Dap notes counseling
Auntie SparkNotes
2018.01.21 07:11 ElectroClan Auntie SparkNotes
This is a sub archiving and organizing the advice columns of YA author Kat Rosenfield under the pseudonym Auntie SparkNotes. These advice columns are directed to tweens, teens, and young adults. Unfortunately, as of December 19, 2018, Kat Rosenfield has finished writing new Auntie SparkNotes columns.
2024.05.19 04:30 Puzzled-Basil3913 Juvenile informants & falsified mental health records in Alamance County?
 | It is believed that the Alamance County Sheriff's Office Student Resource Officer has solicited a 13yo child who was setup by a relative of the SRO's coworker for personal nefarious reasons. This child & their sibling was contacted & groomed by a pedophile. It is believed that the 2 children were targeted as they were the children of 2 terminally ill parents with little to no family support. One of the children who were groomed was charged while Alamance County deputies didn't bother charging the pedophile. Another ACSO deputy then presented falsified mental health records for a place that doesn't exist by the name of "NC A&T university Outpatient Services." However, "NC A&T university Outpatient Services" does NOT exist. NC A&T University does provides basic counseling services for ENROLLED college students only, not minor children. On these falsified mental health records the ACSO deputy had also checked the box for a group home or out of home placement which was never mentioned at any other point & it is believed that they were trying to sneak this in under the judge because once a judge signs it it is as good as done. Please contact me if your child has been in a similar situation. ***Please note that the Alamance Burlington School System does NOT prohibit the solicitation of minor children as juvenile confidential informants in the Alamance County Sheriff's Office Memorandum of Understanding. submitted by Puzzled-Basil3913 to NorthCarolina [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/eddirw7ona1d1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3830ce3a3f701322d5f509614797aa30eb47a930 |
2024.05.19 03:49 Peacock-Shah-III The Committee for the Preservation of the Republic Convention of 1952 Peacock-Shah Alternate Elections
 | “We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.” submitted by Peacock-Shah-III to Presidentialpoll [link] [comments] Thus quipped Benjamin Franklin as the American colonies joined against the tyranny of George III, the phrase hangs heavy in the imaginations of today’s political opposition. Laden with fears of violence, Chairman Osro Cobb of the Progressive-Federalist National Committee announced the cancellation of the party’s presidential primaries and the formal acquiescence of the party to the Committee for the Preservation of the Republic’s call for a joint presidential nominating convention with the American Liberty League. Yet, with the organization’s President Thomas Schall, once seen as the nearly prohibitive favorite for the nomination, dying in an unforeseen car accident and populist contender Eduardo Chibas taking his own life on live radio, the attempt to unite the opposition must find a candidate able to carry both banners in the face of Philip La Follette’s campaign for a third term. Clare Boothe Luce speaking against the President's support for a moderate socialist government in Indonesia. Leading Candidates: The following candidates are seen as frontrunners for the nomination. Clare Boothe Luce: 49 year old Clare Boothe Luce of Connecticut rose to prominence as Henry Luce’s scandal-ridden yet massively popular First Lady, whose charisma would lead to a popular joke that every Luce voter wished they had voted for Clare despite widely known allegations of mutual marital infidelity. Marrying Henry after divorcing her first husband and entering high society as the author of an all-female play, Luce would become First Lady at the young age of 38 and soon emerge as a face of the American home front amidst the Third Pacific War. Describing the nation as having become a “dictatorial bumbledom,” Luce has echoed the anti-New State ethos of the party and is seen as the candidate of establishment conservatives. Criticizing the very slogan of President La Follette, she has argued that the United States cannot “win the peace” as it has not truly won the war until the defeat of international communism. Clare has supported the Zionist project in Alaska, a unified military command to replace the Department of Peace, and the creation of a defense pact among American allies in the Pacific as the centerpiece of an aggressively interventionist foreign policy declaring “if we are no longer willing to fight for it, our Christian democracy is finished." Yet, Luce has also opposed the creation of a stronger international United Nations to replace the powerless Parliament of Nations. Driven to Catholicism in 1946 following the death of her daughter, even as her ex-president husband gallivanted about with a girlfriend a thousand miles from his wife’s baptism, Luce has emerged as a changed woman, reportedly abandoning her affairs and entering a career in electoral politics with her 1946 election to the Senate. Though Aaron Burr Houston maintained a private devotion to the Church of Rome, Clare has taken her faith with a zeal heretofore unseen in American politics, using the Senate as a pulpit to preach against “materialism” and a spiritual decline as the root of both communism and fascism, slyly suggesting that the rise of the Pentecostal, Immannuelite, and Mormon faiths has come hand-in-hand with the nation’s fascist surge as she has publicly wished that “the whole world would be Catholic.” Despite defenses from Presbyterian former President Luce, Clare’s faith has weakened her amongst convention delegates fearing the alienation of firmly Protestant voters. Yet her charm, wealth, and ability to attract millions in funding from backers such as Henry Ford II while winning key endorsements such as that of Richard Nixon has catapulted her to the front of the field. A candid photo of the nation's leading Texan with a fried chicken dinner. Had you asked an observer in 1940 whether Pappy O'Daniel might one day be President the answer would almost certainly be yes, yet many wonder whether the dynamic country singer has waited past his turn. W. Lee O’Daniel: 62 year old Senator W. Lee O’Daniel, better known as Pappy, rose to prominence in his late 20s as an architect of domestic policy during Aaron Burr Houston’s third term, being largely credited with the introduction of an old age pension system funded by a consumption tax. After making his way to the fore of Texas politics on his own through the integration of musical numbers and a widely popular radio show with his political antics, O’Daniel would turn from an upset gubernatorial defeat in the 1938 midterms to organizing Aaron Burr Houston’s campaign for a fourth term in the White House as the nation’s last hope against Charles Lindbergh. Accused by critics of puppeteering a dementia ridden 86 year old out of his own lust for power, O’Daniel would serve as Secretary of the Treasury for a year before being unceremoniously removed from the cabinet by Henry Luce for his critique of the American attack on Pearl Harbor and opposition to the draft, leaving him in political isolation as the Texan distinguished himself by demanding the execution of striking laborers as crucial to the war effort over his radio show. A steadfast isolationist, O’Daniel’s foreign policy views have made him a favorite among Liberty League libertarians. Depicting himself as nearly as conservative as Luce on domestic issues with an isolationist foreign policy able to appeal to the Midwest, O’Daniel has emphasized ties to the legendary ABH and anti-alcohol views he claims can over the rural South. O’Daniel has also sought to use Luce’s Catholicism into an issue, seeking the support of Ben Gitlow through their shared membership in the Evangelical Christian Right. Yet, O’Daniel has been seen as the least committed among the candidates to the Committee’s pro-democracy ideals, while others question his fitness for office based on his eccentric manners as a cabinet Secretary and Senator, with Eleanor B. Roosevelt’s 1936 running mate Dan Moody remarking that “Pappy is as lost at the Treasury as I would be in a circus trapeze.” Lucius D. Clay as an Administrator during the post-war occupation of Korea. Lucius D. Clay: A distant relative of former President Henry Clay, 54 year old General of the Army turned banker Lucius D. Clay of Georgia has been the subject of a draft movement seeking to secure a candidate with the allure of a war hero after an attack on right wing generals such as Harold George, “some of whom are my own classmates,” accusing them of leading the party astray with the nomination of the ultra-conservative Benjamin Gitlow. Clay has portrayed himself as the candidate of order, supporting, as the others do, the prosecution of Blackshirts and the freeing of prosecuted opposition politicians. However, Clay, a former administrator of Lindbergh-era public works programs, is the only candidate to stop short of supporting the abolition of the New State, with backers instead focusing on the renowned administrative talent that led Douglas MacArthur to quip that Clay “could run General Motors or General Bradley’s army.” Despite his reticence to campaign at the convention, Clay’s moderation, vague platform, connections, and war hero status have won over a significant segment of delegates. John Sampson Cooper on the cover of Henry Luce's Time magazine. John Sampson Cooper: Named for martyred Admiral William T. Sampson not long after the First Pacific War dramatically ended with the Second Battle of Hawai’i, 50 year old Kentucky Senator John Sampson Cooper has led an underdog campaign of moderate liberals led by young activists Mark Hatfield and Chuck Mathias and Tannenbaum territorial delegate Jacob Javits. Returning home from Yale to find his father on his deathbed and his beloved Pulaski County burned to the ground amidst the Revolution, Cooper would be elected to county leadership at age 24, famously responding to a legal requirement that he evict the impoverished by personally paying their debts, earning the moniker “the poor man’s judge” as he emerged as a major figure in post-Revolutionary reconciliation in Kentucky. Returning home once more from service as a military attache in the Third Pacific War, Cooper would oust incumbent Farmer-Laborite Jerry Spencer in a 1944 upset, delaying taking his seat to serve as a legal advisor to hundreds of thousands of displaced Indonesians before emerging as a Senate leader in bringing the United States closer to India and other nations newly liberated from colonialism. While eschewing the isolationism of O’Daniel, Cooper has demonstrated a far more relaxed stand on foreign policy than Luce, opposing aggressive anti-communism abroad while depicting the United States as a great mediator of peace in situations such as the violence in Palestine or partition of India. The reported favorite of Fulgencio Batista despite Cooper’s criticism of Batista as insufficiently committed to democracy, the Kentuckian has managed to maintain a widespread popularity with labor that has led many to speculate that Cooper would be the only candidate able to win the endorsement of organized labor and an imprisoned John L. Lewis. Lacking the celebrity draw of Senator Luce, Cooper has countered with a far more detailed platform, calling for the opening of American borders to the world’s refugees, massively increased federal aid to education, and, in stances that have left him anathema to many party conservatives, support for universal health insurance, coal subsidies, and public housing. A self admitted “truly terrible public speaker," Cooper’s political independence has won him the support of Will Rogers Jr. and made him a favorite of the modern liberal wing of the Liberty League. Luis A. Ferre's El Dia newspaper, later renamed El Nuevo Dia. Other Candidates: The following are seen as major contenders for the nomination, but lag behind the frontrunner candidates. Luis A. Ferre: Among the most grim results of the 1948 elections emerged from the Caribbean, where states once considered the most loyally anti-Farmer-Labor in America crossed the aisle for the first time in history. With strategists seeing the path to the presidency running through the island states, many among the electorally minded have flocked to 48 year old Puerto Rico Senator Luis A. Ferre, publisher of the nation’s largest Spanish language newspaper, El Nuevo Dia. A classically trained pianist who has focused his senatorial career on securing funding for the arts, Ferre has referred to the United States as the “moral summit of the world,” while aligning himself in the middle on economic policy, calling for “addressing the inequalities of society” by selling off public land at a low price and supporting federal public housing with an emphasis on rural revitalization, in addition to a call for a 4% Christmas bonus on the grounds of the Jesus Amendment. James A. Rhodes: "Every time I take a position on an issue, I lose two percent of the people. If I do that 50 times, I have everybody mad at me," the quip encapsulates the philosophy of 43 year old Ohio Governor James A. “Jim” Rhodes and his backers. Emerging as the favorite of many convention delegates who have argued that the best path forward for a united campaign is a steadfast focus on bread and butter issues, Rhodes has remarked that “there are only three issues in this campaign: jobs, jobs, and jobs,” and has argued that to win the power necessary to destroy the New State and its legacies, any anti-La Follette campaign must focus on people’s lives and the economy, not vague notions of democracy and American ideals. Born in the hills of Appalachia, Rhodes would be forced out of college after failing every class, only to work his way into the Mayoralty of Columbus, before unexpectedly catapulting himself to the Ohio Governorship before the age of 40, where he has governed with a moderate conservatism focused on local issues such as water rights and a program to "put a college education within 25 miles of every boy and girl” that has been praised as a national model. The King of Country. Write-In Candidates: The following candidates can win the nomination, but are either presently supporting other candidates and thus only subject to draft movements rather than an active campaign or lack adequate first ballot support. Roy Acuff: 49 year old Roy Acuff of Tennessee was christened “The King of Country Music” for smash hits such as Wabash Cannonball, leading fellow musician Hank Williams to quip “book him and you don’t worry about crowds…for drawing power in the South, it’s Roy Acuff, then God.” Yet, after a rumor that Governor Buford Elington had labeled his music “disgraceful,” Acuff would embrace the label “king of the Hillbillies” in the 1948 election cycle to trade his acoustic throne for the Governor’s chair. Declaring that “any business must be put on a business plan, and so must a state government,” Acuff has cut the budget while requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in government buildings, increasing state pensions, instituting a free school textbook program, cooperating with the La Follette Administration on the hydroelectric Tennessee Valley Authority, and has controversially called for additional restrictions on firearm ownership. Widely considered a possible frontrunner for his celebrity status if a primary were to have been held, Acuff has supported O’Daniel at the convention, yet has evasively refused to disavow a draft movement arising from his pro-union sympathies that many suspect could bring Fulgencio Batista into the fold alongside John L. Lewis, Jimmy Hoffa, and the opposition Farmer-Laborites. Joseph H. Jackson: A Mississippi farm boy who taught himself reading and mathematics, 52 year old Joseph H. Jackson, President of the largest predominantly black church in America, the American Baptist Convention, has emerged as the favorite of former Gitlow ally Billy J. Hargis for his right-wing populist views and claim to be able to win millions of black voters back from President La Follette. Calling to “save the nation, in order to save the individual citizen, and the race," Jackson has focused his attacks on La Follette for violating “civil order,” and extended this critique to opposition protests. Making the radical proposal to not merely denationalize the General Trades Union, but to destroy it entirely, Jackson has called for the severing of diplomatic recognition to all communist nations and international intervention to spread “the liberating power of our federal constitution and the supreme law of the land, the American ideals of freedom and democracy.” However, Jackson has fallen from major candidate status after an investigation by the Labor Department into allegedly abusing unpaid labor at a daycare and using church donations to buy himself a mansion and a sports car. America's chief penny pincher speaks. Henry S. Breckinridge: The only member of the Liberty League at the fore of presidential consideration, 66 year old New York Congressman Henry Skillman Breckinridge ran alongside Al Capone in 1936 in the campaign that doomed the Commonwealth alliance, but has reinvented his career since by working to ally Federalist and Liberty League causes against La Follette and serving as the organization’s House leader. Advocating a heavily internationalist vision in line somewhere between that of Cooper and Luce, Breckinridge’s commitment to small government classical liberalism and a strict construction of the constitution has made him the favorite of Liberty League loyalists and some party conservatives. However, it is considered unlikely for a Liberty League member to win outright due to Progressive-Federalists comprising a majority of convention delegates. Eleanor Butler Roosevelt: 63 year old former President Eleanor Butler Roosevelt was promoted for the nomination for months by her former counsel turned the “voice of impeachment,” Richard Nixon, who has noted that her re-election would have stopped the rise of fascism in its tracks. However, content with retirement, the writing of her memoirs, and the promotion of Nixon’s career, Roosevelt has categorically refused to seek the presidency. Nonetheless, she is expected to receive votes on the convention’s opening ballot from admirers. Benjamin Muse: 54 year old former Virginia Governor Benjamin Muse won an upset victory in 1945 to be elected Governor against the campaigning of President La Follette. An establishment Federalist and charismatic writer, Muse received significant support as a candidate but has declined to contest the convention and worked to promote the nomination of Clare Boothe Luce after a meeting with Henry Luce. H.R. Gross: 53 year old Iowa Governor and 1948 Progressive vice presidential nominee Harold Royce Gross has gained renown for his steadfast economic conservatism, vetoing every proposed state budget increase throughout his tenure and calling for a complete end to foreign aid in addition to the dismantling of the New State; avoiding moral arguments, Gross has opposed atomic bombings and war on the grounds that both are too financially costly. A hero of the party right, Gross has declined to seek the presidency himself, citing his refusal to attend fundraising parties rather than watch Iowa football games, and is expected to support Pappy O’Daniel or Jim Rhodes on the convention floor. 46 year old Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa has been elected interim Chairman of the Convention. View Poll |
2024.05.19 02:53 Waterfall-Throwaway Update! - AITAH for ruining my girlfriend's reputation/relationship with her family after she commented on my weight?
TW: reference to mild ED
We broke up!!
I decided to do it over text. I didn't think there was a real risk of her tricking or attacking me, but I've been trusting her too much for years, so I thought it was better to be cautious. Plus, I was kind of excited to do this and not have to attend to her anymore - which is probably a sign I should have done this way sooner.
This was confirmed when I told my work crew and they bought a six pack to celebrate.
I'm going to go to a few sessions of church counseling just to make sure it didn't kick anything up in regards to my eating disorder. (Which is not, I promise, erectile dysfunction.) But I actually felt much more happy with my looks and weight basically the moment I broke things off!
And while I don't plan to date for a short bit, to make sure I'm not in a weird defensive headspace when I start courting someone, people've flirted with me a few times since we broke up. So apparently I don't look hideous! 😎
I've dumped her stuff at her mother's, along with a thank you note for the reunion. Her mother is a lovely woman and I'm glad she has two other (great) daughters because her third is certainly unique. My girlfriend is still texting me and is apparently getting an earful from her mother before she'll let her take her stuff.
I'm still not entirely sure it was right to break up with her and screw with her like that, but I'm definitely sure it was right to break up. One of us definitely deserved better. (And I'm pretty sure it was me. 😅) A serious piece of advice - always check if you want to be in a relationship, or if you're sticking it out because you feel like a knight that's already pledged her fealty to a fool and is waiting for them to wise up or the contract to end. 'Duty' can be just as strong a motivator as 'love', and both are vital, but they aren't interchangeable.
For those who were concerned about my health; thank you, and luckily, due to the motivations behind it, I'm very unlikely to suffer from it again. (Unless someone I respect starts hassling me about my weight again, but I don't plan on letting that happen.) I was a little prone to fever for a while but it never got to the point of long-term damage to bone/organs.
Sort of a rambling and plain update, so here's a fun event: Marshall, our best breeding bull, got a tire stuck on his horns today. We spent half an hour riding him down and getting it off - and he promptly stuck it back on. The boy has interesting tastes in haberdashery.
Thanks so much to everyone who gave me advice or warned me to have, especially the ones speaking from personal experience or asking me if I would want my friends/family treated like this. MASSIVE shout-out to those who asked about what I would think of my friends, family, or God forbid kids being treated like this. Have a great night y'all!
submitted by Waterfall-Throwaway to AITAH [link] [comments]
We broke up!!
I decided to do it over text. I didn't think there was a real risk of her tricking or attacking me, but I've been trusting her too much for years, so I thought it was better to be cautious. Plus, I was kind of excited to do this and not have to attend to her anymore - which is probably a sign I should have done this way sooner.
This was confirmed when I told my work crew and they bought a six pack to celebrate.
I'm going to go to a few sessions of church counseling just to make sure it didn't kick anything up in regards to my eating disorder. (Which is not, I promise, erectile dysfunction.) But I actually felt much more happy with my looks and weight basically the moment I broke things off!
And while I don't plan to date for a short bit, to make sure I'm not in a weird defensive headspace when I start courting someone, people've flirted with me a few times since we broke up. So apparently I don't look hideous! 😎
I've dumped her stuff at her mother's, along with a thank you note for the reunion. Her mother is a lovely woman and I'm glad she has two other (great) daughters because her third is certainly unique. My girlfriend is still texting me and is apparently getting an earful from her mother before she'll let her take her stuff.
I'm still not entirely sure it was right to break up with her and screw with her like that, but I'm definitely sure it was right to break up. One of us definitely deserved better. (And I'm pretty sure it was me. 😅) A serious piece of advice - always check if you want to be in a relationship, or if you're sticking it out because you feel like a knight that's already pledged her fealty to a fool and is waiting for them to wise up or the contract to end. 'Duty' can be just as strong a motivator as 'love', and both are vital, but they aren't interchangeable.
For those who were concerned about my health; thank you, and luckily, due to the motivations behind it, I'm very unlikely to suffer from it again. (Unless someone I respect starts hassling me about my weight again, but I don't plan on letting that happen.) I was a little prone to fever for a while but it never got to the point of long-term damage to bone/organs.
Sort of a rambling and plain update, so here's a fun event: Marshall, our best breeding bull, got a tire stuck on his horns today. We spent half an hour riding him down and getting it off - and he promptly stuck it back on. The boy has interesting tastes in haberdashery.
Thanks so much to everyone who gave me advice or warned me to have, especially the ones speaking from personal experience or asking me if I would want my friends/family treated like this. MASSIVE shout-out to those who asked about what I would think of my friends, family, or God forbid kids being treated like this. Have a great night y'all!
2024.05.19 02:52 abhishekjoshi171 Need Advice: Dealing with Workplace Bullying and Grievance Process
Hi,
SEE the old post for background:
https://www.reddit.com/TheCivilService/comments/1cn3tms/comment/l37dzpc/
I hope you are doing well.
Typically, we correspond directly with individuals submitting grievances. However, the concerned party has requested that all communications be routed through their representative.
Could you please relay the following information to the concerned individual so that we can address their grievances as soon as possible, depending on when all involved parties are available:
The formal grievance was submitted on 9 May and was acknowledged upon receipt.
Under usual conditions, the next step involves a response from the line manager during Informal Stage 1. It's unclear if the line manager was aware that a grievance had been filed regarding their conduct when they responded.
If the concerned individual's current health absence continues, it will need to be addressed (see below).
The Assistant Chief Executive will address the concerns raised and, after meeting with the concerned individual, will seek further clarifications and responses from the line manager. In the meantime, the line manager needs to be informed about the grievance.
We understand this is a challenging period, so we want to remind the concerned individual about the free counselling support available, which can be accessed by calling [Counselling Support Contact Number] or visiting the [Occupational Health and Wellbeing Link].
The next steps include a meeting with the Assistant Chief Executive, arranged after reviewing the grievance submission. This meeting will also address any ongoing health concerns of the individual if applicable. (Does this mean they want to use this against me?)
In the meantime, if you or the concerned individual have any responses to the points mentioned, please let us know. Please note: I am on leave starting tomorrow, returning on [Return Date], so please direct any correspondence regarding this matter to [HR Consultant]. Otherwise, your next contact will be from the Assistant Chief Executive.
Bottom Line: I have been working at my current job, but my boss has started bullying me and put me on performance management without any prior warnings or issues being raised. In response, I filed a grievance about the bullying, the unjust performance management, and the discrimination based on my disability. This situation has caused me significant stress, leading me to take sick leave. My grievance addresses not only the discrimination but also the harassment and humiliation I've experienced. While I feel that the unions were trying to help, I worry that filing the grievance might have been perceived as too aggressive. However, without taking this action, I would have been placed on performance management under false pretenses and potentially terminated. Therefore, I felt it was necessary to fight back.
Now, I'm uncertain about how long I should remain on sick leave.Thanks.
submitted by abhishekjoshi171 to TheCivilService [link] [comments]
SEE the old post for background:
https://www.reddit.com/TheCivilService/comments/1cn3tms/comment/l37dzpc/
I hope you are doing well.
Typically, we correspond directly with individuals submitting grievances. However, the concerned party has requested that all communications be routed through their representative.
Could you please relay the following information to the concerned individual so that we can address their grievances as soon as possible, depending on when all involved parties are available:
The formal grievance was submitted on 9 May and was acknowledged upon receipt.
Under usual conditions, the next step involves a response from the line manager during Informal Stage 1. It's unclear if the line manager was aware that a grievance had been filed regarding their conduct when they responded.
If the concerned individual's current health absence continues, it will need to be addressed (see below).
The Assistant Chief Executive will address the concerns raised and, after meeting with the concerned individual, will seek further clarifications and responses from the line manager. In the meantime, the line manager needs to be informed about the grievance.
We understand this is a challenging period, so we want to remind the concerned individual about the free counselling support available, which can be accessed by calling [Counselling Support Contact Number] or visiting the [Occupational Health and Wellbeing Link].
The next steps include a meeting with the Assistant Chief Executive, arranged after reviewing the grievance submission. This meeting will also address any ongoing health concerns of the individual if applicable. (Does this mean they want to use this against me?)
In the meantime, if you or the concerned individual have any responses to the points mentioned, please let us know. Please note: I am on leave starting tomorrow, returning on [Return Date], so please direct any correspondence regarding this matter to [HR Consultant]. Otherwise, your next contact will be from the Assistant Chief Executive.
Bottom Line: I have been working at my current job, but my boss has started bullying me and put me on performance management without any prior warnings or issues being raised. In response, I filed a grievance about the bullying, the unjust performance management, and the discrimination based on my disability. This situation has caused me significant stress, leading me to take sick leave. My grievance addresses not only the discrimination but also the harassment and humiliation I've experienced. While I feel that the unions were trying to help, I worry that filing the grievance might have been perceived as too aggressive. However, without taking this action, I would have been placed on performance management under false pretenses and potentially terminated. Therefore, I felt it was necessary to fight back.
Now, I'm uncertain about how long I should remain on sick leave.Thanks.
2024.05.19 02:03 DragonTimeTraveler Vance v. DIRECTTV Kroll Settlement - is this a sophisticated scam?
 | Everyone in my family received the same letter this week. I went to the official website and entered everyone’s phone number and received the same response “records do not indicate that this number received a covered call”. submitted by DragonTimeTraveler to Scams [link] [comments] So is this a piggy back off the real class action scam? Thanks!!!! |
2024.05.19 01:05 Adhd-tea-party247 Therapy in the age of acronyms
 | Excellent article on the market obsession with finding the ‘next best thing’ in therapy. submitted by Adhd-tea-party247 to therapists [link] [comments] This section particular struck me: “But in an era of cost-cutting, the labor-intensive art of clinical supervision has been given the short shrift: “I have noticed in recent years that agency sites emphasize and support supervision considerably less than they once did. Hospitals and counseling centers are currently under relentless pressure to “do more with less” – a maddeningly patronizing piece of self-serving magical thinking that invites clinicians to spin straw into gold. Whereas in a previous era most mentors would have had the time and institutional backing to help you become a better therapist, they may now have to supervise you almost on the run… Recent interns and trainees consistently tell me that they feel thrown into the deep end of the professional pool without a life jacket” (McWilliams, 2021, p. 187). In the trenches of everyday clinical practice, many practitioners “…always feel lost and disoriented….” (Cozolino, 2022). Cozolino also notes: “The training has devolved to the point where students get out into practice and they don’t know how to swim, so they grab onto whatever weekend workshop serves as a life preserver.” |
2024.05.19 00:15 Medium-Wing-4710 The harrowing experience of a cancer-surviving partner turned abuser
Over the course of my 4 year marriage to my partner, I have arrived at the position that I was abused, manipulated, and functionally enslaved to a mentally ill partner.
In simplest form, the progression is apparently observable. She was diagnosed with cancer in October of 2019 while we were engaged. Due to the diagnosis, we moved up our actual marriage date (our wedding was still set for mid-April) to December 1, 2019. Her surgery was December 13, 2019. In my compassion for her, I agreed to move our wedding date up to offset her anxiety around who would be responsible for her if things went south with her surgical treatment.
Our first month of marriage was straightforward; she was on pain meds recovering from surgery, so the main engagement that occurred was me walking her up and down the hospital hallway as she recovered and trying to meet her base physical needs of hygiene, food, and presence. We stayed in the hospital for 2-3 weeks (with recurring hospital visits for complications).
Quickly after we figured out our marital living situation in her small 3-bed apartment with 2 roommates, our relationship devolved. Specifically, she was irritable because of the pain she was in, causing her to lash out at me with regular frequency for small things. If I didn’t put clothes away in the right place, didn’t anticipate her needs (without her communicating them), or ate the wrong food in front of her she would shout at me and decry me for my thoughtlessness.
