I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/AdhesivenessMurky204
Originally posted to AITAH
AITAH for separating from my husband because he refused to get a vasectomy?
Thanks to u/queenlegolas and u/Direct-Caterpillar77 for suggesting this BoRU
Editor’s Note: added paragraph breaks for readability
Trigger Warnings: PTSD, mentions of abortion, domestic abuse, verbal abuse, sexual assault, rape
Original Post: April 28, 2024
My husband (28M, who I will call Jack) and I (27F) have been together for 4 years, we have 2 young children and I am pregnant again. I have been pregnant for what feels like most of our relationship. I got pregnant 4 months into our relationship. We got married a month before our daughter’s 1st birthday and ended up with a honeymoon baby. After our son was born, I talked to my OB and she put me on birth control and I have been taking it militantly.
My daughter is now 3 and my son is 2. A little over a month ago I discovered I am pregnant again, despite taking my birth control religiously. Abortion is banned in my state, and the pregnancy was discovered too far along to attempt to obtain one out of state. While Jack and I were nervous, we also love being parents and decided that 3 young kids would be a challenge, but 3 was a good number for us. Then we went in for the first ultrasound and got some unexpected news - it’s twins.
Things have been tough financially, and while we were stressed but excited for a third child, we were not expecting a third and fourth child. Beyond the finances, I am the primary caretaker and I know that twins is going to be a lot, three children under 5 is already a lot, but 4 children under 5 is going to be really really difficult for me. Physically, I am tired of being pregnant. I’ve been pregnant or breastfeeding the majority of our relationship. It’s exhausting, it feels awful, and I don’t recognize my body anymore.
Four children is enough. I don’t want more. I told Jack that I was done with pregnancy, I’ve been pregnant enough, I’ve been experimenting with different types of birth control for over a decade and I still can’t stop getting pregnant, abortion isn’t a valid option where we live, we need something more permanent. He agreed, and suggested an IUD, I told him no - if it did fail then it could cause an ectopic pregnancy which could kill me, especially where we live. I’ve had both control fail me multiple times already and I’m not taking the chance, so I suggested a vasectomy. He was not open to the idea, and was even upset that I suggested it and told me I should get my tubes tied. I told him a tubal ligation is a much bigger surgery and I could be recovering for weeks during which time I wouldn’t be able to work or take care of our 4 young children, but he could ice his balls for a day or two and be done with it. He told me that not getting pregnant was ultimately my responsibility, and topped it off by saying “that’s what your body your choice means, YOUR body, so YOU choose.” That’s when it went from a discussion to a full blown fight.
See, when I was 19 I had another birth control failure with my boyfriend at the time (who I will call Tom). I wanted an abortion, Tom did not because he was opposed. I told him I was getting the abortion since it was my body and my choice, and Tom said some horrible things to me, including threatening me. I broke up with him and got the abortion. In response, Tom ended up following me one night and attacking me. I don’t want to go into detail but it was horrible, and he ended up going to prison for a number of charges related to the attack. Not only do I have a number of scars and some long lasting physical effects, but I have PTSD as well.
Jack knows about my history and diagnosis, and has known from the beginning. I have a pretty prominent facial scar so I was upfront about it early on in our dating. Jack always presented himself as very pro-choice, so I was shocked that he would say that. I got really emotional and started crying and shouting, and it turned into a full-blown fight.
Eventually I said that birth control is a two-way street and so far I’ve been the only one managing it and he said “and now we have 2 kids and 2 more coming, great job.” I told him he sounded like Tom and he got super pissed, basically said how dare you compare me to him, and maybe he might want kids one day with someone who doesn’t compare him to her felon ex-boyfriend. I was stunned and horrified. I said “well then let’s not waste any fucking time,”then packed up myself and the kids and drove to my parents place.
It’s been about a week since the fight. I’ve spoken with Jack a few times and he has since apologized and said he was out of line and was speaking from a place of anxiety after finding out about the twins, but also that I said things that were out of line and it was wrong of me to insist he undergo a medical procedure. He said that can move on from the things I said and that he wants to see his children and be a family again. I told him no, that I didn’t want to “move on” from the things he said to me. I can’t just get over that and I think we need space apart. Jack was upset by this and while we talked I brought up getting a separation agreement to manage custody and finances while we figure things out. He did not like this suggestion, said we didn’t need to pull the courts into this.
I haven’t told a lot of people about what’s happening but my family and a couple close friends. My sister and best friend both think I should throw the whole man away, but my brother (who is the only other one married with kids) thinks that I’m being extreme for what sums up to a fight between two scared people who both said nasty things. My mom is trying to be supportive but is occasionally reminding me that I “don’t want to be a single mother of 4” and telling me not to let my PTSD drive my decisions, while my dad is being completely unhelpful (he thinks jokes are helpful - like calling me Doorknob because I “can’t stop getting knocked up”, telling me to let the oven cool down, real knee-slappers). I don’t know what to do. My kids are happy to be at grandma and grandpas house but they miss their daddy, I’m 4 months pregnant and already uncomfortable as hell, I wish I could go back to being a happy little family but I’m so hung up on the things he said in that fight. Am I destroying my family over one bad night? Am I being unreasonable for asking my husband to get a vasectomy?
Edit: I've noticed a lot of people recommending condoms. I have gotten pregnant with condoms twice. Our second child and my first pregnancy were both conceived using condoms properly (correct fit, put on correctly, single use, not expired, no breaks, etc). I do not trust condoms enough to not fail a third time. I know the failure rate is supposedly small, but it's not personally small enough for me. Edit to the edit: I'm sorry, I didn't expect so many comments so fast and I can't keep up with them. By the first pregnancy I mean the pregnancy with Tom. With Jack I was on the patch when I got pregnant with our daughter, condoms with our son, and the pill with the twins. So far I haven't ever suspected that Jack has tampered with our birth control and always presumed that I'm a fertile Myrtle.
I recognize the comments and just want people to know I'm seeing the suggestion. I'm not dismissing it, but the thought of it is deeply upsetting and has provoked a lot of anxiety. I just wanted to make it clear that if the suggestion is only based on the condoms, that the condom pregnancies were with two different partners. While I know I always used condoms properly with Tom, I do believe that Tom could have been fully capable of sabotaging the condoms.
AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP received mixed reactions of NTAs and YTAs
Relevant Comments
deepsleepsheepmeep: NTA. Your husband is though. Your body has already been through A LOT. A tubal ligation is a serious surgery and you are right about being out of commission for a while when recovering. If he is more concerned with an imaginary future wife than he is for you, I don’t think there is much hope for this marriage.
We have 4 close friends who all got vasectomies. None of them bitched about it like your wimp of a husband. We actually had fun vasectomy themed parties for them.
On the off chance he does end up getting a vasectomy, make sure to do the follow up appointments. One of the vasectomy fab 4 did not follow through and ended up with a post-vasectomy baby.

OOP: Thank you, I feel like this is a lot of what has been so upsetting has been that he's thinking about some imaginary future wife when I'm right here, his actual wife, the mother of his children. It's like he's already imagining a future without me.

 
Update: AITAH for separating from my husband because he refused to get a vasectomy?: May 3, 2024
I didn’t expect so many comments and literally couldn’t go through them all. It seemed like the majority of people said I was NTA but I did get a lot of YTAs telling me I was trying to force him to get a medical procedure and telling me to get one instead. Besides already addressing my reasonings why I made my request in the original post (which I want you to read with real "per my last email" energy), I in no way am *forcing* him to have a medical procedure, but I am saying that I do not want to be with a partner who is not willing to be snipped. This is an issue of compatibility. The number of children you want, the methods of birth control you’re willing to use, those are issues of compatibility and a reason relationships end all the time. If he doesn’t want to be sterilized that’s fine, but then that means that we’re not compatible anymore, since it means he wants more children and I don’t. Beyond that there were some YTA comments and some DMs that were just nasty, calling me a murderer and saying my body is a cemetery. Sadly enough, I expected those types of comments, because I know there are a lot of Toms out in the world.
First I wanted to address a couple things that kept coming up, because last post turned into thousands of comments that all said about 5 different things, so to avoid my inbox becoming another echo chamber:

You’re 100% going to have a C-section anyway so just get a tubal while giving birth.

No, I’m not 100% going to have a C-section anyway. Twins are not an automatic C-section. With my birth history there is no reason to presume that a C-section is in my future. My OB agrees, and has discussed the possibility as doctors have to do but also said that based on my past two birth experiences, I'm a "perfect candidate" for vaginal delivery.
I also am not going to mince words: tubal ligations are *less* effective than vasectomies with a *much higher* likelihood of an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy can *kill me*. In fact I got a PM from a woman who is a fellow fertile Myrtle who had an ectopic after a tubal. I am rejecting birth control options that, if they fail, would lead to my likely death. I don’t want to be pregnant again but I also don’t want to die and leave my children motherless, and in no way should anyone assume that traveling to another state to obtain an emergency abortion will continue to be an option in the future - we live in scary times, and Gilead is a real possibility. The comments seemed to have the vibe that people think that ligations are magically more effective than vasectomies and vasectomies are more of a whisper of sterility than an actual sterilization method so for those in the back VASECTOMIES ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN TUBAL LIGATIONS, FULL STOP. So I really need y’all to shut up about it.

Go to another state and obtain an abortion anyway.

I appreciate the personal offers to help I received in DMs deeply, but no. I’m in my 2nd trimester, which I know is still legal in some places, however I am at a point in my pregnancy where I personally as an individual do not feel comfortable obtaining an abortion, considering I would be *even farther* along by the time I could travel (which is not only finances, but logistics as well). I am 16 weeks pregnant now, these babies aren’t just clusters of cells to me anymore, and I’m not going to expand on that since it’s not up for debate.

Why not adoption?

With love and respect to everyone who has gone through adoption in all its aspects, adoption is absolutely not for me. This is a thought process I already went through 8 years ago, and now that I’m a mother and not a scared teenager I know it’s even less for me. I personally could not go through with it and come out the other side intact. Going through a full pregnancy, having my babies, and then being separated from them would break me.

Leave him and give him full custody of the twins

No. Because going through a full pregnancy, having my babies, and then being separated from them would break me. Jesus, some of y’all.

Just have a sexless marriage.

No. I love banging my husband, obviously lol. I don't want to be in a sexless marriage and anyone who has been to an abstinence-only high school knows that abstinence is not the way lol. There were a lot of comments assuming I would be perfectly fine withholding sex from my husband and having na dead bedroom, and I wouldn't. I have a sex drive. I'm going to want to bang my husband. Wanting to have sex with your spouse is *normal*.

What you would do about birth control if you divorced and dated in the future?

I’m not thinking of dating anyone else right now, because I’m thinking more about saving my actual marriage instead of an imaginary relationship. And if theoretically I did, I would probably seek out a partner who was snipped or was ready to be to be honestly, or a woman. I’m bisexual so there’s a very good chance that my future partner wouldn’t have the right parts to knock me up anyway lol.

Jack is sabotaging your birth control

I clarified my methods in the original post (as per my last email), but I did want to address this because it came up a LOT. I don’t have reason to believe that Jack sabotaged my birth control. A number of other fertile Myrtles showed up and brought up they or their family members repeated pregnancies in the face of birth control, including tubals. Accusing my husband of reproductive coercion for no reason other than I keep getting pregnant is a big leap and a weighty accusation. I am not the only fertile Myrtle out there, there's a reason there's a whole term for it.

Your husband is a narcissist, abuser, psychopath, and he does no childcare

My husband and I historically have a really healthy and loving relationship outside of this fight. In fact, this fight is the first time we’ve really had a fight, we’ve only ever had little arguments that we’ve been able to talk through. He’s an active father, the reason that I do the majority of childcare is due to circumstance between maternity leaves, our job schedules and the fact that I breastfed my babies. Someone also presumed I’m the breadwinner, which isn’t quite true. Jack makes more than me, but we do not have deeply significant differences in our incomes. When he is home he does his fair share of cleaning and cooking (arguably more than me at times), and parenting. That being said, the things he said in the heat of the moment were deeply concerning, and we’re addressing that together.
So to get down to the nitty gritty of the real update: since the last time I posted, Jack and I have sat down together and had a real come to Jesus talk. I’m not going to go through the whole breakdown, but it basically boiled down to this: it’s the vasectomy, but it’s more than the vasectomy. It was wrong of me to compare him to Tom but it was wronger of him to weaponize my trauma against me in a very malicious way. The way he intentionally used the same language my abuser used in an effort to hurt me was not acceptable and damaged the trust between us. He agreed it was not acceptable and said that in the aftermath he was horrified and ashamed his own words, and that he (as an explanation and not an excuse) kind of snapped under the stress. Oh and what he said about his “next wife” was not an indication of him not being committed to me but was because he felt hurt and wanted to hurt me back. He has apologized numerous times and seems to feel genuinely bad about it.
As for the separation, I am still going forward with it. I need space and time and I need to take that before the babies come. I am still staying with my parents who, for the record, are not sick of me or the kids. We’re a tight knit family, I only moved out when I moved in with Jack, and my sister moved out about a year ago so they have been empty nesting, and my mom doesn’t like that we live “too far” (an hour) away. What I have realized with space and time is how deeply triggering it was, in a way that I cannot explain to those without PTSD from DV, those who know will know. It’s deeply unsettled me and I’m having a hard time “getting over it” so to speak. There is now a lot of fear of my husband that was never there before and it’s going to take a lot to repair that trust and sense of safety. I cannot make a decision while I’m in this space, and I am addressing this with my personal therapist. Overall, I told him that if he wanted to stay married to me I needed two things from him: marriage counseling and a vasectomy, and even then I still cannot guarantee him anything. He understands, but I do not know what will happen with the vasectomy right now, we focused more on talking about the fight, but he is very aware that it's now a dealbreaker. And we have a marriage counseling appointment set up for next week. I'm hoping that counseling will bring some clarity to the situation, and in the mean time for the next couple months I'm focusing on giving my kids lots of cuddles and preparing myself for two new babies to come into my world, with or without Jack.
Additional information from OOP on her relationships

OOP: I've been through a trial to convict my ex-boyfriend of trying to kill me because of an abortion in a deep red, deeply religious area. I've definitely heard worse things, and I typically have pretty thick skin. That being said, I am pregnant and pretty emotional, so it's not the best experience. That being said, I do appreciate the level-headed comments when I see them through the sea of comments kind of saying the same stuff over and over. I'm not reading a lot of them if what I can see in the comment notification starts off nasty, so a lot of it is just inbox white noise. My favorites are the ones that start off with "I'm not going to read that BUT..." and I just think lol same. Like you don't want to read my post but expect me to read your comment that was made without even reading the situation? lol nope. And there are a lot of people conflating "providing someone with a hard choice" with "forcing someone into a medical procedure" and it just makes wading through for the actually helpful comments more tiring. Thank you though, I very much appreciate the kindness. Sorry, I've gotten so much of the same nonsense I guess I needed a little vent lol.

