Funny macro art | | How did I get here?

I updated a collection and uploaded it for other people's benefit because some mods conflicted. Owner got mad because I "didn't give credit" even though I literally have his shit linked in the first sentence, and the "stealing of art" was an MS paint edit that was VERY obvious. Funnily enough, he updated his collection, removing the conflicting mods the day he and his friend threw a tantrum. Didn't credit me for it though ;).
Here's my collection, a non-scuffed, non-bloated version of CAW that doesn't crash. I've had 0 crashes in gameplay, regardless of reloads and new games. The only "crash" I get is on game exit, so who cares.
I just found the whole thing funny. I'm not invested in the slightest in the modding community, it was just humorous seeing this curator of what is effectively a spotify playlist get bald because I didn't refer him by name, just you know, sending a direct link to the original collection. I was never looking for clout or recognition, it was solely just to be a little fix for people until the revision happened, but their response made me want to link it out of spite so here it is.
https://next.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/collections/ry3qbt?tab=Comments
Just really soak in that stolen art
Edit: I also find it hilarious that it took a blow to a curator's ego for them to fix their collection so as to prevent it from crashing regularly.
https://gyazo.com/6b2e39a1ae4c3a11b959dacc7e2685a2
https://gyazo.com/b1bb3c429060b1e9388dfb15bd428f10
Timestamps say it all :skull_emoji:

DISCLAIMER: This is a RANT that's going here as someone who just graduated from SOA, and I'm sure there's discourse that's already been going on for a while around what I have to say that I'm just new to it but what I have to say just feels urgent to shout at a bunch of people, but specifically people who might be receptive/interested in taking action on it/at least thinking through it and debating it. SO while there might be a better space for this post, we'll see what moderators and anyone else on here might think.
SO:
As title states. IMO Big Tech has really truly gotten out of hand in controlling and having influence over every aspect of human culture and society globally; way, WAY too much power. I think this is real bad and a lot of us aren't vibing with it, and we should be trying to disrupt Big Tech's power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibMd_Jx9daw&t=1s
This conversation about AI in music/Spotify sparked a march larger chain of thought in me about something that I took for granted but didn't realize the scope of. Across nearly every industry, Big Tech is running mass/macro culture into the ground. Movie studios don't take risks on things because all profits rely on streaming services (no more Blockbuster rentals to make up box office losses). All forms of media, entertainment, even journalism or information, the whole game of content--
I don't know if anyone else has felt this way, but I feel like the algorithms feeding me content every day don't even work at hacking my lizard brain anymore like they used to; I mean most of the shit they show me on social media and other apps these days just doesn't hold my attention or interest me any more. It feels like, no offense STEM peeps, your services and function in society and humanity is vital, but seems like fueled by the structures of capitalism, a bunch of STEM peeps in Silicon Valley thought they could reduce the human spirit to math and engineering, and the feeling I have of cultural stagnation seems to me to prove the overstep of Tech Companies incentivized to grow ceaselessly with no greater reason than higher stock prices.
Has anyone else not felt like art and culture has been kind of stagnant lately? Art and culture has been taken over my tech companies and on the macro level, shit is just bad an uninspired and I feel like we're all really in need of many kinds of revolution, but also one that's more a humanistic creative artistic and cultural revolution.
Does Tech really need to just keep advancing? I'm not convinced humanity is doomed unless Tech companies just keep expanding and exploding and completely shifting the entire nature of the human experience in a single human lifetime. I'm not convinced that's necessary or inevitable. I'm not anti-tech either, but I think the version we've gotten of monopolized capitalist tech corps turning our digital commons into a deeply surveilled Digital Disney World is not inevitable.
I'm speculating here, but I'm day-dreaming about young creatives, inspired STEM peeps, perhaps even some of YOU, who might be trying to figure out how to make new decentralized internet, how to create more new micro internet culture. Create hardware systems that people can access and allows them to communicate with other people in different ways than devices created by corporations; DEI software and hardware not owned and controllled by corporations, almost a vision of anarchist tech, with clever people using the comms systems already in place to let the masses know and teach them about these new spaces forming on new internets and new systems that massive corps can't control. Make virtual meeting spaces and modes of communication that aren't owned by Musk, Bezos, and Zuck.
I know shit like this already exists and it immediately gets targeted (and i'm sure sometimes fairly when it's actually used by criminals and terrorists)--but I believe the right people are clever enough to design something that could be innocent and benign enough to really break through and disrupt the monopoly of the tech corps.
We can do better tech, better internet, and we can disrupt the power of these tech companies, because a handful of these assholes have just been going to town on human civilization for the last decade and these mfs need to be put in their place. I don't believe we have to inevitably plow into a cyberpunk dystopia; I think the last few months on campus should have everyone here in agreement that if enough people feel strongly enough about something and choose to resist it together, things can happen.

Hey everyone! Title hits on the points pretty well, I've just finished with the campaigns and art of war stuff, and have started playing the other civs to get a feel for them, and start narrowing it down a bit to find a main (or two). I've done some searching but can't find any good in-depth breakdowns of the new(er) civs and current ones with the most recent changes, wanna try and understand them all a bit more (and what I would be up against). Wondering if anyone has any good info/links/resources to share? Just to note my playstyle, I tend to lean towards defensive with quick econ macro, maybe some harass sprinkled in just to keep the edge, before closing it out. I think Eng fits the bill by definition but as I'm playing/testing others out, they seem a bit.. Dry (no hate, just personal view). Would appreciate any info/recommendations!

I don’t know what happened. Maybe it’s because so many people think they can do what other people do because this generation is so “forgiving”, if so it bothers me.
First off the actors/actresses are pathetic. None of them can act. 1: it’s because they aren’t casting talented people, they casting either attractive people or people with big followings. 2: The actresses and actors who used to be good are now being cast in films that don’t let them showcase their talents. 3: most of the characters they act as aren’t complex.
Second, the film directors don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Most of the films look uncanny and too perfect. Back then the early 2000 films looked natural and so were the characters. For example “mean girls” characters in early 2000 are way better compared to this generation not because it’s the original but because Regina was intimidating. This new Regina is trying to appear mean but she isn’t intimidating. She gives off an I know it all vibes. Then the lighting was too bright. The people are too animated. The actresses aren’t portraying the characters right. There’s no feeling, no emotions, just perfection that makes it so boring.
Third, Writers are horrible. They don’t know how to write therefore they keep re-making movies. And if they don’t re-make movies, they steal a movie and make it into their own. Then they force things into it like slang, wokeness, etc. They try to appeal to Gen-Z instead of writing a fucking movie. “American horror story” used to be good now look at it. They try so hard to be funny that it’s uncanny, they even have Kim Kardashian to make it popular, that’s a tactic. I mean they did have Ariana Grande but she’s actually an actress. Kim sounded so fake when she was saying her lines.
So many influencers are stepping into the film industry, they already ruined music industry. So many easy access. No one is actually working. No one cares. They just want money and popularity. They don’t care about the vision, they don’t want art.

