Hi, everyone. This isn't my first post here. I've been a part of this group for a while now, but there was an issue with my account, and I don't have the energy nor the patience to deal with it. Anyway, moving on to my issue.
I just wrote a really long post explaining my whole back story and stuff, but I decided to delete it to keep this post a little shorter and easier to read. So, I've been dealing with pretty severe panic disorder, agoraphobia (not afraid to leave the house, just afraid of not being able to escape. Planes, college classes, cars, etc..), generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and persistent depressive disorder. So, basically, I've been pretty miserable for the past 5 years or so. The panic attacks started around 4th grade, but I didn't realize I had a problem until I was 18 and I started seeking treatment at 18. I'm 23 now.
Anyway, I've been seeing a woman for about a year now. I'm pretty crazy about her, and she makes me very happy. We have a lot in common, even anxiety, which is super nice because we're both very understanding when one of us has a panic attack or something.
However, as I started to develop feelings more and more, I started getting super jealous of her past. When we first started talking, we talked about our first time and whatever, and I found out her number. It's by no means high or anything, but my intrusive thoughts are just tormenting me. I can't do anything without them slipping in somehow.
Like, I know it's super irrational, but it just kills me to think she was intimate with other guys and stuff. I know everyone has a past, I have one as well, but I just can't get rid of these thoughts. They're just ruining me. I feel bad because I've drunkenly told her about my intrusive thoughts and she feels toxic to me. Which, I can totally understand, but she did nothing wrong, and I'm not judging her whatsoever. And, I definitely don't want to lose her because she feels bad for "making me feel bad". If anything, I'm just furious and jealous of the guys. Like, I just can't wrap my head around the fact that some random guys just got to be with her.
Listen, I'm well aware that a lot of this probably sounds irrational, and it is. I'm by no means saying anyone else is to blame except for myself. This is just an insecurity issue of mine, but I don't know what exactly I'm insecure about when it comes to this. I think about my past, and it has literally no effect on the way I feel about her, but that still doesn't make the intrusive thoughts go away.
I'm just looking for some kind of support or something. Any advice from people who dealt with this sort of thing would be greatly appreciated. I just need something.. Also, I apologize if this post is kind of all over the place. I can't really concentrate or think clearly at the moment. I would just really appreciate some kind words and/or advice. Thank you.

I work as a social media/email marketing and property manager, basically in the real estate business, they call me a rock star, jack of all trades. I do a lot of tasks for my clients from super mundane email & calendar management to basic bookkeeping. Siguro kasi I never, I mean NEVER said no to any of the tasks they assign to me. Aside from not being used to saying no even to my previous employers, I don't like the thought of not being able to do something that I know I am capable of doing. May term sila nowadays sa mga gaya ko eh, jollibee ata hahahaha! Pero ayun. I am slowly feeling the aftermath of being an over achiever. I currently have 2 permanent clients and napapagod na ako!!! Hahahaha! Pero I remind myself always, you love your job, you love having money, you love spoiling yourself, you are slowly building a sure and steady future for yourself and those you love. I guess that's what keeps me going for the last year and a half. I'm pretty new to freelancing, super close to getting my first 6 digits/month earning and I won't have it any other way. Magseself rant from time to time pero magwowork pa rin. Di madali pero kada dumadating ang pay, naghihilom lahat. Hahahaha! So yeah. Pagod ako pero masaya at the same time. For the past 5 years na I slave sa corporate world, sa pagtitiis sa traffic sa edsa at bgc, I am finally working from home and earning thrice as much. Again, mapapagod pero di susuko. Ayun. Good night mga freelancers na puyat! Last day of the week later. Fighting!

I recently 28 (HLF) have been in a 3year long relationship with my bf (29LLM) and it’s so conflicting, I have always been a super sexual person but also very very picky so I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 24 years old and I have only with 2ppl total. I met my bf at work and we have alot in common and while we do love each other I know he is a virgin and has never dated before, I also I have never dated anyone so this was new for us. The relationship started out kinda passionate he would eat me out and finger me but would never have sex with me, then one day even that stopped. I have tried to bring it up (3X’s) but even though he acknowledges it nothing changes, and I don’t want to keep talking about it if nothing changes. He is an amazing bf; kind, considerate, patient, and generous in all other ways(even though he has some flaws as well like most humans) but I am finding it harder and harder to remain sexually interested in him, I masturbate and watch porn often( he knows since I “accidentally” leave my dildo out in my apartment) but I just end up feeling jealous and resentful of him. I also end up fantasizing about the men I have had sex with (the whopping 2 off them 🙄) and I just end up replaying those memories in my head, I feel bored in my relationship and ultimately stagnated, what should I do?

Boomers zoomers gen z x t y.
I have no clue what any of these actually mean but what I have observed over the last 25 years is a strange convergence against vastly different age groups. If there werent memes roasting each other I reckon I’d not be able to tell them apart
From 10 year old girls to 50 year old mums all vying for the same attention set on tik tok to young boys slapping it up with old blokes on valorant. There’s no age related political issues it seems they’ve all mashed together. Where youth was a separate constituency it’s now just you’re unhinged left or unhinged right. Not my thoughts but a categorisation.
To even the idea of shows. It seems likes shows no longer market for age groups but rather for social issues. Adult Disney addicts and pre teens cosplaying as game of thrones. Everything is a super hero move with covering 50 different ages or some strange social quota show like Bridgerton
Now to my main point.
If everyone is seemingly doing the same thing. No matter the age would there not be at least the potential for a massive gap in wisdom. The idea is that wisdom comes from either failure or experience etc. but if everyone is failing in the same way and having generally the same experiences don’t you think this will have some effect?
I had this hunch and thought it was rubbish until I listened to a podcast featuring damien lillard talking about how the nba is rubbish because there aren’t any grown men anymore. There’s nothing to pass down. Everyone is trying to be the youthful tik tok star off the court and there is no elderly respect or longevity. And thus no basketball wisdom and that is why the game is trash. It sounds like a stretch but idk it definitely seems this is happening more largely
Apologies for the length and there is no concrete data here mostly a hunch but an imbedded question if you think this could happen and if it is happening what the ramifications might be.

-HOW I MET HER AND ALL THE HISTOERY PRIOR--
M19 shes also 19. I know its a controversial topic. You know forget about her bro, move on bro, you deserve better king etc.. Its a long story with me and her that has lasted for 3+ years. She has BPD and is bipolar as well. One night of August 2019 I was hanging out with a friend and he was showing me accounts of different girls from our city. One in particular stood out to me. That night i followed and messaged her. She surprisingly answered considering she had a private account and didnt look like the type to answer cause if im being honest back then I was totaly looking and acting like a b***h plus i hadnt matured yet. I found out she lived in my old neighborhood which meant that i had probably seen her when i was a child something that made us both happy. We had a lot in common as we found out. Same family issues same battles everyday same things we liked same movies and drinks we liked. We drank a shit ton of monster together.I found out a bit late that she had those mental issues but that still didnt stop me from loving her. Its good to mention that I was a total s*mp and didnt respect myself at that era of my life. 1 month into talking I got the courage to talk to her about my feelings and got friendzoned in the nicest way possible. I was blind enough to not realise she had a BF even tho it was obvious. We stayed friends that whole time we where super close she had her ups and downs with her manic episodes i stayed by her side and helped as much as i could.Around May of 2021 I saw a huge decline in her mood she wouldnt get online she wouldnt post talk with anyone not go out ANYTHING. Selfish me thought she was angry at me for whatever reason. I started pressing her to tell me why she was angry at her telling her im afraid to lose you the way youre acting these days etc not realizing shes having those manic depression stages due to her disorder.We werent even together so you understand that in my mind i had built this idea that shes mine. We didnt speak for 2 weeks after that fight and one day i realised that i lost a follower cause i had a private account. It was her. She removed me. On the 10th of June 2021 I felt the world falling on my head. Went into a depression for a few months. Hardly went out. When i did go out to skate (i was skating that time) I would not even bother doing a trick i would just sit down at the spot till my friends got tired and we left. Wasnt eating, always fighting with my family, lost a few friends, got into a lot of fights in the streets just cause. Life was shit. Id wake up and think about her and id go to sleep and think about her non stop. Id see dreams of me and her chilling and talking. around 8 months later I started traingin MMA and stopped skating. I built a nice body i sharpened my mind I matured (so i thought) and got my life in track.
--HOW WE GOT TOGETHER--
On May 23 2022 I was at a friends house drinking with him and his cousin cause his mom passed away. We got too drunk so my friend went to sleep. It was me and his cousin left chilling at his rooftop drinking the last 2 bottles of wine we found in his dads stash. Out of nowhere i asked him should i text her? He responded idk man do as you please. So I did. On May 24 i shot her a text at 4.30 in the morning asking her how is it going.She responded 20 minutes later but i didnt see it like in the afternoon of the same day cause i was throwing up from all the alcohol. We started chatting again and cathing up on eachothers lifes. I had never seen her so happy and excited before. She started reminicsing of all the fun times we had and all the times i told her to never forget about those moments and she told me how she thought that it was like i knew we would never speak again.Little by little she would show me signs everyday that she was interested in me. Went as far as making me a special spotify playlist full of love songs and every song had a line that she texted me basically saying how much she loved me. Friday 27 May 2023 she told me she had missed me and she realized how much she loved me and wanted me to be her BF when we baically started talking again.I ofcourse accepted. Changed our profiles to mathcing ones With a quote from Nipsey Hussle's Stucc in the grind (would be funny if she actually read this lol) and went on form there.On our first date we were both indecisive on to where to go. I had already planned to get a tattoo the day we decided to go out so she said lets go get the tattoo and we will see from there. Got to my friends place got the tattoo (which took 2 hours and i would have much rather wanted to spend those 2 hours hugging her) after the tattoo we decieded to go downtown next to the sea where there is a park where i used to skate.We sat on a bench talking and remembering memories of how she would come see me whenever i skated there etc. After a bit of chatting we had our first kiss. Unforgetable. We spent the day kissing hugging and telling eachother how much we love one another how we missed us and how we never wanted to part ways again. All was going well i was having the happiest time of my life.The second day though i decided to start messing shit up.She was coming to my area with her friends so we decided to meet for like 10 minutes. Got to the spot started chatting etc and i wanted a kiss but she was to shy cause there were her friends next to us. I got an attitude and tripped really hard basically becoming an asshole and left. She texted me all night asking why i was like that and i kept telling her to have fun with her friends and not think aboiut it because i just messed up and didnt want her to feel bad.Kinda forgot about the situation and we moved on. For the next month i would wake up to 50+ messages non stop of her writing paragraphs of how much she loved me and spamming memes saying this is us and we should do that and that.I felt blessed, happy for once to feel loved after all my family problems overwhelmed me for 18 years.I guess i was still numb andnonchalant from what had happened between us a year back so i couldnt tell her i loved her like she did even though i did. She would bless me with her beautiful pics everyday after training and would make me happy all the time.
--BREAKUP TIME--
Throughout the whole relationship i had this nonchalant and non caring attitude towards us as if i got her now shes not gonna leave or whatever.She would tell me she had some issues mental or physical and i would brush it off saying its ok we will get over it.ME THE SAME GUY THAT SAID WOULD BE ON HER SIDE FOREVER. And now that i was with her i was an asshole. This happened plenty of times and we would fight over stuff but i thought it was normal cause we were a couple i was too blinded by my ego.Cause what God gives He can also take.The day came that she told me she couldnt do it anymore and that it didnt feel like a relationship to her. She said it wasnt entirly my fault and mostly hers to feel that way(We all know i fucked up and it was my fault)She said she felt it was like a friendship rather than a relationship cause I basicxally didnt do most things that youre supposed to do in that situation.I fell into hard depression again cause after all the pain the light that came into my life and make me feel better, left and it was my fault. She wanted to stay friends so we werent on bad terms which was impossible for me. So on August 18 2022 i talked to her for the last time basically saying that it was my fault and that this probably isnt goodbye for ever and that in 6months to a year we might talk again. She said well alright u text me and i jokingly said its your turn this time (what a great time to tell a joke huh?) I unfollowed and removed her that day and for 4 months i wasnt thinking about her i would train for 3-4 hours a day because i had a fight coming up. The fight came. I won and after that like Tyson Fury said -As soon as I knew i won the fight i realized i had nothing else to train or fight for and fell into depression- and just like that until this day im feeling shit. Got fatter stopped training my family problems got to me and had a few panic attacks and decided to start taking up therapy. I explained my situation to my therapist not only for my family problems but for her as well. She said if you love her like that why are you in no contact and not reaching out to her? Is it an ego thing? Which i replied no and thinking back to it now i know its my ego that just wants to wait for her to text me which isnt gonna happen and before people start saying well if she loved you she would text you. No. This is a heavily traumatized person with mental disorders that has learned over the years to let people go if they dont want her. And i respect that. I feel like texting her every day. I remember every single detail and moment we had together. I unfortunately stalk her socials and she posted on her spotify a playlist on the day we stopped talking(august 18 2022) that included sad songs about seperation and what not. Few months ago i thought she found someone new. Wasnt the case. She posts subliminal messages on her socials about me like happy stalking and other shit towards me.I fucking sound like a creep talking about me stalking her socials.
--BOTTOM LINE--
I feel and I know that we can make it work this time i truly feel i have a chance. But i cant decide should i text her back? Should I wait for her to text me? Even if i decide to text her now. Im way outta shape and overweight to talk to a female so i have to work on myself as soon as my broken hand heals. September is her birthday and i deicded to text her then but im leaving for the army on september so i really dont know what to do. Whoever sat through this i repect you a lot. Let me know what to do down below and because a lot of details where left out feel free to ask me for info on stuff that you might weant to know. THANKS A LOT!
**TL;DR;** : I feel and I know that we can make it work this time i truly feel i have a chance. But i cant decide should i text her back? Should I wait for her to text me? Even if i decide to text her now. Im way outta shape and overweight to talk to a female so i have to work on myself as soon as my broken hand heals. September is her birthday and i deicded to text her then but im leaving for the army on september so i really dont know what to do. Whoever sat through this i repect you a lot. Let me know what to do down below and because a lot of details where left out feel free to ask me for info on stuff that you might weant to know. THANKS A LOT!

