Hi Pubtips, I've been lurking here for a while and I'd like some feedback on my query. I've read a lot of about what good queries tend to be like and I'd like to think I've followed those guidelines but I'd appreciate a second opinion. This isn't the first book I've written but it's the first one I've ever tried to query. Thank you!
Dear [agent],
When the immortal Nelle Foster wakes up from a century-long sleep, she finds herself in a world she no longer recognizes. On an ailing estate in Southern England barely kept afloat by George Harridan, great-grandson of a man she'd once been close to, Nelle now has to come to terms with a past that had chased her into an endless slumber in the first place. That's when Maurice Howler, a secretly immortal philanthropist and socialite, persuades her to use her magical abilities to help save the world, accidentally dropping her into the middle of a love triangle between Maurice and his old friend and secret crush, Daniel. Among this cadre of ancient beings, plain and mortal George, too, has to learn that wisdom doesn’t always come with age. Plagued by dreams of a coming climate apocalypse, Maurice has to act to prevent the visions from coming true, even if saving the world isn't his area of expertise. When a powerful man offers his help, it seems like the universe has aligned itself to help him. Little does he know that the dreams he believes to be prophetic are actually so much worse. When they find their paths intertwining, they learn that the stakes are much higher than anyone could have anticipated.
THE ONE WHO SLEPT (115,000 words) is a close fantasy novel in an alternate history setting with a stream of Victorian romance told from multiple points of view, both mortal and immortal. It also features a flashback sequence for the main character. The book can work as a standalone, though it's part of a trilogy. As of writing this letter, the second book is in the editing stage and the third one is in outlining with the first draft expected by early 2025. The first book in a trilogy, THE ONE WHO SLEPT is similar to V.E. Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, with an atmosphere and a diverse set of characters reminiscent of Freya Marske's A Marvellous Light.
[Bio mentioning that I'm a bilingual writer]

let's say our protagonist steps into a new room, and later in the plot, they have an important interaction with an item in the room. i don't like the prospect of describing the room during the interaction--maybe it'll break the real focus. that means that we have to describe the setting the first time the character enters. when is the best time to describe it, then?
like:

He hopped over the mossy step and knocked on the door.
The door flew open, too quickly to produce any sound more than a squeak, and broke a teacup hanging in the air.
“You're late, midget, for the sake of Delphi,” a green-skinned elf scolded, already striding past him, crunching porcelain under her bare feet. She snatched an envelope from behind the door, not batting an emerald eyelash when a shelf toppled behind her, spilling stationary and ink. "Do try coming earlier." She plopped the letter in his hands before closing the door.
The moaning creak echoed through the forest glade. Tristan looked at his ink-soaked shoes, then at the closed door.

Where do I possibly fit the description about the winged teacups and the moss-rimmed bookcases teeming with books and encyclopedias? And the magic circles drawn in chalk on the floor? What about the mushroom roof? And the squirrel stuffing that hung over a bubbling cauldron?
​

I enjoyed Dunki, but it wasn't as great as a RKH film with SRK as the lead that talks about illegal immigration should have been. I am not a better writer than RKH, Abhijaat Joshi or Kanika Dhillon. This is just for fun. Here we go:
ACT 1:
We open the film with a large group of people protesting in front of the UK embassy in India. Cops show up to remove the crowd. The protestors start running away and chaos ensues. We see an old man, running, clutching his chest, sweating. He regains his composure and the man is revealed to be SRK. He gets arrested by the cops and we cut to him sitting in an interrogation chamber. A woman enters, adresses SRK as Mr. Dhillon and introduces herself as Priya Varma. She says she has been appointed by the Indian government and the UK embassy to talk to him. They share some fun banter and then, Mr. Dhillon starts explaining his story.
Back in 1995, in the small village of Laltu, Punjab, lived Hardayal Singh Dhillon aka Hardy. In a short funny sequence, we learn that- He was an outsider in the village. He was in the army, but due to his cowardice causing 7 other soldiers to get gravely injured, he was expelled. Without any money, he showed up to the village of Laltu, a place where there is great respect for the army. He paints himself as a war hero in front of the villagers, and as a result, he is treated like a celebrity. Free food, free lodging, you name it. Eventually, he got exposed by some villagers. To stop matters from getting worse, Hardy sweeps this matter under the rug by using the obsession of the villagers to get to foreign countries to his advantage. He tells them that he will start an IELTS coaching centre in the village and help everyone get visas.
After this sequence ends, we cut to the characters of Manu, Sukhi, Buggu and Balli. We see their everyday struggles and how they desperately want to get to London. We also establish how they dislike their country and living in it. We see them join the IELTS classes, where Hardy and his assistant, Geetu, teach English to students. Some comedic sequences will take place here and it will get established that Hardy and Geetu just want to earn money and don't actually care about the students. Also, we see that Hardy hates living in India and wants to go abroad too. He capitalises on his students' hate towards their country by making them appear for IELTS to get a visa.
Eventually, the day of the exam comes and like the movie, we see a sequence here that is both comedic and emotional. The results come and just like the film, Balli passes whereas the others fail. As Balli is departing, Hardy and Geetu arrive to shoot a promotional video. Here, they get confronted by Sukhi, Buggu and Manu, who tell them that they don't care about the students and just started this as a hustle to earn money and save Hardy's reputation in the village. The sequence ends with Sukhi slapping Hardy, causing the latter to leave, dejected.
Manu and the other two decide that they will take the Dunki route to get to London, because they cannot die in this stupid village. Hardy arrives and decides to help them by not only giving them the necessary money, but also deciding to accompany them. The gang is skeptical, but agree to accept his help.
The next day, they go to meet an agent who will send them on the journey. Here, we get a comedic sequence where the agent tries to paint the whole journey as some kind of tourist activity and also tries to sell them packages. Hardy sees through all of this and tells the others that as a former crook himself, he understands the agent's tactics. However, left without any choice, they decide to go ahead, as none of them want to "rot in India."
END OF ACT 1

