Illinois high school girls basketball rankings

Just learned of MHA about a month ago, and watched the latest episode today. Have not watched the movies - not sure where I can watch them for free. Have not read the manga. Most of my friends don't watch anime, and those that do are skipping this one because they don't like high school animes... So, this is a random brain dump of thoughts since I don't have anyone to talk to about this, but I'm a nerd and write a lot. Warning: Some of it might be philosophical.
In general - I love this friggin show.
First, the darker, real-life stuff:
Being in the US, I feel like I was told early on, anyone can be anything - you just have to work hard at it. But how often does anything really work like that? How many were kept out of their school's advanced classes or the "gifted" program because they were misjudged? Or maybe you didn't fit in with the "right" crowd? Or you are judged because of your demographic? Or you're brilliant and have a "learning disability"? It's not easy to break the mold. What is this like outside the US?
Unless it was buried somewhere, I'm surprised nobody seems to have mentioned imposter syndrome. Per ImposterSyndrome, this is "a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud." This jumped out at me from the first episode. Deku was told to kill himself, and then was continually wondering if he could keep up with his classmates, AND working harder than them. How much really was luck or outside help? And then when he was successful, he still was stuck with Bakugo directly telling him he's a fraud. It hits a bit close to home for me. Was called all kinds of garbage because I learn differently than most. Then I went into a field that was originally dominated by men and was told (indirectly) that I didn't belong there. Oh, that promotion I got, shouldn't it have gone to the charismatic guy who is friends with everyone? Because, of course, I had help, right? Never mind that everyone else was training on the related subjects in childhood and I didn't get started until much later in life. If any of this sounds familiar, the sub I mentioned above has good suggestions. I find it's good to make a list of everything I did well without any help.
Yes, this is anime and not real. Even so, much of what Bakugo says makes me cringe. In the US, if someone bullies a kid into killing themself, the parents can take legal action against the bully. That's already happening in a case where the school did next to nothing to help. In my case, it would be wonderful if the kids who bullied me would even apologize. I cried when Bakugo apologized.
Interesting to see All Might question himself and his own motives when Deku ran in to attach the slime monster attacking Bakugo. Any imposter syndrome aside, a good leader holds themself to the same standards they want to see in the world.
Crappy that the students don't receive credit for taking down so many villains. Funny; in real life other people also want to take credit for your work.
Ok, on to the less serious stuff:
Mina/Pinky is seriously underrated. She has a beautiful personality, is powerful, and is all-around cool.
LOVE that Koji evacuated animals from the city so they wouldn't get hurt. Also watching JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and though I like most of it, am also feeling disgusted at all the animal cruelty.
We finally got to see Thirteen's face! What about invisible girl?
RIP Aiswa's leg, Midnight, and everyone else who was killed.
This show has it's own version of Sheild Hero. Hmm...
Gigantomachia - reimagining of Armored Titan/Attack Titan?
Maybe I missed it - I thought Rock Lock has his quirk removed? How did he get it back - was that Eri and I missed it?
Overhaul needs to seriously apologize to Eri. She's been through too much and blames herself.
Bakugo was mostly cut from the news broadcast - aside from his cringing, angry face. Ahahahahaha!!!!
Deku, just eat the damn food from All Might!
Now that we're stuck until season 7, what are you all watching?

Demographics
· Gender: Male
· Race/Ethnicity: Turkish (International)
· Didn't apply for aid
· Type of School: Semi-competitive private boarding school
· Hooks: n/a
Intended Major(s): International Relations
Academics
· GPA (UW): 93/100 UW (87 Freshman, 96 Sophmore, 97 Junior, 100 Senior)
· Rank: n/a
· # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: Full IB Diploma
· Senior Year Course Load: National Curriculum (IB ends in the junior year)
Standardized Testing
List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.
TEST OPTIONAL
· AP/IB: 42/45 IB Diploma (777 in HLs)
· Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.): 140/160 Duolingo, 7.5 IELTS
Extracurriculars/Activities
List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Interned at the Harvard Crimson with eight other global winners; wrote sponsored articles; created a social media project that the team is implementing.
2. Published a peer-reviewed article about literature & history at 17; became the youngest author in the journal's history; was downloaded 500 times.
3. Conducted research with NYU Prof. Chris Ankersen; wrote a 27-page thesis; Interviewed the foreign affairs minister; Oberlin-accredited. Grade A.
4. Conducted research with Dartmouth Prof. David Rezvani; wrote a published 19-page thesis; topic: international migration. Grade A.
5. Became one of the two global ambassadors of King's College Summer School; helped students access the resources; received training from six professors; assisted them in the lessons.
6. I was the founder and the president of the Philosophy Club; I organized six seminars and two panels nationwide, hosting five well-known academics in total.
7. Yale Young Global Scholars
8. Chosen as one of two EYP representatives of my school; organized the EYP in school; invited other prominent schools in Turkey to our school.
9. Created a social movement that relies on the “butterfly effect”; created two workshops that host 300 people in total.
10. Managed a project that aimed to prevent peer bullying in high schools; invited to present it in Luxembourg in March 2020, but the event was canceled.

Awards/Honors

1. Harvard Crimson Essay Competition-Global Winner-4th Place (ELL)- Essay is published/ I appeared on TV
2. The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey- Second place in a research competition.
3. Full merit-based Scholarship from King’s College London in summer school- only offered to 2 people.
4. Global Social Leaders- semi-finalist and collaborative award winner in the finals
5. International Basic Sciences Knowledge Contest-finalist and holder of Second Place in Biology

Letters of Recommendation (Didn't waive FERPA accidentally, but the letters are truly great)
· IB Business Management Teacher: 9/10
· IB English Teacher: 9/10
· Counselor LOR: 7/10
Interviews
Didn't get any except Cornell. It went great.
Essays
· PS: 8/10 -- I talked about my challenge with my faith and the battle between my identities.
· Supplementals: 8/10
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
Acceptances:
-Oberlin College + 15k Scholarship
Waitlists:
-Pomona College
Rejections:
-JHU
-Tufts
-Northwestern
-Swarthmore
-Amherst
Awaiting (Honestly, I lost all hope, lol):
Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, Duke, Vandy, NYU (I changed ED2 to Rd), Brown,

I attend junior high second year female, I can’t stop thinking about this girl, im not a special need and won’t share her name though. She laughed at an autistic girl who screamed when coming down the hallway, called me a monkey and said I looked like one when I stimmed(I’m undiagnosed) in front of her and her friends. She got upset when she called me her best bestie and I told her no? And expected me to feel sorry for her. She’s not funny she is a pick me and called me weird and a r*tard, i can’t tell how many times I cried after these incidents. I moved to another school and live far from her I am now still trying to cope from her but I’m not really okay still. Should I talk to someone? I’m starting to have nightmares now.

I don’t understand how there can be really talented teams, with high end faculty, facilities, etc from colleges and universities I have never heard of and never read about outside of basketball. How is it these random colleges in the Midwest and flyover states are able to have these programs that compete and are sometimes better with schools that are well funded? Like where did Florida Atlantic come from? Creighton? Even Kansas St in Manhattan, Kansas? I just don’t understand how those programs can beat UNC, Duke, UVA, Texas.
Why is Gonzaga, a small random school in Spokane, WA consistently a contender for champion? I just don’t get it

IMO, 2006 might be the channel’s greatest year. Yes it was the year where High School Musical and Hannah Montana made their debut and help usher a new era for the channel. But Disney Channel in 2006 still had a so many great moments.

• Disney Channel Games
  
• That’s So Suite Life of Hannah Montana (The first Disney Channel crossover live action ever)
  
• DCOMS were releasing 6 movies in 2006 alone (Cow Belles, Wendy Wu, The Cheetah Girls 2)
  
• The Bounce Era was still used
  

Let me know which year do you think was the best year for Disney Channel.
View Poll

To start off I met this girl (f17) on a popular social media app and we had been talking for a few day about a week, we where getting along and she talked about maybe meeting up for lunch or something (we both drive and she wasn't at school this day soo I thought she was atleast a high school graduate) , anyway I end up asking her age , mind you I've turned 21 a few days ago . The age of consent in my state is 16, now I don't want anything in that way and we didn't talk about anything like that, should I keep talking to her and cut ties? Am I a creep for talking to her ? I just don't want to get into any trouble at this point in my life. Any advice/input would help. I want to keep talking to her and she wants to keep talking to me but I don't know what to do.

