"Çerbe"

Çerbe is a traditional Turkish soup renowned for its hearty and comforting flavors. This nourishing dish combines tender lamb or beef with wholesome grains and vibrant vegetables, simmered to perfection in a savory broth. Served piping hot and garnished with fresh herbs, it's a delightful taste of Turkish cuisine that warms both body and soul.
Here's a recipe to bring the delicious essence of çerbe to your kitchen:
Ingredients:

• 300g lamb or beef, cubed
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced
  
• 1 carrot, diced
  
• 1 potato, diced
  
• 1/2 cup barley or bulgur
  
• 6 cups beef or vegetable broth
  
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  
• 1 teaspoon paprika
  
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Fresh parsley or mint for garnish
  

Instructions:

1. In a large pot, heat some oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and minced garlic, sautéing until softened and fragrant.
   
2. Add the cubed lamb or beef to the pot, browning it on all sides.
   
3. Stir in the diced tomatoes, carrot, and potato, cooking for a few minutes until slightly softened.
   
4. Add the barley or bulgur to the pot, along with the beef or vegetable broth.
   
5. Stir in the tomato paste, paprika, cumin, salt, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and let it simmer, covered, for about 1 to 1.5 hours, or until the meat is tender and the grains are cooked through.
   
6. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. If the soup is too thick, you can add more broth or water to reach your desired consistency.
   
7. Once the soup is ready, ladle it into bowls and garnish with freshly chopped parsley or mint.
   
8. Serve hot and enjoy the comforting flavors of çerbe!
   

Feel free to customize this recipe by adding your favorite vegetables or spices to suit your taste preferences. Enjoy!

"M'dukhaz"

M'dukhaz is a traditional Moroccan dish bursting with flavors and textures. This hearty stew combines tender lamb, aromatic spices, and a variety of vegetables to create a comforting meal perfect for any occasion. Here's how to make it:
Ingredients:

• 1 kg lamb meat, cubed
  
• 2 onions, finely chopped
  
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 2 tomatoes, diced
  
• 2 carrots, sliced
  
• 2 potatoes, diced
  
• 1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
  
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  
• 1 teaspoon paprika
  
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Olive oil
  
• Fresh cilantro or parsley for garnish
  

Instructions: 1. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and minced garlic, and sauté until golden brown and fragrant.

1. Add the cubed lamb to the pot and brown on all sides, ensuring it's cooked evenly.
   
2. Stir in the diced tomatoes and tomato paste, cooking until the tomatoes begin to soften and release their juices.
   
3. Drain the soaked chickpeas and add them to the pot, along with the sliced carrots and diced potatoes.
   
4. Sprinkle the ground cumin, ginger, paprika, turmeric, salt, and pepper over the mixture, stirring well to coat everything evenly.
   
5. Pour enough water into the pot to cover all the ingredients, then bring the stew to a boil.
   
6. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and let the stew simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours, or until the lamb is tender and the vegetables are cooked through. Stir occasionally and add more water if needed to maintain a stew-like consistency.
   
7. Taste the stew and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
   
8. Serve the m'dukhaz hot, garnished with fresh cilantro or parsley. Enjoy with crusty bread or couscous for a complete meal.
   

"Mnizdyk"

Mnizdyk is a traditional Ukrainian dessert that combines layers of crispy wafer and creamy caramel filling, creating a delightful contrast of textures and flavors. Here's how you can make it at home:
Ingredients:

• 300g sweetened condensed milk
  
• 200g unsalted butter
  
• 200g granulated sugar
  
• 200g all-purpose flour
  
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 200g wafer sheets
  

Instructions:

1. Prepare the caramel filling:
   
   • In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
   • Add the granulated sugar and stir until it dissolves and turns golden brown.
   • Gradually pour in the sweetened condensed milk while stirring continuously.
   • Cook the mixture for about 5-7 minutes until it thickens and becomes a deep golden color.
   • Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla extract, and let it cool slightly.
2. Prepare the wafer layers:
   
   • Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
   • Place a wafer sheet on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
   • Spread a thin layer of the caramel filling evenly over the wafer sheet.
   • Repeat this process, alternating between wafer sheets and caramel filling, until you have used up all the filling and wafer sheets.
   • Press down gently on the top layer to ensure everything is compact.
3. Bake:
   
   • Place the assembled Mnizdyk in the preheated oven and bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.
4. Cool and cut:
   
   • Allow the Mnizdyk to cool completely in the baking tray.
   • Once cooled, use a sharp knife to cut it into desired serving sizes.
5. Serve:
   
   • Mnizdyk is best served chilled or at room temperature.
   • Enjoy the delicious combination of crispy wafer and creamy caramel filling!
6. Storage:
   
   • Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.

"Koliža"

Koliža is a traditional Serbian dish typically made during the winter holidays. Here's a recipe for koliža:
Ingredients:

• 500g of cornmeal
  
• 1 liter of water
  
• 1 teaspoon of salt
  
• 200g of smoked bacon or ham, diced
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
  
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
  
• Optional: grated cheese for topping
  

Instructions:

1. In a large pot, bring water to a boil and add salt.
   
2. Gradually whisk in the cornmeal, stirring constantly to avoid lumps.
   
3. Reduce the heat to low and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pot. This usually takes about 20-30 minutes.
   
4. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add the diced bacon or ham and cook until it starts to brown.
   
5. Add the chopped onion and minced garlic to the pan with the bacon or ham. Cook until the onion is translucent and fragrant.
   
6. Once the cornmeal mixture is thickened, spread half of it evenly on the bottom of a greased baking dish.
   
7. Spread the cooked bacon or ham, onion, and garlic mixture evenly over the cornmeal layer.
   
8. Cover the filling with the remaining cornmeal mixture, smoothing the top with a spatula.
   
9. Optional: Sprinkle grated cheese on top of the koliža.
   
10. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C (350°F) for about 30-40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.
    
11. Let it cool slightly before serving. Koliža is traditionally served warm.
    

Enjoy your delicious Serbian comfort food!

I don't know if i can.. But i want to try to make clear that the dutch team did not ment to hype up the performance so much and it was not a "part of their campaign" at all. I will do my best to take you with me in a overview about this event and intentions and I hope people take time to read this and understand it a bit better, If you do, Thank you! I love you. Lets go!
It started with the creative director Gover saying those big things who took those words back immediately a few days later (on dutch tv etc) Where he said that he likes to talk in metaphors and didn't realize enough that this words he said in just 5 seconds was going to be taken so seriously and translated in so many languages in some hours, and that the next day he got some strong words from the delegation for saying that, Because they said they where afraid it could cause too much expectations. And after this they discussed what he could better not say even more.
He also said : "I am the person who wipes his head with a napkin after the performance, but also the person he can come to talk to in the evening, And with whom he can spar and vent." " It really is like my kid is playing a very important match/competition. And I think anyone with children will know how intense it is to let go. To have him go on that stage and have the whole world wash over him.” Its clear that he was just very enthusiastic and proud of his best friend (for context they know each other for almost 10 years).
I know this guy from tv, He is someone who tends to use big exaggerating words in everything he does and about how he feels. Just one of the most unfilterd, enthusiastic and pure people you can imagine and then please go even beyond you can imagine... also with a lot of humor. For people who don't know him it might seem confusing at first but he is just super out of the box and authentic. For him this probably indeed does feel like a moonlanding (in a metaphor way ofc lol. I followed this whole thing closely and people really misunderstood this and made it a whole thing with theories, expectations etc.
That there was going to be AR on stage was never said or teased on by the team but people made a theory after that timelaps video what got spread and build. And last week when they asked Joost about the AR rumors it was clear in his reaction that this wasn't true, This was only shown on dutch tv too so thats why people didn't see this and are confused about this not happening lol.
That there was a big suprise coming also was never said by the team. They only where open about that Joost didnt like to spoiler pics of his artwork while its unfinished and ruin the jokes ment planned for people to react to in the moment, And to compromise this fact some visuals where not showed to keep those a bit suprising. People interpreted this as them hiding the big moonlanding suprise (what statement was taken back already long before the rehearsals) as a part of their campaign and plan.
In some interview artical, Joost said that he finds it complicated and hard that there where also negative reactions after the rehearsal pics. Some of his own words there : "I forbidden myself to use my phone. It's just very strange. I try to stay myself. So far I don't really care about it, but I would be lying if I said I don't care about it. But I am here with the best intentions, also for the Netherlands and not just for myself. I dare say: we make art. And we are now putting it in the Eurovision gallery. Whether it all fits in there, we will see on the ninth and eleventh. And I just hope that the country still has some love left somewhere for me. And if not, then you don't have to watch. I'm not the channel boss."
Gover meit also said something about this thing somewhere that he sees a role for himself in helping Joost with this : "I have been involved in the media world for about ten years now. I know how you are met with a lot of criticism. So I always help him remember how many people also will possible be helped with this. I think if I wasn't there, it was a lot more difficult for him to keep that trust"
For Joost this is also a part of trauma processing, He said that he sees this as a part of letting being stuck in the pain of the past go and for his inner child. On the eurovision podcast (I recommend this as it was a beautiful open conversation about emotions) he talked about that beyond it being a fun, funny childlike tip of the iceberg he is putting out there this is hard and very emotinal for him. As his trauma's a the same time come from his childhood and the song also being for his parents. He told about doing a lot of talking and lot of crying on a daily.
A bit of my own vison is that Joost has a funny interesting maybe for some people hard to understand style what might look unserious but it is not only that. Its both. To come back to some topics out of the podcast again, We can do both at the same time, We can rave, dance and cry, joke and hurt. We need that, we to need to move and let that energy out, feel, have fun, We can also do this together. It can be funny and serious and thats how this song is ment, its ment to come together and laugh but also to connect.
I saw comments going so mean about this team and about how they tried to hype this up too much on purpose, And much more stuff so hurtful that im not even going to repeat. What made me salty enough to spend way too much time on this probably lol, And write this whole thing. To make a conclusion on this nerdy analysis of mine. It was all just good hearted and not ment to make it a big hype thing at all. This is their art, they don't do this to win, But to show their thing and messages to the world and get a good result with it. They worked on everything for a year and putted their all in it.
lets respect each others art, There are real people behind every entry in this competition with real reasons. Joost his staging will be prob be funny, fun, confusing, and lighthearted. And its okay that its not going to be everybody's cup of tea whats totally fine but lets love each other even if we see things differnetly. We might all love differnet songs and even in totally differnet ways. Im gonna get emo here, But why hate if we can choose to love each other or at least respect each other while having our differences? Is that not the beauty of this all? isnt that the point here?
Europe lets come together... After all we are all just passionate about this song party thing whats ment to make us feel.. 🩷united by music🩵

