They say life flashes before your eyes, but in reality, every second seems to last forever. It wasn’t like I was afraid to die; I knew I would have, given enough time, of course. Matter of fact, it was inevitable spending so much time in war, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth. Sure, there was pain, but regret stings far worse than a missing leg or tooth. Probably because of the adrenaline, but who cares about explanations anyway? And so, I sat there in that muddy ditch, the song of war screeching overhead as more and more of my brethren marched toward death, pondering my regrets and joys.
I thought about my wife. I thought about my kid. He was a little shit, but the kind you could only love, and my wife was a handful, but not too much of a handful. I wish I could scold that boy, and have pointless arguments with my wife, but that joy was stolen from me by war.
War always seemed like a distant thing, unrelated to my happy little farm life on a pretty little world. We grew grains and raised livestock, exported it to the military to feed troops, and kept the profits to ourselves. Despite the smaller size of the planet, it was certainly fruitful, a cornerstone to the military and to national stability. So, of course the Humans attacked it, it was the best option after all. I cannot hate them for attacking my homeworld, only for taking my joys with it. Hell, it was why I joined the military all those years ago anyway, to find a new purpose and maybe get revenge while I'm at it. I was never the kind to hold onto something and dread over it forever, it seemed like a waste of time to me, so instead I ambitiously climbed the ranks for decades, reaching Admiral and commanding a fleet of warships. It was my pride and joy, but that joy yet again was taken from me.
We got ambushed while heading to an allied system to provide orbital support, but just after arriving, a group of human stealth frigates pounced on us from the ring of asteroids that orbited the planet. In my hastiness to reinforce the front lines, I neglected to anticipate an ambush, and my fleet and I were punished for it. Our badly damaged ships were forced to begin an atmospheric descent into the planet to avoid enemy bombardment, and much of the ships made it into the atmosphere in good enough condition to support the ground troops. However, our battleship was targeted by the human frigates, and one managed to nail a gravitational slug through all of our upward thrusters. Our slow-and-steady descent quickly turned into a crash landing, and upon impact, much of the crew was lost.
Those that survived made use of the hangar bay to take several light corvettes out to engage in combat, me included. Unfortunately, corvettes do not take much of a beating, and I experienced my second crash landing in one day. And that is how this foolish fleet admiral ended up in ground warfare. Staring at the swirling clouds of smoke and hearing the booms of gunfire made me realize the irony of an admiral dying on a planet. This was not my job, and it was certainly obvious I was not cut out for it, having lost a leg mere minutes into ground combat.
What a funny way to die, I thought to myself. All these eventful years just for an ending like this. The universe has a sense of humor, and it's to other's dismay. Just when I thought things could not get worse, though, I saw a young human combatant clamber over the lip of the ditch I rested in and land next to me for cover. I looked at him, and he turned his head towards me awkwardly, making eye contact, and then looking at my missing leg. In any normal circumstance, I would have immediately shot him, but I was at death’s door with no strength and no cares, so instead, I laughed. That chuckle devolved into uncontrollable laughter until I once again settled down. Looking back at the human, he was still staring at me, rifle at my head, prompting once again laughter until I started coughing up blood.
The soldier looked at me with a surreal expression on his face. I could not tell whether it was amusement, pity, or simple shock, but either way, he lowered his rifle. His gaze continued to loom upon me, until finally he opened his mouth and spoke in my language, “What's so funny?” I was surprised by how well he spoke, but I didn’t have the wits to care anymore.
“Everything is funny right now, I mean, how could it not be?” I mumbled, stifling laughter and coughs between each word.
The human looked at me with still eyes, and then eventually away. He smiled briefly before matching my gaze once more, “Life is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Conversing with a human at the end of my life was not what I expected, but right now anyone would do to talk with.
“Has to be,” I elaborated, “I’m an admiral, and here I am dying on a battlefield.”
For a moment he was quiet, but eventually the human snickered lightly at the idea as well. “I’ll be dead by tomorrow at this rate, too. Have to find the little things to enjoy, I guess.”
I had never talked with a human besides on open-comms once or twice before, but this conversation was oddly calming. It was like a mellow fever dream, incomprehensible and irrational, but the boy seemed familiar somehow. I decided I should try and assure the soldier a little bit before I passed on, and maybe him too. Even if my words fell short, I wanted to say something, “Death isn’t anything to fear, it's as much a part of life as the day you were born.”
He thought about the prospect momentarily, “I suppose so, but I am not eager to experience it.”
“It’s not like I wanted my leg to be blown off by artillery and bleed to death either, but here I am, with a missing leg anyway.” From there, a somber and sincere mood silenced the chaos erupting about the battlefield. I tried desperately to remember who the boy reminded me of, but to no avail. I figured I would know at some point, but right now it didn’t really matter who it was, only the peace I felt did. The silence was killing me, so I decided to elaborate a little more on what I said, "What I am trying to say, soldier, is that you will not know death is coming. It will knock, and you will answer. Maybe in fear, regret, or even malice, but you should not answer in any of those ways." The soldier looked at me with a sincere expression and chortled quietly.
The young man started, “Y'know, Admiral, if you don’t mind me calling you that, but, you remind me of someone. I cannot quite place a name on them, and it feels sort of nostalgic, but I am sure I have met you.” He rubbed his head in what I assumed was a quizzical manner, and his eyes showed a deep sense of indecisiveness. I reciprocated his words quietly.
“I feel that too, soldier.” The blood loss from my lost leg was finally making me sleepy, and I knew it meant death. I muttered quietly. “I’m about to take a nap, kid, but I have an order for you. It's a little weird taking one from an enemy officer, and one you just met at that, but humor me, will you?”
He paused for a second before responding in affirmation, “What would that be?”
“Don’t take life too serious. You have too little of it to care about everything, so make time for just the good things.” I continued after taking one difficult breath, “After this war, find yourself something good for yourself.”
The soldier took some time staring at the ground beneath his feet before responding slightly sarcastically, “So, live my life to the fullest?” “That’s about it.” I coughed up more blood, and something deep inside of me instinctively told me my time had come. The silence continued past that for a brief moment, but then I heard something I never thought I would hear from a human. He quoted a religious epitaph of my kind’s holy scripture, placing his hand over his heart, “The universe offers you its humility, and with its solace, I pray you find hospitality.”
I was stunned by the words, gaining one last stupid look on my face, but I dismissed it and added to the quote for him weakly, “And with those great tidings, may the cosmos embrace you once more.”
He stood up and met my eyes one last time, finishing the scripture, “Everlasting will the Universe’s embrace be, its warmth indisputable, and grace unsurpassable.” I smiled at the soldier, a human gesture, and gave a weak salute to him before he ran out of the crater. As the last bits of life drained from my body, weakness finally set into my limbs, and what I saw was a man fearless as a fool, and as strong as the stars themselves. In those few moments, I finally understood why I couldn’t bring myself to hate the humans.
The shadow of death covered my eyes and took my soul as I succumbed to a deep slumber, finally embracing the cosmos once more. And its warmth? Its warmth was burning a joyful sorrow, the melancholy tears of life shed upon the planet. Perhaps the universe was disappointed in us, unable to put aside our differences, but I could have sworn there was a smile on its face. Life is a funny thing, after all.

I just bought ghosts of tabor for the quest 2 watched the orientation vid and I put the keycard in the doors and light went green but I can’t push door open is there a certain button you need to press?

