So it's me again, back for another rant! Life is tough, and I don't have anyone I can talk to. I'm just so tired of the way things are!
Last night me and my bestie decided to have a few drinks and just unwind, it was actually a lot of fun. We had some drinks and sang along to some music, it was overall just great. Unfortunately if everything went good, it wouldn't be much of a rant would it. The night was going fine, I had 3 cans of Mike's Hard Black cherry (super yummy and definitely recommend it) and I had 2 glasses of rum & coke, so nothing all that crazy for me compared to how much I have drank in the past. Around 3am I got hit with some mild chest pain...
The chest pain turned into a really intense pressure through my chest that ended up radiating through my back, it was nothing like what I've felt before, I get stress chest pains and honestly this experience made them seem somehow diminished in comparison. As the pain got worse I noticed I was having trouble breathing, it got so bad that I started getting nervous. Within 20 minutes of the chest pains starting I got genuinely scared and asked my bestie to take me to the hospital, anyone who knows me knows that I will avoid it at all cost so she knew that it had to be serious enough. She went into panic mode and in spite of everything I managed to stay calm and take control of the situation. As we pulled into the hospital parking lot I started feeling an almost primal fear, the type of fear you get when you think you're truly about to die.
I got to the front desk and was immediately told to come in and take vitals, they couldn't get a BP despite having the cuff on my arm for about 10 minutes, she finally gave up and asked me the usual questions about pain and stuff. Weirdly enough my arms decided to shift between pain and numbness and I suddenly started slurring while trying to explain myself, that was when all "care" was off limits to me. Our hospital has a bad habit of sweeping people under the rug if they even remotely suspect alcohol use, but the thing is I was fine moments before going in... I was perfectly coherent and I actually felt completely sober thanks probably to adrenaline or fear. I was sent back to the waiting area and told to just wait my turn, and things went from bad to worse quickly.
I didn't know that I had passed out, my bestie filled in the blanks for me. Apparently while we sat there waiting I kept coughing roughly, my eyes rolled to the back of my head, and apparently I kept making weird movements with my tongue sticking out. She said the best way of describing it is "I was behaving like I'd been severely drugged and suddenly seemed to spiral quickly". When I came too I was still in the waiting room, freezing, in severe pain (I don't do well in cold environments and the hospital is always freezing), and feeling just beyond exhausted. When I asked her about if we were even checked on she confirmed my thoughts... we were left there, away from other patients, out of sight of anyone who could help if things got deadly.
After managing to stand up I looked at my bestie and said that I didn't want to be there anymore because no one cared about me, she agreed with me on the terms that if anything else happened we'd go back immediately. When I went back to triage to tell them I was leaving the nurse gave me a smug look and asked if I was feeling better or do I just want to leave, so I answered with "better isn't the word I'd use but dying at home seems like a better option". She ripped the IV plug out of my arm (which I frankly don't remember having one inserted), and told me to have a good day. I felt so angry! The experience triggered my PTSD from the last time I went to the hospital (long story short, I was kept isolated in a room soaking wet and freezing until the department I needed decided to take me in).
I could have died, and no one would've cared because they suspected I was drunk!!! What if no one came to check on me at all?! What if they only found out I died because my bestie couldn't wake me?! Would they have maybe cared than? Or would they have just said "oh well she drank"? It's infuriating to be treated like nothing just because there was a little bit of alcohol involved, like I said I wasn't drunk and actually felt sober! My condition deteriorated rapidly over the course of a 5 minute car ride. I spent the whole day just feeling rough!
After we left the hospital my body just doesn't feel right. My chest feels fuzzy/bubbly, I don't know how to better describe the feeling as well as feeling tight. My breathing still feels really labored like it's taking a lot of effort to just keep going, and small things are leaving me feeling winded. All day I couldn't shake this weird chronic fatigue, I'm just drained of all energy. And I've been noticing my arms go completely numb if I lean on them, which is super alarming. As long as nothing else happens in between I'm planning on following up with my doctor because at least she's taking me seriously, if something else does happen though were gonna take the 3+ hour drive to the next nearest hospital. The scary thing is, that weird primal fear still hasn't gone away and I'm nervous about that!

This is my first shot at this. My original goal was to just create a local copy that can be used in a browser even if your offline, but u/olegccc's comment in https://www.reddit.com/ex30/comments/1cv3v2t/pdf_user_manual/ gave me the idea to generate a PDF from it.
It's already pretty usable, but still more like a proof-of-concept, than a polished end result.
The PDF was created with the following steps:

1. Download a copy (local mirror) of the online manual. I used wget for now, but it's far from perfect (the mirroring process is quite error prone).
2. Process/modify the downloaded copy so it doesn't reference www.volvocars.com. I.e. make the copy self-contained, so it works even if offline.
3. Remove all JavaScript. This was easier than to solve the issues with burned-in hostnames and/or absolute URLs. For a PDF the JS code is not needed anyway.
4. Test in browsers via a local HTTP server (actually I just used Python's built-in HTTP server).
5. Generate a new "index-single-page.html" by using the start (mostly the ) from index.html, then adding the contents of the tags from all pages (index.html, software-release-notes, article/*).
6. Add CSS page breaks between all pages, this makes the PDF more readable.
7. Close the HTML (i.e. add a "").
8. Open the new "index-single-page.html" page in a browser and save as PDF.

I've created two versions of the PDF from the same HTML source. One with Firefox and one with Chrome.

• Firefox: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fi0qqG5QzC0tqMqHCPv-SbwNJclrXNYview?usp=drive_link
• Chrome: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bBAYXRqFu9ImeuaKA3Qq-UvpiqCsjmWg/view?usp=drive_link

Both are based on a snapshot of the UK user manual, saved on 2024-04-29.
Known issues:

1. I've inserted page breaks before every manual page, but Firefox doesn't honor the first one (i.e. the one between the ToC and the "Software updates" pages). Chrome has no such issue.
2. There're a number of mp4 movie files in the manual, which the PDF rendering simply left empty (blank space). Later I'll take snapshots of these mp4 files and replace the video elements with them.
3. A couple of images are missing. I used wget to create a local mirror of the manual and there were some issues, it's not very robust, especially when volvocars.com starts to throttle the download (i.e. starts to send HTTP 4xx responses after a couple of hundred requests). Wget is not great at continuing an aborted mirroring session either. I'll try to look for a better tool for mirroring/saving the online manual.

Let me know what you think, what other issues/bugs you find, etc.

As a writer, I have a conflicted relationship with commissions, but you’re here for the tea. Sorry if this is jumbled, but the client is an amalgamation of every bad commissioner that you have ever read about or that you may have worked for.
First, they ordered a writing commission, but during the first 5000 words they were surprised there was “too much” writing and reading. I told them from the start the first draft would be better off as a script so I could easily adapt into a novel, a D&D homebrew or whatever they desired. They originally had 60 PAGES of characters, but I have cut it down to 31 pages (so far). I gave them three simple ‘homework’ tasks to gather all the information I needed for the three parts of this commission. A plot summary (in bullet points) which took them four months because they insisted on writing it like a novel. The list of characters took six months (they are going back to remake EVERY character reference because it took them so long that the early references are out of date) and they fought me with every character we cut and they still haven’t sent me examples of how they want the D&D homebrew to be formatted. They say they have no idea what to look for as they knew nothing about D&D, but they blew me off for two years playing a D&D game with other friends using a D&D Beyond account ( I do not support Wizards of the Coast). For context, the bullet points took me 2 pages and 2 voice calls with the commissioner to summarize and the list of character names took 3 days and 3 voice calls to compile on Google Doc and move to Trello. What about my plan to script? He INSISTED that I, an expert in my field, should write the novel while he worked with a ‘friend’ of his on the D&D homebrew. Why would he need a script? He didn’t WANT a script.
Only a few weeks later, he ran back to me after being blown off by said ‘friend’, with the genius idea of having me write a script, novel and homebrew. His card is always empty whenever he pays for the next part of the commission because he spends it on $400 sketches and junk food. He refuses to listen when I say he doesn’t need 300+ characters. One of the stories he is plagiarizing is mine. My novel only has 27 characters (including a canine). We will be celebrating the 16 month anniversary of the commission by the time this is posted. He has nine days to finish the characters before I cancel. I’d rather live in my car again. Two hours ago he LITERALLY just made a FULL bio (in the description) with five full body outfits for a character that was deleted. He spent a month adding a shine texture to an npc's tiddies.
After making me wait for 16 months, he has the AUDACITY to get angry at me when I was offline for an emergency and I could only make one of our two commission vcs. Now he’s using the deaths of friend(s) caused by recent global tensions to ADD more characters. Why do you NEED to keep your brother’s ocs? To kill them? Delete them! This psycho has a history of making fictional versions of people who he perceives as having wronged him to kill and/or torture them graphically. Do you really need an entire MONTH? You won’t recycle two characters (that don’t belong to your brother) to fit VITAL roles but you proceed to make two random characters FROM SCRATCH that have nothing to do with those roles. Or last month I asked him for a list of 8 damage modifiers (8 digits) he replied in 12 minutes. This task previously took him an ENTIRE month because he was ‘busy’ with maps (in reality he was blowing up on a ‘friend’ who turned down his art commission on Discord and watching videos). This client is too lazy to browse with Google but he deliberately makes changes in complex organization software to disobey me. I am going to die before this torture ends! Would I be the a–hole if I put a stop to this nightmare?
It’s happening! Finished or not, the commission ends on my birthday (May 24). I am sick or getting “Okay.” every time I ask him a question about his commission.
Just when I thought I was in the clear, he drops a D&D manual of dice rolling, resting and training mechanics, skill trees and a point buy system he has NEVER mentioned predating these 16 months; all the way back to when we met (2012). He does this the week that I am “finishing” the commission. Did I mention that he has “accidently” erased the maps through his own bad habits. ARGGHH! He’s got until Monday. I don’t care if he pays me one last time. I can’t live like this.
FREEEEEEEEEEEDOM! After 16 months and two weeks.
Since I had writer’s block and another traditional art friend was suffering from art block we decided to remake some of each other's characters in our styles. The subject of this post got excited to join us. What kind of a--holes would we be if we gate kept something this trivial? I remade nine of the subject of this post's characters in my style (in two days). We both use the same program for the same amount of years, but we have developed wildly different styles. Will I ever learn? He spent the whole stream telling me their sweaters were wrong, he disliked the ribbon in one of the girl’s hair because it was too big, asking why do all of the girls have the same stockings (while wearing school uniforms) and why they do not have the exact same skin tones (despite me using the eyedroppecolour picker to show him the neon colours (one background character has eight colours in their hair) he chose in his style does not work with my duller, minimalist palette. Did you ask for me to copy your style or use my own style? After they were done, he listed all of his (multiple) issues with them like nine college essays. I can take criticism, but I had to force one compliment (one word per character) out of him. His criticisms regarded me adapting elements from the references that HE sent me. 90% was negative and 10% positive. Naturally the subject of this post still has not even thought about which character of mine he'd like to remake, but even professionals cannot unravel the web of things this person has done to avoid me even in situations when I am the center of the conversation/activity. I was unsure where to post this since this rant is a bit of most subreddits that I enjoy. Thank you for reading! I have mountains of experiences to share from freelancing and I will have many more in the future.