Im 16 and my first relationship lasted almost a whole year, I broke up with him right before our anniversary and regretted it almost immediately, we talked about it a week later and decided neither of us thought it was a good idea to get back together after a day or two, mostly due to everyone around us telling us not to. I know its stupid because I was the one who broke up with him and because im only 16 and "have my whole life ahead of me!" but It really feels like I lost my soulmate. My freinds all think hes stupid and silly and embarassing but I really loved him. I loved everything about him, I never felt a connection with anyone like that before. I always feel like the odd one out, like everyone secretly dislikes me and is just waiting to leave. He didnt make me feel that way though, he made me feel like it was ok to be me, stupid and all, I really loved that, He just understood me so well. Like everyone tells these horror storys of there first dates and first kisses but my first date was with him and we walked miles from our town to my house just talking, then we climbed onto the school by my houses roof to watch the sunset, finishing the night by watching the mandalorian because I hadnt seen it before and I just HAD to watch it. our second date was me literally going skiing with his whole family, I got introduced to not just his family but all there family freinds on litterally the second fucking date, he made me feel so special from the start, like we just clicked and that was it, it was meant to be. Our first kiss was after snuggling, I kissed him on the cheek and then he looked at me and pecked me on the lips, we both giggled and continued snuggling while listening to music happily. Like how much more perfect can it fucking get. We dated through a failed freind group, my dogs and uncles death, He literally took my first everything. I had liked like one or two people before him and they were crushes that nothing ever happened with, He was my boyfriend though and it felt so perfect for so long. I put my everything into him and now I feel so lost. I cant get back with him though and I understand that but it just hurts so much. He was depressed and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't fix that, I couldn't live with being cut off from the few friend's I had. It hurt to much not being aloud to hang out with friends without him getting angry. I couldn't handle him getting angry when I couldn't read his mind when he was upset, like I should just know what to do. The day I broke up with him he threw a bagel at me because He "didnt want" my "fucking bagel" even though I was just trying to give him food because he said he didnt eat and was hungry. I just didnt know what else to fucking do because my mental health was getting to a point where it was suffering just being with him, I felt so alone while being with him. I tried to tell him to get therapy but he wouldnt, I tried to get him to journal, he wouldnt. He wouldnt ever listen to my input it felt like and it was making me so tired. He put the blame of so much on me and it just brought me to a point where I couldnt handle it anymore. So I broke up with him. I dont regret breaking up with him, because I know why i did it, there were a lot of just red flags in the relationship. but Its so hard to not think about all the good in the relationship too, like i loved him so much, I wanted it to work so badly, there was so much good. He helped me in so many ways, I thought i helped him too but clearly I didnt. Now that its been like two months I thought Id be fine and ready to move on and be myself again, but I still think about him so much. like I know its not true but i have a guilt now that I possibly lost my one soulmate or something just because I couldn't understand what he was going through and how to fix it for him. I feel fine around my friends but as soon as im alone I just cry, at school I just sleep through my classes. I genuinly think im depressed but I cant talk to my parents about it because I told my mom I was feeling better for some reason and thats not true at all, if anything im feeling worse and worse by the day. I feel so dumb letting myself fall in love with someone, then letting this person emotionally abuse me to a point where Im broken without them. like I know its stupid but i dont feel like a singular person anymore, his favorite color is now mine, the bands he showed me are my favorite, I dress like him and catch myself doing gestures and talking like him. I feel like I lost myself to love, like Im just not me anymore. I put so much time into this one person that I lost the parts of my identity that used to mean so much to me, like playing guitar for example, Ive played since 2nd grade thats 8 years- 7 years from when we started dating, tell me why i have not picked up and played my guitar genuinly in a year just because it took too much time to learn a song. I chose to spend all my time talking to him, rather then practicing the hobbies that made me happy and me. I just cant get myself to do it anymore, any of it I just dont have these interests anymore no matter how hard I try, I pick up a guitar and nothing comes out of my hands, like some muscle memory is still there but the passion is just gone, its like a second fucking heartbreak because it was such a big part of me for so long. I just dont feel like me. everything just genuinely feels just so shitty on a daily basis at this point I don't know what to do. I don't know how to move on, how to be happy. I dont even have friend's to talk to about this because none of them have dated anyone that long before, none of them have ever even gotten to the point of saying I love you. None of them have experienced depression or anything like that, I cant relate to any of them and I dont want to seem weird and depressed talking to them about this sort of thing.

