The finale finally aired.
And by God was it disappointing.
From the get-go of this chapter, nothing felt right or earned. Including the title.
"You're Welcome."
Now, it does play into the later part of this chapter and whatnot, but I just want to preface that even without context, no. No I will not be thanking Rachel for this chapter. I will not thank her for allowing this story to fall so poorly, especially during the finale where her fans deserved a better ending regardless of what I or others may think of the story as a whole. They deserved better. The people who stuck with her for 8+ years when LO was still on Canvas deserved better.
They deserved better than being told "You're welcome" for a chapter that felt utterly thankless in it's rushed conclusion and fraying plot threads.
Anyways, to sum it up before getting into the grit and grime, this entire finale could be described as one giant TLDR. And a very incoherent one at that. Parts were scattered about and so, so many plot points were left to be wrapped up in the most disappointing narration over a party ever.
But, to truly grasp this chapter, let's start from the beginning.
☆Spoilers ahead for those who havent read yet and be prepared to get comfy with food and a drink cause this thing is LONG☆
Starting off, we get the return of Gaia. Aaaand not even 5 panels in and she already offs Ouranos like it's nothing. The supposed puppet master and big bad of the series and he's dead in record time. Perhaps I should feel more regarding this moment of a woman finally breaking free of her eternal entrapment due to her selfish lover, but I really can't when there was no rhyme or reason to the dialog as Gaia hole punches him and rips out a yokeified Apollo while walking away with Ouranos' hula hoop.
What happens to Ouranos? Psh, heck if we know. We have to cut to dropping off Apollo and looking for Persephone. Why? To "set things right."
Only we don't see what that means because now, we're jumping ahead 3 WHOLE MONTHS just to see a depressed Hades going about a morning routine. Why? Again, heck if we know. We have to watch Hecate and Hades play console a friend telephone and be completely ambiguous over the situation. Hades then finishes getting ready before he makes a trip to the mortal realm with Cerberus in tow.
Only to then CUT RIGHT BACK TO WHERE WE LEFT OFF BEFORE THE DAMN TIME SKIP!!!!
(ノ｀Д´)ノ彡┻━┻
WHAT WAS THE POINT?!?! WHAT WAS THE REASON?!?!
Okok...anyways, back to prior time skip, Gaia too has subscribed to the H+P fanclub and talks about how they've proven how 'true love is real.'
I've got several problems with this:
For starters, how? In what way have they proven that 'true love' exists? Hades fell 'in love' with a barely legal (by our standards) teenager while he was still seeing someone else. He also allowed said teenager to become his employee and later became her only crutch to lean on when she had nowhere else to go. They both have done horrible things to other people for the sake of the others pride, reputation, etc. Not to mention that we've barely seen them learn anything about each other or actually stick to the boundaries that were set up by both parties. Literally almost anything Hades has supposedly learned about Persephone has been thrown to the wayside just so he can 'spoil her.' Any of their flaws just gets ignored or discarded in favor of showing how 'in love' they are.
And for another, how did Hades sharing his power with Persephone actually show this? The whole "real love should go both ways" thing doesn't prove this. You can have two people be infatuated with each other and still not have it be true love. And so little of the fertility goddess lore is actually maintained that it's hard to figure out how the rules established actually prove that what they have is true love. For all we know, none of the males in the relationships just ever bothered to try giving their female partners their powers because of their arrogance or thinking it didn't work. If they had shared their powers, would that then be considered 'true love'? Even though they're still abusive and toxic individuals?
The implications here are both ridiculous and unnerving, especially given what Gaia says after about how true love can be nurturing and healing and is not a force for greed and destruction.
We literally have a Greek myth that talks about how an entire war was kicked off over two men who were in love with the same woman. Whether they were truly in love with her or not, their love/lust and desire for her still sparked the Trojan War. Love can be just as destructive as hate when placed in the wrong hands. It can absolutely be used as a source of greed and destruction and is literally shown in one of the most well known Greek myths, the very religion this story relies upon to make it work.
Sigh...Anyways, Gaia then talks about how they freed her and how their love proves Hydros wrong which, why should we care? Hydros still had a point that giving her power to Ouranos was a foolish idea and again, why should we care what Hydros thinks when we've only seen them brought up once in this entire comic?
For the next section, there's something I want to bring up and that's the dialog in this comic since this plays an important role in the next scene. The dialog in this chapter was very stilted. Not much of the conversations between these characters made sense, especially this exchange between Gaia and Persephone:
Gaia: "I can tell you made quite the deal with Erebos, which has put you through a lot."
Persephone: "That is true, but it was a deal I was willing to make and ties me to the Underworld. Please don't change me."
I-...what? What does this even mean??? Gaia never said anything about changing her or removing her ties to the Underworld. This feels like something she would've said to Erebos of they had actually met and changed the deal. Gaia hasn't implied anything of the sort. So...why is Persephone saying this??? Unless the story got changed at some point due to Webtoon giving a definitive end date or Rachel scrapped the idea and forgot to rework the dialog, there's no reason for Persephone to mention this.
And then after this exchange, Gaia just says she can't remove it anyways and that with her help, she can just bring back all the life that passed from the plague?!?! WHAT?!?! BUT-BUT WHY?!?!
Why is it so difficult to allow Persephone to have consequences for her actions?!?! Why?!?! Nearly this whole comic, we haven't seen Persephone do things that have consequences without it either being someone else's fault or someone else taking care of it for her. And even in the literal finale of this comic, Persephone can't live with the guilt that her actions caused the near destruction of the mortal realm! Gaia can now just magically bring everyone back to life who died with Persephones help! Once again, Persephone cannot be held accountable for her choices and cannot be given any form of agency, good or bad. This whole situation has really been for nothing, hasn't it? Because if breaking Gaia out of Earth jail was the magical solution they needed, that means the stakes for the mortal realm getting completely frosted over, killing millions of people, and causing this giant cascade of events for the better half of these recent chapters, has practically been for nothing. So what if these characters died, Gaia will just revive them with Persephones help!
This however brings me to the next and possibly the most infuriating part yet. Gaia then says that Persephone has two roles in two realms and to relieve her of the uncertainty and drama, Persephone will spend 3 months in the mortal realm for spring and the rest in the Underworld.
(=д= ) You're kidding, right?
So, not only did we remove Demeters agency in her own myth regarding her love for her daughter and seeing her child again and also being the one to start winter out of her grief for losing her child, but now we can't even have Persephone be in the mortal realm longer than she is in the Underworld??? She's literally spending more time with Hades than Demeter!
Yet despite this, IT STILL ISNT ENOUGH FOR EITHER OF THEM AND THEY'RE STILL UPSET OVER IT!!! This is the least they can do after all they've put everyone through is being forced to separate for a bit so Persephone can deal with spring and still be apart of both worlds. Sure, they've been separated plenty of times by now, but this isn't even forever! It's just 3 months! Yet even 3 months is far too much of a time for H+P to be separated even though it's completely fair! It's not like they're being separated for years! It's just 3 months yet if they aren't able to be together 24/7 then it's something to be upset over!
But wait, there's more! Because apparently, Hades isn't barred from seeing Persephone WHILE SHE'S IN THE MORTAL REALM! So technically, they aren't even separated at all!!! They can literally see each other whenever they please!
Gaia talks about this whole reunion hoopla and how they can make a special occasion out if it. EXCEPT THEN IT WOULDNT BE A REUNION THEN GAIA, NOW WOULD IT?!?! THEY WOULD STILL BE ABLE TO SEE EACH OTHER DAMMIT!!!! ヽ( `Д´)ﾉ
A reunion is what happens when two people have been apart for a long time and haven't been able to see each other in person during that time! It can't be a reunion of they can literally see each other whenever the other pleases!
(T_T) I want to cry. Why? Just-... never mind, let's continue.
So anywho, we cut back to the present (what is the present anymore?) with Hades arriving in the mortal realm to greet Persephone who has spent time with Demeter and Metis (who is still alive for some reason,) and the two teleport back to the Underworld and Hades house where they makeout.
Once again, we are treated to horny H+P as Persephone undresses Hades as he suggests they go upstairs while she comments how she can't wait to see his ass. Only to then trail off into assistant when they notice the various people in his home.
Why are they in his home you may ask? Because apparently, it's also Persephones coronation day as the official Queen of the Underworld. Why they decided to have it the day Persephone gets back, I will never know and I'm too tired to consider it.
The next scene starts off with a news reporter at the scene of the event telling us what we already know: Persephone is back, she's becoming Queen now, her return marks the end of spring, etc.
But, what the reporter also brings up is Apollo. Why? To tell us he will not be in attendance and to tell us that he's serving his punishment doing TEMPLE RESTORATION IN THE MORTAL REALM!!!!
ARE. YOU. SERIOUS?!?!?! (＃ﾟДﾟ)
WHY?!?!?! WHY IS HE GETTING WHAT EQUATES TO COMMUNITY SERVICE?!?!?! (ノ｀△´)ノ
Ok, we need to take a step back and just go through exactly what has happened regarding Apollo. Up until this point, he has:
-SA Persephone -Took non consenting photos of Persephone -Blackmailed Persephone -Blackmailed Hebe -Tried to assassinate Zeus -Tried to kill Eris -Tried to kill Daphne -Nearly had Kassandra killed -Threatened multiple people with violence -Kidnapped two gods and kept them locked up in his basement -Tried to force Persephone into marriage -Tried to cover up his crimes
And last but not least:
-CONSPIRED WITH THE TITAN OF THE SKY TO BRING CHAOS TO THE MORTAL REALM AND THE OTHER EXISTING KINGDOMS TO ALLOW HIM TO COME BACK AND TAKE OVER AS RULER OF THE GODS ONCE MORE.
All of that! All. Of. That.
He could've gotten entire realms destroyed, he tried to kill his own father, he tried to hide and cover up his crimes while doing all this...
And the only punishment he gets equates to community service????
We have seen other characters get harsher punishments than this! Persephone had her 10 years in the mortal realm for trying to cover up the act of wrath! Demeter was stripped of her powers for the same thing! Leuce had her home filled with animals and her life threatened for trying to flirt with Hades! MINTHE GOT TURNED INTO A PLANT BECAUSE SHE TOLD ZEUS ABOUT WHAT PERSEPHONE DID! ALEX HAD HIS EYE TAKEN OUT, LEGS BROKEN, AND WAS SENT TO THE HOSPITAL FOR TAKING A PICTURE OF PERSEPHONE FOR THE TABLOIDS!!!
All of these characters got far more serious punishments for what is considered far less heinous crimes than what Apollo has racked up against him!
And it's not as if he sees it as demeaning or if he had his own powers stripped or there's some sort of emotional or psychological side to this punishment, no! He's just repairing temples! He still has his powers, he's still in love with Persephone, and he's still free for the most part!
After everything that's happened, after all the insidious and horrible things he's done, after all this time waiting to see Persephone get her justice for her SA, to finally see Apollo pay for what he did to Persephone, to his other victims...this is it?!
What happened to this being a feminist retelling?! What happened to getting justice against those who have wronged women and are still free to continue harming others?!
Not only can we not be free of seeing Apollo at every turn when it comes to Persephone moving on from that trauma, but now we're ending this series seeing Apollo, one of the worst characters there is, practically get away with the crimes he's committed by doing his time in the mortal realm fixing temples.
I know others may say that it's a fitting punishment and that's fine for them, I won't judge. But in my opinion, this was not a fitting punishment. Justice was not served.
This was not the way to finish off this plot line after everything we've seen and have been told.
Unfortunately, the chapter keeps going on as we transition from the news to Hera officiating the coronation and Persephone becoming the official Queen of the Underworld.
And thus begins the most boring conclusive TLDR I have ever witnessed.
As Hades and Persephone have their first dance, Persephone blandly talks about how so much has changed in the past 3 months, how living in the mortal realm is so much easier because Hades can see her whenever he likes. She talks about her mother and her son and how he's taken up farming.
It is then revealed that Dio has aged up to a teenageyoung adult and that Hades brought his bio mother, Semele, back to life.
So...not only did you steal Dios myth of going to find his mother and bring her back, but we're practically just saying 'f₩ck all' with Dio being an adopted child.
Screw adoptive kids apparently. All they need to do is find their birth parents and everything will be fine!/s
It's not like we never got to see Dio make this choice on his own or got to see him ask Hades if he could bring back Semele because he wants to get to know her or see Hades and Persephone actually parent this child they brought into their lives that they've practically neglected since the day Persephone stole him from Zeus. No, no. Everything just works out and they've dumped Dio back onto Semele!
I just-...I can't even right now.
How tone deaf does this have to be? All of the drama over getting Dio out of Zeus' hands only for H+P to practically ignore and neglect him to the point Dio was practically moving the plot on his own because even he too was done with this. All of this fuss about making sure Dio was taken care of, of treating him like their child and looking after him...and they just don't care. Just like with Thanatos, they neglected and ignored this child they chose to raise. And now, they've just dumped him back on his bio mother and we don't even know if it was his choice to see her again. Not to mention this whole series of events has set up a horrible idea of adoptive children being less than biological children. Dio was not treated like their child, merely another accessory or tool for H+P. Hades showed more care and consideration for his future biological daughter than he ever has for EITHER of his adoptive sons. And that's horrible. Thanatos and Dio deserved better. They deserved so much better than the abuse and neglect Hades and Persephone put them through (mainly Hades since Persephone didn't raise Thanatos.)
Continuing on, we are told Zeus was healed and is awake, but is now a figurehead King while Hera takes care of everything and that his powers haven't been the same since he woke up. Why? We don't know. Why is Hera running the show now? We also don't know. Did Zeus read Heras note? Did they talk about what happened? Did they discuss anything about their divorce? The world will never know and we certainly don't either.
Speaking of Hera, she apparently got divorced and is now dating Echo. Yup, the nymph racist alcoholic got together with a nymph who was once her employee without any sort of development or effort into changing her behavior. You know, it's a little funny that the goddess of marriage got divorced. It's especially interesting because that's a focal point of why Hera could never leave or take power from Zeus. Because this is her role as the wife of Zeus, no matter how many partners her husband takes to bed. In canon mythology, the one time she tries to userp Zeus, she gets hung from Olympus, in the sky, with weights attached to her feet.
Yet here, she's free to lead and leave Zeus without any kickback.
To continue, Area asks fir a dance and once more, we have to cut down Ares as the god of war to being nothing mire than a horny dog.
And as if demonizing TGOEM wasn't bad enough, it has now been disbanded. Why? Who knows. You would think that after everything that's happened, it could be repurposed into a women's help group or something similar to help women out of rough situations like forced marriages, abuse, SA, etc. But nope. Simply disbanded and Artemis is now hanging out with Selene, the goddess of the moon. We don't know why and we don't know what their connections are cause now it's onto the next scene which involves Hades trying to talk with Thanatos.
"Sonetimes they even have a conversation." (-_-) This is the furthest thing from funny and quite honestly, it's sad that apparently, this is the best Hades has to give for his adoptive child who he neglected with his own problems. I'd understand if it were that Hades and Thanatos are trying to reconnect and are taking things slow, but no. No, this was the line given and it just makes this all the more annoying and depressing.
"Eros and Psyche are enjoying parenthood." I will admit, their child is cute, I like the butterfly wings. I just wished those wasn't the only time we see them and Hades is asking for Persephones attention yet again. And for some reason, they're still searching for Kassandra? But, why? Why are they looking for her? She doesn't have anything else to do with them besides the oracle stuff but, that wasn't elaborated upon.
Thankfully that's the end of this horrible TLDR and we're back to dialog. Persephone and Hades dance alone, talk about how they couldn't get privacy, if they're enjoying the party and how Hades has the best date. The two dance for a bit before they start thanking each other for making their lives better with Persephone just telling Hades to say "You're Welcome."
Sigh while not as horrible as in the past, these interactions feel so dry. I don't hate it but I'm not exactly convinced they have chemistry.
They're grateful for all they've done for each other and they say they love each other while also mentioning their titles for some reason and they kiss. The last few panels say how the mortals never forgot about H+P love and how they remained forever in love.
THE END.
OH THANK GOD ITS OVER. IT'S DONE! I'M FREE!!! I'M FINALLY FREE OF THIS HELL!!! I CAN FINALLY LEAVE!!! MARTHA I'M COMING HOME SWEETIE!!!!
Wait...
What do you mean 'many, many years later'...?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN ITS NOT OVER YET?!?! IT JUST SAID THE END!
I'M BACK IN THE F₩CKING BUILDING AGAIN!!!!!
For f₩cks sake when will it end?!?! Just let me go, dammit!!! (ＴДＴ)
I'm still trapped here!!! What is there more to tell that hasn't already been skimmed over?!?!
Apparently Melinoe waking up because of Demeter and explains that she had a weird dream which we can only assume is remnants of her time stuck with Kronos.
I already despise the fact that Hades had Melinoes memories wiped without asking her or involving her in the process, but the fact that she still recalls some of what happened is also another reason why I disliked this so much. Cause she still knows to an extent subconsciously. But she will never understand why she has these weird dreams or why she recalls some things that seem weird. And she will.never know unless Hades ever decides to tell her.
Anyways, they both go into a room where there's a doctor and H+P are there with Hades holding a baby. Melinoe joins them and is introduced to her sister, H+P sit with her and reminisce about how far they've come as they hold each other and their two bio kids in a nuclear family photo.
And finally, FINALLY ITS OVER NOW.
JESUS TAP DANCING CHRIST TAKE THE WHEEL AND GET ME OUT OF HERE.
Oh thank goodness it's over...it's finally over...I'll probably have words for how I feel overall later, but I want to get out of here. My brain hurts and my soul feels defeated.
All I can say right now...is no thank you. No thank you to LO, no thank you to the false endings and the horrible tying up of losses ends. No thank you to anymore of this chaos...I'm done. I'm truly done.
Hope you all enjoyed my unhinged rambling for a good read and thank you all for your time! :3

