Is rooster chew still beingsold

Wall of text warning: I was writing a comment on another post but I figured I'd just make my own topic on it with my full thoughts on each faction and their skills, balancing, etc, after about 20 hours of playing (enough to get a decent idea). Personally I don't feel like any particular faction is especially strong currently and I think the balance of the factions is actually pretty decent overall.
Cleaners are the weakest by far (not very far, though) and seem to suffer from some confused design choices. The Firebomb is great for punishing bunched enemies or denying area but this is a ranged game at the core so it often is completely useless on many maps or just makes you vulnerable if you try to use it aggressively, and particularly in mobile modes like Escort where there is high kill turnover and less opportunity for anyone to keep a strong foothold. The Incendiary Drone is decent, does what it should, not a lot to say about it. Strong alternative skill to Firebomb for mobile modes. Their Incendiary Ammo is a bit useless in a vacuum due to the nature of the TTK because most of the time it will not result in a kill you wouldn't have already gotten and it doesn't deal enough damage on its own to really speed up the TTK in any meaningful way. You still have to shoot someone the same number of times to get a kill and if you stop shooting to let the DOT tick instead you'll just die. On top of that, Incendiary Ammo actually reduces your weapon optimal range, and as mentioned before, this is typically a ranged game. The Incendiary Ammo shines more in situations where someone is running away and a teammate can finish them off instead since then it may have done enough damage or canceled their regen enough. It seems as though the Incendiary Ammo might be meant to offer a counter to Libertad's healing-oriented skills but it usually doesn't make a great deal of difference even there. Weirdly, the best weapons for taking advantage of Incendiary Ammo are snipers since it more or less guarantees a kill no matter where you hit someone with the Tac-50 even if it's a leg or arm shot, and guarantees a kill with the M44 in the body, in spite of the "reduced range". Personally the times I've seen Incendiary Ammo end up killing me is right after I had already killed them first anyways, so it was more of a kill guarantee after death than a true advantage in the fight itself. The Cleaners are still playable, just kinda why would you choose them over anything else if you aren't playing them because you like them. Also the Cleaner ultra is ridiculous if you get in a good spot to use it because it instantly kills anyone you hit but again its range makes you vulnerable. The Cleaners biggest strength at the moment seems to be that they have messed up hitboxes, honestly. I think that the Cleaners really need some kind of help on their skills as they are now, they are weirdly situational and difficult to safely employ, but I suppose that is the real philosophy of the Cleaners as it is, they run around with explosive tanks on their backs that instantly kill them in The Division so an exploding flaming firebomber that may or may not live through their skill is oddly appropriate.
Echelon is strong by nature of being a crutch. Intel Suit lets the enemy team know you're nearby and can see them thanks to the notification, smart/skilled players will just listen for you and it's not a huge advantage against them, below average players won't pay attention to it though and it's quite strong against players that don't have good audio or are unaware of where their flanks are. However, the main advantage of the Intel Suit is that it reveals the enemies for your whole team no matter where they are. While you have to be in closer range to detect enemies with it, your teammates can be on the opposite side of the map and still see exactly where the enemy is which is a massive advantage. Digital Ghillie Suit is honestly a pretty balanced skill, someone paying attention will still notice you and Intel Suit counters it (weirdly, same faction counter) but it has a lot of outplay potential and lets you reposition or get into weird spots that the enemy team might not expect if they are distracted. It offers a similar advantage that Phantoms skills do in that it can easily be used to disengage a losing gunfight back into your advantage for a kill instead. Not much wrong with it, it's a well designed skill-expression skill. Echelon passive is kind of whatever, I don't feel like it's a great advantage because it gives you no direct benefit in a gunfight or even while traversing the map most of the time, it's another thing that is strong against unaware or distracted players. The Echelon ultra is of course quite strong in even an average-skilled players hands thanks to real-time wallhacks and a Golden Gun, although the sound it makes and sonar waves effects do put a bit of a target on you and sometimes the OHK gun doesn't actually get a OHK (somehow) but even being guaranteed just 2-3 kills for the duration is still enough to wipe an objective and some players will even try to hide from it. Echelon is overall a strong faction to use against players that are worse than you (likely why it is the most popular faction seemingly at the moment) but it doesn't provide any major meaningful advantage against equal or more skilled players since that will come down to your more practical gunfighting skills instead the majority of the time. Digital Ghillie offers some potential to outplay even skilled opponents but aside from that their skills heavily depend on their opponents being distracted to take advantage of them fully. Given that, the faction is pretty well balanced even with multiple players spamming Intel Suits on one team, since it only offers opportunities, it doesn't exploit them for you.
Phantoms are my personal favorite faction because I feel as though they have the widest degree of skill expression over any of the others. Mag Barrier used smartly can completely turn a lost gunfight around in your favor, especially if there is a choke point or corner you can use to make enemies chase you. Mag Barrier is one of the few skills in the game that is actually a punish skill when you use it correctly by letting an enemy get caught out if they try to ego on you or think they are winning the fight. That's on top of everything else it does. The EMP grenade is only a "counter" to it if someone is mindlessly spamming it because when used correctly you don't have time to throw an EMP grenade. You would have to pre-emptively EMP the Phantom player for every encounter if they use it well and that's not very feasible in a dynamic scenario. That said, Mag Barrier is fairly weak in terms of pure cover and a determined player can chew through it in a few seconds if you carelessly use it without exploiting the advantage it gives, or grenades can be thrown around it, enemies can run through it, its strength comes down entirely to the user. Blitz Shield is also a strong punish skill but currently the way player collision works makes it difficult to use against anyone that is experienced or skilled because no enemy player collision means they can jump through you. You can't really use the shield to turtle 1v1s since enemies can just run through and behind you, even if you're in a corner. Most players won't do this or know it's possible, so it can be a bit of a crutch against less skilled players at least. The Blitz Shield is mainly strong for punishing around corners if someone chases you since you can typically swap to it fast enough to surprise them before they get around the corner. It's also good for absorbing damage at range or aggressively disrupting enemy players on an objective for your team to pick off but that depends a lot on how good your team is and less on the shield itself. Phantoms passive is honestly extremely strong, and IMO the best passive in the game currently. Having 20 more health is massive when 110 damage OHK body shots exist since it allows you to survive hits no other faction can and combined with the other skills it offers retaliation and outplay potential no other faction has. The Phantom ultra is a bit mediocre in terms of kill potential, due to lack of range or mobility, vulnerable to grenades, and various other problems that come with moving slow and telegraphing yourself to the entire map as a giant target. The ultra's primary purpose is of course simply being a big shield to deny area to the enemy team or offer your team a safe place to stand on objectives for pushes. The Phantoms are a well-balanced and strong faction currently that offers a lot to players that know how to take advantage of their skills properly.
Libertad is probably the most well-balanced faction in the game at the moment. It's very straightforward and easy to grasp for players of all skill levels and doesn't depend on a lot of gun skill, map knowledge, or general experience to perform decently. Since none of their skills are directly offensive, they are easy to employ in a variety of situations, like fortifying an objective or pre-emptively giving your teammates an advantage for a push, refreshing a teammate after a close gunfight, using mid-gunfight for a surprise comeback, etc. El Remedio is such a strong heal that it can greatly increase your EHP in a straight gunfight to the point you need multiple extra hits to kill if the enemy misses any shots, and if you manage to break contact with them briefly you can set up the heal on yourself for a surprise punish similar to the Phantom Mag Barrier. It forces the enemy to decide if they try to kill you or break the canister first and assuming you are equally skilled, you will usually end up winning the 1v1. The main downside to El Remedio is its fairly long cooldown so you have to use it smartly or else you won't have it for major moments when your team might have needed it. It's strong and has some skill expression to it in a variety of ways. BioVida Boost is one-time instant version of El Remedio with similar uses, but it works much better with a unified team push and has a shorter cooldown which makes it much more useful for a more mobile style of play. Not only that but its heal is essentially instant, again being very strong if you manage to break contact for a moment in a gunfight to come back with full health before the enemy got their natural regen. Libertad's passive has no strings attached, simply natural regen with no downtime for you and any teammates near you, doesn't require you to do anything and is always active which makes it great for people of all skill levels since it's always being taken advantage of. The Libertad ultra is literally just an even bigger version of El Remedio that also increases your and teammates max HP massively, it can guarantee a last second payload push or let you lock down a critical objective to break out a losing zone match. Libertad is generally the best faction for anyone that's really new or isn't that great at FPS games since it doesn't depend on your technical skill too much aside from simply staying alive to give your team a constant advantage. Another nice thing about Libertad is they synergize incredibly well with the Phantoms' huge health pool. The only outstanding weakness of Libertad is the old classic: your teammates. It has very little potential to actually carry and under focused fire their healing is pretty irrelevant so you're not exactly going to go tank a payload by yourself. Even with the ultra on, a single person can chew through it and kill you if you give them long enough (not very long).
I've not gotten to play around a ton with DedSec yet but my initial impression is that they are very similar to Phantoms in terms of skill expression and offer a ton of flexibility that other factions don't have through being able to hack enemy deployables and regenerating devices. I would not call them imbalanced, but I do think they are the one faction that currently does lean the most into that because they counter every single other faction. Being able to shut off enemy skills and ultras is huge, even if it takes their own ultra to do it. But you are effectively turning everyone on the enemy team into the Rookie from Rainbow Six Siege temporarily while all the players on your team get to keep their skills. If you have multiple DedSec players on your team and properly chain the ultras then you are looking at a free objective push every single time. The Spiderbot is fairly alright, but it's currently bugged and sometimes enemy players can't destroy it properly which makes it stronger than it actually is, and that's on top of it taking more than one hit to kill anyways which I personally think shouldn't be a thing either. In its current state it is basically a guaranteed kill on anyone you hit with it if you use it aggressively, though, and I do think it should be adjusted in some way after they fix the desync issues with it. Hijack isn't always super relevant because at the moment deployables aren't very long-lived or common, but being able to flip a Phantom Mag Barrier is wildly strong and is the only counter play to a choke point punish in that it punishes the punish. Hijack is fairly useless though if the enemy team all happen to pick Echelon or Cleaners (which is a fair possibility). I think the skill is still a good skill expression skill and fine, though. The DedSec passive is unsurprisingly very strong because being able to throw two proximity mines on an objective or get multiple uses of grenades is obviously something no other faction can do and those things are one per life for a reason. The passive doesn't benefit if you don't live long enough to use it, though, so it can be kinda useless depending on the situation: if you never throw your grenade or mine, the passive literally does nothing. DedSec is currently in a very strong state overall, while I wouldn't say it's imbalanced, it's definitely one of the better factions if only for the fact it can shut off every enemy skill and ultra and has a way to essentially guarantee a kill.
If I had to "tier" each faction in terms of their effectiveness in a vacuum regardless of skill, I'd probably rank them (from best to worst): DedSec > Phantoms/Echelon > Libertad > Cleaners. But that is a very shallow slope with all factions being very much viable to play and do well with.
All of this is also given without thought to the current state of weapon balance generally speaking, while I do feel that Phantoms have a particular advantage currently due to the prevalence of Tac-50s. Echelon's Digital Ghillie also helps them get in close to employ some of the better weapons in the game currently like the MP7 or double barrel. DedSec's spiderbot sets them up for kills with all kinds of weapons, particularly the Tac-50. I don't see any of these skills being worse off without the existence of those weapons, however.
If I were to speculate on any adjustments that should be made: Spiderbots need to be fixed ASAP so they always properly appear on the targets screen to destroy them (not really an "adjustment", a bug fix). Libertad needs some kind of light buff in my opinion, maybe a bonus effect on a skill like slightly increasing max HP (good to help deal with prevalence of OHK snipers) or an alternate mode that poisons or debuffs enemies (Viviro would make sense because it's the chemical weapon made by the same company in Far Cry 6). Cleaners need a little bit of help, maybe allow them to also select Molotov cocktails as grenades that make small fire puddles that aren't quite as strong as their skills as a form of area denial to sort of solidify their "stay the fuck away from me" presence as a faction. The big one people talk about is the Intel Suit for Echelon but I honestly don't see much issue with this. The game literally highlights enemies for you already as it is, seeing them through walls briefly isn't a huge stretch when you can already hear people running around anyways since (thank god) we don't have anything like Dead Silence/Ninja/Covert Sneakers in this game. Echelon is a noob stomping faction and that's why it's generally popular right now but I think once more people get access to DedSec we will start to see more of them instead.
Anyways, that's all for today. I do really hope Ubi upkeeps this game well and makes smart balancing decisions that keep the game fun and engaging without oversimplifying or nerfing anything for the sake of salty people. If it were up to me, they'd reduce the TTK to 4 body shots max like original COD4 and then we'd really be cooking (after they fix the netcode, that is). Also hoping for The Division themselves to be introduced as a playable faction with deployable drones or even seeker mines...

