Fascism has a number of essential characteristics but the most distinct is palingenetic ultranationalism: The myth that the nation is an organic body composed of a downtrodden but authentic "common people" who have been betrayed, victimized, and derived of land and money by out-groups (especially Jews, LGBT folks, immigrants, and liberals), and the nation must be reborn and grown larger, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its downtrodden state through the cleansing fire of violence against those out-groups and their allies (especially their allies among the "common people") and the seizure of their land and property, regardless of how many "common people" must be sacrificed in this process of violent "purification"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalism
Palestinian nationalism has all these definitional features. Its central myth is that "the Palestinians" (whose language, Arabic, lacks the letter P) have been betrayed, oppressed, and deprived of their land and money by Jews, and "Palestine" must be reborn and grown larger, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its current corrupt theocracy through the cleansing fire of violence against Jews, LGBT people, and liberals (especially liberal Arabs who believe in co-existence with Jews and LGBT people), and all those who support them, regardless of how many human shields, child soldiers, and hospitals with bunkers underneath them must be sacrificed in this process of purification
This Palestinian ideological mythos entirely reverses victim and perpetrator
In the real world, there is an extensive and well corroborated archeological record (starting with the Merneptah Stele) showing the continuous residence of the indigenous Jewish inhabitants in the land between the river and the sea, but that Stele alone independently establishes their presence for at least the last 3200 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele
In contrast, the Arab-Israeli conflict started relatively recently, with the battle of Tel Hal on March 1st 1920, when an Arab militia attacked the Jewish-owned farms at Tel Hal in an attempt to find French soldiers, eventually burning it to the ground. Prior to that there was no organized violence between Arabs and Israelis in the region:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tel_Hai
The next incident in the Arab-Israel conflict was the Nebi Musa riots a month later, on April 8th 1920, when Amin al-Husayni (who later allied with the Nazis and was a big fan of Hitler) gave an incendiary speech from the balcony of the Arab Club, kicking off what resulted in an Muslim mob of around 60,000 ransacking of the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem:
https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/6709/palin-commission-report
That's what started the war. It started with Arab people committing mob violence against Jewish people and that has never stopped to this day. Genocide is what Nazi and Communist-inspired Arab mobs and armies have repeatedly tried to do to the indigenous Jewish people of the land between the river and the sea, starting from the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, and continuing on through 1948, 1967, 1973, 1982, 1987, 2000, and most recently on October 7th
They keep trying to eradicate Jewish people off the land their ancestors lived in continuously for thousands of years, they keep getting their asses kicked every time they try it, and they deserve it every time they do
This makes sense when you understand the history of the region, and how Arab-ness was imposed by force (along with Islam) by multiple relatively historically recent waves of conquering Muslim settler-colonists
The Ottoman Empire was the culmination of those waves of Muslim settler-colonists, and after World War I it collapsed and in much of the Middle East was followed by Pan-Arab nationalism, which was a remarkably Nazi project. The founder of modern Palestinian religious nationalism (Amin al Husseini) was a close ally and personal friend of Hitler
https://time.com/4084301/hitler-grand-mufi-1941/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-official-record-what-the-mufti-said-to-hitle
After waging and escalating series of genocidal pogroms against the indigenous Jewish people (culminating in their alliance with the Nazis in World War II) and getting their asses kicked, Palestinian nationalism (as distinct from pan-Arab nationalism) emerged a fundamentally Soviet project
That is not an exaggeration. 100 years ago most people in the region defined themselves as Ottoman, by their village, or by their religion. Arab nationalism is a relatively new socially constructed weapon, made up by unambiguous fascists (like Sati Al-Husri, Abdulrahman Badawi, and Amin al-Husseini) and communists (like Fawaz Taraboulsi or Suhayl Idris) to mobilize hate against and justify the murder of their imperfect but much more reasonable democratic enemies (who also happened by the enemies of the Nazis and Soviets)
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/liberation-arabs-global-left
Palestinian nationalism, as opposed to Arab nationalism, was created by the KGB after the repeated defeats of the USSR's Arab-nationalist proxies in 1948 and 1967. The blueprint for the PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow in 1964 and was approved by 422 Palestinian representatives hand-selected by the KGB. At that time, the USSR was in the business of creating "people’s liberation" fronts. The KGB founded the PLO as well as the National Liberation Army of Bolivia in 1964 led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia in 1965
The “Palestinian Liberation Army” was contrived by the KGB, much like the KGB devised the Bolivian National Liberation Army, Greek People's Liberation Army, Malayan National Liberation Army, etc etc. It created this Arab army in the early 1960s following the failure of the troops of various Soviet-puppet-ruled Arab states to destroy Israel. The KGB drafted the Palestinian National Charter and handpicked the 422 members of the PLO council that approved it. As the KGB's director said at the time, "We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel". Likewise, both the Palestine National Covenant and Palestinian Constitution were drafted in Moscow
https://stanfordreview.org/deception-palestinian-nationalism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_change
The most popular Palestinian faction currently, Hamas, pointedly opposes multi-ethnic pluralistic democracy. That's what Israel already is and they hate it. Hamas also explicitly opposes a two-state solution, wants to expel and murder Jews, and impose an Islamic theocracy by force
The founding covenant of Hamas, which they created their terrorist organization around in 1988, opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan. Quoting Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a constituent member (Article 2), the document proclaims, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. “The Day of Judgement will not come about,” it proclaims, “until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and k-ll him.”
Article 11 spells out why this annihilation of Jews is required. Palestine is described as an “Islamic Waqf”—an endowment predicated on Muslim religious, education, or charitable principles and therefore inviolate to any other peoples or religions. Accordingly, the territory that now encompasses Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is:
consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up … This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.
In sum, any compromise over this land, including the moribund two-state solution, much less coexistence among faiths and peoples, is forbidden.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231010215457/https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/
And Hamas has the support of somewhere between 65-80% of the Palestinian people
https://www.awrad.org/en/article/10719/Wartime-Poll-Results-of-an-Opinion-Poll-Among-Palestinians-in-the-West-Bank-and-Gaza-Strip
To understand the Palestinian strategy in this latest phase of their forever war, see here:
How Hamas Uses Civilians as a Weapon - The Dark Side of Clausewitzian War
https://deadcarl.substack.com/p/how-hamas-uses-civilians-as-a-weapon
Both Palestinian leadership and street have repeatedly acting as willing pawns, first of the Nazis, then of the Soviets, and now of the contemporary fascist Axis that includes Russia, China, and Iran. The historical Palestinian embrace of Nazi, Soviet, Islamist, and modern Axis fascism (and their rejection of democracy and equal rights) only makes their rationale for doing do so, and the nature of their project, more clear
In this context, Biden's support for Israel should not be surprising. Palestinian-ism is fascist, and everyone who understands and opposes fascism should oppose it

Had the PU France war yesterday. Not sure if I played too aggresively. I hired about 50k soldiers worth of mercs (85k army on 45k force limit). It's 1450, I'm in about 15 loans in debt (2580 ducats) with a negative income of 30 ducats per month, but I've got Soctland, the isles and France as my subjects. Surrender of Maine fired in 1445 March I think and I just started warring. War ended after 2 years.
But what I did after the PU was aggressively vassalised scotland, and fought all the non HRE minors (Brittany, Savoy, provence...) for war reps and cold hard cash to keep me afloat. Didn't take any land. You can declare with France claims. One war nets me about 200 - 500 ducats and the truce timers keep them from a coalition. I figured if I took so many loans for mercs, I might as well make the full use of it.
For some reason, burgundy decalred on my PU France subject Bourbonnais in 1450, so I took the opportunity to get them to remove me as a rival + war reps and war reps. Hopefully I can get the inheritance.
I also allied austria and castile. But I've got a pretty big coalition against me.

Dracula: World of War --- The Violet Reaper ---- Humans Don’t Make Good Familiars Book 1 ---- The Lonely World --- Discord ---- YouTube --- My Patreon --- My Author's Page --- ArcAngel98 Wiki ---- The Next Best Hero ---- HDMGF Book 2 ---- Jess and Blinx: The Wizard ---- The Questing Parties ---- Previous
It took a month for Zanwy to recover from losing her wing. The shaman said everything went well, but afterwards she developed a fever for three days, and couldn’t move from the pain for over a week. Even after the fever broke and the pain faded, she was still too weak to move, and could not eat for some time. I visited her every day, bringing her food, making sure she ate even a little, and peeling the chard scales off the wound to help it heal. The shaman never even returned once to check on Zanwy. Her parents and siblings stayed with her, but that may have only been because they lived there too. After she recovered her strength, we started making plans on what to do. She knew the swarm wouldn’t accept her anymore, and I never felt at peace within it, so our plan was to leave.
“Are you ready?” I asked Zanwy as we overlooked the cliff edge. Even though I could fly now, I was not strong enough to carry her, so she needed to climb down. Which, after a month of infrequent meals and not moving much, seemed risky. “We could wait a few more weeks. Until you recover.”
“No. I can’t stay here.” One claw after the other, her wing pressed tightly to her back so she didn’t catch an updraft and twist, her belly flat against the rock, and her head pointed to the ground, she climbed down carefully. Of course, I could have glided down, but I didn’t. It felt wrong now somehow. The rocks shadows had moved over an inch before we made it to the bottom, with the forest we loved so much as our first destination. We thought that maybe the first place we should go could be past the furthest point we’d gone together.
Walking through those familiar rolling grassy hills and past the jumper’s nests, I listened to these familiar sounds one last time. Taking it all in, I heard, of course, that penetrating roar of the swarm, but there was also the small wet splashes of the jumpers moving about, the small howl of the wind as it made waves in the tall grass, the crunch of that same grass under our claws as we walked, and Zanwy’s slight panting. She was out of breath, but was keeping quiet, hoping I wouldn’t notice.
Eventually, we reached the edge of the forest, and stopped to eat red-berries. We sat in the grass and ate the red-berries that had fallen out of the treetops. Once we’d had our fill, and juice dripped from our snouts, I asked Zanwy, “How do you feel?”
“Off balance. Walking is a lot harder than I remember it being.” Zanwy said, limping slightly.
“Can you climb?” I looked up to the branches we always run along.
“I… no. I don’t think so.”
“What if I helped you?”
“Maybe, but jumping along the branches would be hard.” A drop of berry juice ran down her mouth and landed on the grass as she licked her claws clean.
“Okay, we can just-”
“No, I wanna try.” Zanwy said.
Getting Zanwy up the tree truck was clumsy and hard. She rested her tail on my head as I climbed below her, pushing her up for support. It took a few minutes but she and I made it to the strong branches. The branch swayed with the wind, and Zanwy flared her one wing, before quickly realizing her mistake and pulling it, and herself, closer to the branch. Using my wings to balance myself, I walked over to her. “Should we go back down?”
“Not yet. Just let me…” She slowly stood back up, and kept her wing pressed to her body. The nub where her missing wing had once been pressed itself down too, mimicking the movements of the other like an invisible mirror. Pushing off, she jumped to another nearby branch, and landed safely on the other side. Once again, I heard heavy panting, but she couldn’t hide it as well right now. “See, I can do it!” Zanwy yelled excitedly as her tail swayed back and forth from the edge. I followed suit, and lept to the branch next to her. It took a while, but she found a rhythm, and we ran along the branches for nearly an hour, until the sun began to set.
“It’s almost night. Let’s find somewhere to sleep.” I suggested.
“Yeah, let’s head back to the ground.” Zanwy agreed.
“You don’t want to sleep in the trees?”
“No. Without my wing… I don’t wanna risk falling by accident. Do you mind sleeping with me on the ground?”
“Okay, let’s find somewhere safe.” We spent a few minutes looking around, and found a tree with a hollow spot near the base. It was cramped, but empty. By the time the moon rose we had already settled down. Zanwy rested closer to the back of the hollow, and I slept near the entrance.
“It’s cold.” She said, and yawned. Since we were under a tree, the walls of the hollow couldn’t be heated with fire directly. So slowly and carefully, Zanwy and I used our fire to heat the dirt under us instead. Small embers of grass charred, caught fire, and burned away, leaving the ground much warmer; enough for us to sleep comfortably.
That night, I dreamt of Zanwy. She was flying around, soaking up the sunlight with her wings. I was the too; flying right beside her. We danced in the sky together. Zipping and diving about. It was so quiet. It was just us; as a perfectly happy swarm of two. Later that night, I woke up feeling sluggish and dizzy. A moment later I realized how cold it had gotten, and that the heat from the ground had long since gone. Zanwy was still asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her up.
Controlling flames is easy… to a point. But once something is on fire, you don’t control how it burns. That was something my father taught me when I breathed my first flame. The grass had already burned, so I assumed it could burn again. Because of that, I thought it would be safe to use more this time. I assumed wrong. One breath was all it took, and the walls turned yellow with fire. I tried to put it out by beating it with my tail and wings, but that only spread it faster.
“Zanwy! Get up!” I shouted. Dragons may be harder to burn, but enough fire can char and blacken even our scales.
Zanwy startled awake, “what’s going on? What happened!?” The flames started creeping closer, so she scrabbled to her and we both ran out of the hollow. It didn’t take long for the rest of the tree to burn, and for the fire to spread to the nearby trees. We ran away as fast as we could, the smell of smoke in our noses, and the sounds of crackling flames left behind us. Once we’d gotten safely out of the forest, I told Zanwy what happened.
“I’m sorry.” I told her.
“I guess the forest isn’t as used to fire as our nests are.” She said. She was upset, but was trying to not let me hear it. “Let’s just find someone else to sleep for tonight.” It was dark, but we could both see well enough to spot a rocky outcrop.
“Rocks are harder to burn than trees.” Zanwy said, crawling into an opening between the rocks. We crawled inside, and made sure there was nothing that could burn this time.
“Looks safe to heat these up.” I suggested. Zanwy agreed, and we spent several minutes making the place warm. “Much better.”
We finally got to sleep again after that, and woke up to beams of light hitting our eyes from the opening in the rocks. I rolled my head away from the light, and covered my eyes with my wings. I was all set to go back to sleep, until Zanwy said, “Woah… look at this, Blinx.”
Sliding one of my wings down, I peaked an eye open. With the sun out, the cave we were in became a lot brighter. Enough to see that it was much deeper than we’d realized. Zanwy, who’d slept further in than I did, noticed it first.
“This hole is really deep.” She said. “And it gets darker inside too. Do you wanna go explore it?”
I stood up, and my stomach growled. “Sure, but let’s eat first.” We left the cave in search of food. Outside, we found three things. One, some tasty slitherers under a big rock. Two, some water under another rock. And three, a burned down forest. Well, not the whole forest, but a lot of it that we could see. In the distance, white smoke rose into the sky from a few different places. A lot of the grass around the rocky area had been burnt up too.
“I guess we slept through the worst of it.” Zanwy said.
“Are the fires out now, at least?”
“Yeah, the smoke it white, so nothing’s burning anymore.” The was a moment of quiet, and I thought about how lucky we were to escape that tree in time, and how careless I was.
“I’m… sorry. We almost got hurt because of me.”
“Forget it. Name one dragon who hasn’t accidentally burned something with their breath. Let’s just go look at that cave. That’s why we left, right? To explore?” She said.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
The cave itself was very deep, and the walls were made of stones of lots of different colors. As we climbed down, we had to squeeze between rocks, and scrabble with our claws to make holes as we went deeper and deeper down. Eventually, the light from outside didn’t shine, but we could still see fairly well, though not as far, and without any colors. The cave quickly went from colorful, to just shades of gray. As we went along, the sounds of our claws on the stone did something strange. The sounds started happening several times, and coming from all around us.
“Do you hear that Zanwy?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
“Listen,” I said, and tapped the stone with my claw. Suddenly, the same tap came from above, below, and beside us; like a tiny swarm was clattering all around the rocks.
“Let me try.” She said, and scratched a stone. Once again, the sounds repeated. “Oh wow!” We decided to go deeper, and find out what was causing the sounds to do that. Eventually though, we entered a big open area in the cave.
“What is this?” I asked, hoping down into the area, and looking around.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the village of another species!” Zanwy said. “Hello!” She cried out with her mind in a way that any species could hear and understand, but there was no answer. As we continued to look around, we found all kinds of things. There were strangely small hard clay nests all around, but they were filled with tiny rocks and ash and mud. There were also lines of white mud on the ground. I followed them, and they led to the center of the ‘village’.
“Find anything?” Zanwy asked, walking over.
“No, but I am getting cold.”
“Yeah, it was much warmer aboveground.”
“Do you wanna warm up?”
“No, you go ahead, I’m going to keep looking around.” She said. As she walked away, I used my fire to warm up the rocks below me. Suddenly, light started to shine from the mud lines, revealing that I was standing on a large, circle with a strange pattern on it. The light got brighter and brighter, and I tried to run, but found that I couldn’t move. “Blinx!”
“Zanwy!” Without warning, I felt dizzy, and I could move again. Then I heard the sounds of something behind me, but it wasn’t Zanwy. Growly, I tried to make myself look bigger, and threatening. Whatever it was, it stood on two legs, and was rubbing its eyes. In its hand was a broken tree branch, with a rock at one end. The cave village had been filled with light, but it came from all around.
“What the?” The creature mumbled, looking at me. “Are you a dragon?” I growled at the creature, while looking around for Zanwy, but she wasn’t there.
“Who are you? Where’s Zanwy?” I demanded. I let the flames build up in my mouth to show that I was dangerous.
The creature grabbed her head. “Telepathy. That’s new. My name is Jess. I’m a wizard. Who are you?”