Note: The era 2000s (2000 - 2009), where a lot of great anime series went unnoticed, due to less appeal outside of Japan on non - big shows. It was an era where big titles were ruling all over place, big shonen mangas were had anime adaptation that are popular to this day like "One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Death Note, Detective Conan", some very popular anime originals like "Code Geass, Gurren Lagann" to critically acclaimed "Monster" and most other animes are went unnoticed. It was also an era where watching anime considered weird, whereas now "all cool kids watching anime" era, and more sites to watch anime compare to back then.
My top 10 underrated anime series in 2000s (not in ranking order) are:
A. Baccano (it's from the same author who did Durarara, but for me this one even better which was the first light novel I read because at this point everybody should give up on season 2 for this anime)
B. Welcome to the N.H.K (emotional package the series: the story deal with depression, anxiety, isolation, existential dread, the hardships of life, but S tier show nonetheless)
C. Eden of the East (an anime original from the writer of Ghost in the shell stand alone complex, s tier show deals with terrorism and kind of game to save Japan, absolutely entertaining series)
D. Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (it is based on the novel from the renowned writer Alexandre Dumas "The Count of Monte Cristo" novel, great and unique animation that is so underrated)
E. Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit (a great and very underrated series that had the fantasy elements that set in the historical period)
F. Den-noh Coil (the most underrated Sci-fi anime of all time without a doubt, that deals with real world, Internet world, software tools and so on, very interesting and entertaining show)
G. Ergo Proxy (if you are fan of cyberpunk genre that loved Ghost in the Shell, finished "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners" and want more, this series is absolutely recommend, definitely worth your time)
H. Nana (one of the best, if not the best musical anime in shojo/josei genre that heavily deals with drama and friendship, fun fact nowadays it's easy to see a series outsell "One Piece" in yearly sells, but back then when it was impossible to touch "One Piece" there are only 3 series achieve that feat: Vagabond, Death Note and Nana)
I. Beck (this is the best musical series in Shonen genre, very great and underrated series that deals with a band, awesome series definitely need more love)
J. Bokurano (perhaps one of the most, if not the most underrated mecha series ever, do not ignore this just because "mecha" a lot of people nowadays tend to do this, absolutely amazing series)
Honourable Mention:
FLCL a.k.a Fooly Cooly (the embodiment of "greatly weird and weirdly great" a surreal Sci-fi series that is just 6 episode long)
Looking up at the half-moon (another 6 episodes long, romance drama, beautiful, cute, and totally amazing series)
Ghost Hunt (a series about paranormal activities, not much of a groundbreaking series, for me I main liked because of the group of people on the paranormal activity dynamic is so good to watch)
There's a lot to recommend on the underrated anime from 2000s for now let's stick with the top 10 and 3 honourable mention the most.
What are your top 10 underrated anime series from the 2000s era (2000 - 2009)? You may give top 5 or even top 3 if you want.