Note: Adapted from a devlog posted to itch.io. Edited for clarity, specificity, and usefulness.
Hello again, gamemaker. As part of the ongoing development efforts for my project, Reality Layer Zero, I've been tinkering around with optimization and profiling recently. I wanted to share some of my personal discoveries here, on the off-chance they're remotely useful to anyone other than me.
To preface matters, this post will largely be talking about diagnostic techniques. When you know you've got a problem and you don't know what it is, you might employ some of these steps to figure things out. The appropriate optimizations to apply, once appropriate diagnosis has occurred, tends to be a somewhat obvious thing, so that side of development is of lesser interest to us for the duration of this write-up. We'll still talk about it a little bit, in-brief, but not to any satisfactory degree if you're not yet totally comfortable with common optimization techniques and why they work. Just a little bit of optimization talk, as a treat.
I should also mention that, while much of this post will be spent discussing very "3D graphics"-related topics, the techniques outlined here should be fairly universal across all Game Maker projects (2D and 3D) and, indeed, game development in general. The only difference will be what numbers you think are acceptable, depending on what your target platforms are and how your game "ought" to run.
So, about two weeks ago, a friend of mine tried to run my game on a 10-year-old laptop with a 2GB VRAM discrete graphics card. This was the result:
Hey... That's not the usual crash message box...
After doing a real quick Google, I found that this error is (usually) caused by the DirectX application-- in this case, my game-- allocating more texture memory than is available on the host device.
To be honest, at the time, I dismissed this as being not a very critical issue-- after all, the hardware was old, probably not representative of a typical modern system, and could have had untold other problems of its own that caused the crash.
However, something kept bugging me about it and, after about 2 weeks of sitting on it, I decided to properly investigate.
As it turns out, this wasn't exactly the first sign that not all was well with the game's VRAM usage. The first time happened almost a month prior when a different friend recorded this clip of the game running on a GTX1050. There's a stutter in the framerate that occurs once every three seconds or so, and, curiously, only in "exterior" scenes. The GTX1050, for reference, has 4GB of VRAM.
On first brush with this footage, I couldn't even hazard a guess as to what was going on-- after all, the profiler said the game was running fine! The framerate was comfortably in the middle-hundreds, and memory usage was reported at around... 900MB. Well, okay, I guess that sounds a little bit high, but it's a 3D game with real-time lighting and shadows! Besides that, RAM is cheap! It... it is 900 MB of RAM, isn't it?
So, the only answer I can give is... Maybe? The documentation is somewhat vague on this point. I'm actually still not sure whether the memory usage displayed in the debugger graph is RAM, VRAM, or a lump sum of both.
After applying the optimizations I'll talk about in a moment, the profiler reports memory usage as being <= 500 MB (or 300 MB less than the control) under the same conditions. I'm not sure if this was a product of the optimizations to VRAM usage or of a separate, unrelated effort wherein I applied compression to some of the internal audio files (thus reducing their memory footprint when loaded by the game). I'm leaning toward the latter as the explanation, which would indicate that the debugger graph only shows RAM usage. This... Seems like, possibly, not the best thing in the world for video game diagnostic purposes. However, I'm unwilling to say that I've confirmed this to be the case definitively.
My favorite corner of the screen.
In a similar information deficit, the more in-depth profiler view only shows call count and execution time. This is great for figuring out certain performance bottlenecks-- stuff that isn't executing as efficiently as it could be-- but not so good for figuring out when you've, say, allocated an unreasonable amount of texture memory for a shadow map that, in truth, just doesn't need to be that nice in the first place. Not to spoil the punch-line or anything.
First place is good, right?
So, VRAM, right? There's something going on with the VRAM, according to the DirectX error in the first image. Furthermore, it might have something to do with exterior scenes, judging by the video clip. However, the Game Maker debugger isn't doing a very good job of telling me how much VRAM the game is using-- I can't, using the built-in tools, watch the game and see how the memory reacts to figure out what's going on (at least, I don't think I can-- would love to be proven wrong, though).
To give me a little bit more insight, I enlisted the help of a 3rd party profiling tool-- GPU-Z, in case you're interested. Then, I cracked open my IDE and started tweaking areas of the code that seemed memory-inefficient.
At first, I thought the overuse of VRAM was related to the way I'm rendering text-- I'm actually using multiple surfaces at 1080p to render nice outlines and drop-shadows underneath the letters in a reasonably-fast manner at runtime (and then simply downsampling to lower resolutions, which results in some pretty nice-looking words, I think). However, whenever I reduced the size of these text surfaces, I noticed that GPU-Z was only reporting a very slight reduction in VRAM usage-- like, between 30-50MB. That's not nothing, but it's not really "make-or-break" numbers for a GPU, either. So, what gives? What's the real problem?
To borrow the words of Tetsuya Nomura, it was the darkness.
... Or more specifically, the shadows.
Angry duck noises.
The effect pictured above is accomplished using fairly traditional texture mapping as described in this excellent thread. The summary explanation of how it works is that, to figure out what parts of the scene should be "shaded" and what parts should be "lit", we basically snap a photograph from the perspective of the light that's casting a shadow, and anything that shows up in that photograph gets lit up-- everything else remains tinted by only the "ambient" color of the scene, which determines the darkness (and color) of the shadows that remain.
In order to accomplish this, though, you need paper to print the photograph onto-- virtual paper, of course, for virtual photos. In Game Maker, this is accomplished by rendering the snapshot to a surface and then converting that surface to a texture. There are simpler ways to do this in more recent versions of GMS2-- surface formats-- but I'm still running version 2.3.0.529, so I can't use 'em!
The smaller the shadow map surface, the worse the "quality" of the shadows. If you don't know what I mean by "quality", take a look at this:
​
Chunky pixel shadows!
See how the shadows become kind of boxy and deformed? That's the "quality" I'm talking about.
Now, the above image, admittedly, looks kind of cool, in a stylized sort of way-- but, low-quality shadows can introduce some weird-looking visual artifacts due to, I think, rounding errors-- one of the main offenders being "shadow acne" that jitters around and is, overall, not quite as aesthetically pleasing as the shadows in the above image.
So, you don't want to go too low-- avoid the artifacts. However, you also don't want to go too high. Every time you create a texture, you need somewhere to put it, after all. Further, since it's a texture we're talking about, the only place for it is in texture memory. What happens if the texture you create is just way way way too big to fit into the available texture memory on the host device? May I refer you back to the image at the top of this post?
So, yeah, basically the problem was that the shadow map quality in the exterior scenes was turned up absurdly high, resulting in absurdly large textures that 2GB graphics cards (and below) simply couldn't deal with. I figured this out when I, by total chance, entered an exterior scene and noticed GPU-Z reading-out these numbers:
<_>
Your eyes might go cross-eyed looking at this image at first, but the important row is the one labelled "Memory Used". It's reading out 3481 megabytes! That's over 3 gigabytes of texture memory! That's not just eye-crossing, that's eye-popping!
Mind, it's not 3 gigabytes from the game alone. My GPU (yours, too, probably) allocates what I'm gonna call "ambient memory" for basic system tasks, other open applications, and all of those Google Chrome tabs you're keeping open for whatever reason. For my development PC, this ambient usage is usually between 500 MB to 1 GB, and at the time this number was recorded, was close to 1GB.
In other words, the shadow map for this exterior scene required around 2 gigabytes to store in memory. That's, put simply, excessive!!
This was caused entirely by turning the quality of the shadow map up too high, which resulted in a texture that was unnecessarily large being generated and subsequently taking up far too much space on the GPU. I cut the quality of the shadow map in half, which bought back about 1.5 GB of texture memory without resulting in... really, any noticeable visual difference. Huh. Well how about that.
I should mention here that this isn't something unique to shadows or my implementation of them. Any time you create a surface, that surface is stored in texture memory. Create one that's too large, and you'll quickly exceed the limits of many GPU's. This is something important to keep in mind, both because it might not be intuitively obvious and because Game Maker (and your own development hardware) might not do a good job of warning you when you've done something unreasonable.
While I was testing all of this, I noticed that VRAM would also creep up turn-by-turn in the debate mode until the debate ended (at which point, the allocated memory would be freed)-- a kind of "localized" memory leak, so-to-speak. This, too, was related to shadow maps-- or, specifically, to the class which manages all of the shadow maps. Turns out, it wasn't cleaning up the maps associated with the temporary spotlights created by card effects in the debate mode. In effect, that means you'd play a card, and then the pretty lighting effect would flash, and then the shadow map that the light generated would just hang out in memory for the rest of the debate, taking up valuable space! Fixing this problem was simple, but I wouldn't have ever noticed it if I wasn't looking. Since this could potentially result in progressively terrible performance or even a hard crash if a debate goes on long enough on a small-enough GPU, I'm rather glad I managed to catch this problem when I did. Even if it was a, uh, a month after the first public release...
In the interest of not doing anything halfway, I added a graphics option in the options menu to allow the player to further reduce the shadow map quality if desired (all the option does is modify a scalar "shadow quality" global). This can save a respectable amount of VRAM as well, although the majority of the performance gains here came from the reduction on my end.
- To Wrap Up -
At this time of writing, I can confirm that the fix I applied here did fix the crash that kicked off this post. The 10-year-old laptop in question is now able to run Reality Layer Zero largely without complaint... At between, usually, 30 and 50 FPS on the lowest settings. So... It's not perfect, but it's a fair measure better than it used to be! I wonder if it'll run on a 1GB card...
In conclusion, test early, test often, and make sure you profile your VRAM usage in addition to your RAM. And, perhaps most importantly... Remember to play Reality Layer Zero on Steam or Itch, since it's both a really cool demonstration of what you can do with GM and, if I'm allowed to say so, a pretty cool game in its own right!

I admit I grew up sheltered and rarely had to think of my own finances (a privilege I acknowledge). I finished university in my hometown and still live in my parents house. Whatever money I have is theirs since binigay lang nila sa akin. I have work lined up for me and I'm really determined to be financially independent (I just turned 24). I want to make my own hard-earned money. I don't even have my own bank account. I kinda feel ashamed to be asking this here but I genuinely want to do more for myself. This phase of my life is quite like Rachel Green cutting up her credit cards that her dad pays for.
Where do I start? Do I start looking for insurance deals? What kind of account should I open? Any credible sources I can look into (Youtube, blogs, etc.).
I'll appreciate any responses. Thank you all very much in advance.

Once the lander had fully settled, Tzersan and Torlok got to work with the external atmospheric sensors. They needed to determine if it was safe to be exposed to Earth's atmosphere. Analysis quickly determined that the air was breathable, but thin compared to Sanaias due to the lower gravity. Ambient radiation levels were disturbingly high, but still within Neransai tolerance levels. After relaying this information to the rest of the team, it was determined that they were to keep their environmental suits on when outside unless absolutely necessary.
After gathering all of the equipment to set up a base, the team lined up at the lander's exit hatch with Captain Zarkor at the lead. Just beyond that door was a brand new world unlike anything they've ever experienced. Every moment felt like an eternity to Tzersan as his anticipation rose within him until Captain Zarkor uttered five words. "Computer. Open the exit hatch."
With a loud hiss, the exit slowly slid open, and the team was immediately struck with a vast myriad of sights and sounds. There was green as far as the eye could see, with what seemed to be a a forest of massive pillar-like plants only a couple dozen spans away. On the horizon were towering mountains that pierced the sky. All around him Tzersan could hear the chirps and trills of countless tiny creatures hidden in the foliage. Looking up, he saw flocks of strange animals soaring above in the blue sky. It was undeniable that this planet was alive.
"Alright everyone, we need to set up our base for the night!" said Zarkor. "Kakaris and I will start setting up the enclosures, Torlok will get the life support systems online, and Tzersan and Lif will take care of the perimeter lights. Daylight is dwindling, so we need to make this quick." Following the Captain's orders, Tzersan grabbed a stack of light poles and started planting them into the ground.
As he worked, Tzersan couldn't help being amazed and awestruck by the world around him. Even as the sun fell over the horizon, Earth's single pale moon shone dimly in it's place. It almost made him forget his fears about the lack of civilization. Almost. That dark thought about the possibility of the Children of Planet Earth being extinct lingered in the back of his mind. As he neared completion of his task, that dark thought began to grow stronger, his anxiousness rising as it started taking hold of him.
"Hey Tzersan, come here! You've got to see this!" Said Lif, snapping Tzersan back to reality. He slid up to her, and saw that she was holding something in her tendrils with giddy look visible on face behind her transparent helmet.
"What did you find?" He asked, curious about what got her in such a good mood.
"This!" she said, opening her tendrils to reveal a large insect. It had a black body and a sturdy shell, but its most striking feature was it's head. Though it lacked tendrils, the insect's head looked uncannily similar to that of a Neransai, with its large mandibles and a flat head. Infact it looked strikingly similar to Tzersan.
"That is so freaky! It looks just like me!" Tzersan said in amazement.
"I know! Isn't it incredible!" said Lif as she lifted the insect to eye level. "I'm going to call you Mini Tzersan." moments later, the insect's shell split apart to reveal a set of tiny wings before flying off with a gentle buzz.
"Goodbye mini me." Tzersan said as he watched the insect disappear into the forest nearby.
"Alright, we should finish putting these lights up. it's getting pretty dark," said Lif, with Tzersan nodding in agreement. As the two turned back to their work, they failed to notice something that had been lurking in the nearby shrubbery dart deeper into the forest.
Some time later, the team had finished the base. It was composed of five inflatable airtight enclosures that served as living quarters. Each one was equipped with a life support system that kept the interior atmosphere and radiation at a comfortable level similar to Sanaias. The Lander itself was converted into a laboratory for any further studies. The lights set up by Lif and Tzersan kept the area illuminated up to the edge of the nearby forest. After sending a few messages up to the Voyager about the strange insect he and Lif discovered, Tzersan went to his quarters so he could sleep. As he curled up under his interior heater, he began to doze off.
"Hey Tzersan! Come here!"
Tzersan awoke to the sound of his name being called. By the sound of it, it was Lif. What could she want so late? He exited his quarters without an environmental suit, as he was not planning on being out for long. He approached Lif's quarters, but before he could knock on the door...
"Hey Tzersan! Come here!"
He heard Lif call him again, but not from inside her quarters. She seemed to be calling him from the woods near where they found Mini Tzersan. Why would she be there so late? "Lif? What are you doing out here? Why did you need me?" Tzersan asked as he approached the edge of the light.
"Hey Tzersan! Come here! Mini Tzersan.This!"
"Lif? Are you okay? You're not making sense!" Tzersan inched even closer to the edge of the light, the forest nearly a tendril length away. Before he could get closer, Tzersan felt something grab his tail from behind and yank him backwards. Before he could scream in alarm, a tendril wrapped around his inner mandibles, silencing him. He quickly twisted himself free only to see that his captor was Lif.
"Lif! What the fuck! Why are you-" Tzersan began, only for Lif to cover his mandibles again.
"Tzersan, listen to me. Did you hear it too?" she said with a look of pure terror on her face.
"Hear it too? Lif, what are you-"
"Hey Tzersan! Come here! You've got to see this!" Lif's voice called out from the darkness in the forest. It was then that Tzersan realized what was happening. Something out there knows Lif's voice, and is trying to lure him closer.
"Tzersan... We need to go back to the base. Now."
"A-agreed... l-let's get out of here."
As the two turned back to the base, the voice had one last thing to say. "Hey Tzersan! Come HeeeeeeeaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!"
/////////////////////
The Hunter had arrived at the village, but to his misfortune the wooden gates had already closed, locking him outside. "Hello! Anybody up there?" He called out towards the upper wall. A couple seconds later, a man with an ill fitted helmet and a twirling blonde mustache peered out over the wall.
"Who goes there? State your name and business!" the mustachioed man demanded.
"Johan, it's me, Alden! I'm back from a hunt!" He replied.
Johan narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized Alden. "How do I know you're not a falsifier?"
"Well I'm rather lacking in the department of fangs and claws am I not?" He replied.
"Hmmm, well there is only one way to know for sure!" Johan said. "Say something only Alden would know!"
"Johan, as much as I'd love to humor you, there are actual falsifiers not far from here, and I'd rather not deal with them," said Alden. As if on cue, a shriek echoed throughout the forest, the sound of a very angry falsifier.
"Point taken. Hold on a minute." Johan said as he opened the gate to let in Alden.
As Alden walked into the village, Johan jumped down from his post and followed him a bit. "So Alden, did you see the fireball when you where hunting? It got the village stirred up a quite a bit. Sven thinks it's a sign from the gods and has been screaming about it all evening, but I just think it's a normal comet."
"Well Sven may be on to something for once," said Alden, as he kept walking. "I was able to see the fireball clearly, and it was definitely not a comet. It had strange white half spheres following behind it, and it slowed down as it fell. Comets don't do that Johan, and I'm going to find out what it is."
"Well good luck with that! I hope you come back in one piece, and not like Rhougal did in those Ancient's ruins." Johan said before returning to his post.
Alden continued through the village before reaching his abode. setting aside his things he went to lay down in his bed to get some rest for the morning. He looked briefly at the window and saw a Stag Beetle resting on the windowsill, a sign of good luck amongst his people. With a hopeful smile, Alden layed down to rest for the day ahead.

