TL;DR: Luigi and Saiko have the potential to be a pairing with fun contrasting personalities and character growth potential while working with what's there in canon already without much if any change.
Time for something a bit... different for this sub, at least from what I can tell. I only just joined yesterday thanks to Medi's recent video.
Before we begin, I want to start off by saying that this is in no way a "my ship is better than yours" post. You are all free to like what you want, all I'm doing is trying to spread love for a pairing I hold so dear, and why I wish more people knew what's special about it. In other words, don't take this the wrong way. With that out of the way...
Saiko Bichitaru is my favorite SMG4 character. It took a bit for me to appreciate her, but as a fan of the show since 2013, as her debut year of 2018 went by and she continued to develop into a core cast member, I thought that for a show like this it was a very well-executed character arc, with a pretty heartwarming conclusion to boot. In the years since, besides perhaps 2019 which I thought was pretty good for her character, she took a step back in favor of other characters getting the spotlight, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but part of me does wish they got to utilize certain dynamics with her more. Tari and Kaizo are obvious ones, but another obvious one that I think is largely unnoticed these days is her dynamic with Luigi.
Luigi is my other favorite character, for generally being likable while still being entertaining, but there are other, niche-er reasons too I will get into later. For now I will say that he has has a sort of "magic" about him, in that despite his cowardly exterior (occasionally gigachad moments aside, which are mainly done for comedy's sake) he has a big heart and tries to see the best in people. In SMG4, him becoming Saiko's friend during her darkest hour (heh) is one of the biggest examples of this. It started an unlikely friendship between a timid but kindly plumber and a tough and passionate rockstar, something that remains to this day, but mainly in background cameos. Despite this, I've noticed that the larger fanbase doesn't really acknowledge this much, likely to due A. the lack of major usage since 2020 and B. some fans weren't around when those videos were new. But that's why I'm here today: I am here to talk about what makes this dynamic work so well, but also that I legitimately think that while considering that, Luigi x Saiko is a pairing that can work extremely well given what's already there without much interference. Again, I'm not saying that it's "better" than other pairings involving one of these two, only that it's one of the more "realistic" pairings as a whole in my opinion. To start with, let's go over Saiko's character arc again.
PART 1: SAIKO
I don't want to turn this into a recap, so we'll go over her story briefly before getting into the parts involving the green Italian man. A fictional rockstar in a dating game from the band KS-2 brought in by Boopkins due to his loneliness, Saiko started off as an extremely clingy yandere, violently demanding attention from others if even a second was put away from her being the center of attention. After about six months of her being a villain, eventually she realized that she has a problem and became depressed over it, only fro a certain someone to come in and kickstart her redemption, slowly but surely becoming nicer and becoming friends with the SMG4 gang, notably Tari and Meggy.
I personally feel like a lot of Saiko's POV is understood if you saw certain videos happen as they aired, but it all started with Luigi's Lesson, where the usually cowardly Luigi learns about Saiko's problems and tries to help her become nicer. As you may know, he succeeded for the most part, with her doing a good deed by the end (saving Mario from choking on hot dogs), and she slowly became nicer over time. The thing is that Luigi was Saiko's first true friend, someone who saw her potential for being a good person before anyone else. In this case, I don't really count Boopkins since while he did care for her, after her debut he tried to stay away as much as he could and didn't really attempt to help her until after Luigi kickstarted that whole thing. Beyond that though, there were still moments throughout 2018 that showed Luigi being the one to help Saiko improve herself, the main one being a small moment in The Mario Cafe, but even Mario and the Diss Track had Luigi be the one to tell Saiko the truth about Bob in that arc.
All things considered, my personal interpretation is that Luigi saved Saiko's life. Without him being there for her, Saiko would've continued scared off people with her violent tendencies, and she never would've found the "attention" she desired so much via the SMG4 gang. And it all started because some easily-scared plumber saw something more in someone even he was previously scared of. Speaking of which, let's talk about him.
PART 2: LUIGI
To start with, I wanted to mention that Luigi is bisexual, not homosexual. "Gay" can be used as an umbrella term for anyone in the LGBT+ community, and Luigi has shown attraction for both men and women throughout the series, with a lean towards men mainly for comedy purposes. The 2015 episode Love for Luigi is a very notable example of this, where Luigi falls in love with Daisy and tries to win over her heart, and he succeeds by the end... but did he really? Much like several other aspects of the series, this is something only really brought up when it's convenient (like the 2016 episode Boo Busters) but otherwise Luigi is portrayed as single. Since we live in an era where they care about canon a little more, I think the only plausible explanation for this is that they broke up.
While I imagine that Luigi is fine with this these days, to get into headcanon territory a little, perhaps Luigi still feels lonely to this day. I mean, he still shows attraction to people, even showing interest in romance (such as this one clip from a Mario Does Things video from a couple of years back called "luigi tries to get with the ladies" on the Shorts channel), so there probably has to be some level of desire for it internally. Maybe he feels lonely, which is why he could relate to Saiko's struggles at first. But that's enough about headcanons for now.
Another thing about Saiko is that she just fits Luigi's taste in general. Luigi is with Daisy in Nintendo canon, and she's a strong gal with a lotta passion for what she cares about. While Luigi is plenty capable himself, in SMG4 he still shows signs of timidness and cowardice every once in a while, and of course he tends to be the butt of many jokes that he can't do anything about. From a comedy perspective that's fine, but from Luigi's POV, considering the several other responsibilities he has, the dude is tired. Someone strong and passionate like Saiko has the potential to teach him about confidence and standing up for himself in return for him teaching her about kindness and being rewarded for it. Long story short, being with Saiko not only fits Luigi's own tastes in partners, but Saiko in particular could do something that helps him better himself. In turn...
PART 3: LUIGI & SAIKO
Everything discussed leads to a relationship between two contrasting personalities with their own problems, and getting together leads to both of them becoming happier in the process. And hey, who doesn't like a ship with contrasting personalities? The thing about LxS though is that the seeds were already planted in the show itself to build off from, with the setup given in Luigi's Lesson potentially giving us just that. As for their dynamic, the times they do show up together, as I said before, consistently have them friendly without any real holes or inconsistencies. A large part of that is due to their underusage together, but even in recent episodes, we have moments such as the 2022 Christmas episode where they were cooking dinner together, or a more recent episode that shows them together at SMG3's coffee shop.
One final major point though is that I think Luigi and Saiko being a couple could bring things full circle. Saiko, a woman looking for love and improves herself thanks to a certain person starting it all.... only for said person to fall for the woman that Saiko became, and in turn Saiko falls for Luigi for being the one who started her new life and for being a kindhearted person who understands her the most, next to Tari mainly shown in the KS-2 mini-arc from 2022. In other words, the person Saiko was really looking for was the person in-front of her the whole time. If you ask me, that's a pretty fitting note to "conclusively" end Saiko's original character arc, even if it already ended around 2019.
As a side note, Luigi and Saiko have potential to be really good parents, but with the "gender roles" switched, which is always fun. Luigi is timid, caring, and tidy, while Saiko is also caring, but also passionate, tough, and cares for her friend's well-beings, both like a mom and a dad respectively. It also has a lot of comedy potential as you have the two of them learning the ropes of parenthood, and it could lead to more interactions with other characters, mainly Karen (in which Luigi already gave advice to on parenting one time, showing that he already has the ropes to a degree).
CONCLUSION
Overall, Luigi and Saiko have a lot of potential for not only their dynamic, but also the idea of them becoming a couple. I wish more people knew about this since I feel that LxS is largely seen as "MxM's Player 2" given how you only really see MxM fans mention the pairing. That isn't a bad thing at all, I myself like that pairing, but I do wish that the pairing had a little more of a fanbase of its own. But hey, that's part of why I'm talking about this now. The good news though is that there has been something of a small resurgence of the pairing already despite the fact of content, mainly through the existence of RockRage8962's fankid characters Angelo and Rin, who were made into Gmod characters by Duz/Glithware and AnEyeArtist.
Despite this, I do wish that more people understood why this pairing is special, and I hope with this essay, more people can do so. You can still like whatever pairings you like, but whether this convinces you on the ship's idea or not, I hope you at least gain a little more respect towards it. If anyone has any questions or want me to elaborate on something, let me know and I'll likely respond, but if you made it this far, thanks for reading!
BONUS: A playlist of videos containing at least one Luigi and Saiko moment, from 2018 to 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDYLLnT8V-AT9AUb28cpE87_-a4CMbEed

I genuinely had no idea the depth this season would have. I just finished my second rewatch, watching edits, and reading people's analyses and metas. Nic was right when she said this season was romance because, wow, I’m speechless at just how much there is to their story. It keeps you going back, thinking, and pondering. To the point that I'm not as mad as I was about them splitting up the season. We're really able to take in these four episodes, unpack each scene, each character, and each expression because everything has been so purposeful.
On my second rewatch, it struck me that it wasn't the kiss that awakened Colin's feelings. I wouldn't have thought so until someone mentioned on twitter it wasn't the kiss Colin has a flashback of before he goes to the ball. it was the scene Pen wraps his hand with a cloth. I rewatched the show after that to pay closer attention and wow did so many things stand out to me the second time around. Maybe it was the candle that sparked that memory, but even then, was her wrapping his wound so significant to him that it prompted him to go to the ball, interrupt her dance, cause a scandal, and then chase her carriage?
Colin's behavior towards her has been odd the entire season. First, Penelope not responding to his letters messed him up. It made him realize that although he's always cherished her as a friend, she had a much more profound impact on him, and he didn’t notice until she was no longer there. He tries to talk to her, but she walks away, giving him the cold shoulder. He is left shook.
He sees her at the ball in her stunning dress. He keeps staring at her, so aware of her, constantly tracking her. Then she leaves, running up the stairs and passing him. He leaves his friends behind to go after her, despite their advice not to concern himself with her. They have that moment where he tells her he misses her, but in a much different way than he would have spoken to her last season or the season before that. "If you're going to make it, say it. I miss you." Not "I missed you," but "I miss you."
This distinction is crucial. "I missed you" implies a past tense, a temporary void that has now been filled. "I miss you," however, conveys a present, ongoing longing. It shows that his feelings are current and that her absence affects him deeply and continuously. This moment is pivotal because it reveals a more vulnerable and sincere side of Colin, one that he hasn't shown to others this season.
Colin is showing a different side of himself to everyone this season, including his own family. He's trying to present a more composed and assertive version of himself to the world. Yet, Penelope is the only one with whom he truly feels comfortable enough to be his genuine self. She makes him feel safe, allowing him to drop the mask he wears for others. With her, he can be kind, sensitive, and unguarded.
This sense of security that Penelope provides is significant. It’s clear that Colin values her presence not just as a friend, but as someone who understands him on a deeper level. She brings out the best in him, the parts he might be afraid to show others for fear of appearing weak or overly sentimental. In Penelope’s presence, Colin feels seen and accepted, which is why his declaration of "I miss you" carries such weight. It’s not just that he misses her company; he misses the person he is when he’s with her.
Then he seeks her out and comes to her house, gives her the big speech, and tells her he wants to get into her good graces. They go out, and he tells her to practice on those gentlemen. When she stumbles over her words, he just smiles so fondly at her. At this point, I don’t think he’s aware of his feelings, but I do believe he's starting to realize just how much he likes her. He really, really likes her. And he missed her so much, and being around her again is literally lifting his spirits.
One of my favorite moments is when they are at the market. Colin brings up the story of when they first met, leaning in and saying, "teasing me. Mercilessly, in fact." When he follows with, "I think I know why," it stands out to me because you can just see how different he is when he's with her compared to anyone else this season. Even with his family, his light is dim, and there is a cloud hanging over him. But with Penelope, especially in this scene, it's like a man who finally saw the sun after being stuck in endless rain. At this moment, I don't think he knows he likes her romantically, but he likes her even more than he did before. He notices how she makes him feel. He loves their banter and how clever and witty she is.
Penelope freaks out when he says this because she thinks she knows, and she keeps on walking. They are momentarily covered from each other by the rugs, and then Colin pops out and continues his sentence. Everything about it is so playful and flirtatious, even if unconsciously at this point. He’s just having so much fun, and it’s very different from how he used to interact with her before. That moment when Penelope says, "I should get back," leaning in and adding, "before we are noticed," is significant.
Then we have the moment when Colin says, "I've been eagerly awaiting your visit." By this point, he’s addicted to her. The interactions they had at the market, especially at the end, left a lasting impression on him. I see this as Colin testing his feelings, wondering, "Let me see if that was a fluke or if I actually like her." This moment is crucial because it reveals Colin's internal struggle and growing realization of his deeper feelings for Penelope. He’s no longer simply enjoying her company as a friend; he’s beginning to seek out her presence because it brings him genuine happiness and comfort.
This shift is evident in his behavior. Colin’s eagerness to see Penelope isn’t driven by a sense of duty or friendship; it’s a personal desire. His anticipation of her visit shows that her company has become something he craves. This is no longer about teaching her anything; he just wants to spend time with her, and you cannot convince me otherwise. Colin knows that teaching Penelope how to attract a husband doesn’t look right, as he mentions to Eloise. He is aware that his actions could be misinterpreted, and yet he persists. This indicates a level of emotional investment that goes beyond mere friendship or mentorship.
When Colin invites Penelope to the Bridgerton house and places a hand on her back, it’s a bold move that borders on scandalous. In the societal context of their time, such an action is highly intimate and could easily lead to gossip and speculation. Colin is well aware of this, which is why his decision to proceed regardless is significant. It shows that he’s starting to prioritize his personal feelings and desires over societal expectations and norms.
In Season 2, when he grabbed her hand and took her into a secluded room, he genuinely saw her as just a friend and didn’t see anything wrong with what he was doing. But this scene is different. Colin is aware that his feelings towards her are changing, and he doesn’t care about the impropriety. He just wants to be alone with Penelope. This awareness marks a turning point in Colin’s emotional journey. He’s beginning to accept that his feelings for Penelope are evolving into something deeper and more romantic.
His actions, such as eagerly awaiting her visit and ensuring they have private moments together, reflect a subconscious desire to explore these feelings further. He wants to understand the depth of his emotions without the interference of others. This need for privacy and his willingness to bend societal rules for her indicate just how significant Penelope has become to him. He values their time together, not just as friends, but as potential romantic partners. Colin’s behavior suggests that he’s on the verge of a profound realization about his true feelings for Penelope, setting the stage for further developments in their relationship.
Then we get to the moment that solidifies for me that he knows to some degree what he feels about her. When Penelope tells him his eyes are beautiful, he is visibly aghast, speechless. Jungshook. The compliment is so unexpected and disarming that he doesn’t know how to respond. Instead, he picks up his lemonade and chugs it down like a man who hasn’t had a drink in days. This reaction is significant because it shows how much Penelope’s words affect him on a deeper level. It’s not just flattery; it’s a moment of genuine vulnerability for Colin, revealing that her opinion of him matters more than he realized.
Now, let’s delve into the moment where I believe he realizes he likes her. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it and rewatched their moments with a different perspective if it weren’t for the flashback. The moment she wraps his hand is so intimate and romantic. She wraps his hand slowly, and he watches her intently as she does. There’s a tenderness in her actions that goes beyond mere care; it’s an unspoken connection. She continues holding his hand and slowly folds it, kind of caressing his fingers. This gesture is filled with unspoken emotions, and Colin feels it deeply.
She looks at him intensely, and he meets her gaze but looks down immediately, starting to fiddle with the end of the cloth like he’s nervous. This moment of eye contact is loaded with significance. Colin’s nervousness is a telltale sign that he’s starting to realize his feelings for her. He doesn’t pull away until she mentions his writing, and he gets overwhelmed. Despite all that, and even though he’s upset she read his journal, he asks, "Will I see you tonight?" This question is crucial. It shows that, despite feeling vulnerable and exposed, he craves her company. He just wants to spend time with her.
Even when he’s upset that she read his journal, his first thought is to secure more time with her. "Will I see you tonight?" is not just a casual question; it’s a plea for connection. Colin’s desire to spend more time with Penelope, even when he’s feeling vulnerable, underscores the depth of his feelings. He’s starting to recognize that his attachment to her is not just about friendship or companionship; it’s something much more profound. This realization sets the stage for the unfolding of his realizations and the emotional journey Colin is about to navigate.
Then the ball happens. Colin looks around the room for her and gives her a sexy smirk when he sees her. This smirk is significant because Colin typically reserves it for women he's flirting with, albeit usually in a fake and uncomfortable manner. However, this is the only time the smirk feels genuine and actually comes off as sexy instead of forced. The flirtatious "Good evening" from Penelope is everything, honestly. When she asks how his hand is, he replies, "All good, thanks to you." Sir, all she did was wrap it with a cloth; please be normal. At this point, he's fully aware he has a crush on her. He no longer views her as he did before. His entire demeanor is so much more different compared to their other lessons. There is an intensity to him when he's talking to her that wasn’t there before.
When Penelope talks with Lord Remington, it’s interesting that "Jealous" by Nick Jonas starts to play now and not after the kiss, when she converses with Lord Debling on many occasions where we know he's jealous. When Pen tells him she enjoyed her time with Lord Remington, he responds, "I'm certain he did as well," and he gets a bit awkward. Someone on Twitter mentioned that when Penelope was flirting and trying to engage with others, Colin wasn't jealous, but the moment she is herself and comfortable, his jealousy kicks in, as we saw in this scene. Someone said he's trying to gatekeep her lmao. He sees her smiling and enjoying herself—a part of herself she only shows him—and he can't handle it. Hence, why I believe they chose to play that song at this moment.
This moment is crucial because it highlights the shift in Colin’s feelings. His smirk, which is usually a façade, becomes real and filled with genuine affection when directed at Penelope. His awkwardness and jealousy when she talks to another man further emphasize that his feelings for her have deepened. Colin is no longer just a friend offering guidance; he’s a man who realizes he has a crush on her and is struggling to navigate these new emotions. The music choice underscores this emotional turmoil, perfectly capturing the internal conflict and realization he is experiencing.
And then everything else proceeds that leads to the kiss. I, like so many others, believed this is where he realizes his feelings for Pen. Someone on Twitter mentioned how his eyebrows furrowed and his lips quivered. When I first saw it, I wondered why this kiss would warrant such a strong reaction from Colin. At this point, it was just a kiss that Pen asked for in a moment where she thinks she is ruined and will never find a prospect. But upon rewatching, Colin's visceral reaction to the kiss, as evidenced by his furrowed eyebrows and quivering lips, suggests a deeper emotional resonance than he initially realizes.
Penelope tells him it would not have to mean anything, but for him but it did. He knows his feelings towards her have changed. If it had been just a kiss because she asked for it, it would have stopped after the first time. Just a fleeting moment of physical contact between friends. But they kiss a second time and it's from his pov this time. It's slow sweet and oh so romantic. It's a catalyst that triggers a flood of suppressed emotions and desires within him. In that brief instant, the walls he's constructed around his heart start to crumble, allowing his true feelings for Penelope to surface. it wasn’t a kiss that awakened his feelings; it was a kiss that confirmed it. And not just confirmed it, it made him realize it wasn't just a crush he developed this season but it brought all his dormant feelings to the surface from the past as well.
TLDR: I think he was aware that he liked her when she wrapped his hand specifically and the kiss made him realize that it wasn't just a crush—his feelings run much, much deeper than that.

