25(M) This condition has taken a toll on the way I live, breathe and feel. I was 8 when I moved to nyc from Africa all I ever wanted was to be someone who can make a difference for my family, my loved ones and myself. I was working towards that before all of this happed and now I can’t even afford to get a haircut. The ocd was so intense that I even threw out my whole living room set( sounds stupid) I get so jittery and antsy and inpatient and it bothers me so much. I went from being the person you can turn to, to the useless person. My delusions and paranoia are there most of the time. I feel like my family and loved ones did something to me…and I have acted out of it. I have insulted my mother and my father … I have hurt my sister , I have disappointed my best friend and mostly my self . I was never like that. I am a lover. This hurts all I feel is severe anxiety, paranoia, fear, depression, pressure, my ringing ears,Ear fullness. As my birthday approaches I wish it was just over. Everybody I know is doing something, living , thriving and me I’m stuck , never been in a relationship, never won anything, never been truly happy and now this . It’s been 3 years and I can’t picture my future self. As my birthday approaches I can’t help but feel like I don’t want to be here anymore.

This will probably end up being longer than I want, but there’s so much to it. And I’m questioning a lot of my life right now as I recently started believing my dad and stepmom have very narcissistic tendencies.
My younger childhood seemed “normal” and nothing out of the ordinary. Things started going downhill when I was in 5th-6th grade when I noticed my parents fighting bad. Once my dad moved out and my mom got a restraining order for awhile. But I never knew why as I only ever heard them yelling. In jr high, my dad’s anger came out full force. He could clear a counter with one arm sweep and the house was never clean enough. He once slapped me so hard across the face my body slammed into the wall. But he justified it because I had hit my younger brother and I deserved it. So I believed it was my fault.
Things got worse and I was hearing my dad hitting/pushing my mom around in their bedroom on occasion and we did eventually go to a battered woman’s shelter (my mom and myself with my two brothers) for a month and didn’t move back in with my dad. By the time I was a freshman in high school (many scary fights and even kidnapping threats later) my parents were divorced. I didn’t spend a lot of time with my dad as he had gotten a bit scary in his anger and I didn’t want to be around him. A few months after the divorce, my dad met a woman who seemed nice and had young kids from a previous marriage. So I started spending a little more time with my dad just to spend time with her. They both started sitting me down and describing these horrible things my mom had done. Cheated on my dad for years, thought my youngest brother wasn’t even his which caused him to choose to have a vasectomy, she had an abortion, and was partying and doing drugs. After a couple months hearing this over and over, I started believing it. And my mom had a couple boyfriends off and on and did drink/sleep with them sometimes. So I thought maybe they were right. (I was only 15) So I ended up moving in with my dad who did eventually marry that woman. They continued to share the awful things my mom did which got worse as my mom quit trying to contact myself and my brothers. Through my whole high school, I only saw my mom on occasion because she would “move in the middle of the night and not tell anyone where she was going.” They also told us on a regular basis that any contact with her physically would cause demons to come into our house. And those “demonic” episodes were scary and very real. So we continued to believe she was “evil”.
My stepmom hit me on multiple occasions when I didn’t “comply” with what clothes or hairstyles she and my dad wanted me to wear or sing the songs they picked. (I was a singer and performed small concerts). I was slapped, pushed onto my bed, and once thrown over her shoulder and landed on the floor next to the toilet in my bathroom. She also would tell me often how much I looked like my mom, but it was said with disgust and meant to be an insult. So stepmom would “help” me pick hairstyles that made me look more like her.
I ended up so hurt and devastated over the abandonment from my mom that I was a cutter and attempted to unalive myself. I had severe depression and was on meds for years. They blamed it on my mom as they believed she had bipolar and was delusional and I must take after her.
When I graduated high school, I was moved out of my bedroom within a day (stayed in a corner of the basement) and was told I would be leaving for college on my own. I didn’t need family moving me in as I was an adult now. And I was not allowed to ask for help in any way during college.
But we also had fun times. Lots of family vacations like Disneyland and other theme parks, lots of camping, went to the Grand Canyon and Mt Rushmore. They would have huge movie parties and slumber parties for the high school kids and all my friends. Even allowed alcohol at the house. My stepmom was always there for all my friends if they had issues. So everyone absolutely adored my “amazing parents”. So sometimes I feel bad thinking such bad things after so many “good” times.
When I was in my 30’s, my dad went through an episode where he was completely delusional (thought the government was against him and even went walking down the interstate naked once) and I watched him treat and talk about my stepmom the exact same way he was with my mom. He was eventually diagnosed with severe bipolar.
After talking with my mom (we had slowly been building up our relationship again) and some other outside family members, I found out everything was a lie. My mom never cheated, never had an abortion, never did drugs, and most of all, never abandoned us. She would call all the time and would be told by my step mom (who always answered the phone) that we didn't want anything to do with her. On the flip-side we were told our mom never called or wanted anything to do with us.
As an adult and even married, I’ve dealt with things that a friend of mine said is considered psychological abuse as well. Like when my husband had his eye removed due to cancer and I couldn’t stomach changing out the bandages and had a local emt come over and help. I was told by my stepmom that I was a bad wife and didn’t really love my husband. “A good wife would be able to change those bandages”.
These things are never allowed to be talked about. The past must stay in the past. And if I bring anything up, I’m either teased about the things I used to do or the “way I was” or told that I was such a difficult teenager to raise, they had to be tough on me.
I could go into so much more detail, but then it would be a book, not a post. My mom and I are very close now and I’m trying to decide how much contact to have with my dad and stepmom. I feel awful going no-contact, but it’s an emotional roller coaster when we visit as it’s made known I’m not the favorite child and my son is not a favorite grandchild.

This idea came to me in college and I've sort of played around with it over the years. I would appreciate any constructive criticism, especially focused on the prose and characters. This would be the introductory chapter of one of the main characters, Karl Klug, who is an important noble in his country. I hope you enjoy!
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KARL 1
Three men stood beneath a great oak branch, hands bound and nooses pulled tight around their necks. The branches connected to a mighty tree, old as the mountains themselves. The men were all silent, as were the other corpses gently swinging in the morning breeze. The air was still cold from the dew, not yet banished by the still rising sun.
“If you have anything left to say, now would be the time.” Karl Klug, Lord of the Wald said as he eyed them with disgust from the back of his chestnut horse destrier. He sat tall in the saddle, his close cropped brown hair and clean shaven face a far cry from the ragged appearance of the condemned. His heavy, black, woolen cloak was pulled tight, the hood up to block out the wind. Under the cloak he wore a simple brown doublet, with a crest bearing the black tree on a green field that was the sigil of his house. Karl always made sure to represent House Klug when acting as Lord, as was his duty.
These men were thieves, rapists, and murderers. They attacked travelers on the roads of the Wald, and it was Karl’s duty, as Duke of the Wald and Lawspeaker to the King, to keep those roads safe. The law demanded only one punishment for their transgressions. Their fate would serve as a warning to other would-be bandits.
The first man, a stern face and hard eyes, said nothing, but spat on the ground. The second man, fat and whimpering, managed to speak out in between choked sobs “Please m’lord. Mercy! They made me do it!”
The last man, a boy no older than fifteen, barked at him to be quiet. “We’re done for Ozzy. Go to the Wainman with some dignity, would you?” Such bravery in one so young. What could he have become if he followed a different path?
With that, Karl nodded to Jorivs, his household Resolver, who pulled hard on the ropes, them each one by one into the air, sending them kicking and choking into the Beyond. The second one, Ozzy, screamed and begged for his mother before the rope cut him off. Jorivs tied the final line off to a stake, while Wolter, his barber-surgeon companion, scribbled something down in a book. “They go to their doom in all different spirits, yet they all dance the hangman’s jig just the same.” He said as he turned a page.
“Amazing the lessons they teach at Spierpont.” Jorvis chuckled as the last pair of legs stopped kicking. “Shame Lemba couldn’t join us.”
“The Elf has seen his fair share of death. Let him enjoy his peace.”
“I only jest, my lord.” Jorvis said as he took a sip from his canteen. He motioned for Wolter to take a drink, but the older man was too busy furiously scribbling in his notebook to notice.
Karl looked to the east. The dawn was still cresting the horizon. “I’m off to the woods. I will not be disturbed.” Matilda and the children will still be sleeping. Best not to wake them with my return.
His pages nodded and replied in unison “Yes my lord.” By Karl’s standing order, Jorvis was peeling the boots of the dead men, better they should shoe a pauper than rot on the condemned. Wolter sketched the hanging men in his book, taking special care to note the lolling tongues and soiled breeches. Jorvis had the boots in a loose pile when he pulled a knife and a small pouch from his belt. “The eyes,my lord?”
He nodded grimly. “Hain will have his due.” Jorvis took a small stool and set to work, all six organs removed in a few quick flashes of the blade. Jorvis placed the grim package in its usual place on Baldur, Karl’s horse. With the bloody sack tied to his saddle, Karl rode off towards the thick forest nearby, a page in tow to hold his horse.
The page started to speak, and then stopped himself. He was a small boy, ten or eleven at the most. He had been to several executions before and not once had he been troubled by the sight of death.
Karl noticed the indecisive boy and helped him along.
“Something bothering you, Wiglaf?”
“The” came a squeak. Wiglaf cleared his throat and tried again. “The Resolver grumbles, lord. He grumbles that it would be easier to take the eyes before hanging the condemned.” He said meekly
“I know he grumbles. I know. But this is the way things are to be done. Taking their eyes before they hang is not the punishment for their crime. These men had their trial, and I sentenced them to die, not to be tortured. Do you understand, Wiglaf?”
“Aye, my lord. I understand.” Wiglaf nodded.
Wiglaf. So eager to learn but so nervous to offend. I’ll talk to his father the next time we meet.
This was the first time in months he had a chance to take in the forest. The influx in banditry in the past year had been a great source of woe not only to Karl, but to the Waldish people as a whole. They had enough to be fearful of without their fellow man adding to their problems. It had kept Karl up many nights, as he racked his brain trying to figure out the cause.
He had built roads, sick houses, held fairs, endorsed the Bard’s college, done all in his power to keep the people happy and content and quiet, and yet, there were some who still turned to crime. Why? No. Not now. Not here. Karl decided that he needed to rest his mind from constant affairs of state, and allow himself to relax before he made his offering.
They reached a clearing, and Karl dismounted. “Hitch up Baldur and rub him down. Have something to eat from my pack if you get hungry. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone this time.” The page nodded. Wiglaf, a good lad, if a bit timid at times. Weather had concealed his typical path into the great forest, but muscle memory lead his way.
He enjoyed his solitary walks in the woods, it gave him a chance to forget the woes of rulership, the frustrations of fatherhood, and the horrible curse that befell his bloodline. Now that things had quieted down with the bandits, Karl hoped he might have more time to be a husband to his wife, Matilda, and a father to their children. His three children, though nearly adults themselves, still tended to make a commotion. What they need is a firm hand. Their mother will spoil them rotten if she has her way. Karl laughed to himself. She always gets her way.
His feet knew where he was going, even if his mind did not. He always returned to the same place, no matter what direction he turned. Are the woods themselves magic, or just the creatures that inhabit it? He wondered as he found the well worn dirt path covered by a tunnel of tree limbs. The branches must have kept this clear from storms after all.
Few who entered the Wald came back alive, save for the Elves and their slaves, who usually came out in one piece. Most who walked too far past the tree line simply vanished. There were rumors, of course. Even his own grandfather had claimed that he was, in fact, the same Helm Klug that had vanished without a trace in the winter of 542. He had fallen through a tree hollow and into the myth shrouded realm of Cunnan, where time flows differently, or so the stories go. As such, though ninety-five years had passed from the time of the vanishing, Helm had only aged ten years or so.
Karl’s realm was a dangerous one, even without the recent rise of the highwaymen. To an outsider, walking alone in the duchy of the Wald was like strolling past a dark alley with coins jingling loudly. To Karl Klug, Lord of the Wald, it was like walking into his own bedroom. He had grown up here, he knew that danger lurked behind every tree, above every branch, and below every root. Not once had he seen anything like what Grandfather Helm had rambled about. No fairies or witches or traces of Hain. Still, one had to tread carefully here. Even Karl would not dare to venture in some parts of the forest, for an ancient force still had power in the dark parts of Bordrim.
I hope Hain will be pleased with my tribute. To survive here, one had to know when to fight, when to run, and when to submit. Some might call that heretical, going against the word of the church, But that was not something he wished to think about now, not when he was trying to be at peace.
The fresh air cleared his head and refreshed his spirit. Karl took a long, deep breath filling his lungs with the cold morning damp. He knew he would not be distrubed here, as none but the Duke of the Wald may travel to this part of the woodland.
He had been Duke ever since the death of his father when he was just four years old, though he had not ruled in his own right until he was fourteen. In that time, he had learned much from his regents, and his mother, who was far more capable than many made her out to be. She had taught him that most men, however pure their intentions may seem, nearly always had some ulterior motive that they wished to advance. Karl remembered that as his most valuable lesson, and it had assisted him greatly as he came of age. My father’s sycophants did not last long when I ruled in my own right.
The sound of rushing water came to his ear as he walked by the River Cember where his father had drowned. He used to intentionally go out of his way to avoid being near it, but now he barely gave it a second glance. I used to be so afraid of the water, until I understood why Father died. But by then, Mother had the Court Elf Lembe throw me in Sillac Pond. How I thrashed! It didn’t seem so scary after that. Fate is far more terrifying than any danger and far more comforting than any joy. Once you have been through the worst, everything else can be done with ease.
Karl heard a branch snap in the trees to his right, and his hand slipped to the silver coated dagger at his hip. He stood still as the trees around him, slowly moving his eyes from right to left as he looked for the source of the noise. Funny. I was afraid of harmless water for so many years when there were very real threats all around me the entire time. As long as I stay on the path, no beast would dare harm me.
There were no further noises, and judging by the humming of insects and the singing of birds, there was no real threat. Probably a stag or maybe one of Grandfather Helm’s Fae creature having a laugh at my expense. He continued walking for some time, climbing up small, rolling hills and ducking under fallen tree trunks, before reaching a final, gentle incline which led to Hidden Hill. That was where they found his older brother, Jasper, hanging from the tree at the top. That was the day his father had told him about the curse that stalked their family.
He made his way up the slope, as he had countless times before. The top of the hill was clear, save for one tree, planted by Karl’s grandfather Helm upon regaining control of the Wald after decades of Gaunt rule. His family adopted that tree, and made it part of their heraldry. A great black tree, sounded by the green of the forest.
The air seemed to resist being pulled into his lungs now. He had to unclench his teeth, relax his shoulders. He looked down at his fingers. He had scraped away the flesh near the nails on his thumbs and middle digits. How long have I been at it this time? It is difficult to relax when I am surrounded by some many painful reminders of the past. No matter how deep in this forest I walk, I cannot escape the memories that tears at me.
He kept his eyes low. Karl enjoyed seeing the blooming flowers and vibrant weeds that grew along the path he always walked. One particular group of plants caught his eye. A clover patch. The old folks said that in every clover patch, there was one particularly special sprout. And so Karl made a point to look over each and every patch he saw, even if only a passing glance.
What’s this? He said to the tiny green sprout as he crouched down for a closer look. A clover with four leaves. Lucky, lucky. Karl smiled as he plucked the clover and put it in his coin purse. And a good omen too. I know Otto will love this.
Karl continued up the path, and sat beneath the great black tree, looking out onto the castle that stood proud below in the clearing. Grey Hallow, it was called, and it was among the oldest in Bordrim, predating even the great fortresses of the Empire that many great houses now called their own. With two rings of thick, tall walls and towers covering every angle of approach, no enemy had ever successfully stormed the walls. Though a knife in the back is sometimes better than a ram at the gate, as history has proved.
Karl grabbed the now wet sack that Jorvis had provided. He quickly found a small knothole and stuffed the grisly offering side. The Dule clasped his hands together and bowed his head. “Haim, please take this offering that we may know quiet peace.” He sighed. Was Haim even real? Or just another story to make obedient children?
As Karl reclined in the unearthed roots of the black oak, he smiled. *Real or not, offerings to Haim aren’t all terrible.*This was the tree that he had married Matilda under, after he came back from the Siege of Hammerring, the last remaining Imperial stronghold in Bordrim. He had made a fortune by securing the ransoms of important Imperials, bringing House Klug from the embarrassment of near bankruptcy to extreme wealth in a single day. He had spent coins like a drunken gambler blessed with immovable luck that night, and from then on men had begun to say he was the richest man in the kingdom. I don’t know about any of that. But riches aren’t just measured in gold. Karl thought as he ran his fingers along the black bark of the tree.
Searching through the leather pack he took from his saddle, Karl grabbed the cloth that held the dried venison and cheese he had carried along for his breakfast. The castle will just be coming to life now. He thought as the sun began to climb higher in the sky. After he had broken his fast, he pulled a quill, a tightly sealed ink pot, and a piece of parchment from his sack. He began to write.
“Your smile, a joy
Your laugh, a pleasure.
When we are together,
Troubles are light as a feather.”
Karl would have a servant hide that among Matilda’s things, where she would discover it later. Even after fifteen years of marriage, Karl loved to create these little surprises for his wife, just as she loved finding his cumbersome gifts and clumsy poetry.
A long, steady drumming sounded over the tops of the trees, booming from the direction of Grey Hallow, but far beyond. In the west, birds squaked and scattered to the wind. By the cadence of their beat, Karl knew it was the Elves, come to pay their respects and receive letters of safe passage as required by the Pact. A little earlier than expected. No matter. I prefer early to late. No doubt my Chamberlain, Aldred, will have everything prepared. Karl sprang to his feet, dusted off his trousers, and rolled the dried parchment. He followed the path back to the castle at a quick pace, humming a song his Bard had sung the previous night while they slept under the stars.
The day had well and truly begun upon his return. Servants wearing the green and black of his house dashed about as their duties required. Men stood guard wearing the Great Black Tree of the Klugs on their livery. The halls were alive with chatter and the scuffing of feet. Karl knew a long line of petitioners awaited him in his hall, but everyone knew that an audience with elves took precedence over the squabbles of men. They had all heard the drums, and they would be pressed together like bees in a hive just for a glimpse of the pointy eared outlanders. Every year, young elves Elves embarked on a great journey that they called *THING* or “The Taste” in the Imperial tongue. They spent anywhere from one to one hundred years living among the mortals, learning their ways and customs. Some spent the rest of their millennia-long lives among the mortals, watching dynasties rise and fall, technological marvels stun the world, and should they be unfortunate enough to make friends or find lovers, they witness death on a scale previously unimaginable.
Lemba is due to return home by the end of the year. After seventy years of service to my family, he’s earned his rest. Perhaps one of the newcomers would like a position at court. I would very much like to continue my lessons. Karl flexed his fingers at the mere thought of magic. Outlawed in most realms of men, Karl had insisted on instruction. The training was hard and the consequences if discovered by the Church would be dire, but in a land as dangerous as the Wald, every advantage counted.
The drums boomed, growing louder as the elves approached closer. I must hurry. I cannot insult them by wearing the same clothes I just wore to an execution. Karl jogged down the path from whence he came. Wiglaf was holding Baldur by his reigns, and he snapped to attention the moment he saw Karl approach. “The drums my lo-”
“I heard. Ride ahead and have your father prepare clothing for court.”
“Right away, my lord.” The page said as he galloped away. Karl followed at a quick but more relaxed pace. No sense in appearing sweaty and exasperated for my guests. He reasoned as he rode down the winding path.
His servants were waiting at the gate for him. They grabbed their reins from Baldur, and Karl climbed down from the horse. “Andred has selected your clothing, m’lord. Right this way, if you please.” Onna, the fat seamstress said and she beckoned him to follow. She led him to the laundry, where Karl pulled the dirty articles he had worn for the execution and picked up the courtly clothing she had laid out. He pulled the white linen tunic on first and fasted it was a leather belt inlain with a large silver buckle. His slipped into brown wool trousers next and grabbed a pair of light leather boots. While I won’t appear filthy in front of my guests, high fashion is not something I care to waste my gold on.
Karl sat in his finely carved chair on the dais at the end of the hall. It sat to the right of an identical, but smaller chair where his wife sat*.* She wore a black and green dress with a modestly cut v-neck which exposed her pale skin. Her golden hair lay in one long braid along her shoulder. and her piercing blue eyes smiled back at Karl’s own green. This was the women he had fallen in love with the moment he first spoke to her. She had been less convinced, at first. While he had been the highest born of her many suitors, he had not been her first choice.
“I thought you were boring!” She would tease him later. “You barely said a word the first three times we met.”
“I was nervous.” He would reply. “You captured my heart and my wits that day in High Hibaltia.”
“Well, that wit is what won me. Perhaps I just borrowed it for a time.” She smiled.
Cleverness, justness, kindness. These are the things that make me love you.
The couple held each other's hands as they looked over the court. The chamberlain, Aldred, was quickly giving some last minute instructions to his son and another page, and they immediately scrambled to their work. Guards stood firmly at attention in front of the doors, knowing that they would be facing a hallway full of eager onlookers at any moment.
Their three children stood to the side, talking amongst themselves. Grimbold was the oldest. And doomed to die young, as my brother and uncle have. He was tall, taller than Karl even. He had the arms of a blacksmith’s apprentice and Karl’s own brown curls. He shared his mother’s sky blue eyes and slender nose, as well as her quick temper. He’ll want more responsibility soon. I’ve already denied him a squireship. Perhaps a minor position at court would assuage him.
Next to Grimbold was Charlotte, their only daughter. She too had Karl’s curly brown hair, but she wore it in a long braid, like her mother. She was just like Matilda, in fact. They were both skilled with numbers, and Charlotte’s fascination with bards rivaled Matilda’s own obsession. The two of them often pleaded with Karl to hire this performer or that one, and Duke Karl Klug, Lawspeaker of Bordrim, would not resist his girls, especially Charlotte. She had just turned fourteen, and would be expecting suitors soon. I doubt any of them would be worthy of her. The two of us share a thin patience for stupidity and love makes fools of us all. Especially this false, courtly love the Pawley’s have been peddling these last centuries.
And then there was Otto, the youngest of the three. He stood in between his brother and sister, obviously uncomfortable and being talked over. Nervous and shy, Otto had trouble making friends with children his age. He got along well enough with Wiglaf, but the two never actively sought each other out for play. Probably waiting for the other to make the first move. Karl thought to himself.
“Otto!” Karl yelled. The boy snapped nearly to attention. “Come here, lad. I have a surprise for you.” The boy warily came before his parents.
“Close your eyes and stick out your hands, Otto.” Matilda gently urged.
Otto did as he was told. “Karl dug around in his coin purse and pulled out the clover and a gold coin. He placed the two in Otto’s open palm.
His eyes beamed just before the rest of his face lit up. “Is it real?” He asked as he squealed at his gift.
“Just found it this morning. I figured, with you as my son, I already have all the luck I need.” Otto grinned wide, his missing baby teeth apparent in his otherwise toothy smirk. “Now, with that coin, I want you to find a book that we can read together. Would you like that?” “Yes, father! Yes, yes!” Otto exclaimed, almost shaking with excitement.
“Now get back to your place. The Elves will be here soon.:
“Yes, father!” Otto slipped the clover and coin into his own purse and hurried back to his siblings.
Matilda leaned over and kissed Karl on the forehead. “You’re a good man, Karl Klug.” His mind raced back to dawn, and the creaking of ropes. “I try to be, my love.” He kissed her forehead back. There was a commotion behind the doors to the hallway. It started as a low murmur, and then grew in size, becoming a roar of excitement.
Lemba, Karl’s tutor and resident Elf, took
The Elves had arrived.
Two figures, hooded in dark crimson cloaks, approached the dais. Less than a quarter of what I was told to expect. Behind them were six large, muscular, green skinned orcs bound together at wrist and ankle. Less than a tenth of what I had prepared for. Some Orcs had obviously suffered wounds in the recent past, black blood welling up through tightly wrapped bandages at shoulder, scalp, or thigh. Karl knew from past experience that were these wounds even a slight inconvenience to the Elves, the Orc would be killed with no more pity than lame donkey.
The two cloaked figures marched in a praticed cadence as they moved towards the Duke and Duchess. They all move like that in this room. Is it tradition? Or something more calculated? Lemba, can you enlighten me?
“In due time.” The elf’s voice answered in Karl’s mind. “For now, let us see who has survived the journey.
Karl cast a quick and silent spell to identify the travelers, his only tell was a twitch of the nose, which may have been mistaken for an aborted sneeze.
Viksna and Piske Dun Beske, twin siblings of a prominent Orhani family. Lemba leaned and whispered into Karl’s ear. “The youngest children of a powerful family of sorcerors. T
“Viksna and Piske you illuminate my land with your presence.” Karl’s voice boomed across the hall. It had been so long since he had shouted without magical amplification that he wondered if his throat could even yell anymore.
The two outsiders removed their hoods and stood with clasped hands and bowed heads. Their hair golden, their ears pointed, they were both of a similar height and build, shorter than most men in the room, and Karl could tell they were thin even under their robes.
“And you honor us with your hospitality, Lord Klug.” The pair said in unison.
“You’ve arrived sooner than expected. Was your trip pleasant?”
“We ran into some trouble with monsters, I’m afraid.” Piske said, matter of factly.
“ They devoured quite a few of our slaves.” Viksna added. And of course, the Shadow King must have his due. Our traveling companions were not to his liking. We two and The six Orcs you see behind us are all that is left, I’m afraid, out of the seventeen souls we departed with. Ah, yes. The older races call Haim by his title and dare not refer to him by name. A superstitious bunch, the Elves.
Three slaves for each of us is hardly fitting.” Piske scoffed.
“A shame. I will see that they are tended to. And my servants shall make up for your deficit. See these creatures to their quarters.” He ordered with a wave of his hand.
Guards cautiously herded the six chained beasts on the points of spears, but the broken creatures simply did as they were told and offered no resistance, not even a scowl. They were broken in mind and spirit, they simply existed to do as they were told. Even still, they looked as if they could crush a man’s skull without much effort, and so the guards insisted on caution. I cannot say I blame them.
The instant their slaves were gone from the room, the elves both went down to one knee, each pulling a small bundle from their cloaks. In unison they spoke. “We have come to pay tribute to the Lord of the Wald. Bordermaster, River Watcher, Upholder of the Pact. We offer these small tokens to you, Great Lord.”
Karl pushed up from his seat on the dais and walked towards the pair, gesturing them to stand. This well rehearsed speech never fails to delight my courtiers. “You have left your great capitol of Orhani to live amongst the lesser lived. You have endured freezing cold and driving rain. You have crossed river and mountain, field and fell, and traversed the Wald itself. You have fought beast and monster and seen many things that Man fears in his dreams. You have lost friends and companions along your way, and for that, you have our sympathy. However, all is not lost, and these deaths have not been in vain. You have proved yourselves worthy of fellowship through your very deeds. I bid you stand, as friends of Men.” The two figures stood, pulling back their hoods as the ritual demanded. They both looked as beautiful as painted godlings, young as if in their prime, though each must have seen a hundred years come and go.
The two approached, stepping slowly, deliberately, in unison to the dais where Karl sat. Piske stepped forward, leaving his sister still as a statue with her bundle still in her hands.
“For you, my lord. A gift.” He bowed and handed the package to Karl.
“Thank you, Piske.” Karl exchanged a rolled parchment for the gift. The container was small, and light. It could have been empty if Karl did not know better. He pulled the string holding everything together, and opened the paper wrapping. Inside was a ring, small and green, with all manner of beasts carved intricately on the sides.
“This is remarkable, Piske. You have my thanks.” Karl said as he turned the ring over in his hands. He spied an eagle, a fish, a rat, and a bear amongst the throng of creatures on the metal.
Piske looked to Lemba, eyes practically screaming for help. Lemba chuckled to himself for a moment and then cocked his head in Karl’s direction.
“May I approach, my lord?” the Elf asked in the elegant Elvish tongue, hands out stretched. Karl nodded his approval and he came forward. Piske leaned forward, taking the ring from the Lord’s hand and slipped the emerald ring onto his own left pointer finger.
“This ring is rather...peculiar, my lord. Observe.” The Elf cleared his throat and began to shout “Will one of you fellows come out? We’d like to make introductions.”
A heavy silence, followed by quiet, confused muttering amongst the onlookers. Then a shriek came from the rear of the crowd, growing louder and closer by the second.
That’s when it appeared before Karl’s eyes. It came forward at a run. Sharp claws, huge black eyes, and jagged yellow teeth.
“The ring summons rats?” Karl answered in Elvish in between laughs.
“Or maybe it makes the wearer forget his manners.” came a perfect Elvish reply from the rat. Karl’s eyes shot wide. Bhalik’s Maw. Did that rodent just speak? He regained his composure and looked around his court. Everyone was staring up at him. Had they all heard too?
“They can’t hear me, you big oaf. Only the ring bearer can.” Karl glanced at the green band around his finger. “My name is difficult to pronounce, but for the sake of simplicity, call me Ymaut. Piske tells me you have a rather large network of informants. How would you like to expand?
“We’ll discuss another time. Thank you, Piske. You honor me.”
Piske bowed. “Of course, my lord. My sister has brought you a gift as well” gesturing to his companion. He stepped back to take her place, while Viksna approached, bowed and held out her tribute. The thing she brought was bigger and heavier than her brother’s gift. When Karl had finished unwrapping it, he understood why.
“A Grimoire.” he said quietly.
“May I approach, my lord?” Karl nodded absently as he flipped through the pages.
Viksna whispered. “I am told you enjoy practicing magic. I would be happy to teach you, if you’d like.”
“This is too much to trade for a mere letter of safe conduct. Anything in my power to give you is yours, if you but name it.”
Viksna thought for only a brief moment. “Should there be an opening for a position in your court that I may be suitable for, I would like to enter your service.”
Lemba is leaving my service, to return to Outland. If you would care to remain here and assume his role upon his departure, I would welcome the company.” Karl said as he struggled to tear his eyes away from the book. That will be all for today. My servants will show you to your chambers. Should you want for anything at all, you need only ask and it is yours.”
The two bowed low. “You honor us, my lord.” the two Elves said as one. As they slowly walked from the hall, Karl’s Chamberlain, Aldred, whispered in his ear. “My lord, Sir Vanya has come to charge Baron Stevers as an oathbreaker. My duty calls. Karl thought, the grimoire still open in his hand.