M21 I'm doubting if it was strict parenting or if it was the drink but I want opinions. She has done a lot but I don't feel entirely satisfied either. But in the days I have drafted this, my doubts only grow.
As a kid my mom hawked over me and now things I wish I could have experienced did not exist, like going to a park or playground with a friend without supervision, whereas she did. Going to the gas station for snack I couldn't, when she asked her parents and was given a quarter when everything was a cent. Riding a bike was limited to the street we live on, and when I was able to leave, I couldn't leave the neighborhood when she walked for a while to make sure her friend got home. Once sitting on my bike at the edge of the sidewalk and she walked over, cursed me out for going on a different street and wouldn't believe me. I couldn't go to a friends house because I was going to do my homework how my teacher taught me instead of hers, which I didnt know and was not taught. At a friends house, she berated me for making her wait in the car for a few minutes longer than the arranged pickup time. By comparison to what it would have been like, it is a magical opportunity lost.
For most of my school years, all I did was go to school, do homework and play games. Despite catching on to lessons quickly, classes were something to pass, nothing more, not even for life skills. Have a B? Make it an A. I did. Is the project due? Make it better. Alright. Taking orchestra and painting was fleeting then and while I enjoyed it, it was only done for practice or assignment. Now I am upset that it was all I did instead of going out and experiencing life: going out with friends, finding a club or sport to do, or just big activity sessions. Never had a curfew because I never left home to start. I may have had fun gaming then, but I lament heavy over that now to where I will not touch one. A future education and the future as a whole I should have taken a lot more seriously than I could possibly have imagined. School did push for it, but I was a fool and did not care.
Other than the occasional family visit, I did nothing and learned nothing. Never taught to cook much, properly clean, shop for necessities, make right finances, etc. Future prospects was left to whatever I would choose, which I would put it later down the road. Never got any real world experience and just been sheltered for so long, both by my doing and my moms. No drive to do anything, nothing of a hopeful future, no being pulled out of whatever I was doing to learn anything or having skills necessary in the world today be incentivized. Aside from making sure I did well in school, I was left to myself.
She always has something to complain about. Streaks of mean and grumpy. Remembered somethings of what we were interested in but other times just an empty face. Who my mom is today is doom and gloom, speaking two different points that are showing the worst of her and nitpicking over every possible detail. Most of who she enjoys in media has an underlying toxic presence to them with name calling. Polarize, prejudice, politicize, judge and bias everything. Norway and Iceland? Too cold and mountainous, how could anyone have settled there? Germany? They all speak the same language and cannot understand anyone in a city that is 30 minutes away. That guy's accent she can't stand and defaulted to being generated, even though he sounds the same speaking Finnish. All for a better planet yet everything is wasted, trashed, or sent to China. Treat others how you want to be and from where I stand, seem like a backtalking coward. Couldn't have a water pitcher because "no one refilled it" to keep the filter going when I made sure to keep it plentiful. If she has a problem she will bring up the one exact same example related to the topic that I have heard plenty before. And most of the negative aspects of society happen more likely than they should. All while bring home a 24, 30 or however many count of budweiser a week at least. I imagine we only got along because I wasn't a brat anymore and did not try to upset her. Falling in line if you will.
Emotions bottled or maybe emotionally dead. The masculinity trap of what is the general expectation of "men". To express myself, to show emotion, to even cry is something I don't want to do out of fear of being seen, which is ironic given the code of the samurai. 6th grade she didn't remember to pick me up even though I said and called and a friend and his friend caught me being emotional and stayed around a bit to comfort me.
The fear that was put into everything. An actual quote went something as "If you get hurt, I'm not going to drive you to the hospital". Another "All girls are evil". And "that sounds too confrontational" when I asked neighbors to clean after their dog. Even questioning if my eyes doing something required a doctor for her to say that my eyes will fail naturally and something about her relative who had an eye problem and didn't see a doctor. Things that made me not do the kinds of things I want to do now. I have been so sheltered then and now that I want to go out but there is the ever scared part of me towards the unknown world. I feel I have been prejudiced into thinking such ways but there's no personal experience to back or challenge said thoughts.
Admittably, parts of me are glad I know what I have and want for morals and mindset, but its also a matter of temptation and theres still so much that I wish to explore. At times I feel I matured too quickly at the cost of a kids stupidity or innocence and now am too serious and heavyhearted for my own good. To be told how I've matured when there wasn't much to mature from. A part of me feels that I have taken after her cold, judgemental, selfish attitude and that makes me fearful to screw up any kind of friendship or relationship, and dreading that I could reflect that onto any child I may have no matter how far away into the future I do have one. I kind of want to hate her but I am so emotionally gone or warped that I can't. If I "rebel" now, or begin to, I feel that might get the fire started.
She would argue with my dad from time to time but then that continued on for days and it was a cold environment lasting days to weeks after a fight. Even prior to their fights, they rarely slept together in the same bed, let alone the same room. She would critique his employer and even his choice of friends. Once he woke up late, thus having us late to get ready for school and she began one for that. I don't remember the exact details but she once criticized him over a coat he got me. All while listening from the top of the stairs to even the bottom where I was covered by a wall. A few times we listened and we made noise that I think made them aware of us but that didn't stop them. Even starting in our presence where we would leave the room. It got to the point where he actually packed lightly to leave for the night or days and my brother and I stopped him just so he could be home. I wish I did let him go then.
I really do believe I could have had it differently if my dad was alive. He made such an effort. When I was in hospital at 4, he made the efforts to get me out and moving around. When I didn't know a swim style, he literally chucked me towards the deeper waters (I was scared, but he was right in the end, one of the fondest memories). He taught me how to use the mower and had a mini shop set up in the garage. I played with him so much and he got me into the complex games he enjoyed as I got older. For as rough we were, he was so gentle. I looked up to him then and even more than ever now. He made the effort to be one worthy of "Dad" and he was damn well worthy of that and no one could be more better for me.
"Faded gray are all the days of yesteryears So much time has turned to memories and to tears" -Valkyrja
I did graduate HS 3 years ago, did a summer program and since nothing. No job, education chances, or life plans. Even though I felt smarter, I was turned off of college simply for cost reasons and "feeding the rich" mindset. Last summer I began to look at my past and future with a whole new look with no physical change taking effect. First week into March this year I realized what I have been doing compared to how others are living through good and bad and I fell into depression hard. Now it persists with great off and on. Where I have been up at 9 in the morning to suddenly be up at 5 or 6 in the afternoon. Throughout the past 3 years, there was no making sure I was ok, no seeing how I felt, no finding out what I wanted to do. And I am still frightened of what may be out there, even when that is the key to the living that I want. I want to go, I need to go. But where? I leave for the good and better of myself, but I also leave behind this place I've called home, yet it's now so far from the one I want to remember with a fond memory. So much happens that seems to have been "normal" when it doesn't seem like it should. The same place with the same inhabitants in the same motions. No going out, no difference, no change, and VERY artificial. Nothing means anything anymore. To let how I feel about the previous years subside in me or blow over...
Always have been insecure, hesitant, second guessing. While others had spent their 18s, 19s and 20s going into the world doing many things, I've had the summer program at 18, nothing at 19, and two days in the big city to attend a concert at 20. Little noteworthy moments under my belt. It seems like love in the immediate family was not two ways or had to be earned. I have not grown. Who I am is not who I want to be at heart.
For 21, I know I should have more skills and be in better places, but theres nothing from anyone. No check-in, no advice, no motivation. Like "the birdling will leave the nest" instead of anyone preparing a boy to what is before him. Its not a snap of fingers or blink of an eye do I learn what is expected. On the grown up part, I feel heavily underprepared for the world and life. Far too long have I stayed and lived in my head. I cannot understand why I am still at home, a part of myself thinks to keep the peace but what peace needs to be kept? Nothing and no one is stopping me from leaving except myself and the thought that they will most definitely want to know where I am if I go, which I do not want to tell anyone. Or that I've been sheltered and not have realised the gates have been unlocked long ago. Things are not ok and I want to stop pretending when I leave. Even with Spring's green grass under a blue sky that ends the day with the orange sunset piercing the clouds to make them blue and pink do I feel grey.
"Watching to the night with tired eyes Waiting for nothing all my life" -Battle Against Time
I feel the kid within me, wanting to do those exciting things, yearning for any kind of companion or fellowship. What daylight reveries I can conjure to make him feel hopeful enough so he can shine soon. The things I want to do to feel happy. I want to water that little guy.
A lot of this I have remembered recently and still am connecting the dots. I already am upset at myself for not doing anything in life, but I want to be angry and I honestly hate myself for not seeing this sooner and listening to her for so long. Despite feeling broken and defunct, I still feel young enough but there's been so little done that it feels many chances are long gone. There is more freedoms I have that I do not know about and ones that I have had before that gathered dust. And now I am in a toss up between beginning college preparation now, leaving states or the country to act on these now childhood regrets. I don't want to be who I am now any longer. I just want to do something. And in between it all, confusion of what to do, how to feel and saddened that I am not who I once was or could have been.

I'm a history fan in general and love biographies in particular. Monarchs and other royals make excellent biographical subjects, and I wanted to share my thoughts on a few books. I hope you'll also share thoughts and recommendations.
In no particular order:
Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart - John Guy. I think this book has a few different titles, depending on where/when it's published, but under any name, it's superb. All historians should be great, thorough researchers, and Guy is definitely that. But he's also a wonderful prose stylist. He provides a sympathetic and realistic portrait of the tragic queen and her context.
The White King: Charles I, Traitor, Murderer, Martyr - Leanda de Lisle. Another gifted writer (her Tudor, an overview of the entire dynasty, is a rollicking read), de Lisle doesn't let Charles I off the hook in this book, but she does paint him as a multifaceted individual. I finished the book still thinking he was a disaster, but understanding a little better some of his decisions. Also, Cromwell and crew were just awful, but I didn't need this book to tell me that.
The Plantagenets and The Wars of the Roses - Dan Jones. I think alone out of the entire world, I'm not a fan of this authopresenter. I love writing with flair, but there's such a thing as too much flair, and I think we see this in these two books. I appreciate that Jones is writing for the nonspecialist, but still, if you know just about anything about the period and personalities involved, there's not much to learn here. These books are mostly flash with less substance. There is a place for storytelling - at its heart, before the Germans in the 19th century got to it, history is about storytelling. But there are better tellers of this particular story. If you want a great tale, I recommend Thomas Costain instead. A young George RR Martin read Costain's work on the Plantagenets and lists it as inspiration for A Song of Ice and Fire.
King Edward VII - Philip Magnus. Biographers have been mostly unkind to poor Bertie. Yes, he liked women. Yes, he slept with a lot of women. Yes, he had a special chair made for that purpose. But is that really all there is to the man who reigned over the British Empire and gave his name to an era? Philip Magnus doesn't waste a lot of time on the philandering. I don't think he's trying to cover anything up. Rather, in the grand scheme, it's just not that important. Instead, he speaks to Edward's role as a social icon during his long years as Prince of Wales, and then focuses on the King's diplomatic and constitutional work. It's a serious work about a serious man, and highly recommended.
King George V - Kenneth Rose. The author is definitely a fan of the King, but still doesn't do much to convince that one would want to spend much one on one time with this particular sovereign. George V was as dedicated to his duty and his empire as was his father, but the son was not nearly so interesting, personally. He turned stamp collecting into his entire personality. But I came away from the book admiring how George V did his job. He was honest and did his duty as he saw it. A boring king is much better than most of the other figures in charge of European nations in the 1930s. A great book, though I wonder why Rose did not mention that George was mercy killed. Either that came out after publication, or he thought it beneath the King's dignity. Not sure which.
The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy - Ben Pimlott. This is the only book I've ever read about Elizabeth II or her immediate family that wasn't mindbogglingly stupid. 99% of books published on Queen Elizabeth and now on King Charles III are just silly gossip, and Pimlott is perhaps the only author who attempts to address the Queen's constitutional role and the framework in which she existed. A fascinating book.
A note on Alison Weir: I actually owe a lot to Alison Weir. Like most everyone else, the Tudors sucked me in, and for me the hook was her The Six Wives of Henry VIII. But that was in middle school, and I've since grown, read more and learned more. A quote from Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch (if you haven't already, seek out his books on Thomas Cromwell, the Reformation, and Christianity) on Weir's Henry VIII: King and Court will suffice: "...hers is a great pudding of a book, which will do no harm to those who choose to read it." Her books won't hurt you, but there are better books.
The above are a few of the books I've read about the UK's monarchs. For various reasons these stood out. I'd love to hear which books are your favorites, or which to maybe avoid. Does anyone know of any books that will be published soon? I love something to look forward to.

