I have been with my partner for approximately 7 months. He is affectionate toward me, loves physical contact/cuddling, likes to groom and take care of me, spend quality time together watching films, etc. He has introduced me to his family, I have stayed with them on multiple occasions, and we have a trip planned in a couple weeks. Approximately a month ago, we had a major relationship hurdle in which we basically broke up. He said some extremely cruel things to me (which he claims to have not meant and regret) and furthermore, due to this incident and how abusive he was during it, I contacted his former partner and certain things about him were revealed to me, which I have since confronted him on. I am also aware that I am going to possibly sound like an asshole in this and apologize in advance.
She also randomly outed that he has a gargantuan porn addiction, and is fetishistically interested in trans women as well as having a trichophilia (hair) fetish (he shaved her head). He is sexually interested in haircutting, headshaves, short bobs, etc. The hair fetish he has pertains to hair types and women that are the exact opposite of me, and frankly look exactly like his ex partner, who he was with for 3 years beforehand, and only started dating me about a month after going no contact with her. He claims he is no longer addicted to porn and now only watches it once every couple of weeks, of which I have no reason to believe is a lie, however its hard to confirm for sure as we only see each other once a week since he lives in another city. This will become relevant later.
Anyways, since he claimed to be repentant and apologetic for his behavior toward me (of which I will not get into because that's for another reddit post...) we started talking again, and eventually I agreed to try again. I would do my best to forgive him, in exchange for him taking better care of his mental health and never again treating me as he did the day we split up. However, we were apart for a month after this incident and our subsequent re-kindling of our relationship, and during this time, after he admitted to everything his ex said in relation to both his past behaviors and also the fetishes I was never told about--- I felt insecure in how the people he's sexually aroused by look nothing like me, I tried to indulge his fetishes to the best of my ability. Particularly for the hair thing, since there's not much I can do about the fact that I am not a trans woman. We were gonna meet again after the month was up, and talked extensively about the erotic fun things we would try together, which we would have a week together to get up to since he would have a free house for a week, and I'd come down to visit him. During the time before my visit, he seemed very sexually interested in me and we'd exchange pictures and text and call extensively about how we missed each other physically, emotionally, and sexually. There was mutual excitement about all of the things we'd try, since instead of judging his fetishes I wanted to do my best to satiate sides of his sexuality I didn't even know existed.
I noticed a little bit of a sexual disparity between us in the past and felt he'd often rather get pizza or watch a movie than have sex, whereas I'm the sort of person who would rather have sex, then order a pizza in once an appetite is worked up... or I'm happy to watch a film at home, pause it if things get frisky, and continue it later... However, he's also very compartmentalized with the things he's doing when he's doing it, and possibly autistic, so that could be part of it as well. Anyways, to sum it up, I always had a higher drive and as a result he would frequently reject my sexual advances, and we essentially only had sex when he initiated or on the rare occasions when I'd try and get him in the mood and he'd actually respond. But It exhausts me, constantly feeling like I have to seduce my partner, I hate feeling predatory for wanting to have sex, I honestly resent it and it makes me feel like shit about myself and feel unattractive. I'm not upset about him for it, it just always feels shit for me about myself, that perhaps if I looked different or suited one of his stupid fetishes he'd pay attention to me. I want to be with someone who deeply sexually desires me along with all the other stuff, who pursues me equally if not more than how I pursue them. Learning about the fetishes and how extensive they are really recontexualized a lot in our sex life to me, and I'm constantly going back and re-analyzing things with this new information to the point where it makes me feel like shit about myself. I know it sounds ridiculous, but earlier this month, I used to cry whenever I saw someone with a bob haircut. But he SWEARS up and down he doesn't just have one type like a robot, that he loves me, that he finds me beautiful and wants to be with me romantically, emotionally, sexually, etc...
Then I arrive at his house for a short visit on his birthday... he shaves the back of my neck in an undercut... he enjoys himself, I'm out some hair, sure maybe I feel a little bit weird about it, but whatever, I was just happy he was happy, and had a bit of fun with it in my own way. He told me once, when he was apologizing for his behavior, that due to past events in his life he had stopped watching porn alltogether and touch himself and participate in his fetish only in regards to my hair. it worked at first, he'd touch himself with my shaved off pony tail on his face... lol. A week later, I return to stay for the week and enjoy the empty house with him---for our 'week of wonders'... And he just doesn't seem that interested. He wants to record joke songs with me, and watch films, and go out to dinner, and cuddle, but he doesn't want to have sex, doesn't want to do all of the erotic things he said he would when I was on the phone. It made me feel like he just isn't physically interested in me in person. After all the big talk he did about wanting this emotionally and sexually, and after our extensive period of separation, in which we had no sex for a month, and he couldn't care less about touching me. I suspect that he would, at the end of the day, prefer jerking himself to videos of petite, bobbed, straight haired women, and transgender women, shaving their heads or giving themselves haircuts, then do anything with me, a real-live woman he loves but may not be his 'type'. I confronted him on it multiple times, and he said his sex drive just isn't as high as mine, and stress from our arguing over me still being hurt by the things he said last month might be killing the mood for him, but its really making me feel pathetic and undesired.. I mean, I shaved the back of my long, thick curly hair to make him happy, I try and do anything to meet his every need to the best of my ability to prove to him that I'm enough, and frankly to prove to myself that I'm enough for him, and then... barely anything. I was there for a week, we had sex maybe twice, and then went four days without any sexual contact whatsoever in an empty house. I would wonder every day, where is the passion? Why isn't he so excited to see me, both sexually and otherwise, after such a long and traumatic separation we had? It really made me feel like a freak, like there was something wrong with me for so desperately wanting to fulfill his fetishes even more than he does (or so it seemed) and like a nymphomaniac for counting days between sexual contact, but now I'm wondering if since staying with him for a week, he was just missing his porn and that was why he didn't want to do anything. Or that he simply was only attracted to me and liked the thought of experimenting with me until I am actually, physically there. Regardless, I feel so disappointed, so rejected. I'm good enough to cuddle with and parade around his parents and book vacations with, but not good enough to fuck. I'd wait at night until he went to sleep to get myself off despite being right next to the person that was supposed to wait my lover during this week, and go to sleep feeling like depressed afterwards that I have to touch myself because the person I'm with doesn't want to.
I suggested we open the relationship because frankly, I miss being desired. He was furious, even called me a whore, and this interaction also could've added to the low sex drive but I digress... I did so much to be desired by him, I shaved the back of my fucking head, I let him shave my vulva/pubic area with hair clippers, I was going to let him shave or bleach my eyebrows, and it feels like it still wasn't exciting enough for him. During the times we have sex he'd say things like he wanted to shave my head while I slept or whatever but I feel even if I was stupid enough to allow him to do that, he'd only find it erotic in that instance before going back to being uninterested in me again. The last time we had sex, he asked if we should invite a transgender girl into the bedroom, and that it would turn him on if I desired that... But I feel that is only a pretense for his own desire to sleep with a transwoman.
I am not a supermodel, but I am not an unatttractive, I can get a date with relative ease. There are people to whom I am their 'type'. I may not be as conventionally attractive as his ex girlfriend, who also fits his bob hair fetishes and whatever, and I may not be transgender, but I feel that the sexual paraphilia/me not being HIS type, along with him currently having a somewhat lower sex drive than me is also impacting his desire despite his protestations otherwise. He says I've too much time on my hands (clearly, this is quite a long reddit post...), and that I'm reading too deeply into things, and I'm just insecure, that he loves me and wants to be with me. I believe he does want to be with me, but I believe he is lying about his sexual desire. And if he is lying about his attraction for me, I feel it is unfair to keep me in a monogamous relationship where he won't satiate any of my sexual needs because deep down, I don't satiate his... Am I being a crazy, sex crazed maniac? Do you think my insecurities about his sexual fetishes is correct and that is the basis of our sexual incompatibility, and will be the case no matter what I do to participate with/indulge them? Why is he doing this? I told him if he's not sexually interested in me deep down, he doesn't need to pretend on the pretext of keeping me in his life because he's attached, that we can still be friends, but this makes him even angrier. We're only in our early 20s and with our entire life ahead of us. If sex is already like this now, what about after we've been together for a long time, or after we've had a child? I know it sounds ridiculous and if the gender roles were reversed people would find this deeply offensive, but I don't know if I can cope with this sexless thing, or this fetish shit, especially if it is the underlying issue of his lack of interest in me.
Surely there's overlap with his lack of sexual desire toward me and the fact that I don't fulfill his fetishes? And if that's the case, then I don't know if this is fair for either of us. We have a lot of other problems, and he said some nasty stuff to me last month that I am still trying to forgive him for, that situation along with this resultant of that is really exacerbating pre-existing insecurities and old wounds in me that he doesn't really know how to deal with. Funnily the lack of sex thing (especially for this week, when we were re-united) is equally as emotionally hurtful to me as cruel words he has spoken to me and things he's done. (of which he is allegedly repentant of, in his defense...)
What should I do? Am I overthinking things? Is he lying when he says I am enough?

I'm transgender. I've known I wanted to be a girl instead of a boy since I was 6 years old. My family is from a part of the world where LGBT people are killed, so of course they did not accept this. I am the family golden child and I've lived up to every expectation. I'm a few months away from finishing a STEM masters degree, I have an apartment downtown in a big city, all at 26. This whole time since I was 21, I've been on estrogen and pretending to be a man to make them happy. Everyone knows something is up. I take pictures of myself sometimes and even with a man's haircut AI photo apps gender me female. I wear shape ware everyday to hide the fact I have curves and breasts now. I tried, I tried so hard to be who my family wanted me to be but I failed. I failed so hard. Why did God make me this way? Why do I have to cut my family off to live my life? I love them, why can't they accept me? I can't keep living like this, I will end myself if I do. I don't want to be alone in this world, but what else can do? I'm scared.

Some key points to establish context:

• I'm part of a Networking Team working in the Public SectoHealthcare (That should paint a picture about salaries, skill levels, attitudes and budgets)
  
• Team is comprised of staff who were from either non-I.T. backgrounds (see: Plumbers, Builders) or I.T. silos but were "white roomed" into the Networking Team due to issues in their original groups (e.g. ServeDesktop Support or Telephony)
  
• Average tenure of staff is ~15-20 years in the same role
  
• Skill level is medium to very low. Some Team members struggle with basic tasks like configuring devices based on templates, and cannot or are not willing to follow MOPs. We have suffered many self-inflicted issues (The same ones over and over) due to the Senior's reluctance to follow Checklists.
  
• Out of a Team of 10, only 2 are remotely competent, but none are formally trained in Networking (e.g. No Certs, Degrees, any recent Training). The manager is apprehensive about training due to budgets/not wanting to ask the question to his Managers and the misguided through that once people are trained they will leave.
  
