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In and wikihow please.
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Mar 8, 2021 19:53
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Please include your picture when you post your story (for archival purposes). That said, these are mainly for your fun/inspiration. I'm just mashing the random article button and grabbing the first interesting thing I see. Oh and I keep weird as hell hours because my schedule is ridiculous right now, bear with me if you request an image. Beezus posted:I'm in. Hit me with a wikihow, please.  magic cactus posted:seems like as good a time as any to throw my hat back in the ring. IN wikihow me pls.  Idle Amalgam posted:In edit: wikihow please  Black Griffon posted:My god, is that—  brotherly posted:In and Wikihow me please  Thranguy posted:In, with a wikihow  Aardvark! posted:in. Give me a wikihow image please  Chairchucker posted:It's me, an rear end in a top hat.  toanoradian posted:Found this just when browsing the subreddit!  I brought my Drake posted:In and wikihow please. 
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Mar 8, 2021 21:10
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in
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Mar 9, 2021 00:21
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Sitting Here posted:The Assholes finally a team for me. in
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Mar 9, 2021 02:19
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I'm in!
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Mar 9, 2021 02:40
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AITJ? Yes. I am the judge.
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Mar 9, 2021 02:44
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Crit for Simply Simon – Siegfried of the Schoolyard -I like that the dragon calls him a potato. And I see why eventually, which fits. -I can see why others said the transition was too quick. I don’t think it was too quick, but I do think if you’d worded it slightly differently it might have been a bit smoother. Even “reappear” might have done it. At least in my opinion. -The voicing is inconsistent. I think the fantasy portion fits with that of a teenager thinking of himself as a hero, but then the explanation of the politics of the school yard sound as if they’re coming from an outside observer with a much more sophisticated vocabulary. But after the break it comes back to a younger descriptive POV with “cool boy stuff.” -Ending is a little predictable and not just because the prompt called for an unhappy ending. I didn’t actually find it unhappy exactly because of course they were never going to end up together. It might have been different if I got the feeling that Siegfried was doing this for Zeynep for a more personal reason instead of his “honor” or perhaps if there was a personal reason that he had this need to defend women. It just needs one more detail connection to make the reader understand his motivation a little more deeply. Otherwise, I have this feeling, that he could fall for any such woman who might have him. Overall it’s got a setting that’s well-established and full of possibility, though from more of a distant lens than that of the highly involved protagonist, and several characters who are just a few more words away from being well-rounded despite the small word count, and I think if this piece got a little more thought about what exactly it wants to say, it could be very powerful.
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Mar 9, 2021 20:01
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My (33M) partner (69M) of the last 12 months turned out not to be who I thought he was 579 words So, before you mention the age gap, I didn’t realise how old he was at first. I met Seth just over a year ago, and we hit it off immediately. I usually have really bad luck with guys, and met so many total jerks who just wanted a one night thing, or who turned out to be catfishes, and even one guy who was legitimately on the run from the police. (Long story, I’ll make a thread about that if there’s interest.) With Seth, though, it was different. We just hit it off instantly, had a lot of interests in common, he got on well with my friends, and even my sister, who has never liked any of my boyfriends. Also, he’s really good at cooking. The problems started two months ago when the Reptoid army invaded Earth. Turns out, Seth is actually a Reptoid advance scout. The first time I saw him in his Reptoid form I just about fainted. The thing is, apart from the whole ‘actually being an advance scout for the army that invaded Earth and subjugated humanity’ thing, Seth has been nothing but honest with me, and I still do really like, maybe even love him. I think he’s the Reptoid I want to grow old with. (Oh, on the old thing – Reptoids have a much longer lifespan, that’s why he’s 69.) He apologised for deceiving me into thinking he was human, and although I was mad at first, I get it, like, there’s a lot of stuff about my work I’m not allowed to tell him, either. We’ve talked about kids, and I’ve always thought that because of who I loved I’d have to adopt, or go some surrogate route or something like that, but it turns out Reptoids reproduce by planting eggs in the belly of their mate. I’m not totally sold on having Reptoid eggs hatch in my belly, but all prospective parents have doubts, right? Besides, we still have the option to adopt if we want. So, we both still really want to make this work, but my sister’s pretty mad. She always finds it harder to forgive men for hurting me, and I love her for it, but I really want her to get along with Seth; they’re the two most important lifeforms in my life, and it sucks not being able to hang out with both of them at the same time. TL;DR: My boyfriend Seth is actually a Reptoid, we still want to make it work but my sister’s pretty mad. EDIT: OK, very clever, you can all stop commenting ‘nice’ now. 2nd EDIT: OK, to those of you telling me that’s a ‘red flag’, and to break up with him now, I’m not going to throw out the perfect relationship just because of one lie. He’s apologised for it, and I understand why he did it, even if I don’t agree with it. 3rd EDIT: I’ve blocked all the xenophobes calling me a ‘race traitor’ or ‘Benedict Arnold’ or any variation on that. We don’t need that negativity, we’re trying to live positively here. 4th EDIT: Thank you to u/IHeartReptoids for letting me know more about the Reptoid spawning process. I don’t think my ribcage could take that kind of trauma, so I’ll definitely hold off at this stage. Maybe we’ll investigate the adoption thing more thoroughly.
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Mar 10, 2021 11:58
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In
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Mar 10, 2021 12:52
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My sparkle plum fairy is sad and its making him grumpy and I don't want him to be sad any more (plz help) 830 words. I have the most scrumptious husband, who I think is better than Jesus and a basket full of fairy dust. Although, thinking about it, fairy dust would probably fall between the little gaps in a basket, and that wouldn’t be very good  My husband has this one issue, which is that he keeps telling me that I’m distracted, and that it’s getting on his nerves, and that I need to get serious. I think he might be the one who's distracting me, actually. For example: We were out at a lovely creek by a parking lot in town. Seeing the ducks swimming in their little line in the water was the highlight of my day. However, Brian (my husband) said that we need to go back to the car so we can get the ice cream in our freezer before it melts (very distracting). We had lots of bread with us, and I gave a loaf to the ducks, and Brian got angry and he said “You really need to grow up.” I am twenty eight and three quarters. I AM grown up. Also, Brian knows I’m grown up because I like to nibble at his naughty bits, the tasty little animal  I asked him about this and he had this idea about me getting a job. He actually said that, if I get a job, I can buy all the bread in the world and feed it to the ducks, if I want to. I think that sounds wonderful. He asked me what I wanted to do as a job, and I said I wanted to be an astronaut, because I think I would be really good at talking to aliens. Well, he didn’t listen at all. He said that, if I’m good at talking, then maybe I should work in a call center. I'm sorry, but that’s not remotely the same (unless it’s a call center for aliens). I think that Brian and I are very different people. And that’s great, because I don’t know how to fix a car at all (and he's got no idea about basic things, like leaving a bowl of milk out for the fairies each night). He’s somebody who works at a very boring factory, where they do the same thing every day: I just don’t think someone like that can appreciate the kind of jobs I’m looking for. I know he must get really excited by picture frames if he does that job in the factory. In fact, I told him we could have loads more picture frames if we lived in a big castle. He just ignored me again, and said it’s not very realistic. I know it’s realistic, because I saw a big castle on the side of the road when my car broke down, and it was very real. There were very real people living in that castle. He saw it, too, when he came to fix my car with a big green jug of whiskey. Last night he said that he doesn't want to see a picture frame again in his whole life. I think it's very sad: He's devoted his whole adult life to picture frames up until now, and he suddenly doesn't like them any more. He keeps working at the factory, and I hope he finds his passion again, but he says he's just going through the motions. He's even gone so far as to say that he never liked picture frames at all, which is horrible. I just want Brian to be happy again, because that’s obviously what’s been wrong with him. I thought the fairies might help me out, because they've been drinking the milk I leave out each night. When I got up one morning, I saw that the fairies had turned into a lovely ginger cat with little white feet. I thought I would let him in and feed him some chicken, because cats are lovely, and because maybe the fairies are saying that a cat is just what Brian needs. Except Brian doesn't want this cat, and I don't think that's wise of him, because the cat is a fairy (and if you are mean to fairies they'll steal any babies you have and replace them with screeching devils that look like those babies). He's still my scrumptious husband, and I love him to bits. I just want a second opinion on this idea I’ve had to make him happy. I was thinking I could surprise him with some of his favourite ice cream, and we could drink whiskey. Then I'd get a picture frame, and I'd wear it so it's just me on the other side. I think that would maybe make him excited about picture frames again. I'm just worried: What if it has the opposite effect? What if it makes him suddenly dislike me, in the same way he suddenly dislikes picture frames? Maybe I should try the cat again. Terrence is a lovely cat :3