I think a lot about signals. Signals that show people what groups they belong to. Signals that hide the truth. Everybody uses signals to blend, entice, or trap.
Grandma Pearl died not long after her stroke, and I've been making bad decisions ever since. Maybe my expectations are too high, or I'm just an idiot. Either way, I ran away from the group home to be with people who called themselves my "family." They were the wrong people. They used the words family, brother, sister, and love like lock picks, stealing trust, and taking self-respect.
The only person I remember using the word family correctly was Grandma Pearl. She was a small woman who toured the US as an actress before settling with Granddad above their theatrical rentals shop. I was three when the car accident took Granddad and Mom, so I don't know if they used the word "family" correctly, but I hope they did.
I was never as outgoing as Grandma, but that didn't bother her; she taught me how to watch people. How to see their signals, and how to listen. When she died. I forgot a lot of those lessons for a while.
They called it a "family". The "family" moved product. That product could be goods, drugs, or people.
The uninitiated, like me, were distracted with food and a dry place to sleep, but it didn't take long to see behind the curtain. Things got too intense with the new "family" and I ran.
I ran back to my old neighborhood. The buildings were familiar even if my home was gone. The old theatrical shop had been turned into a microbrewery.
After an appropriate amount of self-pity, thirty minutes, I wandered the alleys, picking up cans or scavenging for bits and pieces that could be recycled, used, or bartered.
I recognized old faces, but I tried to stay out of sight. It was safer that way.
The only place I allowed myself to be seen was the old Lutheran church on the park's far side. Most people who might have known me had aged out of the congregation or died. It was worth the risk because St. Lazarus had a food pantry in the basement and gave out lunches most days, so I wasn't always hungry, which was nice.
I found a dry spot near the library to sleep, which seemed like a stroke of luck until it wasn't.
I had the contentment that came with being in a familiar place. Little bits of comfort let me believe, for a moment, that I wasn't a screw-up and hadn't trusted the wrong people. That moment scurried away when Stick found me.
Stick was a scary asshole. He technically wasn't in charge of the " family," but he made it work. He got things done. I have no idea how old he was. He was all corded muscle and could clock in between twenty and fifty. He looked half-starved and moved like a stalking predator, even with his limp.
His left leg was stiff. The knee didn't bend, and anytime he sat, his left leg would be splayed to the side like a kickstand on a bike. The leg was why he walked with a cane. The cane and how he used it was why we called him Stick.
I don't know why he took the time to track me down. It's not like I was wanted. Maybe it was that I had become property. Property shouldn't just wander off.
Sometimes, you feel a person before you see them. The air is different. When Stick was around, the air felt dead and motionless. I knew I was being watched before I opened my eyes.
Stick was sitting on a milk crate, his bad leg cocked to the side and his forehead resting on his cane. I pushed myself out from beneath the ductwork of the HVAC unit I had been sleeping under and slapped the dirt off my jeans.
"I thought that was you," Stick said as his sharp grin curved up to his unblinking dark eyes.
Stick wanted my discomfort. I'd seen him play the intimidation game too many times. He'd act too friendly, and then when you were good and worried, quick movements, a hand around the back of your neck, and violence would be next. Then he'd act like the whole mind fuck was a big joke, like you were friends, and isn't it great that you can joke around with someone who "really" cared.
It worked, too. If you were the unfortunate focus of Stick's attention, you would be grateful when he smiled and said, "Just a joke, kid. Don't be so sensitive." I'd seen the pattern enough times to know Stick trained people like dogs with his hot and cold game. I didn't like the game, or the fear, so I changed the pattern.
"Hey, Stick, did you come to help pick up cans?" I asked, making sure my smile reached my eyes. I was trying to be pleasant while ignoring the burning nervousness in my gut.
It was still dark out, but I could see Stick's expressions well enough.
Stick tapped his cane on the sidewalk and squinted at me skeptically before answering. "Just checking on my little brother."
We were not related.
Stick liked to call the uninitiated his little brothers or little sisters. He forced intimacy into his language. I didn't argue the point. Interactions went best with Stick when you agreed with everything he said.
"Thanks, man," I complimented, trying to sound genuine and ignorant as I stepped forward and offered him my hand.
Stick didn't move, but I could see that this conversation wasn't going as planned for him, and I forced myself not to react to his confusion. I couldn't break character, or he would know I was playing him.
Stick tapped his cane on the ground twice, grasped my hand, and stood. He watched me. I held his stare, but in an open, naive, guileless way that I had perfected in front of the mirror as grandma gave acting advice while she put her face on.
I once asked Grandma Perl why anyone would practice acting stupid. She pointed her mascara brush at me and, in her ditsiest Minnesota Nice character, said, "It's easier to be forgiven when people think you're a little dumb, don't ya know?" Like with most things, Grandma was right.
Before I understood what had happened, Stick pulled me into his side and slung an arm around my shoulder.
"You don't have a name yet. Everyone gets a name, but they don't get to pick it." He paused and gave me a Cheshire cat grin. "I have a name for you, little brother. You are going to be called Slide." Then he held my chin and forced eye contact." Your name will be Slide because I have never seen anyone slide out of shit faster than you. I can't tell if you do it on purpose or not, and I've been watching. I watch everybody. You do, too. Hell, this might be the first time I've ever heard you talk. So let's celebrate your name, Slide." Stick's smile slipped as he pulled me out of the alley. "We'll go do something special."
I stayed silent, knowing full well what was coming. Being named meant doing something you could never take back. It was public and would put you in prison if the police ever took the time to look for you. It meant severing yourself from your life before and relying entirely on the "family." I had been absent each time naming seemed to be in the cards, but I couldn't duck out this time.
There was only one place to go at this time of night that would have an impact, the Bodega.
The Bodega was a red hole in the wall with a glass door papered over with grocery ads years outdated. Canned salmon two for one seemed to be the dominant theme. Although there were two large windows, one on either side of the door, you could barely see in. The right window was a tapestry of cigarette promotions. The left window displayed the only swath of uncovered glass with a view of the interior. From the outside, the view was of tobacco, lottery scratchers, and Old Lady Imitari.
Old Lady Imitari owned the store. She was a short, dark-haired woman who always wore a long floral tank top. Grandma Pearl loved the old woman but said Imitari looked like an old man's thumb all the years she had known her, and Grandma moved to the neighborhood with Grandad thirty years ago. Imitari was a local legend even then because the Bodega was open twenty hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, and no one else worked in the store. Grandma used to make an extra strong coffee called Barako and chat with Imitari sometimes when work in the shop was slow.
I would sneak out at night and try to catch Imitari sleeping. No matter the time, I never caught her snoozing, and she always saw me peeking at her through the window. I know she saw me because she would uncross her arms and wave her flyswatter at me.
All these memories flicked through my mind as Stick smiled his too-wide smile and pushed me into the Bodega.
Imitari flicked her fly swatter at me in acknowledgment, and her attention returned to the small TV she had nestled beside the cash register, which seemed to be the old woman's only real tether to the world outside her shop.
The inside of the Bodega was just a long hallway with shelves of convenience foods, drinks, home supplies, candy, and cold meds covering every available surface from floor to ceiling. The only break in the tunnel of products was the glass counter at the back corner of the store; Imitari presided over her mini domain by casually ignoring her shoppers. I tried to make eye contact with the old woman again as Stick pushed me to the back of the shop, but after her initial acknowledgment of our entrance, Imitari's eyes stayed focused on her TV.
As casually confident as possible, I walked to the cooler and grabbed an iced tea. "Want a drink," I asked over my shoulder, my voice unusually steady, given the electric current of anxiety flowing through me.
Stick sneered and tapped his cane twice on the ground. His eyes found all the security cameras in the tiny store, a frown creasing his angular features.
I followed his line of sight and finally realized what had bothered him. The cameras were fake. They looked like security cameras, but they weren't. There were no wires or lenses, just rectangles and circles in a security camera shape.
Stick took a deep breath and tapped his cane on the ground again. " There… is … so… much… here… to… see… but… no… one… is… watching," he said with a singsong. Then his sneer turned into a cruel smile.
I knew Stick wanted an audience for what he would force me to do. The fact that the security cameras were fakes meant that whatever was going to happen would now have to be significant. An event that the neighborhood wouldn't be able to ignore. My stomach twisted with the thought.
Stick waggled his eyebrows at me. He had been watching. He had seen my thoughts, and we both knew he had something terrible in mind.
The cane twirled in Stick's hand and then tapped twice on the shop tile.
"I think I want a little bit of this," Stick said, gesturing wildly with his cane, sending a row of soup cans tumbling to the floor. "And a little bit of that," Stick added as another wild gesture sent cups of ramen spinning and knocking glass bottles of hot sauce to the floor.
I stood paralyzed, unable to run. I was trapped with nowhere to duck away to. I didn't want Stick to hurt Old Lady Imitari, and I didn't want Stick to hurt me, either. The truth was, he would hurt both of us no matter what I did. That was just the way Stick was. I'd seen him. I'd seen him show us who he was every day.
Then I realized Imitari hadn't moved. She was watching her TV and chuckling at the sitcom as if nothing had happened.
Stick glanced at me, confused. I almost felt sorry for the sociopath. His night was not going to plan.
Imitari chuckled at her TV again, and a crease formed in the middle of Stick's forehead, letting me know that he was beyond angry. He was calm, dangerous, and vicious. People had been left for dead when Stick got this way.
Stick raised his cane and flipped it so the handle jutted like a pickax. He was going to attack Imitari.
Somehow, I moved. I didn't do much, but when I slid forward and grabbed the back of Stick's shirt, the cane missed Imitari, and the sharp handle punctured the thick glass top of the counter just above a roll of Lotto scratchers.
Old lady Imitari slowly looked up into Stick's eyes and smiled. Her wide, gentle frown was replaced with a look of joy and something else, something primal, something hungry. Her pupils were blown, and I had the uneasy feeling that I was watching someone be served their absolute favorite meal.
Before Stick could pull his cane from the punctured glass, Imitari casually reached forward, grabbed the cane, and pulled the wirey man forward. Small, old, and wrinkled, Imitari stared into Stick's eyes and overpowered him.
Stick fell forward across the counter. He tried to push himself back, but Imitari's hand clamped down on his wrist like a vice.
Bones ground together as Imitari pulled Stick's hand to her mouth, and with a swift, subtle movement, she bit off the tips of Stick's pinky and ring finger like she was sampling a cookie.
I jumped back next to the cooler as a thin spray of blood arched toward me.
Stick screamed and thrashed, but Imitari's small form was static and immovable. Stick was a fly in a trap. No matter how much he struggled, punched, poked, or kicked, he could not break the old woman's hold. Then, slowly, she took another bite.
It was strangely fascinating watching the frail form of this old woman I had known for years take bite after bite out of Stick. This man, whom I thought of as a predator, a hunter, an enforcer, was crying and begging while an old woman, who looked like a wrinkled thumb in a floral top, quietly devoured him.
I was surprised by the lack of blood after the first spray. I'm sure it was Imitari's crushing grip that stanched the flow of blood. The flesh of Stick's arm looked white from the pressure.
Hand over hand, Imitari pulled Stick forward. Bones cracked as she gripped higher on Stick's arm, clamped down with her long leathery fingers, and fed the flesh and bone, one concise bite at a time, into her open smiling maw. It was rhythmical in its simplicity: chomp, crunch, chew, chew, swallow. Over and over, the pattern continued until the begging stopped.
Stick wasn't dead. He gave up. Not struggling, he laid over the glass counter like a rag doll. He watched me glassily as Imitari took bite after bite, and I knew he wasn't there anymore. Whatever made Stick Stick had either curled up and hidden in a dark corner of his mind or had been devoured with his arm.
The old woman seemed displeased that her meal had stopped struggling. She shook him, but he flopped, and his head lulled from side to side. Imitari frowned, let go of Stick's arm, and pushed down on the limp man's back. Blood gushed from the ragged stump, and Imitari lowered her mouth and drank from the wound like she was sipping from a garden hose.
Stick didn't move. He just grew pail, and eventually, his panicked, shallow breaths ended, and the blood stopped flowing.
Then Imitari stood. With a quick tug, she pulled Stick's body over the counter and let it flop to the floor at her feet. Her eyes closed. A contented smile bloomed on her face as the explosive sound of crunching and cracking bones echoed through the small shop.
The deafening sound of crunching stopped, and only the buzzing of the drinks cooler reverberated through the small space. Imitari opened her eyes and watched me, a broad smile still on her lips. At that moment, I realized I could hear the drinks cooler so well because I had crawled into it, wedged between the glass door and the shelves.
Imitari held me with her gaze as cords of pink flesh lowered from the ceiling and efficiently tidied up Stick's mess, lapping up blood and hot sauce, placing cans on shelves, and scooping up cups of ramen with whip-like tendrils. Then, the cords of flesh nudged me forward, and I stood before Old Lady Imitari.
The thing that I had always thought of as a stern old woman handed me Stick's cane. With the same benign smile I remembered from buying red hots from it as a ten-year-old, it waved me away with its flyswatter, and the cords of flesh pushed me out the door onto the sidewalk.

THE 2000 YEAR OLD MAN (1975) - FULL TRANSCRIPT 2000 Year Old Man is an old Brooks-Reiner comedy routine turned into a half-hour animated TV special. Reiner, a TV reporter, interviews Brooks, a man claiming to be 2000 years old. The interview consists of a serious of questions regarding the history of the world. Brooks' answers to Reiner's questions are priceless.
About four days ago a plane landed at Idlewild Airport.
The plane came from the Middle East bearing a man who claims to be
2000 years old.
He spent the last six days at the Mayo Clinic.
Ei, sir.
Sir, is it true that you are 2000 years old?
Oh boy.
-Yes. -You are?
It's hard to believe sir because
in the history of man nobody has ever lived more than 167 years
wich a man from Peru claimed to be.
But you claim to be 2000?
I'll be, not yet. I'll be 2000, October 16th.
You will be 2000. When were you born?
We didn't have formal years and names and writing.
We didn't know. I see.
Nobody kept time.
See, we didn't know.
We didn't write. We just sat around, pointed in the sky
and said wow hot there wow.
-That's all they said? -We didn't even know it was the sun.
You really didn't know anything.
Anything, we were so dumb.
We didn't know who was a lady.
-But they were... -They were with us.
But we didn't know who they was
we didn't know who was the ladies and who was fellows.
You thought they were just different type of fellows.
Yes, stronger or smaller or softer.
The softer ones I think was the ladies all the time.
What about that? How did you find out?
Well, they are cute, a fat guy,
could you could have mistaken him,
soft and cute.
Who is the person who discovered the female?
Bernie.
Who was Bernie?
Bernie, one of the first leaders of our group.

• And he discovered the female?
• Yeah.
  
• How did that happen?
  
• Ladies, ladies here.
  

I'm very interested to find out how Bernie discovered the woman.
-Well, he... -How did he come to find?
One morning
he got up smiling. So he said:
I think there is ladys here.
I said, well, what do you mean, you know?
He said: 'cause in the night.
I was swelled and delighted, see?
So he went into such a story that
it's hundreds of years later, I still blush.
Could you give us the secret of your longevity?
Well, the major thing.
The major thing.
Is that I never, ever touch ripe food.
I don't eat it.
I wouldn't look at it and I don't touch it.
And and I never run for a bus.
There's always another.
Even if even if you're late for work.
You know, I never run for a bus.
I never ran.
I just stroll, jump it, slowly walk to the next bus...
Yeah, well but there were no buses at the time.

• No, in my... -Right.

In my time ahnn...
What was the means of transportation then?
-Mostly fear.
-Fear transported you? -Fear yes.
You could see.
A lion, he would would growl, you would go two miles a minute.
I'd like to find out about some social customs
the origination of social customs.
For instance, singing how that started?
Oh it stems from fear.
-Could you explain? -Because in the old days,
I said old days.
I don't mean the georgian cars.
-Did you.. -I mean rocks and caves...
I'm asking you, sir, how song...
Some song came about when you really had to communicate.
-But in trouble you couldn't say help. -Yes.
But have to use your mouth.
Yes, I know.
Hello.
-I mean, I wouldn't say help, I say good morning.
Yes. You're really...
you know you in trouble.

• But somebody said eeeh eeeeh. -That was the first song.
  
• I don't know.
  
• In other words, fear, right?
  

I was singing.
We thought happiness did.
Oh, and the song came out of it.
A lion is eating my foot off.
Somebody call a cop.
A lion is eating my foot off.
Somebody call a cop.
A lion is eating my foot off.
Somebody call a cop.
A lion is eating my foot of
Somebody call a cop.
Very interesting to hear the derivation of songs
The first songs,
the first songs were all the anthem songs.
We always thought...
We always thought...
Wanna hear an anthem song?
You had an anthem song?
We had a national anthem.
-What was the anthem? -Well, ah...
you see, was only fragment...
-Fragment? -It wasn't a nation.
-Yes. -It was cave, each cave. Yes.
Each cave had a national anthem.
You remember the national anthem of your cave?
Ok. I say I'll never forget it.
You don't forget a national anthem in a minute.
Let them go to the hell
except cave 76.
For instance, how did the custom of two people shaking hands
how the handshake come to be?
The handshake? As you know...
I don't, that's why I'm asking!
The handshake has also stemmed from fear.

• Everything seems to stem from fear.
• Of course.