These small, critical engagements were wounding and created a distance between us – and there was no upside. She was never kind, never paid mind to needs I might have, and started down a path of cultivating a root of bitterness in her soul. She quickly revealed herself to be venomous, hateful, and vindictive when she felt like she was wronged — and any observation of concern about our marriage resulted me in being accused of being mean or insensitive, even if I spent hours or days calculating the best way to share my concern (and I have a master’s degree in communication where I focused in studying disagreement — I know how to carefully package concerns).
During this time, I worked hard to provide for us, foreseeing a significant time period where I would have to be primary financial provider and caregiver. I increased my income each year we were married by around 25%, finishing our marriage at >$80,000 in yearly income, compared to starting our marriage at a modest $42,000 salary (including dramatically improving our healthcare). Frankly, I increased my income to provide for us in spite of the lack of support at home.
But to be clear: I don’t think it would have been particularly difficult to provide financially if I had an ounce of support at home.
However, the relentless criticism and expectation of mind-reading continued through the years. I rationalized this abuse for the first year of our marriage because of all the excuses to be cruel, she had a good one – she had cancer. I hung onto a hope that it would stop. Contrary to my hope, as the years went on – and our expenses climbed – and I continued to work myself to the bone – she continued to relentlessly critique and even started being more emotionally demanding, expecting me to take responsibility for her inability to cope with her emotions – I was drowning. She was asking too much of me. There was no deliverance from her abuse.
I was exhausted. In the peak of the abuse I endured at her hand, I was working multiple jobs, sleeping 10+ hours a night and napping frequently during the day around meetings and work, then coping with alcohol to numb myself to the abusive dynamic and fall asleep with no support from her. The only time I could approach her sexually was when I was intoxicated, with inhibitions lowered. The only time I could have a conversation with her was with a counselor in the room. Without something to mitigate opportunity for her to be cruel to me, either a mediator or self-medication, I was scared.
I lived at home in a constant state of alert and cognitive fatigue. No matter how I tried to make sense of my home life, I couldn’t. When she looked at or touched me, I would recoil in fear, anticipating some sort of incisive critique or demand expressed. Then she would criticize me for not responding warmly to her, exacerbating the cycle.
I couldn’t meet her needs – I was utterly exhausted. When I would tell her of the exhaustion I experienced in marital counseling, her responses were typically something along the lines of not believing me, denying what I was saying was true, or calling my exhaustion an ‘excuse’. I could interact happily with my friends… why not her?
I did not deny her demands were legitimate; rather, I expressed my inability to meet them because of how fatigued I was. I said ‘I can’t’ so many times. I realize her demands were small; affection, saying ‘i love you’, complimenting her. But it’s disorienting to be consistently berated and belittled by a person and then asked to compliment them and tell them you love them.
The push and pull of abuse is exhausting to a person who is not mentally because it does not make sense.
Further, in counseling I realized that I have forgotten that I have needs. I have lost the tools to even evaluate what my needs might be because, implicitly and explicitly in my marriage, I was told my needs don’t matter.
My marriage made no sense; I was obviously drowning, exhausted with the demands our life imposed on me. I was doing everything I could to get straight. I was in individual therapy, marital counseling, pastoral counseling, trying different antidepressants (4 in total – all with no effect), changing eating habits, trying to reduce my drinking, getting medical tests to see if I had health issues causing my fatigue, and being vulnerable in my friendships in an attempt to invite others in to process and move forward and figure out my marriage. I desperately shared everything I could about my marriage, hoping someone else would crack the code where I couldn’t.
None of my efforts worked. I could not get out of the exhausted state I was in. It’s worth noting here that within weeks of separating I almost completely cut out alcohol, got into a regular sleep schedule, was waking up at 6-7am every day and reading multiple hours (which I couldn’t do in marriage due to cognitive fatigue/distraction), and experienced a resurgence of energy. I have felt the duress I was under lift and lift and lift and the weeks and months have went on.
In retrospect, I was experiencing cognitive fatigue because I was taking the demands my wife was placing on me seriously, but no matter what I did I could not make sense of them. How could she not see that I was doing everything I could to make ends meet – the ends which she was imposing on me? I did not have additional energy left. She would ask me ‘Do you love me?’ and I didn’t know how to respond. How is my work not at least some symbol of love? My dream was to be a poor professor, which she knew – instead I was grinding myself to the bone, working in digital marketing with multiple freelance projects, picking up a bartending gig and a teaching gig on top of full-time employment.
The last straw was when she accused me of abuse. I took that accusation seriously, and weighed it against my experience. ‘Am I an abuser?’ I asked myself. I sorted through my behavior and how I treated her. I came to the conclusion that I may be a poor husband in serious ways; but I am not an abuser. And the abuse question opened the door to the question… ‘I may not be an abuser… but is there abuse in our marriage?’ And the answer quickly became ‘Yes.’
When we were married, I understood that she wasn’t going to work much for a while. However, she worked the bare minimum she could for 4 years, earning at most in a single year $18,000. As the years went on and my income climbed, our debt continued to climb as well. She was still contributing the same, yet spending frivolously on useless knick knacks for our home and a cat. As I packed up our home to sell, the majority of items were dozens of boxes of useless junk she’d accumulated.
She lived a life of mania around finances. We would go to marital counseling and she would regularly express, ‘I would rather be poor and happy than rich and sad’. We were poor and sad. Sure, my income was the highest it’d ever been – but we were still drowning, with debts climbing. At the end of our marriage, we’d accumulated about $20,000 in consumer debt between credit cards and personal loans.
It was traumatizing (and abusive) to go to counseling and be told by my partner she would ‘rather be poor and happy and than rich and sad’ when the factual scenario we were living was neither. She actively denied reality – both my lived experience and the reality of our finances – at my expense. It was killing me, trying to make sense of what we were going through but being unable to make sense of what I was being told and what I was experiencing.
Throughout this time, it is worth adding that she also leveraged my spiritual leadership to ‘set me straight’. I was in a conservative Evangelical space, believing that men are the ultimate provider in a family unit and primarily responsible for the status of the marriage. Because I was not doing what she wanted me to (lavishing her with affection), I was muscled into multiple groups and meetings where pastoral care intervened to restore our marriage. In the moment, I submitted to my pastoral care because of my trust for them and my faith in God. Now, I believe this dynamic was abusive; my pastoral care did not care in any sense for my soul; they only cared about fixing my marriage. No questions around ‘why’ my marriage was so bad were asked; only what was going on and how it could be fixed. I relish the thought of my pastoral care being held accountable for the abuse they exercised upon me during this time on judgment day, albeit through a shaken faith in a God that would enable this dynamic.
With my spiritual community, I shared that I felt like she was my tormentor; that she it felt as if I were on the ground due to exhaustion, and she was standing on my throat, telling me to ‘get up’ and ‘tell me you love me’; that our metaphorical life was a boat, sinking, and I was desperately bailing out water. All the while, she stood at the other end of the boat, desperately bailing water in and looking at me like I was a maniac.
And yet, because there was no adultery, there was no category for divorce. We had sworn an oath before God and were required to fix this.
As I reflect upon my marriage (and the ongoing divorce proceedings), a few things are clear.
She is an abuser. I don’t think she intends to be, but impact matters. She is mentally ill and unable to reckon with basic reality.
She is a manipulator. She manipulated my spiritual community against me. I was viewed as someone to be corrected while begging for help from my trusted friends and pastoral care, whom I now regret being vulnerable with due to their abuse and denial of my reality because I didn’t fit neatly into their thin theological categories.
She is an enslaver. In divorce proceedings, she is doing everything she can to get every dollar from me, leveraging student loans I did not co-sign, my continually increasing income due to my hard work, and denying every claim of dissipated assets she can.
It is truly a mind-breaking experience to see your compassion leveraged against you for money. I had to sit under an attorney proclaiming to a judge that, since I consented to move up our marriage date before her cancer surgery, ‘I knew what I was getting into’. That she is entitled to large sums of money (that do not exist; we never had more than $3000 in our bank account during marriage) due to that decision.
Even apart from the abuse, I did not know what I was getting into. Including the abuse, I am full of remorse for having invited such an evil, hateful person into my life.
This experience has been the most challenging to my faith. As I endured abuse from her, I trusted God in a few ways. That the compassion I showed would maybe be rewarded – or, at least not punished. That my spiritual community wanted what was best for me. That God was not a punitive, hateful God (like my partner). I do not believe this trust was well placed, but am open to shortcomings in my views here.
I struggle to consent to a God that allowed my experience to occur. I’m open and processing in some kind of faith, but I really don’t know what it looks like to find a place to put this pain and betrayal that I’m experiencing.
I am a survivor of abuse, and the abuse I endured was mind-shattering. I sacrificed everything to support a partner diagnosed with serious bodily illness, which drove her to hate me and deny my lived experience because she could not reconcile it with the hatefulness she cultivated over our marriage, choosing bitterness over any positivity for four years, poisoning my well-being in the process.
What I envisioned to be the most compassionate moment of my life — marrying a person with cancer and promising to support and love them — has become nothing but a symbol of pain and remorse. I envisioned a life where my partner and I would fight against the terror of cancer; instead she hopped to the other side, choosing her ongoing health issues as the ally and myself as the enemy.
It took me 4 years to realize it. And as she drags me through court to leverage every dollar out of me I can, my only regret is that I didn’t leave my abuser to her own devices sooner; self-pity, hatefulness, and a sheer disregard toward taking responsibility for anything.
I am grateful but drowning. As we are negotiating settlement, the end is near, and my abuser will soon be unable to execute any influence in my life.
submitted by Medium-Wing-4710 to abusesurvivors [link] [comments]
In simplest form, the progression is apparently observable. She was diagnosed with cancer in October of 2019 while we were engaged. Due to the diagnosis, we moved up our actual marriage date (our wedding was still set for mid-April) to December 1, 2019. Her surgery was December 13, 2019. In my compassion for her, I agreed to move our wedding date up to offset her anxiety around who would be responsible for her if things went south with her surgical treatment.
Our first month of marriage was straightforward; she was on pain meds recovering from surgery, so the main engagement that occurred was me walking her up and down the hospital hallway as she recovered and trying to meet her base physical needs of hygiene, food, and presence. We stayed in the hospital for 2-3 weeks (with recurring hospital visits for complications).
Quickly after we figured out our marital living situation in her small 3-bed apartment with 2 roommates, our relationship devolved. Specifically, she was irritable because of the pain she was in, causing her to lash out at me with regular frequency for small things. If I didn’t put clothes away in the right place, didn’t anticipate her needs (without her communicating them), or ate the wrong food in front of her she would shout at me and decry me for my thoughtlessness.
These small, critical engagements were wounding and created a distance between us – and there was no upside. She was never kind, never paid mind to needs I might have, and started down a path of cultivating a root of bitterness in her soul. She quickly revealed herself to be venomous, hateful, and vindictive when she felt like she was wronged — and any observation of concern about our marriage resulted me in being accused of being mean or insensitive, even if I spent hours or days calculating the best way to share my concern (and I have a master’s degree in communication where I focused in studying disagreement — I know how to carefully package concerns).
During this time, I worked hard to provide for us, foreseeing a significant time period where I would have to be primary financial provider and caregiver. I increased my income each year we were married by around 25%, finishing our marriage at >$80,000 in yearly income, compared to starting our marriage at a modest $42,000 salary (including dramatically improving our healthcare). Frankly, I increased my income to provide for us in spite of the lack of support at home.
But to be clear: I don’t think it would have been particularly difficult to provide financially if I had an ounce of support at home.
However, the relentless criticism and expectation of mind-reading continued through the years. I rationalized this abuse for the first year of our marriage because of all the excuses to be cruel, she had a good one – she had cancer. I hung onto a hope that it would stop. Contrary to my hope, as the years went on – and our expenses climbed – and I continued to work myself to the bone – she continued to relentlessly critique and even started being more emotionally demanding, expecting me to take responsibility for her inability to cope with her emotions – I was drowning. She was asking too much of me. There was no deliverance from her abuse.
I was exhausted. In the peak of the abuse I endured at her hand, I was working multiple jobs, sleeping 10+ hours a night and napping frequently during the day around meetings and work, then coping with alcohol to numb myself to the abusive dynamic and fall asleep with no support from her. The only time I could approach her sexually was when I was intoxicated, with inhibitions lowered. The only time I could have a conversation with her was with a counselor in the room. Without something to mitigate opportunity for her to be cruel to me, either a mediator or self-medication, I was scared.
I lived at home in a constant state of alert and cognitive fatigue. No matter how I tried to make sense of my home life, I couldn’t. When she looked at or touched me, I would recoil in fear, anticipating some sort of incisive critique or demand expressed. Then she would criticize me for not responding warmly to her, exacerbating the cycle.
I couldn’t meet her needs – I was utterly exhausted. When I would tell her of the exhaustion I experienced in marital counseling, her responses were typically something along the lines of not believing me, denying what I was saying was true, or calling my exhaustion an ‘excuse’. I could interact happily with my friends… why not her?
I did not deny her demands were legitimate; rather, I expressed my inability to meet them because of how fatigued I was. I said ‘I can’t’ so many times. I realize her demands were small; affection, saying ‘i love you’, complimenting her. But it’s disorienting to be consistently berated and belittled by a person and then asked to compliment them and tell them you love them.
The push and pull of abuse is exhausting to a person who is not mentally because it does not make sense.
Further, in counseling I realized that I have forgotten that I have needs. I have lost the tools to even evaluate what my needs might be because, implicitly and explicitly in my marriage, I was told my needs don’t matter.
My marriage made no sense; I was obviously drowning, exhausted with the demands our life imposed on me. I was doing everything I could to get straight. I was in individual therapy, marital counseling, pastoral counseling, trying different antidepressants (4 in total – all with no effect), changing eating habits, trying to reduce my drinking, getting medical tests to see if I had health issues causing my fatigue, and being vulnerable in my friendships in an attempt to invite others in to process and move forward and figure out my marriage. I desperately shared everything I could about my marriage, hoping someone else would crack the code where I couldn’t.
None of my efforts worked. I could not get out of the exhausted state I was in. It’s worth noting here that within weeks of separating I almost completely cut out alcohol, got into a regular sleep schedule, was waking up at 6-7am every day and reading multiple hours (which I couldn’t do in marriage due to cognitive fatigue/distraction), and experienced a resurgence of energy. I have felt the duress I was under lift and lift and lift and the weeks and months have went on.
In retrospect, I was experiencing cognitive fatigue because I was taking the demands my wife was placing on me seriously, but no matter what I did I could not make sense of them. How could she not see that I was doing everything I could to make ends meet – the ends which she was imposing on me? I did not have additional energy left. She would ask me ‘Do you love me?’ and I didn’t know how to respond. How is my work not at least some symbol of love? My dream was to be a poor professor, which she knew – instead I was grinding myself to the bone, working in digital marketing with multiple freelance projects, picking up a bartending gig and a teaching gig on top of full-time employment.
The last straw was when she accused me of abuse. I took that accusation seriously, and weighed it against my experience. ‘Am I an abuser?’ I asked myself. I sorted through my behavior and how I treated her. I came to the conclusion that I may be a poor husband in serious ways; but I am not an abuser. And the abuse question opened the door to the question… ‘I may not be an abuser… but is there abuse in our marriage?’ And the answer quickly became ‘Yes.’
When we were married, I understood that she wasn’t going to work much for a while. However, she worked the bare minimum she could for 4 years, earning at most in a single year $18,000. As the years went on and my income climbed, our debt continued to climb as well. She was still contributing the same, yet spending frivolously on useless knick knacks for our home and a cat. As I packed up our home to sell, the majority of items were dozens of boxes of useless junk she’d accumulated.
She lived a life of mania around finances. We would go to marital counseling and she would regularly express, ‘I would rather be poor and happy than rich and sad’. We were poor and sad. Sure, my income was the highest it’d ever been – but we were still drowning, with debts climbing. At the end of our marriage, we’d accumulated about $20,000 in consumer debt between credit cards and personal loans.
It was traumatizing (and abusive) to go to counseling and be told by my partner she would ‘rather be poor and happy and than rich and sad’ when the factual scenario we were living was neither. She actively denied reality – both my lived experience and the reality of our finances – at my expense. It was killing me, trying to make sense of what we were going through but being unable to make sense of what I was being told and what I was experiencing.
Throughout this time, it is worth adding that she also leveraged my spiritual leadership to ‘set me straight’. I was in a conservative Evangelical space, believing that men are the ultimate provider in a family unit and primarily responsible for the status of the marriage. Because I was not doing what she wanted me to (lavishing her with affection), I was muscled into multiple groups and meetings where pastoral care intervened to restore our marriage. In the moment, I submitted to my pastoral care because of my trust for them and my faith in God. Now, I believe this dynamic was abusive; my pastoral care did not care in any sense for my soul; they only cared about fixing my marriage. No questions around ‘why’ my marriage was so bad were asked; only what was going on and how it could be fixed. I relish the thought of my pastoral care being held accountable for the abuse they exercised upon me during this time on judgment day, albeit through a shaken faith in a God that would enable this dynamic.
With my spiritual community, I shared that I felt like she was my tormentor; that she it felt as if I were on the ground due to exhaustion, and she was standing on my throat, telling me to ‘get up’ and ‘tell me you love me’; that our metaphorical life was a boat, sinking, and I was desperately bailing out water. All the while, she stood at the other end of the boat, desperately bailing water in and looking at me like I was a maniac.
And yet, because there was no adultery, there was no category for divorce. We had sworn an oath before God and were required to fix this.
As I reflect upon my marriage (and the ongoing divorce proceedings), a few things are clear.
She is an abuser. I don’t think she intends to be, but impact matters. She is mentally ill and unable to reckon with basic reality.
She is a manipulator. She manipulated my spiritual community against me. I was viewed as someone to be corrected while begging for help from my trusted friends and pastoral care, whom I now regret being vulnerable with due to their abuse and denial of my reality because I didn’t fit neatly into their thin theological categories.
She is an enslaver. In divorce proceedings, she is doing everything she can to get every dollar from me, leveraging student loans I did not co-sign, my continually increasing income due to my hard work, and denying every claim of dissipated assets she can.
It is truly a mind-breaking experience to see your compassion leveraged against you for money. I had to sit under an attorney proclaiming to a judge that, since I consented to move up our marriage date before her cancer surgery, ‘I knew what I was getting into’. That she is entitled to large sums of money (that do not exist; we never had more than $3000 in our bank account during marriage) due to that decision.
Even apart from the abuse, I did not know what I was getting into. Including the abuse, I am full of remorse for having invited such an evil, hateful person into my life.
This experience has been the most challenging to my faith. As I endured abuse from her, I trusted God in a few ways. That the compassion I showed would maybe be rewarded – or, at least not punished. That my spiritual community wanted what was best for me. That God was not a punitive, hateful God (like my partner). I do not believe this trust was well placed, but am open to shortcomings in my views here.
I struggle to consent to a God that allowed my experience to occur. I’m open and processing in some kind of faith, but I really don’t know what it looks like to find a place to put this pain and betrayal that I’m experiencing.
I am a survivor of abuse, and the abuse I endured was mind-shattering. I sacrificed everything to support a partner diagnosed with serious bodily illness, which drove her to hate me and deny my lived experience because she could not reconcile it with the hatefulness she cultivated over our marriage, choosing bitterness over any positivity for four years, poisoning my well-being in the process.
What I envisioned to be the most compassionate moment of my life — marrying a person with cancer and promising to support and love them — has become nothing but a symbol of pain and remorse. I envisioned a life where my partner and I would fight against the terror of cancer; instead she hopped to the other side, choosing her ongoing health issues as the ally and myself as the enemy.
It took me 4 years to realize it. And as she drags me through court to leverage every dollar out of me I can, my only regret is that I didn’t leave my abuser to her own devices sooner; self-pity, hatefulness, and a sheer disregard toward taking responsibility for anything.
I am grateful but drowning. As we are negotiating settlement, the end is near, and my abuser will soon be unable to execute any influence in my life.
2024.05.18 23:59 According_Guess4479 Unsatisfactory academic progress
Has anyone gone through being kicked out of your programme due to unsatisfactory academic progress? I failed last year due to mental health and family issues. But I'm trying to re-enrol in the same programme as I only have one year left and would be such a waste if I don't.. but I'm in such a better headspace now and decided i really want to complete it. I have to submit the appeal form to the board but they're asking for evidence of my exceptional circumstance. I've started counselling and did one session with them so far bc they can provide me with a counsellors note as evidence but I feel like time is running out until enrolments are due. Anybody gone through this and was successful with their appeal??
submitted by According_Guess4479 to AUT [link] [comments]
2024.05.18 21:20 Yellow_scarf23 How to protect yourself and your assets during a divorce as a man?
Our close family member married a woman with humble background more than a year ago. No dowry was given or asked for. However, who he thought was a kind soulmate turned out to be a nightmare, with her having very demanding and entitled behavior with severe temperament issues. Marital counselling has not helped. And what I see coming next is a legal divorce. However, I am worried that woman would take advantage of the situation and may come up with accusations like dowry demands, caste discrimination (she is from scheduled caste- please note that I do not want to offend anyone and our family is very unbiased from caste standpoint) and would probably go after his money. What would you suggest can be done pre-emptively to prevent such a situation and move towards a more peaceful legal separation but also protect his financial assets? please note there are no children in the picture.
submitted by Yellow_scarf23 to LegalAdviceIndia [link] [comments]
2024.05.18 20:24 TheLotStore The Ultimate Guide to Buying a House for Sale near Me with Land
 | The Ultimate Guide to Buying a House for Sale near Me with Land submitted by TheLotStore to u/TheLotStore [link] [comments] The Ultimate Manual for Purchasing a Dwelling for Sale close to Me with LandAre you scouting for a new residence with ample outdoor space? Whether you are a first-time homebuyer or aiming to elevate to a property with extra land, there are numerous aspects to contemplate while seeking the perfect house for sale in your vicinity. From establishing your budget to grasping local zoning laws, securing the right property with land necessitates meticulous planning and assessment.In this extensive handbook, we will guide you through the complete process of acquiring a residence for sale in your area with land. We will encompass everything from investigating the local market to enlisting a real estate agent, bargaining the purchase agreement, and ultimately, sealing the deal. By the conclusion of this guide, you will possess all the tools and information you need to make a well-informed choice when acquiring a dwelling with land.Comprehending Your Requirements and BudgetThe initial stage in purchasing a house with land is to define your requirements and budget. How much outdoor space do you necessitate? Do you have any distinct aspirations for the land, such as gardening, raising animals, or constructing additional structures? Comprehending your requirements will aid you in narrowing down your exploration and encountering properties that fulfill your prerequisites.Subsequently, it's vital to confirm a budget for your home purchase. Take into consideration your present financial position, including your income, savings, and any debt. Additionally, consider the continuing expenses associated with possessing a property with land, such as maintenance, utilities, and property taxes. By possessing a lucid understanding of your budget, you can sidestep overspending and assure that the property you opt for is financially sustainable for the long haul.Exploring the Local MarketOnce you have a lucid notion of your requirements and budget, it's time to commence investigating the local real estate market. Seek out properties for sale nearby that correspond to your criteria, encompassing the quantity of land, the type of property, and the location. Websites like Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia are exceptional resources for discovering homes with land for sale in your vicinity.Furthermore to online listings, contemplate collaborating with a local real estate agent who holds expertise in properties featuring land. An informed agent can furnish valuable insights into the market, assist you in identifying potential properties, and guide you through the purchasing process.While researching the local market, consider the subsequent aspects:• Property Prices: What is the average cost of homes with land in your desired locality? • Property Taxes: What are the property tax rates in the area, and how might these affect your budget? • Zoning Laws: Are there any limitations on how the land can be utilized, such as agricultural zoning or conservation easements? • Local Amenities: What amenities are accessible in the area, such as schools, shopping, and recreational facilities?By meticulously investigating the local market, you can amass a better understanding of the available choices and make an informed decision when procuring a house with land.Getting Pre-Approved for a MortgageBefore you commence shopping for a house with land, it's essential to obtain pre-approval for a mortgage. Pre-approval entails meeting with a lender to ascertain how much you can afford to borrow based on your income, credit history, and other financial factors. By obtaining pre-approval, you can signify to sellers that you are a sincere and qualified buyer, which can furnish you with an edge in a competitive market.To secure pre-approval for a mortgage, you will need to furnish the following documents to your lender:• Proof of Income: Pay stubs, W-2 forms, and tax returns • Proof of Assets: Bank statements, retirement account statements, and any other assets • Employment Verification: Contact information for your employer and any other sources of income • Credit History: Information about your credit score and any outstanding debtsOnce you have been pre-approved for a mortgage, you will receive a letter from your lender stating the amount for which you are approved. This letter can be included with your offers on properties to demonstrate to sellers that you are financially capable of acquiring the home.Enlisting a Real Estate AgentWhen purchasing a house with land, having an informed and seasoned real estate agent on your side is crucial. A reputable agent can aid you in navigating the local market, locating properties that fulfill your criteria, and negotiating the best feasible deal. When selecting a real estate agent, contemplate the following aspects:• Experience: Seek an agent with experience in purchasing and selling properties with land in your preferred area. • Knowledge: A good agent should possess a thorough understanding of local zoning laws, property values, and market trends. • Reputation: Read reviews and solicit recommendations to find an agent with a solid reputation and track record of success. • Communication: Select an agent who is responsive and attentive to your needs throughout the purchasing process.Meeting with potential agents and discussing your requirements and goals can aid you in finding the right match for your home search. Once you have elected an agent, they can assist you in identifying potential properties, scheduling showings, and providing valuable guidance as you navigate the purchasing process.Discovering the Right Property with LandWith a clear understanding of your requirements, budget, and the local market, it's time to commence seeking the right property with land. Your real estate agent can aid you in identifying potential residences that match your criteria and scheduling showings so you can tour the properties in person.While searching for the right property with land, contemplate the subsequent aspects:• Location: Is the property in a sought-after area? What amenities are nearby, and what is the overall quality of life in the neighborhood? • Land Size: Does the property possess the quantity of land you desire, and is the land suitable for your intended use? • Property Features: What is the condition of the home and any outbuildings on the property? Are there any unique features or amenities that make the property stand out? • Zoning and Restrictions: Are there any zoning laws or restrictions that may impact how you can utilize the land?While touring potential properties, take note of any features or issues that catch your attention. Pay attention to the condition of the home, the quality of the land, and any potential maintenance or improvement needs. Retain an open mind and be patient as you hunt for the right property, as discovering the perfect home with land may take time.Negotiating the Purchase AgreementOnce you have pinpointed a property with land that you are interested in acquiring, the next step is to negotiate a purchase agreement with the seller. Your real estate agent can render valuable assistance in this process, aiding you in determining a fair offer price, incorporating any contingencies, and bargaining with the seller on your behalf.While negotiating the purchase agreement for a house with land, contemplate the subsequent aspects:• Offer Price: What is a fair price to offer for the property, based on the local market and the condition of the home and land? • Contingencies: Are there any contingencies you would like to include in the purchase agreement, such as a home inspection or appraisal? • Closing Date: When would you like to close on the property,and do you need to consider any specific timing aspects?Your property specialist can assist you in drafting and submitting the purchase agreement to the seller's representative. If the seller agrees to your proposal, the purchase agreement becomes a legally binding contract, outlining the terms and conditions of the sale.Conducting Thorough InvestigationOnce the purchase agreement is accepted, it's time to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the property. A thorough investigation involves a detailed inspection of the home and land, reviewing relevant documents, and ensuring that there are no issues that would impact your decision to purchase the property.As part of the investigation process, consider the following actions:• Home Examination: Enlist a certified home examiner to conduct a thorough inspection of the property, including the home and any additional structures. The examiner will identify any potential issues with the property, such as structural deficiencies, plumbing problems, or electrical issues. • Land Mapping: Consider hiring a surveyor to perform a survey of the property and verify the boundaries and acreage of the land. This will ensure that the property lines are accurate, and you are informed of any trespasses or easements. • Title Investigation: Initiate a title investigation to ensure the property has a clear title and that there are no pending liens or other issues that could affect the sale. • Zoning and Permits: Research local zoning regulations and permits to ensure the property can be utilized for your intended purposes and that there are no outstanding infractions or issues.By conducting a thorough investigation of the property, you can identify any potential issues that may influence your decision to proceed with the purchase. If any issues are identified, your property specialist can assist you in negotiating with the seller to address them or potentially recalibrate the terms of the purchase agreement.Managing the Closing ProcedureOnce you have completed the investigation of the property and are content with the results, it's time to manage the closing procedure. The closing procedure involves concluding the sale of the property, signing the necessary legal documents, and transferring ownership from the seller to you, the buyer.The closing procedure typically includes the following steps:• Finalizing Financing: Provide any required documentation to your lender to finalize the mortgage approval process and secure the necessary financing for the purchase. • Reviewing Closing Papers: Collaborate with your property specialist and legal counsel to review all closing documents, including the settlement statement, purchase agreement, and any other legal documents related to the sale. • Completing Final Inspections: Undertake a final walk-through of the property to ensure that any repairs or agreed-upon improvements have been completed to your satisfaction. • Signing Documents: Attend the closing appointment and sign all necessary legal documents, including the mortgage loan documents and the deed of trust. • Transferring Ownership: Once all documents are signed and any required payments have been made, the property ownership will be transferred from the seller to you, and you will receive the keys to your new home with land.Following the completion of the closing procedure, the property is officially yours, and you can initiate the process of moving in and personalizing the property as you desire.Property Ownership with LandCongratulations! You have successfully acquired a residence with land near you. Now that the purchasing process is finalized, you can commence enjoying your new property and customizing it to your preferences. Whether you intend to start a garden, raise livestock, or simply relish the additional space, owning a home with land presents numerous opportunities for enjoyment and satisfaction.As a property owner, it's crucial to stay informed about ongoing maintenance and upkeep of the property. Regular maintenance of the home and land, including mowing, landscaping, and repairs, will help ensure that the property retains its value and remains a source of pride and enjoyment for years to come.If you have any inquiries or concerns about owning a property with land, consider contacting local resources, such as gardening clubs, agricultural extension services, or land management organizations. These resources can offer valuable guidance on caring for your land and making the most of the property.To sum up, purchasing a residence with land near you can be a gratifying and enriching experience. By following the steps outlined in this guide, including understanding your needs and budget, researching the local market, getting pre-approved for a mortgage, enlisting a property specialist, finding the right property with land, negotiating the purchase agreement, conducting a thorough investigation, and managing the closing procedure, you can successfully acquire a home that fulfills your requirements and provides ample outdoor space for enjoyment and fulfillment. Congratulations on taking the first step toward owning the perfect home with land! View our amazing property deals at TheLotStore.Com. Additional Information: https://thelotstore.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-buying-a-house-for-sale-near-me-with-land/?feed_id=10833 |
2024.05.18 20:15 kittypac Can someone please explain to me this financial aid issue I'm having?
