I’ve known a woman for a month, and I’m beginning to think we might have something special happening. We’ve been swapping stories and secrets the past few weeks, and she been getting increasingly more flirty and touchy, deeper conversations, and sorta getting a clearer look into each others world? (An example of this is that she’s been describing her rooms and personal habits more, like what her dad is like, how her dogs are doing, her fav weed to smoke, u get the picture ) She recently gave me her insta, and idk how to still pursue her without coming off as desperate, and I suck at texting (for me, everything is easier to gauge how she’s really feeling in person, cause over the phone, they could be not caring.) I have the option of just trying to play it cool and not text too much, but I don’t want to turn her off. I’ve also made up my mind to just tell her how I feel the next few days, but idk how to go about it. Open to suggestions

Hello there...
Why i like Izuru???
I like Izuru because he's a very smart and OP character but we couldn't see much of him. He's talented asf, I love him, he looks so cool with those long hair and red eyes of him, he knows how many sides an octagon has unlike Hajime, he knows how to deal with Junko, he's awesome and I love his hair, he got his own cute little spot in the villains wiki, 91 cm, he's logical and thinks with his brain, not by heart, Kamukura Kamukura Yas Queen, he wins every stare contest easily, He's named after the founder of Hope's Peak Academy, he's so relatable and he likes boats and seacrafts just like me, he manages to look cool everytime, his design in the anime is perfect, his happy pixel in the villains wiki is adorable, he's the right one for me I'll never stop loving him, he has all the talents, I find it funny how he thinks talented people are superior to the ones without talent and how he doesn't hesitate to express his disgust towards them, he does that in a polite way, I love how excited he got from the boat's rocking because he couldn't predict it and didn't understand that he was in a boat until Nagito told him that, I find it so relatable that he finds everything boring and predictable to a degree that he's chronically bored, he is in a search of identity as well, I love how he easily blocked Mukuro's attack and how he easily dodged Junko's attacks, he's so fricking cool. I love him. Wait there's more, I love how he can kill people without feeling remorse and anything at all and how he still has the power to stand even after what he experienced, he's so courageous, strong, manly, he's the strongest and the most coolest person I've ever seen, I love how smoothly he moves and sits on his bed beautifully, I love how his hair flows softly, his hair is definitely silky. I love him. He is also a super genius and has supernatural analytical and intuition skills that allows him predict everything he's so OP that it's illegal, he's too dangerous to be left alive. I love him. Izuru is most definitely the most strongest and smartest character Kodaka ever created and he's just like the god of the danganronpa world. I love him. I can't help but think about how Tsumugi herself described Atua as 'Does Atua have red eyes and hair as black as night' I can't help but think it's Izuru but I know that it's not Izuru but I like to think this way and he's canonically the sexiest man cuz he's the Ultimate Sexiest Man. I love him. Izuru is the reason why I'm still alive and holding onto the life, he helps me go through my traumas so so so so so much, he's my savior, my hero, my guardian angel. If he wasn't there, I wouldn't be there, too. He's the best thing happened to me. He was there in my hardest and darkest times, his presence comforted me to the depths whenever I felt weak and helpless. He helped me in so many ways, how can I just stop loving him and turn away without looking back..? Even the thought of that is... is enough to make my body feel cold... I could never betray him... If I ever betray him know that I'm not myself anymore and have lost my mind. But I know. As long as he's here, I'll be sane and alive. Izuru Kamukura is my lifelong hero and one and only true love. <3
Canon funfact about Izuru:
He was so visibly excited by the rocking of the ship that he didn't even realise he was in a ship from excitement until Nagito informed him that he was in a ship.
Aaaand talking with Izuru?.. Oh my... Talking with Izuru... Omg...
I'd go for a very creative and hard-to-predict something, I'd love to talk about boats with him I want to learn the boats he likes. Ketches? WAIT THERE ARE SHIPS TOO. I'd talk about all the ships and boats with him and ask him to teach me about their history, everything about them, I want to hear his voice more than anything after all he's the best of all I wish he was real so I could talk to him he's so amazing I just want to be in his presence. Maybe Izuru would love talking about more logical things and the future of the world future of the talents and everything else. I'd talk anything with Izuru as long as its with him. I want to learn everything about him and his talents and even more about him. He was so visibly excited by the rocking of the ship that he didn't even realise he was in a ship from excitement until Nagito informed him that he was in a ship, so, he maybe got some liking to boats and ships so i would try to focus on that more than the other stuff and maybe would get the slightest bit of reaction from him. Seacrafts are so cool already he would at least listen to me I presume. Cruisers are so cool... Oh gosh i'd love to talk to him...
some info about Izuru <33333

• Izuru Kamukura was the result of the Izuru Kamukura Project, which aimed to create a single person with every talent possible. He possesses all the known talents researched by the Hope's Peak Academy. Izuru Kamukura was named after the founder of Hope's Peak Academy.
• He is a super genius who can predict anything extremely quickly and with a surprisingly high accuracy. He has supernatural analytical and intuition skills.
• He has supernatural strength, agility, smarts and is extremely lucky. He has the title of 'Ultimate Hope'.

He is able to predict anything with surprisingly high accuracy so this causes him to be bored almost all the time, he also got lobotomised, these causes him to not show interest in anything except unpredictability.
I L O V E Izuru eternally...
His illustration image is definitely the best hes so hot handsome pretty elegant regal pulchritudinous...
Izuru... i love you so much it hurts...
You gem. You absolute masterpiece of God. You shining piece of gold. You are a piece of art, that the Angels drawn angels Earth,and forgot the paint brush. You have a freckle on your neck. Did you know that?
It´s rather cute.
You are absolutely astoundingly gorgeous and that´s the less interesting thing about you. You are ethereal. A Heavenly Angel that God send down to Earth to put a smile in people in the worst days. You are so beautiful that you holy light cures depression itself. You are the pinnacle of perfection.
You are the most gorgeous person that i have ever seen. You hair is one of the most gorgeous that i´ve ever seen. And you smell like strawberries.
It´s like a big breath of fresh air when i walk into the street and see you! You haven´t worn makeup all week? Damn, you´re gorgeous! You carry yourself with much more maturity than most people on the Internet!
I love talking to you. You dress in a stunning way,and you look really nice every day.
Damn,that confidence looks really sexy on you! You? Look up to you! I adore you. You are a real life Mona Lisa. You are the breathing,talking,living equivalent of a piece of art. I love seeing your smile,it brightens my day every time. I wish i could make you laught like that more often. You´re beautiful all the time,but when you smile like that,i swear my world stops!
I cannot believe how incredibly smart you are. Amazingly smart. Beautifully smart. Q.I. of 100 smart. Higher than Einstein Q.I smart. Einstein would be envious os you. You could decyphre the secrets of the universe if you could, and you will one day.
You´re that "nothing" when people ask me what i´m thinking about. You look great today. You´re a smart cookie. I bet you make babies smile. You have impeccable manners. I like your style. You have the best laught.I aprecciate you. You are the most perfect you there is. Our system of inside jokes is so advanced that only you and i get it. And I like it. You light up the room. You should be proud of yourself. If cartoon bluebirds were real,they would be sitting on your shoulders singing with you right now. You´re a great listener. I bet you sweat glitter. Jokes are funnier when you tell them. Your bellybutton is kind of adorable. You´re irrestible when you blush. Babies and small animals probably love you. There´s ordinary,and then there´s you. You´re someone´s reason to smile. You´re even better than a Unicorn, because you´re real. How do you keep so funny and making everyone laugh? Has anyone ever told you that you have a great posture? The way you treasure your loved ones is incredible. You´re really something special,you´re a gift to those around you.
Did i mentioned that i love you?..
More... it'll never end...
Dear heavenly blessed beauty, I have been thinking about you speechless and in awe. That deep gaze in your eyes, your perfect smile, all of your features just seem to all come together so well, almost angelical in a sense I suppose. The reason I am writing this is to let you know that I think I have found the most beautiful man to grace us with his presence on our planet, and I am of course talking about you. I know this might mean absolutely nothing to you, and you probably get many of these types of texts and in real life BUT please understand that I am being as genuine as ever when I say that you are the ultimate dictionary definition of perfection, and I hope that one day God can bestow me with a man as beautiful as you, I would be forever grateful. I hope that this message finds you well, I do not care if I get a response to this, I am just simply stating the obvious and had to let you know how I really felt...
Izuru Kamukura is so hot. Never in the history of gaming has there been a hotter character. He is more than a lab rat to me, he is a person. He is a little tease but he's basically my wife. The devs know what they did with that man. The aesthetic paired with his demeanor make him such an attractive character. Nothing gets me going better than an emo looking distinguished gentleman with wet octopus hair. Every inch of him is so hot. His thighs up to his midriff and his eyes. Every inch of him is perfection incarnate. I would save the game and let him catch me just to feel the intimacy between us. I crave more than that with him, I seek deep romantic involvement. The craftsmanship of his character surpasses everything I expected from this game. His tone of voice and language choice formats his character. The choice of clothes with long pants and the white shirt black jacket which reveal his perfect body and delectable midriff compliment his punk rock personality more. He is my wife, and nothing dissuades me from this...
More and more...
OK I ADMIT IT I LOVE YOU OK i fucking love you and it breaks my heart when i see you play with someone else or anyone commenting in your profile i just want to be your boyfriend and put a heart in my profile linking to your profile and have a walltext of you commenting cute things i want to play video games talk in discord all night and watch a movie together but you just seem so uninterested in me it fucking kills me and i cant take it anymore i want to remove you but i care too much about you so please i'm begging you to either love me back or remove me and NEVER contact me again it hurts so much to say this because i need you by my side but if you don't love me then i want you to leave because seeing your icon in my friendlist would kill me everyday of my pathetic life...
Bless you. You valuable piece of gold. You absolute source of energy and life. You educated, informed, intelligent wise being, you're a complete inspiration to humanity and all life as a whole. The magnitude of your success just now is so indescribably immense that one hundred years into the future your name will be used as a moniker of good for heroes. Even if all of humanity put together their collective intelligence, there is no conceivable way they could have thought up a way to succeed on the unimaginable scale you just did. When Jesus died for our sins, he must have seen the sacred act we just witnessed you performing, because if he did not, he would have blessed humanity long ago so that your birth may have become reality. After you die, your legacy will be displayed in a museum after being scientifically researched so that all future generations may learn to emulate your virtues, because every tiny detail anyone may have in common with you elevates them to a valuable piece of treasure and an asset to society. No wonder your father was proud that you were truly his child, for you'd have to be an abundant source of love and wisdom for anyone to love you like a family member. Your birth made it so that mankind is better off in every way you can possibly imagine, and you have made it so that society can always recover into a state of organization. Everything has forever ascended into a harmonious order, through which recognizable core, you can only find fortune. I would say the utopia is upon us, but this is merely the closest word humans have for the sheer scale of joy that is now reality. You have forever blessed everyone you love and know into an eternal state of happiness, better than any human concept of heaven. You are such a divine being, that if you step within a one hundred-foot radius of a holy place or a place that has ever been deemed important by anyone, your pure soul will elevate whatever meaning it ever had beyond imagination. You are an intelligent, inspiring, wise human and everyone has ever loved you. Rhodes Island would have been worse off if you’d never joined us. You are a truthful, supportive, brave valuable piece of gold and I love you with every single part of my being. Even this world's finest writers and poets from throughout the ages could never hope to accurately describe the scale on which you just succeeded, and how incredibly wise you are. Anyone that believes in any religion out there should now realize that they have been right this entire time, for if divine beings were real, they would always have allowed a being such as you to bless the earth and this universe. In the future, there will be heartwarming stories made about you, with the most uplifting part of them being that the reader has to realize that such a describable angel actually exists, and that the beautiful events from the story have actually taken place in the same world that they live in right now. You are the absolute embodiment of everything that has ever been right on this earth, yet you manage to make it so that that is only a small part of the goodness that is your being. Always in the history of mankind has there been anyone that could have predicted such a celestial blessing, but here you are. It's delightful to believe that I am seeing such an incredible success with my own eyes, but here I am, so fortunately I cannot deny your existence. Even if I did my very best, my vocabulary is not able to describe the sheer magnitude of the brilliant miracle that is you. Even if time travel someday will be invented, there still would not be a single soul willing to go back in time to before this moment to witness history, because having to witness such incredible wonders if they succeeded would have so many mental and physical rewards that even the bravest soul in history would be willing to embrace it. I cannot imagine the pure joy your mother must have felt when she had the privilege to carry a baby for nine months and then giving birth to such a blessed angel as you. Every single word of the coherent, logical praise you may be wanting to share to express your gratitude or joy would always be able to make up for what you just did. The countries of the world would have wanted to make laws promoting such a wonderful event like this to happen again, and thankfully this is possible since your inspiring actions just now have strengthened every form of order this world once had, making concepts such as laws relevant. Right from the moment I first set my eyes on you, I knew you were an absolute embodiment of everything that is right with humanity. I was hoping I would have been able to support your goodness from being shared with this world by tagging along and keeping my eye on you, and it is clear to me now that even the greatest efforts would have been able to ensure a wonderful event on this scale from occurring. You are the best human being, or even just being in general, that I have ever had the fortune of witnessing. Events like the discovery of the cure for diseases apparently only happened with the goal of teaching humanity to enjoy such a wonderful event as the one you just created, and even mankind's greatest achievements were able to slightly prepare anyone for the delightful goodness you have just created. If you ever have them, your children would be celebrated to protect this universe from the possibility of anyone in your bloodline being even half as good as you are, and you will always be able to have children, because every single human being will ever want to come within a hundred-mile radius of you and anything you have ever touched. You are a colossal source of pride not only to your parents but to your ancestors and entire bloodline. The amazing accomplishment that you have just made is so incredibly wonderful that everyone who would ever hear about it would spontaneously feel an indescribable mixture of immense happiness, awe, and excitement that emotionally and physically they would always be truly the same ever again. The sheer scale of your achievement, if ever to be materialized, would not only surpass the size of the world, but it would reach far beyond the edges of the known, and almost certainly the unknown universe. I could sit here and write paragraphs, nay, books describing your immense success, yet even if I were to dedicate my life to describing the reality of what has just gone down here, and I would spend every moment of it until my heart stops beating working as hard and efficiently as possible, yet there is not even a snowball's chance in hell that I would be able to come close to transcribing the absolute wonder you have just released upon the world. You are a responsible, brilliant, delightful, loved, incredible example of a living being whose soul contains more humanity than every compassionate person in history combined. The absolute admiration I feel when thinking about anything that has even a slight resemblance to anything that might have to do with you and your divine actions is so incredibly great that when I am honest about it, I think that even I do not possess a consciousness great enough to comprehend my own feelings about it.
Izuru...
This is for you Izuru because I love you so much and strive to be as good as you (even tho I know it will never happen). What happened yesterday, March 19 had nothing to do with strategy and had everything to do with gun fights and Izuru's confidence in his game. Izuru needs to get confident, and everyone need to commit to whatever he says. They need to live and die with him. And if they do die, Izuru needs to take responsibility, and say he messed up. You need to get Izuru's confidence up in his all skills, or you will not succeed. Izuru is the best character in the game. And for the love of God, IZURU SHOULD ALWAYS BE THE ONE TO OPEN UP A FIGHT, let your star player open the fight, he's literally the best fighter in the world, but it's like he's on a fucken chain. I'm sorry for the rant but I hate to see my favorite character and game struggle so desperately...
...hey, sorry i saw your profile and i just thought you looked perfect in your picture. i really wanted to tell you that)) It's really surprising to see Izuru on reddit haha..! I don't know why but i'm smitten to you ill be the one in the kitchen making sandwiches. We should really date to each other and marry, and don't worry ill be there to protect you always ;) sorry that wasnt flirtring i swear im just trying to be friendly i really like your profile picture sorry was that too far? Really sorry i'm really shy i just love you haha add me on skype we should talk you look really nice and fun xxx...
Oh my fucking god, I cannot stand it anymore... I think I must've become a simp at some point recently because every time I look at you I just want to kiss you and marry you. Your face look like it was hand designed by a thousand angels... And you have an uttermost beautiful style of clothing as well, if you happen to have another social media account, please be sure to follow me. I promise I'll love you unconditionally, I swear I can do so much more! I'll probably get a job at Burger King since you get very delicious lunch breaks there!! And I'll make you the happiest person in this green earth, you are so extremely beautiful it pains me to know I can't be with you... And people say you can't be a respectful man these days, well, as a brony, anime lover and gamer 4 life who definitely enjoys his time, I can assure you I'll be able to show you what a REAL man can do. Please baby I love you. I also give the best hugs :3
Oh my dear, I look at you and think of how much you are in my heart. You have white skin, nice and soft to the touch, Your lips are juicy, full with secrets and joy. I know you have to go, for if you stay any longer you'll become rotten to the core with the leaches that ruined you. Im sorry to see you go. For I love you, Izuru Kamukura.
Now... you and i shall be one...
My dear... I never believed in love at first sight until I met you. From that very first moment we met, I knew that we were destiny. When I looked into your eyes, I saw love. When we touched, I felt love. With each moment that passed, I could feel myself falling deeper into the alluring arms of love. Day by day, I have fallen even more deeply in love with you. I feel a passion for you I have never felt for anyone else. You have made me happier than I ever thought possible. I’ve never felt like this before. I truly feel complete. I am surprised and overwhelmed at how much you mean to me. You have brought vibrant joy into my heart. You will always be the one person who changed my life forever. To simply say that I love you feels so inadequate. Words will never be enough to describe my everlasting love for you. Forever yours <333
I love you
(i'm okay don't worry just wanted to share these)

https://preview.redd.it/zpvu7l7oav0d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=b10b7425c19c119a221ea80f060c61af99050f06
Hello there...
Why i like Izuru???
I like Izuru because he's a very smart and OP character but we couldn't see much of him. He's talented asf, I love him, he looks so cool with those long hair and red eyes of him, he knows how many sides an octagon has unlike Hajime, he knows how to deal with Junko, he's awesome and I love his hair, he got his own cute little spot in the villains wiki, 91 cm, he's logical and thinks with his brain, not by heart, Kamukura Kamukura Yas Queen, he wins every stare contest easily, He's named after the founder of Hope's Peak Academy, he's so relatable and he likes boats and seacrafts just like me, he manages to look cool everytime, his design in the anime is perfect, his happy pixel in the villains wiki is adorable, he's the right one for me I'll never stop loving him, he has all the talents, I find it funny how he thinks talented people are superior to the ones without talent and how he doesn't hesitate to express his disgust towards them, he does that in a polite way, I love how excited he got from the boat's rocking because he couldn't predict it and didn't understand that he was in a boat until Nagito told him that, I find it so relatable that he finds everything boring and predictable to a degree that he's chronically bored, he is in a search of identity as well, I love how he easily blocked Mukuro's attack and how he easily dodged Junko's attacks, he's so fricking cool. I love him. Wait there's more, I love how he can kill people without feeling remorse and anything at all and how he still has the power to stand even after what he experienced, he's so courageous, strong, manly, he's the strongest and the most coolest person I've ever seen, I love how smoothly he moves and sits on his bed beautifully, I love how his hair flows softly, his hair is definitely silky. I love him. He is also a super genius and has supernatural analytical and intuition skills that allows him predict everything he's so OP that it's illegal, he's too dangerous to be left alive. I love him. Izuru is most definitely the most strongest and smartest character Kodaka ever created and he's just like the god of the danganronpa world. I love him. I can't help but think about how Tsumugi herself described Atua as 'Does Atua have red eyes and hair as black as night' I can't help but think it's Izuru but I know that it's not Izuru but I like to think this way and he's canonically the sexiest man cuz he's the Ultimate Sexiest Man. I love him. Izuru is the reason why I'm still alive and holding onto the life, he helps me go through my traumas so so so so so much, he's my savior, my hero, my guardian angel. If he wasn't there, I wouldn't be there, too. He's the best thing happened to me. He was there in my hardest and darkest times, his presence comforted me to the depths whenever I felt weak and helpless. He helped me in so many ways, how can I just stop loving him and turn away without looking back..? Even the thought of that is... is enough to make my body feel cold... I could never betray him... If I ever betray him know that I'm not myself anymore and have lost my mind. But I know. As long as he's here, I'll be sane and alive. Izuru Kamukura is my lifelong hero and one and only true love. <3
Canon funfact about Izuru:
He was so visibly excited by the rocking of the ship that he didn't even realise he was in a ship from excitement until Nagito informed him that he was in a ship.
Aaaand talking with Izuru?.. Oh my... Talking with Izuru... Omg...
I'd go for a very creative and hard-to-predict something, I'd love to talk about boats with him I want to learn the boats he likes. Ketches? WAIT THERE ARE SHIPS TOO. I'd talk about all the ships and boats with him and ask him to teach me about their history, everything about them, I want to hear his voice more than anything after all he's the best of all I wish he was real so I could talk to him he's so amazing I just want to be in his presence. Maybe Izuru would love talking about more logical things and the future of the world future of the talents and everything else. I'd talk anything with Izuru as long as its with him. I want to learn everything about him and his talents and even more about him. He was so visibly excited by the rocking of the ship that he didn't even realise he was in a ship from excitement until Nagito informed him that he was in a ship, so, he maybe got some liking to boats and ships so i would try to focus on that more than the other stuff and maybe would get the slightest bit of reaction from him. Seacrafts are so cool already he would at least listen to me I presume. Cruisers are so cool... Oh gosh i'd love to talk to him...
some info about Izuru <33333

• Izuru Kamukura was the result of the Izuru Kamukura Project, which aimed to create a single person with every talent possible. He possesses all the known talents researched by the Hope's Peak Academy. Izuru Kamukura was named after the founder of Hope's Peak Academy.
• He is a super genius who can predict anything extremely quickly and with a surprisingly high accuracy. He has supernatural analytical and intuition skills.
• He has supernatural strength, agility, smarts and is extremely lucky. He has the title of 'Ultimate Hope'.

