Growing grandma s drunk again

I’ve been long distance with my boyfriend for almost a year. We lived together for a while and he had to move away for school while I stayed for work. We love each other so much.
Last night got too drunk with my friend that I know has a crush on me, but he’s also friendly with my bf and knows I’m in a super committed and loving relationship. Stumbled back to my apartment, made us some snacks, sat on the couch. He slept on the couch like he always does but I was so drunk I almost kissed him. This morning I told my boyfriend I was so drunk I almost blacked out, and my friend was making moves/flirting and I didn’t know what to do or how to react. That’s all true, but in the moment I did almost kiss him first.
I feel like a piece of shit. I don’t know what to do, I love my boyfriend so much and I truly don’t have feelings for this other guy. I think I was just drunk and missing my bf but god I feel guilty. I know I just need to set boundaries, not let myself be in that situation again bc I know I enjoy the flirting even if I don’t ever want to act on it. But I feel like I’m a disgusting person

Let’s get it out of the way: Crystal is boring and yes she was opportunistic. But she has a point about how Holly has openly disliked her for years, and that their experiences are very similar.
Holly’s always been a ‘sniper from the side’. She throws rocks and then hides her hands. She did it with Kendra, and gets away with it because Kendra overreacted with the explicit tweets. But her shade is subtle and steady with just enough plausible deniability to feign innocence.
An example of that is here, where Holly calls Crystal and the twins ‘the skanks next door’ and then says ‘I didn’t say that, people who commented on my Myspace said that’
When she returned to the mansion to see Hef she said to Crystal “You take care of him or I’ll be on you!” here
In her conversation with Kendra and Mary for the ‘Hef’s Runaway Bride’ special here she’s shady, again making the Hef ‘dodged a bullet’ comment and sarcastically saying she left ‘at the right time for her single’.
This one struck me because she continues to dismiss Crystal even after Mary tells her that Crystal called her at the Jazz Festival in tears saying she ‘couldn’t do this and needed a shrink’ —which Holly wrote about a nearly identical situation going on antidepressants and wanting to talk to a therapist and Hef just saying to talk to Mary.
——————————
In 2011 she questioned Crystal’s intentions
“I’d like to see Hef settle down,” Holly told the tabloid. “I just want it to be with the right person, and I feel like he’s making a hasty decision. I’m not sure Crystal is the best thing for him.”
Referring to her fellow giant-breasted blonde as “mysterious,” Holly adds that she’s wary of Crystal’s intentions: “I’ve seen a lot of girls try to date Hef, and some have ulterior motives. I don’t think it would be a bad idea for him to get to know her a little better. I think it’s possible Crystal could break Hef’s heart. They could end up divorcing, and she could take half his money.”
Is she jealous that the man she once wanted to marry has asked for the hand of someone else? No. It’s simply: “I just don’t want it to be a girl who’s using him to start her career.”
Here’s an article about her Tweets following the ‘Runaway Bride’ saga.
Hollywood Lifehttps://hollywoodlife.com › holly-m...Holly Madison Attacks Crystal Harris On Twitter!
“That’s disgusting and whoever booked her is tacky!” tweeted Holly in response to a reporter talking about Crystal’s arrival at The Wet Republic. The Peepshow star also wrote, “That’s a new low!!!” in response to pictures of a bikini-clad Crystal living it up at the Vegas pool.
“Trust me, NO ONE is interested in filming Crystal! She left Lifetime high and dry while filming a 2 hour special!” was Holly’s response to the reporter wondering if camera’s would be documenting Crystal’s day in the sun.
That wasn’t all the Queen of Vegas had to say about Hef’s cold-footed fiance! In addition to dissing Crystal for promoting herself on the day she was supposed to say “I do” to the man who made her famous, Holly also tweeted Crystal’s decision may have been a blessing in disguise.
“Where does one find the “Dodged a Bullet” mylar balloons?” tweeted Holly a few days after the wedding was called off.
But to prove her off-handed remarks were really attacks on Crystal, Holly took her tweets one step further and declared a “war of words” with her fellow platinum playmate! When Crystal tweeted, “Hard times show your real friends…” Holly boldly shot back with, “No, they show HEF’s real friends…”
She jumped in to comment on Crystal taking her dog with her that was attached to Hef (even though she re-homed her own dogs she got with Hef to her parents and immediately got 3 new ones)
"Why did you voluntarily give the dog to Hef (who loves him too) after you left, only to ask for him back a few months later?" Madison, who stars in Holly's World and also appeared on the eighth season of Dancing with the Stars, wrote on her Twitter account Monday.
"Dogs shouldn't be yanked from happy homes on a whim. She needs to quit attention-seeking!"
Took a shot at Crystal with her usual passive-aggressive style when asked about naming her daughter Rainbow:
“It's definitely a unique name. I like unique names and I wouldn't have picked it if were common. But, growing up, there was a girl in my class named Rainbow. I grew up in Oregon, where a lot of hippies went to start families. There was a girl at school named Rainbow, and I was so jealous and I wanted it to be my name."
"So it's definitely unusual, but it's a name. It's not like I called her Coffee Table. People love to say, 'That's a stripper name.' But I've spent a lot of time in Vegas and strippers aren't named Rainbow. They're named Amber, Crystal and Jessica."
https://radaronline.com/photos/holly-madison-hugh-hefner-feud-wife-crystal-stripper-name-playboy-takedown/
It’s probably also not a coincidence that the other 2 ‘stripper names’ she chose were the names of Kendra’s 2 close friends at the time when they had their own falling-out.
And finally, a couple of Crystal comments in her book:
I have to say, I was a little curious about this Crystal character. Though I kept far away from Hef and Crystal (in part to avoid replicating how Tina had made me feel after her departure), it still seemed like Crystal had major jealousy issues. A few weeks earlier, I had run into a Los Angeles magazine editor I knew socially who told me a story about Hef begging him to retract a statement he had made about my being welcome back in his life anytime.
The editor threw up his hands and said he told Hef he couldn't retract it, that he had him on tape saying it and that he heard his new girlfriend threw a fit about it when it came out. When it came to being dramatic, it appeared Hef had met his match.
Crystal acquired the seemingly requisite boob and nose job shortly after moving into the mansion, and after her plastic makeover, Hef handed her a December 2010 centerfold.
Crystal just didn't come off as comfortable or clever enough to think up even a lame zinger like that. In fact, most of her dialogue on the show was painfully awkward at best.
"Ugh," I groaned. I had heard through the grapevine that Crystal was still moping around the mansion because she had "her show taken away" and was upset that I was the one still on television. Any suggestion of my presence anywhere near Playboy sent Crystal into a frenzy.
What happened to the laid-back Crystal I had seen the last time I visited the mansion? "Are you serious? We didn't get into a fight," I snapped, exasperated by her immaturity. "Someone on Twitter pointed out that she copied my underwater photo shoot, and later I made a generic post about hating copycats. That's it. I didn't even mention her name or reply to the person who pointed it out! "I'm sorry that she has a guilty conscience," I huffed, rolling my eyes. Over the past few years, I definitely began to feel that for whatever reason Crystal was trying to Single White Female me. "And I'm sorry that she can't deal with people's comments on the Internet."

I’ve been searching for this on vinyl for YEARS. I have it on CD as well.