Hi, David here!
Today I wanted to share with you 12 behaviors and communication traits of an attractive man!
​

1. Comfortable with silence and does not feel the need to fill every gap in a conversation.
2. Comfortable holding strong eye contact while talking to a person.
3. Speaks in a low voice with a downward inflection and not an approval seeking upward inflection.
4. Well-known and well-received by others.
5. Has open body language and is comfortable taking up space.
6. Does not brag or actively qualifying himself, such as by dropping the names of the people he knows, the things he owns, or the degrees that he has earned.
7. Unapologetically states his opinions. While he does not purposely try to insult others, he also does not prioritize the reaction that other people may have to his words over the desire to state his true thoughts and beliefs.
8. Willing to cut people off and redirect a conversation when needed (no need to be done rudely).
9. Comfortable making decisions and being decisive.
10. Calls people out when they cross one of his personal boundaries.
11. Does not constantly ask for permission or approval.
12. Treats other high status people as his peers and equals. Does not get star struck or act like a fan.

​
Adding to that, I just finished putting together my dating eBook "How to Date Any Girl" version 4.0 and would LOVE to get some honest feedback from you!
I decided to give it away for free for the time being.
​
The eBook is 27 pages long and gives you a practical step-by-step solution to meeting women (15+ years of knowledge put into it).
You can get the eBook by clicking here!
​
This book is the result of going out and socializing with girls for over a decade. I have put in there all the fundamentals I have learned over that time so I would really appreciate all the feedback I could get!!
​
What are your thoughts? Do you have any tips to add?
Let's discuss in the comments :)
Thanks for reading and have a GREAT day!
Coach David

i (18ftm) am nearing the beginning of college and work experiences outside of where i have been my whole life. i want to have the ability to peacefully go ghost and assimilate into a normal daily life, this achieved through being able to pass as a normal man. the problem is that i'm on the shorter end (5'3 w/o insoles 5'5 with). i cut my hair shorter, have been practicing voice toning for a good few months now, actively working on changing any feminine mannerisms, yet i still feel as if i could pass better. i want to go pn testosterone but my father (56m) says i'm not allowed to until 25. this feels way too far away, especially with the rate of constant unsatisfaction with the way i present. he told me we could have a conversation about it but i feel like i won't be able to convince him, especially since his goal is to convince me i'm not trans. my dysphoria has been increasing heavily through constant remarks and angry insults about my identity. i would definitely settle for 21 if i could convince him, yet i don't think he'll let me break even on this. some people tell me to pursue my happiness and go on testosterone but i know for sure that if i take that path, my dad probably won't want to talk to me anymore. i love my father, even though we've had rough patches involving my gender. my friends remind me of the harsh things he's said before, yet i cant help but want him in my life. i wish he could agree with me and make it a little easier for us.
also, to speed things up, i'm looking for better ways to pass, how to react when misgendered, and some trans self esteem stuff if any of you would cae to share some of your advice. thank you all for reading

Hi there,
We have Landlords that love to be rude and not fix anything without real pressure put them. We have had to assert our rights numerous times with them resulting in petty insults. Our 15 year old Central ac unit stopped working and needs to be replaced. It's been 5 days since we emailed them and we haven't had a response.
In Ontario, how long would repair take if it fell under a "reasonable" time frame? Also, despite the rude no response, how long should we wait before proceeding with the next steps such as T6 forms or the RHEU?
Finally, does AC count under the purview of the RHEU?
Thanks alot all,

I'm tired of being told that I'm a good person and anyone would be lucky to be loved by me...but only if I change everything about myself and my personality.
I'm tired of being told that if I want to experience love, I shouldn't be friendly, generous, and try to connect through shared interests and experiences that indicate compatibility. Instead, I have to participate in this weird "banter" where someone I barely know insults me and I have to insult them back and we don't actually learn anything about each other or our compatibility or what either of us are really thinking.
I'm tired of being told that all body shapes and sizes are worthy of love, but if I want to actually be worthy of love I should dedicate 4-10 hours per week (not including nutrition, etc) and $100s-$1000s to a form of training I might not even find enjoyable so I can get the most worthy body shape for loving.
I'm tired of being told that consent is 'sexy', so I should always consent to being sexualized or expected to be sexual when someone wants me to. Doesn't matter if I have my own boundaries or past sexual traumas that make trust in intimacy difficult or if I simply value a strong emotional connection before crossing that line. If I don't want to fuck on the first date and she does, I'm the asshole. Don't I know she consented and consent is sexy, am I not a man, who is by definition driven by his lust for women? I'm tired of this shit.
I'm tired of being treated like a presumptuous self-obsessed jackass for showing someone new I'm attracted to them, and I'm tired of being treated like a manipulative conniving creep if I learn a bit more about them/our compatibility before showing (or even feeling) attraction.
I'm tired of everything! Dating and relationships have done nothing but traumatize me and drain all self-love I ever had from my soul.
Be yourself!*
*Only applies if 'yourself' is the ideal partner model of the mid 2020s
I'm done with dating. I'm done with relationships. I'm done trying miserably to be someone I'm just not. I would much rather be myself alone forever than force myself to change for the approval of someone else who might not even exist.

