Saying about missing someone who died

Title says it all, 9 months ago I moved to a new city 700 miles from where I grew up to start my life over. My father had just died a few months prior to me leaving, broke up with the woman who I thought would be my wife, we dated all though my 20s, my career in my home town had taken a turn for the worst with little to no money coming in.
9 months after moving to a new city and finding a new job things are looking up, I’m making more money than I ever have before, have a nicer apartment a new vehicle but it still doesn’t make me happy. I’m still empty/mad inside.. honestly I hate myself in a lot of ways. I miss coming home to my ex and having someone to love, I miss being near family and close friends. Being around my dad and hearing him give me life advice. It was something I’ll always cherish.
Unfortunately I can’t go back home there’s nothing there for me anymore. I don’t want to be reminded of my ex, no job opportunities and I just wanna forget all the mistakes I made while there.
Feels like I’m starting all over I just turned 30..anyone else been though this and have any advice?

Nerd Alert incoming …
I’m in the midst of blogging my rewatch of the series, and with me reaching The Debate for my blog, I started wondering about what differences there might have been between the live East Coast version (the first performance, which is what I would have seen back in 2005) and the West Coast version, which the studio used for re-runs, syndication, DVDs, and streaming.
A week or two ago I made a post mistakenly saying I thought the version of The Debate on the DVDs was the original East Coast broadcast, while the streaming version was the West Coast version. That was wrong, both versions are identical (except for the edits made on the Max streaming version to cut the run time from 50 minutes down to 43). So I thought my search for a record of the East Coast version was done, at least on the “official” internet. But let me give a shout-out to u/Hixie, who pointed out to me some clearly identifiable differences between the transcript of the episode on westwingtranscripts.com and the DVD/streaming versions.
Which brings me to the nerd part. I spent the better part of 10 days copying that episode transcript, and then creating my own transcript of the DVD version, then putting them side-by-side to find the differences. And let me tell you, I’m pretty much convinced that the westwingtranscripts version has to be the original, East Coast version. There are word substitutions, there are rephrasings of thoughts between the versions … and if you’re watching the DVD while following along with the transcript, you can see cases of a word being different, and then the actor catching themselves, stammering over the next word, and maybe saying the rest of the line differently … as though they were reacting to the realization they’d gone off the script, even just a word. As an actor myself, I recognized that instantly.
If you’d like to see the transcripts side-by-side yourself, please check it out at my blog. I also outline exactly what got cut out of the edited streaming/syndication version.
And as to the “global warming theories” part, and did Alan Alda drop the word “theories” and throw Jimmy Smits off in the West Coast version, here’s what I think - I think Alda said the line correctly in both performances. The transcript of the apparent East Coast version shows Santos continuing with more of his line after he interrupts with “Theories?” - that’s the part that’s missing from the West Coast version, Smits stops and looks flustered as Alda throws in, “Yeah, global warming theories.” It’s my belief that Alda said it correctly in both versions, but Smits lost his train of thought in the West Coast version and both actors had to scramble a bit to get back on track.
Now, how does this account for the fact Vinick doesn’t say the word “theories” in the edited streaming version? I think the studio edited the word out - which helps explain Smits’ confusion when he jumps in with “Theories?” even though Alda didn’t say that word. I think the studio edited that out to make the actors’ scrambling be explained by Alda dropping a word, even though he actually didn’t and it was Smits who lost his place. Kind of a dirty trick to play on Alan Alda … I can’t prove it, but that’s what I think happened.

Have been seeing this girl for some time now, she's in Blr and I am in Delhi. She came back to me after ghosting me and said that let see how it goes before committing or anything, and I was okay with that.
Problem is, she makes 0 effort to know me. No calls, no texting from her side. She's always busy or is out with her friends. It's always me who texts or calls (she's okay on calls at best, doesn't ask me any question or anything, it's always me). The final straw was yesterday when I called her, we talked for around 15m and she said "Mai dinner ke baad call karu?". I kept waiting for her call and she never called! She had the call to say that she crashed last night which is a total lie as I saw her online deep into the night.
It's clear that she is using me as an option and I kinda want to end it/communicate this to her that this won't work for me. I responded to her lie (that she had slept) after 12 hours saying "Hey nothing, lets talk when I am in Bangalore", and she responded with a "ok". Tbh I was hoping she says if everything is okay, or when are we meeting, but nothing like that. Just a "OK" (that too a reaction).
I fly to Blr tomorrow (for some work). I am now thinking whether I should wait for her to schedule a meeting/date or should I ask her. I don't want to ask her to be honest as I want to see if she cares about it AT ALL. But then I also don't want to miss the chance to communicate how I feel on her face. In case you recommend that I ask her to meet, how can I do that making it clear that I am available only on the weekend and she'll have to prioritize it if she wants to meet?
What's the best course of action from here?
PS: She ghosted me twice before and came back. I am stupid that I took her back but this is the final straw, I don't want to fuck my brain any further over this narcissist.

Let’s start by saying that me ‘18F’ and my bf ‘19M’ have been together on and off for about 9 months… he started a new job around 3-4 months ago and recently became very close with this one coworker ‘24F’. For more context, even though I am 18 I still live with my parents who are extremely strict conservative Christian’s, who do not even know he exists. Due to this fact, I can only manage to hangout with him once or twice a week usually. Up until recently that has been manageable, but in the past month he has been hanging out with her after he gets off work(which isn’t until anywhere from 12-2 am because he is a closer) almost every night that we don’t hangout. Usually he doesn’t end up getting back to his house till at least 4am in the morning (I have his location). I’ve voiced how this makes me uncomfortable, but he has always assured me that they are just friends and that she has a lot going on due to to a recent terrible breakup and he’s the only person she really has. He has showed me their texts and while there’s nothing concerning or flirty, but they text goodnight sometimes and check up on eachother a lot. He has never hungout with her instead of me, and has told me he never will. That has been true, until he was able to come to my house one night after work because I was home alone. He told me he’d be straight there, but then stopped otw to pick her up and take her to Sheetz and then back home. I was angry but then he explained this horrible thing that happened to her recently that happened to her and how she called him absolutely losing it and he felt the need to check up on her. Because it genuinely did sound awful I felt like I couldn’t be mad. Then a couple nights ago I was at his house and we had started a movie when she calls him SOBBING about how she hungout with her ex and he told her he didn’t love her, and then goes on a rant about her whole sad life and why something must be wrong with her, why is she alive etc. etc. for about 20 min he stayed on the phone with her while I just waited and then when he finally hung up he was upset and it ruined the vibe. Eventually I just couldn’t stay silent any longer and told him he wasn’t her therapist and he shouldn’t be this close with someone who is this much of a burden and calls him crying knowing he’s with his girlfriend. He just said he didn’t feel burdened and we moved on, but I’m not over it. I don’t know how to talk to him about it without sounding like a bitch or saying something like either me or her when they are close and he’s all she has. Can someone please tell me how to explain to him why it makes me upset?

And I do in person check-ins... this guest booked for 1 person, which was confirmed multiple times via chat. I even calculated the tourist tax amount for him as a single guest.
This guest arrived late in the evening, as we always do I sent him detailed instructions to get in and agreed upon having the in person check in at 10.00am the following morning.
First, he's pissed because he was asleep. Dude, you told me to come at 10.00... when I point out there's an extra person he starts arguing the the studio is for two, and checks on the app multiple times saying he booked correctly. In the end we amended the booking and he had to pay the tourist tax for two (and he has something to say about that too), and the extra charge (we have a discount for single guests).
Do this people seriously think we're all idiots and pushovers? I've been in the industry for years... I know I will get a bad review and they will grasp at straws to find anything to complain about, but seriously? If these guests had arrived during the normal check in window I wouldn't even let them in until the booking was amended.
FFS
In before the "why do you have to do in person check ins?", because here the law says we have to identify guests on arrival and check their ID. A bit difficult to do remotely, if I have to make sure you are who you say you are. We also noticed that people usually behave more responsibly when someone greets them on arrival.

There's a post every so often specific to one coffee shop or two, but I'm wondering if we can get some opinions across the board and cross-comparing. Who has the best-pulled espresso? Who has the most interesting iced coffee flavors? Who is most consistent? Coziest ambience? Maybe most important: Best price to quality ratio?
Here are my thoughts:

1. Prairie Lights cafe - Solid regular "special" coffee options - black rider, shakerato, and espresso tonic are great. Used to have a wonderful barista that pulled great espresso and made the best matcha, but they haven't been around recently and the last few times I've gone it's been wildly inconsistent :(
2. Press Coffee - Super cozy and nicest folks working the counter. Good "drip" coffee (quick press) but espresso-based drinks can sometimes be hit-or-miss. Fun and most wide-ranging syrups (who else has banana or marshmallow syrups?? not saying I love them all but the range is impressive) and awesome seasonal options.
3. Dodge St Coffee - Ditto on the friendliness! (So sad they're getting kicked out of their current location and am hoping they are able to reopen elsewhere). Consistently good drip coffee, solidly made espresso-based drinks, and hands-down best pastries (their daily rotating scones are awesome: chai, ube toasted coconut, vegan raspberry, blueberry lemon, apple spice, etc. - another reason I'm torn apart about them leaving)
4. Java House - I avoid it whenever possible. Super friendly folks but very stinky inside for some reason and filled with flies. Coffee is mediocre and thus overpriced. Other craziness that has been mentioned here often doesn't need to be resaid :/
5. Fix! - Friendly and knowledgeable folks, incredible coffee, sunny and happy ambience. Haven't had a disappointing drink from here yet.
6. Mammita's - Unique flavors you can't find elsewhere - Horchata latte and Dulce de Leche latte are great, plus they have interesting pastries. Solidly pulled espressos and super friendly folks working there each time I've been. Their indoor space is limited but their back garden is awesome!
7. Tru Coffee - Ordering experience can be awkward for some reason. Pricey but most baristas are great. Space isn't particularly cozy unless you get the corner couches.
8. Daydrink - Espresso was a bit too acidic for me and their fig coffee tasted absolutely nothing like fig :( Loved their reusable to-go glass/jars. Haven't been to their new location so can't say whether it's changed, good, bad, etc.
9. Cortado - I don't get coffee here enough to give it a good run-down, but I remember it being very expensive and the coffee not being remarkable.
10. Who am I missing??

My final say:
Who has the best-pulled espresso? Used to be Prairie Lights, now I'd go with Fix!.
Who has the most interesting iced coffee flavors? Mammita's and Press Coffee.
Who is most consistent? Going with Fix! for now.
Coziest ambience? Press Coffee when it's not super crowded. Otherwise Prairie Lights I guess.
Best price to quality ratio? Not sure on this one.

Yes, I know, it sucks. You are stressed. You are broke. You are bombarded with negativity 24/7. You are lonely. You don't know what to do. You want to give up. You want to turn off the lights, curl up in bed and hope that it all goes away.
The FREE Resume+ webinar is less than 2 weeks away and will help with a lot of that but ONLY IF YOU GO. If you don't go, nothing will change.
https://startupschoolforcoders.com/subscribe
If you go:

1. you'll be less stressed
2. you'll get some positivity
3. you'll won't be lonely anymore
4. you'll know what to do

Isn't it worth a try before you give up? What do you have to lose? Did I mention that the Resume+ webinar is FREE? Really, what do you have to lose?
https://startupschoolforcoders.com/subscribe
For months, I've been saying "pretty please, sign up for the FREE Resume+ webinar" and you haven't done it. So, now, I've got to be harsh: it is URGENT that you sign up RIGHT NOW or you will remain unemployed and miserable.
https://startupschoolforcoders.com/subscribe
You know what coders who are signed up for the FREE Resume+ webinar are seeing in their email?
"You are golden and all set. Don't worry about a thing."
They are feeling:

1. stress relief
2. positive vibes
3. hope

I hate writing these posts but the FREE Resume+ webinar is rare, only twice a year. If you go to it, it'll change your life for the better. If you miss it, it'll change your life for the worse. You'll hate yourself if you miss it. And, dammit, it's FREE!
I'll hate myself if you miss it because I can't help you. You'll be stuck in the same HELL that you've been stuck in for the past months and, for some people, years!
You don't want that. I don't want that for you. Sign the f' up!