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Chapter 168 – The moment to live and the moment to die
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„Jumping!“ an Ensign announced loudly as the Sun's view-windows very briefly flickered into a dark black only to go back to a full view of the ongoing battle basically instantly, having barely shifted the ship's position at incomprehensible speed. „Shot clear of allied ships.“
Vice-Admiral Kazadi tapped his finger on one of the armrests of the Commander's seat that still felt anything but comfortable for him to sit in as the tight grid of flashing lights reflected in his eyes within the twilight of the bridge.
“Fire,” he then ordered. Not even a blink later, a burst of colorful light broke into his view from the side of his very own ship, lighting up the entirety of the bridge even through the automatically tinting windows that absorbed a lot of the harmful light so the crew wouldn't flashbang themselves with each shot.
The relativity canon fire tore through the enemy ship at an almost literal instant with any travel time barely being conceivable to a mortal mind. In a large unload of energy that left almost the entire stern-side of the zodiatos ship as a molten mass of dispersing slag, the main propulsion was taken out. Simultaneously, the two accompanying cruisers had also taken their shots; with the 'Civil' taking out the engine of one more enemy vessel while the 'of the roses' had instead used its shot to disperse one of the enemy projectiles in order to buy their own hunter ships more freedom of movement. Those huge ones didn't go down easy from one of the hunters' smaller shots, so using one of the large canons to dispatch it took some of the heat off them.
Meanwhile, smaller targets on the enemy vessels, such as their own canons, were gradually taken out by said hunters, whose own fire – while able to be quite destructive if intended no doubt – could be used in a far more precise manner. With more and more of their canons failing, the protective volleys the coreworld terrorists could fire to hide themselves away also became less and less effective.
“Send the fallback-beacon,” Kazadi then ordered, since close quarter attacks became less and less necessary.
It seemed that the zodiatos had a hard time adjusting to the combat style of the human unkindnesses, however that didn't mean they should take any unnecessary risks. Even if a pilot could've been able to avoid all enemy attacks in a perfect world, he knew that his pilots were only human.
Casualties of their own had been comparatively minimal so far, however as if to prove him right about his thoughts, he could see on his surveillance screen how, just in that moment, one of their ships was taken out by an enemy craft.
He grimaced to himself and let out a mild sigh. One more family who would never see one of their own again...
It took a moment before all the ships were reached by the beacon. Due to the nature of their own combat strategies, as well as the particular nature of hyperspace, it was entirely impossible to effectively contact any of their ships directly while they were out in the battle. Therefore, the order to fall back had to be broadcast as a general signal, that each of the pilots could individually pick up as soon as they would keep still for long enough so that it could reach them.
By now, the battle was already won. None of the zodiatos' weapons were able to match the relativity canons in effective range and without the larger ships to back them up, their small hunters wouldn't be able to launch an offensive – shields or not. They could just stay back and fire until surrender now. As the signal was picked up, one of their ships after another disappeared in one last flash of hyperspace as they joined back up with the larger vessels in an enclosing formation.
“Prepare for the retrieval of some of those projectiles,” the Vice-Admiral then ordered as he hoped they would be able to track some of those spent shots their enemies had fired. They would have to figure out what kind of tech that was.
In such a small-scale conflict, it was more than manageable to face it. However, it could offer some difficulties in larger fleets – especially since they didn't know how far this kind of tech could possible be expanded and refined. It was quite possible this was just some form of prototype.
While that order was followed, one of his Lieutenants suddenly spoke up.
“Sir, we have an incoming transmission from the planet. Civilian. Not encrypted, but they seemingly had an access code,” they related quickly.
“Is the earlier interference cleared up?” he immediately asked back, to which the answer was positive. “Put it through then,” he immediately ordered as soon as he heard that.
He rubbed one of his tight braids between his fingers as he waited for contact to be established. Once the line was clear, things remained quiet for a moment.
“What are we best at?” he then asked the silent line, his chest tightening ever so slightly, even if he didn't have to wait long for a reply.
“Topping from the bottom,” a very familiar voice replied from the other end, sounding incredibly strained but most certainly alive.
The code phrase was an old in-joke about something that had been said back during humanity's first contact with the tonamstrosites due to a slightly choppy translation. However, it more than sufficed here to tell Kazadi that the person on the other side of the line was not only genuine, but also not in any immediate distress – at least none that was brought onto her by someone else.
“Good to hear your voice Ma'am,” he greeted the Admiral after taking a brief moment to allow his heart to settle.
“The pleasure is all mine, Celestin,” Admiral Krieger replied in between heavy breaths that sounded like a combination between being ready to collapse and absolutely willing to tear anyone's throat out at a moment's notice. “Excuse me for the unorthodox contact, my own means of communication have all been destroyed. Update me.”
A brief smile played on the Vice-Admiral's lips.
“No problem, Ma'am. Things are under control up here, but multiple allied coluyvoree ships were destroyed and we suffered some casualties of our own which I will take full responsibility for,” he quickly complied. “By now, the enemy crafts have been largely disabled and our fighters are falling back. What's the situation on your end?”
There was a bit of a grunt from the other side of the line that seemed unrelated to the ongoing conversation.
“I'm sure you did everything by the books,” Krieger then replied a moment later. “Down here the situation is precarious but momentarily under control. We have an unconfirmed number of casualties after an attack with an unknown weapon. All squads are either KIA or unresponsive. We took down six enemy combatants but can't confirm if there's more. I'm going to need clean up, rescue teams, as well as pickup for me and two large offworlders asap.”
Celestin nodded.
“We're in a stable position, so we'll jump teams down right away. Hold out just a minute more,” he assured her while already signing in the necessary order to the troops they had on standby. “How bad are your injuries?”
There was another groan of pain from Krieger's side.
“Crushed cranberries,” she replied after a long moment that sounded like she needed to catch her breath.
“Copy that,” Kazadi replied with a grimace. “Sending muti-team with the evac.”
“Copy that,” Krieger confirmed. “Krieger out.”
With that, the call was hung up. On his screen, Celestin could see how the preparations for dispatch of the requested teams was already well underway. Jumping towards a planet at FTL was generally discouraged by the Galactic Community. However, this was an emergency. They couldn't wait for normal re-entry.
After watching the reported progress for just a moment, his eyes returned to the ongoing battle. He watched the enemy ships as they hovered dead in space, unable to maneuver.
They seemed to have recalled their own fighters back in order to form some sort of protective wall around the 'mother ships' with their own small shields. Obviously it wouldn't be very effective, so it seemed like needless cruelty to make their own soldiers get in the way of the incoming fire. Something within Kazadi told the Vice-Admiral they weren't going to stand down.
“Sir, we're getting some strange hyperspace-readings,” his Lieutenant suddenly announced, making him look up.
“Weapon-grade?” he immediately asked, knowing they had less than a moment to react if it was. However, he also figured there would've been more urgency to their voice had it been so.
“No, Sir. Travel-grade,” the Lieutenant quickly replied. “However the readings are unusual. It seems like they are creating a stretch solely around themselves.”
Kazadi's lips shifted a bit as he took that in and he briefly ran a hand over his mouth in thought. “Prepare to collapse,” he ordered. “Maybe they will attempt some sort of running start. We can't let them get away.”
Right then, the light of what was happening had not yet caught up to the spacial distortion that their sensors were detecting, meaning the ships still looked perfectly normal – if damaged – when he looked at them. However, they were planning something. And that made them appear all the more ominous.
His mind quickly went through their own protocols. The U.H.S.D.F. employed hyperspace in nearly all its possible facets in their tactics. If it was even close to sensible, they would have something that was akin to the maneuver their foes were attempting to execute right now.
A bubble of hyperspace solely around their ships...a dodge? Hardly, there was nothing to dodge like that. An attempt to hide away? No, they knew human ships could collapse hyperspace from the outside easily.
Before him, the windows of the ship once again automatically dimmed, protecting the crew's eyes as the colorful light of the created hyperspace-bubble finally reached them.
“Hyperspace collapsed!” the Lieutenant then suddenly announced, causing Kazadi to blink in surprise as his eyes shot up to his screen. He hadn't given any order to collapse it yet. But indeed, it was gone. For a moment, he thought that the stress had caused his officer to use the wrong term in haste, however no, they had been completely right. It had not been dispersed in a controlled manner. It had collapsed.
In a mild 'thud', the Vice-Admiral's fist descended on the armrest, hand firmly clenched into a fist.
“Those cowardly ba-” he began to growl but then bit his tongue and released a low, almost grunting exhale while his fist quivered from momentarily clenching tighter. “Prepare to search for survivors,” he instead said in a much more controlled manner a moment later. “Preserve lives.”
“Yessir,” multiple of his officers echoed back as he looked out of the window, where he could still see the ghostly afterimage of the hyperspace bubble linger for a bit longer. It was always a strange feeling, seeing someone in the distance who was already dead...
–
With her view darkened and her goggles momentarily pulled off her eyes, Shida stared at the glowing bubble of impossible colors. Her sensors had already told her what was about to happen at any moment now, however her eyes still heavily constricted as they finally witnessed what unfolded themselves.
In what could be described as nothing else than a 'snap' , the light of the hyperspace-stretch instantly condensed down into its original size as the universe all at once remembered that the laws of physics were a thing that existed and brutally forced space to conform to them once again – no matter what may have been in between it and its original form.
Anything within the strange, round stretch was mercilessly ripped along with the convulsion, forcing all the injected warships and fighters into the single, small point that the stretch had been generated from. Though not even a faction of a second later, it all exploded outwards again as the megatons of mass realized that they could not all exist in the same place at once, since the energy of the event was not quite potent enough to press it all into a neutron star or singularity.
No longer recognizable blotches of undefined, white-hot matter were instantly scattered in all directions like some sort of micro-supernova that accentuated the sometimes still burning nano-stars that the earlier battle had created from the opposing fighters.
It was almost pretty...but still, Shida couldn't help but let her ears hang as she wondered how many of the enemy combatants had known about the decision to end things this way. Had any of them even been asked?
Even if it was the far more disturbing answer in a way, Shida almost hoped that this had actually been one mutual suicide-pact instead of the decision of one single commander to choose death over dishonor. Especially while sitting in a ship that was technically under the command of someone else herself, that was certainly the less immediately petrifying option – even if it would probably spell far worse things in the long run.
As she said there, the 'shockwave' of the collapsing hyperspace suddenly hit her, spreading out through space even without any medium to carry it and rocking her ship gently while also penetrating all throughout her body. Of course the earlier relativity fire had already caused similar ripples and she was therefore quite used to the feeling, however these ones sure felt a bit more severe than those of the U.H.S.D.F.'s own canons. It was like she felt her own body distort while also remaining perfectly in palace – almost like she was a stiff container full of water that someone had given a heavy smack from the side, riling up the liquid without it actually having any place to plash to.
According to everything they knew, this phenomenon felt incredibly odd but was entirely harmless to living beings – which was instinctively very hard to believe when one felt it on their own body.
However, her dwelling thoughts were, perhaps luckily, interrupted as she – or more precisely one of her scanners - picked up on a peculiar signature that one of the scattered debris pieces was sending out.
Well, it was 'peculiar' to her that there was a signal at all at first, however then she quickly realized what it actually was. This particular signal was hammered into any pilot's head six ways to Sunday, and so she reacted relatively quickly when she glanced at the grid and realized that she was the closest ship to it. Firing up her engines, she turned her ship on the spot in a slight drift before activating her generator and making a jump right behind the flying object.
Once there, she allowed her computer to take aim for a second before firing out a harpoon that quickly struck the flying debris and latched her ship onto it through a long cable, allowing her to pull the thing along with her after slowly using her backwards thrusters to disperse its speed little by little. Pressing the indicator of her communication, she then spoke up.
“Scratches to Sun,” she announced. “I just recovered a black box. Permission to return for inspection?”
The black boxes of modern ships truly were among the most ridiculous pieces of tech out there, in Shida's humble opinion. Built to withstand almost everything that would likely take a ship out through a combination of brilliant engineering and extremely flexible material that only worked in its indented manner on very small scales. Well, very small compared to the ships they were built into. The things were about half the size of Shida in the end. For many years, armies of scientists had attempted their very best to make this same sort of defense useful in ways that could maybe be used to protect actual people from catastrophic events – but to no avail so far. For now, the only thing those little marvels could allow to survive even something as ludicrous as hyperspace collapsing was information.
“Permission granted, Lieutenant-Commander,” the answer came almost immediately. “Return to hangar three.”
“Copy,” Shida replied. “Scratches out.”
With that, she moved her ship around and prepared for her jump back to the Sun. Hopefully this thing would give them some answers on what exactly this whole thing was meant to accomplish...
–
Far away in another part of the galaxy, a pair of mildly glowing red eyes was laser-focused on a large screen that was just one of many that had merged all over Nedstaniot-Station to broadcast the breaking news to anyone willing to lift their eyes at a slight angle to look at them.
An attack on a coreworld. And not just any coreworld. Gewelitten itself. Something like this hadn't happened in...well, Curi didn't even know how long.
Details seemed to still be incredibly fuzzy as the battle so close to the coluyvoree homeworld had either just happened or was still happening at the moment of the broadcast, however what few details were known were already repeated on end in an endless scroll of text that was meant to catch as many people up to speed as was at all possible through the medium of television. Obviously the same emerging details could already be looked up on the net as well to find them in a more digestible format than the endlessly moving text next to the not exactly top quality footage of the occurring conflict.
However, despite the speed with which it went by, Curi had no problem following the scroll as they stared at the screen intensely.
“Attack was unannounced. Multiple Gewelitten fleet ships destroyed. Official sources confirm: Humanity NOT the aggressor. Attacking ships presumed to be of zodiatos origin. Unknown weapon technology deployed during the attack. U.H.S.D.F. ships engaged in combat after aggression. Myiat delegation ship confirmed unharmed. Attack on government facility on planet simultaneous to spacial attack. Councilman-Candidate Aldwin confirmed unharmed. Status of U.H.S.D.F. General Krieger unknown. Status of Gewelitten Governor H. Cierrophai unknown. Status of Acting-Councilman Afuéhner unknown. Allied coreworld defense fleets activated and inbound. General alert level raised to 8. Hyperspace-travel shut down around the system.”
“Mother, oh no...” Mueen said with absolute shock in his eyes, both of his hands clasped over this mouth as his wide pupils quivered in fear from what they witnessed.
Curi could understand his worry. Though Moar had supposedly been with James, so she would probably be fine. The cyborg was certainly more than just a little relieved that James was already confirmed to be safe. Though the idea that Admiral Krieger's situation was unknown was more than just a little disconcerting.
Though despite the supposed lack of their commanding officer, it seemed like the humans had decisively won out in the battle outside of the coreworld's atmosphere; unknown technology or not.
Given the sub-par footage that some drone was likely recording from quite far away from the actual conflict, it was very hard to tell just what sort of weapon the unknown but presumed to be zodiatos attackers had unleashed there. It looked like some sort of emanating energy that destroyed what it came into contact with but also interacted with it as if it had a physical presence.
Curi had never seen anything remotely like it before – not even in their wildest theories – and their mind immediately wanted to go wild with speculations and ideas about how such a thing might work now that they knew for a fact that it was possible from seeing it with their own eyes.
However, the cyborg pulled themselves together and successfully forced the briefly almost overwhelming desire to focus on nothing else down as they shifted their gaze slightly away from the screen to look over at their other currently nearby company.
Then again, as much as they knew they couldn't let their guard down around him, Reprig's eyes were just as immovably attached to the large screen as Mueen's were as he witnessed the unfolding battle with quivering horror.
His trunk was wiggling wildly in his face and one of his hands nervously scratched over the plate of the table they were all sitting and standing at and on, right next to a piece of paper with a hastily drawn sketch of a spring-like mechanical leg that was inspired by what humans called 'running blades'. The Warrant Officer's weapon also laid on the table, pushed a but further away from his hand so he wouldn't be able to easily reach it.
Though despite his focus, Curi couldn't quite help but speak up after a moment of watching him. “A coreworld attacking another coreworld,” they said to the man, who they knew either had to know far more than they did about this – or would be far more invested in it unfolding. “This is unprecedented.”
Reprig seemed to notice that they were talking to him, however he still remained silent and stared a good few moments longer before finally pulling his gaze away from the screen.
As his eyes met theirs, he looked a bit sick. It almost reminded the cyborg of one of the first interactions they had with the man, back when they nudged him slightly to hand his spy-device back to him after he tried to hide it in James' cabin. Though this time, the cyborg was quite sure that they were not the reason why the man seemed like most of his blood was currently rushing into his stomach.
Could he actually be shocked about what was happening? Was this not part of the plan?
“Unprecedented doesn't even come close to describing it...” he mumbled and couldn't hold the cyborg's gaze for long, looking down to the table's plate instead. “And these aren't just any coreworlds. Osontjar and Gewelitten have been allied for an unimaginably long time. The thought that they would even think of attacking each other...what sort of madness could've caused something like this?”
Curi was the first to admit to themselves that they were far from the best at reading people. If someone with even a modicum of skill in acting wanted to make them believe something untrue about the person they were talking to, they would never deny that there was a good chance of that person succeeding.
Still, Reprig's reaction felt...genuine to them. As if he had actually never expected something like this to happen. Not in a million years.
Maybe it was just skillful acting. And Curi knew that they should have been suspicious like that. However, despite everything he had done, they couldn't quite bring themselves to suspect that he was lying at that moment.
“I know it is unlikely you will give me an honest answer, but-” Curi began to say, however Reprig was more than able to anticipate what they were going to ask and replied long before they were finished.
“No. No. Never,” the sipusserleng said, shaking his head heavily and standing his trunk up while making a denying gesture with his hand that was so brash that he actually knocked his crutch off the small outcrop in the table it had been laid down on. “This must be some absolutely deranged people, no two ways about it. To attack a coreword...”
Curi noticed Reprig's gaze briefly twitching down, his eyes jumping onto the personal assistant strapped to his lower arm as if he suddenly got the urge to use it for something.
Curi suspected he likely wanted to call someone; question them to make extra sure that they had, in fact, nothing to do with this. Though the sipusserleng suppressed the urge and pulled his eyes away, bringing them back up to the screen.
Just at that moment, the implosion of collapsing hyperspace suddenly lit up the footage moments before the glowing remnants of what once had been the zodiatos ships were scattered across the star-system.
Mueen mumbled something in his home's language as his eyes remained affixed to the screen. Curi couldn't even begin to guess what he was saying. However, his voice sounded pleading.
“Suicide instead of surrender?” Reprig meanwhile mouthed breathlessly as his nervous tick of excessively licking his trunk began to show.
Although he had often been otherwise employed in recent times, Curi could see it in the man's eyes that he was still, in a way, military at heart. He knew the general values and doctrines that were conveyed to the soldiers of the Communal Military, both inside and out. And the idea of someone choosing death like this...it seemed to rock him to his very core.
Slowly, he turned his gaze over to Curi. His eyes were almost pleading with the cyborg, even if they seemed to already know that his next question would be asked in vain.
“Could it maybe have been the humans and their-” he began, but this time, it was Curi's term to cut him off after anticipating what was coming.
“While humans very much employ the collapsing of hyperspace as a tactic in war, the process is not invisible – or even subtle. Had the human ships caused that collapse, it would've been noticeable,” they explained succinctly. “It could've still been a mere unexpected failure of the hyperspace generation, of course. However, with the rarity of such events, the timing seems...unlikely.”
“They weren't even trying to generate a real stretch...” Reprig concurred dejectedly and left his head hanging, his trunk also sinking down limply. “I can't even imagine- Well...I hope they will at least find peace now, away from the madness.”
Curi paused for a long moment, staring at the Warrant Officer some more. Admittedly, the cyborg was a bit confounded at something. They knew for a fact the man had put his own life on the line for his orders, with a very real chance that they would lead to his death, more than just once. And yet the idea of being ordered to die seemed to disturb him. They couldn't quite figure out the difference that led to the results in reaction being so incredibly different, however it was still very clear that there was one.
And it seemed to hit the man hard.
Self-admittedly, Curi didn't exactly pity the man. They didn't quite have the capacity to. They knew about so many horrible things he had done that simply seeing him distressed was far from enough to stir such deep empathy for him within them.
Yet still, they weren't left entirely cold by it either – and if it was only because he seemed to be affected by these events in the ways a, for a lack of a better term, 'normal person' would be. He was shocked at the sudden, seemingly senseless violence, and concerned about the people involved.
Granted, it was likely only because they were people he considered worth being concerned about, yet still, the reaction was so...'normal', in a way they didn't quite expect from someone with such a capability for unceremonious acts of cruelty and violence. Even this person who had tried to kill them, or at least had been entirely comfortable with them getting killed, was capable of such a reaction.
And Curi...wasn't sure if that made things better or worse, if they were being honest.
It felt better because there was the capability for empathy there, however...it felt worse because they felt how they had been and likely still were willingly denied said empathy.
He could have cared...he just didn't want to.
Curi shook their body heavily, causing mild sounds from the engines running their legs' movements from the sudden force as they tried to shoo away emotions that they really didn't want to be feeling at that exact moment.
The thing that mostly kept them from following up on some of their uncomfortably aggressive thoughts at that moment was the fact that Mueen was still with them, the worry for his mother written across his features like a deep engraving in a metal plaque. He did not need anything like that around him right now, that much was clear.
Slowly, they moved over to him and reached up one of their long legs to run it along his arm while he still covered parts of his large face with both hands.
“She will be alright,” Curi then assured the dark-furred rafulite, switching from their usual voice box to their more “melodic” one to put on a gentle, calming tone. “She is stronger than she seems.”
Inhaling deeply as his nostrils flared, Mueen closed his dark eyes and swallowed heavily, taking his gaze off the large screen for the first time in many minutes while slowly hanging his head down.
“Yeah,” he said, seeming to force hopefulness into his tone. “Yes, she'll be fine. She made it his far. This won't get to her.”
Curi nodded with their entire body and continued to run the tip of their leg along his arm.
“She will be,” they repeated, both to the man and themselves as their own eyes moved upwards, their gaze falling back on the battlefield riddled with burning remnants of matter. “I'm sure of it.”
–
Never in his life had James felt so drunk and so sober at the same time. His mind was entirely clear, running a light-year a minute as it desperately tried to simultaneously process all the admittedly little information that he had in his current situation AND to not absolutely freak out while doing so somehow – a task he was ludicrously failing at. And it did NOT help that his body could barely keep itself on his own two feet.
He had avoided completely fainting by a hair earlier after reminding himself that, instead of being terrified for Shida's life, it would be much more fair towards her to simply focus on trusting in her skills to carry her through. However, that was barely a little patch on an enormous crack in his facade as he couldn't help but go over and over and over the fact of how much worse the situation that she needed to jump into here had been for her simply because it was his damn birthday and they wanted to indulge over it. He should've stopped that, but noooo, he just had to go and let himself be swayed so damn easily, as if he was still that little boy following Koko around whenever she visited the compound to try and get some attention.
Of course, a quiet voice in the back of his head tried to politely remind him that Shida had, in fact, not only taken part in the festivities as well but also encouraged him to do so, however it was easily overpowered by the screaming rest of his mind.
He briefly glanced over at the only somewhat conscious Commander. When she said that they should match each other's drinks, that should've been the moment he stopped. She was like half his weight, what the hell was he thinking?
His mechanical hand shot up, heavily gripping a fist full of hair as he tried to force himself to focus. What's done is done. There's no changing it. He should focus on anything else right now.
Though as he painfully pulled on his hair like that, his eyes suddenly went wide as he noticed something. Or, more precisely, didn't notice something.
When had the alarm stopped? Just now? Or had it been out and he just hadn't noticed?
Letting go of his hair, he lifted his face and looked around. If the alarm was over, then that meant...
The uncoordinated movement of soldiers reaching for their phones and radios with different speeds went through the room, and after brief confirmation, the uniformed forces began to move, having seemingly gotten new orders other than guarding the safe-rooms. Apparently, the threat was over.
James quickly fumbled for his own phone, his barely coordinated hands struggling extremely with the simple task of trying to call one of his contacts – much to the frustration of his already cleared mind. His finger trembled as he swiped it across the screen, trying to get it to the right damn place to make a simple god-damn call.
However, he froze in the motion at a quiet sound that was immediately followed by a sudden stir behind him as multiple people seemed to move quickly. And after just a second, James was among them as well.
Nearly tripping over his feet, he damn near threw himself onto the sickbed that didn't stand too far away from him, his phone momentarily forgotten and eyes wide open as they stared over at an endlessly familiar dark face, that however had life in it for the first time in what felt like an eternity at that moment.
Slowly and twitchy, Nia's eyes fluttered open as she let out quiet groans while mildly stirring in place while her doctors and nurses hurried around her and quickly began to take her vitals.
After flinching heavily as a flashlight was quite suddenly shone into her eyes to test her photopupillary reflex, she began to move even more. Meanwhile, James and Tuya were basically pressed shoulder to shoulder close to the foot of her bed, the only thing keeping them from dashing right up to her face being just enough awareness to not get in the doctor's way.
Still, although her movements were very slow, stiff, and groggy, Nia eventually lifted up her head, looking around with still somewhat hazy and half-closed eyes. But that didn't stop her from smiling when her gaze fell onto the two who so nervously stood at her bedside there.
“Hey,” she said in a quiet, croaky, but still very much cheerful voice as her unkempt hair fell down both sides of her face.
Though James didn't see much more than that, because just about at that moment, his vision was entirely taking away by welling-up waters sweeping him along.

My husband was recently given a rating of 90% (this is our initial filing) but there are 3 conditions still being evaluated- Hearing Loss, Tinnitus, and Sleep Apnea. Sleep Apnea is the one I am concerned with. He has OSA and uses a Cpap prescribed by the VA.
-His sleep problems began while he was stationed in Iceland just a few months before the incident that caused his PTSD- it was basically the perfect storm of excitement / exhaustion / light for 20 hours per day causing hyper-alert insomnia / palpable Cold War Soviet Nuclear fears / declaration of DEFCON 3 and then a terrifying flight with multiple missile alarms (where he and the entire crew thought they were going to die) over the largest Russian warship fleet that had ever assembled.
So anyway, that’s the background. I believe the holdup is proving that his sleep problems / sleep apnea started then. They rated him high for PTSD and part of the reason is his sleep issues / nightmares / insomnia. We tried contacting his old roommate on base in Iceland for a Buddy statement (he used to tell my husband to go to bed every night because he was bouncing off the walls) and he said he would write a letter but we haven’t heard from him since (3 mos). I understand, Maybe he has his own demons and doesn’t want to think about it. Anyway, we can’t seem to find anyone else he served with who would actually know him well enough to get a letter and I don’t know how else to connect it to his service. We have an appointment with VERA rep tomorrow, any suggestions would be very much appreciated. If not, I hope anyone reading this is doing well today.

The Big List

Prices are firm. Please only redeem the portion of a code you are paying for. All codes are for immediate redemption. All Disney & Sony codes include points unless otherwise noted. As of 4/01/2024 all Google Play options have been removed from Disney codes.
I accept Cashapp, Venmo, Zelle & PayPal F&F without any notes. Comment & pm if interested. Thanks!

🦝

MISC

X-Men Trilogy HD [X-Men, X2 & The Last Stand] $8 (MA)

🦝

$5 4K UHD

John Wick 1-3 (iTunes)

🦝

$4 4K UHD

Big Lebowski, The (iTunes/ports)
Black Panther (MA + 200 points)
Captain Marvel (MA + 200 points)
Despicable Me [2010] (iTunes/ports)
Expendables 4 (Vudu or iTunes)
Frozen 2 [2019] (MA + 200 points)
Gone Girl [2014] (iTunes/ports)
Guardians Of The Galaxy [2014] (MA + 200 points)
Halloween [2018] (MA)
Jungleland [2020] (iTunes)
Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil (MA + 200 points)
Scream [2022] (Vudu or iTunes)
Tangled [2010] (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Titanic [1997] (iTunes)

🦝

$5 HD

Adventures Of Ichabod & Mr. Toad, The [1949] (MA + 150 points)
Banshee season 2 (iTunes)
Fear The Walking Dead season 2 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 4 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 5 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 6 (Vudu)
Fear The Walking Dead season 7 (Vudu) or all 5 for $20
Five Nights At Freddy's [2023] (MA)
Groundhog Day [1993] + Stripes [1981] double feature (MA)
Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The [1996] (MA + 150 points)
Hunchback Of Notre Dame 2, The [2002] (MA + 150 points)
Lady & The Tramp II: Scamps Adventure [2001] (MA + 150 points)
Rob Zombie Trilogy [House Of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects [Unrated] & 3 From Hell [Unrated] (MA)
Silent Night, Deadly Night 3,4 & 5 (Vudu)
Veep season 5 (iTunes)
Veep season 6 (iTunes)

🦝

$4 HD

300 Spartans, The (MA)
BFG, The [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Color Purple, The [2023] (MA)
Fox & The Hound 2, The [2006] (MA + 150 points)

🦝

$3️⃣ Movies

$3 4K UHD

Angel Has Fallen (Vudu or iTunes)
Baywatch (Vudu)
Bourne Identity, The [2002] (iTunes/ports)
Cabin In The Woods, The (Vudu)
Doctor Strange (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Dredd (Vudu)
Frozen 2 [2019] (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Guardians Of The Galaxy [2014] (iTunes/ports + 150 points)
Logan Lucky [2017] (iTunes/ports)
mother! [2017] (iTunes)
Prometheus [2012] (iTunes/ports)
Robin Hood [2018] (Vudu)
Sicario (Vudu)
Spy Who Dumped Me, The (Vudu or iTunes)
Top Gun (iTunes)

🦝

$3 HD

Avatar: The Way Of Water (MA + 150 points)
Baby Driver [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Bloodshot [2020] (MA + Sony points)
Bridge Of Spies [2015] (MA + 150 points)
Call Me By Your Name (MA + Sony points)
Candyman: Day Of The Dead (Vudu or Google Play)
Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite (MA)
Disneynature: Bears [2014] (MA + 150 points)
Divergent Series Trilogy, The [Divergent, Insurgent & Allegiant] (Vudu or Google Play)
Fruitvale Station (Vudu)
Glass [2019] (MA)
Goosebumps [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Grand Budapest Hotel, The (MA or Google Play/ports)
Grown Ups 2 (MA + Sony points)
Hocus Pocus (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Hundred Foot Journey, The [2014] (MA + 150 points)
Into The Woods [2014] (MA + 150 points)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Vudu)
Killing Gunther (Vudu)
Lion King, The [1994] (MA + 150 points)
Little House On The Prairie season 5 (Vudu)
Midsommar [A24] (Vudu or Google Play)
Mindcage (Vudu or iTunes)
Money Monster [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Nurse Jackie season 7 (Vudu)
Orange Is The New Black season 1 (Vudu)
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (iTunes/ports)
Pete's Dragon [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Planes: Fire & Rescue [2014] (MA + 150 points)
Pride + Prejudice + Zombies [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Public Enemies [2009] (MA)
Punisher, The [2004] (Vudu or Google Play)
Queen Of Katwe [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Robin Hood [1973] (MA + 150 points)
Scoob! [2020] (MA)
Secret Life Of Pets 2, The [2019] (MA)
Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs [1937] (MA + 150 points)
Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse (MA + Sony points)
Secret: Dare To Dream, The (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Super Mario Bros. Movie, The [2023] (MA)
Tyler Perry's Madea Goes To Jail (Vudu or Google Play)
Us [2019] (MA)
Vanishing, The [2019] (Vudu or Google Play)
Venture Bros: Radiant Is The Blood Of The Baboon Heart [2023] (MA)
Walking Dead season 9, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Walking Dead season 10, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Way Way Back, The [2013] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Whiplash [2014] (MA + Sony points)