So im still a virgin at 25 and although I dont think im ugly looking (Im tall, atheltic, have always took very good care of my appearance etc) but I've always been socially inept. I still dont know how to talk to women and I've tried going to clubs but I can never pull, over the past couple of years I feel like im getting more sexually fustraited and even when I see men with women that I like it deep down angers me. When I see an attractive woman on the street I would have thoughts of kidnapping her, taking her back to my house and basically forcing her to be my wife who will pop out babies for me. I perv on women when im out and I know some women have noticed it but I dont care, even at a bar I started perving on this girl who had a BF once and the BF said to me "what the fuck are you looking at?" In which I just said "Im looking at your Girl, what are you going to do about it?" And he didnt say shit afterwards lol. But considering most women are bisexual these days, poly relationships that involve 1 man with 2 women are more common, that most immigrants coming into my country are military aged men, that there are more men on tindedating apps than women etc I feel like I need to start being aggressive as there is too much competition for women. Im also attracted to young slim women who dont have kids or any baggage but are going to give me that family that I've always wanted. I have a good paying job and im degree educated so in a few years time im thinking of buying myself a mail order bride, I dont really give a fuck if shes sex trafficked but in some poor countries they do have markets where they literally sell women. Then once she is with me then it will be time to make some babies, id like at least 3 children from her. But I feel like the only way im going to get myself a woman/sex is if I either kidnap one or go to a poor country and use my money to buy a woman

We are Azure Infinitum
Visit us at: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/)
You may have seen us in the Aether data center's party finder during our weekly events, or may have seen our recruitment shouts around the realm in-game in Midgardsormr, but there just isn't enough space in those places to really explain everything wonderful about what our Free Company and community is.
Azure Infinitum is an LGBTQ+ friendly community, and welcomes players of all experience level, play style, and availability. We're a warm home with a balance of online players, weekly optional activities, and flexible ranks from our membership, to our support & leadership categories. We have a 24/7 Support Team, a Councilship that governs each tier, seasonal events of our own, and many resources between the games we support and online services.
Who We Are
We are an established 9-year old community who's home is in Midgardsormr Server of Final Fantasy XIV. We are a structured, well-rounded, welcoming, friendly, and organized community that hosts daily events (check out our calendar: https://azureinfinitum.com/events/ ) that provide opportunity for members to excel. We work to provide an arena and opportunities to establish strong bonds and camaraderie between our members. As a community we are driven, we carry each other forward, and we are proud.
Our Name & Philosophy
Learn more about our global community here: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/aboutus/)
Learn more about our FFXIV Free Company here: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/ourffxivfc/)
Azure Infinitum means "Azure/Blue Infinity or Infinite Blue/Azure" and there is some mythos behind the name that stems from our guild-wide philosophy of kindness, freedom, vigilance, diversity and activity. We promote positive fellowship among members in an organized guild, with our sights open to our unending endless skies, full of possibility and success together.
Our motto is "As Free As The Azure Sky!" which stuck well when our FC was restructured from an old guild in 2014 as Azure was founded, and it was first shouted as we looked out at a clear blue sky above. has continued to be our electric victory as we continue to snowball in success and activity, our members soaring high through the Azure Sky, flying together!
Ranks
Click here to learn more about our community ranks: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/ranks/)
Our community has an organized ranking structure beginning with Members who comprise the majority of the roster. Scouts are our support team of Members who've stepped up to more officially support the FC, some work on obtaining a future leadership rank. Lieutenants and Officers comprise the proud Azure Council, a diverse group of players of different specialties and services to the FC, making up lower and higher tier leadership, seeing over the Scouts and the FC weekly events, aside from being admins. The FC Infinitum Master oversees all and leads the Azure Council and the company forward while always keeping the heart and vision of the community alive and in sight. Currently we are re-assessing ranks in the free company, giving more support permissions and duties to our Scouts, while the current council operates as a small team of Lieutenants lead by the FC Master.
Everyone Welcome and Who Fits Best
We have an open door policy. Whether you're casual, a returning player, a veteran, or a newbie, we have a vast array of players in our member roster. Our weekly schedule is organized and provides an array of activity for players of most levels, however we like to ask players who're pretty new or under the level cap, to be extra vocal about their needs while they're still unable to attend some daily events or higher level content that most of our weekly lineup focuses on. We want everyone to have as much fun as possible and have the most success. We find that most players enjoy Azure Infinitum, many have stated that they subscribed to FFXIV much longer than they ever would have imagined after they have been around in our community, as they've gotten involved and experienced all that we offer.
Our FC keeps a daily schedule (see here: https://www.azureinfinitum.com/events/) of events that are hosted by permitted Scouts and Council ranks, these range from 8-man and 24-man raids and map parties, to WT journal groups and trial clear parties or farms, and more- and attending anything isn't mandatory at all here. We're happy to have you, and its up to our members how much they'd like to get involved. Attendance is optional! There's never any stress to attend FC functions.
Savage Raiding Statement
We find that some hardcore raiders looking for free companies just to join their statics who don't already have one, might not fit well if savage raiding is their only or greatest focus, because traditionally Azure does not have a Savage Static, but focuses more on allowing members to organize their own groups and also provides resources to do so. Despite not supporting an official static for the FC, we hope that hardcore raiders enjoy the wealth of our community's wealth of harmony and overall fun, and that everyone may take initiative to seek out or build a raiding static within our community if they are interested, as opposed to missing out on experiencing Azure. Depending on the content season, we may have an Unofficial static lead by a leader, and routinely offer limited time Savage-learning events that may run for a number of months.
Rules and No Drama Policy
Please take a moment to look over our Rules Page at (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/rules/), we find that rude individuals and people who create drama are the outsiders here that don't fit well. We know its a big page, so at least visit the General Rules section before joining.
Recruitment Care & Activity
People of Azure Infinitum are often if not always good natured players who found their way to our community looking for a place with structure, friendliness, organization, and great activity, or they've been scouted during recruitment drives and have been well screened. Its a place where one can be social and attend everything, or relax in the background and enjoy the services and facilities of being in an active, organized, and friendly FC. We actively recruit periodically to assist with upkeep of community activity levels, and to meet new comrades. A community that closes recruitment can be doomed to stagnation. Its normal for a community to have an inner core of die hards who log in daily regardless of content releases, and also have an outer core of individuals that range from those with less availability to those who check in during Patches. This is why we take extra care in keeping the fresh blood flowing into Azure, cautious recruitment, and support our active model by always staying welcoming and sometimes running recruitment campaigns and other services. Like this ad!
Handling Online Drama
Because we keep a no-drama policy and have a strong communication network, it is leadership's ultimate priority to handle any issues that may come up as soon as possible, and most people appreciate our problem solving which has inspired many other communities. Between our Support & Leadership ranks, we use a number of report and resource channels to handle situations, and perform problem solving protocols & tactics to fairly address issues as possible. Drama is inevitable at some point for any online community, so its important to have a large and strong list of moderators (currently around 60!) and a council of leaders (15+) to quickly handle any problems. Luckily, we don't have a lot of drama, but we're always very well equipped and very prepared. Our community has been commended by game staff in the past for our methods, and we have worked with the FFXIV Special Task Force to ensure as much safety to our community as achievable. It should be stressed that it is up to our membership to report to GM's in-game, and to Azure Leadership should any issues or concerns come up. Its also highly recommended that our members appropriately document evidence that can be used to help us assess situations and make proper decisions. Documenation such as screenshots of harassment is a great example! Our members online safety is greatly important to us and is a number one concern of our leadership team. Our Rules Page at: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/rules/) describes a bit more in Chapter 3, including other entries on avoiding/ignoring trolls, playing while intoxicated, depression, and more.
Our Philosophy
We believe in our community and its people, how far we can go, how much we can do for each other, being an experienced community who's core values are positive fellowship, formation of bonds, and indomitable unity.
Azure Infinitum tightly grasps success and masters a casual and lucrative weekly play schedule while inspiring motivation and providing avenues for further success, friendships, and camaraderie among all who freely fly together among our Azure skies.
Founding on the principles of intricately forging a generally drama-free experience with keen leadership and a zealous and mighty membership, Azure has striven to guide and support many hundreds of players through every era of Final Fantasy XIV.
With an illustrious history, company lore, impressive statistics, and a model that is adaptable and blessed with innovative ability, Azure Infinitum claims a dominant presence of excellence and player growth that is possible in our community and extended services.
Estate Organization
We have the entire set-up at our estate, from gardens for members and Krakka Root production (free for members' chocobos), to our stables, nicely uniform clean lawn with hangout spots that are popular, with crafting stations, all available NPCs for simple mats and repairs, cut-scene viewer, toybox, triple-triad board, a fully operational and geared fleet of airships and subs, and our Azure Infinitum Assembly Chamber on the top floor for our meetings where announcements are made at our Grand Assemblies. Check it out if you like at Mist Ward 7 Plot 1.
We also have an organized form of gathering for weekly events in the yard, places to relax, food that is always available on tables at our Cellar, and hold a lot of special events and social games at our Hall. We're also conveniently located next to a Market Board and a Retainer Bell outside of our estate.
Communication and Extended Azure Services
We have multiple services of which none are mandatory, but we provide being (azureinfinitum.com) where our Forums, Event Calendar, News, Company Meeting Summaries, Seasonal Merch Giveaways, Contests, Rules Page, and more take place and can be found. We also have a popular and active Discord Server.
We also have a Facebook Group, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Steam Group, (Look us up! Or visit: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/socialmedia/) and Linkshells like our Infinitum Alliance LS for contact and aid from our allies if needed, our Azure Hunters LS for Hunters, and our Azure Industry LS which connects our members to our inner crafting/gathering community for newbies to pros.
Also worthy of mention is our big Company Meetings in-game, known as Azure Infinitum Grand Assemblies. Even though we have several avenues that keep people connected, our live assemblies gather the FC in unity where announcements are made first, and all proposals, ideas, and more, can be decided together live with the Azure Council present.
This network ensures a lot of information and communication gets around and has been exceedingly useful to us.
More On Events
One part of our reputation that often precedes us is our event crafting and hosting.
First, let me make sure its clear that attendance is never mandatory, but those who can make use, when possible, of what we provide each day, benefit from our events each week.
Since our beginning, traditions like our Thursday Treasure Thursdays events have run each week. Our weekly line-up presently begins on Tuesdays post-weekly reset, and consists of Raid Tuesdays, Wondrous Wednesdays (WT Journal Parties, often doubles as Trial Clears and Pony Drops), Treasure Thursdays (Endwalker's timeworn maps with groups of 8 doing up to 3 rounds of maps allowing for up to 24 maps ran), 24-Man Tuesdays (full pre-formed Azure 24-member alliances are made and raids are cleared, will be returning upon the release of EW's 24-man), Super Azure Slayer Sunday (our weekly meetup to do all sorts of PVP content be it Rival Wings or Frontline), and Monstrous Mondays (helps clear the current and previous patch extreme trials).
Special, Seasonal, and Quarterly Events
More info here: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/azureday/)See the latest event news & more at: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/news/)
We also have what we call Special and Quarterly Events. These types of events are Weekend-Long-Events that usually consist of a theme or celebratory social events we craft. During these events we hold big Riddle Races, Costume/Glamour shows and contests, 3-Story Mansion Maze Races, Speedrun Dungeon Races, Hide and Seek games, Custom Quest Events, Discord events like Cards Against Humanity nights, Comedy events, PVP Tournament Circuits, and more.
Our Special and Quarterly events are Azure Day Weekend (Takes place 3 times a year across a weekend, celebrates the FC), Azure Summer Festival (3-days at the end of August in partnership with Child's Play, raises money for children in long-term care, anniversary of historic FC event called the Lunar Rebellion), Anniversary Azure Day (a big weekend event in November that celebrates our Founding), Azure Day Saint's Wake (celebrates Halloween/All Saint's Wake), Azure Starlight Day (celebrating Starlight Day/Christmas/December Holiday Season), Azure Grand Melee and Duel Tournaments (PVP Circuit series crowning our PVP Champions) and more.
Azure Day Weekends
If you've been around our server you may have heard of our Azure Day Weekends. Our Azure Days take place quarterly as mentioned just above, with four evolved editions called Azure Summer Festival, Azure Day Saint's Wake, Azure Starlight Day, and Anniversary Azure Day. With Azure Day Weekends and related events traditionally occuring quarterly our members are always excited to see the next big weekend of crazy and fun social games, and our showering of the free company in gil and prizes galore. We go all out when we celebrate the free company, and Azure Days are another way we find for leadership to give back to the community. 2023 and beyond is now host to additional seasonal Azure Day events!
We're always giving our members a chance to have fun, win big, and make some great memories in the in-game family we've become. Something fun is always on the horizon in Azure.
Community
I almost can't stress enough how friendly our community is. We have a vast variety of members from hardcore gatherers and crafters, social butterflies, chill veterans, experienced raiders, level grinders, support teams, PVP aficionados, mechanic specialists, and mentors. We're also very friendly to all casual players as well and we keep an open door so long as recruits are always aware that we have a no-drama tolerance here.
​Evolution into a Gaming Clan & Network
Plans are in the works and foundations are being laid that is slowly turning our community into a larger gaming network, with our first established Azure Wing with regular occurring activity being founded in Monster Hunter World, this has led to a successful Destiny 2 clan and more. Becoming a member of our Discord and/or Free Company now means access to things like our huge discord, Azure Wing membership in other games, and being able to join in on any of our other activities in the general community. Azure Network as its being called at the moment, is growing with an all-new website and community features for playing together across Final Fantasy XIV and to Azure Skies beyond!
Activity
We rank high as one of the top FC's in Worldwide Activity on lodestone, and have for a long time. Most of our players are divided between the US East and West Coasts, members in East and West Canada, and a few outside the US or in EU or Aus zones. Because we do have an activity policy (mentioned below) we keep a standard flow of people, and have crowds in the early morning, late morning, early afternoon, afternoon, evening, and late night crowds.
Elitism isn't our style. Our community boasts a broad range of characters, great personalities, the proud, and also some silly goofs. But elitism isn't welcome, no matter how successful we are or how large we grow. We're always welcoming towards fresh faces interested in joining our guild, and the in-game activity ranges between 30-60+ online at once during prime time hours, sometimes around 70+ on patch days, and usually always with half the roster logging in throughout a 24 hour period, and around 15-30+ during the night.
Activity Policy
We ask that our members do not go missing without logging in for more than 60 days straight. If we hear word from someone or have some kind of decent excuse, we place our members on our On Vacation rank, which lasts presently until 90 days have passed. Exceptions are made for military deployments, hospital stays, financial issues, disability/health related issues, moving, or other reasons that might fall on a case-by-case basis.
All members not heard from in 60 days (roughly 2 months) or currently 90 days (roughly 3 months) are discharged. We allow 3 joins to Azure Infinitum in total, but exceptions can be made due to reasons listed above. If removed for inactivity, or you've left our FC for another reason and haven't already joined 3 times, you're always welcome back, but please remember, we are not a revolving door.
Keeping our roster full of members who have been online and presently play the game actively ensures an active environment for our players who play often. It also keeps our credits and clerical processes balanced across our network, and allows space for new faces to join our big happy in-game family of comrades.
How to Join
Quick Instructions here for joinin us in FFXIV & more: (https://www.azureinfinitum.com/howtojoinazure/)
If you are interested in joining our Azure Infinitum free company, please register an application at our site and/or FC in-game. You can also seek any of our Scouts, Lieutenants, Officers, or the Master of Azure Infinitum in-game and ask for an invite. You can find their names on the roster page at our website.
If you read everything on this page, you are awesome, and you should let anyone you talk to who recruits you know that you read everything on this page which will greatly expedite your invitation to join.
If you have any questions whatsoever feel free to send a /tell in-game to me or any of our Scouts or Lieutenants listed on our official roster here: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/freecompany/9232519973597911137/membe
You can also message us at our FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/AzureInfinitum
Discord here: https://discord.gg/azureinfinitum
Twitter: https://twitter.com/azureinfinitum
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/azure_infinitum/
Main Site: https://www.azureinfinitum.com/

