Cute facebook about me ideas

Okay so I'm in a really tough relationship which I've been in for almost 2 years. The trouble is I'm very codependent. I'm 3 years older and since the start I've been deeply entrenched in a caregiving role. We've had a rocky time. We lived together for 8 months, now we're long distance 3 time zones away. We've been caught in an unfortunate dance of breaking up, being unable to actually follow through with it, and getting back together.
Recently there's been this thought at the edge of my mind: what if there's a secret third option... What if I chose to commit to solo-polyamory and gave him the choice to stay or go depending on his feelings about it.
A year ago when I mentioned anything like this he said he would accept it so I could stay in his life but he would be heartbroken secretly. So obviously sounds like a huge no right?
But here's the thing: he's not currently able to sustain being my boyfriend. He has told me as much. His mental health is really bad (he was literally just in the psych hospital), and he cannot be there for me. Not just in the caregiving ways but even just spending quality time together, being cute, etc. I don't blame him either, we both think I have BPD and my codependent tendencies can be suffocating.
And on the other hand, I cannot sustain being his primary caregiver. I feel neglected and lonely. And also feel incredibly fatigued from spending the last two years trying to keep him alive and build up his self esteem.
I need to get out of this dynamic! However, I've tried many times to just break it off and that doesn't work well for us because of our intense magnetism and chemistry and love for eachother.
His needs aren't being met by me and mine aren't being met by him but we don't want to stop talking/loving on eachother.
At least I don't. I hope he's not staying just because he's scared no one else will ever love him the way I do. That would be extremely fucking selfish because I've been suffering with this relationship unable to fully start my new life in a new city because I'm still stuck in this painful dysfunctional relationship.
But recently he has been so unavailable even telling me things point blank like "I can’t handle it today I’m sorry (our relationship)". This is actually great communication. But just because I've been selfless a lot in this relationship doesn't mean I'm a saint! I go crazy when he's unavailable. The experience of neglect is so strong that I disregard his boundaries and start fights just so he will text me. I did this just the other day. I am highly disappointed in my actions. Super not cool!!!
He said I was acting entitled and it hurts because I am so alone. I'm devoted to him but he can't do anything for me. I never ever get to be held by him. And I can't hold it against him because he's doing all he can to just stay alive.
So why do I think solo polyamory could help? Well it's all the boundaries which I crave while still keeping open a real avenue for being in eachother's lives as lovers.
It would be an immense relief to not feel guilty for desiring to connect with other people in addition to him. I have never been a jealous person, and I have always had an ability to care for multiple people in unique ways. To me each relationship is unique and I want to be able to honor them all.
I also want my life back. I'm done being his Mom. I'm done waiting around for his American dream fantasy to be realized (where we have a farm and kids and I'm the mother of his children and we're a happy couple who grows old together) That's a really sweet dream but rn I'm 24, devoted to something unfulfilling, and very unhappy.
I truthfully, want out. But I am shackled by guilt and self doubt. And also bound by the dreams we dreamt up together about the future we could share.
I don't think he's really monogamous at all. He's literally not. He has the hugest crush on my best friend (which doesn't bother me at all btw it genuinely makes me feel good). I have a crush on his best friend too and he loves our trio dynamic so much.
Monogamy has hurt us a lot. It's kept me isolated. His jealousy and possessiveness is out of control. He made me cut off everyone I had previously been romantically involved with which was a good portion of the friends I had (we met in one context and then I decided I was only interested platonically but he still felt really threatened because of the history). He lacks support outside of our relationship and only trusts me enough to go to but I literally cannot be the only one holding him it's not sustainable!
He has had two other girlfriends at times we were broken up but he didn't really like them and told me he just wished they were me. He's extremely upset about not living together anymore and frankly I am too, but I left because it was too much.
I am so sick of it and I know he is too. We need a change. I need my autonomy back. I'm tired of feeling shame and guilt for the way I love. I am not monogamous and I know that in my soul. Solo-polyamory calls to me. It's a little scary. I'm scared that without the context of monogamy maybe I will never get to experience cute lovey dovey shit again.
I loved being his girlfriend/boyfriend (I'm NB) in the beginning. It was really fun being his girl/man. I enjoy deeply having a partner like that. But the idea of having to deny my nonmonogamous nature for the rest of my life feels awful. I denied it and pretended it wasn't part of me for him. But I always felt like he could sense the truth. That I was choosing him over everyone else for his comfort and because I believe he deserves to feel chosen/like the only boy in the world. Not because it was natural or fulfilling or truthful for me.
I feel like I've had to make myself smaller for him and deny parts of myself for his happiness. Maybe that's normal but it feels sad to me.
I want my life back, I want my self back. I don't want to feel guilty anymore. And I'm done being codependent with him. But I think that if I could reinvent the way I relate to romantic partners, maybe I could actually salvage this and get back to the roots or true parts of our love.
It would require immense amounts of courage and trust to transform our dynamic and my concern is he isn't ready for something like that. But I feel like it's worth it to give him a chance to decide how he feels about it for himself.
IDK. Am I crazy?? Am I trying too hard to salvage this? I can't walk away until I've tried everything people. I am far too in love with this man. I swear from the bottom of my heart I love him for a reason and he is a beautiful beautiful person and he really does love me fiercely. Seriously we aren't just getting back together for no reason. If you knew us you would get it. Our love is incredibly passionate. Our chemistry is very intense. We have deep deep deep gentle and caring feeling towards eachother. I admire him deeply. Just because we are struggling with monogamy and long distance and both being mentally ill doesn't mean our relationship isnt worth trying to save.

Hi everyone, I am 20M in my third year of college. This is my second post on this platform and my only post talking about my experience, so I don’t know if it will reach people at all. However, I lose nothing by trying. I’ll start by giving some context about myself. My intent is to know if people relate to my experiences to some extent and what they have done, if anything, to become better.
I can consciously ascertain that I’ve had an introverted nature ever since I was in 3rd grade. This became more apparent over the years, but when young, not being able to participate in class by answering questions even though I knew the answers (some strange invisible force wouldn’t allow it), and not turning in my homework because it involved standing up, walking , and placing it in the turn-it-in pile with the rest (the same strange force acted upon me, but this time because I didn’t want to be seen by my classmates even though they were all doing the same thing) would be the usual. I was lucky enough to be “adopted” by my current group of friends when I was in 7th grade. Else, my HS life and regular life would have been bound to be much lonelier.
I have always attributed my lack of communication skills to my introversion, but I’ve been able to identify some characteristics in my behavior that make me believe I have some degree of social anxiety. Rather, I am almost certain.
• Although I’ve been able to get better over the years, and even more now that I live alone, talking with people in customer service, retail, cashiers, etc. is something I dread. Early in my life, I would be able to get my message across, but weirdly phrased due to my nervousness. Even today, if there is some kind of self-checkout, or I can order my food online even though I am in the restaurant, I will most certainly do that instead of talking directly with someone. Same goes for phone calls, I detest the idea of making them and receiving them, but I’ve had to adjust. Today, when talking with people in customer service, I limit myself to provide the necessary verbal information that is needed to conduct whatever business we’re involved in (such as paying for groceries) and if asked unrelated questions, will answer in the most concise manner, leaving no room for conversation. It happens smoothly though.
• I am not able to maintain eye contact with people for a lot of time when talking with them and will tend to have my sight directed elsewhere (90% of the time). This does not apply to immediate family, but most certainly applies to extended family (even if close), friends, acquaintances, and evidently strangers.
• I am unable to start relationships with new people and this is mostly due to the fact that I don’t talk to people. In my 3 years of college, I’ve made about 8 acquaintances due to obligatory groups for class projects. Out of those 8, about 3 will nod at me (and I’ll nod back to them) when we see each other in public. I have no communication (in-class or messages) with any of them. I have no friends and will most likely end up graduating college with no friends made at all. No connections. I spend my days in my apartment, doing homework and wasting time (watching TikTok or doing other unproductive stuff). Note that I do not live in the same country as my group of friends, so I am, in practical terms, friendless. It is not that I want to be like this, but whenever someone new approaches me, my mind blanks and I always come up with concise responses to whatever they tell me. Again, leaving no room for conversation. Just today I was taking my dog to the vet, so I stepped into the elevator (I live on the 5th floor of the building). A girl had called the elevator from the 4th floor, so it stopped so she could jump in. Our “conversation” went something along the lines of this:
Random Girl: Hi Me: Hi Random Girl: Aww your dog is so cute, what is their breed? Me: Havanese Random Girl: Aww a little Havanese, so cute. I really want a dog. Me: … silence, while directing my eyes towards my dog which I had in my arms to avoid eye contact with girl Me: … now starts watching the elevator button panel Elevator reaches first floor after maybe 30 seconds of silence Me: Have a good one. leaves Random Girl: Have a good one. also leaves
That is my most recent example, but all of my spontaneous interactions look like that. And it is not that I didn’t want to talk to the girl, but my mind just goes blank, and thus my mouth shuts.
I am sure there are many other things I could talk about here, but I won’t as this post would become too long and what I want to know is your experiences, and if possible, hear some advice from anyone who can and wants to give it. It goes without saying that I live a lonely life and am not very happy because of it. I long for connection with other people. People with whom to laugh, cry, eat, etc. I have also never been involved romantically with anyone, but I understand stuff like that won’t happen with me being this way. I guess my petition to you is to provide me with advice on how to get better in this aspect of life. To be utterly honest with you, I am desperate, and I am tired of my life being this way.

"Snoozydoodles! Get your Snoozydoodles here!" Himiko announced. Some students smiled kindly at her, but continued to walk. Other students scoffed or snorted at her, ignoring her completely. Himiko sighed. "It's no use." Three went up to her.
"Don't give up, Himiko!" she said. "Um...maybe it would help if you gave them a reason to want your cookies."
"What do you mean?" Himiko asked.

"Instead of waiting for customers to buy your cookies, do something to lure them in!" Three suggested. Three spied Kaito and Maki walking towards the school. "Ooo! There's some people! You know them?"
"Yeah, that's Kaito and Maki," Himiko said.
"Maybe there's a way for you to draw them in," Three said. Himiko took a glance at her glittery snickerdoodles, and thought the perfect way to convince one of them. She jumped right in front of Kaito and Maki.
"'Space...the final frontier!'" she announced dramatically. "'These are the travels of the starship, Booby Prize! Its continuing mission to explore strange new galaxies! To look for new life and new civilizations! To boldly go where no one has gone before!'" Kaito's mouth hung agape in amazement.
"Hey! You know the opening sequence to Cosmic Quest! " he exclaimed. "That was pretty good, Himiko!"
"Nyeh...if you liked that, then I think you'd like my Snoozydoodles!" Himiko said, gesturing to her cookies.
"Snoozydoodles?" Maki repeated, raising an eyebrow.
"You made space cookies?!" Kaito shouted excitedly.
"Come see for yourself," Himiko said with a sly grin. Kaito hurried over, pulling Maki along. Maki noticed Three standing next to Himiko's table.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Just a friend," Three simply answered.
"Whooaaaa!! Maki Roll, look at these cookies, Maki Roll!!!" Kaito shouted, holding up a cookie with both hands. "They look like stars, or somethin!'"
"But, why are they called Snoozydoodles?" Maki asked Himiko.
"Nyeh...I made those cookies special," Himiko explained. "You hafta eat them right before you go to sleep."
"What'll happen then?" Kaito asked.
"You'll have to wait and see," Himiko replied, grinning mysteriously.
"This sounds like a prank Kokichi made up," Maki mumbled skeptically.
"No, it's not a prank, I promise," Himiko assured.
"Ha! I believe her!" Kaito said as Three handed him a small baggie to put his Snoozydoodle in.
"What else is new?" Maki muttered. "But...if Kaito will believe you, I guess I'll be an idiot, too." She and Kaito both paid Himiko ¥500.
"Hey! Did you just call me an idiot?" Kaito said with a frown. Maki merely smiled and rolled her eyes. The two started walking away. "I'm serious, Maki! Is that what you meant?" Himiko turned to Three excitedly.
"Wow! I had customers who weren't my friends!" she squealed.
"Eeee! Yay!" Three said. "You really knew how to handle that guy!"
"It's not hard, really," Himiko shrugged. "All you gotta do is talk about space."
"Well, space is pretty cool," Three admitted, nodding her head. "But, in this case, it's good that that guy's so obsessed with it."
"Nyeh...I think I'm ready to try someone else now!" Himiko said, now feeling energized.
"Look! Here comes a girl! And, wow! She looks really cool!" Three said, pointing to Ibuki, who was skipping her way to the school.
"That's Ibuki," Himiko said. She thought she'd try matching Ibuki's energy. "Nyeh...hiiii, Ibukiiii!!" Ibuki noticed Himiko and went over to her with a big grin.
"Hellooooo, Himikooooo!!" she shouted.
"I hope you like lotsa color and sparkles!!" Himiko said. She was already feeling tired from talking like Ibuki, but she forced herself to keep smiling and talking in Ibuki's overly-cheerful manner.
"Of course! Color and sparkles make the world go 'round!" Ibuki cried.
"Then, how about you try my Snoozydoodles?" Himiko suggested, gesturing to her cookies. Ibuki gasped.
"GAAAASSSSP!!! THESE LOOK SO AMAZING!!!" she cried.
"You want one?" Himiko asked.
"Yeah! Can I have a pink one and a blue one to match?" Ibuki asked, pointing to her arms and hair.
"Nyeh...sure! That'll be ¥1000," Himiko said. Ibuki paid for her cookies, and opened her mouth to take a bite of the pink one. "Wait, Ibuki!!" Ibuki stopped.
"Huh? What's wrong?" she asked.
"Uh...b-before you eat that, you should know that they're called Snoozydoodles because you're supposed to eat them right before you go to sleep," Himiko said. Ibuki's eyes widened.
"Really?!" she exclaimed.
"That's right!" Himiko handed her two baggies. "There you go!"
"Yeee-haw!! I can't wait!!" Ibuki shouted. "Ibuki's so excited to eat these that she might not even be able to sleep!"
That's what you think, Himiko thought to herself.
"Well, thanks, Himiko! Good luck selling your Snoozydoodles!" Ibuki skipped away, leaving Himiko to sigh deeply.
"Hee-hee...she was a ball of energy," Three giggled.
"I know. I don't know how she can stand it," Himiko muttered tiredly.
"Hey, look! More people!" Three said. Himiko turned and spied Fuyuhiko and Peko. She rubbed her palms together.
"Nyeh...I think I know how to get them," she said. "I've always wanted to do this." She sat down on the flat end of school's front entrance's brick banister. She sat up straight, crossed her legs, and stared ahead, stone-faced while curving the corners of her lips downward. Fuyuhiko raised a brow, but smiled curiously as he and Peko slowly approached Himiko.
"Uhh...Himiko? What are you doing?" he asked.
"Fuyuhiko, my boy, thank you for coming here on this very...very important day," Himiko said in a raspy voice as she reached out to straighten Fuyuhiko's suit. Fuyuhiko uttered a small chuckle, realizing that Himiko was trying to imitate Vito Corleone from The Godfather. "Now, listen...I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse."
"Okay, dork, show me what'cha got," Fuyuhiko said, chuckling. Himiko hopped up off the banister. Using her two fingers, she gestured to Fuyuhiko and Peko to follow her.
"Come," she said, still putting on a voice. She gestured grandly to her cookies. "These are the greatest cookies ever known to man. If you were a dope, you'd leave right now. But, you're not a dope, are ya, Fuyuhiko?" Still smiling, Fuyuhiko shook his head in awe.
"No, Himiko, I guess not," he replied. Himiko picked up a cookie.
"Then, here, take a Snoozydoodle," she said before nodding to Peko. "And one for the dame, too." Fuyuhiko handed Peko the cookie, and took one for himself.
"I'll pay for the both of us, Peko," Fuyuhiko offered, and paid ¥1000.
"There's only a minor thing about the cookies," Himiko continued. "You're supposed to eat them right before getting conked." Fuyuhiko smiled quizzically at her.
"Getting conked?! " he repeated.
"Yeah...y'know, in other 'woids,' before youse guys go to sleep," Himiko explained. Fuyuhiko laughed and shook his head.
"Got it," he replied. Himiko handed him and Peko a couple of baggies for their Snoozydoodles. "Thanks, Himiko. Y'know, I can see why Kokichi digs you. You are pretty cute." Himiko blushed.
"Oh, stoooop," she said bashfully, breaking character. "Oh! Um, I mean...Don't call me cute, or it'll be 'coitans' for you, punk." Fuyuhiko laughed again.
"If you say so, Himiko," he said before waving goodbye to Himiko.
Part Ten
Two hours had passed, and Himiko earned a total of ¥9500. She wished she had made more, but it was much better than the day before.
"Nyeh...thanks for helping me out, Keiko," Himiko said with a grateful smile.
"Nooo problemooo!" Three replied. "That was fun! Maybe I can come by next weekend and help out again!"
"Heeey, that's a pretty swell idea for someone who's slacking on the job!" came Kokichi's voice. Himiko and Three turned to see him peering at them from over the brick banister. He walked down the steps and joined them. Himiko and Three glanced at each other frantically.
"B-Boss! I was, um...I-I..." Three stammered. "It's not what it looks like! I was just...dropping by, and I-"
"Yeah, Kokichi! She wasn't helping me, honest!" Himiko chimed in, coming to Three's defense.
"I was just giving her moral support, and maybe some advice," Three said. "But, I promise, I'll go right back to-" Kokichi held up his hand to silence her.
"Very well," he said. "Return to headquarters, Three."
"Okay, boss," Three said, pouting. She dashed off, waving goodbye to Himiko, who waved back. Then, Himiko turned to Kokichi.
"Kokichi? Are you mad at her?" she asked in a small voice. "Are you mad at me, too?"
"I'm not mad at either of you," Kokichi said. Himiko stared back in uncertain silence. "It's not a lie, Himiko. I'm really not mad."
"Oh, but...why do you seem...not happy?" Himiko asked.
"Because Three has business elsewhere," Kokichi replied. "She wasn't supposed to come here."
"Oh..." Himiko said quietly. Kokichi sighed and nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders.
"Seeing as she was assisting the Supreme Lady, though, I'll let it slide this time," he said. "But, I need to have a talk with her about shirking her responsibilities."
"Oh, but...with her support, I made ¥9500," Himiko said, showing Kokichi her earnings. Kokichi's eyes lit up.
"Really?! Way to go, Monkey Buns!" he said, nodding with respect.
"How much did you make?" Himiko asked, afraid to find out.
"Not as much as yesterday," Kokichi said. "Just ¥25000."
"Oh..." Himiko muttered disappointedly. Kokichi held her shoulders firmly.
"Don't be so down, Himiko," he said. "What you earned...it's a start. I'm sure you'll get better later."
"Well, it's just that...I don't understand how you make so much when nearly everybody hates you," Himiko sighed. "And, no matter how much they hate you, they'd still rather buy from you than me."
"Well, even though I'm annoying to most people, I'm always confident in my abilities," Kokichi said. "I know how to give people just the right amount of intrigue. You can do that, too, Monkey Buns! You did make ¥9500 after all! By the way, what advice did Three give you?"
"Well, she said that I should find a way to lure customers in," Himiko said, remembering Three's words. "That I should give them a reason to buy my cookies, rather than waiting around for someone to."
"She's right," Kokichi nodded. "And, how did you do that?" Himiko smiled modestly.
"Well...all I did was recite the Cosmic Quest opening to Kaito, hoping it would interest him enough to try one of my cookies, which kinda looked like outer space," Himiko answered. "Then, I imitated Ibuki as a form of flattery, and then I pretended to be that guy from The Godfather to appeal to Fuyuhiko's 'yakuz-y' nature. Nyeh...he even said I was cute for that."
"Ooo, so you have a crush on Fuyuhiko, now?" Kokichi teased.
"No!!" Himiko cried. "You're already my boyfriend!"
"That's right!" Kokichi said dramatically, wrapping his arms around Himiko protectively and kissing her cheek. "Mwah! You're my Supreme Lady. Mwah! And I love you. Mwah! So very much. Mwah!" Himiko giggled.
"Gross! You're getting your slobber all over me!" she exclaimed. Kokichi blew on her cheek, making a rumbly sound. Himiko laughed even harder. "KOKICHI!!" Kokichi chuckled and kissed her lips.
"I'm proud of you, Himiko," he said, patting her shoulder. "Were they the only customers you had, though?"
"No, Tenko, Angie, and Tsumugi also bought some cookies," Himiko said. "And after Fuyuhiko was Ryoma, Sonia, Celeste, Makoto, Mikan, Miu, and Gonta bought some, as well."
"Heeeey, look at you, being a salesgirl!" Kokichi said, giving Himiko a high five. Himiko blushed bashfully. "Sooo...ready to go?" Kokichi asked her, casually sticking his hands in his pockets.
"Nyeh...yeah," Himiko replied. "I've had enough funny business for one day." Kokichi's smile faded, and frowned.
"Did Three teach you that, too?" he asked. Himiko stood still like a deer in headlights.
"Y-Yeah...why? What's wrong?" she stammered. Kokichi sighed deeply shook his head.
"Three knows better than that. That should only be said to official members of the organization," Kokichi explained.
"Oh! But...I'm the Supreme Lady, I thought," Himiko said.
"Not officially," Kokichi pointed out.
"But...I don't understand," Himiko said, genuinely confused. "You tell me stuff about your organization all the time."
"Only the basic things you need to know," Kokichi said. "But, if you wanna know all the secrets in how we operate, you have to be an official member."
"Oh..." Himiko mumbled. "Nyeh...you really do take your job as Supreme Leader seriously, huh, Kokichi?"
"I do...which is kinda ironic, considering what we do," Kokichi said thoughtfully. "But, if I let everyone act all willy-nilly, the organization would go to pieces. What kind of Supreme Leader would I be if I let that happen?"
"Well, I guess you're right," Himiko said. "But, please, don't be mad at Three, Kokichi. She really helped me!"
"Alright, alright..." Kokichi sighed, holding up his hands in surrender. "But, I do need to have a serious talk with her. Aaaanyhoo, let's get ready to go back home." Himiko nodded, and the two cleaned up Himiko's area.
"Nyeh...I hope they end up liking my cookies," Himiko said on the way home. "Or even bothered to remember not to eat them until right before going to sleep."
"Well...you sold them a pretty interesting cookie, HimiCocoa Bean," Kokichi said. "I'm sure you've intrigued them enough form them to remember. We'll have to wait tomorrow to find out what they thought of them."