-I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I- -I-
Utrecht, Confederation Administrative Military Peacekeeping Zone Doorta (Former Kingdom of the Netherlands)
May 8, 1945
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Isa Visser
Holland. The land of tulips.
The land under eternal occupation.
My home.
When the Nazis came in 1940, my home town of Utrecht was turned upside down. The war was quick and I hardly even remembered it until the Wehrmacht began to strut freely in our town. At first, we did our best to ignore the grey troops in the streets. But eventually, the Jews of our town began to disappear without a trace.
I didn’t really think much of it, the rumours were horrendous but unfounded. I knew the Nazis preached something about anti-Semetism, but I never really thought anything of malice was happening to the Jews. Besides, the Germans were mean and pushy to all of us, shoving us along like prisoners or attacking us without reason.
Some collaborated with them, but most despised them. However, true anger arose once food began to fade from the shelves. Rationing was in full effect and Mama had to come up with new thinner recipes just for us to get by.
By the time 1943 rolled around, just when we thought that things couldn’t get worse, the Confederation came.
At first, it was some Allied and some Axis aircraft getting blown out of the sky by seemingly nothing. Then some astronomers kept on saying that there were a billion asteroids in the sky. Their estimates put many of them at the size of the Vatican! The world didn’t mind this developing situation as the Nazis tried everything they could to knock both Red Russia and the United Kingdom from the war.
Eventually, they landed, and the world was not prepared in the slightest for their arrival. They didn’t shell any of our cities, even though they could’ve turned all of them to dust in a flash. Not even that American ‘atom bomb’ project could’ve saved us, even if it was somehow made in time for their arrival.
Their troops swiftly subdued the superpowers in under a month. The Soviet Red Army, the American US Army, the British Royal Army, and the previously feared German Wehrmacht were no match for the very advanced and very coordinated men and machines of the Confederation. Sure, our tanks gave them a good scare just as much as the Russian rocket artillery, whistling bombs, and wailing Stukas, but those alone weren’t war-winning weapons.
The world surrendered in Versailles and the post-war world was negotiated in the places that the Allied Powers wanted to negotiate with each other. Yalta, Tehran, Cairo, and the Germans offered Magdeburg and Potsdam too for negotiations.
As it turned out, the Confederation didn’t want us dead or enslaved. Instead, they just wanted to occupy us and help us forward from our brutal wars. I couldn’t really blame them, but then again, their soldiers were the fearsome bullet-proof beasts that could, and had, brutally mutilated and even devoured human soldiers resisting.
Even with those setbacks, the total number of deaths in the Verrassingsoorlog only reached an impressive and scary 1 million. Never surpassing that compared to the nearly 50-60 million corpse pile the world was already stuck in.
Now, the Netherlands as a nation was disbanded. We were still Dutch through and through, and all humans still used the old borders to define land and places. But according to the dozen species entente that conquered us, we were now a hundred occupation zones with the ruling of each zone being distributed to what species got there and captured it first.
The Netherlands, as well as the rest of the Benelux, Northwestern Germany, Denmark, and Calais, were now a part of the ‘Doorta’ zone. Doorta. What a dumb name! The Nvouw in charge named it after the flowers and plant life of the region which made them nostalgic for their homes. There were some rumours that they’d give us our old names back, but that was just hope at this point.
“Isa! Can you quickly run down to Mr Achter’s store to get some butter? I need it for the cookies!”
“Ja, mam!” I called back, setting down the basket of eggs I was carrying. Mama was restocking her depleted goods from the morning rush. Now, she was making new foods for the afternoon rush. It was a very tight schedule that she somehow perfected with robotic efficiency and a warm smile that was the complement of every serving. Now that people had stable homes and jobs once more, they could now enjoy the wonders of life, like Mama’s cooking.
The Confederation weren’t really all that bad once the gunfire ceased. They stayed true to their word. They fixed our country’s buildings and roads, they brought peace and stability in a way, and on a personal note, they gave me a chance to learn Mama’s cooking with some real ingredients rather than some Fanta crap or vegetable peels.
But their soldiers patrolled our streets like hawks. The aliens seemed to best us in everything, hearing, strength, agility, speed, marksmanship, and overall better traits like fangs, venom, appendages, snouts, tails, frills, thorns, and many other animal-like characteristics. But the soldiers were nice and most of the time, didn’t care about us and just let me and my friends play tag. Goodness, some of Felshans even taught some of the boys war tactics while they played war games last week!
I quickly grabbed my late father’s old bulky satchel and patted my bunned-up hair as I walked back into the kitchen to see Mama zooming from baking pies to sizzling batters like a robot. Her eyes then fixed on me as her smile crested her white face, she quickly gave me a tight hug and handed me some guilders for my little expedition.
The Dutch guilder was worthless according to the aliens, who wanted us using their standardised tolija instead. Of course, no one cared and each nation still used their reichsmark, pound, ruble, peso, dollar, guilder, franc, or whatever they had before the first war even began.
I tightly hugged her back and kissed her cheek as she reciprocated the deed. Mama was the best mother one could have. She was loving, good at cooking, good at knitting, and calm and quiet. She would never shout unless I burned down a farm or something.
“Mmm!” I hummed smelling the apple pie from the oven. The warm and delicious apple smell mixed with the doughy batter simply created a scent that one could only find in heaven.
“Ask him for the butter from Rotterdam, the ones from Amsterdam don’t mix well with the cookie stuff like the chips, lemons, sugar, or—”
“I get it, Mama!” I punctuated her typical verbose lecture, shoving the guilders into my pocket. “Rotterdam butter.”
“Zeer goed,” she smiled. “Now off you go!”
Dashing out of the kitchen to the main café, I waved in greeting to some of the people already there. Most of them were either young people doing work, or old people playing chess. These were things you could do anywhere else, but the reason why they were here, was for the food and drinks.
“Where are you going, Isa?” the old Mr Maes asked me, looking up from his little thick novel. He was Flemish and was a veteran of the Great War. He served in the Somme, and Passchendaele, but mostly served in Belgium and Calais. The only answer he gave to me on why he was fighting in France proper was: “I was there to beat the Germans back on every front and every town from the Channel to Switzerland.”
“To get some butter from the store. That’s all,” I replied with a warm grin. I then slipped out of the store onto the lively streets as I dashed down the cobble roads towards Mr Achter’s place. Utrecht was still as bustling as it was before the war. I was born in 1934, so I knew the city well enough before the war to get around quickly.
Mr Achter’s store was down the street and left around the corner shop and then it was down a little incline at the end of the next street as a corner store of its own. I quickly zoomed across the road to the other sidewalk before I ran towards the corner of the street.
I didn’t think or register anything as I weaved through some people and snapped around the corner only to come into a collision trajectory with two shadows that blocked the sun. I couldn’t stop myself in time before a little gust of wind slapped me and now suddenly, the sun was hitting my face again.
Now, instead of ramming into huge shadows, I was on a collision course with a street pole. I braced for the surge of pain, but that also changed until I was frozen upright in under a second.
Reorienting from the random situation, I dizzily readjusted my focus only to now face-to-face with a Nvouw and a Felsha that eyed me up with composure. My blood ran cold, especially with the Nvouw present.
“Be more careful next time, ok?” the Felsha advised as my eyes fixed on him. They were scaled lizards that were as blue as the deep sea. They had snouts with at least 100 fangs just packed into there in such a scarily neat fashion. Their eyes were glowing aqua and they had little prongs and “D” shaped animal ears. Not to mention the bajillion thorns that were dawned on their backs like a cape of bee’s stingers.
Add that with the fact that they were a good two-and-a-half metres tall, and you got the perfect killing machine. But, regardless of their traits, they were probably the nicest of the two occupational species here. Which was a pretty low bar to pass anyway due to the evil of the other demon that I had also stupidly bumped into.
The Felsha soldier in front of me tilted his head and wagged his humongous tail in patience for a response from me. That’s another thing, their spiky tails were at least as long as Mama if she was horizontal. As if these things weren't deadly enough on their own.
“Y-yes,” I replied, a bit scared. “I-I’m sorry.”
“Aw, don’t worry,” the Nvouw replied for the Felsha as I snapped my head to meet him. “You’re just a kid, aren’t you? What are you out for?”
The Nvouw were the ones who occupied the Benelux first, arriving in their skyships randomly. I didn’t even know they were in the Benelux until they began to shepherd the surrendering Germans through the streets after they captured Utrecht. Some of them were covered with human blood. I didn’t know why until they spoke with each other, and then I could see blood covering their large main quadruple fangs and their smaller fangs too.
They ate the German soldiers.
Now, I didn’t like the Nazis, they were mean and tyrannical. But, they were still humans. Sometimes, they’d give me chocolate, sometimes they’d help me around, and sometimes they were understanding when I wanted to go out past curfew to buy some goods from the always-open Mr Achter. They were humans and they were merciful. But never, never, did I want to kill them. And never, never, never, never did I ever even think of wanting to eat them.
And yet, the Nvouw had done it and even enjoyed it. They mowed through many German squads before the garrison here even knew it. By that point, it was too late and they surrendered to the Nvouw, who could just zip up to them and tear them apart in a second if they wanted.
As a result, it was the Nvouw that I feared the most. They weren’t the reason for anything bad in my life, but the first impression I got of them was one of them being merciless brutes and man-eaters. My fear of them is probably why my mouth was zipped shut and I looked down to the ground in terror, resisting the urge to whimper.
My face was hot like the sun above and my hands fidgeted behind me as I simply puckered my mouth and faced the floor. I didn’t want to be in such a predicament. Maybe if I went slower, I wouldn’t be here. But now here I was, and I wanted to disappear in a snap so I could escape these soldiers.
“What are you out for?” the Nvouw repeated to no avail as I did my best to resist crying. My body went into a million different scenarios of how this would end. It could gut me here! If I tried to run, it’d just do it quicker.
“Citizen, I will not repeat myself,” the Nvouw asked once more with agitation. It seems that this beast had a chip on his shoulder for insubordination. But then again, maybe it was just me as I began to hyperventilate, more tears pushing against my eyes and probably making them bulge.
Not even the strongest dike could hold the deluge ready.
When the Nvouw came, Mama hid me in the house. Every time we left the café she brought me with her. I couldn’t be alone. She always kept my head pressed against her and she hugged me until we reached wherever we wanted to go. She did all the talking when the Nvouw would stop us for ID or just to converse. I never wanted to be face-to-face with one, and even worse, I wasn’t ready.
“Answer me,” the Nvouw asked again with its tentacles fluttering in annoyance.
Their tentacles obstructed their fangs and powerful teeth. But, if they just pulled up their tentacles, you could see every gut-cutting fang in their mouth. I didn’t reply and this only seemed to agitate the Nvouw as it hissed with its fangs. Those pristine white teeth were the ones that cut through the Germans like paper. Those were the incarnates of suffering themselves. Those damned fangs.
With that, I couldn’t help myself as a little sob escaped me and tears rolled down my cheeks in small amounts before more flowed. I did my best to suppress my sobs, but that was like trying to hold back the whole English Channel with a table for cover. So to the beasts, it probably sounded like I was gasping for air like a drowning human while also screaming for help.
The Felsha stared at me with concern and realisation before it rose from its squatting position and turned to the monster it called an ally. After whispering something more akin to garbling than Russian like my mother had compared it too, the Nvouw sighed and walked off to the side with its big bulky rifle unshouldered and resting in its talons.
“Look, I’m—,” the Felsha squatted again. But this time, he used the blunt edge of his claws to push my head up to meet his. His eyes were glowing with concern as he looked over my reddening and teary face with pity, “I’m sorry about that. I know that they weren’t the most docile when they occupied this land. But don’t worry, we won’t hurt you ever. Am I clear?”
“Y-yes, sir,” I mewled.
I was assessed once more by the concerned Felsha before he nodded and moved out of my way. I broke into a trot, then a speed-walk, and then a wild dash until I reached my destination. I looked back momentarily to see both creatures staring at me before the Felsha snapped its head to its monstrous comrade and conversed with him.
How anyone thought those creatures were friendly was beyond me. Call any of the Confederation species docile and I’d agree, except the Nvouw.
I quickly jumped into Mr Achter’s shop through the push door, stumbling around before regaining my footing. The store was as old as Mr Achter himself, being made in the 1870s. The shelves were wooden and antique. The products, however, were new and fresh.
“Woah, Ms Visser,” the old Mr Achter gasped at my haggard and eccentric demeanour. “What snake bit you?”
Mr Achter was an old man, in his seventies and was bald on the top with hair on his sides. He wore round professor’s glasses and always wore a pale blue-checkered jacket with a red tie and white undershirt. He always had a pipe in his mouth and yet his teeth were somehow always bright white and as clean as the rest of his shop.
“N-nothing, Mr Achter,” I wheezed. “Just the usual sticks of Rotterdam butter for Mama please.”
“M-hmmm,” he scanned me suspiciously. “Was it something to do with the soldiers?”
He was good. I never understood how he did it anyway. He did raise three sons, but two of them died in World War I and the other died of malaria in the Congo on a trip. I guess his fatherly instincts kicked in once he saw my trance.
“Y-yes,” I replied hoarsely.
“Did they do anything to you?”
“N-no,” I shook my head. “It’s just . . . one of them was a Nvouw and—”
“Oh!” Mr Achter exclaimed, slapping his palm to his forehead in realisation. “Oh, don’t worry. I understand, yes. They scare me too.”
Mr Achter brought out about three bars of butter, the usual amount I ordered, and I pulled out the guilders to pay him. Except, I was three guilders short.
“W-what?” I tensed up in shock. “I-I had all of them . . . How . . . ?”
Then it clicked. I must’ve dropped it in my hurried escape from the soldiers. Now I was short on cash and couldn’t even purchase the ingredient I had encountered a Nvouw for. My body burned hot with rage until it just boiled over and I slumped my shoulders in exhaustion and misery.
“Don’t worry,” Mr Acther smiled sombrely. “You can take it anyway. I’ll take what you have.”
“T-thanks, Mr Achter,” I sniffled. This day was nothing but hell for me.
Mr Acther looked at me with concern before puffing a smoke cloud from his pipe and leaning back into his seat at the cashier desk, “Occupation is a weird thing.” He hummed.
This was how he started a lecture, with an unconfirmed claim. He’d state his claim as more a question and have me try and fill in the gaps. To be honest, I thought it was patronising. But then again, it worked wonders. He always got his point across in the most clear ways possible.
“In what way?” I replied with a small grin.
“You have one power conquer the land of the other. And then, they decide to keep that land until the end of the war or even after. Sounds normal right?”
“Right,” I replied with a nod.
“But, sometimes the occupying power wants to stay. When they do, it’s usually either for strategic reasons . . . or for something else.”
“What?” I pestered impatiently.
“Guess,” Mr Achter coaxed.
“To make it a part of their nation?”
“Good!” Mr Achter jumped before putting his hand to his chin in fake thinking. “What should they do to accomplish that?”
“Just make it formal in a treaty,” I shrugged nonchalantly.
“Well . . . yes,” Mr Achter replied with a bit of lost energy. “But once something small is a part of another bigger thing that is much more different to it. What do you think that smaller something would do?”
“Assimilate?”
“Yes!” Mr Achter congratulated me with a rejuvenated spirit. “But what happens when you move to a new culture where another one is?”
“You force it out,” I replied in realisation.
“But if the people don’t want to?” Mr Achter pushed.
“You force them too.”
“By?”
“Intimidation,” I replied blankly, finally understanding the concept.
“Excellent,” Mr Achter snapped his fingers in delight at my response before handing me the butter to stuff into my rucksack. “That’s what we never want. They will try and intimidate us into listening. But never fold. We are Dutch through and through. Nothing will change that.”
“Thank you, Mr Achter,” I smiled politely as he waved me off.
“Alright, go on. Your mother’s cookies can’t bake themselves.”
I stopped walking in an instant. I never told him she was making her afternoon cookies, “How do you know they’re cookies?” I turned to him in shock.
“You really think I can’t tell my own butter in her cookies?” Mr Achter cackled. “Don’t be a fool. I know something’s mine when it’s good. I give the good-tasting ingredients and your mom turns them into even better-tasting food. Now run off before I ask for a discount.”
I laughed and dashed out of the store with a happy energy that was stolen from me earlier. I didn’t have to fear the Nvouw, not anyone! I was human and Dutch. Nothing could ever change that!
Running up the road again, I slowed down around the corner and peeked out. No one was there, so I turned and ran up the rest of the way to Mama’s café. Bashing through the spruce door into the kitchen like a tank as I put the rucksack down on the floor and took the butter out.
Mama’s head snapped my way in surprise before it warmed up to a smile, “Be careful!” she hissed playfully. “You almost made me burn the pies!”
“Sorry,” I hummed, handing her the butter.
I probably would’ve stayed to help, but a knock at our house door drew me away from the kitchen. Our house was behind the shop and so there were two doors that were used. The main door for all the customers, and the backdoor for me and Mama.
Only the mailman or milkman used the backdoor to deliver items. Except the milkman doesn’t come until tomorrow and the newsboy comes in the morning as well as the mailman. So whoever was at the door was clearly someone random.
I reached the door and turned the knob, the door creaked open and I looked outside to see a boy. Upon seeing him, a sudden odour forced me back a bit in shock.
The boy was thin and looked frail, even though he also seemed just as old as me. His face was pallid and sickly and his clothes were tattered and torn, like he had just swam across the Atlantic from America. His hair was unkempt and overgrown like an abandoned garden.
To my disgust, he was also barefoot and his legs looked bruised and cut. His arms were exposed by the ripped shirt except for a hastily bandaged part of his lower left arm. His eyes were a murky blue and his lips were cut and as dirt-covered as the rest of his face.
“What’s your name?” I asked the boy. Looking him over with contempt at his haggard apparel.
“B-brutus,” he replied hoarsely, tugging at his torn shirt.
“Really?” I scoffed. “That is not your name.”
“J-Johann. . .” he mumbled.
“Johann what?” I pestered him with impatience, tapping my foot in anger.
“I don’t know,” he replied in broken Dutch, rubbing his bandaged arm anxiously. “I-I forgot.”
“Forgot?” I hissed before giving a hearty sigh. “Alright, Johann, that first name doesn’t even sound Dutch. Where are you from?”
“U-uh . . . G-germany.”
How unspecific! Might as well have just told me ‘Earth’. Why was he so meek and secretive? Maybe he was a challenged boy. How did his parents let him wander like this? Also, his accent was so Eastern European that I could smell the borscht. Metaphorically of course, he smelled more like cow manure than a bowl of borscht. There is no way he thought he was really fooling me.
“Right . . .” I trailed off with suspicion of the boy’s intent. “Where are your parents?”
He seemed to tense up at the simple question. I was now concerned for this boy, but I also didn’t want to trust him at all. He was dirty, spoke Dutch poorly, was secretive, and probably addicted to something that would bring us trouble.
“G-gone,” he stuttered. “I-I lost Mama a while back. Then I was sent away.”
“From where?” I huffed.
“I-I don’t know . . . Some place that began with an A.”
“An ‘a’?” I raised a brow at the boy. I really didn’t like him, but then again. He was cold and hungry. The least I could do was give him some basic necessities before I sent him off to be someone else's problem.
“Who’s at the door, Isa?” Mama called from the kitchen. She then peeked out and her eyes fixed on the boy. “Who’s that?”
“Brutus,” I sighed, looking at him with disgust.
“Where are your parents?” Mama hollered to the boy over the sizzling pots and pans.
“He said they were gone,” I replied to the boy. When I looked back at him, his mouth was literally watering. I backed away a tad bit in disgust as the boy’s eyes fixed back on me.
“S-sorry . . . I just haven’t eaten for a bit and . . . your mom’s cooking is what brought me here really,” the boy mumbled in embarrassment. Since he seemed to deserve something to eat to make up for his crappy appearance, I decided to turn back to a concerned Mama
“Mama!” I called out.
“Yes!?” she called back, now seeing the boy in all of his dirty glory.
“The boy is hungry. Can we give him some food before we let him go?” I asked.
“Sure,” she replied, her face puckered up at the sight of the boy. I couldn’t blame her for that really. “On second thought . . . he needs a shower . . . and a new set of clothes first. Isa, take him up to my room and have him wait there. I’ll finish the batches here.”
I really didn’t want to be in the same room as this smelly boy, but I didn’t have many other options. Besides, I kind of felt bad for his situation, even if his personal specifics and identity were just a load of poorly made lies.
“C’mon,” I sighed. “Let’s go.”
The boy’s eyes lit up as I led him up the winding steps to the second floor. I skipped my room and pushed open the spruce door to Mama’s as the boy walked in and sat on the ground.
“Nice house,” he hummed to my concern. I was now pretty sure this kid wanted to steal from us.
“Y-yes . . . it is,” I replied slowly, squinting at the dirty boy with contempt at his appearance and his ulterior motive for being here.
Unless I wanted to contract a disease, I wasn’t going anywhere near him. This kid was more of a biological disaster than an actual living being. I found myself subconsciously drifting away from the putrid kid, but since I didn’t trust him alone, there I remained. It was a long while of miserable waiting before anyone spoke again.
“Your m-mom is g-good at c-cooking,” the boy complimented sheepishly from his sedentary pose on the wood floor.
“Yeah, her café is popular for a reason,” I sighed, pinching my nose in disgust at the lingering smell.
“My mom owned a flower shop,” the boy reminisced as I just sneered at him. “It was a beautiful one, the best in all of Wa–” The boy stopped as if he had just said too much.
“What?” I pestered with a bit of jumpiness at the information that he had mistakenly donated.
“Westphalia,” he corrected in a choppy manner as if he had just pulled the name from his rear.
“Uh-huh,” I scoffed. “What next? She fed you schnitzels and swastikas every day?”
“I’m not a Nazi,” he grumbled at me with some pent-up anger. “Those are the worst people to ever walk this earth.”
“A bit odd from a German,” I hummed, tiling my head in a sarcastic show of curiosity. “I expected you all to be the same. Unless if you weren’t a German.”
“I am German,” the boy replied adamantly.
“So you are a Nazi?”
“No!” he shouted. “I am German.”
“A Na-zi!” I mocked.
“Przeklęty!” he retorted before shutting up and clasping his mouth with wide-open eyes.
“See,” I giggled. “Not German.”
“Part-German,” he grumbled with his head down.
“Changing your story again?” I hissed, stamping the floor. “Just tell me the truth.”
“It is the truth.”
“That isn’t the truth, Mr ‘Johann’!”
“Well, my name is just as Germanic as yours,” he hissed. “That’s because . . . What’s your name?” the boy bleated.
“Hitler,” I sighed with a little smirk. If he was going to play around with his identity, then who cared if I did? “Do you believe me?”
“No,” the boy replied with a hiss.
“Then why should I? You are no ‘Johann’ because I can hear and taste the pierogi and borscht in your accent. Don’t think you’ll fool me with some German-sounding name.”
The boy opened his mouth to respond, but it was hushed when Mama came upstairs in her food-stained apron as her eyes fixed on the boy more clearly. Now she could see his haggard state in the sunlight from the window, like some sort of bad impression of an angel.
“Oh, God,” she practically mouthed as she stared at “Johann”. He pretty much looked at her with the most fear I’d seen yet. That’s one thing I could trust about him, his fear was raw.
Mama said nothing, simply walking into her room past the boy and opening one of her wardrobe’s drawers where she pulled out some of my old clothes. Due to the boy’s skinny frame, he’d fit in that old farm wear like a glove.
“Isa, leave for now. I’ll fix him up,” Mama ordered with a serious face before giving a little smile. “Unless you want to shower him with me?”
“What!? Ew!” I kicked, finally stumbling out of the room far enough to not smell the boy. Mama simply laughed and the boy tensed up in embarrassment. That was the last I saw of the two before Mama shut the door.
To be honest, this day just kept on getting weirder and weirder. First, I nearly soiled myself in front of a Nvouw. Second, I was three guilders short when I went to buy butter. Finally, some odd kid who couldn’t seem to lie properly and who smelled like he just crawled out of a garbage pit appeared at our door for no good reason other than he smelled Mama’s cooking! The Nvouw encounter was scary, but that kid was just weird.
But I didn’t let that bother me, I was now free to play in the little fields behind our house. Those fields were wild and led to forests. We lived on the outskirts of Utrecht anyway, rarely going downtown. That stuff was only for expensive shopping, not day-to-day errands.
Running out the same back door that the dirty kid had used, I dashed into the field of tall grass. Eventually, I found a little wild tulip, swaying in the wind.
It was beautiful. The symbol of our people. The red pedals bounced around in the wind freely, taking hit after hit from the soft blows of nature. I got down on my belly in front of it and watched it for a bit as it swayed and bounced, swayed and bounced. Inhaling a whiff of it, I smiled and rolled onto my back facing the skies.
They were blue and open, not tainted by low white clouds or the occasional spacecraft, the only thing puncturing the darkening blue sky were some high strips of clouds way up in the atmosphere.
The Netherlands was my home, and these sights are why Mr Achter’s lecture was so useful.
My job wasn’t to just be proud of my little Holland, it was to defend and preserve her beauty.
And I would do anything to keep my serene life here as free as possible.