I’m only 16 and still in high school. I go to a small school and no one really catches my eye. I have no idea where to meet girls. I’m too young for apps and I don’t really care about them too much. I normally do long distance and I’m sick of that. I just don’t know where to meet girls🥲

I’m only 16 and still in high school. I go to a small school and no one really catches my eye. I have no idea where to meet girls. I’m too young for apps and I don’t really care about them too much. I normally do long distance and I’m sick of that. I just don’t know where to meet girls🥲

I (F) am turning 30 this year and I still have a lot of trauma that was caused by my family that still affects me to this day and I don't know what to do about it at this point. Although, I'm still figuring things out, I may be part of a narcissistic family but I'm not fully certain. I've been confused about it for years now and I still go back and forth sometimes. I'll try to summarize as best as I can.
I used to be really close with my older brothers (now 37 and 40) when I was a child. I was the youngest sibling until I was 14 when my mother became pregnant with my sister. Prior to my sister being born, we hung out together all the time and they were emotionally supportive as well. They genuinely felt like my big brothers and I spent a lot of time playing video games, watching cartoons, and doing normal sibling stuff that kids did back in the 90s.
Eventually, they joined the military for their own reasons, one of which being to get away from my strict parents. They enlisted at different times and went into different branches of the military. Even at the time, I was around 11 years old and I understood and supported their reasons. My parents' marriage was rocky and it was tough to deal with their dysfunctional relationship. My mother being toxic was also a huge contributing factor.
My mother took out an Amazon credit card in my name when I was 19, maxed it out, made it go 90 days past due. It almost went into collections but my father and I discovered the bill in the mail one day. My father was pissed at my mother but he ended up paying the whole thing in full. Me, being 19, I was afraid of not being able to make it on my own. I was afraid of what the potential consequences of standing up to my mother would bring. I felt like if I stood up to her, she would kick me out and because I had no friends, I would be homeless with no where to go and I would have to drop out of college. Because of that fear, I didn't take legal action against her. Something I still regret not doing.
I found out she did the same thing to my Marine brother and he did not talk to her for almost a year. My mother played the victim at the time and called his girlfriend asking why my brother wasn't speaking to her.
As for my other brother, the Airmen: He met a girl when he was stationed in Utah. We were all raised Catholic but she wasn't and my mother had a problem with that. She intervened so many times to try and get them to have a "normal Catholic marriage" or get the marriage blessed by a priest. My now sister-in-law doesn't speak to any of us, isolates her children from us, and I haven't seen my oldest brother since my Marine brother's wedding. (5 years ago) I text him happy birthday and happy veterans day but two years in a row, he hasn't wish me a happy birthday.
Basically, my mother's actions have caused a rift in our family and I can't move on. I can't accept it. I feel so much anger towards my mother. I feel anger towards my brothers for abandoning me. It's actually poisoning me and turning me into a bitter person. I've tried dealing with it through medication, therapy, self-help books, meditation, yoga, endless research on psychological concepts like the narcissistic family and how to deal with them (Doctor Ramani, Jordan Peterson, etc.), how to love and trust people again, how to be independent and not care what others think, etc. I've spent so much time and money on trying to fix myself. The haunting thoughts of my family not caring about me or not making me a priority in their life at all holds me back from a lot of happiness because it just breaks my heart so much to the point where it distracts me from daily activities and makes me scared to take risks. I'm afraid to trust other people, open up to people, etc.
In terms of my father, we have a pretty decent relationship. He worked overtime to send me to a college prep high school. He was a hydraulics mechanic working out in the cold sometimes during the recession of '08. He showed up to my high school graduation when my mother didn't. He helped me move when no one else did. He's very smart with cars and he still helps me out with mine. He's always been a great Dad and has always been there for me. However, seeing him means seeing my mother.
Idk, I guess I'm just looking for comfort or words of wisdom or maybe someone has been through something similar so I just don't feel so damn alone and unloved anymore.
​
TLDR: My family trauma still haunts me after all these years and despite seeking professional help, I still feel like I'm on a hamster wheel, mentally.

Hello all. To preface, my friend (we will call her Lisa) have been friends ever since high school. We became friends because we were both being cheated on by the same guy. We decided to become friends and kick that guy to the curb and have been close ever since. In retrospect, I can see how this friendship has been more of a trauma bond. But nonetheless, I have never been closer to anyone in life. We finish each other’s sentences, have had the most fun together that I’ve ever had, and have been through a lot together. We always joked and said we were soul mates. Now that we’re both older and life is taking us in other directions, I am more triggered by her than anything.
After my first boyfriend (the one that was seeing both me and Lisa) I got another boyfriend a few years later. We can call him Kane. Kane told me that he was going on a trip to NY to visit family, but what really happened is that he left, and never came back. That was his easy way out of our relationship. I only found out because I saw a picture of him and the girl he left me for (we will call her Alice). It devastated me. It triggered me in such a profound way, that I became too depressed to work, and I ended up losing everything. My apartment, my car, and my job. For about 3 years after that, I struggled. When my depression over this man started to disappear, I just settled into my new identity that felt worthless and bummy.
Fast forward. I find out randomly one day that Lisa and Kane slept together on a drunken night years back and I never knew. It is still unclear when exactly this happened because they both have conflicting stories. I was angry for awhile. But ended up forgiving her because I did not want to lose my only friend. This was stupid of me, but I figured this happened so long ago I might as well let it go. Wrong. Typing this out I am realizing whatever justification I came up with for this isn’t good enough.
After numerous talks, and numerous apologies and validation from her, we have kinda settled into a good place. But I just saw on Instagram that she denied coming to my little get together with friends last night because she was actually going to a different one- with the girl my ex left me for.
I’m really triggered by this. It seems like they have all moved on, have found fun friendships in each other, but I have no friends and no life really outside of work and school. It makes me feel worthless. I don’t know why I struggle to make friends that I connect with, but the people who have triggered such dark times in my life have seemingly great lives. I guess this comes from my ignorant sense of justice, and hope that somehow I will be victorious after people shitted on me. But really everyone has moved on and I am just stuck in the past.
I am in a new loving relationship now, my life is stable, I’m no longer in that dark place I once was, and I genuinely have no feelings for my ex anymore. But still, seeing my only close friend finding a community with them guts me and reminds me of how bad I was hurting during that time. She is friends with my ex. Everyone is civil. And she even attends my exes events when he throws them. I can’t help but think that there is something wrong with me.
She is with a new bf that she is really happy with. Of course, he is close friends with the girl my ex left me for as well. They’re also all apart of an artsy community. So it’s looking like eventually her life would be much easier without having to dodge certain people to appease me, which I certainly would never expect someone to do. But eh. Still hurts feeling like my friend who I love dearly does not think our friendship is worth not being friends with these people.
Not sure what I’m looking for. Advice is welcome.

