Showalter blackwell long funeral home obituaries

I, female 23 and married to male 33, however he really has nothing to do with this story. It’s my sister in law Female (35) who we’ll call SIL for this story, because I’m not typing sister in law every time I reference her. I’m tired lol.
I recently had my first child. It was amazing and fantastic, he was a NICU baby so I’m extra cautious. I probably annoyed family by not inviting them over to see the baby (I never arranged a date but Easter happened when he was around four months old, so they all saw him there; however I did not offer for anyone to hold him and no one asked.
SIL has had two children already and was pregnant with her third. I have known Anna since I was 12 and she was getting married to my older brother and knew she came from a very conservative family. She has always breastfed with a cover around our family, however at the Easter table I breast fed my child. I will say he latched right away, I was somewhat restricted view from my place at the table in my grandmothers house anyway. He was quick to latch, due to having so much practice- my point being Minimal time my whole boob was exposed (maybe 30 seconds at most). When I said “oop someone’s hungry, baby do you want some milk” her youngest child (boy 6) asked “how does someone only eat milk” and I answered “it’s kinda like a protein shake”.
I would like to add SIL is expecting another baby and I assumed that she would feed her baby as normal in her home without covering (maybe I assumed wrong).
She didn’t say anything at the time about home openly breastfeeding (which I was a little shocked at) but frankly I’m not feeding my child with a cover over his head in my own home. I will cover out of respect for others in two places (church, and then the one time I went to a family funeral). I invite anyone who disagrees with my policy to eat a meal with a blanket over their head.
She also corrected me when I made her child wash his hands before sitting down to eat (we do family style buffet line) and made him take the dinner roll he touched on a separate plate instead of putting it back on the main serving tray (her kids are ALWAYS SICK).
Anyways queue to this weekend. We have always grilled out on Memorial Day as a family for as long as I can remember. This year my mom had already bought all the steaks and all the food before they announced they had “other plans as a family”, which is the same excuse they used a few years ago after they didn’t come to Christmas due to wedding drama after I got married (I chose very small very private and frankly would’ve eloped in Europe if my parents had let me).
So, am I the asshole for ruining events by breastfeeding my child?

I made a stupid mistake on my previous post of typing the wrong ID.
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YammerS was a Chinese Dota2 commentator. He posted his suicide notes in Weibo and I translated them. However the images are highly compressed and I can't use image to text convertor. I have to type every single character down and translate them. I was bursted into tears when I was doing so. Please if anyone had suicidal thought, go and seek immediate help.
Australia (Beyond Blue): 1300 22 4636 (Lifeline Australia): 13 11 14
US (National Suicidal prevention lifeline): 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
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https://preview.redd.it/ss5nlbcrfr2b1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=9775dd86e1b92ca21a5c8d99a0d87b835000c31e
Here is the translated notes:
In the main post:
This is a scheduled Weibo post. After all these years, I still can't let go of the hatred in my heart. I can't find reconciliation within myself either. I know I have wronged many people. It's all because of me, the beginning and the end. Let it end.
In the images:
I was born in a small city in Hebei in 1997, in a residential compound belonging to a typical working-class family. My father is a retired soldier who transitioned to work in China Railway (中铁), and our family settled here. My mother, originally from Hubei, came here with my sister and got married to my father through a mutual introduction. Both of them had previous failed marriages, and this one was also destined to fail. However, I was born in the second year of their marriage.
As far as I can remember, during my childhood, I mostly lived with my mother. Due to my father's work on construction sites, he was often away for long periods. This resulted in very little time spent with my father during my childhood and adolescence. Additionally, my father was introverted, had a peculiar temper, and didn't talk much with me. We would only meet once a year or sometimes every two years, so when I was very young, I kept asking my mother when my father would come back. I longed for my father's presence, but I hardly received any fatherly love or feedback.
Living in this residential compound with many children, one would expect my childhood playtime to be joyful. However, for me, it was all nightmares and pain. I distinctly remember how the adults in the compound looked at me differently when I was very young. Many parents didn't allow their children to play with me. Initially, I thought it was because our family had a poor financial condition or maybe I was a bit mischievous. It was later when I grew up that I found out the real reasons, which I will explain later. Despite the challenges, I eventually managed to integrate into the circle of children my age. Although I still faced bullying, it didn't bother me much. The most painful experiences were being bullied by the older kids, who were probably already in junior high school when I was still in kindergarten. One summer, I vividly remember coming out of my house, eating strawberries, and being noticed by the older kids. They lured me to the former staff building with their toy guns, saying they wanted me to play with them. Once there, they held me down and forced me to drink their urine while prying my mouth open. I ran back home crying and vomiting. Another time, three or four people cornered me in a corner of the compound and made me perform oral sex on them. I resisted that time and my cries attracted adults, so they let me go. Later, as I grew up, I realized that I was not the only one who was being bullied at that time. There was also a girl my age who went through unimaginable things. Moreover, many of these older kids were children of China Railway executives, born into powerful and influential families. But they were truly like beasts. I will never forget these memories.
As time passed, it was time for me to go to primary school. Due to my poor comprehension ability compared to children of the same age and my lack of concentration as a child (possibly due to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), my first-grade exam results were very poor. I only remember having Chinese and mathematics as the earliest subjects. While many children achieved excellent scores, I barely passed in one subject and failed in another. When I returned home, I was scolded and beaten. That was the first time I started resisting learning from the bottom of my heart. I said I didn't understand... I hadn't learned... My mother believed that I wasn't paying attention in class. My parents themselves had a low level of education, especially my mother, who couldn't help me with my studies. Later, they spent money on tutoring, and my grades improved slightly in second and third grade..
In grades four, five, and six, there were changes in the homeroom teacher. During this time, some kids started demanding protection fees, and if you didn't pay, they would beat you up. As a result, I got into fights more frequently. I was called to the office and falsely accused of starting trouble. I was also bad at expressing myself and couldn't defend myself properly. The teacher didn't believe me, and in the end, I was the one who got beaten up and punished. The corporal punishment by teachers in the small city's school was really outrageous. They would actually hit you, slap your face, hit you with a soft pencil, or use a stick. It was during that time when my grades were already average, and I started hating studying. I didn't want to go to school anymore, I didn't want to attend classes. I started pretending to be sick and skipping classes. I completely lost interest in studying, and it was probably in sixth grade when something happened. The classroom door lock was broken, and coincidentally, I was cleaning after school. Some students were fooling around and broke the lock. Later, they went and told the teacher that I did it, and they even testified against me. The teacher didn't believe what I said, and in front of many teachers in the office, they kept hitting my palms with a soft pencil until they were all bruised, asking me to admit it quickly. It was then that I truly understood what it meant to be coerced into confession. In the end, I couldn't bear the pain anymore and admitted to it. I even bought a new lock to replace the broken one in the classroom. After that, I didn't want to go to school anymore. Some might ask why I didn't talk to my mother about it. It was because there was already a rift between us regarding my academic performance. In the eyes of my relatives and family members, I had already become a poor student and a bad child. I didn't study properly and started sneaking off to internet cafes. I didn't care anymore and didn't want to say anything to them.
After entering junior high school, in the first and second years, our physical education teacher served as the homeroom teacher. Since I hadn't laid a good foundation in elementary school, I continued to hate studying in junior high. I would disrupt classes, talk back, and get into fights. During the first two years, corporal punishment and long lectures at home accompanied my education. This period was also my rebellious phase. My father returned to work, and they would argue all day long at home, which was true. They would argue all the time, every moment of the day. The old-style building had poor sound insulation. The entire neighborhood could hear the sound of our arguments, and in addition to the school issues, I would have endless arguments with my family. On one hand, I didn't want to attend school and face punishment, and on the other hand, I didn't want to go back home. I was already feeling a bit depressed. During that time, I would skip classes, go online, play Dota, stay up all night, and sleep in school the next day. It was during this period that I learned a devastating truth, not to mention how I found out, but I discovered that I wasn't my parents' biological child. I was the illegitimate child of a relative, and to cover up their mistake, they brought in my father as a substitute and got married. I was born quickly in the second year of their marriage. That's also why, since I was young, the kids in the neighborhood would always bully me, and adults would look at me with strange eyes, including the children of many parents who initially didn't let their kids play with me. I truly broke down at that moment. It was also during that time that I developed depression, and I started hating myself and my family more and more. I really didn't want to live during that period. One day in the second semester of eighth grade, I bought sleeping pills. At that time, the control over sleeping pills wasn't as strict as it is now. I attempted suicide, but I didn't take enough, so I didn't die. Later, a teacher visited our home and conducted a home visit, asking me about the reasons. I didn't say anything. I just said I wasn't happy and that life had no meaning. The homeroom teacher was probably afraid of taking responsibility, so the attitudes of all the teachers toward me changed afterward. At the very least, they didn't bother me anymore when I slept in class. After moving up to ninth grade, aside from changing the homeroom teacher, the other subject teachers remained the same. During this time, I encountered the second great teacher in my life. The first one was Mr. Cai in the first three years of elementary school. This teacher's last name was Tian. He was our chemistry teacher, and maybe it was because of what happened in my eighth grade... As I write this, I'm finding it difficult to control my emotions. After taking over our class, he had individual conversations with each student. He was the first and only teacher who wanted to be friends with me. He always encouraged me, saying that I wasn't any worse than anyone else and that I should be confident. My depression improved a lot during my ninth grade year, and I studied diligently. However, because I had fallen so far behind before, I couldn't catch up. In the end, I didn't pass the high school entrance exam, and I left home to study in Shijiazhuang. I didn't want to continue living in that city or return to that home.
The three years of studying and living in Shijiazhuang were among the few happy times in my life. My depression rarely occurred during this period. With a completely new environment, new friends, and classmates, I actively engaged in my studies. I joined the student council and became a department head. I played basketball, exercised, and played Dota. Overall, I felt fulfilled. The only regret was that during the final stage of the semester, I had my first official romantic relationship, but it ended in betrayal. Afterward, I didn't date anyone for the next five years.
After graduation, I interned at a China Railway unit, which happened to be in Shijiazhuang. At that time, Shijiazhuang was constructing a subway, and since I studied surveying, I decided to stay. It was my first time entering the workforce, and many things shattered my preconceptions. There was hypocrisy and flattery in the workplace, colleagues engaging in office politics, data manipulation, construction companies cutting corners, and project managers having affairs behind their spouses' backs... The world turned out to be different from what I had imagined. In the first half of the year, I worked diligently, but in the latter half, I started contemplating what I really wanted to do, and my enthusiasm for work diminished. After the completion of the project I was involved in, I resigned directly. I left Shijiazhuang and became a commentator.
My depression completely erupted in mid-March 2019 when my father passed away due to illness. He had been tormented by the disease for several months and eventually succumbed to the pain. During his last few days, I stayed by his side, watching him and reflecting on his two failed marriages and the mistreatment he endured at his workplace, only to be plagued by the disease until his death. After the funeral, in April, I returned to my rented house in Shanghai. During that time, I would spend the entire night talking to myself in the house, painfully banging my head against the wall. Every day, when I looked into the mirror, I felt an intense disgust towards the person I saw. As I grew older, I resembled my biological father more and more, and I couldn't even count how many times I had hurt myself in front of the mirror. This state of mind persisted until recently, where I would only take a bite of food every two or three days, experiencing headaches and various sleep disturbances. Sometimes, I would even have uncontrollable fits of laughter and engage in self-talk. I'm really not doing well.
In recent years, I have started squandering money to fill the emptiness in my heart. I can't find meaning in life, and I can't reconcile with my past either. Many people have told me that it's not my fault, that I shouldn't blame myself for the mistakes of others, and that I should live my own life. You could also say that this is my way of escaping from reality, that I'm a weak and useless person. Well, so be it. Without me, this family that should never have existed wouldn't have come into being. There wouldn't have been so many things that should or shouldn't have happened. This family emerged because of me, and today I will end it by taking my own life. Everything from the beginning has been wrong, and I hope this mistake can be corrected now. My inner pain can finally come to an end. Today, when I leave, I will leave with a smile. Every second in this world, many people are born and die. Without me, the world won't be lacking anything. I don't want to come to this earthly realm again in my next life, and I hope that in the future, you won't create a tragic family for the sake of your own selfish desires or to cover up your own mistakes.
Please forgive my selfishness and cowardice, and please forgive my pain and struggles. Goodbye.

Hello everyone,
I've been developing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows users to create online obituaries efficiently. It's a tool I've designed with funeral homes in mind, hoping to streamline their operations and offer additional value to their clients.
The platform allows the customization of obituaries with an easy-to-use interface, offers a variety of templates, and facilitates the sharing process to various social media platforms.
I'd greatly appreciate any feedback from this community regarding the following:

1. The Website: Any suggestions about the design, usability, functionality, or any features you think would be beneficial to add?
2. The Business Model: Thoughts on the per-use pricing model for funeral homes. Are there any alternative pricing models you think could be more effective?
3. Marketing Strategy: I'm planning to approach funeral homes directly to sell this service, but I'm open to suggestions for other marketing strategies that could be effective.
4. Market Demand: Do you think there's a demand for this kind of service? Are there any other markets you think I should be targeting?

You can access the platform at https://elysianmemorials.io/. Thank you in advance for your time and feedback.