Dear A,
I know that you don't want to hear, often, my name,
I'm writing this maybe as a letter or just something to tell my feelings away? I'm not sure...really.... Oh well, it's not like you're gonna see it, anyway. So i guess that's...okay? It's okay to tell my feelings now? I mean...you already know..so it's not like I'm giving my own secret away... But alright ...then,
Let me just take you back to that day, The day i first set my eyes on your eyes and face, The day where i didn't know how i felt, Was it "love from the first sight"? Or was it just some dumb teenage crush that will go away? And to end, In a split second or maybe taking a few days? The moment i looked at you, It was like i saw...a piece of art? Something that's shattered in some parts, and in other,flawed... Something that had potential, yet it was let go like the idiot you are. I thought it would take a few days and that's it? And not spend two whole years thinking about it.... Thinking about you, Your eyes, smile, laugh, petit nose.. And the small talks and stuff you told.
Oh, A.... All i ever wanted was love from you,But i guess I'm just not the right one that it would be given to? Why did and do I wait? Wait for love from someone, who could, without thinking about me, go days? Bet that when you hear people mentioning my name, You don't smile in anyway, Maybe even get angry or annoyed at the sight of it.
Really, all i ever wanted was to know, Why were you treating me that way? Why were you almost punishing me for something that's not in my hands and in my control, anyway? Why were you ignoring me like some sort of air? Am i really that boring to you? And uninteresting to you? Or am I too ugly to be at, stared? But then again, How can you love me when.... neither can I? How can you love me when I try to hide Hide my flaws...and maybe myself sometimes? Hide the fact that I'm an idiot sometimes...?
I get it, I'm full of flaws, I'm not surprised that people don't have feelings for me at all... But maybe, shouldn't you have given me a chance? To express and to show what and who I really am? But no.... All you did was just make fun of me,The way I text the way I act, And probably the way I had feelings for you.
You don't know what I'd do for you, A. I would get close to people you dated and liked before, so I'd know what you like and what was "attractive" to you, And Maybe....what to change in me?
See? I'd move out of my comfort zone just for you, Just so that...... you'd like me too...... I just want to be the one you go to, When you're sad, mad, happy, or absolutely hating your existence... I just wanna be one those girl you talk to, You tell your secrets to, Is it really that hard? Is it really that hard for you to love me or at least respect me? I guess yes....
All you ever do is just make fun of me, and chase girls that are hating on you with me, Making fun of you and absolutely talking crap about you, all with me. But I don't do that and wouldn't do that, would I? No. No, I don't and I'd never would.
Oh, A... Isn't it heart-breaking? Heart-breaking to see the only boy you've ever loved, Chase and love girls you're friends and close with? Maybe you wouldn't know... I mean, at the end of the day, You're that boy girls chase, So why would you, them, leave? To be with me? It's not like I'm any special, I'm just that "nerdy" smart girl you'll never like.
"Oh, it's just that he likes girls looking a certain way..." "Oh, it's just that he likes when you do hairstyles a certain way..." Are you basically saying that I'm not beautiful in any way? I mean...I get that... Afterall, I'm just that nerdy girl with the bun, Nothing special about me, right?
Oh, A.... You absolutely made me despise myself, A. You made me think I was unloveable in every way. Maybe I'm just over-exaggerating? Maybe I am...
Oh well..... I'll forget about all of this, right? Hopefully, meet other people and forget...you, right? Maybe the future years wouldn't be so harsh on me, right? Maybe if i even have another crush, I won't cry over him every night like I did about you, right?
Oh,A... I just wish the best for you, But I don't really think you'd wish the same for me, too.
Sincerely, Someone you probably don't look forward, hearing something from, to.

She was telling me that she didn’t believe people could self report empathy (that’s not the part where I disagree with her). I asked her why, she said “think of the 2 most narcissistic people you know. Would they say they aren’t empathetic? No! They’d say they were the most empathetic! Theyd say they are so incredibly sensitive” Which I kinda agree is a thing that can happen, especially with covert or vulnerable narcissists and especially as someone who would have described myself as so sensitive and the most empathetic until a few years ago.
So I said to her “I wonder what that means for diagnosing NPD. Could there be situations where patients present themselves as really empathetic but actually are not (think your stereotypical self proclaimed empath).”
And she basically said that no, that’s not the case, it’s really easy to identify narcissism. She said the 10 minute narcissist test is talk to someone for 10 minutes in a bar and ask yourself “how much do I know about them versus how much do they know about me.” She said they really like to talk about themselves.
That’s where I disagree partly. I think it’s more complicated than that. I don’t think you can identify all narcissists in 10 minutes or very quickly at all. There are a lot of covert (hidden) aspects of narcissism. For myself, it’s very true that I like to talk about myself and don’t care about the other person, but in that bar scenario, I don’t think people would pick up on that, because I’m good at masking essentially. Like I’ll ask people questions about themselves even if I don’t care about the answer.
Also, from what I can tell from this subreddit. How obvious narcissism is varies a lot from person to person and situation to situation. It just doesn’t seem like something that would necessarily be obvious depending on how covert (as in hidden) or vulnerable (as opposed to grandiose) someone is.