Hey guys, so for some context I m20 have been dating f20 for almost 10 months now. We’ll call her A, so A and I had a great going for 3-4 months before shit started to hit the fan. During that month where things took a turn, a close friend of mine had heard from his friend that he saw my girlfriend holding hands with another guy at the mall, turned out to be a rumour however she was unhappy that my friend even mentioned it to me and that he didn’t take her side when his friend told him what he saw. This resulted in them two fighting and her telling me I have to cut my friend off, which I then did because I love her and valued my relationship with her more. Fast forward a few months she sends this same friend a paragraph cussing him out and insulting him, completely unprovoked just because she felt like it, I said nothing about the paragraph because I did not want her to get upset with me and think I’m siding with him even though it was wrong for her to do, this then led to my friend group resenting her, telling me to breakup with her and I can do better which she was not happy about, this led to several breakups caused by her saying I chose my friends over her. Each of these breakups left holes in my heart which made me question my self worth, why breakup with me when we can talk it out? It was becoming toxic and it made me feel as if there was something wrong with me even though this was my fault, I tried to balance my relationship and my friend group with my brothers since day 1, I realized these things cannot coexist. Now the most recent situation, my girlfriend A told me to cut off my best friend, my brother, during a moment of weakness where him and I had some fights, he called her some names, she got upset and gave me an ultimatum. She told me it’s either my friends or her, she told me I have to unfollow my best friend on every social media right now or she’ll breakup with me. I hesitated and chose nothing because this is a difficult situation, cut off my best friend since day 1 who has been there for everything or choose my girlfriend? She then blocked me off everything, broke up with me, this was breakup number 4. She then goes on social media and reposts these tiktoks that were coming at me, making me seem like a monster and maybe so, maybe I am the one at fault for trying to save my relationship and my friendship with my day 1 friends. This situation has left me feeling empty, I don’t want to choose anyone now and I just don’t know what to do. Do I give in? Cut my friends off so I can get my girlfriend back? Or do I just stay silent and pray she realizes there’s more to this situation and it’s not black or white, or is it best for me to leave her and never look back? I love her truly with all my heart, she’s my first love, the love of my life and the girl I’ve done any and everything with. I’ve had many firsts with her, I was her first for almost everything, I’m afraid that if I let this relationship go I’ll never find anyone like her, I’ll never find better. Yes it was toxic but when we were alone just me and her there was nothing close to the feeling. What do I do, I am so lost and upset right now.

My fiancée (34F) and I (32M) have had issues since I proposed to her at the beginning of this year regarding communication and attending the same church and some of our conversations have led to heated discussions but never all-out shouting matches or anything like that. I’ve questioned her motivation for converting citing that she’s not putting in the work she said she would do to move towards going from a catechumen to a convert. In addition, we have problems with communication due to my fiancé saying odd or nonsensical things then straight up denying that she ever said them.
Two weeks ago my fiancé told me that her and her therapist were discussing my custody battle with my three year old daughter and the counselor asked my fiancée why it took me three years to get 50% custody then said if it took that long it was “probably because he was running his mouth”. My fiancée allegedly “defended” me by saying I’m a good dad and my baby mama lies. The therapist replied “there’s two sides to every story”. i was very confused as to why she waited 3 weeks to tell me this and also why she brought it up out of the blue in a separate conversation we were already having. I got very upset and demanded to know why she didn’t defend me harder and file a complaint against the therapist she saw. My fiancée replied that she didn’t feel the need to do anything else. I proceeded to (regrettably) call her a coward and took the ring back from her then stormed out.
I called my fiancée a week later and apologized for everything. We had a very productive conversation and agreed to continue working on our differences in couples counseling. Not 2 minutes after the conversation ended, her parents called her at the gate to her neighborhood (she lives in a gated community). And walked right in with my fiancée’s best friend. Her best friend put her arm around her shoulder and walked her outside while her parents interrogated me. They started by telling me that I didn’t belong here and that they wouldn’t allow me to get back with their daughter and then said I “pulled her away from the church she’s gone to since she was 7 days old”. I replied that this isn’t their house and that she started attending my church out of her own free will. Her parents also told me that they felt guilty for not protecting my fiancée during her first marriage in which she was abused by her ex husband. They asked me why I’m so horrible, controlling and abusive and compared me to her ex husband who raped, assaulted, and cheated on my ex in addition to hiding secret cameras in their house. Her mother asked me if my church believes in respecting women. I found this very insulting and said obviously we respect women. Her dad at one point during the hour and a half interrogation told me that I needed to stop talking and went to get my fiancée to “kick me out”. My fiancé walked in and said it’s getting late and that I need to leave so I left.
The next day my fiancée and I were texting and she had the gall to ask me if I changed my mind about getting back together with her and I asked if I was marrying her or her parents and friend. She said she would only confide in me from then on and that she didn’t normally divulge details of her past relationships with her parents. I asked if she told her parents and friend to come over that night but she said they came over unannounced and that she was “too shocked” to do anything and that she wanted her parents to hear all the good things I told her before they came over (I’m still not sure what the truth is on this). We talked in person after work and I explained how disrespectful and hurtful this situation is. I went on to say that if what she’s saying is true, then her parents have zero respect for her and that she should have stood up for me. She apologized but I said explained that she’s just sorry that I’m calling her out. She claimed to not know much of the details of the conversation even though she was right outside the door. I took the ring back a second time and walked out.
Another week later, (this past Sunday) we talked after church and she apologized again for everything and we agreed to try again. She claims she knows she made a mistake and that she has set new boundaries with her parents. I love my fiancée so much and I want to be with her. However, I’m still uneasy about this situation. I feel as though this is going to happen again and that my fiancé won’t defend me when her parents do this again in the future. I’m going to demand that her parents apologize to me before we can move on.
Am I justified in asking for an apology? How do I go about trusting my fiancée again? Is this situation too toxic to work?
Tl;dr I broke up with my fiancé, got her back, her parents interrogated me the same night, and I broke up with her again the next day and now we’re considering getting back together again. Am I crazy?

FLAGGED FOR INVESTIGATION AND SECURITY RESTRICTED
Account from the squad leader of SH'azz squad on advanced long range assault scout mission in the Tz'urgal system. 3rd moon of the 3rd planet in system. Colony of "Deltamist" pirates.
Race: Inagoor, who are known as separatists. Noted for high crimes to include piracy, kidnapping, smuggling, murders and assassinations.
This is the true, and unredacted, original account.
SEC level set as Black 8 tier 12 restricted.
Account reads:

Journal log entry: T'zk 72:31 G'az 8
2nd leader, Expeditionary Assault Scouts: SH'azz squad.
We landed the stealth assault class (S.A.C) skiff 12 mektreks* from the pirate settlement with the determination to make final approach on claw, and from under cover of night with full stealth masking knowing that the Inagoor would easily spot the mirage haze and light warping of our stealth fields during the day. The gravity of the moon is comparable to ours, if slightly less, so it seemed like it would be an easy trek. I determined that only 2 rest stops would be needed instead of three. Our landing distance assisting in our stealth attempt, and thus adding to our chances of successful surprise attack.
Our intel determined that the pirates had recently raided the Tau shipping lanes, and had taken hostages for the purposes of ransom and slave sales. Our unit was tasked with forward observation and intel gathering of the pirates before termination of their operation, and to report all intel direct to command via secured subspace micro-pulse.
The Flora and Fauna scans determined that this moon was a Class 4 temperate world with no signs of natural life forms rated as sentient.
At our first predetermined rest location we discovered a burn mark cutting a path through the foliage as though a small vessel of some kind had made a controlled emergency landing. Scanners indicated that the craft was emitting power output signals, and was only a short distance from our location. We proceeded to rest and recuperate under the cover of the stealth fields with both live, and drone perimeter guards for security. The rest cycle was extended to insure that the guards could rotate so that all were rested and ready. I had decided that the investigation of the small craft could wait until after our main mission was complete when one of our forward scout drones sent my linkpad some images flagged for immediate review.
The images were of an Inagoor corpse. It was...dismembered. Torn limb from limb and the barrel chested, fur covered torso had chunks ripped out of it. (Images in file listed SET 1) The closeups of the
torso showed that the gaping rents and holes were not impact points of a projectile weapon nor were they of a beam, or energy weapon. No charring of flesh or fur, and no melting or blast marks on their suits armor plating. It simply looked as though an appendage had been grabbed and pulled off. The armor, as well as the flesh underneath, was simply torn off of the main corpse. The dismembered limbs were in the same condition, and save one other notable clue which was that there were obvious "gripping points" where the armor was crushed, and the bone beneath these areas was pulverized. The Inagoor's infra Red pulse rifle was found partially embedded in the trunk of a tree. Its "combat rated" frame had been crushed and wadded up as though it was a piece of waste paper. Its power cell was ruptured and leaking. The scout drone had marked it as a hazard zone out to 30 pace lengths and labeled as "lethal chemical hazard". I informed my second in command, and we reviewed the images together. He was as dumbfounded as I. What native beast could have done this kind of damage to powered assault armor?
(Addendum:)
The Drone was unable to locate the Inagoor's head in the immediate area.
(Addendum ends:)
My second and I resolved to scout this issue as a priority. We did not want to engage our current mission only to have an unknown element interfere and compromise mission success. As per command prerogative, I shared the drones information with the rest of the squad personnel, and reformed mission parameters around this element. Mission AI rated a 92% agreement with my assessment. Well within command parameters. We arrived at the location of the drones discovery in 4 hours. Our visors highlighted the chemical hazard of the leaking power module, and its set perimeter was also highlighted by our personal visor AI, and we all gave it a wide berth. The Inagoor was indeed scattered everywhere as the drones images had relayed with one exception. The smell was horrendous, and sickening. The stench of the Inagoor's "parts" indicated that it had been killed only 2 day/night rotations ago, and already some sort of fungus growth had begun to creep into the strewn dismembered parts and pieces. On every life bearing world, nature always has a cleanup crew. On closer examination of the "parts" we determined that the only explanation of this incident was that some creature had simply grabbed the Inagoor and ripped him apart, flinging the pieces in random directions in the process. The Inagoor's armor was their combat rated class, which is their equivalent to our front line infantry armor, powered of course. It was just torn apart as if it was a Tk'turka wedding veil. Armor that can withstand a pulse from an infra Red rifle at close range, or the puncture of a ballistic needler at point blank range had been torn apart, as if it were made of nothing sturdier than plant filament.
The grip points visible on the appendages did indeed look squeezed/crushed, and the separation points showed signs of literally being "pulled" apart. Not cut. Not chopped, but PULLED apart. The Inagoor are from level 9 temperate worlds and are thus pretty tough, and considered very strong even to a majority of other sentient species. Yet something far, FAR, stronger just pulled them apart. My visor AI showed the majority of my squad running "weapon ready" checks, and a few more scout drones were tossed into the air to begin new stealth patrols.
It wasn't long before another Inagoor corpse was found in the direction of the unidentified craft that
had "seemingly" crash landed.
This Inagoor's corpse was simply pinned to a tree. Its back was against the trunk, and the Inagoor's pulse rifle was pushed through its torso and into the tree trunk thus pinning it a pace off of the ground. Whatever creature did this to the Inagoor, had used the butt of the rifle to penetrate completely through the Inagoor's chest cavity, and further into the tree trunk, thus pinning the Inagoor. My visor AI noted more "Weapons Ready Checks" as well as one of the newer members of the squad using a dose of Stimcalm. My visor AI noted the dose as well within regulation, and I chose to flag it for review for his after mission performance evaluation. (Noted in File marked VA1. attached) I was actually considering using a dose of Stimcalm myself, as my second reoriented the stealth drones to a new scout pattern. Rather than taking the stim I began reviewing database information for "nearest Deathworld locations” from current location, and the AI promptly informed me that none were reachable within a standard week of FTL travel at NOK* 6 speed. I relayed this information to my second, and he reciprocated with a listing of the most dangerous lifeforms on this moon. None were capable of this level of violence by orders of magnitude.
I also noted that there were many burn holes in the vegetation in this area. Obviously the discharge of the pulse rifle was futile in halting the violence that occurred even if the Inagoor had made direct hits. The updated drone orientation revealed a new element to this mystery soon after. The visor alert from the drone was not unexpected, but still caught me off guard. I opened up the video footage, and saw a scene of carnage that staggered my rational mind. Many, MANY Inagoor corpses were strewn about a small clearing in the vegetation. All of them were not merely killed but ripped apart and scattered just like the first corpse we encountered. I am not ashamed to admit that I was so visibly sickened that my second inquired as to my health and mental state. As is my command authority to do so I relayed the drones footage to him. Then I too, took a regulation dosage of Stimcalm. As is noted in the file attached I also ordered my second to share the footage from the drone to the rest, and pre-authorized them to also take a regulation dose of Stimcalm, IF they felt they needed it after reviewing the drones footage.
Upon closer examination of the footage we could see the "fin" of a craft sticking up from the other side of a nearby hill. The site of the visceral carnage was a short distance from the crafts resting position. I, and my second reviewed the footage a few more times, and weighed the pros and cons of sending the drone over the rise, and within full sight of the downed vessel. I came to the conclusion that the possible loss of a stealth drone was far less costly, and far more prudent, than the loss than a squad member, and so I authorized the reroute. What the drone showed us next was intriguing to say the least.
The drone's path was kept slow and close to the foliage line so as not to expose too much of a blur signature, but, as it came into line of sight of our objective we saw that the craft was indeed, of some strange alien design. Its structure and air frame looked almost completely undamaged. Boxy though, and clumsy in appearance it had long airfoils sticking out from its sides and a tall one sticking straight up from its reatail. An enormous alien who was twice our height and bipedal was working on some component in an opened hatch in the side of the craft, and there were other aliens assisting it. A Craxx was handing it a tool of some kind, and a Piryllek was holding some illumination device next to it so that the enormous alien could see what it was doing. A Moorkha, with its brightly colored feathers, was working with a blue-green scaled Sithys. Together, they were making preparations for a meal of some sort. A black furred Glerff suddenly stood on its hind legs and looked straight at the drone. its yellow feather-patterned antennae quivering. We had been spotted!
The aliens that we could name registered in the operational AI as the abductees from the afore mentioned recent raids on the shipping lanes, and when the Glerff alerted the others they all stopped what they were doing, and started chattering wildly at the giant, who then reached for some sort of computational device and began fiddling with it. It did not look as the giant was concerned overly, but, simply curious. The suit it was wearing was scorched in many areas, and the hide that showed through the holes in its clothing was light brown with red splotches. These were definitely wound sites on the unidentified alien. If these were the wounds suffered from the infra Red pulse rifle fire, then they likely only caused this creature some mild irritation and inconvenience. Its face was hairy, as was its head, and the left mandible, hair burned away was swollen and blistered. A pulse rifle shot to his face perhaps? There were obvious signs of it being shot all over it’s limbs and torso, and yet it was still alive and breathing? Impossible! What was this thing?
It was apparent from the drone video that this alien was over twice our height. It stood head and shoulders taller than the Moorkha, and with triple its mass. The Moorkha quieted the others, and began cooing at the giant, making a visible sign to breathe deeply and calmly while stroking the giants fore appendages and digits, as we witnessed this process via the live feed. The fur above one of its ocular organs (it had 2, side by side, and front facing.) rose a bit but it otherwise seemed to relax and looked in the direction of the drone that the Glerff was still pointing at.
Based on this evidence I chose to drop the cloak on the drone and send it slowly to the Glerff as it was the closest. When the drone was within verbal communication distance I sent my voice through the drone to introduce myself.
"I am Ak'kik. Leader of SH'azz squad. We have come to investigate, and rescue you and your fellow abductees. Do you require assistance?", I said with as much authority in my tone as I am capable of. "Most assuredly Ak'kik, though we are no longer in danger thanks to our new friend that rescued us. Although I do not believe that he did so intentionally. The pirates that abducted us attacked it as soon as it’s craft crash landed. The pirates made the mistake of shooting it. That failed to kill it, and only made it angry. When they persistently kept shooting it, it subsequently became enraged." The Glerff shuddered, but seemed to regain control of its emotions quickly.
"The pirates are no more. The pirates that attempted to flee were pursued, and exterminated. The base the pirates held us in was likewise cleansed of the pirates by our rescuer. Our rescuer is very, very fast and very, very strong. Please do NOT shoot it. You would not survive should you do so. Also, it seems to be an omnivore. PLEASE! Do not anger it. I beg you!"
I responded with calm. "Please tell it that we will be there shortly and that we have no intentions of violence. We only wish to rescue the abductees."
"I can't." The Glerff replied quickly. "None of us speak its language and it does not know ours. We have no Data AI's to link to its technology to work out language algorithms. I think the aliens technology is also damaged. It keeps having to go to its’ ships control station to check for power readings.
Communicating with it has been a challenge, though oddly pleasant. It is quite patient and amenable, when it is not killing pirates in an excessively psychotic state. As terrified as I am of this creature, I cannot help but be curious about it. I am sure you will find it to be a pleasant, and respectful entity if you approach calmly, and with no hostility."
I thought for a moment. "Please try to keep it calm and we will try to make our approach as calmly, and respectfully as possible. We will endeavor at all costs, not provoke it."
"I should think not!" said the Glerff showing some alarm. “Since the extermination of the pirates I have personally observed it lifting enormous amounts of weight without strain. Seen it consume it’s rations which looked to be a combination of vegetable, AND meat with vigor. Much of which I am confirming was poisonous using an analyzer that once belonged to the pirates. The analyzer shows that some of its’ rations would be considered lethally poisonous to every species that I know of."
He held the analyzer screen to the drone for confirmation, as he continued speaking. "I am not an expert in the field of chemistry, so I would strongly suggest you scan whatever food he offers you before you eat it. Please note that refusing his "gift" of food does not insult him. Just hand it back to him if it is inedible, and then he will eat it himself."
The alien approached the drone that the Glerff was speaking to, and then picked up a silvery pouch from the makeshift table that the Moorkha was working over. It peeled the top off, and it ate the dark brown bar in 3 bites, then nodded to the drone, and went back to it’s repairs.
"What he just ate, by the way..." The Glerff said turning back to the drone. "...the analyzer states contains some alarming chemical chains. Theobromine, Phenylethylamine which look to be nearly lethal stimulants. Massive amounts of caffeine, Taurine, and Niacin as well. Oh dear, uh. By the nesting Gods! Leader Ak'kik, What it just ate could poison a small colony just on the amount of caffeine alone. But the amount of Capsaicin he just ate is even worse, FAR worse. PLEASE, please, refrain from angering it." he was still scanning the data in astonishment. "And, er, and this is most important, your weapons would be useless against it. It is incredibly fast, and can quite literally jump across this glade in a single bound. I think it came from a very high gravity planet. Maybe even a Deathworld. I vehemently recommend caution, and I strongly feel it necessary to reiterate, do NOT anger it, or incur its’ ire! Oh, and by the way, I did use the analyzer on it, it allowed me to do so, actually. the Analyzer data shows that there is probably nothing on this moon that it cannot eat, including us."
I replied, not through the drone this time as I was close enough in my approach that I no longer needed it. "Leader Ak'kik, at your service. Whom am I addressing?"
"Ah, apologies, I am professor Roonoomoo, and this is service master EEG'lix. That one there is Vorvert, and over there is D'rrr, and Higuv is just to the left of the table, and the two who are helping our rescuer are Woosk, and Rakk'n. It is a pleasure to meet you in return Leader Ak'kik."
"So you were saying some of the items on the table surface are actual foods that it eats? This is its’ food that it brought?" I said looking at the multitude of pouches and containers on the table.
“Oh yes. We made eating motions when we were trying to establish communications with it, to ask it for food, and he brought us this trove. He opened a package for us, and offered it, but, Woosk went into near panic when he saw that it was animal meat of some sort. After that he just spread everything out, and made a motion for us to inspect it for ourselves. All of us ate what the analyzer said was safe but that was not much of a variety. It turns out that there were only 2 packages all of us could eat. We saved the empty packages to show the alien what we ate once he is finished working. So that we do not risk angering it, you understand. Woosk and Rakk'n decided to offer what assistance they could after they ate, and have been doing so since then."
"May I be introduced to the alien now? I may have some tech that could help. If you will be so kind as to bring it here to us, as I would not want to trespass on its established area of operations, and be mistaken as hostile. We are obviously carrying weapons, and us approaching it...and its ship seems a questionable choice, at best."
"Very wise, Leader Ak'kik, I will see what I can do. I won't be but a moment. “Uh, er, you might want to hold on to that”, indicating the analyzer “and use it before you decide to touch anything on this table.", he said as he handed me the analyzer.
Professor Roonoomoo went to the alien ,and gently patted the joint in the middle of its lower appendage. The alien looked at professor Roonoomoo, who was pointing at us, and trying to explain us with hand signals and gestures, that we wished an introduction. When the alien looked at us we all, as a squad, showed it out empty hands as our weapons had been placed on the ground by our sides. it simply made a wave of one of its upper appendages, as if to say, “come here”. We approached with our empty hands plainly visible. As we approached it, it knelt. Not in surrender, or in supplication, but rather to level our mutual eye line. I realized that it was making an attempt to be polite.
I SLOWLY patted a stow pouch on my utility harness, and it nodded as though it seemed to understand, and motioned me to proceed. I held out the translator AI slate, "TAIS" and it took it, and then touched it to a device it wore on the wrist of its upper arm. (note that I am assuming proper body anatomy, based off of our own, although there are few similarities.) This alien was not only one of the largest I have seen, but also must be of a quite dense mass. As in its anatomy, and not its mental state, for it shook the ground around it with every step.
After a few moments there was a "chirping" sound from his device, and our coms alerted us to a new language file available. I allowed the exchange through my visor, and we were suddenly speaking to each other. I chose to make introductions first.
"I am Ak'kik. Leader of SH'azz squad. We have come to investigate and rescue these abductees. Do you require assistance?"
It held out it's hand as it spoke. "Bartholomew Wane Hatfield. Friends call me Bart." this aliens voice boomed at us.
"I was mining the asteroid belt in this system, when I caught a rogue asteroid right in the nads. Power plant was having a conniption fit after that so I figured I better set her down where I could patch her up. flying this old girl by wire is a bitch but, we got a thing so…"
This was the literal translation we initially received. As you can imagine, we were all quite confused.
"I beg your pardon unknown alien species, but the translation unit seems to be malfunctioning. We do not quite understand all of your words, we have no equivalent in our language for some, even though we seem to be communicating."
The sides of it’s facial orifice turned upward, revealing a multi-functional set fangs. Some pointed and some chisel shaped. Making it obvious it was an omnivore. Our visor AI stated that it “perceived” it was amused. It spoke into it’s wrist device, and it chirped in response. A second later our visor registered a "receive transmission" request. I allowed it, and this is what the visor AI showed us by way of "corrected translation".
"Bartholomew Wane Hatfield. Friends call me Bart.”
[REQUEST FOR FRIENDSHIP. THE USE OF "BART' ACKNOWLEDGES AND ACCEPTS FRIEND REQUEST]
“I was mining the asteroid belt in this system when I caught a rogue asteroid, right in the nads.”
[ASTEROID DAMAGED CRAFT IN CRITICAL LOCATION]
“Power plant was having a conniption fit after that so I figured I better set her down where I could patch her up.”
[POWER PLANT OPERATING WITH INTERMITTENT FAILURES. IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY REPAIR IS REQUIRED.]
“Flying this old girl by wire is a bitch but, we got a thing so..."
[LANDED SHIP WITHOUT COMPUTER ASSISTANCE OR ASSISTED CONTROLS. I AM EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO SHIP.]
I replied with, "AH, thank you for the subtext. Bart. I can see that your language has a vernacular art to it. I am culturally fascinated by such a language. Polite request. What is your power plant, and what is its power source? We may be able to assist with our spare component sets. Please feel free to not detail your technology to us, if it is security bound. We will not be insulted."
The alien again showed its fangs with a deep resonating, yet pleasant, vocal repetition. [LAUGHTEAMUSED]
"It's old tech stuff, by about 20 generations or so, but it's cheap, and reliable, common knowledge, and easy to repair. It’s a paired enriched uranium atom cracker.”
[DUAL/PAIRED NUCLEAR CORE POWER GENERATOR. EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS.}
"Chasing blinking lights mostly. When the asteroid hit, the core spiked, and caused a number of shorts and jumps."
[POWER SURGE CAUSED MULTIPLE SHORTS AND POSSIBLE INTERMITTENT ARC / SHORT IN SYSTEM.]
I nodded my understanding to the alien Bart. I then asked the engineer of my squad if he would be willing to assist. Corporal Zi'Kict accepted the challenge, though it looked as though anxiety, and fear
of "Bart" might overwhelm his current Stimcalm dose. "This is Corporal Zi'Kict. He is our designated engineer, and he has agreed to assist you. You can decline with no insult incurred."
He flashes us his fangs again. [HAPPY] His species, whatever it was, seemed to be fond of showing their teeth often.
"Hell, I never turn down a helpin' hand. Grab whatever it is y'all use, and let's get to chasin’ sparks."
[ASSISTANCE IS WELCOME]
"Uh, Bart. I must ask, what are your intentions with those that we were designated to rescue? If there is good will between us I would like to ensure that we, my crew and I, be given liberty return them to their families, and respective worlds. Will this be acceptable to you?"
"You go on right ahead, bless yer’ heart."
[ACCEPTANCE OF PROPOSAL WITH WELL WISHES TO YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE.]
“I'll miss these 'uns. Their nice and friendly."
[FONDNESS]
"Not like those other jackhole fecktards."
[REFERING TO PIRATES. INSULT INTENDED TOWARD PIRATES AND PIRACY.
{insult "jackhole" refers to anal orifice. "Fecktards" derogatory reference to mentally damaged or deranged individuals with severely limited mental capacity that act inappropriately.}]
"I understand and concur with your insult of the pirates, and thank you for your understanding, your patience, and your friendship. With your permission I would like to redirect my ship to your encampment so our medtech device can confirm their current health. If it is not offensive, I would like to offer our medtech device to scan you as well, and determine if it is capable of repairing your injuries also. Refusal will not be considered an insult. My squad engineer will will assist you as needed, and our spare components are at your disposal. Friend Bart."
"Well bless yer heart, that would be dandy with me. Much obliged!"
[ACCEPTANCE OF PROPOSAL WITH WELL WISHES TO YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE. IMMENSE THANKS]
I bowed to the alien I now called friend Bart, and went to co-ordinate the rescue operation, and sent the AI to bring the ship to my location. Since my priority was the health and safety of the of the abductees I spent the majority of my remaining time with them.
The alien required only a single spool of CronWire, and a span of shielded conduit, a simple enough repair. The abductees were tended to medically, fed, and shown to their racks. We allowed the abductees to contact their loved ones through our secured communications net. The alien allowed our medtech device to repair its burns, but it was unable to regrow the lost hair on its face. Friend Bart removed the rest of the hair around its mandible orifice with a small device, saying that he had to keep the balance. The squad medic timidly requested a full scan of Friend Bart, and Friend Bart was amenable to this.
We left Friend Bart, and watched him take off from orbit a few hours later. My squad medic started pouring over the MedTech device scans of Friend Bart, and quickly went into a fit of panic, and it took a questionable dose of Stimcalm to calm him down. I admit that I glanced at the data, but I am not trained as a medic so I understood nothing. The squad engineer simply handed me a collated list of intel he gathered while working with Friend Bart. They had a lengthy converse, and the engineer had actually formed a bond with Friend Bart. The list is as follows.
Name: Bartholomew Wane Hatfield
Species: Human
Origin: city of Austin in the state of Texas in the country of the United States of the planet Terra of the Sol star system
(system is far past the outer edge of our empire on the frontier side, opposite of coreward.)
Gravity: home normal +4 (4 times greater than our own gravity!)
Planet notes: frequent earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes.
Planet has multiple biosphere, and terrain hazards that are lethal.
Plague level viruses, and bacteria, Multiple predators in every biosphere.
(See files freely given by Friend Bart) [FILESTORE- FriendBart01a]
NOTE: great white shark, alligator, saltwater crocodiles, king cobra, wolf, pit bulls, and other canines, polar bears, poison dart frog, hippopotamus, killer whale, rhinoceros, box jellyfish, cone snail, hyena, stone fish, black mamba, grizzly bears, puffer fish, komodo dragon, death stalker scorpion, lions, leopards, brown recluse spider, black widow spider, Brazillian wandering spider, electric eel, etc.
Please note that this list is merely a VERY small fraction of the actual list. My understanding is that the home planet of Friend Bart is at least a level 10-12 Deathworld. He also states that many of the species on this list are kept as pets by his fellow humans.
The squad engineer states he will send in a request for allowance of continued discourse with Friend Bart, but understands if this request is denied. After careful deliberation with the squad medic, we strongly recommend that the details of this mission be put to the SEC level at Black 8 tier 12 restricted, or higher, if there is a level higher than Black 8 tier 12 restricted.
Captain Ak'kik. Leader of SH'azz squad
[END OF REPORT]
mektreks*Aprox. One Terran kilometer equivalent.
NOK* Measurement of warp travel. 1NOK = speed of light

