u/Arvenlock

I have a friend, “Mia,” who loves talking about shows and movies. I do too, so usually it’s fun. The problem is that she has a very strange idea of what counts as a spoiler.

To her, a spoiler is only something like “this character dies” or “they were the killer.” Everything else is apparently fair game. She’ll say things like “don’t worry, I won’t spoil it,” and then immediately tell me that the ending is sad, or that a character has a huge betrayal arc, or that episode 6 is where “everything changes.”

That is still a spoiler to me.

Last week I told her I had just started a show she loves and was only on episode 2. She got excited and said, “Oh my god, just wait until you find out why the brother is acting weird.” I asked her to stop, and she said that wasn’t a spoiler because she didn’t say what the reason was.

I told her that hinting at future reveals still changes how I watch something, and I don’t want any comments beyond whether she liked it or not. She got annoyed and said I was being impossible to talk to because “anything can be a spoiler if you’re sensitive enough.”

Now she says she just won’t recommend anything to me anymore because I take the fun out of it.

I don’t think I was rude. I just want to experience a story without her dropping little warning signs all over it first.

AITBF?

Obligatory this happened yesterday, and my apartment still smells faintly like burnt confidence.

I have a smoke alarm right outside my kitchen that goes off constantly. Toast slightly too dark? Screaming. Oven door open for three seconds? Screaming. Boiling water with too much personality? Somehow also screaming.

Yesterday I was making a grilled cheese and it started going off again before anything was even smoking. I got annoyed and told my girlfriend that the alarm was basically useless because it reacted to everything.

She said, “Maybe it’s just doing its job.”

For some reason, I decided this was the moment to defend my honor against a plastic ceiling circle.

I said I could prove it was too sensitive. My plan was to make another grilled cheese the exact same way, keep the window open, fan running, everything normal, and show that it would still go off for no real reason.

Except while I was explaining this very smart experiment, I forgot the pan was already heating.

Then I forgot the butter was in the pan.

Then I forgot bread burns really fast when you are busy giving a speech about fire safety.

The alarm went off again, but this time there was absolutely smoke. Real smoke. Dramatic smoke. Smoke with a purpose.

My Fuck Up

I tried to prove the smoke alarm was overreacting by creating the most valid smoke alarm event of the month.

My girlfriend opened the windows while laughing so hard she couldn’t talk. I stood there waving a towel under the alarm like I was surrendering to it.

The grilled cheese was black on one side and somehow still cold in the middle.

TL;DR: Tried to prove my smoke alarm was too sensitive, got distracted explaining my genius plan, burned a grilled cheese, filled the kitchen with smoke, and proved the alarm was actually doing fine.

Hear me out.

You wake up. Roll for consciousness. Nat 1, you hit snooze four times and show up to work with your shirt inside out. Nat 20, you wake up five minutes before your alarm feeling genuinely rested for the first time in three years and you have no idea why.

Every conversation is a Persuasion check. Every argument with your partner is contested rolls and whoever has higher Charisma modifier just wins, doesn't matter who was actually right. Your coworker who somehow talks their way out of everything? Charisma 18. The smartest person in your office who can never get anyone to listen to them? Intelligence 17, Charisma 6. I think about this more than I should.

Job interviews are Performance checks with Disadvantage if you slept badly. First dates are social skill contests where both people are rolling secretly and neither knows the DC. That one time you parallel parked perfectly on the first try in front of a crowd of people? Critical success. Everyone witnessed it. It meant nothing mechanically but it felt incredible and now I understand why.

The thing that gets me is failed rolls wouldn't mean you're bad at something, just that the dice were cold that day. You tripped going up the stairs in front of your entire school? Rolled a 2 on Dexterity. Not your fault. Statistically inevitable. You can just say that now.

And death saves. The older I get the more I think about people I know who went through something they really shouldn't have survived and somehow did. Three succeses before three failures, sittig there not knowing the numbers going against them, not knowing it was even happening. And I don't know, it just. yeah.

It's 1am and I don't know how I got here. Anyone else ever gone down this rabbit hole.