Greetings, Redditors!
If this post is reasonably well-received, I might do one of these every couple of days until I feel I've sufficiently critiqued Skyrim's writing; if this post is not well-received, then you likely won't have to worry about seeing me again.
The first thing that I wanted to address is Emil Pagliarulo's series of Tweets from several months ago:
https://twitter.com/Dezinuh/status/1734978443899510795
I wouldn't have been made aware of these Tweets without Youtuber, Luke Stephens, who can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/@LukeStephensTV
Before we get into my commentary on Mr. Pagliarulo's Tweet and the writing in Skyrim, I would first like to add a few disclaimers:
DISCLAIMERS:
1.) I love Skyrim; I absolutely adore The Elder Scrolls series. (Morrowind is still my favorite; it has much better writing.)
2.) As I'll shortly acknowledge for a second time, I don't know anything about game development; I come here as someone who has written, for a living, for the last eight years. I'm not here to critique the game itself. Specifically, I am here to critique the writing of quests and certain key characters.
3.) As the community is well-aware, Skyrim has a lot of content that ended up on the cutting room floor; that being the case, I fully acknowledge that there may have been better versions of the quests and characters that I am going to be critiquing; however, it should also be said that the cutting room floor is not the game in the hands of the players. It's not the story we were told.
With that out of the way, I shall quote Mr. Pagliarulo's opening salvo in its entirety:
"Loooong (1/15) Funny how disconnected some players are from the realities of game development, and yet they speak with complete authority. I mean, I can guess what it takes to make a Hostess Twinkie, but I don't work in the factory, so what the hell do I really know? Not a lot."
The first thing that I would point out is that an individual does not need to be a game developer to critique video games. By Mr. Pagliarulo's logic, people would also be required to abstain from commenting on movies, TV shows, music and basically anything else that they didn't care for (or did) and think could be made better. I believe that Mr. Pagliarulo's apparent position becomes even more absurd when discussing content that the consumer is paying for.
Furthermore, I doubt if Mr. Pagliarulo would be so quick to attempt to invalidate the opinions of people who like, in this case, Starfield. However, if the people who have liked it are ALSO not game developers, then why wouldn't they also be disqualified from having an opinion.
To put this absurd position to bed once and for all, let's contemplate if someone went to a high-end restaurant and ordered some sort of chicken dish: If the individual cuts through the chicken and sees that the inside is not only pink, but also, colder than room temperature to the touch, does that person need to be an executive chef to know that the chicken needs to be recooked? I think not.
After that, Mr. Pagliarulo spends the next several Tweets detailing that he used to be a game reviewer (who had no development experience), that he now knows how difficult making games is, that nobody sets out to make a bad game and that making games takes a lot of time.
I'm going to address all of that---as far as I can tell, nobody said that making, in this case, Starfield, was easy. Perhaps someone can correct me, but I haven't seen one single review that asked, "How can BGS screw up the incredibly simple and quick process that is making a video game?" As far as people not setting out to make a bad game, my only guess is that Mr. Pagliarulo never played any Tiger handheld games, but I don't think BGS sets out to make bad games. Also, multiple companies (particularly in the days of Atari and Nintendo) would occasionally release games that weren't even functional, but that's not here nor there.
The next few Tweets (9/15 to 14/15) briefly list some of the difficulties when it comes to making video games.
And, the final Tweet:
"(15/15) But... just know that the game you're playing is in some ways a freaking miracle in and of itself. Normal people have come together to work FOR YEARS for one goal - to bring you fun and happiness. So it helps to remember that... and them!"
Basically, even if you think a game sucks, you shouldn't say that it sucks.
I'm not here to critique Starfield as I've never played it and don't think it looks particularly interesting. What I think it would be more productive to do is to critique a game that I love (Skyrim) exclusively based on the aspect that I know a bit about (writing).
Today, we will start with the extra tasty crispy former leader of The Dark Brotherhood, Astrid.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS OF ASTRID:
As this is already a bit lengthy, I have no plans to address anything about The Dark Brotherhood quest line aside from the very basics; I will perhaps discuss The Dark Brotherhood quest line, as well as other members of the faction, at a later time.
Also, SPOILERS, but what are you even doing on this subreddit if anything said about Skyrim could constitute a spoiler for you?
When we first meet Astrid, we have already killed Grelod The Kind and have received a mysterious letter from The Dark Brotherhood. The trigger for Astrid/TDB to abduct the player character is to go to sleep, at any point, after receiving the letter.
The first problem that this creates is that the abduction of the player character doesn't always make sense. I don't want to dwell on quest line too much, but let's imagine that you've chosen to go to sleep at The Winking Skeever, for one example. In order for the player character to be abducted:
1.) A Dark Brotherhood assassin must first go to your room at The Winking Skeever and, we would assume, poison you somehow. It's tough to say what specific poison is used, but in game logic, we can assume that someone hit with a paralysis poison would remain asleep during the duration. While the duration wouldn't last long enough for any paralysis poison NOT created by the player character (Fortify Restoration Glitch), it's possible that TDB continues reapplying the poison or knows someone with the Paralysis spell.
2.) While it only takes one assassin to go into The Winking Skeever and paralyze the player character, there aren't any NPC's in TDB (aside from maybe Arnbjorn, Astrid's husband) who are going to be solo carrying a limp body out of The Winking Skeever at all, much less, all the way to the Abandoned Shack.*
*However, we can assume that the player character's body would not need to be carried all the way to the shack and that TDB might have a carriage nearby; there's also no reason Shadowmere couldn't carry two people.
3.) However, someone from the TDB first has to go into Solitude, enter The Winking Skeever (the main room of which is generally populated), walking directly past Gulum-Ei who, one would think, is not going to be terribly pleased to see the player's lifeless body carried out if the player has made it a sufficient way through the Thieves Guild quest line; if the player has not, then Gulum-Ei wouldn't care. TDB would still have to carry the player's lifeless body past Corpulus Vinius, and generally, at least a few other NPC's prior to leaving The Winking Skeever.
4.) Everything after that is probably fine as it would rely on TDB to go only to the side door that leads out of Solitude and to the hill that leads to the stables/docks/etc.
The point is that we start off with some shenanigans, depending on where the player chooses to sleep after receiving the letter. An even more ridiculous example might be if the player was abducted from The Ragged Flagon Cistern despite being a member of The Thieves Guild...any number of which would be in the Cistern at the time.
Naturally, if the player sleeps in the wild, or perhaps a dungeon, then this manner of abduction makes sense. What would perhaps make the most sense is if the player character was hit with a potion of paralysis, out of nowhere, just roaming the wilds and then woke up in The Abandoned Shack.
When we first meet Astrid, she's perched on a bookshelf waiting for us to wake up. Cindy Robinson voices Astrid and does an incredible job giving the character a portrayal that is equal parts sultry, teasing and confident.
Astrid tasks the player character with killing one of the other three prisoners of the room; in typical Skyrim (and Emil Pagliarulo) fashion, the character (or combination of characters, if not all three) that you choose to kill has no impact on the result of the interaction with Astrid. The only alternative result to joining The Dark Brotherhood is to kill Astrid, on the spot, and then report her death to a guard followed by going to The Penitus Oculatus, whereupon the player character will be tasked with destroying TDB.
We next meet Astrid at The Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary of Falkreath; Astrid exhibits the same personality traits as before and her character still makes sense. Astrid sends you to speak to Nazir (a well-written character-perish the thought!) about some entry level contracts.
So far, so good. After completing Nazir's first set of contracts, our next interaction sees her sending us to speak with Muiri, in Markarth, about a contract on her former lover and an optional side contract on Nilsine Shatter-Shield (you monster!).
After completing Muiri's quest(s), things start to go off the rails. Astrid first sends us to spy on Cicero who Astrid suspects of conspiring against TDB because, reasons. Why would Astrid not send someone with more experience with TDB on this task? Why does she trust the player character over all others? After all, the player character and Cicero arrived at about the same time, so if Cicero would be conspiring with anyone against TDB, then certainly, it would be the player character who also stole a kill.
In any event, the player character hides inside The Night Mother's coffin, The Night Mother speaks to the player character who then surprises (and, initially angers) Cicero. At this point, after convincing Cicero that The Night Mother did indeed speak to the player character, Astrid appears (immediately defying The Night Mother's wishes, but fair enough, at this point) and sends the player character to get more contracts from Nazir, instead.
After completing at least one of the two side contracts given by Nazir, the quest, "The Silence Has Been Broken," begins. The player character speaks to Astrid who orders the player character to go to Volunruud after all. The player does so and is given an amulet and sealed letter by Amaund Motierre.
Upon bringing the letter to Astrid who, "Needs time to read it," the player character is sent to Delvin Mallory, located in The Ratway, to have the amulet appraised. Delvin Mallory indicates that the amulet is one that is only given to members of the Emperor's Elder Council.
From this point forward, Astrid, as a character, will make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
We first note that The Night Mother sent the player character to Volunruud to find Amaund Motierre, who was there and, as it turns out, is almost certainly a member of the Emperor's Elder Council (or close enough to someone who is a member to have obtained the amulet).
During an optional conversation prior to the quest to kill Cicero, Astrid admits that she thought it may haver simply been a coincidence that the player character was sent, by The Night Mother, to a dungeon far to the north to speak to someone...who just happened to be there and had on his person an amulet of The Emperor's Elder Council...who wants to have Emperor Tidus Mede II assassinated.
It doesn't matter how stupid Emil Pagliarulo intended for Astrid to be (also, nothing about listening to her speak...other than her decision-making...would indicate stupidity), there is absolutely no way that the player character was coincidentally sent to Volunruud by The Night Mother.
Let us also not forget the sorry state of The Dark Brotherhood upon our arrival. Not only is there not a Listener, but worse than, Astrid is hearing about people performing The Black Sacrament secondhand, and without that secondhand information, wouldn't even be aware of many of the contracts that The Dark Brotherhood receives. All of a sudden, a new recruit (that, ironically, Astrid brought in despite that The Dark Brotherhood (most playthroughs) has already been sent to kill...and could have, evidently) becomes The Listener and, consequently, knows things that Astrid cannot possibly know.
Back to the quest.
The assassination of Vittoria Vici is basically fine.
The next quest involves the stalking and murder of Gaius Maro, an officer of The Penitus Oculatus and son of Commander Maro. There are a number of ways that this quest can be completed, but Astrid still makes fundamental sense as a character during this quest. The player character kills Gaius and plants the incriminating evidence upon him.
In, "The Cure for Madness," we return to find that the mad jester, Cicero, has evidently lost his mind and attacked multiple members of The Dark Brotherhood, followed by fleeing the Sanctuary. In finding Cicero's journals, it is established that he fled to the Dawnstar Sanctuary. Astrid bids us to find him, save her husband and to take her horse, Shadowmere.
The player character finds Astrid's husband, Arnbjorn, severely wounded outside of Dawnstar Sanctuary. Arnbjorn indicates that he equally wounded Cicero, and of no use to the player, sends the player inside of the Dawnstar Sanctuary as he mounts Shadowmere (after we enter) and departs for Falkreath. In an optional conversation, Arnbjorn indicates that he distrusted the player character, at first, but has a new perspective given that the player character saved his life.
Astrid, as we will soon find out, doesn't seem to care that the player character is a capable assassin who may even have followed all Dark Brotherhood contracts/bonuses to the letter, is definitely The Listener, has set The Dark Brotherhood on the path back to relevance and has been nothing but trustworthy. As mentioned above, it is prior to this quest that the player character can converse with Astrid who mentions that she thought Motierre actually being in Volunruud could have been a coincidence. (WHY!?)
The player character may, in Dawnstar, choose to either kill or spare Cicero. Sparing Cicero will result in an amusing interaction after the main Dark Brotherhood quest line is completed; after that interaction, Cicero becomes available as a follower. Cicero is the LAST follower I would ever want, but has his fans; either way, I generally choose to spare him even if I don't want him as a follower. The Dawnstar Sanctuary would be even emptier without him.
As far as Astrid is concerned, the remainder of The Dark Brotherhood quest line involves the player character finally posing as the gourmet and going to Solitude, purportedly, to kill the Emperor by poisoning his meal.
Unsurprisingly, The Emperor turns out to be a decoy; the player character now needs to escape Solitude, but is met by Commander Maro. Maro claims to have made a deal with Astrid to avenge his son by which Astrid gives up the player character in exchange for being allowed to continue to operate and the Falkreath Sanctuary being left alone.
In a 'plot twist' to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Astrid aside, Commander Maro opts not to keep his end of the deal and decides to destroy the organization (TDB) as well as the person (Astrid) who ordered the murder of his son.
What's astounding about this is that Astrid, who betrays the player character (who is also definitely The Listener) for exactly no reason when TDB is on the cusp of assassinating an Emperor, a feat it hadn't done in quite a few centuries---is shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, that Commander Maro would go back on his word and take out an organization that not only killed his son, but also, that the Penitus Oculatus is duty-bound to eliminate, if it can, anyway.
CONCLUSION:
We understand that Pagliarulo wanted to portray Astrid as the matriarch of The Dark Brotherhood who was blinded by a combination of arrogance, power and wanting The Dark Brotherhood, her 'family' to continue to be guided by her and her alone.
In that, I would say that Pagliarulo was successful; in writing terms, however, the cost of this success was not justified.
The cost of this successful portrayal is that it requires making Astrid blind to the point of absurdity. For whatever reason, relatively late in the quest, Astrid still believed that the player character meeting Motierre, in Volunruud, where The Night Mother said he would be, was somehow a coincidence.
Furthermore, while it might be somewhat understandable that Astrid wouldn't want the player character, as Listener, to become the de facto leader (or co-leader) of TDB, the following points stand:
1.) The player character has shown nothing but loyalty to TDB.*
*The only exception to this is if the player character lies and tells Astrid that he/she killed Cicero, despite sparing him. Of course, when we look at when that happens in the quest line, Astrid will have already betrayed the player character to Commander Maro.
2.) The player character saved Astrid's husband's life.
3.) The player character may have executed every contract to the letter, from Nazir and Astrid alike, and earned every single bonus.
4.) The player character never challenged Astrid's authority. Even when the player character was given her first instructions by The Night Mother*, the player character did what Astrid wanted first.
*As a side note, it's strange that The Night Mother wouldn't have warned the player character that they were walking into a trap, in Solitude and that Astrid is not to be trusted.
Astrid is a poorly written character because the quest unfolding as it did requires her to be both power-hungry and impossibly stupid. Amaund Motierre being in Volunruud (as well as the amulet being legit) can only mean that the player character is The Listener, which means The Night Mother speaks to her, which then validates Sithis---because, prior to, it could be argued that Astrid didn't truly believe in Sithis.
Astrid knowingly threw away a return to relevance for TDB (by killing The Emperor) to keep her power over TDB's pathetic Falkreath Sanctuary in which they relied on second and thirdhand information, rather than The Night Mother, to know when The Black Sacrament is performed and get their contracts.
The worst part is that Astrid, in so doing, sold the player character out to Commander Maro...who nobody in Astrid's position could have possibly trusted.
When we look at a character, from a writing standpoint, the most important question a writer should ask themselves is, "Does this character's words/actions make sense?"
Astrid is not only impossibly stupid; Astrid does not make any sense.
From a writing standpoint, Astrid is an abysmal character. The only aspects that save Astrid, as a video game character, are excellent voice acting work by the phenomenal Cindy Robinson and that her character model/TDB gear, is pretty cool-looking. It's also implied that she used to bang Delvin Mallory, so that's kind of neat.
WAYS TO IMPROVE ASTRID:
Obviously, I could write an entirely new Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim story from scratch, but I'm not going to do that. Instead, let's keep as much of the current story as we can and determine what Astrid could have done that would make sense.
1.) Immediately, Astrid must recognize (after Volunruud and the visit to Delvin, anyway) that the player character is absolutely The Listener.
2.) Everything else can go basically the same until just before the attempt on (the decoy) Emperor's life.
3.) In the story, have the quest require that the player character is to arrive (as the gourmet) to Solitude the day before the decoy Emperor's visit. At this point, the player character can be required to spend the night somewhere in Solitude; a good choice for this would be the Thalmor Headquarters, as they are always empty anyway.
4.) The player character goes to sleep in the Thalmor Headquarters only to be awakened by Astrid. Astrid explains to the player character that, while they might be The Listener, Astrid is the leader of The Dark Brotherhood and is sure that The Night Mother will forgive her, and perhaps even make her the new listener, for killing the player character, in fair combat. The reason Astrid says The Night Mother will forgive her is, after dispatching of the player character, Astrid will pose as The Gourmet and assassinate Emperor Tidus Mede II herself. Astrid tells the player character to make ready to defend themselves.
5.) The end of Astrid's involvement in The Dark Brotherhood quest ends up being fixed in a creative way: If the player declines to join TDB, then the player kills Astrid after waking up to her in the room; if the player does join TDB, Astrid's involvement/leadership of the factions ends after the player kills Astrid after waking up to her in the room.
In terms of optional events to this alternate ending: If Cicero is spared, then Dawnstar Sanctuary becomes available (with a quest to visit there and speak to Cicero) and can be furnished. The player character will decide if they want the primary Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary to be located there or in Falkreath.
If the player chooses Falkreath, then Arnbjorn (who the player can kill if they want) will say he is leaving The Dark Brotherhood, but understands that the player was left with no choice but to kill Astrid, and consequently, TDB has nothing to fear from him. The player character will take over the room that used to belong to Astrid and Arnbjorn.
If the player chooses to move the primary Sanctuary to Dawnstar, then Arnbjorn will approach the player character, state that he understands the player had no choice but to kill Astrid, and will request to remain in the faction as well as the Falkreath Sanctuary. He will state that it makes sense, especially in light of the Emperor's successful (at this point) assassination for TDB to begin to expand its influence again. The player character will accept this; Festus and Veezara will remain in Falkreath with Arnbjorn who will also be given a few generic initiates.

. Last year my (F35) bf (M32) of three years met someone else at work. My bf ghosted me for a week, then spent 2-3weeks deciding between me and her. Eventually I dumped him, but we got back together in September.
I found out that the other woman also had a bf the whole time, who she was living with when she met my partner. My partner also knew this, so they had an affair. He says all they did was kiss nothing else, but she did stay at my (by now, ex) bfs apartment for an entire weekend in March. I had already dumped him by that point.
It’s been a year now, and as they work together, they still occasionally talk. I have now ended things again with my partner, as although I love him, the trust is gone.
My question is: do I tell the other woman’s bf? I want to. It feel like I’m carrying a dirty secret for both of them. I feel sorry for this bf not knowing about this affair, but equally it caused me so much pain finding out and I don’t want to put someone else through that. My partner said the other couple are going to therapy and trying to make it work. Do I tell?
Also, I’m okay with never hearing from my ex again.
tldr: breaking up with my ex again after he cheated last year; do I tell the bf of the person my partner cheated with about their affair?

Everybody. I wanted to share a bit of my story! I know a lot of people deal with psychological issues and denial about bad breath. I do believe that a small portion of people it’s just in their head but many of us have been told repeatedly that we smell and then go into deep denial. Or at least that’s what happened to me. I also want to preface that I do believe that some closes to us can become nose blind. I have heard that people think that’s BS but my husband said that he thought maybe I smelled sometime but that mostly he did not notice. Whereas strangers or aquantence have blatantly told me i smell. Repeatedly. For years. Especially children. Who are brutally honest haha
I want to skip the horrifying parts but a brief synopsis. Probably for the past decade I have been told I smell or I have seen people cower in disgust. I know is some people say this is the psychological issue but this was verifiable with me. Years ago I became very fearful that I smelled. It was so hard for me to talk about but I asked my husband if I had bad breath and he said absolutely not. I had a new lease on life that day and went to a party that night where someone told me that I needed a breath mint. Honestly I died a little and that started years of fear and anxiety. Yall know what I’m talking about.
Two years ago I finally decided to take matters into my own hands. I spoke to my PCP who was of no help. That was really disheartening for me. A dentist also did not help me. No one was listening. The final straw for me was I was at a New Year’s party this year and someone was literally freaking out about how I smelled. I was horrified. Like yelling omg what is that. It was so heartbreaking but I’m actually thankful because it spurred me into action.
In retrospect I had a lot of symptoms that I didn’t not notice until they were treated. Dry mouth. A persistent bad taste in my mouth. I was always thirsty. I had very bad smelling gas and BMs I just DID NIT FEEL RIGHt. Since it apparently was not oral I took matters into my own hands and made an appointment with a gastroenterologist. She was a PA and ACTUALLY listened to me. She did tell me that it was probably all in my head that she couldn’t smell anything but that she would test me for H. Pylori just in case. She called the next day I was positive! I could not tell u the relief. I literally SCREAMED running around my house. I think I vented for 30 minutes to my husband telling him I knew I was sick and all the terrible things that had resulted from that. I was placed in very strong antibiotics for 14 days my symptoms subsided after my 2nd dose. I didn’t realize how sick I was until I wasn’t.
Everybody listen to your body. Everyone kept telling me that it could because I vape at times. Or alcohol can cause bad breath. Or coffee. Yes they can but not like this. Do not hide anymore or be afraid. If u know something is wrong keep telling someone until they listen. My life is completely changed. I have a new lease on life. I could BARELY function at work and I had almost become agoraphobic. There was nothing wrong with me I was sick! This infection can cause anxiety btw. There is help out there!
I just wanted to share. I know most of yall know what H. Pyolori is if you’ve done research about bad breath. This infection is HIGHLY correlateed with bad breath. Demand a test if u have symptoms. I’m sorry for everyone suffering out there. You’re not alone. If anyone ever wants to talk about this please DM me. I know how absolutely isolating this can be. There is hope!