I received an email saying that I'm missing items from a checklist so that my financial aid isn't delayed. I receive a Pell Grant, and my fafsa has been processed for weeks. I reached out to financial aid, and they told me I need to activate my loans. I'm confused, as I use the Pell Grant and pay the rest out of pocket. I emailed back for more clarification, but haven't gotten any response yet. Can anyone help please?
submitted by kittypac to SNHU [link] [comments]
2024.05.18 19:47 Ok_Bullfrog_8491 Celebrimbor, St Sebastian, and Sauron
I often think about Celebrimbor, and I simply can’t get over the obvious visual parallel with St. Sebastian. This is St Sebastian’s martyrdom: by Reni), and Mantegna).
Celebrimbor died thus: “In black anger [Sauron] turned back to battle; and bearing as a banner Celebrimbor’s body hung upon a pole, shot through with Orc-arrows, he turned upon the forces of Elrond.” (UT, p. 307–308)
The iconography (see drawings by peet, and Kaaile) is the same.
And this led me to wondering about what made Tolkien, a Catholic, decide to give his Elf who fell to Sauron’s manipulations a famous Christian martyrdom, and why St Sebastian in particular?
I don’t know enough about St Sebastian or Tolkien to do more than speculate.
First, as a hint of Celebrimbor’s feelings for fair Annatar. St. Sebastian has a strong gay association. This was so even at the turn of the 20th century: Oscar Wilde clearly loved St Sebastian and the associated iconography. Here he refers specifically to Guido Reni’s wonderful painting of St Sebastian. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, St Sebastian is highlighted in Chapter XI, the chapter about Dorian’s personal (and generally rather decadent) passions. St Sebastian also appears in Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig(Zweites Kapitel). I can see the whole thing as being a hint at Celebrimbor falling for Sauron in more ways than one, particularly given what we know of his seduction (the term used in LOTR, p. 1083) by Annatar in his “fair form” (Sil, Index of Names, entry Annatar; UT, p. 328). Sauron is said to have “used all his arts upon Celebrimbor and his fellow-smiths” (UT, p. 306). “All his arts” would include this: “Yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth, and the strength of his hidden will, that ere three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King; for flattery sweet as honey was ever on his tongue, and knowledge he had of many things yet unrevealed to Men. And seeing the favour that he had of their lord all the councillors began to fawn upon him, save one alone” (Sil, Akallabêth). To me, this passage sounds distinctly sexual, and also like something that Oscar Wilde could have written, with this imagery.
(I admit that having Celebrimbor fall in love with Annatar makes the eventual betrayal even worse. I also am aware that in one of the many different versions presented in The History of Galadriel and Celeborn, it is said that Celebrimbor loved Galadriel (UT, p. 324–325), but according to Christopher Tolkien, this “Celebrimbor is here again a jewel-smith of Gondolin, rather than one of the Fëanorians” (UT, p. 325), which is why I tend to take his characterisation here with a pinch of salt.)
The other thought I had is quite dark: rape. It’s an association that I personally feel imposes itself, in a way. “The arrow is a highly phallic image” (source) already, and there’s the image of Cupid’s two arrows, causing uncontrollable desire in one victim, and revulsion in the other. The result for the person who was shot by the second arrow was rape—or death (or transformation into a tree if your father happened to be (1) a god, and (2) nearby: Daphne). I’m not the first person to connect the iconography of St Sebastian with rape: see this (NSFW, nudity and violence) blogpost. This could be a very Tolkienian hint of what Celebrimbor suffered in his “torment” (UT, p. 307) at the hands of Sauron before his death—subtle, “clean”, deniable, but intriguing.
We know that Morgoth wanted to rape Lúthien (“Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark than any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor. Thus he was beguiled by his own malice, for he watched her, leaving her free for awhile, and taking secret pleasure in his thought.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)) and that, while the above passage implies that Morgoth only ever wanted to rape Lúthien and no other, that is not true: he also attempted to rape Arien, the Maia of the Sun, in order specifically to break her: “though he attempted to ravish Arien, this was to destroy and ‘distain’ her, not to beget fiery offspring” (HoME X, p. 405, fn omitted).
Sauron, meanwhile, is described thus: “Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.” (Sil, QS, ch. 18) I do not think that it would be either out-of-character for Sauron or “out-of-world” for the Legendarium (especially as Sauron used to be Morgoth’s second-in-command in Angband) to assume that Sauron raped Celebrimbor in order to break him or just because he’s an obvious sadist who would enjoy every last second of it, or had others rape Celebrimbor as grisly a method of torture—and then turned him into his banner to show the Elves what he’d done, and dishonour Celebrimbor even further in death.
(Note that it is a common misconception that Elves die when raped. As per HoME X, p. 228 (a text likely from the late 1950s: HoME X, p. 199), this only applies to married Elves raped by someone who is not their spouse: “there is no record of any among the Elves that took another’s spouse by force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so forced would have rejected bodily life and passed to Mandos.” (Emphasis mine) This is confirmed by the fact that in a later (from 1959–1960: HoME XI, p. 359–360) text, Eöl rapes unmarried Aredhel and Aredhel survives: “Eöl found Irith, the sister of King Turgon, astray in the wild near his dwelling, and he took her to wife by force: a very wicked deed in the eyes of the Eldar.” (HoME XI, p. 409, fn omitted, emphasis mine) Note the same expression used to describe a rape.)
This post turned out longer than I planned. I’ve speculated on two possible associations that the imagery of St Sebastian and the character and story of Celebrimbor invite. Do you have other ideas? Why do you think that Tolkien chose this imagery?
Sources:
submitted by Ok_Bullfrog_8491 to TheSilmarillion [link] [comments]
Celebrimbor died thus: “In black anger [Sauron] turned back to battle; and bearing as a banner Celebrimbor’s body hung upon a pole, shot through with Orc-arrows, he turned upon the forces of Elrond.” (UT, p. 307–308)
The iconography (see drawings by peet, and Kaaile) is the same.
And this led me to wondering about what made Tolkien, a Catholic, decide to give his Elf who fell to Sauron’s manipulations a famous Christian martyrdom, and why St Sebastian in particular?
I don’t know enough about St Sebastian or Tolkien to do more than speculate.
First, as a hint of Celebrimbor’s feelings for fair Annatar. St. Sebastian has a strong gay association. This was so even at the turn of the 20th century: Oscar Wilde clearly loved St Sebastian and the associated iconography. Here he refers specifically to Guido Reni’s wonderful painting of St Sebastian. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, St Sebastian is highlighted in Chapter XI, the chapter about Dorian’s personal (and generally rather decadent) passions. St Sebastian also appears in Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig(Zweites Kapitel). I can see the whole thing as being a hint at Celebrimbor falling for Sauron in more ways than one, particularly given what we know of his seduction (the term used in LOTR, p. 1083) by Annatar in his “fair form” (Sil, Index of Names, entry Annatar; UT, p. 328). Sauron is said to have “used all his arts upon Celebrimbor and his fellow-smiths” (UT, p. 306). “All his arts” would include this: “Yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth, and the strength of his hidden will, that ere three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King; for flattery sweet as honey was ever on his tongue, and knowledge he had of many things yet unrevealed to Men. And seeing the favour that he had of their lord all the councillors began to fawn upon him, save one alone” (Sil, Akallabêth). To me, this passage sounds distinctly sexual, and also like something that Oscar Wilde could have written, with this imagery.
(I admit that having Celebrimbor fall in love with Annatar makes the eventual betrayal even worse. I also am aware that in one of the many different versions presented in The History of Galadriel and Celeborn, it is said that Celebrimbor loved Galadriel (UT, p. 324–325), but according to Christopher Tolkien, this “Celebrimbor is here again a jewel-smith of Gondolin, rather than one of the Fëanorians” (UT, p. 325), which is why I tend to take his characterisation here with a pinch of salt.)
The other thought I had is quite dark: rape. It’s an association that I personally feel imposes itself, in a way. “The arrow is a highly phallic image” (source) already, and there’s the image of Cupid’s two arrows, causing uncontrollable desire in one victim, and revulsion in the other. The result for the person who was shot by the second arrow was rape—or death (or transformation into a tree if your father happened to be (1) a god, and (2) nearby: Daphne). I’m not the first person to connect the iconography of St Sebastian with rape: see this (NSFW, nudity and violence) blogpost. This could be a very Tolkienian hint of what Celebrimbor suffered in his “torment” (UT, p. 307) at the hands of Sauron before his death—subtle, “clean”, deniable, but intriguing.
We know that Morgoth wanted to rape Lúthien (“Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark than any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor. Thus he was beguiled by his own malice, for he watched her, leaving her free for awhile, and taking secret pleasure in his thought.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)) and that, while the above passage implies that Morgoth only ever wanted to rape Lúthien and no other, that is not true: he also attempted to rape Arien, the Maia of the Sun, in order specifically to break her: “though he attempted to ravish Arien, this was to destroy and ‘distain’ her, not to beget fiery offspring” (HoME X, p. 405, fn omitted).
Sauron, meanwhile, is described thus: “Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.” (Sil, QS, ch. 18) I do not think that it would be either out-of-character for Sauron or “out-of-world” for the Legendarium (especially as Sauron used to be Morgoth’s second-in-command in Angband) to assume that Sauron raped Celebrimbor in order to break him or just because he’s an obvious sadist who would enjoy every last second of it, or had others rape Celebrimbor as grisly a method of torture—and then turned him into his banner to show the Elves what he’d done, and dishonour Celebrimbor even further in death.
(Note that it is a common misconception that Elves die when raped. As per HoME X, p. 228 (a text likely from the late 1950s: HoME X, p. 199), this only applies to married Elves raped by someone who is not their spouse: “there is no record of any among the Elves that took another’s spouse by force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so forced would have rejected bodily life and passed to Mandos.” (Emphasis mine) This is confirmed by the fact that in a later (from 1959–1960: HoME XI, p. 359–360) text, Eöl rapes unmarried Aredhel and Aredhel survives: “Eöl found Irith, the sister of King Turgon, astray in the wild near his dwelling, and he took her to wife by force: a very wicked deed in the eyes of the Eldar.” (HoME XI, p. 409, fn omitted, emphasis mine) Note the same expression used to describe a rape.)
This post turned out longer than I planned. I’ve speculated on two possible associations that the imagery of St Sebastian and the character and story of Celebrimbor invite. Do you have other ideas? Why do you think that Tolkien chose this imagery?
Sources:
- Unfinished Tales of Númenor & Middle-earth, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2014 (softcover) [cited as: UT].
- The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien, HarperCollins 2007 (softcover) [cited as: LOTR].
- The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins, ebook edition February 2011, version 2019-01-09 [cited as: Sil].
- Morgoth’s Ring, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME X].
- The War of the Jewels, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME XI].
2024.05.18 19:47 LadybugOnABoat Will I ever stop wishing for someone else?
Tl;dr my husband was awful for the first 9 years of our marriage. Now he is changing and I should be thrilled, but I am not. Will I ever stop wishing for something else?
I 33F have been married for almost 9 years to my husband 31M. It has been rough. We have almost separated/ taught our divorce 3 times. We have two children together and that is what has motivated me to stay. Two years ago I found out that he was on dating apps and looking at garbage on the internet the entirety of our marriage/ dating. It was shocking. He told me he never met anyone or formed a relationship. I tried to leave and he begged and said he would change. Small changes but nothing lasting. Then I told him in the fall I feel so lonely and realized I was so far away from him emotionally that I started having feelings for another man. Nothing acted on- it was just a shock to my system that really woke me up to how far gone I was. Again he begged and pleaded. Went back to old ways of constant video games, not helping with our kids, and just overall not really being here when he is home. He was cruel and pulled me away from my family when my mother was terminally ill. He gaslit me and made me feel so bad for many years. I thought I was crazy and I didn’t share with anyone what was going on for many years.
Fast forward to now. We had a huge blowup and finally went to counseling ( we had tried before twice and then he started refusing to go). The counseling is going well but this is HARD. I see him making positive changes. He is also going to personal counseling to deal with some of his personal trauma from his childhood. He is much more involved with our kids. He washes dishes, helps around the house, and has gotten rid of 90% of his video game stuff and only plays when we are both okay with it. The reality is my heart is just not in it. And I feel like total garbage. He is on cloud 9 feeling like he has a second chance at happiness, and I am afraid and waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the inevitable moment when he backslides and things go back like they always have. Except I am another year or two older, our kids are another few years living in a dysfunctional household. I just need to vent and get some of this off my chest. Part of me wishes he would go ahead and fail so I can just move on with my life. We tried to have a talk about it all last night and I could see I was hurting him when I shared how I feel so I quit talking and we ended it on a semi good note of just giving each other breathing room.
I feel like I will get questions about the man I have feelings for so I will just give detail now. Nothing physical ever happened. It is just the way I feel around him that is like nothing I have ever experienced. I am at such peace- I feel like I can just be myself. Just talking or even the simplest thing fills me up in a way I can’t describe. We work cows together with my family, or go do yard work- he just feels like a partner and a friend. Someone I can come alongside and do life with. He has been around my extended family often but is about to start a new job 2 hours away and I feel once he is away it will be a lot easier to maintain boundaries. I am never alone with him, we no longer text or send funny reels on social media. I sent him a message yesterday telling him I need him to essentially break my heart by telling me we could never be together and he could never love me as more than a sister. He did that and it hurt. It really hurt me because I had thought maybe down the road after healing from my marriage and working on myself… just the hope of knowing there could be a person out there to love me the right way gave me joy.
I know staying in my marriage and fighting for my family is the right thing to do. My heart is just hurting terribly. Will I always have this longing to be with someone else? Why can’t I find peace with my husband when he is doing and saying all the right things?
submitted by LadybugOnABoat to relationships [link] [comments]
I 33F have been married for almost 9 years to my husband 31M. It has been rough. We have almost separated/ taught our divorce 3 times. We have two children together and that is what has motivated me to stay. Two years ago I found out that he was on dating apps and looking at garbage on the internet the entirety of our marriage/ dating. It was shocking. He told me he never met anyone or formed a relationship. I tried to leave and he begged and said he would change. Small changes but nothing lasting. Then I told him in the fall I feel so lonely and realized I was so far away from him emotionally that I started having feelings for another man. Nothing acted on- it was just a shock to my system that really woke me up to how far gone I was. Again he begged and pleaded. Went back to old ways of constant video games, not helping with our kids, and just overall not really being here when he is home. He was cruel and pulled me away from my family when my mother was terminally ill. He gaslit me and made me feel so bad for many years. I thought I was crazy and I didn’t share with anyone what was going on for many years.
Fast forward to now. We had a huge blowup and finally went to counseling ( we had tried before twice and then he started refusing to go). The counseling is going well but this is HARD. I see him making positive changes. He is also going to personal counseling to deal with some of his personal trauma from his childhood. He is much more involved with our kids. He washes dishes, helps around the house, and has gotten rid of 90% of his video game stuff and only plays when we are both okay with it. The reality is my heart is just not in it. And I feel like total garbage. He is on cloud 9 feeling like he has a second chance at happiness, and I am afraid and waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the inevitable moment when he backslides and things go back like they always have. Except I am another year or two older, our kids are another few years living in a dysfunctional household. I just need to vent and get some of this off my chest. Part of me wishes he would go ahead and fail so I can just move on with my life. We tried to have a talk about it all last night and I could see I was hurting him when I shared how I feel so I quit talking and we ended it on a semi good note of just giving each other breathing room.
I feel like I will get questions about the man I have feelings for so I will just give detail now. Nothing physical ever happened. It is just the way I feel around him that is like nothing I have ever experienced. I am at such peace- I feel like I can just be myself. Just talking or even the simplest thing fills me up in a way I can’t describe. We work cows together with my family, or go do yard work- he just feels like a partner and a friend. Someone I can come alongside and do life with. He has been around my extended family often but is about to start a new job 2 hours away and I feel once he is away it will be a lot easier to maintain boundaries. I am never alone with him, we no longer text or send funny reels on social media. I sent him a message yesterday telling him I need him to essentially break my heart by telling me we could never be together and he could never love me as more than a sister. He did that and it hurt. It really hurt me because I had thought maybe down the road after healing from my marriage and working on myself… just the hope of knowing there could be a person out there to love me the right way gave me joy.
I know staying in my marriage and fighting for my family is the right thing to do. My heart is just hurting terribly. Will I always have this longing to be with someone else? Why can’t I find peace with my husband when he is doing and saying all the right things?
2024.05.18 19:27 Yurii_S_Kh Monotheism. Part 2: Judaism
 | Part 1 submitted by Yurii_S_Kh to SophiaWisdomOfGod [link] [comments] Judaism: a Retreat from Biblical Monotheism The history of the Jewish people is clearly divided into two periods: before and after the expiatory death of Jesus Christ. As the Sacrifice for the sins of the world had not yet been carried out, Old Testament history continued, the entire meaning of which consisted in waiting and preparation to meet the coming Savior. Messianic expectations were particularly pronounced during the last decades before the arrival of the Savior into the world. People not only in Jerusalem, but also in other cities and villages of Palestine, waited for the Messiah foretold in the Holy Scripture. Christ and the Pharisees Time was fulfilled. The Messiah came, but Jewish leaders, Pharisees, and Sadducees condemned him to death. But why were the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes offended? Why was it enough for the Samaritan woman to reveal the secret side of her life for her to gladly believe that the traveler standing beside her, weary from the road and asking her for water, was Christ (see John 4:42)? Why did the Pharisees and scribes, who were witnesses to the magnificent miracles performed by Jesus and knew the Scriptures better than anyone else, stubbornly refuse to recognize Christ? Finally, one more question: why did they hate Him, despite the fact that he delivered many people from terrible disease and suffering? The answer must be sought in the peculiarities and character of the spiritual life of the leaders of Israel. Religious life demands of a person self-attentiveness, moral sensitivity, humility, and pure intentions. Without this, the heart gradually hardens. A change inevitably occurs, the consequences of which are spiritual death. Already before the beginning of our Savior’s Gospel of the Heavenly Kingdom, the Jews had begun to imagine the Messiah as a powerful earthly king, who would exalt them above all nations and make them wealthy and powerful. This concept of the Messiah corresponded to their spiritual and moral condition. For a proper understanding of the prophecy inspired by the Holy Spirit, not doctrinal erudition, but pure, uncorrupted faith was necessary. The consciousness of lawyers and scribes, corrupted by sin, did not notice the parts of the Old Testament in which the spiritual qualities of the promised Messiah are given: "behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech. 9:9); " Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth" (Isa. 42:1-3; cf.: Matt. 12:20). Despite all the seemingly multifaceted events preceding the trial of the Savior of the world, there is only one reason for such a grave sin to have been committed—the people were rooted in sin and loved it. They seethed with anger at He who had come to the world to conquer and destroy sin. After Christ the Messiah, who came to save the world, was slandered, profaned, and put to death, the spiritual death of the chosen people began. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke to the Hebrews directly, "He that hateth me hateth my Father also" (John 15:23). This means that the monotheism of the Hebrew leaders became entirely formalistic. In literature, Old Testament religion, which ends with the conclusion of the New Testament, and Judaism, are often confused. This association is completely wrong. The expectation of the Messiah, which permeated the centuries-long history of the religion of the descendants of the Prophet Moses, ended. The goals and aspirations of the Hebrews, led by the Pharisees and Sadducees, stayed on Earth. Earthly well-being, wealth, success, and power became core values. In keeping with these, they imagined the anticipated Messiah. However, the prophets foretold the coming of another Messiah—the Suffering Messiah. The Prophet Isaiah, who is called the "Old Testament Evangelist" (see Saint Jerome, Letter to Paulinus) because of his many prophesies and the precision of their fulfillment in Jesus Christ, speaks about this with impressive clarity and precision. What then is the true Messiah? "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth… for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand" (Isa. 53:7-10). Were the Jews familiar with this chapter of the great prophet? Not all of them. Usually during weekly readings at the synagogue this chapter is omitted. Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of Rosa Price, who survived the horrors of several Nazi concentration camps and accepted Jesus Christ. Her daughter became a follower of the Savior Jesus, but she adhered to old misconceptions. "I ran to the rabbi. He would tell me different Scriptures with which to challenge my family. In response, they would give me five more. At the urging of my family, I asked the rabbi about Isaiah 53. He said, “No Jew reads that, especially not a Jewish woman.” So I couldn’t read it. The same for Psalm 22. There are 328 prophecies of the coming of the suffering servant Messiah. I asked the rabbi about almost all of them. Finally, the rabbi told me not to come to the synagogue anymore because I had read him Isaiah 53" (Rosa Price. The Survivor // Sid Roth. They Thought for Themselves. WWP, 2007). How did the lawyers, who knew many parts of the Old Testament Bible by heart, explain the chapter? In the period of the Talmud's formation, the scribes recognized that the 53rd chapter was a prophecy of the Messiah's coming. However, beginning with the famed Hebrew exegete Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki; 1040 - 1105), rabbis assert that the 53rd chapter speaks of the Jewish people. A simple reference to the text can refute this belief.
The Forerunner of the coming of the Messiah is also mentioned in the Old Testament. "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts" (Mal. 3:1). Dwellers in Palestine knew the Holy Scripture and saw in John, who preached repentance, the Angel of the Covenant predicted by the prophets. Thus, people from all of Jerusalem and all the outskirts of the Jordan came to him (see Mark 1:5). In the holy books of the Old Testament, there are prophecies of all of the main events in the life of Jesus the Messiah. The prophet Micah identified the place of birth: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Mic. 5:2). The Word of God demonstrated the great spiritual gifts of the future Anointed One. "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isa. 11:1-2). All of this was fulfilled by Jesus: "... the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Matt. 7:28-29). Through the prophets, the Holy Spirit indicated a special distinguishing feature of the Messiah, the extraordinary power of wonderworking: "He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isa. 35:4-6). When the two men came to Jesus from John the Baptist to ask, "Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?" (Luke 7:20), the Lord before all else points to the miracles he has performed: "The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me" (Luke 7:22-23). The people knew that the Messiah would be characterized by the miracles he performed. "Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David?” (Matt. 12:22-23). A mind corrupted by sin could not notice the parts of the Old Testament in which the spiritual qualities of the promised Messiah are given: "Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech. 9:9).
What is this "central pillar" of Judaism? I will introduce an excerpt from the Tract Sabbath, with commentary from Rabbi Pinchas Kehati: "The cripple may go out with his wooden leg; such is the decree of Rabbi Meir, but Rabbi Jose prohibits it. If the wooden leg has a receptacle for pads, it is subject to defilement. Crutches are subject to defilement by being sat or trodden upon; but one may go out with them on Sabbath and enter the outer court (of the Temple). The chair and crutches of a paralytic are subject to defilement, and one must not go out with them on the Sabbath nor enter the outer court (of the Temple). Stilts are not subject to defilement, but nevertheless one must not go out with them on Sabbath." Commentary: "The cripple, a man with one amputated leg, may go out on the Sabbath on his wooden leg, an artificial leg, made according to the size of his shin. Such is the decree of Rabbi Meir, who believes that an artificial leg corresponds to footwear, while Rabbi Jose forbids the cripple from going out with his wooden leg on the Sabbath. According to him, it does not correspond to footwear because the cripple stands primarily with his hands on a cane, while the artificial leg is only for appearance's sake so that his physical handicap would go unnoticed. Thus, the artificial leg on Sabbath is seen as an unnecessary load, and it is prohibited to enter with it. According to the other point of view, Rabbi Jose agrees that the artificial leg equates to footwear, however he is afraid that the man will detach it and will carry over 4 cubits into the public domain, but Rabbi Meir does not have this fear.” I risk fatiguing the reader, but I will introduce one more place from the Talmud to fully portray the spiritual deadness of ritualism. “There are two acts constituting the transfer (of things which are prohibited) on the Sabbath, which are in turn subdivided into four for a man who finds himself inside a private domain (reshut hayachid). The two acts are, however, increased to four for a man who finds himself outside in the public domain (reshut harabim). How so? For example, a mendicant stands outside (in reshut harabim) and the master of a house inside (in reshut hayachid). The mendicant passes his hand into the house (through for example a window) and puts something into the hand of the master (let's say a basket, so that he might give him a piece of bread), or (another variation) the mendicant reaches out and takes something from the master's hand (a piece of bread). In these two cases, the mendicant is breaking the law of the Sabbath, but the host is not. Or, if the master of the house (being inside) passes his hand through a window and puts, say, a piece of bread, into the hand of the mendicant, or, having put out his hand, he takes an object (a basket) from the hands of the mendicant, who is standing outside on the street, and brings it into the house, the master of the house would have broken the law of the Sabbath, but not the mendicant. This is the first part of the Mishna, which has demonstrated to us what the “two acts” of transferring objects mean, from the position of one who is inside, and from the position of one who finds himself outside. Carrying out any of these acts on the Sabbath is prohibited" (Tract Sabbath).[1] Instead of a living faith in a merciful God and love towards one’s fellow man, entire volumes of the Talmud are filled with the sophistic disputes of various rabbinical schools over what to do with an egg laid by a chicken on the Sabbath, or about a host giving bread to a beggar, so that he does not break the Sabbath. What a huge spiritual distance there was between the prophets and the scribes! The first to shine in the faith were those who participated in the source of heavenly wisdom, while others directed their extraordinary erudition to "solving" questions irrelevant to life. The lawyers occasionally thrashed out whether one may move a ladder from one dovecote to another on feast days. It is obvious that religious life, in which ritualism is the determining principle, will become formalistic. "Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men" (Isa. 29:13). Falling away from the living source of Truth will inevitably lead to dissolution and barrenness. In medieval European church art, the contrast between Christianity and Judaism was allegorically represented in the form of two female figures: the Church and the Synagogue. The south portal of the transept (cross aisle) of the cathedral in Strasbourg (approx. 1230) is decorated with such sculptures. The woman representing the Church, clearly and confidently carries a cross in her right hand as if resting on it. The straight folds of her cloak, flowing down to the ground, make her figure solid and firm. Her head is crowned. Her gaze is cast into the distance. The figure of the synagogue holds to her body a spear broken in several places. The bend of the figure repeats the broken line. Scrolls fall out of her left hand. Her head is downcast. Her eyes are blindfolded, a symbol of spiritual darkness.
