Mad libs dirty

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
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“Should I be worried?”
Why would you be worried?” Kim said. “Dean Lichman loves us.”
Dean Lichman had asked the two of them to stop by his office, though his brief message had not said what for. That left Vell to concoct nightmare scenarios in his head.
“He doesn’t love all of us.”
“Alex doesn’t count as ‘us’,” Kim said. She was a looper in purely a technical sense, mostly due to her own refusal to be a team player. “Besides, she’s been behaving lately. She’s only been an asshole, not an active liability.”
“That we know of.”
“If we don’t know about it, Dean probably doesn’t either,” Kim said. “It’s fine, Vell, he probably just wants to ask us for advice or deal with some problem he has.”
“That’s not much better,” Vell said. “How weird would things have to be that the Dean is asking us for help personally?”
“Only one way to find out,” Kim said. She gestured to the door to the Dean’s office.
Kim entered first, and found it in much the same state as it always was. The desk piled high with paperwork, a small bowl of assorted candies shoved into the corner of the desk, and Dean Lichman behind it, frantically tapping away on a laptop. Vell had not been in this office for several years, and it was vastly different than the last time he’d been here.
“Ah, there you are, come in, have a seat,” Dean Lichman said. “Unless you’d rather we have our conversation elsewhere, Vell.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Well, it’s my understanding you haven’t been in this office since my, uh, predecessor,” Dean Lichman said.
“Oh, right, the kidnapping,” Vell said. “No, I’m good, I don’t really get traumatized by things anymore.”
Vell had been killed too many different ways in too many different places to have a functional trauma response. A few days ago he’d gotten his legs chewed off by a vending machine, and still stopped by it to pick up a soda on his way to the office.
“That’s a very concerning response, Mr. Harlan.”
“Yeah. Anyway, what did you need?”
Dean Lichman gestured for the duo to take a seat, and both did so. He folded desiccated hands in front of himself before beginning to speak.
“I would like to ask you two to take a look at an experiment that will be occurring later this week,” Dean Lichman said. “I don’t have any reason to believe it poses a threat, but I would like to be assured it is a safe and ethical environment, and, well, you two have a knack for identifying trouble spots.”
“You could say that,” Kim said. It was more accurate to say that trouble had a way of identifying them -and then leaping at them and ripping their heads off.
“I’d appreciate it if the two of you could simply examine the laboratory and give it your approval, or disapproval, as the case may be,” Dean Lichman said. “Though if you’re too busy, I fully understand.”
“If you don’t think this is dangerous, why are you asking for our help anyway?”
“Simply for my own peace of mind, frankly,” Dean Lichman said. “The school’s policies on animal experimentation are...satisfactory, I suppose, but I do want to take extra precautions when the subject is a creature as smart as an elephant.”
“An elephant?”
“Yes, a resident of a reserve in Thailand,” Dean Lichman said. “An older elephant by the name of Mae Noi. She has cancer, apparently, and she is submitting to experimental treatment in the hopes it will be useful for younger elephants.”
Kim’s digital face briefly flashed with a facial expression of concerned skepticism.
“‘She’ is submitting to treatment? As in the elephant?”
“Yes. Apparently the elephant can talk,” Dean Lichman said. “No, I don’t know how it works, they said it was ‘more impressive in person’.”
“Well now I kind of want to go just to see the talking elephant,” Vell said.
“Same.”
“Well, do try to take a few glances at the experiment’s safety while you’re there,” Dean Lichman said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“I’ll be there too,” Kim said.
“Excellent. Thank you both, and I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” the Dean said. He then bid them both a polite goodbye and returned to his mountains of paperwork. Vell took a step out of the office and then took a sip from the soda he’d recently retrieved from the evil vending machine.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I really do want to see the talking elephant,” Kim said.
“Obviously, yeah, we all want to see the talking elephant,” Vell said. “I mean the whole situation. You think the elephant thing is going to be the daily apocalypse for that day?”
“Well, on the one hand, an elephant seems like the kind of thing that would kill us,” Kim said. “But on the other, I feel like the fact we have advance warning means it’s not going to happen.”
“True. The universe probably wouldn’t make it that easy for us.”
“Yeah, but the elephant thing still feels pretty threatening,” Kim said. “Only way to find out is to wait a few days, I guess.”
A FEW DAYS LATER
“Hello you two,” Dean Lichman said. “And Hawke.”
“Hey,” Hawke said.
“He also wanted to see the talking elephant,” Kim explained.
“Well, that’s not a problem, it was an open invitation,” Dean Lichman said.
“Thanks. Still, sorry for not saying I was going to show up in advance,” Hawke said. “It took me a long time to make up my mind whether I was more interested in or afraid of a talking elephant.”
“They are rather large, aren’t they? I suppose that could be intimidating.”
“I’m okay with elephants on their own, it’s the talking part that doesn’t sit right with me,” Hawke said. “What if the elephant doesn’t like me? What if I’m the first person to ever get insulted by an elephant?”
“You’re less afraid of getting trampled by an elephant than insulted by one?”
“I’m a little afraid of trampling, but elephants are chill,” Hawke explained. “They wouldn’t attack unless provoked. I kind of feel like one might call me a dipshit unprovoked, though.”
“You have oddly specifics fears, Mr. Hughes,” Dean Lichman said.
“Yeah.”
In spite of those fears, Hawke happily stepped through the door to the zoology lab. It did not take a long time to locate the elephant in the room, as it was a literal elephant. The towering pachyderm was in a makeshift pen in the center of the lab, with an ample supply of food and a strange pedestal in front of her.
“Dr. Chanthara,” Dean Lichman said, with a polite wave to one of the researchers in the room. “Good to see you. These are the students I told you about.”
“Hm. Nice to meet you,” Dr. Chanthara said. He was, perhaps not unreasonably, skeptical of why three seemingly random students were in charge of a safety inspection. The fact that one of the three was a robot made him even more skeptical.
“Hi, nice to meet you too, and, uh, don’t mind us,” Vell said. “We just have an eye for weird things other people might miss.”
“Sure. I- wait. Aren’t you that kid who got chosen by a god?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Vell said. “And her too, technically.”
Kim shrugged. She didn’t care for any extra attention on that point.
“Right,” Chanthara said. He was beginning to see why these students might know their stuff. “I suppose we should start by introducing you to Mae Noi. Say hello, Mae.”
The elephant shifted on her feet and poked her trunk at the wide pedestal in front of her twice.
“Hello. Friends,” a synthesized voice droned. Vell stepped a little closer to the pedestal, just enough to see that there were an array of buttons on the side facing Mae Noi.
“Oh, it’s kind of like a keyboard,” Vell said. He’d seen similar things used with dogs, though usually in a much simpler fashion. Mae Noi seemed to have a few dozen buttons at her disposal.
“Smart,” Mae Noi said, with another prod of her trunk.
“We initially put it into our sanctuary as a bit of a novelty, something elephants could choose to interact with,” Dr. Chanthara explained. “Mae Noi took to it a bit better than most. Especially once she found out she could use it to ask for food.”
“Food. Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin.”
“No, Mae, no food until after experiment,” Dr. Chanthara scolded.
“Experiment,” Mae Niko said with a prod. “Pumpkin.”
“Yes, experiment then pumpkin,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“That’s not really a talking elephant, is it?” Hawke said.
“It’s more talking than most elephants,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“Elephant. Smart,” Mae Niko said. “Smart.”
“Yes, uh, right, elephant smart,” Hawke said. He took a step back, to avoid any further offense and any further risk of being insulted by Mae Noi.
“You’re very impressive, Mae, don’t mind him,” Kim said. “How many words does she know?”
“Our platform back home has around three hundred words, though she’s still learning some of them,” Dr. Chanthara said. “The ‘travel’ version we put together only has a hundred, just enough to make sure she can get her basic needs met and communicate about the experiment.”
“Right, speaking of, I do believe we should put some time into our reason for being here,” Dean Lichman interjected. “You’re welcome to stick around afterwards, at Dr. Chanthara and Mae Noi’s discretion, of course, but we should get underway.”
“We probably should get to business, yeah,” Kim said. She tapped the side of her metal head. “I’m going to scan the lab. Vell, you talk to the elephant and make sure everything’s above-board.”
“Abov- oh, right,” Vell said. “Sorry, not exactly used to being able to ask animals if they agree to animal experimentation.”
“Experiment,” Mae said.
“Yeah, experiment,” Vell said, as he turned to Mae. “So, Mae Noi, this experiment might hurt, do you know that?”
“Experiment. Hurt. Elephant,” Mae Noi prodded. “Experiment. Help. Elephant. Help. Baby.”
“Help baby?”
“Baby. Baby. Elephant. Sick. Baby. Sick.”
“We’ve explained the nature of her condition to Mae Noi as best we can,” Dr. Chanthara said. “She has several children, and is concerned they might be similarly affected.”
“Help. Baby,” Mae Noi said. “Experiment. Help.”
The way Mae Noi frantically tapped the buttons tugged at Vell’s heartstrings, but he choked those emotions down.
“So you want to do this experiment to help baby, got it,” Vell said. “Even if it hurts you?”
“Elephant. Old,” Mae Noi said. “Hurt. Okay. Help. Baby.”
“Huh. Well, that does sound like informed consent to me,” Vell said. “Passes ethical muster, at least.”
The campus rules allowed students to be experimented on, with their consent, so Vell saw no reason not to apply the same standard to an elephant.
“You speak up if you change your mind about the experiment, okay?”
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Mae said, mashing the same button a few times. “Yes.”
“You got it. I’m going to go help my friends check things out,” Vell said. “Good talking to you, Mae.”
“Good. Talk. Friend,” Mae said. She waved goodbye with her trunk, and Vell waved back. He wandered away from Mae Noi’s pedestal and found Kim and Hawke carefully examining rows of beakers and various other supplies.
“Nothing sus yet, boss,” Hawke said.
“Nothing caustic, mutagenic, or explosive?”
“Well, something mutagenic, but it’s supposed to be,” Kim said. She had scanners built into her body much like those that had once been in Vell’s glasses, allowing her to analyze the complex chemical formulas at a glance. “They’re going for some gene editing similar to what we’ve tried to do on human cancer patients. Low success rate, but not harmful. Some adaptations to work on elephants, of course.”
“Run it by any of our chemistry and biology student friends yet?”
“A few,” Kim said. “Haven’t gotten anything back yet, though.”
“Maybe run it by Skye, too,” Vell said. “She’d recognize anything that’d mutate an animal.”
“She does love to mutate things,” Kim said.
“Benevolently,” Vell insisted. “Just show her. I’m going to check for any stray equipment.”
The presence of an unusually large test subject had resulted in the lab being rearranged and reshuffled, so Vell did a quick scan for any misplaced equipment that might pose a threat. He found, to his surprise, a tidy and well-organized environment, with any and all extraneous materials securely locked away. There wasn’t so much as a shrink ray out of place. Vell did another loop just to be sure, but returned to his friends empty-handed.
“This place has less safety hazards than my lab,” Vell said. Hawke stared at him for a while.
“Why does your lab have safety hazards?’
“I do runecarving, there’s like, hammers and chisels,” Vell said. “Those can hurt people.”
“Mm, true,” Hawke said. “So you really didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing,” Vell said. “This place is secure as I’ve ever seen a lab be.”
“It’s like I said,” Kim began. “We got an actual warning about it, so obviously nothing’s going to go wrong. That’d be too easy.”
“Maybe,” Vell said. “Things can get teleported in, or someone could cast a spell, or something.”
“Yeah, but that applies to anywhere, at any time,” Kim said.
“Kim’s right,” Hawke said. “I say we go business as usual.”
“I guess,” Vell said. “We have to branch out a little, at least. Can’t keep an eye on one room all day.”
The trio stopped sulking around the outskirts of the lab and returned to Dean Lichman and Dr. Chanthara.
“Everything looks good,” Kim said. “Probably the safest lab I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“We have very high safety standards here at the Einstein-Odinson,” Dean Lichman said, defensively. “Relatively speaking. Innovation requires some risk.”
“I understand perfectly. So does Mae.”
“Hurt. Okay,” Mae said.
“Not that okay,” Vell said. “Nice meeting you, Dr. Chanthara. You too, Mae.”
“Wait.”
Mae prodded one of the buttons on her pedestal and then pointed her trunk at the three of them. Hawke looked deeply concerned, but stepped forward alongside Vell and Kim. Mae Noi appraised them with massive brown eyes, and then moved her trunk back towards the pedestal. Vell noticed a distinctive scar on the bridge of her long nose just as Mae Noi pressed another button.
“Joke.”
“...Joke?”
Dr. Chanthara sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Just go along with it,” he said. “She likes to tell her joke.”
“Uh, okay,” Vell said. “Let’s hear it.”
“What. Elephant. Favorite. Part. Tree.”
“Umm...I don’t know, Mae,” Vell lied. He’d heard this joke from a kid, once. “What part?”
“Trunk,” Mae said. She gave a loud bray of amusement and then slammed her trunk down a few more times to emphasize the punchline. “Trunk. Trunk.”
“Oh, ha, I get it,” Kim said, hoping her feigned laugh was convincing. She’d never tried to lie to an elephant before. “Good one, Mae.”
Mae Noi shifted from side to side, looking pleased with herself, while the trio took a step back and stopped their feigned laughter.
“Did you give her buttons just to tell that joke with?”
“She gets upset,” Dr. Chanthara said. “I’m not even sure she understands the pun, she just likes people’s reactions.”
“As long as she’s having fun,” Hawke said.
“We’ll get out of your hair now,” Vell said. “Good luck with the experiment, feel free to let us know if you need a hand with anything.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dr. Chanthara said. Some of his earlier skepticism seemed to have softened, but he did not seem entirely onboard with three strangers mucking about with his experiment. Vell and his friends left before they stretched what little goodwill they had any further. Mae Noi waved her trunk goodbye as the three left the lab and stepped back onto the quad.
“I’m going to try and sneak some classes in,” Hawke said. “Later.”
“I’ll check some of our usual hot spots,” Kim said, before she too left. Once again alone, Vell headed to one of his own classes, and called up Samson.
“Hey, Samson,” Vell began. “See anything interesting while we were playing with the elephant?”
“Well, I thought I clocked someone acting suspicious, but it turns out he was only sneaking around to go see his boyfriend,” Samson said. “Nothing apocalyptic, but I did get called a homophobe, which is pretty emotionally devastating.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover someday,” Vell said. “Keep an eye out. Usually the safer things look, the more dangerous things end up being.”
“Will do,” Samson said, before saying goodbye and hanging up.
***
Vell got increasingly nervous the longer the day went without its daily disaster. He thought about checking in on Mae Noi again, but then recalled Kim’s warning about it being too obvious, but then remembered that nobody had seen anything suspicious anywhere else, but then remember that Mae Noi’s lab had looked perfectly safe-
“Vell.”
“Huh?”
“You’re spiraling,” Kim said.
“I’m not spiraling, I’m just,” Vell said, with a pause for contemplation. “Considering multiple options.”
“In a spiral fashion,” Kim said. “Eat the damn french fries. Honestly, what’s the point of ordering so many if you’re just going to let them get cold?”
“It’s not like they’re going to go to waste,” Vell said. The same time loop that allowed him to eat massive amounts of french fries without fear of gaining weight also allowed him to avoid food waste. One of the upsides of life in a time loop.
“Just eat, Vell,” Kim said. “You worry too much about all this shit.”
“I’m in charge, it’s my job to worry about it,” Vell said.
“It’s your job to handle it,” Kim said. “There’s no point thinking about this shit before it happens, you spend all day thinking about an elephant and then the universe drops, like, a bat with tentacles on your head. Just deal with as it comes, Vell.”
Vell leaned on the table and managed to chomp down on a french fry or two.
“You know, next year, when I’m not running the show anymore, I’m going to call and see if you still think it’s that easy.”
“I sure hope so,” Kim said. “I’m saying all this shit trying to make myself believe it too.”
“Oh good, you’re lying to both of us,” Vell said. “That’s cool.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it, Vell, that’s how it goes,” Kim said. “Eat your damn french fries.”
Vell rolled his eyes and returned to his fries, which were now starting to cool. Thankfully he would not have to worry about finishing them. A loud crash from across campus interrupted him mid-bite and nearly made Vell choke on his fries. He painfully swallowed the half-chewed food and then looked over his shoulder.
“Son of a bitch, finally,” Vell said. A few years ago he’d found it weird whenever he was relieved about a disaster, but now he was just genuinely glad to get it over with. The waiting was as killer as the apocalypse. He tossed his fries in the trash and headed toward the sound of chaos, with Kim right behind him.
“Already told everybody?”
“Well, I may or may not have left Alex and Helena out of the loop…”
“Kim.”
“They’d find out anyway,” Kim said. “I got to use my brain parts to get in touch with them, even over wi-fi that shit feels dirty.”
“Just get in- stop.”
Vell held out his hand. Kim froze in place and did not move. Not intentionally, at least. There was a small amount of unintentional movement. The ground was vibrating.
“Always love a good earthquake,” Kim said.
“That’s not a quake,” Vell said. “That’s...footsteps!”
Vell grabbed Kim and dove out of the way just in time for something to barrel through the walls of the dining hall and stampede across the room. Tables, chairs, and more than a few students were crushed under the feet of a hulking, brown-furred behemoth as it charged. Kim picked herself and Vell up off the floor and tried to trail its progress.
“That’s a- oh fuck me,” Kim said. “Please don’t say you told me so.”
Vell got his bearings and looked across the room at the titanic form of a woolly mammoth. Though it was definitely recognizable as an archaic mammoth, the ancient creature was also heavily mutated, unnaturally large even by mammoth standards, and with multiple curled, jagged tusks protruding from a slobbering maw.
“Well that could be unrelated,” Vell said. “Mammoths can come from a lot of places, cloning accidents, time machines…”
The mammoth reached a wall, and rather than barreling through, turned around, facing directly towards Vell. A prominent scar covered the bridge of its broad trunk.
“Oh, nope, that’s definitely Mae,” Vell said. The scar was in the same place and at the same angle. Even a clone wouldn’t have an identical scar.
Once the revelation had struck, Mae took her turn. Vell found himself staring straight down the barrel of a very angry mammoth coming right at him at Vell-squishing velocity. Luckily he’d been charged at by a lot of creatures over four years of looping.
Vell jumped up and to the side, and latched on to one of the curled tusks, which made for very convenient handlebars. Kim did the same on the opposite side of Mae, and punched her in the head.
“Wait, wait, hold off on the violence for a second,” Vell shouted. He tried to wave at Kim to stop, but Mae was thrashing so violently he had to grip the tusks with both hands.
“Good plan,” Kim shouted. “Can you get Mae on board?”
Another set of tables got crushed underfoot. Thankfully the other students were out of trampling range by now, but Mae Noi’s feet were still coated in the blood of earlier victims.
“Mae’s smart, maybe we can calm her down,” Vell said. He then ducked to dodge a swat from Mae’s mutated trunk.
“Call me crazy, Vell, but I think this is more than just a bad mood,” Kim said, as she climbed up Mae’s seven jagged tusks like a ladder.
“We have to try,” Vell said. The loopers rule against hurting other intelligent life forms had some flexibility for blood-crazed mutants on violent rampages, but they had to at least try to reason first. Vell climbed up on of Mae’s tusks and looked into one of her bloodshot eyes for any sign of recognition. “Mae! It’s Vell, do you remember?”
The only response Vell got was an enraged trumpet, which he didn’t think was a “yes”.
“Come on, bud,” Vell said. “What’s an elephant’s favorite part of a tree, right? The trunk?”
The massive brown eye staring at Vell blinked, and he felt a brief glimmer of hope. He then felt a brief glimmer of his lungs being crushed as Mae swung her head and slammed her tusks into the wall, and Vell along with them. Kim punched Mae in the throat and then jumped across the tusks to grab Vell and carry him to safety.
“You okay, Vell?”
He opened his mouth to respond, and a pint or two of blood came out instead.
“Apparently not,” he mumbled. “I might be down a few ribs. And a lung. Or two.”
Kim carried Vell a safe distance from the fight and set him down on the ground, where he promptly spat out another mouthful of blood.
“Okay, uh, you just lie there and try to die peacefully, I guess,” Kim said.
“Way ahead of you.”
***
“Was that last bit as funny as I thought it was?” Vell asked. “I think the blood loss was affecting my sense of humor.”
“It was kind of hard to appreciate in the moment,” Kim said. “But as far as dying jokes go, it was pretty good.”
Vell and Kim walked into the lair for their morning meeting and joined the loopers that had already gathered.
“Okay, what’d I miss while I was dead?”
“Well, after Alex was done getting herself killed,” Samson began.
“You’re saying that as if it’s something to be ashamed of,” Alex said. “Vell also died.”
“Yeah, but he got killed trying to do something good. You got killed trying to do something stupid.”
“Trying to eliminate a threat is not stupid,” Alex said.
“We don’t kill intelligent creatures,” Hawke said. “Sometimes we punch them into a coma, but we don’t kill them.”
“When a dog bites, you put it down, I don’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to a mammoth that’s crushed seventy people.”
“That wasn’t Mae’s fault,” Vell said. “She got mutated, or something. On that note: did you guys figure out what happened to Mae Noi?”
“Nothing,” Hawke said. “Looked like Mae smashed up the entire lab, trampled everyone involved in the experiment too. Nothing left to investigate, and nobody left alive to interrogate.”
“Typical,” Vell sighed. “At least we have an easy out. Dean Lichman was really concerned about the ethics of that whole experiment. We raise some kind of complaint, we could probably get the whole thing shut down.”
“The problem is getting the complaint,” Hawke said. “That lab was airtight, Vell.”
“Apparently not completely airtight,” Kim said. “I can camp out in the lab and raise an entirely justifiable stink whenever something capable of making a murder-mammoth shows up.”
“And what if it happens so suddenly you can’t complain about it?” Samson asked. “For all we know that could’ve been some kind of dimensional rift, or time anomaly, or something. It might not be as simple as somebody just putting in the wrong syringe at the wrong time.”
“He’s got a point,” Vell said. “We might want to shut this down before it gets there.”
“Seems like our best option is to plant evidence, then,” Alex said.
Everyone else at the table spent a few seconds brainstorming ways to prove her wrong, and much to their frustration, could not.
“Okay, fine,” Vell said. “But it needs to be something incidental, not something anyone would get blamed for. We want to cancel the experiment, not get anyone in trouble.”
“I could have a seizure on some sensitive equipment,” Helena offered. “It’ll break something and nobody would dare get mad at me.”
“Can you fake a seizure?”
“No, but I’m allergic to elephants, so I’d probably have one anyway the moment I stepped in the lab,” Helena said.
“I don’t feel entirely comfortable sending you into anaphylactic shock for a bit,” Vell said.
“Offer’s on the table,” Helena said. “I’ll live. Wouldn’t have made it through that trip to the zoo otherwise.”
“Anybody have any non-medical emergency suggestions?”
“Seagull in the air vents,” Kim said.
“Will that work?”
“It happens now and then,” Kim said. “Seagull gets in, and Dean has to close down the whole lab for potential material damage and biohazard risks if they shit in the vents.”
“Really? We’ve never had to deal with anything like that,” Hawke said.
“It may shock you to learn that sometimes minor, tedious bullshit happens that we have nothing to do with,” Kim said.
“That is kind of surprising, actually.”
“Enough. Kim, can you grab a seagull?” Vell asked. He shouldered his bookbag, and stuck a hand into the extradimensional pocket that existed within it. “I can probably smuggle it in with my bag.”
“Yeah, I can get you a seagull,” Kim said. Since she did not need to sleep, she had to find ways to keep herself entertained at night, seagull-grabbing being among them.
“Alright, we’ll go grab one and put it in the bag,” Vell said. “The rest of you, be ready to meet us when I call.”
***
Roughly three minutes later, Vell put out the call and they reconvened in front of the biology lab.
“Yeah, that was much faster than I thought it would be,” Vell said.
“I’m great at grabbin’ birds,” Kim said. Seagulls were among the easier birds to snatch, even. They were suckers for food, and many of them were attracted to her shiny metallic body anyway.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vell said. “I want this thing out of my bag ASAP.”
Even though the seagull was safely within a pocket dimension, Vell would swear he could still feel the bird thrashing and squawking inside his bag. He tightened his grip on the shoulder strap and led the way towards the zoology lab entrance. He grabbed the handle and held it as he froze for a second.
“Vell, what’s up? Is this bird escaping?”
“No, the handle’s vibrating,” Vell said. It was shaking the same way a wall near an incredibly loud speaker might. He pressed his ear to the door and listened closely. He opened the door immediately, and let all his friends hear the frantic trumpeting of a panicked elephant.
Inside the lab, Mae Noi was stomping her feet and trumpeting as loud as he long trunk would allow. She swayed from side to side in her pen, bumping against the walls not quite hard enough to damage them, but hard enough that it was clear she was doing it on purpose.
“What the heck is happening here?”
“Ah, Vell,” Dean Lichman said. He hustled over to Vell’s side and gestured to the entire room. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”
Mae Noi stopped braying long enough to start mashing her trunk against her pedestal, mashing out the word “Bad” over and over again.
“Our test subject, Mae Noi, has been throwing an absolute fit ever since she got here,” Dean Lichman said. “Dr. Chanthara, these are the students I was telling you about earlier.”
While Vell reintroduced himself to Dr. Chanthara, Kim and Hawke stepped up to examine Mae Noi and her enclosure. It was a far cry from the peaceful, orderly scene they had examined on the first loop. They were half an hour earlier this time than before, but Kim found it unlikely that they had been able to calm Mae Noi down, clean everything up, and get back to work in such a short amount of time. They hadn’t mentioned any of this panic on the first loop either. They were soon joined in their confusion by Chanthara and Vell.
“We’ve tried everything; food, water, her favorite toys, even videos of her children,” Dr. Chanthara said. “We’ve even offered to call off the experiment, but she won’t listen.”
“She is an animal,” Alex said. “Sometimes they do things arbitrarily.”
“Not Mae,” Dr. Chanthara said. “Some of our sanctuaries residents from traumatic backgrounds can have outbursts, but Mae was injured in the wild. She’s never been like this.”
“Maybe some experiment on the island is upsetting her,” Vell said. “A sonic experiment only she can hear, or something…”
Vell stopped and thought about it. If there had been such an irritant, it would’ve been there on the first loop too. Everything always repeated exactly the same, except for-
“Could you, uh, take a step back for a second?” Vell mumbled. “I want to try talking to her.”
“Don’t get close,” Chanthara warned him.
“I’m not, I’m not,” Vell said. He didn’t need to get very close to tell a joke.
The massive brown eyes of Mae Noi stayed locked on Vell as he approached, and she continued to mash the “Bad” button on her pedestal.
“I know, I know, bad,” Vell said. “But, uh, do you want to hear a joke?”
Mae Noi stopped. She locked eyes with Vell for a few seconds, and then cautiously tapped a button on her pedestal.
“Joke.”
“Right, joke,” Vell said. He tried to recall the exact sequence of words Mae had used on the first loop. “What elephant favorite part tree?”
Mae didn’t blink.
“Trunk,” Vell said.
After a moment of contemplation, Mae Noi let out one final, fervent, trumpet, and then started mashing buttons on her pedestal again.
“Bad. Help. Help. Experiment. Bad. Help. Bad. Help.”
“Yeah, bad help, one second,” Vell said. He turned away from Mae Noi to look at Dean Lichman. “Hey, uh, excuse me, Dean? Hey, uh, if I remember correctly there are some pretty complicated rules on having intelligent animals on campus, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Dean Lichman said. After hearing of some questionable ethical practices involving an octopus back in first year, he had instituted a few clauses into the school’s ethical code of conduct regarding intelligent animals like elephants, octopuses, and dolphins. “Mae’s presence here is a bit of an outlier, but there were workaround, given her apparent consent to the experiment.”
“Yeah, about that, is she, uh,” Vell began. “Is she registered as a student?”
“Yes.”
Vell pursed his lips. It took a few seconds for his friends to catch on.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Samson snapped. He turned his back on the crowd and leaned against a wall while Hawke put his head in his hands.
“The first rule of looping,” Alex said quietly. “Loopers are randomly selected-”
She looked up and locked eyes with Mae Noi.
“From all registered students.”