(My profile is tagged N-S-F-W because I also post these in dirtyr4r since some have actually had luck finding something serious there. Figured it's worth a shot, haha.)
I'm searching for the kind of wonderful woman who shares most of my interests below in addition to her hobbies and interests, who's also goofy, likes to playfully insult each other, and also believes in open and honest communication. I believe with that, we can work out any problems when they arise. 💛
• I'm a gamer, car guy, and maybe one day, a musician too. I enjoy anime, nature, going on little adventures, swimming, traveling... I wanna see the world with you before all the beautiful sights are gone. - Current games I've focused on lately is Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic. If you wanna play those together, that would be awesome! I would also eventually like to play other things together like Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Terraria, etc. - My taste is music is nearly everything except country and today's rap. To name a few bands/musicians I really love: Led Zeppelin, Arctic Monkeys, Tame Impala, The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, Queens of the Stone Age, Mac Demarco, Them Crooked Vultures, and Metronomy.
• I want to dance with you. In the living room, bedroom, back yard, in the park, almost anywhere. I enjoy doing romantic things and expressing my love. I love deep conversations that distract us from the passing of time.
• I'm a dog person because my allergies chose to target cats for whatever reason, so there's that. 😅
• I'm monogamous and don't have children currently, but they're in my future plans, probably within the next 6 years. I want to spend plenty of time with, well it might be you, and enjoy the best of life as a couple, and then as spouses, traveling and whatnot, before we start a family. 🤗
• I'm really hoping to find someone who's also into dirty humor (amongst other forms of humor) and has mutual...interests 😏 so we have even better compatibility in the bedroom (and sometimes away from home too). I usually have a high labido, but I only want to get intimate when we're both comfortable and ready. 👉👈
• Specs for those who would like them: - 6 feet tall (about 183 cm). - 219 lbs and dropping (about 99 kg). ~ My figure is very dad-bod at the moment, but apparently it comes with a nice ass (so I'm told). ~ This is close to the most I've ever weighed, and I'm not happy with it. I'm targeting somewhere around 170 lbs (about 77 kg). - Brunette/dirty blonde, kept relatively short. - Blue eyes. - Caucasian.
• I have learned the hard way that I do have a type. I used to date outside that type, and it only led to hurt feelings, so I don't want to repeat that. That being said, my type is Caucasian or East Asian ranging from petite to average body type. I don't love going to the gym, but if you have or want a membership I would be open to going together. 😁 I apologize if my preferences differ from who you are. You're all beautiful people, regardless! Please love yourself and enjoy the time you're given in life! 💛
Chat with ya soon! 😁

Vera

^{Maidenpool, 7th Month of 276 AC}
[M: very sorry for the delay, was struggling a lot to get this one on the page!]
In consideration of the fact that Vera had spent the most of her life avoiding her sister's grand theatrics--they simply being different women with adverse interests--she was immensely grateful for the presence of Victaria in the ensuing preparations for the wedding. In polite company Vera was prone to indecision. This had not in the past been of such complication as others of greater rank or relevance had been present to defer the decision upon. But as the impending ceremony was to be her own (albeit shared) and that she was by her marriage vows to become the future Lady of Maidenpool there was no woman of rank greater than her own residing in the city to remit these choices upon. It felt to her overwhelming as every steward and seamstress would flock to her to debate a detail that she had never thought to spare a thought to.
It served, then, to rely upon the wisdom of a woman who was to be equal to her in station. That she was of blood relation merely an unexpected boon in a notable demonstration of affection from the Lady Bracken.
Yet in Victaria's less than veiled attempt to live vicariously through the ceremony of her sister she had taken on an enormity of stress that might have else undone Vera. And though she made an effort to demonstrate her appreciation, Victaria was swift to dismiss it. An autumn wedding shall be sufficiently complimentary to the heraldry of the Lord Bryan, she had insisted as she had herself been pointed in the adornment of crimson and silver since her coming to Maidenpool. That these colours coincided with those of her own heritage (and fortuitously that of the House Blackwood as well) was merely a convenience of coincidence that she embraced entirely as the disposition between she and her Lord Husband had grown frostier since Lord Jonos' arrival. The why of it all she remained elusive on as she did not wish to discourage Vera in her impending nuptials yet a point of contention in her own union repeated was that she would not see her sister shunted toward the irrelevance of a winter's wedding.
"Jons and I were meant to host a celebration of our marriage when the snows had melt," she had said as they had together settled upon flower and foliage arrangement, Victaria dictating the decision most of the way while her sister nodded sheepishly. This late in season their choices were few but in the embrace of the harvest they were not without a bounty of beauty to assemble, utilizing even oak and sweetgum branches to fill out the bulk of the vases where a lack of fresh flowers had left them lacking, "Alas... it never in the end manifest."
"There was not time?"
"No," she had said solemnly, "Life was underway come the spring and by then I had my son to contend with."
As Victaria took increasingly upon he plate the details of the planning, Vera to her dismay found the commitments on her behalf did not belay. She had become accustomed to the young Lady Morella following at her heel but in the pomp of the impending union and her own investment in them as her father was to be the groom, the girl was as good as attached to Vera at the hip. And when the Lady Alys Whent had come to Maidenpool to attend her she had been further distressed in the change that had taken hold of the young woman in her absence--and woman she was, no longer the girl that had been left for her own safety in Harrenhal. With this onset of development had brought with it too a difference in disposition that Vera was not as swift as she wanted to be in adapting to. While Alys' curiosity had not eroded it took shape in new ways, the eyes that assessed Maidenpool more astute than she was prone to in her youth and her enthusiasm had come to wane in her development. Vera found that for all the time she commit to guiding Alys in their new shared abode, as much of it was spending instructing her as reacquainting, pained by and equal in her pride as periodically the Lady Whent would impose a distance. A fine Lady of Maidenpool she will make, thought Vera, someday.
Not near to enough time could be commit to Alyx as was deserving, at least not in the sanctity of secret as they had become accustomed. In the weeks of the weddings encroaching there was seldom a solar they could stand in without interruption and no shortage of guests to greet. It had come to be the library alone where solitude could be preserved though even from between the shelves would servants come in search of the women for inquiry or summons as the hours crept closer to the day in question.
It had begun to wear upon the resolve of Vera that she was so seldom afforded peace enough to peek between the pages of a book so as to center her scattered mind. Though she had not outright snapped at anyone until a steward had deigned to take the tome from out of her hand in an attempt to usher her along to her next appointment, one that had need be rearranged for the following afternoon as Vera had stormed away on cusp of crying. In a mood such as this it might have been typical to call out for the company of Alyx yet she had been encumbered by her own family and arrangements that Vera had not the courage to impose upon. And, taking inspiration from her sister, chose instead to channel these frustrations into a more productive venture wherein her anger had the potential for purpose.
In spite of the offense there was a need to make right upon, she had paused so long as to fetch a flagon of wine to serve as peace offering while she waged a war on behalf of the woman she loved. Lucias, at the prospect of a full cup, had not entertained the thought of turning his sister away.
"It is a ghastly thing," she said, fingers pressing through the coarse hair of his beard with her brother's consent to inspect the scar their goodbrother had left him with. There was one upon the tongue, too, yet less prominent as the cut that had sundered the cheek. Pale of complexion as Lucias was the wound was a contrast of twisted red flesh that could not be fully obscured entirely the fiery strands of his facial hair. Vera was uncertain if that was the purpose of the beard or whether it had been grown out of apathy in consideration of his generally disheveled state.
He lightly bat her hand away so he might partake in the wine she had brought, "As ugly on the outside as in, now," Luc said with a shrug, "It does not bother me."
"And here I had been hoping you'd been humbled to be inflicted with the insult you set upon our niece," she murmured, the knit of concern in her brow growing. Whereas Victaria had written off Lucias as disruptive and cruel, and Otto displayed a disinterest in the plight of his elder brother, alone of the siblings Vera maintained an empathy for him. It was mighty modest in its maintenance, strained significantly by his conduct, yet that he had made an attempt upon his own life and seemingly been spiraling all the more since... Vera could not help her heart and the excess of sympathy it spun in droves. Even for the sake of those undeserving.
With a shake of her head as Lucias returned no response, she stared intently at him as she issued an order to him, "You will apologize to the Lady Alyx Blackwood if you should wish to attend the ceremony and the feast, else I will ensure the guards sequester you sober to this solar."
Luc's face scrunched in irritation and the subsequent gulp of wine he took was hastened, as if afraid the remaining portion would be robbed of him. As had occasionally been the case in Castamere, "Why should I care for her feelings? The Blackwood bitch did not wait long to scamper off to a new husband when I was imperiled."
"That is hardly her fault," countered Vera with intensity, an anger that felt foreign to her, "Had she the choice she'd wish to wed Ser Donnor no more than she had want to suffer you. You cannot hold her complicit to the misery of your own making."
"What a mummery that is, when your mouth moves while Victaria's words tumble past your teeth."
"That is not the insult you think it to be," said Vera, "I should think to emulate her a compliment. Victaria is plenty capable, and with a wealth of wisdom."
"Aye, rich in wits for the reserves of her husband have been ever empty," Lucias barked as he tilted the flagon to further fill his cup.
"Let that be your motivation, then," she pressed upon him, leaning forward in her seat as if conspiratorial as she was unaffected by his not-baseless jest, "Father will not arm you with a blade to return the blow done by the Lord Bracken, so the knife you need twist must be wielded in an alternative method. Words have ever been your weapon, Luc. Use them as you have never done before, make right between you and the Lady Alyx at the feast in a considerate candor and watch the Lord Jonos seethe in his seat as you do, without recourse to protest."
To his credit, this notion was one that Lucias did not rush to dismiss. Permitting the prospect to permeate into a possibility. There was however a piece of him, an embittered fragment that had been with him since the campaign in the Stepstones, that resisted if for no purpose other than to act obstinate.
"Do this for me and I shall ensure a cask of wine awaits you in your personal quarters throughout your time here," Vera sweetened the pot, ashamed that this need be the leverage not unaware of her father's efforts to contain Lucias' consumption. She was commit to this course however. Anything to ease any anxieties of Alyx with the Reynes come to congregate after her and Lucias' shared experience upon the road.
Sighing heavily as he relented, "Ale," he said, "A cask of ale and I will make the amends."
Vera was not given more than a moment of relief before her brother spoke again, less strained. As though this comment was his attempt to diffuse their shared discomfort, "And that I am allowed the killing blow upon whichever tiger the Mootons set loose as is their custom in weddings. I barely grazed the last."
"Rest assured, there shall be tigers," she said realizing that this was a humour that had somewhat shared in, "Nor shadowcats... I made a jest that I would ask uncle Vardis not to come in company of a lizard lion. The Lord Bryan was less than impressed at the notion, to say the least."
"Did you really?" for the first since she had called upon them, Lucias' glance was focused and alert. Not wandering to the rim of his cup as he burst into laughter.
Nodding solemnly, "I did, much to my dismay. My nerves sending my tongue spinning swifter than my mind could cease speaking," she explained, "I hope to never garner the look of disapproval it brought upon me again... but I should be pleased bedeck you in stripes for the ceremony if it should ensure you behave."
Pensively, Luc cradled his cup. There was doubtless a biting retort residing on the tip of his tongue but he did not speak it, musing on another matter, "Can you seat me near to the minstrels for the feast?" he asked, "Songs and stripes... aye, that must in the end be my motley... I am less inclined to conflict when there is music swelling in my ear."
Rising, Vera cradled Lucias' chin so she might stoop to kiss at his brow. The act seemed to startle him. He was not unacquainted with kindness but not even his mother had deigned to display a physical affection with him since he had been taken forcibly into custody. She and he having never been the sort for reassuring, whether that be with words or embrace, "A good man buried beneath this bitterness, Luc," she told him before she left him to the wine, "Let not your experience in the Stepstones sunder him from your spirit. There is love left in this life for you would only that you let it in."