Everything we do is based on fear.
-Even love? -Mainly love.
How can love stem from fear?
How can love stem from fear?
What do you need a woman for?
You know what you need for?
-In my time? -Yes.
To see if an animal is behind yourself,
you had to get eyes in the back of your head.
you take two eyes that is to be a lady.
I see.
You say, lady, you look behind me for a while.
And that was the first... the first marriages.
What if you take a look behind me ok?
How long you want?Forever, we are married.
You walked back to back to the rest of your life?
Yes. You only look at her once in a while,
when you knew you it was safe?
When I knew I was in a highground.
-The handshakes they started how?
-They started to see if the fellow had a rock
or a dagger in his hand.
Where is you hand? Hi, Charlie.
How you're doing Jumpy, where is you hand?
Then you open it and you look...
And you shook another one.
And that's the way the handshakes started.
Yes, the shake.
May have a stone or a marble to stick in your eye.
In the older days
you should get a snap and all.
How the dancing started?
-Dancing is the same thing. -Fear again?
Just fear. The only thing you could do with a hand
was to see if there was a rock or a marble
or rubber band or nail or something that would stick in your head.
Right. Ok.
But while imobilizing my hand
dancing gets to complete the imobilization.
Dance and keep the feet busy so he can't get you.
Yes, but I think most people are interested
in living a long and fruitful life.
-You mentioned? -Fruit is good food, you mentioned.
Fruit kept me going for 140 years once
when I... was on a very strict diet,
mainly nectarines, I love that fruit
half a peach, half a plum, such a hell of a fruit.
It's not too cold
Not too hot, you know, just nice.
-What if... -A rotten one?
That's how much I love. I'd rather eat a rotten nectarine than a fine plum.
-What do you think about? -I can understand that.
Yes, that's how much I love them.
-Yes, I can understand, sir. -Some good things.
What did you do for a living?
Well, many years ago, thousands.
There was no heavy industry.
We know that.
Most things that we manufactured or we made,
most things we ever made,
was we would make a take a piece of wood
and rub it, rub it and rub it and rub it
then clean it and look at it and hit right with it
and hit a tree with it.
-For what purpose? -Just to keep busy.
There was not. There was absolutely nothing to do, had no job.
What other jobs were there?
Must've been something else besides hitting a tree with
the knowledge, hitting a tree with a
piece of stick was already a good job.
You couldn't get that job.
Mainly was sitting and looking in the sky
was a big job
and another job was watching each other.
-And what language did you speak? -They spoke...
-Rock, basic rock. -Years before Hebrew.
Yes. 200 years before Hebrew was the rock language, the rock talk.
Could you give us an example of that?
Hey, you don't put that rock on me.
Hey, what you do with the rock?
Do you remember you remember your Hebrew sir?
Yes, I would just I think I remember fluent...
Because I understand the modern Hebrew is different from the...

• Yes. The difference in some of the

-phonetic alliteration paterns. -Yes.
Can we hear an example of the ancient Hebrew?
A very ancient Hebrew is...
Oh, hi there, hello.
Hello there. How are you.
-Hi. How are you. -That's English.
-Oh wait, wait. -You remember any Hebrew?
Very little.
I don't think I remember.
I must have forgot a great deal of it.
-I think you forgot it all. -Maybe all, yes.
Maybe all. Thousands of years since I needed it.
Now, sir, did you ever...
Did you ever have any formal job as we know it today?
Yeah, well, I was a manufacturer. I was owner.
What kind of a factory did you have?
I had a I used to make the star of David, Jew stars.
Making a little money?
Where's that? Yeah.
Soon as religion came in, I was one of the first in that.
I figured this was a good thing.
How did you make them? Did you have tools?
Well, we didn't have a lady.
I employed six men each with a point.
They used to run together in the middle of the factory
A great speed, it was huge.
They were making a star.
Yes. We would make two a day because of the many accidents.
Six men running and... you know.
Lots of accidents.
You never thought of going into anything else?
Oh, no, I had an offer once.
-It came to me. Simon. -What Simon asked you to do?
Said he had a new thing, a new item,
a winner, looks like a winning item.
That was gonna be a big seller is called a cross.
And I looked at it and I turned it over
and looked in all sides of it
and I said, it's simple. It's too simple.
I didn't know then. Element.
-I didn't know with such a -You turned him down?
and I said, I'm sorry, but I'm too busy.
See, I could have I could have fired four men,
two men run together, bang, that is a cross.
Would say that I would I would have earned
over a hundred dollars doing that crosses and everything.
Yes, certainly.
Do you have a few moments, sir?
What do you mean? Money or the time.
No, we have to cut way for messages now.
-Okay, let's do it. Is it in English? -Yes.
By the way, sir, are you married?
I have been married several hundred times.
-Several hundred times? -Yes.
You haven't, man. Do you remember all your wives?
-One I remember well. -Which one was that?
The five one, Shyla.
I remeber her well.
I'm afraid to ask the next question, you had many hundreds of wives...
-Hundreds and hundreds. -But how many children you have?
I have over forty two thousand children.
And not one comes to visit me.
It's awful, sir
well, sir, it's really you mean to say there isn't one daughter...
there's many daughters, but, but they
you know how they are, children.
Good luck to them, let them go.
I don't want listen, let them be happy as long they're happy
I don't care. But they could send a note
write how're you Pop how you're doing Pop
you know, they don't.
Sir... ahn, you must have known
some great men in your time, you did travel to...
I knew the greater and the near greater.
Can I ask you about some of these...
Certainly, I'll tell you the true
the true whether I knew or not.
For instance, people are people are
very interested in somebody like Joan of Arc.
A lot has been written about her, we read a lot...
Aah what a kiss.
You knew Joan of Arc?
I went for her, damn it, I went for her.
Nowhere in history do we know of Joan going with it anybody.
Well, they don't print everything.
You did marry her? No.
No. I didn't marry her because she was on a mission.
she used to say to me
she used to say to me, I've got to save France.
I should say I look.
I've got to wash up. You save France.
See you later after you save France. I'll wash up, you know.
-How did you... -Hold it, I... yet.
How did you feel about her being burned at the stake?
Terrible.
I didn't I didn't know.
Sir, how about some of the legendary characters
who supposedly might have existed?
For instance, Robin Hood.
-Did he...? -Oh, yeah. Lovely man.
Ran around in the forest.
Did he really steal from the rich and give to the poor?
No, he didn't.
He stole from everybody and kept everything.
Out of the legend?
Out of the legend let's bring up that
he had a fellow monk, hired a press agent
running all the paper and roll and scroll.
He takes from the rich and gives to the poor, who knew?
You knew you took such a knock in the head
when he robbed you wouldn't knock him down.
-In other words... -A tough guy.
I hate to have our legendary figures smashed
Well, I hate do smashing for you.
So much to discuss, for instance,
-somebody like William Shakespeare -Oh what a pussycat.
-You are saying that you knew -A pussycat.
You did know it, for instance
Oh, that little beard, that cute hair...
He was reputed,
I guess you are agreeing that he was the greatest writer of all times.
Oh no, hey, hold up he was small.
What you mean? You just said he was great.
-Oh boy!
-And I said he was great... -No sir.
A cute man and a pussycat.
William Shakespeare was not a great writer?
Not good writer at all.
He wrote 37 of the greatest.
Shakespeare was not a good writer, no.
He wrote 37 of the greatest.
Would you ever see the original the first folios?
You mean they were edited by someone else?
Never mind the edit, did you see the folios?
No, I never saw them. Did you see?
I saw that folios, your wanna see how they are?
A blast...
A 'm' you know that look like a 'D'
an 'M' didn't look like an 'M'
I know that is a 'V'
Every letter was cockeyed and crazy.
Don't tell me he was a good writer.
The worst printmanship I ever saw in my life.
What he did? He did as it was reputed,
he did write 37 of the greatest plays of...
-38! -I only know 37.
Would you care to look at this list sir?
These items are listed come down to the ages.
-You know one that should be there? -Yes.
What's that?
Queen Alexandra and Morris.
Is there any copy of this unexistent?
This is a play that I put invested money in.
Probably the only one that didn't come to light.
Come to light and closed in Egypt.
Sir, you remember...
you remember any of the dialogue of Queen Alexandra and Morris?
Queen Alexandra turn to Morris and said:
Oh, Morris. What could it have been that I have seen?
Is it not in my marrow or we not have one on ourselves?
And he would say to her:
What are you hollering?
What are you hollering?
-Sir, what... -Wake up the whole castle, you know.
Sir, what did you do 2000 years ago to entertain...
-Walk and wing. -I want to know wether...
-Were there comedians -Oh sure sure, we had.
You remember any of the... 2,000 years ago...
A matter of days, let me see.
I remember one comedian gave us some laughs
while we were hysterical.
Well, who is he? Some good laughs.
Murray the Nut. He gave us a laugh.
A tiger came in the cave one afternoon.
Soothed in uninvited naturally.
Nobody asked how a tiger did walk in.
Tiger came in and Murray, you know, the joker
the tumbling, you know, the Nut
jumps at and grabs the tiger by the tail
yahaa, yahaa, yahaa...
and the tiger turn around and ate him in a minute.
and we get histerical laughing and laughing.
Best joke we ever had.
Oh sir, that's not very funny.
That was all we have, our chaos then that was all we have.
Terrible, I would consider that...
Have to pass me out, Murray took the tiger.
-That was entertainment? -Yes.
I would consider that in the realm of tragedy rather than comedy.
It's a point of view, to me tragedy is... is
if I cut my finger, that's tragedy.
It clinch and I cry and I run around
and I go into Mount Sinai for a day and a half.
I'm very nervous about.
And to me comedy is if you walk into an open sewer
and die, I like that.
Comedy I say.
-My finger is important. -Yes
In the 2000 years you've lived, you've seen a lot of items.
Certainly.
What is the biggest change you've seen?
In two thousand years the greatest thing mankind ever devised
I think in my humble opinion is saran wrap.
You can put a sandwich in it.
You can look through it. You can touch
you can put over your face and fool around and everything.
It's so cool you could wrap up
-You would ate it? -I love it,
put three olives in it and put a little one.
can put ten sandwiches and make up this.
-Whatever you want, It's clean and it sticks with.
-You equate this with... -You can look right through.
You equate this with man's discovery of space?
That was good, that was good.
-Sir, we ah... -Yes, yes.
We have to take time out for message now.
Why do you have to take time out?
You take the message, I'll keep talking.
That was a good message.
Well, sir, if we don't have too much more time
but we all here would like to know your code.
Well, alright, is this it?
A farewell? -A farewell address.
Hello there. This is 2000 years talking to you
from the depths of back there when we was
now I'm still and they not and I just want to say
keep your smile on your face.
And stay out of a Ferrari
or any small Italian car.
stay out of them. I wanna tell you that it's been
it's been a wonderful two thousand years
and you've been a wonderful civilization
and it's been a thrill living for 2,000 years
and eat a nectarine, is the best food ever made.

Serge Lutens is one of the most enigmatic figures in perfumery. Famous for a love of wearing black, he is a curiously aloof character, who appears to enjoy playing the role of both artist and psychoanalyst at the same time. His creative output, likewise traverses the realms of the rational and the emotive; usually within the same piece.
Take his 2013 release La Fille de Berlin, for example - it’s about as ruthlessly cold as a rose can get (think the olfactory version of Dr. Lilith from Frasier!), yet it still manages to project an air of femininity and vulnerability.
Ambre Sultan meanwhile, which is the focus of this particular post, is a similarly captivating piece of work, and arguably rewrote the rulebook on amber perfumes on its release in 1993. The notes, if we’re to go by Fragrantica, include the following (in no defined order):
Resins, Amber, Bay Leaf, Myrrh, Benzoin, Sandalwood, Vanilla, Coriander, Oregano, Patchouli, Angelica, Myrtle
As per the note breakdown, Ambre Sultan contains, as one would expect, all the traditional hallmarks of an amber perfume, but it is so much more than that - it is a nostalgic exploration of the scents of Marrakech. To quote the man himself:
This fragrance is not an Oriental, but an Arab and a Lutens. That being the case, don't expect it to fit in. The point of departure was a scented wax, found in a souk and long forgotten in a wooden box. The amber only became sultanesque after I reworked the composition using cistus, an herb that sticks to the fingers like tar, then added an overtone that nobody had ever dreamed of: vanilla
Serge is on the money in describing Ambre Sultan as an ‘Arab and a Lutens’. I should know - I’ve wandered the very same souks in Marrakech myself. My memory of picking through those bustling streets in the dry heat of a distant April is perfectly captured by the perfume - a combination of green herbs and spices, dusty patchouli and burning labdanum that effortlessly recreates the scents of the warren-like passageways of the medina. Sometimes it can even display an almost crystalline or ‘sandy’ feel reminiscent of the the smell of the ancient buildings of the city.
If those accords represent the Arab aspect of the perfume though, the ‘Lutens’ element lies in the tying of these to the sweeter notes in the composition so as to create something that can be worn for pleasure. Ambre Sultan is, therefore, an olfactory study of an Arabian city merged with classic French perfumery.
It wasn’t actually Uncle Serge (as he is affectionately known) that created the formula behind the fragrance, of course. That honour goes to the legendary Christopher Sheldrake who, as well as composing the vast majority of the Lutens catalogue, has his fingerprints over many of the best Chanel releases of recent times. His technical prowess is what makes the creative vision a reality, although there also seems to be a bit of the Lutens rebeliousness in Sheldrake himself - he was originally training as an architect before he fell in love with making fragrances and is clearly a well-travelled man of culture. Perfumery it seems, is one of the very few industries that allows one to marry a passion for art and science.
It is, remarkably, over thirty years since Ambre Sultan hit the shelves, and it is now firmly established as being a ‘reference’ amber. Indeed, in my personal opinion, it is one of the most important and influential perfumes of all time as well as being one of my favourite perfumes to wear. It is still utterly contemporary too - it could have been made yesterday.
As a result of its success, the concept behind it has, of course, been riffed on numerous times over the decades. Andy Tauer’s L'Air du Desert Marocain, for instance, takes a similar approach, but drops almost all pretences of being a perfume in favour of artistic statement. Zoologist’s Camel, meanwhile, chooses to introduce animalic facets which add skank to the amber accord.
On the more traditional side of the spectrum, L'Eau D'Ambre Extrême by L’Artisan Parfumeur replaces the caustic spices of Sultan with a warming nutmeg note which mingles alongside a gentle balmy vanilla. All, however, trace a clear line back to the Lutens in some form.
It’s also worth noting that Serge Lutens as a brand has also been inspired by Ambre Sultan and a number of the company’s future releases can be linked thematically, and osmatically, to it. So much so, in fact, that the Lutens style is often, unfairly, generalised as being based around resinous notes (there is much more depth to the catalogue!). That being said, lovers of these accords would be well advised to sample Cuir Mauresque, an Arabian themed leather that owes its heritage to Knize 10, the labdanum heavy La Couche du Diable, and the aldehydic and confectionary Arabie.
For me, however, Ambre Sultan will always be the most perfect expression of both the Lutens approach and the amber genre.