i'm working on a novel and would like to know if anyone could tell me any improvements i could make to the first chapter and prologue
Prologue
The day had started the same way it had for the past two years. The only difference was that I was going home. The hallway was crowded with people walking to and from their classes. Everyone was crowded next to each other so the halls were making the area feel claustrophobic. All the people talking mixed with the summer heat made me feel like I was locked in a sauna. I walked with Preston to the last class we would ever have together and as usual he was smiling. I never got why he always smiled even in situations where people should be sad he still smiled. He knew what today meant for me and he tried to keep light of the situation. I kept my head down away from what was ahead of me. My mind was too clouded about returning to see my family to notice anything in front of me. I walked into another student. It felt like I had walked into a wall. I knew immediately I had walked into tree. I stumble onto the ground and the commotion around me slows down to make room for us. He turned his bulky body around and apologized profusely without saying a word even though I had walked into him. He helped me off of the ground before hurrying down the hall.
“Alexandria, are you doing okay?” Preston said he had tilted his body downward so I had to look down to look him in his eyes. The way he was standing made him look like an idiot but he didn't seem to care. The way he acted made me laugh, which caused his smile to widen.
“I'm doing fine, just got lost in my head.”
“Thinking about how you’ll leave soon,” he said
“Was it that obvious?” He was the only person I told about me being an exchange student. I came to spend high school in Newkinawa and he was the only person I ever hung out with.
“I see what you mean,” he said “Newkinawa is a beautiful place with beautiful people to live in it…myself included”
“You wish,” I say with a smile we continue walking through the hallway “I'm just not excited to go back yet”
After I say that his smile grows wider “So you will miss me after all”
“I wouldn't say that much” I responded whilst smiling.
We had made it to our last class only to see it closed with a sign labeled “Uma incident” Uma was a student known for messing with the chemistry lab and destroying school property in the process. I've never actually met her but Preston says “She's a little weird but still nice”
“Guess class is canceled for today,” Preston remarked with a smile “Wanna go out to the court till the bell rings.”
“Sure let's go” I respond
The place we ate every day was outside. It used to be a tennis court before I moved in. Now they put trees and flowers all over the place. Preston really liked the blue color of the flowers but it just never clicked for me. I look over at Preston and he's staring up at the sky. There are a number of clouds in almost enough to block the sun but it still pokes its rays through and lands on Preston's face. The clouds swim in front of the sun till they block out the sun's light. Preston faces towards me.
“I'm gonna miss you Alexandria” he says
“You know you can just call me Alex,” I replied. I start to smile again. “I'll miss you too!" He smiles toward me again as we get up to leave as the clouds start to clump together and rain slowly falls. As we're walking back to the school there's a loud tearing sound followed by screams as the ground shakes.
The ground tears itself apart as the dirt and stone erupt from the ground. The sky blackens and a pale blue light escapes the earth. Then creatures erupt from the ground in a violent ejection from the earth creating a white pillar diffusing as they reach higher in the air. Some are clawing their way out of the cracks like maggots out of a corpse. People are swept into the updraft screaming for their lives.
The creatures descend like a tidal wave and tear apart any people caught in their path. They storm out of the crack in hundreds as more cracks in the earth form. Me and Preston started running away as people were screaming behind us. A girl running next to us has her legs slashed by a creature. The monster begins to tear open her chest as she chokes on her own blood. The monster shovels her lungs and innards into its decrepit mouth. Me and Preston keep running until we're met at the entrance of the school and we catch the attention of a monster as it begins to savagely rush toward us. The monster resembles ghosts my father told me about. But this one looks monstrously horrific. It floats in the air and opens its mouth so wide it nearly replaces its entire torso; its jaws hold savage teeth each the same old gray color of its body. Its eyes glow a rotten yellow color through the dark. It stretches out its arms showing its giant hands and claws like fingers. It swipes at us leaving a giant claw mark on the door behind us but Preston ducks my body down to avoid the attack. We run around it as the monster swaps its focus to another bystander. Screaming past us. Me and Preston run into the parking lot as people scream around us. We hide next to a car.
“What the hell is happening!?” I yell to Preston. More of the creatures fly over us and swoop down to people like vultures on roadkill devouring the fleeing people.
Preston starts to breathe heavily ”we need to get out of here and someplace safer”. As we were talking one of the monster phases through the car we were hiding next to forcing us to run into the street.
“Lets go to your house till things cool down” i say to Preston through panted breaths
“Wait couldn't we head to your house instead” Preston says.
“Why would that matter your house is closer anyways” i respond
“But-” Preston is interrupted by two creatures swooping above us to grab another person. The two monsters begin to pull the person apart while he writhes in pain before having his flesh be torn in half and having his organs be devoured.
“Come on lets go!!” I say as I grab his hand and run even faster.
By the time we reach Preston's house any living person is gone. On the street are just corpses laying torn and mutilated on the roads and sidewalk. The air in the neighborhood feels cold despite the season being summer. When I walk down the street I can still hear the occasional horrific wail the monsters give off. We move closer to Preston's house and I can see him sweating. He looked more worried than before when the creatures were chasing us and he kept darting his eyes away from his home.
“Preston, are you feeling okay?” he doesn't respond to my question and keeps darting his eyes. He walks slowly behind me and as I reach for the door handle and when I touch it it feels nearly freezing. I wrap my hoodie around my hand and slowly open the door. The house is quiet so me and Preston creep further into his house. The inside is cold and damp as if we were locked in a freezer. The further we move into the house the louder a subtle chewing sound is heard.
“It sounds like rats are eating a dead cow over there” I whisper. Preston continues to stay silent behind me. We slowly walk closer towards the kitchen and the sound gets louder and louder and louder until we reach the room.
We're met with a rancid smell of vomit and blood. My blood starts to run cold and every instinct in my body is telling me to run. I can feel Preston breathing get heavier as we get closer. We turn the corner and see Preston's mom lying on the ground dead with one of the creatures hunched over slurping her intestines. The sight causes me to vomit alerting the monster to our presence. The creature turns around and its mouth turns into a mortifying grin as it flies into Preston's moms body. The corpse begins to rise and spur splashing blood over the kitchen. When the corpse stops spasming it picks itself up from the ground and with glazed over eyes it holds its intestines in its hand and gives us the same grin it did when it was outside her body. The possessed corpse lunges at me and starts to chase me around the kitchen. The body is running into the walls and cabinets spraying its blood and other loose organs around the area as I'm avoiding its assault. The corpse leans over and ejects one of its loose intestines towards me, wrapping me in it. It pulls me towards it so fast I'm flung towards the ground. The corpse limbers over to me and raises its free hand aiming for my head. The creature's deranged smile causes the corpse’s cheeks to tear apart. It places both of its bloodied and demented hands on my face and starts to press my skull into the ground. I struggle to breathe. The room starts to get dark and blood escapes my head.
Until Preston jumps on top of his mothers corpse with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabs it in the head. The possessed body tries to shake him off but he keeps stabbing, blood gets in on his face and tears start to escape his eyes. The creature violently ejects from the corpse's mouth causing her head to nearly explode and Preston stops stabbing the body. The body falls over in a splash of blood and organs. The monster leaves phasing through the roof leaving Preston crying over his mother's body. As the blood mixes with the tears he collapses to his knees crying. I walk over and hug him as the air around us turns bitter and the chill of death leaves the room and us with it.
Chapter 1 Eclipse
It's been 2 months since the apocalypse started. We've kept ourselves alive by looting grocery stores and houses, we hide from the creatures as we have no way to fight back against them. Preston came up with the idea to call them glanter’s. He’s looking better since we left his family home but I can tell something is wrong with him that he's not telling me. Everytime I ask him about it he tells me it's no big deal. I asked him earlier today and he just told me
“don't worry about it, I'm over it” without even looking at me. Now we're walking through the street and I'm walking behind Preston, I can barely see his head past the giant bag we're both carrying on our backs we use to carry supplies. I look up at the sky and it's still pitch black except for the moon giving us any amount of light. Preston turns around to face me.
“Let's check out that house, it might have some cool stuff in it” he points to a white house to our right. The house is a two story building with steps leading to the front door. There's a generator poking out from the backyard. The driveway is empty save for a couple of dried blood stains and tire marks. It's similar to the other houses in the neighborhood except for a couple broken windows.
“Sure why not” We head over to the house and I see something shining on the side of the house in the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look at it closer but it quickly disappears before I can see it clearly.
“Probably squirrel or something” I mumble to myself. Preston walks up the stairs to the house and I walk up the steps behind him as a breeze blows past my face. Preston tries to turn the door knob but the door is locked. I start to pull out a lockpick I grabbed at the store earlier. I motion towards Preston to move out of the way as I kneel down to pick the lock. It takes me a couple of minutes to unlock the door so I walk inside the house and Preston follows behind me while closing and locking the door. The doorway of the house leads to a dark room so I take a flashlight out of my bag to illuminate the area. Were put into the living room and bookshelves are on the walls and a large TV sat in front of a large black couch with smaller chairs surrounding it. Dust is covering every surface of the room and spiderwebs litter the corners of the walls. The area smells like moth balls and there's a lack of blood anywhere nearby.
“Guess the owners got out before the Glanter’s got in, '' I say to Preston. When he doesn't respond I turn around and he's already looking further into the house. When I find him he's managed to find a flight of stairs that lead to a lower portion of the house.
“I'll check on him later,” I think to myself as I headed towards the kitchen to see if we could restock on food. I walk past a bedroom and remark on how childish it looked. The walls were painted with blue and green stripes and a bunk bed sat on the right wall. There's a chest at the foot of the bed so I walk over and lift the top off of it. The box is layered with children's toys, a multitude of dolls, bears, and figures all jut out of the box. I notice a small robot toy and inspect it in my hands.
The cold metal makes my hand shiver and the sharp body shape makes the robot bigger than my hand. There's red lining around the robot's buttons surrounded by the cold gray of the robot's “skin”. It reminds me of a toy my little brother had. My heart feels heavy as I worry about what happened to my family. If they're alive, dead, or worse…possessed. The thoughts send a chill down my spine but I push them aside for now. I put the toy in my bag and exit the bedroom.
I can see the kitchen is down the hallway so I walk down the hall and enter. The kitchen is pretty clean except for a couple of dishes in the sink and the dust. There's a table seated for 3 people in the center of the room. I start opening the cabinets in search for any food or water. There's boxes of cereal leftover on top of shelves and a mix of chip bags and cookies in neat boxes stationed in the cabinets.
“Score,” I say to myself as I begin to put the snacks into my bag. When the cabinets are empty I look inside the fridge. The inside of the fridge ran out of power so most of the food inside is rotted. There are a couple of bottles of water in the front so I shove those in my bag. There's also a bag of oranges that still seem to be healthy in the back. I grab them and toss them on the table. There's rotten sandwich meat hidden in the drawer of the fridge.it smells like a dumpster outside of a butcher shop. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. I look around the kitchen for any bread with no luck.
I continue to look through the fridge until I hear Preston scream from another room. Immediately I bolt out of the kitchen leaving my bag behind and run towards the lower part of the house. I run down the stairs and nearly trip on the steps. The stairs lead to a big room. There are posters to tv shows and movies I don't recognize. The walls are painted black and there's a bear skin rug on the floor. I notice Preston standing next to a really big TV hyperventilating. I walk over to him and ask him.
“Are you ok? What happened?”
He talks through deep breaths “I… saw a… spider.”
“What?!” I respond in confusion.
“It was really big and I had jumped at my face”
“Sure it was.” I say while laughing “Let's go upstairs there's some food in the fridge we can eat”
“Wait, I think you should check this out.” He says while pointing towards one of the walls. I grab Preston's flashlight off the floor and face it towards the wall. Hanging halfway off the wall is a large map labeled Newkiwana scavenger hunt of 76.
“I think we should take it,” Preston says “You can read a map right?”
“A little but I'm not the best at it,” I say to him “can you read a map?”
“it shouldn’t be too hard it’s mainly pictures any way I'm sure I can figure it out”
I walk over to the wall where the map is hung there are trophies covering tables and shelved in their own personal cases one of them reads “1st place 100-meter swimming competition for 1986 Zack Hemmingway” and another one reads “2nd place 100-meter swimming competition for 1989 Zack Hemmingway”
“Guess this guy really liked swimming,” Preston remarks while staring at a wall of newspaper clippings. All of them are about the same person in swimming competitions. All labeled different things like “a new record for Zack “the dolphin” Hemmingway”,
‘Zach Hemmingway our star plans for the future” all the newspapers are about this kind he has paler skin and a bulky enough build to swim pretty well. Most of the pictures have him coming out of the water in a pool, his long black hair soaked and sitting at his shoulders. Another one has him sitting at a desk over a pile of books and his hair in a knot , “vicious wipeout ends the Dolphins career”, and “ex-swim champ Zack Hemmingway found in a drunken stupor outside strip club.
“Everyone has their own hobbies I guess,” I say as I take the map off of the wall and fold it up. “Sucks what happened to Zack though” I walked over to Preston’s bag and put the rolled map in one of the pockets. I walk back up the stairs and Preston grabs his bag and follows behind me.
We make our way towards the kitchen and Preston starts looking through the fridge for anything to eat. I grab an orange from the table and throw it at his head. The fruit bounces off his head and rolls on the floor. He turns around and grabs the fruit from the floor
“Why did you throw an orange at me?”
“It's the only food we have unless you plan on eating spoiled a sandwich“ He starts to peel it while walking towards the table. We both take a seat and start to eat the oranges from the bag. He plants his feet on top of the table and bites into the fully peeled orange. I grab a water bottle from a bag and start to drink from it as Preston says.
“I saw a dvd player in that man cave downstairs we could watch a movie if it still has power”
“Sure it could be fun.” Me and Preston spend the rest of our time eating until the bag of oranges is emptied and we head back downstairs. Preston grabs the DVD player from under the table and blows the dust off the top of it; he plugs it into the wall as I plop myself onto the couch. He plugs the DVD player into the TV and sits on the recliner next to me. He presses a few buttons on the remote and the TV lights up. I squint my eyes at how bright it is. It's the most amount of light I've seen that didn't come from a flashlight. I notice there's a box filled with DVDs. I pull the box over towards me. I ruffle through the box and see movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, and Home alone.
“Dude some of these came out just before the world turned inside out” I say to him.
“Really? Let's play one.” He responds. I toss him Terminator 2 and he puts it into the DVD player.
We spend the next couple hours watching movies and laughing together. It's some of our only moments of peace we’ve had since the end of the world and to me it's the most fun I've had yet. We're putting in the next DVD when there's a loud crash outside and the TV shuts off. Preston goes behind it to see if it's still plugged in.
“I think the generator outside is busted” i say
“It seems that way” Preston replies while backing away from the tv” i'm gonna go check it out”
“Don't worry I got it” I say as I hop out of my chair. Preston waves goodbye as I head up the stairs. I make my way back through the hallway leading to the living room and front door. I reach the door and start to turn the knob. I open the door wide as a car speeds down the street. I step out of the door to see what had happened when I hear the screech of a glanter. It cuts through the sky like an unholy opera singer. A group of them fly by and chase the car as I rush back inside the house. I slam the door shut and look through the window as I see a couple of smaller glanters grab and shake the car violently looking for the driver. They tear at it, ripping off doors and breaking the windows. The driver screams as the seats cover with blood and he's ripped out of the car as multiple smaller glanters tear and bite off parts of his body like piranha's until his body is completely devoured. I run back to the man cave to warn Preston about what had happened. I spot him laying in his chair spinning a DVD disc on his finger.
“It's not safe outside right now”
“Why not?
“There's glanter's outside, they just ate a dude in his car”
“Did they see you come inside?”
“I don't think so , they flew off before I went inside.”
“well we're not dead so I'm gonna say they didn't see you. But let's stay here for a couple more hours just to be safe”
“Sounds good i'm gonna go find the master bedroom.” I start to walk back up the stairs to the house
“ Hold on why do you get the master bedroom” Preston says while walking after me.
“Because I'm gonna find it first” I say as I start to run to find the bedroom. He chases after me in pursuit of the bedroom. Me and Preston run around the house looking for the master bedroom. We look through room after room finding closets, the garage, a bathroom and a door leading to a balcony in the back of the house. I manage to run into the bedroom and yell out to Preston.``Found it!!”
He comes walking into the room breathing heavily from the running. We both check out the room. The walls are painted a cream yellow and the bed takes up most of the room's center. The bed has burgundy sheets poking out from its bottom and a quilt with multi-colored floral designs lay sprawled out on top of it. There's a wardrobe built into the wall and a black leather couch sits comfortably on the left wall.
“Dibs on the bed” I say as I jump on top of it. I stretch out on top of the quilt and search for a comfortable part to sleep in.
“Where am I supposed to sleep then?” Preston complains
“You can sleep on the couch it looks soft enough” I respond while pointing towards the couch “I saw some spare blankets in one of the closets”
“Alright i’ll be right back” he mumbles to himself “why do i always get the couch”
“ I'll be right here if you need me,” i call after him. I sit up on the bed and start to look around the room more. I notice the entrance to the wardrobe is cracked open slightly. I hop out of the bed and grab a flashlight from my bag as I walk into the wardrobe. I turn on my flashlight and stare in awe at how many clothes are in there. The room is only half as big as the bedroom but it's still bigger than any closet I've ever had. The wardrobe is full of shirts, dresses, pants, and shoes for men and women. I immediately start to look through the shoes to see if any fit my size. I throw a pair of black high heels behind me as Preston finds me in the wardrobe. He looks around before asking me.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a new pair of clothes to wear cause I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for waaaaay too long”
“Fair enough. Is there any guy stuff in there?”
“Yeah right there” I hook my thumb behind me to point to the other end of the closet.
“I'm sure they won't mind if we take a couple of things…they're probably dead by now anyways,” Preston says with a slight grin on his face. The way he said made me spin my head to look at him but he was already on the opposite end of the wardrobe looking at suits.
I shake away the thought and continue looking for any pair of sneakers in my size. 40 minutes pass before I walk out of the wardrobe holding a new pair of jeans and a black guns-N-roses t-shirt. I toss the clothes on top of the bed and check to see if the shower in the bathroom still works. I turn the dial and wait for a moment. The shower head chokes a little before water comes pouring out. I reach my hand under the showerhead to feel the water. The water is cold, it causes my hand to shiver when I take it out. I shake the water off and say to myself.
“Good enough” as I start to take off my old clothes and get in the shower. The cold water bounces off my skin, it sends shivers down my spine but I still get the old dirt from the last few months off of me. I step out and see a couple of dry towels hanging off of the door. I grab one and dry my body off and grab another to wrap around my head and dry my hair. I step out of the bathroom and Preston is still inside the wardrobe. I put on my new clothes while his back is turned and walk over towards him when I'm finished.
“Still haven't found anything,” I ask him
He turns around “Nothing yet, the only thing interesting was this coat.” He holds a leather coat up to me. The coat is made of black leather and has a skull covered with blue flames on the back. There's a black shirt inside the coat with a skeleton hand making a thumbs-up embroidered on the front.
“ That's pretty cool, it's better than what you're wearing right now at least” he's outfitted in a blue hoodie with holes on the chest and tears at the sleeves. He also has a shirt with a faded picture of a blue flower printed on it.
“I guess you're right” he gets up from the floor and exits the wardrobe. He lays the clothes on the couch along next to the blanket and pillow he brought into the room.
“The shower works so you can get yourself clean In there,” I say to him
“You know, a shower sounds really good right now.” He gets up from the floor and grabs a pair of pajama pants that were laying next to him. He leaves the wardrobe and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment the water turns on and I hop on the bed to get ready to sleep. I squirm myself into the quilt and rest my head against one of the pillows. I shut my eyes and fall asleep listening to the passive sound of the shower like rain on a car.
I'm in a void. It feels like I'm standing in a puddle of water that reaches to my knees. I wade my way forward looking around for anything in the darkness. In the distance I can see 3 figures l. I moved closer to them and their silhouettes get clearer. I realize they are my dad and brothers. I start to run towards them kicking up water behind me until something grabs my leg. It pulls down violently forcing me under the water without a breath of air. I kick at the thing grabbing me until something grabs my other leg. I look down and see two glanter's each with a monstrous smile on their faces. They stare back at me and one of them tugs my leg harder than before and tears it off of my body. The water around me turns red as the glanter laugh's. The other smiles wider as it starts to fling me around the water forcing any air left in my lungs to be forced out as I scream in pain. The glanter throws me away and I can see my family slowly fade into the distance as I'm flown away.
I struggle to swim back to where I was, one of my legs is missing and the other is broken. The glanter's find me again and I try to get to the surface to escape them. I'm flapping my arms in any attempt to escape as one of the glanter's flies in front of me and grabs my arm. I look at the monster with tears in my eyes as it bites my arm and tears my body away from it. It flings my body away and with my remaining arm I clutch the wound as the water floods into my body leaving me in the void I started in. I look around and the glanter's seem to have left. I turn behind me and see my family again, this time I'm closer than before.
I grit my teeth and drag my body towards them slowly as I leave a trail of blood and tears behind me. I finally reach my family and grab one of my father's shoes. I stare up and he looks at me. His stare causes me to feel cold as a grotesque smile grows on his face. I stare in shock as my brothers each have the same look as my father.
I shoot up from my sleep panting heavily in a cold sweat.
“It was just a dream..just a dream…just a dream” I look at my hands as tears fall into them. I look around the room and see Preston sleeping peacefully on the couch. The room feels frozen in place as a chill runs down my spine. I get out of the bed and walk out of the bedroom. I make my way through the dark hallway and find the entrance to the balcony I saw earlier. I creak open the screen door and head outside. The Balcony is pretty large, about the size of the kitchen in the house. There are some chairs knocked over next to a table and I pick one up to sit on it. I look out into the expanse of the neighborhood, houses lined up next to each other, dozens broken apart by roads, and dead bodies scattered across the roads.
I look up in the sky and sit back in the chair. The sky looks empty except for the moon giving this world its only source of light. Without the moon, we’d be left in darkness. It hangs in the sky alone, no stars, no clouds, nothing but itself, and the void of the sky. I think back about the dream I had. My dad and my brother's all dead and possessed and then they kill me. I start to tear up thinking about it. I try to wipe away the tears but it’s no use. I'm too scared for my family. I don't know where they are if they're alive if they're worried about me I don't know anything! I start to quietly cry into my hands. I don't know how long I'm sitting there until I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head to face it and I see Preston. He was smiling and looking at me. I turn away to wipe my tears and he walks next to me.
“I heard you sneaking out of the bedroom so I followed you to see where you were going.” he says “but that's not my question.” he pauses and looks at me “my question is what’s got you feeling so down?” he leans over the railing of the balcony
“It's nothing, I just came out here to clear my head.” I say as more tears escape from my eyes in big slow drops that ride down the sides of my face.
“if you don't feel like telling me you don't have to but i'll be here if you ever change your mind”. He looks up at the moon before turning to face me and his smile widens “I'll always be here with you…trust me I'm not going anywhere”
I stare up at him and wipe away my tears as a smile grows on my face to match his. I get up and stare over the balcony with him. “So where are we heading next?” I say to him, Preston pulls the map we got from the man cave downstairs out from his pocket.
“After I got out of the shower I decided to take a look at the map for anything interesting we could see.”
“Ok did you find anything?” i ask
“I did,” he points at a spot on the right of the map. “We should head to the museum”
“I didn't want to go to a museum before the apocalypse why would i want to go now?'' I ask him.
“Well the best part of museums is the cool stuff right”
“Yeah what about it”
“The only problem is that you could only look at the fossils and armor but you could never take them.”
“So you want to rob a museum?” Prestons eyes light up at the question
“Exactly they might have a really cool sword I could use, or I could sharpen a dinosaur tooth and use that as a weapon, there might be a cursed shield that can summon the dead to fight for you. This opportunity is too good to pass up. We need to go!”
“That does seem pretty cool but wouldn't carrying that stuff weigh us down. What if a glanter is chasing us and we can't run fast enough because of the stuff we took from the museum.”
“We’ll only take things that are light. Even then I could just block the glanter with my newly acquired 2000 year old shield.”
“Fair enough we can go in a couple hours” I yawn and stretch out my arms. “Cause I'm feeling way too tired to walk all the way over there right now.”
“Alright i'm heading back to my couch and THEN we’ll head out to the museum” he leaves the balcony and heads back to the master bedroom leaving me alone on the balcony.
“Thanks Preston I'm not leaving either” I say into the sky. I turn around and walk back inside the house, closing the balcony door behind me. I walk back into the bedroom and Preston is hunched over and holding a flashlight looking at the map. He’s drawing lines through roads and marking X’s in different areas.
“What are the X’s for?” i ask him
“They’re places that glanter’s usually stay around. I'm marking them off so we remember not to go through them, or at least be more cautious.”
“Cool. Did you find where we are right now?” He points to an area where the lines all converge out of.
“Right around here is where the neighborhood ends. So if we follow this path we can make it to the museum in one piece” I pat him on the back and take the map from his hands.
“Get some sleep Preston, we have a full day tomorrow” he grins to himself before laying down on the couch. I put the map back into my bag and hop on the bed to get to sleep. I cover my body in the quilt and roll over facing away from Preston as he falls asleep. I nestle myself into the bed and slowly fall asleep to get ready for the next day.
I'm awoken by Preston shaking the bed I'm sleeping on. My eyes open and the room is foggy, I wipe away the sleep from my eyes and focus my attention towards Preston. He's practically jumping out of his skin with excitement, he's already fully dressed for the trip and shaking the bed with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok ok i'm up the air feels heavy as a groggy feeling fills my body. I wipe my eyes and the room starts to clear up. I turn to face Preston. He's still shaking my bed to wake me up, he’s already fully dressed and nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement.
“Ok ok, i'm up you can stop shaking the bed” i say
“Then get up we’ve got a long walk ahead of us” he says as he stops shaking the mattress. He grabs the map from my bag and points to one of the red lines.
“We're gonna follow this way to the museum. We’ll move past the hotel around the ice skating rink and around the park. We’ll mainly stick to walking through the streets, we might have to go rooftop hopping to avoid any glanter’s if we see them but i'm sure we won’t reach that point.” he explains
“Wait, wait, wait, why are avoiding the skating rink and the park” i ask
“ everytime we go near the park there's weird noises and light coming out of it”
“And why can't we go to the ice skating rink?”
“I didn't think it would be important”
“It couldn't hurt to check it out at least”
“Fine we could make a detour”
“Ok and how do you plan on getting on top of roofs?”
“I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get to it”
“Ok man as long as you’re sure '' I yawn and step out of the bed. Preston starts to put the map in his bag. I walk into the bathroom with my clothes and change out of my pajamas. Minutes later I walk out and see Preston sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs.
“Finally you're out” he smiles at me before handing me my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. We took a last look inside the kitchen to see if we missed anything. Afterwards we leave for the outside. The cold air bites at my face but Preston walks down the stairs, his face buried in the map. I jog to catch up to him as we both head into the street.
“Hey Preston, could I see the map?”
“Sure” he hands over the map and continues walking. I look at the map and the numerous lines drawn on roads. I look at the corner of the map and notice a small map key with numerous symbols for different areas like a library, school, hospital, and more. There's even a way to tell how far away each location is. The text reads “1 inch=5 miles” I quickly count how far we are from the museum.
“Dude this museum is like 100 miles away.”
“Yep it'll be a long walk, it'll take us a while to get there”
“Did you plan on us walking there the whole time?”
“We might find bikes or something.” he pauses “well i did think we would walk the whole way”
“This is gonna take us weeks to get there!”
“Did you have anything else planned?”
“Well…i guess not but we should still try to find some bikes or something”
“Ok if we see any way to travel faster we’ll take it”
“Alright cool” I hand him the map back and he folds it back up and puts it in his bag. We walk further until we leave the gated neighborhood we started in. Preston takes the map back out and looks at it before he turns right and continues walking. I follow him staring forward at the expanse of the road. The outside of the neighborhood is surrounded by roads all leading to different parts of Newkinawa. We walk past a sign that reads “Coretown 20 miles ahead” I nudge Preston towards the sign and he checks the map again.
“Yep, the museum’s in Coretown. Would you believe the residents were pretty proud of it. Should be a fun place to explore” he says
“Yeah but it’ll take us a million years to get there.” i complain
“Lighten up, I'm sure it will be worth it”. We continue walking down the road slowly making our way to Coretown.