We have to stop pretending butts are attractive. They're not.
All of you who say they're an ass man. No you're not. You're just refusing to accept face is best.
All of you women who want a bigger butt. Stop. You're wasting your time
Butts are gross and they should be avoided. They are dirty sphincters and they protrude in the most unflattering ways. They look bad, don't feel good to touch, don't feel good to have grabbed, they're quite literally the dirtiest part of the body. So why do we make it seem like something desirable ? We need to stop this madness

TW/ sexual assault and physical abuse
Today I pushed my mom- I feel terrible about it. Especially because I love her so much and I’m so appreciative of her
I’ll make this short. I grew up in a verbally, psychologically and physically abusive home. And I have some sexual trauma as a child as well. I was abused by my dad and also harbored anger towards my mother for allowing to happen continuously
I have Lyme disease and had to move home this year. Due to the Lyme I’m very sick, weak and brain fogged.
I met this guy outside the condo and he said he had a TBI. The next day he came to my door and asked if I wanted to walk and I told him no! Found it very weird and uncomfortable and wanted to establish boundaries. I told my mom he came by but I didn’t walk with him because I was tired.
The next two days he came by and my mom answered the door. She knew it was him and that he was probably there to see me but just opened the door. She starts talking and tells him that “we” are available for a walk. I felt violated bc there wasn’t any consent with opening the door or volunteering me. She goes on to say she doesn’t want to go. I’m left alone with a person we barely know that gave me an extremely bad vibe
The walk was uncomfortable and he asked me about my age, if I had a bf, If my dad was in the house and if I wanted to go into his house to see his cat and the back of his house to talk- I declined. He then went on to say that he had a children’s sexual abuse charge and I told him I was uncormfortable and walked away. I immediately felt dirty, scared and wondered what I did to make him go after me.
I told my mom about it but also told her that she shouldn’t just blindly open the doors and volunteer others to go out without their consent bc if I was alone I would have told him no and to not do that for our safety
At this point I’m triggered with all of my past trauma and I’m losing sleep and getting very edgy and nervous bc the guy is scaring me.
I told my dad what happened and he was very upset and went and talked to him. I was livid bc I felt like If my mother just didn’t answer the door and volunteer me to go none of this would have happened. So I tell her I’m mad about that. She tells me that I lied about the whole thing to my dad and I was incredibly triggered. I told her that “I feel like I want to put my hands on you please stop saying I’m lying- I’m telling the truth” I said that about 6 times and she wouldn’t stop saying I was lying- I was so triggered and frustrated. I ended up giving her a push and she kicked me and I pushed her again. It was light but regardless- not okay!!
I feel terrible. In retrospect I was incredibly triggered from some of my sexual abuse trauma and felt really gross about the situation and during my trauma there were moments I wasn’t believed.
This is my first time doing ANYTHING like this. I’ve been in therapy for 10 years and have great and healthy relationships! My mom and dad trigger me so much I don’t even know who I am around them
Regardless, I should not have done that AT ALL!! I apologized and told my mom no matter what she said- that’s not appropriate and it’s abuse!!!
Anyways- the guilt is making me extremely suicidal and Being around my parents and reliving trauma is making me suicidal.

