
We stood in the middle of a large parking lot. "Look. We've reached a point where I might not even care anymore. You guys are teasing me." It did matter to me. Maybe more than ever. I was supposed to be two steps ahead of them, but I couldn't figure it out. "I give up."
The delightful silence returned. Louis and Gurb looked at each other. "You guys win. Apparently, I'm not to be trusted as a friend."
From Louis's expression, I could tell he disagreed with this. "Not true. Come to the car."
We arrived at the car. Louis unlocked it and searched for the trunk button. Gurb had started his third cigarette. "It's a corpse, isn't it? Say it now. I can still help you. I can still help us. I can book a ticket for you. We can get you out of here," I said to Louis.
"Just wait. Nutcase."
"Why won't you accept my help?"
Louis started laughing nervously. Or at least it seemed that way. Perhaps a sly laugh too. Had Louis killed someone? "It's not a corpse. That can't be. You wouldn't be stupid enough to use their ID. You're smarter than that. So it must be something stolen. Haven't you found that button yet?"
Suddenly, we heard a click. Louis had found the button. Somewhere, I didn't want to know. Shouldn't I just trust Louis? Wasn't that the whole point of friendship?
Finally, the moment had arrived. I placed my right hand in the slot of the rear hatch. Something in me doubted. Still. I still doubted. Louis looked dead serious. "You wanted to know, didn't you? Then you also have to be man enough to accept it." Louis was clearly not joking. Or was he acting again? "Pussy," Louis said. I looked away. "You're afraid of what's inside, huh? You're afraid of the real Louis." He began to laugh manically. "Open that thing, man. Nutcase!"
I started laughing too. Why did I make such a big deal out of it? Sweat broke out from every pore in my body. It was even a bit damp in the no man's land between my scrotum and my anus. A tropical climate. It had been quite an adventure the whole evening. I took my hand off the rear hatch and first gave Louis a hug. Not some half-hearted birthday wish. No, a real hug.
"It's okay, buddy," Louis said to me. I had no idea what he meant by that. It fit the moment though.
It was really time now. I opened the rear hatch.
"Where is it?"
"In front of you," said Louis.
"In some secret compartment?"
There was nothing in the trunk. Absolutely nothing. An empty trunk. For an empty evening, in an empty Berlin, with an empty group of guys. I didn't get it.
"You won, man," I whispered. "You finally fucking done did it."
I couldn't believe my eyes. Empty? There was still nothing in the car. Louis just stood there. Emotionally, I was a wreck. I had felt every emotion this evening. Seen every color and smelled every scent. I was done. My body was ready. No longer needed. My mission was complete.
"But why did you do this?" I asked Louis, laughing.
He scratched his chin. It felt like the end of a bad movie.
"I sold our Playstation. Wanted to tell you only after I had sorted everything out again. I terminated my lease. Had some debts, and I also wanted to have some money for once. Once not empty-handed in the club. Once not dependent on my best friends. This is not who I am... I know how much that Playstation meant to you. It was ours together. I should have just told you."
"… and how does Gurb actually make his money?"

Remember SM...remember when they did the coolest thing by giving a bunch of older characters new designs. Like we got Red and Blue, Colress and Grimsley, HECK even Annabel! A character who was only in the BF in emerald, (a game Game Freak wants you to forget about...).
So why not do this again?

Here is my top 5 characters I want to cameo in the gen 10 games

5. Drasna

Very underrated E4 Member...
I want to know if Zinnia is her kid or not, if not kid, like maybe...niece?
It would cool if she and her family were a sect of draconids that specialize in the sinnoh legendary dragon pokemon, and she was interested in the legendary dragon pokemon of Gen 10...since we know every generation has to have a legendary dragon pokemon.

4. Nemona

Love or hate her, Nemona is one of the most popular characters of Gen 9. I would argue before Kieran and Carmine, it was her by a long mile. Still might be.
I would love to see her again, because she might have finally taken Geeta's place as La Primera, and it would be really funny if she is just a superboss like Cynthia. Go into a house, and then BOOM...Nemona!
"Hi I'm Nemona! I'm La Primera of Paldea. Things have been stressful...but fun! Battling all of the new trainers in the paldea league-wait you look like a trainer...a strong one. ME. YOU. BATTLE. YES?!"
Show slight growth as she talks about how becoming La Primera opened her eyes to the responsibilities that Geeta had, and how she wishes to do her do best to honor her example.
Just please...KEEP her the same, ON sight persona. PLEASE.

3. Drayton

I feel out of the entire blueberry league, including Lacey, Drayton has to be coming back again...like I feel they set him far too well to replace Drayden as gym leader.
Like Drayden's other grandchild, he is a prodigy but unlike Iris he is a SLACKER.
Which feel like could be translate well if bro is just on vacation to the another region and they could further his character saying he finally graduted blueberry but still doesn't want to come home.
Could be a fun six sages type quest/glitterai where you follow him around and get more of his story.
I'm going to assume it's because Drayden is getting up there in age, and he feels he won't be able to set an example as the heir. And perhaps this story has a dark ending with Drayton being called by someone (assuming it's Iris) that Drayden has passed.
Bro then leaves but thanks the player for following him around by giving him Draco Meteor, which would be really cool since Iris and Drayden did that in BW1, so it kinda leaves something to the imagination....hm.

2. Hau

Now, I feel if any character that needs a chance in the spotlight again...I think it should be Hau.
Like he forever plagued by being "the smiley rival" because SM didn't have that many facial expressions for anyone that wasn't the aether family (minus Mohn). Like Drayton, he is a prodigy, but unlike Drayton...he is a bit more upfront with his insecurities.
In SM, there are moments in the story when Hau gets visibly upset he isn't strong: like when Lily gets kidnapped, or when Gladion accused of holding back, or when he still can't beat the player in their final battle.
USUM gave his character more focus, giving a lot more urge to battle and win, while still keeping his level headed persona. He even got to be the champion fight for the game, that is arguably the hardest in the franchise. Good on him.
When he returns...he should be the kahuna of Melemele Island*. There is no excuse why he couldn't be. They SHOULD make my bro a BADASS gigachad like that guy from* Moana.
Like make everyone think Hau is the coolest dude ever.

1. Bianca and Cheren

Now, I know picking two for one is kinda unfair...BUT COME ON.
These two were the first rivals that actually felt like characters instead of just being tropes.
Blue was literally just cocky anime rival, Silver was the edgy criminal rival, May and Brendan were the rivals that have a crush on the protag,
Wally and Barry were close but the story of the games don't really have time to dwell on them... unlike Cheren and Bianca.
Like they these two were a perfect example of pokemon fans at the time of BW1's release date, ambitious yet kinda clueless about what to do with their ambition.
So what if, after nearly 12-13 years, we finally see them in the games and learn what they have been up to.
Like I want to see if Bianca has become professor and if Cheren finally has a beard to cover up that baby face he has lmao.
IF RED AND BLUE CAN COME BACK...why can't them?

There was always something odd about old cartoons. Whether that is the unhinged nature or the disturbing images. There is something memorable to them. Something that sealed themselves into our childhoods. I remember growing up watching Spongebob and The Fairly Oddparents along with Dexter’s Laboratory. However, there is one cartoon I remember dearly that nobody seems to remember.
Back in 1997 a cartoon that went by the name Smiletime aired on TV. It was made by this cartoon studio located in Pennsylvania that shut down only 4 years after Smiletime’s release. It was loved by viewers, me included. Everyone seemed to love the antic’s that the main crew got into each episode. The parents however found the main crew’s designs to be “unsettling”. The crew was composed of four characters. The go lucky Smiley. The wimpy Crybaby. The always upset Grumpy. And then the shocked Spooky. They all looked the same, wearing overalls and a mask. The only difference was the expression on the mask and the color of their outfit. They were all voiced by male voice actors except for Spooky who was voiced by a female.
Now that I have grown up, I can see why parents hated the designs. Those soulless black eyes and mouths gave off some disturbing feeling.
Funny enough, the show got canceled in 2001 when the studio that made it shutdown. It is a shame since it was reaching millions of viewers per episode. That company had to make millions off the merch sales alone.
Recordings of the show are incredibly rare and valuable. I think I saw one going for $3,000 a while ago. I loved that show back when I was little, but I didn’t love it that much.
I might look more into this show. Maybe it might be the next big piece of lost media. I’ll add updates if I do.

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love esports in general, mostly follow Dota 2, and actually consider them in general to be "real" sports. The possibility of them being included in Olympics actually excites me, and the Olympic Esports Series by the IOC is a huge step for esports finally being recognized by everyone. However, looking how some pros behave after a match ended, typing in all chat "ez", question marks or smiley faces it feels so unsportsmanlike. There's nothing wrong with celebrating or trash talking; i do agree that is part of a mindgame and athletes do it all the time (celebrating a goal, touchdown) and the tipping system for me gives me that.
To be completely honest, I think that behaviour should be punished. Some might find it funny, but I can't really imagine an athlete from any other sport going to the rival's side after a win and start mocking them without a consequence.

When we go into battle.. customers will piss you off. They will demand to be serviced. They will order 3 buckets at a time. Though I walk into the valley of the shadow of death, I have no fear. For f*k these customers and may they all burn in hll. Amen.
I don’t understand these people who eat so much fried chicken and so often. The store I work at currently, the customers are SO entitled. Go into the back to work on something, and you hear people yell “HeLLoooooo??!!?”. They don’t even give you 5 seconds to walk out there. You end up going out front and they don’t even know what they want…. or expect you to walk them through everything. “I want chicken”. Okay… what kind of chicken? “The regular”…… or “Can I get a pound of pastrami”. If they ask for Primo pepper chicken I just give them Dietz brand.. if they ask for mesquite turkey and I don’t have one open I give them any turkey and just put the mesquite label on. Look at me funny? I’ll add a few dollars to the price. Come in late? That’s a $2 fee. Be rude to me? $3-$5 fee. No one’s ever noticed and if they do I’d just say I printed the wrong tag let me change it. I save all the bad unsellable pierces for the rude customers. Oh you wanted 2 fresh buckets and you were rude? I’ll pick out the smallest pieces. Then there’s people who get mad we run out of chicken and they have to wait. It’s not my fault people come by and buy 2 or 3 or 4 buckets at a time, but that doesn’t stop them from snitching. This lady complained TWICE the other day and left her number. I’m sorry but I signed that he’s number up for scam/spam messages. What exactly is the mentality you have to have to mess/jeopardize with somebody’s job/livelihood? Like is it really that big of a deal? This lady last Monday came in saying we never had hot pot pies. I told her I’m sorry but we do have cold ones that you just need to heat up. “Well I don’t want to heat them up”. Well okay you f***ing b*ch, was just trying to help. That’s exactly why I don’t try and be “nice”. Customers like that are exactly why I don’t bend over backwards and give a fake smiley attitude. Whatever attitude you come to me with is the one I give back I really dgaf anymore…
Rant over. Good luck ladies and gents.
Anyone else need to rant?

To clarify, I worked for the state, driving a white van that transported police officers along with dangerous apprehended criminals from the station to a high security prison. These criminals included serial killers, sex offenders and other such abominations. The van had eight seats in total, two at the front separated from six at the back by a thick transparent plastic panel for driver protection. I was never specifically told the crimes they had committed, but the drive could be over an hour long, which meant I often had enough to gauge from their conversations and ramblings. Some would yell and try to fight the police or escape during the ride, but the van was built rock solid to account for those types. Some were child abusers, molesters, remorseless killers who gloated about their sins. Others would beg the police to let them go.
I was disgusted by these people, but never disturbed to the point of wanting to quit. After ten years on the job, nothing fazed me anymore. In fact, I was proud of what I did. The more horrific the person, the more I liked the idea of sending them off to get what they deserved.
That was until one day, when a calm, well groomed young man was apprehended and brought to the van.
Four police officers accompanied him. He was dressed in a tailored blue suit and had shiny brown slicked-back hair. Couldn't have been older than thirty. At first, I mistook him for a manager or lawyer from a distance, before noticing he had both hands behind his back. He nodded politely as he passed my window, and was taken to the back. They unfolded the seats and sat down, and the door was slammed shut. I started the engine.
"This ride's an hour and a bit. You're not going to give us any trouble, are you son?" Asked one of the officers.
"Course not. You guys don't get paid nearly enough for that," said the man in the suit. A few of the policemen scoffed.
"You're right on that one," another officer said, rolling his eyes.
"My uncle used to be a cop. Ironic, I know," the man in the suit replied nonchalantly, still handcuffed. "But when he started, there were fifty in his division. Now there's about ten. Makes you wonder if all the tax money is going to nuclear warheads instead."
"Wouldn't be surprised," one officer mumbled to another, shaking his head.
"My lawyer told me not to say that because it might piss you off, but I told him you'd all let me go as soon as you heard it."
The policemen guffawed, the entire van erupting with laughter. I wondered what was so funny. Whatever crime he had committed, this man was bantering without a care, while being deported to face life in prison or possibly the death penalty. He cracked a few more jokes, and they were wrapped around his little finger. A while later, he caught my eye in the rear view mirror.
"You must hear all sorts of crazy stories," said the suited man, talking directly to me.
"Imagine being an Uber driver, but all the passengers kill people. I'd watch that reality show," he continued. "Still, it must be satisfying in a weird sort of way. Bringing them all to justice, literally."
"Yeah, sick people like you," I replied.
He stared at me through the mirror. I felt a chill out of nowhere. My blood ran cold, and I instantly regretted opening my mouth.
"Sick people like me?"
There was silence for a few seconds. The cops looked at each other awkwardly. I kept quiet.
"Well, cheers to you on behalf of all the sick people like me then," he finally said. I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic. "I mean it. If it weren't for you, we'd all have to walk to prison. Wouldn't wanna drop the soap after that hike."
"He must be fun at parties," a cop smirked. I realised the cop was referring to me.
They all laughed again. For the rest of the journey, they talked about politics, stories about other prisoners and how early they could leave for work. They had an odd chemistry with him. The policemen acted very differently to how they usually did. They usually tried to bully the criminals, or scare them into a confession. On the contrary, this time it almost seemed like they were all at a big dinner party, and I wasn't invited. Perhaps they were getting some entertainment while they could, or they were intimidated by him and didn't want to admit it, I thought. Some serial killers were notorious for being charming, after all. Everyone's heard of Ted Bundy. I realized that even after all that chat, I still had no idea what crime he had committed.
When we arrived, I opened the back doors for them to get out.
"Thanks for the lift. Drive safe." He grinned at me, and they took him away to the prison.
The nerve, I thought. I got back in the driver's seat.
About a week later, I was in between shifts and decided to take a break at a café in the parking lot. I walked inside and joined the queue, eyeing a big latte. As I glanced to the side, my heart skipped a beat. A man was wearing a blue suit, which looked exactly like the one that the criminal with the slicked back hair was wearing. I blinked. This man had an afro, and was reading a newspaper. Same suit, perhaps, but obviously not the same guy. I exhaled with relief.
I ordered my latte and sat down at a table, sipping it slowly. The man in the blue suit sat by the window, still reading the paper. I glanced at him for a while, and noticed that he was just staring into it, without turning the pages.
As I stood up to leave, he folded the newspaper and looked up towards me. His lips stretched into a wide, menacing smile, and he dragged his finger across his neck as he stared at me with wide eyes and tilted his head. We stared at each other for a while in silence, my heart starting to race. Then I looked around frantically, suddenly concerned for my safety. Everyone in the café was absorbed in their own world. It seemed like no one else had seen the gesture he had made towards me in a very public space.
I rushed out of the café, glancing behind me every few steps, suddenly paranoid. He turned my head to lock eye contact with me, gleeful that his threat was having its intended effect on me.
For the next few days, I kept hearing noises - footsteps, scratching, sometimes even the sound of someone breathing behind me. When I turned around, there would always be nothing there. Just as I thought I was turning schizophrenic, my suspicion that something was out to get me was confirmed again. I was at the grocery store on the weekend, putting vegetables in my cart as a woman wearing a blue denim jacket and flowery dress was walking towards me. She was pushing a cart with a baby strapped to the seat.
"You better watch your back," she whispered, as she walked past.
That caught me off guard. I whipped my head around, and she kept walking without looking behind her. She wasn't talking on the phone, and she wasn't with anyone else apart from the baby. That warning was undoubtedly for me. Had I just pissed off a cult of people dressed in blue?
I got in the van the next day at 7AM and headed off to the station. There was heavy traffic, and I was convinced I'd be late for work. I turned into a long stretch of road that was next to a steep drop, a metal railing fencing off the edge on the right. As I drove along the congested road, stopping and starting to move a few feet incrementally, I stared at the bumper stickers on the back of the white van in in front.
'It's gonna be a good day!' There was a sun with a smiley face next to it.
The traffic finally started flowing, and I approached an intersection where cars merged from the left hand side. A set of traffic lights came just before it. I looked at my watch. Please don't turn red, please don't turn red, I thought. As if the universe was conspiring against me, the lights turned yellow, and as the van in front of me sped past them, they turned red. Fantastic. I slammed the brakes and looked up.
I only saw the van in front for a split second, and suddenly out of nowhere, a massive lorry T-boned it violently from the left. A loud crash combined with a painful crunch stunned me into paralysis. Both vehicles crashed through the railings and went hurtling over the edge of the cliff.
The lights turned orange then green, but I remained unmoving in silence, shaking. There was an empty space in front of me where the van had just been. I could see people through their car windows, horrified and calling the police. Eventually I snapped out of it and drove numbly to a side road, without having fully processed the event. I parked there and called my colleagues at the station to inform them about what had just happened.
A few days later, I found out that both drivers had died on impact. The lorry had crashed into the van driver's side at 90mph, crushing him instantly. They thought it was a freak accident at first, until they recovered the remains and discovered the lorry driver's phone, which had been in a holder stuck to his windshield. It wasn't a GPS on the phone that was guiding him.
At the time of the crash, he had been using a navigator app connected to a tracking device. The device had been tracking my vehicle.
The police searched my van top to bottom, and found the bugger stuck to the underside of one of the back seats. The seat that the man in the slick backed hair wearing the blue suit had sat in, on his ride to prison about two weeks ago.
I pieced it together as soon as they told me. The motherfucker must've slipped that out from a pocket or something, and stuck it to the inside of my van as soon as I pissed him off.
Turned out, he was an infamous underground weapons dealer. A lot of people who had their firearms confiscated (most of them for good reason) knew he was they guy that would supply them, so were absolutely infuriated when he got caught. Apparently he had a cult-like following among those people, and wearing all blue was their low key way of supporting him. I don't want to get too political here, so I'll just say that this guy was very well connected and had a lot of people on his side, even if it was under the radar. And I was their next target.
I figured blue suit guy must've somehow communicated to one of his cronies about the tracking device on my white van and told them to get after me. By pure chance, another white van was in front of me at the very moment they decided to strike. They must've mistaken the driver for me, knowing the vehicle was a white van in that approximate location. If those traffic lights hadn't turned red at the exact moment they did, that would have been me. I was supposed to die a horrific death that day.
I quit the job that very afternoon I found out, packed my bags and moved to a new town. Since then, I've moved several times. The paranoia won't leave me. I think it'll stay with me for the rest of my life. Any time I see someone wearing blue, a wave of terror sweeps over me - the same terror I felt seeing that van in front of me get pummelled and tumble over the cliff edge, knowing that should've been me. Previously, I'd always taken pride in the fact that I was a brutally honest guy, but I'm a lot more careful nowadays.
And one thing's for sure - when someone makes a lame joke now, I always laugh.

