u/bee_my_girl

Trying to figure out whether I've been poisoned by a nefarious Costco court adviser or something. I got a mocha cold brew for the first time yesterday, and it tasted incredibly sour and kind of fruity (barely like coffee at all) with the chocolate as an undertone. My working theory is that the smoothie next to it in the machine somehow impacted the taste. Is this the price of getting what is effectively a milkshake/slushie for $2.99, or is it supposed to taste different?

It took me too long to understand why she kept sniffing another search and rescue dog's stomach.

Obligatory disclaimer: this happened when I was a kid, around 11 (so a little over a decade ago). I just feel so bad about this incident that it haunts me.

As a kid, I had phases where I would obsessively get into a certain show or run of comics, which made buying gifts for me very easy and talking to me very difficult (sorry, mom and dad). My mom sometimes had evening work in the downtown area of the fairly small city that we lived in (large for our state, small compared to other cities). There was a coffee/wine shop near her job that was open until 8 or so, so I would sometimes hang out there and do my homework while she wrapped up. I was very well-behaved, and she was friends with someone on the staff, so they were cool with it.

One night I'd finished all of my homework and didn't have a book or comic with me, so I was bored. I saw a very cool-looking man sitting beside me at the bar. (By that, I mean he looked cool bye eleven-year-old me's standards, which is to say that he had shaggy hair, glasses, and a tweed jacket.) I could see his laptop from where I was sitting, and I saw that he was clearly writing fiction.

I asked "Are you writing a book? That's cool!", because I was a child with very little social awareness. He found this charming, though, because he immediately said "Thanks! And yeah, I am, haha." with a big smile. I realized this guy was British at this point, which was enchanting to me as someone from (you can probably guess this) a southern state with very few immigrants, at least not ones from anywhere farther than Texas.

I asked him what it was about as I sipped my very adult mocha (hot chocolate with half a shot of espresso). He said, "It's a book about a school for children with superpowers. It's for young adults, actually. You might like it." I immediately became excited and said "Oh, like X-Men!"

He chuckled a little and said "No. I've heard of X-Men, but this is different." I asked him if it was like Sky High or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and he also said no to those. I asked him what his book was like, and he told me, "It's kind of a darker setting, but it's basically about a world in which some people have developed powers as part of a... genetic mutation, or evolution. Other people are afraid of their powers, so the kids have to hide who they are from these people who don't understand them. Some people are even trying to hurt them, because they hate supers."

Being a fucking beacon of social graces, I immediately replied with "Oh yeah, X-Men has mutants like that."

This guy thought I wasn't understanding him, so he continued with, "Well, in my book, having powers can be really hard on its own. Some of them can't control their powers, or their powers make them look scary. One of the main characters has powers that make him super strong, but his whole body looks like stone, like a statue." I replied, "Oh yeah, like Colossus from X-Men! But stone instead of metal."

This poor dude just kept listing ways in which he thought his concept was different from X-Men, and being eleven and an idiot, I thought this was an invitation to share my encyclopedic knowledge of every X-Men character with this man. I think the last straw happened when he said "I'm kind of trying to represent how hatred works in the real world with these characters with powers, how they're judged unfairly based on something they didn't choose. I think it's a really important message." I said I totally got it, and added "oh yeah, that's the whole reason Professor X and Magneto can't be friends anymore in the comics. Because they have different ideas about how to help mutants."

The guy finally says "Uh huh, okay, it was nice talking to you," in a deflated voice. I realized I'd said something wrong, but I was confused, as I saw nothing wrong with taking a concept basically wholesale to use in your fiction (again, I was 11). I said goodbye and got another "mocha" before packing up to leave, because my mom was due to pick me up in five minutes.

My mom and I left about ten minutes later, and I turned to wave goodbye to her friend. From behind, I saw that man googling something, and then a bunch of pictures of Nightcrawler came up on his screen, and he rubbed his forehead with both hands.

Random novelist man, if you're out there, I'm so sorry.

TL;DR: I was a nosy kid in a coffee shop, and I struck up a conversation with a man writing a novel. In the ensuing conversation, he revealed that he'd accidentally written X-Men, which I explained to him in detail as an X-Men fan.

Good god almighty. I'm a fanfiction writer who occasionally does smut commissions on the down low (original characters and otherwise) because I'm broke. Despite being very much only into women, I'm often commissioned by straight or bi women and straight or gay men. Yes, I've written a lot of male gay sex. "But how do you do that if you don't have sex with men as a man?" Because coaches don't play! Moving on!

Overwhelmingly, the freakiest requests I get are from the gals. It is no contest. The straight guys who have approached me IRL or otherwise have been absolute boy scouts in terms of their conduct. Just politely twiddling their thumbs and asking me "Do you mind writing about a young man like myself being whipped by (well-known tall female character from video game)? No worries if not, fine chap!" And then I look at my chat histories with the average female fan of a character, and it's anarchy in there!! They're sending me pose references that aren't physically possible!!! I had a friend slash client DM me to ask for a DETAILED DESCRIPTION of her favorite fictional guy whimpering and pleading for mercy after being BRANDED. YES, she gave me permission to post this, she thought it was funny. And MAYBE I took the money. I'm not judging. I'm just saying that it's crazy that the average straight dude's response is "Wow! Great work!" and the average straight or bi woman's response is "On god I'm gonna shatter my pelvis stroking to this"! One of them said mashallah after reading!! I didn't know that was allowed???

