(The post is slightly altered because the original text was more personal and directed at my friend)
All of this is stuff you’ve already heard before so this is just my personal looks at the album, its meaning, and why it’s probably the best rap album we’ll ever see.
If you have listened to TPAB all the way through then you remember that in the final track, Mortal Man, it’s Kendrick and someone else talking. I put this together and it’s just the conversation they have so you can easily read it and see who is talking when.
This is how I interpret albums meaning: TPAB is about the issues that African Americans will face due to the neglect of the U.S. government. The idea of the butterfly is a person who has become famous, or has power. That’s why in tracks like Wesley’s Theory, the opening track, the person talking says, “When the four corners of this cocoon collide You'll slip through the cracks hopin' that you'll survive Gather your weight, take a deep look inside Are you really who they idolize? To pimp a butterfly.” A butterfly is a transformed caterpillar, so in TPAB the idea of a caterpillar is someone who the government, or really anyone for that matter, doesn’t care about. Once they become famous (transform) and have power, they are treated better or like a butterfly.
Also, fun fact about TPAB that you prob already know. The original title was going to be “To Pimp a Caterpillar.” This was because it would then abbreviate to “2PAC” instead of TPAB.
Now for the conversation:
Kendrick: “I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence. Sometimes I did the same, abusing my power full of resentment. Found myself screaming in a hotel room. I didn’t wanna self destruct. The evils of Lucy was all around me, so I went running for answers. Until I came home, but that didn’t stop survivors guilt. Going back and forth, trying to convince myself the stripes I earned, or maybe how A-1 my foundation was. But while my loved ones were fighting a continuous war back in the dirty, I was entering a new one. A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination. Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned, the word was respect. Just because you wore a different gang color than mine's doesn't mean I can't respect you as a black man. Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets. If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us, but I don't know, I'm no mortal man, maybe I'm just another n*. Shit and that's all I wrote. I was gonna call it Another N** but, it ain't really a poem, I just felt like it's something you probably could relate to. Other than that, now that I finally got a chance to holla at you. I always wanted to ask you about a certain situa--, about a metaphor actually, you spoke on the ground. What you mean 'bout that, what the ground represent?”
Friend: “The ground is gonna open up and swallow the evil…”
Kendrick - “Right…”
Friend: “That's how I see it, my word is bond. I see--and the ground is the symbol for the poor people, the poor people is gonna open up this whole world and swallow up the rich people. Cause the rich people gonna be so fat, they gonna be so appetising, you know what I'm saying, wealthy, appetizing. he poor gonna be so poor and hungry, you know what I'm saying it's gonna be like... there might be some cannibalism out this mutha, they might eat the rich.”
Kendrick: “Aight so let me ask you this then, do you see yourself as somebody that's rich or somebody that made the best of their own opportunities?”
Friend: “I see myself as a natural born hustler, a true hustler in every sense of the word. I took nothin', I took the opportunities, I worked at the most menial and degrading job and built myself up so I could get it to where I owned it. I went from having somebody manage me to me hiring the person that works my management company. I changed everything I realized my destiny in a matter of five years you know what I'm saying I made myself a millionaire. I made millions for a lot of people now it's time to make millions for myself, you know what I'm saying. I made millions for the record companies, I made millions for these movie companies, now I make millions for us.”
Kendrick: “And through your different avenues of success, how would you say you managed to keep a level of sanity?”
Friend: “and by my faith in "all good things come to those that stay true. You know what I'm saying, and it was happening to me for a reason, you know what I'm saying, I was noticing, shit, I was punching the right buttons and it was happening. So it's no problem, you know I mean it's a problem but I'm not finna let them know. I'm finna go straight through.”
Kendrick: “Would you consider yourself a fighter at heart or somebody that only reacts when they back is against the wall?”
Friend: “Shit, I like to think that at every opportunity I've ever been threatened with resistance, it's been met with resistance. And not only me but it goes down my family tree. You know what I'm saying, it's in my veins to fight back.”
Kendrick: “Aight well, how long you think it take before n***** be like, we fighting a war, I'm fighting a war I can't win and I wanna lay it all down.”
Friend: “In this country a black man only have like 5 years we can exhibit maximum strength, and that's right now while you a teenager, while you still strong or while you still wanna lift weights, while you still wanna shoot back. Cause once you turn 30 it's like they take the heart and soul out of a man, out of a black man in this country. And you don't wanna fight no more. And if you don't believe me you can look around, you don't see no loud mouth 30-year old muthafuckas.”
Kendrick: “That's crazy, because me being one of your offspring of the legacy you left behind I can truly tell you that there's nothing but turmoil goin' on so I wanted to ask you what you think is the future for me and my generation today?”
Friend: “I think that n***** is tired of grabbin' shit out the stores and next time it's a riot there's gonna be, like, uh, bloodshed for real. I don't think America know that. I think American think we was just playing and it's gonna be some more playing but it ain't gonna be no playing. It's gonna be murder, you know what I'm saying, it's gonna be like Nat Turner, 1831, up in this muthafucka. You know what I'm saying, it's gonna happen.”
Kendrick: “That's crazy man. In my opinion, only hope that we kinda have left is music and vibrations, lotta people don't understand how important it is. Sometimes I be like, get behind a mic and I don't know what type of energy I'mma push out, or where it comes from. Trip me out sometimes.”
Friend: “Because the spirits, we ain't even really rappin', we just letting our dead homies tell stories for us.”
Kendrick: I wanted to read one last thing to you. It's actually something a good friend had wrote describing my world. It says: "The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it. Its only job is to eat or consume everything around it, in order to protect itself from this mad city. While consuming its environment the caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive. One thing it noticed is how much the world shuns him, but praises the butterfly. The butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness, and the beauty within the caterpillar. But having a harsh outlook on life the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak and figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits. Already surrounded by this mad city the caterpillar goes to work on the cocoon which institutionalizes him. He can no longer see past his own thoughts. He's trapped. When trapped inside these walls certain ideas take roots, such as going home, and bringing back new concepts to this mad city The result? Wings begin to emerge, breaking the cycle of feeling stagnant. Finally free, the butterfly sheds light on situations that the caterpillar never considered, ending the internal struggle. Although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same. What's your perspective on that? Pac? Pac? Pac?!”

**WARNING** long post. Feel free to skip the background information if need be
BACKGROUND:
I am a software engineer at a major bank. Relative to my counterparts on my team, I am the "most junior", but I have three years of experience. This is important to know as it may offer some insight to our team culture. I landed this job in November 2023 and was placed with my team in January 2024. The team consisted of two women, including myself and five men. I work at our NYC office with three of the other men, one of which is our team lead, let's call him Anderson. The other woman coworker lives in FL and the other two men are in India. I am the only black person on the team, and the rest of my coworkers are of Indian descent. This, too, is important to note.
From day 1, I was intentionally assigned low level administrative tasks while my coworkers were purposefully trained and briefed on other, technical tasks. The first week with my team, I mentioned to my team lead that I felt it important to learn the technical tasks that my teammates were learning, even if these technical tasks were not going to be my responsibility, because there would not be anyone to take on the technical tasks if someone was on vacation. My team lead told me to focus on the work he assigned to me.
Still determined to learn the technical tasks, I scheduled trainings with my offshore counterpart so that he would train me instead. This meant that I had to sign in to work after hours to be trained. I was now trained on what my "work buddy" knew, but still not fully trained on what the rest of the team knew how to do. Suddenly (not suddenly), my other woman coworker, let's call her Sandra, went on maternity leave and I was assigned her work. My team lead expressed his frustration with me not knowing how to do her job, and told me to figure out how to learn the things she was doing.
What is interesting to point out here is that during the first few weeks on the team, my team lead would assign our other senior engineer to train Sandra and answer all questions that she had. I was not granted this opportunity. Instead, my Slack messages went unanswered (I have all of this documented) when I had questions and after another two weeks, my team lead quietly reassigned Sandra's work from me to another senior engineer instead. He never explained why he did this, or gave me feedback on the work I was doing.
As the weeks went by, my team lead called me into a meeting to gauge my knowledge on querying our databases. He asked me to find a few items, which I could not find because for one, I had NEVER interacted with the databases before, and for two, I had no understanding of the database architecture or the data flow for our app. Nevertheless, I decided to ask clarifying questions to help me better understand the data so that I could write appropriate queries. My team lead responded to this with yelling "you are an engineer and you don't even know SQL", to which I responded that my knowledge of SQL was sufficient (part of my technical interview was based on writing complex queries), but I needed to understand exactly what he wanted me to find. He ended the meeting and never followed up on the information he was looking for. I still do not know what task, if any, that he was trying to assign to me.
I decided to follow up with him and explain to him that I could sense his frustration, and I asked him to define clear expectations for me and the team, and provide official training that focused on our application architecture and other technical areas that we needed to focus on. He told me that no amount of training would fix the "fact" that I did not know SQL and that it is the team members' job to train themselves.
Nevertheless, after that meeting, he assigned me with handling all onboarding for new projects moving forward. I have taken the liberty of advocating for my team members to ensure that we are all properly trained and provided with ALL resources needed to do our job well. Since then, the team, and myself has expressed more confidence in our ability to do our work. We are even at a point where senior team members reach out to me when they cannot find resources and either ask me to provide documentation, or ask me to reach out to other engineers to schedule meetings to provide trainings. Here is where I am concerned that I might be experiencing hostility at work. Please provide objective feedback and even constructive criticism if need be:
MAIN POINTS:
-my team lead uses language in his interactions with me that creates a false narrative. For example, he accuses me of "not caring" about my job, not "being collaborative", and not paying attention. One example is where I was tasked with migrating a google guice project to springboot. We had four weeks to get the work done and each week during standup, I brought up to my team lead my plans to make changes to the service. Each time, he would redirect my attention to administrative tasks. The third week of the sprint, literally in the middle of a Slack conversation of me telling my team lead that I planned on making some code changes and him instead telling me to do something else, our senior manager called a meeting with the team and yelled at my team lead for not getting any work done related to the code refactoring. After the meeting, my team lead followed up with me and berated me for not having work done. This is all documented in Slack and I remember being very confused as he had literally told me to do other tasks. As a result, my team lead removed me from the code refactoring project and used this to further justify his belief that I do "not care" about the work. Keep in mind that these interactions are documented.
-my team lead constantly verbally berates me in my interactions with him. One example is when I was typing up a document on a zoom call and I was sharing my screen with him. He kept rushing me and was saying things like "come on man I have other things to do", "ughhh hurry up", "you need to move fast!". Two things here: he yelled at me for moving fast because he said he could not see what I was clicking on when I moved fast. Then he yelled at me when I slowed down. There was one time he yelled at me for clicking a back button instead of the home button on the screen...he told me that I was not listening to him or paying attention...I am confused by this because the point of his instruction was for me to return to the home screen. There was another time where I misspelled a word in the middle of him berating me, and then he berated me even more for misspelling the word...
-my team lead has unclear expectations and gets angry at me when I do not do things he wants me to do. One example is when he wanted me to watch a 40 minute training video, summarize the points in the video, and schedule a follow up training with the person who lead the training so that the team (me) could ask questions. He asked me to get this done within an hour. He also wanted me to upload some recordings to Sharepoint. But this task was just another task to complete and not time-sensitive. After the call, I watched the video and made a summary and got back to him with an update in 45 minutes instead of the hour. He responded to my message 20 minutes after I wrote him by hopping on a call with me and yelled at me for not having the videos uploaded. Again, he accused me of "not caring" about my job. When I explained to him that the videos were not uploaded because I was focusing on the other, time sensitive task, he said that that task was not as important as having the videos uploaded and "people" were asking him about the videos in the Sharepoint space....this was a lie because it has been a week and the only person who accessed the uploaded videos was...you guessed it...me :)
-my team lead just berates me in general. He berated me for collaborating with a team member to explore a new internal application. He said that there was no need to get on zoom with the coworker because we should have already known everything...the app was new and I was the only one who understood how to navigate it after exploring it with the team member...oh...need I mention that he then asked me to train the other team members on the new app's UI next week?
-my team lead expressed his frustration at not having access to certain resources when I was on bereavement.The documentation was incomplete and I had to take a sudden leave due to a death in the family. Upon my return, he asked for the documentation and said that he find an "excuse" to tell his manager as to why the documentation was incomplete and that I was "on vacation"
-my team lead "warns" me not to "disappoint" him when he assigns me with tasks. When I ask him to define what a "disappointment" is and for us to agree on what is acceptable, he ignores me.
-my team lead tells me that "people" ask questions about my work and one day he is going to make our department head "deal" with me. The department head is known for being a hot head who yells at people. But he (department head)has NEVER yelled at me in any interaction I had with him, no matter how frustrated he may have been.
I want to make an important note here that my team lead does NOT speak to other people like this and he ONLY does this over zoom. I work 3x days in office and on the days where he speaks to me in person, he does not even make eye contact with me and he speaks so soft I can barely hear him sometimes. My team lead has never provided any feedback on my work. As a matter of fact, he uses my documentation and my explanation of technical tasks as if they were his own.
I am considering taking my concerns to our senior manager, who apparently is a well respected, "big boss" at work, but also MY direct manager and I happen to have a great relationship with him. I want to be as objective as possible in my complaint but in the meantime, I would like to explore areas where maybe I can improve to minimize my team lead's verbal assaults on me

 So me and this friend (we will call them storm) became friends during Spanish class my sophomore year of high school and have been friends for about two years now. I became friends with them because we both shared a mutual friend and that mutual friend soon had a big falling out with storm and so I invited them to basically join my own friend group. During our Spanish class they would often mumble phrases in what sounded like a different language and when I asked them they said that they were mumbling Japanese because they are Japanese, they just don’t look like it. Their words exactly. I believed them thinking that no sane person would lie about being Japanese and storm seemed pretty normal to me at first. I asked more about their background and they told me that their mom was a white Christian southern woman and their dad was the Japanese one. However, their dad also doesn’t look Japanese because he hates being Japanese and so he got plastic surgery. Yes, fucking plastic surgery. I didn’t want to be rude so I once again believed them. Their dad was also directly from Japan since their grandparents still live in Japan but their dad somehow knew no Japanese whatsoever. They also told me that when they were born their parents sent them to live with their grandparents over in Japan from ages 0-8 and then they moved back to the U.S. (where we live). When I asked them what part of Japan they were from they told me that they lived in Kyoto. They would later go on to tell me that it was Osaka and then Hokkaido. Three completely different places. Storm and I were joking around one day in Spanish and they mumbled something in what I assumed was Japanese again and I asked them to say I’m a terrible person in Japanese as a joke and because I wanted to hear more of the language. They said a phrase and that was that. I asked them the very same thing the next day because I wanted to know the phrase for myself and they said something completely different. Not even remotely close to what they had said yesterday. I didn’t think much of it and just figured they used different wording or something. Storm tends to do this thing where they are very obviously lying about something that me and my friends are talking about just to join in on the conversation and have their own part. I usually have no problem with this since I think everyone lies a little to get to be better friends with people and to be included in conversations. However, I have been friends with them for 2 years now and the lying has just gotten worse. An example would be that just a few days ago me and my friends were talking about summer trips and how a few of us are going to Europe. Storm jumps into the conversation and says that they are going to Japan this summer. Mind you, they said this exact same thing last year and never went. They’ve also told me that they don’t have their passport and that their parents are awful and never let them go anywhere and are super strict. Why on earth would they suddenly let you go to Japan? It just never adds up but me and my friends never make a fuss about it. In March I was talking with a friend who also used to be friends with storm and they told me that they didn’t like them because they lied about being poor just to join in on the conversation. Storm tells people all the time how their dad gives them around 1k a week to spend and how they have a Camaro and they always offer to buy everything for their friends. I’ve been to their house and they have 5 cars on the driveway, including the Camaro. I know cars and 1k a week don’t exactly equal not being poor but it was kinda inconsiderate to say that they were since they are constantly bragging about how much money they have. It just doesn’t add up. I could see why my friend didn’t like them and I started to realize that a lot of what storm tells us doesn’t completely make sense. Now moving back to storms childhood. This is where everything really makes no sense at all. I myself am mixed (half Hispanic, half white) and one day I was talking about a horrible elementary school experience where I got bullied because of my unibrow and how I have darker hairs on my body than the other kids. Storm decided to join the conversation and says that they were bullied too for not knowing any English in elementary school. I was talking about the book Dune one day and Storm tells me that they have read Dune but they read it when they were really young to learn English. Fucking Dune. That book is hard for me to even read now how the fuck were you learning English from that at 8 years old. It could make sense if Storm was just really smart but they take all standard classes right now and get bad grades. I started to ask more people when Storm had told them the age that they had come over to the U.S. They all had different answers. I got 2,4,6,8, and the 6th grade. The person that said 8 was the mutual friend that me and storm shared before they had a falling out. I asked that friend more about what Storm had told them and they said that when they lived in Japan, their grandparents sent them away to this Buddhist camp for 6 months when they were 6 years old where they shaved their head. This threw me off completely and I started to experiment. I share art class with storm this year and I decided to ask them about their last name. I won’t disclose it here but it is a very white last name. I brought it up to them and they told me that they have their moms last name and not their dads Japanese one. When I asked what the Japanese last name was and they told me (I literally had them spell it out) and I looked it up on google. It wasn’t even a real fucking word . They told me it was Takamishido. They were silent and so I asked them more about their moms last name and they said that it was Russian and so they were part Russian because their moms parents are Russian. I looked up their last name and the only origins are Americanized Dutch. Nothing to do with being Russian at all. They were silent about that too . I asked them more about their childhood in Japan and they told me that they were homeschooled and don’t remember any Japanese or really anything from living in Japan from ages 0-8 because of a trauma response that made them forget everything. This all already made me mad since nothing was adding up but what really did it for me was when I got in trouble because during school there was a drug search in the parking lot and the cops dogs smelled weed on my car. The only friend I have that I knew for a fact smoked weed is storm and I know this because they have showed up to come hang out with me and my friends multiple times and been extremely high and smelled so strongly of weed. I had driven them to prom that last weekend and I guess they stunk up my car because they were high again. Stuff like this doesn’t usually happen to me so I was crying all day during school because I was confused and embarrassed. While my other friends comforted me, Storm ignored me all day and then at lunchtime proceeded to tell me to just fuck the cops. They know damn well they were the reason I got in trouble and said fucking nothing about it. They have also spoken multiple times about how they think people who do drugs are awful and affect others so bad yet they themselves do the exact thing. There are multiple other little horrible things they have done but these are just the main things. I’m writing this because I wanna know if I’m over exaggerating everything and they aren’t lying and I just can’t see it somehow. I feel like I am going crazy. Please help me. 