You know, there’s something special about 2022 Dharminder Mann. Perfectly bad videos with the 2000s sitcom vibe. Today’s topic is just the same so let’s get it on and over with.
We start with a gym class playing dodgeball. In a dance studio, Dhar literally has a gym set why not use it! We also meet our protagonist who you will grow to hate real soon. Elliot (Winston Vengapally) is a dickish asshole from the time Dhar was trying to make Mikey clones since he was in jail for the fire alarm scheme
The old ass science teacher comes in and asks to play making me wonder why considering he should be doing his job not playing dodgeball in a room far too small for it. Like, throw the balls. They are fight in front of each other.
Elliot questions Old’s (Michael Minnis) ability to play dodge ball as he says “I may be old, but I still got the juice” before doing a pose complete with a gong sound effect.
During this, Old is pelted by various dodgeballs and of course he isn’t, these kids are stupid. He dodges the long delayed throws giving Elliot time to bitch about him joining, giving Old ample time to procure a ball, get him out, and get him to bitch more with a loud OW, and I HATE YOU!
Pissed, Elliot tosses a ball at his spine which Old refers to as “Friendly Fire.” They were on different teams and he was out, and this doesn’t get him in trouble. In class, Elliot is up to his latest scheme against an old man. He “unplugged” the batteries from the remote, which you don’t you. They’re batteries, not cords.
Elliot is a stupid idiot who is failing his class but is getting Cs because this carpet of an old man is curving his grades, almost like he wants this dick to further give him shit.
The class laughs at Elliot’s joke about Old’s old age and about his devious plan, to play a Dhar Mann video and force them to watch. God he is evil!
Apparently Elliot started BOYS Vs. GIRLS Prank War in the middle of a fight scene which somehow leads to Old tripping on a cord like an idiot. Idiot.
The next day, Elliot’s “friends” (Shaun Dixon) and (Anthony Bashian) are suddenly mad about what happened yesterday despite laughing at the plan to play a video, I guess the old fool tripping like an idiot set something off in them.
We also have further reason to hate Elliot as he is not into planning a prank involving ketchup but is wearing a SML Jeffy backpack. It could be worse though, it isn’t a MHA backpack. The principal (Sean Harris) shows up to reveal he got hospitalized by the pervious prank, somehow.
We then get introduced to my personal favorite character in Dhar history. Meet the replacement teacher, Mr.Smiley (Moses Matthew Jackson) the guy is your stereotypical military sergeant and reveals a Chevkov’s fear. The imagine of a deranged sergeant with ketchup over his face yelling at this child is stupidly funny.
The class hates him for getting Old in the hospital as gym class now consists of running laps no thanks to Smiley. Who makes the class run laps around this dance studio and Elliot loudly discusses his plan to prank Smiley with him right there.
Remember that fear of snakes that I totally mentioned like two paragraphs ago? Good. Elliot plans of using a fake snake to get this military trained, overseas serving, PTSD ridden psycho to leave the school.
He is actually not giving Elliot a free pass and giving him Fs which actually are deserved. He also doesn’t want to study with him at lunch, I mean he’s not wrong. Who would want to spend lunch with this asshole?
He decides in a better seating arrangement, As and Bs in the back, Cs, Ds, and the F belonging to Elliot in the front. It’s quite the far arrangement, if you ask me.
However the snake mildly scares the great Mr.Smiley, but you forget who we are dealing with. He takes little time realizing Elliot’s scheme and tosses a desk aside as a threat. Sadly Smiley doesn’t get to violently assault this child as the Principal walks back in.
He doesn’t question why the desks are out of wack as it turns out Old is back, yay. He goes back to the worse seating arrangement as he lets Elliot going back to being a dick. Well not really, he’s better now. I think.
Thankfully this video doesn’t end with Elliot becoming a Karma Houdini. It happened in the stupidest way though. So a month later, Elliot is now a model student with As. His mother however grounds him for his snake prank form a month ago before dragging him off by the ear in front of everyone. Why she waited a month to punish him or bring it up is beyond me. Would much prefer Smiley giving him a much deserved ass beating.
You know, is it mean to want to see this kid beaten? Nah. I’m an internet reviewer, I can hate on kids. Smiley is really the only good part of the video and the fact he gets away with nearly assaulting a child is funny as shit, 5/10, with all five points coming straight from Mr.Smiley.
As for the future, well a couple of videos are in mind. Namely Dad Won’t Let Daughter Wear Crop Tops, Poor Boy Drinks Tap Water At School, and my first Dhar Bonus video, I’m Dying and Fell In Love are the videos I have planned for the rest of May.
As for June, well I have a very special event planned out, which you will have to look forward to in the meantime. Leave your comments below and I’ll see you next Friday!

Do you think the boys sign for like packages and stuff the same way they sign autographs? All I can think of is Howie’s lil smiley face on a legal document. Edit: I was hoping this would’ve been an obvious joke but I guess not 😂 I KNOW they’re not autographing their legal documents, it’s just a funny thought.

It’s very cold this morning. It was like 4° when I woke up from memory, it’s now 11° and sunny so that’s better. I should probably not have bare feet but oh well. I don’t like wearing socks if I’m walking around as the idea of dust or whatever accumulating on my socks makes me feel gross, and I don’t have any slippers, so… bare feet it is. It’s fine, I don’t mind. I don’t feel negatively about any of this. He said I’m negative so I think I want to try acknowledge when I feel okay, and when I actually feel negative. I feel fine.
He called me a wet blanket last night. I knew he thought of me that way. I knew it I knew it I knew it. See this is what I mean, I may well think negatively but clearly it’s not always inaccurate. This is what I mean, I don’t want to be some deluded idiot who is convinced everyone adores me and thinks I’m great. I know people like that, I always have, and they are never all that great and it makes me feel so filled with second hand embarrassment that I utterly refuse to ever be thought of in that way. To think you’re wanted/great and for people to think the opposite? The idea makes me feel sick to my stomach. I know this links to my fear of rejection which further links to my lack of self worth but whatever. Everything’s linked somewhere, it seems. Anyway. He literally said I’m a wet blanket. I don’t disagree, and his points were valid. I could feel myself starting to get really upset after he said it - I had tears welling up and I was feeling choked up and things. However, I practiced my self control and whatever that I’ve talked about in therapy and I managed to bring myself out of it before it escalated and he noticed. I didn’t actually cry, I hauled all those lil tear drops back inside. It was kind of hard though, to actively work against my emotions when I’m hearing something I’ve been paranoid of for a very, very long time. Anyway I worked through it while still in conversation I might add so I’m quite proud of myself for that, I think that shows definite progress? Maybe? I hope it does. But anyway, he called me a wet blanket because I basically refuse to admit I’m into certain things. I don’t really want to write about it. I just feel like I can be into certain things and not want to be into them, and I think clearheaded me is mindful of that. And once you admit to being into something when clearheaded it sort of cements it in place, whereas I feel like when you’re in the heat of it all it’s kind of whatever and might be hot but it’s not a cemented want. Does that make sense? He explained it well though and I get what he means. But it’s like his friend, not J but his actual best friend, the idea of him gets me so wildly turned on, not because of the guy himself because idk him from a bar of soap and he doesn’t sound like my type either, plus not to be rude but I’m fairly sure he’s the one that always dates strippers and I realise I’m being a judgemental cow but that grosses me out so in reality the idea of him… no. But in my head? It being Andy’s best friend? Or one of them? It makes me go feral. But I do NOT want that to be a thing, I do NOT want to indulge it, I do NOT want it to become a fantasy of mine/ours. I want to meet this guy eventually and hopefully be friends with him and spend time with him and all of that. I do NOT want spicy thoughts clouding my mind when we spend time with someone. Like what, we’re all out for dinner and I keep thinking about him bending me over the table? Absolutely NOT. It’s one thing for it to be a sort of friend, like J, it’s another to be an actual best friend of a long long long time. That’s far too life altering for Andy. And also I just don’t want that to be a thing for me. Except we said all this and then my honey proceeded to get my soaking wet and utterly rabid thinking about how best friend, so that worked out well -_-. Anyway. He thinks I’m a wet blanket and a killjoy. I’m going to choose to not dwell on this, however given I’ve been paranoid of this for quite some time it’s kind of hard to let go of. I feel kind of negative.
I just spent a few minutes with my eyes closed with the sunshine streaming down on me and I listened to all the sounds around me like all the birds, some roadworks several streets over, I heard a ship horn, I heard my laptop humming away - it sounds like of like a carbonated drink fresh out the can, and the creaks of the house. I heard my toe doing little taps on the floor because I sometimes find it hard to sit still, I heard the fridge start doing something. I felt the warmth of the sun on my face, I tried to not think about skin cancer and being a leather bag of an old woman. I felt the coldness of the wooden floor and the softness of my cardigan. I tasted a little hint of strawberry from my strawberry mint earlier because I wanted something sweet but I don’t have anything and it was also 11am. So I just focused on everything for several minutes, as well as controlled breathing in and out like I would when I feel panicked but I can do it when I just want to slow everything down. I feel positive, not negative.
My pretty baby green princess philodendron is still fighting a battle. I just know it’s because I blanked and poured a glass of sprite into it instead of the water. I remember doing it, I poured it in and then I heard the sizzling and I thought oh no oh no oh no but the damage was done. I tried to dilute it with water so hopefully that helped but I potentially just spread the sprite around. Ever since then the leaves are kind of spotted with yellow… yellow like lemonade :’( I’ve had her for a few years now, she was just a little bubba with a couple of leaves and now she’s a blimmin queen not princess but I’ve maybe ruined her. I need to repot her, get some plant food or something and I think she’ll come back to me. It’s very hard to find an aesthetically pleasing pot though, I mean I can but not a big pot and my girl needs a BIG pot because she’s a voluptuous lil lady with big leaves everywhere. I mentioned it to M the other week and she said “why not just get rid of it” and didn’t even joke and I took offence. I jokingly said omg what no way but I actually kind of felt offended. She has this hideous terrarium she got some her cousin, it’s just sludge inside at this point and the jar is butt ugly, but I don’t say anything and I’ve tidied it up for her. Same with her little parsley plant - she asked me to take over and now it’s thriving whereas it was near death when she did it. Same with the succulent on the kitchen window - another one I saved of hers and is now thriving with so much new growth. I hate her taste, I mean she doesn’t even have taste if you ask me. I think she’s amazing in SO SO SO many ways, but her taste in style and all that is abysmal. She’s basically someone who says lounge and will furnish said lounge with leather recliners, old office furniture and bulk made souvenirs from whatever holiday. And I’m all for things from holiday, I think it’s the best time to find pieces for your home, but there’s a difference between a little painting or ceramic by some local artist at a market or a funny little whatever like if I go to Hawaii I know I’m getting a lil dancing hula girl figure thing, but idk, I think there’s a difference between little things like that and just buying straight up tat. I’m being way too harsh. I feel bad. I’m just upset about my plant, stressed about work and taking it out on her. That’s not fair. But I still stand by what I said. I just didn’t need to say it. But as always, it’s her home too and I have no issues with that - she has things on the wall I hate, she has her sofa that I hate etc etc - I mean we have a goddamn chest freezer in the living room, I think I’m being a good flatmate and entirely accommodating?! I also know I can be a control freak with things and I find it difficult to accept things I don’t like in terms of design etc. And I can be very opinionated about it. I try keep my trap shut and I do, but I know it’s a flaw of mine. I know it’s something I will need to keep in check when creating a home with Andy, I know I will often have different opinions to him because sometimes I don’t like his taste, on the whole we’re mostly similar I think, and I like things he has ie his bedding, I think his bedding colours look really nice, but I don’t want them for ME, y’know? But compromise is the word and I will not be a typical only child about it because I can be a very spoiled only child brat sometimes, it just slips out. I can also be a VERY VERY VERY judgmental person and I can think quite mean things. Like yesterday, he showed me a keyboard and I managed to shut my mouth before I said it but he knew I held back so I had to tell him the colour way reminded me of a rotting corpse. I didn’t want to say that. It’s why I closed my mouth as soon as I knew I didn’t want to say it but it was a fraction too late. And I hated having to say it because I just felt like such a raging bitch. I can be like that with a lot of things. I mostly internalise it, like 90% of the time I will internalise it but sometimes things slip out. Like dad was trying on a jacket in one time that he really liked and he asked my opinion and I said it “looked like he borrowed it from someone”. That’s not so bad but it’s the only example I can think of, also he likes to be told things straight up. Like with the house he shows me things he likes and I’ll say I don’t but I back it up with why I don’t and suggest alternatives and he’s said he likes that and he takes my suggestions on board too, like he was talking about a breakfast bar and I said I like the idea in theory but given the space you have and the fact you want it because of an image you have in your head about having breakfast together at it or whatever isn’t realistic - they will have a large dining table right across from it and the breakfast bar thing will just get covered in clutter. So I like the idea of them but I said no for X Y and Z reasons and he scrapped the idea. Same with paint colours, placement of the fireplace etc. So it works with dad, I can be critical but he makes me feel valued - but we also have quite similar taste and we think quite similarly in many ways… God help my mother. I can be more critical of mum, hyper critical even. About every little thing. Even when we were out to dinner last week I didn’t like how she was calling the waitress over so I criticised it and other things. I was like that all night, I apologised a couple times though and she understands I get HYPER critical when I’m anxious because I’m on such high alert of how I’m being interpreted by everyone around me and with my mum I just sort of lash out at times. WAY WAY WAY better than I was as a teenageyounger though, but it’s something I’m still working on. It’s quite rare now, it’s just when I’m struggling with moderating my mood really. It also doesn’t help that a symptom of my anxiety is occasionally irritability. It’s hard to explain, but when I’m in a very anxious mood I just have zero tolerance and am sort of in that panic mode even if I appear calm and composed but inside it’s like a train is barrelling towards me, well that’s what my therapist said anyway, that to others I appear and come across as a normal girl feeling normal things, but inside it’s like I’ve just looked to my left and I’m imminently about to be hit by a car. So everyone is on the zebra crossing chatting away but I’m looking yo the left and feeling like I’m about to be splattered all over the road. It sort of makes sense but idk. Anyway. I’m rambling. I’m really quite a horrid horrid girl at the end of the day.
I’m feeling kind of anxy today. Jittery. The back of my throat is now a body part I am very conscious of. I don’t know why, I just am. I don’t always have a specific reason, sometimes it’s down to worry/fear over a specific thing or whatever else, sometimes it just comes out of nowhere and I can’t function properly but I don’t have a reason for it. Or I do, but it’s not something I’ve been actively thinking about. Idk. Whatever. It’s fine. I shall do some more breathing.
He just asked how my day was :)
Sometimes I don’t know what to do. Well I often don’t know what to do. I know I should bring this up with him, but I also feel like I ought to be picking my battles and this isn’t it. I just wish he would acknowledge when I send a lovey message or say something, I’m at the stage now where I do not expect it to be reciprocated whatsoever - I realise we aren’t at that stage and let’s be real, I get giddy when he uses a smiley face - I mean he used a :( last night and I felt lovey. So I mean, I’m clearly not expecting anything back from him and I am making do with the bare minimum and tbh it’s fine, I know this is my own doing and I have created this situation and it’s whatever - it’s fine. But the fact he just ignores it, I find that difficult. He could say something like “that’s cute/sweet” and leave it be, but he just ignores it and I’m left standing here feeling like an absolute idiot. It just hurts, that’s all. It’s not a big deal, and a lot of the time I don’t even bay an eyelash anymore as I’m used to it, but sometimes I just need something. I think I needed it this morning. I think I needed to hear some form of acknowledgment this morning because I find it difficult to grapple with the idea he doesn’t get jealous of me being with someone else. I know we see it differently and I know it doesn’t mean he’s pushing me to date other guys and idk. It’s usually fine, I think I just feel a little delicate about it this morning and then he ignored something I said and it just made me feel not so good. I don’t think this is worth bringing up, I don’t think I’ll dwell on this. If I’m still thinking about it later tonight or tomorrow then I will. He deals with enough of my BS, I don’t need to start giving him every minute detail of my feelings - just the ones that count or impact things. I don’t think this is that. Plus I’ve said this before to him, that it upsets me sometimes and makes me feel ignored/rejected. I can’t remember where we came to with it. Anyway like I said, this is a situation of my own creation - I only have myself to blame for feeling this way. I feel medium negative.
I am so ugly, ugly ugly uglyyyyyy.
Work is getting on my nerves a bit. For example I said I may have capacity to take on a new piece of work later today but couldn’t promise it but it was just chucked into my queue of work despite me saying I CANT DEFINITELY DO IT. But now it’s in my queue I kind of have to.
I cannot deal with the men in these books. They finally profess their love, and he says “even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you” and I’m sorry but who the hell have anyone the right to put those words into the world. SO DREAMY. Except it kept being mentioned a few chapters earlier how he spent centuries sleeping around and he spent centuries heartbroken over someone and idk, this is my issue - because of that it cheapens the dreamy thing he said. I know it could go the opposite way for others, that he had fully lived and finally found the forever one, also this all happened before she even existed, but even so, this is my issue - the fact he was a total slag ruins it for me. All these men are and it makes me like them less. I just can’t seem to accept it. Even with Andy, the fact he’s slept with 30+ women and undoubtedly hooked up with more in “lesser” ways… it makes me feel sick to my stomach and it makes me want him less when I think about it. It makes me feel like I’m nothing. I know he feels the opposite, he said so himself, but I can’t move past this kind of thinking. It’s a me thing, obviously, it just makes me feel so… inconsequential. It’s like with his friend J, I’m like the third or fourth girl he’s included him with and I hate it. I shouldn’t but I do. It makes me feel like I mean absolutely nothing and I’m no different to anyone else.
I got a sort of shout out thing in our team meeting today that I was NOT expecting. I was half listening and half drafting an email and heard my name and the shock that ripples through me. Well it was somewhat mild but still. But the Head of specifically asked the BL to bring it up, after the Head of had given already given me an inter-company award thing. I honestly did nothing out of the usual and it’s very nice to feel acknowledged, very very nice, but I get so awkward and embarrassed and when he was finished giving my shout out thing I just went off mute and literally squeaked out a “thank you’” and went back on mute. I think I prefer private acknowledgment but it’s also nice to have it shared too. Anyway that was nice.
It’s 8pm and I haven’t written anything more sooooo bye
Actually wait we finished BB last night! I’m still sad about Hank. I’m glad Jesse got away and I think it was a good ending for Walt. I feel bad for Skyler and the kids though :( but at least they’ll get a tonne of money soon enough. Anyway. I’m glad we watched it!