-for Katalina-
Ah, lipstick! The intricacies, the magic of how it's made, the blush upon the lips, the way it catches your eye. A shot of bourbon, a splash across the rocks, delirium sets in. She comes up out of nowhere, somehow danced across the floor to you. As you look deep into her eyes, as a strobe beat flashes across the night, you sink deliriously into her arms. Echoing thoughts race across your head, your mind is set upon the hunt.
Oh, how deep her bed goes.
When after doing the best you can, you have to move on.
I went over to my best friend's house. She was sitting there applying her blush. She said that she wanted to become a writer one day, that was why she liked hanging out with me. But looking at us, we both realized that we're both beyond sex, you seem to live each other higher, in certain ways. The mere mention of sex between us to each other would be almost like an insult in a way, it would be like a brother and sister talking about sex but not with each other. Oh earlier in the relationship it was about sex, but that soon faded into insignificance once our friendship blossom into something more, something more deeper and wholesome between us. It was like we both complimented each other, we both made each other whole in a certain way, in a way that sex between us could never could. She worried that she was going to become a cat lady one day, and I giggled when she mentioned that. A plane flashed across the sky, it's whispering song across up in the sky was letting us know that it was coming and it's drone afterwards let us know that it had arrived and left. Some people going from here to there, probably a vacation, some on business, some for pleasure. She painted her toes with such finesse and grace, as only a girlish thing a woman could do. I laughed under my breath at such a thought.
Life over thought.
Once again the delirious shot splashed across the glass, a fisherman outside plying his trade. Seagulls screamed up into the sky, as if the gods was just going to throw down some nuggets or some treat. She said I'll buy you anything you want, I said let's ride my motorcycle instead, and sing songs up into the wind. She said, "Bet"
I saw her, one time, cry over a song she heard on the radio the other day. I didn't dare ask her why, that would been too impetuous, all I did was just come over and hug her and put my head on her shoulder. Of course that was her opening to just go ahead and give me a hug and put her head against my chest and cry, and of course I let her. After the storm had passed, she spoken into my chest about how the song had reminded her of her son, of how he didn't talk to her anymore, of how she wondered if he even loved her anymore. I didn't dare ask about it or say something stupid like of course he loves you, I just remain quiet, and let her talk. I figured that was the best way for her to get it out, because if you don't get everything out of a wound, all the pain and the scar and the hurt,the wound will never heal. I knew she appreciated it more when I didn't say anything. I just knew that she needed somebody to be there just to hear her out to hold her keep her calm to let her vent to just be herself.
Ah, lipstick! Beauty in the night, just smear across my lips, the blush across my cheeks. Parts of invisible forgotten dreams across the night.
We went to our favorite jacuzzi. It overlooked the river, and as we sat there, drinking our cherry wine, we watched as the boats went up and down the river, each one seemed like forgotten dreams heading up and down the coast.

I wanna start by saying I've know I've never been a saint,
And nothing I say is for the faint.
Of heart,
It's for those closest to falling apart.
Who recognize the abyss,
The pain mixed with the bliss.
You think I don't know I'm a hypocrite?
I'm so sick of this shit.
I've said my apologies,
But it's nobody's responsibility to acknowledge these.
I don't owe forgiveness to every person who made me bitter,
It was me who decided not to be a quitter.
There's some shit you can't just pray off your ledger,
Ahould it have been me on the ledge or her?
You think its better to be better?
Go tell that to heath ledger.
Mastered his art,
Right on time for the nightmares to start.
Why even lie,
It would be so much easier if I could just fucking die.
Then, I wouldn't need to hide,
But it would mean giving up on all these people who have tried.
And that is the linch pin,
The reason for the grimace in the grin.
I'm not here for me.
If I was, I'd have already vanished into the sea.
I'm thankful for those of you who've never had to face reality.
The finality, or the totality.
White hot pain,
The will to fight even if it's in vain.
Would you rather I cap it,
Muffle myself and write sap shit?
What do you think,
Do I loon better clutching the pills or the drink?
All these fuckin' critics,
Clutchin'their pearls and complaining about the cynics.
Take a look into the reflection,
I've never been anything for you but a deflection.
Always lookin' to hurl insults,
It's so easy when you don't gotta look at the results.
Happy life, happy wife,
Never felt the edge of the knife or the burning of the strife.
I can only explain so many times,
That sometimes, you need to look past the rhymes.
See the shadow in the man,
Trying to hold back the demons, so that they can't rise again.
Trying desperately to reach anyone who needs it,
If he finds an ounce of humanity, he feeds it.
I try to let people know they aren't alone,
And they can try, even if they can't atone.
It's better than the white wash,
The person crushed in the mosh.
They need someone, more than you,
Someone who will acknowledge what they have been through.
And not someone who will denounce them as a simple nihilist,
It's vital that they receive the hand and not the fist.
And that is why I'll keep talking back,
No matter how much you choose to see it as an attack.

TW SA AND SH Background: I'm a current 20 F with hispanic immigrant parents, moved here when I was 6-7
I don't know where to start , childhood I guess we moved here and i learned English by the first year by that time I was 8 (this will come into play later) .My parents would work till 4 pm but my sister who's 6 yrs older (14 yo at that time) would cook+clean+take care of me . None of us ever had a close relationship all my younger years my parents were very explosive almost, emotionally and physically, I consistently would get A+grades but a 95 would still be too low And I'd consistently get yelled at for a B+ I remember being threatened to be sent back to our home country , being told I wouldn't amount to anything being told I'd be homeless and useless , being constantly compared to other kids . The one time I got a C I was terrified every time I got a report card I'd be scared to bring it home , I hid one in my stuffed animal piggy and my dad and mom trashed my room looking for my report card mind you I was maybe 9 or 10 they found it and I remember this clearly my dad dragged me by my hair around our house I still remember the patch of hair that came off to this day I have a sensitive spot. I'd get beat for a small cup falling or if I spilled anything. Well I started looking for I guess someone to talk to at the age of 8 online without anyone rlly checking on me which ended up to me being groomed and SA'd up to the age of 12 but because I'm so scared of my parents to this day they don't know all that's happened to me and I'm scared ill get blamed for it i started to SH since 2nd grade but thats a whole other mess. As I grew up not much changed only the insults became calling me a whore or slut bc I started dressing like a teen girl the constant comparison stayed etc. I did start faking report cards in highschool bc of my fear even tho my grades were still good the physical treatment wasn't as bad but their words still left a mark on me and it hurts to still be so afraid of them , In hs it got hard I was going to attempt but my friend called the cops which led to me and my parents having a "talk" which was me bawling my eyes out telling them how I felt and them just laughing in my face and dad saying there's no reason to be sad or want to kms bc my life isn't that bad and I have food water and a bed . I feel like a a-hole bc I want to move but I feel I owe them everything bc they did make huge sacrifices for me and my sister to be here but I haven't been able to make any choices for myself not even into college which I've been paying for too. I feel I'm betraying them by wanting to leave but my sister is 26 and still stuck here , we both never had any boyfriends or friends in general bc we don't feel comfortable bringing ppl home. I know my parents love me bc I'm their kid but I can't forget my childhood it hurts to this day how they are now and how they treated me back then . I'm terrified they'll call the police or report me missing even tho I'm 20 and the guilt I feel Is immense because it hasn't been so bad for 2 years now but I can't seem to forget how I was treated back then how I was just a child then . I'm packed and ready to go I have 5 days left , have a apartment ready and a job w steady income and money saved up , is there anything I should do once moved or before I move , can they take any action against me?

TLDR in bold lettering.
Hello. I've been dodging making a reddit account because I like to stay off the internet but I've been playing this game a lot for the past few days and I was hoping it was way closer to the expectations, but as we all progress through it it seems we're finding so many things that make it really not so much worth at least my time. I've sent 3 extensive in game feedbacks but this one I feel CANNOT be dodged so I decided to "expose" it here. This is an issue that more and more of you will come to realize once you start hitting UL 30 and DB 15 or 17, so it might be a bit early to make this post, but I'm hoping for the game to change before it's too late.
As a preamble and self explanatory to my complains, here's some math. Let's assume you are Data Bank level 20, meaning you have 20% chance for echo drops and 80% for them to be legendary. Let's also agree on that cost 1 echoes have around 2.5 possible sonata elements on average (some have 2, some 3) while cost 3 have 2; and let's say it takes about 60 seconds to farm ONE cost 1 mob including teleporting, moving to destination and fighting (since they're grouped up sometimes) and 75 seconds for one cost 3 mob (since there's almost always just one of them). Now numbers:
The time to get ONE legendary cost 1 mob of your intended sonata effect and main stat is:
60 * (1/0.20 drop) * (1/0.80 legendary) * 2.5 sonata * 3 main = 46 minutes and 52 seconds (2812.5s) of active grinding.
Now for the let's say out of the 12 total substats, you're fine with about 6 of them cause you only want a usable echo and not really a good one, and as long as you get 4 of these out of the 5 substat rolls then you're set:
2812.5 * (1/0.0697 [note at end of post]) ~= 11.2 HOURS (40351s) of HANDS ON GRINDING for ONE piece.
For 3 cost echoes you have 10 possible main stats instead of 3 because they decided to intentionally keep elemental bonus a non global stat, changing the total to:
75 * (1/0.20 drop) * (1/0.80 legendary) * 2 sonata * 10 main * (1/0.0697) ~= 37.4 hours (134505s) for one piece.
Let's help their case and say the cost 4 units take as "little" as the cost 1 even though they'll be somewhere in the middle or higher depending on how long to kill them at your world level.
Each character will normally use 4 3 3 1 1 sets, this means a total of ONE HUNDRED AND NINE HOURS of running too slowly or gliding around the damn map killing worthless enemies that you have already beaten thousands of times by that point. And this is for EACH character and remember - just for a decent set. Pray that you don't get shit on by substat RNG which has highs 1.8x as their lows or almost 3x if it's energy regen which is the most crucial substat to get right.
Now for those people who will want their crit sets or just a good set instead of an usable one, feel free to input your own chances. If you want only 3 specific stats on each piece (e.g. crit set) it gives about a 50% increase in time over that above. If you want 5 good stats out of 6 or 5, forget about it (910 or 5300 hours respectively). I would also like to add that since you can't farm echo EXP indefinitely, the actual grinding time will be higher by a considerable amount (+~50-100%) since you most likely won't +25 all the echoes with a main stat that you get if they start with one or two horrible stats and this is ignored by the probability calculation.
This is not just a complaint about the drop chances and substat roll system. This is more about the fact that they had a person calculate this or choose the rates on purpose to make us spend somewhere between one hundred and three hundred hours of mindless, boring farming for each character, of which you need at least nine built to be able to complete the hazard tower. This is the reason why I'm trying so hard to not swear on this post because I take as an insult to the value of my time and life (I remind you that it's INTENTIONAL to keep the legendary chance at 80% at DB20 instead of it being 100% when the effect of this change would be minimal except in quality of life, for the love of god). Spending money on this game to get characters has nothing to do with this, so it's not an issue about them making money. This is a cheap attempt at extending the game's life at the cost of the quality of our experience. What about events, quests, combat, challenges? Aren't those supposed to be the drive and appeal of this game? The most fun I've had while playing was trying to beat the holo bosses while being at a low level while competing with my brother about who did it faster, and the least fun was indeed this waste of time that is gliding around the map going to far away teleport spots from the units you're trying to kill just to get a wrong rarity, sonata, main stat and then upgrade them only for your first substat to be flat defense (let's not talk about the story here).
I don't have on hand how much time it takes for a character in Honkai or a gun in Destiny to drop, but in Honkai you log in and it farms *automatically* for 5 minutes and you can log off, even if it takes two weeks or two months for a good set. In Destiny you at least are required to be engaged in difficult combat or find ways to speedrun them with the weapons you already got in the past. This is just a barebones, insulting mechanic, like most of the game feels to me. Props to the combat designers for both bosses and characters, props to the musicians; swear words at the balance and strategy team.
Here's my proposed changes which focus on quality of life first, and the reduction in grind time second: 100% legendary chance at DB20, 50% echo drop rate, elemental damage bonus main stat becomes global (no specific aero, fusion, whatever), energy regen substat floor from 5.6% to 8.2% (in line with other stats), and killing echoes drops some amount of echo EXP and tuning materials. This would reduce the grind times from 150-750 hours PER CHARACTER to 25-125 hours per character depending on if you want a usable set with decent but random stats or one with crits, atk%, and so on, respectively. With these changes, if you want a perfect character it would at least be feasible at around 250 to 1000 hours PER character (of active grinding, remember). And still, I believe something should be done about the fact that 90% of grinding is sprinting, gliding, and running out of stamina.
P.s.: about the math in the substat calculations. I had two courses in statistics in uni but it's possible I already kinda already forgor. I used the hypergeometric distribution and did the math but I'm not 100% sure about the results, if you want to fact check and post your results I'm willing to change the post once they're shown.
P.s.2: the time taken to farm one mob was assumed at 60 and 75 seconds for cost 1 and 3 like I said at the beginning of the post. This was meant to be an approximation based on my experience, since I have grinded almost non stop for the past two days. However, it's also possible that the mobs I was grinding took more than the others, or something like that. Maybe if you're farming excarats or gulpuffs it'll take 30 seconds per mob or whatever, so if you want you could reduce the total times by about 25% -- 100 - 500 hours at the end to 20 - 100 --, but I don't think this is a meaningful difference here.

