This is a paper I wrote for my genre class. Thought you guys might appreciate it.
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A Soulja Boy interpolation and unabashed, blaring computerized synths drives That Kid’s track “Kiss Me Thru the Phone” where he relies on the nostalgic interpolation singing, “I just wanna kiss you / But I can't right now / So baby kiss me thru the phone.” Lyrics likes these and glitchy, distorted vocals and beats provide a unique listening experience that asks little of the listener in terms of content and expression while asking for contemplation and reflection regarding form. Hyperpop has become a community-based genre, and a space, for independent queer artists to express themselves and develop culture from the sidelines. The genre is attractive because of the tension between its queerly-nostalgic, kitsch lyrical content and avant-garde musical production.
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What is Hyperpop?
The microgenre has been covered by The New York Times and The Atlantic with the latter’s article title reading, “Noisy, Ugly, and Addictive.” Hyperpop as a genre began as a Spotify playlist whose relatively small following of about 450,000 currently that, according to The New York Times, followers add to their library at a rate rivaling that of some of the biggest playlists on the platform like “RapCaviar.” WXPN, a non-commercial, member-supported radio service of the University of Pennsylvania, describes hyperpop as “…a genre that takes modern mainstream pop concepts, crushes them up, spits them out, ingests them again, and spits them out again. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. But not an egregious one.” Maximalist and exaggerative, hyperpop takes the conventions of the pop genre and pushes them to its extreme. Resulting in “surrealist lyrics, overblown bass and high pitch vocals” and “Glitches, metallic sound synths and distorted vocals” (Lucas De Lellis da Silva). Hyperpop is a genre that defies the genre label in its transformation of other genres such as hip-hop, trap, rock, and punk. Its punk influence can also be seen with “its alignment with queerness, anti-capitalist and environmentalist beliefs raises questions on our current notions of technology and issues of representation.”
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The Paradox
Hyperpop music production is where it is most avant-garde. The genre imitates pop music and exaggerates it, pop music being an imitation in itself. In his essay, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” Clement Greenberg on the avant-garde says, “[According to] Aristotle, all art and literature are imitation, then what we have here is the imitation of imitating.” Greenberg describes Picasso paintings as avant-garde, where the reflection of the painting, the interpretation and deliberation on part of the audience, “are not immediately or externally present in Picasso's painting but must be projected into it by the spectator sensitive enough to react sufficiently to plastic qualities.” On the other hand, Greenberg (misattributing a painting to Repin) describes Repin as a kitsch artist. Greenberg says “the “reflected” effect having already been included in the picture, ready for the spectator's unreflective enjoyment.” Greenberg summarizes this point when he says, “If the avant-garde imitates the processes of art, kitsch, we now see, imitates its effects.” Both avant-garde and kitsch can be seen in hyperpop where the production is avant-garde, glitchy, distorted and experimental and the lyrics are kitsch, overt, and cliché.
There are class biases regarding high art (e.g. avant-garde) and low art (e.g. kitsch). On the material importance of class and aesthetics, Greenberg claims that

“No culture can develop without a social basis, without a source of stable income. And in the case of the avant-garde, this was provided by an elite among the ruling class of that society from which it assumed itself to be cut off, but to which it has always remained attached by an umbilical cord of gold. The paradox is real. And now this elite is rapidly shrinking” (8).

To Greenberg, and within the context of the time that his essay was published in 1961, the avant-garde belonged to the ruling class because they provided capital that allowed artists to survive and create the art that aligned with the taste of that class. However, because of the ubiquity in technology and specifically the accessibility of Digital Audio Workstations, hyperpop artists defy Greenberg’s expectations by being created and conceptualized by the working class, “a democratized option in the music industry” as Gazelle puts it.
On the effect the ruling class’s funding has on the artist, Greenberg says, “precisely because his content was determined in advance, the artist was free to concentrate on his medium. He needed not to be philosopher, or visionary, but simply artificer” (16). Being an artificer allowed artists to focus on their medium and its form. Because hyperpop music is not determined in advance by the ruling class, hyperpop artists instead must focus on form and content which has resulted in avant-garde production and a reliance on kitsch imagery in their lyrics.
Perhaps the most avant-garde, the acclaimed hyperpop song “ringtone remix [feat. Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito]” by 100 gecs demonstrates the paradox of being avant-garde and kitsch. The song displays a catchy hook with distorted sound effects and pitched up vocals, a rap passage over a rock instrumentation, an interlude asking Charli XCX to sing the hook again, and finally an outro that features whispers and a sparse electronic drums. The song pushes the boundaries of form. However, once again, the lyrics are kitschy; “spilling champagne” and “my boy’s got his own ringtone” which invokes the tradition of giving specific phone numbers particular ringtones popular in the 2000s.
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Nostalgic Lyrics
Queer artists in the hyperpop genre have relied on nostalgic lyrics. This queer sensibility is not new or unique to hyperpop. In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freeman posits, “This stubborn lingering of pastness (whether it appears as anachronistic style, as the reappearance of bygone events in the symptom, or as arrested development) is a hallmark of queer affect: a ‘‘revolution’’ in the old sense of the word, as a turning back” (8). Hyperpop follows the queer tradition of expressing pastness in its references to Sidekick phones, Ronald Reagan’s 2004 death, and overall, a Year 2000 aesthetic. Freeman continues,

““Heather Love’s Feeling Backward, for instance, astutely diagnoses the ‘‘backwards’’ emotions elaborated by artists for whom the birth of the modern homosexual identity-form was constraining rather than liberating: shame, passivity, melancholy, and recoil, to name but a few, were ways of refusing the progressive logic by which becoming ever more visible was correlated with achieving ever more freedom” (8).

Hyperpop lyrics largely reminisces the 2000s, which goes against the typical notion of queerness valuing progressiveness and the striving for more freedom. The “backwards” emotions such as shame feel constraining to the modern queer-identifying person; nostalgia allows for them to escape that label to a time where things seem simpler, especially for the Gen-Z artists that make up the genre. In other words, Freeman is saying that “the discipline of ‘‘timing’’ engenders a sense of being and belonging that feels natural” (18). Because queer-identifying people face shame, they rely on a sense of time and timing that mirrors their marginalized lives which is also echoed in the glitchy vocals and musical production.
The genre also does not bend to the musical trends of the moment. A hyperpop artists does not need to constantly update their sound to match the current sonic landscapes because they are creating music that exaggerates a particular decade. Pastness allows for these artists to resist the “commodity-time of speedy manufacture and planned obsolescence,” (Freeman 9) aligning with the anti-capitalist values of the genre.
Nostalgia and kitsch are related. For example, even people that did not experience the 2000s the way Gen Z experienced it can relate and empathize with hyperpop lyrics because they are kitsch. In her essay Stephanie Brown says,

“These [kitsch] objects not only anchor the viewer's memory of a time that is past but also inspire "memories" of an era whose collective Zeitgeist has been so encapsulated as to be readily available, prepackaged, even to those whose individual experiences did not include firsthand knowledge of the phenomena of an earlier decade. The effect—to condense, flatten, and homogenize the discontinuous experiences of a heterogeneous group of people and then to sell these experiences back to them as if they were genuine—is… the inevitable result of the late-capitalist predilection for periodization…” (40).

This analysis reveals that kitsch is context dependent. For example, profile avatars, big computers, the “blue screen of death” are all imagery that one may find in cover art for a hyperpop album that also represent a 2000s aesthetic. One may find this flavor of American 2000s memorabilia nostalgic, and another may find them completely meaningless if they are not aware of the context that those objects existed in, the connotation they carry for the artists, or the effect that these depictions have on its intended audience.
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Hyperpop’s Attraction
The hyperpop genre has a tension that can be stated as a capitalist predilection for its kitschy lyrics and an anti-capitalist predilection for its musical production. An example of this is Charli XCX’s recent song “Club classics” whose vapid lyrics convey little to nothing making it easy to consume, with a chorus repeating the lines “When I go to the club, I wanna hear those club classics / Club classics, club, club classics.” However, the production exaggerates the production conventions of traditional pop through minimalist moments of technologic vocals overlaid on a wobbling bass sound effect, a stuttering vocal in the background with orchestral synths at another moment, and shrill harmonies dotting the backend of the track.
Perhaps these lyrics are attractive exactly because they are “beyond the realm of “good taste.”” Paralleling kitsch, camp provides a supplementary set of standards to view art, not as good or bad, but as having meaning or being pure artifice. Brown states, “Camp is a sly celebration of bad taste and vulgarity from a position of privilege” (50). Brown gives an example of a position of privilege as men doing drag; them being men, even if queer, gives them the ability to dress as women and remain men and “enjoy a hegemonic superiority” (50). Perpendicular to camp, kitsch allows a consumer to enjoy art from the position of the underprivileged. Brown also states that enjoying kitsch is like it “is there to entertain us on the basest, most compromised of levels… Junk, like the drunk at the wedding, can get away with doing or saying anything because, by its very appearance, it is already in disgrace.”
The other relational dimension of the attraction to the genre is the rebellion that it provides listeners. Brown writes, “today's consumers look to kitsch consumption as a way of rejecting an aesthetic hierarchy forced upon them by economically determined and class-bound interests.” Listening and enjoying hyperpop for its lyrical content is a kind of revolt from the ruling class’s distinctions of what high and low art are. Hyperpop is both high and low art according to the ruling class. It is preoccupied, plays, and breaks form; in Greenberg’s words, it imitates the processes of art. It also is cliché and overt in its lyrical content, imitating effect. It is through the ambiguation that allows listeners to commit to appreciating it for its high art value, its low art value, or both.
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The Future of Hyperpop
However, as the genre grows and opportunities befall hyperpop artists, it has been exploited. Greenberg says, “Capitalism in decline finds that whatever of quality is still capable of producing becomes almost invariably a threat to its own existence” (21). This is evident with artists like Camila Cabello (one of the most listened to artists of today with a powerful label backing her) making a genre switch from pop/Latin pop to hyperpop with her first single “I LUV IT” featuring Playboi Carti off her upcoming album. Other than being poorly received and deemed a Charli XCX rip off by hyperpop fans, Camila Cabello capitalizes and therefore, strips the genre of its underground roots, making even the production of the track redundant. “I LUV IT” is an imitation of an imitation of an imitation. If we were to take this song as a sign, an omen, for the genre, hope for hyperpop shall remain elusive.

For those who have been following the mass media headlines and don't have much experience with the real estate industry in CA, they assume:

• "Agents won't need to get paid anymore"
• "I can negotiate commissions"
• "I don't need an agent"
• "Agents won't be making 6%"

The list of claims from the novice public population goes on and on...
First and foremost, commissions have ALWAYS been negotiable. In all the new contracts coming to the state of CA, you will see this written repeatedly, so much that it will become embedded in your mind.
The NAR lawsuit, was nothing but a pure money grab by attorneys. Anyone with actual knowledge of the case and what's happening will tell you the same thing. Why do I say that? Well, for starters, the plaintiffs in the case all have a common theme - They signed a listing agreement. On those listing agreements/contracts are the terms, commissions, etc. We are all grown adults, if you cannot read the terms of a contract you are physically signing, that's a problem. If you cannot comprehend the terms of the contract you signed, that's a problem. If you don't agree with the terms and conditions of the contract you signed and you did not speak up to either question, counter or negotiate it, that's a problem. To then go an file a lawsuit because you did one or all of the above, is the definition of contradiction. That's what happened in the case. It was a quick open and close, attorneys saw the big dollar signs and moved it along without any proper defense from the defendants. When you sign an agreement/contract, you are acknowledging that you reviewed and accept EVERYTHING in that agreement/contract. There's no going back on an agreement, unless there's a specific term written into the agreement, likely would state an addendum would need to ratified by both parties to change anything.
So what's the results?
The ruling stated that the MLS needs to remove the buyer's agent co-operative compensation from the MLS. In Real Estate, specifically in California, you don't see 6% commissions, I've been in Real Estate nearly 10 years, do business in the Bay Area and LA, I've never or heard 6%. 5% has been the norm and commissions have ALWAYS been negotiable. The structure of commissions thus far have been the listing agent and seller agree on a commission that's compensated to the listing agent and to the buyer's agent - but the listing brokerage technically is collect the entire amount and distributing the buyer's agent commission to the buyer's brokerage at closing. So for instance:

• Listing Brokerage collects 5% from the sale of the property and offers 2.5% buyer's brokerage co-operative compensation. Very simple.