Mi "Yammers" Hongwei is a Chinese caster from China. He is considered as one of the best Chinese stream commentator. His liquipedia link: Yammers - Liquipedia Dota 2 Wiki
Here is his weibo(kind like facebook). Translated by google translate.
This is a scheduled Weibo. After all these years, I still can’t let go of the hatred in my heart, and I can’t reconcile with myself. I also know that I’m sorry for many people. It’s all because of me. Let’s end it.
https://preview.redd.it/80j4fla91r2b1.jpg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=db0589274220dde10de641bba4bab83b71017033
I was born in a small city in Hebei in 1997, in a family compound, in an ordinary worker's family.My father is a veteran, after retiring transferred to work in China Railway, and then settled here. My mother is from Hubei. After coming here with my sister, she married my father through introduction. Both of them had a failed marriage before, which was also a failure. Then there was me in the second year of marriage.
As far as I can remember, I lived with my mother most of the time when I was a child, and my father was on the construction site all year round because of the project, which also caused me to spend very little time with my father in my childhood. In addition, my father has a withdrawn personality, has a strange temper, and doesn’t talk to me much. We only meet once a year or once every two years, so when I was very young, I always asked my mother when my father would come back. I was able to see it during the Chinese New Year, and I kept talking non-stop, and he basically replied perfunctorily, that I basically didn't get any fatherly love.
Living in this family compound, there are so many children, logically speaking, childhood should be very happy, but for me, this is all a nightmare and pain. I was particularly impressed by the adults in the yard. When I was very young, they looked at me differently. Many parents would not let their children play with me. At first I thought it was because our family conditions were not good, or I'm a little naughty, and I will know the reason when I grow up, and I will talk about it later. After several twists and turns, I still integrated into the circle of children of the same age. Although I still suffered from some bullying occasionally, it didn’t matter anymore. The most painful memory for me should be the thing of being bullied by boys older than me. At that time, I was still in kindergarten, and those children were already junior high school students. That summer, when I came out from home and ate strawberries, I was seen by several older children. They held imitation gun toys and told me to play, and pushed me into an abandoned apartment building. Four or five people held my hand. My limbs poured urine on me, opened my mouth on the spot, and kept urinating. Then I ran home crying and vomiting all the way. Another time, it was also three or four people who dragged me to the corner of the compound to make me suck their cock. That time I didn't give in, and the crying attracted the adults, so they gave up. When I grew up, I realized that it was not only me who was bullied, but also girls of my age. It was hard to imagine what they would go through. Moreover, many of these older children are children of leaders, born in powerful families, but they are really assholes. I will never forget this memory.
As time goes by, it's time for me to go to elementary school, because my comprehension ability may be worse than that of children of the same age. In addition, when I was young, I was inattentive and a little hyperactive. My first test in the first grade was very poor. I remember that the earliest subjects at that time were only Chinese and mathematics. Many children got full marks. But for me, one of them just passed and the other failed. When I got home, I was scolded and beaten. That was the first time I started to resist learning from the bottom of my heart. I said that I really didn't understand...I didn't learn...My mother just thought that I didn't pay attention to the class, and my parents had a very low level of education, especially me. Mom, she can't help me. Later, I spent money on cram school, and my grades in the second and third grades were slightly better. Grades 4, 5 and 6 my head teacher changes, and at this time some children began to collect protection fees, and they would fight you if you didn’t pay. After that, the frequency of my fights became more and more frequent. I was called to the office and framed. I was stupid, I was bad at defending myself, the teacher didn't believe me, and I was the one who was beaten and punished in the end. The school teachers in small cities punished people really outrageously, really beat them, slapped their mouths, whipped people with soft pencils, and beat them with sticks. It was also at that time, my grades were mediocre at that time, I started to get tired of studying, I didn't want to go to school, I didn't want to go to school, I started to pretend to be sick, and skipped classes. Completely tired of studying, it should be an incident in the sixth grade. The door lock in the class was broken by someone. I happened to be cleaning after school. A few students fought and broke the door lock. Then I ran to tell the teacher , I broke it, and they testified to each other, the teacher didn’t believe what I said, in front of so many teachers in the office, they kept hitting my palms with soft pencils, and they were all smashed, let me admit it quickly, I was really at that time Knowing what it means extort confessions under torture , in the end I really couldn't stand the pain and admitted it. I also bought a new lock for the class to change. I never wanted to go to school at that time. Some people will ask why you didn't tell your mother, because of the academic performance, I have already separated from my mother. At this time, in the eyes of my relatives and family members, I am already a poor student and a bad boy. If I don't study hard, I will secretly go online. , I don't care anymore, I don't want to say anything to them.
https://preview.redd.it/7kkel8aa1r2b1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=da27d654ca56a622970fb849b9981d99aef00ed9
After entering junior high school, our class teachers in the first and second grades were all physical education teachers. In addition, my previous foundation was not well established, and I continued to be tired of studying in junior high school, chatting and fighting in class all day long. The first two years were spent with corporal punishment education and parents. This period was also my rebellious period. My father also transferred back from work, and my parents quarreled all day long. This is true. Every day, all the time, we are arguing, really all the time. The sound insulation of the old-fashioned buildings is very poor. The sound of our family’s quarrel can be heard in the whole courtyard. In addition to my school’s affairs, I also have endless quarrels with my family. On the one hand, I don't want to go home, and I'm already a little depressed. During that time, I skipped classes and played dota online, all night long. Went to sleep at school the next day. Later, it was also during this period that I knew, a thing that broke me down. Let’s not talk about how I know, I know that I was not born to my parents, but the illegitimate child of relatives, and then they found my father as a successor in order to cover up their mistakes, and I was born soon after the second year of marriage. , This is also the reason why the children in the yard have been bullying me since I was a child, and the adults looked at me strangely and refused to let their children play with me. I really broke down at that moment, and it was at that time that I suffered from depression. I became more and more disgusted with myself, and I hated my family more and more. At that time, I really didn’t want to live anymore. One day in the second semester of the second year of junior high school, I bought sleeping pills. At that time, the regulations on sleeping pills were not as strict as they are now. I committed suicide, but didn't eat enough to die. Later, the teacher came to our house for a home visit and asked me why, but I didn't say anything, I just said that I was not happy and that my life was meaningless. The head teacher is probably also afraid of taking responsibility. After that, all the teachers’ attitudes towards me have changed. At least they never bothered me when I slept in class, hhhh.
After entering the third year of junior high school, except for the change of the head teacher, the teachers of other subjects did not change. At this time, I met, the second good teacher in my life. The first one was Teacher Cai in the first three grades of elementary school. The teacher's surname is Tian. He is our chemistry teacher. It may also be because of my second year of junior high school... I can't control my emotions when I write here. After he took over our class, he talked to the students one by one. He was the first and only teacher who said he wanted to be my friend, he always encouraged me, he said you are no worse than anyone else, you have to be confident. In the third year of junior high school, my depression eased a lot, and I also studied hard for a year, but because I had left too much behind, I couldn't even catch up. In the end, I still failed the high school entrance examination, and then left home to study in Shijiazhuang. I don't want to continue living in this city either. I don't want to go back to this home.
The three years of studying and living in Shijiazhuang were one of the few happy times in my life, and my depression rarely broke out. Brand new environment + brand new friends and classmates, I am actively studying, I joined the student union and became a minister. Basketball + exercise + dota I have a very fulfilling overall life. The only legacy is the first official love in my life in the last stage of the semester, and I was cuckolded. I didn't have a relationship for the next five years.
After graduating, I went to China Railway for an internship, and I happened to stay in Shijiazhuang. At that time, Shijiazhuang was constructing the subway. and my major was surveying, so I stayed there. Maybe the first time I began to work, many things broke my cognition. Hypocrisy and flattery in the workplace, intrigue among colleagues, false reporting of data, cutting corners by construction units, project managers who have families behind their backs to find mistresses... This world is really different from what I imagined. I was very serious in the first half of the year. In the next six months, I was thinking about what I wanted to do, and basically I didn't have any enthusiasm for work. Later, I resigned directly when I was working on the project I was working on. Leaving Shijiazhuang. Do a commentator.
My depression broke out completely in mid-March 2019, and my father passed away due to illness. I was tortured by the disease for nearly several months, and finally passed away in pain. In the last few days, I have been by his side. Looking at him, thinking back on his life, two failed marriages, being bullied by others in the workplace, and finally being tortured to death by illness. After the funeral, I went back to my rented house in Shanghai in April. During that time, I talked to myself all night in the room, banging my head against the wall in pain. I looked in the mirror every day, and I was disgusted when I saw myself in the mirror. The more I grow up, the more I look like my biological father. I can’t count how many times I have smoked myself in the mirror. This state has continued until the last two or three days. I laughed out of control and said to myself, I really can't do it. In recent years, I have started to squander money to fill the void in my heart. I can't find the meaning of life, and I can't reconcile myself with the past. Many people have said to me, you are not to blame for this matter, don't blame yourself for other people's faults, you have to live your own life. You could also say it's my excuse to escape from real life, a weak, useless piece of shit. whatever. Without me, there wouldn’t be this, this family that shouldn’t be there, and there wouldn’t be so many things that shouldn’t be there. This family came into existence because of me, and today I killed myself, and it ends with me. Everything was wrong from the beginning, and now this mistake can be corrected. My own inner pain can finally be over, and I leave today with a smile on my face. Many people die and are born every second in this world, without me, this world will not lack anything. I don't want to come to this world in my next life. I also hope that you will not create a tragic family for your own selfish desires or to cover up your mistakes in the future. Dota2_Yammers
Please forgive my selfishness and cowardice, and please understand my pain and struggle. goodbye
https://preview.redd.it/sz4ecsva1r2b1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c7be1f595d946ed5571d4f077927f5f823825f80
I don't want to comment too much, just want to tell the story of a poor man, a dota lover. Hope dota brings him more happiness in his life. He has a famous voice line, which content is "再见了宝贝”, means "goodbye baby". I don't know if valve can do anything to make it a memorial.
R.I.P.

About 10 days ago my dad passed away from a long illness. Me, DH & our 3 young kids flew overseas for his funeral for 5 days. While away, house was meant to be empty. We paid our friend to clean for us while gone & check on the place. My husband offered for BIL to use his car if he wanted (BIL doesn't have his own). BIL offered to do our bins for us, DH accepted & said if he did need to stay over for that he could.
Saturday it was clear from our security cameras, BIL had invited himself to stay for the whole time. I was a bit pissed but waved it off, as long as he put the bins out and the house was safe, secure and tidy, it's okay. Saturday night all our security cameras go dark. DH messaged BIL to ask if everything was okay cos our cameras had gone off. BIL said yes everything was fine.
Sunday got a message from our friend (cleaning) saying "Oops! Just scared the shit out of [BIL] and the girl he had round!" I asked her to clarify. Said she walked in on BIL & a woman on our couch. Our friend then asked them to leave and they got their stuff from the master & ensuite before leaving.
Sunday night cameras all come back on. I go back to the timestamp where they went off, & see BIL covering our security cameras. (Note: these ALL are external ONLY). He knew we had recently had our car stolen & it cost over $1000 to sort. But here he is, covering our security cameras, to bring a random person into our house, & our bedroom, while we are gone.
DH messaged BIL: "Who's the girl you had round?" BIL: "I don't know what you mean." DH says "Boyfriend then?" BIL responds "😉" and hubby sends footage of him covering cameras and the message from our friend. BIL admits to having a woman around.
Friend goes back Tuesday to check on things. She'd changed our sheets on Sunday, bed clearly slept in by Tuesday; and shit in our ensuite. She recleaned the general messes he'd made.
Tuesday night in a phonecall between DH and BIL, hubby tried to explain why we are upset and feel disrespected; and told him to leave immediately
Re cameras - he "doesn't like being filmed" - they're not his security cameras to mess with. I don't think what he did to the cameras is okay. DH had to send the video of BIL covering the camera and the message from our friend to him for him to come clean. He then lied to DH saying he didn't take the girl into our room (which he was seen doing). Using our bed is a whole other thing.. There is a big spare bed. Our friend had to reclean so hubby asked for a $50 cleaning fee from BIL too.
BIL ended the conversation by directing at me: "Okay [name], I know you're going through some stuff right now so I'll tidy up and leave." But it had nothing to do with my feelings, and everything to do with how he behaved.
We are married with 3 young children; this is our private family home. It's not a bachelor pad or AirBnB - I think it was really disrespectful & rude of him to treat it that way.
I need 3rd party clarification: AITA??!

My godfather was an idol to me, and a great teacher. He passed of natural causes not long ago, and since my two godsisters and I have always been close, I was talking with them about godfather and his life.
He was a Lutheran pastor, and lead many churches in his life. He always seemed a calm and collected example of a good man. He worked with children most of his life, and was a man I greatly admired. He and my godmother adopted my two godsisters from Columbia. One godsister left home at 16, never to return. I was always told she was a rebel, and that God had given her the stubborness to survive on her own. She and I had little contact while I was growing up, but I was always close to the godsister that remained, and am still close to her today.
After godfather died, the estranged sister returned to our lives, and is still slowly building new relationships with us. In talking, I learned that my godmother was severely physically abusive. She often beat both girls, made them kneel and pray for extended periods on ice packs, and would even go as far as biting them to the point of bleeding.
Meanwhile, I learned that godfather basically had them as sex slaves from their preteen years up until both girls had moved out (hence why one had left at 16).
I, being much younger and a boy, never knew any of this. I had wondered why only one godsister attended her mother's funeral, and why neither spoke at either parents' funerals. I had no idea the horrors that both had protected me from, and had hidden from the entire family.
I am also having difficulty processing the fact that I idolized and looked up to a monster. Had he abused any of the many children he was supposedly a spiritual keader and teacher to? How could he be so horrible behind the doors of his home, and yet a man admired and respected in multiple communities?
I'm torn.
The one good thing is that since both parents are dead, both godsisters (both a bit older than I, BTW) are talking to me again, and that part of my family, along with their children and grandchildren are forming a close knit group again.
Any advice on processing all this would be appreciated, and thank you for reading my ramblings.

My (22M) gf (22F) have been together for almost 4 years. She is away at medical school and had her birthday coming. I had planned on giving her a specially engraved gold signet ring that cost me a lot of money and required months of work by a specific jewellers to create. I was so excited to give her this on her birthday and spent a long time planning for this gift. She had always wanted it and I knew she would absolutely love it. Unfortunately, my great grandmother died at the age of 105 in her care home. It was to be expected after how long she’d braved through life but that time had to come for her.
When the funeral date was released, it was on my gf’s birthday. After knowing this, I told her and asked her what she was going to be doing. She said that she would be waking up at home then driving an hour and a half back to medical school in the morning and had a very busy day ahead of her. Lectures and studies etc. when I say she works hard, she works non stop all the hours of the day. On the morning of her birthday, I sent a really long and lovely birthday message by text saying how much I love her, I hope she has an amazing day and I can’t wait to celebrate it with her. She woke up 9 o clock at which I was already on my way to my grandmas house to rendezvous for the funeral car to arrive. I kept her up to date with what was going on whilst also asking her what she got for her birthday, what she’s up to today etc. Keeping happy and cheerful birthday morning messages for her before the funeral begins.
Once the funeral had started, she had set off back to medical school. Once the funeral was finished, we all met at my great grandmas favourite pub for the wake where we drank alcohol, ate food and celebrated her wonderful life at the ripe old of age of 105. I was quite occupied with family stuff. Throughout the day, I hadn’t been receiving many messages from my gf, assuming that she was busy so I thought nothing of it. When she’d message, I would continue to be asking about how her day has been, has everyone been giving her birthday wishes, did she receive any more presents from her friends etc. At the end of the night, the entire family were quite drunk, crying and overall ready for bed. I said goodnight to my gf and she did too so I went to sleep.
In the morning, I asked if I could give her a call and she was awake and ready. I called her and wished her another happy birthday and asked her what she got, did you enjoy your day? How was it? Etc. She told me it wasn't the best because she was just so busy with her uni stuff which I showed empathy towards. After she came back from medical school the next day, I surprised her with her present i had been waiting ai long to give, she opened it up and she was over the moon. She loved it so much and I'm so happy i got her it for her birthday.
A month later she was upset with me over some things and she brought up her birthday. One night, she face-timed me saying that i didn't call her on her birthday and was so upset by it. She used it as another reason to break up with me. She said that she feels like i don't care about her or the relationship and broke up with me that night. I am devastated by this. My heart has been torn into a million pieces never to be put back together. After some thinking, i wanted to see how you all feel about this situation? I was at my great grandmas funeral all day, she was busy, should I have called her? I called her the next morning am i being the asshole?
I could talk to you all about the other reasons she decided to break up but I can make a second list about it if you would all like.

You died back in March, but I couldn't get back home to say goodbye to you properly. We still live 9 hours away and no longer have a car. We tried to figure things out, but we just couldn't afford to even send just me back home for the funeral. I'm sorry, Dad. I know which cemetery you're in and I hope I can get home in a year or two. I'd told Mom that I couldn't make it and she understood. I knew you weren't doing well, the last time we spoke. It won't be the same, but as I said, I'll try to come home soon and see you. 88 years was a good long run. Wherever you are now, take care, Dad.

TLDR: I just need to vent becuase I'm so heartbroken right now. I just want some support. My friend/ex died and before he died he told his other friend that he didn't ever love me.
My friend's celebration of life was a few hours ago and I can't stop crying. I loved him so much. We met eachother in kindergarten but weren't close until after high school. I grew up around him. He was just such an amazing, unique person but he really struggled with alcoholism. It was like I met the person of my dreams. When he was sober he was so charming, funny, intelligent, creative, passionate, energetic, and loving. We had such an intense connection and I've never had butterflies like that before. But I broke up with him only after a week of being official becuase he wasn't very reliable. He was blacking out, canceling plans to get drunk and then lying about how much he had been drinking. We took a break and then started being friends again and I would hear from him from time to time. I moved on to other relationships after that, but I still cared about him deeply as a friend. I just couldn't tolerate his alcoholism anymore as a girlfriend.
I had a dream about him saying goodbye, so I tried to reach out to him but I couldn't becuase all his accounts were deactivated. After that dream I would wake up comforted just to the thought of him and memories of him just kept popping up everywhere. there was one moment it genuinely felt like he was hugging me and resting his head on my shoulder. Until one night I get home from work and I start feeling an intense sense of grief and dread without reason. I could almost hear his name in my room, even though I live alone. So I google him and the first result is his obituary. It says his funeral happened just a few hours ago so I didn't make it. But I still went to the celebration of life. At the celebration of life one of his friends told me that they called him before he passed, and he was talking about me and how much he never loved me. That really broke my heart. I saw his mother too and she said he wouldn't stop talking about me in a good way and that he really loved me and cared. He just wasn't in his right mind to continue a relationship when he isn't sober. His best friends told me not to look too much into it becuase he wasn't well and before he got to that point in his alcoholism he really did care. I'm just so sad that he is gone and I just wanted him to care becuase I cared. I still care.

