African american hair salon near me | | What i asked for vs what i got

I've been thinking what will happen to him in season 4. I'd like to think that A-Train will perform a last heroic act although not so significant as Maeve did.
Picture this: Ryan, who is still learning about his core abilities such as flying and laser eyes is getting his first mission. Homelander sends him to his first patrol alone and so he flies off. He spots an African American man trying to steal a car. Ryan lands and orders him to stop. A man explains that he lost he keys and he must go to a hospital where his wife is about to give a birth. Ryan, who doesn't believe him, attempts to grab him but accidentally snaps his neck or something. Freaked out because of accidental manslaughter, he flips the car and flies off to cool himself. Then we see the keys which have been under the car all along. I know that is basically what happened with Blue Hawk but I see this as A-Train's chance to do something selfless and actually help as heroes should.
Next day in Vought Tower Homelander asks about Ryan's mission and he tells how it went. Homelander probably pats his son's head and praises him for his bravery. A-Train sees how dangerous world will become with two sociopathic maniacs patrolling and decides to do something. So maybe A-Train will try to kill him or at least make him to correct his mistakes. Long story short Homelander lasers A-Train because he rose his hand against family and is a weak spot in the Seven.
English isn't my first language so excuse me.

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“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
Anecdotes
“As the fire consumed the house around me a single figure walked calmly through the flames. He neither flinched nor hurried as he was nearly seared by fire, a cacophony of wood and smoke and death. He walked towards me, his hair of charcoal, his breath still seen in that cold night.
He did not ask if I was okay, he did not get my permission, nor did he check to see if I was still alive, but grabbed me as though I weighed nothing, and rushed out of my once home. Laid me delicately on the grass, and rushed into the next engulfed house.” - Caelum Civilian
“It is said that out of the six Human generals, the one called Noah is the most docile, most calm, and weakest of them. It is also said, he could kill any of us without hesitation and certainly without effort. Both of these facts are true.” - Caelum General, Codename “V”
Legal Name
Noah Taliesin
Preferred Name
Noah Taliesin
Nicknames
The Keeper
The Hero
The Master of Deaths
The Prince of The Hellworld
The Calm Before The Storm
Birthday
Earth time: February 23, (year unknown)
Descriptions
Known Facts: Male, Human. Approximately early twenties during the war.
Possibly: Of average Human height and weight. European descent. Blond hair. Large scar that blinded his left eye.
Possibly: Below average Human height and weight. European descent. Black hair. Wears glasses.
Early Life
Born on Earth, in the small walled town of Eden. To two currently still living parents (names unknown) he was their only child. He was not interested in politics, or in school, having a fear of public speaking and a stutter. Spending most of his childhood reading and writing short stories and novels. Usually about the tribe of Legacy’s that attacked Eden’s walls. He attended Eden’s only school from elementary to high school “Don Juan School of Eden”.
Becoming Mayor
Once he turned eighteen, the election of Eden's new mayor took place. Like all elections in Eden it was decided by placing names of all the members of the town in a hat above the age of eighteen, excluding all previous mayors and people interested or accused of being interested in becoming mayor. His name was drawn to his dismay, writing in his diary that night “Shit.” and leaving the rest of the page blank.
He was forced to lead the town and did so for a few months, until The Dropped landed on Earth, there seeing an opportunity in getting aid to help fight off the Legacy's asked The Dropped leaders (Harry, Jay and Rue) to fight them, which they agreed to. Moving the other seventy-five members of The Dropped into Eden, and helped fight off the Legacys.
First Contact
Once the Caelum prisoners landed and captured Rue, and after Rue killed five of the Caelums and escaped, the First Caelum Human War took place. Eden became the main base for The Dropped and a truce was formed with the few Legacy tribes still at war with The Dropped.
Noah became a general in the conflict. During this time The Dropped began to teach him how to become a good leader. Getting him over his stutter and fear of public speaking, along with teaching him how to fight.
One day near the end of the war an unknown person found a cache of firearms and explosives in a bunker under Eden. This turned the tide of the war leading to the surrender of the Caelum prisoners.
The Great War
Once the Caelum prisoners explained that they were forced to come to Earth to test if it was worth conquering by The Queen, it was actually Noah who first vocalized joining the rebels, going to the Caelum planet and overthrowing the Queen. Once the ships were repaired the Humans and Caelums went together to their home planet.
After The Battle of the Factory and its capture by rebel forces, Arcade, Harry, Jay, Jude, Rue and Noah became the Human leaders of the rebellion. The next nine months were marked by dozens of battles and heavy casualties on both sides.
Noah’s leadership was instrumental in several victories in the war including The Battle of The 7th Station, The Great “Retreat” and The Burning. Most notably the rescue of the captured Human generals late into the war. Known as Operation: Ark.
Current Affairs
Noah is still alive and still the mayor of Eden. It is not known if he is married or has children.
References

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[Next]

