I am currently 6 weeks pregnant with my ex boyfriend of 2 1/2 years. We spent the last 2 years having sex almost everyday without contraceptives, as we were ready for any risks, we were not actively trying, but not actively preventing.
We decided to take a break due to arguments over the past month, and on our last day together, we had unprotective sex (we didn’t have sex for 3 weeks at that point). I took a test upon unusual symptoms and missed period, and discovered I am pregnant.
I informed him last week and I think he’s still in denial. He asked me to go for a scan to confirm so he can tell his parents and he has expressed that he doesn’t think it’s a good time for him, and I should get an abortion. He is not ready for fatherhood and doesn’t see that we can work things out in the future. I encouraged him to reconcile, not as a couple, but as civil adults to make communications easier in the following weeks or potentially years. He refused and told me I should talk to people for advice. I have spoke to my best friends and I don’t have a solution, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want my child to grow up without a father figure but I also don’t want to have this kind of father in its life. I only had one sex partner my whole life so there is no possibility that he is not the father. I’m personally also not ready to raise the child as a single mother without support. If this pregnancy happened few months back, I would not have the same doubts I currently have. I considered abortion after the conversation with him but I don’t want to end my own child’s life because of our unresolved issues. My family don’t live in the same country as me, so I will not have day-to-day help. My friends are supportive but I don’t think it’s realistic for me to raise the baby without a partner. I have all sorts of concerns and I am not in the right headspace at the moment to be thinking clearly.
For context - I (28F) moved in to live with my boyfriend (30M) after 2 years of dating, we barely had any disagreements throughout the first 2 years, we were both in love, and decided that we were ready for our next stages in life so we moved in together. We were certain that we were compatible despite our differences in interests - we are very different people in the best ways, and grew to love and learn of each other’s character. Our lives are very intertwined, and our respective friend groups are very involved in our lives. We had a healthy lifestyle and socially active ever since we got together.
Fast forward to 2 months ago, we were discussing wedding plans. We previously agreed that we would move in together > get engaged > married > have children. I expressed that I didn’t really want to move in together until I get a reassurance from him this is for lifetime, he told me not to worry because he already had plans to propose to me and it’s ok to move in first and then get married as we are living together. He suggested that we could plan the wedding first because weddings take at least a year ahead to plan, and the proposal will happen sometime later this year. Our first big argument came because of his unrealistic expectations and lack of logic and sense in event planning (he was never really a planner or an organized person, I do most of our travel logistics and household plannings).
Few weeks later I discovered that he was withholding his plans made with a colleague that I didn’t particularly liked, I felt strange that he had to hide this fact from me. I don’t believe that he was disloyal or anything but I didn’t understand why he lied. I exploded, demanded to check his phone, then I discovered more things he was hiding from me, including going on walks during lunch with the same female colleagues. I also discovered the group chat with his boys where they were making jokes about us getting married. I was livid and we argued over our definition of commitment, I questioned his maturity and his intentions to settle. He told me he was ready to settle with me, and suggested that we go pick out rings the next day.
The real issue came in when he called his parents to ask them for their blessing in our marriage. His parents disapproved, and called me materialistic, questioned my family, my social circle, my religion, my political views… etc. My boyfriend could’ve easily justified every one of the points they have made about me but I guess he was too in shock of their response to defend me. His parents never really agreed with our relationship to begin with, they never wanted him to date and thinks he should be focused on his career at this age rather than dating, despite this we spent every holidays and celebrations the last two years with his family and we thought they have grown to accept me as they had been very friendly with me, I guess it was all a facade. I was disappointed and lashed out at him. And somehow our previous issue with his ‘commitment’ was brushed under the rug.
He says he cannot propose to me when he doesn’t have his parents blessing. I gave him a deadline the next day to make a decision, if he cannot talk it out with his parents then I will have to let this end. He came back the next day, and told me his dad apologized and would like to reconcile with me. And he came back to tell me he was ready to settle.
The following weeks we continued to have smaller disagreements and I was still uncomfortable to face his parents, as he would return home a different person, and treats me worse every time after every time he had met up with his parents. Before all these issues, we had made plans to visit my grandparents and his extended family who were both living in the same country. On our way there, I expressed that I would want to remain with my grandparents and not join his family trip as I’m not ready to face his parents yet. He tried to persuade me to go and that his parents will apologize to me, but I was still very uncomfortable. I told him I’ll only go if he can give me reassurance and that I will only go on another family trip with him if he can give me the status as his fiancé before I can face them. He said if he were to propose to me now he cannot face his parents, and he told his parents he has plans to propose to me on this trip, but they insisted that they should reconcile with me before he can propose as I would potentially “steal their grandchildren away from them” in the future if we don’t make up. He told me he even brought the ring with him but he can’t do it. I walked away from him, I felt so betrayed and lost in a foreign country. I got very emotional and told him he made feel worthless and want to end my life. I was not in the right headspace after a whole month of torment and I didn’t have the energy to reason with him any longer. I gave in and proceeded with the rest of our trip.
The day before we went to meet his family, I told him I wanted to go somewhere else instead and I still wasn’t ready. When he was making changes to our tickets, I saw his sister’s message on his phone, saying that it’ll be better in the long run if he sort out the parents issue first and don’t propose to me yet. I snatched his phone and spoke with his sister. After I told her everything, she apologized and gave me the reassurance that their family will treat me with respect and will apologize to me the first thing they see me, and that they just want to reconcile before we move forward to the next stage in life. I felt it was reasonable and reassured after my conversation with her, so I decided to give it a go.
When we did finally meet up with his parents, they pretended as if nothing has happened. Few days later we finally had the ‘conversation’. His dad started off by saying he doesn’t think it’s appropriate for us to get married at the moment, and kept going on about their same points again, he said our relationship hasn’t been long enough for us to decide marriage at this stage. They claimed their comments weren’t a personal attack, they didn’t apologize and said that I was ‘thinking too much’ for this to be a personal attack because it was simply a generalization, then dismissed me for being upset for hearing from my bf because he wasn’t supposed to tell me, and proceeds to keep commenting about me and my friends and how they disagree with their celebrations of weddings.
I respectfully explained we are not having these discussions about marriage out of no where, we have been having discussions on marriage throughout our 2 years. In fact our plans to have children was the basis of our relationship and were his requirements, and we just want to move forward with the next part of our lives. His mom doesn’t think I need to think about having children at this moment and it’s not a good time for us to have children, because she had kids much later in life and apparently so is everyone else, and we shouldn’t be following my ‘timeline’ on when things should be happening. Apparently I should not have such control over the timing of giving birth ‘like a reproduction machine’, and it’s not right to have to set such timeline on how much time I need for recovery and time between having each children. She asks why do we feel the need and so early in life to get married now? And ditch your own families and start your own life.
His dad said I should not decide right now how many kids we need to have and it’s rather in gods hands to decide, and some people are not even be able to have more than 1 kid, I asked him why is this relevant in regards to our plans to have kids… so I have to listen to god now and have kids without planning? And then he started giving this bs about god and how we are not meant to plan ‘these things’ out in life so specifically. I asked him: What is wrong with being practical and setting realistic goals. He claimed he doesn’t think it’s wrong to have plans but we shouldn’t be so set and ‘controlling’ over our own lives. He has experience and we should listen to the grown ups with experience… I knew the conversation wasn’t going to get anywhere as soon as he brings religion into this.
My boyfriend just stood there in silence. After the conversation ended we both walked away from his parents, he apologized to me and told me he’s sorry for any of the things his parents have said to me and I didn’t deserve it. He says he won’t listen to his parents anymore, and he knows how to make this right, and he will propose once we return to my grandparent’s place. I didn’t challenge him anymore because I that was the reassurance I needed from him, and I was happy that he was finally able to see his parents for who they are.
The following days of the trip, his dad tried to isolate him from rest of the family to give him the same lecture. Every time he rejoins the group I can see from his expression that their conversation did not go well, I didn’t comment. On the day we returned to my grandparent’s home, he told me he can’t follow through with his promises. And his dad told him he should feel guilty for making promises to me and be pressured into marriage. Somehow this convinced himself into thinking he’s not ready for marriage all along. I walked away from him and we spent 3 days apart before our flight to return home.
On our last day, we met up for closure, talked through what happened and we had sex. I told him I wasn’t ready to fly back home with him and I didn’t want to fall back into the vicious cycle of arguments, and that we should have some time to cool things down before we reconnect. We agreed to give each other some space and he wants to learn more about himself before he makes commitment to me as he doesn’t want to disappoint me again.
A week after he got back, he told me he wants to move out of our co-rented apartment, and he wants to break lease. I was a bit confused because I thought he wanted to work on himself, and him moving out essentially is an indication of a break up to me. He said if I don’t let him move out, I’m not giving him space to work on himself. I didn’t really have an option so I agreed. We didn’t talk afterwards.
3 weeks later, I missed my period, I took a test and was positive.