Never thought I’d say this out loud, but it was a huge part of my life for years and I can never speak to anyone about it because it’s so fucked up lol.
So around when I was 11, I was a fan of this famous person and I really loved their work for years prior. I hadn’t really been on the internet much yet aside from watching YouTube and Limewire, but as I was being taught more and more in school about how the internet works and what you can find and where to find things, I decided to give it a try at home.
Among my searches for pictures of this artist, YouTube videos, and whatever articles I could find, I discovered the concept of a chat room. Retrospectively, no, an 11 year old should never have access to a public chat room. But I found this chat room on a fan site for this celebrity, and I entered the celebrity’s name into the name box and joined. I only entered their name because I liked them and did not want to use my real name, but once I joined a few people were excited, saying “[celebrity] oh my god! I love you!” and other stupid shit that kids my same age would say lol.
I don’t know why, but I just went with it. When I tell you that to this day I don’t understand how some of these people believed this, I have no fucking clue. The first person I met and befriended was a 29 year old woman from New Zealand who had 3 kids. She made YouTube videos singing for me, she wrote me love letters, and even though I had not entertained it, acted like we were in a relationship together. She had badly (and I mean BADLY) edited photos of her and this celebrity and other adjacent celebrities. She called me babe and wrote a fan fiction of us together. Honestly looking back this lady was super unhinged I have no idea what that was about.
She made me an email address and convinced me to join a very popular writing website. I reluctantly joined, because I was technically not allowed to have social media accounts per my parents. She made the username, which was the celebrity’s name and some other characters.
I just kind of hung out on these chat rooms and this writing website for a while, and actually ended up amassing a huge amount of attention. I had tens of thousands of views on my profile, I had 10 chats going in yahoo messenger at a time, and the PMs on the writing website were so deep I would have to take an hour or two to reply to them every night.
Most of these people who I was speaking to, if not all of them, were older than me. Sometimes significantly so. My best friends were 15-17 age range, except for the NZ woman. I had people putting me in touch with their moms because their parents did not believe I was this celebrity, which, yeah. But miraculously I had always convinced all of them, and ended up actually having long conversations with the parents and becoming really close to them.
When anyone asked for proof, most of the time I got incredibly lucky. Proof was made up of small actions a lot of the time that lined up perfectly, some proof was providing pictures that were incredibly rare and candid.
For example, I would say goodnight to these friends and then celebrity would tweet goodnight minutes later. This happened quite often, somehow, so that worked out in my favor. I also was able to find some crazy back room ass Flickr and Photobucket pictures that I don’t even know how these people got, but they were selfies from this celebrity that were never posted by them and not distributed widely on the internet at all. I also had access to a LiveJournal that knew what this celebrity was doing before it was widely publicly known. So if they had been sighted at an airport, I’d know while they were standing in the terminal where they were going and why before it ever showed up on a magazine or article.
I could go for days about what effort I put into this, because I was in so deep that I just assumed my role as this celebrity completely. I was a lonely and miserable kid, if you couldn’t tell. I copied the celebrity’s typing style, vocabulary, and many other things to seem real to these people.
After a while, I decided to attempt to guess the password of the account on that writing website that was the celebrity’s name with no special characters at the end, that perfectly matched their real social medias. Again, miraculously, I was able to guess correctly and this again scored me points in the proof department because I had told everyone that I reached out to the website to secure my official username because people were getting confused by my current one. There were no verified badges on this website, so that was not a factor.
I also made accounts for friends and family members for this celebrity on yahoo, not because I actually spent a lot of time being these people, but because if I remember correctly Yahoo almost had a weird little social network back then, and you could see full names of friends or contacts so I just made sure that was convincing enough. This part is foggy but I know there was some public area where you could see something like that.
I decided to move off of the writing website after a while. No particularly good reason, and most other people did as well. I made a personal blog as this celebrity, and posted photos of backstage that I had acquired from being friends with crew members on Facebook. I posted photos of the studios this celebrity was working in. From interviews I pieced together their favorite songs and movies and made a little about me section where I put goofy things like that. It was a lot of work.
By the time I was 13 or 14, I kind of grew sick of it so I gradually stopped. I think the final straw was seeing a picture of that celebrity and accidentally blurting out “my hair is-“ and I realized I had merged myself with this person so much that my real sense of self was getting caught up into it. Honestly it was probably caught up well before that point.
My friends were graduating high school, still talking to a celebrity impersonator they’ve known for years. I told the very close ones I still wanted contact with and they stuck around for a few years and visited me IRL and stuff. Most of them though I just sort of faded out for. Never spoke to them again and went dark on all of my social media.
What’s most perplexing to me about this whole thing was how many adults actually believed me. I am now nearly the age of some of these adults I was speaking to, and I just genuinely could not imagine actually believing shit like that. Maybe it was a different time, I don’t know. But they certainly were not fucking with me.
I truly do wonder now how many of these people look back on those years and think they’re fucking idiots for ever believing that, or if they still believe it. I don’t know.
There’s a lot of other lore that I could never possibly get to, but this is the gist. For a few years I felt very guilty, and I had a real crisis for quite a while about how I realized I simply could not be myself (after I stopped being this celebrity I still used a different name and gender and pretended to be someone else, but nobody specific this time). I worked on that for a long time and came clean to everyone in my life and decided that being a liar is not the kind of person I want to be and hurting people was never my intention but it was a direct result of lying to people, so I stopped.
I’ve been regular boring me since then, and I’ve processed the whole situation a long time ago. But it is a part of my past that I cannot share with anyone because honestly it’s really fucked up. I probably wouldn’t keep someone in my life if they had done such a thing. I think my only saving grace is that I started this when I was 11. I loved the attention and I loved the escapism. I wish I had known roleplaying existed back then, which is quite a bit more socially acceptable and not hurtful to others.
But yeah, honestly I’ve mulled around the idea of posting this for years because it is incredibly elaborate and ridiculous because of how deep into this I went and how successful it somehow ended up being. I guess today is the day I finally post it.
Thanks for reading.

This is a cute idea but the way they mixed plants with different light/watering needs, planted all the succulents in super organic soil, watered the freaking leaves, AND planted a water heavy plant on top that will drain it's water in to the succulent soil guaranteeing they will die of overwatering just makes my eye twitch!
But also...feeling grateful to all the people on this sub who have spent the past few years teaching me enough that I now know enough to be angry about this <3 https://fb.watch/s4K4nT5O9u/

starting with little intro ; i am a college student, i have experience in the ecommerce industry as i have 1 client.
I am planning to provide email marketing as service and do freelancing and looking for guidance here
i would appreciate it if you can answer these questions of mine :

1 INCOME Expectations ? How much income can i expect in this industry ? it will be low at starting but i still wanna get a rough idea​​​​​​​
2 LEARNING Can anyone suggest me where should i learn from and what exactly should i learn. There are many courses out there on the internet, i wanna what things are needed from me and resources guidance will be appreciated​​​​​​​
3 What service What service should i start with in email marketing ? i would like a service which i can provide and get paid monthly just like facebook advertisers do. But email automations look easy to deliver and get clients for

i will learn about how to get clients later ( i can arrange 2-3 testimonials )

pls be specific about learning resources. IF you can give overview of the industry or any suggestion

i know this might take long to respond but i hope you will help me clear any misconception i have about the industry.

Looking forward to your responses and thank you in advance for sharing your expertise!

Hi Everyone!
This is my first write-up of any kind of unresolved mystery, on any platform, so I apologize for any formatting errors and my storytelling ability. Today I would like to hear your thoughts on the very mysterious death of Noah Presgrove, a 19 year old from Comanche Oklahoma. I have tried to be as thorough as possible with the details, but there is a great deal of conflicting information in the news reports, so I primarily used facts stated by Noah's family in interviews. With that said, let's begin...
Noah Presgrove was a handsome, athletic 19 year old from Comanche Oklahoma, which is located just south of Oklahoma City in the middle of the state. Noah had recently graduated high school in the spring of 2023 and was waiting for his cousin to do the same the following year so they both could enlist in the Marine Corp together and serve our country. By all accounts Noah was a ladies man, standing at 6'2" with an athletic build, in high school he was a 4-sport athlete with American Football and Wrestling among them. His family also says he was adventurous, kind and very much a jokester who would happily play pranks on his family. Last Labor Day weekend, the first weekend of September 2023, Noah was deciding between attending Rocklahoma, an annual 3-day hard rock and metal festival held in Pryor, Oklahoma, with family members or attending a 4-day Labor Day weekend bash/22nd birthday party of a friend. Noah considered going to Rocklahoma, but changed his mind when the family members he'd be attending with said they didn't think it was a good idea for Noah's 16 year old friend to join them there, since they didn't know this friend's family and Rocklahoma is big for consuming alcohol. With that, everyone went their own way to celebrate the holiday weekend.
The Labor Day/Birthday party was for a female friend of Noah's who was turning 22. It had been advertised on Snapchat, even containing the address, so quite a few people were expected to attend. Noah drove himself to the party on Saturday and by all accounts enjoyed himself. He did text his family member who was at Rocklahoma and express regret at not going with them, but it doesn't appear that this put too much of a damper on his attitude at the house party. After spending Saturday at the birthday girl's house, Noah returned home Sunday, probably to freshen up and take care of any outstanding errands or just check in with his grandmother, with whom he lived. Also, Noah's car was leaking from the oil pan, so it sounds like part of the reason to return home was to leave it there so he wouldn't have to worry about it. There are two stories about what happened next: The first is that one of Noah's friends picked him up from his house on Sunday, but took him to a truck stop so he could grab some food from the Sonic there. Oddly, the friend who took him there says he left him there and Noah was then given a ride to the party by the birthday girl, who had to come pick him up. The other story is that his best friend picked him up from his house and took him directly to the party, leaving him in the driveway. Either way, Noah was back at the party on Sunday and according to those present, was very much enjoying himself. There were videos from the party showing Noah and his friends doing "guy things" like the Slap Game, where two people try to slap each other across the face as hard as they can. Just "macho" drunken teenage guy things. There was also video from the party of the guests playing "classic" party games such as beer pong.
With all the drinking going on, some issues were bound to arise. A confrontation happened between Noah and his best friend. Noah had been in a corner with his best friend's girlfriend and apparently they had their backs to everyone else while talking. The best friend took exception to this and an argument ensued. Luckily, it did not become physical and they made up shortly after, but this event with the best friend and his girlfriend is important for later. A second confrontation occurred between Noah and a 16 year old guest that did become physical. The 16 year old accused Noah of hiding his phone, although the reasons why he thought Noah did it have not been stated. During the argument the kid "fishhooked" Noah and Noah returned the favor by biting his finger. It seems like the other people there were able to diffuse the situation and the kid's phone was found underneath another guest who was sleeping on a couch. As the day went on, things continued to become crazier as the people at the party drank more and more. At one point girls at the party started signing their names on Noah's torso and buttocks, writing things such as "Noah's hot!" and drawing a cartoon penis on his rear-end. Noah and the best friend he had the argument with even drove a John Deere "Gator" UTV "Side by Side" around the property, but stopped when Noah scrapped his hand almost flipping it over. Some people even say that Noah was tossed from the UTV, but he was checked out by a nurse at the party and she said he had nothing to worry about. Another event worth mentioning is that the birthday girl seemed to have a crush on Noah. Noah realized this, or was told this, and while talking to her about it called her a "fat, nasty b*tch". I assume that they were close friends and this is just a drunken teen being a drunken teen. An odd thing to mention is that this girl's mother, who also lives in the home, had told Noah's family that she believed Noah wanted her sexually. Whether this is true or not, I have no clue, but it seems a very weird thing to say to the family of a 19 year old your daughter is friends with.
So here's where the mystery comes in. Early Monday morning (September 4th, 2023), after 2:00am, the guests say that Noah was upset about something and that it might have had to do with sleeping in either the birthday girl's or her mother's bed. One of them either heard, or saw, Noah attempting to sleep in their bed and demanded that he go on the floor. This apparently upset Noah so much that he said he needed to go out for a walk, completely drunk, very early in the morning. The guests say Noah was wearing his best friend's shorts (we'll get to his clothes later) and could only find one of his shoes, so he grabbed another shoe lying around the house and took off out the front door. The house had a 1/2 mile long driveway that then went out to US-81, a major North-South highway that runs for 1,200+ miles through the central US. At 3:41am, a friend of Noah's posted a weird Snapchat: a photo of a girl at the party smiling, with the caption "well, Noah's missing". This was the last Snapchat posted by any of the partygoers after days of constant videos and pics. Around 5:00am, a semi-truck driving along US-81 saw something he believed to be a body lying on the shoulder of the road. After driving past, he became concerned and turned around to confirm what he saw. By the time he got back, two other vehicles had stopped in front of the lifeless body of Noah on the shoulder. He was completely naked wearing only 2 mismatched shoes and curled up in a fetal position. He appeared to have blunt force trauma to the back of his head. He had small scrapes on his left shoulder and left hip and his fingertips on both hands were reported as being "shredded", down to the bone. Noah's front top and bottom teeth had also been knocked out and they were found scattered at the scene. There was no blood found at the scene, other than a small amount around Noah's injuries. Very concerning was the fact that there was no writing on his body anywhere. Not on his torso and not on his buttocks. The shorts Noah was wearing were found folded up next him. The people at the party said "They must've been knocked off when he was hit.", which obviously does not make sense.
Around 6:00am, with the police already notified by the people who found Noah, all Snapchat's/social media from people at the party was deleted. His friends and acquaintances at the party say they have no idea what led up to his death and they were unaware of it. The police did not search the house because they said: "Noah wasn't found there.". They did eventually conduct a "mass" interview with all the partygoers. During this interview, Noah's best friend's girlfriend, the one that led to his first confrontation, told police she had never met Noah. She had wiped her phone so completely that even her boyfriend's number had been deleted. When the guests were asked about Noah being naked, the girls said they gave Noah a "shower", but Noah's mental state at the time, whether mildly drunk or completely inebriated, has been an area of dispute among the guests. Some say he was joking around and being himself while being showered, other accounts state that he was barely conscious. Noah's clothing he wore to the party that night has never been located. Police were told that after Noah showered his clothes were dirty, so he wore his friend's shorts. There is a rumor that his best friend's father found Noah's shirt from the party, which was then cut-up and distributed to the party attendees as a "memento". In addition to this event with his shirt, there is also information that his best friend's father had some of Noah's teeth in his pocket. He stated he "accidentally" picked them up from the crime scene. It's worth stating that this particular individual has been on Noah's family's Facebook memorial page for months, arguing with others on there. Just very odd behavior from an adult father who's son's best friend died mysteriously. But, on this same topic, NONE of the partygoers or their families have ever visited Noah's family to express their condolences. Never once.
Since Noah's friends and others at the party said they didn't know what happened, the police had their work cut out for them. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol obtained a "geofence" warrant covering a 1-1/2 mile radius around the party house. What they found was a bit disturbing. Around the time it is believed Noah died, 2 phones were traced as having left the house, heading to the location of his body. After briefly staying there, the two phones returned to the house. People at the party told a private investigator hired by Noah's family that they went out looking for Noah in the UTV/Gator that Noah and his friend had been on earlier. If they had really done this, they would have found him since the phones were at the spot Noah was found. It has not been released who exactly this was. Also revealed when police searched phones was a video of the birthday girl and her sister on their front porch, screaming at each other about Noah leaving the party. It is believed that this could be relevant. The Texas Rangers also became involved, due to the fact that two men at the party were from Texas. It is not known if these men are persons of interest. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol also quietly issued a warrant for a "black pick-up truck" believed to have been used to dump his body, but it is unknown why they are looking for this particular vehicle. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol has unequivocally stated that this was 100% NOT a hit-and-run. They have now also said that this is NOT a murder investigation. The Medical Examiner's report released on Monday, May 13th 2024 stated that Noah died from "Multiple Blunt Force injuries", but list the manner in which this happened as "unknown". His report also detailed extensive injuries to the teen's upper body, including 10 broken ribs, serious skull, neck, and spine fractures, internal bleeding, brain and organ damage, and cuts and grazes all over his body. The autopsy also revealed air in both his cranial cavity and spinal cord, extremely rare conditions only caused by massive head trauma. The family has heard rumors that a golf club from the set in his best friend's truck may have been involved, but nothing else has come of this.
The family has engaged with a private investigator, who did uncover previously unknown information, and gave that to the police. They have also said that there is much more which has not been publicly released and that the search of the phones did uncover good information. Also according to the family, some evidence has been covered-up or lost and that the day after the party, the birthday girl's house and property reeked of bleach. Despite this, his family says good things are going on behind the scenes.
So, with all of the above information, it doesn't seem to be a stretch to say that someone from the party knows something. It is my personal belief that this case will be resolved, but I think three things will have to happen: Time, Pressure and Guilt. At some point in the future, someone from the party will feel guilty, or media pressure will get to them and they will talk. Unfortunately, it may take some time unless the police uncover new evidence sooner. Thank you very much for reading this, but please let me know your thoughts on this case and feel free to ask questions.
Sources:
Podcast (Interview w/ Noah's family): https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jimny-carpenteepisodes/The-Suspicious-Murder-Of-Noah-Presgrove-Part-1-e2dchac
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13421341/Oklahoma-teen-Noah-Presgrove-beaten-death-gang-doctor-claims.html
https://kfor.com/news/local/m-e-releases-more-details-in-19-year-olds-death/
https://www.foxnews.com/us/oklahoma-teen-military-hopefuls-family-cant-imagine-was-murdered-offers-theory-about-last-hours

