Wanted to hear a conversation of strong clashing accents.
Had chatGPT write a quick skit about Moira and Laszlo fighting over the last bottle of wine at the grocery store.
It would be awesome if I could actually hear this with their voices, but I don't know of any services or have an experience emulating those.
Here is the skit:
Certainly! Here’s a quick skit of Moira Rose and Laszlo Cravensworth encountering each other over the last bottle of wine in a grocery store:
**[INT. GROCERY STORE - WINE AISLE]**
*Moira Rose, dressed in her usual eccentric attire, reaches for the last bottle of red wine on the shelf at the same time as Laszlo Cravensworth, who is equally flamboyant in his Victorian garb. Their hands touch the bottle simultaneously.*
**Moira:** (with exaggerated enunciation) Oh, darling, I believe I saw this divine vintage first. It would be positively *unconscionable* for me to leave without it.
**Laszlo:** (baffled) What the fuck did you just say?
**Moira:** (tilting her head, slightly offended) I was merely asserting my prior claim to this exquisite elixir. Your *plebeian* ears may not be accustomed to such *sophisticated* parlance.
**Laszlo:** (eyes narrowing) Are you taking the piss? I’ve been drinking wine since before your ancestors were crawling out of the muck. I’ve earned that bottle.
**Moira:** (smirking) And yet, here you are, squabbling over a mere bottle like some *commoner*. How dreadfully tragic.
**Laszlo:** (snarling) Tragic? I'll show you tragic. You ever tried sharing a coffin with someone who leaves their fangs everywhere?
**Moira:** (laughing melodiously) How *quaint*! Sharing a coffin! I suppose that’s one way to keep the marriage alive—if only just barely.
**Laszlo:** (scoffing) And what would you know about marriage, dressed like a cursed peacock? You’d scare a man to death before he even got to the altar.
**Moira:** (mockingly) Oh, you flatter me! But let us not bicker like children. This wine—*my* wine—will be the perfect accompaniment to my evening of cultural edification.
**Laszlo:** (growling) And what culture would that be? The art of driving everyone around you mad with that accent?
**Moira:** (smiling sweetly) Precisely. And if you’re ever in need of lessons on *elocution*, do give me a call. Now, if you’ll excuse me.
*Moira snatches the bottle from the shelf with a flourish and sashays away, leaving Laszlo fuming.*
**Laszlo:** (shouting after her) You better hope that wine is worth it, you— (pauses, thinking of a suitable insult) overly dramatic bat!
*Moira waves her hand dismissively without turning around.*
**[END SCENE]**
This scene highlights the comedic clash of their eccentric personalities, with Moira’s theatrical elegance contrasting sharply with Laszlo’s blunt and abrasive manner.

I (M )was single for a long time, almost half a decade since my last relationship . The situation of my last serious relationship was that she was my high school sweetheart , we knew each other from school and we had the same interest . Shes an amoi but perangai like Malay girl. Anyways fast forward 2 years we broke up because I acted toxic alot ( I mengaku ) . Fast Forward more to this year, I now am dating my first serious Malay Gf that I want to bring to marriage , out of knowhere, my ex gf hit up my phone and wanted to watch a movie with me. I have to be honest , I was willing to break up with my current gf to get back with her ( i was thinking with my dick and reminiscing of our sexy times together ) I told my ex that if shes willing to be my gf back and stay loyal with me ill be the same . Plot twist , she has a BF and wants me to be the "ex bf to not be worried about " so she declined my relationship offer . I cut her off then and there for good. Fast Forward to few more weeks and months I actually there has been a lot of instances where I could have cheated with her and/or left my gf for a new one . Colleagues and neighbours are trying to have my social media and number , the worst part is that most of them are amois ( my dulu punya nafsu ). I told my gf about it because I dont think its good to blindside her, she likes that I talk to her about these things and she says its a test from the Almighty to see if I can stick to my principles or not and so far so good I have been a good bf to her. Although I understand I still feel lowkey baffled how I got looked at by kaum wanita only after I decided to settle down. During my tenure as a bachelor litterally most women treated me as a weirdo or creep but now dah up skit suddenly kena like this. AMA.
TL;DR Women can sense if youre not a loser I guess.

Growing up my grandmother was a very kind, church going, volunteering, just overall helpful and loving person…but the day my older cousin mentioned marrying his girlfriend, it changed.
My town is so white that everyone knows whenever a “minority” moves in as the old folks wont stop talking about it. Even in school we would have that 1 kid who happened to be black, and they would be asked if “they could rap”, like it’s a skit from South Park when they have Tolkien play the bass…because he is black.
Back to the story: My Cousin comes from a city that is a few hours away and it’s a fairly large city with a big university and a normal about of diversity(as most cities tend to have). It just so happened that my cousins GF was black. Everyone in my family liked said GF and she was pretty dang awesome(as the past GF were just not great on any level). After a year my cousin mentioned getting engaged to his GF. Everyone was supportive and happy to hear my cousin would be settling down, everyone except my grandmother…
One day my grandma says to me, “I like the girl…but I am just not ready to have little black babies running around at family reunions”. This was said with such a casual tone as if I was meant to respond back with something of equal displeasure or pull a white hood out of my back pocket.
It was very weird and I had never heard anything like this from my grandma before.
Unfortunately, there was no marriage as the GF came from a fairly well-to-do family and expected a bit more than what my cousin could provide at the time. On the scale of drive/ambition, my cousin was about a 4.5/10, where as his GF was about 8/10 with a personality to boost her into the 9/10 range.
I was sad to see her go, but it really stuck with me the mentality that my grandmother would be against another person’s relationship when it meant the possibility of having mixed colored grandchildren!

Dane Cook is in my opinion one of the most Millennial comedians ever. He was popular in the 2000s and had his come up with Myspace. With that and his Ed Hardy shirts, you couldn't get more millennial than that.
I personally always liked him when I was in college. He was energetic, funny, and expressive. His "observational humor" could be very fun, and to me his comedy was a bit unique. I recall comedians all joking about the same exact things, especially in the 90s and aughts (black guys - "hey ever notice black folks do this and white folks do that?" White guys: Complain of marriage, religion, mocks Clinton or Michael Jackson, Women: Men, amirite?)
His over-the-top Jim Carrey-esque, physical comedy was a bit refreshing, at least to a younger me.
I tried watching a few clips of his again and it's one of those things where it's like you're looking at it through a different set of eyes. I thought he was running around WAAAAAAY too much. One skit he literally gets undressed. A lot of it looked extra, like he was really selling the joke.
Also, his observational humor didn't seem as relatable in hindsight... "You know how everyone has this one friend named Billy, right? He like always wears red and carries around a katana?"
I'm like: No Dane, we don't...
Family Guy and MadTV really did an excellent job parodying him.
With that said, while a lot of it didn't age too terribly well in hindsight, I still think he was very funny and very entertaining to listen to. As a late teen/young adult I found him to be hilarious! It's sort of how you can find a childhood movie endearing but the pie in the face jokes don't hit as hard.
Anyway, what are your thoughts?

I had written a lengthy post but it got deleted bec of a bullshit reason. I'm too tired to write it again, so I'll just give the main points :
When you see LA influencers collaborating with each other in skits/shorts/reels etc . you'll find a lot of attractive EA men/women and even SA women, but you'll be hard pressed to find a SA guy, and in the rare vid that you do, it's some ugly comedian type guy. Consider Dhar Mann for instance. Dude is average looking and extremely popular (Dhar Mann studio). He has promoted quite a few good looking black/latino/ EA male influencers in his vids, but I haven't found one SA male in his vids (let alone a attractive one) which is just absolutely pathetic.
For instance Alan Chikin Chow ,a already somewhat popular EA yt shorts creator, blew up in popularity after featuring in some of dhar mann studio vids. And now Alan has collaborated with several SA female influencers (lily singh, radhika bangia a notorious koreaboo, and others) but not one SA male influencer, bec of course, why should he. When cucks belonging to a particular race hand you a massive following on a silver platter, you have no obligation to help them back (the absurd part is , once again, not one SA male influencer showing up in Dhar mann vids, when he's SA himself). I had some other points too, but I'm too tired to write them again.
So question to my desi LA friends: How 1)ubiquitous 2)popular (esp among female circles/fans) are SA male influencers in Los Angeles? Do you know popular pretty boy type SA guys/SA guys who specialise in thirst trap/omegle rizz type content who have massive fan followings ? (bec. there are hundreds of EA guys I'm aware of that make this type of content , and they have a massive female fanbase from all races thirsting after them in the comments)
I'm aware of the pookie guy, but he's canadian. My question is primarily about LA, since it's a hotspot for influencers/ actors etc. Also how well do SA guys in LA do with women of all races/desi women? Do attractive desi women in LA go mainly for brown dudes ? (bec if the content of female SA influencers are anything to go by, there must not be a single SA guy in los angeles, but only white/EA dudes)
Edit: Wongfu productions did a parody of the bachelorette, and they had a indian dude there who was only the butt of jokes, replete with indian stereotypes /arranged marriage. And of course the girl in the vid only thirsted over the EA dudes (who were portrayed like kdrama oppas). EA guys literally don't give a fuck about anybody else lol, and then you have cucks like Dhar Mann who has promoted so many EA guys in his vids that you would think he's wongfu production 2.0
Edit 2: Do we have our own version of wongfu productions?

I’m (20M) in a relationship with a girl (20F), she’s very nice and etc, she bought me gifts and wrote meaningful stuff for me, and she’s a girl who genuinely likes me and we’ve even considered about long-term/marriage etc, always joke about her being my wife, me being her husband, and just overall a really good relationship. We’ve also been pretty close physically too, nothing crazy sexual, but just together closely.
We were acting in a play together for a university club skit, and she wasn’t here for one of the rehearsals, but I was. Now because we don’t show everyone our relationship to the club (to avoid PDA and awkwardness within the club members) we don’t really talk much when we have club meetings, rehearsals etc, as we discussed this prior. So we ran through the skit and everything, and on the day of she was still allowed to be act in the scene. So she was lost as everyone had their placement except for her. Me being in the scene, I automatically assumed she would ask me where she should be, but she instead asked another guy, in which she kind of jumped up and seemed excited to ask him, but it was like a short encounter, something I witnessed from the corner of my eye. The thing is, we’ve had multiple occasions with this guy, where he’s put his hand over her once when talking (which I told her I felt uncomfortable with and she understood). He himself is a slightly a flirty guy which i’ve noticed, but he’s also a nice guy to me and her. Their also close in another way, as sometimes they carpool together with a couple other club members, as they live in a different city compared to me, so it’s easier for them, but I guess this is also how they probably got closer during these drives (she’s always transparent to me about these car rides and such).
Not that I’m the jealous type, but I’ve been hurt in a past relationship, where I liked another girl, and she liked me, but she start jokingly flirting with another guy, in which she ghosted me and started to like him, and then we stopped talking. This is sort of an insecurity I face because of that incident, and I’ve been trying to get better at trusting people.
Now because of all the things she’s done for me, and the just the genuine love we have, I can’t tell her if she’s genuinely a person who’s excited when talking to this guy/guys, or if she’s flirting with him. I also have more evidence leading towards her not flirting/texting him, is because she’s almost 24/7 texting me, and I would know if she’s talking to him, as she usually just tells me something he messages her for club related stuff.
Now if you can maybe start to tell how I feel, but I’ve been just feeling very insecure and sort of lost, as I don’t know if I should tell her how I’m feeling, as it’s really draining me, but I also don’t want her to judge me, or think I’m being possessive in any way. Should I set a boundary? Or should I tell her about my past and this is why when she talks to a guy in sort a flirty way, it reminds me of my past, and I’m scared it’ll happen again? How do you guys think I should move forward with this?