Jasper frowned as he read over the letter, the summons looking like no other mail he’d ever received.
On Saturday, you are summoned to attend Midnight Visitation as part of your rehabilitation. Attendance is non-negotiable, and refusal will result in forced attendance followed by time spent in solitary. Be ready by no later than eleven. The Warden
“Whoa, that's pretty cool,” said Gavin, reading over his shoulder, “Who do you know that would come all the way down here at midnight to see you?”
Jasper didn’t know, and he told him as much. He was in here for killing the last person who had given a crap about him, and he couldn’t think of anyone who would make the trip in the daytime, let alone at night. His parents had disowned him after he’d killed her, and most of his family refused to have anything to do with him. Some of his cousins would still accept his letters, but few of them would bother to write back. Jasper was perplexed by the invitation, but, by the sound of it, it wasn’t much of an invitation anyway. Attendance seemed to be mandatory, and he was pretty sure most of the guards on the compound would enjoy dragging him there in chains.
The letter had come with their mail, and it was one of the few times the guard had called his name. The last year and a half had been difficult for Jasper, but he was getting used to making it on his own. He’d done it all his life, hadn’t he? His mom and dad had been too busy with their own thing to care about their middle child. Barbara was the smart one, Reggy was the athletic people person, and Jasper…well, Jasper was the screw up. His grades had never been too good, his achievements few and far between, and when Grace had come into the picture, his parents figured it was the best Jasper could do.
Jasper had agreed with them. Grace had been his everything from the moment she agreed to go steady with him. Grace was motivated, a natural saleswoman who had strived for something more than middle management. She had a successful business by the time she graduated college, and Jasper was happy to stay at home and keep the house. Jasper provided her with stability, someone to come home to who lacked the means to do any better, but he couldn’t give her the one thing she wanted.
That's why she had left him, and that's why he had killed her.
He couldn’t stand to be apart from her, couldn’t stand for her to be with someone else, and now he was stuck in Stragview for his lapse in judgment.
That's what made the note so cryptic, and the longer he thought about it, the shorter the list of people who would come all the way out here at night became.
He did a little more than wait, he supposed. Jasper had asked around about this Midnight Visitation, but no one seemed to know much about it. The younger guys all shook their heads, and the older guys clammed up when he asked them. It was like a magic spell had been cast over the whole thing, and when you asked some of these guys, it seemed to sap the life out of them before your eyes. Garth, one of the more gregarious murderers on Jasper’s block, had looked downright scared when he’d asked him about the visitation.
“I can’t say nothin,” Garth had said, “and neither will you once you go. It’s a secret that you keep after that. It’s something that changes you, or you keep going back till it does.”
“What changes you?” Jasper had asked, but Garth wouldn’t say anymore.
“Get away from me. Get away, before he thinks I told you.”
He’d left in a hurry then, their chess game only four moves in, and Jasper found he had more questions than before.
He supposed that all would be answered on Saturday, and as the days passed, he found himself a little excited by the whole idea of the thing.
When Saturday night finally arrived, Officer Gauge found him on his bunk, his best uniform still looking ragged, as he waited for whatever might come. Gauge held out a pair of cuffs, telling Jasper that he’d have to cuff him before they left. Jasper nodded, putting his hands behind his back, but Gauge told him that in the front would be fine. Jasper shrugged, it was his show, and let him cuff him in the front. Some of the guys who were still awake made suggestive noises as he left, some of them telling him to enjoy his “night visit”, but a lot of the older guys were noticeably quiet.
Gauge led him to the visitation area, the little spot behind the staff check-in area, and when Jasper shook his cuffs at him, Gauge told him to sit down and put his hands on the eye hook on the table. There were a few guys in here, some of them Jasper knew, but most he didn't, and they all seemed to be cuffed to the protruding hook in the center of the table. Jasper started to buck, but realized it wouldn’t do any good. Whatever this was, they would have him one way or another. He set his hands down on the table, and Gauge pulled a lock out of his pocket. He secured Jasper to the spot before leaving in an all fired hurry.
Whatever was about to happen, Gauge clearly didn’t want any part of it.
Jasper glanced around the room, taking in the men who sat around him. There were about twelve in all, all of them shackled to the table, and they were all spaced so that at least three chairs separated them from another inmate. Most of them looked confused or unsure, but a couple of them looked like they knew what was coming; knew and weren’t looking forward to it. One of them, a big bald bruiser named Dennis, had his head against the table as he cried nakedly between his elbows. Another who Jasper didn’t know was praying in fast spanish. A third, Jasper thought his name might be Conroy, was thrashing around as he pulled at his bonds. His eyes were roving around like a scared horse, and he kept pulling at his cuffs until he heard a lock click near the back of the room.
Then he went still and Jasper thought he saw him listening for something.
A pair of double metal doors at the back of the room burst open then, and Jasper saw a small group walk in unattended by guards. Two of them were children, a pair of twins who looked ghostly under the dim fluorescents. One was a dark haired woman who sat down in front of the man as he prayed. The last was a tall, homely woman who took the seat across from a younger inmate that Jasper couldn’t put a name to. The young man stiffened as she sat down, and the pair was close enough that Jasper could suddenly see that the problem wasn’t the womans face, but rather what was on it. She had a crop of mold growing from ear to ear and as it wove around her eyes, it made her look like she was wearing glasses.
“Hello, Emanuel.” she said, her voice thick but not unhappy to see him, “I see prison had suited you.”
“What the fuck is this?” the inmate said, trying to back away and failing as the chains caught him, “you ain’t real. You look like my ma, but you ain’t my ma.”
“Of course I am, Em. How else would I know about how you drowned me in the bathtub? How else would I know what you did to me before you buried me in the basement? How else would I know how much you cried before you turned yourself in? You felt me watching you from the corner of your room, and it ate at you until you couldn’t take it anymore. The same way,” She leaned in slyly as she grinned, “that you ate at me after I was gone.”
The inmates started making a sound like someone choking on air. He kept pulling away from the woman, but the chains brought him up yet again. Jasper looked away, but he could see similar scenes of horror unfolding around him as more people joined them. The twins sat down in front of the sobbing man, but he wouldn’t lift his head. He wouldn’t look at them, couldn’t look at them, but the longer Jasper looked, the more he could see the bruises around the necks. The deep purple marks looked like individual fingers, and they seemed incable speaking through their bruised throats. They sat menacingly across from him, and every peek he gave them was followed by a hopeless cry of terror.
Others came, men, women, children, mothers, fathers, wives, and everything in between. The inmates' reactions were as varied as the specters. One man could only repeat the phrase “I’m sorry” as a half naked boy of seventeen sat silently across from him. The mother and son he had seen first were now sitting with her hands on his as he rocked and shook his head in negation. What could only be an older man's parents asked if he were proud of what he’d done to them, but he only sat silently and stared right through them.
Jasper wondered when it would be his turn, but he didn’t have long to ponder.
“Sorry I’m late, dear. The commute was dreadful.”
His breath came out as little more than a puff of smoke, and when he turned to look at her, Jasper could tell that it was Grace only by the necklace that she wore. He’d given her that necklace for their third anniversary, and he supposed her parents had left it on her when they buried her. Her face, a face he had loved so much, was gone. She looked like a burn victim, like a used up match stick, and the eyes that looked back at him glowed from empty sockets. Jasper wanted to scream, wanted to pull away as her red and oozing hand came out to touch his, but he couldn’t muster the strength.
She was burnt, her beauty stolen in death, and that too was his fault.
After he’d blind sided her, begging for another chance, she had told him to get lost. She said she couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t give her children, and suggested that he go back to his moms house before her new boyfriend found them together. At the mention of a new boyfriend, he grabbed her by the neck as she turned away and slammed her head against the wall of the stairwell outside her apartment. He had kept right on doing this until she stopped struggling, and even then he did it a few more times. He only stopped when her head began to dribble something besides blood and he realized he had broken her skull. He was scared then, afraid that he would get caught, and when he put her in his car, he wasn’t sure what he intended to do with her.
The police had caught him in his parents backyard, one of her neighbors having seen the whole thing, but by then, Grace had been a charcoal briquette.
He’d heard the funeral had been closed casket, but apparently they hadn’t closed it tight enough.
“Whats wrong dear? Didn’t you tell me you couldn’t live without me? I believe it was a little bit before you smashed my head against the wall. I assumed that, since you’d taken all that time to burn me, that you wanted me to look this way. Well, have a good look, Jasper. See what you’ve done to your Grace!”
Every word she spoke sent flakes of her tongue and lips onto the table, onto his hands, and onto Jasper’s face. She was leaning in closer, bringing her horrible visage closer to him, and Jasper felt his sanity beginning to whimper. As she brought the remains of her blackened lips together, he added his scream to the others. As they pressed against his flesh, he let his eyes roll up to the whites. He tried to stay conscious, but the sheer horror of the situation was eroding his mind. This couldn’t be. Things like this weren’t real. Grace was dead, she couldn’t come back to torment him.
As he regained consciousness, he found that he was still chained to the table and the terrible Grace was still sitting across from him.
“You seem to have gotten a little sleepy, my love. That's okay. The Warden was nice enough to extend invitation for the whole night, and I was more than happy to come and see my best fella.”
Jasper screamed, screamed until his throat broke, and when Gauge opened the door at five o’clock, all those present were as silent as the grave.
Gauge led them away like a flock of lambs, easily correcting them when they tried to stumble out of line. He had been doing this for a while, two or three years at least, and he had learned not to question what went on behind that door. He heard begging, screaming, the mad laughter of the deranged, and at the end of the month, he found an extra five hundred dollars added to his check for every Midnight Visitation he conducted.
His smile curdled when he remembered what the Warden had said to him when he gave him the position.
“I know you’re struggling to feed your appetites, and its only a matter of time before you end up inside these walls for doing something foolish. Why not let me help you feed those urges, and in exchange, I won't tell anyone what sort of debauchery you get up to in your spare time.”
The Warden was a weird one, but Gauge had to admit that he always kept his promises.
Gauge wondered what he put these poor saps through, but quickly put it out of his mind.
The Wardens games were none of his concern, and how he chose to discipline his inmates was his business.