I'm honestly at a loss of what to do. Until half a year ago I was engaged and had everything I never thought I would have until she decided she was no longer happy. It's been more than a few years since I was in the dating market, but things have drastically changed for me due to a horrible incident that occurred a while back. A bit of backstory, and I'll included a TlDr at the end.
Several years back there was a hobby group I used to regularly attend, and one day this woman who had only started showing up recently took an interest in me. I'd just gotten out of a pretty bad relationship a few months before that, so when she made a move on me, I took her up on it to see where things would go. I wasn't use to a woman actually making the first move, so I took it as a good sign. We saw each other for the next few weeks and in that time we had gotten physical a few times, with her making the first move on that as well. Fast forward to the end of our time together when I found out she had a boyfriend the entire time and was cheating on him with me. I broke it off with her because I didn't want to be "the other guy" to some poor sap, and she wasn't pleased with me for finding out. Her boyfriend had nearly caught her cheating, so what did she do? She threw me under the bus and told him I was "just some creep who wouldn't leave her alone". Hilarious, because I had chat logs that showed nothing but positive interactions between us and call logs showing we would spend several hours a week on the phone together. I block her on everything and move on with my life.
Fast forward several years later, I'm engaged and in a happy relationship, and a gal pal of mine DM's me to tell me she saw a post about me in a group on FB. She sent me live updates on the post as well. I guess these groups called "Are We Dating The Same Guy" popped up seemingly everywhere, and our local group had nearly 50,000 local women in it at that time. Considering I live in what's generally called a "small city", this was extremely concerning. The poster was the woman from the hobby shop, and she uploaded my full name and multiple photos of me. In the post she said that I "violently rxped" her, was a "woman beater", and called me a "dangerous predator". I felt sick to my stomach. Worse than that, at least 15 different women were commenting on the post verifying it was "all true". Only 1 woman tried to defend me, a woman I used to work with, and within minutes her comments were deleted and she was banned from the group. As for all the other women commenting, half of them were women I hadn't seen since literally high school and never spoke to because I was a quiet nerdy kid who stuck to his friends. One of them even said she had "first hand experience", but I had never even spoken one word to her in my life. The other women commenting, I didn't recognize their names or faces at all and was certain I'd never met or spoken to any of them. Comments ranged from saying things like I "stalked them home", "assaulted them at a club" (I don't drink or go to bars), and one even said that I "forcefully penetrated her" in her own home, despite not even knowing who she is.
I spent that entire day having a panic attack and was on the phone with the mental health crisis line for a good while. When I went to work the next day, female co-workers who were normally friendly and cheerful towards me looked at me with disgust or walked in the other direction when they saw me coming. I went home early that day after taking another panic attack in the bathroom. Later that night I had a missed phone call from our local police. Called back, hoping it was just a prank call, but it wasn't. An officer actually wanted to speak with me about some grave accusations that were brought to him. It turns out the hobby shop woman and other she knew collectively called in "anonymous tips" about me, but in those tips I wasn't a "violent rxpist". Instead, these tips included where I worked and told the police I was "dangerous to children". I remember nearly passing out on the phone from panicking again. Turns out the officer I was spoking to already suspected it was BS, because these groups were generating hundreds of "anonymous tips" a day for them. The investigation was closed and branded as "malicious gossip" and I never heard from the police again.
Despite that, my reputation was ruined forever. My partner at the time actually had my back and was a huge pillar of support, but I was still a wreck. I became a recluse and started going to therapy every couple of weeks. In our local group, old posts of guys are "bumped" all the time whenever a guy is found on a dating site or women remember he exists. The group has nearly doubled in size since then too. Posts aren't even about dangerous people, but I'll see posts all the time like "This guy just matched with me and hasn't messaged me yet, any tea??" and even random creep shots of guys at the gym saying things like "This guy is super cute, any tea or red flags??" I see nothing to do with "safety" and actual dangerous dudes I've known over the years haven't appeared there at all. Old classmate kidnapped and nearly beat his partner to death? No post. Dude admits to mxlesting his partners toddler? No post. Guy doesn't buy a gal a gift after a date? He's a monster and must be posted about. It was easy enough to get in there with a dummy account to make sure I wasn't caught off guard again.
---Fast forward to today. I unfortunately find myself single when I never thought I would be again. I'm still somewhat of a recluse, don't keep any photos of my name on social media, nor do I use my real name. I've disappeared as much as possible. I'm still terrified that someone there will remember I exist and post about me again, as I see happen to other men daily. Dating websites are just asking for trouble, as most posts in this group are screenshots of guys profiles. If I dare take a photo of myself and put it in a dating website, odds are very good I'd be posted and would have to suffer through the same ordeal yet again. I can't afford (nor could I back then) the several thousands of dollars to take someone to court for slandelibel, and Facebook says these posts aren't against their "community standards". Even then, that's like cutting a single head off of a hydra knowing that more will take it's place. Meeting people IRL just doesn't happen anymore and it's frowned upon to try to meet women in public settings as opposed to online dating where they can screen everyone beforehand. Online dating is no longer safe for me. How am I to ever be with someone again if OLD is off the table and I have a destroyed reputation?
**TlDr: Woman cheated on boyfriend with me several years ago and didn't like me finding out. Woman in question decides to publicly slander me to nearly 50,000 local women several years later. Slander works and my reputation has been destroyed and people think I'm some kind of monster. I delete all presence of my name and face online that I can, but now that I'm single again, I have no idea how to ever date again with OLD being off the table and having a tarnished reputation.**

Recently I (26 f)was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. Because of that and not want to be on meds for the rest of my life I'm trying to do a major life style change. Unfortunately that has been easier said then done. While I miss the foods I used to eat the biggest thing has been my dad. He is a type 1 diabetic and you would think that would make it easier but it's not. Since he can treat his high blood sugar with insulin he can eat anything he wants. I cannot. Two hours after being diagnosed with it he sent me a recipe to make sugar donuts that he wanted me to make for him. He bought a whole bunch of bread products (Nothing whole grain which I can eat in smaller potions) and said I got these for you. Usually I just remind him hey I can't eat that anymore and move on. Or he tells me to eat these certain foods since Facebook people say they are good for your diabetes even though I hate them (lemon, cucumber, and pineapple and I highly doubt the information hes getting about this are not from any real medical doctors) Among other life issues that revolve around money and lack there of I've been under a lot of stress. Recently my dad brought home a new puppy. I was against this idea since we already had 3 dogs. Because she is so young she needs all her vaccines, to get spayed, and where we live we need a kennel license to have all 4 dogs which is a process of itself. I tried to tell my dad my concerns about getting another dog. The cost, training, everything. He said "Whose house is this? You will not tell me what I can and can't do". Now this is an okay argument. It is his house and he can do what he wants. But I'm moving out. It's about time anyway but with all the other stress and waiting until I get an okay from an apartment is stressful. He said "I will take care of everything for the puppy" which has not been the case. I tell him how to get her to do things since that's how I've been training her and she is learning fairly quickly how to do what is being asked of her, but he will disregard everything I say, confuse her, and then I'm back at square fucking one. It's only been half a week but my mental well-being has tanked, I don't want to eat even though I have to, I haven't showered in 3 days nor been motivated to do anything because of this puppy. It is not her fault so I train, play, and take care of her to the best of my ability but I do want to scream at my dad about it.
I love my dad and issues like this are far and few in-between. I do care for the puppy since as I said it's not her fault but I'm just so frustrated of not being heard and everything I do is being written off.

Lol now ihub punk is asking “What is the current sales pipeline for Lightwave Logic's polymer modulators and other products? Can you share any details on the size and timing of potential deals with the 20+ major corporations that have viewed the technology demo?"
"When do you anticipate Lightwave Logic will achieve its first $1 million revenue quarter? What milestones need to be hit to reach that level of quarterly sales?"
"What is the company's plan to become cash flow positive and profitable? When do you expect Lightwave Logic to reach profitability?”
Punkin has come a long way, he used to say that it could never be done, now he keeps falling back, apparently trying to hold the line, lol, now he is asking questions about revenue and dang even invoking God to help humanity as his reason for posting in his credentials. Even if one thinks that they are right that is quite a statement, typically something that a reasonable person keeps to themselves a life's effort is something between them and their creator. I have no idea where this technology will lead or what it will solve, my goal is an investment, certainly not divine, I have no clue in the end who it will truly benefit but the medical thing does have potential.
Today I'm happy with thousands of modulators on a foundry produced wafer. And thousands of modulators from a few ounces of Perkinamine. These modulators Triple the speed, reduce the power and are 1/30 the size of today's modulators. Lebby will fill us in on what we need, he is far more intelligent than anyone on this board.
Read on folks.
Oh and do not forget about those that sold early (or didn’t sell early) that purport to be long and like to consistently complain every single time the price drops. Let me try to explain it this way, this is not a sports game, this is a technology, so unlike sports, points can be literally be taken of the scoreboard by simply borrowing and selling shares (shorts). Remember though that those shares must be purchased back and until then the actual score of the game is not known. So the shorts agenda is to sell it down then try and convince folks to sell them shares at that discounted price. Some longs do not understand that they are helping the shorts at their game. That being said, there are currently 17% more shares sold than exist. They have borrowed those shares and pay interest daily and have sold them to us with the hope of buying them back at a reduced price (Some purported longs even try to help them) apparently, they think that if they complain it will force an NVDA, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon to reach an agreement with Lightwave sooner. Well, it will not change the speed of the adoption of the technology, I’m all for doing a tier1 agreement, but a few quick little agreements could force their hand so the Tier1’s do not have to have to honor those agreements should the company be taken over. Some seam to forget that until now Silicon photonics could keep up, but no more and with AI we just entered a new world, where the pace set by Moore's Law for silicon photonics is leisurely compared to this new demand. AI is totally on a sprint, with its computational power doubling not every two years, but approximately every six months.
Let me look at what the shorts have said over the years basically throwing spaghetti at the wall and have been proven wrong. Patents were filed in 2020, 2021, ALD I think was 2022. Patents were not made public, the shorts were babbling meanwhile Lebby had not only solved it but wrote and submitted patents.
Here are the 10 top B.S. short myths, trying to suppress the stock so they could try and cover I also think that there are a few purported longs that sold prematurely that are now helping to push the shorts game forward, meanwhile with the next deal announcement the dam is about to burst.
I’d love to see Punkin hold a conversation with Lebby one on one for 5 minutes, it would be hilarious,
Shorts and those paid by the shorts to act like they “know something” won't even tell you when they are short, they just say, no not short just here to spend my life 7 days a week helping folks that I have never met. Well, here they are, you tell me guys.
1.) The shorts had worked for months to try and convince investors that Lightwave had a problem poling. Then low and behold Lightwave unveiled 2 patents they submitted years prior solving that issue.
2.) The shorts claimed for years Lightwave could not protect the device in anything other than a gold box, then Lightwave unveiled the ALD patent that they had acquired. Basically, hair spray over the finished chip is all that is needed. The foundries are using the same thing over the electronics side of the chip. Understand that even if someone else invents an EO Polymer Lightwave Owns the Patent on ALD over Polymers. Comprende?
3.) The shorts claimed Lightwaves material was not stable, Wham Bam blown out of the water yet again.
4.) Shorts said that Lightwave could never get this under 1 volt, well Lightwave did, in fact Lightwaves polymer is so sensitive that their modulators can function without the aid of driver to boost the voltage. Basically the electrons in the 1's and 0's rolling off the silicon can embed themselves into the laser using Lightwaves polymer. Oh and by the way, Lightwave also owns the patent on a driverless Polymer Modulator. Even if someone perfects a stable sensitive EO polymer when the want to do direct drive, they have to come knocking on Lightwaves door with cash in hand.
5.) For the 6 months leading up to last years annual shareholder meeting the shorts stated Lightwave could not close a commercial deal all the then like now trying to convince us that the sky was falling and once again Lebby delivered.
6.) For months the shorts said Lightwave could not use anything other than gold on their electrodes, well guess the F what, yup, once again (at the shareholders meeting) Lebby put up a slide of successful foundry runs and when asked by me if the contacts labeled AL on the slide stood for Aluminum Lebby said “yes, we use that any many other materials as well”. I asked about aluminum corrosion, the response was, X (you idiot) that is what the ALD will also protect.
7.) The Shorts were trying to convince longs that the foundry had not made progress on PDK’s, Lebby certainly blew them out of the water on that as well. As info PDK’s are process development kits, it is how the foundries make Lightwaves devices available to the public so when an NVDA’s, Amazon (AWS), Cisco or Fujitsu are designing devices they can check that box and add that to their device in the foundry. 2 weeks ago lebby said the foundries have thousands of modulators per wafer. On question that I need to understand is that with thousands of devices on a wafer how many of those thousands of modulators are affected by the kerf when dicing (sawing or scribing?)
8) The shorts used to say that it couldn’t me done now as you see Pumpkin is asking Yes but “What is the current sales pipeline for Lightwave Logic's polymer modulators? Can you share any details on the size and timing of potential deals with the 20+ major corporations that have viewed the technology demo? When do you anticipate Lightwave Logic will achieve its first $1 million revenue quarter? What milestones need to be hit to reach that level of quarterly sales? What is the company's plan to become cash flow positive and profitable? When do you expect Lightwave Logic to reach profitability?” Lol, Lol and again Lol It sounds like Pumpkin is finally being honest, perhaps it is by divine intervention on his posts
9) As info the institutions now own 26% of the shares, The shorts would have us believe that is irrelevant, wait what?
10) I like this, Ted who also has another ID said that he gets his info from the internet because everything on it is true. When asked why he does not use first-hand information he said that he is not good at reading people, lol and yet he watches every video with baited breath.
I know some do not see it but as evidenced by their latest efforts the shorts are worried and it is obvious that whomever they got their info from was consistently years behind making up issues that had in fact already been solved. I would not want to have been an advisor to the shorts.
Lightwave is finally at the stage where they have the patents in place, moved into additional lab space, hired additional lab personnel for making larger quantities of perkinamine, (a few fluid ounces can make thousands of devices) the new lab will be equipped to test larger quantities of chips coming back from foundries, work on new polymers for additional devices (they even have another polymer available for licensing) produce data sheets, standardize bulk testing, they have even hired a dedicated deal maker, oh also a V.P. dedicated just to working with foundries that are actively running wafers. Now they have added a former Intel deal maker to the board of directors.
Soon this thing will in fact snowball because the industry's "go to" good old silicon photonics has hit the wall it simply cannot run faster. Lightwaves material when added applied to Silicon triples the speed and because it is so sensitive it is 30times smaller and uses 1/10 the power all at a time when AI is pushing the amount of data processed by the data centers through the roof.
~Some of us were wondering why the Lightwave employees were still in town (apparently held over) for an extra 2 days over after the OFC San Frisco meeting, now we see that there were no less than 20 companies that apparently requested an unscheduled impromptu demo on a holiday week (good Friday) after the convention was over. Not only did Lightwave employees not go home but it sounds like a bunch of Tier 1’s and such saw it as important enough to see ASAP. And yes while many on here say that NDA’s do not exist, LOL I’ll bet that not only were NDA’s mandatory but I bet that every demo was “private” by scheduled appointment only and also attended by the various expert employees at Lightwave to get the most bang for the buck.~
Lightwave makes the thing that makes the component better anyone communicating using fiber optics needs it, the entire industry needs it. Think if BASF produces a chemical that makes paint last longer. Why would the paint manufacture tell its competitors what makes their paint so durable. Lightwave is going partner with many and they will simply sell devices that are faster and require less energy, those companies are not going to tell the competition what they do to make that happen. Lightwave will quietly market to the tier1's and they will insist on it in their data centers and devices. The one exception that I see is that if the foundry runs were paid for by Lightwave Logic (vs. say an amazon or facebook etc) Lightwave would do joint public PR of where the industry can order chips with Lightwaves Perkinamine on it (It is called checking the box on the PDK).
The shorting situation will be solved by additional Partnerships and look out when those Partnerships are accompanied by a dividend in a new 3rd party company licensing say the ability to develop the Lidar device market or for the biotech crowd a medical sensing partner, wham short situation solved in short order. Remember that currently they are only talking about Telcom 2km to 10km market but there are so many more.
Currently 1k difference between the buys and sells changed it 1 penny. Folks this is just normal trading without any pressure on the price. This time next week we’ll either be in the lab or in the meeting.
Still trying to digest the effects of T+1 on the shorts especially the foreign exchange rate, Fails To Deliver, Naked shorting etc. it is coming the Tuesday after Memorial Day (Holiday in the U.S., which is the weekend after the Shareholders Meeting), Finra Settlement Date 5/31 which then will mean a trade date of 5/30.
Short Game, Market Maker Game, Institution Game, changing technology
Check it out rainy day so I thought I’d look Punkin “I never said any of those things in that context. I’m just here doing Gods work” https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174419282 That was in reply to JimJet218’s statement. 1. Couldn't be poled. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169035142&txt2