Hello everyone. Long time lurker, first time contributor here. I've wanted to write something like this out for a while but never felt sure about it until now. I grew up in the evangelical bubble and have been in therapy for several years now, working my way through it and trying to work toward a new phase in my life that I think I'm finally comfortably settling into.
My family raised me in a very devout, Baptist church where we were at the center of everything. My dad was actually raised by his parents in the same exact church and so he passed it on to my siblings and I (lucky me). So this place and world was all I knew from birth. My dad was a deacon in the church and my mom was a Sunday school teacher. We were there every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night, every Saturday afternoon/evening for choir practice, and attended every single event. My mom and dad were both on the women's and men's church baseball teams respectively and I and my sisters played on the church kids' teams. I participated in every holiday cantata, every skit, every children's choir event, every VBS, etc. We were heavily involved and it was my whole world. We had family friends who were so close to us that I referred to them as "Aunt" and "Uncle", and I had two best friends, one male and one female (I'm male), who were closer than any friends I had at school. I have a strange sort of disconnect with so much of it now because when I reflect back on it there are so many really genuinely happy memories that cause my heart to ache over the eventual loss. The rupture that eventually tore this whole world down around me ripped apart everything that made me feel like me and that's why I'm here now.
What I should say before going any further is that there was always a part of me that struggled to believe and was filled with constant doubt. I remember in fourth grade when the kids on the playground at school were teasing me because they knew I was a religious "goodie two shoes" and were goading me into saying a swear word. As the pressure mounted I finally let it out and yelled out the F word, the first time I'd ever sworn, and they all stared at me in shock and then started laughing and slapped me on the back like "yeah, this kid's alright after all." I remember waiting for the punishment to fall out of the sky but then...nothing. It was totally fine and no one cared. So I started letting it fly all the time at school while hiding it from the rest of my family. I mention this because that's when I started really compartmentalizing my life and I got pretty good at it until eventually I wasn't. I'd go to church on Sundays and hear the pastor say that if we weren't going out into the world on Monday and evangelizing to our friends then we weren't being good stewards of the faith because those people were lost souls in need of our guidance. Then I'd go to school on Monday again, see my friends there, and think "...but they're fine." I would then spend the next week feeling guilty and ashamed of myself only to have it reaffirmed the following Sunday once again that I was being a bad Christian. I was plagued with thoughts of dying and meeting God only to be told I was never a true believer and then being sent to hell for all of eternity. I got "saved" more times than I care to count. And then I'd go to school on Monday again and think "but my friends are fine" and so lather, rinse, repeat.
The real change started happening, however, when I was in sixth grade. The year prior my grandmother had died a few days before my birthday and that was the beginning of something I didn't quite understand. See, on Sundays after church my mom and dad would take my sisters and I to our grandparents for the afternoon since they lived down the road from the church and we'd hang there all afternoon with my aunts, uncles, and cousins until the evening service started. That was our routine every single Sunday, week in, week out. When my grandma died, it started to unravel. I never knew how much of a matriarch she was and after she passed the family dynamic immediately shifted and my aunts and uncles stopped showing up. My grandpa grew very quiet and depressed and eventually developed Parkinson's. Sundays suddenly started feeling a little strange and so - it quickly became apparent - did my parents. My mom began spending a lot of time with my sixth grade Sunday school teacher, who was a male, and she referred to him often as her best friend. My sisters and I used to say that everything that happened later took us by complete surprise, but I think that's how we chose to cope because looking back...it seems obvious. There were several moments over the course of that year that made my sisters and I uncomfortable each in our own way, but one stands out in my mind for me specifically.
We were at my dad's church baseball game on a night in July and my dad was standing at the pitcher's mound. The church had two separate men's teams and my dad was on one while my Sunday school teacher was on the other. My dad was having a rough night and had just walked the previous batter after a series of fouls when said Sunday school teacher approached the plate. He jokingly yelled out for my dad to "go easy on me" while some of the guys laughed in response. What I remember about this is how still my dad was. He was always very athletic and sure of himself, but his body language told a different story on this night. I remember that the catcher was signaling the pitch to my dad, but my dad was just standing there, unresponsive. Sunday school teacher took his batting stance and then my dad wound up for the pitch and let it fly, hitting his intended target and shattering the man's cheek bone instantly. I can still hear the man's screams of agony as he fell to the ground, but what I remember more is that amidst the men running to his side was my mother. She was right there with him and my dad...just stood there at the plate and watched. I was standing behind the fence and everything inside of me was screaming "something is wrong." My mom went to the hospital to go be with the man and when I asked my dad that night if it was an accident he let out a deflated "mhm." I would later find out that Sunday School Teacher had a metal plate put in his face and to this day that thought fills me with a weirdly spiteful sense of joy; a constant reminder he'll carry with him for the rest of his life. Sometimes I find myself hoping that something will remind him of the metal plate and that he thinks of us.
I remember that my mom started behaving very strangely whenever she was around this guy. We went on a family camping trip that summer with another family and Sunday School Teacher also went with all of us. I watched my mom interacting with him, thinking that she was acting like a teenage girl and how odd that was. My dad...just silently watched. My sister told my dad at one point "I don't like the way that man touches mommy" and my dad...said nothing. I started seventh grade and the feeling never went away.
For my part, I was somewhat distracted. You see, that female friend I mentioned above had become my best friend and I was secretly head over heels for her. I found out through a mutual friend that she felt the same way about me and I was on cloud nine. My sisters and other kids in the youth group picked up on the tension between us and would pick on us, calling us boyfriend and girlfriend while we denied it. The truth was, however, that even at a young age I just knew this girl was my first love. We connected in a profound way and there was a quiet understanding between the two of us that we were on the same wavelength on a number of issues. My male friend was like a brother to me and we'd have sleepovers and hang together on Wednesday nights when the other boys were running around playing sports. Neither of us were athletes so he'd run around wreaking havoc much to the chagrin of the adults in the room, and I'd gleefully follow. The three of us together were thick as thieves and it apparently caused the adults a lot of grief because they tried, on more than one occasion, to split us up to no avail. It was that whole quote at the end of Stand By Me about never again having friends like you did at twelve years old. Jesus, does anyone?
It all came tumbling down the first week of January in 1999. We'd just gotten back from our family Christmas vacation and had settled in on a Saturday night to watch a movie we'd rented from Blockbuster, My Giant. We didn't end up watching the movie until the following day because of what my parents had to tell us that night and I remember sitting there on the couch while it played as if through some fogged up window from very far away. To this day I irrationally hate the movie though I remember little to nothing about it. We were sitting on the couch in our basement when my mom said that they needed to tell us something. Things were going to be changing, she said. We went wide eyed, worried she was going to say someone had died again. Instead, she told us "your father and I are getting a divorce." This is a moment that has replayed over and over and over again in my head ever since and I wish so badly that I could make it go away. I've told other people that I vividly remember hearing or feeling glass breaking inside of my brain and thinking for about two seconds that this was some cruel, weird joke before reality set in and my sisters began sobbing. I followed suit and begged my father "why?!?" to which he responded angrily, "I don't want it, your mother does!"
Pro tip: never start off a divorce by telling your children this.
They informed us that not only would this be happening, but that we were also leaving the church. I immediately begged them no, please don't do this to me, as my thoughts drifted to my two best friends who meant the absolute world to me. And that's when they told me the thing that broke my brain and forever altered the rest of my life:
We couldn't stay at the church, you see, because we were no longer welcome. It turns out that my father, having been utterly crushed by the news my mother had apparently given him two months prior (we have this old video of my dad standing on the stage behind the pastor during that two month period as the pastor is talking about certain members of the church "suffering quietly" right now and my dad looks absolutely defeated), had reached out to my grandpa for support. My grandpa, being devastated for my dad, decided to reach out to one of his very best friends for some moral support of his own. The man he contacted, unfortunately, was one of the Church Elders. This man then took it upon himself to call the pastor, the other Elders, the Deacons, and members of the church to inform them of what was transpiring between my parents. Discussions were had and the decision was simple: my parents (and subsequently my entire family) were to be excommunicated by the church for living in sin. Unless my parents agreed to stand before the congregation to be judged, counted, and to then agree to work on fixing the marriage to stay together, we would not be welcome. A group of men attempted to confront the Sunday School Teacher about his relationship with my mother, as it was painfully obvious to anyone with eyes that something was going on there. Sunday School Teacher, the coward that he was/is I guess, tucked his tail between his legs and insisted they had it all wrong and that he was the innocent in all of this. My mom, they had to know, seduced him and he was just a little choir boy. The men, having given it the proper, rational amount of consideration, decided he must be telling the truth and walked away, referring to my mother as a jezebel. My parents then decided it was time for us to go. So in the end, Sunday School Teacher got to stay, and we were forced out. We were allowed one last Sunday service to see our friends, but we couldn't tell anyone that we were leaving. We sat down in the pew in our normal spot and the family that usually sat with us got up and moved away. These were some of the family friends I referred to as "aunt" and "uncle". I remember playing a game with my friends after the service wherein we were vampires and the daylight would turn us to stone. When it was time for me to leave, we were standing outside and they'd just "frozen" in place due to the sunlight and I kept repeating "goodbye" until my mom told me we needed to go. I climbed into the car and watched out the back window as they got further and further away until, I remember thinking, they looked like stick figures waving in the wind.
I had my first panic attack that afternoon when we got home, though at the time I had no idea what the hell it was. My family had all gone inside and I refused to join because I was devastated and just wanted to be alone. So I sat there in the car, banging on the back of the driver's seat and sobbing until my hands started to feel "fuzzy" and numb. My fingers had curled up into my fists until I couldn't move them and I suddenly was finding it very hard to breathe. That only made me panic more because I didn't understand what was happening to me and my whole body was shaking. I sat there out in the driveway with not a soul in sight, fearing that I was about to die. When it finally ended I sat there in a sort of stunned silence, terrified that something was physically wrong with me, and so I got out of the car, went inside the house, walked past my family members, and went to my room where I closed the door behind me. Sort of how I lived my life for a while after that actually.
I was eventually allowed to call one friend, I was told, to inform them that I wouldn't be returning. So I chose the girl and very cautiously explained to her that I wouldn't be seeing her again. She was confused, naturally, and repeated to me over and over again how sorry she was. Around Valentines Day, I went upstairs to my mom's room where she kept tons of various holiday cards and found a series of Valentines cards. I picked one that had a dog on the front and wrote a secret admirer letter to the girl, telling her how beautiful and kind she was. I put it in an envelope and sent it in the mail with no return address, forever wondering if it ever made it to its destination. I lost all contact with my male friend and never again replaced him. No one I ever met after that measured up.
I became quiet, barely spoke anymore, stopped taking care of myself, started failing classes where previously I'd been a straight A student, was bullied mercilessly, and eventually became suicidal. It just always felt like there was darkness lurking around every corner where once it felt like all I'd known was light. God was nowhere to be found. He wasn't saving me from this, from any of it. I was on my own. My mom's best friend from our old church, a woman I also referred to as "aunt" and who also lived down the street from us with her family, whose children I walked to school with every single day, came strolling down to our home one afternoon with a letter in her hand. My mom walked out the front door to greet her and she was handed the letter instead. The woman said a few words I couldn't hear and then turned around and left.
