What to put in my graduation yearbook

Hi this is going to be a very long one, so I (24F) have been in a relationship with my boyfriend 31(M) for 6 years. We met when I was 18 and he was 25 when I was about to start college and he was in an internship near my college then. It was good at first and we would spend almost every day together during lunch hour and talked constantly it was amazing. I had dated before during high school, but it was the childish kind of dating and was never anything sexual. So, he was my first ever serious boyfriend. I admit it got sexual really fast and I agreed to lose my virginity 2 weeks into the relationship. I think it was 2 months into the relationship was when i noticed a lot of red flags but being young in my head i thought he loved me and we could overcome it. He used to stay with his brother, and they would go out every weekend drinking so i asked if that is what he does every weekend, he went on on me and telling me that what he does with his life is his business and no one in the world will ever come before his brother and his friend. After that we got into an argument, this was over text by the way and he didn't talk to me for days after that. What he said kind of hurt and to make it worse i saw him while i was attending my driving lessons(it was near my college and his work place) and i realised i am going through hell over here and he's just fine. I don't exactly remember what happened to get us to start talking but eventually we did again and continued the relationship. Few months after that i found out he was cheating, i saw texts on Facebook and WhatsApp, nudes and a lot of girls. I should have left then and for the love of me i do not know why i did not. This has happened a lot of times now and every time he would say he will change. he will buy flowers and big gestures and sometimes make me feel like i pushed him to do it because he feels like i don't trust him anyway.
Another thing is I'm introverted so i did not have that many friends i had 3 friends and i had to distance myself from them because every time I would try to go out he would come to where we are and start throwing tantrums and telling to please come home or want to regulate what i can say to them. I was not allowed to ask or tell them anything about our relationship but he could discuss it with his friends. I started distancing myself from them to avoid arguments and now i have no one to talk to at all. At some point when things got a bit too much for i wanted to at least see a therapist because i had no one to talk to and he said i should not because he knows they are going to try to break us apart. I was on my second year of college here and during the pandemic and i had moved out of my sister's house to move in with him because she was living in millitary housing, and it was hard getting into the camp sometimes during the pandemic.
I tried to break it off June 2022 after another cheating thing, i moved out and back with my sister, I was doing my last assignment and was about to graduate. I moved back to my hometown when i was done. He came to see me made big promises about him seeing a therapist and did some really big gestures and we were back again. (I know, i know)
let me make a list of what i have to do and cannot do:

1. If i start a new job i have to tell everyone i have a boyfriend 2. I should not go see my friends without him agreeing 3. I should not miss his calls 4. I shouldn't keep friends 5, i shouldn't drink alcohol 6. I can't go anywhere or the mall without him knowing. This does not apply to him by the way just me.

So that is the back story. Now last year he did it again and I broke up with him for the millionth time and he got his family involved, he said he was suicidal and that he will off himself if i left and stuff. I was back in the city here because i was doing an internship and was back to staying with my sister. Everyone was talking about how bad it is this time and i should give him one last chance. I told him i would think about it so for a few months it felt like he really tried he was doing everything right, we didn't even have sex for like 3 months we went on an expensive vacation everything felt good again and i decide to try again. January i moved back in with him.
Ever since moving in it has been HELL. Every little thing triggers him. He nitpicks what i do or say. Then he gives me the silent treatment for days and i have really bad panic attacks everytime or when after silent treatment he says we need to talk because i know he is going to go off on me and i am going to be crying having panic attacks till i give in and apologies for things i know i did not do or are ridiculous. it has gotten to a point where i can't even get out of bed sometimes because of how bad i feel being here. Last friday there was a barbaque thing at work, he was out of town and we were talking a bit on the phone i put the phone down to get food and drinks when i was done i got a cab home. I realised i missed a call from him 20 minutes ago i tried calling back he did not answe and he did not talk to me the whole weekend. he got back sunday and he does not talk to me. He texted me yesterday while he was at work and asked how would i feel if he missed my call. I told him if he told me he was busy with something and tried to call me back when he realised i wouldnt have a problem and this happened a lot and i never gave him the silence treament for days. He got really mad and told me all i am saying is nonsense and that he hates me and degrading stuff like that.
In the middle of all this texting i got a panic attack and started crying on my own and I decided there and then that I was finally done.i realised I don't even love this man anymore, I don't know why i am even with him anymore.I feel numb now. I don't have enough saving to move but in that moment i got dressed and went to the bank to get a small loan to help pay for the first month of rent and deposit. I don't even have a bed or a fridge but i think I'll see what to do as long as i am out of there. I have lost myself in this relationship.
but guys, after the loan is approved i need to find a house but i don't know how to do that without him finding out yet. I don't know how am i going to leave. What do i say? i don't like confrontation because i know he will go off on me and i am going to cry and have a panic attack or breakdown. I need to safely do this too. I know i am leaving but help me with how to do it.
I know this was long but i think i needed to get it out. Sorry if there are errors i do not want to read it and correct the mistakes and relive it again

My daughter's has two exchange student friends here in Colorado. One from Italy and the other from France. I will post in proper thread for her French friend but for the Italian friend is why I'm here. She is graduating today but the graduation party that her host home has graciously put on for her is next week. I have been looking for what is traditionally given in her home country after graduating upper secondary school but I can only find traditional gifts for graduating University. I thought for instance to gift her a laurel wreath to wear at the party however it seems this is worn in Italy only for University graduation. I really feel like the United States does not have a lot of cultural tradition and so there is nothing really traditional to give her that is American..... Maybe a gift card? (That's a joke). I want to make this a special gift that either makes her feel closer to home, or something that would resemble her time here in the United States as an exchange student. I am looking for any suggestions, and my budget is between $50 to $100 USD. Thank you in advance!

(23F) Mom won’t ’let me’ do a summer sublet
Hi guys!
Some context: from a young age I have always wanted to learn other languages and live briefly in other places while I’m still young. Had an opportunity to sublet in Montreal last summer and didn’t take it, and always regretted it as I went to school in Vermont, visited the city, and loved it. I graduated college last year and am 23 years old — I basically lived alone in my last apartment in Vermont.
Now, through an internet friend I managed to get an awesome, cheap room just for the month of June in the Plateau, one of Montreal’s trendiest, most gentrified neighborhoods. I was very excited to finally live out my dream of trying out a new place — and my friend has been planning on introducing me to their social circle and showing me around the city.
My mom has some narcissistic tendencies, extreme paranoia and anxiety, negative attitude, and some controlling behaviors. She is also at times very sweet and permissive, almost too permissive to a fault. My dad passed away a few years ago so everything is now on her as the figure of our family. I put off telling her about my Montreal plans because her reaction to news like that is typically negative, and rarely positive or supportive. Now that I’ve told her she’s basically saying she won’t allow me to go.
I get it, I’m not a man — I’m a young woman and the idea of me going to a city “alone” would for sure be anxiety inducing for any parent. But now that I’m older and have saved enough money to afford this I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong by making this plan. I’m also going to Europe for the first time in July for 3 weeks with friends. In our last conversation she said she was already being generous enough to “let” me go to Europe, even though I paid for all the arrangements myself.
Feeling really conflicted here. She’s right to be worried about safety… but I feel old enough to do this, it’s only for one month, and the roommates are both female artists about my age. She’s basically saying this is not allowed, so now I’m thinking of just cancelling the sublet (though it’s two weeks away and short notice for the girl whose room I’m renting) because now my mom has me very stressed about the whole situation when I previously felt very excited, my friends were happy for me, other adults in my life were excited when I mentioned going to Montreal, etc.
This is causing me a lot of anxiety and I’m not sure what to do. Should I cancel my plan or try to hold firm and assert my independence? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I feel very alone and not sure if I’m doing the “wrong” thing by wanting to go.
Unfortunately she does pay my phone bill, health insurance, and car insurance as I’m still job searching and cannot afford these things… so I guess perhaps she’s right to feel like she should be allowed to have some control over me. (I have been doing freelance work on my own making websites for clients in the meantime).
I don’t really feel I have a guiding figure any more ever since my dad passed… so any words of wisdom or advice as to whether I might or might not be unreasonable in wanting to do this for myself would be so appreciated. Love to everyone <3

I am lost. I’ve lost my job in May last year and it’s been exactly 1 year since I’ve been trying to get a job with no luck.
I graduated law school in 2017. I worked in Compliance, I interned for the UN. Then I decided to join a consulting company who “trains candidates then finds them “a client” a job” type of thing. The idea was to continue with risk and compliance.
However, halfway my training the company announced that they don’t have compliance positions any longer because of Covid. I decided to train with them anyway. Knowledge is power. They found me a client and I started working as an IT assistant project manager! Meanwhile I had little to none technical training so as you can imagine. 2 years in, I lost interest and my boss decided to try with another consultant from our company. They let me go.
Luckily a large bank was looking for a compliance assistant project manager (whatever that was, because I never got a job description or a title, they literally just told me you have an interview with so and so). I got hired. Idk how. The department was a mess and almost nothing related to what I have been doing the years before that. I was starting from 0 again. They let me go last year and tbh … I was relieved. I hated the place and the job, my boss was trying to put me down constantly instead of lifting me up. On top of all of that, I spent 3 years working almost 7 days a week. Every week! I had to work the weekends because life is expensive and I was getting chunk of my pay deducted because the “consulting company”s policies.
So here I am now, with 1 year of experience in Compliance and 3 years in Project Management. Trying to find a job and loosing my way already.
All I know is that I need to work remotely so I can be present for my family. Any advices are more than welcome…😞

Hello everyone,
I'm starting my PEI PNP profile under International Graduate Stream, they ask the starting date of employment at my current company. I'm wondering if I should put my initial starting date in 2021, I started as part-time while studying, or the starting date of my permanent full-time contract which is in 2024 (it's the same job)
I'm quite confused as International Grad Stream only considers about permanent full-time contract but I already started way earlier in this company, so I don't need probation.
Does anyone know/have same case as mine? Please let me know what I should answer to that.
Thanks everyone.

