I (28m) I met this girl (29f) in August. She has a kid, dad is out of the picture. The kid is awesome and she treats them well. Her family is trailer trash garbage and the females in particular are the spicy ones. For a little more context, she does sex work. I have no issue with this but it is a red flag in itself on the sole fact she actively seeks out external validation and then in exchange she is literally paid to be worshipped and degrade people-cluster B personality disorder. I feel like I’m playing with fire and it just sucks because I got caught in her damn hooks and they’re already in pretty deep. I think initially I was blindsided by “growth from trauma” and “just trying to do what’s best for me and my kid” but that just seems like a fucking cop out to me. I only know one side of her story and her baby daddy “got strung out on meth” and dipped. I’m just really struggling with this because it feels genuine but sometimes feelings are too good to be true and I know I’m smarter than that. It’s a hard realization to come to man. Holy fuck. It sucks because I show her how I want to be loved and it’s just not reciprocated. I’m getting closer and closer to just snapping this line entirely. I think I can see the full picture as to how this is gonna turn out. Thanks guys. Let me know if you want more context.

I'll start this post by saying that I'm a second generation recruiter and have been in the industry for 6 years. I have done work for Meta, Forbes, and a few startups. I have always been a top performer on my team.
I HAVE NEVER ONCE GHOSTED A CANDIDATE.
The fucking clowns that you guys post about all day are exactly that. They are the result of recruiting agencies hiring people out of college enmasse and laying them off after a year of them sucking at their jobs because they were poorly trained. These people then continue to do the only thing they know how to do, recruit.
Please continue to call them out by name and company whenever you do because it's so easy to be a bad recruiter. If you're not in it because you love helping people and advocating for them then find another fucking career. I'm so sick of these idiots making us look like we don't know what we are doing.
There are so many good recruiters who push back on bullshit from managers and don't let them do whatever they want. But we speak up and sometimes we get punished for that. They then hire the people who won't resist them at all.
The core of recruiting is Talent Acquisition. I will fight all of you on this. It is NOT HR, it's a completely different space. Most recruiters I've met fucking hate HR just as badly as you do. They're soulless fiends who represent companies over people. Recruiters are quite literally the opposite of that. It's my job to make sure people are not judged based off of their name, not payed less due to the racist or exist Hiring Manager, it's my job to make sure you feel REPRESENTED and SEEN through the process.
I hope all these booger butts that make you guys feel less than human get fired and switch Industries because it should be different.
I'm sorry you guys are encountering these poor excuses for adults.

If a guy only wants to be friends with you does that mean he never found me attractive?
I was dating an intj guy, and during dates he was very affectionate, would have amazing intellectual conversations, and he would always speak of how similar we were and how well we got along. He would kiss my forehead, hold my hand etc But he always kept dates short. If I ever stayed over, in the morning it was clear he just wanted me to leave.
After dates, he took like 2 days to reply but always sent long paragraphs. But very formal ones, no flirting. Almost robotic like. We certainly had a connection but I was so confused.
One day I was brave and sent a flirty text. The text went ignored and he didn’t message me for 2 weeks before telling me he didn’t feel romantic and he didn’t think we were the right fit. Confusing as he always talked about how well we got along.
2 months later, he wanted to meet up as friends. Music gigs, took me to play golf. It was clear he was very happy to see me, hugging me a lot and subtly touching me. He even started asking questions like do I see myself having children. Some days he would send me memes and random stuff over text all day, whilst other days he’d take several days to reply
We continued to have intellectual conversations, something I loved about him and missed dearly. He showed interest in my art, my life .
Then one day, he just stopped replying.
A month later, he checked back in with a message asking about my holiday. I then responded to see how he is doing and he didn’t reply. He continues to like all my pictures
I don’t understand why I am only a friend he sporadically now reaches out to. I am an INFP, but I felt me and him really click. He agreed. But I just keep wondering if he might regret or if he’s keeping me around as undecided.
I feel really sad about it all as I really like him and I felt we were a match . I keep having this horrible thought maybe he didn’t find me attractive at all (during sex he struggled to keep it up and said he was thinking too much )

There is this girl, I have known for some time. We had a kind of online relationship / friendship, idk how to call it. In the beggining it looked like we would be togather, but I was very shy, so we met only once irl. We didn't even voice messaged each other the entire time, it was all about texting. So understandably the feelings kinda dried up - at least on her part. Now she is in a relationship with another guy, irl this time. The thing is, we still text each other, almost every day. And to be honest, I still have some feelings for her and the idea of her being with the other guy makes me mad and sad at times. Should I stop talking to her and move on ? I talked about this with her and she told me that I should do what I feel like, what my heart tells me to do, but I don't know ... Over the time we builded a really close friendship, we talk about everything, from our struggles to joys, etc. I helped her with her depression, she even told me if it wasn't for me, she would be probably dead already. What do you think ? Is it worth it to kill this very close friendship ? Should I just give it a pause for some time ? Or should I remain in contact with her and wait, until my feelings disappear too ?

About me; Married dad, home repair career, moved across country 2 years ago.
I don't expect many views here, I know I'm just whining, and I know I'm not the only one feeling like I'm feeling. But, I'm just tired. I want to be back home. I hate my career choice/ path. I'm so overwhelmed.
Most recently, I switched from an easy, cushy, maintenacen supervisor position that was 2 minutes from home, to a handyman start up that needed a decent guy to help grow the business. I was urged to do so by a family member, I'm 2 days in and I realize I fucked up. I'm so fucking overwhelmed because the woman who owns the business is taking on jobs that are way too big IMO. Since before I officially came on, I have been following behind a fixing fuck ups that one of the other guys has done. I don't know why, but despite having done this work for 16 years, I suddenly have 0 confidence in what I'm doing. I feel like I'm fucking stuff up, despite getting calls to the owner about how happy they are with that I've done.
I've got a stupid ass tear in my eye right now from frustration. I want to just find a job that I can completely disconnect from at the end of everyday. Which is easy for everyone else(it seems), but I constantly run though every single thing that I worked on during the work day. I cannot disconnect, when my daughter reads to me at home, I cannot focus on that because I'm stuck in my head thinking about how frustrated I was at one second during the day, or I'm thinking about how I could have done something better, or how I need to go back and do something else because I didn't think it was up to my standards. I'm a perfectionist for alot of things.
I should have just stayed at my old job, I think to myself. But that wouldn't help me because all though the job was easy, I was the supervisor in charge of 3 properties and my mind would never let me have a second off. Thinking about things that need to be done, things that may happen in the future, things that would most likely never happen. "Don't take that home with you" My manager and my tech would say.. fucking easy to say. I was on call, and when I wasn't on call, I was on call because the tech would need assistance alot of the times. My mind doesn't just shut off work, especially being in this line of work where I feel like I have to please everyone. I've never heard of a complaint of my work, but In my head, noone likes the stuff I provide.
I couldn't take a vacation because All of my saved up pto this year was going to go toward 2 weddings and helping someone move from a few states away. I probably could have dealt with my last job if I had taken a break for myself. Maybe. I couldn't take any time off between jobs because I have to provide for my family. My wife works for money part time at home, but she works 24/7 homeschooling our daughter and housekeeping. True saint of a woman, who I love more than anything. Her getting a full time job isn't an option because we aren't comforatble putting our daughter into the public school near us after a sick fucking pervert teacher kissed her and other kids.
Well, I'll end this with who knows of a job that a non college educated person can switch to that pays 65000 a year atleast and that is easy to not bring home? I'm desperate

Title, but here’s some extra information on what I remember. In the episode there was some crocodile Dundee looking hunter and Cartman telling Kenny to use some kind of special attack on him. Cue Kenny, as said before, dive bombing right into the guy. If you want an idea of what Kenny looked like, think of Luigi’s side special aka green missile but with Kenny doing it. That’s all I can remember and I hope it was enough, I’m pretty sure on the season it was on, it was part of its intro at the time, actually that’s how I was reminded of this episode. Anyway thanks for reading and thanks a bunch for sharing possible episodes.

As I stated in the title, I believe I know what causes male entitlement to women’s time, body or just women in general. At the very least what caused it for me, and how I (am breaking) free of it.
When I was 7, I would watch TV. There would always be an episode where a male protagonist gets a Girlfriend. Loses her to a dumb mistake. Tries to get her back, fails, tries again, and succeeds.
I’ve always been in favor of Womens Rights -er believed I was. As a little boy, nobody ever told me about love or women or relationships (especially considering I don’t have any sisters). I didn’t know how to talk to women, and I’m not attractive enough for them to come to me. But by some miracle for little me. When I was 12 going on 13, I got a girlfriend. She was the same age, let’s call her “Kelly”. I obviously cared deeply for Kelly, and I know she did for me too. I was just exploring my sexuality at the time (we’re both straight).
As we got closer together I rushed things, I would want to touch her, and she would let me. I would become focused on that. Long story short. I neglected her consent, not even intentionally. It just didn’t register to me. It didn’t occur to me because I don’t think I was subconsciously programmed to listen to Kelly, or any woman my age for that matter. So we break up and I move schools etc… but the misogyny doesn’t end there. That’s when the misogyny SURGES!
I move to another school. I was broken from the last year as it took a big toll on me. But burns stop being hot after at least a little bit. So i was ready?, for someone else. Well, I guess I was window shopping again thankfully. But this time it was different. I‘m high function autism, and it kinda? shows. But not enough that I need special classes or whatever. But regardless, I saw more attractive men, with better clothes, hygiene, social skills. They got girl’s attention. Well, they got the girls that got MY attention. Hot guys with Hot girls (what a shocker lol). But I felt angry, not at the other men. But at the girls, when I was at my worst, I saw a hot white girl with a tall lightskin dude. (I’m white male btw) And I thought to myself “of course HE gets her.” Even at my worst I rejected that kind of thinking. But that doesn’t change the fact that it came to me naturally.
I would see hot girls and internally label the h*es, sl*ts, you get the idea. Insert chudjak. I saw something on , it was a tweet that said “Nobody calls a woman a hoe more than a man who can’t fuck her”. And that’s when it hit me. I knew it was a me problem. But I just now I INTERNALIZE the idea. And I kept thinking, I‘ve heard people on TwoX talk about male entitlement. And I’ve seen places like and talk about it. I never understood what it meant to be entitled to a woman. But now I do. Think about it. I got mad at a hot white girl, who i have no connection to, with some hot dude. I had NO relations with her. But I was mad somebody else had her? I felt like a victim all along. A victim of what? Unfairness, or even injustice. But everyone get’s justice (morally). And if everyone gets it, everyone’s entitled to it, literally! So denial of my “right” to women is (from this flawed perspective) wrong to do. And logically, to resolve it. I can be given a woman.
If that sounds messed up, it”s because it is. Because when you put it like that, you seem crazy. But I never thought if it like that. And that’s why women pick up on that instantly.
So in conclusion, It’s occurred to me that young boys are taught that getting women is a right. And everyone is entitled to rights, so if you perceive women as the object of s right that you have, you (aware or unaware) will become entitled.
TLDR: Male entitlement to women stems from cultural rhetoric, and when access is denied, it sparks rage.

Just need to vent for a moment.
I bought my 2017 Volt brand new in March 2017. No complaints. I absolutely love the car. Anyway, mid-January I get a “Propulsion Power Reduced” message on my dash along with a check engine light. I bring it to the dealership right away and it’s diagnosed as:

FOUND A LOT OF CODES. ALL CODES ARE ON THE SAME CIRCUIT AND THE FUSE IS BLOWN ON UNDER HOOD FUSE #3. FOUND EGR VALVE IS SHORTED INTERNALLY. RECOMMEND STARTING WITH REPLACING EGR VALVE.