First Last
Once Lizra and Human crested the hill, in front of them was a long rocky peninsula which jutted out into the turquoise green waters of Quori. It split through the ocean like a dagger, the white foam of waves washing onto it trying to bury it beneath the tide. Lizra hopped down from Human’s shoulder and bounded down the path to a secluded black sand beach nearby. Looking out over the waters, the semi-circle outline of the red giant was slowly dipping below the horizon. The water shimmered in the red light, shifting from green to a vibrant yellow in the sun’s intense glare. The sounds of waves crashing ashore was all that disrupted the world around them, a tranquility undisturbed except by nature itself.
“I remember you talking about a beach back at the facility, and how much you wanted to go to one. So I chose this place specifically since it has the most impressive on Quori. We should be far enough away from the town that nobody will bother us. It’s empty this time of day since they don't wish to trek all the way back in the dark.”
“Can you see fine in the dark?”
“Well no, not really; but Tic-Tac said it wouldn’t be a problem for you.”
“Yea, it’s not a problem,” Human said, walking out onto the shore. The tiny black stones of the beach crumbled underneath him, each step transforming the rocks into a fine sandy powder. He stopped a few meters before the water, gazing out into the setting sun that was trying to escape below the waves. He set the boxes down beside him and slowly seated himself on the beach, resting his hands on his legs and watching the world from between his knees. The green wake slowly washing up and licking the edges of his boots as he sat there.
“Is it everything you were expecting?” Lizra asked, going over to Human and sitting atop the boxes.
“Even better. Thank you.”
The two sat patiently for a breath, taking in the ocean vista before Lizra spoke again. “I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing things like this. Places like these are why I love the Outer Worlds so much. Untouched, pristine, just existing in their own little pocket of the galaxy. One thing we have that The Core worlds don't, is real genuine nature. I know you’ve needed something to take your mind off... well everything. You always seem so down and stuck in your own head. I hoped this could help you clear it.”
Human sat quietly, watching the sea rise and lower, like a creature breathing in a slow steady rhythm. He lifted his arms up to the base of his head before stopping, hesitating as if he was thinking something over.
“I think… It’d be even better to see it with my own eyes.” He submitted to the thought and released the clamps at the base of his helmet. A small hiss of air escaped from the edges before he pulled it off his head. Multiple wires and connectors dislodged from his ears and mouth as he let the mask fall into the sand with a heavy thud. His pale hairless scalp a stark contrast to the pitch black beach around them, and his sunken features told the story of someone who had seen better days. A jagged red scar ran from the side of one of his eyes to the back of his head, breaking up the symmetry of his face. He brought an armored hand up to block the light of the red star in front him, squinting his eyes which weren’t adjusted to the newfound intensity.
“It’s… a lot brighter than I thought it would be. And everything’s so… quiet.” He sat still as his eyes adjusted to the new environment. “I don’t hear it all anymore. The little things scurrying in the rocks behind us, the restless buzz of the city… the constant sound of your heartbeat. It's actually quiet for once.”
“I didn’t know you always heard those things.”
“You get used to it if it's all you’ve ever known. This feels so strange, like losing one of your senses you’ve had since birth. Is this how it is for you?”
“Only in places like this. Away from it all.” Lizra said, curling up into a little ball, enjoying the serenity of the occasion and the sun on her speckled fur.
“It’s nice, you were right. It’s different to actually feel the heat of a star on your own skin.” The pair didn’t say anything for a long while, taking in and appreciating the peacefulness of the moment that they were sharing. The sun was nearly set by then, great crimson beams of light broke through the gaps of the orange clouds above setting the sky ablaze. Lizra finally broke the silence between them, “I forgive you, you know. You don’t have to feel bad for what you did. You didn’t know what you were doing.”
Human didn’t reply for a short moment, a bead of water slowly emerged from his scarred eye and splashed into the rocks below. “No… I knew what I was doing.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I want you to know that I don’t blame you for what happened to my people. It was a long time ago.”
“Not for me.” Human replied with a whisper, closing his eyes as he looked down at the sand underneath him. “I had a long time in that pod in the beginning, no way to escape my thoughts. Nothing to do except dwell on everything I did over and over, again and again. You don’t know what I did, the people I hurt.”
“I know that you’re not the same person that was there all those years ago. I can tell that you are genuinely sorry for your actions, and someone who feels that kind of remorse deserves a second chance.”
“How can you forgive me so quickly? I haven’t done anything that could even remotely make up for the things I've done.”
“Because you want to be better. That shows that deep down you were always a good person. Regardless of what you might have done, you can still make the universe a better place here and now. That’s more than enough in my eyes.”
“But it's not enough!” yelling the words as he stood up. Lizra hadn’t ever heard Human speak like this before. “How can that be enough? I haven't even done anything yet!”
“It’s not about what you did, it’s about what you’re going to do moving forward.” She stated as she sat up, locking her small eyes with the creature towering above her. "Whatever you may have done, you can always atone for it by doing the right thing now."
“That doesn’t fix anything I did! No matter what I do now, however many fucking lives I save! I can never go back and salvage the ones I ripped apart.” He yelled, turning away from her, hands clenched into fists. “That’s all I was made for after all! I wasn’t made to differentiate between right and wrong, good vs evil, to think. That was never supposed to be my problem. I was made just to do as I was told, and let somebody else worry about the mess. All I’m good at is destroying everyone and everything around me. Is that the kind of person that you think can be salvaged!? You wanna see how great of a person I've always been?”
Human reached over to something on his chest with trembling fingers. Nestled between the plates of armor and his bodysuit were a few small pieces of paper. He pulled them out as he turned around to the tiny Elyrian and threw them into the air over her. Lizra ducked down in fear as the photos floated to the ground around her nearly getting caught in the breeze.
“That’s how good of a person I was. See that happy little family in those pictures? How great and wonderful their life was?” Lizra picked them up and looked down at the small collection of images in her paws. They appeared to be a personal keepsake one would have on them to remind them of their family. The first showed two of her own species at a beautiful Connection ceremony, happy to spend the rest of their lives together at a beautiful mountain temple. The next was them holding a newborn child, you could see the joy in their eyes as they gazed down at it. Next they were in a town, the father holding the little one up in the air as it smiled. There was one of two younglings playing together in a grass field while the mother ran after them trying in vain to catch them. The last showed the family of four together, the now grown baby from the second image lifted the father off the ground laughing as they tried to recreate one of the earlier frames.
“I slaughtered them, watched them bleed out and die one by one. And what did I do the whole time? I was laughing, I was fucking enjoying another casual day at work as the little ones begged for their lives crying, and had watch their parents be executed right in front of ‘em. Is that something that someone who was always a good person would’ve done?”
“Who are you to forgive me? What gives you any right to say that I’ve changed and am any different from the monster who murdered that family? I’m not someone who deserves a second chance at anything! I don’t deserve anyone's forgiveness or sorrow or any of that shit. All I deserve is to be put down and forgotten about like the rest of my people! Maybe then, when we’re all dead and gone, the universe would finally be a better fucking place!”
“Human, I-I apologize that-” Lizra tried to speak but was cut off.
“You apologize? for fucking what? What do you possibly have to apologize for? You weren’t the one that looked them in the eye and pulled the trigger with a smile. You live in this happy little bubble where everything’s so great and nobody’s truly all bad, just misunderstood. Well news flash Lizra, the universe isn’t some magical place where the good always win and the bad guys lose. Cause if it were, I should've died a long time ago.”
Lizra looked away from the images clutched in her shaking paws, tears flooding her own eyes now. “Well excuse me for thinking that there might be some remnant of a genuine person behind that emotionless facade you put on. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that maybe, just maybe, you’re not the monster everyone wants me to think you are. But clearly that's all you see yourself as. You may have escaped from the human ships, but if you can’t escape from your own head then what was it all for? Why even go through the trouble if you’re just going to sulk around feeling sorry for yourself until the end of time?”
“Sorry for myself? I’m not sorry for myself, I couldn’t give less of a fuck about myself or how I feel. The only thing I even remotely feel sorry for is all the ones that actually deserve to be alive instead of me!”
“Does it feel good taking that anger out on me? Do you feel better yelling at the one person who's tried to show you that there's more to the world than just anguish and sadness?”
“I just can’t wrap my mind around it. You don't know the first thing about me! And yet you sit here and tell me how I should feel? As if someone like you can even begin to comprehend what I’ve seen, the shit I’ve done. You think I’m someone deserving of kindness?” Human nearly crying now, getting his words out between choked breaths. “All my life, this universe has shown me nothing but malice and hate from the moment I was forced into existence. And from that day on, I've made sure everyone else felt just as awful as I have. So what have I done to earn anything better?”
“You don’t need to earn the right to feel better! You’re not going to go out and do some heroic act of redemption that magically makes you feel better about everything!” Lizra yelled back, getting just as emotional as Human was. “You don’t need to save me from the great danger of someone walking out of a store, or go back in time and rewrite the history of my people, for me to forgive you. The fact that you’re here now, yelling your heart out on this beach, proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that you’re more than just some mindless weapon like everyone thinks you are. You have thoughts, feelings, regrets, that's why you deserve a second chance.” She was panting, nearly out of breath from the way she was yelling back at him.
“You just have to want to do some good in this life, and maybe then people won’t see you as l something that needs to be feared. Maybe once people realize there’s more to you than just pent up destruction, they’ll actually want to be around you. And when you wake up and see that everyone around you can care about you, might just start to feel a little bit better about yourself.” Lizra spoke, putting the pictures down and wiping the tears from her eyes.
Human stood motionless glaring at his trembling fingers before falling back into the sand. He brought up his hands to his head and yelled, there were no words behind it, but the meaning was clear to everyone there. Lizra carefully picked herself up off the box and stepped over to Human laying down on his back. She sighed wrapping her tail around him and rested her head against his. Then he began to cry for the first time in his life.