Late last year, I started an apprenticeship at a new company and I was excited to meet someone there with an equally or higher level of IT than myself - all the windows-maniacs excluded (because there is only so much excitement in a Domain Controller or Active Directory, honestly...). That employee explained and told me about all the services and things we use - one of them being Kubernetes, in the form of a cluster running OpenSuse's k3s.
Well, hardly a month later, and they got fired for some reason and I had to learn everything on my own, from scratch, right then, right now and right there. F_ck.
Months later, I have attempted to use k3s for selfhosting - trying to remove the tangled wires that is 30ish Docker Compose deployments running across three nodes. They worked - but getting a good reverse proxy setup involved creating a VPN that spans two instances of Caddy that share TLS and OSCP information through Redis and only use DNS-01 challenges through Cloudflare. Everything was everywhere - and, partially still is. But slowly, migrating into k3s has been quite nice.
But. If you ever intend to look into Kubernetes for selfhosting, here are some of the things that I have run into that had me tear my hair out hardcore. This might not be everyone's experience, but here is a list of things that drove me nuts - so far. I am not done migrating everything yet.

1. Helm can only solve 1/4th of your problems. Whilst the idea of using Helm to do your deployments sounds nice, it is unfortunately not going to always work for you - and in most cases, it is due to ingress setups. Although there is a builtin Ingress thing, there still does not seem to be a fully uniform way of constructing them. Some Helm charts will populate the .spec.tls field, some will not - and then, your respective ingress controller, which is Traefik for k3s, will have to also correctly utilize them. In most cases, if you use k3s, you will end up writing your own ingresses, or just straight up your own deployments.
   
2. Nothing is straight-forward. What I mean by this is something like: You can't just have storage, you need to "make" storage first! If you want to give your container storage, you have to give it a volume - and in return, that volume needs to be created by a storage provisioner. In k3s, this uses the Local Path Provisioner, which gets the basics done quite nicely. However - what about storage on your NAS? Well... I am actually still investigating that. And cloud storage via something like rclone? Well, you will have to allow the FUSE device to be mounted in your container. Oh, were where we? Ah yes, adding storage to your container. As you can see, it's long and deep... and although it is largely documented, it's a PITA to find at times what you are looking for.
   
3. Docker Compose has a nice community, Kubernetes' doesn't...really. So, like, "docker compose people" are much more often selfhosters and hobby homelabbers and are quite eager to share and help. But whenever I end up in a kubernetes-ish community for one reason or another, people are a lot more "stiff" and expect you to know much more than you might already - or, outright ignore your question. This isn't any ill intend or something - but Kubernetes was ment to be a cloud infrastructure defintion system - not a homelabber's cheap way to build a fancy cluster to add compute together and make the most of all the hardware they have. So if you go around asking questions, be patient. Cloud people are a little different. Not difficult or unfriendly - just... a bit built different. o.o
   
4. When trying to find "cool things" to add or do with your cluster, you will run into some of the most bizzare marketing you have seen in your life. Everyone/-thing uses GitOps or DevOps and includes a rat's tail of dependencies or pre-knowledge. So if you have a pillow you frequently scream into in frustration... it'll have quite some "input". o.o;
   

Overall, putting my deployments together has worked quite well so far and although it is MUCH slower than just writing a Docker Compose deployment, there are certain advantages like scaleability, portability (big, fat asterisk) and automation. Something Docker Compose can not do is built-in cronjobs; or using ConfigMaps that you define in the same file and language as your deployment to provide configuration. A full kubernetes deployment might be ugly as heck, but has everything neatly packaged into one file - and you can delete it just as easy with kubectl delete -f deployment.yaml. It is largely autonomous and all you have to worry about is writing your deployments - where they run, what resources are ultimatively utilized and how the backend figures itself out, are largely not of your concern (unless Traefik decides to just not tell you a peep about an error in your configuration...).
As a tiny side-note about Traefik in k3s; if you are in the process of migrating, consider enabling the ExternalNameServices option to turn Traefik into a reverse proxy for your other services that have not yet migrated. Might come in handy. I use this to link my FusionPBX to the rest of my services under the same set of subdomains, although it runs in an Incus container.
What's your experience been? Why did you start using Kubernetes for your selfhosting needs? Im just asking into the blue here, really. Once the migration is done, I hope that the following maintenance with tools like Rennovate won't make me regret everything lmao. ^;

I am not crying but I do want to cry for days now but I can‘t? It‘s like feeling numb
Even though I have supportive friends and a family they sometimes don‘t know how to handle it
My best friend doesn‘t know what to answer me when I come to her about such things
My mum doesn‘t know how to respond either other than just listening and hugging me
I don‘t and haven‘t had therapy for a while bcs I just got out of a mental hospital(went there everyday and then back home) and am searching for a therapist right now.
(For ages: I‘m 17 and the people referred in the story are 15)
Now: I have had relationships, they ended all good somewhat, I‘m still friends with close to all of my exes(except one) or I have had a talk with them about our relationship and now we send texts to each other here and then
So, when I was at the mental hospital I met two girls. At first I thought one of them was really cute then the other confessed she liked me. I got really confused and gave a lot of thought to things and chose to go on a date with the one who was interested in me. (I wanted to go on a date with both but i never got to ask the other girl bcs she always was picke by her grandma and I didn’t find the right time to ask her) I mean, a date wont be bad to figure out I‘d like either of them??? (To be clear: I thought that both of them are cute. Nothing really more) the way that the girl who thought she had feelings for me gave me attention and love made me like her. For the other one, she knew from the start I thought both were cute. I constantly felt like an ass kind of leading them on, I wont excuse myself for that. At the date I had(I‘ll refer to the girl who liked me a lot as Amy(not real name)) with amy, she shortly, before the date happened m, asked if 2 other friends could tag along. I made another mistake by saying alright(I thought she was scared and needed backup or sum) the first girl(gonna call her coral) did not show much interest. She said she thought I was cute too and always tagged along anywhere we went. This is the first time I had something with a girl. I did know I was bi/omni before that but it was real knowing I don‘t only simp for attractive woman online, but also wanting something in real life. Since coral didn‘t show much interest and there was a spark between me and amy I asked amy to be my gf. After some weeks I broke it off with her because I noticed things about her that I couldn‘t like. I thought about that every day, why I didn‘t like these things even though I liked her and we had a healthy relationship(communication, honesty, meet ups and all that). Coral also was in the back of my mind so I told amy all this and why I thought it was better that way. She was pissed at coral, understandable, but I wanted her to know it wasn‘t coral‘s fault but mine at leading her on. I was playing with her and I really hate that I did that. After 3 weeks of our breakup I did write amy once or twice, as friends tho, also leaving her be and letting her heal. Again I know that what I did was wrong and I‘m a dick here
After that I asked coral how her pov about all that was. She said she thought I was cute, I did chose amy over her and we are friends, but it didn‘t bother her. I asked if she still had interest in me and she said yes. So I apologized for doing what I did and asked if she wanted to go on a date, she said yes and I think it was fun.(before I asked her, some weeks went by and since we saw eachother every day I did feel like I started having a crush on her. I told her that face to face and she was happy and said she was really happy about that. It was also my last week at the mental hospital, so yeah) We went to her place bcs I wanted to drop her off and she lived like 15 minutes away(I live like an hour away). I was invited and had a fun talk with her fam and her until I needed to go home. I wrote her that I had fun and hoped she did too, she said she enjoyed it. A week later or si I went to visit the mental hospital to greet her and some friends who stayed like 2 weeks longer. I like to write silly letters with feelings bcs it‘s one of my love languages. I wrote her one and gave it to her, on it was a questiom saying if I could take her on another date. I put boxes and she didn‘t answer them. I asked her if she and everything was alright, then she told me she might like someone else too. Just needed to figure out if it‘s platonic or not. She also said she liked the attention I give her and that she never really know‘s if she likes the people or not; and that she struggled with selflove and needed time to get herself fixed before a relationship. I accepted that and told her she can have enough time as she needs and that I‘ll be waiting and that she doesn‘t need to stress abt me waiting. We‘ll have some sort of break. Only thing I‘d want is to still be able to meet her so her decision about me was easier.(it‘s similar to mine from before, I didn‘t have enough time to get to know either of them) Ok reading the last sentence makes me sound like I wanted enough time with both until I chose the better one, which isn‘t true. I only wanted to figure out if I liked either if them that way. And they knew. She did agree and we stayed in kind of low contact I did ask if I stepped over any comfort zone She said no I didn‘t want to push the answer So, yeah. Weeks after, when I felt I was allowed to ask without stepping over the line, I asked if she knows already and if she does like me back. If she likes me or that other friend of hers. I said: „Hey, if you want we can be open friends(not wanting to stress her to answer again) as in if we figure things out we tell eachother and see where it takes us? Cuz I still I like you. Like a lot. More than before bcs I keep thinking about you but I don‘t want to stress you or bother you :)“ Her: „yeah we can be friends but just so you know I have feelings for someone else.“
Hit me like a brick. Bcs all those weeks I did know there might be someone else but it didn‘t feel like she would lead me on. Should have seen it coming lol
I took that and stayed friends. I did stop writing her as much as I did before, but we did play video games here and then, today we did and I noticed her bio on her discord saying „I lov my gf“ My heart sank to my feet and I excused myself from our call. Her telling me she needed to fix herself with self love felt like a lie? Like that was fast- was I pushing???
I get that this is karma and I always knew this was a possibility but I guess I should have just not have contact with her at all after she told me she didn‘t like me like that My bad
Sorry again I just needed to tell someone before I start self blame and pity again Though, was it entirely my bad? Did I push her? Was it because I made that huge mistake and chose amy even though I didn‘t know amy as much as I thought?? Was it ok for her to make me feel we‘ll have smt or if I was to oblivious to anything she might have made or said?
I don‘t pity myself, I‘m just overthinking and dn‘t want to keep botteling this up inside me
Thanks if you have read this far! (I‘m genderfluid, mostly girl btw) (Reminder to drink water🏃)

I have always felt like the odd one out in every social circle I've ever had. Not saying I didn't like these people or they didn't like me but I have always felt different enough where it's noticeable. These differences ranged from minuscule insignificant things to major ethical/personality differences.
Here are some examples.
I grew up outside my home country and kept moving around to different countries. My parents didn't teach me my native language or culture. As a result, I'm always getting comments from family about how I don't understand the culture or don't speak the language and how it's a shame. Even for people who aren't family, the confusion, disappointment, and judgment is always visible on their faces. I try to ignore it as much as I can but every now and then some poor soul will do or say something that will set off years worth of pent up frustration.
With my friends, I've always just been different. This isn't so much problematic as it is lonely. We may share common interests but they're also different at the same time. For example, we all like playing video games, but I'll never be into the games that the rest of the group plays so I feel left out at times. I don't want to spend money on a vacation since I've traveled plenty already and I'm kinda over it but this is met with something along the lines of "OOH rich kid over here too cool for vacations"
My girlfriend and her family are from the same country I am originally from but immigrated to the US a while back. I get similar comments from them about me not speaking the language or knowing the culture. At least my gf makes an effort to teach me about the culture and language but even sometimes she gets frustrated and gets that same look on her face. She also doesn't seem to get me on many things like not wanting to go out and spend a lot of money and save and invest it instead. Whenever I tell I don't want to do this or that, she doesn't out right say anything but again I know her enough to know when I'm being a buzzkill for her.
I'm super strict about my diet and workout regimen. I track my calories and macros, record my gym progression things like that. While I'm not looking for approval from people for this, I am met with comments like "How can you eat like that" or "As long as you're happy, I could never do that". It makes me feel much more alien to the people around me.
I'm not the type of guy to be super inquisitive about other people's lives. Never have been tbh. I just figured if someone wants to share they'll tell me. That's what I do anyway. My girlfriend will sometimes get angry with me if I don't ask her family/friends about their lives and says I sometimes checkout of conversations. For example, we were hanging out with her friends and one of them mentioned they're going on a trip somewhere. I responded with "Cool! That sounds exciting" and didn't really ask any questions beyond that because in my mind I felt like I got the full story.
I just wish I could find someone that thinks like me. LIkes the things I do in the same way I do, wants to achieve the same things I do. Socializes like I do. It's not like I don't have friends or a social circle, it's just that I don't have anyone around me who's like me and it's a very alienating and lonely feeling that I've dealt with throughout my life, from family to friends to relationships. It leads to me isolating myself sometimes. Even enjoying my own company over that of others.
I don't know why in 27 years on a planet of 8 billion people I haven't found a single person that thinks like me. Maybe I have some condition like autism or something. Who knows, the only thing I know for sure is that I'm tired.

Man, I'm just trying to complete a basic online transaction.
CTAS "declined" my card twice, but it actually went through, so I had to figure out how to call the Israeli support number (without a phone plan that includes international calling!!). Only for them to say to email. It took them several days to respond. Finally got that sorted out.
I was more careful with the SIM card after that fiasco. When they inevitably declined my card, I waited days to make sure the decline was real (it was). So I use my parents card to make the purchase. It goes through this time, only for them to hit me with "We've run out of phone numbers, contact support"
Are you actually kidding me?? How the actual fuck do you run out of phone numbers?? Aren't there like hundreds of millions of combinations for each country code? Am I missing something? And of course. OF COURSE. Their support number doesn't let me press 2 to get to the English language automated machine. So I had to hunt for an email address. I think I found the right email. I hope.
I'm just so done. Are online payments in Israel always this obtuse?
Sorry I know it's not like the world-is-ending issues, I just really need to vent to someone. And also, be careful when ordering your stuff I guess.

My therapist encouraged me to continue writing to help me process. I am Narcoleptic, and cancer has enhanced my Narcolepsy symptoms tenfold. Narcolepsy causes overwhelming amounts of lucid dreaming, so my dreams feel very real. My lucid dreaming as of late is always the same scene each time that I dream. The beach was always my safe space. I would run away there as a teen. Now, the thought of it feels like hell because it has become my hell in this hospital. It is torturing me. It’s difficult to describe how crushing it feels when you awaken from repetitive lucid dreaming. It almost leaves you breathless and I wrote this poem to reflect what I have felt these past few weeks. Excuse my language in my poem- but no other word would suffice for exactly how I felt in he moment.