I like chainsaw man, love it actually. Became a fan back when chapter 45 dropped and I've been following since (top 5 series for me currently). But as the title suggests I've recently been frustrated with the series and i kinda want to go on a rant about it. Now I'm not gonna go on a whole essay long yap fest but I kinda just want to share some of my thoughts and frustrations. You're free to listen, you're free to disagree.
The overuse of cliffhangers
For me this really became a problem in the "dating denji arc" (whatever the wiki calls it☠) I feel like this right here is when my problems started happening. I was cool with the spinal cord sword cliffhanger. I thought the cliffhangers were clever at first and a funny way to subvert expectations ) Then the nayuta one happened.... I was already not a fan of the memory erasure thing. I felt it was a cheap and forced drama tactic but I gave it a chance. Then the Yoshida one happened... and it just kept going and going...
Next characterization
Denji. I like denji I really do but he feels like he never developed aside from today's chapter and even then it feels like something he should've learned back in part 1 it just feels like he took five steps back. He resisted alone time with makima to help power get through her depression yet now he's going to get random pussy instead of saving his sister? I could go on about denji but ill leave it here. Quanxi I never really liked quanxi since she was boring in part 1 but now she's worse imo. With her only showing up to no diff everyone.
Nothing burger chapters There have been so many chapters in part 2 that feel like nothing is happening. No im not expecting the death devil to come out, no im not always expecting asaden. But what I am expecting is actual content in a chapter. There are alot of chapters with a few words are spoken and characters just stand and stare at each other, maybe a character will say something but it will likely be used as a joke for the beginning of the next chapter and then it will lead into a 2 week break. There's a reason why the mangaplus comments on chainsawman always talk about its 10 second read and a reason readers on Twitter can only post a few panels cause there is nothing else otherwise.
Art quality I'll give fujimoto a slight pass on this one since drawing a manga every week (even bi-weekly) isn't easy and im pretty sure he doesn't have any assistants either. But It would be crazy to deny the drop of quality from part 1 (even early part 2's) art. Overall I still like chainsaw man and I will continue to follow and maybe glaze it in the near future but I can't deny my frustration and dissapointnent with it currently.

So recently, a few years ago i had a idea to make a joke mod about the first unfinished guy on this post, his name is red skinned martin and he is supposed to be a bootleg copy of Mario mixed with peppino based on a edit of a racist Peppino comic that was found on twitter and i tought like ''hm, this edit is very funny" then i decided to make it into a mod but soon it got cancelled because i forgot about it then i decided to get it back to being alive. The second post is a joke thing i made for the story of undertale discord server where i made a playable frisk rig for Sugary Spire (leaked build) wich i posted ase and gif file, its public and for everyone to use for whatever mod. The third post is a mod wich I'm making wich would be Pinolino's Great Grand Adventure: Regarged if it was made in Sugary Spire wich is basically called Suggary Worlds and its gonna have a really slow devlopment. The fourth and fifth post is about a caracther i made for a mod wich me and my friend MrGamer123 are working on, his name is Lester Louie and obviously... he is a Luigi bootleg, the sixth post is the name of the mod wich is Glarted UP, "what is Glarted UP?" Glarted up is a pinoslop type of mod but with effort. Last post, this is a mod that i got the ownership of because a terrible person in the PT community named Sandibles got exposed by me, Greg., Nebulabubbles and thenighthack for grooming, the mod is a greglike named Fleg, since i now have ownership of it i can contact a bunch of my friends to plan on remaking it without such a terrible person. Lastly, i have one more thing to talk about, one of my friends stixel got able to have the ownership of new Pinolike mod because of the same reason i have Fleg's ownership and I'm now planning on helping him on the making of the mod when i get able to contact him via gamejolt since he doesn't have a discord.
Credits for sprites Red Skinned Martin, Suggary Protagonist, Lester Louie digital art and Playable SOU Frisk: Me
Fleg: Sandibles/Pisscup/Lolpoll/Mywindows
Playable Lester Louie and the Glarted UP logo: MrGamer123

If you're looking for something fun to do this Thursday, I'd happily invite you down to the Woodshop in St. Elmo. I've been hosting a weekly songwriters showcase that we record and turn into a radio show for WUTC. We've had some awesome guests like Randy Steele, Swayyvo, Call Me Spinster, Luke Simmons, Catherine Campbell, Lon Eldridge, and tons of others.
But this week I'm going to play a full set with my full band, which I haven't done yet this year. I've got drums, bass, fiddle, lap steel and baritone guitar. So it's got a 70s country vibe. Most my songs are pretty funny, and I think the show's a pretty good time.
Here's a song we recently finished recording with a bunch of lyrics about Chattanooga, including a reference to my old favorite restaurant, the Piccadilly Cafeteria at Northgate Mall...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLI9JZh-oDs
Also, here's a link to an article I wrote for the Chattanooga Pulse about how I'm a stinky idiot...
https://www.chattanoogapulse.com/arts_entertainment/music-news/alex-the-stinky-idiot-returns-to-the-woodshop-this-thursday/
Hope you can come check us out!

Sorry that this is so long.
Tldr: My boyfriend is extremely insecure about several topics and I'm afraid it'll destroy our relationship.
My (F21) boyfriend (M21) of a few weeks is very insecure and I have a feeling I am making it worse. When I first pursued him he actually accidentally rejected me due to insecurity because he couldn't imagine a woman like me would ever be interested in a man like him (so he thought I was making fun of him). I made it more clear that I really want him and now we're together but I know that he's feeling super insecure. When we kiss he oftentimes opens his eyes after and mutters something like "I can't believe you actually like me" or "I don't know what I've done to deserve you" and a few days ago I found him crying because according to him he doesn't deserve me and I'm apparently to good for him, which I don't get. I wanted him first. Still, I'm scared that this insecurity will destroy our relationship again and it's really not healthy at all so I want to help him get over it. I told him even though I like him no matter what that if he feels like he doesn't deserve me he can try to become a guy who he thinks he deserves me but I don't know if that was too harsh so I might have to try another approach .
From what I've gathered there are 4 main areas of insecurity for him. 1. Our social circles, 2. Our grades, 3. Our looks and 4. The romantic attention we get/our experience.

Our social circles: He is a pretty nerdy guy who is introverted to the point where I'm suspecting him to have social anxiety. He especially struggles talking to women. I'm pretty sure he was only able to talk to me since did most of the heavy lifting in terms of our early conversations and never stopped trying to get to know him. He has a small group of close-knit friends who he cares a lot about. They're like brothers which is really cute to me. The problem is that outside of that group of friends he is definitely less than popular, I think because he is socially awkward like that with a pretty peculiar sense of humour, which I like however.

My social life looks very different. I'm just as nerdy as him behind closed doors but since I had a pretty massive glow up people don't expect that from me. I'm fact outwardly I'm definitely someone in the popular crowd and I gotta admit- I got a pretty big social circle with four groups of friends, two of which are really close as well and I'm basically the centre of.
Whenever he and I are walking together and I have to greet someone again (which happens pretty often, especially on campus) he gets annoyed, especially when it's a guy. A little more than half of my group of friends are guys and I already made him aware that that's not gonna change since I've known most of them for years- still, he suspects almost every one of those to be interested in me which can be quite annoying. There have been some who confessed but that was before my boyfriend and I got together and I established clear boundaries with those. That's the first problem caused by insecurities.

