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As I said in the title, I'm re-reviewing the album in a less whiny and more thought out manner. I'll break down each track and what I think it does right and wrong. Then I'll give it a score. The scoring of each song will be out of what percentage of the album said song takes up. So the beggar lover, which is 36% of the album, which means it should account for 36% of the overall album score. Bla bla, let's get going.
The Parasite is rather disappointing, if there wasnt a demo to compare it too i might feel differently, but i think the demo does a lot better. The instrumental on the demo just sounds better, the new version has a weird effect added to it that i dont like. I also think the demos vocals were overall cleaner during the first half, no odd vocal dips and spikes. I know why michael sings the way he does, he thinks it added something to the overall experience, but idk what his weird screetching really did. It just makes listening to the first half of this track more obnoxious. It was so bad i took the first half of the demo and replaced everything up until the "come to me feed on me" part. Its after the first half of this song passes that the song picks up and becomes good. Other than hearing the vocal track awkwardly overlap the other during the switch up (this is what i mean when i say this album isnt finished, theres more natural ways of having a new vocal track come in, not having it awkwardly overlap the first). This second half is ominous and a very welcome switch up from the original. Although I still like the second half of the demo more than the new version, I like what they went for and I can't really complain. 66/100 (final weighted score 4.62/7)
Paradise is mind is my favorite song on here, it does not have many flaws. The worst thing I can point out is the "oooooh ooohs" that happen way too often and get a bit old. Otherwise, this song has a catchy riff and a nice atmosphere. 97/100 (fws 7.76/8)
Los Angeles city of death, ive gone on and on about how the vocals pop in and out of existence like the grass in elden ring. (Also it doesn't fit pacing wise, the song is an awkward transition) It gets either drowned out, or is perfect, there is no inbetween. If the song was finished, they would have picked a line and mixed the main vocal track better. The ending doesnt do it for me, atonal screetching just isnt for me. Also female vocals are mixed okay, but only okay. This is just an incredibly forgettable song 50/100 (fws 1.5/3)
Michael is done. (For convenience, im referring to new female singer as jarboe jr, dont question it i just dont know her name) i dont think jarboe jr and michael sound very good together, like its passable but their voices dont mesh that well imo. The instrumental break, though good, just doesnt feel natural. Especially when it awkawardly flips back into the chorus. I also just don't think the song fits on the album, it's not bad I just don't really like it. It's noise to me. 45/100 (fws 2.25/5)
Unforming is a rip off of annaline, the same chords but less instrumental. It might sound nice, it might be a call back to 2 different and very good songs, but due to laziness im giving this song a 0. You cannot just copy and paste shit and expect me to want to hear it. I would rather just listen to annaline instead of this filler track. 0/5 don't copy and paste songs to fill space, I'd rather have 1 less song on the album than have an extra completely unnecessary one. So again, 0/5 for laziness.
The Beggar is an uneasy listening experience, and that's the point. It excells at what it wants to do (mostly.. ) and I love it for that. Slightly off key vocals add to the tension and make the climactic moments pay off way better. Would be perfect if not for michael screaming at the start of the second and last climax. People go out of their way to try and defend something that sounds bad, you can have a scream, have it be pathetic (someone told me the point of the scream was that it was pathetic, so I'm going with it) you can have a pathetic scream that doesn't ruin all tension and make me cry from laughing. Without the scream this song would be a 100/100, but the scream destroys all tension (the most important part of the song, the thing that makes the climax satisfying). So im lowering the score by quite a bit, not out of hatred but just dissappointment. 70/100 (fws 5.6/8)
Ebbing has a great start before an awkaward folky switch up which lasts 4 minutes. It sounds kinda like the burning world if it was actually decent. Jarboe jr had her vocals kinda screwed by the mixing. You can tell she's going "ba ba ba" over her own vocals, which muddies the background. That incoherent muddiness then rubs off on michaels vocals, occasionally making them almost completely incoherent. I also just dont like how jarboe jr sounds, not her fault, just dont like her voice. So not only are the vocal tracks becoming incoherent, but the main cause is jarboe jrs subpar vocal performances. The last 3/4 of this song have an amazing instrumental, jarboe jrs angelic vocals are used properly and fill in what would otherwise be dead air on the instrumental. Then when combined with michaels vocals, it becomes ear candy, and the best kinda. I dont get how michael and jarboe jr can go from sounding terrible together to being literal perfection. This ending makes up for the mid to bad vocal mixing in the beginning. So, for the sake of being nice to this album ill pretend the first quarter of this song had no issues. Jk you thought I'd be nice 83/100 (fws 7.47/9)
No more of this has a nice instrumental. I get what the song is going for, it works, i dont have many major gripes except for the ending. Jarboe jr has said "bah bah bum bum" 6 billion times on this record and every time she does it sounds bad. First half is beautiful, second half tries to be but falls flat. 52/100 (fws 3.12/6)
Why can't I have what I want any time that I want. This song has a kinda menacing bass, but not menacing menacing, more of a ghostly and ominous type of menacing. The song features a haunting ghostly choir, which is fitting because it's a song about time taking everything away from you. I just kinda wish there was instrumentally, the bass gets a bit repetitive as it goes on and not the good kind of repetitive swans is known for. Luckily it barely avoids getting annoying by yk ending. That thing songs do. I also want to mention how good the chorus is here, everytime michael says "wrong" i feel my soul exit my body. 94/100 (fws 5.64/6)
The Beggar lover (three). This is part of a trilogy of songs, one technically being an album. Body lovers, look at me go, and beggar lover. I decided to add those songs in to make this album feel more complete.
So the first 2 tracks are interchangeable, body lovers can go first or the parasite can go first. Either way the transition works.

1. Body lovers
2. The parasite
3. Paradise is mine
4. Los Angeles
5. Michael is done
6. Unforming
7. The beggar
8. Look at me go
9. Ebbing
10. No more of this
11. Why can't I have a shorter song title
12. The beggar lover (three)
13. The memorious.

All that aside, beggar lover 3 is a good song. I'm not listening to it right now, but I've listened to it many times so just trust me when I say it's really good and a 94/100 (fws 33.84/36)
The Memorious has the best weird scream to kick it off. Originally I hated the baby cooing, but it's less annoying now. I still despise it though, it brings this song from a 9 to a 6. The baby cooing along with the extended spoken word bit during the first half makes this a less than favorable listen. 52/100 not because it's bad but because it's littered with several questionable decisions. I will say though, the latter half of this song is almost perfect (baby cooing aside). Final weighted score for this song 4.41/7
Final score: 76.1/100.
I suppose it's not a 3/10. However, when not doing a weighted score, this album drops to a 64/100, not a big drop but still a very noticeable one.
The big issue here is the varying song quality, lazy mixes, poorly thought out choices, and jarboe jr getting the short end of the stick. Jarboe jr can sing but these mixes make her sound like she's a parrot trying to imitate the concept of singing, squak bah bah bum bum bah bum.
My original 3/10 score was more out of anger than my genuine thoughts, but either way this album is very dissapointing. I hope their next album is better, if there is one.