Hello I wanted to do a chronological playlist combining all The Beatles material on Spotify from the live releases, to studio tracks, to outtakes. Here is a link to the playlist and below are my justifications for the placements. Would be curious if anyone could tell me any sections where I may have went wrong with the dates. This project has inspired me to dig deeper into the bootlegs of the studio sessions and I’ve already begun doing that so maybe I will make a post about that at some point as well.
1958-1961
1 We Were Four Guys… That’s All [Anthology 1]
Actually an interview clip from December 8 1970. Placed here for sequencing like in Anthology 1.
2 The Quarrymen - That’ll Be The Day [Anthology 1]
3 The Quarrymen - In Spite Of All The Danger [Anthology 1]
Two Quarrymen recordings from July 12 1958. These are the only official releases of the Quarrymen on Spotify. You may see another song listed by them on their Spotify but this is actually a different group.
4 Sometimes I’d Borrow… Those Still Exist [Anthology 1]
Actually from an interview on November 3 1994 but placed here for sequencing like Anthology 1
5 Hallelujah I Love Her So [Anthology 1]
6 You’ll Be Mine [Anthology 1]
7 Cayenne [Anthology 1]
1960 home demos. Left the sequencing the same as Anthology 1. Not sure on exact dates, but the interview clip mentions Hallelujah so I think it makes sense to start with.
8 First Of All… It Didn’t Do A Thing Here [Anthology 1]
Actually an interview clip from October 27 1962 but placed here for sequencing like Anthology as he mentions the Tony Sheridan recordings.
9 My Bonnie [Anthology 1]
10 Ain’t She Sweet [Anthology 1]
11 Cry For A Shadow [Anthology 1]
All recording with Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers June 22 1961. The June 22nd date is disputed
1962
12 Brian Was A Beautiful Guy… He Presented Us Well [Anthology 1]
13 I Secured Them… A Beatle Drink Even Then [Anthology 1]
Actually from October 1971 and October 1964 interviews respectively but placed here for sequencing like on Anthology 1.
14 Searchin’ [Anthology 1]
15 Three Cool Cats [Anthology 1]
16 The Sheik Of Araby [Anthology 1]
17 Like Dreamers Do [Anthology 1]
18 Hello Little Girl [Anthology 1]
Beatles Decca audition tape recordings. Recorded January 1 1962 from Anthology 1.
19 Well The Recording Test… By My Artists [Anthology 1]
Actually from the same October 1964 interview as I secured them… but placed here for sequencing like Anthology 1.
20 Besame Mucho [Anthology 1]
21 Love Me Do [Anthology 1]
Recorded June 6 1962 featuring Pete Best on drums for Love Me Do
22 How Do You Do It? [Anthology 1]
Recorded September 4 1962
23 Please Please Me [Anthology 1]
Recorded September 11 1962
24 Love Me Do (Single Version) - 2023 Mix
25 P.S I Love You [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
Love me do, the first Beatles single, releases October 5 1962. This version features Ringo on drums and would be different from the version on the Please Please Me LP.
1963
26 Please Please Me [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
27 Ask Me Why [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
Please Please Me releases as a single January 11 1963
28 Keep Your Hands Off My Baby [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
29 Beautiful Dreamer [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded January 26 1963 for the Beatles Saturday Club.
30 One After 909 (Takes 3, 4, & 5 with stops) [Anthology 1]
31 One After 909 (Takes 4 & 5 complete) [Anthology 1]
Recorded March 5 1963
32 Misery [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded March 12 1963 for Here We Go
33 I’m Talking About You [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded March 16 1963 for the Beatles Saturday Club
34 I Saw Her Standing There [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
35 Misery [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
36 Anna (Go To Him) [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
37 Chains [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
38 Boys [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
39 Love Me Do [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
40 Baby It’s You [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
41 Do You Want To Know A Secret [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
42 A Taste Of Honey [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
43 There’s A Place [Please Please Me 2009 Remaster]
44 Twist And Shout [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
Please Please Me LP released March 22 1963. This version of Love Me Do features Andy White on drums. I exclude all the singles that release before the album when doing this so Please Please Me, Ask Me Why, and P.S. I Love You were excluded.
45 From Me To You [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
46 Thank You Girl [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
From Me To You single releases April 11 1963
47 We Were Performers… In Britain [Anthology 1]
Actually from a December 8 1970 interview, but placed here before a big chunk of live material similar to the sequencing on Anthology 1.
48 Love These Goon Shows! [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
49 I Got To Find My Baby [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
50 Young Blood [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
51 Sha La La La La! [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
52 Baby It’s You [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded June 11 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
53 Sure To Fall (In Love With You) [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded June 18 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
54 Some Other Guy [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
55 Thank You Girl [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded June 23 1963 for Easy Beat
56 I’ll Be On My Way [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded June 24 1963 for Side by Side
57 Hey Paul… [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
58 Hello! [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
59 A Real Treat [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
60 Boys [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
61 Absolutely Fab [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
62 Chains [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
63 Bumper Bundle [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
64 P.S. I Love You [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded June 25 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
65 Lend Me Your Comb [Anthology 1]
Recorded July 2 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
66 That’s All Right (Mama) [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
67 Carol [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
68 What Is It, George? [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
69 Soldier Of Love [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
70 A Little Rhyme [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
71 Clarabella [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
72 Lend Me Your Comb [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded July 16 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
73 And Here We Go Again [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
74 A Taste Of Honey [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
75 Sweet Little Sixteen [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
76 1822! [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
77 Lonesome Tears In My Eyes [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
78 Nothin’ Shakin’ [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
79 So How Come (No One Loves Me) [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
80 Love Me Do [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded July 23 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
81 Memphis, Tennessee [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
82 The Hippy Hippy Shake [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
83 Set Fire To That Lot! [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
84 Matchbox [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
85 How About It, Gorgeous? [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
86 Do You Want To Know A Secret [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
87 Till There Was You [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
88 Please Mister Postman [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded July 30 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
89 I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry (Over You) [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
90 Crying, Waiting, Hoping [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
91 To Know Her Is To Love Her [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
92 The Honeymoon Song [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
93 Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey! [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
94 Twist And Shout [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded August 6 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
95 I Got A Woman [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
96 Long Tall Sally [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
97 Please Please Me [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded August 13 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
98 Glad All Over [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
99 I Just Don’t Understand [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
100 Slow Down [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
101 Words Of Love [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded August 20 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
102 She Loves You [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
103 I’ll Get You [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
She Loves You single releases August 23 1963
104 Dear Wack! [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
105 You Really Got A Hold On Me [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
106 Glad All Over [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
107 Lift Lid Again [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded August 24 1963 for Saturday Club
108 A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
109 Ooh! My Soul [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
110 Ooh! My Arms [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
111 Don’t Ever Change [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
112 Anna (Go To Him) [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded August 27 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
113 Honey Don’t [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
114 Roll Over Beethoven [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
115 There’s A Place [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded September 3 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
116 Too Much Monkey Business [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
117 Lower 5E [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
118 The Hippy Hippy Shake [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded September 10 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
119 Lucille [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded September 17 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
120 Ask Me Why [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
121 The 49 Weeks [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
122 Sure To Fall (In Love With You) [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
123 Never Mind, Eh? [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
124 Bye, Bye [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded September 24 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
125 Devil In Her Heart [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded September 25 1963 for Pop Go The Beatles
126 Lucille [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
127 I Saw Her Standing There [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
128 I’ll Get You [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
129 Memphis, Tennessee [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
130 She Loves You [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
131 Happy Birthday Dear Saturday Club [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded October 5 1963 for Saturday Club
132 I’ll Get You [Anthology 1]
Recorded October 13 1963 at the Palladium
133 Now Hush, Hush [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
134 From Me To You [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
135 I Saw Her Standing There [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded October 20 1963 for Easy Beat
136 I Saw Her Standing There [Anthology 1]
137 From Me To You [Anthology 1]
138 Money (That’s What I Want) [Anthology 1]
139 You Really Got A Hold On Me [Anthology 1]
140 Roll Over Beethoven [Anthology 1]
Recorded October 24 1963 at the Karlaplansstudion
141 Beatles Greetings [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded November 3 1963 for The Public Ear
142 She Loves You [Anthology 1]
143 Till There Was You [Anthology 1]
144 Twist And Shout [Anthology 1]
Recorded November 4 1963 at Prince of Wales Theatre
145 It Won’t Be Long [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
146 All I’ve Got To Do [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
147 All My Loving [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
148 Don’t Bother Me [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
149 Little Child [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
150 Till There Was You [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
151 Please Mister Postman [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
152 Roll Over Beethoven [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
153 Hold Me Tight [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
154 You Really Got A Hold On Me [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
155 I Wanna Be Your Man [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
156 Devil In Her Heart [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
157 Not A Second Time [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
158 Money (That’s What I Want) [With The Beatles 2009 Remaster]
With The Beatles releases November 22 1963
159 I Want To Hold Your Hand [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
160 This Boy [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
I Want To Hold Your Hand single releases November 29 1963
161 This Boy [Anthology 1]
162 I Want To Hold Your Hand [Anthology 1]
163 Boys, What Was I Thinking… [Anthology 1]
164 Moonlight Bay [Anthology 1]
Recorded December 2 1963 at ATV Studios
165 Brian Bathtubes [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
166 This Boy [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded December 21 1963 for Saturday Club
167 Money (That’s What I Want) [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
168 I Want To Hold Your Hand [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded December 26 1963 for The Beatles Say From Us To You
1964
169 Can’t Buy Me Love (Takes 1 & 2) [Anthology 1]
Recorded January 29 1964 in Paris during their residency at Olympia. Komm gib mir deine Hand and Sie liebt dich were also recorded at this session.
170 All My Loving (Live on the Ed Sullivan Show) [Anthology 1]
Recorded February 9 1964 for the Ed Sullivan Show in New York City
171 Johnny B Goode [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
172 If I Wasn’t in America [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded February 15 1964 for Saturday Club
173 You Can’t Do That (Take 6) [Anthology 1]
174 And I Love Her (Take 2) [Anthology 1]
Recorded February 25 1964 in EMI
175 Komm gib mir deine Hand [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
176 Sie liebt dich [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
German version singles of I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You released March 5 1964*. These were done to try to penetrate the German market after The Beatles began to achieve international fame following I Want To Hold Your Hand going #1 in the US with pressure from Odeon execs. *Both Walter Everett and Barry Miles write the single was released in West Germany on March 5 1964, but the songs were not mixed for mono and stereo until the 10th and 12th. John C. Winn says the single was rush-released in West Germany after mixing, but does not provide a release date. See this for more details.
177 Can’t Buy Me Love [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
178 You Can’t Do That [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
Can’t Buy Me Love releases as a single March 20 1964
179 From Us To You Opening [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
180 Can’t Buy Me Love [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
181 From Fluff To You [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
182 Till There Was You [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
183 Ringo? Yep! [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
184 I Wanna Be Your Man [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
185 Just A Rumour [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
186 Roll Over Beethoven [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
187 All My Loving [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
188 Oh, Can’t We? Yes We Can [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
189 From Us To You Closing [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
From BBC vol 1 these are listed as March 10 1964 but Oh Can’t We? from vol 2 I believe lists the correct date of March 30 1964.
190 I Got A Woman [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded April 4 1964 for the Saturday Club
191 A Hard Day’s Night (Take 1) [Anthology 1]
Recorded April 16 1964 in EMI
192 I Wanna Be Your Man [Anthology 1]
193 Long Tall Sally [Anthology 1]
194 Boys [Anthology 1]
195 Shout [Anthology 1]
Recorded April 19 1964 for Around The Beatles in London
196 I Forgot To Remember To Forget [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded May 18 1964 for From Us To You Say The Beatles
197 I’ll Be Back (Take 2) [Anthology 1]
198 I’ll Be Back (Take 3) [Anthology 1]
Recorded June 1 1964 in EMI
199 You Know What To Do (Demo) [Anthology 1]
200 No Reply (Demo) [Anthology 1]
Recorded June 3 1964 in EMI
201 Long Tall Sally [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
202 I Call Your Name [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
203 Slow Down [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
204 Matchbox [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
The Long Tall Sally EP releases June 19 1964
205 A Hard Day’s Night [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
206 I Should Have Known Better [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
207 If I Fell [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
208 I’m Happy Just To Dance With You [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
209 And I Love Her [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
210 Tell Me Why [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
211 Any Time At All [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
212 I’ll Cry Instead [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
213 Things We Said Today [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
214 When I Get Home [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
215 I’ll Be Back [A Hard Day’s Night 2009 Remaster]
A Hard Day’s Night releases July 10 1964 along with A Hard Day’s Night single featuring the B Sides Things We Said Today and I Should Have Known Better in the UK and the US. Can’t Buy Me Love and You Can’t Do That were previously released singles.
216 Crinsk Dee Night [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
217 A Hard Day’s Night [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
218 Things We Said Today [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
219 Long Tall Sally [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
220 If I Fell [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
221 A Hard Job Writing Them [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
222 And I Love Her [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
223 You Can’t Do That [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded July 16 1964 for Top Gear
224 Mr Moonlight (Takes 1 & 4) [Anthology 1]
225 Leave My Kitten Alone (Take 5) [Anthology 1]
Recorded August 14 1964 in EMI
226 You Can’t Do That [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
227 All My Loving [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
228 Things We Said [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
229 Roll Over Beethoven [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
230 I Want To Hold Your Hand [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
231 Boys [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
232 She Loves You [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
233 Long Tall Sally [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
Recorded August 23 1964 at the Hollywood Bowl. I have decided to split Hollywood Bowl’s tracklist by day it was actually recorded and yes it does make the sequencing terrible. I did try to mirror the original setlist as closely as possible for that day, but both the The Paul McCartney Project and Beatles Bible list She Loves You as the 4th song, but the song features a clip saying “the next song will unfortunately be the last” making me think a different show show I put it second to last. The rest of the tracks on Hollywood Bowl are from the 1965 tour.
234 No Reply (Take 2) [Anthology 1]
Recorded September 30 1964 in EMI
235 Eight Days A Week (Sequence Takes 1, 2, & 4) [Anthology 1]
236 Eight Days A Week (Complete Take 5) [Anthology 1]
Recorded October 6 1964 in EMI
237 Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey! (Take 2) [Anthology 1]
Recorded October 18 1964 in EMI
238 Riding On A Bus [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
239 She’s A Woman [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
240 I Feel Fine [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
241 I’m A Loser [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
242 Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
243 Honey Don’t [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
244 I’ll Follow The Sun [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
245 That’s What We’re Here For [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
246 I Feel Fine (Studio Out-take) [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded November 26 1964 for Top Gear
247 I Feel Fine [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
248 She’s A Woman [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
I Feel Fine single releases November 27 1964
249 No Reply [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
250 I’m A Loser [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
251 Baby’s In Black [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
252 Rock And Roll Music [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
253 I’ll Follow The Sun [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
254 Mr Moonlight [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
255 Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey - Medley [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
256 Eight Days A Week [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
257 Words Of Love [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
258 Honey Don’t [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
259 Every Little Thing [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
260 I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
261 What You’re Doing [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
262 Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby [Beatles For Sales 2009 Remaster]
Beatles For Sale releases December 4 1964
263 Rock and Roll Music [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
264 Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey! [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded December 26 1964 for Saturday Club
1965
265 Yes It Is (Takes 2 & 14) [Anthology 2]
Recorded February 16 1965 in EMI
266 You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (Takes 1, 2, & 5) [Anthology 2]
267 If You’ve Got Trouble [Anthology 2]
Recorded February 18 1965 in EMI
268 That Means A Lot (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
Recorded February 20 1965 in EMI
269 Ticket To Ride [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
270 Yes It Is [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
Ticket To Ride single releases April 9 1965
271 Green With Black Shutters [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
272 Ticket To Ride [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
273 Dizzy Miss Lizzy [Live At The BBC (Remastered)]
Recorded June 7 1965 for the Beatles Invite You To Take A Ticket To Ride
274 Bad Boy [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
Bad Boy releases June 14 1965 on Beatles VI in the US
275 I’m Down (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
276 Yesterday (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
Recorded June 14 1965 in EMI
277 It’s Only Love (Takes 2 & 3) [Anthology 2]
Recorded June 18 1965 in EMI
278 Help! [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
279 I’m Down [Past Masters (Vols. 1 & 2) 2009 Remaster]
Help! single releases July 23 1965
280 I Feel Fine [Anthology 2]
281 Ticket To Ride [Anthology 2]
282 Yesterday [Anthology 2]
283 Help! [Anthology 2]
Recorded August 1 1965 for Blackpool Night Out at ABC Theatre, Blackpool, UK
284 The Night Before [Help! 2009 Remaster]
285 You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
286 I Need You [Help! 2009 Remaster]
287 Another Girl [Help! 2009 Remaster]
288 You’re Going To Lose That Girl [Help! 2009 Remaster]
289 Act Naturally [Help! 2009 Remaster]
290 It’s Only Love [Help! 2009 Remaster]
291 You Like Me Too Much [Help! 2009 Remaster]
292 Tell Me What You See [Help! 2009 Remaster]
293 I’ve Just Seen A Face [Help! 2009 Remaster]
294 Yesterday [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
295 Dizzy Miss Lizzy [Help! 2009 Remaster]
Help! releases August 6 1965. Ticket To Ride and Help! were previously released singles.
296 Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby [Anthology 2]
Recorded August 15 1965 at Shea Stadium, New York City
297 Ticket To Ride [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
298 Help! [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
299 Dizzy Miss Lizzy [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
Recorded August 29 1965 at the Hollywood Bowl. Dizzy Miss Lizzy includes recordings from August 30th spliced in so I put it last.
300 Twist And Shout [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
301 She’s A Woman [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
302 Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
303 Can’t Buy Me Love [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
304 Baby’s In Black [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
305 A Hard Day’s Night [Live At The Hollywood Bowl 2016 Remaster]
Recorded August 30 1965 at the Hollywood Bowl
306 Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
Recorded October 12 1965 in EMI
307 I’m Looking Through You (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
Recorded October 24 1965 in EMI
308 12 Bar Original (Take 2 Edited) [Anthology 2]
Recorded November 4 1965 in EMI
309 John Pop Profile [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
310 George Pop Profile [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded November 30 1965 at The BBC
311 Day Tripper [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
312 We Can Work It Out [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out released as a double A Sided single December 3 1965 along with Rubber Soul.
313 Drive My Car [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
314 Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
315 You Won’t See Me [Rubber Soul 2009 Remaster]
316 Nowhere Man [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
317 Think For Yourself [Rubber Soul 2009 Remaster]
318 The Word [Rubber Soul 2009 Remaster]
319 Michelle [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
320 What Goes On [Rubber Soul 2009 Remaster]
321 Girl [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
322 I’m Looking Through You [Rubber Soul 2009 Remaster]
323 In My Life [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
324 Wait [Rubber Soul 2009 Remaster]
325 If I Needed Someone [The Beatles 1962-1966 2023 Mix]
326 Run For Your Life [Rubber Soul 2009 Remaster]
Rubber Soul was released December 3 1965
1966
327 She Said She Said (Johns Demo) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
John Lennon began recording She Said She Said in March of 1966 and this is a home demo.
328 Yellow Submarine - Songwriting Work Tape Part 1 [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
329 Yellow Submarine - Songwriting Work Tape Part 2 [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
These are home demos of Yellow Submarine and I am assuming they would go around here, but I’m not sure of an exact date. Possibly before She Said She Said, but I believe before the studio recording began.
330 Tomorrow Never Knows (Take 1) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
331 Tomorrow Never Knows (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
Recorded April 6 1966 in EMI. This was the beginning of the Revolver sessions. I am pretty sure these are the exact same but the mixing and mastering are different.
332 Tomorrow Never Knows (RM Mono Mix 11) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
From the April 7 1966 tape loop overdubbing sessions or the final overdubbing on April 22nd in EMI
333 Got To Get You Into My Life (First Version Take 5) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
334 Got To Get You Into My Life (First Version Take 5) [Anthology 2]
Recorded April 7 1966 in Abbey Road Studios
335 Love You To (Take 1) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
336 Love You To (Unnumbered Take) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Love You To began recording April 11 1966 in Abbey Road Studios with an additional session taking place on the 13th. I am going to assume these are both from the 11th.
337 Love You To (Take 7) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded April 13 1966 adding an additional vocal to a previous take
338 Paperback Writer (Takes 1 & 2) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded April 13 1966 in EMI
339 Rain (Take 5 Actual Speed) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
340 Rain (take 5 Slowed Down For Master) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Either recorded April 14 or 16 1966 in EMI
341 Doctor Robert (Take 7) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded April 19 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
342 And Your Bird Can Sing (First Version Take 2) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
343 And Your Bird Can Sing (First Version Take 2 Giggles) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
344 And Your Bird Can Sing (First Version Take 2) [Anthology 2]
First version of And Your Bird Can Sing was recorded April 20 1966 in Abbey Road Studios
345 And Your Bird Can Sing (Second Version Take 5) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Second version of And Your Bird Can Sing was April 26 1966 in Abbey Road Studios
346 I’m Only Sleeping (Rehearsal Fragment) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
347 I’m Only Sleeping (Rehearsal Instrumental) [Anthology 2]
348 I’m Only Sleeping (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
349 I’m Only Sleeping (Take 2) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
350 I’m Only Sleeping (Take 5) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded April 27 1966 in Abbey Road Studios
351 Eleanor Rigby (Strings Only) [Anthology 2]
352 Eleanor Rigby (Speech Before Take 2) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
353 Eleanor Rigby (Take 2) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded April 28 1966 in Abbey Road Studios
354 Paul Pop Profile [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
355 Ringo Pop Profile [On Air - Live At The BBC (Vol.2)]
Recorded May 2 1966 at The BBC
356 I’m Only Sleeping (Mono Mix RM1) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
I’m Only Sleeping was completed May 6 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
357 Taxman (Take 11) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
358 Taxman (Take 11) [Anthology 2]
Overdubbing for Taxman Take 11 was done May 16 1966.
359 For No One (Take 10 Backing Track) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
I am assuming this is from the May 16 1966 session at Abbey Road but possibly from the May 9 1966 session. I believe the French horn solo was recorded at the final session on the 19th.
360 Yellow Submarine (Take 4 Before Sound Effects) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded May 26 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
361 Yellow Submarine (Highlighted Sound Effects) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded June 1 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
362 I Want To Tell You (Speech And Take 4) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded June 2 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
363 Paperback Writer [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
364 Rain [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Paperback Writer single releases June 10 1966
365 Here, There And Everywhere (Take 6) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded June 14 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
366 Got To Get You Into My Life (Second Version Unnumbered Mix) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
367 Got To Get You Into My life (Second Version Take 8) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded June 17 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
368 She Said She Said (Take 15 Backing Track) [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Recorded June 21 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
369 Rock And Roll Music [Anthology 2]
370 She’s A Woman [Anthology 2]
Recorded June 30 1966 at Nippon Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan
371 Taxman [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
372 Eleanor Rigby [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
373 I’m Only Sleeping [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
374 Love You To [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
375 Here, There And Everywhere [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
376 Yellow Submarine [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
377 She Said She Said [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
378 Good Day Sunshine [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
379 And Your Bird Can Sing [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
380 For No One [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
381 Doctor Robert [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
382 I Want To Tell You [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
383 Got To Get You Into My Life [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
384 Tomorrow Never Knows [Revolver (Super Deluxe)]
Revolver releases August 5 1966 along with Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine as a double A Sided single.
385 Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
386 Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 1) [Anthology 2]
387 Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 4) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded November 24 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
388 Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 7) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded November 29 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
389 When I’m 64 (Take 2) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded December 6 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
390 Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 7 And Edit) [Anthology 2]
391 Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 26) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
I believe the edit was done and take 26 was recorded December 8 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
392 Strawberry Fields Forever (Demo Sequence) [Anthology 2]
The final edit for the song was done on December 22 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
393 Penny Lane (Take 6) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded December 29 1966 at Abbey Road Studios
1967
394 Penny Lane (Vocal Overdubs And Speech) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded January 10 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
395 Penny Lane (Alternate Mix) [Anthology 2]
Likely created January 12 1967 at a later overdubbing session.
396 A Day In The Life (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
397 A Day In The Life (Take 2) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
A Day In The Life began recording January 19 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
398 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
399 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Take 9 And Speech) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded February 1 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
400 Good Morning Good Morning (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
401 Good Morning Good Morning (Take 8) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded February 8 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
402 Fixing A Hole (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
403 Fixing A Hole (Speech & Take 3) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded February 9 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
404 A Day In The Life (Orchestra Overdub) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
405 A Day In The Life (Takes 1, 2, 6 & Orchestra) [Anthology 2]
406 A Day In The Life (Hummed Last Chord) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded February 10 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
407 Strawberry Fields Forever [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
408 Penny Lane [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane release as a double A Sided single February 13 1967
409 Only A Northern Song (Takes 3 & 12) [Anthology 2]
Recorded February 14 1967 at Abbey Road Studios. I do not believe these takes include the overdubs done on April 20th but would be interested in hearing from someone that knows more.
410 Good Morning Good Morning (Take 8 With Overdubs) [Anthology 2]
Recorded February 16 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
411 Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (Speech Before Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
412 Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite! (Takes 1 & 2) [Anthology 2]
Recorded February 17 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
413 Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (Take 7) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
414 Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (Take 7) [Anthology 2]
Recorded February 20 1967 these are duplicates but with different mixing and mastering
415 A Day In The Life (The Last Chord) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded February 22 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
416 Lovely Rita (Speech & Take 9) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded February 24 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
417 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded February 28 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
418 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Speech, False Start & Take 5) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
419 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Takes 6, 7 & 8) [Anthology 2]
Recorded March 2 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
420 Getting Better (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded March 9 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
421 Getting Better (Take 12) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Likely recorded March 10 1967 following John Lennon’s LSD incident the previous day, but possibly both recorded on the 9th.
422 Within You Without You (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
423 Within You Without You (George Coaching The Musicians) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded March 15 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
424 She’s Leaving Home (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
425 She’s Leaving Home (Take 6) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded March 17 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
426 Within You Without You (Instrumental) [Anthology 2]
This version contains overdubs that were done on March 22 1967, but it’s possible this is based off the mix created April 3rd but it does not feature the sound effects overdubbed at that session so I’ve placed it here.
427 With A Little Help From My Friends (Take 1) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded March 29 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
428 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (Take 5) [Anthology 2]
429 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (Speech & Take 8) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Recorded April 1 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
430 You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) (Extended Stereo Mix) [Anthology 2]
Recorded May 17 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
431 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
432 With A Little Help From My Friends [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
433 Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
434 Getting Better [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
435 Fixing A Hole [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
436 She’s Leaving Home [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
437 Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite! [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
438 Within You Without You [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
439 When I’m Sixty-Four [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
440 Lovely Rita [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
441 Good Morning Good Morning [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
442 Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
443 A Day In The Life [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)]
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP releases May 29 1967
444 All You Need Is Love [1 2015 Remaster]
445 Baby, You’re A Rich Man [Magical Mystery Tour 2009 Remaster]
All You Need Is Love single releases July 7 1967
446 I Am The Walrus (Take 16) [Anthology 2]
Recorded September 5 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
447 The Fool On The Hill (Demo) [Anthology 2]
Recorded September 6 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
448 Your Mother Should Know (Take 27) [Anthology 2]
Recorded September 16 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
449 The Fool On The Hill (Take 4) [Anthology 2]
Recorded September 25 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
450 Hello Goodbye (Take 16) [Anthology 2]
Recorded October 19 1967 at Abbey Road Studios
451 Hello Goodbye [1 2015 Remaster]
452 I Am The Walrus [The Beatles 1967-1970 2023 Mix]
453 Magical Mystery Tour [The Beatles 1967-1970 2023 Mix]
454 The Fool On The Hill [The Beatles 1967-1970 2023 Mix]
455 Flying [Magical Mystery Tour 2009 Remaster]
456 Blue Jay Way [Magical Mystery Tour 2009 Remaster]
457 Your Mother Should Know [Magical Mystery Tour 2009 Remaster]
Magical Mystery Tour releases November 27 1967 in the US before the UK EP.

