I remember being 12 and looking up unclaimed bodies around my area because I called my dad for 2 years straight and he never picked up.
My mother used to tell me that I’m worthless anytime I did something that she didn’t agree with. It could be over the stupidest things too. She was always deliberately cruel.
Like when my job promoted me to another store, and I was bragging to her about my accomplishments, she said “they’re just doing that to get rid of you. Nobody likes you”.
I’m turning 24 soon and it just sort of hit me that I could never be like either of them. It’s hard to be a good parent, but it’s not that hard to just be an ok one.
I want to reconnect with them so bad, because what am I doing that’s so bad that I don’t deserve parents?? I never argued with them as a kid/teenager. I never drank/smoke/ snuck out or talked back to them. I got excellent grades in school. But it’s like I got dealt a shitty hand.
I got a job at 16 and i was apparently deemed good enough to parent myself. My mom stopped grocery shopping so I had to spend my paycheck to buy groceries/food and then when I got home she would yell at me for hours because I didn’t “get the right food” and I must hate her because I didn’t buy the organic stuff she wanted. But I was only working part-time at a restaurant for $9 an hour and couldn’t afford it. She also gave me $600 a month bill that was also my responsibility with the rest of my paycheck.
Or when I graduated high school and needed to go college, she wouldn’t fill my Fafsa out (she did the same thing to my brother and he had to drop out and go to community college) and kept pushing it back. I had to get a 2nd job to pay my tuition, so I was going to school full-time, and then had a full-time and part-time job.
She figured out the days I got paid, and would drive me to a check cashing place and take most of my money. I couldn’t keep that life up of working 12+ hour days every day and flunked out of my college. I reenrolled in my local community college, but I was just so lost that I ended up quitting.
She brought a new house when I was in college that had a run-down in law suite. She told me if I fixed it I could live in there and pay rent and have some more privacy. I worked extra hours and got a 3rd job, found a plumber and electrician, and would spend hours every week to fix the place, and wouldn’t you know it as soon as I was done she sold the property and took all the profit. She did the same thing to a broken down car that she had, I paid $4k to take it to a mechanic and when we got it back, she “never said that” and still drives that car to this day.
When we were moving (again) i decided to just get an apartment with my boyfriend because I was getting sick and tired of being used. She found out and hid the leasing information that I got from a complex, and guilt tripped me by saying she wouldn’t be able to afford things on just her paycheck and would starve. So I quit looking, just for her to scream at me a week later that I was a useless burden and that I was the one financially abusing her.
So I packed my bags, slept on the dirty floor of my boyfriend’s parents trailer for 2 weeks, got a round of the stimulus checks, and moved out to our own apartment. When I went back to her place to pack the last of my stuff she was snatching things out of my hand, threw my boyfriend’s laptop and tried to choke him/throw him out.I pushed her away from him and she told the family that we both were hitting her, so they don’t talk to me anymore. She was also insulting him for his family bring poor, and making fun of his dead grandmother.
And as I’m getting older and my prefrontal cortex is developing I just don’t understand them. I can understand hurtful things being said in the moment, but to continually be like that means you are making a conscious effort to be a terrible person.
But I miss them so much. I want a mom to talk to about my day and complain about my co-workers with. I want to watch movies at her place again and eat junk food. But she doesn’t deserve it, and I feel like I do. I don’t know what to do. There’s plenty of more terrible and down right weird things that she does. Like she used to beat me and my brothers with electric wires as a kid. Or recently, she was renting out one of our old homes and my partner and I moved in and we were paying MORE THAN market rent. And she forced us to move out after only 6 weeks because I said no to helping her on a side project because I was busy. But I “owed her” because she could’ve “charged me more”.
Which I should’ve known it would end this way honestly.
My parents are divorced and my father lives in a different city. He only calls me when he needs something and honestly I have stopped answering.
I’m not sure what to do. Advice?
TL;DR: my parent’s are terrible, I still want a relationship with them.

I've had my ACL reconstructed 3 times in addition to a meniscus and a bone transplant on the same knee. I'm 8 months post-op and it's likely torn again (failed the Lachman test). Being from America, I can't afford another surgery financially or emotionally. My insurance provider changed and I can't see my old surgeon anymore.
Do you have any recommendations for alternatives to a 5th surgery? Has anyone tried stem cells? I'll get an MRI soon to determine what grade tear it is, but has anyone had success recovering a partial tear without surgery after multiple reconstructions?
Also for fun, here's how they've happened
1st ACL - Soccer
2nd ACL - Bouldering
Femur Fracture - Bouldering
3rd ACL, Meniscus - Snowboarding
4th (likely) ACL - Mountain Biking
All on my left leg. Should I get rid of the whole leg and go for a prosthetic? jk but kinda not. I'm 26 and don't want to spend the rest of my life having surgeries every other year.

Am I wrong? I feel like the narrative of being a natural player and the youngest seeker in 100 years etc etc is spoon fed and never questioned.
As somebody with a lengthy background in athletics, including a collegiate career and multiple national titles, this bothers me. the first question I have is why is an 11 year old making the team? The school consists of 11-17 year olds. You're telling me there's not a single kid that's an upper classman capable of being literally the most important position? He makes the team almost by default imo. Imagine you're high school (grades 9-12) football team being like "Yeah, we're gonna start this 6th grader at quarterback." It's wild to me.
That aside, it's the 2nd point I have that actually makes me think he's average.
Money. In our real world, sports like track, football, soccer, rugby, your talent is mainly capped by your athletic ability. Can't be a 100m sprinter without being fast. As a seeker, hand eye coordination is obv huge, physically catching the snitch, but athletically speaking, there aren't many requirements. Even Crabbe and Goyle make the team 6th yr. I'd argue the faster you can fly the better the player you are. Now, some of this will come down to aerodynamics, laying flat on the broom, just flat out being a good flier, and we can call that technique. But, the single biggest variable in performance is 100% the broom they are using. Harry has the best broom available NEARLY the entire series. He is using a nimbus 2000 and then the firebolt and he's flying against cleansweeps and shooting stars and other ancient hammy down brooms. The only time he faces a broom of equal or better caliber is when he faces Malfoy book 2 when they're on the Nimbus 2001s. And granted he does win. I'm in the middle of a reread and several times he is way behind on somebody who saw the snitch first and he just out races them to the snitch. Not possible on a lesser broom. Once he was on the clear opposite side of the field and he made it the length of the field to catch up and get the snitch. It's like using a metal bat in baseball when everyone else is using wood. For those that don't get the reference, metal Bats hit way farther and the pros use wood for this reason. Cedric is a better flier. Cedric beat him and we can say dementors, but Cedric had the lead on the snitch before the dementors showed up and Harry was coming from behind on a faster broom.
Harry's quidditch career is product of having a better broom in every match.

I am looking for some advice. My daughter (11) is autistic and has been diagnosed with anxiety. Generally, she doesn't have much in the way of compulsions or obsessions, but she goes through periods of obsession. We had a few weeks of her chronically asking about being in trouble and then worrying about being late, which she has mostly moved on from. Overr the past few weeks she has started obsessing about 2nd hand touching of pee. Like, "I think I got a drop of pee on my pants and then it touched the blanket, is it okay if I touch the blanket".
Are there any best practices, her mother and I should be doing? We try to stay patient and reassure her that it is fine. She is already on 25 mg of Setraline and is restarting therapy, but not with someone who has a speciality in cbt, anxiety, or ocd.
Prior to this most recent episode, she had a tremendous last year of grade school. She chose to join a bunch of clubs and even did a sport, but she pulled away from a lot of the stuff over the past few months, which I mention since it corresponds with the most recent obsession.
What else should we be doing to support her and help her through this? Were there any strategies that helped you when you were younger?
Thanks!