Lol, I thought this would be funny to write about as a first silly little post as it is the most interesting thing in my life. (Don’t mind any typos)
First of all, to anyone who wants to tell me to stop or get over it or give me any valid reasonable and rational advice,I will not listen so don’t bother.
As these stories go, I 15(f) in love with English teacher 26(f). I’m obsessed with her, and have been for almost msot 2 years, it would have been longer if she had come into my life sooner.
I’m not a love at first sight person, so it took a while for it to come about. And iv always had problems with getting violently obsessed with things, I believe it’s some kind of coping mechanism, you know? If I don’t have something to live for then I fall in love with something, subconsciously of course. First it was cartoon characters then celebrity’s and the for the first time a real person who I know in real life! (Except she’s my teacher and she’s 26) but also the first woman iv ever fallen for (iv always known Im pan so it wasn’t a shock really). I think another HUGE reason I love her is because I don’t have a mother, she was abusive, druggy, alcoholic yadi-yadi-yada, and so I don’t live with her and I don’t like her and she isn’t there for me, and so I meet a kind female adult who I look up to? Obviously I get attached and I see her as a mother figure. I really do, I want to be just like her, I want to make her proud, I seek her validation, i want to fuck her. You know, regular motherly things!
The first day I met her, first day of year 10. From the second she walked into the class I felt her energy and her vibes and I had that feeling where you instantly like someone and want to be friends with them and think they are super cool. Now, she is not hot, like Obviously to me me right now in this moment she’s the most beautiful and pretty person iv ever seen she’s so cute and hot and all that, but Obviously that’s because I’m obsessed with her everything about her is great, but she’s the kind of ugly that when she first walked into the class people snickered.
She has a rash on her chin, a noticeable moustache, she looks at least 30 despite being much younger, her eyes are creepy looking and small, her skin is really red and dry and way too textured, she does weird ugly facial expressions, she has a big nose, her hair is never brushed and always greasy, she has really small eyelashes blah blah blah.. (she obviously has some really nice features as well, but I’m trying to prove i don’t like her for her looks)
Now In her defence I think they were laughing because she has the hugest ass iv seen in my entire life, not cuz of her face. (She wears really tight leggings everyday) But, she is overweight and a lot of people bring her down cuz of it but that has nothing to do with any of it for me obviously, and I obviously didn’t laugh when she walked in.
The point is, I instantly liked her and her personality, she has that school mum vibe, she’s witty she’s confident she’s loud, she’s funny, she’s so weird (like she does and says the weirdest stuff, she’ll start dancing out of no where with no warning, she shortens words all the time and then says them three times like: “fab fab fab” she has just the weirdest tendencies and mannerisms it’s insane), shes always so exited and jolly, she’s like a ball of sunshine yet at the same time she’s so sassy and passive aggressive, when I’m older I wanna be just like her you know!
And that’s how I felt for a long time, I would just enjoy her lessons because of the energy and vibes she’d bring! She makes everything so much fun just by being there, she’s also a drama teacher so she’s great at getting a crowd going and stuff. But it seemed no one else liked her, they either fat shamed her, or said she was a bitch, or found her annoying.
They aren’t wrong she is all of those things, but she’s only a bitch to you if you don’t respect her and then she’s passive aggressive and makes your time in her class hell, and as her favourite student who kissed her ass everyday it was fun for me to watch people get roasted by her and never have to worry about it. She is annoying to a lot of people because she hypes everyone up, and she’s loud and obnoxious and confident, she laughs at her own jokes and she’s giggly and she does stupid accents, she’s the walking talking definition of “QUIRKY” and so 15 year olds find her incredibly cringey and jarring. But as an immature individual my self I found her energy like something I have never seen anyone have so i from the first day thought she was my favourite teacher ever!
I often take the role of like comic relief when it comes to my friends so I often make the joke myself, and once I felt this admiration for my English teacher, and this giddy happy feeling in me when I saw her, I thought it would be a great idea to pretend/ hint to having a crush on her to my friends as a joke so they can make fun of me. It was small things like “oh my english teacher! … oh.. I liiiiikkkee herrrrrrrr~!” Id day when people mention her, no one caught onto the joke for a couple months until one day, after a holiday I had dyed my hair and she walked past me and she complimented it, I thanked her and INSTANTLY MY HEART WAS POUNDING AND I GOT ALL GIGGLING, my friend was next to me and found it funny obviously. And then the more I went to her lessons I couldn’t stop getting all sweaty and nervous around her, and every time she’d do something cute, like squeal when she’s frustrated and make weird noises or do a fake accent, or tell a joke I’d feel so unbelievably happy, and I couldn’t stop talking and thinking about her, but Eveytime I’d think about her or look at her id get a huge ick of like.. but ewww she’s so not hot! I can NOT be in love with THAT.
By summer I was still feeling this Same way, one day she wore a dress and like the dopey idiot she is, she lifted her leg and from where I sat I saw her panties. I WAS DISGUSTED, and looked away. And then looked back.. but then looked away.. and then looked back.. and then looked away.. (and did it a couple more times) but I felt sick in my stomach the whole time! It was not a hot thing at the time.
Then the year ends and it’s the summer holiday, (now up until this point I was quite caught up with my David walliams obsession. yes the 56 year old.. and so I didn’t really care about her all that much. On the first day back, before school started I went to a birthday party and I saw her walking outside of the school, when I saw her my heat was beating so fast, i hadn’t seen her in 6 weeks and I was not expecting to see her then, I said hi to her and i couldn’t stop thinking about that moment so intensely, and every thought I had about her being ugly didn’t matter to me, it’s not like I forgot about it, I know what she looks like, but I just think everything about her is so beautiful, it’s part of her and so its perfect.
That feeling got worse and worse as the year went by, every time i see her I shake, i sweat, I have panic attack like symptoms, but I feel so happy, like manic, I am overwhelmed, I want to punch things, I want to scream.
Then we get to the part where to silence this obsession I did regrettable and wierd things that she will never know about, some of the despicable things iv done in “the name of love” for her include:
Eating her hair Licking her spit of the table Kissing her chair when she leaves the room Following her around school Drawing her Writing poems about her Writing songs about her Making edits of her Taking photos of her Recording her voice when she talks to me Stealing her trash Licking her pens Making AI chat bots with her personality Making a bingo game about her (that one is just funny, and all my friends played it too, during her lessons lol)
And many other things I won’t mention. Obviously I’m not proud of any of this, and I didn’t really need to do it, some of it I did “as a joke” for my friends, some of them I did just because I could.. but the recording her voice one is essential! Anytime we’d have a heart felt convo I’d record it so I can listen to it if I ever loose the will to live (surprisingly frequently).
Now our relationship as student and teacher was/is very good.
We’ve had some lovely moments, she told me she cared about me outside of the classroom.
A personal favourite of mine: One time she was marking my work and it was just us in the classroom and I rested my head on her shoulder as she was going through it with me, and she looked down at me and she smiled and then we stayed like that for ages while she marked my work.
All my friends said I was delusional and that she probably hates me, but she has a huge ego and i believe she likes to keep me around to give it a boost every now and then.
I wore a matching outfit with her once (on accident) and she was very happy about it
Anytime I’d ask her what I can do to improve my grade she’s say to me “oh no! But you’re doing really well! I thought you did great!”
She’d never get mad at me or shout at me for anything, if we are doing a one between two activity she’d give me the only extra sheet in the class
I asked her to sit at the front to her because I “concentrate better at the front” (i only asked cuz i wanted to sit closer to her) she gave me a sly smirk and then the next lesson she moved me to the back of the class, and also moved her self to the back of the class.
We took a selfie together and the whole time she was giggling, I gave her a Christmas card, she lets me follow her around the school, she gave my friends dirty looks when they were being mean to me
I sent her stupid emails of pictures of capybaras (it was an inside joke between us) and she responded with a way to enthusiastic response for such a simple image lol!
I sand “you belong with me” by TS and she stood in the crown and when it got to the “you belong with me” bit I pointed at her and she pointed back! Singing the words back to me
Oh, and let us not forget the amount of eye contact. I never look people in the eye, one of my first exes I barely ever looked into their eyes all the time I knew them, I just suck at eye contact. Until I met her, since I’m so insecure about her forgetting me or loosing me or something I often stare at her when she’s teaching to make sure that she doesn’t forget me. And some how in the last couple of months she stares at me as well.
Anytime she tells a joke she looks straight at me to see how I respond (always with giggles even when it’s the lamest thing iv ever heard. It’s often not funny at all.) and the entire time shes teaching the lessons I will stare at her. IN HER EYES. Like, I’ll often smile calmly, but if she hasn’t looked at me in like 4 minutes then I’ll stare deeper, but she usually looks into my eyes and hold it for a while sometimes she’ll even smile at me and then stutter and forget what she’s saying before looking away and continuing. She’ll stare deeply into my eyes, throughout the lesson, and I also always catch her looking at me first.
Once she was helping me with my work, she got really close to me, and she stared into my eyes and then I see her getting small glances at my lips (with this one I may be a little delusional) she leaned in and she kept getting confused. Like, she yaps a lot, and a lot very loudly. So it was odd for her to be standing there her arm touching mine talking to me and being like “…. Um-.. heh-.. where was i..” and she flicks through my paper and then looks back at me and goes silent and then swallows and then looks down and then flips through it again and then says something small and short followed by more silence.
I also have a theory shes on drugs, for many reasons but one time I needed her to take a photo of my book, and she was acting so weird, tired but like really like dizzy and loopy and breathless. And she went to take a photo of my book, and got behind me and she leaned into my book, and I felt her heavy loud breath on my neck as her stray hairs were tickling the side of my face and her shoulder was touching my back, she she just stood there and stared at my book for ages until i was like “um so.. you can.. take a photo or something..” and then she slowly did it hahahaha!
Obviously it’s now exam time and so school is basically over and I have no more lessons, so I didn’t go into depth about how much she means to me as a person but to sum it up into one sentence; I would want to seriously kill my self with out her in my life.
And so the thing I had been fearing for so long, the last English lesson, the last time seeing my dear beloved. Well obviously it’s life or death so I have to tell her how I feel and get her to stay in contact with me.
The last lesson ends I go up to her after a morning of: pissing my self, shitting my self, throwing up in my mouth, constantly putting on perfume, checking my hair and chewing the mintiest of gums. And I start my speech, I won’t go into it but I told her how I felt about her (minus the being in love bit I played it off as platonic duh, im not fully stupid).
I told her that she means so much to me, and she’s (one of) my favourite people in the world (that’s a white lie she’s my only favourite) I can’t go on with out her, I need her, iv felt this way since the first lesson, your so fun, you mean so much to me! I cant loose you, I don’t know what I would do with out you!!!!
I cried in her arms as she hugged me! And i didnt even need to ask she suggested we could stay in contact, in-fact all i had said was “I’ll miss you so much :(“ and she already suggested we stay in contact, but Obviosuly I still did the whole speech cuz at some point she needed to know. Her response was basically that she already knew, but she was very pleased to hear it, and everything is going to be perfectly okay.
She said we can stay in contact (through email, cuz apparently there is a “legal thing unfortunately” stopping her from giving me her number (yes I did ask for her number, but in a total no homo way.)
She said I can talk to her anytime about anything as much as I like, and that’s good enough for me!
I also gave her a drawing I did of her and me together which was cute, her response to that was “oh very cool! she walks over. she takes it in her hands, very excited to see it. This really throws her confidence off, she’s really not expecting this. OH THIS IS AMAIZING! her voice cracks THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH! this is lovely! thank you, this is soo good! oh-muh-gud it’s SO good! oww I love it! thank you.. I’m wearing the same top as well, how fun~.. HOW FUN!!!! how fun!! … she takes it and puts it in her bag i will prop this up, on my desk! wicked wicked awesome!” (I recorded her reaction so that’s how you know it’s word for word)
In conclusion, im creepily obsessed and its a problem, but I don’t really regret anything cuz it’s all gotten me to this point where I can talk to her when ever I want and that’s all I could ever ask her. Yes I want to fuck her, but that’s not important to me I just need her in my life, she’s my world she’s my reason of living, and I’m so happy things are this way! I’m doing my exams now so I get to see her everyday when I come into school (by see her I mean wait outside the staff room so I can catch a glimpse of her knee). I’m also glad I’m not in her lessons anymore cuz I’d always get so twitchy around her, anytime she’d be near me and I’d be trying my best not to lunge at her, when I see her my mouth waters I just wanna grab her and kiss her all over! Eeek! She’s adorableeeee!
I love herrrrr ❤️❤️❤️