i (16) am a little conflicted on what to think abt this cause it just happened and idk if its that serious.
ive become friends with this group of girls this year. theyre very normal, and not something im used to. i’ve always been kind of the ‘weird kid’ cause i liked anime at the beginning of school and i draw in my spare time. generally im not someone you see around people like this. one of the girls in this group is someone i was kinda familiar with cause we shared a class 2 years ago but we hadnt really talked again until this year. shes pretty conservative and i agree with her on barely anything but the importance of being politically active.
i live in the uk and among the crowds of ‘normal’ people its been common to describe yourself as ‘acoustic’ as an rude insult disguised as a joke. this friend seems to find it funny to joke that were all autistic. i dont find it funny at all.
i am not diagnosed with autism nor do i ‘self diagnose’ myself with the condition. my uncle has it and a few of my other friends. i’ve considered whether i do but overall i doubt it. i was talking with this friend and all of a sudden they begin to say im slow and that i have down syndrome. i feel quite uncomfortable already but then she begins saying ’me tard, you tard, re-“ i then blocked her under the guise of a joke.
my current issue is whether im right to feel so offended? she meant it as a joke, and i domt even have the condition, but it also feels wrong that im kind of offended even at the insinuation that i have it? i feel a bit like the parents who say they love gay people but refuse to accept their child might be. and again im not autistic so it just feels wrong to be offended. idk what to do cause the friendship feels strained, at least on my end, cause of our differing opinions. i feel that even by being friends with her im discrediting the beliefs i live my life by, but i also feel im giving in if i break it off.
regardless, i have another 2 years at the school and i dont want it being too awkward for me 💀 sorry if it does seem im being soft and annoying i just had to get if off my chest somewhere they wont see it

Lonely Castle in the Mirror, by Mizuki Tsujimura
"Lonely Castle in the Mirror" is a genre-savvy portal fantasy about junior high students who get drawn into a mysterious castle when they're supposed to be in school. Kokoro had a terrible experience early in the school year that's made her terrified of facing her classmates, and develops some kind of (psychosomatic?) illness that prevents her from attending either the normal school or a special alternative school for students who need more support. Shortly after this, her bedroom mirror turns into a portal to the castle with six other students who are also not in school during the normal hours. The "Wolf Queen" in charge--an elementary school girl who enjoys allusions to "Little Red Riding Hood"--tells them all that there's a secret key in the castle that can grant one wish, and they have a year to find it and, potentially, use it. Also, if anyone is caught in the castle outside of the 9-5 school day timeframe, they'll all be eaten by a wolf.
So, these painfully shy students have the opportunity to make friends and have a non-terrifying experience with kids their own age, and they all enjoy bonding and playing video games and drinking tea together, and for the most part nobody cares about finding the key, because that would make the castle close and prematurely end their new friendship. For most of the book, the contrived quest stuff doesn't play into it. And then when it does, it kind of lampshades "oh yeah I have to do this on speedrun mode."
There are a lot of takes pointing out that books where "the magic goes away"/"everyone loses their memories"/"we just have to move on with our lives and pretend like the portal fantasy never happened" can be pretty messed up. In this book, however, I couldn't find myself relating to the characters because it felt like a perverse incentives situation. Yes, middle school is an emotionally volatile, turbulent, unpleasant environment full of many immature people. This is a pretty common experience, actually. Kokoro just can't handle it, and as a response, the infinitely patient teacher at the alternative school reassures her mother that she's battling really hard and it's not her fault, she just can't go to school, and then she gets to go through a portal into fantasy world with people who play video games and eat snacks all day...? I understand there's more to it than that, but something has to change about this situation because otherwise this really isn't the message you want to send. (Once we learn about the backgrounds and life situations of some of the other students, I can imagine how it was easier for people like Subaru and Aki to fall through the cracks, but it feels like, eg, Masamune and Ureshino's junior high situation should have had some kind of guidance counselor or adult in the room. The readers' guide in the back of the book describes Kokoro as a "futoko," and I understand this is more pervasive in Japan than elsewhere, but I have a hard time accepting that seventh graders staying home for months on end with no apparent homeschooling or tutoring gets such a shrug.)
The prose didn't really grab me, sometimes it felt awkward ("That day, Fuka apparently enjoyed the chocolates back home, for she faithfully reported to Kokoro that 'they were delicious.'") and there were a several parts with very. short. one. line. paragraphs.

Kokoro tried to convince herself that she hadn't been at home that day. Miori and the others had simply pounded on the door of an empty house, trampled over the patio, gone round and round over outside of the house. But nothing actually happened. Nothing at all. She never was about to be killed. And yet the next day, she said, "I have a stomachache." And she really did. It was no lie. And her mother chimed in: "You do look pale. Are you OK?" And that's when Kokoro stopped going to school.

A few paragraphs later:

Would she be able to protect herself?
The only place she could now go to freely from her bedroom was the castle.
If I'm in the castle, she started to think, then I'll be safe.
Only the castle beyond the mirror could offer her complete protection.

Girl, I know your mental health isn't the greatest, but we're talking about the place where people threatened you with being eaten alive by a wolf. ??? Sorry, my suspension of belief does not extend this far.
There's also a random red herring with a neighbor student whose father has an interest in researching fairy tales, and like, maybe that "real world" location/characters are related in some way to the portal world? No, it's just a fortuitous coincidence that helps Kokoro have access to more Western fairy tale info.
The good news is, about halfway through the characters start developing some genre-savviness and realizing what they have in common, and towards the end, things pick up significantly in terms of how and why some of the arbitrary fairy-tale logic came about. So it definitely sticks the landing in that way.
Bingo: Prologue/Epilogue, Author of Color, Book Club
Promise of the Flame, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
At the end of "Stewards of the Flame," to which this book is a sequel, our heroes Jesse, Carla, and Peter had hijacked a spaceship and jumped to an uninhabited planet to set up a colony where humans could develop psionic powers free from the medical bureaucracy of Undine. Jesse's hyperspace jump was rushed and not perfectly calculated, so in order to ensure their oxygen supply makes it all the way to planet Maclairn (named after their late founder), the Group had to confront their deepest fear and brave the stasis boxes that had been Chekhov-gunned several times in the last section. As the existence of the sequel implies, the protagonists and most of their comrades survive stasis. But while, in "Stewards," the hyperspace navigation "error"/imperfection sets up the Group's ultimate test, here it casts a long shadow as Jesse keeps wondering, "could we have picked a better landing site if I hadn't screwed it up?"
The early days on Maclairn are a struggle. The first part of the book is a recurring cycle of "should we do things this way or that way? Well, we came here to set up a society fully founded on mind powers, we pretty much have to commit to the bit or else what's the point." Repeat ad infinitum. Later, this broadens somewhat to "we have to have psi powers coexist with modern technology to fulfill Ian [Maclairn]'s dream, otherwise what's the point." There are clear parallels to (Engdahl's older trilogy) "Children of the Star"; that society represents the endpoint if they go down a path of giving up on modern technology--and the burdens of agrarian, high-population-growth societies fall disproportionately on women. If "Stewards" had motifs of baptism, this is more of an Exodus story, with the characters sulking about "why did you bring us out of Undine just to starve in the wilderness, at least there we had enough to eat." "My God, came Carla’s thought, we’re homesick! Homesick for Undine! I never admitted that to myself, it was so foolish, I’d wanted so much to leave . . . I guess I just pushed it down inside, into a place I didn’t dare go. . . ."
The consequences of the hyperspace jump being off are a minor tonal retcon/change in perspective on the events of the first book. A more significant one, to me, involves love triangle dynamics. In "Stewards," we learn that Carla and Peter both previously had spouses who died under the authoritarian Undine government. Fortunately, Jesse shows up just when Carla is ready to love again, and their relationship brings him into the Group and thus enables their escape from Undine. "Promise" adds that Peter has been silently pining for Carla all along, but needed Jesse's starship skills too much to say anything. We're told the Group's adult recruits skew slightly female, but that isn't represented among the main characters, and you're telling me that none of them are Peter's type? All three of them sigh and angst about "oh, we're such great friends, we can't let this love triangle come between us," and at times it feels like it's setting up for a polygamy plotline (they're all highly powerful telepaths, they can't keep secrets from each other!) And then it just...goes nowhere. As in the first book, I can accept that sex is probably great among telepaths; I can't buy that every single person has to have sex in order to fully level up their telepathic sensitivity!
The best parts of "Promise" involve the culture clashes between Jesse, who grew up on Earth; the rest of the adult Group members, from Undine; and the Maclairn-born generation. Undine's environment is so tightly regulated, they don't even have insects or lizards, so the planet's "collective unconsciousness" doesn't have a fear of creepy-crawlies; Jesse's initial revulsion risks "contaminating" the psyche until everyone faces their fear.