I’m 28, divorced, a single mom, I have two degrees; one being a master’s in clinical counseling yet no job, and had to move back in with my parents. I feel pathetic, ugly, and like no one is ever going to want me again because of how damaged I feel.
I was in a toxic marriage for 4 years, together a total of 7. I decided I had enough and left. I then had a rebound relationship with someone I met while on a mission trip to Ireland and he became everything I needed at the time. After my mission trip and after my divorce, I went back to visit him for 6 weeks and everything was amazing and more than I could have hoped for. So I went back again with the intention of staying for 6 months. Things began to unravel during that trip and he became a drunk scary monster. When I found out I was pregnant it only got worse. It got to the point where I was scared for mine and baby’s life so I left with just a backpack and my passport late at night and took a series of flights back home. He continued to harass me and a whole bunch of traumatizing things, like sending me graphic pictures of him trying to unalive himself. I’ve gone completely no contact with him now. At this point I just feel like a mental mess, I have flashbacks constantly, I always hear him in my head saying things like “you’re so f***ing stupid” and I feel unlovable.
My daughter is 8 months old now and she’s honestly the light of my life, she makes it all worth it. I want to be whole for her and I’m scared I never will be. I hate that she doesn’t have her father in the picture and I worry how I will tell her why I kept him from her when she’s older and how she will react. I’m so lucky to have my parents and the support I do, to be able to live at home and be completely devoted to her right now without worrying about anything else. Yet, I feel lesser because of it. But she needs me. She was 9 lbs 8oz at birth and I’m a small female, my body almost couldn’t push her out and she got stuck, which caused paralysis in her left arm. We go to PT and OT 4x a week to help her regain full function of that arm, so not having a job and being able to stay with her at all times is truly what’s best. I just feel like I’m never going to trust anyone ever again, especially enough to be around my daughter, but I also think no one is ever going to want me again now. Who would want an emotionally damaged single mom? I don’t feel like myself anymore, I don’t feel beautiful anymore, I don’t feel worth anything anymore. I feel damaged and unlovable.
I’m in the process of finding a therapist because I absolutely know I need to work through all of this, I just don’t have anyone to talk to about any of this right now.
I just needed to get that off my chest, if you read this, thank you for letting me be heard. ❤️

My life has seen lots of trials and tribulations in the form of bullying growing up in school, currently in the workplace, and being raised by an abusive and narcissistic mother - whom I discovered, through reflection, learning, and in general spending time apart after no-contact, has intentionally inflicted trauma and mental illness on me because she was envious of my calling. I was fortunate to discover what my callings were at a young age due to my natural artistic and creative talents, thus I grew up a very focused individual who was favored by teachers, made some peers either jealous or intimidated by me, and I received a handful of recognition for the times my creative abilities aligned with certain opportunities at the time.
I was breaking generation curses within my immediate family just by being a focused individual. This didn’t stop the abuse, however, and I now know the reason why. I didn’t grow up with the same teachings and discipline as other families, so admittedly I’m a somewhat stunted young adult despite my maturity who’s had people close to me try holding me back as much as possible from being independent as well as inflicting trauma. It took a long time to shake off the biggest factor to all this, my abusive mom, but this didn’t happen without any consequences: Before going no-contact, I was financially abused into a $5k debt and was violently kicked out our apartment by her, which was illegal since I was a co-leaser who paid rent not that the police cared since the attitude of domestic abuse is commonly different and unjust when a male victim and female perpetrator is involved as it was in my case.
Since last year when that happened, I’ve been sleeping on my narcissistic grandma’s couch catching up on my bills through my second job - my current one. That same week I was kicked out last year, I was also fired from my first job due to being burnout from overworking, workplace attacks and bullying, and I was at a vulnerable time of my life when my mental health quickly deteriorated at its lowest to which I became a laughing stock. I was harboring suicidal thoughts which made the situation more worser and isolating. Those three months I spent job searching before landing this current one was probably the most peaceful time of my life despite the looming debt. I drew closer to God by reading my devotionals every day, praying, meditating, journaling, as well as taking care of my health and going back to hobbies linked to my calling I otherwise didn’t have the time to tend to. Those were the only things I had control over at the time, and it made me feel good and somewhat balanced until I was hired at this current job. I didn’t have much time to heal my burnout, nor heal from the lifelong trauma of being an adult survivor of childhood abuse and even enduring domestic abuse past the age of 18, so it seemed like the little progress I made that summer disappeared as I entered a similar state as I did at my last job. It’s been hard maintaining all the things I was focusing on that summer while juggling a full-time job with the old energies of abuse and previous burnout still affecting you.
It’s been about 8 months I’ve been working here trying to keep my peace and to remind myself that I’m a work in progress, a testimony in the making, but my patience and anger has been tested almost everyday, old thoughts of self-harm are reappearing, and I’m almost at the point of quitting. I want to quit. Of course, I’m thankful for this job. I’m thankful that I get to pay my bills down, the health and dental insurance that comes with it, the little bit of money I have to go to the movies to show self-love and something I find therapeutic, but the benefits can’t be worth it when your peace is constantly disturbed by people’s laughing, snickering, and gossiping when they don’t know the hell you’re going through. None of these people could walk in my shoes. I know that. I want to pay off everything from my debt, even if I’m left with a little over $2k or so, and immediately quit after. Nothing that would leave me with enough to buy my own apartment or anything, so I’ll have to break the news to my grandma who’s the type of narcissist to force you to listen to what they want you to do with your life, and to say ‘God isn’t pleased’ this and that like she knows what God is thinking and can read hearts like God. I can already see that’s going to create some turmoil in the home when I have no one else to rely on. I have to somehow keep my peace and not give in to anger when she becomes angry at all the benefits I’m leaving behind even when I have the intention of placing God first in my life again, in the hopes that everything else I need will be added onto me and my living and financial situations could be more ideal without the toxic work and home environments.

I have been on and off with a leo for 4 years …. we have never once made things “exclusive” according to him, but if he finds out I’m starting to see someone else or choose to sleep with someone else, he gets really mean and upset with me. However, he rubs in my face that he has told me time and time again that he wants to continue sleeping w other women and i’m not allowed to be upset over it.
we both are very intense and passionate people. it seems like no matter how many times we walk away from each other, we always find our way back. however, he has an alcohol issue (and has since we were teens) and it affects our relationship tremendously. he is constantly telling me he can’t “give me what i want” or wants to be “strangers” or says we’re “not compatible”, and then blows up my phone whenever he’s drunk. then he blames our entire relationship on his drinking.
i don’t know what to do. i love him a lot but he disrespects me in front of friends and tells everyone im crazy, but when we’re alone he’s a completely different person. i have tried to move on for so long and i just can’t let go. he’s everything to me but he isn’t willing to work on himself and blames me for everything. there’s a lot im not including in this thread, but i guess im just looking for some advice. especially if you’re in a scorpio/leo dynamic.
i only attract leo and aqua men as a scorpio sun aqua moon cap rising. sometimes scorpio as well but it’s rare.

