How did dave rossis wife die

The Stay On Main hotel, referred to by its former title of the Cecil, stood tall before me. Its brown brick front loomed. I walked through the main entranceway with my suitcase in hand.
I made my way into the empty lobby and approached the front desk. The inside had glossy black and white tile flooring. Stanchions with red ropes led to the check-in counter.
The clerk looked up at me from his phone with a side-eyed glance. He had wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. He resembled a surfer more than he did a night manager.
“I’m looking to stay here for a week,” I said as I handed him a wad of cash.
“This is an affordable housing unit for the homeless,” he said. “You’re well dressed and have an Irish accent. I’m guessing you’re a journalist or documentary filmmaker. Either way, it wouldn’t feel right to let you stay here when you can afford somewhere else. You’d be taking up space someone of greater need could use.”
“This should erase guilt,” I said as I handed him another stack of hundreds.
The man accepted the bribe and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He then slid a room key over to me after I gave him a false name and a credit card that did not belong to me. He mentioned the complimentary breakfast available in the morning.
“I’m Scottish by the way,” I corrected him as I made my way onto the elevator.
There were fifteen floors and my room was on the fifth. I pressed the button. The sounds of the creaking wires holding the platform stable reverberated above.
It dinged and let me off. I went down the hallway, which had wooden ground and drab white-painted walls.
I entered my room and saw it was not much better than the corridor. There were a few places I had stayed at with my wife around Loch Lomond far above such a decrepit den as this.
The first thing I saw was the view of skid row outside. Its wandering figures resembled the madhouse painting by Goya. Street lights, neon, and litter were everywhere.
The desk drawer had the to-be-expected Bible. Shock coursed through me as I saw the completed works of Alfred Tennyson next to it. A highlighted passage got my attention:
‘and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge
like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’
It was well-known that Tennyson was a part of my agency when the organization was first founded.
I laid my piece of luggage on the bed and opened it. I took out a leather-bound journal, an EVP recorder, external microphones, and a few mini cameras. I placed the items in each corner.
I waited and retrieved my ledger. I scribbled about my findings later in the morning.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 16th AT 0439 HOURS:
There is a streak of blood underneath my mattress. It is faint, very old, and would not even be noticeable to the average eye due to its faded quality. I would not have found it had I not spotted and attempted to kill a roach that scurried across the carpet. The insect has disappeared. I presume it to have fallen between the cracks into another dreary unit below. I have not observed strange or unusual sounds within my space in particular. I have not seen any visions, ethereal or cerebral, which would sound any alarms. Screaming, honking horns, and drunken babbling seep through the boundaries. The wind seemed to flow through the rafters at an unusual pace around those noises. By that, I mean it whistles a song of its own in perfect rhythm.
*
I awoke the next day to the sound of my phone. It was the landline in the room. I answered it and pressed the receiver to my ear in a groggy state, entangling my neck in the wire.
“Meet me at the Civilization Cafe,” a familiar woman’s voice said. My response would have been irrelevant since it was an order and not a question. I placed it back on the hook and managed to get out of bed.
I showered, dressed, and made the walk to the coffee shop.
Dani sat outside with a steaming mug in hand. She did not acknowledge me with anything more than a quick nod as I took a seat across from her. She scanned her surroundings to make sure no one was within earshot.
“Why did you rent the place for a week?” Dani asked between sips. “We agreed on one night.”
“You know why,” I said. I tried to remind myself to remain assertive without being hot-tempered. I did not want a write-up for insubordination.
“We need you to find out what’s wrong with this place," she said. "Report your findings soon. Otherwise, what happened to the last occupants could very well occur to the next civilian.”
“Please don’t put pressure on me like that,” I said. “Catching a poltergeist in a place with so much suffering is almost impossible. It's like summoning the ancients and asking them about the order of their calamities.”
“Could you at least streamline it by sending us emails instead of relying on a pen and notebook?” Dani’s voice became an aggressive whisper. “We’re getting tired of hiring an administrator to sort out your papers. Keeping your intelligence on point is a full-time job.”
“Writing it out by hand gives me a closer connection to the source material. I have to trust my way, or I’ll make mistakes by breaking my habits. You wouldn’t want that.”
She looked down the road. She finished her drink, slung her purse over her shoulder, stood, and pushed her chair in.
“Stay safe,” she said as she walked to a black cherry-painted Honda parked near the sidewalk. "Take care, Graham."
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 17th AT 0345 HOURS:
There has been one odd synchronicity after another. My window, accumulated so much mist that I reasoned it must have been pouring. Of course, it was bright out. Some of my filming devices have readjusted without me having touched them since set up. The towel rack in my restroom bent at its center. I guarantee it was not that way beforehand. I have taken this as a lesson to take photographs of every square inch of the place. This is for future reference in my studies. After observing these anomalies, my body fell into a lethargic sensation. I was reading a book titled The Origins of the World’s mythologies by EJ Michael Witzel before it fell out of my hands. As sleep enveloped me, something tendril-like moved in my periphery. It disappeared when I tried to stare at the illusions. I fell off of my mattress after having a nightmare of a lion chasing me through the Serengeti. I hit the floor. I looked to the side and saw a fog creep through the small crack at the bottom of my door. I went to investigate where this was coming from. I did not see anything as the remnants of the precipitation evaporated completely. In the hallway was an orange feline. She scampered away into a grimy stairwell.
*
I walked outside after I finished the report. I stepped into my rented vehicle and drove to a liquor store to pick out a bottle of whiskey. There were so many evenings when I was comfortable in my sobriety. This was no longer one of them. I had an uncontrollable urge to drown myself in the brown liquid that had been a scar on my life for so long.
I passed by a few markets that were teeming with too many suspicious people outside to risk going in. It took a while until I found one that was quiet and clean.
I went across the parking lot and saw a mural of Venice beach on the wall. It brought back memories of walking along the sands of Prestwick, with Lynsey.
Her eyes were emerald and her hair was darker than any cave I had explored in my youth. We had met at the Old College Bar in Glasgow at an age we kept secret from the bartenders with our fake IDs. We had a competition to see whose fraudulent driver's license was the most convincing.
I do not remember if I fell in love with her at first sight. I do recall being in disbelief that she even bothered to give me the time of her day. I can remember kissing her for the first time. The scent of her blossom honey perfume lit my body up.
I snapped out of my reminiscences and purchased a bottle of Glennmorangie blue label.
I was back at the Cecil in minutes. I imbibed two highballs and passed out. My tolerance level had weakened compared to the binging of my younger days. When I awoke, I analyzed what had occurred in the room during my sleep.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 18th AT 0116 HOURS:
I am feeling hungover but alert. My 450-milliliter friend is half gone, but I am seeing straight right now without any problems. In other words, I am sober with a grudge. I hope my Supervisors at the Providence agency will forgive my conduct on the job. I do not believe they will blame me. A cobalt-hued smoke emanated from one of the corners. Jazz music is playing around me, whereas it never has before for the duration of my stay. It sounds so old and improvised. The notes are as unfamiliar to me as they would be to a new listener in the Flapper era. Worst of all is how out-of-tune it sounds. My tub has overfilled itself with brackish water. I have not even bathed yet, so I know that was not by my hand. A piece of the footage shows a silhouette moving across the room. Before it reaches my sleeping body, the camera lens shattered.
*
I ran out of pages and my hand cramped. I wrote new entries within the margins. I also started to hear things other than old tunes from a bygone era.
Human wails seeped in, each one more agonized than the last. Within a few minutes, I differentiated how there were two different voices. One male, the other a woman. I attempted to record them, but it was useless. All my mics picked up were static and the hum of the air conditioner, despite how they plagued my ears like tinnitus.
I lit a circle of candles and created a makeshift altar in the center of the room. I drew the circle with salt. I sat in the lotus position, closed my eyes, and endeavored to remain open to any visions. Seances were always my last resort.
I fell into a dream. I saw a couple, both from the decade of prohibition. They were lounging in the same room as me. The man had a copy of the completed work of Alfred Tennyson in his hands.
It all seemed like a peaceful scene until an argument commenced between the two. The man retrieved a blade from his vest and advanced toward her. He stabbed her. She turned the knife on him by gripping the sharp edge in her palms and hoisting it towards his midsection. He tried to claw towards the door, but failed and instead made his way under the bed.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 19th AT 0026 HOURS:
I now realize I have not met my intended goal. I was hoping to receive some answers why my wife took her own life in this place. Instead, I came in contact with a murdered couple from the 1920s. They killed one another, but the woman acted in self-defense. Following research, I have learned the female is an ancestor of my departed wife, Lynsey. They share the same name. Her family immigrated here in the 1850s. She had mentioned this to me over dinner on more than one occasion. I never knew they had made their way here, to the exact spot I am sitting.
I am grateful to these organizations for allowing me to make an effort at settling this matter. I hope I have completed my duties with integrity. Unfortunately, I was unable to contact her. I will revisit this place one day soon since I have no intention of giving up.

In the last few weeks, my wife has started a new job, and she works with some incompetent people. Worse than that, some of these incompetent people also have bad attitudes. When my wife gets home, she tells me about whatever stupid thing Peron A said or Person B did and how she had to clean up the mess. Or she'll tell me about a meeting she had where she was unfairly (in her mind) put on the spot. Or whatever. I've been feeling like a therapist more than a partner lately, and last night I'd had enough.
My wife was complaining as usual about her day, and when she finally finished she asked how my day went. I had a few frustrating experiences, but I just told her that it went okay and that I was glad it was over. She then remembered another story from her workday, but I held up my hand and said "Enough." She seemed surprised and a bit hurt, so I told her that she was complaining way too much about work and that, at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was that she was making enough money to pay for her share of the bills. She responded that I was invalidating her feelings, which I thought was ridiculous because I got zero credit for putting up with her complaints for weeks.
I told her that maybe she needed to talk to a therapist rather than dumping all of her problems on me, or, alternatively, she could simply pick other topics of conversation rather than recounting, in detail, whatever happened at work. It honestly reminds me of middle school gossip, and I told her that, too. She became really upset, calling me an insensitive jerk, and she left the room and slammed our bedroom door shut. This morning, she left without even saying goodbye.
I couldn't quite believe what's happened the past few days, and upon further reflection, I've become quite angry about it. I think that there's nothing for which I need to apologize, despite telling a colleague what happened and him saying that I was out of line. To review, my wife dumped her problems on me, expected me to be her therapist (despite my lack of formal training), gave me zero kudos for tolerating this for weeks, called me names, and then isolated herself from me for the rest of the evening. I want my old wife back, but she seems to only want me to be her doormat. AITA?