“Horror vids involving animal life aren’t permitted on colony worlds,” Peter told him. “Haven’t you ever wondered why starship libraries don’t contain any? Earth has always banned their export as a measure to protect extraterrestrial lifeforms. It’s one of the few government trade regulations I think is wise.” Of course, Jesse realized. The average Earth citizen’s reaction would have been to kill the crawlies—if possible, to exterminate them. That hadn’t occurred to anyone yesterday. And horror vids often portrayed even intelligent aliens as repulsive; what kind of precedent would that set if similar ones were ever encountered?
Traditionally, said the knowledgebase, small farmers had chopped chickens’ heads off with a hatchet. Wringing their necks was said to be more humane, but nobody wanted to experiment on live, squawking chickens despite the specific instructions provided. These warned that the hardest part, in the physical sense, would be catching a grown chicken in the first place—a fact soon borne out by experience, as chickens are not devoid of telepathic sensitivity and the pursuers were unconsciously broadcasting their intent to kill.
Kel, like many of the Group’s other children, had been slow in learning to talk. It had taken awhile before it dawned on the adults that this was because the kids’ telepathic bonds with their parents had been so strongly encouraged that they felt no need to communicate vocally. Speech could not be allowed to die out in a psi-based culture; it was essential not only to reading but to the framing and communication of complex ideas. Now, everyone realized that like the skills for volitional control of the body, telepathic conveyance of concepts, as distinguished from emotions, must wait until the kids were older.

On the other hand, the scope of "this is dangerous, but we must, to commit to the psionic bit" and "well, we've come through a lot of tough situations before, but this time really is the end...jk never mind we got out of it" got repetitive. There was one scene towards the end where it's like "okay, we're almost done, I can see how telepathy might be used to enable a permanent self-sacrifice...nope, we're still going, huh," and even though some of the resolutions were nice callbacks/tying up foreshadowing, it was still a lot.
Like in James P. Hogan's "Voyage to Yesteryear," the kids who were raised outside of Earth and Undine's prejudices are, overall, a great step forward for humankind, but there can be some values dissonance. In both cases, the desire for lots of population growth leads to a much lower age of consent than Earthlings are used to. Justified somewhat more in Maclairn's case; telepathy means almost everyone wouldn't fathom hurting each other and of course sex is consensual, as well as amazing. On the other hand, in both cases, there's no prison infrastructure; if someone is determined to be evil and is posing a grave threat to others, you just have to kill them. "Promise" gets a little more philosophical about the problem of evil--if it's not nature and it's not nurture, what causes it? Free will? Sure, but it seems as if some people are also evil from day one even if their DNA is just fine.
There are a couple shoutouts to Lord of the Rings and Star Trek that fit in nicely. I found "it's just like using the Force, you know, like in that old vid, Star Wars" to be more of a distraction. Similarly, Engdahl's commitment to showing her work ("in the twentieth century on Earth, you know, people experimented with remote viewing!") got to be a distraction. But the exploration of "okay, let's try a rain dance, even if it fails we're learning something and pushing knowledge forward" was a great use of the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" trope, which is what I come to Engdahl for anyway.
Some people, like Peter, tend to believe in an afterlife; others, like Jesse, are more skeptical. Earth religions don't transfer well to other planets because the interstellar gap is too big for the collective unconsciousness to bridge. Despite this, characters use the word "God" (like in a telepathic context of "Carla . . . oh, God, Carla, answer me!") approximately 144 times. Do you have no one else's name to take in vain???
Criticisms aside, I do think that this is less heavy-handed than "Stewards" and at least as good a starting point!
Bingo: Dreams, Prologues/Epilogues, Self-Published, Survival. One prominent character acquires a physical disability midway through the story. Jesse and Peter's Criminal record on Undine is not very important (since the entire book is set on or around Maclairn), but it becomes more prominent in the last section.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty
Once upon a time (1100s Indian Ocean) there was a notorious nakhudha (pirate captain) named Amina al-Sirafi. Ten years ago, she retired, and now she's a single mom with a bad knee and a leaky roof. However, a wealthy noblewoman who believes her granddaughter has been kidnapped by a Western European would-be sorcerer insists on having Amina rescue her, never mind Amina's own family responsibilities. So Amina has to put the band back together, staying one step ahead of the authorities while getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Amina and her crew are likable rogues. I found this easier to get into than Chakraborty's "City of Brass". That book focused more on a long-term conflict between two factions, neither of whom consistently seem like the "good guys"; maybe that's supposed to be sending a message about RL actually works, but I found it confusing at times. In contrast, the early sections of "Amina" are about tracking down individual allies, from a gay smuggler stuck in a prison in Aden, to a navigator and family man in Mogadishu, while researching the notorious Falco Palamenestra and speculating what he might be up to.
At first, Amina's Muslim identity comes through more in the ways characters talk, and some level of monster-fighting exorcism (like Catholicism in some horror movies), than actual practice. But gradually, we see more of how she's struggled to be a parent in her post-pirate life:

If the criminal past didn’t alert you, I have not always been a very good Muslim. Drinking and missing prayer were among my lesser sins, and if I tried to straighten myself up every year when Ramadan rolled around—a new life of piety easy to imagine while dazed with thirst and caught up in the communal joy of taraweeh—I typically lapsed into my usual behavior by the time the month of Shawwal had ended.
But then Marjana was born. And Asif was . . . lost. And if one of these events made me feel as though I had no right to ever call upon God again, the other filled with me a driving need I could not deny. So I keep my daily prayers, even if I feel unworthy the entire time.

To me, this rang true as a depiction of a complicated, realistic, person of faith.
This is a time and place that I knew very little about. For instance, one plotline involves the island of Socotra, an island off the coast of Somalia which is today part of Yemen. There are caves there with graffiti from sailors going back thousands of years, in Indian and Greek and Ethiopic scripts. This is a real place! I would not have been able to tell you anything about it before reading this book! So Chakraborty's vivid descriptions of places this, and of the diverse cultures and religious backgrounds of pirates who live and work alongside each other, is compelling. There's a danger in this as a reader, though, in that getting too caught up in the "worldbuilding" of the actual world can make it feel like its "foreignness" is what makes it speculative and fantastical, which is obviously inaccurate and beside the point. That's one reason why jumping in at the deep end with an honest-to-goodness sea monster in chapter one might have been a good choice, to remind us that there really are otherworldly things happening.
The themes of "rich people love to jerk poor people around" and "the male gaze sucks" are clear, but there's lots of quippy banter mixed in.

“That was you, was it not? The woman who poisoned the soldiers at the wali’s office, freed a crew of homicidal pirates, set a score of ships on fire, and fled the harbor in the middle of the night?” “I would never confirm such a thing and put you at risk of consorting with criminals. But it was two ships, not a score. I wouldn’t wish to encourage exaggeration.”
Sailing past its ancient breakwater—the stones said to have been set there by giants—you might feel as though you have entered a mythical port of magic from a sailor’s yarn. You would be sorely mistaken. Aden is where magic goes to be crushed by the muhtasib’s weights, and if wonder could be calculated, this city would require an ordinance taxing it.
“She knows you are a pirate?” “I am not a pirate,” Majed huffed. “I am a cartographer with a checkered past.” “Yes. A checkered past of piracy.”

The book contains a few chapters that are "in-universe documentation" or chronicles of the places and people in the main narrative. This is a trope I really enjoy at times. However, in this case, I didn't feel it added much, beyond underscoring the themes that "men feel threatened by powerful women, oh no."
The biggest issue for me was how all the diverse, sympathetic characters just kind of went along with developments that felt more reminiscent of 2020s Tumblr idiolect than 1100s Indian Ocean. How fortuitously convenient! (At least it got a Hugo nom.)
Smaller quibbles: the timeframe with Amina in her forties is appeSaling to the extent that it's a story about a working mother trying to follow her own dreams while also desperately missing her kid. But in order to make that work, the narrative sometimes withholds a lot of important information about the tragedies in Amina's past/her relationship with her child's father until it can be brought forward for dramatic effect, and it made me wonder what a story from the younger Amina's POV would look like without the artificial suspense problem.
More broadly, I felt like the second half's pace wasn't as crisp as the first--there's a dramatic near-death experience, then a bunch of fantastical creatures are introduced in quick succession as if to make up for the "worldbuilding via the actual world" stuff earlier, then we get a very contrived in-universe sequel hook, then we double back to a setting that had already been introduced. Whereas the first part was "we need to go to A to do B and then that gives us a clue that leads us to C."
Who wore it better?

“It is invalid!” I burst out. “Our nikah. It is not permissible for me to marry a non-Muslim.” Raksh frowned. “Is that why the man had me say all those words about God and prophets?” He returned to studying the contract. “Trust me, dear wife, I can be a vast number of things.” “But—but you are not a believer.” “Of course I am. Best to know the competition, yes?”

Compare "Alif the Unseen" (which is one of my favorites and I suspect I probably was harsh on "City of Brass" by comparison):

"But I told him I couldn't marry him even if I wanted to, because I can't marry an unbeliever. And he laughed and said he'd been a believer, 'for a the better part of a thousand years,' I believe were the exact words." "What?" said Alif. "Vikram? Vikram the madman who bites people?" "He might be those things," said the convert hastily, "but did you ever know him to do or say anything really blasphemous?" "I guess not."

Bingo: Alliterative Title, Criminals, Dreams, Reference Materials, Readalong! It's planned to be First in a Series but the sequels aren't out yet. (Statistics from last year just came out and this was the most popular book across all 2023 bingo cards, with ~200 reads!)
Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
When I read "Uprooted" and griped about the implausible romance and/or reactive plot, people's reactions were "try Spinning Silver, it's an improvement in some of those ways." And yeah, it is! I was aware that Spinning Silver was set in the same world as Uprooted, ~1700s Eastern Europe but with some fantasy elements, and that it was based on Rumplestiltskin.
But it's a lot more than a simple retelling. "Spinning Silver" teases out the individual trope elements of Rumplestiltskin--a mercenary father trying to get his daughter to marry up, the dead mother looming over the plot, a woman given the impossible task of making gold out of other elements, terrible bargains, aloof and unknowable beings from the fae world, the power of knowing someone's true name, the horror of a mother trading her child to inhuman creatures--and blows them all up, turning them inside-out, and creating something original.
It also does a lot with POV. For the first chunk, we have two young women from a small town who go back and forth telling the stories of their business dealings. But as the book goes on, we start jumping into more and more people's heads, and everyone's voice is very different. Sometimes this can be used for dramatic irony; we hear what character A thinks of their interaction with B, then we jump back and tell the same scene from B's POV and what was going through their head is very different than what A assumes. Once in a while, this makes the plot drag--there's a couple of scenes towards the end where we can't have any suspense about "oh no, will they find what they're looking for" because we've just seen the corresponding scene from another POV, and it would have been more effective to rearrange them--but overall, things are propelled forward much more intriguingly than "Uprooted."
Our POV characters are:

• Miryem, the daughter of the village moneylender. Miryem's family is Jewish, which means her father is one of the few people socially permitted to work as a moneylender--but he's more interested in currying favor with the neighbors than getting his debts repaid, so his family goes hungry. Miryem steps up, grows "cold" and "wintry," and takes on his job, to her parents' horror. But an offhand remark about "look, I can turn silver into gold" (metaphorically, because of, you know, capitalism) inadvertently catches the ear of the "Staryk," monstrous elven raiders who live in a parallel realm.
• Wanda, the daughter of an abusive alcoholic. Miryem is like "he can't pay off his debt because he's drunk everything away, I'll have them repay me by hiring Wanda to assist me with our work, I know this is cold and ruthless but I have to." Then when we see it from Wanda's POV she's like "you're giving me money to be out of the house and away from my father? And you'll even feed me? What an undeserved kindness!" Her reaction to "learning to manipulate numbers and do arithmetic is an amazing kind of magic!" felt cheesy and over-the-top, but the contrast between the literal phrasing of a royal decree and the way she "translates" it was more convincing.
• Irina, the daughter of the duke of Vysnia (Vilnius, Lithuania). Like Wanda, her mother is dead and her father is trying to arrange the most profitable marriage for her, never mind what she wants. When Miryem is compelled to turn magical Staryk silver into gold, she does so by having an acquaintance forge silver jewelry which the duke purchases--so when the gold takes on magical powers in the Staryk world, so does the silver with Irina, and brings her to the attention of a tsar. Despite her cold relationship with her father, she learns a lot from him and is a true politician, adept as anyone at cutting deals to keep her realm safe.
• Stepon, Wanda's younger brother. His narration is very simple and childlike (amazing cold open with "I like goats because I know what they will do.") It's possible he has some kind of sensory/mental health issues, or it's possible he's just eleven and overstimulated by unfamiliar crowds.
• Magreta, Irina's nurse/caretaker. She can be kind and supportive, but her casual antisemitism provides a contrast to how Miryem is treated by the villagers.
• Mirnatius, the tsar. For a while we mostly see him through Irina's POV ("this guy is so full of himself he requires a new outfit every day, that's no way to manage the economy"), but again, his narration provides a very different perspective on what's going on.

So I said the romance was better than "Uprooted," in that we didn't have the implausible "elderly magician berates young woman all the time but also they can't keep their hands off each other." In "Spinning Silver," both {Miryem and the Staryk king} and {Irina and Mirnatius} are paired off without much say-so on anybody's part, it's being manipulated by magic/higher-ups. So the timeframe of the book is mostly them all learning how to tolerate each other, and the romance is kind of left to your imagination in the future era.
The Staryk magic is kind of like...you can see their roads briefly if they make incursions in the human world, but as soon as they've disappeared, you start forgetting them and it really takes effort to remember. This means that if someone, like Miryem, disappears into the Staryk world, she's forgotten almost immediately except for little irregularities that don't seem right. These depictions were well-done. (Except that I was trying to remember if the Staryk were the same as the [jerk, mundane human] aristocrats in "Uprooted." They're not. I think I was half-remembering "Marek," the creepy prince, instead of "Staryk," the winter elves.)
There's a cool liminal space that sets up back-and-forth "communication" between the human and Staryk realms, and again, the multiple POVs are a good framework for this. On the other hand, there are some things, like, why do the Staryk want human gold, that are kind of chalked up to "magic idk" and not completely spelled out; for some of the confrontations at the end, again, it's better not to worry too much about hard magic systems and just go with the vibes. There's also an earlier plot that definitely plays the trope of "the less the audience knows about the plan, the more likely it is to succeed" trope straight.
Especially early on, it can be a very bleak "everyone sucks here" setting. Wanda and Stepon's father is horrific. Irina's father is mercenary and sets her up with Mirnatius, a dandy who abuses animals for fun. Nobody in the village respects Miryem's family, and when she tries to reclaim what she's due, her parents are horrified. The Staryk raid the village and carry off women and demand impossible tasks. There's a lot of "I have my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it" coming from all sides. Even though the plot is moving forward, it's hard to feel like there's anything to root for.
But cracks of light shine through. Miryem's mother, and her mother, defy the "dead moms" trope, and are able to be loving parental figures to Wanda, Stepon, and their brother Sergey. Miryem's grandfather is wise and conscientious, warning her of the risks that some of her choices pose not only to their family but to the Vysnia Jewish community as a whole, but still recognizing she's mature enough to make her own choices. They even make use of a real-world Jewish blessing for the first blossoming of trees in the spring. Even when people are trying to be cold, sometimes they're just too human!
Bingo: Alliterative Title, Under the Surface (not for most of the plot, but there is a secret tunnel that gets use), Multi-POV (and how!)
The Infinite Arena (edited by Terry Carr)
Anthology of SF short stories about sports, stumbled upon while browsing a used bookstore. I like sports and the first one was based on "Casey at the Bat," so okay, sold.
It's from 1977, and the stories were originally published in the 40s-70s timeframe. The sex ratio among writers appears to be nine men, zero women, which is pretty "impressive" considering there are only seven stories. Three of them are installments from series that feature the same recurring character(s), so maybe that explains some of the...paucity? I don't want to say they're "flat" or "shallow" or anything, most of the contemporary "deep" stuff isn't to my taste either, but it feels like there's "no 'there' there" for several of these. In some cases, it's like, "we have to raise the stakes by involving gambling/someone's fate being on the line"; in others, it's looking for parallels between sports and other aspects of life (warfare? weird alien insects?) that provide the impetus for two plots to intertwine.
-Joy in Mudville (Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson)--very impressionable and earnest teddy-bear-like alien species imprints on humans, and immediately become obsessed with baseball. One of the aliens names himself Mighty Casey, but unfortunately, opponents can rattle him by reminding him of how "Casey at the Bat" turned out. Fortunately, what poetry can break, poetry can also fix...

"You untentacled mammal! raged Ush Karuza. "You sslimeless conformation of bored flesh!" Alex had long ago discovered that mankind rarely reacts to insults couched in nonhuman terms. It did not offend him at all to be told that he was slimeless.

-Bullard Reflects (Malcolm Jameson)--Dazzle Dart is a sport played by bouncing light rays around with reflective gear and aiming for a goal at the opponents' end. Like American football, one team is designated on offense at a time, and the other is on defense, but you can "intercept" and score from on defense. In Dazzle Dart, this is worth bonus points. Except instead of normal goals and "turnover" goals being worth one and two points respectively, it's twenty-five and fifty. And you thought Quidditch was silly. (This is from 1941.)
-The Body Builders (Keith Laumer)--the best of the stories, in my opinion, in that it predicts both technological advancement and the social changes that will ensue in a clever way.

So it's a little artificial maybe--but what about the Orggies, riding around in custom-built cars that are nothing but substitute personalities, wearing padded shoulders, contact lenses, hearing aids, false teeth, cosmetics, elevator shoes, rugs to cover their bald domes? If you're going to wear false eyelashes, why not false eyes? Instead of a nose bob, why not bob the whole face? At least a fellow wearing a Servo is honest about it, which is more than you can say for an Orggie doll in a foam-rubber bra--not that Julie needed any help in that department.

-The Great Kladnar Race (Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett)--bored humans on an alien planet try introducing something like horse races that they can bet on. However, the aliens' concepts of sports and competition and betting don't necessarily align with the humans'.
-Mr. Meek Plays Polo (Clifford D. Simak)--guy who has only seen one space polo game in his life somehow accidentally stumbles into being the "expert" space polo coach, oops. Also there are weird alien bugs that are great at computation (a little like "The Circle").
-Sunjammer (Arthur C. Clarke, whose name is spelled wrong on the front cover)--a solar flare interrupts a solar sailboat race. Felt timely given the storm of a few days ago! (I did not get to see the aurora, alas.)
-Run to Starlight (George R. R. Martin)--short and slow but extremely muscular aliens enter an American football league and crush everyone, metaphorically and literally. However, the aliens' concepts of sports and competition don't necessarily align with the humans'. Too bad he never wrote anything else ;)
Bingo: 5+ short stories.