I had tried to leave honest reviews after leaving 49 on Glassdoor, etc. They got taken down because Glassdoor caters to their paying customers image I imagine. It’s hard to write truly detailed reviews, because there are lots of small caveats as part of their corporate policies and the protection of their customer’s image that can get a post taken down.
So, take all that with a grain of salt. Also prior to leaving, I probably wrote 4-5 of the positive reviews because my manager told me to about once every 6 months or so. Therefore, anyone lucky enough to make it to this reddit thread for 49 Financial. Learn that so much out there is so fake, and it is hard to find real, true, honest information these days.
Who knows, with Reddit a public company these days and possibly going after monetary gain, even this may not be safe for long. Heck, Tik Tok might get banned, and a possible reason for that is the spread of free information that wasn’t being censored as much as the government would like. If any of you Tik Tok users reading this remember how you heard a lot about what was happening in the world there first, if not only there, versus the mainstream media.
So, all you young college grads, understand the real world/adult world, it is an interesting place, and there is a game about navigating it. It will take a little bit to learn, and for now, understand that not everything is really as it may seem sometimes. 49 Preys on this naivety, uses good sales tactics through positive review tactics, best place to work ranking tactics, etc. Which best place to work only asks the people still working there, it doesn’t ask people that left, so kind of a flawed system, really a marketing grift to get employers to pay to be able to use for deceptive recruiting practices, and not just 49, across every company anywhere. Sometimes they can be truthful, more often from salary paying companies, and companies with low turnover. However, for companies with zero salary, and high turnover, that information is not going to be very accurate.
49’s turnover is also very high, if you search LinkedIn and filter for “past company” and filter for “49 Financial” you’ll get 350+ and currently employed 200+ and that’s just the ones that list it on linked in. Which, sales is a difficult career, so that’s part of it, but also let that tell you that their “retention” numbers are a total lie, at least what I was told while working there was no where close to reality.

Shortly after Final Fantasy VII hit the gaming world in 1997, Cloud Strife’s howls of grief at the loss of his beloved companion Aerith Gainsborough were echoed by droves and droves of fans. These echoes gathered in swarms, reaching the developers in the form of petition signatures, each begging the makers of the game to allow Aerith’s resurrection. Though these prayers remained unanswered —until now—, there soon came more protests: this time, fans pleaded with the developers to consider making a remake of the original game. Both of these wishes were met with considerable derision, with large chunks of the fandom calling the requests delusional— which is why the Final Fantasy world had to prepare for another meteoric hit when the Remake project was finally announced in 2015. With Kitase, Nomura, Toriyama, Nojima, Uematsu and more of the original developers at the helm, along with longtime FFVII fan-turned-developer Hamaguchi, the Remake trilogy was met with great expectations. These were nevertheless surpassed, though one aspect of the trilogy’s first entry seemed to thoroughly puzzle some and enrage others. Far and wide, the resounding questions were “What are these Whisper things?”, “Why is Cloud having visions unrelated to Nibelheim and Zack?” and “Why and how in the hell did Zack survive?”
Friends, I believe the answer lies within this post. Welcome to my literary-analysis-based theory on the Remake trilogy’s most important and most secret plot point: Cloud’s hidden mission. I want to make this fun and suspenseful to read, so I will write my analyses in the same order and manner in which I encountered them while putting my theory together. You will be reading what initially sparked my curiosity, the path I took while researching for answers, the conclusions I made every step of the way, and only then will you read my theory, after which we’ll try and apply it to the Remake trilogy so far and see if it fits! I want you to experience the rollercoaster that I did when digging through SE content to bring you this post. Thank you so much for waiting for and anticipating this analysis, and I do hope you read every word to soak in every last bit of Clerith you can get. I also hope it’s really fun and touching for you (I cried at least once making this)! Let’s embark on our adventure through the compilation, other FF games and real-life events to find out what the Remake project is truly all about and anticipate the events of part 3.
N.B.: Please be aware that I have never seen this theory navigate online, so I have no idea if anyone has ever come up with a similar hypothesis. The big reveal I’m building toward might be something you’re already aware of or suspected. In that case, I hope this post doesn’t disappoint you if you’re one of the lovely people who requested it! At the very least, it will provide you with valuable literary and musical analysis, a ton of evidence you haven’t considered yet, and hopefully, entertainment too!
WARNING: Please be careful with the censored spoiler text, because I'll be referencing other FF games in this analysis and I don't want to ruin anything for you! Obviously, this analysis contains spoilers for the entirety of the FFVII compilation. Additionally, if you're not a fan of Clerith and you've stumbled upon this post, please stop here. I would hate it if something I worked on and posted made you angry, so please don't read this analysis. I have only good intentions and I just want everyone to enjoy the FFVII world as much as they can.

I. Groundwork: The Remake Timelines Theory

Before I take you on this ride, we must lay down the framework of the Remake Timelines Theory. In this section, we’ll be reviewing the general consensus of theorizers within the fandom on timeline/multiverse shenanigans, with some added specifications on my part. Please keep in mind that because the timeline mechanics are kept quite vague by the devs, there might be certain inaccuracies in my iteration of the timelines theory. Thankfully, these potential variances won’t have any effect on the legitimacy of the theory I’ll be presenting to you in this analysis.
I. a) Sephiroth’s Plan
The premise of the Remake trilogy is widely thought to be the result of post-OG Sephiroth attempting to succeed where he failed in OG. There are six key points we need to keep in mind to understand how this was possible.
I. a) i. Sephiroth in the Lifestream
Firstly, it’s important to remember that Sephiroth is dead and located in the Lifestream before OG even begins, and remains that way for almost all of OG's duration. He is only able to operate in the world of the living via his/Jenova's control over the living Sephiroth clones. In the OG timeline then, Sephiroth is sent to the Lifestream by Cloud twice: once before the game takes place on the night of the Nibelheim incident (pre-OG), and a second time during the final battle against Sephiroth (disk 3, chapter 3). During the long period between the Nibelheim incident and Sephiroth’s rebirth at the Northern Crater (disk 2, chapter 2), he exists in the Lifestream. After his ultimate defeat (post-OG), he returns there for good.
II. a) ii. Sephiroth Unintegrated
Secondly, because he is full of hatred and unyielding determination, Sephiroth’s spirit cannot become one with the planet. After both occasions where Cloud kills him in OG, Sephiroth retains his individual will and the memories of his lifetime, remaining a separate entity in the Lifestream. He says so himself in Nojima’s Advent Children prequel novel On a Way to a Smile:

“[Sephiroth] could sense the Lifestream trying to erode his spirit— the memories of his former experiences, thoughts and emotions. If he allowed himself to be taken into the current, the being he once was would soon disseminate and disappear amongst the spirit energy cycling around the planet. [He] thought this unacceptable. The planet was to be his to rule, and to become a part of that system would be nothing short of defeat” ("Lifestream Black 1").

Combined with Bugenhagen’s basic lesson on planetology (FFVII OG, disk 1, chapter 19), this excerpt provides interesting information on how the Lifestream normally works. Usually, when a life returns to the planet, its individuality (personality, will, consciousness, memories, etc.) is stripped away. The trappings of a soul’s former lifetime are progressively dissolved so that all that is left is the spirit itself, ready to integrate into the Lifestream. This way, soul energy can be “recycled” by the planet to animate new lifeforms in a sort of reincarnation process. The erasure of one’s memories in the Lifestream is necessary for the creation of a brand new life, poised to make its own memories: the slate must be wiped clean, so to speak. Sephiroth’s sheer hatred for and desire to dominate the planet is enough to keep him from undergoing this process.
It is also thought that Sephiroth cannot be integrated into the Lifestream because he was conceived with the use of Jenova cells in vitro. Given that so much of his consciousness and genetic makeup originate from an alien life force, it is impossible for him to become one with the planet.
Regardless of the reason, it is precisely this persisting individuality in death that allows Sephiroth to meddle in the world of the living during the post-OG events of Advent Children, as explained to us by post-OG Aerith in On a Way to a Smile:

“[Aerith] had sensed a different presence within the Lifestream cycling around the planet. It was the vehemence of a strong will, one that would never join with the planet. She knew this consciousness. It was [Sephiroth]. A merciless spirit hidden behind a beauteous wall. That spirit was now operating from within the Lifestream. [She] sensed that he was planning to exert his influence to the surface of the planet“ ("Lifestream White 1").

I. a) iii. The Lifestream Beyond Time
Our third point is that the Lifestream has existed for as long as the planet, and has therefore touched every part of its history— including, of course, the events of OG. On that account, one could think of the Lifestream as atemporal. Considering this, it is possible for a spirit in the Lifestream to communicate with or even travel to the past, provided the necessary circumstances and/or abilities. For instance, the Aerith that appears in Cloud’s resolution scene in Remake (chapter 14) is commonly considered to be a post-OG Aerith, appearing to him from the future to try and dissuade him from falling for her. This time-defying event is made possible by the fact that post-OG Aerith’s spirit has access to the atemporal Lifestream because she's deceased. In my view, this explains why she dissolves into green light (Lifestream visual cue) at the end of the resolution scene (5:19-5:45). This is not time travel per se, but it is a manner of communication unobstructed by the one-directionality of a linear timeline that only spirits can perform.
I. a) iv. Sephiroth Beyond Time
What we’ve covered so far amounts to our fourth point. Please familiarize yourself with the graph below before you continue reading. Refer back to the graph when you encounter text in bold.
The Remake Timelines Theory: FFVII OG Timeline
As we discussed in section “I. a) i.”, Sephiroth is dead and located in the Lifestream for the duration of the green arrow and beyond point D: in the context of the OG timeline, he can only ever be considered “alive” during the period highlighted in purple. In section “I. a) ii.”, we asserted that Sephiroth retained his individual will in the Lifestream, enabling him to exert his influence on the world of the living by manipulating his clones on the surface. In section “I. a) iii.”, we covered the atemporal nature of the Lifestream, which allows post-OG Aerith’s spirit to communicate with her past, living self thanks to her Cetra abilities. Now, I will explain to you how Sephiroth was able to do virtually the same thing, albeit his lack of Cetra blood.
To the characters of the story and a fully immersed first-time player of OG, the timeline above was not always an established series of events: when they first started playing FFVII OG, the player began at point B, with nothing existing beyond it. It is only as the player moved Cloud forward that the black, arrowed timeline was drawn, accumulating lived events (or points) in Cloud’s wake. The picture you see above is only available to Cloud and to the player with hindsight. All this to state the obvious: at point B, Cloud could not know what would occur, say, at point C.
During the period highlighted in purple, Sephiroth was “alive” again, accumulating new memories on the surface of the planet and adding them to his consciousness. When he entered the Lifestream for the second time at point D, he brought these memories with him. Simply put, after returning to the Lifestream at point D, Sephiroth remembers what happened during the period highlighted in purple. However, given that the Lifestream exists beyond time, upon Sephiroth’s consciousness’ return to the Lifestream at point D, his newly acquired memories were also made available to him at all points on the green, double-arrowed line— including point A, before the OG timeline even begins at point B. So while it is true that Cloud cannot know what will occur at point C if he is only at point B, Sephiroth indeed knows what will occur during the period highlighted in purple when he is only at point A. While a living, pre-OG Aerith would be able to receive post-OG Aerith’s spirit’s knowledge through the Lifestream thanks to her Cetra powers, Sephiroth has no need for this ability. The fact that he resides in the Lifestream for practically the entire FFVII OG timeline renders the limitations of time irrelevant: as far as the FFVII OG timeline is concerned, Sephiroth exists beyond time itself.
In summary, after point D was first encountered in OG, pre-OG Sephiroth (in the Lifestream) is made aware of his eventual defeat, and begins plotting an alternate path to victory. This time, with the benefit of hindsight, he will do things differently: we experience his "second” attempt at FFVII as the Remake trilogy.
I. a) v. Sephiroth Against Fate
Of course, the Whispers stand squarely in Sephiroth’s way. This leads us to our fifth point, which Remake Ultimania describes better than I ever could:

“According to Red XIII, who gained knowledge through his contact with Aerith, ‘The Whispers are drawn to those who attempt to alter destiny’s course and ensure they do not’ […]. It would appear that what the Whispers deem to be ‘fate’ is the original story of Final Fantasy VII” (section 08 “Secrets”, “Newly Arisen Mysteries”, “What Is the Goal of the Elusive Whispers?”, page 733).