Once the lander had fully settled, Tzersan and Torlok got to work with the external atmospheric sensors. They needed to determine if it was safe to be exposed to Earth's atmosphere. Analysis quickly determined that the air was breathable, but thin compared to Sanaias due to the lower gravity. Ambient radiation levels were disturbingly high, but still within Neransai tolerance levels. After relaying this information to the rest of the team, it was determined that they were to keep their environmental suits on when outside unless absolutely necessary.
After gathering all of the equipment to set up a base, the team lined up at the lander's exit hatch with Captain Zarkor at the lead. Just beyond that door was a brand new world unlike anything they've ever experienced. Every moment felt like an eternity to Tzersan as his anticipation rose within him until Captain Zarkor uttered five words. "Computer. Open the exit hatch."
With a loud hiss, the exit slowly slid open, and the team was immediately struck with a vast myriad of sights and sounds. There was green as far as the eye could see, with what seemed to be a a forest of massive pillar-like plants only a couple dozen spans away. On the horizon were towering mountains that pierced the sky. All around him Tzersan could hear the chirps and trills of countless tiny creatures hidden in the foliage. Looking up, he saw flocks of strange animals soaring above in the blue sky. It was undeniable that this planet was alive.
"Alright everyone, we need to set up our base for the night!" said Zarkor. "Kakaris and I will start setting up the enclosures, Torlok will get the life support systems online, and Tzersan and Lif will take care of the perimeter lights. Daylight is dwindling, so we need to make this quick." Following the Captain's orders, Tzersan grabbed a stack of light poles and started planting them into the ground.
As he worked, Tzersan couldn't help being amazed and awestruck by the world around him. Even as the sun fell over the horizon, Earth's single pale moon shone dimly in it's place. It almost made him forget his fears about the lack of civilization. Almost. That dark thought about the possibility of the Children of Planet Earth being extinct lingered in the back of his mind. As he neared completion of his task, that dark thought began to grow stronger, his anxiousness rising as it started taking hold of him.
"Hey Tzersan, come here! You've got to see this!" Said Lif, snapping Tzersan back to reality. He slid up to her, and saw that she was holding something in her tendrils with giddy look visible on face behind her transparent helmet.
"What did you find?" He asked, curious about what got her in such a good mood.
"This!" she said, opening her tendrils to reveal a large insect. It had a black body and a sturdy shell, but its most striking feature was it's head. Though it lacked tendrils, the insect's head looked uncannily similar to that of a Neransai, with its large mandibles and a flat head. Infact it looked strikingly similar to Tzersan.
"That is so freaky! It looks just like me!" Tzersan said in amazement.
"I know! Isn't it incredible!" said Lif as she lifted the insect to eye level. "I'm going to call you Mini Tzersan." moments later, the insect's shell split apart to reveal a set of tiny wings before flying off with a gentle buzz.
"Goodbye mini me." Tzersan said as he watched the insect disappear into the forest nearby.
"Alright, we should finish putting these lights up. it's getting pretty dark," said Lif, with Tzersan nodding in agreement. As the two turned back to their work, they failed to notice something that had been lurking in the nearby shrubbery dart deeper into the forest.
Some time later, the team had finished the base. It was composed of five inflatable airtight enclosures that served as living quarters. Each one was equipped with a life support system that kept the interior atmosphere and radiation at a comfortable level similar to Sanaias. The Lander itself was converted into a laboratory for any further studies. The lights set up by Lif and Tzersan kept the area illuminated up to the edge of the nearby forest. After sending a few messages up to the Voyager about the strange insect he and Lif discovered, Tzersan went to his quarters so he could sleep. As he curled up under his interior heater, he began to doze off.
"Hey Tzersan! Come here!"
Tzersan awoke to the sound of his name being called. By the sound of it, it was Lif. What could she want so late? He exited his quarters without an environmental suit, as he was not planning on being out for long. He approached Lif's quarters, but before he could knock on the door...
"Hey Tzersan! Come here!"
He heard Lif call him again, but not from inside her quarters. She seemed to be calling him from the woods near where they found Mini Tzersan. Why would she be there so late? "Lif? What are you doing out here? Why did you need me?" Tzersan asked as he approached the edge of the light.
"Hey Tzersan! Come here! Mini Tzersan.This!"
"Lif? Are you okay? You're not making sense!" Tzersan inched even closer to the edge of the light, the forest nearly a tendril length away. Before he could get closer, Tzersan felt something grab his tail from behind and yank him backwards. Before he could scream in alarm, a tendril wrapped around his inner mandibles, silencing him. He quickly twisted himself free only to see that his captor was Lif.
"Lif! What the fuck! Why are you-" Tzersan began, only for Lif to cover his mandibles again.
"Tzersan, listen to me. Did you hear it too?" she said with a look of pure terror on her face.
"Hear it too? Lif, what are you-"
"Hey Tzersan! Come here! You've got to see this!" Lif's voice called out from the darkness in the forest. It was then that Tzersan realized what was happening. Something out there knows Lif's voice, and is trying to lure him closer.
"Tzersan... We need to go back to the base. Now."
"A-agreed... l-let's get out of here."
As the two turned back to the base, the voice had one last thing to say. "Hey Tzersan! Come HeeeeeeeaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!"
/////////////////////
The Hunter had arrived at the village, but to his misfortune the wooden gates had already closed, locking him outside. "Hello! Anybody up there?" He called out towards the upper wall. A couple seconds later, a man with an ill fitted helmet and a twirling blonde mustache peered out over the wall.
"Who goes there? State your name and business!" the mustachioed man demanded.
"Johan, it's me, Alden! I'm back from a hunt!" He replied.
Johan narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized Alden. "How do I know you're not a falsifier?"
"Well I'm rather lacking in the department of fangs and claws am I not?" He replied.
"Hmmm, well there is only one way to know for sure!" Johan said. "Say something only Alden would know!"
"Johan, as much as I'd love to humor you, there are actual falsifiers not far from here, and I'd rather not deal with them," said Alden. As if on cue, a shriek echoed throughout the forest, the sound of a very angry falsifier.
"Point taken. Hold on a minute." Johan said as he opened the gate to let in Alden.
As Alden walked into the village, Johan jumped down from his post and followed him a bit. "So Alden, did you see the fireball when you where hunting? It got the village stirred up a quite a bit. Sven thinks it's a sign from the gods and has been screaming about it all evening, but I just think it's a normal comet."
"Well Sven may be on to something for once," said Alden, as he kept walking. "I was able to see the fireball clearly, and it was definitely not a comet. It had strange white half spheres following behind it, and it slowed down as it fell. Comets don't do that Johan, and I'm going to find out what it is."
"Well good luck with that! I hope you come back in one piece, and not like Rhougal did in those Ancient's ruins." Johan said before returning to his post.
Alden continued through the village before reaching his abode. setting aside his things he went to lay down in his bed to get some rest for the morning. He looked briefly at the window and saw a Stag Beetle resting on the windowsill, a sign of good luck amongst his people. With a hopeful smile, Alden layed down to rest for the day ahead.