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

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

A few paragraphs later:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I was 16-17M I had a drinking problem. I would drink whenever I could get my hands on alcohol because it was the only way I knew how to escape. I would do all kind of stupid shit when I was drunk, try to fight people, verbally abuse people for no reason, throw up in peoples houses etc. i would often get angry at my parents for no reason and once I even had a fight with my dad.
2 yrs ago aged 17 I met up with 3 girls and a male friend. I had had a lot to drink at this rate. I was sitting in a bench with one of the girls and I put my arm around her. She did not object to this so I thought I was on the next stage of flirting. I asked ro kiss her, she said no to that. A minute later I asked again and a minute after that I asked once more. All 3 times were rejected. Eventually i came to my senses and realise my attention was unwanted. I feel as though if I was physically stepping the line someone would have intervened. I cant actually remember any of this happening, this is just what I got told. I never forced myself on this person and I didn’t get aggressive or violent when rejected. After this happened she and all her friends left the venue and texted my friend that I fucked up and that no means no. I probably freaked her out bad. I didn’t understand what I was doing and I thought I was flirting but I got it horribly wrong and upset someone
When I heard about my actions the next morning I felt disgusted with myself, I instantly apologised to the girl I did it to. She told me she forgave me, my friend told me that she was initially upset after it had happened that I pushed her boundaries, but she accepted my apology. That was the last time i spoke to all the people involved. I feel disgusted within myself, I feel like a predator who kept pushing someone. I feel as though I might have traumatised her and ruined her life cos this was such a bad experience. It was after that I stopped drinking alcohol as a whole because I was now aware of its destructive nature. I haven’t done a thing of this nature since and realised that it was the alcohol dictating me.
After I apologised I didn’t think too much of the incident, but 18 months later for some reason it’s come back into my mind and it’s all I think about 24/7. I really can’t understand why I did what I did. I certainly wouldn’t have done it sober, but I’ve realised that it’s no excuse. Their friend said to my friend it wasn’t that much of a big deal but I still can’t forget about it. I feel like a piece of shit for trying to do something without the other person’s consent. I was verbally asking for consent but I was being pushy about it. Since this has been of my mind, I haven’t allowed myself to have anormal life, I’ve since quit my job and I hardly leave my room. I feel as though this is who I’m gonna be forever. That drunk idiot that kept asking. I told one of my friends bout it and he said it wasn’t a big deal. I can’t even look my own mother in the eye knowing the way I treated a woman that night. No charges were ever pressed or anything, idk if I did something illegal or not but it was certainly immoral. I hate myself for it every day and I’ve been thinking about ending my life over this. Once u do something like this in todays society there is no going back.
Although im 2 years sober and wont do something like this again I just cant let the past go. This haunts me 24/7 and honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for it. I thought of myself as an ally of women but this situation says that I wasn’t.
Should I tell my mother what happened?

So I'm really thrown of by this. For some context, when I was younger (16) my sister and her bf (who is also her long-term partner of almost 15 years now) lived with us. And there was an incident where he got drunk and invited himself into my bedroom and made some inappropriate comments that made me uncomfortable. I told my sister and they had what ever conversation was needed and long story short she stayed with him. They did have a baby together by this time. Anyways. I had moved on from that incident and we all see each other at family events and holidays. No awkwardness. For the past year or so Ive been cutting my nephews hair and he had started asking to cut his aswell. Again. No awkwardness with that either for the past year or so. Here recently for like the past six months I would get random text messages from him when he is drunk. Nothing sexual. Just how how got drunk again and that my sister is probably mad at him. And I'd end the convos with something like "consider A.A." or encouraging him to get help.
So cut to today, this is where I need some insight. He just called me in the middle of the day and asks if I'm busy. I said not right now. Right after that he says "ok. If you can keep this between us.." then proceeds to tell me he is drunk and needs some help. I ask what kind of help and says "help moving stuff out of my van". My senses were immediately alerted. I ask move the stuff where? He said "uuuh. Just outside. I just need help moving the stuff out of my van. And I'll help you with cutting your grass". I have a big yard and he knows that I often let it grow too tall. I'm cynical so I am already thinking some ill intentions with this request. But he insists he is drunk and my sister is already mad at him. He needs help taking everything out of his van so he'll be able to work tomorrow. So I ask again. Where are you wanting the stuff in your van out? He says "uh. I just want everything taken of the van. Cleaned out. And out it outside. And then I'll put what I need back in". So I try to be nice and say "sorry I have to get ready and that usually takes some time so I can't help this time." And he just says a couple more times about making the deal of helping him for 30 mins and he'll help me mow my lawn. And the phone call ended with me just being stern and saying I can't help today. Am I thinking too much of this phonecall? I feel really weird right now and I'm about to go to this sisters house and he's probably going to be there. Any advice or insight would be helpful. Thank you in advance.

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

We’ve only been together 4 months - he is 36 and I’m 27 - we moved pretty quickly after we met because of incredible chemistry and shared values and got into a relationship quickly. He was everything I had ever asked for and more - the perfect boyfriend - treated me like a queen for the first 3 months. We were madly in love. It was after that that I started seeing the red flags. He would snap at me for sharing my feelings about minor things, e.g. “I’m a little upset you’ve been late to our dates these last couple to times” or “it would have been nice if you had downloaded something we could watch together on the flight instead of football like I did” his reactions over things like these would involve lashing out at me, flinging whatever was in his hand near me (like headphones or his phone or a spoon), getting extremely defensive and the arguments would then snowball and he’s swearing, walking away or asking me to “fuck off”. Recently during a small argument he go so angry and punched his kitchen cabinet so hard he hurt himself. He recently yelled at me about buying me xx worth of things that he volunteered to buy me because he wanted to spoil me. Thjs behaviour only ever got so bad when he was really drunk and he has admitted to having drinking issues in the past.
I think I noticed his anger issues earlier when someone disagreed with him at work he would punch his desk after hanging up the call. It was very odd for me to watch someone react like that to work stresses because we all get thrown curveballs at work all the time.
I was really sad these last few weeks and he was extremely apologetic each time, telling me it’s all external stresses with work etc. promising to work on himself and telling me it’s not my fault at all, sending me flowers and comfort food to my house, telling me we’ll get back to being the perfect couple and I’m the love of his life, only for it to happen all over again and the aggression and rage to get worse each time. He even introduced me to his parents and closest childhood friends and talks about a future with me all the time. I told myself his love for me hasn’t changed and it’s just personal issues that’s affecting his attitude (which he himself confessed to) but some of my friends have told me this sounds like textbook narcissism and I need to run.
We met last Friday for a dinner date he had planned for us where we entered into a stupid argument again because I said “I’d rather you not bring up your ex on our date” he got really angry and stormed out - we went back to my apartment, he packed his bag and ragingly left saying “I need some space” even though I tried stopping him to talk things out. It’s been as if I have no safe space to share my feelings without it being met with anger. Sometimes just resenting me for things like “you didn’t ask me how I’m feeling the second after we woke up” - I didn’t because I was rushing to get ready to make it to work so I asked him how he was feeling in the elevator on our way to work instead. I had just been feeling so heavily criticised.
I haven’t heard from him since (very unusual) but I have decided I’m done with the relationship and just want to collect all my belongings from his apartment. I messaged him about it a few hours ago but I’m not sure if I’ll hear from him again. I’m not sure where to go from here - I just want this to be over with.
TL;DR I think I’ve been in a relationship with a narcissist and I’m trying to get out but not sure about the best course of action

I’m in my final year of secondary school (UK equivalent of high school) and I feel really weird. All my high school years I was so excited to be done with school and go onto uni, but I feel so regretful.
I have many friends, I’m in 3 or 4 friend groups and it’s really fun to be honest. But some of these supposed “friends” haven’t really acted as friends. They made me mad (not in a joking way), would make me sad, and shit like that. But now, I don’t really let it bother me, and I quite enjoy school.
I still had some real friends, and in spite of what these people did, I still feel as though I’m going to miss them.
But why, I just don’t understand. Why do I feel so sad about leaving, when only a few people (who I do and will keep in regular contact with) were actual friends to me. Why do I feel like I’ll miss even the people who treated me like shit?
It makes me kind of angry, not being able to rationally understand myself. But then again I think I do get it. I’ve grown up with most of these people, from when I was 11, and I would see them everyday for years.
I also think part of it is seeing many people grow away from each other. I’ve seen some people I used to be close with act like they’re all tough, doing weed, xan, and other shit. It hurts seeing people do this you know? Bro we used to be friends playing Fortnite a few years back now they’re on a path that will probably have them killed soon.
We all used to be so close when we were 11. But over time we split into smaller friend groups and soon some of us didn’t really fuck with the others. It’s shit like that that upsets me, I don’t get why we must grow apart from each other.
In conclusion, my take on my feelings is that I feel this way because I know I won’t see most of these people ever again, and also because I’m leaving them, seeing them for their worst, without knowing what may happen to them.
Writing this post, summarising my feelings has made me realise how bad things have really gotten with some people. I have no idea what to do.
If anyone who is emotionally intelligent has any explanation for me, I’d be willing to listen.