OOP on wanting her husband to make a decision and be on the same page

OOP: I want to be honest with him about where I am emotionally because I want him to make an informed decision. While the vasectomy is a deal breaker, it's really my secondary concern. My primary concern is the way he acted during the fight and his intention exploitation of my trauma because he was mad and scared. I think that telling him "get the snip to stay with me" and then deciding to leave anyway because there are deeper issues and/or I don't feel safe anymore would be cruel. He deserves to have the full picture before he makes a choice, doesn't he?
If he doesn't want the vasectomy, that's his choice. It's not what I want, but it is what it is. If he wants to call it quits at 4 kids, then it is what it is and if he secretly wants to be the next Nick Cannon then it is what it is he should be free to do that. That is part of why I don't know where he is on the vasectomy right now and we didn't really discuss it much when we talked, I'm focusing on discussing the bigger issue for me which is trust and safety within the relationship. The only way for him to make an informed decision about whether or not he get a vasectomy is for him to have all the information about the situation. If that makes him want a vasectomy less, then it is what it is. It's not about making him want to have a vasectomy. It's about being on the same page.

 

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

Something no one is talking about was the original diss record Meek Mill did to Drake. In that song he mentions Drake getting pee'd on. I believe he was hinting to or alluding to some of the weird things that go on behind closed doors in the industry. There are countless stories and testimonies about the rituals and occult parties that go down in Hollywood. You can literally go on youtube and see actual people from the industry talking about their experiences.
There seems to be patterns with their strange fetishes and activities. R. Kelly peeing on girls, P Diddy and Young Miami and their golden showers. Doja Cat talked about eating feces, and Nas talked about the things he had to eat/drink for satanic rituals in his song "You're da man." I can't help but wonder if the "Champagne" in Champagne Papi is code word for Champagne Showers. I think the photo of him wearing blackface is an example of the blackmail and secret "tapes" that they have on all the celebs. It's come out that the elites like to use the tactic of blackmail to keep the industry in line, drugging and r*ping an artist on film or having them do other unspeakable acts. I wonder what kind of weird things they have on Drake?

1. Kolm pitching and confidence.
In a series that had many interesting storylines such as Jorgensen’s and Behen’s first series with their new teams, Evan’s first official series in MLW after being drafted with the first overall pick in the past draft and Cheetam’s first series as manager it was Preston Kolm who caught my eye the most.
I thought that surely Jorgensen would get the ball for game 2. Instead, manager Tommy Coughlin decided to go with Preston, clearly, he impressed him in the offseason, and he certainly impressed me as well. He showed great command, his pitches looked sharp, movement was working, and you could see that as he got deeper into the game his confidence was rising, he even broke out a Kracht-esque sidestep pitch for a strikeout. He ended up with a no hitter and a near perfect game just ruined by a single walk.
Now, with no intention of ruining the Mallards hype party, it is important to note that the Gators are probably not the most competitive team in the league, and their offense might be the weakest of all teams. They only scored one run in 9 innings (granted, the Mallards scored 2) but still, it was an amazing first outing for Kolm.
What was interesting to watch is that the confidence was not only bounded to pitching, but it carried over to everything else. He made some nice defensive plays in the field including a really tough one. At the plate he reached in 4 out of his 6 plate appearances.
I will follow his progress closely as the season goes on, but the Mallards suddenly have really nice depth in their rotation, with 3 very capable arms on the roster.
2. Sawyer Behen can pitch!
Coming into this series many eyes where on Behen, and for good reason. After the very loud and controversial trade that saw Behen land with the Gators, there is a lot of pressure on him to perform this year, especially with the comments he made during the offseason, and if this series is any indication of what we will see from him, ohh boy did the Gators win this trade. After Jorgensen’s departure the Gators will need to fill the franchise player vacancy. And while I don’t think Behen can be enough of a hitter to fill that void, he showed he can be the face of the Gators pitching staff. Behen looked unhittable, and aside from a Robles rocket to left field, no one really made strong contact off him. His final line was 7IP, 1ER, 16K and 9BB. With Behen at this level on the mound, rookie Evans talent and Cheetam as a third arm the Gators quietly have a solid rotation, capable of winning games even against the most dangerous offenses as they nearly did in the 3 games against the Mallards.
3. Gators rookies are here!
Aiden Richard joined the Gators as an undrafted free agent, and while I’m sure it was not the debut he hoped for, as he went 0-2 and had a whoopsie play in right field that resulted in a Robles home run which ended up being the winning run for the Mallards. He looked good. He was responsible for one of the few Gators’ hard-hit balls, unfortunately it went just foul instead of what would have been a monster home run. But his swing looks good, he clearly has power and I think as the season goes on and as he racks up more plate appearances, he will be a good player for the Gators.
As for fist overall pick Jeremy Adams it was mixed bag, he started off great with a well hit ball to open the series for the Gators but wasn’t able to get any hits after that. Still, he managed to reach base 4 times in 10 PA’s. Which was the best mark on his team. The swing looks dangerous and there is definitively a power threat in there. I think it will take some time for him to adjust to MLW pitchers and rules, but I am confident he will figure it out. However, what really impressed me was his pitching. It is normal for first year players to struggle as pitchers, but Evans looked as comfortable as a veteran star pitcher. He only allowed one run in 3 innings of work and that run should have a major asterisk next to it, as Richard pushed the ball over the fence on a batted ball that would have never made it past the fence without some help. Overall, I loved what I saw from him on the mound, and Behen now must be absolutely remarkable if he doesn’t want to lose his spot as the guy in the pitching rotation. I would go as far as to say that Evans might already be the best second arm in the league, (if he will be the second arm for much longer is really in question) to say he has ace potential is an underestimation.
4. What happened to the Mallards offense?
If you would have told me that the Mallards would manage only 2 runs in the whole series against the Gators, I would have called you crazy. Nevertheless, that is exactly what happened, and I have no idea what to think about it. I had previously called the new Mallards offense the best assembled lineup in modern MLW history. The fact that they couldn’t really get anything going against a rookie pitcher and a 2.48 ERA pitcher in Behen is honestly, surprising. There is no point in trying to analyze why this happened. Its too small of a sample size. Let’s just call it an off day for them, but its something that is worth paying attention for their next series.
5. What happened to the cheat code?
I believed Cheetam could return to his usual form as a hitter, after an awful 2023 season, but it was a torrid start. If the Gators want to play playoff baseball this season, they need Cheetam’s bat to wake up. He is now the leader of this incredible young team, and I fear that if they keep getting no production out of him their season will be a short one.

So context - I am talking with a co-worker who we have been friends for nearly 2 years and we just click, we share almost everything and common and we always get on well and even other ppl at work said they seen it coming.. another back note is that they have just left a 3 year long distance relationship in which their partner was not a good person to them at all, it has been roughly a month since they broke up..
So it all started with us going together to one of their friends 21st bday party and this was my first time drinking alcohol so i kept it easy and had enough to enjoy the night but not enough to where i couldn't function etc however my co-worker had one too many and some of the stuff they did triggered my feelings.. as they were holding my hand, stroking it, begging me not to go home when they got in taxi (i just walked home as i felt like that was just the alcohol speaking) so i got home and just sat in my chair and just thought about it all and how WHAT IF you know so over the next few days i try and get some clarity to my thoughts and get some advice from other work staff and just under a week later when me and said co-worker finished our shift together (i walk them home) i told them how i felt and that i liked them etc to which i got told they would message me once they got home and showered.. so about half an hour or so passes and i receive the message, they said the feeling was mutual and that they even had a crush on me and this was even whilst they were with their ex which i was abit baffled on anyways we both talk more into the night happy days and then days pass of endless talking etc and about a week later i crashed at their place which was agreed too as we were gonna spend the day together, we chilled and watched stuff, played some games and went out into town and then on the night we just cuddled and nothing more as i wasn't sure what they were comfortable with yet.. i ended up going home later that day as they had said their social battery had died which i understood and told them it was ok and i went home (ofc i was sad there was little i could do).. again days pass and we are both ok talking away and then one day we were talking well and later on in the evening they went out with their friend to which it went abit downhill as that is when i got this
(my name) would you be mad if I said I wasn’t ready for a relationship yet cause honestly im really struggling with things like I know im not ready and I won’t be able to give you what you deserve in a relationship because I know im just not ready to jump into another one yet but I don’t wanna lose you I really love hanging out with you and sharing our interests together it’s been so fun 🙁 but at this point im just not ready cause even things like physical affection is freaking me out i can’t handle being this close to another person right now and I don’t wanna be leading you on further only to randomly back away out of fear im just really not ready for this right now
And pls don’t worry you did nothing at all to make me uncomfortable the other day but I know I need more time before im ready for something like this cause im still kind of a mess and not mentally ready yet
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"i need space" message to which again i was accepting and understood as alot has happened in such short time, i sent words of encouragement etc and they followed up with this which is the message that makes me feel like i'm not going to make it
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Thank you for all of that I promise you didn’t step over the line with anything at all i just realised that i really do need space right now and I know I can’t handle a relationship I can’t promise if or when I’ll be ready for a relationship anytime soon either, thank you for understanding !!
​
so right now i only share my shift today with them for 30 minutes other than that all of our shifts are different to each other that i won't see them for the rest of this week and i am on holiday next as it is my bday week so i have sent my last message and i said i won't message them anymore as it will clog their thoughts but i am always there if needed as i really don't want to lose them and they have said the same thing to me in that they don't want to lose me and that i make them so happy yada yada.. was this the right thing to do or not? so i'm essentially giving them 2 whole weeks to think about it all and if they don't come back to me by the end of that time even if it's just confirming we'd be no more than friends i will move on with life but i really have that feeling it will all work out over time, they are me as the opposite sex and i just love having someone i can share everything i love with someone.
Another note is that i have always played off of them in this and never forced them to do anything at all.. and one of the things that is confusing me about it all is that they have booked my bday off work as they wanted to spend time with me and they have also bought me gifts for my bday which i did tell them not too and that they alone were the best gift so i'm hoping after some time they figure out their needs?
my question is do you think i am never gonna have a chance or is there hope in all of this?

Hey everyone! I’m new to the gaming world and picked up BG3 after being a huge fan of other RPG games. I’m at the Moonrise tower part of the quest line and curious which way is better: underdark or mountain pass?
For some background, my main party is Shadowheart, Gale, & Astarion (I didn’t find la’zel in time). My character is a high elf sorcerer. All characters are a little over level 5! I did a lot in the underdark + grymforge (i.e., Nere is dead). I’m also on like the easiest possible level ♥️
I am mainly playing for the story but struggling with combat, so any tips on that would be helpful too!
Let me know your thoughts and I look forward to any feedback or helpful tips/tricks <3

I have no prom date as a senior in hs and haven’t been to prom yet. I am a guy and I don’t care too much but I don’t wanna regret not going later down the line since I haven’t went to any dance or anything in high school yet. I am not a bad looking guy however I’ve never really focused on girls as I have been focused on being a college athlete. I am starting to feel like a loser and I have no idea what to do. I always talk with my friends girlfriends and it goes great I think one of them might even like me but that’s not part of this. I have had opportunities with girls at parties and never took them. Very regretful in life rn and looking for help.

Some preliminary info:
My mum and I have lived in our townhouse for over 10 years. During that time, we have constructed planter boxes that are set on our driveway (we don't own a car, so we use the space for that). For many years my mother has carried out her hobby of gardening there. We received new neighbors approximately 1.5 years ago. For the longest time, they would be throwing parties that would leak over to the AMs of the next day, as well as do renovations. While being understanding, it got to a point where my mum couldn't take the noise anymore at night. After numerous attempts to contact our new neighbours to decrease the noise of their parties, she finally made a noise complaint to a city. Parties started to occur less frequently.
THEN came the REALLY noisy stuff. The majority of my neighbors' renovation was to finish the basement. It was during this time when OUR house would start to shake at times. Aside from the fact that this distracted my mum from doing her (remote) job, it drew a concern as to what could possibly be happening in their basement that would cause OUR house to shake. Again, she reached out to them numerous times, with vague answers. And again my mother filed an anonymous complaint.
Turned out, they did not have the permits for the type of construction they were doing in the basement. They got super-peeved at us, as they now were delayed and had to spend a bit more money.
Anyways, fast forward to 1.5 months ago, I'm helping mum with gardening stuff. The male neighbor (of the couple) decides to approach us. He decides to "apologize" and be the "bettebigger person". Following his apology though, he makes a complaint about one of our planter boxes, the one that borders the property line between us. He says that some of the wood pieces are falling off/poking out onto his property (fair, though my mum reckons he purposely took some of the pieces of, but that's speculation). He decides to give us an ultimatum: either move the planter box more onto our property (an inch our two, but with soil and wood, probably weighs a ton, so not happening), repair the boards, or destroy it. Otherwise he will complain to the city that the planter box is on his property. So.... he's still a little butthurt that we complained to the city of his actions, and wants to have something over us.
But my mum remained positive. Understanding that the outer pieces of the planter box ARE weathered (some scrap 2x4s, some decent pieces of wood), she set out to buy sheets of new plywood that would be weather-proofed, and would replace those pieces after I took them out and drilled the sheets in.
This evening we were measuring the dimensions of the planter box to figure out what lengths I would need to cut the plywood. To make one of these measurements, we had to step into our neighbors' driveway. He saw what we were doing, and asked us to get of his property. We explained what we were doing, to which he responded "unless YOU have a permit to do this, the only thing you can do is destroy it, otherwise I'll be filing my own complaints" (not verbatim, but that was the gist of it). My mum and him at a little tiff, but I got the last of the measurements for us to then leave his driveway.
I am not a confrontational person; I'm not good at aggression or telling strangers to fuck off. But I do not like the fact that I have this intimidating dude trying to scare my old mum and threatening her to destroy something she's worked years on. Furthermore, I have the following contentions:

• The planter box on the property line border was there WAY before the new neighbors bought the place. To me, the fact that they bought it at all should also be an okay/acknowledgement of the placement of the box on the property line; unless something happened to it that ACTUALLY affects them (eg breaks and soil spills over), they shouldn't (?) have a problem.
  