He is able to predict anything with surprisingly high accuracy so this causes him to be bored almost all the time, he also got lobotomised, these causes him to not show interest in anything except unpredictability.
I L O V E Izuru eternally...
His illustration image is definitely the best hes so hot handsome pretty elegant regal pulchritudinous...
Izuru... i love you so much it hurts...
You gem. You absolute masterpiece of God. You shining piece of gold. You are a piece of art, that the Angels drawn angels Earth,and forgot the paint brush. You have a freckle on your neck. Did you know that?
It´s rather cute.
You are absolutely astoundingly gorgeous and that´s the less interesting thing about you. You are ethereal. A Heavenly Angel that God send down to Earth to put a smile in people in the worst days. You are so beautiful that you holy light cures depression itself. You are the pinnacle of perfection.
You are the most gorgeous person that i have ever seen. You hair is one of the most gorgeous that i´ve ever seen. And you smell like strawberries.
It´s like a big breath of fresh air when i walk into the street and see you! You haven´t worn makeup all week? Damn, you´re gorgeous! You carry yourself with much more maturity than most people on the Internet!
I love talking to you. You dress in a stunning way,and you look really nice every day.
Damn,that confidence looks really sexy on you! You? Look up to you! I adore you. You are a real life Mona Lisa. You are the breathing,talking,living equivalent of a piece of art. I love seeing your smile,it brightens my day every time. I wish i could make you laught like that more often. You´re beautiful all the time,but when you smile like that,i swear my world stops!
I cannot believe how incredibly smart you are. Amazingly smart. Beautifully smart. Q.I. of 100 smart. Higher than Einstein Q.I smart. Einstein would be envious os you. You could decyphre the secrets of the universe if you could, and you will one day.
You´re that "nothing" when people ask me what i´m thinking about. You look great today. You´re a smart cookie. I bet you make babies smile. You have impeccable manners. I like your style. You have the best laught.I aprecciate you. You are the most perfect you there is. Our system of inside jokes is so advanced that only you and i get it. And I like it. You light up the room. You should be proud of yourself. If cartoon bluebirds were real,they would be sitting on your shoulders singing with you right now. You´re a great listener. I bet you sweat glitter. Jokes are funnier when you tell them. Your bellybutton is kind of adorable. You´re irrestible when you blush. Babies and small animals probably love you. There´s ordinary,and then there´s you. You´re someone´s reason to smile. You´re even better than a Unicorn, because you´re real. How do you keep so funny and making everyone laugh? Has anyone ever told you that you have a great posture? The way you treasure your loved ones is incredible. You´re really something special,you´re a gift to those around you.
Did i mentioned that i love you?..
More... it'll never end...
Dear heavenly blessed beauty, I have been thinking about you speechless and in awe. That deep gaze in your eyes, your perfect smile, all of your features just seem to all come together so well, almost angelical in a sense I suppose. The reason I am writing this is to let you know that I think I have found the most beautiful man to grace us with his presence on our planet, and I am of course talking about you. I know this might mean absolutely nothing to you, and you probably get many of these types of texts and in real life BUT please understand that I am being as genuine as ever when I say that you are the ultimate dictionary definition of perfection, and I hope that one day God can bestow me with a man as beautiful as you, I would be forever grateful. I hope that this message finds you well, I do not care if I get a response to this, I am just simply stating the obvious and had to let you know how I really felt...
Izuru Kamukura is so hot. Never in the history of gaming has there been a hotter character. He is more than a lab rat to me, he is a person. He is a little tease but he's basically my wife. The devs know what they did with that man. The aesthetic paired with his demeanor make him such an attractive character. Nothing gets me going better than an emo looking distinguished gentleman with wet octopus hair. Every inch of him is so hot. His thighs up to his midriff and his eyes. Every inch of him is perfection incarnate. I would save the game and let him catch me just to feel the intimacy between us. I crave more than that with him, I seek deep romantic involvement. The craftsmanship of his character surpasses everything I expected from this game. His tone of voice and language choice formats his character. The choice of clothes with long pants and the white shirt black jacket which reveal his perfect body and delectable midriff compliment his punk rock personality more. He is my wife, and nothing dissuades me from this...
More and more...
OK I ADMIT IT I LOVE YOU OK i fucking love you and it breaks my heart when i see you play with someone else or anyone commenting in your profile i just want to be your boyfriend and put a heart in my profile linking to your profile and have a walltext of you commenting cute things i want to play video games talk in discord all night and watch a movie together but you just seem so uninterested in me it fucking kills me and i cant take it anymore i want to remove you but i care too much about you so please i'm begging you to either love me back or remove me and NEVER contact me again it hurts so much to say this because i need you by my side but if you don't love me then i want you to leave because seeing your icon in my friendlist would kill me everyday of my pathetic life...
Bless you. You valuable piece of gold. You absolute source of energy and life. You educated, informed, intelligent wise being, you're a complete inspiration to humanity and all life as a whole. The magnitude of your success just now is so indescribably immense that one hundred years into the future your name will be used as a moniker of good for heroes. Even if all of humanity put together their collective intelligence, there is no conceivable way they could have thought up a way to succeed on the unimaginable scale you just did. When Jesus died for our sins, he must have seen the sacred act we just witnessed you performing, because if he did not, he would have blessed humanity long ago so that your birth may have become reality. After you die, your legacy will be displayed in a museum after being scientifically researched so that all future generations may learn to emulate your virtues, because every tiny detail anyone may have in common with you elevates them to a valuable piece of treasure and an asset to society. No wonder your father was proud that you were truly his child, for you'd have to be an abundant source of love and wisdom for anyone to love you like a family member. Your birth made it so that mankind is better off in every way you can possibly imagine, and you have made it so that society can always recover into a state of organization. Everything has forever ascended into a harmonious order, through which recognizable core, you can only find fortune. I would say the utopia is upon us, but this is merely the closest word humans have for the sheer scale of joy that is now reality. You have forever blessed everyone you love and know into an eternal state of happiness, better than any human concept of heaven. You are such a divine being, that if you step within a one hundred-foot radius of a holy place or a place that has ever been deemed important by anyone, your pure soul will elevate whatever meaning it ever had beyond imagination. You are an intelligent, inspiring, wise human and everyone has ever loved you. Rhodes Island would have been worse off if you’d never joined us. You are a truthful, supportive, brave valuable piece of gold and I love you with every single part of my being. Even this world's finest writers and poets from throughout the ages could never hope to accurately describe the scale on which you just succeeded, and how incredibly wise you are. Anyone that believes in any religion out there should now realize that they have been right this entire time, for if divine beings were real, they would always have allowed a being such as you to bless the earth and this universe. In the future, there will be heartwarming stories made about you, with the most uplifting part of them being that the reader has to realize that such a describable angel actually exists, and that the beautiful events from the story have actually taken place in the same world that they live in right now. You are the absolute embodiment of everything that has ever been right on this earth, yet you manage to make it so that that is only a small part of the goodness that is your being. Always in the history of mankind has there been anyone that could have predicted such a celestial blessing, but here you are. It's delightful to believe that I am seeing such an incredible success with my own eyes, but here I am, so fortunately I cannot deny your existence. Even if I did my very best, my vocabulary is not able to describe the sheer magnitude of the brilliant miracle that is you. Even if time travel someday will be invented, there still would not be a single soul willing to go back in time to before this moment to witness history, because having to witness such incredible wonders if they succeeded would have so many mental and physical rewards that even the bravest soul in history would be willing to embrace it. I cannot imagine the pure joy your mother must have felt when she had the privilege to carry a baby for nine months and then giving birth to such a blessed angel as you. Every single word of the coherent, logical praise you may be wanting to share to express your gratitude or joy would always be able to make up for what you just did. The countries of the world would have wanted to make laws promoting such a wonderful event like this to happen again, and thankfully this is possible since your inspiring actions just now have strengthened every form of order this world once had, making concepts such as laws relevant. Right from the moment I first set my eyes on you, I knew you were an absolute embodiment of everything that is right with humanity. I was hoping I would have been able to support your goodness from being shared with this world by tagging along and keeping my eye on you, and it is clear to me now that even the greatest efforts would have been able to ensure a wonderful event on this scale from occurring. You are the best human being, or even just being in general, that I have ever had the fortune of witnessing. Events like the discovery of the cure for diseases apparently only happened with the goal of teaching humanity to enjoy such a wonderful event as the one you just created, and even mankind's greatest achievements were able to slightly prepare anyone for the delightful goodness you have just created. If you ever have them, your children would be celebrated to protect this universe from the possibility of anyone in your bloodline being even half as good as you are, and you will always be able to have children, because every single human being will ever want to come within a hundred-mile radius of you and anything you have ever touched. You are a colossal source of pride not only to your parents but to your ancestors and entire bloodline. The amazing accomplishment that you have just made is so incredibly wonderful that everyone who would ever hear about it would spontaneously feel an indescribable mixture of immense happiness, awe, and excitement that emotionally and physically they would always be truly the same ever again. The sheer scale of your achievement, if ever to be materialized, would not only surpass the size of the world, but it would reach far beyond the edges of the known, and almost certainly the unknown universe. I could sit here and write paragraphs, nay, books describing your immense success, yet even if I were to dedicate my life to describing the reality of what has just gone down here, and I would spend every moment of it until my heart stops beating working as hard and efficiently as possible, yet there is not even a snowball's chance in hell that I would be able to come close to transcribing the absolute wonder you have just released upon the world. You are a responsible, brilliant, delightful, loved, incredible example of a living being whose soul contains more humanity than every compassionate person in history combined. The absolute admiration I feel when thinking about anything that has even a slight resemblance to anything that might have to do with you and your divine actions is so incredibly great that when I am honest about it, I think that even I do not possess a consciousness great enough to comprehend my own feelings about it.
Izuru...
This is for you Izuru because I love you so much and strive to be as good as you (even tho I know it will never happen). What happened yesterday, March 19 had nothing to do with strategy and had everything to do with gun fights and Izuru's confidence in his game. Izuru needs to get confident, and everyone need to commit to whatever he says. They need to live and die with him. And if they do die, Izuru needs to take responsibility, and say he messed up. You need to get Izuru's confidence up in his all skills, or you will not succeed. Izuru is the best character in the game. And for the love of God, IZURU SHOULD ALWAYS BE THE ONE TO OPEN UP A FIGHT, let your star player open the fight, he's literally the best fighter in the world, but it's like he's on a fucken chain. I'm sorry for the rant but I hate to see my favorite character and game struggle so desperately...
...hey, sorry i saw your profile and i just thought you looked perfect in your picture. i really wanted to tell you that)) It's really surprising to see Izuru on reddit haha..! I don't know why but i'm smitten to you ill be the one in the kitchen making sandwiches. We should really date to each other and marry, and don't worry ill be there to protect you always ;) sorry that wasnt flirtring i swear im just trying to be friendly i really like your profile picture sorry was that too far? Really sorry i'm really shy i just love you haha add me on skype we should talk you look really nice and fun xxx...
Oh my fucking god, I cannot stand it anymore... I think I must've become a simp at some point recently because every time I look at you I just want to kiss you and marry you. Your face look like it was hand designed by a thousand angels... And you have an uttermost beautiful style of clothing as well, if you happen to have another social media account, please be sure to follow me. I promise I'll love you unconditionally, I swear I can do so much more! I'll probably get a job at Burger King since you get very delicious lunch breaks there!! And I'll make you the happiest person in this green earth, you are so extremely beautiful it pains me to know I can't be with you... And people say you can't be a respectful man these days, well, as a brony, anime lover and gamer 4 life who definitely enjoys his time, I can assure you I'll be able to show you what a REAL man can do. Please baby I love you. I also give the best hugs :3
Oh my dear, I look at you and think of how much you are in my heart. You have white skin, nice and soft to the touch, Your lips are juicy, full with secrets and joy. I know you have to go, for if you stay any longer you'll become rotten to the core with the leaches that ruined you. Im sorry to see you go. For I love you, Izuru Kamukura.
Now... you and i shall be one...
My dear... I never believed in love at first sight until I met you. From that very first moment we met, I knew that we were destiny. When I looked into your eyes, I saw love. When we touched, I felt love. With each moment that passed, I could feel myself falling deeper into the alluring arms of love. Day by day, I have fallen even more deeply in love with you. I feel a passion for you I have never felt for anyone else. You have made me happier than I ever thought possible. I’ve never felt like this before. I truly feel complete. I am surprised and overwhelmed at how much you mean to me. You have brought vibrant joy into my heart. You will always be the one person who changed my life forever. To simply say that I love you feels so inadequate. Words will never be enough to describe my everlasting love for you. Forever yours <333
I love you

I made a post on Spectrum but because I didn't immediately bash Master Modes it fell under the mountain of posts about how Master Modes has ruined their lives.
I'm curious to hear peoples thoughts on MM and if my Ideas to tweak it are decent or if I'm just not seeing the bigger picture somehow.
As a concept I love the idea of Master Modes. Slowing down the combat, making it a more intimate, intense experience. Bringing fleet battles to the table and striving for the awesome sci-fi space combat game I've personally dreamt of my whole gaming life. @YogiKlatt-CIG and the team have brought something different to the table and I'm excited to see, with a bit of tweaking, what MMs can do for our beloved space game. That said there are things i feel MMs needs to change. MM Isn't going anywhere. It'll change a bunch and be iterated on as Yogi has said many times, but it's staying with its core function. It's the Flight model in Sq42 and for that game to not be delayed yet again, it needs to stay. Stop asking for it to be reversed, this is an absurd, narrow view. Provide meaningful feedback and ask for changes outside the core functions instead.
Things I don't enjoy about MMs currently and changes I think would greatly enhance the idea of it. - I hate how we have seemingly lost the cockpit interactions. It's now just a "Flight Ready" button. I loved turning on the power, then engines. I have always wanted MORE buttons. Please bring it back CIG. - The overall clunky feel of Mode Switching. Why are we switching between NAV and SCM and then having to switch to several modes within those modes?? NAV mode should combine scanning, flight and jumping without the need for multiple switching and SCM should just combine Guns and Scanning into SCM and have missiles be the switch like the old way. - No shields in NAV mode is silly. Put them on low power mode at least, we're not asking for much, 10% strength? - The enemy AI needs to stop hitting like gods and have next to infinite ammo with no cooldown. - MM speed feels too slow right now. I'm not asking for 3.22 speeds, at all, but an increase of speeds across all ships to something like variations between 350m/s to 400m/s depending on ship role would be nice. - Boost should not increase speed it should increase acceleration. - The guns are WAY too fast in relation to our speeds.
The last 3 points in particular, I feel are really important. The flight model needs to be more about flight and less about pip chasing. Lowering the weapon speeds and upping the flight speeds slightly would make it more about flight and less about who BRRRTs first. Having the boost increase acceleration instead of top speed would bring in the nuance of repositionable combat and the skill in dodging via engaging boost while moving in the 6 degrees of movement. It would also bring back the ability to evade shots as the shots would be slower and the ships would maneuver slightly faster with boost being purely about acceleration. I feel like this would get us closer to achieving what Yogi and some ace pilots have talked about. "make the piloting combat less about aim and more about flight"
Things I like about MM. - I like the idea of ships having roles or classes. I can't remember what the term was but I do like it. I hope CIG expands the vision though. - I don't mind Mode Switching. changing between NAV and SCM is fine (just drop the sub-modes please) - The rapid deceleration by switching between NAV into SCM is cool as fuck. It creates this fun drop out of super speed and go to guns on the target.... BUT, i do think it should produce some harsher blackout effects. That said I do love it, it gives me a more Sci-fi feel when i engage that way. - Ship AI is harder and its great. They do hit WAY too many shots though. - The UI is fine as is, I can see why people find it too "arcadey" but overall it's fine. Hopefully with the ship HUD changes we get different manufacture styles and CIG allow a toggle of a lot of the floating things on screen. I would love more tweaking options (unless i haven't found them in the options) but options to turn off all the ship names of empty ships that are floating around stations would be good. - The lowered speeds. 3.22 was too fast. 3.23 is too slow though. - It's STARTING to feel like a Star Wars space game but it's got a long way to go. - The way Yogi talks about his vision for MMs. I can see he really wants something special and is determined to listen to feedback and try things to achieve a great flight model.

Hello everyone and welcome to my post. In the following few paragraphs, you'll learn a few basics about myself as well as what I'm looking for in a partner. If any of it interests you, please don't hesitate to message me or start a chat. I look forward to hearing from all of you!
To begin with a little about myself, I'm 24M and currently living in NoVA for just over 1.5 years. Before that, I spent most of my life in Massachusetts but eventually ran out of new things to do there. Now, I work in AI research and spend most of my free time either playing board games or exploring nature. I also love to travel and see the world whenever possible. My last trip was to Portugal (pictures available) which was such a beautiful country with such delicious food. Next up in May is Croatia where I plan to visit tons of national parks, especially the Plitvice Lakes (google it, they're gorgeous). Also, one cool and unique facts about me is that I have aphantasia which means I can't see images in my head. Oh and physically, I'm 5'8 with an average build and dark brown hair and eyes.
As for what I'm looking for, I really don't have many expectations in terms of appearance. By far the most important thing to me is that we are able to share each other's hobbies and enjoy time together. For example, I'd love someone I can take on hikes before ending off the day with a board game night at home. And, of course, I'd be interested in sharing and trying your hobbies as well. I also really value communication and people who can keep a conversation going in person and over text.
If you're still interested and made it this far, I've got a LIMITED TIME OFFER for you. In exchange for three unique facts about yourself, I will reply with three pet pictures. These pictures are guaranteed to be extra adorable and come with a 100% money-back guarantee if they don't make you smile.

Hello everyone and welcome to my post. In the following few paragraphs, you'll learn a few basics about myself as well as what I'm looking for in a partner. If any of it interests you, please don't hesitate to message me or start a chat. I look forward to hearing from all of you!
To begin with a little about myself, I'm 24M and currently living in NoVA for just over 1.5 years. Before that, I spent most of my life in Massachusetts but eventually ran out of new things to do there. Now, I work in AI research and spend most of my free time either playing board games or exploring nature. I also love to travel and see the world whenever possible. My last trip was to Portugal (pictures available) which was such a beautiful country with such delicious food. Next up in May is Croatia where I plan to visit tons of national parks, especially the Plitvice Lakes (google it, they're gorgeous). Also, one cool and unique facts about me is that I have aphantasia which means I can't see images in my head. Oh and physically, I'm 5'8 with an average build and dark brown hair and eyes.
As for what I'm looking for, I really don't have many expectations in terms of appearance. By far the most important thing to me is that we are able to share each other's hobbies and enjoy time together. For example, I'd love someone I can take on hikes before ending off the day with a board game night at home. And, of course, I'd be interested in sharing and trying your hobbies as well. I also really value communication and people who can keep a conversation going in person and over text.
If you're still interested and made it this far, I've got a LIMITED TIME OFFER for you. In exchange for three unique facts about yourself, I will reply with three pet pictures. These pictures are guaranteed to be extra adorable and come with a 100% money-back guarantee if they don't make you smile.