(Not using her real name) I M18 and my best friend Brooke F21 have been friends for ages plus she’s my neighbour and we grew up together. Now here’s some more important info about Brooke she really struggles with her mental health, she has severe anxiety and depression due to past relationships and an SA that happened to her a year ago now. In October 2023 her and her boyfriend M24 got together and I disliked him from the beginning, I’m not sure if the initial feeling was because he just gave a really off vibe or because she’s like my older sister who I’m protective of. After 2 months of the relationship I was proven fully right about him. Over the span of the first two months I learnt he had a bunch of ‘crazy’ ex girlfriends (his words) and a few girls that he has restraining orders againt. He has a drinking problem and does dr^gs, he also gave Brooke a disease that I won’t talk about here. Before meeting him Brooke never touched dr^gs before and only drank when going out now she’s out most nights and dabbled in dr^gs (I understand that it’s just having a bit of fun or whatever but the Brooke I knew would’ve never tried it) . Just passing the 2 month mark of their relationship they got into their first major argument he had taken ac^d that night and was very drunk, he had screamed at her to leave the house and that he wanted to break up out of no where which ofc caused her to storm out his house slamming the door behind her. She went straight home and called me while walking home in tears to tell me what happened, she then turned her phone off and I got messaged by her boyfriend bare in mind I was 17 at the time. He had messaged me calling Brooke all forms of names and threatening me and her to come round to her house because she ‘broke’ somthing when she slammed the door. I told him to go put somthing where the sun don’t shine and called him an a hole for what he had been saying to her and how he was treating her, he then continued to message me horrid things about Brooke calling her crazy and unstable and threatening to come round to hers and break in just to shout at her more. At this point I was sat outside in mid December at 2am freezing for 3 hours outside mine and her houses so just in case he did stick to his word and come round I would be there to get rid of him because no way I would’ve let him near her after that. A few days later she turned her phone on and they were all happy again and I was fuming. She wouldn’t even let me show her the messages from him or even tell her what had happened after she turned her phone off. Still to this day she doesn’t know that I was sat out there for 3 hours waiting for him. All this had happened and she had no idea after a couple of days he deleted all his messages to me and blocked me on everything so I didn’t even have proof of these messages anymore. Multipul arguments between her and him have continued going in the exact same way him screaming at her saying he wants to break up and her carrying on going back to him a couple days later. Every time I tell her to not go back and to break up fully but she keeps laughing it off saying no. I am terrified that at some point he will lay hands on her. Every once in a while she’ll say I need to wait for the right time but it’s never the right time and I know she doesn’t mean it. They had an argument like this around 2 days ago while he was drunk and now and he’s messaged her today telling her that the reason they are broken up is because she keeps shi talking him to their mutual friends even tho she just tells them about the argument they’ve got into that week. I had asked her to come round tonight but she’s gone out on a ‘petty mission’ because he has also gone out tonight so she posted about her night half an hour after he posted somthing about being out. After she told me this I told her I couldnt check his profile because ofc he had me blocked on everything but she didn’t know that I was so I told her that she didn’t know because I’m not aloud to tell her anything about that night of the first argument and she just continued to say that she doesn’t want to hear about it, so I called her out saying how she legit let her new boyfriend who is 6 years older than me threaten her so called bestfriend plus I was also a minor at the time. She hasnt responded for about 2 hours now and I’m seriously thinking that she might just not be worth these arguments she has already told me earlier today when I was at hers that she’s going back to him if he wants. Now AITAH for telling her and arguing with her to break up with him for good.

I would to recommend a fanfic called Punch through your limits
Summary
A kid was being mean to him.
A kid was being mean to him so the only logical conclusion that Izuku (at his glorious 4 years of age and having no quirk) could get to was to punch the mean kid in the face.
The kid cried.
But he was never mean to him again :D
Or:
Life was going great for quirkless Izuku, who doesnt love getting bullied daily after all? Until one day everything changed after the fire nation attacked.
New family was made but with that also came new enemies.
Also, Izuku stop stealing your brother's socks, for fucks sake.
Chapter 21
“Today I am teaching our dear Kohais how to make bread. Simple right?” Shindo grinned maniacally “Let’s see how badly they fuck up!”
“Why did I agree to this..” Izuku mused as he rolled his eyes
“Because you love me, NOw” He clapped his hands “First we activate the yeast! Grab some warm water along with sugar, we will cut the video while we let it rest for ten minutes”

“Right” Todoroki said “But what is yeast?”
“That’s a stupid question” Izuku said

“Oh, then you know how to do it dear Kohai?” Shindo teased

“O-of course I do!!! I didn't live in some CAVE!!!”
“Be my guest then” Shoto said getting out of his way

He did not, in fact, know how to do it.

Ten minutes later the camera turned back on and the yeast was flat and sad, it could only be described as a depressed dough. “Why didn't it grow?” Izuku asked with a sad face while looking at the sad dough
“Maybe you didn't encourage it to grow, did you try saying words of encouragement to it?” Shoto asked, he sounded serious despite his words
“It’s bread Shoto, it can’t hear us”
“It’s yeast, It’s biological, it’s alive”
“Well.. But.. Well, it’s a fungus, it doesn't have ears”
“Did you know that scientists found out that plants scream in pain? We just can’t hear them because it’s in another frequency”
Izuku stared at him
Shoto stared back.

I suffered through a sexual assault in 2018 at the hands of a tinder match. Because I was too naive at the time, I kept trying to see the good in him. He would go on to do it again, and would ultimately secretly record us having sex. It took until 2022. Before I would come to terms with what happened, and get therapy.
In this time, my ptsd symptoms went into remission, and I have much better coping skills. But I still really struggled with paranoia and I would startle easily. I also struggled with hypersexuality.
This past year, I reconnected with a guy I had known growing up, but was not close with. We got closer through the first part of this year, and as we edged into flirting, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I’d run and hide like usual. Only, it never did.
That’s the thing that just doesn’t make sense to me. I waited to make sure it wasn’t just because he was kind, and it wasn’t that either. I’m also fine if he doesn’t text me back for hours.
My symptoms are gone, now that I’m around him. They haven’t come back.
Why would this be? I don’t feel any anxiety around him. I feel nothing but calm and composed.