I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
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I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
​
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I (24M) and my fiancée (24F) recently announced we are getting married and have set the date. We have decided to have a small wedding and it will be just family except for 2 or 3 people who are our friends. Everyone has been excited and there has been no issues up until I told my mum about the reception, and she asked for a plus one.
For context, my mum and dad broke up when I was little and both married other people, he and his wife will be attending the wedding. My Stepdad passed away almost 2 years ago. This is the first big event since his passing.
I informed my mum over the phone that we had booked the reception. She asked if my brother’s girlfriend was invited to which I said yes as they will have been dating for two years by that point. She asked if could bring her best friend (we will call her Sarah) as her plus one. My family have known Sarah for a long time, but I have grown not found of her due to some of her actions. I told my mum this which led to her trying to tell my fiancée to tell me to let her come and to which she replied no and explained why we did not want her there. We told my mum that we understood she did not want to be alone but that she wouldn’t be as her parents and sibling will be there.
Our reasoning behind saying no is the following:
- At my stepdad’s funeral Sarah discussed planning a meal between the two families, Sarah’s and my mum’s and stated to my fiancée that she was specifically not invited. I witnessed this conversation as there was just the three of us there.
- At the funeral she spent most of the night seducing a friend of my stepdad’s and later going home with him after agreeing to spend the night comforting my mum. Who later had to lie to Sarah’s boyfriend about where Sarah stayed the night.
- Sarah has repeatedly told my mum that she needs to get herself back out there including the day after the funeral.
My mum said it was fine that we did not want Sarah to come and I apologised but I just didn’t want Sarah there. A few days later she messaged me asking me to come over for a chat later in the evening. Both me and my fiancée were worried sick all day as we knew what the topic of conversation would be. My fiancée was not invited to this chat.
She started the chat by saying that she had been talking to people she knows about us not wanting Sarah to come and the fact that I do not like her. She then proceeded to berate me for not liking Sarah as she has supposedly done many good things. She then said that I have no right to not like someone, but she wanted to try to understand why I feel the way I do, when I tried to explain my reasoning, she did not listen to what I had to say and spoke over the top of me. She proceeded to tell me things about other people that have nothing to do with me and are also not invited to the wedding. She ended the evening by telling me to leave her house and has not spoken to me since.

MAP
ORIGIN MYTH
Young Titi had just celebrated her seventh nameday. She couldn’t help but feel happy about her newly braided hair. Soon she would look just like her big sister Jani, who already had two braids on her brown hair, she cheerfully thought. As Titi’s prancing drew prints upon the soft yellow sand, the setting sun slowly approached the serene waves. The fishing canoes were just returning to the village’s pier, the strong armed villagers taking the catch of the day back to their hovels. The impending dusk meaned it was time for Titi to return home. Father had always beaten her if she arrived after dusk. It was dangerous to be out at night, he would always say, the hill people could take her away and she would never again see her mommy or her little brother Kiru. But Titi wasn’t all upset about returning home. Afterall, today she would hear granpa Koyo’s stories! The old man could barely see anymore, but it felt to Titi that the older and blinder he got, the better he became at storytelling.
As she returned back home, Titi’s mommy was already cooking today’s meal. By the smell of it, the hovel’s wood-carved bowls would soon be filled with fish stew, enriched with sourghum and yesterday’s leftover horse meat. Titi didn’t enjoy stringy horse meat, but her belly already rumbled nonetheless – most often she wouldn’t have as rich a meal as today’s. Her rambling was soon interrupted by the frail voice she so fondly remembered: “Titi, you young pony legged brat!” As granpa Koyo caught Titi’s attention, she could see that the old man was already sitting cross-legged by the hearth, her little brother Kiru at his lap. “Come by the fire with your granpa. I have a story to tell you, one only your big sister knows about!”
Titi couldn’t hide her excitement as she quickly scrambled to her granpa’s side. Her little brother Kiru sneezed as she got close – he always did it when she played with her uncle’s horses at the afternoon. “I know what it is! It’s the one that tells about the big hairy red horse, isn’t it?” Titi had heard her big sister Jani bragging about not being scared of it once. She turned to Jani, who was helping her mommy prepare today’s meal. “It’s this one, isn’t it?”
Her sister didn’t even look back as she aloofly answered: “Shut up Titi, I’m trying to keep the fire going!” Titi could never understand her sister’s apparent disinterest of granpa’s stories, she thought, abashed. “Granpa! Please, tell us the story!” Titi’s excitement quickly replaced her momentary sorrow.
It took a few heartbeats for granpa Koyo to answer: “Oh, little one! You shall hear the story of how our very people came to be, of how Great Zhi brought our ancestors across the world to this blessed land. Sit tight and listen!”
Several generations before our current time, our people dwelled in a cold, harsh land where food was hard to get. They didn’t have houses back than, so they slept on temporary animal hide shelters along their seasonal hunting grounds. Making a living out of the steppe was strenuous, with game and wild herbs ever harder to find. Many children starved, their mothers’ dry bossoms not able to sustein their ever growing hunger. Conflict with other local tribes was commonplace, turning the already tough life into a waking nightmare. Long did this suffering last, until a previously unbeknownst hero revealed himself under a moonlit night.
Zhi was his name, and he came to our people riding his great white horse, whom he named Jahnn. His unblemished skin, long sky-dark hair and strong build immediately set him aside from common folk. Most impressive of all, Zhi could speak our language, and so he began teaching the ancestors about the Way of the Horse. Such as Zhi’s prowess that in a fortnight our people already mastered horse breeding. Hunting was no longer essential as before, and the folk cheered their newfound plentitude.
Yet, all was not well, for Zhi also came with dread news. The malignant red horse, Araw, and its evil spirit, Makk, were bound to come and bring impending disease, hunger and death. Zhi revealed that he had come to usher our ancestors to a land of plenty, where the sun shone bright and where the grass was green, a land where Araw could not ever reach. There, they’d be safe from the evil spirit’s influence, and would be able to prosper for a hundred generations. Scared, our ancestors were divided about Zhi’s heed. Many, convinced that Zhi had already shown them all they needed to prosper on the steppe, decided not to come. A few, scared of the dreadful tale, prepared to journey away.
The journey was tough, as Zhi had warned. Our folk crossed uneven ground were horses would break their hooves and men would stumble. Women cried out as their children grew exhausted of the journey. Hunger was once again commonplace, despite mastery of the Way of the Horse. Was Zhi wrong? When doubt was about to boil into open anger, a lone wayfarer crossed their path, his furs and shoes ragged, his skin covered in bruises and pustules. Such was his stench that many couldn’t bare his proximity. His nearness revealed him as one of our own. The red horse had come and the man was the only survivor of those who were left behind. It went exactly as Zhi had warned.
Grief overcame our ancestors, doubt and anger now replaced by melancoly. If not for Zhi’s sheer determination, our people would have given up their own hope, slowly dwindling away until the evil spirit finished them. Zhi’s promisses of a new life, however, ignited renewed hope on our folk’s hearts. Zhi’s leadership was of paramount importance back than, such that our ancestors adopted his name to refer to themselves as a people. And thus did our ancestors arrive at where we are today, the land we call Zhilnnia. As soon as they reached the open coastal plains, they sighted what none had never laid gaze before. The endless salt water expanse that we today call the ocean spread before them, lit brightly by a warm sun. And, surprising everyone, there were people living by the sandy beaches. Zhi told our folk that these men, women and children who lived by the sea and called themselves the Illn were friendly folk who would teach them the Way of the Water. In turn, our ancestors would have to teach them their Way of the Horse.
It was as if two long departed friends met each other again. Gifts were exchanged, and one side showed fascinating crafts to the other. Zhi arranged marriages between sons and daughters from both folk, and in a few generations the two folks were indistinguishable from one another. With Zhi and Illn together as one, the Zhilnn were born. Zhi’s mission was complete and as with his appeareance, he soon vanished without a trace under a moonlit sky.
Titi was fascinated by the story. So much that she lost herself in her thoughts again. How handsome must Zhi have been? Her rambling was interrupted abruptly by a loud cough, a sigh and by her granpa falling atop her. Startled, she recomposed herself, lifting herself up from the ground as her little brother Kiru cried aloud. Titi looked around and saw that her mommy, her big sister Jani, and even her recently arrived papa were all staring at her granpa Koyo, concern of their faces. It was then that titi saw his sightless gaze locked into her, his mouth frozen in a perpetual last gasp.
“It was his last story” her mama said, tears sprouting on ther brown eyes.
“Quickly, we must bring Fivi in” her father seemed distant “Before his bones cool and his spirit can’t reach the stars” He hastily left their hovel, intent on seeking the shaman.
Titi was scared. What was happening? She could only cry as her mother embraced her. Even Jani seemed shaken. Her sobbing eventualy subdued as Titi entered a troubled sleep, dreaming about the lonely wayfarer with her granpa Koyo’s face.

OBJECTIVE INFORMATION
The Zhilnn are a pastoral-agricultural folk, with a bit of maritime tradition mixed in. They don’t master any of the three particulary well, being well-rounded. Zhilnn villages are spread across Xhantea’s coastal plains, being more densily present at river estuaries, where fishing, pastures and farmland are easiest. Some villages especialize more in one aspect than other. The Zhilnn are prone to trading, being on the way of possible maritime trade routes across Xanthea and Gorgonea. Raiding by their nearby cousins, the Chiim, puts their expansion in check. Zhilnn villages are led by local chieftains, who rule under a clan-like disorganized structure. Shamans, usually female, are respected mainly because of the Zhillnn’s burrial traditions (the dead are put into burial urns and laid to rest in funeral mounds), but also as healers, hearbalists and spiritualist guidance. The Zhilnn believe in spirits, good or bad, with the Red Horse (Araw) being the most dreadful, while Zhi and his White Horse are the holliest. Zhilln Villages are small, usually no more than a few hundred people at best.

ADITIONAL TECHS
Key techs: Celestial navigation
Main techs: Advanced Carpentry, Sewn Plank Hulls
Minor techs: Piers & Warfs, Oar locks, Steering Oars/Basic Rudders, Boat Type: Plank Canoe, Harpoons

