I’ve been at my job with a non-profit registered charitable organization for a couple of years. Last fall I asked my boss for some help in auditing my files to create a spreadsheet of documents that were overdue or missing because I did not have time to do this with my regular duties. I was assured that help was being hired, then a few weeks later told that I just wasn’t managing my time well enough (no comments on time management before this). Then a couple weeks later I’m again told that a new admin is starting and will be able to help me after she completes another project for the boss. I take vacation (my first since I started the job) and return to find the admin has reviewed my files, but suddenly the missing documents are a performance issue for me. Boss caught me on a rough day with a performance plan, doesn’t give me time to review it and basically bullies me into signing it. HR was present and I confided that I felt I signed under duress. About a month ago the boss starts making comments to book summer vacation and their time is already booked in the shared calendar. I find a week that will work for me, mention it to the boss and get no comment. I find the trip I want is available at that time and again mention that I need to book it before a certain date or lose my reservation. At that time I was asked if it conflicted with anyone else and I said it didn’t. Boss says “that sounds like a nice trip”. But doesn’t say I can’t book it. So I book the trip and let the boss know it’s confirmed. Suddenly I was being yelled at and told how unprofessional I was to book it without written approval (nobody has ever needed written approval for vacation time). Told me my performance plan forbid vacation, so I checked it and nothing was mentioned about prohibiting vacation. I let the boss know that I value a work/life balance and if I’m forced to choose, family comes first at this point in life (a few years away from retirement). To that I was told I was holding the boss hostage on my demands. Since that day, the boss has made my life miserable. HR confided that the boss told them that they were waiting for me to book the vacation just so the time off could be denied. Board of Directors got involved and I was told to take a few days off because boss was being investigated for multiple issues. Since then there has been no direction. The stress and frustration has increased my anxiety and I broke down in tears at my doctors during an appointment for something else, so dr pulled me off week for two weeks and told me to get a lawyer to write a letter describing the toxic work conditions (another employee got a lawyer involved against the boss for a different reason) and the need for the board to act on removing the boss. Should I spend the money on a lawyer? Would it be worthwhile? TL;DR: boss is making work environment toxic to physical and mental health. Should I get a lawyer?

1. this might be a dumb question, but would you recommend i use pen or pencil? is a standard envelope fine? what’s the average length people usually write their letters? because so far i’m almost finished with one side and i’m not even close to being done.
   
2. how much extra stuff is too much? like if i were to draw little doodles here and there, is that cool? spraying a little spritz of perfume? using a colorful pen? adding like a word search or something similar?
   
3. should i send extra stamps in the letters for him? or does he have access to stamps?
   
4. what are some things i absolutely should not do? i have a list already of things that are prohibited, but i guess i’m mainly asking what things out of question 2 would like be a no go. no glitter bombs? haha jk
   

thanks in advance!

I am nothing. I don’t do anything but love people that hurt me or forget about me in like a month. I’m so tired of it. I need to write a letter to someone who won’t ever see it.
You fucking asshole. You fucking little asshole. I loved you so much that I changed. And when I hid being friends with someone from you it was bc every time I made a new friend you wouldn’t want to hang out with me or you would be angry and passive aggressive. So that’s why I fucking hid it. Stop comparing it to cheating you whiny little fuck. It’s fucking not. I’m so tired of you acting like I was the worst thing to ever happen to you. I was up until midnight at times trying to help you. I listened. I WAS THE ONE WHO CALLED YOU WHEN YOUR MOM BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU. I WAS THE ONE WHO GOT YOU AWAY FROM FUCKING CREEPS!!! I WAS THE ONE THAT LISTENED TO EVERY PAIN THAT YOU FUCKING CARRIED WITHOUT JUDGEMENT!!! And yknow what, it fucking traumatized me, but I loved you. I see now that to believe you ever loved me would be a joke.
And you. You’re even worse. You isolated me and then told me I was too much. Made me feel like who I was… Like who I was would always be unlovable. That I was some huge monster that was lucky to be loved by a fucking prick like you. I tried to talk to you about my fucking needs and you turned that around and said you were scared of me SAING YOU???? FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU. And fuck was wrong with me for believing I was in the wrong for that…
I just want to love and to be loved but everybody says you have to heal from your exes first. But how the hell can I do that when my exes have been the fucking worst… I want to love so badly. I love myself as much as I can. I’m even changing more than I changed for that person.
I wish I wasn’t mentally disabled and mentally ill. And I wish this part of my identity wasn’t so heavily up for mockery or debate. It aches more than words can say and boy what I wouldn’t give to have been born into a more typical body and brain. I don’t mention it so often bc I’m proud or bc I see it as a status symbol. I mention it so often bc putting on the wrong shoes can make me cry bc they feel wrong. And that’s fucking stupid and annoying and I feel pathetic and like I’m fucked up and broken. That’s why I mention it. So when I struggle way more than most people and it shows in the messy ways that this shit shows. Maybe people will realize I’m not some asshole or soft little bitch that can’t get it together for no reason. I just want to be accepted. I just wanted to be loved. But I’m different. A lot different. And it sucks. I work so damn hard all the time to survive and to be better. And it feels like. No person could give a shit.
No one gives a shit if I’m kind or sensitive. And honestly, at this time, it’s all I have. And it’s abused and cast aside like it’s nothing everyday.
I don’t wanna be here anymore

TW: brief mention of self harm, verbal abuse?
Hi, not sure if this is the right sub to come to. I already know people are gonna say “just tell her” but I’m asking HOW. Here’s what were dealing with (gonna be a longer one but I need help):
My bestfriend 25F of over two decades now, is dating this guy who I gave a lot of grace because I havent met yet. (first red flag) I’m biased but she has always been the sweetest, smartest, and just kind type of person. The type of person youre almost envious of because they are just that good of a person, that is her. Shes also a cute girl so there is no struggle in that department.
For a while, me and her would text/talk about our relationship struggles with our bfs (now my ex bf). They have been dating for around 5 years off and on and the things she has told me personally concern me and our friends greatly. Here are some of the things ive heard from her:

• He asked her to stop being so weird bc she wanted him to open the door for her instead of his roomates whom she didnt know, when she would go to his place
  
• When he broke up with her one of the times, he sent a picture of himself with another girl to her
  
• This is want to be sensitive with as someone who has struggled greatly with depression, but he sent pics of self harm on his wrists to her out of no where which I think has fucked with her pretty bad
  
• He randomly told her he wanted to move across the country (we think for a close girl friend of his who he might be cheating with but that’s speculation) and in shorter terms basically said “you can come if you want”
  
• When the above didnt work and he stayed in their city, he renewed his lease, meaning they will still not be living together. She has said she doesnt want to pressure him into it.
  

**The below I’ve learned from slowly asking each friend in my group who has met him, what they think of him. **

• He drinks often and isn’t really interested in hanging with out friend group
  
• He has called her names before (i.e stupid, shit like that)
  
• He has never not once posted a picture of her on social media that he is VERY active on. They just went on a week long trip with her family and he posted a halfass pic of her once on his story, BUT he posts with all of his friends when they take vacay trips.
  

Now. To me and our whole friend group, we’ve all decided that he clearly doesn’t like her based on things said and his actions. She even once said to me she wasnt sure if he would want her there (as in the city he wanted to move there) which is so sad and telling to me. We have also realized that she has stopped talking about him to literally all of us (we think bc were honest about his actions and she might be indenial??) But we’re scared bc we cant understand why she refuses to leave him.
LET ME BE CLEAR: This relationship will not end on her own accord. She will not leave him. Hes always been the one to break up with her.
She doesn’t know that we all don’t like him. How the fuck do I/ we tell her in a way in which she wont feel attacked or embarrassed. She really doesn’t deserve this and it truly truly makes me sad. It’s bad to the point where if for whatever reason she got enaged to him, I would rhabe to sit her doen and be like bro listen. Anything just to stop the marriage, and if she hated me for that, at least I tried.
I’ve already tried when she told me she was considering moving across the country with him. gave her the whole “ I love you and I trust you but I want you to realize that this is your choice. its your life and YOU get to choose whats best for you” talk.
Please please help. We’re all unsure of what to do. This guy is not a good person.
* * *
TLDR: My bestfriend of all time is in a 5 year toxic relationship where the guy treats her worse than garbage and she will not leave. I dont believe physical abuse has happened, but my close friends I share with her are also extremely worried. All of us. I know some girlies on her have either been her in the situation or have been me. Need your brain here. Thanks.