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Mar 10, 2021 19:33
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in
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Mar 10, 2021 23:53
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Mar 11, 2021 09:07
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My boyfriend left open jars in all our cupboards and I gave him an allergic reaction with consequences, AITA? 990 Words I (27f) met my boyfriend (26m) (let’s call him Steve) at a medieval renaissance fayre. We were both participating in the longbow trials and just hit it off. He showed me a few things about my draw and when I felt his hand on mine I said, “Your grip is so firm,” (awful flirting, but it’s important later) and he said he does crossfit to keep in shape (more awful flirting, but something was there.) We stuck around after the event, watching the falconry, cheering for jousters and eating food. I love mushrooms and we went to a place doing deep fried mushrooms but he said he couldn’t eat there because of “cross-contamination.” I’d never heard of a mushroom allergy before and asked how bad it was for him, and he said, “it gives me the poops.” (I cringe at “poops” now, use a grown up word, but poops’ll be important later.) We got together and stayed with each other and have been together for three years now, maybe. I don’t know if we can last with him being so angry. Anyway, a few months ago we decided to go back to archery but I couldn’t draw the big bows at the beginning so I started going to the gym as well. This is when the problems started. For health I went to a regular gym, boxercise, spin classes, pilates, and, of course, strength training. I got fitter and fitter, and I have to say I feel better and stronger than ever before. Steve kept up crossfit. At the gym I learned a bit about exercise and started to gently mock him about his crossfit “cult.” This was fine until one night he was making a pasta (carb loading for some event) and couldn’t open the jar of passatta. I took it from him, quite easily, really, despite his protests, and popped the cap right off. I did my usual joking about the wonders of crossfit and didn’t notice but he must have been really pissed. The opening things for him happened a few more times, where I’d open a jar he couldn’t and gently rib him about crossfit, and he’d get angrier and angrier. One night he was making a pepper dish, and using a jar of peppers, and couldn’t open the jar. I asked him to give it to me and he blew up at me saying the reason I liked him in the first place was his strong grip and if he didn’t have that any more why was I sticking around. I apologised, I said it wasn’t a big deal he couldn’t open jars, maybe I just had less slippy fingers (his fingers are very moist.) He refused to hand me the jar, and stormed off, so I had to finish off the meal (that he didn’t even eat) but I did manage to open the jar he slammed down. A few days later I was making something, I don’t remember what, maybe a salad, and went to the cupboard for a jar of olives. The jar was popped open with the cap just sitting loose on top of it. I didn’t know if they were bad, or something like that, and had to throw them away and change our dinner plans. Over the next few weeks already opened jars kept appearing and I would spot Steve standing around smiling, and asking how the meals were going, so of course I knew it was him. It was so incredibly petty, just that I could open the jars and he couldn’t (I don’t know how he managed to open them, I guess something like a special gripper thing, like from a shopping channel, or for the elderly or people with illnesses.) Food was being spoiled so, for petty revenge, I started putting little slices of mushrooms in the sauces I’d make, just to give him “the poops.” Not every night, but when I’d see him hovering around and smiling while I was cooking I’d ask him to get me something, then I’d chop up some mushrooms very small and put them in the stew, or carbonnade, or whatever. He got the shits, every time. I knew he wasn’t too allergic, and he even loved whatever it was I was doing to the food that was new, according to him, but he still got the shits. Anyway, one night it kind of went really bad. His throat started closing up, something he recognised from a previous allergic reaction. I said there must be cross-contamination from mushrooms in the jarred sauce and rushed him to hospital. The doctors didn’t know how to treat him. They did treat him for allergies, but he also told them he was “getting the poops” regularly, so they said it must be something more persistent. They scheduled him for a colonoscopy the next day. Of course, I had to come clean and tell the doctors it wasn’t necessary to shove a camera up his butt. I had been putting mushrooms in his food and he was allergic. But they insisted it could be something else and they had to check. I was terrified what would happen after he got the camera up his butt, what he’d say to me, but they found irregularities. It was something like polyps or growths, not serious straight away, and it normally wouldn’t be an issue until he was in his fifties, but now they’d spotted them he needed to be probed every six months. Of course Steve is talking about the future of our “relationship” and “trust” and is furious that he has to get something stuck up his “poop chute” every six months, but I feel like I’ve maybe prevented a serious illness. Yes, putting the mushrooms in his food was wrong, but he was being really petty too, and it turned out for the best in the end. I think he should focus on that. AITA?
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Mar 11, 2021 09:17
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In + wiki
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Mar 12, 2021 10:44
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Rhymes With Clue posted:In + wiki 
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Mar 12, 2021 18:27
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in and wikihow me
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Mar 13, 2021 04:56
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850 words Archive. Yoruichi fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Mar 13, 2021 06:13
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My Fiance Will Not Be Attending My Wedding 925 Words I know this sounds horrible, but bear with me. I (25F) disinvited my fiancee (23M), we’ll call him Jake, from my wedding. This is truly for our own good. So, a little backstory. We had been dating, on and off, while in college. He was the first serious boyfriend I had ever had. We met in class when I caught him cheating off my bio midterm. I know, that’s terrible, but I guess I was looking for a bad boy, and there he was. Turns out he wasn’t so much a bad boy as he was a guy with a learning disability who was hosed by the system. We worked together to get ourselves through college and we even moved in together during our senior year. That decision was a costly one as my parents did not approve of him at all. First he wasn’t right for me because he was Jewish, then he wasn’t right for me because his height was ‘imposing?’, then they finally landed on “he’s just not good enough for you”. This extended to them cutting me off financially. Not a huge deal as I had a scholarship but it certainly made living more difficult. So, I helped him with his school work, and he helped me make rent. And hey, my cat loved him and still does, and he doesn’t like anybody. Cut to 5 months ago, we’d been living together for years, happy as hell, and he suggested a road trip to Atlantic City. He admitted that it wasn’t what it once was when he was younger, but that it was an important part of his childhood. He doesn't usually get excited about stuff so I was really happy to go. He took me on a tour of all of his favorite pizza places and I did my best to pretend like I could tell the difference between them. When we got the last one, a charming little place called Rocco’s, he sat me down and told me that it was at this pizza place, that his grandfather had proposed to his grandmother. The man I loved was about to ask me what I’d wanted to hear for years. I was so caught up in how I felt however, that I wasn’t paying attention to him. He struggled through the story and fell short of breath as he ramped up to the proposal. When he went to reach for the ring, he passed out and face planted right into his slice of mushroom and pepperoni. And it’s been like this. Every. Step. Of The Way. Pick a caterer? pass out, choose a band? pass out? picking colors, same deal. He’s so psyched about being married to me, but anytime we even broach the idea of the wedding itself, he freaks out. I’m so happy that when we discussed the issue of asking for my parent’s permission we both agreed it was stupid. My father once told me on a phone call that if Jake ever came around asking for something like that, he’d only say yes if Jake could manage to read the first page of Machiavelli’s The Prince, outloud. Anyway, we’ve been to therapy together, and he’s been by himself, but there’s just no way around this. It does make sense, I guess. The last Big Thing like this for him was his Bar Mitzvah and his learning disability made reading all of that Hebrew nearly impossible. It apparently didn’t go well, and he doesn’t like to talk about it. Here’s the deal: I almost hate to admit it because I’m not generally That Way, but I have been thinking about my wedding ever since I was a little girl. It does matter to me, but it seemed like it was only worrying him. So, one day, after we scrubbed his vomit out of the curtains, when I jokingly suggested that maybe we just didn’t need to have a wedding and could just be married, and I saw his face light up, my heart did kind of break. The thing I wanted most was the thing that sent him to panic. Hence, my great idea. I asked him how we would feel if he didn’t have to be at the wedding, but that it could still happen. Naturally, he found the idea to be a bit ridiculous but then he realized that he was able to talk about the idea without face planting into the nachos we were eating at the time. And the more we talked about it, the more engaged he became. Suddenly, he was my partner back! He was able to find a band, a venue, and even did all of the invitation work. He has, in short, become my partner again. We even asked one of our best friends to be his stand-in and he found the whole idea adorable. While I am happy about this, and he is too, my family is incredibly offended. They seem to think this is a terrible red flag. So look, I know this is unconventional, but we feel like it’s what will work for us. My dad insists that him not being present for the first step of our marriage is a sign that deep down, he really doesn’t love me and that he’ll ultimately leave me because he’ll never be comfortable. I don’t know. This is our wedding after all and I can’t help but worry a bit that my judgment is clouded. Am I missing something? Edit: yeah yeah, cat tax, sorry, I forgot, here’s the horrible beast. His name is Catamel and he is actively trying to destroy the world: 