Chapter 1
“Huff, huff”
Zhong Lin inhaled the heavy gray mist surrounding him, sizzling his already sore lungs. The rancid, musty air did little to soften his scowl aimed at the colossal slab of gravestone. The waning blue moon above casted eerie shadows on the ground, seemingly mocking his desperation.
A reckless punch born out of rage landed on the hard granite. But the carvings of incomprehensible beings responded with little other than broken nerves and muscles.
“HAHAHAHHAHA”
With a loud laugh of self-derision, he roughly fell on the cold, cobbled floor. The chest injury he had forgotten about flared up with the fall. He stared at the blood that flowed from his chest, akin to a river slithering down a mountain, dyeing the floor crimson.
He moved his right hand towards his chest, holding down on the wound. Physical pain was still more bearable than the heart. He had been long used to the pain. Both of heart and body.
“All that for nothing.”
A dispirited mutter left his parched lips as blood and sweat melded together. Divine sense showed his nascent soul in a similar state to his body. As the Qi and Blood competed to leave him, a strong dizziness assaulted his senses, spinning even the azure moon above.
He pulled out a jar with only one red pill left inside.
*Crunch*
Brisk chewing gave life to the hollow, misty temple of death as he gnawed on his final pill. He knew it was futile. When the slab showed no response, he already had a hunch that all his efforts were for naught. Yet, if living a mere moment would increase his non-existent odds, he would seize that moment with everything. He lost too much to stop here.
“You were wrong, father. Trying is never enough.”
Reminiscing about his lives, he couldn’t help but wonder how everything had gone so awry. When he transmigrated to this world, he thought he could redo everything.
A second, no, his first, proper chance at life.
And he had to admit, he had gotten lucky. A loving family. A shed above his head. A heart full of warmth. Brought by the simple act of his mother brushing his hair. By stern reprimands of his father as his sister laughed from behind. But that gave away to the question, had he been a bit too lucky?
“I am sorry, Rin. Your big brother is a coward.”
They say that your life flashes past your eyes before you meet your end. He could not confirm it in his last life, perhaps because he did not have a life worth remembering, but now he could see it clearly.
A scene that frequented him in his nightmares.
It was midnight when the mournful shrieks broke him out of dreams. He sat up to muffled screams, fizzling out, one after another. Even the unending darkness of night was eclipsed by an emerald hue, bleeding into his room from the small crevices of the windows.
From an interstice he watched the man in black robe. With a glowing blade, the dark figure painted the snow in crimson. He saw his father among them, kneeling. A warning in his eyes met his own. And he raced like hell itself chased him, away from the nauseating scent of blood.
And quickly hid inside the house, going away from his room. As fear grasped his soul, the realization hit, his sister was still sleeping, unaware of the carnage outside. Before he could reach out, a footstep froze him, burning him with a primal fear. Only a small, sleepy “Big brother?” reached him, before his heartbeats taking over once again.
But fear whispered at him, to not breathe, to not move, to not go. And he caved in to it, paralyzed, until the screams stopped and the morning sun shone. Only then did he go out, finding her there, lying peacefully.
Only, a bit of perplexity in her azure eyes, which had long lost all semblance of life. Her eyes would continue to stare at him, every night.
Like they did right now as his vision blurred.
“I am sorry, Rin. It should have been me.”
He croaked. There is no pill for regret. Like a gut punch it hit. Often, he wondered why he had been left alive. Before, he thought it was due to him hiding well, but only later did he know that he was spared. After all, there was nowhere to hide from a divine sense.
Sound sleep became a thing of luxury from then on as nightmares took over. Thus, a ten-year-old made revenge his life goal.
But it did not take him long to realize that smarts could not overpower those with the strength to break mountains. Hence, he ran after power, meticulously scheming. Ten years a valet of nobles. Hundreds a slave to immortals. Thousands of years of cultivation. Only to find an answer to one question.
Why was he spared on the night of snowfall?
But efforts matter less where talent is venerated. What took him years took the man of his nightmares a day to accomplish. And by the time Zhong Lin reached nascent soul, his figure of vengeance had long surpassed him by an impossible margin. And he despaired, for as long as he remembered.
Until Requiem landed on his hand, that is. A book of a God long forgotten. A different path to power, beyond what immortals could ever hope to accomplish. And he did whatever the book told him. For that was his only hope.
He found the missing pieces, assembled them, piece by piece. Hiding, running, stealing, slaughtering. Funnily enough. all his efforts only led to him creating his own burial. Perhaps it was karma. Slowly, He felt impending death crawling on his skin as the smell of blood got thicker and thicker.
Faintly, a sound of footsteps could be heard from afar. The firm noise of boots steadily made its way, like death. Inevitable.
Zhong mustered all his remaining strength to stand up, amplifying the dizziness. He had a faint idea of what approached him.
He who led him to the pit of hell.
A black silhouette wearing a gray overcoat slowly emerged from the haze of mist, holding a yellow lantern in his hand. Yet, all the light avoided his visage, scattering before reaching the inky blackness.
“To be honest, I never imagined that you would actually manage to find it yourself.” Zhong Lin’s face crumbled as he listened to the deep, gruff voice mocking him, but he had little to return to the derision reaching his ears. “I must thank you for saving me the trouble.”
Zhong Lin numbly gazed at the figure that went beyond his understanding. A being made of the vast cosmos. Hands made of stars, a face that resembled eternal darkness.
“Sorry. Kid. There was never any inheritance.” Zhong Lin listened to the voice that sounded like a death sentence. In his journey, he had considered many times a question, What if he does not get the inheritance? But he never considered that there was no inheritance to begin with. But all the despair only left as the haze cleared, and a profound numbness filled all that was hollow in his heart.
“Kid” A soft voice reached the ears of the listless Zhong Lin. He watched the inky black around the cosmic figure leave as he brought the lantern up. But more than that familiar voice and face, what brought him more despair is the one single line. “Do you remember the night of snowfall?”
No. It could not have been that early!
His face scrunched up, forming an expression of madness again, his knuckles cracking as they turned white. “Old hermit.” He whispered. He finally connected all the dots. It was not just after he got Requiem. For his entire life, he was but a simple pawn. Chess piece right from the very start of his journey. A mantis unaware of the oriole behind.
No wonder. The only reason why he managed to survive the impossible odds so far was because a higher being was aiding him. He attributed the random burst of luck and lucky encounters to destiny, thinking the world itself wanted him to succeed. How foolish of him when fate has done nothing but mock him.
He stared at the peaceful face of an old hermit; someone he had known for ages. His benefactor, a lifesaver many times,. “Kid, don’t misunderstand. It was never personal.”
“Why?” A quivering voice escaped Zhong Lin’s lips as all of his expression left his face, leaving numbness occupying it once again.
“Why was I spared?” He stared at the being that seemed eternal by now once again, with a black face, hands like the cosmos holding onto a lantern.
Old hermit laughed at the question. “Would you believe me if I said everything was merely a coincidence?”
Zhong Lin watched the burning golden eyes on his eternal black visage peek at his soul. Unfeeling, cold, relishing in his nightmare, refusing to fulfill even his final wish.
And he decided, right there.
The runic seals around his soul unchained as he quickly compressed the Qi on the bead, something he had been keeping inside his soul for a long while. The thunder and fire souls mixed together, creating a mad frenzy of Qi inside him. Soon, all seven souls were burning madly, before destroying themselves within seconds, like an avalanche of Qi.
*BOOOOOOMMMMMM*
The nascent soul destruction created a feint as he propelled the bead forward, to the middle of the gravestone, to the piece he had forged himself. He watched with his dimming divine sense as the bead slowly made its way with a bit of hope, to destroy one of the stones, to stop whatever his plan was.
But right before the bead could reach it. Hermit waved his hand, stopping all the chaotic movement of Qi and soul. Zhong Lin’s final bit of hope died out as he reached his eternal end.
“Almost succeeded. But you were too desperate.” The hermit laughed as he watched the desperate Zhong Lin’s final attempt. Walking towards the frozen bead, he stared at the brewing Qi that would have certainly taken down the entire temple if it hit. .
“And even if you damaged it, it would have only brought me a mild inconvenience.” He ran his fingers on the gravestone, muttering softly. A laughter of elation resounded in the empty hall as he brought out a key from his overcoat. As soon as the key reached the stone, a small hole opened up, like it was made for it. With a clink, the rectangular slab of granite transformed, into a small, unassuming olden black book.
A single ancient word was written on the black cover.
Requiem
“Right? Requiem.”
He stared at the bloody mess caused by the splattered organs and blood on the stone walls. Although he protected himself and Requiem, he shared not that feeling about the old temple of death. He gazed at the detonated Qi that intermixed with the soul energy, all seven souls had been unchained and intermixed.
“Did not even leave yourself a path out for reincarnation. But, kid, you may have chosen well.”
A sigh escaped his lips as he walked off into the dark maws of the door. As he left the temple, it broke down, piece by piece. The large pillars slowly slid underground like it were submerging in water, along with the rest of the temple, disappearing like it never existed, taking with it Zhong Lin's remains. From now on, the old temple of death will have never existed, alongside Zhong Lin.
Or that’s what was supposed to happen.
But an anomalous corruption in time and space was brewing,

