𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘦 .

hello, my name is steby, for now i do not want to reveal my name as i do not feel comfortable doing so. i am 21 years old and i am filipino. the reason i am writing and posting this is because i need help. not financial help, but to plan. i want to leave my house but i need to bring my pet dogs with me (i am unsure how many i can take with me but approximately 3). please help me plan to survive my remaining time here and how to successfully leave and cut off contact with my family. i will start with some context.

i am currently attending the second semester of my second year (sophomore) in my university, we are bi-semestral so this is my last semester before moving forward to the next academic year. although i have been vaguely planning it, after what happened and is currently still happening, i have decided 100% that i will be filing for leave of absence instead of proceeding to my third year (junior) in university.

my plan is to get a job over the summer or after my final exams and continue to work for a year (minimum) or two (maximum). this is so that i can save up money to find a small aparment to live in with my pet dogs, somewhere far away from my hometown but near my university. of course, i still want to finish my education and get a degree, i just have to postpone it for now.

why i want to leave.

i am the youngest child of three. i have two older brothers, the eldest was born prematurely and has cognitive delay (currentky in his mid twenties but can barely formulate sentences and behaves like a one or two year old). this lead to my parents conceiving another child to "help" with the situation, hence my brother. and i was an unplanned child. in one house, there were two families, my mom's sister and her daughter lived with us. she helped take care of us and mediate fights between my parents and guided her coward of a sister (my mom).

fast forward, about five years ago, my mother passed away. took a huge toll on the entire family, especially my brother. he was very close to her, bonded as the neglected middle childs of their own family. emotions were high. a lot of grieving. there was fear of continuing to live life with our father whom we all had a terrible relationship with. the kind of father whom once it hits 8pm and the door makes a sound signaling he is home, the entire house goes quiet and everyone escapes to their rooms. so so aggressive with his words, never had anything nice to say. always throwing tanthrums. he fought with my second brother, some punches, he couldnt fight back, he was handicapped. he got scared cause my brother was a lot bigger than him now. he ran away, with my eldest brother. this was 2 months after my mothers death. and then we found out around a year later, that the same month he ran away back to his hometown, he reconnected and remarried his high school sweetheart.

he trie to reconnect with me and mend our relationship. saying how he had a terrible childhood and how terrifying his father was. he described his feelings as a child, anf i realized he was describing my feelings as a child growing up with a father like him. he criticised his fathers parenting while practicing the same methods to his children. he tried to gain my sympathy by dumping his childhood trauma on me. cried to me about how much he loved my mother too. for all we know, he mightve already planned remarrying his high school sweetheart while my mom was admitted in the hospital. he alway refused to do stuff for her and csre for her while she was there, always busy with his phone.

3 years later, he passed away. left us with so many financial uncertainty, he spent a million pesos on something we will never know. maybe all the new wooden furniture, house and e-bike his new wife had. my aunt, the one that lived with us was kind enough to stay and take care of us even if she wanted to leave. because we were pitiful 17-18 year olds then.

thats when it started.

my brother started to have "episodes" of him being very violent. never to me but it could be because i locked myself away. the first time it happened, i had to sleep in our neighbors house. i had dirty feet from running away barefoot and a jacket reeking of sweat. felt like i was a spy trying to run away from my enemy. he had been physically violent with my aunt, he strangled her, slapped her so many times her cheeks were swollen after and i dont even know what else he did because i was shaking and crying in my room under a desk. we had to call the police, he kept shouting and threatening to burn the house down. and he had sharp weapons with him, scissors, knife and a lighter. his build and height were bigger than the police, and we have so many dogs, the police got too scared to even pass through the entrance gate of our house.

we told them what happened and why, the possibility of my brother suffering from a severe mental illness from all the things he went through, causing him to be this way. they laughed it off. they laughed. to my face. to everyones face. they laughed and shrugged. "ahh depression lang pala eh hahaha, kaya naman pala" (oh its just depression hahahaha, thats why.) with what he did, you would think, they would at least arrest him or detain him but they said no. they cant do it if hes suffering from a mental issues, because if he commits suicide while he was inside the prison cell or in the station, they would have to deal with the consequences and be held accountable for what happened. and they didnt want that trouble so they left.

its months after, before it happened again. we didnt call the police again. we hid all possible weapons and ran outside and waited until he fell asleep before going in and crying ourselves to sleep. theres at least three more episodes of his that happened. but some of them are mixed up in my memories, i cant recall them properly anymore. at some point he did get less violent and aggressive, he tried to control himself and hid away the harmful objects himself. he would lock himself in his room until it subsided.

but an argument with my cousin triggered his violent tendecies. we had to call the police again one night, we were desperate to see daylight the next day. it was the worst episode, i will not go into details.

his last episode was approximately a week ago before today. it has been becoming frequent because hes stressed about his thesis and final examinations and his unresolved issue with our cousin is just getting worse.

a lot shouting, cursing and threats were thrown. he had once again, threatened to burn the house down. but the reason why i am suddenly making the effort to ask for help this time is because of something he said earlier. he had never hit me. and i always blamed myself for what hes going through. i pitied him. had sympathy. because i had always been told growing up, family is family is no matter what. and he was the only one i had left. my eldest brother stayed with our aunt in a different province. thats a whole different issue to unpack.