OG’s plot line is the fated timeline, and the Whispers are tasked with its preservation. They prevent alternative paths from even beginning to branch out from the OG timeline, which poses a problem for Sephiroth: he cannot win FFVII if his destiny is to lose it.
I. a) vi. Sephiroth and the Multiverse
Consequently, our sixth point is that Sephiroth must dismantle the mechanisms of fate before he can even try to accomplish his dreams of godhood.
As Sephiroth explains in chapter 14 of Rebirth, “the planet encompasses [an ever unfolding] multitude of worlds”, and these “[new worlds are born] when the boundaries of fate are breached.” Since the Whispers uphold the “boundaries of fate”, a world in which Sephiroth’s evil plans succeed can only emerge after the Whispers have been defeated. Otherwise, destiny will continue to protect the OG plot line by preventing any significant deviations. Consequently, before the party vanquishes fate, the Remake timeline and the OG timeline are one and the same: before chapter 18, Remake Barret is OG Barret, Remake Tifa is OG Tifa, Remake Hojo is OG Hojo, etc. After the defeat of Destiny, the OG timeline is no longer protected by fate: there are now an infinite number of timelines or worlds, including those we see glimpses of in Rebirth: Remake Barret is no longer necessarily OG Barret, Remake Tifa is no longer necessarily OG Tifa, Remake Hojo is no longer necessarily OG Hojo, etc. Perhaps this is why Aerith gives the party the following warning at destiny’s crossroads in Remake:

“[This] is the wall of destiny. If we go through it… if we go beyond it… then all of us will change, too” (FFVII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, VA script notes, “Destiny’s Crossroads”).

I. a) vii. Sephiroth’s Plan
Now that these six points have been elucidated, we can compose a solid hypothesis on how Sephiroth plots to win FFVII.
After gaining knowledge of his eventual demise (disk 3, chapter 3), pre-OG Sephiroth began thinking of what he must do in Remake from the Lifestream. First, Sephiroth must antagonize the Whispers in the initial stages of the OG timeline. He accomplishes this by commanding his clones to commit acts that drastically violate the fated timeline, engendering plot-line deviations that the Whispers must course-correct. The most extreme example transpires in Remake’s chapter 17 when the Sephiroth clone in President Shinra’s office kills Barret, forcing the Whispers to restore the fated plot line by coming forth and reviving him. The Whispers react to Sephiroth’s prodding by rushing in to protect fate, their efforts culminating in the protective wall of destiny that surrounds Midgar in chapter 18.
Secondly, after he’s created an opportunity for a battle against the Whispers, Sephiroth must convince the party to seize it and beat fate for him. After all, a mere Sephiroth clone is probably no match for Destiny. This second step is accomplished in Remake’s chapter 18 when Sephiroth successfully tempts Cloud to breach the boundaries of fate. Now that destiny is no longer a limitation, worlds deviating from the OG timeline can finally emerge; Sephiroth has a chance at victory.
The steps Sephiroth plans to take going forward are unknowable at this stage, but we do get more hints in Rebirth’s chapter 13. At the Temple of the Ancients, Sephiroth reveals a part of his plot:

“Sephiroth: My fragmented mother, these errant worlds... All shall be one again.
Aerith: The ‘Reunion’…!”

It seems Sephiroth eventually plans to merge the worlds created by destiny’s defeat in Remake’s chapter 18. My guess is he hopes to achieve godhood in part 3 and consolidate all diverting worlds into a single timeline protected by destiny once more— only this time, his victory will replace the ending of OG as the destined outcome. If he succeeds, Sephiroth’s Black Whispers will likely replace the planet’s Whispers as the arbiters of his desired fate.
I. b) Aerith’s Intervention
But Aerith can’t let this slide unchallenged!
We know that before chapter 18 of Remake, while the OG plot-line is still protected by fate, Aerith has knowledge of its future. This is insinuated by certain slips of the tongue: for instance, when Aerith reveals she knows Cloud is a mercenary upon meeting him for the second time in chapter 8, just like she knows Tifa will ask her to retrieve Marlene at Seventh Heaven in chapter 12. In the run-up to Remake, post-OG Aerith's spirit likely sensed Sephiroth planning his second try at FFVII in the Lifestream. She’s been able to anticipate Sephiroth’s plotting in the Lifestream before, namely in the context of Advent Children:

“[Aerith] had sensed a different presence within the Lifestream cycling around the planet […]. It was [Sephiroth] […]. That spirit was now operating from within the Lifestream. [She] sensed that he was planning to exert his influence [on] the surface of the planet” (On a Way to a Smile, "Lifestream White 1").

If you’re wondering how Aerith was able to maintain her individuality in the Lifestream like Sephiroth, On a Way to a Smile provides the following explanation:

“[Aerith] was an Ancient, which explained how she was able to maintain her individuality even within the Lifestream. If she so wished she could become part of the planet at any time, but [she] thought it too early for that just yet” ("Lifestream White 1").

It is thought that, as a countermeasure to Sephiroth's scheming, post-OG Aerith’s spirit used the atemporal nature of the Lifestream to inform her past, living self (pre-OG Aerith) of this new threat to the planet. Because the Cetra can commune with spirits, pre-OG Aerith would have been able to receive post-OG Aerith’s message from the Lifestream without a problem. Essentially, pre-OG Aerith received post-OG Aerith’s memories of the fated OG timeline. As a consequence, pre-OG Aerith embarks on the OG timeline with knowledge of the fated future that demands she give her life: the player experiences this version of her in Remake.
Be that as it may, it’s unclear how much Remake Aerith is aware of. You would think she’d be completely opposed to defeating, destiny since it protects the planet, but Aerith shows ambivalence toward the idea instead. Had she gotten a clear message from her future self that she must keep fate intact, she would not have allowed the party to enter the battle against fate in chapter 18. She doesn’t seem to know what the Whispers are the first time she encounters them either. Regardless, what’s important is that the Aerith seen in Remake is the result of pre-OG Aerith receiving knowledge from post-OG Aerith via the Lifestream.
I. c) Ambiguity: Memory Transfer or Time-Travel?
There remains an ambiguity pertaining to the Aerith we see in Remake and the question of time travel. What I’ve described to you in section “I. b)” is post-OG Aerith's spirit transferring her memories to her past self through the Lifestream. However, it’s possible that post-OG Aerith’s consciousness used the atemporal nature of the Lifestream to inhabit her living OG body instead, effectively time-traveling. There is no evidence to outright refute either explanation, since the gaps in Aerith’s memories of the OG plot-line in Remake can be explained in both cases. For instance, in a memory transfer scenario, it’s possible that post-OG Aerith only communicated the most essential information to pre-OG Aerith. On the other hand, in a time-travel scenario, one could interpret the following quotes as proof that the Whispers are progressively erasing Aerith’s memories of OG as Remake advances:

“Aerith: Every time the Whispers touch me, a piece of me falls away” (FFVII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, VA script notes, “Aerith Speaks”)

&

“At any rate, Aerith is perplexed at how, like a flower being scattered, something inside is being taken away by the Whispers and lost to her” (Toriyama in FFVII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, VA script notes, “Aerith Speaks”, “Scenario Staff Q&A - Answered by Motomu Toriyama”).

This ambiguity is completely irrelevant to Sephiroth’s situation in Remake, as we established in section “I. a) iv.”.
The specifics don’t matter nearly as much as I’m impressing upon you by explaining all these little alternatives. Simply keep in mind that: regardless of why, the Sephiroth and Aerith we see in Remake know the events of the OG game because they have acquired this knowledge from the future, and the events of Remake occur squarely within the OG timeline until the Whispers are defeated in chapter 18.
So there! That’s my iteration of the Remake Timelines Theory! I hope I’ve made it clear in your mind, or at least clearer. Now that we’ve established the widely theorized premise of the Remake trilogy, we can get into our theory on its hidden premise.
II. My Initial Curiosity
My theory first burgeoned upon going through Remake for the second time. I noticed something strange going on with Cloud, something that could not be explained by the Remake Timelines Theory. Key moments in Remake Cloud’s experience of the OG timeline (aka, everything before chapter 18) stuck out to me as strange and mysterious, and certain inexplicable audiovisual cues struck me as hugely significant. It was upon watching the tear fall from Cloud’s eye during my second go at chapter 8 that I knew I had to look into this.
At the very end of Remake’s chapter 8, Cloud watches Aerith walk away from him, humming happily into the night air as she sets off to lead the way to Sector 7. According to the VA script notes, “his heart skips a beat” and watching her walk away provokes a sudden “anxiety” within him. Triggered by the familiarity of the sight, a strange sensation overcomes Cloud:

“[There’s a] close-up shot of Cloud’s fingertips (they’re tingling). He presses them to his temples (his eyes are burning). A trickle of tears quickly rolls down from the eye hidden behind his hand” (FFVII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, VA script notes, “A Midnight Ambush”).

If you’re clever, you’ll recognize these lines as a reference to the speech Cloud makes in OG following Aerith’s death at the City of the Ancients (“My fingers are tingling. My mouth is dry. My eyes are burning!”) (disk 1, chapter 28). In this small moment in chapter 8 of Remake, Cloud experiences a flash of the profound grief he is destined to feel upon Aerith’s fated death.
Many players immediately recognized the composition of this scene: the blue-greenish air, the straight path Aerith heads down, the sight of her walking away itself… this moment closely resembles Cloud’s Sleeping Forest dream of Aerith in OG, wherein Cloud and Aerith’s very last words are exchanged (disk 1, chapter 25). Toriyama, codirector of the Remake project, comments on this scene thusly:

“It’s possible these similarities […] cause a memory of the future to be called forth in Cloud” (FFVII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, VA script notes, “A Midnight Ambush”).

The language used by Toriyama here is strange in both the English translation and the Japanese original: the term “memory of the future” makes no sense. One cannot remember things they haven’t already experienced, so why did Toriyama use the word “memory” to describe a "future" event? Couldn’t he have simply said that Remake Cloud experiences “visions of the future” rather than “[memories]”?
Cloud experiences a few moments like these throughout the game. These pseudo-premonitions are just as markedly exclusive to Remake as the Whispers are. I did not want to dismiss them as a foreshadowing device the devs included just to elicit emotional reactions from OG players; I felt they were more important. And thus began my digging! My mission was initially to figure out what these “[memories of the future]” (MOTFs) could signify… I had no clue it would turn into what I’m writing right now.
II. a) Each MOTF and Its Context
I began by finding every one of Cloud’s MOTFs so I could better understand them.
MOTF 1 occurs in chapter 2 on Sector 8’s Loveless Street, when Cloud sees Aerith struggling against the Whispers. The VA script notes reveal that even though this is only his first time seeing her, Cloud recognizes Aerith’s face:

“Recognizing Aerith’s face causes Cloud to experience [a hallucination]. Sephiroth is suddenly standing between him and Aerith” (FFVII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, VA script notes, “Encountering Aerith”).

Sephiroth then taunts Cloud with words that, according to the script notes, “[live] inside of Cloud's heart”: “You can’t protect anyone. Not even yourself”. Cloud should not recognize Aerith’s face at this point in the OG timeline, nor should he associate it with not being able to protect people.
MOTF 2 occurs in chapter 3, at the plaza in front of the Sector 7 slums support pillar. Cloud experiences a MOTF of the plate falling, which is fated to occur at a much later point in chapter 12. The Whispers float near him, “watching Cloud alertly as he sees a vision of the future” (FFVII Remake Ultimania, section 08 “Secrets”, “Newly Arisen Mysteries”, “What Is the Goal of the Elusive Whispers?”, page 733).
MOTF 3 occurs in Aerith’s church at the start of chapter 8, when Aerith mentions that her mother’s materia is “not good for anything at all”. Triggered by the mention and sight of the White Materia, Cloud’s fourth MOTF takes the form of a vision: he sees quick flashes of the materia falling into the lake of the Forgotten Capital and Aerith holding her hands together in prayer. These are evidently visions of her death in OG (disk 1, chapter 28).
MOTF 4 is the one we first discussed, occurring at the very end of chapter 8 as Cloud watches Aerith walk away from him to lead the way toward Sector 7.
MOTF 5 occurs in chapter 13 shortly after the Sector 7 plate has fallen on the slums. Cloud tells Barret that Marlene is safe at Aerith’s house, and they begin heading there. As Cloud thinks about Aerith, the VA script notes describe the very next moment as follows:

“Cloud: Tifa, you know anything about the Ancients?
Tifa: I’ve heard of them before, but…
Barret walks on ahead, showing little interest in the topic.
Barret: Read a book on planetology and they’re sure to come up. They’re a tribe that cultivated the planet a real long time ago. Used to talk to it. That sort of stuff.
Cloud: That must be why the Turks were after her.
[Psychic] interference starts up.
[Cloud has a] flashback of Sephiroth from five years ago, after learning of his ancestry at Shinra Manor […].
Sephiroth [(in flashback, voice tinged with madness)]: Within my veins flows the blood of the Ancients. I am the rightful heir to this planet!
The flashback ends and Cloud looks lost in thought. The interference starts up once more. Cloud makes agonized sounds. When he opens his eyes, Sephiroth is actually standing before him.
Sephiroth: You failed again— failed to protect [her]*.
Cloud is startled. He shrinks back. Tifa watches what’s happening. The other two can’t see Sephiroth. All they see is Cloud acting frightened.
Sephiroth: But loss will make you strong. […] Isn’t that what you want?
With that, Sephiroth departs.”