What I remember most about that moment is how long it seemed like my mom stood there with her back to us while we watched out the window. I remember how long it seemed like the woman was walking down the street, never to return. My mom looked down at the letter and read for a while. When she was finished, she stood a while longer and then came inside. We asked if she was okay and she didn't respond. She had tears in her eyes and, without saying a word, walked upstairs to her bedroom where it felt like the mother I knew never came back down from. She spiraled into a depression that left her lying in bed most days to the point that it became routine for my grandma (my mother's mom) to call in the morning to make sure my sisters and I were getting ready for school and to then have us hand the phone off to my mom in bed. I would later find out that my grandma would painstakingly walk my mom through getting out of bed, getting some clothes, taking a shower, eating some food, and so on and so forth. Former church "friends" began repeatedly calling our house and leaving hateful messages on our answering machine, telling my mother she was a sinner and needed to repent. They sent us letters that my dad would try to get to before we could and he'd rip them up and throw them away, telling us we needed to "just ignore it." My grandpa got too sick to take care of himself so he came to live with us for the last few months of his life. He slept in my bed while I was moved to the basement where I spent many, many long, lonely nights crying myself to sleep and trying not to let the panic attacks become unbearable. My grandfather passed that summer and very few from our old church said a single word to any of us at the funeral. My dad eventually moved out and on the day he said goodbye to us at the door I begged him to stay and he cried, telling me he had to go. I chased him down the street on my bike, but he was gone.
Eventually we moved to a new church with my dad (my mom stopped going for a while until she found one of her own where she could get a new start) and I settled in as well as I could. I found out through the grapevine that our old pastor had been arrested for running a bogus investment scheme involving a fake electronics company and was sent to prison for defrauding congregants out of thousands of dollars. One of the Deacons involved had fled from the FBI and was eventually found where he was tried for skimming $1.7 million in investments. At my new church, within the first year, our new pastor (who just so happened to be the former youth pastor from our old church) stood up before the congregation one Sunday morning and said that he'd done something bad and that the Elders were going to allow the church to put it to a vote as to whether he could stay or needed to leave. They didn't tell us, of course, what he'd done, but we were going to vote on it nevertheless. It would later be revealed that he a.) cheated on his wife with an underage teen and b.) was also secretly molesting his own daughter. And the Elders had us put it to a vote.
Over the years I'd also find out that certain men in the church were sexually assaulting women and children and getting away with it because "God forgives, people can change, etc." and these were men who'd been in my home. One of them was also a deacon and had been exposing himself to underage girls. When it was brought to the pastor's attention by parents of the girls, the pastor told them that he would take care of it and then he'd sweep it under the rug, giving them all the same old song and dance about forgiveness. Another man, someone I'd grown up with, was physically abusing his wife and kids. She would show up to church wearing sunglasses to cover up a black eye and everyone knew what was really going on, but nothing was ever done about it. She eventually divorced him, won her kids in the custody battle, and left...but he stayed there, in the church.
My parents both eventually remarried, which was its own deeply traumatic experience as they'd both started dating other people within a year of their separation. My sisters and I, being young preteens and teens, responded poorly and my father apparently spent his time telling members of the church how mean we were to his girlfriend and they judged us accordingly. I just sort of...coasted through all of it until I could get out. I was constantly at war with myself and was an absolute mess. I hid my suicidal tendencies from the rest of my family and hid my pain as well as I could.
At the end of my junior year of high school I attended a Christian summer camp with the youth group and one night during the altar call they were pushing heavily for us to commit our college years to a Christian university. The lights were dimmed, that old familiar emotionally manipulative music had been playing, the speaker got all emotional, the room was full of somewhere around a thousand crying teens, and I felt compelled to go forward and do it. So I made the stupid mistake of going to the front and making the commitment. At the end of my senior year I realized all too late what a mistake I'd made. All of my friends were excitedly discussing their futures and what state they were moving away to, and I...had nowhere to go. I had been accepted a to a small Christian college here in Michigan (Tyndale, which, ironically enough, closed down like a year later), but no longer wanted to go so I settled on a local community college where I'd commute to from home.
Feeling very low, I decided to go to my youth pastor at the time to ask if I could borrow his mini DV tapes he had of our youth group at a variety of events over the years. I had some of my own as well (I desperately wanted to go to film school) and wanted to edit a video together for my senior class. So he said yes and I went home and watched every tape. Every single one. You can probably guess where this is going. I stumbled on one tape that had been filmed by his brother, a guy who assisted in the youth group and played the guitar, in which he was zooming in on girls in the youth group...inappropriately, and was filming from all sorts of angles he shouldn't have been if you catch my drift. I sat there at my computer in this old, familiar, stunned silence. I started shaking like crazy and shut the camera off, having no idea what to do. I was eighteen. I was a kid. A week or so later I returned the tapes to the youth pastor's office where his brother saw me and asked what I was doing with those tapes. Youth pastor informed him what I was doing and the look on the guy's face said everything. Youth pastor asked if I got everything I needed and all I said was "Yeah...you have some interesting footage," and then I left. The following Wednesday I played the video for the youth group, and after the service the youth pastor approached me. His brother was standing behind him sort of looking off in the distance like he didn't know exactly what this was about, and the youth pastor asked me if there was anything more I felt like I needed to say because, you know, this is the end and next fall you're not coming back. Just making sure all you seniors are good, you know? Just making sure everyone here is happy. I was looking at him but just off in the distance I could see friends, my younger sister, other leaders...and they did look...happy. I felt sick to my stomach and said "no, all good." He slapped me on the shoulder and said "Great. Thank you." And that was it. I was out. My dad remarried that summer and, promptly, walked out of our lives. My sister was still in high school, but weekends with dad just stopped being a thing and that was that.
That fall I found out that there was no college leader at the church so the seniors from my class were just going back to the high school youth group each week to hang out together and I knew my presence would be potentially problematic, "this is the end and next fall you're not coming back" and all that, so instead I just sort of...went away. I disappeared for a long time. I'd hear about my old friends getting together for parties and bonfires and going on trips together and I...disappeared. The phone never rang. Everything got real quiet. I quit my job, and then started working at a Christian bookstore thinking "well I'll just replace those friends with the young people working here. I've done it before, I'll just do it again." My depression worsened and I went to some very dark places during that period of my life. The customers were awful. I met some of the worst people I've ever met in my life. The days were long and I skipped classes constantly, finding myself driving to nowhere and wishing I could just disappear. The youth pastor and his brother eventually moved to another church overseas and I was so...angry. And relieved. Had I known what it was called back then I would know that I was already deconstructing and I was doing it all alone.
Two long years went by and the girl from my childhood, my best friend, returned. She and her family were attending the church now and she got a job with me at the bookstore. We reignited the friendship and the flirting started not long after that. One night she and I went out to Starbucks where she told me that long ago when she was a kid she'd received this strange love letter from a secret admirer and she'd always wondered who it was from. I felt my tongue roll back and drop into my stomach and my heart stopped and everything felt very blurry. I then played stupid and said "oh really?" She offered to take me back to her place to show me. I said sure and then spent the drive there absolutely freaking out because I knew there was only one reason she wanted to show me this and that was because obviously she knew it was me. When she brought it out to me I had the most bizarre out of body experience and froze on the spot. Eventually I told her, "...You know what my handwriting looks like." She smiled at me and said yes, that she'd always known. I admitted how I felt about her and she said she felt the same way, that she'd always hoped.
We dated for almost five years before we got married. We have two kids together now, and we've been through hell and back. God I love her so much. The last few years she's been on a deconstruction journey of her own and it's only brought us closer. We're raising our kids without church (haven't stepped foot in one in about five years now) and their lives are already much different than my own. All those years, all that pain, all those people who walked away from me and my family. None of it is ever coming back and I just have to be okay with that now. I think that I am finally learning how to make a home in myself. Therapy has been so healing and I'm grateful every day that I get to choose to make this change, that I get to be the one to stand in the face of generational trauma and say "no more. This stops here with me."
This is a random tangent I guess, but I get frustrated about it every now and then. A while back my son asked out of the blue, “why do some people have two mommies?” My wife and I tell him “well some women just love women, buddy.” He says “oh” and then asks “but then they won’t have a daddy?” So we tell him “well no, but that’s not a bad thing, bud. Families all look different and all that really matters is that they love each other, right?” He thinks about it for like maybe half a second and then goes “Yeah. Okay.” Then he went back to drawing.
I’m frustrated because it’s just so simple. It’s so simple to love. When I was a kid, this unfortunately is not how I was raised. I lived in the evangelical bubble and was told from an early age that homosexuality was a sin and the people “practicing it” (like a job or preparing to play a baseball game or something) were living in sin. One of my uncles on my father’s side has a brother who is gay and if he ever happened to show up to an event with his husband, everyone would get all hush hush and my uncle would tell us that his brother was living in sin and that we needed to pray for him. Church members would come out or be outed and then they’d disappear. My father strictly taught me to believe that anyone in the LGBTQ community were living in hate because if they actively reject “God’s word” then they must also hate God and should be viewed as an infection. He believed in praying the gay away. He took me to a Promise Keepers rally as a little kid where I sat through countless speeches from men on the pulpit claiming to have “overcome” their desires while my father cheered. He has a step daughter now who is gay and the friction between them is palpable. I was raised to live in fear of the LGBTQ community, but the only fear I wound up living in was fear of myself because the truth was I never believed any of it.
I went to church, I memorized the verses and books of the bible, I sat through the sermons and choir practices, went to Wednesday night youth group with a bunch of male teachers who all taught me the same things, I prayed the words I knew my parents wanted to hear. But I didn’t believe any of it. Deep down I just knew I didn’t and that what I was being told was wrong. I privately believed to myself that if there was a God then that God would have to truly be merciful and just and loving and that there wasn’t some eternal hellfire waiting for anyone who refused to believe the same thing and live the same way. It just didn’t make sense to me.
When I got into junior high I met a kid that everyone would whisper about because there were “rumors” that he was gay and he was very quiet and, you could see it on his face, nervous and terribly lonely. When he did come out he began pushing back and took pride in himself and we became friends and I felt so ashamed inside that if he ever found out about my upbringing then he’d stop being my friend. That’s the fear I lived with when it came to just about everyone; that they would not only think I was weird but a symbol of hate. So I did live in fear, not of God but of literally everything else. It fucked with my head and impacted my relationships. It went on that way for years and years; just desperately trying to separate and compartmentalize parts of myself in the fear of being found out by my family and excommunicated, and in the fear of being labeled something I wasn’t by the rest of the world. I look back now on my teen years especially, during deep periods of depression, and regret so much of what didn’t have to be.
And so here I am, all these years later, sitting in the kitchen with my son as he asks about kids having two mommies and I tell him yes, and that’s okay. Everyone deserves love. And he just looks at me and says “okay” and goes back to coloring and I just get so furious inside over what my parents and their generation did to me and so many others like me. It’s this complexity my son will never have to grapple with as he grows up and that’s because the solution is so god damned simple. A life of handwringing, angst, fear, and hate or a space for everyone where there is love. I’m so fucking angry and I’m crying writing this and I’m sorry to make you all sit through all of this long novel of a post if you did.
There was this moment a couple summers ago when my son was sitting next to me on the beach. My wife was out in the water with our little girl and our family members were at a picnic table nearby. He had his beach towel over his head and he was just staring out at the water looking a little lost. I asked him if he was okay and he told me he was scared to go spend the night at my dad’s (a planned sleepover event with all of the cousins). I asked him if it was because of what “papa” says about hell (we’d had this problem before). My son nodded his head and told me he was afraid. He didn’t want God to send him to hell and didn’t know how to stop it. So I’m sitting there in my swimsuit and t-shirt in the warm sand, and an incredibly comforting silence I’ll never forget, next to my little boy with the towel over his head so scared of the future. I remembered what it was like to be in his position, looking for something no one would ever give me. I scooched closer to him and said out loud, for the first time in my life to any blood relative of mine, “Buddy…I don’t believe that.” He turned and looked at me to ask “you don’t?” and I shook my head no. I told him that I really tried when I was his age, but something about it just didn’t sit right with me. I asked him if he felt that way and he said yes. I asked him what it made him feel and he said it made him feel sick and he pointed to his stomach. I told him “me too, but if there is a God, and I don’t know for sure because I don’t think anyone really does, then if God is love a place like hell cannot exist.” I told him to look around at all the people in the park and how happy they were. “I don’t believe they deserve hell and so I don’t believe in hell.” I will never in my life forget the moment his face relaxed and he smiled up at me and said “I think I believe that too.”
God, what could be. It fucking breaks me.