Devouring Cancer

________________________________________________________________________________
Meat. /mi:t/
Me it. /mi/ /:t/
It me. /:t/ /mi/
It’s me…
We are eating ones of ourselves…
________________________________________________________________________________
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
/C̶̢͈̈̂͒̀̋̾̓͌Ô̶̻͉̠̱͈̳̮N̸̫̹̱̯̣̣̻̐̽͒̎̃̆̕͜Ǹ̴̛̛͙̫̇E̴͕̮̻͇̒͐̀C̶̳̤̠͔̺̚T̴̘̑̈́̂͛̂̏E̶̡̩̝̮͇̤̣̋̏͗D.
/Mellator Matrix Mind: Inner Core.
/Unit: great [AVALON] the first
/G.R. Era.
/Memory File transmission: Generalized perspective
/Gender: N/A[Neutral]
/Age: {Human equivalent: 2001 years}
/Race: Grrrr’atrrr
/Species: N/A[Hive Mind]
/ Additional verification: Class>>> [Cancer Cells]
/Cradle planet: Ci-3301
/Home planet origin: Mupan
/First person POV not applicable. Generalized Spectator mode.
/Sequence Code: 5-18-5-8 19-1-23 20-8-7-9-14-11-5-12-2-13-21-8
/Memory transmission in 3…2…1…
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

Hunger…
It’s all that drives us. It’s all that unites, connects us… All that pulls us, all that defines and binds us…
Our story began long ago. It all started with a single parasite cell. Not the greatest primordial ancestor indeed, but every Apex Predator started somewhere. But back to our history… That very first cell was our first grandmother, as well as the beginning of our entire civilization. Hard to tell what was the trigger for it’s evolutionary change, as time wipes all. Perhaps it was desire to become something better? Awakening? Or maybe just spontaneous mutation in one of the genome chains, occurring by changes in environment? It really doesn’t matter. All what matters is that that cell evolved…
It didn’t happened quickly of course. Our first grandmother was no different than an average cancer cell that is present in nearly every life form, even us. It just growed into one small neoplasm, or simply, a cancer tumor. But that tumor slowly made it’s way to the brain. We know that because that’s how we, as well as our ancestors, assimilated everything for millennia…
It is impossible to determine which one of the prey species was honored to become the meal of our first ancestor, but it was clear that that feast was something that never happened before. That tumor did not just sucked the nutrients dry till the brain dies from the protein starvation, taking the tumor along the way with it. No, that tumor assimilated it. And that tumor learned. Learned from it. And it saw the world for the first time.
Assimilation is not as easy as other inferior beings think. First, your cell needs to find the prey cell. Then it needs to envelop the cytoplasm of that cell to properly assimilate it. However, after assimilating the “Host”, your cells need to take properties of assimilated cells and even function for the prey organism for the time being so it won’t suspect anything. It is a long, tedious and fatiguing process. That’s why we just ambush other prey organisms, tear them apart, and devour them for protein supplies, to avoid all that bustling.
And say what, the prey doesn’t make it easier for us either. As our first ancestors quickly learned, prey can be sentient too. It is inferior, weak, pathetic… And yet it can create great weapons to stop us. For [decades] these beings create astonishing amount of that pesky, venomous and disgusting antibiotics and chemicals to kill our minds. For thousands of [years] they set our flesh on fire, making us scream as we die in agony cell by cell.
And yet we prevail. When they make those chemistry compounds they call “Cure”, we gain immunity to it. When they set our bodies ablaze, we spray them with our blood and teeth, making their bodies to slowly blister as we eat them inside out. When they close their doors on us, we use ventilations, slithering right above their heads or below their {feet}. When they use special protection suits, we just tear them apart. And when they completely quarantine themselves, thinking that they are safe, we pretend to be one of them, striking from behind…
What is the most amazing thing about this prey? Well, aside that their flesh is delicious… They are clever. And they know how to build stuff. Weapons, tools, technology… Everything to increase the odds of survivability and comfort of their pathetic kind. And by devouring their minds, we gain all this knowledge as well! We learned how to grow cattle to saturate our hunger, we learned how to create faster means of transportation that even the fastest members of our swarm can’t out-crawl with their appendages. And most importantly; we learned how to reach the skies…
Among the prey species that we feast upon, there was a special class, or caste, of highly educated specimens, who called themselves “scientists”. These specimens learned how to use metal, fuel, radiation, and other inedible and in some cases straight up harmful components of nature, and turned them into what they called “Spacecraft”. A special vehicle, capable of leaving the atmosphere of our planet. Something that sounded like fantasy, even for the boldest ones of us, who sometimes managed to grow wings and flew high in the sky. It was a fantasy until we consumed their heads and the knowledge they possessed along the way. From them we gained knowledge of the schematics of these space vessels, and most importantly; the schematics of FTL drives. Devices capable of traveling among the stars with “superluminal” speed. And so, after conquering and discovering each and every corner of our planet, we soared to the great unknown, right into the void…

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
/Transmission mode: Spectator. Centralized perspective.
/Subject: Verrruur. Grrrr’atrrr. Lead hive mind of the Hunter Fleets.
/Transmission in 3…2…1…
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
We flew among the stars in our glorious ships made out of strongest titanium fusions and covered in our eternal flesh. Yes, what wasn’t made out of the metal hulls and electronics, was made out of sheer muscles and flesh tissue. So many cells… So much nutrition… We could withstand decades without the food and still hunt like our greatest hunters back on Mupan(Apparently, that’s how prior sentient prey species happened to call our planet, and we didn’t really bother to rename it, as for us it was widely known as just plain“Ground, floor, or land”). Our strongest weapons, combined with our most dissolving acid spitters, made us the strongest and most feared hunters, “cementing” our history as the strongest Apex Predators in the galaxy! We defeated, devoured, and assimilated everything… It did not matter if our enemy was a leviathan, an enemy prey fleet, or even an entire planet. If it could be eaten, it was eaten…
Until it wasn’t…
On yet another great crusade in search of delicacy for our insatiable fleets, our sensors captured a strange, but nonetheless familiar signal. The impulse of FTL drive. We made a serious double, and even triple checking of our radars to avoid a major nutritional loss due to false readings. After our intels captured, properly verified, and confirmed the signal, our intercoms just exploded with thousands of jaws:
“Food?”
“Food…”
“ Food! FOOD!!! Food! Food! Delicious prey! Food! We shall… FEAST! Food! Yes!!! Food! FOOD!!! We haven’t ate for [Month]! At last… Some good food… Food! Juicy food… Flesh of prey…
Food! The succulent meat…”
Yes, we felt joy. And anticipation of hunting down these unknown but likely very delicious organisms. It was like opening the present. You don’t know what was inside these flying metal cans, but you sure know that it was likely to be something edible.
Oh, we never were so wrong in our glorious history.
We did not saw them at first, that’s how black and cloaked they were. When we finally identified our “prey” we saw it was a small cluster of black ellipsoids, just hovering there. They did not tried to contact us, like other naive prey organisms did. They were completely silent...
“We will smash you like the eggs you are!” we foolishly thought back then...
They slowly turned frontwards when we approached them. Their range was astonishing, picking our smallest drones instantly before they could even scream, like if they were the candles that these black horrors just blew out.
When we finally reached the required distance and fired our acid sacks and laser guns however, they were still there, not blowing up, retreating, or even moving an [inch]. Then we opened all the airlocks(if we weren’t already outside) and enveloped their ships in our mighty grip, not stopping to pour their shields with our acids and plasma. Usually, after a few unpleasant zaps of enemy shields, they just popped and the ships just were crack open like the [nuts].
But not them...
They did not crumble and exposed their hulls with screaming prey just getting sucked out in the vacuum as usual, no, instead they started to grow bright red. Redder than our flesh and blood…
And burned. Burned stronger and more painful than any flame. Our drones roared in pain but we couldn’t hear any of their songs of torture in this vacuum of silent space. Hundreds of megatons of our flesh clusters was just turned in ashes or were torn off and become drifted dead lumps of burnt meat. Our intercoms filled with screams of fear and agony, our minds losing their mass and density, turning into undeveloped children.
"Father? It hurts…” could be heard from countless drones. And any of them that tried to escape, were sniped with red beams of such accuracy, that our best spitters could only dream of. It didn’t last long when we were the only operating guide ship of entire Armada that was so ingloriously butchered. And then we felt the warmth…
No… NO!
All weapons of this black "eggs" were pointed at us, our last mind. The last memories flashed as we slowly were burned to death. The last though of our last tumor was the realization that there was someone stronger than us. Someone who cannot be eaten. The bigger Predator…
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
/Memory transmission File disconnected.
/Reason: Biological death of the Subject.
/Cause of death: Sterilization.
/End of data log.
/D̵̛̤̂͜I̵̢͎̬̍̄̂͌͋S̴̢̛̙͇̯̽̔̾́͝C̸̭͓̰̤͋͆́ͅÓ̴͖̜̯̻͂̃̉N̵̨̧̦͙̳̍̾̕N̴͙̬͓̽̃̂̇͂͝E̵̠̬̠͉͒C̵̢̛͚̪̭̭̼̿̎T̶̝̈́͋͘͜Ì̸̢̱̙̤̽͑̽̈́̍ͅŌ̵̗̬̑̍̽̒N̷͖͖̗̗͚͈͗͛...
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

I don't want to waste any more time than I already have with my "support staff" about this situation, but I also thought it would be good to ask for your opinions as someone who is not involved.
The JTE I work with doesn't like giving criticism to me or expressing things they don't like about me, but the fact is that they still have these opinions. When these issues inevitably come up again later on, they "blow up" at me while it's the first time I've heard of it.
When I try to continue to talk about it and find a mutual understanding in these moments, they don't want to hear it and just brush it aside so that the subject can be dropped. The reason they cite for this is, it feels like I'm blaming them for the argument in the first place, so they don't want to talk about it.
I always feel like walking on eggshells working with this person, and I'm not the first person to have these problems with this JTE either. The past 2 ALTS who only stayed in the area for a year each, had problems with them also. So, I believe am the 3rd ALT in 3 years and this makes me reasonably confident that this is not a "me" thing. The vice-principal at one of the schools I work at said as much, as well.
Is it toxic for my support staff at my company to say things like "consider the children in these situations and do what's best for them" when I express this to them? Not that I don't agree with the sentiment because it's something I thought of as a way to "cope" with this situation, but this response feels like a cop-out to actually doing something about it.
Should I just do my best to check out mentally and "tough it out" til the end of my (1 year) contract? I could technically, probably continue pretending like everything is "okay" like the JTE does and just dismiss the arguments with them when they inevitably come up again. I'm not sure if there are any other viable solutions to this.
It is my first year as an ALT in Japan and I want to stay in Japan but this is kind of shitty if I'm being honest.