Kabbalah is divided into the contemplative (Kabbalah Iyunit) and practical (Kabbalah Maasit). The central aspect of the Kabbalah is Ein Sof (The Infinite). In contrast to the God of the Holy Scriptures, Ein Sof has no name because he is without person, unknowable, and incomprehensible. No attributes can be ascribed to him. Ein Sof makes himself known in his manifestations (not to all, but to Jewish mystics). Ein Sof's chief manifestation is the original man, Adam Kadmon. Through his emanations (flows) the ten sefirot come into being, which are the attributes of God. Ten sefirot represent the mystical body of Adam Kadmon (heavenly Adam). He appears as a result of emanation and has no image or form. The earthly Adam was created in the image of heavenly Adam. The tenth sefirot is called "the Kingdom" or Malkuth. It unites all ten sefirot. In Zohar, Malkuth—or Kingdom—denotes how the Knesset (assembly) of Israel is a mystical prototype of the House of Israel (Shekhinah). In The Dialectics of Myth (XIV. 3), Aleksei Losev writes, “As a very well-educated Jew and great expert of Kabbalistic and Talmudic literature (from which I, with the nasty habits of a European observer, sought to learn exclusively about the Neoplatonic influences in Kabbalah) told me, the essence of all Kabbalah does not at all consist in pantheism, as liberal scholars think, who compare the doctrine of Ein Sof and the Sephirot with Neo-Platonism, but rather with pan-Israelitism: the Kabbalistic God needs Israel for His own salvation, He was incarnated in Israel and became it. Therefore the myth of the world domination by a deified Israel, which is forever contained in God.” Kabbalists have established a correspondence among the different sefirot with parts of the human body. Becoming familiar with this primitive mythological arrangement of the structure of the universe, it becomes difficult to ignore the question that Kabbalists themselves do not ask: What is the source of this "knowledge"? How does one manage to conclude that the sefirot of the Crown (Keter) is the brow, the Tiferet is the chest, Victory (Netzach) and Majesty (Hod) is man's hip? The esoteric teachings of Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar are fundamentally incompatible with the biblical teaching on God, the world, man, and humanity's path to salvation. Contemplative Kabbalah represents a combination of elements of Gnosticism of the second and third centuries A.D. and Neo-Platonism. From the Gnostics, it borrows the teaching of the 10 eons, which comprise the pleroma (universal fullness). Dualism is the link between Gnostics and Kabbalists; the idea of eternal enmity began with good (light) and evil (darkness). Kabbalah's dualistic world view finds a direct expression in Sefer Yetzirah: "Also Elohim made every object, one opposite the other: good opposite evil, evil opposite good, good from good, evil from evil, the good delineates the evil and the evil delineates the good, good is kept for the good and evil is kept for the evil.” It is evident that the teaching, which ascribes evil an ontological status, leads to the justification of evil. In contrast, according to the Holy Scripture, evil was not created by God, but arose as a result of the abuse of the gift of freedom given by God to his creatures, Angels and mankind. Kabbalistic teaching is an obvious expression of pantheism, a complete retreat from monotheism. God and the world are understood as one complete whole. The world is only a manifestation of God. Pantheism is fraught with internal contradictions. Its logical consequence is inevitably first the derogation of God, and next, denial of him, because all of the world's imperfections are attributed to him. Kabbalists divide the world into male and female elements. The right and left spheres are respectively male and female. The world is presented as a loving union, as the unification of male and female elements. The relationship between the spheres is interpreted with the help of gender symbolism. Kabbalah presents itself as a fantastical mix of esoteric occultism, blended with pagan religious and philosophical ideas. It attests to a complete regression from the great and saving teachings of the Bible with its deep and sustained monotheism. Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) [1] This appears not to be a direct quote from Tract Sabbath, but commentary based on Tract Sabbath: http://www.evrey.com/sitep/talm/index.php3?trkt=shabbat&menu=19. —Trans. [2] This cite may not be accurate to the English version. —Trans. [3] Page number may not be accurate to English version.—Trans. |
2024.05.18 17:38 ThrowRA_KangarooWill My (M56) wife (F58) haven't been intimate/had sex in 10+ years. How should I move forward?
We've been married for 27 years. We have two adult children. We started our relationship just after college - I'm her second husband. We started our relationship while she was married. Met up, had sex, dates, romance. She left her first husband for me. Once we married, intamcy/sex early on wasn't bad. By my expecations then, it was great - I was having intimacy with someone! When we would be intimate, she never seemed to enjoy herself. There was no variance in the plain, vanilla act. Sometime after our 2nd child we quit having sex. Ok, perhaps not entirely at first, but certainly enough to fall in the sexless marriage category. This was six years into our marriage. I kept asking, and kept being told no more than yes. After some time, I quit asking. We became roommates and lived comfortably for many years.
I've recently started counselling for other unrelated issues. The topic of her and I came up. Through many weeks of counselling, I've come to the conclusion that after MANY years of having no intimacy, sex, or romance, I've fallen out of love. We're good friends, but not romantic partners. I told her that I no longer have romantic feelings for her. I mentioned the lack of sex. She's gone to counselling - I'm unclear what she talks about. She approached me a few weeks ago saying she was ready to try sex. I panicked and couldn't go thru with it. It just felt wrong. A few days later she noted that in counselling she identified that she started to withdraw after our second child due to image issues and how she was treated by her mom while growing up. Her mom treated her badly psychologically, and continues to as she ages.
In hindsight, sex was never really something to write home about. Very vanilla. Missionary all the way. Oral was begrudgingly performed. She was never grateful when I returned the favor. She just didn't like it. Lights off. Doors locked. Completely covered by blankets. Never saw/see each other naked in passing in bedroom or bathroom. Showered together maybe twice in all this time.
Now, this is my side. She's trying. She wants us to continue. I just completed a Love Language questionnaire for her. I'm wanting to check all the boxes to ensure I'm not missing something. I'm trying to respect our 27 years. Yet I struggle...
If this were infidelity, I'd be out in a second. But it's systematic neglect. I'm now completely uninterested in her romantically. I've tried to imagine her romantically and it's just not there. I'm strongly considering divorce, but I feel bad because she's not done anything "wrong", per se. I'm looking for input from strangers on their thoughts. We both deserve to be in a loving relationship, I just can't see it being with each other any longer. My counsellor continues to tell me I deserve to be happy. I'm failing to see a path to happy with my wife. Just more of the same - friendship. As my children are grown, there isn't an entanglement with children. I'm ready to cut ties, but I'm procrastinating as an avoidance technique, I think, to avoid the drama. My youngest asked me to pray about this. Sadly I think I have the wrong channel as I'm not materializing any guidance. My oldest asked me to talk to strangers before I do anything. I'm trying to honor their requests. I look to you (hopefully) kind strangers for advice and thoughts.
submitted by ThrowRA_KangarooWill to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
I've recently started counselling for other unrelated issues. The topic of her and I came up. Through many weeks of counselling, I've come to the conclusion that after MANY years of having no intimacy, sex, or romance, I've fallen out of love. We're good friends, but not romantic partners. I told her that I no longer have romantic feelings for her. I mentioned the lack of sex. She's gone to counselling - I'm unclear what she talks about. She approached me a few weeks ago saying she was ready to try sex. I panicked and couldn't go thru with it. It just felt wrong. A few days later she noted that in counselling she identified that she started to withdraw after our second child due to image issues and how she was treated by her mom while growing up. Her mom treated her badly psychologically, and continues to as she ages.
In hindsight, sex was never really something to write home about. Very vanilla. Missionary all the way. Oral was begrudgingly performed. She was never grateful when I returned the favor. She just didn't like it. Lights off. Doors locked. Completely covered by blankets. Never saw/see each other naked in passing in bedroom or bathroom. Showered together maybe twice in all this time.
Now, this is my side. She's trying. She wants us to continue. I just completed a Love Language questionnaire for her. I'm wanting to check all the boxes to ensure I'm not missing something. I'm trying to respect our 27 years. Yet I struggle...
If this were infidelity, I'd be out in a second. But it's systematic neglect. I'm now completely uninterested in her romantically. I've tried to imagine her romantically and it's just not there. I'm strongly considering divorce, but I feel bad because she's not done anything "wrong", per se. I'm looking for input from strangers on their thoughts. We both deserve to be in a loving relationship, I just can't see it being with each other any longer. My counsellor continues to tell me I deserve to be happy. I'm failing to see a path to happy with my wife. Just more of the same - friendship. As my children are grown, there isn't an entanglement with children. I'm ready to cut ties, but I'm procrastinating as an avoidance technique, I think, to avoid the drama. My youngest asked me to pray about this. Sadly I think I have the wrong channel as I'm not materializing any guidance. My oldest asked me to talk to strangers before I do anything. I'm trying to honor their requests. I look to you (hopefully) kind strangers for advice and thoughts.
2024.05.18 17:05 Southern_Beat6052 Arius vs Everybody
On the whole" Arius vs Everybody" debate, maybe the problem is not in what he believed ( because his beliefs DO align with how Yahshua and Yahweh define themselves and describe each other), but in how humans define and treat others considered to be lesser than or “subordinate” to in some way.
Humans can be incredibly evil in their treatment of those deemed of lesser value. See the history of indigenous people, slavery, chattel slavery, women, poor women, children, and female children across time, space, and cultures.
Perhaps they knew they would subconsciously begin to see Messiah in the same dastardly manner if they considered him to be not the Father or not equal to the Father in every way possible.
In addition, maybe the 4th century church as redefined by Constantine didn'’t want to be held accountable for how they lived and how they treated people— both openly and behind closed doors.
The same could be said of today's "Christians". People don’t want to be held accountable for who they vote for, who they partner with, how they treat their spouse, how they treat their bodies, and more importantly, how they obey or fail to obey the Father’s commands. To believe that Yahshua had to answer to Yahweh AND had to submit to Yahweh’s will before He died means that we too have to submit to Yahweh’s will and live it out, just as Messiah did. To believe that Messiah is subordinate to Yahweh and sits at his right hand ( vs in the seat as Him) suggests that it’s not enough to simply “believe” and celebrate Christ crucified.
It is also interesting to note what Yahshua said when He asked Peter who He was in Matthew 16. Peter said you are the anointed one…the Son of God. Jesus did not correct him and nor did He add any additional descriptors or persons to His identity. He blessed Peter and acknowledged that his answer (his understanding) was not of human origin, but was something that was revealed by His Father.
So to say that Jesus is Yahweh would be rebelling against what Yahweh says and revealed and what Yahshua submits to and blesses.
I am starting to see why the way is "narrow"and why only a few ( relatively speaking) will find it. The masses, once again, are not right.
Forsaking the doctrine of man ( God= Father=Son= HolySpirit) is hard to do. Submitting to the will of Yahweh, following the example of His Son, and being guided daily by His Counsel (I.e., His Spirit) requires discipline of the flesh and truly yielding one’s heart, mind, and soul.
Even the demons and the adversary believe and confess that Jesus has authority. So no real relationship or fruits of value can be produced by beliefs and confessions of guilt alone.
Yahshua believed who He said He was and STILL had to grow in wisdom. He STILL had to submit to the will of the Father. He had no authority that was not GIVEN TO Him. There is no Yahweh beside Yahweh. No human has seen Yahweh and lived. We ( Humanity) have seen His SON. Yahshua is now seated at Yahweh's right hand. As the Son of Yahweh, Yahshua has been given all authority of everything concerning the blue marble and it’s inhabitants. And every one of our knees will bow down to Him in one way or another.
And on a secular note, just as people in the US can’t just walk into the White House to meet with the President without making an appointment, going through the proper screening, getting the right credentials or passes, being on the list, wearing appropriate clothing, getting to the White House at the set time, entering the right door, waiting in the right room, etc., we can’t really enter the presence of Yahweh without going through Yahshua, being cleansed in mind, body, and soul, getting in right relationship, following the guidelines/ obeying Yahweh’s commands, bearing the characteristics defined in the sermon on the Mount, living out of faith in Yahweh’s faithfulness, etc.
There is no harm in agreeing with and allowing our egos to let Yahweh and Yahshua be who they consistently say they are, not who we...or Paul...or John...or Constantine describe them to be.
Going back to the Hebrew Bible ( including those books removed in later centuries), there is no harm in taking Yahweh and Yahshua at their recorded words.
submitted by Southern_Beat6052 to religion [link] [comments]
Humans can be incredibly evil in their treatment of those deemed of lesser value. See the history of indigenous people, slavery, chattel slavery, women, poor women, children, and female children across time, space, and cultures.
Perhaps they knew they would subconsciously begin to see Messiah in the same dastardly manner if they considered him to be not the Father or not equal to the Father in every way possible.
In addition, maybe the 4th century church as redefined by Constantine didn'’t want to be held accountable for how they lived and how they treated people— both openly and behind closed doors.
The same could be said of today's "Christians". People don’t want to be held accountable for who they vote for, who they partner with, how they treat their spouse, how they treat their bodies, and more importantly, how they obey or fail to obey the Father’s commands. To believe that Yahshua had to answer to Yahweh AND had to submit to Yahweh’s will before He died means that we too have to submit to Yahweh’s will and live it out, just as Messiah did. To believe that Messiah is subordinate to Yahweh and sits at his right hand ( vs in the seat as Him) suggests that it’s not enough to simply “believe” and celebrate Christ crucified.
It is also interesting to note what Yahshua said when He asked Peter who He was in Matthew 16. Peter said you are the anointed one…the Son of God. Jesus did not correct him and nor did He add any additional descriptors or persons to His identity. He blessed Peter and acknowledged that his answer (his understanding) was not of human origin, but was something that was revealed by His Father.
So to say that Jesus is Yahweh would be rebelling against what Yahweh says and revealed and what Yahshua submits to and blesses.
I am starting to see why the way is "narrow"and why only a few ( relatively speaking) will find it. The masses, once again, are not right.
Forsaking the doctrine of man ( God= Father=Son= HolySpirit) is hard to do. Submitting to the will of Yahweh, following the example of His Son, and being guided daily by His Counsel (I.e., His Spirit) requires discipline of the flesh and truly yielding one’s heart, mind, and soul.
Even the demons and the adversary believe and confess that Jesus has authority. So no real relationship or fruits of value can be produced by beliefs and confessions of guilt alone.
Yahshua believed who He said He was and STILL had to grow in wisdom. He STILL had to submit to the will of the Father. He had no authority that was not GIVEN TO Him. There is no Yahweh beside Yahweh. No human has seen Yahweh and lived. We ( Humanity) have seen His SON. Yahshua is now seated at Yahweh's right hand. As the Son of Yahweh, Yahshua has been given all authority of everything concerning the blue marble and it’s inhabitants. And every one of our knees will bow down to Him in one way or another.
And on a secular note, just as people in the US can’t just walk into the White House to meet with the President without making an appointment, going through the proper screening, getting the right credentials or passes, being on the list, wearing appropriate clothing, getting to the White House at the set time, entering the right door, waiting in the right room, etc., we can’t really enter the presence of Yahweh without going through Yahshua, being cleansed in mind, body, and soul, getting in right relationship, following the guidelines/ obeying Yahweh’s commands, bearing the characteristics defined in the sermon on the Mount, living out of faith in Yahweh’s faithfulness, etc.
There is no harm in agreeing with and allowing our egos to let Yahweh and Yahshua be who they consistently say they are, not who we...or Paul...or John...or Constantine describe them to be.
Going back to the Hebrew Bible ( including those books removed in later centuries), there is no harm in taking Yahweh and Yahshua at their recorded words.
2024.05.18 16:14 Professional_Prune11 Escape From Heavalun Section Two: Club Chaos
Whats good buds. I hope I did not keep you all waiting too long for a new chapter. I am back with a new fun section of the interlude story between Human Trauma 2 and 3. This time we get a big peak into our leading man's mind and our leading ladies. one being a stuck-up spoiled brat, the other a gruff and too stubborn for his own good gunslinger.
Let's go save our bread
Conor slowly descended the stairs, muscling past a drunken pair of Purletric dancers loitering at the bottom. Once on the ground floor, he vanished into the crowd of undulating, grinding bodies.
None of the dancers paid him any mind as he weaved in and out of their groups. All were far too inebriated to note the predator stalking past or any weapons he carried beneath his jacket. Be it the knife on his hip, the pistol in hand, or the stun granades on his belt.
Clutching the pistol in his metallic hand, Conor wondered what the worn stippling was like to hold. It had been years since his right hand could feel, and the L1-JKL was nowhere near as sharp as when it was manufactured hundreds of standard years ago by Nekarilaqa arms.
At this point, the JKL was ancient, being over tenfold his age. But the Slug thrower was still effective and was integrally suppressed. Those who loved the weapon model would call it the Jackle; Conor was not one of those people.
He preferred to call it the Joker because the pistol was the perfect weapon for his needs or as helpful as breathing on someone. At least the suppressor would make it impossible to hear the weapons report beyond a few meters —-especially with loud base drums.
In an environment as ridiculously voluminous as the nightclub, Conor would not even be able to hear the weapon going off, much less the drunk and high partygoers keying their senses into the ear-splitting music.
Conor’s theory on the level of ignorance the inebriated attendees was given credence when he wrapped his hand on the slimy mouth of one of the Voodal mooks and sent four slugs through his back, blood and viscera showering a group of scantily clad dancers; all of them none the wiser that the warm liquid glowing neon in the club lights was the orange blood of the amphibian.
Instead of taking the time to hide the body in a trashcan like this was a B-rate hollow-flick, Conor shoved the limp body off to the side. the Voodal collapsed against the damp, durecrete wall with a dull thud.
Club security would find the body soon enough and toss it in the alleyway outback, likely assuming he passed out. Until then, the dancers would continue blissfully unaware of the cadaver in their midst. Conor just knew he would likely have to explain to Zyntle why he and Brakul were conducting business in his nightclub; that was in a way taboo for the duo.
“Good kill. Move to the right,” Brakul instructed through the radio. “Next target is lazed.”
“Copy,” Conor muttered coldly into his mask's communication device.
While he passed a pair of green-skinned Kubutals grinding hard against one another, Conor spotted Brakul's laser stock steady on the chest of the next Voodal. He moved quickly, distancing himself from the couple that was only two layers of cloth away from fucking on the dancefloor, needing to speed things up if he was going to win the bet
Once past them, Conor closed the gap between him and the next target, pulling her close. Before the woman registered that she now had a new and less-than-provocative dance partner, Conor slammed her against the wall, pushed his suppressed pistol into her groin, and stitched off four quick shots.
Usually, a bullet smashing your pelvic girdle would cause uncontrolled screaming, But with Conor's metallic elbow crushing the amphibian's trachea, she could only muster a weak croak.
As the Kyrail woman thrashed, her windpipe cracked and crackled; She struggled against Conor like an untamed Rehal: kicking, punching, clawing, all in a desperate animalistic desire to survive. But that could not last forever, and they both knew it; after half a minute, the fight in her amber eyes faded, having drained out with the blood coating her and Conor's boots.
“You better hurry it up; there are only four left,” Brakul mocked as Conor let the dead woman's corpse slump against the wall, and running her pockets.
“You could fucking help me, you Nurlik!” Conor flippantly replied while pulling a bag of visage from the woman's pocket.
“I am helping, just not too much; I still have crit riding on you failing—-remember,” Brakul sniggered.
“This was your idea,” Conor grumbled, leaving the woman gbehind and wafting past another dancer towards the next Kyrail.
Thankfully Brakul did not comment further while Conor was actively dealing with the next target; Brakul might be an asshole, but he was a professional and knew to let Conor work.
Conor covered the gang member's nose with the open bag and drove a swift knee into his grundle; the man’s autonomic functions did the rest. The strike caused them to gasp and breathe in a lungful of the acrid yellowish powder.
The amphibian coughed, bluckling over as his brain was forced to error code by the narcotic. Conor silently thanked Orphian Manufacturing that filters in his mask saved him from the zombifying cloud, unlike the other patrons within arms reach of his last target who also began to fall tot he deck.
“Do I have to remind you of our bet on the Driltol mining platform? Because last I checked, that was your idea,” Brakul commented, shifting his laser to the next target.
Conor huffed in annoyance, remembering that bet and horrible day all too well. He lost five thousand crit and his arm over the course of an hour. All because he was young, inexperienced, hot-headed, and not keeping keyed in on the task.
On top of the physical and financial damage, Conor also learned two important lessons about this line of work. Firstly, he had to stay focused on his current objective while being aware of what was happening nearby.
The second lesson he learned was to trust Brakul's wisdom and counsel. The older mercenary had a far better sense of business and an uncanny ability to tell when a gig would go bottoms up, and they needed to pop smoke.
Those lessons were things Conor still had to remind himself of regularly. He was far more reliable and wise than those days but could not hold a candle up to Brakul.
“Are there any updates on the others?” Conor questioned, slipped behind a pillar, pulling the trigger and splattering another Voodal ganger's brains on the bar, wall, and an unsepecting Farun’se.
“You better hurry up, conman. They just figured out something is going on and are starting to move,” Brakul said calmly.
Grunting to confirm he understood, Conor gave up on flowing like an unseen predator through the crowd and started to force the comparatively diminutive aliens out of the way. Sometimes speed was safety, and with his time hack being measured in seconds—now was one of those times.
Conor pushed through the last group of dancers, most falling to the ground with painful yelps. Once through, he finally had sight of the group of Kyrail. One of the Kyrail was bleeding out on the deck, and two were left standing.
One was a hulking brute with a beer gut, grey scales, and wore a tight tunic like cloth. The red scaled woman was using the older lizard like a shield, yelling something at the Voodal gangers, but the club's music drowned out her voice.
Conor had to give it to the old fool; he had some balls. Even though he was outnumbered and unarmed, he stood stalwart against the last three Voodal gangers, closing the short gap between them.
Balls or not, the Kyrail were not in a winning scenario and would be overwhelmed quickly. With their back-to-wall, Conor had to act fast; there was no way he would lose another bet. Brakul would never let him live that down.
—--
“Stay behind me,” Torkla hissed, pushing Eivaley back from the three aliens.
Eivaley clutched tightly to Torklas clothes and did what she was told. He was the champion appointed ot her by her father; and would fill most of the rolls of a champion until she found someone who could best him.
Her heart was slamming like a hammer and anvil in her chest while the three aliens cackled and kept getting closer. The only question running through her mind and body right now was, what was happening?
This was supposed to be an enjoyable trip, not whatever this nightmare was now.
Daddy had invited her to Heavalun and the COS to get a feeling for the city and the area of space his shipping company was expanding into.
Her father, Vuraley, handled all the tedious paperwork: setting up contacts, buying warehouses, hiring security, and setting up a private spaceport. All she was supposed to do was stay out of trouble, look pretty at a few meetings with clients, and stay close to her security detail.
Now Eivaley was cowering behind the back of one of her clans proudest warriors while three meter-and-a-half tall bipedal frogs brandished weapons and were threatening them. She could not imagine what Daddy would say about this when she got home. Would he cut her allowance? Not let her go out in town again? Or worst of all, not let her go out and see her friends anymore?
Either way, she was not looking forward to what he would do to her—it wasn’t like any of this was her fault.
“Oi, soljah, ‘and, ‘er ovah, and we hont ‘urt yah,” one of the grey-skinned toads croaked, pointing a pistol at Vuraley and flicking off the weapons safety.
“You had better get out of here,” Eivaley hissed reflexively, far to use to having others of her species following her everyword like gospel. “My daddy will have none of this; he will make you all regret this,”
“Stop talking,” Torkla yelled, keeping his eyes on the encroaching Voodal. “you’re not helping.”
What in the grand broods name? Torkla yelled at her. He never yelled at her, even though he had been guarding her since she was a little girl. Torkla was under Oath to obey her, and keep her safe; that includes listening to her. He should not be able to yell at her.
“Yah lil’ lady, yah should listen. We know yer daddy and don’t care, and you are worth too much to pass up,” The Voodal sniggered. “So soljah, yah gonna ‘and ‘er ovah?”
Torkla looked over the men who had paused, slinking closer, and were waiting for his answer. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Eivaley. The girl he might as well have helped raise was shaking like a leaf and needed him to be a rock right now.
“No deal,” Torkla replied, drawing a knife and readying to fight off the aliens or die trying.
The front toad clicked his tongue and languidly twirled the pistol while stepping off to the side. “Come on, no reason tah die fer ‘er. Be reasonable,”
“Torkla would never—” Eivaley started, but he yelled at her again.
“I said shut up,” Torkla barked. “You can get made at me later.”
Eivaley jumped then clutched his jacket and nodded silently, not wanting him to yell anymore. While yes she might be in charge of Torkla and the others her father assigned to her; until she found her own champion she would never have any true power.
“I said no deal,” Torkla affirmed.
The lead toad rolled his eyes and sighed while raising the weapon toward Torkla, readying to slump the stupid royal guardsman.
Once the pistol was full raised they nodded. Both accepting accepting that there was only one way this would go. One of them would end up in a body bag. While the Kyrail and Voodal had many differences this was one thing both accepted.
Neither group would detest giving someone a good death—even though both thought it would be others turn to hit the deck.
The next few seconds were some of the longest, most horrendous moments of Eivaley’s life.
Torkla roared like a beast dredged up from the bottomless dark pits of hell, shot forward, and tried to slip the pistol from the Kyrail’s grip; his fangs snapping as his potent venom trailed passed his lips.
But at his age, Torkla was not the young proud palace guard he was when he was first assigned to be Eivaley’s personal guard.
Now that he was pushing fifty, he was old, slow, and more willing than ever to lay it all on the line for the few people he was bound to protect. Right now, he regrettably could not meet the bill.
A deafening, unsuppressed shot cracked like thunder just as Torklas claws caressed the handgun. The round ripped through his palm and carved a deep canyon in the old warriors skull, showering Eivaley in blood, bone, and brain matter of the man who earlier was chuckling and asking her to dress more modestly.
The crack of the weapon turned the nightclub into pure bedlam. Drunken partygoers screamed while they shoved and trampled one another, desperately trying to get away. Their panic blaring overwhelmed the club's music and Eivaley’s screams.