Hi guys!
Some context: from a young age I have always wanted to learn other languages and live briefly in other places while I’m still young. Had an opportunity to sublet in Montreal last summer and didn’t take it, and always regretted it as I went to school in Vermont, visited the city, and loved it. I graduated college last year and am 23 years old — I basically lived alone in my last apartment in Vermont.
Now, through an internet friend I managed to get an awesome, cheap room just for the month of June in the Plateau, one of Montreal’s trendiest, most gentrified neighborhoods. I was very excited to finally live out my dream of trying out a new place — and my friend has been planning on introducing me to their social circle and showing me around the city.
My mom has some narcissistic tendencies, extreme paranoia and anxiety, negative attitude, and some controlling behaviors. She is also at times very sweet and permissive, almost too permissive to a fault. My dad passed away a few years ago so everything is now on her as the figure of our family. I put off telling her about my Montreal plans because her reaction to news like that is typically negative, and rarely positive or supportive. Now that I’ve told her she’s basically saying she won’t allow me to go.
I get it, I’m not a man — I’m a young woman and the idea of me going to a city “alone” would for sure be anxiety inducing for any parent. But now that I’m older and have saved enough money to afford this I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong by making this plan. I’m also going to Europe for the first time in July for 3 weeks with friends. In our last conversation she said she was already being generous enough to “let” me go to Europe, even though I paid for all the arrangements myself.
Feeling really conflicted here. She’s right to be worried about safety… but I feel old enough to do this, it’s only for one month, and the roommates are both female artists about my age. She’s basically saying this is not allowed, so now I’m thinking of just cancelling the sublet (though it’s two weeks away and short notice for the girl whose room I’m renting) because now my mom has me very stressed about the whole situation when I previously felt very excited, my friends were happy for me, other adults in my life were excited when I mentioned going to Montreal, etc.
This is causing me a lot of anxiety and I’m not sure what to do. Should I cancel my plan or try to hold firm and assert my independence? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I feel very alone and not sure if I’m doing the “wrong” thing by wanting to go.

Editing because I can’t fix title: episodes that mimic Hypoglycemic episodes but sugar levels are normal—what questions can I ask?
I’m 23F, AFAB I have atypical Cystic Fibrosis, I’m pancreatic sufficient, and no CFRD. for the past 2-3 years I’ve been having episodes that seem to mimic postprandial hypoglycemia but my levels are always above 70. I’ve had a few fasting readings that are 67-69 but I don’t have any symptoms then. The symptoms start within an hour or so of eating and my levels will be 70-80 but get to 100ish 3-4 hours after eating, which does make me nervous that something insulin related is going on. My blood pressure is normal but tends to be on the low side as well.
The episodes mostly correspond with the 7-12 days before my period but it’s not uncommon for them to happen outside of that range. The symptoms are: - high heart rate (130-150) even if at rest (resting heart rate when I’m not having an episode is 60-70 range - shaking - sweating - confusion (including slurring/stammering and switching words around) - weird tingly rising feeling inside - mouth tastes like sand/ash regardless of food or drink - pallor - certain edges blur in my vision; like where the walls meet the ceiling or floors - more frequent urination with lower output - chills
There are a few things that don’t happen every time I have an episode but have happened more than once: - Pain behind eyes - intense headache that disappears quickly
I’ve tried adjusting my diet in every way I can think of (and GI and nutrition have suggested) and nothing really seems to have an impact. Drinking sugar during/after an episode does help a bit but not by much.
My CF team seems to kind of be at a loss. All of my bloodwork is normal, weight and PFTs are fine. They’re sending me to a gynecologist because of how the episodes tend to correspond with my period. I am also seeing my PCP to get my heart checked soon.
Meds: Bupropion 450 (had been on this for about 2 years before any of these symptoms started) Levalbuterol (10+ years) Trikafta (3 years ish) Mirena iud, placed fall 2019
Vitamins Women’s one a day 2000 iu d3
Other diagnoses: PTSD/CPTSD (incest/rape trauma related, not sure how relevant that it is but I’m trying to be more detailed than not ) Major depression General anxiety Insomnia (PTSD related)
Psych meds I’ve tried a while ago but didn’t help: - Zoloft (brain fog was way worse) - lexapro (would not stay in my system, to put it politely) - latuda (didn’t do anything)
I edited my post on cysticfibrosis after someone recommended I post here,so this part isn’t over there but —one of the things that’s getting truly untenable for me is brain fog/confusion. Since fall 2020 I’ve struggled a lot with brain fog and since it started with PTSD related events my doctors and I have been assuming it to be a mental health thing but I’m not that sure anymore.
The confusion is definitely worse during the episodes I described (and affects stuff like where I walk around and what I put down where, for example, putting my phone in a fridge or not being able to find my car) But day to day—I’m forgetting words and sentences almost immediately after thinking them. My mental health has improved a lot on Wellbutrin but I can’t tell if it’s improved the brain fog at all or just improved the other symptoms like low energy and the can’t get out of bed heaviness.
My major involves a lot of writing and the same assignments that would take me a few several hour sessions, if that, I haven’t been able to complete. I’ve spent 12 hours on essays (with only meal breaks and things like that) with about a paragraph to show for it — but what I can get out never quite matches what I’m thinking. I almost constantly have the feeling of having a word on the tip of my tongue, especially when trying to write. The things I think of seem to float away before I can keep them in my head long enough to write them down. I was supposed to graduate 3 years ago and I’ve been one full time semester’s worth of classes for these past three years because I just can’t get it done. The majority of my depression symptoms that remain have to do with the stress and feelings behind not having finished school despite being so close. On the whole though, my mental health is in the best place it’s been in pretty much my entire life And the other symptoms have improved drastically.
Last note on the day to day brain fog/confusion: I don’t switch words around when I’m not having an episode—but I have been noticing that 0-5 times a day (I can’t say for sure that it happens daily without fail but it definitely happens several times a week) that I do slur sometimes when talking? The beginnings and ends of words will just sort of smush together . This is a relatively recent development (in the last 8 months maybe?) don’t know if that’s normal person stuttering kind of thing but combined with the writing stuff it irks me more than it normally would)
I feel like a lot of these symptoms could be literally anything so I don’t know how to go about narrowing it down.
I have a check up appointment soon and I wanted to see if anyone has any suggestions for other questions or specific testing requests that I can ask my doctors for to help figure this out.
Thank you!

Mine is not getting Joss. I remember when she came out I was graduating high school and I loved her. I also kinda look like her, I have brown hair and hazel eyes. I’ve also always wanted to surf, big beach fan (dream is to live on the beach) and her aesthetic was super similar to mine! Later in the year I was debating between buying Joss’s starter collection or Courtney’s and I bought Courtney’s because she just came out, I love the 80’s, and I was a berry member at the time so I also got the freebies like the leg warmers. After, I went to college and couldn’t afford AG, didn’t bring them with me, and we moved so they got packed away until a few weeks ago when I came home. Ever since 2020 I’ve thought about Joss, but did get out of AG from 2021 until this year (Kira put a bad taste in my mouth + the direction they were taking + being in college). Now I really want to buy a Joss but I really want one NiB, but I already have so many dolls, I don’t think my mom is the biggest fan of my collecting, and I’m going to grad school which is expensive. Anyways, what are yours?

my friends had their internship in a call center company (job internship is one of our requirements to be able to graduate) after finishing the amout of time they needed to put it thwy were given a certificate of completion
however, our professor asked for another certificate which was certificate of exemplary for those who were given high ratings in their appraisal forms during their performance at the site of deployment. since our professor was requiring it to be passed on the same day, my friends made their own certificate of exemplary using the template that they used for their certificate of completion (it had the company name and logo which might be a concern so I'll just mention that bit) but HAD THEM SIGNED BY THEIR HEAD IN PERSON at the site of deployment.
is that ruled as falsification of document? because this is what our professor told them, i think i might also need to mention that our professor is a pain in the *ss and is unprofessionally grading most of their students and only favoring the few that they like. almost everyone had good grades and actually should be given awards but the prof is doing everything they can to only give the others they favor.