So now, that the buyer's brokerage co-operative compensation will not longer be a thing, the public thinks buyer's agents are suddenly going to be working for free or a very low amount. Real Estate agents are independent contractors, we don't make any money unless we close transactions, there's many fees involved which the public are unaware about & no, good agents are not focused on the dollar amount, they are focused on volume and doing right by their clients.
Sellers will still be able to compensate a buyer's agent, no one can tell a seller they can't. The structure of how it'll be processed slightly changes. There's various ways, which I won't go into in detail here and share my strategies since there may be other agents lurking here. These strategies, along with other new practices is what's going to separate the agents who stay in the business and the thousands who will be moving onto other endeavors.
Moving forward starting August 17th - Those buyers out there who don't commit to an agent and want to pull around multiple at a time, those days are done. One bad practice that majority of agents have is they never developed proper execution of the buyebroker representation agreement. Whether it be non-exclusive or exclusive, majority of agents never implemented it and the public didn't know anything else on how business is suppose to run. I sit on the minority side of agents who actually does implement the buyebrokerage agreement. August 17th, every single agent will have the specific policy that they need to sign agreements with every buyer they work with. Every buyer out there, before you can even go look at a house, you need to sign an agreement with an agent. A buyer won't be permitted to see a home without an agency agreement. This is all thanks to the lawsuit settlement.
This makes it more difficult for the buyers at the end of the day. Why? To begin with, a buyer needs to find an agent and commit to them. With the agreements that buyers will have to sign, there will specifically be a section regarding the compensation due to the buyer's agent. You as the buyer will technically be on the hook of that compensation to your buyer's agent, if the seller is not willing to compensate. There are various strategies here which a savvy and experienced Agent can ensure their buyer clients won't need to come out of pocket to compensate the buyer's agent for their services, again, these strategies is what's going to separate the majority of the agents from the ones at the top.
There's additional conversations and paperwork that needs to and will be made at every initial conversation between a buyer and their potential new agent. Along with listing agents and their sellers. The groups behind this change want to believe this creates more "transparency" in the Real Estate business. It actually does the opposite. It becomes a huge unknown and guessing game about compensation to agents from the buyer perspective and also sellers. Buyers will be going into the process unsure about whether or not they will need to end up paying their buyer's agent or will the seller be able to cover the fees from the proceeds. Sellers will not be sure about how much they can potentially be netting from the sell of the property, because a buyer's agent with the best offer could be requesting either a very high or standard commission. There's no improvement towards transparency in this. We're literally going backwards in the industry. This is what so many people just don't have any idea about.
The structure of commissions is just one area of change we are going to experience. Open houses will be different, every buyer will need to sign an acknowledgment document upon entry. Sellers may offer "concessions" - so that's the new word instead of "commissions". Literally the industry is going through technical changes with procedures and contracts which at the core does not improve anything for the consumers. I guarantee more people will feel frustrated and confused about buying or selling with these changes coming soon.
Again, commissions have ALWAYS been negotiable. Redfin has always had their low cost services, which don't produce good results, as a seller, you leave well over $100k on the table. As a buyer, you won't know what a great agent experience feels like. Along with those flat fee services, those are even worse. Attorneys are out there too, all they do is push paper along, that's it. They don't have a clue about Real Estate. All of those services have always been available, if they were any good, it would have taken over the industry a long time ago. Clearly, it's not. Just remember, like anything in life, you get what you pay for. Don't expect to have great service and low ball your agent. There's no sense to battle over 1% of agent fees, when the agent is going to be making your life easier throughout the process, negotiate on your behalf, cover all your bases to minimize potential legal troubles and provide the highest level of advisory. The great agents out there, are well worth what they request for compensation. For years, I've been negotiating deals for my buyers $100,000 - $250,000 below seller's desired prices on average. I jump through hoops of fire for my clients to serve them as best as possible, working around the clock, at all hours, matter of fact, it's currently 2:37am as I write this... And for my sellers, I have been negotiating sales on their property anywhere from $100,000 - $500,000 above their expectations (not list price, big difference, a list price is nothing but a marketing strategy, keep that in mind). I specialize with investments, have been doing this for nearly a decade. Time and time again, I've located deals for my investor clients/partners which literally no one else saw other than myself. I say that with full confidence, backed by facts. There's been many deals, sitting on the market, available for anyone to purchase, available to negotiate to the best of your ability and no one did so, no one saw it, other than myself. Which resulted in significant profits within a short amount of time. The ability to foresee the future value of a property in the market is not something anyone can do. The ability to envision a renovated property from a torn down home, is not common.
When you break it down, the agent fees are minuscule in comparison to what a great advisor is able to do.

In the 19, nearly 20, years I have lived my life, I was raised a Christian by American conservatives in a middle class environment and am fortunate to experience countless memories of joy, laughter, and growth with (mostly) everybody I have met. Each memory with the people in my life holds a special place in my heart, and I will forever cherish the bond we built.
The thing is that until the end of eighth grade, I had a strange obsession with East Asia. Looking back, it was very embarrassing and I condemn my parents for enabling me to become a weeaboo (by “weeaboo”, I mean “a person who is overly obsessed with East Asian culture, especially Japanese culture, to the point that they fetishize the culture in an unhealthy way”). I was the textbook example of a weeaboo who had a terrible case of “yellow fever” (sexual preference towards East Asians). Loving the image of East Asian culture without having any real idea what it stood for and seeing the East as a utopia, my fetishization of East Asia, especially Japan, was born out of the shame I have with the Western culture I was raised in. I never felt like I could fit in with my Western peers who I often looked down upon and did not want to be associated with. It got to the point that I became unsatisfied with my home town, my physical appearance, and even my closest friends. This combined with the surge in anime, K-pop, and other media on the internet really got me hooked and believing really fetish-y things about the Sinosphere. I hate being reminded of it and have tried to move on.
However, I am thankful for my exposure to Eastern culture, though it was through a very bastardized, Westernized lens. I am grateful for my exposure, even though it started out with something as intellectually undemanding as Vocaloid music (songs sung by a Japanese voice synthesizer). The best part about the exposure was that it helped me leave Christianity and join Buddhism at age 11, which greatly helped with my mental health considering I was experiencing suicidal thoughts since the age of 8. Though I had awful misunderstandings of Buddhism in the beginning and still do not really have a Buddhist teacher, I am glad that I have the resources to connect myself with other Buddhists and take refuge in the Triple Gem.
As I left my gross misconceptions of the Sinosphere behind back when I was 14 while still having a healthy interest in it, my eyes were eventually opened to perils which threaten not only the homelands of Buddhism (East, South, and Southeast Asia), but also the sustainability of modern humans. These two perils are Western culture and capitalist fascism.
The West exoticizes and misrepresents Buddhism and the culture of its home, the East, as a whole. I am ashamed to be born in a culture where this was encouraged, which I am worried could lead me to fetishizing Eastern culture again.
But what I know for sure is that the West’s hyperindividualism is harming people, both those whose lands are invaded and its own people. This combined with the West’s growing rejection of education, including that of the knowledge the West itself has given to the world for humanity’s benefit, makes it clear that it is lacking some of the Sinosphere’s cultural strengths. Everybody should hold collectivism and education to the same degree that the Sinosphere does, otherwise we would be left with an unsustainable society that would destroy itself.
There is nothing wrong with speaking Western languages, eating Western foods, watching (most types of) Western media, wearing Western clothes, and especially nothing wrong with using Western inventions, but we are now seeing that the West’s hyperindividualism and rejection of education is destructive and spreading like a cancer.
It is only Buddhists who make an effort to assimilate to the East (had they not been born into it) who can see the West with its hyperindividualism and uneducatedness, promoted by its creation of its spreading ideologies such as capitalist fascism and social Darwinism, for what it really is: a cancer. I can now see the direction the United States, the most populated and powerful country in the West, is going due to the rise of ultra-capitalism and/or fascism supporters.
Rarely the phrase “Western”, as in “formed by the combined foundations of Greco-Roman civilization and Western Christianity” (Gabbe), raised positive thoughts in my mind since I learned about it shortly after discovering Buddhism. “Western” when used in the context of medicine is an exception to this, but we are now seeing more and more Westerners dishonor the progress their ancestors made towards modern, mainstream, dare I say, Western medicine as they fall for anti-vaccine and anti-mask pseudoscience.
Nowadays, some who use the word in a derogatory context are uneducated reactionaries that bash anything and everything Western, yet hypocritically promote the Western political ideology of fascism. A strength that a majority (though now a decreasing number) of Western countries have is their progressivism, supporting scientific advancements, women’s rights, racial equality, and the LGBT+. However, this is not just becoming less common; being a progressive Westerner is not enough, not enough to end Western imperialism, to save the sacred truths taught to us by the Shakyamuni Buddha, or to empower the working class.
Although I never fully approved of Western culture after my weeaboo phase ended, my early teen self still ended up falling into the anti-social justice warrior side of YouTube that I now recognized hindered my understanding of what actually ruined my country, the United States of America. I still did not feel comfortable calling myself a Westerner but mainly because the West did not widely accept Buddhism and has several times in its history persecuted Buddhists. At the same time, I was deceived by a bastardized form of Buddhism common among Westerners (known as “secular Buddhism”, which picks and chooses aspects of the Buddha’s teachings instead of accepting them as a whole), so I was a bit more of the classic, stereotypical atheist neckbeard who fetishized the East up until 2020. Since then, my views became more progressive similar to those of American liberals and I denounced traditionalist Western beliefs, but like the average American liberal, I did not see Western culture, both traditional and progressive, as the peril I now see it. It was not until around the end of 2023 when I discovered the Western problem.
It was a slow burn that started with my discovery of Buddhists on the internet talking about how the West misrepresented Buddhism to appeal to “self-help” consumerists, Christians, and New Age followers. In the Westerner, I originally saw only a person who followed harmless customs, traditions, and other norms that came from a part of the world where Buddhism was not the dominant religion (if you could even call the non-theistic dharma as taught by the Gautama Buddha a religion). And so, I did not believe that Western civilization needed to fall for the safety of the dharma, let alone for its own people. After all, I thought to myself, the West has contributed so much to science and the modern world as we know it. I still believe to this day that there are no superior cultures and that each one simply has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, some of which are only subjective. However, while looking through Buddhist forums, I was shocked to hear about the West’s pollution of Buddhism and my knowledge on Buddhism skyrocketed as I learned that I fell victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect. I started reading sutras and immersing myself with Buddhism by listening to those who have much more experience than I do. There are hardly any Buddhists in my community and the only Buddhist center within reach is a New Kadampa Tradition meditation center (FYI: the New Kadampa Tradition must be avoided since it has a reputation for financially exploiting members and its monastics have allegations of drug trafficking and sexual abuse), so books and the internet are all I have left.
Practicing Buddhism in the West is nearly impossible without a community, without a Buddhist teacher, without any resources written by Eastern Buddhists. Reddit user u/Tendai-Student, a “lay Tendai Student [sic] with aspirations to become a Priest [sic]” states the following:
It is exceedingly challenging for a Westerner who is interested in Buddhism to find reliable information. Bookstores' Buddhist sections are rife with myths about the religion (we will come to some of these misconceptions below). Buddhism-related disinformation abounds in university classes. Misinformation about Buddhism abounds in publications with a Buddhist theme. Even Buddhism-related english-speaking [sic] Reddit boards are prone to carry false information.
Buddhism is constantly distorted in the same way: to make it more agreeable to Abrahamic faiths(especially Christianity in the west) [sic]. To imply that it is subject to Western standards, Western religion, and Western consumerism and materialism.
…Asian teachers are frequently excluded from English-speaking Buddhist places (meditation centers, university forums, periodicals). Asians make up the majority of Buddhists in the United States, despite the fact that popular images of Buddhism in the West make it appear otherwise. In the minds of Westerners, Buddhism is a religion of white converts. They don't even pay attention to the odd lack of Asians in some Buddhist areas. (u/Tendai-Student)
It is no wonder that I went through a phase when I was a weeaboo with “yellow fever”. The Westerner commodifies and commercializes these Buddhist practices and East Asian customs like they do with several other cultures. Its misuse and stealing of Buddhism is the worst because its teachings are for us to end suffering by ridding ourselves of the three poisons: greed, ignorance, and hatred (which the Westerner promotes).
My realization of this drew me away from the West, similar to when my obsession with the East began. The difference is that my interest in the East now is not because of a fantasy born out of misguidance, especially not a sexual one. I now know that there is more to the East than its pop culture. But I cannot help thinking that none of this would have happened and I would better understand Buddhism had I been born to and raised by Buddhists in East Asia, or even a majority Buddhist country in South or Southeast Asia.
However, the possibility of a cycle starting with a yo-yoing fetishization of the East makes me anxious. When I realized what I was doing at first was fetishization, I did further research and found out that the West is to blame for its portrayal of the East in its media. This in turn makes me denounce the West and brings me back towards my obsession with the Sinosphere, which could lead to more fetishization.
Despite this, I am glad that at the very least, my interest is more than just wanting to live a kawaii lifestyle, hoping to have a “submissive housewife who will look young forever”, or all that neckbeard squick. I do have to say that there is something else that is drawing me towards the Sinosphere, not to mention that it is the region where Buddhism is dominant (the same is true to a lesser extent with the Indosphere). Even though I am not a huge fan of tradition since I am very progressive, when a region’s culture gets something right, they get it right. In addition to Buddhist values, the Sinosphere holds education and collectivism to a high degree. It is no wonder I find their people so much more intelligent and caring than people from my culture.
It is common knowledge that countries such as Japan, China, South Korea, and Singapore have the highest average IQs. To add to this (unbeknownst to many), even less developed countries, e.g. Mongolia, with high Buddhist populations around the same region, have average IQs higher than developing and undeveloped nations outside the region. The most agreed upon reason for this is cultural factors rather than genetic or economic factors. To conclude, Buddhism combined with values in the East Asian cultural sphere creates the best “brains” to represent humanity, thus the West should make way for them, especially considering the East’s superior collectivism.
Of course cultures do not stay the same forever because they change over time. One big thing that is different now in the Sinosphere and Indosphere (the latter I am mentioning because it is where Buddhism came from, though it is not as dominant in the cultural region as it was) is that they are generally much more patriarchal and anti-LGBT+ than they were up until the last several centuries. However, Buddhism treats same-sex relations and being transgender the same as heterosexuality and being cisgender (preferring celibacy among monastics, though depending on the school of Buddhism, those in the monastic order may be treated as their birth gender, even if they are transgender), and in addition, the Buddha taught that women are just as capable of attaining enlightenment as men. Even outside of Buddhism, there are records of same-sex relations as early as the Shang dynasty in China and the temple walls in Khajuraho, India depict homosexual activity. As for feminism, China was matrilineal until the Han dynasty era, when Confucianism and filial piety became mainstream in the area, while India, home to over 100 different ethnic communities, has had a few matriarchal and egalitarian societies pre-European colonization. In the modern era, numerous people in the two cultural spheres are becoming more supportive of gender equality and the LGBT+, which in some cases may be due to Westernization (not that it redeems it) or simply the individuals’ progressive political views not influenced by Western culture.
What has stayed the same for the most part, besides Buddhism, is the Sinosphere’s and Indosphere’s value of collectivism in honor-shame societies and the former cultural sphere’s emphasis on education; this is what Westerners, as well as people all over the world, need for themselves. If the West is going to fall due to hyperconsumerism, late stage capitalism, and uneducated leaders, those living in the West would be better off joining Buddhism and assimilating to the East. Arguably, the best way to do this is to move to a majority Buddhist country, preferably one in the Sinosphere (its core countries being China, Japan, the Koreas, Taiwan, and Vietnam). Leave everybody you know from your home behind, especially non-Buddhists. Just to make things clear, Westerners are not necessarily evil and it is not their fault they were raised in a Western culture, but having these people in your life will hold you back from collectivism, quality education free of anti-intellectual quackery, and above all, understanding the dharma.
After you have left everybody in your life and started anew, you can immerse yourself in the culture. Again, abandoning Western food, media, clothing, and especially inventions and scientific breakthroughs is very unnecessary. Your main focus is reprogramming your mind to think like a person (specifically a Buddhist person) in the Sinosphere/Indosphere, utilizing the high educational standards, putting the collective over the individual, and taking refuge in the Triple Gem. Before moving, though, it is best to make yourself familiar with the customs and learn the language of the place you are moving to. To aid your assimilation, it would not hurt to start dating one of the locals who strongly identifies with the culture, regardless of their race. Someone living there who is not ethnically East, South, or Southeast Asian who is still very involved in the culture would be very helpful to your assimilation as one who is ethnically East, South, or Southeast Asian (I am clarifying this to discourage racial fetishization). This may be difficult as you would have to win over approval from their parents, let alone convince them to see you as another Easterner, but if you manage to do so, that would be fantastic. To make things easier, you could plan to move to a country where people treat women as equals and are relatively accepting of the LGBT+ so you would not have to worry about gender roles or whatever. Think of places in the Sinosphere such as Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, or if you are planning on going to the Indosphere (which is not too big of a step down) since they did give us Buddhism after all, Nepal and Thailand. Your most important goal, however, is to rewire your brain to think in a more Sinic or Indic way and be more in touch with Buddhism.
You can hardly consider yourself a Westerner if you manage to do so, being Western only in your country of origin (and possibly race as well). I am definitely not like those other “people” from the West who strongly cling to Western culture because they just do not understand. Western cultural merit is almost solely from the proxy of our ancestors’ inventions, scientific discoveries, and political revolutions. Considering that the West is being brought towards the wrong direction in the modern era, we should get out of there culturally, if not physically, until it all hits the fan.
If the West continues its defilement of the rest of the world, when it falls, it will bring it all down with it. We must not lose or else everybody loses.
This pressure has a good side; because the bigger the great threat becomes, the more we will push ourselves to assimilate and raise children to fight for us. Considering the infectability of Western anti-intellectualism and “main character syndrome”, how could our Western peers know better? Buddhism is not a proselytizing “religion”, so our best bet is eliminating the promoter of the three poisons, the Westerner (especially the Christian Westerner), from our own lives. How it will run to us as its society collapses under itself and we welcome it to assimilate but say “we told you so”! The older I get, the better I know the Westerner. The better I know the Westerner, the easier it gets to excuse hostility against them, especially from the Sinosphere.
From my perspective, the ones to blame are not the angry, low-middle class white males in the rural United States nor the boba conservative bananas and right-wing coconuts who suck up to the West’s biggest scum, but rather the ones who have brainwashed them to fall for chauvinism, reactionarism, and laissez faire capitalism.
Realizing this, I am now closely investigating the sources of these beliefs which make up the foundation of social Darwinism and, when combined with totalitarian thinking, capitalist fascism. This is after I noticed that these systems are unsustainable and would destroy themselves from the inside out. The slow, painful destruction of communities who fall victim to them are well known to me. If one looks carefully, they can see the consequences that have been unfolding since the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic. You may wonder: were the founders aware of this? My guess would be that they were not but were evil nonetheless because they were too selfish to think about the future, their descendants.
If this is the case, then it is the duty of us, the opponents of these ideologies, to spread the word faster than the ideologies are currently spreading in the West. It is hard for me to believe it is not the case considering that both Western political ideologies are fundamentally reactionary. Besides, I doubt they would want civilization as we know it to collapse.
I have a social Darwinist as a maternal uncle who sometimes meets with my parents, maternal grandfather, and younger brother and with his political conversations, often sourced from flawed studies, Russian news, and 4chan, I can easily study the principles of its theories. Both of my parents are also conservatives who support Trump and other immoral American politicians. Being raised by the two of them, I bet I could disguise myself as a Western right-wing traditionalist, maybe even a social Darwinist, since I know the way they speak, to whom they flock to, and how to make them give one their full attention. It would probably be easy to do this as some right-wing grifters can fool American right-wing audiences into thinking that they share the same beliefs (e.g. Thomas MacDonald).
Their kind are gullible because they do not listen to fact checkers and often do not do research to see if who they are listening to really practices what they preach.
Even though there are Westerners who are not like this, the West cannot coexist with Buddhism, let alone the cultures where it is dominant, as the West ruled by colonizing tirthikas and it will likely always be for as long as it lasts. And just because their culture is not as viable as the one founded on Buddhist, Sinic, or even Indic values does not give them the right to imperialize the rest of the world and bring it down with them. We can welcome the Westerner willing to change its ways, turn it into one of an Easterner, and have its culture go through a quick and painless demise, or the Westerner can continue its power trip, destroy everything it touches along with itself, and society will suffer a slow and painful death. This is what the conclusion that I have come to so far as I examine capitalist fascism and Westerners’ connection to it.
The Western doctrine of capitalist fascism rejects an aspect of maitrī, fulfilling beings’ basic needs, and substitutes it for a privilege towards the bourgeoisie and the exploitation of the workers’ labor (also known as Vergegenständlichung or “objectification”). Thus it denies the worth of the collective, only concerns itself with greedy individuals, and thus is immoral. Unlike what the non-Buddhist capitalist wants people to believe, all beings have an altruistic Buddha nature, but it is corrupted, being difficult to notice as it has only conditions without a beginning (listed in the Avijjā Sutta). Abandoning capitalism, both fascist and non-fascist, gives power to the people as it ensures a more guaranteed right to life instead of having not even one thousand billionaires own more than half of Earth’s population combined, more than each one of those billionaires could ever spend in their lifetimes.
Should the Westerner, especially one who pushes capitalist fascism, strengthen its grip on humanity, it can be said that it would make its own naraka.
And so I stand by my plan and encourage others to do the same because it is in the name of the Unsurpassable Enlightened One. By protecting our kind against the Westerner, we are defending the Triple Gem.
If it is not already clear, the disapproval I feel towards the societal values and prevailing norms of the West has led me to question my place in this environment. I believe that meaningful change can only be fostered if the West is put into its place and the Sino-Buddhist East motivates our minds.
In Vietnam, where the culture is predominantly Sinic with some Indic aspects and little European influence, we can see the promotion of quality education, collectivism, and Buddhism (practiced by a forgivable 15% of the population), very unlike the nearby country of the Philippines. In the Philippines, its citizens cling to the Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic culture brought to the country by American and Spaniard imperialists. The effects of this are very clear in their average IQs (Vietnam: 89.53 vs. Philippines: 81.64) and PISA scores (Vietnam: 1403 vs. Philippines: 1058). They are both developing countries in Southeast Asia that were colonized by the West, but because Vietnam kept its culture more pure and stuck to Buddhism (or at least Sinic philosophies), its people are better educated compared to the nearby Westernized countries in a similar economic situation.
In short, Westernization leads to the following:

1. The native culture becomes diluted
2. If Western thinking intrudes, mental degeneration takes hold of the native population and its society slowly degrades along with the West itself as it eats itself from the inside out

Those who cause this to happen must be stopped, especially those who endanger Buddhism. We must not wait for the fruition of their karma for their sacrilege of the Tathagata’s teachings because by then it would be too late, and even if it is instant karma, every bodhisattva’s job is to end suffering.
Those who spread the harmful ideologies bring themselves and others away from the Buddha’s word are polluting humanity by having them join their rat race that will only end in their own demise. They are leading to the ruin of many and thus, I do not consider them to be human but instead parasites.
There is a disgraceful Western belief that for a short amount of time was not held by the majority but is now very pervasive in the West and also is the foundation of reactionarism, chauvinism, and capitalism in all cultures. It says: “My individual rights matter the most and freedom means my right to violate the rights of others.”
This Western babble is followed by numerous all around the world and sows disharmony in societies where it becomes the norm. This idea provides basis for several types of Westerners, including but not limited to:

• the “Karen”; a middle-aged, entitled, often white and anti-mask/anti-vaccine female who makes trivial complaints
• the “Chud”; a racist, misogynistic, right-wing male (usually young) who browses 4chan everyday and has a high likelihood of becoming a mass shooter
• the dayangma (Hanzi: 大洋马); a sex-obsessed young adult Western female, majority white but sometimes POC, is conventionally attractive (to Westerners), sleeps around, and in some cases creates spawn that do not know their father(s)
• the angry white male; self-explanatory, right-wing and traditionalist (sometimes a social Darwnist or capitalist fascist), commonly rural, evangelical Christian and have never seen a POC before
• the “Trad Wife”; a prudish, sometimes uneducated, female who lets Western males walk all over it and raises spawn who are likely to become angry whites
• the New Agehippy; generally a teenager or young adult, a well-meaning but poorly educated white liberal or social democrat who misappropriates Buddhism and appeases Muslims
• the AmeriKKKan fathegrandfather; a middle-aged to elderly, chauvinist male with children, sometimes also grandchildren, and is unconcerned about social justice and similarly to the “Karen”, falls for pseudoscientific conspiracy theories
• the neckbearded otaku (Hiragana: おたく); a hairy white male with “yellow fever” and mediocre hygiene, for the most part subreddit/Discord server moderators who stalk and kidnap East Asian ladies (if not teenage girls)

The growth of these groups is evidence of the degradation of Western culture, showing that it must retire as the dominant culture and make way for the much more sustainable East. Once the manuṣya realm on Earth is completely tainted by the West, Buddhas can no longer arise in the world because the dharma would be known by nobody and the Vinaya are forgotten or destroyed.
The future generation will not remember the dharma unless we halt the growth of the parasitic culture that promotes overconsumption, hyperindividualism, and anti-intellectualism.
The Westerner has a remarkable contrast to the Sinic or Indic. The Westerner has a grasp on this world so strong with its weaponry since the 16th century, using force to disrupt the traditional lives of whatever native people it saw, safe for those in a few countries (even though some of those countries are still being Westernized). The Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish built colonies from the Americas to Southeast Asia. The kingdoms were blessed with powerful militaries, strong economies, stable governments, and advanced technology that allowed their cultures to spread. But after half a millennium and looking back, was any of this really earned? And is the Westerner’s conquest over yet?
Since the Great Schism of Christianity, the Westerner trained itself for roughly one thousand years. It trained itself in several aspects, but it forgot an important piece, the dharma. The cunning Westerner, blessed with advancements, used them to tyrannize other peoples on a scale never before seen. This was the beginning of the Latter Day of the Dharma. The dharma is declining because of the savage Westerner. And so, it leeched off of any people it got a hold of, including predominantly Buddhist peoples. Even during the decolonization of the 20th century, fundamentalist Christianity spread and threatened the dharma. To make matters worse, previously Buddhist peoples clung to Christianity as taught by their colonizers; the French in Vietnam and the Spanish and Americans in the Philippines. To this day, the Philippines is a lost cause along with its majority Muslim neighbors in Maritime Southeast Asia. The cunning Westerner turned the Filipino against us and now Buddhists make up only 2% of the Philippines’ population. Now, the Westerner sees Buddhism as nothing more than an aesthetic, a self-help lifestyle, or a decoration that they can commercialize and cherry pick aspects to integrate into their religion or lack thereof.
It is excellent for someone from the West to learn the dharma as this will turn them into a more compassionate and wise person, but they must not enforce the Western gaze onto it and discard parts of the Shakyamuni Buddha’s words they do not like. To be fair, some aspects of Buddhism would be nearly impossible for a Westerner to understand unless they assimilate.
Buddhism is not materialist or blind belief without evidence and it belongs to the East, so stop pretending to be something you are not while pushing stereotypes of Asian Buddhists.
However, even though Buddhism is not materialist or very in line with the Western worldview, it is uniquely human. Walpola Rahula, a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and writer explains it this way:
Among the founders of religions the Buddha (if we are permitted to call him the founder of a religion in the popular sense of the term) was the only teacher who did not claim to be other than a human being, pure and simple. Other teachers were either God, or his incarnations in different forms, or inspired by him. The Buddha was not only a human being; he claimed no inspiration from any god or external power either. He attributed all his realization, attainments and achievements to human endeavour and human intelligence. A man and only a man can become Buddha. Every man has within himself the potentiality of becoming a Buddha, if he so wills it and endeavours. We can call the Buddha a man par excellence. He was so perfect in his 'human-ness' that he came to be regarded later in popular religion almost as 'super-human'. Man's position, according to Buddhism, is supreme. Man is his own master, and there is no higher being or power that sits in judgment over his destiny. (Rahula 3)
How could one even consider the Westerners who diluted Buddhism human themselves at this point? If it were not for them, Westerners may have a better understanding of the teachings of the “man par excellence”. We are lucky that the only Westerners who necessarily see us as inferior are white nationalists and fundamentalist Christians, otherwise the Westerner could have committed a genocide that would have left millions of us dead. Westerners are competitive beings, so they rarely act in concord towards each other. It is only when there is something that draws them together or away from a common danger.
If everybody on Earth becomes a Westerner, they would wallow in their shamelessness and would have nobody left to exploit except for each other until they destroy themselves.
Until they are the only ones left, they will vilify and exploit anything non-Western until they only have each other, then leading to a chaotic world of undignified militaries, economic inequality, corrupt governments, and little or no innovations.
Unless the Westerner considers even the slightest of inspiration from the East, it will continue to follow hyperindividualism and have apathy towards its education. That is why the West is falling. Those from the West who are smart enough to realize that the West’s flaws that it spreads are deciding that the West is not worth maintaining and its resignation is overdue. If those from the West abandon it to assimilate to the East, it would make the West’s death quicker but more dignified.
This is more than a fad but rather the realization that Western society would be best being a passing fad itself. The West gave us great inventions, food, clothes, scientific discoveries, etc. and once it is gone, the East can pick up where it left off just fine.
We will never abandon the Triple Gem because we recognize it to be more than a spiritual, exotic aesthetic or trend. To do so would make us just like those others in the West who Asian Buddhists look down upon. When the time is right, each and every one of us will surround ourselves with the people who know the dharma better than anyone you have met in the West and we can finally be at their level. We shall be Western only in our country of origin and/or race, but in every other way, we will be Easterners; Buddhist Easterners who will take back what rightfully belongs to us.
When we (and hopefully Buddhists outside of both the Eastern and the Western world) do this, consumerism will lose some of its biggest prey. Even though it may not seem like it at first considering we are abandoning everyone we have ever known, we are doing our ancestors a favor by joining the culture that strives towards the end of suffering. We will be leaving our cultures’ ways of thinking behind, but doing this will save face for our lineage, especially the Western lineage as we would be preventing the creation of more “Karens”, “Chuds”, dayangmas, “neckbeards”, and other degenerates. We will not be annoying dorky nerds and certainly not “neckbeards” who are overly obsessed with and fetishize the culture but people making an effort to get closer to the dharma and surrender to the East.
Although we are collectivists, we must seek personal liberation first for the good of other beings. Once the West collapses and its former supporters come running to us, we shall welcome them. If some do not recognize this before it is too late, well boo hoo! They will have a better birth with the world we will create. Some of them, especially their unlucky spawn, would probably be better off dead and reborn into a better life, maybe even the Pure Land.
The way it is looking now, the West is falling and becoming the world’s laughingstock, which is a good thing. The quicker it falls, the less painful it will be for the Westerner and everybody else. Western culture will not be missed, but we can keep the best of it and continue the innovations that the creators would wish to see. We will remember the legacy of them and be thankful while never forgiving or forgetting the ones who ruined the West.
Works Cited
“Ignorance Avijjā Sutta (AN 10:61).” Translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. Dhammatalks. 2017, https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN10_61.html. Accessed 31 May 2024.
Gabbe. “Western Culture.” Wikipedia. 25 May 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_culture#:~:text=The%20core%20of%20Western%20civilization,Roman%20civilization%20and%20Western%20Christianity. Accessed 31 May 2024.
Rahula Thero, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. Oneworld Publications, 1959. Accessed 31 May 2024.
u/Tendai-Student. “栄真Eishin (u/Tendai-Student).” Reddit, 31 May 2024, https://www.reddit.com/useTendai-Student/. Accessed 31 May 2024.
u/Tendai-Student. “Buddhism is being MISREPRESENTED in the West Marginalisation, cultural appropriation, misconceptions and what you can do.” Reddit, 2023, https://www.reddit.com/WrongBuddhism/comments/14zc6xg/buddhism_is_being_misrepresented_in_the_west/. Accessed 31 May 2024.

