Does anyone have any direct experience with Windmill Palms in Zone 8?
I have seen some blog posts indicating they are the hardiest palm trees and could survive freezing temperatures as low as 20 degrees Fahrenheit. We would plan to plant them in a 7’ wide area between our pool and the fence. Is it inevitable they will die eventually since every decade or so we get a freezing storm that gets temperatures below that lower limit?
For the bed, would large river rocks be ok instead of mulch?
Thanks!

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.

Like the title says, I have a theory that Ging...doesn't have a hatsu.
Not only that, but going even further, he might be a true enigma. I think...Ging doesn't have any one nen affinity at all.
This is going to be a very, very long post. If you don't have all day, move along for your own mental health.
I'm going to break this down into theory, details, character and story connections, and then a smaller theory that branches off from this one. Things like evidence and side-effects of this theory will be scattered throughout.

*Theory:*

I think Ging keeps nen contracts that force him to be noncommittal to such a degree that it goes beyond what the Hisoka Personality Test claims of Transmuters and Specialists. In fact, Ging has literally no personal Hatsu or Affinity because of this.

*Rewards:*

I think it will be revealed that Ging has a universal 70-80% efficiency with all nen types due to a lack of specific affinity, and that the reward is an immense boost in nen. So this contract more than makes up the difference, giving him effectively permanent Emperor Time. He would just use the contract to give himself 100% efficiency, but a raw power boost from a contract with conditions like I'm about to go into would go far beyond that difference, so he likely went that route instead. So this contract simply makes Ging immensely powerful at *everything.*

*Conditions:*

-First condition, Ging is to refrain from committing heavily to any person, task, ability, affinity, or anything of that nature. Nen affinity is typically something every user has, but perhaps shifts with time. If Ging gives too much favor to any one thing, such as even having one affinity or hatsu in particular, he will break this contract. So despite Ging's immense power, he isn't able to have any one unique thing he uses it for.
-Second, this contract goes so deep into being non-committal that when an idea is presented to Ging that would/could change his current life path, he has to flip a coin whenever he is able to do so without violating any condition of this contract. This flip will decide if he does the presented idea, or continues with the path he's already on.
-Third, nobody can know about the contract except Ging. He can't tell them about it, he can't explain why he does the things he does in any way that would elude to it being part of a nen contract. This typically means he does his coin flip in private as well, because otherwise they might notice the pattern and become suspicious.
-Fourth, he can't flip a coin for the same idea twice. This would explain why when he leaves something or someone, he never turns back.
-Fifth, an idea *needs* to be presented to Ging in the form of a statement, not a question. Someone needs to *tell* Ging to make a big life decision.
-Sixth, he only needs to flip for the last idea presented. If he's given 4 orders, but can't coin flip for them without breaking another condition, he only has to flip to determine the outcome of the 4th order.
-Lastly, he does *not* need to achieve his goal before potentially diverting from it. If another path-altering idea comes up, he has to coin flip. If he can do his new goal while continuing his older one, he must do both. If not, his path is decided by the coin toss. If one path ends, he has the option to pursue a previous goal. Maybe any, maybe only the most recent unfinished one. Unsure at this point.

*Character Connections. If this theory is true, what it means about Ging is:*

-More than likely, he trains all nen types roughly equally both as part of this contract, and to make best use of his neutral efficiency.
-He's trained his skill at understanding the abilities of others so finely specifically so he can still use Hatsu without being allowed to have his own.
-He uses the claim "I go after what I desire!" as a cover to avoid eluding to any details of either his abilities, or any part of this contract. This is huge, since it's one of the main reasons everyone sees him as a fickle enigma.
-Why he's such a goddamn mess. No, not just because he's neurodivergent(although he clearly is), but Ging purposely presents himself as someone who deserves to be yelled at to get his act together when faced with an idea he truly wants to pursue. This way, the odds of being told to do something he's not allowed to personally commit to increase, which means he can manipulate people into telling him to do what he wants to do anyway, giving him better odds of having to coin flip for it.
-It explains why he seems to have different friends help with basically every big project he undertakes. If he's with a group whose whole goal and experience with him is, say, exploring a set of ruins, or creating Greed Island, or governing the Hunter Association, then the odds are much lower that they'll suggest any big life path changes that will divert him from that goal. They probably wouldn't even know what to suggest!
-Ging being an outright genius, it doesn't at all seem out of the realm of possibility that he's spent a long time honing his ability to outthink his own nen contract to allow himself to abide by it while still living mostly mostly for himself when there's something he genuinely wants.
-We now know why Ging sometimes actually seems very committed towards one thing at a time, such as Greed Island or the Dark Continent, and abandoning all others when a new goal comes up.
-Since Ging isn't allowed to have a deep, committed relationship with any one person...not a partner, not a child, not a good friend...this is another part of why he always formed groups for his projects. That way he isn't giving too much attention to any one of them.
-It even explains why he avoids those closest to him to the point that he makes his disciples "chase him" as part of their training. Because it's a loophole that lets him "train" someone, without having to commit to them strongly enough that it violates his nen contract. You're probably catching on to a point that you'll find in the Story Connections now, right?

*Story Connections. With this theory, what it means for the story is:*

-A minor plot point dating all the way back to the Zoldyck Arc was actually foreshadowing. What, you ask? Why, coin flipping, of course! Firstly, we have Gotoh(RIP). His whole thing was coin flipping. He only came up a few times, but when he was around it typically had something to do with coins. Okay, cool. But the main one is...
-The Phantom Troupe using coin flips to settle arguments. It means that the previous point and this one were actually a minor foreshadowing of Ging's nen contract all along. All writers know stories are built on threes. Ging would be the third, and by far biggest, part of the coin flipping triangle in the HxH story.
-This one ties into the "Ging is both Gon's parents" theory I've heard about. As is known, there are cards on Greed Island that can change your gender or impregnate you. That's odd...but maybe he got Razor to make Card 7: Pregnancy Stones, to implant the idea in Razor's head to bring up that this card meant even Ging could have a kid. *flip* Heads. Ging's having a kid. Well, months later, let's have him also make Card 33: Hormone Cookies, that allows anyone to change their physical sex for 24 hours. This will make giving birth a much easier and less risky. (Plus, maybe your "sex-specific parts" become healed when you change back? If so, Ging could give birth and then be perfectly fine when changing back into a man.) Using the Hormone Cookies here is still just him fulfilling his goal of being a mom, so Ging's gonna change sex for 24 hours when the time comes to have Gon now.
*Alternatively, and actually more likely*, maybe he flipped tails on Card 7. So he thought of Card 33 later on to get Razor to ask "First Card 7, now Card 33...Ging, I get the feeling you *do* want to be a parent." *Flip* Heads. Ging takes a Hormone Cookie. Ging...uhh..."does the nasty", *does not* get gregnant, but then, following his new "Be a mom" goal, proceeds to use the Pregnancy Stores, and just takes Hormone Cookies to change back into a woman again when it's time to have Gon. Not the exact same question, just mostly the same outcome. Loophole.
-When Gon asks Ging to talk later when they first meet, he pauses. Then his answer is very non-committal, but very much implies a no. "I'm a busy guy, ya know?" He didn't want to say yes because of his contract. He can't make a big decision like suddenly having a role in his son's life without flipping a coin. So why didn't he say he'd get back to Gon on it, or anything other version of a flat "Maybe"? Because...
-Ging wanted the crowd to present the idea of having a chat with Gon *to* him so that he could consider it. When Gon brought up the idea, he phrased it as a question. "Can we talk more later?" So Ging had to think of a response to get the crowd riled up and tell him to do it in a way that worked with his contract. I mean, from how Ging spoke to Gon, he seemed open to talking more. It feels odd he would suddenly back away without a real reason. But! The crowd telling him to do this only counts as 1 order until he flips a coin on it. So Ging had a backup plan. Why? Well, let's rewind, shall we?
-This one is more of trying to explain a roadblock. Leorio told Ging to go visit Gon. Ging avoided explicitly answering the question, again giving wording that is non-committal on paper, but when mixed with the way it was phrased would imply a no. "He has friends and that's enough." He then allowed Leorio to knock him out because of political stuff, and so when he woke up he could do his coin flip since by then everyone will have left without telling him to do anything else, and without him having to go anywhere else first. *Flip* Tails. Sorry, Gon.
-This is why Ging, who was largely a pain in the ass to find, even throughout this arc, was just sat in the auditorium in plain view during the final vote.had a backup plan the next time around. He was there in case Gon ended up being healed and coming to see him.
-But! It's also why Ging had a backup plan. He needed someone to stay after the final election was over. Someone he knew would be upset if he broke his promise to Gon. Someone that would be likely to re-present him with the idea of meeting with his son, in a way that would still make it be an original enough idea that he would have to flip a coin again. That way the odds would be more in favor of the coin telling him to do it. Someone good at seeing all sides and forming potential compromises. But also someone he could flip a coin in front of without them knowing, and wouldn't try to physically force him him not to leave.
-Somehow, the crowd was able to be convinced this person would make sure Ging stayed in the auditorium and wait for Gon, and they all left. Then Ging did his coin flip, and...Tails...But this is why we make backup plans. So...who was there when Gon went back to meet Ging and saw the card saying Ging was at the World Tree? Beans. One of the most trustworthy, loyal, duty-bound, and therefore predictable, members of the Hunter Association, and also a skilled mediator, but seemingly not overly capable at, or disposed to, fighting. He would be perfect for the job. Beans outright states that he tried to keep Ging from leaving. This means that Ging turning Gon meeting him into another one of his little chases was likely Beans' idea, and he just didn't think to mention that detail to Gon.
-But now, the moment you've all been waiting for, this theory even explains why Ging left Gon with Mito. Mito told Ging that he wasn't fit to be a father and to leave Gon with her. *Flip* Heads. Ging lets Mito go about taking custody of Gon. Ging is now off on his own again.
-Now. I know what you might be thinking. "Ging had Gon until he was 2!" Yes, however...while he was with Gon, he was also working on finishing up Greed Island. So while he would Dad around now and then, he likely still spent most of his time running around helping with all sorts of different parts of creating the game. And then, when it was finally all finished, he took Gon and left. This also served the purpose of avoiding being told to "Go take care of your son." by any of the group. Because he was taking care of him! He couldn't leave Greed Island before it was done without being told to leave.
-Plus, if he did leave, left Gon with someone, went back to Greed Island, and was told "Go take care of Gon!" he would've had to leave to be with Gon again. I said this theory explains why Ging left, but that still doesn't mean Ging wanted to/could have been around. If someone told Ging "Go explore the Dark Continent!" when Ging was bringing Gon around with him as part of his "Being a parent" goal, Ging would've had to bring Gon, since both goals were possible simultaneously. As a result, Gon would've died during the expedition.
-It would also explain why he set up so many steps for Gon to follow that would help him become stronger. Heck, he even does most of these things *before* Gon is born. Maybe that's a loophole too, that even though he put so much work into giving Gon a roadmap to success, he did it *before* there was a Gon, and as part of his other goals. So it didn't technically violate his contract.
-Lastly, Ging opted to leave the "I don't want to see you" message for Gon, that he could only open under certain circumstances, would tell him what information is coming next to make committing to its knowledge up to Gon, and afterwards would destroy itself. Ging purposely made this tape as non-committal as possible, specifically so that he could leave his son a message without it being a life-altering decision he would need someone to tell him to do in order to even possibly be able to. The leaving of the message didn't affect Ging at all unless Gon put a great amount of effort in to *make* it affect him. So his contract didn't forbid it.
Connected Theory:
-Continuing with the Phantom Troupe point from earlier, this theory could also present the idea that Ging might've been a part of the original Phantom Troupe. Amd what's more, he might've served as a sort of advisor to Chrollo.
-The Troupe follows a doctrine that the whole Spider is more important than even the leader. That all of them are replaceable, to the point that if you kill a member of the Spiders, they are actually supposed to try and recruit you to replace that member! This could be more of Ging pulling strings to get the Troupe to live by a code that kept Ging sticking to his conditions without seeming out of place.
-The Troupe met Gon and very quickly had the idea of introducing him to Chrollo, thinking he would be a good fit for the group. Gon says himself that he and Ging share a lot of personality traits, so this adds to the idea that they would likely have the same thoughts on Ging.
-Plus, if Ging were the one who suggested the Coin Flip rule, then it would mean he could simply say "Flip a coin to decide?" in the rare case he was with another Troupe member, and some big idea was brought up, without needing to
A. Risk breaking his contract by arguing the point out loud,
B. needing to do this coin flip in private when the highly perceptive Troupe might be around and get suspicious of it, or
C. Needing to wait and only being able to decide the outcome of the last given idea after the Troupe splits up again. He wasn't the leader, so having to ignore or avoid committing to every order the leader gives you in a group like the Troupe is a good way to make powerful enemies.
-Also...notice how Gon is 12 years old at the start of the series, and the Phantom Troupe was formed as much as 12 years before that? Gon was with Ging until he was 2, but maybe the Troupe formed shortly after Ging left.
-Following this, Kurapika joining the Dark Continent Expedition may eventually lead to a reveal that Ging was part of the Troupe when they took down the Kurta Clan, and Kurapika would then have to decide whether to try to fight Ging, her friend's father(without Chain Jail, as Ging is no longer a member of the Phantom Troupe); or finally start to psychologically move past his life-long drive for revenge.
You made it to the end! I'd put a tl;dr somewhere in here, but honestly that would probably just end up being multiple paragraphs long too. Whoever is still here, feel free to give your thoughts below. Anything ranging from total agreement, to a list of receipts that prove that I'm actually an idiot.