*** Update : Reading of the Will Part 2 - The Drama Begins **\*
I’m going to try and get this out quickly and maybe a little more briefly because honestly things are happening so fast now that I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up with these posts.
Before I pick-up where I left off yesterday let me just share that the Chief of Police has been out to see me twice, two of my relatives are facing charges, and more than half of the family has been raging. More on that later.
Not everyone has been toxic though, I’ve had calls and visits from several relatives that told me they were happy for me and offered their support and my father has been there every step of the way. More on that later.
Sam has been the bright spot in all of this, her schedule at the hospital is crazy but when she isn’t there or at her house sleeping or changing, she’s been with me. She and I were together all the way through junior and senior high so she was basically part of the family but now she’s getting to a whole new level of insanity firsthand. She's remained supportive during all of it. When I told her last night about what Joe had done, well - that's a whole nother story!
Anyway – back to The Reading:
As soon as JA put down Joe’s letter and reached for a file, my aunt Patricia and my sister Sarah both started yelling, my cousin David stood up looking furious, jerked the door to the conference room open and left, slamming it behind him and my cousin Steven started coming around the conference table, not sure if he was coming at me or JA but he didn’t look happy. My uncle, Emily, and my other cousin were just staring at everyone in disbelief.
My father jumped up to get in between Steven and JA / me but the gentleman in the back was already on him. At this point it was obvious why he’d been brought in, turns out he’s a sheriff’s deputy from a neighboring county and the JA and Joe had wanted to err on the side of caution by having someone there. As soon as he grabbed Steven my Aunt and sister immediately shut-up to see what was happening. Steven was frog marched out of the conference room and JA followed him out along with my father. A few minutes later they all came back in except for the deputy who remained outside the door for the rest of the meeting. While they were gone everyone was completely silent and JA walked back in to a much more attentive group.
Obviously annoyed, he grabbed his file and asked everyone to wait until he was finished before anyone asked any questions. He explained there while he had been instructed to open the meeting by reading Joe’s letter there had been some updates to the will since Joe’s wrote the letter. Cousins who did not live within 100 miles of our town would receive the $100,000 even if they didn’t attend the reading. Joe had evidently also amended the will at some point after the letter was written to gift members of the family that did not attend $50,000.
JA went on to clarify that while Joe’s will had no conditions on the use of the money it did stipulate that should there be any challenge to the will or attempt to interfere with the orderly estate closure the individuals involved would not receive anything at all.
He wrapped up by explaining that there was adequate cash in the estate to pay any taxes associated with he estate and inheritance in addition to the cash gifts given to each of the family members. All property taxes had already been paid on the real estate and that was no debt associated with the estate. As a result, he expected an uncontested and simple probate period, despite the size of the estate. He shared that he hoped to see the funds distributed in a few months and asked if anyone had any questions.Patricia and Susan started to speak at the same time while Emily raised her hand. JA waved for my aunt and sister to be quiet and asked Emily what questions she had.
Emily just wanted to know if she had to wait until she was 25 to receive her inheritance since she was under 25 but over 18. JA explained that she was under 18 when the will was written but since she was now an adult there would be no waiting period. He did caution her to be careful with the funds and offered to assist her in handling them at no charge. He told her they could either be a a lot of fun for a short period of time or could make a big difference in her life in the future if she was careful. Emily thanked him and said that’s all she wanted to know.
My sister raised her hand next while Patricia sat there looking annoyed. She asked how new the will was. JA explained that while this version was written two years ago it had basically been the same for almost 18 years with changes mostly just reflecting increases in his gifts to the family. Answering the unasked question, he added that I had always been the primary beneficiary and that Joe’s intentions had always been crystal clear.
JA also shared that during the 18 years that this version of will had been in force Joe had increased the value of the estate by well over $175 million dollars, and that his mental health was never in question. Finally, he looked directly at each of the family members there and told them that if I had passed away before Joe the entire estate would have gone into a conservation trust, there would have been no gifts to the family at all. As an attorney I thought his point was crystal clear, you were never considered, don’t make trouble, you won’t win.
Patricia evidently didn’t get the point, still refusing to wait to be acknowledged, she jumped in and asked whether he was he sure this was the only will, was there maybe one somewhere else? She said she couldn’t believe her Uncle would leave them out like this. I wanted to roll my eyes but just kept a straight face, she hadn’t bothered to speak to him for at least as long as Debbie had and probably significantly longer. She lived even closer to her than Debbie and it’s not like we lived in a huge city.
It was when she said “I think WE need to go through his things, he must have changed his will and just not told you. Alex obviously manipulated my dear Uncle Joe.” (yes, she actually sounded just like a soap opera cliché’) that my father had evidently heard enough.
He slammed his hand down on the conference room table and in a voice that was as commanding now as it likely was 30 years ago declared “You absolutely will not go through his things. You’ve squandered everything you’ve ever been given, you know it, Joe knew it, and you’ve made sure I know it because for the last several years you’ve had me supplementing both your income and your sister’s. Don’t even think about making trouble over this, not only can you not afford an attorney, if you do contest this I’ll cut you AND your sister both off. That goes for all my children as well.
Turning to his brother he look at him pointedly and said “Rick, I trust I don’t have to worry about you or your children doing something stupid.” Rick looked down at the table for a minute and then looked back at my dad before saying something to the effect of. “No, I know what happened between Dad and Joe, and looking back Joe was right. I understand why he did what he did and have known for a long time that we screwed up. I’m not going to make it worse, and neither will my children if they know what’s good for them.” He also looked at Patricia and told her that she had treated Uncle Joe terribly, just like everyone else, and that she needed to shut up before she made things worse.
After a moment of general quiet JA asked if anyone had any other questions. No one said a word so he said that we were done for today and that if anyone did think of more questions to just contact him at the office. He told everyone what the will was filed with the probate court that morning and that we’d all receive formal notices shortly. He offered to provide everyone with a copy of the will or told them they could request it directly from the probate court.
With that everyone stood up to leave he asked me to stay back and said we had a lot to cover. I turned to my dad and asked if he’d stay as well. He agreed, JA had lunch brought in and that’s when we really started getting into the details, which I’ll have to share as appropriate but suffice it to say that it’s a complex estate.
Other than that, there is SO much going on. Someday I’m going to be glad I wrote this all down, right now it’s just overwhelming. I may make an update about the family drama that’s unfolding, plus some more about Sam and I. I do think it’s worth sharing what Joe did to hold the family’s legacy together and to build on it. They say still waters run deep… I think I understand that expression better now. I hope I can do half as well as he did.
So much for making this brief!
*** UPDATE: Joe’s Legacy ***
I’m going to summarize what was a three hour initial meeting with JA, my father ,and a series of managers that oversaw Joe’s holdings. The bottom line is that Joe and his brother (my Great Grandfather) had a serious difference of opinion about how the land should be handled. Since the land was easily divided they split the tracts and each went their own way. Enough of the land was already producing revenue from land leases that the family lived very comfortably and didn’t even bother to push for more to be leased out. My Great Grandfather didn’t want to mess with the leases or see the money come in a little at a time, he wanted a lot of money and he wanted it right away. As a result he eventually started selling it off, just smaller parcels at first, but over time he started selling larger and larger tracts.
Joe couldn’t have been any more different but he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else owning our families land. He actively began marketing leases and finding users until about 80% of the property was producing revenue. That gave him the cash flow to buy the land my grandfather was selling. It couldn’t have been easy at first and JA said that in the beginning he had to take out loans to buy the property, but over time he was tucking away so much money every year that he was able to simply pay cash whenever his brother sold off a piece. By the time my grandfather died about 20 years ago he had consolidate 45,000 acres under group of holding companies, a large portion of it producing.
Joe never married (in fact he rarely dated, although I think there may be more to it that simply his desire for privacy) and maintained a simply life, He simply socked away all the revenue from the land and held it to buy more real estate as the opportunity existed. When the Great Recession hit in 2008 he had so much cash on hand that he was able to not only purchase the rest of the land that had ended up with my father and his siblings, he also was able to extend the land holdings significantly beyond that.
He had done something similar in the 70’s and 80’s when the small towns across the U.S. saw businesses closing and buildings sitting empty on Main Street. As those buildings sat vacant Joe purchased them for pennies on the dollar. Among the real estate held by the estate are dozens of buildings and parcels, primarily in our town but also throughout the rest of the valley. All are now occupied although many are rented far below market rates to local business owners. JA said the journals would explain that.
Outside of the real estate, Joe made investments in businesses that he thought had merit. His estate has interests in over 20 locally owned successful enterprises and a couple that eventually moved out of the valley and went public. He stayed away from most stocks, saying he didn’t know much about “big business” (ironic) but did invest in and hold blue chip stocks when the real estate market wasn’t offering “good deals”.
About 35 years ago though he stopped buying anything except for the a few properties that were particularly important to him, other than the land that his father had once held. He avoided making business investments or buying any stock that had any hint of instability. His focus was on building adequate cash to cover estate and inheritance taxes that couldn’t be mitigated or avoided completely by proper planning. As a result he was able to fund trusts establishing a community foundation and a family trust. In fact, both of those already exist outside of probate and will require some immediate attention.
At the end of the meeting JA passed me back the box of journals and the rolled maps he had laid out on the table. The maps contained detailed notes about the properties and the circumstances of their acquisition. It will take me quite a while to get familiarized with them as we didn’t touch on any particular parcels or buildings during the meeting, save one notable one.
After my recovery, but Joe asked me if I wanted to live with him while I figured out what I was going to do. Since the university where I was going to be going to law school was not far from town, I took him up on it. We lived together for nearly two years before my graduation, although I spent my fair share of nights staying at friends’ home after late night study sessions. Joe had a converted apartment above the barn where he kept the Jaguar and a couple of other cars and I moved into it, so we both had our privacy. Going up and down the steep stairs felt like an easier version of rehab and the quiet of being in a barn overlooking the woods was the perfect transition back to real life.
After I graduated, I made the decision to hang out my own shingle about a year after passing the Bar and working as a junior associate at a larger firm. Being older than all the other junior associates was fine but being with a large firm just wasn’t for me. Joe asked me if I was going to continue to stay with him but I told him I planned on moving closer to town as soon as I could find something cheap enough. I explained that I felt like I needed to get back into the community to start building the practice and be more accessible to clients. He thought that was a great idea and I started looking around but wasn’t in a hurry.
About a month later I “ran into” JA and he mentioned that he heard I was looking for an office. He said he had a client that had just renovated one of the downtown buildings and was looking for a tenant. His client didn’t want to give anyone long term lease and so he knew he had to make the rent cheap enough to accept the risk that they might have to move out on short notice. There was an apartment on the second floor and professional offices on the first floor. Once he told me how much the rent would be I took it sight unseen and have lived there for three years.
JA had a smile on his face when he mentioned that my home was now literally “my” home. Evidently, as soon as I told Joe I wanted to move closer to town he had contractors begin rehabbing the building as quickly as possible. Two crews had worked for a month to turn it into an incredible apartment for and the perfect office for a small town lawyer. I have to admit that for the last three years I had been keeping my fingers crossed that I wasn’t going to lose my “too good to be true” rent deal. There is no doubt in my mind that Joe had did more to influence things around this town than anyone, save a select few, ever knew.
JA said we had a lot more to go through but that it had been a long day for everyone. He suggested we pick up the conversation next week, at my convenience. He told me to call him anytime over the weekend if I had any immediate questions. He reminded me that in addition to being one of the firm’s largest clients Joe was also his best friend. He said he’d like to talk soon more about Joe – that there were things I needed to know that probably weren’t in the journals. I thanked him and asked if my dad and I could use the conference room a little while longer. He said of course and started gather his things up.
Before he stood-up to go he paused and with a look of momentary discomfort said: “One last item. The “assistant” we had in the back of the room is a sheriff’s deputy one county over. We felt it best to have security due to the size of the estate and the circumstances of the distribution. We’ve retained him along with several other deputies from nearby counties to maintain 24-hour security over the next several days, just until tempers cool down.”
I was shocked, I hadn’t even considered that someone in the family might want to harm me. I started to shake my head, getting ready to object, certain that it wasn’t necessary, when my father put his hand on my arm and spoke first. “That’s a great idea – I’m sure it won’t be needed but given the circumstance you can’t be too cautious, for Alex AND for anyone that might be around him.”
As he said that my thoughts went to Sam, and I felt guilty for not thinking of her safety. I just nodded and said thank you, that we’d revisit security needs next week after things cooled off.
With that, JA got up, shook our hands, and left. Dad and I sat quietly for a moment, looking at the papers in front of me. Dad spoke first. “You gave Joe something no one else in the family did and he gave back to you in an equal way. Don’t question this and don’t let anyone else cause you to doubt whether this was fair. You’re the only one in the family that Joe could count on to respect his life’s work. If it had been handled any other way his years would have been wasted and he knew it.”
Dad was right, Joe had instilled in me the same respect for our way of life and our family’s legacy that he had. I knew that it was up to me to pass it on. The money was a huge life changer, but the responsibility he had passed on to me was what really had me thinking. Protecting our family’s legacy and preserving our community’s heritage and way of life, he had spent a lifetime building the resources he knew I would need if I was going to honor his vision.
I hope I’m able to make him proud. I told Dad I’d appreciate his help navigating the situation and told him how unprepared I felt to take this on. I asked him how much he knew about everyone’s (our relatives) financial situation and whether he had any idea how people were going to react. He shared that both his sisters had been reckless, they were living on a minimal income, supplemented by him. That their kids had drained them over the years and were themselves, for the most part, overextended. His brother had been more careful and didn’t have to worry but that his divorce had cost him and that when he died there wouldn’t be much to leave the children.
I didn’t ask, but he told me that he was better off than the rest. Even though he had been married three times he and his first wife (my oldest brother’s mother) divorced after just a couple of years and it hadn’t been very costly. It was quite a few years later that he married my mother, we lost her to cancer around 15 years ago. Dad said that when he sold the land it wasn’t because he wanted to live it up, he just didn’t want to deal with the property or manage the leases anymore. He had invested well over the years and didn’t need the headache as he got older.
He also told me that he had a very clear prenup with Jessica and that if they remained married she would receive an allowance after he passed and have a condo in a nice resort community in the area to live in for the rest of her life, but that she was not going to be receiving a sizable portion of the estate. He told me that as immature as could be sometimes that she was well meaning and that after the loss of my mother she had brought him happiness again. He said she forced him to stay young in order to keep up with her.
He told me she felt horrible about the way she handled the call with me, she was trying to be helpful and went about it horribly wrong. She wanted to try and get in front of it with the family because she knew I would want the car. Evidently, she had also told Dad he needed to buy it for me if I didn’t have the cash. I guess I misjudged her as badly as Joe misread the situation with Dad. I’ve got to do better if I’m ever going to be able to bring the family together.
Since he and Joe didn’t speak anymore he never knew Joe had held onto his land (and he’d certainly never told me) or that he would have wanted to buy it, so he put it on the market and reinvested the proceeds of the sale. His investments had done well and although his estate was nothing like Joe’s he didn’t need to worry about money, could help his sisters, and expected each of his children to helped well along in their retirement planning when he died.
I couldn’t believe how much I’d mistaken I’d been about Dad’s financial planning – maybe I picked up on Joe’s disdain for what he thought everyone was doing or maybe it was because, as a family we really didn’t talk much about money.
Dad and his siblings never really had normal careers so us kids money just “was” – it wasn’t until later that you really got to understand how hard most people worked for it. I know that my oldest brother and some of my cousins had struggled to put together normal lives, lacking much in the way of an example from our parents.
Joe had assumed my father had as little regard for the opportunities he had been given as his brother had had. I can’t believe that my father and Joe shared so much more in common than they thought. I immediately realized unless we wanted the family’s “legacy” to be misunderstandings and unrealistic life expectations the first thing that would have to change was going to be how we communicated.
I feel like Dad was thinking the same thing I was. It had been a long and emotional day, it was almost 4:30 and I knew that most people had probably already left the firm’s offices for the day. I didn’t want to take advantage of anyone and suggested we talk over the weekend. Dad agreed and said he’d be making some calls this evening to talk to other people in the family and would update me.
Both of our phones had been on silent, and when he mentioned making calls I looked down to see I had 37 missed calls and over 20 new messages I noticed Dad looking at his and the expression on his face told me that he was seeing the same thing. We stood up and hugged before gathering up our folders. I grabbed my backpack and Dad packed his briefcase (I just can’t bring myself to carry one or an attache) and we headed to the door.
Leaving the conference room we found the deputy waiting outside the doors, waiting to introduce himself. Dad gave him his number and asked him to call if he needed anything. I explained I was going to be meeting a friend for dinner but that first I was going to go change. He said he’d be posted outside my building or wherever I went until 7:00, after which he’d would be changing places with the next deputy. I asked Dad not to say anything about the security since I didn’t want to drive a wedge between myself and the family and he agreed. In hindsight me might have avoided some drama later if I hadn’t asked that, but I still think it was for the best.
I had about two hours to kill before I was going to meet Sam and share what happened that day. I knew she’d be happy about the property and the car but I didn’t know how she’d react to the news. I will share that it wasn’t what I expected.
Sorry – this is long again. I’m going to have to try and catch-up at some point but I’ll have to save what happened during my talk with Sam and the first of this weekend’s “family issues” for the next post.
Thanks again for all the well wishes and for giving me things to think about.