*Sephiroth does not use a gendered pronoun here, because the grammatical structure of the original Japanese sentence doesn’t necessitate it. I've seen some debate as to whether the proper translation is “her” (Aerith, who’s just been kidnapped), or “them” (Jessie, Biggs or Wedge, who have seemingly just died). I believe Sephiroth was referring to Aerith for a few reasons. First, Cloud’s hallucinations of Sephiroth always appear as a response to whatever he is perceiving or thinking about at the moment. At this point in the scene, Cloud has been thinking and talking about Aerith for some time, and not about Jessie, Biggs or Wedge. The Sephiroth hallucination must therefore be referring to “her” rather than to “them”. Secondly, Cloud was never tasked with “[protecting]” Avalanche, but he was in fact tasked with “[protecting]” Aerith as her bodyguard back in chapter 8: it makes far more sense for Sephiroth to be referring to Aerith when he speaks about someone Cloud “failed to protect”. Finally, FFVII Remake Ultimania describes this piece of dialogue as “[Sephiroth aiming] these profound words at Cloud, who not only failed to prevent the tragedy in the Sector 7 slums but allowed Aerith to be abducted” (Sephiroth’s profile in section 01 “Character & World”, “Impressive Words”, page 29): the specific mention of Aerith here seals my decision to translate the line with the pronoun “her”.
Contrary to Sephiroth’s words, this is the first time in Remake that Cloud “[fails] to protect [Aerith]”, and he hasn’t “[lost]” her either— not yet, at least. So why use the words "again" and "loss"? This fifth MOTF must be similar to MOTF 1, in that Sephiroth is referring to Cloud’s guilt surrounding Aerith’s death in OG.
MOTF 6 occurs in chapter 17, in Aerith and Ifalna’s old room at Shinra HQ. The Whispers swarm Aerith as she tells the party earnestly that she wants to do everything in her power to help her friends and the planet: according to the script notes, it is at this very moment that, “for some reason, Cloud feels his chest constrict tightly” (FFVII Remake Material Ultimania Plus, VA script notes, “Aerith Speaks”). In the corresponding cutscene, this unpleasant physiological reaction to Aerith’s words makes Cloud glance down at his chest with a confounded frown. This physical response to her speech about wanting to fulfill her duty to the planet implies that Cloud somehow knows deep down that saving the world will cost Aerith her life.
At this point, I noticed that five out of the six MOTFs Cloud experiences in Remake are triggered by and/or revolve around Aerith specifically, the one exception being a MOTF of the Sector 7 plate fall. One could actually argue that this MOTF revolves around Aerith too, considering the plate fall marks the first time Aerith is taken away from Cloud since reuniting with her in the Sector 5 slums church. This is more than plausible, as MOTF 5 proves that in the wake of the Sector 7 plate fall, Cloud’s main concern is Aerith (see section “II. a)”). How fitting is it, then, that the merc of few words’ longest uninterrupted piece of dialogue in all of Remake is:

“We found an underground Shinra lab where they've done human testing. This wasn't the first time and it won't be the last. I know these people, and I know they're never gonna let Aerith go. She's the last living Ancient on the planet. Think about what that means to Shinra's scientists. Especially to that son of a bitch Hojo. We're all just numbers and meat to him—“ (Remake, chapter 13).

Cloud would’ve gone on too, had Elmyra and Tifa not stopped him.
At this juncture in my research, my questions were only stacking up. What are these MOTFs? Why is Cloud the only one experiencing them? Why do all of them implicate Aerith? What did the devs hope to accomplish with their inclusion in the game? What do they mean for Remake’s story? But most importantly:
II. b) What Does Cloud Know?
The first assertion we have to make is simple, yet essential: the only reason Cloud would experience MOTFs is that whatever’s triggered them is significant to him in one way or another. Some part of him must recognize his triggers for them to be triggers at all. It’s clear he doesn’t consciously understand the meaning of his MOTF triggers, just like his Jenova triggers: for example, Cloud doesn’t know why Zack’s name causes him to experience psychic interference, but it sure does. We as players know Cloud’s MOTFs are hinting at Aerith’s fated death because of our awareness of OG, but as a character navigating the OG timeline, Remake Cloud shouldn't even be unconsciously aware of Aerith’s eventual death in the slightest! Whatever the nature of the MOTFs, it’s essential to understand that if Cloud “[recognizes]” Aerith’s face the first time he sees her, it must mean some part of him knows Aerith’s face in the first place. If this recognition triggers a hallucination of Sephiroth telling Cloud he “can’t protect anyone”, it must mean some part of him knows he was once unable to protect Aerith. The same goes for every other MOTF: subconsciously, Remake Cloud somehow has memories of the OG timeline. Most interestingly, it looks like he either only has OG memories related to Aerith, or like his OG memories of Aerith are simply the only ones prominent enough to trigger his MOTFs. Why and how does Remake Cloud have memories of OG, and why are they so focused on Aerith in particular? What does he know?
When examining a situation with no explanation, it’s wise to examine similar situations that have already been explained. Maybe the mystery of Remake Cloud’s MOTFs will become more approachable if we consider the cases of the only other Remake characters who seem to know the future: Aerith and Sephiroth. Remake Sephiroth knows the future of the OG timeline because his consciousness exists beyond time in the Lifestream, while Remake Aerith likely obtained her knowledge of the future from post-OG Aerith’s spirit via the Lifestream. But what about Cloud? Where does his weaker, fragmented knowledge come from?
(continued in part 2)

Has anyone had their review posted removed by TrustPilot?

Hello everyone! :D
I was watching Dawson's Creek streaming on Amazon Prime. It is well-known between fans of the show that the streaming platform and DVD versions have their own music, which is different from the one of the original broadcast. This is because the original music licenses didn't include DVD or other types of distribution. Many of these WB shows have very obscure songs on their DVD/streaming versions that not even Shazam recognizes and are difficult to track.
Anyway, on the end of Episode 1 of Season 5 titled "The Bostonians" there is this song called "Once and Always You" by Sylvia Tosun. It belongs to the album Jump In, from the same singer and published in 2005. I wasn't able to find neither the song or the album on streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple Music/Itunes), YouTube (I only found the songs "We belong" and "Head Over Heels", nothing else), SoundCloud (info about the album can be found, but nothing else), Archive (info about the album with 30 seconds mp3 samples of each track can be found here) and even Soulseek. But I came up with nothing.
I even tried reaching out to Sylvia Tosun on Facebook, but it seems she does not use her Social Media pages since 2020. I also contacted Miklos Malek, the producer of the album and I am yet to receive an answer.
The only place you can find the album is physically on Amazon, but it costs $144 USD and it does not ship to my country. I though about contacting the person who left the only review on the Amazon page, but I am not sure if I found the right person or not.
I ended up ripping the part of the song that's used on the DC chapter, which you can find here, but the quality is horrible and it has dialogue over the song.
Any help you can give me finding this album or song in a higher quality would be greatly appreciated :D I published it on at first, but they told me to search here. Thank you!
(PS: I censored the cover of the album with a Sylvanian Doll because I want to respect the NSFW guidelines, but you can see the proper cover in the links I have attached).

Hi, I'm Alessandro from Colombia, and I'm still in the fight.
A couple days ago I relapsed. And I posted the following in PornAddiction during my guilt phase. I deleted it later in the day. I got lost out of focus in telling my story, but my main reason to go online was to seek for help about relapsing. After the post, I didn't actually continued reading the book. After some days whitout using, I relapsed again, I've had about 7 relapses since my fight started. Today I did it again, and opened the book just after doing it. I went to the ¨nature¨ section and reviewed ¨A pleasure or a crutch?¨... ¨Porn isn't pleasant¨... That is the only thing I do not agree with the book, and this doubt has cost me several of my relapses. Today I reviewed that part, comparing porn with food, and the book says that they are exact opposites. I read it again, and again, asking myself, analizing the arguments, but it just doesn't seem correct. Actually, the hackauthor doesn't say it isn't a pleasure, it just says that it's sabotaging happines mechanisms. So I went to science direct and found this: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.05.004 . And thought ¨ok, it is correct that porn is in fact, a pleasant cue. But it is also correct that is the kind of pleasant stimulli of a heroine injection¨. Then I read this: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.06.005 . And found that it's an pleasant stimulli not only for addicts, but also for normal people. So my biggest argument against the book rings true for me. So today I just did a desperate google search: ¨is porn enjoyable?¨, and that led me to find this subreddit. I read a few posts and felt saved, this is the kind of community I need, PornAddiction disappointed me. I'll keep reading you and the book to learn what to do with that question: ¨is porn enjoyable?¨.
The following is that post:
______________________________________________________________________________________________________,
Why did I fail? My story, let's talk.
I spent almost 1 month reading Easy peasy. Long ago I realized I'm an addict, this wasn't a problem for me, I'm very self-conscious, kind of a hobby writer (obviously not in English as you can tell by now). The day I "clicked" while reading the book I spent almost 12 hours in a row writing something like a biography, focused in how porn have changed my life for over 11 years of addiction since I was 8yo. That "click" moment (maybe you know how it is, if you've completed the book) was in January 2024.
Just after completing the book I lived a couple weeks enjoying what is like to remember how to live a human life of freedom. But this surely wasn't the end of this illness. Back in the day I tried all methods. Willpower, streaks, even paid a subscription to app-block just before I gave up and threw it all, all my life, career and aspirations to thrash. After that I accepted I needed help, and then discovered the book (more than discovering it, because I discovered it in habitica in a time before the first suicide note and academy failure, I accepted I have to give it a serious try, not like the first time). Then, after for once in my life trying to be open minded in something, in my most beaten, broken spirit, soul naked moment, I took a learner role with the book, and I could manage to understand it. I understood the things I understand today, this sounds funny but you may know what I mean, those sort of things you simply can't un-understand. Like how you were thinking before how you thing now, discovering that you aren't alone. That old mind was like being a monkey living in a desert island, didn't know how I got there, didn't know how to get out of there, just making poor, illusory conclusions to survive, like: "I'm feeling depressed and hollow inside because of the death of my brother", the sad truth being that, I wasn't even capable of feeling something about it, because the fog in my brain. Used a lot of things to fill the void, not only porn, but also collecting videogames, thinking that playing games is my purpose in life (that, sadly, isn't an exaggeration of my way of thinking back then) That was the life before the mere act of understanding. That understanding is the same click I'm talking about the click that marked the end of a live of making up false realities to cope with existence, all by myself.
But hear me out, just understanding is not everything. That I realized after living a couple weeks of remembering what living a real life is, like the one I was living when I was a kid, before all of this shit.
The most hearth and mind braking thing was beggining to happen to me. The unavoidable relapse. Even when feeling the most hard trained mind, after feeling one of the best stories in the sea of life of war stories versus this monster, this begun to happen to me: forgetting. I thought forgetting was impossible for things that you just understand. But that's a lie, another made up conclusion of the monkey, now you understand me how it works? Subtle logical ideas that you just have and you don't question. Thruth is, you can un-understand things.
I started to forget how the life was before, that literal hell in this world. Despite of how vastly low my life got in those times, the way I felt in real time how my brain was literally rotting, like the room that all week long, contained my endless cycle of waking up, jacking up, feeling like shit, have to study, don't study, feeling like shit, jacking up because I'm feeling like shit, and playing games in the night because the night is for playing games and rest for the arduous work day, even that literal hell I could forget.
I started to forget it day after day of joy and happiness.
Until the day that it just seemed no so bad to me to watch just one peek, it was by waiting for the ads of an anime page to load, knowing exactly what this pop-up page will show. That day I booked a date with a psychologist (right before starting to read the book I was getting to the neuro psychiatrist) and she told me to keep writing as I was doing for necessity in my most anxious days. But after everything just kept going downstairs. Even after reading the book, before this announced and hyped relapse I wasnt doing it right. I couldn't have a date with my girlfriend, which I told all of this process, making sex and orgasms uncomfortable for her, without having sex. Saying to myself that sex and orgasm with a real woman is ok, but knowing deep inside, that I just don't want to do it right know, and even if this is real, it feels like it is triggering the cycle again, even if it doesn't, I personally feel like it does.
So after finishing the book for the first time, yes I enjoyed freedom, but it wasn't for long. Even before the relapse, every single sex session with my girlfriend seemed to harm my mind. I felt guilty.
Why I failed?
After reading the book one time, I started to have the capability to read other books. I started reading a bunch of them at the same time. "Un día en la vida de Iván denisovich", "la república", and digital minimalism by cal Newport, because I knew that the second problem in my life, born because of and also being a backward feedback to the porn addiction, is internet addiction. So I thought the right next step to take is reading a book to help that addiction too.
I think that was the mistake.
I hate social media, but today I'm posting this because I truly want to know the opinion of people that have the same or more knowledge that me. Usually I write this things for myself, and sometimes I share them with my girlfriend and close ones. But this time I want real competent minds in this field to give me it's opinion, it's the first time I write this kind of things in other language, but I read easy peasy in English so I'm thinking genuinely in spite of "translating" my thoughts.
Today I did the thing I think is the correct step that I didn't saw the first time I read the book. Mainly because of one sentence at the end of it, of one guy saying "some people go on in a eternal cycle of re-reading easy peasy" so I understood ok doing so is bad, then I started reading about digital minimalism, not even the recommended lectures by the hackauthor like the addictive voice recognition technique. And after even watching some coomer meme archive (I know is a good movement, but being realistic, those memes are made by a wide range of people, not everyone of them are psychologists like Allen Carr or the hackauthor, not even people with the introductory science based knowledge of the ones who read the book, and besides of the few memes that cleverly show deep and hard to digest realities, like the ones that helped me realize that even though sex with my partner might be good, I'm acting like a depravate thinking of sex everytime I se her alone with me, the majority of memes are made by people that make memes, not artists, I saw a lot of people still thinking about streaks, and a lot of Christianity, and above all of that, what am I doing watching memes to help an addiction man... )
So after reaching that point I had enough. "I'm walking a long ago twisted path, it's time to go back by the road I've been walking, and pause, and think, and solve... " And today I decided to just read the book again. And I have a number of conclusions to share.