Intro: While running through the forest one full moon night, you smelled a particularly delicious-seeming dead rabbit. Never one to waste a good meal, you go for it, but as you’re beginning to chow down, you feel something sharp closing over your leg. It hurts. You don’t know how you’re going to get out of this, but you do know one thing: You’re going to take a piece out of whoever did this to you.
Summary: Speaker finds Listener trapped in the woods, so she finds a way to patch him up.
Go ahead and monetize, it's fine. Word count is about 1700.
If you fill this or plan to fill this, please notify me. Please don't make edits without asking first.
Line breaks represent the listener talking or space where no one talks and should be short pauses, words within {brackets} represent the speaker’s tone or sfx. At ellipses, the speaker trails off, and at dashes, she is either cut off abruptly by the listener or by herself.
Author’s Note: Y’know, I don’t think this is what I envisioned originally, there was going to be a lot more of the “get you to calm down, heal your injuries, make the pain go away” stuff, but I think I like it nonetheless. It certainly feels more realistic now, with the lack of getting in range of a wild animal’s teeth. And who knows? Maybe it has more series potential the way it is. We might even find out, one day.
If you want to read this somewhere other than Reddit, it's also here.
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{preoccupied} All right, what’s on the docket for today? Check the rabbit traps, see if I got anything edible, that’s a good start. After that, maybe I can head down to the creek, try to catch some fish. Even if I don’t get any bites, it’ll still be nice to- whoa.
{a little awed} Well, damn. That’s a beautiful sunrise. Been a long time since I’ve seen one like that. Hell, for someone who lives in nature, I don’t spend enough time appreciating it.
{sigh} Yup, lovely. {back to business} All right, that’ll be enough appreciating for now. Time and tide, after all, and scavengers are even less polite than they are.
All right, where did I leave the first one, again? Past the fallen tree, yes, leave the track at the rock that looks like a bear-
{scared gasp} {quieter} Okay. That’s a wolf. That’s a wolf. He sees me, yup, looking right at me. That’s bad. Okay, okay, survival lessons, what do I do… He probably doesn’t want a fight. Make myself larger, make noise.
{loudly} Hey! Hey, you, wolf! Get outta here! Come on, I know you don’t want to be around a human, shoo! Leave!
{to self} {worried} Why isn’t it- Okay, that’s not ideal. He’s not moving, he’s growling at me, I should- what should I do? This seems strange. If it was going to jump me, wouldn’t it have by now?
{trying not to panic} Oh, fuck, what do I do? If I move towards him, will he take it as aggression and attack? But, if I walk away, he could think of me as prey and attack anyway. I suppose it’s a wild animal, there’s no telling what it could actually do, is there? But… wait, does he look… why’s he looking at me like that? He almost seems… scared.
{forced calm} All right, use your brain, {insert name here}. There is a wolf, here, in the place where you set a rabbit trap. Why? Probably because it wants to eat the rabbit, and you’re interrupting a hungry predator. But no, that doesn’t fit so well, he’d be doing… something other than this, I think, if I actually was getting between him and food. Maybe he already finished it, and he’s just chilling? I suppose that’s possible… But then he would’ve left already, right? So there’s probably something keeping him here. Like what? No chance it’s cubs, I’d be dead already. Same with an injured packmate, probably same with a stash of food. So why…
The trap? No, that wouldn’t even make sense. It’s tiny. It’d kill a rabbit, for sure, but a wolf probably couldn’t even get his paw through the little loop, much less get caught by it. But maybe…
Hey, hey, stay calm, buddy. I’m not threatening you, I’m not even gonna get in your blind spot, just want to walk over to the side… Yup, that’s it, you can keep your eyes right on me, see? I’m not a threat. Just want to look at- {gasp}
{shocked} What? Where did- How!
{forced calm} Okay, okay, the how isn’t that important. The wolf has his leg caught in a trap. Bloody hell, that looks nasty. That explains the immobility, and the growling. Poor guy is probably scared out of his mind right now, with that thing through his leg. {upset} I can’t believe you can still even get your hands on spike traps like that! I mean, come on, isn’t that inhumane?
{forced calm} Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. How do I help him? I could… call the forestry service? But cell service is so horrible out here… I could drive into town and call them? Oh, but what if they said they can’t help? Or what if they’re too late, and he’s already chewed his paw off by the time they get here? Wait, do wolves do that? I think I read somewhere that they do that. I shouldn’t let him do that. Okay, can’t get anyone else to come help, I could try to get the trap off it myself? That’s… that’s a really not-good idea, isn’t it? Yeah, he’s a wild animal. Probably doesn’t like humans so much in the first place, and now he’s scared and in pain… He’d probably maim me before I even had the chance to help, no dice. But I have to do something…
{upset} Ugh! Come on, {insert name here}, think! There has to be something you can do. Something you can… {gasp}
{excited} That’ll work! Okay, wait- right there, Mr. Wolf, stay- do not chew your paw off while I’m gone, I promise I’m going to make the pain stop.
{running footsteps sfx} {fading away} {chuckle} Heh, I’m talking to the wolf like he understands me. Ridiculous. Oh, but I hope he gets the message…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{running footsteps} {out of breath} I’m back! I’m… back. I made it. You’re still here, right? Oh, oh good. Please tell me you didn’t injure your paw any further.
{confused} Wait… you’re not growling at me anymore. Huh? That doesn’t make much sense. I- eh, can’t worry about it right now. {coaxing} I brought you some food, buddy! It’ll be nice and tasty, and it’ll help you go off to sleep so I can get that thing off your leg. Doesn’t that sound good? Don’t you want to feel better?
{considering} Uhhh… how to give it to you… All right, I can push the tupperware into your reach with a stick, that’ll work just fine, yeah? Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
{scraping sfx}
{coaxing} All right, Mr. Wolf, don’t you want to eat the bacon? I promise it’ll taste good!
{perplexed} Was that… a sigh? Did you just sigh at- oh, well, you’re eating. Good enough for me.
{pleased} Wow, you polished that whole thing off. Okay, the pills should be kicking in soon. I think they’ll work as well on you as they would a human? We’re both mammals, our chemistry shouldn’t be too different. God, I hope that’s how it works.
{fading out} Yup, there we go. That’s it, buddy, just go to sleep… You’ll feel much better when you wake up, just let it all drift away… I’ve got you.
Okay. Damn, that leg looks even worse up close. I don’t think I can patch it up here. I might need to…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{fade in} -right, I think that oughta do it. All patched up, the gauze should hold decently well. As long as he doesn’t go stepping on any more traps, he should be able to use the leg as much as he needs. Oh! That reminds me. I need to find out who set that trap, maybe there’s some kind of-
{small voice} Your eyes are open. How long have your eyes been open?
{terrified} I- uh- wait, fuck, no- this isn’t what was supposed to- uh- okay, down, down, stay back, please don’t kill me- I’ll give you more bacon if you don’t kill me please-
I… I’m not dead?
{scared gasp}
I keep opening my eyes… and he keeps being there. Just tell me, am I gonna die or not?
{disbelief} What, you’re a communicative wolf, now? What’s that whine supposed to mean?
{plaintive} Oh my God, I’m losing it. I’m cracking up under the stress. I’m actually trying to talk with the vicious wild animal.
…Well, in for a penny. What is it that you want, Mr. Wolf? Is there some reason you haven’t killed me yet? I doubt it’s gratitude.
{perplexed} Wha- The refrigerator? You’re pawing at- {shell shocked} Oh my God. It’s the bacon. He wants more bacon. Well. I guess I did say I’d give him some, and I’m not dead. All right then, Mr. Wolf, if you’d like to move out of the way so I can reach the fridge…
Thank you.
This is the most surreal bloody thing I have ever encountered, I hope you know. How in the hell do you understand me?
{door opening and closing sfx}
Yeah, I didn’t really expect an answer. Well, uh, here’s your bacon. Please don’t bite my hand.
{scraping sfx}
{nervous} Are we… are we cool? I patched up your leg and gave you some food, and you don’t turn me into food? Sound reasonable?
…In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I’m going to take that as an affirmative.
{fond} Aww, that was a cute little- {nervous} okay, okay. Not calling you cute. Message received.
Uh- whoa, wait, what are you doing? What are you sniffing around for? I don’t have any more bacon-
The… trap? Why do you care about…
That is the strongest “mind your business” stare I have ever gotten from anything, human or animal. Understood, business minding.
Sniffing… OH! You’re going to- nope, never mind, I’m not involved, you do you, Mr. Wolf.
{annoyed} Y’know, just because you could kill me, doesn’t mean you have call to be rude. I did save your leg, after all.
{taken aback} Is that… your version of an apology?
I- Apology accepted. Or, wait. {mischievous} I can’t go through my life knowing I could’ve said this, but didn’t. I’ll accept your apology, on one condition. I get to scritch your ears.
Don’t look at me like that, you’re fluffy. I want to scritch. I- is that okay?
{gasp} All right, I’m going to risk it.
{scritching sfx}
{in awe} I’m… I’m petting a wolf. I did not expect this… ever.
You really are fluffy, this is nice. And it looks like you’re enjoying it, too-
Oop, okay. I guess we’re done.
All right, yup, I shall open the door. You shall exit the door, and continue to do whatever wolves do. Don’t step in any more traps, okay? I don’t want to have to risk getting mauled again.
{door opens and closes sfx}
{muffled} {exhale} {stunned} Oh my God. Did that really just happen? There’s no way that just happened. The wolf understood me. That’s not how wolves work! Wild animals don’t just speak English. Was he… was he somehow sentient? Does that mean that there are other creatures out there that can think like that? God, that just makes the fact that that spike trap exists even worse. I… I really can’t even process this. How does one begin to process this? I gave a wolf headpats. This is not a normal experience.
I… don’t think I’m going fishing today. Maybe I’ll just have a nice little lie-down, instead, and when I wake up it’ll have been a weird dream. Yeah. That’d work.
…I wonder if I’ll ever see him again?

