Human Drama, and writings of ordinary people their lives and unusual circumstances are my thing. Philip Roth is brilliant. Julian Barnes writes with beauty. An unexpected gem of a book was City of night by John Rechy.
I’ve often been disappointed by the famous big name writers. They seem dated and simplistic. Ernest Hemingway was particularly dry along with Graham Greene. Although Julian Maclaren-Ross wrote some very funny books.
Kazuo Ishiguro (for me) is a mixed bag. I enjoyed Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go but found The Buried Giant and When we were Orphans pretty hard work to read. I hated Klara and the Sun. The Unconsoled was an odd book, but it got to me. I felt uneasy with all those requests and tasks requiring action and not being attended too.
Haruki Murakami often goes over my head because they are so weird. Did anyone really like Hardboiled Wonderland and the end of the World? Seriously? - I can’t help but think he’s overrated - although Norwegian Wood, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and Killing Commendatore were surprisingly good.
Don’t mind a bit of Nick Hornsby or Paul Auster.
Arthur C Clarke does a pretty good sci-fi book in fact I’m reading Childhoods End right now.
Really really struggle to bear the writing of Salman Rushdie.
Could not finish Dune or 100 Years of Solitude.
Please give me some suggestions - I will investigate your ideas further. Thanks

After rewatching the 3 seasons of the anime a few times and absolutely loving it, I've made the decision to read the source material starting with the very first chapter. I have just finished the challenger finale with Taichi losing to Arata in the goofiest way possible and would now like to voice some complaints about the post-season 3 era of the story. If it's okay with you of course.
I have read some discussions and will attempt not to be repetitive with my points.

1. The first years. With Taichi going on what is stylized to be his villain arc and Chihaya going on a study spree to cope with her feelings, the new first years are given a challenge to become memorable and exciting while all that other incredible and exciting stuff is already going on around them. And boy did they not deliver. There are 4 new characters but for the purposes of the narrative they act like 2 characters: Tamaru and generic first-years (GFY). Sure they all have quirks to be distinguishable but not one of them has a compelling journey or a goal.

The first conflict that GFY face is not vibing with the karuta club and it is solved with the seniors just talking to them, there are no interesting one-on-one interactions here like there were with the construction of the OG club (Chihaya learning to see poems as colourful from Kana for example), it is delivered as a series of short comedic sketches. And that's because they are not individual characters, they are a representation of a group.
And Tamaru's arc was about not requiring the praise of others I think?
To see this point clearly, compare how Tsukuba and best girl Sumire were introduced to how the GFY are. There is an obvious discrepancy in depth.

1. Karuta matches.

Now, this is something that was a problem with the manga from the beginning. Here is how a match between character A and character B would go: Character A takes a card; the spectators: "OMG A IS GOING TO WIN"; B has a revelation in their inner monologue and take a card; the spectators: "OMG SINCE WHEN IS B SO STRONG MAYBE THEY WILL WIN"; A has a different revelation and take a card; repeat; Now, of course there are matches where the tactics are very interesting (Harada vs Suou), where every take is an emotional rollercoaster (Taichi vs Chihaya) or where the whole thing is just poetic to the bone (Harada vs Arata), but that is not the case with filler tournament matches. They are a massive yawn. I cannot be expected to be excited over a bunch of chapters about the new hokou team most of which I don't care about, the new fujisaki team most of which I don't care about and Arata's team which consists of people I could not care less about.
It's just a bunch of characters I don't know competing in generic matches (though there were some funny moments). And worst of all, I have no investment in who wins. In second year it was Mizusawa's dream to be the strongest in japan, a dream they worked through blood sweat and tears to achieve, so of course I was invested.
Here I was just waiting for more Taichi and Suou content.

1. Suou and Shinobu

Oh, this one isn't a complaint. The author ansolutely killed it with these two, absolute perfection.

1. Dirty tricks

This is a segway to the Taichi vs Arata match.
So, Taichi learns from Suou a lot of things: incredible perception, feints, detachment, fun. These are his weapons with which he manages to breeze through the challenger qualifier matches. But in his match against Arata he considers them off limits. Nishida even says something to the effect of "we want Arata to see us, real us, no dirty tricks or anything". Taichi doesn't use feints, doesn't try to mess with Arata starting with the second match and is not detached. Like bro.
Harada has bad hearing and uses different techniques to compensate for it, those are not considered dirty tricks. Arata doesn't have extraordinary hearing and so uses cross sweeps, those are not considered dirty tricks. So why does Mashima feel the need to abandon all of his weapons to play "true" karuta? Makes me mad.

1. The incredibly goofy Taichi loss.

What I find hillarious about his loss is that during the second game he decides that "winning cannot not matter" and that he will play Harada's karuta. In any other circumstance, heck, in any shounen manga this would be the moment where he strengthens his resolve and gains an unforseen power boost. But instead he just starts panicking and sweating and stuttering and losing by 18 cards. Goofiest stuff I've read in a while.
But on a more serious note, Taichi 100% should have a skill on par with Arata. He was able to completely toy with Sudou, controlling the game completely. He had very close two matches with Arata. I find it rediculously contrived that he just decides to not use his strongest weapons and play bad. That's literally what happens, he decides to play bad and loses. From a narrative standpoint it would also be more interesting if Taichi won, at the very least because he is a much more interesting character and because Arata could use a massive setback like that for character development (which is nonexistant as it stands now).

1. Nothing exciting happens

Harada's path to challenging Suou is one of my favourite arcs in fiction. Nothing that grandiouse happens after Taichi's confession.
On a more personal note, I am greatly saddened that best girl Sumire doesn't have much to do. She is still only enamoured by Mashima (as we can see from her talk with Mamashima). Like, girl, find a new target or become a rock star or date Nishida idk. Do something. Oh, and Kana's dream of becoming a reader has evaporated too it seems.
--‐------------- Sorry for the long post, it seems I got really frustrated and disappointed.
TL;DR

1. The new characters are a yawn, have no journey and are not built up like previous first years were.
2. The national tournament is overshadowed by Taichi's arc and there is no good reason to care about its outcome. The matches are repetitive and formulaic, the characters uninteresting.
3. Shinobu and Suou's arcs are perfection.
4. Taichi learns a lot of techniques but dismisses them as dirty tricjs for no apparent reason. Btw, shouldn't feints be considered even harder that normal karuta if anything?
5. Mashima gets a stereotypical shounen boost (for no good reason btw) just to revert to a blabbering baby in the third match.
6. Nothing grand happens. OG characters are left behind. Like, imagine Chitose learning karuta and becoming queen before Chihaya (joking).

Hi everyone! My first name means “river & sky” which came from a famous Chinese poem “Spring Blossoms On The Moonlit River”: “River and sky becomes one, with not the finest of dust, Shining brightly in the sky is that lone wheel of a moon. By this riverside, what person was first to see the moon? This river’s moon, what year did it first shine upon the people?”
I’m wondering choosing a cute natural English? (alphabet?? I also think words originally from Français or Deutsch are also interesting) name 💭 Any ideas?

I think one of the things I’ve been most enjoying while watching SVU again from the beginning is all the surprise cameos! Now famous actors or ones that are beloved staples of other shows are so interesting to see early on in their careers. So far I was surprised to see David Harbour from Stranger Things, Emily Deschanel from Bones, Fred Savage (I know him from Friends from College), Elizabeth Banks, Ian Somerhalder, Julie Bowen, etc. but I think one of my favorite things is seeing actors get recycled over the course of the show. It’s just funny to me and an extra easter egg. I was super shocked to see Casey Novak in an early on episode as a blasé rapist/murderer. I think it’s just extra amusing when someone on one side of things, cops/prosecution, pops up on the other side acting totally different, as a suspect/witness, or the other way around.

It seems the developers had an idea of when in history the game should take place. Here are some of the clues we get:

• It is before Guan Yu, so before ~200 AD
  
• Before humans invent guns
  
• Before Homer becomes a famous poet, so before ~800 BC
  
• There is a war going on
  
• There seems to be a sort of ice age
  
• After the Trojan war, so after ~1400 BC
  

I know some of these are redundant, but I wanted to be exhaustive
Okay, so we are looking for a period of time after ~1400 BC but before ~800 BC, that puts us right in the range for the Bronze Age Collapse, interesting...
There was an unusually cold period of time during the Bronze Age, known as Middle Bronze Age Cold Epoch, but it ended around ~1500 BC, so around a century before the Trojan war...
Well, we know that climate instability was a big reason for the Bronze Age Collapse, and we know the invasion of the Sea Peoples did destroy the Minoan and Hittite civilizations, leaving the Egyptians in really bad shape
Also, I don't remember a single mention of iron in the game. When Asterius and Theseus get their armor it is specifically bronze armor, almost as if Dedalus didn't know about iron
So yeah, my conclusion is that the events of the game happen during the Bronze Age Collapse, and this is particularly nice for the connection between Zagreus and Dionysus
I'm not a scholar on greek mythology, but my understanding is that before the Bronze Age Collapse the Cthonic Gods were more important than the Olympian Gods, and we find evidence for the cult of what we call "Orphic Dionysus", which is a version of Dionysus who died and was resurrected, and he is sometimes called Zagreus... I may be missing some details, but that's the general idea
After the Bronze Age Collapse greek civilization was reborn from the ashes, but it was very different. Their first writing system, which we call "Linear B", was forgotten, so they lost many myths and stories written with that system. Also, the cultural memory of the Trojan war, the last big war before the collapse, became the basis for the new myths, which were compiled and edited by poets, and maybe Homer was a real poet that took part in this process
In this context for some reason the Olympian Gods became more relevant than the Cthonic Gods, and this is where Dionysus did something weird, it became an Olympian God. Poseidon also had a similar transition, since it was believed that he lived under the sea he was associated at first with the Cthonic Gods, but later with the Olympians...
Anyway, the point is that Zagreus telling all these stories to Orpheus could be the in game explanation for this confusion. Somehow those stories leaked out the underworld through dreams or whatnot
So yeah, all in all the idea that the game takes place during the Bronze Age Collapse fits surprisingly well. But who knows? Maybe I'm overlooking something important, let me know