I recently wrote up a blog post on how to make a worldbuilding timeline, and I thought I'd share with you my tips, tools, and neat inspirations here in a summarised version :D
If you find it challenging to keep track of your world's history (or all the crazy stuff happening at once in your TTRPG campaign) then making a timeline might be a good way to keep an eye on everything (and stay consistent)!
(Inspo & tools listed below)

⏳ How to make a worldbuilding timeline:

1. Plan out the scope of your timeline - do you need it to focus on one part of your worldbuilding such as the growth of a civilization or the events of a conflict, or will it be your main timeline-of-everything that you use for personal reference?
2. Decide what point of view it's being told from - is it an omnipresent or wiki-style accounting of every event that happened, or is it a recorded history from the perspective of a character or group of people?
3. Break it down into sections - this could be in the form of eras, ages, generations, sessions, stages, or acts, depending on what you're using a timeline to illustrate.
4. Start with the most significant events - start with adding what you know and make sure to keep it relevant to the scope of your timeline to avoid going overboard with info.
5. Add placeholders - if you're not sure on the details of an event or when it happened, add in a placeholder roughly when you think it took place. As you expand your timeline you'll be able to make references to it and figure out those missing details.
6. Fill in the gaps - start to question why certain events happened and add in the events that lead to them and the results that came afterwards.
7. Expand the details - make sure each event has at least a title, a date, and a short summary of 1-2 sentences. You can add extra detail or a full accounting of the event later or in an article.
8. Review and revise - check over your events to make sure that they make sense, and add more to it if you want to as your worldbuilding continues!

🖼 Inspiring Timelines

• Histography.io (every dot is a historic event from Wikipedia)
• Carta Històrica de Barcelona (language toggle in the top right, scroll through the growth of Barcelona)
• Witcher interactive timeline (sound warning! map timeline from the Witcher Netflix series)
• Kings and Queens of England and Great Britain (inspiration for building lineages)
• Ancient History timeline (good overview of ancient history across the world)
• Sid Meier's Civilization VI tech tree (inspiration for thinking about how tech developed in your worlds)
• History of England (J. Barfield - 1800) (more of a family tree but I thought the layout was neat!)
• history of the entire world, i guess (Bill Wurtz) 🌞💥🌍

📜 Timeline Resources

• Events & Technology ( u/OtherAtlas made a fantastic infographic of things you can add to your timeline - you should check out their other posts, too!)
• On Worldbuilding: Fictional Histories (Hello Future Me)
• The Histomap (John B. Sparks)
• Histomap of Evolution (John B. Sparks)
• Timeline of Timelines (Daniel Rosenberg)
• Adams' Synchronological Chart (Sebastian C. Adams)
• Chemical element discoveries (ChronoFlo)
• Food Timeline (a fantastic list of when different foods emerged over the years)
• How to make a worldbuilding timeline (TJ Trewin - that's meee there's some extra tips on the blog!)

🧰 Worldbuilding Timeline Tools

I've done a bit of searching around for websites/tools to help make timelines, some of them are more worldbuildeTTRPG focused and others more generic (I haven't tried all of them firsthand but I'll give some pros/cons for the ones I have).
Shameless plug: I actually made a customizable timeline template in Google Sheets 😅(I'm the guy that made the 400 prompts sheet)! It's F*REE *(or pay-what-you-want if you enter 0) and you can grab a copy here to play around with:
TJ's Timeline Template

• Pros: easy to organise/sort/filter, comes with prompts and event ideas, near unlimited size
• Cons: it's functional but it ain't pretty 😂, online only (although I think you can still view & edit offline on Android?)

Tools I've tried and enjoyed:

• World Anvil (timelines and chronicles)
  • Pros: looks super slick, can use interactive maps, easy to link events to other articles of lore in the world (this is one of my chronicles and interactive maps)
  • Cons: monthly/annual subscription, learning curve
• Microscope RPG and Microscope Explorer (expansion)
  • Pros: one time purchase, fun as a solo or group collab, focused worldbuilding
  • Cons: needs either physical space to lay out cards or a digital canvas (I've seen some people use a kanban board like Trello/similar)
• The Story Engine (all of them, but in particular the Lore Master's Deck because it adds new event cards)
  • Pros: so much fun!! great for filling gaps in lore and history
  • Cons: once you buy one you will want more, you also need some decent table space to arrange the cards
• Obsidian.md (default canvas and diagrams)
  • Pros: free for personal use and no account required, offline, canvas can be used to layout timelines however you like, lots of community plugins that also have timeline features too (check https://obsidianttrpgtutorials.com/ for cool plugins)
  • Cons: official syncing and hosting is a subscription service but there are free/cheaper solutions available if you search around, I've listed diagrams because Obsidian supports Mermaid.js timelines (and flowcharts) by default but the diagrams have are tricky to learn and are kinda ugly xD

Tools I haven't tried but might be worth checking out (please lemme know in the comments if these are any good or if I missed any):

• Draw.io
• Tiki-Toki
• Campfire
• Aeon Timeline
• LegendKeeper (timeline feature announced?)
• Preceden
• Kanka.io
• Canva
• TimeToast

What do you include in your timelines and what's your tools of choice? 😀

I need some advice for a BIG project of mine.
Hello, so I live in a small town in nebraska, I am looking at some big projects to do to help the local economy. The one I see as having the most potential is a tree park. I plan on planting redwood trees, starting on 20-40 acres, having a trail and having some spots for wedding venues. It would be an admission park, with ticket price of probably about 5 usd. There would be expansions over time to add additional "regional type" forests that are all part of the same park. All with their own types of trees and plants, with short 4 foot stone walls between each, to keep each section visually distinct as well as having separate sets of plant species. My real question is this, how do I go about getting grants, I do not feel comfortable getting a loan, given that it would be at least 5 years before it starts making money. I have also heard of "angel investors" that invest with little to no stake in the company, how do I go about finding them? Sorry about the long post, I am just very passionate about helping my community and they REALLY need more businesses and tourist attractions to help stop the town from shrinking any more! Thanks in advance for the advice people! 😀

Hi everyone!
I need your valuable help. I've been reading about permaculture for a while now, and recently stumbled upon the concept of syntropic agroforestry. Although many videos about these systems are from Brazil, I'm interested in trying out this "technique" in the area where I live - Mediterranean climate
I tried to create this table with classifications used in agroforestry, and I'd like to hear your opinions on it. What would you change or add?
I've only included trees and shrubs for now. For herbs and ground covers, I plan to scatter seeds and let whatever grows, grow (thyme, lavender, comfrey, lemongrass, chamomile).