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Mar 13, 2021 06:55
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Crits for New World week. If you want a more in-depth take, just find me on discord. Azza Bamboo’s Vacancy - Assistant Production Operative Run n’ gun I like crap shack once, I’m turning on it as a definitive title of a thing. (She introduces me to Bash, who is built like a tank, and has scars lining his face) ^clunky (She introduces me to Bash, he’s built like a tank, and scars line his face) ^less clunky Gore-store is also fun, you’re pretty good at naming things. (She leads me through a rusted door; it groans. Bash heaves the rusted gate; It whines.) Little heavy handed with the semi-colons and also redundant/lack of interest in how you’re phrasing things. Weird use of emdash that first time. The bone paragraph isn’t reading as nicely as I think you want it to. It’s messy and hard to parse. I don’t know enough about what the kanga rats are or how they look. You spent more time building the world than building them up. (That’s why I say "I will be there tomorrow.") lose ‘that’s why I say’. About ⅔ of the way through and I’m finding little to care about here. Getting a little lost in the blocking of the action. Overall So some mundane poo poo happens early, then there’s a lot of action at the end. Throughout the whole story I couldn’t find much of a reason to root for anyone or to empathize with the characters in your story. Your descriptions of the world are probably what shines through the most here. I did, often, feel like I was there. But, I want a better sense of what these kanga rats are and how they move through space. Noah’s Ocean With No End Digging the vibe. There’s a character named Shaka-Brah. Sorry, think this is gonna be one of those stories where I don’t have much to say because I’m too busy enjoying it. ( Ken’s gut felt like he’d eaten an urchin,) bleh (but you left early, I tried to flag you down, but you took off.”) bleh The midpoint is kinda losing me, there’s suddenly a plot and I’m not really as into it. Lot of passive phrasing, especially toward the end. Overall This started off promising. I liked the world you built and the way you characterize your dudes, but as a story… not so much. Kinda lost my interest when the detective showed up. Felt superfluous at that point. I just wanted to surf with these orangutans Brotherly’s Hemp Bonds Not enjoying the voice here. Worried it’s not going to be consistent. If you’re gonna do the ‘whatever’ thing you gotta start that poo poo in the first graph and really loving commit to it. Yikes on these tenses. So gently caress, is this just a ‘lol apes gme’ story or something? This sorta stuff (I knew I was all sleaze: tall, slicked-back hair, black pinstriped suit.) is getting mighty tiring. Now we’re kinda shifting into a noir voice? What even is this? Who says this “Those dope fiends were too busy loving in vast yurts atop, like, hemp blankets, or whatever.” And also this “Monica said, her voice acidly polite.” “I mean, you are the Expanding Tisser Empire, after all.” grooooooooan Overall This story doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. I’m unclear on your vision or what you were trying to do here. The voice is all over the place, and I’m not entirely sure what the whole tisser thing is even about or how it relates to the overall thrust of the action here. Nae’s A Tiger Can Change His Stripes Between the title being a nod at a cliche and the opening being a pop cultural reference, I’m not exactly starting off with the rosiest of dispositions as I begin reading this. Good sense of place and the writing is clear through the first beat. I do feel like the judge this week specifically said ‘i’m tired of so much talking’ and this story is basically nothing but. That’s actually a pretty big quibble now that I’m paying attention. What are these characters actually doing while they’re talking so much, this reads as pretty flat. (Cheddar’s leg bounced up and down against his seat. Lieutenant Temple cocked her ears at him. .) like that’s something but I didn’t even know they were sitting. Paint the picture a bit more y’know? Meeeeh at the ending. Overall Ok so this wasn’t awful. So far it’s the clearest thing I’ve read but man, so much stinkin chatter. When I read things like this I want to see it in my mind and I’m not getting much by way of movement or blocking that interests me at all. Flerp’s the thin line between now and later Don’t have any run n’ gun for you. Overall As usual, your stuff just kills me. I read this quickly, without stopping, and was hooked. My biggest critique, I guess, is this doesn’t quite feel totally in spirit with the prompt. This feels like it could happen in a boring place with boring people. Why I like it so much is that it addresses the pain of the unknown and even though it’s heavy it wasn’t a total downer to read. Steeltoedsneakers’s New Dialect Run N’ Gun You establish what the devils are, quickly, and effectively. Thank you. Reading this fairly quickly and enjoying it. (The bug knew what she meant. It was a tough situation.) You don’t need either of these sentences. (The night and all Got some gnarly tense shifts in here. What? Overall I liked this a lot, for a bit. I connected with Rayna, she made sense to me, was a character I wanted to root for…. I don’t really get much of anything with the bug, certainly not the ending. It’s kinda nice that it seems to be a happy one but it doesn’t quite feel earned or necessary. I mean, yeah, Rayna figures out a way to cope and be mindful but that is kind of its own reward, you don’t get all that validation from a magical bug wall, that kinda takes some of the power out of it for me. QuoProQuid’s Confessions of a Lion President: I Was a Teenage Content Creator Run n’ Gun Good lord that’s a dumb opening that I like very much. The only way I’m gonna be ok with these ridiculous cat bastardizations is if you keep them going for the whole story. OK, so this president is starting to seem kinda familiar in places… (The vice president pursed his lips. “Indeed,” he said dryly. ) biggest laugh out of me this week so far. (“Oh, there you go again you go again, yucking our president’s yum,”) woops Oh goodness, this ending. Overall I’m going to bat for this story. You committed to something incredibly silly and you didn’t let up. It got laughs out of me. Thranguy’s Phase Changes Run N’ Gun Opening reads like it wants to be a hook, but it doesn’t feel very hooky. What even is that second beat? OK, I’m following enoug now and I generally like these kinds of stories, glimpses at periods in time and what have you and you’re doing a pretty decent job of it. The connective tissue of training is about to run out though, curious to see what’s next. Liking the wayward quality of the protag, liking less this last minute introduction of a new character. Not entirely sure what happened at the end there but it still feels somewhat satisfying. Overall Aptly titled story. You handle these various scenes well and Rhyme is very well characterized. It does feel like this would have been better suited for a novel. I wanted to see more of each beat, which is a good thing but they did somehow feel a little incomplete as well. Well done though, this was a nice read. Antivehicular’s A Day For Black Salt Run N’ Gun Well this is certainly grotesque and uncomfortable. Kinda losing interest in the chemistry part of all this, but that might because I’m not a very bright person. OK, this is kinda above my station, comprehension wise. Overall I didn’t understand much of what was going on and why. To quote my grandfather at the movies ‘who’s the goody and who’s the baddy?’ I’m not entirely sure if the deeds here are sinister or somehow virtuous in line with the universes rules. The prose is nice and it’s still a pleasant read but I don’t quite know what to take away from this. a friendly penguin’s Spy Walks into a Bar Run N’ Gun That whole first beat felt all too real. Well done. I’m confused by the action in the bar. Yeah, and I think because I didn’t get it early, I’m not quite following what’s going on as the story continues. Overall The prose is slick and efficient and the opening is great but it kinda loses interest for me as it pushes on. I can’t quite tell what Talik is doing or why he’s doing it. sebmojo’s You don’t have to be, but it helps. Run N’ Gun Solid opening. But then, I don’t know. You kind of meander around a bit with a whole bunch of explanation and aren’t really getting to the story. And as this goes along, it still isn’t much of a story. But by golly, it’s still a fun read. Overall Yeah, the voice of this is strong enough to carry it through, and the ending does bring home some closure and a bit of a twist on what’s going on. It’s solid enough. Baneling Butts’s The Killers Run N’ Gun Starting the story off with a cold conversation is a bold choice and it’s not doing you many favors here. The back and forth between the protag and the grandma isn’t doing much for me and I don’t care enough about what I’m reading. Lots of adjectives you don’t need. I don’t care about these people. Why is this so procedural? Overall I kept glazing over as I was reading this and that’s a problem give as there’s all of this whacky poo poo in it that should be pretty attention-grabbing. I just never found myself engaged in any of what was going on here. Sperglord Firecock’s Bat Mission Run N’ Gun Goodness, why did this story have to follow the one I just read in my random order? It’s suffering from the same problems of things just being and then and then and then and you’re not giving me any reason to care at all. This character reminds me of Samus, in that she does cool spacey things and I don’t know anything else about her. Overall I’ve obviously seen you swing better than this, the lack of investment is an issue here though. Try to treat your characters as special dudes as opposed to vehicles for your story. Hell, look at what sebmojo did this week, there wasn’t even a story, just a pretty well voiced character and that got him an HM. crabrock’s Forever Young Run N’ Gun Getting Dorian Gray vibes early on but this the opening is more flowery than it needs to be. Once The Game gets going and she’s asking questions though, this becomes an easy read for me. The sudden violence was a bit jarring. The catharsis at the end was as well. Overall It seems like you wrote this story backward. Not sure if you did though. I like working toward that ending and having it feel poignant. At the same time, though I appreciate that you have somewhat of a… minor relief, it isn’t exactly earned and we don’t know what Annie does or doesn’t deserve here. Can’t tell if this is a place of judgement or whathaveyou. But anyway, it’s a complex premise that’s handled well and the story is a gripping read.