Growing up, I remember it all vividly: any time my friends or I got too close to the shed, my dad would come out hollering and yelling, telling us to stay away from there and that it was no place for kids. He told me he had expensive tools and dangerous chemicals stored there. As a child, I didn’t question it. It was just one of those things. In my mind, I had been born into a world where the sun rises in the east, breakfast is the first meal of the day and the shed stays locked. They were all true, self-evident and simply the way things existed in my young mind.
But as I grew older and eventually moved off to college, I began to question the shed more. My father still wouldn’t let me look in there. In fact, he kept the sole key on his person at all times. Even when he slept, he would keep the key in his pocket.
Then, during my second semester at the nearby state university, I got a call that every son or daughter dreads. I was attending a lecture on anatomy when my phone lit up, ringing silently in the great, crowded hall. Looking down, I saw it was my brother’s number. I went outside, lighting up a cigarette and answering it.
“Hello?” I said. “Gil?” My brother answered immediately.
“Luke, thank God you answered,” he said. “It’s dad. He’s being taken to the hospital. He had some sort of medical emergency. Can you meet us there? In maybe twenty-five minutes?” I said I would, hanging up. I grabbed my stuff in the lecture hall and made my way to my car. Twenty-two minutes later, I pulled into the hospital.
It was too late, however. My father had died of a heart attack on the way. He was declared dead on arrival.
***
We ended up inheriting the house. Our mother had died of breast cancer ten years earlier, so Gil and I were the last two of the Mortin bloodline. My brother was a good guy, though somewhat of a waste case, constantly smoking weed and dropping acid. He had a tendency to travel out far across the country without notice, moving around to see nature or go to music festivals. That is, when he had the money. And since he worked as a freelance writer, he was often broke.
He really wanted to get at the money dad had left us. He wanted the money from the house most of all. He told me repeatedly that it would be enough to tide him over until he got a footing in the writing industry, that he just needed to make a name for himself and then the money would start rolling in. He had his heart set on it. He would write anything that he could make money off of, from horror stories to romances, short stories to novels, even technical manuals or freelance journalism articles. As we walked to the house together for the first time in months, he repeated this mantra to me again: “Just enough to tide me over, Luke…”
“I think you’re probably going to burn through the money that Dad left you,” I said. “Why don’t you get a real job and just write on the side?” He gave me a sideways look.
“Did you see Hunter S. Thompson getting a ‘real job’ while just writing on the side?” he asked. I nodded.
“Yeah, he was a journalist…” I began as we walked into the house, but we both stopped simultaneously when we saw what was on the coffee table. It was all of Dad’s possessions he had when he died. They were placed neatly in a line- his wallet, his phone, his car and house key, some cash, and last of all, a little shed key on a thin, leather chain.
“What do you think is really in that shed?” I asked. Gil looked at me, pale and wide-eyed in the dark living room.
“I don’t really… I don’t know if I want to find out,” Gil said, whispering as if he were in a church- or a funeral home. I put my hand on his shoulder and shook him gently.
“Of course we need to find out,” I said. “You and I own this property now. We should go look right now.” He breathed in sharply.
“No, no, don’t be an idiot,” Gil whispered. “It’s dark now. In the morning, we can go together. In the morning. You have waited twenty years to find out, I think you can wait a few more hours.” But there was something pleading in his voice, something scared and child-like. It reminded me of when I was scared as a little boy at bedtime, telling my dad there were monsters in the closet, and he would go to open up the door, and I’d tell him to stop, that they’re going to hurt him if he opens that door. But he would open the door and there would be no monsters in there. Surely, it was the same here. Gil would see, and for that matter, so would I. There were no monsters in there.
***
This all happened from yesterday to this morning. We ended up leaving that place together a few hours ago, bloodied and bruised and injured, after being trapped inside all night.
The day before it started, Gil stayed up late downstairs, watching TV and smoking a joint. He made himself a night-cap from my father’s liquor cabinet, pouring some Jack Daniels and ice in a cup with some Coke and sipping it slowly. I stayed with him for a while, talking.
We talked about the good times we had with Dad, about going hiking with him at the Green Mountains, or traveling to New York City with him to see the museums. I thought about how much I really missed him, and a knot formed in my throat. I quickly blinked my eyes to try to get the tears to go away.
Eventually, I went to sleep in the guest bedroom. Gil stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch in front of the TV. I heard the faint hum of it from upstairs, the canned laughter of whatever comedy he was watching, the acerbic tone of the lead characters as they delivered one witty joke after another. I fell asleep to it, the voices blending into a sarcastic, hissing whisper in my ear.
And then I was floating, bodiless, looking down on a dark cornfield with ravens staring at me. The voice was bodiless, too, sounding like it came from right behind me, but when I turned, nothing was there.
“In the halls of our fathers, everyone is dead,” it whispered mockingly. “You’ll be dead soon too, if you get curious. Some doors are locked for a reason. Some doors should stay locked.”
I woke up suddenly. Something was wrong. I heard Gil yelling. I fumbled around in the dark for the lamp, groggily checking the time. 4:17 AM. Flinging the comforters off, I ran downstairs.
Gil was sleeping on the couch, still as a corpse, and quiet as one too. I looked around confusedly. Where was the screaming coming from? I followed the noise out back. I looked at the shed, and my blood ran cold as I heard another long cry come from inside. I walked across the dirt yard in my slippers, not wanting to get any closer but walking forwards nonetheless. Part of me wondered if I was still dreaming, but the chill air against my sweaty face felt real enough.
The screaming from the shed was not in words. It was a long, drawn-out, painful shriek. It was the shriek of a mother who just lost her only child in a war zone, or the yell of someone doused with gasoline and burned alive, but amplified into an ear-splitting cacophony. I had the key in my pocket. I reached for it with shaking hands, pulling it out, slowly approaching the shed.
Then someone grabbed my shoulder. I jumped, whirling around with clenched fists, ready to fight. Then I saw it was Gil.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I said through clenched teeth. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He put his finger to his lips, the universal signal for silence. Then he leaned close to my ear and whispered.
“If you open that shed now, we will both die,” he said quietly and calmly, as if he were just stating the weather for tomorrow. “Put the key away and go back to bed. You never want to open it in the dark. Never.”
“What do you know about it?” I whispered back, shooting glances over my shoulder at the shed. The screaming still came, though slower now, maybe one heart-rending shriek every minute or so. Part of me was glad there were no neighbors for half a mile in each direction, and that made me want to laugh. There was probably some horrific animal in there that would rip me apart if it got the chance, and I was thinking about noise complaints.
“Tomorrow,” Gil repeated, gently taking my arm and leading me back into the house. I sat next to him in the living room, pouring myself a gin and tonic, sipping it slowly as the screams from behind the house mixed with the canned laughter of the TV show, wondering what kind of man my father really was.
***
I woke on the couch, an empty glass falling out of my hand onto the cushion. Light streamed in through the windows. Gil was nowhere to be found. I looked back and forth, then heard the sizzling of food from the kitchen.
Stumbling in, I saw he had prepared a massive breakfast of bacon, sausages, corned beef hash, eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce, Texas toast, orange juice and coffee. He was smoking a joint with the windows opened, occasionally sending a grim look out the back of the house towards the shed. I sat down, pouring myself some coffee and grabbing milk and sugar to mix in.
“Who is all this food for?” I asked. He kept staring out the window. “Hey!” He turned suddenly, his face looking pale and drawn.
“What?”
“I said, who is all this food for?” I repeated. He looked around, smiling.
“Just for us. Why not? I figure you will need the energy today, and so will I,” he said cryptically. He sat down across from me, pouring himself coffee and orange juice and grabbing a plateful of meat, toast and eggs. I did the same, giving him occasional glances.
“What did Dad tell you?” I asked, pouring maple syrup on my sausages and bacon and chugging an entire cup of coffee in one long swallow. It burned my throat, but the rising heat and caffeine made me feel instantly better and more awake. Gil sighed heavily.
“Not much, to tell you the truth,” he said. “He was really drunk one time when you were away at college, a couple months ago. He was drinking more and more before he died, like something was weighing on him, something he wanted to forget. Well, anyway, I was sitting down here with him, watching those documentaries he used to love with him, and during a commercial, he just started talking about the shed.
“‘Now boy,’ he said to me, ‘I know you probably have a few questions for me. I probably should have told you and your brother about it a long time ago, but it is something I don’t like to talk about. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. I think talking about it tends to wake it up.’
“‘Wake up what?’ I said. Dad was quiet for a long time, just staring at me. Then he leaned close to me and whispered something strange.
“‘The stairs,’ he said. ‘They’re not normal, son. Sometimes they go down below the shed to a… Well, I guess it is just an empty sub-floor. Just a plain, swept dirt basement below the shed. But I never built any such sub-floor, and it wasn’t here when I bought the house, and it isn’t on the plans either. If that was it, then who would care? Hah, a free storage place, people would be happy, right?’ I nodded, grinning back at Dad. He seemed to have a glimmer of his old self for a second, happy and free. But then his face darkened again.
“‘But lots of times, boy, those stairs do not lead to a sub-floor. One time, they led down to a white room covered in blood, with bright fluorescent lights flickering all over the walls and ceiling. And there was a little girl down there, dancing among all the blood, jumping and twirling in her little blue dress, little ballerina slippers on her feet, and all the skin on her face peeled off. She was just a bloody, grinning skull. And when she saw me on the spiral steps in the corner, she stopped dancing and just stared. The lights began to turn off, everything went dark, and I ran, my boy, I ran faster than I have ever run in my life. I felt little hands grabbing at me as I made my way up the last stair and slammed that shed door behind me. I locked it as something fought to get out, something that felt far stronger than any child. And that was just one time.
“‘It’s worse at night. That’s when the real dangerous ones come out. I don’t know how the stairs work, son, and I don’t think I ever really want to. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll never have to deal with them. Maybe I’ll find a way to destroy them before I die. Aye, maybe…’” Gil stopped speaking, deep in thought and remembrance. I took another sip of juice and ate some bacon before responding.
“So you’re telling me Dad went batshit crazy before he died?” I asked. Gil shook his head quickly.
“He wasn’t crazy, Luke,” he said simply. “At least, I don’t think he was. If he was, the stairs probably made him that way. Do you really think that you were just hearing a fox or something caught in the shed last night? Those screams sounded human. We both know that was something unnatural. But I wouldn’t worry if I were you. If you need proof, we’ll have plenty after today- assuming you still want to go into the shed.” And after we finished eating, with no fanfare or delay, we did. I grabbed the key, and Gil and I went out side by side, scared but not showing it, ready to finally see for ourselves the mystery that had haunted our family for decades.
***
We walked through the hard-packed dirt yard, looking down the grassy field behind the house to the rolling hills that stretched as far as the eye could see. They began to grow blue, pale and fuzzy near the horizon. It was a beautiful place to live, and hard to imagine something so evil might be right in the middle of it.
The shed loomed up ahead of us, boards tightly hammered together and freshly painted a dark red color. The shingles on the small roof all looked relatively new, and the door was expensive and sturdy. I stood in front of the door, listening for the sounds of any movement, but there was nothing. I fumbled in my pocket for the key, pulling it out, looking at Gil who stood close by my side. Then I shoved it in the lock and opened the door.
The shed was dark, as if a curtain of shadow fell across the open door. I stuck my head in, feeling around the side for a lightswitch. And that was when something grabbed my hand. I screamed, ready to pull my hand out and run, and then I felt the lightswitch on the wall. I flicked it on quickly. There was no one in there. Shaking, I turned to Gil.
“Something grabbed me,” I whispered. He nodded, unsurprised. Then we walked in the shed together.
The walls inside were all covered with plates of sheet metal. Every square inch of the shed was reinforced with steel, including the roof, which had a flat pane of metal going straight across the shed, welded to the four that covered the walls. Only the floor was unprotected. It was just a plain dirt floor with a hole in the center.
Looking closer at the protective structure of the shed, I saw deep claw and gouge marks raking the metal’s surface, even those on the bottom of the ceiling eight feet above the floor. Something had clearly been in here and wanted very badly to get out.
I inched closer to the hole in the floor, which took up most of the floor of the shed. It was at least ten feet wide. Looking down, I saw spiraling steps, descending in a clockwise fashion as far down as the light extended. I found a small rock on the ground outside, came back in and dropped it down the center of the stairway. I listened for it to hit bottom, counting the seconds on my watch. After about thirty seconds, I realized it wasn’t going to. Maybe it was too far down to hear when the stone connected.
I looked over at Gil. He was standing as near to the door as he could get, looking like he would rather be anywhere else in the world. I gave him high marks for courage, though. There was something wrong in here, and I could feel it. Outside, it was warm and a fresh breeze blew the smell of flowers and pines through the yard. But in here, it was cold and oppressive. A freezing chill seemed to come from the hole in the floor, spiraling up with the stairs and running over my body, sending a feeling like ice running up and down my back.
“Do you want to go first, or should I?” I said, gesturing to the hole. Gil stared at me as if I had gone mad, his eyes widening.
“Why in the fuck should either of us go?” he said, raising his hands and using them to gesticulate wildly as he often did when he was upset. I shrugged.
“This is our property now,” I said. “We need to at least know what’s on it, don’t you think?” But there was another reason too. It was sheer curiosity, and a desire to prove to myself that there was nothing supernatural going on here, no monster in the closet, just the overactive imagination of an old man. Gil sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go. Go grab two flashlights and Dad’s gun. Maybe some extra batteries. Some extra magazines too. Better safe than sorry, after all…”
We both went inside the house together, leaving the shed door wide open, and that was when, I believe, something got out. And then the killings in town began.
***
We descended the stairs slowly. They were stone, slick in some places. There was no guard rail or any protective barrier, which made my heart beat a little faster. I liked something to hold onto. If I took a tumble on these stairs, I might keep falling forever.
We heard strange sounds from below periodically, but when we shone our lights down there, we couldn't see anything. Echoes rose around us, sounding at one point like kids playing a game of hide and seek, at another like the howling of a wolf. Strange squeaks and clicks would also arise intermittently from the shaft below us, and then stop as quickly as they had started.
The noises got louder as we descended dozens of stories, then hundreds. It seemed like the stairs would just keep going on forever, until we hit the mantle of the Earth and got burned up. Then a door appeared, painted a chipped blue with a fading daisy on the center of it. I looked at Gil, then swung it open.
Beyond it, a hallway with fluorescent lights extended as far as the eye could see. Countless rooms went off it to the left and right. The lights flickered on and off, sending portions of the hallway into darkness. The floor was falling apart in many places, with strange molds and fungi growing out of the wood. White and black molds battled for space, forming huge colonies that were bigger than my shoe. I walked forward, putting my weight gingerly on the floorboard. It creaked slightly and felt wet under my shoe, yet it held my weight.
“Come on,” I said to Gil, who followed closely behind. As soon as we had walked a few steps down the hall, the door slammed shut by itself behind us. I jumped and turned, pulling out the gun reflexively. Gil put a hand on my shoulder, pushing the gun back down.
“It’s OK,” he said. I was breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest. Maybe that was why I didn’t hear the counting at first.
But as we walked down the decayed hallway, the lights turning on and off above us with every step, I realized that someone was counting, and it had been going on for a while. It sounded like the voice of a little girl.
“Forty… thirty-nine… thirty-eight…” she said, counting off the seconds. I heard giggling from the rooms around us, but I couldn’t see anyone. We kept walking forward, but that counting was getting on my nerves- not least because I couldn’t for the life of me tell where it was coming from.
We checked the rooms to the left and the right. There were broken tables, old office equipment and chairs in nearly all of them. Some of them had fish tanks, but instead of fish, they had plumes of multi-colored molds growing over the top of them, or, in one case, a dead and dried-out turtle.
“...one… ready or not, here I come!” the girl’s voice screamed gleefully, and that was when all the lights went out at once. We quickly fumbled for our flashlights, turning them on at the same time. I had the gun in one hand crisscrossed with the flashlight in the other, a trick I had seen used in cop shows. Gil had a ten-inch bowie knife in one hand, which he had just removed from the massive scabbard he had it in around his leg. In his other hand, he held the flashlight, which he frantically shone back and forth, up and down.
“Geez, calm down with that thing,” I said. “You’re going to make me dizzy.”
“Something’s coming,” Gil whispered, a note of dread in his voice. “Don’t you hear it?” I stopped, listening hard. Indeed, I heard footsteps nearing, small suppressed giggles, the swishing of a dress. My flashlight illuminated a pale face, a little boy sneaking a peak out of the nearest room. He was filthy, covered in black soot with torn clothing and what looked like blood caked into his hair. He looked up at us quickly then withdrew into the room. For the first time, I felt genuinely scared. Now we could be certain we were being watched.
“Hey!” I whispered, running into the room after him. Gil followed close behind me. The footsteps seemed to be right next to us now, but I looked around, not seeing anyone. Then a blur of movement passed by as a little girl ran over to the little boy, where he was curled in the corner under a broken folding table, crying and shaking with terror.
“Found you!” she said. I shone my light directly at her back, seeing a pale blue dress, but I couldn’t see her face.
“Get away from that kid!” I yelled. She ignored me, bending down quickly, and before I knew what had happened, she had ripped the boy’s throat out with her teeth. She turned to look at us, and I saw that her face had been cut off, and now only a grinning skull remained. It was covered in a thin sheen of blood, and two tiny white pinpoints of light seemed to glow inside the empty sockets of her eyes. With her teeth full of flesh and gristle and fresh rivulets of blood running down her skeletal mouth, she continued to cry, “Found you! Found you! Found you!”
Without hesitation, I shot her in the shoulder. She fell back a half-step, turning to look at me with that skeletal grin, then spun around and continued eating the little boy. He was still alive, choking on his own blood, his huge eyes moving over to me as he died, as if accusing me of being the cause of all this. The sound of his last gurgling breaths were the only sounds now. I shot her again, but she wouldn’t go down. A blossom of blood began to spread outwards on her back where I had shot her, but she showed no pain. Gil grabbed my shoulder tightly.
“We need to get out of here,” he said through gritted teeth. I nodded. We ran back to the door we had come in through, but it was locked tight. The lights were still off. I told Gil to take a step back, then tried shooting at the lock. The bullet ricocheted crazily as if I had shot a reinforced army tank rather than a plain wooden doorway. Next we tried kicking it open, but it was as if it were fused to the wall.
I turned to look at him, and the truth passed between us in a glimpse. To get out, we would have to go farther in, where there were likely even worse things waiting for us.

So I’ve been down the rabbit hole, trying to chase every off-the-cuff reference, stray allegory, allusion, comparison, and tangent. I’m going to need you to bear (hug) with me for a bit because I think I’ve stumbled on some truly insane parallels between this show and the myriad of references it makes and it will take a lot of text to justify to you that I'm not crazy (or that I am, but at least I do my research).
This is a show that employs a ton of intertextuality and what the poet T.S. Eliot (someone quoted frequently throughout the series) calls “the mythic method”: essentially using historical, literary, and mythological allusions to draw parallels between characters on the show and characters throughout history (real and imagined).
This method helps the audience to build both conscious and unconscious associations with each of the characters and, ultimately, underscores the Roys’ (and humanity’s) damning commitment to making the same mistakes over and over again. The show seems to draw a lot from Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, biblical parables, Shakespearean tragedy, and modernist poetry (among many other things).
These networks of symbolism span from the earliest recorded history to modern celebrity culture and yet they reveal frighteningly unchanged elements in the stories they tell. The parallels of these references throughout the show serve to highlight the cyclical (the illusion of progress) and deterministic (the illusion of free will) nature of existence.
While I will be dipping in and out of the existing references, I want to call particular attention to the poetry of the aforementioned T.S. Eliot (who champions the mythic method) and John Berryman’s poem Dream Song 29 because I believe much of their work has served as a foundation for characters.
In the show, Frank makes mention of his poem “The Long Song Of J Alfred Prufrock” more than once. Outside of the show, Matthew McFayden (the actor who plays Tom) references the same poem to describe his character. Jeremy Strong (the actor who plays Kendall) says Eliot’s work The Four Quartets is a huge inspiration to his acting and character. A line from this particular work did strike me as being quite on the nose, which is why I continued to comb the poem for more (which it does deliver on):

"In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf."