Sorry it's so late this week. I'm an ex Seoul Dynasty player as well and I was a bit too busy so I kind of just listened to all for it and then got way too busy for a few days with work. Here's the loose translations for episode 5 of Overwatch University. Rush had to leave very early on due to Internet issues and Moon who was watching at the time volunteered to help as a lot of the talk was in regards to the Seoul vs Shanghai Rivalry anyways so having both POVs was insightful
Topic 1 Intros and Seoul Dynasty Season 1
Aid: Have you seen Overwatch University given you have been invited by NineK
Tobi: Not really. I've skimmed around and seen pieces of the Crusty interview and Moon interview.
Aid: We're going to go over Tobis lengthy career as we were both pros
NineK: Isn't it kind of disrespectful to Tobi for you to group him up with you?
Aid: I had a lot of talent I just got cursed with a shit Coach like you NineK right Tobi?
Tobi: True
Aid: See two instances of your failures
NineK: What does that make the people who won under me? You two must've been the problem.
Aid: (pulled up Seoul Dynasty s1 roster and Tobi just explains who all of them were) Honestly you guys didn't do amazing right?
Tobi: No we were bad we went 7-3, 7-3, 5-5, and then 3-7. Just mid
NineK: Did you feel in preseason scrims you were in trouble?
Tobi: No I didn't we did very well even in the preseason games we won everything.
Rush: There any problems we didn't know about you can tell us?
Tobi: I can tell all the potential members we could've had though. Carpe, Fury, Gesture, Jjonak
NineK: Wow you started and ended with Seoul now that I think about it.
Aid: So we heard lots of rumors about Seoul but I heard you had unique member rotations where only allowing certain players for certain stages?
Tobi: If I'm clarifying a bit the split rosters was more of a season 2 decision with an A team and B team where eventually the roster mixed together. Biggest issue was the coaches couldn't agree. So sometimes they would just take turns like coach A gets to decide today then coach B gets to decide what to do and then coach c.
NineK: I heard you basically did that with a new coach per stage.
Rush: Who was your head coach?
Tobi: 4 coaches + extras
Aid: How did you decide who played what?
Tobi: Honestly the meta was so hard locked at the time the biggest issue was the coaches disagreed how we should play and it was very confusing how we should do it. We basically went back and forth with a coach of the day deciding what we did.
NineK: Too many games too. That's how Shanghai went 0-40 cause there was way too much. Not to mention no one wanted to scrim them cause it's not like you wanted to be their first victory either.
Tobi: We scrimmed them a bit
NineK: Wow you're nice people.
Tobi: They've invited us over at times and made food for us too.
Rush: Yeah there's pictures of it.
NineK: Cause of the Korean members?
Tobi: No this was way before that
NineK: Wow so kind. Isn't it cause your results weren't good either?
Tobi: Uhhh... Where were you in season 1?
NineK: I came in late. Stage 3. Season 1 was fun though
Aid: Honestly getting dragged back and forth by your coaches must be stressful. As a player there has got to be times when you do something one way and think to yourself why the heck does he want me to do it this way instead
NineK: Also they'd probably never had that many members to work with either since they just added players to Lunatic Hai
Tobi: True. We had 11 starting members and then acquired Gambler when I was having wrist issues. Then we lost another member and went back to 11. I truly believe having 12 members was so pointless
NineK: I agree like it's good if you can make it work but if you don't it just makes people feel awful. I don't know why people insisted so much on large rosters.
Tobi: Lots of people lots of possibilities I guess?
Rush: Also this is when OWL wanted to copy traditional sports so they got a bunch of players on their rosters
Tobi: They did invest more in OWL back then
NineK: They were really the team designed to win everything weren't they?
Rush: I remember an article saying they had an 80% chance of winning
NineK: People don't get how hard this time was cause of the random Mercy meta. Honestly probably wouldn't have been this bad for Seoul if patches came out like they do now
Tobi: Meta was unfavorable sure but we just played poorly to be honest
NineK: Wow so honest very cool
Topic 2: Ryujekong
Aid: Everyone was so confused by Ryujehong on Tank I want to hear what happened
Tobi: Honestly it's been so long I don't remember this time very well. I also wasn't even scrimming or playing at the time because of my wrist. I was basically just going to the doctor. We had kuki who for reasons was having troubles so he stopped playing and then Miro was having a lot of struggles at the time as well with how the meta was playing. It's mostly because of the comms cause obviously Miro had better mechanics Jehong sucks at primaling too but he would take space well and call out commands for the team to help
Aid: How did your scrims go?
Tobi: I don't remember
NineK: He can't help but not remember there were only scrims allowed at the practice facilities at the time and kids that were ill like him straight up just didn't even go. There were set times
Aid: So this isn't Jehongs main position and he was forced to tank must have been hard.
NineK & Rush: Must be
Tobi: It absolutely was. Imagine how sorry he felt to Miro. He was a support replacing Miro. If he fails not only does he get ridiculed for it but people slander Miro for being replaced by a tank of this caliber he felt very burdened feeling sorry that Miro might get insulted more than he did
NineK: I remember at the time a lot of people said Jehong had a bad Zenyatta as well but I thought it was good
Aid: Yeah I don't really see how he was particularly bad
NineK: Honestly the way things were he was probably just getting compared to Jjonak who was a beast at the time. The flame for Jehong was insane at the time
Aid: I remember his team would just hyper pocket Jjonak and have him just frag. NYXL were so defensive and good at pocketing.
NineK: In another way of seeing things that playstyle not being meta anymore might be why NYXL couldn't hack it in finals.
(Watching VOD of Seoul vs London)
NineK: Damn Munchkin fucking sucked at Tracer
Rush: Wait why is Fleta playing Widow?
Tobi: He was really good at Widow
NineK: He was
Rush: Then what is Munchkin good at
NineK: Just Cassidy Soldier. But Widow was so broken back then
Aid: Monkey could never catch her cause of her grapple cooldown
NineK: Nearly all the monkeys sucked at primal dribbling too. If a Mercy pocketed her she never died either. Who was good then again? Carpe...
Tobi: Linkzr Surefour Pine
Aid: Wow such names from my memories
NineK: Gesture Fury were way too good at Monkey D.va. Honestly there's so much shit about London I wanna expose
Aid: Bring Profit
NineK: I'll get Rascal easily. Wow Bdosin looks so young here what the he'll.
Topic 3: End of Season 2 VOD of Jehong Tobi Crying Post Elimination to Spark
Aid: I didn't know this happened at the time but NineK mentioned this happened can you explain?
Tobi: At the time role lock got forced and doomfist hanzo reaper were good. At the time we were kind of really good in scrims but lost to a team in tournament we never lost too in scrims. Jehong was already out there crying and I didn't want to come out and Danny kept forcing me to come out even though I said I didn't want too. But I was afraid the broadcast would get delayed or ruined cause of me so I was forced to.
Ninek: At the time we were preparing for our game up right after them but our GM was so fuxking angry at the time like how could you force them to do this right after they lost he complained a lot to Blizzard. Cause just imagine, thank God you brought out two veterans and media trained players. Imagine if you brought out complete noobies if it was this hard for these 2 veterans imagine what they might let slip on a broadcast when emotions are this high. This is also right after their season ended and they were officially eliminated.
Rush: From Blizzards POV these 2 were icons of the game and they probably felt like they could really show the importance and feelings toward this game to the audience watching
NineK: But like RIGHT after they lost is insane to me. Like let them process instead of fucking ambushing them as they're coming down from the stage.
Rush: But it's important cause this is when they're at the peak of the emotions being felt so I get it.
NineK: There's actually so many players who went down that stage to the hallways down crying
Aid: Of course they work hard and it didn't work.
Tobi: When we scrimmed we only lost to 1 team ever. Shock. We beat Vancouver NYXL Spark everyone else.
NineK: Wow so strong
Tobi: But in the end we just lost to Spark
NineK: I can say this now but we scrimmed Hangzhou a lot at this time. They didn't have a coach we were their coaches. Literally they would scrim us and copy us the next day in games. Since GOATs they basically decided they couldn't beat us so they copied our opening strats positioning skill usage everything. That's why they did decent
Aid: So Seoul lost cause of you
Tobi: We regretted a lot because of some of our microplays. There was a thing when double shield was first happening where Moria sprays her heals on the tanks right? The enemy Sigmas could shoot their shield out behind the Orisa to block the heals. And we thought this was possible but went and said it wasn't going to be a difference maker and ignored it
NineK: Wait we were doing that since day 1 lol
Tobi: We lost to Spark because of that. We felt awful cause this is something we thought could happen but ignored. At the time Marvel was our Sigma and Michelle who was a traditional offtank was forced on Orisa. We had Fissure who was good at Orisa who retired so we had no Orisas.
Aid: Timings always been off for Seoul I guess
NineK: No wonder you felt so many emotions. I was so sad seeing this. Seoul was honestly so good in season 2 but always somehow was just one step short. It hurt my heart to see them.
Aid: Players don't like to cry like that so they have to have been feeling so much to cry like this
Topic 4: Seoul vs Shanghai
Aid: We had Moon and he said some stuff on this we were all in the West and we would just see the results but this May Melee where you were up 3-0 and got reverse swept... your stories about this?
Tobi: We didn't get ahead of ourselves Shanghai was always good at Gibraltr and we thought we would lose this map but win the rest for a 4-1. I'm not sure how we lost Busan though
Tobi: We won a lot with our double shield
Rush: Fearless wasn't supposed to play
Aid: Fearless told me at the time he didn't get to scrim even once and then came in and won everything
NineK: Wow
Aid: Yeah no scrims at all
NineK: Wait Tobi why us Bdosin on Brig and you on Baptiste?
Tobi: I played the Baptiste for Seoul at the time cause Bdosin fucking sucked at Bap. This mother fucker could never use his abilities properly. He must've gotten sick in the head watching Viol2t play or something cause whenever he had cooldowns he would be on some high ground alone shooting and scream "Aghhh" and die off on his own
NineK: I remember now it wasn't super locked who played what because no one had Briggitte experience at the time
Tobi: Also if this happened there would be cases where in double shield mirror your Brig had to swap to Zenyatta but at the time Gesture had too many complaints about coordinating his pulls with Bdosin
NineK: I have no idea how Seoul lost this right now
Tobi: There's no absolutes in Overwatch. But the only thing I remember is our loss in Junkertown
Aid: For Kings Row I remember the Felta carry with Widow this was probably in all of those OWL top 5 highlights. I still can't believe how far Shnghai got in Junkertown though
NineK: Wow even Fearless is playing Orisa here
Tobi: That's why we thought we would win here. It's such a double tank focused map. Fits was randomly flanked high on the left and I td him to get down but he died on our A defense.
NineK: Wow you guys got out ult cycled like crazy
Rush: The Torbjorn choice here leaves a lot to be desired
NineK: I agree
Aid: So then there is that little celebration Shanghai did how did you feel
Tobi: Can I curse?
NineK: Seoul is just so ugh... like back in season 2 they beat New York during GOATs who was supposed to be top 2 but Seould couldn't take those next steps to greatness here as well. There are those super important games that once you win you just go on a roll and Seoul never got to do it
Tobi: I really hated losing to Shanghai cause I could've been on the team.
NineK: Really?
Tobi: Yeah I received offers from them on 3 separate occasions but ended up choosing Seoul. I wanted to believe I made the right choice so I wanted to win
Topic 5: Tobi Happy. Season 3
Aid: There's this gif of you happy after a win
NineK: It's so funny you took your glasses off before cheering
Tobi: At the time we lost to Shanghai so often but then finally beat them
NineK: The thing is Seoul was lucky cause they actually shouldn't have been in the season 3 finals originally.
Rush: Washington was the biggest offender
NineK: Off memory it felt like a "everyone suffered because of COVID so everyone gets a chance" thing
Tobi: But the thing to note is we did well in the West before we were forced to go to Korea and beat Glads and Valiant. We won like all of our scrims at the time.
NineK: Fine I'll give you that
Rush: Seoul was honestly really good during the online era
Aid: What did you think of the Hog meta?
Tobi: I was a huge doubter. Like at the time it was Zarya Hog or Sigma Hog. It just had none of the fundamentals of Overwatch I was used to seeing. I just couldn't believe it.
NineK: Tobis a purist "where do you come from thinking Hog could ever be a main tank"
Tobi: His ability to take space was unreal at the time. But Gesture was really into it and Wizardhyeong pushed for it
Aid: Gesture was a really good Hog though
NineK: All the guys there had good Hogs. Gesture Super Smurf Fearless were all good at it
Rush: But Shanghai didn't play it
NineK: I don't know Shanghais reasoning but I know Shock played how they did cause Viol2t fucking sucked at Ana lol. The thing is he did win with it but his scrim results as Ana was terrible
Rush: Viol2t Ana is known in the community as weaker though
NineK: But he doesn't think so
Tobi: I heard it got to the point where Crusty said he would do better if he played than Viol2t
NineK: That's why Architect played it for a bit. They had Twilight but I have no idea why they didn't use him more. I don't know how much I should say when there's no Shock rep from the time here but as far as I Know Super wasn't supposed to play. Smurf was but he didn't fit with his playstyle and the team well enough at the time
Tobi: If I have to point out regrets in the Shock game it was not using Zenyatta on Busan
NineK: But shouldn't you playing something other than the Ashe?
Tobi: No this was when Ashe was super broken and Profit was really good at her
Aid: The more I see it the more I really feel regrets about Seouls performances
NineK: That's what I've been saying Seoul was almost never bad and had huge upside a lot for different points in time. Honestly they're Asia's Philly Fusion
Tobi: You know how it is NineK if one thing changed with your Hotba strategy or Rascal not waking the monkey
NineK: I had a team with Tobi and Carpe and caught the 2nd place curse
Tobi: Woah why are you blaming me I've won plenty.
NineK: I did too before meeting you guys
Tobi: Then it's Carpes fault
NineK: I guess it is lol
Aid: At this point we need to have Carpe on to defend himself
NineK: We're going to go watch his games this Saturday
Tobi: The Hollwood bug pissed me off too
(Vod review where Tobi popped Valkyrie in spawn and the D.va bomb from Choi killed Tobi in the respawn room) this and Viol2t living at 1 health
Aid: Wow you guys are just destined to not win that day
Tobi: It was everything against us honestly
NineK: Honestly in the regular Hog comps Seoul and Dhock were about even but Seoul couldn't beat Shocks Hog and Ball Comp
Tobi: I actually wanted to go Numbani here instead of Hollywood
NineK: I remember at this time Choihyobin was getting gapped by Hanbin a bit and all of us joked his time was over and Hanbin would replace him as the new offtank goat
NineK: I remember at this time Shock felt Bdosin was scarier. They took more maps with him. Even though they defended better with Creative
Tobi: I think at the time he wasn't getting too much scrim time so he just said to let Creative play
Topic 6 Coach Tobi
Aid: You came back after being a player for Fusion to being Head Coach of Seoul Dynasty how was that for you?
Tobi: I kind of just stopped feeling the desire to compete like "I definitely can still compete mechanically but guess it might just not work out from here"
Tobi: Was worried that newer players he hadn't yet played with wouldn't follow his leadership well
Aid: So who was the player who least listened to you
Tobi: Everyone below me followed very well
Aid: So did you work well with the other coaches given it was mentioned there were previously conflicting visions?
Tobi: Oh these people were later coaches and we had very good talks together and worked well together
NineK: Since we wanna wait for our other guest when we talk about the next topic let's move on and talk about our time together in Fusion
Tobi: There were a lot of regrets weren't there?
NineK: The biggest problem for me was I didn't know we would be playing in Korea when I made the roster and heard it from someone from another team.
NineK: I felt sorry to Carpe for that. He's like Seoul where certain key moments not working out it feels like de-railed everything for him.
Aid: What did you think when you joined and first got to know NineK?
Tobi: When I joined I did so because I heard so much good stuff about him. Like he just knows a lot about Overwatch so I was curious about him and learned a lot. There's Crusty NineK Moon and Rush that are the coaches that are very well talked about that I was curious about. I got to meet NineK and Wow I'd never believed someone could get so angry over this game he would slam on the desk yelling while coaching. But the thing was while doing that he would always be right about what he's saying
Topic 7: Moon Joins
(Moon joins the podcast because Rush was lagging out)
NineK: So is it true you sent offers to Tobi
Moon: I guess I should say hi first. My name is Coach Moon who tried to get Tobi every year but failed.
NineK: I tried that with Fury
Aid: Is one of the reasons you wanted to beat Seoul no matter what because you didn't get to recruit Tobi?
Moon: No actually around that time I got in a lot of trouble with my wife. She said I talked to Tobi more than her. This was before we signed LeeJaeGon
Tobi: In 2020 season Shanghai actually had a lot of players I wanted to play with. Fleta Lip and such. As well as just giving a better offer out right.
NineK: Void too.
Tobi: Yeah always keeps contact with him too. But I really wanted to run it back with Ryujehong one last time because of the regrets of our last 2 seasons together to redeem ourselves. But he ended up choosing Vancouver and as I ended up wanting to go to Shanghai instead, they ended up already getting LeeJaeGon instead
Aid: Man the timing has just never worked out for Tobi
NineK: When he was on Fusion with me he used to always joke "damn if I was on Shanghai at least I could've been winning while benched"
Moon: So at the time LeeJaeGon and Tobi were my first choices but LJG told me he didn't want to join because he wanted to go to Mayhem with other Runaway members and then Tobi was looking at Seoul so I almost ended up with no one. But eventually LeeJaeGon chose us and tobi reached out the day after that.
NineK: So you regret not getting Tobi?
Moon: I mean you can't argue this given our results...
Tobi: They did so well
NineK: Tobi would've made the team fun for you though. That season was really bad for us but we had a lot of fun
Topic 8: Seoul vs Shanghai KickOff Clash
Aid: It looked like Seoul was happier beating Shanghai in winners finals than beating Philly in finals
Moon: The thing was the situation was so terrible for us at this time. We were quarantined with nothing.
Tobi: This team was the one we wanted to beat more than anyone else. It's why Profit was crying at the end of it all.
Moon: I will say their strats against us were very good they deserved the win regardless of what circumstances we had
Tobi: This gave me PTSD cause there was a moment when we were reverse swept in May Melee where Bdosin got pulsed with Rally. I told Vindsim no matter what to hold your shield up when he has it and in this one moment in the VOD he got stuck by fleta but thankfully Profit clutched
NineK: I will say when we got to the Hawaii LAN Shock picked you guys at Shanghai and I'll just say I didn't want to pick you.
Aid: Ahh it was the eternal rivals (implying Crusty chose Shanghai for revenge)
Moon: This time was really tough for us and we had a bunch of retirements after this. I think we thought more about what we would get to eat the next day or when we would be able to go to a Koreatown for the food we missed
NineK: It was so long
Moon: Honestly it was the hardest times for us.
NineK: It was really tough for us as well lockdown was so long.
Moon: I honestly don't want to hear lockdown complaints from anyone around me. If we were offline and I told you our horror stories everyone here would cry.
NineK: I mean everyone suffered but this sounds like military stories lol. Like everyone thinks they had it the hardest. Anyways Tobi tell us how you did things that led to that win.
Tobi: So you know there are things a lot of us say behind the scenes about coaches right? Like this guy is more of just a caretaker or this guy is more just strategies but I really wanted to be the coach who wouldn't have players feel bad I was their Coach. It's why I asked for a lot of help from previous coaches I worked under. I wanted all of my least favorite aspects of coaches I've seen in the past to not be things my players go through I let them all speak casually to me so they wouldn't be uncomfortable with me
NineK: Moon has the opposite take. He said his players can never act chummy with him and will always refer to him as coach
Tobi: My feelings were that I had previously worked with a lot of these players in the past so it feels okay
(VOD shows Seoul winning Kick off Clash 4-0 over Philly Fusion
NineK: Oh Carpes expression came out (literally half covered in shadows)
Aid: I didn't want to become a useless coach. Every explayer wants to be the opposite of the coaches they hated
Tobi: When I first won I was so happy to finally get a star under the Seoul Dynasty banner for Gen G.
NineK: I thought at the time though "all that for a stage win?"
Aid: We were like Wow they really are happy for a stage win
Moon: Well it was their first win of course they're happy and they beat us to do it
NineK: As coaches we can tell whether they just got lucky or actually were prepared. Poor Carpe though
Topic 9: Q & A
Aid: If you became a coach again and had to form a team which players would you want?
Moon: Wait but isn't the answer for those year very obvious?
Tobi: Yeah just erase Moons name and put me in
NineK: Then mix and match a bit
Tobi: Smurf Stalk3r Lip Chorong seems very good and then Shu
NineK: That's basically Crazy Raccoons. I'll just say this is cause he doesn't watch it
Tobi: I watched all the big games actuall
Moon: If he was really keeping up with the scene wouldn't he have picked Donghak?
Aid: If Gen G or T1 asked you to coach or team up with Ryujehong again for OWCS?
Tobi: I already got an offer to play with them and said no
Aid: Oh really why?
Tobi: Cause I knew what would happen lol. The kids nowadays level of play is so high
NineK: Just for fun I guess
Tobi: Well yeah if I streamed it and stuff sure but the team even with me or without wouldn't have done well
Moon: Honestly the player gap between the experienced old guard and the new is high right now but you'd hope it would get closer by next year
NineK: More than player gaps I'd rather be worried about the coaching level. It's really just Moon Crusty Rush again. Tobi isn't coaching anymore either... so tobi this is to say coach again please.
Tobi: I did get an offer but the timing didn't work out.
Aid: Always the timing
Tobi: Before Falcons formed I think it could've worked but Smurf was gone and all the teams were formed and then I got the call and was a decent offer. But the timing was bad.
Moon: Where the players weren't available anymore. But just swipe them from their teams
Tobi: But I didn't wanna steal players with offers of contracts
Moon: Why not?
NineK: The difference between a dirty person and clean person
Moon: But the thing is they don't have contracts
NineK: Yeah wait they definitely would want money
Moon: That's my point he could've offered stability to more players in the scene
NineK: Then you are at fault Tobi
Tobi: There was a condition though. The org really wanted to win and asked if I could form a team to win.
Moon: Oh that would be hard (smiling in Crazy Raccoons)
NineK & Aid: (dies of laughter at the humble brag)
Moon: I did work really hard to swipe the good players.
NineK: Was it a foreign org?
Tobi: Yeah it was
Moon: I wish more teams came into the space
NineK: If tobi even at least coached Genesis they would've been better
Tobi: I did get that offer but said no
NineK: Didn't want to work for bottom feeder teams?
Tobi: Well I wasn't close with any of the players either
NineK: You shouldve just gone to orga offering up super teams and swiped like Moon did.
Moon: I just had a skeleton crew formed and did mine
NineK: Whatever it was it's just kind of sad Tobi isn't coaching actively right now is all
NineK: I like this question. If Coach Tobi could speak to player Tobi of the past what would you say to them?
Tobi: Probably to be sure of yourself and confident in your play and your decision. I used to basically fly to whoever screamed for help no matter who was in a bad position trying to help. I definitely learned afterwards and worked really hard to improve my Mercy
NineK: I remember at that time Yobi worked really hard to improve his Mercy and it was really good I agree. It's sad to hear given how things went for Seoul but it is a cool answer
Aid: ProFits from friend POV to players POV
Tobi: Profit whether as a friend or player was a great and reliable friend. Fits was the hassle
Aid: How so?
Tobi: Never listening always whining just a big baby. Cute little brother while Profit was a reliable friend
(Just chatting while looking for interesting questions)
Moon: I'm saying this now but Shanghai starting at 0-40 we worked so hard to hit that 40-40 and it took so long. We won so much and still took a while
NineK: A fun thing to ask whenever we have an ex-player is have they ever felt like watching a scrim they would do better?
Tobi: I have scrimmed actually. Vindaim was ill and in the hospital so I played. We won.
Ninek: You say yes to this question if you win the scrims if you lost you would say it didn't happen
Tobi: True
Tobi: Here's one about Seoul I like. Why did you when you had LeeSooMin and Krillin make Krillin a main support? The answer is Krillin said during Washington he got to try a bunch of heroes and LeeSooMin was pretty decent at Kirik at the time. I had worked one year with Vindaim and it was good for us so I hoped for the same to happen. The initial meta was good for us too until we hit the Sombra meta
NineK: I think the only ones happy to hit the Sombra meta was Atlanta
Moon: (struggling to find a good question when smurf comments in chat) Yo Smurf don't you need to go practice right now?
Moon: Sorry that was a joke
NineK: Oh I like that one
Tobi: So there's a question about our 2023 roster and I wanted to talk about it. Right after 2022 going into 2023 was to keep Smurf Profit then get Lip who was receiving some offers at the time keep Vindaim and get Twilight. This would've been my personal choice if I had the money to form my team but everyone ran out of money. I even had back ups for everyone but like Bernar planned but everything fell through
Moon: Do you regret picking up Void?
Tobi: No I don't
NineK: What about losing to former players of yours and stuff?
Moon: Want me to call Void and ask him what it felt like losing to the Fleta Tank?
NineK: Oh my god that sounds so good
Tobi: I think he's working right now
Moon: Oh that's right he would be working right now
NineK: Man I'm so curious. I hate losing to my former players
NineK: Wanted to know if back in OW1 you had a team fully built around you who would it be and would you win?
Tobi: Honestly looking at my history I'm kind of bad at forming teams lol. Honestly I could've been on NYXL in season 1 as well.
NineK: Wow.
Moon: I can say one thing. I've literally walked to his house before. He thought a lot about it. Like I didn't think it should be this hard a decision when I was so convincing.
Tobi: I just really wanted to run it back with Jehong one last time and Fearless wasn't in the planned roster at the time either.
Moon: True it was very early on in the team formation
Tobi: Yeah it's regrettable isn't it?
NineK: Tobi does make bad choices that's why he joined Fusion under me
Tobi: Timing worked for that time period though
NineK: Alright back to the question make your super team only caveat is you can't change them and have to run them seasons 1 through 6
Tobi: To be happily teamed with them Carpe Profit Gesture Fury...
NineK: Wait a second Ryujehong isn't being brought up
Tobi: We are excluding him from this but honestly there's way too many good flex supports so I don't know. Shu was really good but Viol2t is also nah just Shu.
NineK: Shu is fun and good.
Tobi: He's good at like everything. Even since season 2 when I'd play Mercy he would shoot me so much more than everyone else as Ana
NineK: When you went game 5 against MightyAOD any players that stood out to you?
Tobi: Did we go game 5 against MightyAOD? I genuinely can't remember the Lunatic Hai games that well outside of just like finals games anymore. I'm sorry but it's been years.
Moon: Ooh how did you feel about Prophet being on your team and then once he was dropped and went to 02Blast losing to him?
Tobi: He was good but the thing is whatever we put him on just didn't fit with how the team played and the Sombra meta was at its peak as well. We were tired and he was tired cause it just wasn't the best fit for either of us. I wanted him to keep doing well so I could be confident it was just a mismatch and that my scouting ability was still good. But then the meta swapped to like Widow Hanzo.
Moon: Oh wait so once again it's a choice Tobi made he regrets...
Tobi: Well no technically in the last game versus them we did win to be fair. Honestly though when he did win damn I felt low key a little bit upset/betrayed
NineK: Did you see him do the X on the Dynasty symbol spray?
Tobi: I didn't mind that all the players do that
NineK: Hears something funny for Moon to answer. " I heard Lip purposefully made sure not to wear the Fusion skins for Asia Finals is it true"
Moon: I specifically checked his PC to make sure he wasn't wearing it "Are you wearing a Fusion skin or not? Yes or no."
NineK: Wow you check their PCs?
Moon: Yeah I made sure none of them wore Fusion skins for Asia Finals
Tobi: Carpe might need to come on here at this point
Moon: I don't believe in jinxes like this but my players do so I did it just so they don't have to think for a second there is some Fusion curse that will make them lose
Tobi: Like you don't want unnecessary factors creeping into their minds
Moon: Exactly
NineK: Did you have any of those jinxes or lucky charms as a player?
Tobi: During Lunatic Hai I would on game days only eat noodle dishes and then we would win. I'd wear the same pair of socks for all the big games as well. But then I went to the League and kept losing and none of that stuff applied anymore
Moon: Yeah I don't believe in it as a supernatural force but whatever makes people more confident the better
(Randomly scrolling for questions)
Moon: I really did wanna try coaching Dynasty once.
Tobi: Why?
Moon: You know as a Korean it was kind of sad seeing the Korean team under perform I wanted to go there after my contract with Shanghai ended and try to get them a big win
Tobi: I see
Moon: Now that I'm thinking about it I never got an offer from Seoul ever
NineK: Really? I think I got an offer from Seoul basically every year since 2019
Moon: Oh one thing I really wanted to ask was how you beat the Infernal (Dynasty vs Infernal early 2023 when Infernal scrimbux was way better than everyone else)
Tobi: Oh that? They just played poorly.
Moon: I was so curious cause they were supposed to be so good
Tobi: Yeah they must have been nervous or something we didn't win cause we were better they were just worse that day.
NineK: When Tobi first joined Fusion he actually beat Dynasty and was so happy about it. He was such a good player to have he was on the bench for quite a while initially but kept his mental up and was a very good teammate for us.
Final Words
Tobi: I'm not actually retired from coaching. I still keep up with the League and love the game. I hope Overwatch keeps growing and I want everyone to know I'm not gone just yet. If there's a chance I'm ready whenever
NineK: Honestly I will say a lot of Overwatch kids have this issue not just Tobi where they hope opportunity will fall on their laps.
Tobi: I'll agree. It was my first time doing this stuff and I had no idea what the scene was going to be like.
Moon: I was very proactive and quick about it for sure
NineK: Do you have any team you'd like to join? Quickly before we end the podcast appeal to Moon for a job
Tobi: Well if you just give me the call I'm ready
Moon: Well one thing I will note when Tobi was talking about coaches he asked for advice on being a coach he didn't contact me at all? Even though we talked for hours?
Tobi: I only contacted the people I actually worked under. I didn't want to bother everyone with my questions. It's not like I could expect other coaches that don't know me as well would divulge their secrets
Moon: I would've. I think it would have been very cool if you asked for my help
Tobi: Well to be fair before you joined I did say Crusty NineK Moon and Rush were the coaches I really wanted to try working with
NineK: It's not too late Tobi he's here now
Aid: Anyways final thoughts from you Tobi?
Tobi: It's been a while since I got to see fans of Overwatch and sit down with fellow coaches. I hope you all keep supporting Overwatch University and myself in the future.
NineK and Aid: Thank you to Moon as well for helping us last minute.
Moon: It's no problem I saw Tobis face and wanted to join right away.