I am very confused what this fic is about. So i want a review from those who know what this is about. Does the author change the fate of nejo or is this just depressing!
Title : Naruto : Hyuga Neji’s Beautiful Life
Author: 丢人现眼
This is the summary : My name is Hinata Neji, and I live a happy life. I was favored by the elders when I was young and treated me as their own flesh and blood. When I got a little older, although my father died to protect the patriarch, this was what he expected, and I can completely understand it. Later, my outstanding talent made me known as a genius, and I also received extraordinary treatment in the family. The patriarch took care of me kindly and tenderly like a father. I also liked playing with Miss Hinata very much. ...My name is Hinata Neji, and this is me reflected in the mirror...

when me and my boyfriend (i’ll call him dan) first got together, he wasn’t very comfortable with sending nude photos, which is fine, i wasn’t either, and i respected his comfort. i wasn’t pushy but i had asked a few times, he told me he was afraid to send, afraid it wouldn’t be good enough for me, etc. i assured him no matter what i would still love him, and that no matter what i would love it because it’s HIS. dan ended up sending me stuff and as expected it was amazing. perfect even. that’s besides the point though. dan has been best friends with a guy (let’s call him gabe) for like 5 or 6 years, they were very close friends for a while. really close. so dan talked to gabe about very personal things. like our relationship, and about this nude situation as well. gabe is also a trans guy. for the record, i respect this, and have always fully seen gabe as his chosen gender, male. but, it’s noted that gabe hasn’t had any surgery, so he doesn’t have a d. i didn’t really care about this all, gabe is a dude, dan is straight. whatever. but i was on dans phone once, and opened a snapchat conversation with gabe. and there, saved in chat, was a d pic of dans d. the same photo that he sent me the first time i saw it. im confronted dan about it, he told me he sent it to gabe because he’s his best friend and just wanted advice to see if it was a good photo to send to me. i was upset because, how could gagne even give advice on a body part he DOES NOT HAVE? i expressed to dan that i saw this as cheating. he says it’s not because gabe is a man. he says by saying it’s cheating i’m being transphobic, but i’m truly not, i see gabe as a man, i just think it’s cheating because he sent a d pic to someone who doesn’t have a d. now he’s angry at me for calling him a cheater and still thinks i’m being transphobic. i feel he is in the wrong but he makes me feel like im overreacting. am i the asshole?

I will try to make this short, as this is a complex situation, and I sound like I’m trying to convince someone Pepe Sylvia is real whenever I discuss this.
I (30f) live in a condo that I rent, but they are individually owned. There is a 65-year-old man who stays in my condo complex a few doors down from me who lives out of his car, named Robby. His mother has dementia, and he has been taking care of her since she got in a car wreck a few months back.
Robby has always been weird with me. He stares at me, doesn’t talk to me but talks to other neighbors, and I've caught him so many times just standing outside my front door. (I’m the first condo, so he has to walk by, but it’s still inappropriate). I never wanted to report him because I truly felt bad about his situation, but he has become a nuisance to my complex. He walks his dogs literally every 30 minutes, lets his dogs poop all over the complex and on the sidewalk, and throws his cigarette butts everywhere. He also hangs out in his car for most of the day like it’s his own driveway.
I can deal with all of this, but the main problem is one of his dogs is aggressive. It's an Irish Wolfhound type that is extremely reactive to humans and animals and barks and lunges at anyone who comes near it. I have complained about him twice to the HOA. First about him not taking care of the property and hanging around my door, and the other time his dog was off leash and tried to attack my boyfriend while walking my Maltese - Dandy - but he called it off and they were okay.
I had a talk with Robby after this situation and told him to keep his dog away from Dandy as she was attacked by a dog when she was a puppy and is also reactive to other dogs (frustrated greeter on leash, has never shown aggression but we still keep her away from other dogs on leash). During this conversation with him, I was able to discern he has some level of cognitive impairment, and I wasn’t going to get anywhere with it (I’m an RN, so I see this a lot). He made a sexist comment and told me “he had no intention of hurting my dog.” I got annoyed and just walked away.
We have not had big issues since this talk. Robby still walks that dog multiple times an hour (I see him walk the other non aggressive dog maybe once a month). It had become an inside joke if we saw him outside whenever we briefly opened our door even just to check our mailbox. He is 90% of the time standing within 10 ft every time I open my front door. If I see him down by the dog area, I will turn back to keep our dog away from his. He will yell to us that he will keep her away from us and won’t let her out of the car or off leash (Obviously trying to be polite, but he has shown he cannot handle the dog even leashed).
My boyfriend and I were walking Dandy Wednesday 5/1 around 9 pm. I was opening the door to my condo, and his unleashed dog comes around the corner and attacks me and Dandy. I got Dandy in my arms, and his dog bit her left lumbar area, and bit me on my finger and broke skin. Dandy made a horrific sound that will literally haunt me forever. My bf got the dog off of us, and we went inside and realized Dandy was bleeding. Robby’s dog was being walked by his mother, the homeowner. She told me that her son would be mad at her as she’s not supposed to take the dog outside and is supposed to walk her in the fenced courtyard attached to her condo. I felt really bad for her because she obviously didn’t understand the situation, but ultimately, he should not leave a dangerous dog in the care of someone with dementia.
We took Dandy to the emergency vet; she is okay but is definitely scarred from this. She's now terrified of a cat walking by and is shaking when going out for walks and when she sees that dog around. It seems like all the work we’ve put into healing her reactivity has been undone. She had 4 puncture bites, and the bill was $600. I came back home that night to a note on my door from another neighbor who witnessed the incident and told me to report this to the HOA since there are multiple complaints against Robby and his mom and the dog attacking people and other dogs. It attacked that neighbor's Chihuahua a few months prior.
We called the police; police filed a report, told us to call animal control. Next day, AC wrote him a ticket. I unfortunately had the most lax AC officer since I had to call multiple times over 3 business days to get an answer on the vaccination status. Dog was not vaccinated, and officer said he did not write a ticket for rabies non-compliance as that would have been a “lesser charge.” AC has essentially done nothing and says they can’t take the dog unless a human was seriously injured.
Robby was spoken to by the AC officer who told me Robby's remorseful and “don’t know how that happened” but didn’t have much to say. Robby hasn’t said a word to us or asked how my dog is doing. My bf went to put a note on their door asking for reimbursement for the vet bill, the door was open, and the dog almost broke down the glass door to get to him. Bf had to slam the door back, and Robby had to grab the dog to keep him from attacking my bf.
My bf and I have been carrying dog mace and have only been walking her in pairs where one of us can scope out if he is nearby or around the corner. We only take her on walks twice a day now and let her pee in my courtyard (not ideal as there is no grass and only rocks but she will pee sometimes).
The next day and almost every day since then, I have seen Robby with the dog off leash and letting it run around. When I first saw that, I went inside to get my phone to take a picture; when I came back out, Robby is there letting his dog sniff around my door where it attacked. Today, we took my dog out, and he was working by his car without dog. We start to come back, and I see him coming out of his condo with the dog. It’s like we reminded him his dog needs to be walked, so now when we were outside was the best time to do so.
I finally got in touch with DHEC who says the number they have for Robby doesn’t work, so he hasn’t put the dog on quarantine. DHEC told me to call AC if I see the dog off leash again.
My HOA has been dragging their feet about doing anything. Part of the problem is they are unable to get in touch with Robby or his mom. They keep emailing me back with long paragraphs about how they are handling this but aren’t really doing much at all. I think they are also looking to AC to handle this but AC has done nothing.
I’m looking for advice on how to proceed with this. My lease in up in July, and before this, I had told my landlord I would resign for another year. After this situation, I told her if the dog is not removed from the property, I would not be resigning. Other than Robby, I love this place and don’t want to leave. I want Robby to reimburse me for vet bills. I’ve looked him up and he has multiple judgements against him so I know he won’t pay me if he doesn’t have to.
Do I file small claims? Try to file with their homeowners insurance? Take legal action against HOA and property management? Ultimately I do not feel like I should be paying so much money each month to live here and not feel safe walking out my door. I shouldn’t have to go through all of this trauma, eat the cost of the vet bills, have a severely traumatized dog afterwards, AND have to move out of the condo afterwards. So what would you do? Thank you if you’ve made it this far.
TL;DR Irresponsible dog owners Irish wolfhound attacks my little dog and everyone is giving him a pass. Looking for some sort of justice and reimbursement.

**Sort of spoiler tried not to use names. **
I just finished the first book in the stylo series wool. I can't believe how different it was from the TV series I really liked this story too I think it would have been great to be closer to the story of course there's a lot to it that comes after the first season that I understand but I hope they stand a little closer to the book for the rest of the story.
What I'm a little annoyed about is that we go from a certain someone at in walking towards his death I don't want to say who I don't want to do any spoiler alerts to I started someone being put outside that wasn't the one that was supposed to be put outside and then a certain woman waking up with burns at the very end of the book I feel like there should have been more story of how that certain higher up was put outside.

I barely know where to begin other than I (24NB, feminine presenting if it matters) am the youngest in the apartment and yet share half the load of chores with the second youngest (26F) who is a healthcare worker. Both of us have jobs that take us out of the apartment during the day. Two of the others have been living in this apartment with us for going on 3 years now, and one of them recently had his fiancé move in (about 2 months ago). The groom (M) and bride (NB) are going on 30, and the fifth person is 27F.
Since we first moved in, myself and healthcare roommate have had to remind the Groom and Fifth to put dishes in the dishwasher, rinse dishes so chunks of onion aren't decaying in the dishwasher, clean out sink catches, sweep after spilling dried and cooked rice on the kitchen floor, clean up crumbs on counter, and so much more. They have never, in three years, swept anywhere other than the kitchen, and myself and Healthcare had to have multiple roommate meetings to get that to a consistent place. They still don't sweep properly, leaving lots of dirt and crumbs in corners, under cabinet overhangs, etc. None of them mop. They have openly said they don't know how to. Groom didn't know we had a mop bucket despite Healthcare and I routinely mopping each month. Garbage is better but they only handle it when it's overflowing, and frequently smear spaghetti sauce and other detritus across the lid without any care; none of them clean the lid or the bin. Sponge (we use scrub daddy) is always filled with vegetables, cheese, or other food debris after they do dishes by hand. Microwave, fridge, and drawer handles are constantly covered in butter from popcorn made by Groom. Groom and Fifth constantly put opened bags of frozen veggies, tater tots, chicken nuggets into the freezer without closing them, leaving crumbs and food all over the freezer and all over everyone else's food containers. They also consistently shove my food in particular to the back of the freezer, which I've told them not to do previously. When the Bride moved in, they excused things like leaving cabinet doors (which are at perfect eye-gouging height for Healthcare and I) open by saying, "Oh yeah, he's always done that, and I'm too short for it to matter, so."
Every time either Healthcare or I bring up any of these issues, Groom comes rushing out of his room (the master bedroom of course, with the largest amount of room and a sunroom and a bathroom) to say "I'm sorry, I fucked up, I fucked up" over and over. Like, dude! I don't want sorry, I want different behavior. Fifth has gotten marginally better but still actively avoids chore duties and has lied at least twice about her dishes being someone else's. The Bride gets some grace because they've barely been here, but they've also routinely left puddles in the kitchen (genuinely covering half the floor space) from doing dishes. Manageable, but annoying and not great for the apartment. We might as well mop at that point.
This is already too long and becoming a rant, but I guess if anyone has advice on how to handle this, it'd be highly appreciated. This feels like a lot of weaponized incompetence and I just don't know how to respond to it given roommate meetings haven't worked. I don't think they're observant enough to notice a chore strike (which Healthcare has been mumbling about).