Intro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Just sharing this so others are aware. I’m in the UK. I had a fairly convincing scam caller pretending to be from the HSBC fraud department yesterday. He sounded like a reasonably posh, youngish British guy. He talked to me for 10 minutes or so listing a series of fraudulent transactions that had just shown up on my card - at Argos, Vodafone and a bank transfer to someone called Mohammed. He knew my full name, address and card details. He was pretty thorough - he spent ages telling me how my details would be shared with the police Action Fraud scheme and listing ways my card could have been compromised. He wanted to know the expected balance on all my accounts, which I gave him (basically 0), my most recent transactions, my sort code and account number. He put on a good show of checking the details I gave against what he saw on his screen.
Eventually he got round to asking me to generate a logon code on my phone, which is when I (finally) got suspicious. I said I’d prefer to call back and he told me he understands but that he needs this to block a transfer and that any transactions that went through while I was in the queue after calling back, I’d be liable for. He got a bit arsey when I said I’d still rather call back, telling me that when this happens customers get charges for thousands and call back crying and there’s nothing he can do. He gave me his full name (ostensibly) and employee number.
I hung up and called HSBC directly, got through immediately and they were very clear that it was a scam and cancelled my card.

Hello everybody!
This is my cautionary tale and potential advice!
As you are probably aware, women on the spectrum are more likely to have eating disorders. Moreover we are more likely to not get sufficient or direct instructions from our doctors regarding our medical care. Below is my story on how that hurt my health and wellbeing.
Since I was a child I was a picky eater, with limited food I would accept and not a big apetite. I was also a very thin person, could not put on any weight no matter what I tried. I remember first learning what anemia is when I was 9 or 10. I struggled with my blood for years after that, despite diets and supplements. At some point I accepted that this is just what my body is like and I will be forever underweight and anemic.
Suddenly in high school I learned I developed lactose intolerance. I was devastated because diary was one of my go-to foods and a main breakfast food (either cereal or cheese sandwitch/toast). It was near impossible at that time to find any lactose-free products where I live and so my diet had to drastically change. Overnight I stopped my usual breakfast and went lactose free. That alone was a big issue but then suddenly I developped unusual headaches, dizzyness and chills.
My parents (with a history of dismissal of my health concerns) thought I am pretending to skip school. Luckily I was over 16 and scheduled my own doctor visit behind their back. Before the visit [warning: gross] I had an unexpected toilet visit with green feces. I was surprised but put it down to eating something green and not noticing. Doctor sent me for blood tests and included iron levels knowing my anemia history and worrying I have dangerously low iron levels again. Surprise surprise, my iron levels were through the roof. Turns out you can poison yourself with iron supplements. Doctor was surprised, ordered me off of any iron supplements I was taking.
I only learned years later (in university course on farmacotherapy) that drinking milk with iron pills significantly decreses their effectivness. Suddenly it all made sense. It even explained why I got worse again once lactose-free products became available (but not as bad as before).
Since then I learned that there is a lot of different interactions with medication and food you consume around the time of taking your drugs. Make sure to check grapefruit interactions if you're on antyhistamines, xanax or others, and check for St. John's Wort if you're on antidepressants.
TL:DR I overdosed on iron supplements because I stopped drinking milk everyday.

This isn’t what it sounds like… this was no typical window, and this was no ordinary situation…
I (27F) am a full time drag performer in my city and one of the places I frequently perform at is a local queer owned and operated bar run by someone who I consider a good friend. It was this past Mother’s Day while I was performing at his establishment, when the freak accident occurred.
I had already done my two numbers, and the cast and I were closing out the show with a silly group number. While I was going around interacting with the crowd, I noticed some people from outside trying to get a look inside through the giant windows up at the front. My first instinct was to be silly and pretend to moon the people outside by putting my butt up against the glass (I was wearing a bodysuit.) Big mistake…
The second my cheeks touched the glass the whole window shattered and came crashing down around me, leaving me pretty much shredded. I had to get rushed to the hospital where I had to have about fifteen stitches, and a bunch of superficial cuts skin glued and cleaned out. They even took x rays to make sure there was no glass stuck inside the big cut that they had to sew shut. I can’t even imagine the cost that I’ll possibly end up being responsible for in all this…
The whole ordeal was pretty traumatizing to say the least. While my injuries may not seem that bad, considering it could have been a lot worse, I’m still reeling from the whole ordeal and I feel like my adrenaline has been going for two days and it’s been difficult to sleep. I also discovered another cut that appears to be really deep, and I might need to go back in for more stitches. I didn’t notice it on the first visit because this particular cut just so happens to be right on the outside of my anus and I didn’t think to tell them to check there. Now I’m sitting here worried and I’m thinking about going to the emergency room again tomorrow to get it looked at. It’s pretty nasty and is more painful than the one on my back and I’m also worried about infection.
I also had to call out of work that night, for obvious reasons, and have been struggling to deal with the pain and discomfort, and I have a busy weekend of work and drag ahead of me while dealing with an injury, if I can even make it. I brought up these concerns to one of my best friends and they told me I should think about taking them to court… I see where they’re coming from but I’m having a hard time considering the place this happened at is owned by one of my good friends, and I wouldn’t want to ruin a relationship over something like this.
I’m also extremely anxious over the fact that it might be considered my fault for leaning up against a window. However this is something that so many people have done here and other venues innocently, and this could’ve happened to anyone. If the window had a hairline crack (which is our current working theory as to why it shattered so easily), what would’ve happened if a customer slipped on something and lost their balance and went through the window? Or even if a child went to press their face up against the window and it shattered like it did to me?
Even though I happened to be the one who appeared to break it, it still doesn’t make sense to me why a business would A) use such cheap glass for a giant store front window in a major city or B) if it was a defect or hairline crack in the glass not have it replaced or fixed. Would that even make it my fault then? I’m grateful to legitimately be alive right now. However this is already causing a great deal of pain and suffering. Not only is it painful to sit or walk or even use the bathroom, I’m also out of a lot of money already, since we cancelled the second seating of the show and I’ve missed work on top of it. Not to mention my brand new costume being shredded and stained in blood, that is now unusable…
So please help me Reddit. What do I do? Am I the asshole? Or do I legitimately have a case here?

TLDR end of post
I am 25F and currently pregnant (my first baby, so lots of anxiety about it for us both). My fiancé is 30 years old, male.
My fiancé bought us a house and we currently live in it. It’s in a rural area which means lots of privacy and distance from neighbors. We only have one neighbor really.. everyone else is far. This neighbor isn’t very close but he’s the closest one and the only one we’ve talked to. He is in his early 40s and has a younger wife around my husband’s age. He does not have kids but he has big dogs.
Since we recently bought this place we were waiting for spring and nicer weather to do some renovations outside. This includes perimeter fencing since there’s obviously some ways the big dogs keep getting into our property.
Which brings me to the issue. The dogs. I have a fear of dogs. I love dogs and animals but I got bitten by a dog when I was a kid and so I’m wary of them, even if they’re cute. I need to take my time and softly approach them. I’m cautious in my interactions. Dogs off leash unnerve me. It doesn’t mean I don’t love dogs. One of the reasons we moved here is so we can have one of our own.
Twice already the dogs scared me while I was outside on my property. I complained to my fiancé and he talked with the neighbor. Then it happened again..
My fiancé wasn’t home. The dogs ran at me. The neighbor was attempting to recall but they didn’t listen to him. I thought the dogs were going to jump on me. I was so scared I couldn’t even move my body. The dogs barrelled at me but didn’t attack me or anything. One ran past me.. so close like he was going to slam into me but he didn’t and then he just kind of circled me and started sniffing me and seemed friendly. I calmed down a bit. My neighbor apologized and I was so shocked I just kind of breathlessly went with his apology.
The same day I told my fiancé and he was very mad (since he had talked to the neighbor about it in the past).
And that same night the dogs were in our yard yet again. They set off the motion detector lights in the back and I told my fiancé I see them. My fiancé went outside and fired his gun (warning shot, not at them)
I didn’t hear the full conversation because my fiancé wasn’t talking loudly, I could only hear the neighbor who ran over yelling at my fiancé. My fiancé said he basically gave him a warning/made a bit of a threat because the neighbor hasn’t taken the issue seriously.
The neighbor retaliated by making a police report about it. The police came and talked to us, mostly my fiancé .. but nothing happened. They checked firearms registration and stuff.
Was this an AH move? I’m feeling uncomfortable because now the neighbor has a vendetta against us. When I went for a walk, (I have to pass by his house to get onto the trail), he kept staring at me. I could feel his stare, and then he made a rude remark about how I should be careful because coyotes will eat me in there (the trail) since my bodyguard isn’t around to protect me. And if I see a deer it isn’t really a deer. Whatever that means. Basically he is super sour about the warning shot.
I feel like my fiancé scared him that night because maybe in that moment he thought one of his dogs got shot. I feel bad. And I hate the hostility and animosity in the air. I’m very emotional lately lol so it could also be that.
I didn’t say anything to my neighbor’s comment, I pretended I couldn’t hear with my earphones in.
TLDR— my neighbor’s 2 big dogs keep coming into our property. I’m pregnant and I’m scared of dogs. My fiancé talked to the neighbor about it but it kept happening so one night my fiancé fired a warning shot with his gun and the neighbor got upset. My fiancé made a threat to the neighbor during this interaction and the neighbor made a police report. Neighbor hates us now. I feel like my fiancé started a neighbor war.