grades and achievements: He is a smart man, a former gifted kid, It's a part of him that first caused me to be attracted to him, but the problem is- I as well was a gifted kid. We have lived very different lifes up to this point. He had a pretty relaxed upbringing while I spent my time growing up in debate competitions, dance competitions and participating in youth politics since my parents wanted to prime me for success. I think he has just always been the smart kid and at the beginning he was fully convinced that he was way smarter than me because I asked him to explain things to me since I like to hear him explain and he didn't think that someone like me would be able to have intelligent thoughts or something which he admitted was stupid of him and just based on stereotypes. Now that we spend pretty much every second day together he knows that I actually have a better GPA than him and that I'm according to him "more gifted than him" (which partially has to do with me being on the spectrum) he doesn't openly say it but I know it bothers him. As a formerly gifted kid myself I know how much it hurts when someone is better than you when the thing you were growing up was always just the 'smart kid'. He said that he wants to work harder so he can take care of me sometime in the future but knowing him I know that's only half of the story. Just like he started going to the gym more because at the beginning of our relationship I was stronger than him (Years of competitive dance, martial arts and just being a gym girl). He now is stronger than me again but he still talks about how emasculated he felt because of it.
Our looks: I was told I have pretty privilege and I got to admit myself - after my glow up I definitely felt how different people treat me now and I get quite a lot of attention now to the point where it's uncomfortable, especially since before my glow up I definitely wasn't as conventionally attractive and was also treated as such. I think my boyfriend looks good. He is cute. His lips are pretty and heart shaped and his eyeshape and lashes are to die for. He doesn't see that though. I know he's not everyone's cup of tea. I gathered so much when I told other people that we're dating but he's my cup of tea so that shouldn't matter. Even his friends teased him about his looks in comparison to mine when he told them and when he told me- I swear I was ready to explode. I try to give him compliments about his looks but he doesn't know how to accept them. He says I'm the only one who'll ever compliment him this way anyway so what's the point. My boyfriend says that when he first saw me he thought I was the most beautiful woman he's ever seen which is why he couldn't believe why I would keep on talking to him. I think being with me makes his insecurities about his looks worse because according to him an 'ugly guy' like him doesn't deserve a girl like me. I think that's bullshit. There is way more to a relationship than looks and I think he's cute and way too harsh on his looks.
Our romantic experience and the attention we get.

I am his first. The first girl he kissed, his first date, his first time holding hands, his first in general. He told me that before we met again he had given up on love- concluded that it wasn't happening for him and that after his parents passed on he should just follow them- and then I showed up again and made it obvious how much I wanted him. I feel so honoured to be his first but not getting any attention before me took a real toll on his self perception I think. He says that I'm the only woman he'll have in this lifetime though. That if I don't work out he'll give up on dating which worries me.
I am the exact opposite. Sure I wasn't in a relationship before him, I also was still a virgin and also never kissed anyone willingly but I get attention. I get asked for my number on the streets or in uni, I get asked on dates and I also went on dates before. I just never felt it. Where he feels like he doesn't get seen by women I feel like I only get seen as a piece of meat, as a love interest, a manic pixie dream girl or a sex object by men. I had so many bad experiences with that just being treated like a normal person by him (partially because he thought he didn't have a chance anyway) had me falling head over heels for him.
He feels insecure about the attention I get however, especially if it'd be men he perceives to be good-looking, successful or simply cool. He often mentions that apparently there were several guys in the friend group we met in that wanted to pursue me and he feels bad for them that he's the one who got me because he's just a 'bastard' in his own words. I think this is another one of the things that bothers him the most based on how often he mentions it. Whenever he finds out that a guy we know ever was interested in me I never hear the end of it. I even was asked for my number while he was right next to me and while in a conversation with him which is not only mad disrespectful but also made him really angry and caused his insecurities to skyrocket. I feel really sorry to make him insecure that way but I really can't control it. He also likes when I get really dressed up for dates and I like that too but whenever he sees the stares I get from men he seems to regret it.
All in all he seems to put me on a pedestal and seems to compare himself to not only me but also other men in my life though I don't want them. I only want him. He says it's suspicious how little is wrong with me, that I'm too good but that's not true. I'm possessive (which I'm working on), at least as competitive as him, all of the social skills he admires so much in me I trained myself to have since I'm pretty much lost in social situations. I can be quite clumsy and scatterbrained sometimes and when I get to talk about my special interests I won't stop for hours. I was training for discipline from a young age to the point where I sometimes don't sleep or eat enough to manage to do everything I planned. I am a perfectionist to an unhealthy degree and sometimes I feel like a robot who just has to function no matter what. I tried to show him, tell him all my flaws but no matter what he doesn't see them as flaws.
He for example sees all of the achievements, the medals my perfectionism brought me but not that I lost so much sleep and ate so little for extended periods of time when I was little that I just stopped growing.
I try to show him that I really like him. He is smart, witty, funny and even though he tries to hide it incredibly kind. He takes care of his friends, family and now me. I feel so safe around him and ...just like myself. I try to tell him that. I try to give him gifts, I try to spend as much time as possible with him and take care of him. Whenever he expresses his boundaries I try to comply (for example he dislikes when I show my cleavage when he isn't around so I stopped) but I feel like that's no use as long as that little voice in his head tells him that he's not enough and that he doesn't deserve me.
I just don't know what to do so that he finally sees himself the way I see him- a person who of course has flaws but is beautiful and kind and a person who deserves to be loved and I'm pretty sure I love.
Thank you for any advice. (And sorry for my English. English is actually my fourth language so I'm not as articulate in it as I would like)

Alright, so… I (18F) kinda made this reddit account just to get some feedback about this situation, since I’m too ashamed to ask my parents. The girl in question is 16, and is probably one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met…
(TLDR: This girl I was pretending to be friends with in High School obsessively fantasized about murdering someone for an entire semester, is overbearing as a person, interrogates people on a daily basis and is nosy, injects herself into drama that isn’t her own, throws temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, constantly touches people and makes unwarranted comments about girl’s bodies, asked me to draw CP for her, and MADE FUN OF HER SUICIDAL BROTHER. And I wrote a hate-letter telling her that all of this stuff is a problem, but now I feel bad about it because I think she might actually have mental issues. It’s a really wild ride and a long story, so if you choose to read it, you should expect to be here for a while. And it’s High School drama, so I’ll try to discard the boring details.)
There’s this girl, who… I’ll call her Storm. You’ll find out why. Storm quickly became the most annoying person in one of my classes. Any time she talked, she didn’t have anything interesting to say, but just kept going on and on and on endlessly. It was annoying, but we just kinda played along to be nice.

Well… Around a month into school, Storme started opening up and became comfortable talking about personal topics. She told us this story about how one of her other friends (I’ll call her Katie) “betrayed” her the previous year, and then went on to talk about how much she hated Katie and didn’t care if she lived or died. (Honestly, Katie’s offense was miniscule. At most, she replaced Storm with someone else as her best friend. You know… Regular High School drama that wasn’t that deep.)