On a scale of one to ten, one being touching a hot car on a sunny day and ten being falling into the sun, I’d put having something burst into flames in my hand at probably a four. I think four is reasonable. I mean, we’re not talking about blistering heat that roasts your meat black. We’re talking about a little, blue, cat doll just catching fire and enveloping your hand up to the wrist in white-hot angel fire.
I think anyone’s first instinct when something they’re holding bursts into flames is to drop or throw the item. Since I am anyone, I naturally throw the doll with a squeal that turns heads. It hits the side of the closest tent and tumbles down it, paw over whisker. It leaves a trail of little fires behind it. These don’t just sizzle and go out, they get bigger.
Did I mention the smoke? There’s black smoke billowing out of the doll like it’s one of those funny fireworks that does nothing but make smoke. It doesn’t move like smoke though. Smoke just goes up where I guess it gets sucked out into space or something. This smoke swirls around in a ropey fashion like a snake.
“Meredith?” I say to the smoke snake, “Is that you?”
The smoke snake does not respond. Instead, one of the teenagers shouts, “FIRE!” and throws a cup of soda at the side of the tent that’s burning incredibly quickly. They all scatter. Soda is apparently not an effective fire extinguisher. The flames just sizzle and then swallow more of the tent.
I decide not to stick around. “If you’re Meredith, follow me,” I tell the smoke snake, and then turn to run for the busy section of the carnival.
I don’t make it more than two steps before one of the bigger teenagers grabs me by the shoulder. He’s a lanky boy with black hair and one of those “I wanna look grown-up” half mustaches that you almost wonder if you can just rip it right off his face. He’s wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt. I bet Roger and this kid would have been best buds or bitter rivals if Roger hadn’t gotten turned into mashed potatoes.
“Hey! This girl started a fire!” he yells to nobody in particular.
A girl with really short cut bleached blonde hair and one of those nose stud things runs over and gets right in my face. “Let her go, Johnny!” she snaps at the boy holding me. I’m surprised because I thought from her expression that she was going to headbutt me in the face and knock me out or something. “She’s pretty badass in my book.” She looks me in the eyes with something I’m not familiar with. Is that... respect?
Johnny lets go of me.
“That thing’s gonna burn the whole carnival down!” the girl yells. She sounds pleased. She’s even got a big grin on her face as she watches the fire on the tent rise upward.
“Well I’m not sticking around to watch, babe!” says Johnny, and he takes off between two trailers across the way.
There’s already shouts rising over the sound of the crackling fire. I hear someone yell the word “fire!” and the sentence, “grab an extinguisher!” Just over the tent, where the main thoroughfare probably is, some woman screams, and a kid starts crying. Oh God, I’ve gone and killed everybody, haven’t I? The entire carnival is going to burn to the ground and everybody’s probably panicking and stampeding for the exits. Then the screaming lady lets out a big burst of laughter and I realize nobody on the other side of the tent is even aware of what’s going on over here yet.
“Come on!” the blonde girl pulls on my sleeve. I stumble over my own feet and fall to the ground. She doesn’t stick around to help me up. Instead she takes off after her friend Johnny, doing some sort of twirly dance in the process as she runs away into the dark.
I start to get up from the dirt when I notice dark liquid running out from under me. It’s blood. It’s all over my shirt. I’m a sopping wet, red mess. Also, the cow pitcher is shattered. I must have fallen right on it and it broke and I got Nate’s blood all over myself! How am I ever going to explain this to that angry man I borrowed it from?
“What’s going on?” asks Paschar, “I’m getting only bits and pieces. There’s a fire? Smoke? Snakes? Blood? Are you injured?”
Actually, now that he’s asked, there is a big piece of the cow pitcher sticking through my bloody shirt down in my tummy area. I pull on the end of it. There’s a nasty, burning sensation so I stop pulling. I’ve gone and stabbed myself with a cow pitcher! Is any of this blood mine?
“I’ve spilled Nate’s blood all over myself!”
“Don’t rub it in your eyes!”
I wasn’t gonna rub it in my eyes. It’s not like I’m tired or anything. My cousin Susie used to rub her eyes a lot but that was because she had really bad allergies. Her eyes were always bloodshot. Susie’s worst allergy was boat propellers though. She was deathly allergic to those. After her accident, my Uncle George developed really bad allergies too. I could tell because his eyes were always bloodshot.
Someone nearby yells, “Over here!” and a pair of men run up with big, red fire extinguishers. They start spraying the white foamy stuff at the side of the tent. At first, it doesn’t look like the foam is going to stop the flames, but after a minute of spraying and one of the extinguishers running out of juice, the fire hisses and goes out.
The man holding the used-up fire extinguisher looks at the big, black, scorched portion of tent, then down at the crispy, little cat doll on the ground. Then he turns and looks at the claw machine. The machine blinks its lights like it’s saying hello to him. The man finally looks over at me, laying in a small pool of warm blood. It’s the man with orange hair who passed by earlier that I hid from.
“Look what we got here,” he says with a funny accent. I think it’s Irish, but it might be Scottish. I’m not an expert on accents. Everything I know about accents I learned from this movie I watched with my dad about a Scottish guy who was immortal and he killed other immortal people by chopping their heads off with a giant sword. Well, that and Mary Poppins.
The other man sets down his fire extinguisher and turns around. He’s a beefy guy wearing a huge coat with lots of pockets and a floppy-looking cowboy hat. “Who’s that, Gin?” he asks in a non-accent voice.
“Get up, girly!” The man named Gin reaches down and grabs me by my collar. He pulls me halfway up to standing on my own two feet. In the process, the piece of cow pitcher that has punctured me in the tummy area shifts and causes more of that intense burning feeling I got when I tried to pull it out.
“OWWWW!” I yell, hoping he gets the hint and lets go of me.
He doesn’t.
Then I notice that the snaky trail of black smoke is circling his head like a creepy halo. I don’t think he or the other man can see it because if either of them could, they’d surely be freaking out and trying to wave it away.
“This,” Gin says with one of those half-smile smirks that shows the canine tooth on the left side of his mouth, “is who Clay was looking for.”
The black smoke snake hunches back like it's about to strike at the back of Gin’s head. Then it lunges forward and splashes like a wave against him, going in all directions. A moment later, it recollects itself into a cloudy-form and swirls angrily around him like a swarm of bees dealing with Winnie-the-Pooh.
Gin pulls me the rest of the way to my feet. This is good because I aim to kick him in his testicles and I couldn’t do that lying down. As soon as I’ve got my footing, I pull back, swinging my foot out behind me--
--at which point he brings his big, adult fist into the equation by punching me hard in the guts. The pain is so intense I feel like I’m going to puke. Even worse, there’s a really sharp stinging sensation and then a wet kind of warmth. No, I didn’t pee myself. Gin himself winces in pain as he pulls his fist back to reveal the piece of broken cow pitcher stabbed right up between his knuckles. He lets go of me so he can pull it out and I take the opportunity to drop to my knees and double over, clutching where he hit me.
“Word of advice to you, lass,” says Gin as he flicks the pitcher piece away, “don’t broadcast your intention to kick a man in the quongs if you don’t want to get punched in the ovaries.”
I’m too busy rubbing my face in the wet grass to respond but I’m thinking about how annoying this thing with saying what I’m thinking is and I wish I could stop doing it because it really makes fighting bad guys difficult. I wonder if I just said that thought, but judging from Gin putting his boot on the back of my head, I’m guessing not. Bleh, the grass is warm and tastes like ozone. I realize I’m getting Nate’s blood on me. Paschar said to not get it in my eyes!
“What is she, like ten years old?” I hear the other man say, “What about this brat’s got Clay so spooked? You could knock her over with a wet fart.” Thanks for that visual, Sir.
Gin lifts his boot off my head. I take the opportunity to get my face out of the bloody grass and wipe it off my mouth. I can’t tell how much is on my face.
“She killed his kid or sometin’,” he remarks casually, “burned him alive.” He pauses. I look up. He’s looking at the scorched tent. “Seems like she’s got a penchant for fire. Maybe we ought to give her a feel of what it’s like to get burned before we bring her to Clay. What do you say?”
I cough up some dirt I didn’t realize was in the back of my throat. “I didn’t kill Joey.”
Gin wanders a few steps away and the other man comes over and puts a hand under my armpit. He helps me up in a far gentler manner than Gin did. I don’t think about kicking him in the testicles and I don’t plan to. The two men share a brief look and I worry for a second that I just said all that.
“She’s got blood all over her,” the big other guy says, letting go of me and wiping his hands off on his dark jacket.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if she’s got shit and puke on ‘er,” Gin lights up a cigarette and takes a long drag on it. He looks at me like a kid with a magnifying glass looks at an ant. He blows out a small cloud of stinky smoke. I wonder if he can make smoke rings. “Give me her arm.”
Nothing good ever started with someone saying, “give me her arm.” I instinctively start to pull away, but the big guy puts his hand under my armpit again and moves me away from Gin, twirling me around so he’s between the two of us like a big wall.
“I’ve had enough of this. I’m not letting you put a cigarette out on a little girl. What the Hell is wrong with you, man?”
I put my free arm around his waist and give him as much of a hug as I can. Thank you, Mister, whoever you are.
Gin casually gestures toward the blackened tent flap and scorched patch of ground where the remains of my precious Freddy Lapel doll sizzles with otherworldly heat. “Look what she did, Dutch. She tried to burn down the whole carnival. Could have hurt somebody! Could have killed somebody--” He looks directly at me. “--again.”
Dutch’s thumb digs into my armpit but not so hard that it hurts. He smells like he had bacon recently. And he works on machinery or something, because there’s a distinct scent of motor oil on his clothes. I wonder if he knows Mr. Grizz.
“But thankfully nobody did get hurt. And I don’t know the full story between her and Clay, if there even is one. All I know is a grown-ass, Irish prick is telling me to let him put a lit cigarette on a ten-year old girl covered in blood and I ain’t about to be the guy that lets that happen.”
“I’m twelve actually,” I tell Dutch. He doesn’t hear or just ignores me.
The orange-haired creep named Gin takes another drag on his cigarette. I watch the end of it burn away between his fingers. Then he casually lifts one leg and puts it out on the underside of his boot. He flicks the butt away and then crosses his arms and stares at me hiding behind Dutch. If there was a clock, we could hear it ticking away, but there’s no clock. Instead, there’s just the hoots and hollers of people having a grand old time at the carnival.
After what seems like five minutes of just hard, quiet staring at each other like one of those Mexican standoffs in a Clint Eastwood Western movie --my dad used to love to watch Clint Eastwood movies. His favorite was called High Plains Drifter. I just watched for the horses-- oh right, like I was saying... after five minutes of that staring, Gin shrugs like he didn’t just step on the head of a little girl and then try to put a cigarette out on her.
“I’m fetching Clay.” He lingers for a moment, glaring at both of us, and then storms off in a hurried manner, really working his arms into it.
Dutch’s grip on my pit loosens. I stop hugging him and move away a step. He looks down at me. I can’t figure out what thoughts are going through his head. His expression seems like a jumble of worry and upset and even a little fear. He’s gotten all sweaty. He wipes it away with his sleeve and takes a rough breath.
“Thank you, Mr. Dutch,” I tell him.
He nods silently.
I check my pokey stab wound from the cow pitcher. It’s not leaking profusely but there’s blood and mud caked on my shirt and it’s sticking to me. I hope I don’t get a mud infection. I wish I better understood where germs come from. There’s blood all over my hands but I don’t know if it’s mine or Nate’s.