There’s no easy way to put this, and because I was raised in an environment of brutal honesty instead of watered down truth, this will be very difficult or uncomfortable to read so fair warning for the content below.
I only remember the first few years of my childhood barely, but the years following after the age of 5 were not pretty. I was quite an introverted kid mainly due to stupid kid stuff at the time, I remember elementary school where the big talk was about modern musical artists at that time and Wii was a huge thing, I was more interested in ocean life and life outside, and more interested in bands like ACDC, twisted sister, Motörhead, and Black Sabbath. I was picked on constantly, I never really dressed in basketball shorts and jerseys, I always stuck to what I grew up around Bikes, Bands, and my dear old mom and dad. My uncles was a chopper builder and felt like a big bro more than an uncle, my aunt the same.
Of course because I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, I got sent to religious instructions, it wasn’t bad yet, but I met my first ever like real friend a kid named Devin, he was a year older but we grew up together and made each other laugh, we did everything together to make each other laugh like we had nothing better to do, he was the ultimate brother from another mother. Because of these classes every now and then the local priest would show up and observe, there was guy who followed him around, I think he was like a priest in training or something like that. This sounds like a set up to a dark South Park joke, but it’s the real thing. Devin was my only friend, but he went to a different school, everyone else at my school picked on me or spread rumors to have people avoid me.
Every Wednesday I went to religious instructions, and this priest kept calling me out of class to go to his office, now I had learning disabilities and couldn’t sit still, so I ended drawing on my paperwork a lot and I would get called in for it, but instead of being mad at me for defacing Bible passages, he instead took an interest in my artwork, and it made me feel proud and I felt less introverted. These office visits became frequent and the priest kept encouraging me to keep drawing which I thought was great, it made me feel important.
That was like alcohol to an addict, it felt good to be noticed and it felt good to feel like you’re important until he started touching me. I know this sounds like a stereotypical dark joke, but most dark humor wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t some real life occurrence. It started slow, a hand on the lap, a hand in the shoulder, a hand moving up my thigh, a hand moving up my thigh and around my butt, before it became a sexual assault. Picture the worst thing happening to you, that can be categorized as a sexual assault or rape, and that’s what I was going through. I felt guilty, I felt ashamed, at the same time I felt addicted because I was getting special treatment in these religious classes, I felt good sometimes but at the same time I had a know in my stomach, I felt fucking pain all the time. I lost feelings for pain and instead it became a crutch, watching a 7 year old start scraping his arms with the blades of scissors in 2nd grade art class is not an image you want to see.
My parents became aware of my strange behavior and believe me when I say it took a lot to tell my parents what was going on every Wednesday.
They were livid, they responded like any parent who found out their kid was being raped by someone they trusted. I don’t need to get into the details of police officers asking me to go into detail about what happened to me. As for what happened to the priest, suprisingly the church defended him, and I was seen as a little liar, he never got to see life behind bars, because cancer took his life away 6 months after all of this came out. Though in my mind now I’d like to think he committed suicide because he was a coward and didn’t want to face consequences.
If not the act of being raped as a child is disgustingly awful, it’s the years following that are more painful, but somehow even at the worse times of it, I’m still here! I smoked, I drank, all at ages you wouldn’t even fathom, Devin was still around, and he was the only friend I confided in with this event in my life and he took it to his grave, he passed away in 2020, age 20. Years following after the priests death and the therapy I went through I felt like I wanted to die, I had to die, I hurt myself, sometimes I hurt others, I wanted that time back but now 17 years later I know I’ll never get it back.
Some kids found out around that time and thought it was the greatest joke, I must’ve heard the word faggot and queer a thousand times. But even more surprising is that the same kids that said that, ended up realizing just how bad it was, and gave me some of the most heartwarming yearbook signings when I graduated high school in 2018.
How the fuck I’m still here? I’ll never really know, the times where I was blindly self harming and feeling a shit load of pain, i really felt like dying but now it’s something I want to pretend never happened, but I accept it and like most things in life, I have to move on. It’s not easy, it never is but somehow I just do.

I remember being 12 and looking up unclaimed bodies around my area because I called my dad for 2 years straight and he never picked up.
My mother used to tell me that I’m worthless anytime I did something that she didn’t agree with. It could be over the stupidest things too. She was always deliberately cruel.
Like when my job promoted me to another store, and I was bragging to her about my accomplishments, she said “they’re just doing that to get rid of you. Nobody likes you”.
I’m turning 24 soon and it just sort of hit me that I could never be like either of them. It’s hard to be a good parent, but it’s not that hard to just be an ok one.
I want to reconnect with them so bad, because what am I doing that’s so bad that I don’t deserve parents?? I never argued with them as a kid/teenager. I never drank/smoke/ snuck out or talked back to them. I got excellent grades in school. But it’s like I got dealt a shitty hand.
I got a job at 16 and i was apparently deemed good enough to parent myself. My mom stopped grocery shopping so I had to spend my paycheck to buy groceries/food and then when I got home she would yell at me for hours because I didn’t “get the right food” and I must hate her because I didn’t buy the organic stuff she wanted. But I was only working part-time at a restaurant for $9 an hour and couldn’t afford it. She also gave me $600 a month bill that was also my responsibility with the rest of my paycheck.
Or when I graduated high school and needed to go college, she wouldn’t fill my Fafsa out (she did the same thing to my brother and he had to drop out and go to community college) and kept pushing it back. I had to get a 2nd job to pay my tuition, so I was going to school full-time, and then had a full-time and part-time job.
She figured out the days I got paid, and would drive me to a check cashing place and take most of my money. I couldn’t keep that life up of working 12+ hour days every day and flunked out of my college. I reenrolled in my local community college, but I was just so lost that I ended up quitting.
She brought a new house when I was in college that had a run-down in law suite. She told me if I fixed it I could live in there and pay rent and have some more privacy. I worked extra hours and got a 3rd job, found a plumber and electrician, and would spend hours every week to fix the place, and wouldn’t you know it as soon as I was done she sold the property and took all the profit. She did the same thing to a broken down car that she had, I paid $4k to take it to a mechanic and when we got it back, she “never said that” and still drives that car to this day.
When we were moving (again) i decided to just get an apartment with my boyfriend because I was getting sick and tired of being used. She found out and hid the leasing information that I got from a complex, and guilt tripped me by saying she wouldn’t be able to afford things on just her paycheck and would starve. So I quit looking, just for her to scream at me a week later that I was a useless burden and that I was the one financially abusing her.
So I packed my bags, slept on the dirty floor of my boyfriend’s parents trailer for 2 weeks, got a round of the stimulus checks, and moved out to our own apartment. When I went back to her place to pack the last of my stuff she was snatching things out of my hand, threw my boyfriend’s laptop and tried to choke him/throw him out.I pushed her away from him and she told the family that we both were hitting her, so they don’t talk to me anymore. She was also insulting him for his family bring poor, and making fun of his dead grandmother.
And as I’m getting older and my prefrontal cortex is developing I just don’t understand them. I can understand hurtful things being said in the moment, but to continually be like that means you are making a conscious effort to be a terrible person.
But I miss them so much. I want a mom to talk to about my day and complain about my co-workers with. I want to watch movies at her place again and eat junk food. But she doesn’t deserve it, and I feel like I do. I don’t know what to do. There’s plenty of more terrible and down right weird things that she does. Like she used to beat me and my brothers with electric wires as a kid. Or recently, she was renting out one of our old homes and my partner and I moved in and we were paying MORE THAN market rent. And she forced us to move out after only 6 weeks because I said no to helping her on a side project because I was busy. But I “owed her” because she could’ve “charged me more”.
Which I should’ve known it would end this way honestly.
My parents are divorced and my father lives in a different city. He only calls me when he needs something and honestly I have stopped answering.
I’m not sure what to do. Advice?

Hopefully no one takes this too seriously. But I sub for elementary school. And some times if there’s a really annoying 1st or 2nd grade class I can still hear their little voices as I’m trying to fall asleep. Just wondering if anyone experiences the same thing or has advice LOL. I think I may need to work on being in the moment a bit more as I learned to tune them out but then when I go to sleep it’s all built up.

I am losing my mind!!
I had cancer before my son started kindergarten and thought he would really struggle being away from me, but school started and he was fine.
1st grade had a rough first week but again, he was fine.. both years he’d jump from the car and run inside, stopping only to waive goodbye.
2nd grade started different because we ended up fostering my siblings’ kids. Two of them go to the same school as my son. It seemed great at first, he was getting better grades than before and was more active in class… then just after Christmas break something changed and for the first time ever he completely refused to go to school.
The last 4-5 months have been a roller coaster. At first it was once every 2-3 weeks he’d refuse. Then he started throwing fits when it came time to get out of the car. Now it’s a nightmare! Mondays he won’t even get dressed, throws himself on the floor and cries. If I can get him dressed, he won’t get in the car and has even tried stopping me from taking the other kids to school. For maybe 3 weeks he would get dressed and in the car, but wouldn’t get out when we got to school. He got sick and missed a week and now it’s worse than ever.
We got the school to help, they would pull him from the car and take him inside, letting him sit in the office until he was ready to go to class. Last week they said that they couldn’t do it anymore, that he had to be willing to go to school himself. Yesterday I sat in the office with him for 30 mins just trying to talk him into going to class.
His reasoning is that he doesn’t want to be away from me. He’s afraid that something will happen to me while he’s gone or that CPS will show up and take him (now he knows it’s possible because of his cousins). I’ve tried explaining that I’m okay, and CPS took his cousins because their parents weren’t being parents. It doesn’t matter what I do or say, he still won’t go.
I tried mommy and son dates, which worked for 3 weeks and then didn’t. I tried toys if he went to school each day and a larger reward at the end of the week. He gets no electronics if he doesn’t go and has to sit around doing homework all day but that doesn’t do anything. We’ve got him seeing a therapist and she says it’s separation anxiety but I still don’t know what to do. He’s got signs of stress from the days where we physically force him to go to school which makes it harder because I don’t want to traumatize him. School is almost out but his grades will drop if he keeps missing, I can’t keep doing this. Homeschool is not an option.
Posting here in hopes that someone else has gone through this and that there is a light at the end of this horrible tunnel.

I'm a game developer by trade and at night I'm making a system for VTTRPGs called Digital Scrolls which is inspired by D&D and The Elder Scrolls series, merging the (to me) best aspects of both experiences. I'm also building a campaign using this system that takes place on the continent of Azureia and I'm GM for 1 group at the moment.
I have 2 players ready for a 2nd group (on Thursdays 9PM GMT+2) and would need at least one more.
What you can expect from Digital Scrolls:

• Hand-written dialogues presented by a custom made dialogue reader help the GM host a world and narrative of a completely unlimited size. There is content prepared anywhere, no matter where you go - you will never feel like the DM was not prepared for the direction you are heading in or like you are being railroaded into the main quest.
• Lighter rule system. It should not feel like a chore to play.

You will have the opportunity to help form both the world and the system, if you so wish to.
A little bit about me: 33M and from Sweden. Even though my passion about the project is great and the campaign has a serious tone, I as a person do not take myself too seriously and joking around and laughing will probably be a thing.
If you're interested in joining or even just learning more, don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks for reading!