I hadn't originally thought I'd write up a post about this, but since it comes up with some regularity, and u/alisalard1384 brought it up in a recent post entitled What's the context why George hated to be known as creator of Mara Jade? Ik it's a skit but genuinely asking, I'll try and provide as much context as I can on this. Many myths have proliferated over the years. It's worthwhile to go all the way back to the start. I will go off publicly available info: sources in links.

First Contact

In 1991, when the EU was getting kicked off in full (thanks Lucy Wilson), Mara Jade was first introduced in Heir to the Empire, which was naturally a huge bestseller. Bantam publishing wanted to make sure they got it right, so they asked George a few general questions about what they could do in it (whether Han and Leia could have twins, for instance) and he answered. An outline was also submitted, which may have crossed George's eyes. It is conceivable this might have been the first time George became familiar with the character. After the great success of the Heir, George would invite Timothy Zahn to the Ranch to congratulate him.
In this early period, there doesn't seem to have been any real negative reaction on the part of George to this character. As a result of his negative reaction to Palpatine's return in Dark Empire, George had requested outlines for future novels and comics be sent to him for approval, and this was done via Lucy Wilson with George throughout the '90s. This would eventually lead George to become more involved in Mara's character.

George & Mara: 1994 Involvement

1994 would be a key year for George's involvement with Mara, as he would be instrumental in shaping both her character and her future. In late 1993, Timothy Zahn was asked by Bantam and Lucasfilm to put together an outline for a novel to cap its publishing run before the release of the prequel films. This was to become the Hand of Thrawn duology. As part of his outline, Zahn requested two things: the establishment of peace between the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant, and marriage between Luke and Mara. Lucasfilm was willing to accept the first but balked at the second; they suggested the relationship be left ambiguous. Zahn held his ground, threatening to walk from the project; eventually Lucasfilm essentially said, "We'll get back to you."
During this time, in early 1994, George gave the outline of Hand of Thrawn his attention to determine whether it was acceptable. George had previously indicated multiple possible directions for Luke's relationship future; in 1987, George had implied at a convention that potential sequels might feature a romantic partner for Luke, but later, he had turned down attempts to turn Luke into a married man, as Dave Wolverton recounted in the development of Courtship of Princess Leia. The argument the editors at Lucasfilm made to George in favor of Luke's marriage was that, if Luke was not to marry, his life would simply be full of relationship failures, which was a rather sad fate for Luke. Evidently, George was swayed, and in April of 1994 George approved the marriage.
This was not to be the last of George's involvement with the character in 1994 though. Later in the year, in July, for the short story Sleight of Hand, George received a memo asking his attitude towards Mara's telepathic connection to the Emperor. George said it was alright, but he specified that this was a unique talent of Mara's, and shouldn't be extended beyond her character. Later, closer to the publication of Vision of the Future, artist Drew Struzan seemed to directly imply that George okayed the cover artwork with Mara on it, which makes sense, given George's love of art (he collected EU art).
In the following years before Luke finally got hitched to Mara (in 1999), George had ample opportunity to put a stop to the development of that, and it would have been instantly heeded by publishing, but he did not do so. Although he would regularly veto EU ideas he didn't like in the outline process, Luke's marriage to Mara was evidently an idea that wasn't enough of an issue to him to warrant disapproval. (Note: You can read about how all the authors were in on the plan for Luke & Mara here).
During George's outline review of New Jedi Order in 1998, he made no issue of Mara's married future with Luke, and did not request any changes to that element of that story (though it is unknown when he learned of Luke and Mara's child, as initially Mara's pregnancy was thought to take place later in the storyline).

The Photoshoot

In 1999, a photoshoot was done for a card game which cast Shannon Baksa (later Shannon McRandle through re-marriage) as Mara. While Lucasfilm and perhaps George himself approved the shoot, according to historian JW Rinzler, George was displeased with the photoshoot's end result. While Mara had been conceived and designed one way for the earlier comics and Struzan's cover art, she got a new look for the photoshoot. Rinzler commented, "They went out and got some sort of person who looked like she’d stepped out of a Cosmopolitan to be the model Mara and he just thought the whole thing was so not Star Wars and not his vision of Star Wars." This seems, in part, to have been part of George's issue -- as a very visual guy, George had certain things he thought visually fit Star Wars, and evidently this new photoshoot of Mara did not fit within that.
Despite George's issues with the photoshoot, and now possibly the character, he did not try to interfere with the character's arc or partnership with Luke; as Rinzler would remark:

"George had a very healthy attitude towards the EU and licensing in general. Basically George would give everyone a full head of steam -- his attitude was: do what you want, don't talk about Yoda, you know... George also used ideas from the Expanded Universe. He was interested in it, but it wasn't the movies. There was the movies, and there was everything else. But he took stuff from what other people were doing all the time. You know, it was his intellectual property, and he would take stuff or change it or expand upon it. It was a very healthy system. He was very democratic. And you know, he didn't like Mara Jade, but he didn't come to licensing and say, 'You have to kill her off.' He just said, 'I'm not happy about it,' but he didn't -- you know, he had bigger fish to fry."

Later, Rinzler would go on to say that Mara's death got a muted response from Lucas when he was told of the fateful decision.

Jedi Marriage

In the early 2000s, George's ideas about Jedi and marriage had also evolved a bit, and it's possible Mara's marriage to Luke no longer fit within that broader vision. At one time, he had approved Jedi marriage (like with Ki-Adi Mundi), but by Attack of the Clones, his ideas had evolved. George was also always a little protective of Luke, having identified strongly with him while making the original trilogy, and having intervened to prevent his death during the planning of the New Jedi Order.
In 2008, George was interviewed by Total Film, where he discussed many things, including his praise of the Expanded Universe ("They created this whole amazing universe that goes on for millions of years!"). There, he also made a remark to the press, doubling-down on his commitment to no further sequels of Star Wars, and in so doing, to stress his point, George said:

"I’ve left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no Episodes VII-IX. That’s because there isn’t any story. I mean, I never thought of anything! And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn’t at all what I would have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn’t come back to life, the Emperor doesn’t get cloned and Luke doesn’t get married..."

In 2010, at Celebration V, George would further explain his view on the Jedi and marriage, comparing the Jedi to monks, saying, "Ultimately for a Jedi Knight, one of the things they give up is marriage. They can still love people. But they can’t possess them."

Robot Chicken

For the creation of the Star Wars Robot Chicken III special, the folks at Robot Chicken thought it would be fun to have a dig at this and get George involved in a little skit for the DVD where he pretended to throw someone out of his office for saying George invented Mara Jade; George had real fun with those guys so he agreed to do it. That's this rather famous and amusing clip.
In a behind the scenes portion of the DVD for that special from 2011, the Robot Chicken guys revealed a cancelled sketch between Mara and the Emperor that was voiced but never made it past the storyboard phase. Before the sketch, in the intro for it, Tom Root, writer for the show, commented, "Yeah... George isn't too high on this character," though clarified this was not why the sketch was cut. This further clarifies that by 2011 Mara was still held in some disfavor by George, to some extent.

Star Wars Art: Comics

The final portion of this little article may prove to be surprising; in late 2011, the book Star Wars Art: Comics was released which was of a unique nature -- the book was entirely comprised of George's hand-picked favorite panels from the history of Star Wars comics. Timothy Zahn had speculated for years that George had read the Thrawn Trilogy comics, and that notion would get a tremendous boost with this book's release -- George had chosen to include panels from the Thrawn Trilogy comics in the book.
But not only that -- George had chosen to include panels which featured Mara Jade. By this point, and having read the comics and been involved in her development, he would have known who she was, but he still included the panels anyway. In large part, I'm sure this was to do with the visual aspect of the panels, but it speaks to his openness to include her; it is also a throwback to the pre-photoshoot look for the character.

Conclusion?

From this I think we can draw a few things:

• George participated in the character's development early on without issue
• He approved her marriage to Luke
• Later on, he had problems with her presentation, as in the photoshoot
• His dislike of the character was established, but not enough for him to intervene in her future
• He had enough sense of humor about it to joke about it in that sketch
• He eventually came to a view which excluded marriage for Jedi
• He had his own ideas for Luke's future without Mara
• Choosing to spotlight art of Mara in 2011, he evidently did not have significant enough issues with her to reject her wholesale

I (30F) am married to my husband (30M) for about 5 years. He is the only son, and he has a little sister as well. My husband is adamant to be childless while our parents really wanted grandchildren. We had discussed before marriage that we will not have any children.
Now, before getting married, my MIL(60F) has been telling everyone that I'm her 'daughter'..but after we got married, when someone asked if I'm her daughter? She answer NO.. she's my DIL. Though this is technically correct, somehow I felt something is off?
She will also occasionally mentioned about other people's DIL which is bad to their MIL, how her son was ignoring her and how she is not as important t when he got a wife. My husband is somewhat a mommy's boy so I didnt get why she is this way. He still listens to her a lot? And I hate confrontation so I never fight with her in anyways.
There were just 2 of us in the house just now and she started to watch a skit loudly where the son and DIL treat her MIL rudely, and she kept cursing the DIL...which made me feel very awkward. I'm hiding in my room now to have a peace of mind.
She still cook my favourite food sometimes though, and never really treated me badly. Am I too sensitive here?

Hello. My 11 y/o son has high functioning autism with developmental delay. He was diagnosed at 3. He is a very expressive child with a great vocabulary and a big imagination. He is really into superheroes. A complete Batman/Superman stan. He likes to create his own comic books and slideshows. Even created his own league(think a copy of the Justice League with his own characters). He wishes to make it a published series. I have never realized how violent superheroes were until he became obsessed with them. He has so many action figures and he likes to bang them together like they are battling(he's broken so many). Needless to say, he is now quite interested in violence.
He also enjoys watching skits online in which people are always at odds with one another. People being bullied or kids getting in trouble at school or at home. I never knew things like that existed. I have him logged into my Youtube account so I can monitor what he is watching. Titles like "Kid Beats Up Bully At School" and "I Told My Brothers I Got Jumped Prank" are very common in my watch history. I try to catch him as he does it but it's almost impossible to monitor him the entire duration of his screen time. I've banned YouTube multiple times but then he says he has nothing to do and will start banging his toys together and doing loud verbal sound effects. All which I find inappropriate.
When he was about 5 or 6, he started losing his baby teeth. DCFS showed up at the door saying that they were told that my son said he lost his tooth because my husband punched him in the mouth. We told her that wasn't true and she said she believed us and would close the case. We got the letter that verified she did. Well, yesterday I got a call from the social worker at his school. She told me that he told the teacher that his brothers jumped him and he tased them. He doesn't even have brothers. I informed her that he only has a 6 year old sister, he no access to a taser, and he has never been jumped. She and I spoke for about 10 minutes about how he makes up these wild stories. He does it all the time. The social worker suggested therapy but for some reason, my husband doesn't want that and just thinks he needs to spend more time with him but he has yet to implement that(don't even get me started on the state of my marriage. Let's just say I have no say so around here).
We have explained to him many times that he cannot tell lies, especially ones about people doing dangerous things. I explained to him that he can get mommy and daddy in trouble by making people think he's being physically abused. I've even tried to compromise telling him that he can share his imagination but he needs to make it clear to people when he's sharing a made up story. Some of his comic books are kind of funny. He texted my sister(his aunt) a story about Mr. Incredible and The Hulk and we all were all belly laughing at it. I'm enjoy writing poetry myself and I don't want to stifle his creativity or make him feel like he can't express himself. I'm torn. He's really not interested in anything else besides superheroes. We want him to read more often and chill out on the internet time. We bought him some really nice superhero encyclopedias so he has books that would peak his interest. Now I question if that was the right thing to do. I just know that giving him a book on any other subject would just end up collecting dust.
We try to make sure we talk to him more. We ask him about his day and he just tells us outlandish stories. Saying things like "This kid came up to me today and I punched him in the face". I'm like "Dude, that didn't happen. I would have heard about it from the school." When I ask him why he feels the need to lie, he can't give me a reason. He just looks at me like he's confused or says he doesn't know why. My husband punishes him by taking his screen time and phone away. Then he draws comic strips or plays aggressively with his toys. I don't know how to keep him off the internet and I really don't think that's fair this day and age. You need it for everything. Most schools give every student a laptop now. It's damn near unavoidable unless you live off grid.
I really don't know what to do. He often makes grunting noises or recites lines from superhero shows and movies he's seen. He's now becoming argumentative. I am trying to convince my husband to let me take our boy back to the autism center he went to when he was little, but I already know they schedule 3-6 months out. I'm tired. Please, any respectful suggestions are greatly appreciated. Has anyone else experienced this or something similar? Thanks in advance.