Intro: While running through the forest one full moon night, you smelled a particularly delicious-seeming dead rabbit. Never one to waste a good meal, you go for it, but as you’re beginning to chow down, you feel something sharp closing over your leg. It hurts. You don’t know how you’re going to get out of this, but you do know one thing: You’re going to take a piece out of whoever did this to you.
Summary: Speaker finds Listener trapped in the woods, so she finds a way to patch him up.
Go ahead and monetize, it's fine. Word count is about 1700.
If you fill this or plan to fill this, please notify me. Please don't make edits without asking first.
Line breaks represent the listener talking or space where no one talks and should be short pauses, words within {brackets} represent the speaker’s tone or sfx. At ellipses, the speaker trails off, and at dashes, she is either cut off abruptly by the listener or by herself.
Author’s Note: Y’know, I don’t think this is what I envisioned originally, there was going to be a lot more of the “get you to calm down, heal your injuries, make the pain go away” stuff, but I think I like it nonetheless. It certainly feels more realistic now, with the lack of getting in range of a wild animal’s teeth. And who knows? Maybe it has more series potential the way it is. We might even find out, one day.
If you want to read this somewhere other than Reddit, it's also here.
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{preoccupied} All right, what’s on the docket for today? Check the rabbit traps, see if I got anything edible, that’s a good start. After that, maybe I can head down to the creek, try to catch some fish. Even if I don’t get any bites, it’ll still be nice to- whoa.
{a little awed} Well, damn. That’s a beautiful sunrise. Been a long time since I’ve seen one like that. Hell, for someone who lives in nature, I don’t spend enough time appreciating it.
{sigh} Yup, lovely. {back to business} All right, that’ll be enough appreciating for now. Time and tide, after all, and scavengers are even less polite than they are.
All right, where did I leave the first one, again? Past the fallen tree, yes, leave the track at the rock that looks like a bear-
{scared gasp} {quieter} Okay. That’s a wolf. That’s a wolf. He sees me, yup, looking right at me. That’s bad. Okay, okay, survival lessons, what do I do… He probably doesn’t want a fight. Make myself larger, make noise.
{loudly} Hey! Hey, you, wolf! Get outta here! Come on, I know you don’t want to be around a human, shoo! Leave!
{to self} {worried} Why isn’t it- Okay, that’s not ideal. He’s not moving, he’s growling at me, I should- what should I do? This seems strange. If it was going to jump me, wouldn’t it have by now?
{trying not to panic} Oh, fuck, what do I do? If I move towards him, will he take it as aggression and attack? But, if I walk away, he could think of me as prey and attack anyway. I suppose it’s a wild animal, there’s no telling what it could actually do, is there? But… wait, does he look… why’s he looking at me like that? He almost seems… scared.
{forced calm} All right, use your brain, {insert name here}. There is a wolf, here, in the place where you set a rabbit trap. Why? Probably because it wants to eat the rabbit, and you’re interrupting a hungry predator. But no, that doesn’t fit so well, he’d be doing… something other than this, I think, if I actually was getting between him and food. Maybe he already finished it, and he’s just chilling? I suppose that’s possible… But then he would’ve left already, right? So there’s probably something keeping him here. Like what? No chance it’s cubs, I’d be dead already. Same with an injured packmate, probably same with a stash of food. So why…
The trap? No, that wouldn’t even make sense. It’s tiny. It’d kill a rabbit, for sure, but a wolf probably couldn’t even get his paw through the little loop, much less get caught by it. But maybe…
Hey, hey, stay calm, buddy. I’m not threatening you, I’m not even gonna get in your blind spot, just want to walk over to the side… Yup, that’s it, you can keep your eyes right on me, see? I’m not a threat. Just want to look at- {gasp}
{shocked} What? Where did- How!
{forced calm} Okay, okay, the how isn’t that important. The wolf has his leg caught in a trap. Bloody hell, that looks nasty. That explains the immobility, and the growling. Poor guy is probably scared out of his mind right now, with that thing through his leg. {upset} I can’t believe you can still even get your hands on spike traps like that! I mean, come on, isn’t that inhumane?
{forced calm} Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. How do I help him? I could… call the forestry service? But cell service is so horrible out here… I could drive into town and call them? Oh, but what if they said they can’t help? Or what if they’re too late, and he’s already chewed his paw off by the time they get here? Wait, do wolves do that? I think I read somewhere that they do that. I shouldn’t let him do that. Okay, can’t get anyone else to come help, I could try to get the trap off it myself? That’s… that’s a really not-good idea, isn’t it? Yeah, he’s a wild animal. Probably doesn’t like humans so much in the first place, and now he’s scared and in pain… He’d probably maim me before I even had the chance to help, no dice. But I have to do something…
{upset} Ugh! Come on, {insert name here}, think! There has to be something you can do. Something you can… {gasp}
{excited} That’ll work! Okay, wait- right there, Mr. Wolf, stay- do not chew your paw off while I’m gone, I promise I’m going to make the pain stop.
{running footsteps sfx} {fading away} {chuckle} Heh, I’m talking to the wolf like he understands me. Ridiculous. Oh, but I hope he gets the message…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{running footsteps} {out of breath} I’m back! I’m… back. I made it. You’re still here, right? Oh, oh good. Please tell me you didn’t injure your paw any further.
{confused} Wait… you’re not growling at me anymore. Huh? That doesn’t make much sense. I- eh, can’t worry about it right now. {coaxing} I brought you some food, buddy! It’ll be nice and tasty, and it’ll help you go off to sleep so I can get that thing off your leg. Doesn’t that sound good? Don’t you want to feel better?
{considering} Uhhh… how to give it to you… All right, I can push the tupperware into your reach with a stick, that’ll work just fine, yeah? Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
{scraping sfx}
{coaxing} All right, Mr. Wolf, don’t you want to eat the bacon? I promise it’ll taste good!
{perplexed} Was that… a sigh? Did you just sigh at- oh, well, you’re eating. Good enough for me.
{pleased} Wow, you polished that whole thing off. Okay, the pills should be kicking in soon. I think they’ll work as well on you as they would a human? We’re both mammals, our chemistry shouldn’t be too different. God, I hope that’s how it works.
{fading out} Yup, there we go. That’s it, buddy, just go to sleep… You’ll feel much better when you wake up, just let it all drift away… I’ve got you.
Okay. Damn, that leg looks even worse up close. I don’t think I can patch it up here. I might need to…
{some indicator of a time skip}
{fade in} -right, I think that oughta do it. All patched up, the gauze should hold decently well. As long as he doesn’t go stepping on any more traps, he should be able to use the leg as much as he needs. Oh! That reminds me. I need to find out who set that trap, maybe there’s some kind of-
{small voice} Your eyes are open. How long have your eyes been open?
{terrified} I- uh- wait, fuck, no- this isn’t what was supposed to- uh- okay, down, down, stay back, please don’t kill me- I’ll give you more bacon if you don’t kill me please-
I… I’m not dead?
{scared gasp}
I keep opening my eyes… and he keeps being there. Just tell me, am I gonna die or not?
{disbelief} What, you’re a communicative wolf, now? What’s that whine supposed to mean?
{plaintive} Oh my God, I’m losing it. I’m cracking up under the stress. I’m actually trying to talk with the vicious wild animal.
…Well, in for a penny. What is it that you want, Mr. Wolf? Is there some reason you haven’t killed me yet? I doubt it’s gratitude.
{perplexed} Wha- The refrigerator? You’re pawing at- {shell shocked} Oh my God. It’s the bacon. He wants more bacon. Well. I guess I did say I’d give him some, and I’m not dead. All right then, Mr. Wolf, if you’d like to move out of the way so I can reach the fridge…
Thank you.
This is the most surreal bloody thing I have ever encountered, I hope you know. How in the hell do you understand me?
{door opening and closing sfx}
Yeah, I didn’t really expect an answer. Well, uh, here’s your bacon. Please don’t bite my hand.
{scraping sfx}
{nervous} Are we… are we cool? I patched up your leg and gave you some food, and you don’t turn me into food? Sound reasonable?
…In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I’m going to take that as an affirmative.
{fond} Aww, that was a cute little- {nervous} okay, okay. Not calling you cute. Message received.
Uh- whoa, wait, what are you doing? What are you sniffing around for? I don’t have any more bacon-
The… trap? Why do you care about…
That is the strongest “mind your business” stare I have ever gotten from anything, human or animal. Understood, business minding.
Sniffing… OH! You’re going to- nope, never mind, I’m not involved, you do you, Mr. Wolf.
{annoyed} Y’know, just because you could kill me, doesn’t mean you have call to be rude. I did save your leg, after all.
{taken aback} Is that… your version of an apology?
I- Apology accepted. Or, wait. {mischievous} I can’t go through my life knowing I could’ve said this, but didn’t. I’ll accept your apology, on one condition. I get to scritch your ears.
Don’t look at me like that, you’re fluffy. I want to scritch. I- is that okay?
{gasp} All right, I’m going to risk it.
{scritching sfx}
{in awe} I’m… I’m petting a wolf. I did not expect this… ever.
You really are fluffy, this is nice. And it looks like you’re enjoying it, too-
Oop, okay. I guess we’re done.
All right, yup, I shall open the door. You shall exit the door, and continue to do whatever wolves do. Don’t step in any more traps, okay? I don’t want to have to risk getting mauled again.
{door opens and closes sfx}
{muffled} {exhale} {stunned} Oh my God. Did that really just happen? There’s no way that just happened. The wolf understood me. That’s not how wolves work! Wild animals don’t just speak English. Was he… was he somehow sentient? Does that mean that there are other creatures out there that can think like that? God, that just makes the fact that that spike trap exists even worse. I… I really can’t even process this. How does one begin to process this? I gave a wolf headpats. This is not a normal experience.
I… don’t think I’m going fishing today. Maybe I’ll just have a nice little lie-down, instead, and when I wake up it’ll have been a weird dream. Yeah. That’d work.
…I wonder if I’ll ever see him again?