6’5 mf from bumfuck nowhere COOKS
Kendrick>>>
Demographics

• Gender: male
• Race/Ethnicity: white
• Residence: Rural VA
• Income Bracket: upper-middle
• Type of School: public (somewhat competitive tho, usually abt 1 Ivy+ per year)
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): maybe location? Idk

Intended Major(s): Aerospace Engineering, MechE for places that didn’t have Aero
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 4.0 UW/ 4.53W (4.44 at time of apps)
• Rank (or percentile): 4 (5 during EA)
• Honors/AP/IB/Duel Enrollment/etc.: 6 APs, 9 DEs, 11 Honors, no IB
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Gov, AP Research, AP Art History, DE Calc 1, DE Brit Lit, DE Aerospace Engineering, Honors Physics, Spanish 3

Standardized Testing
List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.

• SAT I: 1520 superscore (two 1510s with 760R 750M and 750R 760M on 3 attempts)
• ACT: Didn’t Take
• 4 on AP Bio and AP Seminar, 5 on AP Lang

Extracurriculars/Activities
List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. Internship (12)- Research Lab at T25, Helped create STEM classroom curriculum
2. Debate (11,12)- Team Captain, Top 10 at states in first year (got 2nd place in state after apps 🫠)
3. Scholastic Bowl (9-12) - Team Captain, led team to regionals for first time in years
4. Tennis (10-12) - Team Captain, raised some money
5. Engineering Club (8-12, yeah it’s weird) - VP, member of competition teams
6. Athletic Advisory Board (11-12) - Represented on behalf of academic teams and did community service, raised some money
7. After-school STEM club/daycare? (12) - Voluntarily chaparoned kids, got offered and accepted real job
8. Powerlifting (9-12) - On varsity team in 10 and 11 before it got deleted, started training before and continued after
9. Beta Club (10-12) - Didn’t do much but that’s mostly the officers’ and sponsor’s fault
10. Mentor (11-12) - Mentored other students in magnet school program
11. additional info - Got Best Delegate at my first Model UN competition after apps as a side quest/practice for debate, mentioned on deferral and waitlist replies later

Awards/Honors
List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. Collegeboard Rural/Small Town National Recognition
2. AP Scholar
3. AP Capstone Diploma
4. Magnet School Diploma Seal (Regional)
5. School award for achievement in Aerospace Engineering class

Letters of Recommendation
Counselor: 7/10. New hire right before my senior year so not much rapport but spoke to her somewhat frequently
History Teacher: 9/10. Bsf. Had him for class in 9th grade and I was the only one who answered during Zoom classes, was my Scholastic Bowl and Debate coach in years following. His writing is not the best tho so not a 10/10
Engineering Teacher: 8/10. Had him for 3 years and was part of his club for all of them. Can speak to my abilities super well. He moved districts before my senior year so didn’t see him for a bit but still pretty good regardless
Professor: 9/10. Interned under him over the summer and he trusted my capabilities a lot. Wrote lots of LORs before and even asked me what I wanted in it.
Interviews

• MIT: 7/10. Virtual. Interested in my research and seemed to vibe quite well. Didn’t talk for very long tho and looking back I didn’t really make as good of an impression as I would’ve wanted or talk about all my stuff as much as I wanted to.

Essays:
Common App: 9/10. Displayed my ability to set really high goals and never be discouraged by failure. Reviewed by friends at Princeton and Stanford, as well as former CMU admissions officer and highly praised
MIT supps: 9/10. Some of my best work. Reused for so many other schools and scholarships because god damn were they beautiful pieces of writing.
General supps: 7/10. Mixed bag. Some really good, some just ok. Spent a decent amount of time and was pretty happy with all of them
Results
Accepted:

• Johns Hopkins (RD)
• Georgia Tech (Deferred EA, accepted RD - committed!!)
• Purdue (EA)
• UMD (EA)
• Penn State - Waitlisted Honors College (EA)
• VT - Waitlisted Honors College (EA)
• UVA (EA)
• Pitt - Honors College (EA)
• George Mason - Honors College (EA)

Waitlisted

• Carnegie Mellon

Rejected

• MIT

Reflection:
GO YELLOW JACKETS WOOOOO
Final record of 9-1-1 (yay!)
Genuinely shocked by CMU waitlist because former admissions officer loved my personal and my supps. Was probably due to lack of insane math talent (displayed on apps that is).
Didn’t really get huge aid from anywhere but was able to cover most of the cost through existing savings and external scholarships (apply for lots of them, especially local ones!!!!)
Start early!! Going EA was super helpful. If you need to miss a school assignment or 2, you can make that up. Sometimes to have to have to wager your present for the sake of your future. This process can really suck at times but it’s manageable in the end.

Chance coma boy for Cornell sha-hotel
Chance me for Cornell hotel admin-SHA
CHANCE ME FOR CORNELL SHA-Hotel
CHANCE COMA BOY WHO SAW HİMSELF GETTİNG CHASED İN TEXAS TO CORNELL SHA/HOTEL ADMİNİSTRATİON ED1
Demographics:FGLİ,African(Parents moved to Turkey then moved to US right before my junior year),very rural in Turkey(village with 1000 population,almost no one goes to college),semi-feeder public school in America, US RESİDENT(green card)
Went from rural village public school in Turkey for middle school to a private school in İstanbul(biggest city in Turkey) because the school was connected to a university and agreed to give me full ride and also university housing to my family. Was the only kid there that came from a public school(public schools are horrible in Turkey)
Gpa(UW/W):9th grade: 92.13(top 5 percent), 10th grade selective ib program:83.17(missed like 40 percent of the year due to car crash/coma) 11th: 4.0/4.85 Class rank 1/494
Coursework: No ap/ib offered in 9th grade, 6ib classes in 10th, 11 AP classes in 11th-12th(so total of 17ap+ib)
İB HL MATH A&A in 10th, AP PRECALC AND AB İN 12th
Sat: 1540(800 math, 740 eng)-They're test blind tho
Major:Hotel Admin
**ECS:*\*
İnterim CEO(10th grade): Ran/fully managed former uncle's now family-owned business/motel 42 hours a week. Really small motel tho,6 rooms. Did school work when nothing was happening.
Founder of financial/educational based organizaton(11th-12th):**Raised 14.5 thousand dollars/475 thousand lira for my former elementary school through collective funding/raising money. Money went to renovations/additions.
(2 ecs in 1)Founder of Nonprofit/Owner of small shoe-reselling business(9th-12)th: Ran shoe-reselling business and made 20k and 10k/325k lira of the money went to buying shoes with the money and distrubuted kids at my old village shoes.
İntern at Divan Taksim(Hotel) in turkey, going back summer after 11th
Real estate internship in summer of 10th
Political İntern with Mayor of Turkish City(Elazığ)(CHP)(10th summer)): networked through the time when İ was a lobbyist around a bunch of rich people(you'll see below) Noted that İ want to be the minister of culture and turism in Turkey
Associate to Turkish Volunteering Agency/leader at school(10th grade): Personally volunteered 200 hours for earthquake. Raised 3.8k usd/70k lira throughout my school and district for relief efforts in Southeast Turkey
Student lobbyist for school renovations(10th grade): Was selected to be the only student lobbyist for my school's multi-million Lira expansion to increase class sizes by around 25% with an additional side building and a new library. Mayors son went to my school so thats where the internship came from
Published a book(11th grade) : on outsiders view on hospitality and finance(20k words)
Family responsibilities(11th-12th)(wont go into detail but valid)
Awards:
3.12 percent on LGS-Standardized test that is the sole factor of high school admission. Best score my middle school has ever produced. Only kid that was in the top 10 percent coming out of my middle school since 1998.
TBB National Finance Competition: 2nd out of 10k+ in national Financial knowledge competition ran by Turkish banking association
10th grade research project qualified for Tubitak(Turkish research council: project was about Corona's effect on reading habits throughout Turkish students)
Takdir 9th grade(top 5 percent of freshmen)
4th in national school based swimming relay in 9th.(Was varsity/ A team swimming in 9th grade)
LOR:Ap lang , AP cogo
Additiional info
İnjuries from car crash(coma)- not a joke, got in car crash right before 10th. Was in a coma for 4 weeks and missed like 40 percent of the year from pt, rehab and surgeries.
İ had to delay taking preclac because İ moved here late so İ took precalc and ab senior instead of ab and bc.