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Jasper frowned as he read over the letter, the summons looking like no other mail he’d ever received.
On Saturday, you are summoned to attend Midnight Visitation as part of your rehabilitation. Attendance is non-negotiable, and refusal will result in forced attendance followed by time spent in solitary. Be ready by no later than eleven. The Warden
“Whoa, that's pretty cool,” said Gavin, reading over his shoulder, “Who do you know that would come all the way down here at midnight to see you?”
Jasper didn’t know, and he told him as much. He was in here for killing the last person who had given a crap about him, and he couldn’t think of anyone who would make the trip in the daytime, let alone at night. His parents had disowned him after he’d killed her, and most of his family refused to have anything to do with him. Some of his cousins would still accept his letters, but few of them would bother to write back. Jasper was perplexed by the invitation, but, by the sound of it, it wasn’t much of an invitation anyway. Attendance seemed to be mandatory, and he was pretty sure most of the guards on the compound would enjoy dragging him there in chains.
The letter had come with their mail, and it was one of the few times the guard had called his name. The last year and a half had been difficult for Jasper, but he was getting used to making it on his own. He’d done it all his life, hadn’t he? His mom and dad had been too busy with their own thing to care about their middle child. Barbara was the smart one, Reggy was the athletic people person, and Jasper…well, Jasper was the screw up. His grades had never been too good, his achievements few and far between, and when Grace had come into the picture, his parents figured it was the best Jasper could do.
Jasper had agreed with them. Grace had been his everything from the moment she agreed to go steady with him. Grace was motivated, a natural saleswoman who had strived for something more than middle management. She had a successful business by the time she graduated college, and Jasper was happy to stay at home and keep the house. Jasper provided her with stability, someone to come home to who lacked the means to do any better, but he couldn’t give her the one thing she wanted.
That's why she had left him, and that's why he had killed her.
He couldn’t stand to be apart from her, couldn’t stand for her to be with someone else, and now he was stuck in Stragview for his lapse in judgment.
That's what made the note so cryptic, and the longer he thought about it, the shorter the list of people who would come all the way out here at night became.
He did a little more than wait, he supposed. Jasper had asked around about this Midnight Visitation, but no one seemed to know much about it. The younger guys all shook their heads, and the older guys clammed up when he asked them. It was like a magic spell had been cast over the whole thing, and when you asked some of these guys, it seemed to sap the life out of them before your eyes. Garth, one of the more gregarious murderers on Jasper’s block, had looked downright scared when he’d asked him about the visitation.
“I can’t say nothin,” Garth had said, “and neither will you once you go. It’s a secret that you keep after that. It’s something that changes you, or you keep going back till it does.”
“What changes you?” Jasper had asked, but Garth wouldn’t say anymore.
“Get away from me. Get away, before he thinks I told you.”
He’d left in a hurry then, their chess game only four moves in, and Jasper found he had more questions than before.
He supposed that all would be answered on Saturday, and as the days passed, he found himself a little excited by the whole idea of the thing.
When Saturday night finally arrived, Officer Gauge found him on his bunk, his best uniform still looking ragged, as he waited for whatever might come. Gauge held out a pair of cuffs, telling Jasper that he’d have to cuff him before they left. Jasper nodded, putting his hands behind his back, but Gauge told him that in the front would be fine. Jasper shrugged, it was his show, and let him cuff him in the front. Some of the guys who were still awake made suggestive noises as he left, some of them telling him to enjoy his “night visit”, but a lot of the older guys were noticeably quiet.
Gauge led him to the visitation area, the little spot behind the staff check-in area, and when Jasper shook his cuffs at him, Gauge told him to sit down and put his hands on the eye hook on the table. There were a few guys in here, some of them Jasper knew, but most he didn't, and they all seemed to be cuffed to the protruding hook in the center of the table. Jasper started to buck, but realized it wouldn’t do any good. Whatever this was, they would have him one way or another. He set his hands down on the table, and Gauge pulled a lock out of his pocket. He secured Jasper to the spot before leaving in an all fired hurry.
Whatever was about to happen, Gauge clearly didn’t want any part of it.
Jasper glanced around the room, taking in the men who sat around him. There were about twelve in all, all of them shackled to the table, and they were all spaced so that at least three chairs separated them from another inmate. Most of them looked confused or unsure, but a couple of them looked like they knew what was coming; knew and weren’t looking forward to it. One of them, a big bald bruiser named Dennis, had his head against the table as he cried nakedly between his elbows. Another who Jasper didn’t know was praying in fast spanish. A third, Jasper thought his name might be Conroy, was thrashing around as he pulled at his bonds. His eyes were roving around like a scared horse, and he kept pulling at his cuffs until he heard a lock click near the back of the room.
Then he went still and Jasper thought he saw him listening for something.
A pair of double metal doors at the back of the room burst open then, and Jasper saw a small group walk in unattended by guards. Two of them were children, a pair of twins who looked ghostly under the dim fluorescents. One was a dark haired woman who sat down in front of the man as he prayed. The last was a tall, homely woman who took the seat across from a younger inmate that Jasper couldn’t put a name to. The young man stiffened as she sat down, and the pair was close enough that Jasper could suddenly see that the problem wasn’t the womans face, but rather what was on it. She had a crop of mold growing from ear to ear and as it wove around her eyes, it made her look like she was wearing glasses.
“Hello, Emanuel.” she said, her voice thick but not unhappy to see him, “I see prison had suited you.”
“What the fuck is this?” the inmate said, trying to back away and failing as the chains caught him, “you ain’t real. You look like my ma, but you ain’t my ma.”
“Of course I am, Em. How else would I know about how you drowned me in the bathtub? How else would I know what you did to me before you buried me in the basement? How else would I know how much you cried before you turned yourself in? You felt me watching you from the corner of your room, and it ate at you until you couldn’t take it anymore. The same way,” She leaned in slyly as she grinned, “that you ate at me after I was gone.”
The inmates started making a sound like someone choking on air. He kept pulling away from the woman, but the chains brought him up yet again. Jasper looked away, but he could see similar scenes of horror unfolding around him as more people joined them. The twins sat down in front of the sobbing man, but he wouldn’t lift his head. He wouldn’t look at them, couldn’t look at them, but the longer Jasper looked, the more he could see the bruises around the necks. The deep purple marks looked like individual fingers, and they seemed incable speaking through their bruised throats. They sat menacingly across from him, and every peek he gave them was followed by a hopeless cry of terror.
Others came, men, women, children, mothers, fathers, wives, and everything in between. The inmates' reactions were as varied as the specters. One man could only repeat the phrase “I’m sorry” as a half naked boy of seventeen sat silently across from him. The mother and son he had seen first were now sitting with her hands on his as he rocked and shook his head in negation. What could only be an older man's parents asked if he were proud of what he’d done to them, but he only sat silently and stared right through them.
Jasper wondered when it would be his turn, but he didn’t have long to ponder.
“Sorry I’m late, dear. The commute was dreadful.”
His breath came out as little more than a puff of smoke, and when he turned to look at her, Jasper could tell that it was Grace only by the necklace that she wore. He’d given her that necklace for their third anniversary, and he supposed her parents had left it on her when they buried her. Her face, a face he had loved so much, was gone. She looked like a burn victim, like a used up match stick, and the eyes that looked back at him glowed from empty sockets. Jasper wanted to scream, wanted to pull away as her red and oozing hand came out to touch his, but he couldn’t muster the strength.
She was burnt, her beauty stolen in death, and that too was his fault.
After he’d blind sided her, begging for another chance, she had told him to get lost. She said she couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t give her children, and suggested that he go back to his moms house before her new boyfriend found them together. At the mention of a new boyfriend, he grabbed her by the neck as she turned away and slammed her head against the wall of the stairwell outside her apartment. He had kept right on doing this until she stopped struggling, and even then he did it a few more times. He only stopped when her head began to dribble something besides blood and he realized he had broken her skull. He was scared then, afraid that he would get caught, and when he put her in his car, he wasn’t sure what he intended to do with her.
The police had caught him in his parents backyard, one of her neighbors having seen the whole thing, but by then, Grace had been a charcoal briquette.
He’d heard the funeral had been closed casket, but apparently they hadn’t closed it tight enough.
“Whats wrong dear? Didn’t you tell me you couldn’t live without me? I believe it was a little bit before you smashed my head against the wall. I assumed that, since you’d taken all that time to burn me, that you wanted me to look this way. Well, have a good look, Jasper. See what you’ve done to your Grace!”
Every word she spoke sent flakes of her tongue and lips onto the table, onto his hands, and onto Jasper’s face. She was leaning in closer, bringing her horrible visage closer to him, and Jasper felt his sanity beginning to whimper. As she brought the remains of her blackened lips together, he added his scream to the others. As they pressed against his flesh, he let his eyes roll up to the whites. He tried to stay conscious, but the sheer horror of the situation was eroding his mind. This couldn’t be. Things like this weren’t real. Grace was dead, she couldn’t come back to torment him.
As he regained consciousness, he found that he was still chained to the table and the terrible Grace was still sitting across from him.
“You seem to have gotten a little sleepy, my love. That's okay. The Warden was nice enough to extend invitation for the whole night, and I was more than happy to come and see my best fella.”
Jasper screamed, screamed until his throat broke, and when Gauge opened the door at five o’clock, all those present were as silent as the grave.
Gauge led them away like a flock of lambs, easily correcting them when they tried to stumble out of line. He had been doing this for a while, two or three years at least, and he had learned not to question what went on behind that door. He heard begging, screaming, the mad laughter of the deranged, and at the end of the month, he found an extra five hundred dollars added to his check for every Midnight Visitation he conducted.
His smile curdled when he remembered what the Warden had said to him when he gave him the position.
“I know you’re struggling to feed your appetites, and its only a matter of time before you end up inside these walls for doing something foolish. Why not let me help you feed those urges, and in exchange, I won't tell anyone what sort of debauchery you get up to in your spare time.”
The Warden was a weird one, but Gauge had to admit that he always kept his promises.
Gauge wondered what he put these poor saps through, but quickly put it out of his mind.
The Wardens games were none of his concern, and how he chose to discipline his inmates was his business.