i 27f, still live at home with my mom, F54. even though im currently out of a car and unemployed, i am looking for remote jobs because i simply cannot take living at home any longer. ive noticed any time im alone, im always tired and wanna sleep and i think its because anytime my mom is home, im always on edge since i dont know what her mood is going to be like. lately it seems like anytime i do something, shes got something to say. she mocks how i chew my food, i have long nails and she tries to peel them off and calls them my claws (theyre natural nails, not fake), im in a wedding this weekend for my bff and she was making comments how my breasts shouldnt be saggy (theyre on the bigger side), makes comments how she wont leave the house w me if i do my makeup a certain way - only to ask to show her how to do makeup & when i say no she calls me a B, etc etc. its to the point that even compliments annoy me cause i dont wanna hear her talk about my body. she makes remarks about other peoples bodies as well, my bffs included when we were in high school.
then she complains about stuff i do, i literally love laying in my room in the evening w no electronics on, in my bed and watching tiktok and she calls me weird everytime. weve been attending a few concerts lately and shell ask what im wearing and then makes comments like "of course, i was gonna wear my xyz too!" and its stuff she never used to wear until a few yrs after i started wearing them, she takes my stuff all the time and i can never find them when i want them. then she complains that im wasting my life away since i have no job and car but yet when i express how i want those things and seem adamant on getting them asap, shes like "whats the rush?" she makes coments how im gonna throw her in the nursing home when she gets older and not take care of her and ive told her numerous times that since im an only child, and that i plan to move to chicago (3 hrs away) that id of course would need help taking care of her. she already complains about taking care of her mom and theres 3 of them total that are taking care of my grandma yet she expects me to handle her on my own??
then she always plays the victim: complains about her weight, wont even try to lose weight - she doesn't even drink 2 glasses of water a week (the only water she drinks is flavored cause she doesn't like the taste of water), says that shes lonely and no one wants to date fat women and if men do seem interested its only for one thing (shes made comments to me since im fat as well saying "dont be surprised if he stands you up - men dont like fat girls"), says she has no friends but doesnt reach out to others to do things - i even signed her up for an app that has a bff option and she refused to put a profile pic & whined how she doesnt have hobbies to fill in the prompts, etc etc
im just tired and dont know what to do. but thanks for reading my rant cause i needed to let it out to someone lol

Hello everyone, my family and I just moved into a new home with a chicken coop and we wanted to start having chickens anyway so we’re thrilled! However, it’s been a few days of adjustment for sure!! We inherited 15 chickens including one rooster and I’ve spent the last few days hanging out with them so they get used to my presence and know I bring food and whatnot. The rooster and I have gotten pretty chill with one another and he appreciates the kitchen scraps. They’ve generally started coming to me as soon as I enter their space so I think they’re learning im a good presence 🫡.
They free range all day on our property from morning to about 8-ish and put themselves to bed and we’ve just been doing a head count to make sure they’re all in. We live pretty rural with our property nested up against some deep woods so there are lots of predators and the flock is pretty fluctuating from what I’ve heard. I just want to make sure im keeping them as safe and happy as I can. I’m used to barn/farm life but im still mildly anxious about keeping my ladies safe. Anyway I have some questions:

1. How often do you guys clean your coops if your chickens are free range? They spend the vast majority of their time outside and the coop looks pretty clean from when I’ve poked around, but obviously I want to keep their home clean and comfy!
   
2. How do I know if a hen is broody? We’ve got a couple who have spent the majority of their time in the nesting boxes and appear to not like to move around much. I suspect they might be broody from my brief internet searches because they are very fluffed up, peck when I try and move them, but are also making a purring noise when I pet them? Still unsure about that lol. We’ve also got one in the corner of the coop who hasn’t moved and is laying on some eggs. I can’t reach her at all and don’t know how to deal with her. How do you break the broodiness btw?
   
3. How much feed do you give your free range chickens/how much feed do you go through in a month? The owners left us all their bags of cracked corn. I’ve just been giving them fresh water and keeping the food topped up in the mornings.
   
4. Ideas for training them to come at a certain sound? I’ve been shaking feed in a pail but it only has a mild success rate so far…
   

We've all heard it, whether you were an adult or a kid being forced to dental cleaning and tooth filling by your parents, the dentist or dental assistant would chew you out with an anti-sugar rant and blamed your cavity on not brushing everyday or even brushing once a day instead of two times a day and your glass of orange juice or canned soda from last week. This is something I've heard from the time I was a kid to my early 20's, it was always my fault because I wasn't brushing enough and because I liked sweet beverages but contrary to their advice I was brushing everyday and I didn't drink very much soda considering my parents started to restrict it from me for a period of time but nevertheless the filling appointments kept coming, while I was mostly cavity free during my teen years things got really bad day once I started smoking cigarettes, first I developed a very bad cavity on abscess in one of my wisdom teeth and this led to me getting gaslighted into pulling all my wisdom teeth, a couple years later while attending a jobcorps where I was never allowed to leave the campus without being kicked out the program and my liquid intake was mostly from sugar free fizzy vitamin drinks, juice and coffee I started developing multiple cavities at a time which resulted in me getting multiple fillings but yet still not all the ones I needed despite that I was brushing twice a day most days, the following year being short on money and dropped off my parents dental plan while the money I did have was going elsewhere I withheld getting a couple cavities in my back molars filled for a few months, I tried compensating for this by pouring a tone of salt in a warm glass of water and swishing that water in my mouth before bed, low and behold not only did this not work but in just a few months of doing this one my molars decayed to the point of being halfway gone and the other developing a large cavity at the gum line, so I wound up getting two root canals in these molars early 2020 along with another filling on my incisor while I first started to make changes to my habits. You'd think I have more since then but after what's been roughly 5 years I've haven't developed another cavity since and I'll go through what I truly believe the reasoning for this being despite that I don't brush my teeth anymore than I used two and that I still consume sugar.

1. I started actually drinking water, I came up with this idea while at work to start buying gallons of water because they were cheap, they helped make me feel energetic, and they helped my chronic tendonitis, they say sugar is bad for your teeth because the remains that stick to your teeth attract bacteria that produce an acidic byproduct or because it's acid but the problem is this wouldn't be any different from anything else you eat that leaves residue or gets caught in between your teeth, if a piece of steak gets caught between your teeth the microbes are going to go after that, and sugar by itself actually has a neutral PH. What not only helps wash away debris in your mouth but also regulates the PH level in your mouth di drinking regular water because that's one of the actual reasons why I believe tooth decay is so prominent in our species, we consume lots of acidic cooked or carbonated beverages that can damage the enamel of your teeth, just by drinking a significant amount of water you compensate for this by buffering out the acids leftover plus you simulate your saliva production which has antibody/PH modifying effects of it's own. This principal can be used I you choose to smoke cigarettes as well, smoking whatever it may be is another large contributor to societal tooth decay because the combust is very acidic and it sticks to your teeth, if you wash your mouth it after smoking like I started doing especially with warm water you can counteract this effect, but Ideally smoking should be stopped. Today I still drink my sugary monsters but I'll drink water aside them, I don't find drinking only water is necessary but the important thing to do is to not neglect it. If you reading get my drift here, IT'S NOT THE SUGAR THAT'S ROTTING YOUR TEETH, IT'S DEHYDRATION! WHICH MEANS ACIDS IN YOUR MOUTH GO UNCHECKED!
   