1. Needed a gold case. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170733222&txt2
   
2. Would never be less than 1 volt. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=144502197&txt2 Pumpkin claims to be doing “Gods Work”.
   

Xster Rainy day so I thought I'd spend few minutes today,
Getting spanked so far today.

Just a heads up. I may not be adding to this for about a week. Seems I have a medical issue my doctor thinks requires hospitalization, even though I've had this issue for the last 30 years. I guess when a person no longer has an immune system a measly sinus infection the medical industrial complex ignored for that same amount of time suddenly becomes an issue if it kills you before they can squeeze the last of your savings out of you. ~ECM
******************** Chapter Six: We shall dig deep!
As much as I want to create new spawners and scions, after some reflection I decide that I need to take my current cave, and try and turn it into a deep cave complex. I'll also need to move my Core deeper into the complex to make it harder to find. That means at least one expansion into the hill and several more to go deeper under the hill. I figure that I'll run into new invaders, and possibly new spawners, so before I do that, I need more mana. A lot more mana. That means I need to upgrade my core again. Right now it's gone from BB size, to large marble size. I think another upgrade might make it as large as a kiwi fruit. None of those size concepts mean anything to me. I just somehow know what the size means in comparison to whatever those things are. But that's a mystery for idle time, and I don't have any idle time.
Another owl spawns and takes up it's place on a branch of the old Oak. And it seems the bats have, for the time being, decided they want to avoid the area rather than die fighting in it. That makes me happy. I know my minions re spawn, but it's still emotionally painful to feel them die. Maybe I'll get used to it but that thought just feels wrong to me. One should never get used to someone dieing for you. I'm a dungeon. I should be trying to protect them all, instead of them protecting me.
As morning nears I finally have enough mana to upgrade my core one more time. After that I'll be nearly drained of mana for most of the day unless I get another invasion force come in. So that's what I do. I concentrate on my core, and choose upgrade, and the ambient mana flow triples. My mana capacity however, has quadrupled. That makes no sense to me, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. What's a gift horse? I... it fades away. Damnit! I hate that. It's just not fair to have all these sayings and have no idea how I know them, or why they fade away behind that damn wall of mystery.
Growling to myself I decide to ignore them from now on. I need mana to expand. And my minions are providing it to me slowly, just as the ambient mana flowing into me is as well. It will take some time, but I WILL expand. And, hours later, that is just what I do. I expand deeper into the hill, and as I do this, the wall to my right crumbles, and opens into another cave. I look for invaders but see none. I look for a spawner and... Well ok, that is definitely a spawner. It seems I have slimes now. And they spawn once every... 10 minutes for a basic slime. Ok a little different than the other spawners. So if I have slimes, where is the invaders it counters?
I soon realize that my new cave is actually two caves, separated by a narrow passage from the slime cave into a deeper cave, and sure enough, there is my invader... I think? It's... some kind of small pile of pebbles? OH! It's an Earth elemental! But why isn't it moving? It's just sitting there. That's fine for now. I glance over at the slime spawner after watching the pebble pile for a bit, and a garden variety, clear jelly like slime, oozes out of the spawner. Only level 1 but hey, it's a slime, right?
I notice my slime has started to ooze it's way to the other cave. I think it can sense the pile of pebbles and is going to try to attack it. It takes my slime a while to get into the second cave. They don't move very fast I guess. But as soon as the pile of pebbles senses it, it tries to flee. Honestly, it's kinda cute when moving. I looks just like pebbles rolling down a stream bed. Unfortunately, for it, it doesn't manage to move more than a foot before a psuedopod shoots out from my slime, and lands on top of the pebbles. My slime then oozes itself through the psuedopod (ewwww), and is now totally engulfing the pebbles. I don't really see how it's going to end the pebbles until I see a secretion surrounding the pebbles and they start to dissolve very slowly. It takes about 25 minutes before I get the mana notification, so I guess it's dead. But where is the spawner for it? I look, but it doesn't show up? Ok so maybe some creatures can't be turned into a spawner maybe? Right as I said that to myself I get a notification [SPAWNER GAINED: ROCK SLIDE].
Why did it take so long to show up? Glancing to my slime, I suddenly realize why. My slime had to finish eating it first, not just killing it. I speculate that perhaps because it was digesting the Rock Slide, that it had to finish doing so before the spawner became available? Ok whatever. I have three caves now. My entrance, the slime cave, and the rock slide cave. I still wanted to expand deeper into the hill, but that would have to wait. I was low on mana. Time to keep reading the HUD's menu while my minions do their thing I guess.
First / Previous / Next

A friend of mine started playing Fates for the first time, so once again I got bitten by the “complaining about Fates” bug. In particular, watching chapter 18 of Conquest again after so many years really got me going, and while the general consensus I’ve seen online about this chapters writing was negative, I wasn’t that satisfied by any of the overviews of it I read. I decided to give it a shot myself.
Dissecting why something doesn’t work is fun and all, but I think it’s also important to be constructive which is why I wanted to rewrite this chapter alongside my criticisms. I really do think there’s a lot of potential here that could have been the highlight of the entire story, and so I’d love to try my hand rewriting this chapter to be what it could have been rather than what we got. I have most of it done already, but Reddit only has so many characters before it cuts you off and this post is plenty long enough as is, so I’ll save that for another part coming up soon. This will be part 1, explaining what the chapter is and elaborating on my issues with it, while part 2 will be rewriting it along with my thought process and explanations.
Recap: https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Black_%26_White/Script
Corrin and Co are traveling when they decide to rest for the night at the nation of Izumo. They are greeted by Izana, the archduke of the kingdom, who seems to be a real goofball. After introducing himself, the levity is ended when it’s revealed the entire Hoshidan family has been invited here as well! Before any swords can be undrawn, Izana tells both parties that the kingdom has a strict neutrality pact neither of them can violate.
The scene cuts to later, where Ryoma enters Corrin and Xanders room to talk with them. Xander and Ryoma’s argument is cut short when Ryoma is dragged off by Nohrians. Turns out “Izana” is actually a Nohrian mage named Zola, who disguised himself to trick the Hoshidan royal family into a trap. Corrin and Xander don’t approve of such dishonorable methods to win, however, and fight to rescue their captives with Xander saying “we’ll win this war with honor or die trying”. After Leo kills Zola, the game cuts to later where we see Nohrians and Hoshidans alike having a meal, much to the delight of the real Izuma, who turns out is exactly as bizarre as the fake impression. Xander and Ryoma confirm with eachother that their fight will continue as usual, but Corrin states that no matter what happens they’re grateful they got to see both families eating together even if it’s not under the best circumstances, and the chapter ends with them saying they’ll revel in this feeling.
So on paper, I think this chapter is a great idea. Despite being at war, when one family is at the total mercy of the other, they lend a hand instead of kicking them while they’re down. This highlights how the two nations could accomplish so much together if only they weren’t at war with eachother. If utilized well, this could have been a great “eye of the tornado scene” emphasizing how tragic it is that these two families who share so much in common are forced by fate to fight eachother, making it all the more sorrowful when that’s brought to it’s conclusion through bloodshed. This would also encourage Conquest players to buy Birthright in a natural and subtle way as well now that they’ve had a nice sample of the other side. Of course, I don’t think this chapter was utilized well, and after reading the script again I believe it boils down to three major problems.
-Problem 1: The Lack of Worldbuilding Causes the Conflict to be Driven by Contrivances.
This is one of the many instances where the lack of fleshing out the world and it’s rules out really hampers the weight of the scenes. Unlike Awakening where there was a general cause-and-effect outlining the level structure, all of the Fates routes are much more individual and self-contained when it comes to chapters. This means the game has to really stretch itself to justify this elaborate setup being brought up and solved in one single chapter of regular length, and it’s very apparent when you write out the summary of events here.
Corrin and his army are just walking by when they happen upon the capital of the country. Corrin decides this would be a great place to rest for the night at and are instantly welcomed by its leader, who is also the only person in the game of that country. The entire Hoshidan family also just happen to bump into us because they coincidently came here at roughly the same time, with somehow neither party noticing the other until they were staring at eachother in the same room.
The only thing we know about this new nation we’ve never seen or heard about before is that it’s a peace-loving land with some sort of neutrality pact which means the two nations can’t fight here. What is the importance of this place that would entice all the Hoshidan royals to come over for a banquet in the middle of their country being invaded? Never explained. What exactly is this pact and what power does Izuno have to enforce it, if any? Never explained. Xander, prince of a nation at war and frontline general, has never heard of it. How does Garon or Iago never figure out or look into what happened here, considering the royals walked through their trap unharmed and everybody in charge of the trap vanished? Never brought up.
How many times here was this supposedly major event dependent on coincidences, seemingly important details left completely unexplained, and characters not knowing things that should be basic information of the world they live in? Things like all this quickly build up and make the world feel small scale and artificial, as if nothing truly exists until it’s in the peripheral vision of main characters. In a vacuum, this could all be excusable if the main meat of the chapter was just so dense and important that they just want a convenient excuse to delve into it. But about that…
-Problem 2: Nothing happens, either character-wise or plot-wise.
This is the only scene in both Birthright and Conquest where all eight of the royal families are together in one spot, and they’re unable to fight eachother. What a brilliant idea! How many great scenes could you come up with from this setup alone? How many directions could this move towards?

-The families bonding over their memories with Corrin (X)
-Calling eachother out for uncool actions, like Ryoma refusing to help Elise or Nohr siccing monsters on farming villages (X)
-Working together to defeat some threat they’d have trouble taking down on their own (X)
-Some cultural exchange (X)
-Some melancholy scene where, even if there’s a lot of resentment, they acknowledge how this may be the last time they ever get to have a meal with Corrin. (Somewhat?)
-Corrin sits down and has a mature conversation with his birth family elaborating on their choice to stay with Nohr (X)
-Some negotiation or debate between the two families about the future of their countries relationship, successful or not (X)
-Corrin being formally declared by the Hoshidan royals as a Nohrian, officially cutting them out of the family (X)

So what does Conquest do with this prompt? It does the unexpected route where all of them but Ryoma are shuffled out as soon as they’re introduced, captured offscreen, rescued offscreen, most of their dinner is offscreen, finishing their meal and leaving is offscreen, all of them sans Ryoma have barely any dialog, and none of them are even present in any of the CG’s.
We actually start off strong, Ryoma and Xander naturally puff out their chest and don’t get along when they’re in the same room, but seem to calm down when Corrin elaborates on how similar they are to eachother. But the game is so eager to get to fighting that it drags Ryoma away kicking and screaming before he even gets to share what he had to say to Corrin, let alone explore what having common ground means to the two of them.
1) I understand this is the Nohrian route so it makes sense the focus is mostly on them, but Takumi only gets three lines here, one of which is “…” Hinoka also only gets three lines, which I think is still more than she got in Birthright, and two of those lines are “You!” and “What are you doing here?”. Sakura lucks out as she’s the only sibling on either side who has anything to say whatsoever when Corrin says they’re grateful they could share another meal with the Hoshidans. That’s a start, but the fact remains Ryoma is the only sibling in the chapter whose remotely relevant, the rest could be omitted and nothing would change. They are only here to be damsels in distress heightening the stakes of defeating the local bad guy rather than providing any character development, checking up on how they are doing without Corrin and Azura, comparing and contrasting their differences between their counterparts, sharing any new information about them, foreshadowing Takumi’s possession, any notable interactions with their counterparts, etc. But no, nothing happens.
2) I also understand this is a video game and they don’t have all the time in the world before the next fight has to happen, yet Conquest is oddly completely uninterested in it’s own set-up. Zola, a minor chapter boss introduced and killed in this chapter, has more screentime and relevance here than any of the siblings, something you’d think would be the actual meat of the chapter they’d want to delve into.
The implications and weight of two dueling nations and families obligated to pause their fighting and dine with eachother could easily take up two or even three chapters as a pivotal arc, yet it’s completely blazed through as if the game considered it a cute novelty rather than a potential life-changing or history-changing moment. Simply put, it’s wasted potential, as if to say “Oh both of the two families meeting in a game about choosing between mutually exclusive families? Eh whatever.”
I wanna stick with just this chapter and not rewrite a good chunk of the entire story, but I can’t stress enough that in any other game this chapter would be the plot-defining moment paving the new way forward rather than chapter 15’s “we’ll expose Garon as a monster by helping him invade an innocent people.”
Neither of the two families are fighting because they outright want to, this isn’t a war about irreconcilable differences or mutually exclusive goals, the only reason for any conflict whatsoever as far as the game has shown us is that the guy in charge of Nohr is a sociopath who threatens to kill his own children at the drop of a hat. Sure, they probably won’t hold hands singing kumbaya after one extended conversation with eachother, but when all of them are in a truce far away from Garon’s authority having a meal together, nothing significant comes out of it plot-wise?
In fact, at the end of the day what significance happened here at all?

• -We learned about a new country, but we know very little about it and (other than Izama potentially joining the party later) absolutely none of it will be relevant after this chapter anyways.
• -Well, maybe this place is just set dressing so we have an excuse to meet up with our siblings again, but then nobody has any meaningful interactions, new info to share, planning ahead, or character development resulting from sharing scenes with them.
• -Then is the primary focus supposed to be on how this situation affects the Nohrian family? The antagonist and the conflict he brings is introduced and quickly solved without any consequences, with all the siblings instantly in agreement about stopping him. They don’t really talk amongst eachother about their feelings or how to go forward.