Narcissistic grandmothefamily ( mostly grandmother )
Where do i begin.... So my grandmother has always been abusive to me. For as long as i can remember.
As a child my mum and dad practically dumped me on my grandmother and grandfather's step. They took me in. My grandad was always my angel. He loved me so much and I was always the apple of his eye. Sadly in 2009 he died from leukaemia. He was diagnosed on his birthday. Died a year later on his birthday 😔 me and my grandmother never really got along. She always looked down her nose at me. Like I was a piece of shit under her shoe.
It was just me who got dumped on my grandparents step. My sisters went with my mum and my brother with my dad when they split up.
Now.... I don't know much about her upbringing because I literally can't speak to the woman. She is very... Undermining and passive agressive. So I just don't bother as its never pleasant to speak to her. Never has been.
So I have 2 sisters and a brother. My grandmother idolises them. Very openly, almost like it's done purposely to make me feel as low as possible. I am constantly left out of family outings, holidays, meals. You name it. It's making me resent my own siblings.
I became the black sheep very quickly. I have to watch my family doing things together, while I'm constantly left out. Watching from the sidelines, Unacknowledged, Forgotten about if you will.
Fast forward... At this point id had enough. So I moved in with my then boyfriend. I was obviously extremely happy to get away from my grandmother and family. I moved to a different city.
Things were great at first... Sadly he started to change after a while. He started to abuse me also and get violent towards me. I found out he had abused 2 women before me. I escaped with my life barely. But I had nowhere to live or any money as my ex had taken everything off me and used me for my money the entire time and I would like to add that this man also made me disabled. ( trauma induced fibromyalgia, chronic pain and fatigue, ptsd, depression, the whole lot )
So I had to move back in with my evil grandmother, but this time... I'm disabled at this point 😔 the trauma and stress of previous life abuses and obviously the trauma of domestic violence had made me extremely ill. I couldn't even walk. I've been in and out of hospital and doctors you name it.
So now, my grandmother has an evil new tactic up her sleeve. Because I'm now disabled, she uses my illness as a weapon to abuse me. Saying "your brain has gone" " you're crazy " . And calling me and i quote a " fat tw*t " obviously because of my ptsd, I was terrified to leave the house and now my own grandmother is attacking my appearance and mental health and disability all at the same time. My illness has turned my life upside down.
She is taking nearly all my money from me, so I'm unable to save up to leave. Shelters are only offering me places half way across the country, alone, which would absolutely terrify me.
I have had a pretty lonely existence and still live a lonely existence. My pets are my everything and shelters also do not allow pets. So I feel trapped now. I cannot survive without my pets. They're all I have.
I'm trapped with a woman who causes a fight with me any time I leave my bedroom. She attacks my disibilty, my mental health, calls me names, she bins my belongings and throws my stuff around all over the floor. She purposely breaks my belongings. Then she gaslights me.
She literally says I'm imagining things when she does all this stuff to me. All while turning the rest of my family against me by telling them, I'm unruly. Because I'm defending myself and standing my ground on what I know to be true. I've even resorted to recording her when she starts these fights with me. But even when I show my siblings. They instantly side with her or say it's nothing to do with them. Even if I tell my mum. She doesn't care. My mum is a very selfish woman. She has a drug addiction. So she only cares about herself and herself only. My dad has just got a whole seperate life now and a new gf. Wants nothing to do with me or anyone else besides his gf.
I've been abused my entire life. I'm still being abused. I've had enough.
What do I even do about this? I feel like I'm getting more sick by the day because of all this trauma. I'm literally trapped. I'm tired. My soul is literally tired.
If I alert authorities. My entire family will turn on me. All but one. My grandmother's daughter. My auntie. Is also cast out by her. So I do speak to her about the abuse which helps.
But it doesn't help my situation. I'm still trapped here. My auntie has a full house and is also dealing with illness herself. So that's not an option unfortunately.
Has anyone experienced anything like this with their grandmother?
It makes me sick because everyone thinks she's a lovely old lady. She puts on this false image in public. But behind closed doors. She's a monster. An absolute monster. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff she says to me I can barely believe it myself. She's told me to unalive myself and that nobody loves me and she hates me.
I know it's awful to say. But I cant wait until she passes 😢 I can then be free of her abuse once and for all. I hate that I think this way about someone. But when theyve abused you your entire life, Belittled you, called you names, attack you, bullied you, destroys and bins your belongings and has trapped you, then blames you for it. You will think and feel the same way. All whilst rubbing how much she loves my siblings in my face.
She makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. Like I'm unlovable. What did I ever do to her!?!
I remember asking this question once and she said I'm imagining things and im being childish and told to grow up and stop being crazy and that I'm weak.
She loves calling me weak and keeps telling me I'm playing the victim. Well.... I am the victim. You're literally abusing me.
It's not crazy if it's reality right?
Sometimes I feel like Im just not from this family. Even my siblings have nothing in common with me and look down on me and don't bother with me. We are 100% from the same mother and father. I just can't understand how I'm cast out and treated like this. I've never done anything wrong to anyone 😔😔
I've asked many times what I've done to deserve this treatment and they just keep saying the same thing. Stop playing the victim or I'm imagining things and to grow up. My feelings are not valid.
I'm constantly just in my bedroom, because if I come out. I become a target. I barely even eat 😢😢 I have 2 meals a week if that and that's when my grandmother goes out. I go down and make something quick to eat. I tend to buy a lot of snacks online. Things I can keep in my bedroom to snack on when I get real hungry, just to avoid coming out of my bedroom.
Not sure how much more heartbreak I can take.
I've planned a day out at the weekend for the first time in 2 years to go see all my friends. To a rave. Because my legs have gained a bit of strength recently after being bed bound for over a year because I've been so ill. Obviously I'm extremely nervous about leaving my house, but I'm trying to force myself to try get myself out of this rut I'm in. My grandmother has done nothing but attack my image, calling me fat and basically trying to destroy my confidence, so I don't go out and calling me other horrible names because it's a rave I'm going to.
Now I used to rave a lot. So it's the only time I get to mix with like minded people. It's always the same people who go and i class them all as my rave family. I've been super excited and obviously nervous about this rave. I planned it just a week ago. My grandmother of course. Is doing everything in her power to try get me to not go. My friends all live dotted around the country, so i barely ever get to see anyone.
I'm not allowed to be happy. Or have a life or do anything for that matter.
I've been trying to exercise using my hula hoops and other flowtoys. Like my leviwand for example. It cost over 300 pound and my grandmother has gone into the tube it's kept in and binned the chargers and string for it. Rendering it useless and saying she's not touched it and im making stuff up and im going crazy!!!
I know she had done it as it was in her cupboard in her room. It had moved completely from where I actually put it. My room is very cluttered as I've had to cram me, my things and my pets all in here with me, due to having left my ex in such a hurry. I feel like I'm living in a closet. So I thought this one item would be safe in that cupboard as it was expensive. She had moved it and shoved something in its box that I know wasn't in there when I put it in there. She's lost all the attatchments, which I know was all together in that box. So now I can't use it at all. Of course.... It's all in my head and I'm the one who's lost these things even though i know for a fact I kept it all safe and together.
She's constantly sabataging me and saying it's all in my head.
I'm Quickly fading. Giving up. But then.... She will attack me for that too. Fcked if I do. Fcked if i don't. I can't win. No matter what I do.
Even if for example... Something has been on its way out... Breaking for a while and she's aware of it, if it breaks, it's automatically my fault.
According to her... Anything that breaks. Even if I haven't touched it. It's my fault. She will deliberately leave things to deteriorate and then blame me when it finally breaks completely. I'm at my wits end.
I'm so lost and just devastated at how horrible my life has been.
Can anyone give me any advice on what I should do about this situation?

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

Quote texts are his comments that I replied to.

It’s been shoved down our throats 24/7 since 2020-2021.

Pride has existed way longer than then. The reason Pride exists, the reason there’s an emphasis on promoting LGBT people in media, is to normalize their existence for millions of people who are often times indoctrinated by their parents into hating those people. Pride is the only reason I broke out of the homophobic, bigoted environment I was raised in and began to accept people.

Prior to that, no one knew or cared about pronouns, now it’s all the rage.

Pronouns have existed for as long as various languages have existed. Even the use of the singular “they” has been used in English since the 1300s. The “rage” surrounding pronouns is merely people stating what shortened form to calling them by their name they prefer. That’s it. You’re acting like this is some “Let’s eat TidePods” -esque internet trend. It’s harmless. I’ve been on the internet in plenty of spaces that had LGBT people, and, in the past 3 years or so, I can count on one hand the amount of times I had to make any effort to remember someone’s pronouns. It’s not that complicated, nor does it signify the downfall of society that you make it out to be.

God forbid I call a man a man, a woman a woman, or people, people.
You literally can’t make any sort of valid criticism towards LGBT without getting labeled a homophobe / transphobe.

Damn. I wonder why they call you a transphobe. What an enigma.

There’s the option to put your pronouns on social media, which is absolutely fucking stupid.

Why? Because you don’t want to use it? Then don’t. There also remains the option to link your other social medias, link your website, post your phone number, advertise your business, pay to promote your own ads on other people’s feeds, direct message celebrities who obviously won’t respond to you, or follow bot accounts that will probably just send your porn or try to scam you out of your money. All of these things have something in common: you can choose to participate, or you can choose to ignore. If it bothers you, just don’t use the feature or delete the app. To your surprise, I’m sure, there are millions of people who gladly use the pronouns feature. You are extremely sensitive and bigoted if this genuinely gets you up in arms. My lord.

There’s people who honestly believe that men menstruate.

Transgender men and intersex men can and do menstruate in many occasions. Cisgender men obviously cannot. When people say “men can menstruate” they are speaking of trans or intersex men. You just choose to ignore this fact because you believe there is no such thing, which you are wrong about.

There’s men dressing up as women desperately trying to get near children to read them books for “Drag Queen story time”.

There’s adult men putting on ridiculous costumes and wearing makeup and attending children’s gatherings to entertain them. What are we gonna do about clowns?
“Desperately trying to get near children” Sounds to me like you can’t imagine a scenario where an adult can wish to read to children they aren’t related to without immediately thinking of sexual abuse. These events occur in public spaces under the supervision of parents. They read to these kids books about loving and accepting yourself and treating people equally. You act like they’re a bunch of sex offenders straight out of prison trying to show children what dildos are. You are absolutely delusional, and your homophobia is showing.

I go to Target, and there’s rainbows and LGBT flags printed all over children’s clothing. Not just in June during “Pride” month. It’s there year-round.

Oh, I know. When I was a kid I had to endure the trauma of reading books about families with straight couples. Oh, the horror! How dare they introduce children to such filth! Leave the kids alone!
I can’t believe they put ideological flags all over kids’ clothes regarding topics they don’t understand. Stop putting those American flags on my kids’ clothes! Quit indoctrinating them into a tribalistic belief of national supremacy!
In all seriousness, why is this an issue? If you believe it’s okay to be gay in the same ways you believe it’s okay to be straight you would not act this way. If you don’t like the existence of gay people (you know, almost like a homophobe), then just say so. Stop pretending to view straight and gay people the same. You don’t.

You have our President announcing Easter Sunday that day is “Trans Awareness” day.

Trans Awareness day has occurred on March 31 every year for the past fifteen years. In case you weren’t aware, the date of Easter changes every single year. This year, both events happened to fall on the same day. President Biden acknowledged both events on that day. Anyways, since when is only one celebration allowed to occur per day? Hanukkah and Kwanzaa occur at the same time. Should they fight to see who deserves their holiday the most? That’s like being mad that some people are born on Christmas and celebrate both occasions. Besides, why is it so blasphemous to celebrate those specific events on the same day? If you believe in Jesus, don’t you believe he loved everyone and wanted everybody to care for their neighbor? Why do you fight so valiantly to demean LGBT people? That seems to go against a belief that we are all created and loved equally, but you can just go ahead and make up your own rules to the religion. That’s how it works, right?

Now June is known as “Pride” month, when in reality, it’s Mens Mental Health month.

Now October is known as “ADHD Awareness” month, when in reality, it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. Fuck your ADHD awareness! My condition takes priority over yours! This month is all mine! No one else’s!
It’s ridiculous and tribalistic to act like every month should only focus on one unprivileged group at a time. I guess we have to consolidate all the cancers into one month, first off. Maybe combine all the historically oppressed minority groups into one month as well. This guy on Reddit knows to focus on the real issues.
Men’s mental health has only gotten worse since the awareness month became a thing in 1994. The month obviously hasn’t worked very well. Especially considering I didn’t even know it was a thing until 10 minutes ago. Pride Month has been celebrated since 1970, and it became official in 1999. Since then, support for LGBT rights has skyrocketed. To claim that a wholly ineffective month takes precedent over something as iconic and impactful as Pride month shows how out of touch you are.
For the record, I’m entirely in support of acknowledging Men’s mental health awareness, and I am sorry for the loss of your friend, but whoever is promoting this month needs to do a WAY better job. Male suicide has only increased since that month became a thing. These days, too many men try hard to act tough instead of admitting their true emotions, resulting in pent up anger that is often times lashed out at innocent people for unnecessary reasons. I think that’s why you have so much hate for the LGBT community; either that or you’re very susceptible to propaganda.
I can assure you the reason men’s mental health is shit is not because of some kinky pride events. It’s because we are a society by men, for men, expecting all men to be breadwinners who are also tall, buff, and attractive. It’s because women have become commodified and it’s way easier to get a boyfriend as a girl than it is to get a girlfriend as a man. There are many things to blame: political leaders, our economic system, our own testosterone…
LGBT people are not one of them.
Shift your focus to the real issues at hand and stop demonizing people who suffer many of the same mental health issues you to claim to care about.

I know I'm wrong in essence and I'm not trying to gain sympathy or anything, it's just that I'm intuitively like "*sigh*, f@%k" and instantly irritated whenever I'm walking outside and I see someone approaching me or I hear "sorry/excuse me" directed at me.
It personally never crosses my mind to reach out to strangers walking outside for help on anything. I'm 32 and may have legit never done it. Don't know if I'm coming off as pretentious or anything like that, but I'm usually just self-reliant and try not to be in need of things that I cannot handle/supply myself. Obviously, if you have some kind of disadvantage compared to the average person, maybe you're old or disabled, then I definitely sympathise, but if not, can you just be a bit more careful and not end up in that situation where you need someone right off the street to help you?
I've been asked for cigarettes and rolling paper, most times. I know smoking is an addiction, but can you at least try and be self-sufficient in your addiction and not end up in situations where you stop people in the street to supply you with what you need? There was one guy who spent 20 seconds telling me how the shops are usually open but they're closed for some reason and I didn't know what he was on about until he finally mentioned that it was rolling paper he was looking for. I was so annoyed and getting so impatient waiting for him to get to the point, only for me to just tell him I don't smoke and his whole explanation was for nothing. I was hanging around someone who happened to have rolling paper and even the way people say "thank you" when you provide them with it annoys me. They're like, "Oh my god, thank you thank you thank you! You're a life-saver!" As if rolling paper is that important in life. If you were dying for a cigarette that badly, then get your sh%t together.
There was one tourist who saw I looked like a local and asked me for directions. He was young and had google maps open. I was giving him directions and he wasn't even acknowledging me. He just approached me without looking at me, put his hand on my shoulder, asked me for directions, and kept looking at his phone trying to figure it out himself the whole time. I just left and let him stare at his phone after a while. I didn't say bye. Don't think he noticed that I left. It's like he forgot he asked me a question the moment he asked it.
I also hate every time there were people pretending to be homeless, asking me for money, putting on a half-assed act to gain pity. They're usually young locals and the government here doesn't allow anyone to be homeless and hungry. They're just drug addicts. They always ask you for money so they could eat, but the government literally gives you food here if you're below the poverty line, so I'd know they're lying. I f*cking hate being in a parking lot and having to get in my car and drive away because some drug addict starts approaching me to ask me for money.
Don't get me started on the people trying to get you to buy something. There are enough ads in my life. I should at least be allowed to walk outside, uninterrupted.
Again, I know I'm not right, but if you're a healthy, young person, I just have no sympathy for you stopping me while I'm walking outside, minding my own business. Unless it's something serious and you had some kind of accident, resolve whatever it is yourself, especially if you just want something so unnecessary, like cigarettes. Just resolve it and leave me alone.