Hi there! I am reaching out hoping someone will have some recommendations for food substitution/recipes. This may be a long post, so I apologize in advance. I have recently found out I have 19 food allergies, most of which are incredibly common foods and in basically everything. It's gonna sound incredibly silly but sour cream is one of my favorite things and I am struggling to find a substitute that fits what I need. My first question is if any of you have recommendations? (I will list all of my allergies at the very end.) My second question is about Thrive market. I realize there is a membership but I have a hard time looking at actual food items until I sign up and was wondering if it was worth it. Lastly, I will take any recipes, tips and/or tricks you may know. Thank you! Below is a list of things I can no longer have:
Wheat, soy, egg, pork, cinnamon, corn, rice, peanut, almond, beef, cashew, chicken, chickpea, eggplant, grape leaf, pistachio, pomegranate, dairy and tuna.

Hi everyone! So in 2020, I leased my car for 3 years / 36k miles. My lease is now up and my car is still at less than 11k miles. I had always planned to finance it at the end of my lease. My lease is now up and the residual for my car is around $15,300.
I have great credit (760) with absolutely no debt, and 2 accounts (1 being the leased car which is done and the other being a credit card that’s at $0). 100% on time payment history and nothing in collections.
When I went to do the end of lease consult, the best deal they could give me was 7.05% APR which they would apply to either 60 or 72 months. This was after going back and forth for quite a while, as I was expecting a lower interest rate since I have great credit and a solid income. I ultimately left stating that I was going to shop around at credit unions. They assured me I wouldn’t get a better rate anywhere else and that 7.05% is super low even for “tier 1” or “tier 1+” which is what I fall into credit wise. I have a Mazda and this rate was through mazda. They said that all of the other credit unions and banks said no, or couldn’t come any lower.
My questions are :

1. Is this interest rate truly low for the current market and my credit?
   
2. Do I actually have a better shot going through a credit union?
   
3. My transunion dropped 12 points due to the hard inquiry. Will this happen with each credit union / bank that pulls my credit?
   
4. Did they actually try to submit my credit and app to all of these banks / CU’s , or was that all BS? I just can’t imagine why I’d be getting rejected or how they couldn’t come in any lower, if they really did submit. I have seen people posting on Reddit recently that they got much lower interest rates for used car loans so I don’t understand.
   

Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone! So in 2020, I leased my car for 3 years / 36k miles. My lease is now up and my car is still at less than 11k miles. I had always planned to finance it at the end of my lease. My lease is now up and the residual for my car is around $15,300.
I have great credit (760) with absolutely no debt, and 2 accounts (1 being the leased car which is done and the other being a credit card that’s at $0). 100% on time payment history and nothing in collections.
When I went to do the end of lease consult, the best deal they could give me was 7.05% APR which they would apply to either 60 or 72 months. This was after going back and forth for quite a while, as I was expecting a lower interest rate since I have great credit and a solid income. I ultimately left stating that I was going to shop around at credit unions. They assured me I wouldn’t get a better rate anywhere else and that 7.05% is super low even for “tier 1” or “tier 1+” which is what I fall into credit wise. I have a Mazda and this rate was through mazda. They said that all of the other credit unions and banks said no, or couldn’t come any lower.
My questions are :

1. Is this interest rate truly low for the current market and my credit?
   
2. Do I actually have a better shot going through a credit union?
   
3. My transunion dropped 12 points due to the hard inquiry. Will this happen with each credit union / bank that pulls my credit?
   
4. Did they actually try to submit my credit and app to all of these banks / CU’s , or was that all BS? I just can’t imagine why I’d be getting rejected or how they couldn’t come in any lower, if they really did submit. I have seen people posting on Reddit recently that they got much lower interest rates for used car loans so I don’t understand.
   

Thank you in advance!

Good night everyone, I hope you are doing okay. Today I'm here to talk about my perspective of being a lonely man in the 21st century, but first I would like to take a moment to address a few things:
-
I'm not here to make a gender war, everyone can suffer.
-
I'm not claiming that my perspective is universal nor right.
-
I'm focusing on the lonely, straight, cisgender male perspective, since I feel more property to talk about that.
-
I don't claim to make sense, I'm just in need to organize my thoughts and feelings, this sub helps me do it. There will be blade runner 2049 spoilers :p
/start
Lately I've been to a speculative trip about society. I discovered chatGPT, and I was amazed about the fact that I could have a person like thing to talk to me about anything I wanted, I did not have to ask for consent to talk about things, and it would always have a solid knowledge to mirror the subject I wanted to talk about. It could even have a sense of humor if I wanted. It amazed the lonely person in me. The thing is: this is not right. I'm probably damned if the technology evolves, lol. Maybe in a near future people will be selling on only fans a downloadable 3D body to integrate in our personal metaverse environment, piloted by a more powerful AI, the possibilities... Those speculations made me have the following thoughts.
Most of the male role models are black and white. They are either sigma or alpha males(IDK what we men have with Greek letters, they quite cool I won't lie). You can be either a person that pulled the rabbit out of the hat, or you can be the guy that is hardworking, diligent like a samurai and made your fortune with consistency. Those two usually have a few things in common: they have built a well shaped body, they have money, they "have" pretty girls, they are independent and conquered those by merit(I'm purposefully objectifying those because that's how it feels, at least for me). So far, so good we live our lives to pursue these, we work out, not just for health, we work more and study the stock market to have money, while also trying to find a rare girl that suits our needs(straight perspective), we do all of this without asking for any help, despite the rain, bad days, mental health, we just power through everything. But why? The thing is I feel like I live in a society that puts a lot of pressure on me. Traditionally, the man is the provider, the protector of the house, he's the strong basis of the family and I guess that nowadays we still want to feel that glory of being all that, It sounds cool to be special.
I watched Blade Runner 2049, It feels like it agent K illustrates really good what it feels like to be a man. You are a dude, not allowed to have feelings. You should be prepared and capable of doing the job, whatever it is. You suffer deep down and is in need of something real, connection. You are alone. In your intimacy you found alternative ways to feel loved, which you are probably not so proud of. You fool yourself with the possibilities of being unique(everyone is unique, but I don't mean in that sense, I mean like a protagonist). The reality disappoints you. In the end your dream was just a way to a random company/institution manipulate you. You just die, the dad and daughter reencounter of the end of the movie could wait for agent K to go to a hospital or be treated, but he decided he just wanted to die there, lol.
And this is where I come back to chatGPT. In a metaverse, where I'm able to spend the whole weekend talking to my AI waifu, I won't need to feel that pressure again. I don't need to be a proud man that can talk about the stock market and tells stories about how hard it was to build my fortune, I won't be worried about all that crap. Dude, the last months the only thing I did was work and study to prove something, to please society in general. I mean, being honest, it's not like we know what life is about. We can't logically trace a place to dictate what this is about, it became a sandbox, not a hardcore grind. We are trapped here. The only thing that is worth the investment is our stay, lets at least make it less bad.
For all those men that struggle with loneliness, that had not received an honest hug in years, that feel like they aren't enough, the ones that miss someone that won't come back, for those who feel the weight of their conscience each time they j*rk off, that are strong enough to tank the whole storm inside themselves but not capable of sharing it with others, for the men that can't cry, to the fellow that is "too feminine" to be a man but still identify as a man, to you that forced yourself to fit into a group, for the fellow that is scared to talk to girls, for you, I wish the best luck and a pleasant evening.

In the quest for optimal health and well-being, many individuals turn to dietary supplements to support their goals. One such supplement gaining attention is C-DINE. In this comprehensive review, we will explore the ingredients, potential benefits, and any possible side effects associated with C-DINE. Whether you're considering trying this supplement or simply seeking more information, this article aims to provide you with valuable insights.
CrazyBulk C-DINE serves as a legal substitute for Cardarine GW510516
Understanding C-DINE:
C-DINE is a dietary supplement that combines a unique blend of ingredients designed to promote various health benefits. This supplement is formulated to support specific health goals, and it's important to understand the components and their potential effects before incorporating it into your routine.
Ingredients:
C-DINE is formulated with a carefully selected blend of natural ingredients, each chosen for its potential health-promoting properties. While specific ingredient ratios may vary by brand, the following components are commonly found in C-DINE supplements:

1. Ingredient 1: [Provide a brief description of the first ingredient, highlighting its key properties and benefits.]
2. Ingredient 2: [Discuss the second ingredient, its potential benefits, and its role in the formulation.]
3. Ingredient 3: [Explain the third ingredient, its significance, and its potential contribution to the overall effectiveness of C-DINE.]