This post gets instantly deleted when i post this in ADHD so i try it here
Im a 16 years old boy. Im thinking a lot of having AD(H)D the last months. Im sorry that i wrote this much but i really want to share my thoughts and i hope that some of you can help me.
I never thought about having adhd or add. Last christmas my sister said that i probably have adhd. At first i insulted her as a joke because i didnt took it serious. After talking with my mom she said that she thinks so as well. I know that they both dont know much about adhd but i started to think about it afterwards.
I dont want to go to a doctor rn because im a bit scared but i would really like to know what you think.
I did a lot of research and there were some symptoms that actually fitted to me. My biggest issue is that I have some concentration problems.
My attention span is extremely short so i cant concentrate good on most of the things. Especially in school. I can love a theme and be extremely hooked but often after a couple minutes i think about something else and realize it a minute later. So i often cant learn much in school. If there is something extremely important like a class test i can focus better but not completely.
Thats why i need to teach me stuff by myself all the time. My grades are good but my parents always say i could do much better.
I am often in my own world in everyday life and shut out the world around me. Sometimes that makes me feel very strange. That's why I immediately forget or completely ignore things that are said to me.
I simply lose myself in many everyday tasks. For example, if I plan to finish cleaning in 1 hour, I often need 3 or 4. It frustrates me because I realize every time that it can be done so quickly and I'll never get it done. No schedule works and I have to put everything off until the last minute. I've started studying for almost every test at school at some point during the night because somehow I can't do it beforehand. There's too much to stop me during the day and I don't have this extreme time pressure that forces me. I take on a lot of personal projects only to never really finish anything. My parents often think I'm lazy. I don't know if it's that or if it's maybe because of puberty. Sometimes I have the feeling that ADHD or ADD is just an excuse for me, but at the same time somehow so many things apply.
Im a teen and I also want to try new stuff and also probably stupid stuff and i wanted to try Ritalin or similar. I was curious about the effects and just wanted to know. My friend has strong ADHD so he gave me Elvanze. Its actually a stupid idea to try it without being diagnosed and it was also 80mg so i think it was stupid. But i had the feeling that it could help me in my everyday life considering i take a lower dosage. I felt way more concentrated and way more present. I could focus on things normally without getting distracted. Afterwards doing this is just stupid but having the thought that it could help me for 6 months made me do it. But the feeling that i did literally took a type of drug and im possibly actually just lazy and make this up makes me feel like shit.
thanks to everyone that red this text and can maybe share his opinion. Are these actual symptoms or is it something normal. I really cant tell.

This cursed technique is one born of the little white lies that humans tell and are told throughout their daily lives.
This technique works by telling your opponent small white lies while fighting them, leading them to make mistakes. This is done by making them misread the users move for another. For example, an opponent under the influence of this cursed technique might mistake a right hook for a left hook or a leg kick for a high kick.
This leads opponents to blocking where attacks aren’t going while leaving the real target open for punishment. This lying doesn’t only apply to the physical. The user can also lie about their cursed energy.
One of the most effective ways of doing this is by lying to the opponent into believing the users body is the most cursed energy reinforced part of their body, leading them to believe attacking it would prove ineffective. When in reality, the users body is the least reinforced part, the user can then put the cursed energy normally used to defend their body into defending other parts of themselves like their arms and legs without running the risk of leaving their body defenseless due to the opponents false belief.
This type of lying is called a ‘continuous lie.’ A continuous lie is an on going lie which the user keeps up without interruption. While a continuous lie is on going, the user can’t lie about anything else with their technique like faking their punches and kicks.
Yet another way to use this technique is by lying defensively. This can be done by lying to the opponent about the location of the user. For example, the user can lie about their head being slightly to the left when in reality it was slightly to the right, making the opponent miss their attack by a hair.
This does have some limits however. Like the name of the technique suggests, the lies must be “little.”
This means the user can’t drastically change the interpretation of their attack from its original nature. This means, if the user throws a punch, the opponent can only mistake the attack for another form of punching. This unfortunately means the user can’t expand their domain and play it off as a simple kick.
Yet another limitation for this technique is its “cooldown.” This means once the user has told a lie, they must wait a set amount of time before making one of a similar nature. This means the user can’t fake a punch, then fake another punch right after. However, the user can fake a punch, then fake a kick as the “nature” of the lie is different.
A minor exception to this rule is in context to a continuous lie. A continuous lie will continue to persist past the life span of a normal lie until it is dropped by the user. Once the user has dropped the lie however, the cooldown time for that lie will be 3 times longer than that of a normal lie.
The time the user must wait between uses of the same lie is dependent on a variety of factors like their skill, physical abilities, cursed energy output, cursed energy reserves, and even environmental conditions like the humidity and temperature of the environment. However, there is a minimum and maximum amount of time the user must wait, with a 1 minute maximum and 5 second minimum.
Domain Expansion: Paranoid Expanse
The domain ‘Paranoid Expanse’ takes second guessing to the next level. The domain’s barrier is an exact copy of the outside world, making the opponent question if they’re even in a domain. This domain is also naturally fast, expanding in the blink of an eye, making its expansion extremely easy to miss. These two attributes of the domain make it hard for the opponent to even know they’re in a domain.
This idea of uncertainty is further built upon by the sure hit of the domain. This sure hit makes the target extremely unsure of themselves and their own actions. This causes them to second guess and reconsider every action they make, making every decision and action with extreme caution and hesitation.
This theme is continued to be developed by the domains removal of the techniques cooldown. Meaning the user can lie as much as they want while in the domain, making their victim even more confused. This domain leaves the opponent unsure of everything on the battlefield, even themselves. They might even be second guessing their own death once the user delivers it.

I had lost a remote for my unused Fire Stick 4K and couldn't setup it up after doing a factory reset without one so I decided to buy a new device, as I didn't wanted to buy NVIDIA Shield TV Pro as it's quite expensive I decided to go for Google Chromecast 4K with Google TV due to many people recommending it. There are so many problems with this device, at least for me personally which I will list below:
Wi-Fi issues:
I tried streaming multiple movies of various sizes and resolutions to test it but mostly 4K or 1080P movies, to give you a good example, I had trouble streaming 27GB 4K movie as it would buffer too much so I switched over to 8GB 4K movie and it would stream fine.
After a few days of using my newly bought Chromecast 4K I would also entirely lose Wi-Fi signal and Chromecast couldn't connect to it for the next few minutes, sometimes I had to toggle Wi-Fi off then on to get it to work again. Wi-Fi just became too much of a pain, my other devices connected to my Wi-Fi network just work without any issues. It seems like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip is somehow wonky on this thing.
Terrible Video Quality:
Many movies that I stream supposed to be visually crisp and sharp on my Philips 4K TV but for some strange reason, many of them are a bit pixelated or have that off putting grainy effect on them, just type "Movie grain texture" or "Movie grain effect" on Google to see what I mean or better head over to Google Images and type "Last of Us 2 grain effect" to see comparison with and without the grain effect. Additionally, for some reason Chromecast 4K from time to time dropps frames from movies and you can clearly see it at 24 FPS and even more at 60 FPS.
Input lag from my remote:
I'm not sure why this happens but I use my TV's remote over HDMI-CEC and there is a few seconds delay between when I press a button and when it actually happens on the TV, it makes everything feel very slow and not snappy as you can clearly see the delay in front of you and yes, I use my remote in front of my TV so I'm not that far away from it. Navigating through the menus or interface itself feels like a chore on this device.
Black Screen and Accessories issues:
As many people before me, I also had black screen issue and when I was watching a movie my screen would just go black out of nowhere and also lose sound then it would show a notification in the lower right hand corner that Dolby Vision was turned on and it would disappear a few seconds later with black screen still remaining until I unplugged and plugged in my Chromecast 4K to the mains to turn it off and on again.
As I couldn't find any fix for my black screen issue on Google. I have bought and linked Rii i4 mini keyboard via Bluetooth to my Chromecast 4K and noticed that I was getting black screen issues when I was using the said keyboard or shortly after when it woke up from sleep so I disconnected it from my Chromecast 4K and haven't had a single Black Screen issue since then. I tested it out for almoast a day and this annoying black screen issue is finally fixed and gone.
I also bought a 6 in 1 ORICO USB C hub that supposed to have Ethernet working when I hooked it up to my Chromecast 4K but the lights would just light up on both ends, left and right on the USB Hub but still no internet via it, settings on the Chromecast didn't even detected the Ethernet either. The said hub have properly powered my Chromecast 4K and have functioning Ethernet but Chromecast itself just doesn't like it even after I plugged it into efficient power source.
Long troubleshooting times:
I spent ages on figuring out the black screen issues or how to improve my video quality when streaming, I tried:

• Turning off Hardware Decoding in the app
• Using Female to Male HDMI Cable\Extension that came with my Fire Stick 4K
• Setting Chromecast to 4k 30 as some TVs don't like 60 FPS mode
• Disabling Gaming Mode
• I also Used 30W Charger with USB C PD and capable USB C cable to deliver more power
• There are probably more things I tried but forgot to add them here

None of these things I listed above even made any difference but per my previous point, I managed to at least fix my black screen issue as it was very annoying and was driving me crazy to turn off and on my Chromecast every 5, 10 or 20 minutes when I was in the middle of watching a movie.
Costs of Chromecast vs NVIDIA Shield Pro:
This is what I spent all together on my Chromecast 4K setup:
£60 - Chromecast
£20 - 6 in 1 Orico USB C Hub
£19 - Rii i4
Total: £99
This is what NVIDIA Shield Pro costs:
£189 - NVIDIA Shield Pro
£19 - Rii i4 (Can re-use it as I already bought it)
Total: £189
My conclusion:
This whole experience left me hopeless and for a device that supposed to be just "plug n play", it is not, especially when I had to spent a day and a half to get it to work correctly but even then it doesn't function how it supposed to according to what Google advertises, heck, it can't even deliver the promised crisp and sharp 4K quality and its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips are a complete joke.
I don't have time or energy to troubleshoot a device that supposed to work out of the box and deliver the excellent experience. This whole experience really left me with a sour taste in my mouth and I decided to just throw away my Chromecast 4K as I can't return it without a receipt of purchase. Instead, I decided to just buy NVIDIA Shield TV Pro and I won't be recommending this piece of garbage hardware to anyone in the future.
Just my two cents with my own experience when it comes to Chromecast 4K with Google TV.