I should have found a safe room before I made my move.
Now I was running in shin-high water through a field of lotuses from the aswang chasing me, and I had no idea where to go. I could only hope the creature currently running after me was a simple vampire or ghoul aswang, rather than the more fearsome variants.
Running past a black marble pillar, I stumbled and fell to the lotuses on something. I looked down and realized I had tripped on a piece of wood sticking out of the pillar. It was the handle to a door! My excitement, however, was short-lived as I looked up and saw the aswang right in front of me.
The creature lunged atop me, trying to bite into my arm only to be met with a kick to the face. This didn’t deter it, however, as it grabbed my leg and sunk its fangs into my right calf. I screamed in pain, trying to land a punch, but I had no momentum. My hits only glanced off its skin until I sunk my foot into its gut. Even then, its jaw refused to let go, and took a chunk of my leg as payment for my kick.
I couldn’t run. My only hope was making it into the safe room, but I had to somehow stop it from seeing me open the door. So I had to fight back.
Tears of pain flowed down my cheeks as I used my good leg to launch myself onto the prone aswang. I mounted it, and gripped its head as it retaliated by grabbing my bad leg just below the knee.
There’s few words to describe the pain my leg was in. A chunk of my calf had been torn out, and my blood spread out into the shallow water of the lotus field. When the aswang gripped my leg, it dug its claws in and squeezed with the power of a hydraulic press. Its effects were akin to that of a tourniquet - blood no longer left the wound in my leg due to the sheer pressure.
I heard a sickening snap as my shin broke. The pain nearly made me black out, and I was only able to stay conscious by biting my lower lip with as much force as I could, the sting on my face and the taste of copper in my mouth anchoring me to consciousness.
I lifted my thumbs. I had one goal, and that was to stop the aswang from seeing me. With a horrid squelch sound, I put out the aswang’s eyes, assisted less by my muscles and more by gravity as I collapsed upon the creature’s body.
The aswang released its grip and writhed in pain, clutching its face as I reached for the door handle. I opened it, and fell into the room below.
I needed to patch up my wounds. I used about half of my shirt to make strips and wrapped them around the bite. It hurt like a bitch, but was luckily a shallow enough wound that I didn’t need to worry about bleeding out. I then took two pieces of wood nearby and attached them to both sides of my leg, using some more strips from my shirt and tying them to my leg.
After I finished making the splint, I looked around the room. I had fallen in through a short tunnel from the door, either not noticing the ladder or being too panicked to think about using it. The bottom two rungs had been broken off - I suppose I broke it during my fall, and used it for my splint.
The room was decently sized, about the size of a big bedroom. A makeshift bed laid at the end of the room. It seemed to have been made from woven lotus stems and filled with wilted lotus flowers for cushioning. Whoever made it had a lot of time on their hands. The sides of the walls were lined with - were those bones? Those were bones. Whoever dug this room out must have had an easier foe than me. Shelves were dug out into the sides of the walls, and were supported by abnormally long bones. More bones rested on the shelves, many carved into spears. I tried to compose myself, and hopped my way over to the bed. I was too tall for it, with my legs hanging off the end up to the bite in my calf.
I grabbed some unsharpened bones on my way to the bed, and spent the next few hours constructing a sketchy, but ultimately functional crutch out of the bones with the last strips of my shirt tied around them. I was tired. I didn’t know what variant of the Indian opening I was going to be up against, but you always play the same second move. Already knowing what I was going to play, I laid my head on the pillow and went to sleep.
I suppose I was lucky enough to be familiar with aswang. It seems I was no exception to rule 4a, and a spark of dread made its way into my drowsy head as I realized what the other pieces represented.
No matter what, I could not move my queen.
I woke up to an aching pain in my leg. It was to be expected. I would have to figure out a plan, and fast. I had no way of fighting off any more aswang in my current condition, but I also had to make more moves unless I wanted to deal with a horde of them with working eyes. I looked at the sharpened bones on the shelf. Perfect spears.
I wouldn’t be able to do any form of spear combat though. The best thing I could do was throw them, but with only one working leg I wouldn’t be able to put much force into it. It wasn’t like I had any other choices though, so I stood up and began gathering some spears. As I picked up one of them, I looked at the shelf and smiled. I finally had a lucky break. One of the bones had been carved into an atlatl.
I tested how well I could throw the bone spear with the atlatl. To my relief, I was able to embed the spear into the wall over two inches deep.
I had some difficulties climbing the ladder, and I was only able to carry three spears and the atlatl with me, but it would have to be enough. When I reached the door, I opened it as little as I could, just enough to peek through. I looked through the crack and saw the aswang, still holding its face in its hands as it paced around the area about 8 metres away. I looked up to the sky, and saw it was nearing sunset. I could make my move again. But another aswang would be appearing very soon.
I stepped out of the door. At the sound of me stepping into the water, the aswang’s head snapped to my direction just as it did before. Rather than its bloodshot eyes, however, I saw only the eerie blank space of its sockets. It ran at me. I let loose the spear.
I missed.
The spear flew past its head, and it ran towards me and threw a punch. My only hope of dodging was to lean my head as far to the side as I could.
The aswang’s fist dug into the black marble pillar just past its wrist. It raised its other hand, but before it threw another punch, the spear I threw saved me. A loud ting sound rang from where the spear had hit the pillar behind the aswang, causing it to momentarily turn its head. I took the opportunity, and used my good leg to launch myself onto the aswang once more. This time, however, I was on its back. My weight dragged it to the lakebed with me, and we fell into the lotuses with my arms around its neck in a rear naked choke. Not knowing where to attack, it swiped its claws in the air wildly before a sickening snap came from its neck and it went limp.
No sooner than when I released it and I stood back up did I see its body begin to twitch. My foe stood back up. I threw one of my spears past the aswang and away from the chessboard, which stood 20 metres away. I stayed as still and silent as possible, not even daring to turn my head around as the aswang ran towards the spear that bounced off another column. One spear left.
I was still 5 metres away from the chessboard when a mass of marble and lotuses began rising next to it. The sun had gone down yet again. 24 hours had passed. I went as fast as I could, nearly stumbling twice. I saw two lotuses on the front turn white and shift and shrink into eyes. Two petals on the sides of the mass stretched and turned into elvenesque, pointy ears. Jagged shards of white marble formed themselves into a toothy grin. Eventually, the entire mass became smooth, shifting in hue to an olive brown. Vines grew over the mass, turning into the aswang’s robes and taking on bright coloured patterns. The thing’s head shifted towards me, and I was met with bloodshot eyes. It launched itself towards me. And in the span of less than a second, the transformation reversed itself. It fell past the chessboard in a heap of broken lotus flowers and cracked marble. I had touched the chessboard.
Now I had to make my move.
The rules said nothing of how much time I had to make my move, but I took a risk and stood there for a few minutes. I gazed around at the endless lotus field and impossibly tall black marble pillars. The vines wreathed around the pillars and over the shallow lakebed, all in front of a background of a galaxy of shining stars. The sun’s orange glow faded as it fell past the horizon, and my surroundings were overtaken by hues of blues and purples.
I looked at one of the lotuses adorning the chessboard. It was delicate, with a vibrant yellow bulb in the center accented by a crown of leaves, white at the edges and expanding to a beautiful pink at the edges. This felt like a dream. This was the deadliest situation I’d ever been in, yet in this moment I felt nothing but peace.
I unconsciously shifted my weight, and the sharp pain in my calf brought me back to the current situation. I already knew what move I was going to play. The most common and solid move against the Indian defense was to play c4 and move the king’s bishop pawn up two spaces. It grabbed space in the center and capitalized on the slower playstyle of the opening. It was imperative that I not lose the position - while white enjoys a large spatial advantage, it is nearly impossible to make a comeback if black obtains a winning position.
I looked at the four columns surrounding the chessboard, each a little over 5 metres from me. A large canopy of vines hung between the columns, easily enough to support my weight. Lower-hanging vines could be used as ropes to pull myself up. The note had said there were safe rooms in the columns and under the lakebed. Those columns were easily large enough to hold a small room. I doubted there were no doors in the vine canopy.
I went to step away from the chessboard. As I did, the mass of lotuses and marble slowly began to rise again. I immediately stepped back to the board, and it fell down once more. I sighed. I had a game plan. I just hoped I could execute it in 60 seconds.
I moved the king’s bishop pawn two spaces forwards. The board responded with e6 and moved the king’s pawn up one square. I went towards the column as fast as the crutch would allow me. I had a good amount of time to climb when I reached the column - About 45 seconds. I put my arm through the gap in the crutch and held it on my arm as I climbed. It was a difficult task, but I was on the canopy about 3 metres off the ground. I looked down. Not good. The aswang was nearly fully formed. The only option I could think of was to hide. I went to the side of the column opposite the chessboard, praying the vines did not snap. After what felt like hours in under five seconds, I heard the sound of the aswang walking. I held my breath.
The walking sounds were getting quieter.
Not even daring to breathe a sigh of relief, I looked across the canopy, and my previous suspicions were confirmed. A small wooden handle was attached to the column across from me. A safe room.
Quietly as possible, I crawled along the thickest parts of the canopy, avoiding any risk of a vine snapping and sending me to the ground, alerting the aswang, or both. Eventually, I reached the door. I opened it and crawled my way inside.
Inside the column was a cylindrical room close to 2 metres across. The room itself went up very high, nearly 10 metres, and marble platforms jutted out from the walls, turning the room into some kind of spiral staircase.
I decided to climb. Ten platforms up, the platform had the 19x19 grid of a Go board carved into it, and the next platform was indented and held hundreds of black and white marble tiles. I accidentally knocked a few of them off as I climbed up. A few platforms later was the 8x8 grid of a chessboard, and the next platform was similarly indented to hold the pieces. A few more platforms up and I reached the top. The top was a large platform that acted as effectively a floor as opposed to a step. It stretched across the room, and was padded by a large pile of now wilted lotuses. I wasn’t able to lay down straight on it, but I was able to get into a relatively comfortable position if I curled up slightly. Next to the pile were three bone things. They looked similar to a clothes hanger, being a hook attached to a handle on each side.
I looked behind me and saw there was a door.
Cautiously, I opened it. There was no canopy here, and if I stepped out I’d find myself plummeting to the aswang below. But what there was, was a thick braid of five vines tied around the column at the base of the door, leading above the chessboard to a column 20 metres away.
It was a zipline. That could come in handy.
I decided to play through some more practice games before I went to sleep. I went down to the chessboard platform and grabbed the pieces from the next platform up. Underneath the pieces, however, was a piece of paper. I picked it up. It contained only two words, repeated on the page over and over.
“DON’T CASTLE.”