As soon as the first Kyrail shot Torkla, the others tossed their bags of visage onto Eivaley, showering her in the drug that burned the image of Torkla’s canyoned skull and slumping body into her mind. An image she would remember until her dying breath.
Over her life she would se many more, and had seen hundreds if not thousands of commoners die so far. That one death meant something more to here; but how much it affected her would take many years for her to understand.
“Grab ‘er,” The lead croaker said just before the metallic hand of a massive beast grabbed his head and crushed it like an egg, blood glowing as it squirted between shining metallic fingers.
Whoever just killed the man who shot Torkla picked up the lead ganger and effortlessly tossed the corpse into another one of the gang members. As soon as he was done with that, he lifted his handgun and fired three rounds into the remaining mook, not even bothering to glance fully at them.
In her drug-induced stupor, Eivaley’s mind and body could not focus on anything beyond critical details. Sparse things that stood out so much she could never forget them.
One of the mans arms was covered in metal; whether it was armor or cybernetics, she did not know, nor could she care. At this moment, it was the shining armor of a night of yor: strong, valiant, and rescuing a damsel in distress.
The vissages causing her neurons to misfire, rocketed stories of strong brave men rushing to the rescue of the noble women when their homes were under siege. And as far as seh saw it, this situation was just that.
Her guards failed,and now as if summoned by the gods themselves a brave knight burst forth from nowhere and defied the darkness threatening the dainty princess. No it did not matter she was the 5th princess and would never be queen, just that she had her champion, and it seems that chose her.
Before the visage entirely took effect, Eivaley heard the man say a few words. It was difficult to listen to him through the skull art covered mask he wore, but her savior's voice was deep, reverberating, and filled with clear, driven intent.
“I got the girl; meet you at Stitches’s place,” the man said just as he tossed Eivaley’s now near limp body over his heavily muscled shoulder and rushed through the crowd.
The last thing Eivaley could remember before the visage sunk its fangs deep into her mind was the man kicking open the back door and rushing out into the Heavalun night, bright neon signs, and the dingy alley welcoming them into their midst.
So how did you like this one? nothing to bad right? we are just getting started, and have a fat chunk of chapters left. like my other stories, expect well-timed and thought-out violence and inter-character moments. I hope you give my new tale a chance.
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submitted by Professional_Prune11 to humansarespaceorcs [link] [comments]
Let's go save our bread
None of the dancers paid him any mind as he weaved in and out of their groups. All were far too inebriated to note the predator stalking past or any weapons he carried beneath his jacket. Be it the knife on his hip, the pistol in hand, or the stun granades on his belt.
Clutching the pistol in his metallic hand, Conor wondered what the worn stippling was like to hold. It had been years since his right hand could feel, and the L1-JKL was nowhere near as sharp as when it was manufactured hundreds of standard years ago by Nekarilaqa arms.
At this point, the JKL was ancient, being over tenfold his age. But the Slug thrower was still effective and was integrally suppressed. Those who loved the weapon model would call it the Jackle; Conor was not one of those people.
He preferred to call it the Joker because the pistol was the perfect weapon for his needs or as helpful as breathing on someone. At least the suppressor would make it impossible to hear the weapons report beyond a few meters —-especially with loud base drums.
In an environment as ridiculously voluminous as the nightclub, Conor would not even be able to hear the weapon going off, much less the drunk and high partygoers keying their senses into the ear-splitting music.
Conor’s theory on the level of ignorance the inebriated attendees was given credence when he wrapped his hand on the slimy mouth of one of the Voodal mooks and sent four slugs through his back, blood and viscera showering a group of scantily clad dancers; all of them none the wiser that the warm liquid glowing neon in the club lights was the orange blood of the amphibian.
Instead of taking the time to hide the body in a trashcan like this was a B-rate hollow-flick, Conor shoved the limp body off to the side. the Voodal collapsed against the damp, durecrete wall with a dull thud.
Club security would find the body soon enough and toss it in the alleyway outback, likely assuming he passed out. Until then, the dancers would continue blissfully unaware of the cadaver in their midst. Conor just knew he would likely have to explain to Zyntle why he and Brakul were conducting business in his nightclub; that was in a way taboo for the duo.
“Good kill. Move to the right,” Brakul instructed through the radio. “Next target is lazed.”
“Copy,” Conor muttered coldly into his mask's communication device.
While he passed a pair of green-skinned Kubutals grinding hard against one another, Conor spotted Brakul's laser stock steady on the chest of the next Voodal. He moved quickly, distancing himself from the couple that was only two layers of cloth away from fucking on the dancefloor, needing to speed things up if he was going to win the bet
Once past them, Conor closed the gap between him and the next target, pulling her close. Before the woman registered that she now had a new and less-than-provocative dance partner, Conor slammed her against the wall, pushed his suppressed pistol into her groin, and stitched off four quick shots.
Usually, a bullet smashing your pelvic girdle would cause uncontrolled screaming, But with Conor's metallic elbow crushing the amphibian's trachea, she could only muster a weak croak.
As the Kyrail woman thrashed, her windpipe cracked and crackled; She struggled against Conor like an untamed Rehal: kicking, punching, clawing, all in a desperate animalistic desire to survive. But that could not last forever, and they both knew it; after half a minute, the fight in her amber eyes faded, having drained out with the blood coating her and Conor's boots.
“You better hurry it up; there are only four left,” Brakul mocked as Conor let the dead woman's corpse slump against the wall, and running her pockets.
“You could fucking help me, you Nurlik!” Conor flippantly replied while pulling a bag of visage from the woman's pocket.
“I am helping, just not too much; I still have crit riding on you failing—-remember,” Brakul sniggered.
“This was your idea,” Conor grumbled, leaving the woman gbehind and wafting past another dancer towards the next Kyrail.
Thankfully Brakul did not comment further while Conor was actively dealing with the next target; Brakul might be an asshole, but he was a professional and knew to let Conor work.
Conor covered the gang member's nose with the open bag and drove a swift knee into his grundle; the man’s autonomic functions did the rest. The strike caused them to gasp and breathe in a lungful of the acrid yellowish powder.
The amphibian coughed, bluckling over as his brain was forced to error code by the narcotic. Conor silently thanked Orphian Manufacturing that filters in his mask saved him from the zombifying cloud, unlike the other patrons within arms reach of his last target who also began to fall tot he deck.
“Do I have to remind you of our bet on the Driltol mining platform? Because last I checked, that was your idea,” Brakul commented, shifting his laser to the next target.
Conor huffed in annoyance, remembering that bet and horrible day all too well. He lost five thousand crit and his arm over the course of an hour. All because he was young, inexperienced, hot-headed, and not keeping keyed in on the task.
On top of the physical and financial damage, Conor also learned two important lessons about this line of work. Firstly, he had to stay focused on his current objective while being aware of what was happening nearby.
The second lesson he learned was to trust Brakul's wisdom and counsel. The older mercenary had a far better sense of business and an uncanny ability to tell when a gig would go bottoms up, and they needed to pop smoke.
Those lessons were things Conor still had to remind himself of regularly. He was far more reliable and wise than those days but could not hold a candle up to Brakul.
“Are there any updates on the others?” Conor questioned, slipped behind a pillar, pulling the trigger and splattering another Voodal ganger's brains on the bar, wall, and an unsepecting Farun’se.
“You better hurry up, conman. They just figured out something is going on and are starting to move,” Brakul said calmly.
Grunting to confirm he understood, Conor gave up on flowing like an unseen predator through the crowd and started to force the comparatively diminutive aliens out of the way. Sometimes speed was safety, and with his time hack being measured in seconds—now was one of those times.
Conor pushed through the last group of dancers, most falling to the ground with painful yelps. Once through, he finally had sight of the group of Kyrail. One of the Kyrail was bleeding out on the deck, and two were left standing.
One was a hulking brute with a beer gut, grey scales, and wore a tight tunic like cloth. The red scaled woman was using the older lizard like a shield, yelling something at the Voodal gangers, but the club's music drowned out her voice.
Conor had to give it to the old fool; he had some balls. Even though he was outnumbered and unarmed, he stood stalwart against the last three Voodal gangers, closing the short gap between them.
Balls or not, the Kyrail were not in a winning scenario and would be overwhelmed quickly. With their back-to-wall, Conor had to act fast; there was no way he would lose another bet. Brakul would never let him live that down.
—--
“Stay behind me,” Torkla hissed, pushing Eivaley back from the three aliens.
Eivaley clutched tightly to Torklas clothes and did what she was told. He was the champion appointed ot her by her father; and would fill most of the rolls of a champion until she found someone who could best him.
Her heart was slamming like a hammer and anvil in her chest while the three aliens cackled and kept getting closer. The only question running through her mind and body right now was, what was happening?
This was supposed to be an enjoyable trip, not whatever this nightmare was now.
Daddy had invited her to Heavalun and the COS to get a feeling for the city and the area of space his shipping company was expanding into.
Her father, Vuraley, handled all the tedious paperwork: setting up contacts, buying warehouses, hiring security, and setting up a private spaceport. All she was supposed to do was stay out of trouble, look pretty at a few meetings with clients, and stay close to her security detail.
Now Eivaley was cowering behind the back of one of her clans proudest warriors while three meter-and-a-half tall bipedal frogs brandished weapons and were threatening them. She could not imagine what Daddy would say about this when she got home. Would he cut her allowance? Not let her go out in town again? Or worst of all, not let her go out and see her friends anymore?
Either way, she was not looking forward to what he would do to her—it wasn’t like any of this was her fault.
“Oi, soljah, ‘and, ‘er ovah, and we hont ‘urt yah,” one of the grey-skinned toads croaked, pointing a pistol at Vuraley and flicking off the weapons safety.
“You had better get out of here,” Eivaley hissed reflexively, far to use to having others of her species following her everyword like gospel. “My daddy will have none of this; he will make you all regret this,”
“Stop talking,” Torkla yelled, keeping his eyes on the encroaching Voodal. “you’re not helping.”
What in the grand broods name? Torkla yelled at her. He never yelled at her, even though he had been guarding her since she was a little girl. Torkla was under Oath to obey her, and keep her safe; that includes listening to her. He should not be able to yell at her.
“Yah lil’ lady, yah should listen. We know yer daddy and don’t care, and you are worth too much to pass up,” The Voodal sniggered. “So soljah, yah gonna ‘and ‘er ovah?”
Torkla looked over the men who had paused, slinking closer, and were waiting for his answer. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Eivaley. The girl he might as well have helped raise was shaking like a leaf and needed him to be a rock right now.
“No deal,” Torkla replied, drawing a knife and readying to fight off the aliens or die trying.
The front toad clicked his tongue and languidly twirled the pistol while stepping off to the side. “Come on, no reason tah die fer ‘er. Be reasonable,”
“Torkla would never—” Eivaley started, but he yelled at her again.
“I said shut up,” Torkla barked. “You can get made at me later.”
Eivaley jumped then clutched his jacket and nodded silently, not wanting him to yell anymore. While yes she might be in charge of Torkla and the others her father assigned to her; until she found her own champion she would never have any true power.
“I said no deal,” Torkla affirmed.
The lead toad rolled his eyes and sighed while raising the weapon toward Torkla, readying to slump the stupid royal guardsman.
Once the pistol was full raised they nodded. Both accepting accepting that there was only one way this would go. One of them would end up in a body bag. While the Kyrail and Voodal had many differences this was one thing both accepted.
Neither group would detest giving someone a good death—even though both thought it would be others turn to hit the deck.
The next few seconds were some of the longest, most horrendous moments of Eivaley’s life.
Torkla roared like a beast dredged up from the bottomless dark pits of hell, shot forward, and tried to slip the pistol from the Kyrail’s grip; his fangs snapping as his potent venom trailed passed his lips.
But at his age, Torkla was not the young proud palace guard he was when he was first assigned to be Eivaley’s personal guard.
Now that he was pushing fifty, he was old, slow, and more willing than ever to lay it all on the line for the few people he was bound to protect. Right now, he regrettably could not meet the bill.
A deafening, unsuppressed shot cracked like thunder just as Torklas claws caressed the handgun. The round ripped through his palm and carved a deep canyon in the old warriors skull, showering Eivaley in blood, bone, and brain matter of the man who earlier was chuckling and asking her to dress more modestly.
The crack of the weapon turned the nightclub into pure bedlam. Drunken partygoers screamed while they shoved and trampled one another, desperately trying to get away. Their panic blaring overwhelmed the club's music and Eivaley’s screams.
As soon as the first Kyrail shot Torkla, the others tossed their bags of visage onto Eivaley, showering her in the drug that burned the image of Torkla’s canyoned skull and slumping body into her mind. An image she would remember until her dying breath.
Over her life she would se many more, and had seen hundreds if not thousands of commoners die so far. That one death meant something more to here; but how much it affected her would take many years for her to understand.
“Grab ‘er,” The lead croaker said just before the metallic hand of a massive beast grabbed his head and crushed it like an egg, blood glowing as it squirted between shining metallic fingers.
Whoever just killed the man who shot Torkla picked up the lead ganger and effortlessly tossed the corpse into another one of the gang members. As soon as he was done with that, he lifted his handgun and fired three rounds into the remaining mook, not even bothering to glance fully at them.
In her drug-induced stupor, Eivaley’s mind and body could not focus on anything beyond critical details. Sparse things that stood out so much she could never forget them.
One of the mans arms was covered in metal; whether it was armor or cybernetics, she did not know, nor could she care. At this moment, it was the shining armor of a night of yor: strong, valiant, and rescuing a damsel in distress.
The vissages causing her neurons to misfire, rocketed stories of strong brave men rushing to the rescue of the noble women when their homes were under siege. And as far as seh saw it, this situation was just that.
Her guards failed,and now as if summoned by the gods themselves a brave knight burst forth from nowhere and defied the darkness threatening the dainty princess. No it did not matter she was the 5th princess and would never be queen, just that she had her champion, and it seems that chose her.
Before the visage entirely took effect, Eivaley heard the man say a few words. It was difficult to listen to him through the skull art covered mask he wore, but her savior's voice was deep, reverberating, and filled with clear, driven intent.
“I got the girl; meet you at Stitches’s place,” the man said just as he tossed Eivaley’s now near limp body over his heavily muscled shoulder and rushed through the crowd.
The last thing Eivaley could remember before the visage sunk its fangs deep into her mind was the man kicking open the back door and rushing out into the Heavalun night, bright neon signs, and the dingy alley welcoming them into their midst.
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2024.05.18 14:47 Kaelaface May 17, 2024
Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 40,000 but then dropped back below it; today it closed above 40,000 for the first time in history, ending the day at 40,003.59. This extraordinary performance means investors have confidence the Federal Reserve will get inflation under control without throwing the country into a recession. It is a triumphant vindication of the financial policies advanced by President Joe Biden and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.
In comparison to the breathless coverage of the stock market during Trump’s administration, this milestone is getting very little coverage. Under Trump, the stock market had the highest annualized gain of any Republican president since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, but at 11.8%, that annualized gain was lower than the annualized return under Democratic presidents Barack Obama (12.1%) and Bill Clinton (15.9%). Biden’s annualized return passed Trump’s in April 2024, as well.
The stock market’s performance is being ignored partly because Democrats tend to underplay the role of the stock market as an indication of economic health because they recognize it is not the only important way to think about the economy. But since he took office, Biden has also had to contend with the constant stream of outrageous news coming from the radical right.
Today is no exception. Indeed, today’s news is among the most shocking that we’ve had since Biden took office.
Yesterday evening, Jodi Kantor of the New York Times reported that in the days before Biden’s inauguration, an upside-down American flag flew in front of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito’s home. A U.S. flag flown upside down is a universal symbol of distress. In the days after the January 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump loyalists flew the upside-down flag as a symbol of “the impending death of the nation and a call to arms,” according to American studies professor Matthew Guterl.
Leading scholar of the American right Kathleen Belew explained on social media that the upside-down flag was “not just signifying that the election was ‘stolen.’ The inverted flag means the country has been overthrown (to many, if not most, on the right). This is a profound act of symbolism and appalling at the home of a Supreme Court Justice.”
For Alito to fly it was an indication that he was part of the insurrection.
In September 2021, Trump loyalist lawyer Sidney Powell, who was part of the team trying to get the results of the 2020 presidential election overturned, told a right-wing talk show host that while rioters were attacking the Capitol, she and her team were trying to get an emergency injunction to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
“We were filing a 12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don’t jive [sic] with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” she said. “And Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that.”
The plan was thwarted, she said, when then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reconvened Congress and certified Biden’s win that night. “[S]he really had to speed up reconvening Congress to get the vote going before Justice Alito might have issued an injunction to stop it all, which is what should have happened,” Powell said.
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) said today that “Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President's immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering. The Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the Court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust.”
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also called for Alito to recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election and Trump.
The potential for Alito to destroy our country in order to restore Trump to the presidency has continued. Along with Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni was in both sympathy and communication with the others trying to overturn the results of the election, as well as the three extremist justices Trump appointed, Alito has been part of a court that has delayed its decision about whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election for so long that Trump likely has won his gambit to avoid trial before the 2024 election.
When Trump claimed last October that he could not be prosecuted, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing his trial, rejected the argument in December. Trump appealed, and Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide the case immediately. The Supreme Court refused. Then, after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court unanimously affirmed Chutkan’s ruling in a February 2024 decision that legal observers praised as “thorough and compelling,” Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court then accepted his appeal and scheduled oral arguments for late April, more than a month after the original trial date set by Judge Chutkan.
The result of all this delay, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote in Politico last month, is “that a question whose answer was obvious back in December is unlikely to get that answer from the Supreme Court until its session ends in June.” “If the Court hadn’t intervened, we would already have a verdict in the January 6 case,” political strategist Michael Podhorzer wrote, “and we don’t know whether the Court would have decided to intervene without Thomas and Alito.”
When the story of Alito’s misuse of the flag broke, the justice explained himself to Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream. He blamed his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, for flying the flag, saying she had hung it up in response to a “F*** Trump” sign that was “within 50 feet of where children await the school bus in Jan[uary] 21.” He said that the neighbors are “very political” and had had “words” with the Alitos that had upset Mrs. Alito.
While Justice Alito blamed his wife for the flag, he could hardly have missed seeing it above his house. Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob wrote: “When I was an editor at the Chicago Tribune, I would’ve been in trouble if I’d let my wife put a political bumper sticker on our car. But a Supreme Court justice’s home can fly a flag of insurrection and he’s still allowed to rule on whether the head insurrectionist has immunity.”
The deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), who represents the town in which the Alitos live, noted that the local schools were all remote in January 2021 because of the pandemic. “No children were waiting for buses,” he noted. Legal analyst Elie Mystal added: “Sam Alito running to Fox News to explain how…he’s not politically motivated at all…is an under-appreciated part of this ongoing ethical disaster.”
It would be bad enough for a Supreme Court justice to announce a partisan preference. But, as David Kurtz wrote this morning at Talking Points Memo, Alito’s embrace of the insurrectionist flag “was a bold declaration of affinity for and alignment with the smoldering insurrection led by a president of the same party that had just been put down but which still loomed as a threat to civic order, the peaceful transfer of power (which at that point had still not yet happened), and the rule of law.”
The call is coming from inside the house.
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/17/dow-jones-average-40000/
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-performance-under-president-donald-trump-dow-jones-sp500-2021-1-1029987163
https://www.usbank.com/investing/financial-perspectives/market-news/stock-market-under-biden.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/justice-alito-upside-down-flag.html
https://www.newsweek.com/sidney-powell-drags-justice-samuel-alito-supreme-court-january-6-mess-1632896
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/06/politics/trump-immunity-court-of-appeals/index.html
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/02/supreme-court-takes-up-trump-immunity-appeal/
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/12/court-wont-hear-trump-immunity-dispute-now/
https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/1AC5A0E7090A350785258ABB0052D942/$file/23-3228-2039001.pdf
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/24/trumps-crazy-argument-for-immunity-heads-to-the-high-court-00153954
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/us/upside-down-american-flag-alito.html
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/the-insurrectionists-in-our-midst
(X):
bresreports/status/1791487198182703348
bresreports/status/1791574545754710428
RonFilipkowski/status/1441958869442260994
kathleen_belew/status/1791538901435220063
mike_podhorzestatus/1791568604682391969
ShannonBream/status/1791483561675022624
Fritschnestatus/1791530635502239985
ElieNYC/status/1791616565697241566
markjacob16/status/1791479696661631337
submitted by Kaelaface to HeatherCoxRichardson [link] [comments]
In comparison to the breathless coverage of the stock market during Trump’s administration, this milestone is getting very little coverage. Under Trump, the stock market had the highest annualized gain of any Republican president since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, but at 11.8%, that annualized gain was lower than the annualized return under Democratic presidents Barack Obama (12.1%) and Bill Clinton (15.9%). Biden’s annualized return passed Trump’s in April 2024, as well.
The stock market’s performance is being ignored partly because Democrats tend to underplay the role of the stock market as an indication of economic health because they recognize it is not the only important way to think about the economy. But since he took office, Biden has also had to contend with the constant stream of outrageous news coming from the radical right.
Today is no exception. Indeed, today’s news is among the most shocking that we’ve had since Biden took office.
Yesterday evening, Jodi Kantor of the New York Times reported that in the days before Biden’s inauguration, an upside-down American flag flew in front of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito’s home. A U.S. flag flown upside down is a universal symbol of distress. In the days after the January 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump loyalists flew the upside-down flag as a symbol of “the impending death of the nation and a call to arms,” according to American studies professor Matthew Guterl.
Leading scholar of the American right Kathleen Belew explained on social media that the upside-down flag was “not just signifying that the election was ‘stolen.’ The inverted flag means the country has been overthrown (to many, if not most, on the right). This is a profound act of symbolism and appalling at the home of a Supreme Court Justice.”
For Alito to fly it was an indication that he was part of the insurrection.
In September 2021, Trump loyalist lawyer Sidney Powell, who was part of the team trying to get the results of the 2020 presidential election overturned, told a right-wing talk show host that while rioters were attacking the Capitol, she and her team were trying to get an emergency injunction to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
“We were filing a 12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don’t jive [sic] with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” she said. “And Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that.”
The plan was thwarted, she said, when then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reconvened Congress and certified Biden’s win that night. “[S]he really had to speed up reconvening Congress to get the vote going before Justice Alito might have issued an injunction to stop it all, which is what should have happened,” Powell said.
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) said today that “Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President's immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering. The Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the Court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust.”
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also called for Alito to recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election and Trump.
The potential for Alito to destroy our country in order to restore Trump to the presidency has continued. Along with Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni was in both sympathy and communication with the others trying to overturn the results of the election, as well as the three extremist justices Trump appointed, Alito has been part of a court that has delayed its decision about whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election for so long that Trump likely has won his gambit to avoid trial before the 2024 election.
When Trump claimed last October that he could not be prosecuted, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing his trial, rejected the argument in December. Trump appealed, and Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide the case immediately. The Supreme Court refused. Then, after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court unanimously affirmed Chutkan’s ruling in a February 2024 decision that legal observers praised as “thorough and compelling,” Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court then accepted his appeal and scheduled oral arguments for late April, more than a month after the original trial date set by Judge Chutkan.
The result of all this delay, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote in Politico last month, is “that a question whose answer was obvious back in December is unlikely to get that answer from the Supreme Court until its session ends in June.” “If the Court hadn’t intervened, we would already have a verdict in the January 6 case,” political strategist Michael Podhorzer wrote, “and we don’t know whether the Court would have decided to intervene without Thomas and Alito.”
When the story of Alito’s misuse of the flag broke, the justice explained himself to Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream. He blamed his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, for flying the flag, saying she had hung it up in response to a “F*** Trump” sign that was “within 50 feet of where children await the school bus in Jan[uary] 21.” He said that the neighbors are “very political” and had had “words” with the Alitos that had upset Mrs. Alito.
While Justice Alito blamed his wife for the flag, he could hardly have missed seeing it above his house. Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob wrote: “When I was an editor at the Chicago Tribune, I would’ve been in trouble if I’d let my wife put a political bumper sticker on our car. But a Supreme Court justice’s home can fly a flag of insurrection and he’s still allowed to rule on whether the head insurrectionist has immunity.”
The deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), who represents the town in which the Alitos live, noted that the local schools were all remote in January 2021 because of the pandemic. “No children were waiting for buses,” he noted. Legal analyst Elie Mystal added: “Sam Alito running to Fox News to explain how…he’s not politically motivated at all…is an under-appreciated part of this ongoing ethical disaster.”
It would be bad enough for a Supreme Court justice to announce a partisan preference. But, as David Kurtz wrote this morning at Talking Points Memo, Alito’s embrace of the insurrectionist flag “was a bold declaration of affinity for and alignment with the smoldering insurrection led by a president of the same party that had just been put down but which still loomed as a threat to civic order, the peaceful transfer of power (which at that point had still not yet happened), and the rule of law.”
The call is coming from inside the house.
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/17/dow-jones-average-40000/
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-performance-under-president-donald-trump-dow-jones-sp500-2021-1-1029987163
https://www.usbank.com/investing/financial-perspectives/market-news/stock-market-under-biden.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/justice-alito-upside-down-flag.html
https://www.newsweek.com/sidney-powell-drags-justice-samuel-alito-supreme-court-january-6-mess-1632896
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/06/politics/trump-immunity-court-of-appeals/index.html
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/02/supreme-court-takes-up-trump-immunity-appeal/
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/12/court-wont-hear-trump-immunity-dispute-now/
https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/1AC5A0E7090A350785258ABB0052D942/$file/23-3228-2039001.pdf
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/24/trumps-crazy-argument-for-immunity-heads-to-the-high-court-00153954
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/us/upside-down-american-flag-alito.html
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/the-insurrectionists-in-our-midst
(X):
bresreports/status/1791487198182703348
bresreports/status/1791574545754710428
RonFilipkowski/status/1441958869442260994
kathleen_belew/status/1791538901435220063
mike_podhorzestatus/1791568604682391969
ShannonBream/status/1791483561675022624
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ElieNYC/status/1791616565697241566
markjacob16/status/1791479696661631337
2024.05.18 11:50 Ok_Bullfrog_8491 Celebrimbor, St Sebastian, and Sauron
I often think about Celebrimbor, and I simply can’t get over the obvious visual parallel with St. Sebastian. This is St Sebastian’s martyrdom: by Reni), and Mantegna).
Celebrimbor died thus: “In black anger [Sauron] turned back to battle; and bearing as a banner Celebrimbor’s body hung upon a pole, shot through with Orc-arrows, he turned upon the forces of Elrond.” (UT, p. 307–308)
The iconography (see drawings by peet, and Kaaile) is the same.
And this led me to wondering about what made Tolkien, a Catholic, decide to give his Elf who fell to Sauron’s manipulations a famous Christian martyrdom, and why St Sebastian in particular?
I don’t know enough about St Sebastian or Tolkien to do more than speculate.
First, as a hint of Celebrimbor’s feelings for fair Annatar. St. Sebastian has a strong gay association. This was so even at the turn of the 20th century: Oscar Wilde clearly loved St Sebastian and the associated iconography. Here he refers specifically to Guido Reni’s wonderful painting of St Sebastian. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, St Sebastian is highlighted in Chapter XI, the chapter about Dorian’s personal (and generally rather decadent) passions. St Sebastian also appears in Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig(Zweites Kapitel). I can see the whole thing as being a hint at Celebrimbor falling for Sauron in more ways than one, particularly given what we know of his seduction (the term used in LOTR, p. 1083) by Annatar in his “fair form” (Sil, Index of Names, entry Annatar; UT, p. 328). Sauron is said to have “used all his arts upon Celebrimbor and his fellow-smiths” (UT, p. 306). “All his arts” would include this: “Yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth, and the strength of his hidden will, that ere three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King; for flattery sweet as honey was ever on his tongue, and knowledge he had of many things yet unrevealed to Men. And seeing the favour that he had of their lord all the councillors began to fawn upon him, save one alone” (Sil, Akallabêth). To me, this passage sounds distinctly sexual, and also like something that Oscar Wilde could have written, with this imagery.