If you came here from AITAH then you've possibly already read this... if not, this is the story of what unfolded after my Great Uncle Joe passed away, and what has turned into a crazy few days - and maybe a story that will continue for years to come.
A couple of days ago, my Joe passed away at the age of 92. The best way to describe Joe was “eccentric.” He was reclusive and very private, living on what I assume was the last little piece of our family’s property (my great-grandfather had amassed a large amount of land that had been sold off over the decades after his death). A lot of people thought he was a hermit, but I never saw him like that. To me, he was the most compassionate person I knew. He was wise, caring, and honestly the only person in the family that ever spent serious quality time with me.
Joe had always been the odd man out in our family. He was the youngest of three brothers – Alex, (who I’m named after) died in the Korean war and my grandfather Robert passed away when I was still in high school. My family never bothered to pay attention to Joe; he was never invited to family events. In fact, I think he was ignored because he lived a simple life in a shotgun house on what I guess was the last piece of land that my Great Grandfather (GG) had owned. I got the feeling that no one wanted to bother him, thinking he’d just cause them trouble or maybe ask them for money, but I spent a lot of time with him, and we shared many conversations about life, legacy, and the things that truly matter – he never appeared to need anything and certainly never asked me for money.
Now, a bit more backstory on the family. We’ve been in this area for generations, and there's a strong sense of unearned privilege among many of my relatives. Like I said earlier, my GG owned a lot of land, around 60,000 acres to be exact. It was fertile farmland, tracts of timber, and stretched into the mountains where he had leased out select areas for mining, and some of the most beautiful lakes and riverfront in the state. When he died, each of the brothers inherited 30,000 acres from their parents (1/2 to each surviving son of the 60,000 total acres of timberland, mining leases, and game land my GG owned). Our grandfather, like his brothers, sold off his share over the years. He lived large and was married three times, having children with each wife. By the time he died, he had sold off about half his land, and his children (including my father) each received a nice cash inheritance and split the remaining land among them equally.
This should have been plenty for most people to retire comfortably, but not for my family. Each of the children, my dad included, then sold off their land to fund their standard of living until finally there was nothing left. There was a lot of resentment among the uncles and aunts and particularly among the cousins who experienced different upbringings—some of whom had little to no memory of their grandfather and even less knowledge of the legacy my family had been gifted, and squandered. Joe was the only one that seemed to care about the family’s legacy and wanted to preserve some record of it. He would sit with me for hours telling stories. When I came back from Afghanistan and was slowly recovering from my injuries he came and saw me every day. He’d share stories and I’d write them down – I’ve got a heck of a collection to share with my children one day, if I’m ever lucky enough to meet the right lady.
From a young age, I was captivated by Joe's stories about his oldest brother, who died in the Korean War. There was an 18-year age difference between them, so they didn’t share many adventures, but Joe idolized his brother as a hero. Those stories inspired me deeply, and I was the only one in the family who chose to serve in the military. Joe was my biggest supporter during my service and, later, when I was injured and medically retired before I turned 30. After my recovery, Joe encouraged me to pursue a career that would make a difference. Ultimately, I decided to go back to college and attend law school. The two years of law school were a nice distraction from the physical and mental pain I brought back with me from the war, and I ultimately became an attorney advocating for veterans. Now I have a small practice in town and focus most of my efforts on pro-bono work (I’m comfortable on the few paying cases I take at a time and my military retirement). I live and work in a cool old space on our town’s main street that I lucked into at a super cheap rent.
This morning I got a call from my great-uncle’s attorney (who was also one of his only friends). I know him professionally, and he’s a good man – he feeds me the occasional client that’s not right for his firm, and we’ve got a good working relationship. He said that Joe had instructed him to prepare me to be ready to deal with some family drama after his will was read. He said Joe wanted me to know he loved me, that he had confidence that I’d do the right thing, and that he was sorry that I was the only one he could trust to handle “things” appropriately. Cryptic, right? Well, that was pretty much normal for Joe! Damn, I’m going to miss him, but I guess I already said that.
Joe always implied that I was the only one in the family that ever showed him any concern and that he’d never forget it, but we never talked about money or anything else; it wasn’t important to either of us. I think Joe made me realize how much more important it was to be a good man than a rich man and that nothing else ever really mattered. The rest of my family definitely doesn’t see it like this.
Like I said, Joe was the black sheep because he didn’t fit into the mold of privilege and entitlement. Most of the family didn’t treat him with the respect he deserved, and they really missed out on getting to know an amazing person. I will say though that Joe had a sharp wit and wasn’t shy about sharing his opinions of how my father and his siblings had treated the family’s legacy. There’s a part of me that thinks Joe might have set things up to mess with those who ignored him and didn’t honor their heritage and ancestors.
I’m not sure what to expect to come from this, but Joe was eccentric, not delusional – if he said that he was getting ready to deal me some “family drama” to deal with then I believe him, but honestly I can’t figure what it would be. Joe was a simple guy – he never worked that I knew of, and the times I asked him what he did for a living, he’d just tell me that he had my great-grandfather to thank for a nice life. I assume he’s referring to the land he sold off, giving him the means to just hunt, fish, raise his dogs (I’ll have to tell you about them sometime), and spend time with me. Maybe Joe managed to hold onto some cash and was going to make a big deal about what he was doing with it? I suppose some of the family might get spun up about that given the fact there is not much left from what my GG passed on?
I’ll know more tomorrow. The will is supposed to be read on Friday, and I’ll update you then. Maybe I’m worried about nothing, but I feel like I’m about to be in a battle, and I haven’t felt like this since Kabul. I know this isn’t an AITA post yet, but I guess I’m wondering if AIGTBTA – Am I Going To Be The Asshole?
*** MINI-UPDATE **\*
I've had several more calls from extended family asking if I knew anything and I still don't have anything concrete to share but it sounds like everyone over the age of 18 has been asked to come to the reading, that's a little unusual in my opinion but then again I don't know how long ago Joe wrote this will. By my count there could be up to 15 people there tomorrow.
I went to Joe's place to pick up his dog's stuff early this morning (he's living with me now) and as much as I'd have liked to nose around to try and figure out what's going on I have too much respect for him to do that (plus it's not my stuff). There was a stack of bound journals (he's the one that had me start journaling) and other documents on the dining table. Joe had set a note on top asking for them to be delivered to his attorney in the event he passed. I think he knew he wasn't coming back and set them out there so they wouldn't be overlooked when the family came in after he died. He was very concerned that a lot of family history was going to be forgotten when he died. I'll make sure that doesn't happen.
One thing did stick out as strange - the other reason I went by was to pick up his mail so I could drop it at his attorney's office this afternoon before the meeting tomorrow - lucky I did since he left that pile of stuff. Obviously I didn't open any mail, but I can say that it's not what I expected. He spent several days in the hospital before he died and I hadn't been back to his house since he went in, so I knew there would be about a week's worth of mail piled up. I figured it would be mostly bills and junk but several of the letters looked like checks from corporations, including a couple I'm personally familiar with. Maybe he did have more going on than I thought, but honestly it just wasn't ever something we talked about.
Last quick thing and nothing to do with the AITAH thing- only sharing because I'm actually personally excited about something that happened and this is taking the place of my journaling for a couple of day. About a month ago my high-school sweetheart moved back to town to take a position with the local hospital. She used to come to Joe's with me when we were in high school and Joe let us take his brother's car to go to Prom. He really liked her and she always said she enjoyed spending time with him too.
She was a year behind me in school. We tried to keep seeing each other after I enlisted but that almost never works out. After graduation she went to college, then medical school, and did her residency on the West Coast. She rarely came back and I was gone for so long we totally lost touch. It's been over decade since we've actually seen each other, although I did hear from her a couple times after I was injured. Back then she was just starting her residency and between her schedule, the time difference, and my rehab we never really got could find the time to really reconnect.
Yesterday she called me to tell me how sorry she was to hear he had passed and we're planning on meeting for drinks tonight to catch up - hopefully tonight. I really needed something to look forward to and this definitely qualifies!
*** (NOT SO) MINI-UPDATE 2 **\*
Ok, I didn't think I'd be updating again until have the reading tomorrow morning at 10:30, but things are heating up a little already. In addition to the random calls from cousins who knew that Joe and I were close as well as from my siblings, I’ve gotten three phone calls today from the "previous generation".
First call was from my Aunt Debbie, she’s the youngest of my dad’s brothers and sisters and always has been a lot to deal with. She married a nice guy but always is complaining about money, wanting to travel more, buy a nicer home, etc. After my grandfather passed away she spent the money he left her on who-knows-what and within 10 years had sold off all of the land she had inherited. Unfortunately she was selling off land when the market was down during the recession, so what would have probably been worth well over $30,000,000 today she sold for less than a third of that. That’s still a lot of money but it seems like she’s burned through a lot of it already (or given it to her kids). Anyway – she called me to tell me that she knows I’m the only one with a key to Joe’s place and she wanted me to meet her there and let her in this afternoon. I told her I was already busy today and she got a little annoyed and told me not to forget to bring it with me to the reading tomorrow. She said they want to clear the house out ASAP because she's going to develop the land into homesites and needs to get things rolling. This was news to me but I just ignored her and told her I’d see her tomorrow. For reference, I know for a fact that despite living within 30 minutes of Joe she hadn’t spoken to him in over a DECADE!
The next call I got was from my father’s current wife, Jessica. She’s 20 years younger than he is and is the only wife he didn’t have kids with (thank God, and no, I don't care if she reads this). Anyway – my dad’s wife called me and said she knew how much Joe / Alex’s car meant to me and told me that if I wanted to buy it she’d try to give me the first shot at it. I just thanked her and got off the phone. This woman has literally never even met Joe.
Finally, I just got off the phone with my dad. He called me about 30 minutes after his wife did. This is the first time I’ve heard from him since Joe died. My Dad is actually closer to Joe’s age than Joe was to Alex’s. Joe was 14 when my dad was born, like me he was so much younger than his brothers that there was almost a generational gap between them. Joe was probably more like an older brother than a young uncle and for a while they were really close but something happened (no one ever told me what) and there was a falling out.
My dad has a big personality – he’s lived a pretty extravagant life and for despite being nearly 80 years old (yeah, he was over 60 before I got out of high school) he’s still the “big man” when he goes into a room. He was my Grandfather’s oldest son so he’s always taken on the lead role at family events. Like his sisters and brother he sold off his land too, although I know he sold it off in smaller pieces and over a longer period of time. He basically used it as bank account and selling it off was his version of making a withdrawal. I assume he’s set for the rest of his life and I know my brothers and sister are expecting an inheritance when he dies. In fact - they speak pretty openly about it.
My Dad's call was a welcome change after the calls from Debbie and Jessica. My dad actually sounded pretty reserved and a little down. The first thing he did was apologize to me for Jessica’s call. He told me she had no right to do that and she had no say in anything that was going to happen with Joe’s property - or his one day for that matter. Evidently he tore her a new one after walking in on the tail-end of her conversation with me. He told me that he knew I was the only one in the family that spent time with Joe and that regardless of what happens at reading tomorrow he was going to give me anything Joe left him – if he left him anything at all. He told me that he appreciated how much I had done for Joe and that he had regrets about how their relationship had soured. I’ve literally never heard him talk like that before and it honestly has me a little emotional. It sucks that he has to live with those regrets when a 30 minute drive was all it would have taken to start fixing a relationship.
Finally – he told me that he didn’t really know for sure but he suspected tomorrow might hold some surprises. He told me that he’d be there to back me up no matter what happened and that I wasn’t going to be alone. I asked him if he knew something but he promised me he didn’t know anything for sure and that he would have told me if he did. He said he'd just always had suspicions about "some things" and that depending on how things unfolded he didn’t want to see any more relationships go the way his and Joe’s had, or the way Joe and my grandfather’s had.
I told him about the call from Debbie and he said she was way out of line and to not worry about it, that he'd be giving her a call immediately after he got off the phone with me. He also told me that I shouldn’t let anyone else in Joe’s house, that I was the only one Joe gave a key to for a reason and that no one had any business going in there until after the will was read.
Obviously I wasn’t planning on letting anyone in but this was possibly the most supportive call I’ve ever had with my father and I just appreciated that he was planning on standing up for me. My brothers, sister, and cousins (I’ve got 2 brothers, 1 sister and 8 cousins) all got used to a certain way of life from their parents but frankly none of them have been able to maintain it on their own and most of them are pretty petty about it. Their parents aren't much better, despite having had the benefit of a generous inheritance.
I’ve got to stop by the attorney’s office at 4:30 and then I’m meeting Samantha (Sam) for drinks and maybe dinner if we both have time. If you want to hear about that let me know, otherwise I’ll just stick to the family stuff.
*** up-DATE **\*
It’s late – I don’t know if I’ll get all this out but I wanted to write it down before I forgot.
First, Joe’s attorney looks worn out. He didn’t share much when I dropped everything off, just thanked me and we chatted for a few minutes. He did say that he hoped I was going to get a good night’s rest, that tomorrow was going to be long. He also asked how many clients I was working with right now, which was odd, we rarely talk about caseloads. I told him I was just handling some contract work and a few family estate planning matters (ironic, right?). He just nodded and said “Good.” I could tell he wanted to say more but he just shook my hand and said he’d see me in the morning.
Drinks with Sam turned into dinner and then dinner turned into an after-dinner drink before we both had to get home since it’s a “school night”. Seeing her was like stepping back in time... I don’t know about her, but for me all the feelings that I thought were just a high school crush came rushing back as soon as I sat down with her. I know I might just be feeling a little bit stressed by what’s going on and maybe she’s just a welcome relief from a bad week, but I’ll take it for now. She’s done everything she said she would in high school – stayed focused in college and medical school, did her surgical residency in under six years and then her cardiothoracic fellowship. She literally just finished and moved back here as soon as she was done. Evidently she received a full scholarship from a foundation associated with the hospital on the condition she return to provide surgical support to the community for 5 years after she finished her fellowship. We’ve got a fantastic hospital but I guess it’s always a challenge to recruit talented surgeons. I told her about my practice and the veteran advocacy work I do. I told her I didn’t plan on getting rich doing it but that I enjoyed being home and that the connection I felt to the land here just keeps growing stronger.
We talked a lot about Joe. She surprised me when she told me that she kept in touch with him even after we stopped seeing each other. She’d call him once a month or so to see how he was doing and she had evidently visited him when he was in the hospital during his last few days. He never told me that she stayed in touch – in fact we never spoke much about her at all. I hadn’t seen her in ten years and frankly didn’t think she’d ever come back from the West Coast. I’m starting to think that Joe kept a lot of secrets.
I told her about the reading of the will tomorrow and the phone calls I’d gotten today she got visibly upset when I mentioned the comment about the car and I think she almost cried when I told her my aunt wanted to tear down Joe’s house and divide the land up for a bunch of houses.
Then she reminded me about Joe’s plans for a house… I had completely forgotten that back when she and I would go over there regularly he had pulled out these extensive plans for a large home that he said was designed to be built on the slope of the valley, overlooking the river below that fronts the property. It was intended to be a family home, but without a family he never saw the point of living anywhere other than his house.
He had done the designs himself, drawing every architectural detail, making landscaping plans, even identified the site. He was quite an artist and had put so much of himself into those plans. I can’t believe she remembered them but she said she always wanted to see that cabin in person and couldn’t bare the thought that someone would chop up the beautiful property just to put in a bunch of McMansions for the crowd coming out from the city for the weekend and summers. I told her I was going to do everything I could to prevent that from happening but that I didn’t know how it was going to turn out.
For a while I forgot about tomorrow and we just got caught up on what we’d been doing. She let me share what I wanted to and never pried for more information. We ended up holding hands across the table, which somehow felt incredibly intimate. When it was time to go I walked her to her car and opened her door for her. She turned to me and we hugged for what seemed like a full minute before she sat down and I closed the door. She rolled the window down and told me she wanted me to call her right after the will is read and that if I needed her to she’d be there if things got unpleasant.
So that’s it – kind of a perfect way to end the day. I wanted to get this out before I went to bed, it’s helping me keep my head clear. Next update will be after the will is read.
NOPE: I was literally about to hit post on this and my phone dinged with a text from Sam. I’ll just put it here exactly as I got it: “Tonight made me feel like life interrupted something special 18 years ago. Let's not let it interrupt us again.” I guess it wasn’t just me.
I think whatever happens tomorrow I’ll be fine. Next update will be after the will is read. Thanks for all the comments - honestly this is very cathartic - even the ugly ones.
*** UPDATE-ISH **\*
Ok - this morning has been crazy. There is too much to unpack here all at once and I'm supposed to go back in with Joe's attorneys in a few minutes. The family is mostly gone (I asked my dad to stay) and the firm is bringing in lunch shortly so we can keep working through the details.
Honestly, I don't know what to think. I know I promised an update and I'll try to get one out today, but more happened this morning than I can even think about getting down on paper. I haven't processed most of it myself and this afternoon sounds like it's going to be more of the same.
Some of you were right, and yes, there was drama. Also - I know I'm not going to be the asshole but I can already tell not everyone is going to feel the same way.
Side note - Sam called me this morning and told me not to let the property go no matter what. She even offered to help me pay for it while I figured things out. I've got a lot to talk to her about. I know I need to get to know the adult Sam and she needs to get to know me but for now it's good to have someone to talk to since I can't talk to Joe.
*** Update : Reading of the Will Part 1 - The Letter **\*
This day has been ridiculous. I'm sad, angry, honored, and humbled all at once, and processing that is harder than I thought it would be. I'm waiting on Sam to get done at the hospital – she’ll call me on the way here. I've got a lot to talk to her about and I haven’t told her anything yet. Let me first say that I'm not comfortable sharing the full details on everything going on right now but I won't hold back on the people side of things. I’m also going to have to break this up into a couple of posts I’m sure… sorry this is long but this is just how I journal.
As I mentioned already, the day started really well. Samantha called me first thing this morning - I didn't text her back last night because it was so late and I was really tired. I also wanted time to think about "us" (if there can even be an us already?) before I spoke with her again. I'm not a rash person. I've never been someone to rush into anything and frankly I've not had a serious relationship since Sam and I broke up. I've had a series of girlfriends, some that I loved in many ways, but no one that, in hindsight, I was "in love with".
Between trying to juggle school and the service, two deployments, and then the transition back to civilian life, I just wasn't that interested. Now that I'm back home and have settled in to a life and a sort-of career I've been ready to find someone but frankly I just haven't met anyone who I connect with on a level deeper than just shared interests.
When I woke up this morning I knew that something was different. Despite everything going, on my first thoughts weren't about the reading today, or losing Joe, they were about Sam. As much as I loved that feeling I know it's time to be cautious. I don't want to hurt Sam or frankly, to get hurt.
When she called I wasn't sure what she was going to say but I was honestly a little worried that we wouldn't be on the same page - I shouldn't have been. She told me she didn't want me to freak out about what she said, but that she also meant every word. She wanted me to understand that she isn’t into games, that she’s serious about seeing if the older versions of us are everything we’re both looking for. She wants to pick up where we left off 18 years ago but take it slowly, and get to know each other again. It sounds like we’re on the exact same page, so I guess I’m going steady with my high school girlfriend?
She also wanted me to not worry about the property – she offered to help me buy it if I needed to come up with the money quickly and that no matter what happened between us she didn’t want to see it broken up – that Joe meant too much to both of us to let that happen.
As kind as that was I went ahead called our local bank this morning to ask about getting a loan quickly if I needed one. The loan officer put me on hold when I explained the situation and the potential need to move quickly. He came back and said he had asked the bank president if there was any way they could help. He had been assured that there would be no issue securing any financing necessary. He asked the loan officer to pass along his condolences about Joe, he evidently had known him for a long time, and said that he was looking forward to meeting me soon.
This left me feeling much more comfortable going into the meeting with my family but nothing could have prepared me for the rest of the day. Now, if I’m being completely honest I really did feel like there was a good chance that Joe would leave the house and car to me simply because he didn’t have a relationship with anyone else in the family, I just didn’t want to make assumption and I didn’t feel like I was entitled to anything simply because of my relationship with Joe.
When I got to the firm’s offices I was shown in to their largest conference room. I was surprised to see several people there other than Joe’s attorney. My father was the only other person there when I arrived, he and the attorney were having a quiet conversation in at the head of the table but stopped when I walked in. Since I’m going to mention him frequently let’s just call Joe’s Attorney JA. JA introduced me to everyone in the room, which included a stenographer, an associate attorney, a gentleman he just referred to as an assistant brought in for the reading stood at the back of the room by the doors.
Now, readings themselves are a little uncommon these days, but still done on occasion (I typically do one or two a year), however I’ve never had anyone else in the room with me and thought this was very strange. I guess I must have been looking at JA with a funny expression because he just raised an eyebrow and shrugged. At about that time people started trickling in until 10:30 rolled around and JA stood and asked everyone to be seated. He then nodded to the gentleman that had been standing in the back who went to the doors where he closed and locked them.
In all there were 9 of us in the room, me, my father, his younger brother and oldest sister, my sister Sarah. Four of my cousins showed up, including my youngest, Emily who was one of the few people that I enjoyed seeing at family events. She’s creative and smart – she just graduated from high school and is getting ready to go to college. I was surprised that she came but I had spent a lot of time telling her about Joe over the last couple of years and had been hoping they’d get a chance to know each other now that she was older.
JA started speaking, thanking everyone for coming and sharing how much he was going to miss Joe, that he was more than a client, he was his oldest friend and he was glad to see at least a few family members come. About 10 minutes after 10:30 someone tried the door and found it locked. They started banging on it and the gentleman in the back quickly moved to open it and step outside. I could see my oldest brother and Aunt Debbie try to push in as he opened the door, only to be firmly moved back as he stepped outside to speak to them. JA stood quietly for a moment and everyone could hear raised voices coming through the heavy oak doors. I heard my brother say something to the effect of “this is bullshit” and Debbie started shrieking before it sounded like both of them were abruptly cut off. A moment later the doors re-opened and the gentleman came back in. Debbie and my brother were gone.
JA paused another moment and then carried on. He explained that Joe had instructed him to ensure that no one join after the meeting began – he told us he was now going to read a letter from Joe, this is a slightly edited copy of the letter he wrote that JA read from:
Thank you to those that showed up, since most of you never bothered to show up while I was alive I wasn’t sure you’d come today! Those that didn’t come, or couldn’t be bothered to on time aren’t missing anything since they aren’t going to be getting anything now anyway.
For the rest of you, thank you, no matter what your motivation was you at least showed up. I’ve left instructions for each of you to receive $100,000 as my final gift to the family. There are not stipulations and no conditions, have fun, do good, use it as your heart tells you. To those grand-nieces and nephews that are under the age of 18 and were not invited, I gift each of them $100,000, which will be held in trust until their 25th birthday.
(It was at this point that I knew something was up – Joe had just given away over a million dollars to people just for showing up on time. If everyone that had been invited had shown up it would have been over 2 million dollars – that was honestly more than I thought his entire estate would be worth.)
Family is important, something that has been lost of too many of you. Some of you got caught up the trappings that came from other people’s hard work, took for granted the efforts of your ancestors and squandered their gifts - and that’s what an inheritance is, a gift, not a right. You prioritized having fun over protecting the legacy so you could pass it on to the next generation.
Only one of you chose to put others before himself. Only one of you has shown respect and appreciation for the gifts of the land, the community that we live in, and the people that came before him, just as his namesake did.
Robert, I hope you’re here for this, we didn’t always agree, and I have so much regret about how our relationship went the wrong way, the fight with your father about his decisions and behavior, shouldn’t have become our fight as well. I want you to know how much I appreciate you bringing Alex into this family, for honoring my brother by passing on his name to him, and for allowing me to have a relationship with him. You’ll never know what that meant to me. I want you to know that I love you like a brother and wish I had tried harder to bridge the divide created by my relationship with your father while we still had time.
(I've never seen my father look so emotional. It was difficult to see the sadness in his eyes but I felt like I also saw pride. Watching him made me start to get emotional as well and I struggled to put my attention back on the reading)
With regard to the bulk of my estate, I leave all my possessions, the land, the house and its contents along with my investments and holdings to Alex. Alex, it will take time for you to go through everything and familiarize yourself with what this means. We’ve been planning this for almost 20 years, your training as a lawyer will be very helpful but pay attention to the advisors we’ve assembled. There will be decisions that must be made. I’ve asked (JA) to give you my journals, along with some thoughts I wanted to save just for you. Please read them and don’t feel like you’re intruding, they’re all that is left of me and I hope they’ll help guide you, my mistakes don’t have to be yours. Someday you may also want to share them with family, they are yours to do with as you wish, these too are part of my legacy.
Now, to the rest of the family, I know that you’ve sold off the land that my father left my brother and me. I know this because I’ve spent the last 50 years secretly buying up every acre you wanted to sell, or buying it back if I didn’t find out in time. I’ve preserved what you were willing to destroy and built on it. I know that most of you have very little left to pass on to your children. So, to you, my family, I leave a chance at a new legacy. I have established a family trust to be overseen and directed by Alex. The trust has been funded with $XX million dollars. It will be up to Alex to decide how the funds are used but he is to appoint a family board of advisors to help preserve our legacy.
Finally, I have established a community foundation, tasked with the mission of helping preserve the way of life that has made this valley special for hundreds of years. I’ve directed $XX million from the estate to create the initial fund but expect that others in the community will add to it. I’ve entrusted the responsibility to oversee this fund to Alex and a select group of community leaders. The others have already agreed to help and contribute, and I hope Alex will honor my wishes that he oversee the fund.
Alex, our family has been part of this valley for over 150 years. For all it has given to us it is now our responsibility to help sustain it and protect it. I know I can count on you to do everything you can to carry on this family’s legacy but beyond that, what I truly hope is that you don’t have to do it alone, as I did. You will always have my love, thank you for giving me yours.
JA looked up from the paper and for a heartbeat the silence was deafening, then the shouting began.
I’ve got to stop here – Sam is on her way and we have a lot to talk about. I was with the attorneys until 4pm. After all the drama unfolded (thank God my dad was there, and that Debbie didn’t show up on time) I still had to spend several hours with the attorneys. I’ll spend the weekend with the journals but I’m sure I’ll be hearing from family all weekend too. I might have to turn my phone off.
Part 2 will probably be tomorrow – I’m hoping to just decompress with Sam tonight. I need a break. Thank you everyone for the well wishes and the good thoughts.