All the kids at the residential facility I work at got sick. Staff refused to hospitalize, or even keep any kids out of school, or even open windows, so 100% of them and about half of staff got it, including me.
14F was cold, but 41F sick was just as cold, and maybe worse. It was last Friday, at 2am when I finally accepted my fate and began getting sick into a plastic bag in my van.
I ran out of bags quickly and felt dysentery coming on so I rushed to planet fitness and pretended I was there to exercise. I got sick 10 times and had other unpleasant symptoms too.
Eventually I was so fatigued and nauseous that I had to roll out a large towel in the handicap bathroom stall and lie down between bouts of getting sick. At other times, I fell asleep with my head on my arm on the public toilet and hoped nobody would notice.
I left PF at 7am feeling like death. I begged my closest friend for help that morning. I told him I would regrettably miss out on mountain biking that day and asked if I could use his bathroom while he was gone. We have a strong friendship and I often watch his place or just hang out when he isn't around. I told him I just needed a safe place to get sick.
I was surprised when he told me no, citing his fear of catching what I have. He's a hypochondriac and caught his first cold in years from me a few weeks prior, so I understand his perspective, but it was heart breaking to see that he was ready to let me shit myself and puke in a bag in a van for 6 hours while I waited for hotel check in. I even offered to only go onside for emergencies. Am I the asshole for expecting he would let me use his restroom while gone?
I spent the rest of the day and all of the next day rotting in a hotel room, married to the toilet. I took a shower and a bath, my first bath in many years. I slept in a bed but slept wrong and trashed my lower back. I watched the Boston Bruins shit themselves as badly as I had earlier that night, and I missed a workshift too after burning $250 on hotel expenses.
Getting sick sucks. Getting sick while homeless is hell. Stay safe out there folks. Avoid alcohol. It trashes our immune systems.

This happened last year but this felt like the perfect place to post about it. Still haunts me to this day but there is a happy ending.
I (33f) am a registered medical assistant.
Last year when I was looking for a new job I thought I had found the perfect one. I found it on Indeed and applied, resume being attached to your account. They liked my resume enough to message me directly and ask for an interview I tape of myself and send back to them. I do that and not long after they ask to do a video interview with one of the office managers. Interview went great and I was feeling confident. At this point we're communicating through email and I get another email asking to come in person to check out the clinic and see if I would get along with everyone.
We set up a time not longer after for me to come in and chat with the other MA's and meet the doctor I would be working with. Everyone was very friendly and it seemed like it would be a good fit. This job was actually in the same building as my first MA job 4 years prior just a couple floors up, which made it feel almost full circle in a way. I go back to her office and she basically offers me the job but doesn't want me to accept right away, would like me to think on it and they would email me all the details the next day at noon. So say I was over the moon excited would be an understatement. This job was offering a 4-10 schedule, which it what I was looking for. They gave you $200 a year allowance for scrubs, you could wear your own. But most importantly it was getting me out of a job I HATED.
I write up a two week notice letter for my manager and give it to her promptly the next day, I was not waiting around. Well noon rolls around and nothing, 12:15 still nothing. Finally around 12:30 I get an email from the manager saying she had been in meetings all day but would be getting back to me shortly. Not too long after I get an email (not in the chain we had been communicating in) stating they they were so sorry but they would going in a different direction with the position. She said it was a very hard decision. I was absolutely devastated, crying so hard that I couldn't control myself. I told my manager they had recanted their offer and thankfully she was understanding and said we'd pretend I hadn't given her the letter of resignation.
I had almost given up searching for a new job. Had done so many interviews and this was the ONLY promising one and it was so perfect for me. I was also working with a contact agency who were helping me get interviews. I was looking for something closer and they knew that too. A couple days later they said they had gotten me a job interview that was at a clinic close to my house. I was hesitant at first but it was close to home and they were actually only looking for CMA's but the company was able to convince them to let me interview.
I did a video interview with the supervisor of the clinic and we hit it off immediately. He was 37, a little flamboyant and had worked his way up to being supervisor from Lead MA, the best kind of management you want/need. Well not too long after, literally less than an hour, I was offered the job! He knew what had happened with last clinic and wouldn't offer the job unless he meant it. Of course I accepted and man has it changed the course of my life for the better.
The clinic is literally a 7-8 minute drive from my house, mostly residential. I have a great work ethic and they could see that right away so within less than 2 months of me starting as a contract worker they offered me an apprenticeship position! It was 1 year of on the job working as well as homework from home. You also had to commit 1 year to the clinic that did the program after you finished but after that year you could leave. I also ended up getting my 4-10, with the off day being Wednesday which is perfect. I love my doctor that I work with. She is also mid-late 30s and we get along great. I have honestly NEVER been happier at a job. My work life balance is great, I've only called out 3 days of work in 14 months and that was because I was literally in the ER. My apprenticeship is almost done, just have to finish the hours and I can take the test to become certified! After that I can make at least $7 more dollars an hour.
Crazy how when I thought everything was falling apart, it was actually coming together.
TL;DR : Did 3 interviews, got offered the job, quit my other job and then they recanted their offer. Next job offer is the happiest I've ever been and now I'm almost certified because of the apprenticeship they offered me.