“I’m taking you to the front entrance and we’re calling the police,” Dutch tells me.
I almost forgot about the cloud of smoke. It is lazily drifting over Dutch’s head now, like a little, black raincloud. It moves unnaturally, not drifting away or dispersing in any way. Just a little, black raincloud over the man’s floppy hat.
We walk away from the burned tent and the claw machine in the opposite direction from the one that Gin went. A noise behind us makes me look back. A blonde woman with an apron covered with pockets from which prize tickets hang out all over comes out of a nearby booth alley and sees the mess I caused. She immediately zeroes in on Dutch and I walking away together.
“Oi! Dutch!” she calls out, “what the Hell happened here?”
“I’m dealing with it, Susie,” he tells her. He puts his hand on my arm as if to show that he’s got the perpetrator and is handling the situation.
I look up at him. “My cousin’s name is Susie.” I don’t know why I feel the need to mention that. My brain is kind of doing a reset at the moment as I try to figure out what I need to do and if that cloud is indeed Meredith’s soul like I think it is.
Mr. Dutch glances down at me and starts leading me away again. “Is that so?”
“My uncle ran her over with a motorboat.”
He frowns and looks away. “Oh.”
I realize I could have worded that better. “By accident.”
Paschar chimes in. “That’s probably not the best topic to be bringing up right now, Lily.”
Mr. Dutch seems to agree with Paschar. “Let’s just get you to the ticket booths, alright? Quiet like.”
Ahead of us, the back alleyway of tent flaps and old, unused arcade machines opens up to the main thoroughfare. I knew it was right there! I can see normal people, mostly adults because it’s so freaking late and kids have got school tomorrow but the carnival is in town so some parents brought their kids because some things are more important than school. Like fishing for little ducks with magnets on the end of a fishing line so you can get a ten cent knick-knack for the price of a couple quarters. Or shooting water in a hippo’s mouth and watching a balloon fill up from out its butt and whoever pops the hippo’s butt balloon wins a prize which is usually just a bunch of tickets like the ones that lady had falling out of her apron pockets.
The little, black cloud follows us, keeping just above Dutch’s head. I wonder if it intends to drop on him like an anvil in a Wile E Coyote cartoon.
Right before we reach the thoroughfare full of laughing, smiling people, I hear something. Fast approaching footsteps. They’re not speed walking; this is more like a jumbling hustle of several feet moving swiftly but trying to be quiet. Oh crap, it’s Gin and Clay. They’re going to burn me with cigarettes or rub deodorant on my wounds and stab me and light me on fire and--
There’s a hard WHOOMP sound right next to me followed immediately by a loud grunt like “UGH” but I can’t do it justice with words. It’s like the sound someone would make if they bang their elbow on the edge of a metal desk right where their funny bone is. Like right between the elbow joint bones, you know? Why does that hurt so bad? I think the person who named it the “funny bone” never hit the corner of a metal desk there. It’s the least funny bone in your body. Or second at least to the coccyx. That’s the little tail end of your spine. Yeah, we got tails. Humans got tails. They’re hidden though, tucked away in the butt area.
Dutch lets go of my arm. I turn to look at him. There’s a foot with a sneaker on it sticking out from between his legs. Just as quickly as I see it, it disappears. Mr. Dutch is the one making the pain sound. He reaches down and clutches his crotch, and his knees give out and he falls forward. Someone kicked this poor man in the testicles!
The foot belongs to the girl with the short, bleached blonde hair. She stands over the large, crumpled form of Dutch and looks at me with a triumphant grin.
“Bleep the authority!” she shouts and pumps her fist in the air. She’s wearing like a dozen rings on the one hand. How can she fit so many rings on such stubby fingers? “Let’s go!” she yells in my face even though I’m right there next to her.
Her friend Johnny is with her. He’s looking around anxiously. “Yeah, let’s get out of here already!”
I’m flabbergasted. “But Mr. Dutch was a good guy!” I try to tell the two of them.
They’re completely enthralled by their own sense of pride in a job well done, saving the little, bloody girl from the big man at the traveling carnival. Mr. Dutch is groaning in severe, testicle-kicked pain. I reach down to try to help him, and the blonde girl grabs my wrist.
“What are you doing?” she asks me through a smile that says she doesn’t even really care what my answer is, “we’re rescuing you! Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, let’s hoof it!”
I feel like that’s one too many horse-themed expressions in a single statement, but I don’t say anything. And not just that, there’s like twelve too many people getting involved in my problems lately. I’m not a complete idiot, I know well what happens to people around me. My whole family is dead. My best friend is... probably a little, black cloud that’s doing some sort of weird interpretive dance over the crumpled form of poor Dutch with the swollen balls. People get hurt around me. Hell, poor Dutch can attest to that at the moment. People die around me. People get torn apart by skinless dogs that form out of fungus that used to be old ladies and I can’t believe that’s even an actual thing I saw. I saw that. That happened.
I take the girl’s hand and remove it from my arm. “Look, I don’t know you or Johnny and you both seem really nice, but you need to get out of here before you get hurt. I’ll be okay. Mr. Dutch was taking me to get help. The bad people are coming, and they like to smoke. They’ve got an angel of death tied up somewhere. And there’s someone much, much worse who could show up any time.”
I think I lost them both somewhere around the part about that creep Gin being a smoker. The boy Johnny does another anxious look around the area, then he grabs the girl’s arm. “Nance, let’s just go. I didn’t come here to get murdered by some whacked-out carney cult.”
The girl Nance drops her arm and shakes her head at me. She starts to open her mouth to say something, then crumples it up into a little mouth and turns and trots away after Johnny. I watch them go. I don’t know who they were, but I hope they get far, far away. The curse of getting involved in my life has a long reach and is unforgiving.
After they leave, I kneel down and pat Mr. Dutch on the back. “All you alright, Mr. Dutch?” I ask him. He mutters something I can’t understand because he’s got his face shoved into the ground.
“You’re not cursed, Lily,” Paschar comments.
“Then why do bad things always happen to people around me?”
“Because your gift is chaotic,” I hear me say. Except I didn’t say it. Not me me anyway.
Paschar whispers, “Oh no.”
I feel the presence of another person standing right behind me. Unlike Nance and Johnny, this person didn’t make a sound. It was as if they rose up out of the ground or descended from the sky as silent as a feather touching a pillow. My whole body tenses up. That sounds impossible but it totally is possible and it’s incredibly uncomfortable. Don’t question it.
I turn around slowly. First at the neck, then the shoulder, finally at the waist. Why am I dragging this out? Because I don’t want to look behind me at the person because I know exactly who it is and I really don’t feel like peeing my pants right now. Or ever. But especially now.
For a second I think I’m just looking in a mirror because I see my own face. Except my actual face probably has more blood on it currently. But less blood everywhere else.
Samael smiles at me. “You got here ahead of me.” He looks at my clothes and then tilts his head and examines my face. “And from the looks of it, you’ve had one Hell of a time. Who did this to you? Was it him?” He points at Mr. Dutch who has finally rolled over onto his back and is staring up at the starry night sky with teary eyes and a really red face.
“This isn’t my blood,” I tell him.
He grins. “But this is,” he gestures at himself. Don’t pee, Lily. Don’t pee.
Paschar raises his voice. “Sam, please, you’ve got to come back! You’re unwell.”
“Really?? Did you really think that’s going to work?” That’s me talking. Actual me. Not Samael. “You can’t appeal to crazy! I mean, come on. You’ve got to have something to back your words up with. When in the history of ever has someone been on the verge of destroying a small carnival and someone else said, ‘don’t do it!’ and they were like, ‘oh, okay.’? Never!”
“She’s right.” Samael says, nodding and raising an eyebrow. Hey, I can’t do that. I try to raise one eyebrow, but I just end up raising both. So I stop and try again. But then I stop completely before it looks like I’m wiggling my eyebrows at him. He stares at me blankly for a moment after, then blinks a couple times and shakes his head.
Mr. Dutch rolls over and gets up onto his hands and knees. He lets out a big breath, then sits up and tilts his head back to look at Samael and me together. There’s a moment where he seems to accept what he’s seeing, but then he clenches his eyes shut, reopens them, cranes his neck forward and looks back and forth between us.
“Don’t hurt him,” says Paschar.
Samael smirks. It’s starting to feel surreal to see myself making faces when I can feel that I’m not. Also, everything’s slightly off because I’m looking at my actual face and not a mirror reflection of it. “I’m not here for Mr. Dutch,” says Samael, “I’m here for the rune-maker, remember? I’m here for Felix Clay.”
“Lillian Alexandra Madwhip!” someone shouts from the direction Mr. Dutch and I just walked away from.
As if he was just waiting in the shadows --which he probably was because it’s such a Felix thing to do-- Felix freaking Clay steps from seemingly out of nowhere and stands about ten yards down the alleyway from us behind Samael. Beside him is his orange-haired friend Gin, smoking another cigarette from the looks of the little glow I can see in his hand. I should have smelled him coming.
They’re a little ways off, but I can see them both pretty clearly, and Felix isn’t smiling. It occurs to me that he always smiled before, even when he was doing things that shouldn’t have made him happy. It’s like his smile is a mask he hides behind. But not now. Now he looks angry. And annoyed. And --why is he holding that hammer? He’s not even holding it right; he’s got the claw side down. He can’t hammer a nail that way unless his arms work backward.
“You came for me and here I am!” Felix yells at us, “But I told you not to come back. So now--” He and his Irish buddy Mr. Gin start marching toward us with very purposeful strides, and I can’t understand what he’s saying after the “so now” part. Mr. Gin pulls something I can’t see out of his coat and holds it close at his side. No doubt it’s a weapon, I just don’t know if it’s a stabby weapon or a shooty weapon or what.
Samael doesn’t look at them. He’s focused on me. He’s smiling. His hands are clenched at his sides, and I remember well that there’s a rune on one that lets him punch through people like they’re made of Play-doh.
As for me, I’m torn. Do I warn Felix that Samael can karate chop him into bits like some sort of bad horror movie? Or do I watch this play out? Maybe I should take this opportunity to just run. I mean, I can’t win against any of these people. Who am I? I’m a Knife That Cuts the Veil that’s dulled by the runes all over the carnival grounds.
While I stand there lost in that thought, Samael reaches forward and pokes me in the forehead. He starts moving his finger around. I just stand there and stare at him, waiting for him to jab a hole right through my head. Don’t pee, Lily. Don’t pee. What the heck is he doing?
“There,” he whispers to me, finishing whatever it is, “that should keep you safe. Just don’t smear it or your head might explode.”
As soon as he lifts his finger away, I can feel it. That tension I had that I mentioned early was all through my body, it just vanishes. I almost go completely slack in fact, but manage to hold myself up. Then comes a wave of warmth starting at the spot on my forehead that he last touched and encompassing my entire head, traveling down my neck, across my chest, down both arms at the same time, through my midsection and then hips, legs, ending at the tips of my toes. The pain in my abdomen that I had actually forgotten about also vanishes. I reach into the hole in my shirt to feel the wound. It’s still there and I feel my fingertip actually go inside the stabby hole for a second before I realize I’m still hurt; I just can’t feel it anymore.
“Who’s your little friend?”
Felix and Gin have finally reached us. Gin looks smugly at me, still holding his hand by his side. Samael turns to face them finally and Gin’s smug look is replaced with one of confusion. Felix stops mid-stride and even takes a step back. He also has a confused expression on his face. I don’t need to see Samael’s face to know he’s got the biggest grin on it right now.