• Said Team of 10 (additionally) has one said "weak" Manager and two "Group Leaders". The manager, who started very young (now much older), is technical but cannot handle the people side of being a manager (Directing troops, laying down the law, getting low performers to pull their weight). The kind of person who should have remained technical. The two Group Leaders exist on both ends of the "bad middle manager" spectrum. One micromanages the group, gets on the defensive about failures/cannot accept responsibility and gets way too involved in jobs (rarely can be contacted when trying to allocate work to his subordinates), the other has his foot so far out the door to retirement, that he's rarely engaged with the daily work. Spending more time planning weekend hikes or on weeks of leave, through the day bluffing his way around technical issues because he doesn't have the skills. Both of these Group Leaders, do not perform any type of task management and when I've pushed them to take control of long term planning of jobs, they've pushed back.
  

I've been in the group for 24 months and for that time have worked on an array of different things:

• I get punted a lot of the ugly troubleshooting tasks, as the Seniors in the group prefer to work on "easy wins" and it seems to scare them when something difficult breaks that needs persistence and dedication or any level of technical skill. They prefer to work on new deploys and things that have clearly defined starts and ends (e.g. Roll a new site, deploy some new switches, things they've done 1000 times over.)
  
• I work on BAU Tickets, everything from Patching Jobs, Upgrade of our Monitoring Systems, and More difficult troubleshooting. The seniors also oddly enough still work on "cherry tickets". When a patching job comes through, they will quickly scurry out within minutes of the ticket coming through to drive to the site to patch in something.
  

I've been trying to work on the gaps in our Environment (Lack of Processes, Gaps in Monitoring) and other basic problems that rob us of time (e.g. Identifying SPOFs). Currently, for the number of staff we have, we've got a large environment (around 75,000 used ports with 150,000 total) over 125 sites with about 200 miles end to end. I feel great resistance to change, the group prefers simplicity at the detriment of any type of efficiency. They would prefer to do something manually than implement something that requires slightly more brainpower yet saves us copious amounts of time, we struggle to come up with standards and struggle to agree on norms. When building out new sites, due to the lack of documented standards, we seem to be constantly starting from scratch. Asking the same questions over and over and missing the same things each time. It feels the aversion to process is either burnout in the Senior Staff or just Job Protection.
At the moment, I feel I'm starting to "softly" butt heads with the team and wondering if I should forge forward with my ideas and act like I'm a contractofreelancer in the group, by detaching myself from their daily ivory towebitching sessions and poorly managed work and focusing on what I believe are the priority tasks we've been avoiding for years. Many of the things I've identified we need to work on have been reoccurring problems we see over and over (which cause us great pain).
Alternatively, do I fall in line and just start asking the Seniors to decide what they want me to work on. I feel the work would be less meaningful and possibly dull my skills. But would mean I'm more accepted by the team (I'd be more in the inner circle). At the moment, I've relocated myself to a different building, sitting in the office is a nightmare. The Team believes they're highly effective (In their own opinion) because they constantly chatter in the office. As an outside, all I see is 4-5 people mostly doing the job of 1 person (Illusion of Productivity/Groupthink). Also, sitting in the office allows the "Seniors" to lob me any question or tasks they cbf'd doing or Googling, even if it's more inefficient handing it over (e.g. On multiple occasions, I've been asked to show the same Senior how to sort a text file, even after trying to send instructions) or just straight up tasks that have become "too ugly" get flicked my way. Then, in the same breath, they'll chase up where I'm at on other tasks, not even realizing that the sidequests they've been giving me (or the their work they've been dumping in my lap) has stalled those tasks.
I'd prefer not to leave, as I've found this environment very accommodating and flexible on time. Any help would be appreciated on how to proceed.

I was shown a channel of a dude a few years back, I can’t recall the names of any actors. It’s a comedy show about a dude who lives in LA, I can’t remember his character’s profession.
The one scene I can picture somewhat clearly is his neighbor (?) or friend in his place making smoothies, talking about how much he loves them. Main character is a white guy redhead/brunette I think with glasses. Neighbofriend character is a latin guy with salt n pepper short haircut.

Neuromancy
Neuromancy is, in essence, altering the way your brain processes information. What we do here is take it one step further and alter not just information, but perception. Data is sent from the sensory organs and interpreted by the brain to let you perceive the world around you. What we've done is found a way to get in between those two events and separate them, allowing us to control what we perceive. There are two kinds of ways to use this: positive effects and negative effects. Positive and negative don't refer to good or bad, but to whether something is added or removed, respectively.
A warning: This is not an undertaking to be taken lightly. There is a possibility of hurting or damaging yourself if you're not careful. If you start to feel pain, stop immediately and rest until it subsides.
A note on this guide: This does not teach you how to bend the world to your will. That's what dreams are for. This guide only teaches you how to fool your senses and hallucinate that you are whatever you want to be. Which is a fun toy in itself. After every section, there will be an example section, where we follow the lessons of Bobby, a beginning neuromancer. Examples will include one of many ways of learning the skill, followed by a tips and troubles section where Bobby finds answers to the various hiccups in the learning process.
PROPRIOCEPTION
That being said, let's jump right into it. The first and most useful step is proprioception alteration, AKA, changing where your brain thinks your body is. This step is also the step most likely to come easily to beginners, so it's a good place to start. If you've ever done meditation, this starts out pretty much the same way. Lie down somewhere dark and quiet where you won't be disturbed for a while. If it makes things easier for you, remove all jewelry and tight articles of clothing. This is where things differ. Instead of focusing on your breathing, you should focus on literally everything else but that. Daydreaming is very useful here. Go on an adventure in your head. Whatever you choose, you have to imagine yourself somewhere else, doing something. After a while, you'll be so absorbed in whatever you were doing that you'll forget that your physical body is lying down perfectly still. If you can do that, you've stumbled upon proprioception alteration. True proprioception alteration is achieved when you can get into and out of this physically dissociated state with little to no effort. This takes practice. The ghostly version of yourself that goes off and does things is going to be referred to as your RSI here, which stands for Residual Self Image. If you choose to change your RSI in order to help differentiate it from your physical body, it becomes an ASI, with the A standing for Altered. Something I've found to help is to have a sensory trigger. Some feeling that signals that you are now inhabiting your RSI instead of your physical body. Since you can imagine anything you want here, you can do this however you like, making it an ASI instead. Muscle, wings, antennae, horns, haircuts, whatever works for you. When you've gotten a good sense of how it feels, you'll be able to walk around in your A/RSI and do other things. Since it's just an alteration of your perception, it will, unfortunately, be just a hallucination. But it's good practice for some of the cooler things you can do with the same skill.
Example: Bobby decides that he wants to try neuromancy and after reading the first section of this guide, goes to try it out immediately. He goes into his room and closes the blinds and throws his cat out. Bobby always wears a watch, so he takes that off, but feels that his clothes are comfortable enough, so he leaves them on. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, and he remembers his tenth birthday party. He sifts through the memory, and tries putting himself in his younger self's shoes. He wanders around his old house in the memory and wonders what it would be like if he suddenly mooned everyone. So he does. And all his friends scream and laugh. After a while, he remembers what he was doing. He's not ten anymore, and he's lying down in his room, not at a party. he had forgotten about his body, since he was somewhere else, having fun. He decides that while he's relaxed, he will try to walk around his house in his RSI. So he stands up and looks down at his body. He walks out to the kitchen since he heard a noise, but can't see who is in there. Because what he sees in his RSI comes from his memories, he can't see what he doesn't already know. He suddenly gets an itch and twitches. That snaps his awareness back to his physical body, making him a little dizzy. What a productive first session!
Tips and troubles: Bobby can't find a quiet place to be alone, and everything is bright and busy. He tries to practice anyway, but it's almost impossible! While it's easy to dissociate with distractions later on, it will be hard to focus at first if you have anything less than perfect silence and darkness. Try to get as close as you can to the ideal setting, because it will help you in the long run. If you can't get alone time, you can still practice, but it will be much harder.
Bobby tries very hard to 'get away' from his body, but nothing's working! He can still feel everything! Some people have a harder time letting go, but that's okay! Everyone's different, so just let it happen. Trying hard will only frustrate you and adds nothing to productivity. If you're constantly trying to see if you're there yet, you never will be. The easiest way to start is to forget what you're doing. Get distracted and see where it takes you.
Bobby tries practicing after a bad day to cheer himself up, but just keeps getting stuck in bad memories. This can happen if you try to practice when you're stressed. Since it's your mind, you can do anything you want to do, even fixing the memory to be a good one. You can always just try again later when you feel better.
Ready for the next step? That's up to you, but you have several options. The visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular, thermoceptive, nociceptive, and chemoreceptive senses can all be altered.
CHEMORECEPTION
Since chemoreception can be used to describe several different functions, the one I will focus on here affects the chemoreceptor trigger zone, or CTZ. This is the part of your brain sensitive to drugs and hormones, and can trigger vomit. Since it more or less relies on propriception alteration, but is not actively competing agaist conflicting stimuli, and is thus easier to learn, I felt that it belongs firmly in second place. If you read that part up there correctly, yes, this will teach you how to convince your body that it's on drugs when it's not. I can't really say 'use responsibly' because there is no known downside to doing this, besides maybe being on drugs at work and getting fired for your behavior. This is the part of the game where we start to lean heavily on the placebo effect, so don't stress out if you don't get the results you want right away. This takes time and practice. The first thing you'll want to do is take inventory of the sensations you're familiar with. If you know the feeling that a certain drug causes, it will be easier to replicate it. Now, you'll notice I said 'easier'. That's because it's possible to feel the effects of drugs you've never done. Since everything works off of expectations, the more you know about a drug, the easier it will be to experience. The internet provides enough information for this to work smoothly. For the sake of ease and legality, I'll assume we'll be starting with beer. Since most people have tasted beer, this should be fairly easy. Using the proprioceptive skill you learned earlier, get into your A/RSI and walk around. Anything to get yourself fully in sync with it. Once you're fully there, go to your refrigerator (if you're not at home, spawn a refrigerator. It's your imagination, go crazy). Open it and take out a beer. Try to focus on the coldness of it, and the condensation on it. This may sound like we're getting ahead of ourselves with temperature and touch, but we're not, and I'll explain why later. Take the beer somewhere and sit down. If it's easier for you, you can sit down in your body, keeping only your arms in your A/RSI. Crack the beer and drink it. Try to feel the taste, especially the alcohol if you can. Focus on the smell and aftertaste. Take in everything about it and make it real. After finishing the beer, you should start to feel a little buzz. If you do, good! Focus on that! If not, that's okay, some people don't feel it the first time. After several attempts, you should start to feel it getting stronger. This is what we want! The feeling improves with practice. After a while, the feeling should affect you too strongly to be considered a hallucination, and that's where it really starts to take off.
Example: Bobby wants to try chemoreception alteration but he has no idea where to start. He doesn't know much about drugs, but he remembers a time when his aunt gave him a glass of wine at Thanksgiving once, and how he was too young to hold his liquor and felt it too strongly. He decides that since that's something he's experienced, he'd start there. Bobby gets comfortable on his couch while his family is gone one day, and starts to dissociate. He walks over to the kitchen in his RSI and gets a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. He takes a wine glass down from the cupboard and pours himself a glass. He swishes it around in the glass and remembers the smell. He decides to take the glass of wine to his room instead of going back to his body, and sits down on his bed to drink it. He starts to feel the slight effects of the wine after finishing the glass, although it's very weak. He was about to go back to the kitchen for another glass when his family comes home and breaks his concentration.
Tips and troubles: Bobby is frustrated because he's not familiar with any drug. He's not sure if he can still do this. There are a few things you can try without drug experience. Caffeine and cigarettes can also be simulated. I used the beer example because most people are familiar with at least the effects of alcohol. If you have never done any of the things listed above, you can try simulating sugar or excitement, although the effects will probably be weaker than if you attempt something more potent.
Bobby wants to try a new drug, but he doesn't have any idea where to start. Even if you've never done a drug, your body can still simulate what it expects it to feel like. It will certainly be easier if you've had experience, but it's not impossible. Try starting with weaker or more common drugs that you may already have some knowledge of. Cigarettes and marijuana are good places to start. If you know the smell, it will go a long way in helping you achieve the effects you're looking for.
Bobby is unhappy with how weak the effects are. He wants to find a way to make them stronger. Like any skill, it gets better with practice. The effects can be quite powerful if you put in the effort. If you're still having trouble, or want stronger effects faster, you can always increase the amount of the drug you ingest. Higher doses seem to make the effects stronger, even though there is no good reason why that should be.
TACTILITY
Tactile alteration affects what you feel and touch. It is among the easiest of the 'big five' senses to fool. If you've ever gotten jumpy after seeing a spider in your house, convinced that it was on your foot or arm, you've already felt the effects of accidental tactile alteration. Since it doesn't have to involve skill in proprioception alteration, this may be easier for you if you've had trouble with the first two. Since it doesn't involve full-body proprioception alteration, you can practice in any position you choose, but I prefer sitting. The skin on your face and hands tend to be the most sensitive to pressure and sensation, so that's a good place to start. Using your A/RSI arms, touch your face. Run your hands down your eyes, nose, cheeks, and lips. If you do it with your physical hands first, it may be easier to recreate the sensation. Pay attention to how the texture of your skin feels, and how your eyelids and lips bounce when you remove the pressure. If it seems simple, that's because it is. Try touching your arm with your A/RSI hand. It's more difficult to feel.
Example: Bobby feels confident enough in his abilities to try tactile alteration. He doesn't have a lot of free time like he used to, so he tries it out for the first time on the bus. The bus is shaking too much to focus on his RSI, so he pictures someone poking his shoulder instead. At first, he doesn't really feel it, so he decides that the pokes would be harder. He starts to feel it, but along with the sensation comes pain. Bobby is so startled that he opens his eyes. What was pain doing there?
NOCICEPTION
Naturally, tactility leads us here: pain control. Before we get into reducing or eliminating pain, first we have to cause it. It doesn't have to be as bad as it sounds, since bruises and soreness are less severe types of pain. If you've ever had a 'Charley horse' or a painful muscle spasm, you can try to recreate that in a hand or a foot. I find great success in focusing it on my thumb. If not, soreness might be easier to do. While the lesser forms of pain get you used to the alteration process, the more daring among you might try something bigger for a shot at better or faster results. Lacerations, gunshot wounds, or amputations are a few options if you're concerned with results. The great part here is that it doesn't have to involve proprioception at all. It's certainly an option, but I've had success without it. This one is the simplest of all. Pick a spot for your pain, and focus on it. It's that easy. You don't need a great degree of skill in causing pain, but it can help your skill in reducing it, so practice here is pretty much optional. Now for the fun part, reducing pain. To reduce pain, first you must have pain to reduce, so you can either cause some, or wait for some to occur naturally. Since physical pain is sending chemical signals through your body, you're going to have to counteract a physical sensation. This is difficult, and there are a few different ways of accomplishing it. First method: Isolate the part of your body that's feeling pain. For the sake of simplicity, let's say it's a finger, and that it's been stepped on. Try to focus on the feeling of pain from before, when you were trying to cause it. Layer that feeling over the pain in the finger, until you are convinced the pain is just something you created. Let the pain slowly drain out into the air because, after all, it's just a product of your mind. The second method is a bit faster. Press the part of your body against a surface. For the finger, let's say it's a table. Focus on the feeling of the table, and try to believe it's more solid than your hand. Picture the pain as a little fire wandering around inside you, and let the table suck it from you like poison from a wound. Now the table has the pain and not you.
(This is a repost from a very old and dead forum I found, from a dead website. I did not write this. I thought it was super interesting and that people should see it.)

