Helm still seems to be the best, despite being older than consult-line.
Built-in occur

• Pro: Word/symbol boundaries work as expected
• Con: Not incremental. Can't keep typing and have the occur buffer dynamically update.
• Con: Doesn't select the candidate corresponding to the current line at the time it was invoked. Leaves the point at the top.
• Con: Doesn't highlight all candidates, only the current

helm-occur

• Pro: Incremental
• Pro: Initially selects the candidate corresponding to the current line
• Pro: Highlights multiple candidates within a configurable number of lines, not just the currently selected one
• Pro: C-t to move the helm window around the frame. Very useful.
• Con: Number of candidates doesn't always match built-in Occur when using word/symbol boundaries.
• Con: Occasionally when jumping to a candidate it does not land on that candidate, but on a different line. Rare, hard to repro.
• Con: Does not respect completion-styles

consult-line (when paired with vertico)

• Pro: Incremental
• Pro: Word/symbol boundaries work as expected, matches Occur
• Pro: Respects completion-styles
• Con: Does not highlight multiple candidates, only the current
• Con: Can't dynamically move the completions window around like Helm
• Con: Neither value of consult-line-start-from-top does anything useful. When it's off the candidates before the current line get appended to the end, so the candidates are now out-of-order compared to the target buffer. Bizarre and confusing design choice. When it's on, it jumps to the first candidate, rather than the one corresponding to the current line, so you lose context.

swiper

• Pro: Incremental
• Pro: Highlights multiple candidates
• Pro: Initially selects the candidate corresponding to the current line
• Con: Slow to start on large buffers. Infuriating, deal-breaker.
• Con: Does not respect completion-styles

icicles-occur

• Seemed slow, but did not thoroughly investigate. Appears to still be receiving updates judging by "Last-Updated" timestamps.

What's going on?

A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.
On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.
Even if you're not a mobile user and don't use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface .
This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.

What's the plan?

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
The two-day blackout isn't the goal, and it isn't the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they've broken, we'll use the community and buzz we've built between then and now as a tool for further action.
What can you do?

1. Complain. Message the mods of /reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
   
2. Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join us at our sister sub at /ModCoord.
   
3. Boycott and spread the word...to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
   
4. Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.
   

Further reading
https://www.reddit.com/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/13yh0jf/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/
https://www.reddit.com/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
https://old.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/
https://www.reddit.com/SubredditDrama/comments/1404hwj/mods_of_rblind_reveal_that_removing_3rd_party/
https://www.reddit.com/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_enterprise_level_tier_for_large_scale/jmolrhn/?context=3

Hi guys,
Im really in the mood to read some summer romance books (with happy ending). Spice is not that important cus I’ve been reading some spicy books lately and im a bit over it. I prefer emotional connection first and I also don’t mind if its slow burn.
I’ve read most of the popular books such as Beach Read, The Roughest Draft, Book Lovers, People We Meet On Vacation, Love And Other Words, etc.
Thank you in advance!🫶🏻

I was in the car and flipped to a radio station I normally listen to when I hit one of the many long stretches of dead zone areas that my phone gets no bars at all.
The song I caught the tail end of was two different male singers one with a higher pitched voice, the other had a deeper voice than the other dude but I wouldn't call his voice like that deep, just it was deeper than the first dudes also he had a bit of a southern accent.
I caught the last two lines of the song and the lyrics were pretty explicit.
Line 1, sung by higher voiced guy "Baby let me feel/fill you up, then I'll let you run away, it's such a shame you won't stay.
Line 2, deeper voice with southern accent: "We'll go back home and get it on and if you say no then you'll have to go sucking down my long/log going all night long no one will hear you scream, as this is all my dream."
Then it faded with electro pop music.
I have tried googling this with no hits. I'm pretty sure I heard most of the lyrics correctly, except for the ones where I have slash marks where I couldn't completely make out the words.
The radio station in question only plays music from the 80s through early 2010s, I don't know when their cut off date exactly is, but you aren't gonna hear any music from say the past 3 years on there.
I checked their website as soon as I got to a place where I was stopped and could use my phone, but they only show the past 5 songs on there and it was about 20 minutes between the time I heard it and the time I was able to stop, so it was already off their list.
Hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction, or maybe have heard this song and I am just getting the lyrics messed up or something.

What's going on?

A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.
On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.
Even if you're not a mobile user and don't use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface .
This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.

What's the plan?

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
The two-day blackout isn't the goal, and it isn't the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they've broken, we'll use the community and buzz we've built between then and now as a tool for further action.
What can you do?

1. Complain. Message the mods of /reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
   
2. Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join us at our sister sub at /ModCoord.
   
3. Boycott and spread the word...to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
   
4. Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.
   

Further reading
https://www.reddit.com/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/13yh0jf/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/
https://www.reddit.com/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
https://old.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/
https://www.reddit.com/SubredditDrama/comments/1404hwj/mods_of_rblind_reveal_that_removing_3rd_party/
https://www.reddit.com/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_enterprise_level_tier_for_large_scale/jmolrhn/?context=3

Out there - Patreon (for all those curious or wanting to support :))
At the Beginning
Adventure Arc - Arc 2
Wilderness Arc - Arc 3
Academy Arc - Arc 4
Previously on Leveling up the World…
 