Her everyday life has been suddenly soiled by blood and humiliation. Cheerful and popular high-school girl, Shibuya Mei was transfered to the other world and without knowing the reason why, she was eaten to death by monsters inside there. She felt every bit of "dying" in the other world and when she finally died, she found herself back in her world. It happened many, many times over and over again ... Read Heroine wa zetsubou shimashita - Chapter 95 - MangaPuma. Read more at https://mangapuma.com/heroine-wa-zetsubou-shimashita/chapter-95

I (40f) on Christmas Eve reconnected with "Mike" (55m). It has been going good. Let me give a quick back story so you will understand.
Over 13 yrs ago, I met Mike on an online dating site. I was just out of a marriage to my son's father and he too was a single father of 2 (a boy and girl). In the beginning it was an INSTANT connection, but due to distance, (me in Illinois him in Georgia) and fresh out of a marriage I was skeptical about giving him a chance. After a year of talking we met, by chance, in Georgia. I was on a layover and and I texted him that I wish I could see him. The bus that I was on was going to his city for a stop. He never said anything but once we pulled up, he was at the stop! He had convinced the driver to let him come on the bus to hug and kiss me..and the driver let him. Let's just say, SPARKS FLEW! And at that time I was puddy in his hands. But like most LDR it didn't work out, not cause of arguing or disagreements but solely communication. It just died.
Fast forward, I ended up getting into a relationship. After living together and moving to a better, more expensive and safer neighborhood, with better schools, my ex (47m) decided to end our 7+ yr relationship in 2018. I was devastated and begged, pleaded, and prayed for us to get back together for almost 2 years! Needless to say it didn't work. I slept on the couch he kept the room. So I regain my self-esteem and regain my worth and decided to let go. But I was in a hard position, I worked, but the field I am in (education for the last 18 yrs) doesn't pay a whole so finding a place, in the city that I was now living in was almost impossible (need at least 60k) I know what you're thinking, just move to a different city.. one that I can afford. What a great idea! Insert the dilemma with my son.
Before and during the break up, my son had experienced a mental and emotional trauma from being bullied and ostracize for 2 yrs. In his 7th grade yr he FINALLY made friends and was trying to regain his life through therapy. He suffers from severe clinical depression, general and social anxiety disorders, and abandonment issues (from birth father). So uprooting him again from this city would further damage him. So, I decided to get a second job one that would help me provide and accommodate my situation since the ex was not involved although we STILL LIVED TOGETHER!
2020-2021: I got a second job at a popular online shopping store and things were looking up.. I'm saving money, working 7 days a week, and looking for a place. Still not on good terms with ex but civil. Now insert the pandemic, my father's death (no life insurance), losing my second job, and everyone in the house catching COVID! YAY! My son and I recovered but the ex, didn't. He had to be hospitalized and placed in a medical induced coma. So, I contact his family and friends and no one but his mother showed up who was out of it because it was her only child. So I made all the tough decisions when she couldn't. Days later he wakes up and his mother tells him all that I did. He decided he wants to reconcile. At that point I agreed.
2022: We break up again, this time I ended it. It just wasn't working and he could never be the man I fell in love with. (Lack of intimacy, not sex) So I moved back to the couch. Since my ex understood, we AGREED to live AS ROOMMATES until my son graduates from High School or able to move. So I am back to looking for another job. I decided to apply for the post office. Anyone who has applied know how off and on it can be (lots of hoops to jump through). I made it pretty far and I'm 2 steps away.
During all this time Mike has always crossed my mind so I decided to reach out to him. And the instant connection was back. Since Christmas Eve, we have talked EVERYDAY! We are growing closer and enjoying the small and everyday talk. He told me about his living situation, added kids, and the hardships that he experienced over the years. And how he is guarded due to his past relationships, which I understood. We are planning on seeing each other this summer. I have told him everything EXPECT the truth about my living situation. I am afraid that if I do, he will back away, but if I don't and he finds out, it could cause worse damage. Idk what to do.