First of all: MUSIC
u/SpartanSpock made a post once, where you post an expy, and we have to guess them, but i was an idiot and accidentally posted them.
For those who don't know, Expy is a character, which author borrows from another work(For example: Renfri is an expy of Snow White or Robert Baratheon is an expy of Henry VIII)
HERE ARE MY TOP 9:

1. Wlad I., An Eastern Batrianic's Empire's warlord, who decided to become his own king, famous for his cruelty and savagery.
2. Göts, A Mercenary Swordsman, who became famous for besting very tough knight in a combat, known for wearing black armor and carrying largest sword in the world.
3. Kiš Zabaru, a mad king who slaughtered every slave child in his kingdom in order to avoid destiny fulfilling, for which his entire city of Kish became punished for his crimes.
4. Erika Keszek, a vengeful lady, who was seeking a way to get revenge on her mother for her crimes and thus was willing to do everything, even bathing in blood of the innocents.
5. Ó Sterey, Gallowglass warrior, Ó Belay's best friend, man of average stature, blonde hair and moustache, very clever fighter, his favorite weapons are javelins and Sword, very friendly and like his friend, very good company when near children, taught Vigviid how to fence and fight.
6. Ó Belay, Another Gallowglass warrior, Ó Sterey's best mate, tall man, who carries large sword, red moustache, not so big belly, very strong, even in melee hes dangerous, but overall very friendly, especially towards Children. Taught Vigviid how to fight against other weapons like Axes, maces or shields.
7. Sir Loxley of Shaerwood, a nobleman, who goes against all law and seeks to keep the corrupt and greedy officials in line, very strong bowman, taught Vigviid how to plan battles. Friendly but not nice, harsh but careful, strict but with reason to be.
8. Morhun Van Hausern. Son of a prime minister Batrian, then Tsar Batrian IV. Brown curly hair, very sexy man, Very good company to be around, ace in horseriding, fencing is his sport, very charismatic, even the ladies want him, but he has one secret that may have caused his doom: Hes a Homosexual, which resulted in his rival, Thorsenn Knärsen(Spoiled son of the villain Thorik Knärsen), who shot him in the back due to a petty revenge (got spat once), and because LGBT people are considered "Freaks" by the Batrianics(yes, Batrian IV was bit of a homophobe(IE will criticize you based on Sexuality, but won't be hostile unless theres a reason, besides, Morhun was his son, and if theres one thing Batrian IV can't stand, its the thought that someone might hurt his family, which is why his morality was slowly dropping after his son's death)).
9. Hugo the Shadowhair, a brutal assassin, hired to kill Vigviid 3 weeks later, once the king learns about Conan's failure. Unlike the previous 3 professionals i talked about, Hugo has no qualms, he will kill whoever angers him, regardless of age or gender. He does it in the most brutal way possible, because he loves brutality. It takes 32 men(Including Sir Loxley, Mathaniel Kildare and Wooly Odairr), 2 boys(Vigviid and Orry) and a feisty warrior woman(Mabyn, Vigviid's cousin and Mathaniel's twin sister), of these 32, 20 Die(Including Loxley and Odairr), Mabyn got sword in her leg(she wears plate armor), Mathaniel got hit in the arm, broken for a month(Again, plate armor), and Vigviid? Well he almost lost his head, no man got hit near neck and still lived(Credit to plate armor). Hugo's fight was very intense, he survived being burned, he was shot with many arrows and many blades crosed his skin, and the only thing that killed him was bloodloss, not being hit by many arrows, nor burned tissue, nor wounds to the organs, just bloodloss.

So if you're gonna guess them, at least number them, so for example

1. [YOUR CHOICE OF A CHARACTER]

Narcissistic grandmother.
Where do i begin.... So my grandmother has always been abusive to me. For as long as i can remember.
As a child my mum and dad practically dumped me on my grandmother and grandfather's step. They took me in. My grandad was always my angel. He loved me so much and I was always the apple of his eye. Sadly in 2009 he died from leukaemia. He was diagnosed on his birthday. Died a year later on his birthday 😔 me and my grandmother never really got along. She always looked down her nose at me. Like I was a piece of shit under her shoe.
It was just me who got dumped on my grandparents step. My sisters went with my mum and my brother with my dad when they split up.
Now.... I don't know much about her upbringing because I literally can't speak to the woman. She is very... Undermining and passive agressive. So I just don't bother as its never pleasant to speak to her. Never has been.
So I have 2 sisters and a brother. My grandmother idolises them. Very openly, almost like it's done purposely to make me feel as low as possible. I am constantly left out of family outings, holidays, meals. You name it. It's making me resent my own siblings.
I became the black sheep very quickly. I have to watch my family doing things together, while I'm constantly left out. Watching from the sidelines, Unacknowledged, Forgotten about if you will.
Fast forward... At this point id had enough. So I moved in with my then boyfriend. I was obviously extremely happy to get away from my grandmother and family. I moved to a different city.
Things were great at first... Sadly he started to change after a while. He started to abuse me also and get violent towards me. I found out he had abused 2 women before me. I escaped with my life barely. But I had nowhere to live or any money as my ex had taken everything off me and used me for my money the entire time and I would like to add that this man also made me disabled. ( trauma induced fibromyalgia, chronic pain and fatigue, ptsd, depression, the whole lot )
So I had to move back in with my evil grandmother, but this time... I'm disabled at this point 😔 the trauma and stress of previous life abuses and obviously the trauma of domestic violence had made me extremely ill. I couldn't even walk. I've been in and out of hospital and doctors you name it.
So now, my grandmother has an evil new tactic up her sleeve. Because I'm now disabled, she uses my illness as a weapon to abuse me. Saying "your brain has gone" " you're crazy " . And calling me and i quote a " fat tw*t " obviously because of my ptsd, I was terrified to leave the house and now my own grandmother is attacking my appearance and mental health and disability all at the same time. My illness has turned my life upside down.
She is taking nearly all my money from me, so I'm unable to save up to leave. Shelters are only offering me places half way across the country, alone, which would absolutely terrify me.
I have had a pretty lonely existence and still live a lonely existence. My pets are my everything and shelters also do not allow pets. So I feel trapped now. I cannot survive without my pets. They're all I have.
I'm trapped with a woman who causes a fight with me any time I leave my bedroom. She attacks my disibilty, my mental health, calls me names, she bins my belongings and throws my stuff around all over the floor. She purposely breaks my belongings. Then she gaslights me.
She literally says I'm imagining things when she does all this stuff to me. All while turning the rest of my family against me by telling them, I'm unruly. Because I'm defending myself and standing my ground on what I know to be true. I've even resorted to recording her when she starts these fights with me. But even when I show my siblings. They instantly side with her or say it's nothing to do with them. Even if I tell my mum. She doesn't care. My mum is a very selfish woman. She has a drug addiction. So she only cares about herself and herself only. My dad has just got a whole seperate life now and a new gf. Wants nothing to do with me or anyone else besides his gf.
I've been abused my entire life. I'm still being abused. I've had enough.
What do I even do about this? I feel like I'm getting more sick by the day because of all this trauma. I'm literally trapped. I'm tired. My soul is literally tired.
If I alert authorities. My entire family will turn on me. All but one. My grandmother's daughter. My auntie. Is also cast out by her. So I do speak to her about the abuse which helps.
But it doesn't help my situation. I'm still trapped here. My auntie has a full house and is also dealing with illness herself. So that's not an option unfortunately.
Has anyone experienced anything like this with their grandmother?
It makes me sick because everyone thinks she's a lovely old lady. She puts on this false image in public. But behind closed doors. She's a monster. An absolute monster. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff she says to me I can barely believe it myself. She's told me to unalive myself and that nobody loves me and she hates me.
I know it's awful to say. But I cant wait until she passes 😢 I can then be free of her abuse once and for all. I hate that I think this way about someone. But when theyve abused you your entire life, Belittled you, called you names, attack you, bullied you, destroys and bins your belongings and has trapped you, then blames you for it. You will think and feel the same way. All whilst rubbing how much she loves my siblings in my face.
She makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. Like I'm unlovable. What did I ever do to her!?!
I remember asking this question once and she said I'm imagining things and im being childish and told to grow up and stop being crazy and that I'm weak.
She loves calling me weak and keeps telling me I'm playing the victim. Well.... I am the victim. You're literally abusing me.
It's not crazy if it's reality right?
Sometimes I feel like Im just not from this family. Even my siblings have nothing in common with me and look down on me and don't bother with me. We are 100% from the same mother and father. I just can't understand how I'm cast out and treated like this. I've never done anything wrong to anyone 😔😔
I've asked many times what I've done to deserve this treatment and they just keep saying the same thing. Stop playing the victim or I'm imagining things and to grow up. My feelings are not valid.
I'm constantly just in my bedroom, because if I come out. I become a target. I barely even eat 😢😢 I have 2 meals a week if that and that's when my grandmother goes out. I go down and make something quick to eat. I tend to buy a lot of snacks online. Things I can keep in my bedroom to snack on when I get real hungry, just to avoid coming out of my bedroom.
Not sure how much more heartbreak I can take.
I've planned a day out at the weekend for the first time in 2 years to go see all my friends. To a rave. Because my legs have gained a bit of strength recently after being bed bound for over a year because I've been so ill. Obviously I'm extremely nervous about leaving my house, but I'm trying to force myself to try get myself out of this rut I'm in. My grandmother has done nothing but attack my image, calling me fat and basically trying to destroy my confidence, so I don't go out and calling me other horrible names because it's a rave I'm going to.
Now I used to rave a lot. So it's the only time I get to mix with like minded people. It's always the same people who go and i class them all as my rave family. I've been super excited and obviously nervous about this rave. I planned it just a week ago. My grandmother of course. Is doing everything in her power to try get me to not go. My friends all live dotted around the country, so i barely ever get to see anyone.
I'm not allowed to be happy. Or have a life or do anything for that matter.
I've been trying to exercise using my hula hoops and other flowtoys. Like my leviwand for example. It cost over 300 pound and my grandmother has gone into the tube it's kept in and binned the chargers and string for it. Rendering it useless and saying she's not touched it and im making stuff up and im going crazy!!!
I know she had done it as it was in her cupboard in her room. It had moved completely from where I actually put it. My room is very cluttered as I've had to cram me, my things and my pets all in here with me, due to having left my ex in such a hurry. I feel like I'm living in a closet. So I thought this one item would be safe in that cupboard as it was expensive. She had moved it and shoved something in its box that I know wasn't in there when I put it in there. She's lost all the attatchments, which I know was all together in that box. So now I can't use it at all. Of course.... It's all in my head and I'm the one who's lost these things even though i know for a fact I kept it all safe and together.
She's constantly sabataging me and saying it's all in my head.
I'm Quickly fading. Giving up. But then.... She will attack me for that too. Fcked if I do. Fcked if i don't. I can't win. No matter what I do.
Even if for example... Something has been on its way out... Breaking for a while and she's aware of it, if it breaks, it's automatically my fault.
According to her... Anything that breaks. Even if I haven't touched it. It's my fault. She will deliberately leave things to deteriorate and then blame me when it finally breaks completely. I'm at my wits end.
I'm so lost and just devastated at how horrible my life has been.
Can anyone give me any advice on what I should do about this situation?

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

This is the third installment of my posts where I provide my thoughts on the team to try and a discussion and learn where we differ. If you’re interested, you can read part 2 here and part 1 here.
Last time around, I led with the statement “No Löwen? No goals.” We’ve only seen Löwen back now for a handful of minutes, and I think I was right on the money. But, it isn’t the whole story.
Löwen, other than Burki, is likely our best player by a large margin. Looking back to last Saturday against Seattle, the entire game shifted when he stepped on the pitch. He didn’t just play for St. Louis City, he was City. Löwen’s ability to pick out passes and create chances is unparalleled within our squad, and missing him was a massive hit to the team and that’s been proven in just 100 minutes.
My hope is that Löwen can finally help the biggest problem since I wrote my last post and even before that. We can’t finish for shit. Every time we get into the final third, it seems like play just stands still and we can’t progress towards the goal. Extra passes, misplaced balls, and a general lack of what to do has plagued this team. Löwen brings creativity and pure talent to the attack at a time when we really need it.
Now that brings me to the “Löwen isn’t the whole story” part. One player does not make a team. I live and die by the Polish National Team, but even with Lewandowski, arguably one of the best strikers of this generation, we’re absolute dogshit. I could write a whole book on why the Poland sucks literal ass at football with decent talent, but that is neither here nor there. They point is that football is an 11 man sport - not 1. Löwen coming back will no doubt usher in more goals, and hopefully more points, but we still need quality across the board to win games, and we’re really lacking a Gioacchini right now.
Cedric Tuechert is Lutz’s answer to the hole left by our old number 11. I’m not trying to be pessemistic, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I haven’t watched him play enough to make any sort of judgement on whether he’ll fit in at City, so I’ll hold any commentary until he’s putting in decent shifts. I hope to God that he can fill the role that Gioacchini once played, just being able to put the fucking ball on net. If we have that, I could see us finishing much higher than our current position.
Now the fun part. There’s been a lot of negativity in this sub - some of it coming from me, I’ll admit - but I think this is the most exciting time for CIty since our first game almost a year and a half ago. We have less points than the same time last season, but I think we’re much better than we were last year. I spoken extensively in my last few posts about our inability to play through the midfield, and if we can figure than part out, we’d be golden. I think we’re finally getting there. I absolutely hated watching the kick and run footy we used to play, just launching the ball up to Klauss and watching him work his magic. It wasn’t sustainable then, and it isn’t sustainable now. Let’s also remember the sheer number of goals that we were scoring from set pieces last season, and now we’re finally scoring fairly consistently from open play.
We’ve needed to lose games and tie (a lot) more to get to this point, but I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Being able to play through the midfield is essential to a good and sustainable strategy, and I’m really excited for what comes next this season. I certainly haven’t been the most optimistic person when it came to City in the past, but I feel it now. Big things are coming.
I had written the preceding analysis before the Miami game and intended to leave it there. It was overall positive and I was finding a lot to like. Bradley Carnell sucks at managing the game while we're playing. The entire Miami game we were in control and we were the better team, and we easily would have walked away with 3 points had BC not subbed on Hiebert and Thor and parked the bus. He makes the exact same mistakes week in and week out and never seems to learn from them. Parking the bus didn’t work the first 4 times, but surely the 5th will buck the trend! Of the 8 draws we’ve had, probably about 6 of them have come from games we should have won, but due to poor decision making in the second half, we ended up with 1 point instead of 3. Miami was just another addition to that tally. I’m not calling for the gaffer’s head quite yet, but it doesn’t take a football genius to realize that parking the bus never works for us and to finally make some smart subs instead of subbing people in and out willy nilly. I had come into the Miami game expecting nothing but I still left watching that game disappointed.
Now that my rant is over, that brings us to my favorite segment - Stars, Standouts, and Stinkers. Just like last time stars are those we are seeing put down really good performances consistently, standouts have shown the have massive potential but don’t bring it every game, and stinkers, well, stink. (-) means that the player is in the same bracket as last time or I didn't rank them. (-1) and (+1) mean moving down or up, respectively.
Stars:
Burki (-)

• Bürki is St. Louis City and St. Louis City is Bürki. I don’t even want to imagine where we would be if we didn’t have him.