• We reached out multiple times to them, trying to be civil; if they responded in kind, reassuring us in some fashion, I believe we wouldn't be in this mess, especially if you're doing things you ought to get a permit for. I get taking a few shortcuts here and there, but not a good idea trying to do so if you can't cover your ass/be cautious
  
• I looked at City of Toronto's website (https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/building-construction/apply-for-a-building-permit/when-do-i-need-a-building-permit/), while it DEFINITELY says one is required when finishing a basement (so we were right to complain), don't think I see one particular about changing out wood for a planter box (which I am not considering an addition to the house, as a line of pots would basically be the same thing)
  
• I am borderline worried he'll try to go out of his way to get my mum in trouble
  
• How else are we gonna replace the old wood with new if we aren't on their property a little? We're specifically doing it because they don't want any of the old stuff breaking off into their driveway (potentially damaging their capop a tire, according to them) in the future. It's gotta make sense!
  
• I think he was "trying to be nice/bigger person", but he just wants to make as sad for making him spend more money and time by making us destroy our own stuff. So much for self-improvement on his part I guess.
  

Anyways, I think we'll try our best to fix up the box as efficiently as we can. We won't be covert about it, but to avoid the neighbors yelling at us again, not gonna loudly advertise it. Just drill out screws, take pieces out, and drill in a big sheet. But does anyone want to chime in on what rights I have if this guy calls the cops on us or makes a scene? Again, we're doing this at HIS request, and he's making it difficult to do. Or if you believe there is bias on my part, feel free to point it out! Free to answer questions as well. Hope I was able to get my points across. Any law stuff would help also!

Some preliminary info:
My mum and I have lived in our townhouse for over 10 years. During that time, we have constructed planter boxes that are set on our driveway (we don't own a car, so we use the space for that). For many years my mother has carried out her hobby of gardening there. We received new neighbors approximately 1.5 years ago. For the longest time, they would be throwing parties that would leak over to the AMs of the next day, as well as do renovations. While being understanding, it got to a point where my mum couldn't take the noise anymore at night. After numerous attempts to contact our new neighbours to decrease the noise of their parties, she finally made a noise complaint to a city. Parties started to occur less frequently.
THEN came the REALLY noisy stuff. The majority of my neighbors' renovation was to finish the basement. It was during this time when OUR house would start to shake at times. Aside from the fact that this distracted my mum from doing her (remote) job, it drew a concern as to what could possibly be happening in their basement that would cause OUR house to shake. Again, she reached out to them numerous times, with vague answers. And again my mother filed an anonymous complaint.
Turned out, they did not have the permits for the type of construction they were doing in the basement. They got super-peeved at us, as they now were delayed and had to spend a bit more money.
Anyways, fast forward to 1.5 months ago, I'm helping mum with gardening stuff. The male neighbor (of the couple) decides to approach us. He decides to "apologize" and be the "bettebigger person". Following his apology though, he makes a complaint about one of our planter boxes, the one that borders the property line between us. He says that some of the wood pieces are falling off/poking out onto his property (fair, though my mum reckons he purposely took some of the pieces of, but that's speculation). He decides to give us an ultimatum: either move the planter box more onto our property (an inch our two, but with soil and wood, probably weighs a ton, so not happening), repair the boards, or destroy it. Otherwise he will complain to the city that the planter box is on his property. So.... he's still a LITTLE angry that we complained to the city of his actions, and wants to have something over us.
But my mum remained positive. Understanding that the outer pieces of the planter box ARE weathered (some scrap 2x4s, some decent pieces of wood), she set out to buy sheets of new plywood that would be weather-proofed, and would replace those pieces after I took them out and drilled the sheets in.
This evening we were measuring the dimensions of the planter box to figure out what lengths I would need to cut the plywood. To make one of these measurements, we had to step into our neighbors' driveway. He saw what we were doing, and asked us to get of his property. We explained what we were doing, to which he responded "unless YOU have a permit to do this, the only thing you can do is destroy it, otherwise I'll be filing my own complaints" (not verbatim, but that was the gist of it). My mum and him at a little tiff, but I got the last of the measurements for us to then leave his driveway.
I am not a confrontational person; I'm not good at aggression. But I do not like the fact that I have this intimidating dude trying to scare my old mum and threatening her to destroy something she's worked years on. Furthermore, I have the following contentions:

• The planter box on the property line border was there WAY before the new neighbors bought the place. To me, the fact that they bought it at all should also be an okay/acknowledgement of the placement of the box on the property line; unless something happened to it that ACTUALLY affects them (eg breaks and soil spills over), they shouldn't (?) have a problem.
  
• We reached out multiple times to them, trying to be civil; if they responded in kind, reassuring us in some fashion, I believe we wouldn't be in this mess, especially if you're doing things you ought to get a permit for. I get taking a few shortcuts here and there, but not a good idea trying to do so if you can't be cautious
  
• I looked at City of Toronto's website (https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/building-construction/apply-for-a-building-permit/when-do-i-need-a-building-permit/), while it DEFINITELY says one is required when finishing a basement (so we were right to complain), don't think I see one particular about changing out wood for a planter box (which I am not considering an addition to the house, as a line of pots would basically be the same thing)
  
• I am borderline worried he'll try to go out of his way to get my mum in trouble
  
• How else are we gonna replace the old wood with new if we aren't on their property a little? We're specifically doing it because they don't want any of the old stuff breaking off into their driveway (potentially damaging their capop a tire, according to them) in the future. It's gotta make sense!
  
• I think he was "trying to be nice/bigger person", but he just wants to make as sad for making him spend more money and time by making us destroy our own stuff. So much for self-improvement on his part I guess.
  

Anyways, I think we'll try our best to fix up the box as efficiently as we can. We won't be covert about it, but to avoid the neighbors yelling at us again, not gonna loudly advertise it. Just drill out screws, take pieces out, and drill in a big sheet. But does anyone want to chime in on what rights I have if this guy calls the cops on us or makes a scene? Again, we're doing this at HIS request, and he's making it difficult to do. Or if you believe there is bias on my part, feel free to point it out! Free to answer questions as well. Hope I was able to get my points across. Any law stuff would help also!

• Spawn system is unbearable after extended play time. Half of the game is just deathmatch fighting at spawn in which kind of defeats the purpose of an open world style game. Please add many other spawn points with a wider range on the sides of maps or make a dynamic spawn system that detects other player proximity and moves your spawn based on range so there is at least a buffer of room to get away. I know this is hard to do on farm based on the map size but currently this spawn system is going to turn off a lot of players since the game is built around hardcore loss of gear.
• Initial recoil bounce of guns should be removed/reworked. This was already hated in tarkov for years and makes semi auto guns really unviable compared to full auto. Please change this to be a more consistent curve of recoil instead of just a barrel bounce. Think Valorant (EDIT) but more realistic based on attachments, etc.
• Jumping and shooting with full accuracy (super manning corners) needs to be nerfed. This is especially bad with scavs who have zero reason to lose anything and can still melt your legs/face with stock guns. I do enjoy the more arcadey movement but please don't make this into a call of duty 360 noscope type of game. If your feet are off of the ground your gun recoil should be double in my opinion. Easy fix.
• Full auto spread needs increased (lazer hipfire is bad FPS design). Currently full auto guns are way too strong in terms of being able to just hipfire horizontally and not really aim the gun. I do not want the goofy solutions that tarkov did like durability and jamming to make full auto not so dominant. Just make the recoil realistic in terms of the first few shots are accurate where aiming and then if you continue full auto the cone spreads. This is a known design that works in just about every single FPS game. Keep the realistic ballistics of course but also make the recoil patterns realistic as well. If you want an FPS shooter that is skill based than the player should be controlling the recoil not some arbitrary system. The current design just promotes cheesing as players will shoot the first 2-3 shots prefire into the corner of a wall knowing by the time they strafe out the recoil is "fixed" and they laser. It is just bad design overall for a game that wants tactical realism.
• Scav detection radius is absurd. I am not sure if it changes based on your player level but after hitting level 30 scavs see me from EVERYWHERE. I am talking like a 150m radius if I am anywhere near them I am spotted. They very often comm and rush at me from behind cover or non line of sight where they really should have no idea of my exact location other than general footsteps. Sniper scavs on valley are just as bad and I have been hit through trees at like 300m out just randomly moving through cover. Either please reduce the detection radius or make thier shots a bit less accurate. Sniper scav will basically kill you by shot 3 if you do not have hard cover or some serious armor. I have even multiple times (im taking like every other raid) will see a scav in the distance just straight rushing at my location when I have not fired a shot or given any target inidcator and I will just watch them path right up to me like a magnet. Its both immersion breaking and annoying as hell.
• Scav tanking expensive ammo. This one drives me insane. If you want to make scavs be stronger by increasing health pools than please make some kind of visual change to thier clothing to look armored, especially the face. They dont actually have to have lootable gear obviously to keep the loot balance but there is nothing more immersion breaking or frustrating than shooting a scav with a baseball cap in the face and they just flinch and run off. This is one of the worst design aspects of tarkov and how BSG uses hp pools to balance the boss/AI and it kills me to see it copied in ABI. Please ask the art team to do some kind of pass even making the scavs have ghetto looking armor like something out of the game Rust to keep with the lore feel.
• Higher tier 6-7 7.62x54R does same TTK hits as lvl 5 making the cost pointless in many hours of sniping with a mosin. So basically T5 ammo costs roughly $1k. It on average will two shot body a naked and three shot a geared player with L4+ armor. Headshots are one hit kill. T6 and T7 mosin ammo again from my extensive tesing does the exact same damage counts in terms of hits. So you are paying an extra $1k per round to get the same bullet DPS. Of course yes these rounds will shine vs level6+ armor players but I do not think any ammo worth $1k+ per round should take more than two body shots for L4 armor players. There are a few exceptions to this but I have used mosin on Valley for multiple 10+ hour sessions and something is weird with the 7.62x54R T6 and T7 ammo class.
• Shoulder swap for weapons to left peek. This is an easy addition and honestly should be in any tactical FPS game that requires CQB fighting. Please add this for a huge quality of life.
• Option in player list that can be enabled so whatever team mate gets the killing blow can only loot that body who they killed locking out the rest of the team. This would greatly help with players not wanting to join random squads and get thier stuff taken after putting in the hard work of securing the kill. Not a perfect solution but would greatly help stopping thieves. Yes would players try to "last hit" to steal your loot? Sure. Would this system work 10x better than currently just watching a teammate rat your gear? Absolutely. Again make this a selecable option in the lobby so party leaders can choose and everyone wins. You don't want that option just don't enable it.
• Allow ANY keyboard key to be rebound. Many of us use custom key binds that are shared across multiple game titles and having to "relearn" the keys for this game because certain keys like ALT can not be bound to crouch for example makes the player controller feel really bad. A normal person is not going to just unlearn 15+ years of gaming keyboard binds and so every time there is a panicked firefight I naturally revert to the expected keys and it gets me killed. Super annoying and again very basic fix to allow those keys to be rebound.

My main concern right now is that these types of changes I have listed have taken tarkov YEARS to update. So what I do not want to happen is players having to camp the ABI patch notes for another 2-3 years just to get back those quality of life changes missing in this game that tarkov now has resolved. I do expect ABI to be much more efficient with the patch releases but none the less for someone who has played tarkov for many years some of these changes feel like "starting over with an old version" waiting for the same fixes that already exist in tarkov. They copied a lot of the bad design aspects of tarkov along with the good in my opinion.
At the end of the day this game is fantastic and really blends the casual and tactical mix to hit a wide audience. If you do not currently have beta access please do understand watching the game really does not do it justice. You have to play it to feel all of the small quality of life changes that make this title rival tarkov. I personally could care less if the game is copied or not. They did it better and BSG had 6 years to get thier act together. Someone like myself has been praying for this exact mix of extraction for a long time now. As long as the monetization does not impede the hardcore looting aspect AKA buying gear than I think this game will be just fine for the long run. Good luck out there!