TLDR: He never did anything sexual with me as a teenager or as an adult, but he did intend on something happening as an adult.
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He was 32 (m) and I was 15 (f) when we met. He was the assistant principal of my school. I had a crush on him as soon as I saw him. I already had a teacher fantasy (thanks pretty little liars) so I would day dream about him.
I chatted him up introduced myself and built an appropriate relationship. He was my confidant, my mentor, my friend. I never trusted an adult as much as I trusted him. I loved him in every way love can be. I would spend hours a day in his office skipping class to be with him and he'd let me. The only time I stopped flirting with him was when I was crying to him about my life and he was comforting me.
Eventually he started to playfully flirt back, not heavy but light. I could barely tell he was flirting with me. I knew he was, but I figured he would never flirt with a student. If he would have initiated anything with me as a teenager, I would have done it. I would have done anything he asked me to, no matter what it was.
A few weeks into my sophomore year I got taken into foster care because of my home life. He was at the school meeting where they came to get us. The whole time I could tell something was wrong with him, he was sad and withdrawn, but kept his eyes on me. He saw my heart break that day. I was sent to homes far from my high school, so I didn't see him for months. I was finally able to visit him, but security didn't want me on campus. We talked on the phone often.
Junior year I was enrolled in a new school in a different city. My first day was his first day too. As soon as we saw each other our faces lit up and we hugged, probably a little too long. He didn't want me in his office as much as he let me at the other school. He said it was because he didn't want to show me special treatment in front of everyone else. The other thing he said was that it would look weird if I was in there so much. If it wasn't anything more than a mentorship, why would it look weird? He would see me get into my adult boyfriends cars and never said anything to me about it. Is that because he didn't care if I dated men? Eventually I had to leave that school. He left the next school year and moved to a different school.
Throughout all of his different schools we always kept up. When I turned 18, he gave me his personal number. We would talk on the phone and text sporadically, nothing other than what friends would talk about. Every time we'd talk, he'd ask me if I was still with my bf.
A few years later (I'm 22, he's 41) I found him on IG and followed him, he followed me back and we started talking again. Much more often than before. We caught up on each other’s lives. Once there was no more catching up to do, we kept talking. Just talking about friend stuff still. Sometimes he would text me late at night. We made plans to hang out next time I was back home.
When I went back home, we decided to hang out. I wanted to get coffee or lunch. He said it would look weird if anyone saw us out together, and suggested I come over to his place. I was reluctant and red flags were going off in my head, but I ignored them and went over anyway. I could trust him. I told my sisters and I told them I would check in with them twenty minutes after I got there. I forgot to check in and they called, I should have texted her to make up an emergency. But I didn't.
We talked for hours. I was probably over there for 4-5 hours just talking. At some point he talked about how attractive I was and have always been. He told me that when me and my siblings got put into foster care, he tried to get my brother to live with him, but by time he decided to do it my aunt had got him. He told me he didn't try to get me because it might have looked weird. He asked questions about my relationship and somehow made it natural to ask about my sex life. I told him my problems in that department. Then he started to talk about his sex life and high sex drive. I was uncomfortable when he was talking about it but I let it slide. Like I said, I trusted him. He gave me a tour of his place; garage, kitchen, guest rooms, and ended the tour in his bedroom. I didn't think a single thing about that until years later, when I realized he groomed me. He was defiantly wanting something by showing me his bedroom, right? Hours later I left and we kept in touch often over text, again nothing nefarious. Looking back at it there might have been some light flirting on his side.
Next time I went back home we made plans to hang out. His place had flooded so he was living in a very nice hotel during renovations. The first time I went over everything was totally normal innocent even, until we hugged goodbye. It was a long hug.
I went over there to hang out the night after or the night after that I can't remember exactly. I hung out with him 3-4 times. Not realizing what was happening until the last time I went over there. The second time we hung out he moved to the couch I was on. We were opposite sides of the small couch. We talked for a while and then he put on TV in the background. I didn't think anything of it. I left and another long hug happened. Again, I thought nothing of it.
I went over to his hotel one more time and it was the last time I saw him. When I arrived the lights were low, a candle was burning, and there was music playing. That was the first time I really thought about the situation, but I buried that deep down... because I trusted him. Nothing happened other than us talking. After I left I texted him and asked if he was flirting with me, and he said he was but its innocent because that’s what you do with your adult friends. I knew that was bs when he said it. But of course, I buried that too.
Ever since I turned him down, he has hardly talked to me. Every time we talked, I was initiating it. We would send maybe 10-15 texts and then he would stop responding. He abandoned me, and it hurt. He was my rock during my teenage years.
I kept in contact with him for 4 years after the last time we saw each other. One day I finally realized that he had been grooming me. I started to question our entire relationship.
I messaged him innocently asking why he showed such an interest in me as a teen. He basically told me it was because my home life was shit and that I was vulnerable and special. I asked him why I was special. I don't remember his response though. I prodded more and then he stopped answering. I think he finally caught on to what I was really asking. A few days later and still no response. I decided to block him on all social media, and delete and block his number. I was so proud of myself. This was 4 months ago.
I thought of him a lot the first months or so. Then I forgot about him for a while. The other day I was putting a kitchen appliance away and it made me think of him. How he has literally nothing on his counter tops, everything is stored in the cabinets. Thinking about how weird that was turned my stomach. Then I started to think about everything he had done, good and bad. Both made me feel like I was going to throw up.
I started to think about the possibility that he never really thought I was special; that I was just easy prey. That I wasn't the only girl he had a close relationship with. Maybe he was doing this with other girls too. As a teenager all I wanted was to be special to an adult, and he gave that to me. But if I wasn't special and just another target that means that I wasn't special to anyone. I want him to have only done this to me for 2 reasons. 1) I don't want other girls going through this. 2) I want to have been special.
2) fucks me up. I shouldn't still want validation from this man. I crave the validation though. As a teenager I grew dependent on him. He built me up, gave me confidence and showed me love I'd never had before. But now after realizing everything he did to me I have no confidence. I am completely broken. I feel hopeless and confused. I feel sick to my stomach every moment of the day. I can't think of anything else but this. Regardless of all of the negative feelings he is causing me, I miss him. I miss our friendship and being able to lean on him when I'm going through a rough time. I could tell him literally anything and he wouldn't judge me. He had no involvement in my problems and was always in my corner. I still need someone like that, and I wish it could be him. I wish he never had any ulterior motives and that I could still lean on him.
I really hope that his affection for me when he started to get to know me wasn't just about taking advantage of me. I want it to be that he grew to have these feelings about me. It would mean I was special. Either way it's wrong and disgusting. But it would make me feel like he wasn't a total pos, just a confused man who made a huge mistake. It's still not acceptable.
I still can't accept that he groomed me. I know he did, but I keep telling myself that I'm over analyzing the situation. Nothing sexual ever happened, so it's not grooming. He always treated me with love and kindness. He was NEVER abusive, not even for a second. He didn't force me into anything. He just cared for me unconditionally, and he was the first person to care about me like that and actually give me the time and attention I needed. I also feel like this is all my fault because I had a crush on him before. Like I brought it upon myself.
I can't tell you all the number of times I've thought about unblocking him and messaging him. Or calling him and making up some excuse about needing a letter of recommendation. I tried to find the letter of recommendation he sent me a few years ago because I needed his validation, even if it was old.
I also want to reach out so I can call him out. Or accidently run into him when I'm back in my hometown so I can call him out. But I know he would gaslight me because that's what groomers do. He would never admit to it. I won't be able to make it through if he did that. I already gaslight myself enough. Hearing him deny or justify it would confirm my doubts. And if I didn't fall for his gaslighting I would be even more broken than I am now. If I did see him in public, I don't know what I'd do. I don't know if I'd run, ignore him, call him out, pretend everything is ok, or get sucked back in. At this moment I think I would get sucked back in. I would believe everything he would say. I would be the same teenage girl I was all those years ago, dotting on him.
I don't know what to do. I'm having extra sessions with my therapist and that’s helping in the moment. I don't want to miss him. I want to hate him and I want that hatred to eventually turn into indifference. I want to find peace. I don't want to love him anymore. (Just for clarification it's not a romantic love.)
It feels nice to share the full story with people other than my therapist and sisters.
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If you've made it this far I whole heartedly appreciate it. It means so much to me. Thank you!

Hey I hope its okay to post an update.
I did get a couple responses that offered help, advice, support or sympathy. But mostly it was people suspicious which I do understand and respect. What was upsetting to me were the public and private messages saying I was a disgusting scammer, con artist, that I should be ashamed of myself and even worse.
Everything I said in my post was honest. I didn't lie at any point.
Within the first couple of responses were privately sent ones and a few public . The public ones offered to meet me in the evening and I genuinely was extremely grateful. But same time I got a private message off a guy offered to send me in his words "a few pound" via a bank or PayPal transfer. I figured it would be like £3 or at most £5. But he sent me a tenner. I accepted this mainly because I was hungry enough to not want to wait until evening, but also I was pretty nervous meeting a stranger even in a safe place.
I gave this guy my bank details and got most of my shopping from heron. Bread, cereal, butter, milk etc.
At that time I got a few quite cruel messages that made me sick to my stomach. I cried a bit which is pretty pathetic, but I didn't message this guy back that day and I didn't respond to anyone else. I still haven't looked at the majority of responses to my post.
I get my benefits tomorrow so I messaged this guy back earlier today saying hey I insist on paying you back tomorrow morning. He refused to give me his bank or PayPal information stating he doesn't know me. He said if I really want to do do something I should send that tenner to a charity and he recommend one.
He agreed I could screen shot his response if I blacked out his name so I will link it at the bottom. He did message the mods and they understandably warned him against doing that in future.
So that's what I think I'll do. Does anyone recommend a charity they feel is more deserving? Once I've picked one I will send that money and proof of it. I genuinely want to do this as I've felt awful for days about this tenner.
Other people messaged me privately offering money via PayPal and no, I didn't respond because I genuinely am not a scammer.
And yes I have posted before, it was around January and I was asking for cheese. Somebody did meet me and gave me food. It was a man and a woman and they were incredibly kind.
However, not long after that I was out kinda late and a man tried to rob me. He insisted I give him money and I denied having any. He got very aggressive, waving his fist in my face and shouting how he was gonna beat me. He put his hand down my top to check if I had money in my bra. Eventually after I was shouting back I had no money he gave up. I genuinely don't believe anyone who offered to help me would do that, but I just feel a bit nervous.
I did get a weird message saying that it's a popular scam and that if anyone did meet me with food, that I would then emotionally manipulate the person into giving me cash. I wouldn't even know how to do that, I'm autistic I'm no good at being anything but very direct.
I do understand people being wary. I understand people replying on my post warning others to be wary. But what I don't understand is saying shame on you to me, calling me a vile con artist, and genuinely other nasty things.
I will take a screenshot and add the response to my update here shortly after I post this. I have posted on Liverpool several times but this was the second time I ever asked for help, and both times I asked for food and not money. I didn't accept money last time but I hope you understand that I was desperate and I truly wanted to pay back this person tomorrow.
The guy who gave me the tenner linked me a charity as you will see. I haven't looked at it yet but I plan to look at it in depth tomorrow. Another thing I thought of was anything to do with mental health via children. I was under cahms for years and they treated me for CPTSD and they were just brilliant. It was a clinic near Alder Hey so if anyone can help me find a link to donating to alder hey I will probably pick them.
Thank you everyone who offered to help. Tomorrow afternoon I will add a screen shot of proof I sent a tenner to a charity.
Here is the response to the guy who gave me the tenner. This response was today after I thanked him and asked for his details in order to repay him the tenner back tomorrow.

My best friend and I are both 17 and graduate in a bit over a week-ish. She lives in a toxic and unsafe household, while mine is relatively okay, just frustrating at times. I feel it is also necessary to mention we are online friends, however we have been friends for almost 5 years, facetime/call often and generally know each other very very well.
For years we've discussed how we can get her out of her home and have mutually agreed her leaving in silence is her best option. She lives in New York while I live in California, which is a bit unfortunate but traveling to get her is not the issue. My parents have met her(over the phone, of course) and have agreed to let her live with us for a few years while we both work and save up money to move out. My parents are no strangers to sheltering friends of my siblings and I who need help with living situations, so I'm certain they will not change their mind on it.
She already has her birth certificate and her social security number so that is also not a problem. Our issue is that we have been planning for her to leave after she turns 18, which is in December, but due to current circumstances in her home it might be best if she leaves sooner. We aren't sure how her parents will react, but the last thing we want is a kidnapping charge on my parents for helping her leave. I don't think this qualifies as legal advice so I apologize for going against the rules with my post if it does.
I need advice with figuring out how we can get her away from them without cops getting involved. I mentioned to her that she could go to the police station to confirm with them her identity and that she is leaving on her own terms and not to report her missing, but that was before her possibly leaving as a minor.
I'm very paranoid about the whole thing and truly just want her to be finally safe. And before anyone suggests it, we don't trust law enforcement/CPS enough to successfully keep her safe from her family, so reaching out to services for help is not really an option for us. I really appreciate any responses I can get from this.