Hey all!
So, I have been playing MTG for a couple years now and I have taught a handful of people how to play. The biggest hurdle when it comes to teaching/playing with new players is finding a deck that is simple to teach and simple to use. On the flip side, using your own complicated deck can be frustrating to play against. I had this thought when I was fairly inebriated and decided to build a collection of decks to teach/play with new players that have minimal complexity, allow for upgrades, and can generally hold their own at a regular table.
So, if you're new, wanna teach someone, and/or just want some deck ideas, here is my collection! As of right now they are only mono-colored decks. Let me know if you want dual/tri colors or have suggestions. These decks are not super tuned or optimized obviously. They are made to be simple. ALSO I MADE SURE ALL OF THESE DECKS ARE UNDER $100. I don't know how much attention this post will get, but if you're a content creator, feel free to use these decklists. Just give me a small shoutout :) or don't.
BLACK
[[Ghoulcaller Gisa]] - This is one of my main commanders for my personal collection. I have a $450+ version that I am constantly upgrading/tuning. Although at first glance you may think this is a zombie tribal commander, what she really wants is cheap creatures with high power, haste enablers, and anything to buff her horde. Added some drain effects that I personally do not run.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/7UdGd1OK_EG8yzRiYxTldw
[[Yahenni, Undying Partisan]] - I have actually never built this guy before. It was fun to learn him. Focuses on light aristocrat and edicts. Probably one of the more complex decks to run. Black was a challenge in general.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/B4r42jY3302Izo7Zxc-raQ
[[Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose]] - Just a ton of drain/lifegain effects. Does not run the combo. You know which one I mean.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/5miq1KVvqEew0grXR7WfdA
WHITE
[[Darien, King of Kjeldor]] - Simple life gain/life loss payoff token deck.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/O89jjZmjo0WI2ZDLvvx0fQ
[[Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite]] - Stereotypical mono white token deck. Feels similiar to the Darien deck.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/mkuQ-bQ0DkGL4HRz-OrVkA
[[Zeriam, Golden Wind]] - Griffins. That's it.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/qQypf44Wf0SsI288oqi7Yg
BLUE
[[Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive]] - Card draw, infect, unblockables, proliferate.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Ctibmv9DoEmNNWpGSgLVDg
[[Bruvac the Grandiloquent]] - Mill and Persistent Petitioners. It's always a pretty goofy tactic, but its fun.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/w22VRo17hUmIqDS01zeeZw
[[Talrand, Sky Summoner]] - Cast spells, make drakes. This one is for that friend who everyone secretly dislikes and you need another reason to dislike them haha.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/8tFDyW8ncUqDnyEkZP5bfw
RED
[[Krenko, Mob Boss]] - If you didn't see this one coming... idk what to tell you. Cast goblins, make more goblins, turn sideways. Probably one of the simplest and cheapest decks on the list.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/MFatZCEIUECABaaejjz_tA
[[Imodane, the Pyrohammer]] - Single target damage burn commander. Not much to say about this one. Just cast spells and do damage.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/mPGgA9NthU6HZrENHwlbhA
[[Lovisa Coldeyes]] - This one would be pretty good at lower power tables / tables that tend to durdle more. Some cards are a little wordy but shouldn't be too bad.
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/H_XVQxOpCUCLwn1iodqB8g
GREEN
[[Fynn, the Fangbearer]] - Okay, its deathtouch and poison counters... ITS SIMPLE THOUGH CMON. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/TsmJM8USu0W7reVehM703Q
[[Marwyn, the Nurturer]] - The classic "ramp out of control" elves. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/hEcNQa5dZkO7DZBtw-Qsqw
[[Ghalta, Primal Hunger]] - The deck for the friend who just wants to put down big creatures and hit people. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/g7JeWbQJMUK7rh_JhyKCfA

I love writing. I go through 3-4 journals a year simply writing down my day to day life. I have lists for everything - groceries, bills, random thoughts, shit that needs to get done. My google docs and Microsoft word are filled with half written stories, poems, etc. It’s what I love.
With this said, I’ve been thinking about investing in a typewriter. I feel like it would be an amazing tool to have in my journey. I’ve never used one before and I had no idea that there were so many different kinds or what all goes into them before skimming this subreddit. So I guess I’m looking for some advice on what I should look for, and where to get started. What do I need to know, to look out for?
I’m fine with getting a newer model, like the ones you can find on Amazon, but I just genuinely don’t know what I’m looking for!

So, I used to be a complete full on emetophobe, used to come here constantly and read comforting stories while in the bathroom having panic attacks, used to only eat white foods in fear of tu* so just in case I did the color wouldnt trigger me, lost a good amount of weight and couldn’t even hear anyone say the word v* But now, 5 years later I can happily say Ive tu* many times, from having fp* and alcohol ToT I think that what helped the most was just being stoic, just not caring. Its weird and its just a switch in the mindset that has to happen, the more you think about it the more it will trigger you. I remember once I was dry heaving in my toilet and I was like tf am I doing? Why does it bother me so much why do I care? If I tu* rn…I just will and thats it, like I have many times before and Ive lived. Something that always comforted me was how I could never ever remember the actual feeling of tu* just the before, just the anxiety, the anxiety I provoked on me. Being stoic helps because whether I stress or cry or just not care wont change the outcome, I still will or will not tu* so, might as well just be chill about it. Drinking and getting sick from drinking has shed an interesting light for me, I don’t drink that much just with my friends at parties and such, when you tu* from being drunk you literally dont feel it at all, I got very used to just doing it nonchalantly, which just made me realize damn, its not bad at all, just a normal bodily response
It helps a lot to breathe and create a mantra for yourself, and to try to get through it by yourself, just you and your brain, not even a battle between you and your stomach
Believe in yourself, trust me youll get over it, start by getting out of here, dont feed your brain with more tu* stories, go out there and live!

