It feels like for the entirety of my life I’ve feared any social interactions. Probably resulting from being relentlessly bullied in middle school by my so called friends I started high school fearing anything to do with large groups of people or social events or anything really. I’d cry in the bathrooms during lunch everyday til my mom finally let me do online school for the remainder of the year. I went back, and I’m okay with the day to day school life being alone, but that’s really about it.
Since then I’ve had a few class acquaintances but I’ve always struggled talking to them about anything outside of the subject area or whatever they brought up in conversation. It feels like my mind gets super fogged up anytime I’m around people. I daze out and feel like I’m not myself, and it’s like I suddenly forget who I am and how I’m supposed to act.
Now my reason for making this post is because I’m graduating in a week and am going to college soon and am facing the reality that I need to pick myself up or I’m never gonna get any better, but I’m not sure how to do that. I do actually have a girlfriend (surprise!LOL) , and I’ve attempted talking to her friends but I really really struggle. I’m not sure why, we share some common interests but I don’t know how to speak. I’m so incredibly awkward and anytime I have to talk to anyone other than my girlfriend or dad, I just keep my mouth shut and don’t want to bother saying anything. I’ve tried talking to them about how I feel, my dad is pretty socially anxious but sometimes I need other input outside of just him. My mom was very popular and never really struggled with this sort of thing, but we don’t connect much elsewhere anyway so it’s hard to talk about anything with her.
Today, I attempted to go to a social event at my school but I was met with severe anxiety that really prohibited me from going, if I was with my girlfriend I would’ve been fine but she’s sick 😅. I feel bad sometimes, I don’t want to use her as a crutch in social situations and as we’re going to college in separate states anyway, I need to figure out how to handle myself. This was mostly a vent post but I would love advice as well.

Some background info: grew up without father and with a neglectful mother who did not have time for me because of my younger sibling with disabilities.
I was diagnosed with bdd a couple months ago. Ive had bdd since i was a young kid. It started with my ears. My ears are protruding and big. I was called monkey a few times growing up and of course i would agree with them. I started to grow my hair long to cover them and i also wore alot of hats to cover them(still obsessively wears hats). I noticed a girl in class who got her ears fixed and i got a bit jealous. I wish my mother would have taken my concerns seriously as it would have spared me ALOT of anxiety. Ear surgery is free in my country if u are a child and it bothers you.
Anyway, i broke my nose when i was 10 playing football. This didnt bother me too much as i had a small kids nose then, but when puberty came it grew bigger and it was now big and noticable crooked. This became my new obsession. I already had a poor self image and this really broke my spirit.
My teenage years and 20s were full of avoidance and anxiety. No pictures of myself, no instagram etc. I never opened up to anyone. I was too ashamed. I knew i had body dysmorphia but it was too shameful to admit. I also hate to talk about my apparence.
Body dysmorphia is an incredible lonely disorder. It strips away ur fundamental need of connecting with people and isolates you. Ive been through periods of extreme depression and loneliness. I still have almost daily suicidal thoughts. Bdd is usually accompanied by trauma aswell. In my case emotional neglect, abandonment and bullying. I have always had the thought that one day i would kill myself. It was the conclusion i came to. However i am realizing that i dont have it in me. It would destroy my brothers.
So now i am trying therapy. It hasnt helped much yet but hopefully it will and i will learn to accept my disfigured face.
I somehow did manage to have a girlfriend for a few years but that is a while ago.
Some things i do Frequent mirror checking or avoiding mirrors. Wear hat or caps to hide my face. Avoid jobs that require interacting with too many people. Stuck in bad jobs. Avoid social events, parties, dating Dissociate through gaming, youtube, shows etc. Chronic people pleaser Struggle with emotions. Very intense and unpredictable Unstable sense of self
Anyways That is my story, i wish i had gotten help earlier. My brain is fully developed now and its harder to rewrite my thoughts.
So if you are young, please get help as soon as you can. I wish i wouldve swallowed my pride and be more honest with my doctor.

My Fnaf AU!! These r support by my Hcs!
(Following theories are...: Mikevictim, mikebot, mikebro(kinda) & FollowVictim, foxysis, Mikevictimsis)
((□Don't attack me pls.))
Timelines —FNAF 4, FNAF SL, FNAF2, FNAF1, FNAF3 FNAF6, FNAF SB— ♥︎♡♥︎♡ This totally makes sense. ♥︎♡♥︎♡
Afton family: William: 47 Mrs.Afton:49 Micheal: 16 Elizabeth: 6 Michaelle: 5
(Liz and Michaelle are Irish Twins)
About Michael: -Isn't very fond of her friends, (except for Jeremy aka Bonnie bully dude), but only hangs out with them to look cool. -she hates both Mrs afton and her father.
-Only bullies Michaelle cuz William manipulated her too.(also to keep her away from the animatronics but William left that part out to expriment on both sisters)
-mike after Michaelle's death was depressed, and he'd cope by bullying Liz instead. -during fnaf sl when Mike found out about Liz he also found out Michaelle was following him as a ghost -Mike is trans but didn't really wanna change her appearance
:
About Elizabeth:
-Elizabeth doesn't interact(sometimes) with neither of her siblings due to her finding them a tiny bit annoying. -she tends to find herself doodling a whole lot when she feels sad -Liz is named after Mrs afton
-Elizabeth is Williams favorite child, but he doesn't even pay her attention, Like at all. And when he does, sometimes it's very fake. Liz notices it always but doesn't point it out bc she know how angry it would make him.
-Liz doesn't like Charlie. But also doesn't want to hurt her feelings, so she stays friends with her anyway. -Liz WAS friends with cassidy -Liz is straightforward sometimes -after the bite(Michaelle's death) Liz was cautious of going near mike.
About Michaelle:
-Michaelle's name was a copy of Mike's because mike wanted to name her. -Michaelle doesn't like Cassidy due to her creeping him out. Cassidy wanted to be friends with him but she'd run away whenever she saw her
-Mike is the one who gave the fredbear plushie to Michaelle on his 3rd birthday. And Michaelle loved it ever since. -Michaelle after fnaf2, William created a small child robot exactly like Michaelle, to make Michaelle posses it and track down other children. Which she did posses it, but when william turned his back it was gone.
-Michaelle after possessing his recreation she had already lost her memory of her dying. And only remembered everything else after before death -she normally randomly spaces out for long periods of time
HEADCANNONS‼️
-All afton kids are Dutch and British -Michaelle has selective mutism, and PTSD -Michael is a paranoid person -liz has golden child syndrome -Michael hates pizza -William planned all his kids deaths -All the afton kids have asthma
And that's it :3 I had fun brainstorming stuff like this randomly