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Mar 13, 2021 08:10
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Obliterati posted:
 JUDGEMENTNeither of these stories really grabbed me. Some cabal you are wtf Sitting Here wrote a story where she clearly did not give a gently caress and she didn't give a gently caress hard. Good opening that actually sells me on this vibe, even though the genericness of it was a bit overplayed. Extra points for top tier judge pandering: inexplicable damage to astronomical objects. Doesn't outstay its welcome. Sebmojo wrote me a story where a bullet is shot directly into another bullet and somehow did not make this mad enough. Some lovely turns of phrase and all that but this story feels both too generic and too specific at the same time, if that makes any sense? Lots of fun strong language about this relationship and I'll steal it later, but if you asked me who these folk are or where they are or why they're shooting each other or what decade it is I got no clue. The win goes to Sitting Here by a hair. I... liked the shootout that begins with one of the revolvers reaching escape velocity because gently caress this? Give us more of the not-giving-one-gently caress voice imo
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Mar 13, 2021 09:17
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Mercedes posted:
AUDIO RECAPI am pleased to announce that Mercedes, I, and AN UNEXPECTED GUEST did not hate your stories this week.
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Mar 13, 2021 09:23
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THUNDERDOME WEEK QUATRO QUATRO CINCO VALENTINE EXTRAVANGANZA 
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Signups are closed If you received a wikihow pic, please include that in your story post when you post. If you already posted and you didn't do this, don't edit your post! Just remember for next time. QuoProQuid posted:in and wikihow me  (Sorry for the delay QPQ, my weird schedule strikes again)
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Mar 13, 2021 11:38
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My boyfriend lied about not being a dark magician but I had to violate his privacy to prove it. 830 words I (25F) met my boyfriend (27M) about a year ago through some mutual friends at a bar crawl. I was immediately taken in by him; he had that tall, dark and handsome thing going on, and he always dressed so smartly. We hit it off right away and started seeing each other regularly afterward. A bit of background on me: I consider myself to be a very open-minded person, but I expect my partners to be up front with me when I ask them if they practice magic or any magical arts. Which is fine, I just want to know what I’m getting myself into when I start dating someone. So on my third date with this guy, I asked if he had any interest in magic. He said no and insisted that he’d take up taxidermy before he pursued magic. I believed him. We’d been dating for about six months when we decided we were ready to move in together. At first, everything was great. Our living habits seemed really similar. He was enthusiastic about decorating the place. We both love antiques, so that’s the aesthetic we went with in the apartment. It quickly became apparent though that we had very different tastes in antiques. He only owned old books. So many old books. I asked if he’d consider keeping some in storage since our apartment wasn’t very big, but he insisted they were too delicate to survive in some offsite facility. So we just put floor to ceiling bookshelves on every inch of wall to accommodate them. He said I shouldn’t touch them or they might fall apart. They didn’t bother me until I walked into the living room one morning and found that some of his books were leaking. I found trails of tacky, dark brown ooze all over the carpet. I asked him about it and he said that’s normal for books that old. I told him I’d never seen an old book leak before, and he said that’s because I’d never been to Moldova. A couple of weeks ago, he said he wanted to have some friends over, which I said was fine with me. I took maybe a fifteen minute nap, but when I woke up and asked him when his friends were dropping by, he said they’d already come and gone. As he was telling me this, I noticed he was absolutely filthy. Just covered in gunk. There was a really big stain on his shirt that he said was jam, but I’m pretty sure it was blood. The apartment smelled like rotting fish, my best skillet was covered in some strange white powder, and the package of novelty birthday candles I kept in a drawer in the kitchen were gone. From that day forward, I regularly woke up in the middle of the night to a sound like an army of rats skittering in the walls. I asked him about that noise one afternoon and he said I was eating too much gluten, and that I should try moon bathing to help me with my paranoid delusions. After that, things got really intense. Whenever he was home, the mood in the apartment was just inexplicably foreboding. Towers of boxes started appearing at our front door. Boxes from places like “Yoccult Boyz” and “Dark Stuff Inc.” He said he’d just ordered some capes. But then I logged into Amazon and saw he’d bought a black stone obelisk on the account we share and returned it because it “wasn’t charged with dark energy and thought it would be 12 feet tall, not 12 inches.” At that point, I was pretty sure he was a dark wizard and lying to me about it. I’m not proud of what I did next. I was at my wit’s end and I needed proof that he couldn’t refute. Yesterday, I logged into his email account and, sure enough, I found dozens of threads from different dark magic groups, animal sacrifice clubs, and some guy named Ron trying to sell my boyfriend a “certified fresh satyr wang.” I confronted him last night after he got home from work and told him what I’d found. He got so upset with me. He said it was a gross violation of his privacy, that I’d totally broken his trust. I said he’d done the same to me by lying in the first place about being a wizard. I told him I don’t care if he’s into magic poo poo, I just want him to be up front about it. Then he unhinged his jaw and a bunch of spiders crawled out of his mouth, which felt really passive aggressive to me. At this point, I don’t think our relationship is salvageable, but AITA for looking at my BF’s emails to prove he’s a wizard? EDIT: I’m going to be slow to reply to comments for a while since I only have my phone now. He turned my laptop into a bag of snakes.
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Mar 13, 2021 18:26
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AITA for throwing out all of my dragon’s gross stuff? Word count: 756 My (18F) dragon (Ugh, he wouldn’t tell me his age. That’s another issue we’re having that I’ll save for later.) and I just moved in together a few months ago and it’s taking some getting used to. Not every royal is suited to life with a dragon, despite it being a threat we all face. I know that my dragon thinks this is a forever situation, that I’m now part of his hoard which he’ll fight to protect so that he can gaze at my shining beauty (It never stops being romantic, does it?) and I’m okay with that. But just because I’m part of his collection doesn’t mean that I have to sit around and give up who I am. I want this to be a formative time in my life when I can really focus on myself for once, you know? It’ll also make for perfect dinner conversation. So I started exploring our caves but I kept tripping over all of his other treasures. It was such a mess! (Bachelors, right?) I decided to do him a favor and tidy up his vast riches. I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of him based on the trash I’ll get to in a moment. My dragon’s no slouch. He’s got sizable collections of precious jewels, beautifully worked gold and robust armor. All very heavy and difficult to arrange just right. Have you ever tried making a wall of halberds look pleasing to the eye? It’s not easy. He even has a pile of magical items. I’ve learned not to touch those after my very favorite pair of shoes transformed into tentacles! This life is full of unexpected dangers and not every royal can do it. It takes a lot of personal strength and fortitude to get up every day and face these challenges. Sometimes I can’t do much more than dust. But here I am, still trying. Recently, I found some not great stuff in our caves. First it was just bones. I thought they might have been leftover knights the dragon had eaten, though he’s usually well-mannered enough to leave those outside. But then I started finding bones inside fancy boxes too. Usually skulls, sometimes a hand and even pouches of teeth! (I’m sorry, I know that’s gross, but I need you to understand what I’m dealing with!) I’m not squeamish so the bones didn’t bother me but these boxes would be much better used to display some of the more choice pieces in my dragon’s collection. I tossed the bones in a corner to remove later. But it went beyond bones! I found a bloody shroud that I immediately threw out. Then I uncovered a large piece of wood also with blood on it and full of splinters. I pricked myself at least five times hauling it outside. No wonder there’s blood all over everything. I was just gathering up a pile of nails and cups and girdles when my dragon barreled into the cave and blew a fireball right at me. I’m not hurt, thank goodness but I was a little surprised. Here I am keeping his place in order, practically breaking my back for a home that I won’t even live in come next year, and this is how he reacts? Apparently a bunch of monks and pilgrims are lined up outside and this upsets him. Something about if he eats them there will be a holy war on his doorstep. But he has no problem eating literal knights? Then he starts in on how I shouldn’t throw his things out. Yet he didn’t have any problems when I threw out his molted skin. You can see that his logic doesn’t make any sense and I told him so. Then he became the biggest hypocrite in the world and he threw me out! Before I could convince him to let me back in, the religious people erected a glass box and locked me inside with the disgusting shroud and the bloody two-by-four. They keep prostrating and mumbling things I can’t hear. They’re treating me like some sort of statue. It hurts my feelings for them to treat me like this. I’m a real person, not some sort of idol to be gawked at. So tell me, fellow nobles, what do I do now? Was I wrong for throwing out old junk that’s only valuable to people with a vow of poverty? How do I get out of this box? And how do I get my dragon to take me back?