First / Previous
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Suzanne thought it was absolutely brilliant of me to put books on a flash drive for Sun. She explained that Sun wasn’t as sophant (her word, not mine) as she might seem, more of a repository of information, but she was fairly intelligent. It was how she was able to connect Andrew being in pain to the fact that I was friends with Andrew, and that I would want to know that he was in trouble. Apparently some of Sun’s species had given some ‘wisdom’ to others in the past and it had made its way into mythology.
The key fact was that she was not smart enough to protect herself and her kind from the clever, organized poachers. With that information in mind, it was fascinating for me to think of how Sun took in and organized what she learned. It was almost as if she was a walking, talking library.
On the topic of tours, my first one went wonderfully, and I’m almost hoping Suzanne lets me do more of them. I know not all the tourists are going to be as awesome as these people were, but Suzanne gave me a lot of slack when it comes to dealing with them. She actually said that being a smartass is not grounds for dismissal, and that if I’m sarcastic or facetious to guests who are being ‘daft’ and they complain, she really doesn’t care. Is this the perfect job for me or what?
There were four guests in this party, two adults who were sisters and two children of one of the women, brothers aged thirteen and seventeen. The tour was a birthday gift for the older of the boys from his aunt, since apparently he was passionate about animal protection and conservation.
When they arrived at the front gate, I was sitting at Andrew’s desk, going over the booklet of information one last time. When the visitors pressed the button that sounded the alert buzzer, I tucked away in a drawer and let them in. I did have a cheat sheet with information about the animals on my phone just in case, a brief notation of each of them and which enclosure they were in, but I really didn’t need to use it.
Exiting through the front door, I saw them walk up the path toward me. “Hi, I’m Ripley,” I said, holding out a hand toward the woman closest to me.
She shook it firmly. “I’m Denise. This is my sister Carla and my nephews, Wesley and Jason,” she said, motioning to each of them in turn.
“I heard it’s your birthday,” I said to Wesley, giving him a smile. “You’re interested in animal conversation?”
“Back where we live, yeah,” he said, nodding. “The animals that you’ve got here are incredible. I can’t wait to see them.”
“Well, I can’t wait to show them to you,” I said. “Right this way.”
I led them on the path around the building, toward enclosure one. Despite the horrific memories of the animal killing Stanley’s friends, I knew it was just an animal, and I had to push past my feelings on what had happened. Keeping a small smile on my face, I motioned to the enclosure. “Fiercely territorial and amazing hunters, despite their large size, they’re arboreal and known to dart from tree to tree with barely a sound. This is one of only about two thousand left in existence.”
“Two thousand, three hundred and fifty six at last count,” spoke Wesley, his eyes on the trees.
I blinked, surprised and impressed. “Well that was fantastic. Do you plan on stealing my job when you graduate?”
Wesley looked at me with a grin. “Nah, everyone knows Suzanne only offers humans this gig. And I want to help animals like this one get off the endangered species list. The zoos are great for awareness and fundraising, but then the money has to go somewhere. I want to be doing the real work.”
“That’s really great,” I told him. “I wish you all the best in that career path.” At that, we saw the animal climb down from the tree, wandering a few yards from the tree line. This was because 90% of the time, when humans were at their enclosure and making noise, whether it was speaking to each other or calling out to the animal, it was someone bringing them prey to eat. Or, in my case, enrichment toys to play with.
“Whoa,” Wesley whispered.
“How close can we get?” spoke up Jason.
“The warding starts at the fence,” I told him with a small gesture. “So, just there.”
Both boys wandered closer and I glanced at their parents. It seemed that Suzanne’s zoo had a serious reputation for high quality invisible walls, because they didn’t look worried in the slightest about the boys being hurt or killed.
“They prefer dense forest as their home and have been known to make their nests in trees up to twenty meter in the air,” I continued. “And when hunting, they’ve been seen dropping eight meters straight down. They have incredibly dense yet flexible musculature, which allows them to tackle their prey without injuring themselves.”
There was more information about the animal that I continued to rattle off, though Wesley chimed in at certain points with the info I was about to convey. That was highly entertaining and very cool. When I’d been in school, I’d never met anyone who had my level of passion about endangered animals. I wondered if things were better where these folks came from, but realized that considering there were so few of these animals left, I guessed not.
The animal paced a little bit, seemingly waiting to see if we were the kind of humans that came bearing food, before deciding we weren’t and climbing back up into the trees as easily as I would climb some stairs.
As we moved onto enclosure two, Jason spoke up. “Are there any animals here we can touch or feed or something?”
I sighed inwardly before slowing to a stop. “Well, can you show me your hands?” Jason looked bemused, holding out his hands. “I mean…they both look like they’re in great shape. You can stand to lose one.”
The two women chuckled and Wesley smirked as Jason shoved his hands into his pockets. “Very funny.”
Grinning, I started walking again. “The animals here are all carnivores and all predators. You get to see them, but that’s it.”
“Alright.”
When we reached enclosure two, I started on my next spiel. “We’ve got three reanimated dead in this enclosure,” I spoke. They were just coming out from the trees as we arrived, presumably having heard our approach. “Marissa, Connor, and Bradley. They were donated by families who knew where they would be exhibited. Their next of kin, whoever they are, can’t stand the idea of putting them down. But we need to make sure they don’t have access to corpses, because one of them plus one corpse equals two of them.”
“They eat flesh though, don’t they?” Wesley asked.
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, but it’s from bodies that have already been dismembered. There’s no chance of them being affected by the transformation because it’s all parts.”
“Oh, got it.”
The creatures with blueish-white skin had superhuman strength, which is why they qualified for the security of Suzanne’s zoo. They also were likely the source of any Earth tales of people being brought back to life as zombies, specifically draugr, according to my research. They smelled like rotting flesh, so even as I kept talking about them and giving a background to the people they used to be, we were quick to move on once Wesley had gotten a good, long look at them.
“Enclosure four’s animal is a vampiric spirit. He’s a small, hairy humanoid creature with pointed ears. He wears a hat, and if he somehow loses it, he freaks out,” I said.
“They eat horses,” Wesley noted. “Also anything that gives them the chance to sit on it, usually catching them by surprise while they’re sleeping.”
The creature came out from the brush, giving us a suspicious look. He wasn’t in his humanoid form though; for some reason, he’d chosen to shapeshift to a dog.
I nodded. “Yep, indeed. Once the prey is dead, then he’ll eat it, and he has a voracious appetite. We have two wolves and two bears in the forest, which is one of the reasons I’ve got some self-defense items,” I said, patting my belt where my pepper spray (rated for bear) and my taser. “But the wards keep them out of this area of the zoo, so it’s really not much of a worry. It’s also a known shapeshifter, preferring the form of a dog, as you can see, as well as a cat, a snake, or even white butterflies, though the last one is rare.”
“The white butterflies are supposed to be a sign of good luck,” Wesley said, glancing to me. “Too bad we got the dog.”
“Yeah, otherwise you might be able to talk your mom into getting scratch-offs on your way home, huh?”
Wesley smirked at me.
The next enclosure was Spike, and he was waiting for us, dripping wet from having just emerged from the lake. I gave the introductory information about him, which included his propensity for eating animal eyes, nails, and teeth. “Recently, I’ve given him some enrichment activities, and I learned he likes artichokes, pecans, and hazelnuts,” I said, taking a bag out from my cargo shorts. “Wesley, do you want to toss this bag into the enclosure?”
The boy’s eyes widened and he nodded excitedly. He took a look into the paper bag before wrapping down the top to make sure nothing would fly out. Then he chucked it underhand past the fence. It landed a few yards from Spike, who waddled over to it quickly and tearing the bag open, spilling out the prizes inside. As the animal ate the pecans and hazelnuts, Wesley asked, “How’d you figure out he likes those?”
“It’s not all about taste,” I told him. “It’s mainly the difficulty of getting them out of the shells. He’s used to having to work for the parts of his prey he likes the most, so this mimics that activity, and he enjoys the process. I tried a bunch of different foods to find a few he liked.”
“Cool,” Wesley murmured, staring at him.
We watched Spike eat until he’d finished and then he went back into the woods, leaving us to move onto enclosure five. Japanese camellia were plentiful here, a type of pink flower, and that was because they grew anywhere near one of his species made their den. “This girl spends most of her time in the lake also,” I said, as the creature made its way toward the fence separating us from it. “But as you can see, she’s just as curious as the rest about what we’re doing here and whether we have food for her. She eats fish mostly, but she also regularly gets live prey.”
This creature was a spider-like monster, having six legs with long claws on each, and the head of an ox with two sharp horns. She was capable of shapeshifting to look like a human, but I guessed that she wasn’t fond of it, since I hadn’t yet seen her in that form.
“She prefers the easy way of catching prey, so to speak, by hiding in the lake and pouncing when something comes for a drink of water,” I explained. “Apparently humans are some of her favorite prey. She has an advantage of being able to spit poison, which often hits her prey in the eyes. But it’s usually used in defense rather than offense, since it secretes a limited amount.”
“What kind of animal would even go after something like this?” Jason asked, staring at her.
“Never discount one of its own species when you’re thinking about what might attack an animal,” I replied. “There are places that are breeding all of the animals here, but competition for mates is common. That means an advantage in a fight, like poison or venom, can make or break who the winner is.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
“It can’t spit past the warding, right?” Carla suddenly asked.
“Oh, no,” I assured her. “We’re fine. The wards wouldn’t let anything cross over.” She nodded, appeased.
The animal in enclosure six was the ginormous seal-hippo, Fiona, and she was looking at us as if she was imagining sprinkling us with herbs and spices and stuffing us in an oven. “This girl is one animal I’m going to work on enrichment activities for next,” I told them. “She prefers to feed on crayfish, though she’s happy to eat any humans that wander into her territory. She’ll even make a sound like a baby crying to reel us in. I’ve heard it a bunch of times.”
“Can you get her to make the sound?” Jason asked, perking up.
I grinned. “Not on command, sorry.”
“What enrichment are you thinking of trying?” Wesley asked.
“Possibly food placed in puzzle feeders,” I told him, “since she has claws that are pretty dexterous. Maybe a piñata made out of newspaper with flour inside, or a scarecrow that mimics a human.”
“Awesome,” he muttered.
After a little more educational tidbits, we moved onto Yui’s enclosure. “What is that?” Wesley asked, smiling.
“I got Yui the closest thing I could to a ping-pong ball,” I replied. “She quite likes it.”
“That’s so funny,” he said as she came out of the trees in her spider form. “I mean, the idea of her being a bloodthirsty hunter who seduces men to their deaths and eats them alive, but then on the other hand, she likes playing with something like this.”
“It is a little funny,” I agreed. “But when it comes down to it, all the animals here enjoy activities besides hunting.”
“She can shapeshift to look human, right?” asked Jason, trying to be casual about knowing something factual like his nerdy brother.
I nodded. “She looks like a woman from a region of Earth called Japan. And she’ll use strategies like holding out a hand to shake to get you closer. She tried that on me when I first got here but, as you can see,” I said, holding up my hands and waving them, “I didn’t fall for it.”
The boys both laughed as they got closer to the fence, watching her slowly pace near the trees.
Next was Sun, but she didn’t make an appearance as I spoke about her species. “Well…unfortunately we can’t guarantee that every animal comes out to say hi,” I sighed. “But…oh wait, here she is.”
The green lion with several horns and many eyes along her flank came out from the forest. “Hello,” she spoke.
“Hi, Sun,” I replied. “We have visitors.”
“What’s that?” Wesley asked suddenly, pointing at the small plastic bag that was still where I’d left it.
“Oh! That is Sun’s enrichment,” I said with a smile. “I put dozens of books on a flash drive and found that she can read them just like she’d read a shelf of books.”
Wesley’s eyes widened. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve read about anyone trying that before. That’s really cool.”
“The books are new and interesting,” Sun spoke, drawing our attention. “I’m grateful for them.”
I nodded to her. “You’re quite welcome.”
The next animal, unfortunately, wasn’t there, and we waited around for ten minutes as we discussed him. He was large and reptile-like with red eyes, with its hind legs and tail making him look vaguely like a kangaroo. Then, enclosure ten was a terrifyingly disturbing creature, the not-a-centaur with no skin, that I’d only seen a few times while walking my route. It gave a good demonstration of its ferocity, showing its sharp teeth and snapping at us a few times.
“I’m thinking of trying salt licks and other horse enrichment like a big bouncy ball,” I told Wesley, whose eyebrows went up at that. “Maybe give him more things to forage like scattered grains or a box filled with pinecones and seeds. Foraging is a huge part of a horse’s life in the wild, and humans have to do a lot of activities like that to keep pet horses busy. Of course, he also loves the little salt-water lake that was built for him.”
We spent some time looking at the animal before moving past our last stop, the empty enclosure of the animal was stolen. Carla glanced at me with a sad smile, knowing what had happened, it seemed. I gave her a nod as we continued on our way, walking into the office. “So, I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!” I said with a smile.
“That was the coolest birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” Wesley said, looking to Denise. “Thanks so much, seriously.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said with a nod. “I’d never been here before, and knew I’d find it fascinating. Thank you for the educational aspect,” Denise said, glancing at me. “I learned quite a lot.”
“Happy to hear it,” I said, returning the nod.
As I escorted the guests out of the zoo and locked the door behind them, I reflected on how much I’d changed. The first time I’d seen Yui’s tarantula form, I’d nearly passed out from fear. Now here I was, walking tourists around like it was no big deal. Humans really can adapt to anything, it seems.
That afternoon, Suzanne had texted me that she was coming by after my shift, and I met her in Andrew’s office, shutting the door to the security room behind me. “How’s Andrew?” I asked first thing.
“He’s doing well,” she said with a wide smile. “Back on non-hospital food. He’s allowed to order food on his phone, and to hear it from him, that’s the best news he’d received in a long time.”
I chuckled. “I guess some clichés are true for a reason.”
“Indeed.” She took a breath. “All right. Ripley…I would like to discuss something with you.”
My face went slack at the serious tone in her voice. “I’m not… Am I being fired?”
“What? No!” she exclaimed. Then she chuckled softly. “No, it’s nothing like that. Just, here, let’s have a seat.” Suzanne walked over to the couch and sat at one end, and I took the other. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve kept from you, that I wanted to keep from you until you found your sea legs here.”
“Well…I have,” I said with a nod. “So, what is it?”
Suzanne took a breath. “I knew your mother.”
The words hung in the air for a moment before making their way to my ears. It was a perfectly logical sentence, and yet it didn’t make any sense. “What?” I finally managed.
“When you graduated college, I decided to move the zoo from Italy to within driving distance of your home,” she said softly. “Near enough to your town that you’d see the advert. We ignored any other applicants and I hoped you’d apply. Actually, I expected you’d apply. Not just for the money, but considering the field you wanted to go into. As soon as I’d found out your major, I knew.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, holding up a hand. I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How do you know Patricia?”
“She owned the zoo before I did,” Susan explained. “Fourteen years ago…she was working to track an injured animal that we could bring into the zoo and she was killed by poachers.”
My heart calcified in my chest and a lump lodged in my throat. As my breaths became shaky, I stared at her in shock. “She…she’s really dead?”
“You suspected?” she asked softly.
“It…” I swallowed hard. “We had her declared legally dead after…I don’t know, seven years I think. My dad wanted to go after her for child support, but the police said…they said they couldn’t find…” Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them back before I met Suzanne’s gaze. “She owned the zoo?”
Suzanne nodded. “It was her baby, you’d say. When Patricia passed, I inherited it, which we’d discussed beforehand, a legal just-in-case that I never expected her to need. I’m under the impression that you were told she went to Africa for her photography career, but she was in fact going to remote areas back in my home world almost every time.”
“But I-I saw the photos,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me she put on a show of getting pictures that someone else took for us to see every time she visited? Did my dad even know?”
“I suppose that’s an accurate way to put it, putting on a show. And no, your father was never told. It’s not the way of things to tell humans unless it’s necessary. I won’t bore you with the details, but us and humans, we’re distant relatives, so we can still have children. But it wasn’t planned. Your mother fell in love with your father despite herself; she hadn’t meant to find love. Then she became pregnant with you and…well, the rest is history.”
“I think she had a different definition of love than the one I have,” I said tightly. “You’d think she’d have put her survival as more of a priority. Put being with the man she ‘loved’ as a priority. Her kids needed her. I needed her. She signed up when she became a mom. She could’ve screwed up all the time but she couldn’t even manage that one job: be there. When I was in the hospital, I kept thinking, ‘Where is she?’ and now you’re telling me that she put these animals above being there for her kids, and this whole time she’s been dead.”
“The hospital?” she asked, furrowing her brows.
“Never mind,” I said tersely, averting my gaze.
Suzanne hesitated before she nodded slowly. “I’m sorry for your loss, and not just for her death, Ripley,” she told me. “Patricia was…well, a ‘free spirit’ would be putting it gently. She always assumed the world would be there for her whenever she needed it.”
Staring at her for a long moment, I shook my head. “Why? Why come here and hire me?”
“I thought that would be obvious,” she said, smiling. “Your mother was so passionate about this place and once I found out your college major, I figured you would be as well.”
“Did you know that I hate her?” At that, Suzanne’s expression froze on the edge of shock. “She…she left us,” I whispered. “Didn’t tell us who she was or what she really did for a living and gave us no closure. And even when she was here, it was just visiting. Her real home was her work. She could give me all the presents she wanted, but even when she was here, half the time she was still on her computer doing work. It’s not like that stereotype of never making it to my tennis practice or something; it’s that it always felt like she was only partially here, even when I was sitting next to her. I don’t even know if I appreciate her turning me into a wildlife fanatic because it…it…makes me feel like I’m close to her in a way that’s just infuriating. She loved the animals more than she loved us.”
“Oh, Ripley-”
“Don’t,” I said, shoving myself to my feet. “Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said quietly. I pursed my lips. “I was going to say that I’m sorry that was the case. Your mother was…flawed, just like any other person. She had two loves in this world: her family and her work. And often, her work overcame her, her zeal for environmentalism getting in the way of being a good mum. She left your father trying to fill the role of two parents, holding your family together. You and your brother and your father, you all deserved better than that.”
My lower lip quivered but I bit down on it hard. It would’ve been a lot easier for me if she’d been speaking from a place of clueless reassurance about all this. But everything she said was making sense and that meant I didn’t have someone in front of me to be angry with.
“Why didn’t you tell me when Andrew hired me?” I sighed, sitting back down on the couch.
“Well, like I said, I wanted you to find your sea legs,” she said with a small smile. “I didn’t want the truth affecting whether or not you wanted to work here, whether you wanted to stay here after finding out about what the animals are. It would’ve complicated things, the emotions you’ll have to work through now that you know the truth. Whether or not you decide to give another tour, you also know what they’re like. That’s the benchmark I wanted you to reach before you found out about who you are.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Who I-” My face went slack. “Wait.”
Suzanne nodded slowly. “You’re only half human. Your brother too.”
The room seemed to tilt on an axis for a moment. “That means I’m also half…what?”
“We call ourselves Eldritch, these days,” she replied.
My eyes bugged out. “What?” I exclaimed. “So you’re all, like, gods or something?”
Suzanne burst out laughing. “Oh no, goodness, no,” she chuckled. “It’s just a word. We live in a very different world from this one, and a few generations ago we discovered the word and it made its way into our lexicon. But it does mean you can see all the animals. Indeed you did, on the tour you gave.”
“Wait, no, I had the glasses that…” I stopped. “Did those glasses do anything?”
She gave a sly smile and shook her head. “Not a thing. You made incredibly quick progress, and then when it came time for the tour, all you needed was to expect to see the animals, and you did.”
Genetics. That’s what Andrew had said during our interview, that part of how many animals you could see was determined by genetics. I guess having a mother who was originally from the other dimension gave me all the genes I needed to see everything here. “Could I…visit your world?” I asked tentatively. “You said that my mom took photos of the animals there. Could I…” My voice trailed off, not even sure if or how I wanted to finish that sentence.
“Those who are half human, especially those who are raised on Earth, don’t come visit,” she said gently. “I could show you some photos of other animals, and I could loan you as many books as you’d like, but it’s simply not a place where you’d be safe.”
“Oh,” I said, leaning into the couch cushion as I pictured the animals in the zoo. “Yeah, actually that…makes sense.” I paused. “So, what now?”
“It’s up to you,” she said. “I wanted to wait until I was sure you were comfortable with your position here, and then put the ball in your court. And so it is. What do you want to do now?”
What did I want to do? It wasn’t that difficult a question, just a deep, serious one.
I wanted to thrive, as the animals did. This is my enrichment now, working at an incredible, wonderful, terrifying zoo. The experience so far hasn’t been perfect, and I know there are risks, but life isn’t about staying safe. It’s about learning new things and making a difference in the world. And, if you’re lucky, having a job that’s something really special.
​
THE END
​
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I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Born_Analysis8995
Originally posted to self
My (16m) mom (40f) confessed that she is my sister and I now feel bad
Trigger Warnings: death of a loved one, past sexual assault, teen pregnancy, drugs and alcohol use, mentions of overdose
Original Post (Wayback Machine): May 11, 2024
Idk why I feel so much guilt about this whole situation. This happened 5 days ago, 1 week after my 16th birthday.
So my mom (sister) explained our entire family situation. Her mom (my bio mom) was assaulted as a teenager (15) and was forced to keep the child because of her parents, eventually giving birth to my mom. They struggled a lot during this time and my mom was resented by her mom so she moved away as soon as she was 18 and went NC. Her mom began spiralling with drugs, alcohol, etc once she left and eventually ended up pregnant again with me around the time my mom was 23. However, she was deemed unfit to raise me so they managed to contact my mom and she agreed to take me in. My bio mom never really recovered and ended up overdosing a year later.
This completely surprised me because I genuinely never had clue I wasn't actually my mom's child. We look very much alike and she went to great lengths to become my mom. She said that I don't need to call her mom anymore and that I deserved to know the truth before I turn 18. This upset me and I absolutely disagreed with her and said that no matter what she would always be my mom and I would always call her that because she is in every way my mom. And we both cried over this and hugged and I thanked her for telling me the truth also.
The thing that is eating away at me though is that she sacrificed so much to raise me and I can't repay her in any way. Like she hasn't dated at all even though I know that she wants a partner. She also changed professions to better accommodate me. She has done so much and I can't repay her in any way. And I haven't always been the best to her either. I was definitely difficult as a child and recently I haven't really been listening and respecting her as much as I should be. And I know I've probably said some mean things over the years, mostly around wanting to be with my dad (she initially said that she had a husband that abandoned us when I was born). All of this just made me feel so much guilt and sadness. And I know if I talk to her about it she'll just reassure me that she is happy and I shouldn't worry but I can't get rid of this feeling.
I've decided that I'm going to be the best son ever and do everything she says from now on. But I still can't get rid of this feeling. I don't know what to do.
Relevant/Top Comments
YoungeCurmudgeon4: Your sister is an amazing woman and an incredible person and deserves all the love and respect in the world.
As for you, handling this so well takes a lot in a person. Be proud of yourself. And always believe in yourself.