PERSONAL AWAKENING
​
Orange clouds floated on a purple sky. There had been a time when Dallion would have found such a sight breathtaking, or at the very least remarkable. Now, it was just another day in his realm. Sitting at the top of Onda’s tower, Dallion stared into the distance.
“Hey, old man!” the teen nymph shouted. “You’re messing up the look!”
If there was one person whose arrogance had grown along with Dallion’s it was Onda. The hammer guardian had always seen himself as a genius and, thanks to the Moonstone in the realm, his opinion of himself had grown even further.
“You’ve no idea how much time and skill it took to get it right!”
Funny. Up to today, Dallion hadn’t minded the attitude. In fact, he hadn’t even noticed it.
“I need some assistance,” he said, glancing down.
At the comment, the guardian froze. There was a spark of emotions within him that was quickly subdued.
“She said not to encourage you,” Onda whispered.
“Harp?” Dallion split into a few instances and looked around. “I won’t be doing anything reckless,” he said with a sigh. “It’s forging related.”
“Forging?” The guardian didn’t sound convinced.
“A while back, you said that there are more complicated things than crafting metals. I want to learn magic crafting.”
“Magic crafting?” Onda shivered slightly while saying the magic word.
“Whatever the proper term is. I know you can do it, so—”
“Can’t.” The guardian quickly interrupted. “She said no magic.”
“Seriously?” Dallion grumbled. “Harp!” he shouted in the direction of the harpsisword’s tower.
Other than a few waves, there was no reaction. Harp was determined not to meddle in his development, and that included not helping him with anything magic related, at least for the time being. After what had happened in Lanitol, Dallion would have thought that he’d be given a pass for reasonable requests. Apparently, that wasn’t the case.
In all honesty, his request wasn’t exactly safe or random. The thought of challenging the archduke’s son had made him remember the duel they’d had back in Nerosal, including the origami weapons the noble had used. Creating such a weapon would be very beneficial in more ways than one. For one thing, Dallion was considering upgrading Lux’s home. Having the firebird follow him about like a bladebow with kaleidervisto sights was starting to get bothersome.
“What about enchanting?” Dallion asked. “I’ve already done that many times.”
The nymph shook his head.
“That was temporary.”
Maintaining his calm exterior, Dallion waited for a short while longer, then left his realm. The first thing he felt was a wave of air hitting him in the face. Moments later, his senses returned to normal.
Normally, entering a realm while flying wasn’t the best of ideas, but it didn’t count while on a cloud fort. Initially, Dallion had wanted to avoid the fuss, but when the squad of furies within the cloud had offered to take them, the choice was made for him.
Aware of their emotions, he knew that the offer was extended mostly because of Diroh. While guard furies assisted mages, they rarely went out of their way to catch up to one mid flight. The rumors of her being royalty must have spread.
“You can rest a bit,” the fury told Dallion. He was a seasoned veteran who didn’t have time for all the rank bullshit. “We won’t reach the Academy till tomorrow.”
One additional day. If Dallion had continued flying on his own, he’d have been there by now.
“Any news?” he asked, suppressing a yawn.
“Where do I start? The Azures are gathering armies in the northeast. Mages too. I’m expecting a major clash in a month at most. The new archduke is also positioning her forces. Now that she’s been given the new spot, she can’t afford to mess up.”
It was tempting to crack a smile. It would be nice if Priscord got humiliated in the upcoming battle, but that was unlikely to happen. The emperor had picked her for the position, which meant that he’d back her up with some of his legions. Losing two archdukes in the same area wasn’t something that would look good.
“Lots of crimsons are also there,” the fury continued. “At least we get to enjoy the skies here for a while.”
Dallion nodded. He, too, was going to join them.
“A bunch of rogues formed a new enclave in the west. It’s out of the empire, so no one’s bothering for now. I told some of your lot that it’s a mistake. No one listened.”
“Someone will take care of them.”
The west, at least, was deprived of any presence. Only the Order was slowly spreading in that direction. No wonder the last Star had made his stronghold there.
“There’s been a few skirmishes in the southeast, but nothing major. The Alliance is keeping the Azures in check. Only minor kingdoms are poking about, trying to get themselves noticed by one of the powers.”
“Yes, everyone’s choosing sides.”
That was true and things were only going to get tougher. Settlements, cities, even small countries were quick to ally themselves to one of the three powers. Even before the war began, several of the minor players had made their intentions known. Most had allied to the empire. Now that its position was shaky, they were looking at the other options. It didn’t end with whole settlements either. Guilds and trade organizations had been moving about, going further to the heart of the empire or out of it. Even hunter dens weren’t immune.
Before leaving Lanitol, Dallion had flown by the structure out of a feeling of nostalgia. What he found was an empty lot. He had expected some of the hunters to have gone—there were many dwarves among them. Yet, the building was missing as well. A more optimistic person might have assumed that the hunters had found a way to take their den as they left the city. In reality, it had likely been absorbed by the overseer. Neutrality was a dangerous notion, especially if those proclaiming to be neutral were strong.
“Over a dozen ghost towns have formed on the border,” the fury said. “If they remain too long without a master, the wilderness will take them.”
“That’s how it usually works.”
The fury glanced at Dallion sideways, but didn’t add anything more. It was obvious he wanted to know more about the fury, just as it was obvious that Dallion had no intention of sharing. The moment of calm had given him a while to relax, and now that adrenalin had loosened its grip, less immediate concerns had resurfaced.
Prophecies, he said to himself. So far, he had heard two. The first had come from a nymph sheet acquired years ago. The dwarf hunter who had found it swore that an otherworlder would bring to the end to the world, or at the very least a substantial change. When combined with what Cleric had shared, the worst might have come to pass. It was Dallion who had made it possible for Adzorg to construct his device. If he found the final pieces, he might pop the barrier between worlds like a soap bubble, letting void creatures pour into reality unimpeded.
If there was nothing you could do, the Order wouldn’t have sent you, Gen said from Dallion’s realm. There’s no point in perfect prophecies.
There is if all you need to do is hide, Dallion replied mentally.
If you’re hiding, you’re not doing it very well.
Dallion smiled. His echo had a suitable sense of humor, even if it didn’t help particularly right now.
“What about vortex gleams?” Dallion asked.
“Vortex gleams,” the fury repeated. “There’s talk of a few out east. The crimsons will know more. They don’t tell the rest of us much.”
“Right.” Dallion leaned back in the sea iron mesh that served as a chair. “Wake me up when we get to the Academy. Don’t stop for anything until we get there, not even assists.”
“You’re the mage.”
If the flight was eventful, Dallion never got to learn about it. Over a day, he spent the time sleeping. To a large part, that was to diminish the fatigue that had stacked up in the last six months. More importantly, though, he was hoping to have a Moon dream. With the curse, he hadn’t been getting anything that might help. This time was no different, although it didn’t bring nightmares either. All it brought was a whole lot of blankness: Dallion closed his eyes one moment, then when he opened them again, he was a few hundred feet from the battle mage building. According to the armadil shield, they had been there for hours, but no one had dared wake him up.
How nice of them, Dallion thought and sat up.
The fury on guard was new—far younger than the previous one, tasked with keeping the cloud stable. Everyone else, Diroh included, was gone.
“Where’s everyone?” Dallion cracked his back. Sleeping on war clouds wasn’t as comfortable as people assumed it would be.
“Your novice was escorted into the building, battle apprentice,” the fury replied, using Dallion’s standard title. “All your things were moved to your room as well.”
“And the furies?”
“They were sent out on another cloud. Katka ordered that we leave you to sleep undisturbed, so—”
“I get the picture.”
Dallion cast a spell, rising up from the cloud. Without a word of thanks, he floated straight to Katka’s room on the upper floor of the building, then went inside. The magic symbols on the walls glowed brighter as he passed. Recognizing him as belonging here, they remained in their present state.
The moment he flew in, the room widened, increasing tenfold in size. This wasn’t normal. Katka wasn’t a fan of modifications, preferring to keep things as they were. Ironically, that made many of the Academy mages see her as a snob. In their eyes, illusions weren’t good enough for her, since she resorted to getting the actual physical thing and bringing it here.
The current modification spell had turned the room into a modern Earth corporate office. There was lots of space, full of desks, cheap plants, water coolers and a glass walled meeting room at the far side. Looking closely, Dallion saw four figures gathered there.
Just great, he thought.
The archmage was present along with Katka. The other two were silhouettes made of cloud matter and water, respectively. That meant that the entire Shimmering Circle had gathered to discuss something. Since Dallion had joined, there had been only one similar meeting. Back then, the “woman” Dallion had seen in Gassil’s memory fragment had also been there, even if no one had formally introduced her to him. There were a few more instances in which she had taken shape to discuss something with Katka. As for the last member, he remained completely unknown. Dallion was aware of his existence, but nothing more.
“Dal,” the archmage’s voice echoed throughout the room, as if he were using loudspeakers. “Join us.”
Taking a deep breath, Dallion made his way to the door of the meeting room and went inside. The conference table was large enough to hold eight people. The seat next to Katka was left free, indicating he was supposed to take it.
“This must be important.” Dallion said, using his magic vision in an attempt to see the people behind the constructs. He was able to see the magic threads connecting the forms to invisible portals, but not what lay beyond. “First time I see everyone gathered.”
The sharp look the archmage gave him quickly told Dallion to tone down the humor.
“We heard what happened down south,” the man said. “What are your dealings with the Order?”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” Dallion said calmly. “Moon vows and all that.”
“Convenient.”
“What I can say is that the Azures tried to take out the archduke.” There was a moment’s pause. “And myself.”
“You were targeted?” Katka asked, more surprised than intrigued.
“I guess Grym is still mad at me for last time. They managed to put echoes in a lot of the people at the banquet. Most of them were normies, but there were a few awakened… as well as the local mage.”
“We know,” the archmage said. “Would have been nice to bring one of them alive for questioning.”
“Wasn’t my fault. The archduke absorbed all the evidence. I did manage to get the mage’s robe, though. If there’s anything to be learned, I’ll find it.”
“Such a marvelous ability,” the cloud woman said. “Sometimes you make me envious.”
“That’s not why I called for this,” the archmage hissed. “A messenger arrived from the emperor himself. The vortex gleam that was spotted not too long ago wasn’t the only one. As it turns out, it’s only a drop in the bucket. There have been twenty-seven confirmed sightings, but unlike the last one, the levels are much higher.”
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story, consider joining my patreon or check out my other stories on redditserials:
The Scuu Paradox (a Space Opera Sci Fi)
The Cassandrian Theory (a Space Opera Sci Fi)
The Impeccable Adventure of the Reluctant Dungeon (Dungeon Core Adventure Comedy)
Uncharted Waters (An Urban Fantasy Detective Noir)