Through old sketches and new sketches, Rattus Rattus hosts a chronological look at some of the more strange, sad, and outright Horrible aspects of the entire history of England.

1. Savage Stone Age

• HHTV News: Bob Hale's Stone Age Report (S1E5)
• Song: “The Ages Of Stone” (S3E11)
• Trepanadol, the surefire headache cure.(S2E6)
• Shouty Man: New! Multi-Purpose String.(S3E6)
• A man tries to convince his skeptical hunter friend that settling down on a farm is the wave of the future.(S3E6)
• Cliff Whiteley discusses the many theories about Stonehenge with one of its builders. (S3E12)

1. Broken Bronze Age

• HHTV Early News: Eager customers queue up for the opening of the Bronze Age (S4E1)
• New Sketch: Advertisement: Bronze Age Funeral Homes (Funeral Ad parody)
• New Sketch: Historical Chopped - A bronze age chef prepares traditional dishes like roasted venison and nettle soup.
• New Sketch: Bronze Age warriors on a quest to find the mythical island of Avalon. (mockumentary parody)
• New Sketch: Historical Shopping Channel - The Bell Beaker Hour
• New Song: “Bling Bling Bronze” (Rap parody)

1. Cut Throat Celts

• New Sketch: Bronze Age people decide to take the Celts culture and use it themselves.
• Home decorating with severed heads.(S1E10)
• New Sketch: Strangest Celtic Beliefs (Animated)
• "Horrible Points of View": Taking questions and comments--also severed heads--from the era's viewer mailbag. (S3E6)
• "Historical Wife Swap": An upscale Roman couple moves into newly conquered Britain and swaps with a traditional Celtic family. (S2E7)
• Song: “Boudicca” (S2E10)

1. Smashing Saxons

• HHTV News: Bob Hale Saxon Report (S3E10)
• The host of "Invasion, Invasion, Invasion" inadvertently helps Hengist and Horsa steal Kent from Vortigern. (S3E3)
• King Aethelred is suspicious of witchcraft on first meeting Brother Augustine (S5E5)
• New Sketch: King Oswiu of Northumbria holds a debate over whether England should be influenced by Roman Christianity or Celtic one.
• Suggestions for coping with famine (S2E6).
• HH Movie Pitch: Alfred the Great tries to avoid being typecast as "Cake Guy" (S4E12)
• Historical Desktops: Ethelred the Unready suffers cyberbullying at the hands of Viking raiders.(S3E8)
• HHTV News: Mike Peabody live from the Battle of Maldon (S3E2)
• Stupid Death: Harold Godwinson’s Brothers (S4E4)

1. Measly Middle Ages

• The News at 1066 provides updates from the Norman Conquest via Bayeux Tapestry (S2E10)
• The tumultuous love story of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders is retold in "Mud and Matilda" (S3E10)
• HHTV News: taking a census for the Domesday Book. (S1E5)
• William the Conqueror's increasingly unusual funeral (S1E5)
• William II meets his death in a mysterious hunting accident (S3E8)
• New Sketch: Henry I can’t help it with his lamprey obsession.
• Song: "Matilda(s) and Stephen ... and Henry"(S5E10)
• Historical Desktops: King John's concern for his social media status leads him to accidentally sign the Magna Carta. (S4E11)
• New Sketch: Henry III & his estranged relationship with Simon De Montfort explained through a graphic novel.
• The plague forecast (S2E11)
• A peasant tries to leverage his rare and desirable plague-free status into a pay rise. (S3E12)
• The Peasants Revolt is led by the confusingly named Wat Tyler. (S1E8)
• New Sketch: A mishap occurs from Wat Tyler during the court of Richard II
• New Sketch: “The War Of The Roses” (Game Of Thrones Parody)
• Song: "The Truth About Richard III" (S3E6)
• Lord Stanley literally waits until the last minute to decide whom to fight for at the Battle of Bosworth Field. (S5E9)

1. Terrible Tudors

• "Who on Earth Are You?":Lambert Simnel (S5E7)
• Song: "Henry VII: The Original Tu-Tu-Tudor" (S5E9)
• "This Is Your Reign": King Henry VIII reunites with his dead friends, advisors and wives (S1E2)
• New Sketch: Imagine Spot: Henry VIII leaves a negative review to Six
• Song: “Divorce, Beheaded, Died” Song (S1E2)
• King Henry VIII plays tennis while his Queen Anne Boleyn is executed. (S2E11)
• "Horrible Histories World Wrestling": Francis I of France defeats Henry VIII (S2E12)
• Time to get ready for the Religious Switchover (S5E2)
• Edward VI's whipping boy, Barnaby Fitzpatrick, faces the wrath of the royal tutors. (S4E10)
• New Song: “Edward VI: Growing Up” (Parody of "When I Grow Up" from Matilda The Musical)
• The story of Lady Jane Grey, queen for nine days. (S3E3)
• Song: “Mary the First” (S4E10)
• Elizabeth I takes her search for the perfect consort online. (S4E3)
• Oh Yea! Magazine: Elizabeth I's formidable temper (S4E5)
• Trailer: Spanish Armada I & II(S4E1)

1. Slimy Stuarts

• New Song: “James: King Of Scotland & Ireland”
• New Sketch: George Villiers comes up with new schemes to win wars in Europe and all fail.
• Bonfire safety tips with Guy Fawkes. (S1E11)
• The story of the Gunpowder Plot as action movie "Fawkes' 13" (movie trailer) (S2E1)
• New Sketch: Charles I goes online to scam people with “ship money”
• Two men with their ears chopped off try to talk to each other (S2E1)
• The introduction of a novel new drink called 'tea'.(S2E9)
• HHTV News: Civil War. Bob Hale gives the Civil War Report(S2E7), The English Civil War breaks out (S1E11), while Mike Peabody reports live from the Battle of Marston Moor.(S2E7)
• Song: “The English Civil War Song” (S3E10)
• HHTV News: Charles I's execution.(S1E4)
• Oliver Cromwell bans Christmas celebrations--among many other things. (S2E2)
• New Sketch: What you can and can’t do under Puritan England
• Song: "Charles II: King of Bling"(S2E2)
• Thomas Blood is brought to the court of Charles II (S3E12)
• Charles II literally dines in public.(S4E2)
• New Sketch: How to burn down London
• New Sketch: Gross Designs - Christopher Wren has some grand plans to rebuild London
• "My Stuart Family" tries to keep up with the neighbors with the help of some exotic new foods. (S1E2)
• "Historical Wife Swap": The Miserables & The Merrys (S1E3)
• HHTV News: Mike Peabody reports on efforts to cope with the Great Plague of London. (S1E9)
• Ye Sun newspaper: Plague Special.(Parody of The Sun newspaper.)(S1E9)
• Plague victim finder recruitment comes with some built-in occupational hazards. (S5E9)
• New Sketch: Charles II & Catherine Brackanza go to couples’s therapy
• New Song: “James II: Protestants Watching Me” (Parody of “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell)
• New Sketch: The host of "Invasion, Invasion, Invasion" meets William and Mary who are storming to take over the Crown
• New Song: "William & Mary" (Parody Of "I Got You Babe" by Sonny & Cher)
• William returns to England from Amsterdam to see how effective his wife is at running the country.
• New Sketch: Shouty Man: New! Bank Of England!
• New Sketch: "Historical Countryfile": Our host explores some of the bizarre and exotic plants grown in Mary II's garden. (Parody of Countryfile)
• New Sketch: William III acts more clueless about running England after Mary's death
• New Sketch: Historical Desktop - Queen Anne & Sophia Of Hanover both wait for each other to die.
• New Song: “The Acts Of Union” (Parody of “Heart Of Glass” by Blondie)