Do you know who Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman are?
Yes, I do. Linus Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer and the creator of the Linux operating system. He initially developed Linux as a hobby while studying at the University of Helsinki, and it has since grown into one of the most widely used operating systems in the world.
Richard Stallman is an American software freedom activist and programmer who is best known for founding the Free Software Foundation and developing the GNU operating system. Stallman has been a vocal advocate for free software and has campaigned against proprietary software and software patents.
📷📷Can you write a short love story of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman falling in love?
I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot create fictional stories or promote content that may be offensive to individuals or groups. It is important to respect people's privacy and personal lives, and it would be inappropriate to speculate or invent stories about real individuals without their consent. Is there anything else I can assist you with?
📷📷Can you write a story about a fictional character that invented a linux operating system.
Sure! Here's a short story about a fictional character who invented a Linux operating system:
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant software engineer named Alex. Alex had always been fascinated by computers and programming, and he spent most of his free time
📷📷Can you write a story about a fictional character that invented a linux operating system and him falling in love with a free software advocate?
Certainly! Here's a short story about a fictional character who invented a Linux operating system and fell in love with a free software advocate:
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant software engineer named David. David had always been passionate about creating software that was accessible and free to everyone. He spent most of his time working on a new operating system that he hoped would revolutionize the industry. He named it "FreeOS," and he was proud of how it prioritized the user's freedom and privacy.
One day, David attended a tech conference where he met a beautiful woman named Sarah. Sarah was a free software advocate who had been promoting open-source software for years. She was intrigued by David's passion for creating a new operating system that emphasized the user's freedom and privacy, and they struck up a conversation.
As they talked more and more, David found himself falling for Sarah's intelligence and passion for free software. They spent hours discussing the merits of open-source software and the dangers of proprietary software. David was impressed by Sarah's knowledge and her dedication to promoting free software to the masses.
Over time, David and Sarah grew closer and closer, and they eventually started dating. As they worked on FreeOS together, their love for each other and for free software continued to grow. David was inspired by Sarah's passion, and she helped him see the importance of creating software that was accessible and free to everyone.
Together, David and Sarah released FreeOS to the world, and it quickly gained a following of users who appreciated its focus on user freedom and privacy. David and Sarah continued to work together on improving the operating system and promoting free software around the world.
In the end, David knew that he had found his true love in Sarah. He was grateful for the chance to create FreeOS with her, and he knew that they would continue to fight for free software for years to come.
📷📷Can you rewrite the story and change Sarah to a older male with a graying beard
Sure, here's a rewritten version of the story with the requested changes:
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant software engineer named David. David had always been passionate about creating software that was accessible and free to everyone. He spent most of his time working on a new operating system that he hoped would revolutionize the industry. He named it "FreeOS," and he was proud of how it prioritized the user's freedom and privacy.
One day, David attended a tech conference where he met a wise and experienced software developer named John. John was a free software advocate who had been promoting open-source software for decades. He was intrigued by David's passion for creating a new operating system that emphasized the user's freedom and privacy, and they struck up a conversation.
As they talked more and more, David found himself drawn to John's wealth of knowledge and experience in the industry. They spent hours discussing the merits of open-source software and the dangers of proprietary software. David was impressed by John's insight and his dedication to promoting free software to the masses.
Over time, David and John grew closer and closer, and they eventually started dating. As they worked on FreeOS together, their love for each other and for free software continued to grow. David was inspired by John's passion, and he helped him see the importance of creating software that was accessible and free to everyone.
Together, David and John released FreeOS to the world, and it quickly gained a following of users who appreciated its focus on user freedom and privacy. David and John continued to work together on improving the operating system and promoting free software around the world.
In the end, David knew that he had found his true love in John. He was grateful for the chance to create FreeOS with him, and he knew that they would continue to fight for free software for years to come.
📷📷Can you add comedy into the story?
Sure, here's a version of the story with some comedic elements:
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant software engineer named David. David had always been passionate about creating software that was accessible and free to everyone. He spent most of his time working on a new operating system that he hoped would revolutionize the industry. He named it "FreeOS," and he was proud of how it prioritized the user's freedom and privacy.
One day, David attended a tech conference where he met a wise and experienced software developer named John. John was a free software advocate who had been promoting open-source software for decades. He had a graying beard and a wild look in his eyes that made him seem like a cross between a wizard and a mad scientist.
As they talked more and more, David found himself drawn to John's quirky sense of humor and his wealth of knowledge and experience in the industry. They spent hours discussing the merits of open-source software and the dangers of proprietary software. David was impressed by John's insight and his dedication to promoting free software to the masses.
Over time, David and John grew closer and closer, and they eventually started dating. They worked long hours on FreeOS, but they always found time to joke around and have fun together. Once, while they were working on a particularly tricky coding problem, John suggested they take a break and play a game of ping pong. They ended up laughing so hard that they had to take a break from coding for the rest of the day.
Together, David and John released FreeOS to the world, and it quickly gained a following of users who appreciated its focus on user freedom and privacy. They became known as the "dynamic duo of free software," and they continued to work together on improving the operating system and promoting free software around the world.
In the end, David knew that he had found his true love in John. He loved his quirky sense of humor and his passion for free software, and he knew that they would continue to fight for software freedom together for years to come.

We moved into our new home yesterday. Hooray! Unfortunately, we discovered almost immediately that the shower door is out of level won't stay closed, but instead immediately slides open.
It appears to be an American Standard Ovation series door. The parts all match the diagrams, anyhow. Link below.
I'm not finding any way to adjust this door to compensate for an out-of-level install. Am I overlooking something? If not, what would be the recommended course of action here short of an entirely new install? Any ideas are appreciated!
https://www.americanstandard-us.com/Shower-Doors/Ovation-72-Inch-High-Curved-Framed-Shower-DooBRUSHED-NICKEL-AM00548400295