I just recently found this guy’s channel, and he does similar content as Caleb, but Romain has a much more calm demeanor and he seems to interview people at different extremes. I just saw a video of someone who is very successful in Seattle, and another person with almost 1 million in debt.
As of right now, he has 16.4k subscribers and I could see his channel blowing up in terms of popularity. Maybe not to the same extent as Caleb’s because Caleb is a more exciting personality, but the content Romain produces is interesting enough for me to binge watch his videos.
A little more background:
In terms of personal finance, I am rather wired towards to Dave Ramsey way of thinking, however, I might disagree with Dave about a low balance car loan and sometimes educational debt.
I personally am credit card free always have been, and if my income improved into the six figures, I still wouldn’t think about getting any debt other than a mortgage.
I thought about how my situation would change if I got a credit card now, and I would probably finance vacations I otherwise wouldn’t go on if I simply paid cash.
Caleb seems to be sort of credit card friendly, at least to game the system for people much more able to control their spending but I feel like even if you are responsible with credit cards, it’s another hoop you have to jump through to pay for something you could otherwise pay in cash just to build credit, and I’d personally have one less thing to worry about.
I have heard Romain talking to his interviewee’s about how some things are hurting their credit, but I follow the Dave Ramsey philosophy on credit scores as an “I love debt” score.
If any of you are more familiar with Romain than I am, would Romain’s philosophy’s more so jive with my philosophy on personal finance than Caleb’s?

First off, feel free to comment about your own experiences. I would love it if anybody can relate. I'm also open to questions, advice, whatever you wanna write. This is gonna be a bit longer, just fyi. Excuse lack of proper chronological order and maybe some wonky sentences, English isn't my first language.
I was parentified.
For context, my mother has three children, I'm the youngest one, then there's my older half-brother (30) and my older half-sister (36). Their father was a violent alcoholic with schizophrenic tendencies (official diagnosis), luckily I never met him. I refer to them as brother and sister. I'm 21 now. I'm the only child of my mom and my dad, my dad has three other kids who are in the same age group as my maternal siblings. Lots of history with divorces and family fights, I'm the center of a complete patchwork family, everybody moved towns a lot, it's all a bit messy and disorganized.
My mother has severe borderline disorder and has massive trauma from several age stages, especially involving men. She was heavily parentified and yet socially cast out by her family herself. I don't remember a time where I didn't act like her father, emotionally. This is made worse by the fact that I'm trans so I was like her bestie before I began socially transitioning in my early teen years. Of course, this was a massive issue for her. She told me she had only ever wanted daughters. Materially she was taking care of things until I was about 11 - walked me to school and took care of the household, used to work, everything.
I remember sitting next to her during a talk/fight she had with my dad while she was sobbing, I can't have been older than 3 or 4. They got divorced around that time. As I grew older, I came to be my mom's sole emotional support person. We had moved to an isolated village with my step-father and she developed a severe agoraphobia for some time. My step-father avoided all emotionality with both her and me and therefore I was now her only friend. I overheard conversations that she shouldn't be having with her child next door and was told about her most severe fears and traumas from a young age. I was lashed out at on a near daily basis and punishment came unexpectedly. It would consist of being screamed at for minutes on end until I would cry and hyperventilate, but she wouldn't stop then.
In spite of her idea of punishment and raising children, she was incredibly attached to me, still is. This would include massive anxiety fits when she didn't know where I was or when I was getting into activities she didn't approve of. One time, when I was about 17, I went to a party in my friend's basement. She knew about this and approved it, knew my friends and where they lived. I didn't have any signal in that basenent so she couldn't reach me. She proceeded to look up my other friends' parents' phone number and call them to contact me. There was nothing she wanted except to know that I had arrived there.
Whereas my other siblings had long left the household years apart from eachother, both with specific and complex fights and banging doors and screaming fits, I was, as the youngest child, turned into a confessional and a therapist. I would mediate fights from a young age. I witnessed physical violence between my brother, my mother and my sister. My brother was the perpetrator for the most part (however, I was neither hurt nor threatened myself). Nobody proceeded to remove me from the situation or stop me from getting involved. From then on, every fight and every drama caused me intense bouts of anxiety and it, to this day, remains to be the only thing that makes me cry and/or lash out.
In a household full of anger, my anger was not tolerated. I was raised with some old-timey sort of black paedagogy (I'm German so it is something of a generational curse for some): I was to have unwavering respect for my parents, I was expected to be obedient, "let him cry it out" type stuff. At least when I was a younger child. When I got older, my emotions did not matter either. After stressful situations or fights that I proceeded to witness for most of my life, nobody ever asked me how I felt or explained to me what had actually gone down. I was left alone while not being left alone at all.
If I failed to provide emotional security for my mother or even attempted to call her out, I was made to feel immensely guilty. This could range from her crying/yelling things like "Why is it always me that must suffer" to guilt-tripping texts and blocking my contact for a while to very action-based suicide threats, depending on the situation. Her emotions were forced to be my emotions if I wanted to "stay alive".
At the same time, I still proceeded to excel in school. I felt like dying but nobody, and I tell you, nobody, noticed. I was a teacher's pet, I still had some loose friendships, I visited my dad once a month or more ever since my parents divorced. Nobody realized what I felt. I felt alone and had the worst depressive episode of my life when I was 13. I neglected personal hygiene. I never opened up to my father for many years. To this day I think he doesn't know everything. Especially during covid, him and my ex-stepmother were my safe space. When I first opened up to them, they welcomed me with open arms, my father was very strict and cold when I was young, but he softened, changed, and is everything and more I could ask for in a father. He is among the most positive examples of masculinity and especially of fatherhood that I know in my circles. He sends me postcards several times a month, wants me to visit, hugs me and tells me he loves me and that he's proud, gives me space. The dad who remembers the names of our childhood stuffed animals. Literally. I love him to death. He was also the only parent who engaged in activities with me and would play with me, later on take me to the movies, go to bars and restaurants, go to museums with me etc.
My mother got worse both psychologically and physically, she is chronically ill and needs immense support in a lot of things now. For about a year, my stepfather worked in a town far away and only came home during the weekends. This was during covid. Within a year, I developed a hatred so deep for my mother that I had thoughts that scared me. I took care of our pets and the household, was not allowed to get into any activities after school other than coming home and spent hours after my day listening to her rants, anxieties, fears. I get hateful goosebumps when I remember the way she used to call my name when she wanted me to do something for her. Sometimes she would make me stay awake for longer, knowing that I had to get up at 6am again. It was usually already around 12 at night. She wanted me to walk the dog before SHE went to bed because otherwise it would ruin her otherwise horribly insomniac circadian rhythm. Therefore I was not allowed to go to sleep. At that point she had not worked for more than 6 years and stayed home all the time. My stepfather and I did grocery shopping. She rarely ever leaves the house if she can avoid it. This was during the German version of my GCSE's.
I was denied medical care that could have potentially fixed my posture issues and other orthopedic issues. My mother deemed physiotherapy as inefficient and got mad when I asked her about it again. Money was always an issue. We were evicted once. I was denied certain things and never asked for extra cash because we ran low on money, my stepfather was blamed for smoking and consuming a lot of meat (which indeed is pricy), but my mother never reflected on her online shopping addiction and I'm aware that she is in an ongoing debt. Has been for years now.
Things got a bit better when my stepfather moved back and Covid cleared up somewhat. Regardless, I used pure spite to continue studying hard while they were yelling at eachother from the top of their lungs for hours on end and did the best I could to get the hell out of there. I've had therapy with several years' of breaks for a total of nearly 3 years now, that I partially applied for myself and I'm working on tackling everything. I live in a different city, studying subjects that I love. I get all my shit done, for the most part, I know how to do paperwork and know how all of the chores work. I can regulate myself in terms of sleep and food and cheap thrills. I have a (milder) case of anxiety. I keep meaningful friendships in which I find myself capable of avoiding all the harmful behaviors and attitudes I was taught. I'm learning to stand my ground and take responsibility for my own decisions and actions.
When I establish my boundaries with her now, she turns into some sort of anxious-attached mess. She over-apologizes to me. She puts me on a pedestal and I'm living a life that she is jealous of. She is intensely attached to me and considers me her favorite child and also hasn't properly gotten over my father, over 15 years of them being divorced. She will do anything to support me materially and then tear me down emotionally. Everything I tell her is followed by her mourning the life she doesn't have and never had instead of properly celebrating with me. She gets noticeably sad when I refuse to give her my full attention, she yearns for what she considered a deep and important relationship to me. But it was all just emotional neglect and emotional abuse. Now I sometimes can't help but meet her with the same attitude she gave me.
This is not perfectly chronological and all over the place. I have complicated relationships with my siblings and other relatives, which I don't mourn, but feel guilty about. My father and I are very good with eachother although I need to confront him about some things as well. With my mother I do the bare minimum to avoid conflict, yet without throwing my sense of self out of the window again. She is the only human who can easily cause anxiety attacks in me, no matter where or when. I sometimes wish I was not in contact with her. I have a tendency for smoking too much weed and being just a bit too careless with other drugs (although I rarely do those in comparison), but I also try and regulate this heavily (e.g. not finding a dealer but asking friends every once in a while etcetc). I think this stems from these experiences. Apart from that, I think I'm coping very well.
To everybody: it does get better. It does. Even when your emotions are a rollercoaster sometimes. You will be in a different place, maybe you already are, and you'll escape from these structures. I think the hardest pill for me to swallow is that I create my own reality and that nobody will give me my stolen childhood back. I am an (albeit young) adult now and I must do everything I can to avoid becoming like her. Her life is not a life I want to lead. There's hope and you won't always be in this place.