I want to get a line from a song tattooed on the inside of my wrist, under my watch strap. So small lettering.
Any advice on fonts?
Will the wrinkles in the skin where the wrist bends affect the tattoo over time? It won't be anything fancy, just black letters.
If I decide to get it done on my arm instead of my wrist, what are some areas that people get lyrics inked? I have no other tattoos and wondering if a line of words will look wierd all by itself. Maybe if I made a pattern with the words?
I've waited my whole life to get one. I won't be around forever so I'm finally biting the bullet and getting it done soon.

Current Champion: Seth Rollins
1: Drew McIntyre(SummerSlam 2023)
After a successful defence against Finn Balor at MITB, Drew McIntyre finally returns to WWE seemingly to help Rollins fend off an attack by the Judgement Day... ONLY TO BLAST SETH WITH A CLAYMORE!!! Drew turns back to his psychopath heel persona, and proceeds to BRUTALIZE the Visionary with two more countdown-less Claymore kicks, and for even more vitriol, hits a cash in attempting LA Knight with a kick as well, leaving EVERYONE furious!
Drew explains his actions by saying that in his time away he nearly left WWE, but now he is on a mission to punish those that stole away his stardom and attention after he spent the entire pandemic carrying the Raw brand on his back as champion, and having his moment ripped away from him time and time again over the last three years. Rollins is emblematic of stealing the spotlight, and he needs to humble him to reclaim his spot as the Scottish Warrior. Seth goes into the feud playing up the mind games, claiming that Drew is lucky that his title run happened in front of no one cause all he has done since then is choke over and over again and proven that he couldn't handle it now. The mind games prove to harm Rollins in the end as Drew DEMOLISHES Seth in a very one sided affair minus some comeback spots from Seth. Drew hits a claymore, followed by a stomp of his own, and one more claymore to the back of the head and ends Rollins' run on top.
​
2: LA Knight(YEAH!)(Royal Rumble 2024)
Drew maintains his grip over the Raw roster through his sadistic means of winning all the while reminding the crowd that he made a hypocrite out of Seth Rollins and sent him packing to Hollywood cause he couldn't handle the loss. He feuds with Sami Zayn, Matt Riddle, even Sheamus in an interbrand feud over the fall, heading into the new year with a fresh face in the now babyface and (hopefully) very over Damian Priest. Drew challenges Priest to remember the beast he had inside of him during his run with the Judgement Day, or else he'll be no different to the younger version of Drew.
At the Rumble, it looks as though Priest might just grit his way to becoming champion, so much so that it takes a kick below the belt preceding a Claymore for Drew to barely retain... But Priest ain't having that shit. He drags Drew outside of the ring and sends him South of Heaven straight through the announcers table! He rolls Drew back into the ring, kendo stick in hand, until WAIT, ITS LA KNIGHT!! Knight rushes down and clobbers Priest with his MITB briefcase, trash talking Drew as he announces his cash in, dodges a Claymore and plants Drew with the BFT to become the NEW CHAMPION, YEAH!!!
​
3: Damian Priest(Backlash 2024)
Knight changes the pace to an insufferable trash talker heading up Raw, claiming that this year at WrestleMania he will get the "LA Knight moment" that he promised would happen at last year's event, and that there ain't a damn thing anyone can do to stop it... And he backs up his words! He barely escapes the Elimination Chamber with his title in tact, before retaining once again at WrestleMania in a Fatal 4 Way including McIntyre, Priest and the recently returned Seth Rollins after snagging a surefire pinfall victory for Priest and escaping once again.
After this, Priest confronts Knight saying that he's a new star, but his age is against him. He doesn't have as much time as he would like, and that he wants to make a new star making memory for himself. The only way to do that is to take the World Heavyweight Championship at Backlash, returning to Puerto Rico once again after last year's successful event, in a San Juan street fight. Knight agrees to the match stating that there isn't gonna be anything better than gifting Puerto Rico their own "LA Knight moment" at Damian's expense. After a wild match throughout the crowd, Knight tries to walk out on the match... AND BAD BUNNY MAKES A SURPRISE APPEARANCE!!! He nails a Canadian Destroyer on Knight on the outside of the ring, rolls him back into the ring stumbling directly into a South of Heaven through a table!! Priest pins Knight, becoming champion one year after a crushing defeat, and lives forever among his people.
​
4: GUNTHER(SummerSlam 2024)
Priest is finally a world champion in WWE, and in becoming that he feels the need to up the ante on his matches. With each title defence he becomes more and more reckless, doing crazy spots that pop the crowd but slowly chip away at his physical health. He goes through brutal wars with Ciampa, Sikoa, Dunne, Waller, even his old Judgement Day compatriots in a triple threat ladder match at MITB, but after he is victorious he is confronted by the new rulers of Raw, IMPERIUM. After ending Brock Lesnar's career at WrestleMania and vacating the Intercontinental Championship after doing so, GUNTHER made a promise that before 2024 ends, all of IMPERIUM will be adorned with gold to prove that they are "saving" wrestling. Ludwig Kaiser and Giovanni Vinci conquer DIY at WrestleMania to become tag team champions, and new member ILJA DRAGUNOV(who joined in fall 2023) takes vacated IC title after it is vacated, keeping it within the group. GUNTHER refers to Priest's antics in his matches as "childish and embarrassing" and that after SummerSlam, Raw will finally have a world champion that other athletes could aspire to have. Priest responds that no matter how broken his body might be, his need to keep living on as champion will push him to be the one to slay the general with an arrow to his heart.
However, GUNTHER proves to be too efficient, too good, and too unstoppable. He picks apart Damian's body as the match goes on, finally finishing him off with a flurry of powerbombs, before locking in a brutal Boston Crab which Priest taps out too. As the show goes off the air, all members stand at the top of the ramp... and Dragunov sneaks one glance at the world title just before the screen goes black.
​
5: Ilja Dragunov(WrestleMania 41)
Over the next 8 months, the philosophy of GUNTHER and his stablemates slowly becomes more and more vicious. Given Dragunov's infatuation with pain, this is initially a match made in heaven... Until Dragunov loses the IC title to Bronson Reed. GUNTHER takes a peculiar interest to his old rival, and tries to "make him stronger" by dealing out beatings to Ilja every single time he loses a match. Ilja is struggling within himself, coming closer to bigger matches but always failing and having the "weakness" beaten out of him. All the while GUNTHER's over 2 year long unbeaten streak continues, as he goes on to conquer some of his old foes from NXT to make himself stronger like Tyler Bate, Tomasso Ciampa and Pete Dunne. Whenever asked about Ilja challenging, he brushes it off. In order to prove himself worthy, Ilja enters the 2025 men's Royal Rumble from number 1 in an attempt to recreate GUNTHER's incredible performance from 2023. He makes it damn near to the end, tossing out many, getting the crowd behind him... Before the rest of IMPERIUM finally betray him, dragging him over the top rope. The next night on Raw, GUNTHER berates Ilja for his "ego" getting in the way of everything HE has created and done for wrestling. He demands that Ilja take a beating as punishment, and goes to chop him... BUT ILJA CATCHES HIS HAND!! He blasts GUNTHER with a headbutt and attempts to fight back but is overwhelmed by Vinci and Kaiser and absolutely decimated by GUNTHER, to the point that even his comrades are baffled at the severity of it.
Ilja knows what he has to do, and he enters the Elimination Chamber match to get a shot at GUNTHER for WrestleMania, in an attempt to "reclaim his life" after he forgot who he was for so long. GUNTHER is "sickened" and sends Vinci into the chamber match to try and stop Ilja from winning, keeping Kaiser in his corner for his title defence against Dragon Lee! Ilja overcomes the odds and straight up Goldbergs the chamber, ending up eliminating EVERYONE in the match! GUNTHER retains his title and the match is finally set, the trilogy concluder nearly 4 years in the making, GUNTHER finally relents on the final Raw before Mania and says that his loss to Ilja has haunted him ever since it happened, and that his sadistic streak has been all to prepare for his chance to rectify his decisive loss to the man who may just have his number. He claims that he must send Ilja back to his family a broken man, or all his fighting will have been for nothing. Ilja claims he isn't going anywhere unless he takes GUNTHER down with him one last time, and that if he dies in the ring, he'll do it with the World Heavyweight title around his waist.
After a near 40 minute all time classic, both men beating the absolute shit out of each other for their own pride. Ilja climbs the mountain one last time, brutalizing GUNTHER until he can barely stand. He tells Ilja "COME ON, I'M READY FOR IT!" Before taking one last Torpedo Moscow, and Ilja finally defeats GUNTHER, celebrating with his family as the show goes off the air. LONG LIVE THE CZAR.