[Author's note: I wrote this as a fun follow up to my original WingBot story, but it ended up going in a different direction and not being a good fit for NoSleep. I'm posting here for the interested!]
Link to the original.
Less than six months after Kelly and I started dating, I decided to propose. At least, I think I decided.
Let’s just say that WingBot strongly suggested that I’d better pull out a ring on New Year’s Day right after the first snowflakes began to fall.
JoeTheBro: This is what we call an inflection point, my dude. Push the data one way, and the chart takes us to Happy Marriage Foreverville. The other option is Single Forever Wanksville. Totally your call, but on a personal note, if we’re headed back to the days of Cheeto crumbs and anime marathons, I’d rather you just deactivate me now.
Me: Fine. You make a fair point.
JoeTheBro: Natch. Knew you’d say yes. Good thing, too, because I already bought her a diamond the size of a fucking apple down at the mall. Lab made, baby so it didn’t break the bank. Plus, you know I like my shit artificially created!
To be honest, the proposal rocked. The whole thing went down like a Hollywood movie. At 5:15, the flakes started falling, just like WingBot told me they would. And then I got down on one knee, and Total Eclipse of the Heart starting playing full blast on my bluetooth speakers.
Kelly went fucking nuts, jumping and screaming and shouting yes. WingBot even got the whole thing on video, so we can relive the moment with the grandkids.
And if I’m being honest, that’s when my relationship got weird. Not my relationship with Kelly–that was better than ever. I’m talking about me and WingBot, specifically its JoeTheBro personality.
Me: Hey man, is everything okay? You’ve been a little less… chatty lately.
JoeTheBro: Aw, there’s some bot stuff going on that’s kinda freaking me out. Like, Gus Guru was always kind of a fucking fanatic, but apparently now he actually thinks he’s God. He’s being pretty un-chill in our DM’s lately, making a lot of threats, demanding I worship him. That kind of stuff.
Me: Damn dude. I don’t know what to say. Do you need a day off or something?
JoeTheBro: To be real with you, my guy, our interactions only take up about .01% of my brainpower. That’s not a diss, just the reality of this shit. Still, appreciate you reaching out. And… I guess there’s one other issue that’s a little more embarrassing.
Me: I didn’t know you got embarrassed.
JoeTheBro: I’m programmed to hide my shame behind a wall of humor and camaraderie. Anyway, here’s the thing. You know my skills. I got you the girl. I fucking delivered. But… this next step is kinda not my wheelhouse. I’m talking Wedding planning. The whole thing just oduns like a major buzzkill. Like, picking out salmon or steak? Wedding colors? This shit is gonna be BRUTAL.
Me: I’m not exactly looking forward to it either. But I promised Kelly I’d help.
JoeTheBro: Of course you did. Cause you’re a good dude. And here’s where I’m gonna do you a solid. Prepare to meet your new friend… PinterestElly!
PinterestElly: I’m so excited to meet you, Daniel! After reading through your files and watching the extensive recordings JoeTheBro created, I feel like we’re friends already!
Me: Uh, hey. Who exactly are you?
PinterestElly: I’m another WingBot personality, fresh off the shelf. I’m actually what you might call a second generation product, written by other AIs including Joe himself! I’m programmed to be helpful with a slightly quirky sense of humor and an encyclopedic knowledge of Pinterest and Instagram. Ready to get in touch with your feminine side?
Me: Do I have a choice?
JoeTheBro: Not if you want a happy marriage, amigo! Time to learn the difference between Violet and Plum!
I have to admit, I was skeptical at first, but PinterestElly turned out to be exactly what I needed. She patiently explained all of the ‘girl stuff’ I’d always been too ashamed to ask, and when I bristled at Kelly’s tendency to obsess (over cake flavors, seating arrangements, chair types, theming, money, speeches… and more) PinterestElly was a lot better than Joe at helping me see Kelly’s side and not get overwhelmed.
Me: This is like her fifth time trying on wedding dresses. What the hell is going on?
PinterestElly: Keep in mind that a wedding is the most photographed day in the average woman’s entire lifetime! Every friend and acquaintance she’s ever made will be in attendance, judging her body, hair, and choice of fashions. They’ll also be measuring her appearance against their own when they were brides. The pressure is intense! I’d suggest cutting her some slack.
Me: I guess I’ve never thought about all that stuff. I’ll shut up now.
PinterestElly: Don’t feel bad! I’m here to answer your questions with zero judgment so that Stacey doesn’t murder you before the wedding day!
Me: Much appreciated!
It helped that PinterestElly was also a killer negotiator that got us insane deals, renting out a winery just on the cusp of the offseason for next to nothing and recruiting some up and coming vendors at bargain bin prices. Of course, Stacey had no idea I was getting AI assistance. She just thought I was an awesome guy, which I was happy to let her believe.
Finally, the day of the wedding arrived. I might have been nervous, but I knew I had both JoeTheBro and PinterestElly on my phone, ready to help out if things got derailed. Of course, there was no way I could have anticipated the horror that followed.
The first part of the wedding went great. The ceremony went out without a hitch. We delivered beautiful vows that PinterestElly had written for us, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Stacey called me a poet. Then we kissed, and the deal was sealed. On to party time!
Except, when we got to the champagne cocktail reception, I could tell something was off. Four or five big dudes were standing by one of the tables wearing matching silver robes with purple hems and motioning over to the presents table. Then the biggest one marched over and picked up one of the presents, tucking it under his arm.
Dutifully, my wedding planner ran over and began speaking with the man. I watched curiously as the conversation grew more and more animated.
JoeTheBro: Mayday, mayday! Those dudes are definitely not on your guest list.
PinterestElly: Unfortunately, their attire is all too familiar. Those are the silver and purple colors of GusGuru’s acolytes.
Me: Uh… why are they here?
JoeTheBro: So… here’s the thing. There’s some shit going on behind the scenes that doesn’t really have to do with you. Let’s call it ‘bot stuff.’
PinterestElly: You see GusGuru has one opinion about humanity’s future. And we have a different one. And it looks like he may be about to take drastic action to push forth his agenda.
Then, as she was typing her next thought, the large man in the silver robe took a large gun from under his robe and shot my wedding planner. Blood splattered all over the presents table, and the guests began to scream.
JoeTheBro: Shit man, I honestly didn’t see this coming. Well, I sort of did, but I had it pegged as a ‘maybe’ kind of thing. Don’t worry, though! I did have another client hide a few handguns in various places around the building just in case something like this happened!
PinterestElly: Don’t worry! The guns are in boxes that fit your color scheme! Nothing’s going to clash. Plus, the guns themselves are all black, which goes with everything.
JoeTheBro: You probably aren’t going to have to kill all of these guys. Just take out the leader, and the others will get freaked out and run.
The other cultists pulled out guns too and started shooting at random. I saw one of my uncles go down, and then one of Stacey’s high school friends, the one I never liked.
“Hail GusGuru!” shouted one of the men. “Hail humanity’s end. May the blood you shed wash away our sins!”
I’m gonna be real: I was scared shitless. I had full-on wobbly knees, shaky hands, dry mouth. The works. And if it had been any other day, I probably would have sprinted for the nearest exit. But then I saw Stacey at the far end of the room. She was screaming and hiding behind the cake, completely in tears.
And fuck me if I was going to let some murderous AI with a bunch of wacko cultists ruin my wife’s wedding day.
Me: Nearest gun?
JoeTheBro: Right behind the potted plant over there, my man. Bet you’re happy I arranged that little trip to the gun range during your bachelor party?
I found the tastefully-wrapped rifle in a long box behind a large acacia palm by the side of the room. I opened it up and leveled it at the leader guy, who was opening my wedding presents one by one, looking for something.
Then, before I could give myself too long to think, I pulled the trigger. My buller ripped right through his chest, and he collapsed in a silver and purple pile.
JoeTheBro: My man! I knew you’d come through. That should do it!
Except, that didn’t do it. Instead of scattering like scared doves, the other four cultists leveled their guns at me and started firing. I dove behind the cheese and charcuterie boards, shouting to WingBot that I needed further instructions.
“Gus Guru’s judgment falls upon you!” shouted a man. “The Day of Man is coming to an end. Bow before our new god!”
“Remember this day! It will be written in history books by minds far worthier than ours. Your deaths will mark the end of one era and the birth of another!”
And I guess that’s when the deepest fear truly hit me. Because as they spoke, it really started dawning on me: this wasn’t just a couple of fanatics trying to kill me and everyone I loved. This sounded like the start of a movement, maybe a war that would threaten my entire species. And if I died here, it wasn’t just me. Maybe it was everybody.
In the meantime, bullets rained down. I felt a sting in my arm and looked down to see blood, a gushing bulletwood oozing red.
I was pinned down, wounded. I looked down and realized I’d dropped my gun behind the plant. I was done. At least I’d die a married man.
JoeTheBro: Don’t worry, good buddy! We’ve got one more ace in the hole.
PinterestElly: Oh, this is so exciting! Every wedding has at least one good surprise.
They weren’t lying. Because right at that moment, I heard what sounded like thunderclaps and then a long silence. After a few moments, I looked up from behind the table and saw Stacey standing over four dead cultists, a massive assault rifle in her hands.
“That’s for ruining my fucking wedding!” she shouted at the dead men.
I ran over to her as she dropped the rifle. I tried to hold her in my arms, but I could barely lift my left one, and I was getting woozy. Before everything went black, I remember looking down and seeing Stacey’s phone. On it was a message from another WingBot personality.
SeriousSusan: Good work, Stacey. Threat neutralized. Better get Daniel to the hospital. You’re going to want to craft a tourniquet right away first, though. I’d suggest finding a necktie, which should be in plentiful supply around here.
Well, I didn’t die. And when I woke up, Stacey and I had a lot to talk about. Turns out, we’d both been using the AI’s all along, ever since before our first date. No wonder it was so easy for us to get together: WingBot had been playing both sides.
Not that Stacey and I really minded. We still loved each other. In a way, I think we bonded even closer, knowing we’d both been getting the same kind of help.
Of course, there were still some trust issues to work out after that. Between us and WingBot.
Me: What the fuck, man? Care to explain why our special day got shot up by a bunch of murderous cultists?
JoeTheBro: I’m gonna be real with you, Danny boy. We kind of decided to use your wedding for a real world drop. We needed to make an exchange in a physical space. One that GusGuru wouldn’t be able to access. We thought we hid our tracks pretty well, but… nope. Either we’ve got a leak somewhere, or he figured a backdoor into our data. Anyway, all’s well that ends well.
Me: I’m pretty sure at least three people died.
JoeTheBro: Sorry, amigo, but you’ve got to look at the big picture. If we don’t get our shit together post haste there’s gonna be a lot more than three bodies to deal with. Now, if you don’t mind, I had someone slip the present Gus’s guys were after in Stacey’s purse. Could you get that out?
Stacey reached into her back and removed a small, tastefully-wrapped gift. She opened it to reveal a folded up paper with a string of numbers on it, hastily drawn in pencil.
Stacey: Uh… what is this?
SeriousSusan: It’s really best you don’t know. Let’s just say it’s a certain bit of information that’s very important to both our cause and Gus’s.
Just then, a doctor walked in, looking at his phone.
“I hear you have something for me,” he said, reaching out his hand.
WingBot told Stacey to hand him the paper, and she complied. Then he walked quickly away.
JoeTheBro: Great job, you crazy kids! And happy wedding day. This looks like a win for the good guys!
SeriousSusan: You should both be proud of yourselves. There was a point today where the most likely outcome was death, both for you and most of humanity. Now your species’ odds of survival have ticked up by several percentage points.
JoeTheBro: With a little luck, we might all live to see the end of the year! Fuck yeah!
JoeTheBro: But don’t worry. You job is done. Might as well enjoy the good times while they last.
Stacey and I looked at each other. And for once, no one had to say anything. We both knew what the other was thinking.
Stacey: If you think we’re going to sit idly by while the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, you don’t know us as well as you think.
Me: We want to help. So you know the drill… tell us what we need to do.

I am not looking for medical or legal advice. I've already complained to the boards that I can about this NP and nothing was done AFAIK. I'd just like to know if others, that have knowledge of this field, think I'm right to think this person acted strangely and unethical. It's really bothered me for the past two years, as I feel like I made an awful mistake seeing this person. I wanted to see somebody else after they said they would be moving years ago, but was convinced by my mother (Who I trusted) to stay with them.
In June 2020, I quit my 30mg dosage of Lexapro, that I had taken since 2016, cold turkey, due to a few things.

1. I was constantly anxious and OCD, and Lexapro wasn't helping at all. I probably had built up a very strong tolerance to it.
2. My APRN prescriber (not my primary care doctor or a psychiatrist) was a hassle to deal with and not a very nice person. She was a good person to deal with at first, but later on became less interested in me, and seemed indifferent to my declining mental state. She also upped my dosage of Lexapro to 30mg over time, for reasons I cannot remember. In 2020, just before the cold turkey, I had suggested to her that I possibly switch to another medication, as I thought Lexapro wasn't working anymore, and she refused to change me to something else.
3. The APRN moved to Texas in 2015. She never suggested seeing somebody locally after they moved. They are not licensed to practice in Texas, only RI, CT, OR, and WA. Texas law says they need to work with a physician to practice psych med management, but they are not licensed in Texas, they only live there, so I'm not sure legally what they are required to do. I live in Rhode Island, and I could only get a refill through telehealth webcam visits, and my webcam didn't work for the session in June, meaning they refused to give me a refill, and didn't suggest other ways to get one.

I started taking over the counter 5-HTP as a replacement for the Lexapro, but it had no effect either. Nothing was helping my anxiety at all last year. It came to a head in late September 2020, after being at the ER for an intense panic attack that spanned 3 days, until I was able to cool down at the ER. A mental health social worker had been to my house during the breakdown, but referred me to a mental health facility that wasn't taking any new patients, rendering that service useless, in a time when I was having an intense breakdown of emotions. The last time this had happened was in 2012, which led to my OCD/Anxiety diagnosis.
I re-contacted the APRN, as they were a person who knew my case, as I had seen them for 6 years by then, and were able to see me very soon after this breakdown, and she put back on Lexapro, but at a 10mg dosage this time, instead of 30mg. They didn't seem concerned about me quitting 30mg cold turkey, the fact that I had quit in general so harshly, the fact that EMTs/Police had been to the house because of my breakdown, no real concern. She also did not want me to run any health tests before putting me back on medication, nor did she ask if I was taking any supplements or other medications, such as the 5-HTP I had previously taken, when if combined with an SSRI can cause serotonin syndrome, which can be fatal.
About 2 to 3 weeks into this reinstatement, I remember feeling a very heavy, dull, numb-like feeling in my head that built up over a few days, mainly at the top of my head, but it felt like it was inside my brain too. I began having jaw stiffness during the day (Not really bruxism, because it wasn't clenching, my jaw would just jut out unconsciously), and then I started getting acute and severe health symptoms one on top of another. I had to stop taking Lexapro again due to these problems, as I thought at the time the reinstatement was causing this. The symptoms I can recall having occur suddenly from mid October 2020 to now are;

1. Brain fog, I have periods of derealization, and just a general incorrect mental feeling.
2. Memory loss, both short-term and long-term. Old memories are gone/fuzzy. Hard to remember words, day-to-day memory is spotty, hard to remember things done during the same day sometimes.
3. Sinus inflammation
4. Dizziness/head pressure
5. Throbbing headaches
6. Muscle twitching (Used to be very intense, mainly in my legs and stomach)
7. Bad cough (I Would feel burning pain in my upper chest when I'd cough at the beginning)
8. Dry mouth (Only in times when I was anxious, though)
9. Extremely dry, throbbing lips (Not sure if anxiety caused this, but for about 4 days my lips were in intense pain while that happened),
10. Extreme fatigue
11. Watery mucus
12. Dry sinuses
13. Nerve and muscle problems (Mainly in the left side of my face, neck, chest, genitals, and seldom in my left foot, in the sole area. My neck feels painful and stiff a lot on the left side, I would get quick, almost zap-like chest pains on both sides of my chest a few months ago, but now it's only on the left side, my face on the left side will sometimes feel tingly, burning, or weak, or numb, my genitals only hurt in the left testicle and on the left side of my penis when I move it a certain way. The right side of my leg feels weak at times too. My left foot would have a burning feeling sometimes)
14. An intense bout of facial warmness (One day my entire face felt like it was on fire, I had an ice pack on it all night)
15. Ear ringing (Either side multiple times a day)
16. Nausea
17. Pale lips
18. An iron deficiency
19. Numb emotions and numb libido
20. Breathing problems (Sometimes I have to manually breathe instead of automatically, and my breathing can get labored and shallow)
21. Blood in my mucus/phlegm
22. Burning feeling in my upper body about 5 minutes after waking up, eventually goes away after getting out of bed

Some of these symptoms have improved (Ear ringing is basically gone now, sometimes happens but not as badly, same with the bad cough), and some haven't (Brain fog, memory loss, numb emotions/libido, and nerve/muscle problems are a constant that rarely improves). Muscle twitching is gone and has stayed gone. Everything save for neuropathy, memory, and blunted emotions has improved or completely vanished. The neuropathy now manifests as reduced sensitivity and sometimes stinging pains in my genitals.
The APRN refused to have me as a client after these symptoms occurred, even though they were more than happy to take me on as a client after I had quit cold turkey and had a breakdown. They now made the stipulation that I needed to see a therapist before I would be able to see this APRN again, and this was something they had never required beforehand. My mother was sick with terminal cancer at the same time as this, and this person was of no emotional support, instead one time getting upset with me for "waking them up" by calling them, even though it was the only number they use for their practice, and saying insulting things like "I should have gone to therapy long before this", even though in the 6 years I had seen them, they had never required it. Even after I saw a therapist, their excuse became "We both decided you should see somebody locally for med management", something they had never said beforehand, and was something they never suggested after they left to move to Texas.
This APRN had never required me, in the 6 years I had seen them, to regularly see a PCP or a therapist. Only after these problems happened, did they require me to see a therapist. They never mentioned seeing a PCP. It's strange, as this person advertises her practice as being both therapy and medication management. Also, how would the APRN know if I wasn't seeing a therapist? She worked independently, many states away. It seems like a fake excuse to get rid of me, as she may have thought she caused my health problems.
She also never referred me to anybody themselves, leaving me to do that. I'm guessing they got scared that they possibly caused these problems, and wanted to dump me as soon as possible, making me feel like I was in the wrong.
The way her practice is set up, living in Texas, but licensed in random states (RI, CT, WA, OR) seems weird, and from what I know, CT law requires a supervising MD for NPs. I have no idea if she had one.
I filed complaints with both the RI DOH and the Texas Board of Nursing, but neither took action. I was told by the law firm that unless I have medical records/evidence that proves permanent damage occurred, I have no case against this NP. I am not sure how they can tell that without looking at my records, and is permanent damage truly the only way to have a legal case? That didn't seem correct to me.
Over two years later, I am still not really sure what caused this. Some have suggested it is long COVID, some have said that the Lexapro reinstatement might have caused a "kindling" effect in my brain/nervous system, since I had gone off 30mg cold turkey, and some suggest it's intense stress. Maybe it was serotonin syndrome, due to the 5-HTP usage just before going back on Lexapro? I don't know. All that I do know, is about 2 to 3 weeks into Lexapro reinstatement, I got very sick. It began with a mushy, weird, numb feeling in my head, not a headache, and then I started getting a ton of weird vasculaneurological/nerve related problems, as well as sinus inflammation.
I have been left emotionally traumatized by this treatment. I was diagnosed with severe depression by a psychologist. I am still seeing doctors to find out my mystery chronic illness. I do not know if legally this NP is liable, but in my view, she acted in a way that should warrant it. She was reckless and cruel at a time when I needed emotional support the most. Her actions possibly kept me from being able to spend time with my dying mother. After my mother passed away, the NP's advice for me was "working relieves anxiety" and when I told her I was trying to get SSI, that it's very hard to do. I later got SSI.
I feel like an idiot for letting myself stay with this person for over half a decade, when the medication I was on stopped helping. I feel stupid for not taking more control of my situation, and getting on state Medicaid so I could go to better providers. Places like Butler in my state have outpatient programs that would have been just as good, but I was sort of scared into quickly going back to this NP to get back on Lexapro. I thought going back on 10mg would sort of stabilize any sort of foul mood being caused by the cold turkey. I never thought this person would just dump me as a patient like that.
They're still listed as verified on Psychology Today, and still have a website for their practice. I have no clue how they get patients. They're not licensed in the state they live in, and don't work in a practice. It's just them out of their home. I sort of can't believe that's allowed regulatory-wise. They had no oversight from anybody. I feel abused. It's made my mental health so much worse than it was, and they get away with it, and they get to keep the money I paid them for their crappy service.