They tell me they don’t have the EGR valve in stock right then but they placed an order and it should come in the next day. I get a call the next day telling me what many of you already know: They made a mistake and the part is actually on back-order. I ask what the wait time might be and am told “anywhere from a week to several months” — I.e., they don’t know. I ask if the car can be driven and they said I risked engine damage. My Volt is my only car, so I ask for a loaner. They told me it will be $50 a day. I declined.
I decided to do some research. Find out the EGR valve has been on back-order for over two years. Uh oh.
Two weeks pass. I’m getting rides to/from places from my partner, parents, etc. It’s a mild inconvenience but I’m in a privileged position that I know people who can help me out. I read that cleaning the EGR valve can actually fix the problem is some cases. I should have made the connection from the quote above that “SHORTED INTERNALLY” meant my problem was electrical, but I found a neighborhood mechanic who was willing to clean the valve for free. Obviously, it didn’t do anything.
We’re at about 3.5 weeks out now. While I’m dealing with getting my EGR valve cleaned, my dad offers to contact GM for me. He runs his own business and is pretty savvy when it comes to navigating these situations, so I let him go ahead. We start with their generic customer service number and are initially told that we need to wait a minimum of two more weeks before they will escalate. My dad pushes back, and they promise us that they will escalate to their parts acquisition team who will check their national network for the part. A week later we get a call back — they couldn’t find an EGR valve anywhere in the country. They would now check worldwide.
We’re at over a month out from the issue being diagnosed now, and my dad decides he’s going to start escalating on his own. He gets ahold of the regional manager of GM, and I don’t recall if they ever ended up having a conversation but it was basically a dead end. Now, I should clarify at this point that all I wanted was a loaner. That’s all I was looking for. Something I could use to drive to/from work myself instead of scrabbling together rides from people I knew. But I can’t afford $50/day indefinitely.
Anyway, a couple more weeks pass with no news. At this point I’m starting to look at Chinese EGR valves. Every lead is a dead end — I think I paid for three off of eBay, and without fail, each time I would get a message a couple days later with an apology from the seller that they don’t actually have the part in stock and they were issuing a refund.
Then my dad comes to me one day. “I called Mary Barra’s office.” Who’s that? “GM’s CEO.” I still have absolutely no idea how he managed to escalate my dumb EGR valve issue to the CEO, but when my dad gets determined, he doesn’t stop. My dad has a phone conversation with her assistant. He tells my dad that he will come back to us with a solution.
A week later we get the call: An assurance that the part will be entering production again “soon”, that my EGR valve will be covered under warranty, and that we should hear from the dealership soon. Sweet!
The dealership calls the next day. No, they won’t cover the repair under warranty because we don’t live in a CARB state. Furthermore, they still won’t issue me a loaner. The manager I spoke with advised me to just unplug my EGR valve and drive without it connected. I ask him if they’ll do that for me, he said that they will not and I will need to find an independent mechanic.
Turns out the EGR valve is super easy to disconnect on your own, so I just did it myself. Cool, I can drive my car again with the caveat that I keep an eye on the engine coolant temperature. Not ideal going into summer, but whatever. It’s now April. We’re getting ~weekly updates of “no news” from Mary Barra’s assistant.
The assistant called my dad again today, and my dad finally had enough. The assistant opened with that there’s no update about the part. My dad outright told him that GM should cover the repair when the part finally gets made. The guy tells my dad, “you know what, we’ll give you 10,000 Chevrolet points for each month you have to wait for the part.” So I’d have ~30,000 Chevrolet points so far. My dad asks if they can be used towards the repair. The guy says yes. My dad asks how much would that amount cover. ~$250.
Chevrolet points. You guys, I absolutely lost it when my dad told me this lmao. What the hell is a Chevrolet point. I just want a goddamn EGR valve or a loaner so that I’m not risking anything with the engine. This is the best the fucking CEO’s office can do?
Anyway, if you need an EGR valve it doesn’t seem like we’re any closer to them restarting production than we were a few months ago when they assured me it would be “soon”. Bummer.

Just throwing my thoughts out there, Spoilers for the Manga/anime!
So I like to divide them into 2 groups: Those who got screen time and those who didn't:
The group that got screen time:
Rayne Ames - The Sword Cane: The fan fave? Okay so he is basically Byakuya from Bleach and I fucking love him for it. Felt natural for him to take Mash’s side and his rabbit obsession is a fun and not overused gag. Plz just talk to your brother and stop overworking your self man. 8/10 solid dude.
Orter Mádl - The Desert Cane: Ngl when I first saw him I though the author really made Harry potter in this Wizarding world parody be the main antagonist huh? Thought his view were comically extreme at first but he kinda grew on me. Let's face it he has the best drip of all the Dvs. Now stop being a dead-beat brother to Wirth. 3/3 eyes.
Kaldo Gehenna - The Flame Cane: This man dead-ass never casts a single spell. Like the flame from his blade is described as not chanting a spell or something like that. I feel like he has a nice balance between badass DV moments and comedic gag ones… of those he has. Anime adaptation is probably gonna add more scene of him, right!? Questionable food taste/10
Ryoh Grantz - The Light Cane: Love the guy, hate the banana-ass looking hair. I feel like there is some lost potential here regaring the fact that Ryoh is the only confirmed parent/father, and there isn’t some line about him understanding the anxiety around shunning children that lacks magic power. Like I’d imagine the reason why is on the pro Mash side, is cause he wouldn’t let his own son having to grow up in a society were you either magic, or don’t magic and get executed. The manliest man that ever man’ed/10.
The group that did (but not enough)
Renatus Revol - The Immortal Cane: From what little we get he seem chill. Apparently the manga author had a backstory of him that didn’t make it in the story. Before he achieved his immortality he tried to sacrifice himself fro the woman he loved, hence the one scar on him. According to the fanbook: Bodies of deceased wizards leave enormous amounts of magical energy, so it is Renatus' job to make sure there is no theft at cemeteries. Sounds metal af, shame we don’t got to see any of it. 7/10.
Agito tyrone – The dragon Cane: Okay so what little we get from him in the story is; he is like the only religious guy and belives killing is a sin and actively hold a count on how many time he has sinned during the ‘final frontier’ battle. On one hand, why would he agree to take Mash’s life then? On the other why okay I guess he would be most pro execute Mash alongside Orter since magic is a gift from the gods. Oh and ALSO he is a an open masochist, and according to the fanbook his favorite type of opposite sex is married-women. I-THOUGH-HE-WAS-THE-GENTLE-GIANT-WITH-A-CUTE-DRAGON-TYPE-OF-CHARACTE10
Sophina Biblia – The knowledge Cane: Girl blocked Deliasters with a book. Go off Queen. Really would have loved to see more of her personal magic and in general let her have more screentime. I mean besides that it’s worth mentioning the trivia on her that mentions her nickname since her school days was "President". She has served as student president many times as she is very reliable. Makes me wonder what her reasons are for agree to Orter’s decisions. Like if she didn’t, I feel like she would just like Rayne, make it obvious she disagrees, also if both Orter and Ryoh were to bite the dust I guess she would be next in line to be the unoffical leader of the Dvs. 1/4 relevant female character in the story.
Tsurara Halestone - The Ice Cane: So what’s the secret under the eye-patch? Feel like it’s a Black Butler reference idk. I mean besides that the only interesting thing I can think of for Tsuara is the fact they dislike they personal magic and actively states so. Maybe if Mashle was a more traditional shonen battle series we would have gotten some arc/story around the fact that not everyone likes their personal magic and can’t do anything about it. And like Tsuara some types can inconvenience the mage to various degrees. Idk/10.
Tl;dr I wish [Insert character name here] got more screentime.