So, it’s been suggested that we present a simplified overview of the recent essays (linked below) that I co-wrote with respected analyst Hanna Kahlert, of renowned London-based MIDiA Research, which covered so much territory of interconnected concepts that all affect the current and future viability of the music industry. This summary eschews the essays’ “$10 words,” (with the exception of using “eschews” here!) with which some have struggled, and is shared in the bite-sized, more digestible form of a survey and petition in combination with this summary/bullet point preface of some of the most salient points. The survey and petition presents the essence of our thesis in the uncomplicated context of a proactive social impact campaign format.
First, let me explain. I grew up in a Long Island suburb town (about thirty miles outside New York City) during the “English Invasion” of music. I’d first hear new releases on my FM clock radio tuned to stations that prided themselves on finding the “cool stuff” first. It was a time when we were met almost every day with another astounding, mind-blowing record and artist to discover, often with something worth thinking about and culturally significant. Sometimes these releases would even be life-changing. Many of these recordings would become iconic — classic evergreens with songs covered endlessly. Yes, like today, there were also dismissable records then. The difference would seem to be that there are more songs about nothing today, replete with de rigeur profanity that only further detracts and is anything but “cool." While there are some very imaginative productions and impressive singers, there are few records now that demand a cerebral, emotional response, and there is a dearth that will be remembered as moving the needle at all, so to speak. Even customary love themes are largely just recycled imitations of the greats.
Since I also relate to the sensitivity of empaths — someone attuned to the deep feelings of those around them at a personal level — I tend to gravitate to music with a message that connects with us viscerally, that which touches the soul. Especially in our currently fraught times, there clearly is a need for thought-provoking music and for more attention given to the evolution of this genre of what was once deemed “protest songs.” Socially poignant music is a category that disguises protest in metaphors and yet is just as potent. It will create community and superfans, lift spirits, and engender a large movement of positive social advocacy. I established Socially Driven Music to develop and market #Music4APurpose. The concept resonated with Hanna Kahlert and we set about to co-write what we envision.
While developing our conclusions towards offering actionable, viable value-propositions for the music industry, we took several months to sort our ideas, research, digest and assimilate the daily deluge of information about changes battering the music industry. While I wasn’t aware that Mark Mulligan, MIDiA’s Founder and Managing Director, was developing his “Bifurcation Theory,” it is validating to be in sync with his thinking and to be presenting what I consider to be the roadmap to implementing that theory. I am excited about offering takeaways that will hopefully propel many away from feelings of helpless, hopeless despair and towards optimism and positive activism through the enrapture we seek from our music and the communities built around it.
Socially driven music has traditionally been a powerful way to raise awareness about issues across the board, such as Discrimination, Climate, Democracy, Mental Health, Bullying, Substance Abuse, Antisemitism, Equality, Homelessness, Veterans, Suicide,Terrorism, Gun Control, Women’s Productive Rights, Food and Clean Water Insecurity, Cancer and other illnesses, Animal Rights/Protection, Environmental Justice, Oceans, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. Our mandate recognizes the crucial difference of a sustained campaign animated by a song.
Above all, we must always remember and honor “The Greatest Generation” (and all Veterans) who fought and died upholding ideals that they expected us to continue to respect. Political affiliation is most often indoctrinated and not questioned individually. Support traditional Republican philosophy if you must, but #MAGA is not the antidote to Democrats and is authoritarian and dangerous to our democracy!
All causes, including music rights, are affected by the influence of a common denominator — politics. Each social cause group is a large community which can be further grown and energized with the natural evolution of fans to music superfans. Compelling socially thematic music enraptures and beckons fans to demonstrate their proud commonality and membership in a next generation fan club that can actually impact society with its fervor and political influence.
Socially Driven Music, the #Music4APurpose consultancy brand, powers extraordinary reciprocal benefits for artists and songwriters when integrated with the community of fans, causes, supportive brands and empathetic politicians ! [info@sociallydrivenmusic.com](mailto:info@sociallydrivenmusic.com)
A list of many social impact causes can be found in the dropdown menu here.
We are thrilled and very appreciative to have been invited to talk with some of the most highly regarded podcast and webinar programs which will include delving into why major record labels discouraging artists espousing political views is anachronistic, irrelevant and no longer a barrier.
As you work through the survey and petition in this post, you’ll likely have an “aha moment.” We look forward to working with you and our fast growing interactive coaltion who share a passion for energizing positive changes in causes that matter to us all.

Join us. Democracy is a big issue in 2024 and one we can influence together! (The correct local and national choices will influence the rest.)

ONE:
The Survey
TWO:
The Petition
THREE:
Connect With Your Senators and Representatives
Identify your Senators and Congressional Representatives with this link and website tool, below, and let us know in the above survey for what purpose you’d like to collaborate with them. Socially Driven Music’s mandate is to facilitate a potent music-fan-cause-brand-political influencer consortium for positive social impact.
Raise your hand in the survey if you are an artist who might want to volunteer at a voting polling station or actually volunteer to help a campaign with calling voters (and meet some new fans).
PS: Although this piece is focused on how music can influence American politics and the fraught issues it impacts, this same template can be applied worldwide. Talk to us!
And here is the epitome example of what we aspire to create:
Paul Simon wrote the masterpiece “American Tune” in 1973 and it applies 51 years later even more to today’s troubled times. This is one of the best examples of the socially poignant music that we contend is so important to create again today, and a brilliant example of a copyright that will live on forever.
The first link is Rhiannon Giddens with Paul at the Grammy Salute evening for him. The second link is Paul’s original.
The song will bring the listener to tears as it describes a societal hopelessness and yet compels the listener to fight through the despair. It perfectly summarizes the emotion powering Socially Driven Music and I hope helps convey what this written summary is trying to articulate.
https://youtu.be/67pyIglP79U?si=ICl2pDKJgTMwcXTT&t=85
Democracy, #Election2024, #MAGA, #MusicIndustry, #MusicBusiness, #Music, #SocialImpact, #SocialGood, #Biden, #Trump, #Vote2024, #ActBlue, #Veterans, #JohnLennon, #YokoOno

Hi everyone, I’m reaching out because I’m feeling very confused and overwhelmed about my current situation at work. Before I transitioned, I had very close relationships with many of my male colleagues. Even to I was fem gay. It was just that the women all have kids and a husband and didn’t want to go for drinks after work. Since the beginning of my transition to a trans woman, I’ve noticed a significant change in how I’m treated. I’m experiencing what feels like bullying and hostility, but my colleagues seems to feel that I deserve it, because of the way I carry myself in my new role as leadership. I also was given a new function to coordinate the staff. Because they know me for long I knew it could give friction but now I feel like they use my transness as a beating stick to easily. It’s a bit of a macho-culture and while some men sometimes be sexist, some women now start to be passive aggressive towards me, now that I place boundaries. I’m often unsure if my interactions with men are being perceived as flirting or not. The insecurity of feeling halfway tru my transition. I feel confused about what female colleagues expect from me, and I sometimes sense that they’re angry at me for wearing too much makeup or not fitting into their expectations. It’s also hard to fix things when it goes wrong. And it the ones that where closest to me pre-transition that show me the disrespect. This uncertainty adds to my stress and confusion, making it even harder to navigate my work environment. It is taking a toll on my mental and fysical health, and I’m considering taking a leave of absence like my doctor proposed to get rest and maybe also to reflect for my future direction. However, I’m also worried about the financial implications and the feeling of guilt for needing a break. Has anyone else been through something similar? How did you cope with the feelings of guilt and confusion? Also, how did you decide whether to take a leave or keep working through the situation? Any advice or support would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