Hey guys!
I like a girl since we were in class 6th!
Lambi story hai dosto, don't judge me!
She left school in 7th grade, just as I realized I liked her. Despite struggling academically, I unexpectedly came 2nd in 8th grade. I tried reaching out on Facebook and WhatsApp, but conversations were sparse. In 9th and 10th, I switched schools to an all-boys institution, where I found her on Facebook through mutual friends. Despite her limited activity, I maintained contact through Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Through Polytech and Btech, our communication hardly continued. In my 4th year of Btech, we reconnected and began sharing topics, including collaborating on articles for my website. Despite our busy schedules, we stayed in touch, and she even used me as a professional reference during a job switch.
I kept talking to her, sometimes flirting, while also pursuing my passion for guitar and posting songs on Instagram. She would often ask for song recommendations and even requested songs dedicated to her. Additionally, she asked me to edit her videos, showing a growing level of trust and connection. She eventually moved to Pune for a job, and we remained in contact as she searched for accommodation, even engaging in video calls. When her company allowed remote work, she returned to town, sparking strong feelings in me.
Feeling like everything she said was a green light, I decided to confess my feelings. One day, while chatting on WhatsApp, she asked for a caption for her display picture, and in my nervousness, I opted for a light-hearted response instead of revealing my true feelings.
After that I asked her that I have a crush on someone! and want to tell her, will she like me! She asked me do you talk to her? I said yes. She said - daily baat hoti hai? I said - casually! jese tere se baat hoti hai! kabhi lagta hai hint hai kabhi nahi lagta! She said - 2-3 din cut off krke dekh and see her reaction I said - mai agar msg na kru to hafto tak uska msg na aae. She said - fir nahi hai kuch, agar wo like krti hai to she will message you chahe busy hi kyu na ho! and if you like her, tell her about your feelings.
And I noticed that she deleted her photo for which she asked caption! I asked her why she said mind changed and not posting now!
Next day we are talking about games and she said to play truth and dare first ques she asked is who is your crust tell her name? I said - 'her name' she thought thatw as a joke and we move on!
Now after that I asked what are my chances if I ask my crush? She said - I don't know, and I don't who is your crush I said - you are She said - tu majak krra hai I said - mai majak kru karunga She said - no chances then😂.
That was the message and I broke down! It was midnight and it is light raining!
After that I tried to maintain the talk but it was not like before! Basically I have't said her clearly so that was a mistake of mine!
Now is been 2 years, we just casually talks in months! but the way is similar and we also met in friends grp meet! but last I messaged her is a year ago.
Now since I never go into any relation after that! The feeling are not that strong but I still kind of like her. sometime it feels I should tell her again and ask her out! and sometime I fear if she I really want her!
So what should I do? I am still confused and I might know what to do, but still have doubts that I haven't clearly express my feelings and I should ask her again directly then thought she already knew still she didn't show any interest!

There have been an increasing number of juniors visiting this sub asking for advice about writing essays. Below are some tips and advice for making your essay stand out as excellent. Feel free to ask questions because I will answer every single question in the comments.
I know from experience that many of you are struggling to identify a good topic for your essay. Conventional wisdom says to start by brainstorming a list of potential topics, and chances are, you have already started a mental list of ideas. You might think you only have a few choices for topics, based on your activities or experiences, or essay examples you read, or the rough draft you already started (or worse, that GPT started...). I advise, however, that you put down your list of topics and back away from it. Forget that exists for a moment. Seriously - thinking about this initial list tethers you to certain ideas that might not actually be your best options.
Now you can begin brainstorming with a clean slate.
Start with thinking about what you want to show in your entire application, not just one essay. Every single component in your app has one purpose – to tell more about YOU. Filling out the rest of the application by rote and focusing solely on the essay is short-sighted and will leave so much potential untapped in your application.

It's About You. Tell Your Story - And Be The Protagonist

An admissions officer’s goal is to understand you fully, in the context of your background and the rest of the applicant pool. They will begin this with assessing your academic abilities and potential. Then they will evaluate how you will fit into the student body they’re trying to curate. All of this can be somewhat broad and diverse and touch on several institutional goals. But they will dig deep to find out what each applicant is like, what your core values and motivations are, what kind of student you will be, how you will contribute to the vibrant and intellectual campus community they’re building, etc.
Your goal with essay brainstorming is to ascertain how to powerfully tell your story in a manner that will fit these criteria. The entirety of your application (again, not just one essay) aims to showcase your abilities, qualifications, and uncommon attributes as a person in a positive way. Before you begin outlining or writing your application, you must determine what is unique about you that will stand out to an admissions panel. All students are truly unique. Not one other student has the same combination of life experiences, personality, passions, or goals as you do. Your job in your application is to frame your unique personal attributes in a positive and compelling way. How will you fit on campus? What personal qualities, strengths, core values, talents, or different perspectives do you bring to the table? What stories, deeper motivations/beliefs, or formative experiences can you use to illustrate all of this?
It is always helpful to start with some soul-searching or self-examination. You might not immediately know what you want to share about yourself. It’s not a simple task to decide how to summarize your whole life and being in a powerful and eloquent way on your application. Introspection prior to starting your application takes additional time and effort rather than jumping straight into your first draft. But it is also a valuable method to start writing a winning application that stands out from the stack.
You'll see the advice everywhere that all essay prompts are really about the same thing - you. The goal of each essay then is to showcase who you are, what matters to you, and how you think. I guarantee if you're on this sub enough, you'll hear the advice to "show, don't tell" when writing about yourself. But what does this mean really, and how do you do it well? How do you even get started on an essay that does this?

Introspection Questions

It’s often easiest to start thinking in terms of superlatives, especially those related to personal insights -- what are the most meaningful things about you, and what do you value the most? Here is a list of questions to help you brainstorm broadly before you narrow down your focus for writing:

• What are your interests?
  
• What sparks your curiosity?
  
• About what topics do you enjoy reading?
  
• With whom do you enjoy spending time? Who has impacted your life the most?
  
• Reflect upon “superlatives” in your life. What moments were most memorable, formative, enlightening, enjoyable, or valuable? What physical possessions, experiences, dreams, or lessons could make your superlatives list?
  
• Stop and think about what things, people, or circumstances in your life are really unique, fascinating, or outlandish. Are there any that really have a lot of "cultural flavor" (whatever your culture is)?
  

I have a free introspection worksheet with over 100 questions like this designed to help you find ideas worth exploring in your essays. You can find it on the A2C Discord or download it directly here.

Find Your Story And Arc

Think of a small anecdote or story from your life that you could share that serves as a microcosm of who you are and what is important to you. It will massively help you narrow this down and find a gem of a story if you first start by thinking about your application arc or theme. This is the one-phrase summary of your entire application. It could be "brilliant entrepreneur who started her own successful business" or "talented athlete who wants to study economics and finance as they pertain to sports", or even "avid baker whose hobby sparked an interest in chemistry". It doesn't have to be related to your intended major, but it can help your arc be stronger and clearer if it is.
Once you have an arc determined and a story to share, think about what you want that story to say about you. This is where it can help to think of this as something you would share on a date - what impression does it make about you to the reader? Once you know this, start showing, not telling this attribute of yourself through your story. For example, instead of saying that you're compassionate toward others, you show an example of a time you were compassionate, then elaborate on why, and what it means to you.

Essay Brainstorming Techniques

If you are having trouble finding a story, or simply have writer’s block once you have picked your topic, here are some ideas to get your juices flowing:

• Stream of consciousness writing -- Start writing whatever is in your head, and don’t stop for 30 minutes. You probably won’t use what you just wrote for your essay, but it will help you find a starting point.
  
• Journaling -- Answer the prompt as if you were writing in a journal. This will get you in the habit of writing about yourself and establish comfort with the concept. It will also take you to a new level of introspection and self-awareness.
  
• Twitter X style -- Write several rapid-fire responses to the prompt in 280 characters or less. Choose an idea from these responses to expound upon in your essay.
  
• Read each essay prompt, then go through your introspection worksheet responses and connect the stories and insights to one or more of the prompts. Some students like using color coding to visually see how their different ideas might work together.
  

Why Essays Matter

Here's the thing a lot of people don't realize about college admission: it's not an award for being the smartest, most accomplished, or most impressive. It's an invitation to join a community. Far too many students think that if they can just show that they're smart enough, they'll get in. Yale even says right on their admissions website that 75% of their applicants are academically qualified to succeed at Yale. But only ~4% are getting in. That should tell you that they're looking for more than just top tier test scores and grades. To be perfectly clear, you will need top tier grades and (optionally) test scores to show that you're qualified, and the vast majority of my students come to me with this part already in the bank. But what sets the admits apart? It's personal insight - sharing who you are, how you think, what matters to you, and how you engage community. You can't just say "/IAmVerySmart, please admit me," or even "I did a cool thing guys! Isn't that neat!" You need to go deeper and show them your core values, personal strengths, motivations, aspirations, character traits, foundational beliefs, personality, etc. And you need to do it in a charming, winsome way that makes them like you and want to invite you to join their community.
So how do I get students to do this? All of my students complete that introspection worksheet. We go through it and find the stories, examples, anecdotes, conversations, memories, relationships, and other things from their life that will help us craft a strong and personally insightful narrative. We also make lists of the values, strengths, and key personal qualities we want to showcase. Once we have some topics, outlines, abstracts, or rough drafts, we talk about which stories to tell where, how to tell them well, and what details to include to present the best they have to offer. Then we refine, edit, polish, and enhance over and over until the story sings, but more importantly shows their heart and soul. We also go through all the other application components to ensure consistency, quality, and distinctiveness.
Here's why this works so well: at most highly selective colleges there is a primary reader (or 2-3) who will review everything first and then present it to the admissions committee, who then votes on whether to admit you. That presentation typically goes one of three ways:

1. Total enthusiasm, energy, and excitement. They strongly advocate for admission and paint a clear picture of how you will contribute to their goals and community. Everyone in the room picks up on that energy and is leaning forward in their chairs, looking for reasons to admit you. This is quite rare, generally less than 5 out of every 100 applications, even among those which are "fully qualified." When you do this right, you show depth, meaning, and valuable personal insights so the reviewer is learning about who you are and how you might engage the community they're curating. You come alive off the page as a person, not just another file.
   
2. Business as usual. You're another great applicant in a pile of great applicants. They share a basic review of the facts, your profile, stats, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Maybe someone on the committee finds something they love, and they really push for admission. More likely, not and you get deferred/waitlisted even though there wasn't anything "wrong" with your application. They just didn't love you enough to commit.
   