It’s not a monolith - some things help briefly or distract me enough. But i have made no lasting progress. I have gotten considerably, noticeably, measurably worse. Every day I’m worse, from my point of view. I just need so, so much more. I feel like I need therapy for every waking hour of each day. I need to be monitored. I need to be changed by force. I need my entire personality completely rearranged by someone much, much smarter than me. I need to be relentlessly deprogrammed. I have given up on myself, I feel like Im constantly trying to improve, but its also clear that I’m not improving, so my efforts - confused, terrified and extremely inefficient - repeatedly land me here. So, so much effort and so much self criticism, and no results. I am trying but i am failing, and I am very aware of that. I truly believe, at this point, that I cannot be the one responsible for myself getting better. I really want to be, but I have been trying for so long. It’s been my entire adult life. I never get better. I am constantly trying again, and again and again, and I have not improved. I am not exaggerating. My thinking is not distorted or delusional. The problem is truly that I don't believe I can get better. I need someone to do surgery on my entire personality. I need someone to convince me that I can improve, despite me confidently knowing that I cannot. Its an impossible situation and it just keeps getting more impossible. I’ve heard therapy requires you to be an active participant and the only way to make a real change is “from within”. But I cannot do that. Trust me. I cannot. Now tell me, suspend your disbelief. what other possible options are there for a person who cannot get better? Are the only other options to continue to live in misery or die by suicide? Tell me what the other option is. It appears that way. Believe me. I want to get better so, so badly. I’m not being stubborn. My misery isn’t a comfort zone of sorts that I return to (on purpose or accidentally). I fundamentally do not have the will or the ability. How could I? My life is miserable and without meaning. If too many noises are happening at once, it hurts me physically. If one thing is stressing me out and another thing happens, I must leave the room and go to the bathroom and hit myself in the head over and over again. If i try to do any more than one task at a time, I become completely overwhelmed, stop doing anything and begin ruminating on my failure, my inability to accomplish simple tasks. I spend more days than not completely alone, often in a dark room, with no one willing or interested in being close to me. I am not looking for sympathy. I know that I have probably earned this somehow. Or it is totally at random. I often have 8-10 hours of screen time a day, most of it watching a live genocide happening that is still happening RIGHT NOW. How could any one possibly feel hope? My desperate negativity seems like and underreaction if anything. I cant fill out the fucking ADD forms. My psychiatrist expects me to print them out somewhere, find a pen or pencil to fill them out, scan them and send them back in? Or find an app where I can fill them in and submit them digitally? Any one of those tasks is at least an entire day for me. And to find two other people in my life to fill them out? I don’t have two people. Is this a joke? If I could DO THAT I would not need help. If i had people to fill out those forms, I wouldn’t be this desperate. No one knows me. I am barely present in anyone’s life. I cannot stop overeating. I have gained almost 100 pounds. It just gets worse and worse. The only momentary good feelings I have are from food or drugs. I do not have sex. The last person who had sex with me killed herself earlier this year. It was a random casual encounter almost a year ago. Even that encounter was uncommon and a surprise for me, and I have had no intimacy of any kind since then. No flirting, no chemistry, no sign of any interest from another human being (as far as I can tell). I am not trying to use dramatic language and exaggerate my suffering. This situation, at least my internal psychological state, is extremely dire. It has been for a long time and it has not improved. Not with medication, not with sobriety, not with therapy. When I voice my misery publicly, I get a generally supportive response. When I try to talk to people in person, I’m always in a state of trying desperately to appear normal, because I do not want them to be burdened by my intense, self centered and myopic misery. I make awkward, stilted conversation and people often show discomfort interacting with me. I don’t blame them. I am trying so hard to not make them uncomfortable or sad, that I end up doing exactly that. I think most people I know generally wish me the best, or don’t think of me at all because we are not close. I am not hated, I am not completely without friends and acquaintances. But no one that I am aware of has an interest in being really close to me, or really knowing me or my voice or my pain. I am so completely, fundamentally invisible to so many people. For good reason. I do not make myself visible. I want to, and I am constantly, crushingly critical of myself to try and get ahead of it and improve. It has not helped. I don’t think it is anyone else’s fault. I don’t think I am entitled to love or compassion or interest. It’s not a failure of other people. I am a blip. There are much worse things going on. I am a little trinket. If someone threw me away, those few who would notice me missing would momentarily be bothered and then forget and move on. The rest, which is almost everyone on earth, would not even notice. I cannot do this - every step to getting better is just another thing to add to the list of the things I already cannot do. It’s a never ending to-do list and I am completely overwhelmed by the first thing on the list, and it never stops getting longer. I am so completely overwhelmed and it feels, 100% for sure, like it is permanent. It has gone on for years and years without improvement. 4 different medications, 8 years of therapy.15 years of experiencing it, at least. There is no escape from it. I CANNOT GET BETTER. I need so much help. And im not worth it, and it will not pay off. I can deliver nothing good. I am so mediocre. There is no reason for anyone to help me. Nothing I do is that bad or that good. I am not even worth the time. I am not worth the paper I’m printed on. My body aches constantly, I’m 33 and I feel like I could die at any moment. My heart is going to explode and I still can’t stop eating. There is heart disease on both sides of the family. I never met my grandpa because he died before I born. From what I know, his first heart attack was in his thirties. I look exactly like him. I just have nothing good of my own in my life. People are good to me sometimes. My family and my few friends try their best. It’s no one’s fault. I feel like I’m lucky to have anyone, but also they are barely present in my life and I more often than not don’t feel seen by them. Every moment I have is a new bottom. I do not have enough money to survive. I am trying to build a studio on credit. I may actually go bankrupt. There is nothing going well in my life. I am so completely detailed and strategic with my spending and budget and plan, but I do not have the will or the resources to actually make it work. I don’t brush my teeth. I cannot do simple self care. My debt just keeps building. $42,000 in student debt. $25,000 in personal debt if I finish this studio (about $17,000 in debt if I stop building right now). I don’t believe that I can be successful at anything. I am so visibly, obviously, crushingly desperate and resigned to it. I would not want to be close to me. I have so much love to give, and I believe I am truly someone who wants to be good. I think i am thoughtful and I really, really try. I’m always hoping to improve and learn from whatever mistakes I make. But for some reason I can’t get better. What do you do for someone who cannot, CANNOT get better. Please believe me. I need someone so badly to believe me. There is just too much. One thing wrong is too much for me and there are SO MANY THINGS at once. Every moment is a crisis of all of these things, all at once. EVERY single living MOMENT my infinitely overlapping problems stretch forward forever in front of me as an endless, tortured mess of things that will never get done. I see my problems, always growing, in a dense fog of my own pain. My failure is not guaranteed (by the logic of the universe) and yet I do nothing but fail. That fact makes it worse. Failure after failure after failure. Constantly trying to start over and try again and reassess, change course, and figure out the next step towards improving. But just more failure comes. Endless misunderstandings. Every moment and every detail that Ive experienced, they are always violently colliding all at once in my mind. I cannot even walk across the room and pick up that pen and fill out a form. Every single molecule in this universe in rapidly expanding and colliding, and there is no limit, no boundaries or meaning or objectivity about anything in this life. Nothing here can be separated anything else and every single choice I make affects every other choice I make, and a person must make hundreds of choices a day. None of them are simple for me. My pain and failures compound rapidly and spin out of control forever into infinite absurdity and meaninglessness. Every one of my failures makes it worse. My misery compounds, over and over and over again. Each fracture is never fixed, so it can never heal correctly. Things just keep breaking. Everything is too much. What do I do? Where do I even start?

hi, i am trying to decide between ucla and ucd as a transfer. i am really having a hard time picking because for me they are complete opposites. i am an environmental science major, but im not sure what specifically i want to go into. i am from la and live there currently. i think i could be happy at both schools, but ultimately need to make a decision.
davis is known for ag and environmental science and seems to have lots of opportunities. they also have some cool and unique classes for my major. because of the small town and distance from family (a complete 180 from what i’m used to), i would have a lot of space to grow as a person. i feel like i want college to be a defined chapter of my life and feel different from what im used to but i don’t know if the change is too intense. my concerns are that there’s not enough going on and it seems too chill. i am nervous that i may not be challenged enough or pushed to my potential at davis (which is probably an underestimation of davis). even if davis is more relaxed academically, that would give me more time to be involved in clubs and internships and such. davis as a town is so small i mean you can literally walk the entirety of downtown in 30 mins max. also when i went to visit, im not sure i felt like i fit in. i don’t know if that’s because its so different to what im used to or because it just doesn’t feel right.
ucla is the number one public university. it has prestige and i know the classes would be academically challenging. the opportunities at ucla would be vast (and also competitive). the campus and buildings are gorgeous and it’s located in a city where there are always things going on. since i grew up in la and my dad is an alum. i’m relatively familiar with the campus. i do feel like i fit in more at ucla, but again im not sure if that’s because i actually do or because ive been there many times over the years and im just used to it. in addition, because its familiar i am concerned that it wouldn’t feel like a big enough change (i mean i literally live 10-15 mins from campus). one big factor that im taking into account is competition. i know ucla is competitive and this would make opportunities harder to get. the competitive environment would either push me to put in full effort/be a better student and learn more or it would stress me out/make me unhappy. ucla feels a little impersonal. because its so big and id be a small fish in an ocean super smart competitive fish, would i be overlooked?
i understand that this is my decision at the end of the day, but i’ve been so stressed about regretting not pushing myself out of my comfort zone or turning down the no. 1 public school that i’ve become somewhat paralyzed. thoughts, opinions, reassurance, and advice are appreciated.
ps if anyone wants to touch on moving from big city to small town, any misconceptions, not fitting in, transferring, class difficulty (including profs), how they made their decision, or what their experience has been pls share :)