I currently (40M) had my ex (35F) completely destroy our relationship while I was working out of town for a few months. This happened a year ago and wish I had these stories as a resource while going through it. I have just started to use Reddit and been reading the experiences of others here and have decided to share my story in hopes it will maybe help others. That way some good may come from some of the worst times of my life.
A little backstory for context for the story and insight to some of the decisions I made. When I turned 30 I left the major city in my Province (it is like a state if you are an American) because buying just a simple house is over a million dollars and I don't make near enough to afford that. My goal was to move to somewhere more rural to buy a house, meet someone, get married and have a child or two. It was my only dream I had and believed I could attain it. I lived out in the bush on my step dads property in a run down trailer I bought so I could save money for the first 3 years. I had my dog but the loneliness of living in the middle of nowhere had got to me. By then I had saved a fair amount of money, so I decided to move into the town. It was nice, it cut my commute down by 40 minutes, I had started to make a few friends and no longer felt so isolated. It was through my friends I met my future ex. Let's call her Kali. She had a long term boyfriend when we first met. Their relationship ended a couple of years after meeting her and we started dating a few months after.
We mostly had a great relationship for the next 4 years. The only thing was it was on again off again. She would dump me after I did anything really special for her for a week and beg me to take her back. It was like clockwork. I used to think it was because of her depression and that she didn't believe she deserved to be truly happy. Nowadays I actually think she might have been cheating the whole time and just felt guilty about it when I did nice stuff for her but I will never know the truth. I don't care what the reality is anymore anyway, Time has a funny way of making stuff like that irrelevant. We did have one bigger break of about 5 months. When it happened I took time off work to travel in my RV the whole time. From spring to summer. I really didn't like the town I lived in and decided to use that time to check out the rest of my Provence to figure out where I wanted to restart my life. She was basically the only reason I stayed for so long. I did have a decent job and family close by but most people I met there were not good people. Lots of drug users, liars, and general scumbags. I had only a few real friends there. After I got back and had decided where I was going to move to she had decided she wanted me back. She begged me to stay and be with her. She told me that she wanted to get serious. We started making real progress about getting married, having kids and looking at buying a house. Everything was coming up Milhouse and I couldn't be happier. So You can probably guess this is when my tale becomes interesting for you and life got real bad for me.
My career is seasonal. I work from spring to the end of fall and can go on unemployment insurance or find work. My dad had asked if I could help on his farm breeding horses that winter when I had still planned to leave my town. I had promised him that I would because it would give me a place to stay before people in my field of work would be looking for employees. This had been agreed upon before me and Kali had got back together. Now I have always been a man of my word. It's something I take great pride in. I have always hated liars. I don't mind a little embellishment to make a story more fun or if two people's stories are different as long as they both believe that was how the events happened. Everyone remembers things slightly off. She was upset that I had intended to keep my word to my dad but I had every second weekend off. The town my dad is in was only a 2 hour drive. So I told her I would be back twice monthly for weekends and that it would only be for 4 months. For the first two months everything seemed fine. During this time I started to look at rings to pop the question and booked an expensive spa for two days in May to propose. There was only one weird thing that happened during the first two months. On one of my visits she confided in me that her brother's wife had cheated on him and that their newborn baby was most likely not his. I was shocked that she not only knew but didn't plan to tell him. She said she didn't want to tell him for fear of breaking up the family. I told her that he has the right to know and that she was being a bad sister by knowing and not telling him. I also informed her if he found out she knew and didn't say anything that he would most likely kick her out of his life. She made me swear I wouldn't tell him. Even though I thought it was wrong I did agree to not say anything. It did get me wondering how she could not only not tell him but stay friends with someone that could do that to her brother. I think that's when I started to question her morals. The third month she asked that I didn't come out because she was "sick". I told her I didn't care, I could still come out and take care of her. She convinced me that she didn't want me to come so I just worked on the farm instead. I switched weekends so I could come out the next instead of in two weekends. The weekend she was "sick" her phone was off the whole time, lasting into the week. She told me her phone went through the washing machine. She was actually on a bender but I didn't learn that till later.
So I head out the following weekend. As soon as I arrive I start getting super sketchy vibes. I was already weirded out about the stuff with her brother and ghosting me for 4 days as we talked/texted multiple times a day normally. At first she acts great to me, cooks me steak and we go out to the bush to have a fire in the snow. At the fire she really started drinking heavily. She then mentions a guy she had been hanging with lets call him Brad. So alarm bells start going through my head. We go back to her house and she keeps drinking. I wanted to keep a clear head so I only had three beers all evening. She put her phone down unlocked because of how drunk she was and I took it to the bathroom with me to look up texts between them. I felt so guilty for doing it at first but once I see the text between the two of them the guilt is replaced with rage. I go to her room to confront her and she breaks down. First, how dare I go through her phone, this never would have happened if I would have broken my promise to my dad, nothing really happened between them, blah, blah, blah. I was furious and drove off. She blows up my phone the whole time. I don't answer. Ten minutes after I left her mother called me. She lives at her moms house. I took the call and her mom said she is freaking out and has harmed herself. I decide to go back and she has a bandage wrapped around her arm. Her mom hid all the sharp objects she could find. She was having a full on panic attack and begs me to not leave. I told her I would stay if she told me the truth. She admits to hooking up with him one time just that last weekend when she asked me not to come out. It kind of matches the messages and I believe her. I stay there till she falls asleep. Once she does I send Brad a text saying that she has a boyfriend with some screen shots of our conversations me and her have had that week. I was about to drive back to the farm when the dude called her phone. I pick up the call and tell him I am her boyfriend. He asks if that was a joke and I assure him it is not. He said he didn't know and actually apologized. I tell him that I'm pissed but if he didn't know I couldn't blame him. I should have asked him more questions but I was tired, not thinking straight and just wanted to go back to the Farm even though it was two am by this point. I get home and crash. Turned my ringer off because I know once she wakes up she will start calling like crazy. After getting the horses in for the night I decided to look at my phone for the first time all day. Around thirty missed calls and a ton of texts. I decide I need another day before I talk to her. Now while the whole day all I can think about is that it was just one time, she seems to be genuinely remorseful about it, how I'm 39 and really want children before I get too old. I took a call from her the next day on Sunday in the morning. She is still wasted. She hadn't stopped drinking since I was there Friday. We talk and I tell her that I am really upset but am willing to give us another chance. I still was in love with her and wanted to have kids, get married and buy a house with her. It was the dream I felt I worked so hard for. She was so happy I took her back and swore to me nothing like this would ever happen again. Basically I was a fool lol.
So I decided on my next set of days off to borrow my stepdads summer home on the river so we can have the place to ourselves. I grab food that she loves so I can cook her dinner and try to make it very romantic. I want to rekindle my love with her so I wanted to go all out on an amazing weekend. I pick her up and she is already a little drunk. I kind of wanted to hang sober but I don't wanna mess up with her so don't say anything thinking we can do a sober day when I take her out to go shopping and dinner the next day. When we get there she gets hammered. Kali had brought a big of bottle fireball on top of a bunch of white claws. I again didn't really drink that night. Once she was drunk and tired I carried her to the bed. As Kali is in my arms she looks up at me and says in slurred words "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Joe" I ask "what did you just say?". "I don't know why you even felt threatened by Brad" she replied. I put her to bed and my mind starts racing. Now her ex before me has a really close name to the one she said first but I also know she has a friend named Joe I only met a couple of times. They were not close or even hung out but were more like acquaintances. I go in her purse to look at her phone again but the battery is dead and I can't find her charger. I have an Iphone so I can't charge it up to look. I didn't sleep that well that night with everything going on in my head. I woke up at 6 am to her being very loud on the phone. I went out to the living room and she had drank all the booze left over from the night before. I ask her who she was on the phone with and she tells me an uber to leave. I ask why is she going to leave? Kali tells me she is upset that I tried to get into her phone. Guess I didn't put it back in her purse. Must have been out of sorts and forgot. I tell her I can drive her once I go to the washroom and get some clothes on. I go to do that, come out of the washroom to see Kali has already left. She was so drunk that she had left half her stuff behind. I decided to have breakfast before bringing her stuff to her house. After breakfast I packed her stuff into my SUV and noticed it had snowed that night. I could see her footprints out into the driveway. While Dropping off her stuff I noticed there were no footprints leading to her house, so I tried calling Kali. No answer. I left her stuff in the snow and decided to drive by her brothers and sisters house to see if there were footprints going into any of their houses but there were none. I sent her a nasty text about knowing she didn't go home, to go be with Brad or Joe or whoever and never call me again. It was a lot more profane than that but that's the gist of it. Cleaned up the house my stepdad lent me and back off to the farm yet again. The next day she blows up my phone and again I wait another day to talk to her. She tells me that she went home but I know that can't be true from the snow, but she says I must have been mistaken. She apologizes for getting drunk and leavening and that she is going to stop drinking after her birthday in two weeks. She has rented a hotel in the town I'm in for her birthday and wants to spend it with me. I agree just because I have to know the truth and want to look at her phone to make sure I am not crazy. She had gaslit me to the point I was questioning what I saw with my own eyes. A couple of days later I decided to send Joe a message on Facebook to see if he would give me the truth. I get a text from her telling me not to bug her friend and that she is embarrassed. I apologize and tell her I am excited about her birthday soon.
The weekend of her birthday comes so I go to meet her at the hotel. She brought her sister and other friend along. It actually is a really fun time. The girls did coke the first night into the second evening. I don't really like it but I figured she can let loose especially if she is going to stop drinking after her birthday. I also knew by Saturday night that they would all crash hard so it would give me time to look at her phone so I could know the truth. As I mentioned the weekend was really fun so I felt bad about going into her phone yet again. I did it anyway and my whole world came crashing down. Now I figured that I would maybe see Brad or Joe texts and Facebook messages. Seemed like Brad was done but Joe and her were totally hooking up. I also found out that she had slept with 3 other guys. I also saw she was using coke all the time now. She did it maybe three times a year when we dated but now it was every weekend. It looked like she started using regularly right before I left for the farm. Joe helped get it for her too, out of all the guys he was the one she hung with the most. Turns out he was also a meth head who was trying to quit for her. She also went to his house the morning she left the other weekend to hook up and buy coke. I was floored. I just staired and took screen shots till the early morning. I decided I wasn't just going to dump her but I wanted to ruin her life not realizing she was already doing that all by herself but hindsight is 20 20. So I started coming up with a plan of what I was going to do. I woke up the next morning and acted like everything was fine and went back to the farm. I was still so upset and didn't want to harm myself or others so had a family friend take my firearms for a while. I don't think I would have used them on myself or others but I knew I wasn't thinking clearly and didn't want them in my house while I was like that.
I didn't have to see her till I moved back because the next set I had off I had tickets for a concert in the city I used to live in. During that time all I thought about was how I was going to do something to ruin her life. I came up with some small things but my main plan was to pretend like we were fine and ghost her when my contract was up with my boss next winter. I had promised him another year after kali and I had gotten back together. Just typing it out makes me look back and cringe that I was so crazy. When I went to the city for the concert I told my best friend, my brother and a few others my plan. No one liked it and thought I should just go no contact, cut her straight out of my life. That probably was the smart thing to do but emotion was clouding my judgement. Also you all would get this story. They even informed me that because I would be lying to her, that I would be compromising my morals and turning into a worse person they didn't recognize. I either didn't see it that way or care. I have a hard time recalling what my brain was thinking during that time. All seems like a haze now that it's been a year. I think I was really upset that my dream and all I had worked for was ruined. A friend later said I may have been in love with the dream and not her. Maybe that's the reason I kept up all this insanity.
My time on the farm had come to an end and I was moving back to the town me and my ex lived in. I was set with my plan, excited to implement it and have what I considered just. But you know what they say of the best laid plans. My ex wanted to go to hang at her brothers as a welcome home party. I went but ended up drinking. Heavily drinking, to the point of black out. I don't remember much from that night but have had it recounted for me. I woke up in the drunk tank. Guess I couldn't lie and play it cool then huh? The story I was told later is, while at her brothers I had gotten drunk and loud. Kept waking up the new baby and we were asked to leave. So we caught a cab and I confronted her in the cab but all I could do was call her a lying, cheating, whore on repeat. She got upset and ran into the house locking me out. I had a bunch of my stuff in her house so I went to the door and demanded she let me in. All the while still only referring to her as the aforementioned 3 words. She told me to leave but my jacket and wallet were inside. It was below freezing at night still and probably wouldn't have made it home in the state I was in. I then kicked in her door to keep calling her LCW and grab my stuff. She was on the phone to the police, so I was taken away by them. One of the lowest points in my life. It still brings me so much shame to this day but it is what happened and I am not going to sugar coat it. I never laid a finger on her and I am so happy that I hadn't. Laying hands on women in that way is one of the scummiest things a man can do. I had to go back to her house once they let me out because my stuff was still there. I apologized to her mom who had been at her boyfriends that evening promising to repair the door for her. Kali begged me to talk to her and like an idiot I didn't just leave. I told her I saw everything and she only admitted to Brad and Joe. Lying about them and the others the whole time. Even when I brought up the screen shots she still couldn't come clean. I left just shaking my head. There is still a ton to this story but this is long enough. I could do a part 2 if there is interest. Catching you folks up to where I am now and the messed up things that happened in between.