Right below this post on my overview page, you'll see a serious, sober reply I gave to somebody's perhaps not altogether serious question about galaxies named "Snickers," bringing up a mildly interesting tidbit from the History of Astronomy. Read it there, because you'll never be able to see it anywhere else. It was deleted, almost instantly, with no reason given, a perfect example of what can happen on a site adults use to discuss serious matters, when the adolescents are so often in charge.
If you are new to Reddit, no, that was not a snarky joke. So-called "power mods" have, in the past, turned out to be minors, well under the age of 18, nothing more than dull-witted children with far too much time on their hands, and an overpowering desire to be in control. When governmental policy was being set in keeping with the consenses set by the social media mobs, a few years ago, these are the people who effectively had the power to decide who would be free to speak about what, and about how full grown adults would be forced to conduct their affairs - the sort of adolescents that, in the days before the Internet was invented, would have been shunned by their peers, and with good reason.
I went to mention this most recent moderator power flex on RedditCensors, and discovered that it had been banned by Reddit, which I understand has created a rule that prohibits public complaints about a moderator's abuse of power - literally, an anti-transparency rule. Those are inherently corrupt and on a platform where freedom of speech is effectively put to a vote through the downvoting process, corrupting.
If it ever was anything else, Reddit has become a place where neurotic teens and tweens have gone to live out their dreams of power, as they've been allowed to control the public consensus by being given the ability to quietly silence the voices of dissent with their mad reign of error. Some tried to excuse this inexcusable reality, a few years ago, by mentioning the stress so many people were under due to the "Pandemic," and arguing that free and open discussion of serious issues would be more than people could cope with during the drama, and perhaps they would again, but let us be serious. That was a nonsensical defense even then, and 2024 is not 2020. Sanity might not have returned, but the panic has passed, and at this point there can be no serious question about Reddit's role in that time of panic. The admins and mods eagerly got down and dirty to encourage that panic and haven't reformed, since.
Strictly speaking, this has cost Reddit its safe harbor protection, since it is in no way running a neutral platform, but we already know how much the law matters when a large Internet firm breaks it - not at all. By now, we all know that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and those hearings of his are a joke. They are there to defuse anger, not to start any real sort of move toward justice.
One could respond to this ugly reality by jumping over to a supposedly uncensored platform - like Gab, to cite the best known example. But when one goes to that supposed alternative to the censorious lunacy of Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, et al., what does one find? Literal neo-Nazis, flat earth conspiracy theories and endless death threats and targeted harassment, while the staff looks the other way and refuses to enforce its own rules, because the founder is, himself, not so far from being a Nazi, himself. To attempt to have a serious discussion there would be like breaking into a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan, and trying to have a town hall meeting during it.
At some point, one has to be willing to see that something has been tried and proven to be such a trainwreck, so consistently, that to put much more time and effort into it would seem like madness. That is how I've come to see the social web, and perhaps even the Internet in general. You can see the links to my other sites and you're welcome to follow me on them, but I'm not sure that I'm ever going to bother to post to them, because I'm at a loss when I try to think of a good reason for doing so. Certainly, I incur a massive opportunity cost by getting down in the trenches with the losers - compare what I was getting paid to answer student's questions about Mathematics in the real world ($120/ hour as an independent tutor before Covid) with what I get here, where I get repaid only in aggravation. In person, at an art fair, I can be (and have been) approached by the editor of a literary journal and asked to submit. Online, if I'm lucky, I'll see a fraction of the audience I'd get at an open mic night, run into censorship because somebody with well developed psychiatric problems though he sensed a hidden agenda behind my words, and then get to deal with scrapers afterwards.
The Internet has, for the most part, neither proved a pleasant, nor a profitable, nor a productive experience, so why get deeply invested in it, at all? I'll be shutting down my groups on this and other sites, as I reduce the role of the Internet in my life to being what it should always have been: a place for posting announcements, along maybe with a tiny amount of free content as a loss leader, in order to get other people to link to the page with my event announcements and other notices. I'm going to turn off the computer and get back outside, more, as I really should have back in 2020. As everybody should have, really.
The Internet, properly used, is a bulletin board, not a community. Life was better when people remembered it, and for me, it's going to be better, again. If other people want to go on being immersed in a miserable, futile effort to succeed where all others have failed before for structural reasons, they're free to do so, but I think they'll find that other serious people will be making the same choice I have, and for the same reasons. The power mods will still be there, and so will the trolls, but when they're nearly all that remains, when the Internet is firmly linked to the craziest members of society in the minds of the general public, just how much influence will it go on having?
Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing at all. Over and out, for now, and probably permanently. There's a nice, sunny day waiting for me, just outside my window and I'm going to go enjoy it.

I have an orange cat named Jeff that I got 7 years ago and I absolutely adore him. He’s my baby. He can be such a sweetheart, but he also has a really difficult side to him. He’s a smart cat and knows what to do to make me mad.
I want him to be an indoor cat, but he absolutely loves going outside. It’s been years of trying to keep him inside or trying different variations of letting him outside at certain times or only once a day, whatever. It doesn’t matter how much we let him out, he always gets so mad when we don’t let him outside. I don’t let him out once it’s dark outside ever, if I can help it. And everytime he comes back inside, he gets lots of treats. It’s the expectation at this point.
Tonight, he snuck out the door after dark and I was able to grab him and get him back in. He was PISSED. So so mad at me. I gave him treats and lots of love but he was just so mad. Hours later, I figured he was over it. He seemed fine, he was just napping in my room on his special spot on my couch. Then I got up to take a shower. When I came back into the room, he was sitting on the bed, but quickly hopped up and wanted out of the room so I let him out. I didn’t realize until hours later that HE HAD PEED ON MY BED. I had to change all the sheets because it soaked through.
This isnt by far the first time he’s done this. We have to keep shower curtains over beds that aren’t being used or else he will pee on them. If I leave clothes on the floor, he will pee on them. He ruined a rug in the living room from constantly peeing on it. It’s such a big issue and my whole family resents him for it, even though he truly has a sweet side to him.
I just don’t know what to do. He’s not doing this because his litter box is unavailable or dirty… we have 3 of them throughout our whole house and we keep them all very clean. He does use the litterbox regularly. He does this out of spite. He is very easy to anger. It makes me so unbelievably mad when he does this… it’s not like it’s an accident, this is purposeful. It’s so bratty and I don’t know how to stop it.
In addition to this, he seems constantly bored. When he’s inside, he paces around the house for hours just meowing SO loud. He will do this all night long and it keeps everyone up, it’s crazy how loud he can meow. I don’t know why he does that but I believe it’s out of boredom. I’ve gotten him lots of toys but he doesn’t like them and still meows and paces.
He’s such a difficult cat but I love him to pieces… what on earth do I do?

I originally posted this in the hoarders subreddit but was advised maybe more help could be found here. the first bit is my original post and a comment i made that i think gives more context. any help is appreciated.
i’m almost 20 and my parents have decided to move out of our childhood home to a retirement home on the lake. my mother is obviously a hoarder and we need to be moved out by july. she mainly hoards clothes which are basically to the ceiling in her room. there is just straight up junk everywhere. i’ve lived like this my whole life and i undoubtedly have issues stemming from it. for example, when my brother went to college i moved into his room. my parents let me pick out paint and said we were going to make my room “my own.” i was 12 when we did that and so far the only thing we did was prime half of the walls about 2 years ago. i have since went to college for a semester and i was away from home for 6 months and things are just how i left them.
i never had friends over, never had a room that felt my own, and was constantly blamed for it. when i expressed my concerns about my childhood my mom just said “well you could have had friends over if you just cleaned” or “we never painted your room because you're lazy” i, however, feel as though i wasn’t the problem in all of this. i never contributed to the hoard as i never brought anything into my house. during the holidays if my room was somewhat clean, my mother would throw things in my room to hide it from family. every year around christmas i have spent it cleaning nonstop just for it to look somewhat presentable. it always stressed me out. our kitchen is also hoarded. i love to cook and i just can’t when there is no counter space. i wouldn’t necessarily call her hoard “dirty.” there are no bugs, mold, etc. it’s just stuff.
i tried cleaning my room today because we need to move out soon and i just broke down. the amount of time it’s taken me to even get a single bag of goodwill clothes out was well over an hour and i just can’t imagine what it’s going to be like to move out. i tried moving on the clean the kitchen and was met with my mom overstepping my cleaning process. she went through the trash and picked out the recycle. i told her that in order to get it done on time we need to just start throwing it away. (this stuff had been sitting out for months) she was insisting i do it her way.
at this point, i have just given up. cleaning makes me so overwhelmed and reminds me of the countless years of yelling around really special times in my life like i mentioned with christmas. i just feel as though my childhood was taken from me. i grew up relatively privileged and i feel so guilty for even feeling the way i do. like i’m not grateful for the life i got. i’m not really sure what to do. does anyone have any tips? i’m desperate.
My comment:
unfortunately i’ve tried putting boundaries in place. my dad has too. the stuff just keeps accumulating and it’s hard to keep it at bay. around 4 years ago my siblings and grandparents took control and cleaned the whole downstairs portion of house when my parents were on vacation. (not the best idea i know but we were desperate at the time) it took us 4 days of 9-5 cleaning and still didn’t finish completely (there were still corners with stuff in them but it was honestly 90% better) my mom was happy but she doesn’t seem to take what we did seriously.
it was hard for her the first few days and of course blamed us for missing stuff, which is expected. i’m not mad at how she reacted but she seemed ungrateful as the first thing she said was “you forgot some things” to which my dad said she needed to be happy. unfortunately she thinks that the entire house can get clean in a day, despite when i told her it took four days of nonstop cleaning from 5 people just for the downstairs. it makes it seem like despite how much time i put into cleaning her mess she’s never happy because she thinks i’m not doing enough. i told her how dire the situation is with them needing to move out in a little over a month and she seems totally unconcerned.
my dad has honestly been the only person who can get through to her but in the 6 months i was away from college they merely managed to declutter around half of the garage. (which is a nightmare itself) i just don’t know how to go about cleaning it. she won’t let me invite anyone over to help despite the need for it. i really want to do what i did about four years ago but fear she will freak out because she will be missing stuff when they move into the new house. as of right now though, i see no other option. i kinda feel like it falls on me to pick up the mess.