Men do not have a monopoly on freakiness! They are not even close!! I'm a little scared, but I'm happy for y'all!!

I absolutely love a good slow-burn horror movie. I will totally watch a movie in which the monster only shows up right at the end, or the big spooky twist reveal happens five minutes before the credits roll, or the horror is fully concentrated in Act 3. I just need the preceding 60-100 minutes of movie and the climax to actually feel connected! I mostly thought of this gripe after watching undertone, but I've felt this way about several movies before (Oddity and Relic being the most recent watches I can recall, the former much less egregious than the latter).

undertone was particularly egregious, because -- SPOILERS, skip this paragraph if you want to see it -- it's over an hour of >!this gal recording a podcast in ten minute intervals before anything happens. She records every night at the witching hour with her obnoxious cohost in her ear going "erm... did you hear that???" as we're drip-fed information about an ooky spooky demon who talks backwards (because, uh, demon stuff). In the last fifteen minutes, shit FINALLY kicks off, and as corny as a lot of it is (the grown protagonist literally makes a scary crayon drawing of the demon in some kind of trance), at least it made me a little tense! Lights are flickering, the chanting is getting louder, annoying cohost is probably getting eaten, the walls are covered in more of those scary demon drawings. And then the protagonist makes it up to her sick mom's room, and said sick mom is standing up in the bathroom looking demon-y. Then just as she starts to run backward at the protagonist, the lights go out and the movie just ends.!<

Again, I love the time spent building atmosphere in dozens of movies: The VVitch, Hereditary, A Dark Song, The Wicker Man, Saint Maud, Possession, The Night House, Ringu, Creep, I could keep going. I just need the payoff to a) actually connect to the buildup beyond "themes and such" (looking at you, Relic) and b) be something actually terrifying and impressive (looking at you, Oddity).

Are there any movies that y'all think kind of squandered their buildup? Or on the other hand, any more slowburns with a great payoff?

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I don’t even know why I’m writing this. I just think it’s very funny, and maybe the strangest situation that happened to and around me in college, which is saying a lot. I’m going to use all fake names and change a few genders of people involved around purely to make this semi-anonymous, but the nature of what happened makes it pretty much impossible to tell this in a way that no one recognizes. 

I was in a comedy club in college. We were a student org that had been around for a few decades, and we were well-known enough to occasionally be recognized on campus but obscure enough to never be paid. We had a fairly rigorous audition process for new members, but we were also very supportive of one another.

In my fall semester of junior year, a fellow junior named Marco auditioned. Marco was super nice and high-energy at auditions, which rubbed some of us the wrong way but I kind of liked. He seemed like an earnest dude, and I chalked his manic energy up to nerves. When I talked to him, he mentioned that he’d actually auditioned and gotten into the club in his freshman year, but that he’d been studying abroad. His audition went well.

We discussed who we were letting in after auditions as a club, and the most senior member, Veronica, mentioned that according to club rules, Marco could actually just rejoin the team automatically. Taking semesters abroad/having to drop the club for a while did not revoke your membership. The rest of us started talking about texting him to let him know he was already “in”, and Veronica got hesitant. She started saying that she’d auditioned on the same night as him, and that he had a “weird vibe” and “was really intense.” The rest of us reasoned with Veronica that she was being unfair, and that club rules stated he could rejoin at any time since he’d already gotten in a few years ago. This was technically true, so she relented and said she was probably being judgmental.

She was not.

So we let Marco back into the team. Part of our team rules were that our practices were closed to anyone not in the club, because we were workshopping our material and trying to create a safe environment to do that. This was basically our one rule. Obviously, we would make exceptions if someone on the team needed someone there for medical reasons (e.g. a nurse) or if a guest comic came, but that was it.

One afternoon, both of our student coaches (Rose and Hughie) got a message from Marco. He stated that he was autistic and asked if it would be okay for him to bring his emotional support animal, Nicky. Rose and Hughie gave him total permission for this. They were imagining a dog or a cat, they later told me. They did not have to tell me this, because I imagine that literally anyone would think of a dog or cat in this situation.

I am so sad that I wasn’t there for that next practice to see what happened, but Rose and Hughie let the rest of us know immediately. Marco’s emotional support animal, Nicky, was his human girlfriend. 

So obviously they told him that he could not actually have his human girlfriend sit in the audience as his “emotional support animal.” Marco first argued that he’d “totally mentioned Nicky was his girlfriend”, then when everyone told him otherwise, he pivoted to saying that she fulfilled the same function as an ESA and that he needed her to be there. When Rose, Hughie, and every other member of the club said “Hey, that’s not how any of that works,” he stormed out in a rage, dragging a very confused Nicky behind him. 