**WARNING** long post. Feel free to skip the background information if need be
BACKGROUND:
I am a software engineer at a major bank. Relative to my counterparts on my team, I am the "most junior", but I have three years of experience. This is important to know as it may offer some insight to our team culture. I landed this job in November 2023 and was placed with my team in January 2024. The team consisted of two women, including myself and five men. I work at our NYC office with three of the other men, one of which is our team lead, let's call him Anderson. The other woman coworker lives in FL and the other two men are in India. I am the only black person on the team, and the rest of my coworkers are of Indian descent. This, too, is important to note.
From day 1, I was intentionally assigned low level administrative tasks while my coworkers were purposefully trained and briefed on other, technical tasks. The first week with my team, I mentioned to my team lead that I felt it important to learn the technical tasks that my teammates were learning, even if these technical tasks were not going to be my responsibility, because there would not be anyone to take on the technical tasks if someone was on vacation. My team lead told me to focus on the work he assigned to me.
Still determined to learn the technical tasks, I scheduled trainings with my offshore counterpart so that he would train me instead. This meant that I had to sign in to work after hours to be trained. I was now trained on what my "work buddy" knew, but still not fully trained on what the rest of the team knew how to do. Suddenly (not suddenly), my other woman coworker, let's call her Sandra, went on maternity leave and I was assigned her work. My team lead expressed his frustration with me not knowing how to do her job, and told me to figure out how to learn the things she was doing.
What is interesting to point out here is that during the first few weeks on the team, my team lead would assign our other senior engineer to train Sandra and answer all questions that she had. I was not granted this opportunity. Instead, my Slack messages went unanswered (I have all of this documented) when I had questions and after another two weeks, my team lead quietly reassigned Sandra's work from me to another senior engineer instead. He never explained why he did this, or gave me feedback on the work I was doing.
As the weeks went by, my team lead called me into a meeting to gauge my knowledge on querying our databases. He asked me to find a few items, which I could not find because for one, I had NEVER interacted with the databases before, and for two, I had no understanding of the database architecture or the data flow for our app. Nevertheless, I decided to ask clarifying questions to help me better understand the data so that I could write appropriate queries. My team lead responded to this with yelling "you are an engineer and you don't even know SQL", to which I responded that my knowledge of SQL was sufficient (part of my technical interview was based on writing complex queries), but I needed to understand exactly what he wanted me to find. He ended the meeting and never followed up on the information he was looking for. I still do not know what task, if any, that he was trying to assign to me.
I decided to follow up with him and explain to him that I could sense his frustration, and I asked him to define clear expectations for me and the team, and provide official training that focused on our application architecture and other technical areas that we needed to focus on. He told me that no amount of training would fix the "fact" that I did not know SQL and that it is the team members' job to train themselves.
Nevertheless, after that meeting, he assigned me with handling all onboarding for new projects moving forward. I have taken the liberty of advocating for my team members to ensure that we are all properly trained and provided with ALL resources needed to do our job well. Since then, the team, and myself has expressed more confidence in our ability to do our work. We are even at a point where senior team members reach out to me when they cannot find resources and either ask me to provide documentation, or ask me to reach out to other engineers to schedule meetings to provide trainings. Here is where I am concerned that I might be experiencing hostility at work. Please provide objective feedback and even constructive criticism if need be:
MAIN POINTS:
-my team lead uses language in his interactions with me that creates a false narrative. For example, he accuses me of "not caring" about my job, not "being collaborative", and not paying attention. One example is where I was tasked with migrating a google guice project to springboot. We had four weeks to get the work done and each week during standup, I brought up to my team lead my plans to make changes to the service. Each time, he would redirect my attention to administrative tasks. The third week of the sprint, literally in the middle of a Slack conversation of me telling my team lead that I planned on making some code changes and him instead telling me to do something else, our senior manager called a meeting with the team and yelled at my team lead for not getting any work done related to the code refactoring. After the meeting, my team lead followed up with me and berated me for not having work done. This is all documented in Slack and I remember being very confused as he had literally told me to do other tasks. As a result, my team lead removed me from the code refactoring project and used this to further justify his belief that I do "not care" about the work. Keep in mind that these interactions are documented.
-my team lead constantly verbally berates me in my interactions with him. One example is when I was typing up a document on a zoom call and I was sharing my screen with him. He kept rushing me and was saying things like "come on man I have other things to do", "ughhh hurry up", "you need to move fast!". Two things here: he yelled at me for moving fast because he said he could not see what I was clicking on when I moved fast. Then he yelled at me when I slowed down. There was one time he yelled at me for clicking a back button instead of the home button on the screen...he told me that I was not listening to him or paying attention...I am confused by this because the point of his instruction was for me to return to the home screen. There was another time where I misspelled a word in the middle of him berating me, and then he berated me even more for misspelling the word...
-my team lead has unclear expectations and gets angry at me when I do not do things he wants me to do. One example is when he wanted me to watch a 40 minute training video, summarize the points in the video, and schedule a follow up training with the person who lead the training so that the team (me) could ask questions. He asked me to get this done within an hour. He also wanted me to upload some recordings to Sharepoint. But this task was just another task to complete and not time-sensitive. After the call, I watched the video and made a summary and got back to him with an update in 45 minutes instead of the hour. He responded to my message 20 minutes after I wrote him by hopping on a call with me and yelled at me for not having the videos uploaded. Again, he accused me of "not caring" about my job. When I explained to him that the videos were not uploaded because I was focusing on the other, time sensitive task, he said that that task was not as important as having the videos uploaded and "people" were asking him about the videos in the Sharepoint space....this was a lie because it has been a week and the only person who accessed the uploaded videos was...you guessed it...me :)
-my team lead just berates me in general. He berated me for collaborating with a team member to explore a new internal application. He said that there was no need to get on zoom with the coworker because we should have already known everything...the app was new and I was the only one who understood how to navigate it after exploring it with the team member...oh...need I mention that he then asked me to train the other team members on the new app's UI next week?
-my team lead expressed his frustration at not having access to certain resources when I was on bereavement.The documentation was incomplete and I had to take a sudden leave due to a death in the family. Upon my return, he asked for the documentation and said that he find an "excuse" to tell his manager as to why the documentation was incomplete and that I was "on vacation"
-my team lead "warns" me not to "disappoint" him when he assigns me with tasks. When I ask him to define what a "disappointment" is and for us to agree on what is acceptable, he ignores me.
-my team lead tells me that "people" ask questions about my work and one day he is going to make our department head "deal" with me. The department head is known for being a hot head who yells at people. But he has NEVER yelled at me in any interaction I had with him, no matter how frustrated he may have been.
I want to make an important note here that he does NOT speak to other people like this and he ONLY does this over zoom. I work 3x days in office and on the days where he speaks to me in person, he does not even make eye contact with me and he speaks so soft I can barely hear him sometimes. My team lead has never provided any feedback on my work. As a matter of fact, he uses my documentation and my explanation of technical tasks as if they were his own.
I am considering taking my concerns to our senior manager, who apparently is a well respected, "big boss" at work, but also MY direct manager and I happen to have a great relationship with him. I want to be as objective as possible in my complaint but in the meantime, I would like to explore areas where maybe I can improve to minimize my team lead's verbal assaults on me

I had watched this movie once when it came out, then again just the other day with a friend. And we were discussing the ending, pitching to each other what we thought about meant. As it show's 3 similar scenes with different outcomes, the middle outcome being him committing suicide.
At first I looked at it as a passage of time montage, so my take that he continued to life his life normally for a while, then decided he couldn't do it any longer, and finally we get a glimpse of his version of the afterlife. Which I don't think is necessarily the worst interpretation. But with the last image of the movie being Petra smiling in a white background, it didn't feel as a particularly satisfying interpretation.
So then I finally decided to give up and search for what other people thought coming to this fantastic analysis by The Love Pirate, in which he or her or they? say this " She gives him a final kiss and leaves, and we see three possible endings for Zimit, each beginning with him walking down the hall to his office and taking a seat at his desk. First, he simply opens his lunch and eats a sandwich, going on with his life as normal. In the second one he pulls a gun out his drawer and we hear a gunshot, the assumption being that he ended his life rather than go on without Petra. In the third, he sits at his desk and has a vision of Petra smiling, symbolizing that he might have learned something from her in this final class and is following her example."
That last sentence stuck in my mind, and I began to think "what if it's deeper than that?" I started thinking about how there were 3 doomsday scenarios, and 3 endings for Zimmit. And was trying to figure out if there was a parallels for each of the endings and each iteration of the thought experiments. And this is what I came up with when re-examining the final scenes of the movie based on the inspiration of The Love Pirate.
After Petra give Mr. Zimmit her goodbye kiss , both of them relax on opposite sides of a wall. Petra staring ahead, while Mr. Zimmit leans his head into the wall, as if he does still love her and explains the etymology of the word Apocalypse. "To uncover what you couldn't see before, a way out of the Dark."
The entire movie so far has been Mr. Zimmit trying to convince Petra time and time again using logic that James isn't the best decision for her to make as a life choice. He acts over attached, and petty about being broken up with, and has been hyperfocused on getting her to see things from his perspective.
When Mr Zimmit is explaining it,he's humbly and sheepishly apologizing for his behavior, but also thanking Petra for helping him out of his selfish mindset. He didn't stop to think about living life from anyone else's philosophy other than his own that was ruled by cold hard logic.
To which Petra replies, "Your sweet talk still needs work." A playful jab, but it's clear she doesn't hate him or demonize him for what he had done that day. In a way she's even saying with a little work, he'd still get be capable of being happy in life even if it's not with her. It's a student becomes the teacher moment when he replies. "I'll work on that."
In that last line Petra reassures him that he's a very good teacher. She had learned a lot from him and is grateful for the experience despite the lows, she still values him greatly.
At this point, what I think is happening, Erik Nimmit on the spot starts running himself thru the three scenarios using Petra's philosphy, a basic test of empathic thinking.
He walks up the stairs , sits in his office and takes a bite out of his sandwich, but he's thinking about the conflict that drove them apart in the first thought experiment. Petra couldn't trust him. From her perspective he executed everyone who didn't make the cut for the bunker with no witnesses. He identified as a wild card, and even though Petra was using the emotion of fear to make that decision, It was still a logical decision to make.
Him eating the sandwhich is him envisioning himself the outcome of being an untrustworthy partner. Alone in his office living life day to do without someone. The consequence of who he is inside.
He walks up the stairs, this time retrieving a handgun from his drawer and ending his life. The parallel to what he had done in the second iteration would be the likely outcome of if Zimmit used that same brutal logic in real life. If his logic would compel him to force people to have multiple partners , sleep with someone who wasn't all that keen on them to sleep with him, or force gay people to sleep with people they weren't attracted too. His logic would make him so ugly even to himself that he'd end his life.
Finally Mr Zimmit walks up the stairs, and closes his eyes. Remembering Petra. I no longer thing that this was some after life vision. But him thinking about her being happy in her future life. The white backround doesn't seem ethereal... it seems cold, and she's wearing a sweater.
In the third scenario Petra fully takes over the thought experiment, She says, In my apocolypse no life is more valuable than another. Logic alone can not make your life more meaningful, contrasting to one of the the first statements Mr. Zimmit makes in the movie. That most people are nutters by the age of 40. He had spent the entire movie looking down on people with a lower intellect, or different sexualities, or their life circumstances or situations, In a way to make himself more attractive to Petra. And finally he realized how ugly it made him, and Petra was the one who taught him that. Now he could finally move on, and be happy for her future even if he wouldn't be in it.
But I'd love to hear from any other fans of this movie , do you think i'm onto something here?

People often talk about how AI could pose an existential threat to life on earth. Often cited among these fears are methods such as bioterrorism, where an incredibly sophisticated virus with high levels of contagiousness and lethality could decimated human populations.
Something I have been thinking about a lot is the actual strategies that a misaligned AI or bad human actor would use to cause as much damage as possible.
It seems to me that all of the conventional methods would be ineffective due to the fact that they are conventional.
It is highly likely that by the time we have systems capable of building bioweapons, we will have systems with superhuman medical knowledge, and the ability to perform bio-defence. Such a system could conceivably create something akin to an adaptive vaccine that can defend against bioweapons, or would have the ability to detect new infections nearly instantly and design treatments orders of magnitude faster than current methods.
Why would an extremely intelligent AI system use an attack vector that is widely recognized and has countermeasures in place?
It seems that a much more effective strategy would be to target natural systems that humans rely on to make earth habitable. I’m talking about ecosystems, more specifically climate terrorism or ecoterrorism.
One example of such a strategy would be the targeting of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are responsible for 95% of the primary energy production in marine ecosystems, and 50% of photosynthetic energy production globally. They are the most vital source of energy for everything that lives in the ocean. They are also responsible for regulating carbon cycles.
If you wanted to cause as much damage as possible, disrupting phytoplankton would be at the top of the list. It would destroy marine ecosystems and throw off nature’s delicate balance, causing catastrophic ripple effects worldwide that would lead to food instability, rapid changes in climate and the collapse of ecosystems worldwide.
Disruption would not be that difficult. Imagine an invasive species of phytoplankton that can outcompete all other species, reproducing at an extreme rate and being incredibly resilient to allow it to live in every aquatic environment. This itself would do incredible damage to worldwide ecosystems, even without maliciously designed biology.
What if this species of phytoplankton produced toxic byproducts that accumulate within its cells? Or perhaps its genetic code harbours a retrovirus that propagates through marine ecosystems and eventually into humans.
This strategy also benefits from reduced discoverability and delays in identifying the problem. By the time scientists figure out what’s going on, it may be too late to stop the chain reaction.
All that to say that there is an infinite number of attack vectors a sufficiently advanced AI could use to cause massive harm. So many options that it is impossible to prepare for them all. So rather than trying to develop responses for things like nuclear risks, mass misinformation and bioterrorism, it’s easier and more effective to focus on alignment as a preventative measure. Just like how it’s easier to prevent a disease than to treat/cure it.