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
[Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art]
“Should I be worried?”
Why would you be worried?” Kim said. “Dean Lichman loves us.”
Dean Lichman had asked the two of them to stop by his office, though his brief message had not said what for. That left Vell to concoct nightmare scenarios in his head.
“He doesn’t love all of us.”
“Alex doesn’t count as ‘us’,” Kim said. She was a looper in purely a technical sense, mostly due to her own refusal to be a team player. “Besides, she’s been behaving lately. She’s only been an asshole, not an active liability.”
“That we know of.”
“If we don’t know about it, Dean probably doesn’t either,” Kim said. “It’s fine, Vell, he probably just wants to ask us for advice or deal with some problem he has.”
“That’s not much better,” Vell said. “How weird would things have to be that the Dean is asking us for help personally?”
“Only one way to find out,” Kim said. She gestured to the door to the Dean’s office.
Kim entered first, and found it in much the same state as it always was. The desk piled high with paperwork, a small bowl of assorted candies shoved into the corner of the desk, and Dean Lichman behind it, frantically tapping away on a laptop. Vell had not been in this office for several years, and it was vastly different than the last time he’d been here.
“Ah, there you are, come in, have a seat,” Dean Lichman said. “Unless you’d rather we have our conversation elsewhere, Vell.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Well, it’s my understanding you haven’t been in this office since my, uh, predecessor,” Dean Lichman said.
“Oh, right, the kidnapping,” Vell said. “No, I’m good, I don’t really get traumatized by things anymore.”
Vell had been killed too many different ways in too many different places to have a functional trauma response. A few days ago he’d gotten his legs chewed off by a vending machine, and still stopped by it to pick up a soda on his way to the office.
“That’s a very concerning response, Mr. Harlan.”
“Yeah. Anyway, what did you need?”
Dean Lichman gestured for the duo to take a seat, and both did so. He folded desiccated hands in front of himself before beginning to speak.
“I would like to ask you two to take a look at an experiment that will be occurring later this week,” Dean Lichman said. “I don’t have any reason to believe it poses a threat, but I would like to be assured it is a safe and ethical environment, and, well, you two have a knack for identifying trouble spots.”
“You could say that,” Kim said. It was more accurate to say that trouble had a way of identifying them -and then leaping at them and ripping their heads off.
“I’d appreciate it if the two of you could simply examine the laboratory and give it your approval, or disapproval, as the case may be,” Dean Lichman said. “Though if you’re too busy, I fully understand.”
“If you don’t think this is dangerous, why are you asking for our help anyway?”
“Simply for my own peace of mind, frankly,” Dean Lichman said. “The school’s policies on animal experimentation are...satisfactory, I suppose, but I do want to take extra precautions when the subject is a creature as smart as an elephant.”
“An elephant?”
“Yes, a resident of a reserve in Thailand,” Dean Lichman said. “An older elephant by the name of Mae Noi. She has cancer, apparently, and she is submitting to experimental treatment in the hopes it will be useful for younger elephants.”
Kim’s digital face briefly flashed with a facial expression of concerned skepticism.
“‘She’ is submitting to treatment? As in the elephant?”
“Yes. Apparently the elephant can talk,” Dean Lichman said. “No, I don’t know how it works, they said it was ‘more impressive in person’.”
“Well now I kind of want to go just to see the talking elephant,” Vell said.
“Same.”
“Well, do try to take a few glances at the experiment’s safety while you’re there,” Dean Lichman said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“I’ll be there too,” Kim said.
“Excellent. Thank you both, and I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” the Dean said. He then bid them both a polite goodbye and returned to his mountains of paperwork. Vell took a step out of the office and then took a sip from the soda he’d recently retrieved from the evil vending machine.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I really do want to see the talking elephant,” Kim said.
“Obviously, yeah, we all want to see the talking elephant,” Vell said. “I mean the whole situation. You think the elephant thing is going to be the daily apocalypse for that day?”
“Well, on the one hand, an elephant seems like the kind of thing that would kill us,” Kim said. “But on the other, I feel like the fact we have advance warning means it’s not going to happen.”
“True. The universe probably wouldn’t make it that easy for us.”
“Yeah, but the elephant thing still feels pretty threatening,” Kim said. “Only way to find out is to wait a few days, I guess.”
A FEW DAYS LATER
“Hello you two,” Dean Lichman said. “And Hawke.”
“Hey,” Hawke said.
“He also wanted to see the talking elephant,” Kim explained.
“Well, that’s not a problem, it was an open invitation,” Dean Lichman said.
“Thanks. Still, sorry for not saying I was going to show up in advance,” Hawke said. “It took me a long time to make up my mind whether I was more interested in or afraid of a talking elephant.”
“They are rather large, aren’t they? I suppose that could be intimidating.”
“I’m okay with elephants on their own, it’s the talking part that doesn’t sit right with me,” Hawke said. “What if the elephant doesn’t like me? What if I’m the first person to ever get insulted by an elephant?”
“You’re less afraid of getting trampled by an elephant than insulted by one?”
“I’m a little afraid of trampling, but elephants are chill,” Hawke explained. “They wouldn’t attack unless provoked. I kind of feel like one might call me a dipshit unprovoked, though.”
“You have oddly specifics fears, Mr. Hughes,” Dean Lichman said.
“Yeah.”
In spite of those fears, Hawke happily stepped through the door to the zoology lab. It did not take a long time to locate the elephant in the room, as it was a literal elephant. The towering pachyderm was in a makeshift pen in the center of the lab, with an ample supply of food and a strange pedestal in front of her.
“Dr. Chanthara,” Dean Lichman said, with a polite wave to one of the researchers in the room. “Good to see you. These are the students I told you about.”
“Hm. Nice to meet you,” Dr. Chanthara said. He was, perhaps not unreasonably, skeptical of why three seemingly random students were in charge of a safety inspection. The fact that one of the three was a robot made him even more skeptical.
“Hi, nice to meet you too, and, uh, don’t mind us,” Vell said. “We just have an eye for weird things other people might miss.”
“Sure. I- wait. Aren’t you that kid who got chosen by a god?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Vell said. “And her too, technically.”
Kim shrugged. She didn’t care for any extra attention on that point.
“Right,” Chanthara said. He was beginning to see why these students might know their stuff. “I suppose we should start by introducing you to Mae Noi. Say hello, Mae.”
The elephant shifted on her feet and poked her trunk at the wide pedestal in front of her twice.
“Hello. Friends,” a synthesized voice droned. Vell stepped a little closer to the pedestal, just enough to see that there were an array of buttons on the side facing Mae Noi.
“Oh, it’s kind of like a keyboard,” Vell said. He’d seen similar things used with dogs, though usually in a much simpler fashion. Mae Noi seemed to have a few dozen buttons at her disposal.
“Smart,” Mae Noi said, with another prod of her trunk.
“We initially put it into our sanctuary as a bit of a novelty, something elephants could choose to interact with,” Dr. Chanthara explained. “Mae Noi took to it a bit better than most. Especially once she found out she could use it to ask for food.”
“Food. Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin.”
“No, Mae, no food until after experiment,” Dr. Chanthara scolded.
“Experiment,” Mae Niko said with a prod. “Pumpkin.”
“Yes, experiment then pumpkin,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“That’s not really a talking elephant, is it?” Hawke said.
“It’s more talking than most elephants,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“Elephant. Smart,” Mae Niko said. “Smart.”
“Yes, uh, right, elephant smart,” Hawke said. He took a step back, to avoid any further offense and any further risk of being insulted by Mae Noi.
“You’re very impressive, Mae, don’t mind him,” Kim said. “How many words does she know?”
“Our platform back home has around three hundred words, though she’s still learning some of them,” Dr. Chanthara said. “The ‘travel’ version we put together only has a hundred, just enough to make sure she can get her basic needs met and communicate about the experiment.”
“Right, speaking of, I do believe we should put some time into our reason for being here,” Dean Lichman interjected. “You’re welcome to stick around afterwards, at Dr. Chanthara and Mae Noi’s discretion, of course, but we should get underway.”
“We probably should get to business, yeah,” Kim said. She tapped the side of her metal head. “I’m going to scan the lab. Vell, you talk to the elephant and make sure everything’s above-board.”
“Abov- oh, right,” Vell said. “Sorry, not exactly used to being able to ask animals if they agree to animal experimentation.”
“Experiment,” Mae said.
“Yeah, experiment,” Vell said, as he turned to Mae. “So, Mae Noi, this experiment might hurt, do you know that?”
“Experiment. Hurt. Elephant,” Mae Noi prodded. “Experiment. Help. Elephant. Help. Baby.”
“Help baby?”
“Baby. Baby. Elephant. Sick. Baby. Sick.”
“We’ve explained the nature of her condition to Mae Noi as best we can,” Dr. Chanthara said. “She has several children, and is concerned they might be similarly affected.”
“Help. Baby,” Mae Noi said. “Experiment. Help.”
The way Mae Noi frantically tapped the buttons tugged at Vell’s heartstrings, but he choked those emotions down.
“So you want to do this experiment to help baby, got it,” Vell said. “Even if it hurts you?”
“Elephant. Old,” Mae Noi said. “Hurt. Okay. Help. Baby.”
“Huh. Well, that does sound like informed consent to me,” Vell said. “Passes ethical muster, at least.”
The campus rules allowed students to be experimented on, with their consent, so Vell saw no reason not to apply the same standard to an elephant.
“You speak up if you change your mind about the experiment, okay?”
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Mae said, mashing the same button a few times. “Yes.”
“You got it. I’m going to go help my friends check things out,” Vell said. “Good talking to you, Mae.”
“Good. Talk. Friend,” Mae said. She waved goodbye with her trunk, and Vell waved back. He wandered away from Mae Noi’s pedestal and found Kim and Hawke carefully examining rows of beakers and various other supplies.
“Nothing sus yet, boss,” Hawke said.
“Nothing caustic, mutagenic, or explosive?”
“Well, something mutagenic, but it’s supposed to be,” Kim said. She had scanners built into her body much like those that had once been in Vell’s glasses, allowing her to analyze the complex chemical formulas at a glance. “They’re going for some gene editing similar to what we’ve tried to do on human cancer patients. Low success rate, but not harmful. Some adaptations to work on elephants, of course.”
“Run it by any of our chemistry and biology student friends yet?”
“A few,” Kim said. “Haven’t gotten anything back yet, though.”
“Maybe run it by Skye, too,” Vell said. “She’d recognize anything that’d mutate an animal.”
“She does love to mutate things,” Kim said.
“Benevolently,” Vell insisted. “Just show her. I’m going to check for any stray equipment.”
The presence of an unusually large test subject had resulted in the lab being rearranged and reshuffled, so Vell did a quick scan for any misplaced equipment that might pose a threat. He found, to his surprise, a tidy and well-organized environment, with any and all extraneous materials securely locked away. There wasn’t so much as a shrink ray out of place. Vell did another loop just to be sure, but returned to his friends empty-handed.
“This place has less safety hazards than my lab,” Vell said. Hawke stared at him for a while.
“Why does your lab have safety hazards?’
“I do runecarving, there’s like, hammers and chisels,” Vell said. “Those can hurt people.”
“Mm, true,” Hawke said. “So you really didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing,” Vell said. “This place is secure as I’ve ever seen a lab be.”
“It’s like I said,” Kim began. “We got an actual warning about it, so obviously nothing’s going to go wrong. That’d be too easy.”
“Maybe,” Vell said. “Things can get teleported in, or someone could cast a spell, or something.”
“Yeah, but that applies to anywhere, at any time,” Kim said.
“Kim’s right,” Hawke said. “I say we go business as usual.”
“I guess,” Vell said. “We have to branch out a little, at least. Can’t keep an eye on one room all day.”
The trio stopped sulking around the outskirts of the lab and returned to Dean Lichman and Dr. Chanthara.
“Everything looks good,” Kim said. “Probably the safest lab I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“We have very high safety standards here at the Einstein-Odinson,” Dean Lichman said, defensively. “Relatively speaking. Innovation requires some risk.”
“I understand perfectly. So does Mae.”
“Hurt. Okay,” Mae said.
“Not that okay,” Vell said. “Nice meeting you, Dr. Chanthara. You too, Mae.”
“Wait.”
Mae prodded one of the buttons on her pedestal and then pointed her trunk at the three of them. Hawke looked deeply concerned, but stepped forward alongside Vell and Kim. Mae Noi appraised them with massive brown eyes, and then moved her trunk back towards the pedestal. Vell noticed a distinctive scar on the bridge of her long nose just as Mae Noi pressed another button.
“Joke.”
“...Joke?”
Dr. Chanthara sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Just go along with it,” he said. “She likes to tell her joke.”
“Uh, okay,” Vell said. “Let’s hear it.”
“What. Elephant. Favorite. Part. Tree.”
“Umm...I don’t know, Mae,” Vell lied. He’d heard this joke from a kid, once. “What part?”
“Trunk,” Mae said. She gave a loud bray of amusement and then slammed her trunk down a few more times to emphasize the punchline. “Trunk. Trunk.”
“Oh, ha, I get it,” Kim said, hoping her feigned laugh was convincing. She’d never tried to lie to an elephant before. “Good one, Mae.”
Mae Noi shifted from side to side, looking pleased with herself, while the trio took a step back and stopped their feigned laughter.
“Did you give her buttons just to tell that joke with?”
“She gets upset,” Dr. Chanthara said. “I’m not even sure she understands the pun, she just likes people’s reactions.”
“As long as she’s having fun,” Hawke said.
“We’ll get out of your hair now,” Vell said. “Good luck with the experiment, feel free to let us know if you need a hand with anything.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dr. Chanthara said. Some of his earlier skepticism seemed to have softened, but he did not seem entirely onboard with three strangers mucking about with his experiment. Vell and his friends left before they stretched what little goodwill they had any further. Mae Noi waved her trunk goodbye as the three left the lab and stepped back onto the quad.
“I’m going to try and sneak some classes in,” Hawke said. “Later.”
“I’ll check some of our usual hot spots,” Kim said, before she too left. Once again alone, Vell headed to one of his own classes, and called up Samson.
“Hey, Samson,” Vell began. “See anything interesting while we were playing with the elephant?”