pardon my photo-shop, skills, (i used photopea, it' kind of crappy, but In Persona 5 Arena I would like to see the Phantom Thieves go up against a Anarchical Terrorist organization known as the Chaos Collective , who seek to dismantle societal norms and create a world in which, people can act without fear of Judgement , utilizing a mockery of the Phantom Thieves, ideals of rebellion , The Chaos Collective , spread chaos and discord , through out Toyoko,
Personality , I think the whole Anarchy theme would fit , Persona 5 Arena perfectly (i mean (what are going to do with that A) , The game should have a urban aesthetic, imagine having fights in urban locations such as backstreet graffiti littered alley ways , and distored locations of real world locations , oh yeah speaking of which, the villans of the game have once again merged the Metaverse with the real world again, so imagine those alley fights having a red tint to them underneath a red sky.....
​
instead of fighting shadow selves (kinda getting tired of that , I hope persona 6 tries something New this time) the main villains of the game serve as dark and twisted and reflections, of each member Phantom Thieves, (similar to how adachi is metaphorically Yu Narukami's shadow) each with their own dark and twisted definition of Freedom
In other words the Phantom Thieves gone to shit....
for example ,
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Riot (twisted foil to Joker)-
Leader of The Chaos Collective -
former cooperate executive who was bright and ambitious, however believed to had been mistreated by the company ,and desired revenge ,used his position to sabotage the company by manipulating finical records, embezzle funds, sabotage projects, his actions not only caused finical harm ,but also endangered the lives of innocent investors and employees
when he was found out he was arrested, during his time in prison he witnessed , and experienced the harsh realities of Prison , such as r*pe, violence , discrimination , degradation
upon his release from prison, he struggled to reintegrate into society, faced constant discrimination due to the stigma of criminal past, finding it impossible to find housing and employment, or acceptance from within communities , the constant rejection and isolation , took a toll on his mental health , eventually driving him insane, instead of taking responsibility for his actions and seeking redemption, he blamed society for everything that went wrong in his life and started to believe unfairly judged for his crimes
twisted definition of freedom: wants to create a "red sun over paradise " (metal gear rising reference and inspiration for character,) which is to him total anarchy and chaos, where individuals are free to do whatever they want without judgement ,consequences or restrictions from society or authorities
Unlike Joker, who fights for justice and freedom with a sense of morality , Riot believes in absolute Chaos above all else, he sees destruction as the ultimate means to create a world where people are free to whatever they want without consequence , even if it means sacrificing order and stability ,
Hell the guy even resembles Florida Joker....
Mirror- (Twisted Foil To Mona)
A former social media influencer who is obsessed with being noticed by others, well known for pulling insane stunts and saying controversial stuff ,filming himself committing crimes and engaging in depraved and debauch activities to get clout online , has been arrested numerous, believes that everyone trying to keep him from being spotlight, is known to get jealous, when not in the center of attention,
twisted definition of freedom- Mirror believes that freedom is the ability to be admired to and elevate oneself above others and prioritize his own image over anything else
while Mona , values authenticity, integrity and meaningful connections, Mirror values fame, attention and validation over any thing else - Inspired by The Sexy Vegan, and any other idiotic social media influencer who whiling to dumb sh*t online just to get clout and attention
Rancor ( Twisted Foil to Ryuji)
Rancor was once a promising athlete , and passionate advocate for justice however things took a dark turn when he became the victim of a criminal who ruined his reputation and framed him for a crime he did not commit, despite his efforts to seek justice through legal means corrupt law officials and enforcers failed him, and this lead to his arrest, is obsessed with getting revenge on those who destroyed his life , the injustice he faced drives him to dismantle the police system and takes matters into his own hands, violent vigilante who has been responsible for the death of numerous criminals and cops (who he see's as nuance and hindrance of getting his revenge ) , is the only member of the chaos collective's cause , only single mindedly focus on getting his revenge on the criminal who ruined his life and the police, see's his alliance with the chaos collective as strategic alliance , he also for reason hates being called the bad guy believing what is doing is justified
While Ryuji values , freedom, friendship loyalty and thrill, Rancor , only values vengeance and alliances and personal gain - inspired by the Punisher -and the F*ck the police slogan
​
personal twisted belief of freedom: just wants the pesky cops out of his way and let be free to pursue his vengance
Vixen ( Twisted Foil to Ann)
Was once a promising celebrity and actress , who was desperate for fame, got involved with a higher up, who manipulated her, and convinced her to sleep with him, and abused her , when this scandal was revealed, the higher up, betrayed her, and made it look she was the one who manipulated him, in order to save his own skin, the believing his lies, sensationalized the news stories covering the scandals, .... this lead to her being fired and her career being ruined, the discrimination and isolation she received eventually would drive her insane, becoming obsessed restoring her fame and glory, b she joined the Chaos Collective , knowing full well what she doing is wrong, however believe that fame only that matters, is the most loyal member to the cause, however her loyalty stems from her own personal interest, and is ultimately self serving , and only sees the chaos collective and her leader as tool to regain her , fame is shown to exhibit Yandere traits towards her entire team, believing any one who threaten her team is a threat to her and her chances at regaining her fame..... and known to become violent and erratic however is literally willing to kill her underlings and shadows under her command just to keep the and main team alive
Twisted Belief of Freedom: Freedom is equated to fame and adoration , where individuals are free to do anything to gain attention and popularity even if means comprising their integrity and values , (and yes if Riot told her to sleep with some to gain information then yes she would)
Unlike Ann, how values her talents but not for fame's sake and was in an abusive relationship , Vixen only cares about fame and validation, and literally willing to abuse anyone who gets in the way of her fame....as well compromise her moral values - inspiration, Holly-weird , Cardi B, Sexy Red, I spice, overly sexualized female rappers and musicians in general, the Dan Schneider case/ controversy
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Obsidian (twisted foil to Yuseke)
A disgraced Doctor , who raised in house hold marked by death and tragedy, became a doctor to save lives, however failed, witnessing patients die to incurable diseases, this personally affected him and became fearful of failure this drove him insane, he became obsessed with saving lives and deviled into unethical procedures ,treatments and experiments to do so, is obsessed with saving lives no matter the cause, get frustrated when people die from his experiments believes that society is trying keep from making progress on his experiments
twisted view of freedom; to him freedom is the complete control over life and death, he sees mortality as weakness, and desires to be unrestricted in his scientific pursuits, and achieve progress no matter causes ,
unlike Yuseke who creates for the beauty of art, and lives strict code when comes to his art , and values consent (most of the time) and would not harm others, appreciates the metaphorical theme v of sacrifice and incorporates it in his art, Obsidian , disregards ethics , and achieving progress is the only that matters and sees sacrifice as a means to the end, and is literally willing to harm to keep them alive, - Inspiration, Batman Arkham Knight _Professor Pyg , any other immoral scientist such dr death, or John Money.....
Ok this next one going to kind of controversial due it being recent ...and also containing something that offend you but...
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Discordia (twisted foil to Makoto)
Discordia grew up and poverty as a child, and constantly bullied for it , due to being bullied for most of her life she became obsessed with crushing her bullies with her success, and she used the political arena in order to do so... while on the surface she seemed to be a promising candidate for mayor, she only cared about having power, so when she won the seat of mayor's office she showed her true colors, the moment she took office she started abusing her power, instead of using the money she received from the goverment , to develop her community, she used it on herself, using the money to fuel a lavish life style, of vacations, luxury dinners, mansions and ice skating ranks in order show off how successful was, when people started questioning her actions , she gave them her back story of poverty , and fact that she was a woman, to silence her critics, and when didn't she started using her authority over the police and personal connections the yakuzu from her time in poverty, to silence her critics through false crimes, blackmail, extortion , police brutality , and intimidation to get them to shut up... despite her efforts to protect her lifestyle she was found out , and arrested , however she broken out of prison by the Chaos Collective , she believes she was unfairly judged by society, and believe she is a princess who rightfully deserves everything due her experiences with poverty, and due to also being a women.......... is prone to throwing temper tantrums when she can't get her way despite believing herself as princess has a dominatrix aesthetic going on
Twisted view of freedom: freedom is viewed as complete control and dominance and control over others,where people have the power to dictate and enforcer their will over others, will over others, without opposition or dissent
While Makoto values, upholding the law and protecting others, and using her intelligence, to make a positive change, Discordia embraces authoritarianism, using power over others , to manipulate through fear , and submission prioritizing her own agenda over making a difference ,
_ Inspired by Mayor Tiffany A Henyard - Everyone's favorite super villain mayor - Ok is everyone nice and offended OK good next character
Chaser (Dark Foil to Futaba )
grew up on a farm, witnessed first hand the destruction of the environment, such as pollution, deforestation , and climate change, as a teen joined a activist group, and participating in peaceful advocating for stricter laws and sustainable practices ,but disillusioned with cause when she realized that she wasn't making much of a difference as people just didn't seem to listen and weren't interested in her cause and meeting resistance from those in power, this made her frustrated
desiring for drastic change , she joined an underground eco-terrorist group,known for its extreme methods in combating environmental destruction and belief in radical action then using words to achieve it's goal, during her time with terrorist organizations , she was introduced to the world of government cover ups, illegal environmental activities, begin exposed to this, caused her to go mad from revelations, and made become obsessed with uncovering conspiracies, and waking people up to the truth to all of the environmental issues , as she delved into her research she developed the ability to spot the differences, and identifying patterns in documents and media and spotting inconsistencies and spotting hidden agendas,
she using the internet to share her discoveries and gain cult like following, who shared her passion, however her obsession with conspiracies started to consume her life, and she started become openly paranoid about everything and everyone around her, and neglecting her health and partaking in extreme measures , such as entering restricted areas, hacking into confidential data bases and confronting individuals she believed where apart of the cover ups, all this stress lead to a decline in her mental health and started paranoia induced hallucinations ,anxiety attacks ,recurring delusions , that everyone was trying keep her from spreading the truth and where fascist, this ultimately lead to her be institutionalized, by friends and family , however was broken out by the Chaos Collective..
twisted view of freedom : true freedom, comes from uncovering the truth, conspires and hidden agendas, and challenging authorities even at the cause of sacrificing personal stability and well being and the ability to defy control and manipulation from those in power regardless of the consequences , she views as a crusader,
while both chaser and futaba, start as paranoid individuals who are obsessed with seeking out the truth , Futaba learned to confront her fears and paranoia , and adopt healthier coping methods, while chaser downward spiraled into her Paranoia and became insane -
inspired by people like "Good Ol" Alex Jones , or any other Red Pilled type people who are good enough for you to pull out the popcorn, and have a good chuckle at....
this one may be controversial too..
Vendetta ( Dark Foil to Haru)
A woman , who born into rival with a conglomerate, that fiercely, competed With Orkuma foods similar to Haru, was forced into a arranged marriage from a young age , spent years emotionally , and psychically abused, one night snap into a fit of rage and murdered her husband , realizing what she had done she went on the run and was forced to live on the out-skits and fringes of society , joined the chaos collective , for protection and promises of freedom from cnorms , due to her experience with domestic abuse , she developed an intense resentment towards men, and became obsessed with never letting them put their hands on her again, and being free and self reliant is wary of all the members of her team, and questions if she can truly trust them, Views Haru and the female phantom thieves , Bond with Joker, Mona, Skull and Fox, as a sign of weakness and that women should, not have to rely on men for protection or validation....
Twisted View Of Freedom : True freedom relies on complete independence and self reliance , without reliance on others, especially men, and the ability to break free from societies gender roles and live on her own terms and not have any one dictate her life, is willing to go to extreme lengths to protect her desire of freedom, even if it means rejecting help and support from others....
Both Haru and Vendetta , both experienced trauma in their lives, while Haru sought healing from friends and loved ones grew thanks to said relationships and empathy, especially with Joker, Vendetta was hardened and self-reliant and rejects the dependence on others especially men, and sees relying on a man as a weakness, and rejects societal norms all together...- inspired by fourth wave feminism and kill bill-ok everyone ok then....
Shade (Dark Foil To Sumire )
Shade is a young women who accidentally killed her family, when awakening to her persona powers ,back during the time of the Qliphoth incident, during an uncontrollable fit of rage and confusion ,haunted by fear and guilt over what she did, and facing consequences of her actions, she became reclusive seeking solace in solitude, believing she is danger to society and everyone around her... and just wants to be left alone...
Riot the leader of The Chaos Collective , saw potential in her persona powers and manipulated her promising protection, but in reality sees her as just another tool for his agenda of destroying societal norms , he manipulates her vulnerabilities and depression for the collective benefits , would rather avoid conflicts , only fights for self defense and if she absolutely has to
Twisted View of Freedom: True freedom comes from running from your problems , avoid confrontation, and living in isolation where she can't harm anyone else,
Unlike Sumire who, also dealt with mental health issues, and the consequences of her actions , learned to overcome her mental health issues and accept the consequences, while Shade let fear , remorse and guilt consume her , and decided to run from problems..
Ok with that being said, The Chaos Collective , openly challenge the phantom thieves ideals of freedom justice and rebellion, while also serving as cautionary tale to them of what they could had become or ended up like if they were not careful and made different choices in life that caused their lives to take a dark turn
I openly like the idea of The Chaos Collective trying to break the the Phantom thieves throughout the game, by psychologically tormenting them and turn them against each other the main question I would like for the game to explore is,
What Is Freedom,... How Much Freedom Is A Person Allowed To Have...and when is enough freedom enough...
Oh Yeah Forgot mention, Qliphoth is back this game and is the main setting of the game takes form of a Hellish- Tropical Environment under a Red Sun, " The Red Sun Over Paradise
please comment down what you think, about my concept for Persona 5 Arena...