It was an overcast morning in late spring, the kind of day where you can't decide if it's going to pour rain or clear up. The weather was perfectly indecisive, much like my feelings about the intricate details that had consumed the last several months of planning this monumental event. You see, the wedding was set to be held at the grand yet somewhat clichéd 'Whispering Willows' event hall. The name alone should give you an idea of the kind of pretentious place it was, with its overly manicured gardens and staff who wore constant, painfully forced smiles.
The day started with me waking up at exactly 6:30 AM, as I had meticulously planned. My schedule was packed with all the banal but necessary activities that precede a wedding: a light breakfast of exactly two boiled eggs and a slice of whole wheat toast (no butter), a shower that I timed to last no longer than seven minutes to conserve both water and time, and a session of silent meditation where I tried to find some semblance of peace amidst the chaos.
By 10:00 AM, I was at the venue, ensuring every napkin was folded in a precise bishop's hat fold, not the Dutch crown fold that the staff had mistakenly started with. I corrected this with a slight twitch of irritation. As I roamed the venue, I checked off trivial things on my checklist: the placement of the 150 meticulously chosen floral centerpieces, the angle of the 200 chiavari chairs (which I adjusted from 90 to 85 degrees to encourage more intimate conversation), and the volume of the background classical music (which should be exactly 40 decibels, no more, no less).
Around 11:47 AM, as I was verifying that each of the 250 champagne flutes was free of smudges and positioned 2.5 inches from the edge of the reception tables, Eric, my college friend, approached me. His presence was as sudden as it was unnecessary at that moment. He wore a suit that was one shade too dark for the daytime event, and his tie was asymmetrically knotted.
"Hey," Eric started, clearing his throat while I pretended not to notice the new watermark he had just put on one of the pristine flutes with his thumb. "Can we talk a sec?"
I glanced at my watch, noting that this unscheduled conversation was eating into the 12 minutes I had allocated to inspect the DJ's equipment setup. But Eric had that look — the kind where you know you're about to be dragged into a conversation you didn't schedule or want.
"Sure, Eric," I said, masking my annoyance with a tone flatter than the soda left out from last night's rehearsal dinner.
He pulled me slightly aside, right near the painstakingly positioned ice sculpture of Cupid, which was now melting at an anticipated rate of 0.5 inches per hour, a detail I noted with a frown.
"You're, uh, coming off a bit strong with all this," Eric muttered, gesturing vaguely at my clipboard and then at the surrounding spectacle of my own design. "It’s your big day, man. You should relax. You're too... I don’t know, edgy?"
I stared at him, the words 'too edgy' echoing in my mind like a bad song on repeat. Too edgy? I was merely ensuring that the event adhered to a standard that would prevent any future nightmares about a less-than-perfect wedding day.
"Thanks for the input, Eric," I said, my voice as dry as the unseasoned chicken I had vetoed from the menu last week. "I’ll take that under advisement."
He nodded, seemingly relieved to have dispensed his wisdom, and wandered off to undoubtedly commit more fingerprints to glass surfaces.
Returning to my checklist, I noted the time of Eric’s interruption and adjusted my schedule, allowing 30 fewer seconds at each remaining task to make up for lost time. The rest of the day proceeded in a blur of similarly thrilling activities: verifying the pH level of the water in the vases to ensure optimal flower freshness, triple-checking the seating chart to avoid the disastrous potential of Aunt Marge sitting next to Cousin Larry, and discussing the viscosity of the gravy with the caterer to ensure it poured smoothly without being too watery.
By the time the actual ceremony started, I had recalibrated the entire event down to the second, all while pondering Eric's words. Too edgy? Perhaps, but in a world full of chaos, I was the master of wedding logistics, turning what could have been an eventful and vibrant day into a perfectly planned, substance-lacking sequence of timed events.
And so, as I stood there, exchanging vows in a ceremony that was timed to coincide with the exact moment the sun was highest in the sky (for optimal lighting, naturally), I couldn't help but reflect on Eric's advice. Maybe he was right; perhaps I could have been less edgy. But then again, the day went off without a hitch, exactly as planned, right down to the last, predictable, perfectly unremarkable minute.
My friend Eric has been with me since we were kids, we grew up on the same street actually. Is he wrong for doing this?

Assalamualykum, dear ukhtis. I see this subreddit is more active then before, and that there’s a lot of new redditors who joined out of their interest in niqab/islam. This subreddit has grown a lot especially this year, so this is just to caution any Muslim women, or women who are interested in the niqab. Although this subreddit was initially intended for only women to share tips for the niqab, it’s no longer a safe space to do so. For your own safety and awareness, please be careful with your interactions on this subreddit.
Firstly, please know that not everyone is Muslim here, so don’t seek islamic advice here. If you need islamic advice, seek the knowledge of those knowledgeable such as reputable shaykhs and scholars who follow the Quran and Sunnah. To any pagans/atheist women here, please know that this is a Muslim subreddit. There is a pagan veiling subreddit and other veiling subreddit for people who do not identify as Muslims. Secondly, not everyone here is women, so be careful who you’re talking to/complimenting/advising. As Muslimahs, we should not be needlessly interacting with the opposite sex (trans or not), let alone encourage them to disrespect and appropriate the niqab. This subreddit in particular is meant for Muslim women who veil/want to veil. Niqab/veiling is NOT for men, including anyone who was born male at birth. Thirdly, and most importantly, there’s more than a handful of perverts who fetishize the niqab here. Most of who are men, pretending to be Muslim/or a veiling women. Unfortunately, the subreddit community was initially full of these types of people, despite the intent of this subreddit. Please know that these people are dangerous and need psychological help, so please be careful about posting yourself here.
If you’re learning about Islam, this is not the place to be, especially if you’re a new Muslim or considering reverting. If you want to wear niqab/are wearing niqab and need support, there are many other platforms/communities that give sincere advice and help. I would love to link those resources but because of the members here, I won’t since many of them are strictly for Muslim sisters only. If you’d like, feel free to DM for resources to help.
Lastly, please check out the purpose of this community post by the admin: https://www.reddit.com/Niqabis/s/fsDqJvvQus
You can check her posts on this subreddit, but even she had to announce that there will be a MOD due to the disgraceful posts by such people. Stay safe sisters.

Recently got a call from FedEx about a parcel being initiated in my name and Aadhar for Mumbai to Taiwan. The email address used was fake.
The person on call said that the parcel was initiated on 7th May.
On 1st May, police came to my home for police verification (4th time) which should have been a red flag. I made the mistake of not checking their badge or their identity numbers. They took the details of my Aadhar and address.
I haven’t shared my Aadhar number with anyone in the last month. And the timing of this is super suspicious to make me think that the police (or alleged scammers pretending to be police) is behind this. I can’t prove it unfortunately but just wanted to let everyone know.
Be careful with details you share