“Well, I thought I clocked someone acting suspicious, but it turns out he was only sneaking around to go see his boyfriend,” Samson said. “Nothing apocalyptic, but I did get called a homophobe, which is pretty emotionally devastating.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover someday,” Vell said. “Keep an eye out. Usually the safer things look, the more dangerous things end up being.”
“Will do,” Samson said, before saying goodbye and hanging up.
***
Vell got increasingly nervous the longer the day went without its daily disaster. He thought about checking in on Mae Noi again, but then recalled Kim’s warning about it being too obvious, but then remembered that nobody had seen anything suspicious anywhere else, but then remember that Mae Noi’s lab had looked perfectly safe-
“Vell.”
“Huh?”
“You’re spiraling,” Kim said.
“I’m not spiraling, I’m just,” Vell said, with a pause for contemplation. “Considering multiple options.”
“In a spiral fashion,” Kim said. “Eat the damn french fries. Honestly, what’s the point of ordering so many if you’re just going to let them get cold?”
“It’s not like they’re going to go to waste,” Vell said. The same time loop that allowed him to eat massive amounts of french fries without fear of gaining weight also allowed him to avoid food waste. One of the upsides of life in a time loop.
“Just eat, Vell,” Kim said. “You worry too much about all this shit.”
“I’m in charge, it’s my job to worry about it,” Vell said.
“It’s your job to handle it,” Kim said. “There’s no point thinking about this shit before it happens, you spend all day thinking about an elephant and then the universe drops, like, a bat with tentacles on your head. Just deal with as it comes, Vell.”
Vell leaned on the table and managed to chomp down on a french fry or two.
“You know, next year, when I’m not running the show anymore, I’m going to call and see if you still think it’s that easy.”
“I sure hope so,” Kim said. “I’m saying all this shit trying to make myself believe it too.”
“Oh good, you’re lying to both of us,” Vell said. “That’s cool.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it, Vell, that’s how it goes,” Kim said. “Eat your damn french fries.”
Vell rolled his eyes and returned to his fries, which were now starting to cool. Thankfully he would not have to worry about finishing them. A loud crash from across campus interrupted him mid-bite and nearly made Vell choke on his fries. He painfully swallowed the half-chewed food and then looked over his shoulder.
“Son of a bitch, finally,” Vell said. A few years ago he’d found it weird whenever he was relieved about a disaster, but now he was just genuinely glad to get it over with. The waiting was as killer as the apocalypse. He tossed his fries in the trash and headed toward the sound of chaos, with Kim right behind him.
“Already told everybody?”
“Well, I may or may not have left Alex and Helena out of the loop…”
“Kim.”
“They’d find out anyway,” Kim said. “I got to use my brain parts to get in touch with them, even over wi-fi that shit feels dirty.”
“Just get in- stop.”
Vell held out his hand. Kim froze in place and did not move. Not intentionally, at least. There was a small amount of unintentional movement. The ground was vibrating.
“Always love a good earthquake,” Kim said.
“That’s not a quake,” Vell said. “That’s...footsteps!”
Vell grabbed Kim and dove out of the way just in time for something to barrel through the walls of the dining hall and stampede across the room. Tables, chairs, and more than a few students were crushed under the feet of a hulking, brown-furred behemoth as it charged. Kim picked herself and Vell up off the floor and tried to trail its progress.
“That’s a- oh fuck me,” Kim said. “Please don’t say you told me so.”
Vell got his bearings and looked across the room at the titanic form of a woolly mammoth. Though it was definitely recognizable as an archaic mammoth, the ancient creature was also heavily mutated, unnaturally large even by mammoth standards, and with multiple curled, jagged tusks protruding from a slobbering maw.
“Well that could be unrelated,” Vell said. “Mammoths can come from a lot of places, cloning accidents, time machines…”
The mammoth reached a wall, and rather than barreling through, turned around, facing directly towards Vell. A prominent scar covered the bridge of its broad trunk.
“Oh, nope, that’s definitely Mae,” Vell said. The scar was in the same place and at the same angle. Even a clone wouldn’t have an identical scar.
Once the revelation had struck, Mae took her turn. Vell found himself staring straight down the barrel of a very angry mammoth coming right at him at Vell-squishing velocity. Luckily he’d been charged at by a lot of creatures over four years of looping.
Vell jumped up and to the side, and latched on to one of the curled tusks, which made for very convenient handlebars. Kim did the same on the opposite side of Mae, and punched her in the head.
“Wait, wait, hold off on the violence for a second,” Vell shouted. He tried to wave at Kim to stop, but Mae was thrashing so violently he had to grip the tusks with both hands.
“Good plan,” Kim shouted. “Can you get Mae on board?”
Another set of tables got crushed underfoot. Thankfully the other students were out of trampling range by now, but Mae Noi’s feet were still coated in the blood of earlier victims.
“Mae’s smart, maybe we can calm her down,” Vell said. He then ducked to dodge a swat from Mae’s mutated trunk.
“Call me crazy, Vell, but I think this is more than just a bad mood,” Kim said, as she climbed up Mae’s seven jagged tusks like a ladder.
“We have to try,” Vell said. The loopers rule against hurting other intelligent life forms had some flexibility for blood-crazed mutants on violent rampages, but they had to at least try to reason first. Vell climbed up on of Mae’s tusks and looked into one of her bloodshot eyes for any sign of recognition. “Mae! It’s Vell, do you remember?”
The only response Vell got was an enraged trumpet, which he didn’t think was a “yes”.
“Come on, bud,” Vell said. “What’s an elephant’s favorite part of a tree, right? The trunk?”
The massive brown eye staring at Vell blinked, and he felt a brief glimmer of hope. He then felt a brief glimmer of his lungs being crushed as Mae swung her head and slammed her tusks into the wall, and Vell along with them. Kim punched Mae in the throat and then jumped across the tusks to grab Vell and carry him to safety.
“You okay, Vell?”
He opened his mouth to respond, and a pint or two of blood came out instead.
“Apparently not,” he mumbled. “I might be down a few ribs. And a lung. Or two.”
Kim carried Vell a safe distance from the fight and set him down on the ground, where he promptly spat out another mouthful of blood.
“Okay, uh, you just lie there and try to die peacefully, I guess,” Kim said.
“Way ahead of you.”
***
“Was that last bit as funny as I thought it was?” Vell asked. “I think the blood loss was affecting my sense of humor.”
“It was kind of hard to appreciate in the moment,” Kim said. “But as far as dying jokes go, it was pretty good.”
Vell and Kim walked into the lair for their morning meeting and joined the loopers that had already gathered.
“Okay, what’d I miss while I was dead?”
“Well, after Alex was done getting herself killed,” Samson began.
“You’re saying that as if it’s something to be ashamed of,” Alex said. “Vell also died.”
“Yeah, but he got killed trying to do something good. You got killed trying to do something stupid.”
“Trying to eliminate a threat is not stupid,” Alex said.
“We don’t kill intelligent creatures,” Hawke said. “Sometimes we punch them into a coma, but we don’t kill them.”
“When a dog bites, you put it down, I don’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to a mammoth that’s crushed seventy people.”
“That wasn’t Mae’s fault,” Vell said. “She got mutated, or something. On that note: did you guys figure out what happened to Mae Noi?”
“Nothing,” Hawke said. “Looked like Mae smashed up the entire lab, trampled everyone involved in the experiment too. Nothing left to investigate, and nobody left alive to interrogate.”
“Typical,” Vell sighed. “At least we have an easy out. Dean Lichman was really concerned about the ethics of that whole experiment. We raise some kind of complaint, we could probably get the whole thing shut down.”
“The problem is getting the complaint,” Hawke said. “That lab was airtight, Vell.”
“Apparently not completely airtight,” Kim said. “I can camp out in the lab and raise an entirely justifiable stink whenever something capable of making a murder-mammoth shows up.”
“And what if it happens so suddenly you can’t complain about it?” Samson asked. “For all we know that could’ve been some kind of dimensional rift, or time anomaly, or something. It might not be as simple as somebody just putting in the wrong syringe at the wrong time.”
“He’s got a point,” Vell said. “We might want to shut this down before it gets there.”
“Seems like our best option is to plant evidence, then,” Alex said.
Everyone else at the table spent a few seconds brainstorming ways to prove her wrong, and much to their frustration, could not.
“Okay, fine,” Vell said. “But it needs to be something incidental, not something anyone would get blamed for. We want to cancel the experiment, not get anyone in trouble.”
“I could have a seizure on some sensitive equipment,” Helena offered. “It’ll break something and nobody would dare get mad at me.”
“Can you fake a seizure?”
“No, but I’m allergic to elephants, so I’d probably have one anyway the moment I stepped in the lab,” Helena said.
“I don’t feel entirely comfortable sending you into anaphylactic shock for a bit,” Vell said.
“Offer’s on the table,” Helena said. “I’ll live. Wouldn’t have made it through that trip to the zoo otherwise.”
“Anybody have any non-medical emergency suggestions?”
“Seagull in the air vents,” Kim said.
“Will that work?”
“It happens now and then,” Kim said. “Seagull gets in, and Dean has to close down the whole lab for potential material damage and biohazard risks if they shit in the vents.”
“Really? We’ve never had to deal with anything like that,” Hawke said.
“It may shock you to learn that sometimes minor, tedious bullshit happens that we have nothing to do with,” Kim said.
“That is kind of surprising, actually.”
“Enough. Kim, can you grab a seagull?” Vell asked. He shouldered his bookbag, and stuck a hand into the extradimensional pocket that existed within it. “I can probably smuggle it in with my bag.”
“Yeah, I can get you a seagull,” Kim said. Since she did not need to sleep, she had to find ways to keep herself entertained at night, seagull-grabbing being among them.
“Alright, we’ll go grab one and put it in the bag,” Vell said. “The rest of you, be ready to meet us when I call.”
***
Roughly three minutes later, Vell put out the call and they reconvened in front of the biology lab.
“Yeah, that was much faster than I thought it would be,” Vell said.
“I’m great at grabbin’ birds,” Kim said. Seagulls were among the easier birds to snatch, even. They were suckers for food, and many of them were attracted to her shiny metallic body anyway.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vell said. “I want this thing out of my bag ASAP.”
Even though the seagull was safely within a pocket dimension, Vell would swear he could still feel the bird thrashing and squawking inside his bag. He tightened his grip on the shoulder strap and led the way towards the zoology lab entrance. He grabbed the handle and held it as he froze for a second.
“Vell, what’s up? Is this bird escaping?”
“No, the handle’s vibrating,” Vell said. It was shaking the same way a wall near an incredibly loud speaker might. He pressed his ear to the door and listened closely. He opened the door immediately, and let all his friends hear the frantic trumpeting of a panicked elephant.
Inside the lab, Mae Noi was stomping her feet and trumpeting as loud as he long trunk would allow. She swayed from side to side in her pen, bumping against the walls not quite hard enough to damage them, but hard enough that it was clear she was doing it on purpose.
“What the heck is happening here?”
“Ah, Vell,” Dean Lichman said. He hustled over to Vell’s side and gestured to the entire room. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”
Mae Noi stopped braying long enough to start mashing her trunk against her pedestal, mashing out the word “Bad” over and over again.
“Our test subject, Mae Noi, has been throwing an absolute fit ever since she got here,” Dean Lichman said. “Dr. Chanthara, these are the students I was telling you about earlier.”
While Vell reintroduced himself to Dr. Chanthara, Kim and Hawke stepped up to examine Mae Noi and her enclosure. It was a far cry from the peaceful, orderly scene they had examined on the first loop. They were half an hour earlier this time than before, but Kim found it unlikely that they had been able to calm Mae Noi down, clean everything up, and get back to work in such a short amount of time. They hadn’t mentioned any of this panic on the first loop either. They were soon joined in their confusion by Chanthara and Vell.
“We’ve tried everything; food, water, her favorite toys, even videos of her children,” Dr. Chanthara said. “We’ve even offered to call off the experiment, but she won’t listen.”
“She is an animal,” Alex said. “Sometimes they do things arbitrarily.”
“Not Mae,” Dr. Chanthara said. “Some of our sanctuaries residents from traumatic backgrounds can have outbursts, but Mae was injured in the wild. She’s never been like this.”
“Maybe some experiment on the island is upsetting her,” Vell said. “A sonic experiment only she can hear, or something…”
Vell stopped and thought about it. If there had been such an irritant, it would’ve been there on the first loop too. Everything always repeated exactly the same, except for-
“Could you, uh, take a step back for a second?” Vell mumbled. “I want to try talking to her.”
“Don’t get close,” Chanthara warned him.
“I’m not, I’m not,” Vell said. He didn’t need to get very close to tell a joke.
The massive brown eyes of Mae Noi stayed locked on Vell as he approached, and she continued to mash the “Bad” button on her pedestal.
“I know, I know, bad,” Vell said. “But, uh, do you want to hear a joke?”
Mae Noi stopped. She locked eyes with Vell for a few seconds, and then cautiously tapped a button on her pedestal.
“Joke.”
“Right, joke,” Vell said. He tried to recall the exact sequence of words Mae had used on the first loop. “What elephant favorite part tree?”
Mae didn’t blink.
“Trunk,” Vell said.
After a moment of contemplation, Mae Noi let out one final, fervent, trumpet, and then started mashing buttons on her pedestal again.
“Bad. Help. Help. Experiment. Bad. Help. Bad. Help.”
“Yeah, bad help, one second,” Vell said. He turned away from Mae Noi to look at Dean Lichman. “Hey, uh, excuse me, Dean? Hey, uh, if I remember correctly there are some pretty complicated rules on having intelligent animals on campus, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Dean Lichman said. After hearing of some questionable ethical practices involving an octopus back in first year, he had instituted a few clauses into the school’s ethical code of conduct regarding intelligent animals like elephants, octopuses, and dolphins. “Mae’s presence here is a bit of an outlier, but there were workaround, given her apparent consent to the experiment.”
“Yeah, about that, is she, uh,” Vell began. “Is she registered as a student?”
“Yes.”
Vell pursed his lips. It took a few seconds for his friends to catch on.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Samson snapped. He turned his back on the crowd and leaned against a wall while Hawke put his head in his hands.
“The first rule of looping,” Alex said quietly. “Loopers are randomly selected-”
She looked up and locked eyes with Mae Noi.
“From all registered students.”

