So I've been radio silent, but I'm kinda back now. This is the beginning of my rewrite for this fic. Unfortunately I'm gonna take a bit to make the next part, this is due to me being part of the ficnnap. So future parts are gonna take a while to get going, hopefully I'll be functional enough to sit down during the summer and write a bunch.
Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the fic. Any feedback would be nice :).
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`Psionic Imprint Subject: Elias Meier, Exhausted Director'
Date [standardized Human time]: June 27th, 2136
Humanity learned it was not alone in the year of 2015, when it was viscously attacked by a hostile alien force intent on colonizing Earth. But humanity fought back, with the formation of XCOM. For the first time in the entirety of human history, Humanity stood as one. And we won, barely and not without consequences. Countries fell apart, or were briefly colonized; or in the case of Advent, for a couple decades.
Of course there was also the aliens that were invading. After some time it was found out that all of them of them were enslaved, controlled and distorted by the Elders.
Or Ethereals if you wanted to be pedantic. God I have had enough of pedantic people.
After a few tense decades, the aliens had slowly filtered into human society. The Vipers forming Sisterhoods, Mutons forming tribes, Sectoids getting into everything, Andromedas forming a haven for their people, and Chryssalids... once thought to be a dying race, surging back to life in 2077 and becoming a horrendous problem for everybody. There were a couple others but I couldn't be bothered to remember them.
Ding a little ring tone sounded, reminding me of my wretched job. I groaned, and waved my hand. I heard a dial up sound, as the system connected. Finally it connected, and one of the voices I dreaded hearing started speaking.
A monotone male voice, the voice of an emotionless thing created by XCOM to make death. "Hello Meier. I have a report, Wraith unit sent to System Gliese-832c has returned. A sapient alien civilization has been discovered. It is not what we expected though."
Wonderful, great even... God this is gonna be a whole thing to handle.
"Explain Odin, I will have to schedule a meeting about this new discovery."
"I have sent a data packet to your computer, which you would see if you looked at it sir"
How the fuck has he developed sarcasm? Has he always had this quirk or did he create it just to personally fuck with me?
I sighed and spun my chair around, away from the great view of my office window. The office I was trapped in was decently sized, the large desk with two 57 inch monitors on each side. The room was 10 feet tall, and 20 feet from door to window, and 12 feet wide. There was a seating area with two couches and a coffee table. A large drink cabinet flanked by two busts on pedestals, and a foyer sitting on the opposite wall flanked by tall standing plant pots with ferns. The entrance was double doors that looked like wood, but were actually plasma and explosive shielded metal doors.
On the left monitor was a display of the planet baring alien life. It was tidally locked, and was inhabited by... sheep, literal fucking sheep. Course they had paws instead of hooves and had no nose but still, literally just fucking sheep. They were apparently called Venlil. They had a decent population, and were part of a larger federation with an unknown number of species. They were at war with 7-8 feet tall nazi space crocodiles, and were deathly afraid of anything "predatory".
I glanced at a small box that appeared, it was an addendum by Dr. Valhen regarding the Venlil. It was a hypothesis regarding their physiology.
Experimental Codex Simulations put them at a 21.53% chance of surviving to a century with current physiology. Likely hood of genetic modification to weaken species at 71.89%.
The addendum pointed out the knocked knees, and the absence of a nose being the most likely areas of modification. I quirked an eyebrow up. I know Dr. Valhen had experience tearing open modified aliens and modifying people at an extreme levels. But still this had to be stretch.
"I have done my own calculations sir, and I have come to the same conclusion as Dr. Valhen sir." I stared pointedly at my monitors before sighing and rubbing my face.
Hmmm whom do I trust more? The mad scientist that walks around in several different metal bodies, or the psychopathic Codex who was created to be unnaturally good at killing. Hmmm good question... how about neither and say fuck it.
"OK Odin. Would you kindly contact the rest of the board and notify them about an emergency meeting?"
"Of course sir, I have already notified them about the scheduled meeting."
... Fucking prick. Oh well if I'm going to be sitting through a meeting I'm going to atleast drink some of the piss flavored water called vodka to pretend I can get drunk.
I stood up and walked over to the drink cabinet. A small round drone that was more of a floating camera came out of the ceiling and followed me. I opened up the cabinet and selected the highest proof alcohol I could find. After popping the bottle and grabbing a shot glass I walked back to my desk. Sitting down as an encrypted channel lit up my right side screen. I pressed on it and poured a shot, the small camera drone hovering in front of me just beyond the desk. The right monitor lit up as 6 people connected.
The Heads of Military, Research and Development, and Diplomatic Affairs were all in the meeting. Dr. Tygan and Dr. Shen heads of R&D, General Zhao and General Kelly heads of Military, Ms. Clark and Mr. Freeman heads of Diplomatic Affairs.
Dr. Tygan didn't look a day over 30, even though he was older than myself. His white coat looked immaculate, and his glasses clean. But his posture and eyes spoke of a man who was debating falling over asleep or shooting someone in the face. Dr. Shen had safety gear on, his clothing stained by machine fluids and sweat. He looked more alive in his 40's than Tygan, and behind him was a scene of a bustling space yard. General Zhao was prim and proper, his posture rigid and his face completely neutral. General Kelly looked to be in a ships captain quarters, his General uniform replaced with a mandatory protective jumpsuit. He looked like he was just woken up, a steaming cup of coffee sitting before him. Ms. Clark and Mr. Freeman looked... normal, they had proper uniforms on and looked like they had been working for a while but still had plenty of energy.
I shot the glass back then looked back at the drone, which had moved to be above the monitor. "So... I have received a report from Odin, and it is the reason for this meeting. Have any of you received the report as well and viewed the contents?"
Dr. Shen squinted at something behind the camera, before bending back and nodding. "Yeah I glanced at it, doesn't really affect my operations honestly. Besides I doubt that they could even get close to the OCDM. That thing can wipe out all kinds of stuff. "
Ms. Clark palmed her face, an exasperated look on it. "Could we not immediately discuss killing these new extraterrestrials? For all we know they number in the hundreds of species, or dozens. Not to mention we do not know the full extent of their technology. They could be much more powerful than us for all we know!"
General Zhao spoke up, a dismissive look to his face. "I have already run through some of the internal information of the Wraith unit. It appears that they have relatively the same level of technology as us. In fact they are actually inferior in some areas. For instance they practically have no cybersecurity. We could shut down their whole planet with a button press."
Ms. Clark groaned as she put her face in her hands. Mr. Freeman just leaned back looking tired. He raised a hand, a ding from the system notifying that he had a question. "Have we attempted to secure a direct access to their network? The more we know about these aliens the better. For all we know they have plans on dealing with "predatory" aliens. We could be signing the death certificate of humanity if we don't investigate more."
Clark looked up with shock and anger. "Yo-you can't be serious Mr. Freeman?! We haven't even attempted communication with these people and you're already planning on spying on them?! We should talk to them first, not just assume they are gonna be murderous!"
Everyone else on the meeting glanced around, the unsaid thing hanging in the air. Clark was very new to the board, and had grown up in New Russia. One of the European countries with the most amount of aliens. Everyone else had either only interacted with aliens as acquaintances, or killed them. Not to mention that XCOM was literally formed with the intention of pushing an invading alien empire off Earth. It had a long and bloody history with aliens, not to mention some of the things that it had done to aliens in service to Humanity.
General Kelly just sighed as he took a long sip of his coffee. Putting it down he crossed his hands in front of him. "We're getting off track people. We need to decide our course of action moving forward with these Venlil and their allies. I would recommend sending a civilian science vessel alongside two Avengers and a Hammer. The Hammer ship can operate in Stealth mode in the alien system, while the Avengers act like Cargo Ships. This allows us to put on a good face while still ensuring that our assets will be protected."
There was nodding across the board, everyone seemed to reluctantly agree on something for once. Then they all stared at their cameras, obviously waiting for myself. I sighed and poured another shot. "I concur with Kelly's plan, but I would also like to have Mothership Valhala on standby with Fleet Alpha. I would like you Kelly to command it, if you are too busy General Zhao will command instead."
Kelly and Zhao looked shocked by what I said. But they both donned neutral faces quickly afterwards. Zhao raised a hand, the system dinged signaling that he had a question. "May I ask why you are requesting this? Last time I actively commanded was for Operation Living Mausoleum and we all know how that turned out."
I shot back the glass and pointed at the camera. "That Operation was fucked from the very beginning. There was jack shit you could've done to prevent the casualties that occurred. Not to mention that you can't compare yourself to the Commander, he was inhumanly good at what he did. Hell from what I hear the man could practically see into the future. So quit it, stop beating yourself up over it. You're one of the greatest generals I've ever had the pleasure of working alongside with."
Zhao's face briefly clouded with a dark brooding look as I talked. But when I finished it lit up in surprise. He must still be beating himself up over that shit operation. I still remember reading the reports and feeling afraid about the future of XCOM. But thankfully Valhen managed to control the damn thing, and Diplomatic Affairs quelled the fires that had started from it.
"This meeting is concluded. Get back to whatever you all are doing." One by one the channel sent quiet. Tygan just stared into space, a vacant look on his face. "Tygan? Tygan!" He jumped in his seat, finally coming to. He took off his glasses and rubbed his face. "Tygan... it's getting worse... you really should reconsider your stance."
He looked up, a fire in his eyes. He put his glasses back on, tapping his fingers as he did so. "Well I won't. I'm not gonna stoop down to Valhen's level of depravity. The procedure is completely experimental and for all I know it's a miracle that I'm even still alive. I am almost 200 years old. If my mind is finally failing then so be it. I have played God long enough."
He left the channel right afterwards, only for another person to appear. It was Dr. Valhen and she had no camera feed. All I could see was a noise graph. "Meier... I would like to... make a... request- demand... I would like to attend the mission."
I slammed the shot glass on the table. "Absolutely not, I don't care what you're reason is. My final and only answer will be no. So kiss my ass, and go back to cutting apart death row inmates and war criminals."
…After a few seconds of silence and the graph not moving, it started laughing. That laugh told me more than enough. "Oh Meier, naughty naughty Meier... keeping me away from the new toys? How cruel of you... forgive me... I will honor your request..."
She... it left the channel. I closed it up, and spun my chair around. The window allowed me to view the Appalachian Mountains in all their splendor. In the distance I could see the camo fields of ships shifting as they moved about. I stared at the bottle before corking it and walking back to the cabinet.
This is gonna be an absolute shitshow. For all we knew we are boldly striding towards a war that will be the end of humanity once and for all.
End of Imprint
[Next]

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To my beloved Marcus
I know you will make sure
this Heart reaches every lost Bastard
or any curious soul in general
until this guide is no longer necessary.
It makes me so sad to think I won't live to see that day.
It is hard for me to say this, but if this book has made its way into your hands, it means that it is already too late for you. For some reason, whichever it may be, you are already in the middle of our situation. And taking the chance now that I already said something so depressing, here is another thing: there is no way for you to get out of it.

Are you being surrounded by strange events lately? I don’t know, maybe the lights around you blink more often than not, the radio changes stations without anyone touching the dial? The animals are suddenly extremely aggressive, or maybe unnaturally tame towards you?

Suddenly you can’t shake the feeling that someone, or something, is staring at you from somewhere unseen in the room…

I guess that I don’t need to mention how this all started. You probably saw something you weren’t meant to see, didn’t you. Some random person breaking the rules of reality in one way or another. A guy flying, a girl on the streets spitting fire, objects appearing out of nowhere.

Nothing makes sense and no one seems to care or know how to explain it. Well my friend, I am sorry to inform you that you have been infected. You are incubating the Arcane Infection, and you are now Awake.

Now, you are a Mage. A Bastard Mage, if you don’t have a master to guide you… which is most probably the case.

If this is the first time you read this book, or any kind of Draconian Text, this probably doesn’t make any sense. I know, it didn’t make sense for me either when I was in your place, almost seventy years ago. But trust me, everything will be explained in time. Just be patient, and stay with me, ok? Keep calm, and keep reading.

The first thing you need to learn is to shut up. You cannot talk about this with anyone who hasn’t experienced it and holds some sort of relevant position in society. Really. Famous scientists, politicians, Mayors, I don’t know. Anyone who tends to be trusted by non-mages. Just. Don’t.

If you already did, let’s hope they didn’t believe you. With some luck, you were disregarded as a fool, a maniac or a person with too vivid of an imagination.

If you survive past three days or so after opening your dumb mouth, you should be safe? Now don’t do that again. The Black Pages don’t like it when you try to talk about this…

Remember that sensation of being stalked? Let’s say that it will eventually go away, unless you are stupid or naive enough to try and bring attention to this deal.

Yes. Magic is real. Good for you. Now shut your piehole and keep reading unless you want to be remembered soon. Walls have eyes and ears, and they’ll probably continue to have them for two or three months. Trying to run away will only perpetuate this, so the best thing you can do is not think about it.

Do something stupid in these months and you will die. Disappear. Kaput. Remembered.

There are people who want to maintain this as a secret. That is another thing I will explain in time.

Right now you have two options: You can learn how to manage this new “gift” (if you want to call it that) in a remotely appropriate way; or you can just be another idiot, and try to live a normal life.

What? You think I am being unnecessarily aggressive? Well maybe I am. But you need to understand the gravity of this situation.

Because I lied. You have no options. Learn how to use this new capability to your advantage, or you will die in a freak accident.

If after reading this you prefer to just keep on with your life like nothing happened, then good for you. Close the book, and put it back where it was. With some luck it will land in the hands of someone less dense.

.

.

.

Still reading? Good. Excellent! Sit down, get comfortable, maybe grab a drink. This is going to be long.

Among the words of this tome in your hands, you will find all the information I have been able to gather along my eighty god damn years of life, or at least all that you need to know to keep yourself alive until getting a proper guide.

It will be a long journey, and many of the things here won't make much sense, especially because I had to take the time to adapt and translate documents three or four centuries old to a mostly understandable format.
So you better be thankful.

The first thing I want you to know: please, for the love of God, do not settle for the things I am exposing here. All the information in this book will be absolutely basic, it won’t replace a formal education.. All the information here is for you to know where you are, how to start, and where to aim.

And now is when I am going to start telling you what IS inside this book.

We will start with something simple: what is Magic (or “The Art”) exactly, how did you end up in this situation and why is it important that you study it by yourself.

Then, after the general explanation, I will talk a little about our “Society”, if we can call a bunch of lonely, grumpy jackasses a “Mage Society”. There are some non-written rules of etiquette and other details that you need to keep in mind, if you want to keep the head on your neck.

Another section of the book will talk about the dangers around us… and this section will be, ironically enough, quite short, because the less you know about it, the better.

Mystery is your greatest ally, it’s everyone’s greatest ally. All that you don’t know is as important as what you do know. And that is what the fourth chapter is about. Each Mage has their own magical system, according to which they can create a Heart. There are as many ways of Magic as Mages in the world (so, not really that many), but all of them share some similarities.

Chapter Five is about the foundations of a ritual. Not every magical system has rituals, but it is always useful to learn and understand how these work, just in case you may find yourself in a desperate situation..

Finally, Chapter Six will be a directory with Formulas, Glyphs and Thrills that should serve as a starting point for all of you. Nothing too complex, but still, very useful. I left a few blank pages here, for you to add anything you learn and feel convenient.

If any of you misuses it, I swear to the Gods.

And this would be the real reason behind this tome: take whatever you can, leave what you create for others to use. I started this book as some sort of reproduction of the classic “Metodología del Fantástico”, that dear Gwendolin de Recattio left for us almost four hundred years ago, and that is obviously beyond obsolete at this point.

That and also probably burned to ashes as many other manuals end up.

Take notes damn it, I will leave spaces for everyone to make a little mark. But for the love of the Gods don’t use your real name, don’t be an imbecile.

Let’s make something together. Let’s create something important for once in our stupid lives. Let’s make the Bastard's life a little easier.

Gato.

That casual exclamation to the so-called ‘gods’ makes it clear that this book is either heretical or very old. Then again, the Wohlian it is written in is quite modern… but that could be the effect of magic, right? After all, this thing is written in ‘draconic’, which seems to be a magical language that self-translates or something?

But that was not the only thing that kinda came to my attention. This guy, Gato, is treating magic like this incredibly serious and dangerous thing… and I can’t help but feel a little nervous about it. I mean, everyone seems to be doing just fine, even if there are a few rules that I have to consider. Was this deal really so complicated?

Well, Gato was the expert, and it felt like everyone respected them plenty so… I will abide by them!

Besides, the knowledge here is beyond promising! A part of me wants to skip right to chapter 6 and start learning new runes! But no, I have to be patient, I have to learn the way it was intended and take my time absorbing/acclimating to the knowledge!

That does remind me, I have my own runes to learn and start using, too… should I begin practicing that before I start learning new ones?

“Wait. Before you do any of that… there’s more on the page?”

Huh?

I will add as much as I can! This book is a great resource but it is also a bit outdated, after all it’s been almost 80 years since its writing!

Don’t give up! We will see this through!

— Giovanni.

If I leave that idiot in charge of the notes he will undoubtedly forget things. Take his optimism with a grain of salt.

Pay attention.

— Mustafá.

Annotations?

I quickly open the file on my computer to compare… and just as I thought, these annotations are not on the scanned version. The beginning is exactly the same, but the writing makes it obvious that these two were written at different times, by the same hand but, still, copied individually!

I look down at my physical version again. Who are these people? And why did they feel the need to vandalize the book like this? I can only beg for them to actually make sensible and useful comments. If this book is as old as they say, maybe the updates will be a good thi–

Wait, only 80 years? I thought a book like this would be at least a century old.

Maybe magic is surprisingly modern after all!

“Fat chance. Gato quoted one of his sources, ‘Metodología del Fantástico’, which should be around five hundred years old.”

Hmmm, whatever the case… I should ask someone about this.

But I can’t just go right back to the Chatbox after saying I would be busy, that would be silly! I instead connect to the Messenger.

Pepe is not online, probably planning a cool vacation with his family or something. Vito is out drawing, Patricio is online but busy… ah, there it is! The group Gal made. Someone should know something there…

xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Hi hi! n.n Anyone here?
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: hey Tav, just me for now! the others are busy or snoring.
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: I wish I could go for some zzz right now
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Is it late where you live? o.o
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: early, we have a few hours of difference between Wohl and Rayah.

The Commonwealth of Rayah… that’s on the literal other side of Jericho, so of course we have half a day of difference!

xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Wait O.o is it like, five in the morning over there then!?
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: eyeup
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: today I gotta take care of granny’s business and that means waking up EARLY
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Damn u.u I hope you have a good day, remember to keep hydrated!
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: hah, will do, will do.
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Hmmm… hey, sorry to bother you with this but, I gotta ask… uwu
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Have you ever heard of Mustafá and/or Giovanni? uwu
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: in what context?
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: those are names, you’re saying names right now
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: In magic contexts? O.o
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: not a clue, sorry
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Bah, probably just a couple of randos then u.u
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Oh well, thank you anyways! n.n
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: where did you even find those names?
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Ah! I found them in the physical version of the book you sent me!
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: why did you go looking for that?
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: I don’t like reading in electronic media TwT
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: hmmm ok but be careful
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: don’t go testing the knowledge of randos or something like that
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: I won’t, I won’t -u- I will be nice and careful!

Cracking my knuckles, I finally get back into the book. Finally, some answers at hand!

At the time of this post 145 thousand people are still without power going on almost 6 days without power. Tornado wiped out our power grid in select areas throughout Texas (I believe the number was about 800 thousand people got hit without power). Here's some things I learned and a situation report of my experience living with a very large family of mixed ages.
Context: We had been getting hit with some pretty gnarly weather however business as usual in Texas. I didn't think much of it usually when our grids down they're pretty quick to respond minus the snow storm years back. So when I heard there was a storm brewing I didn't even flinch I always keep some very very basics, battery's, lights, water, 2 weeks minimum of non perishable foods, self defense protection, and ammo, etc. But I hardly consider myself a prepper anymore, but I know some people don't even have that.
I use to be really on top of my preps overtime, however my stockpile had dwindled, as did my thirst for knowledge and hands on experience/training. I just honestly wasn't on top of my game anymore, and quit taking this as serious years ago. This tornado really brought me back to reality, so this post is mostly for entry level preppers looking at some practical advice from a 5 day experience, I fully regret the fact I quit taking this serious years ago.
First Day: Around 6pm, emergency alert on phone stating tornado in your area, seek shelter immediately. Thought ok let's shelter in the master bedroom closet. Wind rocked the house pretty good, could hear limbs from tree's falling, within about 10 minutes the power shuts off, and glancing outside within a hour the streets flooded. The storm had died down, as did the flooding, and it was time to asses the damage in the immediate area. Got in the car, power had blown out pretty much every store/house within a several mile zone. Found one square zone with a few places that had power, got some fast food but waited about 30 minutes because everyone went there.
What I wish I had on day one/ and general notes:
Rain boots: The streets had not only flooded but was blocked by limbs in the roadway. Luckily our flooding wasn't too severe but had it been I wish I did have rainboots so normal shoes didn't get soaked, or some type of beach sandals, etc.
Chainsaw, electric saw, axes, regular saw: Would of come in handy if the limbs in our area blocking the road were any bigger.
Higher up vehicles: Some vehicles couldn't make it through the flood due to being so low to the ground, so take into account your vehicles.
More variety of quality flashlights: Electric Lanterns came in clutch, but wish I had more handhelds, head mounted, and higher end lanterns.
Battery Inventory checks: Wish I had not only more batteries cause you really do burn through these quick, but wish I had checked all my lights battery condition, and stored new batteries in waterproof containers.
Alternative sources to battery's: Not a huge fan of candles due to fire risk, but some not scented beeswax or soy based candles would of came in handy to help ration battery supply. Maybe glass lanterns as well for safety and ease of transport. Glowsticks would of been great option too.
Car chargers: Believe it or not some of us didn't have car chargers for our cell phones cause we mostly charge our phones at home, although we were able to share, wish we had this on day one for all our phones.
Fully charged portable battery bank, or portable phone chargers: If we had this we wouldn't of been out in our cars late at night charging stuff putting us at more risk for being possible victims to crime.
Quality of cell phone, and cellphone provider: Have a POS phone but keep putting off upgrading it? Don't. Luckily mine was good but some of our cellphone providers carriers had better signal then others, some of are phones were in bad shape and it was noted we wish we didn't put off upgrading it sooner. You can't predict how well your provider will do but maybe do your research, unsure how this works but now I can do my research and learn from it. I had 0 issues with boost mobile but other family members weren't so lucky.
Cash: This is obvious but due to us moving towards a cashless society its pretty uncommon, but this would of came in handy due to how many places didn't have power. You can do so much with cash.
Battery powered or rechargeable camping fans: I did have one of these, it even had a light but wish I had more.
Larger ice chest: Now we had a few, but they were smaller. We lost everything in our fridge/freezer besides canned drinks, I mean everything. We had just bought grocery's too, lesson learned.
OTC sleeping medication: We had melatonin, and Tylenol pm, but it was so quiet you could hear a mouse sneeze a block over, until the generators turned on. First two are OK options but given its only going to be cool at night, and we knew tomorrow would be hot, we took kratom to sleep. Check your area some states it's illegal, not recommending it but it's what we used. I wish I had stockpiled more kratom, I took it when I got the flu on top of C word to relieve body aches and found out it really helped me sleep and ease pain/stress. Usually cycle this 3 days on max, one day off to prevent habit forming.
(This is really for day two + but ill post this here cause I noticed it on day one)
Backup supply of my personal vices or quitting personal vices: I know this may sound stupid but I am fully addicted to caffeine, and nicotine. I picked my poison and know what I signed up for. Caffeine really? yeah really not sure if you know this but for some people caffeine withdrawal can make you really suffer, and I mean really suffer check out decaf. I was in the process of lowering my caff intake to 1 cup of tea a day, and quit soda. Was one month off soda before the storm came in, but had to relapse due to us not carrying high caff tea on supply.
But yeah stock up on your vices so you aren't going through withdrawals during an emergency. Was on 3mg per ml of nicotine and had to dish out 30$ for a disposable vape thats 50mg per ml at a gas station on day two to prevent withdrawals. So I was on way higher dose of nic then usual due to only being able to purchase what I could find, for reference 50mg per ml if you use that in 10 days thats about a pack of ciggs worth of nic per day. So yeah either quit your vice or stock up, I don't advocate hard drugs at all so this isn't for that but this is mainly aimed at coffee/caff use, etc. Instant coffee packs may be great for some people.
Battery powered radio: Can't stress enough how mentally taxing silence can be long term. We had one, but the battery port crapped out. Lesson learned, test your preps.
Backup food for your pet friends: Luckily I was pretty good on pet food but imagine if I wasn't, and this was more severe.
Water situation: Had a decent amount of drinking water, we had running water. If we didn't I would say I wish I had filled up the giant jugs I bought for flushing the toilet/doing dishes or running through a berkey water filter if we ran out of drinking water. I had bought 5 gallon blue jugs specifically for this years back. However I cleaned them out, and didn't refill, Lesson learned.
2nd Day: We were able to cook some stuff on a gas stove, luckily. People at gas stations were stocking up on ice, filling their gas cans up for their generators, and shelves were getting empty at stores with power only on some things though wasn't too bad cause the power outage was scattered some had power, others didn't. Mostly a waiting game at this point, most of the preps I wish I had on this day were the same as day one, but ill toss in some stuff I wish I had. Obtained a portable battery powered radio, the morale boost was real for everyone, even the dogs.
What I wish I had on day two/ and general notes:
BBQ style lighters to light gas stove: We had two but recently tossed em out due to being empty. Realized I had no bics, and only had one box of matches, feels bad man.
Entertainment: Board games like checkers, board games for kids, chess, basic poker set, etc. These would of been awesome and a great way to keep the kids entertained and the adults, the boredom was real. We hit local goodwill's that had power to look for radios, and cheap prep supplies and games, but no luck.
Third day: By then reality set in for most people, neighbors who could afford to do so booked hotels or bugged out to places with power. The generators really started up by day three, everyone was buying gas for them and you could hear them in almost every direction. Pretty sure some people had it from the start but noticed them more by day three. A lot of people were sitting outside the front of their homes trying to escape the heat. Ice from most places were completely sold out, so you had to really shop around to find any.
Finding news about the power outage day 1-3 was kind of hit and miss, KHOU news updates were pretty short and it took us some time to know how severe the storms damage actually was, cause we were focused on trying to get stuff done around the house and conserving battery. I believe at one point CenterPoint's actual website went down. Mostly resulted to local news channels, and nextdoor app. We couldn't watch live news and had to rely on when KHOU posted youtube videos.
Private security company's hired guards and they started patrolling certain stores that could afford the security, obviously to deter looters. Traffic everywhere was insane in every which direction during peak hours more then usual, PD presence was pretty high, more then usual.
What I wish I had on day three/ and general notes:
Generator: Pretty obvious why, had no experience with them but wish I did, and wish I bought one pre-blackout when I was more into prepping and took time to learn about them and how to use and maintain them properly.
Ham radio: Or something to pick up on local freqs to monitor radio comms for information regarding the storm and local activity if any. I think this may of been better then waiting on local news to post videos.
Day Four: Buddy had power so he dropped off his generator and gave me quick instructions on how to run it, how far away to place them, etc. By day four the temps really ramped up, and this thing definitely kept us cool. When you think of bartering you think of some post apocalypse stuff, but no. In reality you can barter during any emergency, buddy dropped it off free of charge but was able to offer some booze as a thank you. So even if you don't drink stock up on booze/ciggs to barter, never know what you might trade it for. Times are tough in this economy and I honestly didn't have much money to spare, family had to pool our funds together to get last minute preps to survive this, cause we didn't know how long this would really last. In certain areas they said it could be weeks. However the alcohol was a small thank you that I could afford and he was happy so all worked out.
Gas cans were sold out, and extension cord supply's were looking extremely low at local hardware store. From what I overheard they also completely sold out of generators. Honestly wish I knew more about electrical stuff but my buddy gave me a small crash course in wiring everything. You can't just plug it in and pray for the best. Bought the best gauge extensions cords I could afford for our needs, and the distance and hooked it up.
We ran one bedroom AC unit, fans for the dogs, wired a light, and a charging station. Also don't cheap out on gas cans it's not worth blowing your face off or starting a fire, or having it leak. If you get a generator do your research on how to properly run it, and safely fill it. Crime in this area can be fairly high we've had a few drive by shootings and other not so good police involved things. Read this book along time ago about post collapse security, so I blacked out our windows so when we turned lights on no one knew we had power. You may hear the generator, but from the street we look like we don't have anything going for us. My biggest fear was looters from people who were less fortunate or really down bad. We near a common site for homeless people as well so they foot traffic the area.
Generators are very loud, between that and listening to the radio 12 hours a day, I was beginning to audio hallucinate lyrics that weren't there with the radio off, and suffered from heat exhaustion. That and the fact we had homeless in our area and tweekers who might loot I was running off adrenaline a bit. 24 hours almost that night without sleep, and didn't even feel tired. Slept near my firearm until my family woke up at daylight and when daylight hit I knew we were in the clear and I passed out.
What I wish I had on day fou and general notes:
Knowledge of generators.
Knowledge about electricity/wiring them safely.
Security: Some type of physical alarm bell to put on the door like metal door knob alarm bells so it jingles if anyone enters to alert the dogs, had to keep the door slightly cracked so the wires hooked up to the generator would fit. So we couldn't lock the door, which is probably where my anxiety of tweekers coming in came from.
Day Five: Same shit different day, power came on that evening.
Conclusion: Just cause it doesn't look like societal collapse or WW3 prep your shit for emergency's native to your area or go beyond, idc but prep. They ain't coming to help for awhile, or at all if it's very severe...so it's up to you and your community to pull through. This was a wake up call, thanks for coming to my prep talk.

