Well I just finished the campaign of Homeworld 3 today and I have to say I am massively dissatisfied with the presented story. I feel utterly disappointed that after 20 years of waiting for a sequel to one of my favorite game franchises; we got something like this.
I feel like this game's story and narrative direction went in a direction that goes counter to the fundamental experience the first 2-3 games delivered that made them memorable so many decades after the fact. I honestly think it is the worst/weakest game of the franchise narratively speaking. All the other aspects of HW3 are fantastic. I 1000% understand what Rob and the rest of the folks at BBI were trying to accomplish here when they said the tech wasn't available 20 years ago with HW2. This game is beautiful and it shows. Visuals, Audio, ship design, UI, are fantastic. Gameplay and mechanical issues are fixable so I'm not going to fault them for that being a bit rough at launch.
I'll try to explain as best I can, but I'm not the best at fully expressing my thoughts out into text, so (BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR) with me.
For context, I've been in the Homeworld community for a LONG TIME. Since the Relicnews days. Not as long as Uber, Shin, or some of the other folks, but long enough to have made many friends from this community I still know to this day, and also I am one of the moderators on the HWU Discord server. So I have spent the better part of my entire life a part of this community in some way.
Here we go... (quote shameless stolen borrowed from The Way of Kings)

Journey Before Destination

The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.
But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination.

Why do people love HW1/HWC to this day? What about those games made them so well loved by the community that they are widely considered the de-facto games of the series when it comes to their story telling? But what about it was good that made it that way?
DanVanCrone wrote a fantastic piece on the old Relicnews forums that the entire forum base loved to referenced for many years of how heartfelt and masterful the story connected with its audience.
For me and many others. it was the experience of the story; the journey that took place within those games that gave us the player something to connect with; to relate with. The story of Homeworld presented a simple premise. A people on a planet who discovered their home was not their own. Their true home was out somewhere among the stars. The reasons how they got here or why lost to time and ancient memories turned to myth and legends. Their struggle to survive, their rise out of near extinction to climb into the heavens and stumble upon a lost secret that would transform their entire society in such a way that would drive them across the galaxy.
So we set out on this journey not as a third party viewing Commander Shepard do his thing, or as a specific character; but as someone who had their place right along side the entire Kharakian people as they set out to find their home. Sure we had Fleet Command/Intel, as they were voiced and spoke, but their agency as a character was done in such a way presented them moreso as proxies or acted as a voice for the entirety of the Kharakian (Kushan) people. Karan did have her own voice due to the nature of her linkage to the Mothership and so she had a sort of duality with her position. But both her and Fleet Intelligence were able to act as a means to deliver the emotions for moments of pain, grief, anger, sadness, revenge, hope and everything we experienced as we played the campaign.
We experienced the journey to Hiigara along with the entire crew of the Mothership. We had the welling of anger and sadness when Kharak burned. The anxiousness and anticipation at the Bridge of Sighs as we gained entry to the Hiigaran system. Panic, concern, worry as we fought to survive in orbit around our Homeworld.
The story of Homeworld was never about a character or about chasing 'a thing' but moreso the exploration and experience of an idea that resonated with everyone; to find your home. In doing so, the story unfolded naturally of uncovering the history of what happened in their past of how they came to be on Kharak, experiencing loss, exacting revenge, hope for the future and eventually tears of joy at the accomplishment that the did in fact find Hiigara. And we were there along the way as an active participant to experience all of it along the way as if we were there with them.
The glorious vistas of the galaxy as we jumped from mission to mission. We cried at the end NIS as we saw the epilogue of our journey. The lives lost from the conflict of the fight to gain our Homeworld. The awe and wonder of seeing a lush world to those who knew only endless sands, and especially when we saw Karan insisting that she be the last person to disembark and set foot on the Homeworld.
The agency we had as a player was not viewed through the lens of one person; but through the eyes of an entire people and the journey they took. The universe had enough backstory written within the manual to lay the foundational ground work just enough that you didn't need a lot of technical exposition dumps, or have to have things blatantly explained to you right to your face. So in a sense, you were like part of the crew going on the journey along with them, as part of them.

Homeworld Catacylsm

HWC worked much the same way within its own twist. For this game, the focus was much smaller in scope and placed you with the crew of the Kiith Somtaaw mining vessel.
Here HWC built upon the foundations that HW1 put in place with the lore of the Kiiths, the fallout of returning to Hiigara, and touched upon and provided interested world building elements about the universe. From the aspects of Kiith politics; and the explorations of galactic geopolitics resulting from the Return of the Kushan people.
It was an underdog tale and also one that mirrors and parallels aspects of a Hero's Journey. Only again the hero here is not a person but a group of people. The story aspect of The Beast acted as narrative driving force to drive those concepts of the growth and journey of the Kuun-Lan and her crew as they had that Hero's journey.
You fight alongside the Kuun-Lann, you feel and hear the fear in their voices of the ship engineers as they struggle to understand the Beast when it captures and subverts ships. The tension as the story progresses as the circumstances get more dire. The interactions with the Bentusi and seeing a culture so powerful be shook to their core was a fantastic element of exploring who the Bentusi were as a people. We saw the horrors of the Imperialist experiments and their alliance with the Beast. We got the the thrill of victory with the Siege cannon working as we fought back in the last mission. And lastly at the end of the epilogue sequence where the Somtaww fought, died, and earned their place among the great martial Kiith; the naming of their children as Beastslayers. Truly it was fantastic story telling under the guise of using science fiction and some space horror.
All of the gameplay, and the emotions come out as the story and narrative is experienced. Everything that is told within the game, works within the confines of the established lore of the game, and the prior game. Nothing is over explained, nothing is just hand-waved away. We saw them grow as a crew, saw their fear, stumbles falls, and triumphs along the way. All this while exploring and growing the established lore of the Homeworld universe.
In my view those two stories worked so well for so many people because fundamentally, they were a story of the Journey; not the destination. We lived through those experiences as if we were there with them; we experienced the ups and downs of the emotions of the stories told about the people and their growth within those stories. We were able to connect and relate to those experiences in our own way. And in my view, the ability to connect to those stories made them so fantastic.

“And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.”

The Stumble

"What you saw belongs to you. A story doesn't live until it is imagined in someone's mind."
"What does the story mean, then?"
"It means what you want it to mean," Hoid said. "The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think , but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”

In my view Homeworld 2 is where things started to have problems.
Many of us in the community know of the development of Homeworld 2, its cancellation, its rushed story and development. However the story of HW2 mostly throws out the concepts mentioned before. While the story and gameplay is presented in the same way as the prior two games; in my view it fails to present the user a story and experience they can truly and fundamentally connect with and is more 'generic science fiction'.
The driving force of the story is some prophecy we've never seen or heard of before this game in any of the lore. And the main reason for all of it is the now retconned nature of the hyperspace cores. Throw on top of this heavy leaning into the religious themes and mysticism focusing on Karan and Makaan who now and take the stage as the primary protagonists and antagonists of the story.
The character motivations of the Makaan/Vaygr, Karan, and the Bentusi are in my view mostly shallow or very hollow to the point its basically cookie cutter tropes without a lot of nuance to it. The story becomes and is less about the people and more about a MacGuffin game of Hide and Seek. The prior exploration and expansion of the HW universe is entirely ignored in favor of this hide-and-seek of the cores that the entire game has driving it forward. There's no understanding of the growth of the world, of the Kushan people, geopolitics, or anything like that. Just lots of woo-woo mysticism about the Cores and the Progenitors.
With regards to the plot; we're mainly just told 'hey the bad guys are coming, keep the cores away and go find the others'. The Bentusi are unceremoniously killed off without any real build up or explanation. Why are they the last? What happened to them? None of that is explored in a way that gives us any sort of satisfying reason to why this makes sense when they detonate their Harbour Ship to give us their Magic Space Core.
To me there's no personal emotional connection to the story. Why should I care about a magic space prophecy I've never heard of until now? Why are the Vaygr the way they are? None of that is given time to breathe or has enough depth to make me care beyond superficially. The narrative doesn't make you feel less of an active participant in the journey you are going through, and makes you more of a passive viewer of a conflict that has little explanation as to why you should care or understand the importance of said driving forces. The reasons for getting to and through the the game feel rushed so much that the narrative doesn't have a lot of depth or time to breathe in my view.
While the backstory in the manual does give context to the pre-exile events and how it does relate to the events in game which helps with overall universe world building; it's done so in such a way that is retconning the fundamental established soft-rules of the universe that HW1 and HWC laid the ground work on which further compounds or allows the weak story of HW2 to take place, and undercuts the accomplishments of the Kushan people as I will explain shortly.

The Fall - Homeworld 3

However the worse crime is what was squandered with the ending of the HW2. The epilogue of Homeworld 2 put forth a massive chance for some incredible story options to take place with the opening of the Hyperspace Gate Network across the galaxy. A chance for exploring stories that can connect with the player on that personal level like HW1 and HWC and the explorations of what could be explored in this new open universe. What will the Hiigarans do now, what about the Taiidan, the other Inner Rim species, what now will the galaxy look like with the Bentusi gone, why were the gates closed in the first place?! So many fantastic ideas were possible with scopes as large or as small as possible. The discovery, exploration of the Homeworld Galaxy would have been tremendous.
Instead we got the story of Homeworld 3.
Now I don't want to be unnecessary harsh or mean to the writers or the team at BBI/Gearbox for the effort they put into the work for Homeworld 3. This game is a niche title and not anywhere near popular like COD, or Warcraft or Zelda. But to be frank, I really truly feel that y'all need to have some direct constructive criticism of this story's campaign. I don't know what the motivation was for putting this story together, or what was attempting to be told here, but whatever story you were trying to tell did not land well.
I backed this game on fig at the Admiral level, so I threw down hard for this and am truly grateful we got the game at all. I truly want BBI and Gearbox to take this to heart in a way this is not demeaning, but a cold bucket of water that I feel needs to be throw.
The best way I can succinctly put this is that the story of Homeworld 3 lacks the fundamental soul that made Homeworld 1 and Homeworld Cataclysm the absolutely best in the franchise. This game makes Homeworld 2's rushed narrative and slight stumbles look somehow not that bad by comparison. Those on the HWU discord know my passionate dislike of the overall story of HW2 and the retcons that introduced that were further compounded by HWDOK. The story of HW3 makes HW2 look polished and well thought out by comparison.
So I'll be straight with my gripes on this.

• More and worse of the same that came from Homeworld 2. Retcons of established lore, de-emphasizing and diminishment of the motivations of the persons and people's in the prior games. Putting the Progenitor hyperspace cores as the singular driving force of the entire franchise
  
• Everything is now about KARAN SJET. Karan saved the Kushan people. Karan lead the revenge against the Taiidan, Karan found the magic space cores. Karan opened the hyperspace gate network, Karan tries to stop the anomaly. Karan probably cured cancer and saved JFK from assassination for all I know.
  
• The compounding of the Progenitor hyperspace SpaceMagic and making Karan the primary protagonist of the series continues to massively undercut the accomplishments of the Kharakian people off at the knees. The entire back story of HW1 that details their struggle and clawing up the tech tree, the struggle to survive on the harsh conditions of Kharak, how the discovery of the Guidestone and the goal of Hiigara the singular unifying goal of reaching their lost Homeworld uniting their entire population. Everything the HW1 manual details and gloriously shows the accomplishments of their PEOPLE to get to where they were at the start of HW1. All of that is diminished because 'magic hyperspace core'. I could go on but you get the gist. (I won't get into the further compounding retcons of HWDOK, but this just furthers that same narrative direction.) In my view, the Homeworld series has and never been about a person, but the story and journey of a group or people whose plight or experience is something that can be emotionally and personally related to by anyone.
  
• Karan was only a small person out of her entire population and only ONE person of the entire crew of the mothership. She was not some messianic figure, but someone who sacrificed for her people. Now I get the messianic implications of that, but the first game was never about her.
  
• HW2 already crossed over the line of making the story about a person rather than about the people. HW3 takes that and makes it worse. Gone is a story about the Hiigaran people and how their place in the Inner Rim has taken hold a century after landing back home. No explaination of how the inner rim has changed since the gates opened. Nothing about the Galactic Council. Nothing about other species or factions.
  
• The world building of HW3 is basically non-existent or is very poorly done as compared to the last games. No real understanding of the world at large since the ending of the last game or how the events have unfolded and affected the universe as we have come to understand it. Unless you go on the HWU website to get some level of backstory to get an idea of what's going on leading into HW3, you'll have no idea what the hell is happening.
  
• The antagonist of HW3 makes the life-size cardboard cutout of Makaan win the Oscar for best actor in a science fiction video game. They are bad and lack any sort of depth at all as a character. They instead come off at worst as cringe at and best cliché trope-y bad. Throughout the entire campaign we have no idea how/why/what they are doing the things they are doing. Nothing is explained that makes any sense. They just monologue at us with some over the top badguy speeches without any real understanding of what they are after or what their motivations are. Seriously, the the cut scenes from Homeworld 1 with Emperor Riesstiu IV the Second or Makaan from HW2 had more narrative depth and in universe understanding of their motivations than the antagonist of HW3. I have seriously no idea how this Incarnate Queen got the power she did, or why she was doing what she was attempting. No reasons why beyond I AM BADGUY WITH ULTIMATE POWER. JOIN ME OR DIE. It was the equivalent of 'Somehow Palpatine has returned levels of bad. How did she get the Progenitor tech she did, how did she live as long as she does, how does she have magic hyperspace cores that let her go into the Magic Hyperspace Navigator Mind Realm?? No idea Something the OG Homeworld games did very well was of show don't tell, and telling just enough for it to make sense without having to go into crazy techno battle or massive mystical assumptions of how things worked. This is one of those moments I feel like it did the opposite of that. We're shown a WHOLE LOT OF STUFF, but have no way to reconcile it in game in a way that narratively makes sense or resonates with the playeuniverse.
  
• The massive in-universe violations of established lore regarding hyperspace. Holy shit this is so bad I don't even know how this came about. The Progenitor hyperspace cores and their special spacemagic look mostly normal by comparison. There is no lore or story elements that help explain how any of this is possible. It's never explained at all beyond 'it happened just go with it'. Absolutely nothing, nada, not a bit of information is explained or made attempts to understand at how the Incarnate Queen is using hyperspace as a weapon. The violation of the mass override safety interrupts or gravity blocking or interfering with hyperspace is never explained at all. Nothing to show how she is THROWING PLANETS AT OTHER PLANETS. This is the equivalent of the Holdo Manuver from 'The Force Awakens'; massively cool to see on screen; but holy shit this violates so many in-universe conventions of how FTL travel works that it fundamentally causes problems.
  
• MASSIVELY more leaning into the mysticism aspects and moreso science fantasy side of storytelling are done within this game than the prior four games. I am not sure on the motivations here, but I feel like it was done in such a way that that leaves much to be desired for HOW/WHY. I get that they may have been trying to lean more into the nature of the Unbound and how the Navigators of the mothership class vessels are connected to their ships and have a much more profound view of the universe (similar to what the Bentusi alluded to). But this just felt very out of place and didn't make a lot of sense to me why it was presented in this way. I feel like it could have been done better or in such a way that helped it link up better to the ideas of the Unbound, but this was not it.
  
• The way HW3 story plays feels like someone only had a cursory understanding of the Homeworld lore and just did their own thing with it irrespective of the established lore and world building that was previously done. Shutting down the gate network??? WHY. This just takes the ending of HW2 and throws all those chances I mentioned and just throws it in the trash.
  
• No explanation of why the Incarnate Queen thinks she can make a new race of Unbound?? Why is this important? Don't know! Why are Karan and Imogen somehow special and able to stop her within the Hyperspace Mental universe? No idea and it really pushes things way into Science fantasy.
  
• Imogen as a character I feel is 'okay'. I am not sure if its the relationships she has with the other characters in the game, or if its just the story as a whole doesn't give her a lot to work with. To me it feels like there some aspect of her story and character I feel is missing from the game. Again its probably my displeasure of the game focusing on individual characters instead of larger abstractions of people like the prior games before HW2.
  

Final Thoughts

Fundamentally I know this is a personal opinion of mine and not everyone will agree with it. That's fine, but for me I have so many issues with the story and many of the pillars that are supposed to hold it up that at a certain point I can only say that the story is for me very bad and goes against the grain of what the foundational games to me setup for the franchise. It does nothing to grow or expand the HW universe lore in any interesting ways. I say this as someone who's been in and grown up with the Homeworld community for the last 26 years.
Story-wise; it's disappointing, bland, and generic at the very least and doesn't live up to the GOAT levels of quality the originals of HW1 and HWC (and to an extent HW2) put forth; to being insultingly bad at worst. I don't mean this as an slight to the writing staff as I know that a LOT of the OG folks involved with the first games were involved, but I really feel like there was a misstep here. It plays well and the pacing is kinda faster than I'd have wanted within a Homeworld game. However the core story ideas that make up the game are poorly explained, weak, or are so counter the established lore that for me it doesn't hold up well. This is magnified by the antagonist motivations and actions being poorly explained which in turn doesn't give the story or world to grow in any meaningful way.
I honestly don't know where or how the path the franchise has taken can be corrected. In my personal opinion, its gone off in a direction that gave the first games their unique style that made them attractive in the first place. Without doing massive retcons to entirely course correct to bring the game to where I personally think would be more akin to the original games I don't know where they'll try to take the game. This recent game I feel it has pushed more into the generic bland science fantasy genre with this newest entry into the franchise; rather than taking the careful slow burn, grounded science fiction based abstract story approach that connects with a player on a deeply personal level.
For me, while may it may have the gameplay mechanics and RTS genre DNA of seasoned devs in the industry that have been involved with Homeworld and other games over the years, it lacks the soul that made the first games who they were and is Homeworld game in name only.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Original post

I am at peace with the fact that I will never have sex with a girl

I am male, Asian [...], autistic, looks not that great. I am also very socially awkward and hate talking to people in general. [...] I don't even remember the last time I talked to a woman other than my mother and my sister. I prefer doing the things I enjoy that doesn't involve other people.
Then I come to reddit and I read posts on how many men are obsessed with sex, dating and girlfriends - to the point where men who don't have girlfriends are stigmatized. [...] Why does it matter so much? [...] I'm happy with my life without a girlfriend or sex.
So explain to me, then, why does it seem like so many men are obsessed with those things, in contrast to being obsessed with things like walking on Mars?

.
You could pay for it?

Fuck paying, that's prostitution which is amazingly illegal.
Edit: I meant only in the USA. No, the world doesn't "revolve around me." Y'all can chill out, please. [...]

My downvote isn't for the USA/revolve around me thing, it's for giving a shit about what some made up laws say.

Well, excuse me for wanting free sex.

Ok boomer

Since when did disagreeing with Prostitution become a boomer mindset?

Just because people have different beliefs in it, doesn't mean they are a boomer. [...]

[...] You are one of those Murdoch press addicted antigun homophobic old farts who needs to take their meds and sit down.

[...] Your emotionally loaded remarks provide no credibility, you can assume all you want but assuming makes an ass out of yourself.

Ok boomer.

It's not illegal? Oh wait, an American who thinks the world revolves around them..

If you meant it without clarifying it in words, that's your default way of thinking -- you're so ingrained in it that you forget there are alternatives. So yes, "the world revolves around you" is a good summarisation of your thinking.