Then Storme started saying ludicrous stuff like “I hope she falls into a volcano”, or “I hope she gets eaten by sharks falling from the sky. Like Sharknado.”. But like… She kept saying it constantly, out loud in class. She ranted about how she wanted Katie to get kidnapped by the Mafia, be flown up to the moon, and be dropped into a black hole to become “Katie-spaghetti”. It was honestly really funny at first, so me and a few other people in the class joined in a little bit and added our own stupid, childlike scenarios. (Katie has a reputation for being… A slut. That’s why it was funny at first.)
But then after this schtick got old, Storm just kept going and going and going… She ranted about Katie until it physically hurt to hear her talk anymore. Instead of adjusting herself like a normal person, she just kept yapping until everyone rolled their eyes every time she opened her mouth, because we knew she would just keep going on and on about all of the stupid ways she wanted Katie to die. Even the damn teacher told her to stop doing that, but she never listened and the teacher eventually just gave up.
Katie then gradually started to get more morbid with the things she was saying, to the point where I genuinely considered calling the cops and getting this girl some grippy socks. She talked until she became red-faced, started tweaking, and laughed in a neurotic, nervous angry way while she started wringing out her trembling hands. She genuinely looked and sounded unhinged, and what didn’t help was that she started saying stuff like “There aren’t metal detectors in this school, right?”, and “I wish I wasn’t such a good person, because if I wasn’t, I’d be acting on my impulse to cave her skull in the next time I see her. One of these days I’m going to snap and then just do it..” …Yeah, so I was genuinely considering getting the police involved in this because of those two sentences. Thankfully Katie is safe and sound to this day and Storm never acted on these “impulses”. I’m so glad it worked out that I didn’t have to call the cops, but I was seriously worried for a minute…
She continued to talk about Katie, but mostly to me. She talked about this topic endlessly, her words getting increasingly violent until Christmas break. Yeah… 5 months. She ranted about the ways she wanted Katie to die for 5 whole months. Months. But then when she was done ranting, she finally shut up.
She wrote a note to Katie after Christmas break explaining “You hurt me really badly, but I’m a Christian so I forgive you and I hope you the best”... As if she didn’t rant about her for 5 months straight. Make it make sense. But enough about that. Here’s where my fuck ups began.
I gave her my number and we started saying we were friends, even though I never liked her. I started sending her some art (I'm an artist), and she started asking me some questions about it. She asked if I had ever drawn p0rn in my life. Of course, I said no because I didn't.
And then my worst nightmare: “Have you ever drawn p0rn of them?” …Of course I didn’t, because that would be CP… Plus I’ve never thought of those characters as being “sexual”... They’re literally 14 and 15 years old.
Then basically, she made an indirect “suggestion” for me to draw them together. I said fuck no. Hell fucking no. She tried to convince me to draw them “aged up”, but again I refused. She put me off from drawing those characters ever again. I haven’t drawn them since and I don’t take my sketchbook to school anymore because I don’t want her to see my drawings and be reminded of that BS.
But enough about that… Storm is a church-going girl, and so she has a few church-going friends. (This also makes everything I’ve said before all the more ironic.).
I’ve heard many stories about how Storm interrogates other people, too. If she sees a guy/girl’s name pop up on the screen of someone she knows, she’ll pester them until they give her one of two answers: either “I’ll tell you later”, or the actual answer. She’s done that to me too, in front of everyone in class.
The thing that upsets me about this is that she claims to be “nosy”, but thinks it’s a positive attribute rather than an annoying one. She brags about being “nosy” sometimes.
And the sexual assault… Since we were in a sports medicine class, our projects involved a lot of hands-on things. That didn’t bother me by itself, but with Storm, it was a nightmare. This girl, in the process of strapping an ice bag to my thigh, called my thighs “small”, and said that I have a “beautiful body”. We also did shoulder stretching stuff the next week, and I happened to fall under her care while she stared into my eyes and made weird faces at me, all the while she made sound effects and made the process much more uncomfortable than it needed to be.
One week, we ended up as partners again and she ended up wrapping my shoulder. This shoulder-wrap wasn’t an issue for me, but having her as a partner made it an issue. As expected, she made sound effects, but this time she stated the obvious as if it was new information that nobody would have ever suspected: “Wow, this is squishing your boobies huh?”... Emphasis on the word “boobies”. Jesus Fucking Christ, it was already awkward as hell before she even brought that up, why would she say something like that?? I didn’t even realize that until she brought it up.

In fear of being subjected to her uncomfortable BS again and feeling violated, I texted her and told her that she’s been making me feel uncomfortable, and to please stop being so…. Weird. I get it’s an awkward thing to wrap up your classmate’s thigh, but that’s a moment to keep comments to yourself. Her response? “I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY-” Just… Stop it. I didn’t introduce the topic as a big deal and told her not to worry about it, but she kept apologizing for it nonstop. Just endlessly, like everything else. Even when I tried to change the subject to something else, she just kept apologizing for it practically until she went to bed. (She has a bedtime at 9:30… At 16 years old.) All of this stuff contributed to my overall hatred toward her. I don’t like her at all, and it’s a wonder I didn’t explode and insult her entire personality and deplorable behavior to her face (Meg Griffin style). Things are just so awkward and awful whenever she opens her mouth, and it just doesn't ever stop. But because of all of this, when it came time for my Senior prom, I decided to secretly invite one of my friends from that class as a plus one, and NOT Storm. I was worried that if I told her that to her face, I would all of a sudden be the new “Katie” in her conversations, because the infraction Katie did was so miniscule that it seemed to be less like a “betrayal” than what I did. (In hindsight, it was probably the other way around.) So… I just kept the whole thing to myself and so did the friend I took to prom (I’ll call her Beyonce. Because… She loves Beyonce.). If this wasn’t bad enough, strap in because not even three weeks ago, Beyonce was doing her usual schtick of making fun of random things. She once made fun of cool whip and the entire state of Texas at the same time and somehow made it make perfect sense. She should really have a comedy show, I swear. But this time, Beyonce was making fun of the name “Gage”, saying “Why would anyone name their kid after a 12-gage shotgun?” and “People named Gage seem untrustworthy. I wouldn’t want to be near one in a zombie apocalypse, because he’d just feed me to those fuckers.”. Funny stuff. Storm then said “My brother’s name is Gage”, and in order to preserve the flow of the conversation (and also to tick her off a little, I’m ngl), Beyonce asked her: “Is your brother untrustworthy?” And then without a single millisecond wasted, she said, in a Disney Channel comedy fashion: “Welll… We can’t trust him with his own life, sooo…”.. And then she laughed as if it was funny. Like.. Rib-stitches type of laughing. ….So then the others (understandably) went quiet, which left only me and her. Then my idiot ass decided to say what I was thinking at that moment: “You don’t seem to be taking it seriously. That’s your brother, but you don’t sound sympathetic at all.” I felt bad for that statement, so I apologized for it over text when I got home from school. Quickly, we erupted into an argument, (with me holding back), and she ended up saying “What does it matter to you? He’s not your brother. If Beyonce said that about her brother, you’d laugh. But when I do, it’s bad.”. Beyonce’s brother is 8 years old…. So no, that would be even worse. …So then I had to explain to her how human decency works, and how making fun of your s*icidal siblings isn’t funny whatsoever and how that joke could be considered to be in very poor taste, even for people who like dark humor. When me, Beyonce or Mark made “suicide” jokes, it was about OURSELVES and it was usually in a statement like “I don’t want to take a test next period, I’m gonna kms.”... …Storm ended up getting so mad that we weren’t having a conversation anymore; we were just throwing shit around. I told her that if she was being livestreamed at that moment, she’d be bashed on the whole internet for a week or so and be called “evil” for that joke. In hindsight I shouldn’t have said that, but my goal was to tell her how people perceive those jokes. I ended the conversation and the next day, I apologized to her again. I retracted my statements and told her that I was sorry for talking out of line. She accepted the apology, and things went back to “normal”. She forgot about it, but I didn’t. …So here are the reasons why I feel bad, before I delve into the contents of the “hate letter” I wrote to her. Here’s a list of my crimes:

I pretended to be her friend for an entire school year.
I hid the fact that I was going to prom with Beyonce from her, and then lied to her face repeatedly whenever she asked if I went to prom or not.
I got into business that wasn’t my own and criticized her.
I wrote a hate-letter to her that I directed her to read at home on the last day of school.

…Here’s why I feel bad: Storm doesn’t seem to be emotionally intelligent and is unable to control her mouth whenever she feels strong emotions. All she wants is to be listened to and understood, but nobody can and nobody truly wants to. She feigns confidence and goes overboard with compliments in the hopes of catching the attention of people who want to be friends with her. She’s not used to change and is very naive, to the point where (just yesterday) she quit her job at a fast food restaurant after only the first day of working there. For the longest time she didn’t have access to the internet, so she doesn’t really have a means to connect with other people through sharing videos or memes or whatever.