Totland (-)

• Tots has been massive for this club. With our right and left backs, we’ve always struggled with finding someone that has good offensive upside but still defends well. We’ve found that with Tots and it has proved massive for our attack and backline.

Durkin (-)

• Durkin fits the City system perfectly. He came up massive against Miami and has proven to be a good constant at CDM. If he can clean up some of the unnecessary fouls, he’d be in the running for our best outfield player

Löwen (-)

• I’ve spent most of this post describing just how essential Löwen is to our success, so I’ll leave it there.

Vassilev (-)

• Vassy has really stepped up this season. He was still very good last season, but it seems like he’s really grown into his role this season, and we’re better for it.

Standouts:
Célio (-1)

• It hurts to bump Célio down, but he hasn’t been as good as he was last time I wrote an update to this post. He is still a great play maker and his dribbles are almost godly, but he is hard too timid with the ball. It seems like there is a situation every game now where I’m shouting at the TV “Shoot the fucking ball Célio!” He holds onto the ball far too long, and instead of taking it himself, he instead waits for someone to arrive to help him and it always ends up being a poor decision.

Alm (-)

• I honestly don’t know what to write for Alm. He’s been good, but I also kinda forget he’s on the field sometimes. He always makes really fast runs to press, but nothing really every comes of it. I think Alm will benefit a lot from the presence of Löwen on the field.

Kijima (-)

• Hosei my hero! Kijima has had massive potential since that very first goal against Dynamo is CCC. It hurt that BC wasn’t trusting him with more minutes, but instead putting AZ on (don’t you worry, we’ll get to him). Last night, Kijima was one of the best players on the field, and there were 4 legends of the game sharing it with him! I foresee starts coming for Kijima, and we’re going to be much better for it.

Klauss (+1)

• Last time around, I had Klauss as one of the only stinkers. He’s grown a lot more since then, finally seeming to feel more comfortable in the new formation and without Gio to help him up top. We haven’t seen Santa Klauss since the SKC game, where he went on an absolute tear. But since then, Klauss has been… fine? I think like many others, Klauss has struggled without Löwen’s beautiful balls. He usually has good chances, but he either bricks a clear chance or is positioned somewhere he definitely shouldn’t be. Hopefully when Tuechert arrives, we can get back to Klauss doing the work and Tuechert finishing. Klauss can get the ball where it needs to be, but he is far from the best finisher on this team.

Stinkers:
AZ (-)

• Boy oh boy I’ve been waiting to write this. Last time I wrote a update to this series, AZ was still getting consistent starts and I called for him to ride the bench for awhile. That actually happened, and now I’m calling for AZ to be sent down to City 2. He isn’t cut out for professional football. He’s had moments this season when he wasn’t plain bad, but even with that, when he steps on the field, he is our weakest link. He’s small and gets muscled off the ball easily, and then flops to the ground to try and get a call because he simply isn’t cut out to battle with players who have fairly normal physicality for MLS. He provides this team with minimal benefit when he’s playing well, but is a massive detriment when he isn’t. With the run of form Kijima has been on, I hope to see AZ less and less.

Big Sam (-1)

• If I had a nickle for every time a pass hit the back of Sam’s foot on a break, I’d have 4 nickles, which isn’t a lot, but isn’t it crazy it’s happened 4 times? Sam started the season off great, but he just isn’t it right now. He had so many great chances against Miami, and couldn’t capitalize on any of them. A lot of people have said that Klauss is a much better team player than Sam because he comes back to help defend. I think this is one of the biggest weaknesses of Klauss, personally. He backtracks and then ends up in a suboptimal position if the run of play turns our way. I think our 9’s shouldn’t have to be backtracking to defend. They should be waiting up top for a good ball so they can break quickly. So when Sam didn’t come back to defend, I didn’t have a big problem with it, but if you’re not going to defend you better be able to score goals.

(for all the players not ranked, this post is already long enough and I didn't have any major thoughts about them)
Conclusion/TLDR:
I'm really excited for the next set of games. Like I mentioned before, we're finally figuring out how to create chances in open play, but we're still lacking a bit in being able to convert those chances into goals. I've been begging for Lutz to finally spend some money on a good outfield player that will be able to score goals, and I hope one of my next posts will have a lot of good to say about Tuechert. Löwen, apart from Bürki, is our most important player right now. With him on the pitch, the game completely shifts in our favor. Carnell is just straight up bad at making decisions during the game. Every manager has their own weaknesses, and I hope that BC will finally recognize that weakness and try and learn from it.
I know this was a really long post. My hope is, like always, that we can have a conversation about the good and the bad and maybe even debate my thoughts a bit. Looking back to my older posts, it's gone from a scathing review of City, a somewhat measured analysis of both the good and the bad, to now being overall pretty positive. If anything, that means we're on a positive trajectory. We might have won the western conference in the first 5 games last season, but the last 5 games will be just as important this season.
Till next time.