1. This is an example by me, a medical student: what I did the first time reading the book is like reading one article for the exan and getting to the next one just after finishing the last sentence of the previous one. The day of the test, and the test is stumbling across accidental peaks some day, like a pop-up, a social night (don't underestimate this shit like me, even if like me you are poorly social, and while reading those sentences in the book you thought "that advice is not for people like me", one day you'll have to socialize, and damn... That's some relapse factory), or being alone and late in the night, that real life test situations, will ask for your knowledge, and if you just studied it one single time, without the most important thing in learning, which is recalling and "repasar", you are most likely to fail that exam, like I did.
   
2. The information in the book never ceases to be enough for me. Even for the most stubborn, egocentric mind, this book schools. I'm not a newbie, one big chunk of the book is focused to helping people lose the fear and accept the addiction, a lot of time ago I'm not longer in that step, and I understand a lot of the brainwashing pillars and went deeper in those, bun even though, finally reading it again makes me feel like the first time. It feels like there are new words between each paragraph that wasn't there the first time. It feels like there are some ideas that are only readable for people that have live that success time, encountered new traps, and failed.
   
3. This time I'll take my time for this. I've been addicted since 8yo, more than 12 years. Even if I spend another 12 years working on this, it's fine for me as long as I'm free. I felt like I beated the game, and that I'm no noob that have to go back to the tutorial, that the next step would be other books, treat other problems in my life fast, but this is not like a game that you beat, actually you beat the game at the very time you open the book for the first time.
   

A long time have past since I finished easy peasy for the first time, after that I went to the psychologist, relapsed a couple times, touched deep ground, fought multiple times with my values, had a lot of tests, had some peaks, have been heavily concerned about the subject of the relationsheep between the addiction and having sex with my partner, surely the most frustrating and difficult doubt to resolve. But certainly, above all of that, I'm much better that I was that first time finishing easy peasy. And that doesn't end in just comparing me with myself to feel optimistic about the progress in this, that means I'll use this new learning abilities gained for focusing in mi career for one time in my life, failing and living new traps and ideas that always were in the book but I didn't understood the first time, to keep working on this.
What do you think? This is my story in a nutshell, that text I wrote that day after the click, was a 12 hours long, this was just 1, that is the impact of this book in my life, and this post is the new way of feeling that I'm not alone in this, and you can help me, and I can help you, than I'm trying. I thing that text is valuable to share with you, because it can help you, but I'll have to translate it and censor it, maybe one day. The psychologist told me months ago I should share everything I write online, but again, I'll have to censor it, so I kept doing in for me, this is the first time I follow her advice, let's see how we do.
I'll keep reading, keep living, keep working on this, actually I have a decent streak, but I would hate being counting days like my prehistoric times. Hope you don't hate my poor writing so much, hope I'll read your opinions, see ya

I am looking to apply for data science roles and I have a masters in data science(a dual degree).
Current YOE ~ 1yr.
Looking for resume review. Censored all my data for my anonimity

Thanks for the incredible support and reporting issues to be solved.

1. Some inaccuracies in some passages, questions and options observed. Will add a flag so they can be reported and removed/edited right away.
   
2. Options to be selected on any question switch instead of just the next button
   
3. Back and Next button to be brought together with Mark for Review on top just like Bluebook for better navigation.
   
4. Sometimes there are more options than 4 that loads (it’s a high priority bug that’s being solved), it doesn’t affect your test so don’t skip your test. We will fix it.
   
5. Sometimes during module switch, you may get redirected to dashboard (1/25 times maybe). Working on this as well. Your previous module performances would be saved and evaluated irrespective.
   

This is why we do beta - will iterate and make this the best Test prep app out there.
And to all beta users, thankyou. I won’t promise anything special but you guys are truly special.
I’ll try sending in some handwritten notes soon :) and all the best for your prep!
If you have any doubts related to anything, always available! Thanks for cheering at a time when we are being censored heavily!
Happy studying for June 👊🏻

Goodreads
This is probably going to be in the top 5 best books I read in 2024. I read this as a library book, but I intend to buy the hardback next time I visit a store.
I have the feeling my enjoyment won't be a very common opinion. This book has layers. And to be honest, I don't fully understand this book. I don't know about castes, as an example, so some of this book went over my head.
Before we begin, do you have a book which needs editing? Do you want to read more reviews? Here is a link: The Rest of My In Depth Reviews
WHAT IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE? WHAT GENRES? WHAT MAJOR TROPES?

• Magical Realism
• South Asian
• Buddhism
• 15+ years old
• A wee bit horny at moments
• LGBT

MY EMOTIONAL RESPONSE/ FUN FACTOR
This book is steeped in Southern Asian culture, a culture I'm not a part of. I'm writing this review in good faith, but I'm well aware I'm approaching this from a place of ignorance. So as you read this, please give me the benefit of the doubt if I make any mistakes.
This novel is a cultural critique of how a Buddhist society can use Buddhism as a cudgel to legitimize control and oppress minorities.
At the same time this book has a surreal bent. The main antagonist, 'The Perfect and Kind,' has reality warping power. Here's a spoiler: at one point, the protagonist is about to assassinate 'The Perfect and Kind.' To survive the assassination attempt, 'The Perfect and Kind' rewrites the events of the prior three days to prevent the assassination from ever happening. This is just the tip of the spear in terms of how weird this book is.
I really enjoyed this book, and was never bored. Now that said, the book only kicks into high-gear about halfway through. Before the halfway point, it is a traditional rebellion against authority story; after the halfway point, it becomes a surreal rebellion.
If you like traditional Western fight-scene focused fantasy novels, this book will not provide that. This book is more focused on how governments use violence against their people; violence is the tool of the enemy in this book, not the heroes.
BIASES STATED
To put this review/study in proper context, you must know my starting point.
Just being honest with ya'll, when I heard this was nominated for a Hugo I assumed it would be a bad book; I read last year's Hugo slate and they left me underwhelmed. (Yeah, I know how shallow that sounds. But I bounced off HARD from last year's slate and especially last year's drama.)
I was pleasantly surprised upon reading 'The Saint of Bright Doors.' It's actually good!
SIMILAR BOOKS/OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

• 'The City and the City' by China Mieville
• 'Ombria in Shadow' by Patricia McKillip
• 'Senlin Ascends' by Josiah Bancrof
• Amber by Zelazny
• 'The Lathe of Heaven' by Ursula K. LeGuin

CONCEPT AND EXECUTION
In the Buddhist tradition, when the Buddha began his spiritual journey he abandoned his wife and child. For the Buddha to find personal enlightenment, he had to renounce all worldly attachments, including family. His son was such a fetter.
'The Saint of Bright Doors' is about a man named Fetter, the abandoned son of a living god called 'The Perfect and Kind.' Fetter now wants to kill his father 'The Perfect and Kind' in revenge for being abandoned as a child.
This book is about the complicated relationship people can have with Buddhism. In the West, we like to think of Buddhism as a nonviolent religion; in truth, Buddhists are as capable of violence as anyone else. This book features castes, needlessly bureaucratic government, religious abuse, and a police state... with 'The Perfect and Kind' (aka the Buddha) being able to meddle with and control all of it. The author is from Sri Lanka, where Buddhist monks play an active role in politics; I'm just guessing that in some way frustration with the status quo in Sri Lanka informed the writing of this novel.
On top of it all is a heaping-helping of magical realism.
At one point, the protagonist is imprisoned for a crime, and he's sent to a prison which (I think) is loosely based on a bureaucratic vision of a Buddhist hellish afterlife. What follows is a surreal, Kafka-esque sequence of bureaucratic madness. The protagonist doesn't even know why he's imprisoned... indeed, no one imprisoned knows why they're in Hell/prison. It's never explained why Fetter was sent to Hell, and that's the point. In Buddhism, everything is empty of meaning, even death; spiritually, this imprisonment is pointless. It also represents a government system run amok, repressing people merely to save face without making anyone actually safer.
The sequence in hell/prison reminded me of Josiah Bancrof's 'Books of Babel,' where characters enter the tower of Babel on vacation, and in order to climb the tower you have to join the culture of the locals in the tower and act as the locals act to progress. No one in the tower of Babel understands how or why the tower exists, just as no one in this book understands why the hell/prison in 'The Saint of Bright Doors' is as baffling in the way it is.
Even after Fetter escapes prison, he's not truly escaped; the vicissitudes of samsara follows him back to Luriat, for Luriat's police state is just another layer of imprisonment. He realizes that even though he escaped the physical prison, he'll never escape the spiritual prison, for the entire world is a prison. Fetter tries to escape suffering by escaping prison, and it doesn't work. Suffering follows him out.
It was with this realization that this book came into it's own. When he realized he'd always be entrapped in a prison of his father's creation, it became more necessary than ever to fight and rebel against his father.
Some of the reviews I read for this book claim that this book is listless, where Fetter goes from one random adventure to another without a solid link between them. This time in prison is one such 'listless' adventure. I think they're wrong about it being 'listless.'

• The 'listless' adventures which annoyed those reviewers are spiritual echoes of his father's evil. Many of the devils in the world are a direct result of his father manipulating reality; likewise, the government is controlled by his father. Ergo, all the minor adventures caused by devils and Bright Doors and the bureaucratic government are his father's fault.
• Fetter spends the first half of the book running away from his destiny of killing his father, only to have many small problems come his way. And yet Fetter never puts 2+2 together and realizes that the minor problems he faces are due to his father. Running away is just making his problems worse.
• I think the 'listlessness' is a deliberate character choice by the author, demonstrating Fetter's willingness to tolerate the intolerable status quo because he is so intent on not fulfilling his destiny.
• This is good characterization and good subtext by the author. I appreciate that the author did not hold the hand of the reader and spell it out, and instead trusted the reader to figure it out on their own.