.
There's plenty of autistic girls out there for you bro, you just have to find where they naturally hang out

Unlike women, men don't care if a girl is autistic. So he is competing against much more socially adept men.

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For some its because they want it physically.
For some, because they are virgins and one to know
[...]
For me, at first, because, like everybody, I wanted to try it out of curiosity. Very soon after, I realized I was dangerously high libido. Imagine every other day or so, my inner monologue was that japanese person running in the tunnel screaming about sex.
[...]

That's not "dangerously high". Dangerously high is when you want it every day, and not once a day.

Look if I left mid work for a booty call every other day for 3 month straight with an FWB, I'd say its pretty bad. When we lived together, any time we got handsy is the next 2 hours out the window

Dawg, now imagine the life of someone who has no constant source of sex
You know, people have addictions and shit that takes away much more time, and, more importantly, health. Having high sex drive isn't as bad still, you don't get sex withdrawal. [...]

[...] And it's a pretty big vice for me as well, during some stretches I was single, instead of drinking or drugs I've wasted a few hundred dollars a month between the 2 vices of gaming and hookers.

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Bro you can definitely get laid, sex is a natural part of being human and don't let Reddit gaslight you into thinking it's not a big deal [...]
A relationship might be out of the cards, but not casual sex. [...]

It's easy to say things like that when you are attractive or even average to begin with. It's a completely different world when you're not. [...]

This is such nonsense. I've seen plenty of uggos get laid, without being rich or anything. [...]

They got lucky finding that there are fetishists who are into that.

no, there are so many plainly ugly people still having sex and fulfilling relationships, while also beeing dirt poor

You underestimate how undesirable some of us are.

If ugly people never had sex then evolution would have eradicated them

Ugly women can easily have Sex and spread ugly genes.

Evolution can't eradicate cancer, let alone ugly people. [...]

[...]

Being ugly doesn't make you sexually attracted to ugly.

.
The amount of posts like these I see here is kinda scary

Why scary? Men actually have brains, we are not sex-driven animals

We literally are sex-driven animals though, what are you talking about? That's all that we're biologically programmed to do, carry on our bloodline & species. We survive & we fuck. Anything else is just a bonus.

Explain gay people

Explain gay people with their own biological children.

It's not really that simple. You can help pass on your genes without having children yourself [...] This is where empathy and compassion are useful, and there is an evolutionary incentive for these qualities to pass on, even in men.
Worker ants are sterile animals with no drive to reproduce themselves but to protect, feed and care for their colony. If it works for ants, why not for humans to some extent at least?

Bro what are you talking about, of course it's that simple. Through helping your 'tribe' you can pass on your genes? Comparing us to sexless ants? Surely you're joking? [...] Dunno why all these fellas on reddit are arguing that sex isn't and shouldn't be a human need. Go watch porn then!!!

The mechanism for this is very simple, and from my understanding commonly accepted among evolutionary biologists. Would you like me to explain how it works?

No, go back to work. That's what i'm going to do. We're both losers for commenting on reddit, i'm ashamed for taking even a second to type this shit. [...] don't sit on reddit typing out bullshit explanations about bullshit topics to some retard on the internet that you've never met. Use your time for something useful.

Christ bitch I’m fucking eating my breakfast get over yourself

finish your breakfast & go to work, get off reddit. Sort your life out. I'm trying to. I better not catch either of us commenting on reddit again.

My life is sorted actually idk what your problem is

You're commenting on reddit dude. Literally everyone who comments on reddit is a loser. It's a waste of our lives. Including me. Right now, i am a loser. So are you. So is anyone who reads this. GO TO WORK. I'm done, goodbye

You don't have a job do you,if you did you'd know that 80% of a job is finding ways to not be working...like I am now,that's work,unless you're a yank in which case your supposed to fill time by licking the bosses chocolate starfish

I'm literally working from home right now lol. I'm not an american. Go do your job, go study, go fuck your girlfriend, go hang out with your friends, hit the gym, go for a walk, learn something new, literally do anything but sit on reddit & comment. How many times do i have to tell you goddamn nerds. [...]

Edit: I'm buying ice cream and cereal as a reward, I fucking love sugar and both will help me "find my fix "...... fuck alcohol, it's a "trade" but I'll take it!!! Hopefully I can run off the calories I have a treadmill in my living room that only gets used as a coat hanger during winter... fuck I'm getting frozen cherries it will keep me off the booze!!!!if I can't have booze I need sweets!!!! Yay walmart delivery.... I'm a fat fuck that needs to run, so I guess ill challenge myself
I'm sober I'm not breaking any rules
But...
I really wanna drink after work... why?
Oh poor widdle ol me had a bad day waaaahhhhh
Yes that's what I sound like in my internal monologue sober when I get home
I think "hey you had a bad day let's get drunk cuz your job hired you for IT in a warehouse but let's be honest you're a shipping bitch when they need you to be"
I really really want to drink right now but I'm still sober, nothing is stopping me from going to my car RIGHT NOW TO GET BOOZE,vodka raspberry is my poison
How the fuck do you stop yourself? Honestly
I'm studying for my ccna and everytime I'm on the way home I think "booze would be nice right now" and it takes a fuck ton not to drive to the liquor store on the way home
WHAT MADE YOU CHANGE!?!? Booze are so easy to say "fuck it" I hate being hungover but it's so easy to do for the short term release to be numb
It's ruining my friendship of my only friend, every weekend we hang out I get drunk and we argue somehow....I remember getting drunk and somehow it escalates into an argument
I want booze to go away!!!! Tell me how to say it's not worth it!!!!!
My liver can't stand much more!!! I worry about it daily I take 7 gulps daily and just not care......I haaaaaaaaaaate this thought, not enough to quit but holy shit I MUUUUUUUST STOP.i already have one cancer through not any fault of my own (male breast cancer)..... but I'd love to come home, sleep, and just get my life together. I'd love nothing more than to come home, go to bed, wake up, study , then run cuz let's face it a runners high is always better than a poor man's drunk
But here I am sober wishing to drink.... fuck who I am!!! Why am I still awake now!!!!???
When at work I say "okay I'm going to bed when I go home to change my life, I'll study, run....."but I never do it!!!!

So I finally got to have my second theater viewing of TFO last night at 10, had a solid audience too which surprised me I expected to be by myself. Round 2 was better than round 1, I wasn't in such a WTF mode and was picking the plot up better this time and it worked as well if not better than I remembered. It's like the first 3 movies in terms of working well on the repeat viewings, that's always been one reason why I always love the Omen series. This one's def in the higher ranking of my list than the lower :) Hope we get a sequel.
It did help to kill off some lingering questions but now I got new theories and ideas lol. Just wanted to see if anyone picked these up:

1. So the Italian chick that Margret rooms with.. is it me or is there more than meets the eye there? That monologue she has about hearing the "voice," made me think.. she must be either a loon like Baylock was or she's related in someway to the main nun. There has to be some reason why she's allowed to sleep around with no recourse from it. Part of my head think she's a sister to Margret but I don't think so on the otherside either. Hope she's back in part 2, I wanna see her get what she deserves.
   
2. The crazy nun chick.. what a mess she was lol. At first I was so confused by the crazyness of the movie that I thought she was the mom of the jackal, it was that pregnant girl Margret meets instead on 2nd watch lol. I never really picked up anything else on the crazy girl. The main nun says she was raised there her whole life, so that's the only thing I could understand out of it. Unless she just seen too much and was driven crazy. Maybe she's Carlita's mom? The one we see in the first few minutes that was begging them to stop. Coulda been so painful and extreme to her that it drove her nuts. The scene where she's sitting with her she might have been saying goodbye before showing her the drawing. That kiss scene was really wild too.. kiss of death.
   
3. Who do you all think survived the car crash besides Brennan and Marget, if any? Drive looks dead, but I lowkey hope the other Priest survived. He just looked knocked out laying on the passanger seat, the driver was mega effed up, poor guy.
   
4. One thing I'm wondering on which I hope we get some clues on in the sequel is, how many actual female babies survived the attempts? Brennan lets on there was more than what was in the files, so I'm sure there's more than 2 female/jackal hybrids out there in that world. I think if so the Italian chick has a good possiblity of being one, she has similar eyebrows to Margret just a little more fuller. Crazy chick maybe, but I think she just had a kid. Maybe it'll be a plot for a sequel where all the not soevil ones come together to stop the cabal of church people and find Damien maybe? That would be fun.
   

5. When the water breaks after that car wreck happens, I love the subtle ways that Margret acts like a Jackal, super underrated and a nice touch. Makes the scene so much more mesermising to watch. Wonder what the gore was that caused a NC-17? The c-section maybe?
>! 5. One twist I discovered from the climax I missed the first time.. that Sister Silva is more or less subtly implied to be Margret's mother. That "it's natural for a baby to bond with it's mother," line really convinced me of that, plus how she looks at her and acts right after before she gets her revenge on the cardinal. She's quietly quite proud of her. She's the older woman version of her mom. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if that was her holding her in the picture that Brennan has. It's why she took her in, she wanted her to be the birth mom along with the cardinal. They just gave up on Carlita for some reason. !<
6. I wonder if Brennan will be retconned in some way. In the OG movie he has severe cancer and was trying to make amends with god hence why he was informing Thorn about Damien, it was implied he was more deeply involved along with the preiest in the office, Spiletto who got a nice form of karma in the OG movie too. In this one they don't interact at at all. Also in this one he's ex-communicated and no longer a priest and he doesn't look or sound sick. So unless he gets a rapid cancer I see him being involved more. I'm curious to what they do with Spilletto and the italian chick. I guess she'll be out trying to hunt Margret down, that's what I'd bet on in a potential sequel. Even if Margret dies (hopefully not too early, I love her characther,) I hope she gets her back.
I'm done rambling now lol.

Nature of Humanity Ch 65
Destination; Wriss part 18
A Fanfic of u/SpacePaladin15’s work “The Nature of Predators.” Thank you for the story!
___
Excerpt of Dr. Elva's Journal recovered from the wreck of the Dauntless Victory
Many people suffer from motion sickness on space-faring ships. Normally, this comes from the disjoint of the body’s means of understanding how its actually moving and the mind's perception of how it is moving, but with the invention of inertial dampeners, one would think standing in what feels like a stationary room with no windows wouldn't cause motion sickness.
Yet, that's precisely what's been happening to me. I've never felt this way before. Dr. Wiesera believes the sudden onset of motion sickness is caused by the stress of our current situation. I am given to believe her as I have noticed ticks in the rest of the crew. For example, Crevan has begun pacing in circles but seems confused when someone tries to get his attention. The only person who seems calm and unbothered is Barmlin, but given his disorder, I am confident in dismissing this abnormal behavior. To be truthful, I am a little glad to see the Arxur just as nervous as us.
____
Memory transcription subject: Elva, Morvim Charter Soldier
Date [standardized human time]: November 3rd, 2136
Our ship was hovering listlessly in the void of space just past the small astrological body known as Pluto. My digits tightened around the trigger of my gun as the five of us kept our weapons trained on the door. Crevan was unable to stop Isif from inspecting the “gifts” Humanity was giving to the Arxur as “thanks” for their intervention.
Wiesera let out a sigh as she lowered her firearm and grabbed the pad displaying the security feed, “Alright… we are in the clear. Isif has just departed the ship.”
We let out a collective sigh. The first hurdle for getting to Wriss had just been cleared without so much as a scratch. We lowered our guns as Hrallak opened the door, “We are safe for now. Crevan doubts we will get boarded again. Isif is apparently a bit of an outlier among the Chief Hunters.”
Caulnek stood up and stretched, “Hey, it's not like we didn't expect to get boarded leaving here and upon entering Dominion space.”
Rivera rubbed the sleep from his eyes, “Still couldn't we have done something better than just sit in a cattle pen with our guns pointed at the door?”
Hrallak thumped her tail no, “This is the Dominion we are speaking about. The great purge taught them everything about how stuff is hidden. I watched an Auditor enter a friend's house and in half a second open their hidden door. If they actually had anything stored in there, they would have all been executed via…”
As she trailed off, Wiesera changed the subject, “I never thought I'd willingly experience what it's like to lift off inside an Arxur ship. This is… unsettling.”
Hrallak wagged her tail, “It's sort of the opposite for me. For the first time in my life, I've come for the people in this room without that horrid knot in my guts. It feels like I'm free.”
It finally dawned on me as we grabbed our limited possessions and left the cattle pen behind for good, that every time she has come to this room before it’s been to drag some unfortunate soul to their death. Even if Crevan stated that she tried to be merciful, her paws were personally stained with a rainbow of blood that I doubt she would ever be able to wash out.
Yet, there was a slight spring in her step as she led the way to the galley with us in tow. Before she probably had to drag screaming victims to their fate, and now she is leading us to one of many meetings. I suppose in a sense, she is finally free. Whether this mission is successful or not, she will never butcher another sapient for as long as she lives.
My tail had the slightest wag to it as we entered the galley. The smell of disinfectant and bleach was strong enough to hit my blunt sense of smell but helped to wipe away any thought of the horrors that happened in this area. Lesh, Ishveil, and Ivan were waiting for us with cloths draped over their snouts.
For a moment, I thought they were trying to mimic what the humans do with their face coverings before they handed a cloth to both Hrallak and Wiesera. Wiesera took in a deep breath through the cloth, “Thank you, this smells a lot stronger than the hospital., Oh! This is a rather strange scent! I wouldn't think the Arxur would approve of scented laundry detergent!”
Ivan chuckled, “The dominion doesn't, but when I got a whiff of what the humans did to clean this ship, I nearly hurled. Thankfully, they had a handy solution ready. The smell should lighten up soon. And we also have more towels if you want them for any reason.”
Lesh thumped his tail against the ground, “Crevan and Mico are piloting the ship. You know the crew rotation. It should be quiet for the next few days… at least before we arrive.”
Ivan thumped his tail in agreement, “Normally, I'd suggest using downtime to train, but that is not exactly something we can do on this ship. So whatever you can do to keep ready for the attack without blowing the ship up or ruining our cover will be essential.”
Rivera stuck his paw in the air, “Does that include doing anything to distract us from the fact we are on a cattle ship?”
Lesh's eyes opened wide, almost as if he hadn’t considered what being on board would be like for us. He thumped his tail, “Y-yeah. It wouldn't do to have you freaking out… but it would be better for you to come to terms with the situation instead.”
Hrallak held herself with her own arms, “If the horrid things that have happened on this ship are getting to you, then you aren't ready for Wriss. Here… people were tortured, killed and eaten… on Wriss it was entire species…”
Rivera was starting to shake when Caulnek slapped a paw on his back, “It'll be fine. We've turned this ship from one of death to salvation, we can do it again. I got a projector and some human movies from a friend. What do you say about turning the lights down and watching them?”
“Y-yeah sure.”
Ivan tilted his head, “Movies? As in video media for entertainment instead of education? Can I watch? I've never seen anything like that before.”
Caulnek flicked his ears yes, then Lesh rolled his eyes and walked out of the room as Caulnek set up his projector. While Ivan, Ishveil and Hrallak sat separated from us, we all sat in a close-knit ball.
With the already dim lights off, our only source of illumination was the projector's light bouncing off the wall. A series of short clips began to play, depicting a series of quarries and mines. For the most part, it was heavy machines moving vast amounts of earth and stone.
Stupidly large dump trucks practically carried mountains on their backs. A gargantuan chain saw cut into the earth, making an artificial valley in a matter of hours. A drill comparable to a skyscraper began to drill a tunnel down into the earth.
I could only begin to imagine this movie was about mining and the stresses that it brings. Several humans began to carefully set up explosives in a tunnel and ran cables to a safe place. The lot of them were smiling at each other and were practically bouncing from excitement. Two humans standing several feet apart nodded at each other and flipped the plastic safety covers on two red switches before flipping them.
As the light turned green, every human ducked and covered in their makeshift bunkers as the detonation sent a shockwave down the tunnel. As the dust settled, I noticed the music that was playing in the background was now silent.
Two people walked off into the settling dust cloud and began to scream. A man who for the entire time he has been on the screen has had a blank emotionless face picked up a radio, “Report.”
“WE HIT THE FUCKING MOTHERLOAD! THE ENTIRE CAVE IS MADE OF THIS NEEAHRITE SHIT! HELL THERE ARE FLOATING COLUMNS OF THIS STUFF”
The description of the made up material caught me off guard. It wasn't until a serious dude walked forward that I realized why they said that. A floating hexagonal pillar of pearlescent green and orange stone floated weightlessly in the middle of a large chamber. As the miners walked through the chamber, what I had assumed to be just the minerals lining the walls twinkling in the light were pushed away like leaves floating on water.
The illusion broke as I realized that the air was filled with small floating particles. They almost gave the impression of being submerged underwater. A miner swept a bag through the air and closed it, “Hey, let's get out of here. Pretty sure breathing in minerals causes cancer. We can come back with respirat-” BANG!
We all jumped as a red puff came from the man's chest. The miners began to scream and run, but each one fell over after their own personal gunshot went off. Soon the only person standing was the emotionless human who wiped some blood off his face.
Several armed soldiers came into the cave wearing full combat gear and respirators, “Sir. Site secured. All potential leaks have been neutralized.”
Their leader fell to his knees and held his hands up to the floating monolith, “Excellent. Begin phase 2.”
Caulnek threw his paws into the air, “What?! Why did they do that? All those people worked together!”
Ishveil snorted, “I doubt that. That one human in charge was using the miners. When he was done using them, he threw them away. I've seen dominion officers do that to countless runts.”
“I- I just never imagined that as something humans would think of…”
“Then you need to read up on Humanity's past. Especially about their most hated foe, the Nazis.”
The camera cut to a man nearby a primitive cabin in the woods. He looked grizzled and old as he was nervously picking at his beard. A truck rolling up caught his attention and he waved at it. I couldn't read the words on it, but the woodsman addressed the man who stepped out of the truck, “Evening, Warden. Thanks for coming out here.”
“Hey, thank you! If there's aA new disease going around affecting the wildlife, I want to get on top of it now and not later. So tell me what happened.”
“Well sir. I got my permit to harvest yesterday when I noticed my stores were getting low.”
“Thank ya for doing that!”
“Welcome. I went to go harvest my first deer and… well, when I shot it, my round ricocheted off. Like I hit a piece of wrought-iron.”
They walked over to the deer and my little herd flinched as he showed the flayed corpse of a prey animal hanging upside down.
“It didn't run off so I shot it again but in the head this time. I brought it back here to dress it, but…”
I suppressed a gag as the man stuck his hand into the corpse and- pulled out a huge chuck of the mineral we had just seen, “Well… this!?”
The warden opened up a bag and took the stone from him, “Go wash your hands now. I- fuck! I got no clue what this is or if it can jump the species barrier. Also, I am taking the deer too, I'll have you compensated and get ya a new tag.”
Ivan spoke up, “Did those rocks… infect that animal?”
Wiesera shook her head, “No. Rocks can't infect anything. What likely happened is this mineral was absorbed by vegetation, which the animal ate and absorbed. That stone chunk the Game Warden pulled out was its intestines. The mineral is probably also contaminating the entire body of it.”
We quieted down again as the show carried on. The warden had put out an alert to the town about the mineralization of local animals, as well as a notice to not drink the groundwater. The Game Warden was standing with his brother, a police officer, as a doctor explained that several people were already showing signs of mineralization.
The pair of them discussed what they could do to try and solve this epidemic. Apparently, all means of communicating with the outside world were gone and both of the major roads coming into the area had collapsed into sinkholes.
Finally, the brother's decided that the Police would help the few Doctors help patients and keep a quarantine enforced while the Warden would go ask the miner's if there was an expert on call who could help.
As the brothers left the coroner's office, they both froze, like spotted prey. One of the miners who was visibly missing part of his head was standing in front of them. The warden took a half step towards him before the miner let out a star’s awful wail. I heard the sound of Hrallak skittering back as we watched the miner rush, lift and throw the warden ten feet onto the hood of his own truck. His brother quickly whipped out a taser and shot the man with it but started to backpedal as he just kept walking despite the electricity flowing through his body.
As the Police brother screamed in fear at the mineralized miner, the Warden managed to scramble off his truck and grab a shotgun from his cab. He fired a round into the miner's head, causing it to explode like a dropped ceramic plate. The body made another step forward and slowly started to crumble.
The brothers stared at the dust laying on the road as sirens began to grow in intensity. The screen smash cut to a dozen law enforcement cruisers ripping through mountain roads on their way to the quarry. As they approached the locked gates, the first cruiser flew through it, smashing it open for the others. While the officers climbing out didn’t look like they were anything special, they still moved in a coordinated effort.
Ishviel thumped his tail, “Are we going to see human strike teams at work?”
Caulnek snorted, “Yeah, no. From what I’ve seen of human media, their entertainment industry cares very little for accuracy. Expect these guys to do some nonsensical stuff.”
The Brother officer stepped out of his truck and loaded some shells into his shotgun. Another officer berated him for taking a lethal weapon into this quarantine operation when he stopped and stared them down, “I watched someone already mineralized chuck my older brother like a gawdamn can of beans. I will try to save as many people as possible, but I ain’t gonna die for this.”
With the defiant statement made, we proceeded to watch some surprisingly boring action. Or perhaps the actual action we had all seen took any entertainment out of it for us. From police officers ignoring all sense of danger and the lack of any competency of the bad guys who were still holding the mines hostage, I couldn’t tell who was worse. We’d watch three officers walk into a clear ambush, only for the bad guys to reveal themselves and then proceed to miss every shot.
Whenever the cops had to deal with those that had been mineralized, the victims suddenly moved five times slower and had absolutely none of their previous magical strength. It was starting to get so bad that we were all laughing by the time the warden and his brother confronted the mine’s manager. Yet, we all froze for a moment when we saw him. He stood there with his back turned to them and his hands held in the air, worshiping the floating monolith. He slowly turned around to reveal… some sort of pink goop thing piloting a robot human?
Wiesera just let out a “What the FUCK is this show?!” while Ivan doubled over in pain from laughing so hard.
Ishviel gave a confused look to Caulnek, “What is the plot of this thing?!”
Caulnek held his paws in the air, “It's a B movie. Guys had no budget to make a movie but wanted to anyways for some reason. My friend and I spent quite some time during the exchange watching these silly things.”
Hrallak was holding the tip or her snout as tears rolled down her eyes, “Oh my gosh, so this isn’t even good Human entertainment?”
“NOPE! Bottom of the barrel right here! Now shush! We are getting to the good part! The villain's monologue!”
“No you stupid apes. We Takakapalta have always been around. We were and have always been. Since your planet's life was barely strands of DNA swimming around in hot mud, we have planned. We have worked and strived and bled for this day. The day the Neahrite is ready for harvest. The full-”
The Warden rolled his eyes, “OH, SHUT THE FUCK UP!” before the brothers fired shell after shell into the alien, killing it.
The Police officer placed his hand on the warden’s shoulder, “Hey… should we have brought it in alive for the feds?”
He and the warden laughed as they walked off and the credits rolled.
Wiesera had buried her head in her paws, “I’m sorry but… WHAT!? Just WHAT?! THEY AREN’T GOING TO ADDRESS THE DISEASE RUNNING RAMPANT THROUGH THE TOWN?! THROUGH THE ECOSYSTEM?!”
Ishviel rolled onto his back and splayed himself across the floor, “What about those tactics? I thought those humans in masks defending the mines were professional soldiers! Those ambushes! They practically screamed, ‘this is an ambush’ before jumping out of cover and getting shot!”
Caulnek was laughing even harder, “Oh yeah! Or the fact that the whole explanation we got was, ‘Aliens did it.’ Like that wraps up anything nicely at all!”
Ivan was still chuckling to himself, “Are all the movies that you have these… B movies?”
“YUP!”
“Put another one on. I’ve never laughed like this before.”
___/\___
Movie night with the more friendly gator bois! And gal. Caulnek was introduced to cheesy B movies and now the whole gang is too! Looks like they might have a pleasant time en-route to Wriss!
Also this week SUCKED. Monday my car hit some deep water early in the morning and popped my water belt off causing my car to overheat. That led to a 4 hour trip home when it should have been 35 minutes. Bought a new belt and it’s fixed. THEN on friday our parking lot floods and the floor of my car gets flooded. Any higher and it would have poured into my car when I opened the door. It’s been three days and I will likely have to pull the seats, center console and some other things out to remove the carpet. Maybe I can find someone to pay to fix this problem. But hey… Ford should start building my truck this week.
___/\___
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A more positive outlook on life is beneficial to your mental health. You can reduce your risk of depression, manage stress, and be happier by focusing on the positive.
Use affirmations, practice gratitude, meditate, and learn to recognize, stop, and change your negative thoughts. Daily practice will make this a life-changing habit.
WHAT IS POSITIVE THINKING?
Positive thinking is pretty much what it sounds like: approaching life with a positive outlook. This doesn’t mean ignoring the negative—it’s about your attitude. You can choose whether to react to everyday situations in a productive and positive way.
OPTIMISTIC ATTITUDE
When your thoughts and attitude are optimistic, you have a healthy outlook on yourself, your life, and life events. You take credit for the good things in your life and recognize that outside forces control negative outcomes.
As an optimistic, positive thinker, you also realize that bad things are temporary.
PESSIMISTIC ATTITUDE
The opposite is a pessimistic-negative- attitude. Negative thinking means seeing the worst in a situation or expecting the worst to happen. With a negative outlook, you don’t recognize bad situations as temporary.
Many people direct their negative thoughts inward and blame themselves when bad things happen. You blame yourself even when things are outside your control and see them as a persistent, inevitable part of life.
WHAT DOES THINKING POSITIVELY LOOK LIKE ?
Positive thinking can take many forms:
Identifying and stopping negative thoughts, then approaching them with a more positive outlook
Focusing on gratitude and the good things in life
Positive affirmations—short, optimistic statements used daily to challenge negative thoughts
Spending more time with positive people
Embracing humor and laughing more
Practicing positive self-talk
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM TOXIC POSITIVITY ?
Positive thinking is generally more helpful and healthful than negative thinking. However, there can be a wrong way to go about it.
Toxic positivity came to the forefront of popular culture during the pandemic. As mental health issues rose, some people combatted their fear and anxiety by overdoing positivity.
Positive thinking becomes toxic when you feel forced to adopt a positive attitude that isn’t natural or helpful. This tends to minimize your feelings. It’s often valid and healthy to feel sad. You don’t have to stay positive all of the time.
A study found that people who tend to completely avoid difficult emotions, like sadness or anger, often feel worse in the end.
Sometimes, other people force toxic positivity onto you. It can be upsetting if you’re going through a difficult time and someone tells you to be positive or to look on the bright side.
In this case, try politely explaining why their advice isn’t sensitive to your situation and what they can do to help you feel better.
HOW A POSITIVE OUTLOOK AND AFFIRMATIONS SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH
It’s important to balance positive thinking and minimize difficult thoughts and situations. Reasonable doses of positive thinking can help you shift your attitude and improve your mental health.
A study of nurses with significant job stress found that wellness apps helped boost positive thinking. They reported a significantly improved work-life quality and less stress and were better able to cope with difficult situations on the job.
These are more of the many benefits of a positive mental attitude on emotional well-being:
REDUCE STRESS
The biggest benefit of positivity for your mental health is stress management. People who have a positive outlook and attitude face stress more effectively. They don’t necessarily have less stressful lives, but they cope with stress better.
Instead of dwelling on a stressful situation, a positive thinker makes a plan, takes action, or asks others for help. Someone who is more negative ruminates and feels defeated. They believe the situation is out of their control and don’t take steps to make it better.
IMPROVE RESILIENCE
The ability to face stress by taking action is an example of resilience. More positive people tend also to be more resilient. This means they cope better with all kinds of challenges. They overcome adversity and bounce back better.
LESS DEPRESSION
It is no surprise that positive thinkers tend to be less depressed. Negative thinking leads to rumination, a major characteristic of depression in which you get lost in a spiral of bad thoughts.
A positive attitude isn’t a cure for depression but can reduce symptoms and help lift you out of the spiral. The belief that you have the power to change your situation is a powerful antidote to depression.
INCREASE CREATIVITY
A positive attitude supports creative thinking, which is good for mental health. Negative thinking is a defeatist attitude. It represents giving up. Positive thinking is all about coming up with solutions. By focusing on positive thoughts, you can become a more creative and better problem solver.
POSITIVE THINKING IS GOOD FOR PHYSICAL HEALTH TOO
You can’t separate mental from physical health. They impact each other, so it follows that positivity improves your physical health as well:

• Improved cardiovascular health
• Lower blood pressure
• Boosted immunity and fewer infections
• Less pain or improved pain tolerance
• Reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and infections

HOW TO STAY POSITIVE AND REDUCE NEGATIVE THINKING
Most people can benefit from increasing their positive thoughts. It seems part of human nature to be too hard on ourselves. A concerted effort to think more positively can improve your mental and physical well-being in many ways. Here are some tips to help you make a change.
Recognize and Stop Negative Self Talk Boosting positivity is about much more than simply adding positive thoughts. You also have to stop the negative ones.
The first step is to pay more attention to how you think. Many people let thoughts race through their heads without much awareness.
Practice noticing a negative thought as it passes through your mind. This can be difficult at first. Try paying attention to all your thoughts for five minutes and notice all the negative ones.
When you do notice a negative thought, stop it and reframe it. For instance, if you think, “I was so stupid to make that mistake at work today,” change it to, “I will learn from that mistake I made today.”
Continue to check in with yourself throughout the day. When you catch yourself in an unnecessarily negative thought, recognize it and then reframe it. You don’t have to be relentlessly positive or deny all bad thoughts, but try to shift your perspective or frame of reference.
KEEP A GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Once you begin training your brain to limit negative thoughts or to shift your perspective on them, build more positive thinking with other tools.
One way to build a more positive mindset is with gratitude. Gratitude doesn’t mean ignoring bad things that happen to you or what’s wrong in your life. It means putting more focus on what’s good.
When you focus on good things in your life, you’ll naturally begin to think more positively.
An easy way to practice gratitude is to keep a daily journal. Before you go to bed each night, write down a few things you are grateful for from the day.
Studies back up the efficacy of actively practicing gratitude. It makes you happier and improves overall health and well-being.
FOCUS ON YOUR STRENGTHS
A big part of positive thinking is recognizing your control over your life and situation. Things don’t just happen to you. You have the power to make positive changes.
To boost this kind of positive thinking, make an effort to focus on your personal strengths. Maybe you are a good friend or partner. You’re good at your job or a sport. It doesn’t have to be a skill or anything bit. Maybe your greatest strength is that you are kind to people.
Take time to list your strengths, especially when you feel yourself getting into a downward spiral of negative thoughts.
SMILE AND LAUGH MORE
This might sound obvious, but the more you laugh and smile, the happier you will be. Boosting happiness automatically boosts your positive thinking.
Spend more time with friends who make you laugh. Watch funny movies instead of dramas. Watch clips online of your favorite comedians.
Even faking a smile can instantly boost your mood, according to research. Studies show that smiling during a difficult or stressful situation reduces heart rate and blood pressure. It helps people cope better with that situation. So, even when you feel negative about life, smile and see how it affects your mood.
CHANGE YOUR SOCIAL GROUP
Take a critical look at the people you spend most of your time with. Are they unnecessarily pessimistic? Do they face adversity well and laugh a lot?
If you spend time with more negative people, it will impact your thinking. Choose who you spend your time with because it affects your mindset, mood, and overall health.
VISUALISE A BETTER FUTURE
The power of your imagination can make you a more positive thinker. When you’re in a bad situation or unhappy with your life, picture yourself in a better place.
Visualization is a great tool for manifesting what you want. By picturing it, you can make it happen. The first step is changing your negative outlook on the situation. Think about what’s possible, and then make a plan to get to that better place.
STAY HEALTHY
When you feel good, your thoughts will be more positive. A healthy lifestyle makes it easier to think positively. Get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise regularly. Spend time outside and hang out with friends. See your doctor regularly and stay on top of your health.
USING MEDITATION TO BOOST POSITIVE THINKING
Meditation is a practice that improves awareness and focused attention. It is not a single thing but multiple practices with similar goals. It creates a deep state of mind and body relaxation and, like positive thinking, boosts mental health.
Meditation is an ancient practice rooted in spirituality. Today it is a diverse practice that encompasses many cultures and styles. You can meditate with a blank mind, focus on your breathing, or repeat a positive mantra.
HOW MEDITATION BOOSTS POSITIVITY
Regular meditation practice benefits mental and physical health in many ways. One thing it can do is give you greater control over your thoughts. Meditation helps you build greater awareness about your interior monologue and your ongoing conversation with yourself.
Awareness is the first step to changing unhelpful, negative thoughts. Consider meditation a type of brain training. The more you practice it, the more aware you become of your thoughts and the easier it is to jump outside and see them from a new perspective. Once you can do that, you can begin to change them too.
A study of meditation and positive thinking compared non-meditators to a group of people using Meditation.
The researchers found that the meditators considered themselves much happier than the non-meditators. The study determined that meditation helped people improve positive thinking, leading to greater self-satisfaction and happiness.
TRY POSITIVE MEDITATIONS ON BETTER SLEEP
You can create or alter any meditation to focus on positive thoughts, or you can find guided meditations that emphasize positivity.
DROPPING INTO THE PRESENT MOMENT
This mindfulness meditation is all about focusing your awareness on the present moment, which is a great antidote to negative thoughts. Negativity tends to arise when you dwell on the past or worry about the future. Use this meditation to turn your thoughts away from negativity and focus on what you can feel and sense right now.
GRATITUDE BOOSTER
Use a short, six-minute gratitude meditation for a quick infusion of positive thoughts.
GRATITUDE FOR STRESSFUL TIMES
Gratitude is a great counterbalance to negative thinking. When the stress and bad things in your life threaten to overwhelm you, focus on what you are grateful for.
POSITIVE VIBRATIONS
This meditation will help you manifest more happiness and positivity in your daily life.
5 NIGHTS OF GRATITUDE
For more extended practice, use this series of five meditations all focused on finding gratitude in your life.
POSITIVE DREAMING
Your dreams are an extension of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Use this short meditation to help condition your mind to have more positive dreams.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In addition to meditations, you can find other tools at lotus that help you boost your positivity while improving sleep. Try bedtime stories to take your mind out of a negative cycle of rumination. These easy, soothing stories are light, positive, and just what you need when feeling down.
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Previously, I wrote an AAR here: https://old.reddit.com/suzerain/comments/1c3bcbf/champagne_socialism_and_selfdeception_adhd/
Look, if I'm going to rip off u/Smiling-Otter, I'm going to do it properly. There was more story to be told, and here it is. If you want more details, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with!
THE GOVERNMENT
Rayne’s reforms had chipped away at the once impregnable discipline of the United Sordland Party. Experienced representatives deserted the party in worryingly high numbers, some defecting to other parties, others simply giving up on their political careers. Many rejected Rayne’s economic policies, and left along with Gus Manger and Symon Holl. Others, such as Lileas Graf’s followers, objected to his alignment with the Contanan Security Pact. This meant that while the USP retained a high number of seats, many of them were filled with fresh faces who had never seen the inside of the Assembly chambers before. The chance for Rayne to mould the party in his own image was counterbalanced by what some in the press referred to as the ‘brain drain’ from high-level positions within the party.
While Rayne was an active leader, the job of filling the cabinet fell to Vice-President Lucian Galade. His first and best appointment was Symon Holl’s replacement in the Ministry of the Economy, a young Agno-Sordish representative called Casper van den Bergh. Van den Bergh was a former teacher at the Lachaven Business School who had been a member of the Communist Party of Sordland before following Rayne to the USP. While he lacked Holl’s instinctive head for facts and figures, he brought an unquestionable work ethic to the position and inspired great loyalty in his subordinates. Under his guidance the state was able to fully integrate recently nationalised industries and take control of further sectors of the economy without wrecking anything in the process. In doing so he was able to fulfil one of Rayne’s wilder ideas, the Universal Wage he advocated in the Presidential debate. Through reform of the welfare system he was able to combine multiple state-provided benefits into one streamlined system that paid out a basic rate to every citizen, with extra provisions for those in greater need. While he would continue tweaking the system until his retirement, the Universal Wage stands perhaps more as van den Bergh’s legacy than Anton Rayne’s.
The rest of the cabinet was filled with a selection of candidates mostly put in place to appease factional interests. Gloria Tory and Albin Clavin had readily held onto their seats, and while Tory’s conservative faction was greatly weakened by defections and Clavin had lost much political capital after being denied the role of Vice President, they had the advantage of experience in an increasingly youthful USP. Ultimately, everyone accepted the truth: that the USP was now firmly wedded to the CSP and to Marcian economics. The only question was what that would look like in practice.
THE GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
The National Front Party marched into the Assembly Hall after the elections full of the confidence of the official opposition, prepared to fight against Rayne’s Malenyevist leanings and represent the values of true purple-blooded Sords everywhere. Several familiar faces now stared down their former comrades, as die-hard nationalists pledged their allegiance to Kesaro Kibener and brought their voters with them. As far as they were concerned, the only way from here was up.
As it happens, the NFP would prove to be very disappointed. While many voters remained suspicious of the USP’s liberal stance on Bludish rights, the fact was that Anton Rayne had dismantled the Bludish Freedom Front, something his predecessors had been unable to do. His alignment with the CSP may have been ideologically repugnant to many, but Valgslandian ships protected Sordish waters and Contanan techniques produced bumper harvests, driving down prices of staple foods in markets across the nation. And while all good Sords spat on the name Karlos Marcias, nobody could argue with the Great Sordish Recovery. The NFP would never replicate their success in the ‘57 elections, and would fracture and collapse over the next decade. Kesaro Kibener, sensing which way the wind was blowing, began an attempt to reconcile the party with Rayne’s popular socialist economics, believing that they could survive as an ethno-nationalist faction aligned with Wiktor Smolak’s Wehlen. This was a step too far for Remus Holstrom, who launched a highly public leadership challenge in which he accused Kesaro Kibener of being a puppet attempting to pollute Sordish blood. While Kibener won, Holsord’s subsequent defection and creation of the wildly unsuccessful True Sordland Party spelled the end of the NFP’s mainstream credibility.
The People’s Freedom and Justice Party had almost been wiped out in the elections, many of their liberal urban voting base defecting to Rayne’s USP and the small core of radically pro-Arcasian voters being lured towards the anti-Communist NFP. Frens Ricter was pressured into resigning as the extent of the losses became clear. Manoly Suheil was widely tipped to be his replacement, but her position as Ricter’s deputy left the stink of failure on her, and she was unexpectedly beaten by Julia Anawalda, a fervent human rights campaigner who had been working for years to expose abuses by United Contana. Under her leadership the PFJP began to claw back their power base, although many pointed out that it would be hard for them to have done worse without the party collapsing altogether. As the NFP descended into drama and infighting, protest voters against the USP shifted their focus back towards a party that was seen as more stable and professional. Their stock rose further when Gus Manger and Symon Holl, who had been making noises about forming their own centrist party, were convinced to join the PFJP instead. The Anawalda/Manger ticket were able to capitalise on the USP’s attempt to poach socially conservative voters from the NFP, advocating for a softening of state control over the economy, more radical social change, and a shift towards the recently-formed Intermerkopum alliance instead of the distant CSP.
The Worker’s Party of Bludia and the Communist Party of Sordland, the groups who initially seemed most likely to benefit from the lowering of the electoral threshold, found themselves initially unable to capitalise on the situation. The shift of the USP to overt Socialism meant that many potential CPS voters saw no need to vote for the smaller party, instead throwing their weight behind Anton Rayne. The WPB was in a similar bind, with Rayne’s ousting of Governor Bron and amendment of Articles 6 and 7 of the constitution giving him a great deal of popularity among the Bludish community. However, Leke and the WPB were still able to retain enough of their voting base to enter the Assembly. The dream of a semi-autonomous Bergia was still alive, and many still carried grudges surrounding the destruction of the Bludish Freedom Front. While the mainstream Bludish movement had begun to distance themselves from the BFF, the fact remains that the fighters who had caused so much trouble were still people with lives, families and community ties. While they remained a fringe party who had no expectation of ever forming a government outside of a coalition, the WPB would remain a fixture of Sordish politics for decades to come. The CPS would not, and after a period of negotiation the party officially merged with the USP in time for the ‘61 elections.
The structure of the GNA came under heavy scrutiny in Rayne’s second term. The President began making noises about adding a second chamber for oversight and revision purposes, taking up the functions once given to the Supreme Court. His initial goal was to institute a Valgslandian chamber of delegates appointed by various trade unions, a notion which the unions themselves enthusiastically backed. The main chamber itself was significantly divided over this issue. Some conservatives disliked the power being given to the unions, some were wary of watering down their legislative power, and many were okay with a second chamber in principle but disagreed with its makeup. In the end, wrangling over this project took up most of the next four years. Rayne mostly got his wish, although as a compromise multiple other non-union professional bodies such as the Sordish Bar Association and the Sordish Medical Council were permitted to elect representatives as well. Some commentators speculated that this was a political ploy by Vice-President Galade to take control of the government by diverting the President’s focus onto a single time-consuming project, preventing him from making any radical policy decisions without consulting anyone. Nothing was ever proven either way.
THE WIDER WORLD
The most seismic change for Sordland came not from the ATO or the CSP, but from the formation of the Intermerkopum alliance right on their doorstep. The sudden shift to a tripolar world would have long-running effects on the global balance of power. Despite this, the biggest change for Sordland came from a somewhat different angle.
Queen Beatrice Livingstone had almost bankrupted her country building up the army. She had riled her population up to prepare for a war with Sordland. Strict authoritarian measures, draconian even by the standards of the monarchy, had been put in place to prepare for the conflict to come. Then Rumburg was ejected from OMEC and sanctioned by the Alliance of Nations. War with Sordland went from inevitable to a near-suicidal mistake. So when parts of the army under the command of Count Roderick Livingstone, the Queen’s cousin, launched a coup, many were shocked but nobody was surprised. Sords saw their own country’s history repeating itself as the newly-crowned King Roderick launched a brutal military crackdown, only to face a civil war as a faction of the army led by Duke Sebastian of Ironsrad revolted. The Ironsrad faction sought to reduce the monarch to the status of a figurehead, transferring the power of the crown to a joint government split between the nobility and military veterans of common birth.
As the country was plunged into brutal war with terrible atrocities committed by both sides, Queen Livingstone’s chickens unexpectedly came home to roost. The BFF, crippled by Operation Bear Trap in Wehlen and by the actions of the police in Sordland, had largely fled into southern Rumburg. As violence began to spread across the north of the country, with the heaviest fighting happening between Thornbourgh and Ironsrad, BFF fighters seized control of the city of Datefort. While their previous attempts in other countries had failed as soon as the regular army showed up, the Bluds found themselves the beneficiaries of a most unlikely alliance: the Nurist Republic of Derdia and the Republic of Wehlen. Newly bound together in the Intermerkopum alliance, the two nations began to funnel weapons, resources and volunteer fighters to the BFF. While the Supreme Wiseman’s involvement was fully consistent with his often-stated principles, President Smolak’s decision to throw his weight behind the Bludish cause utterly baffled anyone who had observed his actions in the past. Ultimately a consensus emerged: that Wiktor Smolak didn’t give a damn about Bluds, Rums, or even his own people, unless they affected his power in some way. To him, the BFF were a weapon. If they were pointed at him he would destroy them, if they were pointed at someone else he would happily load them and pull the trigger.