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

Jack walked into the ship’s medical bay with his hands across his stomach, feeling like the damned thing was doing an entire circus’ worth of acrobatics, and a decided look of discomfort on his otherwise handsome face. The Jal’kek doctor, who looked a bit like a mythical Naga with a serpentine lower body and humanoid upper body covered in fine scales, must have thought Jack was pissed or something because he recoiled in terror briefly before composing himself and straightening.
“How can I help you,” he asked Jack smoothly, trying to hide his initial discomfort.
Jack didn’t hold it against him. Despite First Contact happening almost 25 years ago, he knew most species in the galaxy regarded humans with more than a little trepidation. Apart from Terra being classified as a “Deathworld,” humanity had made a name for itself in what was called, by humans, the First Contact War and by the rest of the galaxy as the Terran/Tal’check War. The Tal’check were an aggressive species and were only kept in check by the Galactic Federation, a group of 50 or so worlds determined to stop the Tal’check before they conquered the entire galaxy. Then Humanity stepped onto the stage.
Humans had been trying for decades to unlock the secrets of FTL travel but their lack of it didn’t keep them down. Luna was settled first, followed by Mars (mostly terraforming crews), then Venus and several of the larger asteroids that didn’t have high amounts of valuable minerals. There were teasing issues, as always happens with humans, but they were quickly solved diplomatically with the help of a rather forceful diplomat. The Terran Alliance was thus born. Eventually Terran scientists created the first successful warp drive and made contact with the Federation, which had grown to encompass almost a hundred worlds. First Contact with the Federation went surprisingly well despite the inherent terror most of the Federation species felt at encountering a predator species. First Contact with the Tal’check however, did not. The Tal’check hated humanity from the very first, for reasons no one could adequately explain, even the Tal’check, who set out to conquer Terra almost immediately.
Humanity fought back, naturally, and while their ships weren’t as sophisticated as the Tal’check ships, their captains were adaptable, innovative, and had far better training than their counterparts. The Tal’check, and the Federation for that matter, were used to fighting in a far more formal manner and their officers were exclusively from their society’s nobility rather than promoting those who were most capable.
The Battle of Jupiter was the war’s grand opening and the battle fleet the Tal’check had sent to conquer Terra was swiftly defeated with acceptable losses to the Terran Alliance. Most of the enemy ships were destroyed but more than a few were captured and while some were sent to the tech geeks, who were salivating at the chance to study them, most were retrofitted for human use and turned against their builders. The Federation offered assistance at first, which humanity gladly accepted, but after witnessing humanity’s ferocity and determination in battle, which the Federation ambassadors called insanity, they eventually withdrew their support. The human ambassador had just shrugged, told them that humanity didn’t really need their assistance anymore and went on to discuss a new trade deal as though nothing had happened. This disconcerted the Federation ambassadors a lot. They were disconcerted even more when, after just over a year of fighting, humanity conquered the Tal’check Empire in its entirety.
Rather than exterminate the whole race as the Federation had feared, humanity integrated them into its own alliance and now controlled a vast swath of territory and a military that dwarfed even the Federation. Not only that, but they had gained a reputation as fierce, if insane fighters.
Jack himself was about 6’ 2” with piercing green eyes, shockingly red hair cut in the traditional military manner and, unusually for a ginger, nicely tanned skin. The rolled-up sleeves of his uniform jacket were stretched tight over his biceps and looked as though they might rip with the slightest movement of his arms. He knew he intimidated most people, and most aliens found any human intimidating, so he paid the doctor’s reaction no mind.
“I was actually looking for Dr. Rodriguez,” Jack replied, referring to the human doctor who was part of his squad and had come on board with them when they had agreed to be security for this trip.
The Doctor, whose name was Chal, Jack remembered, looked a little disappointed, but then brightened.
“I’m afraid she went to get something to eat, but if it’s nothing too serious I’m sure I can handle it. I’ve been brushing up on human anatomy,” he said proudly.
Jack hesitated for a moment. Doctor Chal had sounded confident, but Jack had taken it about as well as someone saying they knew how to perform open heart surgery after watching a YouTube video. It didn’t exactly fill him with confidence to put it mildly. His stomach gave another flip and he grimaced.
“Ok,” he said at last and shuffled over to lay on one of the biobeds, whose monitors lit up and began to display his vitals as soon as he was settled.
Doctor Chal eagerly slithered over, a little too eagerly if you’d asked Jack, and pulled out a hand scanner. As he ran the scanner up and down Jack’s body, he glanced at the vitals monitors.
“Your vitals look good for the most part,” Doctor Chal said. “Heart rate and blood pressure are a little elevated, but I’m given to understand that that is normal for humans under these conditions.”
“Great, doc,” Jack said dryly. He knew Chal was trying to be reassuring but he was failing miserably and didn’t seem to recognize it.
After a few more passes with the scanner, Chal looked at the screen with a puzzled expression.
“Hmmm,” Chal said consideringly.
Like most humans, Jack really hated when most doctors did that.
“What,” Jack asked trying not to let his alarm show. “What’s hmmm?”
Chal seemed not to hear him for a minute before he replied in what Jack was sure he thought was a reassuring tone. Jack was anything but reassured. “Tell me, what was the last thing you ate?”
“A roast beef sandwich and a bag of potato chips?” Jack said, more like asked, confused.
“Is that a fairly normal meal for you?”
“Fairly normal, yeah. What’s wrong doc?”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Chal said, patting him somewhat awkwardly on the head like Jack was some kind of pet. “I’m just going to go run these results through the computer really quick. I’m not entirely sure this scanner was properly calibrated for humans.”
He slithered away into his office before Jack could do more than blink stupidly at him. Jack felt like he’d been hit over the head with a hammer.
A few minutes later he heard, “Doctor Rodriguez please report to sick bay, Doctor Rodriguez, please report to sick bay,” come from outside. It was somewhat muffled by the closed sick bay doors, but it was distinct. Jack tried to breathe slowly as his mind raced with ever more terrible predictions of what was wrong with him.
An interminable amount of time later, the doors to sick bay wooshed open and the tall form of Doctor Rodriguez strolled into the room. She had long black hair, beautiful brown eyes that usually sparkled with humor when off duty, and curves in all the right places. Her skin was that amazing bronze color everyone of South American descent seemed to possess and while her chest wasn’t huge, Jack knew his sister would be jealous of it. If he swung that way, Jack would probably try to hit on her and be shot down as viciously as she shot down everyone on the team who had tried. The veterans on the squad knew better.
She glanced at him lying on the biobed and stopped, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Stevenson,” she said knowingly, her voice like ice. She walked over to the biobed as she kept talking and stopped beside it. “I should have known. What did you do this time?”
“I have no idea.”
She gave him a look that said, just how stupid do you think I am?
“Scout’s honor,” he said innocently, holding up three fingers.
She huffed in amusement. “Like you were ever a scout.”
“Doctor Rodriguez,” Doctor Chal said leaning out of his office door. When she looked up at him, he continued. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”
She frowned but nodded and patted Jack on the shoulder before going into the office. Jack hadn’t even had time to say that he had, in fact, been a scout, if briefly.
A few minutes later, Doctor Rodriguez came back out and stood beside his biobed. She was rubbing her forehead, which did nothing to help Jack’s nerves. He knew she thought him a bit of a clutz with the number of times she’d had to patch up his minor, and not so minor, wounds. Most of which were self-inflicted.
“OK Stevenson,” she said putting her hands on her hips. “Just what the hell was on that sandwich?”
Jack was taken aback and slightly confused by her question. “Ummm, mayo, two slices of roast beef, provolone cheese, and some mustard. Why?”
“And the chips,” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Sour cream and onion.”
She stood there for a minute thinking, then sighed. “Somehow, you’ve picked up some kind of parasite. The readings are a bit off, so Doctor Chal is still going through them, but it looks like we may have to do surgery to remove it.”
Jack sighed and fell back onto his pillow. “Great,” he said dry as dust.
“You’re telling me,” Rodriguez replied. “It seems…”
Before she could continue, Doctor Chal slithered up next to her, a strange look on his face.
“What is it doc?” Jack asked his concern rising again.
“Is there some kind of complication?” Rodriguez asked in a defeated sort of way. Her face conveyed that she wouldn’t be surprised considering the patient.
“Some kind, yes,” Chal replied nervously. “I’m really not sure how to…put this. Normally it would be good news, but…”
When he didn’t seem inclined to continue, even with both humans staring at him expectantly, Doctor Rodriguez exclaimed, “Spit it out already!”
The doctor looked at Jack and tried to smile.
“Congratulations PFC! You’re pregnant!” he said in a jovial tone.
In the stunned silence that followed, a pin was heard hitting the floor somewhere.
…
It was chaos in sick bay for a while after that. Jack contacted his husband, who was also on the squad, and he came bursting into sick bay demanding answers as he rushed up to Jack on the biobed and grabbed his hand. Regulations being what they were, the ship’s captain and Jack’s CO were also summoned to sick bay. Other crew members had heard that something was going on and a few of them came to sick bay to see what all the fuss was about. They were quickly kicked out. Rumors started among the crew ranging from the dangerous to the idiotic as rumors so often do. It was only when everyone was assembled and Doctor Rodriguez had explained what was going on that silence fell again, if only briefly.
“WHAT?!” Roger yelped, his voice a little higher than he would have liked under normal circumstances. These were decidedly not normal circumstances.
“How,” several voices asked at the same time including Captain Finnegan, Jack’s CO. Captain Finnegan had seen a lot in her time in the Terran Alliance Space Navy, but this was a first for her. She kept her red hair cut short enough that the natural curls wouldn’t show, and she was the kind of pale that burned in the barest amount of sunlight but never tanned. Her green eyes were normally stern with just a hint of mischief, but all they showed now was confusion. And probably more than a little humor. It might have been a serious situation, and one of her soldiers may be in serious trouble, but she couldn’t help but find a little humor in it. Hell, if Doctor Rodriguez was any indication, she wasn’t the only one to see the humor in it, but they were both hiding it well. Some of the junior officers weren’t doing such a good job and she saw PFC Stevenson shoot a couple of them glares every now and then. She suspected Specialist Singh was recording the whole scenario on his implants, but she couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t even sure what he was doing there, but no one had told him to leave, or seemed to know when he’d even entered the room, so she didn’t give it much thought.
“I am unsure as to the how,” Doctor Chal replied looking up from a pad, and trying not to appear nervous in front of so many agitated humans. “From my studies, I understand human males are not the ones to carry the children in your species, yes?”
“That’s correct,” Doctor Rodriguez replied. “Human females, such as myself and Captain Finnegan, are typically the ones to carry and birth our young. Males don’t have the anatomy to give birth.”
Captain Finnegan shuddered at the thought of having kids. She was career military through and through. While she wasn’t opposed to the occasional romp while on leave, she preferred children be kept as far away from her as possible. On the other side of the galaxy perhaps. Or even better, in a different galaxy altogether. If they had to be near her, she preferred that they be poached and served on toast with a side of bacon.
Doctor Chal nodded in understanding. “As I said, I am unsure how this happened, but I have a theory.”
“Which is,” Rodriguez asked when Chal’s pause went on a tad too long for her liking.
“The scans reveal that the…fetus has half human, half Glorn DNA,” Chal said slowly. “I don’t know how much you know about the Glorn, but their home world has high levels of various acids. As a result, their reproductive systems involve acid, specifically hydrochloric acid…”
“The same kind of acid as human stomach acid,” Rodriguez asked somewhat incredulously.
“Exactly. In fact, the human digestive system is surprisingly similar to the Glorn reproductive system.”
“Similar how,” Jack asked, curious despite himself. Rodriguez seemed fascinated as well.
“Well…” Chal began. “A Glorn’s womb is built much like your stomachs, very similar in fact. Now that I think about it, their similarities would be a great subject for a study on…”
“Doctor,” Rodriguez exclaimed, throwing her hands up and looking at the ceiling in exasperation. Chal recoiled in terror reflexively before he composed himself. She put her hands on her hips and looked directly at Chal. “We can discuss a paper on cross-species similarities later. How about we get back on track?”
“Right,” Chal said, chastened. “The Glorn are a single sex species and only produce their sex cells when they go into heat once a month, which is actually about two human months. During reproduction, the…receptive Glorn takes the other’s penis into their mouth and…um…stimulates it to release. A valve in the throat ensures that the ejaculate enters the reproductive system instead of the digestive. The sex cells, which are closer to human egg cells than sperm, take in DNA from the cells of the throat as they pass through and the fertilized embryo, or sometimes embryos, then settle in the womb. The acids in the womb bring in nutrients from the stomach, which get absorbed through the protective layers the embryo develops. After gestation, birth proceeds much as it does for humans.”
Doctor Chal finished his speech and looked around at the humans with a somewhat satisfied expression on his face. It quickly turned into worry as he looked at the stunned humans around him.
“Are…are you saying,” Specialist Singh asked, clearly trying to hold back laughter. “Are you saying that the Glorn reproduce via blowjob?”
As the non-humans in the room consulted their implants to figure out what he meant, some of the humans guffawed, some laughed outright, and a few coughed trying to hide their laughter. Captain Finnegan coughed into her hand a couple times, getting her own laughter under control. She couldn’t help the smile on her face though. As she looked at the biobed, she saw PFC Stevenson looking a little green. His husband, Corporal Huxley, looked like he could shit a brick. The two seemed to have a quick conversation through their implants while everyone around them tried to gather themselves.
“It’s a damn good thing humans don’t reproduce that way,” Rodriguez mutters to herself. “Gay men alone would make the population growth unsustainable, even with all the habitable planets in the galaxy.”
Captain Finnegan coughs into her hand again.
“If I understand your terminology correctly,” Doctor Chal says after a moment. “Then yes. Fortunately, there is only one Glorn aboard the ship at the moment, Weapons-master Krulmash, so the identity of the…other father, isn’t in question.”
“BUT I DIDN’T SUCK HIM OFF!” Jack yelled. “I’ve never even talked to him!”
He sounded near tears as he stared into Rodger’s eyes, begging him to believe him. Rodger stared back; expression unreadable. Everyone went quiet as they waited with bated breath. Finally, Rodger let out a sigh and kissed Jack on the forehead.
“I believe you,” he whispered to Jack. “It’s ok baby. We’ll figure this out.”
Jack let out a sob and curled into Rodger’s arms, crying in relief.
“If you did not willingly preform this act with Weapons-master Krulmash, then we must find out how this happened.”
“I have sent a quiet summons to the Weapons-master to report here at once,” came the captain’s watery sounding voice. The captain was a Mabon, an amphibious species that looked a bit like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. “He’s on his way.”
“What’s the gestation rate for a Glorn,” Doctor Rodriguez asked.
“Typically, only about six human hours,” Doctor Chal replied. “The human DNA has slowed things significantly,” he added hastily at seeing her look of alarm. “We have another three hours or so before we need to operate. If necessary, we can remove the fetus in two hours and place it in an incubation chamber.”
“We can’t just cut into his stomach,” Doctor Rodriguez said. “Doing a C-section on a woman is one thing but this…”
“I’ve already considered that,” Doctor Chal replied calmly. “Which is why I sent for Engineer Veela.” He waved over a tall creature with four arms that vaguely resembled a stick covered in brown fur. It’s four eyes gleamed with mirth and Doctor Rodriguez noticed a toolbelt slung around where the creature’s waist might be if it had one she could discern.
“I’ve gotta admit,” it said in a high-pitched voice. “You doctors sure know how to put on a good show. My nest-mates will find this whole thing hysterical!”
“I’m sure they will,” Doctor Chal said genially before Doctor Rodriguez could reply. “Engineer, is it possible to use the sick bay transporter to transport something out of a living body?”
Doctor Rodriguez gave Doctor Chal a sharp look. “You want to use the sick bay transporter to teleport the baby out of Stevenson? Is that even safe?”
“Oh sure,” the engineer said with far more ease than Doctor Rodriguez was comfortable with. “If I can get the sensors tuned correctly it should be safe enough.”
“If? Should be?” Doctor Rodriguez exclaimed, her eyes bulging. “There are two lives at stake here. “If” isn’t good enough.”
“Relax doc,” the engineer said holding up one hand to forestall anymore of Doctor Rodriguez’s tirade. It used another hand to pull what looked suspiciously like a wrench out of its toolbelt. “I’ve got this.”
Without another word, the engineer walked over to a console and began removing a panel from its side.
Before Doctor Rodriguez could say anything, the sick bay doors wooshed open again and in walked a creature that looked vaguely human but had giant bat like ears sticking out to the sides of its head. Its skin was a dark brown color and bulged here and there with muscle. The Glorn Weapons-master towered over most of the others in the room. Only Corporal Huxley stood as tall as Kurlmash and he glared at the Glorn as it stepped into the room.
Kurlmash ignored him, walked up to the captain, saluted and said, “Weapons-master Kurlmash reporting as ordered sir.”
The captain returned the salute and opened his mouth to speak, but the Corporal beat him to it.
“What the FUCK have you done to my husband, you bastard,” Corporal Huxley yelled at him.
“I…I don’t understand,” he replied taking a step back in shock.
“It seems Weapons-master,” the captain replied calmly. “That you have somehow impregnated young, PFC Stevenson here. We are all keen to know how this has happened. Especially since the PFC claims that you two have not been…intimate.”
“We haven’t,” Kurlmash said in surprise. “Pregnant? Are you sure? Are you sure it’s mine?”
His last question was almost hopeful, and the Corporal’s shoulders eased a bit.
“The DNA scans are rather conclusive,” Doctor Chal answered. “If you two have not been intimate then we must figure out how this happened.”
“You said that Glorn only produce sex cells during their heat cycles,” Doctor Rodriguez asked Doctor Chal who nodded in assent. She turned to Kurlmash. “Which means you either just went through a heat cycle or are in one right know.”
“It ended yesterday,” he said nodding. “Doctor Chal was storing my seed for me so my mate could use it to become pregnant upon our return to base.”
“You missed your last appointment, as I recall,” Doctor Chal said.
“I overheard one of the engineers talking about a problem with a freezer. I thought he was talking about the sick bay freezers. I was going to call you about it until I found the container you were using,” Kurlmash replied sounding puzzled.
Both doctors looked at each other in bewilderment. Doctor Chal slithered over to a wall and opened a door, taking out a plastic cylindrical container that had a cone shaped opening at the top. The clear plastic showed the yellow contents of the container clearly.
“There was no issue with the sick bay freezers,” Doctor Chal said. “I’ve had it here the whole time.”
“May I see that,” Doctor Rodriguez asked, a look of puzzled curiosity on her face as she held out her hand. Doctor Chal handed it over and Rodriguez inspected it carefully. To everyone’s shock, she opened the lid and took a sniff. “Smells like…” she began and then stopped, a look of dawning horror washing over her face. She quickly replaced the lid before turning to Stevenson who was watching her warily, one of Rodger’s arms over his shoulders.
“You said you put mustard on your sandwich,” she asked him. He just nodded. “Did it happen to be in something that looked like this?” She held up the container.
All the humans in the room stared at the little container, the very familiar looking container. They had all seen one just like it before, had all used one, sometimes two before. The container in Doctor Rodriguez’s hand looked very much like a plastic ketchup, or in this case, mustard container one might find in any human restaurant.
“Dude,” Jack yelled at the top of his voice. “You jerked off into my mustard?!”
Once again, the non-humans in the room consulted their implants while the humans variously tried to stifle their laughter or not throw up.
“I…I don’t…What is mustard,” Kurlmash asks helplessly.
“It’s…” Rodriguez starts.
“Not fucking important,” Jack exclaims. “You went into my fucking food and jerked off into it! You…you impregnated me! Against my will! Without my knowledge! You violated me! I should wring your fucking neck!”
He tried getting up from the biobed, the look on his face downright murderous, but Rodger held him down, surprise clear on his face.
“Baby. Baby look at me,” he said, his voice calm. When Jack looked at him, Rodger smiled. “It’s ok. I’m right here. Everything will be ok.”
They stared at each other for a minute before Jack broke down again crying and Rodger wrapped his arms around him.
“What is wrong with him,” Captain Finnegan muttered to herself.
“Pregnant,” Doctor Rodriguez whispered to her.
Captain Finnegan jumped and looked at the doctor. When had she gotten so close? Then she turned back to look at Jack and noticed his swollen stomach. Right. The man was pregnant. That was going to take some getting used to.
“Is this normal for pregnant humans,” Kurlmash asked Doctor Rodriguez who nodded.
“Pretty normal, yeah,” she replied thoughtfully. “For human women anyway. Human men don’t normally get pregnant.”
“Ah. I see. So, the death threats are because he’s male?”
“HA! No. Human females will issue death threats too. Usually during labor, along with threatening to cut off the male reproductive organs if they ever come near them again. Fairly standard.”
“I see,” Kurlmash said looking worried.
“What? Pregnant Glorn don’t have mood swings or make threats?”
“No, they have mood swings, as you call them, but I’ve never heard of one making such threats before.”
“Probably because they don’t spend nine months carrying the kid only to be put through agony, sometimes for days, just to give birth,” Captain Finnegan snorted.
“Nine months? Days?” Kurlmash looked even more worried now and he glanced at the biobed.
“Don’t worry,” Doctor Rodriguez told him. “This pregnancy may be a little slower than what you’re used to, but this baby will be here by the end of the day.” She frowned. “Or not.”
She walked up to the biobed and placed a gentle hand on Jack’s shoulder. He looked up at her, his eyes wet and red.
“I’m sorry,” she said kindly. “But no one has asked...and…well…do you even want this baby? It’s not too late to abort.”
Jack stared at her in shock, though she didn’t think it was for the suggestion. She thought it was more because he hadn’t thought of it either.
“I could do that, couldn’t I?”
Doctor Rodriguez shrugged. “Your body, your choice. That’s Terran Alliance law.”
Jack looked to his husband. “What do you think?”
“What are the risks,” Corporal Huxley asked her.
“At a guess, because this an entirely new situation and we have zero idea about anything, I’d say probably the same as the pregnancy itself. I’ve been watching his vitals and as the pregnancy develops, more and more strain is being put onto Jack’s body. A body that was not designed for it. I think he may be able to carry the baby to term, but that’s just a guess. Any pregnancy has its risks, and this is a whole new type of crazy. I have no idea what could happen.”
Rodger looked back at Jack. “Your choice my love. I’ll support your decision; unless it looks like I’ll lose you. I won’t do that. I love you too much, searched for you for too long, to risk losing you.”
“I love you too,” Jack said and the two kissed. And kissed. And kept kissing. Just when things were about to turn awkward, Doctor Rodriguez cleared her throat and the two separated, breathing hard.
“So, does that mean you’re keeping the baby,” Doctor Rodriguez asked.
“Please,” Weapons-master Kurlmash said, and they all turned to face him. He wrung his hands and stared at Jack with a longing look. “I realize I have no right to ask this of you, given the…less than ideal circumstances, but please. My mate and I have been trying to have a child for a long time and, I would really like to start a family.”
“Are you sure they’d be ok with a half human child?” Corporal Huxley asked seriously.
“It…will take some explaining,” Kurlmash admitted. “And probably some time to get used to the idea, but I’m sure the four of us can make it work.”
He stared at them hopefully and eventually Jack nodded.
“Alright doc. Looks like we’re having a baby. But if it looks like I might…ya know…die? Well, don’t let that happen. Dying in combat is one thing. Dying in childbirth? My mother would never let me hear the end of it.”
Rodger snorted. “She may not let you hear the end of it anyway. Not to mention your dad…”
“Please don’t,” Jack said with a groan. “Don’t suppose there’s any way we can just…not tell them?”
Rodger gave him a look and he groaned again. “You’re right.”
“I’m afraid it gets worse, PFC,” Captain Finnegan said with a slight wince. “I’m going to need to file a report with Alliance command. To apprise them of the situation. Alliance medical is probably going to want to know too.”
It was Doctor Rodriguez’s turn to groan. “Fuck! They are going to want to know. Every. Single. Detail. I’m going to be in meetings about this for years!”
She glared at the three prospective parents. “The three of you are officially on my shit list,” she said before angrily turning to talk to Doctor Chal. “We’d better make sure this goes smoothly. The less I have to put into this report the better. I hate paperwork!”