Neuromancy
Neuromancy is, in essence, altering the way your brain processes information. What we do here is take it one step further and alter not just information, but perception. Data is sent from the sensory organs and interpreted by the brain to let you perceive the world around you. What we've done is found a way to get in between those two events and separate them, allowing us to control what we perceive. There are two kinds of ways to use this: positive effects and negative effects. Positive and negative don't refer to good or bad, but to whether something is added or removed, respectively.
A warning: This is not an undertaking to be taken lightly. There is a possibility of hurting or damaging yourself if you're not careful. If you start to feel pain, stop immediately and rest until it subsides.
A note on this guide: This does not teach you how to bend the world to your will. That's what dreams are for. This guide only teaches you how to fool your senses and hallucinate that you are whatever you want to be. Which is a fun toy in itself. After every section, there will be an example section, where we follow the lessons of Bobby, a beginning neuromancer. Examples will include one of many ways of learning the skill, followed by a tips and troubles section where Bobby finds answers to the various hiccups in the learning process.
PROPRIOCEPTION
That being said, let's jump right into it. The first and most useful step is proprioception alteration, AKA, changing where your brain thinks your body is. This step is also the step most likely to come easily to beginners, so it's a good place to start. If you've ever done meditation, this starts out pretty much the same way. Lie down somewhere dark and quiet where you won't be disturbed for a while. If it makes things easier for you, remove all jewelry and tight articles of clothing. This is where things differ. Instead of focusing on your breathing, you should focus on literally everything else but that. Daydreaming is very useful here. Go on an adventure in your head. Whatever you choose, you have to imagine yourself somewhere else, doing something. After a while, you'll be so absorbed in whatever you were doing that you'll forget that your physical body is lying down perfectly still. If you can do that, you've stumbled upon proprioception alteration. True proprioception alteration is achieved when you can get into and out of this physically dissociated state with little to no effort. This takes practice. The ghostly version of yourself that goes off and does things is going to be referred to as your RSI here, which stands for Residual Self Image. If you choose to change your RSI in order to help differentiate it from your physical body, it becomes an ASI, with the A standing for Altered. Something I've found to help is to have a sensory trigger. Some feeling that signals that you are now inhabiting your RSI instead of your physical body. Since you can imagine anything you want here, you can do this however you like, making it an ASI instead. Muscle, wings, antennae, horns, haircuts, whatever works for you. When you've gotten a good sense of how it feels, you'll be able to walk around in your A/RSI and do other things. Since it's just an alteration of your perception, it will, unfortunately, be just a hallucination. But it's good practice for some of the cooler things you can do with the same skill.
Example: Bobby decides that he wants to try neuromancy and after reading the first section of this guide, goes to try it out immediately. He goes into his room and closes the blinds and throws his cat out. Bobby always wears a watch, so he takes that off, but feels that his clothes are comfortable enough, so he leaves them on. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, and he remembers his tenth birthday party. He sifts through the memory, and tries putting himself in his younger self's shoes. He wanders around his old house in the memory and wonders what it would be like if he suddenly mooned everyone. So he does. And all his friends scream and laugh. After a while, he remembers what he was doing. He's not ten anymore, and he's lying down in his room, not at a party. he had forgotten about his body, since he was somewhere else, having fun. He decides that while he's relaxed, he will try to walk around his house in his RSI. So he stands up and looks down at his body. He walks out to the kitchen since he heard a noise, but can't see who is in there. Because what he sees in his RSI comes from his memories, he can't see what he doesn't already know. He suddenly gets an itch and twitches. That snaps his awareness back to his physical body, making him a little dizzy. What a productive first session!
Tips and troubles: Bobby can't find a quiet place to be alone, and everything is bright and busy. He tries to practice anyway, but it's almost impossible! While it's easy to dissociate with distractions later on, it will be hard to focus at first if you have anything less than perfect silence and darkness. Try to get as close as you can to the ideal setting, because it will help you in the long run. If you can't get alone time, you can still practice, but it will be much harder.
Bobby tries very hard to 'get away' from his body, but nothing's working! He can still feel everything! Some people have a harder time letting go, but that's okay! Everyone's different, so just let it happen. Trying hard will only frustrate you and adds nothing to productivity. If you're constantly trying to see if you're there yet, you never will be. The easiest way to start is to forget what you're doing. Get distracted and see where it takes you.
Bobby tries practicing after a bad day to cheer himself up, but just keeps getting stuck in bad memories. This can happen if you try to practice when you're stressed. Since it's your mind, you can do anything you want to do, even fixing the memory to be a good one. You can always just try again later when you feel better.
Ready for the next step? That's up to you, but you have several options. The visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular, thermoceptive, nociceptive, and chemoreceptive senses can all be altered.
CHEMORECEPTION
Since chemoreception can be used to describe several different functions, the one I will focus on here affects the chemoreceptor trigger zone, or CTZ. This is the part of your brain sensitive to drugs and hormones, and can trigger vomit. Since it more or less relies on propriception alteration, but is not actively competing agaist conflicting stimuli, and is thus easier to learn, I felt that it belongs firmly in second place. If you read that part up there correctly, yes, this will teach you how to convince your body that it's on drugs when it's not. I can't really say 'use responsibly' because there is no known downside to doing this, besides maybe being on drugs at work and getting fired for your behavior. This is the part of the game where we start to lean heavily on the placebo effect, so don't stress out if you don't get the results you want right away. This takes time and practice. The first thing you'll want to do is take inventory of the sensations you're familiar with. If you know the feeling that a certain drug causes, it will be easier to replicate it. Now, you'll notice I said 'easier'. That's because it's possible to feel the effects of drugs you've never done. Since everything works off of expectations, the more you know about a drug, the easier it will be to experience. The internet provides enough information for this to work smoothly. For the sake of ease and legality, I'll assume we'll be starting with beer. Since most people have tasted beer, this should be fairly easy. Using the proprioceptive skill you learned earlier, get into your A/RSI and walk around. Anything to get yourself fully in sync with it. Once you're fully there, go to your refrigerator (if you're not at home, spawn a refrigerator. It's your imagination, go crazy). Open it and take out a beer. Try to focus on the coldness of it, and the condensation on it. This may sound like we're getting ahead of ourselves with temperature and touch, but we're not, and I'll explain why later. Take the beer somewhere and sit down. If it's easier for you, you can sit down in your body, keeping only your arms in your A/RSI. Crack the beer and drink it. Try to feel the taste, especially the alcohol if you can. Focus on the smell and aftertaste. Take in everything about it and make it real. After finishing the beer, you should start to feel a little buzz. If you do, good! Focus on that! If not, that's okay, some people don't feel it the first time. After several attempts, you should start to feel it getting stronger. This is what we want! The feeling improves with practice. After a while, the feeling should affect you too strongly to be considered a hallucination, and that's where it really starts to take off.
Example: Bobby wants to try chemoreception alteration but he has no idea where to start. He doesn't know much about drugs, but he remembers a time when his aunt gave him a glass of wine at Thanksgiving once, and how he was too young to hold his liquor and felt it too strongly. He decides that since that's something he's experienced, he'd start there. Bobby gets comfortable on his couch while his family is gone one day, and starts to dissociate. He walks over to the kitchen in his RSI and gets a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. He takes a wine glass down from the cupboard and pours himself a glass. He swishes it around in the glass and remembers the smell. He decides to take the glass of wine to his room instead of going back to his body, and sits down on his bed to drink it. He starts to feel the slight effects of the wine after finishing the glass, although it's very weak. He was about to go back to the kitchen for another glass when his family comes home and breaks his concentration.
Tips and troubles: Bobby is frustrated because he's not familiar with any drug. He's not sure if he can still do this. There are a few things you can try without drug experience. Caffeine and cigarettes can also be simulated. I used the beer example because most people are familiar with at least the effects of alcohol. If you have never done any of the things listed above, you can try simulating sugar or excitement, although the effects will probably be weaker than if you attempt something more potent.
Bobby wants to try a new drug, but he doesn't have any idea where to start. Even if you've never done a drug, your body can still simulate what it expects it to feel like. It will certainly be easier if you've had experience, but it's not impossible. Try starting with weaker or more common drugs that you may already have some knowledge of. Cigarettes and marijuana are good places to start. If you know the smell, it will go a long way in helping you achieve the effects you're looking for.
Bobby is unhappy with how weak the effects are. He wants to find a way to make them stronger. Like any skill, it gets better with practice. The effects can be quite powerful if you put in the effort. If you're still having trouble, or want stronger effects faster, you can always increase the amount of the drug you ingest. Higher doses seem to make the effects stronger, even though there is no good reason why that should be.
TACTILITY
Tactile alteration affects what you feel and touch. It is among the easiest of the 'big five' senses to fool. If you've ever gotten jumpy after seeing a spider in your house, convinced that it was on your foot or arm, you've already felt the effects of accidental tactile alteration. Since it doesn't have to involve skill in proprioception alteration, this may be easier for you if you've had trouble with the first two. Since it doesn't involve full-body proprioception alteration, you can practice in any position you choose, but I prefer sitting. The skin on your face and hands tend to be the most sensitive to pressure and sensation, so that's a good place to start. Using your A/RSI arms, touch your face. Run your hands down your eyes, nose, cheeks, and lips. If you do it with your physical hands first, it may be easier to recreate the sensation. Pay attention to how the texture of your skin feels, and how your eyelids and lips bounce when you remove the pressure. If it seems simple, that's because it is. Try touching your arm with your A/RSI hand. It's more difficult to feel.
Example: Bobby feels confident enough in his abilities to try tactile alteration. He doesn't have a lot of free time like he used to, so he tries it out for the first time on the bus. The bus is shaking too much to focus on his RSI, so he pictures someone poking his shoulder instead. At first, he doesn't really feel it, so he decides that the pokes would be harder. He starts to feel it, but along with the sensation comes pain. Bobby is so startled that he opens his eyes. What was pain doing there?
NOCICEPTION
Naturally, tactility leads us here: pain control. Before we get into reducing or eliminating pain, first we have to cause it. It doesn't have to be as bad as it sounds, since bruises and soreness are less severe types of pain. If you've ever had a 'Charley horse' or a painful muscle spasm, you can try to recreate that in a hand or a foot. I find great success in focusing it on my thumb. If not, soreness might be easier to do. While the lesser forms of pain get you used to the alteration process, the more daring among you might try something bigger for a shot at better or faster results. Lacerations, gunshot wounds, or amputations are a few options if you're concerned with results. The great part here is that it doesn't have to involve proprioception at all. It's certainly an option, but I've had success without it. This one is the simplest of all. Pick a spot for your pain, and focus on it. It's that easy. You don't need a great degree of skill in causing pain, but it can help your skill in reducing it, so practice here is pretty much optional. Now for the fun part, reducing pain. To reduce pain, first you must have pain to reduce, so you can either cause some, or wait for some to occur naturally. Since physical pain is sending chemical signals through your body, you're going to have to counteract a physical sensation. This is difficult, and there are a few different ways of accomplishing it. First method: Isolate the part of your body that's feeling pain. For the sake of simplicity, let's say it's a finger, and that it's been stepped on. Try to focus on the feeling of pain from before, when you were trying to cause it. Layer that feeling over the pain in the finger, until you are convinced the pain is just something you created. Let the pain slowly drain out into the air because, after all, it's just a product of your mind. The second method is a bit faster. Press the part of your body against a surface. For the finger, let's say it's a table. Focus on the feeling of the table, and try to believe it's more solid than your hand. Picture the pain as a little fire wandering around inside you, and let the table suck it from you like poison from a wound. Now the table has the pain and not you.
(This is a repost from a very old and dead forum I found from a dead website, I did not write this. I thought it was super interesting and that people should see it.)