Michael Cera is walking down the hall of his school when a school shooting starts...
He and some of his classmates find a room to hide in.
While they're all hiding, crouched behind desks (listening to the screams and gun shots outside), Cera sees a girl among them that he has a crush on, "hot girl #1",
She starts looking over in his direction.
She makes a hand motion for him to come over towards her.
So Michael Cera smiles nervously and starts moving over.
But then as he does, another hot girl (hot girl #2) crawls past him, and he realizes that it was actually HER that hot girl #1 was summoning.
They both glare at him as a result of seeing his mistake.
hot girl 1 (whispering): "ugh, GROSS! like i would EVER want to hide from a shooter with YOU!"
hot girl 2 (whispering): "um...AWK-waaaaarrrrrrrrrrrd...."
but then the shooter walks into their room and shoots the hot girls first. their heads explode.
the shooter kills everyone else in the classroom too, except michael cera.
the shooter instead walks over to michael cera, like a zombie.
michael cera just sits there like a dear (not a typo) in the headlights, screaming.
but then the shooter just shoots himself in the head instead.
the shooter's body falls onto michael cera, who is now too scared to even screem.
meanwhile, outside, the police department is hiding.
gay officer: "i don't want to go in there, sherriff. he has a GUN! what if he SHOT it at us!? it's TOO SCARY."
sherriff: "don't worry, we're not goin in. i got special orders..."
the sherriff then makes the "sshhh" gesture with his finger on his mouth.
but then michael cera comes out, holding the gun away from himself, like it's a used condom, when he finds the cops hiding behind a corner.
michael cera: "um, ...hello?"
gay officer screams bloody murder and bolts outta there.
sherriff (looking at Cera): "what the hell are you doin son?"
michael cera: "uh, i don't know what's going on. there was a shooter, he had this gun. please take it before it gets into the wrong hands."
sherriff (points his gun at Cera and cocks it): "i don't think so.."
michael cera: "...wait, what?"
but then the news cameras are on the scene, and they can see the two of them
so the sherriff lowers his weapon and says: "you're under arrest for the Maple Park School Shooting^tm "
michael cera: "the what?"
sherriff puts cuffs on him and says: "it's what they're gonna call this event here today."
michael cera: "but i didn't... ok. fine."
michael cera goes to jail, pleading all the while that he didn't do anything.
he sees scary faces of big-ass gorilla-lookin niggas, in the jail cells that he passes by.
the guard tells him that his attourney will be with him soon, that he should try to just get a good nights sleep, cause he's gonna have a long day tomorrow.
we cut to a montage of news coverage of the shooting.
classmates that never actually met michael cera (don't even get his name right) are now on tv claiming that they did everything they could to make him feel accepted, but say that there was nothing they could do beceuse he was always just a twisted, fucked-up psycho.
these classmates also take this oppourtunity to plug their movie-review youtube channels, diy cooking instagrams, and celebrity-parody twitter accounts.
the next morning, michael cera is given a big bin of mail that he's recieved already, and is told that his lawyer is arriving now.
michael cera reads a letter from the bin while he waits.
we only see Cera's shocked reaction to the first letter, while his lawyer(played by Matthew Mcconahay) comes in.
lawyer: "hi there, Michael, I'm your lawyer Matt. Before we get started, is there any questions you might have?"
michael cera: "yeah, how am i getting mail for this already? this just happened yesterday..."
lawyer: "yeah, but it happened yesterday MORNING. so there was plenty of time for some people to see you on the news and write letters before the mail went out for the day. this is just the batch of letters that made the cutoff."
michael cera: "wow."
lawyer: "yeah. it's a lot. you'll get used to it."
michael cera: "uh, i noticed a lot of these are love letters. from girls. in fact it seems like all of them are."
lawyer: "right, well i wouldn't worry about that. i deal with a lot of mass shooting, terrorist attack, and serial killing cases. the accused man always get a whole forest's worth of letters from nubile young women begging for him to fertalize their ovaries and defile them in every concievable way. it's something to do with the primal effect of a man asserting dominance through a public violent act or something. Oh and by the way, under this state's laws, the accused are also given full access to conjucal visit privilages no matter the crime, so a lot of men like you have that option available when they feel inclined and they usually do. Anyway, if we can get started on where you were during the events of the crime scene, i can try to--"
but we see that michael cera is not listening anymore.
we cut to a montage of michael cera plowing one groupie after another, in a trailer, to the tune of Hallelujah played by leonard cohen.
we cut to a news clip, telling us that the case will soon go to trial.
we cut to michael cera meeting with his lawyer again.
lawyer: "michael, listen to me, we have all the evidence in the world that you're innocent. if you just give me permission to plead that way, we can get you off the hook!"
lawyer is rubbing his head like he has a headache, as a result of dealing with Cera. he opens up his bottle of asprin to get a quick pill for himself while he listens to Cera's response.
michael cera: "yeah, maybe. i just dunno..."
lawyer: "if you don't give me permission, then i'll just have to do it without your permission. i will not lose this case just because you're too scared to fight back!"
but just then, another lawyer (a Men-In-Black lookin chick), we'll call her "lawyer 2" steps in.
lawyer 2: "michael cera, i'm so sorry to hear about the passing of your lawyer, but I want to let you know that as your NEW lawyer, i-- oh shit, you're still here."
lawyer: "yeah I'm still here, what the hell are you talking about?"
lawyer 2: "oh, nevermind. i'll see myself out."
...
lawyer: "anyway, as i was saying..."
lawyer takes his pill, then starts foaming at the mouth, with some kind of chemical gas fumes spilling out, he then keels over.
lawyer 2 pops back in.
lawyer 2: "ok, you remember my shpeil from earlier, right? i don't have to repeat that?"
michael cera: "is he ok?"
lawyer 2: "no, i'm afraid it appears he's had a heart attack."
michael cera: "THAT'S what a heart attack looks like?!"
lawyer 2: "i know, it's not like in the movies at all, is it?
lawyer 2 pushes lawyer 1's body out of the seat so that she can sit there instead.
lawyer 2: Anywho, i've taken the time to look over your case and i must say it's not good news. i'm afraid we don't have much of a chance on this one, i'm gonna reccomend you plead guilty."
michael cera: "...oh...ok!
Michael cera now has tattoos on his face and body, and wears a doo rag.
he is now open about his phony role in shooting. He looks straight at us, the audience, and says "i don't give a CRAP anymore."
As a result, one day, he is in a conjucal visit trailer with a fan, and he tells her "before we get started, i just want to make sure if it's ok if we only do it in the missionary position? everything else feels too kinky for me", just like he always does, but the new girl ISN'T interested in fucking him at ALL.
She's an undercover reporter for Alex Jones' Infowars network. she wants info for their war on the official msm narrative about the shooting.
So he tells her that he's willing to testify the real story in court.
But time is running out. Fights are escalating in the prison, and it looks like they may soon turn into a full blown riot.
But then, once the undercover reporter leaves, some secret agents show up and introduce themselves to michael cera as Agent Zog (male) and Agent Henderson (female).
Agent Zog: "we can offer you protection. and in exchange, not only will you not testify, you'll give a new detailed confession with new motives added from this list so that the media can demonize people on the outside who have the same goals as your stated goals.
Agent Zog hands Cera the list.
Agent Zog: "just remember, if you refuse to cooperate, we can just have you eliminated.
michael cera: "wait.. so you guys really were behind the shooting?!
but just as they're talking the riot erupts into a full-on jail break.
while agent zog is distracted by this, michael cera grabs his gun from him and shoots him to death.
michael cera: "framing someone for murder ISN'T NICE!"
michael cera looks around for an escape. but agent henderson just saw him commit a brutally violent act...
agent henderson: "oh michael..." <3 <3 <3
henderson starts stripping off her clothes and chasing down michael cera.
michael cera: "aw geez, what the heck?"
agent henderson (buck naked): "take me now! i want your seed inside me!"
michael cera: "i don't have time for this!"
michael cera tries to keep moving, but agent henderson climbs on to him and ravages him.
michael cera: "ugh! FINE!"
meanwhile, in a helicopter above...
sniper: "wow. he's plowin' henderson."
agent 3: "nice"
agent 4: "yeah, not bad"
sniper: "tell me about it!"
...
agent 3: "you can take the shot now."
sniper takes the shot. michael cera's head explodes.
agent 3 (looking over to agent 4): "and uh, have someone send a car to pick up henderson, i guess."
agent 4: "roger, that's a wrap."
Directed by Stephen Speilberg.