This beef has, for me and I believe many of us, made me want to listen to Kendrick's previous works with the context of what we know post-Aubrey-cide. If you haven't yet, I'd definitely recommend going back to songs like DNA., ELEMENT., The Heart Part IV, N95, Rich Spirit... The list goes on, and I'm having a lot of fun discovering new layers of songs I've known well for years. The consistency of Kenny's artistry and values have really held up over time.
I did want to come back to the song "For Free??" though, because I feel like the Lucien reading for the character "Lucy" could have some more credibility now, and may even help us understand some of the things going on in the aftermath of Kendrick's four tracks.
Now obviously, in "For Free??", Lucy is Satan/Lucifer and serves to continue the characterization of the temptations of fame and wealth coming for Kendrick (or the character, whatever) throughout his journey through the rap industry. However, people have pointed out for years that "Lucy" could also be personifying Lucian Grange, the CEO of Universal Music Group.
I think when you consider the specific subject matter of Kendrick's initial parlay into the rap industry, it's a pretty good working theory, and frankly, an insanely clever way of working in some larger truths about the music industry while perfectly sticking to the themes of TPAB. But after seeing some of the preliminary fallout from this beef (which I think we can all agree goes a bit beyond music at this point), let's look at two lines in particular that stood out to me in the context of Lucien, Drake, and Kendrick:
"Lucy got million stories About these rappers that I came after when they was boring"

• This was the line that really got me thinking - the stories thing is hitting differently after the past two weeks. Considering Lucien and read in a darker way, "stories" could allude to Lucien/UMG using illicit temptations to their stars to get "stories" of them, thereby allowing them to more easily extort them and control their behavioreleases. Why DOES Drake drop underwhelming projects every year??

"Lucy just want your trust and loyalty, avoiding me? It's not so easy, I'm at these functions accordingly"

• Kendrick has clearly tried to resist Lucien thus far "avoiding me?", but UMG's power, and perhaps some compromised artists, are at all of these functions. Probably the same "(No More) Parties in LA" that Kendrick/Kanye talk about in that song (coincidence that that is their last collaboration before the "Like That (Remix)" ?? (I know Ye getting clowned for that but him spewing shit about Lucien is kind of what made me want to dig into this in the first place))

"Lucy gon' call you even when Lucy know you love your Father"

• "love your Father" could honestly be read a bit differently here than simply God, especially considering DUCKWORTH. and some of the father-themes throughout MM&TBS. Was Kendrick less susceptible to the dark side of the music industry's temptations because of his father's influence? I think you could make a good case. Drake had Dennis lmao

Anyways, sorry for the long post, but wanted to de-compress from the PE drama by listening to TPAB and couldn't help be fascinated by this angle of interpretation. I think Kendrick has really been making allusions to some of the nastier problems in the industry for a while. Have you found any similar bits of old songs that could be re-contextualized now?

Phillies @ Mets - Mon, May 13

Game Status: Final - Score: 5-4 Phillies

Links & Info

• MLB Gameday
• Game Graphs
• Savant Gamefeed

	Phillies Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Merrifield - LF	4	0	0	0	1	0	3	.197	.265	.316
2	Bohm - 3B	4	0	0	1	0	1	0	.329	.394	.520
3	Harper - 1B	5	1	1	0	0	3	3	.259	.381	.496
4	Castellanos, N - DH	4	0	0	0	1	2	1	.204	.273	.312
5	Stott - SS	4	2	2	2	0	0	0	.277	.371	.454
6	Sosa, E - SS	3	1	2	0	0	1	0	.311	.415	.533
	a-Clemens - 2B	2	1	1	0	0	1	1	.333	.333	.933
7	Marsh - RF	2	0	1	0	2	0	2	.252	.301	.439
8	Rojas - CF	3	0	0	1	0	1	4	.230	.275	.327
	b-Schwarber - PH	1	0	0	0	0	1	2	.216	.319	.399
	Pache - CF	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.233	.361	.267
9	Stubbs - C	4	0	1	1	0	0	3	.133	.235	.133
	Totals	36	5	8	5	4	10	19

Phillies
a-Singled for Sosa, E in the 9th. b-Struck out for Rojas in the 9th.
BATTING: 2B: Sosa, E (3, Manaea). HR: Stott (4, 9th inning off Díaz, 0 on, 0 out). TB: Clemens; Harper; Marsh; Sosa, E 3; Stott 5; Stubbs. RBI: Bohm (33); Rojas (13); Stott 2 (25); Stubbs (1). 2-out RBI: Bohm; Stubbs. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Merrifield 3; Rojas; Harper 2. SF: Stott. Team RISP: 1-for-11. Team LOB: 8.
FIELDING: E: Sánchez, C (3, missed catch); Bohm (6, fielding).

	Mets Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Nimmo - LF	4	0	0	0	1	1	2	.227	.374	.418
2	Marte, S - RF	5	1	1	0	0	0	2	.253	.298	.373
3	Lindor - SS	4	0	0	0	1	0	0	.209	.278	.392
4	Alonso - 1B	4	2	2	0	1	0	0	.230	.314	.461
5	Martinez, J - DH	4	1	3	2	1	1	0	.302	.351	.434
	1-Stewart, D - PR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.206	.389	.426
6	Baty - 3B	2	0	0	0	0	2	4	.236	.299	.325
	a-Taylor, T - PH	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	.269	.293	.397
	Wendle - 3B	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	.235	.257	.265
7	Bader - CF	4	0	1	0	1	2	6	.265	.314	.319
8	McNeil - 2B	5	0	0	0	0	2	8	.230	.310	.295
9	Nido - C	4	0	1	1	0	0	0	.205	.239	.295
	Totals	38	4	8	3	5	8	24

Mets
a-Reached on a fielder's choice for Baty in the 7th. 1-Ran for Martinez, J in the 10th.
BATTING: 2B: Alonso (8, Sánchez, C); Martinez, J 2 (4, Sánchez, C, Sánchez, C); Marte, S (6, Sánchez, C). TB: Alonso 3; Bader; Marte, S 2; Martinez, J 5; Nido. RBI: Martinez, J 2 (5); Nido (2). 2-out RBI: Nido. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Baty; Marte, S; Nimmo; McNeil 4. SAC: Baty. Team RISP: 3-for-16. Team LOB: 11.

Phillies Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
Sánchez, C	5.2	7	3	3	3	5	0	108-70	3.43
Domínguez	0.2	1	1	0	2	0	0	25-13	7.07
Soto, G	0.2	0	0	0	0	1	0	10-9	6.75
Ruiz, J	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	0	10-7	3.60
Kerkering (W, 1-0)	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	0	12-10	1.54
Alvarado (S, 8)	1.0	0	0	0	0	0	0	9-7	3.57
Totals	10.0	8	4	3	5	8	0

Mets Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
Manaea	6.0	4	1	1	1	6	0	100-64	3.05
López, Jo (H, 6)	0.1	2	1	1	0	0	0	9-4	2.84
Ottavino (H, 6)	1.2	0	0	0	0	1	0	11-10	3.31
Díaz (BS, 2)	1.0	2	2	2	2	2	1	30-16	3.24
Reid-Foley (L, 1-1)	1.0	0	1	0	1	1	0	15-9	0.00
Totals	10.0	8	5	4	4	10	1

Game Info
WP: Reid-Foley.
HBP: Bohm (by Díaz).
Pitches-strikes: Sánchez, C 108-70; Domínguez 25-13; Soto, G 10-9; Ruiz, J 10-7; Kerkering 12-10; Alvarado 9-7; Manaea 100-64; López, Jo 9-4; Ottavino 11-10; Díaz 30-16; Reid-Foley 15-9.
Groundouts-flyouts: Sánchez, C 8-2; Domínguez 1-0; Soto, G 1-1; Ruiz, J 1-1; Kerkering 1-0; Alvarado 1-0; Manaea 3-6; López, Jo 1-0; Ottavino 2-0; Díaz 0-0; Reid-Foley 0-1.
Batters faced: Sánchez, C 27; Domínguez 5; Soto, G 3; Ruiz, J 3; Kerkering 3; Alvarado 3; Manaea 23; López, Jo 3; Ottavino 5; Díaz 8; Reid-Foley 3.
Inherited runners-scored: Domínguez 1-0; Soto, G 2-1; Ottavino 1-0.
Umpires: HP: Gabe Morales. 1B: Ryan Additon. 2B: Brian Knight. 3B: Chris Guccione.
Weather: 61 degrees, Partly Cloudy.
Wind: 10 mph, Out To RF.
First pitch: 7:11 PM.
T: 3:10.
Att: 28,086.
Venue: Citi Field.
May 13, 2024

Inning	Scoring Play	Score
Top 2	Garrett Stubbs singles on a soft bunt ground ball to second baseman Jeff McNeil. Bryson Stott scores. Edmundo Sosa to 3rd.	1-0 PHI
Bottom 2	J.D. Martinez doubles (3) on a line drive to left fielder Whit Merrifield. Pete Alonso scores.	1-1
Bottom 2	Tomás Nido singles on a ground ball to center fielder Johan Rojas. J.D. Martinez scores. Harrison Bader to 3rd.	2-1 NYM
Bottom 3	J.D. Martinez walks. Starling Marte scores. Francisco Lindor to 3rd. Pete Alonso to 2nd.	3-1 NYM
Top 7	Johan Rojas grounds out, shortstop Francisco Lindor to first baseman Pete Alonso. Edmundo Sosa scores. Brandon Marsh to 3rd.	3-2 NYM
Bottom 7	Tyrone Taylor reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by third baseman Alec Bohm. Pete Alonso scores. J.D. Martinez to 2nd. Fielding error by third baseman Alec Bohm.	4-2 NYM
Top 9	Bryson Stott homers (4) on a fly ball to right center field.	4-3 NYM
Top 9	Mets challenged (hit by pitch), call on the field was upheld: Alec Bohm hit by pitch. Kody Clemens scores. Brandon Marsh to 3rd. Whit Merrifield to 2nd.	4-4
Top 10	Bryson Stott out on a sacrifice fly to right fielder Starling Marte. Bryce Harper scores.	5-4 PHI

Team	Highlight
PHI	Bryce Harper hit in helmet by Tomás Nido's throw (00:00:27)
NYM	J.D. Martinez's RBI double (00:00:29)
NYM	Tomás Nido's RBI single (00:00:18)
PHI	Cristopher Sánchez strikes out five batters (00:01:03)
NYM	Sean Manaea fans six batters against the Phillies (00:01:05)
PHI	Bryson Stott's solo home run (4) (00:00:29)
PHI	Alec Bohm gets hit-by-pitch, ties the game (00:00:28)
PHI	Kody Clemens' great leaping catch (00:00:27)
PHI	Bryson Stott plates go-ahead run in 10th (00:00:27)
PHI	Phillies rally late against the Mets (00:01:23)

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10		R	H	E	LOB
Phillies	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	2	1		5	8	2	8
Mets	0	2	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	0		4	8	0	11

Decisions

• Winner: Orion Kerkering (1-0, 1.54)
• Loser: Sean Reid-Foley (1-1, 0.00)
• Save: José Alvarado (8, 3.57)

Division Scoreboard

MIA 5 @ DET 6 - Final
CHC 0 @ ATL 2 - Final
WSH 0 @ CWS 0 - Postponed
Next Phillies Game: Tue, May 14, 01:10 PM EDT @ Mets
^{Last Updated: 05/13/2024 11:08:06 PM EDT}

Phillies @ Mets - Mon, May 13

Game Status: Game Over - Score: 5-4 Phillies

Links & Info

• MLB Gameday
• Game Graphs
• Savant Gamefeed

	Phillies Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Merrifield - LF	4	0	0	0	1	0	3	.197	.265	.316
2	Bohm - 3B	4	0	0	1	0	1	0	.329	.394	.520
3	Harper - 1B	5	1	1	0	0	3	3	.259	.381	.496
4	Castellanos, N - DH	4	0	0	0	1	2	1	.204	.273	.312
5	Stott - SS	4	2	2	2	0	0	0	.277	.371	.454
6	Sosa, E - SS	3	1	2	0	0	1	0	.311	.415	.533
	a-Clemens - 2B	2	1	1	0	0	1	1	.333	.333	.933
7	Marsh - RF	2	0	1	0	2	0	2	.252	.301	.439
8	Rojas - CF	3	0	0	1	0	1	4	.230	.275	.327
	b-Schwarber - PH	1	0	0	0	0	1	2	.216	.319	.399
	Pache - CF	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.233	.361	.267
9	Stubbs - C	4	0	1	1	0	0	3	.133	.235	.133
	Totals	36	5	8	5	4	10	19

Phillies
a-Singled for Sosa, E in the 9th. b-Struck out for Rojas in the 9th.
BATTING: 2B: Sosa, E (3, Manaea). HR: Stott (4, 9th inning off Díaz, 0 on, 0 out). TB: Clemens; Harper; Marsh; Sosa, E 3; Stott 5; Stubbs. RBI: Bohm (33); Rojas (13); Stott 2 (25); Stubbs (1). 2-out RBI: Bohm; Stubbs. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Merrifield 3; Rojas; Harper 2. SF: Stott. Team RISP: 1-for-11. Team LOB: 8.
FIELDING: E: Sánchez, C (3, missed catch); Bohm (6, fielding).

	Mets Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Nimmo - LF	4	0	0	0	1	1	2	.227	.374	.418
2	Marte, S - RF	5	1	1	0	0	0	2	.253	.298	.373
3	Lindor - SS	4	0	0	0	1	0	0	.209	.278	.392
4	Alonso - 1B	4	2	2	0	1	0	0	.230	.314	.461
5	Martinez, J - DH	4	1	3	2	1	1	0	.302	.351	.434
	Stewart, D - PR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.206	.389	.426
6	Baty - 3B	2	0	0	0	0	2	4	.236	.299	.325
	a-Taylor, T - PH	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	.269	.293	.397
	Wendle - 3B	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	.235	.257	.265
7	Bader - CF	4	0	1	0	1	2	6	.265	.314	.319
8	McNeil - 2B	5	0	0	0	0	2	8	.230	.310	.295
9	Nido - C	4	0	1	1	0	0	0	.205	.239	.295
	Totals	38	4	8	3	5	8	24

Mets
a-Reached on a fielder's choice for Baty in the 7th.
BATTING: 2B: Alonso (8, Sánchez, C); Martinez, J 2 (4, Sánchez, C, Sánchez, C); Marte, S (6, Sánchez, C). TB: Alonso 3; Bader; Marte, S 2; Martinez, J 5; Nido. RBI: Martinez, J 2 (5); Nido (2). 2-out RBI: Nido. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Baty; Marte, S; Nimmo; McNeil 4. SAC: Baty. Team RISP: 3-for-16. Team LOB: 11.