Neuromancy
Neuromancy is, in essence, altering the way your brain processes information. What we do here is take it one step further and alter not just information, but perception. Data is sent from the sensory organs and interpreted by the brain to let you perceive the world around you. What we've done is found a way to get in between those two events and separate them, allowing us to control what we perceive. There are two kinds of ways to use this: positive effects and negative effects. Positive and negative don't refer to good or bad, but to whether something is added or removed, respectively.
A warning: This is not an undertaking to be taken lightly. There is a possibility of hurting or damaging yourself if you're not careful. If you start to feel pain, stop immediately and rest until it subsides.
A note on this guide: This does not teach you how to bend the world to your will. That's what dreams are for. This guide only teaches you how to fool your senses and hallucinate that you are whatever you want to be. Which is a fun toy in itself. After every section, there will be an example section, where we follow the lessons of Bobby, a beginning neuromancer. Examples will include one of many ways of learning the skill, followed by a tips and troubles section where Bobby finds answers to the various hiccups in the learning process.
PROPRIOCEPTION
That being said, let's jump right into it. The first and most useful step is proprioception alteration, AKA, changing where your brain thinks your body is. This step is also the step most likely to come easily to beginners, so it's a good place to start. If you've ever done meditation, this starts out pretty much the same way. Lie down somewhere dark and quiet where you won't be disturbed for a while. If it makes things easier for you, remove all jewelry and tight articles of clothing. This is where things differ. Instead of focusing on your breathing, you should focus on literally everything else but that. Daydreaming is very useful here. Go on an adventure in your head. Whatever you choose, you have to imagine yourself somewhere else, doing something. After a while, you'll be so absorbed in whatever you were doing that you'll forget that your physical body is lying down perfectly still. If you can do that, you've stumbled upon proprioception alteration. True proprioception alteration is achieved when you can get into and out of this physically dissociated state with little to no effort. This takes practice. The ghostly version of yourself that goes off and does things is going to be referred to as your RSI here, which stands for Residual Self Image. If you choose to change your RSI in order to help differentiate it from your physical body, it becomes an ASI, with the A standing for Altered. Something I've found to help is to have a sensory trigger. Some feeling that signals that you are now inhabiting your RSI instead of your physical body. Since you can imagine anything you want here, you can do this however you like, making it an ASI instead. Muscle, wings, antennae, horns, haircuts, whatever works for you. When you've gotten a good sense of how it feels, you'll be able to walk around in your A/RSI and do other things. Since it's just an alteration of your perception, it will, unfortunately, be just a hallucination. But it's good practice for some of the cooler things you can do with the same skill.
Example: Bobby decides that he wants to try neuromancy and after reading the first section of this guide, goes to try it out immediately. He goes into his room and closes the blinds and throws his cat out. Bobby always wears a watch, so he takes that off, but feels that his clothes are comfortable enough, so he leaves them on. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, and he remembers his tenth birthday party. He sifts through the memory, and tries putting himself in his younger self's shoes. He wanders around his old house in the memory and wonders what it would be like if he suddenly mooned everyone. So he does. And all his friends scream and laugh. After a while, he remembers what he was doing. He's not ten anymore, and he's lying down in his room, not at a party. he had forgotten about his body, since he was somewhere else, having fun. He decides that while he's relaxed, he will try to walk around his house in his RSI. So he stands up and looks down at his body. He walks out to the kitchen since he heard a noise, but can't see who is in there. Because what he sees in his RSI comes from his memories, he can't see what he doesn't already know. He suddenly gets an itch and twitches. That snaps his awareness back to his physical body, making him a little dizzy. What a productive first session!
Tips and troubles: Bobby can't find a quiet place to be alone, and everything is bright and busy. He tries to practice anyway, but it's almost impossible! While it's easy to dissociate with distractions later on, it will be hard to focus at first if you have anything less than perfect silence and darkness. Try to get as close as you can to the ideal setting, because it will help you in the long run. If you can't get alone time, you can still practice, but it will be much harder.
Bobby tries very hard to 'get away' from his body, but nothing's working! He can still feel everything! Some people have a harder time letting go, but that's okay! Everyone's different, so just let it happen. Trying hard will only frustrate you and adds nothing to productivity. If you're constantly trying to see if you're there yet, you never will be. The easiest way to start is to forget what you're doing. Get distracted and see where it takes you.
Bobby tries practicing after a bad day to cheer himself up, but just keeps getting stuck in bad memories. This can happen if you try to practice when you're stressed. Since it's your mind, you can do anything you want to do, even fixing the memory to be a good one. You can always just try again later when you feel better.
Ready for the next step? That's up to you, but you have several options. The visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular, thermoceptive, nociceptive, and chemoreceptive senses can all be altered.
CHEMORECEPTION
Since chemoreception can be used to describe several different functions, the one I will focus on here affects the chemoreceptor trigger zone, or CTZ. This is the part of your brain sensitive to drugs and hormones, and can trigger vomit. Since it more or less relies on propriception alteration, but is not actively competing agaist conflicting stimuli, and is thus easier to learn, I felt that it belongs firmly in second place. If you read that part up there correctly, yes, this will teach you how to convince your body that it's on drugs when it's not. I can't really say 'use responsibly' because there is no known downside to doing this, besides maybe being on drugs at work and getting fired for your behavior. This is the part of the game where we start to lean heavily on the placebo effect, so don't stress out if you don't get the results you want right away. This takes time and practice. The first thing you'll want to do is take inventory of the sensations you're familiar with. If you know the feeling that a certain drug causes, it will be easier to replicate it. Now, you'll notice I said 'easier'. That's because it's possible to feel the effects of drugs you've never done. Since everything works off of expectations, the more you know about a drug, the easier it will be to experience. The internet provides enough information for this to work smoothly. For the sake of ease and legality, I'll assume we'll be starting with beer. Since most people have tasted beer, this should be fairly easy. Using the proprioceptive skill you learned earlier, get into your A/RSI and walk around. Anything to get yourself fully in sync with it. Once you're fully there, go to your refrigerator (if you're not at home, spawn a refrigerator. It's your imagination, go crazy). Open it and take out a beer. Try to focus on the coldness of it, and the condensation on it. This may sound like we're getting ahead of ourselves with temperature and touch, but we're not, and I'll explain why later. Take the beer somewhere and sit down. If it's easier for you, you can sit down in your body, keeping only your arms in your A/RSI. Crack the beer and drink it. Try to feel the taste, especially the alcohol if you can. Focus on the smell and aftertaste. Take in everything about it and make it real. After finishing the beer, you should start to feel a little buzz. If you do, good! Focus on that! If not, that's okay, some people don't feel it the first time. After several attempts, you should start to feel it getting stronger. This is what we want! The feeling improves with practice. After a while, the feeling should affect you too strongly to be considered a hallucination, and that's where it really starts to take off.
Example: Bobby wants to try chemoreception alteration but he has no idea where to start. He doesn't know much about drugs, but he remembers a time when his aunt gave him a glass of wine at Thanksgiving once, and how he was too young to hold his liquor and felt it too strongly. He decides that since that's something he's experienced, he'd start there. Bobby gets comfortable on his couch while his family is gone one day, and starts to dissociate. He walks over to the kitchen in his RSI and gets a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. He takes a wine glass down from the cupboard and pours himself a glass. He swishes it around in the glass and remembers the smell. He decides to take the glass of wine to his room instead of going back to his body, and sits down on his bed to drink it. He starts to feel the slight effects of the wine after finishing the glass, although it's very weak. He was about to go back to the kitchen for another glass when his family comes home and breaks his concentration.
Tips and troubles: Bobby is frustrated because he's not familiar with any drug. He's not sure if he can still do this. There are a few things you can try without drug experience. Caffeine and cigarettes can also be simulated. I used the beer example because most people are familiar with at least the effects of alcohol. If you have never done any of the things listed above, you can try simulating sugar or excitement, although the effects will probably be weaker than if you attempt something more potent.
Bobby wants to try a new drug, but he doesn't have any idea where to start. Even if you've never done a drug, your body can still simulate what it expects it to feel like. It will certainly be easier if you've had experience, but it's not impossible. Try starting with weaker or more common drugs that you may already have some knowledge of. Cigarettes and marijuana are good places to start. If you know the smell, it will go a long way in helping you achieve the effects you're looking for.
Bobby is unhappy with how weak the effects are. He wants to find a way to make them stronger. Like any skill, it gets better with practice. The effects can be quite powerful if you put in the effort. If you're still having trouble, or want stronger effects faster, you can always increase the amount of the drug you ingest. Higher doses seem to make the effects stronger, even though there is no good reason why that should be.
TACTILITY
Tactile alteration affects what you feel and touch. It is among the easiest of the 'big five' senses to fool. If you've ever gotten jumpy after seeing a spider in your house, convinced that it was on your foot or arm, you've already felt the effects of accidental tactile alteration. Since it doesn't have to involve skill in proprioception alteration, this may be easier for you if you've had trouble with the first two. Since it doesn't involve full-body proprioception alteration, you can practice in any position you choose, but I prefer sitting. The skin on your face and hands tend to be the most sensitive to pressure and sensation, so that's a good place to start. Using your A/RSI arms, touch your face. Run your hands down your eyes, nose, cheeks, and lips. If you do it with your physical hands first, it may be easier to recreate the sensation. Pay attention to how the texture of your skin feels, and how your eyelids and lips bounce when you remove the pressure. If it seems simple, that's because it is. Try touching your arm with your A/RSI hand. It's more difficult to feel.
Example: Bobby feels confident enough in his abilities to try tactile alteration. He doesn't have a lot of free time like he used to, so he tries it out for the first time on the bus. The bus is shaking too much to focus on his RSI, so he pictures someone poking his shoulder instead. At first, he doesn't really feel it, so he decides that the pokes would be harder. He starts to feel it, but along with the sensation comes pain. Bobby is so startled that he opens his eyes. What was pain doing there?
NOCICEPTION
Naturally, tactility leads us here: pain control. Before we get into reducing or eliminating pain, first we have to cause it. It doesn't have to be as bad as it sounds, since bruises and soreness are less severe types of pain. If you've ever had a 'Charley horse' or a painful muscle spasm, you can try to recreate that in a hand or a foot. I find great success in focusing it on my thumb. If not, soreness might be easier to do. While the lesser forms of pain get you used to the alteration process, the more daring among you might try something bigger for a shot at better or faster results. Lacerations, gunshot wounds, or amputations are a few options if you're concerned with results. The great part here is that it doesn't have to involve proprioception at all. It's certainly an option, but I've had success without it. This one is the simplest of all. Pick a spot for your pain, and focus on it. It's that easy. You don't need a great degree of skill in causing pain, but it can help your skill in reducing it, so practice here is pretty much optional. Now for the fun part, reducing pain. To reduce pain, first you must have pain to reduce, so you can either cause some, or wait for some to occur naturally. Since physical pain is sending chemical signals through your body, you're going to have to counteract a physical sensation. This is difficult, and there are a few different ways of accomplishing it. First method: Isolate the part of your body that's feeling pain. For the sake of simplicity, let's say it's a finger, and that it's been stepped on. Try to focus on the feeling of pain from before, when you were trying to cause it. Layer that feeling over the pain in the finger, until you are convinced the pain is just something you created. Let the pain slowly drain out into the air because, after all, it's just a product of your mind. The second method is a bit faster. Press the part of your body against a surface. For the finger, let's say it's a table. Focus on the feeling of the table, and try to believe it's more solid than your hand. Picture the pain as a little fire wandering around inside you, and let the table suck it from you like poison from a wound. Now the table has the pain and not you.
(This is a repost from a very old and dead forum I found, I did not write this. I thought it was super interesting and that people should see it.)