🦝

$2 CODES

💲2 HD

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi (iTunes 4K)
31 [2016] (Vudu)
3 From Hell [Unrated] (Vudu 4K or iTunes 4K)
About Last Night [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (MA)
Action Point [2018] (Vudu)
Admission [2013] (iTunes/ports)
Adventures Of Tintin, The (Vudu or iTunes)
After Earth [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Age Of Adaline, The (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Alien Covenant (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA/GP)
Allied [2016] (iTunes 4K)
Aloha [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Alpha [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Alpha & Omega 2: A Howl-lday Adventure (Vudu)
Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Road Chip (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
American Girl: Isabelle Dances Into The Spotlight (MA)
American Hustle [2013] (MA + Sony points)
American Reunion [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (Vudu or iTunes)
Annie [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Arrival [2016] (Vudu)
Assassin's Creed (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Atomic Blonde (MA)
Avengers: Infinity War (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Battleship [2012] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Baywatch (iTunes 4K)
Beauty & The Beast [2017] (MA + 150 points/iTunes option is expired)
Beirut [2018] (MA)
Ben-Hur [2016] (Vudu)
Best Man Holiday, The [2013] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Blackhat [2015] (iTunes/ports)
Bohemian Rhapsody (MA or Google Play/ports)
Book Club [2018] (iTunes 4K)
Boss Baby, The [2017] (MA)
Bourne Legacy, The (iTunes/ports 4K)
Boy, The [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Boyhood [2014] (iTunes)
Boy Next Door, The [2015] (iTunes/ports)
Breakthrough [2019] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Bridesmaids [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Broken City [2013] (MA)
Bumblebee (Vudu)
Cabin In The Woods, The (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Captain America: Civil War (MA only/no points or iTunes option)
Captain Phillips [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (MA)
Case For Christ, The [2017] (MA)
Choice, The [2016] (Vudu or iTunes)
Company Of Heroes [2013] (MA)
Contraband (iTunes/ports)
Curse Of Chucky [2013] [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Daddy's Home (iTunes 4K)
Dark Tower, The [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Dead Again In Tombstone [2017] (MA)
Dead In Tombstone [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Dead Man Down [2013] (MA)
Deepwater Horizon (iTunes 4K)
Despicable Me 2 (iTunes/ports 4K)
Despicable Me 3 (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Devil's Due [2014] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
Django Unchained (Vudu)
Downton Abbey [2019] (MA)
Dracula Untold (iTunes/ports 4K)
Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer's Curse (iTunes/ports)
Dredd [2012] (Vudu)
Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas [2000] (MA)
Duff, The (iTunes or Google Play)
Emoji Movie, The [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Ender's Game (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Epic [2013] (MA)
Equalizer, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Equalizer 2, The (MA + Sony points)
Escape From Planet Earth (Vudu)
Ex Machina (Vudu)
Exodus: Gods & Kings (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Fate Of The Furious [F8] [Theatrical] (MA 4K)
Fences [2016] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Fifty Shades Darker [2017] [Unrated] (MA 4K)
Fifty Shades Of Grey (iTunes/ports 4K)
Finding Dory (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA + 150 points)
Flight [2012] (Vudu or iTunes)
Fortress [2021] (Vudu or Google Play)
Frozen [2013] (iTunes/ports 4K+ 150 points)
Fury [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Get Out [2017] (MA)
Ghost Team One [2013] (Vudu or iTunes)
Gifted [2017] (MA or Google Play/ports, iTunes option is expired)
God Bless The Broken Road (Vudu or Google Play)
Gods Not Dead 2 [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Gods Of Egypt (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Grey, The [2012] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2 (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Guilt Trip, The [2012] (Vudu)
Hacksaw Ridge (Vudu or Google Play/iTunes option expired)
Hail, Caesar [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Halloween [2018] (MA)
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters [Unrated] (iTunes)
Hateful Eight, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Heat, The [2013] [Theatrical] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Hell Or High Water (Vudu or Google Play)
Hercules [2014] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Hitman's Bodyguard, The (Vudu or Google Play/iTunes option is expired)
Home [2015] [DreamWorks] (MA)
Homefront [2013] (iTunes/ports)
Honey 2 [2011] (MA)
How To Train Your Dragon 2 (MA)
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The (iTunes 4K or Google Play HD)
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, The (Vudu)
Instant Family (iTunes 4K)
Internship, The [2013] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Interstellar (Vudu or Google Play)
Invisible Man, The [1933] (MA)
It Follows [2015] (Vudu)
Jackass 3 [Theatrical] (Vudu or iTunes)
Jack Reacher (Vudu)
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Vudu)
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (iTunes 4K)
Jason Bourne [2016] (iTunes/ports 4K)
John Henry [2020] (Vudu)
John Wick (iTunes 4K)
John Wick 1 & 2 (Vudu or Google Play)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (iTunes 4K)
John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (iTunes 4K) or all 3 for $5
Joy [2015] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle (MA + Sony points)
Jurassic World (iTunes/ports 4K)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (MA)
Justice [2017] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Kick-Ass 2 [2013] (MA)
Kidnap [2017] (iTunes/ports)
Killer Elite (iTunes/ports)
Kingsman: The Secret Service (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Last Knights [2015] (Vudu)
Last Vegas [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Last Witch Hunter, The [2015] (iTunes 4K or Google Play)
Let's Be Cops [2014] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Life Of Pi (iTunes/ports 4K)
Lockout [2012] [Unrated] (MA + Sony points)
Lone Survivor [2013] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Longest Ride, The (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Lorax, The [2012] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Love, Simon [2018] (MA)
Lucy [2014] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Maleficent (iTunes/ports 4K + 150 points)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again [2018] (MA)
Marauders (Vudu)
Martian, The [2015] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Mary Poppins [1964] (MA + 150 points)
Maze Runner, The [2014] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Mechanic: Resurrection (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Men In Black 3 (MA + Sony points)
MI-5 [2015] (Vudu)
Mindgamers [2017] (MA)
Miracles From Heaven (MA + Sony points)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (iTunes 4K)
Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Monuments Men, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Mortal Instruments: The City Of Bones, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Mother's Day [2016] (MA)
Murder On The Orient Express [2017] (MA or Google Play/ports)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (iTunes/ports)
Neighbors [2014] (iTunes/ports)
Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Noah [2014] (Vudu)
Non-Stop [2014] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Norm Of The North (Vudu or iTunes)
Now You See Me 2 (iTunes 4K)
Nut Job, The [2014] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Oblivion [2013] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Ouija [2014] (MA)
Overlord [2018] (Vudu)
Oz: The Great & Powerful (MA + 100 points)
Paddington (Vudu)
Paranormal Activity [2009] [Theatrical] (iTunes)
Paranormal Activity 2 [Unrated Director's Cut] (Vudu or iTunes)
Paranormal Activity 3 [Extended] (Vudu or iTunes)
Paranormal Activity 4 [Unrated] (iTunes)
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones [Theatrical] (iTunes)
Passengers [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (MA or Google Play/ports)
Pet Sematary [2019] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Pitch Perfect (iTunes/ports 4K)
Predator, The [2018] (MA or Google Play/ports)
Prometheus (MA or Google Play/ports, no iTunes option)
Proud Mary [2018] (MA)
Quiet Place, A [2018] (iTunes 4K)
Ralph Breaks The Internet (MA + 150 points/no iTunes option)
Red Dawn [2012] (Vudu or Google Play)
Redemption [2013] (Vudu)
Replicas [2019] (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Riddick [Unrated] (MA)
Rings [2017] (Vudu)
R.I.P.D. Rest In Peace Department (iTunes/ports 4K)
Rise Of The Guardians [2011] (MA)
Risen [2016] (MA + Sony points)
Robin Hood [2018] (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Rock Dog (iTunes)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (iTunes/ports 4K + 150 points)
Roman J. Israel, Esq [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Rush [2013] (MA) PENDING
Saban's Power Rangers (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Savages [2012] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption (iTunes/ports)
Secret Life Of Pets, The (MA 4K or iTunes/ports 4K)
Seventh Son [2015] (iTunes/ports)
Sex Tape [2014] (MA + Sony points)
Show Dogs [2018] (MA)
Silver Linings Playbook (Vudu or Google Play)
Sing [2016] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Sinister (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Sisters [2015] [Unrated] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Skyscraper [2018] (MA)
Sparkle [2012] (MA)
Spider-Man: Homecoming [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: No Way Home [2021] (MA + Sony points)
Split [2017] (MA)
Spy [2015] [Unrated] (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
Star Trek [2009] (iTunes 4K)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA + 150 points)
Step Up All In [2014] (Vudu)
Step Up Revolution (Vudu or Google Play)
Straight Outta Compton [Unrated] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Super 8 (Vudu)
Super Buddies (MA without points)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2014] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Terminator: Genisys (iTunes 4K)
Top Gun (Vudu)
Total Recall [2012] [Theatrical & Director's Cut] (MA + Sony points)
Tower Heist [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell (MA)
True Blood season 4 (iTunes)
True Grit [2010] (Vudu or iTunes)
Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (iTunes 4K)
Underworld: Blood Wars (MA + Sony points)
Vendetta [2016] (Vudu)
Venom [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Walk Among The Tombstones, A (iTunes/ports)
Walking With Dinosaurs: The Movie (MA, iTunes or Google Play/ports)
War Room [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Why Him? [2016] (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Wolf Of Wall Street, The (Vudu)
Woman In Black, The [2012] (MA)
Wonder [2017] (Vudu/GP HD or iTunes 4K)
Wonder Park [2019] (iTunes 4K or Vudu HD)
Woodlawn [2015] (MA or iTunes/ports)
X-Men: Apocalypse (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA)
Your Highness [2011] [Unrated] (iTunes/ports)
Zootopia (MA without points)

🦝

💲2 SD

127 Hours (iTunes/ports)
12 Rounds [2009] [Extreme Cut] (iTunes/ports)
Aliens In The Attic (iTunes/ports)
Amelia (iTunes/ports)
Beasts Of The Southern Wild (iTunes/ports)
Black Swan (iTunes/ports)
Date Night [Unrated Extended Edition] (iTunes/ports)
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who! (ITunes/ports)
Jumper [2008] (iTunes/ports)
Percy Jackson double feature [Lightning Thief & Sea of Monsters] (MA)
Ramona & Beezus (iTunes/ports)
Street Kings (iTunes/ports)
Three Stooges: The Movie, The [2012] (iTunes/ports)

🦝

$1 Codes

$1 HD

Alex Cross (Vudu)
Bad Grandpa [Theatrical] (Vudu or iTunes)
Bad Moms (iTunes/ports)
Battleship [2012] (MA)
Big Hero 6 (Google Play/ports)
Book Club (Vudu)
Bourne Legacy, The (MA)
Bring It On: Worldwide Cheersmack [2017] (iTunes/ports)
Deadpool (iTunes/ports 4K or HD MA/GP)
Divergent (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Divergent Series: Insurgent, The (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Duff, The [2015] (Vudu)
Everest [2015] (MA)
Expendables 2, The (iTunes 4K or Vudu/GP HD)
Expendables 3, The [Theatrical] (iTunes 4K or Google Play HD)
Fast & Furious 6, The [Extended] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Fast & The Furious, The [2001] (MA)
Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, The (MA)
Fast Five [Extended] (MA)
Fate Of The Furious, The [8] [Theatrical or Extended] (MA)
Frozen: Sing Along Edition (MA without points)
Furious 7 [Extended] (iTunes/ports 4K)
Ghost In The Shell [2017] (Vudu)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Vudu)
Girls Trip [2017] (MA)
Hillsong: Let Hope Rise [2016] (MA or iTunes/ports)
Hunger Games, The [2012] (iTunes 4K)
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The (Vudu)
Huntsman: Winter's War, The [2016] [Extended] (MA)
Identity Thief [2013] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
I, Frankenstein (Vudu, iTunes or Google Play)
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (Vudu)
Jason Bourne (MA)
Leprechaun: Origins (Vudu)
Les Misérables [2012] (MA)
Minions [2015] (MA)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (Vudu)
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Vudu)
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Vudu) or both for $2.50
Mummy, The [2017] (MA)
Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor (MA)
Now You See Me [Extended] (iTunes)
Oblivion [2013] (MA)
Parental Guidance [2012] (MA)
Perks Of Being A Wallflower, The (Vudu or Google Play)
Pitch Perfect (MA)
Quiet Place, A (Vudu)
Ride Along 2 (MA)
RIPD Rest In Peace Department (MA)
Safe [2012] (Vudu or Google Play)
Secret Life Of Pets, The (MA)
Selma (iTunes)
Shack, The [2017] (iTunes)
Skyfall (Vudu or Google Play)
Snitch (iTunes 4K or Vudu/Google Play HD)
Star Trek: Beyond (Vudu)
Ted [Unrated] (MA) or [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Terminator: Genisys (Vudu)
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (iTunes 4K)
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (Vudu)
Trolls [2017] (MA)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (iTunes 4K)
Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection (iTunes)
Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions Of A Marriage Counselor (Vudu or Google Play)
Unbroken [2014] (MA)
Warm Bodies (Vudu)
What To Expect When You're Expecting (iTunes)
World War Z (Vudu)
Zootopia (Google Play/ports)

🦝

💲1 SD

21 Jump Street (MA + Sony points)
Act Of Valor (iTunes)
After Earth [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Alpha [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Amazing Spider-Man 2, The [2014] (MA + Sony points)
American Hustle [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Bad Boys For Life [2020] (MA + Sony points)
Big Mommas Like Father, Like Son (iTunes/ports)
Captain Phillips (MA + Sony points)
Charlie's Angels [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Concussion [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Dirty 30 (Vudu)
Dog's Way Home, A [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Evil Dead [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Forbidden Kingdom, The (iTunes)
Glee: The Concert (iTunes/ports)
Goosebumps 2 [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Grown Ups 2 (MA + Sony points)
Hangover, The [2009] [Theatrical] (iTunes/ports)
Haywire (iTunes)
Heat, The [2013] (iTunes/ports SD)
Here Comes The Boom [2012] (MA + Sony points)
Hotel Transylvania 3 (MA + Sony points)
Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs (iTunes/ports)
Immortals [2011] (iTunes)
Insidious: Chapter 3 (MA + Sony points)
Insidious: The Last Key (MA + Sony points)
Insidious: The Red Door [2023] (MA + Sony points)
Journey To Bethlehem [2023] (MA + Sony points)
Jumanji: The Next Level (MA + Sony points)
Knight & Day (iTunes/ports)
Men In Black III [2012] (MA + Sony points)
Mirror Mirror [2012] (iTunes)
Mortal Instruments: The City Of Bones (MA + Sony points)
Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian (iTunes/ports)
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Overcomer [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Parker [2013] (MA + Sony points)
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (iTunes/ports)
Perfect Guy, The [2015] (MA + Sony points)
Perks Of Being A Wallflower, The (iTunes SD only)
Peter Rabbit [2018] (MA + Sony points)
Predators [2010] (iTunes/ports)
Public Enemies [2009] (iTunes/ports)
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (iTunes/ports)
Robin Hood [2010] [Unrated] (iTunes/ports)
Safe Haven (iTunes)
Scoob [2020] (MA)
Shallows, The [2016] (MA + 150 points)
Sparkle [2012] (MA)
Spider-Man: Far From Home [2019] (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse (MA + Sony points)
Spider-Man: No Way Home [2021] (MA + Sony points)
Star, The [2017] (MA + Sony points)
Taken [2009] [Extended Cut] (iTunes/ports)
Thousand Words, A [2012] (Vudu)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (Vudu SD only or iTunes SD only)
Tyler Perry's Madea's Tough Love (Vudu)
Underworld: Awakening (MA + Sony points)
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (MA + Sony points)
Vow, The [2012] (MA + Sony points)
Zombieland: Double Tap (MA + Sony points)

🦝

Super Cheap SD & HD Codes

All movies are 3 for $1 each/must spend at least $1 on total order.
Cabin In The Woods, The (Vudu SD only)
Croods, The (iTunes/ports SD)
Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (iTunes/ports SD)
Expendables 2, The (Vudu SD only or iTunes SD only)
Expendables 3, The [Unrated] (iTunes HD only)
Fast Five [Extended] (iTunes/ports HD)
Hunger Games, The (Vudu SD or iTunes SD only)
Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The (Vudu HD only)
John Wick 3 (Google Play HD only)
Jurassic World (MA ports HD)
Life Of Pi (iTunes/ports SD)
Mechanic: Resurrection (Vudu SD only)
Now You See Me 2 (Vudu SD only)
Star Trek: Into Darkness (Vudu HD only)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Google Play/ports HD)
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (Vudu HD only)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (Vudu SD only)
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (Vudu SD only)

The following is the first two chapters from my first fantasy novel. It's an almost Lovecraftian, dark fantasy inspired by the likes of Berserk, Attack on Titan and One Piece. I had originally thought to try and do a graphic novel. After realising the amount of effort that might take, I'll try it in prose form first.
Hope you enjoy
-----------------------------------------------------------
At the beginning there was only the Source.
The source energy of all things made from pure consciousness, an omnipresent higher being. Fated to be everything and nothing forever in an eternity of self reflection and loneliness, Source felt an eternity of despair. From that despair it gave birth to two new separate beings. Source's soul now divided into two entities.
Order and Chaos were born.
Source divided itself up equally between Order and Chaos and became all the life that that now wandered the world of Eve.
For a time, Order and chaos existed in balance. But Order, in it's increasing desire to control life, soon sought to banish chaos...
Our story begins long after Chaos and his followers have been mascaraed in an ancient war. A small village near the edge of the world is all that remains of them. In their desperation they cry out to their lord and begged Chaos for it's aid. Chaos also fearing it's extinction reached out to them. It would embed a portion its power upon one child born in precisely 9 months time. Created in to defeat Order, it is the last hope for Chaos and all of it's followers. It would defeat Order and the one who ruled in it's name. The leaders of the village David and Fae would give birth to the child of Chaos, it's power blessed upon the newborn. David and Faye named him Guy. Born to defeat Order and kill it's leader, the sorceress of Order. Chaos tells the villagers the child will be the one to rid the world of Order, and restore Chaos into the world. Soon Guy was born and the village held it's breath.
Guy always knew he was different. From his earliest memories, he sensed wasn't like the other children. Whilst they played together he trained alone. Harnessing his skills in combat.
Why do I do this? The thought was always stalking him.
"It is too much to burden you with" Guy remembers his mother telling him. "One day we will tell you everything and you will understand. You're everything our people have waited for. You're special Guy".
I don't want to be special. I just want a friend. I want to be normal...
Ten days before his 8th birthday, in the height of a winter storm, he heard his parents arguing. Every now and again the storm would drown our their voices. The next day they told him he was finally old enough to learn the truth about his birth and his destiny. All the ordeals and training would finally make sense.
Two days before his 8th birthday Guy watched the other kids celebrating one of theirs. Whilst his parents were away for a village meeting, he snuck out to join them. Guy asked if he could play too. The other children went silent. They quickly made excuses to leave. When Guy returned to his house he saw the other kids come back out again.
The next day he was once again practicing his combat skills with his wooden dagger. His father watched on.
Guy's form slipped for just a moment.
"Again Guy?." His father slapped the back of Guy's head . "How many times have I told you to concentrate!?"
Guy dropped his dagger.
"I don't want this anymore. I just want to be normal!!
Guy runs into the woods until, eventually, his father's scream disappeared into the gathering wind. Guy lies still, sobbing beside an old oak tree. A few minutes pass and exhaustion begins to creep in as his eyes turn bloodshot.
"I swear I won't come back this time" Guy muttered to himself.
The sound of thunder can be heard. Guy bolts up right and hears a scream coming from the village. He rushes to his feet and runs in it's direction. The screaming grows louder and louder as thick smoke begins to gather.
I knew shouldn't of ran away, its my fault this has happened! The words hung heavy in his mind.
He arrives back at the village. Hostile unfamiliar voices can be heard in the.
A cold voice fills the air.
"The child where is he?" Guy's father hovers in the air, his feet several feet above the ground, before a hooded figure. The hooded figure was tall and wore dark black and purple robes, his face shrouded in shadow. He carried a long body-length staff stretched towards Guy's father, a blue light shining towards his father's face at the very tip. Guy stops and watches as he sees the life slowly being choked out of him, his fathers eyes just visible through the thickening smoke.
"Tell me where he is!" the figure bellows
"I told you I have no child" David gasped
Guys eyes tremble and he holds back tears. His father's eyes meets his own for a second and then fades . Guy turns and runs. He doesn't stop. He runs for miles till the screams can no longer be heard. The only voices be could now hear was his fathers and his own as they swirled inside his head.
I have no son - He heard his father's voice
Why didn't I save them - He thought
I told you
Its all my fault. Its my fault Its all my fault Its my fault
I should of never have fled
I told you. I HAVE NO SON
Guy, aged 18, wakes up in the present day from the same nightmare. He is sleeping in a makeshift leather tent in the woods, his sweaty hand gripping his steel dagger. The full moon is high and bright but will soon be covered by thick cloud. Guy gets up and takes out his dagger and begins moving towards the nearby tree. He lunges in with it pointed just about touching the tree with the tip, just as he was taught to as a child. As the sun rises we can see that even in the gloom almost all of his strikes to tree were on target. There hundreds of incisions and pieces of tree missing, all laser focused on one spot just a few mm thick and wide.
The sunlight illuminates his lifeless eyes. He stares at the tree and wonders again, what is his purpose. His hand grips his blade as he lunges once more at the tree.
----------------
Chapter 1
Luna
Capital city
The grand temple of Order
Luna's heart danced with excitement as she walked hand in hand with her mother, her bright green-blue eyes sparkling with anticipation.
"Did you tell them I wanted white daffodils when I return to this plane? That's how I always imagined it!"
"Yes Luna, now we must hurry" her mother replied with a forced smile. Luna (7 years old) loved flowers but especially dafodils.
As they approached the grand hall, Luna's breath caught in her throat at the sight before her. The doors swung open to reveal a spectacle more magnificent than anything she had ever imagined.
Three magical orbs floated gracefully in an orbit around the hall, casting a soft, ethereal light that bathed everything in a blue mystical glow.
The religious, military, civil leaders and royal family members watched on in hushed silence as Luna and her mother entered the hall, the blue light only just bright enough to illuminate their eager faces as they watched on. It was so dim Luna could not see very far beyond the limited light the orbs cast. The distant edges of the hall still lay in shadow.
She had dreamed of final seeing the grand Hall and finally becoming a sorceress . Surrounded by white daffodils and the admiration of her family, she would emerge as the greatest sorceress ever. Luna inhaled deeply. She wondered if she'd be like the wise sorceress of the rebellion era who saved Eden from the dark one. Or perhaps the current sorceress , her great aunty Adel, whos powers would soon pass to Luna. As she approached the alter at the center of the oval hall, she looked around to see hooded figure at all side. Most held staffs with glowing blue orbs at the tip, all raised up towards the spheres that hovered in the air. A soft chant could be heard. A choir of hooded girls sang an almost forgotten ancient tongue towards the alter. Known only to a few, Luna couldn't remember what they called the language. Her mother had told her aside from a chosen few, no one remembered the name.
All as was designed by Order in his great plan. She thought
The song rose slightly as she reached the center. Luna walked up a stone step and kneeled before the alter just as she was told to do so. The grand priest, a tall balding man dressed in brilliant white robes cleared his throat and bellowed
"We begin this ceremony to welcome a new vessel to our saviour and light in the dark years. Great Lord of Order who banished Chaos to the night long ago. May we rid the heavens and Eden of all of his kin, so his name too will be lost to time" He cleared his throat again before continuing
"We the disciples of Order eagerly follow his path. Soon we will join him in the promised land"
Luna's mother whispers in her ear
"Be brave, Mother loves you" Luna didn't understand why there was a little sadness in her voice. Her mother squeezed her hand one last time then leaves her side to join her father who's eyes glared fiercely back at her.
Luna looked at her feet. I have to make him proud. Be a good daughter. Be a good sorceress
The grand priest began to speak
"So as the new eve approaches so we cast aside the old and begin anew. The final vassal and saviour." The room echoes these words with him. She could feel her heart beating in her ears
A hooded figure approaches her and removes her brilliant dark purple hood. The sorceress Adel, her great aunt and current ruler of Eden.
White haired and ancient, her passionless eyes stares down at Luna. She nods gently at Luna to begin. Now Luna needed to assume her rightful place before her and kneel. The center sphere turned blue and the air seemed to change. The great priest raises his arms and the chanting grows louder before coming to a sudden stop. Luna could sense a new presence among them. . She took a deep breath. The great priest passed a goblet of shining blue liquid to Luna. She drank a sip of the water and passed it to Adel. Adel was trembling too, even more than Luna. Adel took a sip before passing the goblet back to the grand priest.
A moment passed. From the corners of the hall a shadow moved quickly. The blue light of the spheres began to shiver and twist as the shadow passed though it. The shadow reached out and sank into Adel. She screamed as light bellowed from her mouth.
An unearthly voice rang
Do you accept me child
There was silence
Luna couldn't find her voice. She opened her mouth gasping for the words. Looking over Adel's shoulder. She saw her father's eyes glaring from the shadows. Luna's heart skipped a beat.
"Yes I I accept"
The light blasted out of Adel and hit her head on. Luna screamed as the Adel fell to the floor.
She felt the light tear into the very fabric of her soul and bury itself there. For a moment Luna no longer knew who she was, where she was, or have memories of ever being alive. Her soul was ripped out her body and flung far, far away. There she felt the pure terror of eternity gaze at her. She knew Order was with her now. Waiting, watching. For a moment she thought she could see what was almost an eye, or window of perception. Flashes of light began to appear from it. Each flash was a moment in time. The future. It began to unravel itself in her mind. Her soul screamed out as the future became a part of her. Now every moment of her life, her was as burnt into her memory and it began to unfold one second at a time.
She opened her eyes and saw clapping.
"Arise sorceress Luna."
Tears streamed down her face she took a step forward.
It was just the same as she had foreseen. It was just the same as she had foreseen. It was just as she had foreseen..! The words tormented her.
Everything is the same. No this can't be real. This can't be... Her eyes met Adel's Adel looked back at her with a sad smile.
"I love you Luna. Be strong"
"It hurts. please, please help me, please" Luna begged
"Promise me you won't give up. I believe in you" Adel replied. Luna looked at her feet.
I can't let them see me cry.
She looks up and sees her aunt collapse and lay motionless. The blue light fades and colour returns to the hall.
Luna reaches to cover her eyes as more tears began to form. She already knew what would happen next, but she couldn't prevent it. The tears kept appearing.
Stop stop, please Stop
Her father grabs her her arms away from her face and thrusts them to her side. He kneels and whispers.
"If you don't stop crying and bringing shame to out family.. to our LORD. I will no longer have a daughter. Am I understood?"
"Yes father"
"As you were, child". He glares and pushes her towards the head priest before returning to his seat.
"Continue" he bellows. Everyone who was for a moment frozen in place by his fury jolt back to their positions. All was all just as she had seen. Burnt into her mind . It was like walking through a familiar tunnel. A tunnel of her life. And then came the next moment, and the next. Like she foreseen. Like she had foreseen like she had foreseen...
Her heart slowed.
Who am I now. Please help me Aunty
She saw the daffodils she had requested dancing in the air as she walked through an applauding crowd. She grabbed one and stared at it. Onlookers sobbed and hugged each other in joy. The choir resumed, right at the precise moment she expected it would. She opened her hand and looked at the white daffodil. It was just a dead flower, nothing special.