Something I was thinking about when I watched the final moments of the most recent EFAP was Mauler’s observation that the internet content creator landscape used to be different when AVGN clones ruled Youtube and his question of how that shifted into video essayists and commentary channels. I thought about that for a while and I thought of some reasons why the landscape changed that I would like to share.
Managers
Something that people might not be aware of is how many Youtubers have people managing their content in the form of things like setting up brand deals and other services that I am not familiar with. Some of them are very public about what they do, some of them are more private. The important thing is how managers worked in the past.
One thing that I liked about Machinima, ScrewAttack, and Channel Awesome that the creators probably didn’t like is that they forced the older creators to stick to a set schedule of uploads and some of them forced creators to follow a set formula. This meant that the manager would make sure that if a creator uploaded a video every Friday at 2pm, they would have an upload every single Friday at 2pm.
How would this work if the creator wanted to take a week off? Well, the creator would have to have a video to upload in advance. What if the creator wanted to spend 3 weeks on a super-duper big video? Well, they could absolutely do that, but it would be a passion project and they’d still have to follow the set schedule for regular uploads.
This created a content landscape that I actually enjoyed a lot as a consumer because it’s probably the way it should be for reviewers. Every week, or every day in rare cases, a movie reviewer would need to review a different movie, which meant that a reviewer might have to force themselves to sit through a movie they don’t want to see like Fifty Shades Of Grey to give it a chance to subvert their expectations and earn a glowing review, or dig deep to find a new indie movie to review to fill that quota if they really didn’t want to sit through Fifty Shades Of Grey.
The promise of Patreon and creators becoming more independent was that creators would exclusively make videos on topics they wanted to do, but I personally think that was the wrong way to go. I’ve maintained a position that I prefer it when content creators are encouraged, or even forced, to talk about things that they don’t want to talk about because oftentimes that’s when reviewers are most interesting. Some of my favorite Roger Ebert reviews were when he reviewed a children’s movie like Space Jam or Pokemon: The First Movie, and some of my favorite Zero Punctuation reviews are when he has to pick out a random indie game and commit to reviewing it regardless of what the indie game turned out to be, like when he reviewed Hell Pie.
What I think has happened is that the lack of managers has encouraged content creators to upload whatever they want, whenever they want, which has usually translated to videos about ‘easy’ topics, like videos about Disney movies, being uploaded weeks, or even months, apart, which has made the content creation landscape, at least for reviewers, a lot less interesting, and a lot less engaging.
It’s actually one of the reasons why EFAP has been losing my interest lately, because although they upload a stream every week the topics they choose are generally ‘easy’ topics because I genuinely think the hosts don’t have the ability to make an EFAP on something more obscure, or even just ‘difficult’ like Baby Reindeer, very interesting, or they just won’t do streams on those topics because, as Rags said: “This is our show, and we can do whatever the fuck we want.”
Honestly, my hot take is that I liked you better when you couldn’t do whatever the fuck you wanted all of the time. In fact, one of my favorite Rags moments on EFAP was when he clearly didn’t want to be involved with the debate with Twin Perfect.
Sponsors
I remember the Adpocalypse and how Youtubers transitioned to sponsors over relying heavily on ad-revenue. What that event transpired into is that audiences were far more accepting of basically any form of making money that Youtubers would use. Patreon became a very dominant part of Youtube, but sponsors also became extremely common and audiences would even cheer in the comment sections when creators would have their first Raid: Shadow Legends sponsorship.
Sponsors are what I want to talk about because I have seen Youtubers show that they have a bunch of videos on their computer that they simply aren’t releasing to the public because they don’t want to upload a single video without a sponsor on their main channel, as well as Youtubers having a second channel where they upload ‘slop’ content without sponsors that most of their audience is usually unaware of or isn’t interested in.
The problem is that the appeal for pretty much all content on Youtube is the personalities of the people creating the content, which is less about the actual personalities and more like “That’s an actual person doing what they actually want to do, that’s so cool,” but that is usually undercut by the presence of sponsors. The fact that Youtubers will sit on a video they made and not upload it unless they can get a sponsor to pay for it always seemed strange to me, especially for Youtubers where the image they present is “I’m just a normal, chill guy who makes Youtube videos for fun,” which needs the caveat of “Uhhhh, I’m actually really poor and if I don’t take this BetterHelp sponsor I can’t afford my rent this month. Please understand, I’m barely making any money on Youtube,” when a sponsor is included in the video.
As weird as this sounds, there are communities of creatives online that don’t expect to ever make any money putting hours, days, weeks, months, and years of work into a project. There are modding communities, bloggers, game developers, fanfiction writers, and artists that only want comments saying “You did a good job,” and Youtubers used to be that way, or they used to present themselves that way before sponsors became as common as they are now.
I don’t say this often enough, but I remember when Youtubers would make videos about not just random pictures on Deviantart, but on fanfictions and pornographic videos. They’d do those videos for things like clout, which is something that I don’t see too often on Youtube.
People might say that there are a bunch of Youtubers that talk about obscure media and Youtubers that make things without any expectation of earning money, which I say “Well, yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about,” and then I’d point to things like AVGN’s Atari Porn video, and old videos where commentary Youtubers would branch out from their niche to say “Hey, just for fun, we’re going to check out this weird fanfiction story,” or how Yahtzee would include fun projects he created at the end of his Zero Punctuation videos, like how he’d dub over scenes in video games like Half-Life and Painkiller, or how he made a slideshow with Garry’s Mod that depicted a love story between Heavy and Medic.
What I’m saying is that a large part of what made Youtube fun was that not every video from an established creator with 100k subscribers needed to be monetized, or even created with the expectation of being successful or well-received by the community. There was a time when the expectations people had for, say, Jim Sterling was for a high-quality Jimquisition video to be produced and uploaded to the main channel once a week, and for the other days to feature a minimally-edited video where he showed himself trying out a game or reacting to a trailer on his main channel.
In the past I said that I would like it if EFAP would talk about comments and read fanfictions on-stream and I was mocked for it, but I stand by that statement because, although EFAP clearly doesn’t want to do it regularly, when they do read comments on-stream it tends to result in some of the best content because it showcases a side to them that I like. Instead of being totally normal dudes talking to each other about a movie they saw or reacting to a video, they have to use text-to-speech or read the comment using a silly voice or, well, use just a little bit of creativity when reading those comments out-loud.
What I’m kinda saying is that, yes, I think we all like professionally-produced content, and we all accept that sponsors for videos are necessary. But, like, I don’t like how for most successful Youtubers only the monetizable content, often with sponsors, is presented on the main channel, while the other content doesn’t exist, is uploaded to a secondary channel, or is locked behind some kind of paywall.
It just feels strange that these normal, chill, relatable people have gotten themselves into a position where they can earn real money, in some cases a lot of money, to stand in front of a webcam for 10 minutes talking about their favorite movies, chat with a group of friends, or even just play their favorite video game, and in quite a few cases they won’t do any of those things unless there’s a way to monetize it. Imagine how it looks to say “Well, I can’t talk about this cool fanfiction story I read on my main channel to my audience that enjoys my content about that franchise because I can’t get a sponsor for it.”
I wonder if Rags, a regular host of EFAP, appreciates the irony of him criticizing Chris Stuckmann for advocating that filmmakers “Get as much time and money as possible to make their films in the ideal circumstances and for the process to be easy,” when he’s in the position that he’s in where, on EFAP, he has as much freedom as he wants in the ideal circumstances to make money with EFAP, and it’s easy, yet he still will complain if he’s asked to step out of his comfort zone, even a little bit, on stream.
Insecurity
A while ago I had a theory about Cancel Culture which was that usually Cancel Culture is incredibly exaggerated by the audience of the people being canceled, and that most of the people being canceled are perfectly fine. The go-to example is the poor lady who made a joke about AIDS before going to Africa that got off the flight and got fired from her job due to her joke going viral. What people often don’t mention is that she got fired because it’s a terrible look for the company’s PR person to be involved with such a massive PR disaster, and that she got hired at another company a very short time later. Plus, like, she made a racist joke and people were calling her a racist, it wasn’t like she was targeted for absolutely no reason.
My theory is that people think that Cancel Culture absolutely ruins the lives of celebrities and influencers online because of their intense reactions to being canceled. An early example being Seth Macfarlane, who was mocked for his poorly-received hosting of the Oscars and who seemed incredibly bitter about it, making Cancel Culture a plot point in multiple episodes of Family Guy, talking about how bitter he was about it in interviews for years, and even apparently getting emotional support from his friends and family after the ordeal, even going as far as to ask celebrities to say “I liked what he did and I thought he was hilarious, and very handsome.”
What I’m saying is that I think that in the early days of content creation on Youtube the people making videos were more willing to appear on camera and embarrass themselves, like with Spoony screaming at a big gaming event on camera, because even though they were aware of Cancel Culture being a thing they weren’t going to be reduced to tears by someone saying “You’re totally cringe and annoying,” and even went as far as to incorporate those kinds of comments into their video because it was extremely easy content to create. You probably know what I’m talking about, where a creator would read out “This content creator is SOOOOOOO CRINGE,” in a video in a silly voice which you can’t really do as easily with “OMG, I love your content,” and make it entertaining.
That’s changed a lot today with content creators seeming to project an extreme amount of insecurity in every video they’re a part of, which gets even worse in formats like podcasts. It feels like every commentary creator is a chill dude that isn’t offended by anything and only wants to have a good time talking about things they like because, well, that’s what they need to be to avoid being criticized too severely, but they constantly allude to being a very immature and thin-skinned person that is mainly concerned about earning money, to the point where they’ll say “I’m not even having fun producing content at all.”
In college I remember one of my professors saying: “When you were high school kids you were insecure and weren’t confident in your abilities enough to volunteer when you were asked. You’re adults now, and when you graduate you can’t do that at a real job. Part of growing up is being confident in yourself, and if you don’t want to do that, you can always work in fast food where you never need to grow up, while the other adults in your friend group are becoming doctors and construction workers.”
It’s something that I realized with Youtubers which is that a decent amount of them started their careers young and never had to ‘grow up’ the way that my professor said that we needed to. Even with millions of subscribers you still see a lot of Youtubers struggle to commit to any statement they make, and I hear “I’m just a dumb Youtuber who doesn’t know anything and is stupid and socially-awkward and is fat and smells bad,” too many times from rich and successful people.
The thing is, when you’re a teenager, or you’re in your 20s, that insecurity is charming and relatable because you're trying to find a place in the world and discovering the role that you will fill in society. But, when you’re 30 and your role is “I tell people about the latest internet drama and make references to Spongebob,” or “I talk about Star Wars for hours at a time,” even if you make $2 million every day there’s likely a part of you that says: “I don’t like who I am. I don’t like what I do for a living. Yes, I’m rich, but I don’t like why I’m rich, and I don’t like my audience.”
I think that this insecurity leads to people trying to make their content more ‘mature’, but the way they do it isn’t by presenting themselves as a more confident person, or by making a clear separation between the personality in their content and their actual personality so that they can have a good work/life balance, it’s by creating the same content with very superficially mature elements. So, you end up with the video essayists of the past that gained fame by describing the events of a movie and then giving their opinion on whether they liked or disliked it doing the same thing but with quotes from smart people, like Socrates, and making conclusions like “Some people are gonna like this movie, some people are going to hate it. The important thing is that everyone involved with this movie tried really hard and had fun.”
The thing is, teenagers and 20-year-olds get value from a relatable person that comes across as an insecure loser who is too afraid to take a proper stance on anything to commit to a statement. When someone is actually mature they find more value in someone who is willing to do a good job and defend the job that they did, even if they’re like Neil Breen who thinks they did a good job but clearly did a terrible job. A 20-year-old might declare that Twin Perfect’s debate with EFAP wasn’t embarrassing because he was just being himself or something, but a 40-year-old might not tell Twin Perfect that the debate was embarrassing, but they would no longer respect him, and I imagine a lot of 40-year-olds don’t respect a lot of Youtube video essayists because of how eager they seem to be to engage in self-deprecation.
Conclusion
Despite everything that I’ve said, I do think that the content landscape on Youtube is generally ‘better’ than it was in, say, 2010. We weren’t getting a 4+ hour video by The Little Platoon about Rebel Moon, for instance, in 2010.
What I would compare modern Youtube and classic Youtube to is the 1970s movie scene vs. the 1980s movie scene, which Quentin Tarantino has labeled as “The worst period in movie history,” which the EFAP crew have pushed back on.
The thing is, in the early 80s we got Blade Runner, in the same way that nowadays we got the 4+ hour Little Platoon video, but the theatrical release of that film was famously sabotaged by the company that wanted Harrison Ford to provide voiceovers for the film that ‘ruined’ it, or at least, ruined the ending of the movie.
Throughout the 80s films were made which satisfied audiences more than films from the 70s did because Spielberg was producing hugely successful films that are still highly regarded, but there was also a bunch of shady practices going on and a bunch of notoriously poor studio decisions made in order to appeal to a wide demographic, such as the fiasco with Supergirl and Masters Of The Universe, or changing the ending of Brazil.
In the 1970s we not only got more challenging films, but there was also a thriving independent cinema scene that gave us Death Race 2000, Eraserhead, THX-1138, and Duel. There was also Jaws, Star Wars, and A Clockwork Orange, which were big-budget movies that took serious creative risks that paid off immensely which just wouldn’t happen in the 1980s, or would happen very rarely.
I think that I do prefer Youtube back in, say, 2015-2017 when it seemed like we generally got the best of both worlds, challenging content about a diverse range of subjects with production values comparable to what we have now.
To close this, I would like to include a paraphrased interaction I saw on a podcast featuring a pretty big Youtuber that I think illustrates why Youtube has changed in the way that it has.
Youtuber: Look, I don’t need to work as hard on my videos now because not every video needs to be an event. I just want to take it easy now, pump out a video whenever I feel like it, get paid by the sponsors, and then spend time with my family, is that so wrong?
Host: It kind of is. I know your audience of teenagers will be like “He just wants to spend time with his family, dude, have a heart,” but a lot of Youtubers, especially younger Youtubers look up to you for inspiration. If you’re in that position and your attitude is “I’m going to half-ass every video that I make from now on and if anyone calls my content lazy I’ll use my 8-year-old daughter as a shield against criticism,” that’s the attitude that a lot of young Youtubers are going to have. They’re going to half-ass their content and when criticized, they’re going to find their own excuse, like “I have a kid now,” or “I have to eat,” or something.
Youtuber: That’s not my fault, though. I never asked to be a role model.
Host: That’s not how that works. You don’t get to decide whether or not people look up to you, have expectations of you, and emulate your approach to content creation. You only release 2-3 videos a year, and with your status every video should be a major event, but instead every video is half-assed, as you admitted, and then you use your daughter as an excuse for why you don’t put as much effort into your content as you used to. I think you need to have someone in your life, like a friend, that actually makes you feel some shame for your content and encourages you to do better, rather than your social circle being composed of supportive people like your family and the people who pay you through Patreon.
Host 2: He did have that. He fired him two years ago, remember?
Host: Oh, yeah, you fired your friend, or made him quit, whatever the story was. Did that not make you feel bad at all?
Youtuber: Friendships end, that’s just life.
Host: That’s the attitude that I hate that comes across in your content. You can’t just brush aside everything and bumble through life, except if you’re an internet personality, apparently.
Host 2: It worked for the MCU.
Host: It’s not working for the MCU anymore, though, and it isn’t working as well for this Youtuber. It’s probably going to get worse and when he decides to do more work and make better videos, like he used to do, it’s probably going to be too late, or he’ll need to make really good videos to get the views he once did.
Youtuber: My videos are really good, though.
Host: You admitted to half-assing them.