Yesterday, I commented to you. I did that attempting to apologize, show some form of comradery, and show that I was trying to listen.
My sister believes she IS taylor swift, and uses this to slurp mojo while watching me masturbate.
That's why I'm avoiding sexual and romantic contacts right now. My mother and sister are stealing it for themselves, and using it for their own horrible purposes.
Watch Wednesday the TV show. Wednesday is my mother and the hand is myself. That's how my family sees me, as a thing they employ for whatever they want.
Making sexual or romantic contact strengthens that connection, so I've set both aside for now. They also lead me to believe that women don't want me. They also lead me to believe my orgasmic mojo is 'too much' for 'ordinary' women (which means every woman in creation except them).
I didn't mean to lead anyone on, these two hags have some skin walking ability, and are very determined, and hit me in my sleep every single day.
My own family is sexually exploiting me, and using other women's faces to accomplish it.
If I orgasm to anyone except someone of their choosing, they get people to attack me in different ways.
This is what my family is really like. They have me trapped here, with no choice but to stay here or become homeless.
They witchcraft me all day and night using their flying monkeys, and are incredibly violent to me.
I need your help. As a group of people who have used me and claim to love me, I need help from you. Real, practical help I can use to free myself from these awful women.
I seem hateful, and I'm not (I'm not doing that today, the knots thing). I'm surrounded by feral hags and a swarm of micro spells.
I need freedom from these women. For life. Zero contact possible. No infor.ation must ever reach them.
Why these half-graduates are allowed to raise men is beyond understanding. This isn't misogyny. I don't hate women.
I didn't twist my words here.
My sister pretends to be taylor if and when I've expressed sexual or romantic interest.
I haven't orgasmed in many days because the hags are so fucking gross about it, and confused to an extreme.
My sister actually thinks i want sexual contact with her. That's the only reason I'm here, and not free. If I display control or awareness or ability, she swoops in, fucks my head up, and says 'he doesn't really understand'.
They genuinely believe, simultaneously, that my orgasms can hurt cam girls because I'm 'too much', and that the color purple can't be good.
Yall, what the goddamn fuck? This is so batshit crazy its insane.

2024-174 / MLZ MAP: 90.83 / Zedd MAP: 83.66 / Score Gap: 7.17
Wikipedia / IMDb / Official Trailer /Our Collection
IMDb Summary: When Piglet comes up missing his Hundred Acre Wood friends use Piglet's own Book of Memories to find him, discovering along the way just how big a role he's played in their lives.
Starring the voices of John Fiedler, Jim Cummings, Nikita Hopkins, Ken Sansom, Peter Cullen, Kath Soucie and Andre Stojka.
This morning I needed wholesome, and honestly, what is more wholesome than Christopher Robin and his group of friends, Winnie-the-Pooh, Rabbit, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo?
This film is one that our little bug loved (loves?) very much so it could be a hard watch. You love that adult young lady so much, but still miss that curly-haired little girl.
The love of A. A. Milne’s creation, though, was definitely pre-kiddo, and pre-Mr. Zedd for me. Funnily enough, pre MLZ for Zedd too!
So I popped this on before work and it was pretty awesome folks, for just a few minutes, sitting in my chair and eating oatmeal, I time traveled back to when I was a curly haired little rugrat on Saturday morning with the bowl of cereal on the coffee room table, and my legs underneath, as I watched Saturday Morning Cartoons.
Isn’t that the magic of a good film, with good music? You forget you are a past-middle aged woman eating hot oatmeal before work for just a few minutes.
It’s pretty special.
2024-175 / MLZ MAP: 68.48 / Zedd MAP: 69.38 / Score Gap: 0.90
Wikipedia?wprov=sfti1) / IMDb / Official Trailer / Our Collection
IMDb Summary: A teenage boy is cursed with periodically turning into a sheepdog.
Starring Fred MacMurray, Tommy Kirk, Jean Hagen, Kevin Corcoran, Tim Considine, Roberta Shore, and Annette Funicello.
This little light-hearted comedy about a teenager who is cursed with turning into a shaggy dog at the most inopportune times was really the first of the Disney “gimmick comedies” (a term coined by Leonard Maltin). It was quite successful as well as quite profitable.
This film was also colorized (not in color) and we grabbed a quick peek at it after watching the black & white version. Don’t go there. Not good.
The film was exactly how silly we expected it to be and that was, again, rather pleasant. Just a quick, fun film with a bit of hairy teen-aged angst and some Russian spies. Standard Disney Fare!
Movie On!

I need as much advice as possible TW; all types of abuse
I'm going to give my full story here while keeping it as brief and to the point as possible. But there is a lot so I apologize if this seems long.
I have been with my current husband off and on since high school. He was in the military and is rated as having 80% service-connected disability. He got jumped when deployed overseas and has a Traumatic Brain Injury.
I was abused as a child. Most of my family was in a biker gang, whatever you have heard about them is only skimming the surface. My mom's brother hurt me the worst when I was 9, but his wife was my babysitter and my mom didn't want to pay full price for daycare. When I told her what he did she went back and forth between calling me a liar and calling me a wh*re. Until finally I said I made it up, just so she'd stop. But these "incidents" of being assaulted by him and the rest of the gang my parents rolled with, caused me to develop a trauma disorder which affects the memory.
I don't always remember that I was abused this severely. People like to make jokes and say things like I'm faking amnesia, especially the creeps in my family who either assaulted me or enabled their husband's and sons' to assault me. But if I has know all of these things my whole life, I could have avoided so many terrible mistakes that led me right back to being abused.
There have been other times in my life where these memories came back and somehow I was able to repress them again. I started having these memories return again about 2 years ago while my dad was on his deathbed.
I had told my current husband that I was remembering what my uncle did to me amongst other awful memories. I didn't understand why he seemed so agitated by this, I assumed he was just being his usual volatile self. Then I remembered when we "met" when I was in high school, he kept saying, "I can't believe you don't remember me". At the time it seemed odd because back then I wasn't aware of my disorder.
It turns out that we first met when I was going through a hard time because of my gross family making my church unsafe. My godmother took me to a Salvation Army church group for kids. They put me in a group with the 12-17 year olds because they knew I'd been "sexually active" via assault and thought I should be with the older kids, despite the fact that I was 11. I was talking to this older boy (15 at the time) who led me out to the back parking lot area. It was gravel and the only cars parked back there were broken down but I saw the security camera and assumed it was safe. He had his little brother who was also 11, come with us as well, again making me feel safer. But it wasn't. The first encounter I had with a boy outside my family ended up being the worst experience of my life. The things he said while he was raping me were deeply disturbing. I'd hear these things in my mind and think 'why would I think that about myself?'
When I told my godmother what happened she said to hush, that I shouldn't have gone with him, that I should've known, that I had to have known what he wanted and since I followed him, I wanted it too, and that I needed to quit crying rape. I told her to check the footage from the camera. I begged her to. Then, I blanked and forgot it all. Even when I had a miscarriage 2 months later at age 12, I didn't even remember being assaulted, didn't remember about my family and didn't remember my godmother. I didn't go to the hospital because my mom was a nurse and didnt want her coworkers to know what happened. So there is no record of this for me to fall back on.
Godmother knew about my memory issues and why I had them, and she would often make videos of family events and parties for me. Once she reviewed the surveillance footage from the parking lot, it was obvious I had said no and I did try to fight him. He had his younger brother hold my arms dow. while he.. did what he did. His brother was crying and so he called him a pussy.
I can't prove this happened but I did call him out on it, 2 years ago while my dad was dying.
3 days after my dad died, my mother, knowing the whole truth, and that I wanted to leave my husband and take my 2 sons with me to a domestic violence shelter, decided to attack me. I was coming apart. She got in my face called me the same awful names she used to call me and kept jabbing me in the chest with her finger. Finally, I shoved her out of my face. She had been cussing and spitting and growling through gritted teeth at a low volume. But once I shoved her she ran backwards into the wall and fell to the floor, where she proceeded to scream and beat her head on the wall, waking my husband and kids. I took my kids back to the bedroom and told them we were gonna stay away from their dad and granny for the rest of the day. My husband said not to worry she was just being crazy and he'd calm her down. Really he had her riled up even more and took her to have me committed, as well as helping her to get a protective order against me because she had brushes from beating her head on the wall.
While I was locked away, they moved out. He took my sons and moved into a nasty little one bedroom apartment and she slandered me to my whole family. I was lucky to not be homeless. My brother who I'd only met after becoming an adult, let me stay in his basement. But when my husband brought my sons to visit, my youngest, (at the time, 7 year old) wasn't being bathed, fed properly, wasn't going to bed until late, and missing school a lot, broke down crying because his dad told him I didn't want to be his mommy anymore, that I wanted to run off and start a new family. Which is a total lie. I adore this kid and chose to do K12 home schooling because he's ADHD like both me and his dad are and we both struggled inthis local school system.
Then, when idiot husband went to jail for embezzling from his work, he had my mother move in with my kids after telling me he'd let me stay at his apartment so I could try to get on my feet. I had lost my license and vehicle when I was locked up because he canceled my insurance and I wasn't allowed back on the property for my car. But instead he moved my mother in which meant I went from seeing my boys everyday, to only being able to see them when I could walk across town to visit for a few hours after school and on weekends.
Eventually it got to be too much and I just said fuck it and told him I wanted to work things out. I don't have proof of most of this. My mother and I sort of are on speaking terms again since she had a heart attack but I still can't depend on her for much and I'm afraid to ever trust her again. He was working to turn my boys against me while he actively neglected them. But I had no room for them and wasn't able to find a job until he was already out of jail again. He doesn't have to work for money, he gets a check AND gets a paycheck from "work therapy" through the VA as well. He just has to clean one small building at the local VA office.
I'm afraid because he has a domestic violence charge but its from around 12 years ago. He's done it since then but I didn't call 911 because I was stupid and thought I needed him. Really I just needed enough help to get me through school. I thought I could stay with him long enough to get through school but when I'm with him I'm always so anxious and nervous that I can barely remember what I need to do. But my record might show where I was committed and that my own mom had a protective order against me. She lied on the paperwork she filed and she lied in court. All of the family members that had my back have died within the past 5 years on top of all of this. My sister committed suicide in 2018, my cousin died of cancer in 2021, then 6 months later in 2022, my dad. I know this reads like a lifetime movie from the 90s but it's all God's honest truth. Which reminds me, the husband lies constantly. He's a grade A bullshitter. He tells people what they want to hear, he's very respectful when he's speaking to anyone but me and the kids, yes ma'am, no ma'am, thank you ma'am, etc. He'll outright lie, even when there is evidence against him right in front of his face. If lying doesn't work, he'll start sobbing and I mean sobbing. He's put on a show before for my family saying "I just love her so much no matter how much she hurts me. And I just love these kids more than anything" sniffling and snubbing the whole time. If crying doesn't work, he might let his true colors show. He told me he would hit me but he knows I'll call the cops, and says "right?!", like he wanted my permission to hit me! He's not a very intelligent person but he is a gifted manipulator and he knows exactly how to manipulate anyone I've brought around him. It's like seeing a grown man cry is so upsetting they don't know how to respond.
It breaks my heart every time I remember that my family chose to believe him over me, that my mom helped him push his bullshit narrative, that they both worked together to try and end me, and that my whole family repeatedly chose to just ignore me and pretend I didn't exist even when they saw my kids hurting.
Please tell me there's help out there somewhere. I tried calling legal aid and she stopped me to say she's a mandated reporter and they only help with no fault divorces. I'm trying to start working as a teachers aide, they'll pay for the education I need to become a full blown teacher, which is my dream job because I love kids and I'm actually pretty good at helping kids learn. I just don't know how well it will go if I start working again and he decides to throw my life into upheaval again.

I just returned to the rough draft of a story I wrote over a year ago and I'm going over some feedback I got from DestructiveReaders. One of the reasons I'm posting on a different sub is because I've found I often see some of the same advice floating around that I don't agree with and I want to get a second opinion, not on my work specifically, but on the underlying ideas I tend to see in critiques.