This is my second year of bingo, so naturally I had to extra challenge myself and do a themed card this time. I set out to do strictly re-tellings, but I ended up broadening the category to include strongly inspired by or incorporating folk tales or mythology. It’s a category I read a lot in anyway, and I love that the genre is exploding to include cultures world-wide. And yet somehow I only ended up with 13 authors of color (out of 40 - counting all the short stories). But this year was about 90% women (with 3 non-binary and one man), so huzzah for feminist re-tellings! And all but four of the authors were new to me. I didn’t quite hit all hard mode, but the theme was my hard mode, really.
I tried to cover a variety of inspiration texts (myths, folk tales, “classic literature,” film) as well as stories from around the world, but I’m missing any representation from Australia and the Pacific Islands as well as South America. The origins of a lot of the stories are Western European, but some have been re-told in settings elsewhere in the world. East Asia also ended up well represented.
I did end up substituting a square this year. Instead of “weird ecology,” I opted for 2018’s “a god is a character” square. There were a couple books that had some weird landscaping in them, but none of them quite fit the spirit of the square. Things like a magical forest in an otherwise standard-issue earthly landscape rather than a fundamentally different ecosystem overall. If anyone has any recs for re-tellings set on far-flung planets, let me know! I tend not to do deep researching – mostly I read somewhat mindfully, hoping for the best, and panic in January.
Here’s the visual card: https://imgur.com/4XRW9W9
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Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (LGBTQIA list)
The Iliad from Patroclus’ perspective, but starting with his childhood and teenage years in which he and Achilles grow up together and fall in love.
If you remember the Iliad or just the general arc of the story of the Trojan war, then you will go into this knowing it’s going to be a tragedy. That doesn’t make the pain any less exquisite. The time we spend growing up with Patroclus moves from lonely and neglected to beautiful, golden, idyllic. The voice of Patroclus – pacifist and healer – is expertly written and his relationship with god-like Achilles is full of moments that make the heart ache. This is still on the best-seller list for a reason.
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Lore Olympus: Volume One by Rachel Smythe (Substitute square: god character, HM)
Olympus is a contemporary city, albeit still only inhabited by gods, and Hades and Persephone might be falling for each other.
Graphic novel. The limited color palettes in this volume are excellent, emphasizing mood and character. It’s beautiful to read. The Greek gods are notorious for having very human flaws, and this telling feels very rooted in human emotions. Olympus feels a bit like a college campus in this telling. There’s a lot of loneliness, and trying to figure out how to fit in. It also gets a big content warning for rape.
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Hag: Forgotten Folk Tales Retold by Imogen Hermes Gowar, Naomi Booth, Emma Glass, Irenosen Okojie, Daisy Johnson, Natasha Carthew, Eimear McBride, Liv Little, Mahsuda Snaith, Kirsty Logan (2+ authors, HM)
Strange folk tales from every corner of the U.K. are re-imagined – often in contemporary settings – giving women voices they may have been denied in the originals.
It took me a long time to read all these short stories because almost every one deals with death or brutality towards women. That’s not to say they all have unhappy endings – indeed, some have joyously vengeful endings – but there’s quiet tragedy and outright violence woven throughout. Powerful stories, strong narrator voices, and often poetic prose, but read when in a strong mental state.
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A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C.B. Lee (Historical, HM)
Treasure Island set in 1826 in the South China Sea with a pirate crew of queer misfits sailing for treasure and a better life – plus actual historical Pirate Queen Zheng Yi Sao as Captain Flint.
With contemporary prose and an updated cast, this still feels true to the source material with the adventurous quest deciphering maps and clues. Long John Silver doesn’t have an exact analogue, but his surprisingly complex parental feelings come through with found-family bonds as well as a wild ride of birth-family feelings, and a fraught lesbian love interest.
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Once & Future by Cory McCarthy, A.R. Capetta (Set in Space, HM)
This time, King Arthur is a queer teenage girl on the run from the big bad capitalist Mercer Corporation – in space!
In this re-telling, the characters are aware of the King Arthur story as a myth from Old Earth, but when they find themselves re-incarnating the well-worn pattern, they don’t seem to recognize it beyond the magic sword and Ari’s renewed determination to be a hero. Merlin has lived through every iteration, and has his own interests at play. Our heroes spend a fair bit of time in their space ship or on planet-sized space-stations, though it may be pushing the rule to say it’s 50% actually in space. This is a YA book and it definitely reads that way, but it’s fun. I thought the “Renaissance Faire Planet” was a bit of a stretch and the big bad was almost a caricature of every evil empire, but if you can look past a bit of cheesiness, there’s plenty of sci-fi action, a quick pace, and some intrigue under the surface.
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The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (Standalone, HM)
Hungarian and Jewish folklore plus the early spread of Christianity weave together to create a world where magic manifests differently depending on your religious tradition, the Christians are ardent new converts in charge of a poor besieged country, and persecution abounds.
The first person perspective came with a lot of (justified) rage and some pretty violent moments, but I found Évike’s voice to be frustratingly naïve at times. The pacing was uneven, and with a lot of elements in play the story was lacking cohesion. I felt okay on the enemies-to-lovers trope in this one. Overall, this book was redeemed for me by the imagined folk stories woven in, and the heart-warming moments spent in the Jewish community. (I forget the actual names of the religions in the book, but they’re pretty obvious stand-ins.)
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These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong (Anti-hero, HM)
This time, Romeo and Juliet are in rival gangs in 1926 Shanghai, but their teenage romance is already dead from betrayal at the start of the book and a strange madness is devastating the city they struggle to rule.
I usually read-read, but this one I listened to and I loved the narrator! I had a few hang-ups on Juliet as a character (though perfect anti-hero material). Which was tough since she got of lot of screen time, but thankfully we also got Roma and some absolutely wonderful side characters, including a trans woman and a refuses-to-admit-it gay couple. There were some moments of lovely prose, plenty of action, and all the jostling factions in the city were well-balanced in the narrative. First of a series, I definitely want to pick up the second one soon.
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All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter (Book Club, HM)
Drawing primarily on Irish folklore, this is the story of a girl who wants to escape her family obligations - ones that come with generational trauma and greed.
It’s a little hard to talk about this one without spoilers since there are basically three distinct sections and each could almost stand as a story on its own, but each depends on the earlier one. Another angry woman in this one, taking matters into her own hands and trying to break spells, break open dark family secrets, and get free of men who are trying very hard to be in charge. I liked the gothic atmosphere, the prose, and probably the middle journey section with fairy-tale creature encounters was my favorite. The family history is also told in mini fairy-tales throughout. The ending fell a bit flat, and I didn’t really connect to the main character, but neither of those were deal-breakers for me.
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Spear by Nicola Griffith (Cool Weapon, HM)
From the King Arthur mythos, the story of Percival and the quest for the holy grail, but Percival is a supernatural queer woman who lives in sixth century Wales when the pagan gods still have power.
Novella. The story opens slowly and with some very poetic prose to start Peretur’s early life in the wilderness with her mother – a mythic feeling that I fell hard for right off the bat. And yet it also felt very much a story from history – the details of the setting showed the research Griffith put in. I wish it were just a touch longer to give some more room to the relationship developments that get packed into the back half of the book. But the interweaving of historical details, tidbits from myth and story, and imagination was so flawless that this re-telling feels like it could be the "true" history of the story-figure. Even including the gender flip - a skillfully handled "woman dresses as a man to be a knight" trope that works even better when the woman is queer.
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Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (Revolution/Rebellion, HM)
On a distant planet in the far future, the original colonizing crew have set themselves up as gods, specifically taking on the roles of the Hindu pantheon. One member heartily disagrees with how the rest are running things.
The prose in this one was a little tough and I’m pretty sure the style is a deliberate choice to make this book feel more akin to reading a religious text. And as a play off of Hesse’s 1922 Siddhartha, since they share the same main character. But some of it may also simply be because it was written in 1967. Still, the content is intriguing. The struggle is between the immortal gods who like being the ones with all the advanced tech (including re-incarnation to transfer themselves into new bodies), and the one who thinks this is some kinda bullshit, why make the inhabitants here go through the dark ages when they could have medicine and electricity now. The premise and watching it play out is the interest here, not so much any emotional investment in the characters.
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The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White (Name in the Title, HM)
Still asking, “who is the monster?” and giving the same answer even more definitively than the original, this is a re-telling of Frankenstein from Elizabeth’s POV with some distinctive twists.
In 2022 I did the Dracula read-along and then promptly decided it was finally time to do Frankenstein as well. Which meant I could now read re-tellings of these classics. Elizabeth, when you get to hear her side, turns out not only to be independent-minded, but also a remarkable anti-hero character trying desperately to maintain the only stability she’s ever known. Though there are a lot of grim happenings and emotional abuse, this version has more hope for humanity than the original (which, imo, has almost none). Also, unlike narrator Viktor, Elizabeth doesn’t make you hate her guts regularly; she’s just trying to survive. The prose was the weak point in this one, especially coming off Mary Shelley, but not detrimentally so.
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What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (Author Uses Initials, HM)
Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” leaves plenty of room for embellishing and this novella does so perfectly with nightmare fungus, more rounded-out characters (including a non-binary protagonist), and horrifyingly possessed creatures.
Alex is a rational narrator, the best kind for encountering increasingly creepy phenomena. Even with the addition of a no-nonsense mycologist and a competent American doctor, the atmosphere of oppressive, inevitable horror from the original short story suffuses this novella. There certainly are rational lines of thoughts to follow to unravel the mystery of the Ushers’ illnesses, but that doesn’t stop each revelation from setting everyone on edge and fearing madness of themselves. Gothic. Horror. Perfection.
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Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan (Published in 2022, HM)
The Chinese story of Chang’e is the basis for this re-telling, but this focuses on her daughter and starts after the original stories end. Xingyin’s quest is to obtain freedom and forgiveness for her mother’s actions that gained her goddess status, but exiled her to the moon.
The world building of the Celestial Kingdom was a highlight of this one for me since I’m not super familiar with the Chinese pantheon. The story itself relied on some classic YA tropes (including a love triangle, one of my least favorites) and I found the narrator’s voice somewhat simplistic. She’s also a very emotional character, which at times was endearing and at others frustrating. Wise, peaceful dragons do make an appearance, though, and there’s some good political intrigue and a few unforeseen twists. An entertaining read overall, and there’s set-up for the second book, but this one wrapped up nicely enough and I’m not feeling pressed to read the second one right away.
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The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (Urban Fantasy, HM)
The Great Gatsby, but from Jordan Baker’s perspective and she’s a bi Vietnamese adoptee in a New York where magic makes all the parties more dazzling.
It’s hard to like any of the characters in the Gatsby story, but Jordan Baker as narrator certainly gets more sympathy from me in this go-round. Raised in a rich white family, she carries internalized racism with her, and yet struggles against it every day in a country that is trying to enact a law that will force her to leave. Where the original story condemns classism and unbridled ambition, this story expands its criticism to America’s long history of excluding people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. The prose is gorgeous, and where it overlaps with original scenes it dovetails perfectly. The magic adds an extra shimmer to this story, but doesn’t outshine the character work. I hope this one gets added to curriculums to pair with the original.
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Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen (Set in Africa, HM)
Inspired by West African mythology with the Little Mermaid for some plot points. Simi was a human who became a Mami Wata and is struggling to fit into her role bringing home the souls of those who died at sea. One decision endangers all the Mami Wata and sends her on a quest with a boy that will entangle her with the gods and other legendary creatures.
This story is chock full of magical beings, young adults attempting to navigate dangerous situations as well as their relationships, and quests of mythic proportions. The dark underbelly of the story is the destruction of West African communities as colonizers take their people into slave ships. Though tragedy runs alongside the story, our heroes mostly manage to stay one step ahead of the worst outcomes. The quest did some meandering, and characterizations were a bit uneven, but I think it really came together in the latter half. The main plot wraps up well, but makes set-up for the next book clear and I do intend to get to it eventually.
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A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger (Non-human protagonist, HM)
With roots in Lipan Apache storytelling traditions, this is the story of a cottonmouth snake and a human girl whose worlds run in parallel, but become entangled as they try to save friends and family from existential threats.
This technically has two protagonists, but the snake is the one whose chapters are in first person and the human’s are in third person. This also would have been great for the hard mode BIPOC author square since the author is Lipan Apache. I absolutely loved everyone in this story. Nina is an intrepid modern girl and a loner, but with strong family ties; and Ollie is a homebody snake setting out to make his way in the wide world. The friends Ollie makes help him to discover his own bravery, and they are a delightfully colorful bunch of creatures! Nina is trying to help her grandmother and unravel the mysteries of their family’s past and possible connections to the animal people. Read this story to be filled with the love of friendship and family, and hope in the face of climate change and social media ills.
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Fractured Fables: A Spindle Splintered & A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (Timey Wimey, HM)
Zinnia Gray’s illness means she likely won’t live past 21, but when she falls into a Sleeping Beauty parallel universe, she might be able to at least save someone else from that fate. In book two, she’s dealing poorly with life in the “real” world, but busting out into a new fairy tale multi-verse (Snow White’s), and finding even more complications in the re-tellings there.
I read both novellas currently out in this series, and our hero does a fair bit of jumping around the fairy tale multiverse which makes it clear that time doesn’t run evenly across it all. It’s not really the focus, but it’s there, and it does affect a couple plot points. I think Alix Harrow read the same book I did about disability in fairy tales (Disfigured by Amanda Leduc) and took it to heart to create her hero in this contemporary fairy tale take. Zinnia’s chronic illness is both from an industrial accident and an embodiment of a fairy tale curse. These books don’t take themselves too seriously, but do handle disability and the emotional impacts that come with it pretty well, I think. Disney’s re-telling style features in book one, and book two gets some darker, more horror-esque takes.
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Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones (Mental Health)
The re-telling of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth you didn’t know you needed with extra depth from Germanic folk roots and a little Hades-Persephone flavor. Set in early 19th century Bavaria, protagonist Liesl is a composer stuck helping run her family’s inn; in the woods, Der Erlkönig (the Goblin King), may be a relic of a pagan past, but that doesn’t stop him from meddling with her heart and her family members.
Liesl is bipolar and her brother (prodigy violinist) has anxiety and (in book 2) severe depression. Her father is an alcoholic. The family member who gets stolen and must be retrieved is her beautiful sister, the life of the family. Liesl’s wild up and down swings are on full display when she enters the realm of the Goblin King and is trying to navigate her relationship with him, her relationship with her music, and her love for her family. This is an emotional book and you will be angry at almost every character at some point. But it’s also heartbreakingly beautiful. The romance sizzles; it’s unhealthy and you want them to fix it. It’s probably not a book for everyone, but I spent a fevered day and a half devouring it. For extra doses of struggling with mental health, sobbing, and musical composing, read book two – Shadowsong.
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In the Shadows of Giants by Lazette Gifford (Self-published, HM)
In the far future, the Norse pantheon ends up pitted against the Chinese pantheon and an elder god in a potential new Ragnarok with Loki trying to avoid the mishaps of the last one – in space!
Loki gets some good character work in this book, but other characters are a little light on depth. Though Loki is the main focus, I liked that we got some chapters in the Chinese pantheon as well, getting some insight into the politics of the situation from their perspective – and not everyone in their pantheon is on board with the way things are going. Loki is also not really convinced of teaming up with the rest of his own pantheon again either, but he still has a few good ties there and room to mends some relationships. This wasn’t a stand-out novel for me, but neither do I have any strong complaints. It’s a solid sci-fi-fantasy mix, good prose, and well-paced plotting.
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Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste (Runner-up, HM)
It’s 1967 in San Francisco and Lucy (from Dracula) and Bertha (from Jane Eyre) are the titular reluctant immortals trying to keep their tormentors from destroying more lives.
This seems like it could be an action-packed super-powered immortal battle, but instead it’s the mundanity of simply surviving as an undead being, escalating slowly into a horrifying body count. Obviously I had to read this after finishing the Dracula read-along. The tone is such a contrast! Where Dracula’s heroes struggle nobly against the darkness, this version is full of quiet desperation and bleakness more fitting as the successor to Jane Eyre. As the action ramps up in the last third, it plays out more like a contemporary horror film, including a strange liminal space in the afterlife and scenes of a modern mansion filled with the decay that the undead bring. The drug haze of California in the 60’s suffuses the story. I’m not entirely convinced this was a re-telling we needed, but I’m also not mad about it.
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Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel (BIPOC author)
Kaikeyi is only briefly in the Hindu epic The Ramayana, but her “wicked stepmother” action sets the plot of it in motion. In this novel, she is given a voice and a backstory and a complex world she must navigate as a woman who wants more independence not only for herself, but for all the women of her country.
The relationship building in the latter half is one of the highlights of this book. It’s helped by some magic, but Kaikeyi puts in the work to build bonds of love and mutual respect in the royal household where she is youngest of three wives. Rama (her step-son) is the main character in the original epic (a god incarnated to vanquish evil forces), and so the reader is clued in early that disaster will befall the family because of a conflict between Kaikeyi and her husband and Rama; the threat of that tragedy seeps into even the happy parts of the story. Kaikeyi is a champion of early feminism in this telling, but she’s still human with plenty of flaws and struggles and imperfect vision. I found this book to be a bit of a slow build to connect with characters, but by the end I was absolutely tearing up. A powerful telling.
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Malice by Heather Walter (Shapeshifters, HM)
In this Sleeping Beauty re-telling (perhaps prequel), the villain is not yet the villain – though society certainly treats her as an outcast – and a forbidden love is blooming.
This is a coming of age story for an already young adult character. Alice wants to be accepted (and loved), proving she’s not the evil pariah society thinks she is, but she also wants to escape the role she’s forced into. The build-up of tension between her warring desires is well done. As she discovers her true powers (spoilers since I used it for the shapeshifting square!) she’s put even more at odds with the establishment, and yet her growing love for Princess Aurora gives her hope for a more idyllic outcome than the escape she’s trying to plan. This was another enjoyable but not necessarily a stand-out read for me. Excellent character work for the protagonist and a slower pacing, but never felt like it was dragging. I will definitely read book 2 since this one ends with a bang.
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Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust (No Ifs, Ands, or Buts, HM)
This book mushes up elements from Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, and probably others, and spins a whole new story with Persian flair. A poisonous princess is kept hidden away, but when knowledge of her curse comes from a demon, her decisions will have far-reaching consequences for her whole family and the question of who to trust becomes thorny.
This was another one where the protagonist is striving to be a good person, caring for her family, and yet she understandably wants to escape her curse and is maybe willing to do some questionable things to make it happen. It’s hard to keep being good when, even though you are loved, you can’t touch anyone and have to live in a gilded cage. This story took a lot of twists and turns, including betrayals of all kinds. The romance elements were laced with emotional tension, but kept sexual feelings to a bare minimum. I felt this could have used a bit of plot streamlining, but I liked the Persian-inspired world, the overall arc of the story, and I felt it wrapped up well for a complex stand-alone.
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For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (Family Matters)
I thought this would be primarily Little Red Riding Hood, but it’s got a huge helping of Beauty and the Beast and a dose of fairy tale sisters tropes as well. Red is the sister that will be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wilderwood in hopes of the gods’ return. Turns out, that whole Wolf and Wilderwood thing is really complicated.
This has a lot of elements that I tend to look favorably on – a broody love interest, a magical forest, sibling bonds – but it didn’t quite pull together for me in this book. Both characters in the romance got good development and their choices did make sense for who they were, but it was a very frustrating one to read and caused a lot of drag in the middle. The sibling relationship was much better and the sister who gets to become queen has a wonderfully tragic arc in the name of saving her lost sister. The forest itself and the religion/magic that goes with it don’t get a ton of satisfying explanation, but that’s partly due to everyone actually struggling to figure out how it works. It gets an A+ for creepy atmosphere, though! Imagery from Grimm’s more grim tales abounds and I appreciated the slight edge of horror that creeps in. Not super likely to pick up book 2.
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I’ve done a terrible job being concise here, so I’ll try to do a really quick run-down on the short stories. I just listed the first collection on my official bingo turn-in to make it easy, but I like being able to fill in all the slots in my spreadsheet, so there are five things here. Hopefully someone has made it this far down – if so, thank you for reading!
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The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories by Angela Carter (collection)
The titular story is one of the better ones – a re-telling of Bluebeard. Covering the classics of western European fairy tales, this collection features a lot of liberated sex with a 70s feminist lean (publication date: 1979). Girls and beasts are the big theme. There were a few excellent ones and several that left me going “but why?”
The Bride of the Blue Wind by Victoria Goddard
Closer to a novelette, but that gave this story room to get some solid world-building in. Bluebeard again, but with Bluebeard being a djinn sort of character. I loved the trader communities and desert setting and the family dynamic with the wife’s sisters.
Tales of Old Gods & New by Kate MacLeod (collection)
This collection had two specific re-tellings: another “Norse gods in the far future” re-telling which was also a sci-fi survival story, and an African inspired goddess trying to escape the cycle of her story. These were two solid ones, some of the other in the collection I felt were unfinished scribbling thoughts for novel-sized stories.
Hunting Monsters series by S.L. Huang (2 short stories, one novella)
This collection mashed up eastern and western settings and stories, including Red Riding Hood, Beauty & the Beast, the Legend of the White Snake, and Hou Yi the Archer. The main characters of the novella are middle-aged women long past the prime in which their original stories took place and I liked that take a lot. The short stories focus on a daughter and deal with culture clashes and parent-child tensions.
A Cathedral of Myth & Bone by Kat Howard (collection)
The feature in this collection is a novelette of the King Arthur story set on a college campus with grad students who are themselves studying the mythos of King Arthur. Most of the other stories in the collection take inspiration from saints’ lives or myth and folk tale tropes (or the concept of storytelling itself) and play with them in new settings. I found a lot more hits than misses in this collection.