That’s all :)

Why does Hollywood feel the need to remake or revamp beloved and iconic movies that do not need it. Jurassic park/Jurassic world, Independence Day/its sequel, the Disney remakes(Lion king, little mermaid, etc) Those of us in the “millennial” generation got these movies fresh, without anything to compare them to when they first came out in the 90s. (The closest movie to twister before we saw it in theatres was the wizard of oz) We grew up with these movies and they grew up with us, they are personal to us. Now, new and badly written versions of the same films are being made to please the new generations instead of Hollywood coming up with fresh ideas.
Anyway, so after watching the trailer for Twisters, I am willing to bet this is just another one of those films that takes all the funny, iconic and unique stuff from the first film and puts it in a special effect filled garbage pile instead of it being its own unique film. I bet it slips in the famous Twister quotes we all know like “DEBRIS!” and “COWS”, it’ll have its own Dusty and its own take at the drive-in scene. How many of us wanted a red Dodge Ram after watching twister? Will kids these days feel the same as we did almost 30 years ago? (I had to check my math because 1996 feels more like 20 years ago to me and I’m 35 lol)
I feel like if you absolutely had to make a updated Twister revamp, it should have been a prequel to Twister following Jo and Bill before the 1996 film. Twister starts with a backstory that we don’t know any detail of besides the fact that Jo’s dad was killed in an F5, Bill and Jo are getting divorced and Bill doesn’t want to chase anymore. It would’ve been neat to see what led to that.
One day they’ll start remaking absolute classics like Jaws, and we will know for sure Hollywood has lost its imagination.

The post about getting blocked by famous people made me think: who’s had a funny or nice interaction with a celeb through social media?
Nothing so much to write home about for me, but I love the people who’ve ‘liked’ my comments at one point or another: David Spade, Courtney Love, Kathy Griffin, Rosie O’Donnell, Coco Peru, and David Gray.
Michael K stories are especially encouraged!!

Hi, Reddit. Listen, I know that’s a bit of a sucky opening, but sympathize with me a bit. I never once thought, in all the years that have passed since, that I would ever be re-telling this story. The reason behind this would probably be the fact that tonight of all nights for some reason, even all these years later, I find myself totally and wholly unable to chase sleep, perturbed by the question of whether something similar that had happened to me all those years ago has ever happened to anyone else.
I will be updating this story over the next week or so, as I have come to the conclusion that it is too long to summarize into one post. It also becomes tiresome to recall and write down these events, as I'm sure you will come to see why. In addition to this, I will be using fake names for everyone in this story, in an attempt to protect the privacy and comfort of my close friends and family. However, God willing, they will never see this post anyway. I tell you this to clarify that you should not try to look these people up, for you will be sent on a wild goose chase with no results. However, while the names of these characters are fake, I do ask you to keep in mind that the characters themselves, as well as the events of this story, are real. VERY real.
All too real, if you ask me.
This story takes place around the time I turned 15 years old. For context, I am 19 years old as I sit here typing this. At 5 AM, with a coffee perched in my hands between paragraphs, trying my best not to spill it while the liquid coffee in the cup fights a ferocious battle against my shaking hands. It is a story I have gone over a million times in my head, a story I have kept close to myself up until now, for reasons that will reveal themselves later on. A story I am not sure I am ready to relive, and a story that still sends an uncomfortable, sickening chill down my spine when I think of it to this day, even with 4 years of lived experience to distance myself from it.
Around the time I turned 15 was around the time my parents had sat my brother and I down and told us of their plans to split. Not two weeks later, my father stood on the edge of our picket fenced-in street in the blistering sun, packing what little of his belongings into his Honda Civic that he deemed worthy of making the cross-country drive to the brand new, shiny, sunny state of Arizona. I remember that day vividly.
Not soon after that, my mother, brother, and I all moved into a slightly over-affordable apartment complex in a neighboring town a few minutes over by drive. I remember it was a nice place to look at. Flowers, a children's park, the like. A nice place to live, maybe, for some. But never for me. I remember vividly also that it was the kind of place that reminded you that smell and taste are very intricately connected in the human body. It was the kind of place you tasted before you smelled. And it tasted like murky pools of water had been sitting and dripping in a few too many places they shouldn’t have been, for a few too many years.
Nonetheless, our new family of three quickly made the end unit, which we were lucky enough to receive, our new home. Our new normal. Only, for me, it wouldn’t remain “normal” for very long.
We moved in at the cusp of August and September, right before I turned 15. The summer before my freshman year. A year that would present itself to be full of lots of chin pimples, raging hormones, and inexplicably unexplainable events. We lived there from roughly around the time I turned 15 to roughly around the time I turned 16. Once again, for reasons that will become clearer later on in the story. We will start from the very first time it happened. And I remember, clearly, the very first time it did.
One thing I have failed to mention to you as I have introduced you to what my life was like at the time of this story, is that I was, and still am, very aware of my surroundings. I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at a very young age. And thus, I was constantly hyper-analyzing what was going on around me and with me.
One chilly New Jersey October morning, right after the excitement of a new year of school wore off and the dismay of a full year of school ahead of us had set in, my brother and I got into our first argument in the new apartment. And I was the catalyst. I remember waking up that morning. I dressed myself in my favorite Green Day t-shirt paired with a pair of light-wash overalls; I brushed through my long, dark hair and clumsily formed it into two braids as I listened to some Blink-182 playing quietly off my CD player. I made my bed, I took my meds, and right before I opened the door I applied my favorite perfume: Strawberry Secrets.
My favorite scent has always been strawberry. So much so that my mother had thought this perfume an appropriate start-of-the-year gift to send me off to high school. My room was littered with strawberry candles, strawberry phone cases, strawberry mugs, basically anything you could think of with a strawberry in it or on it. I had it.
As I finished off what had definitively been an over-application of the perfume, I strode a few steps from my desk to my bedroom door and attempted to open it.
Attempted. To open it.
It wouldn’t budge.
As I said before, I am very aware of my surroundings. Sometimes this can be to my detriment, however, in this case it had felt warranted. I had not locked my bedroom door the night before. I would have been aware of myself doing so. Besides, my mom was very strict with not allowing us to do so. My brother, Conrad, was diagnosed with asthma at a very young age. She always feared she would need to bring him his inhaler or to the hospital in the middle of the night and wouldn’t be able to reach him. I wound up eventually just becoming part of the rule by default.
Immediately I was pissed off. Allow me to explain to you how the locks on the apartment doors work. You can only lock from the inside, and once you had left the room and closed it, you were locked out. If the door was locked, anyone on the outside couldn't get in, and anyone on the inside had to manually unlock the door in order to get out. This angered me because I had immediately assumed Connie had done it. It was Halloween morning after all, and he always had a taste for mischief, especially when it meant messing with me. Connie was 17 at the time of my being 15. This often led to a lot of hijinks, as I’m sure anyone with siblings may be able to deduce.
I angrily stomped into Conrad’s room, steam practically coming out of my ears like a cartoon character, as I addressed him in his room. His glorified "room," for context, was conveniently basically a closet inside my mother’s. I needn't worry about a door being locked to get in. It was a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment that housed the three of us, and I was lucky enough to land the separate room.
“Con! What the hell? Real funny! So funny I forgot to laugh.”
“What the hell are you even on about?” he replied.
Classic 17 year old angst. Looking back, I should afford him the fact that it was 6:30 in the morning. And I had woken him up from his nightly 12 hours of sleep minimum.
“Mom could’ve gotten really pissed about that, if she found out, you know!”
My mother had already left for work about an hour prior.
Immediately he perks up in his bed. My mom is a no-nonsense kind of woman. Neither of us feared her, we feared disappointing her. So he quickly jogged into consciousness.
“About what? What did you do this time, G?”
I huff out a breath of annoyance at him. What game is he playing?
“Don’t Play dumb, Connie. The locked door. I know you snuck inside my room last night and locked it.”
What happened next is still burned into my mind to this day. Because as he said what he was about to say, I realized how true it was. And my panic heightened almost ten-fold.
“Now why the hell would I do that? You think I really woke up in the middle of the night and locked your door on you? You can still let yourself out. Just nobody can come in. I don’t even want to be in that girly, strawberry-filled mess anyway. Now get your scrawny ass out of my room. I need to get dressed. We leave in 5.”
Ever the poet, my brother Conrad. His closing statement serving as a stark reminder that he drove me to school every morning, and would not wait for my tardiness should it arise.
But it wasn’t until all his words truly set in that I realized he was right. He had no motive to lock my door from the inside out. But that left one question.
Who, or what, did?part 2