Jasper frowned as he read over the letter, the summons looking like no other mail he’d ever received.
On Saturday, you are summoned to attend Midnight Visitation as part of your rehabilitation. Attendance is non-negotiable, and refusal will result in forced attendance followed by time spent in solitary. Be ready by no later than eleven.
The Warden
“Whoa, that's pretty cool,” said Gavin, reading over his shoulder, “Who do you know that would come all the way down here at midnight to see you?”
Jasper didn’t know, and he told him as much. He was in here for killing the last person who had given a crap about him, and he couldn’t think of anyone who would make the trip in the daytime, let alone at night. His parents had disowned him after he’d killed her, and most of his family refused to have anything to do with him. Some of his cousins would still accept his letters, but few of them would bother to write back. Jasper was perplexed by the invitation, but, by the sound of it, it wasn’t much of an invitation anyway. Attendance seemed to be mandatory, and he was pretty sure most of the guards on the compound would enjoy dragging him there in chains.
The letter had come with their mail, and it was one of the few times the guard had called his name. The last year and a half had been difficult for Jasper, but he was getting used to making it on his own. He’d done it all his life, hadn’t he? His mom and dad had been too busy with their own thing to care about their middle child. Barbara was the smart one, Reggy was the athletic people person, and Jasper…well, Jasper was the screw up. His grades had never been too good, his achievements few and far between, and when Grace had come into the picture, his parents figured it was the best Jasper could do.
Jasper had agreed with them. Grace had been his everything from the moment she agreed to go steady with him. Grace was motivated, a natural saleswoman who had strived for something more than middle management. She had a successful business by the time she graduated college, and Jasper was happy to stay at home and keep the house. Jasper provided her with stability, someone to come home to who lacked the means to do any better, but he couldn’t give her the one thing she wanted.
That's why she had left him, and that's why he had killed her.
He couldn’t stand to be apart from her, couldn’t stand for her to be with someone else, and now he was stuck in Stragview for his lapse in judgment.
That's what made the note so cryptic, and the longer he thought about it, the shorter the list of people who would come all the way out here at night became.
He did a little more than wait, he supposed. Jasper had asked around about this Midnight Visitation, but no one seemed to know much about it. The younger guys all shook their heads, and the older guys clammed up when he asked them. It was like a magic spell had been cast over the whole thing, and when you asked some of these guys, it seemed to sap the life out of them before your eyes. Garth, one of the more gregarious murderers on Jasper’s block, had looked downright scared when he’d asked him about the visitation.
“I can’t say nothin,” Garth had said, “and neither will you once you go. It’s a secret that you keep after that. It’s something that changes you, or you keep going back till it does.”
“What changes you?” Jasper had asked, but Garth wouldn’t say anymore.
“Get away from me. Get away, before he thinks I told you.”
He’d left in a hurry then, their chess game only four moves in, and Jasper found he had more questions than before.
He supposed that all would be answered on Saturday, and as the days passed, he found himself a little excited by the whole idea of the thing.
When Saturday night finally arrived, Officer Gauge found him on his bunk, his best uniform still looking ragged, as he waited for whatever might come. Gauge held out a pair of cuffs, telling Jasper that he’d have to cuff him before they left. Jasper nodded, putting his hands behind his back, but Gauge told him that in the front would be fine. Jasper shrugged, it was his show, and let him cuff him in the front. Some of the guys who were still awake made suggestive noises as he left, some of them telling him to enjoy his “night visit”, but a lot of the older guys were noticeably quiet.
Gauge led him to the visitation area, the little spot behind the staff check-in area, and when Jasper shook his cuffs at him, Gauge told him to sit down and put his hands on the eye hook on the table. There were a few guys in here, some of them Jasper knew, but most he didn't, and they all seemed to be cuffed to the protruding hook in the center of the table. Jasper started to buck, but realized it wouldn’t do any good. Whatever this was, they would have him one way or another. He set his hands down on the table, and Gauge pulled a lock out of his pocket. He secured Jasper to the spot before leaving in an all fired hurry.
Whatever was about to happen, Gauge clearly didn’t want any part of it.
Jasper glanced around the room, taking in the men who sat around him. There were about twelve in all, all of them shackled to the table, and they were all spaced so that at least three chairs separated them from another inmate. Most of them looked confused or unsure, but a couple of them looked like they knew what was coming; knew and weren’t looking forward to it. One of them, a big bald bruiser named Dennis, had his head against the table as he cried nakedly between his elbows. Another who Jasper didn’t know was praying in fast spanish. A third, Jasper thought his name might be Conroy, was thrashing around as he pulled at his bonds. His eyes were roving around like a scared horse, and he kept pulling at his cuffs until he heard a lock click near the back of the room.
Then he went still and Jasper thought he saw him listening for something.
A pair of double metal doors at the back of the room burst open then, and Jasper saw a small group walk in unattended by guards. Two of them were children, a pair of twins who looked ghostly under the dim fluorescents. One was a dark haired woman who sat down in front of the man as he prayed. The last was a tall, homely woman who took the seat across from a younger inmate that Jasper couldn’t put a name to. The young man stiffened as she sat down, and the pair was close enough that Jasper could suddenly see that the problem wasn’t the womans face, but rather what was on it.
She had a crop of mold growing from ear to ear and as it wove around her eyes, it made her look like she was wearing glasses.
“Hello, Emanuel.” she said, her voice thick but not unhappy to see him, “I see prison had suited you.”
“What the fuck is this?” the inmate said, trying to back away and failing as the chains caught him, “you ain’t real. You look like my ma, but you ain’t my ma.”
“Of course I am, Em. How else would I know about how you drowned me in the bathtub? How else would I know what you did to me before you buried me in the basement? How else would I know how much you cried before you turned yourself in? You felt me watching you from the corner of your room, and it ate at you until you couldn’t take it anymore. The same way,” She leaned in slyly as she grinned, “that you ate at me after I was gone.”
The inmates started making a sound like someone choking on air. He kept pulling away from the woman, but the chains brought him up yet again. Jasper looked away, but he could see similar scenes of horror unfolding around him as more people joined them. The twins sat down in front of the sobbing man, but he wouldn’t lift his head. He wouldn’t look at them, couldn’t look at them, but the longer Jasper looked, the more he could see the bruises around the necks. The deep purple marks looked like individual fingers, and they seemed incable speaking through their bruised throats. They sat menacingly across from him, and every peek he gave them was followed by a hopeless cry of terror.
Others came, men, women, children, mothers, fathers, wives, and everything in between. The inmates' reactions were as varied as the specters. One man could only repeat the phrase “I’m sorry” as a half naked boy of seventeen sat silently across from him. The mother and son he had seen first were now sitting with her hands on his as he rocked and shook his head in negation. What could only be an older man's parents asked if he were proud of what he’d done to them, but he only sat silently and stared right through them.
Jasper wondered when it would be his turn, but he didn’t have long to ponder.
“Sorry I’m late, dear. The commute was dreadful.”
His breath came out as little more than a puff of smoke, and when he turned to look at her, Jasper could tell that it was Grace only by the necklace that she wore. He’d given her that necklace for their third anniversary, and he supposed her parents had left it on her when they buried her. Her face, a face he had loved so much, was gone. She looked like a burn victim, like a used up match stick, and the eyes that looked back at him glowed from empty sockets. Jasper wanted to scream, wanted to pull away as her red and oozing hand came out to touch his, but he couldn’t muster the strength.
She was burnt, her beauty stolen in death, and that too was his fault.
After he’d blind sided her, begging for another chance, she had told him to get lost. She said she couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t give her children, and suggested that he go back to his moms house before her new boyfriend found them together. At the mention of a new boyfriend, he grabbed her by the neck as she turned away and slammed her head against the wall of the stairwell outside her apartment. He had kept right on doing this until she stopped struggling, and even then he did it a few more times. He only stopped when her head began to dribble something besides blood and he realized he had broken her skull. He was scared then, afraid that he would get caught, and when he put her in his car, he wasn’t sure what he intended to do with her.
The police had caught him in his parents backyard, one of her neighbors having seen the whole thing, but by then, Grace had been a charcoal briquette.
He’d heard the funeral had been closed casket, but apparently they hadn’t closed it tight enough.
“Whats wrong dear? Didn’t you tell me you couldn’t live without me? I believe it was a little bit before you smashed my head against the wall. I assumed that, since you’d taken all that time to burn me, that you wanted me to look this way. Well, have a good look, Jasper. See what you’ve done to your Grace!”
Every word she spoke sent flakes of her tongue and lips onto the table, onto his hands, and onto Jasper’s face. She was leaning in closer, bringing her horrible visage closer to him, and Jasper felt his sanity beginning to whimper. As she brought the remains of her blackened lips together, he added his scream to the others. As they pressed against his flesh, he let his eyes roll up to the whites. He tried to stay conscious, but the sheer horror of the situation was eroding his mind. This couldn’t be. Things like this weren’t real. Grace was dead, she couldn’t come back to torment him.
As he regained consciousness, he found that he was still chained to the table and the terrible Grace was still sitting across from him.
“You seem to have gotten a little sleepy, my love. That's okay. The Warden was nice enough to extend invitation for the whole night, and I was more than happy to come and see my best fella.”
Jasper screamed, screamed until his throat broke, and when Gauge opened the door at five o’clock, all those present were as silent as the grave.
Gauge led them away like a flock of lambs, easily correcting them when they tried to stumble out of line. He had been doing this for a while, two or three years at least, and he had learned not to question what went on behind that door. He heard begging, screaming, the mad laughter of the deranged, and at the end of the month, he found an extra five hundred dollars added to his check for every Midnight Visitation he conducted.
His smile curdled when he remembered what the Warden had said to him when he gave him the position.
“I know you’re struggling to feed your appetites, and its only a matter of time before you end up inside these walls for doing something foolish. Why not let me help you feed those urges, and in exchange, I won't tell anyone what sort of debauchery you get up to in your spare time.”
The Warden was a weird one, but Gauge had to admit that he always kept his promises.
Gauge wondered what he put these poor saps through, but quickly put it out of his mind.
The Wardens games were none of his concern, and how he chose to discipline his inmates was his business.