When I was a little younger, (about 8-10 years ago) something completely unexplainable happened to me. I don’t tell this story to anyone, mostly because up until earlier today even I thought it wasn’t real. I’m not sure what to do about it or if there is anything I could do, so I thought to post here, maybe at least just to ease my head and hear what others think.
Around high-school time, I was a loser and complete shut-in. Most of my time during these formative teenage years I’d just spend inside, playing games or listening to music and spacing out. Though I’ve always had a fond interest with photography. Capturing life through brief screenshots is precious, plus its fun and easy to do with just the average phone.
So, occasionally, I would leave on my own to wander the woods at the end of our street. Gave me plenty of time alone to get fresh air and stretch as well as snap a bunch of pictures of mostly bugs but other animals or plants I found pretty too.
On one of these walks, I heard a very offputting sound. It vibrated very quietly along the trees and in the surrounding area. Whilst I'm normally a very paranoid person and I was certainly uneased by the presence of this noise, I thought I recognized it. From the distance I was to whatever was producing it, the sound vaguely resembled that of a pig. My thought was maybe some livestock had escaped from a nearby farm or something.
Whether I was right or not, it sounded hurt. The slow agonized rattle, piercing the odd bird chirp or rustle of a branch falling. Then, I made a decision that would scar my life forever. I approached; if it was hurt, I wasn’t just going to leave it to bleed to death or whatever. I know, circle of life and all that, but I was young and much dumber than I am now.
I made a brief trek off the path to find the source of the noise and (hopefully) save it. Wading through a bramble bush that slightly cut my legs, I began to focus on the sound. Or, rather, the sound seemingly gave me no choice but to focus on it. No birds were chirping anymore and aside from my movements, the rising repetitive groans were all I could hear. Everything from the leaves in the trees to the soft blowing winds fell still.
Something felt off and in my stomach I had a strong rising urge to turn back. But I didn’t, the sound grew closer and I hadn’t ventured too far from the path. It wasn’t deafening by any means, but the sound punched through the silence with now a twinge of desperation, like I needed to find it.
Up until this very moment, I have never forgotten what I saw.
In a ditch, just like any other, surrounded by trees and leaf litter but completely devoid of life. Something indescribable. The closest resemblance I could give you is it was similar in shape and size to whale carcasses that wash ashore. A messy pile of color and rotting substances. Except there were so many materials, so many different textures I simply couldn’t identify. There was no discernable body shape or figure, it merely looked as if you had fused together parts of every animal alive and draped a cloth overtop of the result.
It was warping constantly, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. I simply couldn’t understand what this was. What confused me the most was the smell. Or rather, lack of one. The environment smelt just fine, the leaves and earthy natural scent, as if this thing in front of me wasn’t even there.
My heart began to thump a little. I’d never seen a dead body in person, obviously, so I had no clue if I was stumbling upon something I wasn’t supposed to see. This wasn’t what I was looking for and the groaning sound was pulsating from it.
On edge, the slightest sounds began to feel like spears of anxiety cutting straight through my chest. I fell back a little, caught myself and ran back to the path. No-one was around so I didn’t care about keeping my composure and I ran until I caught sight of home again.
My mother was home and noticed me sweaty, shaky and on edge.
“Home already? Your walks normally last a while longer.” she inquired, with a very minor tone of concern.
“I... yeah. Just got a bit tired.” I explained, as I still hadn’t fully come to terms with what I’d seen and didn’t feel that anyone in my family would think anything of it other than that I was losing my mind.
She told me that food was being prepared and wouldn’t be very long, but I returned to my room swiftly and collapsed face first onto my bed. I pondered for a while over what it could have been and came to the conclusion of an art project. It had no scent so perhaps it was a sculpt with sound effects for a film? The indescribable mass being man-made brought me enough comfort to slow my heart rate for the time.
For a brief duration, nothing else happened. I refused to return to the woods for a while so I had no more encounters with whatever it was, purely so that I could continue to convince myself that it was nothing more than a creative pursuit.
That didn’t last for very long, though. Cosy and warm in bed, I was scrolling my phone absent mindedly. I hadn’t thought about the thing all day as I had spent it hanging out with friends outside of school. The slight buzz of my bedside lamp, the busyness of the kitchen downstairs. The slow, creeping ringing in my ears as everything fell silent. Then that haunting, slow rasping seeping under the crack of my door. The drawn out groan pushed its way into my room, my only safe place. I could listen to nothing else, I could think of nothing else as I watched a shadow slowly stretch along the floor invading the dim light.
My eyes grew wide and fearful. I clutched my phone as if it was my last hope and I shuffled out of bed to avoid being caught off guard. If I needed to run, I could run. The doorknob turned, muted by the great harrowing moans. The door creaked open, drowned out still by the desperate sounds of that nightmarish sight.
The doorway opened, giving way to a strange light. It flooded my room as if bright yet pervasively infected each corner of my vision with darkness. In a swift jarring movement, a mass stretched out from behind the obscurant surface. Like skin being pulled from someone’s body to create the mockery of a head. It had the same damn warping textures as the thing I found in the woods. It had no other features and was merely a protruding clump of moving substances.
Except, somewhere within the shifting motion, I could pick out a face. One with a deep haunting gaze. It was as if its eyelids had been peeled back and fused into the skin above and below its eye sockets, unprotected orbs that only stared and stared. Similarly, deep holes, where the nose had been pushed back into its head and once again fused into its undefined formless mass. It had no mouth. All it could do was emit muffled cries as it stretched and quivered in place.
I blinked.
“Hon, we’re going out for a little to get some shopping done, we’ll be back soon. Love you!” my mother called out, as I watched her slip back through the door. That vision, that thing had vanished instantly. But its presence remained.
A few days later, I had calmed down once again, thinking I must’ve hallucinated from a lack of sleep after panicking over the thing I’d seen. The bell rung for the sixth time in the day and I headed to Art class.
I sat by my friend, Alex, with a slight uneasy shiver in my body. I tried to brush it off and we joked a little in murmurs as the teacher rambled on. Toward the end of the subject, as we were doing practical work in the form of paintings, when the bell rang a little earlier than I’d expected. I turned my face to see how everyone else was responding to it.
They’d all turned to me, too. Blank, staring faces. Even Alex, even the teacher. Everyone.
In an immediate fit of panic I jolted out of my seat, slamming my knees on the desk. I winced in pain but still, their eyes followed me perfectly. I shuffled past people, wobbling a little from hurting my knees and bolted out of the classroom. Things just kept happening and I didn’t know why.
Through the hallways, that growing darkness began to appear, before I burst out into the courtyard. There, a slow rattling groan awoken in my ears again. I was becoming extremely familiar and recognized it immediately. Tears began to roll out of my eyes as I screamed, trying to drown out the sound, but it didn’t work. It grew louder and louder, deafening my surroundings.
I opened my eyes wide again to see a huge, limp mass in front of me. Shapeless and constantly contorting, it had no identifiable features beyond the shifting unknown textures and colors. Taller than it was wide, I tried to see where a head should be on a human but once again, just a repulsive slurry that I couldn’t understand.
But it was looking at me. It was looking. At me. Watching, staring, observing anywhere I moved I could not hide. The sound began to hurt, the pulsing rising groan of misery that pained me. I screamed once more, clutching my head.
Alex grabbed my arm violently.
“... Hey?” he questioned, worriedly. I let go of myself and looked up. My classmates all turned to look at me, but no longer staring. They were whispering amongst themselves. Then the bell rang and the teacher awkwardly hurried to move everyone out. I looked back down shakily. Very faint blood stains where I had clasped my ears and everything felt a little quieter.
Alex offered to take me to the medical office and I was far too exhausted to refuse. He had to return to classes after the break, but I was too shaken up to even speak, so they let me stay a little longer and I was sent home shortly after.
I went home and stayed quiet. I was drained. I lay there, appreciating the precious silence of my room. School had just finished and I received a text from my friends. We shortly arranged to go on a walk together through the woods to help me feel better. I wanted to show them what I’d been seeing.
Though my parents were hesitant, they allowed it since my friends, Alex and May, would be there. They arrived and we set off toward the woods, but I directed them to the specific section I had ran out from, I didn’t want to be out here longer than I needed to be.
We arrived at the spot, but the sounds weren’t there anymore. Maybe it was because of my slightly dulled hearing, but there was nothing. Desperate to convince myself I was still sane, I hurried them off the path.
“No, there’s something here you need to see.” I began, immediately turning and stumbling in the direction of where I’d seen it. Alex was less hesitant than May, but both eventually followed.
“If you say so. What is it anyway?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know.” is all I could respond with. He turned to May with confusion, who anxiously shrugged back.
I stepped over the bramble bush again, making sure not to cut myself on it like before. Still, nothing. The ditch was there, there was a clear indication that something had filled this space due to the unnatural scatter of leaves around it. But it just wasn’t there.
“It... it was here before!” I cried out. As much as it freaked me out, I was hoping for any sign that I was overreacting.
“The leaves? The trees? What, what are we looking at here.” Alex chipped in. I turned to him with a dreary hopelessness. His expression fell a little.
“I... there was...”
“Why don’t we just head back onto the trail for now?” May called.
I gave in, slowly returning to the path. Since it wasn’t there, maybe I had nothing to fear travelling through the woods again. But there it was. The distant, faint sound of a hurt animal groaning in slow, painful misery.
“You guys hear that?-” Alex commented. Immediately, I snapped with fear.
“YES.”
I didn’t know what to do, my legs began to shake again and my vision was blurring as the sound grew closer. But we weren’t moving this time. It was. I ran, I couldn’t help myself. I think Alex or May called out to me just before I did but I couldn’t stop.
The further I ran, the sound never faded, but it never grew. Only when I reached my home did it disappear. I ripped open the door, slammed it shut and ran straight up to my room. I didn’t wait to take my shoes off or hear what my mother had to say, I buried myself in my pillow and cried.
Later that night, they both texted in our group chat, frustrated that I pulled a weird prank like that, expressing how worried and concerned they were.
I stopped going to school for the rest of the week as my ears had both become infected and hard to hear out of. It was irritating as hell so I was more than happy to lay in bed all day.
This last part is a little hazy to me due to the actions I took at the end. Most of this is missing details, but this night specifically I have desperately tried to block out of my memory. It wasn’t until recently it came back to me in pieces.
I remember my whole family was out for various reasons. My parents were both working late shifts and my sister was having a sleepover at her friend’s. I was especially anxious already because of my situation, so I crawled out of bed and clumsily headed downstairs. I poured a very shallow bowl of cereal, when that familiar sound kicked up again. I was taking absolutely no chances, dropping the bowl on the counter and rushing to lock everything I could. Every single door, every single window, up until the very last one. I turned, jittery and terrified.
Something was there. The front room’s secondary window, a smaller more ornate patterned window compared to the large glass pane in the center of the wall. Through the textured glass I saw it.
I was face to face with an angel.
A stretched, warping face, with the familiar peeled eyes and nose. We locked eyes and it immediately slipped away unnaturally. I could hear nothing, but I locked the window as fast as possible and nearly tripped skidding back to the stairs. The sound grew louder yet again, louder than it had been, making my ears burn with searing agony.
Nowhere was safe. I hadn’t locked this thing out, I had caged myself in for it. My panic grew as my heart beat faster, I rushed into the bathroom as I heard the door downstairs very slowly creaking open without the slightest resistance from the locks. I ripped open the medicine cabinet and darted back to my room with sleeping pills in hand.
I knew this was it for me. I had an unexplainable feeling, just as indescribable as the formless carcass that was coming for me. I didn’t want to be there when it happened.
Last I remember, I finally smelt it approaching, a hideous mesh of ash and rotten meat. The smell permeated my room as my eyes began to shudder. I could feel the physical pain of them kicking in. I was already exhausted and I don’t know if I fell asleep quickly or if I just blocked out most of before I did.
I awoke a week later. My parents were in tears, wondering why I’d ever try to take my own life and wishing that I’d spoken to them.
For 10 long years, my story has ended there. A crazy drug trip from trying to take my own life.
Just yesterday, I checked my phone’s old storage to see what was on there and I saw a video I didn’t recognize. It was dark blue and grainy. A few minutes in however, a door in the background opens. Light flickers in, illuminating... me. Asleep. Twenty long minutes follow.
Twenty long minutes of raspy, death rattles and the cold, lifeless stare of the corpse of an Angel, watching over me.