I am dying to know what these new programs are like, but since they're new I haven't seen anything on them. I'm very concerned that the programs won't found my child in Christ but in false promises that don't reflect how the Lord works. I also am terrified of speakers and teachers who get a pass for teaching iffy doctrine because they're funny and many people don't understand what the doctrine of Christ is anyway, and they're more concerned about converting people to the church under the assumption that they'll convert them to Christ's will later. I consider myself a faithful member, but I cringe when people just make up stuff that has nothing to do with the rock of our foundation. I'm too edgy for the mainstream latterdaysaints thread to be accepted there so I'm posting here because I know there's other people like me.
Here's some things to potentially include but it NEEDS TO BE THE NEW PROGRAMS ONLY. PLEASE don't use this to reminisce on the old days unless you intend to clarify that you don't know what's up now: Virtual FSY--famous speakers to avoid and why and can you turn the video feed off but still listen? Boys camp--do they do anything uncomfortable like girls camp does (weird reinactments, enforced etiquette, picking on the youngest or weirdest, cringey songs--we had one where the girls said they "got so fresh" with themselves that "I slapped my face", artificial faith promoting exercises, dress code enforcement, make everyone bear their testimony and celebrate when someone cries, goofy theme and cabin names, play favorites and make them leaders over their peers, wake them up early to prank/polar dip in the lake, or questionable supplies and tactics in the medical cabin). New at-home seminary--will I be welcome requesting this? We prefer to study the gospel at our own pace year-round rather than being forced to drive somewhere at an incovenient time of the day. I've heard in the past this was highly discouraged and you had to be excused from in-person seminary, but I've heard this is changing, and I know they have a virtual version but we don't want to do zoom seminary if we have to turn on the camera or do online work (is that required)? Will we get an institute-lite manual or told to refer to Come Follow Me? Is it year-round or school year only? New missions--I've heard that teaching missionaries treat service missionaries poorly on splits and they have to be monk-like just do to an unpaid job that may not even deal with people and/or they may have to support a non-profits' sketchy mission--how often do they actually get to do real needed work for the church and live flexibly like they did before they advertised service missions to the masses? Are they always working for non-profits or do they sometimes work for for-profits now? PLUS ANY BONUS CHANGES? For example trek growing up we were told all the men went to the Mormon Battallion and it was easy and the girls settled the Salt Lake Valley alone without their husbands and were miserable. Then the women had to do the women's pull and the men whimpered and said they felt sorry for us as they watched us take the hardest part of the trek alone as they got a break--I don't know the point of that activity, but it's wildly innacurate*. Please tell me that's changed!
There were lots of women with the Battallion and while most of them had to be dispatched the Battallion's journey appears to be far worse with the extreme lack of water, most of it polluted--on the flip side the first group to the Salt Lake Valley was mostly men--more women served in the military than rode wagons to the Valley. There are a lot of horrible journeys like the flight from Missouri, the Battallion, and the Martin Handcart company, and then the ships that Europeans took going west were no cakewalk--but no, the point of trek seems to be it's awful to be an american woman going west.

I'll be doing a separate post just for Season 2 of the reboot later. Anyways,

Average (C Tier)

16. Caleb (The Best First Boot) - Just a reminder that this list only takes S1 into account (in case you got used to Caleb dead last already) so of course I don't HATE this Caleb. There's nothing to hate here. While the character itself didn't really do anything, I like the role he plays in the narrative, being by far the best first boot in this show. Long gone are the days of the first elimination being some idiot nobody likes getting everybody to hate them for the sake of it! She says, planning on writing about Season 2 later
Caleb says his iconic catchphrase.
15. Axel (Totally Not An Expy) - While I'm usually not a fan of comparing characters and going "this character is basically just X mixed with Y!!", I have a hard time believing Axel wasn't made with being Neo-Eva in mind. She was angry and left second and that's it... And that did make me really curious as to what they'd do with Axel in the rematch. But that's for later.
Remember when everyone thought Axel was gonna be awesome because of this shot?
14. Nichelle (I HATE YOU JERRY!!!) - This might come off as a surprise, but I don't actually dislike Nichelle. She had an interesting concept (famous teen actress going to TD for exposure) with a neat execution (got "exposed" as a fraud on TV, disappointing her fans and leaving determined to improve herself). It was clear she wasn't meant to be "complete" in Season 1, and was just being set up for a bigger story in S2, and there's nothing really wrong with that! We'll see how that went later.
Nichelle hates 1/2 of the Tennis Rivals, for some reason.

Good (B Tier)

13. Priya (Abusive Parents) - Surprised to see the winner of the season this low? Don't get me wrong, this IS the 'Good' tier, so I do like Priya, she's just not really my type of character. I think all comparisons to Zoey and Sky are incredibly silly and a bit dumb, the only thing they have in common is being athletic, and Priya actually has a personality. Yes, it was clear from the start that she was created with being the winner in mind, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, with Priya having an unique concept (raised by TD fans) and fun interactions and dynamics with the other characters, making her obvious win be satisfying nonetheless (take NOTES, Sky). And even after everything, there is still a good setup for things she could do in the rematch, such as addressing her home life and the way she was raised. Boy, I sure hope that happens!
Just wanted to say Priya looks really cute with messy hair.
12./11. Wayne & Raj (Thing 1 & Thing 2) - After Katie & Sadie and Amy & Sammy, I didn't expect to see a 'duo character' I'd actually like. I always knew they wouldn't be the gay couple like most people expected, as it would've been a boring approach, but I did suspect ONE of them would be part of it. And I was right, Raj having a self-discovery moment during the show was very sweet, and so was Wayne being a supportive ally to his bestie, it's a really great message to send to the kids who watch the show (and part of why I don't really like gay Wayne headcanons, it takes away the impact of him being 100% supportive of his best friend despite not being queer himself). Small complaints though, I think it would've been nice if we got to know Raj's thoughts on his coming out instead of just Wayne's, and the 'package deal' characters being eliminated together isn't really my cup of tea either. I don't mind it that much though, because surely Season 2 will separate them and have them be apart from each other for a few episodes, right? ...R-Right?
First and last time we see the Hockey Bros acting mean.

Great (A Tier)

10. MK (Parody Of Annoying Celebrity, Somehow Good) - If you know me, or at least have seen my profile picture, then this placement is probably a surprise. S1 MK is probably one of the most unique concepts this show has had.A thief who takes her castmates' belongings? Fun. Hacking the confessional camera to watch everyone's confessionals? Interesting. Intentionally floating to fly under the radar? Very interesting. Annoying snarker? Yes please. Overall? Great combo. She's only really "low" on this list because she left before being able to put, well, any of her plans in practice. Fortunately, there's still season 2, where we'll see a lot more of her unique strategy and villainy, for sure!!!!
MK: \"I can't wait to be seen as nothing but shipping fodder by the fans next season!\"
9. Damien (Best Design, Hands Down) - And the winner of most unique character concept goes to... Yeah, him. Some guy who's never seen Total Drama and doesn't know what he signed up for? You're crazy if you don't think that's one of the most fun ideas for a new character you've seen. He used a concept other characters failed at (being the token normal/straight man) and made it work! Damien (in season 1) is probably the closest this show has ever had to just having a real person: Being flabbergasted at the insanity that happens in cartoon-land that other characters don't react to, without being played as the "haha token coward afraid of everything", which is something not usually done (...We'll get to season 2 later.). His early exit was sad, but made sense, this wasn't meant to be his season. We all know he was being given an easy, impossible to mess up, set-up for a bigger role in the rematch! There is no way to do this wrong!
Damien: \"Oh well, at least I'll totally have a good arc next season, right?\"
8. Julia (wth is a buttknuckle) - "omg what!! why is queen slay girlboss Julia not in top3 you know shes perfect slay gaslight gatekeep girlb-" Shut up. God. Very annoying fanbase aside, S1 Julia was a fun twist antagonist. The 'good vibes, vegan crystal girlie' instagram influencer being a sour, evil douchebag behind the scenes? Great bit, we all know most of them are like this in real life. Her villainy is criticized by some people for being "too Heather-like", which I disagree with. Sure, her constant immunity wins may seem like heavy plot armor, but unlike Island Heather, others weren't constantly dumbed down to make it work, most of her wins weren't due to dumb luck, (like Heather in Search and Do Not Destroy) and most importantly, Julia was full of flaws. She was a challenge beast, yes, but the constant immunities were the only things she had, for the show goes on its way to show her game otherwise is horrible. Her social game is atrocious, due to being unnecessarily rude to everyone, she had no alliances (and when she did they didn't last a day) and most of her attempts to scheme backfired. Remember when she tried to make Emma vote for Chase and that somehow resulted in them getting back together? Like, wow, making Emma want to vote for Chase is NOT a hard task, girlie, come on. Julia's flaws keep her character grounded and make her stand out from other villains. God, can you imagine if she was like Heather, and everyone got dumbed down to make her look more competent and cause stupid eliminations? That would suck! Not like that'd ever happen though, haha.
Julia telling her fanbase to attack anyone who criticizes her character.
7. Emma (Cringe Girl /affectionate) - God, she's so cringe (/pos). When I saw her face in Chase's intro, I knew there was going to be juicy drama and I'd live for it, but I was not expecting THAT trainwreck. I don't even know how to proceed with this paragraph properly without just calling her cute or stupid (affectionate) and calling it a day. I can't imagine the writers didn't have fun writing her and her extreme emotions; There's a lot of characters the fandom labeled as being "neurodivergent-coded", and while I see the vision with most of them, I think people overlook Emma as one (or maybe I'm just projecting onto her, whatever).While I don't like Chemma as a ship, I can't deny that they have a great dynamic, though it's funnier when it's Emma hating Chase while he tries to win her back, so Chemma getting back together at the end was a bit of a letdown. I do hope season 2 gives us more Chase and Emma individually without both of them being attached to each other though (clueless).
Emma laughs at someone being horribly hurt (cutely).
6. Millie (WOAH! GOOD WRITING!? IN MY TOTAL DRAMA!?) - Now, I know what some of you are probably thinking; "Millie is a horrible character she floated!!" "She foated and had to be carried by Priya!!" "She's a horrible friend she wrote mean things about Priya!!" Shut up shut up shut up. Millie haters, you guys are weak and aren't surviving the winter. Anyways, Millie makes me extremely happy, she has what I consider to be one of the best cases of character development in TD: First arriving with the intent of writing a thesis about how Gen Z is really stupid, befriending someone for the first time, growing to regret ever writing bad things about the others, and then being confronted about it and having to work to patch up her friendship with Priya? Total Drama hasn't had an arc this good in ages, and people think Millie is a bad character? I'm sorry, do you miss Skave or something? I totally understand not liking Millie due to finding her boring or uninteresting,those are valid reasons, but if you dislike Millie because you think she's a "bad person" who "didn't deserve being forgiven" (the amount of people I've seen say this is concerning), then I'm sorry, but I think you're stupid.
When you hate on Millie this is who you're hating btw