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Mar 13, 2021 20:00
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How to convince my ex-girlfriend's boyfriend to sleep with us? Word count: 977 No, this isn't a sex/poly thing. I'd been dating my girlfriend (23f), who I'll call Stacey, since we met while larping two years ago. After university, she moved back in with her mum and her mum's boyfriend. Though they seemed cool, Stacey never invited me over to their house. It wasn't a big deal at first but as we became more serious, I got more curious. I told her I didn't care if her family were hoarders or whatever, I wanted to see where she lived. She told me not to worry and that it was just easier to hang out at my flat. After a while she refused to talk about it. I was going crazy (Maybe they were nudists! Maybe they had a weird bone collection!) so I just had to find out. I did a little stalking to find her address. When I showed up, her mum, who I'll call Betty (40f), answered the door and graciously welcomed me in. Stacey was pissed but got over it as I'd brought her favourite boxed wine. We all spent a lovely day together and everything seemed super normal. However, after dinner Stacey was keen to go back to my place. We'd both been drinking a lot so I asked if I could stay over instead. Betty and her boyfriend had no problem with that but Stacey clearly did. When we went to bed, I found out why. It turns out Stacey's family sleeps together in one huge bed in a heap of blankets and pillows, like a big rat nest. Obviously this creeped me out and I wanted to sleep on the couch, but Stacey got all defensive. She said she "can't even deal" with my judginess and that's why she didn't want to tell me earlier. She said it was important to her culture (she's white??) and if I didn't want to sleep with her family our relationship wouldn't work out long-term. Betty and her boyfriend encouraged me to give it a go (not in a creepy way). I really loved Stacey and thought how bad could one night be, so I gave in. I curled up on the edge of the bed, trying not to touch anyone but my girlfriend, but in the morning, I woke up and found I was spooning her mum! I was so embarrassed that I tried to leave right away, but Betty came downstairs before I could go. I could barely look her in the eyes as I apologised. She said it was fine as she believes sleeping together "aligns our energies" and was happy that I was now more in tune with the family. She made me feel better; I guess the energy thing worked. I kept in contact with Betty, texting each other memes and links and stuff. After about a year of this, we realised we'd fallen in love. In the meantime, Stacey seemed happy that we got on so well, though she still preferred spending the night at my flat (easier to have sexy times). I felt guilty for drifting away from her, so Betty and I decided to break up with our partners. Stacey was devastated and Betty tried to comfort her as mums do, but obviously Stacey became furious with her once she found out that we were together. They had a huge row and Betty kicked her out after Stacey called her a c**t. That broke Betty's heart as her and Stacey had always been super close. Things were good for a few months. I moved in with Betty since she was lonely and we enjoyed having the big bed to ourselves (wink). But one day Stacey showed up in tears. She was pregnant… and I was the father! She admitted to going off her pills as a last-ditch attempt to save our relationship, which is crazy as she knows I'm childfree. However, she only found out now that it had worked and wanted to reconcile with us (mostly her mum) so we could support her pregnancy. I was shocked, to say the least. I insisted on a paternity test, especially after I found out she'd gotten back together with an ex, but the kid was mine. Betty was thrilled to be a granny so when Stacey and her ex, who I'll call Chad (24m), lost their jobs due to covid, she basically begged them to stay with us. I was against this plan but as Betty pointed out, it's her house. Stacey was swayed by the idea of free babysitting and I warmed to the idea of meeting my biological son, so she, Chad, and Junior (0m) moved in. I was surprised Chad hadn't dumped her until Betty explained that he always wanted kids but was unable to after a horse-related accident. Stacey and Junior started sleeping with us of course (don't DM me, the baby chiropractor says it's fine). However, Chad rudely refuses and sleeps on the couch. This makes Betty sad as she'd like to "align" with her son-in-law, and it makes Stacey sad as she wants him to bond more with Junior and her mum. Junior and I don't care either way, but Betty has asked me to help convince Chad to sleep with us. I tried by telling him that sleeping together was warm and cozy and easy to get used to, but he just rolled his eyes at me as usual. I'm at a loss. Tldr: what arguments would you use to convince someone to sleep with his girlfriend, child, mother-in-law, and girlfriend's ex-boyfriend (non-sexually)? Update: your suggestions worked, thanks Reddit! (Haters, please open your minds, we're not that weird). Chad and I are getting along better after a few accidental cuddles in bed, but he's also a lot closer with Betty now and I'm jealous of the attention she's been giving him. Help??
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Mar 14, 2021 10:11
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My (25M) wife (27F) won’t stop buying CPR dummies and I want a divorce 897 words We were talking about getting pregnant like it would be a sitcom, with pancake breakfasts and laugh tracks and all that poo poo. Except one day she came downstairs and said, do you know how to do the Heimlich? And I said, I saw a video one time in health class and it seems pretty easy. And my wife, let’s call her Melissa, she said, no, we need to learn, kids choke all the time. So okay, that was fine, I said she could sign up for a parenting class, and I’d go with her. She didn’t. Choking turned into drowning which turned into full blown heart attacks, and she registered for CPR training instead. She didn’t miss a single class, each night at the YMCA in one of those little rooms they have for local teachers with the beige walls and gray carpets. She came home at night and practiced on me, which was kind of fun at first, her arms pinning me down, her long hair brushing my face. She bought the first dummy a week after she got certified. It showed up in a big box coiled in bubble wrap and I said, what the hell is that? And she was like, it’s a CPR dummy, so I can practice. She took it out, this toddler-sized plastic thing with a gaping mouth, just the chest and face, brown hair and brown eyes, and she put it on the floor and went through the whole routine. The next dummy came a few days later. This time, it was a man. I was like, what the hell, dude, why do you need an adult dummy? And she said, because adults need CPR too, what if your heart stops? I was like, let me die then, idiot. She didn’t think it was funny. She practiced, switching back and forth, and it was really weird watching me and my future baby dying there on the floor, and my wife trying to save us, humming that Bee Gees song the whole time. That wasn’t so bad, even though I came home every day from the vet clinic tired and smelling like dog with my feet hurting and my head full of feline abscesses and rabbit breath and all I wanted to do was zone out, but instead she got another dummy, this time an older woman. She said, it’s your mom, you know she has high blood pressure. The next day, an older man appeared: her father, featureless and bland. I begged her to stop. I was like, you’re ready, you got this. I thought about babies, and everything we’d need, diapers and onesies and changing pads and wipes, and all she could do was buy another dummy, this time her cousin, the one with diabetes. I pleaded with her, and she got another, her older brother, the marathon runner. She stacked them on the floor next to our bed, and at night her alarm would blare, and she’d jump up half-awake and start doing compressions, ah ah ah ah staying alive staying alive, sealing her lips to their rubber faces, and I’d shove my pillow over my head and try to pretend like she didn’t exist. I don’t know what to do. She took a leave of absence from her accounting firm. I found another dummy on the kitchen table, that one looked like an old man, maybe an uncle. Something was very wrong, I was scared for her, and no matter how many times I told her I couldn’t handle the dummies, or the song, or the CPR, she kept getting more. I wanted to go to the movies and have sex and spend nights out to dinner with friends before we got pregnant and the baby came to end all that—but she said she couldn’t leave the house, who would save the dummies when their hearts gave out? At the clinic, I spent my days dealing with sick, poorly trained animals, consoling their distraught owners, and doing my best to remain a human—but at home, my wife kept pressing her lips to gape-mouth things, over and over again. I made mistakes. I mixed up the medicine for a parakeet with renal issues and a Doberman with gum disease. Sometimes, on my breaks, I caught myself humming and singing a little: ah ah ah ah staying alive staying alive. I hated that song so much, it made me want to crawl into the kennels and let the dogs lick my face to pieces. Yesterday was the end. I got home and there were more, maybe five new ones, I think she got them from the medical supply store over near the Buck Hotel. She ran between them, humming, singing, ah ah ah ah, blowing, compressing, and she grinned at me, said, look babe, I can save everyone. I turned around and left. I went to my mom’s house and cried and tried to explain, but she didn’t understand, she said, hon, she wants to protect the family. I feel like I’m losing it. I want a divorce. I want to leave her, because I can’t spend another second near those things, with that song in my head, but I’m afraid that something terrible will happen, and I don’t know what to do. What can I do? I want my wife back.