The Sordish government were torn on how to respond to the civil war. Some wanted to leave Rumburg to its own devices, closing the border and waiting to see what happened. Some, most notably President Rayne, wanted to offer assistance, either by providing relief to refugees or even locating and funding a hypothetical faction of Socialist revolutionaries that they assumed had to exist somewhere. A small but vocal cross-party faction wanted to launch an invasion to seize territory and natural resources, or at the very least to return Dome to Agnolia. In the end, inertia proved to be the deciding factor. With the resources of the Sordish state directed firmly inward, the appetite for getting involved in a foreign civil war was low. Humanitarian aid stations were set up at the borders and an expedited asylum program was put in place, but the government’s stance remained broadly neutral.
The war dragged on for almost two years, only breaking when negotiations between the democratic forces and the Bludish liberationists finally bore fruit. Rumburg transitioned into a federal constitutional monarchy, with different regions allowed to operate under locally-elected governments while sending representatives to the central parliament. The southern-most province was named Bludia, a controversial move which was imposed as part of the alliance negotiations. The newly-reorganised nation, devastated by the massive fighting, promptly found itself at the centre of a diplomatic free-for-all between the superpowers to bring it into their spheres of influence. After significant negotiations which grew so heated that accusations of corruption were thrown around in the AN, Rumburg officially joined Intermerkopum – though not before accepting significant international development aid from the ATO.
Outside of Merkopa, the biggest international development came when United Contana announced that Comrade Malenyev had died peacefully in his sleep. While tributes came from around the world, a diplomatic power struggle quickly sprung up among the communist nations of the world. Chairman Hegel began an international charm offensive to establish himself as the natural successor to Malenyev as the first-among-equals among the leaders of the CSP. He was opposed in this by two other main figures: Vyacheslav Zaitsev, the newly-elected Chairman of the Contanan Communist Party, and Ifeoma Ogedegbe, a Rikan revolutionary leader who had helped to establish numerous Communist paramilitary groups across their home continent. Anton Rayne and the Sordish state in general threw their diplomatic support behind Chairman Hegel, who comfortably cemented his authority within the Pact. Under his guidance the CSP shifted its focus from sponsoring revolutionary movements across the world to offering massive economic incentives to any country that would either join or at least align more closely with their interests. While Hegel himself would die less than ten years later, his strategy of outspending the ATO rather than relying on military force would cause long-lasting shifts in the nature of the cold war between the superpowers.
THE FUTURE
While Sordish politics continued to evolve, Sordish culture also began to evolve in the years after the ‘57 election. Comedic radio personality Erzen Vectern (no relation to the Vice President) shocked the nation and tested the boundaries of the Media Council’s rules on appropriate content when he performed a series of comedy sketches entitled ‘Baby Anton’s Playtime’. In these, the President was cast as an excitable child constantly being distracted by new ideas while his long-suffering nanny Lucian Galade tried to rein him in. While many people found the open disrespect to the highest office in the land deeply shocking, there was no response from the Maroon Palace. Emboldened, Erzen turned these impressions into an entire light entertainment show, featuring other performances such as Storytime With Grandpa Soll and the raunchy (for the time) Adventures In Fairyland, which lampooned public figures suspected of being gay. Erzen’s greatest triumph came when Kesaro Kibener sued him for slander after being featured on Adventures In Fairyland. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled that the show, which advertised itself as political satire rather than factual reporting, could not be construed as a lie and therefore failed to reach the legal bar to prove slander. This ruling led to a flowering of political comedy and the beginning of what became known as the Golden Age of Satire. This was compounded when, in 1970, Anton Rayne appeared in a TV special with Erzen Vectern. Rayne openly stated that he had found Baby Anton’s Playtime hilarious, before acting out one of the classic sketches, playing the role of Lucian Galade alongside Erzen playing Baby Anton.
In 1961, Anton Rayne retired as the first President not to be forcibly ousted from office since the fall of the monarchy. Surprisingly, he endorsed Gloria Tory as his successor instead of Albin Clavin or Ciara Walda, both of whom were running for party leader on a much more progressive platform. The nature of the fix became clear when Ciara Walda dropped out shortly thereafter, endorsing Gloria Tory and being offered a position as her potential Vice-President. The ‘61 election is still taught in Sordish universities to this day as an example of wide-scale political reorganisation. Moderate conservative voters who were turned off by the rhetoric of the NFP returned to the USP, except for those for whom a female President was a bridge too far, who instead switched from the USP to the NFP. Tory’s credentials as a social conservative alienated many progressive voters, who returned to the PFJP, but her stated intention to continue with the Socialist policies of her predecessor drew voters more concerned with economic redistribution from the pro-capitalist PFJP to the USP. The former voting base of the CPS had mostly joined their leader in returning to the USP, but many Bluds who had lent Rayne their votes in the previous election returned to the WPB, not trusting a woman in whom they had no real confidence. The media predicted everything from a record victory for the USP to a hung Assembly to the first ever government of a second party. The one thing everyone could agree on was that Frens Ricter’s Human Dignity Party, whose policy seemed to be the same as the PFJP but with a disgraced former leader in charge, was a vanity project that would get nowhere. In the end, the results were less seismic than many had predicted. The NFP lost some seats, the PFJP and the WPB gained some, and while the USP suffered losses, they did not extend beyond single digits. These losses, however, proved to be only the first cracks in the dominance of the monolithic USP.
Insider gossip claimed that the Tory/Walda ticket was masterminded by former Vice President Lucian Galade in an attempt to hold together the party’s ‘big tent’ coalition of liberal and conservative voters. This plan had one fatal flaw: Gloria Tory and Ciara Walda absolutely hated one another. The two women had previously maintained a frosty but respectful relationship, a state of affairs that they maintained by never talking to one another. Forced to work together closely, the personality clashes escalated quickly. The two broadly agreed to leave the economy to van den Bergh, retained from Rayne’s cabinet, but around areas of social policy, the differences became irreconcilable. While many areas of discrimination under the law had been tackled in previous administrations, discrimination by private citizens was still rampant across Sordland. The right of businesses to refuse to serve Bluds, homosexuals, or members of any other group they disliked came under strong public debate, which the government was forced to respond to. President Tory publicly decried all forms of prejudice, but maintained that it was the right of each individual to associate or not associate with other people as they chose. Vice President Walda argued that there were some reasons to discriminate that were invalid by definition, and that permitting these was an affront to human dignity. As the two most powerful people in the country did everything up to openly insulting one another in their speeches, the press had a field day with what the Holsord Post called ‘the most consequential attack of hysteria in Sordish history.’
The dysfunction within the government led to a great deal of speculation about the ‘65 elections, and who would win the power struggle within the party. Sadly, the conflict was resolved in a way that nobody expected. In the October of 1964, Gloria Tory announced to the nation that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and intended to retire from politics at the end of her term to focus on her health. This threw the party into chaos once again, as an unexpected leadership contest emerged. Ciara Walda refused to stand for President, allegedly on the advice of Lucian Galade, who supposedly told her that her public fights with President Tory had severely harmed her electoral prospects. Instead she endorsed veteran statesman Paskal Beniwoll as the progressive candidate for party leadership, facing off against Tory’s preferred successor, rising conservative star Abrasha Becker. However, the race was thrown into chaos by Anton Rayne unexpectedly throwing his considerable political capital behind Sivan Barhani, a Bludish Representative who had only joined the USP in 1956. Rayne made a series of speeches in which he claimed that it was finally time for Sordland to heal the wounds of the past by electing its first Bludish President. These speeches swayed enough of the party’s membership that Sivan won with a small plurality of the vote.
Ultimately, Rayne’s intervention sounded the death knell for decades of dominance of the party of Tarquin Soll. Mere months before the election, conservative Representatives from the USP defected en masse and announced the formation of a new party, the Sordish Conservative Party. The SCP’s ranks were swelled a mere week later by further defections, this time from the moderate wing of the NFP. The election was somehow even more chaotic than the last one, and when the dust had settled, no party held an overall majority in the GNA. The USP, still the largest party by a narrow margin, sought to form a government, only for the SCP and the PFJP to state their intention to form a coalition government. After the Supreme Court ruled that doing so did not contradict the constitution, Sordland witnessed the end of an era. For the first time since its foundation, the USP no longer occupied the Maroon Palace.
THE RAYNE FAMILY
While Anton Rayne worked hard at his second term in office, his wife Monica continued her development as a public figure. The Sordish League of Women overwhelmingly elected Monica Rayne as their President shortly after her husband’s re-election. The growing women’s movement had reaped great benefits from having the President’s wife as a figurehead, and those gains were only compounded by being linked to a popular President in his second term. Further amendments to the Women’s Liberation Act were passed through the Assembly, banning discrimination in employment, housing and healthcare provision on grounds of sex. Monica also fronted a high-profile campaign to bring more women into public roles within Sordish state media, citing the need for positive role models for young girls. After his retirement, Anton would joke that he was best known as Monica Rayne’s husband. While this was obviously not true, Monica did maintain her high public profile after her husband’s retirement. She tried her best to keep the momentum of the movement up during the turbulent years of the Tory administration, although this was not without cost.
Monica tried her hardest to stay neutral in the widely-publicised split between Tory and Walda, projecting the image of someone more interested in grand unifying projects than political disputes. Sadly, this led to her falling out of touch with the mainstream of the movement she had helped to start. As a new generation of young women took up the task of changing the world, they began to level a more critical eye at their former idol. Despite having been close to Ciara Walda from the beginning Monica had maintained close ties with Gloria Tory, often describing her as a respected colleague and even a friend. This did not sit well with the young women who sympathised with Walda’s more radical reformist tendencies. On top of this, Monica had shown some sympathy for the goal of stamping out prostitution, and had expressed her discomfort with the idea of legalising abortion. While her remarks on the sex trade were rooted in the exploitation inherent to the system and were often taken out of context by her detractors, her stance on abortion was a controversy too far. A mere decade after becoming the face of the women’s movement, Monica Rayne was already viewed as a product of a bygone era. She announced her retirement from the position of President of the SLW, citing a desire to open the role to somebody younger. In her later years she would talk openly of the strain that her public life had placed her under, forcing her to play the role of ‘mother of the nation’, an unrealistic standard of perfection that she could never fully be able to live up to.
Franc Rayne returned from United Contana as a qualified doctor with a specialism in cardiac medicine. Despite the ongoing government incentives to move to a more rural area, he chose to begin working at Holsord University Hospital in order to remain close to his parents. Shunning the example of the rest of his family he chose to stay out of the public eye, refusing all requests for interviews and going out of his way to avoid drawing attention to himself. He was nonetheless active within the Sordish Medical Council, being elected to its executive board in 1972 and eventually being elected as its President in 1981.
Deana Rayne proved to be as comfortable in the spotlight as her parents. After achieving a degree in biomedical science from Holsord State University she went on to work for several medical and pharmaceutical companies in the years that followed. Her life took a significant turn, however, when she published her first collection of poetry. ‘Pictures Of Lilies’, published under the pseudonym ‘A Sordish Daughter’, took the literary world by storm with a combination of romantic longing and stinging social criticism rooted in an all-but-explicitly sapphic viewpoint. While the intelligentsia of Sordland clamoured to know the identity of A Sordish Daughter, Deana initially chose to remain anonymous for fear of damaging the reputation of her parents. This fear was eventually quashed when she came out to her parents, who pledged their unconditional support. Deana gave several public interviews discussing her life and became a noted public figure in the Sordish arts. In her later years she would settle down with journalist Darina Lachav, and adopt two children.
After the end of his second term, Anton Rayne tried and failed to stay out of politics. While he had a stated policy of not commenting on the policies of the governments that followed his, he was never able to stick to it and was always an easy source of quotes for any journalist who could take him by surprise. He was often asked to participate in diplomatic missions on behalf of the government, a fact that some humorists attributed to the desire to get him out of the way so he would stop interfering. Despite this he remained a popular public figure, his constitutional reforms, involvement in the Great Sordish Recovery, and advocacy for social justice within the nation leaving voters with positive memories of him. This was further compounded by the dysfunction of the Tory administration, with some commentators demanding that the GNA repeal term limits to allow Rayne to come back. Rayne categorically stated that he would never run for President again even if he could, but the nostalgia among the general public remained strong.
Nonetheless, the golden age could not last forever. As the USP lost power and the coalition took office, public opinion slowly started to shift. It was hard not to notice Rayne’s role in splitting his own party, especially with the numerous public pronouncements he had made on how this would save United Sordland. This drew more public attention to the assorted false claims he had made at various points in his career, and the public’s opinion started to shift from the man who saved Sordland to a consummate bullshitter who would say anything to convince people to do what he wanted. Satirists and critical journalists alike took great delight in picking apart Rayne’s exaggerations, misinterpretations and flat-out lies, a fact that did not stop him compulsively making things up whenever he was challenged. Sadly, his declining popularity complicated the cause that would define the late stages of his life: gay rights.
Homosexuality had been legalised under Tarquin Soll, alongside divorce and interracial relationships, as part of sweeping measures to secularise the state. Despite this, homophobia remained a significant part of Sordish culture. While homosexuals might no longer face arrest, any with the temerity to be open about their sexuality faced discrimination and even violence outside any but the most cosmopolitan of circles. This led to the formation in 1966 of the Sordish Homosexuals Association for Rights and Equality, or SHARE for short. While smaller groups had existed previously, this took the struggle to the cultural mainstream. Following his daughter’s coming out in 1969, Anton Rayne publicly made a large donation to SHARE, and offered to speak at their next conference. Sadly, this would prove to be a disaster. Rayne’s once-untouchable public speaking abilities had declined as he grew older, tending to slip into rambling and self-aggrandising monologues filled with blatant lies. This meant that the most personal speech Rayne had ever given, in which he admitted to having had homosexual experiences himself and spoke of the guilt and shame he had felt growing up, was met with ridicule and mockery. The tabloid press engaged in lurid speculation about his personal life, insinuating that he had been intimate with lifelong bachelor Lucian Galade, and that his wife was also a lesbian, the two having entered into a so-called ‘lavender marriage’. This had devastating effects on Anton’s mental health. Friends would report that while he was hurt by the personal speculation, he was more worried that he had set back the movement for equality and subjected another generation of young men and women to the same oppression he had once faced.
While he was unable to fully stop himself from making public appearances, Rayne took a step back from the spotlight. By the time of his death in 1980, the result of a heart attack brought on by his terrible diet, he left behind the legacy of a complicated, idealistic man who was constitutionally incapable of getting out of his own way. Nonetheless, his death led to a softening of public opinion. When The Radical published ‘The Dirt On The Gardener’s Hands’, a look back at the life and career of President Rayne, their warts-and-all profile was shot through with a sense of deep affection. When Petr Vectern spoke at Rayne’s funeral, an excerpt from his eulogy summed up the feelings of many:
“Anton Rayne was, to me, the truest expression of the man who tells you ‘I always lie’. I was never sure whether to believe what he said, but I always knew what he meant. I knew I couldn’t rely on him, and I knew that I could trust him with my life. He only ever did what he thought was best, for better or for worse. We could all use a friend like that in our lives.”