This will probably be long and all over the place, but at this point I'm in desperate need of advice.
Like the title says, I'm now coming up on 4 years post-grad without a real career path at all. I graduated in 2019 and spent an entire year alone looking for a job other than fast food or retail (which my resume only consisted of at the time). Got no internships because I was an idiot, so I was already off to a rough start.
Finally found a job at a background screening company doing QA/compliance work.......making $11 an hour. The job was actually great (looking back), and my pay eventually went up to $18 an hour. It was fully remote and I could listen to music all day. I quit because I realized I was not gaining a well-rounded skillset and if I wanted to increase my pay, I would need to find a new job. In hindsight I probably should have just stayed. I was liked, really good at the job and I'm pretty positive I could have moved to another city if I wanted to (because it was fully remote). I have thought about asking for that job back, but I am still undecided.
So after ANOTHER year of painstakingly applying for jobs, I found another job. This time, I royally screwed up. I was working in the fraud department for a bank, where I would reach out to (potential) fraud victims via outbound calls. I was under the impression that the job would be mostly research, but come to later find out, it was basically a straight up call center. The job description was honestly straight up bullshit (it even specified this was not a call center) and I ended up quitting after 6 months due to the stress.
I eventually entered full on desperate mode and found a temp-to-hire job in project management for a construction company. They basically hired me because I was eager to learn, and as you can probably tell, I came in completely green without any background or knowledge at all. Nevertheless, project management interested me and I was also interested in learning the trades. I figured they'd be a good mix.
I've been here for a total of 2 months and I'm already getting the suspicion that I'm on thin ice. Today my manager closed the door, pulled me aside and figured I should work in the warehouse, because "their expectations were too high" and I "wasn't picking it up quick enough." I suppose I'm somewhat thankful they didn't just fire me, but at the same time, they never really gave me any type of work to begin with. I'd say 80% of what I've learned thus far has been self-taught, which I don't necessarily mind, but at the same time, I would routinely ask my co-workers if they needed any help and they would say "Not right now, sorry" or "Sorry man, we're just too busy." Not to mention, I'm routinely teased for being the "quiet" one and most do not seem to like me.
I know, I know, I get it. This industry (like many others nowadays) is basically sink-or-swim, but I haven't really gotten the chance to put any of my knowledge to use at all. Most of my days consist of reading the material or trying (failing) to find work to do.
I'm currently in therapy, which hasn't really been helping at all but I'm still going anyway. I was prescribed Lexapro about 3 months ago, but quit after two weeks due to severe side effects (no libido, ED, extreme insomnia). I've considered going on Welbrutin, but I'm still on the fence.
I'm currently living with my parents and my self-esteem is at an all time low. Few things I have going for me - I have about 30k saved (from living at my parents), nor do I have any debt to my name. Really though, it feels like I have nothing to offer these companies at this point and my track record of job-hunting has been a disaster since graduating. I'm also not a job hopper either (longest stint at a job was for 7 years). I do not want to go back to school (because nothing interests me at all), so I'd just be wasting more time, effort and money.
TLDR ; quit my remote job for a terrible job. Quit that one due to stress, found a job where I've been demoted to working in the warehouse. No real career trajectory and still living at parents.
What can I do at this point?

Okay so. I made a and a class for it. But somehow I cannot use it in editor. It cannot find it. Also it gives me errors like "Cannot find Element property in UserControl". Here's my full code:

             --------------------------------------------------------- using System; using System.CodeDom.Compiler; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Markup; namespace wpftest { public class DescriptivePanel : UserControl, IComponentConnector { public string Title { get { return (string)base.GetValue(DescriptivePanel.dependencyProperty_0); } set { base.SetValue(DescriptivePanel.dependencyProperty_0, value); } } public string Description { get { return (string)base.GetValue(DescriptivePanel.dependencyProperty_1); } set { base.SetValue(DescriptivePanel.dependencyProperty_1, value); } } public UIElement Element { get { return (UIElement)base.GetValue(DescriptivePanel.dependencyProperty_2); } set { base.SetValue(DescriptivePanel.dependencyProperty_2, value); } } public DescriptivePanel() { this.InitializeComponent(); } [GeneratedCode("PresentationBuildTasks", "4.0.0.0")] [DebuggerNonUserCode] public void InitializeComponent() { if (this.bool_0) { return; } this.bool_0 = true; Uri uri = new Uri("/wpftest;component/DescriptivePanel.xaml", UriKind.Relative); Application.LoadComponent(this, uri); } [GeneratedCode("PresentationBuildTasks", "4.0.0.0")] [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)] [DebuggerNonUserCode] void IComponentConnector.Connect(int connectionId, object target) { if (connectionId == 1) { this.descriptivePanel = (DescriptivePanel)target; return; } if (connectionId == 2) { this.stackPanel_0 = (StackPanel)target; return; } this.bool_0 = true; } public static readonly DependencyProperty dependencyProperty_0 = DependencyProperty.Register("Title", typeof(string), typeof(DescriptivePanel), new PropertyMetadata(null)); public static readonly DependencyProperty dependencyProperty_1 = DependencyProperty.Register("Description", typeof(string), typeof(DescriptivePanel), new PropertyMetadata(null)); public static readonly DependencyProperty dependencyProperty_2 = DependencyProperty.Register("Element", typeof(UIElement), typeof(DescriptivePanel), new PropertyMetadata()); internal DescriptivePanel descriptivePanel; internal StackPanel stackPanel_0; private bool bool_0; } } 

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I, (21F), come from a harsh background, from porn addiction as a child, to online toxic and traumatizing sex addiction as a young teenager, which lasted until I was 17, where I started therapy, and actually.. got a boyfriend, but the therapy truly changed me. One thing is i never discussed my online sex addiction enough with my therapist, i thought i was ok and she believed i was to relapse if my boyfriend just left.
Now, 21, I recently left my boyfriend somewhat 6 months ago, having been with him for 2.5 years. The overall experience was painful, cruel, and intense.
What made me go to sexual activity was the feeling of un safety i feel around any other type of connection in my life. I don't want or like love anymore. And friends aren't there. Sex partners are the only thing that's true, not fake, and soothing. I never liked fwb, I hated the attachment I felt and the love I have to hide. I did one night stands a couple of times.
But i thought i was resulting to one night stand sex as it's the only thing that gives me relief in my life, so i thought i was normal to seek relief, and took care not to overdo it.
However i recently quit that as well, as I'm not feeling well at all. I feel ghosted due to the fact that I had sex with a complete stranger, and another complete stranger. And other hard feelings .... etc...
How do i know if i were addicted to sex ?

I'm having fun writing fight scripts for you, and I have enough to do a whole season 1, featuring such based MUs as Captain Planet vs Hedorah, Deker vs Scorpion, Billy Butcher vs kano, and the finale Old Man Logan vs The last ronin.
But I'm not going to stop there,I'm going to do a season 2, decided by you guys, I have picked the mus for the premiere and finale, but the rest is up to you.
As usual they'll be published on the fanon wiki and they have a few rules, no mus already on the site or with preschool or irl characters.
Suggest some MUs, the ones I'll like most will be in a poll to decide that episode, winner gets a fight script, it probably won't be the until the end of the month I'll start working on season 2, but we'll probably get a full episode list by then
Suggest away
MUs that have already been suggested that I won't write fight scripts for due to either being not interested in the MU or I don't know enough about one or both of the characters
Liquid Snake and Shadow Moses vs Zeke Yeager and Marley (Metal Gear vs Attack on Titan)
Ar-Pharazon and Numenor vs Ozai and the Fire Nation (Tolkien's Legendarium vs Avatar)
Chisato Nishikigi and Takina Inoue vs Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (Lycoris Recoil vs The X-Files)
Loid Forger vs Siesta (SPY X FAMILY vs The Detective is Already Dead)
Cayna vs Yuna (In the Land of Leadale vs Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear)
Cursa vs Emperor Belos
The Terrarian Vs The Survivor
Arthur Morgan vs John Wick
Heather Mason vs Moira Burton (Silent Hill vs Resident Evil)
Keiichi Maebara vs Steve Harrington (Higurashi vs Stranger Things)
Matchups that I could write a fight script for but were suggested last time because I want other MUs to get a shot
Deep Sea King vs Hody Jones
Jon Snow vs Faramir (A Song if Ice and Fire vs Tolkien's Legendarium)
KND vs TMNT

Gather ye round and listen to my tale of days long ago, a time of Yaoi Paddles and Caramelldansen, when being Glomped into a pile of pain by a random passing stranger was an active threat and fear of many.
I give you the tale of Kittykitty, half remembered as rusty brains tend to do after the passage of time and too many tackle-hugs to the floor by random cosplayers over the years cause some things to fade.
KittyKitty was a gentleman in tiger facepaint and a tattered punk denim jacket, often also with studded gloves and basically a very "possibly there at the birth of punk, possibly also a catboy zombie" look that was kind of interesting. He also liked to wear a lot of chains, including a collar with a leash on it, and therein we find a major part of our tale, for you see, Kittykitty had a character he played at cons, and rules for interacting with that character, sometimes written out on a sheet of paper he would hand to people he interacted with.
One of the rules was that if you were handed his leash, you became his "owner" and he would escort you around the con as long as you were holding the leash. Another rule was that to give up ownership, you needed to pass the leash off to someone else, and then he would follow them around instead as long as they were holding the leash. (There were a couple others, but the years have faded them from my memory.)
You begin to see the pattern of how the game is played, right?
Some people found it funny and played along, some people thought he was a con creeper and even tried to start a petition to ban him, most people just accepted it as there being another person in the building weirder than them and shrugged it off, he was even a bit notorious/famous for a time at the shows he attended.
Kittykitty and the rise of the Death Note "yaoi handcuffs" trend were the main reason a certain convention established a "no leashes/chains/handcuffs connecting people" rule. And then, one day he was just gone from conventions entirely.
I don't know what happened to him after that, and sometimes I wonder, occasionally I honestly wonder a great deal about the quirks and curiosities of that man, but like all things truly unique and of their time, perhaps it's all best left as mysteries and legend.