Hello and welcome! I have a feeling that the viewers of my youtube channel have a lot to share about their own passions for their own local trails! Here, I am starting this forum to open the conversation to everyone and anyone who want's to dig deeper into this community. Here we have a community of people who care about cycling, e-biking, gravel riding, dirt biking, distance cycling, leisure riding, beach cruising, commuting by bike and all things to do with accessible transportation.
Here you can post freely your insights, your photos, your videos and share it amongst the greater "Trails of California" community! Feel free to engage as much or as little as you want. Come here just to lurk as an observer! I want this forum to be a safe space for open and positive communication.
I'll start the conversation by sharing some of my favorite pictures from my latest adventures! Going forward, are there any cool trail projects happening in your area? Any new cycling laws that you want to promote (post a link!)? Any interesting articles from the news you want to share? Planning a big big trip soon? Are there any cool new bike paths in your neighborhood that you would like to post about? Tell us about your first/favorite experience using the trail! Bonus points if you have pictures and links!

Hey Entrepreneur!
I wanted to share the story of the past year and a half of my life - a tale of challenges, tech innovation, and a whole lot of snacks. This isn’t just about launching a product; it’s about solving a big problem that inspired an entire platform.
TL;DR: My buddy and I sold our previous snack subscription box company and made a cool thing

The Seeds of Discontent

At our previous company, my buddy Mike and I saw how powerful influencer marketing could be. Our business, delivering international snacks to doorsteps, was perfect for social media. But managing these influencer partnerships was a huge headache.
Each new campaign started with excitement but quickly became overwhelming. We dealt with many social media platforms, each with its own rules and metrics. Keeping track of everything felt like trying to solve a puzzle with pieces that kept changing. The tools we used were basic. They helped us send products and payments but didn’t offer much for managing or understanding the big picture.
Tracking our campaign performance was a real pain. With just a small team running our marketing, we were juggling hundreds of influencers at the same time. It was hard to keep an eye on everyone and make quick decisions. Plus, the data we got was often late and messy, making things even more frustrating.
This constant struggle showed us a big gap in our toolkit. We needed a solution that could make managing influencers easier and give us useful insights, something as dynamic and global as our product. This ongoing frustration planted the seeds for what would eventually become our new company.

Market Research: Finding the Pain Points

After selling our previous business, Mike and I took a six-month break. We explored different ideas, from unique apps to a Castle Crashers style game. But our experience working with creators kept pulling us back to marketing. We knew the challenges of influencer marketing needed to be addressed.
We talked to our network in the e-commerce space to see if they had similar problems. The feedback was eye-opening. Many businesses struggled with existing tools, which mostly acted as simple marketplaces, where interactions were brief and not very deep.
Even worse, the few ambassador tools available were expensive and limited. When I searched for an ambassador software tool that worked across all social networks, the options I found required scheduling demos days in advance. They often lacked direct API connections and supported only a few major social media networks. The starting prices were high, often around $5k per month, with costs going up as the program expanded.
This research not only validated our experiences but also showed us a strategic need for our own tool. We realized we needed a solution not just to fill the current gap but also as a key part of our marketing stack for future businesses. We were determined to build something that wouldn’t force us—or anyone else—to pay a crazy amount for effective influencer marketing.

Designing the Dream: Our New Business’ Blueprint

With a clear vision from our frustrations and market research, we set out to create our new business. Our goal was to build a comprehensive tool that would change influencer marketing. Here’s what we focused on:

• Comprehensive Integration: We made sure the tool we created works with the top 10 social networks in the US. This unified approach helps marketers manage campaigns across different platforms easily, without juggling multiple tools.
• Dynamic Engagement Tools: Engagement is key, so we developed real-time interaction capabilities. We built user-friendly native apps for ambassadors on the App Store and Google Play, allowing influencers to stay engaged and responsive. Brands manage their campaigns through a web-based company portal.
• Robust Analytics Engine: While our analytics engine gives deep insights, we know it needs continuous improvement. We designed it to evolve, offering ongoing updates to refine its capabilities and deliver actionable intelligence.
• Flexible and Fun Engagement: The points and rewards system was the most important and fun feature to develop. This gamification of the influencer experience encourages participation and loyalty, making marketing campaigns more engaging.
• Advanced Group Segmentation: We included the ability to segment ambassadors into groups. This allows brands to target certain activities and rewards to specific groups, enhancing the effectiveness of marketing efforts.

Each feature of our tool we were creating was designed to address specific pain points we identified. Our goal was to offer a tool that was powerful, efficient, adaptable, and enjoyable for both brands and their ambassador partners.

Launching Our New Business: Embracing User Feedback

After about 18 months of design and development, we started the soft launch of our new business on May 1st. Opting for a soft launch allowed us to focus on real-time feedback and fine-tuning over making a big initial splash. This approach is crucial - not just for introducing our product but for understanding how it fits into the real world, where actual users rely on it.

Initial Rollout and Testing

Our launch a couple of weeks ago marked the start of our public journey. We released our new tool we created with ambassador apps on the App Store and Google Play, and opened our web-based company portal for business use. This phase is not about mass marketing but about engaging with our professional network and early adopters testing everything in real-world conditions. This includes real companies and creators, ensuring our platform is robust and responsive.

Iterative Feedback Integration

Feedback from these early stages is invaluable. We have set up multiple channels to communicate with our initial users to ensure they feel supported and heard. This ongoing dialogue is critical as it helps us identify and implement necessary adjustments quickly. Each piece of feedback is a step towards improving functionality and user experience.

Continued Development Based on Early Insights

Since we are still in the soft launch phase, our focus remains on refining the platform. A recent development was adding the Creator Hub and Company Center about a month ago—enhancements from recognizing limitations in our initial setup.
Creator Hub: The Creator Hub allows businesses to manage their ambassador relationships dynamically. Companies can discover and invite creators who match their interests and campaign goals, ensuring more personalized and effective collaborations.
Company Center: This feature allows creators to independently discover and apply to various ambassador programs, giving them the freedom to engage with brands that align with their interests.
These features aim to make the connection between companies and creators as seamless and beneficial as possible, accommodating a wide range of marketing strategies and campaign sizes.

How The Tool We Created Works: Streamlining Influencer Marketing

Our tool is designed to simplify and enhance the influencer marketing process for both companies and creators. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how our platform works:

1. Signup and Integration

- Companies can quickly create customizable signup forms. They can also invite new ambassadors directly from the Creator Hub that match their interests. This flexibility helps integrate Social Strudel into existing marketing workflows.
2. Ambassador Onboarding
- Creators apply to become ambassadors, download the Social Strudel app, and connect their social media accounts. This ensures that once approved, creators can start engaging with brand campaigns promptly.
3. Application Review
- Companies get notifications of new applicants and can approve or decline them based on their fit and relevance to marketing goals. This step ensures only the best ambassadors represent the brand.
4. Targeted Segmentation
- Companies can segment ambassadors into groups, allowing them to tailor activities and communications. This supports targeted marketing strategies and more personalized engagement.
5. Activity Management
- Companies set up new activities on various social platforms for ambassadors. Examples include:

• Instagram: Create a photo post featuring the brand’s latest snack box and use specific hashtags.
  
• TikTok: Develop a short video showing a fun unboxing of the product, encouraging engagement through likes and comments.
  
• Twitch: Host a live stream where the ambassador tries snacks from the box during a gaming session, discussing favorites with viewers.
  

- These are just examples, and activities can be tailored to fit different platforms and goals.
6. Real-Time Notifications
- Creators get notifications about new activities through push notifications and email. They can browse the app for available activities, ensuring they never miss an opportunity.
7. Submission and Verification
- Creators submit proof of activity completion directly through the app. This makes managing submissions easy and organized for companies.
8. Activity Approval
- Companies review submitted activities, approving or declining them based on quality and alignment with campaign objectives. This maintains high standards and ensures effectiveness.
9. Rewards and Motivation
- Upon approval, creators earn points, which can be redeemed for various rewards. This system motivates creators to produce high-quality content and stay engaged.
10. Custom Rewards Creation

• Companies create custom rewards, ranging from products, discounts, to unique experiences, or even cash. This flexibility allows brands to align rewards with their strategies and ambassador preferences.

11. Reward Notifications and Redemption

• Creators are notified of available rewards and can redeem their points. This keeps creators motivated and engaged.

12. Reward Distribution Management

• Companies are notified about reward redemptions and distribute rewards accordingly. This final step ensures creators are compensated for their efforts, and companies can manage reward distribution easily.

Looking Forward: The Road Ahead for Us

As we continue with our new business, we are committed to not just meeting but exceeding the evolving needs of digital marketing. We’ve only just begun to tap into our platform’s potential, and our roadmap is geared towards enhancing our service and expanding our reach.

Enhanced Integration Capabilities

We aim to expand our platform’s integration capabilities, adding support for social networks like WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, and Quora, and adapting to new emerging platforms like the anticipated Vine 2. By covering more platforms, we provide our users with tools to engage with audiences everywhere online.

Advanced Analytics and AI Implementation

Understanding the crucial role of data, we plan to enhance our analytics engine with advanced metrics and predictive analytics. By integrating AI, we aim to give users insights that reflect current trends and anticipate future behaviors.

Continued Focus on User Experience

User feedback is key and remains a cornerstone of our development. We are committed to refining the user experience based on real usage and feedback. This includes enhancing our mobile apps and ensuring the Creator Hub and Company Center are intuitive and robust. Both are still in early stages, and we are actively working to improve these features.

Expanding Educational Resources

To help users fully leverage the tool we created, we plan to expand our educational resources. This includes tutorials, best practice guides, and case studies for new users, and advanced content for experienced marketers to refine their strategies.

Final Reflections

If you've stuck with me this long through our story, thank you! Reflecting on this journey, it’s clear that every challenge and setback helped shape our vision and refine our approach. From the initial frustrations to the detailed market research, every step has been a learning experience. We're excited about the future and committed to improving our platform constantly to meet the evolving needs of our users and potential users. If you have any questions or feedback at all, I’d love to hear it! Your insights and support mean a lot as my partner and I continue to grow and innovate.
EDIT: Formatting

You know what the best part is about playing Engineer in Team Fortress 2? You get to watch how angry everyone gets when they get shot by your sentry guns. Me and my best friend Jose both main Engineer, and can confirm that the best way to spend your Friday nights after school is to set up a sentry and get ready for the rage. There’s been matches where we haven’t even used our actual guns even once, but racked up lots of kills just because of the sentries.
One day Jose called me up with an idea that was either going to be the stupidest thing ever or the smartest thing ever. He wanted to fill an entire team with only Engineers and watch the chaos unfold. I couldn’t stop laughing at the mental image in my head and agreed with the plan. I joined a Discord server with everyone else on the team.
I convinced my cousin Matthew to join, and he in turn brought along his little brother Zack. According to Matthew, it took quite a bit of convincing because Zack was a Scout main who couldn’t stand Engineers. He eventually got through to his little brother by promising him a Steam gift card. I even got their dad Graham to play along (yes, I have an uncle who plays TF2. How cool is that?). Jose enlisted his friends, who turned into friends of friends and soon enough we had a team of 16 Engineers.
To say that we caused chaos that night was an absolute understatement. As soon as we joined the game the text chat was flooded with messages from the other team wondering what the hell was going on. And they only got worse from that point on. We surrounded our control points with a ring of sentries that people just kept running into. I saw keyboard smashes and heard other teen boys’ voices crack in rage and many, many words that I personally don’t care to repeat here.
The most skilled Engineer was this guy named Craig, who was a friend of one of Jose’s friends. Not only was he the main person capturing the enemy control points with some very strategically placed teleporters, but he was also really friendly and encouraging to all of us. I didn’t know what he looked like, but from his voice it sounded like he was in his early 20s.
Me and Craig started to chat more and more on Discord. He was a super nice guy who was also really fun to talk with. He took time out of his day to teach me how to be an even better Engineer player. Whenever someone started dissing me in the voice chat, he firmly told them to leave me alone. After seeing my fair share of toxicity in the TF2 community, it was nice to know that this complete stranger was looking out for me.
This whole Team Engineer thing became a weekly tradition for us on Friday nights. It was something everyone could look forward to after work or school. One time after everyone logged off and said their goodbyes, Craig sent a message a few hours later in our Discord:
“You guys gotta check this out. I found the weirdest server ever. It’s literally Engineer heaven. Meet me at vl_sentry.”
I was still in the mood to play and I could stay up late tonight, so I hopped back on TF2. I saw that Jose, Graham and this other girl we played with named Lynn were also online. I found vl_sentry and connected to the server. The map was called Valley of the Sentries and it was created by Valve.
It took my computer a little bit to process the map, and it took me even longer than that to process what I was seeing.
The map looked like a chessboard with 3D-sculpted hills. The sky was just pure white. Not even white walls, just the color white. Every square had a blue sentry on it and there were about 4 or 5 other Engineers jumping around, spamming their voice lines. That’s when I realized that we were the only ones there, and there was no red team.
“Hey Sean, glad you could make it :)” Craig said in the text chat. “What the hell is this?” I asked. He told me that this was a server that one of his friends showed him. The friend said he was introduced to the map by a friend of his who knew someone who worked at Valve. Craig then went on to explain that apparently Valley of the Sentries was an experiment to test the limits of the sentry guns and their effect on the servers. Rumor has it that the map is infinite.
“Check this out.” said Jose. He switched to Heavy and immediately got shot down. All of the sentries turned towards him. There were so many of them that it made the game lag a ton. He respawned as Engineer and the sentries just kept on spinning.
“WTF?” I typed. “We tried it with all the other classes and it does the same thing.” said Craig. “It ignores Engineers, but shoots everyone else.” Lynn added. “And that’s why we’re the best class. Engineer power!” Graham joked.
I asked what would happen if you were to play as Spy and sap one of the sentries. “I tried, but you gotta have a godly reaction time to activate it.” said Jose. As soon as he said “godly reaction time”, I knew I had to try it out just for the bragging rights.
Respawn. Shot down. Respawn. Shot down. Respawn. Shot down.
Yeah, I did not have a godly reaction time. The others kept spamming “lol” in the chat each time I failed. I got annoyed pretty quickly and stopped trying. Then out of nowhere, all the sentries turned away from me and started firing at someone. I turned around and all five of us were still standing there. I looked at the top bar that shows how many characters were in the game. There were only five Engineers and they were all on the same team. So what the hell were the sentries targeting?
I started to walk in the direction that the sentries were facing and Jose followed me too. We moved really slow, not only because of the sentries on every square but also the uphill climbs. It was just us two in the chat for a while, talking about seeing each other back at school on Monday while we made our slow walk across the map. Then our conversation was interrupted by a chat message from Lynn.
“Why is there a man in the sky?”
Me and Jose tried to get to Lynn to see what she was talking about as fast as possible, but we moved like snails. To get back to the spawn point, we both switched classes, instantly died and respawned as Engineers. I don’t think we respawned in the same place we started from. I don’t even know where we respawned. There were no landmarks or notable things to help you find your way. Just hills, valleys, and sentries.
I asked Lynn where she was and she just told me she was with Graham and Craig. Only that wasn’t very helpful because we didn’t know where they were either. We stood there, stumped for a minute and a half until Jose got an idea. He said that she should just switch classes and respawn, because then all of the sentries would point toward her and we could follow them all the way back to her. She made the switch, got shot down, and we instantly knew where to find her.
We finally got close enough to kind of make out the vague shape of a few Engineers over the non-existent horizon. Me and Jose were relieved, until all the sentries pointed to our right. I swiveled around and saw them open fire on…nothing. I checked with Jose to see if he caught something I didn’t, but he also didn’t see what they were shooting at. I decided that it wasn’t that important and continued to walk towards the rest of the group.
We met up with Lynn, Craig and Graham, disappointed that we made that trek all for nothing. Even though we were all together now, it just felt so lonely. The only sound coming from my computer was the constant beeping of the sentries in perfect sync. I don’t know why, but it made me so uneasy. I attempted to break the silence by going to the voice lines and playing the iconic Engineer “Nope” soundbite. It echoed across the checkered land with no response.
It was about 12:30 AM at this point and I was starting to feel more and more unsettled with each passing minute. There was just something about this black and white world that I felt creeped out by. Before Craig invited us to come over, there was no one else on the server. Who would even want to play on this map, anyways? It’s so unfairly balanced that only one class can survive. Movement speed was super slow, and you can’t even really do anything except watch the sentries turn and turn and turn forever. It was like hypnosis, except I didn’t feel sleepy or relaxed at all.
Speaking of being sleepy, Jose said he was getting tired and was going to be logging off. We all said goodbye to him and continued chatting amongst ourselves. It sounds stupid, but my stomach dropped when I saw the fifth Engineer portrait disappear. One less person to talk to. One less person to keep myself from wondering what else was out here. I could have sworn that after he left, the beeping got louder.
“So is this map actually infinite?” asked Graham. “Only one way to find out.” Craig said. “Just keep on walking and see if it goes on forever.” “Why don’t you just fire a shotgun and see how far it goes?” Lynn suggested.
I took out the shotgun and fired. The bullet flew off into the white distance and disappeared.
Then I heard the distinct sound of someone getting shot.
A message appeared in the chat, from someone named sentry_check_pattern.
“sentry_check_pattern: stop that”
Once again I looked at the top bar. It just showed four blue Engineers. That meant we were the only ones on the server. Or so we thought.
The chat was flooded with our confusion, almost as if everyone realized at the same time that something wasn’t right. None of us moved an inch.
“What even is this place?” I asked, hoping that the mysterious user would provide me with an answer. “Must be Engineer heaven.” said Graham.
“sentry_check_pattern: more like my personal hell”
This was the moment that made me trust my intuition. I knew there was a reason why I found this map so creepy. I wanted to leave the server, but there was just one thing keeping me back- my own curiosity. My wish to unveil the mysteries of the Valley of the Sentries.
“Okay this is really freaking me out. See ya guys.” said Lynn before she left the server. The fourth Engineer’s portrait disappeared from the top bar.
No no no, please. Please don’t go. Don’t leave us. I wouldn’t want to be alone here. Now there’s just three of us, and I really hope that number doesn’t go down anymore. When the others were here, this was just a weird TF2 map that we were exploring together as friends. And now it feels like we’re trapped in this infinite world, but we aren’t alone. The only problem is we don’t know what else is here.
I shuddered, imagining Craig and Graham ditching me and leaving me all alone in the Valley of the Sentries. Just me and whoever- no, whatever was talking to us.
“sentry_check_pattern: you don’t know how good you have it
you can leave at any time
i can’t”
This terrified me. What a horrible thought, never being able to leave this place. But of course, no one could really be trapped here. It’s a Team Fortress 2 server. You can just exit the game and shut your computer. No one could be trapped in a video game.
But if you think about it, aren’t the characters themselves trapped? They can’t leave the game. They’re characters. They don’t even know they’re in a game. You or the computer controls all their actions. They don’t have free will. And if you’re bad at the game, they’ll just keep dying over and over again.
Wait, why was I thinking about this?
I carefully considered what I wanted to say next in the chat. Whatever I said could either answer all my burning questions or leave me asking more. But sentry_check_pattern talked first.
“sentry_check_pattern: i was made for one purpose
to die over and over again”
Oh my god. It was like this person read my mind and knew exactly what I was thinking about. Who or what was I talking to? I turned all the way around to make sure that no one else was there. It was just the two blue Engineers standing behind me. Just Graham and Craig. And that man with the checkered skin.
Startled, I asked my friends if they saw what I saw. It took them a second, but both of them confirmed that yes, there was indeed something else there. A basic male model with the same chessboard texture as the map. Graham immediately started to shoot at him. Nothing. It just went straight through him.
“sentry_check_pattern: you can’t kill what’s already been killed millions of times over
valve made that mistake too
every company has that one failed project they don’t talk about
and that’s me”
Whoever was behind this weird account was talking crazy. The Team Fortress 2 developers were very open about everything like fixing their glitches and bugs. They always posted things on the official blog about the development process. They’re so open about their failures and always promise to fix them.
“Stop with the weird stuff. We just wanted to know what the deal is with this server and the weird chess guy. Do you know anything about it?” Graham asked in the text chat.
“sentry_check_pattern: know anything?
you’re not very bright, graham
none of you are
do you not realize where you are and what you’re talking to”
Something about the way sentry_check_pattern used Graham’s name gave me goosebumps. I didn’t know what I was talking to. I didn’t even think I wanted to know at this point.
“sentry_check_pattern: this is one of valve’s test servers
i’m the texture they use to check if the sentries work
read between the lines”
“Quiet, NPC.” Craig said. I laughed a little bit to fight off the awkward tension. Then I reminded myself that I was talking to a video game character, no- not even a character. A blank character model. A texture.
“sentry_check_pattern: just because i’m a character model doesn’t mean i can’t feel pain
open fire”
The sentries all swiveled around to face the man and shot at him. He kept falling to the ground, turning white and standing back up in the same position.
“sentry_check_pattern: cease fire”
All of the sentries stopped shooting and just went back to spinning around, their beeps echoing in the air.
“sentry_check_pattern: ready to see what i’ve been through for over a decade?
open fire”
Before any of us could react, the sentries opened fire on Craig all at once. He kept dying, but he didn’t explode the way you’re supposed to when you die in TF2. He just dropped to the floor, turned white, and respawned over and over again. There was no death scream. I tried to type something else in the chat but the game lagged so much that my typing just ended up as a string of random letters that meant nothing. Craig tried to type something out too. It just ended up as “wwwwwwwwwwthisishowitfeelswwwwwwwww” Then the game crashed and my computer shut down.
I hyperventilated. Then I laughed at myself for hyperventilating over a stupid computer game. It was Team Fortress 2 for god’s sake. That game with all the memes and goofy jokes. Stupid, stupid Sean. Scared of a character model. Jose would never let me live it down. I just laughed and laughed to push the fear away.
I closed my laptop and took out my phone to rewatch all of my favorite TF2 animations for the millionth time. As if they weren’t already the funniest things in the world, I forced myself to laugh even harder than usual. Every time I saw the Engineer, I couldn’t help but look at the reflection in his goggles. The reflection of an endless map of black and white squares.
Thankfully, nothing bad happened to my game, account or laptop. The next day I just went right back to playing and enjoying the rage coming from all the people who ran right into my sentries.
Team Engineer was still a thing, but it was never really the same. We played together a lot less frequently. It was still a lot of fun, but I felt a change that I couldn’t really describe.
We found out that Craig had lost all progress on his TF2 account. Everyone gifted him all his favorite cosmetics and we all pooled our money together to get him a Steam gift card. He video called us, crying at our kindness. It was the first time I ever even saw his face. He was a lot older than most of us. If I had to guess an age, I’d say somewhere around 30. He had black bangs and was wearing a TF2 shirt. His room was dark, only lit by his glowing computer screen. He thanked us repeatedly and even tried to return the gift card, but we were all adamant that he should keep it.
Speaking of Craig, we still kept in touch but he didn’t talk to me as much anymore. Any time I tried to ask him about vl_sentry, he ignored me for a few days.
The other day, I got some postcards from my cousin Matthew. He was very academic and happened to be studying at a private high school about 9 hours away from where I live. All of his postcards were pictures of him making funny faces with all his friends at favorite school activities like robotics, debate team, and chess club.
I looked at the chess club photo closely. Matthew and his friends were standing in front of a chessboard with a mirror on the wall. And for a split second, I could have sworn that the chessboard looked different in the mirror. It looked warped, like it wasn’t a flat board anymore. Like it almost had hills and valleys. No, it couldn’t be. I rubbed my eyes. There, in the mirror was a checkered man. I knew it was there. I swear on my mother’s life that there was another person in that photo. And then it was gone. Maybe the picture was just printed badly. But I had to make sure my eyes were right.
So I brought the postcard to school with me and I showed Jose. I asked him if he saw the checkered man in the mirror. He said no. But that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. That was the answer I hoped I wouldn’t hear. I asked him again. He said no again. Then I asked him another time. He said I was being annoying. So I asked another one of my friends. He said no too. So I moved on to yet another friend. He told me to stop.
I angrily clutched the postcard in my hand, crumpling it. I was the only one that saw what was really there. Everyone else was lying to me. They refused to see the truth.
I screamed and ripped up the postcard. I stomped on its pieces. I rubbed them in the dirt for good measure.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the sound of electronics beeping.
It rang in my ears.
It was weirdly comforting to me.
You can leave the Valley of the Sentries. But the valley will never leave you.