We all love a good carnival, right? Costumes, music, wild celebrations – it’s a chance to let loose and have fun. But what happens when the laughter curdles into something ugly?
That’s the question we’re left with after recent incidents at the carnivals on the popular Greek islands of Corfu and Kefalonia.
In Moraitika, a village on Corfu, a carnival skit targeted a gay individual in a way that was both insensitive and downright cruel. It’s even more disturbing when you consider that the organizers included the local School’s parents association. They participated not only in planning the event but remained fully active and sadly silent while the skit unfolded. It wasn’t until the incident gained traction on social media that a belated response emerged. This raises a troubling question: are these attitudes simply swept under the rug when the tourists leave?
Lixouri, the second-largest town on Kefalonia, unfortunately echoed the negativity surrounding same-sex marriage legalization in Greece. Their carnival festivities, instead of fostering a spirit of community and inclusivity, centered around mocking this recent legal change. This theme clashed dramatically with the celebratory atmosphere typically associated with carnivals. Instead of promoting unity and acceptance, Lixouri’s carnival seemed determined to alienate a segment of the population.
These islands are tourist havens, and rightfully so. They offer stunning scenery, rich history, and warm Greek hospitality. But these recent events in the two aforementioned destinations cast a shadow on their overall image.
Now, it’s important to remember that these incidents don’t reflect the views of all residents on either island.
More at: https://www.inlovewiththemed.com/lets-talk-about-the-time-greek-carnivals-got-ugly-in-2024/

1. Addressing the evident issue, it's clear that BIDEN lacks the respect of both allies and adversaries on the global stage due to concerns about his mental acuity. This perception has led to mockery, even by allies like the Saudis, who have produced comedy skits targeting Biden. A Zimbabwean individual pointed out the perceived hypocrisy of America, previously critical of Zimbabwe's elderly leader, now electing a president struggling with basic tasks like exiting a stage.
   
2. Another prominent issue is the confusion surrounding sexual identity, particularly in East Africa. Many individuals in the region find the intense focus on sexuality in Western discourse peculiar and would prefer not to adopt such obsessions. They view gender as binary and consider deviations as anomalies of minor concern compared to pressing issues. Regarding the gay community, while acknowledging its existence, there is little celebration, and the potential acceptance of gay marriage by the Catholic Church is seen as a threat to its presence in Africa.
   
3. Regarding TRUMP, despite attempts by liberal media to portray him as unpopular compared to Biden, the reality is more nuanced. Many individuals, particularly in Africa, view Biden unfavorably due to his frequent gaffes, with some expressing a preference for Trump's perceived awareness. Twitter and figures like Elon Musk are credited with exposing alternative viewpoints, contributing to a growing conservative sentiment. Some even believe that Democrats and liberals are aligned with malevolent forces, underscoring the ideological divide.
   

This will be long. Throwaway account, cuz you know..
I (28m) have been together with my fiancé (25f) for 4.5 years, we have a pretty awesome relationship and I love more than I thought possible. We are currently doing pre-marriage counseling and it has really brought us closer and has been a great experience the whole process. Interestingly enough our counselor has recommended I / we post this here to help move on and now I’m interested in feedback.
So as the title says I told my FIL he’s a self centered ass in front of the whole family on Christmas.
Context: I grew up being adopted and raised by a single mother who also cared for my aunt who has Down syndrome. I used to have giant (adopted) family but over the last 10 years almost all of them that I was close to like my grandparents, aunts, uncles, have passed away, cancer, Alzheimer’s, auto accidents, heart disease, etc. everyone else lives in different far away states and was never really close to due to proximity. now it’s just my mom and my last living aunt whom my mom is the caretaker of. I miss them a lot. My fiancé however has a massive family. Her bio parents got divorced when she was very young, due to her father cheating. Now both her parents have remarried and their respective new(er) partners both had kids from previous relationships then had more kids after the fact. This has made my fiancés childhood remarkably complex, and now that we are adults it’s even more dramatic. Both her parents are extremely traditional and neither of us are traditional in any sense she is a black sheep and has watched her whole life her many half and step siblings get supported in ways she has only dreamt, and me, I’m simply treated like black sheep’s casual boyfriend. I’m a professional musician, and I make roughly 90k, she is a chef and makes about the same. Despite being responsible and hardworking it’s looked down on to not work a regular 9-5 or have tattoos, or smoke weed instead of drinking etc. Despite this I have or rather had a really solid relationship with all of them.
Now when it comes to holidays, specifically Christmas it’s never a relaxing holiday. Every year the last 5 years we have had to go to 7-9 differnt family gatherings. This year we started by going to her moms house then grandmas on dads side then aunts house on dads side then grandmas house on moms side then uncles house, then dads house, etc. every year my mom is last house we go to this year we didn’t get there until after 9pm, I hate this because I love my mom, she gave up everything to take care of me some random kid she didn’t know or owe anything to, took me in a raised me to adulthood I owe her everything. My fiancé also loves her and the two of them hang out all the time. Now this year we had many places to be starting at 7:00am we were running late to dads house despite just seeing them less than 2 hours ago and having not done anything with my family yet, we’re getting bombarded with texts and calls asking where we were by her dad saying “we have a responsibility to this family” and “it’s disrespectful to keep us waiting” stuff like that. Over 50 phone calls. Once we arrived the berating didn’t stop. After about an hour we were leaving to go spend a little time with my mom and aunt before calling a night her dad pulled me aside to to express disappointment in how I’m pulling his daughter away from her family. I nearly lost it But remained somewhat composed. I told him he is self centered arrogant ass loud enough that all 36 attendees heard. I unloaded and told him every year I have put her and her entire family first over mine. Every year I put up with his snide remarks about my profession, I told him I make money than him, i was gonna tell him about every shortcoming he had as a father and husband but before I could (thankfully) my fiancés step mom had overheard everything in the conversation prior and then she did it for me, she was mortified at his behavior and immediately recognized how deeply my feelings were hurt. After my fiancés stepmom tore into her husband he snapped back to me repeating what he told me to everyone then in his anger started calling out other family members Which then set off the entire family (excluding the kids) to blow up at each other. So there is was sitting on the counter in the kitchen watching people devolve into apes screaming, crying, even throwing gifts they didn’t like. The police called by a neighbor and were on the scene quick and ending up with one of my soon to be cousins (who is pregnant and crazy) getting arrested for threatening to stab the responding officers. (She got sentenced to 10 months) While she was getting cuffed my fiancé and myself left to go hang with mom, we exchanged gifts, had snacks and watched our favorite SNL skits over the years. Unfortunately the drama didn’t stop after that I was contacted by the police for “stealing” the gifts I was reluctantly given by my FIL. Now he’s getting divorced again. Then instead of going home like we both wanted we had to return to my MIL house and explain the situation, which caused another issue about “being too involved in the other side of the family and not involved enough in this side…”. So anyways the wedding is 2 months and our RSVP list dropped by like 40 people, my fiancé hold no animosity towards me but has been depressed since Christmas, and we are going to Hawaii with my mom for Christmas next year and are gonna stay with friends. Now half my fiancés family want me dead for ruining Christmas. We haven’t told my fiancés family yet. AITAH? Because you know what? I don’t think I am.