Am I wrong for soft ghosting one of my “friends”?
Wow, this one might me a long one.
So I moved to (undisclosed location) sometime in the beginning of last year. When I moved here I really had no friends but became heavily involved in this yoga studio I went to and slowly but surely started to make friends/acquaintances with the teacher that instructed me.
From afar she seemed super cool and I became pretty enthralled with her and her life. I would look forward so heavily to going to her classes every week and was quite intrigued by her. I thought she was funny, bubbly, spunky, cool, and always made jokes during class that made me laugh. As months went by I found myself wanting to get closer and closer to her, and she even invited me out one time to one of her “events” she was hosting. Here’s the thing;
It seemed like we had a lot in common and was just generally craving camaraderie and connection. I felt a sense of belonging with her and wanted to expand that energy in my life, and wanted to do anything I could to get closer to her for those reasons. But I guess this is where we have the first red flag;
One day after class, she extended an invitation to me to a meet up of sorts, (I’m being sparing with details just out of fear she might read this) and when she invited me it seemed like it was gonna be this big thing with lots of people invited, and just in general in talking to her it seemed as if she was very well connected and respected within her community, had lots of friends and connects, and I thought this was gonna be a huge thing that I was even lucky to be invited to. I was super stoked and exited about it.
However when the day of the event came, I was super tired and slow to getting up that morning. I figured I would just make my way over whenever I could since it seemed causal and like you could drop in whenever. I also figured there would be more than enough people that no one would really even notice my arrival or departure. (Plus, sometimes it’s chic to be fashionably late ;) ). Well…. I was most definitely wrong.
When I showed up I heard someone excitedly shout my name, which was her, and she waved me down to the “meet up”…. There was literally only one person there and it had been going on for 2+ hours. I was definitely a bit unnerved, but also didn’t want to be rude, and like I said I was just kind of happy to be there and be getting invited to things. But it was kinda like, damn…. Are these all the friends you have?
I had dressed up and looked cute but they were just kind of wearing whatever and I felt awkward and overdressed and also embarrassed now that I was even this late because it was clearly much more intimate than I expected and my arrival/absence was DEFINITELY felt. We had chatted a bit and that was cool but then I remember her confessing me that she had cried to her husband earlier that morning that she was scared nobody was going to show up and how thrilled she was that not only one, but TWO people had showed up and that it felt like she had friends. I wasn’t really sure what to say or make of that.
She also…. The whole time (and mind you, this is our first legitimate interaction out of yoga class) just kind of kept talking maniacally AT me, not to me, and was coming off almost even manic, and she had formed a white crust of spit around her mouth probably from talking so much that I couldn’t look away from. To say the least, I was a bit disturbed coming away from this interaction but I just kept telling myself that I was being too judgmental of her and to give it a chance and that maybe she was just hyper that day and that I had probably had unintentional embarrassing hygiene moments as well. So I keep going to class and that’s that.
There were several other red flag moments between this first interaction and the next one, mostly just her incredibly cringey social media presence that I genuinely almost couldn’t stand to see without feeling like I was withering away inside, but maybe I’ll save that for later. It’s almost like I couldn’t just see that the person I thought was so cool in class and the person I was seeing her be online and outside of class were the same people. But I digress.
She had actually ended up inviting me to go with her on one of her international yoga retreats, and I was actually very excited about this. I had very little time with her in between classes, and my attraction (but also repulsion) with her was growing stronger and I wanted to figure her out and see what she was really about and what the pull I was feeling towards her was about. Plus, I love travelling and just thought it would be fun.
I had a pretty good time, but we didn’t get to talk much, HOWEVER, I do remember this distinct point during the trip where it was myself, 2-3 other fiends I had made, her brother, and her “best friend” who had happened to be her brother’s Gf in a room together, talking. the brother, the best friend, and the other friend I made just all completely started talking shit about her and I was so confused.
I felt super hurt by this actually, bc I felt like I had a inexplicable bond with the teacher who had invited me, she was the reason we were all there in that beautiful place, and I just couldn’t understand why they were choosing to be so negative about someone I thought they had claimed (at least by title) to love. They would say things like “I can’t fucking stand your sister” (one of the friends I made to the brother) and everyone would just sigh and put their hands in their head and be like “I know…. I know. It’s a lot. She’s a lot”. And I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation because I was just so confused and I knew the girl would just be so upset if she heard them saying this. Anyway… that confusion stuck with me for a while after.
Fast forward maybe a month or two, I started hanging out with her more regularly myself outside of class. I would say this is when we became more “friends”. She would invite me to other teachers classes and we would talk a lot about our lives.
I learned how she felt about her close friend and family connections, and how she often felt hurt and betrayed by people close to her and how some of her friends were actually really shady. I just got a general sense of her feeling scapegoated and libeled against by ppl that got close to her and how she had walls up for that reason.
She also shared to me that most of her family was cut off, with the exception of her brother who she had recently rekindled a connection with, hence why he was on that trip. I felt very bad for her and wanted to be a source of comfort and support, and she would often comment on how she felt a sense of camaraderie with me since I also (LITERALLY) had no family and how we have to make our chosen family. This was a sweet sentiment, for sure, but I was still sussing out how I felt about her.
So one day, a mutual friend that had been on the trip with us was having a birthday party and I guess that she was invited to it, too. She sat down next to me and I was SUPER excited to see her as I was craving her energy and hadn’t seen her in some time. But then… idk. She had had a lot to drink. I’m fully aware that she’s kind of a quirky individual, and has a way of socializing which I can sometimes find a bit uncomfortable or even intense, (like the first meetup I spoke of) but this time it was even more and seemed to be heightened by the drinking.
Her husband was sitting on her other side and kept trying to interject and insinuate that maybe she was doing a bit much, but I think she was drunk enough to the point that she just found it funny and had no awareness of how she was coming off. There’s not even a way I can describe it really, but she just seemed a bit obsessive over me and kept making jokes that were literally not funny and seemed to have lost all ability to read the room. I also had noticed that she had only had TWO beers and was acting like this already which I found… really strange.
So at some point she goes to the bathroom, and I also get in line for the bathroom about 5 mins later. When I get up to the bathroom, she’s still in there, and there’s a line of about 2 or 3 people ahead of me. When she exits the bathroom she immediately spots me and rushes up to me and just starts… drunkenly spewing.
I can’t even remember what she was saying, but we were in a pretty high class establishment and I remember her gushing over me and was saying “I just want to let you know that I don’t really have friends or let people close to me in my circle but I just want to let you know that YOU are officially in my circle and you have earned friend status to me and I’ve let you in my circle…” or something like that. And I just kept thinking, who tf even says that??? I’m pretty sure the last time I checked that friendship is a two way street and it’s not just a title we bestow onto some “lucky” person and that’s that. Like girl… let ME decide if I want to be friends too first.
It was partially that, and also the way she was drunkenly spewing was so awkward and embarrassing bc I could tell all the other women in line were like who tf is this bitch and why is she saying all this weird stuff and like, does she even know you?? Lol. Just a very odd interaction which again, I kind of wrote off, but the unsettling feeling kind of just kept growing after that point.
Then, the time that I REALLY knew something was up came up about a month later, but there are still some key details of this story that are missing. Perhaps I will discuss them later.
SO. About a month later, she invited me last minute to this concert of sorts. When I got there, I was super excited to be there, the vibes were amazing and we were having so much fun. But she had definitely had a lot, A LOT to drink. I didn’t mind at first, because everyone there seemed severely under the influence, but she would just start randomly kind of lashing out at people in the crowd and she thought it was funny? She first loudly and audibly started making fun of some guys shoes in front of us, and was trying to laugh with me as if I would join in, but when his girl friend turned around and shot her a dirty look, she had the nerve to be self conscious and mad about it. She would loudly poke fun at other people in the crowd too, but not in a ha-ha way, just in a straight up mean and asshole way and I could not understand why she would even do that or why she thought that was funny.
Again, I kind of just awkwardly laughed and brushed it off. But when all was said and done and the concert was closing, she enthusiastically invited me back to go to her house and soak in her hot tub. I kept saying are you sure?? But she was like please, PLEASE come, we have weed, we’ll smoke you out and other things and I wanted to continue the vibes because it sounded fun. And then….. completely downhill.
I had arrived back at their place before she did, but as soon as I saw them go in I knocked. When I walked in, she was pale faced up on the floor, non verbal, pretty much motionless, and staring at the ceiling. I was like oh no… it seemed like she got a bit too much to drink. I waited patiently there for a few mins, unsure of what to do as I had just drove for 45 mins and I was still 25 mins in the opposite direction away from home.
I kind of just sat around, and hoped that she would sober up. I asked if she was drunk… she said no. She ran to her bathroom multiple times while her husband (a complete socially awkward case himself) tried to take care of her while she threw up. I asked her if she puked and she also said no. So I didn’t really know what to do. I was trying to offer support/ empathy but she just kept denying any claims of anything being amiss. Her husband left to pick up a pizza and I probably just should’ve left but I’m telling you I had no idea how to exit their house without making it weird or awkward. And I also was hungry. So I just stayed… and waited for the pizza.
What happened in those 20-30 mins, I don’t even know if I can fully explain. She just became… so FUCKING WEIRD. she clearly was embarrassed that I was seeing her drunk, and I think was trying to over compensate. But she just turned into an absolute freak show and I’ve never been more uncomfortable in my life.
She started hoola hooping in my face, and making these weird gremlin faces and noises at me, fell to the floor, rolled round on the floor while continuing to make the noises, convulsed on the floor, but tried to do it in a funny way, tried to make an interpretive dance for me… I’ve truly never experienced something so uncomfortable in my life. I probably do sound like an asshole, but I swear you would just have to be there to see how a) gross and b) weird and actually scary it was. I was genuinely frightened.
I’ve never seen anyone act like that and I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable or weird by showing her how clearly uncomfortable I actually was. so I just sat there and tried to laugh. But it probably came off as more of a grimace. And for the record, this woman is 33. I am 26. It was just. Obscene.
And she’s tried to act like and say multiple times that she’s like my “big sister”. Now I’ve seen a lot of drunk behavior, but not this. I wolfed down my pizza, and so did she, and she started to get even more philosophical and weird on me, showing me songs and art which were quite frankly some of the worst things I’ve ever heard in my life, and I left as soon as I could.
I was so shaken and disturbed coming away from this, because like I said earlier, I thought she was a cool girl, but honestly her behavior and lack of control over herself completely terrified me. And it’s not like she was drinking liquor, it was just damn IPAs. And I just did not know what to do.
Some details I will try to add to this story, even though I know it’s monolithic at this point , is that 2 months prior to this she had gotten fired from the studio she worked at.
She had a mental breakdown during class because the manager was being mean to her, and he fired her on the spot. I remember being so angry with the owner, (honestly he IS a piece of shit human being) but I thought he was being sexist by calling her mentally unstable and I thought the way he handled things was unfair.
I went so far as to boycott the studio and completely remove myself from it in support of her and followed her to her new one. After the drunk #2 incident, I didn’t hang out with her very much, and only saw her during her class as I was locked into a certain number of classes I had paid for.
I remember her telling me that she had just started at ANOTHER studio, and got fired 3 days after on her birthday and she was talking about how unfair it was and how much of an asshole that new girl was for firing her… and I believed her. AGAIN.
I went so far as to block that girl on Instagram too, but deep down I kind of knew that she had probably just been fired bc let’s face it… as I was starting to discover, she WAS a lot. and the studio was in an upper class area , catered towards more upper echelon people, and I just don’t think she was fitting that image. I lent her an empathetic ear, because that’s all I would want in that situation.
But where she fucked up was sending me screenshot proof of the text exchange between her and that girl, thinking I would take her side, and later sending me screenshots of another conversation she had with the OTHER manager. She told me that this new girl fired her for bringing her husband to class. In my mind I was like, oh no, is she racist!?! Because her husband was black. But no, that’s not what I read at all.
It was the most reasonable, level headed response to someone ever, and laid out multiple offenses and reasons she didn’t want her at the studio. The reasons were honestly so embarrassing that I don’t know why she would send it to me and think I would side with her. She recently also sent me messages with the other boss and the last thing he says to her is “I hope you get help for your mental illness because whatever you have is serious and will impact all your relationships and business and things that you do”. And honestly I can now say in retrospect that those were the truest words ever spoken.
When I read these texts, I had a look back at my whole relationship with and how she would always paint everyone else to be the villain and how everyone is so mean to HER… and the whole time the common denominator was her. It was always her. And it made me rethink everything.
I’ve even had extensive conversations with some of the other people on her trip that were talking shit and couldn’t stand her and they all told me the same things. How it seemed like she was the coolest person ever and had her shit together and seemed like she was going places… but deep down she was just an absolute mess and pushed everyone away from her. And I no longer felt like I was going crazy.
But like I said, she formed a really close bond with me (I think from her perspective) and said she felt like my big sister and family, and shared all these stories about her feeling isolated and shut out by people, but now here I am, doing the exact same thing to her. Icing her out of my life. And I just wanna ask you guys…
Am the asshole?

Am I wrong for soft ghosting one of my “friends”?
Wow, this one might me a long one.
So I moved to (undisclosed location) sometime in the beginning of last year. When I moved here I really had no friends but became heavily involved in this yoga studio I went to and slowly but surely started to make friends/acquaintances with the teacher that instructed me.
From afar she seemed super cool and I became pretty enthralled with her and her life. I would look forward so heavily to going to her classes every week and was quite intrigued by her. I thought she was funny, bubbly, spunky, cool, and always made jokes during class that made me laugh. As months went by I found myself wanting to get closer and closer to her, and she even invited me out one time to one of her “events” she was hosting. Here’s the thing;
It seemed like we had a lot in common and was just generally craving camaraderie and connection. I felt a sense of belonging with her and wanted to expand that energy in my life, and wanted to do anything I could to get closer to her for those reasons. But I guess this is where we have the first red flag;
One day after class, she extended an invitation to me to a meet up of sorts, (I’m being sparing with details just out of fear she might read this) and when she invited me it seemed like it was gonna be this big thing with lots of people invited, and just in general in talking to her it seemed as if she was very well connected and respected within her community, had lots of friends and connects, and I thought this was gonna be a huge thing that I was even lucky to be invited to. I was super stoked and exited about it.
However when the day of the event came, I was super tired and slow to getting up that morning. I figured I would just make my way over whenever I could since it seemed causal and like you could drop in whenever. I also figured there would be more than enough people that no one would really even notice my arrival or departure. (Plus, sometimes it’s chic to be fashionably late ;) ). Well…. I was most definitely wrong.
When I showed up I heard someone excitedly shout my name, which was her, and she waved me down to the “meet up”…. There was literally only one person there and it had been going on for 2+ hours. I was definitely a bit unnerved, but also didn’t want to be rude, and like I said I was just kind of happy to be there and be getting invited to things. But it was kinda like, damn…. Are these all the friends you have?
I had dressed up and looked cute but they were just kind of wearing whatever and I felt awkward and overdressed and also embarrassed now that I was even this late because it was clearly much more intimate than I expected and my arrival/absence was DEFINITELY felt. We had chatted a bit and that was cool but then I remember her confessing me that she had cried to her husband earlier that morning that she was scared nobody was going to show up and how thrilled she was that not only one, but TWO people had showed up and that it felt like she had friends. I wasn’t really sure what to say or make of that.
She also…. The whole time (and mind you, this is our first legitimate interaction out of yoga class) just kind of kept talking maniacally AT me, not to me, and was coming off almost even manic, and she had formed a white crust of spit around her mouth probably from talking so much that I couldn’t look away from. To say the least, I was a bit disturbed coming away from this interaction but I just kept telling myself that I was being too judgmental of her and to give it a chance and that maybe she was just hyper that day and that I had probably had unintentional embarrassing hygiene moments as well. So I keep going to class and that’s that.
There were several other red flag moments between this first interaction and the next one, mostly just her incredibly cringey social media presence that I genuinely almost couldn’t stand to see without feeling like I was withering away inside, but maybe I’ll save that for later. It’s almost like I couldn’t just see that the person I thought was so cool in class and the person I was seeing her be online and outside of class were the same people. But I digress.
She had actually ended up inviting me to go with her on one of her international yoga retreats, and I was actually very excited about this. I had very little time with her in between classes, and my attraction (but also repulsion) with her was growing stronger and I wanted to figure her out and see what she was really about and what the pull I was feeling towards her was about. Plus, I love travelling and just thought it would be fun.
I had a pretty good time, but we didn’t get to talk much, HOWEVER, I do remember this distinct point during the trip where it was myself, 2-3 other fiends I had made, her brother, and her “best friend” who had happened to be her brother’s Gf in a room together, talking. the brother, the best friend, and the other friend I made just all completely started talking shit about her and I was so confused.
I felt super hurt by this actually, bc I felt like I had a inexplicable bond with the teacher who had invited me, she was the reason we were all there in that beautiful place, and I just couldn’t understand why they were choosing to be so negative about someone I thought they had claimed (at least by title) to love. They would say things like “I can’t fucking stand your sister” (one of the friends I made to the brother) and everyone would just sigh and put their hands in their head and be like “I know…. I know. It’s a lot. She’s a lot”. And I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation because I was just so confused and I knew the girl would just be so upset if she heard them saying this. Anyway… that confusion stuck with me for a while after.
Fast forward maybe a month or two, I started hanging out with her more regularly myself outside of class. I would say this is when we became more “friends”. She would invite me to other teachers classes and we would talk a lot about our lives.
I learned how she felt about her close friend and family connections, and how she often felt hurt and betrayed by people close to her and how some of her friends were actually really shady. I just got a general sense of her feeling scapegoated and libeled against by ppl that got close to her and how she had walls up for that reason.
She also shared to me that most of her family was cut off, with the exception of her brother who she had recently rekindled a connection with, hence why he was on that trip. I felt very bad for her and wanted to be a source of comfort and support, and she would often comment on how she felt a sense of camaraderie with me since I also (LITERALLY) had no family and how we have to make our chosen family. This was a sweet sentiment, for sure, but I was still sussing out how I felt about her.
So one day, a mutual friend that had been on the trip with us was having a birthday party and I guess that she was invited to it, too. She sat down next to me and I was SUPER excited to see her as I was craving her energy and hadn’t seen her in some time. But then… idk. She had had a lot to drink. I’m fully aware that she’s kind of a quirky individual, and has a way of socializing which I can sometimes find a bit uncomfortable or even intense, (like the first meetup I spoke of) but this time it was even more and seemed to be heightened by the drinking.
Her husband was sitting on her other side and kept trying to interject and insinuate that maybe she was doing a bit much, but I think she was drunk enough to the point that she just found it funny and had no awareness of how she was coming off. There’s not even a way I can describe it really, but she just seemed a bit obsessive over me and kept making jokes that were literally not funny and seemed to have lost all ability to read the room. I also had noticed that she had only had TWO beers and was acting like this already which I found… really strange.
So at some point she goes to the bathroom, and I also get in line for the bathroom about 5 mins later. When I get up to the bathroom, she’s still in there, and there’s a line of about 2 or 3 people ahead of me. When she exits the bathroom she immediately spots me and rushes up to me and just starts… drunkenly spewing.
I can’t even remember what she was saying, but we were in a pretty high class establishment and I remember her gushing over me and was saying “I just want to let you know that I don’t really have friends or let people close to me in my circle but I just want to let you know that YOU are officially in my circle and you have earned friend status to me and I’ve let you in my circle…” or something like that. And I just kept thinking, who tf even says that??? I’m pretty sure the last time I checked that friendship is a two way street and it’s not just a title we bestow onto some “lucky” person and that’s that. Like girl… let ME decide if I want to be friends too first.
It was partially that, and also the way she was drunkenly spewing was so awkward and embarrassing bc I could tell all the other women in line were like who tf is this bitch and why is she saying all this weird stuff and like, does she even know you?? Lol. Just a very odd interaction which again, I kind of wrote off, but the unsettling feeling kind of just kept growing after that point.
Then, the time that I REALLY knew something was up came up about a month later, but there are still some key details of this story that are missing. Perhaps I will discuss them later.
SO. About a month later, she invited me last minute to this concert of sorts. When I got there, I was super excited to be there, the vibes were amazing and we were having so much fun. But she had definitely had a lot, A LOT to drink. I didn’t mind at first, because everyone there seemed severely under the influence, but she would just start randomly kind of lashing out at people in the crowd and she thought it was funny? She first loudly and audibly started making fun of some guys shoes in front of us, and was trying to laugh with me as if I would join in, but when his girl friend turned around and shot her a dirty look, she had the nerve to be self conscious and mad about it. She would loudly poke fun at other people in the crowd too, but not in a ha-ha way, just in a straight up mean and asshole way and I could not understand why she would even do that or why she thought that was funny.
Again, I kind of just awkwardly laughed and brushed it off. But when all was said and done and the concert was closing, she enthusiastically invited me back to go to her house and soak in her hot tub. I kept saying are you sure?? But she was like please, PLEASE come, we have weed, we’ll smoke you out and other things and I wanted to continue the vibes because it sounded fun. And then….. completely downhill.
I had arrived back at their place before she did, but as soon as I saw them go in I knocked. When I walked in, she was pale faced up on the floor, non verbal, pretty much motionless, and staring at the ceiling. I was like oh no… it seemed like she got a bit too much to drink. I waited patiently there for a few mins, unsure of what to do as I had just drove for 45 mins and I was still 25 mins in the opposite direction away from home.
I kind of just sat around, and hoped that she would sober up. I asked if she was drunk… she said no. She ran to her bathroom multiple times while her husband (a complete socially awkward case himself) tried to take care of her while she threw up. I asked her if she puked and she also said no. So I didn’t really know what to do. I was trying to offer support/ empathy but she just kept denying any claims of anything being amiss. Her husband left to pick up a pizza and I probably just should’ve left but I’m telling you I had no idea how to exit their house without making it weird or awkward. And I also was hungry. So I just stayed… and waited for the pizza.
What happened in those 20-30 mins, I don’t even know if I can fully explain. She just became… so FUCKING WEIRD. she clearly was embarrassed that I was seeing her drunk, and I think was trying to over compensate. But she just turned into an absolute freak show and I’ve never been more uncomfortable in my life.
She started hoola hooping in my face, and making these weird gremlin faces and noises at me, fell to the floor, rolled round on the floor while continuing to make the noises, convulsed on the floor, but tried to do it in a funny way, tried to make an interpretive dance for me… I’ve truly never experienced something so uncomfortable in my life. I probably do sound like an asshole, but I swear you would just have to be there to see how a) gross and b) weird and actually scary it was. I was genuinely frightened.
I’ve never seen anyone act like that and I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable or weird by showing her how clearly uncomfortable I actually was. so I just sat there and tried to laugh. But it probably came off as more of a grimace. And for the record, this woman is 33. I am 26. It was just. Obscene.
And she’s tried to act like and say multiple times that she’s like my “big sister”. Now I’ve seen a lot of drunk behavior, but not this. I wolfed down my pizza, and so did she, and she started to get even more philosophical and weird on me, showing me songs and art which were quite frankly some of the worst things I’ve ever heard in my life, and I left as soon as I could.
I was so shaken and disturbed coming away from this, because like I said earlier, I thought she was a cool girl, but honestly her behavior and lack of control over herself completely terrified me. And it’s not like she was drinking liquor, it was just damn IPAs. And I just did not know what to do.
Some details I will try to add to this story, even though I know it’s monolithic at this point , is that 2 months prior to this she had gotten fired from the studio she worked at.
She had a mental breakdown during class because the manager was being mean to her, and he fired her on the spot. I remember being so angry with the owner, (honestly he IS a piece of shit human being) but I thought he was being sexist by calling her mentally unstable and I thought the way he handled things was unfair.
I went so far as to boycott the studio and completely remove myself from it in support of her and followed her to her new one. After the drunk #2 incident, I didn’t hang out with her very much, and only saw her during her class as I was locked into a certain number of classes I had paid for.
I remember her telling me that she had just started at ANOTHER studio, and got fired 3 days after on her birthday and she was talking about how unfair it was and how much of an asshole that new girl was for firing her… and I believed her. AGAIN.
I went so far as to block that girl on Instagram too, but deep down I kind of knew that she had probably just been fired bc let’s face it… as I was starting to discover, she WAS a lot. and the studio was in an upper class area , catered towards more upper echelon people, and I just don’t think she was fitting that image. I lent her an empathetic ear, because that’s all I would want in that situation.
But where she fucked up was sending me screenshot proof of the text exchange between her and that girl, thinking I would take her side, and later sending me screenshots of another conversation she had with the OTHER manager. She told me that this new girl fired her for bringing her husband to class. In my mind I was like, oh no, is she racist!?! Because her husband was black. But no, that’s not what I read at all.
It was the most reasonable, level headed response to someone ever, and laid out multiple offenses and reasons she didn’t want her at the studio. The reasons were honestly so embarrassing that I don’t know why she would send it to me and think I would side with her. She recently also sent me messages with the other boss and the last thing he says to her is “I hope you get help for your mental illness because whatever you have is serious and will impact all your relationships and business and things that you do”. And honestly I can now say in retrospect that those were the truest words ever spoken.
When I read these texts, I had a look back at my whole relationship with and how she would always paint everyone else to be the villain and how everyone is so mean to HER… and the whole time the common denominator was her. It was always her. And it made me rethink everything.
I’ve even had extensive conversations with some of the other people on her trip that were talking shit and couldn’t stand her and they all told me the same things. How it seemed like she was the coolest person ever and had her shit together and seemed like she was going places… but deep down she was just an absolute mess and pushed everyone away from her. And I no longer felt like I was going crazy.
But like I said, she formed a really close bond with me (I think from her perspective) and said she felt like my big sister and family, and shared all these stories about her feeling isolated and shut out by people, but now here I am, doing the exact same thing to her. Icing her out of my life. And I just wanna ask you guys…
Am the asshole?