(I admit that having Celebrimbor fall in love with Annatar makes the eventual betrayal even worse. I also am aware that in one of the many different versions presented in The History of Galadriel and Celeborn, it is said that Celebrimbor loved Galadriel (UT, p. 324–325), but according to Christopher Tolkien, this “Celebrimbor is here again a jewel-smith of Gondolin, rather than one of the Fëanorians” (UT, p. 325), which is why I tend to take his characterisation here with a pinch of salt.)
The other thought I had is quite dark: rape. It’s an association that I personally feel imposes itself, in a way. “The arrow is a highly phallic image” (source) already, and there’s the image of Cupid’s two arrows, causing uncontrollable desire in one victim, and revulsion in the other. The result for the person who was shot by the second arrow was rape—or death (or transformation into a tree if your father happened to be (1) a god, and (2) nearby: Daphne). I’m not the first person to connect the iconography of St Sebastian with rape: see this (NSFW, nudity and violence) blogpost. This could be a very Tolkienian hint of what Celebrimbor suffered in his “torment” (UT, p. 307) at the hands of Sauron before his death—subtle, “clean”, deniable, but intriguing.
We know that Morgoth wanted to rape Lúthien (“Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark than any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor. Thus he was beguiled by his own malice, for he watched her, leaving her free for awhile, and taking secret pleasure in his thought.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)) and that, while the above passage implies that Morgoth only ever wanted to rape Lúthien and no other, that is not true: he also attempted to rape Arien, the Maia of the Sun, in order specifically to break her: “though he attempted to ravish Arien, this was to destroy and ‘distain’ her, not to beget fiery offspring” (HoME X, p. 405, fn omitted).
Sauron, meanwhile, is described thus: “Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.” (Sil, QS, ch. 18) I do not think that it would be either out-of-character for Sauron or “out-of-world” for the Legendarium (especially as Sauron used to be Morgoth’s second-in-command in Angband) to assume that Sauron raped Celebrimbor in order to break him or just because he’s an obvious sadist who would enjoy every last second of it, or had others rape Celebrimbor as grisly a method of torture—and then turned him into his banner to show the Elves what he’d done, and dishonour Celebrimbor even further in death.
(Note that it is a common misconception that Elves die when raped. As per HoME X, p. 228 (a text likely from the late 1950s: HoME X, p. 199), this only applies to married Elves raped by someone who is not their spouse: “there is no record of any among the Elves that took another’s spouse by force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so forced would have rejected bodily life and passed to Mandos.” (Emphasis mine) This is confirmed by the fact that in a later (from 1959–1960: HoME XI, p. 359–360) text, Eöl rapes unmarried Aredhel and Aredhel survives: “Eöl found Irith, the sister of King Turgon, astray in the wild near his dwelling, and he took her to wife by force: a very wicked deed in the eyes of the Eldar.” (HoME XI, p. 409, fn omitted, emphasis mine) Note the same expression used to describe a rape.)
This post turned out longer than I planned. I’ve speculated on two possible associations that the imagery of St Sebastian and the character and story of Celebrimbor invite. Do you have other ideas? Why do you think that Tolkien chose this imagery?
Sources:
submitted by Ok_Bullfrog_8491 to tolkienfans [link] [comments]
Celebrimbor died thus: “In black anger [Sauron] turned back to battle; and bearing as a banner Celebrimbor’s body hung upon a pole, shot through with Orc-arrows, he turned upon the forces of Elrond.” (UT, p. 307–308)
The iconography (see drawings by peet, and Kaaile) is the same.
And this led me to wondering about what made Tolkien, a Catholic, decide to give his Elf who fell to Sauron’s manipulations a famous Christian martyrdom, and why St Sebastian in particular?
I don’t know enough about St Sebastian or Tolkien to do more than speculate.
First, as a hint of Celebrimbor’s feelings for fair Annatar. St. Sebastian has a strong gay association. This was so even at the turn of the 20th century: Oscar Wilde clearly loved St Sebastian and the associated iconography. Here he refers specifically to Guido Reni’s wonderful painting of St Sebastian. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, St Sebastian is highlighted in Chapter XI, the chapter about Dorian’s personal (and generally rather decadent) passions. St Sebastian also appears in Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig(Zweites Kapitel). I can see the whole thing as being a hint at Celebrimbor falling for Sauron in more ways than one, particularly given what we know of his seduction (the term used in LOTR, p. 1083) by Annatar in his “fair form” (Sil, Index of Names, entry Annatar; UT, p. 328). Sauron is said to have “used all his arts upon Celebrimbor and his fellow-smiths” (UT, p. 306). “All his arts” would include this: “Yet such was the cunning of his mind and mouth, and the strength of his hidden will, that ere three years had passed he had become closest to the secret counsels of the King; for flattery sweet as honey was ever on his tongue, and knowledge he had of many things yet unrevealed to Men. And seeing the favour that he had of their lord all the councillors began to fawn upon him, save one alone” (Sil, Akallabêth). To me, this passage sounds distinctly sexual, and also like something that Oscar Wilde could have written, with this imagery.
(I admit that having Celebrimbor fall in love with Annatar makes the eventual betrayal even worse. I also am aware that in one of the many different versions presented in The History of Galadriel and Celeborn, it is said that Celebrimbor loved Galadriel (UT, p. 324–325), but according to Christopher Tolkien, this “Celebrimbor is here again a jewel-smith of Gondolin, rather than one of the Fëanorians” (UT, p. 325), which is why I tend to take his characterisation here with a pinch of salt.)
The other thought I had is quite dark: rape. It’s an association that I personally feel imposes itself, in a way. “The arrow is a highly phallic image” (source) already, and there’s the image of Cupid’s two arrows, causing uncontrollable desire in one victim, and revulsion in the other. The result for the person who was shot by the second arrow was rape—or death (or transformation into a tree if your father happened to be (1) a god, and (2) nearby: Daphne). I’m not the first person to connect the iconography of St Sebastian with rape: see this (NSFW, nudity and violence) blogpost. This could be a very Tolkienian hint of what Celebrimbor suffered in his “torment” (UT, p. 307) at the hands of Sauron before his death—subtle, “clean”, deniable, but intriguing.
We know that Morgoth wanted to rape Lúthien (“Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark than any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor. Thus he was beguiled by his own malice, for he watched her, leaving her free for awhile, and taking secret pleasure in his thought.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)) and that, while the above passage implies that Morgoth only ever wanted to rape Lúthien and no other, that is not true: he also attempted to rape Arien, the Maia of the Sun, in order specifically to break her: “though he attempted to ravish Arien, this was to destroy and ‘distain’ her, not to beget fiery offspring” (HoME X, p. 405, fn omitted).
Sauron, meanwhile, is described thus: “Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.” (Sil, QS, ch. 18) I do not think that it would be either out-of-character for Sauron or “out-of-world” for the Legendarium (especially as Sauron used to be Morgoth’s second-in-command in Angband) to assume that Sauron raped Celebrimbor in order to break him or just because he’s an obvious sadist who would enjoy every last second of it, or had others rape Celebrimbor as grisly a method of torture—and then turned him into his banner to show the Elves what he’d done, and dishonour Celebrimbor even further in death.
(Note that it is a common misconception that Elves die when raped. As per HoME X, p. 228 (a text likely from the late 1950s: HoME X, p. 199), this only applies to married Elves raped by someone who is not their spouse: “there is no record of any among the Elves that took another’s spouse by force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so forced would have rejected bodily life and passed to Mandos.” (Emphasis mine) This is confirmed by the fact that in a later (from 1959–1960: HoME XI, p. 359–360) text, Eöl rapes unmarried Aredhel and Aredhel survives: “Eöl found Irith, the sister of King Turgon, astray in the wild near his dwelling, and he took her to wife by force: a very wicked deed in the eyes of the Eldar.” (HoME XI, p. 409, fn omitted, emphasis mine) Note the same expression used to describe a rape.)
This post turned out longer than I planned. I’ve speculated on two possible associations that the imagery of St Sebastian and the character and story of Celebrimbor invite. Do you have other ideas? Why do you think that Tolkien chose this imagery?
Sources:
- Unfinished Tales of Númenor & Middle-earth, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2014 (softcover) [cited as: UT].
- The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien, HarperCollins 2007 (softcover) [cited as: LOTR].
- The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins, ebook edition February 2011, version 2019-01-09 [cited as: Sil].
- Morgoth’s Ring, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME X].
- The War of the Jewels, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME XI].
2024.05.18 09:19 terp-bick AITAH for taking 10 years to destroy my cheating, manipulative, gold-digging, attention-seeking, Instagram-obsessed, yoga-pants-wearing, Starbucks-sipping, entitled, narcissistic ex-wife?
I (M35) was married to my high school sweetheart, Sarah (F33), for 10 years. We had two beautiful, perfectly-coiffed, and impeccably-dressed kids, a boy, and a girl, aged 7 and 9. We lived in a stunning, meticulously-decorated, and Instagram-worthy suburban house, complete with a white picket fence, a perfectly-manicured lawn, and a three-car garage. From the outside, our life looked like a Pinterest-perfect, #blessed, and #couplegoals. But behind closed doors, Sarah was cheating on me with her chiseled, bro-tastic, and Instagram-famous personal trainer, Alex.
I found out about the affair when I stumbled upon a suspicious text message on her phone, which was conveniently left on the kitchen counter, next to her abandoned Starbucks latte and a crumpled up receipt from Victoria's Secret. I was devastated, but not surprised. I had been suspecting something was off when she started "working out" three times a day and "needing" to buy new yoga pants every week.
I confronted her, and she broke down, begging for forgiveness and promising to do anything to save our marriage. "I'll do whatever it takes, baby," she said, tears streaming down her face. "I'll give up my phone, my social media, my friends, my family – anything to prove my love for you. You can control everything about me, and I'll do whatever you say. Just please, don't leave me."
I was torn, but I wanted to save our marriage and family, so I agreed to counseling. But little did I know, Sarah had already planned her escape route, complete with a secret bank account, a hidden email address, and a burner phone.
However, Sarah continued to see Alex behind my back, and I discovered more evidence, including a compromising selfie on her phone, featuring Alex's chiseled abs and Sarah's strategically-placed hand. I was trapped in a toxic cycle of emotional manipulation, gaslighting, and passive-aggressive Instagram posts.
One day, I came home from work to find the house empty, except for a cryptic note on the kitchen counter, written in red lipstick: "You'll never find me." I was heartbroken, but I knew I had to take action. I hired a private investigator, who uncovered a trail of deceit, including secret credit cards, hidden bank accounts, and a secret apartment in the city.
The divorce was a war zone. Sarah's lawyer was a ruthless, ambulance-chasing, divorce-mill operator, who played the victim card, claiming I was abusive, controlling, and emotionally unavailable. The judge, unfortunately, bought into her lies, and I was left with minimal visitation rights, a hefty alimony payment, and a court order to attend anger management classes.
I was furious, but I didn't give up. I focused on rebuilding my life, and I threw myself into my work as a software engineer. I started taking on more projects, and my career began to flourish. I also started taking care of my physical and mental health, losing 30 pounds, growing a majestic beard, and finding solace in meditation, yoga, and craft beer brewing.
Meanwhile, Sarah's life began to unravel. She lost her job due to her constant absences, poor performance, and excessive social media use. Alex, her lover, dumped her, and she was left alone with our kids, who were now acting out, getting into trouble at school, and demanding participation trophies.
I, on the other hand, was thriving. I landed a high-paying job at a prestigious tech firm, started investing in real estate, and bought a beautiful, modern, minimalist condo with a rooftop pool and a view of the city skyline. I started dating a wonderful, intelligent, and independent woman who loved and respected me for who I am.
As the years passed, Sarah's situation continued to deteriorate. She was evicted from our old house, and she had to move into a small, dingy apartment with the kids. I, however, was living large, traveling the world, and documenting my #blessed life on Instagram.
The final blow came when Sarah tried to modify the custody agreement, claiming I was an unfit parent. But I was prepared. I had been documenting her neglect and abuse of our children, and I presented a mountain of evidence to the court. The judge was appalled, and Sarah's visitation rights were severely limited.
Today, I'm living my best life. I've forgiven Sarah, but I'll never forget the pain she caused me. I've moved on, and I'm grateful for the lessons I learned from our toxic marriage. I'm proud of myself for not giving up and for coming out on top.
Edit: I want to thank everyone for their support and kind words. I'm not gloating about my success, but I do hope my story serves as a warning to those who think they can cheat, manipulate, and destroy their partner's life without consequences. Karma is real, folks!
submitted by terp-bick to AITAH [link] [comments]
I found out about the affair when I stumbled upon a suspicious text message on her phone, which was conveniently left on the kitchen counter, next to her abandoned Starbucks latte and a crumpled up receipt from Victoria's Secret. I was devastated, but not surprised. I had been suspecting something was off when she started "working out" three times a day and "needing" to buy new yoga pants every week.
I confronted her, and she broke down, begging for forgiveness and promising to do anything to save our marriage. "I'll do whatever it takes, baby," she said, tears streaming down her face. "I'll give up my phone, my social media, my friends, my family – anything to prove my love for you. You can control everything about me, and I'll do whatever you say. Just please, don't leave me."
I was torn, but I wanted to save our marriage and family, so I agreed to counseling. But little did I know, Sarah had already planned her escape route, complete with a secret bank account, a hidden email address, and a burner phone.
However, Sarah continued to see Alex behind my back, and I discovered more evidence, including a compromising selfie on her phone, featuring Alex's chiseled abs and Sarah's strategically-placed hand. I was trapped in a toxic cycle of emotional manipulation, gaslighting, and passive-aggressive Instagram posts.
One day, I came home from work to find the house empty, except for a cryptic note on the kitchen counter, written in red lipstick: "You'll never find me." I was heartbroken, but I knew I had to take action. I hired a private investigator, who uncovered a trail of deceit, including secret credit cards, hidden bank accounts, and a secret apartment in the city.
The divorce was a war zone. Sarah's lawyer was a ruthless, ambulance-chasing, divorce-mill operator, who played the victim card, claiming I was abusive, controlling, and emotionally unavailable. The judge, unfortunately, bought into her lies, and I was left with minimal visitation rights, a hefty alimony payment, and a court order to attend anger management classes.
I was furious, but I didn't give up. I focused on rebuilding my life, and I threw myself into my work as a software engineer. I started taking on more projects, and my career began to flourish. I also started taking care of my physical and mental health, losing 30 pounds, growing a majestic beard, and finding solace in meditation, yoga, and craft beer brewing.
Meanwhile, Sarah's life began to unravel. She lost her job due to her constant absences, poor performance, and excessive social media use. Alex, her lover, dumped her, and she was left alone with our kids, who were now acting out, getting into trouble at school, and demanding participation trophies.
I, on the other hand, was thriving. I landed a high-paying job at a prestigious tech firm, started investing in real estate, and bought a beautiful, modern, minimalist condo with a rooftop pool and a view of the city skyline. I started dating a wonderful, intelligent, and independent woman who loved and respected me for who I am.
As the years passed, Sarah's situation continued to deteriorate. She was evicted from our old house, and she had to move into a small, dingy apartment with the kids. I, however, was living large, traveling the world, and documenting my #blessed life on Instagram.
The final blow came when Sarah tried to modify the custody agreement, claiming I was an unfit parent. But I was prepared. I had been documenting her neglect and abuse of our children, and I presented a mountain of evidence to the court. The judge was appalled, and Sarah's visitation rights were severely limited.
Today, I'm living my best life. I've forgiven Sarah, but I'll never forget the pain she caused me. I've moved on, and I'm grateful for the lessons I learned from our toxic marriage. I'm proud of myself for not giving up and for coming out on top.
Edit: I want to thank everyone for their support and kind words. I'm not gloating about my success, but I do hope my story serves as a warning to those who think they can cheat, manipulate, and destroy their partner's life without consequences. Karma is real, folks!
2024.05.18 06:56 EsotericaBaphy Dragonball Rework Ideas
Dragon Ball Rework Ideas
To preface: This is mainly a bunch of mental notes and what I recall from conversations I've had with people concerning an AU project I may work on... I consider myself a fan of DB, but over the years I have drifted away from the modern stuff. I may catch the newest movie but that's about it. Despite this, I just let loose on the topic of a rework, sending walls of text to people randomly when I get an idea. To supplement myself I have started to read DB from the beginning, refreshing myself on details and whatnot, and keeping track of stuff like characters, locations, items, techniques, etc just for personal reference. With that out of the way I should probably get to the actual ideas...
I'll start off with ki and related systems: Taking inspiration from stuff like chakra points and mind field theories. Basically, all living things have ki points throughout their body; lying on/within vital organs and the primary joints. Connected via ki channels, and assisted in regulation by the "Threads of Preservation", which are mapped onto the lymph system. The ki points spread throughout the body generate an aura that can indicate one's physical health, but can also be utilized to enhance one's presence and the impact of melee attacks. Situated on the brain, is a ki point that generates the mind aura that can indicate mental health/state and is the center of psychic abilities; being more "malleable" than the bodily aura, it can be cast out like fishing rod or net to grab things and link one's mind to another. When these auras are used in tandem, one is able to fly. It can be pictured as the bodily aura being used to suspend yourself, manipulating the air around you, while the mind aura pulls/pushes you away from things. To use ki directly, your own life energy, it is imperative to have a moderate ability to visualize things; as using ki relies on moving it through your system. In the case of a beam attack, it is energy from ki points, through the interconnecting channels, to the ends of your extremities and out at a frequency/intensity that is destructive. Healing is done by a similar process but at a much more game output, with the intent of transferring it to another person's system. Stuff like ki balls and discs are released from the body, and then guided by the mental aura; unless released and just let fly on its own. To strengthen one's abilities with ki, mental exercises can help, plus general physical training to build mind-muscle connections/control and flexibility. Strenuous physical activity also widens the channels between ki points, allowing for easier flow. Ki points can be expanded, but some people are unfortunately born with smaller ki points, limiting their potential storage and output. These people often fall back on different methods of combat, or if they retain a sizable brain ki point, focus on psychic abilities and training. The art of shapeshifting, demonstrated by characters like Oolong and Puar, is a rare affinity. Wherein a person can manipulate the structure of their ki system, altering their appearance as their body conforms to the new configuration. This process is not permanent, lest the shapeshifter has great force of will, since the structure of one's ki system will always want to return to its natural/stable state. As forcing the channels to lengthen or shorten, does not come without strain.
I think that's all I really have regarding ki, so I'm gonna move on to some world details...
World: I'm not quite a fan of planet busters and universe shakers, at a certain point it gets boring and tedious. To majorly pull back the scale, the world I envision is a singular vast plane of ocean, with great continents and islands scattered about them (the whole world shaking would only really occur if multiple Supreme Kais and Gods of Destruction were fighting at once). Split into quadrants, monitored by the kais who help council "Kami", the medium between Heaven and the Earthly realm, as well as the appointed authority of said realm. Probably selected/voted on by the kais, who judge for a mortal's moral character, wisdom, and connection to the realm; the operating Kami can take on disciples who will be strongly considered as a candidate for the next Kami. Below Kami then are the angels, heaven-born beings who are born when positive energy rises up from the Earthly realm and clumps together. Solidifying into humanoid forms that have an innate sense of justice, and will unflinchingly carry out actions in the name of that justice. Perfect to be linked to Gods of Destructions, who are mortals, the strongest of their respective regions, that are appointed to keep the "destructive balance" in check; possessing an aura that can influence the occurrence of natural disasters and the like. As well tasked with cutting down threats to their region as a whole. The one who is in charge of coordinating and pairing Gods of Destructions with Angels is the Grand Minister. Making sure each of them have personalities that go well together. The Angels and Gods of Destruction are not weak by any measure, but simply appointed to a role with different qualifications, that put them below other beings in this universal hierarchy. With that said, Gods of Destructions take on disciples too, which will be candidates for their master's positions. Ultimately relying on the choice of Kami and the decision of the Kais. Above Kami, is another medium of Heaven and Earth, King Yemma who is of the Oni. A race created by the Kais and Supreme Kais to keep souls in check and operate the systems of heaven. King Yemma himself is both the strongest of the Oni, as well as the most wise, assuring him the role of "Judge of Souls" and "the guardian of the gate". Above Yemma are the Kais, led by Grand Kai who is the mediator between the lesser and Supreme Kais, the tiebreaker for decisions involving Earth, and the host of heavenly events/contests. Above him are the Supreme Kais who rule over the quadrants of Heaven, and answer to the absolute authority of this world— Grand Supreme Kai... I'm not personally a fan of Zeno, so I opted to omit him. I can see his appeal but he just doesn't feel right to me as the top of the ladder.
Bringing things down— way way down, below the Earthly Realm is the realm of Demons. Formerly a dark abyss before the demon Kais, born from the rotten fruit of the Kaiju trees that birth the core people, the first people that devised the Earth and the Heavens, were cast down there; because of their malicious tendencies. With their vast power they gave the abyss form and like their counterparts, created life, utilizing the negative energy which sinks down into their realm. They wait until their demonic legions are great enough to wage war on Earth and Heaven. Until then, they counsel the "Emperor" of the realm, the strongest of all demons who has a majority of the clans under his dominion. All beings except angels can convert into demons, via a ritual of renouncing the good within them to take on a more monstrous form. This action has great effects even on one's progeny (like the majority of Demon King/Chief Piccolo's offspring)...
I think that's all the major stuff regarding the world and its Hierarchy. Guess I'll clarify some things here, such as I previously mentioned the Earthly Realm is a singular plane. Meaning such things as Planet Namek and Planet Vegeta, are now islands/archipelagos far out from their mainlands (but still greatly far from other major land masses). To the point that their existence has become legend, such as talk of the mighty warrior race that bear resemblance to humans but with the tails of monkeys~ that sort of thing.
Other tangents: Speaking of the Saiyans, I want them of course to be strong though, but more in the sense that they recover quickly and have heightened instincts in regards to battle, learning new techniques relatively quickly. I actually want them to be somewhat stunted in the art of ki, primarily relying on their raw strength. As well as following very harsh and strict practices of training and diet. To the point, in this universe, if you put an alternate Goku and Vegeta next to each other, due to Goku's more relaxed and carefree approach he'd appear more filled out though still with a solid physique of course. Vegeta on the other hand would be cut/shredded to an extreme point, but as the story would go... As Vegeta gets accustomed to life on the mainland and starts to question his culture, initially sickened by Goku's indulgence, eventually gains an appreciation for the food provided by Bulma. Allowing Vegeta to fill out his frame a bit more and gain an appreciation for mainland cuisine.
To touch on Oozaru and Super Saiyan, the transformations associated with the Saiyans— I'd like them to have different utilizations. Oozaru being a symbol of the old culture, raw power and killer instinct being greatly valued. While Super Saiyan would be the symbol of a new way, one with a better balance between the body and mind. The Oozaru outclasses Super Saiyan in pure strength, but being less mobile (making it very difficult to fly and move without destroying things), limiting ki usage, and affecting the mind of the Saiyan. While the Super Saiyan promotes developing one's mind alongside their body. Its origin lies in ancient Saiyan mystic practices, relating to the harnessing of one's power. One group created the fake moon technique that would allow them to turn Oozaru at any time and help them train to control it. While the other, less prominent group were able to achieve the state of Super Saiyan. Due to the extensive work that would be required to inspire ki use among the Saiyans, it never caught on, remaining as a legend for years to come. The moon technique winning out while Super Saiyan faded, kept alive in some circles because of the mystique but unaware of what one would need to acquire that kind of form. Which leads into the irony of doing the exact opposite of what the traditional Saiyans do. Focusing just on their bodies and fighting, instead of the simple pleasures of life and growing one's connection to the world. Encapsulated in Goku, a Saiyan raised by a human and trained by others to seek strength but also enjoy the life he is living. A side note related to that - I'm picturing a semi-funny sequence where Vegeta is trying to ask around, talking with Goku's friends and family about what his life was like. Trying to figure out the key to Super Saiyan but just getting more frustrated. On the form itself, I've devised a branching scheme to it. With the base super Saiyan being a balanced refinement of the body. While the graded forms would be strength specialization with the working names “Buffed" and "Maxed". Super Saiyan 2 being the speed specialization, with the working named Charged. Super Saiyan 3 being the ki specialization, with the working name "Flow" (get it, because ki flow and his flowing hair). All of them would have different uses instead of being a linear progression of power, and with all their own drawbacks. The obvious being the graded forms losing mobility, but making them very dangerous once they get their hands on you. Vegeta would be drawn to these forms, falling back on his own Saiyan sensibilities; Trunks supporting his dad as he would be open to the possibility, unaware of the limits of Super Saiyan. While Goku and Gohan would be focused on speed specialization. I think it would be cool if these specializations could work together instead of one outright outclassing the other. For example one person could lead Cell with speed into an ambush, where he can be overpowered physically. Moving into Flow, going with the fact it's easier to use when dead, that's because the dead don't have a physical body to keep running with ki. In the afterlife, that is all you are, a battery of ki, but with a body, some ki is required to maintain the body and its functions. The form majorly improves output, opening one's channels to their limit, but if one is not careful they can easily expend too much ki... The sorta odd one out in this case is Super Saiyan 4, which relies on the Oozaru form of course. Diverting the transformation so that they remain in a more compact form. However, this form kinda acts like a cross between strength and speed specialization, with the drawback that it messes with the mind. Making it easy for a Saiyan to forget exactly what they are doing, lashing out any chance they get (even at allies), and forgetting about mercy. Goku and Vegeta see potential in this form, but are wary. Best case scenario they are facing an opponent one on one, away from a crowd, that they have no qualms with killing.
To touch on Super Saiyan God, I have to touch on Beerus, who instead of coming to Earth somewhat randomly from what I recall. He is instead visiting the Saiyans and other Z Fighters, with the intention of recruiting disciples. Pretending to go rogue, in order to make it feel like they are in a dire situation and will fight with all they have. After evaluating all their strengths, he relents and invites those he seems with great potential/likelihood of succeeding him to his temple to perform a ritual of transferring divine ki... As I'm not a fan of the original Super Saiyan God ritual and its legend. Just feels weird to have two coinciding legends, but one has more obvious relevance. So instead, Beerus would remark that he has heard of Saiyans being candidates in the past but is curious what these "new age Saiyans" are capable of. Training them to achieve their godly state (red), that can act as an alternate to their base form, which they would eventually be able to incorporate with Super Saiyan. Thus becoming Super Saiyan Gods (blue) in that sense.
The recruitment narrative would also reframe the tournament between Beerus and Champa, as teachers testing their disciples against one another.
I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do with Ultra Instinct & Ego + Beast yet, and I'm not caught up on Super as I indicated at the beginning. But I do have some closing additions...
On time Travel, there are a couple instances such as in the early series, later in the Android + Cell Saga, and that one weird Bardock special. But to tie them together I have devised the presence of general time distorting items. Which in the case of the early series and Bardock, those would be handled with the items as they naturally occur. You touch them and they bring you to a certain time, usually related to the location it is found (though in the case of Bardock, it wouldn't be him sent back, and the village would be destroyed regardless the item would just give someone the chance to make a timeline in which it was saved), but your actions would just create a new timeline. While you would be returned to your own as if nothing happened, even if you "die" while in contact with the item, it's more akin to a simulation where you would wake up afterward near the item. Bulma however would acquire one of these items and make it the core of the time machine used by Trunks, directing its effect to specific times.