• Splitting hairs over dialogue tags. It seems like a constant back and forth between using "said," using more colorful dialogue tags, or eliminating tags entirely. Most recently I find people recommend using "said" for everything. My personal bias is to have no dialogue tags for maybe 80% of my dialogue, but to use a variety of tags every time I do use them.
• Hyper fixation on suspense and hooks. I understand that a full paragraph (or several) that don't move the plot forward can make a story slow or interrupt pacing, but I've seen complaints about one or two (very short) sentences describing the scenery.

Specifically on that sub it seems like people will make a mountain out of a molehill because more words in your critique will appease mods that will otherwise mark your critique as leeching (personally I've noticed my no-nonsense critiques are marked as leeching but are received better by the mods if I really lay into the author or ramble) and have extremely low patience for any writing that doesn't provide instant gratification as if they're solely reading your work in order to bank a critique as quickly as possible. They want the conflict and details immediately, but call it info dumping if you do what they suggest. They complain about white room syndrome but will complain about slow pacing and lack of action if you describe the setting. I've been tempted to find an obscure Kurt Vonnegut story and post a passage from it anonymously just to see what mental gymnastics people go through to argue "it needs a ton of work."
So first of all, am I alone in the experience I've had with this sub? Partly I want a sanity check to see if I'm just not taking criticism properly or if these are issues that other people that have used the sub can attest to.
Second, do things like dialogue tags or hooking the reader within the first paragraph matter that much? Is there any objectivity to this dialogue tag discussion or is it just personal preference? And regarding suspense, I get that there are a lot of amateur writers that will write prose that drags on forever with no real direction, but it seems like a lot of people are overcorrecting on this account. I can't help but imagine these people would walk out of the theater five minutes into a Kubrick film.

I live in an era when everyone is seeking to diversify the bourgeois. Give capitalism a friendlier, more diverse face. I am expected to commodify my experiences as a woman, a woman of color, to show why I deserve to move up the ladder, sit higher on the backs of others. In two years, I'll be writing college applications and amputating my sexuality and gender and oppression from the class character that has been forced upon us all under capitalism. Severed from the capitalistic roots of my repression, my survival is a commodity to be exchanged for the slightest better chance of a living in a world where higher education and employment and life are behind paywalls.
That last boy, he was a bootlicker, absolutely guzzling capitalism to its core. I remember he asked me why I'm a radical, I began to answer and suddenly all of his weight was on top of me and holding me down and I didn't have a chance to fight back. He paused and asked me again, why am I a communist, I held him back and tried to push him off me and began to fumble through my words, my head became numbingly empty, he made a face, and held me down and was all over me again and I stopped fighting after a while. Of all the fucked up things he did that night, that memory was seared into my brain. I could tell that there was something about him asking me that and then overpowering me that got him off.
Ironically, I tried to run away from the whole situation, I left him, I hopped a train one weekend night and went to the city, which is where I saw a vigil for Palestine, turned around after I had walked past it and joined in for the rest of the night. I quickly became even more radicalized. I live in a heavily Zionist and liberal area, so eventually I began to get in trouble for all of it. Eventually, my school didn't want to get sued for impeding free speech, they instead used a bunch of posts I had made to expose my assaulters to accuse me of harassment and silence my political speech. I had been assaulted twice (different incidents) and when there was inaction from the system both times, I took matters into my own hands. They couldn't do something about my sexual assault for 4 months but were on that shit the moment I became pro-Palestine and a communist.
Later on, when I still resisted and kept the posts up (for a little while) and kept writing, they accused me of being mentally unstable and having a "personality disorder" and said I had to go to a crisis center. They basically said the 21st century version of "lobotomize her." Of course. Of course it'll always be me being "mentally ill," it'll always go back to what I wear, which men I date, how pure I am.
Patriarchy is another hierarchal system that upholds capitalism. I haven't been able to process any of my emotional trauma because I'm trying to not get expelled. It wasn't simply his hands that silenced me, it was the strings of the entire system I live under. And now I'm watching Gazan women being raped and assaulted and denied healthcare in a genocide and they expect my feminism to not be radical.
For the longest time, I had pure unrefined feminine rage overflowing from me. Years of domestic violence, abuse, assault, and rape, and I had no clue where to direct any of it. Now I know it is to be aimed directly at the heart of the paternal system that is just like patriarchy, reaping the benefits of constant competition, dominance, aggression, and emotional repression, capitalism. Patriarchy is like a cage for men and a barbed cage for women, and capitalism is the suffocating dome that encloses over both.

I've scanned the sub as recent and notice the influx of higher KD posts comparison to the old seasons and so fort and first of all GG's to all you guys and your improvements as players as time went on.
When you check the comments though I'm reminded that the long time players know that the Ace we see now unfortunately doesn't carry as much weight compared to what Ace once was. You can just play alot of matches and make dominator every season. I have friends with thousands of games in at Dom and friends with hundreds of games at Dom and you can tell them apart by their playstyle of a more aggressive playstyle vs a more safer gameplay of picking the right drops and picking the right fights to maximize survival. I think Ace lost it's weight because of the padded up tier protection that we get all the way up to crown I think. (Correct me if I'm wrong) but once upon a time tier protection were cards you got as rewards at the end of season they were never free and covered your ranks. If you lost a good game it was a nasty -40 and brought out the type of anger that would turn a house upside down. Crown was always pure hell. Climbing through it getting 20 points if you win one match with 7+ kills but losing 40 sometimes even 50 if you died early was what made the grind all the more worth the time and effort. And if you were lucky enough to make Ace it was indeed a honor, an achievement to be beckoned because everyone that saw it knew it didn't come easy. It was indeed a long fight.
I've been here since season 2 and for me during the peak times of pubg, the night mode and the snow heat mode with the chicken and the blizzards and everything those were the best and for me I think that's where pubg peaked, those were the best times in the game. I can say I recall playing the game more then than now because of the friends, the arguments over dying to Chinese sweats and who played dumb it was just so nostalgic and boy it was a great time. Unfortunately for me I wasn't fortunate enough to have the best device so I didn't have the best kd I think my highest is 2.4 but that never changed the fun of the game for me. The funny thing about a potato phone is it alerts you when sweats are around in its own way. I remember playing my game semi smooth and the minute my game froze I knew immediately the Chinese pros in their multi colored fancy vehicles and costumes were nearby. I remember my phone would freeze and I'd just see me death screen and all I could do is laugh because it was so funny and I remember fear running into my veins driving around wrangel my phone would freeze and my blood would run cold as I'd spin my camera looking to see where they came from. Old pubg was gold.
New pubg is also good too though but for me seeing the ranks and knowing it's as simple as just playing alot to achieve them I'm not necessarily motivated to rank. I just rank for fun I guess and the current event mode is amazing as hell and they improvements from when I started to now is amazing and we have definitely came a long way and they are more things to be fixed like the desync issues in some modes but the game is good, I just feel like the ranks don't carry as much weight anymore and with lobbies full of super bots now kd's are padded from the start so I'm really unable to gauge how good I am now because I think I have 4 point sumn now but I know that's padded with super bots and by the time I reach higher lobbies with the real big dogs I'm stuck with Randoms unfortunately because everyone that I used to play with moved on to other games And in Ace master lobbies Randoms honestly isn't the way you wanna play because you are going up against well coordinated guys who are on the mic communicating and making amazing plays compared to your random squad of you, and one guy who landed far, the other one calling for help at 10000099km away and the other asking for a revive and let's not forget the one person who joins the lobby then leaves before the plane takes off.
I think the game has come a long way and honestly has some decently longer way to go but as a long time player whose been there and done that. I've gone from my more determined to get better to casual play as the days go on and I'm fine with that. I just miss the nostalgia from the old days. Eitherway. If you made it to the bottom of this by some miracle. Thank you for your time, keep getting better you guys, you guys are amazing, this community is amazing, Much love and keep bringing home those chicken dinners. God bless!

TLDR: Not making Pro/Creator Skins is stupid, as is not making a dedicated fund towards ALGS Prize Pool, and ALGS specific skins/trails. ALGS Prize Pool is too small.
And before "because EA want money" comments, hear me out.
I normally post memes or comment that I don't like x player or y coach. I don't like a lot of you (especially non-DZ and TSM fans), but that doesn't mean we aren't all on the same team; most of us want the players/creators to get a fair return on the effort they put forth to give us entertainment. I was one of the few that participated in the Dizzy/Wigg raid, and I watched Ninja get omega carried by Dizzy. I haven't missed an ALGS since Hal was a scrawny little MnK player with no drip, and now he's a scrawny Controller player with moderate drip (and a giant Redbull hat, I sure do love sugar free Redbull) - oh, how quickly time passes us by.
Jokes aside, the more I think about it, the less it makes sense: EA, Respawn, or Galactor the All-Consuming and Ever Hungry (whatever money hungry name Respawn/EA wants to go by) are fumbling the bag so hard.
Sure, they could be like "Hey, donate here for ALGS" but they'd never do that. They want some money, right? And maybe most people wouldn't be into just tossing five bucks into the void with nothing in return.
Now before the financial gurus come for my throat with "Ackshually the economic infrastructure of Respawn is more profitable without bothering to invest in comp as the casual player-base provides them the majority of their net income through skins." Most of the casual player-base probably doesn't know ALGS exists because these mfers advertise like they are a small indie company. They tried something new with skins for like, what... a week? Two weeks? And it bombed? No way, who could've saw that coming!
Lemme diverge for a second here and say we got some of the most watched creators in the Apex community: Hal, Faide, HisWattson, Mande, or Shiv. All of their fans would probably invest in buying a skin themed around them. Hell, they might even go for a small percentage of return. Maybe, I don't know, if it was me (being the silver ranked pleb I am) I would be happy to have a skin themed after me, wouldn't care about the return.
Make a Faide Wraith skin: That mfer probably wouldn't be like "give me a massive percent of it, now." Make a Hal Bloodhound or Horizon skin: Hal is already gigachad rich and probably wouldn't ask for much. Make a HisWattson Wattson skin: just to make that mfer play Wattson like his name implies. Make a Mande-themed Pathfinder skin: that mfer made Pathfinder incredibly popular. Make a Shiv-themed Bangalore skin: give it an exclusive voice-line that is "LIFELINEEEE, LIFELINEEEE."
I don't wanna say the F word, but Fortnite makes Creator skins for people that don't even play their gyat-dang game, and we can't get some themed around our few creators? Like their foaming at the mouth die-hard fans wouldn't instantly invest in owning that skin?
Give me a Reps themed Gibby skin with the descriptor being "every inch feels like a mile."
But whatever, we aren't doing anything for creators, or anything. Okay, no loss there I guess (That's a joke, it's clearly a huge loss).
Imagine this: They drop an ALGS themed skin and claim "all proceeds go to ALGS Prize Pool" and the best part is even if they are scummy and only donate fifty percent of the earnings from that skin to the ALGS pool, there's no way it isn't inflated to at least double what it usually is.
Why are they not doing this? Why are they not dropping ALGS themed skins, at least themed around the teams that won, or even placed Top 8? Why not immortalize players that have reached the literal Apex of the game? Those players put more money and effort into the game than anyone else, and to be fair they don't make anything in return. "Congratulations on spending a portion of your life grinding our game! Here's your check, now piss off."
I remember there was that weird kerfuffle about Organizations wanting more of a percentage out of skins, but let's assume they negotiate for even 20% of a return or even 10%. My guy: you are risking making dogwater-nothing-zip-ziltch-nadda over high-grounding and proclaiming, "Nay, my organization wants 70% of all earnings from our skins!" Really?
I specifically remember that because it was something like "they did not want to compensate us fairly" or some boo-hoo sob story (someone gonna say I know nothing about financial expenditure for Orgs and to that I say, the orgs themselves probably don't know much more than me), but understandably - those skins were not very successful in terms of sales, because individual teams really only have the pull power of the fans that support that specific team.
I mean they'd probably make enough to at least fund their roster and advertise their brand in the game, right? The reason they drop rosters is because the return is so small it's not even worth it to pay the players salary: imagine if a skin just paid that for them? Ba-da-bing.
Now, Respawn said the return on those Champs skins was not very good, but there's no way the time/effort they put into pumping out those re-skins lost them money. They made money, not as much as they wanted, but they made money. They might've lost a bit by having those skins take up a portion of the shop, but wouldn't it be wild if they just added a COMPLETELY SEPARATE tab for the skins in the shop? That way they kept all their money-makin' up front, and if players cared enough to look at the "ALGS" tab, they could purchase those skins?
Marketing for those skins - sucked, advertisement for those skins - sucked, and whoever was in charge of that stuff just sucked. Wasn't one of the weapons like a fuckin' rampage or something? Like huh? TSM's was like... an Octane skin? During a heavy non-octane meta? What, you just don't wanna make money? Make the skins available the meta at the time. Meta = played more = more advertising, non-meta = not played as much = why purchase unless a die hard main of that legend.
Still, I would be genuinely shocked if that TSM banner didn't have a massive return.
Let's be real: popular orgs like TSM, DZ, or (insert other org name here) would see a massive return, and other less-popular ones would not see as much. Make 'em limited edition, never returning to the shop after a month, and each Regionals or Finals, it is a new, yet slightly different skin. That ain't asking a lot, EA re-skins stuff as their sole source of creativity anyway. "What if the new Wraith heirloom was red?" +3 million dollars, give that guy a raise. Talk about falling upwards.
They can't be on some Mr. Krabs foo-foo stuff like: A: "Man, those skins didn't make us a lot of money... now, let's get back to the real work: inverse the skins color scheme and make it a thirty dollar pack."
B: "We could add 30% of that to the base price, then add a 30% off tag to make it sell faster!"
C: "A sense of urgency! I like it! And I like money!"
My point being: Orgs risk making nothing off of Apex and ditching rosters entirely, versus just letting Galactor the All-Consuming and Ever Hungry just have the majority of the pie - because we all know, they money-hungry and do not care about anything other than that.
So why not out-source some botched ALGS skin, toss it into the shop, and use those funds to fund ALGS while pocketing the rest? Revitalize the scene, give reason for players to actually try. Instead of making the skin 20 goddamn dollars, just make it 5 or 10. Make it affordable, and occasionally advertise it in the shop.
Make a drop trail exclusive to ALGS. What's pricey about that? Color switch, make it somethin' cool like... black, or red and white, or something else.
Hell, why not put out some money and just make some ALGS themed heirloom event, and give half of that to the Prize Pool? You really gonna tell me that would be too much of a loss in profit?
Or is ALGS Prize Pool gonna just continue to be dogwater? Yeah, winning first or second can give these social recluses enough cash money to subsist off of DoorDash and UberEats for a year or two, but it isn't really "life-changing" money to waste a year climbing to top twenty finals twice just to make like 2.5k on the return. It's literally not even worth trying unless you make top ten. Once taxes takes their cut, the org takes their cut, they're pretty much lookin' at maybe enough to put a down payment on a home - but they are being set up for failure. One poor performance at LAN and they go home with nothin'.
HisWattson even said he made more from a single YouTube video than his cut of placing second in ALGS.
What are we actually doing over at the HQ? Why are we even negotiating this like it is a winning battle? We're playing for 2nd.
Is the system so broken that we're content with just letting things flash, flare, and die out? Is this how Apex ends? Not with a bang, or a whimper, but with that obnoxious cha-ching noise bite every time you purchase coins?