3. "Here's a stack of 20 applications that I didn't find all that compelling, so we won't present them individually, but you guys are the committee and you make the decisions. So let me know if there are any you want to talk about." In this case, unless there's a letter of endorsement from an athletics coach or your last name matches several buildings on campus, you're probably not getting additional consideration, much less admission. They will regret to inform you.
   

Everything we're doing is designed to help them get to know themselves, present the best they have to offer, and land in that first group. Having top tier essays is the single best way to get there. Get started on brainstorming in the next few weeks so you'll have time to get a few essays completed over the summer.

I am currently in Tier-2 CSE, I have total 8 'F' Grade, I have no will to even sit and study for 1 hour, I don't know why i am doing like this, i feels like i am very very exhausted. All this 1 year I was like,
I just wakeup, use phone in class, attend labs (didn't try to understand anything just did watching what everyone is doing, no understanding), come to hostel browse internet, game or reels or youtube, then sleep.
I didn't even studied anything during examination,I don't know why, I just can't understand what is happening to me, my mind already gave up, i now feels like i can't even pass anything no matter how much i studied.
In one of the end sem exam of 2nd sem, I knew answer of a question but i didn't have the will to write it on paper, and I didn't write it. In all the exams i just sit, look into the question paper, look into board.
Each paper can only get cleared in parallel, like 1st sem subjects can only be cleared in 3rd, 5th & 7th sem or summer term. And i can get take maximum 1 subjects in 1 term. If i am not limited to take limited cource.
Dean said, from the next sem, my credit will be get reduced to only 4 cources until i reach CG of 5. then after that i have to clear those cources which get removed due to credit limit.
I am thinking that i don't have any intrest left in any of these stuffs, i just want to leave it
I feels all the money is wasted now. I was good till 10th, average in 12th (48k in mains),Sometimes i feels like i should just get a basic job which i can get now(if).
I am going to tell my parents (fat bhut rhi h)that i have failed and now i will discontinue my studies and and will ask if i can join my their business.
Have anyone face similar issue, How did you face this?

I passed the Power PE Exam and wanted to share what I did to help my fellow EEs pass too! I studied since January and took my exam April 23. My goal was to study for at least two hours daily (I studied for about 6 hrs Saturdays and Sundays). Total Study time around 250 hrs. I took 3 days off work to give myself a full week off of work to study prior to the exam. I recommend you take some time off before the exam.
I purchased Electrical PE Review on-demand course and focused mainly on reviewing Zach Stone's material and completing the end-of-chapter quizzes for the first two months. The last month and a half I only did practice exams and quizzes. I did the NCEES Practice Exam twice and both times timed myself. I did 4 hrs on Saturday and 4 hrs on Sunday. After grading myself I went over the all the problems and made sure I understood the concepts and the reasoning. I also wrote down any equations that I used that was NOT in the handbook. Here is a list of all the exams I took in order and my scores:

• NCEES Practice Exam (48%)
• Zach Stone's Electrical PE Review 80 AIT Practice Problems (51.25%)
• NCEES Practice Exam (2nd Attempt) (87.5%)
• Zach Stone's Electrical PE Review Practice Exam and Technical Study Guide (61.25%)

How I felt prior to the exam: I felt like I was ready to get it over with. I had been studying for about 3.5 months and wanted to at least attempt it. You will always feel like you can study more.
Exam Day: I finished the first half of the exam in 3.5 hours. I had to guess on about five problems that I just did not have any idea how to solve. Took 30 min break, went to my car to relax, have lunch, and review some concepts that I did not see much of in the first half. The second half of the exam was about the same level of difficulty. I finished in 3.5 hours again and spent the rest of time figuring out creative was to guess on about five problems. Even though I had to guess there was a bit of logic behind my guesses that made me feel better.
Overall opinion on the exam questions: I think the actual exam was overall easier than the practice exams I did. I did have to guess on a few problems, maybe around 10-15 total. There were some guesses that I felt ok on and some I just had no idea. I think the key for me was to always keep going. Don't stop. Just keep solving problem after problem. It truly is a marathon.
Comparison of practice exam to actual PE exam: I maybe saw two or three problems that were similar to the NCEES practice exam. I would recommend you learn how to solve all if not 90% of the NCEES Practice exam problems. I thought the actual exam was a bit easier than the exams I used to study.
When I left the exam I felt like I passed. I was somewhat surprised at the amount I had to guess on. It was not as many as I was anticipating. Even though I thought I had passed, there was doubt just because there are some answers that if you do one thing wrong the wrong answer will still be a solution in the list of multiple choice answers to choose from. NCEES is tricky like that.
Opinion on the Practice Exams: I liked all the practice exams I did and would recommend you try those and compare your results with mine. They were all very educational with a good mix of concepts. I memorized maybe 10 total formulas but in the end I maybe used one of them if that. So I don't think you need to memorize a ton. I would focus on understanding the concepts.
Tips:
I made a letter sized sheet of paper for only the main concepts that I still had trouble on from each section and would review those sheets only daily (like index cards). After taking a practice exam, I would add any equations that I did not know to these sheets (there weren't that many). I would also review Induction and Sync. machines and make sure you understand the concepts and tests. Be comfortable knowing when you need to use sqrt(3) and when not to.
If you put in the time as I did and are consistent you will pass, no doubt about it. Good luck and hope this helps!

All the rest, I have seen before, same tactics, etc.. except this one thing. Tents/ camps in university. Seen that in Occupy Wall Street. Wearing masks to conceal identity, seen that. Blocking of roads, clashes with police, graffiti, boycotts etc… seen all that before except the “Do not speak to rule”…”we are not allowed to talk”,…”no comment”…”if you got something to ask, speak to the media liasion officer” (I dont think its solely about press,… the protesters are discouraged from speaking not only to the press, but other people (outsiders) like non-protesters or from other other side etc…).
That is new. I dont remember any protest movenent which forbade its supporters from speaking freely. When the Pro-Palestinian movement started back in October, protesters were freely talking about it, explaining to strangers/ passerby their cause, etc… but not these days and not these student protesters, they arent that interested in talking. So much so, other protesters might make some comment to remind themselves, dont speak to others etc… if they see you engaging with an “outsider”
This is the irony. They profess freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to protest….AND YET by their very action they are NO LONGER interested in speaking (at least not individually, there is no room for respect of differences of opinion). It probably started wanting to engage in a dialogue, communicating, talking with others, with the university respectives etc… but not anymore, they are more interested in just telling you want they want you to do, they are not interested to listen to you or hear your excuses/ explaination, and if you dont give in to their demand, they will act out.

1. This is a big problem on many levels, seemingly intelligent or educated young people voluntarily surrendering their freedom of speech to a designated official of the protest movement to speak for them. Why ? Because they were told not to speak to others…how obedient ? They were probably told for your own protection,…trying to conceal your identify,..or you are not well verse with the issue, let someone else better, knows what they are doing (clearly you dont know enough) and in position of authority speak for you. You just keep quiet, repeat the chants, do what you have been told. Its quite easy for more radical or more vocal groups to use them and push the movement to a more violent path.
   
2. Because they are not talking to outside their circle,… they dont know much about the subject matter. They only know whats being told to them. They are not questioning, critically analyzing, debating the information / stories provided to them, starting to sounds a lot like cult, not an expert on this subject, perhaps the could unknowingly fall victim to group think.
   
3. I predict they wont go away anytime soon, they have proclaimed they will continue protesting. They will always have more demands and try to push for more and more…the protest movement started on the streets, then some blockade on roads leading to airports / ports, now on college campus, they will continue to make target big companies on the BDS lists, storming congress #2, riots on streets etc… i am not saying student protesters are violent or seeking violence by nature, but their compliance and their silence make them complicit to any illegal acts or violence carried out in the name of Pro-Palestinian movement.
   
4. If student protesters fail at negotiation with their university. Ask yourself what hope is there for a peace negotiation between Israel and Hamas ? None. You are not too different. You make demands. You dont want to talk. You want the otherside to agree to your demands…if you are not able to get through to your university, just think …who can help ? Mediator. There are mediators negotiating between Israel and Hamas…who are your mediators? I think your alumni will be an ideal mediator, they understand students, they also have good relations with the university admin. They might also give the students a reality check. They might tell the students if their companies are looking to hire any students arrested or suspended.
   
5. On the bright side, students ranked the middle east conflict the 9th concern, after heathcare (1st), education (2nd), Climate change (5th) etc..only 8% students participated in either side of protest. 90% says blocking pro-Israel students on campus are unacceptable. 81% support holding protesters accountable for destroying school property.
   
6. NYC says half of those arrested at two pro-Palestinian campus protests were not students https://www.npr.org/2024/05/04/1249188864/nyc-columbia-city-college-gaza-protests-palestinian-campus 😱 50% are not event students,
   

Let me add some links
Poll https://www.axios.com/2024/05/07/poll-students-israel-hamas-protests

Hi everybody,
I'm studying CS in my 4th semester at some not well known german university and currently have good grades of around 1.3 (equivalent is 3.7 GPA). I also started a university journal club about Computational Neuroscience which I would love to do my masters in. Besides uni I'm building a startup (I'm not a founder but joined as 2nd technical member) that is starting to show some signs of success (It's a B2B and we finally got one of the biggest clients that we could potentially get)
Now my question is: With putting in a lot of time into the startup it's hard for me to keep my grades up. Realistically I think if I finish in time (german "Regelstudienzeit") I will (with some luck) keep my 1.3 - if I take a semester or two longer I think I would be able to achieve a ~1.2.
My question is: For getting into a good/prestigious master (I mean both overseas elite master programs like standford, MIT etc. and good german universities like TUM, TU Berlin etc.) how bad is it if I take too long for my undergraduate degree? Is working on the startup a legit reason for taking longer than expected?