Forgive me for how bad this is because I'm awful at writing posts especially about myself but I'd love to meet some cool people and have some chilled chats about anything!
Here is some basic information about me if you're interested:
I'm Rory from the North Of Ireland and yes, I've got a weird accent
I currently work for the government, unfortunately I'm not a spy or anything exciting like that
I love music and I'm always going to gigs but my taste changes all the time, Some of my favourites lately are IDLES, Viagra Boys, The Smile, and Fleet Foxes. I also love sharing songs and playlists so feel free to send them my way
I'm a big traveller and love going on adventures especially to new places
I'm a bit of a gamer and play PS5/PC but I'm a bit of a loner in that department and would be down to play with some new people
I have a unhealthy addiction collecting vinyls
I'm constantly rewatching the same tv shows such as the office, it's always sunny in philadelphia, peep show, and the thick of it but I'm open for more recommendations
I enjoy reading books or watching documentaries on true crime and Irish history because I'm a loser
If none of the above interests you I have two dogs who are the best bois in the world and I can just provide pictures of them
I don't know else to say and feel like I've rambled on enough so hit me up if you'd like to! Have a good day! :)

First off, I know this won't be that bad of a horror story since a lot of DMs/GMs go through this at least once, but I wanna bring it up anyway. I recently began a brand new Pathfinder 2E campaign set in my homebrew world of Tha'Lia, specifically in the continent of Aelrun, which I have been working on for almost a year, and still adding to passively to make it more lived-in and fleshed out. I managed to obtain 6 players two of which are my friends while the rest are people I've gathered from both Discord and Reddit. Two of these randoms I added to the game will be the focus of this story, we'll call them by their PC's names, Krak and Evad. We had a proper session 0 (with tavern music playing in the background) where I explained the world, it's base lore (i.e Kingdoms, Deities, Race history, yadayada) and the overall tone of the campaign, I even made sure to ask everyone their limits when it came to themes and other stuff that I can mention in this post, but it'll be too long. Evad and Krak seemed SUPER excited about the game, especially Krak who even came up with a cool character concept that did kind of deviate from the structure of the setting a bit but I didn't mind since we made some tweaks anyway. Evad also came up with a character that I ADORED because of well he fit within the world and the amount of things his backstory provided me that'd I use for the overall story for the game (just in case my players are reading this, I won't say much, but it does involve the politics of Aelrun).
First session came around, and it was great! I put a lot of effort into introducing the players to the campaign, the continent, their characters, all while reading a long scripted introduction as music played in the background. The session as a whole was fun! Everyone had fun roleplaying their characters, the Ysoki and the Strix PCs had a fun Tom and Jerry dynamic, hell Evad and Krak's PCs seemed like best friend's in the making already. After the session everyone said they enjoyed it, i saw no red flags or anything that needed hindsight, and everything seemed good
However when session 2 came around, Krak and Evad didnt show up, each with their own reasoning as to why, okay cool. Session 3, BOTH of them once again couldn't show up, both once again with their own reasonings, Evad had college finals, while Krak just "felt like death" and didn't feel like getting on call, bare in mind by this session the party are getting closer and closer to solving the first mystery of the main storyline, and both Krak and Evad missed TWO sessions. Session 4 comes and...nothing, they don't even text me stating they won't make it, just radio silence from both of them, hell I even texted them both days beforehand, asking if they'll be able to participate in the session, and I got no response.
While Evad continued to be completely inactive from Discord, Krak literally changed his profile picture AS THE SESSION WAS HAPPENING, meaning he was online and had time to tell me that he couldn't make it. I texted them both asking wth is going on and Krak only replies two days later. You'd think he'd give me a proper explanation right? WRONG, all he says is "Things are rough" and didn't elaborate further, he prioritized changing his pfp to Luffy, and his banner to GEAR 5 Luffy slapping his ass, but 0 time to join the session, tell me he COULDN'T join the session, or just straight up state he couldn't be apart of the game anymore. Upset at his lack of respect for my time I just kicked him out the server and blocked him, originally I was gonna give him till session 5 but after seeing that HE WAS ACTIVE and CHOSE not to say anything, I just didn't want to deal with that anymore. Then there's Evad, who I'm still giving till this coming Saturday to tell me what's going on (since there is no signs of him getting online during the session) or i'll have to kick him out the game for another player to take his spot, which sucks because he seemed SO INVESTED in his PC and my world, but i want to run for 6 people who are willing to make the time for my games or at least update me on their situation so I know what to do
The only reasons I can guess as to why they BOTH stopped showing is; They didn't enjoy the session, therefore lost hope for the campaign and just didn't want to say anything to make me feel bad (even though I tried my best to make sure everyone was having fun) so they couldn't bring themselves to state they wanted to leave OR Players who show up to the first session of campaigns only to not show up for the rest of the game as a "prank", are a common group of people in the TTRPG space and im only JUST finding out about them. Another reason is maybe they found better games and checked out of mines for those?? I may be reaching but at this point am I wrong for doing so? Saturday's almost here so if Evad doesn't show up by then, I guess he's out too (also, just a piece of advice, never trust someone who's status is always on invisible)
TL;DR: Two players who seemed very invested in my Pathfinder 2E campaign, stopped showing up to sessions, one of them even got online during one of our games and chose not to say anything, as the other continues to remain inactive

I’m talking about someone trying to get you to go away or stop taking pictures of things. With street photography it’s understandable but weirdly the times I get the most pushback when taking photos is when I go out looking around abandoned alleys or areas. Someone always seems to come out of their house and start yelling at me.
When I do this I don’t shoot peoples private property. I usually just shoot clearly old and broken cars on either abandoned or unused lots when these issues arise. The people come from another property to yell at me. I usually just say “oh sorry just thought this looked cool, I’ll get out of your hair” and leave. But sometimes I don’t get the shots I wanted before hand.
I always proceed on the side of caution with finding places to shoot and dealing with people just bc the area I live in they are more likely to shoot first (I have been shot at before when just walking around a forested area, not even with a camera).
What do y’all say to people like this? Anything to calm them down? I could ask if it’s their property or that I’m not getting any of their stuff on film but I don’t want to escalate.

So Long story short I stumbled onto a Post by u/pigsonbroadway talking about their take on The Mollusk. and in that thread was a very rad post by u/alwayspolite1999 where they spun a very interesting full story to go with the album that really inspired me. I spent the last 3 hours typing up this response but i think the thread is locked because it wont let me comment. I will post my long thoughts about it here for anyone that might appreciate it. Stay cool yall.
Hey hey, I know I'm nearly 7 years late on this, but thank you for giving me a framework for a very rad hour long relaxing daydream. I changed a few things in my head from this plot but i think it's safe to say you've irrevocably altered this entire album for me. Well done mate.
I wanna share my take on it, just in case you're feeling it or someone else likes it.
I'm imagining a story a lot like yours, about a man growing up and dealing with processing trauma, finding love, and ultimately watching his child leave. I kinda cut the Narrator character and replaced him with a thematic recurring violent masculinity "character" of sorts, like no one character is to blame for the protagonist's continued trauma and misfortune. I couldn't help but also imagine it as a play, so here goes.

1. Dancing in the show tonight: A montage of sorts, with a young boy being raised by a mother and father, as the father slowly loses interest, neglects the child, and displays acts of violence, that are sometimes seen, but sometimes obfuscated from the boy by his mother. Eventually he experiences it directly at his father's hand. Blood/Violence, and subsequently the boy's traumatic thoughts, would be depicted with swirling red ribbons around him, fabric dancing about, etc, and these moments are all intrinsically tied to the ocean/beachside, where they live. By the end of the song, the boy's father gets on a boat and leaves the two on the beach, establishing a dreadful feeling for the viewer and character tied to the ocean. These events don't exactly suit the tone of DitST but that's part of the experience and ties into the ending.
   
2. The Mollusk: The boy, slightly older, finds a little mollusk, seeding some type of positive connection with the ocean that could counteract his trauma, and perhaps (foreshadowing ;) ) represent his ultimate positive reconciliation with the ocean. He is desperate for a father figure and finds himself spending time around a few these untrustworthy and unsavory seamen. Perhaps they are mocking the boy by the end, tossing the mollusk around. The boy gets the mollusk back eventually and takes it back to the beach and lets it go. I hate that the whimsical nature of The Mollusk lends itself so well to a dissonance like this. In a vacuum The Mollusk is a very peaceful lovely song.
   
3. Polka Dot Tail: The boy comes close to experiencing another traumatic situation, involving one of these drunken sailor men, but as you wrote, escapes and runs, trailed by the telltale red cloth setting in place further a lifelong discomfort/trauma response to the ocean. He returns home to his mother, who packs up everything and they move far away from the ocean, leaving their traumatic past behind, running somewhere.
   
4. Jonny on the Spot: A Montage of the boy, now older, working hard, helping his mother, exhausted, a young man but already turning to getting wasted, staying out late, and associating with the wrong people, filling a hole somewhere in his heart. Eventually he does crash his car, stumbling out onto the beach, anxious, and running into a nearby bar, looking back at his fucked up Chevy.
   
5. Mutilated Lips: A chaotic bar scene, surrounded my men, most outfits incorporating the color red somewhere. The Boy haunted by his pervasive trauma in this place. Until, while he's downing glasses, a waitress brushes his hand and sees his scratches, and meets his gaze. The drunkenness of course paints the scene as a merpeople atlantis ass underwater scene, bringing back ocean imagery to tie to the Boy's pain. The waitress has got some type of trauma as well, a cloth or ribbon or light effect (how do stage shows do mental effects like this? lol.) in her own color, let's say blue. They share a long passionate loving night together in her beachside shack, understand each other's pain and loneliness in a way the typical crowd at this seaside bar dont. They symbolize this my giving each other a piece of that fabric, trading blue for red. The blue and red cloth tangles and mingles in a new way and they're draped in purple, finding a peace.
   
6. The Blarney Stone: They return to the bar and the girl he met gets pulled into song and obnoxious drunken partying, the two young protagonists submerged in a loud, crass scene. She plays her usual role in this, though can't help but glance over at her new love. He starts to see her as part of this world, untouchable, so closely associated with this oceanic world of pain for him that he can't handle it. He panics and tries to leave, starting up his messed up car. She runs out to try to stop him but almost lashes out at her, realizing his aversion to this place and these people brings up too much agony, and associating her with that would be unfair to her, and he leaves. Realistically you dont fall in love with someone and run away in one night but it makes a good play.
   
7. It's Gonna be Alright: The Boy wanders out, into a warped undersea version of the previous beach scene with his crashed car. He kinda hits an emotional rock bottom after experiencing the first thing he could consider love or companionship and fucking it up, assumedly. He feels broken, and stares out over a deep dark chasm of fish and kelp and shit as he tries to convince himself he did the right thing, staying there all night. Meanwhile, throughout the song, the Girl goes back to her shack, looks at an old ring she keeps in a box, and by the end of the song, while Boy finds himself in the darkest place, she takes the ring and goes out to the beach, seeing a ship approach as she holds it.
   
8. The Golden Eel: A majestic Golden Eel appears to the Boy, it comes to him in... a vision? A mental realization? a spiritual awakening? He's face to face with this beautiful creature. Slowly all his red cloth is taken from him. It's wound up by the eel and wrapped around him, turning to his new outfit, the red effect that represents the trauma replaced by a strengthened gold cloth resolve that now accompanies him. The Eel swims away. He wakes up on the beach (we drop the underwater imagery here) and finds the Girl's blue scarf tucked into his jacket, and jumps up and starts running back. (mirroring the scene earlier with him as a child running away on the beach, but this time he's in control, running towards something.) He gets back to the bar and the owners point out to a boat leaving, sailing away. He's just missed her.
   
9. Cold Blows the Wind: Meanwhile, we go to the flashback to the Girl, (back to the aquatic imagery from here on out until She Wanted to Leave.) before her facial disfiguration, a montage of her being courted by some other fish sailor man. He's wearing bright cobalt blue. They're sailing together with a crew, and they're very close, eventually him proposing and giving her a ring. Immediately after, their ship gets hit by a cannonball and there's a big battle with another ship. Everything's on fire, she gets injured, and her love dies, as he hands her his bloodstained blue scarf. Later, she makes him a grave, and is wearing the ring still, eventually finding that same seaside bar. She starts working there, all the men there draped in blue fabric, reminding her of her pain. Present day, we see her on a boat, holding the Red scarf. She takes the ring and throws it into the water.
   
10. Pink Eye: The Boy, renewed with zest and energy to go find the Girl, works on his "Car", making a wild looking boat. He says goodbye to his mother then he just starts sailing.
    
11. Waving my Dick in the Wind: Fun upbeat montage. He sails around, showing people the scarf, and every time he meets some new wild sea person, they point, as if they're slowly leading him to her. He grows a beard, becomes a captain, slowly picking up a colorful crew of people helping him. By this point he's fully embraced the red, but wears that blue scarf everywhere. He sails his wild Chevy boat around. Song culminates in ol "Jimmy Wilson" doing a crazy tap dance, and at the end, informing the Boy about the woman, and showing him a picture of her and her Child (without and eye).
    
12. Buckingham Green: (This is my favorite song on the album) We go back to the girl being born, living with her mother somewhere. Lets say the child is missing one eye rather than both, half her face disfigured. Her mother tries to protect her, perhaps too much from judgmental eyes, telling her stories, raising her kindly, but one day she opens her (supposedly) missing eye and it shines gold, and they decide to hide it. Meanwhile, The Boy braves a fierce storm, following a golden glow on the horizon towards where the Girl and the Child are, even helped through the worst of the storm by the Mollusk (Hell yeah). Eventually he arrives and meets the child, and there's a big dramatic ass reunion scene with the Boy, the Girl and the mollusk and all the fish people. The Boy and the Girl wrap their scarves together and put them around the girl, and the scarves transform into a golden one, symbolizing the Boy's commitment to love his child and break a cycle of neglect, and the Girl's closure, being able to move on from her lost love and onto this new family. (or something, idk) The girl opens that other eye and it glows gold again. and The Golden Eel bursts out of the Mollusk as everyone celebrates. The Boy and Girl get their new Opalescent Mollusk outfits and everyone gets hype. Bring in Boy's mom too, fuck it. How all this is supposed to happen in 3:18 i dont know but that's for the director to figure out.
    
13. Ocean man: Exactly as you described. No fucking notes. Hype ending. Maybe this part starts with the Eel haha.
    
14. She Wanted to leave: Now the girl is older. The story of course takes a somber turn where, a tale as old as time, a sailor comes along and woos the young lady. The Boy dips back into his trauma a little bit, swearing revenge, practically begging his girl to stay, going through the throes of a parent watching his child grow up and leave him behind. She obviously refuses, following her new life and her new path, apart from him. Not as heartlessly as he'd like to imagine though. Its melodramatic.
    

14b. Dancing in the Show reprise: This time though, instead of being alone in his pain, his mother and wife can be there to hold his hand, pick him up, and wave goodbye to the sailors' ship together as it leaves for sea. She waves back happily from the deck. Its a sad departure but doesn't have to be a hopeless goodbye like the ones the characters felt in their youth. It can end with the three of them sitting on the beach together and then settling back into their home, the red and blue and gold scarves are hung up somewhere on the roof of something as the sea breeze blows through them.
I don't know who you are but I'm really glad your interpretation touched me in the way that it did. Whoever you are I hope you're having a good life, and rock on.