Ok so as soon as I started this show I knew I wanted to come here when I was done to write about my thoughts but more importantly to get a sense of how this show was for people when it first came out. I get the sense that this show is very personal for those who watched it when it came out and so I want to start by providing some context of how I went into this show.
I am 23f, graduated from university last year and have been mostly at home since then working online. I had heard about girls when I was younger when it was coming out but never watched it or looked into it. But it was recently when I saw some fan edits and compilations of marnie antics on Youtube that I remembered the show and how it was about girls navigating life in their 20s. Great, I thought, I am a girl navigating life in her 20s maybe this is exactly what I need right now. Wrong! While I related to the general lack of direction each of the girls was experiencing, which I too have been struggling with, I spent most of the show being at best perplexed and at worst frustrated with the actions and choices of the characters, especially Hannah.
And I think that is at the core of what I want to understand about the show: are we supposed to like Hannah? If not like her, understand, sympathise or relate to her. I am someone who is all for unsympathetic or morally flawed characters because they explore the dirty parts of humanity and the difficulty of life. I was reminded a lot while watching this show, of Bojack Horseman who is objectively not a good person but while watching that show you see the the destructiveness of bojack's choices and actions, you see the effect it has on his life and those around him. I could never understand if Hannah was written in this way because as far as I could tell she experiences almost no repercussions for her actions and choices and the whole time I was wondering why. I can't list all the things I feel hannah was completely in the wrong for because I would be here for a long while but the ones that really shocked me was any example of her behaviour in workplace settings (especially when she was a teacher, how she was not fired is beyond me), her two day stand with that doctor and her brief but infuriating time at Iowa. This last point especially really frustrated me because she spends so much of this show talking about being a writer, more than actually writing and she finally gets the chance to pursue it and the thing that sends over the edge is a little criticism from her other classmates! Like is that not the whole point of joining a program like that and she was so rude to everyone and laughably unapologetic about it and then just decides to leave because it "wasn't right for her" and then the show just moves on from that and onto more drama with her and Adam.
I shall not get into the whole Adam and Hannah story because frankly I hated it. It started off with very bad foundations and I could never look past that and never see them as doomed lovers. However, surprisingly didn't hate Adam by the end of it, he was certainly a weird character but there was a certain charm to him.
Hannah's lack of consequences is especially evident when you compare her story to Marnie's. Marnie, I would say, is equally flawed as Hannah, maybe not the same flaws but definitely the same amount but you see where that gets her by the end of the show. In fact she has the biggest downgrade from when she started having a nice comfy job at an art gallery, a boyfriend a nice apartment to the end when she basically has no direction, a failed music a career and ex husband. I really did feel for her at times, but you could also see how her choices and outlook on life led her down that path. Meanwhile Hannah ends the show as a professor for writing! with a lovely house and a baby. Yes there are things that did not necessarily go her way but ultimately everything works out for her and she doesn't ever have to reflect on the many many wrong decisions she made in her life.
What also surprised me about this show, was how the friendship between the girls was handled. I say friendship very loosely because I truly do not think any of those girls liked or cared about each other and even if they did, they were all terrible friends. I ended up really appreciating the meeting they have at the end when Shosh basically cuts them out (completely justified in my opinion) and says they always make every interaction about themselves because that was the reality of the show. Marnie and Hannah especially spent so much time complaining about how the other always talks about themselves and their problems, especially with boys. This really disappointed me actually because I just assumed a show called Girls about four girl friends navigating their twenties in the big city would really explore the complexities of female friendships and ultimately highlight their importance. But all they did was fight and talk about boy drama until I wished they would just get new friend circles. I was honestly kind of excited for Hannah to be in Iowa because it could introduce some new friendship dynamics into the show and maybe reflect the toxicity what she has in new york but obviously I was wrong about that.
I think I could have maybe also enjoyed this show more despite its flaws if I found it funny. While there were times I had a chuckle here and there, but most of the time I was just cringing or just reminded about the frustrating nature of these characters, especially hannah. I am sure there were things she did that were played for laughs but because this show was grounded in reality, I just thought her actions were either cringy or wildly inappropriate.
I will end on a more positive note, on the things I liked, because I got through 6 whole seasons so there must have been things I enjoyed. Firstly, of the girls I loved Shoshana. She started of the show very sweet and lovely and welcoming and while she had that stint where she was just going through it and being rude after she cheated on ray (and never owned up to it). But once again, you see where those choices lead her and how she needed to step back and reflect and how she got to a point where she had to graduate late. When she moved to Japan I was so happy for her! That was another thing I really loved about this show, their depiction of Tokyo and Shosh's time there. I got to spend three months living in Tokyo two years ago and loved it! While I definitely had more knowledge and interest in Japan than Shosh before I went I still feel like it was the perfect place to experience when you're in your 20s. I felt Shosh's scenes there were very genuine and authentic and weren't too bogged down with the same tired cliches of tokyo. Even though she ends up moving back, I felt her time there really helped give her a better perspective of what she wants from life when she was back in New York.
Secondly, and probably the most surprising, I loved Ray. When he was first introduced as Charlie's friend I thought that he was kind of weird and gross especially when he wanted to snoop around the girls' apartment and read hannah's diary. But by the end of the show he was honestly my favourite character (which I think says a lot). His love of books and reading and art in general, the advice he gave the other characters, his little rants, his relationship with hermie (also loved hermie) and his motivation to do more with his life all grew on me to the point that I was just so happy when he was on screen. He was also just such a breath of fresh air from the chaos and drama of the other characters which is why I wasn't too crazy when he started having a thing for Marnie. That didn't really make any sense to me but at least he ended up with Abigail which was such a lovely pairing.
I recognise that this show is very much a product of its time and the fact that I wasn't in my 20s in the 2010s means that a lot of my experiences and outlook differ greatly from that time and affected how I watched this show. Which is why I really wanted to come here and hear from people who did experience it during that time.
TL;DR: Just finished Girls and want to understand what is the point of Hannah as a character and how did people find this show when it first came out.

I sit alone in my room on the seventh floor, writing what will surely be my last will and testament. The heroin which allowed me to forget and to sleep for the last couple of years has lost its power to keep the screaming terrors away. The drug destroyed my body and mind, gradually eating away at them like a corrosive acid. Now I have become a slave to it. And yet, without it, I do not sleep for weeks, but instead continuously see the scenes from that terrible night running through my head on repeat as worsening waves of madness crash on the shores of my consciousness.
In the caverns under the town of Frost Hollow, I found the meaning of true madness. Ever since I escaped that den of horrors, it is difficult to tell what is real and what is only the feverish delirium of an unhinged mind.
Even now, they wait behind the door to this cheap, bare rented room. They drag their claws over the wood. I hear them hissing in that strange, ancient tongue, the one I first heard in the tombs of rock that had been undisturbed for countless millennia.
***
I had first heard rumors of an unexplored cavern from my friend, an experienced caver named Sonia who had explored caverns all over the world. I had been looking for some excitement in my life, some break from the constant monotony and boredom of simply working and sleeping. I had gone caving quite a few times over the year leading up to the trip, but I was not nearly as experienced and had never explored a supposedly virgin passageway of cavern before.
“How do you know no one’s gone down there?” I asked, curious. We sat across from each other at a local diner, getting some early breakfast before our planned descent. The sunrise was still another half-hour away, the sky flat and dark. We would be joined by Sonia’s husband, Phil, who would meet us there shortly after sunrise. I repressed an urge to yawn, chugging half of the steaming hot coffee in one long swallow. Sonia leaned close to me, her nearly colorless blue eyes reminding me of chunks of ice floating down a muddy stream.
“Phil’s friend just found it randomly,” she whispered before glancing around conspiratorially, as if she feared someone would care enough to eavesdrop on a conversation about a cave. “Well, it’s in the middle of a farm, and Phil’s friend, Jack Graysole, owns the entire property and surrounding woods. Jack says he noticed the cows kept going over to a certain spot in the field when it got really hot during the summertime. They would all gather around this little indentation in the grass. After seeing it a few times, Jack got curious and went to investigate what the cows were doing.
“He found a small hole in the ground, almost entirely covered by weeds and grass. He said he felt a cool breeze constantly blowing out of the hole, a breeze that smelled like burning matches and charred metal. After bringing out some shovels and digging down a couple feet, Jack realized that the hole wasn’t a hole at all, but the beginning of a steep passageway leading deep into the bowels of the earth.”
***
The owner of the land decided to unofficially call the newly-discovered cavern Graysole Caverns. Out of respect for him, this is also the name we all used. This is the story of how I found myself in the bowels of a strange subterranean tunnel, a tunnel where creatures beyond my comprehension slunk and hunted, skittering monstrosities who would be more at home in a nightmare.
After grabbing a couple coffees to take with us, Sonia drove over to Graysole Farms. Cows stood out in the grassy fields, huddled in tight circles as they repetitively chewed. The thin silhouette of Jack Graysole waited for us next to the herd. He had a face like a raisin, I thought to myself. I watched his thin, shaking body standing in the middle of an overgrown grassy field. Jack stared down blankly at something only he could see. Sonia and I started unloading some equipment from the car while we waited for Phil.
Once we had the backpacks loaded with some simple supplies, such as water, food, headlamps, rope, a couple extra batteries, some buck knives, and radios, we headed over to accompany Jack. We weren’t taking much, as we didn’t really expect to be down there for more than six or seven hours at the most.
Jack Graysole’s withered old face was as slack and expressionless as that of a corpse. He stared down at the ground as if he were in a trance, waving back and forth slowly on his feet like a plant in a light breeze.
“Jack?” Sonia called out as we approached. I could hear the man’s teeth chattering as we got nearer.
“Hey, what are you doing over here this early? You interested in accompanying us down there?” Sonia joked. But Jack might as well have been totally deaf for all the reaction he gave. Sonia glanced over at me with an anxious expression. I wondered if the old man was having a stroke.
I quickly walked over to where he stood, staring down at a black circular hole about three feet across directly in front of his feet. The entrance to Graysole Caverns stared up at us like a sightless pupil. As I drew within a few feet of Jack and looked straight into his blank eyes, I noticed something alarming.
His pupils were quickly dilating and constricting before my eyes. They would shrink to tiny pinpoints, then, a couple seconds later, rapidly expand until they became dark and serious. I could see his thready, rapid heartbeat pulsating in a vein on the side of his temple. Alarmed, I reached forward and put my hand on his shoulder.
Instantly, he came to life, like a man waking up from a nightmare. Shrieking, he looked at me with fully dilated pupils, reminding me of a panicked deer surrounded by wolves. His quavering old man’s voice shook with ineffable existential horror and mortal fear.
He took a step back away from us, seeming to realize where he was and what he was doing. He looked around, confused, then straight at me and Sonia. His eyes focused with anger and fear, as if we were demons here to drag him down to Hell. His eyes flicked back and forth between us constantly. Jack raised a trembling hand and pointed it straight at my heart.
“It’s you,” he said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. His teeth chattered despite the warm spring air. His skin looked deathly pale. “You’re the one who will bring an end to humanity, who will release the ruler of nightmares upon us.” He continued to point accusingly for a long moment at me, his face turning chalk-white. Then his eyes rolled up in his head. Slowly, he stumbled and fell backwards onto the soft grass of the field.
“Jack!” Sonia cried, running over to the old man. Jack’s breaths had started to come in slow, drawn-out gurgles, like a man with a slit throat trying to breathe. Frothy blood bubbled from his lips as they turned blue. Staring up at the endless expanse of cloudless sky, he exhaled one last shuddering breath and died.
***
Phil showed up only a couple minutes later. He found me and Sonia in a state of utter panic, both of us bent double over the still body of Jack. Sonia was on the phone with 911, and I was trying to give Jack chest compressions. The way his fingernails and lips shone with that cyanotic blue cast made me feel sick and weak. I knew it was futile, that I was simply playing with a corpse at this point, but I didn’t know what else to do. I felt if I didn’t do something, I might explode.
I heard the faint wailing of sirens approaching as Sonia’s panicked voice continued babbling to the 911 operator. Phil stood by her side, his tall, dark features searching and lost.
“Oh God, I think he’s dead!” Sonia cried over and over to the operator, as if she thought the operator could do anything about it. I didn’t hear what the operator said in response. As the ambulance pulled in, I gave up on chest compressions. I stood up and took a step back, looking sadly down on the kindly old man’s dead body.
The paramedics ran over. Phil, Sonia and I stood back while they worked on the corpse, trying to shock the heart back into life. But Jack’s open eyes stayed glazed as they stared sightlessly up into eternity.
***
The paramedics left. A couple police officers stayed behind to ask us a few routine questions. Eventually, after an hour or so, they left, too.
“What a fucked-up day,” Phil said, shaking his head grimly. “Do you guys still want to do this? Maybe it’s an omen from God telling us to go home.” Sonia and I exchanged a glance, then we both nodded at the same time.
“Definitely,” she said. “It’s sad what happened to Jack, but realistically, we don’t know what’s going to happen to this property now that he’s passed away. It might get sold or taken by the bank for all we know. This could be our one and only chance to explore this cave.”
“I don’t believe in omens. I’m still down,” I said, feeling slightly sick from the experience. I still remembered how Jack’s body had cracked under the weight of my chest compressions, how his ribs had snapped like bones shattering in greedy hands. “We’ll do it in memory of Jack. I plan to put this up on YouTube.” I pulled my GoPro out of my bag, turning it on. Phil groaned at that.
“Do we have any idea how far down this cave goes?” Phil asked. I felt a sense of relief now that the topic had changed from the death of the old man.
“I sent a little camera down on a rope, but it only went about a hundred feet,” Sonia responded. “It’s pretty steep at first, then it levels out. I couldn’t really see much after it leveled out, but it looks like it should be easy to climb down. There’s plenty of handholds, lots of jutting rocks.”
Phil put on his headlamp and small pack. As he crawled down into the hole, his tanned face looked up at us and gave us one last devilish grin. Once he had gone down a few dozen feet, Sonia started descending. She looked excited and happy. I noticed how she couldn’t stop smiling as she disappeared from view.
I watched their lights grow smaller and dimmer in the circular tunnel. I marveled at how perfectly circular the entrance was. It almost didn’t even look natural.
Taking a deep breath in, I followed my friends down into the dark.
***
“This isn’t too bad,” I said as I climbed down. The jutting rocks gave plenty of handholds and footholds for us. It wasn’t so tight that it felt like a coffin, either.
“It only gets easier from here!” Sonia called up.
“How do you know?” I asked. “You said you’ve never been here before.” She laughed.
“I know. Probably just wishful thinking,” she said. Far below us, Jack’s voice drifted up, faint and weak. He had already reached the bottom.
“The tunnel really opens up down here, guys,” he called. “It’s somewhat… bizarre, though.”
“What do you mean by that?” Sonia asked. I looked down, seeing Sonia and I would reach the bottom in seconds. “Forget it, I’ll let it be a surprise.” I heard her drop down. Slowly and carefully, I lowered myself down the last few feet. There was a short fall onto a smooth granite floor. I looked up, seeing what Phil and Sonia were so mesmerized by.
“Oh, wow,” I said, speechless. I blinked rapidly, wondering if the image would clear like a mirage. The tunnel was cut into a perfectly triangular shape, each side about seven feet long. The ceiling met in a point above our heads.
All along the smooth walls of gray rock, I saw thousands of black orbs peeking out. They looked similar to obsidian, but they were perfectly smooth and circular, each about the size of an orange. They were formed into interlocking diagonal patterns and followed the tunnel straight down as far as the eye could see.
“What is this place?” Sonia asked, taking a tentative step forward. I looked up, seeing the distant pinpoint of sunlight far above our heads. Our voices continued to echo off down the massive tunnels, disappearing in eerie waves into the thick curtain of shadows.
“Are you recording all this?” Phil asked me. I laughed, giddy.
“Of course! This is internet gold right here,” I said. “No one’s going to believe that this isn’t man-made, however. I can’t even believe it. Do you think Jack was playing a joke on us or something?”
“Jack had the sense of humor of a wet paper towel,” Phil whispered, shaking his head. “No, he wouldn’t do something like this.”
“Well, let’s go check it out,” Sonia said, taking a step forward. Her headlamp bobbed up and down rapidly, throwing dancing shadows through the triangular tunnel. It continued straight ahead, without the slightest deviation or curve, disappearing off into a dark point in the distance.
***
We walked as fast as we could, excited to see where, if anywhere, the strange tunnel led. Phil, always the conspiracy theorist, babbled excitedly.
“This has to be aliens, man,” he said, running his fingers through his dark hair. “I bet that scientists will find out this shit is millions of years old when we get back up and tell everyone. Maybe aliens came to earth in ancient times and made a bunch of stuff underground.” Gradually, as we walked, I noticed the tunnel opening up. The pointed triangular ceiling rose up higher above our heads and the walls moved outwards, as we were walking up a triangular funnel. At first, it was so subtle that I didn’t believe it when Sonia pointed it out.
“No, look,” she said, raising her hand above her head. “When we first started down this weird tunnel, my fingers were only maybe a foot away from the top. Now it’s a couple feet.” I was about to respond when our headlamps illuminated something standing in the middle of the tunnel.
“What the fuck is that?” I whispered, stopping cold in my tracks. Phil and Sonia looked up at the abomination at the same time. Its back was to us. It stood nearly as tall as the tunnel, which was now about twenty feet high.
The bottom half looked black and spidery with dozens of long, jointed legs. A bloody, white spine rose out of the mass of legs. Inhumanly long, skeletal arms stretched out in front of it. Its face was pointed away from us, but the back of its head resembled an enormous pointed skull with deep fissures like the cracks of an earthquake running through the bone. The abomination stayed as still as a statue, and for a long moment, I wondered if we were looking at some macabre work of art.
Then, suddenly, one of its insectile legs twitched. A moment later, the other legs started jerking and twisting. There was a sound like bones shattering as it rose up to its full height, turning around to face us.
Its face was like something from a nightmare, melting and reforming constantly like dripping candle wax. I would see a black eye appear on its forehead, then a grinning mouth on its chin, then the features would get sucked back into the folds of melting flesh. After a few moments, two enormous eyes appeared on its face, dark and cold like craters on the surface of the Moon. The mouths and noses disappeared back into the dripping skin, and only the two lidless eyes remained, emanating a cold, reptilian consciousness beyond the ability of my mind to comprehend. I felt terror radiating from its body like freezing waves.
“Free me,” it cried in a gurgling voice that seethed with insanity. It had a shrieking, metallic ringing behind every word that gave it an alien quality. “Free me, and I will give you the waters of eternal life. Within me, I contain the seeds of immortality. Within the nightmares, we live forever, always together, never alone.”
“Who are you?” I asked, terrified. The black reptilian skin of the enormous beast glistened as it knelt down, its massive face drawing near to mine. A sideways mouth burst out of the liquified flesh, showing hundreds of fangs growing like tumors from its white, bloodless gums. The fangs varied in size from only a couple inches to long, sword-like projections that stabbed into the creature’s flesh, causing white blood glittering with rainbows to fall like raindrops all around me.
“I have many names,” it hissed, its thousand voices rising and falling in crashing waves of sound. “I was present at the beginning, when this planet was no more than dead cliffs and endless freezing oceans. Those holy ones who search for us, the ancient ones, call me Niralahoth.”
“How do we free you?” Phil asked, looking terrified. He held Sonia’s hand tightly.
“By letting me into your mind and body,” Niralahoth cried, shaking the cavern. “I was thrown down here, cursed and forgotten. I cannot leave this place of shadows within this body. But in the body of another, my consciousness can be free, and the seeds of new life can spread beyond this prison.”
“There’s no way anyone’s going to do that,” I said, my eyes widening as Niralahoth’s reptilian skull turned towards me in fury. “I mean, you’re asking one of us to give up our individuality, our lives, right?”
“I am asking you to become one with me and gain power undreamt of by mortals,” it cried. “I have within me the fountain of life, the waters that send death away screaming.” I glanced anxiously at Phil and Sonia, wondering if we would have to run.
“The answer is no,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, we can’t do that,” Phil said, backing me up. “But, anyways, I think our trip has ended. It’s time to turn around…”
“You will never return,” Niralahoth cried, skittering away from us. “If you will not accept salvation, then you must accept death.” Within seconds, it slunk away from us, backpedaling on its many skittering legs into the shadows.
***
All around us, a rumbling started.
There was a pounding that crashed through the rock tunnel, as if an insane blacksmith were hammering on a massive anvil. The ringing of crashing rock started off slowly, with a few stones smashing down around us with heavy blasts of sound. Within seconds, the cacophony sped up, rising into a constant stream of destruction. The black orbs were spinning in place all up and down the tunnel, their glossy obsidian surfaces flashing with sparks of blue light.
“It’s collapsing!” Phil cried, running back in the direction we came, holding Sonia’s hand as she tried to keep up with him. I could only stare for a long moment, not sure what to do. It seemed that the direction Phil was heading stood closer to total collapse.
“Wait!” I cried, but my voice was drowned out in the destruction all around us. I felt a rock smash into my shoulder, sending me down to my feet. I heard Phil give a scream of pain, then another stone came down and smashed into my forehead. I remember seeing everything spinning around me as the world went black.
***
I awoke to find my headlamp still shining straight up in the dusty tunnel. Large chunks of the tunnel had slid out of place and crashed to the stone floor. The granite chunks that had fallen looked unnaturally smooth, most of them in the shapes of cylinders or cubes and varying in size from that of an egg to that of a small car.
My head throbbed. It felt as if a tight belt of fire were wrapped around my temples. Groaning, I put my fingers up to my forehead. They came away slick with blood.
Slowly, I started pushing myself up on my feet. I was relieved that nothing seemed broken. I had a deep gash running from the center of my scalp down to my left temple and some shallower cuts on my shoulders and back, but I knew none of that was life-threatening.
“Sonia?” I whispered, my voice coming out weak and strained. I reached into my pack and found a bottle of water. I chugged it quickly in one long swallow.
“Phil?” I cried again, this time stronger. I heard a soft weeping nearby. Staggering, I followed the sound.
Sonia was bloody and covered in cuts and scrapes, sitting next to Phil’s prone form. I saw Phil’s right arm pinned under a massive slab of granite. His arm disappeared from the elbow down in a spreading puddle of thick, dark blood.
“Oh God, Max, I think he’s hurt really bad,” she wept. Phil’s eyes rolled wildly in his head, his face pale and bloodless. I looked down the way we had come, seeing the entire tunnel blocked by large slabs of stone, many with strange, black orbs peeking out like the lenses of cameras.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. My phone died after a day, and then we were counting the endless darkness in breaths and tears.
Phil swam in and out of consciousness as his arm putrefied and blackened around the crush site. After a couple days, Sonia and I agreed that something had to be done. We told Phil we would need to amputate his arm. He was half-delirious, but he came back long enough to understand us and nod weakly.
We made a fire with Phil’s pack, trying to find fuel to throw in it to get it roaring. As it grew, I saw one of the black orbs near the flames abruptly ignite, as if it had been covered in gasoline. Blue, almost colorless flames rose from its surface. We started throwing the small black orbs on the fire until it rose high in the air. I sanitized the buck knife with the flames and pulled a rope tourniquet tight around Phil’s arm. He was conscious but seemingly insane, talking to himself more than anyone else.
“How are we going to get the car started without a key?” he gurgled to someone only he could see. “We need to look around. It has to be here somewhere.”
“Phil, can you hear me, bud? We need to fix your arm. We need to get you out of this mess. OK?” I said as comfortingly as I could. Phil’s eyes rolled wildly, but they didn’t meet my own. I sighed and looked over at Sonia.
“Let’s do it,” I said, giving a grim nod.
I pulled the buck knife out, slicing quickly down through the flesh next to the tourniquet. His veins throbbed like fat worms as the blackened, necrotic skin split easily under the blade, releasing a rancid-smelling gas that hissed out of the wound.
I couldn’t believe how hard it was to slice all the way through the arm. It felt like I was stuck in that hellish task forever. Phil’s eyes rolled in his head as his skin turned the color of clotted milk.
“God, Jesus, make it stop,” Phil whispered over and over, exhaling ragged, pain-filled breaths. The blood spurted from the blackened, dying tissue all over the dust-covered cavern floor, covering my hands in its warm, slick embrace.
After what was probably only three or four minutes, but felt like hours, I had sliced all the way down to the bone. The infected tissue of his arm spurted great gouts of orange pus mixed with rivulets of blood. The hard part was over.
Standing up, I took my steel-toe sneaker and stomped down on his arm as hard as I could. Phil cried out in a powerful voice, as if all the agony and suffering in the world was contained in that one shriek. The bone snapped under my weight with a sound like a tree branch cracking. A moment later, Phil rolled away from the rock that had pinned me in place for so long. Something alien and spongy was shoved into my face, a mass of destroyed red tissue pulsating in time with a runaway heartbeat. At first, shell-shocked and revolted, my mind couldn’t comprehend that I was looking at the stump of Phil’s mutilated arm. I hardened my heart and forced the giddiness and madness to the back of my mind. The time had come to cauterize the wound.
“Sonia, give it to me,” I said with a tremor in my voice. I reached out a hand towards her, a hand stained with Phil’s blood. It looked as if I were wearing a wet, crimson glove. Sonia only stared blankly at me for a long moment, however. A surge of anger ran up my chest.
“Sonia, toughen the fuck up! He’s going to die if you just sit there!” I swore at her, hearing my deep, angry voice bounce around the caverns. Sonia pulled back, as if she were struck. Inwardly, I cursed having a woman as my only able-bodied companion in this situation. She was a competent enough caver, but what would happen if violence and blood came over us? What would happen if, or more realistically when, we needed to fight?
Grimly, Sonia leaned forward and yanked the burning black orb out of the roaring fire, handing it to me on the end of a buck knife that had just barely pierced its hard, strange exterior. The handle of the knife felt coarse and splintery under my filthy skin. I put it to the spongy stump of Phil’s arm. The stump twitched violently. Phil tried to pull away as black smoke rose from the burning flesh.
There was a smell like bacon sizzling. The searing meat of Phil’s arm blackened and crisped under the heat of the orb, which had become no more than a cylinder of glowing blue embers by this point. I felt simultaneously sick and giddy. I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or vomit. I felt like I was on the verge of some kind of madness, that the stress and insanity of the experience had started to shatter my mind.
His eyes rolled back in his head and he appeared to go into a seizure for a few seconds. With a long exhalation of breath, he finally, mercifully, lost consciousness. It’s hard to admit it, even this close to the end, but a small, sick piece of me was jealous of Phil. Most likely, he would be dead soon, maybe within hours, while Sonia and I would slowly starve and dehydrate like animals over a period of weeks. I looked at her lithe body and soft skin, seeing the feminine curves of her hips and chest. She was a beautiful woman. I knew Phil to be a lucky man. At least, before this trip, he was.
I watched her body, wondering if I had what it took to eat her or Phil if I had to. Did I have an iron heart that would allow me to slice into my friends and consume their raw, cold flesh? Perhaps, by that point, it would be hunger and madness driving me forward, and I wouldn’t even hesitate. I shuddered at the very thought.
***
I fell asleep that night, having strange dreams of massive gods with melting faces sitting in judgment in a circle around me. We had very little food or water left. No one knew we were down here. Rescue was not coming.
When I awoke, I found myself alone. Phil had died from his injuries while I slept, the black streaks of septic shock spreading up his arm towards his heart. His eyes stared sightlessly up at the rock ceiling.
“Sonia?” I called out, my heart racing as I sat up. “Where are you?” My headlamp was growing dim. I looked in my pack, realizing I was on the last of my batteries. I saw a silhouette walking out of the darkness, the thin, pale form of Sonia. She was trembling badly.
“I saw them,” she said. “Niralahoth and its priests. The priests aren’t human. They look reptilian with sideways mouths and too many eyes.” She shuddered.
“Why would you do that?” I asked. Her eyes grew distant.
“You know we’re not getting out of here alive,” she said. “Not on our own. I wanted to see what it offered. It says that if we take a piece of its nightmare into us, we will gain the power to leave this place, that it simply wants to see the surface and spread its nightmares there.” I shook my head.
“Insanity,” I muttered. “We’d be better off dead.” Sonia nodded.
“My thoughts exactly,” she responded grimly. I didn’t realize what she meant until the next day, when I woke up and found her hanging next to Phil’s body, her tongue swollen and blue as it poked out of her cyanotic lips. And then I was truly alone.
***
Soon after Sonia committed suicide, the last of the batteries for the headlamp died. I had run out of food and had only a small sip of water left. I don’t know how much time passed in the darkness, starving and raving, following the tunnel by running my hands over the walls. I heard many things skittering in the darkness, and a few times, I heard the demonic voice of Niralahoth as it split and distorted.
“You are on death’s door,” it hissed. “Will you not drink from the fountain of life?” I couldn’t tell where the voice came from in the maddening blackness. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. I had lost nearly all of my sanity in that pit of shadows by this point. I tried laughing constantly to keep my spirits up, and when that failed, I simply cried.
“I’ll do it,” I wailed. “I’ll do it. Just let me see the sky again. Get me out of here, Niralahoth.” Everything went deathly silent all around me, then a laugh rang out like the grinding of glass.
In front of me, I saw a tornado of fire descending from the ceiling, surrounding the massive, spidery form of Niralahoth. It rose its skeletal arms upwards, as if it were Zeus calling down lightning. In the sudden brightness, I saw the fiery form of snakes slithering and centipedes skittering forwards in that tornado, each massive creature sculpted from flames in the spinning cyclone of energy. Niralahoth reached into the tornado of fire with its sharp points of fingers and plucked something small from it. The fire instantly dissipated. In its hand, I saw a tiny, swirling orb that looked like it contained a firestorm within it.
“The nightmare seed,” Niralahoth gurgled as it skittered forward towards me. I could only stare, open-mouthed and starving. I hadn’t slept for days, it felt like, and everything seemed slow and unreal.
In a blur, its skeletal arm shot out and forced the orb into my mouth. Despite the fire raging within it, it felt freezing cold. As it touched my tongue, it gave off a sensation like frostbite all throughout my mouth. I screamed and tried spitting it out, but it seemed to have a mind of its own. It started liquifying, dripping down my throat.
I felt something cancerous and sick spreading throughout my body, radiating out from my heart and stomach to every inch of it. I tried to scream, but it caught behind my teeth. I fell to my knees, clawing at my face as that insane, alien laugh continued resounding all down the tunnel. I fell unconscious and woke up under a beautiful sky in the fields of Graysole Farms.
***
Soon after, I realized that my life would never be the same. Everywhere I went, I could hear the wailing voice of Niralahoth. Behind the trees, I always saw skittering shadows, creatures with long, spidery legs that stalked me every day and night. I slept with every light in the house turned on, yet when I woke up, they would all be shut off, and I would find myself in darkness, next to something in the bed with far too many legs and a face that dripped like burning wax.
I sold everything I owned and tried to move far away, to give as much distance between myself and those cursed caverns as I could, but the nightmares followed me like a shadow. I realize what a fool I was in those ephemeral moments of madness. Sonia was much wiser than myself; I should have killed myself or died rather than allowing that thing inside of me.
Even now, I can feel it creeping through my heart, spreading through my blood. I feel it trying to crawl its way out of my throat, the thin, black legs peeking out at the back of my esophagus.
I only hope that, when I finally jump and feel my bones shatter against the concrete far below, I will kill whatever is inside of me. For I fear the consequences for the world if it were to escape.