I’m currently eyeing a 30 degrees pneumatic framing nailer from Metabo/Hitachi in the hopes that it’d be much more lighter than my RIDGID framing nailer and be able to fit more places. What has held me back is their price of $240 CAD
I plan on using it occasionally for renovations, decks and woodworking. What I have found is that the battery nailer is quite heavy and unable to fit in places, I even ended up using a palm nailer for some.
Has anyone compared the two or pneumatic vs battery nailers? Is it worth having the two?

First / Previous
​
Suzanne thought it was absolutely brilliant of me to put books on a flash drive for Sun. She explained that Sun wasn’t as sophant (her word, not mine) as she might seem, more of a repository of information, but she was fairly intelligent. It was how she was able to connect Andrew being in pain to the fact that I was friends with Andrew, and that I would want to know that he was in trouble. Apparently some of Sun’s species had given some ‘wisdom’ to others in the past and it had made its way into mythology.
The key fact was that she was not smart enough to protect herself and her kind from the clever, organized poachers. With that information in mind, it was fascinating for me to think of how Sun took in and organized what she learned. It was almost as if she was a walking, talking library.
On the topic of tours, my first one went wonderfully, and I’m almost hoping Suzanne lets me do more of them. I know not all the tourists are going to be as awesome as these people were, but Suzanne gave me a lot of slack when it comes to dealing with them. She actually said that being a smartass is not grounds for dismissal, and that if I’m sarcastic or facetious to guests who are being ‘daft’ and they complain, she really doesn’t care. Is this the perfect job for me or what?
There were four guests in this party, two adults who were sisters and two children of one of the women, brothers aged thirteen and seventeen. The tour was a birthday gift for the older of the boys from his aunt, since apparently he was passionate about animal protection and conservation.
When they arrived at the front gate, I was sitting at Andrew’s desk, going over the booklet of information one last time. When the visitors pressed the button that sounded the alert buzzer, I tucked away in a drawer and let them in. I did have a cheat sheet with information about the animals on my phone just in case, a brief notation of each of them and which enclosure they were in, but I really didn’t need to use it.
Exiting through the front door, I saw them walk up the path toward me. “Hi, I’m Ripley,” I said, holding out a hand toward the woman closest to me.
She shook it firmly. “I’m Denise. This is my sister Carla and my nephews, Wesley and Jason,” she said, motioning to each of them in turn.
“I heard it’s your birthday,” I said to Wesley, giving him a smile. “You’re interested in animal conversation?”
“Back where we live, yeah,” he said, nodding. “The animals that you’ve got here are incredible. I can’t wait to see them.”
“Well, I can’t wait to show them to you,” I said. “Right this way.”
I led them on the path around the building, toward enclosure one. Despite the horrific memories of the animal killing Stanley’s friends, I knew it was just an animal, and I had to push past my feelings on what had happened. Keeping a small smile on my face, I motioned to the enclosure. “Fiercely territorial and amazing hunters, despite their large size, they’re arboreal and known to dart from tree to tree with barely a sound. This is one of only about two thousand left in existence.”
“Two thousand, three hundred and fifty six at last count,” spoke Wesley, his eyes on the trees.
I blinked, surprised and impressed. “Well that was fantastic. Do you plan on stealing my job when you graduate?”
Wesley looked at me with a grin. “Nah, everyone knows Suzanne only offers humans this gig. And I want to help animals like this one get off the endangered species list. The zoos are great for awareness and fundraising, but then the money has to go somewhere. I want to be doing the real work.”
“That’s really great,” I told him. “I wish you all the best in that career path.” At that, we saw the animal climb down from the tree, wandering a few yards from the tree line. This was because 90% of the time, when humans were at their enclosure and making noise, whether it was speaking to each other or calling out to the animal, it was someone bringing them prey to eat. Or, in my case, enrichment toys to play with.
“Whoa,” Wesley whispered.
“How close can we get?” spoke up Jason.
“The warding starts at the fence,” I told him with a small gesture. “So, just there.”
Both boys wandered closer and I glanced at their parents. It seemed that Suzanne’s zoo had a serious reputation for high quality invisible walls, because they didn’t look worried in the slightest about the boys being hurt or killed.
“They prefer dense forest as their home and have been known to make their nests in trees up to twenty meter in the air,” I continued. “And when hunting, they’ve been seen dropping eight meters straight down. They have incredibly dense yet flexible musculature, which allows them to tackle their prey without injuring themselves.”
There was more information about the animal that I continued to rattle off, though Wesley chimed in at certain points with the info I was about to convey. That was highly entertaining and very cool. When I’d been in school, I’d never met anyone who had my level of passion about endangered animals. I wondered if things were better where these folks came from, but realized that considering there were so few of these animals left, I guessed not.
The animal paced a little bit, seemingly waiting to see if we were the kind of humans that came bearing food, before deciding we weren’t and climbing back up into the trees as easily as I would climb some stairs.
As we moved onto enclosure two, Jason spoke up. “Are there any animals here we can touch or feed or something?”
I sighed inwardly before slowing to a stop. “Well, can you show me your hands?” Jason looked bemused, holding out his hands. “I mean…they both look like they’re in great shape. You can stand to lose one.”
The two women chuckled and Wesley smirked as Jason shoved his hands into his pockets. “Very funny.”
Grinning, I started walking again. “The animals here are all carnivores and all predators. You get to see them, but that’s it.”
“Alright.”
When we reached enclosure two, I started on my next spiel. “We’ve got three reanimated dead in this enclosure,” I spoke. They were just coming out from the trees as we arrived, presumably having heard our approach. “Marissa, Connor, and Bradley. They were donated by families who knew where they would be exhibited. Their next of kin, whoever they are, can’t stand the idea of putting them down. But we need to make sure they don’t have access to corpses, because one of them plus one corpse equals two of them.”
“They eat flesh though, don’t they?” Wesley asked.
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, but it’s from bodies that have already been dismembered. There’s no chance of them being affected by the transformation because it’s all parts.”
“Oh, got it.”
The creatures with blueish-white skin had superhuman strength, which is why they qualified for the security of Suzanne’s zoo. They also were likely the source of any Earth tales of people being brought back to life as zombies, specifically draugr, according to my research. They smelled like rotting flesh, so even as I kept talking about them and giving a background to the people they used to be, we were quick to move on once Wesley had gotten a good, long look at them.
“Enclosure four’s animal is a vampiric spirit. He’s a small, hairy humanoid creature with pointed ears. He wears a hat, and if he somehow loses it, he freaks out,” I said.
“They eat horses,” Wesley noted. “Also anything that gives them the chance to sit on it, usually catching them by surprise while they’re sleeping.”
The creature came out from the brush, giving us a suspicious look. He wasn’t in his humanoid form though; for some reason, he’d chosen to shapeshift to a dog.
I nodded. “Yep, indeed. Once the prey is dead, then he’ll eat it, and he has a voracious appetite. We have two wolves and two bears in the forest, which is one of the reasons I’ve got some self-defense items,” I said, patting my belt where my pepper spray (rated for bear) and my taser. “But the wards keep them out of this area of the zoo, so it’s really not much of a worry. It’s also a known shapeshifter, preferring the form of a dog, as you can see, as well as a cat, a snake, or even white butterflies, though the last one is rare.”
“The white butterflies are supposed to be a sign of good luck,” Wesley said, glancing to me. “Too bad we got the dog.”
“Yeah, otherwise you might be able to talk your mom into getting scratch-offs on your way home, huh?”
Wesley smirked at me.
The next enclosure was Spike, and he was waiting for us, dripping wet from having just emerged from the lake. I gave the introductory information about him, which included his propensity for eating animal eyes, nails, and teeth. “Recently, I’ve given him some enrichment activities, and I learned he likes artichokes, pecans, and hazelnuts,” I said, taking a bag out from my cargo shorts. “Wesley, do you want to toss this bag into the enclosure?”
The boy’s eyes widened and he nodded excitedly. He took a look into the paper bag before wrapping down the top to make sure nothing would fly out. Then he chucked it underhand past the fence. It landed a few yards from Spike, who waddled over to it quickly and tearing the bag open, spilling out the prizes inside. As the animal ate the pecans and hazelnuts, Wesley asked, “How’d you figure out he likes those?”
“It’s not all about taste,” I told him. “It’s mainly the difficulty of getting them out of the shells. He’s used to having to work for the parts of his prey he likes the most, so this mimics that activity, and he enjoys the process. I tried a bunch of different foods to find a few he liked.”
“Cool,” Wesley murmured, staring at him.
We watched Spike eat until he’d finished and then he went back into the woods, leaving us to move onto enclosure five. Japanese camellia were plentiful here, a type of pink flower, and that was because they grew anywhere near one of his species made their den. “This girl spends most of her time in the lake also,” I said, as the creature made its way toward the fence separating us from it. “But as you can see, she’s just as curious as the rest about what we’re doing here and whether we have food for her. She eats fish mostly, but she also regularly gets live prey.”
This creature was a spider-like monster, having six legs with long claws on each, and the head of an ox with two sharp horns. She was capable of shapeshifting to look like a human, but I guessed that she wasn’t fond of it, since I hadn’t yet seen her in that form.
“She prefers the easy way of catching prey, so to speak, by hiding in the lake and pouncing when something comes for a drink of water,” I explained. “Apparently humans are some of her favorite prey. She has an advantage of being able to spit poison, which often hits her prey in the eyes. But it’s usually used in defense rather than offense, since it secretes a limited amount.”
“What kind of animal would even go after something like this?” Jason asked, staring at her.
“Never discount one of its own species when you’re thinking about what might attack an animal,” I replied. “There are places that are breeding all of the animals here, but competition for mates is common. That means an advantage in a fight, like poison or venom, can make or break who the winner is.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
“It can’t spit past the warding, right?” Carla suddenly asked.
“Oh, no,” I assured her. “We’re fine. The wards wouldn’t let anything cross over.” She nodded, appeased.
The animal in enclosure six was the ginormous seal-hippo, Fiona, and she was looking at us as if she was imagining sprinkling us with herbs and spices and stuffing us in an oven. “This girl is one animal I’m going to work on enrichment activities for next,” I told them. “She prefers to feed on crayfish, though she’s happy to eat any humans that wander into her territory. She’ll even make a sound like a baby crying to reel us in. I’ve heard it a bunch of times.”
“Can you get her to make the sound?” Jason asked, perking up.
I grinned. “Not on command, sorry.”
“What enrichment are you thinking of trying?” Wesley asked.
“Possibly food placed in puzzle feeders,” I told him, “since she has claws that are pretty dexterous. Maybe a piñata made out of newspaper with flour inside, or a scarecrow that mimics a human.”
“Awesome,” he muttered.
After a little more educational tidbits, we moved onto Yui’s enclosure. “What is that?” Wesley asked, smiling.
“I got Yui the closest thing I could to a ping-pong ball,” I replied. “She quite likes it.”