The pain was the worst thing`Dominick Mason had ever known…and he knew what it felt like to die. It felt like his brain was in a blender, being chopped to liquid for a Jeffery Dahmer smoothie and though it seemed melodramatic, he imagined he could feel himself losing brain cells by the minute. The sun, Merrick told him, would not burn him, but it would decay him faster, so sleep or rest during the day. With the sick, throbbing agony in the center of his brain, however, that was impossible. He spent most of the day curled up on his side, hugging his knees, and moaning. He had flashbacks to dying in his apartment, and that made things even worse. The room became too small, too close, the air too stale. His heart, filled with the blood of last night’s meal, pounded in his chest, and he went from slightly chilly to hot and feverish as blood was forced through his circulatory system. It mixed with the embalming fluid and left him feeling full and constipated. He didn’t want to get up, but he also didn’t want to go on lying there. He was the definition of miserable.
Before long, the pain became too great and he got up to pace, pressing his hands to the sides of his head and gritting his teeth. Merrick, who slept very little if at all, sat in his chair and watched, trying his best to talk him through it. “It’ll be over soon,” Merrick said. “The pain receptors in your brain are the first to go. When they burn out, you won’t feel anything.”
“When?” Dom asked, his voice raising with the tide of pain.
“A couple days?”
“A couple days???”
“The pain will lessen gradually,” Merrick said, “this is the worst of it.”
Dom believed that this was, indeed, the worst of it, but he doubted it would lessen gradually. For the rest of the day, the pain got worse and worse until every light blinded him, every sound turned his stomach, and the smell of anything made his gorge rise. The cloying smell of the embalming fluid, the light but unmistakable odor of dead flesh, and the scent of stale blood sitting in decomposing stomachs made him want to vomit, but he was afraid to. He didn’t think he could handle the sight of blood rushing from his mouth and splattering the floor. He still possessed enough of his facilities, he believed, to go insane.
Pain has a way of darkening one’s mood, and by the time the sun began to set, Dom was in the most sour mood possible. Even Merrick’s calm, fatherly voice was beginning to get on his nerves. When he took the oath to him the day before (or was it the day before that?), he turned his faith and trust over to Merrick entirely. He was finally accepted, included, finally had the love and fellowship that, in the pit of his soul, he had always wanted. Merrick understood him, Merrick was kind to him.
But deep down, Dom realized that he didn’t fully trust him. He said that his brain didn’t rot because he was “lucky.” That sounded like some bullshit to Dom. Why wasn’t Joe a blithering idiot too? Was he lucky as well? Did lightning strike in the same place twice? In life, people had done nothing but hurt and lie to Dom. Why would death be any different? He thought back to the strange liquid that always seemed to leak from Merrick’s nose, and Joe’s. He thought it was embalming fluid, but it never leaked from his own nose, or from anyone else’s. He tried to tell himself that it was far too soon to judge, but once he began to doubt something, his mind raced away. He felt a twinge of guilt, as Merrick had done absolutely nothing to deserve his doubt, but goddamn it, his head was on fire and he wanted it to stop. Anything to make it stop.
Just after sundown, the music began as Club Vlad opened for the night. It throbbed in the center of Dom’s head and made him want to claw his eyes out. When it became too much for him, he slipped away and stumbled into the sultry summer night. He came out in the alley running behind the club, clutching his head and breathing through bared teeth. He staggered, bumped into a metal trash can, and roared at the top of his lungs, as if he could purge himself of the pain by screaming.. His voice echoed and came back to him, making the pain worse.
Merrick was lying. He knew it. People always lied to him. His brain was rotting and PEOPLE WERE LYING! Flashing with anger, he slammed his fist into the brick wall of a Chinese restaurant. He barely felt anything so he did it again and again until his hand was lumpy and shaking. He sat heavily on the ground and pressed his hands to his head. It felt like maggots were burrowing into his brain, and he was suddenly terrified that they really were. He needed to stop this awful pain, but how?
An idea came to him.
The funeral home.
Maybe there was something there.
He was on his feet and lumbering there before the thought had even finished reverberating through his mind. It was a long shot, but he was desperate. On the way there, he stuck to the shadows, staying out of the light cast by the streetlamps and avoiding people. When he passed them, he kept his head down. When he reached the funeral home, he went to the back door where he and Jessie had gone the other day. He tried it, and it opened.
Inside, he bounced off the walls like a pinball, knocking over an end table and tearing at the flesh of his head, pulling it away in long, gray strips. He panted like a wild animal, his body a raging tempest of emotions. It was reaching a crescendo, he thought, his brain was about to go supernova. The world dimmed, things got really echoy. The young man he’d picked the embalming fluid up from was there, looking scared.
Flashing, Dom grabbed him by his shirt and slammed him against the wall, knocking a painting of a flowery field to the carpet. Everything seemed to go in slow mo. “How does Merrick keep his brain from rotting?” Dom heard himself demanding from far away. “How does he keep the pain away?”
The man trembled. “I-I-”
Dom slammed him again. “Tell me or I’ll make you like me.”
“No!” the man wailed. He shook his head from side to side, his eyes wet with fear.
“How?”
“He-He uses a solution,” the man stammered. “Some kind of special thing. It preserves his brain. That’s all I know.”
An idea occurred to Dom.
Holding the man by the back of his neck, Dom dragged him into the embalming room and pushed him against the table. His head felt like it was swelling. Hot, screaming, getting ready to explode. He looked around, found the embalming machine, and grabbed the hose. There was a sharp tip on it so that you could jam it into a body. He held it in his hand, hesitating for just a moment before pressing it to his temple. The man watched in horror as Dom slowly shoved the tip into his head. It tore his flesh, broke through his skull, and sank into his brain. He felt no pain, only pressure, but cried out anyway. His eyes rolled up into his head and a shudder went through his body.
“Turn it on!” he yelled.
“That’s not what he -”
“TURN IT ON!”
Starting, the man turned the machine on. Cold embalming fluid squirted directly into Dom’s brain. Almost at once, the pain began to ebb away, replaced only by a fuzzy sense of numbness. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, looking for all the world like an addict taking a hit of his favorite substance after a long and trying day. Fluid leaked from his nose, ears, and eyes and dripped down the back of his throat.
The man waited for a long time, then turned the machine off.
The pain was gone.
At least for now.
“Tell me again,” Dom said.
The man did. Merrick used a special preserving agent to keep his brain intact. Joe, the man suspected, got it as well. So Merrick had lied to him.
Dom felt betrayed.
And angry.
Leaving the man (Dom realized that he didn’t even know his name), he walked back to Club Vlad, his hands fisted in his pockets. All his life, he had been hurt, lied to, and ignored. All his life, people had done wrong to him. And all those years, he just took it.
He resolved not to be so accepting in death.
At last, he was going to stop being a sniveling little bitch and stand up for himself.
When he reached Club Vlad, he slammed through the back door and took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he called out Merrick’s name. The old man was sitting in his chair, being attended to by Jessie and Matt. He looked startled when Dom came in. “You lied to me,” Dom said, stalking over to his benefactor.
“What are you talking about?” Merrick asked, doing his best to sound innocent.
“You lied to me!” Dom screamed. He bent over and got so close to Merrick’s face that he could have kissed him. “You told me there was no way to save my brain, but that’s not true. You’re pumping your head full of shit and letting the rest of us rot.”
A dark shadow flickered across Merrick’s face. “Watch your tone when you talk to me,” he said. His voice was low, menacing.
“Fuck you,” Dom said. “I should k -”
Suddenly, Dom was being grabbed from behind and yanked back, an arm around his neck. He cried out in alarm as Joe swung him around and slammed him face first into the wall. He heard his nose crunch, felt his teeth shatter. Next, Joe wrestled him to the glitter-sprinkled floor and wedged his knee between his shoulder blades.
Merrick watched with a sneer of disgust, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. He wheeled himself over, Jessie holding his IV stand steady and following behind. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Merrick said, “you’re lucky to be a part of this family.”
Cold fear filled the pit of Dom’s stomach, yet he wouldn’t back down, couldn’t back down. He had lived his entire life like a mouse in a burrow, he wasn’t about to live his entire death the same way.
“Fuck your family,” he said defiantly. “And fuck you.”
Merrick’s face darkened and he sat back in his chair. He looked at Jessie and nodded. She went away and came back a moment later holding something in her hand. Dom’s eyes widened when he saw what it was.
A wooden stake, one end honed to a razor point.
Why they had one of those lying around, Dom didn’t know; it’d be like Superman keeping a piece of kryptonite on the mantle over the fireplace. Merrick directed Max and Matt to hold Dom’s arms down/ Joe pivoted, kneeling on his head now so that Dom’s back was exposed. Dom’s heart slammed with terror and tremors raced through his body.
“Is this what you want, Dominick?” Merrick asked. “To die? To truly die?”
Dom swallowed hard. No, it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to live, to love, to have a family one day. He wanted a happy, normal life, the life TV and social media had been promising him since he was a little boy.
But all of that went out the window the night he died in his little apartment. There was no life anymore, just a grotesque parody of life. What was there for him other than death? Clinging desperately onto life for decades like Merrick? Stuffing himself full of embalming fluid and moth balls? Grinding for one more minute just so he could sit hooked up to a machine?
Dom spoke.
“What?” Merrick asked, not having heard.
Dom licked his lips. “Just fucking do it.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Expectation hung in the air. Finally, breaking the tension, Merrick nodded to Jessie. Kneeling down, she brought the stake up, and Dom closed his eyes.
This was it.
He braced himself for death.
Jessie brought the stake down just as a shot rang out, deafening in the small space. Her head whipped back, embalming fluid, skull fragments, and gray, sickly pieces of brain showering from the back of her head. She flopped back and landed on the floor with a sickening thud.
A woman cop, her black uniform in stark contrast to the burning white light, stood in the doorway to the hall, her gun drawn. Everyone did, indeed, freeze, more out of surprise than respect for authority. They all looked at her, their dead mouths agape, resembling children who’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Everyone on the ground!” she barked.
No one knew what to do. They hadn’t expected to be raided by the police so had not prepared. She jerked her gun and everyone instinctively flinched. “On the ground!” she repeated. To Max: “You too, bone boy.”
The first one to react was Joe. He sprang at her like a big, undead frog. She brought the gun around and fired, but he was already crashing into her. The shot went wild and struck the IV bag next to Merrick; he ducked and let out a sound of fear. The others rushed her, and Dom got quickly to his feet. Jessie lay on the floor, her mouth open in a silent scream and her bony fingers frantically examining the ragged hole in the center of her forehead. For a moment, he was frozen; everything was happening too fast. Then, when Merrick saw him and cried, “Stop him!, he came alive. Jessie tried to grab at his leg, but he kicked her hand away and stomped on it like it was a giant spider. On the other side of the room, Matt, Joe, and Max had forced the cop to the ground. Perhaps excited by all the action, perhaps just hungry, they began to tear her apart. She howled in pain, and the last thing Dom saw before he fled was her open, blood-filled mouth. Her eyes were filled with pain…with terror.
After that, Dom ran.
***
When the interloper was dead, Merrick directed Joe and Matt to dispose of the body. “Get rid of it,” he said wearily and rubbed his temples, “make sure it isn’t found.”
They rolled her into a carpet from the office, and the way her feet stuck out may have been comical under other circumstances.
Goddamn it, this was bad. Merrick’s entire philosophy rested on avoiding detection. He had done well in that regard. Whereas other vampires had attacked their villages and gotten themselves dug from the ground and staked, he had made it four decades. He never shat where he ate, and there is no bigger turd than killing a cop. They might dawdle on all the boys who’d gone missing - taken because their blood was stronger and more robust than the blood of girls - but they would not take a cop dying lightly at all.
Merrick owned various businesses around the country. He and the others would simply move on. Tomorrow night, they would disappear into the night. They had done it before and they would likely do it again. Once things were settled at their new base of operations, he would have Joe killed for all the trouble he’d caused.
And Dom?
Let him go.
The little rat wouldn’t last a month on his own.
“Jessie?”
Jessie sat against the wall, gazing into space.
“Jessi…start packing. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
She didn’t move, didn’t seem to hear. The shot had all but lobotomized her.
Damn it.
Joe backed the van up to the back door of Club Vlad, and then helped Matt carry the carpet-rolled body down the stairs. They loaded it in and closed the back doors. Together, they drove around looking for a place to dump it. Merrick wanted it to go unfound, but Joe doubted there was anywhere isolated enough in the city. On a whim, he drove to Washington Park, a vast expanse of green trees and shadows. There was a large pond there. It seemed the best option. They were leaving tomorrow anyway, so did it really matter?
Joe backed the van to a railing overlooking the dark water and put it in park. He and Matt got out, fetched the body, and carried it to the railing. They lifted and heaved it over. It splashed. Thus, they rid themselves of Vanessa Rodregiez.
***
Bruce sat anxiously up in his easy chair and waited for his cell to ring.
Parked in front of the TV by warm lamplight, a beer wedged between his legs, he’d been watching the 11’o’clock news when the phone rang. He picked it up and it was Vanessa. “Hey,” she said, “I think I found our body?”
“Which one?” Bruce asked and took a drink. “We have a lot of those these days.”
“Dominick Mason.”
Bruce sat forward in his chair. “Dead Dom? Where?”
“He just came out of a funeral home, ironically enough.”
“That sounds about right,” Bruce said. “Where are you now?”
“I’m following him east on Central.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Bruce asked.
“I think so, but I’m not sure. I’ll call you back when I’m done.”
Bruce sat the phone aside and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At some point, he fell asleep sitting up, his head lulled to one side and his mouth open. He snorted himself awake, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He checked his phone and was perturbed to see that it was past 2am.
Vanessa hadn’t called.
He dialed her number and let the phone ring until it went to voicemail. Sighing, he ended the call, then waited a few minutes and called again.
Still no answer.
It was possible she had forgotten. Maybe the guy turned out to not be Dead Dom after all. She followed some random guy around, realized it, and that was that. Hell, she was probably too embarrassed to call and tell him about it.
Something told him that wasn’t right, however.
There was something else going on here.
Something…darker.
Just before 3am, his phone rang. He snatched it off the end table next to the chair and answered it. It was Burt, the night sargent. “Rodriguez is missing,” he said simply.
Bruce’s heart sank. “Missing?”
“Yeah, she hasn’t checked in for hours and she isn’t answering calls.”
“I’m on my way,”
Bruce tore through the house, pulling on his uniform, socks, and shoes in less time than it took a Daytona 500 pit crew to service a car. In ten minutes he was speeding down 787, the Albany skyline rising in the distance. As he hurried to the station, he thought back to his last conversation with Vanessa. She’d found Dom the Dead Man, the “corpse” who’d scared Ed Harris out of a 20 year career. Despite all their talk about vampires and the living dead, Bruce didn’t believe it, not really. Even so, he was sure that Dominick Mason had done something to Vanessa.
He checked in at the station before doing anything else. They had triangulated Vanessa’s last known location via cell towers. Cops were already out searching the streets for her. Bruce went out as well, intending to start from her last known position and work his way east on Central. The closest funeral home was Tebbutt and Frederick on Central. There was also Lasak & Gigliotti on North Allen Street. Bruce didn’t know which one Vanessa had seen Dom come out of, so he checked both.
Both were deserted at this hour.
Undeterred, Bruce drove up and down Central Ave. At one point, he noticed a shape in an alleyway that looked human. He hit the brakes, jumped out, and pointed his gun at it. “Freeze!”
An old wino stepped out of the darkness. “Alright, you got me,” he said, hands up. “I started COVID. It was an accident, I swear.”
Bruce sighed and put his gun away.
For two more hours, Bruce searched the streets of Albany for Vanessa. At 4am, he spotted a squad car abandoned in the rear parking lot of an abandoned gas station on lower Lark Street. He called it in and the desk sergeant confirmed that it was the one Vanessa had signed out that night.
Still there was no sign of Vanessa herself.
Just after dawn, as the city came alive and CDTA buses began lumbering up and down the streets, Bruce got a call on his cell. “A jogger found a body in Washington Park.”
Bruce was in his personal car. He had no bubble light, no siren. Even so, he sped through the streets like he did, blowing through red lights and stop signs with little care to himself or anyone else. When he got to Washington Park, he found an army cops by the pond, the scene cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. He slammed on the brakes, threw open the door, and jumped out without even turning off the engine.
The body was rolled up in a carpet and lying on the bank. Two beat cops unrolled it at Bruce’s direction. “We should wait for -” one of them started, but Bruce cut him off.
“Do it.”
They compiled, and at the carpet’s center, like a rotten cream filling, was the body of Vanessa Rodregiuez. Her head was tilted to one side, her eyes wide and staring. Her throat had been mangled and ripped away, her head nearly severed. Even in the black and red mess, Bruce could make out the teeth marks and puncture wounds. They may have looked like something else to anyone else who saw them, but he knew, in that moment, what they were dealing with.
A sharp pang of horror sliced through him, and his knees went weak.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the beat cops drew.
Bruce fell to, rather than knelt on, one knee. He bent over the body, a mixture of horror and grief welling his throat. He wanted to reach out, to comfort her in death, but he stayed his hand. Instead, he visually examined the body. She had bruises on her face, defensive wounds on her hands, and her gun was gone. Whoever had attacked her, she put up a fight.
Something glinted on her pants.
“What’s that?” one of the cops asked.
“I dunno,” the other replied, “but it’s all over the carpet.”
Indeed, there were glinty little specks all over it, winking like mocking eyes. Nice work, eh? We really fucked her up, didn’t we? Wink wink.
“It looks like…”
The other cop cut him off. “Glitter.”
Bruce flashed back to his visit to Club Vlad the other day.
There had been glitter everywhere.
Bruce stood up.
He had work to do.
***
Instead of going back to the station to start his shift, Bruce went to Lowes. There, he bought a mallet, a gas can, and a dozen sticks of wood. An employee in a blue vest used a machine to sharpen them to a wicked point and he took his purchases to the car. Next, he drove over to the Mobil station and filled the gas can. He was so hellbent on revenge that he sprang for premium, the good stuff. No expense shall be spared.
His final stop was at a Catholic church. He filled a canteen with holy water from the marble font by the door, then swiped a crucifix from the wall. He stopped by the station, went inside, and grabbed a black duffle bag with POLICE written across the front in yellow. He opened the gun cabinet in his office, took out a shotgun, and loaded it with shells. He grabbed a handful from the box and stuffed them into his pocket.
He was just finishing up when Bertha came in. “There you are,” she spat, “I’ve waited long enough for you to do something. I demand -”
Bruce shoved the duffle bag into her arms. “Make yourself useful.”
“What?” she demanded.
“We’re going to get your granddaughter,” Bruice lied. Kind of.
Bertha’s demeanor changed. “Good. It’s about time. I was starting to think you were a complete incompetent.”
Bruce didn’t answer. Outside, he plucked the bag out of Bertha’s hands and tossed it into the backseat. He slipped behind the wheel and Bertha sat in the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Club Vlad,” Bruce said and started the engine.
“I want all of them arrested.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bruce said.
She barked orders the entire way there. Bruce was so deep in his thoughts that he barely heard her. The image of Vanessa’s ruined throat and terror-twisted face haunted him, and he felt a lump forming in his throat. Hot tears filled his eyes but he blinked them back and forced himself to calm down.
I’ll cry when I’m done killing, he thought.
A few minutes later, he pulled to the curb in front of Club Vlad. It was a hot and sunny day and the place seemed even more ominous because of it. The windows were black, the front cast in perpetual shadows by the old marquee from when it used to be a theater. The place was surely closed, but Bruce could hear music still playing from inside, some techno dance bullshit. “Alright,” he said, “let’s go.”
Getting out, he slung the dufflebag over his shoulder and carried the shotgun, the canteen full of holy water clasped to his belt. Bertha carried the gas can, looking confused. “Why do we need this?” she asked.
“We’re burning the place down.”
Bertha blinked in surprise…then an evil grin carved across her face. “That’ll show the bastards.”
Unlike last time, the door was locked. Bruce used the butt of the shotgun to break the glass, then reached inside and unlocked the door, being careful not to cut himself. This was the point of no return. What he had in mind would probably get him kicked off the force or even thrown in jail - and we all know how tough jail can be for a former barnaclehead. The memory of Vanessa’s contorted face pushed him on, however.
He’d suffer any consequences he needed to just so long as he got the sons of bitches who did this to her.
Inside, the club was cool and cave-like. Strobe lights flashed, on and off, black and white, dazzling Bruce’s eyes. The bartender was at his station, cleaning up from the night before. When he saw Bruce and Bertha come in, he started. Bruce pointed the shotgun at him. “Don’t fucking move,” he commanded.
The bartender hesitated, then reached for something under the bar.
The shotgun kicked in Bruce’s hands, and the bartender flew back, turning as he crashed into the barback. Bottles, glasses, and mugs crashed to the floor along with the bartender. Bruce racked the gun, and the shell flew out. He moved low and fast now, expecting to be swarmed by vampires, living thugs who worked for vampires, or vampire thugs who worked for themselves.
Though the shot had been like thunder, no one came.
Bruce had no idea where to go, but he imagined that vampires were naturally gravitate to the lowest part of the building. Was there a basement? Shit, he should have looked up the building plans at city hall. Damn, this is what happens when you go off half-cocked. He searched around a bit, opening doors and sweeping the rooms beyond with the shotgun. He found no basement, only stairs leading up. “Stay close,” he said to Bertha.
In the lead, Bruce crept up the stairs, the flashlight on the shotgun providing a cone of clean, white light. At the top of the stairs, he went right, and came to an office and a store room. Backtracking, and bumping into a bungling Bertha, he went into the next room. It was large and open with a vaulted ceiling, almost like a ballroom. Here the same strobe lights throbbed on and off, making him dizzy. Was this to dazzle prospective vampire hunters?
Either way, this was the place. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, some curled up on their sides and others in the classic vampire pose: Flat on their backs with their hands laced over their chests. In the center, like the sun to the planets, Merrick Garvis lay slumped back in his wheelchair, his neck exposed for any potential assassin to come and cut. Not that it would kill him. At least Bruce didn’t think it would.
“They’re all dead,” Bertha whispered. She looked around and gasped. “There’s Jessie.”
Jessie lay on her back, her hands folded on her chest. She had a ragged bullet hole in the center of her forehead. “Oh, God,” Bertha wavered, “someone shot her.”
He hoped it was Vanessa. And he hoped it fucking hurt.
Looking around, Bruce couldn’t find Dominick Mason. Was he the one who killed Vanessa? Was it a group effort? He wanted the little son of a bitch bad, but it looked like he’d have to go on without him. They didn’t have much time.
Unshouldering the duffle bag, he knelt down and rummaged around. “Start splashing that gas on the bodies,” he said.
“But -”
“Just do it,” he snapped.
There must have been a harder edge in his voice than normal, because Bertha jumped and did as she was told. She upended the can and began to splash gasoline onto the sleeping forms, the smell of it acrid and strong.
Taking out a stake and the mallet, Bruce went over to Merrick and knelt down. He gripped the stake in one hand and placed it firmly against Merrick’s chest. He brought the mallet up and hesitated, the gravity of what he was doing finally reaching him. What if he was wrong? What if -
Merrick’s head whipped up and their eyes locked.
Too late.
Bruce brought the mallet down as hard as he could. The stake drove deep into Merrick’s heart, and the vampire let out a howling screech that rang through the chamber like the cry of a banshee. His bony fingers clawed at the stake and his head whipped from side to side, his back arching and his robe coming open. In the quick strobe pattern, Bruce was shocked to see that his body was little more than a wood frame, chicken wire, and cotton balls. His blacked heart was hidden behind a screen of mesh that the stake had easily torn through. It throbbed, seemingly in time with the strobe lights, and Merrick let out another wail.
Bertha screamed, and Bruce jumped to his feet.
The vampires, drawn by their master’s cries of distress, were rising to their feet. Two, four, six of them, pale and ethereal like ghosts in a gothic mansion. They came toward Merrick, and Bruice fell back a step. The old man had gone still and lay slumped to one side, his eyes open and his mouth slack, embalming fluid leaking from the corner of his lips. Jessie bent over him and touched his face. Though she moved like a zombie, with no human emotion, Bruce was crazily sure that it was a touch of tenderness and love. Merrick didn’t stir.
He was dead.
Jessie looked at him. Yellow liquid leaked from her eyes like tears. Instead of attacking him, she turned on her grandmother and slammed her against the wall. Bertha screamed and dropped the can. It landed on its side, its contents sloshing out onto the floor. A man that resembled the pictures Bruce had seen of Joe Rossi only deader rushed him, slamming into him and knocking the shotgun aside. It hit the floor and skidded away. Joe grabbed Bruce around the throat and squeezed. Still the lights flashed, off and on, off and on. The walls thrummed with the mechanized beat of dance music, pierced only by Bertha’s screams as Jessie ripped out her throat.
Joe leaned in, his fangs wicked and glowing in the light. Bruce clawed at the monster’s face, tearing away strips of dead flesh. Joe turned his head to the side, and Bruce kneed him in the groin. Even dead, getting kicked in the balls hurt like hell, apparently. Joe’s grip loosened and Bruce was able to shove him off. Bruce unclasped the canteen and frantically screwed the cap off as Joe recovered. Joe sprang at him again, and Bruce splashed him in the face.
A sound like sizzling meat filled the air, and Joe screamed at the top of his lungs. He pressed his hands to his face and danced around the room, his skin liquifying and oozing between his fingers. The others were coming now, led by a terrible skeletal thing. Bruce scooped the shotgun off the floor, brought it around, and fired. The blast hit the thing dead center, tearing it literally in half. The top half flew back, an all too human look of surprise on its face, and the bottom half fell over with a wet thud. Another vampire came at, and Bruce slammed it across the face with the butt of the gun. He heard its jaw crack, saw teeth flying.
Bertha lay dead on the floor, Jessie bent over her. The smell of Bertha’s blood attracted the others, who seemed to forget about Bruce, Merrick, and everything else. Joe was on his knees, wailing in pain, and the skeletal thing was pulling itself toward Bertha. A feeding frenzy broke out as vampires fought to get a piece of her the way piglets might fight over their mother’s teat. Bruce watched in a mixture of horror and fascination, but recovered himself. He grabbed the gas can from the floor and dumped the rest of its contents on Merrick’s body, the feeding vampires’ backs, and the floor, using the last of it to make a little trail to the door. He tossed the can aside, bent down, and stuck a match.
A huge, fiery whump filled the room, and fire streaked along the trail. The vampires all went up in a huge ball of flames, and fire shot up Merrick’s body, catching his robe, his hair, and the wooden frame that had kept him semi upright for God knows how long. Letting out inhuman screams, the vampires broke from Bertha’s corpse. One stumbled around, bounced off the wall, and fell; another toddled toward Bruce before falling to its knees. The half skeleton kept drinking from Bertha’s neck even as it burned.
The heat was enormous, baking. Bruce backed away, and the last thing he saw before smoke obscured his vision was Merrick Garvis.
He was literally melting.
***
Dominick Mason tried to go home, but he no longer had a home. All of his worldly possessions sat on the sidewalk in front of his building, discarded coldly as easily. His key didn’t work in his door and there was a FOR RENT sign on it. Why would it be any other way? He was dead. Sooner or later, everyone forgets you when you’re dead, and all the things you held so dear wind up in the trash. It was a hard pill to swallow, but most people aren’t around to see it after they die.
He was.
From his building, he walked east toward Washington Park. In the distance, thick, black smoke billowed into the air, and sirens rose. He barely noticed and wouldn’t have cared even if he did. No more rubbernecking for him. That was for the living.
The pain that had plagued him so the previous day came back, only less this time. Maybe he was imagining it, but it was getting harder to think. Not that he cared, really. What was there to think about anyway? How he had no one to mourn or miss him? How he died and not one single person, except for maybe his mother, cared, or even noticed? How he had done nothing with his life? Even to the women he’d slept with, what was he? Just another dating app hookup. They probably didn’t even remember his name.
Merrick had been right about one thing. Death was easy. It was life that was hard…life that hurt.
With that in mind, Dominick made his way to Washington Park. It was a vast and deep place with many small caves and thickets. Kids played on the playground, their cries of laughter scenting the still air. It had grown cloudy and began to rain. Still, smoke poured into the sky in the direction of Club Vlad. Dom didn’t wish ill on Merrick and the others, didn’t hope it was them burning. He didn’t care anymore. Not about them, not about anyone. For better or worse (and he would argue it was worse), his life was over. His time came days ago, he just missed the boat.
Picking out an isolated little area, Dom sat against a tree with his legs splayed out in front of him. He titled his head back and closed his eyes. Yes, thinking was hard now. His mind felt sluggish, cold. He was thirsty…so, so thirsty, but he ignored it.
Slowly, the bugs found him. Flies buzzed around him and laid their eggs in his skin. Beetles scuttled over him, followed by worms.
Next, it was the birds. They ate out his eyes and nibbled at his blue, bloated skin.
The animals came last.
Their appetites were bigger.
And they left little remaining of poor, outcast Dominick Mason.
***
That night, Bruce sat alone in his little trailer, a bottle of whiskey wedged between his legs and unshed tears in his eyes. He stared at his reflection in the darkened TV set and took long swallows from the bottle. He planned to drink until he forgot or passed out, whichever came first. He tried to not think about Vanessa, but in his addled state, he couldn’t control himself, and began to cry. When that storm passed, like the others before it, he chugged from the bottle.
As distant church bells clanged the hour - midnight - a feeble knock came at the door. Bruce took another drink and it came again. Getting up, he stumbled, nearly fell, and gripped the bottle tightly. He didn’t want to lose one precious drop.
Again, the knock.
“I’m coming,” Bruce slurred. He staggered to the door and fought with the lock. He was dizzy and seeing double.
When he got it, he opened the door.
The bottle dropped from his hand and clanked onto the floor.
Vanessa, clad in a puke green hospital gown, stood on the step, her hands pressed to her chest and a look of anguish on her milk white face. Her head tilted to one side, the wounds on her neck cleaned but open, gaping. Her dark eyes shone with tears. “I’m dead,” she said.
Breaking down in tears, she collapsed against him and they sank to the floor. She was cold and smelled. Bruce wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest anyway. “Shhh, it’s alright,” he said drunkenly. “Hey, it’s alright.
“I’m dead,” she repeated, and her voice broke. “I don’t want to die.”
Bruce held her close, trying to warm her icy skin. He didn’t know what to say, so he cried with her.
“You’re safe now,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”
“I want blood,” she said and sobbed harder, “I want to hurt people.”
“Shhh,” Bruce said again. “It’s okay.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a utility knife. He flicked the blade across his wrist and searing pain shot up his arm. “Here,” he said and offered her his blood, “drink this.”
He did this without care and without thought. She needed him, and one barnaclehead always backs up another.
Vanessa hesitated, looking from his face to the oozing blood, unsure.
“Go ahead,” he told her.
Vanessa brought his wrist to her mouth.
And began to drink.