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Complex-Wing7114
I have 2 weeks to get away from my husband
Originally posted to offmychest
Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU
TRIGGER WARNING: controlling behavior, threats, abusive behavior, stalking
Original Post Apr 27, 2024
Throwaway account as my husband and In-laws are follow my main. I, 29 F, have been married to my husband, 30 m, who I'll call Alex. Alex and I met in college during our freshman year. We started off as just friends, and got married seven months ago. I've gotten along with his family, but we aren't super close but we're friendly enough. The problem is that Alex has begun to make me incredibly uncomfortable.
Firstly, he's begun to ask me who I'm meeting with, where, what we plan on doing, how long every single time I leave the house without him. At first, I just thought he was being protective and a good partner just in case something happened, but then he started checking my phone after the visits, vetting and researching each of my friends as well.
He also has been pursuing me to link my bank account to his, as he's "in charge" of the finances when he was perfectly fine with keeping them separate before. We fight about it almost every day.
Finally, yesterday when he was preparing to go on a work trip for two weeks in California, he demanded I wear a tracker so he could keep and eye on me while he's gone. I can't do this anymore, I feel like I'm suffocating and his family who I've spoken to about his worrying behavior just said he's being careful and protective as a good husband should. I need to gather my things together and find a way to be gone before he gets home without tipping him off.
He's always threatened that if he ever found me cheating on him he'd turn in divorce papers the same day. He keeps a filled out copy in his desk. I'm going to submit those the day I leave. But there's so much to do, bergen finding a new place to live, seeing if my job has any transfers available, packing and moving in two weeks. His return flight May 11th, so I need to move quickly. I'm posting here because I don't have any close family, and I can't risk dragging my friends into this as we share the same friends.I just needed a place to vent, and ask if anyone has any advice on the easiest and safest way to do this?
Edit: oh my god you guys are amazing! I never even thought to not use his divorce papers. I'll check for cameras before I start any packing or prepping. I may also shred his divorce papers just in case and look into getting a lawyer for myself. I'm in a no fault divorce state, that much I so remember which will help. I'll update again when I know more. The tracker he wants me to use is a small clip to put on the belt or waistband. I'll wear it unless I'm going or doing something related to me leaving. No pets yet thankfully.
Update Apr 28, 2024
So I've gotten a lot of support and helpful advice along with questions I thought I should clarify before I proceed with the update. Some asked why I'd be 'hiding' things from Alex regarding going out and who I'm meeting with. I don't, and I have nothing to hide. However when he begins to then double check everything I tell him with the other people there right down to each person I talked to and what I said. Did I send any text msgs, did I order food, how much did I eat, that's when it started to feel like I was slowly being pushed into a corner. It didn't start that bad, but gradually grew worse overtime.
All of the Reddit subs my in-law's families are part of are related gardening and diy so I highly doubt they'll see this, if so by the time they do, I'll hopefully be gone. I talked to my job and explained things to my manager. And they promised to look into openings in other states to see if they could get me into one. They'll have an update on that in three days. I trust that my bank account us secured, considering he's tried to get into it before and failed. I found one camera in the kitchen, another in the living room and one in our bedroom. As such, I've left them in place for now and done all other planning, either in the bathroom pretending I'm taking a bath.
I'm honestly staying away from the domestic violence services as my sister-in-law is unfortunately higher up in those considering she volunteers there and I have a feeling if I did show up there, they would know in a heartbeat. I can't look for apartments until I get the update from my work, but either or i'm still gonna be leaving the state. The day before I do I will be changing my number carrier and wiping my laptop and all of his electronics before I do.
I've met with 2 lawyers so far and had them look over the paperwork. My husband had prepared and both said that it did it have some clauses in it. That could have caused me some trouble down the line. What alarmed all of us close the fact that several of those clauses dealt with future children, and not as a hypothetical. Like several hair suggested I have a feeling he fully intended on getting me pregnant to keep me trapped and tied to him.
There are 3 other locations. My job could send me to and I have. As a precaution Begun looking into all 3 cities and housing in the areas. Just in case one of those, this is the one they send me to. Even if they don't have an opening that they can push me into then I will just have to quit, move and figure things out on my own. I have enough money to live and survive for a few months until I can pick up another job.
Unfortunately all of our friends are mutuals and would likely be unaware of the consequences of saying or sharing anything I do or say with my husband. I don't have any surviving close family and obviously my in laws are not a good resource to rely on. I am on my own unfortunately, other than the wonderful bonds, i've begun to make here. I will update again if I get more information or something else happens. Otherwise all update when my work gets back to me. I do plan on leaving before he returns, though. Just to make sure that i'm not anywhere near here at that time.
Update 2 Apr 30, 2024
Good news! My work has an opening I qualify for that will not only shift me across the country, but also comes with a salary increase as well. I've started telling my in laws and friends that I'm planning a surprise outing for when my husband gets back for just the two of us. This way, people don't give me odd looks if they see me out and about. I've even gone as far as asking MIL to show me his favorite recipes.
Meanwhile, I've found a moving company that while small is willing to work in a storm. The reason is in five days, we're supposed to get hit with a large storm front. I plan to shut off the breaker and say we lost power if he asks just as several people here suggested and even send him a short clip of the storm.
I will have all of my stuff moved that afternoon, and I will be flying out once the weather has cleared enough to do so. I have a lawyer who will push my divorce through, and I've filled out the necessary paperwork so that I don't have to be here for it. I'm not suing for assets or alimony and I've shredded his divorce papers as well. I've set up a cheap payphone plan through cricket until this is all said and done at which point I will find a new carrier, number and phone. This one is being wiped and left behind.
My laptop is provided by my work, and the IT department inspected it thoroughly and it was clean thankfully. No other electronic aside from my laptop and new phone will be coming with me. If alex needs to talk to me, he can do it through my lawyer. Not sure if anything else will happen, my fingers are crossed that he doesn't think anythings amiss until after I leave - and I'm not turning the breaker back on when I do. He can when he gets home. My work is covering the plane ticket, so that at least is one expense I don't have to finagle in.
Update 3 May 7, 2024
Update 3: I have 2 weeks to get away from my husband.
It's been a busy week, but I've gotten so much done. Firstly, I am now out of the house and am currently in a hotel while I look for an apartment. It's a big city, bustling with people no matter where you look. We had a pretty bad storm system hit back home, that actually lasted two days. High winds, thunder, lightning and even hail everywhere. I didn't take much from the house, my documents, clothes and important sentimental items. I left all of the furniture and electronics behind. I cleaned the house top to bottom and took pictures on my phone so he couldn't claim I damaged anything when I left.
My lawyer has already started divorce proceedings, and my husband will be served on the 8th. His plane is due to land early morning, and the sheriff will be there at the house waiting for him. He is very much about public appearances and reputation. My lawyer will be calling him as well to inform him that I am more than willing to air out everything to the public about his actions if it means securing my freedom from him. I will go to court as long as I must to get this pushed through.
I haven't told our friends or his in-laws yet, I will do that while he is on the flight to prevent him from getting wind of it before he's handed the divorce papers. I will be calling around and explaining why we're getting divorced, to try and prevent him from twisting this into somehow being my fault. I don't want him trying to claim I had an affair or something so I want to get the truth out before he can twist this.
I'm... doing okay. I'm tired, but yet I feel almost jittery and off-kilter. I keep looking over my shoulder and monitoring what I say even when I don't really need to anymore. Hopefully that will fade soon. My work is covering the cost of the hotel, and I'm working on getting my other things in order. I also need to find a new GP as I want to get a full test just to make sure everything is okay. I don't know when my next update will be, probably when the divorce papers are filed or if we have to go to court to push them through. I will try to keep my head up, but it feels like I'm in a whirlwind or something with so many things to do and think about. I kinda thought it would be easier once I got out of the house but while the fear is smaller, somehow the number of tasks only seems to have grown.
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I didn't want to post here but I didn't really have a choice so i am just gonna cut to the chase. My older sister is dating my nephew. It sounds weird but please read. They both are under 18 so I wont use real names. First, I will start with explanations about my family. My other older sister I will call her Hope) who is 30 at the time of this post is married to my brother-in law. My brother in-law's brother and his wife was caught doing "Illegal things" (Sorry Its still an ongoing case atm). So brother in-law's other brother and his wife decided to take their kids in but they were still living with Hope and my brother in-law and one of those kids were my nephew who I will name Lee was one of those kids.
(By the way, when me, Pou, and my other older sister who is a year older than me were in foster care. When we were, my brother in-law and Hope took us in and this was when I was five or six. Hope, my other sis whom I'll call Alin and me walked in on Lee and Pou cuddling. That was when Pou was eight or seven and Lee was 9 or 10. )
My sister whom I will call Pou started acting strange when we were folding boats for their grandpa whom recently passed away. Folding boats for our loved ones is part of our tradition. Pou and Lee were acting strange because they were glancing at each other as if they were elementary children.
That's when my suspicions started. Not to be creepy or anything but every movement they made and every small action I was watching as I did with everyone else. To be honest watching and reading people's face wrinkles and actions became a habit when I was 11 and right now I'm 14 so three years of experience was screaming "Somethings happening" So I will list things that stood out and rose my suspicions.
1.Lee's Actions: Lee is a quiet guy just like my brother in-law and they both are talkative to people they know. So during spring break we went to spend time at Hope's house to help with the kids and to hang out. Suddenly Lee came into our room and decided to hang out with us. Usually when we are over Lee stays in the basement. Even Hope said that. I didn't think much of it and thought he had a change of heart.
2.Pou's Voice: Pou is a confident talkative girl and her voice is like Jim Carrey, Drake, and Jennie if they were in one voice box. So that same day where Lee cam into the room to hangout, Pou was acting strange and I noticed Lee being distant from me and Hope. So when Pou would start talking its like she was summoning the snow white out of her soul. So of course that made me realize, "Yea, something is goin on here"
3.Pou's Actions: Usually when it comes to Hope's house Pou wouldn't really be that enthusiastic when going. So when we were about to come back home from Hope's house Pou said."To be honest, I kind don't wanna go home." We had to anyways because we had school the next day. She also would use the bathroom in the basement where Lee sleeps. (The basement is not messy its actually a bar, gym, and bedroom.) Usually Pou would be reluctant to use the bathroom in the basement because that bathroom was cramped and the door couldn't close properly. So when she did I was already convinced she was seeing him.
Lee wanted to wrestle me and Pou or so I thought. My other nephew whom I'll name Leo loves to wrestle me and Pou because I'm a workout freak and Pou for her natural strength. So when Lee wanted to wrestle I was tryna warm up but Lee and Pou were already goin at it. They were gentle and giggling. Its like they were teasing each other.
Next is Confirming My Suspicions
During her visit to the basement she was taking too long so I decided, "Lets see if I'm right." So I tried sneaking down in the basement but my dam flip flops were slapping my feet and the stairs would creak so they hear me coming down. When I opened the door Lee was pretending to be asleep and Pou coincidentally "finished" using the bathroom. A few things stood out

1. Pou was out of breath
2. She was smiling and looking to my left.
3. I looked at her direction, she didnt look like she came around the corner where the bathroom was at. it looked like she just turned around from going to the direction of the bathroom.

I asked her, "Why do you talk in that voice whenever Lee is near?" and she got defensive on me telling me not to get the wrong idea.
Yesterday, we were watching a horror movie named Exhuma and babysitting. Me, Hope, Pou, and Alin were there and we were gonna use the bathroom one by one since we are watching our 1 year old niece. Pou wanted to use the bathroom in the basement since one of our nephews was taking too long. Once he was done, Me, Hope, and Alin had already used the bathroom. We waited and waited on our phones. I was honestly in a good mood since I had predicted the movie's outcome but Pou was killing the suspense of the movie so I told Hope and Alin that I was going to check on her. This time instead of trying to sneak, I decided to run down as it was a habit and when I burst opened the door, Boom, them rushing to get away from each other. Lee was laying on his stomach and face on the pillow, Pou standing up in shock, eyes wide, one hand on her waist and the other covering her mouth. The only thing I thought was, "So I was right." I told her that I had a suspicion and tried to confirm it earlier. Honestly the only real emotion I could get out was a laugh. I didnt really feel anything about it but how funny it was.
How They Feel
Pou told me that she feels that she's truly in love with him and so is he. She told me things how they started falling for each other and by the information it sounds like Lee was the one in love first. It was a romantic story but she told me it was forbidden love. To me it seems more like Illegal love. For the record we come form a strict Asian house hold and culture. In our culture reputation is money, power, status, life. She told me that she loved him because he wasn't a brain-rotted 17 year old guy. Yes Pou is 16 and Lee is 17. Lee was healthy. He worked out just like me and was somewhat productive. She said that Lee was the only one who like her cranky and funny personality. He embraced her body like it was a statue. He didn't just like her, he loved her, and they loved each other. She said that she loved his voice, his protection, and his way of affection. She loved listening to him like he was a melody on the beach. It was addicting and calming to her in my opinion. She cried. She didn't trust me. I understood why.
Just a little information. I was mature for my age. I knew many things, and had many secrets and secrets of others. I used these secrets to get information of other people or use it to my advantage. In public I used an Innocent face, voice and personality. With family, neutral and tried to make others smile. Alone is when I express myself. I use information from others around me to blackmail or just to see their expressions because it was entertaining. I hurt people who hurt me and one of those were Pou.
So I understood why she didn't trust me. If I met me, I wouldn't trust me either. In all the conversations and stories, I felt like I related. I was also wondering what I would do if I lost someone close to me and I did, we all did. She told me that he was the reason she could live, losing him would mean losing herself. She told me to keep it to myself till the day I die. She couldn't trust me to the point she started eating less.
I'm not begging for her trust if anything I didn't want to get involved but curiosity drives me nuts.
I don't know if this is even legal. My strict parents would kick her out and my elders would give her a nickname to gossip about. I'm just a kid relying on internet people I truly don't know. I know its stupid but I cant anyone. My parents would disown her, I would get yelled at and my sis Hope would get shamed on by my brother in-law's elders. I'm supposed be the mediator in these situations but ever outcome I can think of leads to nowhere that everyone is good.
Hope is a good person and she is my main concern. Me and Leo are close and his nephews and nieces love me and I love them too. If I ruin their relationship, it would affect Leo, Hope, Lee, my nieces and nephews and my brother in-law. She's my sister who has never hurt me.
Adults or anyone experienced in things like this could help me, I truly don't know what to do, advice would be nice.