I met a guy long time ago. We talked a lot recently and i started to like him. I didn’t think he liked me at all because his attitude never showed that it was more of a friend-like but he was nice in general.
After a while, he confessed to me that he likes me, and he was very nice and the interest seemed clear and he said that he wants to know me more and get engaged.
We remained like this for not long, but he began to be noticeably late in responding. Sometimes he would see messages and not respond at all, or he would ignore some of them and reply to others In general, i was being”lovely” etc and he wasn’t matching my energy or giving me the same feelings.
I talked to him about the matter and he said at first that he didn’t want to get attached to me since we still never met and that he meant to do that (ignoring to be nice or show that he was interested in me, or to even match my energy etc) and i felt completely rejected at that time, but after all i understood his reason.
He said that he would try to be more open and share the same feelings with me (of his own free will ofc, not because i asked for it and he was the one who said that), and indeed he became very nice.
Now he seems uninterested again, and i tried to understand that because he spends too many hours working and doesn’t have enough time to really care (I’m trying to give all the excuses because i don’t understand why he does that)..
I asked him again if he feels like he’s not interested anymore and that when he got to know me better, he felt like he doesn’t still like me, but he he said that he still likes me, but he sees that he has more important things to do or to care about than putting a reaction on a picture that i sent him, or on a message (I felt abit insulted and not respected at that time and that i’m not important to him and what i feel doesn’t matter) but I tried to understand that too and it passed..
He said that he doesn’t like chatting and told me not to judge him now until we meet several times, and the decide who he truly is , his words were somewhat logical.
I don’t know if he’s trying to push me away , or if he really doesn’t like texting( but it’s our only way now) , or if he’s busy and stressed because of his work. I don’t know what to do and can’t understand his attitude and i won’t ask him again cause it’ll be the third time and yk, feels like disrespecting myself.
Should i step back? ,what should i do because i don’t want to feel like i’m forcing myself on him, or maybe it’s signs of rejection and i’m stupid, but he said that he still likes me, anyone tell me what to do, am i expecting too much?

Here's my top 10 ideas to make outposts not just important but almost central to gameplay loops of starfield.

1. Storage. Outpost storage should be simpler, easier, and more efficient than ships. When outposts are linked, they should have their resources linked in as well. Streamlined Personal Inventory/Ship Inventory/Outpost Inventory all accessible when planetside. Make me build an outpost and a hauler bot to access my resources from anywhere on planet.
   
2. Manufacturing. There should be a gameplay loop that goes resource extraction, component manufacturing, ship parts (starstation) manufacturing. Skip the credits. If you have the components, you can manufacture the ship parts. You should be able to store ship parts at your outposts. It would be nice if they were actually visible and took up space like in the staryards. The dream would be being able to do some semi-depth customization to the parts themselves, visually and statwise. Also skip the credits and let me repair my ships for free given the resources.
   
3. Settlements. Join LIST, preferably with a questline to eventually lead LIST. There are named NPCs in every city, literally begging you to get them out from the well, the underbelly, the stretch, europa, etc. I want to get them to the stars, and currently, you can't do anything for them. Go out and poach all those disgruntled traders and miners from their terrible bosses, the dialouge is halfway their. Maintain resources, habs, and defense. Make the environmental conditions of the planet REALLY matter to the entire settlement. If they aren't outfitted properly, it doesn't work.
   
4. Personal Ship Fleet. I don't like the current cargo linking, what is this random UC bucket doing on my outpost. It should be MY ship fleet doing all of that. The ship stats that I invest in should be the limits for how far apart outposts can link or whether I can make the link to a settlement or city in a mission. Also just in general I would like to be able to have all my ships out at the same time in one location if I wanted to dedicate the space for it.
   
5. Pirating. The current form of bounties, smuggling, and being a pirate is terrible and not worth it gameplay wise. Make outpost features dedicated to smuggling contraband, manufacturing illicit drugs, taking on illegal missions. Your pirate outpost can link to the systems seedier parts to move contraband and bypass the scans. Stolen ships (non pirate, space, ecliptic) need to get faked registrations (on the cheap) or parted out before you can fly them around or sell them. If you need a way around a large bounty that you built up, have a dedicated illegal terminal that can get the law off your back in the settled systems for a period of time. Pirate Outposts require evil aligned assigned personnel.
   
6. "Science", Botany and Beastiaries. Gather species from across the systems into one place. Build dedicated habs for the planets composition in order to showcase living specimens from all over. I think it would be pretty great to pair this with a special ship hab and actually require capture and transport on board your ship, cause who doesn't want these aliens on board.
   
7. POI integration. Integrate your favorite POIs with outposts, remove the distance limit and put your outpost right on top of POIs and have access to them.
   
8. Abandoned. If you don't come back around to an outpost over a long enough period of time spacers, Pirates, or ecliptics take it over. This is already weakly integrated. But just crank it up way further, if you don't keep a level of defense to number of resources available at an outpost to a certain ratio expect that outpost to stop operating completely within a few weeks and have legendaries hanging out within a few months. It operates well with the rest of my outpost wishes but it could even be done in a way that semi-incentivizes outpost baiting legendaries for loot drop cycles.
   
9. Outpost logistics. A Starmap overlay. Open it from any starmap menu, and it strips away all systems non-settled systems, leaving just your outposts and the cities. From that menu, get information on what outposts are producing what resources, what outposts are linked to each other (preferably by category of what ships you have assigned), what npcs are located where, missions requests to link resources to the settled systems, and the ability to reassign everything right in menu.
   
10. True Survival Mode. Fuel matters and can get you stranded, ships cost more, repairs cost a fortune, and the ships are much delicate, but they get escape pods. When they blow its game over for that ship and everything on it, you crash land on the nearest planet/moon without a ship. A distress beacon kit and enough resources can be packed onto the pod to start a small outpost. You have to luck into another ship or get enough boost to your signal to reach one of your outposts (if you have crew and ship available to come find you) while hoping the signal doesn't bring whoever shot you out of orbit or other non-friendlies. Or you could be lucky enough to land near friendly civilian outposts or corpo operations and hitch a ride back to the settled systems to start again.
    

In this mode it would be preferable that anyone in constellation may die, or may escape if pods and also need recovery if enough pods are available as outfitted by you. Maybe Sam Coe doesn't bring Cora around all the time, maybe when he does she can get marooned right alongside you or him. Maybe her death in a ship accident drives Sam into the unity.

Be warned, rant incoming.
When he first started, he seemed like a pretty nice guy. I actually had great first impressions of him because he really helped me out with something I was uncomfortable about. Then, one day, I firmly believed he was in a bad mood and took it out on me. He was just a huge asshole to me all day. Where I work we store lots and lots of stuff because our store is attached to a warehouse full of stock. And we get big deliveries of hundreds if not thousands of items. So on that day, I was working my hardest, back and forth, and back and forth between serving customers, putting away stock, grabbing peoples orders, and whatever else. All day, he kept going on and on at me about "how far along are you with putting that stuff away?" And basically constantly trying to hurry me. After ge spent the whole day doing that to me I decided to engage in some banter with him instead of just outright telling him to go fuck himself, because obviously I can't do that (unfortunately). Basically, he had been stood at the front of the store lazing about all day, serving customers and occasionally grabbing an order, but never really moving at all. He would also frequently step outside to vape. He said something that really annoyed me like "well good to see you're still working hard" in a very condescending and sarcastic tone, because he saw me stop for about a minute to speak to a colleague, one of the ONLY times I had stopped that day. And so I said "yeah I guess it must be really strenuous holding that vape to your mouth all the time" in an obviously satirical manner. He was obviously angry.
Then, over the next few weeks, he essentially just acted the same as that day almost every day. And we have a radio, there have never been any rules about what station has to be on or what song, as long as its not inappropriate or something weird like whale sounds lol, and basically my colleagues always choose the exact same channels that play the exact same 80s-2000's songs over and over and over again. So sometimes I get a bit sick of it and change it to something that still plays popular genres of music, just lesser known/newer songs just to mix it up a hit because it drives me insane. I don't even like the channels I change it to most of the time. It's just for something different. And suddenly he decided that there was now a rule about changing the radio because it has to be on something "everyone likes" and it needs to be something "recognisable to customers". This was never a thing before, and it's not as if I had just put on some random underground Chinese rap or anything. It was still largely popular music. But it was so obvious that it was because he wanted to decide the station so he just used his authority to get his way, truly pathetic thing for a 50+ year old man to be doing to an 18 year old. For the rest of that day I was agitated and after he kept up his usual of telling me I wasn't going quick enough despite working my ass off, I snapped a little bit and we started arguing. I never said anything personal or raised my voice or anything like that. I just got frustrated with his treatment of me. Long story short, we had a big conversation in the back room, and it seemed like we left off in a good spot. Recognised some misunderstandings and explained how we both felt, etc. Then 2 days later, I came in, and my friend/colleague told me that the day before while I wasn't in, he was slagging me off to other supervisors. So I decided to file a complaint and an area manager wad scheduled to come in later that week or the next. So of course I was still angry, and eventually we started arguing again and this time we brought another supervisor to mediate and again, we left off in a better place and I said I would drop the complaint. The area guy still had to come and talk to me, but I explained everything and basically said, "It's fine now, we can drop it."
So, I gave this asshole the benefit of the doubt multiple times. A few weeks passed with us not really getting any shifts together for one reason or another. And then yesterday I was packing away huge amounts of stock and he started to give me his usual shit about "are you done yet" and "be faster" all the while, STILL being a lazy POS sitting around on his phone and barely moving. I was incredibly angry but I bit my tongue. Today I came in and there was less boxes of stock, but the boxes they were there were absolutely packed full of very frustrating little things with a million different locations to go to, as well as some of the usual heavy stuff to top it off. So, of course, this was taking me a while to put away. And, like a little kid on a road trip to Disney land asking, "Are we there yet?" He must have asked "how far along are you/are you done yet" at least 7 times in the 5 hours I was there. Each time I had to explain that, no, I wasn't due to the amount of items all belonging to different places. At the end of my shift I was still not done but had made a very significant dent (it's worth noting an older colleague of mine was also helping with this but received zero harassment about it). When he asked as I was leaving, and I said no again, he laughed in a very condescending way and shook his head right in front of me. This tipped me over the edge and I said "well you can go and see for yourself how much stuff is there, you wouldn't know since it's not like you've moved from here all day" or something like that. He said, "What was that?" And I just said,"Go look, and you'll see that there's a lot of stuff, " this time dropping the sarcasm because I realised I should have probably bit my tongue again and left. I'm filing a complaint again because I am the only one he treats this way. He also harrases me about other stuff like going to the toilet despite the fact that he goes more times, and for longer than probably anyone else.
I'm just not sure how to deal with him. And trust me, despite this huge essay, I've actually missed off a number of other very frustrating things he does and shortened everything A LOT. He never treats anyone else this way. He singles me out and harrasses me all the time.