Took an order to this 8-story building in the downtown area of my city. Parking and getting into the building wasn’t too bad, but the elavator would only let me go up to the 4th floor, and the customer was on the 8th floor.
I then tried taking the stairs, only to try to open a door that was locked. After that, I went all the way back down to the first floor. An employee of some sorts at this place asks me who I’m looking for. I tell him, then lets me up to the 8th floor. He also said the the customer told him to let me up there. On the other hand, he didn’t bother to tell me anything about how his building was. 😡😡😡😡 Did he think that the Dasher would think to tell someone “hey, I need to get to the 8th floor”? Did he not realize that the security at his apartment is very unusual?
I would’ve been deactivated if I had said the things I wanted to say to that idiot when I finally handed him his food.

I am a building sub at a school that’s currently under construction. Everyday I’m in a new classroom, some are shiny and new and some still need to be completed. The district director of facilities has decided that as new classrooms are completed and new keys issued-our office cannot get copies. The only people who have copies to the new classrooms are the teachers who work in them and one night custodian. Last week all the teachers in a new part of the building (four classrooms who share the same key) were all absent. We couldn’t get those classrooms open and had to hold class in the commons until maintenance removed the window and let us in. If I am manage to get a door unlocked but we have a lockdown I have no way of securing that classroom. I have reached out to facilities and HR but they haven’t responded. Guess student safety is low on the priority list.

Hello All! Once again I am deeply grateful for the encouragement and response this sub has given me. Covering Ch 2 this time, and I intend to get Ch. 3/4 in one go next time. So without further ado...
So its been over half a year since my last picking up GotM, something just kinda... snaped, and I decided to pursue the "classics" for awhile. But now I'm back to my literary roots and excited to return to Genebakis. (For what its worth, I highly recommend Moby Dick and anything written by Jorge Luis Borges)

Chapter 2:

Epigraph:
Another entry of Call to Shadow. Weirdly enough, it's not formatted in the same way as the Prologue's epigraph. I'm not particularly sure what the significance of this is, an (in universe) earlier draft perhaps? The poem opens by mentioning again that the Moranth were a significant influence in the war. The "spawn" (heh) of "deathly rain and black winged promise" is simple enough to understand given the content of the chapter. I wonder how significant the recurring motif of black-colored birds is: coincidence or a deeper connection?
I don't have much to say about the rest of the poem but to praise how elegantly it sews together the world-building. The timeline of the war shown in the poems/history texts line up, the 12th year is the Year of the Shattered Moon, four years after the alliance was formed in the 8th year, it is such a tiny thing but nice to see a consistent timeline across texts when so many authors could and have screwed these things up. The rest of the poem mostly describes the following text using imagery we have and will see. Once again, consistent yet extremely specific and granular worldbuilding (specifically through consistent epithets for places/things) is always so nice to see, and VERY typical of classical epics (take a shot every time Homer describes the sea as "wine-dark" and your liver will be wine-dark itself).
The chapter itself:
This chapter (FINALLY) takes place on Genebakis, two years after Ch 1 (I find it funny that Steven "Read Harder" Erikson would outright explain to us what is by far the easiest part of this Gordian knot of a book to follow) Speaking of which, while I really like the way the chapter is structured from a reader's experience, I'm going to talk about the events and characters chronologically so I don't have to keep doubling back and forth and checking my (months old) notes. But once again, this chapter has one heck of an opening.
The day opens with Tatersail (The Erikson fantasy naming continues to be on point, although I'm curious where she got it) sleeping with her fwb and definitely nothing more, Calot. (I'm going to skip over the fact she's roughly double his age b/c I'm not really sure how dating works with an extra order of magnitude tacked onto the ages, not even going to note how she twice regards him as "child-like") The two are magically summoned by the (literally?) never sleeping Hairlock, though we don't know anything else about the nature of the summons. They leave for High Fist Dujek Onearm's tent. From various points of banter across this chapter, we note that Tatersail is the commander of a cadre of mages currently low on members, along with Calot and Hairlock, who believes he was passed over for promotion in favor of TS, after the death of Nedurian. (He was)
The 2nd is stationed outside of the city of Pale, the stronger city, which Felisin said fell first. Also, there's a flying city over the... city. Moon's Spawn (hmmm... spawned in a garden perhaps? Or as likely containing a garden itself) keeping the invading force back by sheer weight of its presence, and the presence of you know who. We also learn Malazan had fought MS before, and it had retreated for reasons known only to Emperor Kellanved, reasons he took to his "watery grave". When it had first appeared, it dropped off the group of Tiste Andii mowing down the 5th at Blackdog Forest (once again, we see references to creatures associated w/ both C&A and the TA)
Given this information, it seems Malazan's campaign strategy was to sweep from coast to coast, slowly working its way down the (so I've been informed) continent. (Seriously, who draws a map that shows only 90% of a continent??) Once stopped, Malazan either established an alliance with the Moranth, or leveraged their pre-existing alliance to resume the campaign south of where CB's legions and the CG were stalling them.
Once they reach the tent, they banter with the guard, who tips them off at Tay's presence, and we get our first big hint that sorcerers can sense each other. Whatever Tay's power is, it's really screwed. Or at least, counter to TS's. Once inside, we get our first look at the other two mages. Each is a distinct flavor of creep. Hairlock, (who can perform pseudo-shadow-invisibility) is a sweaty, bald, off-putting wizard who knows more than he should and does not even attempt to hide that fact. Tayschrenn, the ageless seeming head of the Claw after Lassen's "promotion" has a penchant for the melodramatic.
Here too we see the first of Onearm, I noticed that while repeatedly referred to as the High Fist, at least once he is referred to as a High Mage himself. All in all, he seems to be the closest one to sane in the entire chapter, with the possible exception of Calot.
We learn a Claw is in the city, dispatching the mages of Pale, and three more High Mages are on their way. A lot is said about these mages, how Hairlock correctly guesses who they are and why they are present, and what their histories were, but I don't have much to say or speculate on, outside of their apparent presence at the events the Bridgeburners had just returned from at Seven Cities in the prologue. I've noted a few details on it, but aside from guessing that it's important, I don't have much comment. Aside from this, they discuss Moon's Spawn and its mysterious lord.
I'll be honest, I'd only known a handful of things getting into this series, and one of them was whispers of a certain character. A character billed as so epic, they were reason alone to read Malazan. When listing things they like about Malazan, fans will often grow in excitement, naming the battles, the scope, the magic, the depth, its experimentalism, their voices building to a crescendo as they declare "AND HIS NAME ... IS ANOMANDER RAAAAAAAAAAAKE" so I'm excited to see where this goes.
This guy is old, hundreds of millennia old. A master Archmage, to the point where two and a half armies and four High Mages of the Empire are only hopefully enough to scare him off. We also learn that Caladan Brood himself is pretty old, so much so records and legends of both of them are lost and incomplete. The mages all assemble and within the hour, the battle begins.
The scope of the battle is crazy, if a bit hard to grasp from the way it's written. Rake retreats for some reason, after stomping the Malazan forces pretty hard. We get a good look at some of the things magic can achieve in this world, and it has a very sword and sorcery to it. More magic technobabble and names get thrown around. Made a note of it all but nothing to speculate thus far. To my understanding, Warrens are demi-planes filled with different flavors of power but are also pseudo-physical realms through which individuals may travel, via Minecraft Nether space compression rules. How and why that power is accessed and harnessed, what determines the possible effects/uses of a warren's power, what differentiated one warren from another, and similar questions are currently unanswered, this was just spectacle. The Morranth, who are either bug people or have their culture/armor sourced from bugs, go in to raze the city afterward, and we, at last, come to the opening of the chapter.
Also, Calot dies and Hairlocke gets betrayed by someone behind where TS's Cadere was stationed. Here, we see the Bridgeburners, pale from their THREE YEARS underground, come up to the surface. Similarly betrayed, reduced from 15 to 7 after the battle, after years of having their numbers dwindle from cruel and malicious assignments from Lassen.
Here, we meet Wiskeyjack, who seems to be the Commander from the prologue. Even more battle-hardened and cynical if possible. He seems to have some hope or something keeping him going but I don't have enough to guess at what that might be. Next is Kalam, a hardened, enthusiastic killer. We don't see much of him but if he's a surviving Bridgeburner he must have something going on in the background. Next up is Quick Ben, he's got the most going on of all the Bridgeburners in this chapter, enacting the deal with Hairlocke, and accessing "the Warrens closest to Chaos" which seems, to put it charitably, wildly irresponsible. Or as Tattersail puts it, "pure madness. Or Desperation." It's also apparently a facet of Elder Magic, the same (or similar) stuff the Tiste Andii use.
And finally, Sorry, poor put upon Sorry. Theory Time: Sorry is possessed by Hood or a similar deity. Or at the very least, that's what Erickson would have the reader believe at this point in time. He's the "Shadow [which] will overtake your soul" Rigga warned her of, she's "the pawn of a god" that Cotillion alluded to, her presence seems to resemble a divine power to Tattersail (who dismisses the possibility of it being Hood after she considers it briefly) she complains that Quick Ben "kept me away" when Hairlocke didn't die. Quick Ben is terrified of her. If anything, the only thing keeping me from being certain it's Hood, and is possibly something related, is just how many clues point explicitly to it being Hood. How will our heroes, protagonists, characters get out of this? I have a thought, but first...
'Sail returns to her tent, opening the package Quick Ben gives her. It turns out to be Hairlocke, spared death by way of being turned into a puppet. He is, and will be henceforth regarded as, a goofy lil' guy in my estimation at this part of the narrative. The two decide to do a fantasy(er) tarot reading, leading to my final thoughts on he whole Sorry situation.
By cross-referencing the Glossary, it seems the reading centers on Rake, and a random, favorable outcome. Rigga mentions the "Lord spawned in Darkness" who will free her, "though he will know it not." Something is going on with Sorry/Hood and AR will "fix" it, likely as an unintended side effect of whatever centi-millennial morally ambivalent third-party shenanigans he happens to get into in the vicinity of the endgame.
So that's where we're at, things are happening, and no one is saying what those things are. Just, brooding about how momentous and terrifying everything is. Also, Tatersail is Mock's ex... I don't have anything to say about that but, it's sire interesting! It feels good to be reading again (two chapters in lol) and I am definitely invested to see how things unfold!