so i sympathised. but earlier he said he wished he was never born. so he didnt have to go through this life. he wished my aunt and cousin would just leave us alone so he could die. he said he wants to burn the house down. his words, "susunugin ko yung bahay para mamatay na lamg kami ni steby" (im going to burn the house down so me and steby could just die).

thats when i knew i no longer give a fuck about him. he wasnt my brother anymore. not family either. he never said anything like that before. only mentioning himself and not me. i realized, he sees me as "family" in a way that if he wants to die, i have to die with him.

ive always told him, i will never settle in our house and that i would leave eventually. because he didnt want to leave the house. he wanted to burn it down, himself, along with our pets. so he never mentioned me and i thought he wanted me to leave too.

i am not safe. i fear for my life. but i cannot leave. not right away. i am relying on my scholarship money, which i am already struggling to receive because of the pressures of maintaining certain grades. with current situation in the house, my mental state is obviously not good, i am struggling to stay focused with schoolworks.

i do not know how things will unfold tonight (currently 9pm), im not sure if hes asleep. hes a heavy sleeper so if my cousin does go back home tonight, he wont hear the door. and i can go to sleep without the fear of waking up to fearful screams or him being violent.

i do not have any official id except my student id. with my plans to apply for a job by the end of the semester (mid june) i should be able to have those by then. besides official ids and money, what else should i prepare for before i leave? i have no intentions of coming back ever again, once i do leave, so please let me know.

if anyone has advice on how i should deal with this or things i should do and prepare for before leaving, please let me know. also, what are stuff i should look out for when i start looking for a place to live (any advice is welcome but if anyone is filo and can give advice based on that, please)?

—

and he is sinking. he can feel it, in the depths of his soul and the marrow of his bones. he can feel the grief leaking in through the cracked walls of his heart, haphazardly put back together after shattering at the loss of you, his soulmate.

and the worst part, james knows, is that you aren’t there to see your shadows, together, dancing on the wall as the last dregs of daylight filter in through the blinds.

he can’t hug you when you’ve had a bad day anymore. he can’t kiss your forehead when you’re sick, he can’t make you breakfast in the morning, he can’t drive you to work when you’re running late, he can’t try and convince you to skip work and stay in with him anymore.

and when he lets the grief pour in, just for a moment, he catches himself mourning what could have been.

fourth of july ; sufjan stevens

Prior to posting her series, @/haeonniie reached out to me asking how I made my LCA graphics. As someone who enjoys supporting other writers, I shared that information freely, I had no reason not to. She later showed me her graphics. They were quite similar to LCA style, but at the time I didn't think too much of it since I assumed the overall series would still be different.

However, when she eventually posted the series, I noticed that the structural framework of the series was also very similar to LCA. Because of that, I privately asked her whether she could acknowledge that LCA was an inspiration. She replied saying that she used ChatGPT and asked it what type of structure would work for a web design, and that she just followed what it generated for both the graphics and structure (as previously mentioned in pt.1)

Lights, Camera, Action! was posted in October 2025. By The Hour was posted a few months later in January 2026, after she had already seen and studied my work. The similarities go beyond coincidence, but I haven't included every comparison below, you're welcome to take a look at both series yourself.

However, this didn't stop at By The Hour. Before she posted her collab series, she again reached out asking if she could credit me, stating the layout was coincidentally similar to By The Hour.

As shown above, I agreed at first, but after reflecting, I realised I wasn't comfortable with any reuse of my layouts at all, and communicated that. Her response was that both the By The Hour and GirlNextDoor Post Office (the collab) layouts were entirely her own. Which raises an obvious question, if the layouts were fully original, why was credit to me necessary in the first place? If By The Hour's layout was entirely her own as she claims, then crediting me for the collab series (which she said resembled By The Hour) still traces back to LCA regardless.

My mutual @taestulipss also noticed that haeon's previous theme bore a striking resemblance to hers. Prior to changing her theme, haeon had liked both rosy's pinned post and her masterlist, suggesting she had seen the theme before adopting a similar concept herself. Rosy has a bakery/patisserie themed blog, and haeon's previous theme followed the same concept, a food-based boutique with a similar branding style and comparable layout structure. Rosy was uncomfortable with the similarities, but didn't want to claim sole ownership over a bakery theme, so after a few days, she simply welcomed her instead. Given everything else in this post thus far, it's hard to ignore as part of a wider pattern.

Additionally, haeon's carrd was noted to be using the same premade template as rosy's, which was a free but relatively obscure layout that isn't easily found. While neither of them owns the template itself, the pattern of mirroring rosy's specific choices is hard to ignore in this context.

Lastly, another mutual @gentiliana noticed that haeon posted a #TEDDIEZ 'inspired' by her Taesan smau (#BLACKKATZ) without asking for permission beforehand. According to her, the two fics are highly similar.

While credit was given publicly in the author's note, taking significant inspiration from someone's work without asking first isn't okay, especially when the similarities run deep.

I want to be clear that this post was not made to ruin anyone or send hate her way. If you've read this far, I hope you understand why we felt the need to speak up. The creative spaces we've built here matter, and the work we put into our writing, layouts and blogs is what we're all proud of and hold dearly to us. All we ask is that those things are respected!

Thank you for reading!