~First~
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem AND Harriett The Spy
The tunnel of dark blue gel seems to be leading upwards and upwards, the walkway more a chunky stairwell as behind him the masonry sink into the gel and then re-emerge in front of him. He climbs what feels to be several floors before cresting at a carpeted floor where a large polished wooden table is on bricks to bring it up to his elevated level. Opposite of it is an ornate and extremely detailed image of a woman in dark blue gel who wears a dark blue gel gown.
“Please, have a seat.” She says and there’s enough definition in her face for him to clearly make out a smile. Tendrils holding bottles and tins drop down from above and set the table between them with numerous snacks and drinks. “Care for a drink? A snack perhaps?”
“Hmm... you’re certainly prepared for things.” Jurgen notes.
“Her core is... at the edge of the scanning range. But there’s something odd with it. Beyond it’s absolutely titanic size.” His Handler states.
“Are you alright madam?” Jurgen asks.
“Pardon?” She asks and Jurgen taps his glasses.
“There is a tiny speaker whispering into my ear from these, and I have sensors on my belt. My friend on the other side tells me that your core is close, but something is different about it. Are you alright?” He says and all movement in the chamber freezes. The inner light from the gel dims and he can barely make out her silhouette before things start to brighten again as she regains control of herself.
“No. I am not. Which is why you are here.”
“Madam, I am no doctor. In fact, as a soldier I dare say that I’m legally about as far away from a doctor as one can be. Professionally at least.”
“True, but you’re part of an organization with many doctors. Many doctors who can operate in the Null and do not require Axiom to work.” She says.
“Madam, what’s wrong?”
“I... I do not if I can trust you yet. You and yours. I need your measure before I tell you. Your full measure and not just second and third hand accounts.” She says.
“Hence our little party.” Jurgen says.
“Indeed! A pleasant little party where I get to know you, where we become friends and where my every problem may very well be solved without anyone getting hurt! Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
“It does, but a party with just two is more a date I believe.” Jurgen says as he relaxes into his seat and examines the nearest bottle. “Hmm, this is a Cannidor style wine. Good stuff, if a little on the weak side.”
“Well, with human guests I figured I would need something a little sterner than average.”
“Indeed. So since you want my measure, how do you want to find it? Is there a topic in particular you’re interested in?”
“Why is it that you humans have taken a cultural artifact of The Apuk and reversed it as you have? It’s so odd. Give you a tail and some horns and I would mistake you for a very nervous man and not the downright fearless individual sitting before me.”
“Sitting before you?” Jurgen asks as he looks around and finds dark blue gel in every direction. “If anything I’m sitting within you. You surround me on all sides.”
“The question still stands.”
“It does indeed, I was stilling a bit to find the proper words.”
“Oh? Not having them handed to you?” She asks and after a moment Jurgen takes off his glasses and lays them on the table facing her. “Oh?”
“No, my own words. What I am is a member of Titan Squad as humanity exited Cruel Space all kinds of options became available to us for the first time. And one of the oldest stories, in every human culture is the idea of a giant or an ogre. An enormous human like creature of incredible strength, often with low intelligence, but not always. So the very idea of having someone so large on your side, not to mention the fact that other races are in fact this big, means it’s practical. Because we can have the giant soldiers without all the issues that... well you know... the issues!”
“Very eloquent.” She says with a smile and he shrugs.
“Sorry, it wasn’t something I debated about philosophically. I was asked if I wanted to be the biggest and most powerful I could be and I said yes. Well no, that’s not fully true, I asked if it was going to be some kind of drug that could affect me and I was told it was an Axiom Technique. So I asked if I could back out at any time and if it was reversable. Then I got the full explanation that I could turn back with ease and... I accepted.”
“Rather harder to turn back with numerous chunks of metal and machinery embedded into your spine.” All Lady says with a strange emphasis on her words and Jurgen considers that before leaning forward.
“Ma’am... is something... inside you? The real you and not the extension of your will that is the gel?” He asks and All Lady just stares at him for a bit then the back wall begins to shift. It slowly turns transparent and Jurgen stands up in shock as an enormous pitted sphere floats upwards into view. Then it turns. The back half has a massive crater inside it with numerous black veins all reaching out from a central point.
“Calm calm... must stay calm...” All Lady is whispering to herself all around him. “It feeds on pain and sorrow and misery, control your mind, control your fate.”
Jurgen picks up his glasses and puts them back on. “Dauntless are your reading this?”
“That core is easily twenty times the size of the largest on record!” His Handler states.
“Clearly, zoom in on the heart of that damage. What is it?”
“... What it is is setting off all my alerts and I’m getting a call. Hang on.” His Handler states.
“Are you alright?” Jurgen asks All Lady.
“No. I have not been alright for years.” All Lady says in a haunted tone. “It grows worse if I feel afraid, or angry, or sad or anything that isn’t positive. Joy can push it back, consideration and concern can as well. But any attempt to remove it just makes it worse.”
“I see and you think that you will need Null to stop it from getting worse?”
“Yes, there’s also the fact you’re very new to the galaxy. Whoever, whatever or why this was done to me...” She shakes her head even as she conceals her core again. “Humans had nothing to do with it. You’re not... you didn’t leave some kind of nightmare thing for innocents to be damned with.”
“How long have you been hurt?”
“Years, years now and it... it forces a budding, but doesn’t let me... it won’t let me...” All Lady pauses, all the gel shivers, goes still and she’s once again back to normal. “Needless to say, I want it out. And you Undaunted are the only people that cannot possibly be responsible and the only people guaranteed to have a way to force it out despite all the Axiom weirdness of it. I don’t care if it makes it worse, I want it out. But I need to know, is your reputation truly well earned?”
“I’d like to think it is.” Jurgen says.
“But I need... more. I need to know. I need to truly know your character before I take your word for it. Because my life depends on this.” All Lady says.
“Alright then, let us continue.”
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