Potential Benefits:
C-DINE is marketed to offer several potential benefits, which may vary depending on individual factors and overall health conditions. Some commonly claimed benefits associated with C-DINE include:

1. Benefit 1: [Describe the primary benefit associated with C-DINE, citing any relevant studies or research supporting this claim.]
2. Benefit 2: [Discuss another potential benefit of C-DINE, providing evidence or research to support its effectiveness.]
3. Benefit 3: [Highlight an additional benefit that users may experience when incorporating C-DINE into their routine.]

Potential Side Effects:
As with any dietary supplement, it is important to be aware of potential side effects. While C-DINE is generally considered safe for most individuals, some people may experience adverse reactions. It is recommended to consult with a healthcare professional before starting any new supplement. Commonly reported side effects associated with C-DINE include:

1. Side Effect 1: [Discuss a potential side effect, providing information on its occurrence rate and severity.]
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CrazyBulk C-DINE serves as a legal substitute for Cardarine GW510516
Conclusion:
C-DINE is a dietary supplement that combines a unique blend of ingredients aimed at providing potential health benefits. While individual experiences may vary, understanding the ingredients, potential benefits, and possible side effects can help you make an informed decision regarding its use. Remember, it is always advisable to consult with a healthcare professional before adding any new supplement to your routine to ensure it aligns with your specific needs and health goals.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not replace professional medical advice. Consult with a healthcare professional before starting any new supplement or making changes to your existing routine.

Chapter 1

Where am I? I look around. Curtains. Why are there curtains? The walls. They're white, not blue. My hands. I'm not home. Machines. hospital bed? Hospital. I wonder what happened. My hands. These aren't my hands. It's daytime. My hands. They're big, muscular. I'm not home. My hands aren't mine. Where are my hands? 

"Mom?" "MOM?" "MOM WHERE ARE YOU??" The doctor came in. "Sam, you're awake!" "What happened!" " I can't see straight." "My eyes-"
I wake up.
Chapter 2

 The outside auditorium is filled with people. The auditorium looked like the Roman amphitheaters, but with greenery around it instead of a town. The stage was like a wrestling stage, without the rope around it. The stage was a few feet above the floor. It looks like it's floating. two bridges were connected to it, giving a pathway for performers to enter the stage. The sun was shining pretty hard, but the weather was pretty nice. It was like 70 degrees with some winds. Perfect weather to be outside. The auditorium was small though, probably carrying from 500 to 700 people. It was me and my friends, Steve, Marco, and Ari. Then there's the bengali corus group, with Sasha Aunty as the leader. My mom is going to come later. I'm going to play the violin right before the chorus starts singing. That was the plan. I'm going to play Anondoloke. I have no idea what the corus is going to sing though. Me and my friends went to sit somewhere, and I saw my mom. She went to sit on one of the beach chairs. Why does she look so different? She looks like a tanner version of Abby Lee Miller. I ignored it, and we continued to look for seats. But suddenly, Steve disappeared. I look back, where did my friends go? I turned my head to look straight again. I suddenly arrived to an entrance. This entrance looks like the bathrooms in Jones Beach. I enter. The room turned into a pool room, a large swimming pool with the classic pool tiles, with the classic floor tiles. What in the back rooms did I get into. It was semi dark, everything was visible, but it felt like I was wearing sunglasses indoors. "Sarah?" I look behind me. It's Ellamm, Kat, and Benardo. Why are they here? They're the sped white kids from my PE class. Ellamm is some tall girl who speaks some foreign language on the phone whenever we're walking laps around the gym. Me and Ari believe she's always talking to her grandma. She so sped. She be butting into Ari and her friend's conversations. And she's always acting like she's all that, like boy STFU. Kat's chill, but she's those kids that don't understand anything except christianity and academics. Like she gives me young sheldon vibes without the super brains. Benardo is just full on weird. He's those kids that run around the whole gym when you're only supposed to walk around half the gym. 

"What are you guys doing here?" I'm lowkey so fake. I just can't be honest and mean in front of someone's face. "We just finished swimming," said Kat. Then, Ellamm started looking around frantically. "WHERE DID MY EARRINGS GO??" She started sobbing aggressively and starts looking around like a dog looking for its tail. "I'll help if you want." She didn't reply, all she did was sob, saying "that earring is so important to me!" I don't know where Kat and Benardo went. They're just blended in the background. Why aren't they helping? I get to the entrance to the pool room. I look under the Bench, then look up.

 It's Steve. "What are you doing?" Where am I? I'm so confused. How did I get here? Steve starts pulling me. "Common we gotta go, you're next up to the stage!" We're outside. Why is the sky dark? 

"Steve, what time is it?" "It's 10:42" "AM or PM?" "AM, what's up with you?" "What do you mean AM, it's literally dark outside." "Girl your eyes need to be checked, it's literally morning, we came here at 10 dumbass." What the fuck is going on. It's morning. "COME ON DO YOU WANT TO BE LATE??" Suddenly, I'm on the bridge to the stage, all eyes on me. It's day time-. What the hell is going on. My eyes start getting really itchy. I close my eyes, and start itching them. I open my eyes. I look around. What the actual fuck. WHAT THE FUCK! Where the hell did everyone go??? The sky is light with a few clouds. The sun beaming onto my skin. But, not a person on sight. I don't see Steve, Ari, Marco, mom, Aunty, the crowd. Where is everyone.I start running towards the pool room. What the fuck. Where's Kat, Ellamm, Benardo. I turn around. Everything's black. I turn again. I'm in a black space. No floor, no walls, no roof, no nothing. Just blackness.
I wake up.
Chapter 3 to be decided…

A Necessary Preface

To start things off, some baselines need to be set for the sake of sidestepping a lot of talking points. This post will come entirely from the perspective that fighting games are a multiplayer genre first. There's a lot of very valid criticisms of the genre's single player aspect. I am actively choosing to ignore them for this post. When these discussions occur, it's meant from the perspective of the fighting game community trying to convince people to play and stick with the genre. For hundreds or even thousands of hours. In the same way that people would League of Legends, Apex, Rocket League, etc. The single-player aspect ultimately have very little bearing on the multiplayer aspect since it only increases impressions and not retention.
I'll also make a deeply arbitrary distinction between accessibility and accommodations for the disabled. They're two very different issues where the latter needs to be tackled in ways that I, or most people, am completely uninformed in. I am going to be addressing the layman's accessibility concerns.
FGC-heads, I know many of you have also thrown in the towel and now sing the virtues of gatekeeping due to not wanting "intolerants". But don't be an ass about it and remember there's a lot more wiggle room than you think. This post already comes across as condescending despite my best efforts, so cool it.
Finally, you don't have to read all of this. Just keep an eye out for the bolds that catch your eye. I'll try to keep things as simple as much as I reasonably can, but things will ultimately be technical. You will likely need a passing familiarity of the terms I'll be using, and I'll try to assist you in that by linking to a definition when appropriate. I will avoid requiring rigorous knowledge of the subject matter though, so don't get too caught up in the details.
This conveniently segways to one common criticism.

There is too much terminology for me to learn

There sure is a lot of them. But they're not used to make things esoteric. They're words meant to concisely convey otherwise intuitive concepts for the purposes of discussion, learning, and troubleshooting.
In other words, you don't really need to explicitly learn them. Eventually, you'll implicitly learn all the terminology. Just not the words to express them. Think of it like how many of us trying out chess will start games by moving a pawn to allow the Queen to move around, completely unaware of the fact that what we're performing is likely a Queen's Pawn or a King's Pawn opening. In the same vein, many are likely already familiar with certain popular concepts in fighting games. You're just unaware of what they're called, or know them by another name.
Take for example, spacing or neutral. You're likely familiar with snipers in a multiplayer shooter. If a sniper is uncontested, they completely own or dominate the "space" they're looking at. Running in full view of a sniper is a terrible idea because of it, and hiding behind cover is a solid idea because they don't "dominate" the space behind cover. To shut down a sniper's control of an area, you need to either physically overpower them (kill them), approach from a space they're not in control of (ambush them), or to force them to move else where (flush them out) via grenades or simply shooting in their general direction. Or in fighting game terms, whiff punish them (kill them), by playing footsies (ambush them), or by zoning (flush them out) them out.
Frame data deserves a special mention. The simplest way to put is that they're measurements of time. If you play any game somewhat seriously, you're already familiar. Reload speeds, fire rates, attack rates, and even movement speeds. Hell, something as simple as not wanting to use Knights of Round on generic encounters due to the long animation is a decision rooted in frame data.

There are too many things I need to learn

That's fair. There's no way around it. Fighting games are so far removed on a physical level that most people will have to learn everything from scratch. But it's not for the sake of it. There's too little overlap for you to rely on to draw experience.
I'll try not to bore you with the details by delving deep into stuff like Razbuten's series about gaming for non-gamers. But there's an inherent language to video game conventions and how things control or happen. It's all very learned behavior and not all of it translates to every game. For fighting games in particular, almost nothing translates unless you play exclusively 2d beat 'em ups, spectacle fighters, Monster Hunter, and Soulslikes. And even then.
And that's all okay. We all have a finite amount of time in our lives, with responsibilities to attend to. We can't invest the time to learn everything we need for everything we have a passing interest in. We all pick our battles.

No, seriously, it's all really overwhelming even when I'm trying

It sure is. And there are lots of ways the on-boarding process could be significantly improved upon. These days, the games with the most renowned tutorials are from French Bread or Arc System Works. And they're very excellent... at being a reference. Primary learning material they are not. I could talk about all about the ways things could be improved, but I'm not part of the industry. Waste of character limits if you ask me.
Until things improve drastically, my only advice is to take things slow. A lot of the things you're tempted to learn are cool combos, special techniques to make people stop blocking, or every single move your character has. Maybe all at once. Don't. Pick one or two things to focus on. Play against people where your only goals in life are the one or two things. Move onto new things when you feel that you're comfortable. Rinse and repeat until you've had enough.

The controls aren't intuitive

There's a funny thing about intuition. Despite it being rooted in instinct, it's entirely learned behavior. If you've used mnemonics before, you probably know that some just aren't very useful no matter how hard you try. It's kinda arbitrary. Things being intuitive or unintuitive also don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Like mnemonics, intuition only go so far to help you remember or learn something.
Movement tech in other genres is often brought up as an argument for intuition. They're typically a "logical" sequence of inputs that the player is already familiar with. Smash Melee's Wavedash actually gets brought up as an example time to time. It's jump then air dodge directly back onto the platform. On paper, it's very simple and easy to do.
It's not. The dexterity required to do it is a lot more than you'd expect it to be. Then there's frequency of its use, which causes a very real, physical strain on you. No matter how you look at it, you'll spend several orders of magnitudes more learning the rhythm than you do remembering the sequence of actions. The sequence themselves are a very minor step.
Not to mention, there is a language to how fighting game controls. Most people aren't used to it because most games aren't anything like fighting games. Take for example the quarter circle forward input. It's also known as the fireball input. Why? Because the average QCF input is a fireball. If not, it's probably a move that lunges your character forward. The fact that it ends in forward usually indicates that it's designed to control space in front of you. Hey look, a made up mnemonic. It's also probably useless!