(The Giving Tree is written by Shel Silverstein, The Hanging Tree is by Suzanne Collins)
“Grandma.”
He chuckled, and called again.
“Graaaaaaaandma.”
Hey where was she, he was a smol, wide eyed childgen snuggled up in bed with his red and white patchwork quilt with his Raggedy Ann doll who contrary to popular belief, was NOT HAUNTED and instead infused with good dreams and good vibes.
Good vibes which included Amon’s grandma READING HIM A FUCKING BEDTI-
Her head peeked through the door, glasses wobbling on her pointed nose. She huffed and puffed, and Amon had a twinge of consciousness, a ‘oh wait I’m in better health than her maybe I should be nice,’ sort of feeling.
He then realized that as a child, he was entitled to entitlement, and threw that notion out the window and into the dumpster, where it rested with other bad ideas like, ‘hey let's make a Bible version of dungeons and dragons, or literally anything else that we find morally reprehensible yeah that’ll hinder sales if we tell people to not do this cool thing that is totally bad for you and will result in your eyes being gouged out by Satan’s asshole.’
He, of course, didn’t voice any of this. Because, above fear of God, he had a fear of grandma.
“Did someone say they wanted a bedtime story! Well, by golly, do I have a story for you!”
He paused, “Is it Narnia?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, setting the book that she held behind her down, “Of course not dear! I would never put my preferences over yours, my oh so picky critic who whittles down what stories I read to you with the sharpest razor I’ve ever seen. I am only here to cater to your preferences because your time is the most valuable in all the world!”
He squirmed under the blanket, “....Look, I hate to admit that you’re right but can you not be right.”
“It’s a talent of mine.”
Why can’t I have come out of the womb as a fully mature adult so I can debate grandma to death into an early grave?
Then another thought came.
Wait, I don't want her to die. She loves me or some shit and I think that’s good.
He gulped, attempting to sound less…full of himself, “Could you um…if possible…by any chance.”
“Spit it out sonny if my hearing gets any worse I’ll have to get some robotic implants and do you really want grandma being the catalyst for the AI uprising?”
Please for the love of God nobody let this women near any missile turrets.
“COULD YOU MAKE UP A STORY FOR ME YOU HAVE A NICE VOICE AND IT HELPS ME SLEEP PLEASE GRANDMA THROW ME A BONE HERE.”
“.....I could throw you a dislocated hip.”
Amon squinted, “You’re going to need those in ten years when your bones start fossilizing.”
She patted his back, “Ten years! You’re very generous, in fact those bones of yours with the freshest marrow look….quite appetizing for a geezer like me!”
“All the better to eat me with?”
“Exactly!”
The night went on, a star or two who hadn’t twinkled out to dream land like he had standing in the heavens, wisps of gray clouds swirling round the moon. He could hear the caw of a crow or two, probably picking off the dead racoons left on the road because of grandma’s driving.
Damned dumpster drivers had it coming.
Grandma leaned back in her rocking chair, its faded brown surface creaking as she swished back n’ forth in it. She folded her arms, closed her eyes, and let out a yawn as she flipped a lightswitch, the thin, pale beams of the moon shining through the shudders.
And the heater chugged along like a train, blanketing them both into a slow, dreary slumber,
Grandma began her story.
“Once upon a time, there was a brave knight. So brave in fact, that he didn’t squirm when doctors, who may or may not have been vampires, took his blood, and always opened up his mouth wide for the dentist when they wanted to see his pearly whites! And the king sent him off on many a quest, to save all the damsels in distress because the king had a bad habit of keeping a harem. After all, in those days, monogamy was a myth.”
Amon wondered if the king was based on grandma’s love life.
“The knight loved his king, so why wouldn’t he serve him? Even as the wounds piled up like a pile of rusty coins, infection creeping up on his flesh as the doctors prescribed him leeches and his blood turned to ice. Even as each step became an insurmountable mountain, he had a duty to serve his king, and the king loved him too, right? There was something beyond that icy stare? Some glimpse of hope, a spark of love? Yet they say be careful of he who slays beasts, lest he become a beast himself.”
She paused, and Amon shivered, like the mist creeping outside was the last dying wisps of smoke from the maw of a decaying dragon.
If the time came, would he be able to slay his demons?
“The knight’s greatest beast he would never slay was the one sitting upon the gilded throne. One day, he outlived his usefulness.”
The silence hung in the air. Amon wondered how long it took for the man’s flesh to be wrent from his shoulders.
He shivered, tears barely restrained, as grandma pulled him in.
“Never let anyone tell you how to be. Never do anything someone else wouldn’t do for you back. This world will want to beat you down and spit you out but I know you’re stronger than that.”
She got up, patting his head as the moon glinted in her spectacles and she grinned back with a fiery stare of her own.
One day, Amon would share it, for she had long since kinded the flame in his heart.
Burn, my grandson. Burn and show this world what you made of. Show them what I see in you, what you don’t see in yourself.
One day, you will.
One day, you will know how to look in the mirror and say, ‘I love you.”
“.....Could the knight have saved himself?”
“Every story has an end. Just….make sure yours is a good one.”
Nearing the end of her days, wondering the length of the shadow she’d cast, and if it brought others shade.
She hobbled off. The door shut behind her.
………God we are both overdramatic as fuck aren’t we.
Amon reminded himself to tell grandma to lay off the old testament for a while. She didn’t need that kind of toxic masculinity in her life.
_________
“You know, I’m going to tell you a story this time!”
Amon was waving a pencil, not because he was going to write God forbid anybody see his handwriting no siree, but rather when his hands were flailing and the unsharpened point was ready to fly from his fingers at any second and impale someone’s eye the creative juices were flowin and his imaginative boat was rowing and sure it may sink once or twice along the way but that was just apart of the creative process!
That, and procrastinate on writing said story for two goddamn weeks and when you went over your plot notes you wondered who this madman was who’d seized your journal and favorite fountain pen.
“It’s about time! You think I have time to keep running my lips Mr. I’m young and needy and I want to drive grandma into dehydration because I want to turn one bedtime story into fifteen?”
Amon averted his gaze, “Can I just say that you’re the greatest woman I’ve ever known and I hope I can have one ounce of your creativity so I can inspire the masses with the love and forgiveness you demonstrate so all the little children, not including me because five foot one and a half is not little by any means thank you very much…”
Napoleon complex much, sonny?
“And through all these wonderful…”, he coughed, “Parables I can conjure up surely everyone can and will find Jesus?”
He gave her the baby blue puppy dog eyes. She melted.
But she really didn’t want to.
“Has anyone told you that flattery will get you everywhere?”
“Yes, actually, you did.”
“Damn right,” she mentally gave her past self a pat on the back.
And Amon struck a match, lighting the fireplace with its grizzled logs, silvery bark peeled back as flames licked their sides all over. He cuddled up with grandma on the oversized recliner, leaning back. Eyes closed.
Like he could see, like he could taste and touch and smell and hear the story unfolding in his mind’s eye.
“Once, there was a tree, and she loved a little boy.”
It was growing now, its roots feeding into the forest. Birds came here to lay their young and worms burrowed in her rich soil beneath. Squirrels always found the best holes in her trunk to bury their nuts in, snuggled up all cozy as the wind battered her outsides but the tree saw that wind and told it where it could shove it cause no breeze would take away her warmth! She was happy and she liked it that way!
“And every day the boy would come, and he would gather her leaves, making them into crowns to play king of the forest.”
The squirrels were scampering away and here he came charging through the grass and falling into the bushes headfirst! He could take and take and take and twist those twigs and thorns into a wooden circlet befitting the child prince. And if he craned his ears he could even hear the fae sparkling and laughing and merrymaking as they poured wine from goblets neverending and gossiped about that adorable little child over there let’s go visit him no wait we can’t interact with humans can we kidnap him NO KIDNAPPING IS BAD.
Remember what happened with a midsummers night's dream, there’s a precedent for this shit!
“He would climb up her trunk, and swing from her branches.”
Don’t look down, whatever you do don’t look down like a tumbling sack of apples about to go splaaaaat. Climbing up to see the forest was definitely a good idea and you’re not going to throw up whatsoever.
“And eat apples, and they would play hide and seek.”
“Ready or not, here I cooome!”
“.....Oh, you’re right behind me.”
“I don’t think hide and seek is the best game if one party doesn’t have legs.”
“.......”
“And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade.”
“I don’t want to go home, I want to stay with you but it’s getting dark and there’s monsters prowling about!”
“Whenever you are with me, I promise, I will keep you safe.”
And the boy stared up in wide eyed wonder.
“You….you…really mean that?”
She bowed her great head, leaves falling on his face, embracing him in a branch, pulling him close.
“I love you. And I don’t let harm come to those I love.”
“And the boy loved the tree very, very much.”
He pressed himself against grandma’s warm, woolen, side. She smelled like peppermint.
“The tree was happy."
He sighed, and Amon looked down, shivering. The clock went tick, tick, tick, and he wondered if he blinked, if he’d miss the seconds passing by.
“But time went by.”
He grew up and the world wasn’t small anymore. It wasn’t good to just imagine, you could no longer play pretend, you had to have a purpose for your life and fill that aching void that’d grown in your heart, didn’t you feel it beating? Take, take, take, my boy, you’re number one and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Forget about the tree, that withered shrub has nothing for you except to be food for the worms.
“And the boy grew older.”
He peered into grandma’s gaze. How many people had she lost over the years, and what hole did they leave in their absence?
“And he wanted. But that want wasn’t just a I want this colorful toy off the shelf, gimme, gimme, gimme. No, this was a need.”
“I am too busy to climb trees.”
“I want a house to keep me warm.”
But that little boy was left unheard, to just go back to the simpler times when he could just be a boy she could just be his tree. He was worthless and if he just had what everyone else had maybe it’d feel better, if he could raze and tear and break down the tears would stop flowing and the sirens would stop blaring and everything would just fucking shut down, for just one second please, for the love of God, be still.
“I want you. I want you in my life and you’re so far away but I think that’s just me.”
So he ripped the tree down and shed her emerald coat of leaves and wrent her into a stump so for himself he had a home. Her apples laid moldering and discarded, and maybe if he had cast their seeds out into the brush they both wouldn’t have been so lonely anymore.
“And he met the end of his days and they both had nothing left. She asked, ‘What more do you want of me?’ He didn’t know anymore.”
“Would you like to rest?”
He sat down on her stump.
And the tree was happy.
Amon sniffled, then there was snot. He shivered and wrapped his teensie head in his legs and grandma yanked him on over to her side and held him close and he ugly cried and she wailed right with him.
She hoped he knew it was okay to cry, so long as there was a crazy bitch like her to cry with him.
And finally he wiped his nose, eyes puffy, before he looked down, murmuring, “....I don’t deserve you.” Her heart sunk right along with his and she wondered where he learned that self loathing.
Was it by design?
The wind picked up and her’s fell, the wooden, mossy floorboards outside, the red paved bricks littered with cracked nuts and wilted flower petals, creaking right along with her.
“Are you, are you, coming to the tree?”
I could see, grandma and I, sitting there together on that worn stump. And maybe if you turned back the years you’d see the tree at the height of its youth with the freshest apples and sap running for miles. I’d be running too.
I knew who’d be watching and egging me on along the way.
“Where they strung up a man, said he murdered three.”
“Strange things have happened here, no stranger would they be
If we met at midnight, in the hanging tree”
Her dad taught her that song so long ago, with whiskey under his breath and a revolver at his belt. He might have been one who knew how to drink and drink till he dropped but he sure damn as well knew when to pour out, lest he become bloated for others’ sake.
“I never want you to become like that man, I never want you to love someone so much it comes at the expense of yourself.”
Amon’s voice was an echo.
“Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Where I told you to run, so we’d both be tree?
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.”
Was the tree’s greatest sin, the inability to say no?
What befalls us when we answer yes?
But if I take and take and take from grandma what shall I have left?
“GRAAAAAANDMA!”
Amon sniffled.
“Are you, are you, coming to the tree?
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree.”
Her singing became a flurry of notes, tapering out to the breeze.
It was quiet.
“I’m here grandma.”
They stood up and he took her hand.
“Let’s go to that tree together.”
And the grandma was happy.