with 50 combinations of letters, numbers, and special characters - password.
I’m compressing a file with Compression level of “Store” using “7zip”
Using zip format is a good enough or should I use 7z? I don’t need to compress the size. I just want to put a password on my files.

Hello there! I am 20 years old and a trans guy. I have about 10 years of roleplay experience and I write primarily in third person past tense, I can write up to 5 or more paragraphs (sometimes less depending on the scene, but I also just match my partner usually!) a writing sample can be provided if you want to see it (:
I have a very detailed vampire OC I have been dying to use in roleplay for a very long time, I’ve been having trouble finding anyone interested in RPing with him because he isn’t a super typical vampire troupe type of character so I’ll give you a brief description of him.
His name is Ivan and he was born in the 1400s, originally a human who worked as a butcher Ukraine. After meeting his best friend who soon revealed themselves as a vampire to him, Ivan asked to be turned as well so they could both live together for the rest of time, but Ivan’s friend ended up getting slain by a group of vampire hunters. This sent Ivan into a spiraling depression that led to him hating his identity as a vampire and deciding to move away into the middle of northern Russia to live in isolation, trying his best to live as a “human.” He despised being a vampire and he despised other vampires as well, he turned to drinking the blood of animals that he would hunt to keep himself alive and healthy. He lived a very lonely and simple lifestyle as he tried his best to live out the rest of his long life trying to walk among humans, trying to act as one himself.
I have a lot more I could tell you about him but I wanted to keep it short and sweet so anyone interested could contact me for more! I have a few plot ideas for him, most include romance, angst, action, etc. but if you have any ideas yourself that you’d like to try out I am very willing to listen! I unfortunately do not have an image of him for reference but I do have detailed descriptions of how he looks, if you don’t mind that.
I reply somewhat consistently but due to me working full time, I am usually most available after 5pm EST !! Please be patient with replies, I will always let you know if something comes up that will hinder me from replying like usual :) Don’t be afraid to dm me! I am super friendly and also open to talking ooc as well
I prefer to roleplay on discord but discuss details up here first :-) i am still looking, so go head and shoot me a message telling me about yourself and your writing style + any additional ideas you may have. I hope to hear from you!

Hello there! I am 20 years old and a trans guy. I have about 10 years of roleplay experience and I write primarily in third person past tense, I can write up to 5 or more paragraphs (sometimes less depending on the scene, but I also just match my partner usually!) a writing sample can be provided if you want to see it (:
I have a very detailed vampire OC I have been dying to use in roleplay for a very long time, I’ve been having trouble finding anyone interested in RPing with him because he isn’t a super typical vampire troupe type of character so I’ll give you a brief description of him.
His name is Ivan and he was born in the 1400s, originally a human who worked as a butcher Ukraine. After meeting his best friend who soon revealed themselves as a vampire to him, Ivan asked to be turned as well so they could both live together for the rest of time, but Ivan’s friend ended up getting slain by a group of vampire hunters. This sent Ivan into a spiraling depression that led to him hating his identity as a vampire and deciding to move away into the middle of northern Russia to live in isolation, trying his best to live as a “human.” He despised being a vampire and he despised other vampires as well, he turned to drinking the blood of animals that he would hunt to keep himself alive and healthy. He lived a very lonely and simple lifestyle as he tried his best to live out the rest of his long life trying to walk among humans, trying to act as one himself.
I have a lot more I could tell you about him but I wanted to keep it short and sweet so anyone interested could contact me for more! I have a few plot ideas for him, most include romance, angst, action, etc. but if you have any ideas yourself that you’d like to try out I am very willing to listen! I unfortunately do not have an image of him for reference but I do have detailed descriptions of how he looks, if you don’t mind that.
I reply somewhat consistently but due to me working full time, I am usually most available after 5pm EST !! Please be patient with replies, I will always let you know if something comes up that will hinder me from replying like usual :) Don’t be afraid to dm me! I am super friendly and also open to talking ooc as well
I prefer to roleplay on discord but discuss details up here first :-) i am still looking, so go head and shoot me a message telling me about yourself and your writing style + any additional ideas you may have. I hope to hear from you!

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: Indian
• Residence: Massachusetts
• Income Bracket: Upper Middle Class
• Type of School: Mediocre Public school
• Hooks: Immigrant but US Citizen
• Intended Majors & Minors: Applied Math, AI, Entrepreneurship, Engineering & Computer Science

Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 4.0/4.6
• Rank (or percentile): 8/300
• Classes: 12 APs, 3 Dual-Enrolments
• Senior Year Course Load: 3 APs (Computer Science, Chemistry, Psychology) 3 Dual-Enrolments (MIT OCW Linear Algebra, MIT OCW Multivariable Calc, English), Teacher Assistant for Calculus and Teacher Assistant for AP Physics C

Standardized Testing

• SAT: 1570 (770RW, 800M)
• AP Exams: Calculus AB (5), Physics 1 (5), Statistics (5), World History (5), Physics C: Mechanics (5), Calculus BC (5), AP CSP (4), US History (4), Lang (3)
• AMC 12: 136.5 (Top 200)

Awards/Honors

• Coca-Cola Scholar (150 Selected from 100K+)
• Harvard Guest Speaker on AI & ChatGPT in Education (6K+ Listeners). The Harvard Gazette wrote an article on me.
• MIT Hackathon 3rd place winner 2x (AI Recipe Generator & AI Therapist)
• Presented at International Education & Social Justice Conference (Peer-reviewed) at University of Hawaii
• MIT LLCipher Summer Program (3% Acceptance Rate). Invited back as Guest Speaker the following year.
• Wrote Boston Globe Article on AI & ChatGPT in Education
• AMC 12 Distinction (2x) and AIME Qual (2x)
• President's Volunteer Service Gold Award
• AP Scholar with Distinction & AP Scholar with Honor
• Multiple other Math Competition, Model UN, and Marching Band Awards

Extracurriculars/Activities

• MIT Lincoln Laboratory Summer Intern: Advanced Research in AI & Networking (1% Acceptance Rate). Internship primarily for Grad and Undergrad students. Received a return offer for summer before college.
• Writer: 110+ articles on Medium with 200K+ reads. Published by the Boston Globe and other publications.
• Antarctic Research: Climate Research and Data Analysis at UW-Madison.
• MA State House Internship: Worked for State Rep. Wrote a policy brief on AI. Promoted to Campaign Manager in 2024.
• Math Team Coach & Captain: Coach students and top scorer. 4x Regional Champions (First time in history). 2x AIME qual and 2x AMC Distinction (AMC Score: 136.5).
• Students of Color Affinity Group President: Mentor students and lead professional development workshops; presented at International Education & Social Justice Conference at University of Hawaii.
• AP Physics C & Calculus Teacher Assistant: Help teach 70+ seniors at my school (ran out of classes hence TA lol).
• Model UN President: Perfect record and multiple awards at regional conferences.
• Karate Black Belt: 10+ years and help teach classes.
• Marching Band: 2nd in USBands Nationals (3x).
• Coding Instructor: Taught kids how to code in Python and JavaScript.
• Sales Head & Data Analyst at National STEM Honor Society: Promoted STEM education to underrepresented populations.
• JV Tennis: Doubles Player

Letters of Recommendation

• AP Calculus Teacher
• Math Department Head and Physics TeacheMath Team Coach
• MIT Lincoln Lab Research Mentor (MIT Alum)
• Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Director of my school (Harvard Alum)
• Massachusetts State Representative

Essay Summaries

• Common App: During the pandemic, I found personal growth and a deeper understanding of myself and society through writing, which led me to explore artificial intelligence and its applications, culminating in an internship at MIT and advocacy work, and inspiring my entrepreneurial ambitions.
• Community Disruption: When the pandemic disrupted my activities, I leveraged online platforms to continue learning and leading, discovering new interests in AI and entrepreneurship, and demonstrating resilience by revitalizing my school’s clubs and engaging in new ventures, setting the stage for my future in innovation.
• Additional Information: Links to various articles and videos, and other activities and awards.
• Supplementals: Some were very reflective about my identity, activities, and goals in life. Others were light-hearted and quirky. They were very personalized to the school and emphasized how I fit in, what I would bring to the school, and how I would use the school as a catalyst for my entrepreneurial ventures.
• Additional Uploads: Uploaded my Resume, portfolio of Articles, and a summary of my Research at MIT Lincoln Lab.

Interviews

• Harvard (REA): Great Conversation and said Harvard would have to fight MIT for me. 9/10
• MIT: My Interviewer was very disinterested and didn't care. It was 15 minutes and he said if I don't get in then who would. 6/10
• Princeton: It was a great conversation and said he would fight for me. 8/10
• Yale: It was also a good conversation and she said she would fight for me. 8/10
• UPenn M&T: Guy kept asking technical questions and I was lost. But in the end, he said I did good and he would fight for me, even though interviews don’t matter too much. 7/10
• Dartmouth: Lady was super impressed and said if I don’t get in then she is quitting doing interviews for Dartmouth. 9/10

College Results
Accepted

• WPI (with Max Scholarship, Half off)
• UW-Madison
• Northeastern (with Max Scholarship, Half off)
• Georgia Tech for CS (Early Action)
• Cornell (Meinig Family Cornell National Scholar)
• Dartmouth
• Duke
• UPenn (Waitlisted M&T)
• Harvard (Waitlisted → Accepted)
• Princeton (Committed)

Waitlisted

• UMich (Early Action)
• Vanderbilt

Rejected

• USC (lol)
• Yale
• Stanford
• MIT (This one hurt)

Reflections:
I'm super grateful and happy with my decisions. I have committed to Princeton, and it definitely is the best fit for me. College results this year were very random, but I couldn’t be more thankful to get into the #1 undergraduate university. I was worried that since most of my application was MIT-related (Research, classes, Letters of Rec, Awards, Activities), other universities would think I was going there and reject me. College results were super random and stressful, but it worked out better than I could have ever imagined. It's funny how I got waitlisted and rejected from all my target schools (Vandy, UMich, USC) but then got into most of my reach schools.
Advice for Future Applicants:
Be authentic. There is no formula that gets you in. Sure, you have to do a couple of things like getting good grades and SAT scores and having some unique activities and awards, but especially for Top 10 schools, you just have to be unique and authentic. I didn't have any connections or background (like private school and college counselor) that provided me with opportunities. I was literally the first kid ever from my school to get into Princeton. I was authentic and hardworking, did stuff I enjoyed, and one thing led to another. I also spent a lot of time on essays and my application. 50% of the work is actually doing stuff, and the other 50% is showcasing it in your college application. Also, have balance in life. I had a lot of fun in high school and enjoyed the stuff I did. Live life with no regrets. Feel free to DM me.