Warning: I am going to mention interviews with Eric (that guy's basically Tom Holland at this point...) and official trailers, so if you don't want to read about potential spoilers, better skip this thread.
This is about track 8 ("Raglan James") and the TTotBT book.
What we know so far about the show:

1. Daniel mentioned a "researcher" in episode 1
2. Justin Kirk is going to play a character who knows Daniel and also knows that vampires exist, possibly a member of the Talamasca (but we don't know yet if he's that researcher)
3. Eric said in an interview that the Talamasca are going to help him regain memories in some way
4. Eric also keeps mentioning that he's always wanted to play a vampire
5. (In another interview Eric mentioned ^ again in some special way (can't remember what he said exactly and can't find the exact interview) and a lot of people acted like that proved that Daniel would become a vampire for sure at the end of season 2.)

To recap the book:

• Raglan James (old ex-Talamasca member in a young body) asks Lestat if he wants to become human again, Lestat agrees, they switch bodies and Reglan takes off
• Lestat asks David (active Talamasca member who's kind of friends with Lestat) for help to get his body back
• They set up a trap, Lestat manages to get his body back but Raglan takes over David's body, while David ends up in the young body
• Fake-David asks Lestat to turn him, Lestat's been waiting for that but he notices that something's wrong and Reglan ends up in the hospital and dies
• Lestat turns David (still in the young body) forcefully, David leaves and they later meet in NOLA and agree to travel the world with Louis

Since episode 1 I've always thought that the researcher would turn out to be David and that they would use him in the TTotBD adapation (already mentioned by Rolin iirc) and as a connection to the Talamasca (show) but there's also a fan theory that the show will replace David with Daniel.
Let's just assume that Justin Kirk will indeed play Raglan James and that he's the researcher Daniel mentioned, how would that help get to where we need to be?
Daniel doesn't seem like a guy who's a Talamasca member, he is//was a journalist, so exactly the opposite of what you'd expect from one of them. I don't think he's got a lot of money (he agreed to do the interview because he wants to leave the $10mio. to his daughters) but if he was indeed (closely) connected to the Talamasca, money or taking care of his daughters after his death shouldn't be a problem. I don't think Daniel knows how to body switch either, so he wouldn't be of any help to Lestat, apart from that I don't remember them ever talking in the books.
Daniel's going to end up a vampire, that's set in stone, and it's suspicious how often Eric's mentioned wanting to play a vampire in interviews, so I wouldn't be surprised if they had old-Daniel turn to keep Eric around but again, how would that help with the TTotBT story, especially if they do give him David's role? Vampire-Daniel wouldn't be able to catch Lestat's post-QotD body, they needed the daytime to set everything up in the book and human Daniel wouldn't be of much use with that either (parkinson and all).

I was the first person in my family to even think about attending university, let alone go to grad school. My family is working class. My mom is also an immigrant (although I now live in her country of origin). While supportive of my academic aspirations, she's never understood the reality of it.
My mom is convinced that getting a PhD means I will have endless job opportunities and views my future through unbelievably rose colored glasses. Although I appreciate the support and understand her inclination to view things positively, it's difficult to level with her about my actual odds of getting tenure. It's even more difficult to explain what tenure is and why I want it. When I talk about my frustrations and difficulties, I want her to commiserate with me, but she simply can't understand what's going on despite my attempts to explain. The conversation always turns to her misconceptions about how academia works. Aside from being frustrating for me, I also fear she is developing unrealistic expectations as to what my future holds.
Then there's also the fact that everyone in my family works hard to make ends meet in relatively physically-demanding jobs. My mom has been a factory worker my entire life. While I'm acutely aware of the differences in the types of labor we do, her experiences lead to a devaluation of my work. If I'm stressed, overworked, etc., the response is almost always that I should be grateful I'm not lugging around boxes and have access to opportunities she never did. And I am! But that doesn't mean my life is without problems. However, if we're putting difficulties on the scale, her side always wins out. Adding to this is that she simply can't conceive of what I actually do. When I talk to her about publishing a journal article or conducting ethnographic research abroad, the labor that goes into that isn't something she's able to wrap her head around. She stopped school at 16 and just doesn't have a sense of what academia is.
I do my best not to develop resentment, but it's very difficult not being able to level with her. It's also an absolute mindfuck to see my mega-wealthy peers (I've attended quite prestigious institutions) turn to their parents for advice on selecting courses, applying to fellowships, securing grants, polishing dissertations, etc. Not only do these peers have a practical resource at their proposal which I can't fathom having access to, but the people in their life understand.
How do you guys navigate these conversations and relationships? Have you just learned to accept the fact that things are the way they are? That's the point I'm getting to, but it feels like more and more of my life is something I can't talk to my mom about. She doesn't even know what I research! She doesn't know (or perhaps care) to ask and when I bring it up myself to try and include, she changes the topic (perhaps because she doesn't understand it entirely and/or is a bit insecure and embarrassed about our educational differences). And I really do put a lot of effort into communicating it in an accessible way. I thought I got over my whole first-gen imposter mess during my BA, but it's something I just can't shake.

My name is Luyan, I was born in April 1970, in the village of Qingtaipao, Jinzhou City, China. My father was an electrical technician in a nearby brick factory. Mom was a farmer.
One day in September 1971, A guest came to our home, whom my father called Old Brother Liu from Shenyang (1). Dad said to mom: “Troupe Leader Liu knows physiognomy, and I want him to have a look our Luyan." Mom was impatient. Dad added: "Troupe Leader Liu is not a stranger, you should be more enthusiastic! he said, ‘He should not have Luyan seen him, otherwise it won't work'.” Mom and Dad went out of the bedroom. The three of them were whispering in the kitchen. Troupe Leader Liu asked about my birth date.
https://preview.redd.it/pqfqha639v1d1.jpg?width=1528&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25c81882fd0189d4814c5f6975993f188cd287ec
Note 1, at this time, he was the deputy chief of the Northeast Military Region's Cultural Troupe, about 40 years old, a division officer. He is commonly referred to in this book as Troupe Leader Liu. Before and after this story, I couldn't hear his voice. He spoke in ancient Han; I heard what they were doing from my father's explanation to my mother.

2

Troupe Leader Liu said he wanted to see me and wrinkled the curtain between the kitchen and the bedroom. I didn't see him. Dad explained to mom what he said, "That wantonness he's sitting on, the high beam nose to forehead, is a monk's fate, no marriage life."
"What does that mean, no marriage? He can't get married for the rest of his life?" Mom asked.
After dad inquired with Troupe Leader Liu, explained to mom: "It is possible to get married, but the marriage is not happy or long-lasting."
Mom got upset after hearing that and came inside. My dad and Troupe Leader Liu were talking outside. After a while, Dad came into the bedroom and said to mom, "Why did you just leave!"
Mom replied: "He's godly! Who believes that nowadays."
Dad said: "People can see that, and you're not happy to hear it! He also told me that he was just speaking straight from his heart according to what the ancient books say, just directly speaking what he deemed truth. You shouldn’t be like that! If you don't believe, it's okay to just listen! You come out and talk together!"
Mom followed Dad out, asking as she walked: "What is it again?"
In the kitchen, Dad said to Mom: "Troupe Leader Liu said that his eldest daughter, Jianjun Liu (Eve Liu), is a sky fate (Goddess fate), gifted and smart, but also has a destined bad marriage life. He wants to betroth her to our Luyan; says the two are quite compatible. By tying them together as a pair, both of their bad marriage destinies will be broken."
Mom replied: "Look at his appearance! What can his daughter look like!"
Dad said: "That's just saying, his family is well off. Besides, his appearance is not good, his wife might be pretty!"
Mom said: "His family is doing well now. In this society, twenty years later, who knows what will happen!"
Dad said: "It's not good to refuse someone's offer. Besides, this is just a saying, in the future, the two children will become a couple or not, is the matter of the two of them. Now, we are trying to break Luyan’s bad marriage fate!"

3 Blindfolding

A little later, Dad and Troupe Leader Liu returned to the kitchen. Troupe Leader Liu said, "If I'm right, the boy will cry as soon as he sees me; however, he can only see me this one time."
Mom was in the back, and when she heard that, said, "There's that! Let's try it then! It won't hurt to see him once anyway."
They arranged the subsequent experiment in a whisper. Troupe Leader Liu added, “Then I'll blindfold him.”
Dad and mom both said they didn't understand.
Troupe Leader Liu said, “Oops! I just remembered that I can't let him see me again in the future!” After thinking for a while, he added, “It's okay! I'll arrange for someone to uncover the blindfold later.”
Mom said unhappily, "Why it doesn't matter!"
Dad smiled and said, "We don't understand, but if Troupe Leader Liu said it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter!"
At that time, I was sitting on the bed in the bedroom; a man came in and walked straight into the inner room. Soon I forgot about it. Suddenly, he came out and walked directly toward me face to face, his face bloodless and expressionless. My mind exploded at the sight, before I could react. He floated back to the center of the house floor, and quickly turned toward the kitchen and out. Frightened, I crawled desperately toward the southeast of the bed, howling!
https://preview.redd.it/pdjyyt889v1d1.jpg?width=2024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=163f3f013bc9ef146f5f8b8976698efdde776532
Note 3, this paragraph describes the first step of the “Flesh Eye Through”: He approached me quickly, and as I watched, I felt as if the camera lens were focusing quickly, and my head felt as if it were going to explode. The shock caused me to fall in “children neurodevelopmental disorder”. One symptom of this disorder is visual impairment, which the ancients said blindfolded the eyes. The process of Revelation is in section 2.8; chapter 3 discussed more about the process of making “Flesh Eye Through”. Illustrations 1-3, left, are of ancient Mexican origin and represent the third step of the Flesh Eye Through practice, which Huitzilopochtli is lecturing to his godson. Figure 2 shows Tlaloc, whose eyes, in author my own opinion, are the ancient Mexican description of "non-dazzle" feature of the eyes. Figure 3 is a bronze mask unearthed at Sanxingdui in China, in author my own opinion, that is a description of the eyes of the “Flesh Eye Through” as “touching eyes”, i.e., the person who sees it may have the feeling of "being touched”, "being electrocuted".

In the kitchen, mom was surprised and said: "Oops! Really crying! What to do!"
Dad said, "We agreed, you go in and comfort him!"
Mom ran into the house and shouted, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"
I crawled to the edge of the bed and hugged mom, crying. Dad also came in.
Mom said angrily, "He was scared! We were both away and suddenly he saw a stranger. Look! Oh! My God! His hairs are standing on end! He scared the kid!"
Dad said, "Troupe Leader Liu asked you to ask."
Mom asked, "What? Ah! What's wrong? Tell mom, what's going on?"
I just, “Woo, woo!” gesticulated and couldn't speak.
Mom muttered angrily, "Just scared! This can't even speak anymore!” Mom stroked my head, and continually said, “All right! Ok! Tell mom, what did you see?”
I replied, "Man! Woo! Woo!”, gesturing with my hands.
Mom said to me, "Ah! A man came in and then went out again. It's okay, your dad and I know about it!"

4 Marriage Contract is sealed.

Dad went to the kitchen, came back a while later, and said to mom, "Troupe Leader Liu went out and asked us to discuss the two children's affairs."
Mom said, "Like you said, it's not a big deal. How much does he want?"
https://preview.redd.it/6c0t36wc9v1d1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=283bf64e30a17faa985b77f22065644d37549c29
Dad said, “He didn't say anything about money! It isn’t about money, is it?”
Mom said, "It's better to ask."
The three of them were talking in the kitchen. Troupe Leader Liu said, "Then the marriage is settled! There's no need for any money. This matter also concerns my girl! It's also my business, so I'll make the law (do the magic)."
Dad asked, "What should we do then?"
Troupe Leader Liu said, "I'll tell you later. While you were discussing this matter, I did something outside. Now, half of their Fates have been broken. The rest of the “Making Laws” (western similar words: to do magic) will be done outside somewhere in the future, might not in your house."
Dad said, "It's great that little Luyan will be able to get married in the future! Good Job! It’s all thanks to big brother's hard work!”

5 Vision Test

Some days later, my dad had just returned from work and was talking to my mom. The bedroom opening in my house is about 6.5 meters by 3.3 meters; however, I was surrounded by white fog and couldn't see them. Mom said: "Eve Liu gives gift to Luyan! Quickly let him have a look!”.
https://preview.redd.it/luq5sicg9v1d1.jpg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be6924f7c175eb6dcef80cd756888c002907a3f4
When I crawled very close to my dad, saw the two toys he brought back: a yellow plastic gyro and a red ornate stick with spots of various colors. As I recall now, at that time, I could see a place 0.5m away and 0.9m in diameter, surrounded by white fog (note 5, this is a symptom of children neurodevelopmental disorder). I could only see half the width of my dad's body, not my mom. It is now estimated that I can't be more than 1.4m away from mom.
Mom said to Dad, "Looks like the kid has an eye problem! Getting down that close to see!"