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• 10 Second Ninja X
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• JUST CAUSE 4: COMPLETE EDITION
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• Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
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• Knock-knock
• Koi-Koi Japan [Hanafuda playing cards] *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.1 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.2 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.3 DLC
• Konung 2
• KungFu Kickball
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• Laserlife
• LAST OASIS
• Lawn Mowing Simulator
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• Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West
• Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle
• Learn Japanese To Survive! Katakana War
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• LEGION TD 2 - MULTIPLAYER TOWER DEFENSE
• LEGION TD 2 - MULTIPLAYER TOWER DEFENSE.
• Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry
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• One More Island
• One Step From Eden
• One Step From Eden (Region locked)
• Orbital Racer
• Organs Please
• Orwell: Ignorance is strength
• Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
• Out of Space
• Overclocked: A History of Violence
• Overcooked! 2 + Too Many Cooks + Surf 'n' Turf pack
• Overlord: Ultimate Evil Collection
• Overpass
• Overruled
• OZYMANDIAS: BRONZE AGE EMPIRE SIM
• Pac-Man Museum +
• Pan'Orama
• Panty Party
• Panzer Corps 2
• Panzer Paladin
• Papo & Yo
• PARADISE LOST
• Parkan 2
• PARTISANS 1941
• Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist
• Path of Giants
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
• Patron
• Paw Patrol: On A Roll!
• Paw Paw Paw
• Paws of Coal
• Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
• PER ASPERA
• Perfect
• PGA 2K21
• Pharaonic
• Pixplode
• Pizza Connection 3
• Plague tale
• Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition
• Planet Alcatraz
• PLANET ZOO
• PlateUp!
• Pogostuck: Rage With Your Friends
• Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
• Police Stories
• Poly Island
• Post Void
• Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
• Prank Call
• Prehistoric Kingdom
• Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
• Pretty Girls Panic!
• Prey
• Primal Carnage: Extinction
• Princess Kaguya: Legend of the Moon Warrior
• Pro Cycling Manager 2020
• Prodeus
• Project CARS - GOTY Edition
• Project Warlock
• Project Wingman (EU)
• PROJECT WINTER
• Propnight
• Pseudoregalia
• PULSAR: The Lost Colony
• qomp
• Quadrilateral Cowboy
• Quake II
• Quake II
• Quantum Break
• Quern - Undying Thoughts
• Radio Commander
• RAGE
• RAILROAD CORPORATION
• Railroad Tycoon 3
• Railroad Tycoon II Platinum
• Railway Empire
• Rain World
• Rayon Riddles - Rise of the Goblin King
• Re: Legend
• REBEL COPS
• Rebel Galaxy
• Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
• Recipe For Disaster
• Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
• Red Faction: Armageddon
• Red Riding Hood - Star Crossed Lovers
• Red Ronin
• RED SOLSTICE 2: SURVIVORS
• Redout Complete Bundle
• Redout: Enhanced Edition
• Redout: Enhanced Edition + DLC pack
• Regular Human Basketball
• REKT! High Octane Stunts
• Relicta
• REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES - COMPLETE EDITION
• Republique
• Rescue Party: Live!
• Resident Evil 0 HD REMASTER
• Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
• Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
• Resident Evil Revelations
• Resort Boss: Golf
• Retimed
• RETROWAVE
• rFactor 2
• RiME
• Ring of Pain
• Rise of Industry + 2130 DLC
• Rise of the Slime
• Rising Storm 2: Vietnam + 2 DLCs
• Riven: The Sequel to MYST
• River City Girls
• River City Ransom: Underground
• Roarr! Jurassic Edition
• Roboquest
• Robot Squad Simulator 2017
• Rogue : Genesia
• ROGUE HEROES: RUINS OF TASOS
• ROGUE LORDS
• Rogue Stormers
• rollercoaster tycoon 2
• ROTASTIC
• Roundguard
• ROUNDS
• RUNNING WITH RIFLES
• Rustler
• Ryse: Son of Rome
• S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
• Sailing Era
• Saint Row
• SAINTS ROW
• Saints Row IV
• Saints Row The Third
• Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell
• Saints Row: The Third Remastered
• Sam and Max Devil's Playhouse
• SAMUDRA
• Sands of Aura
• Sands of Salzaar
• Saturday Morning RPG
• Save Room - Organization Puzzle
• Scarlet Tower
• Scars Above
• Scorn
• SCP: 5K
• SCUM
• SEARCH PARTY: Director's Cut
• Second Extinction
• Secret Government
• Serious Sam 3 Bonus Content DLC, Serious Sam 3: Jewel of the Nile, and Serious Sam 3: BFE
• SEUM speedrunners from hell
• SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell
• Severed Steel
• Shadow Tactics: Aiko's Choice
• Shadowgate
• Shadows Awakening
• SHADOWS: AWAKENING
• Shape of the World
• She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
• Shenmue I & II
• SHENZHEN I/O
• Shift Happens
• Shing!
• Shining Resonance Refrain
• Shoppe Keep 2
• Shoppe Keep 2 - Business and Agriculture RPG Simulation
• Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
• Sid Meier's Civilization VI
• Sid Meier's Railroads!
• Sifu Deluxe Edition Upgrade Bundle (EPIC)
• Silver Chains
• SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition
• Sinking Island
• SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption
• Siralim Ultimate
• Size Matters
• Skautfold Chapters 1-4
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore
• Slain: Back from Hell
• Slap City
• Slash It
• Slash It 2
• Slash It Ultimate
• Slay the Spire
• Small World
• Smart Factory Tycoon
• Smile For Me
• Smoke and Sacrifice
• Smoke and Sacrifice
• Smushi Come Home
• Snail bob 2 tiny troubles
• Sniper Elite 3
• Sniper Elite 3 + Season Pass DLC
• Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition
• Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 - Season Pass Edition
• Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts
• Snooker 19
• SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
• Songs of Conquest
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Sonic Adventure DX
• Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing
• Sonic Generations Collection
• Soulblight
• Souldiers
• SOULSTICE
• Soundfall
• Source of Madness
• Spartan Fist
• Spec Ops
• Speed Limit
• Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo
• Spidersaurs
• Spin Rush
• Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
• Spirit of the Island
• Spirit of the North
• Spring Bonus
• Spyro Reignited Trilogy
• Stairs
• STAR WARS - Knights of the Old Republic
• STAR WARS - The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
• Star Wolves
• Starbound
• Starsand
• STASIS: Bone Totem
• State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition
• Steel Rats™
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Still Life
• Still Life 2
• Still There
• Stirring Abyss
• STONE
• Strange Brigade
• Strange Brigade Deluxe Edition
• STRANGER
• Strategic Command: World War I
• Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg
• Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom
• Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism
• Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
• Strategy & Tactics: Wargame Collection
• Streamer Life Simulator
• Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
• Street Fighter V
• Strider
• Strikey Sisters
• Struggling
• Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• Styx: Master of Shadows
• Styx: Shards of Darkness
• SuchArt
• Sudden Strike Gold
• Suite 776
• Sumoman
• Sunblaze
• SUNLESS BUNDLE
• Sunset Overdrive
• Super Buff HD
• Super Mag Bot
• Superbugs: Awaken
• Superhot
• Surgeon Simulator 2
• Survive the Nights
• Surviving Mars
• Surviving Mars
• Surviving The Aftermath
• Swag and Sorcery
• SWINE HD Remaster
• Sword Legacy Omen
• Sword of the Necromancer
• Swords and Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
• Syberia 3
• Symphonic Rain
• Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga
• Synthwave Dream '85
• Tacoma
• Taiji
• Take Off - The Flight Simulator
• Tales
• Tales from the Borderlands
• Tales of Vesperia™: Definitive Edition
• Talk to Strangers
• Tallowmere
• Talos Principle (Gold)
• Tangledeep
• Tank Mechanic Simulator
• Tannenberg
• Team Sonic Racing
• TEKKEN 7
• TEMTEM
• Terminus: Zombie Survivors
• TERRAFORMERS
• Terratech Deluxe Edition
• Terror of Hemasaurus
• Textorcist
• Tharsis
• The Adventure Pals
• The Amazing American Circus
• The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines
• The Anacrusis
• The Ascent
• The Battle of Polytopia
• The Battle of Polytopia *DLC1. Cymanti Tribe *DLC2. ∑∫ỹriȱŋ Tribe *DLC3. Aquarion Tribe *DLC4. Polaris Tribe
• The Beast inside
• The Blackout Club
• The Callisto Protocol™
• The Chess Variants Club
• The Citadel
• The Colonists
• The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
• THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: LITTLE HOPE
• The Darkest Tales
• The Dungeon Beneath
• The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• The Escapists 2
• THE GAME OF LIFE 2
• The Golf Club™ 2019 featuring PGA TOUR
• The haunted island, A frog detective
• The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
• The Hong Kong Massacre
• The Horror Of Salazar House
• The Innsmouth Case
• The Invisible Hours
• The Jackbox Party Pack 9
• The Knight Witch
• The Last Campfire
• The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame
• The Letter - Horror Visual Novel
• The Long Dark
• The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition
• The Mortuary Assistant
• The Mummy Demastered
• The Occupation
• The Outer Worlds
• THE OUTER WORLDS: SPACER'S CHOICE EDITION
• THE PALE BEYOND
• The Quarry
• The Quarry deluxe
• The Ramp
• The Red Lantern
• The Rewinder
• The Sacred Tears TRUE
• The Sexy Brutale
• The Shapeshifting Detective
• The Tarnishing of Juxtia
• The Tenants
• The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
• The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day
• The Uncertain: Light At The End
• The USB Stick Found in the Grass
• The Walking Dead
• The Walking Dead - 400 Days
• The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners
• The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
• The Walking Dead: Final Season
• The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
• The Walking Dead: Season 1
• The Walking Dead: Season Two
• The Way
• The Wild At Heart
• The Wild Eight
• The Witness
• Them and Us
• They Bleed Pixels
• Thief of Thieves
• This War of Mine
• This Way Madness Lies
• Three Kingdom: The Journey
• Time on Frog Island
• Tinkertown
• Tiny Tina’s Wonderland(EU)
• TINY TINA'S WONDERLANDS CHAOTIC GREAT EDITION
• Tiny Troopers
• Tinykin
• Tinytopia
• TIS-100
• Titan Quest
• Tokyo Xanadu eX+
• Tom Clancy's The Division™
• Tom Clancy's The Division™ - Survival!
• Tools up
• Tooth and Tail
• Torchlight
• Total Tank Simulator
• Tour de France 2020
• Tower Unite
• Townsmen - A kingdom Rebuilt
• Trail Out
• Trailblazers
• Trailmakers
• Trailmakers Deluxe Edition
• Train Sim World 3: Standard Edition
• Train Simulator Classic
• Train Valley 1
• Transport INC
• Treasure Hunter Simulator
• TRIBES OF MIDGARD
• Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
• Trinity Fusion
• Trombone Champ
• Tropico 5 - Complete Collection
• Trover Saves the Universe
• Tunche
• Turmoil
• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
• Twin Mirror
• Two Point Campus
• Two Point Hospital
• TYPECAST
• Tyrant's Blessing
• Ultimate Chicken Horse
• Ultimate Zombie Defense
• Ultra Space Battle Brawl
• Unavowed
• Undead Horde
• Underhero
• Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy
• Unity of Command: Stalingrad Campaign
• Universim
• UNLOVED
• Unpacking
• Until I have you
• Unto The End
• Upside Down
• URU: Complete Chronicles
• Vagante
• Valfaris
• Valfaris: Mecha Therion
• Valkryia Chronicles 4 Complete Edition
• Valkyria Chronicles 4 Complete Edition
• Valkyria Chronicles 4: Complete Edition
• Vambrace: Cold Soul
• Vampire - The Masquerade: Shadows of New York
• Vampire Survivors
• Vane
• Vectronom
• Velocity Noodle
• Venba
• Verne: The Shape of Fantasy
• Victoria 3
• Victoria II
• Viking: Battle For Asgard
• Virgo Versus The Zodiac
• VirtuaVerse
• Visage
• Viscerafest
• Void Bastards
• VOIDIGO
• Volcanoids
• Voltage High Society
• V-Rally 4
• Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG)
• Wanted: Dead
• Wargroove
• Warhammer 40,000 Sanctus Reach - Complete Edition
• Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon - Imperium Complete
• Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector
• Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf Special Edition
• WARHAMMER AGE OF SIGMAR: REALMS OF RUIN – ULTIMATE EDITION
• Warhammer vermintide collector's edition
• Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Warman
• Warstone TD
• Wasteland 3
• Wayward
• WE NEED TO GO DEEPER
• We should talk.
• We Were Here Together
• We Were Here Too
• Webbed
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse Heart of the Forest
• West of Dead
• What Lies in the Multiverse
• When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
• while True: learn()
• Whos Your daddy
• Wick
• Windward
• Witch It
• Witchy Life Story
• wizard of legends
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Worms Rumble
• Worms Rumble + Legends Pack
• Wrath: Aeon of Ruin
• WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship
• WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship
• WWE 2K Battlegrounds
• WWE 2K23
• WWZ Aftermath
• Wytchwood
• X-COM: COMPLETE PACK
• XCOM: ULTIMATE COLLECTION
• XIII - Classic
• X-Morph: Defense
• X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
• Yakuza Kiwami
• Yakuza: Like A Dragon
• Yumeutsutsu Re:After
• Yumeutsutsu Re:Master
• Zen Chess: Mate in One, Mate in 2 , Mate in 3 , Mate in 4 , Champion's Moves (5 games)
• Ziggurat
• Zombie Army 4
• Zombie Army Trilogy
• Zool Redimensioned
• Zwei: The Arges adventure
• Zwei: The ilvard insurrection

DLCs and Softwares:

• For The King: Lost Civilization Adventure Pack
• Train Simulator: Isle of Wight Route Add-On
• Train Simulator: Woodhead Electric Railway in Blue Route Add-On
• Train Simulator: North Somerset Railway Route Add-On
• Train Simulator: Union Pacific Heritage SD70ACes Loco Add-On
• Train Simulator: London to Brighton Route Add-On
• BR Class 170 'Turbostar' DMU Add-On
• DB BR 648 Loco Add-On
• Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations
• Expansion - Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise
• Expansion - Europa Universalis IV: Res Publica
• Grand Central Class 180 'Adelante' DMU Add-On
• Peninsula Corridor: San Francisco - Gilroy Route Add-On
• SONIC ADVENTURE 2: BATTLE
• Small World - A Spider's Web
• Small World - Cursed
• Small World - Royal Bonus
• The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - Goodies Pack
• The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - OST
• Thompson Class B1 Loco Add-On
• Total War: Shogun 2 - Rise of the Samurai
• Train Sim World® 3: Birmingham Cross-city line
• Train Sim World®: BR Class 20 'Chopper' Loco
• Train Sim World®: Brighton Main Line: London Victoria - Brighton
• Train Sim World®: Caltrain MP36PH-3C 'Baby Bullet'
• Train Sim World®: Cathcart Circle Line: Glasgow - Newton & Neilston
• Train Sim World®: Clinchfield Railroad: Elkhorn - Dante
• Train Sim World®: Great Western Express
• Train Sim World®: Hauptstrecke Hamburg - Lubeck
• Train Sim World®: LIRR M3 EMU
• Train Sim World®: Long Island Rail Road: New York - Hicksville
• Train Sim World®: Nahverkehr Dresden - Riesa
• Train Sim World®: Northern Trans-Pennine: Manchester - Leeds
• Train Sim World®: Peninsula Corridor: San Francisco - San Jose
• Train Sim World®: Rhein-Ruhr Osten: Wuppertal - Hagen
• Train Sim World®: Tees Valley Line: Darlington - Saltburn-by-the-sea
• Worms Rumble - Armageddon Weapon Skin Pack
• Worms Rumble - Captain & Shark Double Pack
• Worms Rumble - Legends Pack
• Worms Rumble - New Challengers Pack
• Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7
• Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft - The Eldritch Box DLC
• Duke Nukem Forever Hail to the Icons
• Duke Nukem Forever The Doctor Who Cloned Me
• GRIP: Combat Racing - Cygon Garage Kit
• GRIP: Combat Racing - Nyvoss Garage Kit
• GRIP: Combat Racing - Terra Garage Kit
• GRIP: Combat Racing - Vintek Garage Kit
• GameGuru
• GameMaker Studio 2 Creator 12 Months
• Intro to Game Development with Unity
• Music Maker EDM Edition
• Neverwinter Nights: Darkness Over Daggerford
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Dark Dreams of Furiae
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition Tyrants of the Moonsea
• Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition
• Neverwinter Nights: Infinite Dungeons
• Neverwinter Nights: Pirates of the Sword Coast
• Neverwinter Nights: Wyvern Crown of Cormyr
• PDF-Suite 1 Year License
• Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook and Starfinder Core Rulebook
• RPG Maker VX
• WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS - Ultimate Brawlers Pass
• We Are Alright
• The Outer Worlds Expansion Pass
• A Hat in Time - Seal the Deal DLC
• City Skylines:mass transit
• A Game Of Thrones - A Dance With Dragons
• A Game Of Thrones - A Feast For Crows
• Blood Rage: Digital Edition - Gods of Asgard
• Blood Rage: Digital Edition - Mythical Monsters
• Blood Rage: Digital Edition - Mystics of Midgard
• Carcassonne - The Princess and The Dragon DLC
• Carcassonne - Traders & Builders DLC
• Carcassonne - Winter & Gingerbread Man DLC
• Carcassonne - Inns & Cathedrals
• Carcassonne - The River
• Splendor: The Trading Posts DLC
• Splendor: The Strongholds DLC
• Splendor: The Cities DLC
• Small World - Be Not Afraid... DLC
• Small World - Grand Dames DLC
• Small World - Cursed!
• Sands of Salzaar - The Ember Saga
• Sands of Salzaar - The Tournament
• Monster Train: The Last Divinity DLC
• WARSAW

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Wishlist
Region: NA (Canada)
Fees on buyer if any, currency is USD unless specified
CTRL + F to find your games in terms of name