[ First / Previous ]
Memory Transcription Subject: Hileen, Krakotl Fugitive Recovery Agent
Date [standardized human time]: November 28th, 2136
It'd been a while since I sat in Marlig's office for a talk face-to-face. Given the agency's secluded location at the edge of the downtown region, it was a chore to drop by when it wasn't for business, but I'd deemed the matter at hand to be worth my time.
I passed by Nampi at her desk on my way to the door and she gave me a coy glare as I carried on. Trying to ignore her risible ear waggle, I turned the corner to the door with my boss’s name painted on the glass panel where I could hear the frantic crumpling of paper.
Quietly, I entered Marlig's office without prompt as I knew he hated to be spooked by knocking. My mentor was surprisingly spry for a bird at his age, sorting through papers with one wing and an eye while using his talons with the other to set away the papers he had splayed out.
“Hileen!” he chirped. “Glad you could make it in today. I was just finishing up my paperwork. Take a seat.”
It was always nice to hear him drop the professional motif for a more grandfatherly attitude when speaking in person. I did as he suggested and took a seat while he grumbled to himself over the sorting. My eye caught a few of the old contracts he was rifling through and saw that some dated back to his days as an agent.
Eventually, he left some sitting out as he sequestered the rest back into their files, sorted by a dichotomy that only he and Nampi could comprehend fully. He motioned with a wing for me to peruse and I turned the first one to face me to find it was my first contract, signed by me in a sloppy fashion. “This takes me back a couple of years.”
“Slick bastard thought he could get away on a forklift but you showed him! Certainly more exciting than my first day!”
“Mm-hmm. And it was when I nearly got impaled that you had the idea to commission all of us utility vests.”
He chuckled, “I really should’ve done so sooner. Cuts and scratches were already a risk, but a forklift was a new one!”
I flipped through the pages of each report, finding that Marlig's notes were filled with praises of my work. There were highs and lows, but I was flattered to find that the grizzled krakotl held my performance in such high regard.
“Flawless interception!” read one footnote about me catching a runner. “Couldn't have done it better myself!”
Marlig waited patiently as I browsed quickly through each page, realizing more and more how the notes also marked improvements in my work. How I found it easier to talk down a rowdy client, or apprehend them in the case that they were beyond helping on my part. Flowery language plastered most pages with him fawning over my work as a doting father would to his prodigal child.
The trend took a sharp turn as the notes became fewer and more critical the closer the dates reached to the present. I brushed the others aside with a wing to peruse the final paper. “And this…”
“Is Tac. Your latest contract. The most recent in a line of declining performance since the interview. This has become a pattern, Hileen, and its consequences are beginning to reach beyond yourself. Paji and Vesek resigned recently for personal reasons, which leaves us even less hands on deck than before. That's four people to cover the entire municipal region, and maybe even beyond, should needs arise. Three, if we include this little probation I have you on.”
“What was I supposed to do? Marlig, these ‘jobs’ you've got us working on overstep the contracts we were signed on with. Our job is to make sure people obey their court-mandated duties, not drag them off to the facilities ourselves!”
“... So the trip we took to the facilities did bother you.”
A sigh clicked in my throat as he reminded me. “Is that what happens to the people we take in, Marlig? Is that what would've happened to your wife?”
His feathers ruffled.
“That's what happens to those who are too dangerous to the general public to be left roaming free. Not everyone we deal with winds up there, but everyone can be subject to it. Miskela sued for her exoneration and proved in court that she was not diseased. I brought you there to show you how it helps the people, but I see now that it was a mistake. I understand why you were so perturbed, really, but it's how things have been for centuries. It's how we've protected ourselves from the dangers out there.”
“You were willing to let Barsul be interned there, too.”
Marlig flinched and sighed as he swept the papers towards himself once I'd signaled I was done. He turned one eye to me while he sorted them.
“There's no room for favoritism, girl. I negotiated for him to be allowed to walk free, and look where that got me. That boy - your neighbor - suffered the consequences of my nepotism. So too would the girl, had nobody intervened.”
“Like Richard.”
“The human, yes. Or you. Or the police. Where does this sudden obsession with humans come from, anyway? I get notifications of you talking about the acceptance of them all the time on forums.”
“Does it even need explaining?”
“Well, I guess not, no, but it's certainly an about-face from the way you used to talk about them with me beforehand.”
“People can change, for better or worse. Which one I fall under remains to be seen.”
Marlig stroked at the plumage on his neck as he finished his sorting. “I hope it's the former, for your sake. Was there any reason you came to talk, or were you just checking that I hadn't gone senile?”
“Well, I was hoping to borrow your secretary for the evening.”
He perked up while his eyes narrowed and he laced his fingers together with curiosity. “You… want to spend an evening with Nampi?”
“It's not what you're insinuating, but yes.”
“I was insinuating nothing,” he warbled coyly. “Go ahead and take her, and make sure to split the bill at dinner.”
“Pain-in-the-ass geezer. I'll keep in touch if your friend causes any more trouble.”
“Keep in touch regardless. Miskela and I get lonely in our old age,” he called back. “Take care.”
I stepped out into the hallway and turned toward the desk where I could hear the secretary's claws tapping furtively at her keyboard. Nampi sat silently with her ears and tail in a relaxed position that implied a bored demeanor. There was barely any response as I stood before her, waiting politely for her acknowledgment that never came.
Hesitantly, I cleared my throat.
An ear raised in acknowledgement, but her focus remained on the screen of her computer. “Mhm?”
“Do you…?”
Her ear rotated toward me, though she still maintained a passive attitude as she continued to glare mindlessly at the monitor.
“Are you free this evening?”
“Well, I'm quite booked, I believe. Why do you ask?”
I was surprised at her curt, dry tone. She hadn't spoken with me like this since we first got to know one another.
“Well,” I started. “I realized something. Every time we went out, whether it was clubbing, or dinner, or even walking around the parks, you always footed the bill. And so…”
Slowly, her other ear perked up and I saw her keystrokes slow down as she listened in.
“I wanted to return the favor?”
Her lips smacked as she opened her mouth, though paused before she spoke. “How could you possibly do that?”
“With a little gesture of friendship.”
Nampi's horizontal pupil turned up toward me and her tail twitched.
I continued, “So that belt you're wearing? It's the same belt you've worn since we first met. And I know you're the pragmatic type who'd never spend a credit more than she needs to, except for all the times you do"- her ears twitched in indignance -"I wanted to see about getting you a little something… extra?”
Her paws raised from the keyboard and she leaned in, resting her snout on her palms. “Go on.”
The bubbly venlil's tail sold out her collected facade as it twitched with anticipation. She was cornered and she didn't even know it yet.
“Well, I found just the place on the other side of town where we can start. It's a place almost as rich and indulgent as yourself.”
“The Platinum Paw? I mean3”
Her ears folded back in embarrassment as she cracked. She wasn't cut out for acting anyway.
“So that's what it's called! Jeez, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was called. Now what do you say? We go over there and find you something nice—”
I hadn’t even finished my thought before Nampi had grabbed her bag and was out the door, giving me a playful tail flick that said come and get me.

The place I suggested was in a shopping center on the opposite side of town, though easily accessible because of its proximity to the transport rails. Nampi had insisted on grabbing something to eat beforehand and so now gleefully bit into a bundle of stalks that had been “grilled” as explained from the food truck we'd stopped at.
Her tail flicked back and forth with her usual enthusiasm as we entered the massive complex of stores. The roofless plan allowed the natural, orange sun to flood the upper levels while artificial lighting illuminated the ground level wherever the light couldn't reach.
The place was built in the last decade by the previous City Magister in a bid for popularity, though ultimately for naught as he would lose the vote following a scandal involving an iftali priestess and a carved bar of soap. I had to say that despite being sick in the head, he sure had a great sense of decor.
Nampi snacked away, joining me in admiring the scenery as we continued to the place I’d planned out for us. Aimless chatter all melded together into a single, thrumming murmur as pedestrians navigated the many levels and stores offered in the place.
A troupe of children passed by us, held in a chain of tails and arms as they were escorted by a pair of venlil who I assumed were students and teachers on a school trip. I caught a whiff of a sweet, aromatic breeze and found it to come from a perfume shop on the same level as us; naturally, venlil were not to be found inside.
We passed a fountain where a couple sat on the edge, their tails twined together as they giggled and flirted. I turned and caught Nampi watching them as well, though she awkwardly returned to sucking the remains of her meal from her claws when we made eye contact. Her ears lifted when I raised a wing to signal to the store we were going to stop at first.
“Platinum Paw, The Greatest Fashion Emporium For Everyone!”
The title alone was painfully cliche, taken to the tenth power by the brightly lit store taking up three department slots. Despite the flashy exterior, though, it was the best place to shop for belts, brooches, and bracelets alike. Customers who looked like they earned my yearly salary in a week browsed the higher end brands while I brought my friend to the section I wanted to show her.
Her ears were held up as we stood together next to a shelf chock full of fashionable bags and bandoliers of every variety.
“Pick one,” I told her.
Nampi's ears shot to a straight pose in surprise, “Any?”
“Within reason. I've got a few extra credits to blow and I know nobody better to spend it on.”
With an inviting headtilt, I let Nampi peruse the shelves at her leisure. Her lips pursed together and her tail flicked with glee as she fingered at every piece that caught her eye. I chuckled at her outburst of enthusiasm while turning to find my own items to gloss over.
A breeze from outside nipped at my beak while I considered what I’d like to purchase. The place dripped with an atmosphere of faux hospitality, from the bright blue-stained floorboards to the radio prattling off advertisements in a sickeningly sweet tone to the faint, fruity aroma of scented cleaner. It was oppressive as only a fissan-owned company could be to the senses.
What I wouldn’t pay to see how a human would fare in such an environment.
I knew they were social creatures at least, but I had no doubt that the predatory senses of a human, so honed to hunting, would get overstimulated in this center of gaudy indulgence. Knowing I was something of a predator myself made me sympathize provided that even I had to squint to keep the pale lights inside from searing my eyes. I could only imagine how the arboreal eyes of a Terran would fare. I was so lost in thought imagining how lost the Terrans would be that I could almost ignore the obnoxious giggling and metallic rattling coming from behind me.
Risking a peek at the source, into my sight came a pair of venlil, one a male carrying a pair of bags as well as a couple more strapped to his belt. The bored expression in his eyes was not one of a man who was in high spirits. The other venlil was a woman who was the source of the noise.
Her mottled gray pelt was accented by a tasteful belt design, free of almost any practical functions but not flashy or excessive in garnishment either. At least, that’s what I would say, were it not for the braid of beads that dangled on the belt, jingling with each bounce of the lively woman’s stride. It was clear that such a gaudy accessory was intended to draw attention to her, though why was a mystery. Certainly, the shiny braids seemed designed as decoration first and practical second.
She turned about and I faced back to my browsing before she could catch me staring. Nampi was nowhere in sight, though I figured she was somewhere behind the shelf, sifting through every accessory on the section I'd suggested.
Clink.
Something pelted to my immediate right. I tilted my head to spot a tree nut shell clattering to the floor. Without being able to guess where it came from, I had to wonder what could've launched it over this way. Even with my keen eyesight, nobody in the crowd seemed to be a suspect.
Clink.
Another shell pelted my vicinity, ricocheting off of the floor and hitting the shelf I was standing next to. I ruffled my feathers in frustration - clearly, someone was trying to get my attention, though I couldn't make out who it was. Out of the corner of my vision, the woman from before eyed me curiously as I looked about, though I wasn't interested in engaging with her.
Thwack.
One more shell came flying and, unfortunately, the aim on this one was true, nailing me on the beak. Irritated, I stormed out of the store to find the source of the instigator. I scanned over the bodies to find anyone who could've been responsible for this indignity, eventually concluding that it came from the dining area across the walkway.
Whoever was responsible was in for an earful and I was already structuring which of the offender's family members would be acceptable as fodder for stray words. As I approached, I found the tables were mostly empty save for one, which made my heart begin to drop as I met eyes with the only occupant. Suddenly, I was much less inclined to hurl insults.
“Oh, hi there!” Qitel called out in a sickly sweet tone. “Come, take a seat! We have much to discuss!”
The Exterminator clutched a bag of tree nuts in his claws, a pile of discarded shells already gathered on the table next to him. He grabbed another as I approached, effortlessly prying the shell in half between two claws and tossed the contents into his mouth. “Good protein, these,” he commented as I sat down.
“Must be for that good arm you've got there,” I mumbled. I caught sight of a couple of bags beneath his chair, seemingly from one of the tech stores contained within the center.
“Bah, it's guesswork. So how are you? I haven't heard from you since we worked together!”
“I was just spending time with a friend, shopping and enjoying my time off.”
“Your time off? Oh, am I interrupting something?”
His snide tone irked me, though now wasn’t the time for interjections. “You are, Qitel,” I replied with no shortage of vitriol in my tone. “But I see no harm in chatting for a bit.”
“Good, because I have some merchandise”- he reached into his belt pocket and deposited a couple of items onto the table -“and you’re just the person to look into it, human sympathizer.”
I drew a terse breath in shock, but my worries were quelled when I considered that if Qitel had the power to do anything about it, he would’ve done so instead of approaching me so discreetly. A glance down at the item on the table showed that he was presenting what looked to be a tracker as well as a personal drive. “Found in the garbage,” he told me.
“The guild resorts to dumpster diving when they already have such a bloated budget now?”
“No, featherbrain, I have decided to keep this for myself. These items were found together, sealed in a plastic pouch, and placed in a garbage bin. The city has bans against electronics being placed into public bins, and so I was curious why this wound up in there. Managed to get my coworker, a techie, to crack it open and…”
Qitel reached into his belt again, glowering at me with the same condescending gaze he’d given me when I first saw his face. He seemed to revel in digging for the item as slowly as possible to waste my time. Finally, he found whatever he was looking for and revealed it as a printed piece of paper, folded into eighths. The snobby yotul threw the unfurled paper on the table and rolled it toward me.
I craned my neck to look at the parchment, though I was immediately perplexed by the text on it; it appeared to be some sort of form, going by the boxes with words on the inside, followed by blank lines. “Found on the drive, here,” Qitel told me, jabbing a claw to the storage. “Translator shows it as Terran writing.”
Drawing my holopad from my satchel, I held it over the paper with the translator to get an understanding. Surely enough, the language on it came up positive as a variant of Terran writing and I was affirmed in it being a form of some sort based on the wording of the text. The boxes seemed like an odd sort of job application, asking for the typical name, contacts, and prior work experiences, but quickly took a strange turn as it began asking for where their home on Earth was prior to arrival, what family they had on Venlil Prime if any, and where they worked, implying that they were seeking individuals who were already employed.
I knew little about human employment methods, but I didn’t imagine that sourcing individuals from other jobs was the most efficient way to gain a workforce. Terran service industries already dotted the planet while many humans also found work in local environments. So what was the angle that the creator of this application was going for?
Most concerningly was that the paper had no insignia, identifying marks, or noted address to return the form to. “And where did you find it again?”
“In the garbage, alongside this intact tracker that was activated at the time of recovery. Y’know, when I was dumpster diving. Text on the document showed it was addressed to one ‘Choctaw Nexus’.”
“A pseudonym of some sort?”
“Clearly. Short sorting through the archives shows the first name traces back to the group out east - perhaps you've heard about them. How the name and the items we have here are connected is beyond my understanding, but-”
“Well, this has been an absolutely riveting discussion about your collection of trash, Qitel,” I told him as I stood up to leave. “But this really sounds like an issue to be resolved by your fellow guildsmen.”
The sound of another shell splitting rang out as I turned away.
“I'm not through talking with you, predator.”
The sting as a piece nailed me in the back of the head prompted me to whirl back around, sticking my beak in the insolent yotul's snout. “Perhaps you've forgotten, little man,” I cooed in an equally bittersweet tone to the one he gave me before. “The krakotl never had a problem with settling issues the old-fashioned way before the interview. Try me and find out why I'm in the line of work I am.”
“Oh, we wouldn't want that in such a"- he waved his paw to a group of passersby who had stopped to gawk at my display -”public forum. Please, contain yourself.”
I had to force the feathers on my back to settle and I raised my head away from him. “What else is it you wanted, then?”
“Well, I'd appreciate if you took this merchandise off my paws,” he told me as he brushed the electronics and printout toward me.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you're closer to the humans than I'd ever care to be, and may be able to find out who this Choctaw Nexus is. Something about the package just feels… off. And I know when to trust my feelings. Besides, we both know that you know where Tac is, don't we?”
“I don't-”
“We have videographic evidence that you conspired with a human - of the aforementioned squatters, no less - and let the kid escape. You're not as sneaky as you think, and if we find this ‘Choctaw Nexus’ turns out to be a bad actor that can be traced back to them - and by extension, you - well, there’d be no talking down my boss from having you dealt with. By helping me find out who this is, you may yet be able to clear your name of any wrongdoing.”
I clenched my beak tightly to maintain a straight face. Qitel stood up with a flourish and discarded the bag he was carrying in a bin.
“See, the krakotl were never special for using threats and bullying to get results. It's because you were good at killing predators,” he jeered. “Now, if you don't mind, this primitive has appointments to attend to… old lady who got trampled courtesy of the humans and all. You stay out of trouble, Hileen, and stay in touch.”
The self-assured marsupial melded into the crowd in a matter of seconds, leaving me with a table containing dumpster trophies and a pile of shells. Reluctantly, I swept the shells into my wing and dumped them into the bin before gathering the other two items he'd left me and stuffing them into my bag. I'd been gone from Nampi long enough and she would notice my absence before long.
Crossing the walkway again, I could spot from where I stood that Nampi was indeed still in the Platinum Paw. I approached, and soon I found that while she didn't seem to have noticed me stepping away, she was definitely in a soured mood based on the sagging of her ears and tail. With my talons clacking on the floorboards, I hustled to her side and her mood chippered up ever so slightly as she heard me approach.
I chimed in, “Find anything?”
“Everything. I want everything, Red, and I can't decide on what I want. They all just look so great!”
From behind, a voice called out, “Nampi!”
We both jumped at the exclamation and turned about to spot the venlil lady I'd seen before spring from behind the shelf. The man poked his head from behind the shelf too, though less enthusiastically and with yet another bag in his clutches. My friend's eyes widened in surprise with her tail and ears perking up in kind. With a light in her eyes, she exclaimed, “Nalek!”
The two embraced with shrill squeals and laughter as Nalek's accompaniment and I traded awkward glances.
“It's been too long!”
“You never stayed in contact!”
The women exchanged giddy greetings and the pompous stranger turned to me, leering over me as though she was sizing me up.
“Who's your friend here?”
“Oh she's actually my-...”
Nampi paused for a moment, looking back to me.
“Yeah, she's a friend.”
“A friend,” Nalek repeated while her eyes flicked between Nampi and I. “Right.”
Somehow, I get the impression that that was judgemental.
“I'm Hileen, by the way,” I chirped, “if names are to be exchanged.”
“Hileen, that's a lovely name! And such plumage to match, it's a wonder you aren't swarmed by suitors!”
Internally, I groaned at the notion. The idea of being approached by someone to state their interest in me made me queasy, to say the least. Thankfully, I never had that issue growing up as most of the other drakes in school were too busy chasing girls who didn't have a lousy pigmentation mutation such as myself.
“I'm flattered,” I told Nalek before turning to the man whose name had yet to be introduced. “May we get your name?”
“Sask.”
His response was succinct and tonally flat, though there was a brief silence as I expected him to elaborate. Nalek's beads jingled as she lashed him on the calf with her tail.
“I'm Sask, Nalek's fiancée,” he added, throwing her a look to see if she was satisfied.
Nampi gasped with her paws over her snout. “Fiancée! Nalek, you're getting married and you never even told me!”
“Well, I felt a little guilty since it technically broke our pact we made when we were pups. You remember that?”
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I? ‘Let she who bonds through betrothal first be cast out unto the world for all to admonish her!’”
Sask and I both gave inquisitive expressions. “You two spoke like that as pups?” Sask asked.
“Well, I'm paraphrasing,” Nampi admitted with a playful ear waggle. “But you get the gist.”
“Indeed, they do, sweet Nampi. Now, may I ask what you're doing bringing your avian friend here into this store on this fine claw?”
“Oh, no no, she's the one treating me! Isn't that right, Red?”
I saw her tail twitch and was sure it took restraint not to tickle my neck with it as we stood before her old friend.
“She's been a good friend,” I explained. “So I wanted to reverse the roles for once and treat her to something myself.”
Nampi skipped over to me and wrapped her arm around me, glancing back to her old friend. “See? We'd all be so lucky to have a… friend like her.”
“So I've witnessed. But perhaps you're a bit stuck, as I've seen you prancing up and down these aisles for a while, no? Maybe you don't know what you want?”
“Nalek, you know I've never been good about making my mind up.”
“Some things never change, you ditz. Tell you what: you and Sask go find us a seat and we can catch up all we'd like when we're not taking up aisle space, yes? So shoo! I'll help Hileen here pick one out for you!”
With a bored grunt, Sask made off with the goods he had strapped to himself, followed by Nampi who gave me one more playful tail flick before dashing off into the crowd. I looked back to the mottled snout of Nalek who watched her friend wander off with a wistful glance.
“She was my first, you know.”
“Your what now.”
“Love. Way back when we were growing from pups into young adults back in private education, we explored much together. We saw each other through a lot, including the less savory parts of finding a mate. When Nampi realized it wasn't the boys she was into, she turned to me, and I offered my hand as her stalwart companion… to a point.”
“You weren't interested in her the same way?”
“I'd grown up seeing her as a sister of sorts, so ultimately, when we split it off, we stayed close as friends and she never seemed to be bothered by it. She struggled to find others in school who had the same interests as herself, but she never fussed about it.”
Nalek's claws browsed over a set of pouched bandoliers made with intricate embroidering. “Have you two… spent the night together? Alone?”
Spiritually, I reeled from the inquiry. The whiplash from that question was equitable to being smacked by a human. “Wha- why? How's that pertinent to the subject at hand?”
“That sounds like a ‘yes’ to me,” she purred with a smug glance my way.
I didn't need to begin to list the different ways such a question was violating to our privacy, and yet this woman was treating it like a game.
“Not really your concern, ma'am.”
Nalek chuckled as she picked out one of the bandoliers and inspected it with her claws. “I'd like to think that she and I still have that old connection, despite everything. And to that end, I know that she's no slag and doesn't trust easy. To see her be so vulnerable around you and to talk so highly of someone who's clearly below her income level as a predator…”
She stretched the bandolier out to appreciate the design in its entirety.
“Well, that's something special. Here"- she foisted the accessory into my wings as I stood gobsmacked -"this just screams her name.”
“This is, like, double my budget.”
“Love don't come cheap, darling. You wanna see good things happen, sometimes you've gotta step out of your comfort zone and grasp for it!”
“I'm being lectured by a rich woman on finances.”
“It's a philosophy that goes beyond money, ‘Red.’ The humans have a saying, in their horrendously predatory nomenclature, that contains a kernel of truth: ‘you miss every shot you don't take’.”
Yep, that's definitely a human phrase.
Nalek's steely braid rattled with every flick of the tail as we proceeded through the checkout.
“You want things to change between you and her?” she continued. “Don't just wait for it to happen.”
She let the conversation rest there as we finished the purchase, possibly to let me recuperate mentally from the damage done to my account. Outside, we found our respective partners sitting at a table with Sask looking up in boredom as Nampi chatted away, though she immediately shut up and turned to me with excited flicks of her tail as she saw what I was carrying.
I held it toward her and she happily shot to her feet, effortlessly removing the tags with her claws and clipping it to her belt. Nalek clapped and waggled her tail as the giddy lady did a whirl about to let us admire the accessory. While I'd have preferred one with pockets to give it a more practical use, I decided to let Nalek have the victory as our mutual friend clearly enjoyed it.
The rest of the paw was a blur as the two friends chatted without end until Sask eventually reminded his betrothed that they had a schedule to attend to. Though Nalek offered to call us a taxi home as a gesture of kindness, I saw through her ruse to determine that she was trying to pull a fast one on me - the clever ear flick she gave as we boarded the automated vehicle sold it for me.
We sat in the seats as the vehicle took the express ride home.
Nampi cleared her throat before she spoke, “Thank you for taking some time to spend with me, I know you've had a lot less free time as of late.”
“It's a prison of my own design, if I must be honest. A feedback loop of working a job that doesn't guarantee a paycheck to pay for rent that keeps going up, and thus needing to work more.”
The venlil giggled and chided me, “You really should've stayed in university.”
“There's a lotta 'should haves’ that've led me to this point. No use wondering what could have been.”
“There's always a use for wondering what could have been, Hileen.”
She wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
“Every decision I make, I always wonder what I could've done differently that it'd have turned out better,” she explained as she waved her free paw to the sky. “It's how you grow as a person, Red.”
Her silky pelt felt heavenly in contrast to the chilly air from outside, making it hard to let her words sink in.
“You rich types seem chock full of philosophy. I wonder if I'll become a brooding orator when I get some cash to my name.”
The cab filled with laughter as we veered around the final corner to my neighborhood, as it was the closest stop. The door popped open accompanied by a chime from the drone, signaling for me to depart.
But before my talons could even hit the pavement, I felt Nampi's scrawny arms wrap around my waist and she let out a pitiful mewl again.
“You don't need to get off here,” she told me with a pouty expression. “We can spend the rest of the paw at my place.”
“I'd love it, but I need to water my plants and get the month's bills sorted before they're due. Again.”
One claw at a time, I plucked her paws from around my waist and the childish venlil conceded, giving me another ear waggle as I departed. “I'll see you tomorrow?” I asked her.
“If you still have eyes by then, then you can bet your ass!”
“I still don't gamble.”
“You'll come around to it eventually.”
I shut the door to the taxi and watched as it carted away the one venlil who I ever truly felt on the same wavelength as. Fiddling with the lock felt like more of a chore than usual at this time as I felt a little voice tugging at the back of my head.
“You miss every shot you don't take.”
The lock felt jammed as I began to jiggle it more vigorously with the electric key. Either the RFID or NFC readers were messed up, as the lock refused to accept my key. I looked up and down the street, though Nampi was now long gone for me to rescind my earlier rejection.
“Every decision I make, I wonder what I could've done differently.”
The door rattled as I grew more and more infuriated with the lock. Qitel's smug expression as he threatened me so boldly in public played back in my head, and I wondered what would've happened had I decided to go through with insulting his mother. Better yet, I wondered what could've been had I not backed down in the face of his unflinching confidence.
Bzzt. The lock rejected my key again.
“Raagh! You fucking useless hunk of junk!”
I squawked in anger and kicked against the door, careless of the consequences of having Markol back down here to admonish another of his tenants for causing a ruckus. The walls were surprisingly sturdy for how ineffective the venlil architecture looked on the surface and I reeled back in pain as my leg throbbed.
Click.
I looked to my left to see that it wasn't my door that came open, but that of the twins. The door cracked open ever so slightly, no doubt nudged by the force of my tirade and I sighed. Nobody was expected to be home at this time, with Vili being away and Luka leaving early to get a head start.
Luka had been given a stern talking-to by the landlord for allowing one of those cats into his apartment through neglect, and I was disappointed that he seemed to have not learned his lesson this time. In fact, it seemed he hadn't even thought to lock the door this time.
I took it upon myself to shut the door for him before turning back to my own apartment door. Grasping the key with one talon, I turned it ever so gently, though the lock still refused to give in.
With a bit more force, the torsion applied to the key felt as though it should've snapped it by now. Markol sure didn't waste any expense for the security for this place, doubtlessly as a result of his history in electronic security, but I wished now that he had provided a way in that didn't rely on privately sourced locks.
Considering my options as I stood trapped outside, I realized that I had never gotten around to paying for a new lock for Tadi. I'd considered contacting her to inform her that Tac had made it out of town safely, but that'd involve also telling her that her son was now in the care of humans, as if that was a better outcome to her.
Stepping out front, I realized that there was one more option I hadn't considered: my window. I usually forgot to lock it after I was through letting air circulate and I was silently grateful to myself for this absentmindedness now more than ever. Sticking a foot on the threshold, I lifted myself in a way that'd allow me to have leverage to force the window open.
The window made me fight for every inch, but I felt a strange satisfaction as it slowly opened up into an entrance that I could squeeze my way through. I let out a sigh as my talons clicked against the cool floor and slid the window shut.
I laid my satchel on the couch and turned back to the door, ready to unleash my fury on the disobedient object. But as I reached for the lock to manually open the door, I noted that the lights on the RFID interface both flashed at once, blinking erratically. Red and green flickered without rhyme or reason, indicating that it was both active and inactive.
As pretty as the colors were, I now knew that Markol's locks were not as reliable as he had touted them about: typically, such would not occur unless the device was damaged deliberately, and yet nothing indicated that I'd had uninvited guests. One could pray that those cats didn't secretly know how to cobble together an ECM jammer, but my personal wager was on faulty equipment.
Settling in, I browsed my favorite soaps on the television. For what was intended to be a day of relaxation and show of affection for a friend, I found myself rather wound up over all the things that added up. Couples threw around flowery words and swooned over one another on screen as I felt the tension diffuse. My holopad rang and I turned it over to spot that Nampi was informing me that she'd arrived home safely.
>>> Feels empty here, all alone.
She made sure to drive the point home with a sticker of a venlil making a pouty expression.
Next time, I thought to myself, I'll get it right for you, Nampi.
[ First / Previous ]