Every time I Share -> Export File, the background tasks window shows that sharing is engaged. But when I open the disclosure triangle (to the left of the Sharing line-item,) it reveals that transcoding is in progress.
This happens even though all of my footage is ProRes 4:2:2, with no titles, cuts or anything. The same thing happens if I drop a recently shared-to-file file back onto a timeline and share again, having made no changes of any sort. Again, it shows transcoding. Why?
Media playback is set to Optimized/Original, and Quality is set to Better Quality. And all the settings match the source file. (I'd think FCP would simply copy the file with no transcoding at all.)
Thanks for any insights.
​

I (30M) and my partner, J (M29) of 3.5 years recently moved to his hometown for a year. J comes from a wealthy and influential family of his town. He moved to the capital city of our country when he was 21. At the time he was engaged to another man, it was sort of an arranged-cum-love bond which was/is common for people if his family’s wealth. My partner broke off the engagement because he wasn’t in love with his fiancé and wanted to live away from his town (disagreeable to his fiancé).
I come from an extremely different upbringing. I spent most of my childhood in foster homes and was later taken in by a good family at the age of 16 and gained an amazing older brother (and friend). So, neither do I come from wealth nor a fancy lineage.
This was hardly a hindrance in our relationship. J is the sweetest man ever, aware of his privileged background yet very humble and kind.
We had been living together for only a few months when J received an offer from his family’s company (his cousin being the oldest child inherited the position of ceo) to work at the same post as he is for a better salary. J was elated, more so for the opportunity to live close to his family. J’s mom and I have don’t have the best relationship. I am nothing she ever wanted for J. Adding to that, mother wants J to get married but J and I have no plans to get married in the foreseeable future. We are very content with how things are and are looking forward to buy an apartment next year once we move back to the city.
J’s mother is still very close to the ex-fiancé which does bother me a bit only because she treats him like a son as if he still is with J. She doesn’t yell at me or anything, just ignores me and prefers to do things with the ex-fiancé. J has taken it up with her (without my probing) because it made him uncomfortable too to run into his ex-fiancé at his mother’s place. She simply dismissed him.
It makes it difficult to feel at home with his family when his mother is dismissive and clearly thinks lowly of me.
One of her acquaintances saw me hanging out with a friend (he heads the cleaning team that comes to our house and J’s mother’s). I have confided in this friend about J’s mom before. That day he actually confessed to have feelings for me. I (kindly) shut the confession down and told him we are good as only friends (I love my partner very much and only have eyes for him). J’s mother brought this up after dinner. It caught both of us (J and me) off guard because I hadn’t told him yet and also because I found it a bit creepy. Mother insinuated that an open relationship is not acceptable in the family. That there should be plans for a marriage and if I want to take more partners I should do it in secret to not taint the legacy of the family. My mind is still reeling from all of this. J was appalled to hear this and we left her house immediately. He’s currently lying in our room and I am in the kitchen “getting water”.
I feel like coming to this town was not the best decision. As much as my partner loves his family and I love being part of that family, our life in the city was calmer.

Long story short I’ve been employed for about 2 weeks now by a new firm & completed and passed my background check. The only thing is I stated on my resume that I worked for Company Y for 8 months when in reality it was like 5-6 ( I know it’s wrong but I was desperate for new employment by this point). Now I’m needing to complete the FNRA background check (U4) and I’m starting to get nervous that it’ll question my 2-3 month gap for that company. Has anyone been in my shoes before or can possibly provide some sort of insight? I can’t be the only one who’s stretched out employment months for a company to sound better😭
Did I just fuck myself? I have a clean record and no financial crimes or anything like that

This drama is mainly about the events of Season 7/World Championship 7 (WC7), the season of Battlebots that aired in 2023. Big spoilers for the season inbound, including the overall winner, along with spoilers of the outcomes and winners of previous seasons.
I will try my hardest to be unbiased which is hard because I am extremely biased and any attempt to be unbiased could only come across as enlightened centrism. I will simply try to keep the bias to a manageable level.

Battlebots

In case you don't know, Battlebots (well, combat robotics, but Battlebots is the most well-known and publicized event by an order of magnitude) is a... sport? Game? Hobby? Lifestyle? Where the goal is to throw two robots of a comparable weight against each other, with the goal to destroy each other. Battlebots itself is in the heavyweight category, with a 250 lb weight limit per robot. Other popular weight classes (relatively popular - heavyweight is the only televised one) are antweight (1 lb), beetleweight (3 lb), hobbyweight (12 lb), and lightweight (30 lb.) Battlebots itself airs on Discovery, generally with a main season and a spinoff season each year.
If you watched Battlebots back in the late 90s when it was on Comedy Central, you might remember robots that were basically big wedges pushing each other around a square and maybe occasionally taking a bit of armor off. That's not how it is anymore. Bots are destructive, powerful, and great spectacles to watch fight. Seriously, you should watch Battlebots. It's on Discovery+ and HBO Max. If you don't want to spend the money, Norwalk National Havoc Robotics League (NHRL) has competitions every few months that are livestreamed for free on Youtube in the smaller weight classes.
In case it's not clear from the write-up, Battlebots is filmed usually in the fall, and the season airs spring the next year. So all of the events in this write-up occurred over a 2-week period in OctobeNovember 2022, but only were public drama as the episodes aired January-May 2023. Much like any reality/game show, all the builders, production, etc. knew the outcome of the season before anything aired, there's just millions of dollars of NDAs.

The Culture

Something interesting about Battlebots that might surprise those unfamiliar with it is the culture. While teams work as hard as they can to reduce the other robot to splintered scrap in the box, back in the pits everyone is super awesome and nice and kind and helpful - a frequent occurrence is going to the pit of the bot you just took apart and seeing if there is any way you can help with the rebuild.
The classic example is in the 2021 season, when the iconic Witch Doctor's weapon disk kept breaking due to poor quality steel. They were scrambling to find material and resources to machine a new disk, when a ton of teams came together to save their season.
Team Sporkinok (yes, that's a trans Battlebot) lent them their pickup truck, to go pick up steel from a nearby supplier who was found by the captain of Team Blacksmith.
They needed to recreate the failure to figure out was wrong, so Team Shatter (the biggest, strongest hammer-bot in the competition) took their robot to the test box to try and break a disk.
They took the steel to the nearby build space of Team Chomp, who stayed up all night on their waterjet to cut new disks (the new disks worked well, by the way.)
After the season, they still didn't know for sure what the cause was, so they worked with Team Hypershock to create a dummy test robot, modeled after the very durable robot (and future 2022 champs) Tantrum, they could test the old disks on. They then sent the broken disks to a materials science lab run by a friend of the captain of Team Tantrum to perform materials analysis.
Many of these teams had fought Witch Doctor in the past, others would fight them in the future. But that doesn't matter - in robot combat, everyone is friends outside the box.
Right?

Riptide

Every year there are of course rookie bots competing for the first time. Sometimes from veteran teams and builders, such as last year's Blip (from the creators of Tantrum), or this year's RIPperoni, from former members of the teams behind Uppercut and P1, but just as often from new builders, at least new to heavyweight (almost nobody starts out with with the robots that can cost as much as a new car.)
One of these 'new-to-heavyweight' rookies last year was Riptide, captained by Ethan Kurtz (the guy with the "you know I had to do it to em" pose.) Ethan had found a good amount of success previously with the beetleweight Rival, and Riptide was basically Rival writ 80 times bigger. Riptide had a pretty good first season, winning 2 out of their 3 qualifying fights and making it to the quarterfinals before losing to the extremely good SawBlaze.
No real controversy, aside from a false start and early hit on HUGE in their first fight - written off as "I'm fighting a heavyweight on Battlebots for the first time" nerves, no hard feelings from anyone, not even HUGE. They also gave fan-favorite (formerly) indestructible brick Duck! such a bad thrashing that Duck! permanently retired after that fight (Duck! was having a bad year anyway, that fight was just the icing on the cake.)
Their success led to them co-winning Rookie of the Year alongside Glitch, who won an amazing 7 fights in a row, a feat only done before by 3-time championship winner and undisputed GOAT Bite Force (Glitch had to bow out of the tournament because their bot had taken irreparable damage despite the victories, but it's possible they could have extended it even further.) Riptide became well known for Ethan screaming "LET'S GO!" (or sometimes, "LET'S F------ GO"!", giving the censors a bit of a workout and annoying production) after big wins.
So coming into season 8, their sophomore year, hopes are high for Riptide and people want to see this breakout star do well, right? After all, there's no big controversy in their funding or anything, is there?

Stan Kurtz

Stan is the bald dude next to Ethan in the team picture. He's Ethan's dad, and also one of the main sponsors for the team through his company BeCourageous. Where did Stan Kurtz get his money to sponsor a big team? Well, he once had a company named RevitaPOP. RevitaPOP made vitamin B12 lollipops. If you know anything about 'alternative medicine,' this is where you say "oh no."
Stan Kurtz was once upon a time the president of Generation Rescue. Yes, that Generation Rescue, the Jenny McCarthy 'vaccines-cause-autism' one. He was instrumental in getting the 'movement' off the ground in the first place - I even seem to recall seeing a link to a talk he did where he said he was backstage for McCarthy's interview with Larry King, but I'm not about to sift through hours of his horrid talks and speeches to find it.
Stan Kurtz sold lollipops that he claimed cured autism, autism that he and his organization claimed was caused by vaccines. In fact, he claimed they even cured his son Ethan's autism! Remember this when you read about Ethan's behavior - it's not an excuse, but "autistic but prevented from going to any kind of therapy or anything because it would make his dad look like a liar" is certainly an explanation.
Let me divest into opinion for a sec. Stan Kurtz is evil. There is a direct line between the actions of Stan Kurtz promoting vaccine denalism and snake oil cures, and dead children. Fuck Stan Kurtz. Every other problem with Team Riptide could be overlooked if they did not have this dude as their primary sponsor (which necessarily would require replacing Ethan as captain, because you can't separate him from his dad financially.) Okay, back to the writeup.
But put a pin in "Riptide's captain and his dad are antivaxxers" - it's a surprise tool that will help us later.

Riptide in WC7

Fight 1: Glitch

Aside from that, people didn't have that much of an opinion on Riptide going in to WC7 (and even that wasn't too widely known until partway through the season.) Generally, there was a feeling of "let's see if they can keep it up" - often a lot of very promising rookie bots have weak second seasons. They started the season fighting Glitch, to see who was truly better. One hit, weapon-on-weapon, and Glitch fucking died. Upside down, weapon not spinning, no way to self-right.
Team Glitch asked Riptide to hit them again try to flip them back over, maybe knock some life back into the bot. Not an uncommon thing, but sometimes it backfires. Riptide did, launched Glitch across the box, and now Glitch was super-dead. Instant, extremely decisive knockout for Riptide. No drama yet.