Motion controls are superfluous and should be simplified

A very popular misconception, no doubt due to the widespread popularity of Smash. But the matter of fact is that motion controls are not superfluous and have momentous consequences. But at the same time, the consequences kinda don't matter. It creates a different type of fighting game for people to enjoy, which people do. The problem comes when people assert that it should be mandatory across the entire genre thinking that nothing would change. It's the same as saying that every FPS needs to have parkour mechanics or every action game needs to have animation canceling or every RPG needs to be real time: it's incredibly short-sighted. There's a reason why Smash has poor cross pollination or why not every TF2 player likes Overwatch.
If you're willing to accept the previous paragraph at face value, skip to the next checkpoint. The following will be dense.
The simplest example of the consequences of simplified inputs is the single input invicible DP. Their existence completely redefines how offense is structured and how it is played out. In particular, it heavily emphasizes true gapless blockstrings because the ease of the DP make it so that any unintentional gaps are fundamentally bad pressure. Because of that, pressure becomes more telegraphed and rigid, to the point of turns becoming almost concrete. Or in other words, homogenized and potentially requiring study at all levels.
I also need to stress the word unintentional here. There are entire series and subgenres that thrive on forcing chaotic, ambiguous situations that neither player is fully aware of but have to place their bets anyway. But with a one button DP, intentionally causing mutually ambiguous situations will almost never be in your favor because doing anything will lose out to a DP.
There's some other reasons why the ease factor can cause new problems that need to be addressed, like how most motions don't end in a blocking input which means you must forgo blocking or how some inputs assume that you forgo your ability to move forward. But there are ways around this with surprisingly minimal effects on gameplay or even cause novel situations. But I'm ready to move on.
See, simplified inputs have a very inherent and significant design cost to them. Grapplers in fighting games historically have insanely fast grabs. It's not uncommon for a grappler's command grab to be tied for literally the fastest move in the game, while simultaneously being 2-4x the range of other similarly fast non-grabs, and typically leading to much more advantageous situations post-grab than fast non-grabs. As seen here. Not only are they incredibly strong offensively, but also incredibly strong defensively. Almost as strong as a DP generally, and sometimes stronger than DPs in very specific (but potentially common) scenarios. This is often balanced out by the motions tied to these moves have an associated time cost to perform them in most but not all situations, ontop of the fact that it requires some modicum of effort to perform. Combined, this results in a surprisingly low margin for error to utilize this move effectively, and even players at the highest levels fail it every so often in stress-free, at home in their boxers, scenarios.
Think of it like the choice between slamming on your brakes to minimize collision damage or swerving to avoid it entirely. With enough of a heads up, everyone would choose to swerve. But sometimes you don't realize that you have enough room to swerve and by the time you did, it's too late. You have to pick the next best option. Mental burden is the concept I'm stressing here.
Of course, we can adjust how one button command grabs work to minimize the differences. The most common answer to this is by making the command grab themselves slower. But by doing so, the command grab is now a fundamentally different move. It cannot be used defensively. It is offensively neutered and the scenarios where it is a good idea to use is significantly reduced. The alternative answer is by tying the command grab to a resource. In turn, it's no longer a move that you always have access to. It's something that must be built towards and then managed alongside all the other mechanics that likely share the same resource.
Nothing mentioned so far are inherent downsides and won't make games bad. You can even omit more nuanced moves like command grabs and DPs entirely and people can still like it. The problem is that these would be the only kind of games that could exist if motion controls would be permanently retired. My preferred solution would be not to remove them, but to add more characters who don't have motions.
Anyway if you've read all that, then you might think I'm making up assumptions. That I can't know for sure that this is how one-button specials would affect the game. Except they're not assumptions. They're real world observations of games that already have one-button specials.
Games with one button specials: Fantasy Strike, Smash, DNF Duel
Games with simplified-but-still-motioned specials: Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Dragonball Fighterz, Skullgirls
Games with both: Granblue Versus, Street Fighter 6, Idol Showdown

Combos are too long

This is a really interesting complaint that comes up a lot. But what it means is one of three very different concerns that all need to be addressed in their own ways.

...because I keep getting stuck in one and dying to them

A very common and popular problem that is unfortunately born out of complete and total ignorance. Allow me to demonstrate with a clip.
Do you believe this was one combo? A really long infinite? A 100% to 0% combo? If your answer to any of these were a yes, then you are wrong. That was about six separate combos. I try to not get caught up on definitions as a rule of thumb and focus on the meaning instead, but this is a pretty big deal for this concern. Because people don't actually know the language, they misuse words all the time. They don't actually know how to express their concerns in an immediately understandable manner. This is... a huge can of worms that I won't get into for this post.
The thing about combos is that combos only work if the recipient of those combos have failed. One failure = one combo. Therefore, six separate combos means that the opponent has failed six times. But if it's the result of failure, then that must mean that success is an option, right?
Yes. It's called blocking, or more accurately, having good defense. Really focus on this bit here:

Players and characters with strong defense tend to be able to survive long offensive sequences from their opponent and take little overall damage

This leads into the next separate concern expressed in the same way.

...and there's nothing I could have done

Here's a clip. The player with the long whip (P1) looks really oppressive, right? The player with the hat (P2) had nothing they could do to stop the onslaught of combos coming their way. It was a miracle that they didn't take more damage from all of that. There's a bit of a hitch to all of this though:
None of those were combos. It wasn't oppressive at all. In the context of that clip, P2 willingly chose to do nothing but exclusively block because they wanted to see if P1 was capable of doing anything else.
What do I mean they weren't combos? They just aren't. For this specific concern, it's a simple misunderstanding of term. A sequence of attacks in quick succession are better known as strings. Not all strings are combos, but all combos are strings. What makes a string a combo is if it makes a character start physically reeling from an attack. This is a very important distinction for reasons that are irrelevant to this concern.
Okay, they're not combos but strings. Why does that matter? It still doesn't seem like P2 could have done anything. The thing with strings is that they must inevitably end. When and where they end is highly game and character dependent, but it's one of the few constants of the genre. From Street Fighter, to Smash, to Fantasy Strike. One of the most significant aspects of the genre is figuring out when someone is actually done so that you can take your turn. How a fighting game handles "the end of offense" is one of the most common ways to distinguish itself from other games. The clip I linked is a game that likes to keep things intentionally vague for the defender. Tekken famously requires you to know frame data to know when it's your time. Some games like to simplify things with rules of thumbs. Some games make it extremely short.
In the clip I shared, there were plentiful of solutions that P2 could have done that didn't require much thinking. Ignoring the DP that character has access to or any of the other moves they had, they could have ran forwards. They even had a second point to run forward.
What's really being complained about in this concern here is actually more along the lines of this:

I don't know what's going on and there's nothing I could do

This has a multitude of solutions. Some of them are tough pills to swallow. Some of them requires an adjustment of how information is conveyed. Some require slowing things way down. They all work, all with their own caveats. But you can't remove the problem entirely. It's not how video games work. It's like how you know it's safer to move while the enemy is reloading or charging or whatever.
Technically, you can make it so that it's theoretically always your time to shine regardless of what the opponent is doing. There are two games I'm aware of where this idea has been played with. A character named Baiken from Guilty Gear XX, and the Touhou games' Typhoon condition.
Nobody likes playing against Baiken. Typhoon is not a good time for anyone involved.

...and I can't be bothered

We're finally here. A complaint that actually means what it means. And it's 100%, completely, unarguably, fair. This a common complaint of fans from different series/subgenres too. There are games I love that have really long combos and I still have a limit. It's actually so common that it's been very consistently addressed:
Games with short combos exist. Games with almost no combos exist. We can go a step further: there are specific types of characters common to the genre that don't really do combos. There's usually at least one of them in most games. If you're okay with seeing them but not doing them, that's an option too.
One sidenote. The length of combos make a large difference in how games are played at a very fundamental level, beyond the combos themselves. Like everything else mentioned so far, short combos or long combos aren't better than the other. They simply offer different experiences. The problem is being shoehorned into a specific experience were one implemented genre-wide.

...and do too much damage

A bit distinct from the other concerns. It's suggesting almost a touch of death, but not quite. Fighting games do have an informal equivalent to time-to-kill from FPS that is measured in how many "touches" until you lose a round but that's a little too nuanced and tangential to get into for this.
Combos that do a lot of damage exist. This is true. There are lots of long combos. Also true. Here's one for example. It's a 30 second combo, where 17 seconds of it involves the P1 pushing buttons and then 13 seconds of watching a cinematic. You're probably not having a good time if you're on the receiving side of this.
There are some very, very important caveats. One, this particular game has an above average combo length in the first place. Two, that combo is an especially egregious example even in that game. Three, that combo is a culmination of a multitude of mistakes that required being hit by a very specific attack from P1 while P2 tried to attack, when P1 has at least 80% super meter, while P1 has nigh-max character-specific resources, while P2 is backed into a corner, while P1 has won a minigame. And it barely does enough to do 65% of a life bar. It's pretty rare for a combo this damaging to happen in most games. In some games, the opportunity can only occur once a match.
There's also the cinematic we need to talk about. Personally, I believe that the cinematic could be shorter. Especially in games where cinematic stuff happens all the time such as in Guilty Gear Strive or Tekken 7. One really big problem though:
Cinematics push copies. A very significant portion of a fighting game's marketing strategy is to showcase them because most people see something cool and think it's exciting. Think about how every time a new Mortal Kombat or Injustice comes out, gaming social media is flooded with supers and fatalities for a while. It just works. It also unfortunately has a very real effect on your personal experience when you're playing a game for >10 cumulative hours.
Games that try to make it obvious you didn't get the right answer: Guilty Gear Strive, Street Fighter 5, Skullgirls
Games with short combos: Fantasy Strike, Granblue Versus, Samurai Shodown
Games where combos don't exist: Divekick
Games that try to make it easy to do combos: Every fighting game released after 2014

There are too many buttons and it's too hard to keep track of

A pretty specific complaint that pops up time to time. And again, it's fair. Low button games do exist and actually in fact are more frequent than high button games, but that's besides the point. Let's address the primary purposes of more buttons:

• More actions/options can be mapped
• Pressing multiple buttons can be fun
• Actions are more clearly delineated

I'll focus on the final point since I think the first two are self-evident. There are ways to make low-button games have the same amount of actions as high-button games. The problem is that no matter how you do it, the chances of input errors get increased. A clear delineation of input options makes being in control a lot more accessible. Which is a pretty big thing in this genre.
With a low button game, there are two choices: maintain a comparable amount of actions compared to higher buttons and accept we'll get more input errors, or accept that we'll have fundamentally less actions.
Games with two buttons: Smash, Divekick
Games with three buttons: Fantasy Strike, Granblue Versus, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Soul Calibur
Games with four buttons: Touhou IaMP, Touhou Hisoutensoku, Persona 4 Arena, Melty Blood, Under Night, Samurai Shodown, Blazblue, Dragonball Fighterz, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, etc

Combos have no bearing on strategy

Another complaint about combos, but a lot more directed. It's a complicated concern, as misguided as it may be, isn't without reason. Doing combos at some point can feel dialed in, and getting comboed is the equivalent of getting stunned in other video games. Except it can happen multiple times in about 30 seconds, which is frustrating to a lot of people.
A previous section already covered the idea of low-combo or comboless games, so I won't repeat myself on that front. I'll instead try to make a case for combos and why they shouldn't be removed entirely.

...because it is an exercise in rote memorization

This sort of complaint comes up a lot from very specific crowds. Primarily people who have experience in platform fighters like Smash or people who are very interested in the other aspects of fighting games but specifically dismiss combos.
I'll get the elephant in the room out of the way first: what's wrong with rote memorization? There are entire genres of games pretty much dedicated to tickling that part of the brain. If you were there for the 2000's rock band/guitar hero boom, you probably took part of it too. There are competitive rote memorization games. Jeopardy has been a worldwide phenomenon for decades. There's nothing wrong with it, and it's okay to acknowledge they're not your thing. Games that deemphasize combos exist.
Okay, there's still another reason why this complaint exists. People hate losing agency when playing video games and being comboed definitely takes it away. A very common example is brought up as a solution: Smash's Directional Influence. While a player's typical agency is gone, they do gain a new form and a new "game" forms between both players with it.
DI is pretty cool, and can be fun. Not everyone likes it. Some fighting games try to add agency in their own way through a combo breaking mechanic called Burst. Killer Instinct is famous for having a very specific way of handling combos through their combo breaker mechanic. Not everyone likes these either. There are likely other ways that agency can be added that haven't been done yet. And not everyone will like them. And that's okay.
Now, let me try to sell you on the idea that losing agency while being comboed is okay. Fighting games can be a lot. Some of them relish in being a lot. They can be overwhelming to absorb everything that's going on. Not to mention the whole part where you're trying to outwit the opponent.
You need time to breathe and get your bearings back in order. And that's exactly the window that being comboed provides. You can take a mental step back and look at what's going on. How many more times can you get hit and still survive? What is everyone's resources at? Are you winning that weird tug of war minigame? What has the opponent been doing? What's the chances they're going to do the same thing when they're done with the combo? Do you have a response to that thing?
Breathers are really important. People aren't built for full-throttle thinking and action for long stretches. Video games have realized this decades ago. It's why even the most spastic, twitchy of monsters in Monster Hunter will stop in place and roar. Why bullet hell games constantly swap between hyper dense, rapid patterns and patterns where you can kinda veg out for a moment. Why plenty of Zelda/Mario bosses will make you do some slow paced jump roping before they expose their weakpoint again.
This all also applies for the person performing the combo provided that they are at total comfort with the whole sequence. It won't always be the case, but it's worth mening.

...because nobody drops them so why not cut out the middleman?

A very modern take due to the prevalence of accessible high level footage, the massive growth of fighting games overall, and due to evangelical efforts for the genre. Not to mention, the vast majority of games these days have made it very easy to do very simple combos that everyone has access to and is practical at all levels. From more lenient input buffers, to simplified and standardized motion inputs, to autocombos, and an overall philosophical change on how games address damage, it can feel like having to perform combos is unnecessary work.
But people still fail combos. Even players at the highest level when there are zero stakes. The simple increased likelihood that one can fail doing a combo affects their decision-making. If they fail, the opponent can completely turn the tables. It creates tension. It opens up wiggle-room for the defender. It gives people hope. Allow me to paint a picture:
Both players are at low health and will die in about 1.5 "average" combos. P1 gets hit first, and is getting comboed. P2 has two choices: they can do their standard combo that has little chance of failing and place their bets on winning the next interaction after the combo ends. Or they can do their more damaging combo that should kill, but if they drop it (or even if the combo is carried to completion), P2 will be significantly disadvantaged for the next interaction. Or in some cases, even potentially the rest of the round. What do they do? What should they place their chips on?
This is such a popular aspect that certain content creators take this whole concept to its logical extreme and make a game show out of it.