Over the following week or so, Marco made the group chat uninhabitable. He sent long, furious DMs to Rose and Hughie first, then later sent a screenshot of a Google result for “how much can you get in a disability lawsuit” to the chat gloating about suing us. He demanded to speak to our lawyers. (We do not have lawyers. We are a student comedy club.) Our new members were baffled, and our senior members quietly made a new groupchat without Marco to explain the situation. Marco started saying that the fact that none of the other new members of the club supported him was proof of their ableism, and that “silence was siding with the oppressor.” He quoted Desmond Tutu. I want to be clear that Marco was very white and not South African. Hughie wisely removed the new members and myself from the original groupchat before we could start cracking wise, but not before someone sent a “ruh roh raggy” that set Marco off again. 

I found Marco’s tiktok (I’d followed it before and forgotten about it) and saw that he was making videos about “exposing” us. They were Fleetwood Mac lipsyncs with very vague captions. He deleted them when I commented “lol” on one. Someone in the club received an anonymous text from someone I believe to be either Nicky or another girlfriend (I think he had multiple?) apologizing for his behavior. 

After that it died down pretty quickly, because the administration did not give a fuck and I assume any lawyer Marco consulted said “no, what the hell?” to the supposed case he had. We revised our club rules to make the “no outside folks” part REALLY clear, and that was the end of that.

I still wonder what’s up with Marco today. I heard he did some stuff at Disney parks. My current partner was in the same drag club as him before it imploded for entirely unrelated reasons and a fraud scandal. Wild stuff!

If you recognize this story or the people involved, no you don’t. Seal your lips. Don’t even comment. Marco could still be out there, ready to tell me Nelson Mandela would be disappointed in my lack of empathy for his plight. 

Most of the women in my village are homemakers, and most of the girls are weavers or foragers. I’m the only one in the Night Watch.

I’m proud of it, even though it’s not a job anyone was fighting for. The men and I spend long, windy nights watching the hills for any sign of trouble, eyes peering into the fog that settles among the trees no matter the season. Eli tells me that it’s because the water that springs up from these miraculous hills is warm, and that it steams when it strikes against the cold rocks. I don’t know if it’s true, but he sometimes brings back water that feels like it’s been sitting in a boiling pot from his excursions outside the wall, so I assume it is.

He didn’t have to make me a member of the Watch. He did it because the other people in town hated me. I was quiet, and twitchy, and I loathed caring for the babies who spat and puked and always smelled. When a nice boy tried to court me, I bit a large chunk out of his cheek and hid in the firewood pile while he screamed.

I was a bad girl who would grow into an unworthy servant, and if I could not find a place where I belonged, they would turn me out into the woods with the Infected and the wild animals.

I went to Eli one night, begging him not to turn me out as my mother told me he would. He laughed and brought me into his home, the finest in the village, and he let me drink the berryshine that he kept in a secret place there. When he had passed it around to his men, he took me into the forest and told me that if I could shoot the empty bottle at a hundred yards, he would let me join the Watch.

God guided my hand in that hour of needed. They cheered for me, and it sounded like a dozen baying dogs.

Every night, I join him and his favorite men, and we search the hills for the forces of evil that wait outside. When the night is long and quiet, he even lets Isaiah play the fiddle — he is the brother of the boy I bit, but he does not hold it against me, because he is good and kind. We rarely see anything more interesting than deer and bobcats out there, even though Eli says the woods are crawling with them.

I’ve only ever seen the Infected once.

I didn’t shoot either of them for a moment. They came through the trees at a distance, haggard and limping, and I stared at them through my scope, perplexed. The male led the female, loping like a wolf, stumbling over a root or a rut in the cold earth.

“What’re you waiting for?” Eli asked.

“I thought they’d look different,” I said, in wonder and fear. “My mother said they had horns.”

“Ha! No. But look at them closely. Look at the way they move,” he whispered. “They prowl about like roaring lions.”

“Seeking those they may devour,” I finished.

He kissed the top of my head, like a son. “Good. Good.”

I steadied my rifle and looked through the scope, letting by breathing shallow, gnawing the skin from my lip.

“Watchman. Only kill the Infected man,” he said. “Leave the other one alive.”

So I did. I killed the man with the long beard and pale skin as he leaned down toward a creek, watched the bullet enter through the crown of his skull. The one following him screamed, and screamed, and I watched her howl through the scope and thought of disobeying Eli for the first time.

But I prevailed over the temptation. I always can, when Eli is there. Jude-Peter went out into the woods on his horse and brought the Infected female back.

I learned a wonderful secret that night — so wonderful that I could scarcely believe it. Eli told me and the men that God had given him a cure for the Infected, but it only worked on some people; only he knew how to tell whom it would work on and who could not be saved.

We named the Infected he brought back Ruth, once she was cured. She is silent — Eli says that he could not save her tongue from the virus — but she is part of our settlement now. The rest of her has been restored to health and wholeness.

She will even bear a child this spring.

I still wonder how he can tell the hopeless Infected — the ones who are lost and mad and depraved — from the ones that can be cured. It does not matter; I trust him to tell me which are which.

He must have better eyes than I do. From my memories of shooting the male that day, as he crouched over the creek, I know that most of the Infected must look and sound exactly like humans.