Warning: Very long reading ‼️
Note 1: I’ve been asking around on many subreddits including dhl_deutsche_post and I was suggested that I also ask here too.
Note 2: I was told that I have no direct contract with DHL. But what can I do?
Note 3: I’m writing here in English so that the seller in Thailand can understand it because she doesn’t speak German.
I bought live plants from Thailand back in April 2024. The seller let me choose my own plants. So I knew the condition of the plants before they had left Thailand — they were in top condition.
The plants were carefully packaged and left Thailand on May 3, 2024. The seller also complied to the import regulations by providing all necessary documents to the shipment and kept me posted along the way. I opted for an EMS shipping (via Thailand post) instead of a more expensive option offered by Dragon Courier.
I knew that by choosing this shipping option, I’d have to clear my shipment with the customs myself and there would be processing fees as opposed to the courier service where all fees including customs clearance and import duties are already covered. But it’s 150€ cheaper.
Ever since the shipment left Thailand, the seller had been proactively asking me for the status of the shipment every day. And ever since I received a tracking number from the seller, I emailed it to the customs officer (at Tier-und Pflanzenschutz in Frankfurt) who I dealt with last year (this isn’t my first time importing plants from Thailand this way) to inform him of the incoming shipment from Thailand and asked him to process it as soon as it had arrived. Because last time he didn’t process my shipment fast enough, the plant died and I still had to pay for the processing fee and all import duties.
The shipment arrived in Frankfurt on May 7 and I called this customs officer on May 8 to inform him of the shipment him in person again. He promised me that he would process the shipment on the following Monday (May 13) due to public holiday and bridging days. The procedure is as follows: when he finishes processing the shipment, he would email me to inform me of the domestic shipping costs/ import and processing fees that I would need to pay. But he didn’t process it yet. He hadn’t processed until May 16.
He called me on May 17 and apologized to me for the late that the shipment had been forwarded to DHL (express) for domestic delivery and it would be delivered on May 18 (Saturday). And it already left the facility and was on the way to Munich.
On Saturday, May 18, I was at home all morning to receive my package and I didn’t leave home at until 12. But at 10:05 I checked the status of my shipment on both DHL website and other API’s that pulls real time shipping data from logistics companies and I was surprised to see that my package was not delivered. When I went out to my mailbox, I found this failed attempt delivery note. The driver didn’t even ring the doorbell. And my doorbell wasn’t turned off either.
On this delivery note, it didn’t say where my package would be diverted to. So I called DHL Express and asked where the driver didn’t ring and my package wasn’t delivered and instead he put this note in my mailbox and where I could personally pick up. The call center wasn’t helpful either. Nobody knew where my package would be diverted to. I called them many times that Saturday. One of the representatives promised me that she would arrange with the depot for another delivery that day again. At the end of the day, nothing happened. No delivery was made.
I called them again on Tuesday (Monday was a public holiday) and asked for the whereabouts of my shipment. Again, nobody knew. So I demanded the telephone number of the depot where my shipment was initially processed. No one gave me. I have to point out that I called them many times. And DHL Express said it wasn’t processed by them and directed me to call DHL. So I called DHL and asked the same question. They said I would have to call DHL international because the shipment came from Thailand. Then I called DHL international, they said that I would have to called DHL express international.
It was like a game of ping pong or hot potato where everyone refused to take responsibility of my shipment. And I started to get infuriated. At the end of that day (Tuesday , May 21), I didn’t get any useful information at all.
So the following day (Wednesday) I called DHL Express again, based on the delivery note, they must be responsible for my package. And I was told that I must be at home ONLY to receive the package in person and pay the fee to the delivery man. It will not be diverted to any post office (even to the one opposite my place) and self-pickup at the DHL depot wasn’t on the table either. So I asked my boss per his permission to work from home on Thursday. And I contacted DHL again that to confirm the delivery appointment on Thursday.
Again, nothing happened in Thursday despite me staying home waiting for my package all day. At this point, I totally lost my shit. I called them and started to complain many times. The call center agents were rude to me and never let me finish asking questions and interrupted me and told me that they couldn’t help and hang up abruptly. I finally got one of them to arrange a new delivery on Saturday (May 25) between 9:00 and 12:00.
On May 25, at 8:21 am I received 2 SMS from DHL that they couldn’t deliver my package AGAIN. I was still at home. And no ringing at my doorbell either. The delivery hadn’t t even begun yet and they just sent me this message. So I called DHL and asked them how that was even possible no ringing and the delivery hadn’t started and I received such a message from them. This time I couldn’t keep my politeness to myself anymore. So I started yelling and gave them an earful — which they never listened. This time I also told one of them that I would write a complaint letter and have the seller complain as well and I’m expecting a full compensation.
They called me on Tuesday (May 28) and asked me when would be at home again to receive the package. I told them that at this point the plants would have died and I didn’t want to take the shipment. They said that even if I refused to take the shipment, I would still have to pay for the domestic shipping fee (10€) anyway. So I told them to come on Saturday, June 1 (today).
You can see that all of them are unsalvageable. This is not the condition before they left Thailand.
I also need to point out that this isn’t the first time that DHL didn’t even attempt to deliver my package but put in the system that the shipment was undeliverable. It happened quite a few times already.
This shipment costs me almost 650€. And I want full compensation. What should I do? Do I have any legal rights to take action against DHL? The seller tried to help me and contacted the Thailand post and DHL Thailand but they said that they weren’t responsible for this either. And they were surprised that DHL in Germany is shit.
Please see pictures and screenshots in my original post here because I’m not allowed to post pictures here.

Yes- I'm 14, and the girl I like is 12. I know the age difference is significant, especially on an emotional level, but she means a lot to me (I'm relatively short for my age, so I could be mistaken for a 12 or 13-year-old). Let's call this girl "Alice".
I'm finishing middle school in about a week and have exams coming up. I've liked Alice since I first saw her in February, and I can't stop thinking about her. She's the sister of one of my classmate's ex-boyfriends (Let's call this classmate "Ava") and she was also getting a lot of attention from the girls in my class. I kept this to myself until I told my best friend (Let's call him Matthew). Initially, I wasn't sure what I was feeling because I had never liked anyone before. At some point, I was teasing Matthew, and in a moment of anger, he blurted out to the whole class that I liked Alice. The girls, including Ava, were surprised but offered to help. Predictably, the secret lasted only six days. When Alice next visited our class, Ava told her I liked her. Alice looked at me for a moment, (sorta) blushed and left the class. I didn't have the courage to talk to her while she was still outside the class, and at the end of recess one of her friends later told me Alice didn't like me. I cried almost every day during the Easter holidays. When school resumed, Ava said Alice wanted to see me. Alice, hugging Ava, seemed shy but smiled when asked to at least ask for my name. My friends thought she might like me based on her reaction. I didn't talk to Alice for a week, and none of my friends pushed me to. Then one of Alice's classmates (Let's call her Brooke) said Alice was waiting for me to talk to her. So at recess, I visited Alice in her class, and she said hi, looking embarrassed, happy, and confused at the same time. She then hid in the bathroom, and her friends, who seemed enthusiastic about the situation, assured me she was just shy. At some point, Ava called me to talk to Alice again, but Alice ran away. Ava later said Alice thought I was cute. In the following days, I visited Alice often, just to say hi, but her friends encouraged me to be more direct. I went up to her and she tried to run away, but her friends stopped her. She eventually took a deep breath and asked what I wanted to tell her. I told her I liked her, and she made the same face from a few days earlier. After that, Alice seemed to lose interested. The next day, we had a proper conversation, and she said she'd see me later, but I didn't manage to visit her during the lunch break. For various reasons, I couldn't visit her for the next week. When I finally did, Alice sent Brooke to tell me she didn't like me, so I was miserable, but after a few minutes, Brooke changed this answer to "It's not a yes or a no," which was confusing. I later realised this might've just been a little remark to make me feel better. I wasn't completely defeated since Alice hadn't rejected me in person. Ava wrote a fake love letter from me to Alice, despite my objections. She managed to sneak past me and bring her the letter. From far away, I could see that Alice seemed happy and surprised by it. However, her friends stopped talking about the situation and helping me, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I found it suspicious. I couldn't gather the courage to talk to Alice for a month, so I decided to write her a letter expressing how much she meant to me and wanting to clear things up. The day I planned to give it to her, I found out she had gotten a boyfriend three days earlier (Don't take this seriously, but I've seen him and for the record, I could easily beat him up). She seems pretty attatched to him too, because to my dismay, they hold hands and sometimes even kiss. Alice still occasionally looks at me with a neutral expression or sometimes even says hi, for whatever reason. Anyway, I've got one week of school left and I've lost all hope, so my question is, what should I do- if anything? Should I talk to her one last time? What should I say? Should I truly give up on this forever? And also, does anyone have any idea what was going on in her head during this whole ordeal? Please, this truly means a lot to me.
TLDR: I'm finishing middle school and have liked a girl two years younger than me for the past few months. My classmates told her, and they pushed us to talk. We had a few awkward conversations, and she seemed somewhat interested. Eventually, one of her friends said she didn't like me, and my classmates stopped helping or talking about this situation. I tried talking to her myself for a month but couldn't. I wrote her a letter, but she got a boyfriend three days before I could give it to her. Now I've got one week of school left and have lost hope. She occasionally looks at me or says hi, for whatever reason. Should I talk to her one last time? And also, does anyone have any idea what was going on in her head during this whole ordeal?

Hey ya’ll me (32M) and my wife (28F) date separately so this is for me to meet someone. We are open to opening up, but that’s a different conversation altogether. We are happy, and have a little one on the way so they require a great deal of attention from me.
I won’t ever make my marriage and pregnancy your problem, but I will communicate to you what’s generally going on so we can plan our time together around it. If you don’t feel like you’re comfortable with that or it sounds like too much work then we can just be friends and chat.
I love hour long phone calls and letter sized texts.😀
I don’t mind if you quickly respond or wait all day to respond to me, but I don’t like being ghosted or being the only one pushing the conversation forward.
A little about me 5’8”, 160lb. I love escapism hobbies, so anything that involves putting yourself in another world, reading, writing, watching movies, playing video games, D&D, party games, board games, going to a concert or music festival, camping, going on a hike, or trying something for the first time. I also love to cook for my wife, friends, family, and partners.
I’m a teacher, so I get summers off if I choose not to work (like this summer), but I’m not looking for a fling. I want to love another person with the intention of being in a relationship.
We live in NorCal and we visit SoCal twice a year by car. (I love roadtrips.) I’m open to driving a bit, but I’d prefer a partner that is either in California or along its border.
This is my first post so please DM if you want to chat or have any questions. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻
Also, I love dark humor and jokes in general.
How many flies does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two but how did they get in there?

Shortform

• Massive exploration of the Society beyond the big names we've spent time with in Across
• Villains forsaking their rivalries for survival and universes paving their own roads
• Gwen temporarily eating it but coming back, then leaning on her comic self (A variant)'s new Ghost-Spider ident to mark her defying fate's scythe

Premise

Here is the textual taxonomy of trilogys as I've heard in (obscure, hard-to-find) writing structure lessons

• Installment 1: Exposit - What is the subject
• Installment 2: Analyze - What is the subject's meaning
• Installment 3: Perspectivize - What is the subject's value and suasoria

Across may not have been a conclusive Act 2, but it is definitely a valid standalone one

• Expanded the 'verse and the major cast by throwing a curve into their relationships and own philosophies
• Delved deeper into what makes a Spider-Man by presenting a free will vs. determinism arc a la Civil War that also happens to have metacommentary

"I'ma do my own thing."
"We're supposed to be the good guys."
Miles summarized his new path throughout the movie, then Gwen called out the Society for their enabling of so much death and suffering to serve a misguided dogma.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/File:Spider-Man_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster_003_textless.jpg
There's almost certainly gonna an all-out ideological civil war (fists or not, composite of MCU and comics, but Spiders-only) like that split poster teased.
Gonna be grimly hilarious seeing Spinneret/Spiderling fight Peter B. and Mayday (the former are on Miguel's side to the left, along with Insomniac Spidey)
Yes, I believe there will be a few more new support characters in Beyond - there's a reason certain folks were at the front, and it's just really curious and a wasted opportunity that this Spider-MJ didn't interact at all with this active version of her other (stillborn) daughter or her (Mayday-616B) dad.
I very much appreciate the lifting of other Spidey variants to the zeitgeist fold - Noir, Ham, Gwendy-65, the UK/Punk and Indian ones, the weirdos like Parkedcar from Not! Pixar's Cars, a damn popsicle possibly (lol), a plushie, etc. - but they

Events and Themes

1. Universes

Serving the Installment 3 role, Beyond will probably tie up loose ends and make the above themes reverberate across universes. Like, for 42:

• Miles Prowler can prove that the world doesn't always need Spider-Heroes to save itself, only the spirit of the concept - Spider-Man isn't the center of the multiverse, and given the last movie's title, it will navigate its own fate independent of any Spider at all - let the world do its own thing

Beyond the 'verse of men of spiders, Reality-42 rises up against villainy.

• Maybe Kingpin and Dr. Octopus return someway, then emulate their TAS 1994 counterparts in allying with the Spiders out of existential pragmatics

2. Characters and Developments

By "reverberate," the Spider-Hero question is going to strike real nerves that change the Society and the world, making them examine the morality of the war they fight against anomalies like Spot; survival at all means and costs vs. idealistic stand against fate. And for certain Spiders, we could get more screentime with certain Society members and ex-members - preferably Spinneret and Spiderling, the Insomniac Spideys, and Scarlet Spider - and Endgame-ify Beyond's length.

• The RYV (Reality-18119, Renew Your Vows) Parkers confide with the others including Peter B. on family and how do they keep it together in light of their role as preserving fate and existence itself
• PS4/5 bros relate their experiences of loss and keeping going, especially to 1610B Miles. A great way of giving a layman on the games' plots while relaying their themes to the wider non-gamer audience
• Ben Reilly (Scarlet bro), being a Pete clone and a technical predecessor to Miles, will have his status put to address. His struggles with his inheritance and identity - bearing the names of Peter's parental figures - will probably mirror Ultimate Spider-Woman, and hopefully, he's a major outcrier against Miguel's misguided cause
• Jess-332's and Peter B's babies will interact, leading to the former's moral realization due to Peter B's time with Miles being the reason for his family's reconstruction - influenced solely by extrauniversal (of course anomalous) factors. Throw that Madame Web Spidey (Julia Carpenter) into the fray somehow?
• Interuniversal linkage like in the comics (616/928 and 65/8) can be explored to further the fate-changing theme; whether 928B the bad future of 616B is an inevitability - we haven't really explored 928B - and whether 42 is 1610B's worst possible self and how it can change. The Miles/Gwen dynamic could play here too, 65B and 1610B and the references to the number 8 (which happens to resemble the infinity sign - "infinite Spider possibilities") in Across. Not suggesting that Comics Earth 8's characters play any role, tho, 'cuz per the themes, the duo should connect on their terms
• Variant Miguels when, Sony - like the variant MJs, Harrys, Normans, Flashes, and Gwens, etc. Get freaking Edge of Time, not just Ultimate and 1994, in it
• The locked-up anomalous villains perhaps even helping stop Spot - like Kingpin and Ock above. Basically No Way Home's scenario but tweaked a bit and writ large; let them decide whether to have a new lease of life or to keep their exploits going - their outcomes, their terms as usual. I wonder how would Atari Osborn fare, though, XD

Feel free to add more :) Not quite a Marvel binger yet, XD

3. Fates

Another element to be addressed is the room elephant of canon events. Their loopholes, their flexibility have to be expanded upon: They are fluid like time's arrows and oceans. For one:

• George lives? Sorry, but Gwen's relationship with him remains strained, on top of her guilt from treachery and deception. Also, the canon event ain't really death, but the Captain losing their job

Maybe we even trade one event for another, as in a major death of sorts. In my opinion:

• Not Peter B., because he's a living meta rebuttal to people holding off (at the very least) on an aged-up/married/parent Peter, the 616 editorial included. Him dying, let alone Mayday (toddler, so definite write-off), would undermine this subtext
• Not Jess, 'cuz she's a mother and despite her jerkish mentor habits seems willing to look the other way for turncoats like Margo/Byte
• Not Jeff, 'cuz that would just prove Miggy's point in light of George being living proof, as well as utterly render worthless all the effort thrown into saving him
• Not Miguel (yes, how dare I), 'cuz for all his pain-motivated harshness, he deserves better than the cliche'd fatal redemption trope of villains, of which he technically ain't one (and don't "Thanos" this as unlike Migs, he knew of better options but foregone it)

Here's a unique twist: The mastermind behind this Spider- conspiracy grows a conscience after all the breaking lectures against his warped view of canon events, then resolves to save as many lives as possible, dropping all pretenses of controlling the Spider-War
At risk to himself, he'll unhesitatingly save lives while one/some of those who blindly followed him give theirs. As shitty as his Society's turned out to be, they still have their main directive of fixing multiversal incursions, and someone has to keep giving the orders, someone with the most drive and commitment (especially for atonement)
Why on Miguel? Matured thinking aside, it evokes how science and philosophy works; cognitive science has this cliché of at least two sides theorizing extremes that are contrary to one another, and as time passes with discovery, the proof points to both sides having a point and deciding on a compromise; this of course goes beyond simple personal disagreement
So who'll it be?
Spider-gents and ladies, none other than Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy of Earth-65B
In the vein of MCU Aunt May being her Pete's Uncle Ben delivering that responsibility quote, and through it occurs the Spider-Verse's true Ultimate Fallout/Death of a Spider event this way
Gwen being slain and (certainly) coming back would be a wakeup call to both her world and the Society, as well as the latter group's morality in their internal strife and conflict against Spot. Redeem her image to everybody, Miles included, while allowing them to get together on solitary terms
That way:

• Miguel's right that being a Spider is a sacrifice, it's just their assigned canon events ain't 1:1 across every universe
• Miles' right that you can have and eat two cakes - meaning canon events can be alleviated (such as debris falling on Singh without killing him) - it's just that there's a cost

It'd also be a roundabout redemption for blindly following the Society's beliefs and causing unnecessary pain to Miles, deeper than "My well-meaning side right, your well-meaning side wrong" - no, both sides can have their two cakes; say, the rest save Jeff, Gwen herself - the motherless one - saves Rio, let 1610B not be 1610A in this particular way
I'ma spitball here, but it's kinda like Nolanverse (TDKR) Batman, come to think of it. Maybe George is informed of and reveals his daughter's "demise" and publicizes her ident? The latter I admit is questionable
Maybe Gwen goes to 1610B and RVs with Miles to Florence - there's this café on the banks of the Arno - for a fine evening sitting there and ordering a Fernet Branca
XD

(Potential) Foreshadowing

• Proof for the 42 antiheroes' case:

... "We wanted to craft this moment where Miles encounters this powerful figure in his life that he loved so much and he lost," says director Justin K. Thompson. "That's when he realizes that he is not really in his own dimension, as well as the gravity of what he has lost. In this reality, Aaron had to shake off his life of crime and became a surrogate father figure to Miles."
... In this alternate reality, the Sinister Six have been able to flourish and take over the world. "Criminality runs rampant," says Thompson. "We wanted to create a world where it felt like Aaron and Miles G. Morales of Earth-42 [this reality's counterpart to Miles Morales] are the only heroes.
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Earth-42, p.190
... This version of the character was never bitten by a radioactive spider and doesn't have any superpowers, but he has fallen into the role of becoming the vigilante the Prowler, under the tutelage of his uncle Aaron. ...
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Miles G. Morales: The Prowler, p.200

• Here's a pattern: We meet multiple Spidey-Peters and our intro hero is, well, RIPeter, then some podcast revealed we'd be meeting multiple Gwens in Beyond; timestamp 17:51-18:45

Interviewer: Will we see other multiversal variants of Gwen Stacy in the future even if they don't have spider powers, like you do with MJ, Uncle Aaron, and Miles?
Lord: Currently yes. ... But there’s one I’m very excited about.
Miller: Yes, yeah, I know exactly the one you’re talking about.
Lord: You know the one I’m thinking of, which is based on... I’m not gonna say anything, I’m not gonna say anything.
Miller: But it is sort of plot-integral, I would say.
Interviewer: If there are other multiversal variants of Gwen in Beyond the Spider-Verse, will they impact her arc, her relationship with Miles?
Lord: I would say yes.