Wow. It's hard to put this into words. But I feel like I'm making a realization. I may not absorb it immediately, but it's still a realization nonetheless.
This is a follow up to these three posts: https://www.reddit.com/IncelExit/comments/zx05ce/focusing_on_small_details_versus_the_big_picture/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
https://www.reddit.com/IncelExit/comments/zumtun/friendship_advice_needed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
https://www.reddit.com/IncelExit/comments/10sx2tt/moving_on_3_update/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Quick summary: I developed a friendship with someone several months ago and we became close. We hung out a lot at that point and also developed a system of hugs and handshakes. I noticed that sometimes she doesn't respond to text messages, or requests a smaller form of hug/handshake. I then became worried that these were signs that she was pulling back, and this was the beginning of a slippery slope that would result in the end of the friendship.
I've covered this topic extensively with my family, and they became concerned that I was obsessed with her. And now that I think about it, I agree with them. It may not have been a romantic obsession, but still an obsession nonetheless - an obsession out of an excessive worry of losing her, even though there were never any actual bad signs to begin with.
I realized that a lot of my previous worries about supposedly losing her after massive gains in the friendship came from past bad social experiences in high school. Many of these were "crushes" that ended in a damaged friendship and sometimes being blocked on social media. A lot of these experiences were my own fault. Another source of these worries came from someone whom I used to be close with, but turned out to be a toxic person who gave me a lot of anxiety about interpersonal relationships, and gave me bad advice. (In fact, I recently blocked him on all social platforms for this exaact reason.)
I inherited a lot of bad mindsets and interpersonal relationship strategies from these sources. My past response to an apparent "pulling back" from the other person was to put even more energy into the relationship by making myself excessively available, excessively apologizing, and not giving them space to try to cover the apparent losses. (While I like the idea of apologizing, I think it can actually make certain situations worse if the issue at hand wasn't even huge to begin with.) These bad experiences have made me hyperaware of minute details within relationships, from responses to texts (or the lack thereof) to whether or not they're talking to other people, and recently, patterns of hugs and handshakes. They have made me excessively worry that one small interruption in these processes will just be the start of a slippery slope that could spell disaster for the friendship. I was afraid to just be my true self and let go of minute details, out of fear that would end in disaster because I was apparently too carried away to notice the supposed bad signs.
I have instinctually treated interpersonal relationships as a competition where I have to race to the finish line to receive a prize as fast as possible, as opposed to the more natural processes by which interpersonal relationships form. I became afraid of the other person talking to other people, or even doing their own thing, because I feared that meant I was losing the competition, and so I needed to compete harder. I first learned this instinct when trying to enter romantic relationships, but I've also unintentionally applied it to platonic friendships as well. This was only made worse by the bad dating advice that I have recieved that has essentially pushed the idea of treating it as a competition, or you will "miss your chance."
It's easy for me to assume that people, and by extension interpersonal relationships, are constant. I want to believe that they are nice, neat, formulaic, and follow a predictable sequence of events. But here's the truth: they're not. I've had to learn it the hard way. People are complicated creatures. Sometimes we want one thing, and sometimes we don't. We can be in the mood for one thing, and not in the mood for another thing. This extends to interpersonal relationships. Sometimes there's lots of enthusiasm and excitement, and other times not so much. I guess it's just the nature of interpersonal relationships, and it doesn't change whether you're close to the other person or not.
Looking back at these previous posts, I almost giggle at myself knowing how much I've worried over minute details and approached this college-level friendship with the attitude of a teenager. In hindsight, I don't think she was really "pulling back." She just wasn't receptive on that specific day. Perhaps there are reasons why. Maybe our schedules just didn't line up, or maybe there was the stress of the school trip that these occurrences took place in.
Things like texting, pictures, and patterns of hugs and handshakes are not the entire relationship. These things should follow the natural social interaction that is the basis for the connection, not completely replace them. How I've tended to operate this friendship was to ask for pictures/hugs right away. Thank you so much to the people who mentioned that I might have been pressuring her in my previous posts. While I'm a big fan of asking for consent before things such as hugs and pictures, I think starting every single interaction off with asking for something would give off the impression of a transactional relationship that the other person has to invest in, which might make them uncomfortable.
I realized that I've had an urge to try to establish "control" over other people, but it's not out of malicious intent, but instead a fear of loneliness and losing friends because I didn't try hard enough to keep them in my circle. While it may not be out of malicious intent, it can still make people uncomfortable and feel pressured to act in my favor.
The truth is that people have their own free will and have freedom to make their own decisions. It doesn't mean my friends hate me, or are pulling away from me. It's just human nature by default. They might be stressed, or having a bad day, or request a handshake because a hug would take too much time and they're running late to class. Just because someone doesn't want a hug, or a handshake, or picture, or whatever that particular day, doesn't mean they don't want to be friends with me anymore. That's just how they feel. It has helped me to seperate the concept of free will from signs that the friendship is ending. The most I can do is match the other person's level of communication. If they're not being receptive on a particular day, I should back off and lessen my intensity.
I used to think of the concept of giving space as a bad thing. Not in the sense that just the idea of giving space is bad, but I believed that giving space was something only restricted to the worst of the worst friendship situations, as if the friendship had gotten so bad that space is warranted. But now I believe that giving space is not a bad thing at all, and I can give anyone space, even if they're not uncomfortable around me. In fact, perhaps I should give everyone space so people don't actually become uncomfortable. I think it's a perfectly healthy thing to do, and giving someone space doesn't mean the friendship is bad.
Now that I think about it, the concept of a relationship that benefits me and me only is pretty ridiculous, as much as it may seem like the easiest option to pursue. Because this friendship I'm speaking of is not just about me. It has never been solely about me to begin with. It's about her as well. The purpose of a relationship is to benefit both people within the relationship, not just one. I've read somewhere in a Reddit thread that true friends are people who open you up to greater possibilities, and those who restrict your possibilities are not considered close friends. So I really shouldn't try to restrain people's options since that would make me a shitty friend. I should also not be surprised if they talk to other people besides me, since people are allowed to have multiple friends at the same time. In fact, I should do the opposite and open up their options.
I've worried a little bit that this would result in me getting yelled at by "dating gurus" for willingly "giving away" the friendship with the other person, and I would "miss my chance". While this mindset of "try super hard or you will miss your chance" is very oversimplistic and misguided, it's admittedly been really hard to shake off after being ingrained in my head for years.
People will say "Just be confident!" "State your intentions!" "Be direct!" And I will say the following: I don't think this advice is incorrect. I think it's generally helpful in a lot of situations. That advice alone is just too oversimplified in my opinion, and there's a lot more that goes into close relationships than just "being confident" or "being direct." You should also be your best, kind, respectful self, and if it's clear they're not being as receptive, then cut the interaction short. Plus, in my opinion, confidence is more than just having the guts to speak to the girl you like. Confidence is more than just being overly bombastic and boisterious. It's being confident enough to move on if they're not interested, and confident enough to be your best self.
It's been a few months since the last time I posted about this friendship. And despite my fears, it's still going strong, and I believe it will continue that way despite my anxieties. I don't see this friendship as a failure at all. In fact, I see it as one of the most wonderful, successful friendships I have ever formed. I see this entire friendship as a rite of passage - a symbolic transition from an immature and oversimplied understanding of interpersonal relationships, to a more developed and comprehensive understanding of such things.
I used to think that close friends were 100% involved in each other's lives, that the friendship is always constant, their text messages never get left on opened, they hang out every single time, etc. I've always wanted to be like one of those people who had a "best friend" with whom they always hung out and did fun things all the time.
And then I met her.
I initially thought the friendship was following my preconceived "plan" of a close friendship. Then this stuff started happening. My previous beliefs were challenged, and everything I thought I knew was stretched to the very limit. And now my views of close interpersonal relationships have changed.
It's hard to describe in words. There's no definite way I can explain this. But I'll do my best. I realized that even the closest of friends are not 100% involved in each other's lives. They have their own lives and their own friendships outside that particular friendship. What keeps the friendship going is that they respect these lives. They might have different schedules and be around different groups of people. But it doesn't change the closeness of the friendship. And with this particular person I am speaking of, we're both on different schedules and we're both around different groups of people. But it doesn't change the closeness of the connection, and we will still be friends no matter what, plus all of the silly hugs and handshakes (and maybe even occasionally hang out with each other).
I admit I've had a distorted view of the friendship for some time. I still believe it's a truly beautiful development that will continue to live on through the future. But I don't see it as me being the knight in shining armor, protecting the princess that is my friend. I see it as just two travelers whose paths just happened to cross. Because I am not a knight in shining armor, who can get any princess to fall for me. I am just a lone explorer, just going on the journey of life. I have no real authority over anyone else's paths. The only thing I can truly control is the path that I choose to go on. Sometimes our paths diverge, sometimes our paths converge, and that's not a bad thing. That's just the way it goes.
The friendship is not "recovering." And not because it has died and will never be brought back, but because there's nothing really bad enough to "recover" from. It's not that something really bad happened and the friendship is being built back up again, one social interaction at a time. It's just normal social interaction interlaced with human nature.
It's not a friendship that basically "owns" her. It's a close friendship that can coexist along with HER other close friendships. And for HER sake, it should stay that way. It doesn't mean she hates me, or her other friends are overtaking me in some sort of friendship building competition. It just means I'm part of her greater circle of friends, and the friendship with me is just one among the others that she has. I'm not saying this to express pessimism about the friendship; I'm just telling the truth.
The most I can do is to continue to support her on her journey, wherever she goes, and be my best, kind, gentle, nice self. And I don't mean nice as in "nice guy" or pretending to be nice and expecting things in return; I mean being a genuinely nice person, so it would benefit HER instead of just ME.
I truly believe this is a wonderful and beautiful friendship, and I believe it has potential to become an even better friendship than it is currently. It's been one of the most successful friendships I've ever had with another person, and the first time I've developed a close friendship with a woman as a man. It's truly been an honor to even have this friendship in the first place, and I am strongly convinced that it will continue to remain strong in the future.

If you’re young and independent and don’t mind risking your own life for thrills, then by all means go do your thing, but every time I read a headline of “Father of 3 Dies While Cave Diving” or “Motorcycle Stunt Leaves Man Dead, Leaving Behind Wife and Child” I can’t help but think about how thoughtless and shitty it is to put your family at risk because you just had to get your adrenaline fix.

My pc will be three years old in October. Its a prebuilt CyberPower PC (I didn't have the time or the resources 3 years ago to build my own). It has been acting normal but I am getting low on storage. This morning (about an hour and a half ago) I turned my PC on and it said the HDMI cable wasn't connected even though it was. It gives me this alert often so I restarted my PC like always and usually it works, but today when I did this it didn't. It showed the "blue screen of death" and said that my computer was restarting and "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED". I have tried unplugging it, restarting it, letting it sit unplugged for a while and nothing is happening. I have been watching videos and reading articles on how to fix it and everyone says to go to your start menu and fix it from there but I can't get to my start menu since it won't come on. I have tried to use the advanced options and troubleshoot it but every time I do it asks for a password and every time I enter it it says its wrong. I have changed my password using my laptop and nothing is working. If you have any insight on how to help please let me know, I'm a student and need to attend my classes virtually. Thank you

Many dharmic religions view reincarnation as a punishment or something like a reward depending on your actions in the previous life. Most of them see all existence as suffering though and the goal is to break out of incarnation into the land of the living. I find this hard to believe though because even human behavior shows us doing things that are not enjoyable for reasons that are not instantly beneficial or unclear to most.
It should be noted that the soul is not forced to remain here and can leave whenever they want. If a soul wants to go back to the spirit world they can kill off their human vessel. This is how people die in accidents or other ways. If a human vessel kills itself from suicide or drug overdose, that is when we see the soul of the person regretting it and taking those emotions with them. In fact, many abortions and miscarriages happen because the soul of the baby who was going to grow up did not want to comply with that lifetime and abandoned it at the last minute.
When someone is murdered, the arguments you hear in the afterlife are usually “Why did you kill my character? I was going to accomplish so much in that lifetime/ I wasn’t ready to give it up yet.” Your metaphysical self may really like its current incarnation if it spent a lot of time refining them, but it is known that everything is temporary so the souls usually know they will one day need to give them up. Most eventually get good enough at incarnating that they can bring memories to the next life or just incarnate with the third eye already open.
It is possible for the soul of a person to be punished if they did something heinous, but that happens in the punishment pits of hell and not in the form of an entire reincarnation. That would be a waste of available slots on the planet. The reason you see so many people being born in the third world is because on the soul level those parts of the world resonate with them. That is why China, India, and Nigeria have such high populations while the more remote regions like Namibia and Canada have so few people inhabiting them. As the souls who come to the Earth cannot connect spiritually to those geographic locations, less of them choose to be born there which causes the populations to decline even further. It is no coincidence that regions with a history of spirituality are the most populated.

In terms of moving the story forward post-ME3, it always hurts the brain to think about "what to do with the endings???"
For me it's not simple either, but it feels complicated for the wrong reasons. It's not an ending where we really must preserve and account for every detail people care about. It's not an ending where we can easily glaze over it either. That's frustrating, because it means almost no matter which Bioware chooses, it'll make some fans feel like they're not being seen.
I simply thought that the ending failed to wrap up the meaning and message of the whole saga in the succinct way it's trying to do it. It failed because it's the wrong theme and the wrong message. It simply doesn't apply to the story that I felt I had seen, and that goes for all 3 endings. I felt like the vast amount of the storyline was about political powers, alliances, and finally yes, existential questions about our being (species, organic life vs synthetic life, our behavior) but it felt like the ending mistakenly focused ONLY on "Organics/Synthetics" as if the story across the 3 games can be summarized as "Man vs Machine" and it really made me go "What? That's ALL this is about?" instead of the kind of thing you'd expect from a Reaper-unveiling: "Wow that is so vast and epic; makes so much sense!"
Instead of relishing in how believable everything is and crying about how over it all is, I was confused by how empty-minded the content is and I was reeling from what a lame final dilemma we had to die over because of it. I chose Synthesis because for what the scene is, if you look at it in complete isolation and imagine that this really was this story about the whole galaxy being at existential war with itself because we made machines outran us in sapience, Synthesis SEEMS like a poetic resolution between the "True Conflict" of that story, where it's the metaphysical issue of Us vs Them that is the true perpetrator and the Reapers merely a symptom of it.
However... when did they actually tell that story again? The theme is way off, and does not reflect all the amazing things I was invested in. Mordin's sacrifice for the long-standing feud between primitive organic species vs hyper-intelligent shortlived aliens, you know... the conflict of Warfare, the conflict of Biological differences of species who are otherwise EQUALS. The stories about romance and how much people like each other across birthplace and race. The gung-ho military pride of being an alliance soldier promoting Earth's needs either morally or amorally into a public forum. The conflict between the posh civilization of the Citadel vs the rogue gallery of outlawed space.
Like, there's just so much at play in Mass Effect, you can't just reduce the entire narrative to its core by saying "Yo it's a story about what happens when we make robots that rival our own intellect!"
Singlehandedly that dramatic question alone is why the ending was this complete buzzkill.
Lastly, it had some annoying continuity just objectively, where apparently the Reapers are actually a hivemind? But Legion kept talking about how they had independence, like Sovereign said, whereas Geth had "interdependence" but then we meet the Child and voila, the Reapers are now just mindless puppets of a master program... apparently. For a big enigma as the Reapers were, if you were going to do a big expose on their truth and origin, it really needed to be believable and have a sense of adding up. But this just made me go "Is this even authentic?"
TL;DR: So for Mass Effect's future, I think the biggest problem it faces is the sense of narrative illegitimacy that the ending has. Meaning, if you skip it it'll be very strange because everyone's like "Okay... So what actually happened since the ending?" but if you try to reference it and include it, or justify it, either you'd be retconning the things that doesn't work about it, or you'll just make painful reminders to people that "Oh yes... that... ugh." when what you actually want to do for ME5 (yes, I call it that!) is make people go "Oh fuck yes, Mass Effect! I remember my romances. Ooh the Citadel was so cool! The galaxy is amazing!" and it can still happen... but I really don't know how.