Yesterday was my college graduation. As one might expect, it was a pretty big occasion. My friends couldn't attend because it was ticketed, but they did stick around to watch the livestream, which I appreciate.
Once the ceremony was over, I checked our group chat to see what they were up to and was welcomed by a series of messages, some good and some bad. For starters, one of my friends took a few screenshots where I appeared and congratulated me. It was very nice.
However, the others in the group just made fun of me. I can take a joke, I promise. We're guys, so we're practically always bullying each other, but lately it's been out of hand. They screenshotted moments of me walking on stage, proceeding into theater, and jabbed at how I looked. "Why does bro always look uncanny," one said. Another reacted with a GIF of a guy with comically large glasses staring into the camera. I was literally just smiling in the photo.
Very little of the conversation actually involved any sorts of congratulations. While I don't demand praise, I would expect my closest friends from high school to support me, and instead, they could only joke at my expense.
It happens all the time. My college put me on one of their new billboards to honor my achievements and advertise my majoprogram. While the picture wasn't perfect (bad hair day), the people in the group chat once again joked about it. No, "good job," or "that's awesome!" It was brought up last night too, with someone typed verbatim, "Bro what the heck. That's gonna be on their next billboard. Better than the other weird one."
I love the guys, truly. They've kept me alive and well these two years, but all of a sudden - maybe because I suddenly have thin skin - their jokes have devolved into literal bullying. How do I approach this? Do I leave them in the dust? Am I simply being a wuss?

To preface this post, I want to give the disclaimer that like many things, there is not a black and white answer the question. I'm writing this as an experienced tech professional, and the information provided is based on opinion.
To start with. A little bit of history..
The golden age of software engineering(and similar jobs) is over. At least for the next 5 - 10 years. I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. The reason why between the years of 2010 - 2022, these jobs exploded, was because of the boom of the internet for commercial and personal use.
This is different from the dotcom boom of 2000s, where the internet was just starting and most of the products being created were for basic things like: putting banking on the internet, putting videos on the internet, etc.
The boom in the 2010s was related to the widespread popularity of commercial and personal products. Things like Uber, Spotify, and Salesforce. With the sudden increased usage of the digital world, there were MILLIONS of companies rushing to create digital products.
However, we're starting to see the rise and fall of some of these products, millions of startups failings, and less VC funding. In case you don't know, VC stands for Venture Capital, which are basically investment companies that give money to other companies to help them grow and develop, in return for partial ownership of the company.
As the industry began to mature, successful companies started to emerge, and many more started to fail.
The present day..
Software engineering and like jobs will continue to be important, and there will be a high demands for these engineers. Nearly every company will still need a website, a place to manage their data, and people to manage their hardware. BUT.. the basic technologies they need to run their company will become more efficient. AND there will be less research and innovation because the a lot of the trial and error already occurred.
We're in a weird spot where the demand for workers is now decreasing from it's recent peaks, and the supply of workers is now increasing because of how all the benefits of being a software engineer in the past decade.
This has really unfortunate consequences for any recent graduates or others trying to break into the tech field. There are WAY more beginning career people than jobs available. Which is made even worse with the amount of layoffs there are, where mid-level employees are now having to settle for entry level jobs.
What can we do?
I have two pieces of advice for people interested in the topic, or wanting to break into the field but can't. Try breaking in from a adjacent field, where you can get some exposure to tech. Things that data entry, analytics(this can be finance, supply chain etc). Then try to learn as much as you can from the tech people at your company.
The second piece of advice. Go into a different field. Software engineering is not for everyone. You have to learn and understand some relatively complex topics, and it's becoming harder and harder to be competitive in the industry. Healthcare, supply chain, and many other industries are booming right now.
Understanding history, you can see that certain industries will rise and fall. For the near future, technology might be one of the harder careers to break into. Something like healthcare would be that's expected to grow exponentially. The average population of the world is getting older, as less and less people are wanting to have kids. There will be higher demand for healthcare professionals and healthcare technology.
Do your best to review and understand these trends, and hopefully you can create a good life and career. Best of luck!
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The famous baseballer, Jackie Robinson, he once said: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” I could not agree more. That is why I try to make as much impact on my faces’ lives as possible. After all, they have done so much for me. It is the least I can do. Unlike them, I need not fear what people think of me. So I can be brave where they are weak. For I will just be someone else tomorrow.

Born in Russia to the Grand Duke Nikolai Kravinoff, Dmitri Nikolaievich Smerdyakov was treated like trash by his noble father and his working class mother. Young Dmitri was approached one day by Gustav Fiers, who was impressed by the boy's impressions and paid for a trip to Karl Fiers academy. There, Dmitri would learn to master the arts of disguise, vocal impression and infiltration, becoming the Chameleon upon his graduation.
He'd move to America and use his talents to pull off high-scale burglary, working for any group that could afford his fee, including the Communist party, Hydra or the Green Goblin. His elicit activity brought him into conflict with the Hulk, Iron Man and most often Spider-Man, all of whom had to act with great caution when the Chameleon was in town. After all, which one of them could tell if that unassuming civilian or their own ally was preparing to stab them in the back?
Dmitri has some mental hangups over his time with the Kravinoffs. He’s managed to repress the memories and considered himself good friends with his half-brother Kraven. In reality, he was more like a whipping boy and slave to the Hunter, and when he has to wrestle with those feelings, he can mentally revert to that scared little boy with no strong sense of identity or independence. But when he’s able to move past these feelings, the Chameleon has proved himself as a powerful, manipulative force, finding his place as temporary Crime Master of New York and member of the Sinister Six.
Scaling

• Spider-Man
• Kraven the Hunter
• Captain America
• Daredevil
• Deadpool

Notes
During one of Dmitri’s mental breaks, he began to believe that he was his deceased half-brother, Kraven the Hunter. So exact was the Chameleon’s performance that he moved and fought with the hunter’s skill and agility. This was an extreme fringe case and there are no other examples of a disguise altering Chameleon's capabilities like this. Physical and skill-related feats from this period will be marked with [KH].
Hover over a feat to see which issue it's from.

Physicals

General

• He’s taken some of Kraven’s potions, which extends his natural lifespan and protects from disease
• Kraven later notes that he only allowed the Chameleon to drink some of his potions, enhancing his strength, although not nearly as much as the Hunter himself

Strength
Unarmed Striking

• Downs a cop with a punch to the back of the head
• Boxes Alexei Kravinoff’s ears, flooring the bigger man
• Tackles and restrains Bruce Banner
• While posing as Tigra, he breaks Mysterio’s helmet with a kick
• Knocks Finesse out with two punches to the back of the head
• [KH] Kicks Alexei in the chin mid-leap
• Hurts Spidey with a kick to the face
• Hospitalized the Shocker

Striking with Weapons

• Floors a man with a suitcase
• Clubs Captain America with a fire extinguisher, flooring him for several seconds
• [KH] Smashes through a ceiling and dives at Alexei
• [KH] Impales a man with a spear, then rams him into a wall hard enough to crack it
• Beats a man unconscious with a pistol

Grip

• Crushes one of Spidey’s tracers in his grip
• Crushes a picture frame
• Crushes a glass in his grip

Other

• While carrying Betty Ross over his shoulder with one hand, the Chameleon uses the other to smack Major Glenn Talbot
• [KH] Holds a wolf away from him
• Carries and fires this absurdly large gun

Durability
Scaling with Spider-Man

• Gets up after a glancing blow from Spider-Man
• Takes a backhand from Spider-Man
• Stays barely conscious after Spider-Man punches him into what looks like a concrete wall hard enough to break it
• Takes two punches from an angry Spider-Man
• While emulating Spider-Man and clinging to a wall with suction cups, he takes a punch from the real Spider-Man but stays clinging and makes an escape
• Spider-Man throws Chameleon head-first into a wall, then smacks him three times, breaking his mask. Despite this, the Chameleon stays conscious and manages to run off.
• Gets kicked in the head by Spider-Man (dressed as Deadpool) but quickly recovers and puts Spidey in a headlock
• Takes a sucker punch from Spider-Man in the Spider-Armor MK III
• [Limit] One casual punch from the Superior Spider-Man knocks Dmitri out

Scaling to Others

• Gets tackled by the Hulk, who was shrunk down to a few inches at the time
• Takes three heavy blows from Daredevil before falling into unconsciousness
• Takes a backhand punch from Kraven
• He gets up after Captain America throws his shield into his back
• Stays conscious after Deadpool punches him out a window
• Takes a punch from Spidey and an elbow from Deadpool
• Gets punched by Whirlwind
• Gets beat on by Teresa Parker

Blunt Force

• Spider-Man punches Vulture, sending the villain flying into Chameleon
• Gets thrown many feet into the air, then falls back-first onto stone
• He jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge and lands in the water below
• [KH, Limit] He’s KO’ed by a woman with a wooden chair
• While disguised as Spider-Man, he gets grabbed and swung around a room by tentacles, at one point getting his head slammed through a concrete wall with no ill effects

Gunfire

• He’s not noticeably harmed after a cop shoots him in the shoulder
• Stays standing after being shot in the thigh
• Twenty minutes after being shot in the shoulder, he’s not noticeably harmed

Vehicle Crashes

• Crashes his car into the Hulk
• Crawls from a crashed HYDRA aircraft
• Unharmed after crashing his truck into a wall
• While piloting a giant Galactus robot, a helicarrier crashes into the robot’s head and the Chameleon’s control room. He survives the crash relatively unharmed.