Phillies Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
Sánchez, C	5.2	7	3	3	3	5	0	108-70	3.43
Domínguez	0.2	1	1	0	2	0	0	25-13	7.07
Soto, G	0.2	0	0	0	0	1	0	10-9	6.75
Ruiz, J	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	0	10-7	3.60
Kerkering (W, 1-0)	1.0	0	0	0	0	1	0	12-10	1.54
Alvarado (S, 8)	1.0	0	0	0	0	0	0	9-7	3.57
Totals	10.0	8	4	3	5	8	0

Mets Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
Manaea	6.0	4	1	1	1	6	0	100-64	3.05
López, Jo (H, 6)	0.1	2	1	1	0	0	0	9-4	2.84
Ottavino (H, 6)	1.2	0	0	0	0	1	0	11-10	3.31
Díaz (BS, 2)	1.0	2	2	2	2	2	1	30-16	3.24
Reid-Foley (L, 1-1)	1.0	0	1	0	1	1	0	15-9	0.00
Totals	10.0	8	5	4	4	10	1

Game Info
WP: Reid-Foley.
HBP: Bohm (by Díaz).
Pitches-strikes: Sánchez, C 108-70; Domínguez 25-13; Soto, G 10-9; Ruiz, J 10-7; Kerkering 12-10; Alvarado 9-7; Manaea 100-64; López, Jo 9-4; Ottavino 11-10; Díaz 30-16; Reid-Foley 15-9.
Groundouts-flyouts: Sánchez, C 8-2; Domínguez 1-0; Soto, G 1-1; Ruiz, J 1-1; Kerkering 1-0; Alvarado 1-0; Manaea 3-6; López, Jo 1-0; Ottavino 2-0; Díaz 0-0; Reid-Foley 0-1.
Batters faced: Sánchez, C 27; Domínguez 5; Soto, G 3; Ruiz, J 3; Kerkering 3; Alvarado 3; Manaea 23; López, Jo 3; Ottavino 5; Díaz 8; Reid-Foley 3.
Inherited runners-scored: Domínguez 1-0; Soto, G 2-1; Ottavino 1-0.
Umpires: HP: Gabe Morales. 1B: Ryan Additon. 2B: Brian Knight. 3B: Chris Guccione.
Weather: 61 degrees, Partly Cloudy.
Wind: 10 mph, Out To RF.
First pitch: 7:11 PM.
T: 3:10.
Att: 28,086.
Venue: Citi Field.
May 13, 2024

Inning	Scoring Play	Score
Top 2	Garrett Stubbs singles on a soft bunt ground ball to second baseman Jeff McNeil. Bryson Stott scores. Edmundo Sosa to 3rd.	1-0 PHI
Bottom 2	J.D. Martinez doubles (3) on a line drive to left fielder Whit Merrifield. Pete Alonso scores.	1-1
Bottom 2	Tomás Nido singles on a ground ball to center fielder Johan Rojas. J.D. Martinez scores. Harrison Bader to 3rd.	2-1 NYM
Bottom 3	J.D. Martinez walks. Starling Marte scores. Francisco Lindor to 3rd. Pete Alonso to 2nd.	3-1 NYM
Top 7	Johan Rojas grounds out, shortstop Francisco Lindor to first baseman Pete Alonso. Edmundo Sosa scores. Brandon Marsh to 3rd.	3-2 NYM
Bottom 7	Tyrone Taylor reaches on a fielder's choice, fielded by third baseman Alec Bohm. Pete Alonso scores. J.D. Martinez to 2nd. Fielding error by third baseman Alec Bohm.	4-2 NYM
Top 9	Bryson Stott homers (4) on a fly ball to right center field.	4-3 NYM
Top 9	Mets challenged (hit by pitch), call on the field was upheld: Alec Bohm hit by pitch. Kody Clemens scores. Brandon Marsh to 3rd. Whit Merrifield to 2nd.	4-4
Top 10	Bryson Stott out on a sacrifice fly to right fielder Starling Marte. Bryce Harper scores.	5-4 PHI

Team	Highlight
PHI	Johan Rojas drives in a run with an RBI groundout (00:00:22)
PHI	Cristopher Sánchez strikes out five batters (00:01:03)
NYM	Tyrone Taylor's RBI fielder's choice (00:00:29)
NYM	Sean Manaea fans six batters against the Phillies (00:01:05)
PHI	Bryson Stott's solo home run (4) (00:00:29)
PHI	Alec Bohm gets hit-by-pitch, ties the game (00:00:28)
PHI	Kody Clemens' great leaping catch (00:00:10)
PHI	Alec Bohm hit-by-pitch after further review (00:00:26)
PHI	Bryson Stott's go-ahead sacrifice fly (00:00:22)
NYM	Nick Castellanos caught stealing 2nd base, catcher Tomás Nido to shortstop Francisco Lindor. (00:00:08)

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10		R	H	E	LOB
Phillies	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	2	1		5	8	2	8
Mets	0	2	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	0		4	8	0	11

Decisions

• Winner: Orion Kerkering (1-0, 1.54)
• Loser: Sean Reid-Foley (1-1, 0.00)
• Save: José Alvarado (8, 3.57)

Division Scoreboard

MIA 5 @ DET 6 - Final
CHC 0 @ ATL 2 - Final
WSH 0 @ CWS 0 - Postponed
Next Mets Game: Tue, May 14, 01:10 PM EDT vs. Phillies
^{Posted: 05/13/2024 10:22:13 PM EDT}

Two years ago my rapist was found guilty of second degree rape in St. Mary's County, MD. Little did I know, that the neat end to my tragedy would hardly be over.
Sentencing, is the act in which the judge determines the punishment of the convicted felon. Usually felons are taken into custody and the time they spend in jail will later be considered part of whatever jail time they are issued. For me? The Judge allowed the man to have a ankle monitor until sentencing and rest at home. How did he spend his time? Well, he showed up to the soccer games I would've been at (luckily abroad at the time) and he got picked up at a party he lied about attending and was then held in jail until sentencing.
The sentencing happened nearly two months after the trial--but no one told me. The State's Attorney contacted me and informed me I had to drop everything to rush to the court to give my statement. I went first and because I was not prepared--didn't say half of what I wanted and wasn't nearly as eloquent as I wanted to be.
Afterwards, the judge allowed the Defense attorney to comment on my mental health because I had a therapist and then asked if I had ever been sexually assaulted before. Yes, this is not trial--he was already guilty--but the judge allowed me to be crossed anyway at the sentencing. Thankfully the States Attorney objected to that line of questioning and I got to listen to all his supporters sum my rapist up: He's good at soccer, he translates for the community, and he never raped them--so how bad was he really? And my rapist? Well, since he was found guilty he found god, saw he had an alcohol problem, and realized he would never get the life he wanted. Apologized to the judge, his parents, and supporters. Oh yea, and me!
The Judge deliberated and despite the Maryland minimum guidelines being 5 to 10 years--she gave him 18 months and included whatever time he already spent in jail. 10 months later, he was out reoffending against young girls. By the time the warrant went out, he knew he was done for and took his life in the parking lot by my apartment complex--did I mention he only spent three months out of jail and most of it was spent in my apartment complex with his significant other?
Thankfully, a corner apartment, locked doors, and a big, big dog made me feel a lot safer. Remember to get therapy! My therapist was crucial in my mental recovery. But to be honest, his death was the most freeing aspect of it all.
I'll never see him at the soccer field. Never see him turning the corner of a store. Never see his distinctive car flying across an intersection.
But it's never over. The uninformed from soccer mourned his suicide; I didn't have the heart to say he was a convicted rapist who raped me. His obituary was glowing--a loving, helpful, generous community man taken too young.
Then the judicial election. 1.5 years later I am still being dragged into this. When there was a question of the judge's competency in going so far below minimum guidelines for someone who immediately reoffended potentially multiple people/times--the judge's response was a mass text saying I was older than the victim, I had previously been consensual, and I was hiding it from my boyfriend.
??? I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative. After all, my boyfriend was my biggest support in all of it--I just didn't want him listening to me describe my rape? Also, last I checked a large portion of rapes are from former consensual relationships that don't take closed doors as an option.
Regardless, I wrote an Op-ed, connected with the Maryland Crime Victim's Resource Center to coordinate a release...and...nothing. No one wants to post it. I got one response that they claimed they researched for 7 hours but took only a quote on how disappointed I was about the outcome.
Why? Because politics are running behind the scenes. This judge was appointed by former governor Hogan who is running for Maryland senator and his daughter recently took post in the State Attorney's office.
Is my outcome common or to be expected? I guess not. But the next time you tell a rape victim go ahead and report your crime--this is what they get. Silenced.
That being said? Even with tape over my mouth and my hands tied behind my back, I don't regret a goddamn thing--except that I wasn't more vocal sooner.
Nevertheless, persist my friends.

Throwaway for above reason.
A few months ago, I took a new job with a new retail store opening in my area and was hired on as a third key. Everything started out ok when the schedule was 8-4 M-F, however, after the store actually opened and the schedule changed to opening/closing and weekend shifts - all of a sudden there was an issue with the assistant manager wanting to close.
For background information, I am a single, mid-20s single woman without children. The assistant manager came to me one afternoon asking to switch her one closing shift the upcoming week with my opening shift that day because closing shifts “make her tired” and she also referenced the fact that she is a mother, and that she needs to “get home to get kid, otherwise her husband has to take off work.”
I refused to switch shifts with her and honestly made up a reason as to why I couldn’t, even though I shouldn’t have felt like I needed to. I then went and reported this to the store manager, because she also disclosed to me that she claimed that she was told in her interview she would “never have to take a closing shift.” I presented this to the store manager and basically told him he needed to handle it, because I felt uncomfortable to have someone in a supervisor position come to me and ask me in a pressuring way to switch shifts.
The store manager was perfectly understandable of this, and he did speak to the assistant manager about it. However, she quickly figured out who spoke to him about it as I was the only one she had asked to switch shifts with. This then started some pretty extreme retaliation.
Despite being told not to talk to me one on one, the next day after being spoken to by the store manager, the assistant manager approached me and asked to speak privately in the office, without a witness. She approached me somewhat aggressively, and I had an uncomfortable feeling about this conversation. I agreed to talk to her there, however, on the way, I began recording the conversation on my phone. I live in a one-party recording state.
During this conversation, the assistant manager started the conversation by asking multiple times if “we can just keep this conversation a total secret, just between you and me” and then violated open door policy by telling me that I was incorrect to go to the store manager, that she “didn’t mean anything by asking to switch shifts” and if I was uncomfortable, I should have come and talked to her instead of going to my direct supervisor (the store manager). During the course of the conversation, I counted over 4 times that she said “next time don’t talk to SM name, just come talk to me” and told me I should be understanding to the fact that “she’s a mother” and why she wouldn’t want to close. It was a very uncomfortable and unprofessional conversation overall.
I of course reported this almost immediately to the store manager and showed him the recording. He agreed this was fully out of line and spoke to the assistant manager again asking why she approached me when specifically told not to. Not knowing the conversation was recorded, the assistant manager proceeded to lie and say she just “wanted to smooth things over” and made up a completely different narrative that what actually happened. She outright denied ever telling me I could not report anything to the store manager.
After this is when the retaliation started to come out in full swing. One of my job responsibilities is to visually merchandise the store. The next day when I came in for my shift, the assistant manager was tearing down and completely resetting a floor set I had just done the day prior. I asked very plainly “what are you doing?” And she immediately told me “I am not going to deal with your attitude today and I will send you home right now.” This was 20 minutes after I arrived for an 8 hour shift.
I walked away and went to the back office and interrupted the store manager who was in a district zoom meeting at the time and let him know the assistant manager was threatening to send me home. He left the meeting and then proceeded to “mediate” on the sales floor the rest of the day, as the assistant manager did not act out of pocket when under the direct supervision of the store manager.
Another notable incident was an act of attempted physical violence before the assistant manager was fired. I was in the back stock room with the inventory manager when the assistant manager, who was pushing a large rack on wheels of very heavy merchandise (I can’t be too specific as to what the merchandise was as I’m scared it may give away where I work, but this rack would have weighed 350+ lbs easily) burst through the back stock room swinging doors without warning into my direct path. I jumped out of the way with mere seconds to spare or I would have been run over and definitely injured at the speed she was going and yelled out “excuse me!” To try and illicit a response, just in case she did not see me there.
I got no response. No apology, no excuse me, just dead pan silence as she then stared at me as she went by. It felt VERY intentional. She even dropped off the merchandise at the back of the room, turned around and walked out without ever saying a word to me. The inventory manager even rushed over to me and asked if I was alright because she could see how aggressive it was.
The next incident involved the assistant manager threatening insubordination against me, and this is when I felt like she was using language to try and write me up for something. Over the weekend, the store manager (and NOT the assistant manager) completed a new visual set as directed by corporate. Since I was not present for it, I have been previously instructed by the store manager that if I feel there is a better option to fit the set to the corporate visual standard, I have the full power to make those changes behind him. This is because he prefers to set the floor set from the beginning himself and then let me go behind and tweak his work to “make it perfect.”
Since I was previously instructed to do this, when I came into work after the set had been changed, I then proceeded to “tweak” it. My honest contributions were changing the pants on one mannequin, swapping a necklace on another mannequin, and setting a hat shelf for a group of hats that were not set on the floor at all. While setting the hats, I was told that I immediately needed to stop what I was doing because “this floor set has already been set, so you changing it right now is insubordination.” I am smart enough to recognize when she adopted new vocabulary often seen in write ups that she was probably working on one. It was at this point I finally decided enough was enough, and I called HR.
The HR rep was very understanding and listened to my complaints. I do realize HR is there to protect the company more than anything, but with the hostile work environment she was creating I felt like she was a big liability to have on their hands. I complained about hostile work environment, retaliation, harassment, and discrimination because I was made to feel as if I should close because I’m childless. She told me she would investigate my claims and then report back.
To make a long story short, my suspicions were correct and the assistant manager has created an entire write up for my “attitude”that conveniently started the day after I told the store manager about the “private” conversation she had with me in the managers office. It took about a week from when I reported it, but HR did fire her for retaliation. I did not find out about the write up she had written until after she was fired.
There were a couple incidents in the week when HR was investigating her like her calling the district manager because I took our register money to the bank to get change as instructed by the store manager. She skipped calling the store manager entirely and just went straight to the district manager and attempted to make it seem as if I was stealing. The other incident involved her yelling in my face loudly at the register in front of multiple customers and calling me a liar because I corrected her on a work policy.
Once she was fired, she immediately started calling my personal cell phone multiple times. I did not answer. She then sent me a string of multiple threatening texts messages and also tried to say that my recording of our conversation was illegal (again, we live in a one-party recording state). She had a printed out copy of the law and I think is honestly dense enough to not understand that I am the one party to the recorded conversation, therefore making the recording not illegal. I told her to never text me again, and she then proceeded to get violent and threaten to fight me if I ever saw her again and call me multiple curse words. I decided to block her number, hoping that she’d move on.
The HR rep called to tell me they had “closed their investigation” and I’d be notified of the findings on my next shift, however I told the rep that I knew she was fired because she was calling me and sending me threatening text messages. IMO, the rep started to act indifferent and told me to “report it to my local authorities if I felt uncomfortable”
Now, over the past two weeks there has been an anonymous number calling the store asking to speak with me. I have yet to pick up one of these calls, however one of my coworkers did tell the person the first time that I was there. They asked to speak with me, and then when put on hold they immediately hung up. I was nervous she may try to show up, but nothing happened that I know of that night. I chalked it up to maybe it was just an actual customer.
However, today an anonymous number called again asking to speak with someone with my first name. We have two people who work there with my first name, so when my coworker asked “which one?” The anonymous caller immediately said my last name and described my physical features to a T. My coworker told the caller I wasn’t working that day, and they asked when I would return. She told them she doesn’t know the schedule so she can’t say, and then the caller hung up.
I have NEVER shared my last name with a customer, EVER and anyone who knows me well enough to know that information would just call my cell phone and definitely not from a blocked number. I have a strong suspicion this is her, although I’m extremely nervous as to why she would keep calling after it’s been weeks since she’s been fired.
What can I do to protect myself? Am I entitled to protection from my employer given the circumstances around her termination? Does this qualify for some kind of protective order? I genuinely do not feel safe going to work right now. I do not feel like I’ve been protected enough. I understand times are hard and the job market is tough, but she put herself in a position to be fired. The state of the economy makes me nervous that she may feel as if she doesn’t have anything to lose now.
TLDR: my assistant manager was fired for retaliation against me and is now threatening me and has physically harassed me in the past and is probably calling under a blocked number to get my work schedule.