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Mar 14, 2021 13:39
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I(26M) have just gotten out of a three year relationship with my future self(30M) which I now apparently have to restart from the other side in order to avoid the total collapse of the space-time continuum. AITA for wanting to sever and destroy my time machine instead? I invented my time machine five years ago. It was a modest thing, build out of a broken dorm refrigerator that I used for pickling. I've always loved pickles. Dill, Extra Sour, Spicy, Garlic. Twenty kinds of Kimchi. Everything other than that abomination and pretender to the category, the so-called Bread And Butter pickle. But as I grew I was unsatisfied with every commercial variety, and I was unfortunate enough to be living in a part of the country without much of a local pickle culture. So I did my own pickling, working that wonderful alchemy with acid brine and time. Time was the key, of course. A quick pickle is barely worth the name. You need time for the complex flavor of a proper pickle, and I inevitably did not set in enough jars at a time. So I would frequently find myself with jars that would take weeks to mature, months to really peak, when I wanted to eat a pickle right then. Hence, a time machine. I followed all the rules, took every caution. I never retrieved a jar before I had made it. Even when I started selling a few jars, even as demand grew to where that small time machine became the bottleneck in my production. Things were going well, then. I hooked up with the food delivery services and had dozens of customers a day. That's when I made my mistake. I built a bigger time machine, and that's when he came into my life. Myself, from three years in the future. I hadn't changed much at all. Things were great at first. I mean, we had a lot in common, of course. He was vague about why he went into the machine, which should have been a red flag. We didn't know how to reverse the direction and send him forward, so we were sort of stuck with each other. I hadn't really thought much about you know, my sexuality before, but it turns out I've got to be at least a little bi. We didn't even have to get each other drunk to make it happen the first time. So that was how it went for more than two years. I thought I was happy, and I thought the other me was too, but he got more distant as time went on. Got downright guarded and sullen as we got into the third year. We'd fight. It didn't help that money was getting tight. Demand for pickles was flagging, and the new flavor concepts we came up with weren't going over well. He'd go on long trips, always coming back while I was out of the house. Which brings us to yesterday, when he left me. He says he wants someone more mature, and so he's going off to Indiana to shack up with the me from thirty years in the future.(56M) He's got a cybernetic left eye and has a whole wasteland survivor look going, leather and studs and a big knife on his belt. And the other thing is that he looks uncannily like my father. You know, apart from the cybernetic eye. Which is creepy in and of itself, but also I've never known a thing about my dad's family and he left me and mom when I was eight and I haven't seen him since, so there's this outside chance that there's some kind of really messed up Heinlein thing going on. So anyway it's like two weeks from the day that I'm supposed to get in the time machine and set it for three years ago and start the whole thing over again from the other side, but I don't think I want to. The physics I know aren't completely clear, but I'd say there's at least a seventy percent chance of the entire time-space continuum collapsing in on itself if I don't though. What should I do? Tl;dr: AITA or am I the rear end in a top hat?
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Mar 14, 2021 20:49
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My (38F) husband (34M) is jealous of my brother (38M) and it’s causing strife 992 words And it’s not because my brother is around so much. Zeke doesn’t even have to be around when it happens. It starts with something simple. Like, Roger and I will be driving somewhere, a song comes on the radio. I turn it up and Roger says, “Oh, is that like your song? You and your soul mate?” I mean, what am I supposed to say? I could be like, “Who are you talking about anyway?” but I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work. Of course he means Zeke. Having a song implies something that’s just not there. my brother and I share musical tastes, except for Rush. We don’t have a “song” and Roger knows it. That implies a romantic element that just does not exist. Roger and I don’t have a song either. We never did. Why does he think that’s a thing? Or I’ll want to see a movie, and it’s not one Roger wants to see. If I went with a girl friend there’d be no issue, but if I go with my brother? Roger gets all scratchy. It’s not like it’s a date. Okay, “brother” is not entirely accurate. It’s complicated. His father and my mother got together when we were 11. There are good reasons they were both single parents up until that time. But the relationship is definitely a sibling one, nothing more. At that age I wanted three things I knew I wasn’t going to get. I wanted to be a boy, I wanted a horse--and yes, I realize I was a little inconsistent there--and I wanted a brother. And then there was Z, filling that one need perfectly, and we went on from there, living as siblings from age 11 to age 18, putting up with our parents’ individual and collective insanity, and getting into and out of jams as a team. Try to explain this to Roger and he’s all, “Oh, so Z completes you, maybe you should have married him! No blood relationship, no legal relationship, you could have.” Ewww. He’s my brother. But in a sense Roger is right, at least that Z and I complement each other. Like, together we would have made one hell of a baseball player. I was afraid to catch the ball, and bad and wild at throwing it, but put a bat in my hands and I was lethal. The outfield did not back up when I came to the plate. Also, I led our league in stolen bases. Z was not a great hitter, but he could catch the ball and throw it fast, hard, and dead accurate. We each tried to coach the other but these seemed to be innate gifts that did not transfer. And this is a thing I can’t explain to Roger, one of many, because of the flak I get if I mention my brother at all. And if I don’t mention him then I get accused of being secretive. I’m not secretive! Rather than sneak around and pretend I am going somewhere with a girlfriend when really I would be hanging out with Z, I invite him over. My daughters adore him. I had them close together, 14 months apart, to give them the chance to grow up with the kind of close relationship Z and I have. I’ve never told Roger that’s why, maybe he intuited it, maybe not. I have to be careful not to ever call Z by any of the myriad nicknames I used when we were kids, even though he still calls me by one. Z and I also avoid talking about those times that were hell to go through but make good stories. Like when we spent almost 20 hours scrubbing soot from the side of the house, doing many loads of laundry, or rather one load, over and over, and raiding our piggy banks to replace the things that got destroyed or used up--a bottle of detergent, several brushes, the gas can that exploded, and the tarp we used to smother the fire once we realized that spraying it with water just spread it, and all this on a very strict time limit because we didn’t know when our parents would be back. And they never suspected a thing, not even to wonder why laundry that was hung out on Friday had still not dried by Monday. Okay, that’s not a story I want my girls to hear, at least not just yet. But the point is that we can’t share these stories at all or Roger will feel left out, and will get all sulky and give me a bad time after Z leaves. I could point out to Roger that Z is not completely sold on him, either, but accepts him because I do, even though Z thinks it’s strange that I married a cop. We didn’t do things that would attract the cops. When Z’s dad just didn’t show up one day we didn’t call them because what were they gonna do, go and look for him? My mom was like, either he’ll come back, or he won’t. Nothing the police can solve. Best thing is that cops never show up at your door at all. A marriage counselor would probably tell me that I chose Roger and I need to choose Roger again, and put Z aside. Put my husband first. So Roger gets what he wants, and I lose a brother. I know that whatever happens in my life I will always have Z’s back, and he’ll always have mine. I wish I felt like that about Roger, but I’m just not sure. Sometimes it seems like Roger is never on my side. It’s not like Z is disruptive, and even if he was, I would put up with Roger’s crazy relatives. Why can’t he put up with mine?
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Mar 14, 2021 21:55
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AITA for hiring a hitman to kill my wife's birds? 739 words A few months ago my wife and I moved into my parents’ old house. No one had lived there for years, and even after the contractors got the place livable, there was a pretty big mouse problem. I asked my wife if she wanted to get a cat and she said “no, I’m allergic, let’s get a bird instead.” I’ve never had birds before but she sounded like she knew what she was talking about so I said OK. I thought we were going to get a cockatiel or a budgie or something but she just looked at me like I’m stupid and told me those weren’t big enough to catch mice. So we adopted an owl. I didn’t know you could do that, I didn’t think they were pets, but she had this guy with a van come visit us. In the back of the van he had all kinds of birds: owls, hawks, eagles, even what I think was a vulture. It smelled terrible. My wife picked out a big mean-looking owl, and she made a little home for it in our unfinished attic. I thought it was just going to fly away, since the paneling had rotted and there was a big hole where it could just fly away, but my wife said “it’s going to know where its bread is buttered.” Which I thought was weird, because owls don’t eat bread. The results were… mixed. I mean, my wife found some mouse skeletons in the attic, but we were also finding owl poo poo basically everywhere. And there were still mice. My wife said that the issue was that we didn’t have enough birds and we should get some more, so she called her bird hookup again. I asked her what we were going to do about the poop, and she told me to just do some research if it bothered me so much, but I couldn’t find anything online. (If you guys know anything about litter box training for birds, please let me know!) Anyway, she got a pair of red-tailed hawks, and they also moved into our attic. The birds started fighting in the middle of the night and just making super loud sounds. I don’t think I was sleeping more than an hour a night, but my wife was just sleeping soundly through all of it. She told me to get some earplugs and that worked until one day I was woken up by a vulture landing on my chin. I asked my wife when we got a vulture and she said there were still mice so we had to adopt some more birds. Around this time the whole house started to smell like a barn, and I was spending at least thirty minutes a day picking feathers out of the carpet. I told my wife I couldn’t do this anymore and the birds had to go, and she asked if I’d rather have mice, and I said yeah would rather have mice, and she said that I didn’t respect the birds as members of our family and that it was really immature of me. So that got me mad, and I invited a bunch of our friends over for dinner to see if they would talk sense into her. But they didn’t, they just ran around the house taking pictures of the birds sitting on bookcases or globes or poo poo like that. Then later I was smoking a cigarette in the yard and one of my buddies bummed a smoke, and he said he knew a game hunter who would love to hunt some birds of prey. He told me to think about it. Anyway, I called him last night and gave him the go-ahead, and I spent all this time thinking about what I’d tell my wife about the gunshots, dead birds, etc. But then I came home early to try to do some damage control and I found my wife buck-naked, loving the hunter guy on the living room rug, while like ten birds perched on the mantle, looking down on them. I didn’t know what to say so I just asked why the birds were still alive and they both told me to get out. And well, reddit, what do you think I should do? I hear that cooking with Teflon is bad for birds so I’m thinking of trying that next.