• 10 Second Ninja X
• 11-11 Memories Retold
• 112 Operator
• 12 is Better Than 6
• 198X
• 1993 Space Machine
• 60 Parsecs
• 7 Billion Humans
• 8 DOORS
• 8-bit Adventure Anthology: Volume I
• 9 Years of Shadows
• 911 Operator
• A Game of Thrones: The Board Game
• A Hat in Time
• A Hole New World
• A JUGGLER'S TALE
• A Long Way Down
• A PLAGUE TALE: INNOCENCE
• A Robot Named Fight!
• A Tale for Anna
• A.I.M.2 Clan Wars
• Abalon (Summoners Fate)
• Above Snakes
• ABZU
• Ace Combat Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition
• ADOM
• Adore
• Aegis Defenders
• Aeterna Noctis
• AETHERIS
• Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot The First Cases
• AIdol
• Airborne Kingdom
• Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
• Alder's Blood: Definitive Edition
• Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo
• Alien Breed Trilogy
• Aliens vs. Predator™ Collection
• All-Star Fruit Racing
• Almost There: The Platformer
• American Fugitive
• American Truck Simulator
• Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy
• AMID EVIL
• Amnesia rebirth
• Amnesia: The Dark Descent + Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
• Anomalous
• Another World – 20th Anniversary Edition
• Antigraviator
• Anuchard
• APICO
• APICO
• Aragami
• Aragami 2
• Arboria
• Arcade Paradise
• Arcade Paradise - Arcade Paradise EP
• Arcade Spirits
• Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace
• Armada 2526 Gold Edition
• Army Men RTS
• army of ruin
• Arto
• Ary and the Secret of Seasons
• As Far as the Eye
• Ascension to the Throne
• Assemble With Care
• Assetto Corsa Competizione
• Assetto Corsa Ultimate Edition
• Astebreed Definitive Edition
• Astro Colony
• Astronarch
• Attack of the Earthlings
• Automachef
• Automobilista
• Automobilista 2
• AUTONAUTS
• AUTONAUTS VS PIRATEBOTS
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora™ - Ubisoft Connect
• AVICII Invector: Encore Edition
• Awesomenauts All Nauts pack
• Axiom Verge
• Axiom Verge 2
• Baba is you
• Back 4 Blood
• Back 4 blood (EU)
• Backbone
• Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
• Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
• Banners of Ruin
• Bartlow's Dread Machine
• Basement
• Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials
• Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• Battle Royale Tycoon
• Battlecruisers
• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
• BATTLESTAR GALACTICA DEADLOCK SEASON ONE
• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock: Complete
• BATTLETECH MERCENARY COLLECTION
• BATTLETECH Shadow Hawk Pack
• BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
• Bee Simulator
• BEFORE WE LEAVE
• Beholder 2
• Ben 10
• Ben 10: Power Trip
• Bendy and the Ink Machine™
• Between the Stars
• Beyond a Steel Sky
• Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
• BEYOND THE WIRE
• Beyond: Two Souls
• BIOMUTANT
• Bionic Commando
• Bionic Commando Rearmed
• BioShock: The Collection
• BLACK BOOK
• Black Moon Chronicles
• Black Paradox
• BLACK SKYLANDS
• BLACKHOLE: Complete Edition
• Blacksad: Under the Skin
• Blade of Darkness
• Blasphemous
• Blazing Chrome
• Blightbound
• Blood And Zombies
• Blood Rage: Digital Edition
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
• Blue Fire
• Bomber Crew
• Boneless Zombie
• Boomerang Fu
• Borderlands 3
• Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe
• Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition
• Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
• Bot Vice
• Bounty of One
• Brawlout
• Breakout: Recharged
• Breathedge
• bridge constructor
• Bridge constructor medieval
• bridge constructor stunts
• Broken Lines
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
• Brutal Legend
• Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
• BUILDER SIMULATOR
• calico
• Call of Duty® Modern Warfare 3™ (2011)
• Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
• Capitalism 2
• Car Mechanic 2018
• Car Mechanic Simulator 2015
• Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
• Cardboard Town
• Castle Morihisa
• castle storm
• CastleStorm
• Cat Cafe Manager
• Catherine Classic
• Caveblazers
• Celeste
• Centipede: Recharged
• Cepheus Protocol
• CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience
• Charlie's Adventure
• Chenso Club
• Chernobylite: Enhanced Edition
• Chess Ultra
• Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
• Chivalry 2
• Chop Goblins
• Chorus
• Chorus
• Circuit Superstars
• Cities Skylines + After Dark
• Cities: Skylines
• City of Beats
• CivCity: Rome
• Click and Slay
• Cloud Gardens
• Cloudpunk
• Code Vein
• Coffee Talk
• Comedy Night
• Command & Conquer Remastered (Origin)
• Complete Dread X Collection
• Conarium
• Construction Simulator (2015) Deluxe Edition
• Constructor Plus
• Control
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
• Cookie Cutter
• cornucopia
• Corridor Z
• Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel
• Cosmonautica
• Crash Drive 2
• Crash Drive 3
• Creaks
• Creepy Tale
• Crookz the big heist
• CROSSBOW: Bloodnight
• Crush Your Enemies
• Cube Runner
• Cultist Simulator: Anthology Edition
• Curse: The Eye of Isis
• Cyber Ops
• Cybercube
• Danger Scavenger
• Dark Deity
• Dark Future
• DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: HOUSE OF ASHES
• Darkwood
• DARQ: Complete Edition
• Day of the Tentacle Remastered
• days of war definitive edition
• Dead by Daylight
• Dead Estate
• Dead Rising 2
• Deadly Days
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT
• Death's Gambit
• Deceased
• DECEIVE INC.
• Degrees of Separation
• Deleveled
• Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
• Deliver Us The Moon
• Demetrios - Deluxe Edition
• Depraved
• DESCENDERS
• Desert Child
• DESOLATE
• Destiny 2: Beyond Light
• DESTROYER: THE U-BOAT HUNTER
• Detention
• Devil May Cry HD Collection
• Devilated
• Dicey Dungeons
• Dirt 5
• dirt rally
• Dirt Rally 2.0
• Disaster Band
• Disciples III: Reincarnation
• Discolored
• Disjunction (GOG)
• DISTRAINT 2
• Distrust
• DmC: Devil May Cry
• Do Not Feed the Monkeys
• Don't Be Afraid
• Doomed Lands
• Door Kickers: Action Squad
• Doorways: Prelude
• Downfall
• Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
• Drake Hollow
• Draugen
• Draw Slasher
• Drawful 2
• Dreams in the Witch House
• Dreamscaper
• DreamWorks Dragons: Dawn of New Riders
• DRIFT21
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• drive!drive!drive!
• Drone Swarm
• Due Process
• Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project
• Duke of Alpha Centauri
• Dungeon Rushers
• Dungeons 2
• Dungeons 3
• DUSK
• Dusk Diver
• Dust to the End
• Dynopunk
• Earth Defense Force 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair
• Eastern Exorcist
• Eastward
• Effie
• Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
• El Matador
• Elderand
• Elderborn
• ELDEST SOULS
• Electrician Simulator
• Elemental Survivors
• Elex
• Elex II
• Elite Dangerous
• Embr
• Empire: Total War - Definitive Edition
• Empyrion - Galactic Survival
• ENCASED: A SCI-FI POST-APOCALYPTIC RPG
• Encodya (GOG)
• Endless Space 2
• Endless Space 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition
• Endless Space® 2 - Digital Deluxe Edition
• Endzone - A World Apart
• Epistory - Typing Chronicles
• Escape the backrooms
• Eternal Threads
• Etherborn
• Europa Universalis IV
• European Ship Simulator
• Everdream Valley
• Evil Genius 2: World Domination
• Exorder
• EXPEDITIONS: ROME
• Explosionade
• F1 2018
• F1 2019 Anniversary Edition
• F1 2020
• F1 RACE STARS Complete Edition Include DLC
• Fable Anniversary
• Factory Town
• Fallback uprising
• FALLOUT 1
• Family Man
• Family Mysteries 3: Criminal Mindset
• Fantasy Blacksmith
• FARMER'S DYNASTY
• Farming Simulator 17
• Farming Simulator 19
• Fictorum
• Field of Glory II
• Fights in Tight Spaces
• Filthy Animals Heist Simulator
• Firefighting Simulator - The Squad
• Fishing Adventure
• Flashback
• FLATLAND Vol.2
• FlatOut
• FLING TO THE FINISH
• Floppy Knights
• Fluffy Horde
• FOBIA - ST. DINFNA HOTEL
• For the King
• Forgive me Father
• Forts
• Framed Collection
• Fred3ric
• Fresh Start Cleaning Simulator
• Friends vs Friends
• Frog detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard
• Frogun
• From Space
• From the Depths
• Frostpunk: Game of the Year Edition
• Frozenheim
• Fun with Ragdolls: The Game
• Funtasia
• Fury Unleashed
• Gamedec
• Gamedec - Definitive Edition
• Gang Beasts
• GARAGE bad trip
• Garden Story
• Garfield Kart
• GAS STATION SIMULATOR
• Gelly Break Deluxe
• Genesis Alpha One Deluxe Edition
• Gevaudan
• Ghost Song
• Ghostrunner
• Giana Sisters 2D
• GIGA WRECKER
• Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart
• Glitch Busters: Stuck On You
• Gloria Victis
• Go Home Dinosaurs
• Goat of Duty
• GOD EATER 3
• Godlike Burger
• Godstrike
• Going Under
• Golf Gang
• Golf It!
• Gone Home + Original Soundtrack
• Good Knight
• Gotham Knights
• GREAK: MEMORIES OF AZUR
• GREEDFALL
• Gremlins, inc
• grey goo
• GRID - 2019
• grid ultimate
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• Gungrave G.O.R.E
• Guppy
• Guts and glory
• GYLT
• Hacknet
• Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
• Hamilton's Great Adventure
• Hammerting
• Hammerwatch
• Hands of Necromancy
• Havsala: Into the Soul Palace
• Headsnatchers
• Heartwood Heroes
• Heat Signature
• Heaven's Vault
• Helheim Hassle
• Hell Let Loose
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• Hellbound
• Hellpoint
• Hellslave
• Hellstuck: Rage With Your Friends
• Hero of the Kingdom III
• Hero of the Kingdom: The Lost Tales 2
• Heroes of Hammerwatch
• Heros hour
• Hexologic
• Hidden & Dangerous 2: Courage Under Fire
• Hidden & Dangerous: Action Pack
• Hidden Deep
• Hi-Fi Rush
• High On Life
• Hitman (2016) Game of the Year Edition
• HITMAN 2 - Gold Edition
• Hoa
• Hob
• Hollow Knight
• Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
• Home Sweet Home
• Home Sweet Home EP2
• Homestead Arcana
• Hood: Outlaws & Legends
• Hoplegs
• Hot Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora
• HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED ™
• Hotshot Racing
• House Flipper
• How to Survive 2
• Hue
• Human: Fall Flat
• HUMANKIND DEFINITIVE EDITION
• Hungry Flame
• Hylics 2
• Hyper Knights
• I am Bread
• I Am Fish
• I am not a Monster: First Contact
• I Hate Running Backwards
• ibb & obb Double Pack
• ICBM
• Ice Age Scrat's Nutty Adventure
• Ice Lakes
• Impostor Factory
• IN SOUND MIND
• Indivisible
• INDUSTRIA
• Infectonator 3: Apocalypse
• Infinite Beyond The Mind
• Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
• Insane 2
• INSOMNIA: The Ark
• Internet Cafe Simulator
• Internet Cafe Simulator 2
• Interstellar Space: Genesis
• Iris and the Giant
• Iron Fisticle
• Iron Harvest
• Ittle Dew
• Ittle Dew 2+
• Jack Move
• Jackbox party pack 2
• Jackbox party pack 5
• JANITOR BLEEDS
• Joint Task Force
• Jotun: Valhalla Edition
• Journey For Elysium
• Journey to the Savage Planet
• JUMANJI: The Video Game
• JumpJet Rex
• Jupiter Hell
• Jurassic Park: The Game
• Jurassic World Evolution
• Jurassic World Evolution 2
• JUST CAUSE 4: COMPLETE EDITION
• Just Die Already
• Kardboard Kings: Card Shop Simulator
• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
• Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
• Kentucky Route Zero - Season Pass Edition
• Kerbal Space Program
• Kill it with Fire
• Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition
• Killing Room
• Kingdom Two Crowns
• Kingdom: New Lands
• King's Bounty: Crossworlds
• Knights of Pen & Paper 2
• Knock-knock
• Koi-Koi Japan [Hanafuda playing cards] *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.1 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.2 DLC *Koi-Koi Japan : UKIYOE tours Vol.3 DLC
• Konung 2
• KungFu Kickball
• Labyrinthine
• Lair of the Clockwork God
• Laserlife
• LAST OASIS
• Lawn Mowing Simulator
• Layers of Fear: Masterpiece Edition
• Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West
• Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle
• Learn Japanese To Survive! Katakana War
• Learn Japanese to Survive! Trilogy
• Legend of Keepers
• LEGION TD 2 - MULTIPLAYER TOWER DEFENSE
• LEGION TD 2 - MULTIPLAYER TOWER DEFENSE.
• Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don't Dry
• Leisure Suit Larry 1-7
• Lemnis Gate
• Lemon Cake
• lethal league blaze
• Let's School
• Levelhead
• Liberated (GOG)
• Life is Strange Complete Season (Episodes 1-5)
• Light Fairytale Episode 1
• Light Fairytale Episode 2
• LIGHTMATTER
• Little dragons cafe
• Little Hope
• Little Inner Monsters - Card Game
• Little Misfortune
• Little Nightmares
• Little Nightmares Complete Edition
• Livelock
• Loop Hero
• Loot River
• Looterkings
• Lornsword Winter Chronicle
• Lost Castle
• Love Letter
• Lovecraft's Untold Stories
• Lovely planet arcade
• Lucius2
• Lucius3
• Ludus
• Lumberhill
• Lunacid
• LunarLux
• Lust for Darkness
• Lust from Beyond: M Edition
• Mad Experiments: Escape Room
• Mad Max
• Mafia Definitive Edition
• Mafia iii
• Mafia: Definitive Edition
• Magenta Horizon
• Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle
• Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle : School Girls Edition
• Maid of Sker
• Mail Time
• Maize
• Maneater
• Marooners
• MARSUPILAMI - HOOBADVENTURE
• Marvel's Avengers - The Definitive Edition
• Mato Anomalies
• Max Payne 3
• Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons
• Medieval II: Total War - Definitive Edition
• Medieval: Total War Collection
• MEEPLE STATION
• Men of War
• MERCHANT OF THE SKIES
• METAL HELLSINGER
• Metal Hellsinger
• Metro Exodus
• Metro last light
• Metro: Last Light Redux
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition
• MIDNIGHT PROTOCOL
• Mighty Switch Force! Collection
• Milky Way Prince - The Vampire Star
• MIND SCANNERS
• Ministry of Broadcast
• Minute of Islands
• Miscreated
• Mists of Noyah
• MKXL
• Mob Factory
• Mob Rule Classic
• Monaco
• Monster Hunter: Rise
• Monster Slayers - Complete Edition
• Monstrum
• Monstrum 2
• Moon Hunters
• Moons of Madness
• MORDHAU
• Mordheim: City of the Damned
• Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate Edition
• MORTAL KOMBAT XL
• Mortal Shell
• Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
• Mr. Run and Jump
• MudRunner
• Murder Mystery Machine
• My Big Sister
• My Friend Peppa Pig
• My Little Universe
• My Lovely Wife
• My Summer Adventure: Memories of Another Life
• My Time At Portia
• Mythforce
• N++ (NPLUSPLUS)
• Napoleon: Total War - Definitive Edition
• NARUTO TO BORUTO: SHINOBI STRIKER
• Necesse
• NECROMUNDA: HIRED GUN
• Necronator: Dead Wrong
• NecroVisioN: Lost Company
• NecroWorm
• Neighbours back From Hell
• Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! HD
• Neon Space
• Neon Space 2
• Neon Sundown
• Nephise: Ascension
• Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder
• Never Alone Arctic Collection (w/ Foxtales DLC and FREE Soundtrack)
• Neverinth
• Neverout
• Neverwinter Nights: Complete Adventures
• Newt One
• Nexomon: Extinction
• Nigate Tale
• Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor
• Nine Parchments
• Nine Witches: Family Disruption
• Nioh 2: The Complete Collection
• No Straight Roads: Encore Edition
• No Time to Relax
• Nomad Survival
• Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition
• Noosphere
• Northgard
• Northmark: Hour of the Wolf
• Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy
• not the robots
• Not Tonight
• Nurse Love Addiction
• Nurse Love Syndrome
• Nusakana
• Obduction
• Obey Me
• Observer: System Redux
• Occultus - Mediterranean Cabal
• Odallus: The Dark Call
• Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
• One Finger Death Punch 2
• One Hand Clapping
• One More Island
• One Step From Eden
• One Step From Eden (Region locked)
• Orbital Racer
• Organs Please
• Orwell: Ignorance is strength
• Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
• Out of Space
• Overclocked: A History of Violence
• Overcooked! 2 + Too Many Cooks + Surf 'n' Turf pack
• Overlord: Ultimate Evil Collection
• Overpass
• Overruled
• OZYMANDIAS: BRONZE AGE EMPIRE SIM
• Pac-Man Museum +
• Pan'Orama
• Panty Party
• Panzer Corps 2
• Panzer Paladin
• Papo & Yo
• PARADISE LOST
• Parkan 2
• PARTISANS 1941
• Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist
• Path of Giants
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
• Patron
• Paw Patrol: On A Roll!
• Paw Paw Paw
• Paws of Coal
• Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
• PER ASPERA
• Perfect
• PGA 2K21
• Pharaonic
• Pixplode
• Pizza Connection 3
• Plague tale
• Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition
• Planet Alcatraz
• PLANET ZOO
• PlateUp!
• Pogostuck: Rage With Your Friends
• Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
• Police Stories
• Poly Island
• Post Void
• Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
• Prank Call
• Prehistoric Kingdom
• Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire
• Pretty Girls Panic!
• Prey
• Primal Carnage: Extinction
• Princess Kaguya: Legend of the Moon Warrior
• Pro Cycling Manager 2020
• Prodeus
• Project CARS - GOTY Edition
• Project Warlock
• Project Wingman (EU)
• PROJECT WINTER
• Propnight
• Pseudoregalia
• PULSAR: The Lost Colony
• qomp
• Quadrilateral Cowboy
• Quake II
• Quake II
• Quantum Break
• Quern - Undying Thoughts
• Radio Commander
• RAGE
• RAILROAD CORPORATION
• Railroad Tycoon 3
• Railroad Tycoon II Platinum
• Railway Empire
• Rain World
• Rayon Riddles - Rise of the Goblin King
• Re: Legend
• REBEL COPS
• Rebel Galaxy
• Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
• Recipe For Disaster
• Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
• Red Faction: Armageddon
• Red Riding Hood - Star Crossed Lovers
• Red Ronin
• RED SOLSTICE 2: SURVIVORS
• Redout Complete Bundle
• Redout: Enhanced Edition
• Redout: Enhanced Edition + DLC pack
• Regular Human Basketball
• REKT! High Octane Stunts
• Relicta
• REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES - COMPLETE EDITION
• Republique
• Rescue Party: Live!
• Resident Evil 0 HD REMASTER
• Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
• Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
• Resident Evil Revelations
• Resort Boss: Golf
• Retimed
• RETROWAVE
• rFactor 2
• RiME
• Ring of Pain
• Rise of Industry + 2130 DLC
• Rise of the Slime
• Rising Storm 2: Vietnam + 2 DLCs
• Riven: The Sequel to MYST
• River City Girls
• River City Ransom: Underground
• Roarr! Jurassic Edition
• Roboquest
• Robot Squad Simulator 2017
• Rogue : Genesia
• ROGUE HEROES: RUINS OF TASOS
• ROGUE LORDS
• Rogue Stormers
• rollercoaster tycoon 2
• ROTASTIC
• Roundguard
• ROUNDS
• RUNNING WITH RIFLES
• Rustler
• Ryse: Son of Rome
• S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
• Sailing Era
• Saint Row
• SAINTS ROW
• Saints Row IV
• Saints Row The Third
• Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell
• Saints Row: The Third Remastered
• Sam and Max Devil's Playhouse
• SAMUDRA
• Sands of Aura
• Sands of Salzaar
• Saturday Morning RPG
• Save Room - Organization Puzzle
• Scarlet Tower
• Scars Above
• Scorn
• SCP: 5K
• SCUM
• SEARCH PARTY: Director's Cut
• Second Extinction
• Secret Government
• Serious Sam 3 Bonus Content DLC, Serious Sam 3: Jewel of the Nile, and Serious Sam 3: BFE
• SEUM speedrunners from hell
• SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell
• Severed Steel
• Shadow Tactics: Aiko's Choice
• Shadowgate
• Shadows Awakening
• SHADOWS: AWAKENING
• Shape of the World
• She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
• Shenmue I & II
• SHENZHEN I/O
• Shift Happens
• Shing!
• Shining Resonance Refrain
• Shoppe Keep 2
• Shoppe Keep 2 - Business and Agriculture RPG Simulation
• Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
• Sid Meier's Civilization VI
• Sid Meier's Railroads!
• Sifu Deluxe Edition Upgrade Bundle (EPIC)
• Silver Chains
• SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition
• Sinking Island
• SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption
• Siralim Ultimate
• Size Matters
• Skautfold Chapters 1-4
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore
• Slain: Back from Hell
• Slap City
• Slash It
• Slash It 2
• Slash It Ultimate
• Slay the Spire
• Small World
• Smart Factory Tycoon
• Smile For Me
• Smoke and Sacrifice
• Smoke and Sacrifice
• Smushi Come Home
• Snail bob 2 tiny troubles
• Sniper Elite 3
• Sniper Elite 3 + Season Pass DLC
• Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition
• Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 - Season Pass Edition
• Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts
• Snooker 19
• SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
• Songs of Conquest
• Sonic Adventure 2
• Sonic Adventure DX
• Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing
• Sonic Generations Collection
• Soulblight
• Souldiers
• SOULSTICE
• Soundfall
• Source of Madness
• Spartan Fist
• Spec Ops
• Speed Limit
• Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo
• Spidersaurs
• Spin Rush
• Spirit Hunter: Death Mark
• Spirit of the Island
• Spirit of the North
• Spring Bonus
• Spyro Reignited Trilogy
• Stairs
• STAR WARS - Knights of the Old Republic
• STAR WARS - The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
• Star Wolves
• Starbound
• Starsand
• STASIS: Bone Totem
• State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition
• Steel Rats™
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Still Life
• Still Life 2
• Still There
• Stirring Abyss
• STONE
• Strange Brigade
• Strange Brigade Deluxe Edition
• STRANGER
• Strategic Command: World War I
• Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg
• Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom
• Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism
• Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
• Strategy & Tactics: Wargame Collection
• Streamer Life Simulator
• Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
• Street Fighter V
• Strider
• Strikey Sisters
• Struggling
• Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• Styx: Master of Shadows
• Styx: Shards of Darkness
• SuchArt
• Sudden Strike Gold
• Suite 776
• Sumoman
• Sunblaze
• SUNLESS BUNDLE
• Sunset Overdrive
• Super Buff HD
• Super Mag Bot
• Superbugs: Awaken
• Superhot
• Surgeon Simulator 2
• Survive the Nights
• Surviving Mars
• Surviving Mars
• Surviving The Aftermath
• Swag and Sorcery
• SWINE HD Remaster
• Sword Legacy Omen
• Sword of the Necromancer
• Swords and Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
• Syberia 3
• Symphonic Rain
• Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga
• Synthwave Dream '85
• Tacoma
• Taiji
• Take Off - The Flight Simulator
• Tales
• Tales from the Borderlands
• Tales of Vesperia™: Definitive Edition
• Talk to Strangers
• Tallowmere
• Talos Principle (Gold)
• Tangledeep
• Tank Mechanic Simulator
• Tannenberg
• Team Sonic Racing
• TEKKEN 7
• TEMTEM
• Terminus: Zombie Survivors
• TERRAFORMERS
• Terratech Deluxe Edition
• Terror of Hemasaurus
• Textorcist
• Tharsis
• The Adventure Pals
• The Amazing American Circus
• The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines
• The Anacrusis
• The Ascent
• The Battle of Polytopia
• The Battle of Polytopia *DLC1. Cymanti Tribe *DLC2. ∑∫ỹriȱŋ Tribe *DLC3. Aquarion Tribe *DLC4. Polaris Tribe
• The Beast inside
• The Blackout Club
• The Callisto Protocol™
• The Chess Variants Club
• The Citadel
• The Colonists
• The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
• THE DARK PICTURES ANTHOLOGY: LITTLE HOPE
• The Darkest Tales
• The Dungeon Beneath
• The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• The Escapists 2
• THE GAME OF LIFE 2
• The Golf Club™ 2019 featuring PGA TOUR
• The haunted island, A frog detective
• The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game
• The Hong Kong Massacre
• The Horror Of Salazar House
• The Innsmouth Case
• The Invisible Hours
• The Jackbox Party Pack 9
• The Knight Witch
• The Last Campfire
• The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame
• The Letter - Horror Visual Novel
• The Long Dark
• The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition
• The Mortuary Assistant
• The Mummy Demastered
• The Occupation
• The Outer Worlds
• THE OUTER WORLDS: SPACER'S CHOICE EDITION
• THE PALE BEYOND
• The Quarry
• The Quarry deluxe
• The Ramp
• The Red Lantern
• The Rewinder
• The Sacred Tears TRUE
• The Sexy Brutale
• The Shapeshifting Detective
• The Tarnishing of Juxtia
• The Tenants
• The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
• The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day
• The Uncertain: Light At The End
• The USB Stick Found in the Grass
• The Walking Dead
• The Walking Dead - 400 Days
• The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners
• The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
• The Walking Dead: Final Season
• The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
• The Walking Dead: Season 1
• The Walking Dead: Season Two
• The Way
• The Wild At Heart
• The Wild Eight
• The Witness
• Them and Us
• They Bleed Pixels
• Thief of Thieves
• This War of Mine
• This Way Madness Lies
• Three Kingdom: The Journey
• Time on Frog Island
• Tinkertown
• Tiny Tina’s Wonderland(EU)
• TINY TINA'S WONDERLANDS CHAOTIC GREAT EDITION
• Tiny Troopers
• Tinykin
• Tinytopia
• TIS-100
• Titan Quest
• Tokyo Xanadu eX+
• Tom Clancy's The Division™
• Tom Clancy's The Division™ - Survival!
• Tools up
• Tooth and Tail
• Torchlight
• Total Tank Simulator
• Tour de France 2020
• Tower Unite
• Townsmen - A kingdom Rebuilt
• Trail Out
• Trailblazers
• Trailmakers
• Trailmakers Deluxe Edition
• Train Sim World 3: Standard Edition
• Train Simulator Classic
• Train Valley 1
• Transport INC
• Treasure Hunter Simulator
• TRIBES OF MIDGARD
• Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince
• Trinity Fusion
• Trombone Champ
• Tropico 5 - Complete Collection
• Trover Saves the Universe
• Tunche
• Turmoil
• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
• Twin Mirror
• Two Point Campus
• Two Point Hospital
• TYPECAST
• Tyrant's Blessing
• Ultimate Chicken Horse
• Ultimate Zombie Defense
• Ultra Space Battle Brawl
• Unavowed
• Undead Horde
• Underhero
• Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy
• Unity of Command: Stalingrad Campaign
• Universim
• UNLOVED
• Unpacking
• Until I have you
• Unto The End
• Upside Down
• URU: Complete Chronicles
• Vagante
• Valfaris
• Valfaris: Mecha Therion
• Valkryia Chronicles 4 Complete Edition
• Valkyria Chronicles 4 Complete Edition
• Valkyria Chronicles 4: Complete Edition
• Vambrace: Cold Soul
• Vampire - The Masquerade: Shadows of New York
• Vampire Survivors
• Vane
• Vectronom
• Velocity Noodle
• Venba
• Verne: The Shape of Fantasy
• Victoria 3
• Victoria II
• Viking: Battle For Asgard
• Virgo Versus The Zodiac
• VirtuaVerse
• Visage
• Viscerafest
• Void Bastards
• VOIDIGO
• Volcanoids
• Voltage High Society
• V-Rally 4
• Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG)
• Wanted: Dead
• Wargroove
• Warhammer 40,000 Sanctus Reach - Complete Edition
• Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon - Imperium Complete
• Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector
• Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
• Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf Special Edition
• WARHAMMER AGE OF SIGMAR: REALMS OF RUIN – ULTIMATE EDITION
• Warhammer vermintide collector's edition
• Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Warman
• Warstone TD
• Wasteland 3
• Wayward
• WE NEED TO GO DEEPER
• We should talk.
• We Were Here Together
• We Were Here Too
• Webbed
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse Heart of the Forest
• West of Dead
• What Lies in the Multiverse
• When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
• while True: learn()
• Whos Your daddy
• Wick
• Windward
• Witch It
• Witchy Life Story
• wizard of legends
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Worms Rumble
• Worms Rumble + Legends Pack
• Wrath: Aeon of Ruin
• WRC 6 FIA World Rally Championship
• WRC 7 FIA World Rally Championship
• WWE 2K Battlegrounds
• WWE 2K23
• WWZ Aftermath
• Wytchwood
• X-COM: COMPLETE PACK
• XCOM: ULTIMATE COLLECTION
• XIII - Classic
• X-Morph: Defense
• X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
• Yakuza Kiwami
• Yakuza: Like A Dragon
• Yumeutsutsu Re:After
• Yumeutsutsu Re:Master
• Zen Chess: Mate in One, Mate in 2 , Mate in 3 , Mate in 4 , Champion's Moves (5 games)
• Ziggurat
• Zombie Army 4
• Zombie Army Trilogy
• Zool Redimensioned
• Zwei: The Arges adventure
• Zwei: The ilvard insurrection

DLCs and Softwares:

• For The King: Lost Civilization Adventure Pack
• Train Simulator: Isle of Wight Route Add-On
• Train Simulator: Woodhead Electric Railway in Blue Route Add-On
• Train Simulator: North Somerset Railway Route Add-On
• Train Simulator: Union Pacific Heritage SD70ACes Loco Add-On
• Train Simulator: London to Brighton Route Add-On
• BR Class 170 'Turbostar' DMU Add-On
• DB BR 648 Loco Add-On
• Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations
• Expansion - Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise
• Expansion - Europa Universalis IV: Res Publica
• Grand Central Class 180 'Adelante' DMU Add-On
• Peninsula Corridor: San Francisco - Gilroy Route Add-On
• SONIC ADVENTURE 2: BATTLE
• Small World - A Spider's Web
• Small World - Cursed
• Small World - Royal Bonus
• The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - Goodies Pack
• The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - OST
• Thompson Class B1 Loco Add-On
• Total War: Shogun 2 - Rise of the Samurai
• Train Sim World® 3: Birmingham Cross-city line
• Train Sim World®: BR Class 20 'Chopper' Loco
• Train Sim World®: Brighton Main Line: London Victoria - Brighton
• Train Sim World®: Caltrain MP36PH-3C 'Baby Bullet'
• Train Sim World®: Cathcart Circle Line: Glasgow - Newton & Neilston
• Train Sim World®: Clinchfield Railroad: Elkhorn - Dante
• Train Sim World®: Great Western Express
• Train Sim World®: Hauptstrecke Hamburg - Lubeck
• Train Sim World®: LIRR M3 EMU
• Train Sim World®: Long Island Rail Road: New York - Hicksville
• Train Sim World®: Nahverkehr Dresden - Riesa
• Train Sim World®: Northern Trans-Pennine: Manchester - Leeds
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Previous Part
The next day went by in a blur. Rocco was walking the perimeter of the camp, keeping an eye out for Brooke when I woke up. I didn’t really think he’d leave, but it seemed to give Rocco something to do other than being a general menace to society. All of us ate breakfast as normal but no one really said much. I’m not sure if they were still reeling from things they saw yesterday or if they just weren’t in a talking mood. The thought occurred to me that Shaoni may have payed a visit to each of them as well. Prying into what they saw and answering questions they might have. Honestly the whole thing felt like we were guinea pigs. Shaoni didn’t really seem to have a great handle on the trials so far. It was… mildly concerning that the ringmaster of all this didn’t seem 100% in control anymore.
Actually, I’d thought about that a lot last night. Shaoni just sort of left us to our own devices when we went through those “visions” yesterday. It’s not like she backed up her claim that she’d know what we’d seen either. If anything the fact that she came to ask me about it made me even more suspicious that she wasn’t really sure what she was doing. It was the first time I’d ever thought of Shaoni as anything other than in complete control. Slowly but surely it was becoming glaringly obvious that wasn’t the case.
If I was remembering correctly today’s trial was the trial of strength. I sincerely hoped that was a metaphor for something. You’ve got to understand, I’m not a very strong person, not physically anyways. I hoped Shaoni wanted to test mental strength or strength of will something like that. My hopes shattered as we arrived at the coliseum and saw an arena set up. There were several dummies in a corner, the kind you would see used in martial arts or HEMA or something to that effect. At the foot of the dummies were several wooden clubs. I couldn’t see them to clearly but they almost looked clawed from a distance. The real centerpiece was the platform in the middle of the coliseum. It looked like a stage and I’m sure that’s exactly how we were going to use it. The raised wooden platform had been constructed with boards placed across the top. It looked like those boards could be removed and under that was simply the cold hard ground about two feet below.
Katrina’s eyes lit up as she looked over the room.
“Now this is what I’m talking about, a real trial!”
She just about shrieked in excitement, throwing one fist in the air and startling the rest of us to attention. Katrina was the only one that really seemed excited about this. John and Robert just looked accepting and I’m not sure Brooke had put two and two together yet. I’d seen the clubs laid out by the dummies and already figured we’d be sparing with each other.
“Good morning everyone, I hope your ready for today.”
Called Shaoni, emerging unseen from behind us. Anyone who wasn’t fully awake at that point sure was then. There’s just something about Shaoni that makes you really really not want her to show up behind you unannounced. Probably why she kept doing it to us.
“Today I will test your strength, while I’d rather avoid conflict it’s sometimes unavoidable. My ideal candidate not only knows themselves but can handle themselves as well. We will allow you some time to familiarize yourself with the war clubs you’ll be using. Then you will compete against each other to find the strongest, most skilled warrior among you.”
Shaoni explained, Katrina’ excitement growing with every word.
I wasn’t to keen to participate in any of this but, like usual, I didn’t really have much of a choice at this point.
“So will you be sticking around this time then?”
I asked, wondering if Shaoni was going to cut and run again.
“I have other matters to attend to today. While I would like to stay and observe the whole day I need to prepare things for the final trial tomorrow. I’ll be back in time to see you test each other though.”
She replied dismissively, already on her way out. Shaoni seemed almost uninterested in us now. For someone evaluating us she seemed awful happy to pass off the evaluation to her followers. I didn’t say anything else as she walked out of the coliseum and towards the exit.
As I walked over to the little training area I saw the clubs were actually ornate masterpieces. They were carved from a hard dark wood. The handles resembled an eagles talon, curving near the end to grip a wooden orb. Whoever made these was beyond skilled, these things were works of art. I didn’t have much time to admire them before Katrina interrupted me.
“Hey, Keith was it? Want me to show you how to use these things?”
She called over to me, it was more of a command than a question but that’s pretty par for the course with her.
“If you want, sure. I’m uh… I’m kinda a fish out of water with this find of thing.”
I told her, rubbing the back of my neck with one hand in embarrassment. I wasn’t sure why she was singling me out for that but she answered that question for me.
“Good, Those two creep me out and that one has been drooling over me since we got here.”
She said, pointing over at Robert and John who had already started practicing, then at Brooke. Katrina showed absolutely no subtly in any of this, earning us looks from all three of the others.
I was a little afraid of Katrina teaching me anything, if someone was gonna kill me by accident it would be her. That and she still had that gun on her. Despite my misgivings she was actually a pretty good teacher. She was a bit like a drill instructor but I learned a thing or two. By the time we were done I felt like I might stand half a chance in this trial.
“Just remember your footwork, keep your balance and the rest should come natural. Oh, and if we get paired up, take a dive, it’ll be less painful.”
Katrina added with a smirk, walking over towards the group by the stage in the center of the room. Shaoni had just come back in and was up on the balcony. A few of her followers had collected us and informed us we were about to start the, ”practical part”, as they put it.
“There’s five of you so for the first matchup one of my own will serve as the opponent. Anyone what to go first?”
Shaoni asked us, looking down with a raised eyebrow and waiting for a response. Before I realized what I’d done my hand was in the air, my body subconsciously wanting to get this over with as fast as possible. Shaoni actually looked surprised as she gestured for me to take my place on the stage. Two of the boards had been removed on either side leaving us something like six feet of space to work with before falling off the platform. But I was far less concerned about that after I saw the guy walking over. It was the driver from a few days ago when Shaoni had me brought out to the camp. The guy that had his friend stabbed by Bianca, he didn’t look like he’d forgotten about that as they gave him his club.
As I took my place on the stage the only thing I was thinking was exactly how bad it hurt when you got hit with one of these things.
“Begin when you are ready.”
Called Shaoni from her place on the balcony. The guy across from me took absolutely no time to think, charging at me wildly right away. I tried to brace myself and remember Katrina’s training, taking an even stance and angling my club for the coming blow. I did manage to block his strike but the force of it threw me to the ground. My mind went into full survival mode as he swung down at me. He was way less fluid than Katrina had been when she was showing me the ropes. He just seemed like he wanted to hurt me by any means necessary. As I rolled from side to side avoiding his blows I waited for an opening. He took a particularly hard swing at my head and I rolled at the last possible second. He lost his balance, giving me a chance to slip between his legs and get back to my feet. I stood back up narrowly avoiding a swing for my head as my opponent regained his balance and swung back at me. His wide hate fueled swing carried his whole body around with it and gave me another opening. I planted my feet and took one hard swing at the man’s turned shoulder hitting him right on the bone with a sickening crack. He stumbled around towards the edge, turning his back to me. I took one final swing, hoisting the club above my head and bringing it down in between his shoulder blades with a hollow thud. The blow sent him tumbling forward over the edge and off the stage, falling to the floor below.
Katrina shot me a quick thumbs up as I walked off the stage while Shaoni looked down at me and gave me an approving nod. No one else seemed to pay me any mind as I rejoined the group. I felt empowered, I hadn’t expected to get even that far, maybe there was a chance for me in this trial after all. Robert and John fought next and despite their age they each held their own. In the end John forced Robert off the edge, his age and weight throwing off his balance. I was still impressed either of them could move like they had, I guess I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Then Katrina fought Brooke in the last… round I guess I’d call it. The smile on her face was unsettling from the moment she realized she’d be paired up with him, like a shark smelling blood in the water. You could just tell that she was going to take pleasure in what happened next.
That smile was still on her face as she walked up onto the stage and took her place across from Brooke.
“I hope you like it rough baby, cause I’m not going easy on you!”
Brooke called to her from the other side of the stage making a point to puff out his chest and flex his muscles. That set her off like a bomb, the smile disappeared and she exploded towards Brooke. I saw the exact moment that false confidence left his eyes and he actually turned to run, he was far to late and way to slow. Her first strike went low, shooting out in front of Brooke and coming back to catch his knee sending him tripping forward. He tried to regain his balance but she had no intention of letting him. Katrina swung out in front of him again, this time catching his neck with the club on its way back. That sent him flat onto his back, the club falling form his hand and rolling off the edge of the stage was the only sound in the whole coliseum. All eyes focused on Katrina as she took a breath then delivered a kick to Brooke’s ribs so hard that he went rolling off the edge, following his club. I returned her thumbs up she had given me as she rejoined the group.
Next, those of us who remained got matched up with each other. Shaoni wanted to use another one of her followers to stand in but Katrina insisted on just going twice. That meant I’d fight her and then the winner would fight John to see who the victor of the day was. As I stood across from Katrina I considered taking her advice from before, “…Just take a dive…” she had said. I thought about it, I really did, but I’d done so well earlier right? Why stop now? While I’d been thinking Katrina had walked up to me and started to swing. I had just enough time to realize my mistake before she cracked me across the head so hard she knocked me out.
I came to an hour later, alone on an animal skin cot. I was still in the coliseum but everyone else had left apparently. The only thing I saw when I got up from the ground was the torchlight illuminating the passage that lead back outside. That and the note scribbled on a scrap of a sticky note taped to my fore head.
“I told you to take a dive.”
Well at least she might feel bad about knocking me out. I figured we must be done for the day given how dead the camp seemed when I emerged back into the light. With nothing better to do, I walked off towards the forest to clear my head. I wondered what Bianca had been up to since I’d been gone as I aimlessly wandered around the forest’s edge.
“No that wouldn’t work! We don’t know what’s up there and we are not just waltzing in through the front gates!”
Stein yelled at me as I went over my most recent idea for breaking Keith out of whatever trials were going on out by the old mine. It had been two days since I watched him get kidnapped in front of me and I was getting drastic, aaaannd maybe a little dramatic.
“But I could do it guys! Remember back at the reservation? Those guys were willing to do anything for me and there can’t be that many guards in one place. Maybe I just convince a small group to lead us in and make an excuse for us.”
“For the last time Bianca, They’re just about cultists far as I can tell. You ain’t gonna be able to fight the kinda conviction they have to that bird, even if ya could its to much of a risk.”
Tuck protested from his seat at the kitchen table.
The kitchen table had become our war room over the past few days. A map of Eagles Peak Frank had made lay across it with dozens of pins stuck in around where the old mine would be.
“I don’t think an approach from the front is a good idea at all. You and Keith got to the mine through the forest once. Could we follow that path, approach without anyone knowing we were there?”
Stein theorized as he paced back and forth at the head of the table.
“Well, we really just wandered around for a bit and ended up there. We didn’t find the mine either, it was a hole that lead down to an old cavern near the mine. They turned out to be connected but that was just dumb luck.”
I explained to the group. Tuck looked like that had given him an idea.
“So you two got some backdoor entrance figured out that you’re only just tellin’ me about? That could be perfect! The four of us could make our way out and drop through that hole, take em all by surprise!”
Tuck exclaimed, leaping to his feet. His enthusiasm was nice but it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“We… kinda made a bit of a scene when we were there, they might be watching for something like that to happen again.”
“True, but it’s the best entrance strategy I’ve heard so far, I think following up on it is worth a try.”
Frank added with a nod. Stein then started pacing up and down the length of the table for a bit. He was coming up with something, that much was obvious.
“So we’ll enter through this hole leading into a cave connected to the old mine. From what you told us about your time there its some sort of staging area for these trials, at least that’s my best guess. Odds are there won’t be many people there overnight so we make our way out there during the night. From there we move through the cave and into the mine but after that we know nothing about what we’re running into.”
Stein lectured to his audience.
“But I think we have a solution for that. Frank do we still have that drone?”
An hour later the four of us were gathered at the edge of town on that path Keith and I had taken into the forest. The trees growing together forming a sort of arch over our head’s were unsettling but I couldn’t decide why. It just didn’t sit well with me, it looked unnatural I guess and that just gave me the creeps. I get that’s rich coming from a literal succubus but its how I felt.
“Alright, just watch the trees as you take it up, I don’t want a repeat of Missouri.”
Stein instructed Frank as he got the drone in the air.
“You’re never going to let me live that down are you?”
Frank chuckled, shaking his head.
“It was the first time we used this thing, there was bound to be a few unexpected variables.”
“If you call “unexpected variables” an itchy finger on the throttle. We had to have Rocco untangle it from the branches.”
Stein joked as he checked to make sure the drones camera was feeding back into the app on his phone.
I hadn’t seen them like this, being friendly with each other. There was never a time where they hated each other or anything like that but they’d been so… business like with for a long time now. It was nice to see them act like real people again. Leaning over Stein’s shoulder I got a birds eye view from the drone.
“ Just go East, its what we did. Just walked East till we stumbled into everything.”
Frank followed my advice and flew the drone due East. Eventually a campsite came into view, there were a bunch of tepees and a bunch of people just walking around.
“What, they just look normal?!”
I blurted out, a little louder and a bit more distressed than I meant to.
“How’re they supposed ta look then?”
Tuck asked
“They’re just people like you n’ me. Nothin to special about em other than the fact they worship some big ass bird.”
He continued with mild annoyance.
“I don’t know, I guess I expected these creepy guys in tarps, like from Keith’s story. These are just… well they’re just people!”
I responded, Throwing my arms out to my sides in exasperation. Tuck was right, I shouldn’t have expected everything to be just as Keith had said. Still, something just didn’t fit together for me about that whole thing. What had the deal been with those people in Imalone then? I shook my head, clearing the question from my mind, it wasn’t important now.
“There! That’s the entrance to the old mine.”
Tuck told Stein as he looked at screen. I looked over myself and felt my entire being freeze. It was Brooke, walking out from the entrance with some bitchy looking girl and two older guys that I’d seen around town before. How could he be here? After all this time why, why was he anywhere near me?
My vision swam, when it came back Frank was standing in front of me. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear anything.
“…anca! Are you ok, what’s going on? Bianca!”
I finally heard over the sudden ringing in my ears.
“Him.”
Was the only thing the escaped my lips as I pointed one finger at the screen. I felt warmth coming back into my limbs as that frozen feeling slowly left me.
“He’s here…. Shouldn’t be here… why.”
I mumbled to myself as Frank helped me into the back of the SUV twenty minutes later. I was still nearly catatonic as we headed back into town.
“So… that was him, the one you were running from when we found you.”
Stein said, breaking the silence that had fallen. I could talk normally again but I still only managed a quick “yes”.
“You know you don’t have to come with us, I’d understand.”
Frank said, snapping me to attention again.
“NO! I’ve got to help Keith, I don’t care if… if Brooke’s up there too.”
I tripped over my words just mentioning his name.
“I can do it, I can do this Frank, please.”
I begged, taking deep breaths to try and calm myself down. We pulled into the driveway before Frank said anything back. As we were all getting out he muttered something under his breath. He didn’t mean for me to hear him but I did.
“I’m not sure you can girl.”
I went straight up to my room after that, I didn’t want to be around anyone. All I caught before I left Frank, Stein, and Tuck before running up the stairs was the hard look Stein shot both of them. A look that said “We need to talk” and told me that he finally had a real plan. I spent the rest of that night thinking about the past and what I’d been through. Could I go out to that mine and rescue Keith if I had to face Brooke again? The last time I’d seen him had been as I leapt out of a moving car as my eyes turned to meet his one last time, rolling down that hill to freedom. I’d never seen him since and it was rare for him to even cross my mind. I wanted to go with the rest of them but despite what I said I really wasn’t sure I could do this anymore. Eventually I just decided only time would tell, hopefully Stein’s plan was a good one and we could put this whole thing behind us.
“Ey! Ey Keith!”
Someone yelled out as I came back from my little hike around the edge of the forest. My eyes darted around behind me before they finally focused on a rustling bush. Rocco jumped out of it holding a cigar in his mouth.
“That Brooke asshole hasn’t gone anywhere, I found him out by that trail the trucks drove in on with this.”
He said, tossing the cigar up in the air where it twirled around before he caught it in his mouth again.
“I figured I should frisk him just in case. I took a bite of his pants and stole this little number out of his coat pocket.”
He continued, shaking a silver lighter with a gold inlayed image of a lion in his paw.
“Oh and the cigar, I took that too. Cuban so the guy’s got taste, still a prick. Anyways, it looked like someone got to him before me. The guy was pretty beaten up, had some nasty bruises.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was just trying to picture Brooke getting mugged by a raccoon In my head and I burst out laughing. Rocco walked back to the camp in toe with me, only stopping to look up at some weird buzzing sound we both heard above us. Probably some rickety old plane or something way up there. I think I was finally starting to get why Frank and Stein had kept Rocco around. He may be a furry criminal mastermind but when he was motivated he could actually be really helpful. I never would’ve been able to keep any sort of tabs on Brooke without his help.
We made our way back to the long tent that still had remnants of lunch sitting on the table. Usually I would’ve tried to hide Rocco but at this point I figured he deserved the free food. Plus I just didn’t want to argue with him after getting my shit rocked most of the morning. Someone walked up behind me and I heard Shaoni’s voice, of course she was creeping up behind me again.
“Your feeling alright after today I hope?”
She asked me, taking a seat next to me.
“I’ll be alright, I’m sure I’ll have a killer headache in the morning but I’ll manage.”
“Good, good. We’ll be gathering in a few hours so I can announce the final trial. I expect you out by the entrance to the mine by 6.”
“What’s the matter? No cryptic questions this time Shaoni?”
I asked, paying no mind to what was sitting next to me.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you always stop by to check in after these trials. You don’t have any questions this time?”
“No, Katrina was the victor today, there is no question about that, the woman is… brutal. I just wanted to make sure she didn’t hit you to hard, you were unconscious for some time.”
She answered, some genuine concern slipping into her voice again.
“Heh careful, I might start to think you actually care.”
I joked, less nervous than I should’ve been.
“I’ll see you tonight with the rest for the announcement.”
She said with a deep sigh, standing up and walking off toward where ever she came from.
I took a nap and just barely managed to wake up in time for this “meeting” Shaoni had planned. I couldn’t find Rocco before I left but I wasn’t all that concerned about that anymore. When I got to the entrance a massive bonfire was lit and Shaoni stood alone in front of it. Robert and John were already there and Katrina showed up a little after me. Brooke hadn’t arrived before Shaoni started her speech.
“I thank all of you for coming here tonight. Regrettably one of you is missing but I won’t be waylaid by his absence.”
She spoke with clear annoyance in her voice.
“Tomorrow marks your final trial, the most important of the three. The trial of justice. Tomorrow there will be a murder in Eagles Peak. I want you all to work together to stop it. Then, succeed or fail, pass judgment on those involved in the murder. Afterwards I will select which among you will receive my gift. But for tonight, talk amongst yourselves, plan, and rest. Prepare yourselves for tomorrow, I will have my eye on each of you.”
With that Shaoni stepped away from the fire and into the night. Not accepting any questions about anything she had said.
“What do you think she has planned?”
Robert asked me as I took a seat by the bonfire to think over everything Shaoni had said.
“I don’t know, a murder apparently. Shouldn’t you know more about it? You’re one of her followers after all.”
I said as I turned my head to see John walking off into the night. That man was weird, really weird. I knew next to nothing about him and he seemed to never speak.
“Usually sure, but she hasn’t said anything to us about this. It’s why she hasn’t directly overseen all the trials, she’s set this last one up all on her own. I guess there’s nothing to do but wait, we’re all in this together for the first part of the trial I guess.”
Robert explained, leaning back and sprawling out on the ground. He was right, there wasn’t much we could do until we were in the middle of it.
I looked around, searching for Katrina in the firelight. I found her leaning against the rocky wall that made up the entrance of the mine. I stood up, leaving Robert to relax and made my way over.
“How’s the head?”
She asked, feigning taking a swing at me again with an evil grin on her face.
“I told you to take a dive.”
“Yeah, I should’ve listened.”
I admitted, rubbing the goose egg that had formed on my head over the course of my nap.
“So what do you thin about this last trial?”
“Well, I can say that If that Brooke guy tries flirting with me one more time the murder won’t be that hard to solve. Seriously though, I think she’s gone off the deep end. How does she know there’s going to be a murder?”
Katrina made a really good point, how was Shaoni so sure?
“That’s… hmmmm, you’re right.”
“Well I’m gonna head to bed then. Something tells me tomorrow is gonna be a headache. Just try to stay out of my way when we’re all forced to work together and you should be fine. All goes well and maybe we’ll be out of here tomorrow, I know I will.”
Katrina said as she pushed herself off the rock wall she’d been leaning against. Something about the way she said that last part, it made me think she was up to something. Like she was leaving no matter what or she had some sort of exit strategy.
As I left Robert relaxing by the fire and hiked back to my own tepee for the night I spied Katrina. She had climbed up a tree and had her legs wrapped around the trunk and one of her arms gripped a branch above her. There was some kind of box in her other hand, a radio maybe. I had no idea what she was saying, she was too far off, but it had to mean something. As far as I knew none of us had any contact with the outside world since we got here. My gut feeling was that she wasn’t meant to be doing that. I wasn’t going to bother her at this point though so I went my own way and settled down for the night.

TL;DR below
I‘m a trans guy and not so good with social conventions and unwritten rules. I also love hugging people.
What I‘ve noticed is that my women/nb friends never pat me on the back, whereas almost all men do. I‘m talking about the genuine hug with both arms, not the quick dap one btw (although that‘s worth another question).
In my books, a double pat means „stop“ (f ex in martial arts). I also faintly remember reading somewhere that this gesture means „this hug has been long enough“. But maybe I dreamt that or it‘s just bullshit.
Would you say that it‘s just an affectionate gesture? I find physical touch in general but especially pats on the back or shoulder to be an affirmative, encouraging gesture; a sign of „I see you“.
Or does it actually mean it‘s time to end the hug?
For reference, I live in Europe. I know that these things tend to differ greatly depending on the culture you‘re in.
TL;DR: Does a double pat on the back during a hug have a specific meaning? Should I pat other guys? How often/at all should you pat during a dap-hug?

This week's book club list is as follows (enjoy reading and comment which your favourite is below):
​

1. The Lost Art of Compassion: Discovering the Practice of Happiness in the Meeting of Buddhism and Psychology by Lorne Ladner: Dr Lorne Ladner rescues compassion from this marginalised view, showing how its practical application in our life can be a powerful force in achieving happiness. Combining the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism and Western psychology, Ladner presents clear, effective practices for cultivating compassion in daily living.
2. Choosing Happiness: Keys to a Joyful Life by Alexandra Stodda: Happiness lies in the passions we pursue and in the pressures we decline. It is in knowing how to work and when to play. It is in the treasured objects we keep nearby and in the ordinary moments we elevate into small celebrations. It is in the note we write to a friend and the kindness we show a stranger. It is in the colors we love and the music that transports us. It may be as simple as sunlight on your face; as sudden as a shared smile; as sensuous as a single flower on your desk, candles on your nightstand, or cookies hot from the oven. Happiness is what you make it, where you make it. Happiness is our best choice.
3. Health, Wealth and Happiness: You Can Control Your Destiny by David Singh: David Singh's dramatic journey from the jungles of Guyana to the helm of one of Canada's largest financial planning companies provides the backdrop for this guide to lasting happiness. Advocating wise investments, careful planning, and healthy eating choices, this inspirational book uncovers the secrets to a happier and more successful life.
4. What All the World's A-Seeking: Or, The Vital Law of True Life, True Greatness Power and Happiness by Ralph Waldo Trine: Ralph Waldo Trine was an influential member of the New Thought movement. He was one of the first people to write about the Law of Attraction. Long before Rhonda Byrne discovered the secret that one's positive thoughts are powerful magnets that attract wealth, health, and happiness, Trine already knew it.
5. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin Seligman: I have read about 80 pages and I am enjoying Seligmen's friendly, engaging writing style so far. Also, there are interesting facts about each person's 'range' of happiness being fixed on a spectrum.Great so far. Will attempt to update review when I have completed the book.
6. Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science by Jonathan Haidt: Jonathon Haidt is a terrifically productive thinker about psychology. This is book is a credo and a guide book to your own happiness via an accomplished romp through the psychological literature which Haidt uses to explore the truths of ancient religion. I'm surprised it's not a wild best seller, but I think I know why - it doesn't have an singular and catchy formula for your salvation which you can learn in your lunchtime and hear about ad nauseam on late night TV infomercials. Just well written, well thought out commentary on the formula for a happy and fulfilled life distilled from the psychological literature.
7. It's All in Your Head: Thinking Your Way to Happiness by Stephen M. Pollan, Mark Levine: If you've ever wanted to have a conversation with someone on a normal level about undoing negative thinking patterns, this book is about the closest you'll ever get in written form. The style is conversational, pragmatic, and realistic. Kind of like talking to a favorite uncle or aunt who is just "on the mark" about dealing with life. The book focuses on 8 behaviothought patterns that hinder us from being happy NOW, and provides simple, easy "exercises" to do to help overcome them. It is also one of those rare self-help books that the whole family can read, enjoy, and profit from. In my opinion, this book is better than any other I've read by Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Nathaniel Branden, and many others. If you've ever thought you can be happier, YOU CAN, and this book can help you get there.
8. Handbook on the Economics of Happiness by Luigino Bruni, Pier Luigi Porta: This Handbook provides an unprecedented forum for discussion of the economic issues relating to happiness. It reviews the more recent literature and offers the interested reader an insight into the vast scope of the field in terms of the theory, its applications and also experimental design. The Handbook also gives substantial indications as to the future direction of research in the field, with particular regard to policy applications and developing an economics of interpersonal relations which includes reciprocity and social interaction theory.
9. Freeing your child from negative thinking: powerful, practical strategies to build a lifetime of resilience, flexibility, and happiness by Tamar E. Chansky: This book is excellent for those who wish to embrace Food Combining i.e. what has become known as the Hay Diet. It is where one avoids mixing starch-based foods and protein-based foods in the same meal.
10. The 7 Steps of Spiritual Intelligence: The Practical Pursuit of Purpose, Success and Happiness Volume by Richard A. Bowell: Pioneering researcher and educator Richard Bowell delivers the first and only self-help guide to the power of spiritual intelligence (SQ)-the next evolutionary stage in our pursuit of purpose, success, and happiness. He introduces the latest breakthroughs in neuro-science. Life lessons from such exceptional individuals as Nelson Mandela to Ghandi and Mother Theresa take readers on a self-guided journey to personal development and growth.

So, which one are you picking up next or have read? Let us know with a comment and upvote and share this post and our sub bodychemistry to stay tuned for more reading lists every week!
Love, marmalada

On a rainy Saturday afternoon not so long ago when internet connection was fluctuating in most homes, the 80-year-old Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, widow of the late Senator Heherson Alvarez, carrying a mini iPad, hurriedly alighted from a three-wheeled pedicab Toktok and stormed her way into a popular coffee shop in a mall in Manila.

A senior citizen in panic mode, she told the stunned baristas she’s looking for a Wi-Fi connection because she was about to interview retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio via Zoom.
The coffee shop, a known world brand, has Wi-Fi exclusive to its employees, so the old lady was told to try other establishments. She went from one coffee shop to another only to be told the same, until a kind stranger led her to a well-known beauty salon with a free internet connection.
The lady salon attendant was very accommodating to the octogenarian, even typing the password on her IPad. Of course, she needed to avail herself of their salon services. Initially, she opted for a haircut, but since she needed to talk and hear clearly who she was talking to, she settled for a foot spa with pedicure.
“They lowered the volume of the piped-in music, and since there were less customers because it’s been raining all day, I was able to do my interview,” Guidote-Alvarez said.
For the next half-an-hour, the hair dressers and manicurists working with their scissors, nail clippers and cuticle removers on their customers’ hair and fingernails, listened to Carpio and Guidote-Alvarez discussed how Filipino fishermen and the Philippine Navy ships helplessly negotiate their ways in Scarborough Shoal amid the territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea.
“They were all very nice to me. I was able to finish my interview, with newly pedicured nails,” she told The Diarist.
For those who’ve worked with Guidote-Alvarez, her steadfast, almost stubborn, nature to accomplish a task, is nothing out of the ordinary. She would improvise, find alternatives, call up friends and former students, wake them up from sleep, just to get things done.
But now, in her 80s, legally blind and nearly deaf, she has mellowed down.
Cecile Alvarez with her mentors, National Artist for Literature Alejandro Roces, Jr and Fr. James Reuter. SJ
In her twilight years, Guidote-Alvarez has been solely hosting the 57-year-old Radyo Balintataw on DZRH, one of the oldest radio stations in the Philippines, where she tackles a wide range of topics, from climate change, women’s health, theater, culture, dance, to current issues, apart from playing old recordings of classic radio plays she produced and directed, dating back to the late ‘80s.
She shared with TheDiarist.ph how she started and continues to host one of the longest running advocacy programs on AM Radio.
Theater on TV
After founding the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) on April 7, 1967, or exactly 57 years ago, Guidote-Alvarez thought of the need to expose PETA’s members to television, so she started conceptualizing Balintataw, which in Filipino means the pupil of the eye, but in a larger context has something to do with having wild imagination, or what you might see if you have a third eye.

“I designed Balintataw as a bridge between cinema and the stage, where the youth being trained in theater skills can have a ready-made laboratory experience linked with the film and entertainment industry that would likewise have a natural on-the-job training and orientation regarding the theatrical discipline of working with a literary script, whether dramatic or comic—not the regular improvised script done on taping or copycat scripts from foreign themes,” Guidote-Alvarez wrote in her yet-to-be published Memoir of a Freedom Fighter’s Wife.
“A primary goal when I conceived PETA was to initiate and sustain artistic expression that draws meaning and power from the lives of the people, and sharing the literary gems with a greater number of audiences through a Broadcast Theater-Film Program with Balintataw on Channel 5,” she added.
“No matter how little the pay, at least it provided our local writers with a little honorarium. I sought permission for award-winning pieces of the Palanca Playwriting contest to be fleshed out to reach the masses. The much-awarded playwright Bert Florentino served as our literary manager, assisted by Mauro Avena. Eventually, Isagani Cruz took over when Bert left for the US,” she wrote.
“Writers need exposure and encouragement through a regular TV performance that will give them a sense of achievement and inspire them to keep on writing with some kind of honorarium. I was glad Lupita Aquino (now Kashiwahara) agreed to be TV director and Robert Arevalo as TV host.
She got members of the PETA Kalinangan Ensemble to serve as stage directors. “This is to undertake preliminary preparation with a rehearsal with the actors for character development and memorization and preliminary staging,” she wrote.
Five months after PETA was founded, Balintataw TV premiered on Channel 5 on Aug. 19, 1967, coinciding with the Buwan ng Wika birthdate of President Manuel Luis Quezon.
The first play, whose title escapes her now, featured Armida Siguion-Reyna and Maria Eva “Chingbee” Kalaw. She employed photo journalist and award-winning photographedocumentarist/cinematographer, Romy Vitug, to work with her in filming outdoor scenes for Balintataw.

In the pre-Martial Law Balintataw, among those initiated into television were Lino Brocka, Elwood Perez, Nick Lizaso, Maryo delos Reyes, Mario O’Hara, Joey Gosiengfiao, Behn Cervantes, and Frank Rivera.
Among the stage actors who crossed over to television were Lily Gamboa, Angie Ferro, Lorlie Villanueva, Jonee Gamboa, Joy Soler, Sherry Lara, Gardy Labad, Noel Trinidad.
Like with PETA, Guidote-Alvarez directed and managed Balintataw for five years. Because of Martial Law, she and husband Heherson went on exile in the US to escape a military shoot-to-kill order on Heherson, who was tagged as a subversive.
Post-Martial Law
Internationally acclaimed auteur Lav Diaz mentioned in several interviews how he learned writing radio and TV scripts in Balintataw.
This happened in the late 1980s, when the Alvarez couple returned from exile.
Despite its absence on the air in the Martial Law years, Balintataw was honored by Star Awards as among the 20 unforgettable outstanding broadcast programs in the Philippines.
“This encouraged me to consider reviving Balintataw on TV. Another blessing was a FAMAS award for having an important role in the development of cinema recognizing Balintataw as a bridge for synergizing cinema with the stage, providing a pathway of entry of our PETA artists into film and for movie stars to consider enriching their experience by acting on the legitimate stage,” Guidote-Alvarez wrote.
Though she didn’t return to PETA anymore because it had been surviving well and had its own set of officers led by Brocka, she just tapped some of its members for the return of Balintataw.
For 14 years, the Alvarez couple lived in the US as political exiles, shown here during a Ninoy Aquino Movement meeting. Cecile revived Radyo Balintataw upon their return in the late 1980s.
Channel 4 stint
“I arranged to revive TV Balintataw on Channel 4 in 1989. We began with a drama about a rebel returnee, title escapes me now, but I clearly remember it was written by Lualhati Bautista and directed by Maryo de los Reyes. We also had a good story series on the hazing of Lenny Villa, an Aquila Legis Frat neophyte,” she wrote.
At the time, Heherson had been elected senator after having served as Agrarian Reform Minister and eventually Cabinet Secretary during the first year of the Cory Aquino Administration.
“We were able to unravel the deadly hazing process from a fellow neophyte who broke the code of silence as we revealed graphically, acted the cruel process used. I had Jose Mari Avellana direct it. This presentation won all the awards. Lav Diaz was training with us and he started writing teleplays. We also had Nora Aunor in an adaptation of Bert Florentino’s The World Is An Apple, adapted by Frank Rivera, and I had Nick Lizaso direct.”