OOP: Thanks I'll try my best ❤️ My love for her is probably at an all time high. I wish I'd know earlier so that I could have always treated her this way.

TraditionalShop6800: Talk to your mom, thank her and tell you are grateful for how she raised you. And now, she should think about herself too. Encourage her to date again and find a partner.

OOP: Okay I will. I think I'll take some time to figure out the right words to say to her 😅

Galactus1701: Repay her by being the best person you can be. Help her, be respectful, study and always be grateful.

OOP: Absolutely will be the best son I can 😅

BiasCutTweed: You have to also give yourself a little grace here - your mom sounds amazing and deserves all the best, but what she clearly wanted for you was to give you a normal, stable childhood. And it’s very normal for children to act out sometimes, to say things in anger, to be difficult. It’s all a part of growing up.
The good thing is that it’s easy to see from your reaction to what she told you that she did an amazing job and you’re well on your way to becoming a great person she will be proud of. Take all of this and let it strengthen those good qualities. Do your best for her and yourself but don’t beat yourself up for past mistakes you can’t change. You don’t need to repay her for the choices she made, you just need to live a life that makes you both happy.

OOP: Thank you for the advice ❤️ I'll definitely try my best to feel proud of myself and also make her happy

 
Mini Update: May 12, 2024
I've literally been tearing up from all the comments and messages from everyone. I am honestly so grateful for all the kind words and reassurance. Genuinely thanks so much ❤️
Not much of an update really but I thought I would still share. I took a few pieces of advice and have done them randomly during day. Firstly Happy Mother's Day everyone. Hope you had a great time. Me and my mom had a few things planned for today and I got back just over an hour ago now. We went to the cinema then a restaurant and ended the day with bowling. Honestly had an absolute blast and she was happy throughout. I got her a gift too, it was a photo engraved bracelet which I gave her at the end of bowling.
One advice I got was saying things that show her I care about her so I said "Your the best" and hugged her after the cinema. I also said "I love you" when giving her the bracelet which made her cry 😭
I still do feel the guilt but I'm not gonna let it get me down. Don't want more stress especially with exams coming up 😅 I saw a lot of comments mentioning that I shouldn't keep my feelings bottled up so I am planning on conveying all my feelings to her soon. I'll probably write a letter because I know I'll probably start crying before I even start speaking 😂 I think that will definitely give me some peace of mind. Thanks all again for taking the time to read this ❤️
(Also I completely forgot how biology works in my last post 😅 She would be my half-sister not sister since I doubt our father's were the same. But regardless I'm still going to call her mom 😁)
 

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

So, i’m 21 and have been with my girlfriend for over four years now — we started dating when we were 17. our relationship always has been, and is still super healthy. It probably sounds cheesy to most, but i really think i’ve found MY person. we’ve grown so much together, we just get each other. idk, it’s really hard to explain something so … perfect.
but ANYWAY, i’ve been hinting at her about proposing & all of that silly stuff (yes, we are two girls dating, that is beside the point) and she’s also acknowledged the idea of proposing to me sometime this year. Here’s the twist; we aren’t having a wedding. yes, you heard me right — no wedding sadly. as much as i’ve dreamt of having a big, beautiful wedding from a super young age, half of my family hates the other half of my family but i get along with everyone. so it would be a tough game of me “picking and choosing” who to invite and who to not invite, and i honestly couldn’t do that for the simple reason of i’m close with all of my family and have nothing to do with the beef that they have with each other. not only that, but we are 21 and broke, we definitely don’t have 40k to just fork out for a wedding.
so as much as i’ve always dreamt of a beautiful wedding, reality is that it would be a better option for us to elope. i’ve expressed to my gf that when she proposes, i want her to make it “magical” and to fulfill all of my dreams since the little girl in me will never truly get her own wedding. the proposal is basically our “wedding”, so to speak. and i want everything to go nicely and to be beautiful.
The issue? she’s the one proposing, so she’s the one planning everything. in two months, i’m joining her and her family to a vacation somewhere on the east coast and it’s suppose to be really nice and all that good stuff, BUT there’s someone at that said vacation that i just can’t like no matter how hard i try — long story short, she’s done a lot of breaking boundaries and has intentionally tried sabotaging my relationship w my girlfriend many times because she has some sort of obsession with her or something — and she tends to ruin a lot of things because she always feels the need to be the center of attention. always. and on top of that, this trip was originally planned to be a FAMILY vacation; so it isn’t going to be centered around my gf and i, it’ll be centered around everyone and what everyone wants, etc…
I don’t know for certain, but i have a weird feeling that my gf is planning to propose to me on this vacation, so earlier today i mentioned to her that i wouldn’t really want to be proposed on said vacation for the main reason being — if we are going to travel to a beautiful state for the proposal, i would want everything to be about us. not about the family — about US. because it’s our proposal and the closest thing we’ll get to a wedding. if she does it on the trip, it won’t be the same. she didn’t get mad at me for bringing this up, but i could tell a piece of her felt defeated because (i’m pretty certain) she had everything planned out to propose to me on this trip. i don’t mean to sound bratty or selfish — in fact, everything i do is for everyone else — but i want to be selfish for this one thing. it’s so important to me and i know that doing it on this vacation would not be the right time. if people are going to travel out for us, it’s because they are there to celebrate our proposal. The reason they’re traveling to the east coast is for a vacation, not for my gf and i, so of course they wouldn’t center EVERYTHING around us.
am i in the wrong for this?

OMFG! So I'm just now watching the show for the first time, and Crunchyroll's absolutely horrible subtitles have got me cracking up!
I don't know if they had the subtitles/captions when you all watched it, but the constant changing of names was confusing at first, then annoying, but by now it's just hilarious.
There were times, like when the MC meetd with the beastkin and it was evidently in a made up language, because the only subtitles were in Japanese, so I had to sit there with my phone in one hand with Lens open to translate and the remote in the other to stop it every couple seconds to translate what they were talking about.
THAT was definitely annoying, especially since putting up translations for kanji is an easy thing to do (a basic editor is all that's needed, it's not like they need actors for that) and it makes a huge difference. But I've given up on CR trying to improve the viewing experience on that count. So it's whatever...
But it's the names really that have me crackin up!
The first few episodes had me confused, like if they were making fun of Rio by calling him "surreal" (in the CC) instead of Sir Rio; but the more mistakes that came about the more I realized it was just horrible subtitles. I don't know if it's just a shitty program they used to auto generate closed captions or if those watching it before the dub actually had to suffer through what I was reading. I really hope they didn't have to...
So I'm watching episode 8 right now and it's STILL catching me off guard at times! LMAO!
Wether they are talking about a bowl of food that SOUNDS like "Comutan" (which I think is actually Japanese for computer) and looks like traditional Ramen. But the subs first call it "commotion" the it's "Camerton" (and it's capitalized like the name of the town in England). Then he asks the girl he's with to get a bowl of "futon" with him (which sounds POSSIBLY sexual?), and then it's called "mutton" in the very next sentence! I mean, it jumps all over the place for same WORD!! I MIGHT understand if the actors were speaking fast or drunkenly slurring, but it's said in the exact same way, mostly by the MC, every time! Lol
A few moments later (this is still all just ep 8) Rio asks "miss Sayo, are you all right!?" When he interrupted the kidnapping of Komomo, but the subtitles say "MESSIAH. Are u all right?" instead of Miss Sayo. Then when taking about the girl who's about kidnapped it calls her "Lady Como" instead of Komomo. I few seconds later instead of saying "Komomo was almost kidnapped." It says "Come on. Mom was almost kidnapped." Oh God! This is too much! Lmao
It's a great show, but would CR PLEASE get someone on the subtitles!!
I know that other shows will go from episode to episode changing if there even is CC or the translations on screen or for signs in kanji, but they took it to a whole new level with this show!
I really love having the original subtitles in while watching dubs just to see some balance of what the characters really mean since both subtitles and dubs have their own restrictions, and barring that, closed captions that match the dubs just because it's sometimes hard to understand the actors if they are talking fast. But with this show... Wow. Just wow.
You guys have to tell me if it was this bad when it was subtitles only, or if this is just a travesty of an attempt at closed captions!
Sorry about the long post, but I know it's not a new show and I wanted to give some examples. I could go on, but I won't. Lol