Harriett stretches as she’s in a more comfortable outfit after being extracted. Not only had Tiaria been involved in whatever the latest madness was, but her recreational criminal activities were legion enough that they were going to be sitting on her for a while.
“Oh good riddance to bad rubbish. That simpering voice just got more annoying the more I had to hear it.” She says as she passes off her initial report. “Right, now I was promised a debriefing on what the hell is going on.”
“Yeah, and you’re getting it with your favourite coffee blend too.” The high and innocent voice of Herbert says as he passes in front of her with a tray full of hot drinks and donuts over his head. For some reason there’s a butter holster and a small sealed flask. She follows him into a nearby room and bafflers quickly turn on to keep things quiet.
“Well, things are serious if you’re only telling me in person.” She says and he nods.
“Yes ma’am. Check the butter.” Herbert says and she picks up the cover and notes that it’s a trytite and lead lined container to completely cut off whatever is in there. Inside is an odd piece of metal roughly the size of a pea. It’s vaguely reddish but... it’s not the colour of blood, but she can only think about blood and just looking at it makes her feel uncomfortable.
She covers it up again and looks towards Herbert before asking the question. “How bad?”
“Bad enough that the higher ups in the know are in complete agreement about not only keeping things secret as they can be but to also kick every beehive simultaneously.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called Blood Metal.”
“Very imaginative.”
“Yeah. It’s created by a brutal Axiom technique that causes a person’s own Axiom presence to turn on them and torture them to death. That little piece you saw? It takes about twenty people to produce that. All dying horribly.”
“Jesus...”
“We found enough for over fifteen billion people.” He says and she stares at him.
“Yeah, that’d do it.” She says.
“Or at least we thought so.”
“Don’t do the roller coaster thing, just give it all to me.”
“Alright, the bare bones is that we stumbled into an operation that was mass producing blood metal without murder, just owning the stuff without intending to destroy it somehow is illegal. This stuff is so rare no one really knows what it can do and we had evidence to think that there may be other hidden areas with more of it. We were right. But they were weird, acting like antenna.”
“Why would they need antenna?”
“The Mass Production Method requires a seed of blood metal to start, a sort of dirty amniotic fluid that no proper cloner would use outside an emergency and fear.”
“Fear?” She asks.
“Put the blood metal in the flash, it has the fluid in it. Then run some Axiom through it and we both will feel fear on top of the thing getting a little bigger.” He says and she stares at him for a moment before unscrewing the top of the flask and sniffing. It smells... it smells like a dirty hospital. The fluid inside is a piss yellow and has little bits in it. She then uncovers the small pea of blood metal and drops it in. She looks towards Herbert and he nods.
She runs Axiom through and jumps as her everything tightens up and she suddenly has her needler pistol out.
Herbert hasn’t drawn a weapon but he’s holding onto the table and his face is white. She slowly puts the assassination based weapon slowly away as her heart rate slowly returns to a normal pace.
“Well... you certainly said it. Holy god that was awful.” She says before glancing into the flask and finding the fluid gone. “It’s dry?”
“It is.” Herbert says before letting out a sigh and slipping into a seat. “That sensation never gets easier.”
“So we had antennas of blood metal harvesting the fear of... what? Where?”
“Bottom ten on dozens of spires.” Herbert says and she nods.
“That’s do it. If you want to find a paranoid you go down there and that’s fear by the boat load.” She says and then huffs. “At least, the ones that don’t start entire cults and communities around them.”
“Purple Perceivers still a problem?”
“In the sense that the crazy Mrega girl is gathering as many followers as she is crazy conspiracies.” Harriett says.
“Geeze, sorry to hear that. Is there anything else you need to know about things?”
“Hmm... dangerous barely substance was being mass produced using materials all over Centris. It was done in a new method that does not require torture and death, but that was not known at the beginning was it?”
“It was not.”
“Right... Yeah, something like this is a cause for a panic. What have you found so far?”
“So far we found the main mass production area, we think, and the low level employees and drones that maintain it. Tied it’s funding back to a con victim who’s about to get her assets back and who has led us to two other higher members, one an Alfar and one a Tret.”
“And Tiaria is possibly that Alfar. How did you narrow it down?”
“Numerous occasions where our con victim, one Miss Gina Bleat, was in their direct presence. It took a lot of computers a while to narrow down who wasn’t accounted for somewhere on Centris during that time.”
“What are the charges going to be?”
“At this moment there’s definitely a murder charge in there. Even if they started from a single basic seed, it required torturing someone to death to get it. Furthermore there are charges for unlicensed experiments on extremely dangerous substances without a license or proper safety procedures. Of which Blood Metal counts.” Herbert says. “However it’s going on the higher ups. Bleat is a victim, the guards are just rental cops and the janitors and engineers had no idea what they were working with. Blood Metal is rare enough that it’s reasonable to expect that people have no idea what it is when they see it.” Herbert explains and she nods.
“Hmm... so what does it do? If this stuff is so hard to create, then... what’s going on? Why bother making it?”
“It’s almost like combining trytite and khutha. It can hold many kinds of effects, but also tears apart hostile effects. Instead of ignoring them like trytite it’s... hostile to Axiom in a sense, drawing it in and seemingly eating it. Almost like a living thing.”
“Hmm... that’s... disquieting.” Harriett notes.
“It is. We have no idea what this stuff does to people. It devours and remakes Axiom effects constantly and since a good chunk of non-human biology is based in the Axiom itself then there’s not telling what it would do to another species with a piece inside them. To say nothing of the fact that someone figured out a way to mass produce this stuff, we may know the how but the big question of why is still very much in need of an answer.”
“And that’s on top of the more ‘humane’ and ‘safe’ method requires you to feed it fear and amniotic fluid. I mean... seriously, that’s weird.”
“It is.” Herbert says.
“Yes it is kiddo.” She teases.
“Please stop.”
“Then stop playing the part of my little brother or son in infiltration missions.” She answers.
“Would you prefer my desperate spinster aunt?” Herbert mocks.
“It’d be a change of pace.” She says and he snorts in amusement.
~First~ Last