Other

• He survives after being poisoned and being left in a burning bar by the Punisher
• When Captain America breaks one of Chameleon’s stun guns, the resulting blast melts his rubber face mask, burning him
• He eats a full plate of ambien-laced cookies baked by Aunt May
• Spider-Man webs up a big gun that the Chameleon was using, causing it to blow up in his face. Dmitri gets up right after.

Agility

• Dodges some charges from Hammerhead, first with a sidestep, then by flipping over the mobster
• [KH] Dodges a tackle attempt from Alexei Kravinoff
• He lands hits on Spider-Man pretty easily once the hero loses his spider-sense

Skill

Impersonation
General

• When posing as someone, the Chameleon copies their gait and posture
• When emulating J. Jonah Jameson, not only does the Chameleon copy his personality, mannerisms and body language, but he copies Jonah’s writing style so he can turn in editorials at the Daily Bugle
• [Limit] In 2009, he took the form of Barack Obama and attempted to get sworn in as the POTUS. However, Spider-Man asked the fake and the real Obama a question that only the real Obama would know the answer to, outing the Chameleon as an imposter.
• Mimics Tigra perfectly, replicating her movements, voice and microexpressions
• When posing as a zombie Ezekiel Sims, Chameleon does something to make himself smell like a long-dead corpse

Voices

• Skilled in vocal emulation
• He perfectly emulates voices over the course of minutes after listening to audio recordings or the voices of his hostages
• While posing as the Paris police director, he fools a voice recognition system designed by Henry Pym, allowing him access into an Avengers headquarters
• Can emulate mechanized voices, like Doc Ock’s from when he was a cyborg

Limits

• Betty Ross sees through Dmitri’s Bruce Banner disguise thanks to her female intuition
• Daredevil sees through the Chameleon’s disguises because he can hear Dmitri’s distinct heartbeat
• Spider-Man’s Spider-Armor MK III has a Daredevil-inspired feature built in to the helmet that allows Peter to track Chameleon’s specific heartbeat. This allows him to see through the villain’s disguises.

Combat

• [KH] Fights evenly with Alexei Kravinoff before restraining him with a rope
• Off-panel, he killed a SHIELD agent and a doctor with a pen
• Shanks Superior Spider-Man in the neck with a pen
• While disguised as Spider-Man, he brawls hand-to-hand with Deadpool
• [Limit] Lost a fight to Mary Jane Watson with a baseball bat
• [KH] Slashes two mens’ throats with a single swipe of a spoon

Other

• [KH] Performs a handstand on a tree stump
• Using Klawe’s sound cannon, he blasts MODOK’s psionic blaster, disabling the head’s main weapon
• Leaps from a second story and lands on an awning to break his fall
• Jumps from the back of an aircraft onto the hood of a pursuing flying car
• Nick Fury boots Dmitri off of a flying car, but the villain manages to grab a ladder on a nearby aircraft
• Cracks a locked vault door, possibly using a stethoscope
• Pilots a giant LMD modeled to look like Galactus
• (Poorly) pilots the Iron Man Model 4 before being dropped by an alternate-universe Ghost Rider

Disguises

Realistic Masks

• Originally, the Chameleon employed realistic masks and hairpieces to disguise himself as individuals. He kept these pieces in a multi-pocketed vest, allowing him to alter his appearance on the fly
• After getting one quick glance at Thunderbolt Ross, the Chameleon is able to make a perfect mask of the general’s face in a matter of minutes
• When the Hulk is tearing the Chameleon’s car apart, he quickly changes into the guise of Rick Jones to calm the Hulk, then manipulate him into breaking a friend out of prison
• At one point, he used a gun that squirts fast-drying fluid, which kills victims via suffocation and leaves the Chameleon with a perfect mask of their face
• He once wore four masks layered on top of his plain, white one

Malleable Flesh

• He gets a procedure done to his body that makes his flesh completely malleable, changing in response to electrical stimuli. He also had a specially designed costume that reacted the same way to stimuli. The final piece was a control system built into a belt that could memorize and store any face that the Chameleon encountered. All of these pieces allowed the Chameleon to completely copy someone’s appearance and replicate it through thought alone.
• This exact method of changing his face depends on the comic's art style
  • Most often, the change just occurs instantly between panels
  • It can happens in a flash of light
  • Dmitri's features can melt and morph before reforming into a new face
  • The features can “slide across Chameleon’s head horizontally
• After looking at a photograph of a man, the Chameleon completely embodies him in moments
• When begging for his life, he rapidly switches between a dozen different faces
• When he’s knocked unconscious, his face relaxes and goes back to how it normally looks
• Once made a game out of pretending to be a civilian in need, then attacking Spider-Man when the hero helps him
• [Limit] One time, a very serious Spider-Man shocked and frightened the Chameleon so badly that he let his disguise drop

Other Methods

• Uses convincing costumes when posing as superheroes or supervillains
• Disguises himself as a Statue of Liberty street performer
• Some kind of hidden device emits mist, allowing the Chameleon to change masks and outfits
• Carries a canister of chemical gas that instantly changes the color of his clothing
• Later on, he wears a suit that allows him to instantly change his facial appearance and clothing
  • After confronting Spidey in public and taking a blow from the wall-crawler, the Chameleon assumes the form of a defenseless, old lady to turn the public against the hero
• A high-tech costume can resemble any article of clothing that the Chameleon can think of
• When appearing as someone much bigger than he is, like the Kingpin, the Chameleon uses an inflatable suit
• Poses as a hostage, then uses a hologram projector to make it look like Doc Ock is holding him off a roof
• When working for the Superior Spider-Man’s team of “reformed” villains, the Superior Six, Chameleon used hologram tech to aid in his disguises. This let him appear as Loki, with his massive horns and Asgardian outfit being formed with the tech. It otherwise works more or less like his powers did.
• Most recently, the Chameleon requires the use of a serum to be able to change his features at will
  • As soon as the Chameleon touches someone, he’s able to look exactly like that person. This can also make the other person temporarily swap forms with the Chameleon (or other users of the serum).

Weapons

Non-Lethal
Guns

• Uses a dart gun that instantly knocks a man out with a shot to the shoulder
• Uses a chemical gas gun to instantly knock out Captain America, keeping him out for a few minutes
• A dart gun that leaves victims unconscious and foaming from the mouth
• A stun gun

Injectables

• A syringe full of sedative chemicals that KOs Spider-Man and makes Deadpool woozy for a minute until he heals
• A syringe hidden in a prop torch puts Spider-Man to sleep immediately
• He injects Spider-Man with a poisonous chemical. It brings on extreme nausea and vertigo, then later knocks Spider-Man out for two days straight.

Other

• Snuck into Captain Stacy’s room and administered a few drops of sedatives to Stacy’s decanter. This kept him unconscious all day, allowing the Chameleon to assume his identity and steal priceless pieces of art.
• An aerosol can of sedatives
• One time, he coated his clothing in an odorless sedative chemical. When Spider-Man grabs him by his jacket, the hero falls unconscious in a matter of seconds.
• Gas grenades
• He uses some kind of electric weapon on a shallow body of water, shocking Spider-Man, Husk and Deadpool into unconsciousness

Lethal
Guns

• Normal guns like rifles, a shotgun and a handgun
• A silenced handgun
• A revolver
• A double-barreled shotgun
• He wields a one-handed launcher that carries a variety of capsules, including cyanide gas canisters and concussive explosives
• An absurdly large, Liefeld-esque gun that blows up a computer station
• A energy-based handgun with explosive firepower, used to blast a large hole through Deadpool’s torso and later turn a concrete wall into rubble

Injectables

• A poison ring that would’ve injected JJJ with a lethal dose during a handshake
• [KH] Shoots Spider-Man with a poison dart that would’ve killed him in ten minutes if he didn’t take the antidote

Other

• Usually carries a dagger or other kind of blade
• A grenade
• A small, box-shaped time bomb
• He once used a Man-Thing parasite to protect himself from gunfire and form combat applicable branch-like tentacles

Other Equipment

Field Gear

• Smoke pellets
• When posing as Spider-Man, he used a web-gun to emulate the hero’s web-shooters, although the webbing wasn’t as strong as Spider-Man’s
• While posing as Spider-Man, the Chameleon utilizes suction cup-covered gloves and a web gun to replicate Spidey’s wall-crawling and web-slinging
• A tracking device
• Nose filters protect him from a cloud of cyanide gas
• A jetpack with enough fuel to fly for nearly a full hour
• Typically restrains victims with rope and gags

Base Installations

• Uses a modified radio to send a message across New York that only Spider-Man could hear
• Uses a machine to swap memories with Captain America
• One lair boasts a chair that can be lowered into a pit of acid, used to destroy bodies
• Rigs his lairs to explode if they’re compromised
• He detonates explosives in one of his hideouts that releases napalm-like flames

Other

• He’s helped to design Life Model Decoys that look exactly like Richard and Mary Parker with the goal of investigating Peter Parker and finding out about Spider-Man’s identity. While the false Mary developed a conscience and defied her programming, the false Richard was outfitted with a combat form.
• He holds a gun to the head of a simulacra of Mary Jane. When Spidey determines it’s a fake instead of his real wife, it poofs into smoke.
• Robots that drive his escape vehicles