I ask it in good faith, some people may find it offensive. I don't mean to offend.
So I was thinking about the notion of calling people of European decent white and people of African decent black. Purely in a descriptive fashion, like pointing out someone across the room.
"See my buddy Jerry there?" "No, who?" "The guy with black/dark skin, or green eyes, or red hair."
Physical characteristics. Some people get iffy around it, but for some reason it is fine with eye and hair colour. Most people are fine with it. They are physical characteristics that don't define someone but can be used to describe them. It seems weird to feel like we need to pretend to be colour blind and that we can't even acknowledge physical differences specifically when it comes to skin. But I think the whole colour blind notion is out of date. Difference in eye shape also seems taboo no doubt, and it is a characteristic that varies between populations too.
There is this idea that the term African-American is out of date and not useful. For white people we don't say European-American, and if we are going by what part of the world their family came from, it might not even say much about shades. By all means, Elon Musk is African-American. Also I live in Canada, so the term often seemed strange, especially if the person was Carribean-Canadian. They are a citizen and there is a good chance they were born here, so why attach the country/continent of origin to imply a description?
If someone says Asian, do they mean Indian, Middle-Eastern, Russian, or South East Asia? And if they are from Japan, they could be decendants of settlers from long before my family camer here, so it seems strange to bring up the Asian part when I'm just seen as Canadian or white by many.
With this being said, I realize the term yellow isn't exactly accurate and even deemed offensive by many due to history. The term Oriental is also offensive and brings in a part of the world again when idk if their family has been here for 5 generations while I'm 1st generation. Saying a specific country can be offensive if you are wrong (I tend to opt for South East Asian for countries in that region). As someone with German ancestry, I can't tell if someone is Scandinavian, Austrian, Polish, or even from the UK at first glance, so I always avoid guessing a specific nation in any situation, even if I feel like I have a good guess, and people do move around too through history. I also have noticed some people from old soviet countries can look like they have South East Asian decent (perhaps part of history and the Mongols?).
I get It's not a big important thing. By all means it seems more important how you treat someone than what proper term you opt for to describe them in the rare instances it comes up. And it's not like everyone would settle on some term ubiquitously, so the best anyone can do is avoid offensive ones. And I don't think race is a pivotal part of life generally, beyond prejudice. But if it meant ease for terms, I don't care if white people became yellow people and South East Asian people became white people when describing skin shade like we would eye or hair colour. Granted I know there is a variety of skin shades in both groups too. Is it just something that due to the history of terms, requires the added explanation of "the dude over there whose ancestors came from South East Asia"? If you come from South East Asia, do you personally find the terms Oriental or Yellow offensive? What if you and your family have lived in the West for a number of generations?

Jasper frowned as he read over the letter, the summons looking like no other mail he’d ever received.
On Saturday, you are summoned to attend Midnight Visitation as part of your rehabilitation. Attendance is non-negotiable, and refusal will result in forced attendance followed by time spent in solitary. Be ready by no later than eleven.
The Warden
“Whoa, that's pretty cool,” said Gavin, reading over his shoulder, “Who do you know that would come all the way down here at midnight to see you?”
Jasper didn’t know, and he told him as much. He was in here for killing the last person who had given a crap about him, and he couldn’t think of anyone who would make the trip in the daytime, let alone at night. His parents had disowned him after he’d killed her, and most of his family refused to have anything to do with him. Some of his cousins would still accept his letters, but few of them would bother to write back. Jasper was perplexed by the invitation, but, by the sound of it, it wasn’t much of an invitation anyway. Attendance seemed to be mandatory, and he was pretty sure most of the guards on the compound would enjoy dragging him there in chains.
The letter had come with their mail, and it was one of the few times the guard had called his name. The last year and a half had been difficult for Jasper, but he was getting used to making it on his own. He’d done it all his life, hadn’t he? His mom and dad had been too busy with their own thing to care about their middle child. Barbara was the smart one, Reggy was the athletic people person, and Jasper…well, Jasper was the screw up. His grades had never been too good, his achievements few and far between, and when Grace had come into the picture, his parents figured it was the best Jasper could do.
Jasper had agreed with them. Grace had been his everything from the moment she agreed to go steady with him. Grace was motivated, a natural saleswoman who had strived for something more than middle management. She had a successful business by the time she graduated college, and Jasper was happy to stay at home and keep the house. Jasper provided her with stability, someone to come home to who lacked the means to do any better, but he couldn’t give her the one thing she wanted.
That's why she had left him, and that's why he had killed her.
He couldn’t stand to be apart from her, couldn’t stand for her to be with someone else, and now he was stuck in Stragview for his lapse in judgment.
That's what made the note so cryptic, and the longer he thought about it, the shorter the list of people who would come all the way out here at night became.
He did a little more than wait, he supposed. Jasper had asked around about this Midnight Visitation, but no one seemed to know much about it. The younger guys all shook their heads, and the older guys clammed up when he asked them. It was like a magic spell had been cast over the whole thing, and when you asked some of these guys, it seemed to sap the life out of them before your eyes. Garth, one of the more gregarious murderers on Jasper’s block, had looked downright scared when he’d asked him about the visitation.
“I can’t say nothin,” Garth had said, “and neither will you once you go. It’s a secret that you keep after that. It’s something that changes you, or you keep going back till it does.”
“What changes you?” Jasper had asked, but Garth wouldn’t say anymore.
“Get away from me. Get away, before he thinks I told you.”
He’d left in a hurry then, their chess game only four moves in, and Jasper found he had more questions than before.
He supposed that all would be answered on Saturday, and as the days passed, he found himself a little excited by the whole idea of the thing.
When Saturday night finally arrived, Officer Gauge found him on his bunk, his best uniform still looking ragged, as he waited for whatever might come. Gauge held out a pair of cuffs, telling Jasper that he’d have to cuff him before they left. Jasper nodded, putting his hands behind his back, but Gauge told him that in the front would be fine. Jasper shrugged, it was his show, and let him cuff him in the front. Some of the guys who were still awake made suggestive noises as he left, some of them telling him to enjoy his “night visit”, but a lot of the older guys were noticeably quiet.
Gauge led him to the visitation area, the little spot behind the staff check-in area, and when Jasper shook his cuffs at him, Gauge told him to sit down and put his hands on the eye hook on the table. There were a few guys in here, some of them Jasper knew, but most he didn't, and they all seemed to be cuffed to the protruding hook in the center of the table. Jasper started to buck, but realized it wouldn’t do any good. Whatever this was, they would have him one way or another. He set his hands down on the table, and Gauge pulled a lock out of his pocket. He secured Jasper to the spot before leaving in an all fired hurry.
Whatever was about to happen, Gauge clearly didn’t want any part of it.
Jasper glanced around the room, taking in the men who sat around him. There were about twelve in all, all of them shackled to the table, and they were all spaced so that at least three chairs separated them from another inmate. Most of them looked confused or unsure, but a couple of them looked like they knew what was coming; knew and weren’t looking forward to it. One of them, a big bald bruiser named Dennis, had his head against the table as he cried nakedly between his elbows. Another who Jasper didn’t know was praying in fast spanish. A third, Jasper thought his name might be Conroy, was thrashing around as he pulled at his bonds. His eyes were roving around like a scared horse, and he kept pulling at his cuffs until he heard a lock click near the back of the room.
Then he went still and Jasper thought he saw him listening for something.
A pair of double metal doors at the back of the room burst open then, and Jasper saw a small group walk in unattended by guards. Two of them were children, a pair of twins who looked ghostly under the dim fluorescents. One was a dark haired woman who sat down in front of the man as he prayed. The last was a tall, homely woman who took the seat across from a younger inmate that Jasper couldn’t put a name to. The young man stiffened as she sat down, and the pair was close enough that Jasper could suddenly see that the problem wasn’t the womans face, but rather what was on it.
She had a crop of mold growing from ear to ear and as it wove around her eyes, it made her look like she was wearing glasses.
“Hello, Emanuel.” she said, her voice thick but not unhappy to see him, “I see prison had suited you.”
“What the fuck is this?” the inmate said, trying to back away and failing as the chains caught him, “you ain’t real. You look like my ma, but you ain’t my ma.”
“Of course I am, Em. How else would I know about how you drowned me in the bathtub? How else would I know what you did to me before you buried me in the basement? How else would I know how much you cried before you turned yourself in? You felt me watching you from the corner of your room, and it ate at you until you couldn’t take it anymore. The same way,” She leaned in slyly as she grinned, “that you ate at me after I was gone.”
The inmates started making a sound like someone choking on air. He kept pulling away from the woman, but the chains brought him up yet again. Jasper looked away, but he could see similar scenes of horror unfolding around him as more people joined them. The twins sat down in front of the sobbing man, but he wouldn’t lift his head. He wouldn’t look at them, couldn’t look at them, but the longer Jasper looked, the more he could see the bruises around the necks. The deep purple marks looked like individual fingers, and they seemed incable speaking through their bruised throats. They sat menacingly across from him, and every peek he gave them was followed by a hopeless cry of terror.
Others came, men, women, children, mothers, fathers, wives, and everything in between. The inmates' reactions were as varied as the specters. One man could only repeat the phrase “I’m sorry” as a half naked boy of seventeen sat silently across from him. The mother and son he had seen first were now sitting with her hands on his as he rocked and shook his head in negation. What could only be an older man's parents asked if he were proud of what he’d done to them, but he only sat silently and stared right through them.
Jasper wondered when it would be his turn, but he didn’t have long to ponder.
“Sorry I’m late, dear. The commute was dreadful.”
His breath came out as little more than a puff of smoke, and when he turned to look at her, Jasper could tell that it was Grace only by the necklace that she wore. He’d given her that necklace for their third anniversary, and he supposed her parents had left it on her when they buried her. Her face, a face he had loved so much, was gone. She looked like a burn victim, like a used up match stick, and the eyes that looked back at him glowed from empty sockets. Jasper wanted to scream, wanted to pull away as her red and oozing hand came out to touch his, but he couldn’t muster the strength.
She was burnt, her beauty stolen in death, and that too was his fault.
After he’d blind sided her, begging for another chance, she had told him to get lost. She said she couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t give her children, and suggested that he go back to his moms house before her new boyfriend found them together. At the mention of a new boyfriend, he grabbed her by the neck as she turned away and slammed her head against the wall of the stairwell outside her apartment. He had kept right on doing this until she stopped struggling, and even then he did it a few more times. He only stopped when her head began to dribble something besides blood and he realized he had broken her skull. He was scared then, afraid that he would get caught, and when he put her in his car, he wasn’t sure what he intended to do with her.
The police had caught him in his parents backyard, one of her neighbors having seen the whole thing, but by then, Grace had been a charcoal briquette.
He’d heard the funeral had been closed casket, but apparently they hadn’t closed it tight enough.
“Whats wrong dear? Didn’t you tell me you couldn’t live without me? I believe it was a little bit before you smashed my head against the wall. I assumed that, since you’d taken all that time to burn me, that you wanted me to look this way. Well, have a good look, Jasper. See what you’ve done to your Grace!”
Every word she spoke sent flakes of her tongue and lips onto the table, onto his hands, and onto Jasper’s face. She was leaning in closer, bringing her horrible visage closer to him, and Jasper felt his sanity beginning to whimper. As she brought the remains of her blackened lips together, he added his scream to the others. As they pressed against his flesh, he let his eyes roll up to the whites. He tried to stay conscious, but the sheer horror of the situation was eroding his mind. This couldn’t be. Things like this weren’t real. Grace was dead, she couldn’t come back to torment him.
As he regained consciousness, he found that he was still chained to the table and the terrible Grace was still sitting across from him.
“You seem to have gotten a little sleepy, my love. That's okay. The Warden was nice enough to extend invitation for the whole night, and I was more than happy to come and see my best fella.”
Jasper screamed, screamed until his throat broke, and when Gauge opened the door at five o’clock, all those present were as silent as the grave.
Gauge led them away like a flock of lambs, easily correcting them when they tried to stumble out of line. He had been doing this for a while, two or three years at least, and he had learned not to question what went on behind that door. He heard begging, screaming, the mad laughter of the deranged, and at the end of the month, he found an extra five hundred dollars added to his check for every Midnight Visitation he conducted.
His smile curdled when he remembered what the Warden had said to him when he gave him the position.
“I know you’re struggling to feed your appetites, and its only a matter of time before you end up inside these walls for doing something foolish. Why not let me help you feed those urges, and in exchange, I won't tell anyone what sort of debauchery you get up to in your spare time.”
The Warden was a weird one, but Gauge had to admit that he always kept his promises.
Gauge wondered what he put these poor saps through, but quickly put it out of his mind.
The Wardens games were none of his concern, and how he chose to discipline his inmates was his business.