Emmy Awards
Balintataw TV was selected as one of five soaps for social change recognized by Emmy Awards. The Philippines was one of five countries cited, with Mexico, India, Brazil and Kenya.
“The nomination was made possible by the wonderful support from David Poindexter. It was a supreme honor for our country to be recognized in the Emmy Awards, to be cited among the five Third World countries using soap opera for social change.”
Poindexter was a Methodist minister and TV producer who founded the Population Communications International.
Surviving on radio
“In spite of the cry about how television can be deadening the minds of the people with copied themes with an eternal favorite love triangle story, there was really no funding for Balintataw,” she wrote.
“Sponsors would go naturally to the commercial stations where big stars were paid highly for the starring role. Balintataw may have substance but we could not afford payment of bankable stars,” she added.
“Financial stress forced me to drop TV and remain on radio because I didn’t want to kill Balintataw per se just because we didn’t have funds.”
Creative classroom
“We have focused on Balintataw as a creative classroom on the air. I was able to talk to Fred J. Elizalde of DZRH and the president of the network, Mr. Jun Nicdao,” she wrote.
In the ‘80s, the HIV/AIDS became a global epidemic and in the Philippines, the general populace was still clueless on how to deal with it.
“In order to get funding, the first series I did was about the explosive news regarding AIDS in Asia. I got the DOH Secretary at the time, Dr. Juan Flavier, to act as himself, providing the data. It was easier to start off with an AIDS radio serial.
They did a minimum of 13 episodes to raise awareness about the disease.
“From then on, some of our television scripts we transformed into a radio version. DZRH provided us with our initial production staff, so we used some from the network and some of its resident artists and drama talents. Our time slots were changing but always coming after the long-running horror drama, Gabi ng Lagim.
“We worked on the themes of overseas workers, the drug problem, corruption, aside from portraying contemporary and literary classics serving as social commentaries,” she wrote.
Women playwrights
“We dramatized the works of noted women writers and playwrights like Estrella Alfon, Genoveva Edroza Matute and Marilou Jacob, who is distinguished in being a founding president of Women’s Playwright International.
“Apart from our PETA staple of writers, we involved young, upcoming and budding university and community theater groups.
“We also had a lot of foreign plays, where we could feature theater festivals beyond borders. We could do Shakespeare, we could do Euripides but also the current playwrights in the Arab region we translated in our language.
“We brought in Chinese contemporary plays, Malaysian, Indonesian and from other women writers from ASEAN member countries.”
Virtual history book
“The significance of Balintataw is portrayed as a virtual history book on audio as it unveiled events in the country. Radio is fresh, instant and up-to date,” she added.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Balintataw became Guidote-Alvarez’s outlet and therapy. Having lost her husband on the second month of the pandemic, a widow cocooned at home, she began hosting it six days a week, learning how to use an iPad and interviewing via Zoom.
The word “Balintataw” has been associated with her name.
Visual artist and editorial cartoonist Benjie Lontoc in casual meeting told us how in his younger days, when AM Radio was a national past-time, he was surprised to hear a Filipino adaptation of No Exit by Jean Paul-Sarte. This was when radio was airing soap, fantasy adventures targeting housewives and children.
Another was the airing of Larawan as a radio play in the 1990s, with Guidote-Alvarez as the voice of Candida Marasigan.
Leopoldo Salcedo (left) as Manolo in a confrontation scene with Dante Rivero as Tony Javier in PETA’s 1968 ‘Larawan’ directed by Cecile Guidote-Alvarez. (Photo from PETA archives)
In the 1960s, she directed Larawan, the first Filipino adaptation of Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino for PETA’s second season. It ran from December 1968 to January 1969 at the Raha Sulayman Theater at Fort Santiago in Intramural. In the cast were Rita Gomez (Candida), Lolita Rodriguez (Paula), Leopoldo Salcedo (Don Manolo) and Dante Rivero (Tony Javier).
Guidote-Alvarez has a funny recollection of the radio play. It was Nick Joaquin himself who told her years ago how his pedicurist suddenly started a conversation about Larawan.

Joaquin was relaxing on the barber’s chair having a post-haircut pedicure and foot spa when the lady pedicurist asked him how the story would end. Joaquin was stunned because he didn’t want to be known in the barber shop as Nick Joaquin the famous National Artist for Literature, but just a regular customer.
“He told me he almost fell out from the chair. He was a very private person and the pedicurist recognized him as the playwright,” Guidote-Alvarez, laughing, told TheDiarist.ph.
When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, she was given only three years to live. It’s been more than two decades since then. She has also conquered COVID-19 twice.
Over and beyond her work in theater and various advocacies, Guidote-Alvarez is among the few surviving practitioners of AM Radio broadcasting.
The beauty salon incident wasn’t a first for the octogenarian radio host. She occasionally went back there to interview guests and record her shows whenever Wi-Fi connections in her home fluctuated.
Despite all setbacks, man-made or otherwise, the steadfast Cecile Guidote-Alvarez’s voice continues to be heard in this mass media platform in an era that knows mainly Spotify. As Joaquin wrote, “to remember and to sing, that is her vocation.”
(Except Saturday, Radyo Balintataw airs daily on DZRH 666 Khz AM radio after ‘Gabi ng Lagim’, and live streamed on radio.org.ph. Some episodes have been uploaded on YouTube.)

I am 35M from Italy (sorry for my Maccheroni English). I do sports, I have a lot of interests (photography, music, art and I can add a lot more!) but, still, I can't find my "perfect half" in the world outside.
I ended up a relationship last year on August: my girlfriend was extremely jealous and I couldn't even have a running session without facing passive silences and discussion. I left her in a complete negative mood since I thought that she could be the one.
Before that relationship I stayed single for 5 years: in this long long term I met some girls, I keep my passions and interests but I didn't find a person that could make me say "OK, you're the right match for me".
I found myself in a difficult situation: my closest friends are all engaged and have children, finding new people is extremely complicated even if I am an extrovert and I can talk even with walls. There's this sort of pression like a constant drop on my head: "when will you find a girlfriend?".
This question sometimes is heavier than a workout at the gym but, still, I think that some people only want relationships because "it's time to" and not becasue "they want to".
Last night I was driving my car, alone with the music and I was happy: the breeze in the hair, my favourite group on the radio. I was alone and happy.
Is something wrong with me? Why is so difficult being single?

TL;DR: I grew to hate how I look as a result of getting into mewing. I feel like we, as a species, were forced into an unnatural lifestyle that caused our bodies to mutate into an unhealthy ugly mess, and now, because of Mike Mew's work, we have to feel ashamed of it.
I have a lot of things to say, and even though I understand that not all people will read everything, I feel the need to pour my thoughts out.
I am 22 years old, and unfortunately, it so happened that I learned about mewing only a few months ago. Before Mike Mew and his work gained significant popularity among Gen-Zers after the release of his “Ultimate Mewing Guide” on YouTube, I was not even aware this practice existed, which makes me regret many life decisions I made up until this point.
It’s been about a month since I started mewing and I fully believe that tongue posture and craniofacial structure have a direct correlation. When I listen to Mews’ lectures, it feels like puzzle pieces falling into place. Their theories are so logical and spot-on that you begin to question how it is even possible for orthodontics to exist for centuries, or even thousands of years, without dentists realizing that problematic teeth are not a genetic trait. How come these people still treat malocclusion in children using braces? Moreover, mewing improves breathing and can potentially prevent migraines, as those often happen as a result of palatal shrinkage.
But aside from talking about the incredible health benefits of mewing, there is no doubt Mike Mew also places great emphasis on how oral posture affects the attractiveness of one’s face. When you listen to him, it sounds like he is driven to solve the problem of prevailing “ugliness” in the modern population. The amount of work he puts into analyzing the ideal facial structure is astounding. He shares a lot of valuable information on what a person must do to achieve a better-looking face. But my question is, did the problem of ugliness exist in the first place? Do people actually see down-swung faces as unattractive? By providing the instructions on how to improve one’s appearance from the get-go his work automatically assumes that this is the case, but is it really?
While I agree with Mike on most of his theories, whenever I hear things like “A face of a mouth-breather”, it makes me feel nothing but pain, and the reason for that is mewing works most effectively for reshaping the bones in adolescents and young adults, and according to the man himself, after 25 years of age, it is practically impossible to make any significant changes by utilizing proper oral posture.
So, do women really only find men who have a chiseled jawline and pronounced cheekbones attractive? I know I am only one example, but before learning about mewing, I never identified the facial features of a mouth breather as flawed, or even identified them at all, for that matter. I considered a smaller jaw as much of an individual trait as the shape of one’s nose or eyebrows. Yes, looking back on it now, it is an incorrect judgment, as most of the time a weak jawline is a result of an incorrect oral posture and a sedentary, relatively unhealthy lifestyle, but this is beside the point. I distinctly remember having a few crushes on guys in the past who would be considered to have a weak jawline. It’s just to show you how diverse women’s tastes really are.
So why must broad jaws matter, if I was and am genuinely attracted to guys who don’t possess them? Why must it matter, if nowadays, we no longer require large masseter muscles to chew on raw meat for our survival? Why must a slight down-swinging of the maxilla be seen as an unfavorable trait if it did not get so far that it impacts one’s health? Why should the purely aesthetic aspect of all of this matter?
In my opinion, mewing and orthotropics is a wonderful field of study that should be used to spread awareness about the small jaw epidemic and dental malpractices that genuinely ruin people’s faces. It is great for preventing malformities in future generations as well as treating adults who have problematic craniofacial structures that impact their health. But unfortunately, most people, when they hear the word “mewing”, picture a magic exercise that will make them look like sexy Squidward.
I see it very clearly, mewing has become a tool that enables insecurities to grow spread, and fester.
As I stated before, prior to watching videos on orthotropics on YouTube, I was completely unaware of the fact that forward development is deemed as aesthetic perfection. And now, I often subconsciously analyze the facial structure of random people I see in public when I never did in the past. Worst of all, I started seeing my own face as putridly ugly, when in the past, I considered myself to be not very attractive, but at least not looking worse than an average person. And recently, I realized this might be something that is happening not only to me but, probably, to many people interested in orthotropics.
So, do we really care about beauty standards, or is this idea being actively pushed on us by the looks-maxing mentality? To me, personally, it looks like Mike’s focus on looks in relation to mewing not only does not help to solve the problem, but instead, it is actively creating it. Or at least, it makes it severely worse, because, even if there were people like me, who did not care about perfect jawlines before, then from now on, their numbers are going to be dropping in the near future as mewing gets more and more attention.
“You aren’t ugly, you have bad habits», Well, does pushing with all the forces of your tongue on your maxilla in hopes of getting the face of a model sound like a good habit to you? Or performing inter-oral pulling or b0ne-smashing? And also, rating and judging other people’s faces, and suggesting to undergo plastic surgeries in case they are too old for mewing, so “it’s over for them”. Are these the good habits people are talking about?
And if we do follow the logic of “Mouth-breather face = bad habits”, what will the reasons for the malformation of one’s face be? What are the things that ugly no-good modern-day Quazimodos did, that are now being used as a valid excuse for others to judge them for their physical flaws? First of all, according to Mike Mew, breastfeeding plays a huge role in the development of natural proper oral posture. (Only 34.5% of women breast for the first 6 months as of the years 2000-2008 according to this article https://www.cdc.gov/mmwpreview/mmwrhtml/mm6205a1.htm#:~:text=Among%20infants%20born%20in%202000,16.0%25%20breastfed%20for%2012%20months.)) Second, human jaws require a consistent and considerable amount of work for them to achieve good development. (Modern diet is progressively becoming softer, and more processed). And third, the human body requires a lot of physical movement, running, and walking to maintain optimal and healthy back posture, which subsequently affects the structure of the skull. (I don’t know the statistics, but nowadays, most likely most of us can’t survive without sitting at a computer for 6+ hours a day). So, do all these things look like bad habits that one can easily and consciously fix? Adding a bit of exercise to one's life can do some good, that's a nice habit! But what about all the other stuff.... What if you are approaching the age when your bones don't grow anymore?
To get to the point, I don’t understand why people should be ashamed of their appearance when the modern lifestyle is literally doing everything to prevent the healthy growth and physical development of children. Cavemen did have beautifully wide dental arches as a result of chewing on raw meat, running barefoot, and hunting wild animals, but did they also have to spend 12 years of their adolescent life sitting at a school desk, studying, doing homework, and trying to get good grades? Maybe they also produced some impressive pieces of art, music writing, etc.? Then why should we be ashamed of the fact that we did not manage to keep our bodies at peak physical performance, while also studying, or god forbid, having an extracurricular interest that also involves a lot of sit-down work and is time-consuming?
I, myself, wasn’t ever a mouth-breather! I just had an absolutely awful back posture all throughout my life because I decided to dedicate my life to producing electronic music from the young age of about 13 years, which requires an endless amount of hours sitting at the computer. And now I get to be called ugly and lazy for it. I never even played video games in my life, ever! I don’t drink and I don’t smoke, and I’m not overweight, and yet I have to hate myself and how I look?? Just because of my passion?
It feels like we were forced into this unnatural, for our species, lifestyle that causes our bodies to mutate into an unhealthy mess and yet we still have to carry the guilt and shame of its consequences.
It makes me feel awful looking at how quickly the image representing “The face of a mouth breather” vs “The face of a nose-breather” is spreading, thanks to Mike Mew. The way it labels people based on their appearance is almost comparable to a racist caricature. It seeps into young adults' minds and makes them put people into categories, even if they never thought of this stuff before.
I’m not suggesting to ditch mewing as a whole and to continue living as uneducated, unhealthy modern apes. I’m asking people to stop cultivating an environment where we focus on negatively labeling people with unfavorable facial features that they get as a result of, mostly, circumstances beyond their control and that do not carry any health risks. Mewing may bring health benefits in the form of sleep apnea prevention, but it also changes the mindset and I don't think this is a good change.

I want to thank Meatcanyon and Wendigoon for starting Creepcast. I've played around with writing horror, and here is my first short story. I will post it for free in a few other places to see what people think. Please enjoy!
A Hike to Remember
By R.L. Oclen
Chapter 1
A woman sits with hastily pulled-up fire-red hair in the waiting room of the state patrol station. The procedurally sterile off-white walls and decade-old magazines do little for comfort. With her head hanging low, her shoulders pushing forward, and her boots rapidly tapping on the floor, something has to give.
"Please just let her be okay." The woman growls as a pair of officers come in from the field. The officers' demeanors quickly change when they see the familiar face.
"Tabitha, did Officer Nichols call you?" one of the state patrol officers asked sympathetically.
"Yes, he asked me to come in and pick up a few things," Tabitha said, shooting back a muted look.
" I'll let them know you're here." The officer said, nodding to Tabitha as they passed the security door. Tabitha leaned back against the hard plastic chair, staring blankly into the fluorescent light. She had done this dance in the macabre repeatedly over the past month. The last image of her younger sister, Lisa, still burned in her mind. Tabitha had always been protective over her younger sister after their parents died. A pang of guilt shoots through her chest as she thinks about her and Lisa's argument.
"Tabitha Hymm, Officer Nichols is ready for you."
"Okay," she stood up, shaking off her guilt, and followed the officer back. The familiar surroundings of the state patrol station blurred as Tabitha stared forward. She followed the officer as they came to a rustic wooden office door, which was embossed with "Officer Nichols."
The escorting officer turns the old brass door knob. "Sir, I have Tabitha Hymm here." A grizzled West Virginia Highway State Patrol veteran sits behind the desk and nods. The escorting officer steps aside, pushing the door open as Tabitha pushes past him and slumps in the awaiting chair like so many times before. An uncomfortable relationship had formed between the two, born out of necessity and duty.
"Cup of coffee?"
"No thanks. Let's just cut to the chase. You don't have anything new?"
The worn laugh lines and Officer Nichols's face flattens. His eyebrows contour sympathetically as he shakes his head.
"Tabitha, I don't have anything else new for you. I wanted to give you the clothes returned from the lab." Her face darkened at the same response she had heard many times.
"As we discussed two weeks ago, there is nothing new and no signs of struggle or foul play," Officer Nichols said while placing a box marked evidence on the table and sliding it forward. Tabitha began to weep at the realization of Lisa's clothes in front of her. In a coordinated queue, Officer Nichols brought out a box of tissues. Reluctantly, Tabitha took a few moments to unblur her vision.
"How does someone stop their car in the middle of the Remington West Virginia State Park, lock it, and then walk into the woods?" Officer Nichols clasped his hands together and sighed at her worn question.
"Tabitha, I wish I had an answer for why your sister stopped her car in the woods and simply walked off. We're still going through her cell phone, but no signs exist that anyone forced her. On that Tuesday morning, she pulled over to the side of the road, secured her car, and walked away." Officer Nichols said empathetically.
Tabitha became stoic at the same explanation she had heard many times before. " So what next?"
"You should go back to Ohio, and I'll contact you as soon as I have more information." She winced at Officer Nichols's words. Reality began to pull at her that bills and work wouldn't wait much longer.
"If I leave, she's gone for good."
" You staying won't bring her back." Officer Nichols said sympathetically.
" So is that it? She's just gone?"
" Tabitha, I'll be honest with you. In cases like this… when people do things like this. Recovery is harder in the spring due to the weather and the animals. You know her mental condition better than I do. I can't explain why she did what she did. But until I find a solution, a suicide note, some intention, or body. She's not here. Tabitha, I'm-"
" Don't you fucking say sorry!" Tabitha stood up, screaming at Officer Nichols, throwing the plastic chair backward against the wall. " I should just look for myself."
"No!" Officer Nichols said momentarily, gripping the desk as his face hardened, then relaxed. Tabitha was caught off guard by Officer Nichols, who was normally composed. "Tabitha, I know this is unbearable. I've sat on this side of the desk and had these conversations. Trust me; I need you to be safe if I need your help later."
Tabitha nods, knowing Officer Nichols is right. She reaches down, picks up the evidence box of her sister's belongings, and leaves.
" Tabitha, if you're heading home, don't stop your car; just keep driving." Tabitha stops to look at Officer Nichols, feeling an eeriness to his words.
" Goodbye, Officer Nichols," Tabitha said as she closed the rustic wooden door behind her. She counted the tiles as she exited the West Virginia State Patrol Station. Placing her sister's belongings carefully in the back seat of her Jeep, Tabitha then sat momentarily behind the steering wheel, staring at the emblem. The familiar numbness washed over Tabitha as she pushed the start button. She pulled onto the highway, driving to the motel that had been home for the last month or so. Muted pop music accented the drive back as her mind raced with questions. Once inside the two-and-a-half-star motel room, Tabitha sat her sister's belongings on the corner table, crumbled onto the bed, and cried.
***
Tabitha wiped the steam from the slightly spotted mirror above the bathroom sink. The hot water from the shower felt good and loosened some of the stress from her body. Looking back at her, Tabitha's face was framed by damp curls around her shoulders. Her face marked the stress of the past month. Frowning, she examined the bags under her eyes; sleep had to come tonight. Walking into the living area, She changed into her favorite gym shorts and oversized sleep shirt. The alarm on her phone flashed "7:00 am," so she could drive home five hours after breakfast.
Tabitha hated feeling comfortable in this once strange room, but falling asleep was getting easier now. Her eyes closed slowly as the ceiling fan droned evenly. At first, nothing came in her dreams, but she let her guard down and slipped further into sleep.
As she dreamed of floating overhead like a bird of prey, Tabitha soared over the vast Remington National Park. The high noon sun bore down on the crisp woods, perfectly contrasting sky and forest. The heat of the sun felt good on her feathers. Distant cries rang out through the dream-like forest, catching her attention. Tabitha tilted her wings toward the screams, feeling a sense of familiar curiosity.
She now recognized the sobs and cries for help as she flew closer, her sharp eyes locked on her sister leaning against a large oak tree. She glided overhead without care, examining the situation below. Lisa clung to the tree, her eyes darting back and forth, scanning upwards. Lisa's face reflected desperation, looking for help in any direction. Tabitha lazily circles Lisa several times before perching on a sturdy branch higher in one of the oak trees. She watched Lisa intently with hunger. She bellowed deeply, hearing the unnatural sound she made, catching Lisa's eyes. Lisa's expression changed; she became calm, almost uncaring, as she stared back at Tabitha's form. Hunger grew exponentially in Tabitha as she spread her large wings. Her large eyes gaze down at Lisa before diving straight for her sister.
Tabitha jolts awake to the alarm on her phone flashing "7:23 AM." She breathes in sharply, shaking off the last horrible thoughts from the reoccurring nightmare. The strange details become more vivid each time. The lingering memories of folk stories her mother told sat in the back of her mind. In those stories, the dead would reach out in dreams as a matter of warning. Leaning back on the headboard, she searched for the advice her psychologist gave her. During their last session, Dr. Ryland explained dreams are a form of self-actualization of guilt. He told Tabitha that it was natural to feel responsible when losing a loved one in this manner.
Tabitha grumbled, lightly running her hands through her red hair; she pushed everything to the back of her mind. "Get it together!" She grumbled to herself. She pushed herself off the bed and got ready to leave. It was going to be a long trip home, and the only thing she could do now was leave things in the authorities' hands. Packing up was pretty easy since she only cycled through the outfits she brought. The local laundromat must have made a small fortune off her. Tabitha took one last look at the box of Lisa's belongings before throwing them in her duffle bag. She was thankful she didn't have to spend another night in this room.
***
Tabitha sat behind the wheel, waiting for the 90's model minivan to finish their order so she could grab a breakfast burrito on the way out. Considering the situation, the Deer Stop Family Restaurant did have a good breakfast. Finally, pulling up to the 70-style drive-in board, Tabitha rolled off the order she had been accustomed to. " I'll take a large iced tea with the double breakfast burrito meal and hash browns, please."
" Would you like some happy hot sauce with that?"
" That's fine, and a few ketchup packets as well."
" Your total is $8.79. Please pull around."
She pulled around to her window, flashed her debit card, got the receipt, and waited for her food. Luckily, the young woman serving her wasn't very talkative in the morning. The last thing she wanted was a conversation about the weather or meaningless small talk.
" Here's your large iced tea and breakfast meal. Ketchup and happy hot sauce are inside."
" Thanks," Tabitha said while mustering her best fake smile. The woman only smiled and nodded as the service window automatically closed. She pulled into the parking lot and dug into breakfast. Turning the radio to the weather, Tabitha sat back and enjoyed her meal. The local DJ read through the headlines, making nonpartisan comments about politics and grumbling about improving the economy. Tabitha powered through the updates of the "out-of-state woman" who'd gone missing. It was nice that the local radio station gave Lisa's name, description, and a missing person's number for sightings or leads. Tabitha even interviewed with the local news and radio stations, hoping it would bring Lisa home. But she soon found all it brought was a sorrowful look from the locals as she interacted with them in her day-to-day life.
Finishing the last of her hash browns, Lisa wadded up everything in the paper bag and threw it in the back seat. The 9 AM weather report said it was nothing but clear skies and sun the rest of the week. Tabitha flipped the radio over to the greatest hit station, pulled out of the parking lot, and began her trip home. She memorized the roads, every bend and turn in the early weeks as she frantically looked for Lisa. There's something hypnotic about the trees: the way they flow together. The trees' green tops and the oak trees' wide trunks were a relaxing view. Tabitha enjoyed the lazy s-curves of the road, bending and winding around the hills and the trees. The occasional farmhouse or field dotted the sides of the road as she made her way to the main highway.
The blur of a semi-truck snapped Tabitha's attention as she pulled up to the mouth of the highway. She had four and a half hours ahead of her, which would be a long ride. Tabitha pulled onto the highway and picked up speed, noting sparse traffic. She relaxed into her seat, letting her gaze gloss over the blur of green foliage. Without warning, Tabitha caught a large shadow from the corner of her left eye. When she registered the black feathery form, Tabitha tensed up and slammed on the brakes as it swooped across the vehicle's hood. Quickly, she pulled the car safely off the road. She couldn't determine exactly what it was, but it was bigger than any bird she'd seen. It was a bird, right? Tabitha turned off her Jeep and grabbed the keys and cell phone. Standing before the Jeep, she looked over the grill to see if she made contact with the entity.
Bewildered, she scanned the tree line, spotting something in the distance. Sitting in the clearing of the large oak forest was an enormous black owl. It stared intently at Tabitha with bright, shiny yellow eyes. She pushed the lock button on her keys, causing the jeep to beep securely. She turned, looking across the open field, an enormous black owl perched in the upper branches of an old oak tree. Each step she took away from the road piqued her curiosity. Soon, Tabitha stood in the middle of the open field, staring intently into the eyes of the enormous owl.
The horn of a passing semi-truck blared, pulling Tabitha's attention away from the mysterious large creature. She looked back and saw that she had walked farther away from the Jeep than she had thought. She glanced back to the forest line only to see the enormous owl was deeper into the woods than before. She narrowed her vision to find the two large, bright yellow eyes staring back. Had it moved? The day's stress, care, and worry suddenly poured out of Tabitha. It was replaced by only curiosity and overbearing tranquility. She warmly smiled for the first time in months as her feet pulled her further into the woods.
Chapter 2
The tug of gravity pulls Tabitha to her senses as her body reacts, falling forward. Her arms thrust forward, bracing for impact. Water rushes around her face as she struggles to get her bearings. Quickly, Tabitha pushed herself up in the ankle-high stream she fell in. The haze slowly clears from her mind as she stares at the muddy water. The dull ache throbs up her legs. Tabitha can smell the sweat from her clothes. Her face contorted in panic as she quickly stood up in the water, looking for her cell. Thankfully, the device was still in her pocket, dry and unscathed.
"One o'clock. How can that be?" Tabitha says, slowly looking up from the screen to see the vast, dense West Virginia forest encompassing her view. She shakes her head back and forth with disbelief. A smile gently spreads across her face, with the last bit of tranquility leaving her body. How did I get out here? Her breathing becomes faster as her pulse begins to quicken. I'm in the forest. I'm all alone—just like Lisa!
"NO, NO, NO, NO! THIS FUCKING CAN'T BE HAPPENING TO ME!" Tabitha screams into the void of trees. Her eyes well up with tears as she crumbles to her knees, gripping her phone tightly to her chest. Her sobs ring out through the thick oak trees. Her breath slows a little as she regains her composure. She begins to search her mind for anything. What is the last thing I can remember? The image of the black shadow crossing her vision while driving flashes into her mind.
"Okay, I got out of the Jeep, the…then what?" Tabitha says, trying to refresh her memories. She thinks her memory is not just gone; it's a black void in her mind. Complete blackness fills her mind right after remembering locking the Jeep and then turning to see the…
"Fuck I saw something. What was it!" Tabitha says, frustrated with her mind. She knew there must be a logical reason she was out here. Officer Nichols warned her not to go looking for her sister. She wasn't stupid; she just said that as a last-ditch effort to get him to do anything. Now I'm here.
"Run!" Tabitha heard Lisa's voice in her ear. Before she could turn around, she heard a loud bellowing coming from overhead. Fear shot down her back, reminding her of the nightmares she had over the past month. She shot forward full bore as something crashed to the ground behind her. Glancing back as she ran, a black mass of feathers convulsed between the broken branches of the trees. Its slick black feathers rippled across its surface as its bones crackled and flesh tore. Its body contorted and twisted from the shape of an owl to something bigger.
"Run, Tabby! Don't let it catch you!" Tabitha pushed forward, hearing Lisa's scream beside her face. Her breath burned in her chest, and she moved past the old oak trees bent over the creek bed. Her feet slammed rapidly, splashing along the side of the creek. Another loud bellow comes from behind as the trees bend and break to the force behind her. A small opening in the rocky creek bed catches her sight from the left. She dives into the crevasses, not caring where the fathoms lead. Tabitha tumbles in the pitch black, taking scrapes and sharp jabs from the rocks as she tumbles further into the void.
She finally tumbles to a stop on the sandy, wet floor of the cave. Her body aches from the sudden burst of exhaustion. The cool water running around her body from the creek is soothing despite her bumps and bruises. Pushing herself up, she scoots out of the water. Feeling her way forward, she finds a dry spot to collect herself. Quickly pushing her hand into her pocket, she finds her phone undamaged.
The sound of footsteps pushing against the creek fills the void around Tabitha as the light steps move closer to each other up the underground creekbed. She slowly removes her cell from her pocket and then shines the camera light toward the sound. A pair of scratched and bruised pale bare legs hold up a frail form in front of her in the creek. She wears the darkness as a shroud with nothing else to clothe her. Tabitha froze, not wanting to shine the light further in the pale form before her.
"Tabby, turn your light off. You need to save your battery." Tabitha turned off the light and then rushed forward, embracing Lisa—the how or why didn't matter, only the now. The pale form hugged her tightly. Tabitha felt her cold, bare skin. The darkness couldn't hide the feeling of the marks across her back and torso.
"Lisa, I'm-"
"Hush! I don't have much time. This wasn't your fault! I'm with Mom and Dad now. You have to survive, Tabby! Listen. Wait until the sun shines through the cracks, making a trail out. Follow it down the creek until you come to the opening. You'll see a large hill you hike up for a cell signal. And remember…If you can't see it… It can't hurt you. I love you-"
Tabitha stumbled forward before catching herself. The void in front of her arms was only filled by cool air. She looked up and noticed a faint glimmer of light pushing through the ceiling. She sat down, relaxing against the limestone wall of the cave, waiting for the trail of light to form.
***
After a few hours, the light shining through the cracks of the cave ceiling was bright enough to lead Tabitha to the other side. She stepped onto the creek bed, thankful for the sun hanging lower in the sky. Scanning the sky, Tabitha saw only a few clouds. The foothills of Appalachia backdropped the forest as she scanned for the hill. Her eyes found the trail leading up the steady slope of an impressive hill. The top of the hill was bare. Part of the hill must have sheared off in a landslide, leaving the top void of trees and a jagged cliff face. Tabitha started her hike up the back of the hill. She was careful to stay under the heavy canopy of the old trees, hopefully avoiding the creature's eyes.
She did her best to quiet her mind while hiking up the trail. Come on, almost to the top, then I can call 911, she replayed repeatedly in her mind. Her adrenaline made up for the lack of food since morning. She drank some water from a clean spot in the creek. She was placing her bet on rescue rather than worrying about the water.
Leaning against one of the trees, Tabitha took out her cell and measured the signal.
"Damn it, nothing!" She swore under her breath. She listened nervously and cautiously peered her head out from the tree line. Standing at the tree line, the cell phone still had a low signal. She pushed her anxiety down with a swallow and slowly stepped forward onto the bare rock. Tabitha was now out in the open. She walked with the cell phone pointed upwards, measuring the signal. Within three feet of the cliff face, her signal bar punched up to full. Tabitha began to punch in the numbers just as a pair of large yellow eyes appeared. She felt her legs become weak, and her vision blurred as the creature snared her in its gaze.
Tabitha ducked, missing the giant owl's claws as it swooped for her. She squinted her eyes shut, momentarily breaking the hold of the infernal beast as it crashed to the ground, tumbling down the path of old trees. On her hands and knees, she tucked the dialed phone back into her pocket. She heard the creature's loud bellowing, followed by the snapping of bone and flesh ripping. It was changing its shape to finish her off.
Tabitha tried to get up, but the flash of its eyes did something to her. Her legs were numb, her stomach was in knots, and she could barely put a few thoughts together.
"If you can't see it, it can't hurt you." Tabitha heard clearly in her left ear. She quickly pushed herself into a sitting position and fumbled for the key chain in her right pocket. Pulling the long chain of keys, luck charms, and keepsakes, her father's Swiss army knife dangled at the end. She slowly opened the half-inch blade. Her body wholeheartedly rejected her plan and tried to fight her. Every internal warning system sounded as her body fought against her as she brought the blade against the corner of her left eye.
She didn't know if she could do it until the creature bellowed in her direction. With one quick motion, the half-inch blade sliced across her left eye. The world dimmed and then went black on her left side. Behind her, the beast's thundering gallop was getting closer. Tabitha plunged herself into total darkness with the last bit of her strength. Her hand gripped tightly around the bloody knife as she folded forward onto the ground. She could feel herself weeping blood. She squinted, doing her best to stem the tide of blood loss.
A large feathered paw drove into Tabitha's right side, flipping her onto her back. She lay still as the hulking creature stood over her. It remained motionless, and Tabitha was confused about why it didn't move or bite her. Then she started to giggle, just a little at first. Then, laughing madly into the creature's face as it growled back at her. She could not see it; she couldn't see anything. Her mind couldn't be eaten!
The creature roared into Tabitha's face while plunging one of its sharp claws into her shoulder. Tabitha screamed in pain, slashing the knife downward. The blade hit something soft, and she ripped the blade down, rending whatever she had hit on the abomination. A bright yellow, foul-smelling liquid gushed in a torrent over Tabitha's face. She turned to cough, having swallowed a portion of it. The creature reared back, squealing in pain. Its hind leg came down hard on Tabitha's leg, snapping her tibia. She jerked her leg up, causing the creature to tumble forward and fall over the edge of the cliff side.
Tabitha heard the creature crash below at the base of the hill. A large dead tree speared the creature through its chest. Tabitha could hear the labored whines of the creature as its cries became weak and slowed. A wave of sickness hit her as she rolled over and vomited. The foul smell drenched her. She did her best to focus, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the phone. By memory, she typed in the unlock pin. She held her breath and placed her thumb where the call button should be.
She could hear the call being made then, "911. What is your emergency?"
"Please help me! A bear has attacked me, and I can't see. I think I am on a hill."
"Ok, ma'am, stay with me! Do you know where you are located?"
"No, I'm lost. Please send help."
"It's okay. Stay with me on the phone, and I'll use the cell signal to try to find you."
"I'm on top of one of the hills. I think I am lying on a bare roc-" Tabitha slipped unconscious with the cell still tightly in her hand. Her body began to tremble and convulse.
"Ma'am! Ma'am! Stay with me. I have help on the way."
Chapter 3
A young man in military fatigues frantically compiles images and reconnaissance data from his drone feed. Confirming his hunch, he commands the winged surveillance drone to make a hard left and send a live video feed. His eyes widened as he saw a large owl-shaped shadow crash onto the top of a hill. He watches in awe as the sleek black owl twists and shifts into something much larger, like a grizzly. As the drone turns, he sees a woman at the cliff's edge trying to steady yourself on her hands and knees.
He bolts up from the command module, jotting down the drone's coordinates on one of the printouts. The drab government-issued office motif for the watch station blurs in the corner of his eye as he rushes down the hallway to the watch commander's office.
"Sir, recon has eyes on AMOS! And it's feeding!" the man said, swinging the heavy wooden door open. He took the hastily compiled file and pushed it forward to the commanding officer.
An older, tanned man quickly stands, reaching for the files. His brow furls, seeing his charge is awake. "Keep eyes on it! Go Adams!" The young man nods, turning on his heel and bolting for the drone command module. As his office door slams shut from the subordinate officer, he grabs his headset and frantically dials the closest military outpost to the coordinates.
"Hello, Sergeant Klein; this is Agent Smith of Black Watch outpost 7948! Shadow is active, code Alpha, Mike, Oscar, Sierra. The coordinates and data package have been sent. A civilian is on the ground; deploy strike-and-rescue ASAP.
"We'll be up in five, Agent Smith! The line cuts as Agent Smith closes out the call on his headset and rushes to the door. The normally quiet watch station buzzes alive, with personnel flooding the central command station. The background echoes resource allocation calls, frantic typing, and the hum of cold computers warming up.
"Adams, get our eyes back on Amos!"
"Coming back around in 30 seconds." Thirty sets of eyes stare at the three giant screens, anxiously waiting for the drone feed to clear the bank of trees. The camera clears the tre top to see the giant feathered grizzly rear back slinging its massive head away from its prey. Its large yellow right eye spews bright yellow liquid all over the red-haired woman and the cliff face. The giant feathered grizzly missteps, crushing the woman's leg and causing the creature to tumble over the cliff face.
"Fuck!" Agent Smith yells in horror as he watches AMOS fall four stories, impaling a sharp, 3-meter-tall log lodged in the boulders. The command center freezes wide-eyed at the flailing dying creature on screen. Agent Smith pulls his cell out quickly and dials.
"Klein, Scrub the current request! AMOS is down! Switch to rescue and harvest now!
"What, someone took out AMOS?"
"YES! It's at the bottom of the cliff, bleeding out essence! The woman is covered in it as well. Clean as much of it off her as possible before you take her to the ER.
"Understood!"
Agent Smith, in a rage, slings his phone straight forward, connecting with Private Adams's skull. Adams flinches at the sudden impact of the hard plastic and covers his head. Agent Smith grabs the table in front of him and flips it over, sending the computer equipment crashing to the government-issued tiled floor.
"A two-year cycle gone! All that essence is gone! Now I have to wait another 24 months for AMOS to resurrect!" Agent Smith screams, causing the rest of the staff to recoil away in fear.
"Jones!" Agent Smith says sternly, turning to a petite woman on his left. She stares at him, pleading.
"Yes Sir?'
"Get Officer Nichols on my office line. That fuck up has some explaining. He should have told us AMOS was awake."
"Right away!" Jones quickly sits back down and begins dialing Nichols, thankful she doesn't have to deal with Agent Smith further. The command center quickly shifts gears as Agent Smith returns to his office.
***
Two Weeks later…
"Tabitha… Tabitha… This is Doctor Wilhelm. Wake up." The kind older gentleman said as they gently nudged Tabitha in her hospital bed.
"Where am I?" Tabitha asked, waking from what felt like years of sleep. She sat up, the world still pitch black, but an odd sense of the world around her seemed to hum just behind her eyes.
"You're in the hospital, dear; you scared us. Do you remember anything?" He said as he sat down on the side of her bed.
Tabitha thought for a moment the last parts after she slashed her eyes were a blur. She remembers people yelling and the sound of two or three helicopters over her. " No, it's really all just a blur."
"Well, it's probably for the best. You had some very serious injuries. The first night, we honestly didn't think you would make it. Then…" The doctor trailed off with a concerned expression, not knowing how to explain things further.
Tabitha felt his pulse quicken somehow. She didn't understand it but fully felt or sensed the doctor beside her. She sensed the two other nurses standing at the end of the bed. Her body didn't hurt. She felt great. She felt hungry.
"Doctor, you said had. What happened to my injuries?" She said calmly, trying not to startle the old doctor further.
"Well, Tabitha, it's the closest thing to a miracle I've ever seen. You had violent seizures from the minute you hit the entrance of the ER. We couldn't even set your leg. The medications we gave you had a minimal effect, and you thrashed so much that we had to restrain you. Then, the early morning check-in found you in a deep sleep. All but your eyes were completely healed. So we switched gears to support care and treated your eyes the best we could." He said, watching her reaction.
Tabitha leaned back in her bed, taking in the wild account. "Do you know how I healed so quickly?"
"What happened to you is beyond all scientific reason. A miracle is the only way the staff and I can explain it. I know you have been through a lot, but I want to check your eyes."
"Thank you for all your help, Doctor Wilhelm." She said, sitting up in bed.
"You are most welcome, dear. Now I am going to unwrap your eye-dressing. Hold still, please." he said as he reached up and pulled on the bandage tape. Tabitha felt a quick tug and felt the bandages loosen from around her head. The doctor slowly unwrapped the bandages. The doctor's brow wrinkled as he examined the two large black scabs covering Tabitha's eyes.
"Tell me if this hurts at all, ok?"
"Yes, doctor." She relaxes as the doctor's gloved fingers pass over the scab. He pushes and gently tugs at the side of one, and it starts to lift. He pulls on the scab more, and Tabitha begins to sense the light as it hits her eyelid.
"Oh, I can sense the light, Doctor Wilhelm!" She said, smiling.
"Wonderful! Nurse Allen, please hand me some saline solution. I think a little water will loosen these right up. Hold still; this may feel cold," he said as he reached for the solution. She felt the cool liquid flush over the left eye, then the right. The scabs fell away with a gentle tug from the doctor. She could see the light shine through her eyelids. She grinned widely, happy to have some form of sight left.
"Please open your eyes for me," he said as he sat back on the bed. Tabitha slowly opened her eyes. The flood of light was almost too much, causing her to squint. After a few moments, she adjusted to the fluorescent lights. Three figures began to take shape in front of her. First, the distinguished older features of Doctor Wilhelm came into view quickly, followed by the brunette and blonde younger nurses standing at the end of the bed. Suddenly, her vision snapped into place, crisp and clear.
"I can see perfectly! This is amazing! Thank you, Doctor Wilhem!" she said, turning to look directly into his eyes, but he stared back at her unmovingly.
"Doctor Wilhelm?" she said as her expression became more worried. Doctor Wilhelm just sat staring, intensely focused on her eyes. His expression was overbearingly calm. She glanced at the nurses, rigidly staring back at her with trapped, calm expressions. Doctor Wilhelm began to twitch slightly. It traveled from the base of his spine out to his limbs, finally convulsing.
"Doctor Wilhelm, are you okay?" Tabitha yelled as the doctor began to have a seizure and fell on top of her bed.
"Help Him!" She screamed at the two nurses only to see both of them crumble to the tiled floor. One of them bashed her head off the bed frame. Tabitha recoils back from Doctor Wilhelm in terror as he starts foaming at the mouth. She climbs over the bed rail and hits the tiled concrete floor with a thud. Her adrenaline surges as she bolts for the door, looking for help.
At the entrance of her hospital room, she sees another nurse leaving the adjacent room. "Please, my doctor and staff need help!" As the male nurse turns to see Tabitha, he suddenly goes stiff before collapsing into a violent seizure, spilling his cart over with him.
"What's happening!" Tabitha screams, thinking something is in the air, or everyone has come down with something. A pair of security guards round the corner, hearing the screams and commotion.
"Ma'am, are yo-" The guard freezes mid-stride as he makes eye contact with Tabitha. Both men start to convulse and topple over, thrashing violently on the hard tile.
"No, no, no, no!" Tabitha yells as she darts into the women's bathroom, a few doors up the hall. She runs in, terrified of the situation. She approaches one of the sinks, bracing herself against the cool porcelain. Her stomach turns, and she dry heaves in the sink. She steadies herself while turning on the cold water. Leaning in, she takes a drink. As she looks up, a glint of two yellow eyes catches her. Tabitha stumbles backward on reflex. Then, she sees her reflection in the mirror. Two completely bright yellow eyes stare back at Tabitha. She screams at herself in the mirror, not feeling hungry anymore.
The end.
I will