Hello there! I am 20 years old and a trans guy. I have about 10 years of roleplay experience and I write primarily in third person past tense, I can write up to 5 or more paragraphs (sometimes less depending on the scene, but I also just match my partner usually!) a writing sample can be provided if you want to see it (:
I have a very detailed vampire OC I have been dying to use in roleplay for a very long time, I’ve been having trouble finding anyone interested in RPing with him because he isn’t a super typical vampire troupe type of character so I’ll give you a brief description of him.
His name is Ivan and he was born in the 1400s, originally a human who worked as a butcher Ukraine. After meeting his best friend who soon revealed themselves as a vampire to him, Ivan asked to be turned as well so they could both live together for the rest of time, but Ivan’s friend ended up getting slain by a group of vampire hunters. This sent Ivan into a spiraling depression that led to him hating his identity as a vampire and deciding to move away into the middle of northern Russia to live in isolation, trying his best to live as a “human.” He despised being a vampire and he despised other vampires as well, he turned to drinking the blood of animals that he would hunt to keep himself alive and healthy. He lived a very lonely and simple lifestyle as he tried his best to live out the rest of his long life trying to walk among humans, trying to act as one himself.
I have a lot more I could tell you about him but I wanted to keep it short and sweet so anyone interested could contact me for more! I have a few plot ideas for him, most include romance, angst, action, etc. but if you have any ideas yourself that you’d like to try out I am very willing to listen! I unfortunately do not have an image of him for reference but I do have detailed descriptions of how he looks, if you don’t mind that.
I reply somewhat consistently but due to me working full time, I am usually most available after 5pm EST !! Please be patient with replies, I will always let you know if something comes up that will hinder me from replying like usual :) Don’t be afraid to dm me! I am super friendly and also open to talking ooc as well
I prefer to roleplay on discord but discuss details up here first :-) i am still looking, so go head and shoot me a message telling me about yourself and your writing style + any additional ideas you may have. I hope to hear from you!

I met Luna on a train two years ago. I’d just escaped from a toxic relationship, so romance was the last thing on my mind, but then she sat across from me in the carriage and asked about the book I was reading. She had a copy in her bag and wanted to know if it was any good.
I'd never felt such an instant, effortless connection with anybody before. I took a chance and asked her to dinner, and by the time the waiters cleared away our desserts, I already felt comfortable being vulnerable around her. So we went on a second date. And a third. And next thing I knew, we were planning our second anniversary.
In all that time she never gave off any 'creeper' vibes. Until a few months ago, when I stayed the night over at her place...
She'd gotten up early to use the bathroom. I grabbed her laptop off the side desk so I could catch up on some work e-mails, and the incognito tab was just sitting there. My first thought was: either she's having an affair or she's got a secret fetish.
What I found instead was a Google account with a photo album called ‘Michael’s EX’. In it, there were 427 photos of my former girlfriend turned psycho stalker, Sadie. This included shots of ‘Sadie the stalker’ with her family, screenshots of her passport—the works. On Facebook, Sadie's latest post said Moving to the Philippines, and since then she’d become a social media church mouse, so how did Luna keep her under surveillance? And how did you even get PERSONAL ID from a person halfway across the globe?
Down the hall, I heard the bathroom door swing open. Quickly I closed the laptop and pretended to be asleep until Luna planted a kiss on my lips. “Wakey wakey Bugs.”
I faked a stretch. “Morning Lola."
(At school, the other kids christened me ‘Bugs’ because of my cartoonishly large front teeth; I called Luna ‘Lola’ because of her blonde bangs and heart-shaped face.)
“How about we grab a fry for breakfast?” Her smile didn’t seem genuine, more like she was wearing a mask.
“Crap. I forgot I’m doing overtime today, I’ve gotta get to work.” With that, I shot out of there faster than a bullet train to Tokyo.
Because I didn’t wanna believe the worst about someone I cared so deeply about, I didn’t contact the police (not that anybody could’ve guessed what Luna was up to) and made excuses whenever she asked to meet, delaying the decision whether to end our relationship.
At night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time a hedge rustled outside, I’d run to the window and pull back the curtain only to discover a black cat skulking around the garden. I put this down to my previous relationship leaving me with a mountain of unresolved PTSD.
Sadie the stalker also seemed normal until we moved in together. After that she started picking fights if she caught me talking to another woman, even just distant relatives or childhood friends. The screaming matches went from weekly to nightly, only ever ending when I conceded to her every wish and gave her full access to my phone and social media accounts. I literally needed to grab my clothes into a bag and run away one night, and then I started hearing noises outside my new apartment. And although I never found any evidence, I was pretty sure she’d broken in at one point because the books on my side table were suddenly out of order one day. What hurt the most was Luna knew all this and still acted the way she did.
Right as I reached my lowest point, my close friend Gertrude called and said, “The universe is telling me you could use a sympathetic ear.”
I told her the universe didn’t know the half of it.
I’d met Gertrude—aka my surrogate mother—on a flight to London. Passing over Wales the aircraft hit heavy turbulence, and the grey-haired hippie in the seat next to mine squeezed my hand so tight that my fingers turned blue. After we levelled off, she apologized and said, “So what’s calling you to London?”
“A job.”
A few glasses of wine from the service trolley later, she blurted out, “You know your aura is strikingly similar to my husbands.”
“Uhh, thanks. Where is he now?”
“Oh, he burned to death in a house fire.”
Gertrude’s eyes started welling up. To take her mind off the subject, I said, “I lied earlier. I’m going to London because I fell in love with a Londoner.” I pulled up pictures of Sadie (back in her pre-stalker days) on my phone. “We met in Italy. She looked flustered trying to read a map book so I offered to help. Next thing I knew, we were planning a trip to this place called Orvieto.”
“Michael, I need to know how this story ends. Gimme your number.”
Since then, we’d met two or three times a year.
I laid the whole mess out over pizza. It was the first time since finding the Google account I didn’t feel hidden eyes crawling all over me.
Just as I wrapped up the story, over in the corner booth, a family burst into a chorus of happy birthday. A waiter appeared carrying a chocolate cake, capped by a giant candle that looked more like a flare. Gertrude tensed up.
“So what do you think about all this?” I asked.
She looked back at me and said, “It’s possible your reaction has been a touch on the dramatic side.”
“DRAMATIC??”
“Well consider things from Luna’s point of view. Your last relationship lasted for, what, three years? Maybe she felt threatened.”
“I don’t believe this.” I grabbed a cigarette from my pocket, but Gertrude snatched it away.
“You know how I feel about you poisoning your lungs, Michael.”
“Don’t you start. I got enough of that crap from Luna.”
Gertrude always encouraged me to work through my romantic problems. Ultimately, I decided her love of fairytale romances clouded her judgement and ghosted Luna instead. But I couldn’t escape her shadow. She always felt close. In fact, it got so bad that at a friend’s costume party several weeks later, my eyes kept compulsively scanning the crowd as if she was there in disguise, ready to pounce.
I stood off to the corner until, over the sea of heads, I spotted a beautiful stranger dressed as Jarlath the Goblin King. I took a shot of liquid courage and made a B-line towards her.
Halfway across the crowded room, beer splashed across the front of my Ziggy Stardust outfit.
“I am so sorry,” a female pirate said, patting me dry.
“Don’t worry about it.” Every time I tried circling her, she moved to cut me off.
“I am such a klutz. Why don’t you come into the kitchen so I can clean up this mess?”
I put my hands on her shoulders and steered her out of the way. “It’s fine. Trust me.”
Approaching Jarlath from behind, heart slamming against my chest, I said, “Well this is awkward. One of us is gonna have to change.”
Jennie had bright blue eyes and dimples impossible to miss. Ten minutes into our debate about David Bowie’s greatest album, I said, “You know Absolute Bowie are playing the Half Moon next week. I could take you?”
“Sorry. I’m going with my boyfriend,” she said with a sympathetic smile. From beside the buffet table, the pirate stared daggers in our direction.
“No worries,” I replied, despite the fact I was brimming with jealousy.
The next day, as I jogged off my hangover, a brown-haired lady cut across my path and we both went spinning to the ground.
“Flip, sorry.” I rushed to pull her up by the hands. “I’m like a bloody zombie lately.”
She did a doubletake. “Ziggy, right?”
There was no mistaking those eyes. “Jarlath?”
“Well, Jarlath or Jennie. Eithers fine.”
“Right. Well, sorry again. Enjoy Absolute Bowie.”
Before I could jog away, she said, “Hey, so that guy I was seeing? Turns out he’s a total prick.”
Jennie and I went for coffee. Coffee morphed into drinks. Drinks morphed into a steamy make-out session on my sofa.
But as she covered my neck in soft kisses, my stomach turned. It felt like cheating. So, I put the brakes on things and said, “I can’t do this. I’m really sorry. You’re amazing, but I just got out of a serious relationship…and…it’s just…”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.”
We agreed we’d let our connection blossom in its own time.
Jennie had a playful mystique to her. Within a handful of dates, we’d developed inside jokes and could tell what the other was thinking. But Luna’s imprint was hard to shake, to the extent I almost mixed up the two ladies’ names multiple times.
To detox, I suggested Jennie and I spend a romantic weekend in the Lake District, because after two days of hiking and kayaking my ex would no doubt be a spec in the rearview mirror.
Hours before we set off, however, Luna’s mom called. She wanted to meet and wouldn’t accept any excuses.
“Look, it’s obvious why I’m here,” she said, sitting across from me in Starbucks. “Ever since you and Luna broke up, she’s been acting…different.”
“Different? Different how?”
“I call but she hardly answers. I go over to her place but she’s never there. Now she’s telling me she needs to find herself. Says she’s moving to Australia.”
Her fingers tightened around her cup. “I need to know what happened between you two. And I don’t care if that paints anybody in a bad light. I’m just worried about my daughter is all.”
I told her about the Google account.
“Did you confront her about it?”
“Hell no. I ghosted that crazy bitc—” I cleared my throat. “I mean, I just…stopped seeing her.”
She started crying so loudly customers at nearby tables paused their conversations. I touched her forearm, promised I’d call if I remembered anything else, then set off for my romantic weekend.
But while Jennie and I enjoyed all that fresh air and pub food, a thought nagged at me. Luna adored London, so why move to Australia? It seemed so out of character. Back at our rented cottage, I was so fixated on the thought I needed a smoke, badly.
“What the hell is that?” Jennie demanded, as she stepped onto the front deck.
I glanced at my hands. “Uhh, a cigarette.”
“Michael! Don’t be sarcastic. You know how I feel about those things.”
“…Do I?”
“Uhh, well it’s the same as anybody else. Quit poisoning your lungs and put that thing out.”
“Alright alright, geeze. Sorry Luna.”
“That’s okay.”
A knot formed in my stomach as she went back inside. I’d called Jennie Luna by mistake. And she hadn’t noticed. In fact, her reaction to me smoking was identical to Luna’s—even the snappy way she said the ‘poison your lungs’ line.
I followed Jennie into the lounge, where she’d curled up on an armchair with a Colleen Hoover novel. She was hiding something. What else did she know about Luna? Maybe I could trick her into revealing some details…
From behind, I started massaging her shoulders. “Sorry for being rude before. I know what you said came from a place of love.”
“That’s okay.”
I waited until her eyes drooped shut, then said, “It really is perfect here, huh? Maybe we should stay forever.”
“Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
Her little groans of pleasure, the rhythm of her breathing, it all felt so familiar. I waited until the tension in her neck dissolved, then I pushed my lips against her ear and whispered, “So how about we take this into the bedroom…Lola.”
“Hmm. Sure thing Bugs.”
My hands froze. Jennie jumped up. “Uhh, that felt so good, why’d you stop?”
“What did you just say?”
“What did you just say?”
“I called you Lola,” I replied, my arms frozen in midair. “And you called me bugs.”
“Like the cartoon, right? I thought it’d be a cute nickname. Anyway, I’m tuckered out.” She forced a yawn. “Why don’t we get some sleep?”
As her hand laced with mine, an image of me waking up drugged and gagged and tied to the bedposts flashed before my eyes.
I said, “Sure. I just…need to use the bathroom first.”
The second the door shut behind me, I flew out of the house, climbed in my car, and sped away.
Within seconds my phone started blowing up with calls, followed by texts. Where are you going? Is everything okay?
No, I wanted to reply. I’m onto your sick little game. Whatever it is, I’m onto it.
Luna stalked my stalker, now Jennie somehow knew Luna and I’s nicknames. How? Did all women take turns drawing straws and whoever picked the short one needed to become my girlfriend?
I couldn’t go home. For all I knew, my exes would’ve been there burning effigies of me. I needed a safe place. Somewhere I could lie low until I got all this straightened out.
“Of course you can stay,” Gertrude said over the phone. “I’m out with some friends, but I’ll meet you later. If you hop the side gate there’s a spare key under the kissing gnomes out back.”
Gertrude lived in a detached house in Wembley. It took a bit of foraging to find the gnomes hidden beneath the weeds in the brown, patchy garden.
I needed to shoulder the door open. Inside, a mountain of letters and flyers had piled up on the welcome mat.
Down the hall, a huge archway connected the landing with a lounge, where a bar sat against the far wall, surrounded by upholstered sofas, a low table, and tie dye sheets strung over the filthy carpet. Everything had a real elegant vibe, despite the musty air.
I’d drained two glasses of whiskey before Gertrude arrived.
“Looks like you’ve had a rough evening.”
I said we could talk in the morning.
“Not a chance. You can’t take negative energy to bed. Come on, confession is good for the soul.”
She sat on the sofa and patted the empty seat next to her. So, with a weary sigh, I shared a tale of deranged exes.
“Crazy,” she said.
“I sure can pick ‘em, huh?”
“No, I mean you’re crazy.”
“What?”
“Think about it. What’s more likely: that your ex’s are secretly in collusion, or you’re being paranoid? Look how bloodshot your eyes are. When’s the last time you got a good night’s rest?”
She made a great point; teenagers on the street occasionally shouted ‘Bugs’ or ‘Thumper’ at me. Jennie might’ve come up with the nickname herself. I pinched the bridge of my nose, groaning.
“Look, sleep here tonight. Tomorrow we’ll brainstorm ways you can make it up to Jennie.”
I fumbled through my pockets for a cigarette.
“Really?” Gertrude said. “If you insist on poisoning your lungs, can you at least do it away from my home?”
“Well if I can’t smoke, I’m gonna need a refill.” I shook my empty glass.
On my way toward the bar, a wave of wooziness hit me. My first instinct was to blame it on the alcohol, but there was something else.
It was her reaction to the cigarette. My finger ran through the thick layer of dust along the bar’s countertop. Why was it like the place had been abandoned? Why did Gertrude always pressure me to stay with my psycho girlfriends? And how come she always reached out, as if on cue, whenever my relationships hit problems? It couldn’t be coincidence…
I poured two glasses of whiskey and carried them to the sofa. “So, you’re really against the whole smoking thing, huh?”
“Of course. It’s a filthy habit.”
“Yeah. Plus, there was that mess with your husband. House fire, right?”
“I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Sure, sure.” I ignited the lighter with a roll across my trouser leg.
Gertrude grabbed a cushion and hugged it. “What are you doing?”
“Alright, cut the crap. What the hell’s going on? Have you been sending your friends to date me?”
“What are you talking about?”
I wrestled the cushion from her and held the lighter beneath it. “I want an explanation right now or I’m torching this place.”
This was an empty threat. I wasn’t some pyromaniac—I just wanted answers. Inch by inch, I raised the flame. “Last chance. Why are the women in my life acting weird?”
Gertrude grabbed for the lighter. As I swatted her wrists away, we both got scorched, and for a moment her skin went wild with spasms, a sensation I can only compare to reaching inside a bucket of wet, writhing maggots. My gaze whipped between her face and her hands, which vibrated like plucked guitar strings.
Before I could scream, she yanked me up, clamped a cold, wrinkled palm across my mouth, and forced me against the wall. I thrashed around, unable to move. For a lady old enough to collect a pension, she was crazy strong.
She waited until I ran out of breath, then said, “Michael, please. I’m not going to hurt you. Open your heart and listen.”
What else could I do?
“You were right before. I have been keeping a secret from you. The truth is, I’ve been in love with you since we met. I’d never flown before. And you were so so sweet. You started talking about this other woman, but I knew our energies were perfect for each other. And it’s like I always say, love makes us do crazy things. You can’t begrudge me that can you?”
She looked as if she expected me to respond, so I shook my head.
“But I think we’ve reached a point where our connection is so deep we can be completely transparent with one another.” She took a slow, steady breath. “Michael, all your ex’s, Luna, Sadie, Jennie. They’ve all been…well, me.”
I stared at her, confused.
She sighed. “It’ll be easier if I just show you.”
Out of nowhere her hand wriggled again, then her face tightened, as though the skin was being stretched over the bone. Wrinkles smoothed out and colour bled into her grey hair, turning it brown, and within seconds I found myself face-to-face with Jennie. Even her vintage clothes morphed into a green blouse and white slacks.
“See?” she said in Jennie’s voice, her now blue eyes locked on mine.
I screamed into the soft flesh of her palm.
“Sssh, it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. Watch.”
Her entire body jerked and twitched, the muscles spasming as she shifted from Jennie to Luna. “See? Think of these as costumes”—from Luna to Sadie—"the important thing is what’s underneath. And you’ve fallen in love with what’s underneath three times. Now I’m going to let go, but I need you to promise you won’t overreact. Understand?”
On the verge of a panic attack, I nodded furiously.
The second she pulled away I made a break for the exit. The thing posing as Sadie grabbed me and hurled me backwards against the wall.
Like a disappointed teacher, she put her hands on her hips. “I’ve been so patient with you, Michael. So very, very patient.”
She blocked off any hope of escape. I sidestepped around the outer edge of the room, towards the bar.
“All those years moulding you. Trying to grow you into the man I know you can be. I really thought we had it this time. For the record, I wanted to do this the easy way. But drastic times...”
I was so scared I slammed right into the cabinet and yelped. Glass bottles chattered together, and then something wet ran down the back of my shirt. It was whiskey, leaking from the overturned bottle onto the carpeted floor.
Speaking more to herself now, Gertrude said, “I’ll just have to keep you here until you love me as much as I love you. Of course, that means posing as you so nobody gets suspicious, but that’s no trouble. I’ll tell your dad you’re moving to Italy. You always loved Italy.”
Pose as me? She'd been killing my ex's and taking their place, I was just the latest in a long line. She’d keep me as a personal sugar baby if I didn’t escape, but how? She was impossibly strong, and the only thing that seemed to scare her was…
Snatching the bottle, I doused the remaining whiskey all over the carpet and furniture. As I flicked the lighter open, Sadie’s hands shot up.
“Bugs…darling…what are you doing?”
I took three slow, steady breaths. “Breaking up with you, you crazy bitch.”
I tossed the lighter forward. Within seconds flames sprung up all around us, spreading as far as the sofa. Sadie’s shoe caught fire, and as she stamped around, unintentionally fanning the blaze, her body writhed again, starting with the ankles. Fat boils climbed up every inch of exposed skin, milky white and with the consistency of frog spawn, like she’d had a killer allergic reaction to poison ivy.
She dropped to her knees, wailing like a wounded animal. This was my chance.
I made a break for the exit, giving the creature as wide a berth as possible. But as I got one foot planted in the hall something clamped tight around my ankles. My chin hit the floor, then I started sliding backwards.
I twisted onto my back. Where Sadie’s left arm should’ve been, a tentacle-like appendage stretched across the length of the room, a distance of over twenty feet. It reeled me toward her like a fish on a line. Whatever that thing was no longer looked human. It melted like an ice statue, with no bones or connective tissue inside, its lips nose and mouth becoming hideously elongated before dripping off in huge globs like melted candlewax. A fire alarm started wailing as the tentacle dragged me through the flames, scorching my arms and legs.
The loose mass of skin reached out and encased me like a mother bird sheltering its eggs.
“WHY WON’T YOU LOVE ME?” all my ex’s voices screamed at once. Whichever direction I looked, silhouettes of faces rose and fell, as if trying to burst through. Parts of them dripped inside my mouth, disgustingly warm with a bitter taste worse than Vaseline.
I put everything into clawing my way out if there. What was left of the beast had the consistency of wet clay and came apart just as easily. I tore away chunks until there was a hole large enough to squeeze through. Then, I crawled along surrounded by black smoke.
At the far side of the room I risked a glance back and saw a bumpy, uneven hand reaching out of a puddle of ooze. Soon I was crawling over the bristly welcome mat, then fumbling for the door. All I remember after that are paramedics wrestling me into an ambulance…
A specialist officer came to see me at the hospital the next morning. They’d been unable to contact the homeowner, Gertrude Huyton, and through his line of questioning I could tell they hadn’t found her ‘remains’ inside the charred house. Like the wicked witch of the West, my stalker had melted. I told the officer she said I could stay the night, and that I probably started the fire by dropping a cigarette.
“In that case, we’ll keep trying to reach her.” He walked to the curtain surronding my bed and paused. “Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, her cat is missing.”
“Her...cat?”
“Yeah. The little black one. One of the firemen pulled it out of the wreckage. The poor thing had burns over its legs but it ran off before anybody could take it to the vet.”
I swallowed a gulp and thanked him for telling me.
And now I’m still sitting here listening while nurses rush back and forth, terrified any one of them might be Gertrude…