I haven't been able to enjoy my 2 week study abroad trip much. Mostly because I haven't been able to actually have any downtime that isn't incredibly stressful and aggravating.
Why is my downtime aggravating, you might ask?
I'm pretty sure I have misophonia, which is an uncharacteristically intense reaction to certain noises. It's aggrivating, depressing, anxiety inducing, and straight up rage inducing. I'm in a hotel with a roommate who has allergies. Really bad allergies. He is constantly sniffling and the sound is so bad that I can't even describe what it makes me want to do. He has been like this almost the whole trip. These sniffles are super snotty and he's gotten to the point where he's so blocked up he's coughing and you can hear that his airways are not completely open. He claims that he "barely notices them" when it's obvious he can barely breathe. I want to rip my hair out. I would prefer death. It has literally made me cry uncontrollably a few times but I've always turned towards the wall so I don't look insane, because I have no good explanation to offer that was unlikely to backfire. I'm at my wit's end. I've offered him allergy pills a few times, which he has refused, and straight up told him that his sniffling is making me really nervous a few times, because I can't tell him how bad it actually is due to fear of looking crazy (likely won't believe it's a real thing), and today he just responded with "I'll be fine" when I told him it was really bothering me. That wasn't about you dude. I am literally telling you that your sniffles are fucking me up so bad that I have felt the need to say something, which I rarely can draw up the courage for. Multiple times. I put earplugs in, and eventually got up and left the room, and he seems to be completely unaware that it was because of him.
It's very evident that he is on the spectrum (as am I, but I thought I made it clear enough that it was hurting me in a way someone on the spectrum would understand), but I'm not pushing that subject as he already told me he didn't have ASD when I shared my having ASD with him. I just thought it was an explanation as to why he wasn't getting it that I've been trying to tell him it's impacting me without being a dick. If he would just go blow his nose every now and again I could probably deal with it. But no. I have to listen to a noise that brings emotions to me like someone just kicked and threatened to kill my fucking dog. Every 2 minutes. Whenever I am in my hotel room. This is uncontrollable and it is killing me. I even have a physical reaction to his sniffles where my head jerks and he has seen it many times.
I tried earplugs and music, but they don't help enough, and he sniffles like this all night long. I usually can't sleep for hours at night, and wake up feeling near-suicidal, something I thought I had left in the past. I feel dead during the day having to deal with the amount of stress this causes and not getting much of anything out of the museums we are going to, AKA the whole reason I came on this trip.
This is a psychology trip by the way. This dude is a psychology minor and seems to be clueless that these noises are impacting me when I have tried to say it as clearly as possible. If I am any harsher about it, it will be taken as rude and seen as me asking him to do something that is unreasonable (take an allergy pill or blow his nose in the bathroom from time to time) to "cater to my every whim and bend over backwards" (let's just say that with other views he has expressed, this is likely). I just wanted to enjoy this expensive as shit study abroad trip, and I have been walking through museums barely able to get anything out of them at all because this is stressing me out so much. I literally had to leave the hotel room and am sitting on the floor down the hall from the room.
Early on in the trip, he expressed political views that often go along with views that are very against my literal existence. If you live in the US especially, you probably know what I'm talking about. I have no idea why he was okay with rooming with me. He knows that in terms of the common political spectrum, he is on one end, and I am beyond the other end. I am wondering now if he is trying to make my trip miserable on purpose, but we don't talk about politics after realizing we are so far apart. There was another man who was avaliable to room with him, but apperenly that "rule" where men and women couldn't room together went out the window because that guy is rooming with his girlfriend now, so I don't know why he didn't just go with that dude as his roommate, pick a different roommate, or room by himself, as was an option. I had noticed this dude was oblivious to the fact that he was doing things that bothered other people, but didn't think I would regret it so much.
I am completely non-confrontational because I likely have borderline and when I do try to confront someone about something, I go over the top, and I really need to keep that under wraps until I can get into some appropriate therapy in order to not ruin my entire life.
I'm literally sitting on the floor. I can't go down in the lobby because I had clothes drying in the shower yesterday and tried to stay up late enough to move them when he got out of the shower, but he literally moved my partially dry clothing to be in a pile and must have been in the bathroom for an hour. I had tried to get his attention before he went into the bathroom, but convieneintly, when he has headphones in, and he isn't looking at me, he can't hear me at all, but if he is looking at me, he can hear me perfectly fine. I fell asleep. My laundry was still wet this morning and some of it still is. Let's just say I'm not comfortably dressed enough to even go sit in the lobby. I had to layer up today because of it and it was incredibly hot out, so I felt like shit all day wearing layers of damp clothing in the blazing heat.
He literally just walked past me, looked at me sitting on the floor outside the room instead of being in the room, but didn't acknowledge me, and sniffled. It was loud despite my wearing earplugs. If I do anything now I will absolutely lose my shit and I can't be risking that. I can't imagine that this isn't on purpose.
For this trip I have had to remind him to do his daily work and wake him up most days. I've started to scale this back and am no longer telling him to do the work but end up waking him up while I'm getting ready, and he usually seems annoyed when my alarm goes off if it's more than 15 minutes before we have to leave. Like, sorry I have to take a fucking shower and get dressed and brush my teeth and comb my hair and eat breakfast because my food allergies are not accomidated for? It's not like I'm waking him up obscenely early, it's usually between an hour and an hour and a half before we have to go somewhere.
I don't feel like anything I have is solid enough to report to the professor and I'd just have to spend the rest of the trip with a very angry roommate and lose my chances with a prof that would probably write me a grad school reccomendation.
I don't know what to do. I feel like my trip is ruined. There are only a few days left and I can't make up for the experiences I've lost. Ive sat out of a lot of extracurriculars because I am so exhausted and stressed, as well as that being the only time I can sit in my room without him here. Of the rest of my class, there are 2 people I regularly talk to, but they're best friends and had already had a lot of reservations to do things by themselves, which is fine with me, I'm not going to barge in on their plans or be upset about it. I've worked on myself enough to completely be able to rationalize that and feel it.
I feel like most of the class are patronizing me because I obviously have issues communicating and treating me like I'm five, and I don't know how to keep a conversation going with the people who aren't when I'm this preoccupied with anxiety.