eurt si em tuoba yas yeht gnihtyrevE
Oppertunist
Them super powers gettin' neutralized, I can only watch in silence
The famous actor we once knew is lookin' paranoid and now is spiralin'
You're movin' just like a degenerate, every antic is feelin' distasteful
I calculate you're not as calculated, I can even predict your angle
Fabricatin' stories on the commodity front 'cause you saw Germany fail.
A pathetic master manipulator, I can smell the tales on you now
You're not a socialist, you a scam artist with the hopes of being accepted
Your hard working past stood out, but Capital never been in your collection
I write theory that electrify 'em, you write theory that pacify 'em
I can double down on that line, but spare you this time, that's random acts of kindness
Know you a master manipulator and habitual liar too
But don't tell no lie about me and I won't tell truths 'bout you
Shoo, shoo, shoo Shoo, shoo, shoo Bi-bi-bi-bi-bi-bi
Yeah, I'm out the way, yeah, I'm low, okay Yeah, the island right here's remote, okay
I ain't thinkin' about no reaper Comrade, I'm reapin' what I sow, okay
Got a Benjamin and a Jackson all in my house, like I'm Joe, okay
Hellcat, made his homeboys and them types sell they soul, okay
Everybody wanna be demon 'til they get chipped by your throwaway
And I might do a speech a day, once a lame, always a lame
Oh, you thought the money, the power or fame would make you go away?
Have you ever played have-you-ever? Okay, Comrade, let's play
Have you ever walked your enemy down, like with a poker face?
Have you ever paid five-hundred thou', like to an open case?
Well, I have, and I failed at both, but I came out straight
I hate when a comrade talk about guns Then people die, they turn into nuns
Then in exile, like "pray for my city" He fakin' for likes and foreign funds
His daddy a killer, he wanna be junior They must've forgot the shit that they done
Dementia must run in his family, but let it get shaky I'll park his son
The very first time I shot me a Drac', the homie had told me to aim it this way
I didn't point down enough, today, I'll show you I learn from those mistakes
Somebody had told that me you got a ring, on Marx, I'm ready to double the wage
I'd rather do that than let a Georgian Comrade make Vlad turn in his grave
Cutthroat business, you got shit twisted What is it? The hair?
I hurt your feelings? You don't wanna work with me more? Okay
There's three GOATs left, and I see two of 'em kissin' and huggin' on stage
I love 'em to death, and in eight bars, I'll explain that phrase, huh
It's nothin' nobody can tell me, huh I don't wanna talk on no radio, huh
You know I got language barriers, huh There's no accent you can sell me, huh
Yeah, Lev and Stalin know I'm a selfish Comrade The crown is heavy, huh
I pray they my real friends, if not, I’m Feliks Dzierzynski
I don't like you poppin' shit at Trotsky, for him, I inherit the beef
Yeah, fuck all democracy, let me see some real theory
You better off spinnin' again on L, you try voting on me
He's Karl Leibknecht, I’m Karl fuckin Marx, I'm Karl fuckin Marx, yeah, I'm whoppin' feet
We ain't gotta get personal, this a friendly fade, you should keep it that way
I know some shit about Comrades that make Mr Kautsky look like a saint
This ain't been about critics, not about gimmicks, not about who the greatest
It's always been about love and hate, now let me say I'm the biggest hater
I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk I hate the way that you dress
I hate the way you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct
We hate the bitches you fuck, 'cause they confuse themselves with real women
And notice, I said "we", it's not just me, I'm what the worker feelin'
How many more fairytale stories 'bout your life 'til we had enough?
How many more shiny titles 'til you finally feel that you've got enough?
I like J with the robberies, I don't like J when he desk ride
You gon' make a Comrade bring back Mike, let me see if Buddy crash somethin'
Yeah, my first one like my last one, it's a classic, you don't have one
Let your core audience stomach that Didn't tell 'em where your medals come from
V12, it's a fast one, bow-bow-bow, last one Headshot for the year, you gonna walk around like Tzar Nick
Remember? Ayy, Top Dawg, who the fuck they think they playin' with?
"Extortion" my middle name as soon as you jump off of that plane, bitch
I'm allergic to the lame shit, only you like bein' famous
Zinoviev can’t give you no swag neither, I don't give a fuck 'bout who you hang with
I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk I hate the way that you dress
Surprised you wanted me in that process You know that we got some shit to address
I even hate when you say the word "Comrade", but that's just me, I guess
Some shit just cringeworthy, it ain't even gotta be deep, I guess
Still love when the Union see success, everything with me is blessed
Keep takin', the movement forward and it won't be no threat
I'm knowin' they call you The Boy, but where is the man? 'Cause I ain't see him yet
Matter of fact, I ain't even bleed him yet, can I bleed him? Bet
When I see you stand by Mensheviks, I believe you see two Comrades
I believe you don't like workers, they real threatening, you might pop lead in 'em
Let's speak on percentage, show me your splits I'll make sure I double back with you
You loyal to this position now loyal to that position nah your just loyal to you
Try cease and desist on the "Lyons” thesis? Ho, what? You ain't like that thesis "2nd Congress", would like that thesis I'ma get back to that on fake Jesus
Why would I call around tryna get dirt on Comrades? Y'all thinkin' I’m power hungry?
That's ho shit, I got a cause to help, but I can see you don't know nothin' 'bout that
Fighting for prols, know nothin' 'bout that Organizing, know nothin' 'bout that
Developing Organic centralism for the party, know nothin' 'bout that
Teachin' them theory, integrity, discipline, listen man, you don't know nothin' 'bout that
Speakin' the truth and consider what Marx’s considern', you don't know nothin' 'bout that
Ain't twenty-v-one, it's one-v-twenty if I gotta smack Comrades that vote for you
Yeah, bring 'em out too, I clean 'em out too Tell Lev that he better stay right with you Am I battlin' dead generations? Comrade feelin' like Lassalle
Funny, he had a program called Gotha And my Critique tellin' me to off him I'ma blick Comrades all in they coffin
Yeah, Center comrades is dick riders Tell 'em run a revolution to imitate heritage, they can't imitate this violence
What I learned is Comrades don't like the movement
And I'm fine with it, I'll push the line with it Pick a Comrade off one at a time with it We can be on a three hour time difference
Don't speak on the workers, dzmao It can get deep in the movement, dzmao Talk about me and my comrades, dzmao? Someone gon' bleed in your clique, She chema
I be at Gori Tifilis eatin’ Khachapuri with some Churchkhela, dzmao
Tell me you're cheesin', fam We can do this right now on the camera, dzmao
Ayy, fuck y'all Comrades, I don't trust y'all Comrades I wave one finger and dump y'all Comrades, like, "mmm"
Field goal, punt y'all Comrades, they punk y'all Comrades, nobody took my principles
Whoever that's fuckin' with him, fuck you Comrades, and fuck the Party too
If you take it there, I'm takin' it further Psst, that's somethin' you don't wanna do Ooh
We don't wanna hear you say "Comrade" no more We don't wanna hear you say "Comrade" no more

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

Shortform

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

Premise

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

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

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

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

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

Events and Themes

1. Universes

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

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

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

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

2. Characters and Developments

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

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

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

3. Fates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Potential) Foreshadowing

• Proof for the 42 antiheroes' case:

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

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

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

The Pete variants showed up after Blondie's demise, so they might reverse the sequence here - as I said, a bookend.
Yea, all these signs totally bode well for the other blonde Spidey here
Processing img kpz7vzvub64d1...