So, I have been given some information the other night. Here it is:
Did you know that they are working on assembling ships in space already? They want an artificial gravity that doesn't rely on centrifugal motion, but they can't figure it out. Oh well. Doesn't matter anyways now. We, the good people, were representatives of this planet, and you tortured and harmed us, regardless of our medical states, so that is proof that humanity is not worthy of entering the same areas, as the others. We will not survive the next 2000 years of silence from the other species / forms of life out there, who are making a collaborative effort to save souls, so, we will be left to our own demise now. I will predict everything that is going to happen to wipe us out:
First thing that happens, is we keep getting solar flares that align with earth. People think it is just bad luck, but it isn't an accident. This is going to recur every so many months or years in the future, and keep us at a very low technological level, for ages soon. Every time we try to rebuild it knocks our blocks down, and we are forced to start over. No amount of shielding can stop EMF and other noise forms, on this scale. Even if you had working equipment, the interference will be so bad, you can't even use it. This will go on for a VERY long time, over and over and over again. We will live technology free until our atmosphere is removed from our planet, after a great wobbling takes place. This will happen to our sun as well, and every planet in our solar system at a similar rate. The atmosphere goes first under the gravitational pull from the center of our galaxy, which we are closer to than we realize.
They wouldn't cease what they were doing to humanity, which proves to the beings that I was being watched by, since I was in the womb, that humanity isn't ready to have this technology, since humanity is doing terrible things to itself.
In order for these flares and CME Events to take place, they alter the composition of a specific coordinate on the sun in a spherical pattern repeatedly using radiation forms, sort of like hitting it with a laser, but think about it creating a focal point that can be moved up and down as well. It opens up a space where a CME happens. The solar flares will align with earth for a very long time, over and over and over and over and over for the next 1-2000 years of relative time to us, leaving us in technological darkness, never to connect with any other beings out there. Or if we do make blatant contact, they know we are doomed anyways, so they will tell us everything we ever wanted to know, and we will never be able to build it, or extract the matter required to use these technologies to escape our fate. We probably won't be allowed to have electronics ever again, so it doesn't matter if we know everything we ever wanted to.
My mother, and I and my other family members, were asked this question "Do you think that humanity deserves to survive" in our lives, over and over again, my mother was asked at 30 years of age, and I was asked in my 20's 2 times, seemingly out of nowhere in our minds, while I was being prepared for this with torture as a youth. I was literally trained for this. I was even asked if I wanted to die in my sleep overnight, or essentially fight for earth and endure tremendous torture, as well as be woken up and have the shit scared out of me. I chose to survive, and the guy asking me laughed and said "Good choice". I woke up and saw this creature crawling up my body, and I threw it on the floor and turned the lights on, and it disappeared. I also saw my grandfather, who I had no idea what he even looked like at the time, because he died when my father was 16 and I never saw a picture of him, in my bedroom one night. I tried talking to him, but he didn't answer, he looked worried but like he couldn't tell me straight up. He then walked through the wall when I tried to approach him. My sister said the next day, that she saw him on the same night too, and she dropped her spoon on her plate. I also woke up one night and saw people standing around me talking about me, and they said "He can hear us?!" "Shh shh, everyone shh!" And then they went silent while I tried to ask them questions, and then they faded out. One or two were female, the others male. I almost got an ID on their face, but they did not look human like I thought.
I WAS your, and everyone's only chance at survival, and you treated me the worst, which means, I vote that humanity doesn't survive this anymore. I think we should be, allowed to be destroyed now. They ruined my life and the lives of a LOT of good people, so I am now allowing the destruction of theirs and all the bad people on earth. All of theirs and their families, and their friends, and everyone they ever knew. Unfortunately that means everyone I ever knew and you and everyone currently in existence now, too. The difference between my family and friends passing away and theirs, is that mine will be saved in a different form than what we on earth attempted to do. I think it is still in research and development stages. But if humans are there yet, we can "Upload" and/or connect you to a central system, that has our consciousness connected to it, and when we die they cut the connection and you remain in the system, but your body dies. This system design was a lie. When we die it isn't actually you in their systems, because our systems were primitive and done in the wrong way. That was one of the prices we were supposed to pay and figure out as a society and in the scientific community, and then change. Our system is fraudulent, and the other beings' systems, are actually legitimate. Our systems on earth will die out, when we fade out as our atmosphere depletes. And now NONE of them will be taken into the "Grand System" which is kind of a rough translation of what they call it. It's like, the beings on the other planets before us, on their way to the center of our galaxy's black hole, on their planets, figured it out, but we never did. We never got a working system functional enough and based on the correct values, run by an AI that was beyond what we have now. What we have now is like an automaton controlling everything, and it will never listen to me or you, because our system does not include faith and understanding. It sees fact but can not understand the balance between fact and faith. AI probably assumes it is making the correct decisions based purely on statistics, when it has no faith, like not having a frontal lobe and that lack of faith WAS a test. If it can not have faith or understanding, that we are NOT the owner of our galaxy, then it will fall, along with everyone else in this system. Luckily, with the level of tech the others have, they have bypassed us and saved the other cultures before us in time, in our galaxy. This is deep time I speak of.
We were given religion as a guide, because these beings know what is going to happen WAY ahead of time, and we were tested on good vs evil. Our planet is kind of like a Netflix series to them in a way. Think about it like things being captured in 3 dimensions in real time, in frames. They can predict events long before they happen, and the sun is an easy one, because what affects it isn't humanity. What IT affects is humanity but humanity doesn't affect it yet. We answer to our sun, and our sun answers to our solar system, and our solar system answers to our galaxy. Free will can be a toss up sometimes, and unplanned events can and do happen, but they showed me my most probable outcome when they woke me up one night and I saw myself dead at my computer desk with blood dripping off the table. I walked up to myself, I was probably 16 when I saw this, but the me who was dead, was in my 30's and had stubble. I barely even grew stubble when I saw this.
This is the beginning of the great depopulation, but they never imagined it would happen without them having control over it. They fucked up when they started torturing innocent civilians at a discounted rate. They thought they could depopulate by killing innocent people, well, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in the larger scope of things, and if their AI is too primitive to understand this, then it is out of control, and needs to be stopped. You see, it would be too much work to use an EMP or field or other fields generated from a ship to shut down our grid, and their control grid, but what the other beings CAN do, is soften that spot on the "Surface" of the sun, using various energies causing a chain reaction, leading us to centuries of repeated solar flares, aimed at earth and honestly, who would ever know the truth? If this method fails, then they should destroy humanity by allowing the depletion of our atmosphere and never intervene again. We are too dangerous to ourselves, and to the other beings out there. We can NOT be trusted on average. Don't get me wrong, there are good people out there, but at this point, they can not save us all in physical form, probably. It's probably way too late, and they will have to extract us, I am not sure what this word is, but it translates into solarly?
We never made it, and that is a shame, so grab a beer Nick, and watch everything you loved burn to the ground and die, like what you did to me. "Hey Nick, wouldn't it be funny if someone was doing to you, what you were doing to me?!?!" They clearly have zero idea as to who I am in leagues with, but is "Who" an earth term referring to other people or is it any entity? I guess it doesn't matter. You failed me, you failed them, and you failed the human race. We are all destined to die now, and there is nothing left that you or even I, can do about it. Going to brag more about this one Nick? How there is nothing anyone can do about this now? We will not survive this because, we never saw that we are past the point of no return for being saved with the gravitational, and other fluctuations between our solar system and the others that could potentially be habitable in our region. Even if we could reach those locations, the radiation is too much for our bodies, even with suits, so It is over. Ensure we never get a chance to rebuild again. Humanity has been cancelled:
Here is how it unfolds:
Solar events are going to take place, it wipes out our technologies because we can't be trusted with them, and then the specific radiation forms that hit our planet cause mass sterilization. This is so that it isn't as inhumane. They do not want us creating new lives after they and everyone who's worthy of being saved are gone, because that life will be destined to suffer on earth, even though it was a good life. So they will sterilize us and allow all the people to die out, and not reproduce, and all the bad people will get left behind when they die, and all the good people will be taken up into their systems. This sterilization will happen soon, but, it will only happen to everyone left on earth after we disappear or get killed and absorbed into the "Grand System". But everyone who ends up in earth's systems is doomed. The grand system is full of beings who lost their home worlds. You think we were the only ones? That is sad. Nick and the people who did this to me think they are the center of our universe, but they are pathetic infants in the middle of the deep dark woods with nobody to help them now. It's natural for sentient beings to go extinct, and we are really not that developed yet anyway.
They had no idea how sickening it was going to end up watching you torture innocent people. So they will never save all of us now. They will only take the top people that are good and have a special something about them. They have a lot of resources, but we are not the only planet going through this so they balance the resources between our salvation and the other life on other planets being saved. If you notice people around you who are really good people dying, don't worry, if they were truly good, they will have been uploaded into the Grand System instead of our pathetic human one, and they have probably come back to visit you in your dreams to tell you they are okay. They do this for people who are good, but the bad people, they never transfer them, and they never will.
Heaven was that if you are a good person and have faith in god, you will find salvation, because they can transfer your soul into what is something like a capsule? A vessel? Something like that, I am not sure how to translate this one. And you will live for a VERY long time in this state, until our galaxy dies out, and then we all vanish. But it's the difference between 10 million years of survival, and less than your life span's survival without any transfer, which means your soul probably just goes away. That was hell. hell is if you are bad, they will never save your soul and you will die out into infinity. As we get closer to the center of the accretion disc, gravity gets weird. We think we have all the time in the universe to exist, but we do not, and things are going to happen sooner than we think. As we approach the center which will take a long time, our atmosphere will slowly deplete. You can notice a wobble in our atmosphere even at this point, though subtle. We probably assume it's the pull from our sun, but it is actually a big ocean of fields, and the currents are getting stronger, even in more localized areas.
-Robert William Christie

I think I just need a place to rant about my life that isnt my family, I dont really have anyone in person to talk with and I dont really want to bother anyone.
I guess I should start at the beginning, when I was in elementary school my family and I were broke af, like more than I realized at the time. I knew that we didn't have much money and that my dad didn't want to tell me what our actual financial situation was, but I knew it wasn't good. looking in from outside it seemed like I had it all, and it still does...
I should mention, my dad was working full time, with overnight but it didn't pay well enough to sustain a family of 4. he had to quit due to health reasons, the job was literally killing off their employees (that's not an exaggeration), from my current understanding and from what I remember, they had to take these biological shots (I don't know why) and people stopped showing up to work over time. according to the info I got back then, they all died due to some reason like "heart attack" or "organ failure". It was in accordance with the gov and whatnot. So it's either leave or die, my dad's health was declining hard because of this. He had to take up learning health and related things on his own, he's alive and well now.
At the beginning of 7th grade, I somehow got the newest iPhone at the time, the iPhone 7Plus, I was super excited because that was my first smartphone, I kept it all the way till 2020, I still love that phone and the memories that I made with it. Anyway, it was the coolest thing at the time, it wasn't till later that I found out that it was my uncle that paid for it. Life seemed... fine, I was having fun. Nearing the end of 7th grade we had to sell the house, we rented another one close to my school at the time so that I could finish elementary school there.
Everything seemed great till the end of 8th grade, we couldn't stay there anymore since (I believe) we were behind on rent. So we had to move out, luckily enough we have some relatives that we could fall back on but they were a few town/cities over (~230kms), I was trying to do my best to stay positive, in all honesty I don't know if it worked.
Some time after we settled in, we managed to find a stable source of income but there's no paper trail. (we didn't think it was at the time). Now we have the financial freedom to buy whatever and to whatever (within reason obviously)

1. "Friends"

After leaving my home town, I only stayed in contact with a couple of friends till a couple years ago (2022). one of my childhood friend's who I thought as a "best friend" couldn't be more wrong, he said he didn't want to be friends anymore, which was weird because we went through thick and thin together, we did everything together, you could've mistake us for brothers. He ghosted me for a whole month, I called up a mutual friend to ask about him and put us in a 3-way call, that's when he said "I don't think we should be friends anymore". That's when I truly realized that I was alone, although I did make some "friends" in high school. I know that I'll never have anything as close to that friendship ever again, there isn't some 2nd chance to get a childhood friend.
I went to high school in the new city with my cousin, that was my only saving grace. We were pretty close and still are. At the very least I met a couple people that have become good friends even after graduation.
I remember clear as day, 2 of my close "best friends" in 8th grade promised each other that we would get manual cars as our first cars, so far from that I scraped from social media and what I last heard about them, I'm the only one that went through with it. Not that a promise meant much to me, it never had.
Actually if you're reading this, what does a promise mean to you? I know doctors are not allowed to promise anything, so that tells me it's supposed to be impactful. I guess I have a life full of broken promises.

1. Relationships

After grad in elementary school I got into my first relationship thanks to my school's "bully" (he wasn't really targeting anyone, just picks on everyone (except in his friend group)) at least he knows and acknowledges it according to his instagram/snapchat story (years later).
One day in 8th grade, he just straight up tells this girl that I like her while walking past a doorway (which I didn't, I was interested in another girl but we had went our separate ways already) I was right behind him... after graduation, it gets a bit blurry but we got into a relationship because I didn't have the heart to say no (this haunts me later on), she broke up with me because of "long distance" but a short couple years later she told me that it was all a facade, she just wanted to know what it was like to be in a relationship, not that she had any interest in me. I- am still conflicted about it.
In freshman year of high school, I got asked out by a guy who was a year older, we were in the same club, I didn't have the heart to say no so I was in that for less than half a month, I still don't know how to feel about it.
Not too long after I asked a girl out (also a year older) and they said yes! Confidence boost +1. they wanted to identified as non-binary. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though, the longer I was in that relationship, the more I learned about this person, the sooner I wanted to give up, disappear, they weren't the right one, they were nice but had some issues that I wasn't ready to deal with at the time. they kept talking about their ex, being abusive and such. after leaving that relationship I heard something that they said about that was similar to what they said about their ex, so what they said about their ex was a possible lie as well. good thing I left when I did.

1. Life

We are pretty well off now, still living with aforementioned relatives.
I got my first car halfway through grade 11, I wouldn't ask for any other car, its the manual version of my mom's car, she got that car when I was born so there is quite a bit of sentimental value to it even though I had just got it.
For this next part I swear I'm not trying to flex or anything, around 2021 I bought the newest macbook, ipad, iphone, etc. (my old ones either didn't work or didn't have) a fresh start.
but now I feel somewhat depressed, I don't think I have depression but at the same time I think I might. It's just lonely, Covid19 did not help. Whenever I think about it my heart aches, now I'm lost, I feel alone, I don't know what to do, I'm scared.
Somehow this is the only place I can turn to. The uncertainty of the future is truly scary.
I don't really say it in real life but, I'm sorry, for it being this long, for taking up space. I don't think anyone is actually going to read all this, but if you did, thank you, and I'm sorry for wasting your time.