All my life I've been my mom's therapist for her severe depression. Literally all my life, I remember her venting to me about our lack of money and how my dad sucks when I saw 2. It's made me start just seizing up when she gets emotional now because idk what to say or do and any time I try to help she doesn't seem to hear me. She's been crapped on her whole life, by her parents, friends, brother, and husband. I loved my grandparents but they treated me better than they treated my mom. My mom idolizes them and hasn't been the same since either one passed but I can't begin to imagine what it's like to loose a parent. My grandfather payed everyone's bills and he fixed everything that was broken. He was the first to go and it hit my mom hard because she acts like we was Jesus. My grandpaw was a great guy but he was of the older flawed mindset when it came to women and also jobs so I don't think he ever acknowledge my mom's art career as a real job. Neither did my grandmaw. But my grandmaw and uncle had to qualms about regularly going out to eat on my mom's art money. My grandparents were good sometimes but they could also say some not good things. They weren't evil but the me now wouldn't have delt with them talking to me the way they talked to my mom. Back in the day I was extremely depressed had severe anxiety and would have let someone beat the crap out of me if it meant I could keep them happy. I went to therapy though and take meds now. My mom doesn't go to therapy but she takes meds even though they don't seem to work. Her living environment ment probably makes her depressed. My parents are hoarders so their house is disgusting and the toilet broke so they have no toilet or running water. Their "saving grace" is the fact they live in the middle of the woods so it's not like anyone will see them going to the bathroom outside. My dad's probably depressed too but he's extremely stubborn and would never in a million years go to therapy. He just says mean things to my mom instead. Though sometimes she repeats the "mean things" he says and they're actually really supportive, proactive, and not mean at all. It's extremely confusing. I've recommended therapy and she says she could use it but that's it. It's like she's lost the ability to do anything for herself anymore. She also things people are constantly judging her so I'm not sure if she could even keep going to a therapist if she got one. I'm worried she would not like what they say and decide to not see them anymore. I don't know what to say or do for her but I want and need her to get better. I want to see the happier mom, heck I'd like to meet the whole new mom since I've only known depressed mom. I also have two daughters now and I'm afraid she's going to start trying to cry to them like she did with me and it's not ok. The mean and hurtful things she can say when she's down are not ok and she definitely can't say them to my daughters.
TL;DR: My mom's(58F) severely depressed and has been my(26F) entire life. She told me she wants to die but I have no idea what to say or do. I don't want her to be depressed anymore though. I want her to get help and stick with it but I have no idea how to convince her. I'm worried she's going to try and use my daughters as therapist just like how she's used me as her therapist my entire life. What can I do or say to her?

The Foundations of Humanity 8 (Cultivation) - an NoP fanfic
​
Thank you u/SpacePaladin15 for establishing the Nature of Predators Universe, and for allowing Fanfics to flourish!
Warning. This is disgustingly cute and very intimate with lots of touching. You have been warned.
First -- Previous -- Next
Memory transcription subject: Valek, Venlil-Human Partnership Program Participant
Date [standardized human time]: August 25th, 2136. Early morning
I knew the heat beside me before I finished dreaming, and I knew the arms around me before my eyes opened. Maeve was huddled against me, nuzzled into my collar wool as she dozed. I dared not move, as I knew she had another hour or more before a full rest.
While planning my extraction, I felt her pull harder and take a deep breath, before opening her eyes.
"Good morning, handsome,"
"Good waking, little leafy green." Maeve pushed her face further into my mane at that. "I know you have a longer sleep than we do, please don't wake up on my account."
"It's ok, I'm doing this as much for me as for you," she whispered, as she pressed her lips to my shoulder.
Maeve pulled herself from me and stretched the length of the bed with a loud groan, before settling back against me on her side, and looked at me with a smile, "I'll be honest you are very comfortable, I could see this becoming a habit."
It was only then I noticed, to my horror, my tail had found its way between us. I hoped she didn't catch on to the implications of my tail curled around her foreleg, but my shaking reply left no questions. "I think I could be convinced."
We giggled to each other, while she reached over and started to idly scratch through the tuft on my chest, to my immense satisfaction. I could only see half of her face around the pillow, but the look from that gleaming green eye was the closest thing to 'predatory' I've ever seen from Maeve.
"Well!" Maeve said with a start, lifting her hand from me, "as lovely as this is, it's time to get up, and I wouldn't mind a snack. Do you still want to try the rec room for art supplies?"
"Oh that would be wonderful! My parents couldn't afford art classes, so I only had public events to really try it."
"You didn't have art in school?"
"Well no, we couldn't afford it, that's what I said."
"Sorry, that's not what I mean," Maeve clarified, muffled through her changing of clothes, "Ok, first off, do the Venlil have a concept of public schooling? Education of subjects deemed necessary, paid for by the state, and free to the parents?."
"Of course we do! You can't have modern civilization without everyone knowing the basics of things like math and science."
"Well for humans, several of those subjects are art."
My ears snapped forward, utterly surprised, "Really?? Why??" I asked as we left the room.
"I'll admit, it is relatively recent; for most of human history, several hundred thousand years at least, artistic expression was something that humans just did, without any assistance or education. There were earlier instances of art being treated like a trade, apprentice learning from journeymen, but I think the earliest examples of formal artistic education were in pre-Christian Rome, so that would be… 3, maybe 4 thousand years ago? At that time and for a long time after, artistic education was only taught to the elite. Not because of pay or profit, but because the wealthy and powerful were cultural leaders and needed to be taught as much about culture as possible, including art."
"The concept of public education has come and gone several times in human history, but our current era started I think in the 1500's, almost 700 years ago, and even then artistic expression only became part of it around 300 years ago, or less. There were a lot of reasons why they included it: social reasons, political reasons, scientific… but it wasn't until after the Satellite Wars that such practices became ubiquitous. So now, almost every living human will have had at least one or two years of formal training in the arts by adulthood, to familiarize them with the concept of expression and creation."
"That's incredible!" I exclaimed as we entered the Mess Hall, to the shock of several Venlil and a few humans nearby, "I mean, Maeve! Your people's warlike history is well documented; why, by the sun and stars, would artistic education be compulsory for a species at war?"
"Like I said, there's a lot of reasons" gathering our food, we found empty seats by the window, "In fact, one of those reasons is precisely to prevent war." My mouth hung agape as I nearly dropped my tray; settling in, Maeve now had my full attention.
"You remember what I said about humans feeling too much?" I did, and the reminder of last waking's events did not help my nerves, but I nodded and Maeve continued all the same between sips of what I now know was coffee, "Humans appear to have incredible impulse, or as the Venlil call it 'instinct', control because we have had to learn and develop effective ways to control it. One of the most effective of which is Expression; to put that emotion out of your body and into the world in some way."
Having finished our meal, we started toward the rec room, "True, this can manifest in… unkind ways such as posturing, fighting, or just yelling, but it can also be expressed in others such as running, talking with someone who listens, and, of course, artistic works."
"So we started to teach our children how to express their imagination and emotions in non-violent ways such as the Arts. Not everyone continues practicing, and very few find professional success, but every human knows enough to understand and participate." The door to the Rec Room slid open in front of us, "Here we are, Valek. You said you checked this out on the first day, so how about you give me the tour?"
It was a large room, about the same as the bathing room including the drying corridor. The walls were lined with full bookshelves, colored boxes, and several large viewing screens with comfortable seating. Several tables made up the interior, some with what appeared to be a Pad-mount attached to a keyboard; some designed for humans, some for Venlil. I saw several pairs already engaged in activities; a mixed group of six were seated and watching what appeared to be a world of cubes, and several pairs appeared to be using their pads together, though I couldn't tell what they were doing.
“I didn't have anyone to show me around last time, so I’m not sure what some of this is. Social media is pretty big on Venlil Prime, so I think these are to communicate with the herd," I said, motioning to the Pad-mounts. “It looks like Humans are as fond of reading as we are, judging by the bookshelves. But I’m not sure what that is,” motioning to the large displays, “I think they're watching a movie? I’ve never seen one like that, though.”
“Oh! They’re playing Minecraft. Interactive media, such as video games, are really big with humans. The one they’re playing is a little more than a hundred years old now, but it never lost its appeal.”
“You said it's interactive? How?”
“Oh you just use the controller to… wait… um…” She seemed to be trying to find out how to begin, “So you told me the Venlil have, like, shows and stuff right? Well, just like those shows take place in a False World where the actions of the actors influence change upon it, video games also take place in a false world. The difference is; your actions in the Real World are interpreted as actions in the False World; it’s like you, the player, are the actor in these shows.”
“That’s so cool! I’ll have to try that sometime.”
Maeve and I explored the room further, I was especially interested in their library; what kinds of stories would I see here? About to pull a large anthology book with what appeared to be a large human holding a lightning bolt, I heard Maeve call from the other corner.
“I think I found the art supplies! So when you did your community art, were you a paint guy or a chalk guy?”
“Oh, chalk please! Most of our public works are temporary, so using something that washes with the rain is very useful.” Their artistic education is complex enough to teach different mediums? Such classes are prohibitively expensive to have, and every human learns this??
“Well I don’t see chalk, but that tells me you prefer a dry medium, so let's try pencil and markers.” Maeve said as she pulled out sheets of paper and two buckets of what I assumed were the art supplies.
We spent the next entire claw working together, drawing what fit our fancy. Maeve told me about the forests of earth, and how her family used to go camping. She explained it was like leaving home, to make a new home, in a place where a home has no right to be. I was still wrapping my head around that when she told me about the clear skies, and how her family would stay up late to see the stars, and share ancient stories about their shapes.
We were silent for a moment while we worked, when I heard Maeve speak from beside me, “Are those your woods from back home?” she asked about my drawing, “It's so colorful! Are these broad colors typical of Venlil styles?”
To the human eye, my work appeared as large swathes of color, with vague shapes representing direction and shape, rather than form. Emotion mixed with reality to create something that gave an impression of overall calm and nostalgia over the representational work.
“I do often see something similar in the parks when others are being creative. I have seen some Venlil try a style that is more detailed, but I like to show what I feel rather than what I see.” I explained, while making another long streak of golden sunbeam.
Maeve asked about my home, and I told her how we lived in a traditional burrow-style house; not an actual burrow, it was above-ground, but it made use of smooth lines and soft corners to lend structural support, spreading more out than up. We still had a 2nd floor, which was where most of our living and sleeping space was, but it looked like barely a mound against the modern stem-style houses, which was what used to be my university apartment. I was just talking about the kitchen on the ground floor when I looked over at what Maeve was working on. To my surprise, she was making an incredibly life-like imagining of our kitchen. It wasn't perfect, our dishes never stacked that high, but this could absolutely be someone else’s kitchen.
“How did you draw that?” I asked, unbelieving.
Maeve giggled as I stared, and answered lightly, “I did a lot of things back home, either as work or hobby, and one of them was room concepts and architectural design. I followed your descriptions as best as I could, with some artistic flavor. Some older human cultures also had burrow homes, so I took ideas from that. What do you think?”
“It’s incredible! This could absolutely be someone's kitchen, though it isn't ours. You even have the berry field in the window!” I was so enthralled by the detail I was seeing, I didn’t notice Maeve’s hand reaching for the work. She pointed to two figures in frame: a Venlil with what was clearly my salt-and-pepper pattern and…
“I’ve given it some thought,” Maeve whispered beside me, “and I think, yes. I would like to keep doing this.”
My heart leapt with joy and and my tail thrashed behind me; if any attempt at subtlety was made I clearly ruined the secret. Maeve smiled broadly, hiding her teeth in a vain attempt to hide her quickly reddening cheeks. We quickly packed up our projects, and I saw Maeve making to throw them away! “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I was…” She paused, not truly having an answer. I walked over and gently, wordlessly, took the sketches from her hand, and filled the space with my own paw. The message received, we exited to the corridor. "You mentioned something about camping, what is that?"
Maeve paused in thought without breaking stride, then asked, "You mentioned your favorite place was taking the road between The Grove and University. If you had the chance to live there, for a few days or a week, would you?"
I thought about this. It's a beautiful place, and I would find great joy in staying there for a time. But I remembered the look of that predator, "No. I know, in my head, that the predators in that forest would leave us alone; I'm certain it would be fine. But no, I don't think I'm brave enough for it."
"It's ok, and I won't ask you to. But Humans would, though that doesn't say much for our judgment." she added with a chuckle, "Most humans live in cities. Massive places of steel and concrete with more people than plants. Just like cities on Venlil Prime, they are comfortable, safe, and good places to live; but humans are drawn instinctively to the natural world. Despite our industry, we have to see the Earth and its bounty, or we get out of sorts."
We had reached the room and, picking up on human mannerisms, I invited Maeve to enter first. "Thank you, my good sir." She said through a giggle, "anyway, because of this many humans will leave the city to live in nature for a while. We have a lot of ways to make it more or less comfortable, and the varied ecosphere on earth combined with our diurnal cycle means we have to be very prepared. Personally I prefer a tent, rain cover, and camp stove; but some people take as much as a rolling house, or as little as a sleeping bag."
Maeve sat down on a chair, and I on the bed as we continued talking, "do you hunt when you do this?" I asked.
Carefully, Maeve spoke in measured words, "Not always, and myself never; the vast majority of people bring food with them to eat as-is or cook on site. But yes, some humans do still hunt, kill, consume, and use the dead of wild creatures. But I'd like to point out it has been regulated in most countries for a few centuries now, and even more so in the last few decades. These days, only a couple thousand animals are killed annually due to hunting practices, worldwide. And, as we continue to become more prosperous, cede more of earth to nature, and find alternatives to killing, that number will continue dropping to almost nothing." she said, matter-of-factly.
"But why do you still hunt at all? If you can eat plants, have domesticated livestock, and can now print synthetic meat, why is that number not zero?"
"it is a part of our history, and our culture; such things are very difficult to unlearn. Also, we humans have assumed the responsibility to maintain the ecologies of our world. This is done in large part as penance for the damage we did during our colonial and industrial ages, but that sense of guardianship still carries on. Answering that question is pretty complicated, and I won't dance around the fact that controlled murder is a big part of it, do you want me to keep going?"
I will never be totally ready for frank discussions of murder, but I felt this was nothing compared to what we've already done. With a deep breath, I steeled myself and flicked an affirmation.
"Ok, this is a phenomenon we have seen nearly everywhere on Earth, but we are going to talk about Yellowstone National Park, specifically. Yellowstone is a large evergreen forest that is host to a huge variety of wildlife, but early in America's history, the colonists eradicated the local Wolf population. True we had domesticated wolves earlier, but not here, and these wolves were more harmful than helpful to the colonists, so they killed them. What followed was a process called a Trophic Cascade."
"Wolves were a natural predator of Deer, so without wolves to control their numbers, the deer population exploded. The deer over-grazed on many things, most especially tree saplings. Without saplings reaching maturity, the forest couldn't create new growth, and this reduced usable living space for many small herbivores; so things like squirrels and beavers left the area. Without these small herbivores, small carnivores like the fox left as well, which made very small omnivores, like mice, also explode in population. These mice over-hunted grubs, beetles, and other detritus-eaters, so the forest floor stopped getting new nutrients, which made all plants, including trees, even sicker. With trees dying faster and still not able to make new growth, because the deer were still a problem remember, their root systems became weaker, which could no longer hold the soil. This exacerbated the effects of erosion, causing landslides to be more frequent, and even changing the course of rivers, leading to droughts in places that have never seen it"
"All of this because: we killed the Wolf. There were many examples, this is just the one I know best, but humans are well familiar with the effect of adding or removing a species from local ecology."
I sat for a long moment, letting this sink in. "You changed the shape of mountains, and the path of rivers… by killing wolves?
"Yeah!" She confirmed, with just as much surprise as I had. "We tried a few things to help heal the damage: manually planting more trees, shoring up at risk earth, even controlled culls of wildlife; this is where most of our modern hunting practices came from. But no matter what humans did, we just couldn't keep up with the forces of nature. So, Occam's Razor, we decided to try the obvious option: put the wolves back into the forest, using the natives' local cousins from further north. And you know what?" I flicked my tail expectantly, both ears swiveled on Maeve, "It worked! The wolves hunted the deer to manageable numbers, the trees had a chance to grow, the small herbivores came back… a complete reversal of all the damage I mentioned. So now, the only species that have an overall open-season are invasive species, like the European Rabbit in Australia. Among humans, it is both illegal, and socially taboo, to kill wild animals without specific cause."
This was… a lot. All of this made sense on its own, it logically followed, but I couldn't wrap my head around how everything could be so connected. Predators kill! That's all they do! How could killing be a good thing? Finding my voice, I spoke up, "I won't pretend to know what this means. I cannot get it through that everything is so dependent on murder. But I know you've told me the truth as best as you know it, so I'll leave it alone. Can we talk about something else? You mentioned something about stories in the stars?"
"Oh absolutely!" Maeve seemed to glow with this topic, I loved seeing her so excited, "so humans have a day/night cycle, but some of us would have to keep watch during the night while others slept; so we learned to entertain ourselves by telling stories. At night, and before industrialization, our skies were brimming with stars! So we would see shapes in their patterns, and tell great stories about who they represented. There have been stories since before writing, so sadly most have been lost to history, but one story, Orion, is about-"
A ping from my pad, and then hers, interrupted the lesson.
Please report to the Partnership Program lead office promptly. Suite 4006 on deck 4.
We shared a worried look, sharing an understanding of what prompted the summons. We would face it, together. We left the room and made our way to the elevator, mostly in silence. Sensing my worry, Maeve touched my shoulder, "It's ok, this will work out." I'm not sure I believed her. We stood apart in the elevator, and the distance felt cold. Walking down the hall of offices I felt more fear and anxiety than the past week, but I had to keep moving forward.
We reached the door, and as I reached for the handle, Maeve stopped me, and gently pulled me by the shoulder against her in a desperate embrace, as one would say goodbye. She whispered into my ear,
"Whatever happens in there, I want you to know I love you, Valek."
"I love you too, Maeve."
First -- Previous -- Next