This will probably be a monster of a post, so I will attempt to break down the following sections between poetic parallels, visual and dialogic symbolism of eternal recurrence, and an exploration of the historical and mythological allusions. Ultimately, I believe all of these clues point to the overwhelming conclusion that we will end where we began, in some way or another.
Circles & Cycles: Endless Recurrence & The Futility Of Progress
The show toys a lot with the philosophical concept of eternal recurrence, which postulates that “time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity.”
These eternal loops are symbolized visually with mirrors, water, fractal reflections; in the “uh-huh” and “mhmms” of repeated, near-palindromic dialogue; and in the show events that echo and repeat: in-air death scares, asynchronous business deals, family betrayal, weddings, retreats, implosions, family reunions, trauma bonding, baptism, funerals, etc.
In this understanding of time, there is no linear progress — or even progress at all. Time is cyclical. People are cyclical. As are the events that transpire. This is particularly interesting in a show like Succession whose title alone implies the phrase “line of succession.” Viewers would expect to see what comes next — who comes next — but as Logan himself yells, “Nothing is a line. Everything is moving all the time.”
Logan consistently evokes the circle shape in his speech, “Put a circle around him” he tells Shiv. “We’ve been circling for an hour, tell them we’re out of gas,” he complains in a moment of grim foreshadowing on his plane. “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes,” he shouts during the game of Boar on the Floor.
And he is the bright, burning nebulous center of this circle. He’s described as “carr[ying] his gravity. He's not a man, he's a f*cking planet.” And the people around him are described like satellites and moons. Characters exist in his orbit. And every complete orbit (or “revolution”) leaves characters in exactly the same place. There are motions, there is the illusion of progress, but the result is the same. Eliot again:

“every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure”

With this understanding, the show may just end where it begins. Not only in “nothing” happening, but in repeating the same events ad infinitum: A kid tries to take over the family business, they try to align with their siblings, they eventually backstab their siblings, they end out in the cold, and then they reunite, swear not to do it again, until it all repeats.
As most of us are aware, the show has made very direct mention of the John Berryman poem Dream Song 29. The names of the past three season finales (as well as the name of the upcoming fourth) are all direct excerpts from the poem, which deals with grief and sadness and the guilt of killing someone when you can’t even confirm there’s been someone killed at all.
Berryman consistently wrote about the guilt and grief he experienced from his father’s suicide. Berryman himself would eventually end up taking his own life, which on its own is a brutal reminder of the cycles of trauma. It also doesn’t feel insignificant that Berryman jumped off a bridge.
What’s really interesting is how each subsequent finale is named for a line that comes earlier and earlier in the poem. It also toys with this concept that things come full circle and end where they begin. This echoes Eliot’s essential thesis of the poem:

“What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

But while the speaker of the poem comes to realize he has not murdered “nobody” by the poem’s last line; Kendall, moving through the poem backward, must reckon with the idea that he may have killed somebody even if they were a “nobody.” And while we may encounter this as a moment in which Kendall is genuinely despairing over his season 1 inadvertent murder, I believe we are far more likely to see Kendall embrace this moment.
We see "nobody" and "no one mentioned" a lot when it comes to Logan, who believes most people are "fungible as f*ck," and "pygmies" while he's "1,000 feet tall." When Kendall is involved in the accident, we see him echo "NRPI" or no real person involved.
The reason Kendall couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations is that he couldn’t be the killer his father needed him to be (even if his morality or basis of being a good person is off). This retroactive movement through the poem could be Kendall realizing he is, in fact, the killer his father always needed him to be, enabling him to take the necessary steps of seizing the crown on his own.
Allegories & Allusions: Mythic Comparisons & Determinism
It’s Shakespearean, like Roman says, “I kill Kendall, get crowned king, like we’re in f*cking Hamlet or something.” But it’s not just Hamlet, it’s King Lear, King Richard III, Coriolanus, Macbeth. And it’s not just Shakespeare, it’s Oedipus Rex, The Odyssey, The Waste Land, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cronus devouring his children, Romulus killing Remus, Noah cursing his child for looking upon him naked.
The concept of the monomyth was popularized in "The Hero With 1000 Faces" and discusses throughout history, throughout different times and places, different cultures, different religions, different people have developed stories with relatively similar fundamental elements. The show is rife with allusions of stories that follow that same thread. Logan is Cronus who is King Lear who is Romulus who is who is. This is another form of endless recurrence: the inability to break the cycle. Or, in a very Hamlet reference, "maybe the poison drips through."
The themes of patricide, fratricide, and incest in particular are rampant. Rhea (like Rhea Jarell) in Greek mythology is both sister and consort to Cronus. Both are part of the first generation of aptly named Titan gods. Cronus overthrew his father Uranus and learns his children are fated to overthrow him. So he eats them as soon as they are born. Logan does refer to people as food a surprising amount throughout the show, varying from red meat to vegetables. He outright calls for blood sacrifice, which evokes the language of the gods.
Logan is referenced specifically as one of the last real American titans in his obituaries and eulogies. The language around him is frequently god-like. He's known as "the big man" or even "the big man upstairs." Tom tells Greg to "be his representative here on earth"; Roman asks the audience, "who is going to climb Mt. Olympus and be the next Dr. Zeus?" And that's where the myth gets interesting.
The only child not to be eaten is Zeus, who does end up killing his father and was surprisingly interested in marrying his mother. We're familiar with this plot formula through a different archetype: the Oedipus Complex, which we see referenced in the show with “Oedipus Roy,” “Oedipussy,” and “stabbing my eyes out.” The same story is repeated again in Hamlet with brother killing and brother and son yelling at his mother about her milky breasts (something Roman does to Shiv more than once). In the show when Logan says to Roman, “You may want to f*ck your mother but I don’t.” We know none of these stories end well. As Connor muses, “It’s not right to kill one’s father; history teaches us that.”
In the story of Romulus and Remus (whose mother’s name is also Rhea), the two brothers were initially chased out of their city as potential threats to the King (yet again). They were left by the river to die and were saved by the river god (important). After successfully overthrowing the kingdom that left them for dead, they agree to found a new city. They ultimately disagreed on which hill to found it and decided to have a bird-watching competition to see who could see the most omens indicating they had divine approval for the hill. Remus says he saw 6 auspicious birds but Romulus claims to see 12. Romulus kills Remus over this.
It should remind you of Logan visiting his childhood home with Ewan: “I saw a mistle thrush at the bandstand,” and the log book he kept as a child of birds he “saw” that Ewan would cross out if he didn’t believe him. It may also echo a part of The Four Quartets, “Other echoes/ Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?/ Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,/ Round the corner. Through the first gate,/ Into our first world, shall we follow/ The deception of the thrush?"
There is much to be said about the themes of warring brothers. Also the themes of fathers worried their children would one day overthrow them who take action to thwart or murder their children, which inadvertently sets into motion the very outcome they fear. It happens over and over again in stories old and new. As Panhandle Pete says, “I push him, he pushes me, and around and around we go.” Or as Eliot puts it, “that the wheel may turn and still / Be forever still.”
Much of these works touch on a sort of determinism, or the slow crushing reality that every action you take — even if that action is an attempt to thwart your fate — will ultimately lead to the same inevitable ending. This is the illusion of free will on top of the illusion of progress. And Logan, in fearing his children would usurp him (and also disparaging his children for not being able to), set into motion his own death and his own messy succession.
It’s also a reminder that the greatest men in life are all the same when laid to rest:

"O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark…"

Structure & Symbolism: Water As Rebirth & Destruction
The show has very much been structured around Kendall, and we watch him move through bodies of water with what feels like different symbolism each time. Is he drowning, is he reborn? We witness Kendall at his lowest point face down in a pool and at one of his highest, splashing into the Pacific ocean. We watch a man drown. We watch Logan beg Kendall for water as they walk through Adrien Brody’s maze. We watch Roman clamor for water at the funeral when he needs to calm down. Poetry has long played with this life and death dynamic in water, like the sailors dying of thirst in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner who cry:

“Water, water, every where,. And all the boards did shrink;. Water, water, every where,. Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ!”

This sub has noted Kendall’s connection to water, which has been represented over and over visually. But once you realize every metaphor, analogy, and simile he uses is water-based, you can’t unhear it. He calls his father “a tsunami of corruption” and describes things “as more precious than water”; he calls deals “choppy” and “dead in the water,” and asks to “help steady the ship”; he offers to “row back” on business deals, says timing is “high tide,” and that he has “bigger fish to fry.”
Logan is apt to use similar water symbolism, even telling Shiv that she’s marrying a man “fathoms” beneath her. As Rhea tells him, fearful of his own monstrosity, “I can’t see the bottom of the pool. I don’t know if you care about anything. It scares me.” ATN’s major scandal was “death cruises.” Even his operating nemesis is called “Sandy.”
In fact, there is mention of all elements and seasons — in particular, fire from Shiv, air from Roman, and earth from Connor. T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets confront these same themes and share some surprising similarities with show scene locations, dialogue, and plot points.
That’s because Succession is an allegory for the micro and the macro: the rise and fall of families, civilizations, monarchies, dynasties, and empires. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, the cycles rinse and repeat. Eliot modeled the four quartets on the 4 elements and the 4 seasons. And you can see even in Succession a similar manifestation of 4 elements. And, well, 4 seasons of the show. (And what occurs after 4 seasons? A full revolution around the sun, bringing you to where you began.)
Water seems to be at the root of it all. Even Ewan’s eulogy meditates on his and Logan’s journey on a boat. Even their abusive uncle is named Noah. In the show, we watch our nobody die by water, we watch our main character nearly die by water, and then we watch him revive in the ocean. As Kendall and his father wind their way through Adrien Brody’s circuitous Long Island home, Kendall remarks, “I think this leads to the ocean.” Because every path leads to the sea in some way or another.
The overarching narration from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is the Arthurian Legend of The Fisher King. This story is told a million different ways with a million different outcomes, but always boils down to an injured or maimed monarch ruling over a dying land. Or as Ewan refers to his "empire of shit": “He’s built a wasteland and called it an empire.”
He’s looking for someone, anyone, to heal him, rescue the kingdom, and ensure the dynasty survives. This is the myth of the holy grail, which, in this show, can be seen as the throne: The original stories of the holy grail were not Christian/religious but they do employ a lot of the same mythmaking from earlier religions and mythologies to tell their stories and thus construct their new realties. As Eliot says in The Four Quartets:

"The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere."

I believe Kendall (and the other children) represent the grail knights who try to save the king. (On the same level they stand in for the gods, the elements, or anything at all). When Christianity became more popular, these myths adapted to Christian overtones, but they still had the Celtic and pagan myths at their core: the grail becomes the chalice from the last supper.
That’s why Kendall’s easy comparisons of himself to Jesus feel less blasphemous than revelatory. Jesus is another hero archetype in the show’s mythology. He is willing to sacrifice himself, which Kendall must do in order to become the successor his father wanted. As he says, "this is a culmination of my life's journey to be crucified for you morons."
(It’s worth noting: In some legends, the knight saves the king; in others, he inadvertently destroys him. We know Logan dies, but it does feel less likely that Waystar Royco survives.) Drowning is a constant feature of Eliot's poems, but so is baptism and renewed life. It is difficult to determine the meaning of water in either instance, except that it doesn't discriminate as a life or death bringer, which is both beautiful and terrifying.
Parallels & Predictions: Piecing The Plot & Poetry Together
To repeat again, as this show is wont to do: “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes!” Logan Roy shouts during a game of Boar On A Floor. It’s an allegory, like many games on the series, and proudly says the quiet part out loud: Logan always wins. Here’s a little boar on the floor reference in The Four Quartets:

"We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars."

We’ve seen the L.O.G.A.N. system at work many times and with many people. He dangles a carrot, a morsel of love, as each character attempts to play the game over and over while expecting different results. They are doomed to crawl in that circle, to play that blind game, as Logan angrily shouts, “It’s fun!” And this game doesn't end in death. The children still ask. "What would dad do?"
Games on Succession (which are a consistent refrain), it turns out, are rarely fun and are often designed to humiliate or inflict pain. The same goes when characters say “I’m just kidding” after an eviscerating remark. Logan thinks life is a game, and as he says, games should be taken seriously. And because Logan explicitly makes the rules, there is no winning, just trudging around the board, passing Go, and collecting $200. The games are essentially Sisyphean tasks that the kids wouldn’t be able to win even if they were actually competent enough to run the company. And yet they keep rolling the boulder. It’s endless. The repetition. It ends where it begins.

"Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration. A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments."

Please also note the use of “the rose” and “the yew tree,” which are the names of Logan’s siblings Rose and Ewan, which derives from yew-tree. Other important name comparisons include Kendall’s association to spring/river valley; Siobhan’s nickname either a knife (Shiv) or Pinky (a variation of the name Rose); Roman’s connection to Romulus/Corialanus; Tom’s name meaning “twin” because there was already someone named Judas in the bible HELLO; Logan’s name meaning little hollow, which recalls another Eliot poem, The Hollow Men.
We know this show is a game, one that isn't fun at all, and one whose rules Logan made up. Even when there's a winner, there's no winner. So it's almost futile to play at all. That said, it’s impossible to make sense of any of it all without the ending — to confirm this ball has been rolling toward an inevitable conclusion, but given the show’s ending has probably occurred already, here are my thoughts:

• Kendall drowns

This may feel a bit on the nose given we’ve already seen this almost happen to “the Kurt Cobain of floaties,” but it would certainly be poetic. This could be sad (launched from a bridge); empowering (a la The Awakening); or metaphorical (a drug overdose). At some point Kendall says, "If dad didn’t need me right now I wouldn’t know what I would be for." The kids exist with Logan as their sun; they are moons, satellites, in orbit. And when their sun dies out, they repeat the motions in the cold, slowly losing their patterns and motions. The term is science is a rogue planet and the following lines from the poem remind me of Kendall and his broken, hollow stare.
“It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.”

• Kendall is king of the ashes

Any victory feels like it will be a Pyrrhic victory regardless when you've had to systematically take down everyone you love to achieve it. The same lines above can echo here "the purpose is beyond the end you figured/And is altered in fulfilment." A hollow victory. The Fisher King question Logan poses is, "Who can replace me?" Logan wanted each of his children to display the killer instinct. Kendall’s backwards journey through Dreamsong 29 may very well see him realize he is, in fact, the killer his dad always wanted — with open eyes. This will probably involve taking down his siblings. In this version, winning is a lot like losing, which feels very Succession.

• Mattson wins it all

These Shakespearean histories and tragedies rarely end well for existing houses. With Richard III (the-multiple-lineage-ending war of the roses) and Hamlet (the-whole-house-dies-but-a-norwegian-king-swoops-in-to-take-it-all dynastic struggle) references abound. We may just see a new house rise up and rinse and repeat. This would probably also occur if the kids take each other down and leave it open for another party. We saw last season that Roman thought he had an in with Mattson until it didn’t serve Mattson anymore. I see the same thing happening between Roman and Mencken. This puts Mencken and Mattson in a position to take over, which may make Mattson win it or…

• Mattson destroys it all

When Mattson is introduced, he is referenced as a trickster. Generally, in mythology, this character is quite intelligent or in possession of secret knowledge, and he uses it for trickery and commandeering situations. (Is that blood thing real???). Hamlet concludes with every major character killing the other with their own tragic flaws until a third party Scandinavian comes in to take the crown with no necessary action or bloodshed at all. We already know he's unscrupulous; what is his end game? It reminds me of one of his early lines to Roman, which would be an eerie foreshadowing:
“Success doesn’t really interest me anymore, it’s too easy. Analysis + capital + execution. Fucking, anyone can do that. But failure, that’s a secret. Just as much failure as possible as fast as possible, burn that shit out, that’s interesting.”