Fantastic (S Tier)

5. Scary "Lauren" Girl (I don't care if she's one-note stfu) - Scary Girl is a character I've noticed to be pretty divisive. The people who love her do so because they think she's pretty funny, and the people who hate her think she's a one-note gimmick. I'm the former, obviously, I see a lot of people complain that they find Scary Girl to be "overrated", (1. Not a valid reason to dislike a character 2. She literally isn't. Stop throwing that word around, it's already losing it's meaning) and while I do understand why people wouldn't like her, because yeah she does only have 1 joke, I think that one joke is really funny and consistently lands. Also I'd just like to point out that a lot of comic relief characters aren't very varied in terms of humor either but I don't think the fandom is ready to accept that yet. The hockey bros also only have 1 joke and it's less funny than Lauren's Oops, who said that? Wasn't me! Must've been the wind!
She's literally just a girl why are people afraid of her /j
4. Ripper (do you think Ripper has a fursona? no? just me? okay then) - Ripper in S tier?! I know, scandalous! "But you're not supposed to like Ripper he's a mean bully who farts and is gross he's like Owen!!" Shut up, NERD. Anyway, I'm not really fond of toilet humor, but Ripper made up for it by having a lot of hilarious jokes outside of farting (something people will insist is his entire character) and he has some depth that could use some more exploring, such has his home life and his relationship with his parents. Pretty much every dynamic he had with other characters, even if short, were bangers, proving that his character is super versatile. Chase, Zee, Priya, Millie, Axel, Damien... He just works with anyone. Him, Bowie and Millie are the three characters I believe you can pair up with literally anyone, and you can squeeze a good dynamic out of it.
Ripper knows we love him, because he's based.
3. Zee (I don't have a joke for this one bear with me) - I don't have much to say about him like everyone else, because Zee is a simple character. He's really funny, and that's it, and it just works. Dude's hysterical and that's why I love him. Yeah
Birds don't like Zee because birds are stupid.
2. Chase (Horrible Person, Hilarious Character) - Another probably controversial take, and I just know a certain someone on this sub will be very happy with this placement. Chase is, in my eyes, the best comic relief in this show, part of it is because of how unique and specific the joke with him is. We have a million "comically stupid" characters at this point, and we (or I) still love them regardless, but having a comedic character with a different brand of humor makes them stand out more. Chase is so unapologetically a jerk, and that's what makes him so funny to me. He's not a complete idiot like Tyler, Max, Raj, Wayne, Zee and Ripper are, in fact, in s1 he shows a lot of intelligence and common sense for a comic relief character, it's just that he's such a self-centered douchebag that he doesn't see anything wrong with his actions while everyone else recognizes him as a horrible individual, and that makes him so unique in the sea of "idiot men" characters that is TD. Episode 10 was one of the best episodes in the whole series, and the biggest contributors to that? Come on, you know it's him and Emma. They are everything, they are the moment.
\"Chase how many people did you run over that day?\" Chase:
1. Bowie (Drama King and Queen) - When I first saw his design in the promo, I admit I was very afraid? Not because I didn't think a stereotypically gay character could work, but because this is Total Drama. I was afraid they'd mess up and accidentally make the most offensive shit ever like the last few times they tackled minorities (cough cough Mike). When I first watched the season? All worries left my body in an instant. My God? STRATEGY?! IN TOTAL DRAMA? That isn't just an evil villain manipulating everyone using plot armor??? It was a BLESSING to see, even if I was a little upset he got villanized by the end of the season, it does show that TD will always portray ambition to win as inherently evil and something that needs to be punished (and it certainly doesn't make me very excited for future seasons' villains). For what it's worth, I enjoyed watching an actual strategist character onscreen that was neither fully evil or a moron the writers wanted to believe you to be smart, that makes Bowie the first ever. Also the queer rep? Really awesome. I loved his relationship with Raj, and how healthy it was compared to other TD relationships, and I love how it shows a "villain"/strategy focused player can be a good person/partner. It felt so surreal (in a good way) watching a TD character that wears gender non-conforming clothes and has a very flamboyant and sassy personality. Bowie also has some of the best quotes in the season ("MEEE!" and "Oh my, did I do that? Yes I diiiiid! I'm going to be a MILLIONAAAAAAAIRE!" are some of the best ones)
\"Lift a log if you're the best character in the series\" Bowie:
Final S1 list:
This list looks so positive, right? Well, if you want negativity be sure to look forward to the season 2 post.
Final Thoughts: Overall, excellent cast! the only characters below B tier are the first three boots. A great and colorful cast in a good season filled with great writing, and there's even a second season after it? This is a recipe for success, surely the second season will be as great as the first one, if not better, right? Right?
... Yeah who am I kidding. See you guys next post, when I cover this same cast in THAT OTHER season.

recently moved into one of DLFs colonies ( from delhi) and was amazed to see the power cuts . thought less compared to rest of gurgaon . but even 30-40mins its quite unbearable in summers. 10km away in delhi there is seamless power, 0 power outages all year
All of this because of an incompetent organisation DHBVN.
people outside gurgaon barely know about it.
what can the youth do ?
sure we cant do something with immediate impact.
I have been contemplating ways in which we can raise awareness, mocks the city at national level, let people know the hyped up city has issues .hurt the cities luxury/perfect image.
A website parked on a funny domain. yet legally doable
PrivatiseDHBVN.org TataPowerBuyDHBVN.io
people can signin show their support or like sign a petition . funny memes and comic mockery “gurGAON Times” something like that. or we raise money via this and donate to a cause.
i don’t know just need to mock the city at a national level. the mock should be famous somehow. idea is to hurt the cities image at a scale. maybe this will help?
join the discussion and give some ideas 💡

first to post hosts the slam, that’s the rules as I see them
No need for conceding double posts are just fine but if you don’t mind just add your reply
Support the weekly poem submittal accompany with rap beats or metal anyway you choose, you goose
good poetry? I guess some good poetry is boring or too long or annoying
I just do my thing one foot after another posts some images post some poems try not to get lost in silly drama
So join us get some karma karma farm this little gathering this church of mutual support creating beauty and contentment
a little post is all this is a little comment is all i ask of you if it rhymes a bit or holds some beauty all the better
while I like zen masters I am not one to beat you not with a stick just meet you
“if you see a poet on the road, show them a poem” Maybe that’s all we attempt here in this slam’s home