Line Score - Game Over

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E	LOB
CHC	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	0	6
ATL	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0		2	10	0	10

Box Score

ATL		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
RF	Acuña Jr.	3	0	1	1	1	1	.253
2B	Albies	4	0	2	0	0	0	.274
DH	Ozuna	2	0	1	0	2	1	.329
1B	Olson	4	0	2	0	0	1	.209
LF	Duvall	4	0	1	0	0	1	.220
SS	Arcia, Or	4	0	0	0	0	2	.248
CF	Harris II, M	4	0	1	0	0	2	.258
C	d'Arnaud	4	1	1	0	0	1	.269
3B	Short	3	1	1	1	1	1	.105

ATL	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
López, R	5.0	2	0	0	2	4	71-50	1.34
Kerr	2.0	0	0	0	0	3	19-15	0.00
Lee, D	1.0	2	0	0	0	1	19-15	1.33
Minter	1.0	1	0	0	1	0	15-11	3.57

CHC		AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	BA
LF	Tauchman	4	0	1	0	0	0	.269
RF	Suzuki, S	4	0	1	0	0	0	.288
CF	Bellinger	4	0	1	0	0	1	.255
3B	Morel, C	3	0	0	0	1	2	.223
PR	Crow-Armstrong	0	0	0	0	0	0	.244
DH	Happ	4	0	0	0	0	3	.219
SS	Hoerner	3	0	0	0	1	0	.269
1B	Busch	2	0	1	0	0	0	.252
2B	Madrigal	1	0	0	0	0	1	.193
2B	Mastrobuoni	1	0	0	0	1	0	.150
1B	Wisdom	1	0	0	0	0	0	.310
C	Amaya	3	0	1	0	0	1	.195

CHC	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	P-S	ERA
Imanaga	5.0	7	0	0	3	8	98-58	0.96
Wesneski	3.0	3	2	2	1	2	53-33	2.10

Scoring Plays

Inning	Event	Score
B6	Zack Short doubles (1) on a line drive to right fielder Seiya Suzuki. Travis d'Arnaud scores.	1-0
B6	Ronald Acuña Jr. singles on a ground ball to left fielder Mike Tauchman. Zack Short scores.	2-0

Highlights

Description	Length
Bullpen availability for Atlanta, May 13 vs Cubs	0:07
Bullpen availability for Chicago, May 13 vs Braves	0:07
Fielding alignment for Atlanta, May 13 vs Cubs	0:11
Bench availability for Atlanta, May 13 vs Cubs	0:07
Bench availability for Chicago, May 13 vs Braves	0:07
Starting lineups for Cubs at Braves - May 13, 2024	0:09
Breaking down Reynaldo López's pitches	0:04
Reynaldo López's outing against the Cubs	0:22
Breaking down Shota Imanaga's pitches	0:04
Shota Imanaga's outing against the Braves	0:20
Matt Olson makes the catch at the dugout	0:23
Ronald Acuña Jr. is caught out at first after review	0:25
Ronald Acuña Jr. makes a leaping catch at the wall	0:22
Craig Counsell ejected for arguing a check swing	0:29
Shota Imanaga picks off Marcell Ozuna	0:08
Zack Short's RBI double	0:20
Ronald Acuña Jr.'s RBI single	0:18
Reynaldo López fans four batters in 5 innings	0:50
Shota Imanaga fans eight batters in 5 innings	1:22
Nico Hoerner flies out to center fielder Michael Harris II.	0:13

Decisions

Winning Pitcher	Losing Pitcher	Save
Kerr (1-0, 0.00 ERA)	Wesneski (2-2, 2.10 ERA)	Minter (1 SV, 3.57 ERA)

Game ended at 8:53 PM.

Cubs @ Braves - Mon, May 13

Game Status: Final - Score: 2-0 Braves

Links & Info

• MLB Gameday
• Game Graphs
• Savant Gamefeed

	Cubs Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Tauchman - LF	4	0	1	0	0	0	0	.269	.401	.420
2	Suzuki, S - RF	4	0	1	0	0	0	2	.288	.349	.466
3	Bellinger - CF	4	0	1	0	0	1	1	.255	.336	.491
4	Morel, C - 3B	3	0	0	0	1	2	1	.223	.308	.439
	1-Crow-Armstrong - PR	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.244	.286	.356
5	Happ - DH	4	0	0	0	0	3	2	.219	.333	.301
6	Hoerner - SS	3	0	0	0	1	0	1	.269	.361	.391
7	Busch - 1B	2	0	1	0	0	0	1	.252	.316	.474
	a-Madrigal - 2B	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	.193	.258	.246
8	Mastrobuoni - 2B	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	.150	.261	.200
	b-Wisdom - 1B	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	.310	.429	.655
9	Amaya - C	3	0	1	0	0	1	2	.195	.261	.280
	Totals	30	0	5	0	3	8	10

Cubs
a-Struck out for Busch in the 8th. b-Flied out for Mastrobuoni in the 8th. 1-Ran for Morel, C in the 9th.
BATTING: TB: Amaya; Bellinger; Busch; Suzuki, S; Tauchman. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Amaya; Suzuki, S; Hoerner. GIDP: Happ. Team RISP: 0-for-4. Team LOB: 6.
FIELDING: Pickoffs: Imanaga 2 (Acuña Jr. at 1st base, Albies at 1st base).

	Braves Batters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Acuña Jr. - RF	3	0	1	1	1	1	3	.253	.364	.353
2	Albies - 2B	4	0	2	0	0	0	2	.274	.338	.419
3	Ozuna - DH	2	0	1	0	2	1	1	.329	.413	.636
4	Olson - 1B	4	0	2	0	0	1	3	.209	.319	.367
5	Duvall - LF	4	0	1	0	0	1	4	.220	.309	.356
6	Arcia, Or - SS	4	0	0	0	0	2	2	.248	.273	.411
7	Harris II, M - CF	4	0	1	0	0	2	0	.258	.300	.371
8	d'Arnaud - C	4	1	1	0	0	1	2	.269	.349	.527
9	Short - 3B	3	1	1	1	1	1	0	.105	.292	.158
	Totals	32	2	10	2	4	10	17

Braves
BATTING: 2B: d'Arnaud (9, Wesneski); Short (1, Wesneski). TB: Acuña Jr.; Albies 2; d'Arnaud 2; Duvall; Harris II, M; Olson 2; Ozuna; Short 2. RBI: Acuña Jr. (11); Short (1). 2-out RBI: Acuña Jr.; Short. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Acuña Jr. 2; Olson; Duvall. Team RISP: 2-for-6. Team LOB: 10.
FIELDING: DP: (Arcia, Or-Albies-Olson).

Cubs Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
Imanaga	5.0	7	0	0	3	8	0	98-58	0.96
Wesneski (L, 2-2)	3.0	3	2	2	1	2	0	53-33	2.10
Totals	8.0	10	2	2	4	10	0

Braves Pitchers	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	P-S	ERA
López, R	5.0	2	0	0	2	4	0	71-50	1.34
Kerr (W, 1-0)	2.0	0	0	0	0	3	0	19-15	0.00
Lee, D (H, 2)	1.0	2	0	0	0	1	0	19-15	1.33
Minter (S, 1)	1.0	1	0	0	1	0	0	15-11	3.57
Totals	9.0	5	0	0	3	8	0

Game Info
WP: López, R.
Pitch timer violations: López, R (pitcher).
Pitches-strikes: Imanaga 98-58; Wesneski 53-33; López, R 71-50; Kerr 19-15; Lee, D 19-15; Minter 15-11.
Groundouts-flyouts: Imanaga 2-2; Wesneski 6-1; López, R 3-3; Kerr 2-1; Lee, D 0-1; Minter 1-1.
Batters faced: Imanaga 23; Wesneski 13; López, R 18; Kerr 6; Lee, D 5; Minter 4.
Ejections: Cubs manager Craig Counsell ejected by 1B umpire Junior Valentine (4th).
Umpires: HP: Quinn Wolcott. 1B: Junior Valentine. 2B: Ramon De Jesus. 3B: Adrian Johnson.
Weather: 65 degrees, Cloudy.
Wind: 11 mph, L To R.
First pitch: 7:20 PM.
T: 2:31.
Att: 34,582.
Venue: Truist Park.
May 13, 2024

Inning	Scoring Play	Score
Bottom 6	Zack Short doubles (1) on a line drive to right fielder Seiya Suzuki. Travis d'Arnaud scores.	1-0 ATL
Bottom 6	Ronald Acuña Jr. singles on a ground ball to left fielder Mike Tauchman. Zack Short scores.	2-0 ATL

Team	Highlight
ATL	Matt Olson makes the catch at the dugout (00:00:23)
CHC	Ronald Acuña Jr. is caught out at first after review (00:00:25)
ATL	Ronald Acuña Jr. makes a leaping catch at the wall (00:00:22)
CHC	Craig Counsell ejected for arguing a check swing (00:00:29)
ATL	Zack Short's RBI double (00:00:20)
ATL	Ronald Acuña Jr.'s RBI single (00:00:18)
ATL	Reynaldo López fans four batters in five innings (00:00:50)
CHC	Shota Imanaga fans eight batters in five innings (00:01:22)
ATL	Atlanta Braves seal the win with a fly out (00:00:13)
CHC	Christopher Morel exits game with a foot injury (00:00:27)

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9		R	H	E	LOB
Cubs	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	5	0	6
Braves	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0			2	10	0	10

Decisions

• Winner: Ray Kerr (1-0, 0.00)
• Loser: Hayden Wesneski (2-2, 2.10)
• Save: A.J. Minter (1, 3.57)

Division Scoreboard

MIA 5 @ DET 6 - Final
PHI 5 @ NYM 4 - Game Over
WSH 0 @ CWS 0 - Postponed
Next Braves Game: Tue, May 14, 07:20 PM EDT vs. Cubs
^{Last Updated: 05/13/2024 10:22:25 PM EDT}