I was mildly interested in marie during the height of her fame in covid. I knew a handful of her songs by heart but didn’t know much about her. Earlier this year though I watched some of her old music videos with the vhs filter and yellow letters and I was like omg this is so cool. Then I discovered her soundcloud and then I discovered her norwegian music (have studied norwegian on and off i liked using it to practice) and I was like omg this is what ive been missing my whole life. It just has this certain feel to it. It’s what made “we fell in love in october” an instant hit. And I still enjoyed her make it go quiet stuff that I had listened to in the past. I burned 2 cds and listened to them nonstop and was really excited about her new album.
When “too much” came out i tried to like it but it something about it was just immediately off. Right off the bat I was not a big fan of the name of the album, like couldn’t she have thought of something at least a little bit creative??? It doesnt even mean anything or make you appreciate it. The cover art is just like yeah whatever.
Once the whole thing came out I really became a Negative Nelly. I found the “guys im so happy and this is me talking about how happy i am” thing obnoxious. That is great for her and i’m sure if i was her friend I would be pretty excited about it but she is an internet stranger i’m not going to appreciate art because it was theraputic for the artist to make im going to appreciate it because it says something beautiful or interesting that i can enjoy and take away from it. You could be like “she doesnt have to be sad anymore she can grow and change as a person and her music is gonna reflect that!!” and yeah that’s true but she should grow into something better not worse. Theres more to life than just sad and happy and when you try to write music based off of a vague feeling of being ok that you’re trying to chase its not going to end well. When you reach a point in your life that you think you have it all figured out chances are you don’t. It kind of reminds me of what billie eilish said about her “Happier than ever” album. But back to marie. The album just felt forced, she should have waited until she had some better creative juices flowing.
The first song on the album is the worst its literally just sounds like a diary entry. It doesnt have any flow its just words. I’ve found that to be a reoccurring problem with girl in red, idk if its cuz english is her second language or what but so many of her songs dont sound like songs in certain places they just sound like words. If i were a musician and a lyricist or something I would probably be able to describe it better but i’m not so i hope ur able to pick up what i’m putting down from my vague attempt at explaining it. Anyway, it worked while she was a little guy indie soundcloud artist kid recording stuff in her bedroom but now that shes going for a more adult and professional and clean cut sort of image its not working. I just think polished is not a good look for her work, maybe her execution was just poor but my impression was that the original charm of her work was that it was messy and real and rough around the edges. Now it’s just safe and sterile. I think thats my main complaint.
The music videos were obviously nice and well done but it just lacked anything to keep me interested.
I dont know what more to say about the individual songs because they all sort of just sounded the same. When they werent boring they were just awkward. Like yeah it wasnt all bad I still listen to some but not as much as i thought i would be.
I think I blame the fact that she recently signed a record label. When I saw the obnoxious social media posts i knew it was the beginning of the end. I always enjoyed seeing her social medias in the past because they were so real, she didnt post much and when she did it was just silly and usually didnt even have a point. But posting so much about the album took so much away from its value. When you commercialize art it stops being so much art as it is a product. I dont know shit about how the music industry works, but i’m pretty sure it’s hard to make a career out of being an indie creator. I’m sure when she was in a place where she didnt know what to do with her career next and the old internet culture that boosted her to fame was dying out whatever deal she got offered seemed like a great idea. But i think that was her downfall. This is the end of Girl In Red: The Artist and the beginning of Girl In Red: The Celebrity Corporate Entity. I think she should have taken a few more years to find herself despite the pressure to release new music.
tl;dr: the new album just seemed like its purpose was to be something safe that would make the most money instead of something beautiful.

One of the hardest questions to answer on this subreddit is when people ask what their itinerary should be, followed by questions on what an appropriate budget would be, and then suggestions on hidden gems.
The TL;DR is that all three questions need more details if you want them to be answered.
"But kmrbtravel!" you say, "I need an itinerary if I want a budget, and a budget if I want to make an itinerary! It's all so overwhelming, and I don't know where to start! Oh but I also want to find places that have little to no tourists and are your secret hidden gems, just for that variety!"
I'm hoping this post will be a good starting point for the people above but also to let people know that for the vast majority of us, the 'basic' things recommended on Google and YouTube will be perfect! Travelling Japan is fun because there are so many things to be distracted by, and you will be spending a lot of your time wandering and trying things out, even without a detailed itinerary.

About Me

I write this spiel every time, but I'm a 25F solo traveller with friends I stay with in Japan. Played a Japanese martial art for years, and I visit Japan 3-4x every year (usually 1-2 weeks in April, 1 week in September, 1-2 weeks in late Oct/early Nov, and 1 month in December).
I'm currently on a mission to visit all 47 prefectures across Japan, and I'm at 9 right now (Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo, Shimane, Mie, Hiroshima, Okayama, Hyogo, and most recently Nagoya). You can read about my biggest and craziest trip here (especially if you're looking for suggestions outside of Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka!)
I speak and understand very basic and noob Japanese. Enough for me to get around, barely enough for me to talk to random obaasans in the onsen who are curious about my travels. I can read hiragana/katakana, and kanji still eludes me (but we'll get there!)
One thing to note about me is that I'm mostly temple/shrine oriented when I travel Japan, so I personally cannot answer questions regarding things like museums/amusement parks/etc.

What Makes Planning a Japan Trip So Hard? (And why is it harder for us to answer your questions?)

Out of any other country that I've visited, I genuinely believe that Japan has the most variety in terms of what you can do and see and can cater wildly to different kinds of people, which sometimes makes it very difficult for us to give you detailed answers. While we all have the same goal of 'exploring Japan,' I personally want to give the best answers possible. I will have different suggestions (and routes!) depending on if you can walk 30,000 steps/day, if you have young kids, if you like anime, if you like martial arts, if you like nature and hiking, if you like shrines/temples, if you don't mind crowds, if you want to just do what everyone else is doing, if you want to do more traditional things, etc. etc. This is why general questions on 'what should my itinerary be' can never fully be answered. We are not mind readers, but we're happy to help with more information.
'They all sound good to me though, and that's why I can't choose!'
Unfortunately, the reality is that you will have to choose by some point. Japan is so much fun because there is an endless amount of things to do, and you have to pick what sounds the most entertaining to you. After 9 prefectures and multiple visits to Japan, I have very, very little things that I personally didn't enjoy. We do not know who you are, and we do not know your preferences. You need to either pick for us, or give us that guidance so we can suggest appropriate itineraries for you.
In harsher terms, for the vast majority of us, an AI-made itinerary, or suggestions from Google or YouTube will satisfy your trip. What us humans can do on Reddit, is to give you specific suggestions, but we cannot give specific suggestions if you do not provide us with (somewhat) specific questions.

1. The Budget Question

I have travelled Japan with less than ¥2000/day, and have travelled with more than ¥20,000/day. The great thing about Japan is that you have the option to do both. Are you broke after plane tickets + hotels? No worries, there are tons of free sightseeing options and you can konbini or street food breakfast/lunch/dinner for very little. Do you want to splurge because this is your 'once-in-a-lifetime-trip?' Don't worry! There are tons of ways for you to sink your money in.
But to be more helpful, I'll break it down just a bit further. After hotels/planes, these are the biggest money sinks:

• Transportation: while transit isn't groundbreakingly expensive, if you're moving a lot and jumping around stations, it can add up. I usually charge around ¥10,000-20,000 per trip (for day-to-day transportation)
  • The big bank-breaking transportation though is of course, the Shinkansen. If you are moving between cities via the bullet train, you need to keep this in mind and weave it into your budget.
  • Other options include:
    • Night bus: pros (usually cheap), cons (you basically waste a day because you're EXHAUSTED the next day)
    • Local subway lines: pros (faster than the bus), cons (do not come on with big luggage and there is a very real chance you may have to stand 3+ hours if it's a busy line—which happened to me in Hiroshima)
    • Day bus: pros (cheap and you don't have to force yourself to sleep), cons (you literally waste a day travelling to get to your location)
• Food: while I'm personally not a fan of Japanese food myself, I still find all sorts of ways to open my wallet with cool cafes, street food, AYCE BBQ, and just general meals.
  • I've found most meals cost between ¥500-2500, though you can do cheaper with konbini-only or street stall foods. Japan is great because even their cheapest options tend to be pretty high quality.
• Tickets/experiences: renting kimonos, Ghibli museums or parks, TeamLabs, amusement parks, Shibuya Sky/Tokyo ToweSkyTree, (some) temples/shrines, gardens, castles, etc. all cost money. We have no idea what you want to do, so you'd need to provide this sort of information for us.
• Ryokans: I know I said 'excluding hotels,' but if you want a traditional ryokan experience, these tend to be much costlier than most other cheap hotel options. I personally still travel like a broke university student and rarely pay over ¥5000/night for a hotel, unless it's peak travel season, so a ryokan is out of my budget. But if you want to experience one, put it in your estimate!
• Souvenirs: if you're bad with money like me, you will be purchasing a lot of souvenirs. As a Canadian, I cannot fathom what on earth people would even want from Canada minus a bucket of maple syrup, but there are tons of options in Japan, all of which adds up quite quickly.
  • Goshuin: I am writing a massive post on goshuin/goshuincho, but Himekat has some great guides if you're not sure what they are.
  • Snacks: great, cheap gifts to get for friends and family. You're lying to yourself if you say you're not going to blitz through a Donki (Don Quijote—a chain of budget/discount stores across Japan that has everything you can possible want) for souvenirs. (It is a scarring but necessary experience for all those visiting Japan).
  • Omamori/omikuji/ema: omamori are those charms (I'm personally wearing a beaaaautiful one from Asagaya Shinmeigu) that are sold at temples and shrines, omikuji are the luck/fortune draws, and ema are those wooden tablets where you can write down a wish. I personally always write one at Meiji Jingu (Tokyo) and Itsukushima Jinja (Hiroshima)!
  • I've personally never shopped at Uniqlo, but I heard it's cheaper in Japan(?). Stationery fans will also be headed towards Loft and Tokyu Hands, I'm sure.
• Arcades: In North America, arcades are those money-wasting things you take your kids to every once in a while and a sure way to lose $1-2 each time. In Japan, arcades are everywhere and you can actually win prizes (a lot of them!) I usually average around ¥2000-4000 per prize. I know some people are totally turned off by anime and don't want any figures or prizes of the sort, but many of us will find ourselves plastered between a cute plushie and the windows inside of a blinding GIGO. Plan some wiggle room, because I find this to usually be an unexpected money sink!
• Gacha: you will be spending money on some gacha machines. You've been warned.

I'm probably forgetting things (and will update as I remember them), but Japan is REALLY good at chipping away at your wallet little bits at a time. It's not like Europe or North America where your cost is just expensive food + an expensive experience. Japan is a lot of cheap, little things that adds up quickly.
Some prices are baked in/unchanging (e.g. TeamLabs tickets or Shinkansen tickets), but many of those 'smaller things that adds up' can be quite random. I always add up my expected costs, subtract it from my total budget, and divide the remainder with the days I will be in Japan for.

• E.g.: 10 day trip to Japan, total budget left: $1000 CAD (after Shinkansen, plane, hotel, Ghibli museum, USJ, SkyTree, etc.) = $100 CAD/day. I also give myself a $200 'emergency shopping fund' for something I REALLY want that's outside of my budget.

2. The Itinerary Question

There are tons of great itineraries on YouTube and Google and I promise you, most of them are good enough for you to just copy/paste and experience. Use us for specific questions you may have in regards to them (e.g. I'm planning on going to xyz on abc dates, is there anything to keep in mind?) (and then we can inform you of any closures, tips, tricks, etc.).
As someone who travels a lot, I want to point out that hotspots are hot for a reason and the ones in Japan are all worth going to unless you can somehow tell it's not going to be your thing (and that's ok!) or you have a serious aversion to crowds.
How one makes an itinerary is always varied, but as someone who's good at going with the flow when travelling (and often plans very last minute), this is how I usually rumble:
0. BRING AN EMPTY SUITCASE: I usually have a slightly smaller suitcase inside of my big suitcase, and the smaller suitcase has all of my clothes + shoes. If you do this, please cover or cushion the wheels of your smaller suitcase inside. I have no idea what happens in the cargo, but I've smashed the wheels of two small suitcases (even though they were fine when they're not inside the larger suitcase). I usually just put some shoes/scarves/dark hoodies for cushioning.

• 1. Pin your itinerary on Google Maps or My Maps: this is my #1 tip for all travellers!
  • This allows you to visualize which areas you will be staying at the most. It allows for you to group your days based on distance (excluding ticket-oriented events with specific dates), find a suitable place for accommodation, and allows you to estimate the distance for your travels.
  • Google Maps: sign into your account, go to Google Maps, and click on the location of your itinerary → Save → New List (if you want) → make a list for your trip! The points will be visible next time you open a map.
  • My Maps: I use this more for archival purposes, but can be useful too :)
• 2. Pick a hotel: your home base. I prefer accommodations that are close to a station. While I never go back to the hotel to drop things off/refresh, I've found that I really didn't enjoy walking the 10-15 minutes back 'home' after 20-30k steps. On the flip side, there are genuinely really nice and more affordable hotels if you don't mind walking that distance.
  • Architecturally, Japan's buildings tend to be much smaller (narrower) compared to North American structures. For Tokyo especially, many budget hotels have very little floor space, which can make opening your luggage and packing really difficult. I've found hotels near popular stations to be smaller and more expensive, but convenient. Hotels some 10-15 minute walk away (which may not sound like much, but I promise you will feel after travelling Japan) tend to be slightly larger and slightly cheaper, but I've also been to a few that did not have any konbinis nearby (a very first world problem, but I live and breathe konbinis)
  • Outside of Tokyo though (even in Osaka/Kyoto), I've had less issues with hotel floor sizes.
  • You should also choose a place that is close to your itinerar(ies), if possible. This is more a 'winter travel tip' than a spring/summer one, but when daylight is tight and you want to get as many things done with limited sunlight, you do not want to waste daylight commuting if you can help it. Obviously some limitations.

My itinerary recommendations are nothing special as I literally pick things off Google. But hotspots are hot for a reason, and these were some of my favourites for Tokyo and Kyoto!