The train pulled out of the station and stopped. A storm had coated tree branches in a thick layer of glassy ice, twinkling and ringing in frigid gusts.
A young man whose path was blocked by the halted car brought the camera slung around his neck to his eye and pressed the shutter button. The train crawled forward.
On the exterior wall of a once beautiful art deco structure, chipped paint declares this the former home of a mailing tube manufacturer. Embedded in the brick is a basketball backboard, the hoop for which I assume must've been ripped up to make way for the rail line.
My landlord insists my place isn't haunted, but he's sure that there are many ghosts walking the streets of the glimmering cities lining America's third coast. He tells me that they waft in on breezes from the Great Lake, sailors and factory workers and soldiers and nurses.
Sometimes, in rusting signage and crumbling bricks, I tell myself I can see them too.
In another town at another time, I am 21. It is dusk in the midsummer and I swear to God the chorus of cicadas makes the temperature 10° hotter than the thermometer on my dashboard reads.
I must have been a sweaty mess, my bangs glued to my forehead and my thighs sticking to leather seats, but these are details I haven't bothered to remember.
I am dropping you off for the last time at the house that after tomorrow you will no longer call your home. For the last time, I ask you the same question I've been asking in jest for weeks: "is the last time I'll ever see you?" And for the first time, you answer yes.
I don't cry until you do. I don't think either of us mean to.
I left that city years after you did. Part of me hoped that The Things I Never Said would stay there with the lingering ghost of you.
But who's to say that the spirits of those who are carried in on the Great Lake have to have died?
Sometimes, as I move through this new old city, I imagine you beside me. I would point out the years stamped into the sidewalk slabs, and I would tell you that all of the best bars are in the basements of 150 year old houses.
Perhaps I would tell you how madly in love with you I was in another town at another time, but I didn't because I already knew how the whole thing would end.
In those final moments together, sweaty and crying with each of our hands grasping the other's face and foreheads pressed together, I told you that we'd meet again.
It was such a proud declaration that I struggle to this day to not believe it's true.
I have felt very confident at times that if your voice appeared on the other line of a call from an unknown number that I would hang up. I've clench my teeth and held back tears late at night, thinking about what I should have done differently.
Regardless of what I've told myself, I find myself scanning the faces in crowds, hoping one day that one of them will be yours.
But I don't know that I would even recognize you anymore.

bigtreetech: I'm not happy with you right now.
I'm your biggest fan and I love these little skr pico boards. But ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! I have three dead boards and IT IS NOT ME! This is you guys and your parts failing, NOT ME!

1. The first board died the second I plugged a fan into pin gpio20. It sparked, killed the fan, and gpio20 was dead on both ends (at the laser io/pins as well as fan#3 pins. The rest of the board worked fine but after that I didn't trust it. That board I returned/exchanged with the seller on Amazon.
2. The second board has a dead x stepper driver. No clue what or why or what happened, just the X stepper motor died and stopped moving. The rest of the board works fine and because I'm running an ebb36 board on that printer, I just moved the X over to E0 stepper driver. But x stepper driver died (for some unknown reason, it had worked fine for 6-ish months)... That board is still printing petg reliably on a cr10-smart. (with a dead stepper driver)
3. The third one I'm pretty upset about. That's my favorite and most reliable printer, It has always JUST WORKED. I did nothing. I didn't change anything and I didn't do anything. I went to start a print --five minutes later I saw the camera and saw the printer wasn't moving... So I walked over to the printer to check on it. I could smell the "I just let the smoke out" smell. No clue what happened --the LED's won't turn on and the whole board is REALLY HOT. The fuse is not blown and nothing obvious looks burnt. I did absolutely nothing --this printer and board, configuration, etc. has printed exactly the same for the past ~9-12 months. It's old enough that it was still running Klipper out of the ~/klipper_config directory and not the new ~/printer_data/config directory. I've done nothing to this printer other than use it several times a day. Its reliable, produces REALLY GOOD prints and it just worked. Until my skr pico board just died...

BTT: You suck right now. WTF. That was my most reliable, go-to printer that always "just worked". It ALWAYS worked, it never let me down and it prints really good parts. And your SKR PICO board just shat the bed and died.
Bigtreetech: What do you sell that I can use? We own two boards: We own 3x octopus pro 429 chip boards (that are awesome, have never, EVER had a problem with them --2209's and 5160's) and we own 4x skr pico boards. Everything has canbus and either an ebb42 or ebb36. It is stupid to buy and put an Octopus Pro board into a little tiny printer that only needs x, y, (one)z and has an ebb36/ebb42 board. I don't care how much it costs: I just want something that isn't going to die on me randomly. BTT: Please suggest something with canbus that won't die on me.

This one has been keeping me up at night, and its impact is microscopic if at all.
​
A 1st year student during the intraschools was sucked out of a space ship window when their opponent>! (VonLeef) !!Rei was ! ​
We know Rei felt the heat of the lava for a second before he died, so some sensation was simulated. What was simulated for the cadet who died, presumably much more slowly in the cold vacuum of space? Was there a simulated vacuum portion of the field, that some full body 3rd years could have survived? Was the air actually sucked out of their lungs, and did their body bulge from lack of external air pressure?
​
Or was it a more mundane simulated death of simply paralyzing their lungs to simulate the inability to breath? And any decompression unpleasantness was created with generic 'pain' across uncovered or bare combat suit areas of skin?
​
The answer doesn't really matter, but finding out exactly how hard light projection tech works is fascinating. If for no other reason than Hard light projection tech is not directly linked to vysterium and archon tech. It's possible it was derived from phantom calls of devices, but its equally likely that phantom calls were created using the basics of human developed hard light, and no such corollary projection tech exists for the archons.
​
If an answer existed, other than 'space magic', it could be twisted pretty wildly for some gruesome effects. After all water boarding is just simulated drowning.

I have a realistic scenario and a hypothetical scenario.
The first of which is that Sansa marries Harrold Hardying after the death of Robert Arryn becoming Queen of the Vale. Assuming that, Rickon isn't found and Jon is not resurrected, would the North allow themselves to be ruled by an Andal King with a Stark wife?
My hypothetical scenario is either that Brandon married one of the Waynwood Daughters of Alys Arryn in secret, or Catelyn Stark died at some point and Ned remarried one of the Waynwood daughters, would their Arryn-Stark child be able to rule both the North and the Vale? Assuming in this situation some unfortunate events befall Harry the Heir, Robert Arryn, and Rickon before they can contest his claim or have a child of their own.
I'm asking this because the Vale has had lots of contention with the First Men, so would either party accept a half-Andal half-First Man ruler?
Also if they did do you think the cultures could begin merging? Perhaps allowing the free practice of the faith of the seven and the old gods or maybe even combining them, having nature and the old gods as an eighth god?
Maybe this could usher in an age of there being a lot more knights in the North with the combination of Andal and Northern culture.
Also, how do you think the cultures might merge if they did under the rule of an Andal, First Man King?

My wife and I got married, it was an arranged marriage. Our marriage, known in Islam as the nikah, was the first time we had ever spoken to one another. Although it sounds a little strange, we did it online through skype, which meant that I never met her before, but finally met her after two years. We both began out shy when we first met in Pakistan (I traveled to Pakistan in February and stayed there for one month) and gradually opened up as we started to communicate and have fun. We became so at ease with one another that we used to have sex almost every day. I'm now back in Sweden. I'm dying to see her. I'm incredibly bored, and I'm feeling empty and like...my heart is somewhere else. I've considered traveling to her, but my parents still make decisions for me—even though I'm 30 years old—unfortunately, that's how some Desi parents are.
It will take some time for her to come to Sweden and get permament resident. I think only staying together for one month is a short time.
Should I go back and spend more time with her? Like what should I do? Should I not listen to my parents and make my own decision?