Hi everyone! I hope your hallucinations are treating you well.
For me, it started when I prayed "show me the truth no matter the cost to me" and almost immediately I started experiencing a bunch of synchronicities. Prayer really puts your mind in a suggestible state, as my Dad says. These synchronicities made me believe in karma and created the delusion that I was Christ. There was a YouTuber who encouraged magical thinking in me because he seemed to be reading my mind, and when I asked him about it he said it's something like that.
The week before Christmas, I had gone on my first meditation retreat for a type of meditation called jhana that's associated with magick. That's another thing that puts you in a suggestible state. In jhana, I heard voices for the first time but was able to command them to shut up. I got some useful phrases to say to voices from an energy healer. This energy healer encouraged magical thinking in me by telling me that schizophrenia is a spiritual illness with spiritual cures.
On Christmas, my delusion that I was Christ got disrupted by a major synchronistic scolding for believing it. This scolding included threats of madness and my first visual hallucinations. Later I tried to kill myself in order to threaten God into curing me, but afterwards a book that I got from the library was bookmarked by the previous reader on a page that said this had the opposite effect.
My hallucinations are: voices that tell me to join a monastery, to meditate, to get therapy, to move out, afterimages that last too long, 2 colors that I had previously visualized together in meditation, 7 nested meditating figures in the colors of the rainbow, and a small purple haze that overlays things.
I'm sure others have equally interesting stories.

Before I mention anything else, my specs are 8GB of ram with a geforce 1050ti graphics card. I have about 140gb left on my hard drive and I would prefer to have some leftover.
I am looking for a modlist that changes the visuals to be more colorful and lively, lots of player customization (hair with physics is a must), perhaps with some mods that make the game a little more exciting for a mage/necromancer playthrough. Added roleplaying mechanics are also something I'm interested in.
I don't need 4k textures or anything i am perfectly fine with 1k.
I haven't used wabbajack or modlists before and I am coming back to skyrim modding after giving it up after the 2022 update ruined my old modded playthrough.

I am looking for advice from any of you who have experience with the Pulse Soundbar+, PSB Alpha IQ, Powernode and/or Powernode Edge, or any of the NAD amps with Dirac.
My current living room setup is an Apple TV 4K connected to the TV via ARC with a stereo pair of Apple HomePod 2s as the speakers. Honestly, the HomePods come so close to being an acceptable solution, except there's something about the way they interact with my particular living room that generates obnoxious amounts of bass. I mean enough bass to actually cause pressure/pain in my ears and overwhelm the rest of the music, even at moderate volume! The room is basically a 15 foot square with one side that is open and flows out to a foyer and a hallway. TV and HomePods on one wall, couch about a foot in front of the opposite wall. If I use the "Reduce Bass" option on the HomePods, that makes the bass tolerable but leaves the rest of the music washed out and weak.
I'm considering moving the HomePods to other rooms of the house and finding another solution. I have a Pulse M in my kitchen that sounds great, so I'm leaning toward putting something with BlueOS in the living room. But what to choose? This will be the main music system for the house as well at the only TV sound system.
If the Soundbar+ could suffice, that would save a lot of space although we won't get any Atmos because my current TV only has ARC and not eArc. I'd also have to get the $$$ Bluesound TV stand as I can't mount the TV on the wall. We've been enjoying some of the Spatial Audio/Atmos songs from Apple Music on the HomePods as well as the TV sound effects. We're not super-interested in surround sound, but it could be interesting to try in the future.
For around the same price as as the Soundbar+, I could pick up the PSB Alpha IQ. They would actually fit on my TV stand just like the HomePods do, and my wife loves the colors. That option would rule out any Atmos or surround sound. But how would the sound compare to the Soundbar+?
I could always just go for a "real Hi-Fi system" and get a Powernode or a NAD amp with BluOS and some appropriate speakers but that opens up another can of worms with speaker choice and placement (there's not a ton of space on either side of the TV and they'd need to be fairly close to the wall). I'm kinda spooked by the potential for more problems with bass frequencies, so maybe Dirac would be a big help? The larger and/or uglier the speakers (and stands) get, the lower the Acceptance Factor goes, unless the speakers have a cool retro look like Wharfedale Lintons or PSB Passif 50s, JBL L100 Classic, etc.
The system has to be easy to use for the rest of the family. They need to be able to "turn on TV, get sound." Cost is not a major issue, but spending $1K-2K fits into the family budget much better than $3k or $4k. I think I'd get a lot of pushback at $4k and the system would have to be mind-blowing, as the rest of the family is OK with the HomePods and think they sound just fine.
Thank you for reading my novel! Got any advice for me? Thanks!

Hi, I started using Anki recently and I know nothing about HTML or CSS but I'm trying to figure things out. I'm trying to change the colour of the text in some of my cards to blue, and I thought that would be as simple as changing color: white; to color: blue; in the styling section but it's not working! I can change the font-family, font-size and text-align, but color and background-color do not change, whatever I type! Can anyone help? Is there something I'm missing? Sorry if I'm being stupid :D
https://preview.redd.it/d2kp27e4tazc1.png?width=1022&format=png&auto=webp&s=71196c2a3e146da89e6f25e931e0dba7588537e0

This is a semi fictional story that I wrote for a class, and is fictional but not fantastical. I would love feedback, good or bad
She Came To Help

Jay Stain was a man unlike any other. He had fought in the first world war and had gained the Medal of Honor for his achievement. He was revered for his strong attitude and his go-getter attitude. With being the richest around, he had a standard to meet. His house stretched across the bay for almost half a mile. He threw lavish parties and gained an almost cult following of people who waited until his next party. People came from all across the world to see these wonderful parties they had heard about. Jay was happy to all that knew him. However, under all of the parties, drinks, and popularity, was a crippling drug addiction. Jay had not been sober since the war. 