CHARACTERS, CHARACTERIZATION AND DIALOG
'The Perfect and Kind' is this book's antagonist, but I wouldn't call him evil. The author is very careful to point out that 'The Perfect and Kind' rejects all forms of duality; thus, evil simply doesn't apply to him because 'good and evil' are a duality. If we reject duality, we must simply assume his actions are performed because of simple human ambition.
'The Perfect and Kind' becomes the antagonist because the government of the city use his religion as a rallying cry to justify pogroms, mass-imprisonment, and censoring dissent. Even the clergy of 'The Perfect and Kind' religion take part in the chaos.
Fetter's Mother is a secondary antagonist. The Mother-of-Glory is the jilted lover left behind by 'The Perfect and Kind' when he became a renunciate monk; she swore revenge and raised Fetter from a young age to be an assassin and kill his father. She is justified in her rage: 'The Perfect and Kind' learned her culture's traditional magics, and learned them better than anyone who had come before. He used those magics to become a god, dumped her, and then rewrote reality so no one would ever know that's how he ascended.
Fetter himself is emotionally repressed. After escaping his mother's death cult, he's joined a support group for Almost-Chosen Ones, trying to gain his own agency away from his towering destiny. He and his friends lead a rebellion against the status quo, trying to topple the oppressive government.
I liked how Fetter felt a pull towards both parents: I don't know if the author intended to write a Daoist character, but I saw his parents as opposite poles. His mother is very Yang: she's frequently quoted as saying 'change only comes through directed violence.' His father is very Yin: 'The Perfect and Kind' prefers to solve problems by indirect means, such as discussion or manipulation. (My goodness, their marriage must have been a mess.)
Fetter defeats BOTH parents after he learned BOTH of their strengths: he used his mother's rage to lead the revolt, while he used his father's emotional stability to not be washed away in the madness of the cycles of violence which eternally rip Luriat apart. That is a solid character arc.
And yet, the story seems to hold Fetter at an emotional arm's length. I personally feel like the story did a decent job of exploring Fetter's emotionality, but I wanted the book to explore his emotions a bit more. His love story in particular felt underdeveloped.
PLOT, STAKES AND TENSION
The first half of the book was devoted to a growing rebellion against the repressive government of Luriat, while Fetter is desperately rejecting his destiny of killing his father. In the second half, 'The Perfect and Kind' moves to Luriat and takes over it's repressive government. Now Fetter must kill his father to save Luriat and fulfill his destiny, whether he likes it or not.
The first half of the book feels 'normal' (aka, not slipstream), while the addition of 'The Perfect and Kind' in the second half of the book makes the book feel 'weird,' as the very fabric of narrative reality begins to break down. This 'weirdness' gives the book an uneven texture while reading. This uneven texture isn't necessarily a bad thing! Indeed, I wish the author leaned it the uneven texture more. More on this later, when I discuss setting.
The book had minimal tension. At one point important named characters begin to die, and I was left unmoved. I think the author wanted to evoke sadness in the reader when important named characters began to die, but I was so emotionally detached from the characters in this book that I didn't feel sadness.
(You know how I said 'I wanted the book to explore his emotions a bit more' above? The book didn't do enough to sell me on those emotions, and the tension suffered because of it. At least for me.)
Additionally, the whole slipstream-y-ness of this book added a further layer of detachment to the book. This book was so 'anything goes' when it comes to 'cause and effect' that I was left questioning whether or not dead characters were actually dead, or if they would come back. This narrative played by it's own rules, for both good and ill.
And it's fine if this book doesn't have cutthroat tension. Not all books have to have world-ending stakes.
One thing I liked was how the death of 'The Perfect and Kind' does NOT solve the city's problems. Yes, 'The Perfect and Kind' was meddling with events in an effort to consolidate his power, however human nature was always the problem. Luriat had problems before he arrived, and will still have problems after his death, because suffering is the default state of the universe.
The author successfully used foreshadowing to set up and pay off several prophesies. I like pointing out when an author successfully uses foreshadowing, because so many don't.
AUTHORIAL VOICE (TONE, PROSE AND THEME)
I liked the authorial voice of this book. It is very pretty. Here's a link to the goodreads quotation page for a taste of some of it.
As for theme, this book exists in a Buddhist context, but strikes me as being counter-cultural to the Buddhist message. I dunno, I'm Western so I don't feel expert enough to speak as an authority on how this book should be interpreted. But the Buddha is the bad guy in this.
If I'm reading this book right, I think this book re-enacts the life of the Shakyamuni Buddha, but told from his son's perspective. But it also adds a queer lens: not only is Fetter gay, but 'The Perfect and Kind' and the Mother-of-Glory both have same sex lovers. It also adds a modern lens, with computers and bureaucratic governments and social media. It also adds a decolonialist lens; 'The Perfect and Kind' conquered Luriat and the hinterlands. This conquest upset the local Mother, whose entire culture was subsumed and forgotten.
If I'm reading this book right, this book engages with Buddhism as a historical entity and local custom, as opposed to it's theology. It doesn't engage with the Eightfold Path or the Four Noble Truths, but instead looks at how the clerics and monks of the religion can lead pogroms and persecutions. The book isn't wrong to be so jaded; right now Sri Lanka is going through some stuff, and Buddhist monks are playing a political role on both sides. It must be disheartening to see your religion tearing itself apart like that.
This books is a very interstitial. Fetter is the biracial child in a city where you get categorized according to race. He's stuck in-between loyalty to his warring parents and their warring philosophical worldviews. Queerness is innately interstitial. And the theme of doors opening to nowhere is innately interstitial.
SETTING, WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINALITY
The city of Luriat is a character in and of itself. It is located on a magical confluence, where reality never seems to quite stay pinned down. There exist Bright Doors in Luriat; doors which open into almost-was worlds which once existed but are now forgotten. A harsh and nonsensical bureaucracy has taken control of the city of Luriat, to clamp-down on the wild magics and diseases which wash through the place regularly... though in actual practice, the bureaucracy is used by factions to punish their enemies without cause. I'd compare it to 'The City and the City' by China Mieville.
The culture of people in Luriat changes on a whim, and the protagonist can never be quite certain it changed because of the constant reality warping or because he simply missed out on the newest social media wave.

• You know the feeling of logging onto twitter for the first time in a month, and finding references to a weird Highly Online Drama you have no context of?
• Luriat is like that. Because so much reality-altering magic is flying around, Fetter can't be sure the oddness of the city is because of the magic, or because of some cultural shift which Fetter missed because he's been busy doing other things.

I liked how the author used the surreal, dreamlike feel of Luriat as a metaphor to discuss the rapid-fire nature of cultural developments on places like Twitter, though I don't know if that was deliberate by the author or if I'm just reading into things. The setting is intentionally confusing, and it's wonderful. Luriat is a vibrant megalopolis, which refuses to be pinned down.
NOW THAT SAID, it could have been better. This book constantly cites castes and races are at the heart of the various conflicts in the story: what races were these, what castes are these? How do they relate to one another? The book points out multiple factions of Kings and Queens. Who are they? Gimme answers.
Now imagine if the narrative described these castes and factions in the first half of the novel. When reality starts changing, the reader would feel those changes all the more intensely. What if caste A represses caste B in the first timeline, only for caste B to repress caste A in the second timeline? Because the book never explored the details of the conflicts in question, when they changed it wasn't impactful.
If you've played Bioshock Infinite, there is a sequence when timelines begin to merge, when a Theocratic Conservative government loses power to a Worker's Rebellion a la the Haitian Revolution. I wanted a dramatic moment like that to happen in 'Saint of Bright Doors,' when it seems like the whole world changes in the blink of the eye. I feel like the book could have done more with the whole retroactive reality warping thing.
And finally, I have to complement how the author used the topic of architecture to discuss Luriat's history. By discussing different construction styles, this gave Luriat a feeling of timeless depth. A lot of fantasy books I read feel a bit skin-deep, with only a little bit of history; Luriat feels like it's been around for A WHILE. I liked that.
AUDIOBOOK NOTES
I listened to the audiobook. The audiobook narrator was VERY GOOD... however, this book is confusing. I had to back up and re-listen to segments more than once to make sure I understood was was going on. I suggest you read a paper or ebook version of this book; it might help with the clarity. Also, the prose is beautiful enough that reading it with your eyes might help you savor it more.
LESSONS LEARNED
As an author, I want to improve my own writing/editing skills. To that end, I like to learn lessons from every story I read. Here's what I learned from this story:

• Play around with narrative cause-and-effect. In the West, it's common convention that the events in a book must make sense in logical order. This book was compelling in part because it was willing to detach logical cause from effect.

Here's a link to all the lessons I've previously learned.

tl;dr: Barsony Holsters censors negative reviews on their website, giving the impression of better products than reality. Flip through the website and look for a review lower than 4 stars. Please share if you find any!
I've purchased several holsters from Barsony, largely as they have an incredible selection. Some of their holsters are decent, though others have some quality issues. I bought one holster and it started to fail after a couple of days of wearing. I emailed them about it and they told me they hadn't heard of similar failures and left it at that.
This was disappointing to see them not stand by their product at all, especially in such a terse manner. I was emailed asking for a review, so I gave an honest review about the product. A few weeks later I checked and the review had not been posted. This got me thinking...
I went through numerous reviews on their website and realized that they censor critical reviews. Almost every single review is 5 stars. There's a couple of 4 star reviews. Nothing less.
Are they just that good, or are they abusing their review system to make their products sound better than they are?
I saw at least one review newer than mine that had been posted, so it's not that they were backlogged on reviews. They clearly read mine, never reached out out to me, and decided not to publish it.
I always got my products on time and as-advertized. The quality issue in the one holster and lack of support for it was disappointing. But what's very disappointing is Barsony's dishonest review system on their website. This makes me lose all faith in them, which is very sad as I love supporting family owned businesses. Dishonesty (in this case, by omission) is completely unacceptable. I would've left them alone if they just published my review, but now that I realize they aren't posting reviews from actual customers on their own website, I feel like I ought to inform others about these practices.

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is scarce, decentralized, and global digital money that cannot be censored.

• Transactions once confirmed generally cannot be reversed
• Less than 21 million Bitcoin will exist
• Bitcoin is highly divisible to allow for micro-transactions (up to 13 decimal places in a payment channel)
• Bitcoin is an open, collaborative project that no company or government controls belonging to the people
• Bitcoin is more than just money, but a secure timestamping ledger, payment rail, and smart contract platform

Please read the Whitepaper for an general overview of bitcoin as designed
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Quick Advice

• Do not invest in Bitcoin until you do basic research, paid off all high interest debt, and have a emergency savings account of a stable fiat currency.
• If investing do not expect to get rich quickly. You should expect to wait at least 1-2 years before taking profits. Bitcoin is currently very volatile. In the interim spend and replace Bitcoin because it's a useful currency.
• Beginners should avoid all mining and day trading until at least very familiar with Bitcoin. Mining is very professional (You cannot efficiently mine with your computer and need to buy special ASIC machines) and most people lose money day trading.
• Never store your Bitcoins on an exchange or web wallet. Buy your bitcoins and withdraw it to your personal wallet where you actually own them instead of IOUs. Services like webull, and Revoult should be avoided because you cannot withdraw or use Bitcoin.
• Make sure you make a backup of your wallet (software holding keys to your BTC) and preferably keep it offline and physical and private. Typically 12 to 24 words you write down on paper or metal. This onetime backup will restore all your keys, addresses, and Bitcoins on a new wallet if you lose your old wallet.
• Beginners should avoid altcoins, tokens, and ICOs at least initially until they learn about Bitcoin. Most of these are scams and you should be familiar with the basics first. Bitcoin is referred to as BTC or XBT.

Common Questions

What happens when all the Bitcoin are mined; how will miners be paid?
This will happen when we all are dead near the year 2140.
Total block reward = Inflation (coinbase reward) + transaction fees
Where there is a slow transition as inflation drops in a controlled supply where more and more of the total reward is made up of transaction fees
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply
After 2140 all of the reward for miners to secure the network will be transaction fees but sending bitcoin will still be inexpensive because most transactions will occur on other layers like lightning and in aggregate settle onchain .
Also keep in mind that if hashrate drops too low we can simply wait for more confirmations onchain to increase the level of security and this doesn't effect the end user much because if they use a lightning wallet once its setup they still get instant confirmations.

Some foundational Principles of security

If you don't own much value in Bitcoin these principles are not for you. There is no one solution and most people have different risk profiles and make multiple trade offs in a risk vs convenience spectrum.

1. Never store your bitcoins in a web wallet or exchange . You own 0 bitcoins if you do not control your private keys.
2. Do not trust strangers on the Internet to help you setup your personal wallet. This is someone you must do yourself or have a personal friend or family member help you with in real life where they cannot see your backup seed.
3. Buy your hardware wallet directly from the producer or amazon site under the producers name. Verify the integrity of the hardware wallet if you are extra paranoid :

http://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-faq/threats.html#reflashing-the-trezor-with-evil-firmware
https://digitalbitbox.com/faq
https://coldcard.com/docs/ultra-quick
https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/5712308134809-What-are-the-best-practices-when-setting-up-Jade-
First update the firmware of your HW wallet before using
4) Never brag about your wealth to others
5) Never invest in any investment scheme or get greedy thinking you can quickly increase the amount of Bitcoin you have with daytrading
6) Consider more secure means of backing up your 12 or 24 BIP39 backups in case of floods or fire - https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/
7) Setup your hardware wallet , transfer a small amount of btc to it, wipe it clean , and restore it to give you confidence that the backup was done right and give you experience in the recovery process.
8) Keep your Mnemonic 12 or 24 word seed secret and private and show to no one. Never use premade 12-24 word backups , you create new keys and backups upon setup.
9) The most secure , "active" wallet would be a hardware wallet integrated with a full node. HW wallet + electrum personal server and electrum is the popular way to do this
10) Use a passphrase with the hardware wallet (most the security concerns with HW wallets are solved with a passphrase.) keep the passphrase written down a separate from your seed words
https://wiki.trezor.io/Passphrase
https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/5131416184601-What-is-a-passphrase
https://coldcardwallet.com/docs/passphrase
https://shiftcrypto.support/help/en-us/21-optional-passphrase
Make sure the passphrase is also written down somewhere private so you do not forget it! Do not keep the passphrase in the same location as your 12-24 seed backup words. Passphrases should include random words and not words found in lyrics or literature or personal details related to your life.
Here is a good strategy for most people with hardware wallets -
Location 1 12 to 24 seed words preferably on metal
https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/
Location 2 same 12 to 24 seed words preferably offsite
Location 3 5-7 word passphrase unlocking your real wallet preferably offsite
Location your head pin for HW wallet and passphrase. If you don't use your passphrase at least once a month than its better to have 2 written copies stored on paper or metal as backups and kept separate than each other and seed words
Thus you have both the passphrase and seed word backup in 2 locations and can lose either one and if someone finds your seed words or passphrase alone they can only see your decoy wallet at most and under duress(torture) you can hand over one of your seed word backups or enter in your pin instead of passphrase and give the attacker your decoy wallet alone.
Every 6 months check to see if your backup seed words or passphrase written on paper or metal is disturbed or removed.(these need to be stored separately!) It is best to hide them in such a manner if you can tell if someone has tampered with them or found them so you are aware if either your seed words or passphrase becomes compromised.