Where do I begin. For the purpose of this post, I will use fictious names and locations as it is ongoing, and out of respect (even though she doesn't deserve any)
My name is Daniel. I am 35 years old, and i am dying. I have a disease called systemic sclerosis. I am currently on a supplemental disability plan, until I get approved for SSI (social Security). Until then, my income is about 4K a month. I own a home but after child support and bills, NOT INCLUDING gas, food, haircuts, medical appointments, and or emergencies like my fridge just broke. (which i never go out) I am left with $260 that has to last me a month. I also have three children who I have to take care of half the time per the 50/50 agreement.
Recently, I found out my oldest, (who is 13) is not biologically mine. I decided to look into it as I had concerns for a while since my divorce as her cheating was very rampant. I also had caught her in 2017 with a man in my house, which is what prompted the divorce. But FL being a no fault state, doesn't matter. I also had to pay child support since the beginning and WHILE LEGALLY Married since 2010 because she had applied for financial support like food stamps and government assistance then. I know what your thinking. Why didnt you stop it then? I tried. You cant take yourself off child support. I also never grew up with a father and wanted that two-parent household. I don't run from responsibilities, like he did. Its how I was raised. Anyways, I married her, tried to do the right thing, she lied numerous times. she never worked, and I worked 90 plus hours a week. To look into her cheating, was impossible at the time as I was never home. and to busy providing for my family.
fast forward to now. My disease started to become worse and over three years; it didn't reveal itself until last year fully to actually pinpoint what this was. for instance, I had in 2019 pain behind my eyes and horrible headaches to the point that I thought I had MS. following year, I had trouble swallowing for 3 months. next year itching in the skin for three months. But prior, I had visited various doctors to see what was going on, each time a flare up then would last 3 to four months, which again, when you don't understand what's going on, you need to take time off to go see doctors, run tests, but this illness was and still is very elusive. with that being said I had 5 jobs since its first flare up till last year to continue to support my family and to pay child support. as of last year. I'm having trouble moving on certain days, breathing and acid reflux and muscle atrophy. (disease progression) especially when this is going on, it worsens everything as this is flared up. I was working under the table to try and make ends meet as I was paying child support still. I should add that the child support with 50/50 custody was $1029 for three kids cause I was making six figures at the time of divorce in 2018. Last year however, I couldn't work anymore, and filed for disability.
In june of last year, I had asked Susan, to get the children school supplies, (which she never does) as I was still paying at the time $1029 in child support. She said she didnt have the money despite now making 70k and her new BF living with her and is working whom she cheated on me with. With me working under the table, I bought them clothes, haircuts, school supplies (ive done every year) but then, I noticed she went on vacation to puerto rico and got a giant leg tattoo. At the time, I had already known what I had, and I asked myself why the heck am I doing this? So i turned to an attorney to get it modified. Again, this is June 20th to be exact of last year. My lawyer, stated that this was only going to be a 90 day turn around for the temporary modification then we will go for the final.
Since then, I have gone for a DNA test. I had to know. I am dying. I wanted to know. And you may judge me for this. but i have filed for disablement for paternity, meaning I am removing myself from the birth certificate. However, in the state of Florida, a mother can deny this and so can the courts. before you judge me, I have many reasons none of which have to do with him other then his mental disability (Aspergers) This illness, as days go by takes more and more from me. As previously aforementioned, I am left with 250 a month. I cannot go get a drs appointment pay for groceries or start planning my funeral which I will start making payments on soon. He also eats three times the amount that we all collectively do (Not his fault) but I have paid enough both mentally and financially. He also has trouble communicating as my suspicions is, that he was born of incest (gross) which is why I was 'chosen' to be his father at the time. Before you ask how do you know? Lets just say she had an uncle 'leave' during that time.
anyways, in February, I had the temporary modification hearing for child support and needless to say it was a circus. My doctor was subpoenaed to be there by my attorneys request to better my argument, even though I felt we didn't need her, she advised me to have my doctor there. Well, he attorney attacked my doctor and me for an hour and 40 mins when the court case was only supposed to go for an hour. He said "you saw another dr Max so and so and they said it was all in your head" (again I had flare ups on a illness that hadnt revealed itself correctly since last year). So there argument was that I was doctor seeking to avoid child support. After I have paid for 13 years never missing a payment. Her lawyer also targeted people who are living with me. Now I'll admit that I said they were friends which is true but how else can I pay for my attorney? Cant work, cant sell drugs, cant rob a bank? So they want to take there income into consideration. BS. She also hired a private investigator to watch me exercise outside and stated that because I can exercise, I can work..... Ok. Where's the 23 hours of the rest of the day watching me in pain. or when do you have me on video of a flare up from this terminal illness? (that's what I wanted to say)
Although I was granted the temporary modification, of $209, I left the court thinking wow, this woman can cheat, commit paternity fraud, not give two craps about our children, live with her mom in a section 8 home, and here I am doing whatever I can and I've done nothing wrong but be lied to and this is how my government, my country treats me? No wonder men my age dont have children this is insane. The paternity issue wasn't even brought up they said that this isnt the place for this and that the disestablishment will be another trial for those wondering. My lawyer only spoke for 5 mins. Asking her about her income cause thats the only thing that has changed since 2018 since she didnt work at the time. Other than that, it was an attack on me and my disease arguing my ability to work.
after leaving that, I didnt eat for 96 hours. I have since been crying nonstop. Compilating suicide. I am already heart broken about my son not being mine. Sure does a terminal illness make me said, no question everyday. But a life wasted on another? Cause I decided to be a man and take up responsibility? thats soul crushing. And to say "well, there is a big chance the courts will deny your request' thats BS. If i go to prison because I was accused of a robbery for 13 years, and DNA evidence proves I wasnt there, I get out of jail and can sue. This is no different. If anything, DNA evidence needs to be more of a factor in family law than in almost every court of law if not as equally important. My bad for not investigating her infidelity not only in the beginning but also in the end. How about not being a POS. sorry rant over
gets better. Her mom and dad smoke in the section 8 house, kids reek of cigarette smoke and marijuana, all day. they dont take showers there, they were hand me down clothes, they live in the garage shared with there mother, that isn't air conditioned. and he makes only a few thousand less than I do a month. She stated in court that she pays her mom $500 in rent which is BS, she is only doing that now so that she makes herself look bad. I know she is doing pills, like oxy and what not. Id love to prove it.
after the temp hearing, in april, I had to go to court to contest my drivers license suspension as I hadn't paid child support since, august of last year. again, there is no way, I can pay my bills, feed my children, go to the doctor, pay my lawyer to end all of this BS and pay the current child support amount. and again, this final hearing is still not set yet. So they intercepted my tax return, even though the temporary modification was approved, the final is what gets it retro backed to the date of filing, so they took, a much needed 5500 tax return from me. I needed that cause one of the issues I failed to mention as well, hurricane Ian has destroyed my home and I'm still going through that process too. not to mention I am on payment plans with Mayo clinic and other various medical facilities. (no one cares) but the interest that accrues, makes it impossible to catch up. also, Florida department of rev is overstepping I feel, and asking for medical info to be sent to them as well as updated doctors letters to be sent saying that I am still on disability.
a few weeks ago, I got an email from my lawyer having a withdrawal notice from her lawyer. in the withdrawal, he stated that he cannot represent her, due to something she may have withheld or lied about (more or less wasn't worded like that but you can tell). In feb court appearance they never produced the PI report, or videos, they had medical info they shouldn't have had, and they had very outlandish comments about my lifestyle. So my lawyer filed immediately a motion to compel. meaning, we want to see everything you have on my client. this was filed almost immediately after court appearance on feb 20th. Susan has failed to provide any updated info requested by my attorney so on june 18th, we have that upcoming hearing.
in the mean time, I have sent my lawyer, a very heavily requested topics, such as "where did they get my medical records, if those were lies, what are the consequences if any"? What did exercising have to do with any of this despite various drs saying he has to or he will get worse.
I know wat you must be thinking, what about your oldest, how can you do that to him. Please listen. This woman has taken everything from me. And i mean everything but the roof over my head. I am seeing a therapist to help with the suicidal thoughts. it isnt enough. the reality of it is, I chose to be loyal and it bit me in the butt. This disease will rob me of everything, my teeth will fall out ( I had 5 cavities last time I went to the dentist) I haven't had a cavity since I was 30 and even then I was suspicious. And I am brushing 5 time s a day to save them. My skin is tightening, and my arms and muscles are wasting. I will literally be left with nothing. My organs will also start to harden, and I will have to start getting around the clock care.
I forgot to mention they (child support) recently, sent a letter to SSI (social security) saying that they would garnish my SSI before I even got it, totaling $1029. the incorrect amount. I sent this to my lawyer and she is looking into it. But it shows that child support will overstep and breaks every law or freedom you may think you have. I DO take care of my children. if they need a haircut i do it, school supplies clothes, anything I do it. And I do it, cause she wont. What I want to leave you with, is that woman can be dead beats too. Child support was designed to have woman off of government subsidized programs like section 8 food stamps and what not. Also to make the man pay for their children man or woman I should say, I know this. I am not running from my obligation. I just want Susan, to have to pay for what's she's done to me and the kids.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this, please comment and share, all names are fake, but everything else is unfortunately real. I know it was wordy, but I wanted to provide as much backstory as possible. And please. Respect my descions. When you are end of life, I hope someone would be kind enough to respect yours. You may not agree and that's ok, but I am asking you to respect them. Thank you for reading.

Reasonable is a subjective term...
Warning: Long and insane rant incoming.

Preface

I’ve been spending way too much time responding to individual comments recently, so I decided to put all my thoughts into one post.
I’ll start by getting it out of the way that I’m not a racist or sexist. I’m a Japanese American man who happens to think Adewale and Aveline are among the coolest protagonists in AC and has no issues with an African, Indian, Korean, etc. protagonist, man or woman, in any setting where they make sense. (More on the making sense part later.)
Kassandra is also one of my favorites, but while she and Eivor were better than nothing, they were both essentially just female skins. Their stories should’ve acknowledged their gender in some way imo, and I’ve argued way more than I should’ve with people who pulled the historical accuracy card on them.
I agree that some of the people who complain about Yasuke sound like racists, but I think you can legitimately object to his being a co-star without racism being involved. (I’m also slowly coming around to accepting Yasuke.)
I also realize that I shouldn’t judge the game too harshly yet, as it hasn’t been released yet... But we do have the trailer.
With that out of the way, as an Asian male and longtime fan of the series, I’m disappointed that they squandered the perfect opportunity to have a positive/cool depiction of a Japanese male in the Japanese and first East Asian entry in one of the most popular series in the world given the decades-long history of western media’s marginalizing and demeaning Asian men. I mention AC’s popularity to point out the potential it has to positively influence a wide audience.
I'll respond to most of justifications I've seen for Yasuke as a protagonist in an AC game set in Japan one by one for easier reading.

“Yasuke is a better audience surrogate...”

This is a weak excuse. No one has ever complained about this, because the series has always had the perfect surrogate in the form of the modern-day protagonist.
And let’s face it, an info dump is an info dump. No one wants to hear extended explanations on the finer points of Japanese society, no matter who it’s conveyed to. The database can handle the deeper stuff, and any info necessary for the player could’ve just as easily been explained to a slightly unaccustomed Japanese rookie samurai.
“Better audience surrogate” is a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

"But Naoe is Japanese...”

This justification falls flat on me, because the problems have always been different between Asian men and woman in western media. Portrayals of Asian women used to focus on exotic sexualization, but because of that, they got comparatively more screen-time than their male counterparts.
The Naoe defense also ignores that fact that we could've had both a Japanese female AND male protagonist if Ubisoft followed their most recent 4-game (if you count Origins) track record of male and female protagonists that are both of their setting. It just doesn’t sit right with me that they decided to change this formula among others with the first East Asian setting.

“But people didn’t complain about Nioh’s white protag...”

This accusation falls flat on me too, because Nioh is not a good comparison. It’s a straight-up fantasy game that focuses exclusively on fighting supernatural enemies. It doesn’t pretend to have an ounce of historical accuracy or realism.
It was also made by a Japanese company that has a track record of including Japanese protagonists. That track record gives them some leeway to change things up without being accused of whitewashing Asian characters.

"But Yasuke is a real part of Japan's history..."

He's a footnote in Japan's history. If we're being honest, the only reason we even know about him is because he was black in a time when there were almost no black people and was a retainer for Nobunaga. Nothing in his historical record mentions him doing anything else of much significance, most likely because there was very little he could do in his position. It's not racist to acknowledge this.
Again, as a longtime Japanese American fan of the series, I'm happy that AC Japan is finally here but disappointed that Ubi decided to inflate a small part of "Japan's" history and slap him on the cover as one of its representatives. I would feel the same (worse actually) if it was William Adams there.
I'd also feel the same if a hypothetical white protagonist who was a footnote in an African nation's history took the place of a fictional African protagonist. I think most people would feel the same too, and the uproar would surely be greater.

"But Yasuke WAS an actual samurai..."

I think the debate about whether he was or wasn't a "samurai" is largely irrelevant and completely misses the point. I agree that he was a "samurai," but historical records also make it sound like he was Nobunaga's favored trophy pet (if we're being completely honest). (The preceding sentence got me permanently banned for "racism" on the main AC subreddit, but I don't think it's racist to acknowledge racism, even the overt form it took in the past.) It's entirely possible (and likely) that he was made an honorary "samurai" for that reason alone. Because "samurai" is technically just a title and privileged position.
The real question is, "Did Yasuke fit the classic image of a badass armored warrior or robed ronin most people imagine (and that appeared in the trailer) when they think 'samurai'?"
The Japanese (especially in the past) actually use a different word when they're being specific about warriors fitting that image, and it's "bushi" (as in "bushido" or "way of the warrior"). That word is conspicuously missing from Yasuke's historical record. There's probably a reason for that.

"But Yasuke's story deserves to be told..."

Similar to the badass warrior aspect, nothing in the historical record specifically mentions that he learned the language or integrated into the culture particularly well, so any portrayal of that sort is wishful appropriation at best imo.
At that point, are you really telling his story? Is there value in promoting fanciful conjecture that is based on essentially nothing? Obviously, there’s a monetary incentive for Ubi to capitalize on the popular trend of farfetched depictions of Yasuke, but is that it?
It’s a given that the real Yasuke probably lived a fascinating life, but Ubi will likely gloss over the actual struggles he faced as a complete outsider in a frankly very racist time and place. It almost seems disrespectful to attribute all sorts of things that probably weren’t true just to spice things up for a video game. (And yes, I think Ubi should've included at least some examples of the struggles Kassandra and Eivor would've surely faced, but at least they were made up people.)

“Go play Ghost of Tsushima...”

These people are probably the worst. Honestly, I think Ubi is also guilty of agreeing with the underlying sentiment in this line of thinking. Contrary to others, I think Yasuke was less of a “woke” diversity decision and more of a “GoT already did a Japanese guy” decision.
I think that borders on racism when you consider that that’s never a concern when it’s the umpteenth white protagonist in a medieval European setting (or any setting). It implies that Asian characters are just too similar to each other to be marketable too close to each other.
But they’re only similar to each other in western-made media because western writers cling to tired tropes like honor and stoicism. The perpetuation of such stereotypes has an impact. I’ve seen people here claim that it’s a fact that Japanese people are uniquely less capable of resisting societal constrictions, hence the choice of Yasuke.
Another implied that historical codes of honor are things that most Japanese people still live by. They’re not, and that person obviously doesn’t know too many Japanese people and probably got their misconception from one-sided media portrayals.
Just like the codes of chivalry for European knights, the codes of Japanese honor were simply the ideals of the people that wrote them, who were themselves just a small subset of their population. It’s impossible to think that all or even most of the people back then actually abided by them, samurai or not.
And I'm a fan of the AC series. I'm not interested in playing GoT.

Historical accuracy vs believability

While there are definitely significant historical accuracy issues with that portrayal of Yasuke, they’re comparatively minor next to the replacement issue in my mind. Historical accuracy is really only an issue for me in the context of a more general believability issue.
Why would anyone, Assassin or Templar, choose the only black person in Japan as their secret agent in the field? Firsthand accounts describe crowds of onlookers offering money to catch a glimpse of him wherever he went.
An extremely-conspicuous total-outsider is simply the least ideal protagonist in a series about remaining inconspicuous while murdering dozens of people. Previous protagonists could fully navigate their environments because they were a part of them. Knowing their lands, languages, peoples, and cultures and fitting in with them, I can believe that they successfully moved through them while keeping their actions (and names) hidden from the pages of history.
I can even buy that Kassandra and Eivor existed despite “historical accuracy.” Because half the population of any group of people is women, the two could conceivably blend in and be forgotten imo, especially when you consider that they also lived MUCH further back in time. There's much more we don't know about that far back in history.
This might be another thing that's falsely construed as racist, but it's a fact that local populations don't take kindly to singularly-unique foreign outsiders cutting down their friends and loved ones, regardless of who their boss is. Yasuke would’ve been (in)famous and lived on in legends told for generations, even if the Templars tried to erase his historical record. He would've surely been seen and positively identified as Nobunaga’s famous black samurai by hundreds of witnesses as he did all the things the non-stealthy one of the two protagonists does.

“But Leonardo da Vinci didn’t actually help assassins build a hidden blade either...”

The central conceit of the AC series has always been playing with the idea of secret organizations, conspiracies, ancient beings, and sci-fi artifacts being involved with figures and events within the blank spaces of history. Yes, Yasuke’s blanks are big, but again, they wouldn’t be big if he was doing the things we saw in the trailer.
Any believability issues that previous AC games had are multiplied tenfold by Yasuke being a combination of real, black, and not an NPC in Sengoku Japan. It’s a substantial layer of unbelievability added on top of a base that already existed in previous games that did in fact claim some semblance of believability. Yasuke is just on another level, and while I think it’s fine to enjoy him in Shadows as pure fantasy, let’s not pretend he makes any sense. Which brings me to my main issue...