Started in 1960 and it was rough. Heating issues, water cuts, backed up sewers... but I made it to 10k people. In 1968 I had to enable cheat mode for a one time "loan forgiveness". I built up debt into 1980 but finally turned the profitability corner. So here's what I'm going to try to do in my next play:
Macro Layout
Pollution is king. When things ramped up, 400 meters wasn’t enough. Put the edge of housing a full kilometer from industry and waste handling.
Rail is important early. Lay in a single rail line to pull gravel for construction, coal for a heating plant + bricks, and connecting the farm to the industry. Build your construction industry on one side of the border and your manufacturing industry on the other side of it.
City layout
Start with a bus stop and building your residential buildings 200 meters max away from it. Put paths parallel to roads. Create redundant paths to everything so upgrading to gravel, asphalt, etc. doesn’t break things. Build all your housing on one side of the bus stop initially.
Put city services based on vehicles (police, fire, etc.) outside the core of the city. They’ll only be walkable to half of the city compared to the bus stop but the city can be larger. Same with university and schools. Schools, kindergartens, etc. may become overcrowded as the city grows. Build the large hospital in the core as despite having ambulances it is primarily a walking building.
Transfer for big waste (large) should be at the edge of your city and connected to a rail line. Technical services delivers to there. From there, a rail line eventually exports it for handling. Until the rail station is built, use a distribution office to export waste. Sorting is key and should be researched early. Use Stand for big waste containers (small) attached to roads to collect waste whenever possible. Stand for small containers (large) can be used when footpath access is the only option but it’s remarkably less efficient. Citizens produce about 1:3 biological waste to mixed waste so allocate containers accordingly. Within the city only hospitals create hazardous waste and nobody creates aluminum waste.
Build the small party headquarters to start, then the large technical university. You'll need the numbers for faster education and faster tech tree climbing.
Import 3rd world immigrants once you have a minimum educated base to staff your schools. They're way cheaper. Quality housing > dense housing. Dense is great but dense and poor quality = high resource intake and low productivity. Densify in your second city, or rework.
Monuments only get your to 40% loyalty so don't lose your mind on it.
Water and Power
Redundant and parallel. Every time you place a transformer, place a high six way high voltage splitter with it. You will branch your power network to more places over time and need to reroute wires which you can only do while online with open switch ports. Never use the last switch port without building another chained switch.
Similarly, always branch your water and sewer. Unfortunately you can’t have multiple inputs to a line, but you can at least make sure that you can keep branching until the upstream has nothing left to give. Pay attention to pressure. Build the large water tower to supply the town.
Intake water quality is key. Your wells must be placed where pollution won’t reach. Industry should be fed directly from a well so you’re not spending chemicals purifying water. The more polluted the water is, the more chemicals you’ll have to spend to clean it up and that gets expensive very quickly.
Treating wastewater gives a massive reduction in pollution but also takes an expensive amount of chemicals. Best to put your outlet far away if possible instead of trying to treat the water. Drop a sewer switch (remember, always an empty outlet on every switch for infra changes!) before the outlet in case you change your mind.
Roads
Vehicles use the same amount of fuel as long as they’re in motion. If your vehicle top speed is a fraction of your road speed, you’re wasting money. Road stretches of ~500 meters need to be paved and should probably be divided highways. Tight industrial roads with lots of turns can be gravel because you won’t accelerate much anyway. Panel roads are also pretty good as intermediates here. If you’ve got advanced roads on, make sure to set give ways at every highway intersection or your vehicles will drop down to 50 km/h at every one.
Your center of town road probably gets congested and you can help that by banning heavy goods vehicles except supply.
Industry
Focus around one large long warehouse with a train connection at the end and factories directly connected around the warehouse. Central warehouse should have:

• Food factory
• Fabric factory
• 2x Clothing factory
• Chemical factory (possibly 2x)
• Livestock farm

The livestock farm is a bit of a wildcard. It consumes a lot of water and generates a lot of wastewater. Plan for this and consider whether it should be located near your farm or near your factory. I lean towards keeping it with the factory for the sake of concentrating your workforce on one high-throughput passenger line. We'll see how the next playthrough goes.
Mining
Steel is my highest cost and getting to a steel mill that runs even at 5% of capacity seems highly worthwhile. Find coal, colocate with coal mining, attach to train line. Attach transfer to large waste and manage as needed. General separation on site may be reasonable.
Farms
Grow locally. Farms are basically the one thing that doesn’t require people to produce profit or at least reduce cost. As the input to one of your early money makers (clothing)
Economy
Clothing is a top export and accessible early which is key. Build for it, use your own crops, and fill in the rest of the supply chain as you can (chemical plant). Same for steel after some time: find the iron, move it over… but start with making the plant run even with imports.
The republic runs on steel. Want to move something efficiently? You need rails and steel. Want to store it? More steel. More efficient building or process? Going to take steel.
Find coal, make steel. When you have steel, get the radio station going. Yeah, that's not an industry but the productivity boost from loyalty boost is huge.
Now that you have clothing and steel going, make a refinery.
From this point, find the most expensive import and produce it locally until the most expensive doesn’t matter. From there, climb the tech tree into autos and nuclear power. Expand to new cities.