Cultivating a list of "must-know" things for a successful life before 18 is a noble pursuit, but there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Success can look different for each person depending on their values, goals, and circumstances. However, there are some key areas and skills that can build a strong foundation for navigating life after 18:
Personal skills:

1. Self-awareness: Understanding your strengths, weaknesses, values, and passions.
2. Resilience: Developing coping mechanisms and bouncing back from challenges.
3. Critical thinking: Analyzing information, forming independent opinions, and problem-solving effectively.
4. Effective communication: Expressing yourself clearly, actively listening, and building positive relationships.
5. Time management: Organizing tasks, prioritizing, and meeting deadlines effectively.
6. Financial literacy: Budgeting, saving, understanding debt, and responsible credit use.
7. Healthy habits: Maintaining physical and mental well-being through exercise, good diet, and quality sleep.
8. Emotional intelligence: Recognizing and managing emotions in yourself and others.
9. Adaptability and flexibility: Embracing change and learning new things throughout your life.
10. Empathy and compassion: Understanding and caring about the feelings and experiences of others.

Practical skills:

1. Basic cooking and home maintenance: Learning to cook simple meals and take care of your living space.
2. First aid and CPR: Knowing how to respond to emergencies.
3. Technology skills: Utilizing technology effectively for communication, research, and learning.
4. Driving, car care, and basic bike maintenance: Understanding traffic rules and safe driving practices.
5. Basic sewing and DIY skills: Fixing clothes, mending furniture, and doing simple repairs.
6. Research and information literacy: Evaluating sources and finding reliable information.
7. Public speaking and presenting: Being comfortable speaking in front of others.
8. Networking and interpersonal skills: Building and maintaining relationships with peers and mentors.
9. Time management and organizational skills: Planning and prioritizing effectively.
10. Learning a new language: Expanding your communication abilities and cultural understanding.

Career & Life Planning:

1. Career exploration and goal setting: Understanding your interests and setting realistic career goals.
2. Resume writing and interview skills: Presenting yourself effectively for job opportunities.
3. Researching and applying for colleges or vocational programs: Making informed decisions about your education.
4. Understanding basic legal contracts and documents: Knowing your rights and responsibilities.
5. Civic engagement and voting rights: Participating in your community and understanding the democratic process.
6. Environmental awareness and sustainability: Learning to live responsibly and protect the planet.
7. Digital citizenship and cyber safety: Protecting your online identity and using technology responsibly.
8. Understanding personal rights and responsibilities: Knowing your legal rights and how to advocate for yourself.
9. Building a support network: Identifying and relying on trusted friends, family, and mentors.
10. Volunteering and community service: Giving back to your community and making a difference.

Remember:

• This is not an exhaustive list, and the importance of each item will vary depending on individual circumstances.
• Encourage curiosity and exploration over rote memorization.
• Foster critical thinking and the ability to adapt to changing situations.
• Promote a growth mindset and the willingness to learn from mistakes.
• Emphasize self-discovery and pursuing passions in life.

Ultimately, helping young people develop these skills and cultivate a sense of agency will empower them to build their own definitions of success and navigate life after 18 with confidence and resilience.

Of all American presidents, Lincoln, second, only to maybe Washington, is the most mythologized and deified. And as a result you can sometimes take for granted, like I did, that he’s a human being and that his skill in communication wasn’t something genetic.
But I’m reading Michael Burlingame’s massive two part biography of Lincoln and he gets down in the minute details of Lincoln’s childhood and what you see is Lincoln’s fascination with, in broad terms, language. Over and over again Burlingame talks about his hunger to understand how to communicate. He’d write on anything and everything he could from paper, to wood, to slate. He’d devour any books he could get his hands on and, if he didn’t understand a passage or phrase, he’d keep writing it and re-reading it until he understood. In his own words, he said it would drive him nuts if he couldn’t understand what a book or author was talking about
And learning that made me appreciate what Lincoln did. To my mind at least, this broke white trash kid was basically analyzing the English language and how to use it effectively. He’d break down a piece writing to its most basic elements and analyze the those constituent parts to understand how, why and what the writespeaker was attempting to do and what literary tools they were using to do it.
From that nearly subatomic knowledge, his own experience as a poor man and a generous helping of natural talent came the legendary Lincoln we remember today speaking at Gettysburg. Not a mythic figure but a self made man.

Looking for advice/thoughts on setting up ClickUp to manage both work projects and "life admin." I'm using the Personal Workspace Layout and have no collaborators.
I know that it's helpful to start as simply as possible and add complexity as it becomes actually needed. The thing is, I'm importing a few projects already underway (plus a lot of small tasks of varying value), and want to avoid defaulting to my familiar old systems without assessing whether they're actually working for me, or are a good fit for ClickUp.
Assess my setup and give me feedback on where to go from here! I've included a ton of detail on my current setup below. If it's TL;DR, my more general question is: Tell me how you set up ClickUp to handle both work and life admin projects. How are you using categories, status, priorities, tags, and task types? I'm having trouble figuring out how to use them, especially since there seems to be a lot of potential overlap between them. Or, what advice do you have for migrating to ClickUp with a couple complex projects already underway, plus a lot of small tasks?
For context, here's how I have ClickUp set up right now. It's pretty simple but I'm still not clear whether it's the right approach (and FYI, I'm not wedded to it at all), plus there are still lots of components that don't neatly fit anywhere in my current setup:

• I have ClickUp divided into three spaces: Active Projects (multi-step projects with clear outcomes and/or deliverables), Areas of Focus (task lists divided up by a broader work or life "area"), plus a space I'm ignoring where archived projects and messy old things live..
  • Under Active Projects, I have folders for each class I'll be teaching (and because it's summer, right now they're split into prep work for upcoming classes, and wrap-up for the couple last to-do items left over from the spring).
  • Under Areas of Focus, I tend to keep lists of professional admin and personal life admin tasks that aren't part of a larger project (like paying bills or rent.