I started defending people's names when spoken negatively about, if they aren't from my block they get a "Where you from G?" if their not wearing the colour I represent they get beat. If they say one bad thing about me, they get jumped. If they don't say enough good things about me, they get threatened.
I got in to fights, ended up in the hospital, put others in the hospital, cops were called, my parents were called. I got the "you didn't have to do that for me, but I always got you like you had me" talk. I was called "family" by my friends, they said they'd die for me, that they loved me that they'd do anything for me.
Boom,boom,boom now I'm on the ground knuckles hitting my face, feet kicking my stomach. The people I once defended watched from the sidelines.
"My family"... the ones who "loved me". Their faces... expressionless . They didn't stop it, didn't video it, didn't call the cops or call our other friends.
They just watched. Five on one, watched as I laid there not covering my body from the hits I was getting, laid there as I looked them in the eyes. Begging them to do something, say SOMETHING, but they never did anything.
They're finished. They start caring "Are you alright?", "Want me to call someone?", "Hey I tried doing something but there was so much of them". These words. They broke me more then the physical pain I endured. Gasping for air not able to form any words. Sirens in the distance coming closer and closer. Looking into the blue sky, feeling the sun beam on my face As blood drips out of my body.
Blank.
In the hospital being treated, "Hey do you remember your name?" "What's your date of birth?" Asked if I remembered what happened to me. Scared to out my "friends", scared if I said anything the people who did this would do more damage to me.
My parents rushing in, my youngest sibling on my mother's hips, while my other siblings watched in the corner. Looking at their brothers unrecognisable face. Tears filled my face as I watch them cry, they're confused. They don't understand why someone would want to hurt the person they look up to, they don't understand why someone could be so cruel.
I'm healed, scars all over my face and body
. My mother smiling at me , "I love you" she says, my father holding my hand , "I'm happy youre better"...
Death, sad, aching. Laying my parents to rest, "I love you mother. I'm happy you're in a better place father".
Children running around, my siblings and I eating Christmas dinner, everyone opening their presents. Joy, happy, excitment.
Scared, worried, yes. On my knees for the women I love, please say yes, If not then okay. You will marry me? Thank God
Anxious, paranoid, relieved. Rushing to the hospital, Crying and screaming is all I hear Bags and bags of clothes and diapers New to being a father Guilty of sleepless nights I never regret having you and many more.
Saying farewell to my family, moving away with my wife and children. Big house, cute dog, Nice neighbourhood Good income. Warm, comfortable, peace....
As I grow older.
Memories, doubt, blame. 20 years ago That day... If I reached in my back pocket? Bang, boom, pop.
If I did... My parents farewell. My siblings growth. My nieces and nephews. My Wife... My Children...
Realisation, Satisfaction, Grateful.

What's going on?

A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.
On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.
Even if you're not a mobile user and don't use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface .
This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.

What's the plan?

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
The two-day blackout isn't the goal, and it isn't the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they've broken, we'll use the community and buzz we've built between then and now as a tool for further action.
What can you do?

1. Complain. Message the mods of /reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
   
2. Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join us at our sister sub at /ModCoord.
   
3. Boycott and spread the word...to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
   
4. Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.
   

Further reading
https://www.reddit.com/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/13yh0jf/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/
https://www.reddit.com/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
https://old.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/
https://www.reddit.com/SubredditDrama/comments/1404hwj/mods_of_rblind_reveal_that_removing_3rd_party/
https://www.reddit.com/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_enterprise_level_tier_for_large_scale/jmolrhn/?context=3