Fight 2: MaD CatTer

Now on to the second fight. This one was against MaD CatTer, consisting of community college professor Martin Mason (goatee in the middle) and his students. Martin Mason is known for his intentionally cheesebally and over-the-top Macho Man imitation/homage, with lots of pointing at the camera and saying "Oh yeah!" Also by all regards the nicest man on planet Earth and one of the most beloved figures in combat robotics.
Of note is MaD CatTer's driver, Calvin Iba (guy beneath Martin's pointing hand.) Calvin Iba is one of the few builders better known for his smaller robot - his robot Lynx is the winningest beetleweight of all time, with an incredible 11 tournament wins, 8 undefeated, and an overall record of 86-11 as of December 2022 (and several events since then, but I can't find overall fight records of those events.) Now, Lynx is a very similar design to Rival (and therefore Riptide) - Lynx predates Rival by a few months, but the design is relatively generic and common at lower weight classes so it's not exactly plagarism.
This is relevant because Battlebots production tried to stir up drama, painting Calvin as angry that Ethan copied his bot and scaled it up to 250lb before Calvin could himself. For what it's worth Calvin did play into it a bit (he brought Lynx to the fight), but by all regards there aren't really any serious hard feelings about that. "Beater bars" (the weapon style of Riptide/Lynx/Rival) predate all three bots. Worth noting that Rival lost to Lynx in a brutal slugfest in the semifinals match of NHRL a few years ago, so maybe Ethan had a bit of a revenge arc more than anything.
On to the fight. MaD CatTer is a pretty serious bot - not most people's favorite to win it all, but a 'serious contender for semifinals' kind of bot - so nobody knew how this would go. It was back and forth for... about 10 seconds, then Riptide got one good hit and did not let up. MaD CatTer got taken apart like they never had before, left a smoking mess, stuck sideways against the arena wall, knocked out within a minute. Riptide then drove around a bit and punted pieces of MaD CatTer around the box, which got them a warning from the ref for being unsafe and for doing unnecessary damage to perfectly salvageable components of MaD CatTer. The team apologized later for that, saying they wouldn't do it again. Remember that.
Okay, two rapid knockouts against serious bots. Riptide is definitely not suffering from the sophomore curse. But in the post-fight interview, we did get a little taste of Ethan being a bit of a jerk - basically dismissed Calvin/Lynx as worse Riptide, and put his hand over Martin's mouth (without Martin's permission) as a way of saying "shut up wrestler man!" Could have been funny, but it came across as somewhat mean-spirited and Martin clearly was not cool with it (and Martin Mason is not a sore loser - he spends almost every post-fight interview gushing about how good the other robot is, even if MaD CatTer loses.) Production asked Calvin what he thought, and he said (while holding Lynx) "well, I designed this robot to be unbeatable, it's a great robot to base it off of. Good job." Good comeback.

Fight 3: Captain Shrederator

Captain Shrederator is a longtime veteran, being one of the few robots (alongside Witch Doctor, Hypershock, and Lock-Jaw) who has competed in all 7 seasons of the reboot. And they've competed for even longer - under various names and throughout various small tweaks, Captain Shrederator is basically the same robot as Phrizbee, from original Battlebots Season 3.0 in 2001. They're not exactly good by any modern standard, to be honest, but they're fun and an institution of the show. Worth noting that leading up to this fight, Nick Nave (son of Shrederator captain Brian Nave and a member of the team) had been hinting at possible controversy around this fight for a few weeks beforehand on the subreddit, so people were ready for some shit.
So going in, everyone expects Riptide to win. Here's a bot that made MaD CatTer look like a middleweight, versus a team with, at the time, a 6-18 career record. Riptide can't be complacent because even Shrederator can do some damage if you let it (by some metrics, Shrederator may have the most powerful weapon in the competition), but it's their fight to lose. Ethan Kurtz explains his strategy in an interview before the fight - get some big hits that flip Shrederator over. Once they're upside-down, they can't self-right and they'll be counted out. Makes sense, a solid, quick, safe, easy way to win. Well, watch the fight here if you can.
If you can't, I will summarize: It starts off with Shrederator dodging Riptide and spinning up, until eventually Riptide gets a solid hit that breaks a piece of Shrederator's shell off and destabilizes them. One more big hit from Riptide and Shrederator lands upside-down - it's over. Well, no. Riptide then goes in and hits them again before they can be counted out. And again. And again. And again. At this point Shrederator is basically completely dead, but it's still able to spin. Shrederator's team calls over to Riptide "yo, stop it we're dead already." Riptide hits Shrederator again. Riptide's weapon operator tells Ethan to hit him again. And so he does. And one more time, as sparks fly out of Shrederator's pulverized electronics. Riptide leaves Shrederator dead on the floor, as they go and, you guessed it, punt shrapnel around the box. At this point the referee has to physically take the controller from Ethan (while the rest of team Riptide tries to stop the ref.)
Of course this is a KO for Riptide, but in doing so they did around $10,000 worth of extra, unnecessary damage to Shrederator, and almost the entire bot had to be thrown out and rebuilt from spares. Riptide was not apologetic (and in fact later Ethan would gloat to the camera over how Team Shrederator hadn't even tried to rebuild their bot.) No members of Team Riptide helped Shrederator rebuild either, though one did offer. (It wasn't Ethan, Stan, or the weapon operator Sid.)
To say this was controversial to the community would be lying. Controversy requires some argument or debate. There was none - everyone thought Riptide went way too far. Riptide later tried to say "we interpreted their spinning as intent to keep fighting, and we couldn't hear them asking us to stop." Which was seen by most of the community as a load of crap, since Ethan had said to the camera that he didn't need to do those late hits just before the fight, and teams are bantering with each other in fights all the time. Riptide was formally warned by the ref again for this fight.
At this point, the editors I guess realized that controversy sells. In almost every remaining episode of the season, even ones where Riptide didn't fight, they had some clip of Riptide, or Ethan, or something else to rub in "these guys are really mean and have a good bot, wHaT iF tHeY wIn???" Very much a 'whenver Riptide's not on screen, all the other robots should be asking "Where's Riptide?"' situation. It got old very fast (read: instantly.)

Fight 4: Black Dragon

You want to talk about beloved teams, you have to mention Black Dragon. This Brazilian team is known for two things - their plush duck, which they won in a claw machine the first time they came to the US for a competition and have kept as a good luck charm ever since, and their durability - they had gone a near-record 24 matches without ever getting knocked out, winning all of those fights or losing by judge's decision. Leading up to this fight, Battlebots kept having segments showing how Black Dragon had almost surpassed Bite Force for the "most fights without a KO" streak (Bite Force was never KO'd in its entire 4-season career, going 26-1 with 1 lost JD.) Of course, then they had to fight Riptide.
This fight was probably the least controversial Riptide fight of the season - you can watch it here. Riptide went in and did not let up, unrelenting, leading to the Brazilian bot suffering their first ever KO in under a minute. Riptide was actually pretty chill in the post-fight interview, very respectful towards Black Dragon - I guess that ref warning stuck. For now. With that, Riptide advanced to 4-0 in the qualifiers, and ended up securing themselves the #2 overall seed (behind the undefeated Brazilian monster Minotaur, a favorite to win it all every season and the season 3 runner-up.)

Round of 32: Shatter

For those who don't know, Battlebots has a series of qualifying fights (this year, 4 fights per bot) to determine, out of the contenders (50 this year), which 32 get to compete in the tournament for the Giant Nut, and where they will be seeded. As the #2 seed, Riptide got to fight the #31 seed - hammer-bot Shatter, who you saw earlier helping Witch Doctor. Now, let me not mince words - Shatter was fucked. To paraphrase a comment I saw, "If Shatter drives like a god, gets the most perfect hammer shots ever, and in general is the best a hammer has ever looked in the history of hammers... they will still lose." There was no way Shatter could ever, ever win, barring some kind of catastrophic self-induced failure from Riptide. But damn it, Shatter captain Adam Wrigley was sure as hell going to try.
Now, for more info, the bots have rules that govern what you can do. There's a lot, but 2 are relevant - strict 250 lb weight limit, and the tip speed of a spinning weapon cannot exceed 250 mph. Bots are weighed before each fight to confirm the weight limit, and all bots with spinners have to do tip speed tests in the test box. After the weigh-in, you cannot modify or work on your bot in any way without the approval of production and safety. Not for anything. Maybe a sticker if you want.
So when a Shatter team member found Riptide working on their bot in the tunnel leading from the pits just before the fight, questions were had, and team Shatter demanded Riptide be reweighed and tip speed retested (there were rumors in the pits that they were spinning faster than 250mph.) The team later explained they were attaching a plastic hammer to the robot to mimic Shatter (teams doing funny decorative mods to their bot to mimic the other bot is a longstanding tradition.) All evidence seemed to point to that being the case, so nobody thinks they were lying about it, but it still warranted a reweigh. My opinion - that's fine, but tell production. If people think you're going to do something illegal, and you do something legal but in a way that looks illegal, don't be surprised when people think you're doing something illegal.
I will note that the show made a big deal out of how when Riptide was weighed before they were 'caught,' they weighed in at 250 lb, and the re-weighing said they were 248. There was some concern from Shatter about that, not helped by Stan Kurtz being kind of smug back to them. In response to one Shatter member asking "Why is it 248 now and 250 before?", Stan responded "You're right, there's something wrong. We made it lighter." Now, the thing with this is that there are multiple scales, they're not extremely precise, and if anyone has ever worked with industrial scales before you know how easily they come out of calibration. Some builders have said that whether or not the AC was on could add a pound of weight from the airflow. The "250lb" scale was not the same as the "248lb" scale as well. Generally, nobody really thinks there is something up with the weight, but working on the bot post-weigh-in absolutely warrants a reweigh, no matter who it is.
Riptide complained a lot about it, to the point where the word "whiney" comes to mind. You messed up, teams are meant to tell production before they add decorative stuff and you didn't, so you need to be reweighed. You've already pissed people off in the past so don't be surprised when they give you a bit more scrutiny. Take your lumps, apologize, act like adults, and maybe people will give you the benefit of the doubt next time. Instead, there was a lot of "oh boo is me, we're being discriminated against" - a direct quote from Ethan is "their paranoia is affecting our performance, I think it's really uncool that they did this." Granted, if the scale drifted the other way and they had to lose 2lb of armor to satisfy the arbitrary scale drift, I would get it more, but as it is they just look, well, whiney.
At this time, unbeknownst to anyone until they revealed it on a livestream, Team Whyachi (the team behind the powerful flipper Hydra, engine of (self-)destruction Fusion, and Comedy Central-era legend Son of Whyachi, who had the pit next to Riptide, was asked by production to put a spy camera up to make sure everything was above board. Allegedly they also began doing analysis of the audio and video of the actual fights, to make sure teams (read: one team) weren't cheating and spinning faster than the "maximum speed" they did in the test box.
However, aside from the (explainable, acceptable) scale drift, Riptide was not found to be cheating with tip speed or anything else. Shatter accepted this without complaint - they just wanted to be sure. So, that's out of the way. Ethan basically said "they are paranoid and are trying to ruin us so we will crush them" - fair enough, I suppose. Here's the fight (note: this video includes the entire 'weigh-in' drama before the fight if you want to watch it instead of just reading about it.) For what it's worth, Shatter lasted longer than anyone yet against Riptide - almost 2 minutes - but it went the way everyone expected. The most unexpected thing was in the post-fight, where Ethan basically said "Adam is a paranoid loser" (alongside, allegedly, some more personal insults that got cut), then went in for a "sporting" handshake. Unsurprisingly, Adam refused it.
Now, Adam is basically the "union rep" for the builders - he's the guy chosen (by the builders) to represent them when Battlebots is thinking about changing the rules. He is a very widely respected guy and is by all accounts very sporting and nice. So when you've pissed him off enough that he refuses the handshake (only the second refused handshake in modern Battlebots history, as far as I am aware), you know you fucked up. But either way, Riptide is on to the round of 16.