If there’s no juicy character interactions or exploration, and no setting up future events, then presumably the point of this big moment of Corrin and Xander leaping to save their enemies was made to show off that despite working in the same army, our heroes are indeed better than the swarms of war criminals under Nohr’s name we’ve seen and would never tolerate such things under normal circumstances. They’ve talked the talk about disagreeing with their father’s cruel methods, now here’s proof they’ll walk the walk, aren’t they such noble people? The way this is done however, opens up another can of worms…
-Problem 3: Protags come off as dicks
While our heroes are indeed more likeable and moral than blatant monsters like Garon and Hans, liking peace and disliking war crimes is not enough of a reason for a pat on the back. Our protags might not be burning villages for fun, but it’s difficult to take their proclaimed goal of peace seriously considering both the context of working for people who DO burn villages for fun and they way they handle themselves when presented with an opportunity to work on this supposed goal.
Corrin and Azura

• This is not seeing things under the worst possible interpretation to be a stick in the mud, Nohr is indeed invading Hoshido for no apparent reason and leaving war crimes wherever it’s armies go. Everybody in the building is aware of this to some extent.
  
• Azura and Corrin’s grand plan to expose Garon as a slime monster to his family indeed involves directly helping Garon conquer Hoshido, which they acknowledge will bring destruction and suffering that the nation and royal family have done nothing to deserve.
  
• Corrin and Azura are indeed presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here to sit down behind closed doors and communicate anything, just anything significant at all, to the royal family that still seems to value them, but our heroes don’t even try or seem to acknowledge that. Corrin doesn’t have any interactions with them that last more than a sentence or two, and Azura is never acknowledged nor speaks to them.
  
• And yet despite, all this, both Corrin and Azura are quite pleased with the turn of events here, with Corrin acknowledging they’ll “probably try to kill eachother next time they see eachother” but that they’ll “revel in this feeling.”
  

Azura in particular is problematic here. During Odovakar 's excellent overview of the problems with Fates writing, he goes into detail about how Azura’s line about “this is all quite heartwarming. We're like one big family...albeit, a dysfunctional one.” in particular comes off as incredibly tone deaf and tasteless given the circumstances of Azura and Corrin marching on one family’s homeland for the sake of the other family. What I think was also worth noting is the context leading up to that line…

Sakura: I was just, um...th-thinking...it's really nice to finally see you again. I'm glad you... I'm glad you f-found a way to be happy... Corrin: Sakura... I'm happy to see you too. Sakura: R-really? You mean it?! Oh, Corrin! Elise: HMPH! Back off, you! He/She's my brothesister! MINE! Sakura: Ah! I'm s-sorry! Corrin: Elise! Mind your manners, little one. Elise: But she's trying to take you away from me... She's my archnemesis

Whether intentional or not, this is actually a very clever microcosm of the family’s conflict acted out by the youngest and most innocent among them who probably weren’t even born when the conflict started. The Hoshidan loves their sibling, but their time with Corrin is interrupted by the Nohrian shoving them away and declaring Corrin for themselves. This is a great way to challenge our protags to some introspection about themselves.

Azura: Heehee! Corrin: Azura? Did you just...giggle?

Instead, Azura just finds this a real knee-slapper. I understand maybe this is just meant to be a cute image of imoutos fighting over oni-chan Corrin and nothing more, but the context makes it very hard to swallow the narrative’s insistence that all this is “heartwarming” as Azura puts it. Keep in mind that all the Hoshidan nobles are sitting at the same table watching all this. Do you think Ryoma also finds it funny that his little sister is scared off and declared an archnemesis by the daughter of the man who killed his father in cold blood? Do you think Hinoka also thinks it's like one big dysfunctional family when Corrin is preparing to march on her homeland with an army?
I get it, I totally know what they were going for, and in a vacuum it could be a great line making for a properly bittersweet moment. “Even if the two are at eachothers throats and the future is bleak, me and Azura are grateful we get to have at least one big normal dinner together like a real family.”
But the future is bleak because of Corrin and Azura participating in an invasion, the families are at eachothers throats partially because Corrin and Azura haven’t accomplished anything to reform Nohr. If anything, Corrin should feel great shame here. Elise just unintentionally reenacted the history between the nations where Nohr was clearly in the wrong, and Corrin is sitting directly across and staring at the family who’ve done nothing wrong to him yet are going to be hurt because of Corrin’s decision. Grateful they could spend time with them again? Maybe. But cheerful and laughing?

ProZD: D-did an alien write this game? blows gently

But at least Corrin doesn’t show outright contempt for the family they’re screwing over…
Xander and Leo

Xander: Corrin! There's no need to insult me like that. I could not possibly be anything like this sorry excuse for a prince. … Xander: We will win with honor or die trying. Come, Corrin. Let us go set free our sworn enemy. … Corrin: Heh, sorry... It's just that you and Ryoma really are so much alike. If you weren't on opposite sides of a war, I think you could have been great friends. Xander: Yeesh... Do me a favor and keep that nonsense in your head where it belongs. … Xander (to Ryoma): We only acted as Nohrian royals should. When we leave this place, you'll be nothing but an enemy to be defeated once more.

Okay, but why? Ryoma is not the one Xander overheard laughing to himself about how much he’s going to make Corrin suffer. How are the Hoshidan royals “nothing but enemies to be defeated” here when they’re just trying to defend their homeland from somebody who assassinated their king at a peace meeting? Where is all this contempt from Xander coming from?
It’s perfectly understandable he doesn’t get along super well with Ryoma because of the tensions between their nations, that makes sense, but I see no reason for why Xander is making several petty insults to his face unprompted, let alone so nonchalant and even somewhat eager to get back to waging a war Xander himself calls “a senseless war of greed and madness” in the epilogue.
He doesn’t treat his own people much better this chapter, declaring Zola and his henchmen as “traitors” to be “dealt with” for their dishonorable methods when ironically Zola taking over the country by disguising himself as the archduke is actually one of the least evil and self-destructive things we’ve seen the kingdom do so far. It must be emphasized that every sibling was in the same room watching Garon demand Xander kill Corrin if he interferes with killing POWs for his amusement, and half of them were in the same room when Garon ordered his henchmen to murder every singer they can find in a neutral country. So a few hundred or thousand innocent people, most of whom would presumably be young woman, murdered to snuff out potential assassins. Or Garon directly ordering the deaths of unarmed civilians in chapter 13 with Hans relaying “Villagers are just soldiers who haven’t picked up a sword yet.”
Xander talks a big game in this chapter about how “we’ll win this war with honor or die trying”, but how do you honorably win a war when your nation is constantly and openly rushing to pointless overkill brutality like this at every turn? What moral high ground does this country have that Xander is so determined to preserve he kills loyal soldiers over what he sees as sullying it, when at no point in the game does the influence of Nohr ever do anything but make life significantly worse? His sudden fervor towards doing the right thing is completely contrasted later on when Xander is the one telling Corrin there’s no justice to be found in war and you just gotta do what you gotta do rather than what’s morally right, in response to Corrin being upset the Nohrian army is killing woman and children who looked at them funny.

“Justice is an illusion, a fairy tale…Letting innocents die is a tragedy, but so is letting the chance for peace slip away. This is war. There is no such thing as a clean win when lives are on the line.”

“Justice is just a fairy tale, innocent people getting screwed over is something we have to accept in war because there’s no such thing as a clean win! But also we better win this senseless war of greed and madness with honor or die trying!”

• If “justice is an illusion”, how is killing Nohrian soldiers to free people who are apparently “nothing but enemies to be defeated” so you can fight them later on terms you prefer, directly prolonging a war which will lead to much more deaths on both sides, for the benefit of Nohr? By Xanders own logic, is this not letting the chance for peace slip away since there’s no such thing as a clean win? Forget Garon and Iago, I’m confident the citizens back home whose loved ones got conscripted would be the ones demanding his head if they found out about this. A very charitable interpretation is that ending the war this specific way will cause more chaos and fighting in the long-term compared to if they conquered and oppressed an innocent nation fair and square, but that’s nowhere to be found in the script whatsoever.
  
• If Xander believes in “We’ll win this war with honor or die trying”, why is he still following Garon? Garon is winning the war in part thanks to honorless and extreme acts of cruelty like blackmailing the Ice Tribe or making an example out of Scarlet’s body, yet instead of taking action against him like he does with Zola, Xander is instead the most loyal sibling to him to the point Corrin decides the best way to get him on his side is to expose Garon as a literal slime monster? Where’s Xander’s zeal of “Come Corrin, let’s go save our sworn enemies” when his father orders Hans is go through killing injured and surrendering foes who were promised they be spared? Where’s his conviction shown here about “not letting treachery go unpunished” when his father outright says he couldn’t care less about the welfare of his people and he’ll just kill anybody who complains to make an example?
  

I understand one might get the impression I’m going off topic or selectively picking and choosing quotes here from all over the game, but no matter how you look at it Xanders beliefs, morality, and priorities are just all over the place depending on what the plot needs him to do. This means not only is his motivation for helping his enemies here faulty no matter how you look at it, but it also makes the extreme lengths he goes to do so, killing his own subjects who won him victory on a silver platter because it wasn’t a “proper” victory, come off as baselessly self-righteous at best and outright cruel at worst.
I’m sure the game would assure us Zola and all his mooks are terrible people who had it coming, but the issue is no matter how virtuous you portray Xander and creepy you portray Zola, Xander is still directly managing the war for a megalomaniac and helping him achieve his goals in spite of his long history of open sadism and public crimes that make Zola look like a saint. By ignoring the clear root cause of Nohr's dishonor while going this hard against random goon's participating in dishonor, instead of being a gallant preserver of morals, he comes off like a bully who selectively picks and choices punishment.
On the topic of punishment, it particularly rubs me the wrong way how Leo just casually mercs Zola at the end, keep in mind Birthright confirms for all his faults he actually isn’t a complete monster like Garon and dies trying to help the protag.

Leo (smiling portrait): You’d probably rather die than live with the shame, correct? In that case…
Zola: Eek! No, please! M-m-milord... I was wrong! S-so wrong! I have seen the error of my ways! P-please...spare my unworthy life!!
Leo (still smiling): Make peace with it, Zola. Perhaps on the other side you will find forgiveness.

Leo makes a fair argument that the stakes are too high and Zola can’t be trusted not to snitch, but this is bit sadistic, no? One of the most powerful people in the country is smug and sarcastic as he’s getting ready to execute somebody whose bleeding on the ground begging for his life and genuinely confused as to why we’re upset with him. I know the intent of “I was wrong! I have the seen the error of my ways!” is supposed to be him saying whatever Leo wants to hear to weasel out of punishment, but that’s exactly the thing, he’s fully cooperating and doing everything he can to appease this guy. And then he’s just killed like a dog without trial or final words, presumably using the spell that skewers you with tree branches.
Didn’t the game use killing defeated foes like this to establish Garon as a bloodthirsty monster? Why is Corrin just standing there watching this happen? This exact same scenario in Birthright has them jump to spare Zola, but here their disapproval is very meek and only voiced after the deed is already done. It’s still apparently too much for Leo though, who chastises Corrin for being “too soft…I envy your innocence.” And then he declares the matter settled on their behalf.
I’m sure this scene was meant to show off Leo’s pragmatism and strategy skills, but it just makes him look like a sociopath and Corrin look spineless. And that’s the biggest issue with this chapter to me, more than the plot being driven by contrivances that aren’t explained or the lack of any character development or interesting scenes taking advantage of the setup, the actions and dialog of our protags don’t match the noble heroes the narrative insists they are:

• Corrin is openly enjoying spending time with innocent people they’re throwing under the bus so Corrin won’t have to risk their relationship with the Nohrian siblings by directly fighting Garon. They then clearly disapprove of Leo executing a surrendering foe begging for mercy but stand idle watching it happen.
• Azura sits directly across her former family who’ve been very negatively impacted by her decisions and actions, and will continue to be so in the future, yet she’s giggling about the conflict and doesn’t seem to be taking the fact that her two families might kill each other seriously.
• Xander insults Ryoma as a sorry excuse for a prince, and afterwards kills his own subjects to prolong a war of aggression so it can be won the way he personally wants it to be won.
• Leo seems to be having a good time killing somebody who’s surrendered and begging for his life. He then chides Corrin for being “too soft” when they wish that didn’t have to happen.
• And again, for no apparent reason, neither Corrin or Azura do the bare minimum to clue to the Hoshidans about what’s going on or even have a meaningful conversation with them despite claiming to care for them. This is the golden opportunity they were hoping for, yet they apparently spend the entire dinner instead talking to eachother about how happy they themselves are.

These are not the actions of heroic characters.
Summary: Overall, this is a very bizarre chapter. It feels like something meaningful happens here at first glance, your brain sees what’s going on and knows that this is supposed to be a huge moment. Peaceful music playing, a very well-drawn CG of dozens of individual units, liberating a country from Nohrian control, Corrin and Azura are happy and say some lines that sound like they should be deep and impactful.
But when you step back and analyze the bigger picture and context, you find that more or less embodies all of Fates writing, both good and bad. It has a brilliant premise that gets your mind going, excellent presentation to accompany it, and some individual scenes or dialogue in a vacuum are very welcome. If you’re a casual player who just wants context for your favorite characters fighting, it’s easy to feel satisfied at first glance and move on thanks to those factors, especially since the gameplay and MyCastle are very fun. At the same time, there’s no denying the severe flaws that hamper the experience.
Despite being the hyped-up main draw of the chapter, our exciting premise that opens so many doors is almost completely neglected in favor of (once again) exposition on meaningless settings and characters that aren’t relevant anywhere else and also reminding us how evil Nohr is, to the point the chapter title is Black and White. The context makes it very difficult to take the plight of our heroes seriously due to their lack of action (both before and in the present) to achieve their proclaimed goal despite ample opportunity, the proaction they do have being unnecessarily extreme and self-serving, and a narrative that insists they are in the right at every turn despite the results clearly showing us otherwise. There’s definitely bits and pieces of something great buried in all this teasing us, otherwise I wouldn’t be interested enough to write this much all these years later, but as is it’s just a mess. An enjoyable mess, but a mess all the same.

But what do you guys think of Conquest Chapter 18: Black and White? Do you also consider it a wreck, or was there something positive here you believed I missed? What would you like to see in a potential rewrite of it?

Hey gals!
I wanted to share my success story with you. There are so many posts in saphic subreddits out there with gals losing hope around finding a partner. In the kink space, it's harder. But it's possible! It takes a bit of extroversion and effort, but IMO well worth it.
I'm a Domme. I've been kink my entire adult life. I'm also a trans girl. I didn't transition until mid-adulthood due to not knowing anything about gender dysphoria. But that's not really the story. I just want to give hope to trans girls out there as much hope as cis girls. My fiancee/submissive/pet/little is a cis girl.
I went through the hardest breakup of my life with my former partner. We had been together 8 years and she left me for another woman 6 months before our wedding. I was destroyed. I moved home to where I live now and decided I was going to change everything about myself to not feel that kind of pain again. I wanted to switch. I wanted to bottom. I wanted to just date and not fall in love again.
Fast forward about a year after my toxic breakup and I'm now living in my new city. I decided to go to a FemDom munch to give this whole sub thing a shot. Like in most cities, there are not sapphic kink groups where I live but there are PLENTY of kink groups with bisexual women. I wasn't sure I wanted an LTR but I WAS sure that any relationship I wanted to be in had to have some kink and possibly a kink dynamic.
I dressed in a super cute dress, wore a big pink collar, and ventured out into the world. The munch was held at a gay bar and I was one of the first ones there. As the folks began to fill in, there were 1 or 2 sapphic couples there out of about 20-30 people. That gave me hope that I might meet someone to connect with.
Eventually, this bombshell of a woman walks in. She dressed very straight and very vanilla - but as a sapphic friend once said - "Why do you assume everyone is straight? You'll never shoot your shot if you do!" I mean....we were in a gay bar after all! She was looking for a seat and all of the chairs at our table was taken. I stood up, grabbed her a chair and offered it to her. She replied with, "Thank you! Where are you sitting?" and had me put the chair next to me.
At this point, I had no idea what her deal was. Straight girl? Domme? Sub? Vanilla? Wrong internet meet up?
I complimented her beautiful Kate Spade purse and we sat and talked about fashion for the next 30 minutes. Eventually, she offered to buy me a drink. I politely declined thinking it was a friendly offer. Plus I had a stomach ulcer at the time so I wasn't going to make that worse by drinking alcohol.
When she came back to the table, we sat and talked for another hour before I had to go to a friends party at another bar in the same neighborhood. We traded fetlife accounts and I left thinking, "Damn, that girl was awesome! Too bad she's probably straight."
When I got home that night, I added her on FetLife and saw her sexuality listed....a Bisexual submissive! Before I was able to shoot her a message, she shot me one telling me how much fun she had talking to me and how she hopes to see me at more events.
I shot my shot ladies. I asked her out to dinner.
Fast forward a week and we're at a lovely little Mexican resataraunt by the beach. Now that I knew she was a submissive, my Domme side awakened. I skipped the cutsie dress and collar and instead wore a gorgeous, form fitting body-con dress with stilleto black PVC heels. I channeled my black cat lesbian. I curled my hair and did my makeup. I'm still not sure this is a date, and neither is she - but I'm hoping it is!
We talked for 3 hours and sipped on margaritas. We talked about everything. Work. Kink. Politics. You name it! As I walked her to her car in my stilletos struggled with the gravel parking lot but she was impressed I was able to handle it gracefully. She moved in closer to me by her car and we both asked as the same time for a goodnight kiss. I guess this WAS a date! That kiss...floored me.
Our second date was very different. We met up at a Spanish tapas place, again by the beach, and talked kink all night. Despite her looking like a preppy straight girl (I'm more of a big tiddy gothy queer girl), her kinks aligned with mine in every way. We negotiated our first play date. The chemistry was undeniable.
I won't go into the NSFW stuff but only to say that after 23 years in kink, I've never connected with someone is such a profound way.
It's now a few weeks past our 2 year anniversary. We're getting married. We have 3 playrooms in our house. Kink is part of our day to day language but the love and support is beyond great. We're getting officially married in October.
It can happen! Despite being queer. Despite being kinky. Despite gender stuff.
Your partner is out there.
Short version of how I found my person:

1. I skipped the Apps like HER and Tinder because they all suck.
2. I got on FetLife and found a local munch with my interests (Dominant women).
3. I went to a munch and met a girl.
4. We got to know each other and fell in love.