…I feel like a bad person because I knowingly, intentionally played into all of this just for the pathetic reason of making her shut up in class. It’s despicable what I did, and I’m beating myself up for it every day. I was just originally going to leave the school, block her and never talk to her ever again in my life, but when she made that joke about her brother, I decided (stupidly) to take it upon myself to be the bearer of bad news. I gave her a letter. Within the “hate letter”, it isn’t actually hate, per se. It’s more like… A report on the behavior she needs to fix, as well as an admission to my lies over the course of this whole year. I told her the awful truth. I told her about everything I mentioned in this post and tried to keep it “professional”, though I did end up going as far as to say “you have all of the attributes of an obnoxious piece of stale bread”........... And what’s worse is… I told her to read it on the last day of school, and my reasoning is pathetic at best. I told her to read it on the last day of school because I didn’t want her to burden the class with her nonstop ranting about me, since she, Mark and Beyonce are sophomores and I’m the only senior in the “friend group”, which means that I left the school an entire week earlier than them. I’ve been intentionally delaying her pain and still talking to her over text acting like things are “normal” so that she doesn’t read it early, knowing damn well that on that last day of school, my words are going to hurt her so badly that she might not be able to recover for a while. In the letter, I told her that by the time she reads it, I would have already blocked her because I don’t want any more conversation with her due to me feeling so bad and having nothing more to say. If the plan goes right, she’ll read it on May 23rd, and on that day I will block her. I feel awful for all of this. I feel like a monster for this. It’s painful knowing that I’m going to cause her pain and that I planned when it’s going to happen, but at the same time I feel like she deserves it. But at the same time, I know damn well that it wasn’t my place to do that. I should have left everything alone. Nobody I can talk to irl would even hear me out; they’d just stop at the words “hate letter”, which means my only option is to seek advice from people on Reddit. Do my motives for doing things make sense? Am I actually a bad person for this? Am I the asshole? Does she deserve what she’s getting?

Edit 1: I removed some asterisks (they're annoying). Edit 2: I attempted to shorten it or say things in simple terms. I also fixed spacing and stuff. Sorry.

Including the movies, I also watched Atlantis before SG-1 because the practical effects for the symbiotes freaked me out too much in ep1 so my bf had to gradually get me into it lol. Also apologies for the points being all over the place series-wise I'm going from freshest memories to weakest and I apologise if a lot of my complaints are dumb I do genuinely love the series.
The biggest point I wanted to make is searching through this sub I found a post from liek 4 years ago that resonated so hard with me, shoutout to the person wh osaid they wanted to climb Daniel like a tree, based.
Speaking of: the whole glasses on-glasses off Daniel was jarring, does his eyesight just get magically better and then not or are the glasses just to make scenes hotter? Also how many times does this man need to ascend? Jesus.
I gotta admit, it REALLY weirded me out, the whole symbiote thing at first, especially calling Teal'c symbiote at first "Junior" like.. maybe I'm a bit terminally online but the amount of horrific MPreg art I've had to see of other fandoms it really weirded me out. I'm glad Tretonin became a thing.
Also another thing that seemed to occur a lot was peoples wives getting stolen by other men, like probably the hardest thing for someone to go through, very rude, none of those good boys deserved to be cuckolded like that.
Mitchell grew on me, at first I think his writing was really weak but he became one of my favorites (i'd climb him like a tree too), I liked his demeanor and I wish he got to show more of him flying jets around. Vala was fun but I really don't know how they could just accept the apology of a woman who tried to steal a US space battleship and grope all over Daniel when he clearly wasn't into it. Little weird to write him into being into her later on but I guess I'm just happy he got to heal and have closure about his (ex?)-wife.
Tok'ra sucked. Hated them. All they ever did was screw over SG-1 and use them and they kept claiming they were homies. Nah they basically said 'fuck you you're untrustworthy even though you let us slurp up Carters dad and saved our asses including one of our queens' and the big fuck you of being completely absent during the Ori season.
I actually liked the Ori as a villain, I hated Adrea though she was just.. weird, why hot mommy leading a bunch of old magic dudes? Why didn't we use the anti-prior devices more? Why did SG-1 just actively get fucked at every turn? WHY DIDNT WE SHOOT ADREA WHEN THE BIG OLD DRAGON WAS COMING SHE WAS POWERLESS HELLO?
Also during the movies I got really excited about the Achilles being the boat even if it's... a boat. He's just my favorite mythology guy. I also cried every time Daniel got hurt or sad in the movies and wanted to give up, Michael Shanks is a awesome actor. Also I'm in the camp of liking Ark of Truth (dumb weapon but still) more than Continuum, maybe because Continuum ending meant no more fun space friends :(
EDIT EDIT EDIT: I JUST REMEMBERED PETE. WHO THE FUCK IS PETE. WHY IS HE SUDDENLY CARTERS BF. WHY IS HE SO WEIRD. WHY IS HE HERE. YUCK YUCK YUCK #SAYNOTOPETE im so glad she noped out of being with that fucking WEIRDO who we just decided to tel leverything about the stargate program to because he got in a shootout like?? no?? stop??
also the fraiser dying episode goes hard i loved it i missed her so much but i loved it the new doctor thats landry's daughter? fuck her rude bitch i bet she doesn't even give out lollipops she just calls you fat and to "lose weight, fatty" :(
Also shoutout to the naked space flower planet episode it was so good I loved how weird it was.
Extra Bonus thoughts: Rodney McKay is incredible and funny as hell in Atlantis and I hated how the kept being racist / fucking over the one Wraith literally giving their "we're gonna make you un-suckables now" treatment a try, and how the ending was just driving off in a convertible to some rad music? Okay that was kinda based
Extra Extra bonus, I just watched Universe first episode last night. A few takeaways other than how sad this shit is trying to be.

I don't even remember his name but are you seriously going to put the supposed (I think) self-insert protag in a fucking "YOU ARE HERE" shirt to really drive the point home? CAN I REALLY JUST PLAY VIDEOGAMES TO BECOME PART OF THE STARGATE TEAM? WHAT
That sex scene jumpscared me I literally covered my face until it was over
no eye candy so far character wise 0/10 except for our old homies showing up
i'm not gonna cry over a politician dying no matter how sad you try to paint it lol

ANYWAY thanks for listening to my incoherent ramblings of my thoughts of the Stargate shows as a new fan I love my space friends and I hope they are having an incredible space life THANKS heres a real reaction of me takin all the stargate content i can get i miss my space friends