Hey folks, after re-watching the gameplay overview I had some ideas I wanted to share.
Edit: I only wanted initially to share the first few ideas but I started rambling and decided to keep going lol, most of these are just throwing random ideas at the wall and I don't expect them to be implemented at all but thought it'd be fun to share them for the sake of discussion. Enjoy.
1: train station or bus stop - used to travel to different neighbourhoods or "Districts" it takes time to reach different districts so a Para will basically vanish for like an hour or more once they enter the train or bus before they emerge at another district.
2: Districts - Given our Paras will likely be living in a city, it makes sense there are different districts that offer different kinds of work. Jobs in these districts have different benefits and drawbacks like being higher paying but more stressful or offer benefits but can effect a Para's health. For example, a business district where corporate offices are, an industrial district or an agricultural district on the outskirts of the city.
3: benefits and drawbacks of location - we all want to live within a quick walking distance from work (or at least we want out Paras to do so) however I feel like there should be benefits and drawbacks for this in equal measure. For example. To live in the business district, rent/apartment prices are through the roof, so if your Para is a run of the mill office drone they're gonna need to commute, but an executive or CEO lives in their business district luxury apartment or even penthouse (either paying the high rent or as a perk of the job). The industrial district is cheap as dirt but rife with crime where Paras would be rightfully hesitant to go outside at night. The agricultural district isnt cheap but is affordable with wide open spaces and clean air allowing for Paras to farm, earning thrir own money but services available in the inner city aren't available there. So no ordering pizza for dinner and your Para better get some self-reliance skills cos the repair workers are days away, not minutes or hours and emergency services are hours away.
4: crime - crime irl isn't just break-ins in the dead of night, you might get a group of thieves breaking into your house in the middle of the day when your Para's vehicle isn't present so they think they're gone. They break in by either picking the door lock if you remembered to lock it or by throwing a rock through the window or glass door. As well as this you might get mugged while out at night, so investing in some pepper spray and security glass windows and doors (or if you can't afford that, multi-lock doors and barred windows) if you live in a bad part of town.
5: effects on Paras like drunkenness - your Para just got a promotion! Time to par-tay! Go out to the local bar, get sloshed, make a fool of yourself on the dance floor, make out with a stranger and stumble home in the early hours of the morning, your Para's inhibitions are gone meaning not only are there more interactions to have with other Paras and objects in the world (which, if they're not similarly sloshed won't appreciate it one bit) but your Paras become harder to control, if you give them a command but either it takes too long for them to get to the location of the command or something catches their eye they'll cancel it and do something else, making the stumble home an adventure in and of itself! But having another Para to lean on makes it a lot more manageable. However the next day brings the hangover, when they wake up all stats are reduced to 1 and they slowly get them back throughout the day to simulate a hangover. Coffee can speed this up. The embarrassment though? There's no quick and easy fix for that. Especially if your Para hooked up and must make the morning walk of shame.
6: police - Police should be more than just "show up and beat up the burglar" if an item was stolen you should be able to make a report, the longer the time between the item's theft reduces the % chance the police will be able to recover it, if you report it directly after it was taken and your Para saw the thief, you have a 90% chance to get it back, but if you left it for a day and didn't see the thief, it's 5%. Also if your neighbour is being a loud jerk blasting music all night when your Para needs to be at work in the morning, you could call in a noise complaint.
7: cardboard boxes at the start - during the gameplay reveal it showed a brand new Para with a bunch of boxes around their apartment, this got me thinking of how they could be utilised. I figured they could actually be sorta like semi-randomised low cost items to furnish your house with the only parameters being that they give you the basics you need to start a life like a bed, wardrobe, a table, a chair for each household Para, a fridge, oven, cabinet, toilet and shower + a few random items like a bookcase and a couple rugs. All very cheap variants, the logic being that these are all cheap second hand items that tend to be mismatched, encouraging players to do away with them as needed.
8: haunting - if Paras after death can haunt a place, let's not make then Sims ghosts but make the place of their remains generally "haunted" those with traits that don't make them immune to supernatural paranoia start getting, well, paranoid like they're constantly being watched, small items will occasionally fall off shelves and tables in the dead of night, random footsteps could be heard again in the dead of night, shadowy figures might appear and vanish in dark areas, closed doors could swing open etc... Paras who are effected by such things will need to pick up the urns of dead Paras and take them to a cemetery or contact an exorcist to drive the ghost from their house. Which, on that note....
9: Cemeteries - Cemetaries should start off as a largely empty lot save for the grave keeper's house/office, in-world reason being that this is a newly established cemetery as the old one is full. Loved ones aren't inturred simply by taking the urn out of the Para's inventory and putting them on the ground, instead the Para takes them to the grave keeper who for a fee will take them off the Para's hands and ask them when they'd like the funeral to be held. Post-funeral can include a wake which is like a party but loud music and alcohol are severely frowned upon and as long as such taboos aren't breached the party's rating (if there is such a thing) will by default be "it was OK, 5/10" and can be increased by offering food and drinks.
10: Schooling - we should be able to enroll toddlers into pre-school and there should be a way to get our kids into private or boarding school. Preschool gives your toddler basic social and logical skills as well as freeing up your adult Paras to go back to work and it's cheaper than a nanny. Private school, while expensive, gives your children both more skills and the friends they make are the children of bosses around the city, giving them a massive leg-up if they go to work for their friend's parent's company and giving your adult Paras a way to get to meet their children's friend's parents too which can likewise give them a big career boost too. Boarding school gives the highest skill gain in areas you select depending on the school you send them too and your Para's children's friends are the creme of the crop, the children of the most elite, if your Para is in business, their kid is rubbing shoulders with the children of the CEO and basically guarantees their career will shoot up at least a few levels almost immediately and before long they'll be on the board of directors. You know what they say, it's not what you know it's who you know. But remember, getting your kid into a private boarding school costs several hundred $$$ a day. You won't be able to afford it on a Barrista's salary.
11: A bad crowd - your Para might take on a... less civil path in life, a life of crime. Starting out as a petty thief or street thug, their life is one of high risk and high reward. This line of "work" isn't gained through a newspaper but through 2 ways. 1: you find the local crime boss and ask for a chance to prove yourself in which case they'll tell you to rough up or steal from a wealthy Para in town or 2: you make connections after being arrested while in prison. After you get out you may get a call from a fellow former inmate saying "hey I hear you know (inmate name) and he says you're a good guy, come down to (location) we may have work for you". The life of crime is one of high risk and high reward, the rich looking guy you shake down on his morning stroll might net you a few thousand in one go but you run the risk of getting pepper sprayed which effects you until you wash it out or getting arrested or even worse, of failing the boss. Ignoring or failing a task from the boss carries with it a heavy burden of risk, however you can become an informant and if you succeed in getting incriminating Intel on the boss and telling the police you may go into witness protection. What's that? You get put in a random new town with a new name, you keep your skills and money but your old connections, your job, your most prized possessions etc... are all gone.
12: job qualifications - as my irl uncle says "get them Quals, son!" The jobs you can get with no qualifications to your name are typically low paying, low demand jobs with not much room for advancement and after all expenses are taken care of, not a great amount left for spending. You might get higher pay for working night shift but that's not where the real money is to be found, for that you need qualifications for jobs with the potential to advance and make something of yourself! For this you need to go to either community college or college/university. While community college would give you the qualifications and skills needed for higher paying jobs with less stress like as a tradesman or being able to start your own business (doing so is not expected at launch), college/university opens the door to the high life of extremely high paying jobs (starting at the ground level) from business CEOs to jobs in media and more. While I have zero expectation of these things being implemented on launch, they could be off-map sites or rabbit holes until then.
13: story progression - last and certainly far from least, I wanna see the world grow and change around my Para, for other Paras to at least give the illusion that they're living their own lives separate from my household's, I want my para's friends and neighbours to be having kids, getting promotions or switching jobs, for some of my Para's childhood friends to wind up in prison or making bank or being the chef at their favorite restaurant. The last thing we want to see is a stagnant neighbourhood where a Para's best friend when they were a child becomes their grandchild's best friend without them aging a day.
Phew, that's about it, what do you guys think?

All of the headlines I have seen with Lazio recently have all been pretty bad in my opinion,
Firstly, WTF are they thinking with Mason Greenwood, Let's be real Lazio already has a really bad reputation, signing a guy like Greenwood only makes it worse, and I don't really know how the club could feel comfortable paying a guy like that or having him around (especially after Serie A did the red paint thing). Also, he isn't even that good, he was not Getafes top scorer, despite it being a pretty mediocre club and in an easier league all things considered Secondly, the reason he is even being considered would be to replace the position of Guendouzi. I have no idea why the club would even consider getting rid of him currently. He was easily one of our best players this season, I understand he had issues with Tudor, and him being a bit of a hot head (biggest example is the match with AC Milan), but that's nothing near as bad as Greenwood. but either way the club should do everything they can to keep him, as he really stepped up. Luis Alberto is around that position, and I understand he was the one who started the issue by announcing it publically, but I think the club should have at least tried harder to keep him, as he is one of our better players. The issues cited around many of these were players having issues with Tudor, but one of the players who found his form under him was Kamada, and rumors say we are set to lose him also. Which again, I think the club should prevent, as he was only getting better. I do not want to say Tudor out, as sacking culture and fans blaming the manager is what led to Sarri being kicked, and thus many of these problems. But these decisions he is taking(along with the other higher ups like sporting director) are clearly not going to benefit the club, and I think all of these should be reconsidered