Neuromancy is, in essence, altering the way your brain processes information. What we do here is take it one step further and alter not just information, but perception. Data is sent from the sensory organs and interpreted by the brain to let you perceive the world around you. What we've done is found a way to get in between those two events and separate them, allowing us to control what we perceive. There are two kinds of ways to use this: positive effects and negative effects. Positive and negative don't refer to good or bad, but to whether something is added or removed, respectively.
A warning: This is not an undertaking to be taken lightly. There is a possibility of hurting or damaging yourself if you're not careful. If you start to feel pain, stop immediately and rest until it subsides.
A note on this guide: This does not teach you how to bend the world to your will. That's what dreams are for. This guide only teaches you how to fool your senses and hallucinate that you are whatever you want to be. Which is a fun toy in itself. After every section, there will be an example section, where we follow the lessons of Bobby, a beginning neuromancer. Examples will include one of many ways of learning the skill, followed by a tips and troubles section where Bobby finds answers to the various hiccups in the learning process.
PROPRIOCEPTION
That being said, let's jump right into it. The first and most useful step is proprioception alteration, AKA, changing where your brain thinks your body is. This step is also the step most likely to come easily to beginners, so it's a good place to start. If you've ever done meditation, this starts out pretty much the same way. Lie down somewhere dark and quiet where you won't be disturbed for a while. If it makes things easier for you, remove all jewelry and tight articles of clothing. This is where things differ. Instead of focusing on your breathing, you should focus on literally everything else but that. Daydreaming is very useful here. Go on an adventure in your head. Whatever you choose, you have to imagine yourself somewhere else, doing something. After a while, you'll be so absorbed in whatever you were doing that you'll forget that your physical body is lying down perfectly still. If you can do that, you've stumbled upon proprioception alteration. True proprioception alteration is achieved when you can get into and out of this physically dissociated state with little to no effort. This takes practice. The ghostly version of yourself that goes off and does things is going to be referred to as your RSI here, which stands for Residual Self Image. If you choose to change your RSI in order to help differentiate it from your physical body, it becomes an ASI, with the A standing for Altered. Something I've found to help is to have a sensory trigger. Some feeling that signals that you are now inhabiting your RSI instead of your physical body. Since you can imagine anything you want here, you can do this however you like, making it an ASI instead. Muscle, wings, antennae, horns, haircuts, whatever works for you. When you've gotten a good sense of how it feels, you'll be able to walk around in your A/RSI and do other things. Since it's just an alteration of your perception, it will, unfortunately, be just a hallucination. But it's good practice for some of the cooler things you can do with the same skill.
Example: Bobby decides that he wants to try neuromancy and after reading the first section of this guide, goes to try it out immediately. He goes into his room and closes the blinds and throws his cat out. Bobby always wears a watch, so he takes that off, but feels that his clothes are comfortable enough, so he leaves them on. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, and he remembers his tenth birthday party. He sifts through the memory, and tries putting himself in his younger self's shoes. He wanders around his old house in the memory and wonders what it would be like if he suddenly mooned everyone. So he does. And all his friends scream and laugh. After a while, he remembers what he was doing. He's not ten anymore, and he's lying down in his room, not at a party. he had forgotten about his body, since he was somewhere else, having fun. He decides that while he's relaxed, he will try to walk around his house in his RSI. So he stands up and looks down at his body. He walks out to the kitchen since he heard a noise, but can't see who is in there. Because what he sees in his RSI comes from his memories, he can't see what he doesn't already know. He suddenly gets an itch and twitches. That snaps his awareness back to his physical body, making him a little dizzy. What a productive first session!
Tips and troubles: Bobby can't find a quiet place to be alone, and everything is bright and busy. He tries to practice anyway, but it's almost impossible! While it's easy to dissociate with distractions later on, it will be hard to focus at first if you have anything less than perfect silence and darkness. Try to get as close as you can to the ideal setting, because it will help you in the long run. If you can't get alone time, you can still practice, but it will be much harder.
Bobby tries very hard to 'get away' from his body, but nothing's working! He can still feel everything! Some people have a harder time letting go, but that's okay! Everyone's different, so just let it happen. Trying hard will only frustrate you and adds nothing to productivity. If you're constantly trying to see if you're there yet, you never will be. The easiest way to start is to forget what you're doing. Get distracted and see where it takes you.
Bobby tries practicing after a bad day to cheer himself up, but just keeps getting stuck in bad memories. This can happen if you try to practice when you're stressed. Since it's your mind, you can do anything you want to do, even fixing the memory to be a good one. You can always just try again later when you feel better.
Ready for the next step? That's up to you, but you have several options. The visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular, thermoceptive, nociceptive, and chemoreceptive senses can all be altered.
CHEMORECEPTION
Since chemoreception can be used to describe several different functions, the one I will focus on here affects the chemoreceptor trigger zone, or CTZ. This is the part of your brain sensitive to drugs and hormones, and can trigger vomit. Since it more or less relies on propriception alteration, but is not actively competing agaist conflicting stimuli, and is thus easier to learn, I felt that it belongs firmly in second place. If you read that part up there correctly, yes, this will teach you how to convince your body that it's on drugs when it's not. I can't really say 'use responsibly' because there is no known downside to doing this, besides maybe being on drugs at work and getting fired for your behavior. This is the part of the game where we start to lean heavily on the placebo effect, so don't stress out if you don't get the results you want right away. This takes time and practice. The first thing you'll want to do is take inventory of the sensations you're familiar with. If you know the feeling that a certain drug causes, it will be easier to replicate it. Now, you'll notice I said 'easier'. That's because it's possible to feel the effects of drugs you've never done. Since everything works off of expectations, the more you know about a drug, the easier it will be to experience. The internet provides enough information for this to work smoothly. For the sake of ease and legality, I'll assume we'll be starting with beer. Since most people have tasted beer, this should be fairly easy. Using the proprioceptive skill you learned earlier, get into your A/RSI and walk around. Anything to get yourself fully in sync with it. Once you're fully there, go to your refrigerator (if you're not at home, spawn a refrigerator. It's your imagination, go crazy). Open it and take out a beer. Try to focus on the coldness of it, and the condensation on it. This may sound like we're getting ahead of ourselves with temperature and touch, but we're not, and I'll explain why later. Take the beer somewhere and sit down. If it's easier for you, you can sit down in your body, keeping only your arms in your A/RSI. Crack the beer and drink it. Try to feel the taste, especially the alcohol if you can. Focus on the smell and aftertaste. Take in everything about it and make it real. After finishing the beer, you should start to feel a little buzz. If you do, good! Focus on that! If not, that's okay, some people don't feel it the first time. After several attempts, you should start to feel it getting stronger. This is what we want! The feeling improves with practice. After a while, the feeling should affect you too strongly to be considered a hallucination, and that's where it really starts to take off.
Example: Bobby wants to try chemoreception alteration but he has no idea where to start. He doesn't know much about drugs, but he remembers a time when his aunt gave him a glass of wine at Thanksgiving once, and how he was too young to hold his liquor and felt it too strongly. He decides that since that's something he's experienced, he'd start there. Bobby gets comfortable on his couch while his family is gone one day, and starts to dissociate. He walks over to the kitchen in his RSI and gets a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. He takes a wine glass down from the cupboard and pours himself a glass. He swishes it around in the glass and remembers the smell. He decides to take the glass of wine to his room instead of going back to his body, and sits down on his bed to drink it. He starts to feel the slight effects of the wine after finishing the glass, although it's very weak. He was about to go back to the kitchen for another glass when his family comes home and breaks his concentration.
Tips and troubles: Bobby is frustrated because he's not familiar with any drug. He's not sure if he can still do this. There are a few things you can try without drug experience. Caffeine and cigarettes can also be simulated. I used the beer example because most people are familiar with at least the effects of alcohol. If you have never done any of the things listed above, you can try simulating sugar or excitement, although the effects will probably be weaker than if you attempt something more potent.
Bobby wants to try a new drug, but he doesn't have any idea where to start. Even if you've never done a drug, your body can still simulate what it expects it to feel like. It will certainly be easier if you've had experience, but it's not impossible. Try starting with weaker or more common drugs that you may already have some knowledge of. Cigarettes and marijuana are good places to start. If you know the smell, it will go a long way in helping you achieve the effects you're looking for.
Bobby is unhappy with how weak the effects are. He wants to find a way to make them stronger. Like any skill, it gets better with practice. The effects can be quite powerful if you put in the effort. If you're still having trouble, or want stronger effects faster, you can always increase the amount of the drug you ingest. Higher doses seem to make the effects stronger, even though there is no good reason why that should be.
TACTILITY
Tactile alteration affects what you feel and touch. It is among the easiest of the 'big five' senses to fool. If you've ever gotten jumpy after seeing a spider in your house, convinced that it was on your foot or arm, you've already felt the effects of accidental tactile alteration. Since it doesn't have to involve skill in proprioception alteration, this may be easier for you if you've had trouble with the first two. Since it doesn't involve full-body proprioception alteration, you can practice in any position you choose, but I prefer sitting. The skin on your face and hands tend to be the most sensitive to pressure and sensation, so that's a good place to start. Using your A/RSI arms, touch your face. Run your hands down your eyes, nose, cheeks, and lips. If you do it with your physical hands first, it may be easier to recreate the sensation. Pay attention to how the texture of your skin feels, and how your eyelids and lips bounce when you remove the pressure. If it seems simple, that's because it is. Try touching your arm with your A/RSI hand. It's more difficult to feel.
Example: Bobby feels confident enough in his abilities to try tactile alteration. He doesn't have a lot of free time like he used to, so he tries it out for the first time on the bus. The bus is shaking too much to focus on his RSI, so he pictures someone poking his shoulder instead. At first, he doesn't really feel it, so he decides that the pokes would be harder. He starts to feel it, but along with the sensation comes pain. Bobby is so startled that he opens his eyes. What was pain doing there?
NOCICEPTION
Naturally, tactility leads us here: pain control. Before we get into reducing or eliminating pain, first we have to cause it. It doesn't have to be as bad as it sounds, since bruises and soreness are less severe types of pain. If you've ever had a 'Charley horse' or a painful muscle spasm, you can try to recreate that in a hand or a foot. I find great success in focusing it on my thumb. If not, soreness might be easier to do. While the lesser forms of pain get you used to the alteration process, the more daring among you might try something bigger for a shot at better or faster results. Lacerations, gunshot wounds, or amputations are a few options if you're concerned with results. The great part here is that it doesn't have to involve proprioception at all. It's certainly an option, but I've had success without it. This one is the simplest of all. Pick a spot for your pain, and focus on it. It's that easy. You don't need a great degree of skill in causing pain, but it can help your skill in reducing it, so practice here is pretty much optional. Now for the fun part, reducing pain. To reduce pain, first you must have pain to reduce, so you can either cause some, or wait for some to occur naturally. Since physical pain is sending chemical signals through your body, you're going to have to counteract a physical sensation. This is difficult, and there are a few different ways of accomplishing it. First method: Isolate the part of your body that's feeling pain. For the sake of simplicity, let's say it's a finger, and that it's been stepped on. Try to focus on the feeling of pain from before, when you were trying to cause it. Layer that feeling over the pain in the finger, until you are convinced the pain is just something you created. Let the pain slowly drain out into the air because, after all, it's just a product of your mind. The second method is a bit faster. Press the part of your body against a surface. For the finger, let's say it's a table. Focus on the feeling of the table, and try to believe it's more solid than your hand. Picture the pain as a little fire wandering around inside you, and let the table suck it from you like poison from a wound. Now the table has the pain and not you.
(this is just a repost from an old forum I found, I did not write this I just thought it was super interesting and people should see it.)