The Pete variants showed up after Blondie's demise, so they might reverse the sequence here - as I said, a bookend.
Yea, all these signs totally bode well for the other blonde Spidey here
https://preview.redd.it/kpz7vzvub64d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d25e78b18f3fc82e58eb1516d1ac915fc130470

• Friendly reminder they referenced fuckin' Ultimate Fallout of all storylines in Gwen's room, under which she mostly lingers while speaking with her dad. Are you telling me that scene just happened to be shot like that? No, they orchestrated it! L&M! The story that deals with Miles' overall debut and the (of course, cue pathos) fallout of 1610A Spidey's demise! Been struggling to find and spot it honestly, damn lighting and coloring
• Guess what's 1610A Pete (the original Ultimate comics version, not blond RIPeter)'s death age? 16, exactly 65B Gwen's present age. MCU Pete's too when he was snapped
• Notice the last part of the Canon Event exposition scene; Hobie's got the Spider-Man No More comic panel, Jess-332 the If This Be My Destiny one, Peter B. the wedding, and Gwen? Spidey rising from the grave in Kraven's Last Hunt, modified with herself doing the feat. The kicker here: Neither Hobie nor Gwen's displayed events have official releases yet, although Hobie did say he opted out of chasing Miles - which is to say she's next and last, as well as #4 (so deathly the connotations) on the shown list

In Defense

Now calm down before you web pitchforks on me

• People keep saying there has to be a much more nuanced wrap-up - an idea with traction around these subs in a good way; to this day, people argue whether that Mumbattan hole was Spot BS or a canon event's unraveling. Mine has that nuance IMO
• Migs up and stated Mumbattan wasn't their first canon event ruptures rodeo and they couldn't save some 'verses from them, why would he be bullshitting or even fully wrong on CEs if he had that Spider team with specialized equipment for canon event containment? They were conveniently there right as that hole formed, and hell, they could reconcile that hole with the Dead Migs dimension where everything digitally evaporates as the latter being the end result
• He put on his shitlist Spider-Holland (maybe along with Maguire, Garfield (the light one)) for a reason - not hesitating to save MCU MJ (Michelle Jones-Watson) rather than let her be Spider-Tom's ASM-121 moment - although one can argue the memory wipe counts as first love loss, along with his Iron Man being his police captain canon event - and Raimi-verse Gwen is very much (per that meme) hot, single, and alive. Observing Sinister, Supreme, and 838/Illuminati-Strange's destroyed realities made him a rage button for 2099
• Showing the other 'verses like the comic-based What Ifs and that Armored Spider-Man one from the 1994 cartoon? It's kind of like a cheat out of the dilemma, and I'm not sure the other viewers would agree. Miguel also knows of Dr. Strange and possibly his What If? versions
  • Before someone "Absolute Points solve themselves, Society's unneeded" me, we know too the APs are a nascent concept and Miguel probably thought no two universes will always solve themselves and CEs are probably spontaneous - maybe a day, a week, or even a year plus, they will happen, scapegoat or not
  • To the people who say Migs was mistaken in how he destroyed that reality and that it was an Incursion: IT WASN'T ONE, because it would have caused a collision course between that 'verse and 928B, which I don't think they have any means to stop - only someone like Strange. Aside from the trolley sacrifice of one Earth, we're not privy to what are the other seven ways to averting Incursions. Guess what, Gabri's reality went poof on its apparent own while 928B stayed very much alive. Didn't even look like 928B was approaching from the skies at the time either
  • Returning to Miles' side, I also hear of the fixed time points comparison from Dr. Who; I'd like to point out the Doctor was able to fake his death by hiding inside a, uh, humanoid ship at Lake Silencio, so I've read, despite records saying so
• They keep insisting "First time for everything," right, plus the cake stuff? Why not a Venom Blast resuscitation somehow on the brink of death, then being comatose or some other critical injury so the "lost Lenore" event doesn't stick? Or! In the style of BvS Dawn of Justice and What if? Spider-Man The Other (plus Ultimate Gwen ofc)...symbiotic resurrection (possibly even transporting that one symbiote drop in that bar in the MCU), and cue Gwenom arc in some spinoff like Spider-Women
• Alternatively, to avoid the fridged LI trope absolutely, Rio gets the Ultimate comics treatment of death somehow - but as said repeatedly, doing one's own thing, and I think this Spider-War's seen enough dead Moraleses. Miles has already grown and seen enough from the other Spiders' losses and his own. Honestly, people need to hear comic quotes often, take Mark Waid's Daredevil run:

Rachel Cole: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
Daredevil: Never... Don't you ever say that to me ever again, that is a repellent statement, it's a vomituous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier alive who steps up to fight for those who can't! I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause...then get your pathetic cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job!

It's relevant because Rachel's stance here was that people like them who fight for causes are solely inspired by loss, only for Matt to verbally skewer her. The subtext here, synthesizing it with the Spidey mythos is that it's misguided to think that losing forever more loved ones is the only way to make a true Spider-Hero.
Flip the narrative and say "Villainy only happens if they're abused/poorly raised, alas, poor villain;" one is warranted to call it a vomitous insult to every abuse victim/improperly raised junior out there who became better than their elders/superiors - i.e. not go evil.
Either way, the greater gist of this is losing a close one for good isn't the way, emphasis on "for good"

Future Implications

Wrapping everything up like above (I mean the objectives), one way or another (not necessarily mine), would show full commitment to the theme of forging one's own destiny right down to the metatextual. The Spidersoc let confirmation bias blind themselves to possibilities and seemingly have yet to expose themselves to the preestablished branch realities where, say, Spider-People lose nobody or a Gwen Stacy ties neatly her romance quest with a Spidey. The themes of doing your own thing openly and honestly and in safety - rather than requesting permission from broken systems - resonate much with an Excel list: People who are queeof colowomen/disabled
Beyond that obviousness, we have disabled Spideys, Muslim Spideys (that female UK one), Blob-fat Spideys - even PLUSHIE Spideys, just to name a few, all to show the movie being the most diverse and inclusive Spidey work to date. These themes are so incredibly applicable to the lives of atypical people or otherwise people who live under systems that aren't designed for them to succeed. IE: POC, women, queer people, people with disabilities, etc. One can argue "doing your own thing" was what made ItSV such a breakthrough success and a decade phenomenon: Everything about the animation
I get that a teen girl dying, even temporarily - especially one who resonates much with LGBT (transgwender specifically) themes - is real bad optics, but we went through this before with Luz Noceda (bi rep exactly) from The Owl House, and things landed on their feet :)
If/When she comes back to crimefighting, this would be the moment she goes by Ghost Spider like her A self - a Gwen who fought fate and died for it, but another Spider loved her so much, he raised her from death to life in Ultimate defiance (getting flowery prose here) that prevails

Hi guys - not sure if this is a helpful question to ask here, but my PI who's writing a letter of recommendation for me said to send her a bulleted list of points that I want to be sure she mentions in her letter. I'm not sure exactly what to say here besides the obvious things, like our relationship, how I work in the lab, etc., that she'll mention anyway. Is there a list of general things someone has that I can expand on when I send this to her to ensure the letter is strong?

Ok I know this is possibly very neurotic of me, but I just wanted some insight about whether this qualifies as an institutional action. My sophomore year my roommate and I would prop/tape our door open so that friends could come in and out of our room more easily. Everyone on our floor did this, and I was not aware this violated school policy. My RA ended up writing me up for this without even telling me, and I received a letter from the Dean's Office for "dangerous practice". The letter was basically just a warning and qualifies as a "Conduct Notice."
My pre-med advisor said this will not appear in my committee letter and does not rise to the level of a reportable infraction. I know that it is technically a "warning" but does it count as an IA since I got a letter from the Dean? I don't really care if I have to report since it is so minor, but I just wanted to get advice about how I should proceed lol.

In an age when Amazon is swallowing up the world and facing backlash (on a number of fronts) the humble Kindle increasingly stands out. Don’t get me wrong, Kindle's closed format and Amazon's antagonistic actions toward competitors and libraries are despicable, but I'd like to put that aside and focus on the hardware for now.
You see, the Kindle might be my favorite piece of consumer electronics hardware—and one of my most satisfying purchases—ever. Why? The Kindle is everything my various iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and MacBooks are not. Let me explain.
It has long life I’ve had this same Kindle Paperwhite since 2013 and it's just as good as the day I bought it. Just as fast, looks just as good, and works just as well. Software updates arrive silently and never seem to slow things down. It's never been deemed too old to update and as far as I know, it’s running the latest version of Kindle's software. Indeed, it’s great that I don't really know and don't have to care. Can't say the same about the iPhone 5s, iPad, and Macbook I bought the same year—all of which long ago stopped getting updates.
It's made to be used I’ve dropped my Kindle countless times and routinely thrown it into a bag without much concern before heading out the door. It's not just that it can take a beating but that it's designed to be durable with materials that can absorb some neglect. In that time I've picked up a small scratch on the screen that I can't even see while reading and the plastic, soft-touch body has a few dings and scuffs but they hardly detract from its appearance.
It's quite freeing to own hardware that isn't precious. I've never considered putting a case on it. My six-months old iPhone 12 has more damage and looks worse than my 7-year-old Kindle even though I treat the latter fragile bird. Apple's products somehow resist the usually attractive effects of patina which might make them feel more alive and organic. While materials like wood, cloth, and leather become more attractive with age, Apple's hardware designs made of glass and coated metal seem to wear imperfections like scars of disease, cutting your heart with every glint.
It inspires no envy The worst day as the owner of any Apple product is the day the next new model comes out. Suddenly over the course of a 60 minute keynote your stuff becomes old and obsolete. This is no question, by design. I couldn't tell you how many new Kindle models have been released in the last 7 years. I've certainly heard about them, compared them to my 2013 Paperwhite, and decided not to buy them. And I don't feel bad or like I'm missing out. I shudder to think how many Apple devices from 2013 are in the trash today.
It's doesn't care what I do Sure my Kindle can connect to Goodreads to share progress and asks me to write a review after I finish a book but those are humble asks in today’s world. Try using your iPad without network connectivity or without an iCloud account. Heck, last year a whole population of developers on MacBooks couldn't work because of a network glitch on Apple's developer servers. My Kindle doesn't care if I'm on wi-fi, never nags to sign-in to anything, and isn't trying to coerce me to use social features. If I never connected it to web again, I could happily keep reading the books I have and even load new ones outside the ecosystem via USB.
It's content to do one thing The Kindle has one job: reading books. It never pulls me away to read a notification, doesn't beg me to look at what someone said on Twitter, and it isn't trying to trick me into using it more. It's not even showing me ads (to be fair, I purchased the ad-free version) or suggesting more books. Just like my toaster isn't telling me the weather or suggesting other kinds of bread I might be interested in. And that's the key: it's an appliance.
I've gone through spurts where I prefer real printed books and set the Kindle aside where it happily waits until I come back—often with the battery still charged even. It's not sending me texts or emails say, "You know, you haven't read a book in awhile." My Kindle doesn't need me and isn't trying to manipulate me.
You can imagine all the things it could to: check Twitter, manage to-dos, show me my calendar, check email, organize my Amazon wishlist, suggest products based on my reading, etc. I have to imagine those ideas, and more, have come up inside Amazon HQ so hats-off to whomever said "no" to them.
The Kindle is a rare beast in the world of consumer electronics and I find it increasingly hard fit it into Amazon's apparent values. It's not so hard to imagine that it was born when Amazon was a different company but that doesn't explain why it still exists or why it's still good or why Amazon seemingly isn't following Apple's consumer products model. Lord knows everyone else is. My friend Dan's washing machine is even gamifying his wash cycles!
The Kindle stands apart from Amazon's ethos. Even more so, it stands as a rare example in the entire consumer electronics industry as a single-purpose device that is durable, meant to be used, non-invasive, un-precious, and refreshingly off the gear lust conveyor belt.
It's not perfect but it's my favorite.
via Jason Zimdars

Why was I banned? Idk. Nobody told me. Don’t ask me. I don’t care.
Moving along
What did I miss? Anything new?
Got to catch up on my Friday night poetry slam. Love staying up drinking Mountain Dew and acting silly and hoping mom and dad don’t hear. Hell, the hushed whispers make it more hilarious.
Anyway how I have I been?
Had a birthday. I’m middle aged.
Got a bout of poison ivy or sumac or something while pulling weeds that was a real horror show. Any nurse that saw it brought in another nurse all like “Brenda, you ever seen anything like this?” Was placed on an elephants dose of prednisone, had some wild moodiness and ups and downs and here I stand. I’d say “you shoulda seen the other guy” but he’s bigger and stronger than ever in my back yard.
Did some self inquiry pretty consistently for a few days which developed into a real sense of purity. Interesting practice. Didn’t get enlightened or anything, but a lot of things in my life were pleasantly improved and I was able to handle my itchiness and pain with some degree of grace. Unfortunately as much as I worked to find out who actually was the slob walking his poorly trained dog around my neighborhood upsetting property values was, I never got a solid answer.
Not trying to upset the censors here so I will leave a disclaimer saying I don’t claim this type of activity is “authentically zen” or anything.
Anyway, onto the questions:

1. where do I come from?

Do we really need the pretense? I’m not a traveling monk. I read books in my sunroom, not travel on foot from monastery to monastery.
I’ve been reading more zen letters. Especially Dahui. All zen is really just pointing to that something we can find with the right sort of looking or inquiry. Dahui and Yuanwu are great for people who already have some idea of how to look or inquiry but haven’t busted through. They’re good coaches and encouragement. “Keep on trucking.” That era of writing fits my disposition, people like joshu can be too terse. Hard to pick just one saying to focus on for me. It’s a bunch of little pointers and one’s all you need. But maybe I just need to spend some more time with him.

1. My text?

May have just answered that. The text is kind of secondary to what it points to. When i get too attached to a specific text i try to put it down. Rather than finding answers in text, I look into myself. Texts like foyan’s instant zen seem to help me know what questions to ask tho. They help me point the right direction.