I already made a 2-part analysis about Mukuro Ikusaba as a character and my opinion on her once ; I think it's time that I analyzed another beloved character of mine : Mikan Tsumiki, the Ultimate Nurse. Yes, there's probably many analysis about her, but I'll still share my views on her, because I find her complex and fascinating. First of all, let's recapitulate some things about this character. Yeah, I know, it's boring, but still necessary.
I) Who is Mikan ?
Mikan Tsumiki is one of the cast members of SDR2. Like the others, she is actually a Remnant of Despair, that was plunged in a virtual world by Makoto Naegi, who wanted to free them from the brainwashing they all received at the end of the DR3 anime and since the very beginning, she's depicted as a...strange person.
Case in point : During her introduction, she seems to want to interact with Hajime, but she's so nervous that she ends up creeping him a bit, because she's just staring at him without a word. Then, she reveals that she memorized 5,000 different topics to discuss. A bit later, she says this before sobbing :
Mikan : I'll do anything you say...Just...please don't hate me !
Mikan is initially considered a meek, weak-willed individual, who burst in tears at any moment. This is why she is often picked on by the other characters, like Fuyuhiko who threatens her, or, of course, her greatest bully : Hiyoko Saionji.
During the Chapter 3, however, Mikan reveals another side to her : Having been infected by the Despair Disease, she murders Ibuki Mioda, takind advantage of her gullibility, and kills Hiyoko too. She elaborates a very clever plan, and when she is finally exposed, she goes batshit crazy, alternating between giggling like a mentally disturbed little girl and shouting in fury, hoping her classmates will forgive her. Everyone is understandably disturbed by this sudden change in her attitude, including Hajime who literally refuses (at first) to believe she's the culprit. Mikan then accuses everyone of being bullies, and she dies in what can only be called a hyper-sexualized execution that makes no sense.
II) Understanding Mikan Tsumiki's mentality :
However, as it is often the case in Danganronpa, there's more to the character than meets the eye. In the Island Mode, we can discuss with her. And the things she reveals are, objectively speaking, horrifying :
Mikan : I would get beaten up at school and at home a lot...Since nobody wanted to treat me when I was hurt, I just did it myself and eventually, I got good at it.
She also says that "for fun, I tried eating strange bugs, and I let them [her bullies] use my body when there wasn't anything else to write on. Also, I had to be responsible for debts, and be the target for dart games, so...Hmhmhm, I'm pretty useful, you know".
She tries to rationalize her abuse this way : "Obviously, I don't want to do that stuff at all. But...if it makes everyone not hate me and smile at me, then it's much better...".
Mikan Tsumiki was abused in horrific ways during her childhood. The other kids drew at her, mocked her, made her responsible for their own actions (in that case, their debts), and even made her eat bugs. It is interesting that she says "I tried eating strange bugs", and not "my bullies made me eat bugs". It's like she's instinctively taking the responsibility for the bullies' acts. In order to keep her sanity, she made herself believe that she could be useful by letting people hurt her in every way possible.
As a coping mechanism, her brain forces her to believe that the abuse she suffered is, somewhere, a proof of twisted "respect". If people mock her and use her, that means that, in a sense, they acknowledge her status as a human being : People accept to talk to her, to interact with her, like she is worthy of being talked to. You don't speak with an insect, right ? Well, it's the same logic for Mikan : In her mind, if people bully her, they acknowledge that she exists, that she is more than an insect that we can forget. That is why she always trips and falls, to get this attention.
The one thing Mikan's abuse taught her to hate is people not caring about her. During her FTEs, she has this exchange with Hajime :
Mikan : Just please don't look at me like that ! (For context, Hajime was creeped out by her words and her behavior)
Hajime : Ah...S-sorry...F-for now...let's talk again later. You need to calm down...
Mikan : I-I'm sorry...I'm terribly sorry...I'll make sure to get it right...I'll make sure I get it right next time...So please talk to me again ! Eeek ! I beg of you !
These quotes show how much Mikan is afraid of not "being enough". She constantly thinks that she's not enough and that she must "prove her worth" to people by degrading herself, in any way possible. And I mean in ANY way possible.
At one point in her FTEs, she worries about making Hajime upset somehow. Her reaction ? Telling the boy if he wants to see her naked :
Mikan : Wh-what should I do ? Um...would it make you happier if I took my clothes off ?"
When Hajime answers that no, she shouldn't do this, Mikan says : "you're right...you don't want to see me naked, right ?". We could interpret this as her saying : "Of course you don't want me to be naked...I'm too ugly, right ?". Then, she asks if Hajime wants her money.
This interaction implies that Mikan is a survivor of sexual assault. It is not natural to ask people if you should get naked because they want to. If she had to strip to satisfy her abusers...well, you know what ? I don't even want to finish this phrase.
Anyways, she was either assaulted at school or at home. But either way, her parents probably didn't care ; she says that nobody wanted to treat her, which implies that, at first, she must have asked for an adult's help, right ? But said adult (probably her parents) told her to fuck off (I wouldn't be surprised if Mikan's parents literally told her, when she was younger : "Fuck off, nobody cares about your problems"). Like some abuse victims do sometimes, Mikan tries to deny the abuser's fault, saying it is her fault instead : "Did I do something wrong again ?".
However, she seems to realize on some level that what she suffered was wrong. She says in the FTEs :
"There are areas that aren't fatal but still very painful, such as the shoulder and back...You can punch and kick those areas, or even put a cigarette out on them. Repeatedly...over and over...But right now, at this very moment...nobody is trying to do that to me. Because of that...this place is like heaven to me".
The mention of cigarettes is what makes me believe that her parents actively mistreated her. I mean, the bullies at her school were probably too young to have cigarettes on them - and even if they did, it would have been because they stole one or something. But she mentions cigarettes (among other things) being put on her back repeatedly. Mikan's parents used her as an ashtray.
Also, Mikan mentions this in Island Mode, when you go to the movie theater : "Horror...is nice (...). A-And the really mean characters always die first...". She probably is angry, on a subconscious level, at everyone who ever mistreated her, and whishes to take revenge on them. However, she can't, because of years of conditionment and abuse.
However, she shows more clearly her hatred when she contracts the Despair Disease. During her case, she murdered Hiyoko, who happened to walk on her after Mikan killed Ibuki. Mikan murdered Hiyoko not because she was a mean bully to her, but because she saw everything and because Mikan was under the Despair Disease, so she would have done the same thing to anybody. But there is something else : She specifically tied Hiyoko's obi on backwards, which, in Japanese culture, is how prostitutes dressed. This has nothing to do with killing someone because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time : Mikan deliberately called Hiyoko a slut post-mortem, as a way to get revenge for all her insults.
Finally, during the 3rd trial, Mikan accuses the rest of the case of being bullies, who let her being mistreated and verbally abused without ever doing anything to defend her. Even though she's not in her normal state then, it makes sense for her to act like this, because all her life, nobody ever came to her rescue (that's even why she became a nurse in the first place).
Conclusion : She could have been one of the best characters of Danganronpa, but Kodaka visibly doesn't know how to write sexual trauma (Kotoko and Akane, for example). However, Mikan still has some realistic aspects : She harbors a somewhat sexualized attitude because she was sexually abused, like some victims do in real life (well, the true reason is fanservice, but let's pretend it's not the case, shall we ?). Despite her genuine niceness and timid personality, she has a darker, more unstable side to her. Mikan Tsumiki is an example of what happens when bullying goes too far : You end up with a mentally broken person, incapable of living healthily, depending on how others view her. Personally, I always found tragic that the Ultimate Nurse had such an unhealthy mindset.

I'm going to keep it vauge because, knowing my luck, someone from my company will be on here.
I've been in my current managerial position now for two years. It's a non-profit, one of the largest in the country and is the second most profitable store by a large margin. In other words, it's absolutely manic. I was head hunted for the position two years ago and brought on to sort out an absolute shambles of a messily run store. Think zero care for rules and regulations, zero incident reports despite the store being an entire health hazard, regular theft and some of the worst, rudest and shoddy customer sales attitudes I've seen in a decade. (And I've had some seriously crappy jobs!)
Anyway, within a year, (with the core teams help) we all managed to get the store to a much better place. I slowly got rid of incompetent staff, let go of volunteers that were stealing and pushed for more staffing to help take the stress off the main core workers. (Who are awesome btw!)
Now as a non profit, each store is designed to be run by volunteers purely. Which, in theory, works if you have a small store that is easy to manage. Not with our store. It's huge, we do deliveries and collections so a lot of heavy lifting and manual labour is involved. Not unusual to hit 24k steps in a single day on the shop floor.
However, I came in after COVID restrictions, which meant we had lost 80% of our volunteer base ( elderly, immuno compromised, etc) as handling second hand items ran a far higher risk of contracting COVID 19. The store was struggling big time, it was five times the size of a normal store. Staff were unhappy, overworked and the previous manager had already left due to mental health reasons. (This is important to remember later!..)
I worked hard. I mean extraordinary hard, to get that store to a much better place. I held volunteer rally's, open days, coffee mornings, and went round local colleges giving talks about volunteering and the circular economy and encouraging work placement positions with us. I found local government grants to hire people on 20hr contracts in exchange for extra social welfare payments. I pushed for monthly and annual reports, budget plans, allowances and made interior improvements and exterior housing repairs that had needed to be done years ago.
I held staff meetings to find out what they wanted or needed (turns out training wasn't something the company offered AT ALL.) Then pushed for, and GOT additional annual training courses, better canteen facilities, even daily tools and equipment! Everything there was broken, tired or a donation.
It paid off, and I'm happy to say that in addition to having a really amazing core team, better working conditions and more qualified team members, the store is up 58% in PURE PROFIT ALONE. I mean, that in itself is pure insanity.
People are actually taking lunch breaks, using thier holidays and sick days and are generally happier. (I hope! ...at least, they could be lying to my face. There's always that fear. 🤦🏼‍♀️)
The only part thats getting worse...well... is me.
I'll admit, I'm not the best on mental health. I take care of all my staff FAR better than I ever take care of myself. (Not feeling well? Then straight home and bed rest, and take lots of fluids. If I'm sick...well then, I'm a piece of trash that deserves to die. lol)
I have a tendancy to go 100 miles an hour and not stop unless I'm dying. Which in fact, almost happened last year when I stupidly attempted to work through a bout of sickness that landed me in hospital for a week.
I love the job, but have realised that even if I give it 110%, it will never be enough. I've had zero support from my regional manager. All my results for additional support were ignored or refused. I'm the only paid member of staff there, so when we started opening back up on weekends, there was just this assumption that I'd do a 6 day week. (Which I did, stupidly, for 4 weeks straight, which led me to becoming severely burnt out.)
After that, I started going to therapy. Both to deal with my own anxiety and to cope with the stress of work. I've recently took a week's holiday from work to rest and honestly, just couldn't. Staff didn't show up, my manager rang me several times (no, I didn't answer.) And I found I just slept the entire week as I just wanted to rest.
After confiding in both my GP and my therapist, ice decided to take a months leave for Mental Health. The idea of going back into the chaos on Monday has my in tears all weekend and my heart just sinks.
I know it's time to move on but I have this overwhelming sense of guilt for leaving my team in the lurch. I know that if it was anyone else, I would fully understand and support it but because it's me, I feel like I'm somehow not entitled to it?
Like I don't want to inconvenience anyone or be a bother but I hit every number on the burnout assesment by my therapist apart from no.11 "are you participating in any dangerous new activities?" And that's purely because I'm so goddam tired and exhausted all the time!
I sleep from 7.30 till 8am some days and still feel like a dead weights on my chest. I can't switch off my brain and I'm constantly worried about work, if they're struggling, if there's enough staff, are we hitting targets.... It just won't stop.
I've a plan....to use the month to seriously job hunt, take care of myself and really, really take care of my mental state but....I can't help but feel like I'm failing somehow? That I'm letting work down? I know it'll go on without me, as any company would, but I feel like a child about to be told off for taking leave.
I don't know what to do anymore..