Recommended Wallets

Best wallets for securing small amounts of BTC
Blue wallet Android and IOS and OSX
https://bluewallet.io/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9mq1a8bLbQ
electrum For Windows, OSX, Linux and Android
https://electrum.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4EhZg5QslI
Blockstream Green For Windows, OSX, Linux, IOS and Android
https://blockstream.com/green/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DesN85bWmGA
Best wallets for securing small amounts of BTC and sending lightning transactions
Breez LN wallet for Android and IOS
https://breez.technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_4b-y4T8bY
Or Green
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtMXsJxx1X0
Other Lightning wallets - http://lightningnetworkstores.com/wallets
Lightning wallets are not intended for long term storage where you never open them for many months. They are intended for spending wallets that you regularly use.
Securing Larger amounts of Bitcoin
Trezor Safe 3 = ~79 USD https://trezor.io/trezor-safe-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWRI4VTHiuI
Trezor Model T = ~219 USD https://trezor.io/trezor-model-t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3BIo5Ac_n4
Blockstream Jade = $65 https://blockstream.com/jade/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLFmd98mKNw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_9Dtcc1nlY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2VsgoFh78o
Cold Card Hardware wallet = $148 mk4 https://store.coinkite.com/store/coldcard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kocEpndQcsg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8dBNrlwJ0k
Digital Bitbox 02 = 124 USD https://shiftcrypto.ch/bitbox02/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdP_7LgZw7s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7nRq2OEhiw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D4FgJo3j64
Seedsigner ~80 dollars per-assembled
https://seedsigner.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqlIkJf0mA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c5SR8v8l1M
Best Advanced Bitcoin Wallet= Sparrow
Pros= Great privacy and security
Cons= UX is for more experienced users, takes ~week to sync and requires ~7GB minimum disk space if pruned. Only available in desktop so typically should be used with a hardware wallet
https://sparrowwallet.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLi8p9aTlBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSHyKTigNQY

Further Resources

https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html
https://www.lopp.net/lightning-information.html
https://10hoursofbitcoin.com/
https://bitcoin-resources.com
https://www.bitcoin101.club
https://21lessons.com
https://bitcoiner.guide

Common types of Scams to avoid

"Helping" Hand A thief will contact you privately by DM or email, or get listed in a directory as a "Professional Blockchain Expert" and help you setup a Bitcoin wallet , an exchange account, and buy Bitcoin but will end up stealing it later. One of their favorite wallets to use is Blockchain.com online web wallet(You should avoid using this wallet regardless for other reasons) where they can remotely help you. They will either ask for your 12 backup seed words or when you are logged in create another backdoor recovery to take over your wallet without you knowing. When setting up a wallet it is important that you do this yourself and never reveal any passwords , pins , passphrases, of backup seed words to anyone. Do not allow some stranger to remotely help you setup your wallet or account. If you need help in person and trust a family member or friend this is fine but have them walk away/turn their head when you create a password , and write down your backup seed words and never reveal this information to others. Use your own personal computer or cellphone and not theirs to create your account. After you have verified the backup words with the wallet software they can than help you further. Never allow them to see or copy your exchange or email passwords or backup authy/authenticator key as well. Do not keep your passwords in plaintext digital spreadsheets or word/text documents. Use a password manager like keepass/lastpass or at minimum keep a book of your passwords that is secure and privately written down outside the computer. This scam can also manifest itself after you have had your BTC stolen by a friendly "hacker" claiming they can recover your BTC for a modest fee, which is practically never the case.
Unfortunate Events Professional Beggars will create many posts or hundreds of DMs under various fake (shill) identities to solicit sympathy and ask for a Bitcoin donations because they were scammed or had some unfortunate crisis.
Advanced Fee Fraud- This is one of the most common forms of fraud, and is popular even outside the cryptocurrency ecosystem. With cryptocurrency it often takes to form of these variations:
a) The con artist will claim they have a large amount of Bitcoin "stuck" in an exchange because of legal reasons or some other excuse and need your assistance to withdraw the Bitcoin. They offer you their username and password to log into their account and claim that you can even keep a large reward and than send them the difference of Bitcoins to their personal wallet. When you login to withdraw the Bitcoin you will notice a high withdraw fee or deposit that needs to be made for verification before you are allowed to withdraw the Bitcoin that cannot be subtracted from the balance. Since the fee is much less than your expected reward and the exchange looks legitimate despite being one you are unfamiliar with you pay the fee and than realize that the exchange is a fake one that will never allow you to withdraw the Bitcoin.
b) You are trying to sell something online and someone offers you a pre-payment in fiat with a payment service, a cashiers check, or a regular check and than "accidentally" overpays and asks for a refund to be sent to them in Bitcoin or by other methods. You are confident you receive the money because you deposit the check and it appears to clear and shows up in your bank account or digitally shows in your paypal account or other platform and so you are happy to send them the difference in over payment. One key aspect is international money transfers, gift card payments, or Bitcoin are typically non-reversible while most other payments are reversible and this can occur at almost anytime in the future. The check or payment can be involved in fraud or be fake and the payment platform or bank will reverse the deposit(possibly leaving you with a negative balance) and you will be legally liable to reimburse the bank. You will than be left with having to reimburse the bank and be out of Bitcoin and the product you sold the scammer.
c) A company offers you an investment or mining opportunity and to gain your trust is even willing to send you some Bitcoin up front to gain your confidence. Problem is the Bitcoin is frozen in their platform , a watch only wallet, represented in a fake blockchain explorer, or you did not wait for a confirmation to insure that you can use it and you invest in them not knowing that the Bitcoin they sent you is unusable. Common scam here is saying that you can connect your blockchain.com wallet to their "mining server" to mine for free and than require you to pay a fee to withdraw BTC that is watch only because they setup your account for you.
d) A contest or free giveaway usually promoted by a celebrity(typically a fake account on twitter) offers you free Bitcoin or cryptocurrency if you make a small bitcoin deposit up front to enter. The grifter will take your BTC and run.
e) A company solicits to hire you for assistance in buying Bitcoin for them at various ATMs or with your account and offers a salary for this service. They will never pay you or send checks that will eventually bounce as fiat currency lacks transaction finality that bitcoin has.
f) Someone offers you a large amount of Bitcoin as a gift or to pay for a good or service by giving you words to import or a private key to import into a wallet instead of sending Bitcoin to an address you provided them from a wallet you setup independent of them. You open up the wallet and they claim that in order to unlock the full amount you need to buy more bitcoin and add it to the wallet or send to them when in reality the amount of bitcoin you imported is a small amount or unspendable.
Investment Opportunity- These take the form of a company that allows you to make an investment and has promised guaranteed returns due to them trading cryptocurrency, mining cryptocurrency, fx or binary option trading, or any other investment enterprise such as real estate. Some will simply take your Bitcoin and run and others are ponzi schemes which will slowly payout rewards to their platform that you can never withdraw or make payouts but these never add up to your total investment.
Two quickest warning signs that an investment scheme is extremely likely to be a scam is they promise guaranteed returns , and their promised returns exceed 10% per year.
Altcoins, ICOs, Security tokens 99% of these are pointless projects or scams which make dishonest marketing claims that most people don't have the technical ability to evaluate. Even projects that have the best of intentions fail because the incentives are all misaligned for an exit when you give 100% funding upfront without regulation, contract with preconditions, and invested from unqualified credulous investors. Sticking to projects that are 100% proof of work with no premine or instamine from the start is a way to filter through most of these projects but in the end you should do your due diligence and learn about the project before investing. This applies to Bitcoin as well. People should be free to invest in whatever project they wish but one should do so with an understanding in what they are investing in.

For about the last month or so, i’ve been trying to apply to various jobs online, just throwing myself out there to see if I can land something because I’m very eager to hopefully add something new to my resume, you understand. I’ve mostly been applying to maintenance and technical positions since that’s what’s most relevant to me but just very recently I suddenly reviewed a message for what apparently seems to be some kind of job offer. However, I never applied to this company and don’t really believe that I’d be recommended by any agencies since this doesn’t seem especially relevant to me. However, assuming by some miracle it’s real, it seems like a good opportunity so I decided to just double check here to ask if there’s literally any chance/possibility whatsoever this might be “legitimate” in any way. Here’s the full message that was sent to me:
“Hello, I'm sorry to bother you. I am Juliana from TEMU Services USA. Your background and resume have been recommended by several online recruitment agencies. Therefore, we would like to offer you a great remote online part-time/full-time job helping TEMU merchants update data, increase visibility and bookings, and provide free training. Flexible part-time and full-time jobs allow you to work 60 to 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week, at flexible hours and locations (based on your own schedule), and earn $50 to $500 per day. You can earn between $50 and $500 per day, with a base salary of $950 for every 4 days worked. Paid annual leave: In addition to maternity, paternity and other legal holidays. Regular employees are entitled to 5-15 days of paid annual leave. If you would like to participate, please contact us via WhatsApp!XXXXXXXXXXX” (I censored the number at the end)

This sub has a general practice to not censor political opinions no matter how serious the issue. That said, as a reminder, all subreddit rules and sitewide expectations still apply.
Posts must be Davis-related. Further, posts and content must not violate Reddit policies, which means that content which threatens or promotes violence, which harasses people, which targets people based on religion, ethnicity, or nation of origin, or which would cause a reasonable person to not want to use Reddit, will be reviewed and subject to removal. Bans will be given for repeat offenses.
Please feel free to report violating content or reach out to me directly if there’s something you want the mod team to take a look at. That said, also keep in mind that the report button is NOT a super downvote button and should not replace the downvote button for content you disagree with but does not violate rules.

I recently read Richard Wright’s autobiography which dealt in part with his tumultuous time as a member of a U.S. communist group in the 1930’s. I also read a number of Orwell’s essays written shortly after the Spanish civil war in which he discusses the ideology. One thing Orwell brought up that I thought was interesting (partly quoted below) was the pervasive self-censorship by communist western writers during that time. Makes sense - nearly all US/UK communist parties were more or less emulating USSR standards.
Among the many issues Wright encountered while he was a member was the constant peer pressure to censor not just what he said in official writings (eg for their magazine), but also his own work. If any party member stepped out of line (or was even perceived to have - which was troublesome due to how much paranoia raged throughout the group) all sorts of bullying tactics were use. Such as expelling, threatening, shunning, attempting to get former members fired at their job, assaulting them on the streets, or worst of all being called a Trotsky-isk (it’s like being called a mix of Benedict Arnold, Hitler, and a 5 month old puppy that a spoiled child has grown bored of)
This censorship counters something I have noticed is more common in writers/artists than the average person - the desire for freedom of expression. what about the movement was appealing enough for writers to fight for something that denies this? (and perhaps huge portion of the entire literary canon)
But the core question is this: what caused writers / artists to be drawn to communism at higher rates than most other professions?
Most often when reading the work of those actively in favor, they talk earnestly of social and economic equality for all. But if that was truly their primary end goal, socialism alone seems more closely to align with it without the need for censorship. Furthermore, socialism was a moderately prevalent & established ideology at the turn of the 20th century (and had a number of notable writers gaining success releasing works with overarching socialist themes - eg Upton Sinclair & Jack London & Orwell). Was it just seen as old hat (too slow, ineffective) at that point? Or is the focus on the employed lower class just not personally applicable enough for an artist fortunate enough to survive on the profit of their art?
A while ago I read an essay by Chomsky in which he quoted a bit by either Marx or Engels indicating that the ideology has always hinted at a sort of aristocratic literati. Was this what really brought so many writers in (more than fixing economic inequality issues already addressed by socialism)? Sure, the revolution theoretically frees the workers & disposed of great economic inequality, but ( better yet) with our artistic skills we will be reserved a special place right at the foot of the ideological ruler’s throne! Who cares if it’s as jester or propagandist, we will still find ourselves comfortably sat near the table of power. not in the fields toiling, but amongst the intellectual elites. They can see through the propaganda.
(This brings to mind an article by a journalist stuck in an air conditioned hotel somewhere like Qatar with a bunch of other journalists during the Iraq war c. 2003. Every day they would come out to watch a news conference by a low ranking general who never appeared to know anything nor have any updates. The part that irked me was when the journalist wrote that every journalist in that room was rolling their eyes & joking about the bullshit waste of time… yet the journalists continued writing up & sending out the regurgitated bullshit en masse, acting like they were getting break news & the US people were being informed of it.
The journalists all know they’re being toyed with, so if those people who read the trickle down news conference updates and believed anything but the same - they were contemptuously stupid & deserve their own eye roll, no doubt.
Completely ignoring another option entirely - don’t carry on with the charade of being a government mouth piece… the press could print meaningful journalism or push real questions to the 1 star or call them out on the obfuscation [who else could? Only media allowed]. No, just an eye roll and jokes amongst themselves while they continue to perfectly fulfill their place as the apparatchiks, but at least they know it’s a farce.)
too pessimistic?
Orwell:

On the whole the literary history of the thirties seems to justify the opinion that a writer does well to keep out of politics. For any writer who accepts or partially accepts the discipline of a political party is sooner or later faced with the alternative: toe the line, or shut up. It is, of course, possible to toe the line and go on writing—after a fashion. […] Literature as we know it is an individual thing, demanding mental honesty and a minimum of censorship.
The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature. […] it is a product of the free mind, of the autonomous individual. No decade in the past hundred and fifty years has been so barren of imaginative prose as the nineteen-thirties. There have been good poems, good sociological works, brilliant pamphlets, but practically no fiction of any value at all. From 1933 onwards the mental climate was increasingly against it. Anyone sensitive enough to be touched by the Zeitgeist was also involved in politics. Not everyone, of course, was definitely in the political racket, but practically everyone was on its periphery and more or less mixed up in propaganda campaigns and squalid controversies. Communists and near-Communists had a disproportionately large influence in the literary reviews. It was a time of labels, slogans, and evasions. At the worst moments you were expected to lock yourself up in a constipating little cage of lies; at the best a sort of voluntary censorship ('Ought I to say this? Is it pro-Fascist?') was at work in nearly everyone's mind.
It is almost inconceivable that good novels should be written in such an atmosphere. 'Good novels are not written by by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

I'm a lawyer who works primarily in the digital entertainment and media space, and I can't tell you how horribly many multi-million dollar media companies are set up, especially from an investor standpoint. There are a lot of such companies founded by content creators, advised by inexperienced/incompetent counsel (if at all), and I'm hoping that by writing this post, it will reach Destiny and he can avoid some common pitfalls.
There are attorneys who bill >$600/hour to give this basic-ass advice and you're all getting it for free. You're welcome. This is like super basic stuff, so maybe Destiny has it covered, idk. I'm not actually in his walls.
Basic Checklist
Here's a 30,000 feet checklist of things to be concerned about. I'm sure Destiny is aware of them at a basic level. I'll separately break down each one, and the common pitfalls I've seen.