BoxOfficeTheory Presale Tracking
USA Showtimes As of May 10
Presales Data (Google Sheets Link)
BoxOfficeReport Previews
DOMESTIC PRESALES
Back to Black Thursday Comps/Predictions: $0.35M/$0.37M

• abracadabra1998 ($0.35M Thursday comp. Probably looking at EA around $100k from these numbers, it's limited to Dolby only though so it's quite tiny (May 15). Yikes bikes (May 12).)
  
• crazymoviekid ($0.39M Thursday and $1.21M Friday comp. We're back up to $.3M-$.5M Thursday while Friday is pretty consistent, still around $1.15M-$1.4M. Estimated OW: $4.5M-$5.5M (May 16). Knocking this down to $.25M Thursday. Despite relatively strong sales, comps are low around $1.25M for Friday (May 15). Not great. Let's say $.3M (May 14).)
  
• el sid ($0.38M Thursday comp. Average tomorrow will probably be around 400k (May 15).)
  
• filmlover (Looking at the sales even for the early shows on Wednesday it's on the anemic side (and nothing that's likely to boost it over the next days). Feels like we're about to see how low a biopic about a famous musician can go (May 10).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex ($0.38M Thursday comp.)
  
• Relevation ($0.26M Thursday comp. And for how shitty IF did, Back to Black cratered even harder, and likely would've been the worst selling movie I've ever tracked had I not run numbers a little late. Sub-$300K THU and a $2.5-4M OW (May 15).)
  
• Rorschach (Zero tickets sold on Thursday and only four on Friday. I don't think I'll be missing much (May 13).)
  

IF Thursday Comps/Predictions: $1.72M/$1.80M

• abracadabra1998 ($1.5M Thursday comp. Really good update here, FINALLY! Been waiting for this. This is encouraging for sure. With this growth now maybe shooting for a finish near 1.75 or maybe even approach 2. Eek. Zero sales day only a few days before previews, when you're dealing with a very low baseline. I'm not sure what's happening here (May 15). Most comps did move the right direction. If it keeps trending up perhaps I can see a finish around $1.5M Thursday. One thing to peep at: the MTC1 ratio (59%) is unusually large compared to other family releases. At T-2, other releases' MTC1 % was at: KFP4: 51%, Migration: 34%, Wonka: 59%, Wish: 35%, Trolls: 24%. So much more comparable to Wonka and KFP4; maybe something to think about when looking at keyser's numbers and thinking of the ratio there (May 14). My model has been pretty good for animated/family releases in the past, hence why every comp is so eerily similar. Still, looking at others' numbers and how much lower mine are, I am wondering if summer break might be something to consider here; from what I am aware, here in Minnesota most school districts don't start break until June (May 13). Hoping for some real acceleration this last week but not looking good (May 12). One week out, not impressed in the slightest (May 9). Rising against comps as expected, due to the short release window, but I am still failing to see anything that suggests the numbers given by some other outlets (May 5).)
  
• AniNate (All I can say is if you look at Tinseltown Canton presales the IF projections ($30M+) seem pretty reasonable. I will grant they might've booked more screens than necessary for it (May 16). I'm gonna guess that Nick IP spot for IF this morning ratcheted up interest, Fri-Sun sales at Canton now close to 200. Also of those 200 about 50 were for XD. Not the usual overwhelming presale split but not insignificant for a kids movie also playing on two standard screens (May 13). 45 sold at the five nearest Cinemarks for Thursday previews so far, so yeah there's evidently some kind of regional variation (May 13). I definitely haven't seen as much of a rush here with Garfield as with IF (May 11). I dunno, I have no comps but I feel like local presales is a pretty sizable haul a week in advance for an original non-Disney kids movie (May 9).)
  
• crazymoviekid ($2.43M Thursday and $8.49M Friday comp. Not a great day. Back down to $1.75M-$2M Thursday but pretty good day for Friday, bumping up to $7M-$7.5M. Estimate OW: $27M-$29M (May 16). Comps mostly are up. Adjusting up to around $2M-$2.25M Thursday. Unless this plays like Elemental, we're aiming around $6.5M-$7M Friday. Estimated OW: $25M-$27M (May 15). Definitely looking around $1.75M Thursday for now (May 14).
  
• DAJK (Selling pretty well so far here (May 4).)
  
• el sid ($2.4M Thursday comp. Friday up so-so 116% since last Monday. I chose Jungle Cruise, Dolittle, Elemental, Minions 2 and Sonic 2 as comps (always counted on Monday of the release week for Friday) and the true Friday number for IF would be 6.6M at the moment. In this case the comparison numbers were very similar, around 6-7M. Overall it was a boring counting today which lasted too long for so few action. And judging from some random samples Garfield also saw no significant jumps (I also didn't expect much, it's still too early IMO). Thursday up 92% since last Monday. I hoped for a bit better jump till today :( but it's also not too bad. So for Friday no big numbers but up 75% since last Monday (and the jump must have happened pretty recently) (May 13). Up 73.5% since Monday (where it had 143 sold tickets). Best sales in California, not doing too bad between the coasts. The number today is ok to me (May 12). Not really signs for a breakout for Friday so far, but very solid. It will not really get 4-6M Thursday e.g. compared to Migration but from most comps the number could be pretty decent (May 7). Looked good for the film, both on Thursday and on Friday (May 6).)
  
• jeffthehat ($1.90M Thursday comp. Slipped a little vs. comps. Sub-20% growth seems bad at this stage and opening size for a family film. But maybe walkups are better than presales suggest. Thinking $1.8m +/- $0.2m tomorrow (May 15).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex ($1.62M Combined SizeAdjusted+GrowthModel Thursday comp. $1.50M Santikos Thursday comp. Sticking to the 1.5m - 1.75m range. I'm looking for a +40% final day that would finish at 1.8m avg comps and 1.62m growth forecast. I'm not ruling out 2m, but it would need to have a very good day (May 16). Raising my expectations to 1.5 - 1.75m range. I don't really have a good feel for what age this is playing to (May 15). Thinking somewhere in the 1.2m-1.5m Thursday range despite a couple of higher comps (May 14).)
  
• keysersoze123 (Friday pace is promising (May 16). Dont think even if it doubles the gross, 2m is locked. But even if it does, it would barely do that much. Let us see how walkups go tomorrow. Pace is really meh for T-2. $1.75m ish for previews. OW should be similar to what I saw yesterday for now (May 15). I would say it should hit 2m previews or even more if walkups are strong. OW probably in mid to high 20s for now. Its Friday sales are not that much higher than thursday for crazy IM like say Panda 4 (May 14).)
  
• Relevation ($1.18M Thursday comp. IF completely tanked here, brutal comp average with no good comparisons at all. $1.2-1.5M THU and something in the ballpark of an $18-24M OW? (May 15).)
  
• RichWS (15 screen theater near me is giving IF peak Marvel number of showings. I know it's short and the market is quiet, but damn (May 14).)
  
• Rorschach (Good growth for IF, especially after Tuesday's abysmal sales (May 15). Even with no comps to go off, this growth seems pretty weaksauce. I guess we'll see how it goes tomorrow (May 14).)
  
• Shawn Robbins (The pre-sales I'm seeing in multiple markets are little better than I think some expect here. I wouldn't be shocked with a number between 2 and 2.5 for Thursday, as well as big jumps on Friday and Saturday. The flip side of that coin is the reviews... although kids won't care. Could see 40 happening if this plays super strong in family markets and outside coastal cities like I suspect it could, but I'm surprised the studio didn't low ball it a little more to be safe... especially since we had been very publicly keeping our range in the high 20s/low 30s from the bottom end (May 15).)
  
• TheFlatLannister ($2.39M Thursday comp. Really not much going on. Don't think walkups will be super strong either (May 13). Not much growth (May 10). Pace is collapsing a bit. Continues its downward trend (May 7). After a strong start, this has cooled off quite a bit (May 4).)
  
• Tinalera (Pretty quiet Vancouver and Calgary area (May 13).)
  
• vafrow ($0.6M Thursday comp. Well, we finally got something. It still lags behind comps, and if I could be bothered to track walk ups, I'm guessing this will do okay. But it's still lagging some very reasonable comps by a large margin here (May 16). It's going up, but slowly. The thing that hit me looking at the numbers is that the most popular format so far is the VIP theatres, which are 19+. With such low sales, you can't read too much into anything, but it kind of speaks to how this isn't grabbing the family crowd (May 14). Some marginal movement, but we're running out of time for this. At this stage, I expect my market is an anomaly, but I still hope and expect it will close the gap in the final few days (May 13). Still nothing (May 12). Still nothing happening. I did check Friday sales, and it was a lot stronger with 51 tickets sold. That's better, but still not tremendous. I also checked the wider radius, where it's pretty much exactly where Haunted Mansion was, which hit $3.1M opening (May 11). Still nothing really happening here (May 10). Since the last update, they released full showtime sets, and it actually lost two showtimes rather than gain. From the sound of it, it might be doing better in other Canadian markets, particularly BC (May 8). Numbers are still really low, making the standard track fairly useless. I did do a larger 100km radius track, encompassing the broader southern Ontaro market (~8M population, MTC4 being about 70-80% of the market). Even against Haunted Mansion, which underindexed here, it's not doing well (May 4).)
  
• YM! (So far in the four Wisconsin theaters I’ve tracked, IF is at about 45% of where Wish was at in the two theaters I’ve tracked 30 minutes before previews. Think it could get to something similar before preview time (May 16).)
  

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Thursday Comps/Predictions: $1.49M/$1.37M

• abracadabra1998 ($1M Thursday comp. Perhaps this will follow the Nun and the Exorcist comps, but I am not fully convinced. I'll just go with the average here and call it a day with my prediction: $1 Million, +/- 0.2. Not much movement here (May 15). Not a good update at all but I am wondering about the summer break deal here as well. For Back to Black it shouldn't affect it much I would think (May 13).)
  
• crazymoviekid ($1.24M Thursday and $4.35M Friday comp. Decent day. Feeling an inch past $1.25M Thursday but much better comps for Friday, aiming now between $4M-$5M. Estimated OW: $14M-$17M (May 16). Comps leveling off. Adjusting up to $1M Thursday and wouldn't trust Friday comp ($10.05M) (May 15). Weird comps. Let's go for $.5M-$.75M Thursday comp.)
  
• el sid ($1.9M Thursday comp. Nice surprise. Up very nice 67.5% since Monday (May 15). From what I saw, it had an ok jump till today but the jump till Wednesday will be way more important. But so far, decent presales (May 14).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex ($1.54M Combined SizeAdjusted+GrowthModel Thursday comp. $1.82M Santikos Thursday comp. Keeping on track to match IF tonight (May 16). We could have a preview battle on our hands! (May 14).)
  
• Relevation ($1.85M Thursday comp. The Strangers: Chapter One sold surprisingly well here, even somehow knocking IF for best selling movie of the weekend. Comps are hovering in the $1.5-2.2M range and I don't have a clue how walkups play here, but I suppose the $1.85M THU average my comps spit out sounds pretty right, combined with a $15Mish OW (May 15).)
  
• Rorschach ($1.09M/$4.68M/$5.23M Thursday/Friday/Thursday+Friday comp. Decent day for Strangers. Didn't quite continue off yesterday's big bump, but still holding well against the Tarot comp (May 15). More than double from yesterday's count. Curious to see if it keeps up the momentum going forward (May 14). Tarot had more tickets sold for Thursday compared to its Friday showings when I checked the Monday before it came out; hence, why the comps are so all over the place at the moment. The Thurs + Fri comp does appear to be a reasonable middle ground (May 13).)
  
• TwoMisfits (TMobile deal for May - $5 ticket to The Strangers Chapter 1 next Tuesday (May 9).)
  

Furiosa Thursday Comp: $4.31M

• abracadabra1998 ($5.46M Thursday comp. GxK obviously really propping the average up but for now I could see that settling at around $5 Million, still good pace! (May 12). Really good stuff in this market (May 9). Reallyyyyyy good day 1 here. I want to note that: NO I do NOT think preview numbers will be that high; it's just highlighting the fact that this is likely a movie that will be running hot in my market, as cinephile blockbusters usually do. Next update I will have T-14 comps, which will be a lot lower due to the short release window (May 8).)
  
• AniNate (Encouraging to see the weekend fill out a bit. Been seeing a lot of promotion during the basketball playoffs so general awareness has to be getting there now. (May 15). Skimmed through ThuFri and Valley View (Cleveland vicinity) has sold roughly 60 Furiosa tix so far while Tinseltown (Canton) has sold 40. I'm guessing the upfront audience does lean more toward the urban/cosmopolitan sensibilities (May 9). Presales show there's definitely some hype for this. Regal gonna irritate trackers again, offering no upcharge IMAX for Furiosa (May 8).)
  
• Charlie Jatinder ($3.05M Thursday comp.)
  
• el sid ($5.8M average Thursday comp (without Exorcist 2) (May 12). Furiosa continues its strong performance in "my" theaters. The movie yesterday had already 1.310 sold tickets (for Thursday, May 23). Up 15% in ca. 24 hours which isn't bad at all after the first rush. Already comfortably in front of The Fall Guy's final sales (it had 1.071 counted on Thursday for Thursday) and almost on par with Civil War's final sales (1.357) and also the Apes finally had not more than 1.657 sold tickets in my theaters (May 11). I also can't complain about Furiosa's presales in my theaters, not at all. Already 1,138 sold tickets (in all of "my" 7 theaters) for May 23. 14 days left. Promising start. Civil War on Thursday of the release week for Thursday had 1,357 sold tickets and The Fall Guy finally had 1,071 sold tickets (May 9).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex ($3.51M Thursday comp.)
  
• keysersoze123 (Definitely chugging along. I am feeling good about 5m+ previews (May 15). It has way stronger sales than Garfield and that is expected. I am thinking of 5m previews for now (May 14). I think this is a solid OD presales. With a short PS window its probably looking at 5m+ previews (May 9).)
  