Miscellaneous

• After coming across a cave full of assorted scrap mechanics, Chameleon builds a missile from the pieces. He later says he “found” the missile, so who knows. At any rate, the missile is strong enough to KO the Hulk when they collide.
• One time, he inexplicably escaped from Spider-Man’s grasp and disappeared from the room
• He kidnaps Spider-Man and imprisons him in Ravencroft Asylum. He then unmasks the hero, puts a realistic mask and straightjacket on him and attempts to gaslight Peter, through the use of psychoactive drugs and fabricated evidence, into believing he’s another man named Herbert Smith. This ruse does convince Peter for a good while until he later remembers his life with Mary Jane.
• He implies that he might be able to disguise his psyche from the telepathic X-Men member, No-Girl, although the claim is not actually proven
• Off-panel, he killed a man, cut off his face and used it for a temporary mask

Monica Rappaccini: I apologize for the delay in initial payment, but we first had to verify your identity. A.I.M.’s intel had been that the Chameleon was dead- or in an insane asylum.
Chameleon: Yes, well. That would be exactly what I wanted you to think. Faded into the background, imperceptible… that’s where a Chameleon is most comfortable… and where I shall now return.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve gotten out of the army. It felt like time was moving infinitely slow while I was active duty. Between basic, AIT, OCONUS and FORSCOM, the crazy hours and amount field trainings, looking back, I realize it now that the years all went by so quickly the army is just really good at making one day feel like two days, and it was almost like a dream. I guess I got out because I was burnt out and expected more in the civilian side and looked at everyone around my age group starting to graduate college which made me feel like I was being left behind, but honestly I should’ve never compared myself, I never took leave (which was a bigger mistake). After ETSing it was like nothing ever changed back home. My experiences in service changed me significantly and quickly started to die down back home. For me now, time has been flying since I’ve left and it’s scary. Looking back at AD it wasn’t so bad, I had all my basic needs, it was simple! I had my hard earned money to spend on fun things for myself and got to see quite a bit of the US and places I would’ve never seen if I hadn’t joined, I had a nice routine and vacations/reunions were fruitful. Unlike most I had very competent leaders who I could look up to and met some amazing friends and connections. I miss that gut feeling of the unknown, where I could be next year, who I would be working with or who I’d meet, what the next training would look like. I enjoyed being in the field at night and seeing the stars in the field, I wish I could’ve given the army a chance as a career maybe looked forward to the possibility of being sent overseas to Germany or Italy or who knows maybe would’ve been sent to the gulag at hood, but nonetheless I’m unfulfilled now with no sense of direction, my mind was a lot sharper while I was in service, i was actually a lot happier, physically fit and proud of myself, and I was good at my job, simply put i was good at being soldier, and I flourished in the structure. I always was adventurous looking back at pictures of myself, i hate to admit it but i enjoyed the suck, i smiled through it and at the end of the day i always had fun being in the wilderness and exploring new regions, I always took extra time to take training seriously on my part because who knew if we would ever be down range. Didn’t realize it at the time but it was fun being able to look forward to returning from a field exercise, a good shower and a good beer before Mondays PT, the simplicity of wearing a uniform for work, and it was like a milestone every time i got to come back home to visit my family and friends. I realize now it was different from most of my friends because it was my path, After being back in the civ side i realize I don’t belong in a cooperate America. I never asked myself before leaving service, would you be willing to stay in one spot or job for the rest of your life, do I have it in me to climb a corporate ladder? I enjoyed my own little bubble in the army away from my hometown and now I feel like a fish out of water. I would reenlist but I ended up getting 100% service connected, I would give it up to have my life back. I was told that it’s risky and I might be left with nothing because I have to give it up before evening trying to go back to Meps and unfortunately I have a pretty long medical history for physical injuries so I might be SOL under genesis portal. I’m still young in my mid 20s, and no fellas I don’t have Stockholm syndrome. Can anyone relate or give advice?

Backstory - I’m 48, recently divorced, and share custody of two boys 17 and 15. I had to put my dog down last month and I’m out for work from 6:30 to 6:00, so most of the time it’s just me in my big ass house. It feels so wasteful, but I’d like to keep the house as some form of stability for my boys and because they haven’t figured out adulting yet.
There was a single mother being evicted from her apartment during Covid, and I really wanted to reach out but never built up the courage.
So I came across this Facebook post of a mother pleading for a room to rent for her oldest, who is a senior at the same H.S. my kids attend. The family is moving their business to San Antonio, and the kid really wants to stay behind to graduate at the same H.S.
I spent some time messaging the mother while on business this week. I told her basically what I wrote above, and she seemed really interested to talk over coffee this weekend. They are willing to pay rent, which is nice but not really necessary, and she says her son is pretty self sufficient. He would probably plan to drive to their home every weekend as well.
My life kinda fell apart in high school and an army of people stepped in to help me. Now that I am in a position to return the favor, I’d like to try. So . . . am I crazy?
Any suggestions on how to protect myself? My Crown Jewels are lots of Fallout props, transformers, and my grandfather’s civil war black powder rifles I guess. And I really don’t want to have to deal with any legal issues that may arise.
I also need to consider that my kids are both going through their own anxiety issues. 😢

Hi everyone! I would like to share one bizarre story with this sub. I used to have a friend of around 5 years, she was a rather nice woman, but she was known for randomly getting offended by her friends and stopping talking to them for a while until calming down and becoming friends again. She has a mental illness, and I think it is related to the problem, because she would often show me her social media chat and complain how the other person was horribly rude to her, but all I could see was normal talk and nothing off-putting in the conversation, so I just shrugged. Once I noticed that she was also writing to an "offender" how she had shared the conversation with me and how I hated that person, which of course was a complete lie and I firmly told her not to say such things, to which she replied: "So what? It's just to increase the effect". She was also known for begging for money from working friends, and she loaned from me as well with a promise to return the sum, which she never did and only shared how she would buy some expensive comic book for the same amount she promised to return.
At one point, I introduced her to a fresh member of our band, and they started dating. The guy had zero motivation to study at our university, and he would always blame the professors and everyone around for him getting bad grades, despite him repeatedly telling me how he didn't want to show up on time for the class, do homework etc. She kept blaming everybody else as well and saying how the world was heartlessly cruel to her poor, innocent love. He was not progressing at all with music, either, but our band is open for everyone and he was always welcome to play simpler things with us. We also had a sub-band which had paid concerts more often, and he asked us to join, but we made a collaborative decision that his level was yet too low to play for money.
I graduated and found a suitable job, but my profession requires a lot of physical work under the hot sun, so I was more often dead tired than not. I stopped seeing these two as often as before, but I would call them regularly after work, and every time I heard: "Come over to see us", I replied that I couldn't walk the rather big distance to their home (there is no public transport connection to there) due to the heavy work and shaky legs, and invited them over instead. They would always say that they were tired and had no time... while they had no work and lived on the disability money. Sometimes she would outwardly say that I was not tired and was making it up, after I had spent all summer day walking with a heavy canister in a hazmat suit. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but I always tried to shrug it off. She eventually wrote me that I was talking to "creep" friends online (one of which was my partner and they are lovely people whom I had met IRL) and doing my hobbies instead of visiting her, and I explained to her yet again that I was tired and that she had no right to offend my friends, it grew into an argument, and since she obviously wanted to break up, I told her to return me my money finally, and she blocked me.
Fast forward, after a nice concert, she wrote in our band chat that I was narcissistic and shut everyone down, all because I was sometimes announcing songs during the concert, as agreed. Everyone could just stand up and announce, and I kept giving everyone else the chance, but hardly anyone stood up so I had to announce. Later on, the guy stopped attending the rehearsals, and our music teacher told him to return the instrument and the costume without telling him to leave the band, just that they would be safely stored without disappearing as they are expensive. He surrendered the items through someone else and deleted himself from the band chat, of course she followed. When our music teacher tried to contact them, she said that her love won't play for free.
Now these lovey-doveys keep commenting under our band videos and posts how "horrible" everything is from photos to music itself (our music is in general very well-received), but also they spread total BS about me to everyone else: that I "kicked this poor guy from the band", that the music teacher had only supported me and nobody else, that I was always lying to them, that I am narcissistic and stabbed them in the back, that I owe her money etc. Of course, it made me so mad that I also publicly mentioned that she should go and see her psychiatrist because her delusional behaviour was getting out of control, because every accusation she says about me is absolute nonsense. I regret revealing her mental problems publicly, but I was really mad about all the lies that she had said about me. She is still spreading gossip and keep shitting on my band publicly.
Is it worth trying to contact her and say I was sorry about telling publicly she was mentally ill? I am afraid it will let her feel more powerful or something, and her lying started before I did my part, so I felt like I had the right to also offend her in return. What should I do in this situation?
TL;DR "offended" ex-friends couple gossip about me, shit on my band and accuse me of serious things I didn't do, what should I do with them?