Heeeeey ! I’m back with a review and managed to tackle it entirely before the HSR update (yes I play the game). Also sorry for the weird/lack of formatting, we don't have internet anymore for a (long ?) while and my data are too poor for my laptop to use properly, but I did my best on phone. Without further ado, let’s start !
Card review : Luke - Spice and Synergy
As always, the notation is subjective, especially the art one.
Art : 4.5/5
Story plot : 9/10
Story writing : 5/5
Total : 18.5/20
Review summary :
After finishing a co-op game together, Luke and Rosa decide to register in a cooking vlog competition related to the game in order to win limited edition merch. In a warm, cozy and harmonious atmosphere, they tackle this challenge which will bring unforgettable memories.
Review act per act :
Act 1
Luke is tossing ingredients in a frying pan from far away and as the oil is splattering, Rosa hurriedly gives him the lid as a protection. Luke comments that cooking felt more like a physical skill test than any combat. Rosa confirms, remembering how she mentioned trying to challenge themselves to cook. A few hours ago. As the credit of the game finished rolling, Luke and Rosa finally got the perfect ending in a game called Monster Kitchen. Rosa complains on how hard the last stage was, Luke agreeing and saying the game should have been called Torture Kitchen instead. Rosa recalls how they had to avoid traps, collect ingredients in a maze to be able to cook a dish called Surf and Turf to convince the devil in the castle. She says that the guides were correct when they said getting the perfect end was a matter of luck before collapsing into bed like Luke, who immediately hugs her. He says that it's not totally luck since it's because of their marvelous cooperation. He takes his phone and asks her what she wants to eat as a celebration. Rosa tells him she is going to check reviews and recommendations. As she is taking her phone, she is distracted by a Big Data Lab notification, sharing with her an article Sherluke_Polmes, an account Luke created to play Monster Kitchen, was just reading. She clicks on the article and sees it's a Monster Kitchen Culinary Competition, which consists of bringing the food from the game to reality by recording and uploading vlogs. The prize includes limited-edition merch, absolutely unique in the world. Rosa looks at Luke and she sees that he is reading the same page but he looks conflicted. She guesses he really wants the merch but considering both of their skills with cooking it might be difficult. But still, Rosa thinks that since they only have to recreate the dishes on a visual level, they still have a chance. Feeling confident, she asks Luke if he wants to join. He asks the question back and Rosa guesses that he is worried about her pushing herself to do something she doesn't want, since Monster Kitchen is a coop-game, so must the competition be, meaning they would have to enter together. She tells him that she wants to and seeing how confident she looks, he agreed too. But they underestimated their task severely. Back in the present moment, they keep on coughing as Luke turns the fume extractor on. Inside the pan is burnt rice and sauce, stuck to the bottom. Luke complains, saying he was following exactly what the cooking guide which came with the guide said. As he is doing so, smoke starts to rise again from the pan, so Rosa pulls him away, asking if he is fine. Luke says he is but on another side looks disappointed. Rosa wonders if the substitute they used wasn't good enough. Since the ingredients in the game have particular lore and background, they obviously can't find them in real life, so they used substitutes with similar looking stuff, but it failed. Rosa complains how hard it is and Luke mentions they have to buy new ingredients. Luke rubs his eyes and then explains to a worried Rosa that smoke must have got into it and he is going to wash them. Rosa checks his eye and it is red and teary. She takes a wet wipe and softly cleans the corner of his eye. Luke then blinks several times and explains that he might still have onion's juice on his hands so it might explain... He is suddenly interrupted by a loud noise. On the other side of the kitchen, white smoke is coming out from the pot they forgot where they were making soup. Luke instinctively takes Rosa in his arms to protect her from the erupting water. Panicked, she asks him if he was okay, fearing that some boiling water burned him.
Sher(lock)luke_P(earce)(H)olmes, what a genius username I love this so much hahaha ! I wonder how it is in other languages… Also Luke Rosa living the most awesome cozy dream of being a gamer couple, I live for it, like, isn't it literally the dream to just spend time with your partner (or one of your friends) playing co-op-games together and frequently ? Wow, I would love to have this omg
Act 2
Rosa asks Luke if he is okay, which he confirms but knowing him. Keeping her in his arms, he turns off the stove. Rosa asks him to see his back and before he can stop her, she tugs on his shirt and pulls his collar. She sees how red the back of his neck is red. Rosa asks him if he needs to go to the hospital but he refuses saying it's not worth. Luke reassures her again as she was expressing her worry, adding that he needs to change now since he is dirty. Rosa tells him she is going to fetch the first aid kit in case and he agrees. He wants to touch her cheek as an habit but since he is covered in oil and stains, he stops and simply says that he will be back. Rosa is searching for the first aid kit and when she takes it out, a medal falls at the same time. It seems pretty worn out and has the words "Gold Medal in Microbiology Fun Lab Competition" written in front and "National Central University" in the back. Luke comes out of the shower at this moment so Rosa tells him she found the medal while searching for the first aid kit. He asks her if she is curious about it and she tells him that she is but that he is the most important right now. Rosa wraps her arms around his waist and look at his back but Luke tells her there's no need to check as he already did and he is just a bit red. He takes her hands to stop her and she insists. Giving up, he turns his back to her so that she can check. Indeed, there are only small red parts on his back which isn't serious. He tells her that it doesn't need the hospital and she agrees. Luke comments on how he must work on gaining her confidence next time before commenting that it was a good trade. She doesn't understand so he gets closer to her and says that they have to get the ultimate victory before getting a champion medal in Monster Kitchen but he got a champion medal now without even winning anything. She laughs, then tell him to settle down so that she can check for sure if he is fine. He tenses up as she continues to examine him. At some point she asks him to turn, which he reluctantly does and she discovers a crimson swathe which he was hiding. Luke struggles to explain himself and Rosa grabs him before he manages to escape. Commenting on how he needs to improve his reliability, she tells him to let her treat him. She tells him to lay on his stomach on the bed while she applies ointment and he obeys without saying anything. Looking more closely, even the splotches on his back seem very red. As Rosa starts applying it, she asks if it hurts and Luke says that it doesn't and she can even press harder if needed. He burries his head into his arms while she continues asking how he feels. Luke asks to stop since he hasn't cleaned up the kitchen yet but Rosa, starting to feel hot and ticklish, insists on treating him first. Luke relents and rests on his elbow. Rosa guesses he also feels awkward in the situation so she changes the topic to the medal she found earlier by asking him how he got it. He explains that it was worth an experiment where they used microbes as ink to draw shapes on a petri dish. Rosa asks him about it by repeating what he said but she is distracted by her feelings as she is treating him. Luke explains to her how it works and she comments that it sounds hard. He denies and as he continues to explain, he lets out a grunt, which worries Rosa, who asks him if she hurts him. He denies, telling that he is just not used to being touched there and she can continue. Luke turns to her and smiles to reassure her and as she is about to resume, a phone call interrupts the moment. Luke picks up his phone and freezes as he was about to stand up as his habit. Rosa tells him she is going to continue putting ointment while he is talking to the phone. On the other side of the line is an event organizer for the Monster Kitchen vlog contest, who is calling to check the participants' information. To not disturb him, Rosa tries to be more careful and delicate but it backfires, making Luke grunt once again. He however manages to continue his phone call. Once it's over, suddenly, he jumps out of bed and their positions are quickly reversed. He complains to her that she probably did it on purpose. Rosa denies, but he says doesn't trust her. He nuzzles her nose with his, starts caressing her face, and says how he almost made weird noises on the phone so she must pay for mental damage she caused to his psyche. Rosa asks him how she's going to pay that, and he tells her to figure it out. She hugs him and nuzzles her nose like he did earlier. She asks him if it's enough and Luke says no, so she adds that she is going to help him clean the house and think of a way to solve their kitchen problem too. Luke sighs loudly before kissing her. He then says that now it's a worthy compensation. She hugs him, touched by his gesture.
They are so funny and cute and Rosa knows how little care Luke has for himself so the fact she knew he got burnt more than he let on was satisfying kinda.
Act 3
They tidy up everything, then take off the curtains, bedding, Luke's clothes and wash them. Once done, they each carry a basket of laundry downstairs. In the courtyard, a lot of other residents’ beddings are already hung outside. Luke picks an empty corner to set the clothesline then, as he waves at Rosa, he calls her "dear" and asks her to hand her the "item". She realizes he just said a line from Monster Kitchen so she answers back with a line from the game while handing him bedsheets. He recites another line as an answer and she feels a bit flustered. Rosa tells him to stop and work or they won't be able to dry this today but Luke jokingly answers that he calculated that they should still be able to dry even if they layer them. Rosa asks him if he can calculate things like that and asks if he has a laundry guide. He starts hanging the sheets she hands him and confirms what she just said, adding that the guides are his exclusive tricks so he will only tell about them with certain conditions. He says she should get full score achievement in the "Monster Kitchen Castle Combat" like they did in the game and he will think about how to do that in real life. What he mentioned is a challenge triggered each time the player doesn't complete the cleaning task as the requirements, where the protagonists need to build a maze castle with bedsheets before beginning a chase. When one side wins more than 100 times, they get the extra achievement. Rosa says they don't have a castle IRL, then covers Luke with a bedsheet, saying that the combat part is still doable. Luke, surprised, lifts the sheets and says no ambushes allowed. Rosa gets back saying that it's fair in love and war and he always ambushes her in game. He counters saying he lets her know every time in advance. He lifts the bedsheet even more, telling that it won't be easy the next round. Rosa asks who said there was a next round and why don't they wrap it with only one round since it happens like that in Monster Kitchen Castle Combat. She announces she is going to make her victory speech and Luke argues that he just let her win but he agrees to listen to her. She starts by calling him Monster warrior and asking for his laundry secret. While laughing, he agrees to tell her : his secret is the thermodynamic equation. By applying them to the sunlight intensity, the temperature and humidity, you can get results. Rosa asked how he even thought about doing that and he tells her it's because of the medal she found earlier. Luke explains that since microbes needs specific conditions to grow, he did plenty of preparation before the competition. He suddenly think about how they should approach their recreation the Surf and Turf dish using the same way. Rosa asks if he suggests using science to do it and he confirms, saying they should disassemble the task into a scientific experiment. Seemingly excited, Luke explains that he was thinking about it since she found the medal and now that they talked about thermodynamics he got a clearer idea. She reaches out to him, saying she is "ready to complete the greatest challenge of her life with him" and asks about him, with a line from the game, said right before the final battle. He answers with a line from the game too and after putting the bedsheet over their head as a veil, he gently kisses her, saying he "needs to borrow some courage from her before the challenge". She softly answers that she will need to borrow some too.
Okaaaaay so I never understood his living place like this ?? Wdym other residents ?? I thought he owned a 3 floor kind of residence/house with his antique shop, detective agency and private apartment on each of those floors so he had no close enough neighbors to share stuff with them… Or is that like a housing residence with a common courtyard in the back but everyone has his own house ? On another side they are so cuteeeeeee Luke's smile is a 10/10 there, he looks so soft and pure awnnn
Act 4
At 4PM, they pick up the dried curtains and sheets before going to buy some other ingredients. The rules indicate that they have two days after registering to submit their video so the deadline is the next day, in the evening. They don't have the time to replace the broken pressure cooker where the soup was nor the also broken electrical stove on which it was cooking, so they head to Rosa's house instead to cook. After dinner, they check the ingredients they bought and Luke estimates that with the amount they got they have at least five attempts to make the dish. Luke writes in his notebook their ingredients and the issues they have encountered previously as well as solutions to those. Rosa comments on how she really feels like it's an experiment and Luke tells her he has to be meticulous with it especially since it'll help later. He writes the lines describing the dish from the game and pauses, asking out loud what they are going to do for the sauce recipe. Rosa comments that doing the same as in game will be hard so maybe they should stick to their previous method of using substitutes. Luke says that's a good idea but it would require a number of experiments. She tells him they can take the time to do so. She takes his hand, exactly like the protagonists from Monster Kitchen do every time, and quotes a line, telling him their fight is about to begin. He answers with a line from the game too, looking at her tenderly. After a while, they have a table full of saucer with different sauces, their failed experiments. Rosa asks Luke which version they are working on and he answers the version 34, which is too sour. Luke, along with the observations they previously made, lists the ingredients and quantities they have to use. He scratches off a line he wrote, then starts to mix some condiments precisely. Rosa tries it and comments that version 35 is not sour anymore and feels refreshing and sweet instead. Luke comments that the color isn't red as in game though and their sauce is brown. Luke and Rosa wonder about ingredients red enough to stay the same color after being boiled and which doesn't affect the taste. Rosa suddenly has an idea and takes out some small vegetables from her fridge, which Luke recognizes as being carrots they bought just to get a discount. Rosa corrects him saying it's beetroots and that they can be used as natural dye. Luke, excited, tells her they should use it. So a while after, with 2 more pages of the notebook written on and their table filled with reddish sauces, they finally managed to replicate a sauce of the same color and texture as in the game. Luke falls on the sofa, commenting on how hard it is. While the color looks good now, the taste is still a problem. In the game description, the sauce first has a sour and spicy taste, then becomes sweet and refreshing but theirs lack this sweetness. Rosa complains that they have tried so many times that her tongue feels numb and suggests combining all their datas now and see where they can improve. Luke tells her he will do it so she can rest first. Then, taking his notebook, he tells her that despite the experiment being a hassle it's way better than doing research on his own in the lab. Rosa realizes that Luke seems really marked by his microbe drawing competition. He says that he almost forgot it but the medal made him remember. He suddenly says it was lonely. She went closer to him to listen more. Luke explains that since it was an individual competition, he had to do everything alone and he didn't even sleep properly to be able to watch the results from his cultivation. Luke says that at the time, he was thinking how it would be nice if Rosa was next to him because he wouldn't have made that many mistakes with her there. He says that he feels his dream came true and Rosa asks him why he makes it sound like she is someone special. Luke says she is since she is his goddess of victory. She burries her face in his chest, feeling overwhelmed with feelings. Luke tells her to rest since he is almost finished to what she argues that she is not tired he is just comfortable to lean on. Luke insists on her sleeping and brushes her brow and she slowly falls asleep.
I’m seriously wondering how bad they can be at cooking when they managed to break the appliances by forgetting it on the stove, which also has broken, and the way they prepare themselves to try to do the whole recipe 5 times… But wow I admire their dedication to make such a detailed experiment to recreate that dish… Honestly, I love to see someone so serious and dedicated to their hobbies haha
Act 5
Rosa wakes up in a bright room, not remembering how she fell asleep. She looks at the sofa and sees Luke sound asleep, collar and corner of his mouth stained with red coloring and she wonders if he continued to experiment with the sauce when she fell asleep. A bit amused, she decides to wipe him. Rosa is a bit surprised to see that he didn't wake up as she started to clean him but still continues and brushes at some point against his lips, which makes his eyelids flutter. Her odd feeling is confirmed then and she guesses that he is pretending to be asleep, which makes her have an idea. Rosa loudly complains on how hard it is to wipe the collar as she rubs the wipe forcefully against him. Luke stops pretending and while pouting catches her hand and sits up. She laughs telling him he was awake after all but he corrects her and says he woke up when she leaned on him. Rosa compliments him and tell him to control his eyelids next time. Luke says she has to provide a better reward for him to do that. He hugs her and make her lie down with him. A bit embarrassed, she reminds him they have to work on something serious now. Smiling, Luke snuggle against her, telling her they need to wash up first. After doing so and eating breakfast, Luke shows Rosa the result of the experiment he got by improving their findings : the version 42. He asks her to taste it and she confirms that it's exactly how she imagined what it tasted like : a hint of unami flavor and a sour-spicy mixture. Luke informs her he noted the amount of ingredients down to every grams and how to make it. He filled already half of his notebook and put stickers on each pages to sort the infos. Rosa asks him if he turned his notebook into an encyclopedia and he confirms, saying he just wanted to be as meticulous as possible. She mentions that they should film it when doing their video. Luke eyes light up before realizing that despite all the preparations, his cooking skills can't guarantee success. Rosa suggests breaking down the task again and if she makes a mistake, he can cover for her. He agrees and she tells him they should make one last check. Luke adjusts the lights and filming equipment while Rosa takes out the ingredients from the fridge. They start the recording and get to work. Luke gives out instructions to her while reading the notebook and Rosa follows, but despite this, since she isn't used to tossing the pan, a lot of rice falls outside the pot. Luke reassures her despite being nervous too. He continues to instruct her but she realizes at some point they didn't dice some of their ingredients. Luke tells her he did and shows her different containers lined up next to her. Rosa asks him when he did that to which he answers during the preparations. She tells him how she is glad he is here because she wouldn't have time to do the prep and Luke tells her that him doing the preparation and her taking the lead is teamwork and he won't let it fail. She says how she wants to win too, finally understanding why she was so eager to join the competition. In the end, they manage to finish their paella without a hitch. Rosa asks how they are going to edit their vlog now and Luke says they first need a title. She asks if he has an idea but his first two ones are rejected. After a moment of thinking, he decides on "The Warriors' Honor Challenge" and she agrees, saying it sounds like it comes from the game. Luke takes the camera still recording and moves it from the food to Rosa, saying that the warriors who worked diligently should now harvest the fruits of their victory.
They are cute and fluffy aaaa but really once again their dedication should earn them a prize even if they don’t win 1st
Act 6
On another weekend, a few weeks later, at Luke's home. Rosa is on the sofa, scrolling on the comments from the cooking challenge event. Their entry was selected as outstanding entry and despite not ranking high overall, the official account gave them the award of most outstanding innovation. Rosa laughs so Luke puts his controller away and asks her what she saw. She shows him the comments that made her laugh but he doesn't respond so Rosa doesn't know if he is stunned with joy or shocked to be called professional chefs by the netizens. Pretending to hold a mic, she asks him if Mr "Professional Chef" has something to say. Luke answers that the filming of this vlog was a pain so it's great it didn't disappoint them. Rosa asks him how he feels about receiving an award and he says he feels like he isn't confident enough but receiving the title makes him a bit excited. Looking and sounding joyful, he says that seeing her being so happy and smiley makes him glad. Rosa says that it's normal to be happy since their hard work paid off and they fulfilled a small wish. Before he can ask about it, a delivery man rings and screams for Luke, so he rushes to the door, exclaiming that it must be the prize they won. Rosa feels glad to have involved him in the competition seeing his reaction. Once unwrapped from the cardboard the gift package stills takes up the whole table. She pushes the box towards him, asking him to open it for them but Luke tells her to do so since she wanted it. Rosa pauses and tells him she wanted to participate to help him get the limited edition merch which makes him puzzled. Luke says that the Big Data Lab told him that she spent a lot of time looking at the event page so he thought she was interested. Rosa also tells him how the Big Data Lab told her he was the one looking at this, but thinking back, she was the one initiating the conversation about it and his expression made her think he wanted to join. Luke realizes that it was a misunderstanding and Rosa comments that she doesn't know if she should thank the algorithm for being smart or, Luke finishes her sentence, be happy they are so in sync they always end up on the same page. They decide to unwrap it together... Only to reveal another box. Looking closely at it, she realizes that there is a maze on it with two small balls inside. Luke explains that it's a labyrinth lock and pulls out a card from the cardboard wrapping which asks them if they are ready to face the special challenge even in reality. Luke summarizes that the instructions explain that if the two balls fall in the designated spot at the same time, the box will open. They comment on how it's like the challenge they faced with their vlog. They laugh at each other and get ready to tackle the labyrinth, Luke placing himself behind Rosa and putting his hands on hers. Carefully, they sync up and tackle the puzzle together. As Rosa was celebrating their victory a bit early, one of the balls almost ended up in a dead end. Luke reassures her, telling her to be calm. They carry on, focused and steady, in harmony. Then the balls reach their destination at the same time, the box opens and reveals a paper lantern in the shape of their playable characters in game hand in hand, which recreate the scenery of the players returning home after finishing the final boss. Rosa comments on how detailed it is but Luke says it's not good enough, which surprises her. She looks at him and sees that he is way closer to her now. He tells her to remember the perfect ending before planting a kiss on her neck and saying "We rely on each other and help one another. That's how we can reach our destination", which are the final lines in the game. Luke tells her how that is now a more faithful recreation of the scene. Both their tender feelings in harmony, he carefully reminds her how they are always in sync.
Oh wow, what a nice wrap up, I love how they in fact took the challenge to make the other happy and because they thought the other wanted to when in fact they both didn’t even consider their own feelings into the matter, that’s kinda endearing. A huge thanks to the lowkey too sentient Big Data Lab without which we couldn’t have gotten this card !
Personal opinion :
What I liked :
Okay, idk if it's because I literally JUST finished a game and felt lonely not being able to share the whole experience of playing it with someone, but the first act being just them having finished a game together was so sweet and filled some kind of void I felt IMMEDIATELY, and the rest of the card covered the rest with ointment and patched a little heart shaped band aid on all haha. I think that’s what made me like the game so much, the themes and their cute exchanges as they were saying the game’s lines and remembering when they played it, it just felt so nice, so my liking of this card is really biased.
Also, I loved the reminder that Luke is so smart and well versed in scientific topics, it was nice seeing him casually mention and remember his experiment and some notions he knows of.
What I disliked :
Not a strong dislike, but I would have loved to see a small part of their playthrough to immerse even more in the story but oh well
Would I recommend getting this story ?
If you like a fluffy, cozy card with hints of gaming elements inside, sure ! This card was very warm and enjoyable to read, especially the casual, comfortable atmosphere between Luke and Rosa. As a “Sweet Chapter SSR”, it’s not groundbreaking in terms of lore, but it feels very nice still !!