6 Eve Liu

Another day, I was sitting on the bed in our bedroom, and my father said to my mother with a smile, “The other guy, that who, went to Shenyang and saw the Troupe Leader Liu. His family is doing well. I even asked him about his big girl (i.e., Eve Liu). How old is she!? She runs around, is not afraid of strangers, talks to people when she sees them, recites poems, sings songs, and can-do arithmetic within 100.”
Mom replied, “You still remember! She goes to a daycare center or kindergarten! I've heard that's where people are taught. What does that kid look like?”
Dad replied, "That I didn't ask."
Mom laughed and said, “You hid it from me!" Turning to me and said, "This little man, has a wife in the big city. In the future, after we go to school, we'll study hard and be better than her, we look down her! We're not going to climb up that high branch!”
Dad said, “Why don't you know? I couldn't ask. All he said was that the little girl was so smart, not afraid of strangers, and ran around the front and back yards. Such a little girl! Who can say she looks ugly!?”
Mom went into the inner room and stopped talking. At that time, I really wanted to listen. Mom noticed and said to Dad, “Little Luyan probably understands this! As soon as we talked Eve Liu, he stared and concentrated, listening very carefully!"
It seems that by this time, my eyesight had returned to near normal.
The End

First / Patreon (Read 5 Chapters Ahead)

AKA: Ain’t Nothing but a Horndog
–
Private Owens let out another tired sigh as he sat there, his head held in his hands. After the incident with Petra, he’d been forcibly confined to his room, pending further disciplinary action. It didn’t take a genius to figure out exactly how he was going to be disciplined; at best, he figured he’d be getting a court martial. At worst, they’d probably just throw him out the airlock or something.
Harsh, to be sure, but if he’d actually succeeded in inadvertently costing humanity their spot as a central player on the galactic stage, then no punishment was truly out of the question. Hell, Major Barnes had talked about having him drawn and quartered, and if he truly had fucked up that monumentally bad, then it wasn’t even out of the question.
“Way to go, idiot…” Owens muttered to himself. “All this because you couldn’t stay away from the booze or keep it in your pants for a night…”
He let out yet another sigh of despondency, bringing a hand up to brush through his auburn-colored hair. He’d just had it cut short, which was a good thing, because it meant that he’d actually look presentable at his soon-to-be funeral.
Assuming Major Barnes let him keep his head, of course.
Just as that thought crossed his mind, the door to his quarters opened. Owens looked up, and was not surprised to see Major Barnes and Captain Johnson standing there. Somehow, they looked even more imposing than usual, which was odd given that Major Barnes was from Texas and built like the bulls he used to ride, while Captain Johnson was a former MMA fighter.
That was to say that if there were any two people the higher-ups would have sent to beat him to death with their bare hands, it’d be these two, to say nothing of the fact that they’d probably outright requested it given what he’d done.
Assuming they weren’t about to lead him to Captain Ulfur or something, of course. Couldn’t exactly discount that as a possibility, either.
“Alright, on your feet,” Major Barnes announced.
Private Owens blinked. “Sir?”
“I said, on your feet. Are you going to make me repeat myself again?”
“N-no, Sir.” Owens scrambled to his feet. He stood there at attention, doing his best not to start sweating bullets as Major Barnes leaned in to examine him, one hand on his chin.
“Hm…”
“Sir?”
The two of them locked eyes, Barnes’ set of brown staring into Owens’ green. And despite his best efforts, Owens couldn’t help but begin sweating then and there. Captain Johnson shifted a bit out of the corner of his eye, but Owens didn’t dare look over to him; experience had taught him that, much like a T-Rex, the Major’s vision was based on movement. This wasn’t to imply that he could only see things when they moved, but rather that moving was a good way to draw attention to oneself, in the same way that the squeaky wheel tended to get the grease.
To put it simply: predators enjoy it greatly when their prey tries to struggle. And at this moment in time, Owens was nothing if not the juiciest piece of prey available to his commanding officers on the whole station.
The seconds ticked by. Owens dared not count them, both because he didn’t want to press his luck and because he dreaded finding out how short eternity actually was. Finally, after those few agonizingly slow seconds passed, Major Barnes took a step back and let his hand fall from his chin, then clasped his arms behind his back.
“You have no idea how fucking lucky you are, Marine.”
Owens stiffened. “Sir?”
Major Barnes let out a tired sigh, then turned to Captain Johnson. “Smoking is still banned on this station, right?”
“It is outside of the dedicated smoking zones,” Johnson replied. “It upsets the Vuks’ sense of smell.”
“Damn… what about drinking?”
“Allowable outside of working hours, but I’d like to remind you that alcohol is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
“Ah, yes.” Major Barnes turned back towards Owens, his eyes narrowing. “Now, Private – perhaps you’d care to answer a question for me?”
“O-of course, Sir,” Owens stammered out.
“What in the hell made you think Jack Daniels was your friend?”
Owens felt a chill go down his spine. “Uh, Sir?”
“Stop phrasing my title like a question, please. Answer the question.”
Owens hesitated. Thankfully, Captain Johnson came to his rescue.
“Actually, if I remember right, the bartender said he was ordering Captain Morgan and tequila.”
Barnes let out a low whistle. “Damn, for real? What were you thinking, Private? You know rum and tequila don’t mix.”
“Apparently, he hasn’t heard how racist Captain Morgan is – everyone knows the Captain hates Mexicans.”
“U-um…” Private Owens said. “...Is this you both smoking me out?”
“Of course not, Private,” Major Barnes instantly replied. “After all, we’re not in a smoking area, remember?”
Private Owens wasn’t sure if the Major was trying to be dangerously sarcastic or if that was a genuine attempt at levity. In either case, he thought it best to stay silent. Finally, after a few more seconds had passed, Major Barnes shook his head.
“I mentioned earlier that you were lucky,” he said. “Hell, you’re probably the luckiest man alive. Possibly the luckiest man in history. Do you know why that is?”
“Because I’m not dead yet?”
“Partially, but no. No, you’re the luckiest man alive because, in spite of you making a drunken ass of yourself and banging their head diplomat, the Vuk voted to allow us into the Council, after all.”
Private Owens couldn’t help but sputter in surprise at that news. He took a moment to recover, then turned back towards the Major, surprise etched across his face. “You’re serious?” After a moment, he added, “Sir?”
“Oh, I’m very serious,” Major Barnes confirmed with a nod. “See how lucky you are, Private? Not only did you get laid, but you also somehow didn’t completely fuck everything up for our entire species, which means that I very unfortunately don’t get to space you.”
Private Owens hesitated. Next to him, Captain Johnson crossed his arms. “Breathe, Private. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
Owens did as he was told, sucking in a deep breath of air before exhaling it. Once he had taken a breath to calm himself, he opened his eyes again, once more staring at Major Barnes.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, Sir… what happens now?”
“Good question,” Barnes replied. “Well, given that you might have actually done all of humanity a huge solid by sleeping with Petra, there’s not really much I can do to actually punish you. I mean, I could, but that’d reflect pretty badly on me, and if there’s one thing I care about, it’s my service record.”
“Immaculate service record,” Captain Johnson amended. “Downright radiant, really.”
“Exactly. And it’d really suck to mar it by having to write a young Marine for something like this, especially since it’s very possible that the only reason Petra voted yes was because the sex was so good.”
Private Barnes flushed red. “U-um… thanks, Sir. I think.”
“Don’t be so modest, Private – you know women talk. Well, word’s apparently gotten around, and now a fair few of the Vuk women are very curious about how the human mouth works. But that’s neither here nor there; the point is, we’re at a bit of an impasse. I can’t exactly smoke you for this, even though I really want to. But at the same time, I can’t just let you off the hook, either.”
“So… what do you plan to do with me, Sir?”
Major Barnes cracked a wide, wicked-looking grin. A chill went down Owens’ spine at the sight of it.
“Why, it’s simple, Private,” Barnes began, “in this situation, I think it only fitting that I throw you to the wolves… or, in this case, the devil dogs.”
Owens didn’t even have time to beg for mercy before Captain Johnson grabbed him and muscled him out the door, over to the barracks where the rest of his platoon was staying.
–
It wasn’t a surprise to Owens when they opened the door to the barracks and roughly shoved him inside, then closed it back up and locked it. He scrabbled at the door in vain for a moment before pausing and turning around.
His entire platoon was there, because of course they were.
Owens froze at the sight of them. Getting smoked by the Major and the Captain was bad enough, but that was nothing compared to the absolute fucking firestorm that was headed his way from the rest of the platoon. Slowly, he raised a hand.
“Uh, hey, guys,” he offered.
For a moment, nobody said or did anything. It was deathly silent in the barracks. But then, it happened.
Someone started the slow clap.
It began as just one person, but rapidly grew to two, and then three, and then all of a sudden, they were all doing it. And as they clapped, they were shouting at him, or rather, they were chanting – one simple word, which ordinarily wouldn’t have had much meaning, but with the way they were saying it, Owens just knew it was going to haunt him until he was discharged.
And that word was…
“Horn-Dog! Horn-Dog! Horn-Dog!”
Owens cringed as the word reached his ears. Unfortunately, that did nothing to actually block it out, and it only got worse when everyone in the platoon came up, still chanting, and took turns slapping him on the back.
And, naturally, the questions followed shortly thereafter.
“What was it like?”
“Was it as good as she’s making it sound?”
“Are you really that good with your tongue?”
“What’s it like being an actual furry?”
“Guys!” Owens finally blurted out, having had enough. “Look, I’ve… I’ve had a bit of a long day, you know? So can I at least take a seat before you start bombarding me with questions?”
The platoon fell silent at that. Owens breathed a sigh of relief, then began to stride through them; they parted like the Red Sea as he walked.
“Carefully,” one of them said, “he’s a hero.”
Owens flipped that guy off without even looking back. Finally, he reached his bunk and took a seat on it, then breathed a sigh of relief.
And the moment he was settled, the platoon was surrounding him once more, eager for him to answer their questions. Owens took a breath.
“Let me get one thing perfectly straight,” he said, “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Dude, come the fuck on,” one of the men, Corporal Ramirez, protested. “You realize that she’s been telling her people about it, right?”
“For real, man,” Sergeant Douglas agreed with a nod. “Some of the Vuk females have been eye-fucking us ever since.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious. Apparently, that tongue do be putting in the work.”
Owens’ brow furrowed. “That’s nasty, dude.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You did it, not me! I’m just reporting some of the shit that’s been happening ever since you fucking gave Lassie the ol’ in-out.”
“First of all, don’t talk about her that way,” Owens warned. “I get that you’re just joking, but she’s still a diplomat, as well as the reason we’re even having this conversation right now. And not in that way!” He hurriedly added when he saw several of the men about to say something. “She was the deciding vote. If it weren’t for her coming through for us, we’d have been fucked.”
Corporal Ramirez hesitated, but only for a moment. “I mean-”
“Dude, don’t.”
“I’m just saying-”
“I am seriously begging you not to say it.”
Ramirez paused, but eventually, his baser instincts won out. “...She definitely did come through for us, and at least one of us was definitely fucked.”
Owens closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath before opening them again. “...Just for that, I’m not gonna tell you all what it was like.”
“Dude, come on,” Sergeant Douglas protested. “You’re really gonna do us like this? You’re gonna just fucking Captain Kirk it up and then refuse to talk about it?”
“Yes, I-” Owens paused. “...Captain Kirk?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Hey, you’re the first human to actually fuck an alien, at least as far as anyone knows. It fits.”
“No, no, I’m not complaining, it’s just… I can’t be Shepard?”
“The fuck you talking about? You’re no Shepherd, that’s for sure.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you couldn’t keep the wolf away.” Owens glared at him and Douglas just rolled his eyes. “Come on, Horndog, you’re just teeing these things up for me at this point. I can go all night.”
“Shame he couldn’t,” Ramirez added. “Or did he only stop because he got caught?”
“That’s a fair question, actually. Horndog, be honest – if you hadn’t been caught, would there have been another round?”
“How many rounds were there, anyway?” one of the other Marines asked.
“Do you think she’d have wanted breakfast afterwards?” another added. “Makes me wonder… do you think the Vuk prefer waffles, or pancakes?”
“I dunno, man. They seem pretty partial to creampies, if you ask me.”
“Guys!” Owens shouted, cutting them all off. He grit his teeth for a moment, but then let out another exhale. “...It probably goes without saying, but I am very, very, ridiculously tired right now. I’m very thirsty and I haven’t had anything to eat in a long-ass time.”
Ramirez opened his mouth to say something.
“Ramirez, if you say what I know you’re going to say, I will seriously fucking Code Red you by myself.”
Ramirez closed his mouth and said nothing.
Owens let out yet another exhale. “Look, fellas – let me just get some sleep, and then I’ll tell you as much as I can about it without it being disrespectful to her. Okay?”
“Sure, man, whatever you say,” Douglas offered.
“Thanks, guys.”
With that, Owens laid down in his bunk and closed his eyes, doing his best to enjoy the silence.
It lasted for all of five seconds before someone broke it.
“So, was this technically bestiality?”
Owens threw a blind punch, and just like that, the entire barracks erupted into chaos.

Special thanks to my good friend and co-writer, Ickbard, for the help with writing this story.

Hi guys!
I'd be pretty interested in what you guys think about reworking what education actually is. Something like education has been around for EONS. So I was a Teach for Australia person, who stopped studying and working in the teaching field about a year ago.
SO I find that teaching in classes of 24 is a bit unreasonable, so perhaps class size changes could be changed to 8 - 10 students (essentially, different primary school levels) but this is how you can build a relationship WITH each of your students and understand what is happening with them and how they can improve to be the best they can be! Yes sure, there are some teachers who can support 24 kids, but in order to get the best out of every single student, your relationship and your ability needs to fathom. This might happen from about year 8 - 9 onwards.
They really should remove ATAR and exam scores all together. I just cannot believe how some 16-18 year old's can put there lives on hold for an ATAR score - which ultimately doesn't mean anything. It's just a score which you have based on the subjects you were doing. From here, perhaps you could combine, VCAL and VCE and make, an apprenticeship-based-course of VCAL and VCE for people such that they can have an informed opinion about what they want to do with the rest of their lives instead of just working to this arbitrary ATAR score.
Perhaps, each year (in year 11 and 12) you get 2-4 mini-apprenticeship programs with different companies for about 2 weeks each, then you come back and complete your coursework e.g. Methods, Spesh, English or VCAL. It might be something set up by the school, or it might be something set up by the business in question.
So yes it sounds very expensive as an idea, (3 teachers instead of 1, removal of ATAexams (not convenient for the markers), different mini-apprenticeship programs in year 11 and 12) but what if this was the case?
Do you think you'd be better off now?