Hi!! Time to throw my hat into the ring. I have been fortunate enough to make some truly meaningful friendships online. I figured hey, if I could find them, why not look for a relationship this way too?
What I'm looking for:
End goal? A life partner, in every sense of the word. That person who will be there for you no matter what, and you for them. Someone who I can make hot cocoa for and spend all night with, huddled under blankets on the sofa watching movies and talking about life. :)
But of course, it takes time to foster a relationship that is at that point. I like to pace myself when getting to know someone for that very reason. I want to be sure that I can give my whole self to a person, you know? That is some vulnerable stuff. So to start, it'd probably just be chatting online before graduating to more and more stuff slowly.
Anyway, that’s the preamble. Now into a bit about me, I guess. I’m 26, as mentioned in the title. I’m from the northeast of the US. I love having deep conversations about life/philosophy/relationships, but also really enjoy video games, film, novels, comics, etc.
Before I go any farther, I might as well start with the "fundamentals" so I don't waste your time/vice-versa.
The fundamentals:

• Physically? I’m 6’2. Short brown hair, blue eyes, paaaaasty white.
  
• I’m from a Hispanic background. Still learning the language though. That’s been really fun and challenging.
  
• Career Goals: Currently 1 year left in undergrad. (Yeah, at 26… long story short, health issues are stupid. Happy to share if you want). I’m pretty driven and take school seriously. I'm approaching my future career with the same level of ambition and drive. I’m likely headed out to California/LA after I get my degree, just so you're aware. I’m looking for something serious that’d eventually be in person, so if that locale doesn’t work, we probably aren’t a match—but I wish you the best! :)
  
• I do envision having kids when I can feasibly financially support them and am in a healthy relationship.
  
• I lean liberal on the social and political spectrums, but I'm not staunchly liberal. It's not a major part of my identity, but I know it can be important to people, so I'm just putting it out there.
  
• I do believe in God. I was raised Catholic, but I'm still figuring “belief” out. Though I don't ascribe to everything in Catholicism anymore, it's still a part of my background and of who I am. If you’re from a different or no faith background, that’s totally fine, but I don't think I'd be compatible with someone who is an atheist. If that's you, no worries, everyone has their own path, and I wish you the best. :)
  
• I don't do drugs or smoke. I'm okay if you're 420-friendly as long as it's in moderation. I do drink, but very rarely and mildly.
  
• Ideally, you'd be located in the US/Canada, but if you feel that we'd really jive and you're located elsewhere, feel free to reach out anyway. :)
  
• Looking for someone plus or minus ~4 years in age from me.
  

Random interests:

• Long drives by the sea or through the countryside
  
• Dogs. I have 2 little white floofs. Pets in general are awesome too. :)
  
• Classic movies (and film in general). These are my bread and butter.
  
• Anime - Not super well-versed, but I’m in love with Studio Ghibli and Your Name. I’ve sampled a lot of other stuff too.
  
• Star Wars... maybe a little too much.
  
• Video games - low-key games like Stardew Valley or The Sims but also stuff like Overwatch, Battlefront II, and some MMOs
  
• And more! (If you wanna get to know me)
  

If you read all this, thank you. I know I can tend to ramble, but I hope this gives you a good sense of me. Figured I’d put it all out there. Honesty begets honesty.
If you‘re interested, feel free to message me. If we hit it off, we can either switch to my real Reddit account or another platform like Discord. Just as a warning though, I don't have any social media outside of that.
If you’re not interested, no worries. Either way, I wish you the absolute best on this journey that is life. :)

Hi!! Time to throw my hat into the ring. I have been fortunate enough to make some truly meaningful friendships online. I figured hey, if I could find them, why not look for a relationship this way too?
What I'm looking for:
End goal? A life partner, in every sense of the word. That person who will be there for you no matter what, and you for them. Someone who I can make hot cocoa for and spend all night with, huddled under blankets on the sofa watching movies and talking about life. :)
But of course, it takes time to foster a relationship that is at that point. I like to pace myself when getting to know someone for that very reason. I want to be sure that I can give my whole self to a person, you know? That is some vulnerable stuff. So to start, it'd probably just be chatting online before graduating to more and more stuff slowly.
Anyway, that’s the preamble. Now into a bit about me, I guess. I’m 26, as mentioned in the title. I’m from the northeast of the US. I love having deep conversations about life/philosophy/relationships, but also really enjoy video games, film, novels, comics, etc.
Before I go any farther, I might as well start with the "fundamentals" so I don't waste your time/vice-versa.
The fundamentals:

• Physically? I’m 6’2. Short brown hair, blue eyes, paaaaasty white.
  
• I’m from a Hispanic background. Still learning the language though. That’s been really fun and challenging.
  
• Career Goals: Currently 1 year left in undergrad. (Yeah, at 26… long story short, health issues are stupid. Happy to share if you want). I’m pretty driven and take school seriously. I'm approaching my future career with the same level of ambition and drive. I’m likely headed out to California/LA after I get my degree, just so you're aware. I’m looking for something serious that’d eventually be in person, so if that locale doesn’t work, we probably aren’t a match—but I wish you the best! :)
  
• I do envision having kids when I can feasibly financially support them and am in a healthy relationship.
  
• I lean liberal on the social and political spectrums, but I'm not staunchly liberal. It's not a major part of my identity, but I know it can be important to people, so I'm just putting it out there.
  
• I do believe in God. I was raised Catholic, but I'm still figuring “belief” out. Though I don't ascribe to everything in Catholicism anymore, it's still a part of my background and of who I am. If you’re from a different or no faith background, that’s totally fine, but I don't think I'd be compatible with someone who is an atheist. If that's you, no worries, everyone has their own path, and I wish you the best. :)
  
• I don't do drugs or smoke. I'm okay if you're 420-friendly as long as it's in moderation. I do drink, but very rarely and mildly.
  
• Ideally, you'd be located in the US/Canada, but if you feel that we'd really jive and you're located elsewhere, feel free to reach out anyway. :)
  
• Looking for someone plus or minus ~4 years in age from me.
  

Random interests:

• Long drives by the sea or through the countryside
  
• Dogs. I have 2 little white floofs. Pets in general are awesome too. :)
  
• Classic movies (and film in general). These are my bread and butter.
  
• Anime - Not super well-versed, but I’m in love with Studio Ghibli and Your Name. I’ve sampled a lot of other stuff too.
  
• Star Wars... maybe a little too much.
  
• Video games - low-key games like Stardew Valley or The Sims but also stuff like Overwatch, Battlefront II, and some MMOs
  
• And more! (If you wanna get to know me)
  

If you read all this, thank you. I know I can tend to ramble, but I hope this gives you a good sense of me. Figured I’d put it all out there. Honesty begets honesty.
If you‘re interested, feel free to message me. If we hit it off, we can either switch to my real Reddit account or another platform like Discord. Just as a warning though, I don't have any social media outside of that.
If you’re not interested, no worries. Either way, I wish you the absolute best on this journey that is life. :)

Una sa lahat, di ako gagraduate ngayong taon. Nagleave of absence kasi ako earlier this year which is supposed to be my last semester. Nagleave of absence ako kasi di na kaya ng mental health ko yung 3 days of duties and 3 days of classes per week which is technically 6 days per week ang pasok na palaging walang tulog - literal na wala. Walang tulog, walang kain, walang ligo.
My mental health got so bad prior to taking a break to the point that I attempted to take my own life rather than attending school. The environment both in school and in home sucks. The group I have clinical duties with always makes fun of me, while I get yelled at constantly when I go back home even when during tiring days. It became just too much for me so I decided to take a break.
Although I decided to take care of myself and managed to be clean from self-harm tendencies for almost a month, it came crashing down nung nameet ko dati kong teachers ko sa daan. They were all blabbering about how sayang it is na di ko na tinapos ngayong sem and buti pa daw ate ko kasi kinaya niyang grumaduate ng college within 4 years lang and with honors. I just lost it at that point. Lumaki kasi akong laging nacocompare sa kapatid ko na overachiever kaya I strived to be just like that to minimize outside noises. I managed to also be an achiever just like her and continued to be on the dean's list despite of my high functioning anxiety (yes po I'm on therapy) pero outside noises just didn't stop. Lagi kong ginagawa best ko na higitan o pantayan yung kapatid ko kasi di nila ako nakikita as ako - they only see me as the "kapatid ni ano." No matter what achievement I get, I'm just everyone's number two. My parents don't even look at me dati when I achieved nothing, so I always gave my all - constantly overworking myself for people to view me as me - for people to love me. It just became a routine for me to put on a different mask every time I met someone new to create "great" first impressions and have them as friends. Nakakapagod yung ganitong routine. Nakakapagod manlimos ng pagmamahal kung kani-kanino pero mas nakakapagod umasang I would get loved by the people who are the sole reason why I constantly try to find love from anywhere and everywhere else.
So currently, me not graduating this year is viewed negatively by everyone. At first my parents do not agree with it and it took me getting a stitch or two at the hospital for them to understand how difficult it was for me to continue at the time. I already know deep within myself that I feel like not graduating on time sucks. But people constantly talking about it and me when I'm not on the table makes me feel a lot worse. I just wanted to rest. I wanted to breathe and experience things while I get my shit together. I don't want to be everyone's number two nor number one, I just want to be known for who I am and not someone's sibling. I want to go to school feeling normal and not constantly working myself to the edge just to prove a point. I want to meet new people without thinking how I could get to their good side. I wanted for once to do things without needing to constantly prove my abilities. I want to go out with friends. I want to party. I want to enjoy life as it is. I just wanted to be loved. I want to learn how to love myself.
Yun lang. Pa-rant lang. Just want to get this out since I'm embarrassed to talk about this with anyone else and since this is reddit no one would judge me since anon naman lol. Felt like getting clean for a month just went to waste. Haay.
TL;DR: I'm not graduating on time, people talked about it negatively, traumas of sibling comparison arose (once again), I got triggered, broke my record of being clean for a month.