2. I started eating a more nutritious diet, in early 2020 after months after finally getting away from being trapped and graduating from the local jobcorps, this lead to me being able to prepare my own food I developed a more enhanced interest in nutrition after I watched the What in the health documentary, this lead to conduct a mostly whole food plant based diet experiment on myself for several months, while the strict plant based part didn't last what did was my consumption of things that actually have minerals including CALCIUM such as vegetables, beans, whole grains and I bought an instant pot so I could easily prepare my own veggies and beans. Today consume more whole wheat and leafy greens as well as sardines, salmon and fermented dairy products and beverages with fortified minerals.
   

Before for years too much of my diet was made up of refined grains and meat, when grains are refined they lose much of or even all of their nutritional value, white rice literally has no vitamins or minerals in it. This is why nutritionists and physicians tell people to consume whole grains over refined, meats are also not a significant source of calcium, vitamin K oe magnesium which are also other important nutrients for your bones as well as your teeth, this is also where spring water comes in hand, it's naturally high in ph and has natural sources of minerals that helps protects the teeth of animals in the wild.

1. I started only brushing my teeth once a day and that time particularly being just before I go to bed, whenever before I brushed my teeth in the morning I could tell they became more sensitive and would lose their exterior natural protection from the acids and I would feel it if I had breakfast after, I also fail to see the benefit of brushing after waking up when I already brushed the night before. I usually just brush once a day now and sometimes I forget and skip a day, the reason why I don't skip brushing altogether is because I don't want plaque building up in my mouth and I want to brush away any possible remaining trails of food debris.

So about a year ago my dog had what they think ina FCE. She lost use in her back leg and was knuckling. After about 2 months she was back to walking on it. She still limps sometimes. They said she lost 80% of use and feeling in the leg. A lot has come back. Now there is a spot on her leg she CONSTANTLY licks. I think maybe her leg is tingling from loss of feeling. We tried wrapping it for the day and airing it out at night. It started looking so much better. Then she started chewing off the bandage so we kept her in sight. But she must be licking at night. I used a cone today but I would like to avoid it if possible because this is a long term issue. I have dog booties from the time her leg didn't work. Should I try that? I'm not sure what long term solution there is. I am contacting my vet tomorrow

Me and my friends (all early 20's) went to a concert/festival last weekend. Concert was 2 hours away. I offered to drive; since all of my friends are literally 20 minutes in different directions, I just had them meet at my place. Told them they can drink if they want and just crash at my place.
My friend Kim is a mooch who will try to weasel you out of anything. If you pay for something on her behalf you have to hassle her for that money back. Ever since she had a kid, her mooch tendencies have gotten worse. I want her to have fun w us despite being a mother and struggling financially; but sometimes I end up feeling used.
My friend Franny drove Kim to my house. Then I drove those two and my other 2 friends to the concert. Otw down I asked everyone for $5 gas; everyone venmoed me but her.
Anywhom, concert was fun.
Otw home, Kim starts asking me to drive her to my house instead of going back to my house and driving back to her place w/ Fran. I told her no, that she was welcome to crash at my place, but I wasnt driving her home. She said it was on the way; to a degree, she's correct, but it would've added 20 minutes to the trip, and I was on a highway heading in a different direction, and I dont like driving in that area at night. It's poorly lit. And it was already almost 12:30 am at this point.
She's pissed off the whole ride home. Fran wanted to sleep over bc she still felt drunk. Kim starts complaining bc she wants to see her baby and she's chewing me out for not taking her home. I told her she couldve drove herself and that I wasnt going out of my way for her when I just drove for 4 hours. My 2 other friends drove home bc they werent drunk. When I woke up the next morning, Kim was gone. Idk who picked her up.
Im thinking I might be TA bc we live in a rural area, so she couldnt have ubecabbed. She probs didnt get to see her 10m/o that night, and it wouldve only been an extra 20 minutes to drive her to her place. I basically inconvenienced her. So Reddit, AITA?

About a month ago I got a call from my fiance that he found mold in the walls of our house. In that time he has repaired one section of the house, but he still has 3/4 walls to go. It is hard on his body and very expensive. We are using my moms credit card because that is our only option. He bought chickens earlier this year, not anticipating the mold issue. Right around the time the mold popped up the chickens needed to get their outside area ready because they needed to get out of the house. The noise and smell was horrible. They are outside now, but not protected from the weather. The dogs ate one of his prized roosters yesterday. An $80 rooster he said. Toula is pregnant and about to give birth any day now.
He tried to be nice and book us a stay cation in phoenix but he didn't talk to me first about dates. He booked it for this Saturday, when our dog is about to go into labor at any moment. So my mom, my son and I are going. It is a non-refundable booking.
I also found out 2 weeks ago that I am pregnant. My last birth was traumatic and the pregnancy was really hard. I have so much anxiety about it.
School is over for my 5 year old son, but he still has OT and ST 2-3 times a week. He is addicted to the tablet and barely plays with his toys anymore. We are trying to figure out an app with a time limit on it.
We started potty training this weekend. But he is currently in a pull up because his dad is outside working and can't remember to come in and remind him to pee all the time.
He refuses a hair cut and his hair is wild. He hates washing it and it hasn't been washed in at least a week.
I'm somehow -$485 on bills. I don't know how. I had to buy a few things not on budget, but not $300 worth. I'm trying to sell my son's old electric bike that he doesn't use, because I somehow spent the $150 his dad gave me, that was meant for tractor parts. So his tractor is stuck until I sell that.
There is a trash can in the backyard that is stuck back there until the tractor is up and running. So paying for 2 for months and only able to use 1.
All of our canned goods are on the porch because of the home repairs. He can only do so much each day and he is extremely overwhelmed.
I can't afford to buy medical marijuana anymore and I am pregnant, so what I have currently will be the last. I took it out of my budget for the next year. It will really help financially, but I am worried about myself. Mentally and appetite wise. The last time I took a break was 5 years ago this time. I have had so much anxiety with everything going on and I can't use any prescription medications to treat it.
It is all just too much.

I have had a female halfmoon for about a year. I started to slack on the water changes and now I’ve noticed her fins look like they have been chewed off! ( please don’t judge me I feel awful and I won’t let this happen again) I’m positive she has finrot and possibly even popeye. She is the only one in a 5 gallon tank. There are no sharp objects and she has a heater and sponge filter. I also have an Amazon sword plant and moss balls in the tank.
Today I scooped her up into a cup and did a 50% water change (I felt 50 was better than 25% since I had t done it in awhile). I siphoned most of the water I am keeping into a bucket and wiped down the glass of the aquarium. I squeezed out the sponge filter under running water put it back in the tank and added the old water back in. I then added the new water and checked the ph and temp. Ph is about an 8 (that’s always been the lowest I can get it) and the temp is 82degrees. I added the recommended amounts of Quickstart and stress coat.
In a panic I purchases bettafix however I’m now reading that not only can it be harmful for her but it’s also just a bandaid, not a cure.
She is still in the cup. I have not put her back into the tank.
My questions are; 1) is it safe to add her back to the tank now? 2) what is the the most gentle and effective way to treat her fin rot? Please be specific 3) will the medicine for her finrot kill the plants? 4) how long will it take for her to heal? 5) if she does heal, will her fins grow back to normal?
I appreciate any help and advice I can get!
Thank you:)

Welcome back to my weekly Dhar Mann video review series. I was bored and decided to do this week's review earlier than usual. The video I will be tackling today is Bratty TEEN RUNS AWAY From Home, What Happens Next Is Shocking. This was last year's Mother's Day special and is one that I've thought would be an interesting review for a little while now. I even posted a clip from this video the other day. Anyways, let's get the review started.
The video begins with the titular bratty teen Chloe(Logan Roe) getting her makeup ready while the doorbell rings, and she yells at her mom to get it. Mom(Katherine Norland) answers the door and a girl(Sara Kamine) is there to give Chloe a spray tan. Mom is confused and goes into Brat's room while she is dying her hair. Mom tells Brat she is too young to be dying her hair, which is kind of silly if you ask me. This girl looks old enough to be making decisions about her hair color. Mom then confronts her about the spray tan she plans on getting while she is texting a rapper named Lil Pop who she is going on a date with. Apparently, Lil Pop also flunked out of high school. I'm pretty sure Lil Pop is supposed to be a parody of Lil Pump. Now I'm starting to think I should make a video titled "Gucci Gang but every Gucci Gang is replaced with a cringy Dhar Mann clip". Mom informs Brat that she is not allowed to go out with Lil Pop and even if she was, it's Mother's Day and they have the whole day planned. Brat and Mom argue a bit more and Brat calls Mom's rules dumb. Mom says they are not dumb but important. I'm not liking where this is going because last time Dhar preached "rules are important" was the video where Regina got Jay kidnapped. Mom then complains to her husband(Chris Ready), who suggests letting her go on the date. Husband suggests to let Brat go on the date and face her own consequences. He's the only reasonable one here so far. Brat comes down saying she is leaving. Okay, now I'm starting to side with the mom a bit, your mom doesn't let you go out one time and you're running away from her right before Mother's Day? I'm as against strict parents as the next guy, but that seems VERY rash. Mom listen's to Dad's suggestion and doesn't even try to stop her from leaving.
The next scene shows Brat at her friend's house complaining about her mom. Friend(Angelina Koerner) says "you don't want to be with your mom for Mother's Day?". Brat says she is done with her mom and asks Friend if she can get a spray tan and dye her hair, wo which Friend reluctantly agrees. We then cue a shitty music montage of Brat getting a spray tan and dying her hair in preparation for her date. Brat wakes up the next morning only to realize her makeover was a disaster and she looks like what she describes as "an old lady carrot". Her and Friend go to get more hair dye. Then we cut to Brat's parent's house, where Mom is all worried about her since she didn't come home. Then we cut back to Brat trying to re-makeover herself. Then Mom is at Dharla's Diner all by herself waiting for Brat hoping she'll arrive, but she doesn't. We cut to Brat and Friend again, and Brat's hair somehow looks even worse after her re-makeover. Her hair looks like Marge Simpson's and only a small amount of spray tan came off. Lil Pop texts brat saying he wants to meet 30 minutes earlier and she is panicking. I'm a dude, so I don't really have a say in this, but this is the point where I would just back out of my date personally. We then cut home, where Mom is still worried about Brat, but dad insists that they can't stop her from going on her date. I know I said the dad was reasonable earlier, but I feel like at this point, they should at least make sure she's okay.
Now we get to the so bad it's good part of the video. Brat is going on her date and we are finally introduced to Lil Pop(Tate Doppler) and he asks her why she's dressed so poorly. Brat shows her her bad hair and spotty spray tan and says it's horrible, and Lil Pop, who speaks in a stupidly funny, hard to understand voice, agrees that it's not good. A waitress comes over with two menus and because Lil Pop is in a rush, he orders his meal. He orders a steak, and wants it so rare he says "like, blood pouring out of it when you cut it". Brat is about to order, but Lil Pop orders the chicken for her and Brat says she is a vegetarian. Lil Pop laughs and says "for real like you only eat plants and stuff". This reminds me of the football video where the bully says "maybe if you ate meat instead of that banana, you wouldn't be so scrawny". Lil Pop orders for Brat what he describes as "that one salad named after that dude". Why am I finding this character hilarious? Waitress asks if he means the Caesar Salad, and he says that's the one. Lil Pop says he is in a rush because he has plans with his mom later. Wow, even this deadbeat rapper is making time for his mom on Mother's Day(or is he?). Chloe really is a brat. At home, Mom finally caves and says she is going to Friend's house to get Brat to come home. Back with Brat and Lil Pop, they get their dinner and Lil Pop tells waitress to bring the check. We then see Lil Pop cutting his blue rare steak saying it's just how he likes it, and they shows closeups of him chewing the steak. Which is pretty gross. Lil Pop says "you got to eat your food Becca". Brat is offended and says her name's not Becca. Now she is starting to regret going on this date. Brat sees a mom and her daughter at another table eating Fettuccine Alfredo, which Brat was supposed to make for her mom, and she is starting to regret running away from her mom. Then a random girl(Alexa Cate) walks in and calls Lil Pop babe and is confused when she sees Brat with him. She informs her that her name is Becca and she is Lil Pop's date. Apparently, Lil Pop didn't have plans with his mom after all. Brat is hurt because of what she had to go through for the date. Lil Pop insults her saying she looks like an Oompa Loompa and she should go back to Wonka's factory. Brat calls Lil Pop a trashy wannabe rapper, throws her "salad named after that dude" at her, and leaves.
We then cut to Friend's house where Friend tells her mom(Maricella Ibarra) that she will do the dishes because it's Mother's Day. Brat's mom is knocking at the door looking for Brat, but Friend's Mom tells her she is on her date with Lil Pop. Friend's mom invites her inside, but she decides to go home. We then cut home where Brat has returned and has made Fettucine Alfredo for her and her mom. Brat tells her she was right about everything and she realizes rules are important. I'll give credit where credit is due, this video sent that message MUCH better than Jay's kidnapping video. Mom tells Brat she will take her to a salon tomorrow to get her Oompa Loompa makeover fixed, but Brat wants to go to school. Mom says that it's a very special case however and she will let her skip school. Dad walks by and is happy to see that Mom and Brat have made up and love each other again. And that's the end.
Conclusion
I didn't like this video when I first saw it and if you asked me even about a month ago, I would've called Lil Pop Tate's worst character. But after rewatching this, I realized Lil Pop is actually kind of hilarious(maybe not intentionally, but still). But Logan's character is bland as always, and she was acting like a real brat even if the mom was being a little strict at first. 5/10 but only because Lil Pop gives it some so bad it's good points. See you next review.
Tropes Used:
Restaurant named Dharla's, pasta dish, message of the video repeated multiple times, vegetarian stigmatized for not eating meat(not really talked about, but this is actually a fairly common trope), typecasting, shitty music montage.