Hi!
So I know this is a dumb question, and possibly may be offensive to some people. I promise I don't mean it that way! But due to life circumstances, I'm having to budget and cut back where I can. I've now gone without a hair cut for a little over a year now, and it's just looking way too weighed down.
I realized that out of habit, I would always go to a nicer hair salon since that's where I was taken as a child and where I would continue to get my hair cut as an adult. But I don't do anything at all with my hair....no styling, nothing. So I was basically paying way more than I'd like to admit for "just a trim" with maybe "a few layers".
Anyways, the question is: can I take a picture in to a budget salon like Great Cuts or Super Cuts or whatever and ask for something similar? I went to some of their websites and they seem to have like a menu of very basic haircuts. Which would be fine, but I have also read that some of the stylists who work there have absolutely no experience and they just go through 4 hours of training to learn those few basic haircuts? Is that true? And if so, should I just ask for one of those?
I'm not wanting anything complicated here...I have hair that is at mid chest level and I would like it to be cut about up to my collar bone and then maybe a few longer layers. Can most of the stylists do that? Or should I just go as simple as possible like, "please cut about 4 inches off"?
And I know there are great stylists that work at budget salons; not saying I think they are all bad of course lol. Just that apparently some of them are and I'm not going to know when I go in who is good or not. I can try to look at reviews but the ones I looked through yesterday mostly did not give names of stylists that were good or bad.
Mostly I just didn't want to offend someone or come off as wanting something fancy for cheap by showing a picture when I should just be choosing a cut from their menu...

I don’t know how much of this is autism related or puberty related.
She has been asking me for a haircut daily for a week. I go to work and I told her we would go on Friday evening. Yet she would pester me for it daily. Finally we went. She showed me the haircut she wanted. Like her friend. I showed the picture to the hair dresser. She did exactly that. There were two customers at the salon who also complimented her.
My daughter wasn’t happy in the end. I told her that it’s hard to let go I understand. She kept crying and wailing. It’s been hours. She said nobody would look at her and she won’t leave the house. She just wouldn’t stop.
If I leave the room, she comes after me. Blaming me. If I knew this, I would have done something differently. But not sure what that would be. As she’s growing up, I see many challenges like these coming up and I would like to know how you all deal wit it.
Edited. She is still crying like how dogs cry. High pitched crying that I can hear through 2 closed doors. I did go to check on her but she didn’t want it. My mom stopped by. She told my mom that I tried to kill her. She repeatedly said that. I finally broke down. To that my mom in front of her asked me to not take her words seriously and that I have anger issues. She came in between and is now a savior.