So me(19F) and my ex(21M) broke up 3 days ago because he’s going to Korea to study for 2y and plan on living there forever and I am staying in the US. I watched all those tiktoks and read all those reddits hearing people say that the guy will always come back. However I believe mine wont and we will never contact again because we are in 2 different paths from now on but I just want to hear your advices so that I can give up my last hope. This is a pretty long one. Please forgive me.
So I am an international student and I got a scholarship to go to the US for uni and I plan on residing here in the future. Everything is hard for me I only made one best friend who is from the same country as me and that’s it. I cannot make any white friends because it’s hard. Let alone finding a guy to date. My type is white tall athletes guys and all of them in my school only want white soro girls so I dont have hope finding a boyfriend in my school. That’s why I tried downloading dating apps. I am a virgin and I’ve never been in a relationship before and I never lost my first kiss. And s*x and first kiss are precious to me.
We matched on Tinder 6 months ago and he was very active and tried to get to know me. He’s pretty special to me because he was looking for a serious relationship and asked for my insta instead of my snapchat. When everyone there is just trynna hook up he really want a relationship and when I said I will not have s*x until I graduate will you wait for me and he respects me. We went on few dates and things went really well because he’s exactly my type, tall, dirty blonde and blue eyes. He even made the effort to drive to see me every single time because he’s 1h15 away and I dont have a car. And he paid for things too. His type is Asian too because I noticed that he followed many attractive Asian famous girls and many friends from Korea. I noticed one in there name A that he liked every single posts of her. But we were nothing at that point so I didnt say anything. He was just back from a trip to Asia and he likes Korea the most. He said that country is beautiful, safe and cheaper than Us and he did tell me he want to move there to live in the future. But at that point I was just planning on dating for fun so I dont care and keep going.
Funny enough we keep talking even though we dont have anything in common. After getting to know basically every basic things about each other, our conversation is plain and is just ‘wyd’ ‘im tired’ ‘im working’ etc. It’s shallow and not very deep. I noticed that but Im lonely so having a guy like that everyday is actually amazing to me. I dont have the intention of marrying him or anything and he doesnt too. But after several dates I slowly get attached. He hugged me, carried me up like a princess. Everything I have dreamt of before. And finally that day I lost my first kiss to him and he asked me to be his gf and I said yes. It was amazing.
So after we are officially dating. I got jealous of his followings and easily annoyed because he’s a super nonchalant guy.
I made a mess about him following those revealing models and he said he didnt remember because it’s a long time ago and delete all of them. However, when it comes to that girl A and some other I mentioned he said I will delete those I dont know but she’s just my friend and I wont delete her. ‘We dont even talk.’ Just a friend he knows from his Korea trip. Then I let it ago, but then after a while I noticed him liking her posts again and again and each time I fought with him and finally he told me he wont like her post anymore and he stopped.
But then I noticed him following a new girl B and she’s from Korea and I asked him and he said she’s his Korean teacher. I feel something sus but I cant do anything. He’s trying his best to learn Korean just to be able to live there and dont even care about my country. He doesnt even try to say my name correctly or learn anything about my country.
He’s really busy and he trynna work hard to earn money and his sleep schedule is really messed up. Im always annoyed because he takes hours to reply to me. And many small fights like how he only reply to my ‘i miss you’ but never say it first, and never call me, only texting. After a month of dating we got into a big fight. Imma sum it up. I asked him to come see me on Friday but then his grandpa got into a health problem so he had to drive his mom to the hospital and he said he will pick me up on Sat. I was all prepared and woke up early and then he overslept. Then he said he’ll come at 3.30 in the afternoon. I was waiting again. Until he texted me at 4. saying that his car tag exprired so he couldnt come see me. I was so sad but cant help it because it’s all valid reasons. I waited untill next week again, and I asked him to meet again. And then he overslept again, leaving me hanging and waiting like an idiot. I was so upset this time I texted him paragraphs saying not good things like why are you so irresponsible why dont you care about my feelings etc. if you dont text me back before 10a let’s just break up. Next morning he woke up and told me ‘you know what, we not gonna work’ then he unadded me on snapchat and unfollow me on instagram and unfollow me on tiktok too. But i still can text him on insta and imess and discord. I was so shocked and begged him to come back everywhere. I was crying like a baby dont wanna lose him. It was a traumatizing day for me. Eventually he responded and said ‘you dont know but I forgave you many times’ ‘maybe im not good enough for you’ and stuffs like that.. but eventually he added me back and said he’ll give me one last chance.
We got back for 2 days and now he’s lost a large part of interest for me. Then I asked to meet again and he said he cant because his schedule changed again and I got upset again and he unadded me again, block me on insta and tiktok and discord, but I still can text him on Imess. Then I apologized again and we got back again and he said ‘I do mean the last one’.
Then Im constantly careful not to hurt him or fight and we got on dates and we got more physically close to each other. However I dont feel any deep connection we’re just very shallow. Idk how to explain it. I think we’re just there to not be lonely. At least for me. I feel like he doesnt give a shit if i leave or not anymore.
Things go well for another month then I realize summer is comming and I’ll have to leave him for 3 months. I was not happy bc he’s not upset ab the fact that im going away at all. Then I noticed he slowly get colder towards me. I mean it’s not obvious but he doesnt crave for touching hugging me as much as before. I have to ask for kiss and hugs. And he only texted me on snap and never on instagram where I noticed he’s online everyday. His snap scores also went up 10 every morning and Idk if im a creep but like 1 or 2 even when he’s not snapping me so he’s snapping others. I know he has like 1 or 2 guy friends but I took a look at his phone sometimes (which he’s always trynna hide whenever he’s w me) and noticed some girls as well. But maybe just for streaks. And ofc he’s still texting that B girl for Korean lesson. And A girl is now in Japan for a trip. A and B post stories EVERY SINGLE DAY and it’s their cute photos and I know my bf is online on instagram everyday and watch those stories so I am very unhappy.
Then the day come when I have to go away for summer. He asked me when Im back and I said September. Then he said he’ll go to Japan in August for 1 month and I said okay. So we are in LDR now and I asked him to call me bc I need more contact to feel loved and valued. He said he will, but he never call me. He said it’s just he just never call anyone. I was upset many times but I also let it go. Also he never said he loved me. Only like.
Then I saw him like a thirst trap reel of a revealing famous korean girls 2 weeks ago. I was so fcking offended but he’s sick so im not making any fuss. After 4 days I decided to bring that up and texted him paragraphs on insta, imess and snap about how offended and sad I am and asked him why he do that when we are dating. Just for him to seen on insta and imess and reply on snap ‘I dont know’. Eventually, i let it go again because I dont wanna lose him if I take things further.
Then we went on for a couple more days before he texted me ‘I have something to tell you. I’ll go to Japan and to Korea and study there for 2 y w the intention of living there. I’ll be back sometimes to the US but obv that’s not enough for you’ then it’s some more lots of texts of me trying to keep it until he finally say ‘it’s best we break up, it wont work’.
Then he blocks me on everything, Insta, tiktok, snap, discord, mess. I dont dare to check if he blocks my number or not. And he’s gone, cold-heartedly, so easily as if I am nothing. I asked my friends to stalk him for a bit and notice that right after he blocks me. He likes B’s posts, his Korean teacher. And he like A’s posts, the girl he promised he wont ever again, who’re in Japan rn. So he moved on, and ready for his next life, no look back, no regret. While I am here. I think he’s the best I can find on dating apps, because everyone there just trynna hu. And I wont be able to find bfs in school. So i’ll be alone for a long time. Idk what to do, im so pessimistic. And i still want him to crawl back for an ego boost, that at least he still miss me. But apparently not, he’s already moved on, and already didnt give a shit ab me for a long time. So what tiktok says is wrong right. He’ll never come back..

Does anyone want to have a discussion about the use of punctuation in poems? I would love to see some poems where you think the punctuation or lack thereof works well and contributes to the meaning the poet is trying to convey.
Personally I find it really hard to decide how to use punctuation in my poetry. Sometimes I spend ages changing up the punctuation and even then I’m not always happy with it. But I do tend to overcomplicate things!

Hi all. This is not a question for a specific poem nor is it homework; what tools/methods do you use when identifying use of meter in poems and interpreting it? I find it hard to recognize if a poet is using meter and harder to identify what type of meter and if the meter breaks anywhere. I know what a foot is and what a trochee and an iamb is but even when I speak aloud it's difficult for me to identify the meter--I constantly second-guess myself and am not confident in determining the meter of poems. Any tips you guys have for dealing with this issue?

I’m looking for a poem I’m not sure of the title. Scottish poet John Purser wrote a poem about his favourite cow he needed to put down as a result of mad cow disease. I found his website but I can’t track down the poem anywhere. Does anybody have a link by chance?