Next, there are a few different types of things I'm trying to plan and keep track of. As mentioned, I'm not really sure how I should be thinking about them through the framework of categories, status, priorities, tags, and task types.

• Active projects with a specific, concrete outcome. Mostly these projects are longer-term things, sometimes with several potential paths they could take depending on results of earlier tasks, but other times they're just 1-2wk projects that have lots of little steps I need to keep track of. Some real-life examples on my list right now:
  1. Work: Set up a class I'll be teaching in the fall. I need to do a bunch of prep work for this, some of which is pretty clear (set up course homepage and revise syllabus to include XYZ things; revise grade breakdown using these rules, & implement breakdown in Canvas), and other of which is fairly inchoate (e.g. review these five texts and decide which to teach; find an open-source subject-specific text; refine course structure as needed based on the texts I end up using). Then, there are semi-ongoing tasks that will come into play once I'm actually teaching the class (e.g. prep/review the thing I'll be teaching next week; set up assignments due next week so they're ready to go when the start date rolls around; grade assignments X, Y, Z; a weekly review of the syllabus & update deadlines as needed). Then wrap-up tasks that happen pretty routinely at the end of the semester, and one-off "respond to X's grade query email" type tasks. (Many of these things could be part of a template, but I don't need to cross that bridge yet.) How to organize the giant project of "put together, teach, and wrap up X class"? What's the relationship between the big project full of kinda sequential steps and the small "Answer X email" tasks that I mostly put into a project manager so I don't forget about them?
  2. Work: Various small professional development projects that in the past I've thought of as a series of sequential tasks, e.g. "Apply for X grant" (in this case, small individual artist grants for $1k-$20k, not big, collaboratively-written NSF grants). Under "Apply..." is a list of five different pieces I need to put together, one or two of which will need multiple rounds of refinement, while the rest will be relatively quick and easy. This type of project usually comes together in a couple weeks or less, and typically I'll have several active at once. (I usually have a dozen others on my radar at any given moment, but only decide to apply for 1-2 at any time. I keep up with these deadlines via a Google Sheet and a sticky note on my Mac desktop, and in the past only brought them into a project manager once I'd committed to a specific deadline-driven thing, or if I needed a reminder to check on one that has a deadline that varies annually.)
  3. Personal: Research summer travel possibilities, map out a timeline that fits scheduling constraints and mode of travel (one subtask that's a small project in and of itself: research buying a fiberglass camper shell for truck, & if that makes sense to do we'll drive, otherwise we'll fly or take the train). This is still in the research stage, so there aren't many actual tasks yet, but will be in a month or so.
  4. Avocational: Facilitate a large, slow-moving bylaws revision project for an organization I'm involved with. I'm at the beginning stages of this one, but have a pretty good idea of the different stages of this project and what the path to completion will look like. It'll be a big project once it gets off the ground, but for now it's just in the "assembling ideas" stage.
• Ongoing & one-off tasks with varying priority levels (e.g. things I need to do regularly vs. things I'd like to do regularly but don't necessarily get to).
  • Necessary Tasks like paying rent and bills, which are typically pretty straightforward and non-negotiable. Also things like updating the finances spreadsheet I share with my partner, which ideally happens weekly but which realistically I don't get around to more than once a month if that.
  • One-Off Tasks that start cropping up, especially once the semester is underway (e.g. "Answer X email"). Some of these are essential, others don't need to happen (but should for a smoother semester), and plenty are totally optional but worth doing if I have the time. When I'm bogged down, I don't want to think about those totally optional tasks at all, but when I'm feeling pretty unencumbered, they're worth tending to.
• Other things I can't figure out how to classify/organize:
  • Backburner tasks & projects, both work-related and life admin. (How to label and filter backburner tasks that I need to do "soon" vs. "eventually" vs. "maybe, someday, who even knows"?)
    • Some of these are important but not yet active (e.g. applying for that aforementioned grant, for instance, which I don't need to actively think about until next spring when the deadline approaches, though I do often start drafting/refining materials in advance, so it's nice to have a clear holding place for those).
    • Others are aspirational (for instance, "Organize the garage" is a backburner task that will turn into a full project once I start working on it & actually identifying specific subtasks, e.g. put specific thing on FB Marketplace, or buy a set of storage bins). I'd like to clearly delineate between this sort of thing; I don't need to see "Organize the garage" unless I'm doing a big review of the backburner items once a month or so and moving a handful into active projects/tasks.
  • Mosquito tasks: These tasks should happen "soon" or "eventually," but they're not urgent and if they end up never being completed at all, that's usually nbd. Realistically I might do them in the next couple weeks, but probably not in the next few days. These kinds of tasks are helpful to keep in ClickUp so they stay on my radar (and one benefit of that is that for a task like "Email so-and-so to ask X question," I'll often end up drafting half an initial email in a comment, then forgetting about it for a few weeks and coming back to find that email already half-drafted). Mosquito tasks include:
    • Reminders (to check on an important or not-so-important upcoming professional deadline that hasn't been posted yet, & to keep doing this until that concrete deadline appears, at which point it turns into an actual task; upcoming birthday reminders; to get a book back from someone who'd borrowed it, etc).
    • Personal CRM, my most frequent mosquito task. I've done fieldwork around the world and consider keeping in touch with friends/colleagues/informants from faraway as part of my professional responsibilities (but not urgent whatsoever), so I like to keep these things on my radar without letting them distract me from my active, necessary tasks & projects.
    • Ideas, possibilities, and other inchoate things that ended up in ClickUp when I migrated from Todoist, some of which are basically just notes-to-self, and other of which are smaller tasks/projects that I may someday pick back up, all of which I feel sentimental about and don't want to get rid of even though I'm not going to sort through them regularly. These pretty clearly fall under "backburner" and "maybe, someday, who even knows." (Should I break the "Not Started" status into "Backburner: eventually" and "Backburner: maybe, someday, who knows" to delineate these?) Feel free to ignore this category!
  • A Morning/Evening Routine that should reset every day, regardless of whether I've checked every item off from the previous day. (This is probably the only sort of task I want to reset like this, and honestly it's pretty low-priority.)

Give me advice on how to organize all these things, please! Or just tell me about your ClickUp setup for work and life admin projects! Or give me advice for migrating to ClickUp with a bunch of tasks and a couple complex projects already underway, rather than starting from complete scratch!

This post is very long. This first section, before the first triple-line-break, is the summary. Details follow that.
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SUMMARY
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So, I was very much looking forward to Legendary Tales for a while now after hearing so many great things.
I bought it on sale a couple days ago and played the first hour or so, completing the tutorial and entering the main hub. Then I uninstalled and refunded it.
This is not a 'hate post' and I hope that this post will not only help people understand some of the issues of this game, and what this game is NOT, but also help people understand what this game is and why you might love it. I talked about my criticisms with others who love the game to help me approach this and hopefully deliver some useful thoughts. It's worth noting that I got lots of agreement about my criticisms from the people I talked to - who still love the game.
In short,
People love this game for the combat development in the context of a 40+ hour adventure. All the depth to the skill trees, which of course in my hour I didn't touch. The creativity of building the mechanics of a character RPG style - except you get to physically battle in VR. The reward of unlocking that cool skill you've been excited to try out, or finding a legendary that's a blast to use. Even in my short time with the game I could feel the beginnings of this with the parry system. I did have fun fighting skeletons with a simple sword and no skills, and felt the challenge as I had to aim my sword deflections well and time my counterstrikes. There is an effective mechanic preventing waggle-fest and I can begin to imagine all the room to develop your combat mechanics in a way that is, fun and rewarding, and uniquely VR.
Sounds great right? To some it truly is.
But to me, not so much. Why? Because everything else is lacking to a degree I did not expect.
I've been playing a lot of The Light Brigade lately. And although these two games are totally different, it's a useful game to bring up because The Light Brigade excels in all the ways that Legendary Tales significantly falls short.
Atmosphere - music and sound, lighting and colours, art design, character and enemy models
Interfacing - Onboarding and intuitive learning, UI design and fluidity, control mapping, options, grabbing/interacting with objects, general polish
Storytelling - Plot, lore, world building, characters, character and enemy expressiveness, writing
For many people who play games, combat is at the forefront of their interests. For me, it always takes a backseat priority - if its present at all - to the above three aspects. The combat in Bloodborne is great, but it is because it excels in those 3 aspects that it's one of my favourite games. I also love lengthy games like Pentiment, Disco Elysium, Planescape Torment, and Pathologic 2, which have minimal or no combat and lots of reading!
Legendary Tales is simply mediocre in those three bolded aspects and for me that's a hard pass. If these aspects were serviceable to me - done well enough to facilitate the combat - I might have kept going. But I don't use the world 'mediocre' lightly. This is the appropriate word to me, and because of that, I did not want to spend 40+ hours in this world.
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DETAILS
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For those interested, or for the developers, I will continue with a breakdown of these aspects I am criticizing, trying to go through everything I felt about them in the first hour or so of playing.
Main menu was my favourite part. I liked the scene + music together. Nice. I was looking forward to playing and this had me feeling fuzzy and ready to enjoy the game. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
The very first issue I noticed was that the game felt washed out. Even in that main menu I liked, I was feeling like it was a bit washed out. So I tried adjusting brightness down... then the darker areas felt better, but the light areas felt off. The more I played and tried to adjust to find the right equilibrium, the more I realized the lighting and contrast is just not good and adjusting brightness can't save that.
The second issue I noticed was the menu cursor to select things. It felt like an early VR game that hadn't quite figured out VR menus yet. It's useable but not fluid and pleasing.
The third issue I noticed was the unintuitive controls. I thought that this was the kind of game, kind of like a Souls game, where you aren't taught everything but learn things as you go in an organic manner. Maybe some of that exists in this game, but mostly it's simply bad control design and a bad tutorial. It's the difference between having barriers that have purpose, purposeful friction, and feel good when discovered vs barriers that feel pointless and just build frustration without purpose. The controls feel like a mess and while it's apparent that people can get used to them as they play more, it's not in a justified sense.
Along with this are interfacing issues. For example, grabbing items feels very awkward. The motions are clunky, for example the way a weapon will slowly glide into place in your hands. There's so many interfacing issues. The interface to see weapon/item stats on weapons that are laying about is clunky, the interface to switch weapons is clunky, the magic interface is clunky, dialogue boxes feel clunky,... all of these things feel clunky both in terms of feel and also aesthetic.
A very straightforward and obvious example is dialogue. Character dialogue is presented in a large bland text on a page. To progress through the dialogue, there's no obvious place to click or button to push. In fact, you have to click a particular area of the page, which feels totally arbitrary and unintuitive. Sure, once you learn, you can do it fine, but it's just bad interface design.
To go back to The Light Brigade, think about the difference in both feel and aesthetic to opening a chest or breaking a pot. Grabbing a gun and how it arrives to your hand. The attractive dialogue boxes. Watching a reward pop out of a chest, picking a tarot card. Putting objects into your waist pouch or taking them out. These interactions are all comfortable, beautiful, fluid, and intuitive.
The next thing on my mind was sound.
As I played the tutorial, the soundscape was barren. There was a wind loop, which didn't loop correctly leaving a solid second of space between the end and beginning. Sounds didn't feel like they were placed quite right in 3D space. Point-based sounds (like the crackling of a campfire, that comes from a specific point in space) had too small of a zone (the sound should be heard from further away). In general the soundscape was very barebones. And when I encountered the first character, not only did the character look totally goofy and out of place, but they made no sounds when 'speaking', not even grunts or gibberish sound.
To skip ahead for a moment, I also felt the music did not match the environments enough. The music was quite pretty - that's not the problem. It just didn't feel like the environments were quite synergized with the music.
Again for both music and sound, think of the gun sounds, the ability sounds, the sound of the enemies as they spot you, the sound of the environment, the footsteps and dash, the grunts of characters when the speak, the music... not only does it all sound great, but it all feels like expressions of the unique world of The Light Brigade. This is excellent sound and music design, that truly bring the world to life.
Although a minor complaint, I also noticed lots of grammar and spelling errors. Although I understand the team is in South Korea, and I appreciate the challenges of translation, just like with everything else I was just expecting... more polish. I thought it would feel like a full package, at indie scale. But it feels very much like a partial package.
And that segues into the writing...
There are games with simple and/or unmemorable story, where the story is still servicing and facilitating the gameplay.
And then there is just plain bad writing.
This is very much the latter.
Maybe a bit of this goes back to translation but I am doubtful that it fares much better in original Korean in essence.
The writing is goofy, juvenile, poorly structured, and generic.
I was also seriously turned off by a couple lines in particular, that I'm sure affect me more than most but I will mention anyways. One was something like "valuable gem missing. And a hot girl". Like... There's nothing inherent about calling a woman (or a man) hot that I don't like. Yes gamers, you are allowed to find women attractive, relax. But it's the way its written,... I'm not going to turn this into an essay about male gaze but the way its written simply services a particular male audience that casually objectifies women.
Even worse was the final line I read, a quest line. Paraphrasing, but the primary descriptive words are all exact: "Go kill 10 kill peasants in a refugee camp". I don't think I need to elaborate, people who are on a similar page to me will understand why this was just an incredibly gross line.
I know the above two dialogue criticisms will not be shared by everyone and not affect everyone the same way. I am expressing them as part of what I felt, my personal criticisms and experience, just like the rest of what I'm sharing.
Again to compare to The Light Brigade... every line feels thoughtful and builds character and develops the lore. Whether its the forlorn lines of NPC members of The Light Brigade, or the scenes that appear between runs, and other bits and pieces you get. The Light Brigade develops so much world with few words, it's quite impressive and again a beacon that Urban Wolf Games can learn from.
The final issue I'll discuss was something that struck me earlier on. That is, player character model and lack of customization.
First of all - again an issue that the majority here probably won't be affected by - I could not pick my character model until after completing the tutorial. Specifically, I was forced to do calibration as a male character model, and then had to play the tutorial as this character. Minor complaint but again just another polish issue.
Both male and female models are just... boring designs, and the female model is again very juvenile, obviously serving a primarily male audience, whether intentionally or not.
But more importantly, there's no character customization. Not even the tiniest bit. Even the ability to change just skin colour and hair only would go a long way. Especially in a lengthy adventure like this, I need to be able to identify with my character. Especially with multiplayer it seems essential to me, but even if it were single player, and as someone who plays primarily in single player, character customization is hugely impactful to me.
This does not really have a contrast in The Light Brigade - there's no character customization in The Light Brigade either, although the kind of game it is, it's not as relevant. That said, I do think it would be a nice touch if there WAS some minor character customization in The Light Brigade, and especially if you could play as a woman instead of man if you so choose. Although maybe lore-wise it is intended that all members are male except for 'Mother'. This hasn't been established with any good reason though. So on this point I would lightly criticize The Light Brigade as well.
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ENDING THOUGHTS
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Ultimately, Legendary Tales is quite simply a very indie game that probably had a very small team and limited funds. I don't know for sure, but probably there *wasn't* a dedicated writer, a dedicated UI and interface designer, etc.
However, these things are still failings of the game and its design. The greatest indie games to me are ones that successfully recognize their scope limitations and develop something complete within that scope. Whether it's the roguelike world of The Light Brigade, or the very short and stylish Tiger Blade, or Jeff Minter's trippy games like Akka Arrh and Polybius, or the retro Silent Hill aesthetic of Organ Quarter, or the suspenseful hotel of Propagation Paradise Hotel... all these games are made by small teams but successfully navigate their limited funds to deliver a full package within an appropriately limited scope.
On the one hand, I really value and support BJ's push for indie games to be respected and for that respect to reflect in the price consumers are prepared to pay. But after being totally on board with the price of Legendary Tales based on what I read from BJ and reviewers and many regular players too, I have to disagree with this game's pricing. This game is not polished enough, and is not a full package. That the game sucked out so much funds is an error of scope.
Maybe I will be in the minority, and Legendary Tales has been a success so it seems that I am, and so good on them for knowing the value of their game to the demographic they targeted I guess. And regardless, even if the pricing and attempted scope of the game are an error on the dev's part, I'm glad for the dev to earn back as much as they can, or even turn a profit hopefully.
But to me, reflecting back to the question the devs put forward: "Do you want to see deep combat development like this in VR for a 40+ hour adventure from indie devs?" The answer is no, I don't. I do consider the scope of this game an error on the part of the developers. It sounds like they did not even turn a profit enough to allow them to expand their team (but maybe I'm misunderstanding). I hope that they do continue with VR development, but instead focus on a much smaller scope game. Deliver a polished, complete package within a smaller scope, implementing a much tighter budget that will allow for potential turning of profit with an appropriately lighter sale price (maybe targeting a $30 game?).
If that is successful, do it again, and again, until they can expand and eventually work toward their dream adventure RPG, hiring actual writers and UI designers and sound designers etc. For me personally, this is simply not the kind of game you can half-bake. It should be attempted again when, and only when, they feel they have budget to do this in a truly full and polished manner.
I had the pleasure of meeting BJ briefly at PAX East. He struck me as friendly, kind, totally genuine, and incredibly passionate as a game developer and a VR game developer in particular.
I do wish this team good luck and despite my own harsh criticism I am glad so many ARE enjoying this game, and also feel the price point is justified. I want devs to earn money, including Urban Wolf Games. And I hope that they will continue to develop and bring more VR to the world.
I hope that my criticism is constructive and useful toward these same goals.