(We’re online friends)
We’ve been really good friends for over a year and text up literally all day everyday or at least used to before some incident. We always have these little small miscommunication moments but before we used to get through them super quickly.
However, just last week she had to step away from the phone for the whole day which is perfectly reasonable but the reason was just peculiar. It was since she was upset over me and our other friends posting pictures of our pets because her cat died like over 2 years ago and it reminded her of her? (My cat had died just the weekend before this happened so….)
And then it started to get really bad like for 2 days she suddenly started being really cold and distant whenever I’d try strike up a conversation. Worst part about it is that she was being snappy with me when I was trying to figure it out what the problem was and saying this like ‘Not like you would fucking care’ just behaving overly dramatic.
We worked this out but it affected me greatly like I went on a 10k walk then got home ranted to my aunt then drank until I projectile vomited and literally blacked out. Apparently it’s her coping mechanism to be rude when she’s in one of those moods don’t know.
She started saying all this stuff about how much our friendship means to her and stuff but then just a day later she started acting all cold and distant again. Tried to strike up a convo and asked to see her new haircut and she said ‘No thanks’ or when I’d try send her a video I thought she’d like she said ‘Didn’t rlly watch, wasn’t gaining much’
Then I kinda got pissed off since it was clear she didn’t wanna talk and told her as much because I had enough of her being all distant and she got even snappier. I just said I’ll leave you alone if you don’t wanna talk and she got so pissed off and I asked her if she had a problem with me because I thought she made a post on her story aimed at me. etc. etc.
Anyway I apologised for overreacting immediately and explained myself quite a bit and all she replied with is ‘👍’ so I decided she probably wanted some time for herself and didn’t text up for a day. But I wished her a happy birthday at midnight and she was pissed that I had apparently been ignoring her? and told me that she was overwhelmed and tired that I thought she hated me, whatever that means, so that’s why she didn’t reply more. We worked it out but honestly I don’t think we have
Now I’m getting to the real problem she’s definitely been trying to make me jealous with this other friends of ours constantly posting screenshots of their chat and stuff and ignoring me/giving me short replies every few hours. I’ve kinda stopped bothering trying to come up with better convo because she clearly isn’t interested. And she even sent a message being like ‘Omg ‘this girls name’ ‘ and quickly deleted it. She knows I’ve been jealous of the two of them in the past and I definitely feel like she’s stirring up the pot. (After one of our mini arguments she told me she likes to tussle and be snappy)
All my family say she’s toxic and so do my other friends but I don’t know what to do. I really miss our friendship but I feel it’s quickly declining. I’ve been in a constant state of anxiety over losing her but I don’t know what I can do.
And she’s just getting worse with each day like excluding me from a facetime with our group and ignoring my replies to stuff.
Is our friendship over or salvageable? What should I do? Or just leave opinions any comments would mean a lot to me right now.
Tldr: my friend is acting cold and distant and keeps trying to make me jealous with this other friend & trying to make me seem crazy for it

I thought it was pre Annihilation tournament but alot of scenes and dialogue suggest otherwise.
-Ohma knows of Raian's removal, saying "here we go" when Raian fights Jack. -Kuroki is compared with Yujiro as a form of boss. -Cosmos ironically has the old haircut 2 years after Kengan vs Purgatory -The most damning thing is Agito's scar (as pictured). Something he recieved during his fight against Kuroki.
I think they were trying to keep it spoiler free for anime only watchers while also dropping some manga Easter Eggs since the crossover was introduced during Omega.

I visited South Korea with my family for 8.5 days. We spent seven and a half days in Seoul and did a day trip to Busan. Below is our general itinerary:
Day one: Dongdaemun Design Plaza and surrounding area (malls and department stores)
Day two: Gyeongbokgung Palace, Bukchon Hanok Village, Insadong, Ikseondong
Day three: Namsan Mountain and Myeongdong
Day four: Sangbong Costco and Hongdae
Day five: Seongsudong and Starfield Coex Mall
Day six: Ihwa Mural Village, Seoul City Wall, Saetgang Bridge, Costco, Hongdae
Day seven (Busan): Gamcheon Culture Village, Haeundae Beach Train
Day eight: Facial Clinic, Gangnam, Sinsadong, Goto Mall, Banpo Bridge
Day nine (half day): Myeongdong
My family and I are vegetarians so I have recommendations for vegan/ vegetarian restaurants below:

• Sulgodang in Busan
• Vegan Kitchen in Myeongdong (so good went there twice)
• You are what you eat in Starfield Coex Mall
• Indian restaurants always have a vegetarian option:
  • Hello India in Hongdae
  • Bombay Brau in Gangnam
  • Everest Curry World near Dongdaemun Design Plaza
  • Everest near Dongdaemun Design Plaza (Different than Everest Curry World but right next to it)
  • Pooja near Dongdaemun Design Plaza

Below is a much more detailed account of what we did:

South Korea Vacation Report

This document is a report of my vacation in South Korea. Our trip was 9 days and we spent 8 days in Seoul and 1 day in Busan. We are a family of three that are vegetarian and based in the United States.

Day One, Dongdaemun Design Plaza Area

We arrived at Incheon International Airport (ICN) at 5:30 AM and breezed through customs and immigration. By 6:30 AM, we had our luggage and sim cards ready. Though there were various transportation options to the city, we opted for a taxi due to our substantial luggage and the distance to the bus stop from our accommodation. Using the KakaoT app, the ride cost us 65,300 KRW (approximately 47.39 USD), which we found quite reasonable for a 1.5-hour trip, compared to Uber rates in the US.
Upon reaching our accommodation, conveniently located within walking distance of Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), we freshened up and enjoyed a meal we had packed from home. We then walked to DDP and spent about two hours exploring. Our first stop was the im.type pop-up where we had our skin analyzed. Then we visited various exhibitions within the plaza and concluded our tour with the Neuroglow pop-up on the lower floor near the metro entrance, where we received even more freebies, including vegan collagen.
Next, we explored the nearby department stores such as Hyundai Outlets and Doota Mall. However, we found the prices to be excessively high and not worth it, especially when compared to sales in the US. I would recommend skipping these stores.
For lunch, we went to Pooja Indian Restaurant and were pleasantly surprised by the quality and affordability of the food. We spent around $25 USD for two large naans and a paneer curry, which was more than enough for three people. After, we decided to call it a day as we were exhausted from our travel.

Day Two, Gyeongbokgung Palace, Bukchon Hanok Village, Insadong, Ikseondong

We began our day by visiting Hanboknam to rent hanboks. We opted for the traditional package on Klook but, in hindsight, would have preferred the themed or premium packages for their better options and reasonable prices. Renting the hanboks for an hour and a half gave us ample time to enter Gyeongbokgung Palace, where hanbok wearers enjoy free entry. Hanboknam also provides free hairstyling and accessories. Due to the popularity of this experience, I recommend arriving early to avoid the crowds.
After returning our hanboks around lunchtime, we took a taxi to Café Manamin, a vegan restaurant serving traditional Korean food. The lone staff member handled both cooking and order-taking, resulting in a less-than-pleasant dining experience.
Next, we walked to Bukchon Hanok Village, but found it to be a letdown due to the crowds, which made it difficult to take good pictures. However, this is a bucket list item so I recommend going anyway to check it off. We spent only 15 minutes there.
We then took a taxi to Insadong and explored the Insadong shopping street and Ssamzigil Mall. The mall's top-floor poop café was a unique experience, and the waffles and coffee were delicious. From there, we walked to Ikseondong, a commercial area with modern shops housed in traditional hanok-style buildings. We strolled around, did some shopping, and had dinner before taking a taxi back to our accommodation.

Day Three, Namsan Mountain and Myeongdong

We started our day with a taxi ride to the Namsan Mountain Cable Car. The cable car round trip cost 15,000 KRW per person, totaling 33 USD for the three of us. At the top of the mountain, we enjoyed breathtaking views and admired the numerous love locks. We also had a delightful interaction with a group of school kids practicing their English with us.
We had pre-booked tickets to N Seoul Tower via Klook for 13 USD per person. In hindsight, the tower visit wasn't essential, as the mountain view was already spectacular. The tower provided a slightly higher vantage point, but nothing significantly different or special. However, the view from the bathrooms at the top of the tower was surprisingly stunning.
After descending via the cable car, we walked to Vegan Kitchen, my favorite restaurant of the entire Korea trip. The Kimchi Fried Rice was absolutely scrumptious, and I still miss it. The staff, though primarily speaking Mandarin and Korean, were super friendly. Despite my shabby Mandarin, it was nice to practice with them, and they were very accommodating. A quirky feature of the restaurant was a robot that sometimes delivered food. I highly recommend this place, especially the apple soju, which is delicious but quite strong—perhaps not the best choice for lunch, as we discovered.
From there, it was a short walk to Myeongdong, where we visited Juno Hair Myeongdong Street for haircuts. The prices were quite reasonable, at 35 USD per person for a wash and styling. The wash experience was amazing, with seats that reclined back, making it feel like floating in the air. However, despite being advertised as foreigner-friendly, the salon staff only spoke Korean. In addition, the stylist struggled with our thick, frizzy hair and kept trying to upsell treatments we didn't want. Although the final result was satisfactory, it wasn’t exactly what I had requested.
Post-haircuts, we explored the vibrant Myeongdong shopping area. Many shops didn't allow trying on tops, limiting our shopping spree, but the lively atmosphere made up for it. The Olive Young flagship store was a highlight, offering an extensive range of products. Despite the language barrier, the helpful staff made the experience enjoyable; showing them a picture of what you need worked wonders.
For dinner, we chose Gurkha, located in the heart of Myeongdong. The food was amazing, affordable, and filling. We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of Indian cuisine in Korea. After a satisfying meal, we returned to our accommodation via taxi, concluding another wonderful day.