work #transwomen #confused #burnout

I need some feedback here. This is a long story, please be patient (and hopefully provide feedback).
A few months ago, the kid in question wrote a Mean Girls type of burn book. She listed my daughter at the top of the popular list, and then she wrote bad things about other girls. My daughter was pulled into the office for questioning and had to defend herself against a few accusations. It came out that this girl had written the list, but everyone was already mad at my daughter because they assumed she wrote it. The other girl’s mom defended her daughter’s actions and said that she’s the outcast and doesn’t know many other kids because they’re new-ish to the school. Fine.
A few weeks ago, this same mom at our (private Catholic) school texted several moms separately about an incident in which our 3rd grade girls were talking about periods. Her daughter apparently lied about starting her period, so the other girls were kind of ribbing her and saying that she’s lying. Here’s where it gets weird. The mom was pissed about the girls calling her daughter a liar despite her lying. She proceeds to tell me that my daughter and her best friend asked her daughter to see a soiled pad to prove that she started her period. Gross. I talked to my daughter, and her reaction was the same. “Gross! I’d never ask to see that! I didn’t hear anyone else ask that either.” So, I relayed this information to the mom. I told her that I’m personally not concerned about the girls talking about periods because they’re girls. To that, she said “Agree to disagree,” or something to that effect. Also, one of the graphic novels that they’ve all read has a character who starts her period. When my daughter read that novel, she asked me questions, and we had talked. A non-event…at least to me.
The following week, I get a call from the principal that my daughter threw sand in this girl’s hair. She said from the video footage, it looked like my daughter may have been defending one of her friends. I asked my daughter, and she kind of lied about the situation and said that she was “just dusting her hands off” in this kid’s hair. 🤦🏼‍♀️ She said that this girl was yelling at another friend, and the sand in hair thing just happened. She said it was barely any sand, and the other girl had thrown sand on them first. From what I gather, my daughter was the only one to get a conduct mark and note home.
This weekend, this other girl starts messaging my daughter’s friend. She told her that she had JUST talked to my daughter, and she had such NASTY things to say about this friend. I checked my daughter’s call log and chat history, and she hadn’t talked to this kid in weeks. My daughter then tells me that this girl keeps telling all her friends things like to make them hate her. She’s been telling the teachers and coaches on my daughter and several other kids for things that never even happened.
I tried talking to the mom, but she insisted that her child is the victim, and she’s had to endure torment from the other girls recently because they’re mad that her mom gets involved in situations. That’s true. The girls don’t want to interact with this kid because she lies to her mom, her mom goes to school, and then everyone gets in trouble.
The official story to this lady is that my daughter is the REAL bully. She’s reported her several times at school.
From these instances, what’s your interpretation?

Im 19 and ive lived most of my life online with a pretty small amount of people. In terms of achievements in life and the value i bring to anyones life i give 0. Ive always struggled with understanding myself and others and i was rather introverted as a child as a result of some mild forms of bullying. I ended up gaining a bunch of weight when covid happened but i dont even remember existing before the year 2022. I havent studied in so long that i dont know how to study yet somehow im in my second year of uni. I have no hopes, no ambitions. I always struggled with hating living and despising my life and myself. Thats all for me. Late 2024 i met this girl online who I hit it off with pretty easily. A month in we’d hang out like 6-10 hours a day just chilling having fun watching movies gaming etc etc. this went on for 2 more months until i realized i mightve gotten a crush on her. I was raised in a conservative environment from young and never really had experience with interacting with women or anything other than short interactions that lasted like a week max. All i knew was that i needed to communicate these feelings because I hate keeping things inside. Ill be honest I almost always choose the easiest thing to do. I told her i liked her but I dont wanna pursue anything because LDRs suck . She just listened and told me she wouldnt know how she felt about me until a year ish. This was also around the time she told me she had narcissistic personality disorder and bipolar disorder and was on the spectrum. Ofc even after knowing that i just acted normal and didnt really change anything, which led to me making a lot of selfish decisions that ended up hurting her. Now shes told me these decisions wouldnt hurt a normal person but to her she just cant, now weve known each other for 7 months and we hang out everyday the entire day sometimes sleeping on call. Then I made a bunch of selfish decisions back to back that, and im not really sure, made her tell me shes leaving and that she doesnt want to be friends anymore. I knew shes a narcissist and i knew whatever connection i felt was probably one sided but it really doesnt get easier knowing she left our friendship and just moved on to the next best thing. I regret being myself, i hate myself and ill never forgive myself for being me. Now in th period after she left i couldnt do anything, i would spend most of my day on my phone scrolling or watching netflix just to cope with how lonely it felt. I got to a point where i had to add her and talk to her. Not being sure of myself i removed my add request and decided whatever she doesnt care anyways. She added me back and weve hung out twice since then. Shes told me that she doesnt plan on being friends with me but who knows what might happen. She also said i didnt change and that i was still selfish which hurt. Now were back to not being friends but we hang out. I truly dont know what the fuck is wrong with me, I cant just move on now and i have to change.