The last one have some problem with spacing and character amount Sorry for the absence of story for the last two weeks. No I'm not dead, it's just my exams weeks. And because of that, I have to redirect a lot of energy from writing. So all the stories I've developed over the past two weeks have sort of run aground, and I'm not sure they're ready to be uploaded here, yet. But now I'm back and ready to write some more, so roll up that daily disclaimer: As usual accidental copy is truly unintentional
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~7th Chromia Orbital Dock Facility~ ~Orbit of Oskwa~ "Have they arrived yet?" I asked to my fellow commander.
"Yes General Burg, the convoy has just unloaded the... cargo just now" General Von said, looking down through the glass barrier to the cargo bay below where hundreds of yellow capsule-like containers sat in rows.
"Good, so I assume that the assault could be launch in a few hours?" I asked.
"After we distributed this to the orbital bomber we should be clear to go"
"Excellent! We'll finally be able to destroy that annoying little castle of them" I exclaimed. Excited, because finally after months of fighting, we'll be able to seize the last stronghold of the Terran Republic on this planet.
​
Fort Linsky, a large military fortification built by the Terran Republic before the war on the planet of Oskwa, one of their territory at the time. Equipped with eight pairs of massive railgun cannons, each with the capability to penetrate anything ranging from our capital ships in low orbit to anything on the ground not covered by at least twenty meters of solid rock within the range of one thousand kilometers from its' location.
There were more of them before. But since our invasion, with either brilliant tactic, incompetent opponents, or a pinch of luck. We managed to destroy or seized all the other fort on this planet.
But Fort Linsky on the other hand is harder. Its fortification is enforced not only by its massive cannons, but also by what our soldiers on the ground called 'The Torture Zone'.
First the most obvious one, the giant wall covering the entire parameter. A huge twenty five kilometers long stone-composite wall, shaped like a giant star with spikes sticking out of each end, circling the ring where the railguns take places. Rendering all kind of ground incursion imposible.
Behind the wall there is the 'artillery', somewhat a miniature version of the railguns they're trying to protect. A long range kinetic weapon capable of yeeting medium sized projectile, both High Explosive and Armoured Piercing. Preventing any of our heavier vehicles to get close and deal any damages.
And then there is the 'always on particle shield'. While their counterpart in space is extremely weak, their usage here was proved effective against all sort of our attacks. Be it orbital bombardment, areal assault, or our own artillery or missile attack.
​
And of course lastly, we have the Human themself. A tough mammals bipedal species born on a level six death world. Raised by wars they have perfected the art of defense, utilizing the terrain and weather for their advantage.
In battle they themselves go forth to fight, in armor suit five meters tall equipped with a large gun and a pile of rockets that can be fired to scorch our troops.
And accompanied by innovative flying vehicles that uses a single propeller to lift themself from the ground, armed with the same weapon hold by the armour suit they become the thorns that've always prevented us from occupying this fort.
--------------------------------------------------------------
I stepped down from my transport ship to the barren ground, on a mountain ten kilometers away from the fort. Just outside their artillery range, and on a such makeshift observation point it would be worthless to shoot us out with their railguns.
"Is everything ready?" I asked to one of my officer.
"Yes Sir, General Borg just sent out the last confirmation signal" He reported.
"Good" I responded just before a flock of officers approach.
"Sir, are we sure with this?"
"Yeah gas attack seems a little too much, perhaps even breaching the Communities Treaty of war"
"And are we even sure this will work?" They asked one after another.
​
"Hey, do you remember what've they done all through the war? The sight of their armour suit killing all of our soldier? their rail gun destroying our base? I bet they have committed several warcrimes on their own.
And yeah, We're pretty sure this one will work. Our capsules is small enough to slip through the particle shield, and their content... Well gas attack have been banned by the Terran Republic, so I'm sure it's bad for them. And what gasses are we using again? chlorine and bromine? yeah I think they're included in the banned substance" I said reassuring the officers.
​
Not long after, the time finally came. Receiving the signal from the Borg, we sat and watched as hundred of small yellow capsules pierces the cloudy sky with green tails coming out of 'em. Passing through the Terrans shield, straight down to the rows of troops doing their morning call.
Landing next to the unsuspecting soldiers the capsules burst and released their contents. Thick green smokes billowed from the shattered containers, soon filling up the whole facility with an eerie chemical haze.
We watched silently from afar. We couldn't see individual soldiers anymore, but from the lack of large response or any other movements around the base, I think it's safe to assume we've caught the Terrans off guard.
"Yeah, that should kill them" I said breaking the silence.
"We better start moving now, before any surviving Terrans re-enact the automatic defense"
​
We jumped into our armoured vehicles, surrounded by around twelve thousand troops ready to captured the fort.
Approaching the structure, we could feel the atmosphere getting cold. The still lingering green gasses floating low on the ground, getting darker each moments as the thick cloud from the ever-closing storm covered the sky.
"Well at least the rain could clean up this mess" I said to myself.
Closing in, now only a few hundred meters, we could fully feel the eerie state of this fortress. A huge ominous dark wall covered in green haze stretched out for miles, accompanied by a huge thunder on our east suddenly halted the movement of our forces.
The frightened troops stopped on its march, shaking on their boots.
'What are they afraid of, there shouldn't be anyone anymore in that fort' I muttered, trying to figured out what happened.
And that's where I see it, no... see them.
​
Dozen of bulky silhouette, accompanied by a couple hundreds smaller hump lined up between us and the wall. I squint my eyes, the figures standing menacingly became clearer as the green smokes cleared.
'It-it's the Terrans! T-they're still alive!?!' I screamed internally, clenching the iron bars I was holding onto.
The Terrans, on their armoursuits once again challenging our march, but there's something wrong.
Their beige colored skin has grown darker, now with black ulcers and red patches covered many of their exposed area, their once white eyes were now bloodshot like those of an ancient creature on our folklore, and where their mouths should have been, were now covered by all kind cloths with their bright red bloodstains splatred on it.
My frustration and annoyance suddenly turned to fear and horror as my blood ran cold from the realization. They... they're not alive anymore. Me and my troops stand there for a minute, trying to process the sights we behold. The silence continued as fear crawls on our back, forcing us not to move a muscle.
Suddenly out of nowhere a blood screeching screams rang across the battlefield. The Terrans letting out a battlecry as they began to charges. An entire legion of the undead leaping into our position with the classic noise of rockets and artillery soon followed.
"Retreat! Retreat!" I shouted, breaking the stagnant of my remaining troops.
Without wasting a second, the remaining nine thousand troops ran away from the cursed fortress. Racing back to the safety of our base.
Skipping some heartbeats I looked back, to the horror we just made.
'We didn't kill them, we just make them mad'