I don't open up problems to people around me even though I know that there are some who would be willing to listen. So dito nalang muna ako magpapakawala ng frustration.
I'm a person who doesn't want any beef with anyone as much as possible and I can't sleep knowing that someone felt bad because of me. So habang nagiisip pa ako kung papaano ko sasabihin frankly sa isa kong tropa na pathological liar and a heavily driven user of people, na I'm fed up with letting his lies slide and I'm done pretending to be naive and I wanted to cut our friendship ties na, pa vent off muna dito. It's been too mentally toxic for me already. Never have I thought I'd meet someone and eventually be in my circle for years who lives and breathes as a bullshit artist. I always knew he's like that, others in our circle know he's that kind. All in his other circle know that.
Madali lang naman sana eh kung hindi dahil sa put***inang pagkabuhol-buhol sa negosyo.
We are business partners. I know, antangatanga ko din. You got me, and I won't defend myself from that. But he was a friend needing help at that time. So I financed the whole thing and used my highly valued skills to build and maintain it. But public knowledge is that we financed it squarely. He doesn't want everyone to know I solely financed it because this guy's got a fvkn ego as huge as Burj Khalifa -- I agreed. Business is food. Deal was, we'll locate the business in their property and as soon as we rake in consistent profits, we'll slowly return my capital. Then subsequent profits, we'll split 50/50. Fortunately, business slightly blew up. I did get my capital back. Thereafter I trusted him with the numbers and the papers. Biz is under sole proprietorship and let him print his name on it because I tend to travel far regularly. I get to monitor the sales naman real time with an online POS. I initiated the financial sheets for him to maintain manually. IT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE. I relied on his casual updates, on how the general fitness of the busines goes. For the past few months I always get a fckn sad and disappointed face together with a bad news that it's been rough lately and saying we're just breaking even for months now. I opened the sheets yesterday after almost a year of not checking on them and I can see so much bullshit in it as clear as day. I can spot them with one eye closed. It's like a robbery done by a child. Well to be fair, this guy is not really smart. In a lot of ways he's bobo. He thinks he's street smart at ma diskarte but there's a more fitting word to call it for his case -- EGO. He thinks hes's got the flair of bobo but madiskarte. But IQ and other intellectual traits, zilch. When I saw all the discrepancies, I couldn't contain my laughter because it was too funny that he might think he did a great job playing with the numbers. Spotting the bullshit in it was childsplay. But fun didn't last long. I feel brutally betrayed. I knew naman talaga na there was so much risk. Also, I always knew how fckn dark his attitude, his ways, and mindset is. It's just that, he needed help that I agreed to team up. But now, he's become a huge turd I want to wash away as thorough as possible.
He also always likes to make stories and scenarios up where he would sound and look great. He's basically self-feeding his ego. He always presents himself to everyone that he had reached these and those kind of fictional achievements, unsolicitedly blowing his own horn at strange and random times. Probably a coping mechanism because admittedly, he knows that he's a person with no talent, no skills, no intelligence, and just PURE BULLSHIT.

My husband [M31] and I [F26] met online ten years ago and did long-distance between visits until I could move in with him, though now I think he may have groomed me but I'm not really sure, I'm still working through alot of stuff tbh.
Shortly after we got married he had a (common, manageable) chronic medical condition make itself known and it seems like thats when he became emotionally abusive and started threatening physical abuse when he got angry with me. He'd always had a bit of a temper toward anyone but me, but now he was quick to anger and would throw and break things in front of me when his temper flared. Sometimes we'd argue and he'd scream insults at me so loudly I could feel the bass of his voice vibrate in my chest from across the room and my ears would ring. At least twice our neighbours called for wellness checks on me, he would apologise to the officers and we'd pretend that we had no idea our little argument had gotten so out of hand, but as soon as the door closed again it was always my fault; he wouldn't have behaved that way if I had just used my brain and not made him so angry, I'm so twisted how I provoke him then play the victim.
Thankfully I'm now back in my home country and preparing to file for divorce but I can't stop feeling dumb and ashamed for how much time I wasted with him- and ohmygod, the moneeyy 😩 easily over 15 grand on visas, travelling, flights, care packages, post cards, letting him spend entire paychecks of mine on his hobbies (weed & video games)!! 🤡🤡🤡
I know I'm only 26 and still really young, but I'm angry and worried that maybe I wasted my prime years being a bangmaid to someones crusty, deadbeat son. It also haunts me how many red flags I brushed off before we were married that are perfectly fucking neon now! 🤦‍♀️ They come to me at random times, like this morning in the shower; it hit me that him physically intimidating his cats when they groomed themselves in the same room as him was never 'a sensory issue' or 'difference in training methods', he's just a short-tempered bully who solves things with threats and intimidation. I felt like I had to physically shake my head to get the embarassment out after that, because how blind could I have been!!? Ugh.
If anyone reads this and relates, how did you cope with all the anxious thoughts and negative feelings after leaving and start rebuilding yourself? I feel like I lost so much of myself in that apartment, and I'd really like to eventually stop thinking about all of this, and him, all the time.
Thanks for holding space for me if you read this far🌷

The guy I’ve been dating took photos of me during sex without my consent and knowledge. I had a weird feeling after we had sex, when he went to the bathroom to clean himself up I checked his phone and found he’d taken multiple photos of me during it without my knowledge. I deleted them all and also deleted them from his recently deleted. I confronted him about it, he did apologise a lot and he kept apologising the next day also, and calling himself an idiot etc. he bought me a cookie in my favourite flavour as an apology. I didn’t know how to feel at the time and I let him sleep over anyway afterwards. I can’t tell if he’s genuinely sorry or if he’s being manipulative. Because I think he’s trying to make me feel guilty, even though I wasn’t the one who did anything wrong. He keeps calling himself stupid and an idiot non stop, and then he started telling me about his family problems etc, and problems he’s going through at the moment that aren’t relevant at all. It’s like he’s making the me feel guilty to deflect his actions. I’m so confused and hurt by it all.
Up until that point he seemed perfect, and there was no problems. But now I’m wondering if it was too good to be true. Maybe I’ve been love bombed by him. Constantly over complimenting me, telling be I’m the most beautiful girl he’s ever met, giving me gifts after not knowing me for long, talking about our future etc. He was doing this as soon as we started dating. I knew something wasn’t right, but I was so happy that someone was treating me nicely because all my experiences with dating men previously have been terrible. I feel so empty. It’s like every time I think it’s going to be better it’s not. Im let down every time. Men only ever sexualise me, I feel like they only lie to me and pretend to be romantically interested so they can sleep with me and treat me like shit.
I don’t know what to do now, I initially felt very numb and desensitised and told him i would see him again, but now it’s starting to hit how upset I feel and how wrong this actually is. I don’t know if I should forgive him because he’s non stop apologising and trying to make things right, but I feel incredibly violated and betrayed.

Let us pretend that this is a real update, any of this can of course be changed to properly suite the balancing of the game:
‎

Lively Wastes

Well we all have issues with the wasteland, ghouls breaking in and eating your food, gangs of raiders chasing you with spears, or random scavengers boarding up your door in an instant. Today I bring some new content and some solutions for a few of these issues.
‎

Enclosed:

This is a new gimmick for base building, when surrounding your entire base, creatures and players may not spawn in it or 2 spaces around it, same rule applies to anyone else trying to build around your base that isn't you or your team mates, this only works if you completely surround your base, corners must be secured as well. Plants and rocks can still spawn in it so floors are advised if you don't want it to be cluttered up or if one of your walls break, ruining the anti spawn/anti place effect. Special ruling applies when players from different teams build, if a player helps you close in your 'house', you both can build without restriction, this can be good for team mates when their team leader dies to not cause issues, down fall is that raiders can cause more issues.
‎
‎

Item(s)

‎

CaSmall Trucks

Use:

Harvest.

Cost:

3 alloys, 30 metal, 10 junk.

Requires:

Research Bench or Builder Station(check (https://www.reddit.com/devastio/comments/1comkq5/wasteland\_wishesupdate\_suggestion2/), unlock at level 14.

Health:

3000.

Area:

2x6.

Obtainability:

Craft, can be found around the city to break.

Special:

Stacks of 2 gas per slot can be looted from this.
‎

Fire Arrows

Use:

Ammunition.

Cost:

10 arrows, 1 gas.

Requires:

Work Bench, unlock at level 3.

Obtainability:

Craft Only.

Special:

By using the 'R' button you can swap between normal arrows and fire arrows, if you have them. When it hits something, it is afflicted with the 'Burning' effect(check https://www.reddit.com/devastio/comments/1cm4irl/phoenix_risingupdate_suggestion_1/ for info on it).

Flavor Text:

"We didn't start the fire, it was always burning..."
‎

Heater

Use:

Crafting Bench and camp.

Cost:

5 alloys, 15 metal, and 20 energy-cells.

Requires:

Research Bench, unlock at level 16.

Health:

1000.

Arena:

1x1.

Obtainability:

Craft, High level respawn kit.

Special:

Acts like a camp fire, requires energy cells to function and warms up nearby people, if the 'house' is Enclosed, it affects the entire base, having less effect the farther away from it you are(minimum effect stops your cold gauge from decreasing).

Flavor Text:

"Ahhhhh no more cold nights!"
‎

Enemies

‎

Deer

Health:

225.

Damage:

50.

Attack Speed:

Slow(as hammer).

Movement Speed:

Fast.

Appearance:

Looks like a living deer.

Spawn:

Spawns randomly, as ghouls do, during day and night.

Activity:

Runs when you get close, if cornered, it will chase you down and attack you, only running when low on hp.

Loot:

Drops a dead deer you can harvest.
‎

Boar

Health:

275.

Damage:

50.

Attack Speed:

Slow(as hammer).

Movement Speed:

Normal.

Appearance:

Looks like a living boar.

Spawn:

Spawns randomly, as ghouls do, during day and night.

Activity:

If you get too close or hurt it, it will chase you down and attack you. Its attacks involve charging, which means it has a hard time with players who are able to side step.

Loot:

Drops a dead boar you can harvest.
‎

Perks

‎

Master Survivalist

Cost:

3 Points

Requires:

16.

Effect:

While not in a team, your food gauge, cold gauge reduce 50% slower, your radiation meter increases 50% slower and you gather 2x the materials.
‎
I hope you like these ideas and lets hope some of them get added.
If you like this update suggestion, check out the previous one: https://www.reddit.com/devastio/comments/1comkq5/wasteland_wishesupdate_suggestion2/