-2-4 player activity
-At a slayer master set a group. Everyone must be within 5 slayer levels and the activity chooses a task randomly from the pool of tasks that are available to all players. This opens an interface (think like the wilderness flash event progress tab) that says the name of the task, the players names and remaining kills, and a ready button at the bottom similar to the grouping system now. This gives everyone the ability to bank and ready up.
-Once everyone is ready, the players are teleported to an instance shard room/arena (think like POSD or an actual small arena with like scenery stuff to contend with). The "ready" button would turn into "abandon". No enemies are visible on spawn in, there's a brief window (maybe 10 seconds) to set up, and then enemies will begin spawning, and a timer will begin to count up. Players remaining kill requirement will be shown next to them on the interface. You cannot use a cannon, and the enemies are always aggressive so there is no need for aggro pots. You will not receive xp or drops for killing these enemies during the assignment (more on that below).
-As the timer counts up, every 3 minutes? Four minutes? The monsters will receive a buff, or the players will receive a debuff, similar to shattered worlds, making the task more difficult the longer it takes. The goal is to finish your task first, using your familiarity with monster mechanics, your rotation, and your ability to improvise to come out on top. When the first place player finishes, the other two continue until a second place winner is also determined.
-The reason no xp or drops are given is two-fold. One, I want to avoid boosting as much as possible. I don't want people setting these up just to get access to always aggressive enemies (aggression pots would crash) without having to potentially compete for spots. I also think the randomness of the buff/debuff system will discourage people trying to use it for that reason.
-The second reason is because of the reward system. The first place winner would receive a big chunk of slayer and combat xp, 125% of the xp they would have gotten for doing the task. They will also get rolls for unique drops for each monster they killed, at a slightly buffed rate (think like most wanted cards from rush of blood). Second place would receive 100% of the xp and non buffed drop rates. The third place finisher would receive 75% of the xp they would have gained from the normal task, and no rolls for uniques. Alongside the xp and potential drops, the co-op slayer system (which I love but is terribly dated) would be retired, the pets would be converted from items to unlocks, and would be unlocked at various points thresholds. You get 2 points for first, 1 for second, none for 3rd, to keep it simple. The strykewyrm pets are my personal faves and I could def see unlocking progressively higher level skins for them as you do the activity. I feel the rates of xp and rewards would incentivize doing the activity over regular slayer and the buffed drop rate would be something to chase to help ultimate slayer hunters.
-My goal here was to come up with something alternative to the dated and mostly dead co-op slayer mode. I feel the randomness of the mechanics would help replayability, make it more challenging and more engaging than regular slayer, and still give slayer a multiplayer option like co-op was originally supposed to do. I'm open to any suggestions! Let me know what you think.

I’m going to do my best to paint the full picture, this is most definitely not a simple situation and I’ll put my hand up and say I haven’t handled a lot of things well.
First thing, I am white Anglo and my wife is British/Punjabi (born in UK, parents and upbringing Sikh). Just prior to getting engaged in England I offered an idea of us living in Australia (where I’m from) for a period so she could work abroad (a dream of hers) and she could get to know a little about my upbringing. She agreed and was excited about coming over.
2021 was when we arrived here, to summarise things: we stayed with my parents (big house we had space), we had to endure a hard lockdown, our wedding plans were thrown into chaos, my wife had a cancer scare, and then there were a myriad of family related actions/comments that were so far removed from everything she’s known that she felt rejected and disrespected by my mum in particular.
I struggled to fully understand all of this, I tried to find common ground with her and my mum, and I tried to help her to better understand my families “ways” as well as improve my mum’s communication with her. I also told my mum to reign it in, but needless to say I failed. In fact everything I seemed to do only made it worse. When we moved out we essentially went NC with my mum in particular but my family as well. I told my wife that her well-being mattered more to me and I allowed her space to heal, and when she said she needed to quit her job to focus on her mental health I supported her (emotionally and financially). I tried several attempts at trying to help her build a life that wasn’t just based around me, she wasn’t particularly receptive to it.
Then the big one that has set us further back that I’m worried we can’t come back from, I was diagnosed as practically infertile. We have both gone through our own grieving process with it and have tried a couple of rounds of IVF. Needless to say we haven’t had success. We are now preparing ourselves to leave my country to go live near her family, she needs to be close to them and their values, and I appreciate she has given life in my country a go. For a while things seemed to be better with her, she was happy and excited about going back home, but now she has told me that any time I have any interaction with my mum it triggers off all her emotions and reminds herself of the pain she’s experienced. I’m not downplaying her experiences, I know it’s been a struggle to look at my upbringing and realise it’s against so much of what she believes in.
She has consistently told me she wouldn’t stand in my way of spending time with them, in fact she encouraged it. But now she has told me every time I did that it would cause her pain, she would put it aside for me. While I appreciate that, I wish she hadn’t done that. I’m a simple guy, you say something I take it at face value.
So this comes to the current issue I’m at, she gets so upset and angry at the thought of me spending time with them (mum mainly) that she wants to have me essentially go NC with hethem. She has basically given an ultimatum of “her or me”. I hate this, but as I said earlier we essentially did this when we shifted out. We’re going to be busy with work and arranging the move, but I’m also mindful that this will be my last months with them and I hate the idea of leaving them thinking I hate them. They’re in their late 70s, I feel like I might be leaving them behind forever.
Has anyone had experience of having to go close to NC with family through the wishes of your partner? Has anyone else gone through the experience of thinking your family is perfectly and then bringing a partner in you find out they are not what you think they are?
I feel like the stakes are so high no matter what I do, it feels like either way I lose.

Holy shit this game is good. I think this might be my favorite entry in the entire franchise now, at the very least top 5. I've really never seen any other game quite like it, not in the FE series or even the wider genre. I'd love to just sit here and gush about everything I adored about it but I'd be here all damn day so let me just cut to the chase.
First of all, I hate hate HAAAAAATE the idea that it's known as "the gameplay sucks but the story is really good" because I really enjoy the way the gameplay loop is set up. It feels almost like playing a digital tabletop campaign but with Fire Emblem mechanics. Everything people seem to dislike, I thought worked out really well. The giant maps giving a sense of scale and progression, selling the amount of time and distance the conflicts reach. Castles and multiple map objectives fleshing out the world of Jugdral, giving each location its own sense of identity, especially with every map having unique music. Unit specific item and gold loadouts making every character feel like they have their own individual niche, compounded by skills, holy blood/weapons, pairings and things like unit specific mechanics ie Dew/Patty. I don't intend to brush off anyone's criticisms of the game, but I think it's okay to just admit when something isn't to your taste rather than to pass off the intended experience as inherently flawed. The game isn't particularly challenging but there's more to video games than that, sometimes the medium can be used to convey a particular experience through interactivity and mechanics, for example horror games. And I think FE4 does that spectacularly. I believe it would lose a lot of its uniqueness if it was just the stock FE experience but with a different story. To me, the pace of FE4 made it feel like a game I could play in increments and not stress too hard over. Maybe it's a slog to you, that's fine and I don't intend to change your mind. I just despise this idea that people should "tolerate" the gameplay to experience the story or just watch a lets play, when I think experiencing the story through the mechanics is what makes it work so well.
Second, it bothers me that the story is mostly remembered as "that really dark one with all the death and incest." I find that FE4's story might just be one of the most optimistic and hopeful in the entire series. Yes, we all know what happens in chapter 5. But really think about the events of the story. You could say that Sigurd ignoring the warning and hooking up with Deirdre doomed him and his friends, but it also lead to a new hope for Jugdral through Seliph's birth. There's a very distinct humanistic message throughout the entire game. The scene where Lewyn and Seliph find messages left behind from children calling for Loptous's return, because it was the only hope they could muster from their oppression. Antagonists like Arvis, Eldigan and to a lesser extent Travant driven to extreme lengths because of their convictions. Ghost Sigurd's "sorrow of the common man" speech. There's a strong sentiment that evil is made and not born, that people are fundamentally good deep down unless influenced otherwise,. There are definitely pure evil villains in the game obviously, but even an absolute scumbag like Manfroy was given a clear origin point for WHY he's the way he is. Sigurd's faith in people got him killed, it also lead Seliph and his army to victory in the end. If I were to describe FE4's themes I'd call it a story of triumph through tragedy. It's absolutely true that things get very, VERY bleak and the world is a harsh one, but everyone who cares can make things a little bit better in their own way. That's what we see Seliph do by the end of the story, he gathers up people from all across Jugdral, each contributing to a better tomorrow. I know this theme is hardly unique to FE4, but I think it's at its strongest here. When I finished the game I felt a sense of fulfillment and warmth I've never gotten from any other FE, that may sound melodramatic but I think it's a message I needed to hear. That's only the tip of the iceberg of course, but I find that the rest of FE4's themes don't really get glossed over as much.
Sorry for all that rambling, I just really feel like FE4's reputation has done it a serious disservice. I didn't even mention stuff like how heavily memed its biggest twist is, although I definitely think just knowing about it doesn't dull the experience of actually having it play out in real time, especially after the final stretch of that map. I love this game to death and I think it deserves to be talked about so thoroughly. I hope I did it the justice I think it deserves. Again, I don't want to invalidate anyone's critical or negative opinion of the game, just felt like I had to get all that off my chest. Feel free to disagree with me or my reading on the game. Fingers crossed for that remake.