• Tom betrays Shiv

We’ve seen it happen before (which is why it should happen again). We’ve also seen Tom remove the thin veneer of his ambitions to the point where he almost feels like Richard III. He has played the fool, which is Shakespearean estimation, is often equivalent to the trickster. This would be a fun and distorted parallel to Shiv offering this job to him for Logan to offer it to her. This would probably happen in conjunction with Mattson winning. As I mentioned earlier, the name Tom means “twin” and the apostle Tom was only called as such because there were already one too many “Judas” in the mix. He's also from Minnesota (the twin cities!), so this is becoming very real, you know???

• Greg betrays Tom

While we know Tom has betrayed Shiv before, we also know Greg betrayed Shiv and Tom when he spoke to Geri in the first season about Tom having a press conference on cruises. He leads Tom to believe Shiv has betrayed him, getting one over on both of them. There may also be something with the Rule of 3 and being betrayed 3 times that feels biblical. The show also makes TONS of references to holding on to blackmail for opportune moments. Will we see something like this?
I’m not a big believer that Greg will fail so far upwards that he will win (this would feel like a betrayal in its own right), but do I believe there’s a world where Greg gets himself on a piece of paper with a question mark. Maybe???

• Geri finally beats Tom

This is my personal hope because I want the Tom and Jerry allusion to be real more than any other I put together (we love a good cat and mouse game). If Mattson wins, he needs a US CEO. Geri has collected a massive amount of dirt on everyone. And to call back to season 1’s interim CEO discussions, Shiv says, “I don’t like Geri. But I don’t hate Geri either.” It would feel particularly good given how much time and effort Logan spent clarifying Geri would be terrible at the position. Especially as Logan disparaging someone generally means he’s afraid of what they can do.
I’ll end at the ending. Or conclude where Eliot did on The Four Quartets:

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always— A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one."

PS. Given ‘Pinky’ is another name for ‘Rose’ does this mean Shiv wins??? JK let’s just watch the show tonight and laugh at our predictions in the morning.

My brother died in a car accident a week ago and I went and stayed a week at my parents with our daughter (1) so i could help plan the funeral while my husband stayed home and worked. He came for the funeral and had to leave that afternoon. He’s been as supportive as he can before the funeral. Me, my daughter, and sister (21) came back home to my house the night after the funeral because my sister didn’t want to be alone. After I got in bed last night, I said goodnight to my husband and he mumbled something that I couldn’t understand and he snipped at me saying that he said goodnight. I was annoyed at that point and said nothing else. And he said “I love you” and I said it back and he just sighed and said “why do I always have to say it first?” I got so angry and just snapped. I asked him why did he have to pick a fight with me right now, and he just turned over and went to sleep. I have so much grief with losing my brother, and I had to pick up the pieces of my parents and do everything. I created the obituary, I had to take clothes for them to put my brother in for the funeral, I had to pick up his belongings form the funeral home they sent. I haven’t been able to have a single moment alone to process my own grief. For my husband to obviously think I’m going to snap back into our life of normalcy just makes me so angry. I have felt no compassion from him since I’ve come back home. I’m almost considering divorce. Advice?
ETA:
The divorce comment seems extreme, I know. It’s just that this isn’t the first time he’s snapped or came at me while I’ve already been upset about something. It just feels like he’s lacking compassion. Do I truly want to divorce him? Of course not. I just want him to have some compassion. I have had to be strong for everyone this past week, and I just really needed his support and love. Not for him to already kick me while I’m down.

[Part 1]
Date: December 31st, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Eighteen, Desperation
It seems I’ve underestimated those doctors’ resolve badly. And I’ve equally overestimated their sense of self-preservation.
We’re down to the last few possible rescues out there, anything we find alive is a miracle to be kept going at all costs and we’ve started actually worrying about the dead. Yeah, we’ve just been leaving the dead where they lie before, no use worrying about them when there’s lives to save. But now we’re gathering them.
Hey, do you know how aliens are generally very weird about, like, blood? And us eating meat? They’re real squeamish, right? Wanna know what I saw this morning?
We’d ran out of painkillers yesterday. This morning I’d been following my partner, same lass that I drunkenly asked to lick me what looks like years ago by this time. She looked like a fucking bloodhound, I don’t know what she was doing but she found the poor guy, gal’s been doing this job for long enough I guess. Guy was severely dehydrated, nearby storage tanks had ignited or something bringing the whole building down, he’d become seriously trapped by his left arm that had already necrosed. Absolutely certain of infection.
Now, I’m strong. But I was not going to lift nearly three hundred kilograms of whatever this building material is. And all of our hydraulic lifters are dust at this point, we had no means of moving the debris. After checking for that, and finding it to be an impossible task, I setup to call the recovery vehicle to bring a few more people to see if we could move it.
“No time” she said “And he’ll lose it anyway”. I didn’t grasp, exactly, what she was saying at the time, but she asked me to get something hot. The fires from the storages here were still burning, even after so long. I figured she’d attempt to amputate the necrosed arm here and now, we did have some sharp tools with us and she was probably packing painkillers, right? So I prepared a very medieval cauterization tool using a piece of shredded metal.
She wasn’t packing painkillers. My survival knife had been dangerously chipped and bent out of shape when I freed a kid stuck in a locked armoire. The only sharp implement she had was her claws.
If any human reads this I want you to imagine. You’ve seen this kind of scene in media a lot, haven’t you? Having to make a choice to sacrifice someone’s limb to save their life. Maybe on old media someone bringing down a bonesaw on a soldier’s arm as they bite tightly down on a piece of leather. We’re the hardiest motherfuckers in this galaxy, aren’t we?
Now I want you to picture this tiny little teddy bear of an alien, who you’ve probably seen passing out at the mere mention of flesh. Imagine this little thing bringing those tiny claws down on someone’s arm and tearing apart flesh until the bone is showing, dislodging it away and finishing the cut with her bare hand. With that soulless, blank stare in her eyes. And the one getting torn apart isn’t some badass human soldier, it’s a meek little venlil, who’d probably barely even heard about what is going on, who was just some factory worker going about his day before the apocalypse came knocking.
He’s not going to be having nightmares about the arxur I can promise you that. Fuck I can’t even say I won’t be having nightmares of this scene. But she’d cut above the line of the necrosis, and he was freed. Ugh, the smell when I cauterized the wound… That wasn’t right… And he screamed for far too long, he should have passed out sooner, why was nature being so cruel this moment.
Back at the camp wasn’t any easier. It haven’t been easy for a while now… Suppose I better tell, I guess it’d be just plain disrespectful to those doctors pretending they’re saints. There were other things they brought in their personal belongings, things that weren’t, in the strictest sense, for healing people. A type of tool they’ve been using a lot, however.
Stimulants. And I don’t mean stuff like energy drinks, I mean “make the dead walk” kind of brain-busting stimulants. I’ve had to stop twenty eight cases of stimulant use. I’d asked myself earlier if perhaps zurulians didn’t have the same kind of stamina humans have, that isn’t true. Those people were taking their fucking bodies lightyears past their own limits, some haven’t slept in days. Everything to try to find one more living person.
There was a rotation on the triage VR rig, people have to sleep, right? So, I learned about a new kind of problem you can suffer, Somatic Shock. Wanna know what Somatic Shock is? It’s not just the human brain that does this wonderful thing of extending your sensations to your tools, of treating your tools as an extension of your body, seems like a pretty common trick of sapience. And do you want to know what happens when you spend Fifty. Fucking. Hours. Strapped to a VR rig without sleep?
That thing the brain does gets pretty strongly ingrained. And dragging someone out of the system causes somatic shock. It’s kind of like a version of phantom limb syndrome, but what they feel is what you’re doing with the rig. Dragging someone out of a VR rig in that state feels like you’re ripping their limbs out, that’s why it’s called somatic shock. He fucking said “Not as bad as the last time” to me when he stopped shaking “I blacked out back then”.
What is wrong with those people, they have no sense of self-preservation! You can’t help anyone if you’re dead! This isn’t a goddamn fucking last stand. At this point i’ve mostly turned to babysitting them instead of doing anything else.
Date: January 4th, 2137 Standard Terran Time - Day Twenty Two, Pyre
Today I caved in. Ever since I’ve realized they were using stimulants, they had offered them to me in case I wished. Not forced, just in case. Yeah I confiscated each and every one of those doses, before they killed themselves.
But today we were gathering the bodies, it was the very last stretch. We’re running low on literally everything, but at this point we’ve mostly accepted that whoever was left was dead, so we’ve gathered the bodies and identified them.
This… Is still a Federation world. Those poor people were killed by arxur, and also here I am. The help that was given was not requested, but I bet you all reading this know why we dealt with the bodies this way, yes? Doesn’t matter how much you think it’s right or wrong, when you’re here to help, the funeral rites are the ones of where you are. And, well… Here, it’s fire.
At least we tried making a pretty, respectable and honorable funeral pyre instead of anything else. Cremation is a thing, after all. But those ashes will scatter to the wind.
And so, as to not make this take multiple days, to make it end as soon as possible… I took a stimulant injection (yeah, straight into the blood flow, shows how potent the thing is). But i’m going to collapse to fucking hell afterwards, and i’m going to make each one of those damn doctors pass right the fuck out too. We’re done. We’ve done everything we could, everything we couldn’t and then a little bit more.
But despite all that, one thing… Horrified me. You see, that lass… She was watching the pyre burn. All of the others had kept as far away from it as possible, the newest guy, that one that was right out of college, had even thrown up at the sight of it. But no, that lass was watching it, and it made me worried. I went to check on her.
“Does… It smell like food to you?” was what she asked me. And honestly, after sharing this gods-be-damned nightmare with her, she asks me that? I was all ready to get extremely pissed off at her until I noticed what she was doing.
She was scraping her tongue with her claw almost maniacally. And she had even started to bleed. This… This was the lass that told me about how powerful their sense of taste is, how some things overlapped both their sense of smell and taste. The lass I had drunkenly asked to see how I tasted and identified my bad eating habits from that alone.
And that realization made me remember Placido. It was a huge fire, they even brought the armed forces to help the rescue operation, that’s why I was there. What stuck to me the most was the smell, that nauseating smell, the realization that the smell of burning human flesh was so indescribably close to the smell of pork…
And I realized the intent of her question was one word short of what her mouth said. “Does it smell like food to you too?”. Why is nature so completely fucking cruel like this? They’re herbivores and somehow, for whatever twist of fucking fate, because evolution is the worst engineer in the entire universe, whatever little chemical present in burning flesh didn’t just trigger their olfaction, but also their sense of taste.
It made me sick to my stomach to even consider it… And all I could say was “Yes”. I knew now why everyone else didn’t get close, just didn’t know why she did otherwise. But I did what I thought best, straight up grabbed her and pulled her away. Brought her back to the camp (of course we built the pyre far away, I wasn’t sure why at the moment but this must be why) and with an epiphany I… Jury-rigged something. My soap was almost gone, two thirds of it had been used to help sanitize tools at that point, but with my bent and broken knife I shaved little pieces of it into a water canteen, and managed to cobble together something with the vague smell of mint.
Wasn’t none of that buzz-giving smoke, but it was enough to help keep them sane. These people have such a terrifying drive to help people, but no discipline on how to help themselves. How’d they get like this?
Date: January 7th, 2137 Standard Terran Time - Day Twenty Five, Aftermath
Kiki, that’s what I’m calling her here, gotta call her something. Not putting anyone’s real names here, any good historian could match my diary here with the crew roster of the Beacon of Hope and figure out who she is but anyone else seeing this doesn’t get an identifier. Never asked those doctors if they’d let me talk about them, hence why no names.
Kiki reminds me of some people I’ve seen. Whole day she’d sometimes just seem to not be there, and then go back to her normal self afterwards. Right, we’ve finally come back up to the flagship. Dinnertime and she was eating a lot more, always pretty strong stuff. I went up to the most veteran guy I knew, the guy that had taken charge on the ground. Asked him if that was normal behavior and wanna know what he said? “There’s always a mission you don’t come back from, seems like this was hers” What even is going on here?
I tried to get more information, and he told me that it happens to everyone and it’s just a matter of time. One day your body comes back, but your mind stays on that mission, and can never leave. That every day you are both here and there, that every day you’re always at that mission, your mind never leaves it forever. This was very familiar, so I asked him what they do to those people and… “Nothing, they’re still part of the FRF” just a simple nothing. It said a lot, though.
I’m going to consider I’m talking to the future here, and these guys figured out what mental health is. At this time? What this guy said means a lot more than it looks. Nothing means not sending them to a place they wouldn’t come back from, he said they’re still part of the fleet too. You’ve probably read all the things I said earlier, these guys are pretty fraternal here. They help each other because they understand what they all go through
These guys know what post-traumatic stress disorder looks like, and now that I stop to think about his words… “it’s just a matter of time”... How many more of those guys have something like it? How many times were those distant stares during study time this happening instead of just thinking hard? They might not have a single study about this kind of stuff, but at least they try to be here for each other.
I thought there would be something for me to teach here but… There wasn’t. Not a thing. Can’t even talk about their self-preservation problems, I’ve seen plenty of humans do the same in disaster situations, even trained responders. Especially trained responders.
I’ve been spending the day around Kiki, trying to make sure she’s alright. Seems like she is, mostly, at least I can’t detect her getting worse aside from a few times spacing out. Gave her a stupid gift, one of my spare bars of mint-scented soap, smell seemed to help her get her mind out of things. That’s when she dropped a piece of information on me, she’d volunteered on a terran vessel. In fact, the entire unit had volunteered as crew on a terran vessel. Having been on the ground for what, twenty five days I’ve been out of the loop, but something’s going on.
Seems like we’ve got a but mission in Milieau, very big. I haven’t even contacted HQ back to report the end of our mission, didn’t have the strength of spirit to go wade back into the trenches so soon. And here they are, the first thing they do when they get home is ask “Where are we going next”. Been writing this to procrastinate calling, I guess I should follow their example.
Well, big mission indeed. Feds gone full mask-off, unreliable allies, time to rambo shit up. Turns out my unit back home is going to be part of ground operations, and my counterpart had been training with them. Those doctors are adding C-SAR (right, that’s Combat Search and Rescue to y’all reading this) to their repertoire and boy did the guy take to it like fish to water, it seems, guys back home really like the guy. Apparently he’s shocked some of them with his sense of humor, yeah, those guys will do that.
Meanwhile the whole unit I was with here had volunteered to join the hospital ships in that operation, we’re liberating a captured planet after all so we’re going to have a bunch of those in the wings. Actually the entire Beacon of Hope is going to field there, we’re on the way to the rally point right now. They’re going to distribute the excess crew (did I mention the Beacon of Hope generally has triple the crew it’s been built to operate with?) to our ships to alleviate the specialist crewing problems and then remain further back. There’s a wild difference between the facilities of a mobile field hospital like what the UN navy uses and what the Beacon of Hope has. Hell, their fuel barges even split off from the fleet to try and jury-rig their storages as material transport to get us a lot more supplies. This time they’re expecting things to go much, much worse.
Me… I’m going to see if I can try to convince HQ to let me field where this unit is going to, it’s probably going to be one of our hospital ships. Genuinely think I’d be more useful there, making sure those docs don’t burn themselves to death in their passion, than I’d be on a landing party. I know my guys got a good replacement for now.
Anyway, this was my piece. Dunno if i’ll want to write about the next op. You know, thinking on it… I bet this ship was running right in the rearguard of the fleet that showed up on Earth, no surprise they were the first to break with the feds to help us. We all know the feds messed up everyone with their shit, and who the hell knew that the ones they didn’t manage to break, were their doctors.
---
Yep, long enough I had to split in two despite planned as a one shot. Inspiration does that to ya.