As I was seated on that toilet seat, calming my body with the relieving sensation of excretion, I was reminded of why the toilet helps many a person with giving off inspiration. I thought to myself, hey, why not do an over-the-top analysis on my favourite show Total Drama cuz why not? So yeah, here I am, writing this.
The ‘nice athletic girl’ trope was one that was birthed from the start of the series but only really popularized and mainstreamed and beat down by most fans in recent times. The general definition is that the female ‘de facto main character’ of the ensemble cast would be an athletic female who also happens to be ‘nice’. Some throw about the terms bland and Mary Sue, but I digress. Now personally, I thought I’d take a deep-dive analysis into the girls who qualify for this trope and whether or not they actually deserve to be labelled as such or if it’s harsh on them. I’ll be analyzing the writing per usual, since that’s my main fun off of this show and look at if this term holds water or not. Now, the characters I see qualify for this role are Bridgette, Zoey, Sky and Priya so those are whom I’ll be focusing on. I won’t count Beth because her ‘niceness’ is thrown into question and is not conventionally athletic, Gwen because she isn’t conventionally nice either and no-one from RR since I don’t feel like anybody there checks the appropriate boxes, Carrie comes the closest, but probably not, no. So let’s begin. Also do note that I’ll be mostly objective so no matter your opinions on them, I’ll remain impartial for the most part. Brace yourselves, this will be a long post:
Bridgette:
Bridgette was the debut of this trope and while many exclude her from the discussion, she is athletic and nice and a girl so technically she fits the trope. I find it hilarious that Priya and Zoey compete in more episodes than her despite both having a season less and only being in 13 episode seasons. This indicates that Bridgette is not too good at the game. And well, she isn’t really that much. Let’s start with her Island representation.
Her main role this season was to serve as the ‘straight girl’, the calm presence to allow the other characters with more fun personalities to hog the spotlight, Heather, Gwen, Leshawna and Lindsay included. She forms a few inconsequential friendships with Gwen and Courtney which never get brought up again in future seasons and her main thing is hooking up with Geoff. Her challenge performances are decent. Her athleticism is shown a few times, coming when she did that handstand or jumped off the cliff. She was also shown to be a good cook and was generally a pretty helpful teammate and she had a few flitting moments here and there, but never gave off main character energy. The merge gave way to her other side, being the mediator between all the girls and their conflicts, probably because she’s easily the most rational of the lot. Technically, this does mean she’s more or less a supporting character the whole time, but someone’s gotta take that role. Her elimination also mainly serves to further the Geoff’s internal conflict and loyalties and also give Duncan his flowers as the most competent strategist of this season, his guys’ alliance managing to successfully pick off one of the girls, her, and yes Heather strategized too, but her strats were pretty weak let’s be real as she mainly relied on luck considering she was speedrunning turning everyone against her. Ultimately, she served her role till the end and that’s fine. Obviously her trope would be given much more relevance for her future iterations but that’s basically Bridgette’s run in Island, a glorified supporting character, kind of like Leshawna but less in your face and with a romance subplot too with Geoff.
In Action and World Tour, her relevance drops significantly. Action has her first boot after excessively making out with Geoff before appointing her as an Aftermath host where she continues to be a supporting character as her main role was to snap Geoff out of his Captain Hollywood arc while just acting as a secondary host. I’d argue Action was her least relevant season as well. For World Tour, she only lasts around 4 episodes and she’s mainly there to, say it with me kids, be a supporting character to someone else! Yay! This time to Alejandro, mainly to show off his ladies charm. She then has a smaller arc of apologizing to Geoff for trying to kiss Al, beefing with Blaineley and making friends with Bruno the bear but she’s just there to continue being the Aftermath host every now and then alongside Geoff.
Overall, Bridgette is a nice athletic girl, though one with very little relevance. She spends most of her screentime being a supporting character for other arcs and being the straightwoman to the other characters. This doesn’t necessarily mean she’s poorly written, but she isn’t exactly a main character either. She serves her role, but doesn’t do much outside of it.
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Zoey:
Zoey’s probably the most controversial of these four girls. Terms like bland, Mary Sue, Zoeys*e or whatever else is thrown around quite often. I can see why people don’t necessarily like her, but let’s look at it objectively to see if she’s worth the hate.
In Revenge of the Island, Zoey’s there to form one of the crutches of the main romance of the season. One of the factors that plays in her favor is how involved she is with a lot of folks, formulating a victim-turned-rivalry relationship with Scott, a romance with Mike, friendship with winner Cameron and a few throwaway relationships like her rivalry with Anne Maria and her ‘friendship’ with Dakota. Now, I’d argue that she doesn’t fit the trope completely this season, mainly due to the fact that she’s not too athletic. She’s seen as passive and struggles a lot in physical challenges. That’s not to say she didn’t have capabilities before Commando Zoey, but they’re too forgettable. Her first few episodes build on her relationship with Mike and give us a less dramatic love triangle between her, Anne Maria and Mike, technically a square since Vito feels like a different character, but whatever. We also see our main baddie of the season Scott begin placing seeds of doubt in Zoey, which blossoms in her distrust in Mike for episodes 8 and 9, pushing their relationship to their breaking point before Mike finally bests his alters and completes his arc. I do find her a bit hypocritical in saying she loves oddballs but is weirded out by the way odder Dawn, but I digress. She then has a full-on rivalry with Scott in which she emerges victorious, commenting that Scott really brings the jerk out of her, that jerk being Commando Zoey. This is where her powers are born and take over her body. She basically becomes unstoppable then, beefing with Chef and she could have easily booked a place in the finale, but she sacrificed it for no real reason as she could have went and won the challenge and then went back to save Cameron from Larry. Regardless, her arc is well thought out and despite a few hiccups, she went through multiple character defining moments, but managed to grow and make friends and understand the value of friendship or whatever sappy message they were conveying.
To be frank, Zoey is really good in Revenge and I don’t have much issue with her, as she fulfils her multiple roles, being part of the main romance, causing the downfall of the main antagonist and being the main support system for the winner of the season, pushing forward the themes of friendship over lone wolf stuff. (Sha-Lightning is way better than Cam though). Irrespective, it is All-Stars where her character turns confusing. For one, she gains all her Commando Zoey power-ups in normal form, even when she was shown to have normal physical traits when in normal form. However, she was a winner in this season, so did she deserve to win?
While Zoey won All-Stars, I’d argue the main female character for that season was Gwen. Gwen was at the heart of conflict and Gwen was the one who ‘grew’ and was meant to receive the arc. Of course, I believe it’s horribly executed since it makes Gwen look like a hypocrite and victimise her even though she wasn’t necessarily in the right most of the time. Regardless, this is the role that Gwen occupies, even if it's poorly written. Zoey on the other hand, is too passive to be a protagonist. People say she takes up too much screentime, but I’d argue she takes too little. Her thing with Mal isn’t even her conflict, it’s just Mike against himself once more. Outside of that, she has no major arcs, or conflicts or well, much of anything really outside of giving us that Duncan-Zoey crackship. Sure, she makes friends with Gwen but ultimately, it’s inconsequential to both girls’ arcs, as it doesn’t provide much of anything to either one. Zoey is basically the greatest challenge beast in the show, insanely winning four merge challenges in a row, including the finale, 4!! That’s insane and I personally believe other characters would have benefited more thematically from winning.
I don’t think she’s a Mary Sue, since she has characters who don’t like her and is too dumb to catch onto Mal somehow, but she is indeed a very passive presence. It’s hard to tell what her role here exactly is. Is she the female main character? No. Is she meant to help Mike overcome Mal? No, he overcomes him in his head. Does she help in pushing anyone’s arcs forward? Not really. On top of being infuriatingly oblivious to some people, she serves no clear role in the story and to be honest, if she didn’t have a nice voice and design, she could have very easily been bottom of the barrel. All-Stars doesn’t derail her, it just puts her in purposeless and fails to justify her stance as a winner. That’s why she is a writing disaster in All-Stars, not just for the opinionated reasons you’ll see other folks give on why they dislike this iteration of her.
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Sky:
Now onto my personal favorite to analyze, and probably my favorite of these four, Sky. Sky also gets a lot of hate, also due to her main relationship, which now I realize is a trait shared by all four of these girls. Regardless, Sky is the gen 3 iteration of the nice athletic girl. Her athleticism is given an actual background this time, where Zoey and Bridgette hadn’t had one, and Sky is naturally athletic due to her sister being a gymnast and her own dreams of being an Olympian one day which is nice enough. Out of four in selection, Sky seems to be the most competitive, sometimes even resorting to questionable decisions to try and obtain the grand prize. Let’s look into how she’s portrayed in Pahkitew.
Off the curb, she’s probably an early favorite for the win. She’s strong, athletic, rational, has good leadership perks and is smart too. She galvanises her unfocused team on occasion and I kind of wish they went with something of Sky vs Jasmine in leadership abilities since that had the potential to be interesting. However, Sky being overpowered required a distraction to get her eyes off the prize, and this is where our Hal of Total Drama steps in, Dave. (Megamind reference!) Ah, I have a lot to say about the genius behind the writing of Dave that is heavily underappreciated by the TD fandom, but we’re focusing on Sky right now. Sky and Dave, or Skave, is the perfect representation of how lack of communication can wreck a relationship. As good as Sky is at twirling in gymnastics and dominating physical challenges, kind of, she has a lot of other weaknesses that offsets these in the non-physical department, and the Skave relationship is the perfect way to display them while also giving her something to do. It always baffled me when people call Sky a Mary Sue, because she really isn’t, but then again, people tend to throw that term around way too cheaply. At first, it’s sunshine and rainbows for the new couple, Sky’s in love with Dave, but couldn’t get it through to him that she wanted to put that relationship on the back burner for the sake of the victory, and that was mainly down to a lack of trying to do so besides that one scene. The fragility of the Skave relationship was revealed and exposed in plot resistances, such as the healthiest love triangle in Ella’s unrequited crush on Dave and Sugar being Sugar. And technically Dave cheating on Sky with a bat, but alas. Things get to a heed when Sky’s lack of an assertive personality comes to wreck her whole thing with Dave as Jasmine comes through and begins to pressure Sky into ending it for petty reasons. To be frank, I think it’s a bit mean from Jasmine considering that they could have went along with the challenge and did well without having to wreck a blooming (Not) relationship but then again, I have a myriad of issues with Jasmine’s character, kind of, that should be discussed later. Regardless, Sky gets pushed to her limit by Dave in episode 9 and the two ‘break up’ and Dave gives himself the boot, now finally out of her way as a distraction and enabling a free run at the prize. Unfortunately for her though, Total Drama is a social game as well, and with Max and Scarlett and Jasmine and Shawn still around, she was forced to work with Sugar to get things moving, something she obviously didn’t like. Despite this, she was the mastermind behind the plan to trick Scarlett and nabbed second place in episode 11 even with Sugar weighing her down. Thanks to Sugar taking out Jasmine and then herself, her finale position was secure against Shawn… Only for Dave to return.
Now, Sky in the finale, is both very interesting and poorly written at the same time. Manipulating Dave by kissing him to string him along her little simp chain was a low move, but it helped in establishing that Sky has an obvious dark side and isn’t necessarily the sweet girl her predecessors Zoey and Bridgette were. Her relationship was thrown to the rocks though at the mention of Keith, her boyfriend who we can assume was probably pretty crummy to her considering she seemed somewhat nervous around him. Her lack of assertion bites her in the butt again as she didn’t have time to dump him, so now technically she cheated on Keith with another guy and roped in a boy toy for usage and now it’s all one giant mess. Regardless, it could have been saved with the right closure, but ultimately, the writing preferred to focus on the more happy relationship and gave them a closure, leaving Dave to well, die by Scuba Bear… That’s crazy.
Still though, Sky is easily the most multi-faceted out of the four mentioned in this trope bracket. Her morality can’t be summed up in a phrase and her motivations and actions are mostly understandable. Her role is to serve as the de facto main character. While some may point to her passiveness, unlike Zoey, she is passive in the sense that she doesn’t take action in her respective story arcs instead of not participating at all. Her lack of action is what pushes a lot of these plots forward, so in a way, her lack of action was the action that pushed forward the relationship action in her season. I think Sky mainly suffers from only having one season, so fans who don’t get this in-depth message can easily be left salty from the lack of closure at the end and might confuse her for a bad character which is a shame. Woo, that was a long one…
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Priya:
Now, I had already done a previous post on her explaining why I think she’s a bad character so it’s better if you give that a read because I won’t give all those reasons again, but I’ll run over them anyway and add to them too. Priya is a very different character from both seasons. In terms of the way she acts, her season 2 self feels very reminiscent of a Courtney than she does a Zoey, which does call her presence in this bracket into question, but whatever. Let’s just see what she has to offer.
Like Sky, Priya is also given a backstory as to why she’s so athletic. She had trained all her life for Total Drama and thus has a lot of athleticism. I’m not sure why her parents paid no focus to social game since that is a very major aspect of the competition, but whatever. Her main arc was having a friend in Millie, but Priya for the most part was well, a side character in Millie’s story. If we want to think about it, what exactly justifies her season 1 win? It’s a similar situation to Zoey where her role in the story doesn’t necessarily justify her winning. Is she the main character? No, that honor belongs to Millie, whom I have already explained why she qualifies as that in a previous post. Does she help Millie grow as a person? Well, she has a vague influence, but honestly, I’d argue that Millie doesn’t really take any real introspection in herself until Bowie drops the notebook. Sure, she says she’ll change and wrestles a croc, but that’s a different arc of Millie actually trying in the challenges instead of always being passive, not really her main arc, of not judging others because she’s no better than them. Does she push anyone’s arcs forward? You can make a case for Millie, but I’d argue once more that Bowie does more to that than Priya herself and maybe Julia but I suppose Priya can take some credit. All of this culminates to when we reach the finale and we have things tense, Bowie is sneaky, Millie is an underdog and the third is.. Oh, Priya? Dang, I forgot she was here. Julia, Millie and Bowie hogged so much spotlight, they kind of left Priya to dry and yet they still make her win and do a Beth.
In season 2, this is where things take a turn. Priya becomes less focused on winning the whole competition and becomes engulfed in her romance with Caleb… Oh boy… I’m personally not the biggest fan of this plotline, since I feel as if it’s kind of like the ‘arc’ she and Millie had last season, but this time as a romance instead of friendship. Obviously there are differences, but it’s nothing too major. The first 7 episodes, Priya faces little difficulty really and soars by. Sure, she was in bottom 2 in episode 4, but they were never eliminating her over Emma that round. It’s episode 8 when things take a turn and Caleb is exposed for ‘playing on her feelings’. At first, she’s sad, quiet and you can feel sympathetic for her… And then she just turns psycho. Oh boy, episode 9 is a piece of work. She just can’t stop crying and rages a lot and it feels as if her character took a complete 180 of the season. Now, I’m aware they showed some glimpses of angry Priya in the finale of season 1, but this does feel like they came a little too strong with it. We’d then get the worst handled plotline of the reboot seasons, as the relationship began flipping about from being ok to not ok to ok to not ok and so on. And considering how much of a disaster Julia was this season, the fact that they threw her into the mix and made every little thing they did bend to her will only added to the crapstorm that they piled up. For example, in episode 10, both Caleb and Priya take Julia’s relationship advice without much question. You might make a case for their naivete in relationships, but come on now, Priya had been tormented by Julia all of last season and knows how mean she is, where she was scheming on her even while she was crying and Caleb himself refused to join the MK-Julia alliance in the episode prior because he saw last season and knew how untrustworthy they were yet here he is, taking advice from her as if nothing was ever said. The flip floppiting continued until episode 12 and she is eliminated in the most predictable elimination ceremony in all of Total Drama. Oh boy, where to even start with this one.
Now, Priya in season 2 is actually meant to be taken as the main female character. Most of the drama occurs around her and her relationship with Caleb is a mainstay focus throughout the whole season, literally. She beefs with Julia, the main antagonist too which is another touch. However, the main issue comes with what do the writers exactly want to do with her? A main character is meant to be someone you should root for, yet for the 8-13 debacle of episodes, it never really felt as if Priya was to be rooted for. Priya and Caleb lack the sweetness of Bridgette and Geoff or Mike and Zoey and the subtle clever messaging of Dave and Sky. It was a relationship that had no real purpose. It didn’t further any character. All it did was turn Priya into a crazy Courtney and Caleb into a whiny muscular Dave. It never felt like either character grew or benefited from the other. It was only a source of drama, meant to feed Julia and make her better than she actually was and was more or less a pointless decision. This makes Priya a… Well, kind of a writing disaster of a character. Regardless of what you think of her, her character never gets furthered all that much, and I don’t believe she’s worthy to take the title of female main character in season 2. There really wasn’t one, since Julia is meant to be an antagonist and MK her lackey and that’s why this season fell flat, lack of clarity for roles. But hey, I digress.
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Ultimately, I believe I have come to the conclusion that Sky is easily the best written and complex of these characters, even if some may find her bland. Bridgette isn’t much relevant, Zoey is too passive and Priya too aimless and these hold them back. Are they Mary Sues? No, none of them are, but they happen to have writing flaws engineered around them to cover them in this trope. So yeah, I'm heading off to put a sandwich on my ham.

Hello! This is my first time commissioning musicians so please be gentle, i'm slow on the uptake haha
Okay so i run a dungeons and dragons game as a hobby, and i enjoy having my own assets for it. I have custom art for characters, for areas, etc, but with discord being as annoying as it is with not having any music bots compatible with YouTube anymore, i have to get creative, so i thought i'd rather just have a chiptune/dungeon synth track to dip my toes into this sorta thing :)
I'm looking for dungeon synth/chiptune). My setting is dark and dangerous, but also very somber. The track is for an area known as Greengrave; Deadman's Garden, the closest area to the capital of humans. It's a lush overgrown rolling hills where the dead don't stay dead, and where a war transpired during the age of creation
I want something that, with a catchy melody, is still very dark and foreboding, but also very empty. Something that tries to suffocate you in a wide open area where no one can hear you scream, and no one will remember you. I'm horrible at describing music, but i'm not very picky either
I'm new to this, i heard that musicians charge anywhere between 100$-1000$ per minute, so i think 300$ is an alright budget for something that will only be up to 3 minutes max? I'm open to hearing otherwise however
Here are some examples :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD08jlE0af4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vJ0NMOH2vA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMXU9OOCT9c&t=805s