So I'll be finishing my final coursework course at UH ever tomorrow but I still have two years left in the PhD program. From the now until I defend my dissertation I'll just be doing research hours and oddjobs (48 credit hour speedrun). As per tradition every few years, here are all the courses I've taken in undergrad and graduate school. I'll also say which prof I recommend for the class. I transferred to UH my Junior year.
COSC 1336: Computer Science and Programming. Professor: N/A, Semester: N/A

• I didn't take this class. This is the class that gets you started in CS. I recommend taking it with Dr. Yun or Dan/Dr. B. This class is also known as "glorified Python programming". This class isn't specifically made for CS Majors, as ANYONE can take this for their Math Reasoning course, and I highly, highly recommend doing so. Programming is invaluable and easier than you think. 70% of Computer Science majors never wrote a single line of code during college. If you plan on doing graduate school or any form of research, you might have to throw some code in there, whether it be software engineering code or data analysis. Fuck R, use Python.

COSC 1437 (prev. 1430): Intro to Programming, Professor: Giulia Toti, Semester: Fall 2018

• Toti has left UH and started teaching at another institution. I recommend taking Dan or Rincon for this course. You will learn C++ and Java through the semester, and most of the code you learn will overlap with each other (with a small change in syntax in each language). ZyBooks was used to do all programming homeworks. ZyBooks is a decent platform that you can go through to read the material, learn it, write some practice code and then do your HW online. It will run your code against testcases. Sometimes you'll get them, other times you won't. So long as you can do the visible test cases, barring any code that's inefficient and takes too long, you'll pass them all just fine. I used DevC++ as my IDE at the time, before transitioning to ReplIt later on. The class wasn't too hard. I liked doing the Tetris project at the end then playing it in other classes that I didn't really care about lol.

COSC 2436 (Prev 2430): Programming and Data Structures, Professor: Nouhad Rizk, Semester: Spring 2019.

• I will always recommend Dr. Rizk for this course. If you can take Rizk, take Rizk. If not, take Dan. This is the weed out class. When I was taking it, the drop/fail rate was 50-60%. It's hard, and if you have to take it again, don't worry. I ended up becoming a PEER mentor and tutored some former classmates. All have walked the stage. This is the class that makes or breaks the CS majors. This class is HARD, but getting through it makes you "internship ready". You're going to need to learn some stuff about Linux to turn in your homework and run the testcases. There's a decent guide on Rizk's site on how to use it, and the TA's/Mentors should give you a guide on how to do it as it isn't too difficult. I used FileZilla and Putty together to get this done. I also used DevC++ in this class. To get into the meat and bones of this class, you're learning everything at a fast rate. Reading input from the files and doing shit with them, all the way up to graph theory (Dijkstra's Alg) with Linked Lists in between. Just show up to class, practice, and if you aren't sure, go to mentor hours, TA hours, or Rizk's hours. Rizk's memory is the level of Mike Ross from Suits so she WILL remember you and the attitude you have towards her class and CS overall. If you answer questions, participate, show your effort and fail everything, she'll pass you because you can demonstrate that knowledge another way. My favorite resource, the hero of CougarCS is Abdul Bari. This YouTube channel will get you through any explanation you need. The exams are pretty hard but sometimes it comes down to memorizing sorts and doing Leetcode problems (which this class will prepare you for). Get started on your homework early, this is NOT one you want to procrastinate on. For reference, I did the Linked List homework for fun three years later and it took about two hours instead of the few days the first time around. There used to be a lot of inconsistencies with this class but it's improved a lot and Dr. Rizk has won an award for her teaching efforts. Take any extra credit you can, sometimes showing up to enough office hours will get you some. There's also some random things she'll tell the Mentors to assign to anyone that shows up that will add points to a test or something. I have a lot of funny memories in this class, too. Crying sessions at the fountains after tests and being hopeful to pass and make it through the rest of UHCS. Heck, there were a bunch of jokes about infinite looping our code to break the Linux server so we can get an extension LOL. I wouldn't be a TA if it weren't for Rizk. She wrote one of my recommendations to grad school. She gave me one of the biggest opportunities I never knew I had to be a tutor and get more involved with the CS department.

COSC 2425 (Prev 2440): Computer Org & Architecture, Professor: Edward Gabriel/Kevin Long, Semester: Spr19/Fall20.

• I took this class in Spring 2019 with Gabriel (has since left) and dropped it, then took it in the Fall with Long. I like to call this the class I never took. Whenever a homework assignment would go out, we could use whatever resources we wanted. Cue the fact that a bunch of students would just work on it together in the GroupMe, and then afterwards I'll take it and turn it in. Everyone worked on the exam reviews together. This was the A I never put any effort into getting. Even if you're in it to learn about Architecture (or whatever concept Long teaches), do it. Seriously, he's an instructional prof and not a research prof. You're going to hear these two terms a lot in these later reviews. Instructional profs are here purely to teach and do research on the side (where most of them are here the other way around). His classes are easy but he WILL teach you. His curve is based on the person with the lowest grade but did every assignment, exam, etc. That person will be raised to a passing grade (or higher), then everyone else will follow that curve. I always recommend Long

COSC 3320: Algorithms and Data Structures, Professor: Ernst Leiss, Semester: Summer 2019.

• My oh my was this the A I had to put a lot of effort into. Leiss is a professor who will come in, lecture, and leave. This entire class was done in a month (afternoon class). It was two homeworks and two exams. You can use any language you want, but I used C++ and Java. That might be 'easy' but, you're going to be doing a lot of writing and programming in this class. The Towers of Leiss problem still lives rent free in my head. His office hours are pretty open and he'll answer questions at the start of class anytime you ask them. You'll hear the words "Any questions?" to start the class and "See you next time" to end them. For all exams and assignments, you're able to use literally whatever you want (with the exception of people and the internet on exam days). His reasoning was that "If I am your boss, I'm not going to lock you in a room and expect you to know the answer!". The TAs are pretty lenient in grading, but sometimes will be wildly inconsistent depending as to how they feel or which one you get. They know about Leiss' policies so they'll just roll with it. The assignments were also turned in on paper lmao. Leiss doesn't like online classes, like at all. He won't teach online. I don't blame him for it. I recommend him. He wrote my second letter of rec.

COSC 3340: Introduction to Automata, Professor: Ernst Leiss, Semester: Summer 2019.

• This would be the morning class during the Summer. All in a month too. Four exams, each at the end of the week. You could use whatever you wanted to, just no internet or other people (one guy got caught cheating on the final and kicked out of the class). The TA, who was the same for Algos too could get strict, but his grading was definitely lenient LOL. You learn a lot of stuff on the 'machine' level of this class. State Machines, Turing Tests, Search Algs. I remember writing like a one page answer on a state machine that was totally shit but I got it right. There was another student who wrote it right with like one character wrong and got docked for it. There were some students at either UT, TAMU, or UTD that would ask "Why does UH want you to suffer!?" when they heard that this class existed. Not too hard, just do the stuff and you'll get through. Nobody really cares about Automata and cheating on the exams was rampant. Now while Leiss is a great professor, I don't know which one of y'all motherfuckers sold their soul so Singh could teach the class consistently. Take Singh and go LOL.

COSC 4351/4353: Fundamentals of Software Engineering, Professor: Raj Singh, Semester: Fall 2019

• This class had three in person meetings. The first class, and the two exams (closed note). Other than that, you were doing homework about software engineering and it's methods (not code, just drawing stuff out), then writing a piece of software to present at the end of the semester. You're in a group of three people max and the biggest thing you learn in here is the Unit Test. Just some code to test what happens when things come in and out. Basically you write the testcases for your 2436 homeworks. In this class, my teammates did the homeworks and I just worked on the project. It was a basic website with a database aspect that would showcase links based on access levels. The exams were easy, heck, they were in ORDER and the reviews were very, very similar if not exact. Someone leaked the exam in the GroupMes so they were finished pretty quickly. You'll see a question about a specific step on the AGILE method, or you'll see "What is not software? Hardware." This is an effort A. Just do what you need to do and you'll be set. It isn't easy, but it just needs effort. I recommend Singh lol. You can use any language. For this one, I used PHP, HTML, and some JavaScript.