It always starts at 5:13 a.m. Lying in the half-light of my bedroom, I can hear heavy breathing, punctuated by deep breaths and growls that make my hair stand on end. It's there, right next to me. There’s motion. Sheets rustling, a mass rising from the bed. This time, for sure, I won't go back to sleep.
The noises continue into the next room. Familiar yet terrifying sounds, accompanied by weary sighs and muffled whispers. My nervousness increases. The wooden floor creaks and, lurking under my blankets, I pray for daybreak.
It's around 5:30 when the shower turns on. My blood immediately starts to race. I pray for it to stop, but invariably the ordeal lasts a quarter of an hour. Who are you to torture me like this? What's all this about? Why are you making these noises? I'm frozen, tetanized, I don't understand... The height of horror comes as soon as the water stops flowing. Almost immediately afterwards, I hear humming. The same eerie melody sung by a high-pitched voice. I wish I didn't have to listen, but I can't help it. I'd like to run away, but I have to stay alert. A lump forms in my throat, so much so that I have to contain my urge to vomit.
Finally, the bathroom door opens. I feel intense palpitations as my pulse continues to accelerate. Once again, the wooden slats squeak and I know it won't be much longer. It's almost over.
However, I know my respite will be short-lived, and this prospect keeps me from falling back into the arms of Morpheus. The moment the front door opens, I feel as if my body, then stretched like a rubber band stretched to the limit, is about to snap. I never lock the door at night, and I can assure you that hearing the handle turn before six o'clock gives me an intense cold sweat.
After such an experience, there's no way I can sleep, so I decide to get up. I take a few timid steps towards the bathroom, but change my mind. Hearing the creaking floorboards and the drops of water falling from the showerhead into the wet tray is beyond me. All this reminds me too much of the traumatic experience that preceded it, and which still punctuates my daily life. I'm going to put it off a little longer. Heading for the coffee machine, I'm relieved to see that it hasn't been activated this morning. Otherwise, the dread would be at its worst, but today I've been spared.
Although I've just got out of bed, I'm already exhausted. I collapse on the sofa, hot cup in hand. I sip the hot beverage slowly, careful not to make any noise. It could happen again... It will happen again: as I said, this morning's ordeal was just the first of many. I try to forget this harsh reality and allow myself a few more precious minutes of rest. This is absolutely necessary to face what lies ahead.
As I take my first step outside, I am reminded, as I am every day, that my ordeal has only just begun. There it is again, attacking me, clinging to me. It's nipping at my heels, infecting every pore of my skin. In public transport, on the street and then in my workplace, I can feel it following me and overpowering me. I don't know how I manage to put on a brave face, especially when an oblivious colleague says to me: "Say, you should see your face! What's this killer look you've got on your face?" before walking away, laughing stupidly. If he only knew...
For many, returning home is a relief. Home is often a bulwark against outside aggression. In my case, however, the nightmare continues.
At 7.06 p.m., I heard you turn the handle on the front door and come in coughing. Think of the sound of your heels clicking on the floor as torture. We discussed what we wanted to eat, then at 7.18 p.m., you rummaged in the drawer for a long time, looking for the right saucepan. Did you have to spend so much time on it? To make so much noise? Then you sat down on the sofa and started typing on your laptop, breathing so hard I could have strangled you. At 7.42pm, we sat down to dinner and you started chewing and swallowing with the delicacy of a troll breaking a two-day fast. I felt my hand tighten around the handle of my fork. How can someone as beautiful and refined as you stuff your face so noisily? At 8:12 p.m., you decided to have another shower. Why the hell do you keep torturing me? At least stop humming that stupid ditty! It's now 8.30 p.m. You've just come out of the bathroom and are changing in the bedroom. Just like this morning, I can hear the drops of water crashing to the bottom of the shower tray, making me feel like I'm about to explode.
My dear wife, I want you to know that I hate you more and more every day, from the moment you get up to go to work. Your morning alarm wakes me up and it bothers me. Not because I'm roused from sleep, but because of everything you do afterwards. All the strange, stupid things that make me hate you more and more every day. Don't take it personally, though: I hate them all. Our neighbors, friends, colleagues, not to mention all those anonymous people out there. They're so noisy they're despicable. If you knew the number of times I've felt like sawing your brakes, as you drive by with your polluting horrors. The accident would have been inevitable and the emergency services would have been helpless: I would have sabotaged their unbearable sirens, so they wouldn't have been able to arrive in time. You would then have died in excruciating agony.
You, my colleague sitting opposite me, yes, you who laughed stupidly while cutting and stapling I don't know what documents, if you only knew how much I wanted to take the scissors out of your hands. I'd have used them to slit you open and staple your guts raw. Then your unbearable sounds would have stopped and you would have died in excruciating pain.
You, the kid who was noisily chewing your Mentos at the bus stop, if you only knew how much I wished I'd had a bottle of Coke right then and there. I'd have forced the whole candy packet down your throat, then emptied a liter and a half of soda in your mouth. Just to get you over the urge to start emitting those sickening ruminations again. With any luck, your stomach would have exploded under the pressure of the gas, and you would have died in excruciating agony. It would have been such a firework display inside!
As for you, my beautiful wife, I want you to know that you unleashed one anger too many. You shouldn't have bitten your nails and the little skins around them. You know it's one of those things that saws my nerves, but you've never wanted to admit my hatred of sound and movement, minimizing the evil that never leaves me. Since you like it so much, I'll spare you the effort. This morning, I sharpened my knives. Usually, that repetitive noise is enough to fill me with hatred. Today, however, it soothed me, because as I listened to it, I thought about what I was going to do. Soon, you'll be skinned in your entirety like a farm rabbit, and then you'll die in excruciating agony. Don't imagine that I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart. Life for people suffering from misophonia is hell, and there are certain noises we can't stand. And believe me, there are so many of them that revolt me that I know they'll kill me in the end. That'll be a relief, because right now, I'm living... in excruciating agony.

Verification pics: https://imgur.com/a/t88x3cW
REI Quarter Dome 2 SL Weight: 50oz Price: $155.00
Tent has been out around 25 nights. Used with a groundsheet more often than not and is included, but not included in the weight.
Aside from minor staining, there is a stake out loop on the rainfly door that is broken. The attachment point is still good and the fly is 100% intact. One of my dogs chewed threw it on their first trip out.
Excellent tent that is simple to setup, roomy for 1 and a dog, and still comfortable for 2 people.
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/lEOJs9L
Tarptent Stratospire 2 Weight: 43.8 oz Price: 175.00
Picked up from Tarptent as a closeout. Setup a couple of times in the yard, but never taken on a trip.
Tent is not seam sealed. But no blemishes, tears, or other issues. Excellent quality as always from Tarptent, I'm just moving in a different direction.
These items so come from a pet friendly home. Shipping is included to the lower 48.

Hi everyone!
I had a dentist take out a filling because it had a hole in it a month ago and it caused major TMJ and nerve inflammation. My jaw feels a lot better, but is still tight. My tooth is still sensitive to cold and I cannot chew on the tooth. Does anyone know what could be wrong? An infection? I do have chronic Lyme and mold. Could bacteria have been released when the original filling was taken out? What can I do from here?
Thank you!

Friends keep telling me (35M), the trash (31F) took itself out, people that grew up broken can't be fixed, I shouldn't try to understand. I genuinely like this person and want to see her thrive but I think I'm being gaslit. She is so convinced that I am a disrespectful asshole who only cares about himself. I am empathetic and understand people's perspectives but this one is out of my understanding.
FWB on and off for years. Recent reappearance, needed a ride close to where I was for my bday weekend (had no idea I was going) partied with us all weekend after I had told her I didn't hate her for disappearing but I couldn't trust her. She saw me talking to her guy best friend's Ex in my IG DMs when I was showing her a meme. Had a feeling she saw but moved on, it was minor to me.
Monday, she admits she couldn't stop thinking about it. I say, "It's nothing, she followed me, I asked why, we talked about a gym I posted and cars. Hadn't talked in a month. Was at the top of my DM's cuz she said Happy Bday." She said okay and moved on. Friday she asked me to eat on her way home from work, we go out and she came over.
Next night at a party she goes off saying we are disrespectful to her guy best friend, would never talk about him like this in person. We were saying he likes to do some borderline gay things, kisses us on the forehead when he's sassy. We've made jokes about this in person to him. Then mentions that he hates me, I already know cuz she he's friend zoned for decades and she's sleeping with me. Then says this is why she could never date me, trying to embarrass me.
In the morning she admits the Dms are the real reason she blew up so I send screen shots. Reads them and decides she is done talking to me. Whatever, everyone has the right to be turned off for whatever reason they want but I tried to talk about what was such a big deal, can't understand tossing a friendship away over that. We never officially dated, that guy isn't dating the girl now (she said they are still having relations, whatever that means) I wasn't talking to ANY of the people involved when his ex followed me on IG. FWB starts calling me a narcissist with mental issues that cause me to remember things that never happened and forget things that did in order to support my victim mentality. I give her examples of her doing exactly that, she brushes them off.
IDK if anyone will read all this but feels good to type it, sorry it got long. In therapy I was told told I've done nothing wrong. Does anyone think I'm the asshole? Curious if anyone understands where she's coming from? She overreacting to feel better about making herself look like a fool in public? Always digging to find issues with me, first time she stopped talking she said I check every box but was acting protective at bars when we aren't dating (understood and corrected) also I chewed too loud when I ate a couple times. I laughed thinking it was a joke!

For the past 4 or 5 years I have always been very annoyed from specifically gulping, chewing and snoring noises from my mother. I assume that I have misophonia. It’s the gulping that makes me absolutely infuriated. I only get angry when my mum makes these noises and not really anyone else. Like I still don’t like it when people make noises that trigger me but it doesn’t drive me insane. Is this particularly common?

I can't believe the amount of people that are freaking out over the fact that they are still up almost 10x, But because of the volatility and price action in The last 72 hours... are freaking the frack out.
I'm just gonna sit here on the sidelines and chew my popcorn while letting my bag get thicker.
What's the saying... patience is a virtue?

I share a room with my sister and she has this hamster that I hate so much. It chews up all its things, it bit my finger and is so picky. But worst of all is it's wheel. Oh my god where do I start. You can't remove the wheel from the crate, and it squeaks like HELL. My sister's hamster is up all night like most hamsters, and it does nothing but run on the wheel. I was doing a little self care night tonight, and as I was about to go to sleep all comfy and relax, I hear that dreaded squeaking, and let me tell you, I was not happy. I was yelling at my sister telling her to get it out of our room, which she didn't as it has no where else in the house to go, and it's STILL SQUEAKING AND I AM GOING MAD. Also, we didn't even agree to buy the hamster beforehand, like one day I just came home from school and my mum and sister were fussing this random hamster. And they know WELL how much I hate them.
Anyways, that was a little vent, I'm still going mad, wish me luck

So my heeler mix puppy has always been very mouthy and I'm wondering when or how they grow out of this. She's 10 months and still tries to chew up things sometimes but the main issues is mouthing/biting/nipping our arms. Not so much true aggression but she doesn't settle well. She gets so excited and starts nipping and/or jumping all over. She has improved but it's still a significant issue. We keep a leash on at all times she is out of the crate to help keep control. When did your dogs chill out enough to sit calmly next to you? I've had several dogs, a few from puppyhood, and never had this much of an issue. Wearing her out helps. She knows sit, stay, lay down, come, paw/high five and off but getting her to reliability hold a sit/lay down/off is where the challenge is. She's very go, go, go. Is this just a maturity issue and she will get better with age or any suggestions? 😆