“That’s so funny,” he said as she came out of the trees in her spider form. “I mean, the idea of her being a bloodthirsty hunter who seduces men to their deaths and eats them alive, but then on the other hand, she likes playing with something like this.”
“It is a little funny,” I agreed. “But when it comes down to it, all the animals here enjoy activities besides hunting.”
“She can shapeshift to look human, right?” asked Jason, trying to be casual about knowing something factual like his nerdy brother.
I nodded. “She looks like a woman from a region of Earth called Japan. And she’ll use strategies like holding out a hand to shake to get you closer. She tried that on me when I first got here but, as you can see,” I said, holding up my hands and waving them, “I didn’t fall for it.”
The boys both laughed as they got closer to the fence, watching her slowly pace near the trees.
Next was Sun, but she didn’t make an appearance as I spoke about her species. “Well…unfortunately we can’t guarantee that every animal comes out to say hi,” I sighed. “But…oh wait, here she is.”
The green lion with several horns and many eyes along her flank came out from the forest. “Hello,” she spoke.
“Hi, Sun,” I replied. “We have visitors.”
“What’s that?” Wesley asked suddenly, pointing at the small plastic bag that was still where I’d left it.
“Oh! That is Sun’s enrichment,” I said with a smile. “I put dozens of books on a flash drive and found that she can read them just like she’d read a shelf of books.”
Wesley’s eyes widened. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve read about anyone trying that before. That’s really cool.”
“The books are new and interesting,” Sun spoke, drawing our attention. “I’m grateful for them.”
I nodded to her. “You’re quite welcome.”
The next animal, unfortunately, wasn’t there, and we waited around for ten minutes as we discussed him. He was large and reptile-like with red eyes, with its hind legs and tail making him look vaguely like a kangaroo. Then, enclosure ten was a terrifyingly disturbing creature, the not-a-centaur with no skin, that I’d only seen a few times while walking my route. It gave a good demonstration of its ferocity, showing its sharp teeth and snapping at us a few times.
“I’m thinking of trying salt licks and other horse enrichment like a big bouncy ball,” I told Wesley, whose eyebrows went up at that. “Maybe give him more things to forage like scattered grains or a box filled with pinecones and seeds. Foraging is a huge part of a horse’s life in the wild, and humans have to do a lot of activities like that to keep pet horses busy. Of course, he also loves the little salt-water lake that was built for him.”
We spent some time looking at the animal before moving past our last stop, the empty enclosure of the animal was stolen. Carla glanced at me with a sad smile, knowing what had happened, it seemed. I gave her a nod as we continued on our way, walking into the office. “So, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!” I said with a smile.
“That was the coolest birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” Wesley said, looking to Denise. “Thanks so much, seriously.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said with a nod. “I’d never been here before, and knew I’d find it fascinating. Thank you for the educational aspect,” Denise said, glancing at me. “I learned quite a lot.”
“Happy to hear it,” I said, returning the nod.
As I escorted the guests out of the zoo and locked the door behind them, I reflected on how much I’d changed. The first time I’d seen Yui’s tarantula form, I’d nearly passed out from fear. Now here I was, walking tourists around like it was no big deal. Humans really can adapt to anything, it seems.
That afternoon, Suzanne had texted me that she was coming by after my shift, and I met her in Andrew’s office, shutting the door to the security room behind me. “How’s Andrew?” I asked first thing.
“He’s doing well,” she said with a wide smile. “Back on non-hospital food. He’s allowed to order food on his phone, and to hear it from him, that’s the best news he’d received in a long time.”
I chuckled. “I guess some clichés are true for a reason.”
“Indeed.” She took a breath. “All right. Ripley…I would like to discuss something with you.”
My face went slack at the serious tone in her voice. “I’m not… Am I being fired?”
“What? No!” she exclaimed. Then she chuckled softly. “No, it’s nothing like that. Just, here, let’s have a seat.” Suzanne walked over to the couch and sat at one end, and I took the other. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve kept from you, that I wanted to keep from you until you found your sea legs here.”
“Well…I have,” I said with a nod. “So, what is it?”
Suzanne took a breath. “I knew your mother.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before making their way to my ears. It was a perfectly logical sentence, and yet it didn’t make any sense. “What?” I finally managed.
“When you graduated college, I decided to move the zoo from Italy to within driving distance of your home,” she said softly. “Near enough to your town that you’d see the advert. We ignored any other applicants and I hoped you’d apply. Actually, I expected you’d apply. Not just for the money, but considering the field you wanted to go into. As soon as I’d found out your major, I knew.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up a hand. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How do you know Patricia?”
“She owned the zoo before I did,” Susan explained. “Fourteen years ago…she was working to track an injured animal that we could bring into the zoo and she was killed by poachers.”
My heart calcified in my chest and a lump lodged in my throat. As my breaths became shaky, I stared at her in shock. “She…she’s really dead?”
“You suspected?” she asked softly.
“It…” I swallowed hard. “We had her declared legally dead after…I don’t know, seven years I think. My dad wanted to go after her for child support, but the police said…they said they couldn’t find…” Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them back before I met Suzanne’s gaze. “She owned the zoo?”
Suzanne nodded. “It was her baby, you’d say. When Patricia passed, I inherited it, which we’d discussed beforehand, a legal just-in-case that I never expected her to need. I’m under the impression that you were told she went to Africa for her photography career, but she was in fact going to remote areas back in my home world almost every time.”
“But I-I saw the photos,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me she put on a show of getting pictures that someone else took for us to see every time she visited? Did my dad even know?”
“I suppose that’s an accurate way to put it, putting on a show. And no, your father was never told. It’s not the way of things to tell humans unless it’s necessary. I won’t bore you with the details, but us and humans, we’re distant relatives, so we can still have children. But it wasn’t planned. Your mother fell in love with your father despite herself; she hadn’t meant to find love. Then she became pregnant with you and…well, the rest is history.”
“I think she had a different definition of love than the one I have,” I said tightly. “You’d think she’d have put her survival as more of a priority. Put being with the man she ‘loved’ as a priority. Her kids needed her. I needed her. She signed up when she became a mom. She could’ve screwed up all the time but she couldn’t even manage that one job: be there. When I was in the hospital, I kept thinking, ‘Where is she?’ and now you’re telling me that she put these animals above being there for her kids, and this whole time she’s been dead.”
“The hospital?” she asked, furrowing her brows.
“Never mind,” I said tersely, averting my gaze.
Suzanne hesitated before she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry for your loss, and not just for her death, Ripley,” she told me. “Patricia was…well, a ‘free spirit’ would be putting it gently. She always assumed the world would be there for her whenever she needed it.”
Staring at her for a long moment, I shook my head. “Why? Why come here and hire me?”
“I thought that would be obvious,” she said, smiling. “Your mother was so passionate about this place and once I found out your college major, I figured you would be as well.”
“Did you know that I hate her?” At that, Suzanne’s expression froze on the edge of shock. “She…she left us,” I whispered. “Didn’t tell us who she was or what she really did for a living and gave us no closure. And even when she was here, it was just visiting. Her real home was her work. She could give me all the presents she wanted, but even when she was here, half the time she was still on her computer doing work. It’s not like that stereotype of never making it to my tennis practice or something; it’s that it always felt like she was only partially here, even when I was sitting next to her. I don’t even know if I appreciate her turning me into a wildlife fanatic because it…it…makes me feel like I’m close to her in a way that’s just infuriating. She loved the animals more than she loved us.”
“Oh, Ripley-”
“Don’t,” I said, shoving myself to my feet. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said quietly. I pursed my lips. “I was going to say that I’m sorry that was the case. Your mother was…flawed, just like any other person. She had two loves in this world: her family and her work. And often, her work overcame her, her zeal for environmentalism getting in the way of being a good mum. She left your father trying to fill the role of two parents, holding your family together. You and your brother and your father, you all deserved better than that.”
My lower lip quivered but I bit down on it hard. It would’ve been a lot easier for me if she’d been speaking from a place of clueless reassurance about all this. But everything she said was making sense and that meant I didn’t have someone in front of me to be angry with.
“Why didn’t you tell me when Andrew hired me?” I sighed, sitting back down on the couch.
“Well, like I said, I wanted you to find your sea legs,” she said with a small smile. “I didn’t want the truth affecting whether or not you wanted to work here, whether you wanted to stay here after finding out about what the animals are. It would’ve complicated things, the emotions you’ll have to work through now that you know the truth. Whether or not you decide to give another tour, you also know what they’re like. That’s the benchmark I wanted you to reach before you found out about who you are.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Who I-” My face went slack. “Wait.”
Suzanne nodded slowly. “You’re only half human. Your brother too.”
The room seemed to tilt on an axis for a moment. “That means I’m also half…what?”
“We call ourselves Eldritch, these days,” she replied.
My eyes bugged out. “What?” I exclaimed. “So you’re all, like, gods or something?”
Suzanne burst out laughing. “Oh no, goodness, no,” she chuckled. “It’s just a word. We live in a very different world from this one, and a few generations ago we discovered the word and it made its way into our lexicon. But it does mean you can see all the animals. Indeed you did, on the tour you gave.”
“Wait, no, I had the glasses that…” I stopped. “Did those glasses do anything?”
She gave a sly smile and shook her head. “Not a thing. You made incredibly quick progress, and then when it came time for the tour, all you needed was to expect to see the animals, and you did.”
Genetics. That’s what Andrew had said during our interview, that part of how many animals you could see was determined by genetics. I guess having a mother who was originally from the other dimension gave me all the genes I needed to see everything here. “Could I…visit your world?” I asked tentatively. “You said that my mom took photos of the animals there. Could I…” My voice trailed off, not even sure if or how I wanted to finish that sentence.
“Those who are half human, especially those who are raised on Earth, don’t come visit,” she said gently. “I could show you some photos of other animals, and I could loan you as many books as you’d like, but it’s simply not a place where you’d be safe.”
“Oh,” I said, leaning into the couch cushion as I pictured the animals in the zoo. “Yeah, actually that…makes sense.” I paused. “So, what now?”
“It’s up to you,” she said. “I wanted to wait until I was sure you were comfortable with your position here, and then put the ball in your court. And so it is. What do you want to do now?”
What did I want to do? It wasn’t that difficult a question, just a deep, serious one.
I wanted to thrive, as the animals did. This is my enrichment now, working at an incredible, wonderful, terrifying zoo. The experience so far hasn’t been perfect, and I know there are risks, but life isn’t about staying safe. It’s about learning new things and making a difference in the world. And, if you’re lucky, having a job that’s something really special.
​
First / Previous