• IP ownership/entity-level structure
• 3rd party agreements
• Employees vs contractors
• Legal compliance (advertising regulations, TOS enforceability, data privacy, and employee benefits), applicable at state and federal levels
• Taxes
• DMCA safe harbocompliance (if the company/site will be hosting and publishing UGC/3rd party content)
• Purchase policy (refunds, customer service, automatic subscription renewals, etc.)

IP Ownership
While I'm sure Destiny likely has work-for-hire provisions in all of his independent contractor agreements (I'm assuming he has no W2 employees at this point), that's not the end-all-be-all of IP ownership. First, he needs to make sure it's clear who the IP is assigned to. It should be assigned to the existing LLC, whatever it is, and not Steven Bonnell II. This means that the operative party in the IC agreements must all be the applicable LLC or the applicable LLC must as least be named as a 3rd party beneficiary and the assignment is explicitly to the LLC. If he is setting up a new umbrella company (assuming he has separate entities for each podcast/DGG/YouTube channels/etc.), he has to make sure the umbrella company is the owner of the IP. This means executing IP assignment agreements from the existing rightsholder to the umbrella company. Simple to do.
Make sure the timing of the WFH IC agreements line up. If Kyla did some work for Bridges in January, 2023, and then signed a WFH IC agreement in April, 2023, the January work was not assigned under the WFH provision. It is legally owned by Kyla unless the IC agreement also contained a broader IP assignment provision. In this instance, Kyla needs to separately execute an IP assignment agreement to cover the stuff that predates the WFH IC agreement's execution date.
There's a lot more detail here, but this is just the very basic stuff.
Why does this matter? Kyla will never sue Steven for IP infringement probably. Ok, but investors give a shit. If Destiny's media company goes "mainstream", all of this will come out in diligence. At best, the investor will require all these IP assignment agreements to be executed as part of diligence. At worst, they back out. Realistically, it impacts the valuation of the company. If you're staring at a >$10m investment (which is small, btw), you are guaranteed to have lawyers and consultants poking through this shit.
3rd Party Agreements
Obviously make sure all 3rd party software is being used under the correct license. If you're using AI, make sure you're reviewing the TOS on commercial use of the output, the AI providevendor's rights, etc. If you're using 3rd party font, make sure you've purchased the correct license. This is either super complex or very basic depending on how much 3rd party IP and services you're using. If you're sharing any user data with 3rd party vendors, make sure you're compliant with applicable data privacy laws. Etc.
These also include partnership agreements, brand sponsorships, etc. These are unique and impossible to generalize. Highly recommend counsel for this type of shit.
Employees v Contractors
Content creators love contractors. It's simple, you don't need to provide any benefits, and it's very easy. But someone isn't a contractor just because you call them contractors. Misclassification of employees can cause huge liabilities. The IRS doesn't play around. There are legitimate reasons why you want employees and not contractors, and of course, you'd have to set up all of the requisite benefits if you do have employees. This is a lot more in-depth and you would want to retain counsel to work through this process. TL;DR: don't be running a 10+ million dollar company with 0 employees and 50 "independent contractors".
Legal Compliance
The more you do, the more you have to worry about. Are you going to be advertising (on a much greater scale than a subreddit post, like buying programmatic ads)? Seek counsel. The FTC doesn't play around. Not going to be advertising? Then don't worry about it. Are you going to be collecting user data? Seek counsel. 9 times out of 10, a company is actually collecting user data even though they believe they aren't.
There are laws about automatic renewals. There are laws about TOS and disclosures. Hard to give generalized advice about compliance without knowing what exactly the company is going to do other than just keep this shit on your radar. Running sweepstakes or contests? Consult counsel. Be aware of ADA requirements, if applicable. Etc.
Taxes
This is the thing Destiny most likely already has handled. Use 3rd party providers for this until you've scaled to the point where hiring in-house accounting makes sense. I'd recommend hiring a consultant at the outset to make sure everything is set up correctly and running smoothly between the company and the 3rd party providers.
DMCA/UGC/Content Moderation
If the media company is going to be hosting user generated content, make sure your platform is DMCA compliant so you're within the safe harbor. Simple to set up, but you need a DMCA agent as well. If you are doing content moderation, especially if it's political content moderation, be aware of proposed state laws like Florida HB3 (https://www.flgov.com/2024/03/25/governor-desantis-signs-legislation-to-protect-children-and-uphold-parental-rights/) and Texas HB20 (https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-defends-texas-law-prohibiting-big-tech-censorship-scotus#:\~:text=In%202021%2C%20Texas%20adopted%20a,censoring%20users'%20constitutionally%20protected%20speech.). These laws might be unconstitutional (TBD) and would likely not apply to any of Destiny's businesses (due to user base size/revenue cutoffs), but if the business scales, worth keeping an eye on this stuff. In any case, content moderation is increasingly regulated in the US so keep an eye on that shit. See also California AB587.
Purchase Policy
This is FTC stuff. If everything is merging under an umbrella (advisable, tbh), make sure things like refund policies, shipping, comply with any applicable FTC rules.
Closing Thoughts
Just looking at the DGG site alone with no other knowledge of the business(es):

• Probably not privacy law compliant. If you're collecting user IP addresses, you need an actual privacy policy, not just a notice that this is happening. The cookie notice is almost certainly not compliant with EU privacy requirements as well. If the business scales and grows, the risk of enforcement grows.
• Probably not FTC compliant on subscription terms and renewals. Renewal rules have recently gotten more strict.
• The TOS in general is jank as fuck and obviously not written by a lawyer. At least pay a lawyer like $1-2k to make a decent one.
• Trademark registration is not that expensive ($<1k/mark). No real reason not to do it. Though, sometimes, it can get expensive ($5k+/mark) if you have to fight with the USPTO because there are similar existing marks.

Entity structure as a whole is related to all of these so I didn't talk about it specifically. Also probably doesn't need to be said, but it's a good idea to maintain an keep updated an intranet, built like a data room, for all agreements/docs/invoices/etc.

Soo... Volt Typhoon. A serious CCP hacker group that frequents and trolls this sub. They are also Targeted Justice allies. Be weary of any posts that stem from Volt Typhoon. You will face Neuro Strikes from Volt Typhoon the moment you open and read any of their posts. You'll notice you may become lost in translation and slightly stooped as you become hacked with a Neuro strike when you analyze and review their posts on this sub.
Gangstalking is a banned word in the world of the CCP. Why don't they try to censor it some more by trolling this sub?

Just got back from the cinema watching "Challengers", amazing movie definitely recommend. But throughout the movie, I realised the characters' motivations being slightly weird but I didn't think too much.
So after the movie, I checked on the internet reading reviews as usual, and that's when I realized there are two sex scenes completely cut from the movie. They are actually very important for the character development, and after watching them on some website, everything now makes sense, lol.
I'm quite mad now thinking about it. I spent money to watch a half-assed movie that got censored for no reason? Fucking adult still cannot handle some sex scene? The sex scenes aren't even too vulgar, the characters are still in their undies, they're just kissing and stuff.

Hey! I should clarify that I am unaware if Sony still owns the rights to Interspecies Reviewers, this all depends on if the rights to streaming the anime are open.
Interspecies Reviewers is an ecchi-comedy anime that involves around three protagonists reviewing interspecies brothels in a red light district.
Back during it's airing in 2020, it was removed from streaming services Funimation and Amazon for not complying within company standards, but I think four years in the future, and this standard has already changed.
Interspecies Reviewers is with no doubt a controversial anime, but less so for the content within, and more so for the reaction to the anime itself by streaming services.
Over the years, this standard for how we react to sexual content in anime has changed drastically, with many anime doing arguably equally explicit and contextually worse actions, say Redo Of Healer.
Redo Of Healer is an anime that involves sexual revenge, through acts of casual sex, sexual assault, rape, and cannibalism, in the uncensored series all of these acts are shown on screen, in a significantly mean spirited context, unlike Interspecies Reviewers, which despite reviewing brothels, is regarded as a sex positive anime by a lot of media, Redo Of Healer streams on HIDIVE censored, and it aired in 2021.
Gushing Over Magical Girls is an anime that aired very recently and also streams on HIDIVE mostly uncensored, this anime involves characters being wrapped up in BDSM kink situations, with visible on-screen sex in episode 10.
I'll get to the point, these anime have shown equally explicit to contextually "worse" scenes, but Interspecies Reviewers is in purgatory with no legal way to watch it in a lot of the west excluding purchasing a blu-ray, picking up this series if possible would be beneficial to HIDIVE and Interspecies Reviewers, giving western people a chance to watch this anime, and giving a chance for the creators to advertise the show here in the west.
These shows that contain sexually explicit content need to be justified in existing, and we can justify Gushing Over Magical Girls through it's comedy and story, as we can justify Redo Of Healer through it's commentary on the cycle of abuse, and dark content, these shows are both publicly controversial, and HIDIVE has streamed them with no problem.
Interspecies Reviewers is both a great comedy, and an exceptionally great fantasy story, praised for it's positive outlook on diversity and sex work, political worldbuilding, and hilarious dialogue.
ALL the sexual interactions in Interspecies Reviewers is consensual and contextually justified in the story, it is explicit, but not crossing any lines that haven't already been crossed with what streaming services allow now, it complies within a TV-MA rating, and there is a lot more to Interspecies Reviewers than the sexual scenes.
I would love for HIDIVE to pick up this anime, even with censorship, I think audiences will really enjoy it, and it would be a good move for everyone, it's a sincerely great anime, and one of the best ecchi anime just in general, up with the greats like DxD and Kill la Kill.

I've heard a bit about this vn, but there doesn't seem to be much discussion about it that I can find so not really sure if it's worth my time.
You don't have to review in detail at all, tho I'd appreciate it if you could. I don't mind spoilers, just mention the things that left an impression on you.
Also if you don't mind, it doesn't have any weird Rape, NTR or mind break stuff right? If it does, I'll have to get the censored version.

Edit: Saw this later from web and it was awful to look at. Cleaned it up. Please read strike through as cheeky side comments.

Premise:

Share my experience getting started on Bookfusion as a mobile first reader on iOS. I am also a dev so I like to give feedback when I see a project with promise and I figured my use case is not so unique.

Background:

I stumbled upon this app after months of being super annoyed searching for a way to away allowed tablet +pen users to write in line on epub files. I know now that this is possible on some of the very new color eink readers and (maybe?) Marginote but nothing accessible on iOS that gives you the full "I wrote in this book" feeling. I don't actually write in my paper books because it crowds the pages. However I use text based annotations all the time and love that I can just hide them away as I continue reading. It seems like a waste to have all this hardware capable of writing on books, but not supporting the most popular book format for published media. My full ebook library is close to 350gbs, and I have read them on many generations and sizes of devices over the years. That's why I don't like to use pdfs, so I will not be converting them.
Alright, off my rant.

History with other ereader applications:

I've been reading from epub files since the original Barnes and Nobles Nook launched in 2009. Things have changed a lot since then (for better and worse). My biggest pet peeve with all these platforms is that they lock you into their version of a book store and never allow you to include your currently library- or if they do allow sideload, it is at a disadvantage. Each of their reading apps are somewhat lacking in functionality too, one way or another.