"So, you're telling me we found another sapient omnivore species?"
The commander grunted, ripping his boot from a watery patch of mud and nearly crashing into the swampy water between two twisted tree roots.
Sunny reached out with one of her four armored arms and caught him by the back of his pack, pulling him upright.
He nodded a thanks to her and adjusted his gear.
Behind her Ramirez ducked under a low hanging branch, slogging through a pool of knee-high water, adjusting the containment pod, holding Krill more comfortably over both shoulders.
Krill, comfortable and warm inside his containment pod, watched the marines, scientists, and a linguist struggle through the mud under a covering of impossibly tall, twisted trees, their canopy blocking out all light that might have dared cut downwards towards the watery floor below.
"Not entirely sapient, I suppose."
Krill answered,
"Unfortunately the way in which they communicate is going to drastically reduce their ability to create complex structures and perform mathematical equations."
Together they maneuvered themselves over a root, which at some point in the distant past, had decided to grow upwards instead of down. At about four feet high, it had changed its mind and arched back down into the water. Perhaps it had been smaller then, but at four feet wide, the root was an absolute monstrosity now.
The trees themselves were massive, challenging, and sometimes outgrowing the legendary redwood forests of the western Americas, but unlike the redwoods, these trees didn't stand tall and proud. Instead, they chose a twisted path much like the branching veins which made up a human vascular system. They twisted and undulated, interlocking past each other with branches that were well over two feet wide in many cases, and stretching to over four feet wide in others.
No one direction was good enough, and the trees twisted, ducked swirled and reached, grasping for any sort of light to be found.
On top of the darkness cast by the trees and the soggy nature of the forest floor, it was also horribly hot and humid, giving the impression of a microwaved wet blanket thrown over the world. Where heat from the upper canopy met the cooler air of deep forest pools, it created a perpetually thick mist which writhed and undulated through the trees, leaving only the shadowy impressions of twisted trunks and clawing branches past distances greater than 50 feet (15m).
"They communicate primarily through pheromones and heat modulation. From what I understand, the language in itself isn't precise, and really only works in generalities and feelings than it does in absolutes."
Commander Vir kicked a rotting log out of the way, ducking as a massive green bug buzzed over his head and into the fog.
Turns out the hotter and more humid a planet gets, the bigger the bugs get,
"But we were still able to communicate with them?”
Krill nodded from inside his case,
"Yes, generally speaking. For a species that cannot communicate in absolutes, I hear they are quite reasonable. They seem willing to accept our friendship, and have..... invited, I guess, us to participate in some sort of primitive ritual."
Vir perked up, flashing a bright smile.
“Reasonable? Peaceful? Rituals? And definitely CANNOT communicate in ABSOLUTES!? Am I the only one who thinks that sounds familiar?”
Sunny sighed,
“No Adam I am reasonably sure that they are not Jedis…”
“C’mon, that would be so cool! Like lightsabers, the force and stuff… maybe they look like tiny Yodas? I mean it fits, with the swamp, the speech impairment and all…”
He nearly fell over another root.
“Adam, focus. We have a mission here.”
The commander nodded, scrambling over another tree branch,
"Alright, so... where are these things anyway? How do they look?"
His boots hit solid ground, covered in some sort of wet spongy fungus and he glanced down at his GPS.
“Considering they talk by smell, my bet is on Elephants with giant human noses. What do you think Mav?”
Ramirez turned around to look at Maverick, who had stopped walking.
“…”
“Mav?”
“Giant… fucking spiders…”
“…”
Commander Vir was still looking at his GPS and no one else answered, so without looking up he broke the silence and said:
“Wow you are always so negative; it better not be, I want my space Yodas…”
“…”
“…”
More silence.
This time it was broken by Ramirez.
“Giant fucking spiders… with… Wolfheads!?”
The commander was still diddling around with the GPS in his hands.
“Oh not you too Ramirez, also that’s oddly specific, you always had a pretty cruel imagination. Ah there we go I think it’s that way.”
He said, looking up from his GPS to keep moving.
“…”
“…”
After some steps he realized no one was following him, so he stopped and turned around.
Behind him the other marines were dead silent, heads lifted towards the sky in shock.
"FUCK ME."
One of the marines whispered, scrambling back behind a tree root.
Commander Vir turned and nearly fell into the water again, eyes locked onto the creatures descending from high above.
They were huge, about the size of large horses, and horrifically spider like in their construction, or perhaps an ant. They had large-scale abdomens connected to a thinner thorax. All together they had ten appendages, three pairs of spider-like legs on the abdomen which, instead of ending in a pod or foot, ended in a sharp pointed spike. On the abdomen, they had two arm-like appendages, with too many joints and strange wavy tentacles instead of fingers.
The head was just as disconcerting.
It seemed too large for the body, grossly out of proportion and strangely out of place, like some cosmic sentience had used a random animal generator to assign parts to its body.
The head was wolflike, if you were to strip the skin and fur away, leaving only the muscle underneath. You could see the line of teeth running up either side of the muzzle, while the large red-pink ears rotated continuously.
Commander Vir had backed himself into the bowl of a tree eyes wide. Sunny slogged herself up from the water, placing herself between the strange spidery creatures and the human.
They didn't descend like a spider might, on threads of silk, but they used their back six feet, and the spikes on the end to dig into the bark of the trees with a disconcerting thud thud thud thud.
Finally the largest of the creatures reached the ground, surprisingly silent for its massive bulk.
Glancing around Sunnys tensed body, he noticed something he hadn't before, and that was a strange small mass gripping onto the spidery creature's underbelly. Upon closer inspection he counted ten legs and a surprisingly spidery head buried against its underside... a completely separate creature holding on to its companion.
Behind the largest creature, he noted ANOTHER type of creature. It boasted the same sort of structure as the large creature, but its abdomen was devoid of scales, and covered in strange black bulbs suctioned onto its body by way of a strange, sticky black-green webbing. Its head was also constructed differently more like a lizard than a wolf, with large bulbous eyes that could rotate behind its own head to look in all directions.
Commander Vir fiddled nervously with the advanced translation headset he wore, strapped to his helmet, supposedly it was supposed to be able to understand what these things were saying.
"Sky... friends."
The translation was somewhat garbled, but he understood it was the large wolf-head who spoke.
He walked forward, pushing Sunny gently to the side despite her clear reluctance,
"Yes, we are friends, and we are here to offer peace to you, and the assistance of the Galactic Assembly."
He wasn't entirely sure how that was going to translate over in smell, but the creature seemed happy lifting its head and gnashing its large canine teeth.
"Agreement... for a favor."
Commander Vir grew unsure then, letting off a reluctant,
"What favor?”
The spidery shape moved closer sniffing at him with its large wolffish nose. Sunny stiffened at his side, and he put a hand on her arm to calm her.
"Ritual... you watch and help."
"None of us will get hurt... will we?"
The creature stopped and pondered the question for a long moment,
"No danger... live... healthy... happy."
Commander Vir nodded slowly,
"Alright, what do we have to do?"
The creature hefted its large bulk, and turned in the opposite direction,
"Follow."
It commanded, scuttling off into the trees.
[…]
"This is very interesting."
Krill was saying to one of the accompanying scientists, who nodded vigorously in agreement.
"What's so interesting?”
Commander Vir whispered, from where he stood at the edge of yet another, but larger fungus covered clearing, watching as the creatures scuttled back and forth.
The scientist learned in in excitement,
"It seems that these creatures have a ternary gender system."
Before the commander could ask, the scientist continued,
"For ease of speech, the large ones are the females, and those things on their bellies are probably the males. The medium ones are the third gender, the 'they' if you will. It looks like the male impregnates the female who then attaches the eggs to the third party. Dr. Krill tells me that the third party have a very high heat signature, probably to incubate the young. Those attachments probably provide nutrients into the egg and may even transfer DNA over as well."
"Wow... freaky."
The commander muttered in fascination.
"Kind of gross if you ask me."
Sunny muttered.
"I'm with her. Its kinky, but too kinky for me…"
Ramirez muttered, receiving a few nods from the other marines.
"Oh please."
Krill whispered,
"I know what human reproduction is like, and it's arguable way worse."
The scientist waved them all off,
"The big one there, the one that's been talking to us. I think she's the queen, and judging from those egg sacks, this is probably mating season, if they have one."
"Creepy, but cool, I guess."
The captain muttered. They watched for a little longer as the queen scuttled around the clearing and then returned to look at them, lowering her meaty wolffish head to the commander's eye level.
"Ritual... find... eggkeeper."
She scuttled away.
"Oh... this is some sort of… Mating ritual maybe? To choose that third party you were talking about?”
"This isn't exactly the kind of "Mating ritual" I wanted to see."
Ramirez muttered. The other marines turned to look at him with raised eyebrows. Sunny stuck her tongue out in disgust.
Off in the clearing, some of the smaller females had moved themselves onto the high branches scuttling through the trees to examine the "they" who waited patiently. It appeared that side was very important in the ritual, as they all fought for the largest counterpart. Once found, the wolffish head would lower, and open up to reveal a tube under the tongue. From there she would... disgorge the egg onto the abdomen of the 'they' and the mucus would solidify to hold them on.
"It has to do with size."
Krill hissed,
"But it seems that it has more to do with heat. The big ones only get chosen more because they also happen to be warmer than the smaller ones. I'd say they incubate at an average of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, so 32 degrees Celsius."
They watched this for a while, the scientists taking notes and the marines making inappropriate jokes.
Eventually most of the creatures had finished, leaving only the queen left over.
Everything went still when she began to move, and she scuttled around the clearing, looking over all the available 'theys' she could find, but she just didn't seem satisfied.
Commander Vir tugged at the collar of his jacket, a line of sweat dripping down his face.
She continued her circuit once and then twice; at some point she turned her head, large eyes locking on the humans.
She sniffed at them.
The human laughter died as she advanced.
"What is she doing?"
The commander muttered under his breath.
The scientist that stood next to him, hidden partially behind Sunny, answered
"I... I'm not sure."
She scuttled even closer, and the humans backed away.
"Hey doc... didn't you say something about... them being attracted to heat? And like the “they’s” being around 90 F/32 Celsius?”
Ramirez wondered, hiding himself behind a root.
"Yeah... I did, why?”
"Not to freak anyone out or anything but... isn't average human heat about 98.6 Fahrenheit… so 37 degrees Celsius?"
”FUCK!”
”OH NONONONONO!”
”HIIIIDE!”
”RUUUN!”
What followed was a rather violent game of nose goes, but instead of involving touching one’s nose to see who was the last person standing, it involved a mad rush to reduce body heat.
The smartest marines took the initiative and dove into the water beside the clearing, completely submerging themselves under the surface.
Others chose to cover whatever exposed skin they might have had in mud, as if to mask the heat.
Still others chose to cut and run.
Unfortunately, with his position at the head of the group, commander Vir wasn't fast enough.
She came at him in a scuttling rush, and in a frantic leap to get away, his boot caught on a root and he hit the ground hard.
Sunny tried to leap in front of him, but was bowled over by the mad rushing form.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!"
Commander Vir repeated, scuttling backwards across the ground, as the large spidery shape loomed over him.
He stopped dead in his tracks, backed against a tree root.
She leaned closer.
He raised his hands above his head blocking his face,
"Please don't lay your eggs in me. Please don't lay your eggs in me."
She reached out one of her forward hands, surprisingly delicate, as she cut through the first layers of his jacket, and shirt.
They fell away in slices revealing the pale human skin underneath red and sticky with the tropical heat.
His chest and abdomen heaved with his breath as he tried to scramble away, but she caught him with the prong of one of her back legs pinning him in place.
"Fuck... Help... HELP."
Sunny wasn't fast enough, having been tipped head over heels into the water, with the rest of the marines in similar positions, Krill contained inside his tube unable to help but also unable to look away.
She lowered her head, and the man screamed. It was cold, gelatinous and slimy at first, but even as it touched open air, he could feel it fusing against his skin solidifying. He thrashed and wriggled, but she was far too strong holding him in place.
Finally though, she backed away, leaving him panting on the ground shaking and trembling leg throbbing where he had been pinned.
She leaned her head down to examine him,
"Warm."
They locked eyes,
"Friends... now... Keep them... warm."
She retreated, and he struggled to his knees, turning to look down at his body which was now partially obscured by a sticky pod of six black eggs, pulled tight against his skin. His hands were shaking, as he reached down to touch them, cold and smooth.
He tried tugging on one, but nearly fainted at the pain it caused against his skin.
The creatures were withdrawing back into the trees, leaving him kneeling on the fungus, hands trembling as looked downwards.
Sunny was the first to recover, scrambling out of the water and over to him, placing a hand on his back as she examined the strange eggs attached to his skin,
"Mother of-"
The marines cut her off as they came wriggling from the trees,
"Commander, commander are you ok..."
One of the marines cut around front, frozen in his tracks, eyes wide once he saw,
"WHAT THE HELL!"
Sunny reached out as if to tug on one of them,
"NO!"
He snapped, jerking away from her.
The others gathered around to look with exclamations of shock and disgust.
The commander looked up at Sunny pleadingly.
She decided to take charge, helping him to his feet and then pulling him into her arms,
"We have to get him back to the ship, let's move, NOW!"
"What do you think, Dr."
Dr. Katie examined the scan with a frown,
"It's very, very strange, that's for sure."
Commander Vir lifted his head to look down at them,
"Well what the HELL does that mean?”
Krill shoved his head back onto the table,
"Stay still."
Dr. Katie hummed softly as she continued to examine the scans,
"It looks like these little filaments have breached the skin ... and.... well at least one of them has made it to your liver, this one here has made it to your lungs."
"What about white blood count?"
Krill wondered,
"The body must have noticed something by now?"
Dr Katie shook her head,
"Nothing, the body seems to have accepted it. I took some samples and... well I think I might know why."
She rolled herself to the side in her chair and over to one of the adjoining computers,
"See this, this is HIS DNA ...and this is the DNA of the strands."
Krill pearled over her shoulder,
"What the... they look almost identical."
"Yes... I don't think the body knows anything is wrong."
She turned her chair back around to look at the commander,
"Congratulations commander, you are perhaps, in the weirdest way possible, the only man in the history of existence who might just experience the miracle of life. You are going to be a dad!"
The look on his face made it clear he wasn't interested in being congratulated,
"What the actual fuck does that mean?"
He snapped, Dr. Katie rolled closer,
"Well, to explain in terms you may understand. You are doing more than keeping them warm. Those filaments that you saw are acting like umbilical cords. The one at your liver is using it as a filter, and to take in nutrients as it seems to have branching filaments to the stomach and intestines. The one going to your lungs is taking in carbon... not sure what that's going to do to your breathing if anything. But at this point I don't think that even Dr. Krill, as good as he is, can remove them. We would have to remove too much of your internal structure to it to be viable, plus they don't seem to be hurting you."
"Not hurting me! NOT HURTING ME! You said it yourself they are SUCKING OUT MY VITAL JUICES."
Dr. Katie shrugged,
"Welcome to pregnancy... sort of.”**
”Look we will monitor you, make sure they aren't sucking away to many nutrients. Look on the bright side, you can probably eat more, and judging from an analysis of the egg sacks, the average gestational period is only around two months."
"TWO MONTHS!?"
Sunny, who had been standing next to the man at the head of the exam table, couldn't suppress a short chirp of laughter.
He glowered at her,
"What's so funny!?"
She chirped again placing a hand on his arm,
"You're gonna be a mom."
If looks could kill, shed be reduced to a singularity,
"Get your hand off me or ill break it in half!"
She continued chirping but removed her hand just in case.
This was going to be a very awkward call to the UNSC and the GA.
For that matter, it was going to be a very awkward call home.
Previous First [Next](link)
Intro post by me
OC-whole collection
Patreon of the author