I know how hard it is to date as a queer woman, but the majority of successful kink relationships I've met have all met in real life.

Hi there!
I'd like to discuss the topic of personalized advertising and how consumers perceive it. Personalized ads are currently the hot topic, with everyone emphasizing their importance. But in which cases does it work, and when does it backfire? Let's separate the hype from the "hold my beer, I'm about to unsubscribe" reality.
From our focus group, we gathered insightful feedback on what annoys and delights consumers in personalized advertising:
What Annoys Consumers
Irrelevant Ads: Irrelevant ads can frustrate and feel intrusive.

• "I get love novels recommended on Facebook, which I’ve never searched for and definitely won't read."

Inappropriate Content: Poorly targeted suggestions involving sensitive products can be uncomfortable and off-putting.

• "I bought lingerie on Amazon, and now my screen is flooded with underwear ads, some quite explicit. It's uncomfortable, especially when sharing screen during company meetings."

Repetition Fatigue: Seeing the same types of ads repeatedly after a single search can be irritating and lead to ad fatigue.

• "I looked at one skirt on Instagram, and now every ad is about skirts from different stores. It’s overwhelming. Apparently, one skirt means I want to revamp my entire wardrobe."

Age-Specific Targeting: Consumers feel targeted based on their age, which can feel intrusive and discriminatory.

• "Ads for anti-aging serums, pension plans, and arthritis ointments started showing up after I turned 40. Feels like they’re rubbing my age in my face. They could just say, "Happy Birthday!"

Monotony in Ads: Lack of variety can make personalized ads feel stale and uninspired.

• "Seeing the same products repeatedly is boring. Offer something new once in a while!"

General Ad Aversion: Some consumers are inherently averse to ads, regardless of how personalized they are.

• "I hate ads in general, so I use ad blockers and pay for ad-free services wherever possible."

But not all is bad! What Consumers Appreciate:
Valuable and Informative Content: Providing useful, educational content can demonstrate that you care about helping the user, not just selling to them.

• "I was looking for hair loss treatments and got an email with research, explanations, tests, and recommendations. It felt genuinely helpful."

Relevant Product Suggestions: When ads are closely aligned with user interests, they are more likely to be well-received.

• "If Instagram shows me products similar to what I’ve been searching for, I’m all for it."

Personalized Deals and Special Prices: Personalized promotions can enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction.

• "I love getting personalized offers from grocery stores based on my shopping history. It makes me feel valued as a customer."
• "My gym sends me news on fitness programs, discounts, and loyalty programs. This is useful."

Discounts and Promotions: Special offers and freebies can effectively engage and retain customers.

• "Discount emails from my favorite stores are a big draw for me. I also love getting free samples—it keeps me coming back."

Recommendations Based on History: Curated suggestions based on past behavior can enhance user experience and satisfaction.

• "Recommendations based on what I've previously watched or listened to are great—I often find new favorites this way."

Timing and Context Sensitivity: The timing of ads can significantly impact their reception.

• "Ads don’t bother me when I have money, but they do when I’m broke. Maybe timing them around payday would be better?"

Classic Examples:

• Starbucks: Using your name on the cup instead of a number. Because nothing feels quite as personal as your name scribbled on something. Toy Story vibe's turned on.
• Spotify Wrapped: Offering a personalized summary of your listening habits. A yearly reminder of just how eclectic your music taste really is.

It's clear that while personalized ads can be incredibly effective, they must be handled with care. The key is to balance relevance with sensitivity and avoid the pitfalls of over-targeting and repetition.
What are your thoughts on personalized advertising? What aspects do you find irritating, and which ones do you appreciate? Share your ideas—we're eager to hear from the pros!

Me (F, 33) and husband (M, 33) have known each other for nearly 8 years, married for 4 years. We both share a son who is turning 2. Since the start of my pregnancy, we have slept on the same bed but not had sex, at all. We could count the times we had sex in one hand.
I once talked to him about it, and he told me that we either got too tired from work or he was terrified about the idea having sex while a baby was in my stomach.
Long story short, I realised recently that he often eye-balled at massage parlours with sexual services. One night, I went through his phone and realised that he even went to facebook search A parlour nearby our home. I confronted him about it and he told me that he did think of visiting one for reasons that he was very stressed out at work and couldn't find anyone to confide in. Also, he felt that I often disregarded his feelings. When I pushed further, he told me that he was checking these parlour out of curiosity.
Is he mind-fucking me? Did he already frequent them? Did he cheating on me? I am on the verge of initiating a divorce but am at a loss on what to do next. I don't want my son to live without his father at this age. What are the repercussions if we really went through a divorce?

Good Morning Everyone, Evening to some, afternoon to most.
We got home to lots of letters and my fiancee loved them all, and she's sitting next to me while we take the time to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to bring joy here in TN.
Thank you u/onebadjoke The Edible favours is a great idea, I'm going with twix, she's going with Riesen and for the both of us, Swedish Fish, gotten love hand fishing in a bag over waiting by the pond.
Thank you u/jemst0ne Amanda absolutely loves the post card, she's drawn to it immediately, and your card prompted a story. So, fun fact both of us proposed to each other to let each other know we were ready to be serious and jump into husband and wife roles, well the night that Amanda decided she wanted to make her jump, she received a fortunate cookie following a really nice meal at the casino, and the fortunate cookie said "Don't panic," lol, and nobody but her knew that that was. Second fun fact, mine that night said something about, "Don't miss the opportunity of the day, tomorrow it will be lost."
Thank you u/snerdboff We will definitely take funny pictures and thank you for the marriage licenses multiple copies, either of us thought of that, that's a great idea. Love that you had the largest card/envelope package. Love the sticker of the house as the envelope closer.
Thank you u/danigeek That's a great idea about the consignment store for the dresses. So far she has gone with her mom and sister to look at dresses. So far our idea for the colors of our wedding will be purple, blue, and silver. We have yet to try any cakes for the wedding, but my favorite is polish honey cake and her favorite is black forest (which no bakery seems to make anymore). Daisies are Amanda's favorite flower. Great card. Thank you.
Thank you, u/littlemermaidxx Thank you for the Love post card, it's nice, Amanda loves it, will take a pin to the love corner that we've got going. Thank you for the Congrats!
Thank you u/blacksmithequivalent You sent two cards :). Thank you so much. San Diego is such a beautiful area. We love that there is rarely a day below 60 degrees. The ring card is so pretty. Since she calls me her galaxy, I decided that blue sandstone would be a great pick for both her engagement and wedding ring. The actual stone looks like stars in a dark night sky. We also appreciate you saying that as long as we are happy together, no other opinions matter. True relationships are based on trust, great communication, and respect.
Thank you u/ez330 Absolutely beautiful card with the hearts as leaves in the tree. Congrats on your upcoming 12 year anniversary with your husband. I am sorry that you had those stressors during your wedding day. At this point, I feel that my fiancee and I are the least worried about things right now. That may not be a good thing when the time gets closer haha. Either way, as long as we are together and nothing drastic happens it'll be a great day for us as well. I am also a project manager so nothing can be as bad as some of the violent days at work lol.
Thank you, u/uknighinthesky Love the card. We are both very thankful to have several family members that are doing so much research for us and planning parts of the wedding. I think one of our main concerns is getting some family members from out of town to the wedding. The comic snips were very funny and a great touch to the card.
Thank you, u/uaepeyc. I absolutely adore this card. My mom is huge into mermaids and when I showed her this card, she went cray cray. You gave great advice saying that family research is helpful, but that in the end it is our day. Through all the planning, I think that our day will be as amazing as our relationship. She says that our relationship will be made with great memories for the next 55 years.
Thank you, u/ninajyang. The front of the card is so pretty. I wish you and your partner the best. We both have a similar budget in mind. We don't want to spend too much, but just enough to make things as memorable as possible. This will be both of our first and last marriages so we figure we would splurge just a little. Thank you for the cute stamps as well.
Thank you, u/mediocre_radish_7216 Thank you so much for the cute cared. I liked the skateboard with the word love on it. Since she has moved in, we have been enjoying every little moment together. Even domesticated, simple ones can be enjoyable together. As we are writing these, we are doing household chores. Last night we cooked dinner and had a glass of wine together. We both plan to flourish this relationship for the next 55 years.
Thank you, u/notsomini. Not going into debt for a single day is a great piece of advice. Thank you. We have been looking at wedding venues and seeing which one is the most cost effective, but yet flexible. A few places that we have looked at have been so strict with what is allowed in and what is not. One place that we checked out, no outside food was permitted. This place that we plan to check out tomorrow is not strict as we can bring in whatever food and other accommodations we choose. Thank you so much for the awesome stickers too.
Thank you, u/inkyfingerspgs Thank you so much for the card. Amanda loved it as the purple that was on the card is one of our wedding colors. We plan to continue making good memories from the wedding day and 55 years into the future.
Thank you, u/daeneryswon. The card is adorable. We both love it. The quote, "to a love that grows more beautiful every year," should be a goal for all couples. We hope that on our wedding day there is not too many hiccups, but both of us are pretty easy going that we will just continue on. We plan to make each other happy for the next 55 years.
Thank you so much u/keqani. All of the details that you put into your card is appreciated. Amanda adored the snips of paper that you included with your card. She said that those will be amazing to write little love notes to me to leave in my truck for me to discover. We both concur with you that we need to be there for each other no matter what. Loyalty in a relationship is very important. So far we have had great communication. Before we moved in together, we talked multiple times a day for at least 20 minutes or longer. We also promised each other that if anything is bothering either of us that we should just talk it out rather than holding it in. Amanda says that for the next 55 years we will be together through all the ups and downs that life can bring.

I have been through so much and I am exhausted.
Since November of last year, I have been dealing with a conflict with my in-laws:

• A group picture of my parents, my fiancé’s parents, my fiancé, and I was posted by my MIL on a Facebook story post. Let’s call my fiancé, Jerry (fake name). There was a caption on the photo and the caption only covered my face and my parents. When pointed out, Jerry blamed it on her tech incompetence.
  
• Following this incident above, an argument ensues between me and Jerry (I talked about my feelings regarding his family, how I was treated, etc.) to the point that he started a group chat on Facebook messenger the next day out of anger. He threw me, his sister, and his mom into the group to "sort this out" and threw me under the bus. I quickly left the group.
  
• I went to my parent’s house to clear my head for a few days and told Jerry that I need to rethink this relationship. He had an emotional breakdown because of this.
  
• This incident snowballed with questions from his family as they were “blindsided”. I mentioned all the things said and done by his mom over the past 5 years (when I first met his mother, she said that our relationship would not work out due to cultural differences and few other offensive comments in the years ahead)
  
• I was met with "I am sorry if I offended you". His mother sent another attempt at an apology that was a potential apology. However, I could not respond as I was blocked. Then a letter was sent to me from her that was a rug sweep "I am sorry that this has all happened. Can't we move past this".
  
• In December of last year, I informed Jerry that I needed to heal from everything and for that, I do not wish to go with him on Christmas. Every year, his family meet on Christmas. I asked him if he would like to spend it with me. If not, that is totally okay. I also said that he should go because I knew I would be blamed for it. Well, I was blamed for it. I was called manipulative and on a power trip.
  
• His family further tells questioned him for spending Christmas with me because according to them, I don’t celebrate Christmas. He’s white and I am not. I stated to him that his family does not go to Church nor are they practicing Christians. I celebrate Christmas (gift exchanges and dinners) the same way as they do. They did not apologize for their comment.
  
• From December to March, my fiancé has had numerous conversations with his father and mother to resolve the conflict which now involved the entire family. During this span of time and in their absence, I started to heal and focused on my relationship with my fiancé.
  
• Then come March; his father was still stuck in his anger. Did not reflect for the last three months and informed my fiancé that they are not coming to our wedding. I admit that I was so angry that I threatened to divorce him should they not come to our wedding and that he continues a relationship with them. I apologized for what I said afterwards.
  
• We were about to meet up in person to resolve this however, his father decided to send a group text in advance of our meet up and informed us that he is not interested in extending an olive branch. He was bullying us into submission (please see my past posts), blamed me for how I handled things and boldly stated that if I wasn’t his son’s fiancé, he would have nothing to do with me. When called out for his rude texts, his father stated that he needed to get it off his chest to heal.
  
• For days after the texts, Jerry stood up for me and fought with his dad. Eventually, his dad agreed to come to town to “talk”. I was so incredibly hurt from his dad’s actions and I bluntly stated to Jerry that if he continues to berate me in person when we meet up, I will get up and leave the conversation. Jerry immediately got upset, raised his voice at me and left the apartment. I had no idea that he got up to go kill himself, I thought he just left to cool off like he usually does. I later learned that he felt unsupported by me.
  
• Couple days later; Jerry had another meltdown. His parents and all his friends drove down to meet with him to provide support. Before they reached, I got to his place early and his friend was there. Jerry had too much to drink and was at his lowest point. I tried to calm him down, but he was angry to the point that I left the apartment in tears. He humiliated me when he yelled at me in front of his friend. Then at the end of the night, I brought up the issues with his parents to try to resolve. I was later told that I made it about me when I confronted his parents.
  
• Weeks later; his parents met up with Jerry and my parents for their wedding clothing shopping. I decided not to show up.
  
• Jerry and I moved into our new place, with furniture shipped in and it needed to be put together. His dad offered to drive down to help Jerry put the furniture together. I appreciated the fact that the furniture was put together. Jerry was practically upset that I am not recognizing his dad’s efforts when I said it does not erase everything he has done. His father did not even apologize to me once and I should be okay because of the furniture? An argument ensues and it escalated to a point where I could not take it anymore and I went to take my life. Even at my lowest point, Jerry still got mad at me.
  
• And now he is profusely apologizing for betraying me and hurting me. I feel that I don’t even know who he is anymore.
  

I'm not used to Reddit or really how any of this works so I will try to be as clear as possible and hope everyone has patience with me as I try to figure this situation out. My boyfriend [26M] and I [24F] have recently had some conflicts about small or less impactful topics that aren't a huge issue. However, the quantity and consistency of them is starting to confuse me on how I should approach the situation as a whole. My boyfriend will make certain comments or hold strong perspectives regarding highly specific things people do. This has been a behavior of his that has slowly become more and more present the longer we have been together [4 years]. These are things that don't necessarily matter on a deeper level, but tend to make me confused in general whenever they come up. They aren't perspectives that we will hold really strong feelings for if we talk about them but the general idea of them has been coming up more and more often. For example, I was looking at trading in my car for a newer used one since I've had my old one for awhile and now make enough money at my new job to afford a higher payment. When I showed my boyfriend a car that I liked he explicitly said, "I think it's more acceptable for women to drive SUV's. Cars just don't work for them." This puzzled me because I couldn't really connect the dots on where this perspective came from. When I asked him what he meant he just kind of reached for me to agree with him and said cars were more of a guy thing to have.
The same sentiment for what is suitable for specific groups of people has come up more and more often and has had more and more unique standings that are hard for me to relate to. When I try to meet him in the middle with certain things or go even as far as to disagree with his perspective the conversation becomes a bit more elevated and is less of a conversation and more a debate of morals. An example of this is when my boyfriend saw a woman's Facebook profile and was confused that she didn't include her kids in her pfp. He said that women who have children should have them in their profile picture because if she has kids and they aren't in her profile picture she is seeking male attention or is likely less faithful. He did not mention this same criteria for men, just for women. I know I have only given examples of him talking about women's behavior, but these are the most recent incidents that come to mind that I remember the most clearly. There have also been instances when talking about men and highly specific things they must also do or not do. I don't want to paint a reality that I'm not certain is going on because I really want some advice on how to approach this.
I know his last relationship was pretty rough with his ex being a serial cheater, but he has also confessed to me that he was not the best boyfriend when it came to how he treated her. I don't know if this has anything to do with how he discerns these really specific things he has strong feelings for, but it is something that has caused some conflict in the past on topics related to the ones I have mentioned.
While this situation may make it look like my boyfriend is a bad guy, he truly isn't. He is very attentive and supportive to me and my goals. He's always there to be a level head when I become overwhelmed or unsure of myself. He consistently tries to better himself and the type of partner he is to me through us navigating our differences over the past few years. Coming from a cheating situation myself before meeting him I can't say that I don't understand some of the feelings he has or even the anxiety he may have attached to it. He's put a lot of work into our relationship, we both do. I love him and I want us to be together. It's just this weird plane of not knowing how to approach him with this without hurting him or accusing him of something that isn't really there that I don't know what to do with. So what should I do to help diffuse some of the weird holdings he has on how people should behave or should I not try to approach the situation at all? Am I overstepping by even wanting to change his thoughts on these things? Thanks to any future advice.