My father passed away while on long term disability from a job with the city, he and my mother are common law and bought the house sometime like 30 years ago, she believes they are both on the title/deed. It’s paid off. They do not have a car and I believe the only debt is CC debt for 6500 ish
He paid all the bills, did the shopping and my mother is essentially clueless on how to pay them, how much she makes from her job, and what their account balances are. He gets paper bills and paid by phone or in person. I believe she has a small TSFA, a RRSP and I think my dad had those and some kind of mutual find but the bank won’t give us any information even though their accounts were joint. I believe he has a pension through Omers and some kind of policy through Sunlife in which no beneficiary was listed so it goes to the estate (a problem?). Their mortgage is paid, they haven’t done their taxes for over 10 years but I believe their combined income was maybe 40k, so I’m not super worried about them owing. I just want to be able to grieve my dad but I’m so worried about my mom, who has no idea about anything and makes like 13k a year. Totaling up their monthly expenses she needs about 1100$ ish just to live which seems like a lot for just bills, I’m going to see if I can get their TV & internet and phone plans better rates as they’re about 225$ ish total which seems like a lot.
I just don’t know how to help her. I don’t know how much his policy is, if the pension pays out and I obviously do not want her to even begin to touch the very little money she thinks she has saved as obviously I don’t want to burn through it.
Can anyone, who has also lived through this absolute fucking nightmare please help me? I have no idea what to even ask the funeral home so we don’t get ripped off, we’re trying to keep the cost so minimal but burial is expensive and idk where to even start. I’ve organized all her bills, and we put a couple bucks on the things we think are due so they can see we’re trying to pay it. We haven’t “notified” anyone other than family of his passing, and the bank who we made an appointment with. “Do the funeral and then come talk to us” - HOW. We made an appointment anyway. His name is also on my account, as he opened it for me when I was like 8 so idk how that effects my account - I really don’t have any money but I moved what I need for my own rent out as idk if when you die can they just seize your accounts if you do owe?
Anyway sorry this is written with a lot of emotions but I really do need advice- badly. Thank you for reading 💖

I got a flat tire two weeks ago. The roadside assistance gentleman, super nice guy, changed the tire (a long screw had punctured it) and swapped it out with the donut.
Well, one thing led to another, and I ended up driving about 200 km to get home.
Then I learned the sad news that my grandmother passed away and I needed to get to the funeral where I would eulogize her—1,000 km away.
I now know this was incredibly negligent and will NEVER do it again. I understand that I put my own life and the lives of others at risk. I hope to now educate other idiots like myself by telling this story.
Everyone I tell this story too can’t believe I survived.

After a 1940 defined by gathering strengths and refinement across the feature, the early months of 1941 bring a few troubling portents behind-the-scenes for Fox's affectionately termed Grainy Gladiator. Nothing ruinous in itself, but signs of an upcoming radical shift away from what the character represented to start.
For one, the April issue of Adventure Comics (#61) brings with it a new cover feature, Ted Knight AKA Starman, courtesy writer-artist Jack Burnley. Already the second lengthiest entry in the book at nine pages, Starman quickly managed what neither Sandman nor Hourman could during their respective years as star attractions and upgraded to a full thirteen pages by his third appearance in #63. For context, Sandman only went from six pages to ten with its upgrade, while Hourman has remained rockstaedy at eight pages, and neither took down another non-superhero supporting feature to justify the page increase like Starman did Barry O'Neil and Mark Lansing. Moreover, from Starman's second appearance on, he is only drawn by Burnley; writing duties now belong to the Sandman's own Gardner Fox.
Which loops in with two other issues at play over Wesley's tossing, turning figure. Starting with issue #61, available online sources no longer fully agree who wrote what for the Sandman feature. You must understand, outside superstar figures with major pull like the creators of Superman or Batman, very few creative teams are properly credited in these Golden Age comics - my credits the last few posts have all been crossreferenced across numerous wikis and databases who owe their credits to investigative work by fans like Jerry Bails back in the 1960s. Such work was sadly not exhaustive, and while a few places (like DC Continuity Project and Wikipedia) state or else imply Fox stayed on as writer for the next few issues, from June to November there is no consensus as to who penned the stories.
I shouldn't be surprised if Fox's involvement terminated with the March issue, for April also saw All-Star Comics shift its format slightly, with Fox writing all nine interior stories for the 64 page mag in addition to his duties on the longer Starman feature. Man would have to work double time to keep pace, even if Sandman didn't drop to eight pages with #62 in May. Either way, Fox is certainly gone following #64 in July, as that issue features the final story drawn by regular artist and co-creator Creig Flessel, who departs to work on Shining Knight later in the year. As I say, things are changing fast for Sandman, and not all changes seem necessarily for the better. Best, however, to take the stories on their own level before drawing any final conclusions!
^{Coverage note: This entry goes to July rather than June for the sake of my sanity. If I stopped midway through the year, I'd only need cover seven features here, but the back half of '41 would require coverage of eleven. A nine-nine split feels much more feasible.}

• ADVENTURE COMICS #58 (January)

Orchids of Doom - Gardner Fox, Creig Flessel, Chad Grothkopf

Once again, a socialite friend to Wes and Dian is at the center of a minor mystery with big implications - namely, how can Pedro Nogades, father to Carla, rightly claim he breeds otherwise purely wild orchids in captivity? Investigating as the Sandman, Wes and Dian find a dead man in the Nogades greenhouse with his head stripped to the bone, and in following another fellow who sniffed an orchid before promising a shipment of such to some ruffians on the bad side of town, see his own face dissolve to bare skull. A visit to the police chemist reveals the orchids on the dead men's persons were laced to release a deadly flesh-eating gas on exposure to natural air, which is enough probably cause for Wesley to enlist Carla's boyfriend Bill in staging a raid on the Nogades manor. Some close shaves and fisticuffs end with the group discovering a diorama of the local coast, laid out to assist enemy agents in an invasion. Pedro is put away and the orchids revealed as concealing microfilm copies of the coastal plans, but how do we square the mystery that started it all? Simple: Nogades was no botanist, and called the flower by the wrong name when concocting his cover story!
An alright yarn to kick of the calendar year. As per usual when Fox tries for a somewhat complicated mystery, he's no adequate means of tying off loose ends other than large blocks of text, but it's lively and keeps the situation evolving with decent justifications for mid-story action and dragging Bill along for further fisticuffs. Hooking the entire mystery on, "Oh, the bad guy misspoke," is a tad lame, if understandable in the context of Fox's passion for slipping general knowledge flexes into his stories. Flessel and Grothkopf get some good mileage out've the skull imagery that crops up whenever the flower kills, and I rather like the brief bout of fisticuffs towards the end. The minor social awkwardness when Bill gets in the car with Wes and Dian is pretty good too, and I'm sorry to report I can't add this story to the "Wesley getting shot" count, as the bad guy only plugs his hat. Kinda funny having a Golden Age Sandman story involving orchids given Neil's own pre-Sandman work with Black Orchid, innit?

• ADVENTURE COMICS #59 (February)

The Story of the Flaming Ruby - Fox, Flessel, Grothkopf

There exists a ruby of blazing red, which has driven men to rage and madness wherever it appears, and today it sits in the hand of a young man in the local jeweler's shop, who flashes it cross Dian's vision. Later in the evening, she wakes in a trance consumed with the urge to kill her father, stopped only by Sandman as he rushes in from investigating a similarly queer case. A bank teller friend from his private life has found himself driven to steal from the vault and deliver it to some crooks on a lonely road every night, all after one of those men flashed him the ruby. Wes and Dian are unable to stop this night's transaction (on account of the ruby briefly turning Dian against Sandman), but seeing the gem in action gives Wes an idea on how to counteract its effects, and go into battle during the next drop armed with blue cobalt glasses. A brawl puts down all the blackmailers except one, but Wes opts instead to go after the head of the operation, knocking him out and lurking in the dark to catch the last as he reports in, revealing the bank teller! Turns out the ruby DOES have hypnotic properties and was used to assist their robberies, but the teller - hoping by playing at the victim to lure Sandman into his cohorts' midst and rub him out - spoke as if he remembered the whole experience, where Dian forgot herself on every exposure. Oops!
Same basic mystery structure and resolution type here as last month, complete with overly-wordy explanation, although I find the hook of pitting Dian and Wesley against one another gives it a minor leg up, as does the relatively straightforward nature of the criminal operation compared to planting microfilm in deadly flowers. There's a more even balance between the rush in bust 'em up style of crime-fighting the feature has developed and the stealthy skullduggery I think suits the character best, with nice action art to match each. Dian has some silly faces whenever she wakes from her hypnosis, and the four panel sequence of Wes halting her murder attempt works pretty well. This is, unfortunately, the final pencil-inking collaboration between Flessel and Grothkopf, and much as I've kvetched over the second man's solo work, I'm sorry to see the back of him in this capacity. When the two were in proper tune, they were the best artistic team Sandman enjoyed yet.
(Stop dodging bullets, I want to see you gunshot.)

• ADVENTURE COMICS #60 (March)

Mystery at Malay Mac's - Fox, Grothkopf

^{Hey, a rare post-Hourman, pre-redesign cover appearance! That's always nice. "Hello, officer? Yeah, coupla chucklefucks right here, the alley off Fourth, can't miss 'em."}
What's this? Dian breaking into a notorious criminal slumlord's safe in the bad part of town? A safe, as Wes discovers after he scares the lady off, filled to the brim with poison gas! Evidently not, as Dian is sound asleep when Wes arrives at Belmont manor to investigate, and a subsequent visit to Mister Mac reveals the only person who'd know the safe was booby-trapped is a local kidnapping organizer. Some blind, flailing fists turns up the girl, Dian's perfect duplicate, snatched from out of state to replace Dian and gain leverage over the cops. Too bad the kidnapper's made of strong stuff, knocking out Sandman and taking both woman for a ride to get back at Mac. Fortunately, Dian leaves Wes a trail of jewelry out the window, enabling him to follow and take down all the crooks with one throw of his gas pistol, revealing in the process 'twas Mac himself who tipped Dian's duplicate to his safe, in hopes of spoiling his rival's big plot.
Art-wise, this is probably Grothkopf's best work for Sandman to date. His tendency to exaggerate is translated into some properly goonish faces for the villains and really, really strong action poses, with some properly atmospheric shots sprinkled in for good measure. He cannot draw the gasmask for piss, but there's such an improvement I almost thought this was a Flessel joint before checking the wiki credits. Makes me wish we could see what he'd do if he kept on as a solo artist - free from the impulse to treat the feature as a cartoon, he produces damn fine work. As a story, this makes good time to mention my misgivings with Wesley's tendency to burst through windows and start swinging long before he thinks to use his sleeping gas. While it's great fun to describe and hype up as the mark of a madman who's even cooler as the badass normal than Batman, it also encourages a faster degradation in the character's identity. I'm sure you'll notice it's been yonks since lurking in the shadows and thinning the ranks by knocking them out in advance has factored into the stories. That Wes handles the bad guy by literally clonking him over the head with the gas gun rather than pulling the trigger speaks to the influence other, punchier superhero features have exerted over the strip.

• ADVENTURE COMICS #61 (April)

The Menace of the Metal Gun - Fox?, Flessel

From aboard a mysterious aircraft, a madman fires upon the city with a metal-melting ray that dissolves the skyscrapers into slag! Alerted to Doctor Borloff's activities, Wesley meets with swift defeat when the rogue scientist melts his gas gun and escapes in his cylindercraft to terrorize afresh. There IS a bright side, as seeing the ray firsthand gives Wesley some idea how to counteract its effects, and he sends Dian and her father warning for the local airforce to coat their planes in sand as a silicate buffer against the ray. Alas, only one officer heeds his message, leaving Sandman alone to get aboard the machine via his new wirepoon gun and defeat Borloff from within. For his brawling process, a good midflight fight is nothing if the hero gets tossed out an open door, but fortunately he can grapple onto the lone surviving plane, recover his bearings, zip back up, and put a stop to Borloff's dreams of world conquest once and for all!
Action is the name of the game here, and even without Grothkopf's inking enhancements, I think Flessel does a fine job on his own. I'm wary of the wirepoon in the future, as by year's end it will completely replace the gas gun as Sandman's sidearm of choice in further drift from the original Christman concept, but taken as a neutral in its debut, giving Sandman greater aerial mobility does lead to some cool shots and enhance the sense Wes goes stark bananas in the mask by pulling some stunts that would almost certainly pull his arms from their sockets in real life. There are, however, some particularly stiff action shots, and in one panel Flessel cocks up the design on the mask worse than Grothkopf last ish. Based on the opening vignette, Borloff decimated millions of innocent lives in addition to all the planes he melted out of the sky, making him easily the deadliest foe Wes has faced to date, and in turn making the "We did it, gang, everything is bright and peachy again!" ending sorta offputting. They'll have to organize mass funerals tomorrow, Wes. Show a little respect.

• ALL-STAR COMICS #4 (April)

For America and Democracy: The Grey Shirts - Fox, Grothkopf

In the top-level story, the JSA learn of their mission for the FBI: a group of Nazi insurgents known as the Grey Shirts are plotting subversive and destructive activities all across America, and are now posed to badly destabilize the nation in a series of disruptive attacks. Each is assigned a mission at critical points cross the nation, though given the widely-ranging disparity in their powers, their usefulness to the cause varies equally wildly. The Atom humiliates some goons spreading Nazi ideology at a single college, Hawkman barely prevents the destruction of an aviation plant in California, and Hourman's defense of an Oklahoma oil field ends with him toppling one of the oil towers to stop his quarry. Meanwhile, Green Lantern detonates a zeppelin secretly jamming radio transmissions nationwide, the Spectre casually annihilates some otherworldly vampiric globes sympathetic to Hitler's cause, and Doctor Fate uses his magic to out every single spy on the eastern seaboard. Uneven efforts or not, the group converge on the Grey Shirts' ringleader, and with a little help from Johnny Thunder, turn him over to good ol' J. Edgar Hoover's custody. Alas, Wesley does not get the blood he's thirsting after.
(Also Doctor Fate alerts Wesley to the identity and location of the ringleader before his mission starts rather than letting him figure it out on his own like everyone else. Prick.)
For his six-page leg of the assignment, the Sandman is off to El Paso, Texas to assist a local newspaper under threat from the Grey Shirts for printing pro-democracy and anti-Hitler editorials. Of course, this being Wesley Dodds on the job, he gets this information by roughing his way into the newspaper offices, then acts on it by beating on the guard at the Grey Shirts' camp and pounding down a band of brainwashed young men to prove he's a better American than them. After sending the wannabe Nazis for a whirl by running their bomb shipment off the road, Wesley doubles back to completely break the recruits' spirits, daring them to prove their hard enough by shooting an unarmed man in Hitler's name, chiefly himself. When none can cut the mustard, he marches them back into town with collars strapped to his car, and inspires the lot to join the Army to a few shirtless bars of "God Bless America."
Cripes but jingoism produces some heady results, doesn't it? I'm not sure I can rightly condone the ridiculous levels of patriotism on display here, even against such classically anti-American enemies as Nazis, yet at the same time, look at this and tell me it isn't the hardest shit you'll see all week. Again, though I've my misgivings about Wes as a brawler no matter how entertaining the results prove, there's something endearing about him being so raring for a fight his first move is to altercate the receptionist at the place he's assigned to defend. On the whole, Grothkopf's final Sandman contribution also shows refinement from his earlier works, the broader, thicker elements of his linework now tempers on a somewhat more grounded approach. Certainly the Sandman himself keeps a consistent look better than he does in any other issue published thus far this year. I DO notice he reused Flessel's design for the District Attorney wholesale on the newspaper publisher. Since he's going and heading out on a job well done, let's not hold it against him, eh?