My 3 y/o has been going to the daycare since he was 18M. No issues at all. When we pick him up, he is always so happy and jolly.
However for the past few weeks, he avoids going to the daycare every morning. Doesn't want to come out of his PJs. Says that he doesn't want to go. Cries. And after a battle of about an hour, finally he agrees. But even after that, he has a long face and long sighs during the drive. The same happened today but as soon as we reached there and they opened the door, he started crying really bad and started running towards the road. He was uncontrollable so I brought him back home. He isn't sick or anything. My hubby was like I should have left him there even if he was crying. But I just couldn't.. He has good friends there. Meets them outside of daycare as well for playdates. So I don't think he is lonely or anything.. When I ask him the reason, he stays silent. I ask several questions- no answers. My sister says that happens because he is too attached to me and I cuddle him a lot. I don't think I cuddle him a lot (nothing wrong in that anyway I guess).. I'm worried thinking if this is a sign of anxiety or something? Or is it just a phase..? How can I help him enjoy his daycare like earlier..? Please advise what you think..
Thanks in advance

If this has been posted before then I apologize, it’s been a bit since I’ve been to this sub. Doing research into Spider Murphy led me to clouds, there’s a few interesting things that go on here, but the biggest to me is how the game purposefully locks you out.
If you don’t know, there has always been a not-so-secret back way into Clouds. It involves going to a different floor and coming in through the window. What’s interesting to me here is, I think this entrance was planned. If you go back to clouds after the mission Automatic Love, and up to a certain point in the game, they “soft lock” you out of clouds. By doing this, they add a fence to the mega building that stops you from dropping down to the window. But then later on in the story, they remove the fence and allow you to get back in.
Most every other glitch that allows you to re-enter an area has been fixed with patches, especially if it involves a missable item. However, not only do they make clouds always semi-available, but they block it off during specific missions. And to clarify I mean they temporarily disable it, but then allow you to use that method of entry later on.
My question is why? Why would they purposefully lock you out of clouds with a semi-secret back door, but then open it later on in the story?
The missable item here is the cocktail stick.
I’m on mobile and can’t post pictures, but if you want to see yourself. Go to the Backdoor at clouds during automatic love and you should see it blocked by a fence. If you go before or after, the fence won’t be there, allowing you to enter.
I also realize that you do go back here later, but when they lock you out is in between those missions. It seems to be a specific time in the story progression.

Little background; I (21F) am a very private person and I really appreciate being alone. I prefer being alone for most of the day(I'm not shy, or socially anxious). My stepfather lives about 30 minutes away and he works one weekend, and is off the next (besides working during the week). My mother stays at his place on his off weekends. She works on monday, wednesday and thursday so she leaves thursday morning and doesn't come home till monday afternoon. I notice that when she is home, I feel trapped, controlled and I hate how I switch moods as soon as she walks in the door. Especially when I can hear by the way the door opens that she is in a bad mood. I feel like I have to entertain her, and that's what I do. Since I was 12 years old, it's been just me and my mom at home. 8pm means coming downstairs and drinking tea with her and watching tv. She usually nods off around 10pm and so we go to bed. That's when I have my private time. So despite already being home alone a lot, I can't wait for "bed-time" so I can just do what I want (within limits; I can't have my lights on, or have any sound coming from my room). This also means that when I am actually home alone I do the things I actually enjoy, like painting, and anything that requires light or sound.
Here's an example; today was my sister's birthday. So at 5pm I drove to my stepdad's place and ate with my parents there. After dinner we went to my sister. I wasn't home until 11:30pm. Usually I have my alone time from 10pm till 2am. So since I wasn't home till 11:30 I was at least 2 hours short on "me-time" despite being home alone the entire afternoon. Now it's 5:30am and I realize that I have done nothing at all and should have gone to sleep. However I was so restless at 2am that I know that wouldn't have worked out. This is not the first time that this has happened. I have skipped entire nights doing nothing but being alone listening to music after full nights.
Is it normal to catch-up on missed "alone time" even if you don't even do anything that brings you joy?

Enclosed is an email I sent to the webmaster of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. I post it here so it can be seen by more people and be discussed. This is a simple proposal, but the main idea behind posting this and enticing discussion about the nature of the issue at question. You will have to read this to understand the discussion itself.
I would like to preface this by stating I do not hold any ill will for police who have determined that their lives are more important than the children they are paid and expected to protect. I do not hate the player. I hate the game. It is not about you, but about the environment in which you operate, and the legal obligations you actually have, and not the legal obligation we all were under the impression you have.
As a final note before the body of the email I sent I would like to say I don’t care about opinion or side of the argument. The facts are the facts and I am simply just getting annoyed at the sheer number of children who are being slaughtered. It is an awful thought to think that it is simply just so annoying now to fail to address it. The fact that it is annoying is horrifying, but honest. Some people in our society have determined that these deaths are acceptable and morally justified.
I fundamentally disagree and think that those people are the absolute epitome of evil. This is obvious to all. There is no question.
So it is up to us to protect ourselves. We must step up. Those charged with our well being are not obligated to press forward in that direction.
Here’s the email. Please discuss.
“Hello. I am an anonymous person who thinks you may have an opportunity to both shift public opinion of your organization and find a greater purpose for all clubs across the country.
I propose that MC members across the US should organize a patrol schedule around all schools in the country.
Since the police are either too inept to address this issue, or are unwilling to support legislative measures that will mitigate the occurrences of school shootings, it seems the protection of our children and the fight to defend the right to bear arms have found themselves at the same moment. We are now at a point where we must consider new options for both.
I suggest a new order of citizen involvement in protecting both our rights and our people. And I believe you are at the junction of being able to preserve both.
You are men and women who will instantly put your lives in the way of danger to avenge, to fight, to enforce, and to expand. I believe these qualities are essential in the current moment.
Our police have shown the inability to protect as a duty, and our legal system has consistently demonstrated they have no obligation to do so.
So I propose a parlay. I believe your qualities can be directed to both defend our children and cement the good in the right to bear arms.
As a parent, I can only imagine the pain of the families of the victims of these senseless acts. And I know you are parents as well. I know you are horrified by every single instance of violence in schools. You are humans just as we are and it would be unthinkable that you are not feeling the same way.
Here it is. Finally. Fully.
I believe you can organize and affect the institution of a patrol schedule, every 15 minutes of every hour that every single school in the US is open.
I believe that these instances of violence would be eradicated with your organized and willful patrols.
It is obvious after this recent mass murder in Nashville that doors can be locked, made of thick glass, and fortified, yet still succumb to the sheer power of the weapons used against them.
It is time for the good guys with the guns to end this. Please. Do what is right. Become the gang we need. Serve the people and save our kids. Save your kids.
This is the moment. This is the time. This is what you are here for. Save us all. Please. You have the power. You have the resources. You are capable. Show us who you are. Who we all are.
You have been summoned by the people. This is your charge. Every parent of every child will be forever in your debt. Save our country. We cannot survive this.
At your feet,
A hopeful man who believes in the i hear any good is you all.
Save one school. Please. For gods sake, please help us.”
Something must change. It must.