I don’t know what’s wrong with me or if something is wrong with me but I feel like something is. I’m paranoid near daily, I feel bad and stressed, I have too many thoughts and internal monologues to keep up with and I always feel off. For background my grandmother died in pre-covid 2020 and my dog died about a month ago. I hadn’t been over my grandmothers death when my dog got cancer so it was like back to back loss. Ever since my grandmother’s passing I never feel right. I always feel bad or gloomy and I have hundreds of personalities that I can’t seem to control. I feel more self aware and my different “selves” (my personalities) keep cutting in and out. I talked to one of my friends who has a therapist and he said it’s a sign that I miss someone or something but I feel like I’ve gotten over both the losses and excepted them. What do you think.

The Summer Man journal monologues are simple but refreshing. We're let into this silent man's inner thoughts. He's being honest and philosophical and I think we all relate. Who doesn't fantasize about an ideal version of ourselves we can never reach?
Turning it on Betty, what does she see in the mirror of desire? As much as we condemn Betty, she's always compelling because she wants so much. She wants to have more, be better. She's similar to Pete. A blue blood with old fashioned ideals who's ever so dissatisfied with everything. But Pete has a similar attitude to Joan. They both feel that they are the person they need to be and the world needs to change to fit them into it. Peggy is a little bit of both, she has a lot of change and growth to do but she also must bend the world to her will.
What does Betty want?
Her first big hurdle is the ideal female body. She lives as a larger person as a child, internalizing it to the point she attempted to make clothes in a bigger size for herself. The next thing she wants is a good young adulthood. She goes to a perfect school and studies anthropology before running away to Manhattan to become a model and meet a handsome man. She gets married and has kids in her early twenties. Her husband succeeds and they live in a large beautiful house in the country. Everything's right but everything is wrong.
Of course if Don was devoted to her and included her and she was a society mover and shaker she would have been happier. She would have had the Manhattan talk, stayed abreast of art, history, and news to keep up and been intellectually stimulated while a nanny watched the kids. But Don was old fashioned, had to keep a low profile, and he really struggled when other men were attracted to his drop dead gorgeous wife. So Betty became cloistered, resentful, bitter.
When she gets what she always wanted, a marriage to Henry Francis, and after a cancer a scare, her oldest demon, fatness needing to be concurred again, and coming to terms with the whole Don lie/divorce/infidelity/terrible marriage thing she did in her twenties, she goes back to school to study psychology.
We think of Betty getting the bad ending. She died when she was still young, she had to say goodbye to her three children, beloved husband, and life on earth, just when she was finally getting it together.
But Betty grew. She represented some of the worst parts of her era, complacency, racism, fear of change, conformity, entitlement. But she worked on herself. She made mistakes. She left Don. She found a partner who told her how he felt and let her tell him how she felt. Henry and Betty learned from each other in a way Don and Betty never really did.
Would I want to know Betty? Probably not, she hit her kids, supported the Vietnam war, treated Carla terribly, feared civil rights, and smoked cigarettes inside all the time. But she's fictional and the sins I've committed have hurt actual living humans. So why cast stones at Elizabeth Hoftsed?
Betty had a character arc. She represented a kind of change just like every other character. She starts out completely stuck, postured like a Barbie. By the end she's exactly where she wants to be surrounded by exactly the people she wants and she's studying psychology, a fresh forward thinking discipline of the era. Her death is a tragedy, but she is a character who gets what she always wanted. She never has to grow old. And thank god she never has to grown old married to Don Draper.
​

Hello, I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit for this so please let me know if elsewhere is better to post this.
My grandma passed away 2 days ago after being diagnosed with cancer a year ago. She seemed quite well in herself with little symptoms up until 2 weeks ago, when her health rapidly declined. I visited her 4 times in her last week, and the last time I saw her I knew in my heart I wouldn't see her again. She passed away 12 hours after I last visited her, at 1am.
That night at 11pm (so 2 hours before she passed) I couldn't sleep. I decided to place a photo of my grandma between 2 very sentimental crystal angels I own and spoke to the angels. I asked them to please make sure when her time comes, they guide her over peacefully and comfortably, and make sure she is very well looked after up there. I then spoke to my grandma (again though the angels, not directly) I asked her to forgive me for not visiting so much in recent years and told her how much I loved her.
After this I tried to go back to bed but just laid there for a few mins crying and thinking about everything. All of a sudden I got this overwhelming feeling and stopped crying. Difficult to describe, but a calming heaviness is the best way to put it. Not heavy physically (I'm certain it wasn't sleep paralysis, was 100% awake) it felt like a presence was there to reassure me.
Because this is the first time I've ever experienced anything like this, I began to get a bit freaked out but tried not to fight it. I'm not sure if it was my own imagination, but a voice said in my head "don't be scared sweetheart, it's okay". It sorta seemed like my own internal monologue voice though which makes me think I might have just imagined that bit. After about 30 seconds the feeling went away entirely. I felt jittery and on edge the rest of the night, I was 99% certain I would be getting the news from my family the next day, which is exactly what happened.
I've been thinking about this a lot over the last 2 days and I can't figure out what it was. I'm not sure if my grandma's spirit visited me before she died or if it was a guardian angel. Because I'm not sure what happens to the spirit during the hours before death, if it remains with the body or travels around a bit before departing for good, I'm leaning towards thinking this was a guardian angel visiting me, giving me reassurance that they'd heard my message and would be guiding my grandma over peacefully very soon.
I'm not religious at all, but have always identified as spiritual. I have questioned why this happened to me as I wasn't the closest family member to my grandma but I think I definitely made myself very open to this which is perhaps why I had this experience at this time.
I haven't told any family that this happened as I'm aware that a lot of people don't belive in this sort of thing and don't want to cause any upset or offense. I only told my partner and he didn't really say anything to it. So any insight here to what I might have experienced would be appreciated.

[excerpts from The NYT, April 10]
- As my grandfather lay in his bed, close to the end of his long life, he had a vision and pointed to the far wall. “What are you seeing?” my grandmother asked. “A transcendent view of the queen,” he replied. “Which queen?” “The queen of all the world,” he answered reverently. “Is it your mother?” He nodded and smiled, falling back to sleep.
- Toward the end of my father’s long life, he kept telling me he was seeing a little dog sitting in a chair next to his bed. He described the dog in detail and would point his finger at it with serious certainty. After he died, going through a very old and dusty box of his things, I found a sketch he had done as a child — of his little pet dog sitting in a chair. I put it on the cover of the card for his memorial service.
- I am a retired hospice nurse, having worked in the field since the 1980s. I can recall many stories like those commented on here. My favorite was a male patient in his 60s who had been a smoker most of his life and was dying of lung cancer. One day I walked into his room and to my surprise he was making lunging motions up in the bed. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was climbing the stairs to heaven. I helped him lean forward as carefully as I could to help him safely make the motions. About an hour later he died. We can support the dying best by believing them.
- My mom passed away in 2023 after gradually declining from Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia and myelodysplastic syndrome for a couple of years. About a month or two before she passed away, she started talking about how she needed to get the suitcase down from her closet because she had a train to catch. And just a couple days before she died, when she had been barely conscious for maybe a week, all of the sudden she opened her eyes, looked at a fixed point in front of her, and said, “Hi, Dad!” Clear as day, in a calm, confident, hopeful voice. Then she closed her eyes and went back to sleep, as if nothing had happened. Her father had passed away about 20 years earlier, and clearly came to guide her, as he had done in life. I feel so grateful to have been present with her to see that sacred moment.
- At the end of his life, my dad was blind. Arthritis fused his cervical spine, forcing his head downward. He lost the ability to walk. His kidneys and heart fought each other. He became unresponsive. A week before he died, I paused in the doorway before entering his room to find him engaged in a lively monologue. I touched his arm. He announced, “Everyone, I’d like you to meet my daughter.” I straightened and waved to the empty room. He spoke and looked around with ease. He sat relaxed, crossing, and uncrossing his legs, conversing with his children and long gone co-workers. As he spoke, he made grand gestures. I audibly gasped when he lifted his spindly arms over his head and looked toward the sky while making a point. His movements resembled a man decades younger than 91. After a while, he grew tired and fell back asleep. I will never forget how the mind can overpower the body with such ease.
- Throughout the ’90s, I volunteered at a five-bed, residential AIDS hospice that accepted all who needed care. I spent time with many, many people, most young, many older, living with the knowledge that they would soon die. All the staff and volunteers had stories of residents announcing that they needed to pack for a train or bus that was coming, or that they had been visited by people we could not see but who had been an important part of their lives. With rare exception, these were narratives characterized by a sense of peace and acceptance. We learned to read them as signals that death was near, and it always was. Like Sara Teasdale contemplating the stars, I know that I am honored to bear witness to their stories.
- We lost my father in 2018, and Mom mourned and grieved that loss every day. They were a team. Mom fell gravely ill in February 2023. I spent almost every day at her bedside in hospitals and a nursing home until her last day. Her final week was filled with conversations with my father, as if he was right next to her — asking him if he wanted the other half of her sandwich, or would he hand her the TV remote — mundane conversations, but so profound, too. Startled at first, I was relieved to see her find peace after having witnessed her agonizing battle with decline and disease in the prior months. Her passage was not the graceful one that I wished for until that final week. I kept pleading with my father to “come and get her” and he did, when the time was right. I am grateful even as I grieve.
- I’ve been a hospice nurse for the last 10 years. When patients talk about “needing to go” or say someone is “picking them up” it’s like another vital sign. We know the end is near, even if they have periods of lucidity. People regularly see deceased family members and pets. I cared for one younger woman dying of cancer who told me that her room often seemed “crowded” at night, all these people waiting for her. She was clear as anything when we were speaking. I’ll never forget that.
- My mother was a German Holocaust survivor, and even though her father was Jewish, hers had not been a practicing family. She had a religious experience right before she married my father (he was in the U.S. Army Special Forces; that was how they met) and became a practicing Catholic. She had a stroke a few months before her death and was partially paralyzed. While lying in her hospice bed weeks before her death, she told me that all of her relatives were there in her room, and began to have conversations with them in German, sometimes laughing, sometimes weeping. She requested a visit from a rabbi and became more and more peaceful in her final days. Moments before her death, she opened her eyes and looked up. She started to sit up, and with a face that I can only describe as illuminated, said, “Oh, the love!”

Sitting at home with my sick clingon for the 3rd day in a row AND just dropped $1.3k on fixing our aircon so what better way to celebrate than watching these ding-a-lings making crazy ugly mansion money for falling pregnant as a teen! Obviously I’m in!!
The “previously on” recap is very traumatic. It’s the sex party. At this rate I’m going to need my own sex teacher therapist to work through my issues with. That’s right, our favourite dimwit just turned up. I like to pretend she’s crashing the party- not that this is another one of MTVs desperate attempts at creating drama.
I knowwwwwww Cate is just playing a part, but it irks me that she’s trying to push Cheyenne into being buddy buddy with Mackenzie. Cheyenne went into quite a lot of detail about what went on. I’ll just move on. Is it just me, or has Mackenzie always had this way about her- like she’s the mean girl, but then gets upset when people don’t forgive her straight away? Even when she hasn’t apologised? It’s a hangover from the “forgive and forget” notion. Khes seems to be getting right into his possible reality tv career. And just leaves Mack to sulk in the background. Make those connections my dude! Everyone is shocked pikachu face that it’s tense. Really guys?!
Maci and Mr Maci dip from the tension (my signature move btw) and call up “their” 15 year old son, Bentley. Can I get a collective aaaaaaaaw for Mr Maci? They’re definitely looking like defeated 50 year old teen parents at the second, but that’s all the t-ball, right?! Sweeeeeeeeeet baby Jesus in heaven, Maci has taken out her gauges for the recap. It’s worse than I imagined. Like seeing one of those hairless cats, and for some reason, I can smell them from here. Retch. They’re talking about the inability to balance having 3 kids, being attentive parents and their romantic relationship. Like they’re shocked. No shit- you have to become neglectful parents and ditch them with others for half the week. Like Ryan. Maybe grandma Jen would like a few extra grandbabies to raise. Has anyone thought to ask?!
So it’s still tense in the house the next morning. It’s because Mack didn’t up and leave in the middle of the night. My vote is the next challenge is an elimination round. Then we can vote her out. Oooooooh Nelly!! Mack is explaining the beef to Tyler. She was trying to be “politically correct” calling someone coloured. Like it’s 1953 Alabama. She wanted to say “woman of colour”. She’s blaming it on not being raised around diversity. But I wasn’t raised in the US, and I know you shouldn’t sound like an extra in “The Help”.
When the initial backlash happened, Mackenzie texted Cheyenne and… Cate? Because she wanted to apologise and explain was her own ignorance. This can’t have been added now for the “Cate Cares” storyline, right?! Did Mackenzie text Cheyenne and CATE for backup? She’s honestly more juvenile as time goes on.
GAH they’re going dune buggying as their daily activity fake-organised by Cheyenne. So Mackenzie and her trophy boyfriend are sitting it out. Because she doesn’t know “her place in the house”. It doesn’t look like she’s sitting it out BECAUSE OF CHEYENNE. Cory calls it- she’s rejecting another chance to become part of the group. Maybe sober Cory is smart? So Mackenzie is going into a very much non scripted monologue about being raised differently from her trophy boyfriend, how they’re so similar and that she’s grateful to have been invited on the trip. While she’s lying on her bed with a plate of food while missing the first activity.
I should explain- I think Mackenzie scripts a lot of her own scenes. Way back to her “Being Mackenzie” special, and on TM. You can usually tell when her kids look at her like “wtf”. I would say Josh, but he always had that look on his face. Once her mum called her out and said “did you invite me here just so you could do this” when she had cancer. It’s all content baby!
I feel like they just drove the dune buggies to the therapists on the flat safe beach. No wooooo woooooo driving or anything. I’d be Amber-ing, but Mackenzie cannot. Sigh the challenge is about being “the driver” in the relationship, or “the passenger”. Anyone else getting the vibe all the therapy is remedial? I felt like fast forwarding, but I would have missed Maci and Mr Macis MATCHING AMERICAN FLAG SHORTS!! Please say they’re available on the TTM website. I’ll get them in time for the next insurrection.
Guys and girls are split to talk about their relationship issues. With Tyler’s sex teacher and the legit one. Jade’s actually doing an awesome job at putting herself in Sean’s shoes. -wiping tear from eye- I think these guys are going to make it!! Sean does a great job too. Cory… is phoning that shit in. Taylor- the things she says makes me worried about their relationship. Is Cory really jealous of her relationship with their children?! Remembering one has a serious heart condition?! Find the door Taylor.
Tyler’s making Cate sound like Tyler. He may have misunderstood the exercise, because the Sex Teacher does distract the kid. Maybe he should be in the other group? Bla Cheyenne and Zac don’t even have issues. It’s like they’re inventing some for the show.
Anyone else a little worried about Maci and Mr Maci doing this challenge? Like those clear covid screens around cash registers in the grocery store need to be put up to protect us? Mr Maci’s effort is lacklustre at best, and Maci can’t even get her head around talking about herself. All a ploy to avoid talking about their issues in front of the group perhaps??
Correct me if I’m wrong- Maci has a degree in communications? And she’s shitty at communicating. No wonder they’re arse deep in TTM merch.
What a fucking cliche- Tyler’s Sex Teacher makes the guys howl at the end of the session. Is this meant to be conversation therapy?? Where we learn to BE MEN?! What are the girls going to do at the end? Wash some dishes and make their men a sandwich?
Ok re-erect the covid screens. The Macis are going into a private therapy session with Tyler’s sex therapist. To talk about their communication and intimacy issues. So sex will probably be bought up shudders. Judging by the colour of the drink in Tyler’s glass, it’s Budd. Budd Light perhaps. Normally I’m against drinking and therapy together, but in this case, I’m worried about the safety of the cast and crew in the room. Like when Amber gets mad. Do you want to be McKinneyed?
So I’m cringing hard right now. They’re talking about when they knew they were in love. Mr Maci says it’s when Maci re-interrated that when he moved over, it was forever. Because she wasn’t going to have someone in and out of Bentley’s life. What now?? That threat was love for you? Maci has my exact same cringe face. Now we’re watching an old clip before they aged 10 years (don’t come at me… it was about 10 years and 2 children ago! Those tiny spawn age the fuck out of you! That’s why Farrah looks so taut- she only had one) when Taylor was happy to put Bentleys needs first.
I shit you not- I went back and watched that bit again. I didn’t misunderstand. And MACI SAYS THAT WAS HER LOVE MOMENT AS WELL. And she’s crying. Is love and romance different in Chattanooga? Now I want a massive Budd Light. Their marriage is stressing me out. Hide behind your covid screens you reddit folk- we’re going to find out when each person says that hurts the other the most. Maci doesn’t want to say. We know it’s bad. The previous recap was correct- Taylor says he doesn’t want his daughter (cute mini-Maci, Jayde) to become the mother that Maci is. Maci is feeling real emotion- she wants to know what she did to hurt him that much. Whereas I WANT TO KNOW WTF Maci did/does that made him say that?! Or does he just say it to be hurtful. I mean, that’s low. I revoke my “aawwwwww” from earlier in the recap thank you!
Taylor admits that he said it in a “volcano” moment because he pushes all his things down bla bla bla and he doesn’t mean it. Whatever dude. Maybe Maci wonders how she ended up with a bloated Kenny Powers in the space of 10 years?! What if she said that?? What frustrates me more, Tyler’s Sex Teacher is right on board with this “we all say things we don’t mean” thing. Like maybe a bit of accountability would be nice.
Maci then admits she’s been in survival mode since she was 16. I guess that’s what happens when you procreate with the giant man-baby that is Rhyne. Can’t fault her on that. Maybe I missed it, but Taylor didn’t say what Maci says that’s hurtful to him? It’s the perfect time for him to vent that there’s 3 people on his marriage, and he didn’t think he’d be marrying RHYNE. But I digress. Somehow Taylor’s beer has been topped up so I don’t know… the magic of editing. Get the cheap wigs people.
Mackenzie is still in her “no ones taken the time to get to know me” pity party. Does she understand the show is called “Teen Mom” not “Teen Mack”? She’s isolating herself and wondering why no one is running to her table. Make an effort.
I’m actually excited about this- Maci and Taylor are going on their date. Which was homework set by Tyler’s sex teacher. Side bar for a moment… Maci’s fashion decisions of late. What’s happening?! I loved her look for a while there, but now we’ve graduated to some kind of boohoo.com fluro and spandex business. It’s just not the motorcross loving Maci that I’ve come to love. Just update the flannel/black jeans look slightly. Why are they so afraid of hiring stylists if they’re struggling. I’m looking at you Cate.
They’re not allowed to talk about the kids. So there’s a lot of small talk happening around being able to swim in a volcano in Colombia. I’m surprised Jade/Cheyanne/Cate hasn’t jumped in and said they organised the date for them. They’re not even allowed to talk about “family” or “back home” stuff. It’s like they’ve just started dating and don’t really know each other.
Well my dumb arse thought they’d be swimming in water which just happens to be in a volcano. They’re wearing their best matching fluro boohoo swimmers IN GREY MUD THAT SMELLS LIKE SULFER. Oh well just sacrifice those outfits then. So sad.
Back at the tension mansion, Mackenzie realises she should apologise to Cheyenne. For real. Just now. It feels like it’s been 2 days since she turned up, but that’s Family Reunion time which moves at a glacial pace. Could actually be 15 mins.
To set the scene, Mackenzie is too hot near the pool, it’s not refreshing and wants to go in the shade. Where Cheyenne is alone. Mackenzie, being the queen of subtle, narrate all this. In real time. Like “this is not refreshing. I need to go to the shade”. Maybe she expected Cheyenne to invite her over? We are watching “Teen Mack” after all.
Mackenzie is breaking the awkwardness. Call me a hatter, but her apology is, in part: “like the way I came in, I wanted to really respect boundaries, and I didn’t want you to think that I was, like, going around hugging everyone, ‘cause I really just wanted to respect your boundary”. Cast your minds back to their last encounter. I believe one of Teen Mack’s gripes was that she asked Cheyenne for a hug post argument, and Cheyenne said no. If that’s not a snippy half apology, I don’t know what is. I’ll be interested to see if she’s called on it. If she is, I’m sure we’ll see the “ignorance” card used again. Um… now MacKenzie is talking about how self aware she is now. And how much she’s grown. Hello she has a black boyfriend Cheyenne!! I cannot make this shit up.
Well- Cheyenne had an open mind, but Teen Mack is already pulling the ignorance card. She’s saying she “didn’t know” people were turning up at Cheyenne’s house/parents business/Ryder’s school. Even though it was reported. Weirdly, Mackenzie has a smug look on her face once Cheyanne turns away. Like the realisation that she has fans that’ll ride at dawn for her makes her happy?! Maybe a bit of “well, I tried, I am the victim”. I’m already sick of her. MTV can send her home now. No redemption arc for her. Cheyanne just rolls over and shows Mackenzie her butt. Lmfao.
Somehow, the conversation is still happening?? Mackenzie is asking what she can do to make it better with Cheyanne (I’m feeling a sense of Deja Vu- they gave you racial sensitivity training…) but Cheyanne says no thanks, and that she should work on herself. An extra drop kick, she adds that she could have black kids with her new boo (I guess Cheyanne didn’t know Teen Mac had her tubes tied after her last baby) so she should educate herself for the sake of her potential kids. So shes not as ignorant as she was 2 years ago mic drop.
But Teen Mac is STILL TRYING. Just stop. It’s almost harassment now. And we’re back to the “nothing I could have said or done could convince her that I’m sorry”. Back to the victimhood I see. Maybe acknowledging the impact of your words?! I dunno. Cheyenne said that a million times.
And now, the resident fake psychologist of the group, Cate feels Cheyanne was “shutting down” a lot. While playing with her vape pen, she talks to Mack. Only the real cool psychologists have purple hair and vape during session you know. Who thought Cate’s calling would be “fake psychologist”?! I’ve never seen her put so much effort into… anything! See Kim, she just needed to work out what she wanted.
The other girls seem to understand that Cheyanne doesn’t need friendship from Teen Mack. She just wants to move on. And that this isn’t elementary school- you do not need to invite your whole class to your birthday party. We are adults.
I’ve managed to let myself fall so far behind that there’s another episode tomorrow. If you can stand it.