Hi there, I’m wondering if I should have made a bigger deal out of this.
I booked a back pool house for the weekend for about $900 in Los Angeles that appeared to have 4 separate spaces based on the listing photos: 1) a bed area, 2) a TV area with a couch (there were 2 photos of the TV/couch space), 3) a kitchen area, and 4) a bathroom. There were (and still are) definitely photos of all 4 of these separate spaces in the listing.
I arrived and my host showed me into the pool house. There was only a bed area, a kitchen area, and a bathroom. It was one long space, about 7 feet wide (VERY narrow). No couch, no sitting area like the listing shows. I didn’t say anything at the time.
I looked at the listing again after my host left and sure enough, there are photos of the TV in front of a couch. Yet when I got there, the TV was in front of the bed. Then I realized it was the same exact 7 x 10 space, but the bed is there now and there’s no couch anywhere. So he has photos with 2 totally different furniture set-ups in the same area and the listing appears as if there are 4 different spaces yet there are only 3.
Also, the listing shows a few photos of fancy soaps, shampoo, & conditioner in the shower and more soaps in a gift bag type thing. It also showed a Keurig and pods and a good-sized coffee mug. When he was showing me the space he said he was all out of pods. Luckily, I brought my own coffee pods. I brought my own bath soap, shampoo, conditioner, even towels, but someone else might have depended on those items to be in the house if he’s showing them in the listing photos.
When I left, I was instructed to do many procedures and one was to wipe down all kitchen and bathroom counters which I did, and my paper towels got SO dirty and black. I did not use the kitchen once. It didn’t have an oven. I wiped under everything on the counters (Keurig, microwave, etc) and it was clear no one had done that for a while. Honestly, I left that place looking cleaner than it was when I arrived.
So, given all of this information, should I have been upset? I wasn’t at first but then when I told it to a friend of mine, she was mad about it on my behalf, lol. Now I’m starting to feel a bit tricked.

Ok, So I've decided to speak my final peace and be done even thinking about this shit considering I'm pretty sure you have a new man anyways. It'll be long, so.. Read it or not. I've gotta do it. Lots you've heard over and over. Some maybe not. But, here goes..
L,
I TRULY, ONLY, ever wanted what is absolute best for you. I've only ever wanted you to be happy. And i hate that it couldn't be "us" that did that for you. That being said. I still don't even truly know what to believe. I don't know what was real, What wasn't. Given everything that happened and the way it happened and noticing more things as i go back and watch our vod. It truly seems to me like you weren't even that into me the whole time. Unless it had to do with anything sexual. And I'm beginning to believe even that may have been an act. I don't think we were real to you. I think that you came here just to distract me from the truth. And I'm sorry that didn't work out for you.
I do, however. HIGHLY regret talking to you the way i did. Even given what you did and what you were doing. I should've just walked away instead of letting my temper get the best of me and Yelling and name calling like i did. I'm far too old for that shit and I was acting like a child. I do acknowledge the fact that some of the things I've said out of pure anger and pain could have very well hurt your feelings. And this is my final, yet, VERY sincere apology for acting in such ways. I regret it every day. Not a day goes by that i don't. I was just hurt. VERY hurt. I think a lot more hurt than you'll ever realize, or even care to. I just wanted you to do right by me so bad. I knew what was happening. I knew the mistakes we were both making before, during, and the aftermath that was to come. And i was so MAD at you for not listening to me knowing how i felt about you and knowing how honest i really have been with you. I was telling you the whole time that you were showing loyalty to someone else over me. And that's not what you're supposed to do in a relationship. It's supposed to be you and your person against the world. And i felt like it was you and them, against me. While i DO regret how I've acted. I do not regret the intent and my reasoning behind acting such ways. Because just like i told you. It was indeed, The only way i knew how to fight for us and try to talk some since into you from so far away. I was trying to get you to treat me right and give me the same respect I'd given you. To this day, I have nothing hidden from you. I always to the truth, No matter how hard, or afraid for any reason i may have been. Even if i lied at first. I myself always came to you with the 100% truly and i gave you proof in ways leaving you no room to doubt as reassurance i was doing just that.
I'll say it again, stop listening to you friend. If he was any friend at all. As SOON as you told him you were in love with somebody he would stop communicating everyday all day. Because in the real world.. Communicating like you two do will always put some sort of doubt into your partners mind rather it be subconsciously or well conscious and expressed clearly. In a relationship. It is NOT ok to send the types of pictures you sent to him given your past be "dating" or "fuck buddies" whatever you were. And him clearly stating to you that he will ALWAYS "have the hots for you" (that's hitting on you, in case you didn't know). And it is NOT ok to talk about playing with yourself nor your sex life with your partner to somebody whose been such in your life of the opposite sex. Therapists being the exception. Idc what anyone says about how much they trust their partner, Things like this will cause issues. Pretty sure it's a universal boundary unless you're in an open relationship. Which we'd clearly stated was not our case. So, you knew better. And so did he. So if he was truly your friend, He would've well understood if you politely told him you'd crossed boundaries that were not ok and wished not to continue talking like you did. A every now and then "check in" or "catch up" is fine. And i told you that as well. But you'd proven you could not be trusted conversing with this person as you were. I feel like i asked nothing outrageous or unfair given the circumstances of this situation. Specially considering the photos sent, passing up plenty of appropriate photos that would've gotten the same point across.
Now, he used an analogy with me once. " If the police came knocking at your door asking to come inside and look around, just to clear you as a suspect. And you had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to hide and you were COMPLETELY INNOCENT. and they didn't have a warrant, just wanted to clear your name. would you let them in?" I said "Yes, why wouldn't I? I'm innocent and have nothing to hide. I let them in and they see that.. my name is cleared and they see I'm innocent. Therefore, leaving me alone"
He called me crazy as fuck and said he absolutely would not. He's rebellious for no reason. He's the type that ends up getting shot during a traffic stop just for being an idiot and making himself look like hes up to no good even if hes not up to shit.
Now, I understand we as humans deserve our privacy. 100% agree with that. But, You also have to understand that.. like I've said, It's situational. If I'm COMPLETELY INNOCENT and have nothing to hide.. I don't and will never mind giving up a tad bit of privacy for a brief moment to prove so. SPECIALLY when it's for somebody i love and to prove to them that even though I've agreed and they have every right to think something. I'm innocent and they have nothing to worry about. I'd show them anything they wanted to see, given i was innocent... that is. Even if I'd had enough and was leaving anyways.. I'd do it just for them. Because i loved them and wanted them to know even though we're done. I was good to them and they will never have to question it. Not to mention... It would just make them look dumb for blaming me and i could show them anything proving they were wrong lol
He knew what he was telling you made you look guilty, Everyone knew and even you said not showing it made you look guilty. So there's only ONE reason i STILL have NOT seen it. And....well... LMAO
Anyways...
Regardless if anything was EVER real on your part. Which it doesn't seem like it was. Considering everything. Specially how you knew my current life outside of us and how it was going. And you knew my past and how EVERYONE has hurt me. You continued to do so, Having the power to AT LEAST give me a little peace of mind. Or AT LEAST a little clarity. You were leaving anyways. It wouldn't have hurt you. But, You still seen how you were making me feel, and the things you were making me question. And CHOSE to do NOTHING. I wouldn't do what you did to me to you, EVER. Because i loved you. Hell I wouldn't do a STRANGER the way you did me. Just to be honest. But i get it, honestly. You COULDN'T tell the truth or show it. Because you were scared I'd tell his wife. And some of my other "friends" knew too and were keeping it from me. And your bad advice friend, wouldn't let you. Even though you say he had no influence. I know he told you he wouldn't be your friend anymore if you showed me. Once again showing loyalty to another person over me.. Telling me i was the love of your life.
I loved you. With all of me. I would never tell you something i think about do you any harm. I'll ALWAYS have your best interest at heart. ALWAYS. Even given everything that's happened and you making me out to be the bad guy. Read back through it all bbygirl. Even when i was asking you to prove things. I was telling you then i wanted you to prove what i was seeing wasn't true and i WANTED us to work. I was just seeing too much.
But, I guess me still proving up until now you could TRUST ME. And that I LOVE YOU. And that I'm loyal to YOU. Isn't and never will be good enough for you to tell everyone else to fuck off. Look at what actually happened and how long i was still there. And Bring your ass HOME.
last time I'll ever say this. I didn't care what the truth was. I never did. You're the only person I've ever considered an open relationship, JUST to keep you. So i didn't really care that you may or may not have fucked him... or him... or anyone else for that matter. I've been shitty in my day. Beyond shitty. I'm not here to judge you. What i DID, CARE about. Was you hiding things from me. Was you lying to me. Was you telling me you loved me and being loyal to somebody who not only did you say you didn't give a fuck about.. But threw you STRAIGHT under the bus and gave you up to try and save himself. ALL you had to do... was show me ONCE AND FOR ALL. after EVERYTHING... That you were down to ride for ME. THE TRUTH... And i would've worked with you through anything. I loved you like that.
But, too late now i guess. I tried my absolute hardest. Came here talking shit out of anger bc I'm STILL mad at you for messing up and running instead of fixing it. For breaking us both apart. i wasn't innocent.. But my GOD L. That shit was overkill. I've never been so dirty :(
Learn from this. So that with this guy.. You don't make the same mistakes. And you can be happy. Take my advice.. I PROMISE it'll last A LOT longer than we did. And you deserve to be happy. And that little one of yours deserves a father figure to love her like she was his. Don't settle for less.
I love ya, dork.
This is mys LAST, LAST letter to you.
BC i think it was all fake anyways. No way all the shit I've seen and how you were towards the end, was it not. NOT POSSIBLE. Because like i said. I actually loved you. And there's no amount of money nor evil that could make me do you how you did me in the end. period.
Take it easy,

This is something simple and I acknowledge that I may be over reacting, but this week I moved into a new rental house and I was not given my garage remotes as promised upon getting the keys. The property manager said that "the homeowner had a hectic move out of the home so it's understandable that they forgot to leave them behind. Thanks for your patience." That's completely bullshit and I'm fed up because if I don't return the garage remotes, gate remotes, and keys by midnight on the day my lease ends in a year, I face a $100 fine and $200 in replacement garage remotes.
The property manager said that the landlord put them in the mail and I should get them in a week or two. This was on top of the owner leaving random trash behind in the house and leaving it dirty, so this cherry on top is really making me mad.
Should I absolutely roast the property management company on Google reviews, or just let it go and bite my tongue?