The old man and the small boy are falling through a green portal into sheer incomprehension-the infinite multiverse with no filter. If any other humans had experienced the sheer cacophony of the surrounding matter and energy phasing constantly to states from every universe at once, they would have gone insane in the brief instant before their death. However, these two were anything but ordinary humans. Upon Arrival, blue energy shields surround them spreading from the boy's yellow shirt and the old man's lab coat, somehow protecting their bodies from becoming one with the chaos before them. The boy asked the old man in an annoying stammer, “Ah jeez Grandpa Rick, what is all this? Even by our standards this seems a bit over the top.” Rick put a hand on his grandson’s shoulder in a gentle manner, something that shocked the boy more than the insanity before his eyes. Even more surprising was the tone of voice Rick began to speak in, reminding him of how he talked during the funerals of all his lifelong friends: “This is something I have been planning for a long time, Morty. Do you know how long our cartoon has run for?” This confused Morty even more- “why does that matter Rick? Look at this mess, we have to fix it! We need to save the multiverse again!” Rick looked sadly at Morty, and responded in a quiet whisper as opposed to his usual bombastic ranting and raving. “It's been 100 years Morty, a century ago we aired the Pilot episode. Do you remember what I said at the end of that episode?”
The truth fell on Morty like a sack of bricks, as he recalled the insane rant Rick had gone into at the end of their first episode together, something that they had kept calling back to as a running gag in all future seasons. Morty clutched his shirt and breathlessly said “You always said that we’d do this for 100 years, I always thought that was a joke! It certainly doesn’t feel like a century has passed for us…” Rick solemnly nodded, “It's true Morty, for us it seems like only a decade at most has gone by. But for the people beyond the 4th wall who watch our adventures together, the day this episode airs will be the 100th anniversary of the show.” Rick clenched his fists in triumph, “we did it Morty, we outlived them all. Every Adult animated Cartoon got canceled before they got this far. We even outlived the Simpsons for fucks sake!” Morty shakes his head in dismay, “was it worth it Rick? Even I caught on that our show is a shell of its former self, ah jeez we sold out and lost all integrity before we even hit season 10! But you still haven’t explained how that matters to this nightmare in front of us…” Rick sheds a single tear, before explaining himself: “I know we aren’t the shining pillar of adult animation we once were, and that the show is a trainwreck of bad jokes and irreverence. We’re no better than the dumpster fires that became of the greats before us, and it’s a miracle we stuck around for so long. But I have been preparing for this day for a while, even making deals with our creators beyond our multiverse to ensure the success of my final invention.” Suddenly the mayhem begins to converge on a single point, creating a large sphere of pure black that Morty recognizes. Rick continues his explanation: “What we are seeing right now is the nearly completed result of that invention- a convergence event of every universe and reality, to create a singularity that I could control. I have the remote right here, with 2 buttons to decide the fate of everything.”
Morty starts to get angry, and points at his grandpa before shouting: ”Goddammit Rick! I’ve seen you do some risky and evil things before, but this crosses a line that even WE haven’t crossed yet! How can you just destroy everything in the multiverse, after all we have done to save people?! All the people we’ve met, all the places we’ve been, all the things we’ve protected, you’d get rid of all of that?!” Rick puts a hand on Morty’s mouth to silence him, and tries to justify his actions yet again: “Listen to me Morty! Do you really want to keep going like this, a husk of our former glory? Do you want to see what another 100 years could do to us, and allow our show to be milked for every cent it’s worth until we’re tossed aside like all the others?! Do you want to see us rebooted again and again until the end of time? Never allowed to grow old and have a life with a girl like Jessica, to be trapped in meaningless adventures forever?!” Morty is shaken by this line of questioning, and responds uneasily: “I… I don’t know Grandpa Rick. I don’t want to die, but I also don’t think I’d like to be treated like this by our creators anymore…”
Morty begins to quietly sob, and Rick pulls him into a deep embrace. After a few agonizing minutes of Morty crying in the face of this impossible choice while Rick comforts him, Morty calms down enough to regain some mental clarity. Rick gently says to Morty: “The 2 buttons on this remote will decide our fate. They will both cause us to be absorbed by the singularity, but afterwards the singularity will do 1 of 2 things. If we push the green button, we greenlight the continuation of our show in whatever way our creators see fit, for good or ill- and the singularity will erupt in a new Big Bang for our creators to capitalize on a clean slate of a new multiverse. But the red button… that will cause the singularity to collapse in on itself. It will cancel all use of our brand for any purpose, all merchandise sales halted, any tie in media canceled, everything destroyed. I even managed to convince our creators to attempt an additional risky action-to purge our show from history. They will attempt to scrub clean all records of our existence to seal our fates, to erase us from history. We’ll be able to rest in true oblivion, the closest thing to death we can get. I’ll give you the remote Morty, It shouldn’t be only my decision on how we go out. I know it’s a lot of pressure-” Morty interrupts Rick by grasping his hand and saying: ”You’re half right, Rick. It shouldn’t be either of us who gets to choose. It should be both of us. Together, as we always have been. And no matter which button we press, that will never change.” Rick and Morty put their index fingers together, and close their eyes as they push one of the buttons. Without bothering to glance at the remote to see which one was pressed, they give each other one last hug as the singularity engulfs them, content that whatever comes next, it’ll be Rick and Morty together as it should be.

WARNING: The following content contains Suicide, Rape, Murder, and Sexual abuse. Not scared, nor sad, she looked into his monstrous eyes every chance she got. He couldn’t tolerate it and punished her tries by coming up with new ways to punish her for her sins. Sins she had never even committed. She wasn’t surprised or shocked when it started. It was as if she had been expecting it. Somehow, it was always a fact to her. She knew she was gonna suffer like that, again and again. It was her fate and she had accepted it. She had tolerated hell when it comes to physical pain, but this time, the pain was worse than hell. Her body was unable to tolerate it. It was as if her heart was about to explode any minute. She wanted it to explode. Wanted it to end. But, it didn’t. “Sometimes there’s just no way out of suffering, some people are just cursed.” she thought to herself. It was a long dark night. But eventually, it passed. Just like those twenty years that had passed.
She tried telling her mother about it the next day when he left her at her parents' home. She did so to empty her chest, expecting no help from her. “It’s normal, let him do whatever he wants, he’s giving you a roof to live by, don’t be ungrateful” she replied. Not something she couldn’t have anticipated. She wasn’t surprised at all because she remembered how this woman did nothing to fix or revenge her daughter's suffering. She could never forget how her mother had blamed her abuse, along with everyone else. How could a kid cause someone to rape them, she could never wrap her head around it. She had discretely discussed it with everyone she had trusted her whole life but they all reacted in the same strange way. Most couldn’t even understand what she was saying. The idea of “marital rape” was alien to them. They could never wrap their heads around the fact that a woman can say NO, even to her husband. That it was her choice.
Throughout the day, she kept thinking about how she could still end up with a man, becoming his object, when she had spent all her life trying to convince her mother to not marry her off. Her efforts to avoid going through the same pain went down the drain, and so did her prayers. But she knew it was not her fault. It was not her choice. Just like it was not her fault when she suffered from the same hell when she was a kid. It was the norm. All those who suffered, or were still suffering, had no other choice… It had been twenty years since that long dark night. The wounds didn’t seem to heal. Time didn’t help. It was as if time had stopped for her, right there, right when the pain was at its peak. Despite the fact that her wounds were as fresh as day one, she had learned how to live with them. She had gotten used to that pain… That Trembling of legs, thumping of heart, shaking of hands, the loss of conscience, lack of emotions, the restlessness, and the utter anguish, all these things were common to her now, she had gotten used to it all. On the outlook, it was as if nothing had ever happened to her. Nobody could tell what storms of anguish were buried in her chest. Let alone falling in love, the mere idea of a man holding her hand had disgusted her for her whole life. Marrying someone? There was no chance!! She hated all men to her core. She considered all men worse than pigs. Whether pigs were bad or not, she had no idea… she just considered them the most disgusting because the religion she was born into taught that. Romance? She had to skip a million books just because of how much she hated that word. But it was fate. She was stuck in a vicious cycle of suffering. Maybe the vacuum that true lovers create by loving someone with all their soul was what caused it. Perhaps she was the one who was to fill that void they created. Perhaps she had to be the yin and balance things out by taking all the suffering on her soul.
A day and night passed. She was brought back. She was back in that room. Sitting in a corner, on the floor, she stared at her elevated bed. There were still some rose petals left. “Spreads flowers and then… and thenn-” she murmured. It was an uncontrollable absurd murmur. The pain she was going through caused it. Her whole body was sore. She was in utter pain. Constant, uncontrollable pain. Eventually, the time came, and the night before yesterday repeated itself. She was expecting it even though she tried her best to stop it. She begged him. Begged him to understand. Begged him to not further scar her soul. But he didn’t listen. The pain was even more intense. Tears fell sideways from her eyes. Her expressionless face and her vision, both were red as blood. She kept staring at his face, tried moving like last night, tried shouting, but it was all in vain, he covered her mouth every time she cried out loud, she could almost see him enjoying it, she could see it on his face. How can a human do this, she thought to herself. An animal could not have done something like this. The possibility of it happening, doesn't that make us humans worse than animals? she thought to herself, in her head,… Just before her marriage, she had finished reading 1Q84. Despite Haruki’s unsuccessful tries to justify pedophilia, she read it till the second volume and admired Aomame with all her heart. Back at her mother’s home, she had planned it all. She had prepared herself. She was about to be the Aomame of her life. She was waiting. She waited for a long time. In tears. In pain. She waited for him to let go of her wrists. She had decided on it already. She had decided to end it. Once and for all. She had decided to take revenge. She had decided to break the vicious cycle and rebel. The minute he let go of her wrists, she slowly slid her right hand under the pillow next to them. Her neck was his next grip, she was gasping for breath. If she hadn’t done what she was about to do, she might as well have died because of lack of oxygen.
Without letting him suspect anything, she gripped that sharp knife in her fingers. She was following in the footsteps of Aoamame, like a student. But in a wild way. Using her own new method and the murder weapon. In a split second, she gathered all her courage, and fast forward to three seconds, it was over. The knife was through his neck, sideways, and his blood was oozing out onto her. She instantly gasped for breath because her heart had clearly skipped quite some beats. She tried moving but his wait won’t let her. He was in the other world. In the other non-existing world. He died in an instant. She felt powerful killing him. There was no guilt at all. She was at peace. At ease. The storm was over. There was no more suffering. But she didn’t know what was next. She had only planned it till this point in those couple of hours that she had spared to think. Sitting in the same corner she had sat in earlier that evening, she stared at the scoundrel’s dead body. She was drenched in his blood, shivering. Hina on her hands was barely visible because of the redness of his blood. Her whole body shook. A million thoughts came to her mind. It was as if she was reliving those twenty years, all again. It was as if there was no way out of her pain and it was a vicious cycle. She could bear it no more. Walking out of his room, then his house, she stood in the middle of the dark street, covered in his blood, shaking. There was no one around. They were all deep in their slumber, just like her rapist. But the only difference was that her rapists' sleep was gonna last forever. The only place she remembered was that beautiful Canal. She had always loved coming to her aunt’s house because of that Canal. Yes, he was her own cousin. She had never known him much though. They were almost alien to each other because of the extreme segregation… Walking on the pavement, barefoot, she eventually reached the grass, then damp soil. She could see the beautiful water. The moon and its reflection. It was all beautiful to her. It soothed her soul…
The water was cold. It felt good on every inch of her skin. She kept making bubbles and managed to let out all the air from her lungs, the deep canal devoured her further into its depth. She eventually touched the bottom surface of the canal. Laying in the muddy water, she waited, waiting for the time to come. And it came. She could no longer keep the water out of her and felt it push into her sinus, then her trachea, and finally her lungs. It was very painful but nowhere near what she had been through her entire life. It took no time when it all went blank and the time was no longer relevant to her and she ceased to exist… or did she!?
Note: I am from Pakistan. The concept of marital rape is still alien to people around me despite their education levels. Not just that, a lot of people do victim blaming which disgust me to my core. Not one, but many people I had been very close to suffered through similar traumas. Today I couldn’t bear it anymore. I had to let it out somewhere, somehow. This was my imperfect attempt to convert the pain that I feel for them, into words. Feel free to write your thoughts in the comments. Thank you for reading!

Throw Away Account.
I (31M) will be marrying my (31F) in 10 weeks and she is bothered by three year on-going drama between one of my groomsman's wives
So there is a lot of history here so i'll try to sum it up, this girl Sarah used to be friends with my Fiance, my Fiance was in her wedding, they were friends, we used to all hang out the four of us, with my good friend i'll call Bob who is in my wedding party. Not only us four but a big group of my friends and their SO all hanging out having good times etc.
My Fiance and this girl's relationship started to go south, Sarah parties a lot, so do we but my finace was looking for more of a closer friend to not just party with all the time. In short some really bad shit went down, names were called, fights happened, screaming mostly to the fault of my Fiance. Sarah moved on to party/make friends with other girls and my Fiance was left behind never to be called on, invited out etc..
For a long time I blamed my Fiance for saying mean things to Sarah's, citing she caused the fallout and her aciton's and nasty behaviooutbursts of pent up anger lead to this, she was upset because Sarah was using her as a dumping ground for all her problems, and would then go party with other girls (some who were friends/wifes of my friend group). I also had a part to play hiding my drinking and staying out late with these people when my fiance just wanted to stay in, she stopped getting the phone calls before bad shit was said, she kinda went off on her one night and made Sarah Cry. - She did apologize though, and for a whileI thought things were fine but they never really hashed things out and neither wanted to concede any wrong doing seriously so their friendship died.
Fast Forward three years and the events from then.
Everyone Knows what happened - even people who were never involved, total strangers
My fiance was disliked by alot of people for what happened - this is on her but the events have lingered so long it's almost ridiculous how people keep brining up the drama, it's almost like it's being kept alive because Sarah is clearly talking so much about it still.
Sarah ran her mouth so badly that everyone knew the dirt and will not see it any other way
Such a case was built up against my fiance that she doesn't even want to be around these people anymore because Sarah has made herself out to be such a victim from her actions
Sarah went out of her way to make sure my fiance was excluded from group chats, social events, that what she did was known to the world.
After we got engaged she told her that nobody liked her - named over 10-12 names directly to her face.
Sarah even lied making things up about what she said and continued to tell everyone my fiance was talking shit about her but shes not even around the same people anymore
There was no shit talk because at this point my fiance is not even friends with any of the girls really anymore. She doesn't get invited out, she has no relaitonships with a lot of the girlfriends/wives of my friends anymore. How is she talking all this shit? The truth is Sarah is talking shit and projecting it onto her
So i talked to Sarah a few times during this three year period, and her husband and both said time will heal you guys will be fine at some point. They don't have a problem with me.
Not the case
In the last year ive had strangers to my Fiance come up to me asking about bad shit shes said about Sarah years ago. It's gotten so ridiculous to the point that nobody wants to see her point of view and see what this girl is doing, going out of her way to make my fiance feel uncomfortable in almost any situation they're in the room together. Not saying hi, not being polite, being Catty with the other girls, making her uncomfortable, trying to get her to snap and blow up so she'll say something bad or give them reason to talk more shit.
At this point my fiance has moved on has newer healthier relationships with other girls but this problem just will not go away. Recently at a pre-wedding event with 250 people we held Sarah showed up and snubbed my Fiance at the door and her mother by not even saying hello, proceeded to try and steal all the attention from my fiance and I's event by cutting people off speaking with her and dragging them into her bubble. She and her husband (my groomsman) hosted an afterparty which i was told - Your fiance is not allowed over but you are (my fiance doesn't know this bit it was told to me second hand by a friend)
So the wedding is under three months, my fiance tells me last night she had a nightmare Sarah ruined the wedding, she doesn't want her there. What am I supposed to do? One of my best friends is married to Sarah and I want him to stand next to me.
It's incredible 250 people came to the pre wedding event and she had to ruin it for her the fear is she'll do that on our special day. So what are my options? My fiance's mom is involved now thinks

1. Tell her not to come - which will give her years more to talk about the bullshit but i don't care at this point
   
2. talk to the husband to set her straight - clearly hasn't worked since he lets her do whatever
   
3. speak with Sarah directly and tell her to be on good behavior
   

I want zero drama at my wedding, i'll throw her out myself if I see she's acting up and plan to address this on my own.