~Player always get better or cooler reward for helping other~
Player race - fiver options for customization
Ghoul
No radiation damage + slow regeneration + npc more mefiant and discrimination
Glowing ghoul =
No radiation damage + slow regeneration + npc shoot on sight need to convinced them you’re sane
Super mutant =
No radiation damage + Npc are scared and treat you like an idiot and discriminate
Synthétique =
The compount will hunt you down eventually
Human = no malus or bonus

Character background :
Ghoul / glowing ghoul : Old ghoul ; new ghoul ; vault
Human : Vault ; settler ; brotherhood ; institute
Super mutant: amnesiac
Synthétique : Railroad ; Mister handy (Miss nanny) Old, new, vault.
START
New arrivant decided to etablished themselves in an old farm close to the local town and become farmer.
First objectif :
- rebuilt home by scavenging in delapited town

• scavenging town to find seed (First seed of the player)
  
• Scavenging town to find gardening tool
  

Mechanics

Upgrade house by collecting enough scavenging material (metal, stone, tape, glue, etc…) and paid the town entrepreneur to do so.
Possibility to upgrade town by the same way : drinkable water ; defense ; radio tower ; museum ; school ; etc…
Defend home from wild attack (animal, raiders, super mutant, ect…) with gun and eventually autonomous turrets (later game) and engage mercenary to defed (late game). The more the player amass money, the more frequent the attack will be.
Scavenger will gossip about big event and some minor event that occurred in the settlement that you participated in.
Settlement gestion :

• Happiness (Festival ? ; npc request ; …)
  
• Sanitaire (Water access)
  
• Defense (Millitia ; autonomous turrets ; dogs)
  

Thirst gestion.
Can recolt skin, meat (and bones?) of wild animal.
Can recolt material, used to very used weapond, (rarely) health item, (meat and corpse body parts?) on intelligent humanoïds ennemy
Carrying can either be by weight of the item or by the number of item player can carry.

Farming

Season : Spring (middle season) ; Summer (high season) ; Automn (middle season) ; Winter (low season)
Tool: Hoe ; Scynthe ; Watering can ; Pickaxe hamme
Base crop value vs transform product :
Spring : -- ++
Summer : --- +++
Automn : ++ --
Winter : +++ ---

Can sell crop and other to nearest settlement (help with settlement relationship at first) or to traveling marchant.
The river close to your home have fish in it. It take two day for fish to repopulate. If seasonal fish have all be take out, it will take two years
Can raise different mutated animal. Sell them to the town for meat (or kill them and sell them yourself ?) or keep them alive for animal product. (Animal have life span?)
Transform product : Wine ; beer ; jelly ; dried spice,meat, fish ; cheese ; mayo ; butter
Farm building :

• Coop and barn
  
• Forge to fix used weapon
  

- Wind mill

• Food storage (?)
  