Round of 16: Hypershock

You saw Hypershock earlier. They're quite good - definitely a contender, though generally not going to be anyone's main pick to win it all. This year, they were the #18 seed after a rough set of qualifiers, fighting 2021 champs End Game, 2021 runner-up Whiplash, perennial contender SawBlaze, and the confusingly fast Claw Viper (seriously watch this, look how fast that boy is.) But after a solid win over #15 seed Lucky, they were on to the round of 16.
When I say Hypershock is a fan favorite, I mean they are the fan favorite - between their iconic style, aggressive driving, and captain Will Bales's humor and charisma, it's probably not wrong to say Hypershock is the most popular bot and team around. People love Hypershock, and people don't love Riptide, so this fight had a lot of "save us, O-Will Bales Kenobi, you're our only hope" energy with the community. Leading up to this, Will said in an interview that Riptide was good, but every team can't be good forever, and that someday Ethan will experience, in Will's words, a "humbling event."
But Hypershock wasn't the odds-on favorite here - Will Bales's flashy driving tends to lead to errors, and against something as nasty as Riptide, any error is death. The full fight isn't uploaded, but here's a clip of the post-fight highlight reel. Will started out doing a 'box rush' (charging straight at the other bot as soon as the fight starts), only to attempt to dodge to the side. Unfortunately, this led to him powersliding directly into Riptide's weapon, losing a wheel, and getting flipped over.
Now, the thing with vertical spinners in Battlebots is they spin 'up' - this means that the outer side goes up and the inner side goes down, so you can brace your own bot against the floor and send the other one flying. Now Hypershock is upside down, effectively spinning 'down,' so the energy from hits pushes the other bot down and themselves up. Riptide is spinning 'up' as normal. Both of these are extremely powerful weapons. Both want to send Hypershock into the air. So what happens when they collide? The energy of both weapons goes into sending Hypershock flying up over 25 feet and slamming into the ceiling of the Battlebox. Remember that that thing weighs 250 pounds. To quote Will in the post-fight interview, "nobody has ever been hit like that before." Much to the chagrin of Hydra captain Jake Ewert, who had the goal of being the first-ever bot to send another bot into the ceiling (and came within inches in their fight against Deathroll), Riptide made Battlebots history here.
The rest of the fight goes as expected at this point and Hypershock is KO'd, with Riptide moving into the quarterfinals. Sorry Will, you aren't the humbling event this time.

Quarterfinals: Copperhead

It's the final episode of the season - the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals are all in one episode. People are spooked because Riptide is a incredible, powerful bot built and driven by shitty people, and nobody wants them to win but they might. But to go any further, they have to beat Copperhead.. This snake-themed bot is probably best known for getting a new captain almost every year, and this year it's Luke Quintal in charge for his first time. They just came off of an insanely dominant upset over 2021 champs End Game.
Luke has said that he was too focused on Copperhead to pay attention to the controversy, so he became aware of it when, leading up to this fight, builders kept coming up to him and whispering in his hear "dude, you have to beat Riptide. You have to beat them. You might be our last hope." He's just a first-year captain/driver, with the oldest bot in the competition (Copperhead has had the same two frames for its entire 4-year career - this is the longest any frame has competed in the history of modern Battlebots without replacement), who's had to have back-to-back fights against rookie of the year Ripperoni, 2018 Most Destructive winner ROTATOЯ, and End Game. No pressure.
Now, people have tried ways to beat Riptide. You can't just tank their hits with a durable bot (Black Dragon.) You can't outdrive them with fancy footwork (Hypershock.) But something nobody has been man insane enough to try is to go weapon-to-weapon on purpose to break Riptide's weapon. Copperhead just went weapon-to-weapon with End Game and broke theirs. Copperhead is durable enough to take those huge hits Riptide deals out. So their strategy is to just go berserk until something breaks. But there's one major plot twist left.
Remember how I said the Kurtzes are anti-vaxxers? Well, the pandemic is still going on. In order to get into the pits, you either had to be double-vaxxed or test negative every day. Well, there's no confirmation that Ethan was or was not vaxxed (but let's be real), but guess what? In the greatest Chekhov's gun in Battlebots history, he tested positive for COVID the day of the Copperhead fight. Riptide is out their driver for their biggest fight ever.
Other builders have confirmed that this was not the first or only time that team members had to miss days due to testing positive, but previous times either 1) did not involve the drivers, or 2) were in the qualifying rounds where fights could be postponed to following days. But neither was the case this time. Now, this is really a shitty situation for Riptide, and I do feel some degree of pity for them - what a thing to happen. But at the same time, lmao.
Riptide has to spend most of the day deciding who would drive the robot in the fight. The first person they ask? Jack Barker, driver of End Game and 2021 world champion. Jack agreed - can you blame him? Riptide is a hell of a bot, probably super fun to drive, and who knows, maybe he could win another Giant Nut. This got as far as Jack driving Riptide around the test box, before Luke found out and was like "hang on, no. He's not on your team. It's not fair that you can just go to the best driver in the pits and ask them to drive for you." Production agreed and hastily made a new rule where the driver has to be a member of the team. This all was not in the episode, and was only revealed by Luke Quintal after the season aired.
Team Riptide then deliberated between the several members of the team who might stand a chance. They eventually decide on team member Felix Jing, who's an award-winning Vex Robotics driver but has never driven a heavyweight before. Felix seemed to be a nice enough guy, and pretty humble. However, in the deliberations over who would drive, they lose time and are unable to replace their damaged weapon from the Hypershock fight.
So the fight. Riptide box rushes Copperhead, and the first weapon-to-weapon sends Copperhead flying. Luke's bot is still going, though, and goes in for another clash. This goes on for a few hits, until a massive hit sends Copperhead flying up and Riptide flying back - but when they come to, Copperhead's weapon is spinning... and Riptide's weapon is cracked down the middle, exactly what Copperhead was aiming for.
Copperhead does not let up and keeps hitting, eventually ripping about a quarter of Riptide's weapon off completely. However, the damage from the last 4 years of fighting added up. Those big hits from Riptide were the final straw - one of Copperhead's two wheels just falls off. Copperhead can still move, just about, on just one wheel, but suddenly this fight got a lot closer. They keep hitting Riptide, but it goes to the judges after the full 3 minutes.
It's a split decision. Battlebots is scored on an 11-point system - 5 points for damage, and 3 each for aggression and control.
All three judges gave Copperhead three damage points to Riptide's two and Riptide two control points to Copperhead's one.
The first judge scored aggression 2-1 for Copperhead. 6-5 Copperhead.
The second judge scored aggression 2-1 for Riptide. 6-5 Riptide.
The third judge scored aggression 2-1 for the winner...
Copperhead!
They did it, they saved the goddamn universe. We will not have to live in a world where the ur-anti-vaxxer and his dickhead kid win Battlebots. Everyone is fucking ecstatic. I cheered. The audience cheered. God probably cheered. And boy, did the pits cheer - some builders have said this was the biggest celebration in the pits they had ever seen. Tim Rackley of Monsoon (big lad with the flag) apparently was picking Luke up and carrying him around the pits cheering. Riptide is out.
It's a pity Ethan wasn't there to experience his 'humbling event' in person, but it happened. He was there on a video call on a tablet - apparently, production did ask him how he felt and he went on a 5-minute rant about how the team was being forced to face jealousy and adversity because they had to get reweighed. The entire rant was cut from the episode that aired. I've seen conflicting reports if he said "if I was there we would have won," but it would be in character if he did.
Team Riptide used their appeal (each team gets one) to ask the judges to re-review the fight - they did (absolutely fair - you have nothing to lose, anyone should appeal in this situation), and as though to rub it in even more, the sole judge who ruled for Riptide changed his mind about Riptide's aggression, giving Copperhead a unanimous JD. The saga of Riptide in WC7 ends here.

Aftermath

There was zero drama of any kind for the rest of the season (all 3 fights of it.) All the fights were great, clean fights between respected and respectful teams and robots. Copperhead ended up losing to HUGE in the semi-finals - no surprise or shame there, HUGE is designed to be invincible to bots like Copperhead. HUGE ended up facing the mighty SawBlaze in the finals, and in probably the best finals match in combat robotics history, SawBlaze managed to win a unanimous JD, giving SawBlaze captain Jamison Go the Giant Nut.
Literally zero people were unhappy with this - both Jamison and HUGE captain Jonathan Schultz are some of the nicest, most genuine, humble builders in the sport, and going into the finals it was very much a "no matter who wins we all win" kind of thing. Both bots are also "non-meta" - "meta" being the general form of bot that Hypershock, Riptide, Witch Doctor, Copperhead, etc. are, a compact vertical spinner - seasons 3-6 saw meta bots win both first place and runner-up, so people were excited to see a finals match with something new on both sides.
This was very recent, so no news if Riptide will be invited back next year. I would be shocked if they weren't, though - controversy sells, and regardless of how bad the team is, the robot is a killing machine that makes for incredible spectacles. There is allegedly a "sportsmanship rule" being added next year - it's a pity that something that has gone unspoken for decades has to codified in rules because of the actions of one team, but hopefully it will help. Between unethical sponsors, destroying fan favorite bots, being rude both inside and outside the box, cheating allegations, and a stunning lack of humility, Riptide really checked all the boxes in the 'bad guys' field this year.
I could say "the viewing community is willing to give Riptide one more chance to apologize and redeem themselves" but that would be a lie. For the most part, the subreddit, main Discord, etc. are all sick and tired of ever seeing the team again, and would love nothing more than for some cool, nice builder to hijack the bot so we can have cool robots and cool people. I don't know how the builders feel - I imagine that they're probably not quite as vehemently opposed to the team on average, but there's probably no love lost.
I enjoyed writing this up quite a lot, because it really was a classic "villain defeats the main good guys, but then the underdog comes out of nowhere and saves the day" story. Also Battlebots rules. Feel free to ask me anything about the show, or any bots, or if you want to see some cool bots that I didn't include. And seriously, watch Battlebots, it's so good. Check out /battlebots - it's the off-season, so the shitposts are about to get real good. I'm running out of characters so the collection of miscellaneous facts I originally had stuck on the end of this writeup is going to be in the comments.