TL;DR: Reddit is making some bad changes so along with many subreddits we're protesting until Reddit understands how dumb of an idea the API change is and keeps the status quo. The API change is dumb because it hinders it's users and makes moderating much more difficult (many mods have expressed they'll straight up quit which means subreddits will worsen in quality or just shutdown completely)

What's going on?

A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.
On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.
Even if you're not a mobile user and don't use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface .
This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.

What's the plan?

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
The two-day blackout isn't the goal, and it isn't the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they've broken, we'll use the community and buzz we've built between then and now as a tool for further action.

What can you do as a user?

• Complain. Message the mods of /reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
• Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join the coordinated mod effort at /ModCoord.
• Boycott and spread the word...to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
• Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.

What can you do as a moderator?

• Join the coordinated effort over at /ModCoord
• Make a sticky post showing your support, A template has been created here you can use or modify to your liking, and be sure to crosspost it to /ModCoord.

Thank you for your patience in the matter,
- Blender Mod Team
(the decision for blender to participate was made a while ago so apologies for the late announcement)

As I swung open the door to the emergency room, with panic in my eyes. My mind went back to work just half an hour ago. … It had started off as a normal day. Me getting up at 6am to get ready for work. My wife hadn’t been feeling all too well the last couple of days but it wasn’t too bad, she was still able to go to work. This morning however as I kissed her goodbye, she just let out a groan and. Kept her eyes closed, just telling me to leave her alone.
I had thought nothing of it as I left the house and went off to work. As usual, it was a boring drive to work, surprisingly the traffic was light and I had hit all green lights. So I made it to work a little earlier than usual. It put me in good spirits.
I grabbed somebody bland office coffee and went to my desk and sat down. I was IT help desk for a large corporation that will stay anonymous. As I put the head set on my head I heard the phone start to ring, my day officially starting. …. I breathed in lungfuls of air as my eyes scanned around the emergency room, my mind im suddenly a blank. I briefly wasn’t sure what to do until my eyes landed on the emergency room front desk.
I hurried over to the desk, my eyes filled with panic. Today had been going so good, why oh why had this been happening. When I reached the desk I placed my hands on top of it and looked at the brunet nurse behind the counter.
I asked for my my wife, trying to keep the panic out of my voice but failing. A sad look came over the nurses face, telling me she had been brought in 2 hours ago.
She picked up the phone and paged the emergency room doctor to come to the front desk … I pressed the end button on the computer, ending the phone call. I took off my headset and placed it on the table. 4 hours had passed since the start of my shift, the morning had just flown by. One call had come in after another, keeping me busy.
Finally it was time for lunch! Management didn’t allow us to use our personal phone while we were working so I had stashed it in my pocket and hadn’t looked at it since I started my work day.
As I stretched and got up out of my seat, I took out my phone and headed to the lunch room to grab some lunch…
You have 20 missed calls.
I froze in place, Lucy behind me nearly walking right into me. She complained, but I barely heard her. I looked and looked at my messages
7:30am Christina: I am having sever cramps. I can’t go into work today.
8:30am Christina: I am vomiting something might be wrong…
930am there is blood everywhere! Where are you Mike!
Several calls and messages had been left on my phone, after going through them the last one was from the hospital saying Christina had been admitted and was currently in surgery and that he needed to come immediately.
This was an half an hour ago … I sat down in the waiting room chair, nearly hyperventilating at this point. It seemed like hours had passed since the nurse had called for the doctor.
Finally I saw a doctor come into the waiting room, him asking for Mike.
I sprang up to my feet and hurried over to him. Eagerly waiting to find out what was happening to Christina.
When I finally approached him he looked at me sadly and my heart dropped, I knew what he was going to say.
I am sorry, he said. But your wife had a miscarriage.
I was not one to get emotional, but when I had heard those words, my heart dropped, I nearly fell to the floor. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We had tried to have a baby for years and when Christina announced she was pregnant we were both ecstatic.
We had names already picked out for our baby girl. She was going to be name Abigail. The nursery had already been painted and decorated. Everything was set up, only 3 months left to go in the pregnancy. … I quickly told my boos that I had an emergency and that I needed to leave. I didn’t really hear his answer, and I really didn’t care. I ran out of the office and got to my car in record time. I started to car and sped out of the parking lot.
I sped all the way to the hospital, calling my wife’s phone over and over again. Only getting her voicemail each and everytime, I am pretty sure I went through a couple of red lights and am surprised I wasn’t stopped for speeding. I just had the worst feeling in the pit of my stomach knowing that when I got to the hospital that the news was not going to be good.
My tires screeched as I pulled up to the emergency room waiting area, turned off the engine and ran up to the doors of the hospital. … After i had finally calmed down enough, the doctor told me that she had just come out of the recovery room and was now resting in a regular room and that I was able to see her.
The walk to the room was not very long, but with each step, time seemed to stretch, seconds seemed to take minutes, minutes seemed to take hours. When I finally reached the door, my hand hovered over the door handle. I could hear the sounds of weeping on the other side.
I finally worked up the courage and opened the door. Christina’s back was towards me, and as I entered the room, she didn’t even turn to look at me. I approached the bed my hands hovering in the air above her body, unsure what to do next.

What's going on?

A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.
On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader.
Even if you're not a mobile user and don't use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface .
This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.

What's the plan?

On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren't able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn't something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
The two-day blackout isn't the goal, and it isn't the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they've broken, we'll use the community and buzz we've built between then and now as a tool for further action.
What can you do?

1. Complain. Message the mods of /reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
   
2. Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join us at our sister sub at /ModCoord.
   
3. Boycott and spread the word...to Reddit's competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
   
4. Don't be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.
   

Further reading
https://www.reddit.com/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/13yh0jf/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/
https://www.reddit.com/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/
https://old.reddit.com/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/
https://www.reddit.com/SubredditDrama/comments/1404hwj/mods_of_rblind_reveal_that_removing_3rd_party/
https://www.reddit.com/redditdev/comments/13wsiks/api_update_enterprise_level_tier_for_large_scale/jmolrhn/?context=3

Funny story, I actually worked on all the data for this stuff nearly a year ago. Then I got bored and started playing a shitton of Splatoon 3 and forgot to actually write the written explanation part of this post. There's a lot of interesting stuff here that I want to showcase to the community and it was really cool to finally put everything together into a clear visualized graph of the story.

Methodology

I used this official video as my source. For every day displayed, I paused the video on the very first frame of that day, manually wrote down all of the vote totals for the final top 15 characters, and entered them into a spreadsheet to track the overall trends from.