Every day he tried a new thing to ease his mind. Nothing was enough and he couldn't stop. Jay used his extravagant lifestyle to mask and replace his sorrow and addiction, but he knew that was impossible.
In September of 1924, when the warm summer air was slowly being plagued by the cool brisk of autumn, Jay's best friend Scott Adams was killed by a drug overdose while attending one of Jay's parties. This hurt Jay immensely, as they had fought in the war together. They walked through life and death and made it home, only to crumble due to their own mistakes. In light of Scott’s passing, Jay threw his largest party yet. He had dancers from Europe dressed in bright purple satin draped over them in a royal fashion. He had enough drinks to almost satisfy his thousands of party go-ers, but nowhere near enough space. He was os numb from his drug use that he could almost forget why he threw this party.People packed into every corner, pouring out into the lawn to see Mr. Stain is nowhere to be found. As every person is outside dancing till dawn and Belting out songs, Jay clumsily walks down his steps and shouts as if to say something to his ever growing crowd. “TO ALL OF YOU FOLKS HERE TONIGHT” Jay yelled before choking on his words. “ TODAY WE HONOR THE PASSING OF MY DEAR COMPANION, SCOTT ADAMS. HE WAS A DEAR FRIEND, AND A GREAT MAN, WHO I AM THANKFUL TO HAVE KNOWN IN MY LIFETIME”. As a tear streams down Jay's face, the crowd roars in response to his condolences. He takes another line to combat his pain, and the singers resume as Jay walks down the steps to regroup with his people.
Then, a beautiful glimmer starts across his eyes, snatching his attention from the lively party. Out of curiosity, Jay follows her into the garden. He sees her and runs after her but he can never catch up to her. She was always a step ahead, around the next corner. As he entered the hedges, he paused for a moment, as she was stopped, staring out at his stunning field of flowers. Every color you could imagine spread out in a flamboyant display. “ What is your name miss? ”, said Jay in between troubled breaths. However she didn’t answer, she just stared at the flowers and calmly gestured to him to sit beside her. “ Why Jay?”, asked the woman calmly. “ Ma’am?”, said Jay, confused. “ Why the drugs Jay?”. Jay was taken aback, as he didn’t know anyone knew about his problems with drugs. He was perplexed as to how this unknown woman knew about his deep personal thoughts and problems. He had only told Scott and he wouldn’t tell a soul. “ How did you know that?” asked Jay Frantically. She again said nothing, but rose from her seat, grazed her hand on his cheek then returned to the party. He tried to follow her but when he turned around the hedge, she was gone.
The next morning Jay was in complete misery and going through an intense bout of depression. His mind and thoughts of Scott were finally catching up to him. He ran away to the only thing that he knew could make him feel better, Cocaine. He gave into his desire and regained his composure. He set off to his front door for his daily getting of the morning paper, and to see his beautiful home. He stumbled down the stairs towards the door and opened the tall, broad, dark oak gates. It was the woman from the party. “ Hello Jay.” . She spoke to him as if they had known each other for their entire lives. He felt a sense of comfort when he saw her, and he had missed that since the party. “ What are you doing here ?” Asked Jay with a confused expression, “ I’m here because I wanted to ask you on a date.” Jay was so captivated by her question that he almost forgot to answer. He was shocked that such a beautiful woman would ask him on a date. “ Yes!” Said Jay, after the long silence. “ I’m going out with this woman Ronald” said Mr. Stain said to his butler. “ What woma-“ said Ronald before being cut off.
Jay and The woman both went down to the car and left in a hurry. She took him to many shops and diners, but Jay showed her his beautiful view from his complex in the heart of the awe inspiring New York City, and his good friend Daniel. Jay felt as if he didn’t need the drugs with her. He felt all of the joy that came with them when he was with her. Jay had fallen in love with a woman he didn’t even know the name of. Later that night The woman and Jay Both went back to his home. “ You need to stop it with the drugs, Jay. '' Said the women while they lay on the couch together in front of the fire. Jay knew he shouldn’t be doing it and he wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. They shared a kiss,and then Jay set off to the phone to find help. He was going to do this, Get clean, for her.
Jay and The woman left for a rehab center.Her and jay checked in at the front desk and she said goodbye to jay. “ I'll wait for you my love!”. The women waved goodbye to Jay as he left into the deeper workings of the building.
6 Months Later, Jay was clean and hadn’t touched a drug since he was admitted. He immediately upon leaving the center ran to find the woman who was not waiting. He ran to the lady at the front desk, “ Have you seen my lover?”. The woman looked at him with a confused expression, “ Who?”, “ The woman I checked in with.”. She looked at him with pity and said, “ You checked in, alone”. Jay couldn’t believe it. Was she not there? Was he going insane? He ran around town and asked his friend Daniel about the woman, “ You never introduced me to this woman Jay”. He ran to his butler with complete dismay. “ Jay, this woman, never existed”.
Jay was in total and complete shock. His one love wasn't real. All of his love and memories were fake, and left along with the drugs. With his mind broken and his heart shattered he needed her, but she wasn’t there for him. So Mr. Stain turned to the only thing that could make him feel happy again. He took line after line, hit after hit, But it wasn’t enough. No matter how much he took he could still feel her in his mind. He kept going and going until he couldn’t feel anymore.
And then, he saw her. Standing in front of him, with tears in her eyes, and streaming down her face.
“ I will always love you Jay”.

This is a recollection of events that I need to get off my chest. There’s no one close to me anymore. Since I’ve become an adult I have moved off to Georgia and no longer talk to anybody back home. I haven’t made many friends here either, no one close enough that would take me seriously. I thought maybe this would be a good place to let it all out. No judgment, no one to laugh at me or tell me I’m an idiot. So, here it goes:
I used to live in a rural area of Arkansas. With not much around but dirt, fields, and woods. The nearest supermarket had to be more than 30 minutes away and at most there was a rundown quick-mart stationed between the two locations. My father ran a farm, so we lived on an expansive plot of land. The house was two stories and the top had big windows that would survey the field.
My aunt also lived there, along with my grandfather. His mental state was slowly deteriorating and wasn’t doing very well. He was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and wouldn’t remember who we were. It was hard.
My aunt and I clung very close to each other. She was only a couple of years older than me despite being my father’s younger sister. My grandfather ‘ran around’ quite a bit. My dad was in the midst of alcohol recovery but wasn’t very successful if I was being honest with myself, but I tried to be hopeful. Those years were hard and I think that’s what made my aunt and I susceptible to the things that we endured that summer. For reference, we were 14/16. We were afraid of anything and everything.
It didn’t help that we spent most of our free time watching scary videos that were completely satirical or staying up late playing horror video games. It would only feed into our paranoia.
The house we lived in was on the older side, it was rickety, to say the least with wooden panels lining the outside. The walls on the inside also matched this theme. It was a pretty big house and my aunt and I would play hide and seek in it a lot despite our ages. We did a lot of stuff like that.
One night we were staying up late, as usual. I remember it being around 2am. We were doing an ‘adult coloring sheet contest’ and had stayed up terribly late binging storytimes on YouTube. We started to get that ‘eerie’ feeling. The one that made your blood run cold and the hairs of your neck stand. It felt as if someone was watching us. We thought maybe this was just stemming from a video game that we had played early that night, Until Dawn. Yet, we couldn’t shake the feeling.
I looked behind me, my eyes focusing on the vents, “I feel like someone is watching us… from the vents.”
She snapped her head to look at me, “Bro, WHY would you say that.” She said it looked like blood drained from her face.
We opted for tossing all rationality out the window and decided the best thing we could do was to start taping adult coloring sheets to the vents of the upstairs section of the house since we only thought it was in those vents.
After doing so it felt as if a weight had been lifted. We left the coloring sheets up for what seemed like days. Eventually, my father found them and took them down, thinking we were just being goofy.
We hadn’t noticed as so much time felt like it had passed. The strange feeling of someone watching us had gone away and we continued about as usual. My second accounting of another event like this would be when we were playing hide and seek one day. The house was pretty spacious and had tons of nooks and crannies to hide in. Even little crawl spaces that you could fit in if you tried hard enough. It was my turn to hide. I went into the pantry closet which was located downstairs. I tended to hide in one of the large wooden shelves and stack the copious amounts of cans in front of me to hide my body. I guess it would also be beneficial to mention that we would play hide and seek in the dark.
Remembering back to that time, I thought to myself it would be smart to spice it up. Maybe hide somewhere different in the pantry, so it wouldn’t be as easy. We had played hide and seek, so many times throughout the year that it would be obvious where I would’ve hidden. There was a medium-sized air vent behind one of the spaces on the shelves. I looked at it, an imaginary lightbulb going off above my head. It was the perfect place. I was a pretty small girl growing up, so I knew I could fit in, maybe even with a little space to move.
I unlatched the vent, allowing myself to open it and fit myself inside the crawl space. I carefully placed the vent back in, once I had gotten myself situated inside. I was so proud of myself for finding the ultimate hiding space. And was certain she would never find me, since it was also pitch black in here. The countdown was over, I knew from the sounds of footsteps going about the house. I heard several thuds of doors opening and closing. Footsteps began to draw near in which I held my breath to steady my nervousness, I didn’t want my breathing to give my hiding place away.
She peered down, Small cracks of light had peered through the door that was left ajar, which allowed me to see a slight glint of shifting eyes. She had skimmed right over me.
She stood up, her figure seeming to tower over me. She looked taller than before, but then again I was basically cocooned inside of a vent.
Right before walking out, she looked back once more, she began to walk closer and knelt down snapping the latch shut once more.
I held my breath. I couldn’t help, but feel a slight sense of panic knowing that I was now potentially locked inside of the vent. But, the other part of me felt she was calling my bluff and knew I was in there. So, I stayed where I was.
She left and after a minute I released the breath that I had been holding.
I must’ve stayed in that vent for twenty minutes before the realization dawned on me. The terror. She had left me in here, she didn’t know. I pushed lightly on the vent seeing if there was any give, in which there wasn’t.
I was contemplating calling out for help until I felt something staring at me again. I felt all the oxygen begin to leave my body at once. The pit in my stomach was growing and I shifted my eyes to the side. Darkness. I started to crane my neck to now look behind myself, and more darkness. Except for the same glint of light that reflected off the figure's eyes. The eyes shifted rapidly from side to side. I now started to desperately claw at the vent once more, forcing as much weight onto the vent as I could, there was no give. Looking back I think this was due to how curled up I was inside that vent. Even with having more room than the average person, it still wasn’t enough to be able to exert all my strength.
I’ve never felt claustrophobic until that very moment. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The figure behind me watching me was stealing all of my oxygen from my lungs. I began to scream and yell and plead, “Someone help! I’m in the vents! The pantry! I’m Stuck!”
I heard the quickening of steps as I could feel the ‘thing’ behind me growing closer. I swore I could feel a steady breath on my neck. I closed my eyes, squeezing them as tight as I could.
The door flung open and my aunt looked down, beginning to open the vent, and heard feathery light footsteps back away, scampering deeper into the vent.
She finally yanked the vent door open asking me if I was okay. Bolting out of the vent, I told her that eyes were watching me and that I could feel breath on my skin. I could tell she was scared and started accusing me of lying. I promised her I was telling the truth and I’d never seen her more scared in my life. There’s no doubt in my mind that I wore the same expression.
All I remember following that night was placing coloring sheets on the air vent in the pantry closet. We swore never to go down there again.
Several theories were exchanged between us if maybe that was what was watching us the other night. Or maybe the darkness was starting to play tricks on us. Just trying to rationalize what I had seen and the unnerving feeling of dread and being watched. We vowed to never play hide and seek again, not in that house.
A few days had gone by without anything happening, once again. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I would wake up from sleep multiple times a night, thinking I was seeing eyes staring at me and forcing myself to go back to sleep. I’d tell myself it was in my head. I’d eventually fall back asleep and I’d wake up in the morning and everything was back to normal. The eerie feeling would leave each time.
Everything changed one night. My aunt and I slept in the same room. We had a decent-sized queen bed and due to being the ‘scaredy cats’ that we were, we’d assist each other to the bathroom as needed. Or we would keep look out for the other one. That night I woke up needing to use the restroom. My aunt was asleep and we had stayed up awfully late. I felt too guilty to wake her up, so I got up and ran straight to the bathroom. My logic was the quicker I got there and back, the smaller the chance of something happening.
When I opened the door I stepped out hearing a crunch. Looking down a saw familiar coloring sheet. One from in the pantry. The one on the vent to be exact. I closed my eyes, and I refused to look up. I knew it was there. I could feel it was there. I opened one eye and saw nothing.
There was only darkness. But I could feel every fiber in my body telling me to run. To get out. I started to move forward making my way to my room. The closer I had gotten I could see something from the shadows. A figure that I couldn't quite make out. I closed my eyes again knowing if I turned right and walked fast I would be back in my room. So, I did just that.
I ran hard into the wall with a thud. In hindsight, it wasn’t very smart, but I was scared. I wasn’t always the brightest light in the room by any means. I fell back rubbing my head and looked up.
The figure was peering down at me, a silhouette of darkness. It was tall and I could only see its eyes once more, light reflecting off of them from the moonlight shining in from the window. I felt a scream catch in my throat.
I remember feeling a cold hand on me, before waking up that morning. I woke up in the vents. It never happened after that, but I had asked my mom to come and get me. I couldn’t stay in that house longer. I’m not sure if my aunt had any more experiences with ‘eyes’, but I didn’t dare ask. Something inside of me was scared even the mention of the entity would bring it back. So, we never talked about it again.
I’m not sure what happened that night or how I’d gotten into the vents. I’d like to think I sleptwalked and it was all a nightmare… but I know what I saw. I didn’t and still don’t think even my aunt would believe me. I never told anyone about that night. I’m long gone from that house now, I have been for a long time. Even in my own house, I try not to look inside of the vents. I ignore every urge to make sure nothing is there, even when the nagging feeling that I’m still being watched pulls at me. Right now as I’m typing up this post I can still feel that all too familiar feeling. I know it’s still here, I know it followed me. ‘Eyes’ knows I’m talking about it.