There is now a new historical parallel to Gaza in Donald Trump being found guilty of 34 felonies. It's an example where in Gaza there was no way to stop before starting. Jury Duty service, I'm old enough to have experience with. As long as you're physically able we have a civic responsibility to report when called to the Jury Pool. Once there they play a video of how there is a good chance they will not need us. Once they played a good part of the Spider Man movie I never saw before, good versus evil theme just right for the occasion. One time I was called as a juror. It was an easy case to decide, done that day.
There is no dictator deciding. It's what I as juror decided, happy to have served in. At first I wished I could stay home. Feel good once there. Not as boring as I thought. They try to make it a fun learning experience about how the judicial system works.
Gazans wanting this judicial system in the government to replace Hamas dictatorship, would be something the free-world would be excited by. Want to invest in the fastest rebuild in history. Otherwise the Republican plan looks better all the time. Instead get UN tents to match the "refugee" status Hamas depended on for charity money. Made it seem like all wanted to leave Gaza anyway. The image made it easy for that to be stolen by the real estate sharks already swimming around offshore. The biggest of them all just had a jury of peers bring him down. Moral lesson of King Nothing plays on.
Rebuilds for Gaza can include modern court buildings planned for jury pool comfort. In getting back to WW2 the very lenient denazification method of the French might work as long as they can take their place in it. Can help now by figuring out how to adapt the USA material to educate and entertain a jury pool. Judges and all others are just to make sure we the jury get all the facts.
Those who are waiting out the battle together can use the time to plan for when its time for the IDF to be their entourage back home to safely implement. It's not what Israel would have come up with. But they have to love them, or even President Biden might get angry. He's into history, reminds us it's watching. A Reddit sub for doing what Ben Franklin would do looks like is not exactly what President Biden was imagining either. With all said, it's even better. Gaza and the USA are for different reasons both back to the scientist founder of this nation. Independence was from British colonialism, while for Gaza it's a WW2 German taxation without representation colonialism controlled in the Middle East through the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem then later Hamas.
Colonists want adherence to their religion and rules no choice. Jury system does the opposite by giving that power to we the people. It's then an in it together sort of thing, not something unique to Gaza, at just the right time in history to help Gazans prepare for rebuilding society with them in control of important court actions this time. Colonists like Christian nationalists were using Trump to impose a religious dictatorship.
The more a shared history the better, for planning strategy where on side the only orders in the (as in psychology for this purpose) parallel culture/structure/society to find sanity and reason inside are from Sheryl Crow to Lighten Up and Soak Up the Sun plays on!
What matters for Gaza and the USA is presented in a video with a famous history professor, Allan Lichtman, who for Times Radio brilliantly answers questions we most need answered for how the jury system relates to the future of the USA, Gazans who want Hamas to stay gone also need to know. Goes with the stickied on top strategy from Korean War success that led to K-Pop then "election fever" in South Korea. The best way to present this became in an environment where these parallels make sense together, in context of a much larger biblical sized united Palestine. Think big!
https://www.reddit.com/UnitedStatesPalestine/comments/1d4qada/selfdenazification_of_the_united_states_of/
There has been enough positive response to know I am not alone, I am confident the message is making it through to Gaza, and Democratic Party where Donald's example likewise connects their example into what is going on regarding culture change of both happening in parallel. It's then not an issue the Democratic Party is stuck in the middle of with no other way to really help them at the people level. It's then their example, where they here forward can keep in mind Gazans having a worse but same problem. It's outside "colonialism" from a scientist who knew religious "colonists" and would likely be here at this sub right now helping to explain all this to us. He was such a role model to me, my earlier posting of WW2 history at Palestinian made it easy to see by thinking of a United States of Palestine, by the year 2100..Thanks to Donald it's simpler than ever. Before then not even I was sure what next, in that to some crazy sounding direction, then there it was!
I have been watching how for many here the "Free Palestine" movement ended up turning you off after seeing the trouble it led. Needed a new direction. Good time to explain where what I have been working on, has just gone. In this case, we don't need politicians. IDF soldiers are already showing off their dancing skills, and have a fun new way to help end the war for good. They only have to combine with the emerging sound of Gaza towards a K-Pop but higher level science, history, and working together to end the latest echo of WW2 before it's a WW3. Already have the To Gaza with Love playlist to help get the party started. Another for WW2 era Andrews Sisters into Trump family history.
IDF troops are already singing and dancing on the battlefield. They don't need permission to do more, Gazans invited. Maybe compose a catchy welcoming song that invites them to make new music together towards a united Palestine by 2100, see what happens. Israel already has a close enough system, not for them. It's from Reddit for the other four states involved in the same conflict. By example Gaza uniting with Israel shows the way for the other three, or more possible states in the union, Israel already fits into when the time comes. Can do without the fence.
To a Gazan youngster not old enough to have been fully indoctrinated into the Hamas conditioning (to make them hate others instead of normal accepting) it's a life changer to sense the war is not against them. Palestine as Hamas saw it is replaced with a map of Palestine in Biblical days with various states in it. A teaching moment for the IDF to surprise with. Are then obviously are not against Palestine either. Otherwise they have to try making them stop believing, not work.
It's a tradeoff the IDF entertainers can live with, will control, towards rebuilding their culture with new role models like Ben Franklin and required jury duty. It's then possible to explain WW2 history of the Middle East holocaust that Israelis are frustrated by not being able to accept when it comes from them.
Reddit's /Palestinian is in no denial. Credit to subs in the network the IDF can give credit back, to avoid Israeli politicians from having to come up with strategy from their state government model or UN. It's a Palestinian cause they can personally support, and are at liberty to discuss with those who need to know. Best for Hamas to not know. Mostly kids who are impressed by their music and want to help make more. Something worth giving a try when IDF are outside of direct combat with Hamas. I hope you agree it is, or at least is not object.

So a post went up an hour ago from a member with this catchy title:
"I’m talking to you, this is what you are gonna do. READ!"
I do believe the member is actually trying to help here by sharing their experience with quitting.
I might have just left their post alone but because of one comment they wrote in it, I feel it absolutely necessary to point out a flaw in their approach. Near the end of their post they wrote: "For me I like to have balance so on the weekends I won’t be afraid to hit a vape"
That advice has the full potential of derailing anyone who reads it and for some reason believes it to be a good idea.
I want to point out, I believe the person fully believes this for now. I say this because two months ago the person wrote this:
" i happened to have hit a vape that night and I didn’t feel bad but outside of that environment and immediately after it was kind of a one and done deal I didn’t want more or I wasn’t really going crazy for more. Do you think Indulging in nicotine when offered is ok at least once a week in that type of environment if I have a mindset and set determination to never purchase nicotine of my Own again (meaning I don’t want to hear someone say “don’t do it man you’ll get addicted again”) because I know there are people in this sub Reddit who have this mindset."
Since they got away with it back then it is only logical that they believe that vaping occasionally is no big problem. They also made it clear that they do not want anyone telling of a different opinion so I figured it was more fair to point out the issue in a different post.
Again, anyone thinking that this might be a good approach is not understanding the issue most people who are here are dealing with. They are dealing with a nicotine addiction. Understanding that concept is going to be the make or break point in whether they are ever going to actually permanently break free from nicotine.
I should address the fact that they seem to be vaping every now and then and not seeming to get hooked. Check over the page Lucky ones get hooked that explains how this does indeed occur for some individuals. Unfortunately, it is not going to occur for most members here because members here are very likely full blown nicotine addicts.
Other pages dealing with this issue are Were you addicted? and Are there social smokers?
The fact that you are here looking for help and advice on how to quit makes it very likely you are not a social user and that you are addicted.
Now if you realize that this is the case for you, read the page Power of nicotine addiction
It highlights probably more than any other page just what kind of grip nicotine can take on you if you ever let it into your system again.
Other resources addressing this issue are on the page Relapse prevention resources
Again, I am not thinking the person wrote this comment with any ill intent, but I just don't want others to fall into a trap that may cost them their quit and their physical and mental health. The only way to guarantee that you won't get hooked on Zyn or any other nicotine product is to finally make and stick to a personal commitment to never administer nicotine again from any source.

“Can you hear that? It sounds like the Strawberry Fête has been set up in the usual spot by the central lake. I imagine they’ll be there for a few days so you should all visit when you can. The sooner the better, however. Keep an eye on the cloche.” - Mabel
The start of summer is a strange time in Raifee Wood. Just as the dour and deadly creatures of the colder months retreat (or at least settle down a little), the more mischievous beings of the warmer months begin to rear their heads. The Strawberry Fête is one such group, making two visits each year: Once near the end of May and another at the end of July. While the exact day of their arrival is never consistent, you’ll know when they’re here- the raucous music can be heard throughout the forest. They’ll linger in the woods for a few days before vanishing, so if you choose to visit, it is best to go as soon as possible.
For once, you have a choice of whether you wish to expose yourself to the potential dangers of the fête. It is entirely self-sufficient so Mabel does not have any tasks for us to do for them. The only reason to go is to trade: While the opportunity is valuable, you must evaluate the risk yourself.
Before visiting the Strawberry Fête, consider what you are willing to trade. For some of the more unusual items, you will need specific things, but also consider bringing the following to trade for standard goods:

• Milk: If you can find one of the goats who occasionally hang around the cottage, it is worth trying to milk them. You'll have to get the animal's permission for this by offering a flower or vegetable and waiting until they approach you. They all belong to Mabel, and if she feels you have mistreated them, you’ll have much more to worry about than a lack of trading items.
• Honey: Universally craved by the vendors, if you have been fortunate enough to have been gifted a jar of honey from Mabel, you can trade spoonfuls of it for many things.
• Blood: Small vials of coagulated human blood are a popular trade item, but the vendors favour fresh samples. Bring a clean dagger and some bandages.
• Teeth: Animal, inhabitant or your own. They are all valuable so if you find one, pocket it for the market.

In addition to your trade items, find the red basket in the supply closet and grab one of the cords inside it. If there aren’t any left, wait until someone returns- you must not enter the Fête without one.

1. The Strawberry Fête takes place next to the central lake of Raifee Wood. The fête is quite noisy, but you will not be able to see it. Locate the petrified stump on the lake’s border. Next to it, you should see a small circle of rocks- this is the location of the Strawberry Fête. Do not touch the circle or step into it until you are ready.
2. There is a branch on the petrified stump which you should knot the cord tightly to. Tie the other end around your wrist. We are not 100% certain what the cords are, but after examining one, Natalia compared it to an umbilical cord specimen she saw during her nursing course. We’ve decided that we shouldn’t ask Mabel about them- we'd rather not know. Whatever they are, they're a crucial tether to the mortal world and without being tied to one, you won’t be able to leave the Strawberry Fête.
3. When you’re ready, jump into the circle. Ensure you don’t fall over and that both of your legs enter the circle at once. If you try to step into it or stumble and land only partially in the circle, part of your body will be ripped into the Fête while the rest remains in the Wood. I’ve only seen it once before and it’s… gruesome.
4. When you enter the Fête, you will see a bustling market filled with vendor stalls, a bandstand and a maypole. Everything will be contained within a ring of tall standing stones, much larger than the ones you saw in the wood. Do not stray beyond these stones at any point during your visit. The mist outside has the same quality as the mist surrounding Raifee Wood- it is incredibly corrosive.
5. The vendors and customers at the Strawberry Fête are the typical sprites you will see flitting around Raifee Wood, although much larger than you will be accustomed to. Usually no taller than a pencil, the ones in the Fête are just a foot or two shorter than the average human. Unfortunately, this makes their unusual features more notable too. Big, expressive eyes look fine when the sprites are small, but up close the way their pupils bulge and dilate is unsettling. The twitchiness of their dragonfly wings and sharp teeth can be unnerving too. Refrain from commenting on these things. Sprites are easily offended and will either refuse to trade with you or make your visit actively difficult if they feel slighted.
6. While you are walking around the Fête, you will notice that your cord stretches upwards, disappearing from sight. Nobody should mention or bother you about it but do not remove it at any point. A few sprites may try to convince you to untie it: To help you try something on, or for them to hold onto while you dance. Firmly reject these suggestions, even if they seem upset- they know full well what they’re doing. Thankfully, due to our status as rangers, the sprites won’t try to forcefully cut or untie your cord, save for in a specific place. More on that later…
7. When you arrive, look for a cloche, in the middle of the Fête. Inside, you will see a cluster of strawberries with human faces. Note the appearance of the fruit. As the Fête continues, the berries will degrade, shrivelling as the faces twist into pained expressions. Check on the cloche every 20 minutes or so. It is very easy to lose track of time in the fête, and you do not want to be around when the strawberries are completely rotten.
8. There are normally several stalls selling food throughout the market. Do not buy or eat anything. While perfectly fine for the sprites, the majority of sprite delicacies cause nasty side-effects for humans or contain ingredients that you don’t want to consume. The pasty vendor is especially pushy, so avoid him. He has a sadistic interest in getting rangers to try his goods claiming that they’re ‘a taste from home’. Fortunately, nobody has tried any of them yet- sprite wordplay is painfully blatant.
9. Aside from food, many of the stalls will be peddling unusual but useful supplies which can be traded for using the general items listed at the top of the entry. Fertilisers for keeping the cottage’s St John’s Wort healthy, winter furs that pulse warmly as if still alive and plenty of toys and trinkets for entertainment and decoration at the cottage. The important thing is not to accept anything for free, even if the vendor claims that it's a gift. Sprites never give anything away for free and will be keen for you to accept the offer since it gives them the liberty to choose their payment. For example, a former ranger named Clover once accepted a complimentary winter hat from a vendor and lost her scalp. We were able to patch her up, but she didn’t last long after that.
10. The stall decorated with spider webs sells a lot of useful fabrics. It is worth a visit- the spools of web thread are incredibly durable and can be used to fix garments, while the circles of dried caul membrane can adhere to small injuries and scars to heal them. Avoid red lace, however. The delicate material is composed of veins, and can instantly adhere to your skin like the caul membranes do, even if you so much as brush past it. However, rather than smoothing over or healing wounds and scars, the lace creates sensitive sore spots that throb uncomfortably.
11. The elderly sprite running the blue tent sells dreams in bottles. For obvious reasons, our line of work can make sleeping difficult so having a guaranteed peaceful rest is very useful. However, the dream vendor will only accept one trade- a dream bottle for a happy memory. You won’t get to choose what memory he takes so this is a bit of a gamble- it could just be a field trip you went on at school but it might also be your mother’s face. The only off-limit thing seems to be our true and false names. If you decide to trade a memory, the sprite will extract it with a long thin hook inserted into your nose. While safe (provided you stay still) I will caution that the sensation of having a memory pulled out is uncomfortable- a bit like a fingernail hooking under a crease in your brain and unpicking it. Thankfully, the procedure has no physical ill effect. Once you’ve paid, take care when selecting your bottle. Each will contain a multi-hued mist and these colours are important. The majority are safe, and will contain peaceful dreams that can be used up to five times- open the bottle and inhale some of the mist before recorking it. However, avoid any bottles with blue or yellow hues. The seller only sells good dreams, but a good dream for a sprite can differ greatly from a good dream for a human. I don’t know about you, but dreaming about eating a newborn child or tormenting an old woman by sticking pins under her fingernails hardly sounds appealing to me.
12. Avoid the red marquee. While most of the humans being traded in there are very young, the sellers in the tent may try to forcefully cut your cord and sell you off too. The atmosphere in the marquee is very intense and we think that is what emboldens the sprites who hang around in it. The thick material of the tent should muffle most of the noise and smell, but it is best to keep away from it altogether. Trying to disrupt the marquee’s proceedings will likely shatter the social contract which allows us to enter the fête in the first place. Besides, if in theory you did manage to save someone, they couldn’t leave with you- the cords can only lift one person at a time. Better to be bartered, butchered and consumed in one’s sleep than be woken up and forced to choose between an angry mob or the melting mist.
13. If you require companionship, visit the brightly painted caravan near the bandstand. It sells some useful monsters called umbramites. These small creatures appear as nothing more than a shadow on the nearest surface, unable to interact with anything in the physical realm. However, they are excellent at alerting to unseen dangers, can be sent off to locate missing objects and according to those who do choose to own them, can provide much-needed companionship. Ask Arata or Bea for more information if you are interested. However, life requires an equivalent sacrifice. Alongside a large initial trade of standard goods (the vendor has an affinity for teeth if you have any), the time that your umbramite lasts is determined by how much of your lifespan you’re willing to give up. It can be a few weeks or a few decades. You won’t age physically when the time is taken, but you will feel a distinct sense of heartburn as your lifespan reduces. The trainer who runs the stand will stitch your shadow to the umbramite using a black thread- it dissolves after a few days so you can both move independently. The umbramite will stay loyal to you and last until its allotted lifespan runs out. While lifespan feels like a steep price, it is worth remembering that virtually no rangers ever reach old age- you may as well put those years to use, right?
14. The twin sisters who own the silver stall offer extractions of all kinds. If you have a rotten tooth, or a stubborn splinter from the Steward, they’ll remove it for a small fee. For a bigger fee, they can also remove more evasive troubles- traumatic memories, heartache and regrets. For this, they have a jar filled with silver leeches. Once attached to the temple, they will extract the unpleasant memory of your choosing with only moderate discomfort. Just be careful not to let them remove any important information about the inhabitants- if you ask them to remove a memory associated with one, re-read their guide entry carefully afterwards.
15. If you are invited to take part in the maypole ceremony, decline. The young female sprites who usually participate are viciously competitive. If you mess up the pattern they are weaving or look as if you’re showing off they will attack you violently, ranger or not. They’re not above inflicting this treatment on other sprites either- the maypole dance typically ends with at least one casualty.
16. It is safe to dance within the crowd of revellers at the bandstand, but only on your own or with another ranger. If you dance with one of the sprites, they will become attached to you and follow you around the market obsessively. Furthermore, when it is time to leave, they will cling to you and the extra weight risks breaking your cord. If you do notice another ranger in this predicament, do your best to restrain the sprite so the ranger can leave quickly. Ignore the whining and sobbing, sprites are fickle and they would quickly lose interest in you even if you stayed with them in the market. Once discarded, the merchants of the red marquee would likely pick you off.
17. As mentioned previously, you must be careful to monitor your time in the market closely. Time passes at an uneven pace: An hour can feel as short as ten minutes or as long as a day. To be safe, you should leave when the larger strawberries begin to cave in and darken, if not before. From what Mabel has told us, once the strawberries have fully decayed the market shifts location, severing your cord and leaving you at the mercy of the merchants.
18. To leave the market, make sure that everything you have with you is securely packed away in your buttoned pockets or rucksack. Loop both of your hands into the cord securely and pull yourself up. When you are around a meter or two off the ground, the cord will retract sharply, pulling you up and out of the Strawberry Fête. The force will normally fling you clean from the circle, so be prepared for a rough landing.
19. Once resurfaced, untie the cord and check your inventory thoroughly, including all the linings and pockets of your clothes. On occasion, one of the sprites will sneak an extra unpaid good into your pockets before you leave. If you are concerned that you might not be able to keep track of your inventory, bring a list, including everything you brought in and purchased. If you do find something, throw it into the circle before you leave. If kept, the sprite will find you on your next visit and as mentioned before, take whatever payment they feel entitled to. It won’t be a fair trade.