Day Four, Costco and Hongdae

A visit to a Korean Costco is a must for skincare enthusiasts. We headed to the Sangbong Costco branch and found amazing deals on skincare products, much cheaper than Olive Young. This is where we did most of our skincare shopping. Costco also surprised us with samples of Jaegerbombs—a unique experience we hadn't encountered at any American Costco. After our Costco trip, we returned to our accommodation, enjoyed some convenience store snacks, and prepared lunch in our kitchen.
Around 3 PM, we set off for Hongdae. Our first stop was Millo Coffee Roasters, where each person is required to order a drink to sit inside. I highly recommend the Millo Blend Tea—it was delicious and soothing for my cough.
Next, we explored AK Plaza, which features a variety of clothing stores and cafes. Since Hongdae’s shopping and food street comes alive after 6 PM, we spent some time at AK Plaza before heading to Myeongdong shopping street in the evening. Here, many stores do not allow trying on clothes, but we still found some great pieces. The no-return policy added a bit of stress, but the variety of international brands like H&M and Nike provided ample options.
A highlight of the day was visiting The Koon, a sunglasses shop with a fantastic selection of unique and affordable styles, mostly under $20. The friendly shop owner made the experience even better. I ended up buying two pairs of sunglasses and wished I had bought more.
For dinner, we walked to Plant Cafe near Hongdae's main street. The food, entirely vegan, was slightly disappointing. The cauliflower buffalo wings were just okay, and the meal was the most expensive of our trip, which didn’t feel worth it. If Vegan Kitchen from Day Three had been priced similarly, it would have been justified. However, Plant Cafe at this price point felt like a scam. After dinner, we took a taxi back to our accommodation.

Day Five, Seongsu and Starfield Coex Mall

We set out for Seongsu-dong around 11 AM, as many stores there open at 11:30. Often referred to as the Brooklyn of Seoul, Seongsu offers a variety of unique experiences. Our first stop was the Amore Pacific pop-up. This place was incredible, offering a wide range of skincare and makeup products to try. In hindsight, I wish I had done my makeup at the pop-up instead of back at the accommodation, as they even had heat tools for hairstyling. Many visitors were getting fully glammed up right there.
For lunch, we visited Flour Tomato Cheese and ordered a Margherita Pizza. The pizza was amazing, and the restaurant's ambiance was charming, with sweet and helpful staff.
Next, we headed to the Rain Report Cafe, a popular spot on Instagram. While the coffee and atmosphere were decent, the place was crowded due to its popularity. It’s worth visiting once for the aesthetic, but not necessarily a place to revisit.
We spent the afternoon walking around Seongsu, visiting numerous pop-ups, and collecting many freebies. The most notable was the Dr. G x Inside Out pop-up, where we each received full-sized skincare products.
In the evening, we headed to Starfield COEX Mall in Gangnam. While the mall primarily housed international brands available back home, it was still worth a visit. We checked out the famous library, which, though underwhelming, was still cool to see and tick off our bucket list.
For dinner, we dined at "You Are What You Eat," a vegan restaurant in the mall that serves traditional Korean food. The restaurant's aesthetic was pleasing, making it a nice end to our day before heading back to our accommodation.

Day Six, Ihwa Mural Village, Seoul City Wall, Saetgang Bridge, Costco, Hongdae

We left our AirBnb after having lunch. We started off our day with Ihwa Mural Village. When we got there, we were utterly shocked. No guide or blog had mentioned that the whole village was built on a incline so there were endless stairs. The village itself was beautiful but we were unable to enjoy the experience to the full extent as the stairs were an absolute workout. Seoul City Wall is easily accessible from the village so we ended up cutting our time at the village short and just walking down the wall.
The wall was one of my favorite parts of Seoul. You could see the history, the modern buildings, and the natural beauty of the mountains all at once. It was truly incredible.
From the bottom of the wall, where the Seoul City Wall Museum is, we took a taxi to Saetgang Bridge. This bridge has been featured in many of our favorite dramas like Doctor Slump, Vincenzo, and Hotel Del Luna so it was a must-see. The suspension-style bridge was refreshing to walk on and slow down from the hustle and bustle of the trip.
A short taxi ride later, we arrived at the Yangpyeong Costco Branch. We wanted to see if the items differed from those at the Sangbong location and pick up a few things we missed on our earlier trip. While both Costcos mostly sold the same items, the Sangbong location felt more spacious and easier to navigate.
Since Hongdae was nearby, we decided to revisit the area. We explored parts of Hongdae we hadn't seen before and concluded our day with dinner at Hello India. The food was incredible, and the staff was kind and helpful, making for a perfect end to our day before heading back to our accommodation.

Day Seven (Busan), Gamcheon Culture Village, Haeundae Beach Train

We started our day bright and early, heading to Gimpo International Airport (GMP) for a day trip to Busan. In hindsight, the trip felt rushed, but we wanted to maximize our time in Seoul, limiting our visit to Busan to just one day. Opting to fly instead of taking the bullet train saved us two hours each way, giving us an extra four hours to explore Busan.
Upon arriving at Busan Airport (PUS), we took a taxi to Gamcheon Culture Village. We spent about an hour there, though we could have easily spent more time exploring the numerous attractions and food stalls. The village is a popular tourist spot, so be prepared for long lines at the most famous photo spots. I recommend visiting the Hanuel Maru Observatory for a 360 view of the village. The picture on the left was taken at the observatory. The village is on a mountain so be prepared to walk on an incline and numerous stairs.
For lunch, we took a 15-minute taxi ride to Sulgodang, a restaurant popular with both tourists and locals. They serve traditional Korean food and offer a separate vegan menu. We ordered ramen, tofu steak, and a rice dish, all accompanied by unlimited vegan banchan (side dishes). The banchan included roasted seaweed, kimchi, tteokbokki, fresh cabbage, marinated cucumbers, and various pickles. The food was amazing, and the staff was incredibly friendly.
After lunch, we took a taxi to the Haeundae Blue Line Park which had Mipo Station. At this station you can take a sky capsule or beach train which are both scenic rides along the coast of Busan offering gorgeous ocean views. Tickets for both can be one way or round trip. We ended up taking the beach train as the sky capsule was completely booked. The sky capsule offers a more private experience whereas the beach train is more public. However, both experiences offer pretty much the same views.
The Beach Train took us to Songjeong, a charming beach town. We spent about an hour exploring Songjeong, enjoying the beach and local atmosphere before heading back to Mipo Station on the Beach Train. Along the way, the train stops at various attractions, including the Sky Walk, a glass bridge that extends over the ocean for breathtaking views.
After returning to Haeundae Park, we took a taxi to the airport and returned to Seoul where we had dinner at Everest Curry World. The food was refreshing after a long day of travel and walking.

Day Eight, Lienjang Clinic, Gangnam, Sinsadong, Goto Mall, Banpo Bridge

I had booked facials at Lienjang Clinic in Gangnam a few weeks in advance via WhatsApp. The booking process was very simple, and the staff was responsive. I opted for the Aqua Peel and Blackhead Removal treatments. The appointment began with a consultation where the staff thoroughly explained the treatments we had booked. Following this, we were instructed to wash off our makeup and cleanse our skin. The clinic was really affordable and had something for every price range.
The clinic spans multiple floors at the top of a building, so we headed down to the 17th floor for the actual treatments. While the clinic is advertised as foreigner-friendly, only the initial consultation staff and the reception desk spoke any foreign languages. Unfortunately, the staff conducting the treatments did not, so they were unable to answer any questions we had during the facial.
After the treatments, we explored Gangnam and had lunch at Bombay Brau. Lunch was great and filling. Then we headed to Sinsadong which was a 10-minute taxi ride away from the Gangnam main street area. Sinsadong was much more quaint and less touristy than the Gangnam main street. It had many options for shopping: Gentle Monster, Onitsuka Tiger, IndiBrand, Lacoste, AdderError, etc.
We stopped for a snack at Sinsajeon, renowned for its honeycomb makgeolli and Korean pancakes. The restaurant only serves makgeolli by the bottle instead of by the glass, so we ended up with more than we could finish. We ordered one bottle of honeycomb makgeolli to share between two glasses and a potato and cheese pancake. The pancake, vegan and comparable to a cheese-filled hash brown, was delicious and super filling.
Next, we took a taxi to Goto Mall, an underground shopping mall with a variety of local stalls selling everything from clothes to home goods. We spent about an hour exploring the mall. However, most stores didn’t have fitting rooms, so we refrained from buying anything. Still, it was fun to window shop as they had super trendy clothes.
From Goto Mall, we took a 20-minute walk to Banpo Bridge. The walk felt much longer as we were tired from walking all day. The bridge features a light water show every half an hour after 7:30 PM. We sat down and enjoyed the show, with N Seoul Tower and the illuminated buildings in the background creating a stunning view.
For dinner, we headed to Itaewon and dined at Coreanos Kitchen. The menu had sufficient vegetarian options and offered both outdoor and indoor seating. The area was very lively, even on a weekday. After dinner, we took a taxi back to our accommodation.

Day Nine, Myeongdong

On our final day, we headed to Myeongdong in the morning to do some last-minute shopping at ABC Mart and Olive Young. Afterward, we decided to pay Vegan Kitchen another visit. With our flight scheduled for the evening, the remainder of the day was dedicated to packing all the items we had purchased during our trip. We then took a taxi back to the airport, concluding our unforgettable journey with fond memories and full bags.

Hey all. I started my locs back in May mostly bc I was unsure what to do with my hair.(20 years in the military, short haircuts forever) I went about a year without consistently getting haircuts and got some decent growth and started using. A twist comb. After a while of getting frustrated with tangled hair I combed the curls the best I could and went to a loctician. My hair was about anywhere from 3.5 to 5 inches. The hair on top of my head is shorter, and I get a lot of breakage there
Fast forward 3 or so months and my sides and the back of my head are looking pretty good. Not a lot of length but healthy. I get a retwist every 4 weeks. The problem is that in between the top of my head almost becomes completely undone and it's like I'm putting starters up there every time i get retwisted and they're super short compared to the rest of my head. I'm getting frustrated and don't know what to do. She considered waiting to try and re adjust my parts up top to combine some of the locs but man it's discouraging seeing them so short compared to the rest. She told, and showed me the length of the hair this last retwist (about a week ago) so my hair is growing, but they won't stay put...leaving them susceptible to breakage and such.
Some notes, my hair is salt and peppery bc I started going gray in my teens, I'll be 40 in a few days (I didn't wanna post pictures) not thinning, not balding, but slower growth than say a teenager or someone in their 20s. My loctician (love her btw) doesn't want me to mess with too many products, but I wanna try oiling my scalp or something. Do you think that'll help? Any advice?

So without posting a picture of myself (no offense, just a private person) I wanted to ask everyone’s advice.
I’m a late 30s male visiting Italy at the end of this month. Admittedly I have some diffuse thinning - only slightly receding temples but not bad, biggest issue is thinning crown. I’m on finasteride and minoxidil to combat the thinning and hoping for the best. I have dark brown hair, medium length. I typically get a Julian Edelman type fade haircut which has suited me well. I’m a slender guy, tan complexion in the summer. Just trying to give you an idea of what I’m working with lol
What would be a cool haircut that would fit the Italian vibe for my visit? I’d say options in the shorter to medium length range.
Just thought it might be fun to get a fresh cut for visiting Italy and feeling like I kind of belong there lol
I appreciate any advice you can give very much 🙂