1. Gorgeous Georgians

• Song: “Four Georges” (S1E1)
• Robert Walpole take advantage of George I’s inability to speak English (S3E7)
• New Sketch: George II asks Tomochichi about the ladies in his court.
• Song: “Dick Turpin” (S3E1)
• How to Vote In Georgian Elections (S1E1)
• "Historical Wife Swap": Lord and Lady Posh from the Manor swap with the Peasant family of Poorville. (S1E6)
• "Georgian Come Dine With Me" (S5E6)
• King George III's royal physicians torture him in the name of treatment.(S2E6)
• Song: “George IV: Couldn’t Stand My Wife” (S2E5)
• "George IV: Who on Earth Are You?" (S3E4)
• New Sketch: People at a pub argue over whether the Georgian Era is over or not after George IV’s death.
• New Sketch: Britain abolishes slavery and gives reparation… to the owners

1. Vile Victorians

• Queen Victoria's solemn coronation hits some less-than-dignified snags.(S5E6)
• Queen Victoria pitches her workout regime. (S1E12)
• The Shouty Man presents Victorian Child Chimney Cleaner and Victorian Maid (S1E9 and S2E10)
• Parliamentarians try to find a solution to--or at least, a way to ignore--the Great Stink of 1858. (S1E7)
• An inspector gets a rundown from strict teachers on school punishments. (S1E9)
• New: HHTV News: Bob Hales Reports The Crimean War
• Florence Nightingale arrives at a Crimean hospital clearly in need of her help. (S1E13)
• Song: “Mary Seacole” (S4E5)
• Victoria and Albert's love story (S4E2)
• Song: "Work, Terrible Work!"(S3E4)

1. Evil Edwardians

• New Sketch: Edward VII aspires to reign as long as his mother
• New Song: “Edward VII’s Party Song” (Parody of “Party Rock” by LMFAO)
• Suffragettes try to smuggle themselves in a bag (S5E10)
• Song: "The Suffragettes' Song" (S3E8)
• HHTV News: Live from a schoolboy strike in Llanelli. (S5E10)
• Song: “Edwardian Not Victorian”(music hall pastiche)
• New Sketch: Historical Desktops: David Lloyd George posts his budget plan and uses this as an opportunity to decrease power from the House Of Lords.
• The officers of the RMS Titanic run through a highly dubious safety measures check. (S5E2)
• New Sketch: Imagine Spot - “Beatrix Potter’s Funhouse” (Preschool Show Parody)

1. Frightful First World War

• Song: “Cousins” (From the Frightful First World War Special)
• Outlining the causes of the war as simply as possible - that is, not very (S1E8).
• A naive young recruit to the trenches tries to learn the ropes (S3E3).
• The dos and don'ts of keeping the war effort going strong at home, including a ban on feeding ducks (From the Frightful First World War Special)
• Shouty Man: New! WWI Wee-Wee, the multi-purpose liquid revolution (S3E3)
• Summing up the less-than-encouraging results of the Somme campaign (S3E1)
• Scenes from the poignantly pointless chaos in the trenches, in the few minutes between learning of the 11 November truce and its actual implementation. (From the Frightful First World War special)

1. Awful Interwar Period

• New Sketch: HHTV News: The General Strike of 1926 where the protesters play football with the officers.
• New Sketch: A father tries to controls his son’s radio time
• New Sketch: “Historical Fashion Fix”: Changing an Edwardian woman into a Flapper
• New Sketch: The Suffragettes find new things to protest about after women got the right to vote.
• New Sketch: A group of wealthy, hedonistic socialites discuss their extravagant lifestyles and controversial scandals while sipping on cocktails and dancing to jazz music.
• New Sketch: The introduction of “fish and chips”
• New Sketch: The opening of Penguins Publishing
• HHTV Sport: Profiling Lily Parr (S5E8)
• New Song: “Flappers” (Parody of “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper)
• New Sketch: The launching of an obscure network you’ve never heard - The BBC
• New Sketch: HHTV News: Bob Hale Reports On The Great Depression, Mad Molly reports on the actual finance of the economy during the Depression (parody of a financial market channel), and Mike Peabody reports live on the streets of Northern England.
• New Sketch:King Edward VII & Wallis Simpson told through a graphic novel.
• New Sketch: George VI goes to speech therapy
• Historical Desktops: Neville Chamberlain gauges the reaction to his new European peace settlement. (S5E11)

1. Woeful Second World War

• HHTV News: Bob Hale's World War II Report. (S5E7)
• The commandant of a German POW camp tries to keep a determined British officer from escaping. (S1E2)
• A prim couple must choose from a difficult set of inner-city evacuee children. (S5E12)
• PM Winston Churchill discusses arming the British Home Guard. Video game: Operation Defend Britain. The Durham Home Guard branch does more damage to themselves than to the enemy.(S2E1)
• Winston Churchill plans D-Day late into the night, much to the dismay of his secretary and a general. (S2E4)
• Wrapping children in brown paper for warmth leads to a postal mix-up. (S2E2)
• An evacuee child from the city thinks he's landed in a den of monsters in "The Farm" (S2E9)
• Song: "The Few (RAF Pilots)" (S4E1)
• Wartime mechanic and future monarch Elizabeth II also stars in a sprightly "Queen-Fit-Fitters" jingle (S5E5)
• An attempt to foil German railway spies creates unexpected problems for the British passengers. (S4E2)
• New Sketch: Winston Churchill is elected out of office after the war’s over.

1. Freaky Fifties

• New Sketch: The war’s over – but many of the aspects of it haven’t
• New Sketch: George Orwell complains to Cliff Whitley about how people misinterpret his novels
• New Song: “Windrush Migrations” (Parody of “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys)
• New Sketch: Imagine Spot: A literal Iron Curtain falls between Europe
• New Sketch: Deadly Toys Store
• New Sketch: A family watches Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, which is the only thing they can watch.

1. Swinging Sixties

• New Sketch: Groovy Man Magazine: Christine Keeler
• New Sketch: "Historical Hospital" - A hippie provides “alternative medicine” to a patient
• New Sketch: The Commonwealth - It’s not an empire but it's close enough (advertisement parody)
• HHTV News: Bob Hales Reports The 1960s
• New Song: “England’s Changed”
• New Sketch: Mods vs Rockers
• New Sketch: The Beatles members argue about who is more popular and talented than the other.
• New Sketch: “Historical Fashion Fix” - Mary Quant joins our host to give a person a hippie design.
• New Sketch: An old man from the Edwardian Era tries to fit in with the hippies and fails

1. Sadistic Seventies

• New Sketch: "Glam Rock Beauty Pageant" - A spoof beauty pageant featuring some of the most outrageous glam rock stars of the era, complete with over-the-top costumes and antics.
• New Sketch: A woman notices her friend still dresses like its the 1950s
• New Sketch: Because of the Energy Crisis, government employees are trying to cram all of their work into three days, causing chaos in the workplace.
• New Sketch: HHTV News: Mike Peabody reports the winter of 1978-79, where a series of strikes by public sector workers caused widespread disruption across the country, including rubbish piling up in the streets and uncollected bodies at the morgue.
• New Sketch: The 1973 wedding of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, featuring ridiculous hats, awkward dancing, and the Queen trying to keep her corgis under control.
• New Sketch: People at a disco party start to spontaneously combust due to the extremely flammable disco clothing and decorations of the time.

1. Ugly Eighties

• New Song: “Margaret Thatcher” (Parody of “I'm in Love With Margaret Thatcher” by Not Sensibilities)
• New Sketch: Historical Desktop: Margaret Thatcher prevents Argentina from claiming the Falklands.
• New Sketch: "Thatcher's Britain": A clueless host takes a tour of 1980s England under the rule of Margaret Thatcher, seeing protests everywhere. (travel show parody)
• New Sketch: "Rubik's Cube Mania": Contestants compete to solve the Rubik's Cube puzzle
• New Sketch: Customers get frustrated in a video rental store, where VHS tapes were rented out for a few days at a time.
• New Sketch: Heck Yeah Magazine: Punk Rock musicians
• New Sketch: Historical Fashion Fix: Our host gives a man the 1980s fashion, featuring over-the-top outfits with bright colors, big hair, and lots of accessories.