COSC 4348: Intro to Game Art and Animation, Professor: Chang Yun/Vincent Donatelli, Semester: Fall 2019

• The class nowadays is a lot easier than it used to be back then. The class nowadays is offered in the Spring with optional attendance, hybrid, and has seven homework assignments that all work with each other. Two are completion, four are drawing, and then the final project which just puts them all in a Unity scene. Back then, it was mandatory attendance with an in person assignment, a homework assignment, and a team based project game at the end. Everyone had to put their own art in the game. Donatelli (no longer here) was the primary professor for the course and would do everything pretty quick. As CS majors aren't really artists, it's good that Yun's taken over. I was on a 15 person team and led the programmers. We had a progress check every two weeks. If you didn't do your part, the professor would tell you to drop the class or face a zero. Donatelli was an industry veteran and there were some other whack hours in the class, such as an 8pm-11pm presentation time in PGH. Stayed all day on campus and ate Bullritos before going into that one. This class is NOT an easy A, even if it's easier than it used to be. Come prepared to get your stuff done. You'll learn basic C# in this course from a Unity tutorial.

COSC 4358: Intro to Interactive Game Dev, Professor: Chang Yun/Zhigang Deng, Semester: Fall 2019.

• If you're a competitive person, take this class. This is THE most fun class in UH CS. You'll be in a team of 4-8 and spend three months building a video game. All homeworks are completion (so just do them). Two individual, five team. Make sure to do your part because there's always a team or group of people that will get into fights and beef every year over it. Anyway, once you finish your seven homework assignments, your team will get into a 'duel' with another team. This means that your team has to show how good your game is against another one. Winner moves from D to C, then the duel later on will be C to B-. At the end of the semester, industry members, influencers, and UH Alumni will come in to playtest and judge your game. There'll be pizza, drinks, and it just becomes one big LAN party. You'll get some mean comments, but then they go into another room and rank your game from B- to A. Even if you have a really shit game, you will get at worst a B- for your project grade. You have the choice of using Unity (C#), Godot (Python), or Unreal Engine (C++/Visual Scripting) to build your game. Nearly everyone sticks with Unity because they already have Visual Studio, and C# isn't that hard to learn with the many tutorials out there. If you can get into this class, you're going to have a lot of fun. Dr. Yun also wrote my letter of recommendation and brought me into the world of video games for research.

In the middle of Spring 2020, COVID happened. The classes shifted online. Any fully online class will be noted from here on out
COSC 3360: Operating Systems, Professor: Jehan-Francois Paris, Semester: Spring 2020

• Oh god, OS. I heard the horror stories about this class but with Paris (retired/sometimes teaches it now), it wasn't too bad. Three homework assignments and three quizzes. The first HW was pretty hard and you could use any language. The other two were in C++ and had a guide to get it done. Quizzes were multiple choice. Paris had great real-world examples when he was trying to explain something. You were able to have a cheat sheet on the quizzes. Make sure to respect his lectures. He uses MOSS to check for plagiarism, and that was rampant in the first homework. The latter two didn't really matter in terms of running it. This also means variable names, nerds. Lots of partial credit available with Homework 1 (some kind of scheduler). I did all my code in ReplIt. Since Paris has retired (if you can't take him), I recommend taking it with Rincon. Cheng only if this is your last option.

COSC 3380: Databases, Professor: Uma Ramamurthy, Semester: Spring 2020

• This class was hard but so well worth it. A lot of people like to complain about how mean Uma is. Like wtf? This was the professor a lot of the older students told us to take REGARDLESS if you wanted to learn how to do this shit effectively. I still remember a lot of things about Databases that I use in here and whenever I quickly set up something for a solo project or testing something out. I'll never forget this quote "If you think your code runs perfectly the first time, you must be smoking something". Uma will humble you real quick if you walk in with a shit project before giving you a chance to fix it. Your project will be a webapp with heavy database usage. One challenge I had for this class was to generate 5000 random entries for each of the databases then insert them. The database stuff itself and tying it to the frontend wasn't too bad. It was an employee directory with salaries, jobs, tasks, vacation, etc. The exams were fairly difficult but after it went online, it was obvious what we were all doing. Group Projects can cause tension. This was the first time I had experienced tension with other group members, and we had all known each other in previous classes. This was a result of Uma tearing us each ten different kinds of asshole after seeing our rough draft of the final project. Thankfully, the group member that was our former TA for another class calmed us all down and we got out of the class with an A on the project.

COSC 4349: Game Art 2, Professor: Vincent Donatelli, Semester: Spring 2020

• This class was basically 3D Art and Animation. It is no longer offered. This is sort of what the Game Art 1 class is now, but the entire class worked on the group project at once. Each 'subgroup' worked on furniture for a different room, and we just threw it all in an Unreal scene and got our grade. I still use some of the 3D modeling techniques whenever I build games for educational stuff today.

COSC 4368: Intro to AI, Professor: Christoph "A" Eick,

• I actually remember a lot of this class being more math/theory based instead of writing AI code. I don't even think we wrote code in this class. Just a lot of simulation stuff, reports, and papers. This is a combined class with graduate students and gets you into the art and background of AI, instead of the random tutorials you see on YouTube where you literally know nothing of what it means. You are taking a theory heavy course. Eick has been at UH since the 80s and you can see fun facts about his favorite wines and hiking spots on his website from the late 90s. I remember putting "I don't know" a lot on some homeworks, and after the semester was over, his TA/PhD student reached out and offered to give me any advice or knowledge that I wanted to know about the subject. The exams weren't too difficult and were very similar to the review, I also believe they were open note. It made AI very interesting and I did understand a lot of the stuff. Eick is a pretty goofy prof and he'll just randomly giggle during lectures and put pictures of frogs on his exams. Has a huge similarity to Leiss.

COSC 4398: Independent Study, Professor: Nouhad Rizk, Semester: Spring 2020

• I wrote a paper and did some research for Rizk. This was not my best work, and was done the week before the semester had ended. It was about the diversification of individual skills instead of people/races/ethnicity in projects. Turns out there's more to it than I thought.

MATH 4322/4323: Data Science/Machine Learning, Professor: Poliak/Wang/Weber, Semester: Spring 2020

• A math class but this is the math class most CS majors take to get the minor. Programming is in R, the coding problems are easy, and the professors are great. You do a report at the end and you can walk out with a solid B if not an easy A by putting in the work. They are the Stats profs, so if you took any of them for 3339, you'll have a smiliar time with them. The last in person exam I took for this class before COVID was the Friday before Spring Break. I got a 62 because I was out at Rooftop (RIP) the night before. Just a week before, the exam was extended because of some water issue on campus causing classes to get cancelled. A week before that, Dr. Wang cancelled class beacuse she felt like spending time with her kid. This was the second Friday class I ever took, and was the last one I attended before the pandemic.

At this point, I finished my BS at UH. I took some classes in Spring 2021 'for fun'/prepping for grad school which helped me get a leg up now.
COSC 4370: Graphics, Professor: Zhigang Deng, Semester: Spring 2021.

• You'll learn OpenGL in this class, however I heard it has changed. You'll need to use more C++ knowledge and follow along tutorials on the website and YouTube videos. The tasks itself aren't too hard, and honestly you'll have fun with the Teapot Artwork assignment since you can do whatever mathematical wizardry you wanted to get some shapes on there. Some students were making crazy things. Others did smiley faces. Undergrads did exams while the grad students just presented a paper. Deng is good and this his a fun elective if you're interested in interactive media!

COSC 4377: Networking, Professor: Omprakash Gnawali, Semester: Spring 2021.

• I looked everything up on the exams even when he said he'd figure it out. Gnawali is a great prof. Not much coding, if at all, in this class. But a lot of Wireshark analysis and networking/packet/cybersecurity theory. I recommend Long for this class, though Gnawali is a great alternative. If you are a graduate student taking this course, Gnawali will be the only option for the combined class. Long will exclusively do the undergrad classes. Given the time since this class has been taught, I don't know much about how it goes today. Grad Students in the class were exempt from exams and did a paper presentation instead. If it's hybrid, you'll have an easy time. If everything is in person, a little bit of good luck.

COSC 6397 (Now COSC 4321): Selected Topics: Spatial Tech, Professor: Chang Yun/Faisal Sharif, Semester: Spring 2021.

• I loved this class and am very happy that it got bumped up to an official course. This was in the works for a few years with Faisal and Dr. Yun. Jared, a former Microsoft employee with a decent connection to UH and a huge veteran presence in XR also hopped on to teach the class. This class, our group did a project on an AR Solar System that you could project anywhere in the room and walk around it. There was a 'VR' project as well. I kept the AR app on my phone until I was mugged and the robber shot it. I might still have the file somewhere. You used Unity (C#) with Vuforia for AR and VR stuff. It was fucking cool seeing my little 3d things pop up on the picture of the opera lady. Highly recommend if you're interested in AVR stuff.

COSC 4393: Digital Image Processing, Professor: Pranav Mantini, Semester: Spring 2021.

• If you're interested in learning how Photoshop works in a code sense, this class is for you. The assignments are in Python and you'll be rotating images, cleaning up noise, performing image compression, and gaussian stuff. I still use the output of the botched code I wrote because they all looked like sad potatoes. The exams were online and not too lookup-able. The only sucky part was that it was an 8am. You'd put your homework on Github classroom and Jenkins would grade it for you. The TAs and Dr. Mantini knew their shit. If you were sus on a homework assignment, they'd call you into a meeting to clarify things. This was the case on the image rotation homework, as the slides showed you how to rotate by a corner instead of by the center.

These courses come from the start of my Masters program and the three required ones in the PhD. The reviews will be fairly shorter and straight to the point as you started to dabble in a lot more applied things if the classes were not entirely theory. The graduate program is a near totality of international students, so the work ethic and competitiveness goes up. On the other hand, the back-scratching and helping each other out is probably more rampant in undergrad but nobody really talks about it. This is the time where you see the professors absolutely shine in what they research. When you see a research prof teaching a course, you're going to learn much, much more than you expect because that is what they live and breathe daily here. My complaints about teaching vs research profs went out the window after this first semester of the MS
COSC 6324: Randomized Algorithms and Probabilistic Techniques in Computing. Professor: Gopal Pandurangan, Semester: Fall 2021

• What a tongue twister. This class is one chapter from Gopal's Graduate Algorithms class expanded to a whole semester. You'll learn a lot of concepts about the pure mathematical side of algorithms. That, expected values, randomization, hashing, and complexities you'll not even begin to understand. There weren't any exams. Just a paper presentation, a bunch of homework assignments that were written responses to crazy math problems. You couldn't google these easily, and I found solutions to some HW problems by copying like one line and finding it on a Russian website. The programming assignments were LeetCode questions with some of the most insane requirements you can imagine. The stuff was the most beautiful, digusting, messed up efficient wizardy I've ever had to write and this class absolutely helped me slay programming interviews left and right for the internship cycles ahead. It's hard, but good hard. The class had about eight students and it would go from lecturing to conversation about the topic at hand.

COSC 6347: Cybersecurity. Professor: Laszka, Semester: Fall 2021.

• As Laszka has left UH, I am unsure as to how the class is currently offered. At the start of the semester, he told us about our requirements and threw up a slide saying not to try anything in the class at home. Two programming assigments and the rest was just hacking shit on a VM he'd give us. The tests were multiple choice or fill in the blank, and you could pull them easily from the slides. Almost identical in that case.

COSC 6376: Cloud Computing. Professor: Weidong "Larry" Shi, Semester: Fall 2021.

• The HW in this class was very applied as we would learn new tech stacks and languages, one being 'pig latin'. A lot of the things here were follow a tutorial or look things up. The end of the semester was a huge project. In this project, we compared running an image classification task on separate cloud providers and their tiers. Thank God we had credit from each of the services or else the bills would have ran HIGH. No exams, easy A if you do the stuff. Dr. Shi is a pretty good prof in his line of work. His TAs do run the class and teach sometimes as they are in their final years and taking over the teaching aspect. Save this part for later.

COSC 6339: Big Data Analytics. Professor: Carlos Ordonez, Semester: Spring 2022.

• I have personal opinions about the teaching methods of Dr. Ordonez. Pre-COVID, I had always heard that he was a good prof for Programming Languages and Paradigms. However, after learning how he treated his 3380 class, I started to dread it a little. The homeworks were vague, grades weren't released until after our drop date, and he was definitely caught looking at his course reviews daily and probably writing his own (or having the TAs do it). In homework assignments or test reviews, if you were having an issue and you looked it up, it was literally his research work. I don't find that to be bad, actually, because it did give insight on the stuff that he did and it was definitely interesting. Ordonez is also one of the profs that tried to get undergrads in research along with Gnawali and Yang. I didn't enjoy this class much, at all, due to the exam structure and ways it was taught. But, a memorable homework was some entire Dijkstra's thing but for servers, and that was fun. I got it done while hopped up on whatever the dentist gave me. All was done in Python.

COSC 6373: Computer Vision. Professor, Ioannis Kakadiaris, Semester: Spring 2022

• Dr. K will openly admit to you, either privately or to the whole class that he is very arrogant. You'll see this arrogance but not mind it much if you aren't working with him directly. Kakadiaris is passionate about showing students how to research, especially if you're interested in anything medical. His goal in every class that he teaches is to make you an expert in such field. I don't think there was an exam in this class, but he would assign some of his former students or current PhD students to be a mentor in your final project. The homeworks and in class labs were 'follow the steps'. He and his TA were always available for help and made the class a lot of fun, especially when explaining the mathematical operations behind CV Algorithms. I always recommend Dr. K's classes. Personally, he helped me gain a leg up on how to effectively get through UH's red tape on getting research done involving human subjects. Helped me set up an entire 'research suite' on the computer. Everything was in Python

COSC 7336: Advanced Natural Language Processing. Professor, Rakesh Verma, Semester: Spring 2022.

• Unless you have any form of deep interest in NLP, for the love of Shasta, do NOT take this class. I got my second lowest exam grade ever (the first being Gopal's Grad Algos). Curves were done obviously but the highest grade on any given exam was like a 30 or 40. There were homeworks and paper presentations too. If you skipped X amount of question on the homework, it'd be a 0. If you skipped X items in the class, you'd get an F. I barely squeaked by with a B here. This was also a class with like, ten people in it. One student was an undergrad. She was insane in her craft and I believe ended up working with Verma directly on some research and got paid good for it. This class is another case of Verma being an excellent researcher but not so much a professor. He lived and breathed everything NLP or Cybersecurity and was damn good at it. I also didn't pay much attention in class, so maybe I'm wrong on the teaching part. Everyone struggled in the class as the general NLP class, offered by Dr. Solorio (who was a visiting scientest at Bloomberg at the time) wasn't being offered.

COSC 6351/6353: Software Design. Professor: Raj Singh, Semester: Summer 2022.

• This class is just like the undergrad version. Didn't change much, except the final project was an oil price order thing. I used Flask and Python instead of shitty ass PHP. The exam still featured the famous question: "What isn't software? Hardware". Never change, Raj.

This Summer was the 'great resignation' within UH CS. Toti, Laszka, and Gabriel had left UH for other opportunities. Paris put up for retirement and was promoted to professor Emeritus. Kam-Hoi Cheng left but nobody knew why.
COSC 6335: Data Mining. Professor: Christoph Eick, Semester: Fall 2022.

• Pretty simple class since the exams were open note and the homeworks were answering questions (similar to that of AI) and writing reports. Like AEick, you got more into the fundamentals and how all that stuff works instead of writing code. Lots of frogs on the pages and opportunities for extra credit. This is a good class to get done for your core track and the TA was pretty lenient too. You can get an entire preview of any Eick class from the website.

COSC 6370: Medical Imaging. Professor: Nikolaos Tsekos, Semester: Fall 2022.

• This is a fun class, you'll get an A or A- in it if you do everything. No exams, just a bunch of homeworks and a project. The homeworks were quite fun as we got to do stuff that applied to the medical industry, and the project that my team did was identifying babies at whatever term from an ultrasound. The project itself didn't prove well, but we got an A so didn't matter much. Python was the language to use, and a lot of the homework assignments come with the formulas and theories you needed. Not much of a 'follow the steps' kind of thing, more of a 'here is what you need, good luck' kind of thing. Easy recommend. Tsekos is hilarious. "Do not make your grandmother die twice in a semester!".

COSC 6386: Program Analysis and Testing. Professor: Amin Alipour, Semester: Spring 2023.

• This class had three homeworks taken from a public textbook about software testing. "The Fuzzing Book". Not too difficult at all. What was fun was the paper presentation. I had just bought a Flipper Zero and got to demonstrate it as part of the presentation. The final project was basically the class split into two groups. My group recreated, to the best of our ability, MOSS. We made our own code plagiarism checker using NLP and tokenization of variables. We then saw how much of our own code was plagiarised with each other form old assignments lol, and it picked up on variable changing pretty quick. All was done in Python with AI aspects. All in Python/JuPyter

ENTR 7390: Technology Entrepreneurship. Professor: Tanushree Chatterji, Semester: Spring 2023.