• ADVENTURE COMICS #62 (May)

The Purple Death Ray - Fox?, Flessel

At the nightly planetarium show, a member of the audience screams and falls down dead, stricken by a litany of strange symptoms with no obvious cause. Wesley, believing the man was killed by a death ray, examines the auditorium's projector, only to find no obvious alterations or fault. Undeterred, he purchases himself a seat next to the murdered man's for the next show, which is now occupied by another fellow who received a last-second courtesy invitation. Acting quickly, the Sandman reexamines the projector from the shadows and finds a replacement bulb screwed into the socket pointed directly at the man's chair. With assistance from his wirepoon, Sandman swings down and wrenches the man from his seat just as the show starts, the bulb bathing his seat in deadly radiation. On learning the man is a former judge and the deceased a former DA, it's not long before Wes ferrets out the killer; it's the cashier, a former scientist sent to jail for misappropriating university funds years ago, out for revenge and now stopped cold.
See, while I'm skeptical about the growing presence of science-fiction elements in the series, they make fine fodder when they play to Sandman's strengths. Lurking high above a crowd of people seeking the answer to some deadly mystery is exactly Wes' bag, and plus or minus some strange mask drawings, Flessel captures that thrill of closely examining a big deadly machine in secret before it fires. I'd submit the page where Sandman saves the judge from the beam as an easy contender for best of the year thus far, and the shot where Wes pushes Dian away from the killer's bullet is another fine piece of work. My memories of this one before sitting down to reread and write were a lot chillier, probably because I wish the series remained in crime pulp rather than raygun pulp, but a good outcome is a good outcome. Seriously, though, why is the mask going so bobble-eyed of late?

• ADVENTURE COMICS #63 (June)

The Voodoo Sorcerer - ???, Flessel

As Dian and Wesley tiff over his interest in an exotic dancer they know through a mutual friend, the woman's tail-lashing dance is interrupted when she sees a great glowing triangle materialize before her eyes. With the shock straining her bad heart, the Sandman brings her to boyfriend's house, where he reveals the triangle is a voodoo witch doctor's means of accusing someone of murder - just as news comes over the wire that the man the woman lashed with her costume tail has died! Smelling a rat, Wes rushes to the scene of the crime to find the taile barbed with poison quills, only for the titular sorcerer to bumrush him out the window. It's a big misunderstanding, thankfully: he's as shocked by the murder as Sandman, and only summoned the triangle on suggestion from an acquaintance, forgetting the dancer would know its significance through her partner. By happiest coincidence, this provides Wesley the solution to the mystery right quick, for only his friend's chauffeur would have motive, opportunity, and knowledge to frame his employers and their associates for the murder of a stock broker who owed them money.
Hmm, ah, see, on the one hand, it IS nice that the voodoo guy is innocent of everything except a lapse in judgement and the real twist is an unassuming little man exploiting the mystery and fears around the craft to cast suspicion off his person. On the other hand, eek, yike, zoinks! None good. Bad, even. Outside unfortunate depictions of non-white persons from the 1940s, the story's pretty weak for a murder mystery, as numerous elements are evidently known to the characters well in advance, yet only made clear to the reader right before they become relevant, like the exact identity of the murdered man. It's only eight pages, so there's little opportunity to piece information together on your own time, and as such it is heavily reliant on narrative cheats to generate cheap surprise. About the best thing here is the big page-dominating panel of Wesley swinging through the city on his wirepoon, unconscious woman tucked under arm. Kinda hard to convincingly raise my dander about what it means for the character and his feature when it's successfully operating on the long-standing principle of "masked mystery men swinging on a wire through skyscrapers looks really cool." S'like a solid fifth of the formula behind why Spider-Man is so enduringly popular.
(Also not a big fan of how Wes dismisses Dian from participating in the case without any adequate reason why. She calls him out over it, even, and nothing in the story justifies his decision to fly solo on this one.)

• ADVENTURE COMICS #64 (July)

The Unseen Man - ???, Flessel

Dian's purchase of paints from a local hobby shop includes quite the unusual accidental item: a paint that turns anything and everything invisible on contact. Determined to solve this mystery on her own, Dian investigates the shop with the dealer's cooperation, only for the dread Unseen Man to get the drop on her. Fortunately, Sandman is there to save her because he won't let Dian do anything on her own; unfortunately, Dian doesn't know Wes can see her attacker through his blue cobalt lenses and pulls him away, thinking him mad and letting the Unseen Man go free. As reward for her screw up, she's targeted in her home the next night, only for Wes to barge in again, having anticipated the only possible secret identity for the crook would make him likely to strike back at Dian. It is, unsurprisingly, the hobby shop owner, who Wes turns over to the police before heading out to patent his invisibility paint with the United States Army.
Alright, it's definitely not Gardner Fox writing anymore, because I cannot imagine Fox treating Dian so poorly. I gave her some dignity in summary, but this story is plain dumping all over her as a fussy, incompetent tryhard who fails at investigating on her own on account her womanly ways. Just look at the sheer antagonism between her and Wes; you two are partners, she's saved Sandman's skin like a dozen times, worn his costume and wielded his gas gun to do it once, even! Don't try to BS me into thinking Wes would run this paternalist "let me handle it, Dian, I wear the pants in this relationship" crap on her. You're only alive because she's worn your fucking pants. Otherwise, 'nother instance where the story and art alike don't give me much of note. I reckon Flessel was about done with the series with Fox gone and sorta phoned in his last few assignments. They're nowhere near the standard of his early solo artistic duties on the title. There IS another good wirepoon swinging shot, if one counterbalanced by a crummier instance with yet another weirdly-proportioned mask.

• ALL-STAR COMICS #5

The Mysterious Mr. X: The Kidnapper's Union - Fox, Cliff Young

The Justice Society are bored. Bored, bored, bored. Why are they bored? There is no crime. Not a single ruffian or scoundrel or roughneck lawbreaker anywhere in the city! Where did crime go? Crime has taken an enforced vacation, courtesy the plans of big crime boss Mister X (hats off), as prelude to his scheme for taking out the JSA and putting all his criminal enterprises back on easy street. It's quite the collection of rackets out against the superheroes - an arsonist ring for Flash, a jewel snatching gang for Hawkman, leader of the phony fortune teller underworld against Doctor Fate, even hard-pressing gym membership shakedowns for the Atom! Naturally our heroes triumph, though every one also encounters a strange little man idly strolling through their battlegrounds. He's so omnipresent despite his mousiness, he's even there when they convene at the police station to organize Mister X's (hats off) arrest. Except this unassuming slip of a man? He IS Mister X (hats off), and with the Justice Society having taken all the fun out've crime, he's turning himself in to live comfortably on the state's dollar in jail. WHOOPSY-DOODLE!
For his six-page part in the game, Sandman must contend against the kidnapper's union, who naturally enough have abducted Dian to get his attention. Not only have these lowlives taken Dian hostage (though she doesn't particularly mind), they've taken out phony accident insurance claims against themselves should the hero injure any of them en route to his untimely death! Nobody quite expects Wes to avoid the sniper-guarded roads to their remote hilltop hideout, though, and a quick wirepoon swing over the canyon (complete with Mister X - hats off - sighting) puts him right in the criminal den. From there, it's a simple biff wham boom to take down the punks and disarm their supporting fire. Alas, Sandman is once again only in the loop on the true nature of the threat against the JSA because someone notifies him from their own investigation, this time Flash via telegram. Let him do his own detective work, you pricks!
Right. You see these panels? You see Dian being calm and collected in the midst of a kidnapping operation? You see Wes trusting her with a submachine gun to keep watch on the fools who mean them harm? Yeah, THAT'S Fox writing Dian. Whoever's writing the Adventure feature at this time ought've taken notes. Artistically, Young makes a fine replacement for Grothkopf and Flessel in Adventure - he can match the first for goons, the second for action, manages a nice turnaround effect before Wes swings on his wirepoon, and even gives us a by-now all-too-rare heavy shadow shot on Wes and Dian. I'm a big fan of the lead kidnapper who calls the JSA the "Justiss Sassiety," and find this instance of Mister X (hats off) the second best in the book, behind only his appearance in the Hourman story, which I think speaks for itself. Probably the only time I'll express preference for something Hourman related over Sandman.
The loss of all three major contributors to the Sandman feature across early 1941 and the crunch down to eight pages has certainly made the Adventure Comics side of the Sandman line a rockier experience. It's still possible to derive enjoyment from the wonky mysteries and higher-concept criminals, but one must accept atmosphere and and particularity have been near-entirely sacrificed for generalized bombast and louder appeal. Don't misunderstand, I've become a fan of Wesley Dodds, Fist-Swinging Bullet Sponge, and my past praises for him aren't diminished by the realization of what this has done to his integrity as a character circa today's stopping point. The trouble is, while I enjoy this half-mad, impossibly reckless read on the character, it simply no longer bears any resemblance to the early days' lurking and creeping through the seedier parts of town. There's a great series of justifications running through the Sandman concept - he's no powers, so he uses the gas gun, so he needs the gas mask, which hides his identity so perfectly it frees him to wear the ordinary business suit, which highlights his vulnerability. Fling him around like a ragdoll who knows no fear of injury or death, although I'll clap for the bravado of it all, I must object if it means any notion he should be sneaky or cautious degrades.
Especially if it means the gas gun vanishes from the character. It hasn't met its final end just yet, but for this seven month block it's proven a very perfunctory aspect of the strip, hung by his side and occasionally brandished without acting as an integral part of the action or storytelling. The wirepoon has subsumed its function as the sidearm, and while I must stress there are plenty aces shots of Wes swinging that fully justify its prominence, taking precedence over the thing that makes him the Sandman, Crimefighter What Fights Crime By Putting The Criminals To Sleep plain rubs me the wrong way. Be awful nice i we could have both without the new toy putting the old out to pasture, y'know? It's not led to anything I'd full-throatedly object over just yet, but... ach, you'll see next time. Speaking of...
Next time! 1941 comes to a close as Wesley picks up another feature to his name, and also a stupid, ugly new costume!
(Previous write-ups: 1939, 1940 pt 1, 1940 pt 2)

So...this might be a bit all over the place, I can't order my thoughts so well. Also might be long. Sorry! There's also so much I can't decide what to tell you and what to leave out.
I have been in a relationship with my husband for 15 years, married for 5. We have been in marriage counselling since December 2022, which was his idea. I have fibromyalgia and CFS, and I was fired from my 'normal' 9-5 job in 2018, because my body couldn't deal with it anymore. After it ended, out of necessity, I started my own business from home. I've been building it slowly since then, and while I don't take money out of it to live off, I'm at a stage where it keeps itself running plus a little cushion. I work at home and significant amount of my time is spent pushing it to grow, so I can get back to having a decent income. I have recently been given a small disability benefit so I now have a little income from that. My dad died in 2009, and my inheritance paid for the house deposit and a decent chunk of renovation, plus I paid my half of everything for 4 years before I lost my job. Husband has been solely paying bills for the last 4.
My husband has been desperate for children for a couple of years, but I'm terrified I can't look after them, especially since there are days I can't even get myself in the shower. He told me children is the only reason he got married, it wasn't important to him, which I hadn't appreciated before. He's a reasonably high earner, but with him paying for bills and everything I thought it was sensible to try and get my business in a position where I could pay someone to help me at home with children. He doesn't agree. He also keeps sitting down with me and telling me to get a job. He said most people wouldn't have supported me past a year of having no proper income. He says he hates my business and feels it's robbed him of children. He won't accept that it's very difficult to get a job with a chronic illness when you've been fired for that illness and you still have it, and he says there must be lots of jobs from home. I've been looking for an age but I can't find anything I'm qualified for, that would allow me days out with no notice when I have bad days, or that pays well enough for me to give up my business that I'm really proud of. I asked him to sit down with me and go through what work I can find, but he refused.
The therapist told us to fact check his fears and budget what we currently have. According to my calculations with what I know our joint bills and his personal ones to be, plus what I know of his income, I think he should have a decent chunk spare per month. He says he has no money, yet parcels continue to arrive for him, and he keeps paying for golf lessons and his PT. He won't allow me access to his bank account to go through it with him though. He's actually refused to do most of what the marriage counsellor has recommended and by his own admission hasn't been trying. He's gotten himself am individual therapist recently though so maybe that's the start of it?
I struggle with intimacy sometimes, as a result of being in pain a lot of the time, and some meds I'm on make me not all that interested. We had a dry spell just before we started counselling. I am a physical touch love language person though, I need touches and hugs. He's been refusing to touch me, even avoiding brushing past me in a hallways, since we started counselling. He says he thinks any touching will give me hope that this can be fixed and he doesn't want to do that. He's said that the dry spell because of my health struggles is exactly equivalent to him choosing not to touch me at all, and how dare I tell him I have issues with him withdrawing physical affection as a result. As an honest aside - through all of our relationship, he hasn't listened to most of what I've told him I like, regarding intimacy and sex. He hasn't done what I've asked of him. As a result, sex is a bit about endurance for me. We've even had times where I've told him it hurts and the response has been it's OK because he's nearly done. It doesn't make it something I want to use my energy on, when I have it. There was once a rhythm method fail very close to a conversation about how I wasn't ready for children yet, it's the only one in 15 years and bothers me.
He has complained about hugging me for quite a few years now. For example; if he works nights, he'll sit and play xbox right up until the last minute and then if I ask for a hug before he leaves, he'll complain I'm making him late and he doesn't have time. He also tells me regularly that everything is always on my timescale though, and I'm not sure this is the case? If I ask for help emptying pans in the kitchen or putting the washing out, he'll tell me to give him a sec and then I wait there until he's finished with his TV show or gaming to help, however long that takes. He spends all the free time he has at home watching TV or gaming, most housework is my responsibility but I haven't the energy most of the time so it doesn't get done. Last time I asked him to hoover for me he asked me why angrily, although he did do some.
What do you call it when someone responds to you in a hard tone that's quite spiky? I don't like it and it makes my anxiety worse when he does it, but pretty much all conversations use it now. He mostly doesn't ask me how I am or what I've been doing or anything about my life - maybe 2 or 3 days a month he'll ask me how I am. He says he doesn't want to, he's not usually all that interested and honestly, that's how he treats most family and friends. Pretty much all our conversations are about things that he's doing or cares about. He's never told me he's proud of me or that I'm beautiful or he likes how I look, unless in response to me asking if I look OK. He tells me then I look nice or fine. I don't need compliments much but on our wedding day would have been nice.
I'm confused a lot of the time. What if I've made this all worse in my head and imagined bits of it without meaning to or knowing? I struggle to make basic decisions without asking him, because I worry about being criticised. The other day I had to ask what vegetables to add to dinner. It's like there are two different people in him and I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I run through the pros and cons of everything I want to say before I say it, so I can try and work out if it'll get a spiky response or not. I don't always get it right.
Whenever I have raised something I don't like in our relationship he's 9 times out of 10 refused to address it and countered with the things he hates that I do. The worst one of those conversations I remember ended in me crying, and him telling me I should probably go and talk to the doctor about antidepressants - so I did.
The only thing I've really done is taken him to get our cat when I knew he didn't want one. I need animals in my life, I'm really sensitive (I think HSP) and they calm me, but his family are fairly ambivalent about pets. I've apologised a few times for how I went about it and he adores her now, but he still keeps bringing it up as one of the things I've done that upsets him and how he doesn't like cats. He'll always bring up old hurts, and I've asked him what he hopes to achieve from it but he can't answer me.
Finally, he's responsible for the 3 most painful things anyone has ever said to me. The worst was the day after my Nan's funeral. At her house, the last time I'd ever be there, I asked him if he was OK (she loved him and I thought he might be sad) and he said did I think we might nearly be done because he was bored. It was so painful I couldn't breathe.
Is this me misunderstanding our communication? How do you know if you're imagining things? What if there is never anyone else for me? What if I eventually leave and regret it? I can't work out what's going on and I'm so anxious about it. Apologies for the length, thank you if you made it this far.