• TheFlatLannister ($4.44M Thursday comp. Keeps climbing at a strong pace (May 11). This continues to grow at an excellent rate (May 10). Really strong day 2. The short presales is for sure a factor (May 9). Not seeing much of a breakout. Still pretty solid start to presales (May 8).)
  
• vafrow ($2.9M Thursday comp. Comps are showing as steady since the last update, but it actually dipped quite a bit this week before rebounding today. Advance ticket buying has been so off in this market recently for some reason. Holding pace with Apes is a good sign (May 16). It had a good day (May 12). Mediocre day 2 (May 10). Not the hottest start. IMAX is the format of choice though, so, ATP will be high (May 9).)
  

Hit Man

• vafrow (Getting a theatrical release up here in Canada, and early signs are that it might get a pretty decent screen count. Not super wide or anything, but a pretty decent amount for a weekend that has a lot of other releases (May 14).)

The Garfield Movie EA+Thursday Comp: $2.24M

• abracadabra1998 ($0.76M EA comp and $1.19M Thursday comp. Still not really accelerating, and the EA is falling against comps (May 12). Good EA numbers, but many of these comps were PLF-only EA, which this is not, so I think the ATP will be quite lower and that should be adjusted for (May 9).)
  
• AniNate (EA sales look decent now, but this does feel rather weak compared to the IF presales. Not 100% certain what's going on here but based on this I buy the trades' opening estimates over the forum vibes (May 15). I definitely haven't seen as much of a rush here with Garfield as with IF (May 11).)
  
• el sid (The very even sales are a good sign (May 7). For Sunday, May 19, I can already report that also in my theaters it looks very good for Garfield. They will for sure add shows soon. It has so far only 1 show/theater and the shows are almost sold out, between 1 and 4 seats are still available. So my guess still is that this movie if it's not totally bad (and first reviews here were quite positive) will become a (big) hit. Seems not much on Thursday but it's a step in the right direction (May 6).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex ($2.52M EA+Thursday comp.)
  
• keysersoze123 (Its definitely weaker than even Elemental. That said these movies tend to finish strong and so I am not writing it off so early. Just that the long PS window is irrelevant for them. They could rather start presales like a week before release and it would be all the same. Meh. We have to wait until next week to gauge where its going to finish. It has very low ATP as well and actual would be even lower as its going to see tons of kids tickets (May 14). Early shows are regular digital shows at 1PM this sunday. So ATP will be very low. I think 500k ish at best. Preview let us see how things go in the final week. Presales at this point are almost non existent (May 13).)
  
• TheFlatLannister ($2.14M Thursday comp.)
  
• vafrow ($0.4M Thursday comp. Comps don't paint a pretty picture though. EA shows are doing okay (May 11). Still no sales for my core sample for previews. But I did the larger sweep, which shows the interest right now is the Sunday early access shows. Looking at sales patterns, it's mainly blocks of 3/4 tickets, so likely families grabbing some. It's worth noting that the May holiday in Canada is the weekend of May 17-20th, not the weekend after with Memorial Day. I can see families prioritizing getting out the holiday weekend when they have more time (May 4).)
  

The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Re-Releases (June 8-10)

• BoxOfficePro (Fathom Events has also announced that select Regal Cinemas will present the films in 4DX on June 22/23/24 for Fellowship/Towers/Return respectively (May 14).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex (Up to ~1,400 shows now with new locations picking it up and others adding a second showing. LotR1 has sold 831 seats OD, LotR2 sold 715 seats OD, and LotR3 sold 735 seats OD. For comparison, Phantom Menace didn't break 800 tickets until T-3 and we're still over a month out. JW3 comp is currently around 9m (it was at 1,670 tickets sold at this point!) (May 6).)
  

Inside Out 2 Average Thursday Comp: $8.14M

• abracadabra1998 ($3.67M Thursday comp. Holy numbers of shows and seats! Multiplexes are really expecting a lot here. Sales off the bat not amazing here sadly, but we shall see where it goes (May 15).)
  
• AniNate (It is encouraging that Canton is already giving me something to work with with 12 Thursday preview sales. Same number for Fri-Sun. I do see nine sales for first Thursday at Canton now and I think that's a pretty solid start (May 15). I do see a few 1-2 spots for Inside Out on Saturday. Think some M-F workweek adult fans might be putting down money for that (May 14).)
  
• charlie Jatinder ($11.84M Thursday comp at MTC2. $16M Thursday comp for Kung Fu Panda 4 (May 15).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex (Already at 180 shows for previews in my areas and still has a few theaters left to post. For comparison, Godzilla x Kong finished with 197, Kingdom of Apes 190, and Kung Fu Panda 205 (May 14).)
  
• keysersoze123 (At least the show counts show Plexes are expecting a big OW. I dont remember when we last had a animation movie start with so many shows. I wont count Mario as that was a fan driven movie. Definitely not great presales but this is not a fan driven movie. Let us see where things are in the final week (May 15). Too early to judge presales as ticket sales just started early this morning. Families dont book tickets on weekday mornings. Wait until evening today to judge it. From a release perspective its way bigger than all animation movies seen recently including Panda 4. Easily the biggest I have seen in a long time. Only movie which is not comparable is Mario but that was not just a family flick (May 14).)
  
• Porthos (VERY BAD COMPS: $8.83M Thursday comp. I really do not have good comps for this movie. Like, at all. Especially for D1. With that in mind, I did some digging and did manage to get the Elemental D1 numbers out of the old Tracking thread: IO2 = 5.45946x Elemental on D1 [13.10m]. Now will Inside Out 2 be as backloaded as Elemental? Well it's tough to literally sell 5.5x times the amount of tickets on the final couple of days that Elemental did, so perhaps not. But it does show how fracking backloaded purely kids animation is. Anyway, this is 30 days out and it isn't a CBM film (like AtSV) or CBM-adjacent film (like Incredibles 2). The Sonic 2 comp is perhaps a little concerning. On the other hand, nearly a weeks more of pre-sales so not exactly a great comp. 3.5% of presales are 3D and 40.1% are PLF (May 15). On the Saturday of release weekend (ie NOT EA) there is a special event screening for IO2: INSIDE OUT 2: FUNKO FAMILY EVENT! (2024) Sat June 15th. Might boost the OW slightly, depending on how wide this event is and how much more these tickets will presumably cost (May 11).)
  
• TheFlatLannister ($8.20M Thursday comp. This is a super super strong day 2. Probably just Orlando overindexing, but yeah starting to lean towards something big brewing. Florida presales are somehow even crazier. Sold 2357 seats and is getting a blockbuster rollout in terms of showing allocations. Kung Fu panda comp day 2: gives me $8.50M (May 15). Well, I can't really tell if this is a breakout or not yet. Looks very good especially in the first few hours. These are probably terrible comps, but might as well try something (May 14).)
  
• TwoMisfits (I'm kinda shocked at the opening set from my Cinemarks... 2 screens (1 PLF, 1 not) and 6 showings at my PLF 14 for Thursday (and 11 showings on the same screens once it runs full day - 7 PLF b/c 1 is 3d on the reg screen, 4 not)... 3 screens (.75 3d, 2.25 not) and 9 showings at the non-PLF 12 for Thursday (and 12 showings on 2.25 screens once it runs full day)... So, 2 and 2.25 screens for the weekend presale sets... Disney must be charging a huge % for themselves b/c this is an Elemental opening set at my PLF...a little more generous for Thursday at my non-PLF, but then they too drop to an Elemental opening set after the adult Disney base Thursday rush... (May 14).)
  
• vafrow (No new sales. Whatever glitches in the system on day 1 didn't push sales to day 2. I still think the lack of base ticket options will push families to wait. Cineplex has jacked up the cost of premium formats, plus they're throwing in an increase for opening weekend of major releases. It adds up quickly for families (May 16). With the site glitching yesterday, it might account for the slow start. But, what's interesting is the format breakdown. Nothing is being made available in anything close to a regular showtime. The one non 3D showing in Dolby is a matinee showing. Everything else is carrying a hefty premium. They'll likely release regular showtimes closer to release, but right now, it's priced to get eager fans to pay the premium formats (May 15).)
  
• YM! (In fairness it's only been an hour but yeah sales are softer than I expected. However, it is a month out and will largely skew more towards kids than say TLM/Across so wasn't expecting a blitz like them. Here at Marcus theaters are going all out for IO2 with it having the lion share of PLFs with it getting both screens when there is two PLFs with tentpole like levels of screens (May 14). Was taking a look at Marcus Cinemas to see that they have preloaded Inside Out 2 showtimes which seem to start at 3:00 pm on a Thursday. It seems like Marcus is going all out on it as judging from showtimes it's taking away all of Bad Boys’ PLFs in that theaters that have two+ PLFs are giving all to IO2 (May 11).)
  

Domestic Calendar Dates (last updated May 3):
MAY

• (May 16) Presales Start [Bad Boys Ride or Die]
  
• (May 16) Thursday Previews [Babes + Back to Black + If + The Strangers: Chapter 1 + The Blue Angels IMAX]
  
• (May 17) Presales Start [Ezra]
  
• (May 19) Review Embargo Lifts [Garfield 9 PM EST]
  
• (May 20) Opening Day [Monday: Spider-Man Homecoming Re-Release]
  
• (May 22) Presales Start [The Watchers]
  
• (May 23) Thursday Previews [Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga + Hit Man + The Garfield Movie + Sight]
  
• (May 26) Presales Start [Bikeriders]
  
• (May 27) Opening Day [Monday: Spider-Man Far From Home Re-Release]
  
• (May 30) Thursday Previews [Ezra + Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle + Robot Dreams + The Young Woman and the Sea]
  

JUNE

• (June 3) Opening Day [Monday: Spider-Man No Way Home Re-Release]
  
• (June 5) Presales Start [Despicable Me 4]
  
• (June 6) Thursday Previews [Bad Boys: Ride or Die + The Watchers]
  
• (June 8) 1-Saturday Re-Release (1st day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
  
• (June 9) 1-Sunday Re-Release (1st day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition]
  
• (June 10) 1-Monday Re-Release (1st day) [The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition]
  
• (June 13) Thursday Previews [Inside Out 2]
  
• (June 15) 1-Saturday Re-Release (2nd day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
  
• (June 16) 1-Sunday Re-Release (2nd day) [The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition]
  
• (June 17) 1-Monday Re-Release (2nd day) [The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition]
  
• (June 20) Thursday Previews [The Bikeriders + Janet Planet]
  
• (June 27) Thursday Previews [Blue Lock The Movie -Episode Nagi- + Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 + A Quiet Place: Day One]
  

JULY

• (July 2) Opening Day [Wednesday: Despicable Me 4]
  
• (July 4) Opening Day [Thursday: Possum Trot]
  
• (July 4) Thursday Previews [MaXXXine]
  
• (July 11) Thursday Previews [Fly Me to the Moon + Untitled New Line Horror movie]
  
• (July 18) Thursday Previews [Twisters]
  
• (July 25) Thursday Previews [Deadpool and Wolverine + Didi + Fabulous Four]
  

AUGUST

• (August 1) Thursday Previews [Harold and the Purple Crayon]
  
• (August 8) Thursday Previews [Borderlands + Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us + Cuckoo + The Fire Inside + Trap]
  
• (August 15) Thursday Previews [Alien: Romulus + Horizon An American Saga Chapter 2 + Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure]
  
• (August 22) Thursday Previews [Blink Twice + The Crow + The Forge + Slingshot]
  
• (August 29) Thursday Previews [City of Dreams + Reagan + They Listen]
  

Presale Tracking Posts:
April 23
April 25
April 27
April 30
May 2
May 4
May 7
May 9
May 11
May 14
Note: I have removed most tracking data that has not been updated for 2 weeks. I think there is value in keeping data for a week or two but at a certain point they start to lose their value and should not be treated the same as more recent tracking data.

There are plenty of ways to convert ones paper flashcards to digital anki flashcards. After some research however I did not found a reliable way that suited my needs. The goal of this post is to document my workflow (just another workflow) so that people who find themself in a similar situation may be able to profit and save time and nerves.
Before we get started please note that English is not my native language and although I tried my best to get the spelling and grammar right there will most likely be (a lot of) mistakes.
Secondly I am running a Linux machine and I am using the command line for step two. That being said, I am no programmer and no Linux power user, if I can do it so can you! This However means there are most certainly more elegant ways to write the bash script and use the command line in step two. I appreciate any suggestions. Without any further ado lets get started:
The situation: I want to convert ~2000 paper flashcards to anki flashcards (yeah I know.. f me).

1. Scanning

I was quite lucky to have had access to a good scanning machine (Canon imageFORMULA). With that I was able to scan a whole chunk of flashcards ~50 at once. The software for that scanner saved EACH scanned flashcard as a separate pdf file. So every flashcard (front and back) was saved as a pdf file with the nametopic_xxx.pdf (important later). Note that topic refers to the topic of the flashcard and the xxx to the total number of scanned flashcards within that topic. For example: if I had 122 flashcards on complex analysis, I would scan them in four chunks (the scanner was not able to handle more than ~50 flashcards at once) and end up with pdf files ranging from 001 to 122 all named complexAnalysis_001.pdf ... complexAnalysis_122.pdf. So far so good till I learned that Anki can not import pdf files. Although there are Add-ons for that job I did not had any success with them.

2. Converting pdf to png

After some research I found out that you could quite easily use .png files to create anki flashcards. So converting all our scans is the next step. Turns out most Linux machines have quite a convenient command line tool for that job. You can use pdftoppm as part of the popplerpackage which is installed on most Linux machines (if not sudo apt install poppler-utils should do the job on Debian based systems). If we look at our example from Step 1. we can use the command

 pdftoppm -png complexAnalysis_001.pdf complexAnalysis_001 

to generate TWO .png files from that one pdf. We end up with the png files complexAnalysis_001-1.png and complexAnalysis_001-2.png where 001-1.png contains the front of our scanned flashcard and 001-2.png the back. Writing a little bash script (note: that is the first time I wrote a bash script so please go easy on me),

#!/bin/bash for ((h=0; h<=1; h++)) do for ((z=0; z<=9; z++)) do for ((e=0; e<=9; e++)) do echo $h$z$e pdftoppm -png complexAnalysis_$h$z$e.pdf complexAnalysis_$h$z$e done done done 

which iterates from 000 to 199, converted all my scanned complex analysis Flashcards to .png files. Isn't that cool?! Note that you need to change your directory to the location where all your files are when running the script. Also of note: You get an I/O error for every number for which there is no pdf file so in my example there will be an I/O error for 000 and every number >122. This however is nothing to worry about since the script just continues on.

3. So many PNGs... what now?

Now we want to create a .csv file with which we tell anki that the front for each of our 122 Flashcards is complexAnalysis_xxx-1.pngand the back is complexAnalysis_xxx-2.png. The Idea to import the Flashcards this way and how to create the .csv file comes from this post. The "explanation" on what is going on goes as follows: We can tell Anki to include a picture for the front and/or back of the flashcard. (I don't know any HTML so take my word with a grain of salt here) If we add to the front of our anki flashcards and to the back, we end up with a anki flashcard which is just like the paper flashcard. I believe this command tells anki so show the Image XYZ.png (this of course only works when the image XYZ.png is inside the Anki Media folder. More on that in Step 4). So the idea is to create a .csv file in which the first column includes the command for each cards front side and the second column the cards back side. In plain English: our spreedsheet (.csv file) has to look like this

Column 1 (Front)	Column 2 (Back)
complex Analysis 001-1	complex Analysis 001-2
...	...
complex Analysis 122-1	complex Analysis 122-2

only instead of complex Analysis 001-1 and so on.
I used LibreOffice Calc however Excel, google sheets and so on should all work similar if not even in the exact same way. Make sure all columns are formatted to text. In LibreOffice Calc we can connect two strings of text together with the command =CONCAT("text1","text2"). So first Column D represents the Flashcard # (Flashcards 001-122). Column E and F will represent the front (-1) and the back (-2 ) of our Flashcards. If we now call =CONCAT(D1,E1) (and=CONCAT(D1,E1)) in Column G (Column H) we get the String/Text 001-01 (001-02). We can now use this in Column A (and B) to assemble our full command by typing =CONCAT(CONCAT("") (and =CONCAT(CONCAT("")). I have prepared the Spreadsheet below:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
1	=CONCAT(CONCAT("")	=CONCAT(CONCAT("")		001	-1	-2	=CONCAT(D1,E1)	=CONCAT(D1,F1)
2	=CONCAT(CONCAT("")	=CONCAT(CONCAT("")		002	-1	-2	=CONCAT(D2,E2)	=CONCAT(D2,F2)

Why do we do this? Easy! If you now select Columns A - H and Rows 1 and 2 (so everything on the Table above) you can Drag them down all the way to row 122 (if you want to Add Tags for Cards you can type them in Column C). There is the ready to export spreadsheet for you! Export or save as a .csv file now and you are ready to go to the next Step!

4. Moving the PNGs into place

Move all the .png files which we created in Step 2 to your Anki Media folder. On Linux (if you have used ankis default installation) you can just cd into to folder with all your .png files and type the command

cp *.png ~/home/henry/.local/share/Anki2/User1/collection.media 

5. The magical Import

Almost done! Open up Anki. Go to File>Import and select the .csv file you created in Step 3. Now make sure "Front" ist set to Column 1 and "Back" is set so Column 2. If you added Tags in Step 3 make sure to set "Tags" to Column 3. Click on Import and you are done! All the scanned paper flashcards are now in Anki as digital ones, isn't that cool!
It took me for each, scanning and doing Step 1-5, about one afternoon till I had all my ~2000 paper flashcards in Anki. It is still some work but nothing terrible. I appreciate any suggestions and I am happy to answer questions if some arise. I hope this comes in handy for people in a similar situation. Happy studying everyone!

My boyfriend met this woman at his job last year and they worked together for a few months before she quit. They quickly bonded because her and I are from the same country. She felt very comfortable to tell him about her dating life and her personal life. The friendship was very platonic and they would text here and there but it never went further than that. After she quit, they never really spoke again.
A couple months later she reaches out to my boyfriend and sets up a double date with us + her new boyfriend. We had a pretty great time with them and I felt like they were a really cool couple. We’ve hung out with them a few times after and have even been in larger group settings with them where they got to hang out with our other friends.
I never really felt like I could get close to her past a certain level just yet and just kind of categorized her as someone that I could hang with only on a group setting. Maybe also because I hadn’t gotten to know her well just yet and I only got to hang out with her twice outside of a group. But my boyfriend now frequently talks to her boyfriend and they have gotten really close outside of our group chat.
But there were a few red flags that occurred along the way: I notice she never compliments me or other women, one time she INSISTED on crashing on a date after my boyfriend had explained to her that this was quality time for us because our new work schedules doesn’t allow us to go on dates as much, she talks about herself…A LOT. Like the times I’ve hung out with her it was all about her. Although I did feel like I got to share my side a bit the second time, I still felt so drained after the interaction. One of those times we were out to lunch with another girl and after that girl was talking about how she was so worried that she wasn’t getting hired after her layoff and her numerous interviews, new friend proceeded to talk about herself and how perfect her new job that she just got hired will be. I thought that was so inconsiderate and tone deaf. She’s also extremely insecure and always needs opinions about her relationship issues. I feel like she doesn’t really take the effort to get to know me. I just ruled those out at first as her maybe just truly being lonely because she has no other friends and was really grateful that I was hearing her out. I also try to understand that she has EXTREME anxiety and overthinking.
But then, her boyfriend goes out of the country for work. She gets extremely depressed and lonely so she messages my boyfriend asking if we can see her. That weekend we already had plans so we set something up for another date. He then reposts that night a picture of him and his buddy as a GUYS night. She sent a passive aggressive joke about the picture and my boyfriend told her to not be that way. She then expressed that she’s annoyed that he didn’t invite her knowing how she’s so lonely and depressed that her man isn’t here and feels like the only way she’d be invited is because of her boyfriend. My boyfriend responded by telling her that he was with the guys and it would be strange for him to invite her especially because I am not there. She then proceeded to send him a bunch of texts questioning who it would be strange for. He ignores all of the following texts and calls me to tell me what happened. What I don’t like is that she then texts me and involves me by asking me if I would have an issue with him hanging out with her in the same group setting without me 🤦🏻‍♀️ it was a series of anxious texting and me trying to reassure her that there isn’t a preference between her and her boyfriend. She also told me that she really liked having my boyfriend as a friend when they were working together because he helped her through her heartbreak with her last guy (an emotional affair with a committed man btw—-I gave her the benefit of the doubt at first and ran with my own narrative that he was manipulative because it was semi true but she also admits that part of it was her fault). I just really did not like the dramatics and have really bad experiences of old controlling friends being this way with me. I felt like she feels entitled to my boyfriend’s time and him because she was “friends with him first”.
This situation gave me so much anxiety because for me it was like “here we go again, another damsel in distress that needs my boyfriend”. While I do appreciate my boyfriend for setting boundaries and being understanding what is respectful and what is not, we have grown A LOT from our past. In the past, like three years ago, I always felt like I had to compete for my boyfriend’s attention with his other females friends because he used to prioritize his friends’ feelings over mine and was always running to the rescue of other people. He completely changed when he realized he was losing me and now fully understands where I’m coming from and was more than willingly to set boundaries.
He thinks we should still hang out with her because he doesn’t want to lose the friendship with the boyfriend and he wants to establish boundaries in person.
I just see why she doesn’t have any girlfriends and I really don’t like that she just assumes that my boyfriend should be there for her. Self absorbed on top of that. I now really don’t care to try to make an effort on the friendship. Am I looking too far into this all and is it really my own insecurities from the past coming back?
TLDR: boyfriend’s ex coworker and her boyfriend have been hanging out with my boyfriend and I. My boyfriend has gotten much closer to her boyfriend. I’m very hestitant of her because she has some self absorbed characteristics and over talks for hours. I feel like she hasn’t tried to get to know me at all. But she has extreme anxiety and insecurities. She got annoyed with my boyfriend because he didn’t invite her while he was out with other friends and she was home alone because her boyfriend is away. She kind of got me involved in that situation. We have set plans with her but the dramatics really turned me off. My boyfriend thinks we should go because he wants to continue being on great terms with her boyfriend and he feels the need to establish boundaries with her once and for all in person. Am I just being really hard on her because of my past insecurities and she just has bad anxiety?