1. Nasty Nineties

• New Sketch: A group of 90s teens try to come up with the coolest thing to happen in England, only to be constantly upstaged by real-life events like the Spice Girls and Tony Blair's election.
• New Sketch: The rivalry between Oasis and Blur
• New Sketch: An ““anonymous”” whistleblower reveals details about the Royal Family, and it's definitely not Princess Diana
• New Sketch: A frustrated former teacher named Terry Deary hates how history is told in school and decides to write some books to make it interesting.
• New Sketch: People are scared of the spread of “mad cow disease”
• New Sketch: HHTV News: Mike Peabody reporting live of the Y2K scare.
• New Sketch: Song: “Horrible England” (Parody of “Rule Britannia” ft. some aspecting of “We’re History”)

for the place i live in, i basically had access to the best "normal" education a typical family could get, the sport i picked up as a child happened to be a sport my country ranked among the first in the world in. heck one of my coaches was a world champion himself, others had trained world champions for years they were students of world champions themselves.
i am also aware that academically, my peers who had access to the same education went to top schools in the country and are thriving there, the outlier among them is currently in one of the top 50 in the world.. in my team, the ones who took the sport seriously are all world ranked by this point some, very high up.
and here i am, feeling like i couldn't utilize all i was given, i barely got the grade to join the major i wanted, no mention of the university i dreamt of (in my defense its so competitive its barely a couple of marks difference). i never even made it to the first team in my sport let alone compete nationally let alone internationally, I'm very likely the weakest teammate. i barely passed 1 class in uni last semester and failed another even after stopping sport to focus on studies.
i feel like im on the left side of every bell curve in every major skill in every circle, and its not through a lack of effort (sure there are things i would have done different and i had my fair share of distracted ruts, i was never 100% efficient but who ever was?, i did put my honest best 9 times out of 10 at whatever i attempted and still ended up on the wrong side of the curve) nothing really came to me naturally in any meaningful way. as happy as i am to see my closer friends excel, as resentful as i feel towards acquaintances and myself for that matter, i blame myself for every time i was inefficient and at the same time i wonder what more could i have really done. and would it have even mattered.
i had the odds in my favor and i still fell short every time, and there's no "no but im good at that other thing" because im not, i don't really think im comparing myself too much because im not zooming in on one or 2 people, im just comparing myself to the circle that wanted to reach the same goal i tried to, and got access to the similar resources, not just the good ones or the outliers. and as it turned out. i flopped in everything, i downright feel like a failure, i feel small compared to some of them whom i know for a fact didn't study much more than what i did.
the most recent development that i started catching myself partially wanting some of said acquaintances to flop so that i feel even with them once more and it makes me resent myself even more, all that is just snowballing over my head, i downright despise the kind of person im becoming, from the cynicism to the envy to my declining level. and i just need help
i just need to be able to sit in one room and not feel like im among the bottom five in it, i don't even care about being the topper the few times i was in that place it was more a fun, healthy competition than that.
now some of that might sound completely illogical, downright angry-ing because deep down i do know that to some extent it is, but that doesn't change the feeling, the sting of inferiority or resentment i do know i shouldn't be feeling this but its not a button i can press either. even if its the comparison part, its not something which i do deliberately

I need to buy for one girl and one boy. High school graduation, if that matters. Preferably under $100 ea, but if it’s around $50 ea that would be fantastic.

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: White/Hispanic
• Residence: Texas
• Income Bracket: <50k
• Type of School: Public
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): First-Gen, URM

Intended Major(s): Civil Engineering, Engineering
Academics

• GPA/Rank (or percentile): 3.87/4.0 - #15/310
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: A] 5 AP's, 7 DE's, 3 GT's, Rest Honors
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Calculus AB, AP Physics C Mechanics, English 4 DC, AP US Gov&Pol, AP Micro, Entrepreneurship, Business Management DC, Art 2 Drawing, Practicum in Construction Technology

Standardized Testing
List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.

• SAT: 1180 (didn't take a second time... and went Test Optional)
• AP/IB: Failed AP Physics 1 Exam, retaking exam this year...

Extracurriculars/Activities:

1. Academic Decathlon Team (11th, 12th)
2. Debate Team (12th)
3. NHS (10th, 11th, 12th)
4. Bowling Club (11th)
5. Skills USA Construction Team (11th, 12th)
6. EMERGE Fellowship (11th, 12th) (thank you EMERGE for helping me in my college application journey)

Awards/Honors: School is a CTE school, so it doesn't give out academic awards, lmao.
Essays/LORs/Interviews:
Common App Essay: Talked about the US's dependency on cars and how it affected me in my high school career by being limited with opportunities for competitions/etc. Actually, I was accepted into an internship for Macquarie Group last summer but wasn't able to do it because I had no ride to get downtown. In the end, it was edited by EMERGE, so it was good Good. 9/10
Letters of Recommendation:

1. Physics Teacher: Read it through and talked about my learning in how to write amazing college labs. Have him again this year and is quite fond of my passions, but grammar felt off. 8/10
2. English Teacher: Great person, knows me very well and supports me in my passions. She also said that she would vote for me if I ever were to run for congress. Never read the letter because she works at a community college now working on her PHD, but it's definitely good.

Interviews: N/A
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)

• Acceptances:

1. Lehigh University (ED2) - almost full ride
2. UVA (EA) - almost full ride
3. Gettysburg College (EA) - 33k in scholarships, still would be 12k per year, bad aid
4. Union College (EA) - almost full Ride, 70k+ in aid.
5. Texas A&M (RD) - state school, 6k+ in scholarships, still bad aid
6. UT Austin (RD) - state's flagship school, alright aid
7. Carleton College (RD) - almost full ride
8. Kenyon College (RD) - 15k in scholarships, almost full ride
9. Bucknell University (RD) - 20k in scholarships, almost full ride

​

• Waitlists:

1. Lafayette College (RD)

​

• Rejections: (list here)

1. Carnegie Mellon (Applied ED1, Deferred, Later Rejected)
2. Rollins College (RD)

Additional Information: I'm actually surprised in my acceptances considering my extracurriculars aren't that great, but I guess I explained part of it in my personal essay... In the end, I will be attending Lehigh University with almost a full-ride and plan to major in Civil Engineering with a possible minor in Architecture Studio or Business.

The comedic story about a high school teacher, who happens to be a pedophile, and the girl she babysits with her roommate! ... Read Onee-San Wa Joshi Shougakusei Ni Kyoumi Ga Arimasu. - Chapter 47 - MangaPuma. Read more at https://mangapuma.com/onee-san-wa-joshi-shougakusei-ni-kyoumi-ga-arimasu/chapter-47

I need some feedback on some childhood issues I've had and I feel as though Im in denial about if things my mother has said to me would be classified as verbal and emotional abuse.
Growing up my mom was always angry, constantly yelling, really emotionally unstable. She told me once in elementary school that I would probably get divorced one day when I would act up and be difficult, tell me that her mom (my grandma) told her that she hoped one day she'd have a little girl as difficult as her but worse, and how she hoped the same for me. She told me once in high school I'd be a good mom one day and when I said not a good wife? She smirked and told me "put out and you'll be fine". Shes also said deeming things to me like called me a "wench", "shut up", "shut the f*** up" and even told me once she hated me in high school (I will admit I told her I hated her first). I always struggled in math and my senior year she put me in calculus even though my junior year math teacher didnt recommend it, I was crying once at the table trying to do my homework cause I didnt understand it and she told me "one day your sister is going to be more successful than you and your going to be jealous" and that my little sister who was in 7th grade while I was in 12th grade was more mature than me. When i would argue with her she told the family i had a mental "disease" even though I hadn't been seen or diagnosed by a psychiatrist.
In middle school i was really into music, art, theatre, things like that and she told my dad she was worried I wasnt going to have a job in 10 years because of my lack of interest in technology. Shes a computer scientist and only respects engineering, IT and math professions. I went to school to be a nurse and now work as a nurse practitioner. Growing up she'd tell me "dont be a nurse, all they do is clean up pee" and when my dads sister was studying to be a nurse she told me she wasnt smart enough to get into medical school. She even told me when I was working as a nurse that her issue with nurses is "they dont know how to do math". And to this day shed does not really ask about my career or respect it. She even told me once I'm lucky I'm married to my husband cause if I wasnt id be living with them (while I was working as a nurse before I became an NP!).
She'd also talk to me about a lot of adult topics as an elementary school kid, like tell me about people in the family who've had miscarriages and complain to me about my dads family and all their issues. She even disclosed what she talked about in marriage counseling with my dad too me when I was in middle school. Shes also done things like come in the shower and yell at me once and kick a door so hard I had locked while she was yelling at me that she damaged the door frame. Anyways I feel so in denial my mom who said she loves me and would emotional or verbally abuse me. So how would you classify all of this behavior?