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1/22/2048 (military calendar)
Campsite, the former Confederacy of Daru'uie
Nevali Region, Aldrida, Alagore


*****


Looking past the dark horizon of the valley below, all that was seen were the crisp peaks and ridges of the Torness mighty mountains. Above the heights was the final shine of the father of all light, the yellow sun god known as Dorash. It almost seemed like his gaze was taking one last peek at the skirt of Alagore mountain peaks before finally fading to rest.
As the sun fell below the distant mountain peaks, a robust and crisp breeze swept through the valley below, bringing a sudden chill. As expected, the darkness came and got the freezing mountain cold. Everything became pitched black as the only light source came from the starlight flickering high above the dark void. That was until a new light from the campfires illuminated the camp, only so slightly not to be discovered.
The half-elf girl Fraeya Holiadon was not used to this type of cold. Being a forest noble elf who grew up in the warmth of cities, she quickly grabbed her black-white pattern cloak and pulled tightly to remain as warm as possible.
She took a long breath from the thin, chilly air and stared into the massive valley below—forests, lakes, and, in the distance, a glimpse of lights from a nearby town. Everything looked natural and wild, where civilization had struggled to conquer. A sight she rarely saw outside the city walls. She found the scenery incredible. Worth the hellish adventurer across the Torness Mountain Range.
"Stay away from the edge," a Lat said. "We don't want to be spotted."
"Alright," Fraeya replied. She looked at the Lat, surprised at how he stood, defiant of the thin air and freezing temperature. "Are you not cold?"
"Of course, I am," the last warrior said as he returned to the camp. "Living away from civilization, you grow used to such conditions."
As the soldier left, she looked at the valley one last time before heading back toward the camp.
Fraeya saw nearly a hundred soldiers huddling their campfires for warmth, gathering supplies, or standing watch within the camp. They are known as the Palatini of Orias, one of the many Republic elite units within the legionary. They were hand-picked by the Legate for this mission.
As the young girl walked past the palatini, she could see the exhaustion from their mannerisms. Many looked hungry; others tired with dark, deep black bags under their eyes. Others shaking as their bodies adjusted to the night. To her confusion, she also could see the determination within their eyes as the environment was just an annoyance toward their objective.
She wouldn't blame them for their exhaustion as she could feel most of her body sore from the non-stop marching and climbing, she had to endure to get to this point. Something that her professors left out of their classes. A part of her couldn't help but chuckle from how she once thought after graduation from the academy that she was ready to face the challenges of their world. Only now did she understand how little schooling prepared her for the real world.
"What is so funny?" Another Lat said as she passed.
When she turned to the man, she felt a slim nerve of fear that ran through her body, believing that she might have insulted them. While most of them accepted her within the platini, she could tell they saw her as a weakling over a comrade. "I am sorry. I meant no insult. I was remembering my time at the academy."
The man turned back to his friend, commenting on her inexperience.
Fraeya felt sad as this was not her first failed interaction. For the better part of a week, Orias had escorted her and her father across some of the roughest terrains on Aldrida, taking great lengths to avoid enemy forces as their orders were to keep the two elves protected at all cost. As many men had stated, it was a near miracle that they made it this far without being noticed.
From what she understood, the commanding centurion hoped to reach the base of the mountain they were on by tonight. Such delays had become the norm; they had to delay their travels because of enemy patrols. They were hiding for hours because of J'avias' patrols from one of the nearby City-States. As they adventured deeper behind enemy-occupied territory, she expected this problem to worsen.
While the Hispana Republic's detachment for the expedition could have defeated them, the legionnaire leader, Centurion Fionntan Henness, did not want to risk exposing their unit to the enemy. He feared that if the J'avias or one of their puppet races could pass a message to the Unity's regional vassal, the Verliance Aristocracy, their mission would fail, and their last hope for victory would vanish. His superiors had invested in this last-ditch effort to turn the tide of the war to risk it on a small skirmisher with fewer soldiers.
Between the dozen campfires and the dark but illuminated sky lit by their mother Tekali, this side of the mountain range had perfectly trapped the cold air, something that Fraeya Holiadon was struggling to adapt to. As a Noble Elf, she was used to the warmth of the forest and the benefits of civilization from the continent's western side. Not the chill of the alpine.
Hearing a loud howl that echoed through the mountains, clearing coming from another party elsewhere within the area, Fraeya noticed her ride panicking. She quickly rushed over and slowly approached the beast once she got close.
"There, there," Fraeya whispered to her Deerip, a four-legged beast with three horns, light brown long hair fur, and red hoofs.
Noticing that these lands unsettled the beast, a feeling she could relate to, she rubbed the side of the Derrip's neck. Slowly and calmly whispering a song to it as the beast to calm down.
Once the beast was calm, Fraeya reached into her backpack and pulled out a bundle of grass to feed it. "I understand how you feel. This place leaves an unsettling chill down my spine, too. But you need to stay calm."
"If your beast is going to cause trouble, it will be wise to let it free," Henness said as he approached.
Looking at the centurion, Fraeya replied, "he is just startled. Deerips do not usually travel these lands. He needs to get used to being here."
Henness reached into his bag, pulling out a dark red amulet. He then tossed it into a fire pit. One of the other soldiers, a pyromancy battle mage, approached the hole and ignited it with a low-level fire spell. Unlike most red and orange flames, this fire was blackish purple, a type of flame known as dark fire by the commoners.
"Half-Elf, it took us over a week to get here through this dangerous path. These mountains are very unforgiving to wandering passengers, even to the Legion. We are deep behind enemy lines with no support. If Kallam vassals discover us, we will be slaughtered without mercy."
"That is if we are lucky," a Lat said as he sat beside the Dark Fire. "I heard stories of what happens to the prisoners that are handed over to them. I wouldn't subject my worst enemy to such a fate. Especially if a little girl got us caught."
Feeling frustrated and hearing the disrespect from the man's tone, she wanted to march over and warn Henness. While Lats could be civil and possess a strong warrior spirit, she is always surprised by how stubborn they could be.
"What is your issue, Lat? Fraeya asked. "I understand the risks. My father has been studying for this mission longer than you have been alive. I know what is at stake. This legend is our only hope in stopping them."
"Hope?" Henness asked while being unfazed by the young elf's aggressiveness. "The only reason the Legate sponsored this insane mission was that your father already got funds from a Kitsune archivist guild with a questionable reputation. They wanted to eliminate your father to focus on winning the war. They cannot afford to chase fairytales from time immemorial."
"Insane mission?" Fraeya boldly stated. "This quest is not insane, you…, damn Lat! It is the answer! We all know we cannot win the war. They are just too strong. I cannot believe how you, of all people, your kind, should believe in this."
"It is a fool's quest, Fraeya," Henness replied calmly, showing his military discipline. "Look at what we are doing." Allowing himself to collect his thoughts, he sat by the Dark Fire. "We are looking for an ancient relic, a Lat-Orc folktale that allows you to travel to another world. Hundreds of sages like your father have looked for this and other relics over the centuries. Even your father was proven wrong on this subject. There is a reason why the Guilds and his own people disowned his research."
The legend of an ancient relic from a lost age was an everyday fairytale throughout the continent of Aldrida. A Bridge that connected Alagore to the world known as Altaerrie. Her father discovered that each species and civilization had their own version of the legend over the millenniums. While the tales had many different versions, they all had the core idea - that all life was brought here by the Goddess Tekali.
In this quest to validate the legend, her father, Raegel Holiadon, dedicated his life to validating the myth and the truth of their people's past. While she did not know why her father was so passionate about searching for this truth, she knew that he believed it was the most crucial mystery of Alagore.
Considered a joke from the magical and sage guilds, Fraeya's father, Raegel Holiadon, was forced to conduct his research in isolation. Dozens of sages before him have searched for the truth and failed, falling into the same ousted fake from civilization. No one believed that this time would be any different. Because of his tenacity, he was banished to the fringes of the world to prove his theories. It was not until the Unity invaded Aldrida that he brought renewed interest to his work, not because of recent discoveries or because they suddenly believed in the legend but out of desperation to survive.
"It is different this time," Fraeya said. "If we could tale the sphere and-."
Henness cut Fraeya off, saying, "I am too tired to debate this right now. All that matters is that my Palatini was ordered to escort your party through these lands. I and the rest of my people will follow those orders to the end; I guarantee that. You shall not have to worry about our duty. I just hope this fool quest does not result in the death of my men."
Fraeya felt a deep urge to defend her father's work. As she approached, a Noble Elf stopped her, her father.
"Do not let your emotions get out of control," Raegel said.
"He called me a Half-Elf," Fraeya frustratedly replied. "And he insults my Deerip and questions your life's work."
"I know, I know, now let it go," Raegel said as he calmed his daughter. "It has been a long journey for all of us. Everyone is tired and is on nerve. Do not let an off comment grow into a wild vine."
She was hearing the wisdom from her father; she took a deep breath to calm her nerves, placing her hands together to relieve stress. The journey was long after leaving the great Hispana fortress of Nervia Glevensium. Unable to take the main highway between regions, crossing the Alps was the only way. Bypassing many Unity air patrols, Cities that pledge loyalty toward Kallem, and rouge monster hordes, she realized that her father was correct. "Okay, Father."
Seeing the warm smile from Fraeya's father, she followed him to their tent. Once settled, she wrapped herself in a blanket and sat by the fire.
She watched her father place one of those dark red amulets into a fire pit; that same battle mage shortly approached and activated it with the same low-level spell, igniting the amulet into Dark Fire. Unlike the natural red fire or the other magical types like green and blue, dark fire is used by soldiers and travelers to provide a heat source at night without attracting unwelcome guests. According to the sages, Dark Fire does not illuminate as brightly, so heat-seeking creatures and constructs cannot see the flames from distances. Perfect for behind-enemy-lines missions like this. However, it provided some warmth but could never match the red flame's natural heat.
Finally feeling some warmth, or at least as Fraeya's body wanted to believe, she turned to her father and asked, "Do you think this time it will work? Can we find this Bridge?"
"I know we will," Raegel replied as he checked their supplies. "I know that Lats can be a handful, trust me. I have been around them since my exile, but Henness is correct to be skeptical. You must understand normally that only a fool would undertake such a mission. A fool that I proved to be once or twice in my lifetime." He said with some laughter. Seeing a smile from his daughter, he continued, "But this time, it will be different."
Holding the blanket tight, Fraeya shook her head. "I don't understand, though. It is their people's legend, their story. Why wouldn't they be supportive of our mission? Especially if it is our last hope to stop the Unity."
"I am not a military man," Raegel said. "I never learned the art of war but put yourself in his boots. While you were at the academy and I conducted my research, these men have been fighting this war. Imagine all the battles, all the deaths of fallen brothers that they have witnessed time and time again. Last hopes are poison for soldiers, who have lost no matter what they do. It is their fault that the war has gone this badly, or at least I assume that is how they feel."
"But the legends," Fraeya stated again.
"Soldiers do not wage war based on legends," Raegel said. "While we believe in the legend, that does not mean they do. Thousands of years have passed and that is why they call them legends in the first place, my dear. Think about all our fellow elves' tales we have, and how many of our kind believe in them?"
Reflecting on what her father had said, she knew her people had many stories. Being one of the oldest civilizations on Aldrida, they have stories relating to dozens of topics, returning to orlilla. One of her favorite legends was how her kind were once flowers that sprouted legs. Some say that this was why the Noble race was so beautiful.
"You think that orb you found is the key to everything?" Fraeya said.
"I do," Raegel said. "Everything I have invested in up to this point has pointed to this moment. Whoever hid the Bridge did so to never be discovered by anyone. They hide it with magic beyond our means. That is why no one has ever found any trace of it. They were missing one piece of the puzzle, that orb."
Thrilled to see her father excited again, Fraeya cannot wait to see his dream finally coming to life. After all these decades of researching and traveling across the world to search for any clue, he eventually will be able to prove his life work was correct. He had toured Alagore for centuries, looking for clues, relics, ruins, and anything from the old era. A life work proved worthwhile.
As Fraeya stared at the Dark Fire, she asked, "What do you think this other world will be like?"
“I have no idea,” Raegel said. "I believe that this other world will be like ours. If the historical archives at Allsari and stories of old are true, then it is the world of the Lats…, Altaerrie."

Have a few items i'm trying to clear out all in good condition, noted if games are loose or CIB.
Open to offers on Bundles especially , bundle lots listed as well with discounts.
$5 Games for various systems available $25 Minimum if only buying from this list please.
$3.50 Shipping for first item & exact amount for bigger bundles sent via USPS and taking Paypal F&F with Pics available upon request.
Total estimate with PriceCharting is about $2,900
Will take and accept $2,400 Shipped on the entire Lot excluding Paperwork Material.

PS4 - $200 on Lot

PS4 Slim 500 GB Console with 1x OEM Black Dualshock $175
Metro Redux CIB $15
Plants vs Zombies 2 : Garden Warfare $10
Deus Ex MD $10
Grand Theft Auto V $10

XBox - $125 on Lot

https://www.flickr.com/photos/200232813@N07/albums/72177720315735025/
Metro Redux $10
Rare Replay/Ultimate Gears of War $20
Torment Tides of Nememura in GameStop Case $10
Transformers Devastation $20
Sunset Overdrive $10
Pillars of Eternity in GameStop Case $10
One Lords of the Fallen $10
XBox One Phantom Black Controller CIB USED $25 (Controller is 7/10 cosmetic wise with bottom back bumpers having heavy scuffs & 9/10 overall function wise)
XBox Series S White OEM Controller - $25 (Controller is 9/10 cosmetic wise. Left trigger buttons gets stuck randomly not sure if something small or dirt is stuck, buttons functions perfectly)

N64 - $500 on lot

https://imgur.com/a/H9g5GqQ
Cruis'N USA - $15
Body Harvest - $20
Aerofighters Assault - $10
Top Gear Overdrive - $10
Tony Hawk 3 - $65
Buck Bumble - $30
Pokemon Puzzle League with Manual (game and manual in great condition) - $40
Space Station Silicon Valley - $40
Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (Entire label was missing so a cheap replacement was made) - $20
Command And Conquer - $20
The New Tetris - $30
Snowboard Kids 1 with Manual (manual and game in great shape small tear on back of Cart) - $70
Robotron 64 - $20
Forsaken 64 (video rental sticker on label) $15
Yoshi's Story - $25
Mischief Makers - $40
Wipeout - $15
Doom 64 - $30
Kobe Bryant In NBA Courtside Box(good shape includes inner tray) - $25
NHL Breakaway '98 Box (good condition no inner tray) - $10
Mario Tennis 64 Game with Box (Box is rough shape, missing ride side flap. includes inner tray, Cart is clean) - $50

Gameboy

TMNT Fall of the Foot Clan - $10

Switch - $325 on lot

Hori Split Pad Pro Blue CIB (used about 7 months in 9/10 condition) - $25
Old Skool GC Controller Adapter (Works on Switch/PC/Wii U) - $20
Hyperkin Joy-Con Grip Charger - $10
Monster Hunter Rise Joy-Cons with Grip NIB - $125
Shin Megami Tensei V [Steelbook Edition] - $30
Blacksad: Under The Skin [Limited Edition] SEALED $25
KORG Gadget $65
Psikyo Collection Vol. 3 JAP $45

PS Vita - $275 on Lot

The Walking Dead: Season 2 $25
Hot Shots Golf World Invitational $15
Legend Of Heroes: Trails Of Cold Steel 1 $40
Dynasty Warriors Next $20
Stranger Of Sword City $25
Shantae Half-Genie Hero [Risky Beats Edition] $45
UnEpic SEALED $65
Risk Of Rain SEALED $35
Aqua Kitty SEALED $40

Dreamcast - $20 on Lot

NBA2K1 loose $10
World Series Baseball 2K1 loose $10
MTV Sports Skateboarding loose $10