I cut my family off in February so it's been 3months. My brother and I are pretty close. He and my parents knows me the most and is the only one that knows what I have been through (abuse from my dad and sexual abuse from childhood bestfriend). The reason why I cut my family off is because they have been supporting my rapist and his family. For instance my mother told me that my brother went to help my rapists brother. Helped him with housing and supported him. The rapist brother let's call him T. T knew his brother was hurting me and knew what his brother was like. When I went to tell mt family about the abuse. He obviously sided with his brother and acted like he just knew about the situation as well as his dad. My rapist dad would try and calm him down before he knew he was going to take me away to hurt me. Anyway.
I'm angry that my brother worked with the community to support my rapists and his family. Am I been selfish for been mad at my brother for supporting my rapist and his family. I forgot to mention. He let the charges go and called it a cultural thing. Cause my rapist dad begged him to not process the charge due to his mental health. So the one person I went to that had the power to arrest my rapist let it go. And I only found out now. So this whole time I thought I got closure. And now everything is coming undone mentally and emotionally for me. I feel so betrayed and hurt by my own family for lying to me for all these years. Only to find out there still supporting my rapist and his family. I feel so sick and dirty. Am I being unreasonable for going in no contact with my family?
I just also miss my brother.. I miss telling him that I have work now and about to graduate uni soon and all the things I normally tell him.. but the pain out ways the breaking no contact. What do I do?
Sorry for the long post

I am currently 18 and my mom was always overprotective so when I was a kid I couldn't climb on trees, she was mad when I went into the forest with my friends or did anything with even slight possibility of hurting myself or getting dirty. After some time I stopped even thinking about doing things like those. I even had this feeling of being scared of going to abandoned places or riding on my bike down the stairs. But recently I got a girlfriend who is rather reckless and was able to do each of those things and many more at least once and I am extremly envious of that. The fact that she can do those thing without thinking of getting hurt or creating the worst possible scenario in her head of what can happen, is what I am envious of. My problem is that it is making me feel pathetic and like a less of a man, because I would love to live like that and do things without overthinking them, but I just can't get these thoughts out of my head and I don't know what to do.

We are 10 family members who booked this trip through a tour agency. My dadi(grandmother) is 76 years old with operation in both legs and a 3 year cancer patient. Our tour started at 11th May, 2024. We did the char dham in proper sequence (Yamnoutri -Gangotri- Kedarnath -Badrinath). We had a proper itinerary and online bookings done by the agency.
First we had a hotel booking in Barkot. The hotel was okay. they are extremely possessive about their towels with a rule- 1 towel per room??? I'm with my dadi and aunty in one room. They probably have a laundry problem or something but every single hotel has this nonsense rule. Anyways, next day 5am we left for Yamnoutri. Got stuck in a 5km long jam(Yamnoutri is 35km away) Me and my dad decided to walk it out. We covered 20km by 3pm however it started raining and couldn't continue ahead. We stayed in a tapri for 4 hours until the rain cleared. Our family was still stuck in traffic and hadn't reached even close to us. Now it's 8pm. We were supposed to be done with Yamnoutri and go back to our Barkot hotel. We had to cancel our Barkot bookings(and the hotel manager put all the bags of our 10 people in 1 room messing up everyones luggage). We booked another hotel at Sayanchatti were our family members reached at 11pm. Police management was utterly trash. I think even they were surprised with the amount of overcrowding. Next day we finally reached Yamnoutri. About the trek- the pathway/trail is full of shit. And I mean literally full of horse-poop. There are 700-1000 horses. Even after getting a horse, we had to wait 40mins for parchi and additional 1 hour(while on our horse) because of horse-jam. Yes there is a traffic jam of horses ON THE TREK. We wanted to walk but seeing the people who did walk, I was glad we didn't. The path is almost 3 meter wide with pithu, doly/palki, horses and people walking simultaneously. People who walked got continuously hit by horses and had to dirty their shoes in horse poop. We reached the temple finally, did Pooja, etc and managed to return Barkot where we had to re-book for another night. Our itinerary was already messed up at this point and money was wasted thrice (previous booking unattended in Barkot, the new booking in Sayanchatti and rebooking in Barkot). There is more like the incredibly risky horse route, etc but that's inevitable. I'm gonna continue with Gangotri.
We reached Maneri after struggling in jams for 7+ hours. We also did Uttarkashi before that. Ok so here the police had stopped us at checkpost and said cars are going in batches and if they let us go the jam ahead would only get worse. Now our hotel was 5 minutes(3km) by car from the checkpost. I went walking 3km and reached the hotel and there was absolutely no traffic like we told the police. We even showed them on Google maps. Traffic jams are understandable, but not letting us go after talking to the hotel owner, seeing proof that we won't contribute to traffic, that was a bit triggering. From police side it was just plain dumb. The commisioner there would keep talking his egoistical nonsense, not listening to anyone. Finally the rest of my family reached the hotel. Same issue with towels, rubbish beds, never ending insects and super unclean bathrooms with no pressure in water(flush, jets, bath, basin). Anyways, next day 12am we left for Gangotri with zero sleep because we are already behind our bookings and trying to avoid wasting more money. Got stuck in jam till 6am. [Also another note here, we had 2 private cars and one of the drivers was sleeping drunk and almost hit me and my mom. He hit a tempo traveller and we told him go back to sleep.] Finally reached Gangotri at 5:30pm, did our Pooja and then got in line for Darshan. My dadi and I got into the senior citizen line because she is 76 years old and can barely stand/walk in lines. Tilll now in the trip I don't completely blame the police for what was going on. But here in Gangotri, if anyone is going I am warning you, the police is rubbish. They are rude, tired with the crowd and very harsh and worst of all lazy. When u reach the main statue to go darshan, it's continuous pushing and almost a stampede, you cannot carry a baby or a old person there, they are garanteed to get hurt and the police won't care AT ALL. If you are lucky u might get to see the main statue of Ganga Mata for more than 4 seconds. After that we got back to our hotel in Maneri.
Next day we left for our hotel booking (adjusted by our agency) in Phata-Mankheda. Don't forget to go to Guptkashi before entering Phata. Here too same issues like 1 towel per room, charging points at the most unreachable locations in the room, etc. But this was still better than Maneri. Next morning 3am we left for Sonprayag. There is a line for your registration approval which goes on till Sitapur (2km from Sonprayag). People will continuously try to break and enter the line and there is almost a stampede and lot of heated crowd. After registration, you can go join 1km line for government taxi(50rs per head) from Sonprayag to Gaurikund. Anyways, after reaching Gaurikund there is a 1km inclined gali then the horses start.Remember this part^. So here we again had to take a horse even tho we wanted to trek because at this point we were on 3-4hrs sleep everyday and our mental was very weak. We paid 6000rs per horse because it wasn't morning and the horse owner GARANTEED us all of my family members will be together, there will be one person per horse and that he already has the parchi. 5 of us had taken the horses and others went walking, palki and pithu. This path was again same as Yamnoutri or even worse. More horse-poop than ever, the sweepers there won't care and sweep the trash on you if u r in their way and continue doing so. People working there are literally illustrate and 'gouthi'. The horse owner didn't fulfil his promise either. There was 1 man handling 3 horses. The horses were going anywhere, hitting our legs on railings, other yatris,other horses etc. They told us to get down and walk 50m every time they saw police which is when we understood they didn't make a parchi. When we reached the top they demanded for the full money which they very very very obviously did not deserve for all their lies. When we said take 28k because anyways 2 of their men didn't come. They said give 30k else don't give anything at all. This childish, greedy attitude of theirs was again very triggering. We are not beggars and they are not doing us any favours so we still paid them the full amount. We are on a spiritual journey but since everything is about money from tourism, our spirit kept getting crushed. We had to spend the night at Kedarnath and our agency had booked us a dormitory. I warn anyone booking a dormitory, just don't. 30 unclean, continuously used beds, in one non- ventilation suffocating room with 1 Indian style toilet whose latch doesn't work shared with strangers. And the worst part is it is 1000rs per bed. I wouldn't pay 20rs for this rubbish service. At this point my spirit completely broke and I fell sick. I hadn't eaten anything and didn't want to. Next day my dad and I went down through horse at government rate (2300/). Others came in pithu and trek. Now came the worst part. The overcrord at the narrow 500m gali which i told u to remember above. Oh my God. After 22km Trek you are treated with this 0 management wild crowd. I had to take care of my dadi and fam from getting hurt. After reaching Gaurikund, again another 1.5km line with no special preference for senior citizens. Here people bribed the police 500rs to break and enter the line(happened right in front of me and my phone had no battery) When you reach the taxi finally, everyone tries to enter together and the police are just standing mutes. They are done with this💀. Finally got into the taxi, reached Sonprayag. Had to walk till Sitapur. Got a private taxi from there who demanded unreasonable price.We got mad and told him 4000rs till phata-mankheda(20km) which he then agreed to. Our hotel had changed to the worst possible hell of a hotel ever. I don't even want to talk about it. It has scarred me how people go about their business with 0 standards. At this point we just wanted to go home but Badrinath is left 😭
Ngl Badrinath tour was decent. Our hotel was in Piplakoti. Decent hotel called River view hotel. Roads are good. Only 4 hour line in Badrinath with heated crowd and 5 second darshan. At this point we are used to this so it's ok💀. Police was actually working and managing. Only issue we faced was directions from main road to the mandir and back. At night it gets very confusing.
Now I'd like to add, i haven't taken any names of hotels(except river view) or my tour agency because I don't mean any disrespect.
Uttrakhand is a beautiful beaitiful and amazing place with sceneries and memories I will carry with me forever. The sceneries while going to every dham are different and unique in their own way. Even just traveling from one dham to another by road is an amazing experience(excluding the jams).
I have some opinions- 1. Management is almost non-existent. Meet any Yatri and they will tell you the same. 2. Police are corrupt and lazy. Some try actively but that's like 10% of them. 3. The problem with hotels is that they are all on lease. I'll explain. The owner gives a person say Rahul their hotel on lease and asks for a certain amount per year. Rahul gets paid after that certain amount exceeds. Hotel bookings for char dham 6 months are always full. Rahul will always get this money and hence sees no need to maintain this hotel. So that's that. 4. Uttrakhand runs only and only on tourism and it is obvious. So as an individual tourist, you DO NOT matter. They don't care, they get people continuously. If your booking is cancelled there is always someone else to take it. You cannot talk sense to anyone running any type of service there. 5. Yamnoutri, Gangotri and Kedarnath roads for reaching there are narrow. Government should ban big buses permanently and is the best move they can make. These buses are 80% of the reasons for jams. They are improving roads but it's been 75+ years since independence so idk what they are doing. 6. Government should NOT take registrations when they cannot afford them. 27 Lakh registrations is not a joke. 2.8Lakh people in 4 days is not a joke. No one can manage this amount of people. Have a limit. People are spending lakhs of rupees coming from all over India for this and 90% of it is a bad experience. 7. Don't open all char dham together. This year's main issue was all 4 temples opened at the same date, 10th May. People were already ready and started rushing from 7-8th May. 8. Corruption with the helicopter. Bookings started 4 months ago. Opened the site. Site hanged. After 40mins of reloading, site opened and all bookings were full. All done by agents and sold in black. 9. Roadside parkings along the way to the chat dham also contribute heavily to traffic jams.
Advice for Future Yatris- 1. Don't come in May. I had a compulsion so we had to. But everyone here says that the best months for char dham is September-October before Diwali. 2. If you do come in May, don't do online bookings. You need to be flexible with where you are gonna stay. 3. Carry a towel per person. Hotels are extremely possessive about their towels. 4. Leave early for every dham if you are committed to do all 4 of them. I've seen lot of people give up in jams. 5. Get warm clothes especially lot of socks and bring medicines, etc. Rain coats are ok but u need a poncho. Rain coats don't cover your bagpacks while trekking and even if they do, they will stretch and might tear. 6. Private cars/taxi yatri, spend a bit more and get a comfortable car. You will spend most of the time in your vehicle. Tempo travellers are extremely uncomfortable and avoid them. 7. Take cold water baths at colder places as warm water baths bring the blood vessels to skin level making it more sensitive later. You have to be mentally prepared before taking a cold water bath. 8. Weather changes like anything. Suncap and goggles are a must in day time. 9. If u get sick/stomach upset have black tea and biscuits. 10. Do private Pooja at Badrinath.
Good things- 1. The food is amazing. It's almost as good as homemade food. You can always tell the cook how you like your food. Do try the Vegetable Maggi at highecolder mountains. It's available everywhere. 2. Sceneries are amazing and don't forget to carry a proper camera. Phone tech these days is good too and will make photo-frame photos. 3. You will always find people to talk to. If you happen to find polite people, say the hotel cook or a homeguard or other yatris or anyone at all, you will have a good conversation. 4. The pandits are good and will only ask you to pay them if u want to for the Pooja. Always pay them. 5. No phone range. It's good so you live in the moment and can enjoy the amazing sceneries :)
I'm trying to be completely honest without involving any type of hate here and trying to paint a complete picture of what my journey was like. We had to go over budget(almost double) because we didn't know any of this even after research. Our tour agency didn't warn us about anything either. Only thing that matters is that you enter the holy grounds. You can expect amazing sceneries but not an amazing darshan in May. It's been a bittersweet journey and I am writing this while omw to home. I hope y'all find this helpful and plan accordingly only if you are going in May or peak season. Otherwise you might not face much issues in September. Thank you for reading.