I usually read books on Royal Road and Inkitt. I decided to give wattpad a shot for something different.
But it disappointed me quite easily, so far the only books I have come across are ceo or mafia, which I am not complaining I like those books yet at some point it feels repetitive. As if its the same story with the same plot but with different characters, but that gets a pass all because they actually have good quality writing.
What I am gonna complain about is the lack of quality on non romance books. Seriously, do some people not know basic english? Its ok if you don't, but if you are gonna write in english at least make an effort to learn how to write properly. Also some books just feel like picture books, at that point they might as well make a comic but they can't because those pictures are Ai generated or taken from Pinterest. It doesn't bother me if the pictures are on the first chapter only, it bothers me when its in the middle of the book MULTIPULE TIMES
If you need pictures to help you *describe* characters, place or creature, are you even writing?
Cause the last time I checked, writing is about using dialogue, description and expositions to tell people a good story. Your story needs to be good plot wise and writing wise.
Which brings me to my other point, script writing(only dialogue writing). This is the most horrendous thing I have ever crossed, the worst part is its not even proper script writing. Do you guys fear commitment or something?
Bad writing or lazy writing really turns me down. If there is some grammatical mistakes here and there I wouldn't mind But if the book has to much dialogue with direly any description or exposition, I am immediately dropping it.
So if you have good book both in good writing and plot you can link it. I read about anything, but currently I am looking for something non romance, but romance can be a side plot.
And if you don't know if your writing is good enough, just put it through Hemmingway editor, its what Royal Road writers use to see how well there writing is.
For me the standard is Grade 9 but if I had to go low it would be grade 5

Intro

It’s not much of a stretch to say that violence is the primary form of interaction in video games. With a handful of exceptions, most video games involve guys whacking other guys, with varying degrees of brutality. Even chill games fall into this - Stardew Valley has sections with combat in them! Considering the pervasiveness of violence in video games, there has been a ton of amateur and academic commentary on the topic. However, while this is a well-established school of thought, I haven’t seen people try to apply this to Fire Emblem specifically.
So, let’s do that now! In this post, I’ll be exploring how violence in Fire Emblem is implemented - what limitations are placed on violence, how it warps wider game and narrative design, and what it implicitly says and does not say. I hope this post doesn’t come off as too early-2010s “makes you think”-y, but I do think there are multiple interesting things worth talking about here!
Despite the length of this post, "a brief discussion" is an appropriate title, as we won't be able to go into depth on everything. After all, video games are holistic works, so the attitude towards violence is relevant to every aspect of their design. However, I have managed to wrangle some of these threads into the following structure: first a discussion on the fundamental mode of interaction in Fire Emblem, then how stories are constructed with regards to violence, and ending with the aesthetics of violence and how they relate to characters. Also, as FE is a huge series, be aware that I am gonna be making some broad statements which may not apply to each individual plot point of every game. I actually planned to write 3 case studies around Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses (which have the most interesting attitudes to violence in the series IMO) which point out these deviations, but this post is way too long and full of tangents already. If people are interested, I’ll make a followup to this post which goes into them in more detail. Also also, because of the nature of this post, I’ll actually give a useful TL;DR for once:
TL;DR: Nintendo games must be fun mechanically, and they can’t be too uncomfortable narratively. If you try to provide a counterpoint by saying “oh this Kirby final boss is super dark it eats 100 morbillion galaxies”, you do not deserve rights. IntSys has to keep to this as a 2nd party publisher, but they also have to deal with the fact that their games are at least nominally about ‘war’ (or at least they put their toes into that particular thematic pool). This conflict between making a fun video game for children/teens and the wider framing of the narrative leads to interesting narrative and aesthetic tensions. also fun is cringe, misery is based

“Do you like hurting other people?” (or The Fundamental Mode of Interaction)

OK LISTEN I KNOW I LITERALLY JUST SAID THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO COME ACROSS AS A EARLY 2010s “VIOLENCE IN VIDYA BAD :O????” PERSON BUT I SWEAR I’M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS
The best place to start when talking about violence in video games is to think about the primary form of interaction in said game. In the case of Fire Emblem, this is in the in-chapter gameplay. Sure, in objective terms the player moves arbitrary objects across a 2D grid which perform subtraction on arbitrary objects controlled by the computer, but this is always framed as controlling a squad of soldiers to engage in (typically lethal) combat with enemies (who are normally also soldiers). When you’re not doing this in-chapter gameplay, you are preparing for the next chapter of combat. This involves surveying the area of combat, preparing weapon loadouts, etc, however more recent entries also include light life-sim-esque elements. To summarize, Fire Emblem’s interactivity involves ordering violence as well as the preparations to order said violence.
For players, this strategic thinking is extremely fun and is the primary draw of the series! You have all these tier lists of who’s better at killing, discussion of the maps where you do the killing, complaints about the length of gameplay sections where you don’t do killing, etc. This is by design, as while I don’t know the core brand tenets of Nintendo, I imagine the Reggie quote “If it isn’t fun, why bother?” is carved into a solid gold statue of Mario in the office lobby. This then is enforced on all associated studios, including IntSys and so Fire Emblem. While I would disagree with that Reggie quote (especially the bit where he says “If it’s not a battle, where’s the fun?” which is a wild statement to make about an entire medium), this approach to making games is ultimately fine, and so IntSys tailored the strategic gameplay to be satisfying to your dopamine receptors. You could analyse what the normalisation of violence even in ‘just for fun’ games says about wider gaming culture, but I won’t get into that here. In any case, let’s dig into a few specifics of FE’s interactivity.
One thing that’s interesting with regard to strategy games is the detached perspective of the player. You order units and observe the resulting violence, but it’s not tactile, you don’t directly swing the sword or shoot the bow or cast the spell like with action games. This adds a layer of separation between the player and what fundamentally happens, at least within the framing that the game provides. It’s not like Call of Duty, where your relationship to the violence is very visceral, where you view everything down the barrel of a gun. OK, I probably shouldn’t use a series that I have very little personal experience with (I only listen to the supplementary lore material, so let’s talk about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While you’re not directly in the driver’s seat, John Sekiro reacts to your every input with extreme responsiveness, so overcoming the game’s challenges i.e. stabbing people is incredibly visceral and satisfying. While this violence is fantastical in nature, there is sufficient blood and explicit sword-action to clearly say “oh yeah you are violently killing all of those bozos with a katana”. Coming back to FE, not only are you far more detached from the violence, it is presented in an extremely cartoony manner… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, we’ll get to the aesthetics later. Point is, Fire Emblem gives the viewpoint of a stoic commander, who Does What Needs To Be Done™, and not the viewpoint of an actual soldier who has to do the actual killing.
Now let’s view the player’s perspective on violence from a different angle. Fire Emblem intends for its combat to be relatively relaxed on the player side of things - the turn-based nature allows the player to calmly think through all of their moves, and you typically have perfect information on the enemies. The only exceptions to this are Fog of WaSame Turn Reinforcements, which are rare and typically unpopular amongst the fanbase. This leans into ‘combat as sport’, where (going back to the Reggie quote) you have a fun time picking apart a puzzle with the tools you have, and we all collectively enjoy this! This is a valid way of designing strategy games, and I like what IntSys has done. However, it’s not the only way of making these games - for example, in Total War you have to juggle all your battalions in real time whilst the enemy is bearing down on you, and the XCOM games always have Fog of War and limited information on the enemies, with you never knowing what kind of awful new monster is going to suddenly charge at you. Don’t get me wrong, neither of these follow ‘combat as war’, the principle that violence should properly mimic the stress, tension and unfairness of actual conflict. Hell, neither of them are particularly mature either - Total War is the strategy game equivalent of smashing action figures together, and XCOM emulates a pulp sci-fi alien invasion story. However, the additional pressures these games have make them hew slightly closer to actual conflict, putting you more in that mindset in a way that the clean fun Fire Emblem doesn’t really do. Again, I want to say FE’s approach to violence in in-map gameplay is fine, but when all three of these franchises have an explicit narrative framing of ‘warfare’, it does make Fire Emblem’s narrative a little more… stretched.
Finally, I want to briefly mention the maps. To steal from a brilliant Jacob Geller video, these are Worlds Designed For Violence. At least outside of the Kaga games, the maps you fight on are primarily designed around how the player interacts with them, i.e. fights on them. While I imagine the narrative designers and artists at IntSys are involved throughout the map design process, the gameplay flow probably takes precedence most of the time. Maps are not designed to resemble realistic places that you have to fight through, they are instead designed primarily to provide fun gameplay experiences before being dressed up by the artists to look realistic/fit the specific story beat. This is a more consistently entertaining approach to map design - heaven knows we have a lot of Kaga castle assault maps which are as fun as actually assaulting an entrenched position IRL - but this lack of friction could potentially take the bite out of the intended vibe, neuter any commentary on violence throughout the story.
You may have noticed that we’ve only talked about the “in-map” gameplay for now, when there’s an entire second half of these games, i.e. all the gameplay between the maps. Don’t worry, we’ll get to all of that, but this may fit better in:

Something something “ludonarrative” something something (or Narrative Implications)