“Wake the fuck up, man.”
Haruki Fujita slipped out of a hallucination. The hallucination was mindless. It featured a name moments before something killed him, extraterrestrial and horrible from head to toe. Slimy and predatory. The most of it cybernetic. He was dying, with blood gushing out of his neck, but that wasn’t what killed him, at least not immediately, because his intestines were pulled out of his stomach, and that was what killed him.
He watched the blue solar panel wing curve outward from the steel hull of the International Space Station, and he frowned bitterly. From the sensation of death, Haruki Fujita had a sickening gut feeling.
“Stefan Bossi!” he cried out, alarmed.
The name lingered in his mind. He remembered it from his hallucination. He idly watched one of his gloves floating across the room and stopped in front of his computer screen. No reason was known to him why he remembered that name; he remembered nothing more. There was a brief rush—he had time to think about programming languages and decoding radio frequencies, though none of the government organizations he hacked into proved extraterrestrial in origin, but Haruki was convinced by the bizarre nature of the sounds. He didn’t really care about the scientists at SETI, many doctors, and the best professors in the world who regarded them as a hoax. And those who didn’t view the evolution of Earth from an intergalactic perspective that was terraformed over billions of years by otherworldly entities.
“Stefan Bossi!” he said again, grabbing the floating glove with his cold hand and looked at it, trying to decide the significance of the name from his hallucination. Instantly he felt his fingers were freezing from the cold. As Haruki watched the storage bay where he was hiding, his fingers slipped into the glove and strapped the Velcro. “Stefan Bossi! Stefan Bossi!” It seemed to be all he could remember.
Even trapped in the confusing vise of the illusion, Haruki felt an intense fear—this was what an extraterrestrial predator looked like while it slaughtered him. It was a look that filled him with horror.
Another radio frequency echoed from his computer, this one echoing like the mating call of a dolphin, and that excited him. With another “Stefan Bossi!” he stared out of the window and watched the sun disappear behind the Earth, he lost focus; and although it was only an hour after bedtime—another exciting six hours while everyone was deep asleep—the red glow of the computer screen had so hindered his thoughts that he was distracted while staring. And he slipped back into that mindless hallucination.
When Haruki managed to wake up, he realized it was hours later, in the bosom of the night. He glimpsed over the UPS batteries and saw a loose terminal that looked like a collection of fireflies floating in the antigravity of space.
After a while, he hovered upright and spoke.
“Stefan Bossi!”
Incredibly, he did not know why.
Haruki swallowed and looked at the wall, thinking: I’m going to die.
For a moment his mind seemed to separate from his physical body—it was not fear, or angst; it was terror. He was reminded by the physical sense of nausea as he swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, and it occurred to him that he had just experienced a completely new level of fear.

The first argument about faith in the Fujita household—the first one Haruki got a hiding for, at least—happened on an Easter weekend in April. It was a big argument; even the greatest spanking couldn’t change his mind. Only his stepbrother shared his sentiment; Nic Chagall was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and listening to his sulking. This was fortunate because, in those days, there was no way to get ungrounded by a Japanese father.
The circumstances that, slipping out of a deep trance at night onboard the ISS, Haruki had spoken aloud a name that he had no memory of. And it hardly aroused enough curiosity to investigate the phenomenon.
Weird he thought, and got a little shiver; as if to confirm the opinion that the vision was indeed supernatural, he slipped into a trancelike daze. He realized with blank, distant eyes that for the first time the hallucination was no longer mindless.
Now he was walking onboard an abandoned spaceship pondering why the microgravity did not affect his arms and legs; he became aware that he was being watched from the shadows of the spaceship.
Haruki looked around quickly and saw a strange light with a red glow. He would have closed his eyes, but it fascinated him, and now it felt as if he had no idea where to go or why he was there; he did not know. Everything seemed so natural and real, as is the case with hallucinations. The revelation of being onboard an alien ship stopped bothering him, and the questions faded.
He screamed very loudly—the light must have done something to him because he could not remember being able to hear himself, and his lips didn’t twitch.
Soon, he came to a parting of ways; he saw a staircase leading to the lower deck, which had the appearance, in fact, of having long been abandoned. He sensed it led to something evil, yet he went down without hesitation, urged by some unstoppable force. He swallowed and descended the staircase, now convinced that the spaceship was haunted by invisible existences that he could not picture in his mind.
“What?” From behind the giant steel columns on his lefthand side, he heard broken and incoherent echoes of a radio frequency that he somewhat recognized. It sounded to him like fragmentary utterances of an evil conspiracy against his body and mind.
He swallowed again, holding onto the handrailing to steady himself. Haruki pointed at something lurking in the darkness, now believing it was watching him—an apparition so utterly intergalactic that he felt a pause in his breathing and a chill in his bones.
But for a long time, nothing came. He wanted to know why the haunted spaceship through which he journeyed was lit with a red glimmer having no point of origin. It appeared as if the mysterious light didn’t cast a shadow, and he thought about its neon color. Everything seemed a little brighter now, and he stood rooted with that cold feeling squeezing his lungs that reminded him of the alien presence.
A shallow pool in a bent depression met his eyes with a sloppy mess. He tumbled forward and plunged with his gloves into it and then looked at the thick slime of juices and placenta on his fingers with a different kind of horror.
Slime, he then observed, was around him everywhere. The walls towering grimly on either side revealed it in blots and splashes on the big, rusted panels. Bundles of sloppy racks that stretched over the walkways were hoarded with conductor cables and splattered as with placenta—glowing red. Robbing the place of its significance covered in heaps of crimson, slime dangling like slurry with its coagulations.
Sweat ran down his forehead and burned his eyes. He tasted a mixture of salt and minerals in his mouth. The shivering would not stop. Fear was like the ultimate curse. He thought: There is a point where the physical symptom of fear becomes unbearable: I have passed that point already.
It felt as if everything was in compensation for some crime that he could not remember. He believed he was a person of integrity; if he had murdered someone he would have remembered it, and a little introspection would have revealed the person he had supposedly harmed. The discovery of the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings was an added horror, tracing his steps backward in his mind.
And just how vainly could he reproduce the moment of his wrongdoing, here standing knee-deep in the slime? But suddenly the memories flashed tumultuously into his brain, picture after picture, only causing confusion and obscurity, and in no picture could he catch a glimpse of what he had done wrong.
But just because it hadn’t been remembered didn’t mean it didn’t happen. This failure to conceive only heightened his terror; he felt like a failure who had lost something in the dark without knowing what.
He grabbed his knees, shuddering,
(think of a way to kill yourself, think of a way to make it stop)
and sank his gloves into his spacesuit as hard as he could. He looked down, weak and flimsy knees rattling like a dog, tongue stuck into his cheek, and his posture heavily slanted with baleful character. It felt as if everything in sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all around came the audible and startling echoes: the growl of a creature so obviously from outer space—that he could take it no more, and with a great effort to break the curse that bound his arms and legs to procrastination, he shouted from the depths of his lungs.
“Reveal yourself!”
His voice echoed with a hollow clang, it went stuttering and stammering, but of course he could not know what evils might lurk on the ship. He would only assume that, because his voice broke and echoed into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, the ship must have been large enough to have traveled from another galaxy or dimension.
I will not go down without a fight. There may be frequencies that are malignant and haunting this accursed ship. I shall decipher them and blot them down. The monster shall forget about my wrongs, the suffering that I endure—I, a worthless astronaut, a medic, and a computer programmer!
Haruki removed a flashbeam from his spacesuit; it felt warm when he switched it on. He pointed the beam at the wall and heard intimidating radio frequencies echoing against the steel.
Why, yes, I shall take off my glove—dip it into a heap of slime and write against the wall.
He had hardly touched the surface of the steel with his finger when a wild, evil reverberation of growling broke out at a considerable distance behind him, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer. It was a soulless, heartless, and unpleasant growl, like that of a predator terrorizing its prey. It was a growl which culminated in an unearthly roar close at hand, then died away by slow gradations. Maybe the accursed being that uttered it had retreated over the shimmer back to the dimension where it had come from. But maybe this was not the case—it might still be nearby and ready to attack at any moment. Fuck knows he spent a long time waiting for something to happen.
You should be moving, Fujita.
Maybe walking, maybe running. Either way it was better than just standing there and doing nothing.
A strange sensation began to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses were affected; he experienced it as a hunch—an unconscious mental awareness of some extraterrestrial presence—some alien malevolence different in kind from the visible existences that glitched around him, and superior to humans in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous growl. And now it felt as if it was approaching him; from what direction he had no idea—dared not speculate.
Haruki closed his eyes and stared at the back of his eyelids. All his former fears had combined or amalgamated into a gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one mission: to convert the frequency stuck in his head into code, echoing the haunted spaceship, before the extraterrestrial monster blessed him with eternal silence. And now he lifted his slimy finger, idly thinking of computer codes such as Java, C++, and R . . .
Should I write it down?
Should I write at all?
A soft, freaky sound escaped his throat. The face of the astronaut was sickly terrified, the pale face now augmented with a plan of action.
His body started to move rapidly, finger oozing slime without renewal, arm waving in the thin air like a graffiti artist. Two minutes later, at the last part of the script, his arm fell to his side, glove to the air. He was powerless and could not move or cry out; he found himself staring at a wall of illegibly written script, the code representative of the ultimate frequency haunting this spaceship. At that moment Haruki almost believed it: that he was earmarked for death.
He had never been so scared in his life.
The symbols were glowing against the reddened wall written at an angle, the slime, and the acrid smell of the place. He clamped his teeth against each other and tried to focus his mind on what he had written; the code was all he could think of.

Haruki Fujita heard footsteps in the hall. He grabbed a blanket from the bottom of his bed and used it to cover his stepbrother, who was bundled up and lying naked with his knees pulled up to his chest, shivering.
Their father came out of the dark to switch off their light. His wife followed, passed the room with a bottle of wine, and headed down the hall. Haruki lay silent for a moment, not moving, he was aware that something important and significant was being celebrated of which they were not informed. The door of their room closed softly against the clip as his father pulled it. Then came the sound of shouting.
“You’ve bought another Porsche,” his mother said.
“The hospital pays for it, you know,” Chin Fujita replied.
Haruki heard her footsteps march up and down the room before she went to the bathroom and opened the water to wash her hands.
“You are wasting our time on Haruki.”
“No, honey, he will become a doctor someday.”
“What about my boy?”
“He’s not interested, but I think he will pass his exam next week and become a medic like Haruki. I can tell from his aptitude tests, and his EQI is off the charts.”
“Another Porsche, I can’t believe it?”
“I know. You weren’t supposed to find out. It was a surprise. I got the GT3-RS for you; that explains the black.”
Haruki could have cared less about his father wasting his money on that bitch of stepmother. Not giving a fuck was good, but—
“What did I do to deserve another black beauty? No really—is it mine?”
The sound of broken glass woke Nicklaus up. Now looking at the swimming pool in his room, he said, “They’re fighting again . . . Haruki. It’s going to be a long night if they cannot sort out their shit.”
“Are you awake?”
Nic raised his head, which was tucked under the blanket, and kissed Haruki on the forehead.
“You should tell him about your talent.”
“I have absolutely no talent.”
“But you are good at computer programming. I can see the character of Mister Anderon from the movie in you.”
That was when Haruki grew excited. “I would like to make my hero proud.”
“You have lived in the Matrix for your entire life—by which you have become a prodigy and a part-time hacker.”
Maybe even a carbon copy.
“That is nice of you, Nicky. I’m glad you are proud of me since he is on the point of giving up, calling me the family disgrace, and long since dubbed me a worthless gamer. That bitch thinks I am a black sheep and says that I have a psychological imbalance, whatever that means. She said that I have missed my vocation to become a doctor.”
“But you are smart, like your dad. I like it that you are a devoted cybernetic criminal.”
“A hacker sounds better—”
And another glass broke in the room next to them. Their father opened the balcony door, probably to smoke a cigarette. When Haruki looked up this time, he saw joy and excitement on his stepbrother’s face. He was only two years younger, after all. Nic gave him a playful smile, then went back under the blanket where he could finish what he had started.
“Nicky, for God’s sake—stop it and try to focus—”
Yet it had always bothered Haruki that they were stepbrothers. Although Nic was a devoted fan of the great Keanu Reeves so generally and justly admired for his hair. Nic had always taken care to conceal his weakness from all eyes but those who shared his passion. And their common profession as medics was an added bond between them.
Maybe Nic will understand if I tell him the truth. He cannot come with me to New York.
He toyed for a moment with a lock of Nic’s hair which had escaped from its pins, and said, with an effort of calmness in his voice:
“Would you be okay with me leaving for a few months to look for a job, Nicky?”
It was clearly needful for Nic to put his arm across his eyes without making an instant reply. Evidently he would mind; and the tears sprang into his large brown eyes as corroborative testimony.
“Ah, my brother,” he replied, looking up at his face with tenderness, “I knew this was coming. Did I not lie awake half of the afternoon weeping because, during the other half, Keanu Reeves had come to me in a dream.”
It was the great actor, Haruki Fujita would know if his stepbrother was lying, which he wasn’t.
“Neo?” he whispered. His lips were beginning to shiver again, but in the dim light of the swimming pool Nic barely noticed.
“Yes, and standing next to the computer screen—young, too, and handsome as in the first movie—pointed to your picture on the wall? I could not see your face when I looked since you were uploaded into the Matrix, such as at the end of the flick. You can smile at this, but you and I, dear, know that such things are no joke.”
Haruki’s life would be in trouble not because he was uploaded into the program but because his face was missing (and so he believed it to be an actual dream); why the hero would point to his picture on the wall baffled his mind.
“And I saw within the glowing code the wound of a blade on your throat, Haruki—forgive me, but we do not hide things from each other. Perhaps you have another interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go away. Or maybe you will take me with you?”
“I think it foreshadowed a simpler, surely less tragic, meaning like a visit to the great robot city in Zion. But please don’t try to stop me from leaving.”
“Are there not enough medics in New York?” Nic Chagall continued before his stepbrother could stop him— “Trinity discovered the truth with a broken heart? Look—my chest is ripped open; and I am almost sure that I will die in your absence.”
No—not like this.
Too sad.
Might break them apart.
The throbbing in his chest was more persistent; the next moment Haruki held out his hands but he was afraid that Nic would reject his request for affection. His hands lingered. There was a brief interval of silence. It sounded like their parents were making out again. It was warming up according to their breathing, but if his suspicions were correct, they would go on for the rest of the night. Nic refused to take his hands.
How long before his cold hands revealed the pain in his heart and his emotional scars manifesting in the form of tears, the hacker was unable to cry. How long before they would see each other again?
Three months? A year?
That would be the length of his pain, Haruki thought, and his lips began to shudder. By the time his lips stopped shaking, and it was not until a considerable time later that he realized he would have to leave his brother behind.
“I suppose I’ll have to go.”
Watching Nic, he felt the warmth of his affection for him that his blank expression denied. The weight pressed heavily on his shoulders as he watched his stepbrother cope with it in his own kind of way.