Hi all,This year I moved to a new school after 7 years in a previous school (Catholic college - primary and secondary). I left due to 2 colleagues I once admired, respected, enjoyed working with and called friends either bullying, excluding and/or undermining me in front of my students and theirs across the whole school year.Moved to a new school (Catholic and systemtic) and am finding many of their ways of operating very foreign, adding to my work and time and am constantly frustrated by lack of consistency, lack of standards and zero acknowledgement of my noticeable student progression and improvement since my arrival.
A few factors that are frustrating and aggravating:
-Apart from myself and one other staff member, ALL other staff (teachers, Teacher Assistants, the Deputy, office admin, specialists) are ALL part-time in the primary campus. In and of itself this is not a problem, however it leads to a lack of consistency and stability for me as I am constantly playing catch-up due to the rotating nature of the year-level team. It affects student behaviour (not so much mine, but the other classes) due to no consistency with teachers. Seems to be a high level of rotating teahers on LSL (short stints) and staff on and off from parental leave. No staff nmeeting I have been to yet has had all staff there.
-Behaviour of students is atrocious when compared to other schools in the area and previous schools from my decade + experience. Students are verbally rude, cannot settle and focus and there are often physical altercations in the playground. I've spent a term and a half really breaking down behaviour expectations, routines and standards. I am making progress, but there is so much stacked against us.
-Parent copmmunity is INTENSE. Moreso than I have ever experienced. Teachers are consistently told their "tone"when talking to parents is rude/negative/insert critique here, parents are constantly emailing teachers to complain about other children and flat out ignoring any and all comunication about their own child. When I asked leadership about this, the reasoning given is either, "Parents at this school have always been like this" or "It's the culture of the area. We get families from all over"meaning the greater metropolitan area. I persoinally do not think this argument holds up as previous schools I've been at have accepted students from relatively large areas in terms of distance.
-EVERYTHING is done as a team." While this sounds great on the face of it, it adds so much to personal workloads when reporting, individual lesson planning, unit planning, NCCD work, resouirce development and/or sourcing, sending emails to parents, responding to emails from parents and more all has to be done as a committee of 7 people. Nothing gets done efficiently or within a desired timeframe.
-Classes - For each year level (double-stream), we routinely mix and match students. Not just for programs (e.g. Spelling) but for ALL subjects and curriculum areas. This means that in theory, I have a class of 31 (e.g. my roll call list), however in any given lesson I could be receiving students from the next-door class. Sometimes the classes stay the same (students) but we (teachers) swap. This makes assessing and reporting a nightmare, as it is unproductive, inefficient and there is no consistency.The reason for this has nothing to do with student learning, outcomes or development. It occurs "to stop parents complaining about which teacher they do/do not get for their child," "to stop parents emailing and complaining about if child x or y is in their child's class."It also means that due to the way the "team-teaching" works, I will never teach certain subjects (e.g. Science or Geography) this year. I have been given subjects the other teachers on Year 5 do not want: Religion, History for example
-Students miss out on opportunities for growth, e.g. in Science as we need to fill out risk assessments for items like using the school oval outside of lunch times and for simple, basic Science experiments (e.g. mixing two liquids - liquids that are not hot, cold). EVERY science experiment of any category needs a risk assessment.I came in so excited about subjects like Science... no more. Can't take the class outside for a brain break as we'd have to book the oval and fill out a risk assessment.
-Class sizes are 31+ and the school has a high volume of EAL and students with various diagnoses. In a class of 31, 20+ are either EAL and/or have a diagnosis (e.g. autism, ADHD, etc)-Zero autonomy. I have to go through 3 supervisors just to respond to a parent email (even if it is wholly positive), I am told what kind of visual aid posters I can/can't have in my room (e.g. a times table chart or a poster on English contractions).
-Release time a joke. I have to sit in my class cupboard as this is the only place in the school that is:--Free of gossiping staff--Free of staff talking in general--The only place staff and/or students will not interrupt me.-Staff are friendly (cheerfully greeting/seeing how my day is/was, seeming interested in me as a person and educator) but there is so much gossip about each other and parents/families. I could go to a staff member with a purely work-related question (e.g. planning or how a school process works) and the conversation almost always ends up being twisted to a poorly behaved student/complaining/gossiping. Even after I have point blank made it clear I do not engage in gossip and find it fractures teams/colleagues and do not have the time for it.
-Multiple duties each day of the week (as we are únderstaffed'' - same as every other school in Australia)-Duty roster (playground) changes every single week due to the high volume of absent staff, staff with multiple roles, etc So no stability or consistency there either.-Foced to pay money into a school social club each week for amenities (e.g. milk/coffee/biscuits) which I never use in a staffroom I never visit or for gifts of departing/retiring/staff going on parental leave.... Yet every time a staff member fits these categories, we get emails from leaders asking if we would like to choose to put towards a gift.... so unsure why I was told the social club goes to gifts. Tried getting out of it in writing (I pay more being one of the few full-time staff) only to be told, "In your contract, you signed that you will be paying money into the social club." Nothing in my contract at all, and I asked the state union to have a look just in case I am blind and having a man's look. They too clearly stated there is nothing in there.
My question is, after 7 years in a school I enjoyed (apart from the aforementioned 2 colleagues changing how they interact with me) is this the norm in Australian Catholic schools (primary and/or combined primary/secondary colleges). I used to be so effective, productive and built strong and positive student relationships. I am now ineffective, unproductive, my time and experience is wasted and my experience seems to be for naught.
*Is this the new normal?
*Is anyone else so utterly heartbroken, soul-crushed and demoralised (and I guess, angry and frustrated) by red tape/inefficiency/unproductiveness, etc?
Any thoughts? Cheers, legends.

I need some feedback here. This is a long story, please be patient (and hopefully provide feedback).
A few months ago, the kid in question wrote a Mean Girls type of burn book. She listed my daughter at the top of the popular list, and then she wrote bad things about other girls. My daughter was pulled into the office for questioning and had to defend herself against a few accusations. It came out that this girl had written the list, but everyone was already mad at my daughter because they assumed she wrote it. The other girl’s mom defended her daughter’s actions and said that she’s the outcast and doesn’t know many other kids because they’re new-ish to the school. Fine.
A few weeks ago, this same mom at our (private Catholic) school texted several moms separately about an incident in which our 3rd grade girls were talking about periods. Her daughter apparently lied about starting her period, so the other girls were kind of ribbing her and saying that she’s lying. Here’s where it gets weird. The mom was pissed about the girls calling her daughter a liar despite her lying. She proceeds to tell me that my daughter and her best friend asked her daughter to see a soiled pad to prove that she started her period. Gross. I talked to my daughter, and her reaction was the same. “Gross! I’d never ask to see that! I didn’t hear anyone else ask that either.” So, I relayed this information to the mom. I told her that I’m personally not concerned about the girls talking about periods because they’re girls. To that, she said “Agree to disagree,” or something to that effect. Also, one of the graphic novels that they’ve all read has a character who starts her period. When my daughter read that novel, she asked me questions, and we had talked. A non-event…at least to me.
The following week, I get a call from the principal that my daughter threw sand in this girl’s hair. She said from the video footage, it looked like my daughter may have been defending one of her friends. I asked my daughter, and she kind of lied about the situation and said that she was “just dusting her hands off” in this kid’s hair. 🤦🏼‍♀️ She said that this girl was yelling at another friend, and the sand in hair thing just happened. She said it was barely any sand, and the other girl had thrown sand on them first. From what I gather, my daughter was the only one to get a conduct mark and note home.
This weekend, this other girl starts messaging my daughter’s friend. She told her that she had JUST talked to my daughter, and she had such NASTY things to say about this friend. I checked my daughter’s call log and chat history, and she hadn’t talked to this kid in weeks. My daughter then tells me that this girl keeps telling all her friends things like to make them hate her. She’s been telling the teachers and coaches on my daughter and several other kids for things that never even happened.
I tried talking to the mom, but she insisted that her child is the victim, and she’s had to endure torment from the other girls recently because they’re mad that her mom gets involved in situations. That’s true. The girls don’t want to interact with this kid because she lies to her mom, her mom goes to school, and then everyone gets in trouble.
The official story to this lady is that my daughter is the REAL bully. She’s reported her several times at school.
From these instances, what’s your interpretation?

Welcome, fellow 40k data nerds, to another Stat Check Meta Dashboard Update! We’ve made one very important update to the dashboard. You can find the newly updated best free tools for 40k meta analysis on our website:

• Stat Check - Meta Data Dashboard
• Stat Check - Player Elo Scores

If you like our work and consider it useful, feel free to join us on Patreon and join our Discord!
Follow us on YouTube to see the latest episodes of our flagship show Stat Check, Enter the Matrix (Team 40k analysis from some of the best players in the world), and Take All Comers (where a trio of young, skilled players walk us through their competitive approaches to list-building and improvement). Today's episode of Stat Check will feature a rundown of the new Chaos Space Marine rules, following last week's rundown of the Ork Codex. Tune in here!
I’ve copied a table with one half of our State of the Meta Dashboard tab below for our mobile users. You can find images of the rest of the dashboard’s tabs here: Dashboard Images