Race Information:

• Name: Ottawa Race Weekend
• Date: May 26, 2024
• Distance: 21.1km
• Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• Time: 2:30:29

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	Finish sub 2:20	No
B	Personal best	Yes
C	Just finish	Yes

Background

This was my third time running the half marathon at Ottawa race weekend. My first year, I passed out from heat exhaustion only about 500m from the finish line and finished very late after a visit to the med tent. My second year, I wanted to finish without incident, so I focused just on staying cool and having fun. This time, I wanted to improve my time significantly and tackle training with more organization.
Another important piece of information is that I have a muscle disorder called myotonia congenita, sometimes known as fainting goat disease. It's quite rare, and affects only about 1 in 100,000 worldwide. If you've seen the Youtube videos of people scaring goats and making them freeze and fall over...that's the disorder. Basically all my skeletal muscles lack sufficient chloride channels, which causes them to tense and take a long time to relax. (Legs, hands, face, anything voluntary really). Once I'm moving I'm generally ok, but any major change in movement will cause my muscles to lock up completely for a few seconds and slowly move again. Why do I choose to run races with a disorder that makes me an actual zombie? I don't know. I figure all of us are at least a little bit crazy, and I like the accomplishment of a good run, so I accept the challenge.

Training

I got a Garmin watch right before this training block and decided to try a Garmin Coach plan. I chose Coach Jeff. The run/walk strategy I think initially helped me build slowly and I avoided shin splints or other overuse injuries. The downside was that I think it didn't ramp enough as I got closer to the race. The plan had me do one day a week of 800m race pace runs, then 3 minutes of recovery walking, 4-6 times. The 3 minutes of recovery was pretty long and I started to shorten it myself by the end, and I think it prevented me from getting enough runs in that had me going without stopping for long periods of time. The other days were either a short sprint or hill repeats, or a long run that started at 8km and went up to 25km. I think this plan might work well for others, but I don't think I'd use it again - I realized that the nature of run/walk just doesn't work with my weird muscles.

Race Day

I woke up around 6:30, had a tortilla with peanut butter and some coffee, and headed to the race start. Unlike the other two years I've done this race, the weather was perfect. Not hot, and initially nice and cloudy. It was a great day to try for a fast time! I started off strong and the first 11km flew by. The course was great, I was on my pace, and I felt really good. I did the first 10k in 1:03 and started to feel very positive about completing my A goal time. The course also had a ton of supporters cheering along most of the route!
Unfortunately things took a turn around the 14km mark. I started to feel a blister forming on my foot and my legs were feeling the fatigue. There were some long uphills that sucked my energy and the sun came out and started beaming down on us. My myotonia tends to begin to act up more about 2/3s in to the race as well; it takes a ton of effort and stumbling to move from walking to running, my chest and arms begin to get really tight, and my legs begin to react more slowly. I look like an actual zombie with my hands stuck in weird flexed positions and it's like someone tied resistance bands to every muscle in my body. On a good day I can mostly work around this, but I was feeling it more acutely at this point than normal and realized I was going to be finishing this race on a bad muscle day.
At the 17.5km mark, disaster struck. I was down to a shuffling run and working on keeping moving forward when a runner behind me tapped my back. I don't know if they were trying to be encouraging or if they were trying to alert me that they were passing me, but it caught me off guard. I jerked away and the sudden movement triggered my myotonia and caused all of my muscles to completely lock up. I fell like a tree, unable to catch myself with my stiff arms, and my face hit the pavement. My hat brim took the brunt so my forehead was fine, but my orbital bone around my eyebrow and my cheek took a hard hit. I was helped up by some very friendly runners and a volunteer elected to stay with me. I walked slowly with them for a while while I got my head back in the game and assessed the damage, then decided I was in good enough shape to finish. I ran/shuffled/walked with my amazing new volunteer friend until the finish line and crossed the line, not hitting any of my goal times but still beating my personal best by about 3 minutes!

Post-Race

I checked in with the med tent after finishing to make sure I didn't have a concussion. My eye was beginning to swell up so I grabbed some ice and my post-race beer and spent some time recovering. I woke up this morning with a very exciting black eye that has gotten an increasingly violent shade of purple throughout the day. My coworkers were all a bit bemused that I look like I was in a brawl and it was fun explaining that really, I promise, I just went for a run. I'm also much more sore than I have been post long runs in a long time; I'm guessing either from the adrenaline of the whole experience or from pushing myself harder in the first 2/3s of the race yesterday.
I'd like to dial in my training better next time so that I don't fade in the end stage, but I'm also pretty happy that I was able to finish despite all the challenges I faced!

I am new as well still studying and grinding past all the squirrel trees along the way. My motivation to do this is twofold. I live alone in the Yukon Wilderness and have health issues that require communication pretty much always be available for emergencies. We have regular outages of power, internet, land line telephone and cell phone. Also the occasional hiccup in my Starlink system. The other part would be to reacquaint myself with the hobby having been absent from it for over 40 years. My dad was into radio in the 60s and since he passed last year it would give me a bit of remembrance of him. I’ve always been an experimenter and diy on just about everything that I can mainly for the challenge. Now my question. I plan to build an inverted L antenna(s) to access the lower band(s). I have recently found several hundred feet of telegraph wire from the early 1900’s that was abandoned most likely during construction or some mishap in transportation. It has a patina that would indicate a considerable amount of copper in its composition. I have also acquired some galvanized steel wire that is of sufficient length. The galvanized is extremely hard and resists cutting with some of the best linesman pliers. Not sure what the telegraph wire is like for workability as it is still half buried in the ground where it fell. They are both in coils. Question. Which should I use if any. They are both bare wire. Is that a problem or should I give up and go with a shielded wire?