Alright, so this is part 2 of my analysis of the 2nd WRW. Part 1, where I looked at the pure statistics, is here,
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While the outcome of the Second WRW will mostly be decided on the ground, international actors can play quite the role in giving Russia a fighting chance, or alternatively hastening their downfall. In this post I will analyse the diplomatic activity that might surround the conflict, along with the possible inputs of the following:-
The Pakt
The US
Japan
Italy
And some others.
For continuity from my last post, we're assuming a scenario where both powers are somewhat successful going into the mid-70's. For Germany, Fash Speer, with the Pakt including Iran or the UAR, or even both. For Russia, a decently competent unifier like Zhukov, Batov, Suslov, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk or Viatka, but no one too extreme on either end. We're also assuming the war begins in 1978, giving Russia about 6-7 years to consolidate and re-arm post reunification.
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So lets start with the war itself. But not what's actually going on. Rather, what it would look like to the international community?
Well, to begin with, a long-dead power has just risen from the ashes of a radio-silent wasteland (where no one knew what has been going on for two decades) possibly following a radically different ideology from its predecessor, the USSR. This new Russia is now, to the disbelief of everyone, is going after the first power of Europe and one of the world's superpowers - a nation that already put it down twice - with a complete disadvantage in manpower, material and support. To anyone with a brain, and a less than average knowledge of domestic affairs in both nations, this is a losing fight, and you wouldn't be ridiculed for suggesting Germany's got this under control.
But there's more going on.
In the background, a web of diplomacy laid by both sides for half a decade prior is now starting to come to fruition. Let's see the options.
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The Pakt - The Pakt by the mid-70's has the potential to be massive. Covering half of Europe in most runs, and possibly more, along with significant influence in the Middle East. People tend to forget the Pakt in their WRW headcanons, but it really is a major player here. After all, is the Pakt not a defensive alliance? But let's assume that none of the nations of the Pakt (apart from Finland and Iran for reasons I'll elaborate on later) want to get directly involved. Germany can still rely on the material and diplomatic support from the entirety of the Pakt, as well as neutral Pakt-aligned nations like Sweden and the UAR. These nations would most definitely condemn Russia, and would cut all trade to Russia, as minor as it is. Additionally, the Zollverein, an EU of sorts, has enough trade flowing within it to keep Germany and it's industry afloat for the duration of the war.
The United States - Surely, the United States will step up! Upon the commencement of the WRW, the last beacon of liberty will waste no time in embargoing the Pakt, and flooding Russia with 5.56cm Democracy! Or will it? Lets consider a few things. Assuming Speer is in charge, and has spent the last ten years signing trade agreements with the OFN and lifting embargoes, why is the US going to just throw away a massive revenue stream for what is most likely a losing fight? As mentioned above, for all observers this is most likely a losing fight for Russia, and the US needs to balance supporting Russia and not antagonising another nuclear superpower when they already have their hands full with Japan.
That's not to say the US won't covertly support Russia with supplies. American Equipment is far superior to Russian Equipment here, and it's use could help balance the scales in the conflict. But the most likely scenario is for American support to amount to covert aid and nothing more.
This may change if Russia wins some quick early victories, and the prospect of a Russia victory grows. In that case, the US may decide it's worth putting all their eggs into the Russian basket, and one could expect diplomatic and material support to grow.
TLDR - It's gonna be a careful balancing act.
Japan - On the other side of Asia and the Pacific lies Japan. I'm gonna start with uncomfortable conversations here - Japan and Germany have very little reason to be antagonistic to each other. Their spheres largely do not interact, and Japan has far more pressing concerns in the Pacific.
On the flip side though any American supported Russia would be seen as a threat to Japanese interests, especially since the prospect of a victorious Russia turning their attention to Primorsky and Vladivostok isn't unrealistic.
Unless someone who is explicitly pro-Japan is in charge, actually providing concrete benefits to the Sphere, there is very little chance of Japan throwing their weight behind Russia.
Italy - Most people wouldn't expect Italy to be Russia's greatest supporter, but hear me out. Italy has a lot of reasons to want to fuck Germany over, as a Russian victory and collapse of the Pakt could see Italy swoop in and pick up the pieces, replacing Germany as Europe's first power. I can see Italy throwing some support behind the Russians, mostly through material and diplomatic support. Considering Italy, even at its weakest, controls the Suez and the Mediterranean, and has a healthy oil supply from the Gulf, an embargo on or from Germany could be weathered. The Italians, nuclear armed, know that Germany wouldn't dare fight both Russia and Italy together.
However, it's still a balancing act, given that Germany literally borders the Italian state. It's just as likely that Italy could support Germany too.
The Pakt (part 2) - I said earlier that Iran and Finland could get directly involved. And it depends entirely on momentum. Should the Germans weather the offensive and begin pushing back, Finland may consider it well worth their time to open up another front and take Karelia back. Iran could potentially share a border with Russia, should the Russians decide to absorb Central Asia, and it's very possible that the Iranians could see the 2WRW as a threat to their own security, similarly throwing their full weight behind Germany should the latter start winning.
Around the world - China - Too busy. India - Bigger fish to fry. Iberia, Britain, Brazil, Argentina - Depends on alignment.
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Equipment and supplies.
We've already established that some powers will send minor to significant amounts of aid to Russia. But how might this look on the field?
To begin with, Japan is the only country that could provide significant amounts of aid to Russia, if they wish to. Why? Ports. Russia has ONE port that it could use throughout the year, and that is Magadan. The arctic ports? Frozen half the year. European ports? Kriegsmarine says hello. Japan can largely bypass this by supplying aid through Manchuria, but regardless of who provides the aid, be it the OFN, CPS or Italy, there is no chance in hell they provide enough to arm every single one of the millions of Russians flooding into Moskowien. Most likely, foreign aid will be limited to select elite units, while the vast majority of the Russian Army is equipped with domestically produced (and likely outdated) equipment.
On the other hand, the Germans would have access to their own domestically produced arms, as well as material produced around the Pakt.
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Nukes
The nuclear option was never off the table. Both are nuclear armed nations, but to lump them into the same category is ludicrous. Russia by the mid-70's has at most five to ten nukes, mostly low-yield, with the first one coming only in 1972. There's no way they can mass-produce nukes with most of their experts dead or emigrated, and with an industry that is a shadow of the USSR's. Germany, on the other hand, has tens of thousands of various tonnage, and even if most are in disrepair or disuse, they still have orders of magnitude more.
Although I think a nuclear exchange is highly unlikely, someone pointed out in the last post that Germany can and most likely would use tactical nukes if pushed far enough, and I agree to an extent. Where I disagree with most on this sub is 1) When they'd use one and 2) The response. So, here's a scenario I want to propose :-
1) When - Moskowien is a money sink, and largely useless as anything more than a buffer state, at least that is what most of the sub thinks. I think it's worth more, but Moskowien is still worth less than the other three RK's. If the Russians begin to threaten Ostland, Ukraine or the Caucasus, I can definitely see Germany consider the nuclear option, issuing threats. If Russia pushes too far, off go 10 low-yield tactical nukes to turn a few field armies into a smouldering crater in the ground.
2) The response - Russia, of course, would be furious. Off goes the entire Russian arsenal in response. A few get intercepted, three or four proceed to turn a few frontline cities in Ostland or Ukraine to ash (realistically the Russian's don't have long range capabilities to hit Berlin or Vienna only six years after reunification). Well done, the Russians have no more nukes left, and Germany is PISSED.
A few people think this would spur an all-out OFN and CPS response, but I ask the question - will the US and/or Japan really want to start an all-out nuclear war over a few low-yield nukes in a country that wasn't even on the map ten years ago? More likely there would be widespread condemnation of the Reich, with the OFN, CPS, Italy and even some Pakt nations embargoing and diplomatically isolating Germany, but no all-out nuclear war.
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Well, that's it. Personally, my opinion from last time stands. Russia's best chance is to strike fast and hard, capitalising on a moment of weakness, and keeping their aims limited to Moskowien and the Caucasus. If the war drags on, Germany just gets stronger as the Russians lose momentum, and a war of attrition would be disastrous.
This is just my analysis, and all this is subjective. I'd love to know what you guys think. Perhaps next week, I'll analyse in detail the industrial and logistical situations of each side.

After a couple days of testing I am a very sure Druid main and I honestly don't need to play other classes anymore lol
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1. probably the best generator in the game (DR, vulnerability, immobilization, good essence generation).
2. while pulverize is the best dudu spender, tornado and landslide are also viable, shred can work. Only the lightning storm stuff is useless. Meaning it's, what, the only class in game that can use most of the spender skills and not suck while doing so?
3. pets have powerful active skills that make leveling fun. Poison creeper's AOE nuke is murder. Using all three pet skills melts elites (actually instagibs many of them) while leveling until you're way into your 30s. I wish my Barb could do that, but sadly he can't... he's stuck with rend and running in circles until bleeding does its job.
4. pets also distract enemies + you get great healing from skills (both roars) so you can actually play the levelup game without gulping potions 24/7 like a Barb.
5. The aspects you get from dungeons are actually powerful. Barbs would love that, kek, poor dudes have to find everything that's useful from RNG gods.
6. there's plenty of defensive skills, making nec/rogue jelly. Earth barrier is amazing and one of the supporting aspects comes from a dungeon so you don't have to wrestle the RNG gods to get it. The only "wtf" thing to me is that they have nerfed cyclone armor which wasn't that good to begin with.
7. I think dudu's paragon boards are the best overall, or a serious contender. Good balance between offense and defense. +192% rare node gem can get you ez 30% damage reduction AND plenty of +damage% at the same time. Also, unique paragon nodes are actually damn powerful. The x45% damage while being near 3 poisoned enemies in particular. Some other classes, Necro in particular, suffer from meh paragon boards: no good defensive options, too many paragon minion nodes.
8. Many skills have proper gravity and impact to it, esp. bear skills. Especially trample. Probably my favorite skill, i wish the CD was shorter.
9. Grizzly rage is ridiculous with proper support. One of the best ultimates in the game (and one of the few that's actually useful).

Leveling is fun, not a chore like with Barb, which will be important during seasonal gameplay.
My only complaint is lack of spirit regen and a boring class ability (just passive bonuses? cmon...). Oh and Cataclysm sucks.
Dudu for life.