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

In Defense

Now calm down before you web pitchforks on me

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

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

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

Future Implications

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

I’ve always hated people. Not really people, but having to interact with them. You could call me anti-social, but honestly, it just bothers me how fake people are. Friends, family, relationships. People change at the drop of a dime, or maybe it's just them randomly deciding to show their true colors, either way, people will always find a way to tear you down and make you feel less than nothing. I guess getting stabbed in the back enough times made me want to keep to myself, unfortunately, in this society, it's hard to avoid people. You have to go to the grocery store, you have to speak to cashiers at the gas station, and unfortunately, you have to have a fucking job…
Every aspect of life demands you interact with someone, and I fucking hate it. That's why when COVID hit, and the country got locked down, it didn't bother me one bit. Not only did I not have to go to work, but the government paid me triple what I made, and sure, even though paying millions of people for years on end for no reason caused this ridiculous inflation we're experiencing now, at least I didn't have to interact with anyone, and even though astronomically more people died because of the lockdowns than died of covid due to it causing depression and desperation leading to suicide along other health conditions that couldn't be treated, I still consider it a plus. My only problem was figuring out what to do with my extra time.
At first, it was amazing. The first week I started and finished 3 shows on HULU I had been wanting to watch, but one thing about the lockdown that hit me hard was I couldn't even go joyride in my Mustang. I guess the cop saw me past too many times in one day and pulled me over. He said if I wasn't out to get essentials, I had to go home or Id be arrested which made no fucking sense. Eventually, I got tired of just watching TV and not being able to go out and enjoy the world. I'd never really been into video games, I mean, I had an X box but mainly to play a Friday the 13th game as I was a Jason Voorhese fanatic along with any other content that would be described as especially heinous, but I figure I might as well put the x box to use since I had so much time to kill. Upon searching through the games, I found the one that would give me everything the government took away.
If you're not familiar with GTA5, it's an open-world game where you basically do whatever you want. You design a character and can choose to do different types of missions to make money, or just drive around and interact with the world. The best part for me was it had a Mustang exactly like mine. I made my character look as much like me as I could, did some missions, made some money, and bought my car. I played the actual game for a while but I quickly found myself more fixated on the mechanics of the world. The people walking and driving around saying outrageous things.
I am by no means a computer or programming specialist which is why I guess it amazed me so much. How did it run how it did? I passed the time simply walking behind people, seeing where they went, driving behind cars, to see if they had a destination. I was amazed to see how these people interacted with each other. A pedestrian, crossing the road and getting hit by a car. An ambulance shows up and revives the person. A gang member shooting a gun causes motorists to drive erratically crashing into multiple other cars and causing mayhem. I concluded the game is probably a grid, like a railroad track these people were programmed to walk or drive on, but when forced to deviate from their programmed route was where it got really interesting, for example, one time a plane crashed causing multiple people to run frantically, and I chose one to follow. They ran and ran and decided to get off the road and head up a mountain. They topped the peak and proceeded to fall down the other side, repeating this over multiple ranges until I got tired of following. I've seen them decide to jump in the ocean and swim toward the horizon, and even randomly jump off a bridge. I understand how they can be programmed to follow a predetermined route, and even deviate to another route while staying on the grid, but some of them do things that kind of make me think they can make choices.
At the end of the day, I’m sure it's just my ignorance of programs and computer shit, but I did find it very entertaining to see what these people did. Eventually, I created my own games within the game, mainly a slasher game where I put on a mask and stalked people from the shadows. I’d wait until it was night, and I would carry a machete like Jason, and just follow people until I felt it was their time to die, and I would kill them. I’d walk through trees and backyards finding somone sitting on their porch or standing in their driveway smoking a cigarette, and I would sneak up and kill them. Sometimes I would just watch from the shadows. I wouldn't even be holding my controller, I'd just sit and watch the world exist because I wasn't allowed to watch my own… Or could I?
I loved walking around the areas that were just trees or hills, away from the city where the animals are, so I decided to go experience my own world again, against the wishes of the government. It’s not like anyone would see me at night, especially if I just walked around wooded areas. For some reason, I can't tell you why, but I wanted it to be as much like the fake world I had been living in as possible, so I even ordered a mask like the one I had been wearing. I put on clothes similar to my character and walked out my back door and into the woods behind my house. The cool breeze was refreshing and the sky was so clear the moon lit up the forest. I had no clue how deep it was but I knew it was deep enough to not worry about cops seeing me and forcing me to return to my prison. For hours I just walked around, admiring nature, all the while wearing a mask and gripping a machete. All of a sudden, through the trees I saw an illuminated floating window. It was too dark to see the house until I got to the wood line. I wondered what the people inside were doing. What they might be up to. I fought with myself in my head about going and finding out inevitably choosing to have a peek. What's the worst that could happen? There were no trespassing signs and the way the law works is you have to be told not to be there by the police before you can get in trouble. The thought of this person having a gun crossed my mind but not before my legs had started walking across the yard. At that point it was already too late, not to mention, I didn't really care. I wanted to see what they were up to.
Only one window was lit up and it was the perfect height for me to peek through. I crouched below it and slowly rose to look inside. It was absent of blinds but it had curtains that were slightly pulled apart, a kitchen window. A woman was doing dishes as her kids were sitting at the table finishing dinner. I wasn't sure if her husband was home, or if she even had one, but I was satisfied with what I saw and decided not to find out. My heart was still racing As I walked back through the woods. This was exhilarating, but as the adrenaline started to wear off, I started to realize I didn't know my way back. I wasn't worried. I happened to have the Google Earth app and knew it would help me find my way home but when I lifted my mask to look at my phone, I realized 2 things. 1, these woods were pretty big, but not that big. Maybe a square mile surrounded 15 houses along its border. 2, it was only 10 o'clock. I obviously didn't have to go to work the next day, so why not check out another house before I call it a night?
As I made my way to the east side of the woods I started to question if what I was doing was wrong. Sure, I could lose the machete, but in my defense, originally I just planned on walking around the woods. I couldn't kill someone. Not in REAL life. But what's the difference between this and simply looking out your window at your neighbor's house or staring at a jogger a little longer than normal? I was just getting a closer look. I decided to lose the machete in case I was seen and continued through the woods until I saw light dancing through the trees. The smoke smell in the air told me it was a fire up ahead and when I approached the woodline I could see a shadow moving back and forth. I crouched down low and parted the bushes to see a barrel with a blazing fire, and a man carrying a cage. I couldn't see what was inside but once I heard the meows I had an idea. He opened the cage pulled out a small cat, maybe a kitten, placed it in a burlap sack, and tossed it in the barrel. The meows turned to screams and it was so loud I had to cover my ears. I quickly turned and darted back into the woods.
I felt horrible, but what was I going to do? The cat was already in the fire so there was no saving it. The screams echoed through the woods for maybe 20 seconds, and then it was quiet. I had heard that sound before thinking it was just some cats fighting or something. How could someone be so fucked up? I mean, I know I can't say much, I’m watching people from the woods with a mask on, but I’m not burning cats alive. I couldn't get home fast enough. I crawled into bed and forced myself asleep so I didn't have to think about what I had just seen and thank God I didn't have any nightmares about it. The next day, I woke up instantly thinking about it but the shock of it had kinda worn off. I felt a little numb trying to understand how evil like that could exist, but I carried on with my day eventually forgetting about it altogether.
When the sun started to go down, I reentered the woods, this time with a route planned out. I’d check out 3 houses a night, all on different sides of the wooded patch in case I were seen I would be out of the general area, and also to learn my way around the woods so I didn't have to rely on Google to tell me where I was at. The first house was dark and the absence of cars in the drive led me to believe no one was home or maybe it was unoccupied. I didn’t approach the second house due to a man working in his garage. The car he was working on was nice and had him so preoccupied he didn't even notice me watching from the open door. I lingered for a bit and then headed off to my final house before calling it a night. I could hear the whipping sound before getting close to the house. My jaw dropped inside my mask when I looked through the window and saw where it was coming from. A man in a wheelchair, and an older woman wearing a face of pure anger, gripping the belt. He sat in his chair emotionless as the woman repeatedly hit him with the belt. He didn't even try to fight back, and honestly, I don’t even think he knew what was going on. The lifeless look on his face told me he was an empty vessel, a health condition the woman resented for whatever reason. I wanted nothing more than to bust in and stop her, but was it my place?
I wanted to take my mind off of what I was seeing, and the image of the woman and her kids came into my mind. I wondered what they were doing… Maybe something normal that would make ME feel normal again. I made my way to the yellow house hoping the wholesome view of a loving family would prevent any nightmares the scene would cause, but when I got close I could hear the yelling. She did have a husband, and they were arguing. Looking through the window, I could see her crying in the kitchen, the man towering over her with fury in his voice. The kids weren't there but it was 11 pm so I assumed they were asleep, unable to hear the anger filling the house. I didn't like how he talked to her, but again, what could I do?
For weeks, I watched the evil that dwelled in the houses surrounding the woods, walking through the dark trees with negative sounds echoing through my head. Images of people, hurting each other, or themselves. 15 houses, very few pleasant to watch, or anything that could be considered normal. Every Monday, a sound echoed through the forest. I felt it starting to change me, drive me crazy but at the same time, cause me to feel numb. So much pain in such a small area, the craziness inside every box with a door. How much more was in the rest of the world?! What even was normal? I made a decision. Sticky notes.
“Hurting yourself isn’t the answer”
“How would you like to be in a wheelchair?”
“You'll burn next if you don’t stop.”
Messages no one would report because they’d have to explain. I approached the yellow house to leave my last note. “Treat her better”, that’s all it said. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe if these people knew someone was watching they would change their ways. His car door would be the best place for this one. As I stuck it on the handle, I could hear the yelling. He was always yelling, and drunk. It was worse than usual because I could hear things being thrown and slammed. I peeked through the usual window just as he flipped the kitchen table and backed her against the wall. He raised his hand, bringing it down across her face. She hit the floor as he stood over her. He took another swig from his bottle before striking her again. Between every angry sentence, he would hit her. He was going to kill her!
Before I could even think I had kicked in the door. Before he could even turn, I had picked up a chair and swung it at his head. He hit the ground and the woman started to scream even louder. I looked down to see the blood pouring from his head. I dropped the chair and ran back into the woods, her screams fading the further I got.
I got home, hid the mask, and bit my nails to the nubs waiting for whatever evidence I left behind to lead the cops to me. Any trails I made over my weeks of walking through the woods, like breadcrumbs for the police, but they never came.
The next day, every news channel played the same story. "Man killed by a masked vigilante." The woman had told the story, exactly how it happened. How he was beating her mercilessly. How she feared for her life, and how a masked person had come in to save it. I wasn’t proud of what I had done. I had taken a man's life. What if he was only going to hit her one last time and be done? Did this man really deserve to die? It wasn’t my intention, and no amount of Reddit or social media posts praising the vigilante made me feel better about what I had done.
The truth is, I'm not a vigilante. I’m not Superman and I'm definitely not God, so who am I to change what I feel needs to be changed? To redirect a timeline that would otherwise never exist. If there is a God, who am I to change what he himself doesn’t deem worthy to alter? So from now on, I just watch… Or not... One thing’s for sure, the longer I do this, the easier it is to not look away.
SHORT FILM at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKzkNB9Df_Y

Narcissistic grandmother.
Where do i begin.... So my grandmother has always been abusive to me. For as long as i can remember.
As a child my mum and dad practically dumped me on my grandmother and grandfather's step. They took me in. My grandad was always my angel. He loved me so much and I was always the apple of his eye. Sadly in 2009 he died from leukaemia. He was diagnosed on his birthday. Died a year later on his birthday 😔 me and my grandmother never really got along. She always looked down her nose at me. Like I was a piece of shit under her shoe.
It was just me who got dumped on my grandparents step. My sisters went with my mum and my brother with my dad when they split up.
Now.... I don't know much about her upbringing because I literally can't speak to the woman. She is very... Undermining and passive agressive. So I just don't bother as its never pleasant to speak to her. Never has been.
So I have 2 sisters and a brother. My grandmother idolises them. Very openly, almost like it's done purposely to make me feel as low as possible. I am constantly left out of family outings, holidays, meals. You name it. It's making me resent my own siblings.
I became the black sheep very quickly. I have to watch my family doing things together, while I'm constantly left out. Watching from the sidelines, Unacknowledged, Forgotten about if you will.
Fast forward... At this point id had enough. So I moved in with my then boyfriend. I was obviously extremely happy to get away from my grandmother and family. I moved to a different city.
Things were great at first... Sadly he started to change after a while. He started to abuse me also and get violent towards me. I found out he had abused 2 women before me. I escaped with my life barely. But I had nowhere to live or any money as my ex had taken everything off me and used me for my money the entire time and I would like to add that this man also made me disabled. ( trauma induced fibromyalgia, chronic pain and fatigue, ptsd, depression, the whole lot )
So I had to move back in with my evil grandmother, but this time... I'm disabled at this point 😔 the trauma and stress of previous life abuses and obviously the trauma of domestic violence had made me extremely ill. I couldn't even walk. I've been in and out of hospital and doctors you name it.
So now, my grandmother has an evil new tactic up her sleeve. Because I'm now disabled, she uses my illness as a weapon to abuse me. Saying "your brain has gone" " you're crazy " . And calling me and i quote a " fat tw*t " obviously because of my ptsd, I was terrified to leave the house and now my own grandmother is attacking my appearance and mental health and disability all at the same time. My illness has turned my life upside down.
She is taking nearly all my money from me, so I'm unable to save up to leave. Shelters are only offering me places half way across the country, alone, which would absolutely terrify me.
I have had a pretty lonely existence and still live a lonely existence. My pets are my everything and shelters also do not allow pets. So I feel trapped now. I cannot survive without my pets. They're all I have.
I'm trapped with a woman who causes a fight with me any time I leave my bedroom. She attacks my disibilty, my mental health, calls me names, she bins my belongings and throws my stuff around all over the floor. She purposely breaks my belongings. Then she gaslights me.
She literally says I'm imagining things when she does all this stuff to me. All while turning the rest of my family against me by telling them, I'm unruly. Because I'm defending myself and standing my ground on what I know to be true. I've even resorted to recording her when she starts these fights with me. But even when I show my siblings. They instantly side with her or say it's nothing to do with them. Even if I tell my mum. She doesn't care. My mum is a very selfish woman. She has a drug addiction. So she only cares about herself and herself only. My dad has just got a whole seperate life now and a new gf. Wants nothing to do with me or anyone else besides his gf.
I've been abused my entire life. I'm still being abused. I've had enough.
What do I even do about this? I feel like I'm getting more sick by the day because of all this trauma. I'm literally trapped. I'm tired. My soul is literally tired.
If I alert authorities. My entire family will turn on me. All but one. My grandmother's daughter. My auntie. Is also cast out by her. So I do speak to her about the abuse which helps.
But it doesn't help my situation. I'm still trapped here. My auntie has a full house and is also dealing with illness herself. So that's not an option unfortunately.
Has anyone experienced anything like this with their grandmother?
It makes me sick because everyone thinks she's a lovely old lady. She puts on this false image in public. But behind closed doors. She's a monster. An absolute monster. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff she says to me I can barely believe it myself. She's told me to unalive myself and that nobody loves me and she hates me.
I know it's awful to say. But I cant wait until she passes 😢 I can then be free of her abuse once and for all. I hate that I think this way about someone. But when theyve abused you your entire life, Belittled you, called you names, attack you, bullied you, destroys and bins your belongings and has trapped you, then blames you for it. You will think and feel the same way. All whilst rubbing how much she loves my siblings in my face.
She makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. Like I'm unlovable. What did I ever do to her!?!
I remember asking this question once and she said I'm imagining things and im being childish and told to grow up and stop being crazy and that I'm weak.
She loves calling me weak and keeps telling me I'm playing the victim. Well.... I am the victim. You're literally abusing me.
It's not crazy if it's reality right?
Sometimes I feel like Im just not from this family. Even my siblings have nothing in common with me and look down on me and don't bother with me. We are 100% from the same mother and father. I just can't understand how I'm cast out and treated like this. I've never done anything wrong to anyone 😔😔
I've asked many times what I've done to deserve this treatment and they just keep saying the same thing. Stop playing the victim or I'm imagining things and to grow up. My feelings are not valid.
I'm constantly just in my bedroom, because if I come out. I become a target. I barely even eat 😢😢 I have 2 meals a week if that and that's when my grandmother goes out. I go down and make something quick to eat. I tend to buy a lot of snacks online. Things I can keep in my bedroom to snack on when I get real hungry, just to avoid coming out of my bedroom.
Not sure how much more heartbreak I can take.
I've planned a day out at the weekend for the first time in 2 years to go see all my friends. To a rave. Because my legs have gained a bit of strength recently after being bed bound for over a year because I've been so ill. Obviously I'm extremely nervous about leaving my house, but I'm trying to force myself to try get myself out of this rut I'm in. My grandmother has done nothing but attack my image, calling me fat and basically trying to destroy my confidence, so I don't go out and calling me other horrible names because it's a rave I'm going to.
Now I used to rave a lot. So it's the only time I get to mix with like minded people. It's always the same people who go and i class them all as my rave family. I've been super excited and obviously nervous about this rave. I planned it just a week ago. My grandmother of course. Is doing everything in her power to try get me to not go. My friends all live dotted around the country, so i barely ever get to see anyone.
I'm not allowed to be happy. Or have a life or do anything for that matter.
I've been trying to exercise using my hula hoops and other flowtoys. Like my leviwand for example. It cost over 300 pound and my grandmother has gone into the tube it's kept in and binned the chargers and string for it. Rendering it useless and saying she's not touched it and im making stuff up and im going crazy!!!
I know she had done it as it was in her cupboard in her room. It had moved completely from where I actually put it. My room is very cluttered as I've had to cram me, my things and my pets all in here with me, due to having left my ex in such a hurry. I feel like I'm living in a closet. So I thought this one item would be safe in that cupboard as it was expensive. She had moved it and shoved something in its box that I know wasn't in there when I put it in there. She's lost all the attatchments, which I know was all together in that box. So now I can't use it at all. Of course.... It's all in my head and I'm the one who's lost these things even though i know for a fact I kept it all safe and together.
She's constantly sabataging me and saying it's all in my head.
I'm Quickly fading. Giving up. But then.... She will attack me for that too. Fcked if I do. Fcked if i don't. I can't win. No matter what I do.
Even if for example... Something has been on its way out... Breaking for a while and she's aware of it, if it breaks, it's automatically my fault.
According to her... Anything that breaks. Even if I haven't touched it. It's my fault. She will deliberately leave things to deteriorate and then blame me when it finally breaks completely. I'm at my wits end.
I'm so lost and just devastated at how horrible my life has been.
Can anyone give me any advice on what I should do about this situation?