On Frieza and his golden form, I imagined if he attained it while in the afterlife instead of after his revival. The reason he runs into the stamina issue is because he only used it without a physical body, similar to how there is less of an issue of ki in the afterlife, there is no stamina/ki going toward the maintenance of your body. I'm also sort of scratching out his black form because I find it boring— replacing it with the idea that his golden form is a cocoon for a subsequent form. Which he would realize is a way to conduct the demon conversion ritual. Going through with it, he would emerge in a new demonic form. Not fully confident in that idea but it's there. But I am a bit more confident in restructuring Frieza's forms, making his impish form his original form. To remove the redundancy of making so many forms to restrict himself and just have his race be naturally very adaptive. His second form would then be strength focused, his third would be speed, his fourth would be balanced, while his full power form would act in a similar way to the grade 2.
Broly, he's a Saiyan mutant. Which causes him behavioral issues and enhanced power progression. Paragus would put the device on him to make him more passive and restrict him. The device developed by Paragus and a technologically advanced race (Cheelai's in my verse, which would lead to her and Broly meeting), would help Paragus establish his own regime, attracting wayward Saiyans to conquer in his name now that Island Vegeta was destroyed and the prince is nowhere to be found. His super Saiyan form, due to his mutation, is triggered by desperation (to not displease his father) and anger instead of a greater aspiration/need. The years of being controlled by his father, essentially splitting his personality. All of his passive traits remained in his base form, while all the violent and sadistic tendencies welled up in his super Saiyan form.
Fusion, I don't think that needs to be altered much. Off the top of my head it would probably require two people matching their auras instead of power levels for the dance; synchronizing them long enough so their bodies and minds can merge temporarily.
Feel free to ask questions, I didn't cover absolutely everything ofc, so any questions, thoughts, and questions would be appreciated.
submitted by EsotericaBaphy to dbz [link] [comments]
To preface: This is mainly a bunch of mental notes and what I recall from conversations I've had with people concerning an AU project I may work on... I consider myself a fan of DB, but over the years I have drifted away from the modern stuff. I may catch the newest movie but that's about it. Despite this, I just let loose on the topic of a rework, sending walls of text to people randomly when I get an idea. To supplement myself I have started to read DB from the beginning, refreshing myself on details and whatnot, and keeping track of stuff like characters, locations, items, techniques, etc just for personal reference. With that out of the way I should probably get to the actual ideas...
I'll start off with ki and related systems: Taking inspiration from stuff like chakra points and mind field theories. Basically, all living things have ki points throughout their body; lying on/within vital organs and the primary joints. Connected via ki channels, and assisted in regulation by the "Threads of Preservation", which are mapped onto the lymph system. The ki points spread throughout the body generate an aura that can indicate one's physical health, but can also be utilized to enhance one's presence and the impact of melee attacks. Situated on the brain, is a ki point that generates the mind aura that can indicate mental health/state and is the center of psychic abilities; being more "malleable" than the bodily aura, it can be cast out like fishing rod or net to grab things and link one's mind to another. When these auras are used in tandem, one is able to fly. It can be pictured as the bodily aura being used to suspend yourself, manipulating the air around you, while the mind aura pulls/pushes you away from things. To use ki directly, your own life energy, it is imperative to have a moderate ability to visualize things; as using ki relies on moving it through your system. In the case of a beam attack, it is energy from ki points, through the interconnecting channels, to the ends of your extremities and out at a frequency/intensity that is destructive. Healing is done by a similar process but at a much more game output, with the intent of transferring it to another person's system. Stuff like ki balls and discs are released from the body, and then guided by the mental aura; unless released and just let fly on its own. To strengthen one's abilities with ki, mental exercises can help, plus general physical training to build mind-muscle connections/control and flexibility. Strenuous physical activity also widens the channels between ki points, allowing for easier flow. Ki points can be expanded, but some people are unfortunately born with smaller ki points, limiting their potential storage and output. These people often fall back on different methods of combat, or if they retain a sizable brain ki point, focus on psychic abilities and training. The art of shapeshifting, demonstrated by characters like Oolong and Puar, is a rare affinity. Wherein a person can manipulate the structure of their ki system, altering their appearance as their body conforms to the new configuration. This process is not permanent, lest the shapeshifter has great force of will, since the structure of one's ki system will always want to return to its natural/stable state. As forcing the channels to lengthen or shorten, does not come without strain.
I think that's all I really have regarding ki, so I'm gonna move on to some world details...
World: I'm not quite a fan of planet busters and universe shakers, at a certain point it gets boring and tedious. To majorly pull back the scale, the world I envision is a singular vast plane of ocean, with great continents and islands scattered about them (the whole world shaking would only really occur if multiple Supreme Kais and Gods of Destruction were fighting at once). Split into quadrants, monitored by the kais who help council "Kami", the medium between Heaven and the Earthly realm, as well as the appointed authority of said realm. Probably selected/voted on by the kais, who judge for a mortal's moral character, wisdom, and connection to the realm; the operating Kami can take on disciples who will be strongly considered as a candidate for the next Kami. Below Kami then are the angels, heaven-born beings who are born when positive energy rises up from the Earthly realm and clumps together. Solidifying into humanoid forms that have an innate sense of justice, and will unflinchingly carry out actions in the name of that justice. Perfect to be linked to Gods of Destructions, who are mortals, the strongest of their respective regions, that are appointed to keep the "destructive balance" in check; possessing an aura that can influence the occurrence of natural disasters and the like. As well tasked with cutting down threats to their region as a whole. The one who is in charge of coordinating and pairing Gods of Destructions with Angels is the Grand Minister. Making sure each of them have personalities that go well together. The Angels and Gods of Destruction are not weak by any measure, but simply appointed to a role with different qualifications, that put them below other beings in this universal hierarchy. With that said, Gods of Destructions take on disciples too, which will be candidates for their master's positions. Ultimately relying on the choice of Kami and the decision of the Kais. Above Kami, is another medium of Heaven and Earth, King Yemma who is of the Oni. A race created by the Kais and Supreme Kais to keep souls in check and operate the systems of heaven. King Yemma himself is both the strongest of the Oni, as well as the most wise, assuring him the role of "Judge of Souls" and "the guardian of the gate". Above Yemma are the Kais, led by Grand Kai who is the mediator between the lesser and Supreme Kais, the tiebreaker for decisions involving Earth, and the host of heavenly events/contests. Above him are the Supreme Kais who rule over the quadrants of Heaven, and answer to the absolute authority of this world— Grand Supreme Kai... I'm not personally a fan of Zeno, so I opted to omit him. I can see his appeal but he just doesn't feel right to me as the top of the ladder.
Bringing things down— way way down, below the Earthly Realm is the realm of Demons. Formerly a dark abyss before the demon Kais, born from the rotten fruit of the Kaiju trees that birth the core people, the first people that devised the Earth and the Heavens, were cast down there; because of their malicious tendencies. With their vast power they gave the abyss form and like their counterparts, created life, utilizing the negative energy which sinks down into their realm. They wait until their demonic legions are great enough to wage war on Earth and Heaven. Until then, they counsel the "Emperor" of the realm, the strongest of all demons who has a majority of the clans under his dominion. All beings except angels can convert into demons, via a ritual of renouncing the good within them to take on a more monstrous form. This action has great effects even on one's progeny (like the majority of Demon King/Chief Piccolo's offspring)...
I think that's all the major stuff regarding the world and its Hierarchy. Guess I'll clarify some things here, such as I previously mentioned the Earthly Realm is a singular plane. Meaning such things as Planet Namek and Planet Vegeta, are now islands/archipelagos far out from their mainlands (but still greatly far from other major land masses). To the point that their existence has become legend, such as talk of the mighty warrior race that bear resemblance to humans but with the tails of monkeys~ that sort of thing.
Other tangents: Speaking of the Saiyans, I want them of course to be strong though, but more in the sense that they recover quickly and have heightened instincts in regards to battle, learning new techniques relatively quickly. I actually want them to be somewhat stunted in the art of ki, primarily relying on their raw strength. As well as following very harsh and strict practices of training and diet. To the point, in this universe, if you put an alternate Goku and Vegeta next to each other, due to Goku's more relaxed and carefree approach he'd appear more filled out though still with a solid physique of course. Vegeta on the other hand would be cut/shredded to an extreme point, but as the story would go... As Vegeta gets accustomed to life on the mainland and starts to question his culture, initially sickened by Goku's indulgence, eventually gains an appreciation for the food provided by Bulma. Allowing Vegeta to fill out his frame a bit more and gain an appreciation for mainland cuisine.
To touch on Oozaru and Super Saiyan, the transformations associated with the Saiyans— I'd like them to have different utilizations. Oozaru being a symbol of the old culture, raw power and killer instinct being greatly valued. While Super Saiyan would be the symbol of a new way, one with a better balance between the body and mind. The Oozaru outclasses Super Saiyan in pure strength, but being less mobile (making it very difficult to fly and move without destroying things), limiting ki usage, and affecting the mind of the Saiyan. While the Super Saiyan promotes developing one's mind alongside their body. Its origin lies in ancient Saiyan mystic practices, relating to the harnessing of one's power. One group created the fake moon technique that would allow them to turn Oozaru at any time and help them train to control it. While the other, less prominent group were able to achieve the state of Super Saiyan. Due to the extensive work that would be required to inspire ki use among the Saiyans, it never caught on, remaining as a legend for years to come. The moon technique winning out while Super Saiyan faded, kept alive in some circles because of the mystique but unaware of what one would need to acquire that kind of form. Which leads into the irony of doing the exact opposite of what the traditional Saiyans do. Focusing just on their bodies and fighting, instead of the simple pleasures of life and growing one's connection to the world. Encapsulated in Goku, a Saiyan raised by a human and trained by others to seek strength but also enjoy the life he is living. A side note related to that - I'm picturing a semi-funny sequence where Vegeta is trying to ask around, talking with Goku's friends and family about what his life was like. Trying to figure out the key to Super Saiyan but just getting more frustrated. On the form itself, I've devised a branching scheme to it. With the base super Saiyan being a balanced refinement of the body. While the graded forms would be strength specialization with the working names “Buffed" and "Maxed". Super Saiyan 2 being the speed specialization, with the working named Charged. Super Saiyan 3 being the ki specialization, with the working name "Flow" (get it, because ki flow and his flowing hair). All of them would have different uses instead of being a linear progression of power, and with all their own drawbacks. The obvious being the graded forms losing mobility, but making them very dangerous once they get their hands on you. Vegeta would be drawn to these forms, falling back on his own Saiyan sensibilities; Trunks supporting his dad as he would be open to the possibility, unaware of the limits of Super Saiyan. While Goku and Gohan would be focused on speed specialization. I think it would be cool if these specializations could work together instead of one outright outclassing the other. For example one person could lead Cell with speed into an ambush, where he can be overpowered physically. Moving into Flow, going with the fact it's easier to use when dead, that's because the dead don't have a physical body to keep running with ki. In the afterlife, that is all you are, a battery of ki, but with a body, some ki is required to maintain the body and its functions. The form majorly improves output, opening one's channels to their limit, but if one is not careful they can easily expend too much ki... The sorta odd one out in this case is Super Saiyan 4, which relies on the Oozaru form of course. Diverting the transformation so that they remain in a more compact form. However, this form kinda acts like a cross between strength and speed specialization, with the drawback that it messes with the mind. Making it easy for a Saiyan to forget exactly what they are doing, lashing out any chance they get (even at allies), and forgetting about mercy. Goku and Vegeta see potential in this form, but are wary. Best case scenario they are facing an opponent one on one, away from a crowd, that they have no qualms with killing.
To touch on Super Saiyan God, I have to touch on Beerus, who instead of coming to Earth somewhat randomly from what I recall. He is instead visiting the Saiyans and other Z Fighters, with the intention of recruiting disciples. Pretending to go rogue, in order to make it feel like they are in a dire situation and will fight with all they have. After evaluating all their strengths, he relents and invites those he seems with great potential/likelihood of succeeding him to his temple to perform a ritual of transferring divine ki... As I'm not a fan of the original Super Saiyan God ritual and its legend. Just feels weird to have two coinciding legends, but one has more obvious relevance. So instead, Beerus would remark that he has heard of Saiyans being candidates in the past but is curious what these "new age Saiyans" are capable of. Training them to achieve their godly state (red), that can act as an alternate to their base form, which they would eventually be able to incorporate with Super Saiyan. Thus becoming Super Saiyan Gods (blue) in that sense.
The recruitment narrative would also reframe the tournament between Beerus and Champa, as teachers testing their disciples against one another.
I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do with Ultra Instinct & Ego + Beast yet, and I'm not caught up on Super as I indicated at the beginning. But I do have some closing additions...
On time Travel, there are a couple instances such as in the early series, later in the Android + Cell Saga, and that one weird Bardock special. But to tie them together I have devised the presence of general time distorting items. Which in the case of the early series and Bardock, those would be handled with the items as they naturally occur. You touch them and they bring you to a certain time, usually related to the location it is found (though in the case of Bardock, it wouldn't be him sent back, and the village would be destroyed regardless the item would just give someone the chance to make a timeline in which it was saved), but your actions would just create a new timeline. While you would be returned to your own as if nothing happened, even if you "die" while in contact with the item, it's more akin to a simulation where you would wake up afterward near the item. Bulma however would acquire one of these items and make it the core of the time machine used by Trunks, directing its effect to specific times.
On Frieza and his golden form, I imagined if he attained it while in the afterlife instead of after his revival. The reason he runs into the stamina issue is because he only used it without a physical body, similar to how there is less of an issue of ki in the afterlife, there is no stamina/ki going toward the maintenance of your body. I'm also sort of scratching out his black form because I find it boring— replacing it with the idea that his golden form is a cocoon for a subsequent form. Which he would realize is a way to conduct the demon conversion ritual. Going through with it, he would emerge in a new demonic form. Not fully confident in that idea but it's there. But I am a bit more confident in restructuring Frieza's forms, making his impish form his original form. To remove the redundancy of making so many forms to restrict himself and just have his race be naturally very adaptive. His second form would then be strength focused, his third would be speed, his fourth would be balanced, while his full power form would act in a similar way to the grade 2.
Broly, he's a Saiyan mutant. Which causes him behavioral issues and enhanced power progression. Paragus would put the device on him to make him more passive and restrict him. The device developed by Paragus and a technologically advanced race (Cheelai's in my verse, which would lead to her and Broly meeting), would help Paragus establish his own regime, attracting wayward Saiyans to conquer in his name now that Island Vegeta was destroyed and the prince is nowhere to be found. His super Saiyan form, due to his mutation, is triggered by desperation (to not displease his father) and anger instead of a greater aspiration/need. The years of being controlled by his father, essentially splitting his personality. All of his passive traits remained in his base form, while all the violent and sadistic tendencies welled up in his super Saiyan form.
Fusion, I don't think that needs to be altered much. Off the top of my head it would probably require two people matching their auras instead of power levels for the dance; synchronizing them long enough so their bodies and minds can merge temporarily.
Feel free to ask questions, I didn't cover absolutely everything ofc, so any questions, thoughts, and questions would be appreciated.
2024.05.18 06:24 LucyAriaRose New Updates: He (42m) is so jealous of our kids and it’s starting to scare me (35f). Is this family and marriage even savable?
I am still NOT the Original Poster. That is u/ThrowRA-scarecrow. She posted in relationship_advice. Thank you to u/Direct-Caterpillar77 for the original recommendation and to u/ivy5kin for letting me know about the update
Previous BORU here. New Updates (starting with one from a few months ago and ending with one 7 days old) marked with ****\*
Mood Spoiler: utterly terrifying and disturbing
Original Post: March 16, 2024
My husband (42m) and I (35f) tried for so long to have our boys and girl. Due to a health issue my husband suffered he developed fertility issues and we had to get medical assistance to be able to have our children because if we didn’t he’d probably never have kids. So we went through fertility treatment. He desperately wanted his own biological children and we spent a fortune just to bring them into the world and now he’s jealous and distant with them?
He’s constantly in competition with his own infant children. If I hold the children he gets frustrated. Any time they take my attention away he gets completely pissy. He’s always in a foul mood, irritable and just down right nasty. I don’t understand it. Why is he like this? Our children are barely 6 months and they won’t stop crying every time he’s near. I feel like they can sense his negativity. I tried talking to him. Ive suggested he take interest in the kids and spend more time with us as a family. I know it can sometimes take a little longer for parents to bond with their children but this is down right scary to experience. He’s full of jealousy and envy. He sees our children as competition to my time and affections.
A few times now he has made comments about feeling frustrated that I still breast feed our children. The thing is we mix feed so he has had ample opportunity to feed them and he just doesn’t. He also said that this (meaning our life&our marriage after children) wasn’t what he thought it would be like. I mean what did he expect? A singular baby cries and three of them cry a lot.
We’ve been together for 8 years and married for 7 years. He wanted these children. He pushed for them and now this. I never thought this would ever be me. I am scared. I am scared for my children. I have tried talking to him but he just brushes me off. I’ve suggested counseling. He refuses. He tells me it’s all in my head. I want to save this marriage but I am scared I won’t be able to and maybe it’s not worth saving.
He comes home later everyday. He avoids us on the weekends and any time he has off. I’m not ashamed to say that I went through his phone and there are a lot flirtatious text between him and a “Jessica”. I don’t think anything has happened between them but it sure looks like they are building up to it. I haven’t said anything because I’m afraid. Where do I go with three children, with no money and no family that can help me? I haven’t worked in two years and I’ve spent all my savings on having these children. My mind is in a complete meltdown. I can’t sleep I can’t think and I’m always exhausted.
What the hell happened? Is this him now forever?
Edit: Some of you are some real evil bastards ! Stop blaming me for him mistreating me! I do not deserve to be treated this way and neither do my kids! Stop messaging me evil things!
Relevant Comments:
Examples of 'competition':
If I’m with the kids and say I’m feeding them he gets upset I’m focusing on them and not him, or as he likes to say I’m fussing over them. He expects they sleep through the night and gets upset when I’m with them instead of in bed with him. He has even made weird comments about me loving them more than him.
Did he really want kids or did YOU want kids?
Due to my husband’s fertility issues he was the one pushing for us to have kids. He knew early on that he had a health condition and wanted us to have children way earlier but I asked if we could wait but then his condition worsened so we agreed to get treatment before he couldn’t have any kids. He desperately wanted to be a father and they are biologically ours. His desire to be a father was one of the qualities I liked about him when we started dating.
I’ve always worked and the plan was for me to stay home for the first 2/3 years and perhaps work part time until the kids were school aged. But that’s out the window now because I don’t want to ever be this vulnerable! I’ve been brushing off my cv and scouring the internet for a job. I will never allow myself to be this vulnerable again.
Does he help at ALL? Do you have a support system you could go to?
He doesn’t help me at all. I take care of our kids on my own. My parents are long gone and my sister is abroad. She stayed with us for the birth and a month after the children were born. She lives in France but she’s due to return home this summer. So I know I’ll have her help when she’s back. But I’m trying not to bother her as she’s going through a divorce.
I’ve suggested couples counseling and he refuses. He says everything is in my head.
I’m actually even crying writing this but I do have a small to go bag in the trunk of my car. Just incase. I feel like I’m not being rational because he doesn’t hurt me or the kids but I feel like I’m constantly walking on eggshells. Like what happened to my happy go lucky husband? Who’s this person I’m afraid of?
Are they his biologically? Did you guys go to a support group for infertility treatment?
We didn’t use any sperm or egg donations. The kids are his and mine biologically.
We also went to a support group, two support groups actually. One of them was for couples and the other for men experiencing infertility. He also went to individual therapy to deal with his emotional issues around infertility.
Update Post: March 19, 2024 (3 days later)
Title: He’s (42m) been pinching my (35f) babies?
Thank you to the person who said I should watch his interactions with my babies more closely and frequently. Not even hours after I posted here asking for advice I caught him pinching my son!
While I was scrolling on here and replying to people I decided to check my baby monitor and I watched my husband enter our children’s room and insult them in a hushed and whispery tone. I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying but he was without a doubt telling them that he hated them and wished them dead. Then he pinched my son and my baby boy didn’t even cry which made me think he’s done this many times before.
It all happened so fast and by the time I could make sense of what was happening on the monitor he was already walking down the hallway and down the stairs. At the same time I had lept off the sofa and pretty much tackled him as he came off the stairs. We got into a physical and verbal altercation, we fought, argued and shouted for hours. I guess the police were called by the neighbors because the next thing I know the police are banging on my door. I explained the situation to the police and the officers said that they could not prove that my baby was harmed since he didn’t have a bruise and my baby monitor was only on live feed and not simultaneously recording. Eventually they got my husband to agree to pack a bag and leave. He left reluctantly.
He has since been blowing up my phone begging for forgiveness, talking about how he’s been depressed and stressed by the babies, and that his anxiety and jealousy got the best of him. I just responded once telling him to go fuck himself. I’ve also been in contact with a lawyer and she’s advised me to leave him unblocked incase he further incriminates himself. I don’t even recognize who this man is! Where did this all come from?
How did this happen? Has any other parent experienced this? How did you handle this?
Before y’all start jumping down my throat I am absolutely getting a divorce and I will do everything in my power to get full custody. I did take my children to our family doctor and they are in good health and there are no other signs of abuse. I’ve filled a report with the police and my lawyer is dealing with it. I’m also about to start the process of divorce.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: He just wants more and better access to his victims. This is someone who gets off on hurting children. Actual human beings who are stressed and depressed do not sneak around abusing children for their dopamine hits.
I’ve set the monitor up to record now! I’ve also ordered a home security system and will be installing it real soon!
On what OOP is doing to protect them:
I’m doing everything I can to protect them! This all happened a few days ago but I am in the process of getting a temporary restraining order. My lawyer is handling it and I understand it takes some time to actually get one and in the meantime I’ve been advised that I can just deny him visitation until he gets a judgement from the courts that forces me to grant him access to my babies but that takes time. So in the meantime he can’t force me or my babies to see him.
I’ve recorded every call and saved ever text. Literally documenting everything. Thankfully he’s saying and texting a goldmine of incriminating things that I hope would be sufficient information for a judge to give me and my babies a restraining/protective order and for family court to grant me primary and sole custody.
Did you tell him you saw the pinch?
Yes. He at first told me I was imagining things. Then switched to saying he was just frustrated our son wouldn’t go to sleep. Then he started saying that he was angry that our son was interrupting our “personal time” and that he was doing it on purpose because the other babies were asleep so why wasn’t he?
Honestly nothing he says makes sense to me. Like my baby boy was just laying there sleepy and he would’ve fallen back to sleep by himself that bastard actually woke him up with his pinching and insults.
He says he went in their room to check up on them and I call bullshit on that he went in there to torment my children. Who in their right mind whispers death to two sleeping babies and a another half asleep baby?!
Did he tell you that over phone or text?
This was on a call which I’ve recorded!
*****Update Post 2: April 10, 2024 (3 weeks after OG post)****\*
Title: How did it go so wrong? For my (36f) birthday he (42m) broke into the house?
Every conversation with him (42m) feels like I’m (36f) losing my mind. The only thing that has kept me semi-sane and able to track what he has been doing is my audio journal and my posts on here.
Last week it was my thirty sixth birthday. Actually I had forgotten it was my birthday and was reminded by my sister that it was in fact my birthday. I decided I couldn’t mope around the house and I got my kids dressed to go shopping and get groceries. We got back and I put away half of the groceries but my babies were fussy and so to tire them out and ready them for bed we went for a walk. When I got back home he was in the kitchen cooking and putting away some of the groceries I had left out. He greeted me and acted normal. I didn’t react because his entire demeanour was freaking me out so I played along. I went upstairs and got the kids down. I did think of walking out the front door but he was kind of anticipating it and so he was following me around and I thought in the moment that the best thing I could do was to get my kids upstairs and away from him. He said he wanted to talk and clear the air because this has “gone on too long”.
We had a long conversation and it started out reasonable but eventually spiralled out of control. We got into physical confrontation because I refused to let him stay. He tried to physically intimidate me and he, well hurt me. While he was hurting me I was still able to contact the police. It took them a excruciatingly long 20/25 minutes to get there.
So here I am sitting with two completely black and blue eyes, a busted lip, swollen face,massive knots on my head and bruises all over. I don’t know what happened to my life or how I got here but here I am. I can’t even look my neighbors in the eyes. I can’t go outside without seeing the shocked faces of people.
I have never felt so ashamed, so humiliated, so hurt and so utterly stupid. I thought I made all the right choices in life. What did I do wrong? When did it all get so fucked? I mean I think I did everything right? Like I created a stable life for myself then picked a man that at time was a very loving partner, I married that man and waited five years before even going through the process of having children with him and now once I’ve had his children he’s just beating on me and our babies?
Edit: My sister is now aware of what’s been happening and she is supporting me as best as she can. I have plans to move out but since I’m not working right now I need some time to save up.
His family is also aware. His family refused to believe that I saw him hurt our child but they can’t deny this attack now that they’ve seen my bruises. Also yes he was arrested and he was bailed out by his brother. He’s currently staying with his brother.
Relevant Comments:
I’m in contact with a dv organization that my lawyer has put me in contact with. I did have a locksmith come out and I have new locks. I also have a couple of safety locks for my windows, and security cameras around the house and I changed our security code but honestly he doesn’t give a shit.
He despite it all broke in and beat the living shit out of me.
Making the audio journal:
I really didn’t make my audio journal to use as evidence. I literally made it because he makes me feel like I’m insane! I never know which version of him I’ll get at any given time. I also keep my journal to keep track of what he says. Every conversation with him makes me lose grip of my fleeting sanity.
Leaving the house:
The biggest reason I haven’t left my home is because he would without a doubt say I abducted the children! I’m already withholding my children from him since I caught him hurting my six month old son.
On advice of my lawyer I have stayed put. It’s my best option for now and it shows that I’ve been reasonably measured in my actions.
Restraining order?
I am in the process of getting one.
Update Post 3: April 25, 2024 (15 days later, almost 6 weeks from OG post)
Title: It was all for the love of another woman? Who barely knew of his existence? He (42m) hurt my (36f) children to further his own selfish desires
I say all of this without exaggeration. I am certain he was getting ready to kill us. After nearly 8 months of turmoil I’m finally close to understanding.
My soon to be ex husband is in love with a woman he came across on social media and he has been obsessing over her for at least a year. She also happens to be a sex worker and he was paying her for her time and attention. In his mind he believed they could have a future together if only he could get rid of my children and me. Even though this woman gave him no inkling that she even wanted to be with him. He has spent so much of our money on this woman. I am at a loss for words that could accurately describe the situation. I can barely believe half of the things he’s been up to.
I’ve spent the past few weeks playing detective and I finally decided to contact “Jessica”. This is obviously not her name but I need to call her something. I contacted Jessica and at first she was very reluctant to speak to me but I literally begged her to and she was kind enough to get on the phone with me.
She told me that she had been seeing him for awhile but she stopped seeing him because he started to scare her. He was sending her unhinged messages and voicemails. He had been stalking her and trying to convince her to be with him. Jessica eventually stopped seeing him and had him blocked and I guess this is when he started to escalate from emotional abuse to physically abusing my children and myself. He was looking for a way out and in his crazy mind, killing us would free him because the only reason Jessica wouldn’t be with him was because me and my children were in the way.
During our long call I also explained to Jessica what had been happening to me and she was genuinely kind and helpful. She also agreed to speak to my lawyer and to send them the thousands of unhinged texts, voicemails and voice notes he sent her. For a little while after our conversation a part of me genuinely hated Jessica and wanted to blame her for everything but the rational part of me pushed out those unreasonable and dangerous thoughts especially after I read his disturbing texts and heard his voicemail/notes to Jessica. She has also been victimized by him.