hello fellow soaders, I haven't seen too much discussion on here about this book. I unfortunately missed the signing in nyc because I was out of state on vacation so bummed about that. Just picked the book up on Sunday when I returned and finished it a few minutes ago so EXTREMELY fresh on my mind.
First, i'd love to hear everyone's thoughts who read it. I'm of course going to be biased because System was such a big part of growing up for me so it is ingrained in my life story. I read cool gardens when it was first released, bought serart the day it released. I own every SOB album, johns album, I even remember the shavo rza project so I'm a SUPER FAN. seen them 5 or 6 times live dating back to the toxicity era. for that reason there's going to be deep bias. I recognize that and would love to see other opinions who perhaps are not as biased, more casual etc.
nonetheless, I have not read many rock memoirs, only this and the maynard james keenan memoir as system and tool are my two favorite bands of all time. while their life stories were drastically different, i enjoyed them both as both have incredibly creative outlooks on life. without diving too much into a comparison, here's what I loved about down with the system
Serj has always had a way with words, though i'm sure there were ghostwriters, editors etc, this is a man who has been comfortable writing (think understanding oil) for decades, so without knowing how much of a hand ghostwriters had in this project, his fingerprint is unmistakably all over it. there is a certain flow and lyricism to the writing itself that one would expect from serj. It is funny, silly, smart and honest. It is well written which is really a necessity for a good book.
the historical deep dive into the armenian genocide really took me back to my university studies on the holocaust. truly the pain and horror felt by his grandparents and the armenian people in that era recounted in such detail was difficult to read, but really important. it helped slow down my own life, take a deep breath and really appreciate the air. I forced myself to learn about the armenian genocide as a young teen after being exposed to SOAD, but hearing the tale so personally was harrowing and deeply impacting. as a student of history, geopolitics, a father and a Catholic, it was gripping. on the basis of that alone I can recommend the book.
as an artist myself, so much of serj's journey resonated with me. the way art awakens something in you. the power of art for arts sake. the contentedness one strives to feel regardless of something being understood, demanded, monetized, not demanded, not understood etc it spoke so much to me. being unapologetic in making music regardless if anyone wants to hear it. i love that.
unlike mjks memoir which did not touch much on music, serj gave really deep dives into inspirations for particular songs (deer dance, chop suey!, war, bounce, prison song)., albums, lyrics, the songwriting process and a more intimate look at the band dynamic through his eyes. In particular, the background to the lyrics of toxicity added an entirely new layer of awesomeness to that song. I have a really in depth breakdown on the lyrics to that song somewhere on this subreddit, and it was very satisfying personally to see how close I was flying to the target, but also to see the inspiration for the song, where serj came up with it and the mindset he was in when he wrote it.
i can imagine if i were the rest of the band, i would be irritated with serj at how they were depicted. there is a clear indication that the band places the band at the center of their respective universes and they are extremely rigid creatively. at times they are depicted as sneaky, petty, profit-driven and at times irrational. i can only imagine daron and the rest of the crew probably have some specific stories to share about how they think serj is a jerkoff too, but there is def. some personal tension that anyone can clearly read in this book despite the band insisting the hold up has been creative all of these years.
i am glad though he paid specific respect to daron. in many ways it was satisfying to see serj acknowledge that daron always puts the music first and that he is obsessed to a degree with the music and doing what he feels is best for the music. as a fan of the music, i really appreciate that because clearly that has lead to incredible moments in the catalog.
i continue to be one of the hold outs on this subreddit that hopes these guys compromise with one another and give us one last legendary album. after reading this book, it only reaffirms what we've all been saying - it seems unlikely. in order for it to happen, serj will need to be allowed to bring more songs. that seems to be the only way and he will have to do more shows than he would like. those seem like two non-starters.
according to serj - daron seems to see serj writing more for the band as an attack on his ability as a songwriter. john sees that as upending the way they've always done things. on the flipside, it seems that the two most recent songs were extremely micromanaged by daron which does not bode well for the type of artistic freedom serj is clearly seeking and also in some ways hurt the songs imo at least (speaking specifically on how high up in the volume mix daron was and how prominent his vocals played).
it seems like the band is on the cusp any minute of announcing that they will no longer play together, and yet serj ropes the fans back in saying that he really enjoyed 2023 sick new world. as a fan begging for new music it was a roller coaster.
Nonetheless, I'm sorry my thoughts are all over the place, I'm just giving my immediate reaction so it's all very raw and I haven't reflected on it much. I'd love to discuss with anyone but overall, I genuinely enjoyed the book.

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

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.

William was just about to scoop another mouthful of porridge and berries into his mouth when someone scooted into the seat next to him.
“Marline.” He inclined his head before returning to breakfast.
A breakfast that, prior to his teammate’s arrival, had been blissfully free of noise or interruption.
Which made sense given that the ‘rise and shine’ bell wasn’t going to ring for another thirty minutes or so. To that end, the cafeteria was near empty, but for a few servants flitting around the place as they set tables or partook of their own breakfasts.
Breakfasts that were something of a step down from what was normally served at these tables, given that the usual heaped piles of hot sausages, crisp bacon and hearty eggs were still being prepared in the kitchens.
Still, on this occasion, that was fine by William. Sure, the main reason he’d told his team to rise a little earlier than normal was to allow them to dine in peace without being harassed by the rest of the rumour hungry student body, but it was also useful in that it somewhat limited some of his more… difficult teammate’s breakfast options.
“William,” the dark elf hissed as she leaned down. “We have a problem.”
Despite his early morning lethargy, those words managed to send something akin to a shiver up his spine.
“What!? What’s the problem?” he asked as he whirled around, remembering only at the last minute to keep his voice down.
Sure, the cafeteria was relatively empty of both staff and students, but it hadn’t escaped his notice that pretty much all of them had had their eyes on him since he sat down.
“What do you mean, ‘what’s the problem?’” Marline whispered furiously into his ear. “The fucking alchemy lab blew up last night.”
“Oh, that.” She’d gotten him all worked up for nothing. “Someone’s enchantment probably went awry after being kept in storage too long.”
That was a lie and they both knew it. He’d explained to Marline in great detail why trying to gain access to his storage room was a poor idea without him present. To that end, it was obvious that someone had attempted just that.
As such, the old alchemy building was now a smouldering ruin, with dozens of academy guards and at least one member of the palace guard sifting through the rubble when he walked past.
Or at least, they’d been watching over a dozen menial servants as they sifted through the rubble.
Still, no one had been too alarmed by it. It was hardly the first time the building had been destroyed after all.
Alchemy was by its nature a fairly dangerous art.
A form of homeopathic magic that attempted to imbue objects with magical abilities by combining them with conceptually similar items, it tended to both be prohibitively expensive and notoriously unreliable.
Left eyes from forty-year-old salamanders didn’t grow on trees after all. Nor testicles from albino bulls in heat. And that was the kind of specificity one needed to create a half-decent stamina potion.
There was a reason that alchemy was gradually being phased out in favour of the slower but more reliable art of enchanting.
“Yes, very unfortunate,” Marline said through gritted teeth. “But what about ‘our’ ingredients that were being kept in the building. It might be… dangerous of someone stumbled across them in the rubble.”
Dangerous? Gunpower couldn’t explode more than…
“Oh, you’re talking about the gift we were holding for your family?” He realized.
“Yes!”
“Why didn’t you check last night?” he asked.
“...I tend to wear earplugs when I sleep,” Marline admitted reluctantly. “Given… Verity.”
William glanced towards the young woman’s long elven ears and thought about their orcish teammate’s tendency to snore like she was trying to wake the dead. The inner walls of their dorm weren’t particularly thick and Marline’s room was right next to the other girl’s.
Yeah, he could see why she might have invested in some hearing protection.
A decent set of earplugs wouldn’t drown out the noise of the morning bell, but they’d be more than capable of drowning out the distant whumph of an alchemy lab going up on the opposite side of the campus.
He momentarily wondered if the noise had caused any of his other teammates to get up, before dismissing the idea.
Strange noises in the middle of the night were far from unusual in a military academy and usually best ignored unless you had a very good reason to think they might involve you.
“Well, it’s not a problem,” he whispered. “I moved it last night before heading back to the dorm.”
The look of relief on the dark elf’s face was palpable, before it gave way to confusion. “Why?”
He shrugged. “For the same reason I booby-trapped the storage room in the first place. Once it got out that I had a mithril core – and might have had something to do with Al’Hundra’s death, well it seemed like there was a decent chance someone might go snooping around places I might want to hide something.”
And the alchemy lab was just about the first place someone would think of right after their team’s dorm room.
Fortunately for him, there were a few places that were quite impractical for hiding something long-term, but pretty ideal in the short term.
And just so long as Marline’s aunts arrived before next Welday, the mithril core would be safe.
Though as he gazed down at the bowl of porridge in front of him, he found his appetite wasn’t quite what it had been just a few moments ago.
“So where’d you hide it?” Marline asked excitedly, clearly relieved that her family’s future wasn’t currently buried in rubble.
William paused as he considered how to answer that question. Something his teammate was quick to notice.
“William,” she prompted. “Where’s my family’s core?”
He gazed down at his bowl, still thinking.
“William!” she shouted as best she could while still whispering.
“The safest place I could think of. Somewhere it’d be covered completely and no one would voluntarily look.”
“Voluntarily?” Marline said. “Covered?”
Credit where credit was due, no one had ever accused his teammate of being slow on the uptake. At least, where politics wasn’t concerned. So it was that it wasn’t long before he witnessed her expression morph from confusion to horror… to rage.
“You buried my family’s mithril core in the latrines?!” she hissed.
William scratched his chin awkwardly as he avoided her furious gaze. “More like dropped. I didn’t need to bury it because it sank on its own. Which is good given I wasn’t quite sure of the relative buoyancy of mithril in… well… you know.”
In his defence, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Indeed, if one were to be purely objective about the whole thing, it still was. The core was safely hidden at the bottom of one of the lesser used latrine pits. The bottom mounted… storage vats of which were pulled out and emptied into the bay once a week.
It was a fairly old fashioned system, given the existence of indoor plumbing across the rest of the academy. Indeed, he suspected the latrines were only kept around to serve as a form of punishment duty for any cadets that happened to royally piss off their instructors.
“They’ll be safe there until Welday,” William argued weakly. “At which point your aunts can collect them without anyone being the wiser.”
“Collect them from the latrine’s storage vats!” Marline hissed, slamming her head into the table. “Ancestors, the future of our house is now literally swimming in shit.”
Gingerly, William moved to pat the dark elf on the back. “Ah, but at least it’s safe.”
Once more he glanced away as two silver eyes peeked out angrily from between the girl’s arms.
Needless to say, he was rather glad for the eventual arrival of the rest of their team – even if Bonnlyn chose to complain at length about the fact that she was going to be forced to dine on ‘twigs and berries’ – as opposed to the gut busting pile of vaguely food shaped grease she normally chose to partake of in a morning.
Still, at least Marline had stopped glaring at him by the time they’d all finished eating – escaping just before the first of their fellow cadets piled noisily into the cafeteria.