Hi selfimprovement, happy to be here! I've always been someone who aspires to prioritize my mental and physical health, but I've never had the self discipline or motivation to follow through with my goals. I just turned 25, and as I get older, my unhealthy habits are starting to catch up to me. I'm not looking to be the most disciplined or fit person of all time, but I do need to start to taking better care of myself. I am doing very well in my career, have a great social life, and am in therapy which has helped my anxiety a lot. However, I struggle waking up on time and therefore spend the majority of my day running around frantically trying to get to things on time, have terrible eating and sleeping habits, don't exercise despite having a gym in my apartment building, and struggle a lot with sticking to a routine bc of aforementioned lack of self-discipline (I also have ADHD, but find routines are helpful... until i fall off the wagon). I feel overwhelmed trying to get my life together and have no idea where to start.
A bit of relevant background info and my goals:
- I struggle a LOT to wake up on time, especially if I don't have somewhere to be first thing in the morning. I set my alarm for 7:30 every day, but can't remember the last time i actually got up at that time except to like travel or something.
- I live in a large city and work in a creative field where socializing and networking is extremely important. The vast majority of my friends are also creative types, so many of my friends do freelance and/or don't have consistent work hours where they have to wake up at specific times. I work a 9-6 at a creative agency, 2 days in office, 3 days WFH— these days are flexible. Because I'm a creative, it's pretty acceptable to roll into the office late, which I've taken complete advantage of. I can't remember the last time I went into the office at 9am, I always stroll in late.
- I typically don't wake up in time to eat breakfast, literally can not get out of bed until the last possible second, and that sets the tone for the day— constantly running around forgetting things and stressing out about being late places.
- My night time routine isn't much better, I don't have a consistent bedtime. Because I don't have any personal time at the beginning of the day, I end up decompressing at night, which of course turns into procrastinating, staying up late reading or watching TV, feeling wired and gross and stressed and not actually relaxing. I don't spend my alone time working on my hobbies, even though I know it would feel better than laying on my couch doing nothing for hours on end.
- I feel amazing when I am going to the gym consistently and I know its good for my mental health, but I can not get myself to go. I'd LOVE to workout in the mornings 3 times a week before I start working on days I WFH, but... it just doesn't happen. I always feel disappointed in myself when I realize I don't follow through. I'm starting to notice that I'm squishy, I'm not super concerned with losing weight, but I want to be in better shape and a bit more "toned". I look and feel better when I'm exercising.
- I love cooking, but again, get lazy when I finish work and end up snacking or ordering delivery and then overeating and feeling crappy. I'd love to get into the routine of eating healthy, homemade meals when I'm alone, and save eating out for when I'm socializing. Again... I tell myself that and still end up ordering delivery or takeout.
- My social life is super important to me, and I'd like to leave 2-3 evenings during the week open to see my boyfriend or friends, or do something interesting like going out or going to dinner. I feel invigorated and much more motivated the day after I go out with friends, but I don't know how to balance after work socialization with a healthy night time routine because i literally have no bedtime routine at all.
This all leaves me feeling really drained and overwhelmed by the end of the week. I always end my week feeling like I'm behind on things or disappointed that I didn't workout, eat homemade meals, get on a good schedule, or working on my hobbies. It's a really upsetting cycle where I just can not seem to hold myself accountable. The issue I run into is that all of my "problems" compound on each other and I am so confused as to how to start. If I don't wake up on time, I don't do any exercise, which leads to me eating poorly, which leads to me feeling fatigued and exhausted and unhealthy, which leads to me sleeping in, which leads me to stay up later- except im mentally drained so im not doing anything with those hours... then the cycle repeats.
Help me get my life in order please!!!
TLDR; I have no clue where to start in order to get my life in order. I WANT to be productive and organized.

So let me start this by saying that I’m not yet diagnosed- but I’ve been considerable amounts of research and looking back at my old assessments from when I was a kid and I think I definitely have dyspraxia. I want to explain why I think I have it and see what everyone else thinks!
I’m diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia so far
So since I was young I had major coordination issues- I had to go to occupational and physical therapy. I couldn’t button my own pants until I was 13. I couldn’t tie shoes until I was 15. I struggled to hold a pan because I would grab it in the weirdest way (with my elbow in the air). I still can’t use a fork and knife at the same time. Also I have absolutely no spacial awareness! In January I dropped 100 pounds onto my foot because I couldn’t motor plan how to pick it up properly. I got out of the boot for that like 3 months ago- now I was hiking with friends and somehow fell on a root and have sprained my ankle so bad I’m in a boot and tore my meniscus. So I get injured all the time from lack of spacial awareness and poor motor planning. I also have crazy bad sensory issues- especially with light and loud amounts of background noise.
When I was a kid all they diagnosed me with was “low muscle tone” but I’m almost positive I have dyspraxia- and I almost cried when I read all the symptoms because now i know why I can’t do the same things as everyone else and I can provide myself with true compassion instead of just beating myself up

Background: my girlfriend and I met while she was studying in my country 6 years ago. We dated while she was here for one year, and we both felt there was a strong connection, but we decided not to continue the relationship while apart due to the difficulties with extreme distance (separate continents, and I was still studying so we couldn't afford to travel to meet each other often). We stayed close friends however, and always intended to meet again in the future.
Around 8 months ago I was settled into my new job and she had an extended break from work, so it seemed like the perfect time to meet again. I told her I'd always felt that she was "the one" for me, and invited her to stay with me to see if we could have a relationship together. The idea was to live together for a while to see if we'd both be comfortable with her moving here and living together.
She stayed with me for 3 months and everything was perfect, I've never been happier. Eventually her break came to an end and she had to return to her country for work. When leaving we discussed how to make things work while we're apart, and began planning for her to move here within the next 18 months. She told me that she feels it's important to still message each other throughout the day (despite a 6 hour time difference meaning we can't talk directly most days), share our thoughts and feelings, as it's the only form of intimacy we can have while apart.
At first this was fine, but after a few weeks once she became busy with work, she stopped messaging so often. She would send a few messages per day, often not sending anything until mid-late afternoon. Often on weekends she would be too busy with friends to make time to call, and would get home so late that she just wanted to go straight to bed. Sometimes we didn't call for weeks. Sometimes she told me she would be able to call, and I rearranged my plans to accommodate, only for her to cancel at the last minute.
I tried talking to her about this and telling her how I feel. She told me that she doesn't really want to put time into the relationship while we're apart, she doesn't want to tell me her plans, and she doesn't want to tell me what she's doing. She says it annoys her when she feels she has an obligation to do those things. She would get annoyed at me for asking "how was your day", or "how was work", or "are you doing anything this weekend?". In the end I felt like I couldn't ask her anything at all. If I told her about my day or my plans, she'd make a brief comment on them but never offer any information of her own.
We have met several times since, and things are always perfect while we're together. Last time I told her (while she was still here) that I NEED more effort from her while we're apart. She listened, and promised to try harder. When she returned home, she tried harder for 2-3 days, but then went back to how it was before.
When we're together she's open to talk about anything. While we're apart if I send her any messages about how I feel or things that need to change, she often does not respond (despite repeated reminders), and eventually just tells me it's too tiring to read and I'm annoying her. If I say I want to talk about these things on a call, she says she doesn't want to spend the time on call doing that.
How can I approach this with her (for what will be the 4th or 5th time int total) without her just getting annoyed, and instead listening and being open to reach a compromise?
I feel I do a lot of work for the relationship (buying her gifts, showing her what I'm doing, making sure she feels cared for and missed, rearranging my plans (and even working hours) around her so we can spend time together), so I don't think my request is unreasonable, but she definitely makes me doubt this. Whenever I bring up this point she simply responds that relationships aren't about "fairness" and if we are comparing sacrifices/compromises she is not interested. I end up feeling like I am too needy, or a burden. I'm not asking for 100s of messages per day, but things like "good morning", "I finished work, it was a hard day", "good night", or "I'm a bit busy today so can't talk" would go a long way.
In all honesty, things are so bad while we're apart that I would just end the relationship if things were not so good while we're together - I never met anyone that I can talk to like her, that I can feel comfortable around and with whom I can really be my true self. That was the case in our first year together, and also in the recent months. I had several years after she first left to find someone else I can feel this way, and nothing compares. I don't want to throw away something so special for problems caused by a temporary situation, and in the worst case I'd rather just deal with another year of feeling unloved than to end things. Therefore I'm not interested in any replies suggesting to end the relationship, or take a break, or anything to that effect, no matter how well-intentioned they are.
TL;DR: How to approach my girlfriend with a request for her to put more effort into our LDR (specifically with regards to messaging more often, telling me about her day, or at least just saying good morning/goodnight), considering she's promised this in the past but not followed through, and tells me the requests are annoying while we're apart?

Hello, I’m looking for a little advice. I am in uni as a second year and I am registered as a Spanish minor and will begin my Spanish studies this fall. I am also of Colombian heritage, grew up speaking “Spanglish” at home, and am really quick at picking up on languages in general. I have an immense desire to learn languages. As of right now I am also currently enrolled in non-credit basic Mandarin classes. My overall goal in life is to learn as many languages as possible. However, becoming fluent in Spanish is really important to me because of my Colombian background.
My biggest issues with language learning is that I easily get bored when the language is “too easy for me.” For example, I had studied French for three years at the high school level and I caught on to grammar and picked up new vocabulary very quickly— overall an A student. But I never studied at home during high school. So when I graduated, I continued to try and keep up with learning French on my own but it was so easy that it was boring. It just lost my attention because I felt that there was no real challenge. I have the same situation with Spanish. My father who is a native speaker says that what I have down so far is very good and that I have potential and could easily teach myself on my own but again it is just too easy for me to be passionate about. This is why I had decided to study it as a minor, because I figured that studying it in a more professional setting will make me more disciplined and therefore force me to learn it wether I find it challenging or not.
The issue is that I have decided to take up double majoring. I don’t know if I ought to change my Spanish minor into my second major, or if I should major in Linguistics. The thing is that I don’t really know the benefits of a linguistics degree. And if I were to major in Spanish, I would be able to minor in linguistics or a more challenging foreign language.
I don’t know what would be best and most beneficial for my language studies. (Also any advice for getting back into French because I don’t want what I have learned to just go down the drain).

My dad died a little over a year ago due to complications after a tragic house fire.
My mom sure as hell has been living it up since his death. She meets all kinds of random strangers through Facebook.
My daughter's 8th birthday party is on Sunday and my mom calls me to ask if she can bring one of her latest random ass flings to her party. I told her no because I don't know him. It's pretty much a family thing aside from a couple of my daughter's friends.
Then she tries to feed me reasons as to why it should be okay. Reasons I don't give two shits about. "He's rich, he's a good guy, he looks like your dad's brother, you can meet him" I told her I don't give a fuck.
She told me to talk to my husband and see what he thinks. I can say right now he will say no and go on about how tacky she is.