Medyo pessimistic ito. Pagbigyan niyo na huhu I just want to share my thoughts on what I hoped I truly understood before I started IRC. Also, something different from the academic tips our alumni and super seniors have shared with us.
IRC is comprehensive. What does that entail? When you are behind lessons, you will most likely stay behind. Cramming has no place in IRC. Your short-term memory can save you on the upcoming compre, but once you forget the topic you’ll have to study it all over again for the next compre. Which is why I earlier said that once you are behind, you will stay behind. Dadami ng dadami ang kailangan mo aralin hanggang sa malulunod ka na.
You need to be a morning person to survive IRC. I am night owl, kahit ano talagang gawin ko, hirap akong magaral nang may araw. Pero hindi mo ito magagawa during IRC kasi may pasok ka na ng 7am. You have to be attentive because 1 session na lutang ka ang hirap nang habulin. This is one of my biggest struggles because ‘til the end, I was unable to adjust my body clock.
You need to be healthy to survive IRC. Wag magpuyat, exercise, eat healthy, you need all these things to not get exhausted during IRC. I gained so much weight from stress eating and staying up all night. Nahihirapan ako kumilos now that I’m overweight caused by this sudden huge weight gain. I was also sick and battling fever during most of my compre exams.
All these things are too ideal. I also don’t know kung paano ko babaguhin ang sarili ko to prepare myself as I enter my 5th year in AMV. But I hope I bring all these realizations with me as I come back stronger next semester.
Now, as you enter your 4th year, 1st sem, read upon my realizations and ask yourself, “What can I start to change now?”, “How can I physically and mentally prepare myself now?”, because the answer will always be different for each and every one of us, and I encourage you to start now. Put all your past issues behind, forget the cheating issues and let go of baggages that will keep you behind. Sa 4th year, 1st sem, titingnan kayo ng profs niyo at kikilalanin kung mapagkakatiwalaan ba kayo. I’m so grateful that our professors love our batch despite all the issues here sa reddit kasi pagdating ng exams behaved talaga kami. Thank you to our professors and to my batchmates, hindi kayo and nagkulang ngunit, ako.
To my co-super seniors na lalaban para maka-graduate na this December 2024, I look forward to surviving the next semester with you. Let’s come back stronger and better dahil sa dulo, tayo-tayo na lang din magkakaintindihan. Totoo talaga na ang AMVian lang ang makakaintindi sa kapwa AMVian. Hugs to all of you with consent. Magtutulungan tayo para maka-graduate na. 🤍

It has only been 6 months since I started working on a tech startup but I already felt burned out due to misaligned expectations and different working styles, so I'm here to ask for everyone's suggestions.
TL;DR We are a team of 4. I'm not happy with our CEO always thinking about ambitious plans rather than improving and finding customers for our MVP. I also found that he is an extremely organized person and his task lists and frequent meetings are making me tired and distracted. How to sort things out given that we have totally different focuses and working patterns.
Background info
I graduated from university recently and decided to run a tech startup as a cofounder. It was initiated by another guy who is the 'CEO' of our small company. We have 4 people in total and some of us has been knowing each other for a while, but we aren't really close prior to the startup thing. Currently we are between the "discovery" and "validation" stage where we have a MVP and just starting finding users.
The problem
Our CEO is a visionary person and always thinks about building great features and making ambitious plans. However I feel that he has endless desire for fancy new goals, otherwise he'll worry that our current product "isn't good enough". Back in the first few months we could daydream together but I feel like when now it's time to find users and improve our MVP, he's still looking for something ambitious. I reiterated we should focus on finding people to test our MVP asap, and we don't have such manpower to work on new features during our meetings, but apparently after a few days he called another meeting to discuss his ideas.
Another problem is over organized management. We use project management tools with main tasks and subtasks, and columns of priorities, progress, etc. But my take is we're just a 4-people team, we really just need a simple todo list to keep everything tracked. I know some people prefer to be organized but this style has been putting too much on my plate plus the way we do meetings (discuss every detail until everyone agrees on everything, even something like marketing posts that doesn't necessarily need to be read by everyone) are making me extremely exhausted.
While I don't expect our CEO to read this but if you came across this post and recognizes it's me, I just wanna say please don't have hard feelings I just wanna get things sorted.
My struggles
I do plan to talk to CEO directly, but I need a few questions to be answered first

• Does it sound feasible for us to work more independently, like we define what I should work on, and I work on that task myself rather than having back and forth discussions.
  
• Am I too subjective on the management thing. Am I actually the one who should learn and adapt to the 'organized' way working in a team?
  

I really like our business idea and I don't want to simply quit. So I really wanna know your thoughts. And for people who had the same struggle as me, I'd really like to hear your stories. Thanks in advance!

im an 18 year old highschool graduate, i want to pick a major, i HAVE to pick a major, there’s no way i’ll make it in life without one.
i wasnt the best at math and physics right off the bat, i mean it’s not really that i’m stupid, i just never cared enough in highschool to ever really push myself to learn, if i put my mind to it could i excel in math and physics? yes, but i feel like im doomed because i havent focused in 10th to 12th grade in these subjects, its not that i tried and failed, its that i never tried, so i feel like any major with a lot of math and physics might be hard on me considering i dont have the basic knowledge for it.
so any kind of engineering i dont think i’ll do good in.
i have a huge interest in anatomy, so medicine would be a good choice but medicine also has math in it, and it’s too expensive for me to afford in any of the unis here anyway. but anatomy in general, anything to do with a human body, i always tend to learn on my own, reading the latest literature about human physiology and nutrition aswell, forgot to say nutrition is a big thing for me aswell.
dentistry seems nice, except it’s also expensive and i get bummed out by people here saying it’s almost impossible for a dentist to start working. and i also thought of business, until people started saying it’s impossible to work in that field too, psychology? also “impossible” because “everyone is doing it” and i think i’d do well in psychology.
so please help me, what the fuck do i do? im an 18 year old who’s had no guidance from his parents his whole life, lived in the middle of nowhere and never met a lot of people, im really just figuring out how the world works and it overwhelms me.

Alice Munro, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the all-time greatest writers of short fiction, recently passed away. She's been my favourite author since I first discovered her work, so while I go through my own re-reading of her bibliography, I'll be posting semi-regularly here to talk about aspects of her work that I find absolutely brilliant.
Of everything she's written, I think that "Tell Me Yes or No," featured in Munro's 1974 collection Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You represents a perfect introduction to her writing style, the feminism of her early stories, and the way in which she uses narrative construction to explore the subjectivity of her characters. It's also has possibly the best hook for a story she's ever written, as it begins:

I persistently imagine you dead.
You told me that you loved me years ago. Years ago. And I said that I too, I was in love with you in those days. An exaggeration.

Alice Munro regularly uses second-person perspectives in her writing, but never like this. Her stories are often epistolary, with letters featuring crucially into the plots of a couple dozen I can think of off the top of my head (Friend of My Youth and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage are among the most effective, if you're curious). But rarely is a story directly addressed to someone by a protagonist, in the way that it is here. This story has a venom which drips from off the page.
After the narrative hook, the narratoprotagonist brusquely allows us into understanding the source of her contempt. We quickly learn how they met: she was a young mother and a University student, living with her husband in a dormitory of other married couples called The Huts; he lived there as well, as a graduate student, with a wife and child of his own. The student culture she describes is conservative and somewhat repressed: the wives/mothers of The Huts are "creatures of daily use" (87) who rise every night to insert diaphragms or to take other contraceptives, and sex has "shrunk" from an apocalyptic undertaking to another chore. Though there was "no infidelity in The Huts," and "flashes of lust" were uncommon, it is through this man that our narrator "got a glimpse of something [...] that we had not been thinking about — had put aside in your case, or not yet discovered, in mine."
And for a moment, a glimpse is all that Munro gives, as through prolepsis, the story advances to a later year and a remembered conversation, which is presumably also the time when this man told the narrator that he had been in love with her then. It's through this reminiscence that the story moves into the first moments of their emotional affair, : "We never said anything of importance. We never touched each other. [...] Next day, or the day after, when I was reading as usual on the couch, I felt myself drop a lovely distance, thinking of you, and that was the beginning, I suppose, the realization of what more there still could be." (88) Despite only a short walk across campus together during which nothing was said and no one was touched, both parties recall this moment as the significant one in their relationship. For the narrator, it has a transformative effect on her life: "This kind of tension was new to me then. I could not gauge and manipulate, as later with other men." (88) That she brings up manipulation, here, is interesting; we'll find out why, later, but I do want to highlight how Munro will sprinkle things like this into a character's narration which reveal so much of their interiority. Why is she, with this man, so concerned about being able to gauge and manipulate? And why, in the narration, does she go from kind reminiscence to immediately asking the question:

Would you like to know how I was informed of your death?