While visiting a relative in America (I’m originally from London), I met a man (R) and we fell in love almost instantly. Instead of ending our relationship when I had to go back home, we decided to try long-distance, and I would frequently make short trips to New York where he lives. He insisted I move in with him permanently, and I told him the only way that would work is if we were getting married or something, since I have a whole life in London I would be leaving behind. Instead of freaking out about the idea of marriage so soon, he proposed then and there, and I of course said yes! Wedding preparations were rushed because the venue I’ve always dreamed of having my wedding at was being torn down so we had to act quickly. It didn’t matter though, everything just felt so right.
Now, R has an ex-GF, RG, that he is still on good terms with, and she is actually one of his closest friends. As far as I know, they didn’t date for very long (due to something about a “break”, but every time I mention it to R he gets riled up so I really don’t know what happened), but they’ve known each other since childhood and I know that R had a crush on her all through high school. RG and I get along just fine, we didn’t interact very much but she was kind enough to perform a skit for me during my going-away party when I was originally going back to London. Apparently, she also told R that he should consider not ending things just because I was going back home, which I am grateful for. When R mentioned inviting RG to the wedding, I was absolutely fine with it (I was more so concerned with the discomfort that could be associated with seeing a former partner at one’s wedding), but it ended up being a moot (moo?) point as RG had work commitments she had to tend to. All of that said, I never had any reason to dislike her.
Until now.
The days leading up to the wedding were stressful. The venue ended up being torn down a few days early, R and I’s parents couldn’t agree on payment for the wedding and reception, the cellist had carpal tunnel, and the caterer switched the menu from chicken tarragon to chicken Kiev. I legitimately wanted to just reschedule the wedding, but R convinced me not to after he went so far as to “fix up” the torn down venue with lights and candles. The day of the wedding finally arrived and R saw me in my dress before the ceremony (which, now, I see as some sort of cruel foreshadowing for what’s to come), but we both agreed that we had had all of the bad luck already. Boy was I wrong.
RG ended up showing up to the wedding last minute, which R seemed to be very happy about. I was pleasantly surprised as well (although I did wish she had been better dressed for the occasion — she showed up in a sweatsuit to my wedding). That is, until R said her name on the altar. The most humiliating moment of my entire life, and it was happening in front of all my friends and family. We painstakingly made it through the rest of the ceremony, after which I gave him a swift fist to the groin.
I basically refused to talk to R during the reception. We argued in the bathroom for a while, and he tried to convince me that it was just a legitimate mistake because he was still surprised about RG being there. I ended up fleeing through the bathroom window and escaping. The next day, when my dad and stepmum went to gather my things from the honeymoon suite R and I were meant to share, R told them that he would be at the airport waiting for me so we could go on our honeymoon and that he hoped to see me there. I originally intended not to go, but at the last minute I decided to show up at the airport. As I was walking to our gate, I saw what I can only describe as my worst nightmare: R, getting onto the plane to OUR HONEYMOON, with RG. He had left his jacket on a chair in the lounge and saw me when he went to grab it. I immediately started to run and when he eventually caught up with me, he again tried to explain himself, but I was having none of it.
After this incident, I refused to pick up any of his calls. I sent back any gifts he would send me. I only got into contact with him after I learned he was essentially harassing my relatives trying to get ahold of me. Somehow, he roped me into giving him another shot. I wanted him to move to London with me, as I couldn’t stand the thought of him being in the same city as RG, but he has a son in the city so him moving here wasn’t an option. I eventually agreed to move to New York on one condition: he would never see RG again. Extreme, I know, but after what happened with the wedding AND honeymoon, that was the only way I would be comfortable. A cousin of mine agreed to sublet us an apartment, and R got rid of all of his furniture so we could purchase things that were OURS and have a truly fresh start. For a moment, it seemed like it was going to work.
One night, I was trying to get ahold of him, and eventually tracked him down at his sister’s apartment (it tends to be the central location for his group of friends), and I learned that RG was there with him. He clearly couldn’t keep away from her. I was mad, but he assured me that he loved me. I told him I would feel better once I was there, and I knew where he was all the time. He told me that was unreasonable, and that our marriage would never work if I didn’t trust him. And he was right.
Sad thing is, I didn’t trust him. So our marriage had to end.
I guess I’m really just looking for reassurance that I’m not in the wrong here. So, AITA?

The Cult of inCharacter School of Ministry
Getting right to the point, inCharacter School of Ministry, or iC, is a cult and is headed by a charismatic cult leader. Do not attend this “ministry school.” Take your money and time to an accredited educational institution. The accreditation that inCharacter has is not sufficient for any kind of legitimate degree you might be looking for. In addition to that statement, the classes provided at iC are not intellectually challenging and will not help you in academia. You are better off going to your local pastor and getting instruction from them. If your goal is to pursue an academic degree in ministry, again, go to an institution that will teach you these things properly. If they approach your church to do ministry, do not let them into your congregation.
The above paragraph serves as the synopsis for what is to follow. It is to the point and is written to deter anyone from enrolling in iC. Below I will provide my experience at iC to further explain the above paragraph. Below are labeled sections. Feel free to skip a section if it does not interest you. The sections will be the following:
1. History (501 Words)
2. My Personal Experience (1771 Words)
3. Links
1. History
First, some history. inCharacter started out as a young adult program form the Assemblies of God called Master’s Commission or MC for short. MC was a way to train young people in ministry out of local churches. The idea was that these young people would learn ministry by doing ministry. They would also go off and live in dorms or be welcomed into the houses of church members’ houses. While enrolled at a MC, students would attend classes taught by the MC leader. They would also serve in the church by doing anything from cleaning toilets to preaching sermons. inCharacter began as one of these Master’s Commission programs. It was called Master’s Commission Mid-Atlantic and operated out of Hagerstown, Maryland. I do not recall the name of the church it started in.
The leader of this group was/is a man named Brian, or PB for Pastor Brian. PB is a charismatic and likable person. He has a love for theatre and implemented that into his program. MC Mid-Atlantic became known for their human videos, skits, and full production shows. They would travel to different churches in the area and perform for congregations. These performances always had a message in them. Depending on the set, people would either be doubled over in laughter or on their faces in tears, moved by the message based on the gospel. However, after many years, PB and the church MC Mid-Atlantic was based out of had a falling out, a trend that continues to this day. They then moved and took over a MC program in Lafayette, Louisiana. I do not recall the name they went by in Louisiana, but they were only there for a year before moving to Mobile, Alabama. In mobile, they went by the name of Sunbelt Master’s Commission. I do not recall how long they were there, but they soon moved again to Marianna, Florida.
With the move to Florida came both a name and organizational change. PB and his inner circle leadership felt that Master’s Commission had lost its passion and original mission. They decided to leave MC and create their own organization, a 501(c) they called inCharacter School of Ministry. iC still operated the same way PB had run his previous organizations, however this time with complete control and no oversight. iC made its home on the West Florida District Assembly of God Campgrounds. This site served as the headquarters of the West Florida District where district leaders lived and worked. This site was purchased by a local Assemblies of God church, Evangel Worship Center, after Marianna suffered significant damage from Hurricane Michael in 2018. PB saw this as a sign from God that it was time to move again. They moved to Punta Gorda, Florida to a church called Deep Creek Community Center Church or DC3 for short. To the best of my memory, I believe they were only there for three years before leaving and as of 02/19/2024 are still based out of Port Charlotte Methodist Church.
2. My Personal Story with iC
I was enrolled in iC for two years. At the time, it was still an immersive, on-campus experience. Students lived in dorms on the West Florida AG Campgrounds. (In the summer, these dorms would be used to house youth groups from around the district for Youth Camp.) We lived, ate, studied, and worked on this campus. A typical day would be breakfast, then class. After class we would rehearsal our set list that we would travel to churches with. In between would be lunch and dinner. We would also have prayer and all the typical church kind of things. However, it wasn’t typical. All the students were told that we were training to become elite Christians. Christians who thought creativity, outside the box of the status quo Christian. The rehearsals usually left everyone teary eyed as we looked within ourselves and realized how destitute we were without Jesus. We were taught to harness that raw emotion and pour it into our set list. It truly was some powerful stuff. But then again, the arts are powerful.
The leadership at that time was structured like this: PB and wife, ‘R’, were the leaders. PB was the main face while ‘R’ was rarely seen or heard from and worked mostly in the background. Then there was ‘J’ who was PB’s right hand man. ‘J’ had been a student in Master’s Commission under PB many years ago and had stuck with him ever since. PB was the founder and leader, but ‘J’ ran more of iC than PB did. Next to PB and ‘R’, ‘J’s’ authority was second, but he was still very much subservient to PB. Then there was ‘N’. ‘N’ was on the bottom and really had no power. However, she was still a leader and would help develop our sets and dances and such. I quickly gained the respect and trust of PB and the rest of iC leadership and was brought into the inner circle. I made my own opportunities to be close to leadership. I would be invited to PB’s house because I would purposely follow him there, all the while my fellow students would walk away without an invitation. If the team, (the ‘team’ is what the students were collectively call) was invited to come over to watch the game, I stayed behind while others left. I essentially brown nosed for the first year I was there. As funny as that is now, it was nonetheless true. But that is what PB would teach us to do. We were taught that the disciples of Jesus were his closest companions. They knew him better than the crowds. Yet Jesus even had an inner circle. It was this backdrop that we were immersed in every day. Everyone fought to win the approval of iC leadership. And the ones who got that approval got more attention.
For example, we would travel to churches on Sundays and Wednesdays to preach by performing. Before, the entire team would go. By the time I got there, only a handful of people got to go. The people with the best grades, who could act the best, and of course, the people who were closest to leadership or seemed the most ‘sold out.’ This team was called Travel Team. It was said at the beginning of each year that members of the Travel Team would be traded out often. But that did not happen. Once you were on the Travel Team, you were on it. And the people on the Travel Team got to spend even more time with leadership. The only time people traded hands on the Travel Team was when they were kicked off. One guy was kicked off because of his attitude. Another was kicked off because he was getting too close to one of the girls on the team. iC had a strict policy against dating. They claimed this was so that students could focus solely on Jesus, since that was the reason we all came to inCharacter. Leadership had instructed ‘E’ to stop his relationship with this girl. When he didn’t, he was “reassigned” to the newly developed, and less prestigious, Kid’s Ministry team. I had started to become good friends with ‘E’ during my first year. However, PB had a private conversation with me that ‘E’ was not a good influence because he was blinded by his carnal relationship.
To speak more on relationships, leadership would call the team in for a “Family Meeting” from time to time when someone really messed up. On two separate occasions a family meeting was called to discuss how a female member was campused. Campused meant that a student was on probation either due to a moral failing or an academic one. When someone was campused, they could not leave the campus unless on official iC business. Our off days were Fridays. We could do anything we liked within reason on Fridays but could not leave the city unless we had previously received permission. For someone who was campused, they could still go nowhere. If it was an academic campusing, they would spend most of their time studying. If it were a moral failing campusing, I really don’t know what they did. I just know they were regulated to the campus property and treated like scarlet letters.
In addition to our studying and rehearsing, Thursdays were our workdays. As part of the agreement between iC and the West Florida District, iC oversaw lawn care and cleaning of buildings on campus. iC was also obligated to help with District events to include set up, break down, ushering, and even as servers if there were a banquet. This served as payment for room and board on top of the $6,500 tuition each student paid to attend iC. (The school year was from August to May).
Getting back to me. After my first year, PB saw how committed I was to him (not only had I reduced my friendship with ‘E’, but I also gave iC $20,000 as a tithe. This money came from my father who died before I was born. I had been taught my whole life that not tithing on the money you have was a sin against God. So, I gave my tithe to the one thing I really believed in). PB, seeing that my money was where my mouth was, invited me to go on vacation with him, his family, and iC leadership to Disneyworld. He also secured for me an internship at DC3 that summer with their Youth Pastor ‘D’. ‘D’ was a Master’s Commission Alumni and one of PB’s inner circle, and He even served on the iC board. I later found out from ‘E’ that he was supposed to go to DC3, but because he kept pursuing that girl, the internship was given to me. ‘E’ is now happily married to that girl and they have a beautiful child together.
This was the beginning of my introduction to the iC inner circle. I was told a year and half before anyone else that iC was planning on moving to DC3. I would be the only student present when iC leadership would talk bad about other students. It was not surprising. iC leadership would talk bad about the West Florida District leadership directly to the team. iC leadership talked unfavorably about pastors in the region or how no one in the West Florida District did things right.
The leadership was also not to be questioned. When PB or his wife, ’R’, spoke, it was law. Even the other two iC leaders, ‘J’ and ‘N’, had to constantly check in with PB or ‘R’. I witnessed ‘J’ and ‘N’ being treated like children, berated, and belittled. They also were alumni who were chosen and accepted leadership positions in iC. They did all the work and received no compensation. ‘J’ most of all. ‘J’ was and is PB’s right hand man. He is incredibly loyal to PB. ‘J’ has forfeited his entire life to PB and his vision. ‘J’s’ entire adult life has been to serve PB, oh and Jesus.
I saw a lot of these red flags while I was brown nosing my way to the inner circle. But I was certain, like all the other students, that God had called me to inCharacter. I was slated to begin my third year at iC. But in April of my second year, my whole world changed. My stepfather was a pastor, so I grew up in church leadership. My life was the church. But that April, the truth came out about the man who for 20 years I called father. Without much more detail, it made me pause and really think about all the red flags I had stored away about iC. I decided not to come back for my third year. When I informed PB and his wife, they were livid. Surprisingly, ‘R’ did more talking and belittling to me while PB just sat there. I had seen her treat ‘J’ and ‘N’ this way as well. ‘R’ was hardly seen by anyone. She handled the money of the organization, taught their daughter, and cared for her dying mother. But this woman, who I really had no relationship with, talked to me as if she were God himself. I left that conversation fuming. I packed my bags that day and left.
Even though I left irate, we still had a friendly manner between us. I came back with supplies when they were trapped in Marianna from hurricane Michael. I would still go to their full productions and seek their approval. But what happened to me is exactly what happened to all other alumni who left, nothing. PB would tell us that we were family. That we should get close to leadership and depend on them, solely on them. But when I left, I realized that if you were not willing to be their subordinate, they would cast you aside. Once I realized this, I started to rid myself of their influence. After I married, they tried to contact me and send me marriage gifts. I declined the gift from them and made it clear that I wanted nothing to do with them.
I realize this is a long post. Thanks for sticking with me. There obviously is more, but I feel it is unnecessary to post it. However, I will reiterate my original thought: Do not attend this institution. In addition, if you found this post because you want iC or its leadership to come to your church, run. Cut all ties you have with them and save yourself the hassle.
3. Links
This section will have a few links to include: the inCharacter website, the Sunbelt MC website, and reddit post about this group.
inCharacter Link:
https://www.getincharacter.org/
Please only go here for research. Again, do not apply here.
Sunbelt Master’s Commission Link:
http://www.sunbeltmc.org/index.html
reddit Link:
LetMeBeADamnMedic’s post is what is relevant in this case. They were a part of inCharacter when it was in Mobile, Alabama and went by the name Sunbelt Master’s Commission.
https://www.reddit.com/exchristian/comments/imskn2/masters_commission/