• As a UH CS student, you can find up to six (or twelve?) related credits from outside CS to apply towards your coursework requirements. Anyway Bauer needs to stop being a bitch and let undergrads take their version of this class. I first heard of this course when I took Game Art, when Dr. McCormick came in and gave an entire guest lecture on how to take your startup game into the tech industry. She told us we could enroll but Bauer pretty much stopped any CS major from joining it.Since it was more lenient, I got into the graduate version with Dr. Chatterji. When I say that Bauer has the resources, they've got them. This class consisted of speakers in the startup space, UH alums and not coming in to talk about their experiences and give advice. The assignments were very business and tech oriented. I also got access to RedLabs as the prof is the director of it. She knows who to set you up with if you need it. If only the CS majors could have a piece of this the school could be seeing more money flowing into their donations since a lot of high paid Coogs like to give back. Met a ton in the club section at Fertitta. Holy moly.

At this point, I had completed my Masters. The next three courses were required for the PhD
COSC 6110: Graduate Colloqium. Professor: Ernst Leiss, Semester: Fall 2023.

• This class was easy. Attend five seminars, write reviews on them, get satisfactory review scores, and present a topic of your choice. You will get roasted by Leiss, but he also teaches you how to roast presenters. PhD students are required to visit five seminars minimum a semester, so you'll see some really good speakers and really shitty ones. This is also an opportunity to see who UH could be hiring on as a prof soon. Dr. Yang, Das, and Lin were all hired on the semester after giving a seminar talk at UH. There are currently two open spots that are looking to be filled, and I was able to sit in and evaluate one of the faculty candidates. This is where you can see the cool stuff going on in University Research.

COSC 6320: Data Structures and Algorithms. Professor: Gopal Pandurangan. Semester: Fall 2023.

• This class is the Algo Asylum. Fucking difficult. But you had Gopal and Khalid. There are no stupid questions in this class, but it was HARD. It made undergrad Algos look like taking candy from a baby. You have to fight your way out of it. Four exams similar to the HW of 6324, and the programming assignments too. God this class was hard. Still recommend Gopal always tho. They were ALWAYS willing to help. Python was the language of choice.

COSC 6342: Machine Learning. Professor: Ricardo Vilalta. Semester: Fall 2023.

• This class was two exams and a few assignments. The exams by the type of question weren't hard, but the questions themselves sucked. You had to memorize a lot of terminology, equations, vocab words, variables, etc. There weren't any word banks or references on the exams though. This, I just didn't know how to study well for. Everything came from the slides but they were very broad. Vilalta is a great prof and does curve. Good at his research.

COSC 6385: Computer Architecture. Professor, Weidong "Larry" Shi. Semester: Spring 2024.

• The end of the road! I dropped this class in Spring 2023 because I didn't need it to graduate, but then had to take it again because it was required for the PhD. The homeworks aren't hard, neither was the paper presentation or the experiments. But the exams did suck. I don't know how it will be tomorrow, but so long as I pass it, I'm good and I just get to research my way out of here and never have to sit a fucking exam ever again. It's been a long time coming and I can't wait to finish it up :) Python is your langauage here.

At this point, I'm doing whatever 8X98 and 8X99 is required of me. I have an RCE (just a long presentation), a doctoral proposal, and a defense, then the academic journey is over. I feel like the biggest hurdle was leapt.
My thoughts on UHCS. In Fall 2018, there were only 1300 students in the department. Everyone in their graduating class knew each other. You'd sometimes meet people in GroupMes to work on homeworks or projects together, but never see each other in real life. Or did you? There was a lot of weird ways to cheat or get by in class. There was a decent community, and people who wanted to help other students definitely did. I'll never forget cramming into a room with a bunch of other kids while the tutor for 2436 held a review session days before the exam. The jokes about overloading the servers, and the hopeful nature before COVID hit. Everyone seemed friendly, and it didn't seem at all like a few complaint posts that were put up earlier about superiority complexes or whatever.
There are now 2300+ students in the department and it will probably be 3k within the next few years. Classes are getting tighter, it's getting more competitive, and UH isn't giving CS the attitude it deserves. MIS and CIS are getting pumped, CS is just... There. NSM took over the Fall career fair like wtf? Cullen and NSM are going to get in competition over this stuff as CS to Cullen should have happened (and on several accounts, was rumored and about to go through the process) but then didn't happen, and CS wants the juice.
I've seen students in 1336 get caught with ChatGPT like fucking dumbasses, but on the other hand, the talent level of the juniors and seniors at UH CS is FUCKING INSANE. The post-COVID generation of UH CS is going to be the reason the rank and perception skyrockets. Alums of years past are surprised with how Coogs are getting picked off left and right from UH compared to other schools.
The department is focusing on hiring new blood that will help push the department to newer heights in terms of more modern research. The older professors are preparing to retire, we just don't know when or if. Tenure is hard to achieve, but the cycle is definitely happening.
That's all, I'm going to bed. Go Coogs!
Edit: I'm done! And I got through all the classes without taking Hilford or either Cheng so SUCK ON THAT UH

ADHD literally sucks I cannot describe in words how bad it is
I am diagnosed with ADHD, and it is bad especially when you're in school. I do take a pill for ADHD, but doesn't mean that I don't have it no more I still have moments where you can tell that my ADHD is still there. For ADHD there's like there's no way to get rid of it. It's just there for the rest of your life. That concern for when I had ADHD before I was diagnosed was when I was in elementary school and third grade. I don't know about this, but I think my third grade teacher was the person who put more thought into if I had it or not. As an example, I would remember that I used to always get in trouble for not doing assignments in class. I remember I would remember the thing at the top of my head in class and raise my hand and then forget it right away and I didn't know why. My third grade teacher would realize this, and actually take me out of class to take breaks.
Breaks in third grade was going out in the hallway that was right outside the classroom door. There was a desk right next to the classroom door that had a basket full of fidget toys like Poppets, and other stuff that would help people who have ADHD like me now nobody knew I had ADHD but people did have some concerns like my third grade teacher. Every time I took breaks, I would raise my hand. If I could then she would send me, but then I only had a certain amount of time to take one. I only have five minutes to take one and honestly I don't know if it helped or not. but I really think it didn't. Like in third grade, I would have this little squishy thing right on my seat that I could sit on. It was like a cushion, but it was filled with air, and it was made out of rubber thick rubber, and I can move around on it. My third grade teacher gave it to me so I can move around on it. It kinda hard, but then I got kind of bored of it. but I still have a choice if I want to sit on it or not. And I only helped for like about a week I remember but then I got to the point where my third grade teacher would give me this little rubber band to tie to the round of my two front legs of my chair. I could put my feet on there and move around my feet as well and it would help too, but then it broke and I don't remember if she was mad or not. And I got to the point where I got a mood chart and a mood chart in elementary school was A paper that has smiley face is on it. There was a smiley, face, neutral face, and a :-(. Every time we were in a lesson such a science, if I act good during science, I would get a :-) if I act better in silence, I will get us :-( if I act OK during science, I will get a neutral face, and I remember that made me broke down in tears to my mom when I got home. I realize that I had all the stuff that all my other friends hadn't, and it made me feel left out and different from all the other people and I remember I was bawling my eyes out because I wanted to be like everybody else I didn't want to be the one that was weird or just different from everybody else. I felt like if I kept on doing that kind of stuff I would start feeling left out or no one would start talking to me and I remember I really wanted to be a normal kid. I didn't want to have that little cushion of mine I didn't wanna have a rubber band I certainly didn't wanna have a mood chart and I remember that's the thing that made me broke down. I remember telling my mom that the mood chart was bad because I remember some kids that were bad in my class that we were with me also had it and I hate having to carry around it when every time I had to go to specials specials were like library, gym and music and I hate having to carry it in front of other people to those kind of classes and bring it to the teacher. I didn't want to be a bad kid, and I always wanted to be a good kid. End it happened like that from kindergarten all the way to third grade and then in the summer after third grade I was diagnosed with ADHD. I remember when I first came to fourth grade when I was on the pill I was on a low-dose age and yes, I hope they crazy and I was so surprised and I loved how it felt but then also again I remember I was trying different levels of the pill During the summer and I got to the point where I was on a high level so when I got in fourth grade, I was actually really quiet not the outgoing person I was in third grade. A lot of people were confused because they're used to my outgoing. Funny personality now I'm in the back of the room quiet not talking to anybody and I found out it was just weird for me too. I remember telling my mom about it and she said it's just because of the pill it will start becoming part of you, and then you'll start acting like my normal self just more cooperative and more focused it did really help me in my other classes until this day is still help me, but now I am very outgoing but I still freaking hate it. Even in fourth grade when it was on a really high level, I still knew that it was still there. I still couldn't still as well and I also had a really bad anxiety to at that time, so not only was I have anxiety attacks. I also was having ADHD moments where I couldn't sit still and I'll just move around in my chair. till this day, I love my third grade teacher because she's the only one that realized something was up with me. Oh my other teachers would just yell at me and tell me if I wouldn't start cooperating with them I would end up going to the office and I remember going to the office before and I just hated it. I wanted to be like every other kid and every other school. And now to this day, I still hate it easy. I'm still moving around in my chair and I'm starting to not be able to focus on it and I honestly hate it. It's been a couple years later and I feel as if I'm blaming everything on my ADHD I just want to not have it no more I just wanna be normal now I'm not acting out in class and I don't need anything to take me out of class but still people could notice that I have ADHD. I also sometimes get made fun of it. Sometimes I get made fun of of having autism or some thing I know they're just joking, but still is my ADHD really that bad?

This is the final section of the record that led to the verdict and its reasons. I would like to apologize in advance for the length.
The motive for the murder [144]-[171]
“The state's case regarding the question of whether the accused had a motive to kill the deceased largely revolved around the letter she wrote to him that morning. His behavior before and after learning of her death was also important in this regard." The main question was whether the relationship was a sufficient reason for the crime and whether this motive led to careful planning with convincing acting in an "apparently" watertight alibi. The state relied on a crime scene analysis by a Senior Superintendent in the SAPS and commander of the Psychological Investigation Unit in Pretoria, who stated in his full report, dated 29 January 2007: “It is my opinion that the motive for this murder was a personal one due to the circumstances under which the crime was committed and the type of aggression displayed towards the victim. Therefore the offender must have been well-known to the victim and motivated by anger.”
=> I believe that examining the question of whether the planning included acting and alibi alone is insufficient. In my opinion, it would also have to include consideration of whether other people were involved and the defendant knew about it or even was an accomplice.
The deceased's letter, which is dated March 16, 2005 and addressed to "Dear Fred", displays at the top of the first page two crosses and a heart by the date and four crosses, a heart and a smiley face by his name. The same symbols can be found at the bottom of the letter It reads as follows: “This letter is going to be a bit more difficult than email (can't delete and change sentences over and over again), but I have to get these things off my heart this morning. (This sounds like following a request/demand not to write an email but a handwritten letter.) I'm sorry you left here in such a mess this morning - I was unreasonable at first and then the whole story just got out of control. (She immediately takes the blame for the argument, not as a conclusion, but as an introduction. It may indicate that she has had the experience in the past of being able to appease him with this approach.) First about you and your brothers…I pray that God will give you wisdom in how to handle the situation and that you will sort out what is between you. Remember, I am ALWAYS there if you want to talk and I REALLY want to be a part of your life and try to understand what you are going through. (He apparently conveyed to her that he didn't know what the actual reason for the arguments with his brothers was. The capital letters indicate a correction of the extreme accusation that she was NEVER there for him when he wanted to speak out and she is NOT interested in his problems AT ALL) The little things that bother me at the moment… (response to the possible request to write down what bothers her about the relationship; she starts very carefully, immediately makes her needs small and insignificant in comparison) I am truly sorry about some of the things I lost this morning. My biggest mistake of late was finding my security and solution to a poor self-esteem in you instead of in God. I didn't realize it until this morning/now, but God has incredible ways of coming and talking to a person and I realize now that I was actually the unfair one, not you. (Another apology for her behavior. She was unable to draw security and reinforcement from God for her low self-esteem. It suggests that she may have accused him of not feeling enough support in the relationship. This now describes it as an unfair demand on a partnership.) Furthermore, I am incredibly afraid of the Easter weekend and that you will see my father if he has had too much to drink. I don't want to lose you in that way and I don't want you to see that side of our family. It probably sounds silly, but it really is a big concern of mine. (She expresses shame about her father when he drank too much alcohol. Although this is understandable, it shouldn't make a person extremely frightened and/or losing a partner because of it. Unless she fears that the father has something against Inge's relationship and could insult Fred. In this context, I had to think of this ornamental hammer. Since it is much better for opening bottles than as a tool, this could also have been meant as a small swipe and taken as an affront.) And finally the usual old stuff - work, CT1 [apparently the abbreviation of a subject she was taking], am I going to get a job? what am I going to do with my apartment? (Why is she moving before the job prospects are clarified?) etc etc It sounds so silly now when I write it down on paper, but it's only right that you know what's going on. [the word "Actually" is crossed out here] Just don't want to bother you with the same issues over and over again! (Again the reference to the fact that this is unusual on paper, but that she wants to follow what she considers a legitimate wish. Furthermore, the accusation was apparently made that she was constantly annoying him with the same problems.) Sorry that sometimes I forget that you are only human - I look up to you so much and have so much respect for you, your opinions and the way you deal with problems, that sometimes I don't realize that you also sometimes have bad days or just don't get hurt. I don't always know how to support you and whether you need/want support at all... I don't understand how you process or deal with hurt - will you please tell me? I must learn to understand you in this respect and how to support you. (Essentially, she explains that she idealizes him so much that she seems to forget that he is even human. However, the statements about vulnerability are striking. Because of his superior attitude, she has difficulty anticipating when he could feel hurt by something. For me, this shows narcissistic traits on Fred's part, which Inge has to struggle with. She is very careful and criticizes her own actions rather than his, because he obviously doesn't deal well with criticism.) I feel like I'm disappointing you if I don't do the things I’ve mentioned above and that you deserve to have a beautiful girl who looks good, can cook food ( :-) !! ) and who is just as perfect as you in every way - and I sometimes struggle to come to that - maybe that is what is the most difficult for me... I know you don't expect it from me, but then you have to please show me how to be the perfect girl for YOU. (The insults could have been a manipulative strategy to further unsettle her and portray her as inadequate for him so that he would seem bigger and more valuable next to her.) I love you very much and I don't want to look any further - tomorrow it will be a year since I fell in love with you:-)(the 1st Wednesday afternoon that you came to me alone for coffee :-) - and I still have no doubting for a second from that day that it's you that I want. You have enriched my life in so many ways and every day with you is the greatest gift one could dream of. (Even if you can't draw any conclusions, the coincidence of the time of the first meeting and the murder is strangely coincidental.) You NEVER have to doubt for one second that I am absolutely committed and that I want to be with you forever with everything in me. I want to promise today that I will no longer depend on you for a good self-esteem and for security, but that I will go to God with it, that I will support you in everything you do and that I will be absolutely honest with you in all areas of my life. I can also promise you today that with God's grace I will always remain 'faithful' and that I [the words "will never cheat on you" have been crossed out] will never do anything behind your back. (One could assume that Fred said that he gets his strength confidence and inner strength from belonging to the church. If she no longer wants to go there, he would have to do / achieve this as a / her partner. He could also have expressed the assumption that she does not want to adhere to the regulations of the HPC in order to cheat on him.) I love you with all my heart and there is no doubt in my mind that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. (This confession seems to be forced by Fred because, according to Wimpie's statement, he asked Inge to consider whether she still wanted the relationship.) Good luck with everything at work...All my love“
According to the accused, there was also an undated short note in the envelope which the deceased gave him that morning. It came from a writing pad found in the deceased's flat and read as follows: “Hi Honey! I also just want to say how much I appreciate you and how special you are! Thank you for your love, support and soft heart and that you are ALWAYS willing to listen to my little problems! I love you VERY, VERY, VERY! Good luck with your day and week and know that Jesus is with you every moment! Love and xx Inge PS You are in my thoughts and prayers all the time... I"
=> As has been speculated, this note may have been written at an earlier date. I was wondering if there were any prints on the top sheet of the notepad.
The court found that the two letters differed significantly from each other. The note could have been an attempt to tone down the first letter and to emphasize her affection again. It is not relevant whether these two were in the envelope, but only that the defendant only gave the mother the short note. He placed the envelope in a file on his desk at Inge's request not to leave the letter lying around because it was private. On March 29, 2005, the defendant handed the long letter to the private investigator with the addition “The most important thing for me is that the paragraph about her father on the 1st page should not get to Uncle Jan [Professor Lotz] (if possible).“ On July 27, 2005, the letter was analyzed by the state in comparison with the statements of various people. “It was hard to escape the feeling that much further information had not found its way to the court.” The police also expressed suspicions that the defendant was jealous and the deceased was unfaithful. This set a direction that was not appropriate as the Court stated. The evaluation concluded that the letter was intended to restore peace between the two, taking the blame for their differences and assuring him of her eternal and unconditional love and fidelity. “In the process, she belittled herself and painted the accused as a perfect person, a person for whom she wanted to be the perfect girlfriend.”
=> What I'm missing here is a psychological assessment of the obvious imbalance in the relationship (her being insufficient, him being perfect) and Inge's statement that she has difficulty assessing when he's vulnerable and what makes him feel hurt.
“The accused questioned at all Wimpie's testimony about the "hell fight", as it was reproduced to him by the deceased during their lunch together. Despite their argument, he saw it as a love letter. “Whatever was said deeply upset her and brought her to tears.” Apparently she calmed down quickly because she didn’t tell her mother about the argument and was “cheerful”. The arrangement of the meeting to hand over the letters was loving. The defendant attended class, picked up the cupboard and then drove to work. “If he still felt upset and anger, he suppressed or concealed it extremely effectively, as no one seemed to notice. (…) After his (Wimpies) assurance that her relationship with the accused was "perfect", she was apparently so reassured that she told Wimpie that she would like to get engaged to the accused by the end of the year. (…) These loving messages over and over appear spontaneous and natural on the surface, creating the impression that the upset of the morning was a thing of the past.“
=>At the time of this case, text messages were already known to be much easier, quicker and less thought-provoking to write than a letter. Short answers often convey a certainty that does not have to be given, just as the lack of an answer can have both a meaning and be due to the circumstances. Hence perhaps the request to Inge to write a handwritten letter. Since this letter mentioned a dispute, it was probably safer to just hand over the note instead/at first.
“The later events in which the accused was involved tend at all to strengthen this impression.” At 8:11 p.m. he announced to her in a text message that he would call her later “just to chat and hear your voice.” When she didn't answer a call, he said, "at 9:38 p.m., on his computer, began typing a loving email, in response to the letter she had given him that morning. However, in mid-sentence, he interrupted the letter to send another text because he was worried about the fact that he hadn't heard from her yet.” Given the communication, it is difficult to understand why the defendant would have had a motive. If he had such uncontrolled anger and wanted to destroy her, he would have done it. “However, it didn’t happen that way.” On the contrary, they quickly calmed down again. If the plan had been premeditated, “one would not expect such excessive violence.” This would be more likely if the victim had been caught in flagrante with someone else.
=> At this point - as in this entire section - it is not clear to me who drew these conclusions. The court or the person responsible for the psychological analysis? I would like to assert that it is doubted here that there are any psychopathological abnormalities in the personality of the accused. To my knowledge, these have never been professionally assessed. A narcissistic insult can lead to a planned action, while an impulsive act can overtake virtually anyone. Furthermore, in my opinion, it is nowhere considered that the crime was carried out with his knowledge but without his presence.
The state's assumption is that the defendant did not show much interest in reconciliation because he took a lot of time to make personal contact. He lied when he said that he and Mrs. Lotz had been looking for Inge since 3 p.m. and that she might have fainted to underline a feigned concern. “This image was put into a new gear when he told Mrs. Lotz that everything would be “okay” and that he would become a child in the house, as it was, as a substitute for the deceased.” The delayed contact could result from the exchange of loving text messages beforehand. The statement that he had been looking since 3 pm could be an expression of exaggeration, as is usual when someone has been looking for something for a long time, and would not create a motive. The suspicion of fainting dates back to 2004, when Inge lost consciousness because she stood up too quickly and injured herself at the coffee table. “Although he was not present at the incident himself, he thought of it when he could not get hold of the deceased.” This could also have been a simple exaggeration towards Marius. “The accused could not remember whether he told Mrs Lotz that everything would be “okay” and that he would be the child in the house.” The state assumes that he said it, the court rates it as “merely a clumsy way of trying to alleviate Mrs. Lotz's suffering.” and sees no indication of a motive due to the circumstances and the concern shown.
=> These interpretations each refer to the assumption that the dispute was resolved and the relationship was healthy. The exaggerated timing of the search could also be a Freudian slip of the tongue, the contact being made to conceal his knowledge of the crime that had already taken place. Benevolently interpreted as a sign of great concern. On the other hand, offering “the child in your house” is not “clumsy”, but rather unempathetic at best. Seen as a personal characteristic, it shows that the state of the other person does not play a role in the expression, but is guided by one's own motivation.
On April 18, 2005, the defendant opened an account at The Video Place to rent the same DVD as Inge, namely “Stepford Wives”. The same employee worked there on both days. He introduced himself as "the deceased's boyfriend and remarked that it was "funny" that the deceased would take out such a DVD." He was with his parents at a friend's house at the time and they (edit: the private investigator) recommended that he borrow this DVD "in case he could “find out” something from it.” The accused said, he probably introduced himself as such, as his face was already known from the newspapers at that time. He already knew that his fingerprint could be seen on this case and he wanted to find out how this was possible based on the loan procedure. “Oddly enough, he then never watched the DVD because it upset him to think that the deceased had watched it at the time of her death.” He couldn’t remember the term “funny,” but he admitted that he did find it “strange”. The court assessed this either as a coincidence or in connection with her statement in the letter “she would like to be the “perfect” girl for him, just as “perfect” as he is.” Since one can only assume that, no “ulterior“ motive can be derived from this “however unsatisfactory the explanation of his actions may be on the surface.”
=>Of course, it is not possible to determine why or at whose request Inge rented this DVD, but the fact that he opened an account at the same video store during a visit in order to rent it is striking. The question also arises as to whether he wanted to find out if it had already been returned or if he already knew this and wanted to remove traces, because the blood stain made him a suspect a few days earlier. I see the term “funny” as an expression of his lack of empathy and inability to behave in a reflective and appropriate manner in a social context.
Despite the unsatisfactory aspects of his testimony, the defendant left a good impression. Although he had the opportunity to hear the presentation of evidence and the argument of the prosecution in full before he had to respond to it, his statements were consistent with his “plea explanation”. Although some statements contradicted those of Mrs. Lotz and Marius, they played no role in terms of the alibi and a possible motive.
“When all these considerations are taken into account, the court cannot, in my view, come to the conclusion that the state has succeeded in finding a motive for the murder in the accused. Neither the letter nor the accused's behavior at the relevant time provide sufficient grounds for such a finding."
These statements are very extensive and, in my opinion, come to an rather unfounded conclusion. Even the sparse psychological analysis of the letter is not sufficiently appreciated. The expressions of love and efforts to maintain the relationship came more clearly from Inge. The defendant's reactions are always presented as appropriate and are viewed overall as an indication that the relationship was intact again at the time of the murder. I think most young people today would describe it as “toxic” with lots of “red flags”. This does not allow for the immediate conclusion that one of the partners would be capable of such a brutal act, but IMO doesn't make it as unlikely as it was ruled out in this case.
Edited for typos and a wrong attribution.