Mind, now, that it was never established until here that the person she is writing to actually is dead. In the opening, it's only an imagining, "I persistently imagine you dead." For the rest of the story it will seem as if this all is true, and that he has died; but the brilliance of the opening line, beyond its value to draw in a reader, is that now the entire narrative shifts to unstable ground. From now on every action that the narrator takes in the present could be a fantasy, or could be real. It's presented at face value: "I go into the faculty kitchen, to make myself a cup of coffee before my 10 o'clock class. Dodie Charles who is always baking something has brought a cherry pound cake. [...] It is wrapped in wax paper and then in a newspaper. [...] As I wait for my water to boil I see the small item, the modest headline, VETERAN JOURNALIST DIES. [...] Only then do I realize. Your name. The city where you lived and died. A heart attack, that will do" (88-89).
While detailing this narrative of hers, though, the narrator can't help pointing towards the invention of it all: "(The thing we old pros know about, in these fantasies, is the importance of detail, solidity; yes, a cherry pound cake)" (88). When she concludes by saying, "A heart attack, that will do," it isn't pithy, it's another aside, emphasizing the arbitrary construction of her fantasy. All right. So he's not dead. What follows, then, if not a real description of the narrator's subsequent actions, shows that a tremendous amount of thought has gone into building this fantasy. In my version of the text, the story runs from page 86-101, 15 pages; everything said so far has been to frame whatever else follows.
I'll not spend so much time close-reading from here, but briefly: the narrator mentions her habit of carrying the last letter she's received from this man in her purse; upon hearing of his death, the fact that she's not received a letter in a while suddenly resolves itself, and it's a weight off her shoulders. She confides in a coworker, a man named Gus Marks, who suggests she talk to a psychiatrist. She laughs at this, "For I am absorbed in another plan. As soon as the term ends [...] I mean to go visit you, to visit the city where you died." (90) Analepsis: the fantasy/narrative breaks for a moment once again to recall their meeting two years before, where the two confessed that they had loved each other; she learns about his wife's bookstore, he learns about her divorce; he drives her to the airport and she, "was not unhappy at the thought of never seeing you again" (91); instead of the airport, though, they arrive at a hotel together. She muses, "I loved you for linking me with my past [...] If I could kindle love then and take it now there was less waste than I had thought. [...] My life did not altogether fall away in separate pieces, lost." (92)
In the present (fantasy) she gets on the flight across the country, to city where he died. She's only been there once before (it's where they met and rekindled their romance), but now can't help searching the streets for memories of him. She recalls his character, how she saw him, and how he saw himself: "I would say that you are uncompromising [...] that there is something chivalric about you" (94); "You, on the other hand, would describe yourself as genial, corrupt, ordinarily selfish and pleasure-loving." This might be a good time to remember how the story starts, with the narrator describing her past love for him as "an exaggeration." If she was exaggerating then, she must have truly been in love with him here; which is what makes it so devastating when suddenly that love is taken away from her, with nothing to show for it but scraps of letters. "From the beginning, of course, I knew that this was a dangerous way to live," she says, and when the letters stop arriving begins seeking answers in the usual places, reading "case histories" of mistresses in women's journals, and confiding in a friend (a woman) who advises presence and living in the moment. "I have tried this, I will try anything, but I don't understand how it works." (95) So what does work for her?

I have bought a map. I have found your street, the block where your house is. [...] I don't go there yet. [...] That is a house you never meant me to see. [...] Now I can see it if I want to. [...] I go to your wife's store. That is what I can do. (95-96)

She loiters around important areas of this man's life, particularly his home and his wife's store, places that bear incredible significance to the person that she loved, but which he could never welcome her into. She mentions in an aside how these places are opposite to the ones they got to share: temporary spaces that wait for his arrival to come alive. Now she sees the wife, newly widowed in this fantasy, going about her day-to-day life. She recognizes her voice from their time together back in The Huts, and prays that she isn't recognized in turn. After a few days of loitering around the shop, though, she is confronted: "'I think I know who you are' [...] 'We've all noticed you hanging around here. At first I thought you were a shoplifter. I told everyone to keep an eye on you. But you're not a shoplifter, are you?'" (97). The woman gives her a paper bag full of letters, and smugly announces, as if we didn't know, that her husband is dead. In the bag is the record of their correspondence together, which ended when he died at his desk of that heart attack: "But then I notice that the writing is not mine. I start to read. These letters are not mine, they were not written by me." (98)
This, to me, is the true brilliance of the story. Because even if you accept that this is all a fantasy, the fact that something like this exists within that fantasy is so illuminating towards the narrator of this story. In her fantasy, she flies across the country to flaneur around the memory of the man she had an affair with. Alright. She loiters in the vision of her paramour's widow long enough to be recognized, caught, and admonished. And then she finds out that this wasn't even true: the letters aren't her own; he was having another affair with a woman named Patricia. Then, finally, she returns to the bookstore and returns the letters: "'I didn't write these letters' 'Aren't you her?' 'No. I don't know who she is. I don't know.' 'Why did you take them?' 'I didn't understand. I didn't know what you were talking about. I've had a grief lately and sometimes — I'm not paying attention.'" (99)
Her and the widow talk briefly, but they don't ultimately become friends. She walks away from the store, and, "In this city of my imagination," (100), she thinks about the other woman he was writing to: long uncombed black hair, sitting in the dark, "She confides in a woman, goes to bed with a man [...] She suffers according to rules we all know, which are meaningless and absolute." (100) This calls to mind the earlier description of nightly routines back in The Huts, of sex as an apocalypse-made-chore, and of the women who became "creatures of daily use" (87). When I talk about Alice Munro's feminism, it isn't that her characters suffer great tragedies on account of their sex. Instead they're trapped inside of metanarratives that leave them yearning for an alternative to such "meaningless and absolute" rules. Not only that, the narrator in this case tries to have a fraction of the power over this man that he's exerted, possibly without meaning to, over her:

When I think of her I see all this sort of love as you must have seen, or see it, as something going on at a distance; a strange, not even pitiable expenditure; unintelligible ceremony in an unknown faith. Am I right, am I getting close to you, is that true? (100)

She's now shifted herself into the place of the widow from earlier. She's understood him before as a lover; now she's trying to understand him as an adulterer, as someone who never took her that seriously, who possibly never loved her ("an exaggeration") as much as she knows that she loved him. More than that, she wants to get close to him, in an even more intimate way than she's ever been able to, before quickly realizing what a fool's errand that would be. Did he actually love her? He is the one who said it first. "How are we to understand you?" she asks, before withdrawing the question entirely:

Never mind. I invented her. I invented you, as far as my purposes go. I invented loving you and I invented your death. I have my tricks and my trap doors too. I don't understand their workings at the present moment, but I have to be careful, I won't speak against them. (101)

One thing I love about this story is how playful it is, despite the tone never shifting too far away from the contemptuous frustration of the opening passage. The more I read it (and I've probably read this more than any other Munro story), the more details I find to pick out in its construction, of how Alice Munro layered in all these details both to sell the fantasy of her character, and also the character herself. Talking to a man within the fantasy about how she really ought to speak to a psychiatrist reads to me now like Munro having fun with her protagonist's obsession. But I also love that this story is never presented as a woman losing control of herself, even though that would be so easy to do. By allowing the fantasy narrative to be as real as the "true" memories presented alongside of it, she never comes off as irrational or manic, or even jilted until the very end of it, even though to construct such a narrative, with such attention-to-detail and so many layers of fantasy does betray a person who is not coping with loss as well as she claims to be.
It's a strikingly real portrait of a strikingly plausible woman, who married young and therefore never experienced her idea of a romance until years later, rekindling with a man she briefly knew, only for him to disappear from her life again just as quickly. Twice, now, her life had been upended because he showed her something else from the life she had been living; but at the same time, he never truly fit into the narrative of her own life.
Along those lines, there are also a lot of details conspicuously missing from this story about the narrator's life apart from this man: her divorce is briefly mentioned, and experiences with other men; but we never know how much this affair factored into any of those relationships besides a guess at what may have been awakened. We see very little of her as a mother, except that she was pushing a stroller home from the drug store when they first met, and that their romance starts shortly after both her children are away at college themselves for the first time. It's not that any of these details are particularly relevant; I think it's actually interesting how irrelevant they are. One thing that the narrator is trying to do throughout the story is contextualize her feelings for this man within some idea of a life-story. Instead, what we're given is a fractured narrative, with only brief glimpses of real shared moments together, held together by a fantasy in which she portrays both the spurned lover and the homewrecker. The only way she can continue on with her life, therefore, is to persistently imagine him dead.
What Alice Munro does with narrative, in such a short-form as her stories take, is absolutely brilliant. I can't recommend enough picking up a collection of hers, opening to any story she's written, and see how effortlessly she manipulates time, memory and fantasy to suit the needs of the characters she's trying to create. This story ends with the admission that this man who the narrator's addressing is, for her own purposes, basically fictional. She will never understand him. Any love that she had for him couldn't possibly be real under such conditions. And yet, she did love him, despite being an invention, despite her own fantasy.
Because how else could you love a person, or even begin understanding a person, unless they were a little bit fictional to you, existing just a little bit within your imagination?