(To clarify, here I’m going to talk about the wider plots and narrative structure as opposed to characterisation, as that fits more into the aesthetics of the series)
It’s not bold to say that the narratives of games have to warp around the core gameplay structure. Especially in AAA video game production, the narrative designers usually have to take a back seat to the systems and level designers, at least outside of the initial rough outline they provide in the original game pitch. In this case, the job of the writer is to form vaguely coherent connective tissue between individual levels, setpieces and expensive pre-rendered cutscenes. This must be a very difficult job, and is probably the reason why most video game stories are the way they are. I am not privy to IntSys internal meetings, but I imagine they abide by this paradigm, trying to give a reason for why you fight 20 battles which roughly align with plot beats that were decided years ago.
Put another way, the writers of Fire Emblem must contrive a reason why the characters fight a vast number of violent battles in a strategic manner. This has a pretty easy solution - war! We have found something it’s good for, as whenever the gameplay designers decide that an extra map is required, the writers can just insert “oh no there’s a blockade of enemy soldiers in the way, guess you gotta kill them all”. This is the case for almost all the games and is a fair enough narrative choice, as it’s frankly one of the few scenarios where you could reasonably contrive so many battles, but it’s worth examining this in a bit more detail.
Even in the framing of warfare, there are still a lot of skirmishes, which sometimes the narrative or tone fails to support - or at least, their presence means that violence isn’t taken that seriously. Let’s take an example from early in Awakening: Emmeryn sends the Shepherds to negotiate an alliance with Regna Ferox. On the way, they are ambushed by Risen on the Northroad (1), have to fight the border guards who think Chrom is a bandit I think??? (2), and then after arriving they need to take part in Regna Ferox’s ritual combat to secure their alliance (3). These beats aren’t necessarily bad, and I actually think Awakening uses these opportunities quite well: the Risen are established as a constant threat to the world (except not really in the main story but that’s a whole other thing), “Marth'' gets more development, we set up Regna Ferox as fighty people who like to fight, and while the middle encounter is very tenuous it does set up a funny joke in Cynthia’s paralogue. However, I want to communicate that if the map/encounter designers need X maps between plot points A and B - in this case, needing low-stakes trials in the tutorial period - then there’s gonna be a fair bit of narrative filler. That is to say, there must be multiple combat encounters that kinda just happen, which makes violence a lot more casual in the narrative. See also the myriad examples of “oh shit random bandits attack!”, used to have a lower stakes map, with bandits appearing and vanishing as needed. This works fine enough in the context of ‘combat as sport’, allowing your favourite scrunglo to build up a triple-digit body count, but this casual attitude circumvents potentially interesting ideas with regards violence. Taking the example further, banditry and its causes are never seriously explored, as bandits are just treated as a filler enemy (except in Based As Hell Thracia 776).
Another narrative consequence of needing so many fights is that… you need to fight. That is to say, any anti-war sentiment or appeal to diplomacy in the series is fundamentally undercut by a) strategic combat being a core appeal of the series and b) narrative beats needing to be structured around fighting enemies. It’s a struggle to have moments of diplomacy and reconciliation when you had a fight within 3 minutes of said moment, lest some people start screaming that things are getting boring. This also makes any appeals to pacifism kinda moot. Xander’s quote about “war bad” in Conquest is utter bullshit, as a huge part of the marketing around that route focuses on the coolness of the tactical combat and its challenge. Eirika and Ephraim can never be equal, because Ephraim’s “fighting is fucken awesome” is encouraged by the gameplay, and Eirika can NEVER save 11037 because we need a final boss and no-one else fits the bill.
Speaking of, in video games it’s best practice to have a big bad guy you fight at the end of the story, the toughest mechanical challenge coinciding with the narrative climax. In Fire Emblem, you have one grand final battle which decides the fate of the war and/or world, before cutting to a brief wrap-up and then credits. This is an attempt to make these games satisfying, which is fine, but this is at odds with an anti-war message (which FE often gestures towards) - that is, actual wars tend to be deeply unsatisfying in a narrative sense! Oftentimes, after a decisive battle, things just kinda keep going for a little while afterwards with casualties continuing to pile up until peace terms are agreed. In the few cases where there is a final battle, it’s more of a formality as the decisive moment occurred months ago. See World War 1 and… World War 2 for examples of each, not to mention a whole host of war-related books and films. The problem with doing this in a video game is that it would require having multiple one-sided fights past the most climatic fight, which would be unfun, and we return to that fucking Reggie quote again. While video games can effectively explore this anti-war narrative space - This War of Mine is a fantastic example - it just doesn’t gel with the fun games that IntSys wants to make. I bring this up in the context of FE because Fire Emblem has such an aesthetic focus on warfare compared to other video games, so it sticks out even further. Even in FE6/FE9 where the war is effectively over in the final few maps, the enemies still remain extremely challenging, because if they didn’t things would be boring.
A few minor things that didn’t fit in above before we wrap up this section. First of all, in making an action packed story, Fire Emblem neglects an important aspect of army life in warfare - the “hurrying up and waiting”. In the majority of cases, the breaks between fights is under 10 minutes, it’s just glossed over. Fire Emblem Three Houses is the exception to this, but there it’s more framed as school life. Some people may say “what’s the point in having large amounts of timewasting where nothing happens in my game about war” and to that I would say fuck you, I want to play Jarhead Emblem. Next, Fire Emblem involves fighting people AND monsters, but these targets are typically given equal narrative weight, outside of maybe a funny line of dialogue about someone being afraid of monsters. In 99% of cases, enemy soldiers you fight have no more humanity than literal monsters. The death of any of your beloved soldiers is a tragedy with big sad death quotes, the death of those poor fuckers is quite literally a statistic which is proudly used to rank how well your guys have done at the end of the game. Finally, the limited scope of the violence the series can show limits the potential impact of scenes. In some cases, this is good as the implication is enough, e.g. the ‘Monica’ scene in Sacred Stones is wonderfully grim and would be weakened by anything explicit. However, a number of other scenes are neutered by the limitations on violence. This fundamentally relates to the aesthetics of the series:

insert prozd tweet/skit here (or Aesthetics, Tone, and Characters)

I’ve been talking a lot about ‘the violence committed’, and this might have seemed a bit weird to you. It’s a true statement, but because the violence is mostly cartoony and abstracted - bad guys disappear into nothingness, there’s no blood, etc - it’s hard to think of it in that way. It’s basically impossible to place Fire Emblem in the same artistic sphere as, say, All Quiet on the Western Front. This aesthetic sense was partially tech-limited in the early NES and SNES games, which was grandfathered into the more graphically complex titles, but it’s also related to how the aesthetics unavoidably warp the tone of the work. IntSys needs their games to be relatively lighthearted and unconcerned with the consequences of its violence, as one of the core appeals of these games is the charming cast of characters. As you would expect, it would be a lot harder to appreciate your goofy blorbos and their lighthearted chats about nothing if you could see the brutal consequences of their triple digit body counts. If violence was more realistic, there would be a lot less “ooh I like training and/or this one hyperspecific food” or “I like peace, but I guess violence may be possibly needed sometimes” and there would have to be a lot more trauma and dourness. There are also age rating concerns, as you can’t exactly sell Come And See Emblem to pre-teens. And once more, to clarify: Fire Emblem as it exists now is fine! I like the lighthearted tone of this series, and I like the characters that reside within it. However, a few problems do arise from IntSys’s approach to violence, as occasionally they brush up against darker ideas but (due to similar reasons to the above) they can never commit to them, which neuters their potential impact. This is especially troublesome with regards to characterisation, as the little dudes are a core appeal, so if something is off that could cause problems. In a sense, at points we have severe aesthetic tension.
A fairly useful case study to see how this affects characterisation is with Mozu in Fire Emblem Fates. Mozu is a charming character, a genial country bumpkin with a bit of an edge at times, who has fond memories of her hometown. This lines up with the lighthearted tone of her recruitment paralogue, where (checks notes) her entire village gets massacred by inhuman monsters, with her mother literally being murdered right in front of her, and she joins up with Corrin’s party because there is literally nothing left of her old life. I understand that people who experience extreme trauma do still manage to live meaningful lives, and that IntSys wouldn’t want to have a character who is a barely functional traumatised mess for 90% of the campaign. However, this doesn’t explain the sheer dissonance between the relatively normal and well-adjusted Mozu who quietly remembers her lost loved ones, and the fact that her village got My Lai’d a handful of weeks ago in the game’s timeline. IMO this would work a lot better if there were a few survivors (instead of literally everyone else dying), with Mozu actively choosing to leave her old life to help others instead of being forced to leave by circumstance. This reduction in scope would mitigate the dissonance between the character and what actually happens to her. This is by far the most extreme example in the series, however I’m sure you can think of others. My issue here is not with having ‘normal’ characters, or with them suffering tragedies, my issue is the dissonance between the two when viewing the scope of said tragedies. This is just one way the series wants to get into darker territory, then swiftly backing off instead of delving into the consequences.
This aesthetic restriction also affects the potential impact of dramatic scenes in the main story, limiting what the focus of these scenes can actually be. This little bit will involve heavy spoilers for Genealogy of the Holy War and Spec Ops: The Line (I KNOW THESE GAMES ARE VERY DIFFERENT WITH VERY DIFFERENT INTENDED DEMOGRAPHICS IN VERY DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS, SHUT UP). Both have a very important narrative moment around their midpoints, involving fire magic/white phosphorus respectively. In each game, the deaths that occur are utterly horrific when you think about them. In FE4 the focus is on the drama of the plot twist and effects on the characters, with the actual effects of the violence being left to implication. We don’t know if this was the original intent of Kaga and the team, or if this was enforced by various tech- and publisher-related restrictions, but in either case we do not see anything explicit. In any case, in Spec Ops: The Line, the horror and graphic nature of the violence is completely inescapable, and therefore forms the core of the turning point of the story. The specifics of the violence itself are crucial - the game does not work if you don’t see the consequences of the white phosphorus - and it leads beautifully to the complete descent of its endgame. You may be saying “of course you couldn’t show that violence in FE, it’s a kids game” which is true, and in any case the scene in Genealogy is very good, even without showing the violence. I imagine if we get a remake in the year 202X we wouldn’t see anything explicit anyway, partially due to the publisher but also because the scene doesn’t necessarily need it. The point I am trying to make is that the aesthetics form a limitation on what Fire Emblem can explore, narrative space that the series fundamentally cannot reach.
One more thing, and this isn’t really about the games themselves but the impressions leading into them, and how the aesthetics can affect that. Do you guys remember when the intro cutscene of Three Houses was released a few weeks before release? I do, and I also remember the collective shock of the community when seeing the early previews. It was so drastically different to everything that had come before, and consequently was really intriguing - you can see a lot of speculation in the above comments. To clarify, I don’t want to pretend that 3H is some kind of super mature ultra gritty war story, or that blood = good game, but that beginning cutscene gave one hell of a first impression. Even though the game isn’t that much darker than any other FE game, the sheer unexpectedness put people off-kilter in a kinda awesome way. Does the game actually deliver? YMMV, but I think this (and some of the later cutscenes, such as the mid-game Dimitri one) work quite well. Sometimes, a little injection of harsher violence can go a long way.