So like most of you I have watched Dr Nowhere's "the boiled one". But unlike most people I am a historian and I have frequently engaged on and off with war history, specifically world war 2. Knowing what I know after watching the series I think I might know what the plot is.
Lets start small.
At 9:40 in the video there is some Japanese text. The text at the bottom is in Japanese and, roughly, translates to "Fear of the one and only one Watanabe 'The Bird'". The Watanbe they are talking about is a man by the name of "Mutsuhiro Watanabe" who was a soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army during the second world war known for his torture of prisoners (mostly American POWs) during the war. According to his Wikipedia, he would practice Judo on an appendectomy patient and also just violently beat prisoners. While Wikipedia is not the grand purveyor of knowledge it does give you an idea of how bad of a dude he was. Louis Zamperini (called Job in the story) was actually a prisoner under Watanabe's watch and was brutally tortured by him after he was captured. Apparently, Zamperini tried to send Watanabe a letter forgiving him for his brutality and wanted to speak with him but Watanabe refused. Watanabe, despite the brutality of his treatment earning him attention from Douglas MacArthur (yes, that General Douglas MacArthur) and was placed on a list of the 40 most wanted war criminals in Japan. He never was arrested and ended up becoming an insurance salesman which... is certainly a choice he made.
He even did an interview in 1998 where he talks about how he treated people during the war as their prison guard. He said, to abridge things, he treated them like enemies of Japan. To be quite frankly honest given how the Japanese treated their prisoners anyway... this tracks. Imperial Japan in many ways puts Germany to shame in terms of the level of brutality they displayed towards Americans and Chinese troops alongside anyone they viewed as outsiders. Also fun fact, Zamperini actually carried the olympic torch back when the Olympics was in Japan (1998) and did this as a symbol of forgiveness although Watanabe never was willing to see him or speak with him and died April 1st 2003.
Watanabe was Zamperini's prison guard at Ōfuna prisoner-of-war camp which is located in Kamakura. Kamakura is actually located not too far from Tokyo. So we do know they did interact with each other in real life and its also worth noting that Watanabe was stationed at multiple camps so the number of prisoners he came into contact outside of Zampeini was probably a lot. Watanabe refused to meet with Zamperini up until he died which was, as I stated, April 1st 2003. Zamperini died in 2014 of pneumonia although it was also worth noting he was 97. He helped write a book with author Laura Hillenbrand called Unbroken which was his story of being in the POW camps which does go over his torture at the hands of Watanabe and other soldiers. I took a look at the book and looked for mentions of the words "boiled" or "burned". This lead me to a passage that explained why Zamperini and his fellow soldiers feared being captured by the Japanese. The Japanese were not known for taking prisoners nor surrendering. If you surrendered to them you were subject to a whole slew of cruel treatment. During the Rape of Nanjing Japanese soldiers beheaded, burned alive, crucified (yes, really), violently beat and brutalized, and of course violently sexually assaulted the residents of Nanjing China. The treatment seen here was not unlike what the Japanese would do to prisoners on a much smaller scale within camps and elsewhere.
I suppose the first big question here would be "Is the Boiled one actually the ghost of Watanabe"
There is some evidence to support this. The date the boiled one begins appearing on TVs and in the dreams/sleep paralysis of Zamperini and others who are also presumably former POWs is August of 2003. Watanabe himself died in April of that year. So at that point he would have realistically been dead enough to plausibly come back as a 'ghost' or... whatever this thing is. Its also worth noting that Watanabe seemed to favor torturing Zamperini due to his military rank and his past participation in the olympics and Zamperini does state that he was treated worse by Watanabe than anyone else at the camp... so for Watanabe to latch onto him specifically isn't unrealistic. Zamperini also had night terrors about Watanabe after the war which were so bad he nearly strangled his wife in his sleep so I can see it. Finding religion helped him get through the pain of dealing with the torture but Watanabe did live rent free in the minds of his prisoners post-war. Watanabe was not caught in the crossfire that was the nuclear strikes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki so these burns we see the boiled one have isn't from that. Watanabe died of old age in his 80s with seemingly no lingering health issues from the war. So whatever form this, at least assuming this is Watanabe, would have to be a punishment after death. In the Edo period of Japan boiling a person alive was a punishment used to execute criminals among many other things. So could this just be the afterlife's punishment for Watanabe's cruelty? Maybe.
But I am not so sure.
Despite how sadistic Watanabe was in life and when he was working in POW camps during the war, he wanted nothing to do with his victims post war even though in some interviews he stated he was open to reconciling. He even offered a guy the chance to punch him but either those former POWs did not take him up on it or he retracted his offer and went back to not wishing to see people. This was the case for Zamperini since he actually did reach out to Watanabe in his later years, around when he carried the Olympic torch in Japan as a sign of forgiveness, but Watanabe never met with him or responded to the letter. Do I believe Watanabe had a change of heart? No. But I also don't think he would go out of his way to haunt Zamperini after his own death or the other POWs especially when these cognitohazardous effects are not limited to Zamperini or even explicitly POWs (although its implied that's how they are all connected). What I do find interesting however is that this thing is speaking in English. It is understood as speaking English even by those who do not speak it themselves which would be odd for Watanabe since Watanabe disliked Americans and most things connected with them. The English isn't accented either. Its also worth noting that the video is littered with Christian imagery which would be weird if it was Watanabe since from what we know he was never Christian. The closest we get to knowing his religious beliefs is knowing he subscribed to Nihilism so much so he learned French just to keep engaging with it. The trumpets in the air is also something from the Book of Revelation which is a Christian thing.
Lets look at the boiled ones little monologue at the end of the video. It is transcribed as follows:
"Listen closely." "Do you hear it? You will hear the laughter of thousands as the sky opens up." "You will hear the trumpets play their happy sounds," "The struggles of life will pour down onto us all." "Together, we will be still. Together, a feast (fit for a king?)" "Together, melded by love in purest connection; be still, (incoherent speech cut off by the end of the broadcast)
Not only does this directly reference the book of Revelation, but it also sounds like its describing an air raid or, in some ways, the infamous nuclear bombs that dropped in Japan. It would not be the first time this was described in an analog horror but if you look at victims of the blast both who died in it and who survived with horrific burns other health effects... the boiled ones appearance does make sense. But for someone who was present/might have died in the blast of Hiroshima or Nakasaki to mention Watanabe and his nickname given to him by his own prisoners would be weird since his actions were not broadcast to the Japanese public. He was only known after the war. So what gives here? Is this a plot error?!
No. And here is how.
The Boiled one IS connected with the actions and abuses of Watanabe but not in the sense that this thing is Watanabe himself. This thing is either a non-American prisoner formerly housed within one of Watanabe's POW camps (he was stationed at many throughout the war), or is a manifestation created by Zamperini's lingering trauma from Watanabe compounded by the trauma and memories of his other former POWs, tulpa style. Both theories have enough evidence to make them true I think.
For theory number 1 (The Boiled one is a former POW himself but wasn't American), lets look at some earlier parts of the Boiled one video.
In the beginning of the video in the more "nature documentary" section, Poison Oak (also called "tree of heaven") is brought up a lot. Poison Oak isn't native to the US or Europe, it comes from China and Taiwan. Both China and Taiwan were brutalized by the Japanese during WW2 and many soldiers from both respective locations were taken prisoner by the Japanese and ended up in POW camps of they were not killed outright. There were also many instances of Chinese civilians helping and hiding Americans who had been shot down or run out of fuel in the area such as the men of Colonel Jimmy Doolittle. If found out they would usually face harsh backlash from the Japanese which was usually death but there were plenty of instances where they were taken prisoner and ended up in camps instead. As I said before Watanabe worked at more than one camp and was the commander of Kanagawa Prefectural Civil Internment Camp No. 1 which housed 3 individuals of unknown/unstated nationality. So we know if these people were Chinese? No. But would it be impossible? Also no. The boiled one also could have been one of the other allied but non American POWs in the camp with Zamperini and men like him.
In the book featuring the of Zamperini, Friends of Zamperini who were also imprisoned with him at one point, Phil Philips and Fred Garrett described how in July of 1945 they began separating the Americans from the other POWs in the camp and were moved to a new POW camp across Japan (Rokuroshi POW Camp). Their old camp was Zentsuji POW Camp. Word was they were all to be killed August 22nd and the Japanese were not above killing large groups of prisoners once an order was issued from officers. They described smelling burning bodies after they were separated. The Atomic bomb was dropped on August 6th and 9th of that year which resulted in (or at least helped with) the surrender of the Japanese that next month (although Victory Over Japan Day is celebrated on the 14th/15th of August because that's apparently when Emperor Hirohito told people to surrender over the Radio). This arguably saved those American POWs but the same can't be said for some of the other men they were with. Outside of Americans a lot of British, Canadian, Indian, Dutch, Chinese, New Zealanders, and Filipino prisoners were held as well and faced the same general conditions as the Americans. It is almost comedically evil.
From what I know there were actually allied POWs who died in the blasts of the atomic bombs. I also know that there were Allied POWs who were executed when Americans were not (although its not unreasonable to say the Americans were just set to die later). I also know there were many people who were sent to camps like this for helping Americans during the war. So for the souls of one of these people to come back after their death, take the form of this thing as their body might have been burned or better yet, killed in the blast of the bomb, and to torture Americans for being the "lucky ones" who got out of the fate they received (which is a bit of a stretch since... if you were a POW of the Japanese nobody won) does not seem unrealistic to me. It would explain why only Americans are being targeted ad not other former allied nations. Hell, even if this is another American POW since 12 American POWs died in the blasts of the nuclear bombs. Their own countrymen killed them in one of the most devastating bomb drops in history. And they did not die a heroes death. And if I recall the lives of these people were not really remembered or honored till recently. And of course, the ones who survived faced a future of disability, cancer, and PTSD after the blasts. And assuming the Boiled One was one of these prisoners who was either caught in the blast after they had been in a camp with Watanabe or whos body was burned after their death... it makes sense for them to be acting the way they do. Although I will admit this only popping up in 2003 seems a little odd unless Doctor Nowhere releases another episode building on the lore and making the boiled one a much older (popping up either during or right after ww2) being.
As for the second theory (that this thing we see is just a manifestation of the trauma inflicted on vets like Zamperini by Watanabe in a tupa format) this also makes sense since there is too many weird details for this to be Watanabe himself.
Zamperini became a devout Christian after the war to cope with his PTSD from literally being tortured by Watanabe. He had nightmares about him due to all the horrific things he had done. While he did take comfort in faith, in the universe Doctor Nowhere created given many WW2 vets did not receive psychologic care or were stigmatized for doing so; it isn't unrealistic to believe that the sheer intensity of the emotions Zamperini felt somehow manifested into this weird twisted demonic representation of Watanabe which only began to grow and distort more and more as other veterans dealt with their own trauma. The fact this thing was able to show itself on TV and spread its influence that way probably helped it feed and grow more powerful as it fed off of the fears of now only Watanabe's other former POWs, but also random strangers who see this horrifying thing and go "Jesus christ hat the fuck is that". Watanabe did not communicate exclusively in English, but Zamperini and his fellow American soldiers probably did. Watanabe probably did not take the time to learn about Christianity enough to fuck with Zamperini in a specific way to antagonist his faith (a faith he did not have while he was his prisoner, he was raised Catholic but did not feel strongly connected to it), but Zamperini knows what is and is not "demonic" along with the stories. Watanabe might have been present for air raids, but Zamperini was in the air force and was on a bomber that crashed due to mechanical failure. This focus on the end times isn't a Japanese or Catholic thing, but it is an evangelical thing which is what Zamperini became after the war. These are all weird little blurbs that come from the mind of a person who accidentally recreated his own worst enemy.
Regardless; this thing, whatever it is, is directly birthed from the atrocities that 1 man committed on a group of prisoners during WW2 which was very "in line" with what the Japanese MO during this time. The hurt has not gone away. It lingers. And the Boiled one is just a manifestation of that lingering.

Grief sucks. No matter if who you are grieving is alive or not. It sucks. No matter how long it has been since D-Day (diagnosis or death) it doesn’t get easier. It means that the longer I grieve, the closer I am to having to say goodbye. I don’t want to say goodbye.
The long goodbye. People, “friends” really, tell me, “At least you have time with him.” Honestly, those words alone prove that you have never experienced this. As the “divorce” saying goes, “death by a million cuts.” The long goodbye is not grief that just happens the day they die. It is the grief you experience everyday from the day it all begins. The moment I opened the fridge and saw all of the full bottles of milk sitting neatly on the shelf. The moment I realized he had not fed T*** all day. And he had tried to be the best caregiver, he always did. So hard. He tried to figure out why T*** was fussier that day. He still doesn’t know to this day what happened—I hope he never finds out. It would shatter him. His heart is so pure. He is already suffering.
Why him? Why my grandma? Why my aunt? My aunts were sitting around the dining room table at Easter talking about their health with every decade. At 30 it was this and 60 that. One of my cousin’s shared that she hoped to be a centenarian (someone who lives to 100). One of my aunts said, “you know, our family is overall pretty healthy. You know, no cancer, no severe cardiac disease, us M*****’s live well into our 90s, etc.” And then I quietly said it. “Well, except for Alzheimer’s.” The conversation never halted, my words never acknowledged, because if we don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist. But it does, and they have all witnessed the wickedness of Alzheimer’s—with their grandfather, mother, sister, & now my dad. The concern & anxiety of who’s next hanging thick in the air. We don’t acknowledge it because we wish it didn’t exist. But it does, & here we are. All shattered in different ways by the memories we have of our loved ones losing theirs. Our trauma, different, but similar in so many ways. Trying to pick up the pieces until the next loved one is cursed and it all begins again.
This wave all started when I was sitting on the couch at 9 pm on a Friday drinking a glass of wine. Let’s be honest, it was barely 1/2 a glass, because I don’t drink often, am home alone, and a mom of two young boys. I thought to myself how the wine must really be hitting, but really I think my brain is finally acknowledging my reality. Anyways, sitting on the couch, I thought to myself, “I have the time, I really should go work out.” As I am currently in a fit of anxiety about my fate with Alzheimer’s. Really, not a fit, because if it were a fit it would be short term, acute. This fit is chronic. My brain plays a loop of my fears on repeat. The fear that I have migraines, which leads to the fact that I have chronic & complex migraines, which turns into some data that shows migraines cause a higher incidence of dementia, which leads to me thinking of the Reddit posts of 16 yo sons having to care for their 43 yo moms with Alzheimer’s, which leads me to thinking of my boys, which leads me to thinking of them watching me lose myself the same way I have watched my dad, grandma, & aunt lose themselves, heck, they have witnessed it all with my dad, which leads to the memory of me sitting in my dad’s Neurologist’s office, selfishly asking the doctor if I should be concerned for myself. If I should have genetic testing done prior to turning 40 like I have meticulously planned–if I’ll have time, because I am the idiot who’s brain will be more at ease knowing what my DNA projects. Him telling me, “staying active is the best way you can prevent/slow down any disease or progression,” & “you’re so young, nobody your age…” The blur of his words surround me. My internal monologue circulates within, “I need to work out more, but I’ve had a migraine for the last month. It’s important, but I literally can’t see straight at the end of the day. What am I going to do? I’m going to do better. Will I? How can I? I am a terrible mom. How could I be so selfish to have children? I didn’t know yet what I know now, but I knew enough….” It continues. Not only in that office, but constantly. It continues right now. “I should be on the treadmill instead of sitting here writing this and drinking wine.” Alas, here I am, paralyzed on the couch, not moving an inch towards that treadmill. An avalanche of words and emotions started by a mere treadmill.