The idea : Make a HFY stories without other species and take place on modern day earth, the goal highlight the most important component of humans, Humanity

Trigger warning : Heavy Suicide Theme

As Dr James walks to the rooms, he takes one deep breath. “Good morning Rudy, how was your sleep last night ?” he said from near the opened door. Rudy sight is now directed toward the incoming voice from the door. He sees one man in white robe holding a tablet accompanied by male nurse in his back*. Ah, here come the doctor’s.*
“I don’t want to talk with you, I just want to be gone from this world”, followed by shrieks from the patient. “I don’t have any reason to live, please let me goo”, *useless me can’t even finish the job*. The sentence is followed by a loud growl from Rudy as he tries to escape the bed restraints put on him.
The doctor was taken aback by such a strong reaction, Rudy can see that doctor James' face changes from a slight smile to what he assumes is the doctor's thinking face. “Aah I know !! Jamal, can you watch Mr Rudy for me? I have to take something from the outside” as James voice breaks the awkward silence that hangs in the room. Rudy is confused by the doctor's reaction.
Doctor James leaves the room as is, *no one wants to help me anyway*. Rudy could not help but to feel disappointment at the doctor as he went out, doesn’t matter my time here is short anyway. The room is filled again with silent awkwardness as the black nurse just stood in the door watching Rudy every moment. His brilliant brown eyes looking sharply at him, he felt nervous, *please let me go* .
After what felt like eternity the doctor came back to the room with one bag in his hand and laptop in another, *looks like a new model from zeon*. “Is that zeon zenith 12? “ his mouth bluntly said, *wait, noo?!!*. Dr James stopped by his bedside, looking a little bit surprised and quickly nodded “Yes, this is zeon zenith 12, are you a tech enthusiast ?”. Rudy did not answer, he gazed away from the doctor. “Well, looks like you know some tech update for the very least”.
Scrieeek……….. . “Ach…!!” Rudy covered his ear as the sound of metal chair scraping the floor ring aloud. “Ooh sorry Rudy, I did not know you’re sensitive to loud noises, i’ll be careful next time ” as doctor James stops the chair movement. Rudy stays silent, as Dr James takes a seat on a chair beside his bed. “So I know you don’t want to talk to me about your problem right now” James then grabbed the food table, “So instead why don’t we just watch some cute cat video i curated for this”.
Rudy turn his head back to James again this time confused looks clearly drawn in his face, is*n’t his job try to talk me out of suicide?*. “You want to talk about your problem now?” Rudy then looks away again from the doctor “Yeah I thought so. So why don’t we just watch this video and for a moment forget everything about the problem and just watch the video ?” Rudy did not turn his gazes, *how could i forget it if only bad things happened to my life?.*
His face began to puff up as he held back tears, “Alright if you don’t want to, I’ll watch it myself”. Meowing can be heard from his back, wait he seriously does it ?!. Rudy turn back his gaze toward the doctors with a slightly furious face, he looks focused on the video that played from his laptop. As doctor James looks back at him “want to watch ?” Rudy once again threw his gazes away. “Alright ” bruk.., the sound of the heavy laptop being placed in the food table and the sound of meowing continue. Rudy tried to look away still, but the cute voice made him curious, and feel awed. He finally looks at the video playing, he looks at the laptop intentley, almost like a child watching their favorite cartoons.
Rudy for this moment in time and space, he forget his problems, his shitty work at john’s pizza, his loud and inconsiderate upstair neighbor, his neighborhood that is brimming with trash and the gunshot he hears every night, his nonexistent love life, his friend who left him after uni, his grade from uni and highschool, his parents, and his past. For this moment he lives in the present, not overthinking about the past or the future.
They watch the video, both attentive in their own way, transfixed to the screen like a moth to a lamp. Through dozens of cute cat compilation videos they watch together, his face begins to relax from constant fury and agony to a more neutral tone. Then finally without realizing it he, smiled a little.
Chee-klick, a bright flash hit him. His arms reflectively move to cover his face but can’t because of the arm restrained to his bed. “Hey, why are you take a photo of me without **my permission !!!**”. “Oh I’m sorry for that, I just saw you smiling while watching the video so I need to take that” James explained. “I smile ??” Rudy asked as he felt dumbfounded by the word. “Mhemmm, here’s take a look “ Dr james then flip his phone and let Rudy take a look at his screen.
*I smile, does that mean i don’t want to die, no no no that can’t be right i want to die i can’t feel happiness anymore, if life is not happy then, then…..* . “Ah you know looking at it again you smile looks beautiful so I hope i can see more of your smile” Dr James said with a big smile on his face.
Now that Rudy takes a look at his face, he sees it now, his face. His bright eyes that are colored like sapphire, his blonde hair looks like it was made from gold, his face is soft but unmistakable masculine quality, his dark green shirt underneath his white robe. From his broken mind he sees a hope in the form of what seems like an angel to him. *He is… handsome*. His tan cheek is now adorned with light pink.
“Well that is one of the reasons, the other one is I need to make a report to Stephen charities that finance your stay in here”, *ah well that makes more sense*. His face gets back to a neutral tone. “Well, if you want to remove the photo, I can make an ex…”, “No, just give them the photo I can’t pay with my saving, and my insurance will probably not give the money” Rudy said with a stern voice, his face followed similarly but James can notice a hint of Sadness in there.
“With your consent, oh and also our session must end here i’m afraid, i have another appointment scheduled ” As dr James looked at his tablet that he brought from the beginning. “Don’t worry we have another session tomorrow” dr james put the tablet in the bag and shutting down his laptop. “Tomorrow our session will start at 8.30 am and end at 10.30 am so about 30 minutes off from today”. Dr James, who has already finished picking up his stuff then looks at Rudy, “So I hope you look forward to our session tomorrow”.
“Wait doctor James”James stops on his way to the door as he hears his patient call. ” I look forward to it too, and and thank you for today!” Rudy said as he shut his eyes out of embarrassment. “Yeah, your welcome, see you tomorrow Mr Rudy” unbeknownst to Rudy who still closed his eyes, James is smiling now just a little and more genuine.
“Come on Jamal , let’s go” creek.. The sound of the closing door allows Rudy to open his eyes again. Rudy began to process what just happened in his first season, “Is it that easy to actually made me not commit?, do I still have the will to live or does he give it to me?,”, and the last thought made him flustered “did i get charmed by him ?”.
As he overthink his head began to hurt “Stupid Rudy, very stupid"he muttered to himselt. "Well, if I survive and become a burden, I will make sure he take for his responsibility in this”
Hello everyone, i hope you enjoy this short story. The idea come to me after reading a lot of HFY that put emphasis on human physical traits. I feel like there is a need of hfy stories that focused on what i think the most impressive part of human Humanity and our bonds. I'm also intrigued by the idea of HFY story that is based on modern 21st century without no magic or alien, i feel like we human are already impressive now without any exageration of circumtances or another species to be compared too.
I'm gonna remind you all that our path to get here is literally unique and very impressive, and even without sci-fi tech we already have control of this earth akin to God. And even though our future is fraught with uncertainty, the odds are with us. Our form maybe flawed, but so does this universe so let us reach the infinite together !!.

Edit: DO NOT message me a simple hi or hello, with no information about you, Put some effort in to your message like i have, come on. Day+Attempt#189
Hello everyone, Thank you for taking the time to read, I know its long, I know - I know. But its worth the read, Trust me. I appreciate you immensely.
Here's a bit about me,
My name is Jay, I live on the East coast of the US. I'm looking for love - like everyone else on here.., but you may not believe or even be doubtful that I've never had a GF before with me being 26, but its true. I'm simply just not willing to "be with" just anyone and I'm very picky. I want us to be a match, more than just have similar things in common.
One thing I have always been told is that I'm a "Real Catch, I'd be extremely lucky to have someone like you" - WELL THEN TAKE ME. I'M FREE. LOL.
About me:
Physically -
~I'm a semi-tall guy, around 5'10.
~I'm thin but muscular.
~I have dirty blonde/ brown hair.
~Changing colored eyes.
~A voice nice enough to melt all your safeguards and get right into your heart and weak spots.
~I do not have any tattoos or piercings. Though I would like to get some eventually.
If you'd like to see a picture of me just ask and I'll show you - IF I may see you as well, I simply just don't want a picture of me out there for anyone to see.
-If there's anything else you'd like to know just ask.
Otherwise -
~I do have 3 pet bunnies I would be more than happy to show you, they are extremely cute.
~I'm a very honest and down to earth guy.
~I'm very patient and easy going.
~I'm very curious and inquisitive. I will try to ask everything I can to learn all about you haha.
~I'm Very VERY Kind & Caring, I will probably ask how you are feeling a bajillion times a day, simply out of care for you.
~I can get pretty clingy, and will always want your attention and to be talking with you. If i have someone im interested in i wont want to talk to anyone else🤷‍♂️
~I'm very trustworthy - you can confide in me, and entrust your deepest secrets and I wont tell a soul.
~I'm a HUGE hopeless romantic, im old fashioned and will always try to impress you.
- I'm, a BIG softie even though I may look a smol bit intimidating, but I'd do just about anything to see you smile or laugh. And yes.., I do mean anything.
~I'm a big goof - I will get up to some silly shenanigans ALL the time, I will crack dumb jokes and send you memes and tik toks just to make you happy, even if its from across the room I'd wait to see your reaction lol.
~I'm extremely loyal, and would never even think of cheating.
~I will cook for you, and clean up too, even around the house, I'm very self productive and don't ask for much. Just don't forget to kiss the cook.
~I'd also love to just cuddle up and watch a movie or read a book together, anything to get us closer. Id try to take you out on dates whenever possible haha. I have a million SUPER romantic date ideas I have but have never had anyone interested enough in me to take out. Here's your chance ;)
~I will always want to share stuff I find interesting with you, and try to share every moment of every day with you. I'm not looking for someone who can only talk for a small amount of time, I want someone who's willing to put in all the effort I put into them back into me, it goes both ways. If I'm "with" someone you are my TOP priority nobody and nothing else would be. You would be the only person I'd truly want to talk to, so rest assured I would NEVER cheat, even more so because no one is interested in me - Hence why I'm here hahaha.
I'm sure there is more to me than this snippet but I cant think of more at the moment haha, so get to know me and find out more about me.
Some of my interests are: Engineering- I'm a nerd. I admit it. I love being technical and hands on, I love building things. All kinds of things, from furniture, machinery, and reverse engineering anything I find. I love learning how things work and trying to improve things.
Music - I prefer music with a very fast pace, or with some very meaningful lyrics I can relate to. I love to sing along to music and songs that have a deep meaning behind it I can sympathize with makes it all the better. Some bands I like are: Bad Omens, Beartooth, Demon Hunter, MIW, I9K - The list goes on. I'm a bit of a metalhead unfortunately.
TV Shows & Movies - I love watching shows, and I'd love to stream some shows and have some E-dates with you, to get to know you, or if you are close to me, maybe we could do it in person. Some shows I like or more of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Comedy, Action, stuff like: National Treasure, Halo, BattleBots, Rick and Morty, AHS, Anything Marvel or DC, The Witcher, Wednesday, The Sandman, The Magicians, The Umbrella Academy, ETC.
Gaming - Yes yes I know, Basic guy likes basic stuff. But gaming has been a thing for me since forever. I know most of you wont care or want to hear that, but I'll leave out the specifics on this part unless you are interested in that, MEGA Bonus points if you are.
Here's a lists of Cons to dating me-
~I'm not Ryan Reynolds. Disappointing, I know.
~I will fight you on what goes on pizza lol.
~I'm not rich.., Yet.
~I can't pronounce Worcestershire.
~I'm slightly forgetful, but with good reasoning.
~(Not really a con but- some might disagree) I still have ALL of my firsts, Do with that what you will c:
~I've got an endless pile of love and affection and no one to give it to! What a dilemma! Help me fix it?
Other than that I'll save the rest for a bit more of getting to know each other.
Here's a bit of what I'm looking in you:
~Preferably someone with lots of free time, and loves to chit chat. I'm seriously not interested in getting 1 message a day. Though I understand people get busy, I personally am not willing to try to learn about you and form something with 7 responses a week. Effort gets reciprocated and I appreciate the time you put in me.
~Physically: -I’m not personally attracted to anyone who’s “curvy/ chubby”, I apologize. Not a shallow thing, I just dont have the attraction chemical in my brain for that, I’m sorry. -If you’re shorter than me, thats a plus to me. -I love dimples, if you have those when you smile, bonus points 😊 - I’m not sure what else to put.., but as for nsfw wise find out😂
~I'm a sucker for a different accent other than American, and if you have an Posh English accent you have already won my heart.
~I'm also only really looking for someone within the ages of 18-35. I don't want anyone old enough to be my mom lol.
~I'd prefer (But not a must) people NOT on the other side of the world, as other time zones SUCK. I don't expect to find anyone who also has never had a boyfriend either, but that would be a real plus. I also don't mind a LDR, but I don't want that forever. But it gives us time to get to know each other.
But as for attributes I'm looking for in you:
~Someone who is above all else very very Loyal and would never cheat.
~Someone who is Honest, and will tell me the truth over a little white lie.
~Someone who is Kind & Caring, who'd constantly check on me, and accept me for who I am & help me improve day to day.
~Someone who is trustworthy, and I can count on to keep my secrets safe, or even just help me remember things.., I do tend to be somewhat forgetful.
~Someone who is very Patient and wants to see me succeed and will help me do so, just like I would help you. Even if its small day to day things, I would appreciate your company ANY time.
~I want a partner who is Affectionate, can reciprocate, and loves to snuggle and talk about their day, and what their interests are, and what makes them happy.
~Someone who can admit they get clingy or overprotective is a bonus.
~A partner with good communication is key, if something wrong we have to be able to talk about it.
~A partner who likes to game with me or at least watch me play would be a plus but not a requirement.
~Someone with a good sense of humor and like to joke around, I am a big goof after all and I love to joke around. Sending memes is always appreciated and good to cheer people up too!
~I'd prefer someone with the same music taste, but not a requirement, Plus if you wouldn't mind if I send you love songs occasionally that's a bonus, or sending me some back haha.
~Being willing to voice call is a must, Texting forever is not the way to go. I have to know what your voice is like haha, later on we can video call if you are comfortable with that. I prefer chatting on Discord because Reddit messages of any kind I'm sure you know are unreliable and sucky in general. So please send me your discord if you have one :)
~I would LOVE to see picture of your pets if you have any. Bonus points if it includes your beautiful self haha.
I'm sure there is more I'm looking for but I cant think of it right now haha, I will have to edit this when I think of it.
Please tell me about you as an opener! I told you a good bit about me, now its your turn haha.
Tell me some things like -
~What's your name?
~Where are you from?
~How old are you?
~What are your hobbies / interests?
~What about my post interested you?
~Where is my TV Remote?!
~Selfie? Pet pics?
~Hit me with your best joke or meme :)
~What's your favorite candy?
I'd LOVE to get to know you, and see where things go.
But yeah, I know it was long I'm sorry haha. Send me a message and lets get to know each other! :)