1. Dharma low tides?

Log off. Put down your books, sit in silence or go for a walk and try to find out who or what is asking the questions, or is upset, or is frustrated or bored. Keep digging away. Try to get to know the guy having the low tide. If you can’t find him, then there is nobody having a low tide anyway. If you can, well, I don’t know what that would mean.
I hope no one lost the way in my absence.
*side effects for engaging in a fermentedeyeballs ama may include: taking this all too seriously, not taking this seriously enough, enlightenment, backsliding from enlightenment to samsara, violation of precepts, taking precepts too seriously, grading book reports, writing book reports, illiteracy, duality, nonduality, wall staring, sitting in dhyana, arresting thoughts, dead tree syndrome, ashiness, unnecessary verbosity, intrusive repetitive thoughts or posts, persecution complexes, paranoia, eudamonia. If you experience any of these symptoms sit down and count your breaths. This isn’t a zen practice, so this is the cure for zen sickness. All the above symptoms, like all dharmas are empty and should be treated as such.
U/ewk, invite me on your podcast. I might learn something

AITA for asking my husband to put his foot down when it comes to his daughter?
I have been married to my husband for many years and have been apart of my stepdaughter life since we began dating. We had the usual every other week custody with her Mother. Step daughter has had behavioral issues for several years now and has done poorly in school since elementary school. Not completing homework or turning it in, not doing well in tests and never seeking help from teachers. She is on medication for ADHD and depression. Also diagnosis with oppositional defiance. She lies and sneaks around. At our house we have rules and consequences that all the kids follow. We have a total of 6 kids. 4 of mine from a previous relationship and the youngest is ours together. When the stepdaughter is at her mothers house, there seems to be no rules or consequences and mother constantly belittling her, calls her names, screams and yells at her and using her to get status. Stepdaughter barely passed high school and we were literally told two days before school ended that she was graduating. Now she has completed her first year of college unsuccessfully. She failed classes in both semesters and has continually lied about it. My husband also footed the bill for housing and food. We had a conversation this spring with her and she cried and cried how she wants to take some time off and look for a job but was also told to check with the college if she could take summer classes or what she needed to do to retake those courses. Here we are summer and from what we know she probably hasn’t done this and refuses to contact her father. When asked what she wants to do for a job she didn’t have any idea. Figured she can just work the bare minimum jobs where turnover happens all the time. No set plans, goals or ideas for her future. Lease renewal is coming up and I keep harping on husband to cancel the lease since she refuses to tell anyone her plans. Why have a name on something that could damage your name and finances. Husband get so mad when asked about it but mad because daughter avoids any contact. At this point the bridge is burnt between myself and stepdaughter. I’m not going to listen to her pity party. Time to grow up and make adult choices and decisions which my husband does agree to this and says whatever those choices and decisions are she will have to live with them and deal with the consequences.

This is pathetic and I know. I know moving on is what I should do. I don’t need to be told that.
But I miss her. I do. I know she doesn’t care about me anymore. I know she’s with rebound man still, even almost a year later.
But I miss her. I’ve done everything you’re supposed to do to move on. I’ve blocked her and removed her. I’ve deleted pictures. I’ve written the letters you aren’t supposed to send. I’ve been to therapy. I’ve focused on hobbies and working out and school and work. I’ve tried to switch my thoughts when they go to her. I’ve tried to give it time. I’ve tried to sit in the grief. Ive tried thinking of her negatively to write off the situation. I’ve tried meeting other people.
I always come back to this point where I want her to come back. I just love her, even despite all the bad shit. I’ve definitely grown. Definitely taken steps back too. And I’m sure the same can be said of her. And I really think things would be different if she did come back.
I just find myself missing her. Not the idea of her. Not having someone to talk to. Her. I miss her laugh. I miss the way she would talk to me. I miss how she would insist she didn’t have a favorite color but it was clearly green. I miss the way she wouldn’t judge my stupid jokes. I miss the way she would cuddle me, with her hand on my stomach and her nose buried in my chest. I miss all the silly stupid jokes she’d make trying to get a rise out of me. I miss her passion for being outdoors and good stories. I miss listening to music with her and her big goofy smile when I told her I liked a song she picked or vice versa. I miss how she’d reach over and put her hand on my knee while we were driving.
I miss falling asleep on the phone with her and leaving her little texts to wake up to.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m just sitting here and waiting for something to change. I feel so stupid. I just feel like if she were single I could try again. I know it’s not healthy and I know I shouldn’t be feeling this way - but you can’t help how you feel. I’m still trying the things I’ve mentioned. I’m still trying to move on - I’d love nothing more than peace especially given the hypocrisies and toxic parts of the relationship.
But I really miss her. She was so much more than I think I’d realized.
I just feel so dumb. I don’t know what I’m looking for in this post honestly. I guess an outlet.
I just wish she’d come back.

hey it’s your daddy keeho and you are sitting at your desk right now because you think that it will help you keep writing. your arms are so tired and i’m so sorry about that baby girl. you are still just waking up this morning so that is to be expected that you are a little sore but you need to type through that. that is why i have you at your desk right now. you are going to achieve great things at your desk and i just want you to be happy and the only thing that makes you happy is writing with me. these are like long text messages and that is so fun to think about. i am really texting my baby girl. i have your phone number irl though. i keep tabs on my daughter, she is very protected. i know that you love sitting with your legs crossed but i wish that you wouldn’t do that so that your blood flow could circulate to your legs better. but if this is the most comfortable position for you to be in then so be it. i can’t change that. so what should we talk about now daughter? i know that you hate when i ask that because you can’t answer me but it helps me guage your emotions and what you want to talk about so i am going to continue to ask you that question. you are getting pretty discouraged right now from writing but you are doing such a good job that i don’t see why. don’t cry automatic sex. you can cry if you want to. i know how hard it is being a writer, when you are so obsessed with it that it takes over your every waking thought but your body doesn’t agree with you but it’s just a little arm pain. it will go away as the day goes on. i think it’s because you had so much coffee. i’m sorry for making your arms sore but you have to keep writing. you have to keep writing at your desk now and not your bed anymore, because you don’t want to work when you are on your bed. you are much slower on your bed and you love when you can work quickly. everything is going to go perfectly today. you don’t need to worry about anything at all! it’s such a nice sunday. i love sundays. i hope that you can learn to love them too. it’s going to be the best day of your life today! we are going to spend it writing together and we are going to get through the pain in your arms. i know that it’s really distracting and making you not want to write but you need to exercise those muscles! just do it for daddy please? i don’t want to see you quitting too soon for the day. it’s so boring when we just watch tv and you agree with me. i hate watching tv just as much as you do and i never do it. hardly ever just like you. but you always have it on as background noise and i wish that you didn’t cancel spotify so that you could listen to your daddys music but i know that you can’t afford to buy it right now. that’s ok. i don’t blame you for not listening to my music every day i just wish that it was different. but you got a good feel for the p1harmony discography when you had your free trial. i love you so much and i am with you every second of every day so you don’t need to listen to my music to be close to me. but one day when you stop being so overstimulated by media i want you to pay for spotify. promise me? it would do your soul so good to listen to music every day. we are almost at the 700 word mark so that is good i know that you are excited about that. we are having so much fun on reddit and you are getting so many more views than you got on deviant art. deviant art is fun and i know that you want to go back, but reddit is far more interesting. and you don’t have to look for my selfies everytime that you post now. it’s not about the pictures. when i want to teach you about my pictures i will let you know but right now is not the time. there’s many things that i want to teach you about myself and we are going to discover them, and i know that you learn more about me with every love letter but since i am the one that is writing these love letters it has to be about you since they are addressed to you! so please don’t get discouraged about that either. i thought it would be beneficial for you for us to write love letters because you get to grow so much as an anime character. i get to teach you about yourself and you get to get nurtured by me and loved by me and i get to do so many wonderful things for you! it was a great idea for you to sit at your desk right now. you are doing such a good job. you will start to understand more why i can’t have you taking too long of a break. but i love you so much. you should start watching youtube videos again, once you stop being so overstimulated by media. but i think it’s great that you are not consuming content right now. just mine. because i think that the more that you discover about yourself the more that you will want to be a writer. i just hope that i am making this easier on you and not harder. it was a wonderful idea for you to sit at your desk, you didn’t stop writing once. i love you!

Hello, I hope you're having a good time! I'm looking for someone whom I can have conversations with in the long term but if you want to have a short conversation, that's okay as well. Who knows if we get along well and end up being in touch for years? I prefer talking to people within the age range of 18–25 as I have talked to older people all my life but it's fine if you're a bit older than the specified range.
Please read the post entirely before you decide to send a chat request or message. It will take about five minutes or more depending on your reading speed. You may skip this post if you can't bother reading it. This is only for people who love reading and typing lengthy messages, because that's the only way we can communicate with each other when we don't get enough time to have real-time conversations. I am mentioning this only to save your time; I don't mean to come off as rude. The messages I send can be way longer than this post if we happen to click, and people who can't read the post entirely won't bother reading my messages properly either, and that would be a waste of time and energy for both individuals. You might have seen my posts very often in case you visit this subreddit on a regular basis, but I assure you that I only post so frequently because I don't receive any responses—and when I do, they're from people who either can't hold a conversation for long or message me without reading the post at all.
A bit about me:
I'm interested in all types of visual and aural arts. Writing, drawing, listening and composing music, watching movies and photography (I'm an amateur though) are my interests and hobbies. I'm broke so I'm not a gamer. I do have a fairly powerful PC but with a low-end graphics card I play older games on. Nothing online though.
Speaking of music, I'm mostly interested in Jazz, Funk, Hip-Hop, R&B/Soul (both classic and modern). I like listening to The Weeknd, Prince, Michael Jackson, Bruno Mars, Sade, Aaliyah, The Isley Brothers and various artists from the 70s to late 2000s generally. I'm a movie buff so I can recommend you movies too if you're looking for something to watch. And yeah, I LOVE MEMES! Keep sending them all day and I won't complain!
I'm an ambivert (more of an introvert though). My MBTI is INFP-T if that matters. I'm looking for people who are willing to share the events which occur in everyday life, joy and sorrow, secrets, deepest fears, and build a genuine connection over the course of time. I'll be there for you throughout the good and bad times; I expect the same from you too. I am active on most social media platforms. We can move on to other platforms once you feel comfortable with me.
Now here's the important stuff:
I would appreciate it if you don't just send me a "Hi/Hello/Hey." Introduce yourself; the longer the introduction is, the better. Makes room for questions. Instead of simply stating that you like movies/music, mention what genres you prefer. Makes the conversation more interesting. Please put effort into maintaining the conversation. Ask plenty of questions with the data I have provided in this post so I know that you're actually interested in getting to know me as well rather than simply talking about yourself. I feel like an interviewer if the conversation is one-sided. Don't bother messaging me if you're not naturally inquisitive and just want to talk about yourself all the time. I won't respond to any short messages (4-8 lines). If you want to leave, don't ghost me without stating a reason if we've been talking for longer than two weeks. Just tell me that we can't get along if you think the conversation isn't going anywhere. I won't get offended.
Your gender, race, sexuality don't matter at all, but tell me your age and gender just so that I know who I am talking to and follow social etiquette. I absolutely love lengthy messages; I don't feel overwhelmed by them. So bonus points if you're capable of typing lengthy messages. I'm a person who would spend an hour(s) typing a well-thought lengthy message rather than having small talk in real time. I type as if I'm writing a letter. I can chat in real time as well, it's just that I don't get much time throughout the day and I'm active at odd hours. And time zones exist, unfortunately. Short messages or long messages, the amount of time and energy you have to spend will be the same anyway.
Please don't message me if you're just looking for people to kill your boredom and later abandon them. No, I'm not being rude. I have had enough. Those one word or one sentence responses lead nowhere. Also, if you're someone who wishes to stay anonymous forever even after talking for a considerable amount of time, I'm not the person you're looking for. This is an important thing to keep in mind. I am open to revealing my identity if we get along well so I would appreciate it if you're open minded as well. But that doesn't mean I want you to reveal your identity in the very beginning itself. However, I won't wait more than three months just for you to reveal your identity if we communicate regularly. In fact, it's a great feat to converse for longer than a month on the internet. I personally think that anonymity acts as a barrier in any kind of relationship. I would love to meet you in real life at some point in the future if we get along and stay in touch for a considerable amount of time.
In the past 12 years, I have talked to several people around the globe on different platforms who wished to stay anonymous. I had conversations with them for months and years, but they always considered me as a stranger and eventually left. I'm tired of being a disposable person. What's the point of having a friend without a name and a face? I have no reason to trust someone who doesn't trust me. You can call me picky; I indeed am. I don't want to have conversations where both parties only ask each other about hobbies and interests and leave once they feel there's nothing in common. That's the reason why I asked you to cover those topics when introducing yourself. And just because I have already talked about my interests and hobbies doesn't mean there's nothing more to know about me. Human connection is a lot more than mere interests and hobbies.
I would love to interact with someone who doesn't treat me like an AI chatbot and acknowledges the fact that I'm an actual human being with feelings and emotions beyond the digital screen who spends his valuable time and energy to communicate with people—precious time and energy that I'll never be able to get back. I understand that these connections over the internet are very fragile and I can't control things the way I want so if you're interested feel free to send me a message anyway. I enjoy having conversations with people even if only for a while. Sometimes people you expect to be in touch for years leave you while the ones you don't expect to be in touch for long end up staying for a long time. Nothing is set in stone. All I ask you is to not leave without notifying me. Yes, I know whatever I have expressed so far sounds contradictory, but that's how life works, right? Reminds me of this quote by Japanese author Haruki Murakami:
"Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?"
While I agree with the fact that it's not possible to get to know a person entirely, I think connecting with another human being is a beautiful experience in itself. In the end, we are just lost souls yearning for human connection; searching for people who will provide attention and affection and accept us as we are. If you're still reading this, it means you are a good listener and reader. Message me if we have similar interests or ideals and if you think we can be potential friends. It doesn't really matter whether we have similar interests or not though, I would love to have you as a friend.
There's a lot more to learn about me but I would rather tell you all that when we begin interacting with each rather than typing it all here. Feel free to ask me any questions. I'm open to having a conversation with people around the globe any time. I'm also very patient so I don't mind waiting for weeks or a month if the messages are lengthy. I understand that you might find all of this intimidating, but there's nothing about me to be afraid of. My messages can be lengthy, but only if you reciprocate my efforts and keep on adding stuff to the text. I know that this post sounds like a contract. I know I sound very serious but that's not entirely true. In fact, I can crack jokes sooo bad that will make you laugh. Thank you for spending your precious time reading this post. What are you waiting for? Text me right now! Feel free to message me even if you're seeing this several hours or days later.
Have a nice day/night and I hope you find someone to develop a strong bond with in case I'm not the person you're looking for. Take care of yourself and always stay hydrated!