Episode 5: Chapter 15: Friday the 13th
Friday, June 13th: After the intro, the episode starts off with all of the liars except for Faran in the middle of class. The teacher hands out test papers and puts 30 minutes on the clock. Nia gets a text on her phone. The text says “Some people just can’t keep their lips to themselves. You use yours to kiss, I use mine to tell. 🌹” Noa is visibly bothered and she asks to go to the bathroom. Noa exits the class and Imogen was the only person to notice Noa’s expression. She asks to excuse herself to the bathroom and she exits as well. She follows after Noa. Imogen asks Noa what’s wrong. Noa is getting ready to tell Imogen everything, but she realizes that if she says anything to Imogen that she’ll have to tell her about her kissing Jen, and right now she can’t tell anyone. She says that she got a message about her mom and she just got a little upset, but she’ll be okay. Imogen gives Noa a hug and pats her on the back.
Faran is in her room on her laptop. Since 5 days after her final girl test and lifting that beam then getting attacked exhausted her, we can see bandages on her arm due to her attack. Her dad, Zeke, comes into the room and she immediately closes her laptop. He asks if she needs anything. She tells him that she’s good. He then asks her if she’s telling the truth about what happened. She says that she has no reason to lie. She says that she’s already told him the same thing 10 times. She tells him that she had a little accident and she exhausted herself too much, nothing is going on. He leaves the room. She reopens her laptop and we see that she’s on Spooky Spaghetti. She opens a post from a user named “Anonymouse.” In this post, this user claims to be the first person to have made a post about Bloody Rose, which means that they are the creator of Bloody Rose. This post is adding more and more to the lore of Bloody Rose. Faran calls all of this lore bullshit, but she continues to read. She then gets a knock on her window. She opens it and it’s Henry. She asks why he didn’t just knock on the door. He says that he knows her dad doesn’t want any visitors right now so he had to come to the window. He comes into her room through the window, Billy Loomis style. He then says “We need to talk.”
The guys at the pool are wondering where Faran is at. Ash walks up to all of the guys and tells them that Mouse talked to Faran and Faran had a little mishap and she couldn’t come so she put him in charge for the day.
School is over for the day and the girls exit the school. Imogen teases Tabby and asks how things are going with Christian. Tabby says that things are going good. Imogen asks if that’s all she has to say. Tabby says that she really doesn’t have much to say about Christian and he’s a sweet guy. Tabby asks how things are with Johnny. Imogen says that they’re totally into each other but if Tabby wants to be discreet about Christian, she’ll be the same way with Johnny. They giggle and then Imogen gets a text. The text reads “Mother would’ve liked Johnny. If only she hadn’t ended it all before it even got started. 🌹” Imogen and Tabby see a bright red rental car drive by and they see Bloody Rose driving inside.
3:31PM:
Noa is working her shift at Pinball Pizza. Jen is supposed to be there, but she didn’t show up. Noa tells Benny that she’s going on her break. She goes to the back of the restaurant and she pulls out her phone. We can see that she’s tried calling Jen 12 times already but she hasn’t answered any of the calls. She calls Jen a 13th time but she doesn’t answer. She sends Jen a voicemail saying “Where the fuck are you? You’re supposed to be working right now and Benny didn’t seem too happy either! Do you know how hard I worked to get you a job here? We kiss and you just disappear? That’s fucked up!” She thinks about sending it but she deletes the voicemail and when she turns around, Benny is behind her and it scares her for a moment. He asks if she’s seen Jen. Noa says that she hasn’t seen her since yesterday. Benny says that when Noa sees Jen to tell her that she’s fired. Nia tries to plead with Benny but he says that he’s given her too many chances and he’s given up on her so that’s it.
Henry & Faran are talking in her room. Henry asks why Faran has been avoiding him. She asks him why their relationship has been so traumatizing for him that he tells randos about it. He says that he didn’t mean for her to get offended, but he asked his question first so she has to answer it. Faran says that Henry has been such an asshole recently and she needed space. Henry says that he thinks he’s given her enough space and they should be able to talk things out. Now, let’s cut to Zeke in the living room. He gets a text message. In the message it says “Your daughter’s been a liar. Couldn’t you tell? When Pinochio lies, his nose grows longer, when Faran lies, her spine curves. 🌹”
Mouse is out riding her bike around town with a camera in hand. She rides her bike to Bloody Rose’s cabin. She walks up to the door and begins twisting the knob. It’s open. She walks inside and begins to take pictures of the inside of the cabin. She is excited and freaked out at the same time. She then hears a noise from outside. She sees Bloody Rose walking around outside through the window. Blood Rose opens the door slowly and begins to check around the cabin. She pulls out a phone and sends Mouse a message. Luckily, Mouse’s phone is on silent. The message reads “Come out, come out wherever you are rodent. Looks like you’re back for round 2 of our game.” Bloody Rose continues to search around the cabin so Mouse takes the chance to run out of the cabin and onto her bike.
Imogen is working her shift at Millwood Creamery. Johnny comes up behind her and kisses her on her cheek. She smiles. All of a sudden, a woman walks into the shop shaking. She frantically walks up to the counter. Imogen asks if everything is okay. The woman breathes heavily and begins to talk “Man… chasing me… I need my inhaler.” She drops to the floor and begins heavily breathing. The woman is able to get a couple of words out and she says “PURSE… I NEED INHALER!” Imogen begins frantically searching through the woman’s purse. Johnny grabs the woman and sits her at one of the booths. Imogen finds the woman’s inhaler and hands it to her. The woman thanks Imogen. She continues to heavily breathe but she’s okay now. A man suddenly bursts through the door. The woman yells “THAT MAN! HE TRIED TO RAPE ME!” Imogen stands up and stands in front of the man. He tries to get her to move but she tells him to back off before she has to call the police. The man scoffs at Imogen and says that she won’t do anything. Johnny grabs his phone and dials 911 but doesn’t press the call button. He asks the man if he would like to bet. The man backs up and walks out the door.
Henry & Faran continue their conversation. Their talk turns into an argument about Henry’s recent behavior and Faran constantly wanting nothing to do with Henry. In the middle of that argument, Zeke bursts into the room and he says “Faran, we need to talk!” He & Henry make eye contact. He asks Henry what he thinks he’s doing here. He then kicks Henry out due to his no visitor rule right now. Henry says that he was just leaving. Henry walks out the door and leaves. Faran’s dad shows her the text message and asks what this person means and who it is. Faran gets a message on her phone that says “Don’t tell daddy about our little secret meeting. 🌹” Faran says that she doesn’t know and that person is probably just messing with them.
7PM:
Noa ends her shift at Pinball Pizza. She walks out of the place and she bumps into a woman. Noa recognizes the woman as Jen’s mom and he introduces herself. Noa asks Jen’s mom if she’s seen Jen today since she didn’t show up to her shift. Her mom says that last time she talked to Jen was yesterday when she told her that she would be at her dad’s house to pick up a couple things. Noa thanks her and heads off.
Tabby & Christian are cleaning up at the Orpheum. Tabby reminds Christian that they never got to watch Blacula together. Christian says that they could though. Christian asks when Tabby’s free. Tabby says that she can’t today since her mom wouldn’t be okay with her staying at a boy’s house this late, and tomorrow she plans on laying in bed all day since it’s her day off so maybe some other day this week. Christian says that he’s always available whenever Tabby is. Tabby smiles and they continue cleaning up. All of a sudden, Tabby gets a call. It’s from an unknown number, she’s afraid but a bit excited at the same time since it could be PIFT. It’s PIFT, they call her to let her know that they really did enjoy her film, however, it will not be being screened at the festival. Tabby’s heart is broken but she puts a strong face on. The call ends and Christian asks what happened. Tabby begins to cry and she falls into Christian’s arms. Wes walks in and he asks what happened. Tabby tells them that she the film they made for PIFT isn’t going to be screened at the festival. Christian consoles her then Wes begins to rub Tabby’s back, which makes her feel a bit uncomfortable but he continues to do it.
Mouse is in her room on her computer. She posts the pictures of Bloody Rose’s cabin that she took earlier onto Spooky Spaghetti. Lola walks in and tells Mouse that dinner is ready. Mouse gets up and hugs Lola and thanks her then she leaves the room. Lola sees that Spooky Spaghetti is on Mouse’s screen. Lola takes a seat in Mouse’s chair and she begins to scroll through Mouse’s posts and she’s reading them. We skip to 15 minutes later: Lola is still looking through all of Mouse’s posts then Mouse walks back into the room. Mouse asks what Lola is doing. Lola says that this website is scary and Mouse shouldn’t be on it. She begins to question why Mouse is on it. Mouse says that she enjoys reading posts on there. Lola says that Mouse has also been making her own posts. Lola tells Mouse to stay off of websites like this since these kinds of websites give you viruses. Mouse asks Lola if she’s gonna tell Mouse’s moms. Lola says that she won’t tell them as long as Mouse listens to her. Lola then says that it’ll be their little secret and she does “shhh” while holding her finger up to her mouth and smiling.
Noa shows up to Jen’s dad’s house. However, to her surprise, a husband and wife answer the door. She’s confused. The wife asks if she needs something. Noa asks if Jen is home. The wife says that there’s no Jen living there and that Noa must have the wrong home. Noa looks at the husband and says that he’s Jen’s dad so he should know her. He says that he doesn’t have any daughters, only 2 sons. The wife comes to a realization. The wife says that Noa must be talking about their ex babysitter, Jen. The wife tells Noa that Jen used to babysit their 2 sons, but they caught her stealing expensive items from them so they had to fire her and almost had her arrested. The husband says that Jen came back a couple of days ago and stole a watch from them so they had to have her arrested. Noa apologizes for her mistake and begins walking away while calling Jen a lying bitch. She then gets a notification. It’s a message from the number that texted her in class earlier in the day. The text says “Come to this location if you’re ready to be a final girl. And remember, this stays between you and me or you’ll be hurting the person you love most.” A location is attached along with an image of Jen at a bus stop, the same bus stop that Imogen was at in episode 2. Noa says “Oh shit!” and she begins springing for her car.
Imogen & Johnny finally finish their shift and begin to close up. The woman from earlier says that she should probably go since they’re closing up. Imogen insists that the woman stays. Imogen gets a message from an unknown number. It says “Wow Imogen, good on you for helping out. If only your mom were here to help out with the baby. 🌹” A picture of her baby in her crib is then attached. Imogen begins to panic and Johnny asks what’s wrong. Imogen yells “My baby!” She begins to dial one of Estelle’s dads. He answers. Imogen frantically asks if everything is okay with Estelle. He says yeah and that she’s asleep in her crib. She says that he needs to check on her now. He asks why. She says just do it. He runs upstairs to check on the baby and she’s okay. He says that Imogen almost gave him a heart attack and that wasn’t funny. He asks why she’s acting like this. All she says is “Because Rose…” She stops herself and says that she just had a bad dream about Estelle. He thanks her for caring about Estelle but says that Estelle’s gonna be okay in his household so it’s no need for Imogen to act like this. He says bye and hangs up. The woman at the booth says “I used to know a Rose. Rose Waters..” Imogen’s eyes widen and she asks what Rose was like. The woman tells Imogen to take a seat and she’ll tell her all about Rose. Imogen asks Johnny if he’s okay with this and he says yeah.
Noa arrives at the location. She realizes that it’s Bloody Rose’s cabin that her, Mouse, & Faran were at in episode 1. She takes a deep breath and she walks up to the cabin. There is a note outside of the cabin with a rose next to it. The note says “Don’t be afraid to enter without permission. I’m sure another charge wouldn’t hurt.” Noa rolls her eyes and enters the cabin. She sees a trail of roses on the floor. She follows them to the back of the cabin, where she finds a table. The table has a note, a rose, and a clock on it. She reads the note. It says “Some people’s pasts are better kept hidden, but now you must face yours. No matter how hard you try to forget it, the past always comes back to bite. You’re used to being locked up so embrace it. Escape the cabin by any means necessary. 30 minutes on the clock bitch, don’t let it hit 0 or the ghost of the past comes out to play.”
Back to the Millwood Creamery, we find out many things about Rose Waters. We find out that this woman is Rose Waters’ ex best friend and they just fell out of contact months ago. We find out that when Rose Waters had Angela & Archie, she had bad mental problems. His favorite place to be was the playground so Rose would take him & Angela there everyday. Other kids were scared of him because he would bully them, but Rose refused to believe that her son could be a bully so she convinced herself that other kids were scared of him because he was ugly. Archie wasn’t actually deformed, but Rose made him feel that way and she began to hide him from the public eye and never let him out of the house.
Tabby is waiting outside for her mom to pick her up. She then gets a call from her mom. Her mom tells her that her car engine won’t start so she’s gonna be a little late picking her up. Her mom hangs up and Tabby gets a message. Tabby looks bothered so Wes asks what’s wrong. Tabby says that her moms engine won’t start so she’s gonna be late picking her up. Wes offers to give Tabby a ride and Tabby says sure. She texts her mom telling her that a friend offered to take her home so her mom doesn’t have to worry. Her mom asks what friend and Tabby tells her that Christian is gonna give her a ride. Her mom says okay and Tabby gets a message from someone else. The message says “Wes wants you to ride in his car? I wonder if that’s the only thing that he wants you to ride. 🌹” Tabby obviously seems a bothered by this message but she tries to hide it and gets into Wes’ car.
Noa tries to break the windows of the cabin but she isn’t able to. She starts to get frustrated. She looks for anything to pick the lock with but she doesn’t find anything.
Back to Imogen and the woman at the creamery, they continue their conversation. Johnny tells Imogen that he’s leaving and asks if she’s okay with locking up. She says yeah and he leaves. We find out that as the years went on, Rose’s mental state crumbled even more. Rose moved to Rosewood for a little while last year and she started seeing a therapist named Doctor Sullivan for her hallucinations of Archie, but the pills only made her hallucinations worse. Rose only stayed there for 1 month though and decided to move back to Millwood where she struggled to get on her feet. The therapist, Doctor Sullivan moved to Millwood recently and Rose was supposed to start seeing Doctor Sullivan again, but she no showed the appointment. The woman reveals that she lived in Rosewood too but moved to Millwood to help Rose get back on her feet since Rose was her best friend, but Rose stopped answering her messages and she hasn’t seen her since. Imogen seems overwhelmed by all of this information. She then says that both of them should probably get going. She asks the woman her name. The woman avoids the question and says that she should be going now and she quickly walks out of the door. Imogen runs after the woman but she can’t find her anywhere.
It’s 10 minutes left on the clock for Noa. She begins searching drawers and she finds nothing until she gets to 1 drawer. It’s hard to open but she pulls it hard enough and it finally opens. All it has is a bunch of Redemption House flyers in it. Noa tries various different methods to try and escape but none of them work. She begins trying to ram herself into the window but the windows don’t break.
Wes drops Tabby off at her house. Before Tabby leaves his car, he stares into her eyes and tells her that she has a lot of talent and he knows that one day she’s gonna make it big. She thanks him but she is still weirded out. She gets out of the car and walks to her front door.
Back to Noa, it’s only 30 seconds on the clock. She is using everything that she can find. 30…29…28…27..26… Noa hears the clock ticking and she begins to panic. Nothing that she’s done has worked yet. 5..4..3..2..1. Times up. Noa gets a text, “Tick tock, times up! 🌹” The door begins to open. Bloody Rose is standing at the door. Noa begins to scream as Rose walks towards her. Rose tries to stab Noa but Noa ducks and begins to run out of the cabin. Rose slowly walks after her. Noa falls and gets her foot stuck in between 2 trees so she takes her shoe off. Noa accidentally runs onto some thorns and falls to the floor holding her foot. She tries to get back up but she can’t. She says “STAY AWAY YOU BITCH!” Bloody Rose continues to walk towards Noa. Noa is able to get herself up slowly. She continues to run with blood. She begins patting herself for her car keys but she can’t find them. She can’t get into her car without them so she runs even more. Bloody Rose may be slowly walking, but she’s not far behind. Now eventually comes across a lake and since Bloody Rose is close, this is her only choice. She gets into the lake and begins to swim. We see Bloody Rose in the background still following behind her, but she stops in front of the lake, not willing to get in. Bloody Rose walks away and Noa stays in the lake.
Cut to the Millwood Community Pool. Shawn is leaving place. Heads to the parking lot and he presses the button to find his car. His car beeps, but all of a sudden, a bright red car speeds and hits him in the middle of the parking lot. The episode ends with a shot of Shawn laying on the ground.
This is the episode that I wrote. I may have forgotten some things that have happened in past episodes, so it may not follow everything that the show has told us. Sorry about that. Anyways, I hope you liked it since I’m going to be doing this for every remaining episode of S2 following my universe. I even hope that I can write a season 3 and post it onto here.