• Tokyo:
  • Nippon Budokan (for my martial arts fans!), Akihabara (for my weebs!)
  • I usually lap Meiji Jingu, Takeshita-dori, Yoyogi Park, and sometimes Omotesando (for shopping) togetheon the same day as they are all right next to each other! Going from the bustling streets of Harajuku/Takeshitadori to the peaceful forest of Meiji Jingu will always give me whiplash.
  • Shibuya, Shibuya Sky, Shibuya 109, Hachiko Statue, I personally didn't find Shibuya Crossing too special but whatever, along with the Nintendo Store + Pokemon Centre + Jump Store + Capcom Store. There's also Loft/Tokyo Hands for my stationery fanatics. Shibuya is massive and can take more than a day to explore if you really enjoy shopping.
  • I also usually walk from Sensoji to SkyTree, but your feet may hate you. You'll also be able to pass by the Asahi Beer Hall (affectionately called 'The Golden Poo' by my Japanese friends).
  • TeamLab Planets was probably the one non-sightseeing touristy thing I did, and I loved it!
  • Ikebukuro: I personally don't think you need to go out of your way for Ikebukuro but if you develop a gambling addiction from the gacha machines there, Sunshine City has the most gacha capsule machines in the world! (They also have tons of other stores like a Mugiwara Store, Crayon Shin-Chan, Pokemon stores, etc.)
• Kyoto:
  • MY HOME BASE (as it is where my best friend lives) and also my favourite city as I am a shrine enthusiast!
  • Fushimi Inari: I climb this place every trip to Japan without fail. There is nothing view-worthy at the top so feel free to turn around at the viewpoint/halfway point! If you hate yourself like me, you can reach the top and pray for safe passages :)
    • This is my biggest pet peeve: PLEASE DO NOT BLOCK THE PATH TO TAKE PICTURES. I PROMISE you, it looks exactly the same at the bottom as it does in the middle and the top. Unless you have some sort of physical ailment that only lets you explore the bottom, PLEASE KEEP MOVING AND STOP BLOCKING THE PATH.
  • Kiyomizudera: along with Ninnenzaka and Sannenzaka is always busy and chaotic, but I still very much enjoy it and you'll definitely get the feeling of 'wow, I'm in a really traditional part of Japan!'
    • Two suggestions that I don't see as much love as Kiyomizudera, but is still close is Yasaka Jinja and Chionin. I personally think Yasaka Jinja looks stunning at night with all its lanterns. At Chionin, everything looks sarcastically large (the gate, the steps, the temple) but I still really love it!
  • Kinkakuji: I will never understand why people say it's not that great when I've seen it 3+ times and I still think the gold looks incredible. Where else are you going to see a fully gold temple?! Sure it's a little out of the way, but I still think it's worth it. The gold is beautiful on a clear blue day. I know there's 'not much else to do and the loop is short' but the gold is still amazing to me (more below)
  • Ginkakuji: a really peaceful, beautifully designed pavilion. It was actually my first time visiting in my last trip and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The path leading up feels like a mini-sannenzaka, with smaller stores and eateries.
  • Arashiyama: one of my favourite places of all time in Kyoto although I do not recommend the bamboo forest and it is ironically my least favourite part of Arashiyama. Instead, I recommend:
    • Kyoto Arashiyama Orgel Museum: cute music boxes, I personally have one of Yonezu Kenshi's Lemon!
    • Nisonin Temple and Seiryoji: you may not appreciate it as much as I do if you don't love temples, but if you're not a fan of crowds I find these two way less busy (but also much more walking to get to). If you visit Seiryoji, there is a garden at the back of the temple (take the slippers and open the door). Nice cool breeze there always!
    • Monkey Park: monkeys! A bit of a hike.
    • Tenryuji: honestly not my favourite place in the world but people seem to like it
    • I usually do not have food recommendations for Japan, BUT I personally believe Arashiyama has some of the best eats!
  • Kinkakuji / Ryoanji / Ninnaji: okay I know I already mentioned Kinkakuji, but the complaint I hear the most is 'it's so far out of the way and there's nothing else there!' WRONG, if you want be stuffed full of awesome temples, I highly suggest the Kinkakuji → Ryoanji → Ninnaji route!
    • Ryoanji: is famous for its stone garden. One of my favourite gardens to study architecturally and design-wise (search up why before you go, and test it out!)
    • Ninnaji: definitely not visited as much by foreign tourists BUT I personally think it has one of the best indoor loops with long walkways and a gorgeous garden that it loops around. If I had a 'hidden gem' for foreign tourists, this would be the one I'm willing to share! (Also a 3 min bus ride from Ryoanji).
  • One place I do NOT recommend minus sakura season is Philosopher's Walk. I passed through it multiple times until someone pointed out it's actually a popular tourist attraction (??) I would not go out of my way for this at all. It looks like any other road in Japan. I don't even know if I'd recommend it during sakura season because there are so many beautiful streets for them everywhere.
  • Other places to check out are Kyoto Station (sick architecture), Tofukuji (especially during fall), Shijo-Kawaramachi (the downtown area of Kyoto), Shimogamo Jinja (another one of my 'hidden gems'—it's an extremely famous and popular shrine, but I rarely see foreign tourists for some reason), and Kitano Tenmangu (if you're a student—this is the studying god!)

3. The 'Hidden Gem' Question

If this is your first trip to Japan, you don't need hidden gems (unless they're food-specific). The major sightseeing attractions are popular for a reason and will be more than enough unless you're literally here for months.
Secondly, and more importantly, I've realized that 'hidden gems' are pretty personal to an individual's tastes. For example, I revealed a few of my hidden gem shrines and temples a few months ago, and immediately got immediately told that it's not actually very great. Well yeah, but that's why it was a hidden gem for me, because I loved it. We will not know what a 'hidden gem' means for you unless you specify the type. Are we looking for hidden gems that are about food? Temples? Specific anime references?
I can promise you that 99% of places worth going to are already spread across social media, and they're popular for good reasons. I personally don't think it's worth travelling far or trying spend so much time and effort looking for that 1%, especially on a first trip.
Lastly, I personally do not reveal my hidden gems unless I know you in person or it's a small business that may appreciate more support. While you may disagree, I think overtourism/overcrowding is pretty real in Japan right now, and I'm hesitant to put smaller places up on public platforms.
With that being said though, for tourists who have already been to Japan and want 'hidden gems' beyond Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka, I highly recommend the Kyushu/Chugoku region trip that I did back in January. I don't have specific itinerary 'hidden gems' but I definitely have 'hidden prefectures' that I loved (and even preferred) to Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka! (They're not actually hidden, just less visited compared to the trifecta).
Full itinerary/trip report here.
My itinerary for these prefectures are nothing special and none of them are 'hidden gems' as they're literally the most popular attractions for each place. But a. I think this proves that the 'top search' on Google is perfectly fine (because that's what I did, and I had an amazing time), and b. the popular attractions are very much worth going to.
There is a special promotion for foreign tourists that lets you take the bus to and from Shimane to Hiroshima for only 1000 yen, and the bus is only around 3 hrs from Izumo to Hiroshima! You can either start in Kyoto and move down, or start in Hiroshima and move up. I did all in 6 days which I do NOT recommend because I had to rush / clocked 30k+ steps in every day / thought I was going to die by the last day / was in a new prefecture every day.

1. Kyoto → Osaka → Kobe → Himeji → Okayama → Izumo → Hiroshima
2. Hiroshima → Izumo → Okayama → Himeji → Kobe → Osaka → Kyoto

Other prefectures nearby that are worth checking out are Nara and Mie.

Thanks for reading!

If you made it to the end, thanks for reading and I hope this was helpful. I definitely don't know everything about Japan and tons of people have amazing tips (that I still learn from every day). This was hopefully to help address some of the more common issues / repeated questions that people had. The TLDR is really just that we need specifics on who YOU are for us to answer your questions better, especially if you're looking for 'hidden gems' that are specific to your interests.
Have an amazing trip, everyone!

Strap in, it's a long one. TL;DR at the end and I have a question at the end for the good folks of Reddit.
As a set up to this crazy email my dad/DNA-Donor, I'll give a brief background of what he's like/how growing up was like. Long version is here. My father and mother were always religious. Fundamentalist Christian, the extreme ones, that hate Harry Potter and Fantasy things because 'they come from the Devil!'. Couldn't listen to radio, watch most things on tv, and science was wrong. My 'dad' was the pick and chose type of christian, whereas he was always right and god said so. He doesn't agree with divorce, says that's not what god says you can do, so when my mom left him, it wasn't real, and once she is 'right with God, she would go back to him (my dad)'. So you know, just a little bit of an ego.
A quick way to describe his parenting style aside from extreme christian, it would be that he wanted the picture perfect family without any of the work of making it so, and to be the best christian helper at the church we went to. But we (the kids) never saw him, and he didn't help with our food, power, or rent situations. We had to move SO much because we couldn't afford staying in the place we were at.
After my mom left him, she converted to being a Christian Jew (yes, it is odd). But by then, I was done with religion. It didn't make sense, it could be changed far too easily, and if every religion said they were the one true religion, then no matter what, everyone is wrong and we're all doomed. So I've been non-religious since turning 18 (34 now) as soon as I could no longer be forced to go to churches or reading bibles. I've since learned that I'm bi-sexual and A-gendered (don't care what gender I am/what/how I am called), and since Christians don't typically like that, I've not bothered telling my 'dad' about it. I know he will go on a rant and rampage and rage at me, my mom, and my brothers. I haven't seen my dna-donor in over 9/10? years. And he would literally just show up for a day or so, take us out to eat and try to connect with us briefly, and then leave again. (We live in the USA and he's from Canada). He can sort of see what we are doing on facebook, and what little bits we're willing to tell him directly, but we've not bothered trying to keep the communication lines open. He sent emails to my mom at the end of march (only recently discovered) concerning myself, my younger brother (32M), and youngest brother (26M, AFAB). And it's the craziest thing I've read in a long time. Here is the direct thing, names changed/altered to keep privacy.
[Dearest (my mom):
Where to start... Well, I guess asking for news might be a good start. I’ve looked at the FB page for her store, and I know she is slowly recovering from the robbery. Has she shared anything with you recently about how it’s been affecting her? Has she visited you lately? Does she visit on a regular basis? How well do (middle brother) and (youngest brother) get along with her?
Now, to the “meat” of this email... As I mentioned for (middle brother) , I know that OP made a profession of faith at Abundant Live Assembly, in probably 97 or 98. Has she kept up with the faith? I know that the first time I visited you in Virginia, she was pretty into the whole Messianic Jewish stuff, even showing her friend and I, at the meal after the service, how she had tassels tied to the corners of her jeans, because of it.
But I get the feeling she is not currently living for God... I can’t pinpoint anything precise for that subjective statement. However, I do know that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34, Luke 6:45)... and the way she swears does concern me... I first became aware of it one time I was visiting and we went to watch a movie. She was one or two rows ahead of us, and you threw a few kernels of popcorn at her, and she called you a “fuckhead!” I didn’t say anything at the time, as I didn’t want to start an argument, and I didn’t want you to think I was questioning your parenting skills, or anything like that... Then she spent a few years with no contact. I even found her on Yahoo Messenger, and asked her a question I had for her. She answered the question, then told me to not try to contact her again.
It was only at your mother’s funerals that we spoke again. At that time, she warned me to not be surprised to hear her swear, as she apparently swears a lot, but would try to tone it down for the day (it almost sounded like she was bothered by it, and maybe embarrassed that I would find out, but maybe I was imagining things...) Anyway, she told me how when she plays online RPGs, the Elf language consists of swearing a lot, and people were amazed at how “fluent” she was in the language...
So of course, I am concerned about her spiritual well-being... Do you know anything about where she stands with God?
Another thing she told me, that day, was that she had wanted to write me a letter, as she had “issues with the way we raised her...” So she took down my email address, to send it to me later. (She later lost that email, but took the time to look me up on Facebook, which was an unexpected surprise... I guess she really did want to renew our ties, to a certain degree...) In the end, she never sent me anything like what she mentioned, so I don’t know what her feelings are on the subject. Did she ever mention anything to you, about “the way we raised her” ? Do you have any idea what that might have been about?
One more concern I have about her, is whether something happened, whether spiritually or physically, at the school she was going to when you guys were still in Montreal. At the end of the 2001-2002 school year, she had been saying that if they said she had not learned enough French, she wanted to continue learning. Yet when she went to school the following fall, she came back, during the very first week, wanting nothing more to do with French, and couldn’t wait for you guys to leave for the States. Whereas she had asked me for help with homework in the previous school year, now that she was at a new school (a high-school) and (middle brother) was still in the old school (an elementary school), she didn’t want my help, and barely put in any effort on her homework at all. She also didn’t seem to like her new (male, this time) teacher. So I’ve always wondered if something happened at that new school, whether in the physical or spiritual realm. Has she ever spoken to you about that? Do you have any idea what might have changed her outlook that radically in just a few days at her new school? I’m worried that if something happened in the spiritual realm, and it has never been dealt with, it may still be affecting her today, on an unconscious level. Any idea?
That’s all I can think of, for now. Thank you for your time.
Love always,]
The whole '97/'98 proclamation thing: I was 8. An 8 year old who had just seen 'A Thief in the Night' series about the end times and the rapture (scared the shit out of me). The 2001-2002 thing was me discovering that I was depressed and dissociating. I hated being in a city where you HAD to learn the language and if you didn't, you were looked down on and scorned. Also, there was nothing for us to do as we couldn't go out, nothing to watch (extreme Christians remember), and no one around our ages to hang out with where we lived. I didn't want to live there, and by the time the second year of being there, I was tired of the whole thing. I stopped doing homework, and technically failed 7th grade because literally every aspect of it was in french, even the art, gym, and math.
I stopped trying to talk with him and reconnect with dna-donor when I realized he didn't think women should be allowed to divorce their spouses. Even if the man was abusive or it was to help her, because 'they should work it out together' instead. And when I realized that, I realized that I did not want to associate with someone who would allow another person to be abused and hurt if their god said so.
So my question, do I respond to the email with a full list of what has happened and how I've changed? If I do, this will 200% mean that he will try and 'convert' me back, rant at my mom, rant at me, and be 1,000% more annoying. But it would be SO satisfying.
TL;DR: Crazy Fundamentalist Christian Father worried that I (Bi-sexual A-gender atheist) isn't with God and wants to know what has been going on after not doing anything like that for 10+ years. Should I tell him straight up or not bother as he would never change?
Also, the emails he sent about my brothers are just as bad. Though I only know what they are by paraphrasing from my mom. If this isn't meant to be here, please let me know.

I don't have the whole story here, just some key references - and can anyone add to this? Once again, the topic of "Gaucho" sounding like a Jarrett song came up on this sub - with someone commenting "(Jarrett) had to fight for (songwriting credit)." Really, though, fight for it? I myself have never heard that, and it does make D & W sound like thieving assholes, right? Then again, we're here at Shitpost Central, steelydan, so what else to expect I suppose. I do know that they didn't initially credit him, and then, in a March 1st '81 interview with DF & WB in Musician magazine (which I'll quote/link to below), the interviewer brings up the songs' similarity and they reluctantly(?) acknowledge it. At some point thereafter, Jarrett requested co-writing credit and they didn't hesitate to give it to him. Like I mentioned recently: though I do agree they should've either given him credit in advance or finished writing the song without the heavy Jarrett "influence", I don't think it makes the song inherently unoriginal, because Jarrett's influence was only on part of the composition, and it's not the best part of the composition. The more advanced, original sounding part - which sounds like classic DF at his genius-level, compositional best - doesn't recall Jarrett's tune at all.
Here's Jarrett's original:
youtu.be/SM36ykdccsQ
(Note this comment below the vid: "I think it definitely influenced SD, and they should have known better. I also heard that Fagen initially didn't want it to go on the album at all. But Gary Katz et al. spent all night remixing it and the next day Donald liked it, and it got included after all - becoming the album lead track and title.")
Here's Jazzman Ben Sidran's son Leo Sidran's interview with DF where they talk about the Jarrett influence, but it's a long one, so would anyone else care to note the time in the interview where it comes up? Or even use YouTube's "copy url at time-stopped" function to post a link that cues right up to that time?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwl4TYIm-M8
Now here's the Musician interview link, followed by the the section of it about Jarrett:
steelydanreader.com/1981/03/01/steely-dan-interview/
MUSICIAN: Are you familiar with a Keith Jarrett record Belonging, particularly a tune called “Long as you know you’re living yours”?
BECKER: Yes.
MUSICIAN: Have you ever listened to that up against “Gaucho”?
BECKER: No.
MUSICIAN: I’m not casting any aspersions now, but in terms of the tempo and the bass line and the saxophone melody it’s pretty interesting.
BECKER: Parenthetically it is, yeah [uneasy laughter]
MUSICIAN: At this point the reporter traditionally asks the cornered politican or athlete to “go off the record.”
FAGEN: Off the record, we were heavily influenced by that particular piece of music.
BECKER: I love it.
[Becker and Fagen later approved their “off the record” responses for publication.]
MUSICIAN: We were talking about borrowing…
FAGEN: Hell, we steal. We’re the robber barons of rock ‘n’ roll.
MUSICIAN: Well, the only other thing on the record that seems obviously borrowed is “Glamour Profession.” The rhythm and feel of it, and the way the synthesizehorn vamp swings against the pulse sounds very much like Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
BECKER: I don’t listen to them. Donald listens to them. But I see what you mean though.
MUSICIAN: I’m not saying it was necessarily a conscious act of pilferage.
FAGEN: That song was influenced by disco music in general.
MUSICIAN: Nouveau Swing Disco?
FAGEN: What you’re saying is basically valid. There are other things that are borrowed too. The bridge on “Glamour Profession” is a take on the bridge of Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low.”
BECKER: Which is taken from Ravel.
MUSICIAN: What about popular music? Anything going on that you might be a bit more enthusiastic about?
BECKER: I’ve had a tough time with the radio lately. It’s pathetic.
FAGEN: The Talking Heads are very interesting. They’re a top band.
MUSICIAN: That’s what happens when you go to the Rhode Island School of Design.
FAGEN: Fortunately, it’s mainly their album covers that I like. The covers and the guy’s eyes are great. There’s at least an intelligence behind them, which is more than you can say for most groups.
BECKER: Further and further as time goes by… they’re leaving it in the dust.
FAGEN: I like Donna Summer's records.

I'm going to combine an observation by David A. Snow, from his book Cults and Nonconventional Religious Groups: A Collection of Outstanding Dissertations and Monographs, "Shakubuku: A Study of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist Movement in America, 1960-1975", 1993, about how he kept his wits about him despite the pressure being put on him by the Ikeda cultists, with a vintage SGI song he included in his book.
First, from the Face-to-Face Proselytizing on the Streets: Luring Strangers Back to the Fold section (pp. 160-161) - this is an observation from his involvement with then-NSA (previous name of SGI-USA) between early 1974 and late 1975:

As noted earlier, members seem to devote more time and energy to recruiting on the streets than to any other single promotion and information dissemination activity. This is hardly surprising, considering the premium that is placed on expanding the ranks and the fact that discussion meetings, which are held at least four nights a week, do not "go on" unless a new face or recruit is in attendance.

Quite a different approach, eh? You can see his commentary about the "dramaturgical" (theatrical-style) performances of the completely-rehearsed-but-aimed-at-looking-spontaneous-to-n00bs "discussion meetings" here and here. Those days are LONG past. The Dead-Ikeda-cult SGI's growth phase here in the USA was limited to 1966-1976; it's been either stagnant or in decline since, and is poised to collapse now that Super Sensei has been announced officially not merely dead but really most sincerely dead.
This will give you an idea of how much ground the Corpse Mentor cult has LOST here in the US.

My understanding of how members go about this work is based primarily on what I observed during the numerous occasions I accompanied other members on these recruiting forays. The customary mode of operation was to work in teams of two or three, with one member functioning as the initiator of interaction and as the main purveyor of information, while the others would gather around the recruitee and stand by in a supportive manner.

"We've got you surrounded!"

Although the leader and initiator of interaction was usually a senior member or junior leader, the other members of the team often took their turn at establishing contact. While this turn-taking occasionally happened spontaneously, it was normally encouraged by the team leader. On several occasions, for example, the senior member or leader of the team I was with would turn to me and say, "All right Dave, it's your turn."

Lucky Dave 😬
Reminds me of this:

I’ll never forget being on like my third or fourth post-SGI activity dinner and the group unanimously decided it was my turn to shakubuku the server. Humiliating. Source

Back to Dave!

(Note #41) This was always a most difficult role for me to be cast into. Although it was experientially interesting and illuminating, it presented certain ethical problems. Since my primary commitment was to observe how members went about this work and not to NSA in general or securing potential converts in particular, I felt somewhat uneasy about doing this work and especially about the possibility of being personally responsible for luring some stranger back to a meeting. I thus made it a practice of attempting to talk myself out of this lead role; and when not successful, I would try to sound as unconvincing as possible and would defer all questions to other members of the team. (p. 190)

WEAPONIZED INCOMPETENCE!!

BRILLIANT!!

I love dry scholarly humor 😁
He's got a whole section on shakubuku techniques, including SCRIPTS the Ikeda cult issued for its members to use (how very Dead-Ikeda-cult SGI) - I'll give that its own post, since it's a large section.
Second, Snow provides the lyrics and source of a once-famous SGI song, "Shakubuku Fight Song" (p. 113):

Shakubuku early in the morning Shakubuku late at night Shakubuku when the sky is storming (Shakubuku when the sun's shining bright - he left out this line) Shakubuku is the way to Kosen-rufu Twenty years will see Kosen-rufu Keep chanting, keep chanting, we've got just twenty years to go. Do your Gongyo early in the morning Daimoku late at night We will follow President Ikeda To make this planet peaceful and bright Shakubuku is the way to Kosen-rufu Twenty years will see Kosen-rufu Keep chanting, keep chanting, we've got just twenty years to go. (Shakubuku campaign song, to the tune of "Breakin' Rocks on the Chain Gang") 

Now, I'm not familiar with the source for that song, and it took me a bit of looking to find it - it's "Work Song". Here's an original acoustic version by Terry Callier; there was a more radio-ready version by Nina Simone from 1959, and another version by Oscar Brown Jr., 1960. It's OLD! So obviously, you can kind of guess the generation of whoever it was who wrote different lyrics to it - apparently "unknown", and the Ikeda cult didn't bother to credit the music source they were ripping off, either. Of course, it's possible that, by the time someone decided to make an archive for these, the original source song was so long out of popularity that the person doing the archiving may have simply not known, and there was no one left who even remembered.
And WTF! A song of essentially prison slavery, a blues song sung by the miserable and downtrodden and exploited - THAT's the song someone thought most fitting for having to go out and do "street shakubuku"?? GTFOH 😄
Sometimes life imitates art a little too closely!! Was someone just taking the piss here and it somehow took off??
But c'mon - "Twenty years we'll see Kosen-rufu" (the alternative lyrics)? In which UNIVERSE?? Dr. Snow's tenure was a full 50 years ago now, "twenty years" has come and gone TWICE OVER, and "Kosen-rufu" has disappeared over the horizon, never to be seen again.
"We've got just twenty years to go" - to go NOWHERE! FOR NOTHING! And Ikeda's still a NOBODY!

Hello everybody! 1st time posting here.
I'm 35 M , and started kickboxing about 2 months ago (never sparred), 3 days per week. Never made any martial art before, only basketball, senderism and gym.
I'm 6.23 ft (1.90m) tall and weight 220 lb (100kg).
I like it a lot, and can't wait to go to the next clases.
But I have a problem, not INSIDE the gym or dojo, but in the STREET.
In highschool I was always in very rude fights. I'm from a problematic neighbourhood, and a lot of people older in age but smaller in dimension than me wanted to prove themselves by picking fights wih me. Sometimes I won and sometimes lose, nature's law. I did a little crying and that was it. The last incident was 20 years ago.
Violence and social problems are starting to spike in my city. (I know that the best defense in front of almost any weapon or more than 1 opponent is running.) And everytime I seee someone menacing me, or having a bad attitude towards other people, I start trembling. Like a LOT. My legs start trembling incontrollably.
It's not fear, it's other thing. But I don't know what this sensation is. Like a lot of things in my head, almost always being violent thoughts towards the aggresor. I try to slow and calm down, and I like to talk and resolve things in a civilized way. But is getting worse every day. Almost no patience left.
(f.e.: yesterday, at 01:30 am (europe) 4 youngsters were making a literal party outside my home and we wanted to sleep. My gf and I went to talk to them, and 2 went into challenging aggressively mood towards me. I talked calmly, but was shaking, waiting the moment to jump. We said we called the police and they leaved, screaming nonsense)
So, any advice on how to stay calm in these situations?
Thank you very much and sorry for my english.
TL;DR: I start to tremble in situations where a fight can start in any moment. I have very violent thoughts towards the possible aggresor.
EDIT: Thanks to shallothered, I need to add that I feel a rush or pressure in my chest, and the heart rate goes above the ceiling, indicating a possible adrenaline rush. i will check it with a doctor.

TL;DR: My (34F) ex-best friend (34M) fell hard into the alt-right, and I want him back, but don't know if it's worth trying. He's been involved with a lot of it since about 2016. Is it way too late to try to sway him back? If it's not, what things can I do?
The looooong long: Way back in 2011, I made friends with this person (let's call him 'Sam'), from online gaming. Sam was a super positive, friendly, golden retriever of a guy. A huge game/anime nerd, and accomplished martial artist. He always idolized characters who were selfless, compassionate, and would fight to protect others, and went into martial arts as a kid wanting to be a 'hero' one day. He consistently fought for the underdog.
We were very open with each other. Always in each other's corner when no one else was. I talked to him about my sexuality, morals, beliefs, and we aligned so much. He believed no one was above anyone else, all people deserved kindness no matter what, etc, etc. When things happened in the world that were racially-charged, about trans people, or hateful rhetoric, he'd hurt for the clear victims every time. I thought he had a heart of gold.
He lives in Australia, and I'm in California, so the time difference was pretty significant. However, for three years we spent most of our free-time chatting, video calling, gaming, etc. I know some people will say online friendships don't count for much, but we would talk 4-5 times a week for anywhere between 1 to 6 hours. We were digitally joined at the hip. If we were online, we were talking to each other (or in a group with his irl friends). We'd pay the wild costs of texting internationally when we couldn't be online just to wish each other a good day, or say we were bored and missed the other. It got to the point where we'd 'forget' we'd never met irl before.
In 2014 I got a full-time job, and our free time stopped overlapping, so we slowly started drifting apart. We would leave messages for each other here and there, but nothing too substantial. During the start of our distancing, he was having a particularly bad time in his family life (his mom, dad, and sister all have issues either with physical abuse, financial irresponsibility that would become Sam's problem, or drug abuse and felonies). He worked a lot, and most of his paychecks went to trying to pull his family, who he loved, but also resented, out of their own holes. He told me he felt like he didn't have a family, and they only went to him when they needed something.
2015, he asked me for help on a resume 'cause he wanted to start working towards being a cop. I have family members who are ex-cops, and believed he had a good heart, so I supported it. He specifically wanted to work towards being a PI to protect women from violence.
I don't think things panned out (we weren't speaking as much during that), and a while later he discovered Jordan Peterson. Sam was always a gullible person looking for a place in the world, and from what I do know, he was going through a really bad and low period then, so he was a perfect poster boy to get pulled in by Peterson's strange charisma.
I never used FB regularly, so I didn't see all the things he was sharing. I decided to use FB in 2018, so I could come out as pan publicly on Coming Out Day in hopes some of my younger family members would feel safe with me if they were feeling unsure of themselves.
Sam responded to my post. We hadn't had a real conversation in maybe two years, but he commented that this was all a 'fad like going through an emo phase,' that having a day to celebrate was pointless, and it encouraged the sheep to collect together. He also said that while he believed me, other people he was sus about. I told him kindly that there was no fad, or flock, and a marginalized group of people need community to see they matter. That if people saw my post and felt safe with me, I'd be happy to be a so-called sheep.
We stopped talking after that.
Every few months to a year, I would think of him, or dream of us being friends again. I kept in contact with two of his real life best friends who I also met around 2011 (one from childhood, the other college), and Sam ended up dropping contact with them in 2018 as well.
They keep tabs because they have Sam on social media. Since about 2016 he has gotten into NFTs and crypto, has loudly denounced LGBTQIA+ people, expressed and shared transphobic messages, started idolizing Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, of course still loves Jordan Peterson, is a climate change denier, an antivaxxer, interacts with posts concerning American politics (ex, "Actually, America's congress is pretty good based on the videos I've seen") despite never stepping foot in the country, keeps tabs on Fox News, thinks drag queens are indoctrinating children, and will spew things like he is just trying to get the 'truth' to the people. I found his twitter and he's still actively involved in all of the above.
So he's been in this warped mindset for years, and I never realized how bad it actually was until recently. None of his irl friends talk to him anymore. Afaik from his childhood best friend, his family is still a mess, and he mostly broke away from them.
I felt betrayed by his actions because even if he claimed he wasn't attacking me, he insinuated a lot about the community I'm a part of. The transphobic messages especially put me over because my current best friend of almost a decade is trans, and HRT saved her. I had always wanted to introduce her to Sam in the early days of meeting her because they would have gotten along wonderfully, and it rips me apart that he would hate her for being herself.
And yet despite that, I want to reach out. I want to offer an ear for him because it seems aside from his other indoctrinated 'brothers,' he has no friends. Talking to his other rejected best friends, I was the only person he ever really confided in when he had problems, so I assume when our free time was in conflict, he probably felt alone. I worry he's just lost and hurt. I can't imagine someone being content with severing all the good connections/relationships in favor of being so hateful and acting like the world is against you (especially when Sam is a cis hetero white guy).
So maybe I'm being absolutely delusional and it's a fools errand, but I can't help but think the kind soul I knew is still in there somewhere.
Is it possible to deprogram him? What are ways to assist in that?
Thank you to everyone in advance, and sorry for the novel.