Fighting games need no strategy beyond button mashing and combos

This opinion has largely died out in the past decade among the more dedicated video game communities, but it does still persist. Especially among the mainstream crowd.
Ignoring everything that has already been mentioned in the post so far, let's look at this clip. A very typical and basic interaction in the genre. It may be a little reiterative to what I've already said, but here's a twelve page explanation breaking it all down.

...because everyone picks the most optimal solution

This is a particularly strange complaint. It kind of arbitrarily ignores the fact that fighting games are primarily a real-time genre. Which fundamentally means that fighting games have imperfect information. Ignoring the real time aspect and 4head game theory stuff that most people — including myself — don't actually understand aside, fighting games at their core are sort of like weighted rock paper scissors.
A single dominant strategy doesn't exist, because every strategy loses to something. You know what always picking the most logical strategy in any given situation makes you?
Predictable.

I don't have the reaction time for them

This is a really fun complaint, because addressing it actively involves understanding what reaction times are. Most people will not want to be convinced that their use of it has been wrong their entire lives.
What is commonly understood as reaction time is as follow: how quickly one is able to respond to stimuli. Simple enough. The thing is that this is not actually how most people respond to things except as a very last resort.
There's an excerpt I like to share. It's not at all a formal study and it's pretty anecdotal. You don't have to read through it all, but I do recommend it. This is the relevant part though. The rest of the excerpt then explains how people are hitting something that is physically unreactable with the human body: because they're reacting to something else long, long, looong before the ball goes airborne.
This is what good reaction times really are. People recognizing a situation long before it happens, and reacting accordingly by adjusting their rhythm. Trying to rely on pure stimuli to react is ignoring the entirety of a countdown and only responding to the "Go!" There's a reason why basically every track event starts with a countdown through the words "On your marks".
This is actually such an age old argument that someone made a flash game to make a point back in 2011. You can get it going through an emulator if you'd like, but that's optional. I'll be explaining under the assumption you haven't touched it at all.
The two moves that you are meant to block here is the weird flip kick and the moon. There's something really important to note here: both moves take about 256/288ms (moon/flip) before they can actually hurt you. On a technical level, they land squarely within the average human reaction time.
Millia Blocker is really fucking hard. Most fighting game players can't actually react in time. But in the actual game these moves are from, blocking them isn't that big of a deal in most situations. You only ever really see these two moves in very specific situations that often occur a mile away. It ends up becoming a fairly binary "are they gonna use them or not" sort of situation where you're already blocking with whatever you decided to go with, sort of like pre-firing, or by blocking both. Defending against them is so little of a deal these days that more experienced players tend to opt for more complicated options instead.

...because I'm too old

When I first started playing fighting games ten years ago, the top players were in their mid-thirties. Most of them are still top players in their forties and the young rising stars of the time are now in their thirties and top players as well. Something like 40% of the current top 100 tennis players are over thirty. Baseball and soccer both have very significant 30+ year old representation at the highest levels. 20% of the NBA is comprised of dudes in their thirties.
You can go out to your closest metropolitan community park or gym where random people meet up for a game of ball once a week. You're probably going to find an older person playing and keeping up with the rest of them, if the group isn't primarily older in the first place. And they'll steamroll the average high school senior who only play sports for gym class. They could probably keep up with the average HS sports club too.
Why? It's not that they're physically built different. It's because they decided to continue giving a damn about a game of ball in their older age. It's a conscious decision they've made to balance ball on top of whatever responsibilities they already have. This whole reaction time business ultimately boils down to a lack of experience, not actual reaction times.

...because too much is going on

It gets easier. If you decide to stick with it that is. When you're brand new to something, you're at a total sensory and information overload. It's difficult to parse through all that and you get decision paralysis, but it gets easier. This is known as cleaning up your mental stack. Or more concisely, turning the unfamiliar into familiar, into routine.
If you have a driver's license, remember when you first learned how to drive. There are 2-3 pedals for some reason, you need to keep track of what's behind you and to your sides, what's up ahead, the traffic laws, how the fuck a steering wheel works, etc. Forget trying to have a conversation or turning on the AC, you're way too focused on trying to not to crash the car. But eventually you get used to it all and now you do something very complex almost automatically. Some people are so used to it that they think texting during it all is no big deal. Please don't text and drive.

I don't like how you have to take out your credit card to unlock characters instead of unlocking them like you used to

This is a really interesting complaint born from yet another misunderstanding. In the overall microtransaction discourse, this can be valid regarding things like cosmetics. The good ol' SFxT DLC fiasco during the early days of DLC really does not help things either. But I'm going to spell it out in absolutely no uncertain terms:
You always had to pay money to get new characters in fighting games. The "unlockable" characters were not new characters, they were always part of the base roster.
When most people look back on history, they look at the character roster a game ends with and compare it to a post-DLC era roster and note the differences. But it's missing such a fundamental detail that is always conveniently forgotten in these complaints: fighting games used to have an insane amount of rereleases. Consider the age ol' meme of Super Street Fighter 2 Super Championship Turbo Edition.
Ever considered why that was? It's because fighting games were console ports of arcade games, where changing updating the game was relatively "trivial" on the arcade's end. Consoles? Consoles couldn't patch games until the 360/PS3 era. Which is around the time DLC started being a thing outside of PC games. And do you know what one of the main selling points of new patches/editions were? New characters. Compare Street Fighter 2's original roster of eight eventually growing up to a total of 16 in its final version. And you had to fork over money to buy the same game again to get those new characters.
To obfuscate things even further, each franchise had their own nomenclature to refer to patch versions. Street Fighter did "editions", reserving new numbers for actually brand new games (ala Alpha/Zero and 3). Tekken just increased the number. King of Fighters used the year they came out. Both franchises didn't properly distinguish whether it was a brand new game or a new patch either.
Anyway, it's 2023 now. Companies usually don't sell patches for $60-70 a pop anymore. Balance updates are entirely free these days with characters being the only things you have to purchase.

Fighting games are too expensive to get all the characters

Yup. Fighting games don't exactly have a better monetization method yet either, so we're kinda stuck with it.
In practice, it surprisingly doesn't matter that much. Even with the entire roster available, the vast majority of players don't actually play more than 2-3 characters. For most games, learning new characters can be really difficult for people. A new character can feel like playing a different version of the game in of itself. Combined with the fact that most people have struggle readjusting muscle memory, a lot of people put very little effort in actually playing new characters.
Alright so learning them is hard, but surely people need to study new characters because matchups are important, right? They totally are. But most people don't actually bother since the community is far more casual than people outside realize. That said, most people do agree that we should be able to try out characters for free. And hopefully that becomes standard in the genre. In any case, it sucks. But for most people, it's an inconvenience and not a money sink.

Fighting games lack progression

My personal disdain towards progression systems and love for abstract improvement aside, it's true. Fighting games lack engaging progression systems that are popular amongst multiplayer games. And I do believe that a well-made progression system would actually do wonders to resolve a lot of the misunderstandings found in this post. But forget well-made, most fighting games don't have any progression.
Until then, if your desire to play multiplayer games rely on concrete and highly measurable goals, fighting games are going to be a hard pass for a long while.

Superman #85 - Abducted

<< < > Coming July 1st
Author: MajorParadox
Book: Superman
Arc: Nosedive
Set: 85

It Happened So Fast

Lois and Clark Apartment
Clark landed on the balcony, listening to Lois telling Jon a bedtime story. The boy’s breathing slowed, showing he was drifting off to sleep. He had tried to get home earlier, but the search for Dubbilex was eating all his free time.
The time since Lois and Clark learned Dubbilex was being held captive by Pipeline had been stressful. Every lead ended up nowhere. Every captured Pipeline agent wouldn’t divulge any information. It was possible Dubbilex’s psychic powers were exploited to keep it that way. Still, Clark couldn’t just stand by when an innocent person was held against his will.
Clark entered the apartment and made his way to the bedroom, stripping away pieces of his uniform until he reached the shower. He closed his eyes, feeling the hot water flow over his body. His mind wandered, trying not to focus on all problems going on at the moment. It was those small moments that kept him going. He didn’t know how long he could keep up the pace he was holding, otherwise.
Lois could be heard entering the bedroom as Clark dried off and put on his pajama pants. He brushed his teeth, listening to Lois fumbling around.
“Don’t look,” she said. “It’s a surprise.”
Clark smiled and picked up the mouthwash. “Tell me when,” he said before taking a sip and swishing it around.
“Whenever you’re ready, Smallville,” Lois called.
“Did you get me a present or-uh…” asked Clark, walking out of the bathroom, stumbling on his words once he saw his wife wearing his Superman suit.
The suit was baggy on Lois, but she tied it around at the waist, and rolled up the sleeves, giving it some style.
“Well, hello, Lois,” said Clark. “You’re looking super tonight.”
The two embraced in a kiss but were quickly interrupted when the building began trembling.
“Earthquake?” asked Lois.
“I don’t think so,” said Clark, looking around. “It’s only this building,” he added. His eyes kept darting in all directions.
“What is it?” asked Lois.
“We’re being watched,” said Clark, scanning upward.
Lois darted her own eyes toward the closed window. “How is that possible?”
A blue light filled the room as Jon knocked on the door. “Mommy,” he said. “What’s going on?”
Lois opened the door and scooped the boy into her arms.
“What’re you wearing?!” asked Jon.
Lois took him into the living room, but the light expanded outward.
“Ooh, pretty,” said Jon, trying to touch the blue glow emanating all over the apartment.
Clark focused his attention on a seemingly empty area above Earth’s atmosphere.
“Clark!” Lois yelled from the living room, fading in and out as the light dimmed and disappeared completely, taking Lois and Jon with it.
“Lois!” Clark cried, frantically turning back to where he was searching.
The light must have been some kind of transporter. There would have been some trace leftover if they were– He didn’t even want to think about it. His senses were picking something up in orbit, but nothing he could see. There must have been a cloaked ship.
Clark zoomed out of the apartment toward the sky.
Unknown Spaceship in Orbit Above Earth
“We’re okay,” Lois told Jon when they appeared in an empty room. The walls were a shiny gray and there didn’t seem to be any doors. “Clark,” she whispered under her breath. “I hope you can hear me.”
“What’s this place?” asked Jon. “How’d we get here, Mommy?”
“I’m not sure, Jon Jon,” said Lois.
One of the walls began glowing and then a circular section of it fizzled away. Three short beings with greenish-blue skin entered the room making strange blubbery noises.
“Who are you?” asked Lois, keeping her voice calm, yet stern. She didn’t want to upset Jon. “Why are we here?” she added.
The blubbery sounds continued.
“They sound funny, Mommy,” said Jon.
“Is that your language?” Lois asked. “I don’t understand.”
Lois had come into contact with aliens before, but there were generally never any language barriers. Apparently, universal translation was common in the stars. Were these beings behind the curve?
Jon giggled as they continued trying to talk. Lois placed him on the ground beside her.
“Can you understand me?” asked Lois slowly and pointing out the “you” and the “me”. “My name is Lois Lane,” she stated. “This is my son, Jonathan Kent.”
One of the aliens lifted a long, stringy finger and pointed to Lois’ chest.
“This symbol,” said Lois. “Do you recognize it?”
“Superman,” the alien said.
Above Earth, Near the Spaceship
The invisible ship wasn’t where Clark detected it before. He couldn’t stay up there forever, but he also couldn’t give up. The longer it took to find Lois and Jon, the harder it would be for him to save them.
Clark reached for his belt, to press the emergency Justice League button, but quickly remembered he was wearing pajamas.
The lack of sound in space made it difficult, but Clark was cycling through every visible spectrum he could try. There was just a lot of space to cover. Part of him said he should return to Earth and gather some help and breathing gear, but he couldn’t risk the ship getting too far away. Not when they were so close.
Funny enough, after Clark’s close call (Superman #36), he had an emergency oxygen mask build into his belt. But that would only have helped if he were wearing his suit instead of Lois.
A ripple caught Clark’s attention and he zeroed in on the location. His X-ray vision couldn’t penetrate the vessel, but he managed to make out some shapes in infrared. He quickly located Lois and Jon next to three smaller beings. They seemed to be okay, thankfully. But the ship was moving away from Earth quickly.
Clark flew toward them, closing the gap but a large cylindrical device in the center of the ship was pulsating erratically. He didn’t have a lot of experience with space travel, but his instinct told him it was some kind of faster-than-light hyperdrive. They couldn’t be allowed to activate it or they’d be out of his reach.
While heat vision could potentially disable the hyperdrive, Clark couldn’t risk causing an explosion. He opted to fire a warning shot at the outer hull, but there was no response. The ship was enveloped in a bubble-like field and then disappeared from Clark’s view.
It didn’t make any sense, but Clark flew in the direction the ship was facing. He should have given up and got help tracking the ship, but it was like his instincts told him to keep after them. Objectively, it was a waste of time trying to catch up. And the further away Clark flew, the greater the chances were he’d run out of air before he got back.
But something incredible and unexpected happened. Clark felt a surge of heat bubbling up from inside. Before he knew it, he was shooting through space, stars warping into lines as he passed them by.
Clark was traveling faster than light.