Honestly there is nothing like listening to your husband and father of your children talk about how you and your children mean nothing to him and how he wishes you were dead. He could’ve just asked for a divorce or just got up and left. I sent him a few texts asking him why? (this was a one time thing and since then I’ve stopped all contact) Why do all of this? Why torment my babies? Why not just walk away? He responded with a message saying any conversation between us should be through our lawyers. His parents have him lawyered up. They know what he’s been up to and they’ve chosen to protect him. His father came to see me and in a not so direct way suggested he could pay me if I stopped talking about what his son has done and was planning on doing. Ever since he broke into the house and pretty much tried to kill me I’ve told anyone who’d listen what he has done. At this point even his colleagues know.
Relevant Comments:
I have emergency custody of my kids and a protective order. I’m in the process of getting two trained guard dogs haven’t gotten very far though and I have a security system.
I’m also seriously considering a gun. More than seriously actually I’ve applied for a permit. Of course I do plan on taking lessons in gun safety and training.
Be careful with the dogs, he may just kill them:
He probably would but the few seconds to minutes he needs in order to do that is perhaps the chance I need to save my children and myself.
This may seem horrible to you but I rather have them as a buffer then my children getting harmed. I of course don’t want this to happen but I’m in a situation now where I need to do everything I can to protect my children.
His parents:
Oh they really are bastards and refuse to believe their precious son could ever do the things he’s done despite the fact that I installed security cameras after I caught him abusing my babies and despite the fact that my neighbors have signed witness statements attesting to the fact that they saw him break into my house and attack me. They’ve seen the police report. They’ve seen the pictures of my battered face and bruised body. They are feigning ignorance but they know, and I know they know.
You don't want to give him ammunition in the divorce- maybe stop telling people?
Actually me telling people has been the best thing I’ve done so far. It’s what has kept me safe. My neighbors now look out for his car and call the police if they see he’s anywhere near the house.
What was he like before all of this? Were there any signs?
We’ve been married for nearly 8 years. Will actually be 8 years in 2 months. We never had any issues. Sure we had minor squabbles but that was few and far in between. Never did I have any issues that would lead me to think that he’d try to hurt us let alone kill us.
It was during my pregnancy and birth that he became verbally and emotionally abusive, this is also the time period he met Jessica and started fantasizing about running away with her. He was angry and jealous that my attention was more on the pregnancy and the babies and this built resentment towards me and my children. It also pushed him more into his obsession with Jessica and when he was also rejected by her, he spiraled into this insane mindset. At the same time he escalated into verbally and physically abusing our infant children and when I found out he hurt my children, I attacked him. I caught him hurting my son and we physically fought and my neighbors called the police and he was escorted out of the house. Then he came back and broke into the house, he attacked me and beat me into a bloody mess. He was arrested for this. I’ve since attained a lawyer and I’ve been granted emergency custody and a protective order.
Again- why isn't he in jail?
He’s out on bail.
Update Post 3: May 11, 2024 (2+ weeks later)
Editor's note: This post was deleted by reddit. I have transcribed it from this youtube video and this tiktok video
Title: My (36f) husband (42m) has been arrested for stalking and attempting to abduct his former “mistress”.
Last week Thursday at approximately 2:00 AM in the morning, my (36F) husband (42m) of nearly 8 years was arrested outside of Jessica's house, (the sex worker he met online and used to pay to spend time with him until he started to creep her out by his stalking and obsession.)
When he was arrested, they found in his truck small baggies with drug residue and they also found tools of abduction. I honestly do not know what these are exactly.
My soon to be ex FIL called me at around 4:45/4:50 AM to tell me that his son was arrested. My FIL was the one who used the term tools of abduction. When I asked him what the hell that means, he said he didn't have time for my interrogation tactics. He then asked if I could help them find a lawyer for him and to stand by his son throughout all of this. When I said to him "how the hell am I supposed to find a lawyer this early in the morning," he lost his shit and then was just screaming.
My soon to be ex MIL took over the phone, telling me that I'm a goddamn b****, and that all this is my fault. I hung up before she could say anymore.
I never knew this man to take drugs. Sure, he drank occasionally, but hard drugs? I honestly don't know what's happening anymore or how I got here. I mean it does make sense he was on cocaine the past 7/8 months now that I look back at things.
I mean, I don't even know anything about drugs to be able to recognize the behavior pattern, but once I researched it, it seemed clear. The moodiness, the disappearances, the lies, the anger, the sudden outburst and the violence- it all points to drug usage, as well as him being an abusive piece of shit.
His parents and the rest of his family had called and texted me so much abusive shit and they occasionally switched to begging me to go see him or pick up his calls, but I've mainly ignored them. I don't have the time, the energy or the love that is needed to be there for this man and his parents. I've given him eight years of my love and affection, and he spat it back into my face during the hardest and most vulnerable time of my life
Also, why would they think I'd help him after everything he's done? Especially since I think he deserves to be in jail for not only hurting my children, but also for hurting myself and Jessica.
I hope and pray he's jailed for the rest of his natural life. I mean I've tried being a good wife, but he has attacked my children. He has attacked me. He has lied and tormented us, and I'm supposed to help him?
I don't even know how I got here. How did we get here?
I've packed everything up and I'm leaving. I'm disappearing with my kids, and anything else between me and these people can be handled through my lawyer. The only person who knows where I'm moving to is my lawyer and my sister. I mean what else can I do to protect my children? His entire family blames me. And how do I keep my head high when I'm now being treated like I'm an evil and disgusting person by pretty much everyone I once called a family? These people are trying to destroy me inside and out, and I don't know how to survive them. How am I supposed to rebuild my life when they won't stop tormenting me?
In less than a year of their birth, I've managed to fail my children...
TLDR: My soon to be ex-husband was arrested while stalking his former mistress/sex worker and during his arrest they found drug residue and tools for abduction
Relevant Comments:
Change your surname/the kids' surnames:
My kids and I have double-barreled surnames (my surname and their dads) but when I can we will drop his and we’ll all go by just mine.
People blaming OOP:
The sad fucking thing it’s not only his parents. It seems like everyone is blaming me.
OOP's response to a crappy (now deleted) comment:
“ You need to discover the reasons why you failed to notice or do anything about everything that was going on with him. You have to build skills so you can take full ownership over your own life.”
This genuinely has me fucking raging right now! I feel like everyone keeps blaming me!
And I don’t know why everyone keeps blaming me for his shit! We didn’t have any problems in the previous 7 years of our marriage. He started doing drugs during my pregnancy and this is when he started to behave abnormally. I tried to get him help because I thought it was depression or the stress of being a new parent.
When I noticed his irritablity, combativeness and generally shitty behavior was more than just depression or jealousy of me spending more time with my new born children, I kicked him out, I got a lawyer and involved the police because there no way in hell I’d stay with someone who hurt my children or let him get away with it and I also made sure to get emergency custody of my children. This is also around the same time when he spiralled into using more drugs. I don’t know what else I could’ve done but I know I took all the right steps when I noticed his escalation!
I’m so sick of everyone acting like I was making him do drugs and like I’m suppose to know that he’d ruin my life after having had a good marriage before he started taking drugs and going out of his mind.
What has your lawyer said about disappearing?
I currently have emergency custody. My lawyer is the one who suggested to disappear (meaning moving to new house and not letting anyone know) because she says this is a time of great danger and I heartily agree. Since my ex-husband first went to look for me at the house but me and my children went to stay somewhere else for a few days because I was scared he’d come back after he broke into the house previously and attacked me.
submitted by LucyAriaRose to BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]
Previous BORU here. New Updates (starting with one from a few months ago and ending with one 7 days old) marked with ****\*
Read trigger warnings
Trigger Warnings: infant abuse; spousal abuse; drug use; stalking; kidnapping attemptMood Spoiler: utterly terrifying and disturbing
Original Post: March 16, 2024
My husband (42m) and I (35f) tried for so long to have our boys and girl. Due to a health issue my husband suffered he developed fertility issues and we had to get medical assistance to be able to have our children because if we didn’t he’d probably never have kids. So we went through fertility treatment. He desperately wanted his own biological children and we spent a fortune just to bring them into the world and now he’s jealous and distant with them?
He’s constantly in competition with his own infant children. If I hold the children he gets frustrated. Any time they take my attention away he gets completely pissy. He’s always in a foul mood, irritable and just down right nasty. I don’t understand it. Why is he like this? Our children are barely 6 months and they won’t stop crying every time he’s near. I feel like they can sense his negativity. I tried talking to him. Ive suggested he take interest in the kids and spend more time with us as a family. I know it can sometimes take a little longer for parents to bond with their children but this is down right scary to experience. He’s full of jealousy and envy. He sees our children as competition to my time and affections.
A few times now he has made comments about feeling frustrated that I still breast feed our children. The thing is we mix feed so he has had ample opportunity to feed them and he just doesn’t. He also said that this (meaning our life&our marriage after children) wasn’t what he thought it would be like. I mean what did he expect? A singular baby cries and three of them cry a lot.
We’ve been together for 8 years and married for 7 years. He wanted these children. He pushed for them and now this. I never thought this would ever be me. I am scared. I am scared for my children. I have tried talking to him but he just brushes me off. I’ve suggested counseling. He refuses. He tells me it’s all in my head. I want to save this marriage but I am scared I won’t be able to and maybe it’s not worth saving.
He comes home later everyday. He avoids us on the weekends and any time he has off. I’m not ashamed to say that I went through his phone and there are a lot flirtatious text between him and a “Jessica”. I don’t think anything has happened between them but it sure looks like they are building up to it. I haven’t said anything because I’m afraid. Where do I go with three children, with no money and no family that can help me? I haven’t worked in two years and I’ve spent all my savings on having these children. My mind is in a complete meltdown. I can’t sleep I can’t think and I’m always exhausted.
What the hell happened? Is this him now forever?
Edit: Some of you are some real evil bastards ! Stop blaming me for him mistreating me! I do not deserve to be treated this way and neither do my kids! Stop messaging me evil things!
Relevant Comments:
Examples of 'competition':
If I’m with the kids and say I’m feeding them he gets upset I’m focusing on them and not him, or as he likes to say I’m fussing over them. He expects they sleep through the night and gets upset when I’m with them instead of in bed with him. He has even made weird comments about me loving them more than him.
Did he really want kids or did YOU want kids?
Due to my husband’s fertility issues he was the one pushing for us to have kids. He knew early on that he had a health condition and wanted us to have children way earlier but I asked if we could wait but then his condition worsened so we agreed to get treatment before he couldn’t have any kids. He desperately wanted to be a father and they are biologically ours. His desire to be a father was one of the qualities I liked about him when we started dating.
I’ve always worked and the plan was for me to stay home for the first 2/3 years and perhaps work part time until the kids were school aged. But that’s out the window now because I don’t want to ever be this vulnerable! I’ve been brushing off my cv and scouring the internet for a job. I will never allow myself to be this vulnerable again.
Does he help at ALL? Do you have a support system you could go to?
He doesn’t help me at all. I take care of our kids on my own. My parents are long gone and my sister is abroad. She stayed with us for the birth and a month after the children were born. She lives in France but she’s due to return home this summer. So I know I’ll have her help when she’s back. But I’m trying not to bother her as she’s going through a divorce.
I’ve suggested couples counseling and he refuses. He says everything is in my head.
I’m actually even crying writing this but I do have a small to go bag in the trunk of my car. Just incase. I feel like I’m not being rational because he doesn’t hurt me or the kids but I feel like I’m constantly walking on eggshells. Like what happened to my happy go lucky husband? Who’s this person I’m afraid of?
Are they his biologically? Did you guys go to a support group for infertility treatment?
We didn’t use any sperm or egg donations. The kids are his and mine biologically.
We also went to a support group, two support groups actually. One of them was for couples and the other for men experiencing infertility. He also went to individual therapy to deal with his emotional issues around infertility.
Update Post: March 19, 2024 (3 days later)
Title: He’s (42m) been pinching my (35f) babies?
Thank you to the person who said I should watch his interactions with my babies more closely and frequently. Not even hours after I posted here asking for advice I caught him pinching my son!
While I was scrolling on here and replying to people I decided to check my baby monitor and I watched my husband enter our children’s room and insult them in a hushed and whispery tone. I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying but he was without a doubt telling them that he hated them and wished them dead. Then he pinched my son and my baby boy didn’t even cry which made me think he’s done this many times before.
It all happened so fast and by the time I could make sense of what was happening on the monitor he was already walking down the hallway and down the stairs. At the same time I had lept off the sofa and pretty much tackled him as he came off the stairs. We got into a physical and verbal altercation, we fought, argued and shouted for hours. I guess the police were called by the neighbors because the next thing I know the police are banging on my door. I explained the situation to the police and the officers said that they could not prove that my baby was harmed since he didn’t have a bruise and my baby monitor was only on live feed and not simultaneously recording. Eventually they got my husband to agree to pack a bag and leave. He left reluctantly.
He has since been blowing up my phone begging for forgiveness, talking about how he’s been depressed and stressed by the babies, and that his anxiety and jealousy got the best of him. I just responded once telling him to go fuck himself. I’ve also been in contact with a lawyer and she’s advised me to leave him unblocked incase he further incriminates himself. I don’t even recognize who this man is! Where did this all come from?
How did this happen? Has any other parent experienced this? How did you handle this?
Before y’all start jumping down my throat I am absolutely getting a divorce and I will do everything in my power to get full custody. I did take my children to our family doctor and they are in good health and there are no other signs of abuse. I’ve filled a report with the police and my lawyer is dealing with it. I’m also about to start the process of divorce.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: He just wants more and better access to his victims. This is someone who gets off on hurting children. Actual human beings who are stressed and depressed do not sneak around abusing children for their dopamine hits.
OOP: Exactly! I’m tired, stressed, depressed and I’m physically still not fully healed from the pregnancy and the cesarean birth but not once have I thought of hurting anyone let alone a baby! I don’t buy his bullshit excuses. He clearly knew what he was doing was wrong otherwise he wouldn’t have been sneaking around and being all hush hush. I do not believe him for one second. He’s a goddamn beastly man.Update the monitor to one that records:
I’ve set the monitor up to record now! I’ve also ordered a home security system and will be installing it real soon!
On what OOP is doing to protect them:
I’m doing everything I can to protect them! This all happened a few days ago but I am in the process of getting a temporary restraining order. My lawyer is handling it and I understand it takes some time to actually get one and in the meantime I’ve been advised that I can just deny him visitation until he gets a judgement from the courts that forces me to grant him access to my babies but that takes time. So in the meantime he can’t force me or my babies to see him.
I’ve recorded every call and saved ever text. Literally documenting everything. Thankfully he’s saying and texting a goldmine of incriminating things that I hope would be sufficient information for a judge to give me and my babies a restraining/protective order and for family court to grant me primary and sole custody.
Did you tell him you saw the pinch?
Yes. He at first told me I was imagining things. Then switched to saying he was just frustrated our son wouldn’t go to sleep. Then he started saying that he was angry that our son was interrupting our “personal time” and that he was doing it on purpose because the other babies were asleep so why wasn’t he?
Honestly nothing he says makes sense to me. Like my baby boy was just laying there sleepy and he would’ve fallen back to sleep by himself that bastard actually woke him up with his pinching and insults.
He says he went in their room to check up on them and I call bullshit on that he went in there to torment my children. Who in their right mind whispers death to two sleeping babies and a another half asleep baby?!
Did he tell you that over phone or text?
This was on a call which I’ve recorded!
*****Update Post 2: April 10, 2024 (3 weeks after OG post)****\*
Title: How did it go so wrong? For my (36f) birthday he (42m) broke into the house?
Every conversation with him (42m) feels like I’m (36f) losing my mind. The only thing that has kept me semi-sane and able to track what he has been doing is my audio journal and my posts on here.
Last week it was my thirty sixth birthday. Actually I had forgotten it was my birthday and was reminded by my sister that it was in fact my birthday. I decided I couldn’t mope around the house and I got my kids dressed to go shopping and get groceries. We got back and I put away half of the groceries but my babies were fussy and so to tire them out and ready them for bed we went for a walk. When I got back home he was in the kitchen cooking and putting away some of the groceries I had left out. He greeted me and acted normal. I didn’t react because his entire demeanour was freaking me out so I played along. I went upstairs and got the kids down. I did think of walking out the front door but he was kind of anticipating it and so he was following me around and I thought in the moment that the best thing I could do was to get my kids upstairs and away from him. He said he wanted to talk and clear the air because this has “gone on too long”.
We had a long conversation and it started out reasonable but eventually spiralled out of control. We got into physical confrontation because I refused to let him stay. He tried to physically intimidate me and he, well hurt me. While he was hurting me I was still able to contact the police. It took them a excruciatingly long 20/25 minutes to get there.
So here I am sitting with two completely black and blue eyes, a busted lip, swollen face,massive knots on my head and bruises all over. I don’t know what happened to my life or how I got here but here I am. I can’t even look my neighbors in the eyes. I can’t go outside without seeing the shocked faces of people.
I have never felt so ashamed, so humiliated, so hurt and so utterly stupid. I thought I made all the right choices in life. What did I do wrong? When did it all get so fucked? I mean I think I did everything right? Like I created a stable life for myself then picked a man that at time was a very loving partner, I married that man and waited five years before even going through the process of having children with him and now once I’ve had his children he’s just beating on me and our babies?
Edit: My sister is now aware of what’s been happening and she is supporting me as best as she can. I have plans to move out but since I’m not working right now I need some time to save up.
His family is also aware. His family refused to believe that I saw him hurt our child but they can’t deny this attack now that they’ve seen my bruises. Also yes he was arrested and he was bailed out by his brother. He’s currently staying with his brother.
Relevant Comments:
I’m in contact with a dv organization that my lawyer has put me in contact with. I did have a locksmith come out and I have new locks. I also have a couple of safety locks for my windows, and security cameras around the house and I changed our security code but honestly he doesn’t give a shit.
He despite it all broke in and beat the living shit out of me.
Making the audio journal:
I really didn’t make my audio journal to use as evidence. I literally made it because he makes me feel like I’m insane! I never know which version of him I’ll get at any given time. I also keep my journal to keep track of what he says. Every conversation with him makes me lose grip of my fleeting sanity.
Leaving the house:
The biggest reason I haven’t left my home is because he would without a doubt say I abducted the children! I’m already withholding my children from him since I caught him hurting my six month old son.
On advice of my lawyer I have stayed put. It’s my best option for now and it shows that I’ve been reasonably measured in my actions.
Restraining order?
I am in the process of getting one.
Update Post 3: April 25, 2024 (15 days later, almost 6 weeks from OG post)
Title: It was all for the love of another woman? Who barely knew of his existence? He (42m) hurt my (36f) children to further his own selfish desires
I say all of this without exaggeration. I am certain he was getting ready to kill us. After nearly 8 months of turmoil I’m finally close to understanding.
My soon to be ex husband is in love with a woman he came across on social media and he has been obsessing over her for at least a year. She also happens to be a sex worker and he was paying her for her time and attention. In his mind he believed they could have a future together if only he could get rid of my children and me. Even though this woman gave him no inkling that she even wanted to be with him. He has spent so much of our money on this woman. I am at a loss for words that could accurately describe the situation. I can barely believe half of the things he’s been up to.
I’ve spent the past few weeks playing detective and I finally decided to contact “Jessica”. This is obviously not her name but I need to call her something. I contacted Jessica and at first she was very reluctant to speak to me but I literally begged her to and she was kind enough to get on the phone with me.
She told me that she had been seeing him for awhile but she stopped seeing him because he started to scare her. He was sending her unhinged messages and voicemails. He had been stalking her and trying to convince her to be with him. Jessica eventually stopped seeing him and had him blocked and I guess this is when he started to escalate from emotional abuse to physically abusing my children and myself. He was looking for a way out and in his crazy mind, killing us would free him because the only reason Jessica wouldn’t be with him was because me and my children were in the way.
During our long call I also explained to Jessica what had been happening to me and she was genuinely kind and helpful. She also agreed to speak to my lawyer and to send them the thousands of unhinged texts, voicemails and voice notes he sent her. For a little while after our conversation a part of me genuinely hated Jessica and wanted to blame her for everything but the rational part of me pushed out those unreasonable and dangerous thoughts especially after I read his disturbing texts and heard his voicemail/notes to Jessica. She has also been victimized by him.
Honestly there is nothing like listening to your husband and father of your children talk about how you and your children mean nothing to him and how he wishes you were dead. He could’ve just asked for a divorce or just got up and left. I sent him a few texts asking him why? (this was a one time thing and since then I’ve stopped all contact) Why do all of this? Why torment my babies? Why not just walk away? He responded with a message saying any conversation between us should be through our lawyers. His parents have him lawyered up. They know what he’s been up to and they’ve chosen to protect him. His father came to see me and in a not so direct way suggested he could pay me if I stopped talking about what his son has done and was planning on doing. Ever since he broke into the house and pretty much tried to kill me I’ve told anyone who’d listen what he has done. At this point even his colleagues know.
Relevant Comments:
I have emergency custody of my kids and a protective order. I’m in the process of getting two trained guard dogs haven’t gotten very far though and I have a security system.
I’m also seriously considering a gun. More than seriously actually I’ve applied for a permit. Of course I do plan on taking lessons in gun safety and training.
Be careful with the dogs, he may just kill them:
He probably would but the few seconds to minutes he needs in order to do that is perhaps the chance I need to save my children and myself.
This may seem horrible to you but I rather have them as a buffer then my children getting harmed. I of course don’t want this to happen but I’m in a situation now where I need to do everything I can to protect my children.
His parents:
Oh they really are bastards and refuse to believe their precious son could ever do the things he’s done despite the fact that I installed security cameras after I caught him abusing my babies and despite the fact that my neighbors have signed witness statements attesting to the fact that they saw him break into my house and attack me. They’ve seen the police report. They’ve seen the pictures of my battered face and bruised body. They are feigning ignorance but they know, and I know they know.
You don't want to give him ammunition in the divorce- maybe stop telling people?
Actually me telling people has been the best thing I’ve done so far. It’s what has kept me safe. My neighbors now look out for his car and call the police if they see he’s anywhere near the house.
What was he like before all of this? Were there any signs?
We’ve been married for nearly 8 years. Will actually be 8 years in 2 months. We never had any issues. Sure we had minor squabbles but that was few and far in between. Never did I have any issues that would lead me to think that he’d try to hurt us let alone kill us.
It was during my pregnancy and birth that he became verbally and emotionally abusive, this is also the time period he met Jessica and started fantasizing about running away with her. He was angry and jealous that my attention was more on the pregnancy and the babies and this built resentment towards me and my children. It also pushed him more into his obsession with Jessica and when he was also rejected by her, he spiraled into this insane mindset. At the same time he escalated into verbally and physically abusing our infant children and when I found out he hurt my children, I attacked him. I caught him hurting my son and we physically fought and my neighbors called the police and he was escorted out of the house. Then he came back and broke into the house, he attacked me and beat me into a bloody mess. He was arrested for this. I’ve since attained a lawyer and I’ve been granted emergency custody and a protective order.
Again- why isn't he in jail?
He’s out on bail.
Update Post 3: May 11, 2024 (2+ weeks later)
Editor's note: This post was deleted by reddit. I have transcribed it from this youtube video and this tiktok video
Title: My (36f) husband (42m) has been arrested for stalking and attempting to abduct his former “mistress”.
Last week Thursday at approximately 2:00 AM in the morning, my (36F) husband (42m) of nearly 8 years was arrested outside of Jessica's house, (the sex worker he met online and used to pay to spend time with him until he started to creep her out by his stalking and obsession.)
When he was arrested, they found in his truck small baggies with drug residue and they also found tools of abduction. I honestly do not know what these are exactly.
My soon to be ex FIL called me at around 4:45/4:50 AM to tell me that his son was arrested. My FIL was the one who used the term tools of abduction. When I asked him what the hell that means, he said he didn't have time for my interrogation tactics. He then asked if I could help them find a lawyer for him and to stand by his son throughout all of this. When I said to him "how the hell am I supposed to find a lawyer this early in the morning," he lost his shit and then was just screaming.
My soon to be ex MIL took over the phone, telling me that I'm a goddamn b****, and that all this is my fault. I hung up before she could say anymore.
I never knew this man to take drugs. Sure, he drank occasionally, but hard drugs? I honestly don't know what's happening anymore or how I got here. I mean it does make sense he was on cocaine the past 7/8 months now that I look back at things.
I mean, I don't even know anything about drugs to be able to recognize the behavior pattern, but once I researched it, it seemed clear. The moodiness, the disappearances, the lies, the anger, the sudden outburst and the violence- it all points to drug usage, as well as him being an abusive piece of shit.
His parents and the rest of his family had called and texted me so much abusive shit and they occasionally switched to begging me to go see him or pick up his calls, but I've mainly ignored them. I don't have the time, the energy or the love that is needed to be there for this man and his parents. I've given him eight years of my love and affection, and he spat it back into my face during the hardest and most vulnerable time of my life
Also, why would they think I'd help him after everything he's done? Especially since I think he deserves to be in jail for not only hurting my children, but also for hurting myself and Jessica.
I hope and pray he's jailed for the rest of his natural life. I mean I've tried being a good wife, but he has attacked my children. He has attacked me. He has lied and tormented us, and I'm supposed to help him?
I don't even know how I got here. How did we get here?
I've packed everything up and I'm leaving. I'm disappearing with my kids, and anything else between me and these people can be handled through my lawyer. The only person who knows where I'm moving to is my lawyer and my sister. I mean what else can I do to protect my children? His entire family blames me. And how do I keep my head high when I'm now being treated like I'm an evil and disgusting person by pretty much everyone I once called a family? These people are trying to destroy me inside and out, and I don't know how to survive them. How am I supposed to rebuild my life when they won't stop tormenting me?
In less than a year of their birth, I've managed to fail my children...
TLDR: My soon to be ex-husband was arrested while stalking his former mistress/sex worker and during his arrest they found drug residue and tools for abduction
Relevant Comments:
Change your surname/the kids' surnames:
My kids and I have double-barreled surnames (my surname and their dads) but when I can we will drop his and we’ll all go by just mine.
People blaming OOP:
The sad fucking thing it’s not only his parents. It seems like everyone is blaming me.
OOP's response to a crappy (now deleted) comment:
“ You need to discover the reasons why you failed to notice or do anything about everything that was going on with him. You have to build skills so you can take full ownership over your own life.”
This genuinely has me fucking raging right now! I feel like everyone keeps blaming me!
And I don’t know why everyone keeps blaming me for his shit! We didn’t have any problems in the previous 7 years of our marriage. He started doing drugs during my pregnancy and this is when he started to behave abnormally. I tried to get him help because I thought it was depression or the stress of being a new parent.
When I noticed his irritablity, combativeness and generally shitty behavior was more than just depression or jealousy of me spending more time with my new born children, I kicked him out, I got a lawyer and involved the police because there no way in hell I’d stay with someone who hurt my children or let him get away with it and I also made sure to get emergency custody of my children. This is also around the same time when he spiralled into using more drugs. I don’t know what else I could’ve done but I know I took all the right steps when I noticed his escalation!
I’m so sick of everyone acting like I was making him do drugs and like I’m suppose to know that he’d ruin my life after having had a good marriage before he started taking drugs and going out of his mind.
What has your lawyer said about disappearing?
I currently have emergency custody. My lawyer is the one who suggested to disappear (meaning moving to new house and not letting anyone know) because she says this is a time of great danger and I heartily agree. Since my ex-husband first went to look for me at the house but me and my children went to stay somewhere else for a few days because I was scared he’d come back after he broke into the house previously and attacked me.