• Money storage (no bank, credit card or debit card. Need to carry in your inventary the money life in fallout)
  

Crop seed that can be found in the town :

• Potato
  
• Melon
  
• Wheat
  
• Corn
  
• Carrot
  
• Gourd
  

Seed you can buy for traveling marchants :

• Spice seed (basilic ; persil; etc..)
  
• Fruit seed
  
• Legume seed
  

( - Flower and house plant seed ? (Aloes??))

Fight

No power armor for the player :(
Can buy stimpack and radaway from settlement healer or from scavenger in the town (for a more expensive price). When reach high enough relationship with healer, he will give you the recipe for both. The only way to regain life and get rid of radiation (sleep and food don’t heal). (Sickness (malus) if health too low for too long?)
Gain radiation by drinking
The main fight zone of the game is the town. In the edge : house, a small commerce (tiny to small dungeon) ; Closer to the center: Office, appartement (small to medium dungeon) ; Center : Commercial center, sky scrapper, (subway?) (normal to big dungeon.
Some raiders and some synth will drop their weapons and beg for their life if the health is low enough. Spare enough of them and you will receive letter from either : the minuteman ; the brotherhood or the railroad to thank you for sending more recruit their way. Two or three will regularly visit town.

Relationship

Can get a dog as a perm. Companion (can choose race?) (Can breed you dog and gitf puppy to the settlement?)
Npc relationship possible bonus :
- Discount (from marchant)
- Recipe
- Special cut scene
- (Sometime) help on the farm

• (Sometime) help to defend the farm

Some npc love receving gift other will be inconfortable with it. But after (wedding?) no adverse reaction to receive gift.

• 2 gift a week
  
• 1 gift a month (After the first gift wil react more and more incomfortable, will start to lower relationship)
  

MAX : 2 gift a week
Might meet some settler in the edge of the town, scavenging like you.
Cause of relationship decay :

• Unlike gift
  
• (for some) offer to many gift
  
• 1 month with no interraction
  
• Answer choice
  
• Attacking townie (unkillable)
  
• Question choice
  

There’s a vault “near” the settlement. Gain their trust by doing quest (# depend on race of the player). Once they trust you and when you become mayor, they will become full allied and allow circulation between their vault and the settlement.
Romanceable npc
- # Ghoul

• Robot (Synth and miste handy (miss nanny)

• Super mutant

• Settler

- 1 Traveling npc
Special romance
- Mysterious stranger (need 10 Luck and insert condition)
Will randomly pop out of your house and pop back in. Will tell you about a lone wanderer, courrier or vault survivor he helped. Will come to your help in combat with baby in hand (if kid in the game)

• intelligent deathclaw (insert conditions)

Rival ? Date ?
If there’s kid in the game
Player will be able to have two kids. (Hatchling deathclaw will count as one if in a relationship with Deathclaw).
If player or spouse can’t have a kid (Super mutant ; ghoul ; Synth); player will get a quest about a raider camp in town. Discover all prisoner are dead except one human baby hidden by the body of his dead mother.
Quest reward : Congradulation you are a parent :D
If player can have kid; if spouse is a women, player will have to catter to their wife food craving (nothing with rare item) or face a penality in the relationship. If player is a women ; Malus in health, energy, slower deplacement and carrying capacity decrease the more and more the pregnancy advance. New choice of answer : pissed as fuck and hormonal. Spouse will insist to become a companion until end of pregnancy
Kid will go to school (town upgrade) for three day, help on the farm for three other and have a free day.

Stats

Strenght : carrying capacity (?) ; combat ; energy ; health ; defense
Perception : detect ennemy ; scavenging ; npc interraction
Endurence : health ; energy ; resistance
Charisma : batter ; persuasion ; Npc weariness ; # limit of resident npc in settlement
Intelligence : crafting farm upgrade (fertilizer ; spinkler) ; used weapon fixing
Agility : sneak ; weapon ; defense
Luck : loot quality ; gambling (?) ; crit chance (max starting points : 5)

Skill

Tree skill style possibility : Path of exile ; Outer world
Farming: Tilling - Watering
Fight: Heavy weapons- Light weapons- Melee
Defence : Dodge - Block
Stealth: Sneak- Lockpick - Hack
Endurance : Poison resistance - Radiation resistance - Thirst resistance
Persuasion: Batter - Intimidation - Persuation (?)
Scavenging : Deconstruct - Descerning eyes
Thinkering : Crafting - Engineering - Medecine
(Upgrade skill to upgrade stat? Once you upgrade a skill enough, it allow you to upgrade the stat?)

Quest :
Attempt murder on the player by the mayor once town upgrade and settler relationship high enough. Scare that they would lose their place to you to engage mercenary or try to poison you to keep their place. Force the mercenary to tell you who paid them or find a note on one of them or talk to the mayor after the attack (will be surprise to see you alive). You can :
- Bring him to justice and let the settler decide of his fate. (Will be possible to talk to him in prison)
- Execute him (will have to prove to the settler that this was auto-defense. Lose some relationship with settler)

• Let him life (will leave town. Grateful to be alive but bitter to have lose his title)

Result : Become mayor next election!
Raides have created a camp close to the settlement. Remove them. Player will find two npc in cage. You can :

• Let them there

-Help them out
-Kill them inside the cage
Result :

• They die
  
• Will eventually die of thirsth
  
• Will come to the town and become settlers
  

You’ve find a mister handy (or miss nanny) in the town. Why not fix them?
Result : They will propose you to help you on the farm. Accept and they’ll start working the day after. Refuse and they’ll becom settler. (Possibility to make them synth when relationship high enough?)

Find a sorry scene : deadraiders; a dead deathclaw; a nest with two crushed egg a one intact egg. You can :

• Sell the egg
  
• Eat the egg
  

-Hatch the egg
Result :

• Money
  
• Bost in one stat? Level upgrade?
  
• Get a baby deathclaw. Will be able to switch with you dog as perm companion. (If romanced the deathclaw, you spouse will leave with the hachtling for a season. When back the hatchling statut will change from animal to children and gain dialogue)
  

The river close to your house is drying. Discover the reason. The river goes into a cavern and to a lake.
Result : new fish
There’s a thirsthy and hungry homeless man at the edge of the settlement. You can :
-Give him food and water for a week
-Let him there
-kill him
Result :
-They get back on their feet and eventually open an inn in town. Will sometime offer you free drink an talk to you about stranger he hepled by following your exemple.
-They will slowly die an talk with more and more difficulty. (Which led to kill him)
-Burry him and make a small tomb or let him root there. Will get eaten by wild animal.

Guiding an injured npc to the town
Result :??

The settlement don’t have enough food for the winter and ask for your help. You can :

• Refuse
  
• Accept
  

Result :

• -- relationship with settler and some settler will die
  
• ++ reward if accept
  

Help to defend the settlement (before settlement defense upgrande)
Result :??

The scientist of the vault ## think they can help you rediscover old world crop see.
Result : new seeds :D

End game quest :
The vault now trust you enough to tell you about the G.E.C.K.S. The received one that ended up defective and never received the second. They want you to go to the vault building in the center of the town and see if you can find any information about it. Vault tower will be the most difficult dungeon in the game. Beat it to find that the G.E.C.K.S was sent to a second vault that was either unfinished or an experimentation. Go the the vault ## to discover that the G.E.C.K.S had taken some damage from bad condition and bad storage. Get all the item to fix it and either fix it yourself (no money cost) or ask to a vault scientist to fix it (+++ money cost)
Result : The map surrounding your house, the vault and the town will become more and more green with beautiful tree (Process will take ### day or month or years)

Hey there,
The Matrix City Sample released by Epic has exactly the type of setup I’m looking to use for establishing interactions between a playable 3rd person MetaHuman character, and modular NPC’s. My needs do not include any Mass AI, vehicles, driving, cityscape, etc. Simply the main playable character approaching stationary Crowd NPCs in more of a conversational oriented type of gameplay. I may want NPC’s to locomote later down the line.
I’ve tried migrating the main player controlled character BP and Crowd BP into a clean 3rd person project with the same project plugins enabled, but this fails as it requires code level changes to the character class. Rebuilding the BP’s and AnimBP’s is a bit daunting but I’ve started down this path.
Is there anyway to do this without touching C++? I’m a meager artist and am still getting my bearing with blueprints. I haven’t found any examples online but if anyone can point to a decent tutorial, that’d be super helpful. I might also be open to contracting this work out. Thanks!

Hey PubTips! Just want to say an upfront thanks to everyone who posts and comments on this subreddit - I've learned so much already!
I'm hoping to submit to a competition in which the prize is feedback from an agent. The competition is being run by Spread The Word and Frog Literary, and you can find it here if you're interested in applying too! (https://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/submissions-call-out-applications-are-open-to-lgbtqia-writers-for-1-2-1-feedback-from-frog-literary-agency/)
In the submission guidelines they ask for a cover letter, and I initially took this as more of a standard cover letter but after feedback from an author friend, they suggested they might be looking for a traditional query. My autistic brain struggles with reading between the lines sometimes, so I emailed them to clarify and the standard query is what they're after.
Just for context, my manuscript isn't completely finished but there's nothing in the guidelines to suggest it needs to be finished to apply. If anyone has any feedback or insight they could offer me, I'd be super grateful! Thank you :)
Dear [Agent],
As you represent [LGBT+ romance author], I believe you would be interested in my LGBT+ contemporary romance, QUESTIONING, which will be complete at 80,000 words. It merges the exploration of a newly discovered sexuality as seen in Kate Davies’ In At The Deep End with the wholesome, diverse found-family cast of Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop.
Lucy is happy to spend the rest of her life in Harrison’s shadow, but she isn’t content to be confined to their kitchen only making meals for him and his fancy friends. She wants to be a real chef. When she gently brings up the idea of culinary school with Harrison, his temper flares and he kicks her out of their shared flat.
Heartbroken and temporarily homeless, she knows that Harrison will eventually calm down like every other time he’s broken up with her. She reconnects with an old friend who gives her a place to stay and introduces her to Manchester’s thriving queer scene. There she meets Aaliyah, the eccentric artist whose confident and flirty nature stirs feelings in Lucy that are much more than friendship. She has to decide whether to stick with the straight-and-narrow life she’s envisioned for herself since she was sixteen, or take a chance on this side of herself that she didn’t even know existed before now.
As a disabled, bisexual woman living in a society where productivity and heteronormativity are the key metrics of success, I’ve always sought out ways to escape. This has inspired me to create narratives that others can escape into, where queer characters all get their happy endings. Queer joy deserves to be given more space within the literary canon and I want to be part of that.
After taking an online writing course and meeting women from similar backgrounds to me, I realised that being an author might be an achievable dream. In the years since I finished that course, I’ve watched hundreds of YouTube videos, listened to hours of podcasts and read any craft book I’ve been able to get my hands on. I also received a mentorship opportunity with the editor Nicky Lovick, who suggested Frog Literary as a good match for my book.
First 300
The smoke alarm cuts through the quiet of the flat like an air raid siren, interrupting my final rehearsal of the speech I’ve been planning for weeks. I rush across the living room, grabbing a tea towel from the neatly folded pile and frantically wave it under the screaming white box. The noise continues to pierce through me, my short arms useless in the face of the high ceilings. I pull a stack of my cookbooks from the counter and lay them on the floor.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter, stepping onto Marco Pierre White’s face with my bare feet.
With the beeping finally silenced, I have to contend with the source of the smoke. A trickle of grey leaks from the top of the oven, and I send a silent prayer to the universe that my bread is salvageable. I need tonight to go well.
Pulling down the silver handle, a thick cloud billows out from inside, fogging up my glasses and filling the space with the scent of scorched sourdough. I haphazardly wrap the tea towel around my hands and grab the searing hot tin from the oven, the thin material barely enough to keep my hands from suffering the same fate as my poor bread with its charcoal-coloured crust.
I throw the whole thing into the sink, tears pricking at the edges of my eyes, though that could just be from the smoke that’s hanging around the kitchen like I’m in Victorian London rather than 21st Century Manchester. Harrison will be pissed off if he comes back to a smog infested flat, so there’s no time to cry over burned bread. Instead, I crack open the windows to the maximum amount possible on the 27th floor without being a suicide risk and head out to buy a replacement loaf.
When I get home, the flat is back to normal, the neat surfaces and sterile black furniture all looking exactly as it should. I close the window, hoping that heat from the rest of the cooking will ward away the March chill that has seeped in.