Proclamation on the Devourer of Widow's Houses
(One Former Adherent's Response to the Official LDS Temple Recommend Questions [See Infra.] for Evaluating Member Worthiness)
Introduction (Questions 1-3): Moral and ethical frameworks should be grounded in reason, evidence, and concern for human wellbeing rather than supernatural doctrines. A divine savior is an unnecessary concept, being a man-made construct rather than a requirement for moral and ethical living. The LDS church's assertion that it alone represents the "restoration" of true Christianity is an egregious example of religious arrogance and exclusion. There is no reasonable justification or straight-faced argument for the church to view itself as the sole bearer of divine truth, while dismissing the validity of all other Christian denominations. This stance is antithetical to the inclusive spirit of the Christian faith.
Subjugation (4a-c): The LDS church's veneration of its president and other leaders as "prophets, seers, and revelators" is nothing short of a cult of personality. These individuals have no more claim to divine authority than the leaders of any other organized religious institution, sect, or denomination. To demand unquestioning obedience to such figures is a gross abuse of power that undermines the fundamental principles of Christianity, freedom of thought, and conscience. The subjugation of fellow humans is wrong. Humanity deserves to live fearlessly free from imagined supernatural horrors, fears, and violent delights.
Sexual Control (and Trade) (5a-b): The LDS church's stringent moral code and "law of chastity" are not rooted in any universal ethical framework, but rather in arbitrary Puritan religious traditions that were hypocritically twisted in unconventional directions under the guise of freedom of religion. Reason, empathy, and a commitment to human wellbeing - not rigid, outdated strictures of a hypocritical sect - remain the best way to engage with one's neighbors and fellow human beings.
Loyalty Tests to Identify Disloyalty and Lack of Devotion (6-8): The LDS church's insistence that its members conform to a specific set of religious practices, from Sabbath observance to sacrament participation, is a clear example of religious coercion. There is no inherent moral or ethical imperative for individuals to submit to such demands, which have more to do with maintaining the church's power and influence than with upholding genuine Christian values.
Further Financial and Behavioral Tests (9-16):
A. Financial Requirements ("Tithing"): The LDS church's demand for members to be "full-tithe payers," paying 10% of their income to the church, is a far more stringent and intrusive financial obligation than what is typically seen in mainstream Christianity and Judaism. Most Judeo-Christian denominations do not conduct such invasive "worthiness" interviews delving into members' personal finances.
Moreover, many religious institutions, regardless of ideology, offer entry to their sacred spaces either freely or for a modest, fixed cost accessible to all. This is in stark contrast to the LDS church's model, which uses financial tithing as a gatekeeper to determine who is "worthy" enough to enter their temples.
This financial prerequisite for temple access is not only more extreme than most Judeo-Christian traditions, but it also represents a troubling prioritization of monetary contributions over genuine spiritual devotion or ethical conduct. The LDS church's fixation on tithing as a measure of worthiness is a clear deviation from the teachings of Jesus, who decried the hypocrisy of religious leaders who "devour widows' houses."
Furthermore, the LDS church's intrusive questioning about members' personal financial obligations and debts is a gross violation of privacy and an unwarranted overreach into individuals' private affairs. There is no legitimate ethical or spiritual justification for the church to demand such detailed financial disclosures as a condition of accessing its temples.
B. Clothing Requirements ("Garments"): The LDS church's mandate that members wear specific "temple garments" as a condition of temple access is far more restrictive and intrusive than the clothing norms of ordinary Christian denominations. This requirement, which dictates the most intimate details of members' attire, is more akin to the dogmatic dress codes found in the strictest, most authoritarian forms of religious observance, such as certain Islamic fundamentalist sects.
In contrast, mainstream Christian traditions place no such prescriptive demands on adherents' undergarments or personal clothing choices beyond general principles of modesty. The LDS church's insistence on this garment policy as a measure of "worthiness" represents an unwarranted intrusion into the personal autonomy of its members, departing significantly from the inclusive spirit exemplified by the teachings of Jesus and the broader Christian faith.
Conclusion: The LDS church's temple recommend questions reveal dangerously misguided and arrogant flaws of theology and practice. By imposing a narrow, exclusionary set of beliefs and requirements, the church strayed far from the inclusive, compassionate spirit of the Christian tradition it claims to represent. The LDS church's interpretation of Christianity is anti-Christian, erroneous, and unjustifiably and arbitrarily restrictive.
The church is not honest in its dealings with its fellow man or even its own membership.
The Devourer of Widow's Houses (aka The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), itself, is unworthy to enter the so-called sacred spaces built with the resources of its former adherents' ancestors. The LDS church should start putting people over profits.
--- Here, below, are the LDS temple recommend questions (some are compound so listed here with ignored official version of formatting):
(1-3) Do you have faith in and a testimony of God, the Eternal Father; His Son, Jesus Christ; and the Holy Ghost? Do you have a testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and of His role as your Savior and Redeemer?Do you have a testimony of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
(4a-c) Do you sustain the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the prophet, seer, and revelator and as the only person on the earth authorized to exercise all priesthood keys?Do you sustain the members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators? Do you sustain the other General Authorities and local leaders of the Church?
(5a-b) Do you strive for moral cleanliness in your thoughts and behavior? Do you obey the law of chastity?
(6-8) Do you follow the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ in your private and public behavior with members of your family and others? Do you support or promote any teachings, practices, or doctrine contrary to those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?Do you strive to keep the Sabbath day holy, both at home and at church; attend your meetings; prepare for and worthily partake of the sacrament; and live your life in harmony with the laws and commandments of the gospel?
(9 - 16)
Do you strive to be honest in all that you do?
Are you a full-tithe payer?
Do you understand and obey the Word of Wisdom?
Do you have any financial or other obligations to a former spouse or to children? 12B. If yes, are you current in meeting those obligations?
Do you keep the covenants that you made in the temple?
Do you honor your sacred privilege to wear the garment as instructed in the initiatory ordinances?
Are there serious sins in your life that need to be resolved with priesthood authorities as part of your repentance?
Do you consider yourself worthy to enter the Lord's house and participate in temple ordinances?
TLDR: It's not THE worst predatory evil to preach to widows under color of supernatural authority that they must "pay to play" to ever see their late spouse again (during their most difficult times of grief), but it's probably in the top ten.
The LDS church's temple recommend questions reveal its theology and practices to be anti-Christian, excessively dogmatic, and unjustifiably exclusionary. The church's rigid requirements around beliefs, behavior, finances, and attire depart significantly from the inclusive spirit of mainstream Christianity, rendering the LDS institution anti-Christian. The L.D.S. theology offers its membership, and their children, a poison chalice. My dead adherent ancestors would be rolling in their graves at how The Devourer of Widow's houses has been misbehavin'. [Although my less recent 500 year dead British ancestors would be much less surprised] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-znj7Uf9Oo&t=4s