Part 1
Part 2
Content Warning: Child Abuse
***
Darkness gave way to dimness as I opened my eyes and saw slivers of gray light printed on the ceiling like lines on the page of a ruled notebook. In the distance, I heard the sound of pans clanking against the kitchen stove, and I became ever-aware of the scent of cinnamon and bacon sneaking in from under my closed bedroom door. For a moment, I was back in sixth grade. My dad was downstairs cooking up his famous from-scratch buttermilk pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. It was probably 7:00, maybe 7:05, and I had fifteen minutes to get up, shower, dress, eat, then it was off to Middle School with dad: for me to learn, him to work.
It was the day we were set to be assigned our Ancient Civilizations project. Unless something went terribly wrong, I would be choosing Ancient Rome. I didn't know much about it, other than it was some great empire, but even then I didn't really understand what an empire was. I was just happy that I would get to build something with my dad. I turned on my side and looked at the closed blinds, the source of the gray lines, then the cabinet with all my trophies, and finally the wobbly, firetruck-red chair pushed under my desk. I was home at last. The past fifteen years were nothing but a dream. There was no blinking. No malevolent demon chasing me. No inexplicable chaos…
It was a sweet fantasy. But one that became bitter the longer I tried to chew on it.
I swept my legs out from under the covers and sat, face-down, on the corner of my twin mattress. My feet were adult's feet. My room was my former room. And that was Trent downstairs cooking breakfast. Unless, of course, it was my dad, in which case I'd have bigger problems than merely waking up from a good dream.
After changing into a fresh shirt and pants, I went downstairs and saw that it was, in fact, Trent cooking breakfast. He was wearing a plain t-shirt through which I could see the ripples of his large back muscles as he whisked what I presumed was pancake batter. He must not have heard me, because he didn't turn around when I made it to the end of the hall. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, and watched him for a minute as he finished whisking the batter, then poured it onto a hot griddle (spilling a few dribbles on the counter in the process), watched it bubble, flipped it, then transferred the golden medallion onto a plate stacked five high. Next to the pancakes was a plate filled with bacon, and a small aluminum pan of scrambled eggs.
"Smells good," I said at last. "Find everything okay?"
I thought I might startle him with my abrupt appearance; instead, Trent looked over his shoulder, chewing on a piece of bacon. He swallowed and said, "Oh, it's you. Yeah, I hope you don't mind me using your kitchen. I thought I'd make us some breakfast."
It occurred to me then that Trent likely wasn't a guest in other people's homes very often. Lucky for him, I didn't mind him using a kitchen that hadn't been mine in many years. I was going to tell him as much when I saw an opened box of Bisquick sitting on the counter. I pointed to it and asked, "you found that in the pantry? My dad usually makes his pancakes from scratch."
He turned to look at the box, then back at me. "No, I went out and got that. And the bacon and eggs. I didn't want to dig into your supply without asking, and you were asleep, so..."
I felt my eyebrows furrow as I checked the time on the stove-clock. "It's 8:17 in the morning. Are you telling me you went out to the store, bought all these ingredients, then came back and cooked them? Just how early did you get up?"
"Around five," he answered as casually as if I had asked his dog's name. "I don't usually get much sleep. Around four, five hours is all I need. It's actually unusual for Antennas to need more than that amount. But I suppose you are unusual."
I opened my mouth in disbelief. Not only had he commandeered my kitchen, he was calling me unusual? At 8-fricken-17 in the morning?
"Sorry," Trent said, reading my expression, "I'm… well, let's just say I've not had many personal relationships. I'm used to being blunt. It's just easier that way." He took out a plate and transferred two pancakes, some eggs, and a few slices of bacon onto it. Then he held it up to me as a peace offering.
I sighed. "This better be good," I said with a wry smile and took the plate.
"Trent-certified, but no guarantees. Refunds not allowed." He replied, which made me giggle.
We sat across from one another at the dining room table. The meal was pretty good, but it was no dad's special: the pancakes were clearly box pancakes, the scrambled eggs lacked cheese and had a little too much pepper, and the bacon was… well it was bacon, no complaints there. Still, it was nice to settle down and have a somewhat normal morning.
After we ate, Trent unfurled the long arc of his life, which began as the second youngest brother of eight siblings in rural Oklahoma. Trent's 'pops' was in the logging business, first as a lumberjack, then as an owner of his own logging company. His dad acquired the business while Trent was still young, so school was never a high priority for him—at least not the way contributing to the household was. The rest of his childhood he summed up in two lessons: "Being 'close' has nothing to do with distance," and "don't touch strange plants in the woods."
I asked him if he kept in touch with any of his siblings, to which he responded, saying, "The only reason they haven't had a funeral for me is because it would be too much work." When I asked him to elaborate, he said he'd not had contact with anyone in his immediate family for over a decade. He kept tabs on them. For example, he knew his mother had dementia, and his dad was forced into retirement by his oldest brother (who had gone on to take over the logging company). His sisters were all married and moved to other parts of the country. He considered reaching out several times, but his situation required a degree of security that wasn't conducive of close family ties, not that there were particularly strong ties even before he broke contact. Trent admitted to being a bit of a black sheep.
"It all circles back to one of my jobs as a Home Inspector," he explained. "After I moved out, I tried college and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I entered the workforce and did a bunch of odd jobs. Construction, carpentry, plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for a while. But I ended up in Home Inspection. There was one job in particular which made me aware of…" Trent paused and gestured toward the space between us, "our situation. The blinks. You remember what I told you about origin points being like a station where other realms intersect with our world? Well, this house was like Union Station or JFK airport if you prefer a plane analogy. There was a pile of junk up to my knees in the basement of that house; all of it had been blinked in. I spent a couple days on the property, running tests, trying to identify the strange phenomenon, but on day three I rolled up to an army of what I thought at the time were Feds, parading around the property like ants on an anthill and sectioning it off with crime-scene tape." I saw disgust funnel into Trent's expression. "They're not Feds at all though. At least not anymore. I call them "the Organization," a group of people who lead in the formalized understanding of what you know as 'blinking'. And they're the reason I have to take precautions."
I considered this for a moment. Trent's story was certainly plausible, but I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. "Okay, so, what does this 'Organization' want? You make it seem like they're not good people. Have they tried attacking you?"
This caused Trent to laugh for a solid ten seconds. "Sorry, it's just… I mean if you knew what I knew, you might think it's funny, too."
"Then tell me"
Trent took a deep breath, then released. "It's a long story. The gist of it is this. The Organization has a certain device which I call 'the Receiver'. Think of it like a giant antenna—no, not us kind of Antennas, an actual antenna. It's like the machine equivalent of us, but with a billion times the bandwidth. Their goal is to use the Receiver to map our world in relation to other dimensions, then use that map to establish dominion over everyone and everything. In order to do this, they need muscle: both human muscle, and Antenna muscle. They're in the process of harvesting as many of us they can find. They're like a giant diamond company who is taking to the mines. When they find a stone, they take it back to their factory for cutting and refinement. In real terms, they run tests on us and attempt to augment our powers. The ultimate goal is to create a 'Strong Antenna', or an Antenna capable of causing phase shifts—blinks." Trent saw from my expression that he was starting to lose me, so he stood up and began rolling up his shirt.
"What are you doing?" I asked, turning away. Then I saw what he wanted to show me. There was a long scar beginning high up on his ribs and slashing all the way down to his left hip. There was also what appeared to be a patch of burn marks on his stomach.
"It was early on when I got these." Trent explained. "I was naive. I actually thought I'd be able to reason with these people. The only reason I escaped was because of dumb luck and a box of hand grenades. But that's a tale for another time. I learned two important lessons that day. First, the Organization isn't fucking around. And two, they aren't immortal. Most of them are regular, every-day humans, except for their obsession with power." Trent let his shirt fall, covering up the marks. "I ran into them again recently at their Headquarters. My team and I are working on a plan to…" he paused, seemingly weighing his words, then changed gears. "Well, I guess we can go over that another time."
I couldn't help but feel that Trent was holding something back. As much as I tried to resist thinking about yesterday, the old demon-man's words kept ringing in my head. You think he can help you? He's only here to help himself. Then I thought about what Trent said at the deli: "that's the thing that got me really interested in you. Somehow you seem to be able to control it without gear, just by praying." Did Trent think I was a Strong Antenna? Is that the only reason he's helping me? Because he wants to recruit me? And if that is the case, what if I said 'no'?
"Listen, Trent," I started, but I saw Trent was already nodding. Still, I pressed on. "I need you to tell me what I'm actually doing here. Why did you agree to help me? And what does helping me really mean? I want to know the truth."
"The truth is…" Trent started, then stopped and looked out the glass door that led onto the deck. I looked too and saw a sparrow had alighted on our old bird feeder. It tried pecking at some of its non-existent grains, then sang what I assumed was a song of displeasure before taking back off to the skies.
"The truth is: I do want to recruit you. I think you have the potential to be the strongest tool in my arsenal, but I won't require it. To date, I've helped 53 of our kind, but only seven have stayed on. Most decide to go on and live normal lives." Trent scooted his plate to the side. "In our case, this can essentially go one of two ways. In either instance, we pass through Chicago for two stops. First, I need to meet up with an associate who has something to drop off to me. Then I need to stop at a storage locker and trade out some gear that will allow me to open a phase portal. When we arrive at your origin point, I'll open the portal and you'll look inside. Based on everything you've told me, I'm guessing that childhood accident was when the demon appended itself to your life. By seeing how it entered your life, you should be able to figure out how to dispel it. At least that's the working theory. Returning to the origin point has always worked for the other Antennas, although I must admit your situation is different, but I can't imagine it's so different that this method won't work at all. After you return demon-free, you're free. You can walk out and never see me again and hopefully you'll live a happy and peaceful life. Or you can decide to throw your lot in with mine, and I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, so to speak." Trent looked into my eyes, and when I didn't respond for a few seconds, he said, "that's it. That's all I got."
I smiled and responded with one sentence.
"When do we leave?"