(prepare for a hella yap session)
I am not much of a hater. Even some of the heavily hated stuff, take RWBY for example, I can easily ignore the negatives and look at the positives. Though, there are 4 things I hate in this world. Katsuki Bakugo, Ragyo Kiryuin, Marilyn Manson and Dio vs Sakuya. Now while the first two are for another day on why I hate them and the third one is a musician which I won't talk about here, I will happily explain here why this is one of the worst matchups. Not just for Sakuya, or just Dio, or just for Touhou or Jojo. No. One of, if not, the worst matchup. Period. At the end, I will leave recommendations to other matchups for them. And by the way, this is in the style of u/McMania's matchup ranking style, atleast from what I can find from him so thank you for this indepth overview/kinda debunk. Let's go.
Part 1: Connections
Well, heres the thing. There aren't any! The only connection is "they stop time". There is also the fact they use knives but Sakuya's main weapon are her knives while Dio has several other means of attacking. Okay. By that definition, Michael Newman from the 2006 movie "Click" vs Dio can work as well. I will not deny the fact they both can stop time but with it being a small connection and it being the only one, and the fact it can be applied to many other characters, it is barely impressive. Although, while the connections suck. I want to point out one of a few positives.
Part 1.5: Contrasts
Now while the connections suck, the contrasts is actually interesting. With Dio being a vampire, having a human servant while also having time powers and using knives (again, weak connections). While Sakuya is a vampire HUNTER and she is the said human servant to a vampire (Remilia). Now Remilia vs Dio is a topic for a different time, this is a neat contrast matchup. But that is the only thing carrying it. Nothing else impressive. For connections, I will have it as a 0.5/10. Now, how thematic is it?
Part 2: Thematic
Not in the fucking slightest. According to Mr Mania, a thematic matchup is how similar their story is and how good the theme is. Like I said earlier, very bad themes to it. But a vampire theme is decent to this. And their stories matching up, the fucking fuckity no. They do NOT allign up in the SLIGHTEST. So that, it gets a ZERO out of 10. Next up, animation potential.
Part 3: Animation potential
Okay, you get the win this time. With how much fanmade sprites, 3d renders and how easy it could be drawn as. Although for the other options, I feel it isn't as impressive. For that, Im giving this an 8. But only because of how popular and good their sprites, 3d renders and drawability are.
Part 4: Fight potential
Hmm. We could use the knives, but Dio uses a multitude of other weapons. Also, Sakuya's spell cards and hax completely negate all of Dio's weapons so for that, this gets a 4 due to the fact Sakuya hard counters all of Dio's hax. By Mr Mania's definition, even if one character hard counters, as long as its nothing basic, it gets a 4 or higher.
Part 5: Interaction Potential
If you know stuff about Touhou, Sakuya is mainly just hands. With that, Dio will be the main talker in this. Which he will be very cocky but Sakuya, she will ignore Dio. This is my main issue with Sakuya as she isn't much of a talker in a fight, but knowing how cocky Dio will be, she will probably ignore Dio even more. With that, it gets a 3. They can interact, its just realistically, Sakuya refuses.
Part 6: Story Potential
Again, another suprising positive. Sakuya actually has a motivator for fighting as Dio is a vampire and she hunts vampires. Although, by Mr Mania's definition, there has to be a sort of growth or something interesting about the story and the fight. Which brings it down as I doubt Sakuya will have much of a reaction to Dio's death (spoiler for part 8 of this). And I don't see anything special about this. With that, it gets a 5.
Part 7: Music Potential
Okay, you got lucky again. I refuse to elaborate but it can be done in rock, classical, metal, etc. As well as with plenty of music to work with and the said music both blending well and going hard as fuck. I am giving it a 10. But their other matchups also get a 10 in music so nothing impressive.
Part 8: Debatability.
If I could, I would give it a 0 or negatives. But, by Mr Mania's definition, if both have feats, at minimum, it gets a 1. And dear god, Sakuya farts and Part 3 of Jojo is gone (please don't make fetish art from me mentioning that). Anyways, the only way Dio can win is with EoH or comp Dio; entirely different matchups to begin with. So with that, I give it a 1, but if the definition gets changed, I am willing to give it even lower.
Part 9: Promotability
Again, another positive. Lots and lots of offical renders for both. As well as lots of fanart for both to be able to use. For drawing, its literally a maid with white hair and a blonde buff dude wearing a yellow suit. Extremely easy to draw. Even I could draw it. Although for trailers, we gotta use the fanmade anime for Sakuya. But plenty of clips for Sakuya. With that, it gets an 8. Mainly due to Sakuya needing a fanmade anime for her clips.
Part 10: Recognizability
Touhou isn't that recognizable. I first heard of Touhou from Bad Apple in my recommendations in my Youtube feed but with the amount of fan content being popular but not noticing it is Touhou, it could be recognizable. As for Dio, well Dio is an anime icon along with Jojo. But, with that, gets a 6. Mainly carried by Dio and stuff like Bad Apple and Fumo memes.
Total: 45.5/100. By u/McMania and "The Council"'s definition, FAILURE. (suprisingly, it did 1.5 points better than Kiritapp's original review). By definition from Mr Mania, it could work but hella issues with the episode.
Now, who is better for them?
If you want a good matchup with Sakuya fighting a Jojo character or Dio fighting a Touhou character? May I introduce you to Sakuya vs Pucci (https://www.reddit.com/DeathBattleMatchups/s/Ujld0klUVM) and Dio vs Byakuren (https://www.reddit.com/DeathBattleMatchups/s/h1MiTLbddY). Now, they aren't perfect but they are way better than this piece of shit matchup. Now, lets first talk about the star of the show first: Sakuya Izayoi
Sakuya has plenty of options I really like. Bayonetta and Alucard from Castlevania immediately come into mind. Bayonetta makes Sakuya's time powers properly treated while Alucard gives an interesting debate and hella potential with other stuff. Besides those two stars and the priest, it kinda stops there. (someone please make a good Sakuya matchup.)
Dio on the other hand, I will be talking about four Dios. Part 1, Part 3, EoH and Comp.
Part 1 should go to Muzan from Demon Slayer. Should be the same amount of potential with Johnathan vs Tanjiro but villain and less emotion yet a more colder death.
Part 3, two actually. Voldomort from Harry Potter and Alucard from Hellsing are both his best for going over Part 3 Dio. I will skip Diego as they are different yet similar due to the reset. Also Diego is a separate entity.
Eyes Of Hevaen Dio, I choose What If Ultron. I think the highlights are the interaction potential from it and it's amazing connections.
And Comp Dio, Reverse Flash or Beatrice from Umineko. I know the second one is controversial but I would say it is 10x better than Sakuyio. As it actually presents them in a good light and their actual personalities are presented well.

Apologies if this is obvious (I have no real programming experience) or already asked a lot (I was surprised I couldn’t find it via search). I‘m trying to find or make a batch file rename shortcut on iPadOS that does a few simple things:

1. Lets me select several files at once from a location of my choosing in the Files app (usually in either a Dropbox or iCloud folder).
2. Prompts me to enter a new file name prefix (like “NewFileName”)
3. Renames all selected files to the new name and appends a sequential number after them. (Like NewFileName01, NewFileName02, etc)
4. Lets me choose where the new files are saved (or places them in the same folder as the originals).
5. Gives me the option to delete the original files (ideally, but I can do this manually if I have to).

I found this one: Batch Renaming Photos in the Files app which is pretty close to what I want, but it seems to number things in single digits (like Filename - 1, Filename - 2) and I was wondering if there’s a way to change that to 2 digits (like Filename - 01, Filename - 02)?
Basically part of the reason I need this shortcut to begin with is because I’m exporting batches of files from Procreate, which also uses single digits, which means if I have more than 9 in the sequence (like 12 for example), they’re ordered as Filename - 1, Filename - 11, Filename - 12, Filename - 2, Filename - 3 (and so on) instead of being properly ordered from 1-12, which drives me nuts when trying to find and work with batches of files.
Two other minor issues (but not dealbreakers if they can’t be solved) are:

• I ideally want to be able to choose how the number is appended (like Filename01, Filename_01, etc. instead of just defaulting to the dash format).
  
• There’s a weird issue I’m having with this one in that selecting files and launching from the share sheet still prompts me to select files again (and doesn’t use the previous selections), making the share sheet feature kind of irrelevant. I don’t absolutely need the share sheet option to work though.
  

I did also find this: Batch rename and copy shortcut for use with photography files which appends the number directly after the new Filename which gives me a bit more flexibility and allows me to add in the 0 as part of the preffix and then I guess I could go back and delete it for the numbers 10+, but it‘s not the most ideal workaround.
But overall. this 2nd one is probably overkill for what I need and has some other issues (like not being able to just choose one folder to save all the renamed files in without having to enter a folder path manually or reselect it for each file).
Anyway, sorry again if this is an obvious question. It feels like it should be an easy thing to figure out, but I’ve been struggling with it for hours because of my lack of experience in this area.

The Mystery Book
Fiction
Describe the plot.
This is going to be a loose description but I will do my best. The story starts in the real world. There are three friends, two boys and a girl, in either grammar school (8^th grade) or highschool. One day to go into this house and they get separated. One of the boys finds a portal and it lights up and takes him to another world. I honestly don’t remember what happened in this world but I remember the last part of this book.
So, the boy who went through the portal ends up having magic. This kind of magic dealt with time. He was running away from the evil people and in one scene it was raining. He uses his magic to stop the rain and get back to the portal.
While he’s dealing with that, his friends in the real world are trying to find him. They go back to the house and find out that one of the creatures got through the portal. This creature is described as an enormous bull that likes to barrel into things. The friends use the many hallways in the house to trap the creature and the book ends with them finding the portal.
Definitely a series since the first book ends on a cliffhanger.
Describe notable characters.
Don’t remember much but the protagonist is a teenage boy.
What genre is it?
Fantasy/magic
Physically describe the book -- Hardcovepaperback? Book cover color?
Paperback at the time. I think the first book has a boy on it.
When was it set?
Maybe in the late 90s or early 00s.
How long was the book?
Not sure. Maybe two hundred pages or so. It was a fast read for me. I think I finished it in two sittings.
Anything notable about the original language? Did you read it English? If not, what language?
American English
... And You
When (what year) did you read it?
I read this in 2002-2004
How old were you when you read it? Was it age appropriate?
It was for teens and I was twelve-thirteen
Where did you get the book? School library, book fair, book store selling new and/or used books, flea market, borrowed from a friend, given as a gift from X person who is about Y age, or from an online store?
Read the book at the library.
Was it new when you read it?
I don’t know for sure.
What age range was it for?
Preteen- 16

The Plan of Independece of North America
Iguala
Americans, under whose name I aglutinate not only those born in America, but also the Europeans, Africans and Asians who reside in her: have the kidness to hear me. The nations that are called great in the expanse of the globe were once dominated by others, and until their enlightenment allowed them to establish their own opinion, they did not emancipate themselves. The Europeans who have achieved the greatest ilustration and political development were once slaves to the Romans; and this Empire, the greatest that history recognizes, resembles the Parent of a family, who in his old age sees his children and grandchildren separate from his house because they are already of age to form theirs, and set out themselves, preserving, respect, veneration and love, to its primitive origin.
Since three hundred years ago North America has been under the tutelage of the most Catholic and pious, heroic and magnanimous Nation. Spain educated and exalted her, forming those opulent cities, those beautiful towns, those provinces and expanded kingdoms that in the history of the universe will occupy a very distinguished place. With the populations and ilustration increased, and known to all, the branches of the natural opulence of the soil, its metallic richness, the advantages of its topographical situation, the damage caused by the distance from the center of its unity, and that the branch is the same has the trunk; The public and general opinion of all population is that of the absolute independence from Spain and from every other Nation. This is how the European thinks, and so do Americans of all origins.
This same voice that resonated in the town of Dolores, in the year 1810 and that caused so many misfortunes to the beautiful country of the delights, due to disorder, abandonment and other multitude of vices, also established public opinion that the general union between Europeans and Americans, Indians and indigenous people, is the only solid foundation on which our common happiness can rest. And who will doubt that after the horrific experience of so many disasters, there is not even one who stops lending themselves to the union to achieve so much good? European Spaniards: your homeland is America, because you live in her; In it you have your beloved wives, your tender children, your estates, commerce and goods. American people! Who among you can say that they don't descended from the Spanish? See the sweet chain that unites us: add the other ties of friendship, dependence and interests, education and language and the conformity of feelings, and you will see that the bonds are so close and so powerful, that the common happiness of the Kingdom must be made by all, gathered in a single opinion and in a single voice.
The time has come for you to manifest the uniformity of feelings, and that our union shall be the powerful hand that emancipates America without the need for foreign aid. At the head of a brave and determined army, I have proclaimed independence of North America. It is now free; she is the mistress of herself; She no longer recognizes or depends on Spain, nor on any other Nation. Hail her all as independent, and let our hearts sustain this sweet voice, united with the troops who have resolved to die rather than part with from such a heroic enterprise.
The army has no other desire than to preserve the pure and holy religion that we profess, and to ensure general happiness. Hear the solid foundations on which the army bases their resolution:
1st. The Catholic, apostolic, Roman religion, without tolerance of any other.
2nd. The absolute independence of this Kingdom.
3rd. Monarchical government tempered by a Constitution analogous to the country.
4th. Ferdinand VII, or those of his or another reigning dynasty will be the emperors, to find ourselves with a ready-made monarch and prevent the disastrous attacks of ambition.
5th. There will be a Junta, in the meantime the Cortes are created to make this plan effective.
6th. This Junta will be named gubernatorial and will be made up of the vocales and the Viceroy.
7th. The Junta will govern by virtue of the oath already taken to the King, in the meantime he appears in Mexico and takes it, and then all further orders will be suspended.
8th. If Fernandinand VII decide to not come to Mexico, the Junta or regency will rule in the name of the Nation, while the will that must be crowned is resolved.
9th. This government will be supported by the Army of the Three Guarantees.
10th. The Cortes will decide whether the Junta should continue or be replaced by a regency while the Emperor arrives.
11th. The Cortes will work, after they meet, on the Constitution of the Mexican Empire.
12th. All its inhabitants, without any other distinction than their merit and virtues, are citizens suitable for any job.
13th. Their persons and property will be respected and protected.
14th. The secular and regular clergy are preserved in all their rights and properties.
15th. All branches of the State and public employees will remain as before, and only those who oppose this Plan will be removed, and replaced by those who are most distinguished in their adherence, virtue and merit.
16th. A protective army will be formed that will be called The Army of the Three Guarantees, and that will sacrifice itself, from the first to the last of its individuals, rather than suffer the slightest infraction of them.
17th. This army will observe the Ordinance to the letter, and its leaders and officers continue where they are, with expectations, despite vacant jobs and those they consider necessary or convenient.
18th. The troops of which it is composed will be considered as troops of the line and the same will be true for those that later embrace this Plan; Those who differ and the countrymen who want to enlist will be considered as national militia, and the arrangement and form of all of them will be dictated by the Cortes.
19th. The jobs will be given by virtue of reports from the respective chiefs, and in the name of the Nation provisionally.
20th. While the Cortes meet, crimes will be dealt with in full accordance with the Spanish Constitution.
21th. In the case of conspiracy against independence, imprisonment will be carried out, without moving on to anything else until the Cortes dictates the penalty corresponding to the greatest crime after Lesse divine Majesty.
22th. Those who try to sow division will be monitored and will be considered conspirators against Independence.
23th. Since the Cortes that are to be formed are Constitutional Cortes, the deputies must be elected under this concept. The Junta will determine the rules and the time necessary for this purpose.
Americans: Here is the establishment and creation of a new Empire. This is what the Army of the Three Guarantees has sworn, whose voice is carried by the one who has the honor of addressing it to you. Here is the object for whose cooperation it incites you. It does not ask you for anything other than what you yourselves must ask for and desire: union, fraternity, order, inner stillness, vigilance and horror of any turbulent movement. These warriors want nothing more than common happiness. Unite with their courage, to carry out a enterprise that in all aspects (if not for the small part that I have had in it) I must call heroic. Having no enemies to defeat, let us trust in the God of armies, who is also the God of peace, that all of us who make up this body of combined forces of Europeans and Americans, of dissidents and royalists, will be mere protectors, simple spectators of the great work that I have outlined today, and that the fathers of the country will touch up and perfect. Astonish the Nations of cultured Europe; See that North America emancipated itself without shedding a single drop of blood. In the transport of your joy say: Long live the holy religion we profess! Long live North America, independent of all the nations of the globe! Long live the union that made our happiness!
Iguala, 24 of february, 1821
Signed Agustin de Iturbide.