Hi all,
This is actually my first post on here. A little about myself I’m the eldest daughter (23yrs) in a brown household (love that for myself). I swear if I could be born again I’d love to be the youngest of the family (even thought I guess if someone’s narcissistic it doesn’t truly matter whether you’re the eldest or youngest)
Anyway, I’m currently in a country and I’m moving to the states and my mum and lil brother are staying there with my dad atm. My sister (18yrs) is busy with the most important exams of her high school(she’s in her last year) and me and my brother(he’s 22) just finished our university exams so we’re free! It’s just us 3 in this country rn and our flight back is in 30 days and we both need to sell all the extra stuff in the house that didn’t come with our rented house. We also need to pack all our clothes etc and clean this house.
So far I’m the only one who’s been working on selling stuff on Facebook marketplace and cleaning out cabinets in the kitchen and the garage etc. my brother spends the entire day on his computer playing games or watching anime. I don’t hate my brother but sometimes I get really close to it. If I was his mom I swear he would’ve long been disowned. He’s the most unclean person alive (he never cleans his own bathroom, he leaves his dishes in his room for me to come collect and clean, never picks up his own dirty clothes I have to do his laundry, I even had to clean his shoes after he went out yesterday simply because i couldn’t stand how dirty they were) I like to stay clean and keep the house clean too. The only reason he even leaves his room is to eat (Ofcourse I’m the one cooking)
The issue is my parents have both simply given up on him at this point which he uses to his advantage even more. He’s living his best life, goes out with his friends and doesn’t lift a finger in the house.
Despite all this my mum still calls me and gets mad at me for doing things too slowly and not putting everything up on Facebook marketplace quickly enough?! I’ve already sold two items on there but it takes a while to make sure the person coming to our house isn’t a creep. Yet, every time she calls all she talks about is how I’m not taking things seriously, how I’m so lazy, how I’ll pay for the flight tickets if I don’t sell everything beforehand. We needed to renew a card for travelling and there’s a long wait time on it (3 months) which I still applied for despite the wait but yesterday I found out that I could request it earlier if it’s an emergency with the flight details. However rather than being happy or thanking me for finding this out my mum simply gave out since I should’ve found this earlier and it’s my fault if we don’t get an appointment quickly enough.
My friends are all travelling and doing their own things in life and since this week is the last week they’re free they asked me to hang out but I can’t even tell my mom that “hey can I pls hang out with them one last time” because I just know she’ll flip. I’m so stressed about this whole situation and I literally feel so numb and sad all the time. I’m not a social person either but I wanna go out just to change my environment. I know so many people have it worse but ah I wish i could catch a break.
Even when I finally get to the states I know my parents are expecting me to work as soon as I get there. I just want a week off. Just to live my own life in peace and not stress about anything. What would you do if u were in my position?

TL;DR I (14F) don't know what to do about my friend/classmate (15M) who has love-hate (this is kind of an exaggeration) feelings for me.
We're in the same class and graduating 8th grade in less than a month and I'm asking for help because I don't want to be the villain in his life. I'm always stressed about hurting people and I only ever tried to be kind and honest, but I was stupid and I messed up this time. I don't want him to remember me as the exact thing I am not. I hate conflict and being mean. I would rather compromise than hurt somebody's feelings, but now I am just at loss.
We started talking more in October and then got pretty close in November and December. We'll call him D. We went out mid December at the mall to buy a book for school and I ended up buying Christmas presents. He helped me pick stuff for all of my friends and then we ate. It was very much a date-like hangout and we even walked arm in arm to the bus stop at the mall. He also walked me from the bus stop to my front door.
Fast forward to a day before our school's Christmas event. I told my friends that I kind of liked him and they convinced me to tell him. I told him and we texted some more at home then we agreed to talk the next day after the event. That evening I thought about it all and I realized that I wasn't ready for a relationship. I am 14 after all and I have the most important exam of my life so far at the end of the school year (this is just the schooling system in my country). The next day I avoided him and then at home I explained everything through text because I was too anxious to do it face-to-face. I was a wimp and I wish I had the guts to actually talk to him. I apologized countless times. I felt horrible and I can't even imagine how it was for him. I still kinda hate myself for it, but at the time I believed it was for the best.
I thought about the whole ordeal and it made me realize I might have attachment issues. I'm so obsessed with being loved (I grew up very lonely) that I feel a certain level of romantic attraction towards anyone who gives me a little more attention (especially men which I know is terrible). I also don't mean this as an excuse, but rather as an explanation to why I acted the way I did. I liked how D made me feel about myself, not actually him (this is horrible, I know). After I explained everything I felt he was cool about it and I actually thought that maybe things were okay. I told him i wasn't going out until after New Year's because I was very busy with family (I wasn't avoiding him purposely I was actually busy) yet for about a week straight he asked me 2 times every day where I was which was kinda weird and made me not want to go out at all even after New Year's.
Fast forward to this March when a common acquaintance of ours (not in our class) talked to D because he'd heard from a friend of his that D still liked me. D told this acquaintance that he does indeed still like me, that I look good and that he likes my big breasts (he said this in a much less respectful way). I was shocked because I couldn't fathom D still liking me after I'd been a total witch to him. We'd been ignoring each other mostly ever since December and even though we agreed to stay friends and I was very confused.
A few days later I was talking to a good friend of mine, D's deskmate, and mentioned the acquaintance who told me D still liked me. I just repeated something funny he said. I didn't say anything about D because he was right there, but D got mad (he probably found out I knew stuff) and broke a pencil. I'd seen that he had problems with anger and jealousy (he used to read my texts to my online friend on the other side of the world who is also a guy and got upset when I'd say they're personal and we weren't even together), but I didn't think it was that bad.
My friend (we'll call her R) told me she found out from another friend in our group that I was driving D crazy with telling his deskmate (a very close friend of mine) about stuff like weird fanfiction about my favourite singer (Gerard Way) and my variety of dirty jokes. From what R understood, he didn't like me speaking about sexual stuff (I haven't done anything like that, it's just an interesting topic to me) around him. I didn't understand why it would bother him, but apparently it did. Maybe jealousy? I don't know.
Nothing much happened until this Saturday when our whole class was taking album photos. The basic and typically "popular" girl in our class invited my group (the 7 emo girls basically) alongside her group (her another 3 people) to the new Japanese restaurant in town. We get along fine with them, though they kinda gossip about us sometimes, so we gladly agreed to eat with them. A girl in our group (whom D liked last year; she was much harsher in rejecting him - she blocked him on all platforms) is a tad bit closer to the popular girl, so the two of them made the reservation for 11 people at the restaurant.
During the shoot, D and another classmate that we're not very close friends with (they're chill, we just don't talk all that much) overheard our sushi plans and asked me if we were going. I said yes and tried to kindly say that we have a reservation already for 11 people and that they can tag along, but sit at another table. I felt bad because I've been excluded countless times in social situations in my life and I didn't want them to feel that. Their parents who were also there questioned me and I was too ashamed to lie, so I said that yes, we had a reservation. D and the other person didn't come in the end.
That evening I texted D apologizing and explaining that I was just invited and that I wasn't the one making the reservation. He said that it's okay and not my fault and he said that the other person was also not mad at me. He asked me why i was so obsessed with apologizing and I made a sharp remark I didn't think through about being annoyed at my friends' insensitivity about excluding them. He asked me why I was telling him all that and I told him to forget it. He encouraged me to continue and just speak my mind. I said no and told him I only had a question. I asked "do you still like me?" and I proceeded to explain why that would be impossible. He said I was changing the subject and I didn't realize that he was the one doing it in reality. He told me again to just speak and that nobody else will know whatever I tell him. I refused, but he somehow convinced me and I made a small confession about being lonely and feeling like only 3 people truly like me. It wasn't as personal as it may seem because I have much deeper feelings I have never told anyone, but I was still shocked that he somehow made me spit out things it takes a lot of hard work to get me to say as I am a very introverted and closed off person. For some context I was literally shaking and hyperventilating from anxiety throughout the whole conversation. I asked him again if he still liked me and he responded in the morning, completely ignoring the question and asking about a math test we recently took.
Yesterday evening, on Sunday, I talked to another classmate and friend (again not very close, but he's nice) whom I'll call L. L told me D had sent the group chat with the other person who I apologized to for the sushi thing, L and another classmate (I presume) screenshots of our whole conversation (even though he promised he'd keep his mouth shut). L sent me a screenshot of D saying I played him before and after I rejected him and said I manipulated him and only pretended to be interested in the things he liked just to get close to him (for the record, I'm a big listener, I love hearing my friends talk about their passions and interests). He also said he hated me. I was shocked and very upset because while telling me everything is alright and that the mess in my mind will get better, he was talking nonsense about me to others and sharing private information.
I told my friends about all of this. R said it's all my fault and that I did give him false hopes even after I rejected him and that I give him too much importance. She basically said I'm a bad person because I told D I wasn't ready to date anybody after saying I liked him. She probably believes I did it for kicks, just like D thinks, but I swear on everything I have that I'm just very dumb and I have no idea how to navigate human relations. I'm a massive people pleaser and it shows. Two friends said that it is what it is and another four said that it is totally not my fault and that I did not give him false hopes after I rejected him and that I barely even acknowledged him during that time (I also think so, but R said I kept flirting with him - I ignored him completely and he ignored me just the same so I am very confused as to what she deems "flirting"). They said I communicated clearly that it's not him, but rather a personal issue and that I am very sorry and I will respect his decision if he doesn't want us to talk or be friends at all anymore. I am in a dilemma.
I feel like a bad bad bad person for what I did and how I acted and I have no idea if R is right and that I did keep giving him false hopes or if all of my other friends are right and it's not my fault. I never thought that my behavior (existing in his perimeter) would be considered as flirting, but apparently R thinks otherwise. In R's opinion sending him two TikToks in 3 months and talking to him 3 maybe 4 times through text and another two face-to-face from December to now was too much attention.
So, am I a horrible person who deserves unhappiness or is D just overreacting and being manipulative and toxic? Please help this is really messing with my mind.

Today i got this e-mail.
Greetings!
I have to share bad news with you. Approximately a few months ago, I gained access to your devices, which you use for internet browsing. After that, I have started tracking your internet activities.
Here is the sequence of events:
Some time ago, I purchased access to email accounts from hackers (nowadays, it is quite simple to buy it online). I have easily managed to log in to your email account One week later, I have already installed the Cobalt Strike "Beacon" on the Operating Systems of all the devices you use to access your email. It was not hard at all (since you were following the links from your inbox emails). All ingenious is simple. :).
This software provides me with access to all your devices controllers (e.g., your microphone, video camera, and keyboard). I have downloaded all your information, data, photos, videos, documents, files, web browsing history to my servers. I have access to all your messengers, social networks, emails, chat history, and contacts list.
My virus continuously refreshes the signatures (it is driver-based) and hence remains invisible for antivirus software. Likewise, I guess by now you understand why I have stayed undetected until this letter.
While gathering information about you, i have discovered that you are a big fan of adult websites. You love visiting porn websites and watching exciting videos while enduring an enormous amount of pleasure. Well, i have managed to record a number of your dirty scenes and montaged a few videos, which show how you **** and reach orgasms.
If you have doubts, I can make a few clicks of my mouse, and all your videos will be shared with your friends, colleagues, and relatives. Considering the specificity of the videos you like to watch (you perfectly know what I mean), it will cause a real catastrophe for you.
I also have no issue at all with making them available for public access (leaked and exposed all data). General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Under the rules of the law, you face a heavy fine or arrest. I guess you don't want that to happen.
Let's settle it this way:
You transfer 2.4 Bitcoin to me and once the transfer is received, I will delete all this dirty stuff right away. After that, we will forget about each other. I also promise to deactivate and delete all the harmful software from your devices. Trust me. I keep my word.
That is a fair deal, and the price is relatively low, considering that I have been checking out your profile and traffic for some time by now. If you don't know how to purchase and transfer Bitcoin - you can use any modern search engine.
You need to send that amount here Bitcoin wallet: bc1qh5aex028jj339vdjkj5u3k37a72rkr33kqkars
(The price is not negotiable). You have 5 days in order to make the payment from the moment you opened this email.
Do not try to find and destroy my virus! (All your data is already uploaded to a remote server). Do not try to contact me. Various security services will not help you; formatting a disk or destroying a device will not help either, since your data is already on a remote server.
This is an APT Hacking Group. Don't be mad at me, everyone has their own work. I will monitor your every move until I get paid. If you keep your end of the agreement, you won't hear from me ever again.
Everything will be done fairly! One more thing. Don't get caught in similar kinds of situations anymore in the future! My advice: keep changing all your passwords frequently.

I knew it was a scam, but I wanted to make sure and check it on the Internet. so I copied the entire e-mail and pasted it into the browser, thinking that I would learn something, but only after a while I realized that this was how I could have left my data and been hacked. and now the question is whether I should go to the police or leave it because I'm exaggerating too much.

Hiii!! All the names are false :)
I(19F) started a relationship with Peter (19M) one month and a half ago. It's my second one and his first one. We met because his best friend, we'll call Lisa, wanted to present me to him from the beginning since she said we were really similar. First we started talking through instagram, then whatsapp, and in the end we met. All this time before becoming a couple was great and, even if he wasn't the best texter, you could sense his interest: he started conversations, didn't say if any girl was prettier than me, almost never forgot to say good morning/night...etc.
But everything changed when we became a couple.
Two weeks after, he started to have less inniciative, have less interest, prefered to say good night earlier to me so he would talk to Lisa on calls, would ask me less and less how I was doing...etc. It gave me anxiety: my last partner started to act like this when he stopped having interest on me and it all ended quite bad, and I started to overthink and have a lot of paranoia. At the end we talked about this, and he always made me know everything is alright and he was in love with me. So I stopped overthinking and got more relaxed.
But more time passed, and more things happened: * He started to tell me I had to loose weight and put some creams for my acne: I know, I don't have the best skin or body, but I'm never dirty or smell bad and I dress well. Peter was always pointing out my flaws and I repeatedly told him to STOP telling me I have to do excersice and improve my body since this is a REALLY SENSITIVE TOPIC to me (bullyed a lot bc of my body in the past). His answer always was that he was an honest person. Peter only stopped when he said I was more attractive before college and I stopped texting him for 2 days. I was MAD. Finally we talked things and since then he doesn't say more cruel things.

• He started to say when a girl was pretty to him: I actually didn't mind since I also find other guys handsome and is normal to find people attractive. The weird thing is how he would say it. (Ej: one day repently sent me an audio saying he stared to some goth girls and felt guilty and needed to tell me) (Ej: we saw a gothic girl and he stopped repently and said outloud "sorry but this is my weakness")
  
• He started to forget to say I love you: ok here I wanna explain we speak spanish. In spanish I love you can be "te amo" or "te quiero". The serious one is "te quiero", which is something only said to parents, brothers, really good friends or a spouse. He used to say "te amo" a lot at the beginning, but with the time he stopped saying it and even stopped saying "también te amo" (I love you too).
  
• He started to forget a lot to say good morning/night: always was busy and forgot, but never forgot to ask me for hot photos (that I don't send anymore lol).
  
• I was the one carrying all the conversations: we both aren't great at talking and I understand if he sometimes doesn't want to text. The thing is I was always the one who had to put all the effort in talking. For a period of time I decided to stop doing it and if he wanted to talk he'd do it...at the end, Peter asked me why I wasn't talking so much and I told him he didn't put any effort in conversations. His answer? "You know I'm not really creative doing it JAJAJA". I swear he was when we were knowing each other.
  
• Lisa: ok. She's great, the best person I've met in college. And I love talking a lot to her and laughing in class together. BUT they pass reaaaaally long time together, and she is really dominant and to a certain point manipulative. It wasn't an issue until one day we were in her car alone and she said out of nowhere "you know one of the reasons I wanted you to know Peter? Because I knew you would never ask him to be more time with you than with me". I got in shock, but didn't say anything about that (yes I know I'm an idiot :/).
  

I overthink a lot, so even if I know he isn't the most attentive boyfriend, I don't know if I'm overreacting or my discomfort is justified. He is preparing for the university entrance exams and I don't want to put pressure on him with these things...
TL;DR: my boyfriend changed his behavior towards me and I don't know if I'm overthinking or he is just a lazy boyfriend!