***
Memories have a strange architecture. In some ways, they are the great safety net of our experiences: collecting them like a bucket under a leaky roof. In other ways, they are an eternal reminder that nothing ever truly lasts. Perhaps a better way of thinking about memories is as the ghosts of our past lingering in the present. As I took one last stroll through my childhood house, feeling that it might be my last time for a long while, I felt the imprints of childhood memories press into my awareness: I could hear my father's voice reading to me at my bedside; I could see him holding one of my stuffed animals above my head as I wrestled him for it; I could recall the times when I'd sneak down the stairs late at night and quietly open the freezer, grab the ice cream carton, then head back upstairs to eat it.
I felt a yearning to return to those memories: to walk into the fictitious pictures my mind was painting on the canvas of my present. I knew I couldn't return, but I still wanted something to hold onto. I went back to my room and grabbed the cotton-stuffed tomato from off my closet cabinet. Then I walked through my dad's study and removed a volume I recalled him frequently reading, a hard-cover book with a green binding called, "A Collection of Great Works". I placed these items by my feet in the passenger seat of Trent's van, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered something else.
"My plant!" I blurted.
"Your what?"
"My plant—and my car. I left them it the deli. Do you think we could swing by and get it?"
Trent checked the time, then said, "Yeah, I guess we can. I just hope it isn't towed."
Luckily, it wasn't. I half-expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there wasn't one of those, either. I unlocked the door to my Jetta and got into what felt like an active oven. "Hot!" I said and rolled down all the windows, then cranked up the AC. I saw my plant resting in the cupholder that I'd left it in the previous day. I picked it up and touched its soil. It was dry and beginning to crack. Hang on little guy, I thought. Then I led the way back to my house.
When I arrived, I parked at the head of the driveway. I turned off the car, then ran inside with the young tomato plant, bringing it to the upstairs bathrooms sink and dousing it in water. I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to add, but I figured after the sauna experience it had yesterday, I could afford to go a little overboard. Once it was fed, I opened the small purple drapes and placed it on the windowsill which faced East, meaning it would hopefully get plenty of morning sunlight.
"Good, now?" Trent asked after I hopped back in the passenger seat of the van.
"Yeah," I said. "Good now."
"Then lets get a move on."
***
Road tripping with Trent was a much different experience than when we were driving for our lives. For one, Trent wasn't nearly as tense. He drove with the windows down and one hand on the steering wheel like out of a Mustang commercial, talking intermittently about his adventures: people he'd met, jobs he'd done, close calls. He was like a living radio. And when his personal station wasn't on, he was playing one of his CD's—classic rock, mainly. When he was in an 'off' period, I found myself looking out the window at the rolling wheat fields and cloudy blue sky. Journey was playing, and the lyrics to one of the songs crept into my head and reverberated there:
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow…
I've been trying to make it home,
Got to make it before too long…
Ooh I can't take it, very much longer…
In a strange way, I felt like I was leaving home. But in another way, I was going back. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have a home at all. Did I ever have one? These past couple days had called everything about my life into question, to the point where the past seemed as mysterious as the future, and both intersected at that one place in the woods. The place where it all began. The place we were headed.
We only stopped once at a gas station to refuel, get snacks, and use the bathroom. Otherwise it was smooth sailing, other than one heated discussion with Trent that began when he addressed his vehicle as "Car" for the fifth time.
"Okay, you need to come up with a better name than that."
"What do you mean?" Trent asked, seeming genuinely confused.
"You have a super-car and you named it 'Car'. That's actually embarrassing."
"But, it is a car."
I facepalmed. "First of all, it's a van."
"A van is a type of car."
"Second of all, would you name your kid, 'kid'?"
Trent thought it over for what I thought was much too long. At last he concluded, "No, I'd probably name him 'boy', or if it's a girl, 'girl'."
After five more minutes of his childish banter, we settled on the name "Ava"—my choice, after rejecting his runner-up name "Scar".
At around the seven hour mark, I dozed off, then woke up a couple hours later to the sensation of the van dipping, then bumping up into an elevated climb. The evening sunlight that was pressuring my eyelids to open, dissipated, and everything was suddenly dark. I opened my eyes and saw we had entered a parking garage. Trent pulled into an open spot on the second level.
"We're here," he said and gathered up his gun which he stashed in a driver's side underboard compartment that I'm guessing he had installed himself.
"I see that"
"You want to wait here, or—"
I opened the car door, which was answer enough for Trent. We both got out and started down Maple Avenue. I had been to several cities before, Chicago among them, but the size of the buildings always struck me with awe. As we walked alongside dozens of other pedestrians, I looked up and traced the closest tower to its peak, guessing how many stories it was in my head. Then I'd be pulled out of my game by the honking of some nearby vehicle.
We continued for two blocks until Trent made a path directly toward the nearest Starbucks. I didn't know what I was picturing for a meeting with his associate, but it definitely wasn't a meetup at a coffee shop. Still, I followed him in. Then when I saw that Trent was leading me to a corner table where a casually dressed Chinese girl who appeared even younger than me was sitting, I blurted in a hushed tone, "her? She's your associate?"
"Took you long enough," said the Chinese girl, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of homework assignment.
"And she's in school?" I asked, incredulous.
The associate looked to me, then to Trent (who nodded), then back to me. "It's just a cover. I'm glad to see it still works, though." She reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Allison. It's nice to meet you."
Trent gave me a smirk, then said, "looks can be deceiving."
I grunted an affirmation and shook Allison's hand. "I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you, too."
"You have it?" Trent asked, skipping right to business.
"Of course," Allison replied and removed a mailing package from her backpack, setting it on the table. "You want to go make sure it works?" She asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with her eyes.
Trent seemed to think it over for a second, then looked at me. But before he could say anything, Allison cut back in—
"—I'll stay with her. It's been a while since I've had any female company. Why don't you let us girls talk while you take care of that?" She said in a seductive yet authoritative tone which garnered her years that her appearance did not reflect.
Trent hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said. Then he hurried out the door in the direction we had come from.
"Come, sit with me." Allison invited. "Tell me about yourself."
I took a seat on the small wooden seat opposite Allison, then crossed my legs. "What do you want to know?" I asked, feeling discomfort rise in my stomach. Nothing about this situation, from the mysterious package, to Trent leaving me alone with this girl, to the girl herself, whose voice was as velvety smooth as the latte she was stirring with a black coffee straw, sat right with me.
"I'm curious about what you think of Trent."
"Trent?" I repeated. I realized this was the first time I was putting any of my thoughts about Trent or our relationship into words. "I guess... he's a pretty straightforward guy. He seems to know what he's doing."
Allison flashed me a small smile, then took a sip of her latte. I saw the sticker on her drink read "Chai". Then she set the cup down and sighed. "Yes, he's very straightforward. Definitely doesn't mince words." She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a rich black, like onyx pebbles, but there was something about the way the light refracted off them which simulated a kind of inward motion, as if they were tiny whirlpools. Her smile spread across her lips. "I'm curious. What did he tell you?"
"Tell me about what?"
"About what you're doing. About where you're off to. What's the plan?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, but it immediately occurred to me that maybe she didn't know. I never saw Trent with a cellphone. Just how did he communicate with his 'associates'? And what if he didn't want her to know what we were doing for a good reason? Should I tell her?
"No, Trent keeps his cards close to his chest. He always has."
"Don't you work together, though?"
Allison waved her left hand in the air. "Of course, but it's because of the nature of our work that most of our communication is done in person, so Trent doesn't tell me much outside of the current job. I was just curious, is all."
"That makes sense. I mean, I'm actually pretty curious about what you do, too."
"Oh?" Allison's voice went high, as if she suddenly sensed an opening. "Then, why don't we trade stories. You tell about your trip, and I'll tell you about mine."
I thought it over for a second. I really did want to hear what Allison had to say, and she was Trent's co-worker, it's not like I was spilling crucial secrets to an enemy. "We're currently on our way to Southern Illinois. Specifically, we're going back to my origin point so I can confront a demon that Trent thinks blinked into my life there."
Allison stopped stirring, but her eyes didn't break from mine. "A demon, huh?" She raised the cup and took a long sip, then placed it back on the table and continued stirring. "I met a demon once," she started, looking up at the walls as if her life was playing on a screen there. "It was back in China, where I was born." She dropped her attention back to me. "Do you mind if I reminisce a little? Maybe you can get something out of it."
I shook my head, but something in my gut started to stir again. Allison continued.
"I was born during the Era of the Once Child Policy. As a result, my mother decided to leave me in a shoebox on the side of the road. I was a girl, so that's just how it was... Like many other babies in my... 'condition', I ended up in foster care. However, for whatever reason, I wasn't adopted. Years passed, and when I turned six, the government decided I'd be of better use building our impoverished town's GDP in a factory that assembled electronic devices for Western countries. Mostly they had me cleaning, but when I turned eight, one of the employees asked for my help with one of the soldering machines. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for me. I sliced open the ring finger of my right hand. I remember specifically seeing the bone underneath the split flesh and thinking it looked so small and white. The employee claimed to have nothing to do with my accident, and the management declared my injury "minimally invasive" and bandaged it up. Two weeks later and who would have guessed that the wound would become infected, and, well..."
Allison dropped the straw into her cup and raised her right hand, spreading the fingers out for me to see. There were only four. Her ring finger was missing, and a small v-shaped scar had taken its place.
"I'm lucky that the surgeon was experienced enough to take out the whole digit, that way it healed in a way which makes it somewhat difficult to notice. You didn't notice, after all. But, then again, is that really luck?" She made a fist and brought it to her lips, stifling a laugh. "No... Now I remember. My luck was still yet to come." She continued stirring. "Because, you see, after that incident, they moved me to a clothing factory with a boss who had a penchant for getting drunk and roughing up his workers, and, well, one night I was walking back to foster care when I heard the outside door to the manager's office slam shut, and there he went, stumbling, slurring insults, curses, and here I was, perfectly in his path. We met eyes, and in them I saw absolutely nothing. A hollow shell of a man, and I can still remember what it looked like to see that shell fill with a demon."