While job hunting in downtown Brooklyn after three months, Haruki was taking cover under a bridge one thunderstorm night, waiting for his weed to be delivered. The storm was well underway now, and no longer raining but pouring. He believed he understood the economic difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic—since he hadn’t found a job yet—but as the homeless people kept multiplying (he could see more and more people each week), he began to gain a different perspective in terms of earning an honest paycheck.
To his right, through the maze of squatters and bonfires toward the parking lot, he saw a black Lincoln Continental. Haruki noticed a driver with white hair holding the steering wheel like a woman (shit, he thought, she looked exactly like the driver from The Matrix) with her long nails and black leather jacket.
“What the hell?” he asked, sounding smoked as usual.
The car first drove around and then pulled right up to him. He thought of asking the driver if she had also ordered some weed—her eyes were looking mighty red—and decided he didn’t want to have that conversation now. He turned his attention toward the backseat where another woman with a crying baby had been watching him. At first he thought she looked familiar. Then he looked again and saw she was actually a transvestite, rocking the baby in his arms.
“You need to come with us,” the transvestite said. “We heard you are looking for a job?”
“We don’t have much time, Elon,” the driver added.
He thought of Nic back home and imagined he would make his stepbrother proud when breaking the news. He resisted the urge to question the man about the job . . . or even ask them who they were. His clever plan to look for a job in the big city was pretty screwed up and turned out to be a great mistake.
The crying increased, louder.
“We are subcontracting for NASA,” Elon said. He showed his badge to prove it.
“Really?”
“Come.”
“Now?”
“You know we are the real deal, right?”
“Shit, no. I didn’t expect it to happen like this.” Failing to hide the doubt on his face. Or the glimmering sweat on his forehead. Maybe from the weed or the rain. Maybe both.
“Your father said you’re the best medic in the field, but legislation makes it impossible with your qualifications. Your father has pulled some strings for you to work through us. The danger pay is good. Since you’ll be working in space.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“No, really.”
“Space?”
“You will be working on the International Space Station for three months on and three months off, both of you.”
Haruki didn’t hear it. Till it registered. “Both?”
“Both of the Fujita boys will be going to space!”
Haruki brightened. NASA also recruited his stepbrother to join the crew, and two weeks later, the two brothers were reunited in the microgravity of space.
Though happy to be together, Haruki was no less proud in spirit that he had been onboard the ISS for weeks that felt like an eternity. He gladly enjoyed the company of his stepbrother, and it was while living onboard the ISS, awaiting news and orders from ground control, that he had slipped into a trance.

The hallucination came back to Haruki Fujita, haunting enough, as he stood on board the spaceship with his back against the reddened wall, hands at his side. He had to lift his head upward slightly to confront his enemy. Well . . . actually, he had to lift his head more than slightly. The thing was large. So large that he couldn’t even see the extraterrestrial beast. In case you didn’t notice the predator reminds me of Nicky, but ten times more horrible! A monster that stirred no love nor longing in my heart, but strangely its presence evoked pleasant memories of my happy childhood—with all kinds of sentiment. The tender emotions were swallowed up in fear.
Haruki tried to run away, but his boots were saturated with slime. He was unable to pull his legs out of the mess. His arms drifted uselessly in the air; of his eyes only he remained in control, and these he dared not remove from the glowing ember of his enemy.
He stared at it.
Was it cybernetic?
Shit, it looked like it was.
Anyway, it seemed biological and that most dreadful of all existences—a robot with predatory limbs! In its blank stare, he noticed neither love, pity, nor artificial intelligence—nothing to which he could address an appeal for mercy.
An appeal won’t be a lie, he thought.
The sight of it evoked no happy memories. If he could have reached it he would have grabbed it. If he could have reached it he would have tried to stick his finger into its glowing eye. But his inaction only made the situation more terrifying with the red glow on his forehead.
For a time, which seemed so long that the Earth grew bleak with crime and murder, and the haunted ship, having miscalculated its destination in this monstrous height of its terrors, faded out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the predator invaded his space, regarding him with the brutal malevolence of a cybernetic monster.
Quivering with panic, Haruki lifted his head so he could peer into its mouth, double-edged razor blades, rows and rows of them like a predator with a mouthful of fangs chipped but otherwise deadly.
“I see.”
It sat down. The ship rocked a little. Haruki guessed that the beast might weigh as much as thirty tons. It had come from a universe where there were different alloys, shapeshifting metal . . . also advanced composites were used in its construction, some organic materials like flesh and exoskeleton, the biological part of the organism was infected with a wicked cancer.
The monster roared at him, promising annihilation.
He moved back. The monster came forward. That made Haruki very uncomfortable.
“Shit!” Haruki didn’t take any pleasure in the way this was going if not for the brutal nature of his enemy; as solid as a piece of machinery and ferocious, it transformed itself grinning with its one eye missing, about to deliver him to the universe and convert him into stardust.
The thing’s mouth grew sly, confronting him to admit a dirty, dirty secret. Its grin became a smile. Strangely, the venom oozed out of its tongue. This is what it looks like, he thought, if a species faces its ultimate extinction even worse than those robots from the movie. This is what it looks like just before the end of humanity.
“No . . .”
The beast thrust its limbs forward and sprang upon him with outrageous ferocity! The act released Haruki’s physical energy without affecting his willpower to fight back. And his pain was blocked out by an overdose of hydrofluoric acid at the same time something leeched onto his brainstem, his flimsy body and dangling arms powered with a blind, inanimate mind of their own, became weak and puny.
“Not like this . . . I can’t die like this . . . and what about . . . wait!”
For an instant he seemed to see this supernatural contest between an infected robot and a dying human only as a spectator—such fantasies of hallucinations.
He looked at the wall crying like a girl, leaving the predator and its claws to finish him off. Then he regained his willpower almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the visionary now had an accurate will as alert and fierce as that of the predator.
“Leame dafuckalone!”
He tried to fight back. The hacker’s return. But how can a human compete with a creature of extraterrestrial origins? He supposed a boy who was being killed by an alien monster might feel something like pain as he lay regarding his gushing main artery with a cold surprise. The programmer’s skill is the programmer’s weakness.
“No!” His neck bled like a slaughtered animal. His worthless hands were clasped at his sides.
Despite his struggles—despite his strength and willpower, which seemed wasted in the void of space, he felt the sharp claws thrust into his throat and brain, many times. Falling backward to the sheet metal, he saw through his cracked visor the grey and dusty surface of the Moon within an arm’s reach of his own, and then everything was black. The sounds of the unearthly radio frequencies in the distance—the dolphin’s cry, a sharp, far growl declaring the end, and Hariki Fujita imagined he was dead.

The International Space Station is that kind of place that when you are there, you must take it all in, but after Peggy grabbed Jameson by the arm and ordered him to come with her, there was no time to take it all in. The airlock closed behind them, and Peggy knew they were getting close.
“How far is it?” Jamason asked, as they hovered along, their feet stirring particles of dust in the microgravity beneath their soles.
Peggy looked at him, suspiciously, recalling that he had agreed to go with her without informing ground control of their whereabouts.
“Only a few feet further,” Peggy answered. She led the way toward the old storage bay with its battery banks and electrical inverters, accumulating backup electricity in case of an emergency.
“What is going on,” he said as they hovered through the west hanger where corrosion and dilapidation gradually increased and passed through the narrow arch into the dark, freezing aerospace shadows.
“You know Haruki Fujita?” she said, feeding her companion’s curiosity with as little information as possible. The name was disturbing, and Peggy felt her neck spasm a little.
“The Jap who plays with his stepbrother’s hair? I know him; he ruined a month of my work after the botanicals died from his intrusion. There is an HR complaint lodged against him for interfering with my plants, but ground control refuses to believe it. You will believe me when—”
“I believe you, okay. Because he has been hacking into the servers for a long time. He works at night in the dilapidated capsule.”
“The asshole! So that’s where the acidic atmosphere that killed my plants came from.”
“You might have imagined that NASA’s security checks would have picked up a cybernetic criminal who could hack their instrumentation.”
“The very last person I would have suspected.”
“Yesterday afternoon I was issued a job card to check the battery terminals. To my surprise I found something else in there, I found ‘a computer of him’ in there.”
“So you caught him red-handed?”
“Damn it! He frightened me. Something growled from behind me—it literally gave me goosebumps. I’m lucky that I wasn’t there ten minutes earlier. Oh shit, he was dying, and I thought the blood floating in space was proof enough that I wouldn’t be able to save him.”
Hovering in the cramped hanger shoulder to shoulder, Peggy glanced at him. The boy’s eyes were so dark they seemed black, only by her flashbeam did they turn indigo blue. She noticed her death-grip on the torch, her gloves couldn’t release their hold even consciously.
“I need to show you the body so that we can devise a plan of action,” the engineer explained. “I thought it was safe for us to check out the corpse during the day.”
“Are you sure the Jap is dead?” said the biologist. “The light in there may have obscured your visibility and conclusion. If he was unconscious he might still be alive.”
“Well, he seemed very dead to me.” She glanced sideways at the boy, and felt a flare of disappointment. She knew deep down in her being that Haruki was gone, one of the first dead bodies she ever encountered. She had to admit that such a bloody, gruesome, and unsettling scene she had never seen in all her years as a first aider or electrical engineer.
“Alright,” Jameson said; “we will go and look at him,” and he added, in the words of a caring person, “we should keep this between us—I mean, if young Nic Chagall ever finds out about his stepbrother it would kill him. By the way, I heard the other day that ‘Nic’ was not his real name.”
“What is?”
“I cannot remember. I had lost interest in the introvert, and it did not grab hold in my memory—something like Nicklaus. The medic who enrolled in the space program joined his stepbrother after he was abandoned. But Haruki, on the other hand, had joined in search of extraterrestrial technology. Can you believe that there are people who still believe in aliens nowadays? Clearly you are not a believer.”
“Obviously.”
“But wandering about your faith, what do you believe in then? Your boyfriend mentioned what the name was called and said it was scientific in nature.”
“We don’t have a name yet.” Peggy was reluctant to argue without facts about something so important as that. Bossi bases his beliefs on the Principia Mathematica. Isaac Newton was the founder of a philosophy that was only recently made public. A few fragments of his work provide scientific evidence based on experimentation. But anyhow, here is the storage bay.”
She looked at him sharply to see if he was prepared. His face, however, was wearing an expression of frozen panic. His lips and nostrils were rimmed with deep purple, and there were shadows in his dark eyes, like the shapes of a reptile streaking into two hard lines.
“Lemme show you where I found the body,” she said, “this is the place.”
As the two astronauts made their way through the blood of hovering crimson, they suddenly stopped and lifted their flashbeams to the height of the wall, uttered a low note of surprise, and stood motionless, their eyes fixed upon something weird. As far as Peggy could see the wall was covered with inscriptions, though she did not yet understand what she was looking at. A moment later she moved cautiously forward, aiming for the inverters.
Behind the inverter of an enormous height hovered the spacesuit of another astronaut. Standing silent beside it, Peggy noted such particulars that immediately took her attention—the suit was empty, the body missing, the clothing still inside; whatever most probably and strangely happened to this astronaut must have been unearthly.
The suit floated upon its back, the nametag—Nic Chagall. One arm was twisted in circles, the other stretched, but the latter was ripped off brutally, with the missing piece stuck to the helmet. The other arm was severely bent. The whole attitude of the suit was that of desperate but weak resistance to something.
Nearby drifted the disemboweled stepbrother with his naked finger stretched out, stained and blotched, and the floor had been scribbled with blood into symbols all over the corroded floorplate; next to his suit was unmistakable the footprint of an alien entity.
A glance at the empty spacesuit’s missing glove and boots made the nature of the struggle even more mysterious. While the suit and helmet were clean, the arms and legs were red—almost black. The oxygen hose stuck against an inverter, and the suit was twisted and turned backward, opposite any natural posture.
From behind Haruki’s cracked helmet his eyes had popped, bloody and gruesome. The throat showed horrible penetrations; not mere fingermarks, but lacerations and stab wounds inflicted by animal claws that must have buried themselves in his bleeding flesh, maintaining their terrible grip long after death. His throat, chin, and face were soggy; the material saturated; drops of blood had gathered like condensate inside his visor, bloodstained hair and cheeks.
All this the two astronauts observed without speaking—almost frozen. Then Jameson said:
“Poor Haruki! He got what he deserved.”
Peggy was vigilantly inspecting the storage bay. Her flashbeam was held in both hands and at full brightness, and her gloves were clenched around the handle.
“The work of a murderer,” she said, without removing her eyes from the surrounding inverters. “It was done by Nic—Chagall.”
Something half-hidden by the cable racks behind the inverters caught Peggy’s attention. It was the wall. She looked at it while lifting her flashbeam. It contained the code of computer and upon the entire wall the name “Stefan Bossi.” Written in blood over and over again—scribbled as if in haste barely legible—were the following lines, which Peggy read silently while her companion started scanning the dark confines of the enclosure and hearing a commotion from inside the bloody spiderwebs dangling from the wall.