I just found this subreddit today after feeling almost completely alone for the last 5 years. And because I’ve found it and because reading about everyone else’s stories has fulfilled a need so deep I don’t even know how to begin to explain, I’d like to share mine.
I’m 28, married for almost 5 years, and we’ve never achieved penetrative sex. My husband and I have both been Christians our entire lives and we both decided to wait until marriage to have sex. Almost all the other guys I’d been with before him were not virgins, but they knew I was waiting until marriage and so we never did anything more than touching/intense make out sessions. My husband and I never even saw each other naked until our wedding night, when, of course, we tried having sex for the first time.
Now, I was always pretty sure something was wrong with me. I was never able to get a tampon in, I tried going to get a Pap smear so I could be put on birth control for my horrible period pains and they weren’t able to perform the pap because I was in so much pain. I remember telling the NP I was a virgin and I’ve never put anything up there before but it’s almost like she didn’t believe me because she proceeded to shove the terrible plastic speculum right into me in one swift motion and my entire body trembled in pain, I was a sobbing mess, and she just said “oh we can’t complete the exam because it looks like you’ve started your period.” More like you broke my hymen, thanks. Tried again a month later and had another failed attempt. After that I was completely traumatized. I remember crying in the stirrups to the NP asking her how was I ever going to be able to have sex if it was that painful and she just said “sex is completely different, when you’re aroused you’ll be fine.” Wrong. That was in 2017. I got married in 2019 and didn’t attempt another Pap smear until 2022.
I was always open with my husband even before we were married that I had these issues and that I was worried what it would mean for us when the time came, so on our wedding night neither of us were surprised that we couldn’t have sex. And honestly, I think a big part of the reason it’s been almost 5 whole years and we still haven’t achieved full PIV is because we have such a great sex life even without it. Because we couldn’t have penetrative sex we got creative, adventurous, we focus on each other because we’re basically taking turns. We both always achieve orgasm. But there’s just always that part of me saying I’m broken, I’m not enough, he’s gonna get tired of this, he needs more, and any other girl could give that to him and I can’t. (Let me be clear- these are MY feelings, ones I’ve told my husband about and he could not feel more differently. He’s always assured me he is more than happy with where we are and would never want anyone else) But alas, the guilt still eats me alive telling me I’m not a real woman, I’m not a good wife, I’ll never be enough, and he deserves better. I’ve officially gotten to the point where I’m determined to make this happen for both of us, and I’ve gotten serious about my dilator usage with a specific goal in mind.
I purchased vaginal dilators (I use SoulSource) on my own after researching pain during sex. At first I couldn’t even get the smallest one in without pain (about the size of a pinkie finger). I tried having my husband help me use them but realized I need to be able to control the angle and speed on insertion for now. It was not fun. I’d go months in between even trying to use them. I was so ashamed, felt like a complete failure, but at the same time our sex life was great so I didn’t even want to bother with them. The shame took over more as the years went by. We can’t go on like this forever, I want this for both of us.
A few really important things happened that truly changed everything. This isn’t something I talk about with just anyone, but we do have some really great friends and family that know everything. I was talking with a really good friend of mine (who’s always been a bit of a sex fanatic) about how I think I don’t like using the dilators because of a mental block - like, it hurts, it’s awkward, I don’t know where I should be when I do it etc. She said “your vagina is a muscle, you’re just stretching it out. You’ve got to think of it like a workout” and as simple as it sounds, that’s what I really needed to hear. It changed my whole mindset, I realized I needed to do it routinely, for set periods of time, and I don’t need to be embarrassed (now before you say “well duh” remember I bought these dilators on my own, I didn’t trust the healthcare professionals anymore, so I was just winging it). I taught myself my routine. I listened to my body about when I could size up. I realized on my own that deep breathing helped and that once the size didn’t hurt anymore I should move it around and in and out. Nobody told me that shit. I did it by myself, for myself and my husband, and nobody else knew about all of this until I FINALLY decided to go try another Pap smear and found the most amazing NP in the world.
I sat in her office, cried, and told her everything about my previous Pap smear, how I still haven’t been able to have sex with my husband, how I’ve been using the dilators and. she. LISTENED. She did my pap with a juvenile sized speculum that was stainless steel and heated in a warming drawer and told me any time I go anywhere for a pap to call the office and make sure they have that or find somewhere that does. I got through the pap with MINIMAL pain. Then she did an internal exam with her finger, figuring out the spots that were the most painful. I was diagnosed with Vaginismus/Vulvodynia that day. It was the first day I felt seen, heard and validated.
I’d been slowly progressing with my dilators, trying to keep routine and falling out of habit, only ever able to get to size 6 out of 8 for over a year and now my husband and I are traveling to Iceland for our 5th wedding anniversary in two weeks and my goal is to have PIV while on our trip. I use the dilators every other day, I’m on size 7 out of the 8 Soul Source dilators and my husband is a little bigger than 8, but I believe we’ll get there. I’ve never felt this much hope in my journey so far, I’m so incredibly proud of my body and how far it’s come. Say a lil prayer for us if you got this far. I don’t care if nobody reads this because really, this is for me. I’m done being ashamed and I wanted my story out there, because reading everyone else’s really helped me.