Allison's eyes went wide with some strong emotion that I couldn't place. "He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out into the field, far away from civilization. I tried to fight at first, but every time I tried to lunge away, I was only ripping a hole in my own scalp. It felt like flames were spewing from my head, and my only respite was when the blood eventually cooled over the wound. By the time he had thrown me against the rock, I'd already all but given up. Then, when my head met the stone, I heard a pop and my grip on the world loosened. The man continued touching me, but it was as if I was disconnected now, floating somewhere above my own head, and gravity was beginning to reverse, causing me to float higher and higher, away from the horrible nightmare below."
Allison paused for a moment, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
"Then I saw the most bright light I'd ever seen. At the time I thought it was either the Sun or Heaven or something like that. It was just too bright for this world. But then after looking for a little longer, I noticed it was in the shape of a person. It reached out toward me, and I had never been so quick to respond. When I touched it, I felt all my pain immediately dissipate. And I felt warm and... peaceful. And I was no longer in the sky. I was back in the field. But when I looked around, the man was gone. Vanished, right out of existence. I didn't understand it at the time, but that was my first experience with the Shifts. All I knew then was that I was free, and I damn well wasn't going to waste that. I ran as far as I could, away from the factories, the foster home, the corrupt governments and corporations. I kept running until I arrived at a City that didn't know me. That didn't want to know me. And I liked it that way, because it's easier to live as a ghost than as a victim."
Allison perked up, and when I turned around to see what for, I saw Trent entering back through the door.
"But you know what's interesting?" Allison blurted out, her voice becoming quieter. "Trent never took me back to confront my demon." Her voice became a whisper. "In fact, I can't recall him ever taking any of us back."
For a moment the whole world became a still frame. Allison's clear, olive skin, and dark eyes, made darker with eyeliner; her narrow nose; her small lips now coiling into a smile. My entire body was a hair trigger hat only needed the slightest force to set it off. And when Trent placed his hand on my shoulder, I whirled around and narrowly missed a haymaker that swept just shy of Trent's face.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" he said and stepped back with his palms up. "It's just me. Is everything okay?"
I turned back to Allison, but she seemed different now. Her expression was benign; confused, even. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I—you"
"We were just talking about where you were off to next." Allison said without a hint of pretense.
"Okay, well, chat time is over. It's time to go." Trent said and started guiding me toward the door. I turned back and saw Allison mouth some words which I swear I heard, as if they had been directly transmitted into my brain.
"See you soon" she purred.
She was smiling.
***
The next leg of the trip passed mostly in silence. It was a little over an hour to the storage facility which was located just South of Chicago. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I pictured Allison's smile. I wanted to ask Trent if demons could possess Antennas, if somehow one of us could become compromised, but then I remembered Allison's words and stopped myself. Because I didn't know if I could really trust Trent. I tried to tell myself I could trust him—that it was Allison who was the liar. Her whole persona seemed fake at best, and possessed at worst. But, then... what if she was telling the truth? What if Trent was the enemy?
He sensed my quietness and tried striking up a couple conversations, but I only gave one-word answers. Somehow, our trust was so brittle that a single, well-placed sentence was enough to snap it. When he asked if everything was okay, I lied and said that I just had a headache and needed more rest. So I leaned my head against the stuffed tomato and tried to sleep, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to.
We arrived at the facility just as the sun was setting for the night. Trent pulled up to the self-service gate and scanned a card which caused the automatic doors to swing open. We looped down a couple rows of the outdoor units until we came to #48.
"We're here," Trent prompted, but this time I didn't budge. I felt his eyes on me after he turned off the ignition. "Hey," he called. "Are you awake?"
I was silent.
I heard Trent quietly click open his door, then close it the same way. I waited a few seconds then turned my head and watched him from the driver's side mirror. He opened the storage locker, then walked inside and turned on a light. It occurred to me then how dimly lit this outdoor storage facility was. There was a weak overhead lantern peeking over every fourth garage like an anglerfish's lure, leaving a large portion of the road not hit by the light bubbles completely dark.
I tried to plan my next move. I could leave Trent and run. But where would I go? Or I could stay and see Trent's plan through. There was a chance this was all an elaborate trap. Maybe Trent was working with the demon, or maybe he was the demon. But then why did he save me? Twice. Maybe he was actually a double agent for the Organization. But he could easily have captured me by now. Unless he needs me to go back to the origin point for a different reason... I considered everything I had learned up until this point: we live at the cross-section of different realms; these other realms interact with our world; Antennas, who are a very small minority of people, can see these interactions; the Organization wants to harness our power and create a 'Strong Antenna' to achieve some kind of universal hegemony; I'm the closest thing to a Strong Antenna to date; Trent knows this; He's taking me back to my origin point, despite not taking the others back to theirs; Trent claims to want to fight the Organization; the best way to fight the Organization would be with a Strong Antenna. What if Trent was trying to make me into a Strong Antenna?
I considered this chain of reasoning. It seemed very plausible, especially after Allison's cryptic messages. Was she trying to warn me of this? But that smile, and the "see you soon"... If she wasn't being possessed, why would she be seeing me soon?
Suddenly my thoughts gave way like a broken dam as I heard a ping come from Ava's radar. I jumped, thinking that all of the electronics turned off with the ignition, but when I looked at the circular sonar map, I saw a red dot had just emerged in the top-right corner. I looked out the window in the direction of the ping, but I couldn't see anything heading down the road.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Four more dots appeared behind the first, and they were approaching.
I jumped out the van and ran over to where Trent was hauling in a large cardboard crate into the back of the van. "Trent, there's pings on the radar. A bunch of them."
He dropped the box next to three others, and I realized I had never seen inside the back of the van. It was filled with what looked like pneumatic tubes wired into circuits, and in the center was a tri-pod which was holding a large halo-shaped ring.
"Pings?" Trent said, then his face widened with shock as he realized what I meant. "Shit, how many?"
"Five, maybe more now. And they're getting closer."
"Five?" He jumped out the back and ran into the storage locker. I thought he was going to close the door, but when I saw him hauling boxes back toward the van, I yelled at him. "What are you doing!?"
"I need to load this up for tomorrow. Here," He tossed me his keys. "Get it started."
"Fuck, seriously?"
Trent didn't respond, only kept shuffling boxes into the van.
I turned and ran to the door and hopped in the driver's seat. As I was turning on the ignition, I saw the row of bushes that was just outside of the facility begin to rattle. The next sweep revealed a whole sea of pings. I rolled down the window and shouted Trent's name.
"One more, that's all. Get in the passenger seat, I'll be there in a sec."
I scooted over the center console and waited, clutching at the bottom of my pants legs. Just as Trent slammed the rear door of the van shut, I saw the first figure emerge onto the road ahead of us. It looked like some kind of large coyote, though it was hard to tell because it was still fifty meters out.
"Now detecting 53 controlled agents." Ava said right as Trent jumped in and shut the driver's side door. "Net anomalies: 53."
"Ava, increase radius to five miles." Trent instructed as he backed up all the way to the end of the lane and spun us around toward the gate. Just as we left, I saw the pack of coyotes stalking toward us, slow at first, then in a dead sprint.
"Increasing radius." Ava responded. "Increased. Recalculating… Recalculating… Re—complete. Now detecting 451 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 451."
"What does 'controlled agent' mean?" I asked.
"Hold on," Trent said and accelerated into the gate, bursting through it. The whole van shook, and I heard my phone fall in the crack between the seat and door. Trent steadied the van, then said, "It means the things chasing us are being controlled by something that isn't detectable."
"The demon?"
"That'd be my guess."
"But why can't Ava detect it?"
Trent switched to the right lane, then merged onto the Interstate-South ramp. "Probably because it isn't trying to kill us."
"Then, what—" I looked back at the map and basically had my question answered. All 451 pings were coalesced in a semicircle on one side of the map. The side of the map that we had just come from. "Is it trying to force us toward the crash site?"
"It seems that way." Trent answered.
"Trent, pull over."
"Huh?"
"Pull over!" I yelled.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Then he did as I had instructed and pulled off in the middle of the ramp. The red dots slowly closed in on our position.
"Now detecting—"
"Shut up, Ava." I said. I could feel my blood boiling. "I'm not going one step further until you tell me the truth. Why are we going to my origin point? What is your real motive?"
"What do you mean? I already told you."
I unlocked the passenger side door.
"Wait," Trent said and reached out toward me. "Just, wait."
There was silence, except for the pings indicating that the beasts behind us had re-encroached on our position to about fifty meters.
"Okay, I didn't tell you everything. But we don't have time now—"
I opened the door.
"Okay, okay. I didn't tell you everything, it's true. I've never done this with anyone else, but the reason is because I never needed to. And if I told you what might happen, you would have refused it."
"Refused what?"
"This—me, my help. Lauren, I am trying to help you. But you have to understand—it's likely that neither of us are going to live past tomorrow. You're basically confronting a dark entity in a place where I can't protect you, and if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll be coming back to the fight of your life. Because I don't have the power to hide you from the Organization. They're going to show up and try to take you. I really don't know how you've lasted as long as you have. Whatever protection you had growing up, it's gone now. And now I'm all you have. And in some twist of fate, you're all I have."
Ava reactivated. "Now detecting 1,117 controlled agents. Proximity till contact: 20 meters. Net anomalies: 1,117."
I closed my door. "But what if I still don't want to go through with it?"
Trent pointed at the screen. "Then we die right here, right now, together. Because I am one-hundred percent certain that if we don't go to that crash site, we're dead anyway. All of us."
Another ping rolled through. I checked the side-view mirror and saw the swarming pack of dogs reach the van and bound around the rear wheels. I suddenly recalled the conversation I had with Father Martin and the conclusions I had drawn. Father, I've been… wrestling with something, and I think God wants me to confront it. I think I've been running away and hiding from it for so long that I'd convinced myself it disappeared...
"Go," I said just as I felt the collision of the coyotes slamming their bodies against the side doors.
Trent didn't waste any time stepping on the gas. I watched as the coyotes diminished in the distance and the pings receded into the back of the map, never disappearing fully, but covering the flank of our retreat—a reminder lingering on the edge of our awareness that there was no turning back now. That, one way or another, this was ending tomorrow.
And I'd either be dead, or something else entirely.