public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String originalName = “Stefan Bossi”;
System.out.println(“Original name: “ + originalName);

// Reversing the name
String reversedName = new StringBuilder(originalName).reverse().toString();
System.out.println(“Reversed name: “ + reversedName);

// Converting to uppercase
String upperCaseName = originalName.toUpperCase();
System.out.println(“Uppercase name: “ + upperCaseName);

// Swapping first name with last name
int spaceIndex = originalName.indexOf(‘ ‘);
String firstName

“Bossi Stefan—”
Peggy stopped reading; there was no more to read. The code broke off in the middle of a line.
“What a flawless Java script,” she said, since she was somewhat of a programmer herself. With extraordinary patience she stood looking at the wall.
“Who’s Java?” Jameson asked rather confused.
“Computer code, a script that was written to play around with two words—a very jolly script indeed. Coded in first generation; I know the language. The script repeated my boyfriend’s name, but it must have been by mistake.”
“Your boyfriend?” Jameson said. “Let us go back; we must share this information with ground control.”
Peggy said nothing but nodded in compliance. Staring at the inverter behind the empty spacesuit of the missing astronaut with the oxygen hose entangled, she saw that the absent glove was stuck (or rather glued) to the vertical surface by some slimy substance drooling from the melted plastic. She took her torch to illuminate it into view. It was an oozing mess, and painted on the panel were the hardly decipherable words, “Peggy Lance.”
“Peggy Lance!” exclaimed Jameson, with sudden animation. “Why, that is your name—not Stefan Bossi. And—curse your soul! How it all comes together—the murderer’s name is Peggy Lance!”
“There is something weird going on here,” Peggy said. “I deny anything of the kind.”
There came to them from inside the wall—seemingly from a great distance—the sound of a growl, a high-pitched, frequency, cybernetic echo, which had no more joy than that of a predator prowling at its prey; a growl that originated from far away, closer and closer, distinct, more explicit but brutal, until it faded away outside the audible distance of their hearing; a growl so unnatural, so extraterrestrial, so morbid, that it filled those freaked out astronauts with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their torches nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was the kind not to be disturbed by light. As it had originated out of solid metal, to die away grimly; from a culminating frequency that had seemed almost in their head, it retreated into the distance until its soft echoes, cybernetic and mechanical to the last frequency, faded into silence at an immeasurable distance.

So I will add a TLDR at the bottom of this because it came out so long, but I want to add some context
Context---
Me (M27) and my friend(F23), lets call her Tina, have known each other for about 5 years now and have grown really close. Full disclosure, we met on tinder while she was visiting and I found out she was in a relationship and so being the person I was, I just kinda didn't move on her. She went back home across the country, we still would text on snapchat and flirt but nothing insane. She would talk about coming to visit and staying with me but I figured it was just talk.
Fast forward some months and she actually moves out to where I am and we become friends. We hang out a lot, despite the fact that it's still about a 2 hour drive to go see her, and over the years we have gotten really close. I love her to death and we have been there for each other through a lot of heavy stuff as well as some major victories.
That being said shes become a bit possessive and clingy to me. I dont mind it, but it does present problems sometimes. For instance, my ex girlfriend (when we were together of course) would always bring up the fact that she would FaceTime me a lot and I think there was some jealousy/ unease about our relationship. When I did try and "fix" it by setting boundaries it didn't go well. I think I told her she was like my friend who was also a sister or something along those lines, and she pretty immediately and very vocally rejected that and shut it down. It left me feeling kind of lost though because it was hard to explain my relationship with her to a significant other.
I also have to admit that Tina is extremely attractive. Like, models and has a lot of guys generally trying to talk to her where ever we go, get free drinks all the time, guys pay for her stuff in hopes to just get a number, kinda attractive. And to be honest she is my "type" as my ex's have had her same features. On the flip side, all of her ex's and guys shes gone for, have been guys of similar race, height, and build as me.
But we have never hooked up or done anything!
That being said, the relationship has always been a bit flirty, and physical. We go to the club and she will dance or shake her ass on me. I've slapped her ass before, cuddled with her. Slept in the same bed and spent over a week just at her apartment all but "playing house" as we jokingly called it. She FaceTimes me in the shower, and at this point I've seen her naked more times than I can count.
At one point a few years ago, I realized when we were both single, I had been catching feelings for her and tried to have a talk about it but she quickly shut it down. She has ALWAYS and ADAMANTLY pointed out that she would "Never hook up with her friend, especially her best friend" and that we are and have always been just friends. When guys approach us and ask if we are together she always is quick to correct them if they assume we are together (despite her not really bringing her other girl friends out when ever we hang out. I can only count on 1 hand the times she's brought me around her more attractive girl friends).
To add to that, I approached the topic again a few months ago after I had problems with my car and couldn't make it home so I ended up staying at her studio for 5 days "Playing house" as she called it. We slept in the same bed and she cooked for me, I was walking her dog while she got her nails done, she was folding our laundry, etc. but she told me I was "like her brother." Fine. I accepted that because AT LEAST at this point, it was a boundary she was setting.
The problem
All of this has been confusing as it is, but the real problem cropped up around last year when she began claiming I was her "best friend." Which was fine with me. I had just gotten through a really rough time of depression and homelessness and when I was at my low points she was there for me through the whole thing. We hung out more and I realized that we had only ever gone out 4 times in any social setting (I.e A club or etc.) where It would be fine to talk to other women and it not be weird. Which isn't a lot. I can't exactly just slide in to a random booth while her and I would be out at a restaurant and start flirting with a girl while we are out to dinner though. that would be weird. But I had expressed to her I wanted to get back into dating (which she immediately clowned me for and said it was a bad idea) and how she was "girl repellent" when we went out because, while I had normally been successful talking to women, even being pretty regularly approached even, any time Tina and I were out, as soon as they saw her, I wasn't even a glance. I swear I became invisible or something.
I'll skip the specifics because this already feels like too long a post, but of the 4 times we have gone out, 3 she has come up with some reason why we had to go as soon as I would start talking to another girl. The 4th time however (which was the past weekend) was different. She is clingy sure, but this time it was different. When I went to the bathroom, she would follow, saying how she had to go, even when I was sure she didn't and it was an excuse to stay close. I figured it was because she didn't want to be alone on the dance floor at the club. Fine. At this point Tina had randomly started flirting with a guy so I took the chance to separate from the hip and go find someone to talk to. Later that night I started talking to two girls and it was going really well. They were friends and both crazy flirty and, while I didn't plan it, one of them even was a blonde with the same looks as my friend Tina.
We ordered shots at the bar right after the girl and her friend said something like over the top sexual and flirty. Then before we could drink them, Tina put her hand on my inner thigh, shot her hand with her purse in it between both the girl and I to reach to the bar, she ordered a shot, and then looked me dead in the eye saying extremely loudly,
"All these guys keep trying to talk to me, they keep asking if you're my boyfriend!"
Making sure to say "my boyfriend" pretty loud. The girls face went from anger (probably at the fact that Tina had reached in-between us and we had been pretty close to each other so it was an invasion of space for sure, but also to being upset at me who im sure she assumed was trying to talk to another girl while I was with someone. Both of the girls took their shot and left while Tina made up some excuse saying "They were going to go to the bathroom and just leave" and that she just knew cus she was a girl, (Huhhh?) and then immediately pivoted before I could say anything to
"You switched to that other girl anyways! I could hear the whole thing!"
I didn't even argue. I just kind of mentally noted it, ordered another drink and then went on with the night, she never left my side, and we left pretty soon after that.
I think the biggest issue came when we got home. Since the whole "youre like a brother to me" thing I reserved myself to just sleeping on the floor since in her words "it was weird sleeping in the same bed with someone they aren't with" the truth was I was trying to really get over her and try to see her as only my friend and move on with a good healthy relationship with my one real friend left. I also just didn't feel comfortable (as her "brother") sleeping in the same bed where I KNOW she has had a lot of other guys and hookups.
So after her twerking around and going on live and trying to dance on me (to which I just attributed to her being a little drunk) I just laid down at the foot of the bed, used my backpack as a pillow and told her I was going to sleep. Im assuming she changed into her pajamas after I fell asleep because of what happened when I woke up.
When I woke up. "Somehow" she had now moved from the top of the bed where she was sleeping, down with her leg almost hanging off the bed and her bottoms completely off. Not to go into too much detail to keep is SFW, but she was completely exposed with a leg propped up and everything...
I was just frozen for what felt like 5 min. before I just got up and went to the bathroom to try and process. We had slept in the same bed and while she moves around a lot left to right, she'd never done that. I didn't know what to do. I came out of the bathroom like a min later and she had completely moved from the bottom of the bed to the top other side corner and was completely covered up. Im not sure if she was asleep. And I haven't brought it up because it's messing with me so much.
To clarify, im not a fan of this happening. At this point shes actively ruining my chances at talking to someone else, and thats besides what ever the hell that morning was. I don't know what to do, and I've tried to go to my roommates for advice (since they are older guys and I dont really have any other friends atm) and all their advice was is to just sleep with her and move on. Which is not the advice I think I need.
TLDR. My best friend who I have known for 5 Years and has repeatedly said we are not and will never be together has gone 4-0 against me when I try and talk to girls and is probably the Victor Wembenyama of Cockblocking. She has made up reasons why we have to leave a venue when I do talk to someone else because of an "emergency." and has even gone so far as to literally get in between me and other women. I love her and she is my only friend right now. I know she loves me and cares about me but it also feels like im not allowed to go be happy in my own relationship in a way.
I dont want to feel like im pushing her away, and Ive never been good at setting boundaries but I feel as if this isn't normal and Im not sure how to approach it. Sorry for the long post. Thanks for any help in advance.

I never intend to ask this question but Im at a point where Im extremely curious now.
WHY DO I ATTRACT MEN THAT ARE WARLOCKS.
WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?? HOW DO THEY FIND ME ON THE VAST INTERNET?? LIKE EVERY DAMN TIME.
I SWEAR THERE IS SOMETHING GOING ON WITH ME BECAUSE THIS IS THE FIFTH TIME SOME MAN ON THE INTERNET WAS SO ATTRACTED TO MY ENERGY THAT THEY TRIED HEXING ME.
I DON'T EVEN POST SHIT ON MY REDDIT ACCOUNT AND I'M ANNOYMOUS SO IM CURIOUS HOW DO THEY FIND ME BC A GUY JUST DMS ME RN AND SAYS HE INSTANTLY SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO ME ON HERE.
And I instantly felt he was tryna hex me I felt my keyboard glitching and lights flickering.If I had my pfp on. I would understand why someone would say that or are sexually attracted to me. It wouldn't be so errie even with the mf light flickering. But like an annoymous account who has lil to no interaction going on???
BUT WHY ME??? HOW DO THEY FIND ME?? WHAT IS IT ABOUT MY AURA.
Can anyone please answer this because this ks the fifth time someone tried doing that to me. Nd I need to understand.