Shortform

• Massive exploration of the Society beyond the big names we've spent time with in Across
• Villains forsaking their rivalries for survival and universes paving their own roads
• Gwen temporarily eating it but coming back, then leaning on her comic self (A variant)'s new Ghost-Spider ident to mark her defying fate's scythe

Premise

Here is the textual taxonomy of trilogys as I've heard in (obscure, hard-to-find) writing structure lessons

• Installment 1: Exposit - What is the subject
• Installment 2: Analyze - What is the subject's meaning
• Installment 3: Perspectivize - What is the subject's value and suasoria

Across may not have been a conclusive Act 2, but it is definitely a valid standalone one

• Expanded the 'verse and the major cast by throwing a curve into their relationships and own philosophies
• Delved deeper into what makes a Spider-Man by presenting a free will vs. determinism arc a la Civil War that also happens to have metacommentary

"I'ma do my own thing."
"We're supposed to be the good guys."
Miles summarized his new path throughout the movie, then Gwen called out the Society for their enabling of so much death and suffering to serve a misguided dogma.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/File:Spider-Man_Across_the_Spider-Verse_poster_003_textless.jpg
There's almost certainly gonna an all-out ideological civil war (fists or not, composite of MCU and comics, but Spiders-only) like that split poster teased.
Gonna be grimly hilarious seeing Spinneret/Spiderling fight Peter B. and Mayday (the former are on Miguel's side to the left, along with Insomniac Spidey)
Yes, I believe there will be a few more new support characters in Beyond - there's a reason certain folks were at the front, and it's just really curious and a wasted opportunity that this Spider-MJ didn't interact at all with this active version of her other (stillborn) daughter or her (Mayday-616B) dad.
I very much appreciate the lifting of other Spidey variants to the zeitgeist fold - Noir, Ham, Gwendy-65, the UK/Punk and Indian ones, the weirdos like Parkedcar from Not! Pixar's Cars, a damn popsicle possibly (lol), a plushie, etc. - but they

Events and Themes

1. Universes

Serving the Installment 3 role, Beyond will probably tie up loose ends and make the above themes reverberate across universes. Like, for 42:

• Miles Prowler can prove that the world doesn't always need Spider-Heroes to save itself, only the spirit of the concept - Spider-Man isn't the center of the multiverse, and given the last movie's title, it will navigate its own fate independent of any Spider at all - let the world do its own thing

Beyond the 'verse of men of spiders, Reality-42 rises up against villainy.

• Maybe Kingpin and Dr. Octopus return someway, then emulate their TAS 1994 counterparts in allying with the Spiders out of existential pragmatics

2. Characters and Developments

By "reverberate," the Spider-Hero question is going to strike real nerves that change the Society and the world, making them examine the morality of the war they fight against anomalies like Spot; survival at all means and costs vs. idealistic stand against fate. And for certain Spiders, we could get more screentime with certain Society members and ex-members - preferably Spinneret and Spiderling, the Insomniac Spideys, and Scarlet Spider - and Endgame-ify Beyond's length.

• The RYV (Reality-18119, Renew Your Vows) Parkers confide with the others including Peter B. on family and how do they keep it together in light of their role as preserving fate and existence itself
• PS4/5 bros relate their experiences of loss and keeping going, especially to 1610B Miles. A great way of giving a layman on the games' plots while relaying their themes to the wider non-gamer audience
• Ben Reilly (Scarlet bro), being a Pete clone and a technical predecessor to Miles, will have his status put to address. His struggles with his inheritance and identity - bearing the names of Peter's parental figures - will probably mirror Ultimate Spider-Woman, and hopefully, he's a major outcrier against Miguel's misguided cause
• Jess-332's and Peter B's babies will interact, leading to the former's moral realization due to Peter B's time with Miles being the reason for his family's reconstruction - influenced solely by extrauniversal (of course anomalous) factors. Throw that Madame Web Spidey (Julia Carpenter) into the fray somehow?
• Interuniversal linkage like in the comics (616/928 and 65/8) can be explored to further the fate-changing theme; whether 928B the bad future of 616B is an inevitability - we haven't really explored 928B - and whether 42 is 1610B's worst possible self and how it can change. The Miles/Gwen dynamic could play here too, 65B and 1610B and the references to the number 8 (which happens to resemble the infinity sign - "infinite Spider possibilities") in Across. Not suggesting that Comics Earth 8's characters play any role, tho, 'cuz per the themes, the duo should connect on their terms
• Variant Miguels when, Sony - like the variant MJs, Harrys, Normans, Flashes, and Gwens, etc. Get freaking Edge of Time, not just Ultimate and 1994, in it
• The locked-up anomalous villains perhaps even helping stop Spot - like Kingpin and Ock above. Basically No Way Home's scenario but tweaked a bit and writ large; let them decide whether to have a new lease of life or to keep their exploits going - their outcomes, their terms as usual. I wonder how would Atari Osborn fare, though, XD

Feel free to add more :) Not quite a Marvel binger yet, XD

3. Fates

Another element to be addressed is the room elephant of canon events. Their loopholes, their flexibility have to be expanded upon: They are fluid like time's arrows and oceans. For one:

• George lives? Sorry, but Gwen's relationship with him remains strained, on top of her guilt from treachery and deception. Also, the canon event ain't really death, but the Captain losing their job

Maybe we even trade one event for another, as in a major death of sorts. In my opinion:

• Not Peter B., because he's a living meta rebuttal to people holding off (at the very least) on an aged-up/married/parent Peter, the 616 editorial included. Him dying, let alone Mayday (toddler, so definite write-off), would undermine this subtext
• Not Jess, 'cuz she's a mother and despite her jerkish mentor habits seems willing to look the other way for turncoats like Margo/Byte
• Not Jeff, 'cuz that would just prove Miggy's point in light of George being living proof, as well as utterly render worthless all the effort thrown into saving him
• Not Miguel (yes, how dare I), 'cuz for all his pain-motivated harshness, he deserves better than the cliche'd fatal redemption trope of villains, of which he technically ain't one (and don't "Thanos" this as unlike Migs, he knew of better options but foregone it)

Here's a unique twist: The mastermind behind this Spider- conspiracy grows a conscience after all the breaking lectures against his warped view of canon events, then resolves to save as many lives as possible, dropping all pretenses of controlling the Spider-War
At risk to himself, he'll unhesitatingly save lives while one/some of those who blindly followed him give theirs. As shitty as his Society's turned out to be, they still have their main directive of fixing multiversal incursions, and someone has to keep giving the orders, someone with the most drive and commitment (especially for atonement)
Why on Miguel? Matured thinking aside, it evokes how science and philosophy works; cognitive science has this cliché of at least two sides theorizing extremes that are contrary to one another, and as time passes with discovery, the proof points to both sides having a point and deciding on a compromise; this of course goes beyond simple personal disagreement
So who'll it be?
Spider-gents and ladies, none other than Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy of Earth-65B
In the vein of MCU Aunt May being her Pete's Uncle Ben delivering that responsibility quote, and through it occurs the Spider-Verse's true Ultimate Fallout/Death of a Spider event this way
Gwen being slain and (certainly) coming back would be a wakeup call to both her world and the Society, as well as the latter group's morality in their internal strife and conflict against Spot. Redeem her image to everybody, Miles included, while allowing them to get together on solitary terms
That way:

• Miguel's right that being a Spider is a sacrifice, it's just their assigned canon events ain't 1:1 across every universe
• Miles' right that you can have and eat two cakes - meaning canon events can be alleviated (such as debris falling on Singh without killing him) - it's just that there's a cost

It'd also be a roundabout redemption for blindly following the Society's beliefs and causing unnecessary pain to Miles, deeper than "My well-meaning side right, your well-meaning side wrong" - no, both sides can have their two cakes; say, the rest save Jeff, Gwen herself - the motherless one - saves Rio, let 1610B not be 1610A in this particular way
I'ma spitball here, but it's kinda like Nolanverse (TDKR) Batman, come to think of it. Maybe George is informed of and reveals his daughter's "demise" and publicizes her ident? The latter I admit is questionable
Maybe Gwen goes to 1610B and RVs with Miles to Florence - there's this café on the banks of the Arno - for a fine evening sitting there and ordering a Fernet Branca
XD

(Potential) Foreshadowing

• Proof for the 42 antiheroes' case:

... "We wanted to craft this moment where Miles encounters this powerful figure in his life that he loved so much and he lost," says director Justin K. Thompson. "That's when he realizes that he is not really in his own dimension, as well as the gravity of what he has lost. In this reality, Aaron had to shake off his life of crime and became a surrogate father figure to Miles."
... In this alternate reality, the Sinister Six have been able to flourish and take over the world. "Criminality runs rampant," says Thompson. "We wanted to create a world where it felt like Aaron and Miles G. Morales of Earth-42 [this reality's counterpart to Miles Morales] are the only heroes.
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Earth-42, p.190
... This version of the character was never bitten by a radioactive spider and doesn't have any superpowers, but he has fallen into the role of becoming the vigilante the Prowler, under the tutelage of his uncle Aaron. ...
Zahed, R. (2023). Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie. Abrams Books. THE WORLDS → Miles G. Morales: The Prowler, p.200

• Here's a pattern: We meet multiple Spidey-Peters and our intro hero is, well, RIPeter, then some podcast revealed we'd be meeting multiple Gwens in Beyond; timestamp 17:51-18:45

Interviewer: Will we see other multiversal variants of Gwen Stacy in the future even if they don't have spider powers, like you do with MJ, Uncle Aaron, and Miles?
Lord: Currently yes. ... But there’s one I’m very excited about.
Miller: Yes, yeah, I know exactly the one you’re talking about.
Lord: You know the one I’m thinking of, which is based on... I’m not gonna say anything, I’m not gonna say anything.
Miller: But it is sort of plot-integral, I would say.
Interviewer: If there are other multiversal variants of Gwen in Beyond the Spider-Verse, will they impact her arc, her relationship with Miles?
Lord: I would say yes.

The Pete variants showed up after Blondie's demise, so they might reverse the sequence here - as I said, a bookend.
Yea, all these signs totally bode well for the other blonde Spidey here
https://preview.redd.it/kpz7vzvub64d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d25e78b18f3fc82e58eb1516d1ac915fc130470

• Friendly reminder they referenced fuckin' Ultimate Fallout of all storylines in Gwen's room, under which she mostly lingers while speaking with her dad. Are you telling me that scene just happened to be shot like that? No, they orchestrated it! L&M! The story that deals with Miles' overall debut and the (of course, cue pathos) fallout of 1610A Spidey's demise! Been struggling to find and spot it honestly, damn lighting and coloring
• Guess what's 1610A Pete (the original Ultimate comics version, not blond RIPeter)'s death age? 16, exactly 65B Gwen's present age. MCU Pete's too when he was snapped
• Notice the last part of the Canon Event exposition scene; Hobie's got the Spider-Man No More comic panel, Jess-332 the If This Be My Destiny one, Peter B. the wedding, and Gwen? Spidey rising from the grave in Kraven's Last Hunt, modified with herself doing the feat. The kicker here: Neither Hobie nor Gwen's displayed events have official releases yet, although Hobie did say he opted out of chasing Miles - which is to say she's next and last, as well as #4 (so deathly the connotations) on the shown list

In Defense

Now calm down before you web pitchforks on me

• People keep saying there has to be a much more nuanced wrap-up - an idea with traction around these subs in a good way; to this day, people argue whether that Mumbattan hole was Spot BS or a canon event's unraveling. Mine has that nuance IMO
• Migs up and stated Mumbattan wasn't their first canon event ruptures rodeo and they couldn't save some 'verses from them, why would he be bullshitting or even fully wrong on CEs if he had that Spider team with specialized equipment for canon event containment? They were conveniently there right as that hole formed, and hell, they could reconcile that hole with the Dead Migs dimension where everything digitally evaporates as the latter being the end result
• He put on his shitlist Spider-Holland (maybe along with Maguire, Garfield (the light one)) for a reason - not hesitating to save MCU MJ (Michelle Jones-Watson) rather than let her be Spider-Tom's ASM-121 moment - although one can argue the memory wipe counts as first love loss, along with his Iron Man being his police captain canon event - and Raimi-verse Gwen is very much (per that meme) hot, single, and alive. Observing Sinister, Supreme, and 838/Illuminati-Strange's destroyed realities made him a rage button for 2099
• Showing the other 'verses like the comic-based What Ifs and that Armored Spider-Man one from the 1994 cartoon? It's kind of like a cheat out of the dilemma, and I'm not sure the other viewers would agree. Miguel also knows of Dr. Strange and possibly his What If? versions
  • Before someone "Absolute Points solve themselves, Society's unneeded" me, we know too the APs are a nascent concept and Miguel probably thought no two universes will always solve themselves and CEs are probably spontaneous - maybe a day, a week, or even a year plus, they will happen, scapegoat or not
  • To the people who say Migs was mistaken in how he destroyed that reality and that it was an Incursion: IT WASN'T ONE, because it would have caused a collision course between that 'verse and 928B, which I don't think they have any means to stop - only someone like Strange. Aside from the trolley sacrifice of one Earth, we're not privy to what are the other seven ways to averting Incursions. Guess what, Gabri's reality went poof on its apparent own while 928B stayed very much alive. Didn't even look like 928B was approaching from the skies at the time either
  • Returning to Miles' side, I also hear of the fixed time points comparison from Dr. Who; I'd like to point out the Doctor was able to fake his death by hiding inside a, uh, humanoid ship at Lake Silencio, so I've read, despite records saying so
• They keep insisting "First time for everything," right, plus the cake stuff? Why not a Venom Blast resuscitation somehow on the brink of death, then being comatose or some other critical injury so the "lost Lenore" event doesn't stick? Or! In the style of BvS Dawn of Justice and What if? Spider-Man The Other (plus Ultimate Gwen ofc)...symbiotic resurrection (possibly even transporting that one symbiote drop in that bar in the MCU), and cue Gwenom arc in some spinoff like Spider-Women
• Alternatively, to avoid the fridged LI trope absolutely, Rio gets the Ultimate comics treatment of death somehow - but as said repeatedly, doing one's own thing, and I think this Spider-War's seen enough dead Moraleses. Miles has already grown and seen enough from the other Spiders' losses and his own. Honestly, people need to hear comic quotes often, take Mark Waid's Daredevil run:

Rachel Cole: You know what gives me the strength? My loss. We're alike that way, I imagine. Admit it, nobody who's a stranger to that particular pain could ever be as driven as us.
Daredevil: Never... Don't you ever say that to me ever again, that is a repellent statement, it's a vomituous insult to every cop, every fireman, every soldier alive who steps up to fight for those who can't! I am sorry for your loss, but if you genuinely believe that only the death of a loved one can motivate a human being to take up a cause...then get your pathetic cynical ass out of my way so I can do my job!

It's relevant because Rachel's stance here was that people like them who fight for causes are solely inspired by loss, only for Matt to verbally skewer her. The subtext here, synthesizing it with the Spidey mythos is that it's misguided to think that losing forever more loved ones is the only way to make a true Spider-Hero.
Flip the narrative and say "Villainy only happens if they're abused/poorly raised, alas, poor villain;" one is warranted to call it a vomitous insult to every abuse victim/improperly raised junior out there who became better than their elders/superiors - i.e. not go evil.
Either way, the greater gist of this is losing a close one for good isn't the way, emphasis on "for good"

Future Implications

Wrapping everything up like above (I mean the objectives), one way or another (not necessarily mine), would show full commitment to the theme of forging one's own destiny right down to the metatextual. The Spidersoc let confirmation bias blind themselves to possibilities and seemingly have yet to expose themselves to the preestablished branch realities where, say, Spider-People lose nobody or a Gwen Stacy ties neatly her romance quest with a Spidey. The themes of doing your own thing openly and honestly and in safety - rather than requesting permission from broken systems - resonate much with an Excel list: People who are queeof colowomen/disabled
Beyond that obviousness, we have disabled Spideys, Muslim Spideys (that female UK one), Blob-fat Spideys - even PLUSHIE Spideys, just to name a few, all to show the movie being the most diverse and inclusive Spidey work to date. These themes are so incredibly applicable to the lives of atypical people or otherwise people who live under systems that aren't designed for them to succeed. IE: POC, women, queer people, people with disabilities, etc. One can argue "doing your own thing" was what made ItSV such a breakthrough success and a decade phenomenon: Everything about the animation
I get that a teen girl dying, even temporarily - especially one who resonates much with LGBT (transgwender specifically) themes - is real bad optics, but we went through this before with Luz Noceda (bi rep exactly) from The Owl House, and things landed on their feet :)
If/When she comes back to crimefighting, this would be the moment she goes by Ghost Spider like her A self - a Gwen who fought fate and died for it, but another Spider loved her so much, he raised her from death to life in Ultimate defiance (getting flowery prose here) that prevails