It was actually rather amusing, that for all that the coming match had obvious implications for the country as a whole, in theory it was simply another practice match between two groups of cadets.
To that end, there was no great ceremony as the members of Team Seven made their way through the double doors leading to the Floats. There, as per usual, stood the members of the opposing team along with an Instructor from a ‘neutral’ house.
Never mind that the great bleachers to each side of the faux-ships were filled with eager spectators when they were normally all-but bare. Or that not one of the viewing orbs bolted to the gantries overhead was bereft of the ambient glow that signified they were in use.
Half the noble houses in the country were likely watching the events that were about to unfold through those crystalline orbs. Though William had to wonder if the Queen was one of them or if she was present in person, simply hidden behind whatever magic she used to render herself and her guards invisible.
Still, as he gazed upon the spectacle around them, William couldn’t help but be reminded of just how impressive a construction the Floats were, the stadium sized building hosting not just the ships that made up the field, but room for spectators, viewing orbs, staff and a myriad other smaller facilities that each worked to allow the practice matches to occur.
With that in mind, one notable absence from the building’s usual occupants was hard to miss.
“Where are all the sailors and marines?” Olzenya asked.
“I don’t know,” William said as they continued walking towards Tala and her team. “Maybe they’re already onboard?”
He doubted it though. He’d have been able to see people moving about inside the great vessels or marching across the deck.
No, something was amiss here.
Still, he’d known there was a possibility of House Blackstone attempting something. And the absence of the Float’s usual staff was likely to be related.
Nothing for it now, he thought. Whatever they’ve done can’t be too overt.
The Principal of the Academy might have been in New Haven’s pocket – which made her an ally of House Blackstone – but even her power had limits with the Crown and half the country watching.
“Ma’am,” William said as he came to a stop before the Instructor from House Summerfield. “Team Seven reporting.”
Instructor Halfin, ironically the woman who’d first introduced his team to the floats glowered at him.
“I don’t like this,” she said without preamble, her voice raised loudly enough that it was clear she was aiming her words not just at him, but Tala and the rest of the world besides. “The Academy and the Floats are supposed to be a training environment for the future leadership of the nation as a whole. Not a pissing ground for idiotic adolescents.”
“I didn’t choose the venue, ma’am.” Even as she spoke, Tala’s gaze stayed on William.
“And I didn’t ask your opinion, cadet.” Halfin’s words were biting as she turned towards the third-year. “The only opinion that matters here is mine. Not yours. Not his. Not your mummy’s. And not the rest of these upjumped cretins.”
Her hand flew out to encompass the veritable circus that were the stands. “So, with that in mind you can believe me when I say that my only concern is getting through this farce as efficiently and as fairly as possible. I don’t give a shit about what’s on the line or who doesn’t want to marry who. All that matters to me is whether or not you have wax or paint on your breastplate or enough harpy-venom in your system to put you down for the count.”
Both Tala’s and William’s eyes widened a little at that.
“Wax, ma’am? Paint?” Tala said.
The older woman grunted. “You heard me, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter. Let it be known I’m not happy about it. Nor about the fact that half the sailors on base have apparently come down with the shits.”
Ah, so that was why the float’s usual crew was missing. Clearly the work of House Blackstone, though to what end William was yet unsure.
Are they trying to delay the match? He thought.
That wouldn’t be ideal for a number of reasons – most of which centred around it giving House Blackstone more time to sabotage him and his team. There’d been a damn good reason he chose to have their match literally a day after he challenged her.
“This has naturally affected my ability to run a normal Float match. Normally that would be grounds for delaying this whole farce,” Halfin continued, tone darkening as she spoke the next few words. “But it has been ‘suggested’ to me by a number of parties that doing so would be impractical. So, we shall instead be making use of one of the scenarios available to us that does not require the use of regular crewmembers.”
She gestured towards the area between the two faux ships, the football field sized stretch of land normally empty but for a few overhead nets designed to catch falling cadets.
That wasn’t the case today. Instead, the area had been filled with a tangled mess of pre-fabricated structures and various other bits of paraphernalia.
“Airship down,” the Instructor said, and after a moment’s observation, William realized that the stretch of land really did look like what you might have seen if an airship crashed into it.
Assuming said airship crashed with enough force to scatter its component parts around rather than remain as a fairly battered single object. Which, given the heights said ships could drop from, wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
“Our third year cadets will be familiar with this scenario, but I will explain it briefly for our first years.” Again, there was no mistaking just how unhappy Halfin was with all of this. “In short, an allied or enemy airship has crashed in neutral territory. Both sides of the conflict have dispatched a mage strike team to search the wreckage for the ship’s core so as to deny it to the enemy. Unfortunately, neither side can effectively search said wreckage until the other strike team has been completely eliminated.”
Halfin’s gaze turned towards his team. “To clarify, do not let the flavor text of this scenario fool you. There is no core within the wreckage in this scenario. The only way to win is to completely eliminate the opposing team.”
Over the woman’s shoulder, William didn’t miss the small smile that flitted across his fiancee’s features.
Ah, so that’s her game, he thought.
Oh, he didn’t doubt she would have preferred this whole engagement be delayed so as to allow her more time to stack the deck, but on short notice simply changing the scenario to this still helped her.
Theoretically.
It reduced the number of ‘wild card’ factors that might benefit him or his team. No crew members. No orbs to collect. Just a straight up fight between the two teams.
Sure, said wild cards could have just as easily worked in Tala’s favour, but given the skill disparity between the two groups, it benefited her to reduce the number of random vectors present in the coming fight.
Plus, it also had his team attempting to navigate an unfamiliar scenario.
Well played, he thought.
“Any issue with that, cadets?” Halfin said as she finished her explanation.
“None at all,” William said before the rest of his team could interrupt, noting the small pout of disappointment that flitted across Tala’s face.
She’d probably wanted him to kick up a fuss and force the match to be delayed for the reasons he’d thought of before.
Alas, she wasn’t that lucky.
No, for better or for worse this was happening here and now.
Sure, it wasn’t an ideal scenario, but he could make it work for him. It simply required him to pull out another trick that he’d been hoping to hold onto for just a little while longer.
Amusingly, Halfin also looked a little disappointed. The woman had probably wanted the match delayed on principle. It was clear both his new weapon and Tala’s interference rubbed her the wrong way.