Conclusion

Frankly I don’t really have a conclusion, sorry. As you can see, there are so many disparate strands, I can’t possibly make one grand thesis statement. Maybe the inherent contradictions of having warfare in a family friendly video game weakens the potential end result? I guess, but I don’t want to imply that what we have now is bad, as it is pretty good tbh. So, uhh…
…
OK, if I had to say something, it’s more about the process of making this. Having to try and think about how violence intersects with a video game you like takes you in a number of different directions. Ultimately, this process was really fulfilling for me, and I would recommend that you do the same (for FE or anything else)! Trying to analyse something you enjoy from a perspective not usually applied is pretty neat. If you guys have any thoughts (on the points above or your own), I’d be very interested to hear them!
Also, if people are interested, I’ll try to make a few case studies. I would focus on Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses, as (when thinking on this topic) I found that these games were consistently the most intriguing, with the most interesting relationships to violence. This would probably take a while though, as I am gonna be very busy in June, and I probably won’t have time this month either.

Hi Everyone. I'm here for some advise please.
I brought my car 2nd hand from Bidvest Renault McCarthy PMB at the beginning of this year. It's a 2021 DCI 4x4 model, and it had 68000km and now is sitting on 75000. I was told it is under warranty until February 2026, it had a service plan until 45000km but that has now obviously past, so the services would be on me but the warranty was active and would cover everything.
So I took my car in today to sort out a couple issues under warranty, to BB Renault Hatfield, and I was told the following after sending in all the details I had.
"Hi Callum
It is essential to respect the maintenance schedule in order to uphold the terms of the warranty.
The warranty inception date is 13.02.2021 therefor:
First service due: 15 000 KM or Feb 2022 whichever first. Your first vehicles first service was claimed on 14680KM June 2021.
Second service due: 29 680 KM or Feb 2023 whichever first (it was claimed on 14/09/2021 on 30 043KM.)
Third service was due: 44 680 KM or September 2022 whichever came first. – No record even though it was covered by service plan.
Fourth service: 59 680KM or September 2023 whichever first: No record.
Fifth service was due 74 680 KM or September 2024 whichever came first: No record.
My technician will diagnose your concerns and offer a quotation for the concerns so you may advise."
So my thinking is that I will go back to Renault McCarthy PMB and insist that I return the car as it was sold to me under a premise that it was covered by warranty when it actually is not, none of which has been my fault. Is this possible? Can anyone advise? What else could I possibly do?
Thank you so much.

I don’t even know where to begin. 26F. I have had a lot go on in my life (not to short anyone else, because life is screwed). I’m just going to tell my story because I don’t know what else to do. As I’m telling this story please keep in mind, I don’t have all of the information and I’ve been kind of surviving up until this point. When I was 3-8 months old my father packed me and the dog up, and left my mother without telling her while she was at work back in 1997(Florida to Pennsylvania). having no idea because I was an infant, going in to toddler my dad loved the crap out of me. I felt safe, and cared for. My dad ended up sending me to a catholic school for 1st- 5th. started growing and realized that I have a difficultly keeping concentrated, was way friendler than everyone. @ 9 years old he had me speak to my mother for the first time and all she said was mean shit about him and I cried and hung up.
I had noticed my dad started to grow aggravated with me, and would say some down right mean shit. Not let me have my own personality, Embarrassed me by writing mean shit about what I did wrong on sticky notes and would tell me to keep in on my shirt all day at school. Back me into corners like he was a big bully if I didn’t do things right/his way. He through a birthday party for me when I was 11 and then was like “look at how nobody showed up” when he was most likely the reason they didn’t. Before sixth grade started, he moved us back down to Florida. So from catholic school to public. I noticed bigger changes in him and it was a complete 180 for me, going from a religious school to a public. It was like there was no longer the happiness in him and he would pick on me and bully me, when I started going to public schools I was bullied as well there. I would come home from school crying and he stated “I’ll give you a reason to cry”. Would be very physically abusive. Would even threaten to send me to my mothers which I was scared of because of the mean shit she said when I was 9. He sent me to another girls mom to learn about “women things”- literally just how to shave my f**** legs. I eventually went to the schools therapist in 6th grade and tried to tell them what was going on without getting my dad in trouble or him hearing about it and doing something worse, that didn’t happen. I guess I blacked out most of my memory’s about things because of the way I needed to cope but I remember writing him letters and begging him to talk to me because he started just not speaking to me at all, would leave me at home while he worked and told me to lock the doors and hide. I eventually tried to disconnect from it all in my head to go with the motions. Eventually before 8th grade started we moved up to Maryland and moved in with my cousins because he had claimed he lost a lot of money in Florida( in recent years he told me the school was trying to get him charged for the things I said back then to the therapist.) we became more distant because he wasn’t very friendly and would hide in the basement. Moved into my god parents house because eventually he had enough issues with my cousins he didn’t want to be “there problem” anymore. We became more distant as he would just hide in there basement as well, I’d go down there just to talk with him and he’d just be this mean person I didn’t know anymore. Still being a very emotionally abusive person. I got arrested 3 months before graduation because I had weed and cigarettes at school.
When I was 18 I moved into my 2nd boyfriend’s house. Not a good idea looking back at it because it was totally a trap house and I had no clue what I was doing there.(drugs) that’s what I was doing. He had no clue & didn’t care to notice. A lot of co-dependence was there because I stayed there for 4 years.
In 2018 (I was 18 at this point) he was going delirious for about 4-5days and would tell me stuff like take my stuff, I’m going to die ect. Wouldn’t let me take him to the hospital, just wanted to die, thank god my god mother was there when he collapsed and had a ambulance come and get him, he went into a diabetic coma it lasted for 1.5 months or so, he came out of it and basically told me he should’ve died and that he wanted to.
That made things worse mentally for me, I did a lot of fucked up things in the 4 years I was with the boy I was doing drugs with, he also was very physically abusing, as so was I at this point. We broke up and I did everything I could not to go back to living with my father who ended up with enough money to buy a place in my name. I ended up living there for a while and nothing good came from it.
A lot of drinking and boyfriends and dumb shit happened and I was completely out of it until I got a DWI in late 2019. Really woke me up. I started wanting better for myself, knowing I could just didn’t know how. I got into YET ANOTHER RELATIONSHIP, and thought it was good for me, two years in we decided we were going to buy a home (23 years old at this point) we bought it and a lot was wrong with the house and clearly the boy I bought it with because he was into a really odd kink, had girls in his phone, and would not introduce me to his female friends. On top of that he did not doing ANYTHING to help me fix the home. A year into owning the home I broke up with him and lost my job. I was depressed for 7-8 months, got another job and about 1.5 years after the break up someone came up to me and asked me on a date. (I still lived with my ex in the house we own). (I was completely honest with him and up front about everything.)
He has shown me grace, kindness, and compassion. He had shown me a whole new perspective in life. He also had gone through a really traumatic past. Starting of the relationship was rough, I was feral and he gets defensive really easy. We have stuck this thing out and I am 7 months in therapy and he just had his first session in years today. I would like to consider this success. I just changed therapist because the one I had been going to wasn’t as good as I would’ve liked them to be. We are now 1.5 years in, and I’m still trying to figure myself out and currently won’t hear from the new therapist until the 21st of may. I’m struggling mentally but not half as bad as I used to. I guess I’m just looking for new perspectives and some positive words at this point. My boyfriend and I are on opposite schedules for the next 2.5 months and I can tell I’m still very co-dependent, in my head I’m hoping his new therapist doesn’t tell him we are not right for each other. I’m so full of stress and trauma it’s crazy. I don’t even know who I am or if I fully feel happy in any situation.
Any kind words would help. Sorry for the all over the place read.