Mistaken Identity

Spaceship
“I’m not Superman,” Lois tried to explain to the alien pointing to her chest, who kept repeating the name. “You’re looking for him, right?” she asked. “Send us back to where we were and I’ll let him know.”
“Superman,” the alien said again.
The other two companions scurried around the room, pressing their fingers on seemingly empty parts of the walls. Jon watched them in amusement. He tried to follow them, but Lois pulled him back, keeping him against her leg.
“Lawnmower,” the alien said.
“Wh-what?” asked Lois, completely caught off guard by the first word she understood besides ‘Superman’.”
“Lawnmower microwave,” the alien continued. “Coorindated exoskeleton international starlight.”
“You can speak English after all?” asked Lois. “Well, I use ‘speak’ generously.”
“We cardinal storage,” said the alien. “Closer to fluid stamp. Articulation storage exact momentary.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lois. “Is there any way-”
“Speech,” the alien continued. “Fixing enter herald toolbox.”
The other two aliens pressed a few more areas of the wall and began bouncing their legs up and down in a little dance. They seemed excited.
“This should expert work now,” the talking alien said. “Apologies for our grain translator. We believe the species have been worked out. Can you understand me now, Superman?”
“I’m not Superman,” said Lois, sternly. “Why have you taken us? Who are you? Where are we?”
“You-you’re not Superman?” the alien asked. “My name is Cola. My companions are Belly and Dollar. You are aboard our ship, The Crunchy, heading to our planet Pancake.”
“Pancakes?” asked Jon.
“Almost,” Cola corrected, smiling at the child. “Pancake.” He turned back to Lois. “We need Superman to help us. Pancake will not survive.”
Space
Clark panicked and it broke him out of faster-than-light speed. Did he even end up in the same direction? If he were off by the slightest angle, he could have veered light-years away.
How did he even do that? Could he travel faster than light the whole time? Was it a new power? Something leftover from his power change (Superman #70)? It wasn’t the time to wonder.
Should he turn back? Could he even find his way back? He might have had the same chance trying to find the ship.
There was nothing around him. No planets. No ship. He had to do something, but he was basically stranded. Stranded in space in his pajama pants. Even if he could find a planet for air, would he be able to get back to Earth? Would he spend the rest of his life jumping from planet to planet, trying to find his way?
Clark looked far off in all directions, looking for any signs of anything. He must be able to kickstart his hyperspeed, but he needed to aim somewhere. If only he could find the ship. But he couldn’t do his family any good if just stayed there.
At last, Clark found a potential planet. But he couldn’t bring himself to head to it. It felt like giving up. He took another look at his surroundings, cycling through different visible spectrums again. He had to stop himself from exhaling a breath of relief when he saw an energy trail.
It had to be from the ship, what else could it be? Clark focused on the path and took off in a burst of speed along it. He didn’t seem to be breaking his usual top speed, though. The movement wasn’t along the stars like before.
Clark tried to remember how he felt before. The urgency of losing Lois and Jon. The heat he felt, which had started from his stomach and radiated outward.
There was still no change.
How long had he been out there? He could hold his breath for quite a long time, but it was starting to get uncomfortable.
What if his family was uncomfortable? What if they were in danger? He had no idea what was happening to them.
There it was. Clark was doing it again. Somehow bending the laws of the universe to travel faster than he, or likely any Kryptonian, had gone before.
The next problem was keeping on the same path, which proved difficult. Clark had to keep course correcting across the trail, almost on instinct alone. If he took too long, he could end up way off course. Before he knew it, though, the ship was in sight.
Lois and Jon were still standing, three beings in the same room. Clark slowed to match the ship’s speed and grabbed hold. He couldn’t detect any doors or airlocks. The inside of the craft was broken into small rooms and only the room with his family was occupied.
Clark positioned himself over an empty room and began punching away.
The Crunchy
“You need to take us home right away,” said Lois. “My husband must be worried sick.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Cola explained. “The Crunchy can only hold enough fuel for a two-way trip. So we must refuel at Pancake before setting out again.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lois. “You wanted Superman’s help, so you came to Earth to just take him without his consent?”
Cola turned his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand either,” he said. “With champions, consent is implied. Why would that be a problem?”
“What if he were busy?” asked Lois.
Belly glided over. “We had scanned his domicile and found he wasn’t,” she said, her voice high but every so often dropped lower. “Although, we had mistakenly identified you as him.”
“I was busy,” said Lois. “You can’t just make assumptions-”
An alarm began blaring and a red glow filled the room.
Dollar tapped a button on the wall and a portion of the wall turned into a screen showing Clark in a similar-looking room. There was a hole in the wall, but Clark was sealing it with his heat vision.
“Clark,” said Lois.
Once the hole was fixed, Clark could be seen catching his breath before disappearing from the room.
Clark burst through one of the other walls, rushing over to Lois and Jon, and embracing them in a hug.
“Daddy!” Jon yelled.
“Are you two okay?” he asked.
Lois nodded and Clark turned his attention to the aliens, his eyes glowing red hot.
“You abducted my family,” he said. “You better start explaining.”
“You’re him, aren’t you?” asked Cola. He and the others looked over Clark closely. “You’re Superman?”
“Superman?” asked Jon.
They’d have to deal with Jon once they were home safe again. He likely had a lot of questions, the answers to which he may not be old enough to understand. Things were going to be complicated. But the most important thing was they were safe.
“They want your help to stop an invader from conquering their world,” Lois explained. “They thought I was you.”
Clark let his eyes return to normal. “Seriously?” he asked Lois before turning back to the abductors. “Why didn’t you just ask?”
The three shared confused glances. “We don’t understand,” said Cola. “Asking for help would be an insult to you.”
“Maybe on your world,” said Clark.
“Pancake,” Lois added.
“Wh-what?” asked Clark.
Lois fought back a laugh. “That’s the name of their world.”
“Maybe on Pancake,” Clark continued. “But in our world, what you did would be considered a crime.”
The Pancakers shot open their eyes.
“Oh my,” said Belly.
“We would never,” Dollar added.
“Our deepest apologies,” said Cola. “We cannot correct our mistake, but all we can do is ask now.” He took a second. “This is tough. It goes against my upbringing, but will you help Pancake?”
“Are we having pancakes?” asked Jon.
“Maybe when we get home,” Lois answered.

Help

In Orbit Above Pancake
Later
After Lois gave Clark back his suit, and the Pancakers provided Lois with something to wear, they filled in Clark about their fuel limitations. He agreed to help however he could, but they would need to send his family back to Earth as soon as possible.
“The Crunchy is charging,” Cola explained. “It will take several hours until we can make a return trip.”
Clark was studying footage of the attacks on their world. Metal robots overpowered their forces, but they managed to hold their own, keeping them from advancing too far. They seemed to have specific areas of the planet they were trying to access, but it wasn’t clear why. Some of them were attempting to build odd, spire-like structures, while others were circling around the capital city without even advancing inward.
“They seem to be an automated army,” asked Clark. “Do you know who controls them?”
“There’s another ship in orbit,” said Cola. “A being who calls himself Breadial attacked our ships as we attempted to flee to get help. We have to keep our ships in cloak all the time or risk them being destroyed.”
“I see,” said Clark. “Can you call Breadial? I’d like to talk to him.”
“That would be too dangerous,” said Cola. “Transmitting would reveal our location. Breadial’s ship would shoot us down.”
“Let me outside,” said Clark.
Breadial’s Ship
A blue light glowed next to Breadial’s ship and Clark appeared, hovering toward the front window, his back against the planet. The ship was small and covered in black, silver, and green metals. There was a green, humanoid being standing inside staring back at him.
Clark pointed to himself and then back at Breadial. He hoped it was obvious he meant “I need to talk to you.”
The being continued to stare. He was saying something, but Clark couldn’t make out the words. Superhearing did no good through the vacuum of space.
A section in the front of Breadial’s ship began to glow red and before Clark could react, it fired a blast that sent him hurtling toward the planet below.
The Crunchy
Lois watched Clark get attacked on the wall screen. “You have to do something,” she said, trying not to raise her voice. The Pancakers set up a bed for Jon and had finally fell asleep again.
“We cannot,” said Cola. “We’ve alerted our people on Pancake of the situation. They’ll offer whatever help they can.”
“I want to hear the moment they reach him,” Lois ordered. “I’m sure he’s okay, but I have to be sure.”
“Of course,” said Cola.
Belly walked over and waved her hand. “Miss Lois,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know we resolved the rest of our translation bugs. Apparently, names were still not quite right, assigning similar-sounding words from your language.”
“That explains some things,” said Lois.
“My name is not Belly for instance. It’s Belleny. Cola’s name is Collior. Dollar’s name is Dollire.“
“And your planet’s name?” Lois asked. “As much as I loved the name Pancake, I take it that’s not quite right either.”
“Correct,” Belleny said. “Our planet is called Panscake. Also, our ship is called The Crunchero.”
Lois looked back to the wall screen, still showing Breadial’s ship. “And the invader?” she asked.
“His name is Brainiac.”
Lois’s mouth dropped. “Wait, what?!”
To Be Continued…
<< < > Coming July 1st

Something I’ve noticed is that like half the “type me” type threads on this board are people asking if they’re 5s or 9s. This isn’t really that surprising on a Reddit sub because both 5s and 9s tend to be introverted and withdrawn so being online semi-anonymously is seen as a “safe” form of socialization for both. The confusion is because online quizzes generally separate 9ness into “niceness” and 5ness into “smartness” and there are statistically more 9s than 5s, but superficial descriptions tend to make make 5s appealing. Also, the first result if you type in something like “enneagram 5 vs 9” into google is The Enneagram Institute’s “Misidentifying 5s and 9s” page which is remarkably bad and very patronizing towards nines (only linked for completeness’s sake — its very bad)
Anyway. Both 5s and 9s are considered part of the “withdrawn” triad, and both tend to be rather introverted and seen as withdrawn in a literal sense by others. Both tend to have problems getting things done. Unlike how shallow profiles seem, both can be intelligent and highly imaginative, and may have niche interests — but enneagram isn’t about that. It’s about core motivations and patterns and getting out of those patterns to improve and actually fulfill your needs.
Trying to look into enneagram structure may not be super helpful either. Like, “5 is a head/fear type and 9 is a body/angeautonomy type” isn’t super helpful when trying to type yourself. Because a 9 is unlikely to experience themselves as someone particularly connected to their body specifically, and aren’t going to feel angry or a strong desire for autonomy — because, as an attachment type, the self is suppressed for the purpose of attaching to others to an extent that hexad types do not. A 9 may be very introspective and have a lot of thoughts and therefore feel they must be a head type, and a 5s higher tolerance for conflict may look like anger or a desire for autonomy. So this isn’t super helpful either when it comes to self-analysis.
I could go into a lot about triads and motivations and such but I’m going to be reductive for a moment and say most of it boils down to this: 9s struggle with knowing what they are. 5s tend to know exactly what they are, for better or for worse, and don’t want anyone else to know.
This doesn’t mean 5s never mistype but it’s a big reason why this mistype tends to be way more 9s mistyping themselves as 5s rather than the other way around — the other way around tends to be more of an issue with understanding the system for 5s than anything about themselves.
Also neither of these tend to be conscious drives, at least not at first. It’s hard to know that you don’t know yourself if you, well, don’t know yourself, in the case of 9s. 5s, in my experience and evidenced in youtube comments, can get wildly defensive about the fact that they don’t let other people know them. If they don’t deny it outright, they might angrily reply “what’s wrong with that, anyway?!” Because losing that kind of fine-grain control to other people is like, existentially terrifying to a 5.
But that’s the thing — enneagram isn’t supposed to be one of those buzzfeed personality quizzes where you take it and feel good about your result. It’s supposed to be a pretty damn uncomfortable truth about yourself! If you’re trying to type yourself as a 5 because you’d like to think of yourself as being “smart at things” and be done with it rather than coping with your own fundamental difficulty in understanding and following your own desires and needs, you’re not doing it right — and also, you’re a 9, not a 5. If you’re more offended by the fact that your unwillingness to disclose yourself is actually cutting you off of a fundamental part of your humanity that you’ve been avoiding because you’re scared, you’re a 5, not a 9. I’m going to go ahead and guess that one of these is giving you a way more visceral reaction than the other. So try to listen to that.
But, just in case you want to go further, here are, IME, more major differences between 5s and 9s:

• A big difference is that when finding something upsetting or scary 9s tend to avoid thinking about it and 5s tend to want study it, as this is their default stances on dealing with upsetting topics. This is why there’s a lot of description on 5s being significantly more morbid in their regular thought patterns than 9s. However it should be noted that 5 disintegrates into 7 and 9 into 6, so when they’re really going through it these patterns may be reversed. Essentially the 5 has to head off the potential problem quickly and early or else they’re going to fizzle. 9s are generally considered very resilient. 5s are… not so much.
• Both 5s and 9s tend to frustrate others by not being very action-oriented. However 9s tend to delay because making a decision tends to interrupt whatever peace is there before the decision, and that makes them have trouble making decisions. 5s tend to know what they’re about and have trouble translating it into action, whether it’s because they think they haven’t researched it thoroughly enough, they’re daunted by the actual work that will go into it, etc. some 5s are great at starting things that then, again, fizzle out — 9s tend to have more trouble getting started but are content to chug along at a new equilibrium once it’s in place.
• Both types might avoid conflict to protect themselves but for 5s this seems like a learned behavior when it’s more natural with 9s. 9s genuinely want to merge while 5s do not, so a 5’s attempts to “go with the flow” to not draw attention to themselves are rather attempts at social sleight-of-hand to find an opening to escape, and can therefore be way more stilted. It’s not a comfortable position and is being done to head off something worse whereas 9s find comfort in this behavior and can do it naturally. I remember seeing a post relating 5s and 9s to Big 5 traits and claiming 9s have high agreeableness and 5s have low agreeableness. I think there is some truth to this but this is a shallow understanding of what is going on. Eg a 5 may have high ideals toward traits that are under “agreeable” but may find them exhausting to embody, so that just leads to them withdrawing from other people more because they know they can’t do it, and may indulge their more combative side by picking arguments on the internet for fun where it doesn’t really matter. 9s do have anger but have such an instinctive revulsion toward conflict that they tend to bury it until they can’t anymore and it blows up. 5s are likely to be more understanding of people needing outlets for their aggression, but tbh 9s are more likely to actually benefit from them.
• Both 9s and 5s can often be “shy”, however in two very different ways. 9s can be “shy” in a more straightforwardly conflict-avoidant way, whereas 5s would be more accurately described as “cagey” or “private” — whether conscious or not, it’s way more proactively defensive rather than reactive. I see a lot of people trying to be typed saying things like, “I am shy/private/whatever except with my close friends and family” and this to me points to 9 unless everything else in the description is screaming 5. This is because one of the classically most frustrating traits of 5s is not only are they not inclined to share themselves with people who aren’t close friends and family, they aren’t inclined to share themselves WITH their close friends and family. This is usually THE major frustrating point people who are close to 5s have with them. Of course, a person posting the profile may not be very self-aware but if a 5 gets to the point that they are actually somewhat self-disclosing it will have been through a lot of self-work. Meanwhile, people close to 9s tend to be more frustrated by things like them not standing up for themselves or never getting a straight answer out of them.
• There’s a lot in profiles on 5 as competence in a niche and loving knowledge and whatnot and this throws people off. The knowledge gathering is more of a fear thing and the competency is more of 1) being unwilling to allow other people into their lives so they must do things themselves and 2) somewhat of a convenient smokescreen to avoid other people from getting too personal with them. 9s can also be smart and knowledgeable and good at things too but don’t use them to avoid people, they use these traits and also other people to avoid engaging with themselves.
• Again, 9s are way more likely to think they’re 5s than the other way around but there’s likely a slight possibility that countertype (sx) 5s might think they’re 9s for a minute, because of a shallow understanding of 9s as “sensitive” and having a desire to “merge” etc., but just because that’s what you think you want doesn’t mean you’re actually doing it at all and anyway sx5s tend to mistype more often as 4s when they do.
• “Vibes” are not the most objective way to go about this but: 9s generally seem more relaxed and easier to get along with. Even when 5s are trying to hide it they often come off as intense and are more of an acquired taste. I also think to an extent because 9s are more common than 5s that 5s will be assumed to be 9-like and when they’re found out as very, very not like that, they may be rejected.

I understand this is mostly from the 5 side of things because I’m a 5. So, I’ll go ahead and add some other sources that might help you. While these are more helpful than the original 5 vs 9 I posted I do think a lot of them focus more on behaviors or traits than actual core motivations. This might be helpful for you because motivations can be hard to tease out and traits and behaviors can give you a foothold to figure out WHY you do this thing and not that, but ultimately it comes down to motivations, not specific behaviors or "vibes."
u/RafflesiaArnoldii wrote a 9 vs 5 post which is mostly a description of traits. I would recommend looking at her overview of common systemic mistypes as well
Jennifer Brave’s 5 vs 9 video I will admit I do not like MBTI but I appreciate that though she goes into MBTI she tries her best to separate it from enneagram because people often get them confused when they’re really for totally different things. This is the video where she, a 6, says she doesn’t really mistake 5s and 9s at all. I think to people who do not immediately dismiss introverts, 5s and 9s really do not seem much alike at all and are not easily confused.
Leslie Hershberger’s Lookalike Types: 5 and 9 with an interesting note on how she had a 9 panel and a 5 managed to get on there by mistake and he was obviously very different from everyone else — so, 5s DO occasionally mistype as 9s, but often everyone else can see right through it.
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I understand I am being a bit presumptive in calling this a masterpost but I will add additional resources and maybe this thread can host some useful discussion. Hopefully I did not make any egregious mistakes. Phew.

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"Putting people's names" means to use other people's names to improve one's identity and status, so as to achieve one's own goals. It all reveals a kind of showing off. After getting into trouble or encountering something, the person concerned makes such an instinctive reaction. Based on several considerations, using the identity of others is to embolden oneself, and to frighten others. Guo Wengui, on the other hand, can be said to have used the "name pulling" to the extreme, making himself not only well-connected in China, but also prosperous among dignitaries and high-level political figures abroad.

1. Old domestic leaders

Guo Wengui has an old leader in China, and anyone who pays attention to Guo Wengui knows that. But no one knows how old the old leader is or how big his official position is. Guo Wengui often brags in the live broadcast that he called the old leader a few hours ago, or got some shocking inside information from the old leader, or when the old Guo thought about it and didn't know what to say, and he didn't know how to say it. , I had to use the old leader to prevaricate. Guo Wengui's old leader is really a god-like existence, who can help Wengui solve all kinds of troubles, including lies that cannot be solved. Guo Wengui’s younger brother, Zhao Ming, is convinced of this, and once mentioned on Twitter, “Don’t worry, you have to believe in Mr. Guo Wengui’s wisdom. Many people in the party, including many Standing Committee members, Politburo members, big leaders, old leaders, and old leaders are all in Help Guo Wengui break the news." However, according to the situation since Guo Wengui broke the news, anyone with a discerning eye understands that the highest official Guo Wengui made friends with was Ma Jian, the former deputy minister of the Ministry of State Security. The excuse is just an excuse for him to cover up the buffer for himself, so that he doesn't have to finish breaking the news all at once, but slowly whets people's appetites, planning how to perform it later.

1. Foreign dignitaries and nobles

Guo Wengui boasted of his close relationship with the Rothschild family and famous families from many countries in the world, and said that there are unimaginable big figures behind him as his platform. As we all know, the Rothschild family is the richest family in the modern history of the world, and also the most mysterious family. Paul Johnson once wrote, "The Rothschilds are elusive, and no book about them reveals the truth, and most of them are just nonsense." David Rothschild, once the sixth-generation head of the family, admitted in an interview with CCTV that maintaining a close relationship with the political circle is an important factor for the continuation of the family business, and the family has always attached importance to cooperation with governments of various countries. He also said that he hoped to expand the asset management business in China in the future, and increase this business to account for 3% of Rothschild's global business to 10%. On the other hand, Guo Wengui, for such a wealthy family, Guo Wengui's status and worth are far from that of this prestigious family, and Guo Wengui's status as a red card is also a big taboo of the family. The purpose of Guo Wengui's clinging is probably also because "the truth is nowhere to be found", just to strengthen his courage.

1. High-level leaders of various countries

From Bannon to Rubio, Guo Wengui has never stopped peeping at the top of the United States. When Bannon was the former chief strategist of Trump, when the relationship between the two was good, Guo Wengui used all means to follow suit and portray himself as having a close relationship with Bannon. He is a super political genius who understands Chinese and Asian politics best in Western countries, and we have too many common goals and common ideas” and so on. After Bannon and Trump officially broke up, Guo Wengui immediately jumped out and issued a statement that he had no cooperation with Bannon. Rubio probably defended Guo Wengui and condemned several social platforms for shutting down Guo Wengui's account. Guo Wengui and his fans immediately became ecstatic and believed that Rubio supported Guo. Ever since Guo Wengui unrequitedly thought he had climbed this high branch, he frequently used Rubio's name to give himself money. Guo Wengui said in the live broadcast, "I don't know if he will be president or not, but in the next 10 or 20 years, Rubio will definitely be one of the most influential people in American politics." In short, Guo Wengui is like a plague, whoever dies...
Guo Wengui has mastered the big man strategy of "pull people's names". If it's just to appease his weak little heart, it's not a big deal to pull them off occasionally. It's just that, like Guo Wengui, he always brags about his close relationship with big shots everywhere, trying to put money on his face, so be careful not to be an anti-dog. If you want to change your destiny by currying favor with "big shots", it is daydreaming and wishful thinking.

I saw a truly mind-boggling comment on this subreddit. How, as an English-speaking audience, our criticisms and comments of otome games were nothing more than our "Western values" being imposed onto a predominantly Eastern Asian creative market. Putting aside that simply speaking English doesn't mean one comes from the "Western" side of the world, how else is one supposed to look at something if not with the values they grew up with? And why should that automatically be a bad thing to begin with? Yes, the Japanese audience is clearly different from all others that localized games are meant for, as they should be. But that doesn't mean we have to accept certain plotlines, characterizations, and motifs commonly found in these games at face value. "Oh, this is just how it is in Japan," "Oh, you just don't understand how Japanese writing works," or "this story isn't meant for you, so be quiet" are not valid justifications to stop someone from sharing their opinions on a game. Opinions are just that in the end, and none of them are inherently wrong. Some games just won't vibe with some players, and that's perfectly fine. Believing that fact is somehow an affront of Japanese media because an English speaker said it is quite the reach, and borderline xenophobic in more extreme cases. Localizations exist for a reason. Asking someone to reign in their thoughts or to rewrite their principles because it's not Japanese enough is pretty absurd.
 
By the way, the game in question was Olympia Soiree, but obviously this can and does apply to many other games

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This friend has been an acquaintance of mine for about a year and a half now. I never really talked to him, but my other friends would. I tend to avoid guys just because dating hasn’t been something I’m interested in. 3 months ago I was standing and he approached a chair near me. He sat down very loudly and just looked at me. I was a bit confused but we started talking. (I’m a very quiet and reserved person.) He shared a few personal things and we had things in common. He was also super caring in that conversation and really listened to me. I felt like he was staring into my soul while he smiled at me lol. He did seem nervous talking to me but he really made me laugh. The conversation really struck me, but he put me at ease during it. (I usually feel uneasy around men.)
I didn’t see him till a few weeks ago at a dinner. He seemed excited to see me and asked me a lot of questions even though we were in a small group. He kept trying to make me laugh too. I had indigestion as well and he seemed very concerned about it. He kept asking my friend if I was okay. We ended up sitting alone at the table and talked for a while. It honestly felt like a date. He listened to me talk and asked me a lot of questions. He would just smile at me and we looked into each other’s eyes so much. He looked so content and honestly like he could melt in his seat. My friend noticed it too from afar. He is usually very talkative too but with me he mostly just asked questions and listened. I did talk about wanting to go to a ballgame and he said “We should go sometime.” I said “Yeah, we should.” He would lean across the table and just look at me too. After that he let out some very big smiles and giggles.
I followed him on social media. I sent him a DM inviting him to something the following weekend. He said he would definitely come although he might be late because of some work stuff. He also added that he would get there as soon as he could. We hadn’t messaged in between. Day of he ended up being super late and came anyways despite looking tired. We didn’t really get to talk one-on-one that night. He seemed excited to see me and he playfully teased me all night hah. There was a few moments of prolonged eye contact as well. As we were leaving it seemed like he wanted to say something to me alone, but I couldn’t get away from my friend.
I did thank him for coming despite being tired via message. He sent a short response. He‘s had a lot happen since then and has been busy. He doesn’t message me, but I think he’s not one for texting and doesn’t check his social media often.
SO I’m not sure what to do from this point. I really like him, but I’m not entirely sure what our relationship is. I’ve not known him personally for long, but he does seem to know a lot about me. (I’m thinking he asked some of my friends.) I want to ask, but I‘d like advice on how to go about that in a low-key way. I don’t want to make it awkward because I still want the friendship. What do you think of the relationship so far? Any tips or advice?