Tapu erches a generic illegal prank (illegal because he is now old enough). He plans to damage the breaks of Bhides' scooter. His pet animals called "tapu sena" softly voice concern but they are easily convinced by Tapu by saying that he has tied a black fishing net near the society entrance. Then our retard toddlers giggle together.
Goli being the jetiya certified Jadiya, is seen eating junk near the net, and then our Jadiya uses his contaminated hands to fix the net, thereby sprinkling edibles all over the corners.
As per plan, Goli calls Bhide at midnight with an unknown number and tells him that he needs to quickly rush to some hospital as his Ratnagiri Kaka is in ICU after a coconut fell on his nuts or something. Around this time, a dog is seen biting on the net that was previously contaminated by our Jadiya.
Bhide rushes downstairs and hops on his maharashtrian hayabusa and takes off. Hits the net. Net breaks lose. Hits a tree in the garden. Breaks his spine and a few limbs. And, he clamours for help.
Dumb faces of tapu and his pets are shown. His negative IQ daughter rushes to him, crying. Tapu runs away and soon he is nowhere to be seen.
Society folks gather around Bhide. Hathi trips on a broken scooter part and falls on Bhide, thereby breaking some more stuff in him. Dr. Elephant then checks him. Bhide cries, including on behalf of broken sakaram. Tarak notices the broken fishing net and they call Chaluji Pandeji and Hathi calls an ambulance.
Chalu comes. Asks about the unknown number, etc. Tapus' pet army, including Sonu, maintains silence. Meanwhile, tapu returns but stays hidden in the clubhouse. In the dark, he hits something and causes loud noise.
Chalu and his team expect him to be the homicidal culprit, plans to grab him in the dark. Komal is asked to bring upon a blanket to trap the suspect. (as everyone knows Hathi family uses whale sized blankets)
They all go inside, including our zealous 12 year old champak with his chhadi, and they grab Tapu in the dark.
Suspecting him to be the culprit, they all, each society member, Abdul, Chalus' team, etc participate in the Tipendra Beating Ceremony with sheer passion. Champak is seen beating him with his chhadi, with absolute anger.
Then, the blanket is lifted and we see Tipendra, cooked to the core. Behold the magestic sight.
Then he reveals, that he had gone out to ... Call the fucking mechanic to save Bhides' beloved sakaram.
Champak mimics MK Gandhi for some minutes; hence proved tapu cared for Bhide as he was concerned about something that Bhide deemed to be dearer than his own ass; his damn scooter.

I was planning to build a PC under $500 but I kept saying “Oh that better [x] is only [y] more dollars”, and have now hit $355 without a GPU.
Here are the parts I have so far:
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X $164.98
ThermalRight Peerless Assassin $30.90
ASUS Prime B650M-A AX II $84.99
Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-5200 CL36 $73.41
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB (Already had)
BitFenix Prodigy M 2022 (Already had)
ThermalTake Smart 700W (Already had)
I’m not a gamer (at least not now), but I do a good bit of CAD. I also would like to be able to try my hand at a bit of Blender modeling. CAD usage is primarily in SolidWorks currently, but will shift to Fusion360 and Revit.
I’m fine with used and every other part was bought used (or purchased more than a couple years ago new).
My main problem is figuring out how much to budget to a GPU. If I up my total PC build budget to $750, I’d have $395 to spend on a GPU, which seems quite a bit disproportionate to the rest of my parts.
I dual-boot Windows 11 (for most of my engineering school stuff) and Linux [(Probably OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) for non-MATLAB coding and everything else.]
I made an ugly spreadsheet with specs and some used prices I have found and have been using it for most of my search but I would appreciate some human help.

Hi all,
Wondering if anyone has experience with this and can lend advice.
About a month ago I received a warning of a landscape violation. I looked up the case number on the city website and there were no specifics other than landscaping. So i went around the property, found a bush that had grown a foot into the sidewalk and trimmed it back. I also did some minor trimming to a few trees etc. In general we have some nice landscaping in the front yard and the house looks above average for our neighborhood. Looking around the street there are multiple other trees with more overhang than ours within eyesight of our driveway.
Now we get a Notice and Order from the code compliance division with three code violations: 1/ Dangerous, unslightly, blighted condition, 2/Landscape:clearance, 3/ Landscape: right-of-way overgrowth. Along with this is a $575 fee, a $175 title fee, and a $150 termination fee, plus another $275 fee for any additional inspection.
All and all this seems like a huge response to violations that I can not appreciate inspecting my property. We are planning to call the citing code enforcement officer tomorrow to try and learn more, but I cant believe that any issue they have with the landscaping constitutes our house being called "dangerous, unsightly, or blighted" let alone justifies $900 in fines.
Thanks for any insights advice on how to handle this.