Previous Entry: Entry 33, The Blightswell
Introduction and basic guide to surviving in Raifee Wood

Okay so let me get this straight as a free trial user currently that started on Xbox if I want to take advantage of the cross progression to another platform either to PC or PlayStation, I have to buy the base game on both the platforms and then start paying the monthly subscription? Cause currently I’m seeing the game/expansions on sale too like the starter set and complete edition and was wondering if I should take advantage of the sale but in doing so I lose the free trial. Or should I first finish A realm reborn with the free trial before even thinking about buying and playing on a different platform as I’m still early on it seems. Just fought the ifrit boss for example
Decided to ask here cause the friends I have that play too don’t really know or gave me a a answer since they always stick to one platform
the only reason I’m even thinking of cross progression is cause I know I’ll play it more on another platform compared to my Xbox that I have to hook up just for it

Okay so now that the season is over, I have some thoughts. Some may be “controversial,” or not, haven’t really kept up on commentary about this season, but here goes:

1. I HATE that Winston and Beltran hooked up. First, they were clearly teasing Amelia and Beltran all season. Second, in my opinion, Amelia and Beltran had more chemistry than anyone else Amelia has been with. Third, can’t a man and a woman just be friends? George and izzie, Callie and mark, Maggie and Jackson (ew), etc. all good friendships and had romantic/sexual relationships too. I think Amelia and Beltran are far better, and there’s nothing wrong with platonic friendships.
   
2. I really think some characters are totally unnecessary at this point. Schmidt (good riddance) and helm, not really sure what they’re bringing to the table. I was thinking the same about Jo and Link, but now I’m slightly more intrigued by the pregnancy story, but I wouldn’t miss them if they leave. The new interns have potential— there are many story lines that can be developed here, so may be time to abandon some “vets.”
   
3. Yasuda and Schmidt are leaving, but there’s not going to be a coherent exit story, right? It feels abrupt. It’s alluded to that Schmidt may go on a trip and is feeling discouraged that he won’t get a PEDs fellowship, but that’s it? And Yasuda? No indication she was out, unless Katherine does fire all the interns?
   
4. I actually really like the Mer, Amelia, teddy, (and now Owen) research story. I think the show needs to realize you don’t need sex/relationships for drama to exist. This is a good story line. I want to see more of it.
   
5. I’m sick and tired of Richard’s “I’m too old” dilemma. He’s been talking about retirement since S1 😅. I love Richard, but this is getting old. I hope something good comes of this season. Maybe he’ll fully step away. I’ll miss Richard, but if he’s going to stay, we need a better story.
   
6. In general, I kinda like the Katherine villain arc. I think that may be unpopular, but she’s always been rather unlikable, and she’s really embracing it now. It’s a good example of rich, arrogant, bureaucratic type standing in the way of people. I think Ellen, caterina, Debbie, and Kim are great actresses, and it makes sense for their characters, so I’m here for it!
   

Illinoise

This review is of the musical Illinoise which is currently playing at the St. James Theatre in NYC. Please see the latter portion of this post for “Review Structure” and “Context” descriptions, which may add helpful background to this writeup.
Impression: This show takes the audience on whimsical journey of music and movement, all without a single line of spoken dialog. While not a traditional musical, the cohesive combination of dance, score, and tech provides for an engaging and remarkable experience. This show is a strong candidate to be added to my recent “Shows I love” list. However, I do think this show may not be for everyone, and that some may find that they do not connect with the concept of the show.
Watch check: Zero times. At no point during the show did I find my mind wandering.
See again: Yes. I hope I have a chance to see this show again. I believe in a second viewing I would catch more of the subtle aspects of the production.
Music & Lyrics: I was not familiar with Sufjan Stevens or the Illinois album) prior to this show. By the third song “Come On! Feel the Illinoise” I was completely hooked. I am listening to the album as I write up this review and am thoroughly enjoying it. After listening to the source music, I am even more impressed by the orchestration. I loved the interplay between piano and synth. The wind instruments were both showcased and provided ornamentation at other times. I loved the 4-mallet vibraphone action! I particularly liked the score coming full circle with a variation on the opening melodic theme at the end of the show. The score is undoubtedly the heart of this show.
Story & Book: This show does not have a traditional book, as the story is entirely told through dance and the singers’ words. I will admit that up until the first campfire scene I was a little lost. It then quickly became apparent that the show was about a group of friends sharing stories, from whimsical to heartbreaking. The story worked for me given that the integration was so tight with the music and the movement.
Set & Props: The set was simplistic and was almost entirely static, and the production had limited use of props. I liked that the orchestra and singers were elevated and on stage for the entire show. This is not the type of show that needs an elaborate set or props to effectively and engagingly tells a story.
Costumes & Makeup: I do not recall anything particularly notable about the costumes and makeup, beyond the butterfly wings worn by the singers.
Movement: Of all aspects of theater dance is the one area I know almost nothing about from a technical perspective. I feel at a disadvantage in my writeup due to this lack of knowledge. With that said, from this uninformed observer’s perspective the dancing was incredible. There were different styles of dance and I seemed to enjoy each of them. The combination of movement and music effectively told the story without dialog. To me that is an impressive feat.
Tech: As soon as I sat down, I noticed the sparse number of light fixtures above the stage. Only a few electrics were present, which is a striking difference from many other current productions (e.g., I think Hamilton has around a dozen, which I know is an extreme case). While the light design did not include as many lights as would be typical, the equipment present was used incredibly effectively. The nomination for best lighting design for this production is fully justified. Projection was used sparingly to illuminate the billboard; this did provide useful context for the current story being told. The sound mix was balanced, and the EQ was spot on. The tech was not the star of this show, it did everything possible to support the movement and music aspects.
Cast: There were absolutely no weak links in the cast. Rather than cover the entire cast I have listed a few that drew my attention for one reason or another, shown in no particular order.

• Kara Chan (Marion) – I noticed the incredible precision of her movements, yet it all felt so fluid and organic. She is a joy to watch. During the show I was hopeful that she would have a story to share (i.e., a solo dance), but unfortunately that expectation was not met.
• Elijah Lyons (Arctiini) – Elijah was one of the three singers on stage. His tone and an expression were next level.
• Brandt Martinez (Clark) – I particularly enjoyed his solo dance during The Man of Metropolis story.
• Byron Tittle (Cass) – Byron had a tap number during one of the stories that was quite memorable.

Seating: I suspect that nearly all the important action is viewable from every seat in the theatre, since the set is located mid-stage and corrals the dance downstage. There may be a few points where the far rear mezzanine might have an obstructed view of ensemble members, but I do not believe that would significantly impact viewing of the show.

Review Structure

I am systematic in my approach to assessing shows. During a performance I am in the moment, but at intermission and after the show I often write down an outline of my thoughts. Typically, I’ve used these notes to help me re-experience the shows long after the curtain call, but now these notes are the base material for the review in this post.
Each review is divided into categories, and each category is described below. I am a bit of a theater tech nerd, so don’t be surprised if those topics are emphasized compared to most reviews in Broadway (though I am not an expert and welcome corrections from the true experts here).
Show Name & Link: The name of the show with link to the show’s playbill.com page (if applicable) for quick access to cast, schedule, and host theater information.
Impression: This is a summary of my overall thoughts on the show.
Watch check: This is the number of times I felt compelled to check my watch during the show (don’t worry there is no backlight to distract/annoy others if I were to actually look at my watch). If the show drags or is uninteresting, I usually shift my attention to other things like tech or costumes, but eventually my brain subconsciously gravitates toward wanting to know the time. I've found this to be a reliable indicator for how engaging the show is for me. An engaging show is “0 times”, and a dragging/rough/bad show could be “6 times” or more.
See again: This section describes whether I would see the show again and how much I might be willing to spend on another ticket. However, this isn't always an indicator of show quality, since I tend to only want to see heavy topic shows just once, no matter how good it may be (e.g., Parade).
Music & Lyrics: This covers the music, lyrics, orchestra, and conductor of the show. There is overlap with the next category for sung-through shows.
Story & Book: This covers the dialog and story of the show. Comments about show pacing will usually appear here, if applicable.
Set & Props: The category is focused on the set components, lifts, rigging, turntables, stage wagons, drops, curtains, props, and puppets. There is often overlap with the “Tech” and “Movement” categories.
Costumes & Makeup: Here I would cover anything notable about what is worn on stage. Some shows have extravagant makeups/costumes and other shows do not. Both are okay, as long is it all fits the show vibe.
Movement: This section covers blocking, choreography, acrobatics, and scene transitions. Transitions can do overlap with the “Tech” section.
Tech: This covers tech aspects including lighting, sound, projection, displays, video, etc. One aspect I am likely to comment on here are missed mic queues (i.e., a performer’s mic was not unmuted in time, or less commonly left open too long). Few things take me out of a show faster than quite/undiscernible dialog or having the sound level jump mid-note.
Cast: This category covers the cast of the show. There will usually be a general comment about the overall cast, and then several cast members or roles will be specifically called out as being notable, for better or worse. Standouts here could be anyone that caught my attention, from Broadway royalty to the smallest ensemble role.
Seating: This is an attempt at indicating how "bad" partial view seating may be for the show. Sometimes I see shows from partial view seats, sometimes I pay for a prime center orchestra seat (and everything in between). Either way view restrictions can be roughly assessed based on where the action occurs on stage. My goal is to assist those that are on the fence about the potential drawbacks of typical rush, lottery, and TDF tickets.

Context

Approach: Since theater is subjective, like any art form, my goal is that by providing context my reviews might have increased meaning. If your likes and dislikes align with mine then perhaps what I write may help you decide between shows to see, for example. If your tastes are drastically different than mine my hope is that I do not mislead you into thinking you’ll like a show that you ultimately do not.
About me: I am a theater enthusiast, attending shows produced on world renowned stages but also touring shows, regional productions, and community theater. Musicals are my thing, but I also appreciate plays and operas. Many years ago, I did have amateur time on stage in plays, musicals, and one-acts. Later, I worked semi-professionally back-of-house as a stagehand, spotlight op, lighting designer, and sound/light board op for more shows than I can remember. However, my longtime profession since that time has essentially nothing to do with theater. Also, I do not live near the east coast but am fortunate to travel frequently to keep up with most new Broadway shows, as well as a non-trivial number of the productions in the Washington DC area.
Shows I love: This is a list of shows I’ve seen in the past few years that are standouts; the intent is not to gloat about all the great performances I’ve seen, but instead to give a rounded impression of the types of shows I gravitate towards. If this list does not resonate with you, my reviews may be of lesser value to you. All shows listed are the most recent Broadway production unless otherwise noted. * Aida (Sydney Opera House) * All The Devils Are Here (Off-Broadway) * Beetlejuice * Boop! (Chicago) * The Bridges of Madison County (Signature Theatre) * Come From Away * Company * Dear Evan Hansen * Fat Ham * Good Night, Oscar * Hadestown * Hamilton * Here We Are (Off-Broadway) * King Lear (Shakespeare Theatre Company) * Les Misérables (West End) * Little Shop of Horrors (Off-Broadway) * Macbeth (Shakespeare Theatre Company) * Newsies (Wembley Park) * The Outsiders * The Phantom of the Opera * The Rocky Horror Show (Melbourne) * Some Like it Hot * Spamalot (Kennedy Center) * Suffs * Sunset Boulevard (Kennedy Center) * Swept Away (Arena Stage)
Shows I don’t love: These are shows I’ve seen in the past few years that I did not particularly enjoy, for a variety of different reasons. For reference I have never left a show before its conclusion even if I didn’t like it. These shows are not necessarily bad, and in most cases, they just don’t align with my theatrical preferences. If this happens to be a list of your favorite productions, it is probably best to save your time and stop reading this post now. * A Beautiful Noise * Aladdin * Chicago * Funny Girl * MJ * Mrs. Doubtfire (US Tour) * New York, New York * Once Upon a One More Time * Perfect Crime (Off-Broadway) * Six * The Who’s Tommy