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Mar 14, 2021 23:15
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I told him it’s either me or the car, AITA? 1000 words My husband, Sam, grew up a pedestrian: walking to school, trudging home from the grocery store ladened with plastic bags hanging from each arm, choosing extracurricular activities based on their proximity to his house. In high school he got a job at the mechanic on the corner of his block and spent a summer learning to fix up cars. Some guy came in with a busted up Camaro, but balked at the price it’d take to fix it up. He stormed out and shouted back “Scrap it!” to my husband. Instead, Sam spent every spare hour fixing it up. He even got a buddy to give it a new paint job: a deep honey yellow with a thick black racing stripe. After that he drove everywhere. He’d give friends rides to school, load up with heavy items at Costco, even applied to colleges away from his hometown. Needless to say, he loves that car. And I loved it too, initially. It was the car that caused me to do a double take that spring morning freshman year of college, not the long-haired hunk. Him I noticed shortly after, sitting casually on the hood of his machine reading Asimov. We went on a few dates before I told him I wasn't ready to head home for the night. He drove us out to the cliffs overlooking the city, and I lost my virginity in the back seat. In our first two years of dating, I think we had sex in that car more than each other's beds. Afterwards, we'd cuddle on the sticky leather seats, our naked bodies hidden by the fogged-up windows, the broken radio randomly changing stations. Even after college, when we were past the ripping-our-clothes-off-of-each-other stage, we'd still gently caress in the car once every few months. Call me a sucker for sappy love songs, but sometimes that busted radio would turn on and give me a horny kind of nostalgia and I'd tell him to forget about the bank, drive us to the nearest overlook or abandoned parking garage and we'd relive those early days. We got married, had two kids, everything seemed fine. He opened up his own mechanic business, and even though he could have easily afforded a nicer car, he wouldn't even entertain the idea of driving anything else. And I understood that even though the window rattled with every bump, the springs in the seat cushion stabbed you in the back, and that drat radio would never stay on a single station for more than 30 seconds, expecting him to give it up would have been cruel. Until one day when I came home early from a business trip. I thought I'd surprise him, maybe slip in some hanky panky before the kids got home, you know how it is. But when I snuck in the house I heard my husband talking to somebody. I thought it was kind of strange, since my husband didn't really have many friends outside of the couples I'd invite over or parents of ours kids' friends. And I know it was wrong but I was just so curious, so I leaned up against the wall outside the garage and eavesdropped for a few minutes. He was laughing and joking with somebody about very private situations involving him and me, things I hadn't told another living soul. I couldn't really make out the other person's voice, and from the personal nature of the conversation my anger turned to jealousy. I couldn't take it any longer and stormed into the garage ready to knock some homewrecking tart's teeth out. Instead I see my husband's car sitting up, legs crossed, leaning it's head back against our boxes of Halloween decorations. It was a loving transformer. I yelled "what the gently caress?!" and my startled husband dropped his beer--his car turned back into a normal vehicle so fast that for a second I wondered if I was actually hallucinating. For what it's worth, he didn't put up any defense against my onslaught of my profanity-laden screams and litany of verbal abuse that lasted well into the early hours. He just hung his head in shame and set up a station on the couch. Over the next few weeks we went to therapy, and though I haven't been able to forgive him, we're working through his betrayal. But the car/robot thing. At first I just avoided the garage, but that only worked for so long, because that’s where half my stuff is stored. One day I was working on a lasagna and realized I needed to grab the mozzarella out of the extra fridge in the garage. It wasn’t cold out, but I felt compelled to bundle up, drawing my hoodie up extra tight. I cracked open the door and it was just sitting there in car form. Quiet. Like it’d been for fifteen years. I tiptoed out to the fridge hoping it was asleep (do they sleep?) but just as I had my hand in the very back of the fridge its radio turned on and started playing “Let’s Get it On,” and I bolted back into the house as fast as I could, sans cheese. My husband agreed to move it out to the street, but then every time I leave the house it flashes its lights or gives one of those polite little honks like when somebody lets you merge into their lane, but it seems sinister. I can’t get over the fact that the car has seen me naked--more than naked; I used to grab onto the seat for leverage. I can’t help but think that it’s not just that the car is alive, but that it’s also a disgusting pervert. Sam refuses to get rid of it, says it's his best friend, but I can’t live trapped in my house for the rest of my life. I told him it’s either me or the car. AITA?
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Mar 14, 2021 23:32
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Can I sue my employer for injuries sustained due to unsafe sanitation mandate? [WA] 345 words My office has recently reopened (please don’t make this about reopening, I am done having this conversation), and there are obviously a lot of new safety and sanitation rules, which is totally reasonable. However, there’s one rule in particular that I’m having an issue with. Specifically the issue is that our employers have put "sanitizing spray" in the bathrooms for employee use. Personally, I found this a little excessive, but I’ve been trying to comply with all of the safety regulations, so I’ve been using it every time I go. Lately, though, I’ve been having some serious discomfort down there, and I’m pretty sure it’s from the spray. I went to talk to someone in HR, but she actually laughed at me - to my face! - and then when I got upset she acted really uncomfortable and told me she would get back to me. I’ve been doing some research, and the science is not on my employer’s side - not only is there no evidence that Covid can spread from bathroom contact (that kind, anyway), the sanitizer my employee has provided like this is NOT labeled for human use. I’m thinking of contacting a lawyer, but I want to make sure that it’s worth my time. Can I sue my employer for injuries sustained from mandatory sanitizer use? Is this considered a work-related incident? Can I sue for pain and suffering damages over HR laughing in my face?? EDIT: I don’t know how to make this any clearer: YES, it is DEFINITELY intended for personal use! Why would it be in the stalls otherwise??? EDIT 2: IT’S EVEN LABELED “FOR USE AFTER USING THE TOILET”!!! IT IS OBVIOUSLY SUPPOSED TO BE USED ON OURSELVES. EDIT 3: I got an email from HR about meeting to discuss this, so I will update the thread once I get back. Also STOP ASKING FOR PICTURES OF MY A$$HOLE IT’S NOT GONNA HAPPEN!!! edit 4: mods, please lock the thread
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Mar 15, 2021 00:34
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AITA for tricking my mother-in-law into eating dog food? 662 words Background on my (F33) SO (M29), Dord (fake name): He hated his younger brother, but loved his mom He loved everyone in his college anime club, met them monthly He’s always there in my lowest moments. Unrelated to all this, but my sister disappeared few months ago and I fell into depression. Dord assisted me during those days. Now I’m fine. In her closet I found a stack of French novels, with Michel Houellebecq’s being on the top. After reading some glowing reviews, I started reading them and fell deeply in love. Dord did not share my love. He tried reading one, Serotonin, and absolutely loathed it. “Cynical and focused on sex, it's so French it hurts,” he said. Houellebecq’s more than that, and I need him to admit just that. He didn’t have to like it, but Houellebecq’s more than just that. I asked him to finish just one book, and get back to me. Few days later, he came up with few arguments on why the novel’s great. I was happy at first, but I soon realised he’s quoting a YouTube review of the novel. I told him that, and he admitted he hadn’t read a single page, and if he was forced to read depressing smut he’d watch funeral porn. I told him it’s not a hard read, and that it’s important to me he recognised that. Here we realized we were too incensed, and proceed to do our ‘relaxing regiment’: danced to the silly sounding Indonesian song Poco-Poco, played jenga under a time limit, and watched a random video from my slug playlist. this time it’s Secrets about the Slug Slime. Sufficiently calmed down, I asked him that maybe we could read Houellebecq’s book together. We planned a reading session in a week. I thought he agreed. In preparation, I read tons of reviews, both positive and negative, on the books, just so I can get understand his perspective better. On the day, He brought a 250-pages long printout of cartoon porn. He said, “This one’s about a lousy husband losing his wife to a sexually proficient marriage counsellor.” He said my taste is so bad I might enjoy this one as well. Next day I put dog food in his breakfast. Now, I’m not poisoning him. I followed a recipe. The dog food’s organic, so it’s safe to eat. “Let’s see whose taste is worse,” I thought to myself. He loved it. After work, he admitted he brought some of the food to work and shared it with his co-workers. He told me he wanted to invite some people over. He never did that before, when all my food was made of human food and delicious, so I knew instantly that he knew it was dog food, and wanted to gently caress with me, daring me to make dog food for strangers. I took on that challenge. gently caress him, and gently caress his friends too. So I just made more of that dog food recipe, and turned out...he brought his family as well. Including his mother. I prayed that she’s allergic to something so that I can say the food had that, but she was not only “100% allergen free”, she was also “lusting for some of my chow,” she said to my face. Dord’s younger brother tried it first and spat it out. He thought it must had some cat food mixed in. Dord was so angry he shouted at him. Dord’s mother tried it next and loved it, so she shouted at the brother as well. Everyone else tried it, loved it, and shouted at the brother. In the end he apologised. To this day, there were no problems. Dord didn’t say anything about his mother being sick, and none of his friends had any problem. So, AITA? Addendum: Tried changing the dog food with cat food and Dord loved it still. With bird food, I loved it.