Recently, my school organized a special lecture on the history of the Orient.This lecture was called "The Miracle of the Han River," and it was given by a professor from outside Korea.I was very curious about Korea, so I was looking forward to this lecture. In fact, the reason why this lecture was held was at the request of the students. Since Korean culture has been penetrating into American society for a long time, and many things that we enjoy without thinking are related to Korea, students were curious about what Korea is like.
Then Patrick, the student leader and president of our school, asked the teachers if they could organize a special lecture on Korean history, and they accepted, and eventually the whole class gathered in the auditorium and participated in the lecture. Often, our school invites outside professors to give lectures like this, and most of the time, the interest in such lectures is very high, and the lecture on Korean history was also extremely popular. However, the lectures that invite professors from prestigious universities and the opportunity to gain new knowledge about Korea are popular enough to fill the gymnasium.On this day, there were many students in the gymnasium converted into a lecture hall.As the professor entered, gave a brief introduction, and announced the topic of the day's lecture, everyone looked at him with interest. The professor said that he was asked to give a lecture on the history of the East, and when he was thinking about what topic to tell the students, he thought it would be better to talk about the modern history and economic development of Korea, and for two hours without a break, he explained in depth, in detail, easily understandable, and really interesting.
The professor's first words were impactful: "You all know Haiti, the country that receives U.S. aid, suffered a major earthquake about 15 years ago and has never recovered from it, and is in a state of chaos as one of the poorest countries in the world." "But how would you feel if, 30 years later, you were told to congratulate Haiti on becoming an economic powerhouse?" "I'm the generation that actually witnessed it. "I'm the generation that actually saw that happen, where we were the poorest country in the world, and all of a sudden, we were told that we were an economic powerhouse and that we should be congratulated."The students were surprised to learn that South Korea was once the poorest country in the world, even though it was still a decade after the end of World War II.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Korea was a very poor country until the middle of the 20th century, but since the 1960s, it has experienced rapid economic growth and made remarkable progress, which has been called the 'Miracle on the Han River', and today I am going to tell you the story."
From the beginning of the lecture, the students listened attentively as the professor engaged their interest, and I was particularly curious about how South Korea was able to develop so quickly.
"Korea was devastated after the Korean War in the 1950s, but in the 1960s, a government-led economic development plan began.At that time, Korea made a five-year plan for economic development under the leadership of the government, and fostered industries centered on heavy chemical industries such as steel, chemicals, and electronics.In addition, the country invested heavily in education, and many talented people were produced based on high educational enthusiasm."
The professor's explanation was very detailed and interesting, and I was in awe as he talked about Korea's economic development.
"In particular, in the 1970s, the Saemaul movement was launched to promote the development of rural areas and improve the living standards of the people."At that time, residents in rural areas voluntarily maintained their villages and strived for the development of their communities."These efforts helped Korea to rapidly transform from an agriculture-oriented society to an industry-oriented society.""And this Saemaul movement has become an example for many developing countries to this day, and countless policies have been implemented to copy Korea's Saemaul movement. "It is now accepted wisdom that Korea's Saemaul movement was a seemingly simple campaign that contributed tremendously to building the country's economic foundation, with reports of rapid development in some cases and failure in others." "Korea has written a textbook curriculum on how to grow an economy, and its achievements have become a model."
I realized how much effort Korea, which was poor in the past, made to grow its economy.It was a huge lecture of 2 hours, so I can only write down the core flow, so please understand.The process of Korea laying the economic foundation and starting the high-speed growth was really interesting, and there were many points where I learned how much effort Korean policy researchers made at that time.And the efforts of Korean people who believed in the government and followed the policy, even sacrificing themselves, were also great.
"Today, Korea is an IT powerhouse, with world-class companies such as Samsung, LG, and Hyundai Motor, which have great influence in the global market and are an important pillar of Korea's economy." "The characteristic of Korean companies is that they have always strived to develop technology. "There are five technological powers in the world," he said, "the United States, Germany, Japan, Korea, and France." "The United States and Germany have been doing research and development since the Industrial Revolution, while France has been doing research and development since the Industrial Revolution, and Japan received a huge amount of aid from the United States in 1950, taking advantage of the Korean War. It was thought that Japan, which started 20 years earlier than Korea, would be recognized as the last technological power of the 20th century, but how Korea, which started research and development from the 1970s onwards, became the world's fifth technological power, was a very interesting topic among professors in the 1990s.
And unlike Japan, Korea became a semiconductor powerhouse in the 21st century, and even succeeded in fostering an industry that Japan did not, and created a great foundation for Korea to become a developed country.Look at the iPhone you're using right now, and look at it.Do you see a Samsung product in there?
Most Americans think that the iPhone is made by Apple and developed by Apple, but many of the components in it come from Korea, and without Korea, the product you're using would be half as powerful as it is today.
The professor kept the students' attention for the entire two-hour lecture, explaining the difficult content in terms of the smartphones they use.
At the end of the lecture, the professor said that there are only two role models of economic development in the 20th century, Germany's development and Korea's development are very meaningful, and if you want to major in economics or international affairs, you should familiarize yourself with these contents because they are all liberal arts contents.
And originally, this kind of lecture should be 200 hours instead of 2 hours, but since it was shortened to a hundred and one, the fun is only a hundred and one, and if you want to hear more details, you should study hard and go to the prestigious university where you are, and the excellent lecture ended with the story.
After the lecture, I wanted to ask the professor more questions, but there were already a lot of students gathered around him.Then, my friend Xiao approached me.Xiao was a student who was educated in China until elementary school and then moved to the United States."Avery, how did you like the lecture?" Xiao asked me. I really liked the lecture and I have a lot of questions, so I wanted to ask the professor, but I could already hear the other students lamenting that they wouldn't be able to because the professor was surrounded by other students.I had to leave the lecture hall with Xiao, who was listening to the lecture with interest next to me.As we walked down the hall, I continued to talk to Xiao.Minhwa and Jia told me that they didn't know why they hated Korea so much, and they had to tell me a frustrating story.
In fact, Minhwa and Jia are two students who are very anti-Korean, especially since the student council voted for and against this lecture, and there were two votes against it, so everyone could tell that it was Minhwa and Jia from China, and their anti-Korean feelings, or even hatred, were very strong.
Xiao told me that today's lecture was very different from what they teach in China, and what the professor told us today. Of course, in China, they teach distorted facts, and they don't believe in it, but if you're like Min Hua or Jia, who went to school in China until middle school, it's natural to have a negative opinion of Korea.
Xiao's words were sincere because he had lived in China until elementary school and had been educated in China, so he knew the reality of China very well.In China, Korea is often taught negatively, and Xiao also said that when he went to elementary school in China, he was taught that way, but when he came to the United States and was exposed to different perspectives, he realized that it was wrong.
At that moment, Minhwa and Jia walked up to us, or maybe I should say they walked up to Xiao.Minhwa had a disgruntled look on her face."Korea is so great? I never think so, Korea is worse than our China," Minhwa said unhappily.Jia, who had an equally unhappy look on her face, also spoke up."Right. What's so great about Korea, our China is better."
I was offended by their words, because the facts I learned about Korea all seemed interesting and amazing, so why didn't they think so? And when they said that China was better, they didn't have any basis, they just said that China was better, what's so great about Korea, and there was no power in their argument.Xiao was also not happy when his two Chinese friends asked him to sympathize with them.
Xiao usually doesn't like to argue with them, but this time he was in the mood for a fight.I intervened first."Korea has made great progress, and you'll see that when you do a little more research," I said calmly to Minhwa and Jia.But Minhwa and Jia didn't listen to me.They wouldn't even look at me when I was talking to them.That's when Xiao stepped in and said.
"I'm sorry Avery, Minhua and Jia have been mis-educated, so I'll apologize for them.I know why they think that way, but I know the truth is different, so I want to apologize to you."
After hearing Xiao's words, Minhua and Jia still showed their disapproval. They even loudly argued with Xiao in the hallway. All the students passing by couldn't help but notice that two Chinese friends with wrong ideas were bullying Xiao, a normal thinking Chinese friend, again.
In fact, this scene was not uncommon, but this day was different. Despite the fact that everyone had attended an impactful and fact-based lecture by a professor from a prestigious university, Min Hua and Jia seemed to have no room for improvement, and they were still shouting distorted facts and misinformation without any basis.
From that day on, they were increasingly bullied by their schoolmates. Even when Minhua and Jia tried to talk to their American friends, all their American friends would scold them, saying, "Are you going to distort American history like that?" and no one would listen to them.
At first, Minhua and Jia's attitude was nonetheless brazen and confident, but two Chinese students armed with wrong ideas can't live in isolation in this school. Our school has group work as the basic form of class participation, so there are many tasks that require the help of other students.
Eventually, Minhua and Jia came to me, Xiao, and our Korean friend Minji and apologized to us.To be honest, to this day, I don't know if their apology was sincere.They said that they had learned that much of the education they had received was false, and they promised that they would never say anything wrong again in the future.Part of me wanted to tell them that I knew they were lying to survive, but I couldn't turn my back on them, so I accepted their apology.After Minhua and Jia's disturbance and apology
Although I'm still a high school student, I know that when I grow up, I want to exercise my right to vote and join the anti-China movement. We also realized that China's policy of teaching the wrong history and the wrong international affairs is having a negative impact even here in the United States, a country so far away, and that it is causing the Chinese people to suffer.China's ambitious plan to turn the tables by playing shallow games is just ridiculous and will not work.
I can't help but think that the impact of these lectures on our school is great: first of all, we learned how important it is to filter out misleading and distorted information, and how important it is to listen to such information; secondly, many students have a deep understanding of what exactly the "Miracle of the Han River" is.
As a reminder, South Korea was very poor until the mid-20th century, but through government-led economic development plans and people's efforts, it has achieved remarkable growth, especially spontaneous rural development movements such as the Saemaul movement, which played a huge role in accelerating South Korea's industrialization.
Korea's development has been not just economic, but social as well, with Koreans overcoming difficulties and achieving remarkable results through their high levels of education, hard work, and sense of community.
Now, do you feel that there is any reason for Chinese people here to say that China is greater than Korea? Isn't it just that Korea has created a remarkable growth in the history of East Asia, and it is because of Korea's development that China's factories are able to operate? Just because China is lagging behind, to say that Korea is a lesser country is an expression of inferiority, and it is seen as a desperate attempt to deny their own lack.
This is a good liberal arts course where you can learn the facts about what Korea has done and speak about it with confidence in public, but I think the disturbance by the two Chinese students clouded the essence of the course, because the impact of the miracle of the Han River was diluted by the emotion of outrage at the Chinese students' behavior.
In my final presentation at the end of the semester, I plan to find more information about the Han River Miracle, add new information, and present it to my class, because I feel that it is unfair that the attention to Korea has been diverted for a while, and I think that it would be meaningful to talk about Korea in front of Minhwa, Jia, and my Korean friend Minji.
I hope that the country will soon develop into a mature society that can accept the truth as the truth.

Hi all! I shared the resources below to my group, and I thought some people here in ChatGPT may find these of value as well. Hope it's ok to share it here!
I basically summarise useful/practical knowledge on AI in the T.I.P. format:

• 🍟 1 Tool that uses AI to turbocharge our work
• 🍔 1 Insight to consider to upgrade our thinking about AI
• 🥤 1 Prompt technique to level up how we use ChatGPT

Thanks for reading!

🍟 The Tool: Save prompts, Save time

• What’s the Tool? The Saved Prompts chrome extension is a simple tool that stores all your most used prompts for easy access
• Why should I care? Well if you use ChatGPT constantly, why type the same prompts repeatedly when you can just have a place to store it?
• How do I use it? Install the chrome ext here (*link added below). There are others like it in the chrome store - but from testing them all, this one is the easiest to use, is free, and doesn’t require sign up!

🍔 The Insight: Why it’s OK that OpenAI’s Safety Team has left

• What’s the Insight? This week the ethics/safety team of OpenAI has left the company, causing waves of concern in the industry. However, this hot take from a reddit user says that’s ok - and his argument kinda makes sense. His analogy is summarised below

…with any industry, oversight really should come from a governing body that can oversee ALL entities involved in that industry and NOT be the responsibility of the one currently at the forefront of it all.

Do we leave it up to big pharma to decide what safety is needed in a new drug? Do we leave it up to oil companies to determine where they can drill, or car companies to decide what amount of pollution is ok?
So why not let our governments do their job - which they are working towards now - to create the safety and ethics guidelines for Open AI and all the others to follow?

Reddit user: AsheronLives

What do you think?

🥤 The Prompt: Better quality output with the RISEN Framework

• What’s the Prompt? The RISEN framework structures your prompts for maximum guidance for AI. It stands for:
  • R - Role (“You will act as ____”)
  • I - Instructions (“I want you to ____”)
  • S - Steps (“These are the steps you will follow: _____”)
  • E - End goal (“Your goal is ____”)
  • N - Narrowing (“You shouldn’t _____”)
• Why should I care? There are times when you don’t need to structure your prompts for just quick questions to ChatGPT. But there are also times where it’s worth having a framework like RISEN to maximise the quality of output you get from the tool!
• How do I use it? Simply copy the prompt below and fill in the blanks. (Extra tip: add this to your Saved Prompts from the chrome ext you just installed above 😉)

Role: You will act as ____ [insert the role you want AI to take.] Instructions: I want you to ____ [Insert the task you want AI to complete.] Steps to complete task: These are the steps you will follow: _____ [Insert numbered list of steps to follow.] End goal: Your goal is ____ [Insert goal of the output] Constraints: You shouldn’t _____ [Enter constraints].
If this was even a tiny bit useful, I hope you can check out RoboNuggets where I originally shared this and other AI-related practical knowledge! (The links for above are also there). My goal is not "AI daily news", as there's already too many of those, but instead share useful knowledge for everyone to take full advantage of the new AI normal. Cheers! 🥚

I like many grew up with the raimi movies those movies and the 90s show were my intro to the character. The raimi movies were what I considered to he the definitive spider-man experience that alll others had to compare too. Now though many years later Ive seen all the movies,played the insomniac games, spidverse, and even read the ultimate comics and currently reading the original comics. I feel I have a larger and better understanding of peter parker spider-man than before I saw these movies. So how did K feel on re-watch honestly I appreciate them even more now.
I love these movies so much they capture the spirit of the originals well while changing certain elements to fit this version. I don't mind peter being much nicer in comparison to his original version because while he can be too nice he still isn't perfect spider-man 3 shows this off well returning his whole easily affected by public perception from the first half of 1. Though I don't think 2 sets this fall up well enough since hes so perfect there maybe if he wer more flawed the trilogy could have felt a bit more cohesive. But still I love what this peter goes through and how it really feels like he has to make tough choices at nearly every turn to be the hero the city needs and to be the best peter parker he can try to be as well. Honestly I also enjoyed and understood Mary jane wayy more on rewatch like in spider-man I always thought she was pretty mean to peter but tbh from her perspective hes a shit friend who always leaves her hanging. Its hard to blame her for how she acts in that movie to peter. Im not sure I like how often she "cheats" but I see it as just mellow drama to progress the plot I honestly liked that raimi kept the core of mj being someone from a broken home who isn't a perfect person even if I would have liked some more of her comic mj isms still I liked her and peter in 1 I felt it was a cute romance and Im glad no way home confirmed they were able to make it work.
I enjoy harry too though I felt they could have used some more scenes of them actually being friends since I felt it was a bit underdeveloped. The villians though pure peak from goblin to doc ock. Sandman I also liked especially in the spider-man 3 editors cut with that sand castle scene finally made sense of why tf he was tryna kill spidey. Venom was a let down but him literally praying to god to kill peter almost saves the character alone from how funny that is. Overall Spider-man 1 and 2 are both classics that I love with all my heart and 3 is a movie I think while being a mess is a movie I thoroughly enjoy what about you guys has a re-watch changed how you view these movies.