The famous fake photo https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13182189/Kate-Middleton-Mothers-Day-photo-problems-picture.html
Kensington Palace released the fake photo of Kate and her children on March 10, Mother's Day. News orgs quickly pointed to the photo as fake. The next day, on social media Kate (or someone claiming to be Kate) threw Kate under the bus, claiming full responsibility and saying that she had fiddled with the photo.
However. In the fake pic, Kate is not wearing her wedding ring.
I think (correct me if I'm wrong?) that Kate's ring actually first belonged to Diana. It was Diana's wedding ring. So the ring is a kind of totem for the royal faithful. It's inconceivable that the person or persons who faked-up the Mother's Day photo thought that no one would notice.
And if Kate was truly the one who altered/created the photo, how could she have not included her ring?
Kate had already been missing for over two months when the Palace released the fake AI photo. There were also affair rumors, as mentioned in the Daily Beast story. The missing ring created a firestorm of public speculation and gave the photo much scrutiny.
Which means most likely the party or parties who created the fake photo were either

• A. incompetent--they forgot that they didn't include the ring / they didn't care; or
  
• B. they actually wanted the photo to be flagged as fake. They wanted the photo under a microscope. So they deleted the ring knowing that that would get the pic attention.
  

The B explanation seems less likely--although I did read a theory that Kensington Palace had already intended to release a fake AI video (I'm not saying the cancer video's fake, necessarily, only explaining the theory) and the Palace wanted to prime the pump so to speak. Meaning, to show the world that the Palace (or Kate) are too unskilled with AI to be able to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.
At any rate, the omitted ring in Kensington Palace's fake Kate photo is yet another layer of mystery in Kate's disappearance?
The Daily Beast story mentions a photo of William and Kate in a car, that photo has since been debunked, the current prevailing opinion is that it was probably not Kate in the car, her face was turned away. (Full copy-paste of article below, The Daily Beast make you create an account before they let you read it. Edit note, I took the liberty of bolding some text.)
Source https://www.thedailybeast.com/prince-william-and-kate-middletons-friends-are-shocked-by-missing-wedding-ring

Even Kate and William’s Friends Are Shocked by Missing Wedding Ring
HAPPY TOGETHER? *Kate and William’s friends were “completely baffled” by Kate not wearing her wedding ring in the doctored photo, knowing it would raise questions about “the state of the marriage.”
The Daily Beast, published Mar. 13, 2024 8:00PM EDT
Speculation over the health of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s marriage, triggered by the absence of a wedding band on Kate’s ring finger in her notorious Mother’s Day photograph, has been thrust firmly back into the mainstream after Stephen Colbert trolled Prince William in his monologue Tuesday with rumors of an affair.
Colbert astonished audiences Tuesday night by referring to an affair William is widely alleged to have had with his neighbor, Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. The palace has repeatedly denied an affair ever took place.
A former royal staffer told The Daily Beast that Colbert’s comments would be “deeply annoying” as William and Kate’s office at Kensington Palace desperately tries to course correct after a tumultuous few days of headlines.
The former courtier, who worked with William and Kate when employed at the palace, said, “It’s deeply annoying and unhelpful for the palace, but it’s not surprising that the affair rumors are being reheated. What else are people supposed to think when she sends out a photo not wearing her wedding ring?”
Another source, who is a friend of Kate and William’s, said that they and their friend group were “completely baffled” as to why Kate put out a picture which showed her without a wedding band when it seemed “guaranteed to get people asking questions about the state of the marriage.”
The friend said: “They are often seen together at school events, and really it is remarkable how one and often both of them will always be at every match, every music concert and every prize giving. The relationship has always seemed incredibly strong despite the immense pressure they are under, so it’s fair to say we were all completely baffled when the picture came out with the wedding ring missing, especially as it was photoshopped. It just seemed guaranteed to get people asking questions about the state of the marriage.”
In public at least, William and Kate not only present a united front, but a telegenic one. Their family unit and camera-friendly genial bearing also represent the future of the royal family in microcosm—a more open, seemingly progressive, and at least more normal-looking and relatable one than the stiffer and more them-and-us royal models of the past.
Any threat, perceived or otherwise, to Kate and William’s marriage places an imperiling question mark over the royal institution itself—at a time when it is already looking smaller and more vulnerable than ever before, with both King Charles and Kate absent from public duties because of their medical issues.
The affair rumors go back to 2019 when The Daily Beast reported on palace lawyers’ attempts to suppress reporting of the alleged affair by issuing stern legal notices to British publications, cautioning them not to write about the rumors.
At the time, official sources in Kensington Palace told The Daily Beast that the allegations were “totally wrong and false.” Royal law firm Harbottle and Lewis issued letters to the British media stating that the stories were “false and highly damaging.”
British newspapers instead reported that there had been a terrible argument between former friends Kate and Rose without giving a cause.
Colbert said in his opening monologue that “internet sleuths” were guessing that Kate’s absence “may be related to her husband and the future king of England, William, having an affair.”
Colbert, who mocked the fact that Rose’s married name, Cholmondeley, is pronounced Chumley, said there had been “rumors of an affair… since 2019.”
Speculation about Kate and William’s marriage sparked into life again in mainstream British newspapers after Kate and William were photographed in a car together Monday with Kate looking, apparently glumly, away from her husband.
Prominent columnist Liz Jones wrote in the Daily Mail that the picture rang “alarm bells” because it suggested “that Kate is not co-operating and that she didn’t have a hand in photogate but took the rap for it.”
Sarah Vine, a politically connected columnist in the same paper, wrote that her missing wedding ring was “concerning,” saying it seemed, “deliberate, a statement in its own right. If it’s not there, could that be because she doesn’t want it there? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
She added that the miserable atmosphere of the “snap of them leaving Windsor” was “less than encouraging.”
The problem with the picture, Vine wrote, “is that it is, in effect, a lie. What’s worse, it now looks like a lie conceived to hide other lies, a classic example of that old adage: it’s not the crime that gets you, but the cover-up. And there’s only one way to put an end to it: Come clean about what’s really going on—or risk drowning in a quagmire of their own making.”
Kensington Palace did not respond to a request for comment.

Edit: formatting.

I had my surgical consult for lumpectomy yesterday. I was grateful the surgeon spent over an hour with me & my husband, but over the course of the conversation she: 1) Made me feel crappy about my breasts with what felt like a snide response about their size. (I have small breasts, and said so, and she was like “Yeah, you really do have small breasts!” In a tone that just felt mean.) 2) Totally dismissed my concerns about post-surgery breast appearance and basically said oncoplasty is not an option for me. She also made a remark that felt crummy about excess skin already being on that breast, so it basically felt like why bother. She insists that there will be no change in appearance to my breast which doesn’t seem possible given that I have very small breasts and a 2cm lump to be removed (and possibly more — it’s not clear whether the possible cancer spot is inside the lump, or next to it.) 3) When I expressed apprehension and anxiety, which seems normal for someone about to have a 2cm lump removed from their breast, she basically went on a tough love monologue that I did NOT appreciate. About how patients with positive attitudes do better, and surgery is really a choice (how is it a choice if I want to live a long life?!)… basically a “buck up” speech. Meanwhile I had just found out that the biopsy they performed (which was excruciating, because I am apparently resistant to lidocaine) missed the mass entirely. The “seed” they put in to mark where the sample was taken is 1cm from the mass, just under the skin. 🤦‍♀️ 4) I explained that I’m resistant to lidocaine and she prescribed me EMLA cream as an alternative for use during the wire insertion… EMLA cream is also lidocaine, but topical… so this also raises questions for me.
She has decades of experience in the field and people speak highly of her. How important is it to feel comfortable with your surgeon? Should I not get hung up on her bedside manner? Obviously this is a sensitive subject for me, but my husband said he was pretty surprised by her speech, and that it’s not like I really have a choice.

Just as mentioned in the title, this RP shares some things in common with both My Hero Academia and One Punch Man when it comes to the world and how heroes are addressed.
Also, prepare for a lot of reading. Sorry.
------------The World!--------------
This world is one of heroes and villains! You are a member of the former, sworn to oppose the latter and keep those who do not have powers safe!
Approximately 60 years ago, people began to get powers. It was not many, but it was enough; approximately 1.2% of the population is born with some kind of power.
These powers have been used to build up the modern world; people with super strength were hired to build cities, people with super speed were hired as mail carriers, and people with other abilities were methodically placed where their powers could benefit society the most. After the invention of the internet and after all of the cities were built, there was still one job that superheroes could always fill: JUSTICE!
Now, rather than building up the cities, those with powers help to defend them and keep their streets safe.
Well, most of them anyway.
For every hero that is out there, helping to protect and further society, there are more that do the exact opposite. They are supervillains. There are still normal villains, or just 'criminals', and they are small enough a threat that lesser heroes and the police can handle them, but there are still super-villains; criminals with powers so powerful that only heroes have a chance to take them down.
Just as the heroes' powers are varied, so too are the villains'. A hero may have the power to control water with their mind, while another hero may be able to lift a hundred tons! A villain may have the power to cause explosions to spontaneously occur anywhere they wish, while another may have the ability make people bend to their will; the options are truly endless.
Some villains are worse than others. Some villains do little more than commit tax fraud or steal fruit from street markets. Others are truly terrible; taking lives indiscriminately. All of these villains are rated by their threat to society, not just to lives.
For example, a villain named Ripchain, a villain with the ability to morph his hands into long, chainsaw-like tendrils, who has already taken more than 200 lives in horrible fashions, is rated a 7/10 on this scale. A lesser villain named Chevron has been rated a 3/10 due to his use of hypnotic abilities to nefarious ends.
-----------------A Villain! (My Character)-------------------
There is only one villain who is a 10/10 on this scale, though. Their name is Mechoil and they have never taken a life. Their threat stands against the numerous corporations and banks in the city, and because of this threat, their elimination is of the highest priority. Mechoil is a person of unidentified gender, ethnicity, age, and creed who constructs and commands a legion of robots and automatons on a merciless campaign against the aforementioned corporations and banks within the city. So far, they have caused more than 17 billion dollars worth of physical and financial damages.
Mechoil wears a suit of mechanized armor that causes most to believe that they, themselves, are a machine as well, though this has not been confirmed. Mechoil has put plenty of people, both heroes and otherwise, in the hospital, but they have never taken a life. In fact, Mechoil and their machines have gone out of their way to prevent serious injuries to heroes and civilians from things like falling debris, explosions, and other environmental hazards during their attacks. As far as anyone can tell, Mechoil is only interested in inflicting financial and economic damage, nothing more.
Something changed with Mechoil recently, however. For the majority of Mechoil's appearances as a villain, they appeared with a lieutenant; a machine of incredible power. This machine was known as Coil, the right hand of Mechoil. Coil held a power that allowed it to command magnetism with a terrifying accuracy and strength; able to make entire skyscrapers bend like cooked spaghetti noodles to meet whatever goals it desired. Coil was Mechoil's magnum opus, "An Artificial Super Villain" Mechoil had called it with ample pride in their work...
...but something changed.
It had begun with Mechoil and Coil carrying out a bank heist along with the countless lesser machines amongst Mechoil's legion. It was going well for them, but the hero association was quick to act; deploying their most powerful hero: Thunder Flash! Thunder Flash was widely regarded as invincible, too big to fail, the ultimate hero!
Coil brought a skyscraper down on him.
The lesser robots were able to scare and usher the civilians and other heroes away in time, but Thunder Flash was crushed under the rubble. Mechoil and Coil got away, Thunder Flash spent the next three months going in and out of the surgery room, and he only recently was able to get out of a hospital ward.
Mechoil continued their campaign against the banks and corporations, but that bank heist was the last time anyone had ever seen Coil. That was about a year ago now. Thunder Flash is no longer the greatest hero in the hero association. This is largely due to the long-lasting effects of his injuries. The new greatest hero is Thunder Flash's former protege, a hero named the Platinum Pugilist.
Mechoil is still the most highly sought-after villain in the city, but the hero association's ability to take them down has been called into question after what happened to Thunder Flash. Mechoil continues to pester the financial backbone of the city, and the hero association is as dedicated as ever when it comes to bringing them to justice.
-------------A Hero! (Your character)------------------
You are a new hero, at least compared to some of the other heroes in the association. You have a good bit of experience under your belt, and you have even fought Mechoil before. It had been a raid on one of the corporation's server facilities. Mechoils' robots were cutting through the armored doors when you arrived, quickly destroying the lesser machines. This was after the incident with Coil and Thunder Flash, so the artificial supervillain was nowhere to be found.
"I see you've arrived in record time heroes!" Mechoil laughed through the speakers of their suit, which kept their voice quite mechanical and ambiguous. You had been accompanied by another hero on this mission, a hero named Flaming Striker. He was a newer hero with a fiery attitude and head of hair. In fact, his hair WAS a perpetually-burning flame.
"Two against one? This is hardly fair. Does the hero association observe any kind of..." Mechoil began to go on when a loud popping sound came from above Flaming Striker's head. Both you and the other hero looked up to see a robot that had been specifically designed to hold a pan of popcorn over Flaming Striker's head. As soon as the two of you noticed, Mechoil stopped their monologue and began to laugh hysterically.
"I've wanted to do that forever," they laughed, holding their stomach from laughing so hard. When they finally stopped laughing, they faned wiping a tear out from under the lens of their helmet's camera.
"Ah, that was rich. Okay, let's fight," they said with an all-too-chipper tone, just like always. You and Mechoil fought and you eventually got them to abandon their efforts against the server building, but Mechoil escaped without a trace, just like always. That was the time you fought Mechoil. That was about five months ago.
--------------How the RP starts!(kinda sad)----------------
The hunt for Mechoil continued, but everything always lead to a dead end...
...until now.
Out of the blue, while you were on your off-hours as a hero, you received a text. The text read simply "Mechoil's hideout location. Tell no one. Come alone. No fighting." followed by a link to an E-maps location pin.
The city itself was near the coast of the ocean and a sizable island sat off of said coast, but it was largely unpopulated and devoid of human activity. It had been searched many times, but nothing involving Mechoil was ever discovered.
You dawned your superhero outfit and rushed to the island, following the directions on your phone. Eventually, you arrived at the foot of a cliff at the center of the island; the exact point the E-maps pin had directed you to. At first, there appeared to be nothing there, but then the cliff face seemed to shimmer.
The solid rock face flickered like a lightbulb burning out before the illusion of rock and stone disappeared, leaving you looking at an enormous metal door. It was triangular and had a number of lights around its edges. A beam of light suddenly shot down at you from the light at the very top of the door, but rather than being burnt by a laser, the light cast down over you harmlessly.
"Access Granted," a booming, mechanical voice announced from seemingly everywhere all at once before the door began to open, splitting into numerous smaller metallic panels that all folded away. When all of the separate panels had moved aside, you were presented with a long, triangular corridor illuminated by bright white lights. The floor was made of stone, seemingly carved from the mountain itself, but the walls seemed to be made out of metal.
You began to walk forward, heading into the mountain. The tunnel seemed to go on for miles before you reached a large, circular room with many doors. The room now had a metal floor and metal walls, and the doors seemed very heavy and robust. Most of them were locked, however, with bright red lights to indicate as such. Only one door had a green, unlocked light, and you approached it. It opened as you stepped towards it, and beyond it was a short, smaller corridor that quickly opened to an utterly massive room.
The room was not all that wide, maybe about fifty feet, but it was long, and it was deep. It extended so far out into the mountain that you could not see the end of it, and the 'floor' was so far down that the metallic walls of the room quickly became lost in the pitch-black abyss below. The only place one could stand in the room was atop a sort of catwalk that lead to a platform that sat suspended over the abyss.
On the platform ahead of you, sitting in a chair, you could see the back of Mechoil's helmet. Just as you were about to shout a challenge to the villain, two hands rose up and pulled off the helmet. They were human hands. Their long, brown-blonde hair spilled out from under the helmet, catching the light of the bright lights in the room. Mechoil stood up from the chair they had been sitting in and you could see that they were not wearing any armor; just a tee shirt, shorts, and sneakers. In front of them was a desk covered with cardboard boxes, and they placed the helmet in the only box that was still open.
Without turning, Mechoil spoke. "You got here faster than I expected," they said, their natural voice echoing through the room, completely unimpeded by speakers or electronics. They had a nice voice, but their tone was filled with sadness and defeat.
Mechoil picked up the box and turned to look at you, and the look in their eyes was heartbreaking. They had lovely grey eyes, sharp cheeks, and pale skin, but their cheeks were stained with the remains of tears, their eyes red a puffy to boot. They walked towards you, holding the box, but they stop and look at you.
"I have cancer, hero. I don't want to be a villain anymore...," they say before walking past you as you stand there, stunned. The look in their eyes as they spoke was filled with pain and sadness.
They stop again, a few feet behind you. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry..." they say, their voice cracking at the end. They quicken their pace to leave so they aren't seen with fresh tears as you stand there in the now quiet, empty room.
------------Other things!-----------
So yeah, pretty sad. Supervillain who doesn't like hurting people gets cancer and quits being a villain so they can try to enjoy whatever time they have left. Things probably won't go how they plan, though.
Will our hero let them go? Or will they still try to bring the villain to justice? Perhaps their fates have other things in mind! Find out next time in... THIS RP!
So yeah, that's the story. I don't want to spoil too much about what I have in mind for this plot, but let's just say that Coil has more of a part to play in this story than lore, and your character needs to get Mechoil to become a hero without other heroes knowing they are Mechoil. Super dramatic, tension-filled stuff!
Anyway, Hi! I'm a nerd who likes robots and roleplaying.
This plot is an older one of mine and it has a few years of thought behind it, so if you aren't a fan of not-very-well-though-out stories, then this is the place for you. I know you've already read a lot. Like, a whole lot, so I'll try to go easy on you.
I'm open to all kinds of extra details and such for this RP, and I want to leave most of your hero's details up to you (and I'm sorry I imposed my will over your character in this prompt. I tried to keep things non-invasive). I'm down to start the RP at a variety of times that I'd like to discuss with you, and... yeah!
BYE!!!