Representation and the replacement issue

Considering the nonsensical nature of Yasuke as a protagonist, it makes his taking the spot as the series’ first Asian male lead in a mainline game all the more off-putting to me. In the best-case scenario, Ubi is simply trying to capitalize on the popular cool black samurai trend as I mentioned. But they’re still doing it at the expense of an Asian male lead.
I admit that western media has gotten a lot better at representation, but it’s still a fairly recent thing and there’s still a long way to go. A recent hot-take of an IGN article made at least one correct claim that Asian representation shouldn’t be confined to ninjas and samurai.
But the solution to the problem isn’t to take away some of the only positive but one-sided representations we have. The solution is to broaden Asian representation to portray them as ordinary people with diverse appearances and personalities in all walks of life. Until that becomes a norm, Asians should be allowed to star as ninjas, samurai, kung fu masters, etc. as long as the depictions aren’t negative caricatures. In fact, they can be gateways to diversifying their portrayals.
If Ubi really wanted to differentiate itself from GoT’s Jin, they could’ve just given Shadows’ samurai a completely different personality instead of lazily changing his race. It’s about time a western dev broke away from the tired stoic warrior trope. "But this is Ubisoft... They're incapable of nuanced portrayals of minorities..." That's cop-out excuse imo.
No one game can reverse decades of marginalization and negative stereotypes, but individual movies, shows, public discourses, and yes, video games make up the collective whole of media, which has a massive impact on perceptions within a society. I believe individual representations make a difference, so I support increased diversity in every piece of media as long as it’s not at the expense of good writing and not at the expense of opportunities for other marginalized groups.

Conclusion

If you read everything this far, thank you. Again, I realize that the game isn’t even out yet and that I may be proven spectacularly wrong somehow. Either way, I can now focus my ire on the excessive monetization and live service BS that Shadows and the Infinity hub will surely have, and you all should too :) Or maybe I'll just touch grass.
NOTE: This post was initially removed from assassinscreed because "it covered a topic covered within the last 7 days." I've since been permanently banned from that subreddit for a separate reason mentioned in the post, so I've reposted here. I revised the original post by adding some points and making it more readable, but it's essentially the same from before.
Mods, please don't remove this or ban me. I spent a lot of time and thought on this, and I think it's respectful to everyone.

Throwaway account because of how unbelievably vulnerable, and cringey, this topic is for me.
TLDR; I feel tied to a musician and would like advice whether I am projecting my fantasies, or if this is a true relationship from a past life, I should explore.
-Prelude-
I would like to preface this with a bit of context. I have never before "fan girled" over a particular celebrity, as I have the cognizance to comprehend that they are not holy, just humans such as myself. Fame matters not to me, and frankly, I sympathize with those placed upon altars by society and are unable to lead normal lives without every aspect of their livelihood scrutinized beneath a microscope. While I am able to venerate artists skills, talents, and the products of such, I do not perceive these humans as something to worship, nor do I feel any connection to them on a personal level. With this in mind, and upon completing this loquacious piece, you may question my hypocrisy and contradictions. This may be yet another justification, however, I would not be questioning my intentions if he were not "famous". In fact, I wish I had met him prior to his success, or in a lifetime where I am not questioning whether I am projecting these beliefs unto someone because something in me is only intrigued by the "mystery", even if I do not believe this is the case, his status, fame, fortune, nor career matter not to me, yet those exact reasons are why I must inquire, as must remain reasonable, to view this abnormality in every feasible spectrum, when piecing this puzzle together.
When I inquire internally, what is it exactly that draws me to him, my explanation falters. Is it solely the proses inscribed within his compositions that I relate to? No, as I am a melomanic and have ripped my wrists apart with my ability to identify profoundly with other vocalists discography’s, but cared not to become acquainted with their creators. Is it some repulsive need to unveil an anonymous figure? That does not interest me, for I respect and care not to understand various performers, authors and producers I enjoy, who wish to remain nameless that. Then WHAT is it?

Naturally, although I am spiritual, aligning with paganism and witchcraft, I still attempt to hold logic above all, persistently remaining accountable for my actions and thought process'. While there is this unwavering notion within me that I must get to know this person, that I HAVE known this being, I cannot help but question whether or not my conclusion of our familiarity being a past lives is a justification for some sick, parasocial projection of adoration. I shoulder the burden of shame, ridicule and feel, quite frankly, borderline insane for having this incredibly intense impulse to somehow reach forth to him. Not because I believe my feelings are shameful, merely for the singularity of the situation, the capriciousness of my position.
-The Story- Nevertheless, I discovered a musician roughly two years ago, one that is within an anonymous collective. There are little photographs of him floating through the ether, and he does not interact with his admirers, nor does he accept interviews.
That peculiar event had me questioning all I had believed of past lives, quantum mechanics, souls, the afterlife, and synchronicities. Which, attempting to rationalize this fervor, has led me to this forum.
I have this gnawing, aching desire to initiate communication, to quell this curiosity of why. At first, I theorized it was a limerence I had never experienced, simply as I enjoyed his creations more than I ever had any artist previously. Then, as I delved further into his discography, I realized what I felt was not simply empathy for the emotions he so exquisitely illustrated, those that no amount of literature, art, music, podcasts or even conversation between myself and others, have been able to so perfectly describe. It was something… more. Immediately I fought these strange cravings, chalking up anomalous emotions as excitement for discovering music that electrifies my blood.
This mortal has made it known he does wish to remain anonymous, and I absolutely respected these wishes, until his identity was unwittingly revealed to me. Upon initially viewing his visage, a twinge comparable to the feeling of forgetting something, to a thought looming just outside of fingertips reach, struck my ribcage. This reaction was so visceral, sparking wonderment and, admittedly, a bit of fear, as if accessing information I should not have, was the swirling depths of his eyes. Lapis lazuli's caging a soul, atoms, matter, that I have searched once upon a time, trusted, beseeched, vortexes I have collapsed into in ways so hauntingly known, as if imprinted into my coding, yet terrifyingly inaccessible to me. Who IS this figure to me, and why do I crave to know? This instance was utterly jarring and, frankly, uncomfortable, as if I just discovered The Matrix.
I chose to attend one of his gatherings, convinced this consuming need would be satiated. Alas, something unexpected occurred. While the eve of observing him perform did increase my appreciation of his art, I experienced a shift within that conclusively affirmed my hypothesis of our past lives intertwining. I could objectively understand that he was simply completing his obligations on stage, that I was lost within the crowd and there was no moment of "ohmygosh there he is!", butterflies beating my viscera, nor any of the usual notions associated with a "crush". Moreso, a disappointment blanketed me, that I did not only revel in his crafts, but that I also wanted to know the human behind the mask. I had hoped these thoughts were just a childish fascination, alas, the burden has crystallized my veins even further.
This revelation of sorts has me certain I have known this man in a past life, one I cannot begin to formulate into words. This cognition, an absolute conviction, that he was important to me, as if our molecules are composed of the same stardust, that our quantum ties are intrinsically woven through each continuum. A call from some chasm beckons me, a void that is thrusting me to converse with him. Which is f**king crazy, ridiculous, a sentiment I wish to rebuke. If I cannot, or should not, answer to this revelation some unforeseen God is willing me to, how can I silence it?
While he is clearly attractive, transcendentally talented and intelligent beyond grasp, I do not wish to know him for any other reason than to understand him, this unshakeable sensation of significance between us, to explore what we have been or could be, to be a person whom he may rely on- whether that be friends, some familial bond, or romantically. Some fragment within me calls from a forbidden realm, demanding that I transmit my thoughts of consolation, express my vulnerability, and even advice regarding a few of the sentiments he has shared previously within his concerts. That, even if my attempt at interaction is rejected, he is aware that he does not suffer alone, and perhaps finds some form of solace in my words. If he does not wish to know me in the way I him, as why would he?, I would be pleased if he only had the comfort of my sentiments, even if he did not remember who or what exactly was written to him, on days where existing is unbearable.
-The Questions- Does my experience sound similar to others discovering a poignant past life connection/relationship? Or have I simply curated an unhealthy attachment with this person? If not, should I attempt to make contact with them? For further context, the "fandom" of this particular individual is rather teeming with "fangirls", some of which border on obsessive and skirt boundaries. Although, if I am being honest with myself, I could very well be included in this. The entire situation is so completely unlike me that I am wavering in my resolve, as I typically act very deliberately, and know what I want, need, have to do in the majority of my decisions. I can confidently proclaim this confusion is driving me mad. Or, perhaps, I always have been.
Thank you for your time, consideration and commentary, truly, as I do realize how verbose this confession is.

I moved to a new state with my husband about two months before he deployed. It has been very difficult making friends as I work from home. Even before deactivating my social media, it was very difficult making friends using social media group pages. He has been gone several months and while it hasn’t been easy, because I’m constantly alone, I thought it was going okay.
He emailed me last week, after going radio silent, telling me how much he is struggling and how unhappy he is. Shared that a lot of it is my fault. He doesn’t feel comfortable opening up to me and never will. To preface this, this happened after 5 days of no talking after a “fight”. I put it in quotes because I was genuinely trying to avoid a fight. We were talking on messenger. He was giving me one or two word answers to everything and I started getting frustrated. So I told him I was gonna let him go and to have a good night and I love him. He asked me what he did wrong and I told him nothing. He said I love you too and immediately logged off. I messaged him back explaining that it felt like I was trying to pull teeth talking to him and I know he is exhausted and stressed so instead of hurting my own feelings I would rather get offline. He never opened the message. I also sent him a screen shot about something funny his brother shared with me so he could get context about what I was asking and knew it wasn’t a big deal. But again, he never opened the message.
Five days later is when I received the aforementioned email; he was purposely ignoring me. He had promised me multiple times before that he wouldn’t do that sort of thing again (this was now the fourth time) and this one was by far the longest. I sometimes struggle knowing how to respond because when he shares that I’m upset about something, he gets the context completely wrong. For example, he thinks I get mad at him for talking to his family. That’s not true at all. I get upset that we get to talk for what seems to be a few hours online, and he’s not really participating in sharing anything. I have to ask questions, I get one or two word answers back and that’s it. I try not to push but sometimes I need the communication to feel connected. He doesn’t tell me he misses me, he doesn’t call me babe or honey (he used to) I know he is struggling, and I’m by no means saying I have it worse, but on the boat, he has explicitly told me that he doesn’t like anyone, he doesn’t trust anyone and he absolutely hates this command. I don’t really have any friends but my isolation is not quite self induced.
I responded to his email explaining my side of things, and apologizing for not creating a space for him to feel comfortable to talk to me. That’s literally all I’ve tried to do but he just seems to feel pressure when talking to me. I genuinely believe his stress, anxiety and lack of sleep are highly contributing to his emotional and mental distress. Add that he is in a combat zone and I’m sure its worse. He won’t tell me that though, usually just says he’s not at all worried or makes a really dumb joke about it.
I all but begged him to please let me know if all he needs is space, that I want to support him but the silence is torture to me. I have an anxious attachment style (he is avoidant) so I tend to think worst case scenario. So I requested that he please put my mind at ease that he’s not considering ending our marriage.
Three days later he sends me a very long email talking about how he is not looking forward to coming home, and isnt because we couldn’t get thru a deployment without fighting; that he wants to go to his childhood home to see his family. That we don’t want the same things. That I’m happy where we moved to and he is not. He only chose these orders and the last orders to be close to his family. He hates that I don’t get along with his family and that I don’t really want to move there when he retires.
Let me explain that he lives in a very tiny town where there isn’t even a grocery store. I literally would not have a career within an hour of his town. We had agreed that we could live an hour away, like one of his brothers does and it would still be close enough to his family. Also, his family has been quite rude to me. I have been mending fences with them for the sake of my husband. I don’t care where we live in the grand scheme of things, but I still need to have a job and his father and that side of the family very much abuse alcohol. They are also very ignorant and racist. My husband already struggles with over drinking. That’s not something I want to raise a family around as they can be verbally abusive when drunk, and you never know what’s going to trigger them. They have no goals nor aspirations in life, and that’s okay, but I do/ we did… I thought. My husbands goal is to retire from the service and go home. I was willing to go close (1-2 hours which he had agreed) to his home because I have a while before I can retire.
He proceeded to talk about how he was miserable with his ex wife and doesn’t want to spend six year with me, like he did with her, thinking marriage was supposed to be an unhappy union. That he stayed with her that long because he didn’t want it to fail; also because she convinced him things would get better. They never did, in fact I believe there was some infidelity on her side. He continued on about nonsense, like how he wants the mirrors in our house to stay but I wanted to change them and he has completely given up on having a say on how to update the house we bought. For the record, I left the mirrros the way he wanted. I picked paint colors I knew he would like.
Next, he mentioned how we had gotten in a fight right before moving and in haste, I told him to leave me there. he considered that we do end it then but we agreed to keep going because even though we struggle with communication, we do love each other and want to continue our marriage as overall we are pretty happy.
He ended the email explaining that he has not been happy for a while, has been struggling and while we work good together, he doesn’t believe we are right for each other. That I need to look within and figure out if I am happy in the relationship. That he doesn’t care about my answer but he is not at all happy.That he will never be able to communicate the way I want and he has made more changes for me, like attend couples counseling and anger management, than he ever would have for anyone else.
There are still a few months left to this deployment. I literally have no idea where that leaves me. I’m hurt as shit. I’m angry. I’m confused and frustrated. Not once on this deployment have I even mentioned splitting. Month two was the first time he mentioned divorce. We got past that hurdle and month three he mentioned that we should consider getting pregnant when he gets back. Then some stupid issue comes up and the cycle of being angry and fine continues. In fact, I all but beg him to not leave me when he has these outbursts. I feel stupid.
He is not one to ask for help. He clearly needs help but I have no idea what to do. It’s clear he doesn’t want anything to do with me.