The internet is a strange place, inadvertently designed to bring out the best and worst in people. People can be whoever or whatever they want to be. For predators and malignant narcissists and who live in their own delusions to begin with, it's like a hunting ground. They can create whatever persona they wish, fill their victims' heads with lies and half-truths that paint them out to be someone they are not, and by the time their victim actually meets them, it's too late - they've already created an image in their mind of this perfect person the narcissist has convinced them they are, and it usually takes time before the curtain comes down, the lies fall apart, and the mask breaks away.
I'm no saint, and I've learned my own tough lessons from the internet. I grew up under not-so-great circumstances, only getting 5 years of education before I turned 18 and was largely raised by a computer screen. Along the way, I catfished a woman in her mid-20's when I was 14-16 years old. It wasn't intentional at first, I told everyone that I was in my mid-20's and I worked as a bouncer at a bar in NYC. I never meant any harm, I was just raised by a computer and spent all my time alone playing MMOs and learned quickly that if I told people how old I was, they'd stop playing with me. So a bouncer seemed like a job I could bullshit about easily enough, and I was a big dude at 6'1 260lbs so I figured I could maybe pass it off as legit if it ever got hectic.
I started playing with this woman in her 20's and her husband frequently. We became friends fast, and soon we were virtually inseparable on the game. Her marriage ended up not working out, and after they separated she told me she had feelings for me. I should've admitted I wasn't who I said I was then, but I was young and dumb and she was the only real friend I had, so I kept up the ruse. Eventually I did come clean, and she broke it off with me not long after. We stayed friends, albeit with my heart hurting pretty bad, for a few months afterwards - until she met Jack.
When she first told me about Jack, he sounded like a great catch. He had his own IT business in Canada, was a couple years older but not by much, and she was infatuated with him. Obviously I was crushed and didn't handle it well, being a practically feral teenager at the time, so not long after they started getting serious she ghosted me altogether. I was around 17 at the time, and shit started going off the rails for me. After I got out of juvie, I started drinking heavily on a near-daily basis and selling and doing drugs. This led to a lot of pathetic, inebriated, desperate attempts to contact her and apologize for how I acted.
After months of being ignored, eventually grief and regret turned to anger, and finally acceptance. When the pain passed and I came to my senses a bit, I had an epiphany and realized that if I loved her as much as I thought I did, the best thing for both of us would be to let her go. I was a high school dropout with no job, selling drugs to get by. She had 2 kids, and what kind of life could I provide for them? She made the right choice, my age and the fact I made a grown woman fall in love with a teenager not withstanding, and as bad as it hurt I realized it was selfish of me not to accept the way things were and leave her alone, so I did.
10 years or so later, I had gotten my shit together. Worked my way up from cleaning dead shit out of swimming pools, to an entry level position at an environmental consulting firm, to a Project Manager at one of the largest firms in the field in the DC area. I'd met someone, got her pregnant, and for some reason I felt a pull to contact her again. Not to rekindle an old flame, but because she had been a tremendously positive influence on my life in a time where I had few. She was the first good thing I had in my life at a time when I was sleeping on old blankets on a hard floor in an abusive home, and what I'd held onto from our time together wasn't our romantic relationship, it was the best friend I'd ever had. And something made me want to tell her that all that work she put into getting my head right wasn't in vain, and I'd finally made it out of the gutter.
So I messaged her on Facebook, and to my surprise she actually responded. We started talking again, and soon it was back to every day. When my baby mama got back on drugs and turned abusive and was putting my daughter's life in jeopardy on a near-daily basis, she was the one who convinced me I could fight for custody - that I had to fight for custody. So I did, and I won, and I've had full custody of of my daughter since she was 6 months old and for the 10 years since.
But eventually we parted ways again. I'd started seeing someone, and part of me knew I couldn't commit to another woman while I was still carrying on with her. Our relationship had started turning romantic again, and she had dropped some hints about old Jack that would come to the forefront later, but she wasn't ready to leave him and I didn't want to be that guy, so I sent her a message explaining why we had to stop talking, apologized, and ghosted her.
7 more years went by after that night. The relationship I abandoned her for soured quickly when I found out that chick was a carbon copy of my baby mama, and I quit dating to focus on my career and raising my daughter. But on the long, 2+ hour commutes each way from work, I often found myself stuck pondering the "what ifs". What if I hadn't ghosted her? What if our age gap wasn't there, and we'd never had to split up to begin with? I knew in my soul I was never going to find someone like her again, but I made peace with it. I imagined her happy life, her kids with Jack, and convinced myself I made the right choice.
Then COVID hit, and near the start of it, I stumbled on a post on reddit about this dude who sent his high school sweetheart a message many years later apologizing for how he treated her and telling her how her presence impacted him, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I did that!". So I started writing a reply, and for the first time told the story of this girl and I. I'd never told a soul about what happened with us, not even my family or closest friends. Maybe it was the stigma of having an online relationship back in those days that carried over, or maybe it was just too personal to share with my friends or family. It got long, so eventually I just decided to start a new thread. When I was done, it was so long I figured no one would ever read it, but I hit submit anyway and put my phone down and got back to work.
Well, I was wrong. People did read it - a lot of people. Soon my phone started blowing up. Thousands of comments, hundreds of DMs, people offering me book deals and asking if they could have the rights for a screenplay or have me on their podcasts. It was fucking surreal, and being generally a private person who tries to fly under the rader, it got overwhelming fast. Eventually I reached out to her again on Facebook, warned her about what happened, and apologized for putting her business out there.
She didn't respond for a couple weeks, and when she did we started talking again almost immediately. And then in mid-April 2020, she told me that she needed to talk to me. She spilled everything, and told me exactly who Jack was. How he would hack into her devices to spy on her, threaten to kill her and her partner if she ever left him, say vile things to her and her daughters, calling the young girls cunts and bitches. How he alienated all her friends and family, and kept them all isolated in the house her parents bought them that he would rarely leave.
And I felt deceived too. All those years I'd convinced myself that she was happy, that she got together with Jack and was living the life she deserved. In reality, Jack intentionally got her pregnant not long after he flew out to her state the first time. He quickly moved into her house, and refused to work or provide not only for her kids or their kids, but for the other 3 children he abandoned in Australia and Canada who he had no relationship with, with 3 different women he victimized in the same manner. When she was 8 months pregnant with their first kid, she was working nights doing hospice care while he sat on his ass playing videogames all night and talking to his ex. In 17 years, this fucking loser with 7 kids by 4 women worked a grand total of 5 weeks, quit his job, claimed he got PTSD from the experience, and somehow manipulated his way into getting SSDI for it. They survived off SSDI and her parents' charity for years.
But Jack was reading all of this, because like I mentioned earlier, he was hacking her devices and watching us talk remotely. Jack knew the jig was up, and slowly started to unravel. She told him she wanted a divorce, and that she was not going to sever her friendship with me again. And he pretended to take that well, going as far as to try to befriend and manipulate me. He tried every trick to keep her he'd done for years - telling her he was going to get help and would change first, then when that failed he made suicide threats and somehow got his therapist to call her and tell her as long as she didn't leave him he wouldn't kill himself, and then he tried to intimidate her. Eventually he went off the rails completely and sexually assaulted her when he thought she was sleeping.
She called me from her parents' house crying the night it happened, and I convinced her to file a police report. She did, and a couple weeks later Jack got removed from the home, served with a protective order, and charged for sexual abuse. This of course did nothing to stop Jack - he broke into their house a couple days later when she and the kids were out to upload a folder of revenge porn to his Google Drive under the guise of wanting to drop off a cake for her birthday.
Then the stalking started. Jack would relentlessly message her all day and night on Facebook, switching between rage, trying to garner sympathy, convince her he would change, and threatening self-harm. We later found out via a cyber forensics report that he was hacking into the laptop she had taken with her while she hid at her parents' and had been so bold as to steal her Victim Impact Statement and send it to all his World of Warcraft buddies as a joke.
And he didn't just stalk her, he came for me too. Constant unauthorized attempts to access my accounts for everything from Windows to my bank, spam calls and emails - shit, the wormy little fuck even got his friends to stalk my social media and pretend to be strangers to gaslight me. I ignored all of it, and he got desperate enough to send me a lovely message attempting to extort and blackmail she and I, claiming he had "all my posts" but wouldn't do anything with them if I called him. The tipping point for me is when he subscribed to my small YouTube channel - which had nothing on it but 3 videos of my daughter. That veiled threat wasn't lost on me.
But Jack fucked up. I don't know if he thought his insane nonsense would scare me off, or if in his delusions he really thought he was the bad mother fucker he convinced himself he was, but Jack didn't know jack about me. I'm a crazy fuck too, and while he was sitting on his fat ass playing World of Warcraft all day every day for the past couple decades, I was selling drugs and hanging with some of the grimiest mother fuckers Baltimore had to offer. I've seen and experienced a lot of real violence outside a computer monitor, and the prospect of a violent resolution to this saga didn't phase me a whole lot. I'd spent years trying to be a better person and avoid conflict, but I sure as shit wasn't afraid of it either. Leading up to this point, I was already trying to calm myself down and talk myself off the ledge and not pack my guns and drive out there to keep watch until the police did their thing and put him away, which took a lot longer than it should have - this fucking guy violated his protective order 80 times in just a couple weeks.
So I called him, and he spent the next 26 minutes crying over the phone like a drunk little bitch, while I tried my best to be kind and to talk him off the ledge. And yes, I did record it, and yes it is hysterical listening to it now in hindsight, and yes I still have the recording. Anyway, I told him he was scaring the shit out of her and the kids, and he promised to leave us alone and I told him if he could chill the fuck out I would try to talk her into giving him more access to the kids. The next day, she got an email from her first ex-husband - Jack had reached out to him with a link to my reddit post trying to get help from him to come after me, which he promptly shut down and sent to her.
The next few weeks were terrifying as Jack descended further into madness and became more scared and desperate. He knew she was gone and not coming back, and he was facing real charges and real jail time, and while Jack is a fucking moron in a lot of ways, I'm sure he knew a fat, greasy computer nerd with a sex offense conviction wasn't going to have a good time in County. Jack was a murder-suicide waiting to happen, the police were doing nothing to stop his stalking, and I felt powerless to help her. Eventually after he sent her $50 over PayPal at 4:00am with what appeared to be a suicide note, I had enough. I called the DA's office, asked them why the fuck this was being allowed to happen, and promised them I'd been taking meticulous notes and if anything happened to her I would be taking it straight to the media. The DA told me if I was going to make threats the conversation was over, but sure enough he was finally arrested not long after.
Ironically we had remained platonic friends through most of this, but the shared experience of dealing with this psycho brought us closer together and things quickly changed. We knew he wasn't going to stop when he got out of jail, I felt responsible for her safety after my stupid reddit post started this chain of events that led to Jack's unraveling, and with the world seemingly coming apart during COVID, decided if we were ever going to meet it felt like it was now or never. So I booked a plane ticket across the country, spent a week with her and her family, and a few days after I came home she flew out to visit me and meet my family.
We went into it with no expectations. I fully accepted we might not click and our relationship would go back to being platonic. For my part, I just wanted the closure of finally meeting this person who had such a profound impact on my life before COVID mutated or something and killed us all.
But we did click, and the next two weeks were life-changing. I met and cooked for her entire extended family the day after I arrived, and it went well. While I was there I got her mom's email address, and after I went home I had an idea. I knew her parents had met in DC, so I emailed her mom and asked her for a list of places that were special to her, and she told me about the church her parents had met in. I asked her to keep our conversation secret so it would be a surprise, and she did.
So when she comes out to the east coast, I take her on a tour through DC and park the car a few blocks down the street from the church. As we're walking by, she notices the church and comments on how beautiful it is.
I keep it cool and respond, "Yeah, that's a pretty important place.".
She looks at me and says, "Oh? Why's that?".
"That's where your parents met.".
She audibly gasps, giddily bounces a bit, starts to cry, and we pulled down our masks (fuckin covid) and kiss. Her reaction is easily one of the greatest memories in my life. What I didn't know at the time, was that her parents had told her about that church since she and her siblings were kids. When the church changed denominations, the church took the angel statue off the top and brought it back to her home state, and her parents had taken them to see it a few times throughout her childhood.
Anyway, getting sidetracked here, the sappy love story stuff is a different story altogether.
A month after we met for the first time, I had quit my job, sold everything I couldn't fit in my sedan, and she flew back out and drove across the country with my daughter and I.
Sounds crazy as hell, and it was, but it worked out better than it should have. I got a good job making more than I did back home right away, her kids loved me, and my daughter loved her and adjusted to her new home fast. And by the time Jack got out of jail for felony cyberstalking, sexual abuse, and Intimidation of a Witness in a Domestic Violence case, we had cameras all over the house, and I had taught my fiancee how to shoot - which she quickly became better than me at.
But Jack's time in jail didn't slow him down, and the 2-10 year suspended sentence didn't deter him at all. As a matter of fact, on his first day out one of the first things he did was start trying to hack her accounts again. He managed to con an elderly couple he knew threw World of Warcraft from a different state into letting him live with them, and from there he spent a lot of time and energy stalking us and hacking our devices to the best of his ability. He also convinced these poor, very stupid elderly people from his videogame to bankroll a lengthy, expensive divorce. Somehow a man who hadn't worked in almost 20 years managed to run us into over $50,000 in legal fees in two years. How a marriage with zero assets turned into a two year battle when both parties were officially in poverty before the divorce, or how the family courts never saw through the bullshit is beyond me.
To Jack's credit, he did a pretty good job remaining a thorn in our side. Largely due to the complete and utter ineptitude and indifference of the police and District Attorney who could and should have put a stop to his bullshit at any point in that time. Old Jack got hit with a permanent criminal stalking injunction and a 10-year protective order along with his probation, and no amount of effort on our part would get the police, DA, or probation to put a stop to it, despite mountains of evidence.
He successfully managed to draw the divorce out right up to the wedding we planned a year and a half prior, with his attorney putting in motion after motion to delay the process. With all our family and friends coming from all over the country and as far away as Japan, we accepted our wedding would just be a celebration and not an official wedding. Until the night before the wedding, she got a call from her attorney - he had made a call to the clerk's office at the court and got her to move the paperwork to finalize the divorce to the top of the pile, and she was officially divorced. Our wedding would be a real wedding after all, and despite Jack's best efforts, he lost again. We had the wedding on a remote ranch that we rented for a week, and foolishly decided to cater and decorate ourselves, which would have been a colossal undertaking without the extra 4 hours to drive into town and get our marriage certificate at the courthouse. But we pulled it off and it was everything we could have hoped for and then some, and we were officially married.
Jack of course didn't stop after the divorce was finalized. The list of shit he tried to do to us before and after that is too long to spell out in an already too long post, but here are some choice bits:
He wrote a demented letter to the oldest of his kids with her who severed her relationship with him, calling my wife and her mother "vipers and cowards" and promising we would "answer for what we've done sooner or later".
He continuously hacked our computers, miscellaneous accounts tied to our emails, and any other devices he could get into - dropping in remotely via Amazon Alexa, phones, etc.
He set up bots to send us thousands of spam emails, sign us up for dozens of international newsletters all at once, and requests for consultations for things like solar panel installations.
He told the kids vile lies about my wife and I, although the most egregious was when he used a court-ordered therapy appointment with his second oldest daughter to accuse me of distributing child porn, told the therapist I am an "evil man", and told him I wasn't safe to be around his daughters. This led to her being forensically interviewed by the police, where she spelled out what happened, but of course they did nothing.
He gave the two youngest children cell phones to sneak into our house, with Google accounts activated and location tracking turned on.
He sent packages to our house 5 times in the space of a few months, one of which was addressed to himself and contained nothing but a bag of Stevia and a pack of gum. These packages generally came to our door the day before his scheduled visitation with the kids.
During this time my bank account was hacked four times in the span of just a few months with nearly identical fraudulent charges. In each of these instances, I had completely changed my bank account information.
He filed false reports with CPS twice, alleging we were beating the children, locking them in the closet, and not feeding or bathing them. This led to a CPS agent coming to our house to investigate.
We brought all this to the police over and over as it happened, and they did nothing. The DA running the case wasted 5 months subpoenaing a fake email address that we told them when we reported it was fake and spoofed. After finding out about that, we went to the DA's office to find out what the fuck was going on. A Victim's Advocate met with us, and was horrified about how the case was handled, looked up the prosecutor assigned to the case, rolled her eyes and said "Oh...it's Stephanie", confirming what we already knew - this prosecutor was completely incompetent, an elect3d politician moonlighting as a prosecutor. She called us the next day to tell us the actual DA called a meeting and a warrant was put out for Jack's arrest. For some inexplicable reason, they pulled the warrant back, and the advocate told us it was because the DA was pursuing more serious charges.
Then, they stonewalled us. The Victim's Advocate we had met with that actually tried to help us was moved off our case, and the new one assigned refused to talk to us or return our calls. The few exchanges we had with her, she made it abundantly clear she had the DA Office's interests in mind and not ours. We decided to just stay quiet and let the process play out and hope for the best, up until we received an email on Friday night before Election Day from the Detective telling us Stephanie had closed the case. I assume she didn't want her incompetence coming to light, and didn't want to shut the case down before Election Day knowing we would be on the warpath.
Eventually, Jack caught wind that he was officially under criminal investigation, but clearly had no idea they were never going to press charges. He got quiet for a bit, until he was ultimately let off probation early. We still get the occasional reminder he's out there watching, but his fear of going back to jail and the belief it might happen cowed him a bit. So instead he harasses us through the family courts, filing constant bullshit motions with no evidence to support them, and for some reason the courts let it continue. Somehow a man who makes ~$800 from SSDI and is only paying $30 a month total to support his 3 kids with my wife is able to fund tens of thousands of dollars worth of legal proceedings every year, and no one in the family courts has ever stopped to ask how he is paying for it or why all this money isn't being spent on supporting these children.
But despite Jack's best efforts, his bullshit hasn't worked. My wife and I have been together for four years soon, and married for two. His kids call me dad and hate his guts, only seeing him because the courts force them to. I continue to advance in my career, landing two major promotions in the past 2 years and now running a division in one of the largest companies in my field in this part of the country. I just enrolled in college to go back to school and get a degree in family law with a focus on domestic violence. The most frustrating part of the whole experience with ol' Jack was having no one to turn to when all the institutions who were supposed to keep this from happening ignored us, and even though I'll be well into my mid 40's before I accomplish my new goals, I plan to advocate for domestic violence victims and do everything I can to lobby for change to these laws to keep as many people as I can from going through what my wife and I did. I learned that the only way to beat these people at their game is to play on the same field right along with them, and that's what I intend to do.
My wife went back to work too once she healed from some of the trauma, making $30 an hour as a personal assistant for a fella who's had two movies made about his life. Our kids struggled a bit with school and dealing with all their biological parents' issues, but they quickly turned it around and have been excelling. We're all happy, healthy, and doing better now than ever.
As for Jack? Well, he's pushing 50 and still spending his days alone, playing World of Warcraft and jerking off in this old couple's basement. Nothing has changed there, and now he's too fat, old, and visibly an enormous fucking loser to victimize women in the same way he did in his youth. I have no doubts he'll find another victim eventually, probably when these old weirdos bankrolling his life now finally wise up, but one thing Jack forgets is that karma is a mother fucker, and I have a giant database of evidence that I can and will send out to whoever I please to help pull that mask down and keep him from doing this to someone else. Nothing is more appealing to a potential love interest than hearing their man cry like a drunk bitch for 26 minutes to the man he claims stole his wife, while simultaneously admitting to sexually assaulting said wife.
As wonderful as it would have been for Jack to go to prison where he can't hurt anyone again, there is some catharsis knowing Jack will forever be in a prison of his own making. His children want nothing to do with him, and he'll never see them graduate or walk them down the aisle. Jack will die miserable and alone, and in his narcissistic delusion will still be blaming everyone else for the colossal failure of his life, while continuing to fail to grasp the one thread that ties all his misery together - himself.
And since he somehow manages to find and stalk most of my social media, I'd wager Jack will end up reading this too. I hope he does in all honesty. And Jack, if you are reading this, I want you to know that you can kick, flail, manipulate and lie, cry and complain until you're red in the face. None of it matters. You don't matter. You'll leave this world alone, as sad and bitter as you are now, and the world will be a better place for it.