Faction	Win Rate	OverRep	4-0 Event Start	Event Wins	Player Population
Space Wolves	64%	2.86	6%	1	3%
Chaos Daemons	63%	0.61	6%	0	2%
Grey Knights	61%	1.79	13%	3	6%
Black Templars	60%	0.85	9%	1	3%
Genestealer Cults	58%	0.00	0%	0	1%
Necrons	55%	1.65	9%	3	8%
Thousand Sons	54%	0.97	7%	2	5%
Orks	54%	1.95	10%	3	8%
Chaos Space Marines	53%	0.46	5%	1	3%
Adepta Sororitas	53%	0.41	8%	0	4%
Blood Angels	52%	1.15	12%	0	5%
Drukhari	51%	2.25	8%	0	2%
Imperial Knights	50%	0.49	0%	0	3%
Adeptus Mechanicus	50%	2.43	0%	0	1%
World Eaters	50%	1.43	6%	0	5%
T'au Empire	49%	0.83	9%	1	5%
Death Guard	49%	0.39	4%	0	4%
Aeldari	47%	0.94	10%	1	5%
Astra Militarum	46%	0.91	0%	0	5%
Tyranids	44%	0.00	3%	0	5%
Adeptus Custodes	42%	0.42	0%	0	3%
Chaos Knights	42%	0.49	5%	0	3%
Space Marines	39%	0.46	0%	0	6%
Leagues of Votann	39%	0.00	0%	0	3%
Dark Angels	34%	0.54	6%	1	3%
Deathwatch	25%	0.00	0%	0	0%

We're over 3,000 games into the post data-slate meta, and a few things have become clear:

• The Ork codex is as strong as initially suspected. Green Tide and War Horde have some positive leading indicators, while Bully Boyz appears to be the real deal. At 143 games played, BBz are sitting at a 58% Win Rate, 2.6 OverRep, 14% of its players going 4-0 to start their events, and 2 event wins.
• The Necron's Canoptek Court detachment is still going strong. At 93 games played, it's posted a 64% Win Rate, 2.92 OverRep, 15% of players starting 4-0, and 2 event wins.
• Custodes have likely disappeared as a competitive option altogether, and have quite literally disappeared from the "Faction Win Rate - Peer vs. Peer" tab due to an abysmal 23% win rate among upper quartile Elo players.
• Kyle Grundy has put Kroot nay-sayers on notice, going 4-1 with the Kroot Hunting Pack Detachment!

We've made a pretty significant update to the dashboard that we're very excited about. For the past two years (good lord, it's been that long), we've used the Player and Opponent Experience filters as a proxy for player skill, operating under the assumption that more events played = continued improvement for most players. As of a few weeks ago, we've retired those filters and replaced them with Player and Opponent Elo Percentile sliders. If you're looking for a rundown on Elo in 40k, check out our explainer article on Goonhammer
From now on, you'll be able to adjust your view of the meta for a given skill level. Brand new to the game and humbly assuming you're probably not that good yet? Set the max percentile to 25 for both Player and Opponent to see what the meta looks like for players who are still trying to figure the game out. Are you an established player who's routinely X-1, gunning for that 5-0 finish? Set the minimum for both Player and Opponent to 90 or 95 to get a more refined view of what competition looks like in your rarefied air. As always, these filters interact with all the others so that you can get as specific or as broad as you'd like.
Given the Elo update to the dashboard, We've adjusted the "Win Rate - Peer vs. Peer" tab to use win rates for games within the bottom and top quartiles instead of win rates within the now-deprecated "Newcomer" and "Veteran" buckets. We've also added another tab - Win Rates by Peer Elo Decile. This tab displays the WR and total games played for each faction within a given Elo decile, along with games played between players at the 99th+ percentile. This helps illuminate the degree to which there are performance differences across player skill levels for a given faction.
Looks like CSM got the good writer. Meta's gonna get real wonky over the next few weeks.
We’ll be lurking in the comments, so feel free to reach out with questions, comments, critique, or requests for clarification. Until next week, good luck with your games, and don’t forget to keep fun first while you’re playing.

Hey there, We have had a kitten for two weeks name Tommy, he is lovely and very energetic and after doing somereading we decided to get him a feline brother. So Koda arrived in our life. The problem is that Tommy is older by 2 weeks and is larger than Koda, and treats him as a toy rather than a living thing. Everytime he is interacting with him (supervised for now) he wouldn't let him move, pin him and bite him. No injuries accured but there have been squeals and some hisses. From what I understand this is pretty normal behaviour, but I wanted to ask if any one else went through similar experiences. Do you think we can let them interact unsupervised? Should we separate them for the night? how long until they are expected to act more like cat brothers rather than a clasroom bully and a kid who has to take it?

I went to an all boys school in South London and it was fucking brutal. I basically consider myself to have had an experience akin to 5 years in prison. Violence was part and parcel of daily life, no one was safe, popular or not. Unlike most schools where a few kids get bullied, everyone got bullied by everyone else. I saw some pretty nuts things, people being dragged off a toilet mid shit and attacked, someone having their leg stamped on and snapped deliberately, someone having both their front teeth kicked out during a fight over a £2 coin and then continuing to fight over the money with his teeth on the floor, someone getting stabbed in the face with a piece of glass giving him lifelong injuries, people having daily "belt fights" where a group of people would whip eachother with their belt buckles and the last man standing wins, people being strangled with their ties to the point of passing out, someone getting their kneck crushed between 2 desks with 4 people on either side pushing as hard as they could, literally almost killing him. Many people carried knives and there were at least 2 incidents of stabbings on school grounds, one of them serious. There would be mass corridor riots probably once a week where even teachers would be attacked. There were organised fights on which people could even place bets. Sometimes teachers would intimidate or attack students for not reaching target grades. The way the school was run was extremely corrupt, they would do anything to inflate ofsted grades and did not care about people being bullied etc. A firework was once detonated during assembly and then again at break in a crowd of people knocking several of them to the floor. There were people actively involved in gang life and some went to prison for things like murder (outside of school). One guy in my tutor group who was actually a nice bloke now carries a gun and has been shot and also shot at people. There was 1 guy in the year above me who went to prison for 4 years because he got caught trying to join ISIS in an ICT lesson.
I could go on for ages about some of the things but those are the ones that come to mind. I have some good memories and lifelong friends from that time but it's also had a negative impact on me. I'm incredibly conflict averse as I fear violence. I'm also incredibly sexually and romantically inexperienced at 22 because I became used to not being around girls and women my age and don't really know how to interact with them outside of a platonic friendship.
know this isn't technically a uni based question but I thought this would be a good group of people to ask.