Some of you know my story..
WH confessed right after a one-time PA with an engaged coworker who had been admittedly boldly pursuing him and telling him how bad she wanted to have sex with him while we were in a terrible rough patch. It was so out of character for my husband to even socialize with a female coworker, but I think he just got caught up in the attention and has terrible coping skills which led to what happened. I would have never know if he hadn’t confessed and he has told me every detail of the entire situation. His breakdown afterwards and now months of constant inner work (IC, MC, church, only working in a solitary spot if he works overtime so he can’t socialize, check-ins, open phone.. you name it) show me how remorseful he is and that every bit of fantasy or limerance ended at the moment they actually went through with the act. He says he truly hates himself for acting like a person he is not and all he wants is to now be a better man for me and our kids. By both accounts (and they did not have any chance to match up stories and she was denying everything at first when WH confessed) it was awkward, regrettable, and that there was zero connection or reality to the thought that it might be something enjoyable. He has talked to me every day, wrote letters and long texts expressing his deep regret for hurting me and himself and his love for me.
So the issue now is that I allowed WH to keep working in the same office at his job on the same shift. I made it clear I only want to stay together if he wants absolutely nothing to do with her and would never speak to her again, which seems to be the case. She told me she wants nothing to do with him as well and is humiliated that everyone now thinks of her as a whore. Her fiance is their coworker as well and while at first they chose to rug sweep it all, are now blowing up because she was not honest like my WH and OBS is obviously very embarrassed and hurt.
The logical part of me knows they won’t talk. There was no emotional connection and the only thing between them was a sexual tension bubble that popped immediately. According to other coworkers she is a totally different person now and walks around with her head down not talking to anyone when before she was the facility’s attention whore. Besides a slip-up of not telling me right away when OBS recently threatened him at work, WH has given me zero reason to not believe in him. In counseling this week he said me thinking he’s still talking to her deeply hurts his heart because he is so adamant about never wanting either of us to feel this way again.
Sorry such a long backstory.. I’ve battled this for over 3 months now and just wonder if I really should ask him to go to 3rd shift. We’d lose intimate sleeping time together.. and part of me feels like it’s a cop out since 1st shift is the devil I know at this point.. but maybe it would help me heal or have less moments of wondering “what if they are in contact and I just don’t know?”

I understand that the original concepts for these characters were extremely problematic but YandereDev rewrite them years ago and now they're perfectly fine to me.
Hanako is just extremely attached to her brother, so she doesn't want Senpai to have a girlfriend because that would mean less attention for her.
Senpai is a bland character with almost no personality. Having an entirely week dedicated to him showing his strong dedication to family, delving into his and his sister's backstory seems good for me.
Surely, there's a reason for Hanako's profound attachment to her brother. This week presents an opportunity to uncover more about Senpai and his caring personality. Idk maybe Hanako endured childhood bullying or some tragic event and Taro protected herisked his life for her.
As for Muja, Taro is the one who has a crush on her and will confess to her. She's not that bad considering she's not an actual nurse; she's a nursing student and will be monitored by the actual nurse of Akademi during her week (Nasu) . She may have at most a three-year age gap with Senpai. It will be kinnda interesting to Senpai places a letter on her desk and run to the cherry tree with the confession cutscenes showing Senpai instead of Muja.
As for Mida, though, she's completely problematic, a predator. I guess you could change her by making Ayano think she has a crush on Senpai since all the boys have a crush on her. Or making her want to transfer Senpai to another school for his safety or education.

So I've always been of the camp that Signs and Symbols has a solution as satisfying, concrete and as hinted at in the surface story as the acrostic at the end of The Vane Sisters (where the hints are numerous and even somewhat on the nose in retrospect), and that it has not been found yet. A popular reading of the story is that there is no code to decipher, only red herrings that would lead you to think there is, thereby making the reader mirror the young boy's referential mania, but I don't buy this reading for various reasons. It's too obvious, too easy, too inelegant, and not a "a second (main) story woven into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one" as Nabokov described it. So here is everything I have in the way of hints and ideas:
The 0-O confusion takes us to the letter O on a telephone dial where O is under 6 (M, N, O). Three calls make 666 (echoed by the M, N, O, almost spelling out OMEN) but the story is already filled with omens and Nabokov wouldn't have such a conventional ready-made symbol of doom be the ultimate hidden solution, especially in a story where doom isn't hidden at all. However, continuing along the number-letter pairs on a telephone dial path, if you count the syllables in the names of the fruit jellies you'll get 3,1,2,1,3. The symmetry alone marks intention, but when you check only the first letters under those numbers on a dial you get D-no letters-A-no letters-D, or DAD. Is this another message from the afterlife, (maybe along with MOM which you can also write if 6 is dialed thrice)? It's interesting that most "solved" Nabokov stories have to do with ghosts trying to contact living characters from the afterlife (The Vane Sisters, Transparent Things, Pale Fire...). But this is neither conclusive nor unique enough, nor that well hinted at since syllable counting is never mentioned and you can't spell out MOM if the third caller isn't the girl dialing 6 again.
There must somehow be a second story with "incredibly detailed information" hidden among the "phenomenal nature" and "man made objects" but excludes "real people" in the story. I think the long paragraph detailing the boy's mania must be where all the clues are, since that part is the only thing we have resembling the hints pointing out the acrostic in The Vane Sisters. Connections can indeed be made between details here and the rest of the story, like "stains" to "soiled cards" or the increasing "volubility" of wild scandal to "garrulous" high school children. That that the focus of references increase with distance also makes me think that the bulk of the code is hidden in parts that don't have to do with the boy.
It has been cleverly pointed out before that the detached observers, prejudiced witnesses, and hysterical misinterpreters can correspond to different kinds of readers or narrators. It also seems important that they are all reflectors of some kind (still pools, glass surfaces, store windows, running water... etc)
The initials of Minsk, the Revolution, Leipzig, Berlin, Leipzig seem to hint at Middle, Right, Left, Bottom, Left. I have NO idea what this is supposed to mean.
The word choices in the parents journey to and from the sanitarium is suspicious. The bird was twitching in the puddle, the father's hands twitched, it was a "soft shock" to see the girl on the bus, the thunder and foul air of the subway, the train lost its "life current." That's a lot of words that are electricity adjacent and the bird image especially evokes an electric appliance in the shower type of suicide. The focus on the umbrella and the mother searching for something to "hook her mind onto" also seem to point to some hook.
The boy's last suicide is left up in the air (pun intended). It was "a masterpiece of inventiveness", confusable with learning to fly, and had to do with tearing a hole in his world. Maybe the latter has a connection with the wallpaper he was afraid of as a child? The picture of a leafless tree with a cartwheel hanging from its branch is I believe an image meant to mirror a finger through a telephone dial.
I hope we figure this story out in my lifetime.

A bit of an update on my last post. https://www.reddit.com/teenagers/s/ATjE93OSCb
I guess I am making this to rant. Life has been quite hard recently, and I don’t have much time to write. I have been thinking about the way I feel about her, and I feel like I can split it into four categories that interact with each other in strange ways.
Romantic attraction (?) To put it bluntly, I like her. But this attraction does not feel like what it should be. No “butterflies in the stomach”. But I notice her. No nervousness. No stumbling over words. I am not shy; on the contrary, I feel as stable talking to her as I am with any other classmate, provided that we are talking about something academic. But she’s cute. I can’t help but glance every once in a while. I don’t know her very well, despite knowing her for two and a half years. Despite this, I can’t avoid the urge to care about her. It is hard to explain much more without putting it in some more context.
Accomplishment Envy This is, unfortunately, a fairly overpowering theme. I am not a particularly driven person. Even though I know I am not very accomplished, I lack the motivation to push myself to do things. This has become a large problem in my relations with parents, especially with college applications peeking around the corner. My parents worry, especially my dad. He might ask me something like “[Name of acquaintance] just won this award. [Name of acquaintance] just got a high ranking in this competition. [Name of acquaintance] is starting a tutoring service, and she even got grants. How about you? What’s your plan?” He would say how tired he is of pushing me to do things, begging me to wake up to the fact that I don’t have much time left, pleading for me to spend more time on academics, on volunteering, on developing myself so that I don’t look like a fool on my college apps.
So where does she fit into all of this? She is an unavoidable example of what I am not. The contrast is stark. She has a great degree of self-control, self-fulfillment, and identity. She does good things, and is surrounded by friends who care about her. She is her own person, with her own drives and purposes, her own established and developing skillset. I don’t know what kind of background she is from, or what her past is like, but I feel that she will rise above the negatives, utilize the positives to the fullest, and become valuable to herself and people around her. I am a puppet of my parents, and I am starting to fail even there. Yes, I have been pushed into experiences, and yes, I have gained my own skills through those experiences. Yes, I have good intuition when playing games and thinking through the things I am good at, and yes, I like being helpful, especially when explaining things to my peers. I am known to be a good strategist, with good intuition and a willingness to help newcomers, in the gaming group I am in. But as my dad has drilled into me, week after week, month after month: Why can’t I do something productive? What is my plan? Seriously, what will I do with my life?
I understand, there are plenty of other driven people around me. I am aware that I have sampling bias, growing up with immigrant parents who value education and have experienced the effects first-hand, surrounded by people selected with established friend groups who push each other to do better. But the difference here is that she is unavoidable. The same attraction that makes me want to care about her also makes me notice all the things she can do. Studying for something? Talking with friends? Meeting new people? Working on things? Discussing the things she wants to do? Even simple things like asking a question? These things come naturally to her, just as they do to everyone else, and I wish I could say the same myself.
And this is where things start getting complicated.
I understand that what I have been saying makes it sound like I hate the feeling of being envious of her. But for some reason, it isn’t all bad. I get a certain comfort in thinking about her, and this seems to conflate itself with my preexisting attraction. I don’t know if I adore her character traits but am influenced by my existing problems, or I envy her character traits but am influenced by attraction. Two emotions I associate with “positive” and “negative” seemingly feel similar. I don’t know if what I feel counts as romantic attraction anymore; maybe it is just a habit that I haven’t grown out of. And that’s not all.
Curiosity and urge for human connection. I am aware that I may be idealizing her. She is flawed like any of us, but I cannot list any flaws off the top of my head. In combination with social isolation and romantic interest (?), I find myself wanting to get to know her better. I already know that she will never be interested in me in the way I am to her, but I want to learn how it feels to have someone actively approach me in conversation and talk about things.
The only times I have talked to her outside of an academic setting are in very rare cases, in the context of mental health and emotions — she feels like someone I can trust. But these are isolated incidents, and I know that she’s not responsible for me, that she has her own things to deal with. What’s stopping me from just… talking to her more? Talking about other subjects? Lack of motivation plays a big role, yes, but my primary issue is fearing how she thinks of me.
Fear of creepiness. I don’t know where this stems from. Perhaps I internalized something from childhood. Perhaps it is my lack of positive self-image, or a misunderstanding of my place among everyone else, or some combination of these, or something else. But I am averse to approaching girls in non-academic settings, fearing that I make them uncomfortable.
This ties many things together. It goes without saying that this stops me from talking to her as much as I would otherwise, but it is also why I try to suppress many of the other things I feel. I would not tell her most of what I say here, since I know that it would make her either avoid me or feel obligated to talk to me. I feel guilty for caring about her as much as I want to; she doesn’t need my attention, but I still find myself asking her if she’s alright when she seems tired.
I guess I’ll stop here for now, though I’m sure I am missing some nuances that I will remember later. In summary: I think I like her, in a way that I associate with romantic attraction. I also envy her — fuelled by my own probelms — in a strange way that mixes in with how I feel, creating a strange combination that makes me question whether or not I am actually feeling attraction. I seek to know her better, and feel that this might be possible; she is still willing to talk to me, albeit passively. Finally, I fear the way she may think of me.
This is more or less what I wanted to say. I posted this to rant, but I guess any help, information, or people who relate would be appreciated.