• Kindle app is organized like social media with feeds and other nonsense I find that extremely annoying clutter to get to my book. The navigation in looking for books has infinite breadcrumbs you can't reset without hitting back a bunch of times. It's ability to do the one thing, is made unpleasant by the other forced features of integrating with Amazon.
• Apple Books lets you side load, but won't organize books by the same author or series together with ones sideloaded. You can't custom categorize books in your library without them being tied in some way to the Apple Books store view of the book.
• I've always found Google Books reader (on the iOS app) to be very ugly, and they are often the recent missing titles that I'm looking for. Man, I miss buying a ebook and getting a file. I can only do that directly supporting authors on their websites these days.

I haven't mentioned my qualm with actually buying books on these platforms either. Needless to say, I have books scattered across all the major platforms, which is why I will never get a kobo, amazon or otherwise platform affiliated e-reader and why I'm super interested in software based app solutions. I stick with iPad/iOS because it's familiar (I've had iPhones since the 3GS, and iPods even before then) and I have access to a lot of other stuff there too, jack of all trades style. Not an apple fanboy, I just hate having to change up something that's working for me already.
I have yet to find an eReader app that does everything I want, though. Besides digitally hand-writing in ebooks (which I understand is a particular challenge due to the format), I always end up trading one important feature for another. If I want an intuitive and simple interface, I have to give up customization options. If I want good organization, I have to give up proper cross device sync. If I want cloud sync I have to pray to the rain gods and light some candles. I rarely read from web since my iPad is a full laptop replacement to me, so this will all be iOS and iPadOS app perspectives.

Baseline for Comparison to BookFusion:

I have and still have to use the usual Apple Books, Kindle, Google Books and Kobo apps since my purchases are locked there for now. My latest and current app of choice was Eboox. It's made by a quiet little dev team. It's a 2 page app basically. Library view or shelf view. Some customization settings, but it has page-level Google drive based sync. Same deal, you can upload epubs super easily. I like that it shows me my most recent book at the top, and I can even download converted-to-epub fic and other comic files to this app sometimes. The big cons are that it's not very well polished: updates are slow, the shelving system is infuriating because there is no user created order enforced and since you can't re-arrange books on a shelf, tag, or otherwise subshelve books to group them you're stuck with alphabetical and recency order. On my "Worth Reading Again" shelf I'd like to have all the books from the same series sequentially. Or better yet, let me rearrange them. Annotating on this app is buggy, sometimes the note you typed won't be saved and will be open in the next note you make. The reading view navigation is glitchy and crowded. I have stuck with it because it does the thing(tm) with no forced frills and it is simple and nice to look at.
When Bookfusion came up on reddit in my search for supporting hand-written annotation it was like candy on Christmas. Plus, page level audio integration (something I never dreamed of having on mobile outside of platform lock) coming soon? Amazing. Now, I'm excited.

Initial Reaction/Onboarding:

I downloaded the app and made a quick account (not too many forced profile details too, great!), It was super easy to get started. Importing books is also quick and painless although that 10 books free limit is really nothing for someone like me *more on that later in criticisms.

What I Loved:

1. I was immediately in love with the amount of customization available for the reading view. Full color spectrum background support is awesome! I'll take an all black dark mode theme but for me, cream text and midnight blue background reign supreme for me. I don't normally mess around with the font options much but there were a lot to choose from! Big points.
2. Ability to tweak the epub files summary and meta data right in app is nuts, and incredible. Absolutely my favorite surprise perk so far, I've never had that available in a mobile app.
3. The sidebar is easy to use. I didn't love there being a store in my reading app (see my complaints about platform tying) but it is unobtrusive and I appreciate that.
4. Navigating my collection is straightforward and awesome. I prefer the info view over the gallery view since have a lot of files with no cover. Currently reading book at the top in the main screen is a feature I grew to love so I'm grateful to see it here!
5. I just about cried when I saw the color coded (And searchable!!!) tag integration. I've never had an iOS app do that. Especially on files with a large number of tags, like epubs exported from AO3. It's usually something I categorize on my own via shelves. Pretty damn awesome!
6. The text search is actually useful, God is real. I cannot explain how heinous text search has been on pretty much every where else. Being able to search/ see highlights across books is also legendary. A common note-taking feature but a very uncommon reading app feature (especially working well!)
7. Annotating the typed way (from my iPhone) is awesome. the context menu isn't too crowded, the highlighting is easy (another fully custom color palette, I'm screaming).
8. Speaking of the note view! I love that you can edit right from there without the book navigating to that page, AND you can jump there by tapping the note. Link navigation in general works well.

Nice-to-Haves that came up during use:

1. It would be nice to have the option to toggle off the book preview screen that shows after selecting a book you aren't currently reading. Most of the time, I already know what I'm reading when I open it. I'd prefer to be able view summaries or get this view via a long press on the book or from a context menu
2. I noticed that the order of tags isn't preserved, and instead tags appear alphabetically. Not a big deal, but it would be a nice to be able to preserve the order that they were imported with, and that you could priority order them. It would also help in the info view, since those top tags would be priority order too rather than whatever was closest to A.
3. I noticed that if I tap on a highlighted area I've already annotated it doesn't do anything? I would love to get an inline view of my note or at least a preview of it when I tap on the highlighted portion without going back to the edit menu to do so. Since, you can view all your notes across the book from the right sidebar menu, I can live without it but it would be a very nice to have.
4. Additionally, I don't always want to highlight AND note. It would be cool if you could have notes indicated with a accent colored underline when the passage is not highlighted. Typically, I highlight when I find the text meaningful and note when I have something to say about the content. For instance, I might highlight a stanza of poetry but not have anything to add. Or I might add a not to a passage that does not make sense to me- in that case, I'm not appreciating the writing but I do have something to say about it. Maybe this could be done by being able to preset a with a separate highlight color as default for when specifically selecting to add a note. In my view, notes that I wouldn't want literal highlighting on could be defaulted to a very gray/muted color, and then highlights remain as they are now.

Conclusion: So far I'm pretty impressed, and I know there's even more to explore with Callibre integration stuff too. Right now my central ebook library is hosted on a NAS that needs to be upgraded so it won't take me 20 minutes to download an audio book lol. I'd be interested in hosting my library on a cloud too. I also haven't tested it on ipadOS fully yet beyond the sync capabilities, but I'm already pleased with what I have seen so far in iOS
That does bring me back to the pricing though.

Criticisms

Some minor nitpicks: When I get a reading app, I'm looking for it to be completely usable offline. I think most people would agree? Why would I need to make an account before I even import a book? It feels like a lot of investment before I have even seen the app enough to decide if I will use it? It is understandable for early access but it did somewhat rub me the wrong way.
The Store. I don't love it. I wish it was out of view or something I had to open specifically rather than be in my main navigation bar. I get it, but it harkens back to platform lock.
The future social media-like features: Please, PLEASE make these optional or hideable. I hate this social-media-fication of everything these days. I don't want to be on yet another social media platform, I try to be on as little as possible of the already existing ones that you can barely escape these days. Goodreads and Storygraph already exist and I hardly want to use those. Storygraph is sticking to Goodread's original purpose which was to track your reading easily, and is the whole reason I use it. When Goodreads turned into Amazon's rendition of Bookface, I left the platform. Now it's cluttered with social media features I never wanted in the first palce. Goodreads became hard to use for it's original purpose. You have to constantly navigate away from a feed made up of people and authors I don't care about (because even if you didn't have people to put posts in your feed, they'd make you one based on recommendations and your reading lists....yay). Then the reviews were being censored, Amazon was making it difficult to remove books that were added to the platform without permission and get indie authors that actually wanted to be on there up. Sorry, I'm off track. As you can see I have a bitter attitude toward forced social media features. If the app becomes more complex to use for it's main purpose (re: Do The Thing TM) due to the social features it would ruin the whole thing for me.
The free tier: 10 books + 2 adds/deletes per day is way too low to get integrated into a new platform. I'm sure I would not have had time to consider whether I want to continue with my whole collection in Bookfusion before I reached frustration with the cap. I have at least 50 books in every eReader app I have right now, bar kindle since you can only download 10(?) at a time... but I can download and trade them as often and whenever I want- and I don't even properly OWN those titles half the time. And all of those are free and direct competition to Bookfusion.
In the free tier (without specifically enabling it), I should not be using up any cloud storage. It feels arbitrary to have this limit on the number books I can view in the app when I'm not using any services to do so. My device, that I own, with it's internal storage already holding my books that I also already own. Why am basically forced to be on a subscription to use the app realistically when the app is supposedly free? I would have rather (and happily) paid 4.99 out right to have no local storage limits, and the basic offline do the thing(tm) features. This app is better than any other e-reader I've found on the market so far so it should have a strategic advantage but it feels like I won't even get to experience that before I have to pay- under the guise that the app is free.
It's giving free trial instead of freemium and that doesn't line up with what is shown on the app store page. As it stands, I would not consider this a free app, as you can't use the basic feature set realistically without the subscription. If I only owned 10 books or would be okay to only view 10 books on rotation, I probably wouldn't be looking for something with such a robust feature set so I also feels this contradicts the goals of the market you're trying to capture. I understand pushing conversion, but this actually just scares away people who might have gotten themselves fully integrated into the platform and eventually more willingly paid for extra things one might expect, like expanded cloud storage, real time cross device sync, access to new features etc etc.
this is a bit of a soap box speech but I'm explaining what I would like to see for a subscription model Discord is a great example of freemium. The basic features that make it competitive are completely free. These features are limited to user in a reasonable manner, so that if they don't care too much about streaming in 4k or being a power user with 100+ servers, they can comfortably use the app in the free tier. When I first got on discord, it was to use servers as big archivable and searchable group chat. Much smaller than what it was capable of at the time, but had the easiest onboarding and the lowest overhead to get started. All you need is an email address, a username and an invite. Today, I've been a nitro subscriber since 2018, which is 2 years after I got started on the platform. No one I knew besides my gaming friends were on discord. Slowly, as I convinced more people to join me on the platform (I'd respond faster since I could use the web app at work), more and more of my total communication was happening on discord. Now, I happily pay monthly to have 50 more emojis to take between servers, customize my profile and push my server cap up. I also get to support the devs making a tool I use all the time and get early access to new features. I was already invested in the platform and that guaranteed I would want to continue with Discord enough to want and enjoy these extra features instead of hopping to a competitor like Telegram to start all over.
Because of the 10 book cap, there's no real incentive for me to invest time into importing all my books, making the shelves and tags I want to use, customizing the reading ui and making sure it synced over to my ipad. A casual user could have this experience: Upload 10 books immediately, be blocked from uploading more without deleting and be stuck. "What? Well that sucks, I really liked it so far." and immediately leave for other, worse apps that at least let me import my whole library. I hope this is coming off as constructive because I'm not trying to gripe about price. As I mentioned earlier, I have no problem paying for something I know I'm going to use. It just doesn't make sense for me (and when I say me, I mean the general consumer) to get on a subscription for the basic offline features of an app that I likely just got and am not sure I'll keep by that time. Only, if I don't subscribe the app at base is not very useful.
The Other Tiers: The two highest tiers are the only ones that would be useful to me, so I'm sharing my perspective on those. $10 a month isn't a lot but in the monthly sub competition space it's on the steep side. KU is $15? and I get Amazon's backlog included. This app is fundamentally and demonstrably better than any of the platform based apps, but it's not promising much recurring value in comparison to other subscription style plans. Maybe something like getting the first month for free would help? But mainly, changing between these apps requires decent front load effort on the user (to export their files from somewhere else, onto your platform) and then on top of that, you have to subscribe to read more than 10 of your own books? For me, I see it as dev support so I'm willing but others might not even try it with a limit that low.
To me, I would want to see features like the following to make $10 a month worth the value add:

• Integration with book tracking platforms like Storygraph (I hate goodreads but right now SoryGraph doesn't have the apis for it yet) and GoodReads
• Fancy Export tools for my annotations (to Excel, Google, OneNote Etc)
• Ability to view/export my reading stats by time (last month, last week etc)
• Hide social media/store/ad from sidebar and context menus. and be able to customize it with shortcuts to my most used shelves or something.
• Receive notifications about my favorite author's new books (rss feed or something)
• Strict interest/genre profiles for recommendations (for example: I'm only reading women authors writing historical fantasy this month, only show me those recs. Only recommended me Java17 manuals. Do not recommend horror novels).
• Complete data transparency. Where is my Bookfusion account data going?

But overall, I think this level of restriction will hinder the app more than it helps conversion. Please consider removing the book # (not the feature limits, only the local library size stuff) restrictions and either making the app cost money for those basic offline features or having those certain features be fully free so that the app is functional @ the free tier (and therefore, properly freemium).
I want to clarify in a quick closing note that I'm sharing this to give my perspective. This is not an official feature request or complaint or anything. I thought my onboarding experience and background with ebooks might make for an interesting take by new user but veteran e-reader.
I'd love to hear how other users feel (especially new ones) about Bookfusion and for you veterans, what keeps you using it?
Thanks!