Though as he had the thought, he was pleasantly surprised to see there was at least one woman in the academy who placed her duty as an educator and impartial judge above politics.
Indeed, if she had a reputation for such, that was likely part of the reason why she’d been selected for this match as a compromise between the Crown and the Blackstones.
“Well, if that’s all, then you’ve got ten minutes to check out your weapons and get to your starting positions.” Halfin grunted, before she seemed to remember something. “And I suppose I’ll take possession of the ‘bet’ now.”
There was no missing the disdain in the woman’s voice, which actually made William feel a bit better as he gestured over to Verity.
Unslinging the backpack she’d carried all the way over, the girl still looked more than a little awed as she unveiled the glowing metal orb. It was actually a little amusing, the mixture of relief and reluctance that crossed her features as she handed it over to the Instructor.
An instructor who was apparently not entirely carved from stone, as she somewhat reverently accepted the object.
Even the distant stands hushed down a bit as the bowling ball sized core changed hands.
Of course, it was barely a second before the moment was interrupted.
“Of course you’d have the orc carry it,” Tala grunted, her tone resigned.
Verity flinched back at the words and every other member of his team – including Olzenya leaned forward to argue – but William forestalled them all with a simple raised hand.
“Of course I did,” he said simply. “She’s a valuable member of my team and I trust her. Far more than certain other individuals present.”
A core could also be deceptively heavy despite its ability to produce lighter than air aether and he had no real desire to carry it all the way across campus. It also went unsaid that Verity was best equipped to intercept any… opportunistic thieves.
Indeed, he’d have paid to see some enterprising moron attempt to wrestle the bag holding the core off his orcish teammate on the walk over here.
It hadn’t happened of course, the possibility had always been an outlier at best, but given the stakes it had seemed better to err on the side of caution.
…It had also been amusing to see the myriad emotions that had flashed across the faces of most of the team when he quite casually tossed the bag holding the core to the orc. One would almost think he’d just thrown a baby at her.
Indeed, the only one who’d not been affected had been Marline, who’d just looked quietly resigned.
Which was still fun in its own way.
It was a little childish perhaps coming from a man ‘his age’, but that same age was what gave him the experience to know that sometimes life was about being a little silly and enjoying the small things.
And what better silly fun was there than teasing a bunch of far too serious kids by throwing around a basically indestructible ball of magical space metal?
Of course, given the flash of irritation that shot across Tala’s face, it was clear she thought his smile was an accompaniment to his taunt.
However, before she could say anything, Halfin scooped up the core. “Well, I’ll be holding onto this until the match is over. At which point I shall hand it to whomever I deem to be the victor.” For just a moment, her expression softened. “You can rest assured, both of you, that I shan’t let it out of my sight or off my person for the duration of the match. This I swear – even if I’m irritated at this whole situation.”
William and Tala both nodded, accepting the solemness of the woman’s impromptu oath.
“Alright,” she said, slinging the thing under her arm as she returned to her previous acerbic personality. “You’ve got ten minutes to collect your weapons and be at your designated spots for the beginning of the match. Anyone not in the correct place at the correct time will be considered eliminated for the purposes of this match. Dismissed.”
With her bit said, she strode away, no doubt up to the judges tower - which had an eagle’s eye view of the entire arena.
Leaving two teams of rather combative cadets behind.
Ten minutes was more than enough time to collect their gear, so William allowed himself a few seconds to simply gaze at Tala’s team.
“Finally realizing how outclassed you are, William?” Tala sneered.
It was funny, normally that kind of open disdain was beneath her. Sure, she’d yelled at him before, but to his mind that was more of an expression of frustration than animosity.
Here and now though?
She hated him.
And he revelled in it.
Not because he hated her. He didn’t. Even if they were enemies. At worst he’d say he pitied her for her ignorance and worldview.
Much like him and his otherworldly views, she was a product of her environment.
She wasn’t evil. At least not in an intentional sense. Indeed, by the standards of this world she was actually a good person.
Loyal. Dutiful. Hardworking.
Simply in service to an institution that he abhorred.
With that in mind, the reason why he relished in her disdain was simple.
It meant that he was now worthy of it in her mind. No longer an irritating non-factor that refused to play along, his actions now had consequences.
He’d earned her animosity honestly.
He was a factor. A person.
It felt good.
“Just counting the numbers,” he said. “Some part of me wondered if you might be a team member or two short.”
Indeed, the fact that he’d hoped for the murder of a young man or woman last night was something he counted amongst the least of his sins. There’d be a great many more of those to come.
Still, ignorant of his thoughts, the girl stiffened, all but confirming his suspicions as her mind no doubt turned towards last night’s explosion.
It had been her people who’d tried to raid his alchemy storage room – though it seemed she’d not been so foolish as to send anyone on her team to accomplish the job. In all likelihood the unfortunate fools who’d run afoul of his trap had likely been little more than paid off servants or some other kind of catspaw.
Irrelevant in the scheme of things ultimately and chosen for that very reason. Unfortunate, but hoping that his enemy would be a teammate or two down had ever been a long shot.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Tala said. “My teammates are all ready and eager to serve not only me, but to honour their family names as well through that service. Though I know that’s a concept most alien to you.”
Around her, four other members of the girls team stood up a little straight, animosity burning in their gaze as they silently regarded his team with disdain.
Disdain his own team was quite happy to level back – if only out of loyalty to him.
Still, it was funny; Tala was more right than she knew. The values of this world were in many ways alien to him despite having lived here for nearly two decades.
“I suppose you’re right,” he chuckled. “To that end, I’ll see you in the arena.”
He took a moment to enjoy the look of puzzlement on his foe’s face at his placid rejoinder, before he strode away, his team falling in behind him.
Though as he walked, he made sure to turn to each of them. “Make sure to double check all of our equipment. If Tala was able to give half the Float staff food poisoning last night, I wouldn’t put it past her to be able to tamper with our equipment.”
Each of the girls nodded seriously at his words, no doubt leery of discovering a razor blade or some other such implement in one of their boots. Or that their bolt-bow had a faulty intake valve.
Indeed, the only piece of equipment William could theoretically have been sure of was that which he was currently wearing and the spell-bolts that would have been delivered clandestinely at the last minute by either Griffith or a palace guard.
And even then, what the fuck is this about wax and paint rather than rubber? He thought.
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