may we live forever

If I remember correctly part of Mat's reasoning was worrying about what she might be asking him to do/wondering if this might be a way to hurt someone while getting around her oaths or the like, and the promise would compel him to do it if he opened it? Except that doesn't make sense, because he wouldn't count that the same way he didn't count the Seanchan oaths (mentioned in WH). I could be wrong about this though, I tried to go back and check, but couldn't bring myself to deal with it. The last straw was a moment where "Mat" claimed military camps are the most comfortable place in the world.

AMoL would make this even worse, since immediately afterwards he has Mat go off to Ebou Dar, despite having previously stated his intentions to return to Caemlyn to help with preparations for the Last Battle and all, despite the fact that Mat has literally never actually gone back on a responsibility he's previously committed to and in tSR, the pattern itself has to keep him from voicing intentions to go help in the Two Rivers, because it doesn't want to deal with trying to keep him from doing that once he's said he would.

So, the girls' first encounter with Dracula was as terrifying as one can expect when the scene is about an asleep young girl being loomed over by a figure shrouded in shadows as her (also young) friend screams to try and wake her up.

And this is where the misconception of the view between Lucy and Count Dracula sadly starts, yes the novel Dracula tackles some themes of eroticism, but not in the way most mainstream analysis makes it be. This is not a case of "sexual repression into liberation" like some literary analysis try to paint it; when we read the actual text, and the image that it paints, we can interpret this entry through the far more simple (yet terrifying) notion of supposed assault.

The tricky thing is reading how even when nothing sexual happened in the entry, what scares Mina and Lucy is the possibility of this story getting out somehow, and damaging Lucy's reputation as an unmarried young lady.

What happened outside of Mina's view was that the Count took advantage of Lucy's already established sleepwalking state to feed on her, then Mina shows up in a hurry which probably stopped the Count from probably killing Lucy on the churchyard. The aftermath leaves Mina frightened, and Lucy hurt, but both know that victorian society would not focus on their words, but it will focus on Lucy's supposed culpability in a scenario that could easily be twisted into some sort of hidden affair.

There could be older written human stories, older than even Gilgamesh, that actually sucked balls, but we lost them for just that reason.

The rediscovery of Mesopotamian literature was incredibly lucky. Gilgamesh could have stayed buried in the desert for the rest of time. The linguistic reconstruction also relied on one rock formation with multiple languages written in parallel, iirc. What if that had been destroyed? We wouldn’t know what any of the tablets say.

Is it possible to tell a story that sucks balls? I think we all three agree that it is. Therefore, it is possible that people in ancient Mesopotamia were telling stories that sucked balls.

The next question: Is it possible that someone in ancient Mesopotamia wrote down a story that sucked balls? We have no way to know. While the barriers to shitty authors were much higher, I still think it’s possible that some scribe with extra time was writing down a shit story. Was it common? I very much doubt it. But it was possible.

So we have a sequence that goes: Improbable shitty authorship -> low concentration of shitty stories surviving -> extremely low probability that the only surviving story from Mesopotamia sucks ass.

But just because something is improbable doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. That’s the first disconnect.

The second has to do with definitions. If you define lucky as an improbable positive event happening, then Gilgamesh is indeed not a lucky find. As pointed out, it was a wildly popular story, even becoming part of the scribe training curriculum. So it was quite probable that we would find that particular story, given that we found the remnants of Mesopotamia and figured out how to decode their language. If you don’t consider that luck, that’s fine.

I, personally, don’t define luck that way. I define luck as being the positive outcome of a probabilistic set. Doesn’t matter how probable the good outcome is, that’s lucky. As an example, I live in a 500-year flood plain. That means that I have a 1/500 = 0.02% chance every year of my house flooding. I consider myself extremely lucky every year that we don’t flood. Am I normal? I do not know. You can take it or leave it, I suppose.

There could be older written human stories, older than even Gilgamesh, that actually sucked balls, but we lost them for just that reason.

The rediscovery of Mesopotamian literature was incredibly lucky. Gilgamesh could have stayed buried in the desert for the rest of time. The linguistic reconstruction also relied on one rock formation with multiple languages written in parallel, iirc. What if that had been destroyed? We wouldn’t know what any of the tablets say.

Cut up a tree that fell over (I asked him to cut it down a year ago)

Found a plumber (After wasting a whole day trying to fix a broken water main himself)

Paid half of the plumber bill (You noticed that I said half, right?)

Bought school supplies for the boy (From links to the supplies that I sent him)

He didn’t add anything to my load. (Well, not very much, anyway. Like, I got to be support staff instead of running the entire operation.) Which was nice and definitely not how he usually behaves.

But he still isn’t taking anything off of my load. I’ve been carrying more than my share the entire time. I could use a break, you know?

It would be nice to feel like we’re in this together, pulling towards something better. But he’s never been able to do that, especially with me.

Early in our relationship, we were doing some household repairs for my mom. Painting her deck, I think. And this man was impatient and rude and refused to take instruction. I brushed it off as not a big deal at the time, but in retrospect that was a preview of exactly how he would behave any time I tried to do something important with him.

We had similar issues when we did dancing lessons. He was shoving me around off beat and then fussing that I wasn’t following the steps. Leading isn’t about shoving your partner around. It’s a soft touch and a flowing together. It’s accepting what your partner does and continuing anyway. He has never understood that.