I live in constant depression because of my loneliness and I don't know what to do...I am so disconnected from reality, I don't feel like a normal human being, I have nobody in my life, no friends, no one I can call to talk to or go out with, I don't feel like people like me yet I am a normal quiet guy who's nice. I feel ugly, I hate my FUCKING self so much, I wish I looked better, I wish I was different, I wish I didn't have social anxiety.
I go to the gym, I take care of myself, I shower, I dress nice and for what? I don't HAVE anybody to talk to, I feel like a ghost, nobody cares if I disappear to be honest, these days I don't feel like going out of my house anymore, I just force myself to do it, I just feel so ugly all the time, I wish this was a fucking joke but I am crying as I write this, I just don't feel accepted by anybody, I don't have a group of friends, everyone just forgot about me like I died or something, all the girls I was interested in rejected or ghosted me even though I was sweet, I was serious and that's how I am, I'm just someone who's nice, I can't change who I am, I don't want to play mind games, ghost each other or whatever the hell people do, and because I've been rejected/ghosted by girls I really liked, I legit feel like wanting to die, it just proves my point that I was put on this earth to suffer, despite all that, being treated like shit I wish I could talk to them again. I'M SO HURT, I HAVE SO MUCH PAIN BOTTLED UP INSIDE OF ME.
I am so self aware, it's crazy, I'm positive around people, I don't complain, I don't say anything negative, I have interests, I have a sense of humor, there is a lot of topics I could talk to people about, I'm not a bland person believe me..I just don't know what it is, I hate myself so much, I really wish someone cared for me and truth is, I suffer so much in my own imagination than in reality...I'm just so broken and sad. I'm tired of it all, I'm tired of living like this, I don't want it anymore, I can't stand it anymore and no one seems to understand.

Apologies, this one is kinda long. First and foremost, let me say that I am well aware of Reddit's opinions on poly relationships and I'm aware that this one ultimately did not prove to be healthy, but please don't let that be an admonishment to poly relationships. Just like any other relationship, it requires work, and this one actually has opened my eyes to the importance of clearly discussing boundaries in any relationship and validating one another's emotions in a healthy and loving manner.
Essentially, I (37M) started dating this woman (32f) when I wasn't exactly in the healthiest place. I was drinking a fair bit and I was cool with the poly dynamic (she had been with her partner for 13 years, only recently went poly) because I was just looking for a fun thing without having to put too much commitment into it. I'm going to take full blame on this one and say that I realized pretty early on into dating that this woman clearly had substance abuse issues, and I decided to jump on board and have some fun rather than acknowledge and address my own shortcomings with substance abuse. It became a regular occurrence that we would drink too heavily and end up having to score a bag of blow, and then spend the next day sleeping it off. Up until I had met this woman, I had all but cut blow out of my life for many a year, with only the occasional slip-up (maybe five times in the last 7 years of my life).
I had met her partner, he was a rad dude and was totally open to all of this, and the only boundary he had in place was practice safe sex and keep him abreast of any sexually-related health issues, which we did. Eventually, they ended up splitting up and he moved out of the house because they realized they wanted different paths in life (he wants a family, she does not want kids). In this time I was a big source of comfort for her and before we knew it we tumbled headlong into an even unhealthier, co-dependent dynamic where we unwittingly found ourselves as primary partners and there were very strong feelings.
One night we were out with friends and ended up back at a mutual friends house. I had been talking with a friend for awhile and noticed I hadn't seen my partner in awhile, so I went to find her. When I opened the bathroom she was in there with a couple (who were her friends and also poly) and they went scurrying off, so I knew something was up. My partner immediately admitted that they had been making out, and I was pretty upset. I felt like I had been betrayed and she admitted she let herself get carried away in the heat of the moment, but they had no intention of making out initially, and when it did start to happen she realized this probably wasn't right and needed to have a discussion with me first. Eventually we ended up realizing that we needed to discuss boundaries because of the new dynamic we found ourselves in, and we agreed on the boundary that "if we go out together, then we're out together".
Fast forward a couple days and the man from that relationship reaches out to my partner and asks her on a date, and she relays this to me. She wants to go but is asking about my comfort levels given the situation. I will willingly admit at this point I have issues with invalidating my own emotions in order to keep the peace (part of a complex web of PTSD from childhood abuse), so I expressed that I was uncomfortable with the whole situation, but I wanted to afford her the freedom to explore. Well, she ended up going on the date, and I found myself slipping into a CPTSD episode. I was trying to pull myself together, I went for a run to clear my head, tried meditation, but I just couldn't pull myself together. I took an ativan, but it didn't help, then ended up driving to the bar and just throwing back beers. The entire time I felt like I was outside of my body watching myself make the worst decisions while every logical part of my brain screamed "STOP!", but I just couldn't get back to reality. In my drunken, out-of-body state, I ended up leaving the bar, getting in my car, and attempting to drive off a cliff and into the ocean to kill myself. I ended up smashing into some trees instead, but still came perilously close to succeeding, and ended up with a fractured sternum and a week long stay in the psychiatric ward.
Now, I'll admit a large part of this had to do with insecurity and jealousy, but I also really didn't like the way the whole situation with the new partners was handled. When I had returned to the party after finding them in the bathroom, the man didn't apologize but instead kept saying "don't be mad" like some goddamn toddler, and only stopped when I said "no, dude, I have every right to be mad right now". My suspicion that he didn't really care about other people's feelings and he was really just a self-centred hedonist masquerading as an enlightened spiritual being was confirmed when he messaged me the day after my suicide attempt saying that I needed to get my act together and stop dragging my partner through this because she's going through a hard time right now.
When I got out of the ward, I went immediately to my partner and we went out for drinks, which was obviously the dumbest decision ever, but actually it ended up being the catalyst for some serious change (as if the suicide attempt wasn't enough). When we were wrapping up and paying the bill, I noticed my partner was very drunk at this point, and was acting furtive with her phone. This rattled me a bit, because we're usually incredibly open with one another, so I pressed. After a bit of pressure, she admitted she had just ordered a bag of coke, and ended up having a bit of a breakdown. I convinced her to cancel the order, and we found a bench to sit on, where she just completely broke down and opened up to how bad it has really been.
She had been using hard drugs daily for the past month (at least) to keep herself going. Between her breakup with her partner of 13 years, a stressful job that she hated, and the pressure she put on herself to socialize, she just couldn't cope. She let me know she has a history of relying on drugs to get her through the tough times. Her circle of friends is very into the festival and party culture and so she was ashamed she couldn't handle her drugs like they could, she was ashamed of anyone finding out she was struggling, she didn't want to turn to her family because she thought they wouldn't understand and would shun her instead of helping her, despite her father having gone through his own struggles with addiction. I did my best to assure her that nobody who is regularly using drugs has it together, that everyone who abuses substances is struggling, and if she reached out she would find that people are more open to discussing it and supporting her than she'd ever imagine (I've been through this process in my life before, I was no stranger to having to reach out for help), and that the only people she'd lose in the process are ones who aren't worth keeping around. She swore up and down she needed to make life changes and wanted a future of fun, sober adventures together, where we'd go camping and hiking together. I told her I'd be by her side to help her navigate, with the caveat that if she did keep struggling, that I'd have no choice but to have to distance myself from our relationship and get her friends and family involved. I was cautiously optimistic about the whole situation. I've been through the process of getting sober before, and know you can end up in some really dark places before you finally have to make a change. Since that night I've been off booze and drugs (almost two months now). I grew up with an alcoholic father and have gone through the process of recovery myself (did 3 years sober in my early 30s) and have tried to help many friends navigate through addiction, and I've seen an acquaintance succumb to his struggles. So I'm quite seasoned in the hell that is addiction and recovery and self-improvement.
Well, to nobody's surprise at all, she struggled. She ensured me she was on a better path, but then would party one night, but it was okay because she was with safe people and only did a bit of coke etc etc. Ultimately, yes, she was not relying on substances as much, but she was still casually using them and insisting she was under control, until she'd have a bad night, then it was just a "lesson learned" kinda thing. Well, one night in particular really got under my skin. We went out for an evening with friends, which included the other aforementioned couple (for her sake I was trying really hard to be cool about the whole situation and wanted to give it a chance), and I noticed her quickly getting to the stage of obliterated. She ignored my polite suggestion to at least try having a water between beers, and when I tried to talk to her about the way the evening was going she pushed back about how she doesn't need to be mothered and needs the freedom to be able to change her plans on the whim. Well, it turns out what that really meant was that she wanted to be able to disregard the boundary about going out together and staying together, because I caught her telling the couple that she ordered a bag of coke and they were invited back to her house, and all of a sudden she wasn't sure if she wanted me to come over that night anymore (it was a weeknight, by the way. She had work in the morning).
Eventually we biked home together and I dropped her off at her place. She said she just went to bed and didn't end up having any coke or the friends over, but I obviously had some trust issues at that point. She ended up admitting that was a bad slip-up, and like an idiot I forgave her trampling of my boundaries for a time, until not long after when she had another episode of severe upset. She had seen her ex at a mutual friends house while she was drinking and it triggered her because she had realized he was never going to be in her life again etc etc and eventually one of her sober friends pulled her aside and sent her home and told her to drink some tea and have a bath and get a good night's sleep, but the next day she was still distraught, so I went and comforted her and she once again assured me she wasn't in a place where she could handle drinking.
That is of course, until a few days later when she met up with her ex and she realized they actually had space for one another in their lives and were still going to casually date while he looked for a life partner to raise a family with. So they had a night of casual beers together.
This time I just pushed. I said I can't do this anymore, you need to figure your shit out, this is driving me mad, are you drinking or not? Well, she started pushing back, claiming she never said she needed to go sober the same way I did, that she was "experimenting" with sobriety, that she had it under control, and all the other lies addicts tell themselves, and I just got too frustrated and was not sparing her feelings (I didn't insult her or call her names, but I did call her out quite abruptly on her bullshit). She didn't even acknowledge that she was lying to me about the severity of her breakdowns until texted her a screenshot of our last conversation when she said "yeah, I still feel like I have to lay off the booze, definitely not in a space where I can have that in my life", and even then, she tried to downplay her struggles.
She said she needed to process things and I gave her the week to do a therapy session and figure it all out. During that time I reached out to the dude in the other relationship and asked if they had actually gone over to her house after I dropped her off that night, and he said he and his partner just went back to theirs and went to bed. Okay, so at least she wasn't lying about that.
Later in the week she had been to therapy and we had a chance to sit down and talk about boundaries and all that, and she said she knew I had reached out to the dude and asked if I was struggling with jealousy, and that I was not to reach out to either of them anymore because they didn't consent to have me as part of their relationship (hey, too frigging bad, we're partners, and part of being ethical is acknowledging my feelings, too). We seemed to come to a place of understanding, where I would play a smaller role in her life and we would date casually but I wouldn't be around her if she was partying. Cut to: the next night she comes over to hang out but there's a party down the street she might attend later. As soon as she gets to mine she whips out a bottle and takes a few microdoses of LSD, then before leaving for the party does MDMA. Turns out, it was just a little get together, she just assumed it was going to be a party, so she was just rolling at a casual function full of fairly straight-laced adults.
The other day it was her birthday and she was having friends over, and expressed it might be awkward for me to be there because she had vented to them about our issues and had managed to turn it in a way that made me out to be controlling and jealous. That was it. I was sick of this. Now she had no problem throwing me under the bus in order to save face because she was too ashamed to admit she had been struggling severely.
This is where I finally grew a backbone. I had an emergency therapy session, and after having the therapist validate my experience and my emotions (something I have always struggled with), I reached out to the other couple. I sent them a long wall of text explaining that she had been struggling hard with substance abuse, and that she had been lying to save face, and that I don't know what she's been telling them, but she has repeatedly violated my boundaries regarding their relationship and so that technically their relationship was within the realm of ethical non-monogamy and was built on a lie and unaddressed substance abuse issues.
The dude's response solidified my view of him as a real piece of shit. Basically he said "this is super unacceptable, I only read a bit of that but calling out someone who's struggling with substance abuse isn't cool. I struggle with substance abuse, and since you're going sober, I thought you'd have more sympathy." I called him out on making an issue about boundaries all about himself, and said "if her partner had reached out and let me know she was violating his boundaries and that she was struggling with addiction, I wouldn't dismiss the guy. Real class act
".
She has yet to respond to all of this, but I let her know I reached out to them and that I no longer have any space for her in my life. That she has been wildly inconsistent and erratic and is unable to exercise basic levels of respect in a relationship and that polyamory doesn't just mean a hedonistic free-for-all with a bunch of sociopathic enablers. Frankly, I'm thinking of just blocking her number because I don't feel like I owe her the respect of listening to what she has to say anymore, and I'm also thinking of reaching out to her sister, as her sister is someone who has been in the loop previously about her struggles with substance abuse and I feel like she desperately needs someone who isn't a fuckhead enabler to help her come to terms with her lack of control.
So, AITAH for the way I handled things? I know for my own sake I should've walked away ages ago, but this woman is legitimately a wonderful human, just one that is struggling very hard and isn't in a space where she is ready to take accountability for her behaviour while she's been abusing substances. I'm also well aware I was an enabler for most of the relationship, and that's why I feel some kind of obligation to help.