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Mar 15, 2021 06:03
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Submissions are closed. My schedule is really weird and difficult on Mondays so you're all going to be very patient while we judge. Failure to be patient may result in me neglecting to notice your entry, because i'm in such a rush
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Mar 15, 2021 09:43
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interprompt: oh, you think butts are funny? well let me tell you a story about butts. 333 words
sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Mar 15, 2021 |
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Mar 15, 2021 22:53
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The Tower, the Mineshaft and the Giant 333 words. The tower: an icon of western civilization. It implies order, law, and the application of force. The chapel at its spire is of heaven, and there lies a hellish dungeon deep below, echoing the natural design of the creator. Where is he now? As the world turns upside down, and the tower points downward, and the dungeons rise above at the hands of the giant. In this moment, the illustrated manuscripts that were so carefully refined by censors and canonising cardinals careened from the tower libraries down into the sky below. In this moment, all expectation of a civilisation and a polite conversation pointed downward with the tower. The valleys: a place too disorderly and steep to control. Therefore it is a place for bandits and fairies to be away from oppression. That is, until the valleys served a purpose: Rusty brown ore, forever flowing outward on tightly squeezed mine carts. These darkened mineshafts joined the dungeons in hell, and for centuries it was this way. The tower was of heaven, and all beneath the skin was hell, and all the men in hell were deservedly far from God’s light. The ring: an icon of dedication —to your god, to your king, or to your spouse. It is worn to symbolise eternity devoted to your cause. As the world turns, a new devotion emerges. The tower points downward, the mineshaft rises to the sky, and the ringed hand of the devoted heaves the hills of the valleys in twain. Where is the creator, now the world has turned? Where is he, now that his light shines on the depths of the valley of the flesh? Where is he, now that the shaft to the old hell is rent agape by the giant’s hands? The tower falls; the mineshaft rises; this act of dedication stretches to eternity, for the giant was devoted to shining light on a place once dark. He showed us all that there is a grotesque beauty in the old hell.
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Mar 15, 2021 23:59
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one time i left my butt on the school bus and i had to stand the whole day because there was nothing for me to sit on. it's okay though, it was still there when i got back on after school. it smelled like farts, but it always smells like farts so that wasn't weird or anything. that's my story about when i got my butt back, okay bye 69 words, nice
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Mar 16, 2021 01:13
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True Butt Confessions 329 words archived Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2021 01:21
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Don't Call it a Comeback 316 words “You call this rear end?” the rockstar shouts at the video director, motioning wildy towards the girls behind him. “You come find me when you got some real rear end.” Johnny E. Lee storms off the stage, thrusting his confederate flag decaled guitar into the hands of a flustered PA. “We can’t get new girls!” director O. Gee shouts, chasing the rocker past the camera crews. “We only got this space for today! Look, these girls are fine! They’ll look great in your comeback video!” “You call this a ‘comeback video’ one more time, you’ll be making GBS threads your teeth for the next week.” “So we fired or what?” a woman’s voice shouts from the stage. Johnny and Gee both turn to see one of the ten, stars-and-bars clad dancers slouching on top of the amplifier. “You goddamn right you’re fired!” Johnny shouts, storming to the woman on stage. He stops inches from her, leaning in to inspect the flesh peering out from her bikini shorts. “Peel your cellulite off my amp and take it the gently caress home.” “Bridget, I’m sorry!” Gee shouts, rushing between the rocker and the dancer. “We’re all frustrated here. Maybe if we just break for five minutes, we can--” Bridget laughs as she stands to collect her belongings. “Didn’t want my rear end in this old racist’s video anyway.” Johnny watches her leave, his mouth agape. He turns at the sound of heeled footsteps leaving the stage to find another dancer making her exit. Another starts to leave as he turns away. One by one each dancer starts walking in the brief second Johnny glances away from them, until the rocker stands alone on his stage. A desperate Gee flutters among the leaving women. His shouts of “Wait! Come back!” go quietly ignored. “Don’t,” Johnny says to the director, resignation trembling in his voice. “If we gotta beg for rear end, then I ain’t no rockstar.”
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Mar 17, 2021 08:19
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150 words My dog, with one of the world’s most sophisticated sniffing systems, a large snout and highly developed canine olfactory epithelium with specialized neurons for a superior ability, and what does he like to sniff? Where does he go first? You guessed it. Butts. First, other dogs’ butts. Any and all. Mm-mm good! What is wrong with humans anyway, shaking hands? That's no way to learn anything about anybody. Smelling butts is the way to go! Second, people’s. Bonus points if the person in question was wearing a dark silk skirt and he left a nose print. Yes. Yes he did. I don’t know if it was permanent because we got the hell out of there even though he wanted to continue his investigation. This animal on the other end of a leash, I don’t know him. Never saw him before. Bad smells smell good and butts rule, the gospel according to dog.
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Mar 17, 2021 08:30
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I (42069F) have to judge a really weird week of Thunderdome (8N/A) and it's hard. Some background: I met Thunderdome on some forum nearly nine years ago. Before you're like "ew", first of all, it's STRICTLY platonic. Thunderdome is more like a child to me, i guess. It helps that they act like a huge baby sometimes. But I digress. Mostly things are perfect. Thunderdome posts stories, I read them and choose a winner and loser. Pretty chill. Here's where I think I may have hosed up. I know that a lot of Thunderdome users are fans of a certain forums thread, where people argue about posts from from here on Reddit (weird, right?). I thought it would be nice to give them the chance to write stories in the style of those posts. Pretty straightforward, or so i thought. Wrong. See some people basically tried to write stories that were basically normal stories with a reddit framing device. Other people tried to write reddit posts that weren't really complete stories. Myself and the other two judges (no it's not a poly thing) were at a loss as to how to judge the week. Did we give the win to the best story, or the best reddit post? Or just the submission that made us all feel the best overall? You may be able to see where this is going. Brotherly took the win, after some discussion, because they wrote a compelling story that presented a sad, believable situation. Me and the other judges agreed that it was a little more storylike than reddit-like, but still struck a better balance than some stories this week. Baneling Butts gets an honorable mention for presenting a memorably weird situation with lots of fun details. Chili gets an honorable mention for presenting a situation that seemed on its surface distasteful or absurd, then spinning it in a sympathetic way. Rhymes with Clue gets an honorable mention by partial head judge fiat; their story made the head judge want to dispense life advice, and was satisfyingly subtle in a week of relatively shallow plots. Curlingiron gets an honorable mention in spite of not signing up for the week because i laughed my rear end off. tl;dr: Brotherly wins and a bunch of other people get HMs. edit: STOP ASKING ME ABOUT A LOSER. This was a difficult week to judge due to reasons mentioned in my post. It would have been unfair to pick a loser.
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Mar 17, 2021 08:39
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