I'm not enough it seems. I'm havong trouble putting things to word but I'll try my best. I don't remember 99% of my life which is my childhood. I was bullied, emotionally neglected in home and suffered other kinds of abuse. This is as far as I remember because I wrote about them in my diary and used to constantly think about it. When the pandemic started, I tried my best to heal from it all despite still going through them and miraculously did recover alot. But I'm still broken even after everything. My bestfriend too suffered a lot including child neglect but instead, she turned out to be very independent whereas I'm like a clueless 5 year old. I can't do anything properly by myself. I can't take medicine consistently and barely takes care of my health without external force. I find it hard to even move out of my bed. I'm only moderately good at everything I try; art, academics, looks etc. Barely above average. I have trouble in trying my best, I don't give up but I can't put much effort. I self sabotage. When I try my absolute best to heal from an issue, another three pops up. I'm never enough, I can never be the last one standing. I'm all too pathetic and powerless. Not even ordinary but entirely an outcast. I've been fighting for too long and it still hurts, I am too tired; but I have a dream and so I must keep going on. It never got better with time. I act cute and innocent so that my parents still love me and would excuse my incapability. I calculate all my social interactions in a way that I never get bullied but never ends up being the centre of attention. I only have one close friend whom I want to stay beside forever. I never reach my goals. I'm not proud of anything in my life. I hate living as me. I want to rip my soul apart and create something entirely different from it, something that is nothing like me. I tried, idk how much longer I can go on. No one is hurting me anymore but I'm still in pain. I don't want to give up. I want to keep on going but it really just hurts.

There’s this girl in my class that has tried to talk to me a couple times, and I really want to strike up a conversation with her. But I am not scared to talk to her because she’s a girl, or that I like her; but rather because of the people around me. My friends all hate her, and I am worried that if I try to talk to her in class, they will start to hate me and bully me for it, and say that I have a crush on her. I also feel like trying to talk to her while her friends are around her would make it awkward. One time she struck up a conversation with me when it was just us two in the locker bay, and that was an actual brief conversation. A problem is that every time she tries to talk to me, we usually don’t interact again for a while.
But sometimes she confuses me, like one time she said to me from across the classroom that she was proud of me. She just said it randomly, and she didn’t say why. Huh?! and another time she asked me if she was a bully. I have no idea why she said those things to me.
Also, to make it clear, I am not romantically interested in her, and I know that she isn’t with me either. I just feel that there are things preventing me from starting a friendship with her, and I also just want to know why the fuck she said those things to me. This has also been going on for nearly a year now, so keep that in mind.

I have an approximately 3.5 year old male neutered DSH. From his known history, him and his litter were taken away from the mother before 8 weeks of age, and then the litter was immediately split up and he lived with a female littermate until the previous owners turned both cats outside. He found his way to me about a year later. During that time, I observed he was bullied and chased off by feral toms/other strays in the neighborhood. He sustained an injury, as a result of a fight, to his leg that ultimately made me bring him inside permanently.
He came to us with fear aggression of other cats. Which we addressed with medication and behavior modification. He's since been titrated off of the SSRI's. The fear aggression is no longer an issue with the resident cats. However, with his early life being less than ideal, he's lacking social awareness and isn't great at interacting with the residents. The only remaining issue is that he chases two of the cats. He is not being aggressive with the chasing, but he is failing to "read the room" and routinely misses corrections given by the residents.
With the background out of the way, a couple of questions.
He's been taken off of the SSRI's and his "normal" personality is now able to be observed. This may be a bit anthropomorphizing, but it seems that his lack of motherly correction and cat-to-cat socialization, as well as him being turned out to the street at a young age, has resulted in him always being hyperaware of his surroundings. His fight, flight, freeze, was engaged constantly for such an extended period of time and has remained on since then, rarely allowing him to relax, truly. And that seems to lend itself to periods of restlessness/antsy despite enrichment, play, training, etc.
The question is, have you observed such a behavior in a cat, where they can't seem to "turn off" the stress loop and become restless despite mental and physical enrichment?
If so, what are some different approaches that one could take to help the cat "rewire" the brain to allow for less reactivity and achieving appropriate stress reactions and relaxation?
Thanks!

Hi Tankers,
I usually don't post often about games, but I have to admit, WOT is my game. I have more than 53.000 battles and would consider myself a good player (3060 WN8).
I really like the game and the gameplay. It looks simple, but under the surface lies a lot of complexity, that once learned and grasped rewards you in big ways.
A huge part of that complexity is the theoretically large amount of tanks that can face each other in a battle and how they interact with their strengths and weaknesses on different maps.
However, do you also feel, that the game turned from "World of Tanks" more and more to "World of Premium Tanks" or even more limited to "World of Bourrasque/Progetto/BZ/ELC"?
I get it, playing with powerful tanks is fun. Dealing damage is fun, winning is fun. However, I myself really enjoy playing underwhelming tanks as well. For example I recently marked the Black Prince. While it was not the greatest experience I ever had, it was not horrible either. It was new. Low alpha and slow, but a lot of HP to bully enemies face to face. I had to make it work and for me that was part of the fun - you may call it a challenge.
How can we deal with the problem, that especially new or weaker players not only get the impression, that they would perform better and win more in tanks like the BZ, they also have the advantage of playing in a premium tank making more credits than they would when playing the tech-tree counterpart.
The same is of course true for experienced players and unicums who push these tanks to their limits making it very hard for other players to get an enjoyment out of resulting one-sided rounds.
So to bring more variety to the queue, I would suggest, that WG creates a daily or weekly mission or set of missions for a random tech-tree tank of all available tech-tree tanks - not necessarly researched or in the garage (starting from Tier 5 or 6). Of course, it would have to be random for each player individually. It would not even have to be completely random, WG has data which tanks are played the least and which are played the most tier for tier. They could let that flow in the RNG for which tank is chosen for the missions.
I was thinking about making it that only a tank could be chosen for a player that has already been researched or even is in the garage, but I realized, that would actually punish players with a larger garage and would lead to players only researching the best TT lines and would not help the problem at all. So it has to be a random pick from all researchable tanks (from tier 5 or 6 upwards).
Now I realize this would have to be implemented with thought. To prevent just clicking in the queue and wasting your tank the missions would have to have some moderate requirements, like be top 5 or 7 exp of your team. But make the rewards worthwhile enough so that players might even be incentivized to research more tank lines or even buy back some tanks to get a higher chance to participate.
What rewards would you consider appropriate enough to be motivated to play a tank that you normally would not play?
I also was realizing that with the crew changes my idea is way more player friendly than it would be before. You can now use any crew for your tank. Sure, their perks might not work but if you set the mission requirements not too high, you should stil be able to have a decent round with a normal 100% crew.
For WG it would be good, because players would strive after researching more tanks (gold-to-xp) and buying more tanks for silver (more games and/or buying gold/silver from WG).
For the players it would be good, because the game could widen more. The experience would get much broader again. As a counterpoint, you might argue, that it gets more complicated for newer players, when they have to face on average a much wider amount of opposing vehicles than before, memorizing their guns and weak spots etc. On the other hand most of the tech-tree tanks still are less powerful than their premium counterparts nowadays, so if I was a new player I would rather face a Tiger II than a BZ-176.
What do you all think? Would you personally like to see more variety again, especially more tech-tree tanks in the tiers 6-8 and more non-meta tanks in the tiers 9-10?