(Apologies for the long read) What's going on guys. I haven't really used reddit before but got it because I ended up on the site looking for answers on some questions I had and made an account. Anyways. I'm 22 years old. I turn 23 this year. I've been dealing with anxiety pretty much since I was in 2nd grade I want to say, however it has severely impacted my life since the summer of 2017. I realize this isn't an anxiety subreddit, but it's been an up and down journey for me and explains how I am in the position I am today. Before my anxiety got really bad in 2017 I was pretty extroverted. I played baseball and basketball had a pretty high level and was pretty good at it. I had a decent amount of friends and life was pretty good. Besides my mom's cancer diagnosis in 2015 (she survived thankfully) my childhood was pretty great. After my freshman year, we had a school trip to an amusement park for math club. Now I hated roller coasters and carnival rides as a kid because I got dizzy on them one time and got nauseous. Anyway, we drove 2.5 hours to the amusement park, and since this was before my severe anxiety I was nervous but it was manageable. I ended up having a really good time, and paced myself. Some of my friends wanted to ride rides nonstop but I rode rides pretty often and like I said had a great time. Was proud of myself for accomplishing that. Then 4 days later I was off to an annual church camp I'd go to every summer. It was like 5 days long, and from when I first started going I always had a good time. However this time the vibe just felt different, like my mom was finishing up her cancer treatments, and for some reason I felt overwhelmed in life. My mom also signed me up late for the camp until like 3 days before so I wasn't "technically" on the roster or whatever and basically was allowed to choose where I bunked and stuff like that. I don't know why but this made me feel unwelcomed even though I was a popular kid there. On the first night, I wasn't much of a caffeine drinker given I was like 15 but I had 2 mountain dews and a Starbucks cappuccino drink before bed and it just set me off. For the first time in my life to my knowledge, I was experiencing my first panic attack. I took a melatonin to try and fall asleep, but I guess I was so juiced up on caffeine that it wasn't doing the trick. Long story short, I went to the nurse thinking I was having a heart attack (I wasn't). and took another medication to help me fall asleep. Not to mention my mom was out of town in another state and I tried calling her but she wouldn't pick up. I tried again the next night and was able to fall asleep, and I made sure not to drink caffeine again, but the night after that I had another panic attack. I had to wake up the camp counselor again at like 2am and I was super embarrassed. I went home the next day.
That night, everything changed for me. My way of thinking and rationalizing, just completely flipped upside down. I went back to my old school in the upcoming fall because I wanted to play baseball at an even higher level. I transferred to the christian school in my town 4 years prior. I had friends there from before I went there, and people generally knew who I was. I had panic attacks my first couple days at school, but was able to settle in eventually. I ended up quitting baseball that same school year because my anxiety was to debilitating and got in the way of me being able to focus on the sport. I stayed at the school regardless. Junior year went really smoothly, then senior year I was doing fine again, until in October of 2019 my anxiety got so severe that I couldn't even go to school regularly. I ended up taking classes online because of it, and then the whole world shutdown. I was able to graduate thankfully.
I always planned on going to the branch college near my town after high school, and then I wanted to transfer 2 years later to the main campus. The first year was online because of covid, but then it opened back up again in 2021. Then the same thing happened. I couldn't finish my classes because of my anxiety and I was too afraid to face it and go to class and even when I was in class it was super hard to retain information because I was on edge the entire time. Then I got a pizza delivery job and just took online classes. Then I was laid off from the delivery job because the restaurant was shutting down due to the rent being too high for the owner to pay. They transferred me to the other store 15 minutes away, and I was doing fine there for 2 months until I kept having panic attacks at work and ultimately ended up quitting. After that, I was 20 years old with no job and no schooling. I basically didn't do anything for 4 months until my parents had enough. They sent me to a treatment center 12 hours away for 3 months for my anxiety and other stuff. Pornography is also something I struggle with so that was another thing that I needed help with. I also haven't had sex in over 2 years and haven't been anywhere to meet anyone because of my health anxiety, and by choosing not to try and fight through it. And dating apps are toxic. After those 105 days (that were really tough) I came back home and was doing really well for like a month. Then I started to slip in my previous bad habits again, essentially doing nothing with my life. I saw a therapist for like a year, but still didn't have a job. Then my parents decided that I needed to find a job in a week span or they were going to kick me out. I didn't believe them and they ultimately ended up doing it. I ended up finding one and getting an interview at a store pretty close to my house and ended up getting the job. I've been working there for about 7 months now. I have anxiety and panic attacks from time to time but have been able to manage it and get through it okay. I tried going back to school for something and just recently the same shit as happened again. I have one class in person (ONE CLASS) and I stopped going again because of anxiety. I have accommodations but I can't help but feel like I'm a burden to the professor. I don't know where I'm moving forward with that. I am taking 2 other online classes so I should be able to finish those.
Fast forward to today, I am on spring break and debating whether or not I will be dropping that class I stopped going to. I've called off work for the second straight time today and I was able to keep my shit together until now. I'm having a meeting with my boss Saturday to talk about it and why I've been missing work. I haven't made any significant progress really in these past 6 months, other than holding this job. I'm really afraid I'm going to lose this job and how my coworkers will now think differently of me because of my anxiety. They constantly talk about other coworkers behind their backs and it's honestly kind of toxic. Like most of the time they are right but it's not cool, and I've found myself doing it from time to time.
I apologize for this being super long but I felt it was necessary to give a backstory to understand the complexion of why I am where I am today. Currently other than work I do social media management for a sports page on Instagram, and other than that I don't do much. I was working out for a while at the gym, and I have a deviated septum, and I was doing cardio and maybe pushed a little too hard and was gasping for hair because I couldn't breathe through my nose. That freaked me out and I haven't been since. My parents said they would pay for surgery to get it fixed and I'm honestly afraid of getting the surgery done. It just feels like I'm afraid of everything and hyper aware of my bodily sensations and always feel like something bad is going to happen to me.
I graduated in 2020 and am still living at home with my parents. My younger sister goes to college out of town and she has anxiety but is able to manage it. She came home the first semester freaking out about it, but went back and has been killing it. All of my friends are going to college out of town. I haven't hung out with a friend in probably over a year. I am just so lost in my life right now, and feel like I am just treading water under my parents roof and have contemplated suicide multiple times thinking it would just be better if I wasn't alive. I've never made an active attempt at it and don't think I ever will, but those thoughts are still scary.
Anyways, i don't expect anyone to read this entire monologue because it would probably take a couple minutes to read but I'm struggling y'all. I feel like a failure. I know I need to get connected with a group of people somehow, but I've been too scared to do it. Any tips or tough advice (meaning I need to get my shit together) is welcomed,
Thanks.

Obviously I was saddened to hear about Kevin Conroy's passing, especially from cancer, as that's not something I'd wish upon anyone, let alone the guy who voice acted one of my favorite superheroes since I was a kid. Like a lot of people who grew up with the DCAU, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are my Batman and Joker. It's their voices that my mind will typically go to first as the default whenever I think of what those characters sound like and likewise the voices I imagine first when I'm reading a comic featuring them.
All that said, however, even when Conroy was still alive I do think there was a little too much reverence to his and Hamill's versions of the characters, among both fans and even the studios. Yes, I think they were the best Batman and Joker but that doesn't mean I believe that they should be every Batman and Joker, or that every Batman and Joker should be like theirs.
As an example of what I mean, there was the Batman and Harley Quinn animated movie. While not actually part of the DCAU, it does use the Bruce Timm artstyle and has Conroy returning to the role of Batman. And while there are things to like about the movie, it just kind of misses the mark, in part because it's a comedy and its style of comedy does not fit the Timmverse style or Conroy's Batman.
When the Harley Quinn animated series came out, it cast Diedrich Bader as its version of Batman, and it was to a much greater success. Having also played the character in Batman: The Brave and The Bold, Bader's Batman voice was a much better fit for that show's style to comedy, as like TBATB the humor comes in large part from the absurdity of its world and all the over-the-top silliness that everyone is taking so seriously (or at least accepting as a thing that's happening to them). Be it Bader's big gold and silver age style declarations or just his simple grunts, he fits those universes much better than Conroy's does. I cannot imagine Conroy's Batman talking about "The twin hammers of justice" without it sounding very forced.
Conroy's Batman can and has been used successfully for comedy but I'd argue it's been for more character-based comedy, thus why he was a better fit for Justice League Action and its style of comedy. "Good Cop, Bat Cop" works because it's Conroy's Batman playing the good cop and scaring a confession out of Deadshot because Conroy's Batman playing the good cop is so deliberately creepy and unnatural.
And it's the same outside of more comedic roles. In Batman the Animated Series there was a loose anthology episode called "Legends of the Dark Knight", and one of the stories of which was a retelling of a scene from The Dark Knight Returns where Batman fights the Mutants' leader in the mud. Notably, Kevin Conroy, despite being the voice of Batman in the series, does not voice Batman in this story. Rather, it's Michael Ironsides. And likewise, when a proper animated movie adaption of TDKR was made, it wasn't Kevin Conroy cast for the role but rather Peter Weller. And in both cases it's for the same reason. While Conroy can play an old Bruce Wayne, in fact having played the oldest Bruce Wayne to date in Batman Beyond, his old Bruce is very different from the old Bruce in TDKR and wouldn't fit the kind of Batman that version of the character is supposed to be.
Heck, Return of the Caped Crusaders had a bit of fun by having Adam West's version of Batman saying lines from TDKR and Batman '89. Having his Batman voice saying "This isn't a space station. This is an operating table, and I'm the surgeon." is really funny because it so blatantly does not fit the kind of Batman Adam West plays. Even when BTAS brought Adam West on for a serious role in an episode that was an homage to his life and time as Batman in the 60's, the show created the character of Simon Trent and the Grey Ghost for him to play rather than trying to have him be Zorro or some version of Michel Keaton's Batman, the actual influences on BTAS, because roles like those would not fit the voice Adam West has or the performance he gives.
And the same goes for Mark Hamill's Joker. Possibly even more so given how iconic his Joker voice is.
Personally, it bugs me how some people apparently think Kevin Michael Richardson is the worst version of the Joker. Yeah, obviously everyone is allowed to have their opinion but especially back when The Batman (2004) first came out, the first Batman animated series to follow the DCAU, it felt like people were condemning him for not being like Hamill's version. But frankly, Hamill's Joker wouldn't work for what The Batman's style and thus why KMR didn't play his Joker like Hamill would.
Like The Jackie Chan Adventures before it, The Batman's art style and animated allow for very fast, high-energy fight scenes and its characters reflected that. While BTAS Joker could be rubbery, The Batman's Joker is a full-on bouncy ball, moving around in ways the somewhat more grounded, very gangster style Joker never would. KMR's voice and performance fits the very energetic maniac who is growling lowly one minute and then cackling uncontrollably as he's driving a tiny go-kart the next. KMR wouldn't fit a Hamill performance but likewise Hamill wouldn't be a good fit for The Batman's kind of Joker. Same for Batman: The Brave and The Bold's Joker, where Jeff Bennett fit better for the sillier, more silver age style the show goes for.
I don't know how popular or unpopular this opinion is but for as much as people wanted Conroy and Hamill to be in an adaptation of The Killing Joke, when we finally got it I'm not sure it really worked. The performances weren't bad and maybe the problem wouldn't exist if the movie was just a better adaptation (people rightfully point out how bad the first half with Batgirl is) but in TKJ the Joker is more subdued and melancholy and, frankly, that's not the kind of Joker Hamill plays.
I don't think the problem is that Hamill has gotten older. Yeah, he can't quite hit the same pitch he could back in BTAS, let alone the iconic laugh he did, but even in Arkham Knight, released a year prior to The Killing Joke, Hamill still put on a great performance as Joker, likely in part because that Joker was written with Hamill in mind. He works very well as the Harvey to Batman's Crichton; just constantly making fun of Batman and everything and everyone around him.
The parts of The Killing Joke where Hamill's Joker really comes alive are the song "I go loony", because his Joker is a showman, always wanting all attention on him, and a change the movie made to the "One Bad Day" monologue, where instead of just walking through the hall of mirrors before Batman finds and attacks him Joker is throwing things at Batman and getting progressively angrier as his monologue goes on, which works because Hamill's Joker is very emotional and expressive. That's what made him work on BTAS. We got to see a range of emotions from his Joker. He could be calm and in control but we also got to frequently see him be angry, put upon, goofy, sad, even downright pathetic a couple of times. Personally I think one of the best deliveries Hamill had as Joker was in the climax of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, just the sheer fucking venom and hatred in "I CAN'T HEEAAAR YOUUUU!!!" as he's strangling Terry for making fun of him.
I'm not even saying Hamill's performance in The Killing Joke was bad. It wasn't. My point is more that that portrayal of Joker doesn't fit with the type of Joker Hamill plays. While Hamill is the best Joker he can't work as every Joker, or at the very least he's not going to work as well as when he's playing a Joker that actually fits him.
As a point of comparison, think of Superman the Animated Series and My Adventures with Superman. Both are essentially about Clark when he's first starting out as Superman but both series have different takes on what that looks like, thus the difference in the two actors. Tim Daly's voice and performance fits for STAS Superman, who though just starting out is fairly confident and sure of himself, knowing full well what he's capable of and easily standing as an equal to other heroes, and this is how he has played Superman in other works, like the Superman/Batman movies and Justice League: Doom. And these qualities likewise are exactly why he wouldn't work as the voice for the MAWS Superman, who is much less confident and certain about himself and his place in everything, in no small part because he doesn't what he is, where he came from, or why he was sent to Earth. He has much less control and as such a bit more noticeable fear, wearing his inexperience on his sleeve, thus why the show has Jack Quaid playing him, as he can give that kind of performance and have it feel natural and fitting. Neither actor would work quite as well if they were to play the other's Superman.
And the same goes for the various actors who have played Batman and Joker. Some can have some overlap. Troy Baker can sometimes fill in for Hamill's Joker (though I argue his Batman is at its best when it's distinct from Conroy's, such as in The Telltale Series) just like how George Newbern eventually found his footing as Tim Daly's replacement for Superman for Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. But many are too different to fill each other's shoes. They work best when they are their versions.
Mind you, of course, any version of Batman or Joker still has to be good. It doesn't matter who plays them if the writing doesn't meet that bare minimum. Young Justice's Joker wasn't underwhelming just because it wasn't Hamill playing him and I don't think Jared Leto's Joker would have been any better if it was Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger playing that same take on the character.

i have a large document of custom characters that i have created for my own superhero universe, i would like to list some of my good characters to see the opinions of others, you can also use some of these for name inspirations

• Black Iron: high IQ, uses multiple suits of armour, light armour for close range combat, bulky armour for heavy weapons and long range, juggernaut suits like the Olympian Juggernaut that shut down rouge gods and magic users, very strict, treats every mission like its his last, very judgemental and has contingency plans for everyone, he also has many characters linked to him, Ion Star, a young rich boy who finds that his parents got the blueprints for Black Irons armour, since the boys a genius he makes his own suit, Ronin, his son who rejects him because Black Iron did a robin to him after finding him as a baby in a criminal gala, boy joins bad guys, Buckshot, a Meta with the power to make arrows from her back, can create trick arrows as well and Prometheus who is a robot butler who was supposed to be a contingency for Black Iron, also the robot is a detective
• Kaito Tanabe: futuristic Samurai, raised in poverty, made his way to the top, being trained as a Samurai, when finally graduating he was able to pick from 9 elemental Katina's, some are easy to understand, others not so much, all you need to know is that there is fire, water, thunder, ground, life, sound, invisibility, celestial which involves a weird power and void, like teleportation, he is by far the calmest yet most ferocious member, rather choosing to die of exhaustion than give up or surrender
• Blue Bullet: speedster, given his powers by a wormhole, very cocky, very heroic, enjoys the limelight a little to much, was part of the air force, enjoys the thrill of speed, but brings the team together and keeps them inspired and happy
• Hyper Nova: a race of highly intelligent aliens known as the architects, has the 3rd highest IQ in the verse, only rivalled by the god of knowledge and what i would consider the Braniac of the verse, he uses a suit of armour that can translate any language, he can essentially turn his suit into any shape, kind of being like Mr Fantastic elasticity except he can form constructs with it like Blue Beetles armour, probably one of the most OP characters, basically the brain of the team, masterful tactician and engineer, building a highly proficient prison, building a moon and can multitask hundreds of different things at the same time
• Infernus: warrior princess who loves fighting, has a younger brother called Flash Fire, she is a wild card and one of the most destructive characters in the verse, never lets a villain monologue, thrill-seeker, very impulsive, if Wonder Women liked murder and had fire powers
• Enigma: Density Manipulation, has the outline of a normal man but his entire body looks like space, start and bright white eyes, tested on and taken from his family when he was figured out to have a Meta Power, having been found out when he could slightly increase his weight by 20 pounds, villain tests on his powers and makes him very powerful, altering his body and mind, eventually escapes after a decade of torture and manipulation, came back to his family only to find that he had been replaced with another kid, since his parents didn't recognise him, he was ran out, his parents screaming in fear, threatening to call the police, is eventually found by the heroes and brought in
• Arcane: can be considered the Dr. Fate/ Strange, a hunter for mystic artefacts but unfortunately got cancer, he lost everything due to his obsession and he was about to do it again, he refused treatment, rather using the spare time to find a Mystic Artefact he always wanted, during his travels to find it, he meets an orphan girl who takes an interest in him, she teaches him of the purity and kindness that he should have had years ago, at the end he finds the Artefact in his dying moments, even though he was so close, he felt satisfied as he finally saw life in a positive outlook, but he grabbed the Artefact, granting him power over the mystic arts and curing him (Idc if its dumb, i didn't know a better way out ) and he also adopted the girl and joined the heroes, he also eventually raises a powerful telekinetic called Martian Mystic who is one of the last martians
• there are a hundred more characters but it would take ages to talk about but i can give a brief description on some
• Plague: power absorbing parasitic suit of armour
• Duskblade: the best assassin in the world, honourable and could probably beat most super powered characters
• Bull Shark: Duskblades best friend who is a shark from Atlantis, also a top assassin and part of a group of villains
• Nervasu: King of Atlantis, kind of like Jason Mamoa Aquaman
• Gorra-Vin: the Braniac, most intelligent member of the Architects and is very evil
• Red Thunder: an Aussie with electricity powers
• Terry Cage: knows 237 different fighting styles, best fighter in the universe, highly cocky and egotistical hero
• Re-Forge: a scientist with the ability to duplicate herself, smart and cunning and smug, a good hero
• Killstreak: essentially Deadpool
• Night-Shift: edgy vigilante who can turn into animals
• Flak Gunfire: crazy Samurai with dual elemental Katina's and love for explosions and fire
• The Black Knight: 13th century knight with a magic sword, sealed for centuries until he was re-awoken
• Pumo: skilled hunter with a love for fighting, very sadistic and unhinged
• Cyrus: has a secret society that includes many influential and cooperative villains
• Death Angel: deadly, silent and has giant blades attached to her arms
• Midas: dictator being manipulated by a symbiotic alien who has the powers to absorb one soul
• Nanoguar: seductive and relentless girl with a vendetta against Blue Bullet, also a speedster
• Malgrid: God killer who is an utter party animal and energetic anti-hero with two flaming axes
• Leon Woods: manipulator and leader of a team of villains, also the riches character in the verse
• Dr. Valok: generic evil scientist who only cares about his research and rip off superhero team that includes Ultimus: Superman copy, Martian Warlock: Martian Manhunter copy, Lady Luxury: invisibility powers and prehensile hair, Peter Pyre: fire guy, Centurion: powerful brute, White Diamond: can turn anything into diamonds
• there is also a teen team which includes Ler'ran, prince of Atlantis, Fulgar Rod, son of Red Thunder, Blitz, Blue Bullets apprentice, Midnight Ghost, cool guy with spiritual powers, Storm, angry and rebellious with weather powers, Black Tiger, very quippy and has the powers of a tiger, Wind Surf, engineer with a flying surf board

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