Hello one and all. A heads up for the coming weeks. I will be traveling quite a bit, so I may have days where chapters are delayed. I've done my best to build up a backlog in preparation, but there's always the chance I won't have the time to work on them. That aside, I hope you've all been enjoying the story so far, and look forwards to bringing you more!
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Memory transcription subject: First Officer Recel, Federation Fleet Command Date [standardized human time]: August 2, 2136
[Elapsed Time: 16 minutes, 12 seconds]
My head hurt. My whole body felt heavy and weak. Even the act of awareness was tiring. I could hear noises around me, slowly rousing me from unconsciousness. Despite the weariness, I slowly forced my eyes open. The light in the room was low, reminiscent of twilight. My vision was fuzzy, though I could make out a majority of the room was white. I felt like I was in a bed of some kind with pillows under my head and a soft blanket over me. There was a rhythmic beeping next to me, which I eventually identified as some kind of heart rate monitor. As my vision slowly sharpened, I could see that all around my bed were curtains that blocked my view of anything else in the room. Faint memories of where I was and what happened slowly returned, but I felt so tired that I could hardly feel anything more than deep dread. I was glad that I was alive, but that meant that the predators had reason to not eat me right away. My heart rate monitor started to beep quicker along with my slowly growing feeling of fear.
I must have made enough noise to draw attention to myself. One of the curtains was pulled aside, and the Skalgan in a white coat stepped up to my bedside. “Oh, good. You’re awake. I was a little worried that the bump you took to the head had done serious damage, but the fact that you’ve come around so soon is a good sign.”
I was confused by this prey’s presence. I was surely on a predator ship, if my memory was correct, so why was a prey walking free? Why were they here among a predator crew? My crew. I’d forgotten about them. Were they okay? Did they get killed? I was so drained that the best I could do was weakly speak. “Where is my crew? Did the predators get them?”
The Skalgan huffed. “If you’re referring to the humans, they’re the ones who brought you to the medbay after you passed out. Your crew is getting some time in the brig to cool off while we figure out who you are, what you are, and why you’re here.” She walked over to the monitor next to my bed, taking notes on her holopad. “From what I heard, your subspace trail was traced back to Venlil Prime, so we assumed you were some sort of Venlil operation and knew about the humans already. So color us surprised when out of the ship comes three aliens that immediately start freaking out like the devil was after them.” Her ears flick in annoyance. “Honestly, we were told you Federation folks didn’t like meat eaters, but I never would've believed it was this extreme. Had we known, I’m betting the captain would have sourced a few Skalgan from other ships to make up the welcoming party. There’s not exactly many of us on every ship to begin with.”
Her words brought me a mix of surprise, confusion, and doubt. This was not the way I expected predators to respond to prey walking into their domain. The Arxur would have eaten us or dragged us off to cattle pens. Passing out would have been my death. I couldn’t understand why we were still alive, assuming the Skalgan was being honest. Not only that, but why had the Venlil not said anything if they know about the predators. “...Why are you here? Do the predators keep you here since they don’t know medic-”
“Okay, you need to stop with the ‘predators’ label. It might be my job to make sure you’re healthy, but that doesn’t mean I have to stand for your bigotry.” She huffed, ears pinned back on her head. “First off, humans and skalgan have been living together for centuries, so you can forget any ideas you might have about them eating other sentients. Second, I work here under my own free will. It’s my job to take care of my patients, no matter who or what they are. I trained at the University of Pennsylvania, a human run school. So you can take whatever notions you seem to have about humans being savage, unintelligent, uncaring, or whatever and stamp it out of your consciousness. Yes, they eat meat, but there is no correlation between that and how they behave. Okay?”
I stared at her in shock, taken aback by how certainly she was defending the predators. Clearly she trusted them. Maybe she was a special case and had been hand picked to fill a role outside of the cattle pens, but why would a predator even bother with teaching a prey? Were these predators smart enough to even teach? I was getting left with more and more questions, but I felt like asking more would only invoke the doctor’s ire. “...Okay.”
“Good. Now, we got a couple of things we need to go over. And just so you know, my name is Kirith.” She hopped up and sat down on the edge of my bed. “First off, who and what are you and your crew? Like I said, we’ve never seen aliens like you before.” For a few moments, I thought of lying. I didn’t want to give these people information that could be used against the Federation. If these predators are as smart as the doctor says, then they might know the value in having knowledge of our kind. Yet they were in contact with the Venlil. It wouldn’t be hard for them to check their sources, and any lies I’d say might easily be uncovered. I decided that I’d only give the bare minimum.
“...I’m a Kolshian, the small one of my crew is a Dossur, and the spiny one is a Gojid.” I said. Kirith waited a few moments longer, but after a prolonged silence, took a few notes on her holopad and lightly nodded her head. “Alright, I guess we’ll get names later. Secondly, why are you out here?”
“We’re a survey team that came out here after we heard word that there were potentially habitable planets in the dead zone. Many species are always looking for planets to colonize, and some would pay a good sum for the coordinates of habitable ones. Of course, it’s illegal to fly into restricted space, so we hid as best we could when we came out here. We thought that we could follow the Skalgan ships that came to Venlil Prime towards habitable space, and then from there search outwards.”
The doctor shoots me a judgmental look as she continues typing. “Using us to springboard off of. I don’t think any of us would take kindly to being used.”
“Used? But, isn’t it the duty of all prey to help each other?” I asked. This again seemed to irritate the doctor. “Okay, drop the 'prey' label too. That implies weakness, something many Skalgan would take offense to. Seriously, the more I hear about your beliefs of predators and prey, the more I wonder how your society could have ended up so ethically backwards.”
“W-what?! We’re not! We do what is needed to keep our people safe and alive! What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong is that your mind is so ingrained with these beliefs that when there is living, breath proof to contradict what you believe, you refuse to acknowledge it. Tell me, why do you think humans and Skalgan live together? Be honest.”
With me suddenly being put on the spot, I found myself speaking before I could realize what I was saying. “B-because you’re catt-.” I barely cut myself off before I spoke my mind, but it was to late. The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “...Cattle? Like what those monstrous, children eating, sociopathic, psychopathic Arxur do? That’s what you think humans are?” Her voice was starting to rise in volume, making me shrink back in the bed as she ranted. “The only reason I’m not dragging you off to the brig here and now is because I understand your people have generations of trauma inflicted on you by the Arxur, but the fact that you keep tying physical traits to behavior is straight up wrong. If you talked to a human without ever seeing them, I’m willing to bet that you’d assume they were any other ‘prey’ species. Humans aren’t monsters. Forget about appearances, and perhaps put more stock in what they do, rather than how they look.”
I was again left without words. Yet another passionate defense for the humans, something that no prey would ever dare voice. I tried rationalizing why she would say all of this, tried to think of an explanation. The thought of predator disease came to mind, but that wouldn’t explain the contradictions I’ve seen between how I thought a predator would behave and what’s happened so far. If these humans were like the Arxur, I'd be dead right now or trapped in a cattle pen. Something was going on that I was missing. Something made these predators not act like predators. “...Can… can you tell me about the humans?” I asked.
The doctor blinked, looking a little surprised at first, though eventually relaxed. “If it helps you come to understand them better, I’d be happy to answer any questions you have. But do note that you and your crew will likely be staying here for a while as we figure out what to do with you all. The top brass have been working out how to introduce humans to the galactic community without everyone freaking out, and we don’t want anyone blowing the whistle before we have a chance to speak for ourselves. However, I can promise you that you and your crew will be treated well in your time here.”
Maybe it was because I was desperate to believe her, but hearing we’d be okay put a lot of my worries at ease. It also helped that I was talking to a fellow prey and not one of the predators. If she was willing to talk about the humans, then they must not be trying to hide anything. There was still the matter that humans weren’t brought up during first contact, but considering how the Federation would react, perhaps they wanted to avoid a war breaking out. I didn’t look forward to essentially being a prisoner, but it was better that the fate we would have faced had these humans been like the Arxur.
Despite all the assurances though, I still had my worries that there was a lot being hidden from me. It felt like all I had to do was pull back the curtain and I'd see all the human evil, cruelty, and malice that the Skalgan were trying to hide. If that was the case, they were doing a good job so far keeping it hidden. Maybe it’s because the humans grew up with sentient prey that they were capable of keeping their instincts under control. It would explain why I wasn’t attacked when I passed out. There of course was a lot more I needed to learn. Perhaps I’d learn something that would be of use to the Federation after my release.
If the humans were secretly like the Arxur, than I could bring a vital warning to the Federation. I just had to make sure I didn't ask the wrong questions.
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hi, i am trying to decide between ucla and ucd as a transfer. i am really having a hard time picking because for me they are complete opposites. i am an environmental science major, but im not sure what specifically i want to go into. i am from la and live here currently. i think i could be happy at both schools, but ultimately need to make a decision. here are my thoughts:
davis is known for ag and environmental science and seems to have lots of opportunities. they also have some cool and unique classes for my major. because of the small town and distance from family (a complete 180 from what i’m used to), i would have a lot of space to grow as a person. i feel like i want college to be a defined chapter of my life and feel different from what im used to but i don’t know if the change is too intense. my concerns are that there’s not enough going on and it seems too chill. i am nervous that i may not be challenged enough or pushed to my potential at davis (which is probably an underestimation of davis). even if davis is more relaxed academically, that would give me more time to be involved in clubs and internships and such. davis as a town is so small i mean you can literally walk the entirety of downtown in 30 mins max. also when i went to visit, im not sure i felt like i fit in. i don’t know if that’s because its so different to what im used to or because it just doesn’t feel right.
ucla is the number one public university. it has prestige and i know the classes would be academically challenging. the opportunities at ucla would be vast (and also competitive). the campus and buildings are gorgeous and it’s located in a city where there are always things going on. since i grew up in la and my dad is an alum. i’m relatively familiar with the campus. i do feel like i fit in more at ucla, but again im not sure if that’s because i actually do or because ive been there many times over the years and im just used to it. in addition, because its familiar i am concerned that it wouldn’t feel like a big enough change (i mean i literally live within 10-15 mins from campus). one big factor that im taking into account is competition. i know ucla is competitive and this would make opportunities harder to get. the competitive environment would either push me to put in full effort/be a better student and learn more or it would stress me out/make me unhappy, so there’s a bit of a risk. ucla feels a little impersonal. because its so big and id be a small fish in an ocean super smart competitive fish, would i be overlooked?
i understand that this is my decision at the end of the day, but i’ve been so stressed about regretting not pushing myself out of my comfort zone or turning down the no. 1 public school that i’ve become somewhat paralyzed. thoughts, opinions, reassurance, and advice are appreciated.
ps if anyone wants to touch on any misconceptions, transferring, class difficulty (including profs), how they made their decision, or what their experience has been pls share :)

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