January 29, 2384 - the day of the last total eclipse is when the raid began. “The day of the sun's false shadow” as people call it now. We, humans, were an unsuspecting victims in a universe habited by multiple vastly stronger existences. When it happened the world had been thrown into utter chaos and shock. The sun had been completely covered by the moon and this event was supposed to last only a short while however after two hours sunlight had still not shown its face upon the earth's surface. This was the beginning of humanity's greatest tribulation. After days of the sun's light not being shown the planet's temperature began to drop and to compensate for this people began to create massive fires but this did not stop the problem. Photosynthesis in plants began to stop, making it harder for humans to breathe. This made humans build labs and create artificial oxygen, which took care of that problem but humans still began to die from hypothermia, frozen oceans, and forced stoppage of blood flow. After two weeks, the sun finally revealed itself and all hope had been restored in humanity collectively only for half the population to be massacred in an instant. “The watchers” had been slowly waiting with armies to colonize our planet and technology beyond our wild comprehension. Technology we can only dream of had been shown and used right before our very eyes and for the first time in all of human history, we had been united as one in our mutual fear and horror. 2 months later, 90% of humanity has been wiped out and the few who remained were used as slaves to cultivate energy. With the use of a Dyson shell, nearly 80% of the sun's energy and heat had been directed into maintaining their energy. Amongst all this time, humanity had collectively agreed to fight back. This began the creation of the liberation group, “the Plague”. These groups of people were the last hope of humanity and carried an extremely large ambition and dream on their shoulders. While “the watchers” were extremely advanced this doesn't change the fact that they were fallible and this group of people were their scourge. They didn't have the military might nor the advanced brain to even keep up against “the watchers” but through slavery and forced labor, the human body began to develop into something stronger. They began to surpass their limits and break the barriers that the human mind had once placed on themselves. Through the selective farming of “the watchers” a new plant had developed that was essentially a stimulant to the human body and a limit breaker for their physical capabilities. At first, they began by using strong levels of acid to corrode the buildings and structures and then stopping their heartbeat to give the impression of suicide so they could not be caught, however, they did not die due to a new system developed from the human's newfound evolution. Due to the strict regimen that we had to follow, we knew all of the places where they would and wouldn't be, all the blind spots of the planet, all the places where they were in close proximity to a chasm, and all the places where we were at a disadvantage. We used the blindspots as bases and hideouts where we could plan our vengeance. After a year of just observing their behavior, habits, bodily functions, and even their schedules we developed a hypothesis that 24 seconds after 7:39 PM we have approximately 19 minutes and 53 seconds in Greenland where we are not being watched nor located. We used this small window of time to gather the fundamental items we needed to fight back and build the foundation for our organization. We gathered food, plants, water, armor, and weapons. We realized that they were immune to cutting/slicing damage and could only be hurt through blunt attacks. With this knowledge, we developed a specific fighting style and used that small time frame to train others in it. We adapted to the harsh conditions and created clothes using spare pieces from “the watchers” specially made for insulating heat, weighing less, and being less penetrable by outside attacks. After a year every person on the planet was a master at this martial arts and had fully developed a counter to all technology that “the watchers” had. However, we could not initiate immediate war on them so we needed a plan. We came up with the idea to have one of our strongest members report to the watchers about our activity and give away one of our bases. This created the false notion that not only did they have someone working as a double agent on their side but also they knew where we would be so they could catch us off guard. We were all there like they expected and they attacked like planned. We had all moved our weapons, armor, and vital items into a different base but kept some things where they attacked to make them think we had not gotten far but this was a dud. Eventually, we had all “died” and had our bodies left at that place as a sign of victory on their side. However, because of this, their ego had grown and they began to underestimate us. The surveillance had gotten weaker as they assumed their “double agent” would tell them everything as a trade for luxury living. We knew that physical power would not be enough so our smartest man collaborated to develop a virus specifically made for their genetic makeup which took about 5 years to extract small strands of DNA without them realizing. Once the virus had been created the incidence began and eliminated more than 60 percent of “the watchers” because of how they were too distracted trying to develop a cure and the vast amount of them dying, we had gained more time to develop our forces and we began to ingest various harmful substances but in small doses in order to gain resistance to any harmful poisons and acids. After new children start to be born this began the origin of a new human species. One massively stronger, smarter, more durable, and with all the immunities and benefits without the downsides. With the birth of this new generation, all of the human race had experienced a collective euphoria. We had begun to secretly train these kids for years and strengthen them in a way the human race had never been before. Due to the circumstances of their birth, they had also developed a strong ability for adaptation and healing factor which ultimately led to humans finally being able to physically compete with “the watchers”. However, we were still lacking in numbers despite the virus taking a vast majority of “the watchers” away. Some of us grew confident and because we were now physically capable some believed we could win the war while others believed we couldn’t yet. This created division within our ranks but did not necessarily break our ranks but that was all depending on your interpretation. We gathered our smartest men and women to make a plan to initiate war, and for 14 days they were stuck in ruminative thought. 2 years passed and we had finally built up the numbers, technology, and physical capabilities to contend with the watchers. Now on the day of the war, all of our strongest soldiers imitated the attack. But this time they were an unsuspecting victim on a planet habited by a stronger species. During the war we had counters for nearly everything the watchers could dish out but one thing we were not aware of was the fact that the watchers could transform into a smaller but faster, stronger, and more durable form. This form took the shape of humankind. So closely related that it struck fear into the hearts of many. Not only was this extremely off-putting but the revelation that came along with it had altered the perception of humanity as we know it. The war had been put to a halt, and all forced fighting in the war had directed their attention to one watcher and one watcher alone. All forces had been completely immobilized and fighting back was no longer capable. With this, the words that had been spoken out of the watcher were a revelation that humanity had not even considered possible. “We are not your enemies. We are you but from the future. In our original timeline, we have been attacked by a species even higher than us. We had been pushed to the brink of extinction and our last hope was only to go back in time in hopes that if we returned to our past selves we could help evolve even more to contend with the world-ending threats from the future. This siege we had laid on this planet and the forced evolution, progression, and tragedy among humankind also brought extreme progression in human capabilities. All of you are vastly superior to your previous forms because of our arrival. While we acknowledge our methods were not the ideal we had no other option. This was the fastest and most effective method to progress the human species although we could not allow the human race to have this win. It would boost the ego of your race and our all of you in a state of comfort and stagnation. With this being said we resign from our participation in this war and would greatly appreciate it if you allowed us to help humanity rebuild and donate technology.” Speechless as to what humanity has just heard we just stood there in utter shock and disbelief. Not a single soul knew what to say and all of humanity had stood in confusion. One man spoke “how do we know this is true” the watcher proceeded to show pictures and videos of them being massacred while some stood in human form and others did not. They showed is this along with the words, “we initiated this war as a way to put the human race through natural selection and eliminate all the weak human being who would not be able to contribute to our growth and success in any upcoming battle. So with that being said what is your decision?” Our leader, and the smartest woman among us had stated, “We humbly decline this offer as we would prefer to evolve by our capabilities and we have already surpassed you so what can you possibly teach us.” After this being stated the war had been started again and the watchers had been for the first time since the “great cleansing” began utterly defeated and annihilated. With the war being won, humanity being victorious, and newfound abilities being discovered humanity had been thrown into an era of peace and prosperity. All tragedies had been blamed on the watchers and for the first time humanity had an ever lasting peace and a perfect utopia where everyone agreed and benefited from each other. With this, we have been vastly improving and slowly but steadily rebuilding our planet and all of humankind. Our members started family’s and genuinely enjoyed the life they were living once again. Everyone acting coyly and with one another was a beautiful side to behold. Everything was perfect until the same monsters who killed the watchers, showed up to eliminate us due to fear of what we could evolve into this time we had no way to fight back and our ranks were already diminished or severely weakened. How would humanity be able to survive this time???Most people had been massacre and captures to be experimented on. Very few of us had actually managed to get away from them and we had only been able to do this through shadow banishment. It was a skill that we had acquired through the technology of the watchers. Living in the void was not the ideal lifestyle as it was ruthless, dirty, and unsafe but the chances of surviving here were massively higher than surviving on earth. Only a hundred of us remained and the human species were basically extinct. With this small group left we had resorted to instead of trying to repopulate and exact revenge immediately we would take the short route. In the void monsters had no sort of civilization and the only rule amongst these creatures were the strongest prevail. There was no sort of rule, order, or even a sense of respect between these monsters. The weak were prey for the strongest, and the strong were killed by the stronger. We took this as an opportunity to not only increase our strength by training and battling but also amassing an empire. The remind of humanity collectively agree that we would bring order and peace to the void. The best way to go through this was by entering the tournament. The monsters held tournaments to watch the strongest fight and kill each other for pure fun. We joined this colosseum and while at first we easily overwhelmed our opponents we had slowly been facing harder and harder opponents as we rose through the ranks. By the time even a single one of us was defeated we had made a name and gained the attention of multiple monsters within the void. We were not necessarily respected or followed but we were feared and simultaneously an opponent that monsters wished to fight. After this we had developed our own fighting ring in which monster could fight and battle against us and only us. We implied a set of rules in this ring. Rule 1; no killing Rule 2; reservations must be made to fight Rule 3; both parties must consent Rule 4; do not make the fight personal Rule 5; it must be between a human and monster. These rules created a sense of security amongst the monsters and while driven by their desire of battle they also abided by the rules. Eventually after fighting throughout the tournament and gaining more traction with the monsters in it. Eventually even the most high ranked demons had begun to make reservations in for our fights. Our strongest soldiers had been the ones to fight them as nobody else can really compete. The first fight had been with a demon who had the ability of immunity. This ability did not only revolve around internal status effects but also could be applied to his physical body. The fight had been the biggest one the ring had ever experienced and it did not disappoint. Eventually we had won and this through the whole entire void and everyone in it into an uproar. Monsters who never even bothered to fight had shown up to battle. The strongest monster in the void and the only monster with a sense of order, self, and purpose had shown up to fight all humans by himself. He agreed that if we win he would pledge allegiance to us all and work under our rule however if we lose we will be killed. This monster bore an extreme resemblance humans. The structure of his body and the contents of it were all human like however he claimed not to be. This monsters name was angel and he possessed the ability to manipulate and control all matter with the sole exception of any other organic material that resided outside of his own body. Our commander and strongest member amongst us was the person to fight him. His name was Alexander and despite the fact that we didn't have any singular special powers like him however our physical bodies were honed greater than any other species in existence. They were evenly matched in speed and strength and even in our capabilities to rapidly heal from damage. They had been evenly matched in all physical ability and the fight had ultimately come to hand to hand combat and who could last longer. Angel was unmatched in combat and had barely even been hit due to how experienced in martial arts he had been; however throughout the fight Alexander had been naturally adapting to his fighting style and developing counters to everything. Our natural ability to adapt to all attacks and effects placed upon us had given a clear win condition; however time was needed to actually see and fully understand how to possibly adapt to everything. The longer the fight took the higher the chance of Angel losing. Alexander had slowly but steadily been adapting and developing new combat styles to counter everything angle could do and even had grown to use his own severed limbs as projectiles and use his blood as a coat over all other objects to cancel his ability to use his field. Angel's main ability had been to control the air around him to increase speed, power, and even get a sense of what his opponent would be doing before it happened. After finally adapting to this his body had begun to heat itself in an attempt to turn it into vapor and due to blood being organic matter of another life form he would no longer have control of the air and the surrounding area. After this the fight had come down to solely base physical capabilities and for 10 minutes they had been mindlessly brawling and instantaneously healing through the damage taken. After a long period of time their healing began to slow down due to bodily fatigue. Biting, punching, scratching, kicking, anything you can think of, they did it. That fight was a bloodbath unlike anything else and in the end they both passed out on the floor with nothing left besides their bodies soaked and bathed in each other's blood. After they had both been knocked unconscious their bodies had been left there in anticipation for them to awaken. The ring filled beyond capacity as people argued and fought about who would awaken first. In anticipation for this once in a lifetime event the whole void had stopped with all its attention. Angel was the first to awaken and he had been exhausted and utterly stunned as to how he actually had gotten knocked out. He had the opportunity to kill his opponent as he had technically won the battle but out of respect for his opponents strength and capabilities he possessed. After the fight had finished Angel had left and was never to be seen again. After 2 weeks Alexander had awoken in a small shack being guarded by one other human and confused after everything had been explained to him he had went around looking for angel but he was not to be found. After awakening Alexander had been massively stronger than before. Due to the physical state his body was put in and all the damage that he had taken from Angel his body had adapted and become more dense in order to take all the attacks while sustaining the least amount of damage possible. After his awakening this began our political revolution. We had now implemented the ring with rules and gotten multiple monsters to follow by these rules and with them being accurate to filling orders more now we had decided to initiate a leadedictator in a sense. The top 5 strongest creatures in the void had been the leaders and this had consisted of Alexander at 1, 2 other demons at 2 and 3, and humans to fill the final spots. We began to implement laws and rules in order to stop the mass murder and destruction happening and within a small time frame we had created structures similar to the ones of the earth. Houses and gyms in order to train in hopes of becoming stronger and even professional combat sports. After 2 months time had passed we had developed a military with our best members in it and humbly had began to repopulate. All this had been done in hopes of regaining the earth and defeated our oppressors. Fast forward 1 months the and the siege of the home planet had begun. They had not been suspecting us however took the preparations in case we had come. Based and soldiers set up in every corner of the world to fight back when the time came we did come back. With this an all out war for the fate of humanity had began and the extinction of either race lay in the balance between life and death.
After the war had began all forces had been deployed to different areas of the planet. Groups that had worked together best being deployed to one part while our strongest being deployed to another. At first we had been nearly even in everything besides technology. They had everything that we lacked and this gave them the combative edge. However despite lacking in technology we made up for it in numbers. Most fights had consisted of large groups of monsters fighting against one or two of our enemy and this has convoluted till their forces had been somewhat deployed. The one on one fights had been more dragged out and heavily impacted the war. Our strongest soldiers fighting against their strongest soldiers in a one on one fight. Everyone has put their all into this battle and left nothing to spare. Our second and third strongest soldiers had the most impact in this war not because of who they fought but because of what they could do. They didn’t actually have abilities specific to them but instead they were born with a type of energy within their bodies in which they called “synergy”. This synergy could be used to amp all their physical abilities but also be used to crate and use techniques or even use techniques that are specific to the traits of the individuals soul. The strength and physical stats of the individual depended on how much synergy they had at their disposal and while some of them were able to gather strength from other life forms it was not a very common occurrence. Alexander fought someone with the ability to control and manipulate momentum. They used synergy and funneled it through all objects of their choice to increase or decrease of momentum of that. This didn’t do much on a wide scale and was a very basic ability but in a solo battle this made it extremely hard to land attacks and even when they were landed they did little to no damage. The most important one to kill had the ability to manipulate all probability. Meaning the likelihood of us even winning this war was less then .0001 percent with them being alive. Whether it was because of a collection of small losses or one major loss did not make a difference. All odds were stacked against us as long as this person remained on the battlefield. In simple terms the whole war relied on the defeat of that person. Our second in command and smartest soldier, “Cassandra” decided to take this upon herself. She was the only one among us who possessed an innate ability and was viewed as the most special soldier but this came at a cost. She gained a talent no other human possessed but in return she no longer had the natural ability to adapt to all circumstances. Her ability was to take the form and attributes of any and all creature she knew to exist. Mythical or not she could take the shape and ability of these creatures and use it as long as she desired. However she could only use one at a time and had to wait 30 seconds in between shifting. Our third in command, “Vladimir” had took the roll of fighting their head technologist. While his opponent had not specialized in battle he still was one of the most dangerous and this was because of his ability to create machines as small as molecular level that shared his thoughts and emotions. These machines were used to repair his body in case on injury, transport information, invade any opponents body and restrict movement, anything that he deemed possible could be done with the use of those machines. But he chose to mainly use them as sort of technological tools to help him further advance his society. The rest of our battles were not nearly as important and were mostly group battles. Afro the beginning portion of Alexander’s fight he had been losing severely and could barely land any attacks at all. After a few minutes of getting beat down and not being able to fight back the adaptation process began. The first adaptation was only a temporary solution to the problem but his body had been explosively shooting out sharpened pieces of his bones and even using tiny droplets of blood as weapons. However this was only a temporary solution because eventually those bones and blood just started being slowed also. The final adaptation and most effective one happened when his body created a function in which he can store kinetic energy and then release it at any given time. This allowed him to rapidly boost his speed whenever his momentum had been slowed and basically cancel out his opponent power. However this still did not stop how his opponent made himself significantly faster. After this the fight had been more tipped into Alexander’s favor but still not enough to actually win. Throughout the progression of the fight Alexander had been gathering more and make friction between the clothes he had and his feet running against the floor. After gathering as much friction and kinetic energy as possible he let it all explode and release all over his body. This altered the form of his body. His body and skin began to form cracks and let off steam. He began to turn dark red and his eyes became shot with blood. His body was slowly crumbling and deteriorating. He had 5 minutes left to defeat his opponent and if he did not then his body would crumble and he would die. Due to his rapid healing factor he had a chance of living if he was able to end the fight within 5 minutes and give himself some time to rest but this all depended on how much he could get done. The battle had been tilted all the way in Alexander’s favor and had no longer been a battle. It had turned into if his opponent could outlast him in those 5 minutes. Brutally beating his opponent and taking full advantage of the situation Alexander did not relent on his rampage. Stopping his momentum no longer mattered and it seemed like the more he tried the faster Alexander got. Steam had been blowing off him. In the end he had managed to kill his opponent within those 5 minutes and had been at deaths door. Cassandra had began her battle and had been absolutely obliterating her opponent. The ability to shape shift from dragons, unicorns, hydras, centaurs, and any mythical creature you can think of. At first she had taken the abilities of a dragon but throughout the fight she had been developing into stronger and more complex creatures. After a while her opponent had been decreasing the probability of her even landing attacks. This made it extremely hard for her to fight and maintain the advantage. She took the appearance and abilities of the mythical deity sun wukong. Due to sun wukong being a monkey that ascended into a higher power he is one of the only gods that she can transform into. After this she gained the ability to not only make clones out of every hair on her body but also multiply the power of each clone. While she does not possess every power sun wukong has she possesses some of them and the most prominent ones. This fight had been a one sided beatdown and only lasted longer than 2 minutes because the probability of each clone attacking each other had been raised to its maximum percentage. Despite this every 1000 punches that had been thrown at least 1 hit her opponent and this was more than he could handle from millions of clones. Vladimir had no special capabilities; he only possessed an extremely honed body and battle experience. At first they had been near equal but the battle began to take a turn when the tiny bugs began to infest his body and eat him from the inside. Due to his advanced healing factor he had been able to stop any significant damage and fight with mild discomfort but this did not change that if he continued in for a longer period of time then he would inevitably be defeated by these bugs and killed. This made the battle a race against time. Expending everything his body had to offer and leaving not a single drop of energy left. Pushing his body to the absolute peak and physical limit. Even going beyond the known capabilities of his body he began to evolve into a higher form. He did not develop any new type of power or gain a newfound power but he did increase and rapidly evolve his physical capabilities. He began to punch with such speed and strength that he created shockwaves from breaking the sound barrier. With this his punches became far more explosive and with every punch thrown he was exploding giant parts of his opponents body and everything within the perimeter. With no regard to his surroundings the battle had destroyed everything in sight and left them fighting in a bare wasteland. Basically erasing everything within line of his punches he began to annihilate his opponent with speed and strength unmatched. Due to all the tiny machines within his body he regrow limbs and was able to counter attack with near no fatigue or even lag in his action. While pushing his body to its absolute limit his body had given up on him. Rapidly healing from constant damage, pushing muscles to their utmost limit, moving, attacking at his highest speed, and even understanding/ perception of all attacks massively faster then he could ever before. Due to all this his body began to give out and in the midst of battle he fell and was unable to recover. No longer able to fight back and maintain the performance he had, he was defeated. Being eaten from the inside, limbs being torn from his body, and being damaged so much that not even his regeneration could keep up. His head had been ripped off his body and with this humanity had suffered its first major loss. After this all other forces began to gain support from all his other bugs and humanities forces had been rapidly depleting. With loss in sight humanity had lost hope and accepted defeat. Right when humanity had accepted defeat and all hope had been lost the king had shown himself once again. Like an Angel coming to bless all of humanity he had run through and obliterated all enemies of humanity. Destroying everything in sight and bringing all enemies to his feet he had saved humanity and restored hope and just like that he had disappeared into the void once again. There was no explanation as to how or why but in that moment all of humanity knew who we would be forever grateful and indebted to. Not many opponents had been left standing but the few who were, were extremely weakened and overwhelmed by numbers. After this decisive battle humanity had been in a state of joy and excitement out of their new victory. Once all the excitement and happiness from winning had worn off all the sorrow and remorse from the losses had come rushing in. All the lost family members, dead soldiers, limbs lost, and mental trauma had taken a toll on humanity. After we had gotten our planet back we did not spend our time rebuilding and trying to repopulate. We spent months mourning the loss of our loved ones and all our soldiers. We laid in depression and sorrow for our mutual loss and mental trauma. This brought humanity closer as a whole and we bonded over our suffering. Humanity had been one but at what cost. After years of processing humanity had finally been able to rebuild all of our structures, population, and even expand to different planets. After all these trials and tribulations we had finally evolved completely and after ages of loss we had finally entered a golden age of humanity. After all this we had begun to explore the deep parts of our planet and while exploring we discovered something far beyond our comprehension. Humanity had only been a small part of a vastly bigger world and a whole new world had now been exposed to us. We had breached through the ice caps of the north pole and had been greeted with hostility from a race on our planet we did not even know existed. After entering this “new world” humanity had found out the truth of our existence and creation. After finding out the truth of our creation and the prophecy of our faith we had all collectively regretted winning that war. Beyond our world laid horrors and truths we were not yet prepared for. After all this we had once again been thrown into a dark age with no will to fight. In the end this was the beginning of the end for humanity…

Hey everyone, we should leave this guy alone if he's telling the truth. But something isn't sitting right. I was asking a lot of questions in that chat, but got no real answers.
My issue with the livestream/article:

• Christopher has a certain harsh bravado, making jokes around it being "NYC BABY, I was partying at 3am." Like this is so strange. He said he was alone that night or had left his friends to be "independent." No offense, I'm sure the guy has had a tough life and has done well for himself, but how are you realistically getting around NYC at 3am? And why is someone in that condition doing so?
• Listening to beats with Drizzy in a hotel room? This seems incredibly strange to do at 3am after one of Drake's shows. More likely drinking / doing drugs at an OVO afterparty, right?
• The minors and footnote from his article from a PR team - Seems like a coverup
• He laughs a lot at very serious questions/topics - Odd demeanor
• There was a question about if he saw Drake with minors that night? He answers something along the lines of, "That night? No..." Then sort of backpedaled, moved on quickly to other questions.
• Being invited to listen to beats with Drake is surely noteworthy to a stargazer like himself who posts his celeb encounters on IG... whether it was premediatated (invitation by Drake) or by happenstance after showing up at the hotel. But nothing from that night. Even his picture on his article is from 2017 (I think). And it's photoshopped, which is even stranger.

I'm spit balling right now, but where there is smoke, there's usually fire. Did that livestream seem off to anyone else?