This sub helped me out a lot so thought I'd share my experience in Japan. Hope I can bring a bit of a different perspective because unlike most of the people that seem to post here, we are definitively not early risers and rarely left the hotel before 1pm every day. Still had a great time and crowds were only an issue in a few places.
We're an early 30s Asian-American couple traveling from Germany, so we're coming at this from a bit of an in-between of Western and Eastern perspective. I have been to Japan when I was 15 with family, but remember basically nothing. It was my wife's first time. We had an absolutely wonderful time and both thought it was the best vacation we've had in years.
The trip was pretty last minute (for my standards at least). I started planning the trip from scratch (no flights, hotels or anything booked) in early April and our trip was May 18-30. We spent 5 days in Tokyo including DisneySea, 2 nights in Hakone, 3 nights in Kyoto including day trip to Nara, and 1 night in Osaka. We flew in to Tokyo Narita and flew out of Osaka Itami. We decided to fly from Osaka to Tokyo instead of bullet train back to Tokyo so we didn't have to buy JR rail pass and worry about luggage.
Tokyo

We stayed in Ginza, which was significantly cheaper than similar hotels in Shibuya or Shinjuku. Maybe it was because I was planning such last minute, but I enjoyed the area just fine. Lots of restaurants and close to Tokyo Station which was convenient.
Shout out to Star Club in Shinjuku. Had a wonderful Saturday night there drinking til 4am, chatting with other patrons and the super friendly bartender. Mix of locals and tourists.
T's Tantan Ramen in Tokyo Station was one of my favorite ramen places of the trip (tied with the Michelin star one from Kyoto, but minus the wait). The bowl had a good variety of vegetable ingredients (which didn't seem that common in Japan, most ramen was just noodles and meat) which I really appreciated. Small queue but didn't wait more than 10m.
The only restaurant reservation we made all trip was at Bon. Vegetarian multi-coursed meal. I would recommend, it was very nice, though sometimes a tad under salted for my taste. My wife loved it though. You get your own little private room to eat, even for two people, which was unexpected and very lovely.
Asakusa has a tourist center with air conditioning, bathrooms, and an 8th floor view. Nice place for a rest
Akihabara did nothing for us, as we're not really into anime or games. Pretty skippable if you are similar.
I thought Ameyoko Shopping District was a disappointment. More like a flea market, it was similar to many Taiwan street/night markets that we've been to before. We also had probably our worst meal in Japan here, at a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant where the food was extremely mediocre. I would have skipped this place altogether and go to Ueno Park or something instead.
Character Street in Tokyo Station was very fun to explore, we did a lot of shopping there. Nice place to visit before taking the Shinkansen.
We enjoyed Takeshita Street in Harajuku. As mentioned before we went at around 8pm and it wasn't too crowded.
When planning I had thought about skipping Shibuya Scramble but I'm really glad I didn't. Something about witnessing the sheer number of people bustling about was so epic and grand. Reminded me of Saturday midnight at EDC (Electric Daisy Carnival) when the atmosphere is electric and everyone is moving from one main stage to another.
Golden Gai was interesting to look at, but way too claustrophobic for us. Very small alleys and very small bars.
I enjoyed Tsukiji Market a lot. This is one of the places I would agree with people here and advise you get there early. Take advantage of jet lag and get here before 7am, and it is literally a buffet of delicious fresh foods. (not much choice for vegetarians though sadly). By 8am it was starting to get REALLY crowded. I prefer picking out my sashimi this way as opposed to a restaurant tbh, you can look at many options and pick whatever looks freshest. First time eating Wagyu here, had it on a stick. Delicious. Not the cheapest, but I figured if I ate it at a restaurant I'd also be paying for table service and atmosphere. I'm not big on the "restaurant experience", I'd rather just eat my food and be on my way.
I thought Hamarikyu Gardens was wonderful. I love city parks where there is green, peaceful nature in the fore ground, contrasted by enormous skyscrapers towering in the background. Hamarikyu Gardens fits that perfectly. Got there right when they opened after visiting Tsukiji Market and it was a perfect way to walk off the big hearty breakfast. ~1 hour at a moderate pace should do it.
Ginza Corridor after work was very interesting to see around 5-7pm or so. Simply packed to the brim with business folks wearing suits and having a good time after their work day

DisneySea

We checked the weather and specifically went on a rainy weekday. I highly recommend, it was not crowded at all. Almost all the rides are indoors anyway and most of the queueing is either inside or covered. We got to the park at 2pm and basically rode everything we wanted before the park closed at 9pm with time to spare.
Popular rides still had 40m-1hour wait, but we used premier pass for Center of the Earth and Soaring. Most we ever waited was 20m for Finding Nemo (similar to Star Tours, all in Japanese but very fun). I checked the app the next day when it was sunny and saw the wait times for each attraction were 3-4x longer.
Another thing I think the rain helped with was that the premier passes did not sell out. We were able to buy them as late as 6pm to Journey to the Center of the Earth. (Fun ride, but I can't imagine waiting 1.5 hours for it)
I think Soaring is pretty meh, I'd probably skip it next time. I've been to the one in CA ages ago and remember thinking it was just okay too, but we had extra time so decided to try it here.
Sinbad was excellent, the ride that most exceeded expectations. It's basically "It's A Small World" but way better animatronics and story telling.
Indiana Jones is worse than in the one in California (less exciting, no fire effects), but the line was nonexistent so we went on it twice.
It stopped raining at night too so we were able to catch the Believe show with no issues. It's a good show but it is very long, about 40m. Much longer than I thought. After show is over, there's only about ~1 hour before the park closes, so good time to catch a last ride at one of the popular attractions while the locals are heading home.
I love how every restaurant has a display in front that shows you what the food will look like. They were all extremely accurate and not at all misleading!
(not a tip but a rant, is it really necessary to have 10 thousand parking spots when the vast majority of people are going to arrive on Tokyo's world-class public transit system?)

Hakone

Open Air Museum was really nice on a pleasant day. It's mostly outdoors. We spent a leisurely two hours there, but you could probably do it in one hour at a brisk pace.
We left our Ryokan at 1pm to do the Hakone Loop and still completed it comfortably with plenty of time spent on shopping.
Speaking of shopping, Cat Goods near Gora station was a wonderful little store full of cat stuff!! Our shopping list in Japan was basically to buy as much cat-themed home goods at possible, and we went crazy here. They also do tax-free! Recommend this place if cat-themed goods sounds interesting to you, the shop people were super nice!
We stayed 2 nights 3 days in a Ryokan. I purchased Hakone free pass for 3 days, which was maybe not worth it. The first and last day we only took transport to leave Hakone to Odawara station, so I think it would have been cheaper to use the IC card to pay for it ad-hoc instead of an entire extra "free pass" day. Might be worth looking in to.
If you have the Freepass, don't tag IC card at the stations. Show your Freepass to the attendant instead. It can't be a screenshot, they need to see the day
Google Maps was great everywhere except Hakone. For some reason it was especially unreliable here, it led us stray a few times.
Busses are faster for getting around, but have very little space for luggage and seemed packed with locals. If time is not an issue, I'd ride the Hakonetozan Line with your luggage, much more comfortable and more space.
If you can spare the money, getting a private onsen was really really nice. Plus you can drink while you chill!

Kyoto

Had an excellent time at Gion Bar M16, favorite bar experience we went to in Japan. The owner was super friendly and welcoming, and was himself a very interesting person that has lived a full life and travelled all over the world. Very interesting to talk to. He was also very knowledgeable about whiskey and drank whiskey with us while letting us try some different whiskeys and giving recs about what to buy and bring home. Also gave us lots of delicious and interesting snacks while we got drunk together. We also met a friend of the owner there who is a foreigner that has been living in Japan for 8 years, and gave us some recs.
One of his recs was Eikan-do Temple as a less-crowded temple option. Good rec! We really enjoyed this place a lot. Probably our favorite temple out of the 5 or so we visited. They have this really extensive "shoes-off" wooden walkway on support beams. It felt like exploring a big tree house, because the wooden part went up the cliff as well. The insides areas were also very extravagant and intricate. Not so many tourists, even Sunday middle of the day. I really recommend as well!
Another of his recs was Men-ya Inoichi (has a Michelin star). You line up when the shop opens to get a ticket, and then come back at a designated time, though there's still a wait before you actually eat. We probably waited ~50m in total, 20m at the beginning and 30m when we returned. Even then, thought it wasn't worth the time. Don't get me wrong it was very good, but IMO not significantly better than other ramen places.
Kodai-ji Temple was a miss for us, especially after Eikan-do. Thought it wasn't that interesting, would have skipped.
Kiyomizu-dera was indeed very nice, but very very crowded. Another place I would actually either going early or late for.
The shopping street in front of Kiyomizu-dera was super fun to browse, but also very crowded.
Had lunch at this tucked away Soba restaurant in an alley that was very nice, one of my favorite meals in Japan. Owner was friendly and spoke in Japanese to a translator that replayed his words in English. Noodles nice and chewy. Good experience, felt very personal!
We visited Yasaka-jinja Shrine and Maruyama Park both in the evening and during the day, and much much prefer it when it's dark. Less crowded and there are cute little lamps that are lit up and make the whole place look magical.

Nara

Arrived in Nara station at ~2:30pm and left at 7pm. Felt like we saw plenty.
Nothing new to add, the bowing deer are fun to visit and feed, though they can be quite aggressive. We went on Saturday and there was large crowds of children in their school uniforms, but we didn't really mind it too much.
Isuien Garden and Yoshikien Garden are both very nice gardens, good place to get away from crowds for some peace and quiet.