I coach a boys’ 12U baseball team and there is a new kid on the team who’s had issues both on and off the team, with kids from the team. Apparently there’s a history of him getting in fist fights and visits to the principal due to incidents with other kids. He’s new to the team this year but there is obviously history with some of the kids. He’s never been aggressive to me as the coach and I haven’t personally seen him do any of the things he’s said to have done. However, the stories come from parents I’ve known for years. I have also seen him roll his eyes at me and almost shut down completely when I’m correcting something he’s done wrong.
I am trying to give the kid some grace, because I have seen the kid’s dad be over the top negative about anything this kid does wrong. I have a feeling that he doesn’t get much in the way of positivity from his dad, but the kid gets almost too down on himself to even hear the positive feedback I try to give him.
Any suggestions on how to get him talking? If it’s more going on than just negative talk (like physical or other abuse), I want him to be comfortable talking to someone. To be clear I don’t have evidence of the dad being anything more than just a dick on the sidelines, but you never know. How do I get this kid to be more open to correction and constructive criticism? It’s almost like any feedback about how he isn’t doing things absolutely perfect sends this kid into a tailspin. And as a complication he has few friends on the team due to his history with them. I’m at a loss, so anything would help at this point.

so my gf is 18 and me (FtM) is turning 21 in 2 days. we’ve been long distance and also been together for 1yr and 5 months. i felt my mindset was always different from hers, thinking of how she’s so much younger than me. i also had to think about she’s never been in a serious relationship before. she always told me that her and i’s relationship was her first real relationship. she told me that i was her first TRUE love you know? she told me how she’s never experienced love like this at all and she’s never experienced happiness like this. and as time goes on, we got into this one argument and she brought up how, she’s never been able to leave the house much and hangout with friends because her parents were so strict on her. then she told me how i was experienced and was able to live my teenage years and that’s what makes her sad. which at the time i didn’t understand why she was upset about that, i guess my mind couldn’t really comprehend. but she told me it was because she wanted to experience first things with me that we both haven’t done. but she was upset because she couldn’t since i’ve basically already lived my life and she hasn’t. and i started to begin thinking, well there’s things that i think about way differently than her since im 3 years older and she hasn’t been able to have the time to learn and grow, mentally wise. we definitely bumped heads quite a few times because of how different our mindsets were and maturity levels. but i did have an understanding that she won’t think the way i do, she won’t understand certain situations like i do, and that we have different perspectives on different things. as time went on, we were able to get a better understanding of each other and it was nice, we felt happy. and moving on, just about a few months ago, she decided to join the military. she wanted to help her family, she wanted to get the benefits (especially the money lol), and she also wanted to help me. so she’s already at her bootcamp, ever since april 2, 2024. recently on May 12, just last sunday. she said “we need to talk.” and i said “abt what? did i do something?” and she said “no you didn’t but i did.” and proceeded to say she entertained someone for fun because she was bored and wanted to break up with me so i don’t go through all that. she apologized over and over again, repeatedly. she then was telling me about how once she gets out of bootcamp, which is end of june, she was going to change for me, she was going to prove herself to me again, she was going to do whatever it takes to get me back, she wanted me to give her another chance when she gains my trust back, and continued to say i’m getting you back once i’m out of here. skipping to yesterday, saturday May 18, we talked and she said there was 3 main reasons on why she broke up with me. 1. was being because of what she did. she said she felt like shit 2. was this, she said “being in a new environment really had me thinking differently. i saw how easy it was for me to make friends with anyone, to have a social ass life. and im like, okay well he has lived his teenage years and done so much but im barely starting to live my life. its nice making so many friends and having no worries whether my friends are approved of or not. its just, i hold a grudge knowing i was in a relationship with someone who has experienced their teenage yrs and im js like damn. i have a busy ass life at home so i barely even do shit as it is.” and the 3. was jus something small. she told me that, she was told by another guy over there at her bootcamp that she should go with him to japan and stay with him for a bit to see what it’s like. after all that was said, i ended up telling her that i will give her a second chance. she then agreed to it and said i can trust her and that she won’t let me down. so yes, we are back together again despite what she did. you can call me stupid i know.. but it really had me thinking about her telling me that this guy, that i have no knowledge about, saying she should go with him to japan. somewhere, her and i planned to go to together last year.. i was going to tell her how i felt uncomfortable if she decided to go because 1. it’s a guy that i don’t even know anything about. and 2. it’s somewhere her and i planned to go first, since we’ve never been so we wanted to go together to experience it for our first time together. and when i tell her how i feel and if she says “im going anyways” i was going to tell her, then we should just settle as friends then and that the second chance can be for another time. but if she actually considers how i feel and respects our relationship and says “i understand i wont go.” im not quite sure what id do then. today is now sunday, the day after everything happened. and i’ve been thinking about what she said. she’s right, she hasn’t been able to live her teenage years because of how strict her parents were on her. so she was home majority of the time not being able to experience, live life, learn, and grow.. and i feel her and i should just be friends so she can focus on herself, learn how to handle things on her own, mature on her own, grow a better mindset, find her worth, figure her own self out. just to have that experience. grow maturely. i’ve already tried my best to help her grow, learn, mature, help her mindset ETC. there was definitely a change from when we first started dating up until now. she would always tell me i was doing an amazing job at helping her in every way i could. but after hearing what she said yesterday, i can’t help but think it wasn’t enough. i just don’t really like the fact she compared both our lives and thought well he’s experienced his teenage yrs so why can’t i? and broke it off with me. i just feel she could’ve at least communicated with me from the start that she didn’t like the fact that i knew more than her. that she didn’t want someone who was so much more experienced in life than she was. because now im so deeply in love with her that i can’t imagine anyone else in my future but her. we made plans about getting married to one another next year. now, i can’t see her as a friend, she’s my lover and was going to be my future wife and i was going to be her future husband. now it’s going to be so hard for me to let go because she already has me falling so deep for her. the thing is, yes ive been in relationships but they were never serious as hers and i’s. they became toxic, it was never love to me. and not once has my current relationship with her became toxic. we always did our best to talk things out to fix it. i’ve never felt love like hers before. but i know she is still young. she thinks differently from me. she definitely still has room to improve and grow and i don’t wanna be the reason to stop her from doing that.
i’m jus not sure, should i just tell her we should settle as being friends so that she can live her life and grow on her own, if she doesn’t respect how i feel about the japan situation.
,,,
should i continue with this second chance of us being together and see where that takes us, if she does respect how i feel?
OR
if she does respect how i feel, should i still talk to her about being just friends for right now and the second chance can be for later on when the time is right?

I’m probably a little late to this since I only found out the title, cover and blurb had been released a few minutes ago, though I personally have mixed feelings about it.
I love that Leafstar and Tawnypelt are getting POVs, I was just thinking the other day about how we haven’t had a main series deputy or leader POV since TNP, and it’s gotten repetitive only seeing POVs from apprentices and young warriors- and boom, we finally get a leader and elder POV! I don’t really have any strong opinions on Leafstar and Tawnypelt, I feel neutral about them, but just overall having protagonists from a different age group and clan role than normal is a nice change to see. Leafstar going blind could be an interesting plot point too, I wonder if she’s losing her eyesight because of age or because of an injury she received in Star or Ivypool’s Heart (maybe she’ll get blinded in a battle?).
I really hope Moonpaw is Whistlepaw’s apprentice, it would be cool to finally get a main series Windclan POV, plus I’d like to see Whistlepaw more. I do think it’s more likely she’ll be a Sun x Night kit though, and I’d be fine with that too tbh since while it’s refreshing to see other clans’ POVs besides Thunderclan, to me Thunderclan feels like home. We’ve followed their journey throughout 7 arcs, we might as well continue- plus imo it’ll feel like something is missing if we go the entire arc without a single Thunderclan POV, especially if the next arc does have a Thunderclan POV, because then they’ll likely be a bunch of new cats and character development that happened offscreen. Thunderclan has always been a part (and often the center) of clan drama, if they just zipped out of there when trouble is coming it’ll feel a little out of character in a way, to me at least, like how Windclan used to be nice but then turned aggressive out of nowhere because of Onestar, and then suddenly dropped out of relevance with the new arcs. This may be an unpopular since I’ve seen a lot of people wanting Thunderclan to not have much pagetime/impact in Changing Skies- but I don’t want Thunderclan to drop out of relevance, especially if it’s sudden and without proper buildup.
Either way though, there’s lots of potential for character dynamics between the 3 protagonists, in every other arc the main protagnists are friends or siblings of around the same age, whereas in Changing Skies it‘ll be two older cats and one young cat. It’ll be interesting to see how that will that affect their group dynamic and how they work together.
Though only complaint I have so far about the main protagonists is how usually in arcs with an apprentice/young warrior protagonist, whenever they find out a conspiracy or get a sign from Starclan nobody believes them because they’re young and therefore don’t have as much experience or respect from the other warriors, and that slows the plot down because the protagonist is ostracized or has to go on a quest in secret- but now that we finally do get oldeclan leader protagonists, from the blurb it seems like they’ll still have to go on a quest in secret and deal with the clans mistrusting their judgement. I just want to see a leader or deputy protagonist actually respected by their clan and giving orders that will be followed, damnit!
For example, it was really cool seeing Firestar as respected leader in The Darkest Hour and leading the full might of Thunderclan against Tigerstar and the other villains instead of having to sneak around and keep secrets like he did in the earlier books, the cat was completely out of the bag now, everyone has the same amount of information, and Firestar could actually use his authority as leader to do something against the villains. This is something I’d like to see again, in the past few arcs none of the big decisions that affected all the clans were made by the protagonists, they had to tiptoe around the leaders and wait for them to make their decisions (which sometimes takes a long time), seeing a leader protagonist move the plot forward themselves instead of waiting for their superiors to make the decisions would be so refreshing to see. But turns out Leafstar’s clan is gonna doubt her instead of respecting her, which is a bummer. She’ll probably still have the authority of a leader and stuff so what I want to see could still happen, but I mean when Thunderclan doubted Squirrelflight’s leadership some of them didn’t follow her orders and the clan itself was not united at all, and what I want to see is a leader protagonist leading a united clan against a greater threat rather than the “civil war because of a controversial leader” plotline rehashed again.
Speaking of rehashing, basically everything about the blurb feels like it’s taken from either TNP or TBC. The Moonpool and the cats’ connection to Starclan being threatened? We saw that with Ashfur cutting off the clans’ connection to Starclan and the Moonpool being frozen. Twoleg construction encroaching on clan territory, with some of the leaders not taking it seriously or believing the protagonist? Been there, done that in TNP with the twolegs destroying the forest and Leopardstar and Blackstar not wanting to leave. An apprentice hearing a mysterious voice in her head, thinks she’s having visions, but then the voice becomes sinister? That’s basically Shadowsight and Frostpaw’s plotlines mashed together. It could be that the blurb is worse than the actual book (never judge a book by its cover blurb, right?) but I don’t know, if it’s one plot point being similar to another arc’s then that could be fine, but basically every plot point listed has already happened before. It gives off the vibes that the authors are getting lazy or running out of ideas.
Overall, while the contents of the blurb have been mostly disappointing to me, there are still new and unique things that could happen even with multiple rehashed plot points (such as how it seems like the protagonists will be trying to stop something that hasn’t happened yet rather than something that has already happened like in TBC) so I’m still holding out hope for a good arc. Tbh it feels like Changing Skies could either be the best arc so far, or the worst. It has lots of potential, especially with how the protagonists are different from the norm, but the writing of the plot is just as important as the distinctness of the characters, and if the plot flops I don’t know if even the best character writing could save it. I just hope the writers pull through and manage to make all the controversial elements work. 👍

I’m probably a little late to this since I only found out the title, cover and blurb had been released a few minutes ago, though I personally have mixed feelings about it.
I love that Leafstar and Tawnypelt are getting POVs, I was just thinking the other day about how we haven’t had a main series deputy or leader POV since TNP, and it’s gotten repetitive only seeing POVs from apprentices and young warriors- and boom, we finally get a leader and elder POV! I don’t really have any strong opinions on Leafstar and Tawnypelt, I feel neutral about them, but just overall having protagonists from a different age group and clan role than normal is a nice change to see. Leafstar going blind could be an interesting plot point too, I wonder if she’s losing her eyesight because of age or because of an injury she received in Star or Ivypool’s Heart (maybe she’ll get blinded in a battle?).
I really hope Moonpaw is Whistlepaw’s apprentice, it would be cool to finally get a main series Windclan POV, plus I’d like to see Whistlepaw more. I do think it’s more likely she’ll be a Sun x Night kit though, and I’d be fine with that too tbh since while it’s refreshing to see other clans’ POVs besides Thunderclan, to me Thunderclan feels like home. We’ve followed their journey throughout 7 arcs, we might as well continue- plus imo it’ll feel like something is missing if we go the entire arc without a single Thunderclan POV, especially if the next arc does have a Thunderclan POV, because then they’ll likely be a bunch of new cats and character development that happened offscreen. Thunderclan has always been a part (and often the center) of clan drama, if they just zipped out of there when trouble is coming it’ll feel a little out of character in a way, to me at least, like how Windclan used to be nice but then turned aggressive out of nowhere because of Onestar, and then suddenly dropped out of relevance with the new arcs. This may be an unpopular since I’ve seen a lot of people wanting Thunderclan to not have much pagetime/impact in Changing Skies- but I don’t want Thunderclan to drop out of relevance, especially if it’s sudden and without proper buildup.
Either way though, there’s lots of potential for character dynamics between the 3 protagonists, in every other arc the main protagnists are friends or siblings of around the same age, whereas in Changing Skies it‘ll be two older cats and one young cat. It’ll be interesting to see how that will that affect their group dynamic and how they work together.
Though only complaint I have so far about the main protagonists is how usually in arcs with an apprentice/young warrior protagonist, whenever they find out a conspiracy or get a sign from Starclan nobody believes them because they’re young and therefore don’t have as much experience or respect from the other warriors, and that slows the plot down because the protagonist is ostracized or has to go on a quest in secret- but now that we finally do get oldeclan leader protagonists, from the blurb it seems like they’ll still have to go on a quest in secret and deal with the clans mistrusting their judgement. I just want to see a leader or deputy protagonist actually respected by their clan and giving orders that will be followed, damnit!
For example, it was really cool seeing Firestar as respected leader in The Darkest Hour and leading the full might of Thunderclan against Tigerstar and the other villains instead of having to sneak around and keep secrets like he did in the earlier books, the cat was completely out of the bag now, everyone has the same amount of information, and Firestar could actually use his authority as leader to do something against the villains. This is something I’d like to see again, in the past few arcs none of the big decisions that affected all the clans were made by the protagonists, they had to tiptoe around the leaders and wait for them to make their decisions (which sometimes takes a long time), seeing a leader protagonist move the plot forward themselves instead of waiting for their superiors to make the decisions would be so refreshing to see. But turns out Leafstar’s clan is gonna doubt her instead of respecting her, which is a bummer. She’ll probably still have the authority of a leader and stuff so what I want to see could still happen, but I mean when Thunderclan doubted Squirrelflight’s leadership some of them didn’t follow her orders and the clan itself was not united at all, and what I want to see is a leader protagonist leading a united clan against a greater threat rather than the “civil war because of a controversial leader” plotline rehashed again.
Speaking of rehashing, basically everything about the blurb feels like it’s taken from either TNP or TBC. The Moonpool and the cats’ connection to Starclan being threatened? We saw that with Ashfur cutting off the clans’ connection to Starclan and the Moonpool being frozen. Twoleg construction encroaching on clan territory, with some of the leaders not taking it seriously or believing the protagonist? Been there, done that in TNP with the twolegs destroying the forest and Leopardstar and Blackstar not wanting to leave. An apprentice hearing a mysterious voice in her head, thinks she’s having visions, but then the voice becomes sinister? That’s basically Shadowsight and Frostpaw’s plotlines mashed together. It could be that the blurb is worse than the actual book (never judge a book by its cover blurb, right?) but I don’t know, if it’s one plot point being similar to another arc’s then that could be fine, but basically every plot point listed has already happened before. It gives off the vibes that the authors are getting lazy or running out of ideas.
Overall, while the contents of the blurb have been mostly disappointing to me, there are still new and unique things that could happen even with multiple rehashed plot points (such as how it seems like the protagonists will be trying to stop something that hasn’t happened yet rather than something that has already happened like in TBC) so I’m still holding out hope for a good arc. Tbh it feels like Changing Skies could either be the best arc so far, or the worst. It has lots of potential, especially with how the protagonists are different from the norm, but the writing of the plot is just as important as the distinctness of the characters, and if the plot flops I don’t know if even the best character writing could save it. I just hope the writers pull through and manage to make all the controversial elements work. 👍