Growing up I don't really have friends and it put into this pedestal thinking that I must be really pathetic, no one even tried to get to know me, they tend to act that I don't exist and it only got worse throughout my teenage years. Wherein I don't even know how to interact with people anymore when I do I stutter alot and kind of lost my voice along the way. Now I suffer from social anxiety which make it even worse it's probably because of all the bullying that happened to me when I was kid that's why whenever my anxiety were at it's peaks I tend to get depressed and Isolate myself from everyone. It's exhausting having to show myself out there when deep inside I just want to end it all and then it happens. My anxiety started to manifest itself affecting my grades, my mental healh and family. I feel so lost and alone in that moment like there's no way out and the only solution that I came up with was suicide which was a very impulsive decision, I went for it and decided to just leave all this shit behind me cause I'm just so fucking exhausted existing having to suffer every seconds of my life. I overdosed but survived it somehow and went to school the next day and acted as if nothing happened it was actually the end of school year when I did it (this was last year). That's why I decided to dropout of school this school year cause I still haven't find a way to deal with the fact that I tried to killed myself last year , and I have been isolating myself since then, I can't even get out the house. I'm literally in my room rotting like a self deprecating trash.
'Sorry for my bad english.'.......

Intro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

So like, it's really not that bad. Obviously getting emoted at isn't the worst thing in the world. Few children will be rendered sobbing messes from anything this game has to offer, but still, to me the sheer presence of it all is totally unprecedented.
I guess like, I'm used to Nintendo. They offer no form of messaging whatsoever in their games to minimize inapproproate interactions. Splatoon offers no interaction, the only way to taunt another player is to "crouchspam" after a kill, which if you're 9, probably even fails to register as an attempt at bullying. Smash 4 randomly limited the intricately animated taunts, and Ultimate bans it entirely! Pokemon is even stricter. Playing PvP in a traditional Pokemon game is completely devoid of player ro player communication save for the battle, and I can't say I recall Pokken or Pokemon Unite having any interaction either.
So like. I boot up this game right. And not only do you have the ability to endlessly make faces at your opponent, one of THE most universal forms of taunting, but a sassy, boast-y win quote is usually shoved in your face with every loss, plus an animation of the person that just beat you flexing. There's no way to disable any of this or report a player either, a feature several of the games mentioned above include.
Now like, again, I don't mean to imply this is like. Evil. I'm not on here to demand it be removed immediately(!!!), I don't have a kid to get their feeling hurt or anything, I'm just surprised it's here AT ALL. My entire life Nintendo and Pokemon has attempted to minimize bullying through their games as much as they possibly can, and this game, in comparison, has gone out of its way to include wildly unecessary features that seem to specifically cater it. Like if this was Street Fighter or something I wouldn't even blink, but the fact it's a game and company so famously tied to having a child audience is what throws me for a loop. Like, I've played a lot of Yugioh Duel Links and a bit of Magic the Gathering Arena - both of those games offer mutes, reports, and don't offer intentionally bragadocious win quotes and the ability to sarcastically pull exaggerated grins at your opponent throughout the entirety of the match. I haven't even mentioned that the game's incredibly long timer allows pretty much any deck to drastically extend a game if your opponent's feeling petty.
Is anyone else as taken aback by this as me??? It's just like. One of the intentionally teasiest games I've ever played is the pokemon trading card game app???? What????? It's bizarre

How do you all handle bullies? We’ve got a close family member that is around the same age as our kiddo and she’s always mean to him. When they were younger it was mostly biting and scratching. Now shes always pushing and knocking him down on purpose. She’s a bigger kid and has been doing the same to other kids. I think she does this to show dominance but I could be wrong. I’ve even heard her mom say that her daughter is “making the other kids tough.” I know the parents are the problem as they don’t have a good relationship and constantly fight and yell in front of their kid. It makes me feel for my kiddo since he doesn’t have much interaction with other kids his age (he stays home with me) and I noticed he’s now started to hit another kid here lately. He’s usually a sweet kid who only plays rough with dad but I don’t want him to think that hitting and pushing is a normal part of play all the time. I also understand that rough housing is normal but not to this extent.