Osaka

Didn't spend much time in Osaka, but Dontonburi was fun to walk through and shop.
Ate at a very nice Okonomiyaki restaurant. It was our first time eating it so can't compare it to anywhere else, but the staff was super friendly and bubbly and we had an excellent time there. They also have a little dice game you can play to "gamble" on getting a drink for free, or "lose" and get the drink double sized and also pay 2x the price
Shout out to our hotel, Hotel Royal Classic Osaka. We were only there for one night, but my god this hotel was so convenient. Directly connected to the subway station via an elevator, and also has a 24-hour FamilyMart you can enter from the lobby. It was also only 3m walking away from a airport limousine bus, which made going to the airport super easy. If we ever visit Osaka for a longer stay, we would definitely book this hotel again.

Random Tips

The flipside to getting to a popular tourist spot early, is to get there very late. We visited Takeshita Street in Harajuku at 8pm at night and it was very comfortably not crowded. Also noticed other tourists spots tended to clear up near closing time, like Senso-Ji in Asakusa.
As everyone says, toilets are generally as clean as you can reasonably expect, everywhere from parks to gardens to subway stations. Nastiest toilet I saw was in Don Quixote at 1am, trash everywhere.
7/11 seemed to have English featured more prominently on their products labels compared to other convenience store chains. All the convenience store food options seemed very similar, so I started to favor 7/11 for the language convenience. (FamilyMart had English in super tiny letters on the side of the label lol)
In one of those small counter seating type restaurants, I saw someone take the wrong backpack when they left (didn't know it was the wrong backpack at the time ). A few minutes later, the person who's backpack was taken got up to leave, and was very confused trying to find his backpack. He spent a long 10m talking to the restaurants folks (in Japanese), before the original guy came back super apologetic. Anyway keep an eye on your stuff. I know Japan is a safe country, but accidents do happen.
One trick we had was to tie a little charm or hair tie to the handle of our umbrella, making it less likely someone would accidentally take yours from the sea of indistinguishable white plastic umbrellas.
Yes there's a lot of walking. My feet tend to get damp if I'm out all day and foot powder works wonders, highly recommend it. Picked up this trick while attending music festivals.
No issues with tax refunds and customs. We packed some of our stuff in carry-on in case they inspected, but nothing happened.
Used Ubigi esim and it was perfect. I bought 10gb and used 7gb over our trip, doing most of the navigation and planning. My wife bought 1gb and used about 700mb with just random internet surfing. I will 100% be using this service for travel to other countries in the future, not just Japan, it was so damn convenient.

Transportation

Definitely leave extra time for navigating subway stations, those things are like enormous underground malls.
Shinkansen app didn't work for our iphone country (Germany), but I was able to use the mobile web browser pretty easily. Great for free, last-minute rescheduling of Shinkansen tickets when we inevitably take too long shopping.
Apple Wallet Suica / IC card worked like a charm (with AMEX and Mastercard). One thing though it that it can sometimes take up to 1 minute for the money to load onto the account, so don't wait until the very last minute and accidentally hold up the bus.
Taxis are green when someone is in it and red when they are free (at least in Tokyo?). Confused the hell out of drunk me at 4am in the morning. I think in Kyoto it is orange instead when someone is in them, and the orange/red difference is quite hard to spot from far away.
On that note, I had sorta assumed the metro runs all night in Tokyo, but this is definitely not the case. They stop service from about midnight to 5am, so keep an eye on the last train if you do intend to catch it. Otherwise you'll have to take a more-expensive-than-usual taxi (captive markets), but not a big deal. We thought it was typically priced in comparison to most other US and European cities.
We had a choice between a 1 hour or 3 hour layover in Tokyo NRT and we chose 3 hour because we weren't sure how long it would take to transfer from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 in NRT. In actuality it took less than 30m, so the 1 hour would have probably been fine. We didn't mind the extra buffer time to relax though.- Absolutely enormous plane flying between Osaka and Tokyo. Like literally it was the size of a transatlantic plane, with 10 seats in each row, for a sub 1 hour flight, completely full with business travelers (judging by their suits and brief cases).

Food

We aren't big foodies; we like Japanese food a lot but food isn't really a top priority for us while traveling. Some of our favorite meals were from 7/11 (kelp & bonito flavoured tofu stick, sukiyaki beef over rice, fish flavored cheese snacks, grilled squid. Yum!)
Most meals were good, if a bit straightforward. At least the places we ate at, main courses seemed to be carb heavy, with a side of meat, and little else. I know we could have gotten side dishes, but the portion sizes were too big for us to order more.
Very few vegetables in general, and if there were some they were pickled. (Guess it makes sense for an island country). I usually bring fiber pills with me when traveling and do recommend it for Japan too.
Wife is vegetarian, I am not. Japan is not particularly vegetarian friendly if you don't like tofu, which fortunately my wife does. Most places did have at least one tofu option, so it worked out okay for us. She doesn't follow it super strictly though. A few times she would order a dish and I would just pick out the meat from her bowl.
Portion sizes were a LOT bigger than I thought they would be. I think maybe we are just small eaters. US and European portions are a little bit bigger I suppose, but Japanese portion sizes were too big even for us. Especially ramen! It was crazy to see folks wolf down an giant bowl of ramen, then ask for an extra helping of noodles with their remaining soup, and finish that up too.
We only made one reservation beforehand and waited in line over 10m once. Worked out fine for us.
Restaurants tend to do last call an hour or more before closing, so don't get there too late. Happened to us twice before we learned our lesson, got to a restaurant about one hour before the listed closing hours and they turned us away.
The Japanese palette seems to be much more subtle than typical western palette, and notably less salty. We often find Asian food at US/German restaurants too salty or saucy. Even then, some of the food we ate was bordering on the minimum range of my taste buds to almost be bland. Just my opinion, most of it was good but sometimes the lack of salt was pretty noticeable to me. My wife tends to like things less salty than me though and she thoroughly enjoyed all of those meals no problem. Soup noodle places like ramen and udon are excluded from this, those were usually perfectly salted to my taste.
Walking while eating seemed fine. I saw at least 3 different instances of Japanese people doing it.
Apparently there are no laws banning public drinking in Japan. You can drink alcohol on the street no problem, but I rarely saw people doing that (unlike here in Germany where people seem to take full advantage of it and also leave trash everywhere). I did see a few groups of Japanese people doing it at night in Tokyo, usually near bus stops, and the next morning saw the empty bottles and cans. Guess there are litterers everywhere. We had a beer in the park at night, weren't loud about it and took our trash with us. That was very pleasant.

Hotels

Hotels always have liquid or foam hand soap! I hate the bar soaps that most Western hotels provide in the room, so I usually bring my own liquid hand soap. Was totally not necessary for this trip.
Lots of people on this sub have mentioned check-in time being very precise, as in you rarely can check in before the designated time. We didn't experience this first hand. But on the flip side, we did find out that check out time is very precise too! They start calling your room about 15-20m after your check out time. This is in contrast to most American/European hotels that we've stayed at, which are in my experience very lax about their check out times. We can often get away with leaving the room at 1-2 hours after the stated check out time (we're late risers). Not so in Japan.
Agree with other people's advice that booking a hotel close to a big subway station is probably the most important factor. It sucks having to walk 10m to the station every single day, and it is amazing when it is close. Also being close to a 24/7 convenience store was also very nice for late night munchies.

Language

We only knew sumimasen, konichiwa, and arigato gozaimasu and got alone just fine (lots of hand gestures!). We do know a bit of Mandarin Chinese though so that was helpful with reading signs.Some places knew Mandarin better than English and would switch to that if they thought we could speak it. Chinese tourism seems like big business (we saw a ton of Chinese tourists everywhere) so I guess it makes sense for people in tourism industry to cater towards that. Announcements (like over train stations) always went Japanese, English, often Chinese, then sometimes Korean.

Luggage Forwarding * I thought it was kind of expensive, but it does make things easier.- ○ Tokyo -> Hakone: 2310 yen- ○ Hakone to Kyoto: 2630 yen- ○ Kyoto -> Osaka: 1940 yen. * I feel like for that price you could take a taxi to and from your hotels to the train station and it wouldn't be much more work. There was plenty of space on the Shinkansen to put smaller checked luggage overhead. Then you don't have to prepack things the day before. * For the first leg Tokyo -> Hakone, we shipped two checked luggage which was about ~32 euros. After that we only shipped one, not two. * The middle ground we found was to designate one suitcase as souvenirs and dirty laundry and forwarded it every time. We would then travel with two carry-ons and one checked luggage. YMMV depending on your number of luggage and ease of carrying them.

I have an appointment with a vet Monday (soonest I could find one near me and they're an hour away) my boy Bruce he has been acting weird hunched in a corner, barely eating and definitely losing weight. He's wobbly on his feet and isn't jumping around his cage like always. Today he started a low chirping kind of sound when I open the pen to check on him and pet him around his ears (he usually prefers that) I'm a first time chinchilla owner, and we got him almost a year and a half ago. When I got him he had hair loss from chewing it from stress (previous owner had 2 big dogs that bothered him a lot) I have a smaller medium dog she talks to him but he likes to sit near her when she sleeps by his cage and his fur looks healthy now. I'm waiting to get him to a vet but he's really scaring me I can tell something is very wrong I just don't know how to help him until I can get him to the vet :(