Yuju recently celebrated entering her third year as a soloist. And that’s a good excuse to revisit and reflect on all the great stuff she’s brought us so far. If you don't happen to know who she is, she was the main vocalist in GFRIEND. And also a prolific OST singer with roughly 17 OSTs to her name. Her most successful being Spring Is Gone By Chance, and In The Mood For Dancing. Since GFRIEND’s unfortunate disbandment however, she’s been signed as a soloist under Kang Daniel’s Konnect Entertainment.
As much as I miss GFRIEND, Yuju's music releases since going solo have been the best band-aid possible for that particular wound. And has somehow become my favorite thing in kpop. It's been shockingly good! Between awesome vocal showcases, really fun collabs, and two incredibly cohesive albums, I've been blown away by it all. It seems like Konnect was indeed the right home for her. They've let her take complete charge of her own music, and have trusted her to compose and write a lot of her own material, and the result has been .. so damn good.
So wanted to do a little mini-spotlight about her music to celebrate, going through all her major releases the past 2 years! Hope you take the time to check out some of her stuff!

Solo releases:

1st EP: REC

She came in the door like a hurricane with her debut EP. Play was a dark and sultry song, showcasing much of her impressive and unique vocal range and flavours, and weaving in traditional korean elements like gayageum instrumentals, and modernized hanboks in the MV.
The whole EP was themed around anger and hurt cooling off into acceptance. Red fading into blue. The theme was visually represented with a gradient between the two colors, and and the track list. From the fiery red, rocky Bad Blood, into the soft, somber ballad Blue Nostalgia. Also reflected in the two album versions, Take 1 and Take 2, each based around one of the colors. It's hard not to think the album is about - at least in part - the hurt from the abrupt end to GFRIEND, and the callous and cold treatment she and her groupmates received from their company. As the album progresses though, the sentiment shifts from anger and hurt to reflection about the good times.
Track List:

• 1: Bad Blood (Intro)
• 2: Play (title)
• 3: Cold Winter (ft. Mad Clown)
• 4: The Killa
• 5: Blue Nostalgia

For the album, she got to work with two different veteran producer teams. The western MZMC and his crew, and Konnect's inhouse producers Chancellor (one half of Duble Sidekick) and Purple. The MZMC team has since taken Yuju on as a lyricist, although she's only worked on one external project with them so far. She co-compose all the tracks on the album sans one, and co-wrote the lyrics for everything. Cold Winter in particular was mainly penned by Yuju, and was something she started during her time in GFRIEND - but she had good help by Chancellor with polishing it, and arranging the final song. We've seen some great footage of Chancellor guiding her to nail down her vision. She also brought in rapper Mad Clown as a feature, to represent the other character in the song's story. She had previously worked with him once in a stage performance of Mad Clown's Fire. Yuju had mentioned wanting to collab with rappers before, and it's something she's continued after. Some other notable things from this album are:

• The lethal performance video for The Killa.
• The ballad version of Play from Begin Again

1st Single: Evening (ft. BIG Naughty)

Next up was the soft and chill summertime digital single Evening, about the start of a new romance. Again with a new rapper collab. Not too much to say about this one, but it's sorta funny that the first time Yuju and Naughty met in person, was minutes before their It's Live stage. The nervous energy is palpable, and really cute.

2nd EP: O

Her second EP was a softer, more emotional look back at her years in the music field since debut, and her relationship with singing, and music in general. The album opens with the former, with the soft semi-acoustic track 9 Years, speaking about her journey since debut. The latter is mainly explored in the powerful title track ballad Without U, in an allegory of a relationship. And the album closes out with the happy, chanty sing-along song Full Circle. It's a very honest and heartfelt album on the whole, with more really impressive vocal performances. The MV also had many fun and sweet little easter-eggs to read into for GFRIEND fans.
Track List:

• 1: 9 Years
• 2: Without U (title)
• 3: Dreaming
• 4: Peach Blossom (ft. Sokodomo)
• 5: Full Circle

For her second album outing, she penned 2 of the songs on her own, co-composed 1 other, and was the sole lyricist on the album, except for Sokodomo's rap part. She did a short stint of music show promotions, with Peach Blossom as the promoted bside. Sokodomo even turned up on stage! With some light 'flirty choreo' which got Yuju scolded by GFRIEND group mate SinB. Again she worked with the MZMC crew, who composed Without U and Dreaming. Konnect seem comfortable with using them, but between her and Kang Daniel's music, they have offered a lot of variety, and it's been working wonders so far. So I certainly wouldn't mind them coming back in the future (even as someone who started out luke-warm to seeing their names in the track list). Some other things worth mentioning are:

• Her soft Asian Spotlight performance video of 9 Years, with her on guitar
• The solo version of Peach Blossom from Picnic Live
• Full Circle from Picnic Live
• The Peach Blossom Art Film

2nd Single: DALALA

Her latest solo release was a lot more light and fun, even with a charming little mid-video skit in the MV. DALALA was a song that came to her walking around Gangnam Station, based on the snippets of songs you'll hear when passing by. The song is about being more carefree, and losing yourself in the music. The song wasn't promoted much beyond it's dance challenge, but received a proper full choreo this winter (along with Peach Blossom). We even got her first official dance practice video. A bit of an unorthodox way to go about it, but it feels like Konnect is testing the waters and trying different things. She got producing help on the track by Shintaro Yasuda, who also worked on Full Circle. He actually recently turned up to her solo stage in K-PLAY! FEST in LA! Which I think is the first time in about a year we saw her hold a proper solo concert. And she killed it. A cool tidbit from this era is how much Heize loved and praised the song. Her and Yuju have since been in talks about collabing. The thought of that makes my knees weak.

Special singles, collabs, features and OSTs:

That's it for her main solo releases, but there's been other stuff too! She's stayed busy with extra-projects as well, and I feel they should be mentioned! I have less to say about these though.
She's released 2 singles as part of different music projects. First, a remake of By Your Side for CYWORLD in 2021. Then later on, the tropical EDM track Rewind for the Plus Memory Project last fall.
There's also been some collabing. First off, she released Happiness Index with singer Lee Woo. A really fun and chirpy duet, where she showcases some bright vocals, and gorgeous harmonies between the two. More recently she teamed up with producer PATEKO for the music project COMPLIT, where they held a contest to find their feature artist. In the end, singer I'MIN won, and they released the full version of the song. The two of them also met up at Dingo to perform together.
She's also had 2 features. I suppose the first one was right before she signed with connect, but I'm including it anyway. She sang the hook for Sane's So Silly. And more recently she featured with a little verse in the latter half of Babylon's Destiny.

Recent OSTs:

The majority of her OST work is from her GFRIEND time (she did 3 with the group too), but she's been really active since going solo too.

• Stay (Prod. by Jinyoung) (Police University (Police Class) OST Part.5)
• My Americano (Kiss Sixth Sense OST Part 1)
• Paradise (NEXON CLOSERS OST)
• Real Love (Love In Contract OST)
• My Whole World Is You (The Story Of Park's Marriage Contract OST)

In addition to that, she did the OST for a stage play by LOTTE, called Magic Matches & Dreaming Nights. Sadly they haven't released it online, but you can hear the audio here. But most important is her OST for My Chilling Roommate, Tell Me This Is Real which was the theme of GFRIEND leader Sowon's character in her acting debut. The showrunner originally asked Sowon to sing her own theme, but she requested Yuju do it. Which was such a precious interaction - and turned out so good.

Covers:

Lastly.. I want to mention her covers. Because the woman goes all out, and it's such a treat every time. We don't get a ton of them, but it feels like an event whenever we do. The polish on these first 3 are just crazy.

• Out Of Time (orig. The Weeknd)
• Yoru Ni Kakeru (orig. YOASOBI). She tried to stare unnervingly into the camera to match the mood of the song, and later laughed about how she overdid it a bit. The woman. Does. Not. Blink.
• Santa Tell Me (orig. Ariana Grande

She's released some 'lower effort' covers and snippets too. She sang Newjean's DITTO on instagram, and later on performed it on Picnic Live along with NOEL. They also performed AKMU's Nakka together on that show. Another great live music show she went on was Begin Again, where she performed two duets: I Don't Love You (with Tei) and The Meaning Of You (with Na Yoon Kwon). She also sang IVE's After LIKE, and the Play ballad version linked up above. Lastly, she did a short vocal challenge video to DAWN's Dear My Light. Which I can't convey in words how much I want a full cover of. I mean just.. aah. It's actually tragic.
That's about it! Just some gushing about music I love! Now this just went through the stuff she’s done since disbandment. There’s plenty more. If you’re at all intrigued, there’s a more extensive list at the Yuju wiki page, where it also links to her work with GFRIEND.
I feel like her third album isn't that far off now. And more than ever I'm excited to see what's coming. It could potentially be time for her studio album. She's gotten close to 2NE1's Minzy. And then there's the potential Heize collab. We've also only had male rapper collabs yet, so maybe it's time to get a woman on board! Who knows, maybe that's coming up too? And with Rec and O being such wildly different albums, and the two singles also being opposites, it's hard to speculate what she'll do next.
Whatever it is, man alive am I ready for it.