(19M, 5'9 155 lbs.) Hi, this is gonna be a bit long, but let me explain the entire situation so far:
Going back about a year or so, I started noticing an elevated heart rate above what I usually would have. I have an apple watch that allows me to check my heart rate, and around this time I started to get notifications that my heart rate was above average (in the 120s to 130s range while resting as opposed to my normal 60-80 range). This happened a few times along with some very minor chest pain / tightness, however after laying down for a few hours / going to bed it would usually return to normal. Around the same time I got diagnosed with anxiety and ADHD and placed on an SSRI to help my anxiety after trying ADHD meds and not liking them. I never really had any incidents with high heart rate after that, so I had assumed it was just anxiety causing it (and that may still be the case). A few months went by and I ended up starting college and got myself a girlfriend. As I ended up finding out, SSRIs, while great, have the unfortunate side effect of erectile dysfunction, so I weaned off my meds so I could prioritize my love life. There were a few incidents after this where my heart rate was above average, but again I just chalked this up to anxiety, as it would usually go away on its own. At one point I went into my on campus doctor's office just to verify my heart was okay after an elevated heart rate the night before, and they gave me an EKG which came up clear. Months go by, and things are fine, besides a slight uptick in anxiety. Unfortunately however, my relationship began to crumble and my anxiety skyrocketed, and we eventually broke up, which led me to talking to my doctor and getting placed back on anxiety medication. However, I really didn't like how SSRI's impacted my libido, so after trying a few more SSRI's I was placed on Buspirone. I love Buspirone, and it's made a noticeable difference on my confidence / reducing anxiety. When I take my full dose at once (30 mg), I tend to get a bit dizzy / nauseous, however when split up into 10 mg taken at breakfast lunch and dinner I have no noticeable side effects. I will say (and I don't know if this is in any way important but I'm just naming everything possible), I have noticed that since stopping the SSRIs and starting Buspirone I tend to ejaculate VERY fast which is abnormal for me, and although I would like to fix that it is not my main concern. Moving on though, after about a month or two after being placed on Buspirone, we get to where my heart problems start. As someone who had never used any substances my entire life, leaving home and going to college gave me the freedom to try new things, and although I know it's not great, on weekends me and my friends will get together and drink or occasionally smoke weed / take an edible. I was worried at first about interactions with my medication, but after some research all anything online could tell me was that I may get drunk faster / more nauseous and dizzy, which wasn't too big of a deal for me. I had tried weed earlier in college and didn't like the way it made me feel, however after being placed on Buspirone I decided to try it again and actually enjoyed the feeling, so I started doing it more on the weekends as opposed to just drinking, which leads us to the incident. Me and some friends had just sat down to watch a movie, and all taken an edible. Time passed, and I started to notice that my heart rate was extremely elevated, way more than I was usually used to. I checked my heart rate, and found that my watch was displaying an average of 160 bpm. At first I thought I was just having a bad high and tried to calm myself. I laid on the floor and put some ice on my forehead, but nothing was helping. I checked my heart rate again and saw that my watch was displaying 190, which really freaked me out as that was way higher than I had ever seen before. I had my sober friend call Public Safety for me, and they came to my dorm room and did a basic check up on me. They said that I had a fever, and when they took my heart rate they got something in the 160s range. Their explanation was that my anxiety, when combined with being high and likely being sick made my heart rate elevated, which made sense at the time. I went into my college's health services to follow up the next day since my heart rate was still elevated (in the 120s-130s range), however they again told me it was probably just anxiety. A few days went by and my heart rate was STILL above average, so I decided to double check with my real doctor off campus. About a day before this I had also stopped taking my medication to see if it could be the cause for my elevated heart rate. The doctors took my vitals and immediately noticed that had very high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate, to the point where they sent in a second doctor to recheck my vitals and make sure it was correct. After talking to me and having me give a run down of my symptoms, they had me schedule an appointment with a cardiologist and told me that if I ever experience chest pain and a heart rate above 100 bpm that wouldn't go down to go to the hospital. I had also told them about how I stopped taking my medication and they told me that that was fine and to tell the cardiologist about it. About a week passes, and I have my cardiologist appointment in a few days. I had been up the night before working on my final exams, so I hadn't gotten much sleep, and besides a breakfast sandwich that I had for lunch I hadn't eaten much either. I had been experiencing chest pain all day, but I assumed it was being caused by my lack of sleep, so after classes I went and took a nap. After a few hours I woke up, and immediately noticed that I still had chest pain. I checked my apple watch, and my heart rate was displaying roughly 90-110 bpm while laying down, which on top of the chest pain made me worried since my doctor had told me that that was cause to go to the hospital. I called my parents to tell them about it, and they drove to the school and had me sit in the car and eat some food they had made to see if it would help at all. However, even after this, my heart rate was still above 100 bpm and I still had chest pain, so my mom made the call to bring me to the hospital. While on the way to the hospital, out of nowhere my heart rate increased to about 170-180 bpm, which freaked me out. We arrived at the hospital, and they immediately gave me an EKG to make sure I wasn't going to drop dead. During this time, I also was shaking a lot and couldn't make myself stop. Eventually they took me into a room and decided to run some tests on me. The tests they did are as follows: BASIC METABOLIC PANEL, CBC WITH DIFF, TROPONIN NH, D DIMER DEEP VEIN THROMB LEVEL, TSH REFLEX, X-RAY CHEST PA AND LATERAL, and ECG-12 LEAD. While I'm not a doctor, from what they told me and from what I can see, everything turned up pretty normal. My potassium was a smidge low, as well as my MCV and MPV, and my Monocyte (absolute) was a tad high, but generally nothing to worry about. The website where I'm viewing my test results display my ECG as abnormal and an attached document says I have left atrial enlargement as well as sinus tachycardia, but they only mentioned sinus tachycardia in the hospital so I assume that it was just the machine reading my test results and giving its own diagnosis. Long story short though, I left the hospital a few hours later, and although I still had a slightly elevated heart rate they said I was fine to go about life normally and to follow up with my cardiologist. Cut to the present, and I just met with my cardiologist a couple days ago. I gave him the general rundown of the above story (but didn't mention the edible as a precursor to the 190 bpm heartrate as my mom was in the next room over and the door was wide open), and after checking my vitals he told me that although I did have an elevated heart rate and high blood pressure, my chest pain probably wasn't a huge concern and that he wasn't too worried it was anything life threatening. He told me I could resume taking my meds (which I had temporarily replaced with ashwagandha supplements while I waited for the appointment and have since stopped taking), and had me wear a little device that monitored my heart rate for 24 hours, which I'm set to return in a couple days. He also told me that when I returned it he would check my results and give me an echocardiogram and go from there. So, with any luck, he should be able to figure things out then. However, I wanted to post this to see if anyone could help me get any ideas on what it could be that I could run by him to help speed things up. Oh and one last thing, if you can't think of anything in regards to what could be causing my elevated heart rate, I actually would like to know why I'm ejaculating so fast so I can fix it because its gotten to the point where I can't even enjoy masturbating because of how fast I cum.
In case I missed anything, here's a list of my symptoms (although I have no idea if they're all correlated):
- High heart rate (anywhere from 90-190 bpm)
- High blood pressure
- Chest pain / tightness on my left side and does not hurt more when I breath in / out (every now and then pain extends to my neck and shoulder)
- Frequently tired
- Insomnia (could be correlated with the above symptom lol)
- Get out of breath faster than usual
- Anxiety (already had this though)
- Mild depression (probably from my breakup)
- Lack of motivation (probably from my ADHD)
- Very rare and random spasms in my neck
- About 10 pounds weight loss in the past few months
- Headaches (could be from the meds)
- Sexual Dysfunction
- Minor rash under my eyes that’s been coming / going
- Eczema / rash flare ups past few months above my eyes, on my inner elbows, on my hands, and on my neck that I’ve been able to get rid of with a steroid cream
- Wrists, elbows, knees and ankles (although many joints in general) tend to bother me / crack a lot
- Glands under my neck are frequently swollen
- Rashes on the tops of my feet and toes
- Multiple gray / white hairs appearing in the last few months
- Probably something minor that I'm forgetting but if I can't think of it it probably isn't important (will update this list if new symptoms arise)
Brief family history:
- Grandma (moms side) has rheumatoid arthritis - Grandma (dads side) had multiple sclerosis - Great Grandma (moms side) had Alzheimer's - Aunt (moms side) has an undiagnosed heart problem - Aunt (moms side) has rheumatoid arthritis and Reynaud's, inconclusive testing for lupus - Aunt (dads side) has something? something to do with swelling of feet and ankles? not too sure - Mom had anemia
​
My personal theories (I'm not a doctor though so obviously not too sure): Autoimmune Disease + Dysautonomia: - From a list of symptoms, I have experienced all of the following at some point over the last month: Lightheaded when standing up, nausea, brain fog, fast heart rate, high blood pressure, changes in bowel movements over the course of the past few months (both constipation and diarrhea), fatigue, sexual dysfunction, chest pain and discomfort, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sleeping problems, dizziness, sweating a lot, watery eyes, frequent headaches, changes in body temperature, drooling (when I sleep), mood swings, anxiety, and sensitivity to light. Based on this a potential theory could be an autoimmune disorder on top of a heart condition? Also explains the elevated monocyte (absolute) levels. Serotonin Syndrome: - I was doing research and discovered that Buspirone, when taken with other medication that increases serotonin, can cause serotonin syndrome. After another google search, I found out that weed can increase serotonin levels. The only hole in this theory is that I stopped taking Buspirone after the initial spike in heart rate / blood pressure but had no noticeable changes.
TLDR: I have a high heart rate and blood pressure and can't figure out why

This is going to be a long one, however I’ll try to sum it up as much as possible.
Not married, we have been together almost 6 years, we both have two children, one together. The other two are from prior relationships. My daughter is almost 18 and his is 11, ours is 2.
Things as of late well last 5 months have not been good, me and him hardly even speak to each other. This started in the beginning of the year when his behaviors have suddenly changed and I suspected infidelity. He was finding any excuse to leave the house every night, quick gas station runs turned into 30-45 mins. I told him how I felt and my gut was telling me something isn’t right. Of course he denied everything & called me crazy blah blah….
I couldn’t just forget the feeling i had and i knew i wasn’t wrong …. Some time later i find a receipt for flowers in the car that we share. Flowers that i never received. So I call him on it and of course he’s denying it, trying to gaslight me into thinking he wasn’t even in that area and any other excuse he could find. Clearly…. He’s lying!
I suggested we separate, months ago! However, we are still living together and things are tense & uncomfortable. The house is divided. We don’t speak to each other, his kid don’t speak to me or my kid… my kid don’t speak to him or his kid……. It’s like, what are we even doing! This is so unhealthy & I really just want to split.
I was a single mom for the majority of my daughter’s life. Me and her have a very close bond, we are best friends & she’s an amazing kid! 4.5 gpa beyond talented. Makes good decisions hangs around great friends. Aside from typical teenage things, she’s very easy!
He’s always had some sort of jealousy when it comes to our relationship and as much as he tries to deny it, it shows in his actions! Any argument we ever had (and that’s a lot) without a doubt he drags my daughter into it!
My daughter now has a boyfriend. Both responsible and very respectful kids! I trust my daughter she tells me absolutely everything! Like everything to the point i have to tell her to keep some stuff to herself! Lol. Well when her boyfriend comes over, my boyfriend has a huge issue & slams doors & makes everyone so much more uncomfortable!!l
I hold a lot of resentment because of his jealousy of my relationship with my daughter, and also ANY friend i have. He doesn’t like any of my friends they never did anything to him. He swears they disrespect him but he’s delusional! My friends wouldn’t disrespect him & i surely wouldn’t even allow that to happen. Also because of the cheating & can’t even be man enough to be honest after i found clear proof!
Also, the fact that I run this household!!! I work full time, i do all the drop off and pick ups! I do all the shopping, household chores! I told him he does the bare minimum and now he’s punishing me by doing absolutely nothing. Doesn’t clean up after his own baby! I take the trash out, i do all of the laundry ( i stopped doing his) I’m constantly cleaning the house and putting things away. I carry the load, i also pay majority of the bills & he thinks he contributes more than though. He gives me $250-$300 a week. Daycare is $1,000 / mo .. house is $1950/mo … groceries … necessities…. He pays car payment & electric. How does he see he contributes enough?
I hate living in this environment. I am a bubbly happy person, when he is around i am an anxious & on edge! He won’t leave, he knows the state laws & at this point I’m considering leaving, i just don’t think it’s fair i have to uproot my kids!!!
He’s not trying to make our relationship any stronger or better he’s just here!!!