EXT. CAMELOT - CASTLE DAY
(The castle of Camelot stands over grassy hills and crystal clear rolling rivers and seas. Gray clouds cover the sky and hundreds of soldiers and knights can be seen riding toward the castle. Text appears on the screen reading “CAMELOT” and then “CENTURIES AGO”.)
INT. CASTLE - THRONE ROOM - DAY
(MORGANA LE FAY (Centuries-Old), a beautiful middle aged appearing woman with sharp features and long flowing black hair, sits on the throne and holds Excalibur, the Crown of Camelot sits upon her head. Knights and soldiers march in linear motions through the hall. DEWIN (30s), a scruffily charming magician, enters in handcuffs, with guards behind him. Dewin marches up and presents himself to Morgana. Everyone in the room halts.)
MORGANA: State your name.
DEWIN: You know my name, Morgana.
MORGANA: State your name.
DEWIN: Dewinson of Merlin.
MORGANA: You are being tried with treason and conspiracy against the crown. Do you plead guilty to these crimes?
DEWIN: That depends.
MORGANA: On what?
DEWIN: Who you consider the crown to be.
(Dewin slips his handcuffs off and as he does three Blue Jays come flying out of his sleeve and begin to fly around the room.)
MORGANA: Enough foolishness. I find you guilty of the accusations placed upon you.
DEWIN: Then kill me.
MORGANA: Hm?
DEWIN: Let’s skip past the chatter and get my head on a platter. You see what I did there? Chatter platter.
MORGANA: Silence! Death is far too good for you.
DEWIN: Do your worst, no matter what Camelot will fall.
MORGANA: Is that a threat?
DEWIN: A threat would be something I plan on doing to you myself, the fall of Camelot, well that will be purely your doing.
(Morgana gets off the throne and draws a glowing circle around Dewin with Excalibur, as she does so Dewin lets out a small laugh.)
DEWIN: Binding me? My imprisonment shall not halter the winds of time.
MORGANA: I banish you.
DEWIN: What?
MORGANA: From this plane of time and place I banish you.
DEWIN: Not even you have the power to do that. Banishment spells have been hidden away for ages.
MORGANA: Hidden away in scrolls buried in this very castle. Dilflannu o’r awyren hon.
DEWIN: No.
MORGANA: Dilflannu o’r amser hwn.
DEWIN: No, no, stop.
MORGANA: Dilflannu o’r meddwl. Rwy’n eich gwahardd!
(Morgana’s eyes turn purple and electricity sparks all around Dewin and seems to be sucking the energy out of him.)
EXT. LONDON - FOREST - DAY
(A plain and put together autumnal forest. Text appears over the screen reading “LONDON” and then “EIGHTEEN EIGHTY FIVE”. Electricity sparks and Dewin appears in the forest dazed and confused. He is covered in scars and almost immediately passes out face forward into the ground.)
EXT. LONDON - FOREST - DAY
(As night begins to dawn Dewin is still incapacitated. A carriage led by a horse named, Sally, comes through the forest and halts at Dewin. ALDEN SMITH (Early 40s), a plump and posh man with a defining bushy mustache, cautiously hops out of the carriage. Alden looks around for a moment before spotting Dewin. Alden approaches Dewin and checks his pulse through his arm. Alden’s eyes linger on Dewin for a moment before looking up.)
ALDEN: Hello!? Is anybody there!?
(Alden waits for a moment before looking back down at Dewin. Alden sighs and then lifts Dewin up and into the carriage before hopping in himself. Alden pulls on the horse’s reins and it begins to march forward.)
EXT. LONDON - WICING DRIVE - NIGHT
(Alden drives his carriage down Wicing Drive and parks in front of a townhome, Twenty Six Wicing Drive. Alden gets out of the carriage, carrying Dewin, and walks up the steps. MINERVA SMITH (Early 40s), a stern yet radiant woman, opens the door in shock.)
ALDEN: It’s a long story.
INT. TWENTY SIX WICING DRIVE - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
(A stereotypical Victorian living room made primarily of oak and illuminated by two small oil lamps and a burning fireplace. Dewin is still incapacitated and lies on the table covered in bandages, Alden and Minerva hover over him. Bottles of ointment sit next to Dewin.)
MINERVA: What were you doing in the woods?
ALDEN: It’s the fastest cut home.
MINERVA: And you just-
(Minerva is interrupted by Dewin’s sighing as he wakes up.)
DEWIN: Ah! Where am I? Who are you?
MINERVA: My name is Minnie, and this is my husband, Alden.
DEWIN: What’s happening?
ALDEN: I found you all bruised in the middle of the forest. Do you know what happened to you?
DEWIN: Morgana le Fay banished me.
(Alden and Minerva glance at each other.)
MINERVA: Oh lord, I think you're a bit confused.
DEWIN: I am not confused. I am Dewin, son of Merlin. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask if you could take me to a sage or healer?
MINERVA: Of course, Alden can take you tomorrow morning, but for the night you can stay here.
DEWIN: Why, thank you.
ALDEN: Minnie, may I speak to you in the other room?
MINERVA: Of course.
(Alden and Minerva step into the kitchen.)
INT. TWENTY SIX WICING DRIVE - KITCHEN - NIGHT
ALDEN: We can not keep this man in our home. He is mentally insane.
MINERVA: Which means we must watch over him.
ALDEN: I am looking out for our safety.
MINERVA: And where would we take him?
ALDEN: I don’t know. He is as mad as the Doeth man!
MINERVA: Then that’s where we’ll take him.
ALDEN: Stick to nuts together?
MINERVA: The man has some common sense and he’s very compassionate.
ALDEN: Perfect.
EXT. LONDON - ALDRICH’S HOUSE - NIGHT
(Alden and Minerva Dewin sit in their carriage with Dewin outside of a small house that is slightly separated from the other homes on the street.)
DEWIN: So this is the home of a healer?
ALDEN: According to him. I will go to the door alone, I do not want to scare him.
(Alden gets out of the carriage and starts heading towards the home.)
MINERVA: So you really do believe that you are the son of Merlin.
DEWIN: I know who my father was. Why is this such a puzzle for you and your husband to wrap your heads around?
MINERVA: Why I’ve only heard stories of Camelot, myths of ancient pasts.
DEWIN: So Morgana not only shifted my place but also the time.
(Alden knocks on the home's door and is greeted by ALDRICH DOETH (Hundreds Of Years Old), an older looking man with crystals strapped around his neck.)
ALDRICH: Doctor Smith, have they finally sent someone to take me away to a nuthouse?
ALDEN: On the exact contrary, I’ve found a wounded man who claims to have been sent here by Morgana le Fay.
ALDRICH: That’s what the shift was!
ALDEN: What? You know what it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re willing to take this man.
ALDRICH: Yes, yes, bring him to me.
ALDEN: Minerva, send him up!
(Dewin comes up to the door.)
DEWIN: Hello.
ALDRICH: My goodness, the energy pulsates off of you.
DEWIN (TO ALDEN): This is the healer?
ALDEN: Yes. Now if you two don’t mind I think I will be headed back on my way.
ALDRICH: Are you sure, Doctor? It’s getting rather late, you and your wife are welcome to stay here.
ALDEN: Thank you, but there’s no need.
(Rain starts pouring out of the sky out of nowhere and thunder and lighting begin.)
ALDRICH: What about now, Doctor?
ALDEN: Minnie! We’re staying here tonight!
INT. ALDRICH’S HOUSE - LIVING SPACE - DAY
(A cluttered mess of books, candles, and potions. Aldrich, Alden, Minerva, and Dewin sit on Aldrich’s circular array of couches and chairs.)
ALDRICH: Before we dive in I suggest you go wash off, Dewin. The washroom is that small one to your left.
DEWIN: Thank you, Aldrich.
(Dewin gets up and goes into the washroom.)
ALDRICH: I know what you two think of me, the neighborhood’s resident crazy.
MINERVA: Not at all, Mister Doeth.
ALDRICH: Don’t lie, Minerva, our actions all come back to bite us.
ALDEN: So we think you're mental, what of it?
ALDRICH: There are dark forces amongst us, Mister and Misses Smith. I believe that Dewin is here to save us.
ALDEN: I appreciate you letting us stay here, but I think it’s time we leave.
ALDRICH: I will change this storm into an earthquake to keep you here if I must.
ALDEN: Come on, Minnie.
(Alden and Minerva get up and go to leave when the whole room begins to shake.)
ALDEN: What’s happening!?
ALDRICH: I warned you.
(Aldrich makes silencing symbols with his hands and the storm and the shaking stops.)
ALDRICH: Now will you listen to me?
(Alden and Minerva both sit back down.)
ALDEN: What are you?
AlDRICH: A magician, a clairvoyant, a healer, I am all of those things and more.
ALDEN: Why do you want us here so badly?
ALDRICH: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you are the one who found Dewin, Doctor Smith. He needs a guide in this vast new world. Prophecy states that when the second coming of the Camelot war comes, the savior will have a protector.
ALDEN: And why me?
ALDRICH: There are questions that only we can answer ourselves.
(Dewin comes out of the washroom and sits back down.)
ALDRICH: Dewin, please tell me exactly how you arrived here.
DEWIN: Morgana le Fay used an ancient banishing spell on me.
ALDRICH: The fall of Camelot.
(Suddenly a wind sweeps through the room that blows out all the candles.)
MINERVA: Mister Doeth, are you doing this?
ALDRICH: No.
(A match is lit in the center of the room to reveal GWENWYN LIGHTWOOD (Centuries-Old), a green draconic humanoid woman in black robes and a hood.)
GWENWYN: Aldrich.
ALDRICH: Lady Lightwood.
GWENWYN: I’ve tracked a shift in magic to your home.
ALDRICH: It is this boy, he was banished here from Camelot.
(Gwenwyn goes up to Dewin and takes her hood off to reveal her scaly appearance. Alden gasps in disbelief. Gwenwyn runs her finger down Dewin’s cheek.)
GWENWYN (TO ALDRICH): Hm. I presume you wish to let him roam freely?
ALDRICH: With guidance, yes.
GWENWYN: If one thing goes wrong you will be punished.
ALDRICH: I know.
DEWIN (TO GWENWYN): Who are you?
GWENWYN: The last of the dragons. Just as Aldrich is the last descendent of the Family Merlin.
DEWIN (TO ALDRICH): You're a descendant of my father?
ALDRICH: Of his sister, I have many of her poems and spell tombs still intact here.
GWENWYN: Magic is rare these days, endangered, most people don’t even know it exists. So are we under agreement on the boy, Aldrich?
ALDRICH: Yes, but something is still troubling. If you and I both felt Dewin’s presence then-
GWENWYN: Benjamin did too.
DEWIN: Who is Benjamin?
ALDRICH: A descendant of Morgana who wishes to rule the earth under her ideals.
GWENWYN: A very very dangerous man who will certainly kill me if he finds me here.
(Gwenwyn’s match extinguishes and after a moment the candles all reignite but Gwenwyn is gone.)
ALDEN: By Jove!
ALDRICH: So do you all accept this challenge?
DEWIN: What challenge?
ALDRICH: Defeating Benjamin Fayle.
DEWIN: Of course!
ALDEN: Absolutely not.
ALDRICH: Are you that repulsed by compassion?
ALDEN: I can’t risk Minerva of I’s life on what could all be me hallucinating.
ALDRICH: You're risking the world for a craven excuse.
ALDEN: Goodbye.
(Alden gets up.)
ALDEN: Let’s leave, Minnie.
MINERVA: Thank you for your hospitality, Mister Doeth, and good luck.
(Alden leaves, followed by Minerva.)
EXT. LONDON - ALDRICH’S HOUSE - NIGHT
(Alden and Minerva ride through the street in their carriage.)
MINERVA: We were definitely drugged.
ALDEN: Absolutely.
EXT. LONDON - WICING DRIVE - NIGHT
(Alden and Minerva hop out of their carriage.)
ALDEN: I’m going to bring Sally back to the stables.
MINERVA: Goodnight, love you.
ALDEN: I love you most.
(Minerva goes up and enters Twenty Six Wicing Drive as Alden detaches Sally from the carriage and begins to guide her down the cobbled sidewalk with one of his hands on her reins.)
EXT. LONDON - FOREST - NIGHT
(Alden guides Sally through the forest to a set of stables. Sally suddenly rears up and neighs in terror.)
ALDEN: What is it Sally?
(Sally suddenly breaks off her reins and runs towards the stables. A figure in a dark purple hood and robe sweeps past Alden and their eyes glow purple. Alden screams.)
INT. TWENTY SIX WICING DRIVE - BEDROOM- DAY
(Alden and Minerva lay next to each other asleep in bed. Alden wakes up screaming which awakens Minerva.)
MINERVA: What’s the matter?
ALDEN: Just a night terror.
MINERVA: We did the right thing with Dewin, he’s with someone like him now.
ALDEN: Is that really a good thing? I think I’m going to go to the pub.
MINERVA: This early in the morning?
ALDEN: I need to clear my head after yesterday.
INT. GRIFFIN’S TAIL PUB - DAY
(A traditional Victorian pub. Dewin sits at the bar and is served by BRYNN CROWING (Early 30s), a charming bartender.)
BRYNN: What can I get you, Mate?
DEWIN: Just a pint of mead, please.
(Brynn goes and pours Dewin a pint of mead that she brings back to him and he begins drinking.)
BRYNN: I like your outfit, it’s very medieval.
DEWIN: It was made by the tailor of Sir Gawain.
(Brynn gives a light chuckle.)
BRYNN: What’s your name?
DEWIN: Dewin, and yours?
BRYNN: Brynn.
(Alden enters and sees Dewin. Alden leaves, but as he does he spots another person in a dark purple robe and hood with glowing purple eyes.)
DEWIN: You're very beautiful.
BRYNN: Why, thank you.
DEWIN: Would you like to go for a stroll?
BRYNN: My shift here doesn’t end till six.
DEWIN: Then I’ll see you then.
BRYNN: I guess you will.
(Dewin finishes his mead and drops two silver coins with dragons etched into them on the bar before swiftly leaving. Brynn picks up the coins and looks at them with confusion and yearning.)
EXT. LONDON - ALDRICH’S HOUSE - DAY
(Alden knocks on the door and Aldrich opens it.)
ALDRICH: I’ve been expecting you, come in.
(Alden follows Aldrich into the home.)
INT. - ALDRICH’S HOUSE - LIVING SPACE - DAY
(Alden and Aldrich sit across from each other.)
ALDRICH: Can I offer you some tea?
ALDEN: No thank you, I want to be in the clearest state of mind possible here.
ALDRICH: So what ignited your appearance here?
ALDEN: I’ve been seeing these people.
ALDRICH: Who are “these people”?
ALDEN: They wear these dark robes and their eyes glow purple.
ALDRICH: Faley’s society.
ALDEN: What?
ALDRICH: Benjamin Faley, the evil man I mentioned last night. Is this what caused you to believe?
ALDEN: What are you saying?
ALDRICH: That you believe in magic.
ALDEN: You're mad.
ALDRICH: Exactly, so the fact that you came to me shows that there’s at least one lingering thought in your mind that magic is reality and reality is magic.
(There’s a moment of silence between Alden and Aldrich.)
ALDRICH: Where have you been seeing the people you mentioned?
ALDEN: Everywhere that Dewin has been.
ALDRICH: Oh no, oh no, no, no.
ALDEN: What is it?
ALDRICH: Dewin is going out with a woman tonight.
ALDEN: Already? He’s only been here for a day.
ALDRICH: He's charming but also so foolish. You must watch them, in case Faley strikes or even worse this woman is working for him.
ALDEN: What could I even do to stop that?
ALDRICH: You are destined to protect Dewin, and at this point your logic for denying all of this is purely irrational. You're not hesitating because you think it’s not real, you're hesitating because you know it is. He is meeting her at six outside of the “Griffin’s Tail”.
ALDEN: I’m not going.
ALDRICH: We both know that you will.
ALDEN: Farewell, Mister Doeth.
ALDRICH: May the spirit of Merlin be with you, Doctor Smith.
(Alden gets up and leaves.)
EXT. LONDON - GRIFFIN’S TAIL PUB - NIGHT
(Dewin stands outside of the pub when Brynn comes out of the side door and walks towards him.)
BRYNN: I wasn’t expecting you to show.
DEWIN: Why wouldn’t I?
BRYNN: Most men flirt and then leave, half of them are married.
DEWIN: They are not true gentlemen then.
BRYNN: I suppose not.
DEWIN: Shall we begin walking?
BRYNN: Sure.
EXT. LONDON - STREETS - NIGHT
(Dewin and Brynn stroll down the streets of London. Alden follows them from a distance.)
DEWIN: This world is so beautiful.
BRYNN: Compared to all the other worlds you’ve been to?
DEWIN: Well Camelot obviously has a better scenic view.
BRYNN: Camelot?
DEWIN: My home land.
BRYNN: You're full of jokes.
DEWIN: I’m not joking.
BRYNN: What?
(Suddenly someone grabs Brynn into an alleyway and she screams. Dewin quickly turns to see no one beside him and runs after her, followed by Alden.)
EXT. LONDON - ROOFTOP - NIGHT
(The clear skies suddenly turn gray and ominous as Dewin arrives on the roof of a building to see three people with glowing purple eyes in the dark purple robes and hoods with one standing in the center holding Brynn with a dagger to her neck. Alden arrives on the rooftop.)
ALDEN: Bloody hell!
DEWIN: Let go of her!
(The three people take off their hoods and their eyes go to normal shades. The person holding Brynn is revealed to be DABRIA (30s), a menacing looking woman.)
DABRIA: Dim mynd i mewn dim dianc.
(A purple hazy force field appears around the edges of the rooftop.)
DABRIA: So you are the one sent to stop us.
DEWIN: What do you connote?
DABRIA: We are the Citadel of le Fay.
DEWIN: Oh no.
DABRIA: Who are you?
DEWIN: My name is Dewin, I am the son of Merlin, and I demand that you let Brynn go.
DABRIA: Why? Is she your protector?
BRYNN: Dewin, what are they talking about!?
(Dewin starts to move his hands around and a wispy blue energy begins to come out of them.)
DABRIA: Get him!
(The two other people with Dabria rush towards Dewin to attack him, but he uses the energy he created to push them around and drop them both to the ground. Dabria drops Brynn and her dagger and Alden rushes to pick up the dagger and succeeds.)
DABRIA: You are foolish, Dewin.
(Dabria pulls a gun out of her robes and shoots it at Dewin but he turns the bullet into a flower. Dabria shoots more but each time Dewin does the same thing until Dabria is out of bullets. Alden sneaks up behind Dabria and stabs her in the back. Dabria shrieks in pain and then disappears in a cloud of black smoke. Brynn gets up off of the ground.)
BRYNN: What the hell just happened?
DEWIN: Are you okay?
BRYNN: Not mentally. What in the world is going on here? How did you turn bullets into flowers!?
DEWIN: I told you I’m from Camelot.
(Alden drops the dagger.)
ALDEN: Did I just kill that woman?
DEWIN: Most likely not, you didn’t stab deep enough to hit any organs.
BRYNN: What do we do now?
DEWIN: Go home and call it a night.
BRYNN: I can’t forget about this.
DEWIN: I’m not asking you to.
ALDEN: If any of us speak of this people think we’re insane.
DEWIN: Then don’t speak of it.
BRYNN: Will I see you again, Dewin?
DEWIN: Did you enjoy tonight?
BRYNN: I was almost killed.
DEWIN: That doesn’t answer my question.
BRYNN: Meet at the pub on Friday after my shift.
INT. TWENTY SIX WICING DRIVE - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
(Alden and Minerva lay next to each other.)
MINERVA: Do you think the Citadel will return?
ALDEN: Unequivocally.
MINERVA: What have we gotten into?
INT. BENJAMIN’S LAIR - NIGHT
(A cavern full of crystals and magical runes. BENJAMIN FALEY (30s or 40s), an attractive but uptight looking man, sits on his throne. Dabria enters and walks to face the throne, she bows and then gets back up.)
BENJAMIN: Did you find him?
DABRIA: Yes, Master Faley.
BENJAMIN: And did you find his protector?
DABRIA: Yes, but it’s not the girl.
BENJAMIN: Then who?
DABRIA: A Doctor Alden Smith.
BENJAMIN: Did you kill the doctor?
DABRIA: He deeply wounded me.
BENJAMIN: Then the battle goes on.
DABRIA: For Morgana.
BENJAMIN: For Morgana.
INT. ALDRICH’S HOUSE - LIVING SPACE - NIGHT
(Aldrich and Dewin sit across from each other drinking tea.)
ALDRICH: There are many things in this world, Dewin…
INT. GWENWYN’S CAVE - NIGHT
(Gwenwyn stands in the middle of a circle of candles. She stretches out her hands and forms magic blue charts and graphs with a picture of Dewin.)
ALDRICH (VOICE OVER): Forces we can’t explain…
EXT. LONDON - ALLEYWAY- NIGHT
(Brynn wears only her undergarments and takes a few coins from a man.)
ALDRICH (VOICE OVER): Secrets we hide…
INT. BENJAMIN’S LAIR - NIGHT
(Benjamin sits on his throne.)
ALDRICH (VOICE OVER): And villains we must defeat.
INT. ALDRICH’S HOUSE - LIVING SPACE - NIGHT
ALDRICH: You are the key to this all, Dewin, you are the son of Merlin.

There's a lot of people who already had many or at least some more successful videos but now struggle to get a fair amount of views. As a creator myself, with almost 10M followers on tiktok via my main channel googlemapsfun, I frequently experience ups- and downs in my views. Especially because I have a theme-related page and not a personal prominence, my views depend a lot on the individual quality of my videos. However, I have always managed to go viral again regardless of what people have been saying.
So first, let's identify the potential causes of unusually low views:
The causes & individual solutions
I don't want to be one of those "prolly your content sucks" people, even though it might by true for many people, but a lot of times it's something different. And secondly, sometimes content seems bad for some people, but a sekect few might love it. If the videos have low views because of this, let's just say your niche is too small and the videos are just not a fit for a wider mass.
Besides, I believe we shouldn't just compare a person who genuinely doesn't have the ability to create engaging content with someone who just uses outdated trends for examples. So there have to be some nuances to it. However, in 99% of cases where tiktok isn't actively supressing your views, in some way or the other, your content strategy has to be changed. But in order to know what to do, figure out which of the following causes fits to you most:
Option 1: Your content has not gotten better or worse, but your target group has moved on, as you failed to gain a personal connection to them or advance your content to stay ahead of your competition. They have enjoyed your content in the past, but now it has lost relevance and interest, as they tend to watch other content that is more fresh. Perhaps they have even forgotten why they followed you at all in the first place, especially if you are a one hit wonder. Think about where they might have moved on to, and how to stay relevant for them. Can the content you are posting right now be a long term theme? There is also a possibility that you have a very weird target group that does not exist in its current form anymore, for example if you provided an entertaining video to a news topic that is not relevant anymore. Then, you are more or less at the same point you were before having success at all.
Option 2: Your target group is somewhere else, but they are just sick of your content. Maybe you used the same trend or content style for a longer time, and failed to notice that the sound you used is slightly overused, your videos become repetitive and new trends arise that you failed to notice. There is also a possibility that your competition just got ahead of you, while your videos are just as good as ever. But if you have consistently managed to gain success with a clear video structure, there is always a potential for a similar format to work again, in case you manage to identify the fundamental and distinctive aspects of it. In the meantime, try a few new content formats while you try to improve your existing video format and modernize it, maybe bring some new trends and fresh ideas into it. A lot of times, your old formats will work again in some way or another, and only in some cases you will really need to change your content fully.
Option 3: You are blind to the reasons that made you go viral. Maybe, you do not know your niche or target group. And interesting enough, your target group is still there and maybe even interested in your videos - if you just knew what is the Factor X that made them like your videos, that made a wider mass like your videos and not only a small niche. Maybe you are trying to hard and lost your authenticy on the way - there is a lot of possible further reasons. It takes skill to find out the important aspects in your video formats. Only good analysis skills, as well as trial and error will get you to that point. So keep trying and improving your content! Some might have been experiencing more views in their first videos ever posted, but then fell off. This is very common however, as tiktok tests your videos more in the beginning to find out which is your best target group.
Of course, you can always give tiktok the fault for knowingly restricting your account or something, but I would never expect that. I hoped this helped you, but at the same time I couldn't really get very specific here as there are a lot of different cases.
If you need individual 1:1 advice, feel free to DM me. Else, leave a comment especially if you think I forgot some causes. AMA in the comments aswell! Hope you'all have a nice day :)