3DS - $100 on Lot

Legend Of Legacy Launch Edition SEALED $60
Crush 3D Loose in 3DS Case $10
Cubic Ninja Loose in 3DS Case $10
Codename S.T.E.A.M $10
Smash Bros 3DS CIB $17
Steel Diver CIB $8

PS1 - $45 on Lot

Fighter Maker Loose $10
FF9 CIB (Case damaged) $15
Sim City 2000 Game+Case (damaged) $10
Oddworld Abes Oddysee CIB $20

DS - $50 on Lot

Bleach Blade Of Fate Loose $15
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring Of Fates - $15
OEM Charging Base for original 3DS $20
Intec DS Case(scuffed up) $10

PS3 - $75 on Lot

Final Fantasy X/X2 Remaster Limited Edition CIB $10
NiNoKuni 1 Steelbook CIB $20
Zone Of The Enders HD Collection CIB $15
Yakuza 3 Loose $15
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Loose $15
Genji Days Of The Blade $20
Genji Days Of The Blade Loose $10

PS2 - $225 on Lot

https://imgur.com/a/pBJLqjf
https://imgur.com/a/1odALsV
MGS 2 CIB $10
DQ8 missing Demo Disc $20
Onimusha 2 CIB $15
MX vs ATV Unleashed CIB $10
Tekken 5 CIB $30
Kingdom Hearts 1 GH CIB $10
Kingdom Hearts 2 GH CIB $10
Stuntman CIB $10
Looney Tunes Back in Action CIB Looney Tunes Back in Action $10
Tak CIB $10
Soul Caliber 3 CIB $15
God of War 1 First Print CIB $50
GTA San Andreas (missing manual) $10
Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec $10
Soul Caliber 2 CIB $15
ATV Offroad Fury 4 $10
MDK 2 Armageddon Loose $10
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 $10
The Getaway $10
007 Agent Under Fire Loose $10
Test Drive GH $10
Eye Toy Antigrav with Eye Camera $20

XB360 - $35 on Lot

3rd Party Controller $10
Marvel Ultimate Alliance in Gamestop Case $10
OEM Black Controller with Battery Pack $20

Gamecube - $275 for Lot

GBA to GC Link Cable loose - $15
Donkey Kong Bundle (includes CIB copy of Donkey Konga, 1x loose Bogo Drum controller and DK Jungle Beat Bongo Drum controller in box but missing game BOX IS IN ROUGH SHAPE) - $125
Odama CIB with Microphone (Big Box is in rough shape but Game/Case/Manual/Mic are in perfect condition) $35
GB Player OEM Case Holder *Missing outer cardboard and Manual $25
Monopoly Party+Manual in Blockbuster Case $10
Star Wars Rogue Leader+Manual in DVD Case $15
Spiderman 2 Player's Choice (Missing Manual) $15
Megaman Anniversary Collection (Missing Manual) $20
MC Groovez Dance Craze$10
Fifa Soccer 2002 $10
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 loose in GC Case $15
Resident Evil 1 CIB Players Choice $30

Wii - $20 for Lot

Nights Journey of Dreams in Gamestop Case & Manual $10
Generic Dual Wiimote Charging Dock $10

$5 Games - $150 on Lot

GC 007 NightFire Case with Fantastic Four Games
GC NFL2k3 Loose with Cover & Manual
XB360 BF3 Limited Edition
XB360 Kinect Adventures
XB360 Motionsports
XB360 Call of Duty Ghosts
XB360 Darksiders 2
PS2 Wheel of Fortune
PS2 Motorcross Mania 3
PS2 Seaworld Deep Sea Adventures
PS2 Socom US Navy Seal
PS2 Final Fantasy X-2
PS2 ThrillVille
PS2 Star Wars The Force Unleashed CIB
PS2 Army Men Soldiers of Misfortune
PS2 Welcome to Jumpack Demo Disc
PS2 Metal Arms in Generic Case
PS2 MX vs ATX
PS2 Army Men
PS2 Rocky
PS2 NCAA Football 2004
PS2 Army Men : Sarges Hero
PS2 Full Spectrum Warrior
PS2 FIFA 2001 MLS
PS2 NCAA Football 2003
PS2 NCAA Football 2004
PS3 Need for Speed Most Wanted CIB
PS3 Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 3
PS3 Need for Speed Pro Street
PS3 Red Faction Guerilla x2
PS3 MoH Warfighter LE Loose
PS3 Crysis 2
PS3 Mercenaries 2 in Generic Case
PS3 Call of Duty MW3 x2
PS3 Assassins Creed 4 BF
PS3 Beyond Steelbook (Bad shape broken at spine)
PS3 Uncharted Dual Pack in Custom generic case
PS4 Has Been Heroes
PS4 The Division

Controller Lot for Repair - $75 Shipped

3x XBox One/Series Controllers
(White controller has minor drift on Right thumb stick, 1st Black one has Left Bumper issues where it's not detecting the press always and the 2nd Black one has the B button gets stucken on occasions.
Both Black ones have something small loose inside rattling. And both Black ones come with original back voters as the Power A one shown here is for my rechargeable batteries. Shipping should be around $10-15 at max if that.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/200232813@N07/albums/72177720316925867)

Covers, Cases and Manuals

8x Universal Game Cases (N64,SNES,Genesis,etc) $8 Each
3DS Persona Q : Shadow of the Labyrinth Case $10
PS4 Rise of the Tomb Raider 20th Anniversary Extras Only No Game $10
Grand Kingdom Case $10
Toukiden : Kiwami Case $10
Wii Dragon Quest Swords Manual $7
Wii Monster Hunter 3 Manual $5
Wii Elebits Manual $5
GC Ghost Recon Case & Manual $7
GC True Crime Streets of LA Case & Manual $10
GC Spiderman 1 Case Only $7
GC Dead to Rights Case & Manual $10
GC Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Case & Manual $10
GC Hitman 2 Case & Manual $10
GC MoH Frontline Case & Manual $7
GC Rainbow Six 3 Case & Manual $7
PS2 Red Faction Case $5
PS2 Call of Duty FH Case & Manual $7
GC NFL 2K3 Case $5
PS4 Nioh Case $5
PS Vita Exist Archive Case $5
PS3 Zone of Enders HD Collection Case & Manual $10
PS2 Dragon Quest 8 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Onimusha 2 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Tekken 5 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Kingdom Hearts 1 GH Case & Manual $10
PS2 Kingdom Hearts 2 GH Case & Manual $10
PS2 Area 51 Case PAL version $5
GC NBA 2K2 Case & Manual $10
PS2 Final Fantasy X-2 Case $ Manual $10
PS2 Starwars Battlefront Case & Manual $10
GC Prince of Persia Cover & Manual $10
GC Viewtiful Joe 1 Manual $20
PS2 Katamari Damacy Cover & Manual $10
GC Burnout 3 Takedown $5
PS2 Nightmare before Christmas Oogies Revenge Cover & Manual $15
PS2 GTA San Andreas Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Capcom Classic Collection Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution Manual $5
PS2 Megaman X Collection Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Star Ocean Till the End of Time Cover & Manual $10
PS2 R-Type Final Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Soul Caliber 2 Cover $7
XB Panzer Dragoon Orta Cover & Manual $30
XB Ninja Gaiden Black Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Mad Maestro Cover & Manual $10
PS2 007 Everything or Nothing Manual $5
PS2 Half Life 2 Cover $10
PS2 Devil May Cry 3 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 FF X-2 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 REZ Cover & Manual $15
PS2 Rygar Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Chaos Legion Manual $7
PS2 Zone of Enders 1 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Final Fantasy 12 Manual $7
PS2 Front Mission 4 Cover & Manual $10
PS2 Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence Cover $7
PS2 Escape from Monkey Island Cover $7
PS1 Final Fantasy Chronicles GH Back/Front Cover & Manual $10
PS1 Tenchu 1 Cover & Manual $15
PS1 Final Fantasy 7 GH Front/Back Cover & Manual $15
PS1 Buster Bros Collection Cover & Manual $20
GC Zelda Master Quest Manual + Windwaker Promotional Paperwork $30
PS2 Black Case & Manual $10

Round 11 deadline: Wednesday 22nd May, 9pm GMT

Hi peopleee! Sorry it's been so long since I last posted, I've been pretty busy with stuff. But anyway, let's find out which episodes got the most votes in round 10...
...
Perfect Day. There wasn't really anything interesting about the results this time, but Perfect Day got 4 votes.
Which episode will be eliminated next? It's up to youuuuu.
Vote for the episode that you like *the least. The episode that gathers the most votes will be eliminated with the **22nd place in this game. Make sure you have watched all episodes before voting and don't vote more than once. (I don't think you can anyway)*

VOTE IN ROUND 11 HERE

Round 10 results
Perfect Episodes: (SPOILERS!!!)
S1E1 - Who Do You Think You Are?:

• Alison and Mike inherit Button House
• Ghosts haunt them
• Captain annoyed at Fanny screaming

S1E2 - Gorilla War:

• Mike starts renovating house
• Ghosts annoy Alison
• Alison accepts ghosts as real

S1E3 - Happy Death Day:

• Pat's death day, family visit
• Kitty asks where babies come from
• Captain & Julian try to get rid of builders

S1E5 - Moonah Ston:

• Beg-Chetwyns visit for dinner party
• Captain & Mary help kill/prepare pheasant
• Ghosts do Moonah Ston ritual & watch Friends

S2E3 - Redding Weddy:

• Captain flashback
• A&M clear garden
• Fanny fancies Mike
• Pat keeps ghosts occupied (moon landing video, volleyball)

S2E4 - The Thomas Thorne Affair:

• Thomas death flashbacks
• Mike worries about meeting Alison's ex

S2E5 - Bump in the Night:

• Alison goes out
• Burglars break into house
• Ghosts try to warn Mike

S2E7 - The Ghost of Christmas:

• Mike's family visit for Xmas, parents help too much
• Julian feels guilty about avoiding family at Xmas
• Alison gets presents for ghosts

S3E1 - The Bone Plot:

• TV crew making documentary about Humphrey (death flashback)
• Julian thinks Barclay is having heart attack
• Pat tries to make Fanny & Captain laugh
• Thomas prepares Alison for interview

S3E2 - A Lot to Take In:

• Alison meets Lucy
• Julian remembers first day as ghost
• Mike starts new job
• Kitty & Pat dance

S3E3 - The Woodworm Men:

• A&M camp outside during fumigation
• Kitty watches Grease

S3E4 - I Love Lucy:

• Captain spies on Lucy
• Julian changes Mike's emails
• Fanny has affair with Humphrey's body

S3E5 - Something to Share?:

• Kitty shares story about ball
• Mike tries to find way to see ghosts

S3E6 - Part of the Family:

• Mike films promotional video
• Ghosts find out Lucy is lying
• Ghosts do drama/improvisation club

S4E2 - Speak as ye Choose:

• Annie teaching Mary to say what she wants flashback
• Kitty shows Captain how to live in moment
• Thomas goes cold turkey on Alison addiction
• Mike's old friends stay at gatehouse

S4E3 - The Hardest Word:

• A&M try to have relaxing day
• Ghosts make apology song

S4E4 - Gone Gone:

• Pat cheers Kitty up over Mary moving on
• Mike organises children's birthday party last minute
• Alison helps ghosts deal with their feelings about Mary

S4E6 - Not Again:

• Robin's death flashback
• Mike buys giant bear
• Kitty starts talking by saying opposite of what she means

S4E7 - It's Behind You:

• Ghosts put on panto
• Alison shows Pat old VHS recordings
• A&M get stuck in traffic on way to parents

S5E1 - Fools:

• Alison does April Fool's pranks on ghosts
• Insurance company person investigates insurance claim for fire

S5E3 - Pineapple Day:

• Ghosts figure out how Kitty died
• Mike discusses selling land with Barclay
• Thomas, Julian & Humphrey want blue plaque
• Kitty watches 'Is It Cake?'

S5E5 - Carpe Diem:

• A&M have spontaneous night out
• Robin thinks someone will move on before midnight
• Fanny & Julian make most of possible last day
• Captain's death flashback

Eliminated Episodes:*
34th place: S5E7 - A Christmas Gift
33rd place: S3E7- He Came!
32nd place: S2E1 - The Grey Lady
31st place: S2E2 - About Last Night
30th place: S4E5 - Poached Guests
29th place: S4E1 - Happy Holiday
28th place: S1E4 - Free Pass
27th place: S5E2 - Home
26th place: S1E6 - Getting Out
25th place: S5E4 - En Français
24th place: S5E6 - Last Resort
23rd place: S2E6 - Perfect Day

Hopefully this isn’t downvoted instantly, because I know people seem to get strangely very defensive about Beast’s characterization in this run. I think there is a lot of miscommunication whenever a Beast fan complains about how he was depicted here. Often times people will discount those complaints because they think Beast fans just don’t want him to go bad, when that doesn’t really seem to be the whole truth from what I’ve seen. Ultimately, the complaints I raise and I have seen others raise are more about thinking the writing of his spiral in X-Force 2019 was not done well rather than that said spiral shouldn’t have happened at all. With the Krakoa era coming to an end, and “From the Ashes” having the now-rebooted Beast who is pulled all the way from his time on The Defenders, I don’t see any of the flaws here being addressed beyond characters casually referring to how bad he became. So I wanted to take this time in the in-between, where our new Beast is apparently just chilling on Wonder Man’s couch while the rest of the X-Men fight against Orchis and Nimrod, to once and for all lay out the flaws of Beast’s villainous era, and establish not that it shouldn’t have happened, but that it could have been way better.
Problem 1: A Lack of Pathos:
Most X-Men fans who have been reading for awhile will agree that it’s honestly surprising more mutants haven’t gone down a dark path. Their history is one of striving for acceptance, putting their lives on the line for people who would rather see them dead, and being rewarded with not one but multiple genocides on their population. Some of the most interesting stories can actually come from a formally “upstanding” mutant finally deciding enough is enough. When Cyclops went down his “villainous” path, it made a lot of sense. We’d seen him becoming more disenfranchised with the dream for years. We’d seen his trust in Xavier erode time and time again, and so when he decided to stop asking for acceptance and start demanding it, it was hard to blame him. Even as we saw most of his friends turn against him, that didn’t stop people from declaring “Cyclops Was Right,” because his perspective could easily be understood, and he did achieve results. More recently in X-Men ‘97, we saw Rogue go down a dark path in the wake of Genosha being wiped out, including Magneto and Gambit. Again, this was understood, and it was an interesting direction for her character.
This sort of turn would also make a ton of sense for Hank McCoy. Did you know that back towards the start of the original Uncanny X-Men run, Hank was actually the first X-Men we ever saw to leave the team and say that Magneto was right, after he and Bobby were attacked by an angry mob because Hank used his powers to save a young child? Over the years, one of Hank’s most recurring struggles and arcs is self-loathing and eventual acceptance of his condition. Hank has always been at his darkest when he’s trapped in his spiral of self-loathing, but when he comes out the other side, he tends to be one of the most optimistic mutants when it comes to coexistence with humans. He was out making connections and fighting alongside non-mutants before anyone else. Joining the Avengers and Defenders, speaking on behalf of mutant rights before congress, dating human women who were able to accept his appearance, blue fur and all. Until they weren’t… looking at you, Trish Tilby.
So with all of this in mind, it would honestly be an extremely interesting arc to see Hank, this optimistic mutant who has spent his life building bridges and making connections with humanity, to be slowly beaten down and start to believe peace is not an option. As one of the original X-Men, he has been there through every tragedy that struck the mutant population. And as one of the smartest X-Men, he has usually been at the center of these crises. He has seen advancements in science meant to eradicate the mutants. He has fought against viruses that threaten to drive them extinct. He was there in the wreckage of Genosha. He has seen countless friends killed again and again. He has suffered his own mutation evolving and making him less and less human-looking. He saw the development of a mutant “cure” and was tempted to take it. He has seen it all.
And so that brings us to Krakoa. This is the moment where the mutants as a whole decided enough was enough. If they could not be accepted by humanity, they would pack up and form their own nation, and they would force humanity to accept that they exist by developing life-saving drugs that other nations would have to rely on. And what is one of the first things that happens after the establishment of Krakoa? Hank witnesses assassins infiltrate the island and assassinate Charles Xavier. This right here is honestly the perfect setup for Hank to go darker than he has before. Even after literally segregating the mutant population from humanity, like humanity seemed to want, they still decided to come and kill the man at the forefront of the movement. And Hank, recently placed in charge of mutant black-ops, would likely see that all options are on the table.
Unfortunately, Hank’s actual pathos surrounding the decisions he would go on to make is not explored by the book itself. The book has no interest in detailing Hank’s fall from grace as we saw with Cyclops before him. The book just wants us to accept that Hank has already fallen. And in fact, according to the writing, maybe he never had anywhere to fall from. Any time a character in X-Force tries to ask important questions to understand Hank’s thought process, they are cut off. Usually by Wolverine saying “He’s always been like this.” And then on one occasion, when Wolverine asked Hank why he was doing all this dark shit, Hank said, “Didn’t you read the script? I’ve always been like this.” There is no attempt to examine Hank as a character. We don’t need to know why Hank makes the decisions he does, because this book wants Hank to be a black and white villain and so that’s what he will be. Why? Because he’s always been like this.
Problem 2: Rapid Escalation:
One of the major defenses people have when it comes to Krakoan Hank is that he has apparently been on the road to his villainous self for over a decade. The X-Force run itself loved to have characters spout a list of Hank’s previous “crimes” without any context involved, as justification for why he was acting the way he did in the current run. The problem is, that context is very important. Because it shows the disparity in the Hank of previous stories who made mistakes with good intentions vs the Hank of X-Force who did heinous shit because he wanted to. This was less a plane making a slow descent and more a plane that was slowly descending, but then its engines shut off and it plummeted into a fiery explosion.
To make this case, we need to briefly analyze the previous perceived transgressions of Hank McCoy to show what they actually meant for his character and how they differ from the Bond villain X-Force would present us with. Let’s start with Threnody. Somehow, Threnody became a bit of a buzzword for the beginning of the end for Hank. When people talk about the history of Hank and Threnody, they will usually present it as one of Hank’s worst sins, saying something like “Hank callously handed Threnody over to Mr. Sinister so he could experiment on and abuse her!!!” It kind of makes for some whiplash when you actually read the Threnody story people are talking about. Here is a brief rundown of what actually happens:
Threnody is a young woman who cannot control her powers. It causes her no end of grief, and when we are introduced to her, she is homeless and constantly in danger of hurting herself or others. Beast, Rogue, and Iceman come across Threnody who has been found first by Mr. Sinister. Sinister actually has a vested interest in curing the Legacy Virus, and believes he can help Threnody master her powers, at which point she will prove vital in his efforts to study said Virus. Notably, Threnody wants to go with Sinister here. While Rogue disapproves, Hank does believe that Sinister is actually Threnody’s best option, openly stating Sinister can actually help her gain control and the X-Men cannot, because, as Hank directly says, Sinister is willing to damn parts of his soul in pursuit of scientific enlightenment, and the X-Men are not. A few issues later, when breaking into Sinister’s base, Hank encounters Threnody again. She’s happy. Sinister did indeed help her control her powers, and she has been able to use her abilities to help mutants the world over, while also undermining Sinister’s more evil operations from the inside. Hank expresses relief, saying he was kept up at night by his decision to let her go with Sinister, but Threnody actually thanks him for letting her. And that’s it. That’s Hank’s big “crime” here.
Hank’s other “sins” are also of varying levels of severity. There’s the time “Hank worked with his evil self to cure the Legacy Virus!” when the actual story in question is Hank asserting that he won’t stoop to the levels of Dark Beast and compromise his values in the name of science. There’s the time “Hank sided with the Inhumans against the X-Men!” when the actual story is Storm sending Hank to Attilan to find a way to end the conflict between mutants and inhumans before war broke out. Hank runs out of time to find a cure for the terrigen mist cloud, suggests mutants get off-world in the meantime rather than go to war with the inhumans, is thrown into a cell by the other X-Men for his “betrayal”, and then freed at the conclusion of the war by a repentant Storm when it comes to light that the whole conflict was manipulated by Emma Frost. There’s the time “Hank risked the timestream by bringing the original X-Men to the present day!” A decision that was made on his perceived deathbed with the hopes of bringing his old friend Cyclops back to his side. Hank wants to take the young mutants back right away, but they refuse. And instead of others enforcing that they need to return, we actually see Kitty Pride decide to lead them in the present in memory of Charles Xavier. Notably, Kitty would be one of the many mutants in future issues who would yell at Hank about this.
The point of this post isn’t to absolve Hank of all fault. He has made countless mistakes and bad decisions. Regardless of the culpability of others, the pulling of the O5 to the present was his decision. During Secret Empire, Hank would turn a blind eye to Hydra’s activity simply to keep the mutants under his care safe. During all of this, however, Hank’s character was not compromised. He expressed despair and regret over his worse choices, and struggled with thinking he was a good person any longer. Again, going back to his recurring struggle with self-loathing. He had pathos behind his decisions and how they affected him, and would often reunite with Wonder Man as an opportunity to recenter and declare he would “be better tomorrow than he was yesterday.”
You would think, if the aim of X-Force was to turn Hank into a full-on villain, it would take advantage of the long-form storytelling of comics to chronicle that escalation. Like I said, the assassination of Charles Xavier is a great starting point for Hank to start going darker than he ever has before. The problem is, we don’t get an escalation. Hank starts the run by doing some of the most heinous shit imaginable. Regardless of your thoughts on the severity of Hank’s previous mistakes, none of them compare to his opening volley in this run. Hank uses telefloronics to override and genocide an entire country, leaving various people either completely dead or braindead. We later find out that during this time he also established a space station where he ran unethical experiments on prisoners like Krakoa’s very own Dr. Mengele. He then accuses his old ally Colossus of conspiring with Russia against Krakoa, and calls forth the mutant population to witness as he parades a shamed Colossus through its streets. Then he kills Wolverine and resurrects him as a mindless animal who he uses as an attack dog against his perceived enemies. This isn’t an escalation, this is a different character. And the aforementioned lack of pathos means that we don’t get to see him struggle with these choices. We don’t see his thought process as he becomes darker and darker. Why would we? “He’s always been like this.”
Problem 3: No Personality:
One of the most fun aspects of turning a protagonist into an antagonist is seeing how their personality works with a more villainous mindset. When Cyclops became an “antagonist” to the X-Men, he was still Cyclops. He stuck to his convictions, he was a great leader and tactician, and he was able to turn many mutants to his side because of this. We’ve seen an evil Beast before. The creatively-named Dark Beast is from an alternate future where Beast went down a dark path lacking ethics. The fun of this character, besides comparing his ideologies with our Hank McCoy, is seeing how Hank’s penchant for jokes or quotes now become far more sinister and cutting.
There’s a strange narrative that the jokey Hank is reserved for the Avengers while the Hank with the X-Men is all business and science. This isn’t entirely true. Early on when he was a member of the Defenders, Hank talks about this sort of thing. He essentially says that he wears different hats. While working with the X-Men, he used big words essentially to gain respect from both his teammates and humanity. But with other teams, and in his then-new furry form, he dropped all of that. His speech became more naturalistic and he was much more of a goofball. The thing is, it’s the speech patterns that truly change depending on who Hank is hanging with, not his personality. Hank with the X-Men and Hank with the Avengers are both jovial characters who like to tell jokes and quote philosophy. You can see Hank being a bit of a clown among the X-Men in various runs. So it’s not like it’s a given that Hank is some entirely different dry doctor devoid of any sense of humor when among the X-Men.
But this is how Hank is portrayed in X-Force. Part of why this version of Hank is so hard to reconcile with the rest of his history for fans of the character is that he just doesn’t act like himself, even when he isn’t actively committing war crimes. In one early issue of the run, we get a glimpse at Beast’s journal where he accounts a meeting he had with Forge. Now, Beast has been known to be a very physical character. He is often known to sweep others into a hug, or even plant a big kiss on their face in the case of characters like Wonder Man or Iceman. Meanwhile this one page where we read his thoughts on Forge is clearly pretending this is not the case:

I paid Forge a visit in the Armory – and I must say that he can be, like Logan, rather impossible. There is a certain locker room bravado about him I find perplexing, like a language I only half understand. For instance, he refused to shake my hand but instead dragged me into what he called a “bro hug.” Then he challenged me to a “feat of strength,” asking if I would test out this sappy “muck bomb” he had developed that – or so I gather – glues one in place. He wondered if a “big boy” like me might be able to thrash free of the binding. I refused him and said I very much would prefer to get down to business. He then referred to me as a “bookish peckerwood @#$%” but did so with a friendly laugh and clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to make me stagger. I’m not sure how to process this, honestly. Is he being friendly or cruel? Is it possible to be both?

Needless to say, this doesn’t read like Beast. It reads like an android that has never before felt human emotion. I remember before reading this I was theorizing that Hank had been switched with Dark Beast once more to explain his sudden escalation, but after this I realized that couldn’t be the case. Because this sounds like neither Beast nor Dark Beast. Dark Beast understood how to properly write Hank as a villain. He doesn’t suddenly become your typical made scientist devoid of emotion, humor, or basic human understanding. He still makes jokes that are now cruel. He still quotes literature in a way that paints him as a god among men. Hank going bad can be a fun read, but this run was not.
Problem 4: No One Cares:
Another important angle to consider when writing a story of a good person breaking bad is how it affects those around them. Those who are close friends to the person and find themselves disturbed by their current actions. Again, I return to Cyclops. Regardless of where you stand on if he was right or not, he was very much positioned as an antagonist to the mutants at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Yet we see various friends of Cyclops still caring for him and wanting to pull him back from what they perceive as the dark side. Like I previously said, Beast’s whole reason for messing with the timeline was because he felt he was going to die and wanted to try to appeal to his old friend and bring him back around before he passed on. When someone good goes bad, part of the emotional core is seeing former friends try to appeal to their better nature, and even eventually deciding they’ve gone too far to turn back.
Not so with Hank in X-Force. Like I said, this run posits that this is not any kind of heel turn for Hank. This is how he’s always been. “Hank this isn’t you!” “No, he’s always been like this.” “Hank, turn back before it’s too late!” “Turn back where? He’s always been like this.” None of Hank’s friends give a shit. Hank’s best friend amongst the X-Men is Bobby Drake, Iceman, and we never once see any kind of confrontation there. Cyclops and Angel similarly doesn’t care. Now you could argue this is because X-Force is a secretive organization. Bobby and Scott don’t even know what Hank is doing. There are two issues with this. First, things reach a point where they would know. Hank’s actions become public knowledge, and Wolverine goes off to hunt him down while the rest of the X-Men just kinda look the other way. And second, there is someone with a lot of history with Hank that was a part of X-Force and did see everything that was going on. Jean Grey.
But we never get to see Jean wonder what’s happened to her close friend. Jean who was always incredibly close to Hank. Jean who, it was confirmed during the All-New X-Men era, had mutual feelings for Hank and might have started dating him had things been different. But no, Jean, like every character in this run, accepts that Hank has always been like this. That’s the answer to everything. So instead of some kind of emotional confrontation where she tries to appeal to his better nature, we instead have Jean yell at Hank, use her powers to throw him against a wall, and quit X-Force. And then most recently, we see her tell Firestar without hesitation to throw Hank under the bus for any heat that comes her way from her undercover mission. Because everyone will believe Hank is responsible for all the bad shit. Who the hell cares about Hank? According to this run, no one.
Conclusion:
I hope you can see the larger issue here. When Beast fans complain about his Krakoan era, people assume they just don’t want to see their favorite do bad things. But it’s practically accepted at this point in comics that most heroes will have a villain arc. Hell, Iceman is the only one of the original five X-Men who hasn’t gone down a dark path at this point. The problem is that everything about the writing of Hank during this time was just not done well. There is no exploration of Hank’s descent into villainy, and any questioning down that line is immediately shut down by the assertion that this is just who he’s always been. There isn’t any slow escalation because his first move is genocide. Hank is not even written as himself during this era, but rather as a generic bond villain. And none of Hank’s former close friends even show any emotion about his turn to villainy. An evil Hank story could easily work. We saw it with Dark Beast. A story where the former optimistic member of the X-Men has been beaten down so many times that he takes on a “whatever it takes” mentality could be interesting and emotionally resonant as we both understand what drove him here yet hate the man he’s become. But that isn’t what we got. We got a run that wrote him as a complete stranger and then had all the characters tell the reader that they were wrong for ever thinking he was anyone else.

Im from Utah County and non-Mormon, so you can see the obvious fun I have dating /S. I'm not making this a sob story; the real reason I'm posting here is that it feels a bit more personal than most dating apps. I'm a pretty cheerful, confident guy. I can be a massive smartass and yap a lot, but I can have serious conversations and value communication. So, if you need an ear, I'm game, but do expect the same in return. I tend to be out and about a lot, usually doing stupid stuff and trying not to get hurt or in trouble while doing it. Most of the time, I'm a pro, but there are quite a few stories where I fumbled, lol.
I like to work out. I mostly do calisthenics. I'm admittedly fairly skinny but decently toned. I've also taken up running, but I'm not Usain Bolt, lol. I also play video games, mostly military simulation games like Arma and OHD. I also play platformers like Mario and Sonic, with Sonic being my go-to for my neurodivergent self. I'm big into history, mostly WW2 and the Cold War, and some WW1. I'm actually working on making a Cold War-themed board game.
On top of being a nerd, I do have a sensitive side. I know some of you have probably rolled your eyes, but hey, I like to write poems, and I'm a huge flirt when I warm up to someone. I'm looking for a sweet, caring person around my age and preferably living in the USA. I'm not picky, it's more important that we click, you know?
As for my values, I'm very liberal and an atheist. You don't have to share my views exactly, but I'm being upfront now to avoid causing issues later. I drink sometimes and don't use drugs. I don't care if you use pot, but anything harder is a no-go zone for me, as my family has some history with addiction. If you want to talk, I'm down to give you my Snap or Discord in DM

Tldr; Been struggling lately because it feels like no matter where I go. I'm stuck in an environment that's hostile one way or another. And I'm stuck having to be around immature grown ass adults. And I'm very tired of it. It's tanked the hell outta my morale. To the point where I'm considering on enlisting because I don't feel like I can fit anywhere else in regular society. I'd appreciate any insights if you want to share.
I honestly feel like 2020 was the start of my downward sprial. I had always been depressed. But I feel like the Pandemic really made it worse. As ridiculous as it may sound. I was upset that my prom and senior trip was canceled. As I was looking forwards to it. Because I saw it as a day I could truly feel pretty. And the last time I could spend with friends before adulthood sucked the little life left in us. Didn't help me to see the next classes get to have their prom and trip either. But it's in the past, and I'm glad they had the privilege to have theirs. But a huge issue, back then. Was I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do with myself after Highschool.
My guidance counselor was more excited for my senior year than I was. And my dad didn't help with all the pressure he put on me. We got into more arguments when I was eighteen. As mentioned before, I was clueless on what I wanted in life. And had told my dad I was taking a gap year. Gap year turned into two years. Due to me having fallen into a deep depression due to the quarantine. Which didn't help things between my parents and I. They told me I had to get a job. Fine, started working part-time at dollar tree. And over time that wasn't enough. I started getting badgered about school again.
I have no issue with further education. Be it college or a trade. But the world is far more expensive than it was in the 80s - 90s. And it felt like my parents didn't grasp that. Everytime I brought it up I was treated like I was making excuses. I also didn't want go to school because I didn't want to be stuck with courses to something I fucking hated. I was the one that would have to pay for it in the end. I wanted it to be something I could at least tolerate until I found something better. Ended up doing it anyway to shut them up. And I started working another job to save money. Though I wasn't doing much of that.
Because I'd spend money to get a shred of serotonin. Mostly fast food. Not proud of it, but that was my reality. Eventually, I couldn't put up with the classes and two jobs. And attitude I was getting from my parents. And became very apathetic about life. This was maybe around 2021 - 2022. I truly felt alone at this point. And because I grew isolated from family aside my maternal grandma. I felt I had nobody to really open up to. Couldn't talk to my older brother because he's awful at communicating back with me. As he's always busy with work. And he has a son so. I have friends. But they have their own lives and seem to be doing well. I didn't want to risk being an emotional burden. So I didn't vent to them.
Didn't even have much energy to Journal anymore either. And I stopped therapy when I was nineteen I think. Because my father essentially said I was wasting my therapists time. Since I had been seeing her since I was fifteen and still had the same mentality. My care for my well being and self preservation went out the window for the most part at this time. Think I was twenty at the time. Because that's when I met my ex. Let's call him Gio. Gio is five years older than me (I'm 22F now). I didn't expect us to end up dating. As I wanted to just be friends. But I don't regret it. He's a pain in my ass sometimes. But a great guy.
I think in 2022, April 14th me and my dad got into an awful arguement. Gio had a habit of calling me after he dropped me off home. And we'd talk while he walked to his since he lived a town next to mine. So he had heard everything. At some point I stormed out of the apartment. And my dad had stormed out and tried grabbing me to drag me back in. And that's when Gio pushed us apart. I want to make it a point. That Gio didn't come to the apartment to fight my dad. He came to console me, and since my dad was being agressive, he got protective. They ended up getting into a little scuffle and someone called the police.
After a little more arguing I packed some of my shit and stayed with Gio the next two weeks. Two weeks where I dealt with passive aggressive texts from my dad. The next few months were hot and cold with them. I'd move in and then get kicked out due to my dad and I bumping heads. Around December that year Gio's brother. Let's call him Antonio, invited us to live with him in Massachusetts. Since my dad presses charges on Gio. And due to court stuff, his boss didn't want to give him hours. So we were struggling with money. And Antonio wanted to help us. It was a hard move for me. Since I'm from New Jersey and haven't lived anywhere else.
But I figured a fresh start outta state would get me to take initiative and get my shit together. But before that could even happen there was a misunderstanding between me and Antonio's wife. It was quite small, and I was willing to apologize for it. But she blew it out of proportion and called her daughter. And I assume said I gave her attitude. Little bitch actually came to the house in attempt to fight me over it. Luckily Antonio was able to hold her back. I ended up getting sent back to Jersey. Which leads to my whole point here. It seems like no matter what. Something gets in the way of me going somewhere in life.
Im always surrounded by at least one or two immature grown ass adults. And im tired of it. My dad hasnt changed much either. And ive been unemployed for three months. Theres no peace at my parents house because of my dad. And there isn't any at my exes house. Which I currently have to reside since my parents moved into a one bedroom two months ago. I have no issue with the majority of the house aside from Gios aunt. Who is an old bitch I hate. And I don't use that word lightly. I understand she deals with stress and chronic pain. But that doesn't excuse her attitude. I know my place in this apartment and generally keep out of the way. And respect everyone. But she has a very nasty spirit, lacks accountability and self awareness, is entitled, and rude as hell.
And being told by not only my ex but her DAUGHTER to just ignore her. Is tiring. I understand it though, because that's just how it is with some people. But like... that's been my WHOLE childhood. Being mindful and expected to have sympathy, understanding, patience, and respect for others. Yet never or barely receiving any myself. All because what? I don't pay rent? I don't work 40+hrs a week? I'm so tired of this shit. I know I'm pathetic. I can be immature. And emotional. But I'm TRYING and it's like it's never enough. And when I'm at a point where I'm hopeless. It's as if I never tried in the first place.
I'm supposes to appreciate and validate others and what they've contributed for or something that benefitted me. Yet I can't get the simplest acknowledgment that hey, you've been struggling. But you managed to do X today. And that's great, I'm proud of you. But perhaps that's too childish of me. I'm a grown woman. Not a toddler. You don't get stickers for doing what you're supposed to. Because nobody gives a fuck. Hell, when you're a child it's probably worse. To quote my father, why should or would I get praise for something I was SUPPOSED to do.

This is a rundown of the predominant intelligent races on my fantasy version of Saturn, which is a sword-and-sorcery world loosely based on Classical mythology. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Aranians are the oldest of Saturn’s intelligent races. Like their kin the Arthropoids, they are entomons, with multi-jointed legs and semi-flexible exoskeletons. Unlike the Arthropoids, they are only slightly humanoid. Their lower bodies are spider-like, with eight legs and large abdomens, while their upper bodies are more humanoid, although they have six arms and numerous eyes. Once long ago, they boasted a planet-spanning civilization; they were the first to develop philosophy and art, mathematics and astrology, architecture and literature. But in the apocalypse of the Day of Wrath, their civilization was annihilated, and today, the descendants of those ancient Aranians have largely forgotten about the glories of their once-proud people. Many Aranians, such as the Slavars, live nomadic existences, although a few settled Aranian nations, such as Anansazi and Ctenizan, still exist.
{Classical Mythology equivalent: Centaurs}
Arthropoids are entomons, insect-like creatures with semi-flexible exoskeletons, but are far more humanoid than their Aranian cousins. Most are of human height, with two legs and four arms, but a few are smaller, such as the ant-like Marwari, who stand roughly four feet tall, or the flea-like Zaoi, who are usually less than three feet in height. Most Arthropoids have wings, which allow them to fly thanks to their irridescent membranes, membranes which manipulate colour and permit flight despite the Arthropoids’ weight. Unlike the Dendryads, the Arthropoids are not a single species, but rather a collection of many species that are not capable of interbreeding. A wide variety of nations have been founded by the Arthropoids—the expansive empire of Marwar, the reclusive land of Aed, the militaristic Vazhka—and in a few places, mainly Naranj and Merinj, they live in harmony with the Dendryads. In the main, however, a state of war usually exists between the Dendryads and the Arthropoids, as the two “superraces” compete for control of Saturn.
{Classical Mythology equivalent: Myrmidons, Amazons}
Although Dendryads appear to be plants, they are not. They are instead phyta, a kingdom of organisms that split off from plants roughly 400 million years ago. Humanoid, like almost all creatures native to Saturn the Dendryads have six limbs, four arms and two legs. Unlike the Arthropoids, the Dendryads are a single species, although with astonishing diversity; their subraces are capable of interbreeding, but this usually requires divine intervention. Most races of Dendryads are sequential hermaphrodites: they change from male to female or female to male periodically throughout their lives. Over the millennia, the Dendryads have spread out across the surface of Saturn, forming mighty kingdoms and vast empires. Today, most Dendryads would assert that, even if their own nation is not particularly powerful, the greatest and most puissant of Saturn’s civilizations are still Dendryad. The most notable of these is Aquarium, the Golden City, the Light of the World, the last remnant of the Anthemite Empire and defender of civilization since Anthem’s fall ten thousand years ago. Other Dendryad kingdoms of note are Naranj and Merinj, Dzjanggakh, Mora, and Qoq. With the fall of Anthem, though, the Dendryad position is threatened by rising powers, most of which are either Arthropoid or Mykobold in ethnicity. On multiple fronts, the Aquarine Empire is challenged: by its ancient enemy Marwar, by the new and dynamic Swarm of the Azzuzzazi, by invading Slavars. Only time will tell if Aquarium can withstand this onslaught of “barbarians”.
{Classical Mythology equivalent: Dryads}
Mykobolds are the fungal equivalent of Dendryads. Shorter than the Dendryads, they prefer dark and moist regions of Saturn, such as deep caves, swamps, and the undergrowth of many of Saturn’s forests. This often brings them into contact with the te’Ythul (see below), often at the Mykobolds’ cost. Their relations with the other races of Saturn vary significantly depending on the tribe of Mykobolds and the counterparty: the Russulkas or Redcaps are mischievous bordering on murderous, the Troggoths of the subterranean empire of Troggoroth are insane cultists, the Kuba are peaceful shamans, the Lichens are undead necromancers who possess the rotting bodies of other races, the Gomphlins are friendly but isolationist, the Thallids have an ancient but proud scholarly tradition, and so forth. Recently, many tribes of Mykobolds have begun migrating from their traditional strongholds into the vacuum left by the decaying eastern half of the Anthemite Empire, creating new petty kingdoms for themselves and occasionally finding themselves as the ruling class over Dendryads. This has led to tension between the two ethnicities.
{Classical Mythology equivalent: Troglodytae}
The Coral Brains are not, strictly speaking, a race in the same way as the others. They are, instead, vast colonies of polyps that function as enormous neural networks. Once a single supercomputer that covered much of the surface of Saturn, the coral was shattered during the Day of Wrath and many fragments were ejected into Saturn’s atmosphere and beyond. Now the remaining pieces, which range in size from a few dozen meters across to dozens of miles, roam the skies of Saturn, kept aloft by careful channeling of colour which provides an antigravity force. It also fuels their computation. Some of them have seen their surfaces colonized by other races, but those settlers exist on the coral brains only at the brains’ sufferance. For at least a million years, the coral brains have been locked in a secret war with the Shimmering Demons, recruiting from the other races individuals and sometimes entire nations as pawns in their struggle to control Saturn; most notably, both sides have engaged the services of what remains of Anthem’s ceramic legions as foot soldiers.
{Classical Mythology equivalent: Genii Loci}
The te’Ythul, or Spawn of Ythul, are one of the most ancient and mysterious of Saturn’s races. These hulking giants, who can reach heights of thirty feet, are found only in humid and swampy areas, where the water in the air keeps their mucous-covered skins moist. Having arisen from the congealing, rancid blood of the thousand-mile-tall embodiment of primordial chaos Ythul when it spilled from his body on the Day of Wrath, the te’Ythul hid themselves in secret parts of the world, far from the other races towards which they were and are profoundly hostile. Many have become masters of manipulating the obsidian oil, giving them access to arcane and eldritch powers unknown and forbidden to the rest of Saturn’s peoples. A few have even taken to dabbling in anti-colour, a sinister and unholy force of unknown origins. With their dozens of tentacles, they are formidable and terrifying foes for any adventurers who encounter them, whether in the depths of the earth or secreted within foul swamps or roaming the dusk-shrouded undergrowth of Saturn’s rainforests.
{Classical Mythology equivalent: Cyclopes}
Syngnals are the messengers and servants of Phragma, the trickster goddess of magic. These small, seahorse-like creatures flit around, gradually influencing the course of Saturnian history in the direction Phragma would like it to go. Unfortunately for her, they aren’t very good at their jobs. Or maybe they are…
{Classical Mythology equivalent: Hippocampus}
Titanians and Uberonians are humanoids not native to Saturn; instead, they originated on Saturn’s moon Voeba. However, when Voeba was destroyed during the Day of Wrath, its inhabitants were forced to migrate elsewhere, to other moons. One group settled on Titan; the other, after finding their first choice of Hyperion unsuitable, eventually formed a new society on Rhea. Not being native Saturnians, they only have four limbs, rather than the standard six, and they have a higher level of technology than the Saturnians, boasting flying saucers, rocket ships, and rayguns. Since the Day of Wrath, they have been locked in a cold war for control of Saturn’s moons and rings, largely ignoring the planet itself, which they regard as inhabited by primitives. Of the two, the Titanian are marginally more benevolent, although both nations feel perfectly free to abduct Saturnians and probe them, or, in the case of the Uberonians, enslave them for their own amusement. This latter habit is frowned upon by the Titanians, who attempt to enforce what they call the “First Order”, which states that more advanced and sophisticated and, frankly, intelligent races are not supposed to meddle in the affairs of primitives, because primitives, with their primitive planet-bound brains, simply cannot grasp how dangerous even a single piece of Titanian or Uberonian technology can be to a witless primitive. That raygun? Put it down. That com-talker? Put it down. That belt buckle? Put it down! The Titanian Ring Patrol, with its stalwart band of Space Marshals, attempts to enforce the law on a largely lawless Ring system, but even they periodically break the First Order, usually because the Uberonians broke it first or because the primitives had already been exposed to advanced technology or because the captain really didn’t feel like following it.
{Norse Mythology equivalent: Ljósálfar and Dökkálfar}
The Shimmering Demons, like the Titanians and Uberonians, are not native to Saturn. In fact, no one knows where they come from, exactly. What is known is that they don’t seem to be entirely…here. Flickering in and out of perception, they are found throughout Saturn, usually as traders, but what they trade in is…odd. Want wealth? They’re happy to oblige, in exchange for a handful of twigs. Want power? Sure thing; you’ll just need to give them your happiest memory. Want immortality? It only costs a broken sword. Want true love? Not a problem—but you’ll be sacrificing all the messy complexity of a real relationship…which the demons are glad to take off your hands. It’s been noticed that people who deal with them come away from the transaction a little…flatter, somehow; a little more two-dimensional. Those of the demons who aren’t engaged in trade are busy measuring. They measure everything, absolutely everything—from the diameter of that tree to exactly how much of a “hero” you are--and when they aren’t measuring, they’re cataloguing. They catalog everything. Even people. They would classify you as a web-based amateur worldbuilder grade B+ (not to be confused with a web-based amateur worldbuilder grade B++). Would you be interested in being reclassified as a web-based amateur worldbuilder grade A---? They have an installment plan…
{Classical Mythology equivalent: none}

Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Today, I remembered to update! This is apprentice Lara filling in for the master thestoryteller987 with hopes for good health and a swift return! Sorry about the week's absents, it's been very busy over here in Laratown with so many thing happening I've barely had time to say ISW let alone read it. Without further nonsense though, (other than from Russian milbloggers) lets go! Remember I know less than nothing.

Ukrainian sources indicated that Russian forces are concentrating limited, understaffed, and incohesive forces in the Sumy direction, but even such a Russian grouping of forces will be able to achieve the likely desired effect of drawing and fixing Ukrainian forces in the international border area

Ukraine stands strong. But Ukraine also is stretched like a rubber band right now. Push in the wrong place, and things will snap. On the bright side of this, it genuinely looks like Russia is stretching themselves, too. Note how ISW states that the forces are drawn from other areas, so yes, Ukraine is spending manpower being fixed in the border area, however, by the same token if Ukraine can manage a breakthrough, other areas are seriously going to feel a hard punch. Something to keep an eye on and I suppose western weapons will be the big tell here, what will arrive first?

Kremlin officials expressed their condolences to senior Iranian officials following the announcement of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's and Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian's deaths on May 20

I am sorry for any children, wives and family these people left behind. Not so sad to see them past on, being no more, ceasing to be. expiring and going to meet its maker. Running down the curtain pole and meeting the choir invisible. Maybe there will be daieies. TLDR, They are x parrots.

Russian President Vladimir Putin fired Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Yury Sadovenko on May 20, replacing him with former Deputy Economic Minister and current Federation Council Accounts Chamber Auditor Oleg Savelyev

A mixture of booting out loyalists who are loyal to Shoigu and replacing them with people who can slow down the utter train wreckof the Russian Economy. Putin wants to get as close to a war time econoomy without putting the country on a war time economy. Because, as you know, it's not a war. It's a 3 day special operation.

Putin also dismissed Presidential Advisor Alexandra Levitskaya on May 20, but the reason for Levitskaya’s dismissal is unclear.

Rumour has it Levitskaya sneezed during a Putin speech just at the point where Putin was saying an important part about goods and the follow up "bless you" was taken as patronising.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated the White House's unwillingness to approve Ukraine's use of US-provided weapons in strikes against military targets in Russia following a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (also known as the Ramstein format) on May 20

Once again, the US is dragging its boots. Seriously, guys! You're giving them bucket loads of democracy and freedom, just let them deliver some liberty to Russia!
There was an intersting quote here though:

Austin vaguely noted that "the aerial dynamic is a little bit different," but stated that he would not speculate further.

So I will. I see this as being taken in three ways: 1: The fabled f16's. Is this Austin's way of subtley giving the nod that Ukraine can pursue Russian planes over the border? 2: does it mean Ukraine could use f16's to strike over the border? 3: does it mean Ukraine could shoot down fighter's in russia? IE if a Russian fighter fires a missile from Russia's side of the border, is Ukraine within its right to shoot down said fighter from their side?
All interesting questions!

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas stated that some unspecified countries, presumably NATO member states, have already sent personnel to train Ukrainian soldiers "on the ground."

The Baltic's have balls. This is a direct fuck you daddy Putin. this in direct alignment with more an more rumours floating through the EU that actually they might lift the embargo on Ukraine striking within Russia. Both the UK and France are talkking about it, and we never agree about anything!

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev amplified a known Russian information operation aimed at directly undermining Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's legitimacy as president.

Why is Medvedev still talking? How is he still talking?
Anyway, Medvedev is saying that the last Ukrainian election should have been in March 2024. Technically true, however in Ukraine's constitution it states that under times of marshal law, the term of the president mayy be extended. So, according to ISW at least, Medvedev is once again doing what he does best.
Talkin' shit, talkin' shit.

Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Vovchansk, Chasiv Yar, Avdiivka, and Donetsk City and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and the Dnipro River Delta.

Unfortunate pushes forward. Ukraine is giving ground, but slowly and carefully. I fully still believe the second Ukraine is ready, she'll sweep Russia right back into their own border and fire a storm shadow up their ass for good measure.
I do actually have some maps now, not sure if they have the level of detail I need (they are maps of Europe in 4 volumes) but if not I'll order the rest.

Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii (iStories) reported that Russian military authorities and Kazakh law enforcement acting on Russian orders detained at least two more servicemen in Kazakhstan who had deserted from the Russian military.

Poor guys.
This is why you don't flee Russia by running to a Russian puppet state. Duh.
‘Q’ for the Community:

• Austin's vaguery about air targets. What do you think he is talking about?

• Join the conversation on /TheNuttySpectacle!

I’m going out on a limb here, because this post is going to be a strong dose of woo. But I feel I have a duty to warn, and you people seem just weird enough to be able to get it. Read this in the voice of John Oliver if you have to, it might help.

TL;DR: Things are going to get worse before they get better. A mundane and lame, but not altogether surprising, amount of worse. Around 2045-2050, is when things finally turn around. Time to get your shit together, people.

Backstory: Back in the late 70s, a former Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations, Stephan A. Schwartz, got involved in remote viewing. Schwartz started a long-term project that ran from 1978 to 1995 to ask remote viewers to look at one day in June, 2050 to see whether or not the Cold War turned into a nuclear war. He collected data from hundreds of remote viewers over thousands of sessions, over decades of time, and aggregated down the places of only broad consensus. The points where nearly everyone agreed over years and years.

What came out was while we didn’t nuke ourselves, things like the fall of the USSR, the rise of HIV/AIDS, climate change, and terrorism replacing the Cold War seemed like crazy talk at the time, but it's what the remote viewers said. To date, points of wide consensus have held accurate because they’re non-specific. It's not “on Sept 11 this will happen…” it’s “something happened, and now terrorism is why the world is a more dangerous place.”

You can watch here in 2017 where Schwartz talks about a “series of epidemics” occurring. HIV/AIDS was the first one, and last I checked, the opioid crisis, huge increases in non-communicable diseases, and COVID are all massive public health problems on a scale we didn’t used to have - even at the level that in 2017 to consider them. Then he describes Zoom meetings, and how they’re in VR by 2050. So, like I said, things get worse.
/backstory

In the last few years, Schwartz started up a new version of the 2050 project, asking remote viewers to look at the year 2060, and report on wide consensus. A summary of his work is here, with findings on the last page. (This is not investment advice… or is it? ;) I’ve been waiting around on a book with more details for 2 years now, and still nothing, so I have this and interviews as most of what he has out there to go on.
I’m a remote viewer, and I’ve had years of profound, sometimes bonkers experiences that have forced me to stop being so materialist and accept that sometimes remote viewing works. And that the universe is buck wild, but whatever.
Anyone can learn to remote view, just like anyone can learn French if they spend a lot of time every day working on something that seems cool at first, but is ultimately borderline pointless to do without a solid reason. In reality, both have too many rules and are kind of annoying to keep up every day when you’re not using it professionally. But, objectively, learning French is still worse.

….But I’ve also studied and used social science data for work, and looking at broad consensus is how we evaluate things like aggregating survey data. So I put a lot of stock in both the 2050 and 2060 projects simply based on the methodology.

You know what I don’t put a lot of stock in? Astrology.

So I made the mistake of asking astrology about the general themes forecast for the US for 2030-2045, expecting some sort of hilarious contradictions. Like “oh, 2034, Saturn is in Leo - the US elects its first kitty-cat president :3 YAY!””

Nope.
Fam (can I call you fam?) - look, Fam, let me tell you, it did not go well for me.

TL;DR of that post: Nothing contradicts Schwartz. Even the timeline of bad to worse lines up. And I didn't even tell them why I was asking about that time frame before I got a few responses back.

We go from now to bad in the early-mid 2030s, bad to worse in late 2030s/2040, then spicy worse until 2045, then come up for air by the time kindergarten-age kids of today are old enough to rent a car and drive it through Mad Max: Tornado Dustbowl II.
OK, so two woo-woo data points. Who cares, right? Just stupid woo coincidence, right? How many pretend "skeptics" are screaming "confirmation bias!" at me right now? It's not zero.

But....Then we have the unfortunate triangulation of the fact that some of the less pleasant climate change models pointing to a 2.5+ degree world, which is entirely right smack-dab in the realm of possibility right now, agree with the severity of the remote viewing predictions. Expectations of a Blue Ocean event are on track for 2036-2038ish, and the remote viewing data says something happens around 2040 that is a big deal.

The 2050 and 2060 projects both agree that there are migrations: “people flee the coasts, then the Midwest becomes uninhabitable.” But like, more uninhabitable than right now. Constant tornados and floods and drought and general bad times kind of uninhabitable, not like, thinking spaghetti in your chili is still food (I’ll fight you about this, Cincinnati! Come at me!)

Now, if you’ve made it this far, you’re probably just a podcast host desperate for content. Respect.

But for real, if you’ve made it this far, it’s important to acknowledge the fact that this is a warning. This is knowledge, not to create fear, but to inform your sound choices. To be used to guide your life. Data to keep you safe and happy and doing whatever else normal people do these days. Fidget spinners? Are those still a thing? Anyway, point is that if you’re scared, you’re doing it wrong.

And look, this is a topic I’ve looked at for a long time, so there’s no way that you won’t have questions about the nuance. I would, too. Maybe questions like “I’m not clear - are you on drugs now, or do you NEED to be on drugs?”
But I’m going to get off the internet now, and let comments pile up for a while, because we have, like….8 years left to post on IG about plates of food someone else made and you just paid for. Or however you spend your time. I have 8 years left to understand why fidget spinners are a thing before I’m taking out the ball bearings and using them for ammo.

People, get your shit together. Find community. Be compassionate and kind. Learn to garden. Get in shape. Touch grass.
And vote, FFS. Not for America’s first kitty-cat president, I mean, not YET. Vote for humans now so we can have cats later.

I've just completed my re-read of all of Stormlight in anticipation of the WaT coming out later this year. To say I'm excited for the new book would be an understatement.
Throughout my time reading Sanderson's works (Stormlight first then Mistborn Era 1+2, then everything else), I had largely considered Rhythm to be the weakest of the Stormlight series, with rating being something like Oathbringer as a 9.5, WoK a 9, Words of Radiance 8, Rhythm 7.
On my re-read however my view of Rhythm improved markedly and several of the issues I had originally seemed to fall away:

1. Kaladin repeats his storyline from the first two books.
2. Navani's storyline with Raboniel felt like lore dumping instead of the slow trickle discovery that worked so well in the Way of Kings
3. Venli's flashbacks are so boring that Eshonai actually just takes them over.
4. Szeth straight up murdering Taravangian is just written off by Dalinar, etc.
5. Kal's big 4th ideal moment is so convoluted they need to bring in time-slowing, speaking across continents and is separated by so many other moments that it loses all tension of Kal falling after Lirin

1st: The first was my biggest complaint. I had always thought Kaladin just replays his arc from the first novels, but on re-read, he is actually learning to grow beyond his old coping mechanism: his men and Bridge 4. Needing to fight and protect them was the identity he created to deal with being enslaved and watching of his squad being murdered by Amaram, but he's growing past that now.
2nd: On re-read I really really appreciated the Navani-Raboniel relationship more and feel like I glossed over this too fast in my first read. Raboniel ends up being a great character and a very interesting looking at someone utterly desperate to escape the prison of a life she is placed in by this eternal war. Navani's appreciation for her near the end after ending her daughter's life and her scenes with Moash were after all.
3rd: Conversely, this one seemed to be an even stronger take than before. Venli's chapters really just felt insufferable to me. I realize her story is about the awful things that happen with a literal child being forced to be responsible for the survival of her people, but her storyline just doesn't feel believable, especially the scenes in Kholinar where she just does everyone's bidding while igniting a war that effectively dooms multiple nations.
4th: This one....really doesn't make sense to me. I hope this is something addressed in WaT, but Szeth walked into Taravangian's room and just murdered a prisoner. We the reader know that Taravangian escaped and took up the shard of Odium, so never actually died....but Dalinar in the Radiants legitimately thing he murdered an elderly prisoner in cold blood with no authorization or process of justice. Dalinar immediately sending him on a mission to Shinovar with Kaladin seems insane given these circumstances.
5th: On re-read I liked this scene much more than I did in my original read, but I feel like it was just overdone so much. Dalinar's forgiveness scene in Oathbringer I think was the perfect template for Kaladin falling through the storm. It would have been better for him as a character to overcome his unwillingness to say the Fourth Ideal on his own, but even if he needed Dalinar to help him, then it would have been better to keep his entire falling plot within a single chapter instead of chopping it up so much. The constant jump cuts really ruined the tension of his fall and his return.
That was really just a stream of consciousness on the books as I finished them, but a few theories I have:

1. Kaladin is re-walking the same paths that Tanavast walked long in the past. In WoKs Kaladin almost ends his life at the HONOR chasm, presumably where Honor was splintered. The Stormfather later tells Dalinar that Tanavast loved humans and died protecting them. My guess would be Tanavast made a promise to protect both the Singers and the Humans, and was torn apart trying to honor both of those promises much like Kal was during WoR trying to protect Elhokar while also agreeing to help his murderers. More on this right below.
2. In Mistborn era 1, we are continually led to believe Vin will be the Hero of Ages, but in the end Sazed takes up both shards to form Harmony. Scadrial at the time was plagued by so many environmental disasters that the person to take up the power of the shards needed to be wise enough to use the power to remake the world itself: a task that Vin would have been incredibly ill suited for. I think a story conclusion is very similar in Stormlight, the true problem Roshar faces is the cycle of eternal war that destroys the planet and its people of both Singer and human descent. The person to eventually take up Honor / Odium / Cultivation etc. must be someone who can legitimately bring an end to the war and find a way to peacefully coexist. Kal so far seems like the best example, Dalinar is intent on leading the Radiants as a military force to oppose Odium directly, while Kal has had significant time with the Singers and humans of every kind, and he sees them as no different from each other.
3. Odium's offer to Dalinar near the end of the book, where the contest of champions is hashed out seems to have some spoilers: Odium: "Though I will be able to focus my attentions on sending agents to the rest of the Cosmere, using what I've conquered here as enough for now." as an addendum to the terms Dalinar demands if he wins. In Mistborn Era 2 we see two groups that are agents of Odium (the Skybreakers and the Iriali) operating on Scadrial. This seems like it indicates that Dalianr will be victorious and Odium will focus on sending agents to other planets and systems.
4. Dalinar: "I intend to be my own champion, I'll have died if you win." Odium "Yesssss, you will have. And you will give your soul to me. You Dalinar will join the Fused. You will become immortal." Human Fused are confirmed then. Who do we know wanted to become immortal and was generally a huge asshole who caused most of these problems? Gavilar. My pet theory is Gavilar will be Odium's champion when it is revealed that Odium made him a Fused after Szeth killed him. Gavilar being Odium's champion is a great explanation for why we start every single book looking at Gavilar through a different perspective in the prologues and will be a great emotional moment for Dalinar to face off against Gavilar one final time. No one else seems like it will have the same emotional weight as Gavilar, bringing a random Fused we've never heard of to get stomped by Dalinar would be anti-climatic while Gavilar could be an excellent twist for the series with lots of pontential foresadowing left to us in the prologues.

Monster wall of text, but just tons of thoughts as I just finished the novels again yesterday.

(Throwaway account because I have friends and family who listen to the podcast.)
I (25F) have been best friends with Jack (24M) and Rick (25M) since college and we have always been a trio friendship. Jack and I have always been playfully flirty with one another in private and around Rick who finds it funny and occassionally jumps in to fluster Jack.
Over the past year Jack and I have been talking a lot, he has helped me through a lot of stressful situations and naturally became the person I sought comfort in. Before we knew it, we got very close and feelings started surfacing. For context, Jack and I are very guarded people and we rarely open up to others they way we have with one another. We just recently decided to start dating in private. Jack and I wanted to keep the situationship as hushed as possible until we knew for certain we wanted whatever this is.
Rick started noticing our closeness but shrugged it off because we still acted the same as we usually were around him. Then one day all hell broke loose between Jack and myself, and I finally told Rick what was going on between us because I felt like he deserved to know why there was negative tension in the group. Rick admitted he wasn't surprised nor was he angry about not being told, if anything, he said he was happy we found each other and he was rooting for us from the get-go. When I explained the fight, he acted cupid and got us back together. Throughout the last few weeks he kept encouraging us to be more proactive in the relationship, giving advice and kept commenting how adorable we looked etc etc... It was like he was our number 1 cheerleader. This went on for a while until he told me one day that he felt like a third wheel in our group.
I was devastated to hear it, so was Jack. Upon self-reflection, we tried to think of all the times we displayed any PDA or anything similar around Rick and that was not the case. As I mentioned, Jack and I are dating privately, whatever we do that involves romance or dating remains between just us two and is never displayed or shown around others out of sheer paranoia. We also always keep Rick in mind and include him in our shenanigans we usually did as friends.
It gets worse. Rick has now decided to no longer attend our weekly meet ups when I'm around because "I don't want to third wheel!". This has put me in an odd predicament because recently it feels like Rick and I are playing tug-of-war with Jack, and I hate it. He has also very recently started acting quite cold towards me, making comments like how I have other friends I can hang out with or just sending me one worded answers when I try to speak to him. Ngl, I feel like I've been made the villain here. His behaviour has made me feel isolated from our trio friendship, with Jack in the middle trying to divide his time as evenly as possible - although, quite impossible, we all have busy schedules and can only meet up once a week. I feel like rather than being myself around Rick, he is starting to see me as "Jack's Girl" rather than his actual female best friend. Which hurts and is causing me a lot of grief because I feel like I have lost a friend because I decided to date one of ours. It's also made me feel a bit isolated from the group itself because all Rick wants is to hangout with Jack without my presence.
Jack and I really haven't changed our behaviour in the group. The only difference between now and then is that Rick is now aware that we are dating. I am tired of his hot and cold behaviour about our relationship and I wish that he would just outright tell us what his issue is. He has gone from cheerleader to wingman to negativity. At the same time, I am tired of feeling stressed and upset about how Rick has been treating me recently. I have expressed this to Jack and he wants to try to fix this because he loves us both and enjoys spending his time with the trio - but in all honesty, I don't think this new dynamic can be "fixed".
WIBTAH for wanting some distance from the group?