I'm 24 and still feel like my parents treat me like a kid. I'm doesn't help I'm the youngest of 3 siblings so I've always been "babied" which I think has had a negative impact on my development. I also might have some undiagnosed mental issues, as I realize I did some abnormal things as a child. It's funny bc my parents always talk about how they were allowed to go out late and stuff snd they walked or bike to school on their own. I was never allowed to walk or bike to school alone, and I was never allowed to even walk to my friend's house who had lived up the street, always had to be driven there. The rare times that I did walk home from my friends house they freaked out. Which tbf one of those times I ended up staying longer than I said I would so they were mad, but at the sametime I think it was an overreaction as they told me I'm not trusted to do that again. I didn't even learn how to use a real razor from my dad, I learned from another guy I knew on the wrestling team who was a grade below me.
In general I can't stand that they don't really support my own decisions, even though I'm an adult now. When we moved from the town I grew up in to this new one and I started working is when I started doing really bad in community college because I couldn't deal with the stress of being in an unfamiliar place and also working a minimum wage job and I really hated my job at the time because coworkers and customers were awful just because I was new. I remember telling my mom I wanted to quit and focus on school (I wanted to make my own business at the time) but she said I couldn't go to school and not work. So in 2019 I did 2 semesters at college but I failed all of my classes except for 1 class. So I decided to stop going right before the pandemic started which I decided to not go back also bc of the pandemic and bc I didn't wanna deal with working and going to school, so I focused on work. Later they eventually got mad that I wouldn't go back to school, and even though I've thought about it, I just dont really want to. Too many bad memories from college and I don't see the point in paying for classes I might not have the time and energy for.
They've also told me a few times I shouldn't get another job because my current job is close, I've wanted to apply to other places but they don't want me to. Which the times I asked I didn't have my driver's license. So I eventually committed myself to getting my license which I got last year before my birthday. Although when I asked about getting a car they said I wasn't ready yet because they wanted me to be a "safe driver". I kept asking them about when we'd go car shopping ( which I had no clue about buying a car or how to get credit or anything), but they either gave vague answers or said "maybe another day" or gave some other excuse like "You know it'll be expensive right" (which is why I've been saving my money for the past 3 years). Fast forward to 2024 they finally agree I should get a car but then they gaslight me and say "We were waiting for you! We were ready but you weren't and you never said what you wanted to do". Which when I learned I needed good credit to get a car, no one wanted to cosign for me, and my aunt didn't want to either bc she didn't want me to mess up her credit. So i eventually got a credit card but I realized it might take a long time to get from carmax so I start looking at private sellers. There was a mini cooper I wanted for $5k being sold at my work but my parents told me not to get it and buy a Honda instead and that the car was too old and overpriced. Fast forward to today I just asked about if they could take me to look at a car from a guy on offerup but they tell me no and that they don't trust offerup, which I personally think it wouldn't hurt to test drive, and they also didn't like that this car wasn't a Honda.
Which I get Hondas are good cars but they're so boring, I want a car I'm going to like, everyone buys Hondas,everyone in my family has a Honda. I want to do something different, I'm aware people can rip you off but I'm trying to get my first car, I'm aware lf the risk of getting from a private seller but I also think that your first car should be something affordable that you like even if it's not a perfect car. I should be able to make my own decisions at 24. They treated my sister in a similar (and in some ways they're even more harsh to her) and she still lives at home at 34 and she got a brand new that she can't really afford so she's always broke. I really hate that they're doing the samething to me.