Little Author's Note up here since it was missed in the last chapter by some people: I don't approve of anyone "narrating" or using my story for their youtube channels or whatever as it makes me uncomfortable. I’ve been getting messages whenever I post a chapter asking the same thing and I keep saying no. If you see this story on youtube or elsewhere, I didn’t approve of it or give them my permission to do so.
Also I hope you enjoy this chapter, I had some difficulty writing it, so it’s probably not my best quality.
Cerelia, Altrin Female, Captain of The Opal Star
I smirk at my wrist data pad as I can see Triwt is basically hunting and chasing down the remaining pirates while expertly leading them to me for a trap.
“Triwt, you know me so well.” I say with a fully smug tone as I ready my rifle and prepare to open fire.
Not yet
The footsteps are getting louder.
Not yet…
The footsteps, given how good my hearing is, have now rounded the corner and there’s a shriek of terror.
“Boys! Turn back and save your damn Captain! The damn girl has me!”
I can’t help but smirk, it seems the ugly bastard did come aboard the ship. What’s better is that Triwt has grabbed him, leaving the remaining 4 pirates not looking this way.
Now.
Triwt, Female Valis-Trobat Hybrid, Security Commander
I’m slightly annoyed as I have to constantly dodge and weave going through the corridor. These dumbasses aren’t even aiming where they're shooting. I quickly duck low to the ground to dodge a barrage of plasma bolts, when I hear the one thing I was looking forward to. Click click click…
Silence follows the clicking of empty TOR’s besides the frantic running. It’s then replaced by one of the pirates, not the Captain, shrieking as she runs ahead of the others in a panic. In no sense am I a sadistic person, but however in this situation, I might have smiled a bit to her reaction as I pick up the pace and quickly enter melee range.
Hm, maybe we can afford one prisoner…
I see the corner coming up as I whip my body around and grab the Captain with my tail.
EWWWW He’s all slimy and mucusy! Goddess this is worse than Jordan Cores bleeding on my fur. EWWW!!!
“Boys! Turn back and save your damn Captain! The damn girl has me!”
Despite my own internal hatred of the sensation of having to get that gross slime like mucus on my tail of all things, I still pull the Captain back as they round the corner looking back at me as they abandon their captain. I give them a wave right before a hail of gunfire shreds through them, leaving only a fine mist.
I’m surprised Cerelia is allowed to even own such a modified weapon. I can’t even shoot it while holding it with all 4 of my arms due to the recoil! She says it’s registered as a ceremonial weapon. I suppose a sudden funeral is a ceremony in itself.
I smirk at the thought before returning my attention to this gross captain wrapped up in my tail.
Cerelia, Altrin Female, Captain of The Opal Star
I let out a relaxed sigh as I released the trigger from my grip. I don’t particularly enjoy battle, but there seems to be something within my own instincts that triggers dopamine at the end of a battle.
Probably something to do with Altrins being a hunter race before we were modern and spacefaring. Might have to ask a historian about that, if not at the very least a psychologist.
I lower my rifle as Triwt slithers down the hall, her fur was undeniably red in a few spots where it came into contact with Jordan’s blood, but it was mostly on her uniform. She keeps moving with the Alcoranth Captain getting dragged along by Triwt’s tail as she had already bound up and gagged them.
“I can deal with the blood of Jordan Cores, but take this bastard away from me before I slit his throat for getting mucus on my tail.”
Oh, she is pissed. She’s just doing a good job at mostly containing it.
I nod before speaking, “Just knock him out for now and we’ll put him in a cryopod or something. His slime-like excretions from his skin might make him an easy flight risk since we can assume he can slip out of handcuffs and other bindings fairly easily.”
Triwt nods at me and uses a Stun Baton to knock him out for now after hitting him with probably more volts than regulated.
I suppose it’s better than bashing his head against the wall until he passes out.
The remaining guards who were left with me take the now prisoner captain away from Triwt and begin transporting him to a cryopod room meant for emergencies like if the ship’s thrusters were to stop working and we’re years away from rescue.
We could just set up an SOS frequency broadcast and then put everyone in cryo until rescue arrives. But now, it’s a makeshift prison for a cowardly pirate.
Now… for the real battle in all of this. The battle on the inside.
Lys, Verkrawn Male, Fauna Research Specialist
Silence. Well, except my ears are ringing from the sound of gunfire that has now stopped.
I take in a shaky breath in what feels like the first time in forever. Everything is shaking now that the fighting seems to have stopped. It seems I’m not the only one who was holding their breath for so long as other crew members near me seemed to breathe in, while a few start to break down crying.
We’re not fighters like security, Triwt, or Cerelia. Most of us had never seen people die, to say the least how brutal it was to see how Jordan Cores attacked the Alcoranth. I feel my face with my clawed hands and feel the warm liquid of my tears running down my face.
When did I start crying?
The realization hit me like a powerloader as it’s my turn to break down crying, my own legs failing me as they shook before I found myself weeping on the floor as the thoughts and emotions flooded my head with what happened and how terrible this was. I keep crying as I feel the large paw of my older sister as she slowly sits me up and holds me in a warm embrace. It makes me think about when I was younger. The days when she and I were in the orphanage. She used to hold me just like this after she would chase away the older kids who would be mean to me. I still remember some of the things she’d say to them.
“I don’t care if a Verkawn’s scales can deflect most bullets, he still has feelings!” The first thing she ever said to the bullies as she chased them off. It was also the day I met her. She had lost her family due to a Slaver raid on the colony world she was living on at the time. She didn’t tell me much about it, and I doubt she would tell me even today, but she always called me her little brother, so I started calling her my older sister. It’s been like that since.
I keep crying until it’s more of a sniffle as I slowly return the embrace.
“They will never hurt you like they hurt me, Lys.” She whispers to me before slowly turning her attention to the crew members with a sad expression. “Nor any of you. Oh, none of this was ever supposed to happen.”
“Y-You can’t predict pirates, Cerelia”
“I know, but they got so close to hurting and enslaving you. I failed to keep you all safe.”
“Cerelia, we’re fine. No one got hurt physically. We should probably just go to the nearest planetary city, maybe see some therapists and psychologists while the ship gets repaired.”
Cerelia nods as she thinks about what I said.
“Yeah, but what about the furless beast? What are we supposed to do about it?” A member says as everyone was slowly coming to grips that they are alive and well. “Are we just going to keep it here? Who knows if it’ll attack us again like it did to Lys or that Alcoranth on the floor there!?”
“He was scared!” Cerelia counters, with a hint of personal anger in her tone. “He couldn’t understand us and was only trying to escape because he thought he was in danger!”
“He was in danger? He is the danger for all I’ve seen!” They countered as I felt like shrinking down and hiding away, before a bit more of an emotional burning sensation rose up in me.
“Shut up!” I suddenly snapped. Silence follows as they wait for me to say something. I have never raised my voice.
“Sure, they found us in here because Jordan Cores had a chip on him, but he didn’t know about it! Not only that, but he at least protected us from that psychopath, breaking his own body and getting shot before doing so! You haven’t even had time to interact with him. While my interactions with him were brief, I could at least tell that he was scared and that he was sorry!” I huff as I silently cry while I look at both Cerelia and the crew member. I think their name is R’dorn. They’ve always been brash and rude, so I had a tendency to avoid them.
R’dorn looks at me annoyed, but as they are seemingly unable to come up with a good counter argument, they storm out of the safe room.
I look at Cerelia and Triwt before sighing and sitting down. “Sorry…”
“It’s alright, you kinda said what we were all thinking.” Someone says as they place a wing on me. “That, and R’dorn needs to shut up every now and then.” There’s sounds of agreement before it becomes a group embrace of comfort. Much different to huddling in fear.
“So wait, where is Jordan Cores now? Is he okay?”
“He’s in Med Bay 07’s only regeneration pod. He’s going to be fine, but it’s going to be a while until he’s out due to his injuries.” Triwt responds as she slithers to the entrance of the room. “How about everyone gets cleaned up, or takes a hot shower to calm their nerves, and in about 2 hours time, we can see how Jordan Cores is holding up?”
That sounds like a good idea. To wash away the stress and some time to think, it sounds super nice.
I let out a sigh and nod. “Yeah, that sounds good to me… I’ll be there then. I guess if everyone else wants to show up, you can as well? Not like I can stop you or force you to, but the suggestion is there. Just trying to be considerate.”
With that, I stand up and I’m escorted back to my room to try and freshen up and clear my head.
And that is chapter 9! I was personally a little bit of mental and emotional wreck while writing because sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. At least that's how it feels. Gonna try and do some experimenting as I kinda want to explore some places now as we’ve been stuck on The Opal Star since the very beginning. So what are we feeling? A desert world, tropical world, or maybe a world that’s high in gravity, but Jordan seems to be just fine? Let me know your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions below, and thank you so much for reading!
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I (14f) and my crush (14m) have been friends since grade 7, i had a crush on him since i ever saw eyes on him. I hit him up with a text and that spiralled into us becoming close friends.
He became like my go-to person for advice and ect.. He asked if had a crush and who, i told him i had a crush on this other dude i had a crush on prior to him.
My favourite memory was the day i skipped HPE cause at this point i was getting bullied by a bunch of 'friends', he found me just sitting down and scrolling on my phone and stood in front of me, we basically just talked and he made fun of him and vice-versa. I got up and he followed me where we just stared at each-other, no words - just stared at each-other.
Later that year we shared air-pods, he didn't care if i cleaned it or not ( i did dont worry) and he put on a song he really liked, i couldn't hear it but i think it was a love song. I let him listen to the song.
This girl that i'll call Mia, anyways she also had a crush on him and i made the mistake of telling Mia i had a crush on him. She didn't tell anyone but she did act more touchy with him. Put mascara on him, and tried to braid his hair.
I kept talking with him, face-timed and played video games all the time.
Anyways i woke up to find people messaging me telling me that everybody knew i liked him, and he swore he didn't like me, i didn't go that day but our interactions were the same. I messed up and we didn't talk for a long time until i apologised.
We still talked, but no irl interactions. My fucking dumbass friend edited a pic of me 'talking shit' about him and sent it to him, and we just stopped talking, he brought up me having a crush on him and we stopped talking
That was in grade 7, im in grade 9 now.
The last interaction was him telling me that a guy in my class had a crush on me, which didn't seem likely because the guy instantly swore on god that he didn't
how do i talk to him without sounding/seeming like a weirdo.
(Also the girl who likes him - 'Mia', is a jealous bitch, she follows him everywhere, talks to him all the time and she slapped a girl really hard for COMPLIMENTING HIS HAIR as a joke, he got a buzzcut and she was making fun of him. Shes popular so nobody cares - plus shes pretty?)