Background- a client hired me for organization of a garage and playroom. The day of the task my dog had a mast cell tumor rupture and we had to put her down. The client was messaging me during this and saying things like "I hope there was an emergency, I'd hate to have to leave you a bad review". I responded as soon as I could and told the client I was sorry, what had happened, etc. He responded "Will you still be able to come right now?" "My whole day was gone unused" to which I said "No, I just lost my dog". I was admittedly frustrated at the situation and his response once I told them there was an emergency situation. He replied and said "Ok see you Monday for sure?" the task was originally scheduled for Friday. I thought about it over the weekend and realized I didn't want to work for someone who was already threatening to leave me a bad review. This was the first time I ever got the feeling that the client was going to be impossible to please. I also checked the weather for Monday and saw the expected temp was 93. I googled this and discovered garages without ac are 10-18 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, so I would be working in a 103-111 degree garage. I decided to trust my intuition about this guy and told him that due to the high temperatures I needed to cancel. I am epileptic and the heat can be a trigger for my seizures. This is the first task I've ever canceled and I felt terrible but ultimately like I did the right thing. I canceled and put safety concern as the reason. I received a call today from an unknown number that I didn't answer. That number then began to text message me. 1st "Hi Miranda. I just saw your message. I still needed the play room organized. If you are able. I would have scheduled someone else as I took day to work from home today thinking you were coming. But totally understand. Let me know if you are able to come tomorrow for garage in morning it’s not bad it’s in high 6and low 70 I don’t think it would take too long." then "Hi checking I if you’d be willing to help I’m open to paying same price as app so you get more". I have no idea how this person got my phone number but I have not replied. I just received a new organization request on TR from the same client. I'm starting to feel like this is borderline harassment and don't know how the client was even able to rebook me after I canceled due to safety concerns. What would you do? Am I overreacting or has this happened to someone else before? I really don't want to take the hit for forfeiting the task after cancelling but I understand the analytics aren't going to change so I'm at a loss. Is it better to forfeit or not respond by 9pm and let the system auto cancel? I've had that happen before and it doesn't seem to significantly affect my performance/ranking. Any advice??

I'm NT and in my second year of HS. I thought I would post on this sub because I cannot in any way relate to any experiences that my friend has. I would like to share what it's like being on the receiving end of a draining relationship, but I need to hear everyone's opinions and some possible explanations as to why my friend behaves the way he does. And if struggling to maintain relationships is just the average autistic experience, or I'm just a shitty friend.
My friend in question is autistic and has ADHD. Sometimes he just makes out-of-the-blue remarks about his bad mental health or his horrible therapist, and I find it disturbing. His hyperfixation is an RPG romance video game, and he can't talk about anything other than that. I know that hyperfixating is pretty typical for autistic people, but he's been talking about it for almost a year now. And it is a very niche video game, definitely not mainstream, so there aren't that many people willing to listen to him. Well, as soon as he became friends with me, I listened to him, even though to be frank, I don't care about romance games. I just let him infodump all over me, and I even posed questions encouraging him to infodump, because I believed that that was how some people showed that they appreciate your company. I just went along with it because he didn't have any friends besides me (not even friends who weren't NT. I was literally his only friend).
Today, the conversation somehow devolved into therapy, and I am pretty mad at myself for letting it get there because I really should have just shut up and changed the conversation topic instead of encouraging it further. Here's how it went:
Him: "I don't trust therapy. I've been to therapy and it was a horrible experience. My old therapist tried to get me to go back on my eating disorder."
Me: "The responsibility to do the healthy thing isn't on the therapist. The responsibility is on you."
Him: "That's a wild sentence."
Now I feel the passive-aggressiveness, so I try to clarify why I said that. "Well, the therapist can't make you do anything. You have to do healthy things by yourself to get better."
Him: "Yeah, but therapy sucks. I'm not saying that your therapist is bad, but in general, there are more bad therapists than good ones."
Me: "Maybe you need a different kind of therapy. You could try CBT."
Him: "I hate CBT."
Now, let the awkward silence commence.
After doing some research, I realize that most autistic people don't like CBT because it implies that something is wrong with the way they think, when they can't actually help it. CBT helped both me and my sibling, but since we're neurotypical, it definitely affected us in a different way than it would affect my friend. The reason I became friends with him in the first place was because, at one point, I was also struggling with mental illness. But I got better while my friend just stayed in the same place. And when I suggested therapy, it felt as if he'd taken personal offense to it. He also mentioned during conversation that he hates it when his friends leave, and he doesn't know whether people he knows are just pretending to be his friends while secretly hating him. And, well, I don't hate him. But I always have a feeling of dread when I see him, because I know I have to be cautious of what I say. I believe it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you aren't willing to go out of your comfort zone to get more mainstream interests and become closer friends to people, then how will you make lasting relationships?
I have spoken with a few of his ex-friends. Those people are still my friends, and all of them are neurotypical. They all said, that at one point, they couldn't handle his infodumping and trauma dumping, and three girls ghosted him while another (one of my best friends) called him out on his behavior, so he unfortunately lashed out at her. As soon as we began conversing and I described the kind of behavior I witnessed, she immediately guessed the name of the guy I was talking about. My good friend who called him out explained that every time they interacted, it was like walking on eggshells, and a large part of me agreed with that. I felt cornered and pressured to respond to everything he said, so I eventually (inevitably) said something he disagreed with, and suddenly it was like the life got sucked out of our conversation.
This is not a complaint against people who are autistic. I am just frustrated and need guidance as to how I should go about things now. We may be incompatible, that's for sure, but could there be a person out there that is compatible with him? From a NT standpoint, I find it hard to believe that anyone, NT or autistic, would voluntarily be friends with someone who dumps emotional baggage constantly. But I am not autistic.
I have a difficult choice to make because I know I will feel a lot better without him, but he will not have any other good friends if I leave. Is there any way that this relationship can still be salvaged? And is it okay for me to leave him? Has anyone experienced social isolation like this, where friends ghost you, and you just deal with it? If you do relate to my friend, please tell me how you feel about this. Above all else, though, I want him to realize that I don't hate him, and neither did any of his previous friends. When I give him my honest thoughts, I don't expect him to agree all the time, but I also don't expect him to get mad or passive-aggressive.
TLDR; Autistic friend got angry at me for mentioning CBT as a legit way to help him. I no longer want to be friends with him because it is emotionally taxing, but I feel bad because he interprets social rejection as a sign of hatred. Should I cut contact? What is it like experiencing a friendship falling out?

Hey guys, thanks for all the help and support from my last post I really appreciate it. This past week I was able to talk more to my girlfriend and parents and that went well. My parents essentially said that they will support Me no matter what(as long as I'm not being a bum) which ever way I choose. They said I should br doing it for me and not for the validation and feelings of others and that my validation needs to come from within. That wad awesome to hear. My girlfriend was a bit harder, she is nervous about me coming home due to the inevitable judgement coming from others and its not how she imagine and hoped that it would go. I think she's holding out a little hope not that I'll figure out it's true, we both don't believe its true, but rhst something good will happen to make my time worth it.
Today I talked with my president in interviews. I tried to go in very calm and not attacking him or how he believes in any way. I explained that there are certain things about this church that I do not agree eith or believe in, he asked me to go further into detail. He's a business man and earlier in my mission we had talked about Ensign Peaks and how that is troubling for Me to learn about and how I believe that it wad fradulent. Before I could finish my sentence about ensign peaks he cut Me off and retorted that it wasn't illegal or fradulent because if it was people would be in jail. He told me that it went against regulations so in his eyes its ok for thr church to lie and deceive members and the government because it's not "breaking laws." I chose not to argue or agree eith him and we continued on with my questioning joseph smith and the book of mormon and again he cut me off to "testify" that it's true. He asked me about president Nelson and the apostles and I basically said there are some good things that has been taught but I do think there are times that he speaks as a man and teaches things as doctrine that shouldn't be. He said he's spent a lot of time with apostles and he knows that they are the mouth piece of God. I then brought up questions about policy/doctrine issues like blacks in the priesthood being taught ad doctrine, he again cut Me off and said that it wasn't taught as doctrine. About after that I clocked out and replied with ok to most of his answers. I feel very disrespected and unheard after pretty much all of my encounters with him. That'd about all of the update, still thinking about going home and I'm not sure what to do entirely. If anyone has anymore advice I'd love to hear it. Hope you all have a great day.

So my parents finally had a divorce in 2020. I say "finally" because I saw it coming and honestly wanted them to. They have been fighting for years and other problems made me just want them to get a divorce because the tension was horrible.
They got a divorce because my dad fucked up, but my mom was the one to move out. For years now my mom has told me that if they ever got a divorce she would take me and my brother and we would live happily alone. But because she already found a new partner while the divorce was still in motion, me and my brother did not want to go live with her because she promised it would only be the three of us. It's childish, I know, but me and my brother have been through a lot.
So me and my brother live with my dad now and it's fucking awful. Even though my dad messed everything up he pretends to be the victim. He acts like we have to pity him. He has always had an alcohol problem but ever since the divorce it got worse. He would always say "your mother did this to me". My dad stopped receiving a bonus at work because he's been slacking off and we spiraled down a financial disaster. He actually quit his job a month ago, making me even more worried about our financial situation.
My mom has always done the cooking and cleaning around the house so when she left I had to take over. I taught myself how to do the laundry and I had experience doing the dishes but never liked doing it because it's gross. My cooking was sometimes good but ive never made something disgusting. I always made sure my brother had clean clothes to wear to school and I would even spend the little money I had to buy something if we really needed it. Where I always spent my money for pleasure I now have to use it like an adult.
So, about my dad... Yeah he's acting like the victim but he also acts in charge, and I mean he felt like he was the boss of EVERYTHING. We had to ask permission for things that didn't need permission. We weren't allowed to do the dishes. He would tell us to leave the dishes because he said he would do it. And because we were scared of him, we listened. The dishes would just pile up for days and when I decide I'd had enough I would do the dishes, only to get yelled at afterwards. Other chores and activities would have the same outcome.
We weren't allowed to be sad. If we had a bad day at school and just wanted to stay in our room and be upset, he would for some reason always accuse my mom for being the reason for all sadness. If we had a disagreement about something he would always say "Why don't you go live with your mother!" "Why am I the bad guy?" It's exhausting.
My dad obviously has a smoking and drinking problem. My mom was strict about the smell of smoke in the house but after she left, my dad didn't care and would smoke indoors and his room was full of askes. A teacher even asked me one day if I was smoking because I came to school smelling like smoke. My dad could easily drink 1.5 litres of alcohol everyday. He would start drinking early in the morning untill he went to sleep so he's never sober. It made me and my brother not want to hang out with him, which made my dad mad.
My dad was emotionally abusive. He never physically hurt us, but his words has a huge impact on us. My dad is the cause of our trust issues, our paranoia, and our insecurities.
We are not allowed to make jokes. We are not allowed to have friends over. We are not allowed to go out with friends. We are not allowed to take part in school activities. We are not allowed to be children. We are not allowed to talk seriously with him. We are not allowed to have problems.
I hate my dad, and I'm sure he hates us as well.
I just finished highschool, so you might think I can finally start my own life, but no, I'm not allowed to leave. I'm not allowed to go to uni. I'm not allowed to get a driver's license.
I'm stuck here

I recently told my therapist about my obsessions I get when I like someone. She asked me why do I romanticize them and put them on a pedestal. Maybe to reject myself before they can? Maybe I think too good of them? Maybe to imagine my life with them? I didn’t really know how to answer that. I started obsessing over a new guy recently and quickly blocked him when it seemed like he didn’t like me. I was wondering if you guys had an answer for why you personally put your LO on a pedestal (if you do at all)?

As the title says, We are in the grocery store and minding our own business located somewhere, USA (in Texas but willing to relocate as long as its in the USA only) and we end up bumping into each other physically, as I say I am sor.ry, our eyes lock and right then, we fall for one another and just get lost in the moment.
After a few dates, you learn that I am on disability for PTSD (non military) and you learn that I love animals and enjoy being a homebody more than being out in the public, and that I am a nonsmoker and don't even do drugs. (yes weed is a drug)
After a few weeks of dating, we end up getting into gaming together and I teach you games like fortnite, sea of thieves, fall guys, grounded, palworld. And we just spend nights gaming together and spending time together after a hectic day of just life.
After a few hours of gaming, we end up in the kitchen where we cook dinner together and then do the dishes together then snuggling on the couch or in the bed feeding each other spoons of ice cream while watching our favorite tv shows/movies before we fall asleep in each others arms.
We have a small apartment together in a small town but big city vibes with lots of things to do and places to go. You are very clingy and needy and constantly texting me through the day telling me you miss me and love me. we send cute feet pics to each other with the occasional toe wiggles while you're at work.
As you come home from work, I have a snack and drink ready for you and we sit on the couch and I rub and massage your poor tired sore feet and wiggle the little toes as you just lay there telling me about all the karens at your job and how they threatened to have you fired.
Anyway will wrap this up, if any of this sounds like it would be great, just shoot me a dm and lets chat. I prefer voice chat so must be willing to voice chat. and please no men, I am a cis male, looking for my one true love that fits me like the perfect socks on a cold winter night.