There is something wrong with my family.
When I walked through the door after spending two days at a slumber party, the house smelled of… bacon.
Holy shit.
Mom was actually cooking dinner.
Which was crazy because Mom never cooked dinner.
She was either at work, locked in her home office on the ground floor, or in her room complaining of a migraine.
We never ate Mom’s cooking because she never cooked for us.
My brother Fitz once joked she would cook us an Excel spreadsheet, or throw her iPhone in the air fryer to make a stew.
He was almost right.
A few months ago, Mom microwaved her iPad.
We weren't really an eating together type of family. Sure, we had the white picket fence and family SUV.
We greeted our neighbours every day with nuclear family smiles. Mom was the head of her book club on her days off, and Dad worked in an office. From the outside, we were your average Brady Bunch. My best friend had even commented on it. “Ruby, your family is so close! I wish mine were like yours!”
Close couldn't have been further from the truth.
Keeping up appearances is all we had to do in front of the locals.
I smiled my biggest smile and wore my hair in a perfect ponytail.
Fitz and Cassie followed suit, playing their part as nuclear children.
That is what Mom wanted us to be. However, our dollhouse wasn't as perfect as perceived. Inside our so-called forever home, we were a disconnected group of lodgers.
Mom barely spoke to us, and when she did, she was enforcing yet another rule.
Don't go into the living room unsupervised. Don't go into the basement. Don't eat food outside of the kitchen. Don't wear your shoes inside.
Mom had different rules tailored to each of us.
For me, I wasn't allowed electronics after 8pm.
Fitz, who was one year older, had a set curfew of 9pm.
Cassie could only eat fruit and vegetables on Wednesday.
Snacks, candy, and chocolate were banned for all of us.
We weren't even allowed to sit on the living room couch. Mom was terrified of us ruining it, so we had beanbags.
When I first got a whiff of bacon, I was convinced either our house was burning down, or my brother had finally gotten tired of his Uber Eats diet.
Fitz wasn't a cook, though.
Christmas 2019, his turkey dinner gave us all food poisoning.
I was slipping out of my shoes and hanging up my jacket, when a familiar voice tinkered from the kitchen.
“Ruby, sweetie? I’m making dinner if you're hungry!”
It smelled amazing, whatever it was.
I was in disbelief, walking into the kitchen to find my Mom standing over a bubbling pan.
“Can you set the table, honey?”
Fitz and Cassie joined us, followed by Dad.
“Smells good, Mom!” Fitz jumped into his seat with a grin.
Which was definitely odd for him. Normally, the guy took 5 working days to sit down.
Cassie slid past me, ruffling my hair. “Hey, sis!”
My family were acting different in general. Cassie was unusually smiley, not the bratty teenager she usually was, while my brother dropped his patronising smirk and I'm better than you attitude, for a more laid back vibe.
Usually, my brother and sister were insufferable.
Cassie always had to bring up how much she hated all of us.
Fitz wouldn't rest until he had the last word, and Dad’s face was beet red.
Now, it was like they'd had a personality purge.
Fitz caught my eye, his lips curling into a smile.
“Yo.” He saluted me with two fingers, which was not my brother.
Fitz Setori greeted me with a scowl or a pretentious movie quote.
Before I left for the slumber party, he wouldn't shut up about a black and white French movie only he had seen. If Cassie and I liked a movie, he hated it. If he liked something, Fitz made sure we didn't like it.
My brother’s wardrobe was like he was trying to cosplay Sherlock Holmes, and I still didn't understand how he had friends at school. The thing with my siblings was, I missed them. It used to be the three of us versus the world (and our dictator-like mother). But since starting high school, Fitz had turned into this pretentious film freak with an obsession with being right, and Cassie was sixteen going on twenty one.
Presently, my brother’s demeanour was more relaxed, not the stiff uptight bullshit he usually was, always trying to get ahead of the conversation and prove himself right. In the corner of my eye, I could have sworn something flashed, a bright light filling the edges of my vision, like a polaroid was being taken.
Fitz didn't notice. Leaning over the table, he stabbed his fork into my steak, speaking through a mouthful of mashed potato. “Are you eating this?”
I shook my head, watching in disbelief as he took my whole plate, inhaling my food too.
Cassie, who was always glued to her phone, gave him a playful shove.
Well, that was weird.
The two of them couldn't go one day without trying to rip each other's heads off. I don't know what baffled me more.
Seeing my siblings sitting together, shoulder to shoulder instead of avoiding each other like the plague, or the fact that Cassie was yet to announce that she hated all of us, and couldn't wait until college. Which usually followed with Fitz saying, “What college?” and ending up with a face full of food.
But it didn't end there.
Because, when they were sent to their rooms, they continued, snapping at each other with passive aggressive remarks until they were physically trying to murder one another. The craziest part is, the two of them used to be so close.
If Cassie didn't throw a death threat at Fitz, it wasn't a normal Seteri dinner.
Now, I was watching them nudge each other like they knew something I didn't.
“Okay, what happened while I was away?” I spoke up, toying with my fork.
“Hmm?” Mom settled me with a smile. “What do you mean?”
I bit my tongue, waiting for Dad to intervene with a cough.
When we did eat together, which was rare, Dad wasn't a fan of talking at the table. When I risked a look at him, though, Dad was happily chewing through his meal. He caught my eye, grinning through steak juices running down his chin. “Isn't it a wonderful day?”
He nodded for me to continue, a crunching noise twisting my gut.
Dad was grinding through the steak bones.
He stopped, slowly inclining his head. “Ruby, are you okay, darling?”
I felt my fingers tighten around my fork.
Dad never called me darling.
He made it clear I wasn't the favorite child, making little effort with me when I was a kid in favour of Fitz and Cassie.
It was always those two who he spent time with. I remember sitting outside the basement door with cookies, waiting for Cassie and Fitz to come back up the stairs. They were down there for hours, sometimes a whole day.
The only bonding I did with my father was when I snuck down there myself.
Dsd was always working, so I stuck around, usually spinning around in his chair or poking things I shouldn't poke.
I was still struggling to process darling, mashed potato creeping back up my throat, when Fitz kicked me under the table. His smile was unnerving me, the way he and Cassie kept grinning at each other, like they knew something I didn't.
It was just like when we were kids.
Fitz was trembling, trying and failing to hold in laughter.
“What's going on, Ruby?” He choked, before bursting into childlike giggles.
Cassie joined in, her smile stretching wider and wider.
Something ice cold trickled down my spine.
Too many teeth.
“We never have dinner together,” I said pointedly, glancing at Mom. “Unless you're impressing a work colleague.”
I turned to Fitz. “You barely come out of your room, and when you do you're insufferable.” Fitz only smirked, and I moved onto Cassie, who wasn't fooling me with her innocent smile with far too many teeth. “And you only come downstairs when you want something.”
There was a pause, before Fitz exploded into laughter.
Cassie started giggling, and to my confusion, even Mom was trying to hide her smile.
My rule obsessed, fun-hating mother was barely holding in her own hysterics.
Dad wasn't laughing.
Dad was still fucking grinding bones between his teeth.
I stood up, which made my brother howl harder.
“What's so funny?”
My family didn't respond, snorting like middle schoolers.
I snatched my plate up from Fitz.
“You're all fucking sociopaths.”
I waited for the inevitable chastising for swearing. I stubbed my toe a few weeks ago, accidentally saying, fuck and Mom almost had a nervous breakdown.
She said my vulgar language was a problem that would be solved by taking away my phone for a week. But this time, Mom didn't even notice. She was still eating, stifling her own snickers.
I was planning on heading to my room, but I couldn't help it, making a detour down the hallway.
Dad always told me to look at the teeth.
Too many teeth was bad.
Too many teeth meant something was wrong.
Mom immediately noticed, her shadow following me.
Another flash of light behind me, and this time I could hear a shutter sound.
“Ruby, where are you going?”
Twisting around, my mother was smiling at me. I blinked, and the hallway I had known my whole life suddenly appeared warped, like it wasn't real, like it was slowly closing in on me, and my destination was getting further away.
With panic rising in my chest, my hands searched for a door that was no longer there, bleeding into the wallpaper. Another flash. This time it was brighter, filling the dark with light that didn't make sense, a blinding white blur fraying the edges of my vision.
But where was the camera?
“Ruby.”
I blinked again.
Mom was standing closer, her smile wider.
“Is there something wrong?”
I found my voice. “What was that light?”
Mom did a slow head incline, mimicking my brother. “What light?”
I was growing progressively more paranoid, my hands shaking.
“Is someone taking photos of me?” I whispered.
Mom’s plastic grin didn't waver. “Photos? What do you mean, sweetie?”
I managed to shake my head, pushing past her.
“Nothing.” I said, “I'm okay. I'm just tired.”
Mom nodded, and I could hear Fitz giggling behind me.
When I looked, however, there was nobody there.
Still, my brother’s shrieks of laughter followed me all the way to my room.
Only stopping when I slammed the door.
4:01am.
There was a figure standing in my doorway. I thought it was a trick of the mind, but no, there was someone standing inside my room, peeking through their hands. For a disorienting moment, I was frozen. I couldn't move.
“Fitz?”
When I sat up, I was blinded by that same light, the unmistakable sound of a camera shutter filling the silence.
The figure didn't have a face, a shadow hanging over my bed. But looking closer, it did have wide, laughing eyes peeking through its fingers. Keeping my gaze glued to the figure, who was very slowly uncovering its eyes like playing a game of peek-a-boo, I reached to switch on the light.
The shadow ran away, though I definitely saw my brother’s dark red hair.
I didn't sleep well that night. I kept waking up.
The laughing had stopped, but I could still see Fitz’s unmoving shadow.
His feet under the door.
All night.
Obviously, I called him out on it the next morning.
“What were you doing last night?” I demanded, trying to force down toast.
Fitz acted oblivious, because of course he did.
“What did I do?” he teased, wearing that smirk I wanted to carve off of his face.
“You stood outside my door all night!”
Fitz chuckled into his glass of juice. “You caaaaaaan’t prove it.”
Mom was yet to get ready for work, eating cereal from the box.
She was halfway through a bottle of wine when I came down for breakfast, laughing hysterically at a refrigerator commercial.
Usually, my mother was gone before I woke up. Not to mention, we weren't allowed to eat cereal for breakfast.
It was always health food crap.
“Mom.” I gritted out.
Cassie was making coffee behind us, joining in with the theatrics.
My sister hated coffee.
“Mom!” I yelled, when my brother winked at me.
Mom ignored my complaints, kissing the rim of her glass. “Be a doll, and go get Mommy’s favorite vino from the basement,” she downed the rest of her wine, tipping her head back and blowing strands of hair from her eyes.
“You know,” she sighed, “The expensive one.”
“Don't you have a job to go to?” I glanced at my phone. “It's almost eight.”
“Mmm.” Mom rolled her eyes. “Maybe later.”
My workaholic mother who went to work with gastritis, and had even forced Fitz to go to school with the flu, was acting like a drunken teenage girl.
Mom’s whole life revolved around perfect attendance.
She scanned our report cards for tardies, threatening our phone privileges if we were a minute late for class.
Suddenly, I was the one who felt like a mother.
“Mom, you need to go to work.”
“Yeah, Mom!” Fitz mocked my voice, leaning his chin on his fist. “You need to go to work!”
Mom settled me with a patient smile. I thought she would get mad, though she seemed amused. “Mommy wants a drink, darling. Fetch me the wine.”
I nodded, standing up.
Anything to get away from these psychopaths.
My siblings' laughter followed me, once again, out of the kitchen.
Down the hallway.
Before stopping abruptly, when I stepped in front of the basement door.
Reaching out with shaking hands, I grasped the handle.
I hadn't been down to the basement in a while for a number of reasons.
Heading down stone cold steps, I used my phone light to navigate the darkness. I remembered the exact way I used to jump down them as a kid, two at a time, squeezing the handrail tightly.
Sometimes, Cassie joined me, the two of us holding hands.
I recalled the time we used to run up and down the Miller family stairs.
Cassie and I would sing a song, the two of us giggling nervously.
One step, two step, three step, four.
I can hear a human knocking on the floor!
There was no sign of my mother’s expensive vino when I stepped inside the Setori family basement. It was exactly how I remembered it, a single observation bed, my Dad’s desk filled with research. I wasn't supposed to look at them, because it was dangerous.
Instead, I focused on the strange looking machines and rows of metal shelves filled with an assortment of jars.
When he was fifteen, Fitz opened one up.
He didn't tell me what was in it, but he was violently sick for days.
Further into the basement, I could sense their shuddering breaths.
”Do not look, Ruby.” Dad always told me.
But I couldn't help it, risking a glance, the breath catching in my throat.
Five slumped figures, each of them brutally tied back to back under a single buzzing bulb.
My parents’ prisoners.
Riley and Connor Setori with their teenage children Fitz and Cassie, and then of course, the girl who made me.
The reason why I was alive and breathing.
Ruby Setori.
I want to preface this by saying it was never my choice that I became Ruby.
Dad was insistent, and as a kid, I followed my parents.
My family and I were born in a lab as Mimics.
There were three Mimic families, though we were the only survivors. I've only ever known mimicking, and being forced from person to person. It's kind of like shape shifting, but we need human bodies and voices to survive.
Human voices make us real.
My siblings were born after me, but something was wrong with them.
I don't really remember it, but I used to live in a white room with sponge walls.
Fitz and Cassie were in the room next to me. The people in white spoke of failures and more tests, and my brother was so weak, while my sister was spitting up blood. They concluded that their original forms were dying.
A default body for a mimic is a faceless being with no discernable features, a shadow you swear you see in the corner of your vision, what you think is a trick of the mind. With my old body, I could explore the darkness and creep into the corner of any human’s eye. I started to get better. Voices were hard at first.
You have to get the exact tone, and once you have that, you can latch onto the body and brain. My first successful mimic was a scientist named Doctor Carlisle.
His voice didn't make sense to me, but I was able to replicate it and use it to my advantage. When we escaped the lab, my father broke into the Miller house.
I was too young to really understand, but my Mom urged me to mimic their youngest daughter.
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was a lot more comfortable to mimic.
I spent 8 years being Elizabeth Miller, before we were forced to relocate.
The family we were impersonating were growing suspicious of us, and my brother was getting progressively sicker. He couldn't acclimatise to a body. The Miller son almost killed him, and he only embodied the kid’s voice.
The Setori household is where we struck gold.
Fitz Setori, sitting in front of me, blindfolded, was my brother’s saving grace.
When I was twelve years old, my parents kidnapped the Setori family and forced them into their own basement, immediately stealing their faces.
I remember Ruby Setori sitting cross legged on the floor, her wide eyes filled with tears.
Dad said I had to talk to her to form the connection. When she refused to talk back, my father was forceful.
Our first conversation was me mimicking her sobs, her throaty cries for me to get away from her.
With Ruby’s voice, I asked her questions.
Mom told me I had to talk to her, before the bond was severed.
“What's your favorite color?” I asked, swirling her voice around my mouth.
“What did you do to my family?” Ruby squeaked.
I looked at my dad for help, and he shook his head.
“Ask her again.”
I took a deep breath. “What is your favorite color?”
“Pink.” She whispered.
“Pink.” I repeated, leaning closer.
“Please.” Ruby said. “Please don't hurt me.”
“Please.” I said, clinging onto her tone, the exact indentation in her speech.
She cocked her head, and I did too.
“Please don't hurt me.”
“I'm not going to.” I told her, when the invisible ribbon binding us together tightened, entangling. This time I was speaking over her. My face became Ruby Setori. Thick brown hair and wide eyes, lips parted in a silent cry.
“I promise I'm not going to hurt you.”
Ruby stared at me like I was a monster.
She shrieked, stumbling back, only to be forced back into place by my mother.
Dad told me mimicking had three stages.
Voice.
Body.
Mind.
I already had Ruby’s voice, and I was wearing her face.
Her memories hit me like a tidal wave, warm and cosy.
I saw her perfect family, all of her friends, growing up behind a white picket fence and a fluffy dog called Cosmo. Ruby liked orange soda and ice cream. She was smart at math, but got her words mixed up. She loved elephant plushies and the Disney channel.
The human girl was scared of the dark, scared of what lurked in the dark.
Scared of me.
I wanted to tell her I wasn't a monster.
“Ruby.” I whispered, “I'm sorry.”
She didn't move, and something slimy erupted up my throat.
Ruby’s expression was frozen in terror, her mouth slightly open, eyes wide.
“Ru… by.” The girl’s voice was a strangled cry. “I’m… s… ooooorry.”
I lurched back, swallowing a cry.
Ruby Setori was mimicking me.
Which was the final stage.
I went through it as a little kid, but I was too young to remember assimilating with Elizabeth Miller.
My brother's assimilation was different, and a lot more brutal.
Fitz Setori did not want to have his face and voice stolen.
He escaped four times, attacking my mother, despite her wearing his own Mom’s face. My brother was gentle, kneeling in front of him and speaking in soft tones. My sister and I watched from the corner of the room, too scared to go near the unpredictable human boy.
“Hello.” My brother was too sick to stand. “Can you… tell me your name?”
Fitz spat at him.
“Fuck you.” The fourteen year old hissed, “You're not taking my voice.”
“Fuck… you.” My brother mimicked, already taking hold of the boy’s tone.
Fitz shuffled back. “Get away from me!”
“Get… away… from me.” My brother copied.
His nose wasn't bleeding this time, and very slowly, he adapted Fitz’s face.
It took a while, and a lot of screaming and crying.
I didn't want to watch, but I was also curious about how human children were supposed to act. I was never in a stable body enough to fully adapt to emotions. Fitz was feeling panic and fear and anger, all of which I decided to copy.
But my brother did manage to mimic Fitz Setori.
Mr and Mrs Setori begged my parents to let their children go.
But my dad needed the Setori kids. For our survival.
Cassie and I sang another song, this time to block out the screaming.
My family took over the Setori household, and slid into our roles as the not quite perfect family on the quiet suburban street. Growing up, Dad insisted on daily tests to make sure our bonds with the Setori siblings were still intact. We were forbidden from talking to them.
Presently, I couldn't stop myself.
There was something wrong with my family.
And I had zero doubts the family had something to do with it.
Dad had drawn a line on the basement floor.
We were acquired to stay behind the line, unless we wanted to be grounded until college.
Stepping over it, I shivered, my bare feet grazing warm blood pooling across the floor. Mom and Dad were always protective over the basement. They told us the Setori family were safe and unharmed. But that was hard to believe even my parents resented humans for creating them, and torturing them.
What my parents did to the human was a whole other level of torture.
Especially the adults.
Mr and Mrs Setoti had been in a medically induced coma for almost four years. Their heads were bowed, plastic tubes sticking directly into their skull.
Cassie Setori was awake. I could hear her breathing.
She was pretending to be out of it.
Fitz Setori had been fixed by my father a year ago.
Dad said his behavior was too ‘dangerous’.
One minute the boy was screaming and threatening, and the next, he was silent, drool seeping down his chin, head tipped back, blinking at the ceiling.
The fixing was in case Fitz ever managed to gain control of my brother.
When I crouched in front of the Setori siblings, I felt a deep, twisting guilt eating me up inside.
They were barely human anymore, stripped of their terrestrial bodies, atoms and static and a shadow of what once was. The blood made me nauseous, splattering their arms and legs and clothes they were growing out of.
Ruby’s hair was almost at a Rupunzal length. I wanted to see the good in that, maybe call her a princess, though maybe she was more of a Sleeping Beauty, forced into slumber.
Fitz had aged way beyond his age, bearded like his father.
Cassie’s pigtails were touching the floor.
I pretended not to see the restraints cruelly binding their wrists, the burn marks branding them as ours.
The three were skeletal, pale and malnourished.
Humans who were anything but.
My stomach twisted when I peeked under Cassie’s blindfold.
Her right eye was gone, scooped out of its socket.
Dad didn't have to hurt them.
He didn't have to tie them up.
But I know what humans are like.
They are scary and unpredictable and will murder their own kind.
I did try to talk to them before Dad fixed the Setori son.
Fitz, Cassie and me.
The Setori siblings told us we were dead.
That they were going to kill us slowly, an painfully.
By slicing their own throats.
Fitz tried to argue that it wasn't us who did this.
Only for his original to call him a piece of shit.
Ever since then, Mom put a lock on the basement door.
I was trying to loosen Ruby’s ropes, ignoring my father’s earlier warning, when a familiar light filled the room.
A camera flash.
When I stumbled to my feet, I was alone.
A giggle caught me off guard.
It was Ruby Setori herself, her lips split into a grin.
“Can we play a game?” She asked.
Her voice was made of static, barely a whisper.
The girl wasn't supposed to have her voice.
My voice.
I held my breath. I had to be tactical with my speech.
“What did you do to my family?”
“I have a better question,” she said, growing stronger. She lifted her head. I could hear her straining against the ropes. “What's your favorite color?”
“Pink.” I said. “What did you do to my family?”
In the corner of my eye, I detected movement.
There was something at the other end of the room.
Twitching.
“What about your favorite TV show?” Ruby asked, leaning forward. “You must have one. Maybe it's even mine!”
It was hers, and she knew that.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” I said, my mouth filling with blood.
Just like Dad said, our bond was severing.
If I continued to talk to her, I risked detaching from her completely.
Ruby Setori wanted her voice back.
“I love Buffy!” The girl’s smile was, dare I think, genuine.
“How about we talk about your brother? Is he doing okay, Ruby? Is he acting…“
She paused, sucking her teeth. “Kinda weird?”
Upstairs, I could hear Fitz’s laughter getting louder and louder.
“Please.” Ruby was mimicking her younger self.
Even blindfolded, I could see the gleam in her eyes.
“What did you do to my family?”
Her words forced me into action.
I prodded Fitz Setori, only for his head to hang.
Unconscious.
There was dried blood under his nose, a slimy ooze of black.
Prying open his mouth, I checked his teeth.
Too many.
Just like Cassie, a whole new row of spiky incisors were pushing through.
Dad was hurting them.
He was torturing them.
Turning them into something.
My quivering hands found a needle sticking into the back of his head, colorful wires protruding into his skin.
There was a clear fluid being pumped into the three of them.
If Dad was experimenting on the Setori family, was it affecting us too?
“Well?” Ruby demanded, her voice twisting, contorting into that of a monster.
“What did you DO to my FAMILY?”
Instead of answering her, I forced my legs to move toward the movement on the other side of the room. There was something piled on the floor, jerking in sharp movements, a slimy mess of inside out flesh. It hit me when I was closer.
The bodies entangled with each other, some of them headless, others missing arms and distinct facial features, were me. Dozens of Ruby Setori’s both made of buzzing static and terrestrial flesh, covered in a slimy, blood tinged substance, like these things were being born. Not made.
I think I was sick. All over myself.
Another blinding flash hit the corner of my eye, and in front of me, another thing was slowly forming, first static, growing into skin, a body moulded and sculpted into existence.
This Ruby had no eyes, no arms, her limbs contorted like doll pieces. I was aware I was staggering back, slipping in what looked and felt like part of a placenta.
The Setori siblings were making copies of me.
My gaze found one singular version of me who was almost perfect.
Except her enlarged brain expanding Through the skull.
And these replicas were getting better by the minute.
“Ruby!”
Mom shouted from upstairs. “Did you get my wine?”
I left the basement, my heart in my throat.
Upstairs, my brother and sister were giggling.
And downstairs in the basement, the Setori siblings were laughing harder.
Three nights since I spoke to Ruby, and the copies of me are getting better.
One of them managed to walk upstairs yesterday.
I think the siblings are slowly making another version of their sister.
I want to talk to her. I want to know what she's doing to my family.
But I can't talk to her.
If I do, I lose Ruby Setori.
Mom and Dad play peek-a-boo with me every night.
They're behind every door, their hands covering their faces.
Cassie is eating meat raw from the refrigerator.
Fitz is getting better at crawling under my door.
And the laughter in the basement is getting louder.
Please help me. I'm so scared of my own family.
I don't think the Setori’s were my parent’s best choice after all.