The raw data and its errors

Funny story, if you look at the raw data, you can see a few points where some intern or something apparently messed up the data entry. This was not created as a foolproof automated system, there was some human working behind the scenes who accidentally made a couple of mistakes in some surprisingly obvious places once you have everything laid out in a format that makes them easy to spot.
Raw cumulative votes
Raw votes per day
I colored the places of error. Do you see the issues?
Teal: Not an error, but Carrot is the only character in the final top 15 to not place top 20 in the initial voting period. There doesn't actually exist any voting data of what her initial rise looked like. In order to accommodate and approximate this missing information, I took her vote total after she first shows up on day 26 and split it 26 ways evenly across the first days. This is not an accurate representation of what her votes looked like at the time, but for an approximation, it's certainly closer than making a sudden jump out of nowhere and should be a decent enough fix for us to view the rest of her data in the second half of voting from.
Red and Yellow: Hey, Zoro and Ace's votes went DOWN in one day! What happened? How is this possible?
Well, if we look at the yellow squares next to them...they're identical to the same cumulative vote total of that day for Luffy and Carrot respectively. Someone was entering the data and accidentally put Luffy's and Carrot's numbers in Zoro's and Ace's squares respectively, which caused them to go downward for that day. It's a pretty obvious mistake where someone clearly just put the wrong number in the wrong spot when setting this up.
In order to fix this I just removed the data for those days from Zoro and Ace and replaced it with a difference split between the day before and the day after. It should be a close enough approximation to fix an obvious entry mistake.
Green and Blue: Luffy and Zoro have some strangely identical daily vote numbers taking place here. I believe that this is a result of two issues, missing data for specific days causing the program to simply flatten out the slope and fill in the gaps with the same number of votes per day, and some additional incorrect entries causing an absurd voting spike for them at the start of the green section followed by extremely low votes in the days after to compensate.
Regarding the green section, it looks like there was another error in data entry, so I averaged out the votes across those entire chunks in order to flatten it out and remove a spike and dip that look pretty clearly incorrect. However, the blue section seems to be just the result of missing data that can't be recovered, so I simply left it as is as it appears to already be the best possible approximation of how things have gone.
So, with the errors found and easy to more or less fix, what does that final data look like?

Fixed data

Adjusted cumulative votes
Adjusted votes per day
Coincidentally, due to the exact nature of the errors that took place in the raw data (suspiciously swapped values, weirdly identical/linear periods of growth to accommodate supposedly missing data points), I'm extremely confident that my methodology of tracking one data point per day, taken from the very first frame of each day in the video, is also exactly how the voting data is internally stored in their systems. They aren't tracking the votes perfectly smoothly as they come in, but rather, sampling the current totals at these exact daily moments and extrapolating the trends between them. Honestly pretty cool to have figured out with some pretty strong evidence exactly how their system works for this!
These charts are interesting but a little boring. Let's put it in some charts!

Cumulative votes

Votes per day

Check it out, we have these fun charts now! Let's take a look at some of the stories that we can see taking place.

The first 5 days

We can see HUGE vote totals taking place across the initial days of the poll, with an especially notable spike up in day 4 being the most heavily voted day across the poll. With the voting being fresh and new in everyone's mind, it's understandable that after about five days results would almost universally fall off and

Luffy vs. Zoro

Luffy and Zoro are the iconic rivalry that has defined nearly every single popularity poll. Will the main character retain his throne, or will his ever-popular sidekick with an army of diehard fans finally be able to overtake him?
We can see that the Zoro fans were eager to prove themselves and came out in droves in the first week, barely Luffy daily and building a lead to hold onto. But after that point, the passionate force of his charge fizzled out to more normalized levels and Luffy was able to cleanly overtake him before the halfway point and solidify himself at the top.
If there's any story to be told from these two, it's that even if Luffy is cementing his throne as the definitive most popular among the general audience, Zoro's early lead really signifies just how die-hard his fanbase is about him, forcing an early lead during the most active and passionate part of voting. Unfortunately, it was another year where he was still unable to overtake his captain.

Sanji

The third member of the monster trio has always placed right up with the other two in the polls, landing below Zoro every single time except for the fourth poll where Shanks's striking early presence and Sanji's more minimal breadth of content had kicked him down to fourth. In the fifth poll, he and Zoro were knocked down a spot together by Law but both had comfortably reclaimed their top 3 positions by the time Dressrosa had passed by in the next one
Sanji's storyline in the polls here is particularly boring. He started off at #3, managed to push his distance from Law and solidify his placement, and kept up overall consistent vote totals throughout the entire process. While his daily vote totals were caught up with by a handful other characters in the later half, his overall lead in the first half sitting comfortably between Zoro and Law allowed him to keep a steady rise and perform about what you would expect from him.

Law

Law has always been a top contender for the polls, making an insane upset win against the monster trio in the fifth poll before dropping down to a respectable place right below him in the sixth. Here we can see that the early votes give a similar trend, with his votes spiking him into an early fourth place, before they settled into a more unremarkable position and getting overtaken by a handful of other characters. Despite this, it wasn't enough for them to overtake him and he more or less maintained his approximate spot.

Ace

Ace is in an interesting position as one of the least prevalent characters in terms of screentime to become an overwhelmingly high ranking top contender. His early votes showed an absolutely insane spike, nearing a ballpark closer to the top 4 than the lower contenders, before dropping off significantly to relatively unremarkable daily levels. While he has placed sixth below Sabo in the fifth poll and secured a top 5 spot in the sixth poll, his falloff across the voting period meant that he wasn't able to maintain his initial top 5 placement and was overtaken by several women in order to settle at 9th this time.
Ace's early placement seemed to indicate similar trends to his previous top 5 level history of popularity, but it's likely that the push to an international poll caused other character campaigns in other country to overtake him. In Japan only, he placed 5th again keeping the trends of his previous placements intact.

Robin

Robin opened up with a respectable 6th place start and stayed mostly at the top of the lower end of the pack, before a significant later push before the halfway point really kicked her higher above that group. After overtaking Ace, she managed to hold a respectable number of votes that placed her right alongside Law and formed a new gap between her and the 7th spot.
As Robin placed only 8th in Japan below Ace and Sabo after landing outside of the top 10 in the two polls before this, the demographics of the international push for her past the initial phases was likely what allowed her to make such a significant rise to end up with an impressively similar total to a top character like Law.

Hancock

Similar to Robin, Hancock was a recipient of a notable late push, with her votes being even a little steeper than Robin's though she did not have nearly as much support in the earlier parts of the second half of voting. After an unremarkable start at only 12th, the strength of her late voting force was enough to propel her to 7th, barely overtaking Sabo, Ace, and Carrot but still ending up a distant gap from Robin.

Carrot

While Carrot had the most unimpressive start of the top 15, failing to even be in the top 20 at the start, she managed an impressive steady increase in voting power into the second half, rivalling Robin's performance and working her way all the way up from the bottom of the pack to to Ace levels in the third quarter. After overtaking Hancock, she was eventually surpassed by her again at the very end, ending up in a virtual tie with her but barely losing out in 8th place to her much steeper late push at the end.

Sabo

Sabo is the steadiest character that we're looking at so far. Lacking the immediate meteoric initial spike of Ace but not really getting the same late poll vote increases like Robin, Hancock, and Carrot, he managed to hold onto a respectable spot throughout the poll and ended things right below his brother in a gradual catchup.
In Japan, similarly to previous polls, he landed at 6th right next to Ace again, a much higher placement that alongside previous results indicates that Luffy's brothers are significantly more popular in their home country than they are internationally. Both dropped down 4 spots together with the global shift, maintaining respectable top 10 placings but clearly showing that they're the big Japanese fan favorites relative to the rest of the world.

Yamato

Yamato was in an interesting spot where her position as a manga-only character at the time of voting was pitted directly against her recent fan-favorite presence resulting in some very notable pushes for her votes that were relatively visible in the fanbase. Starting the poll off at only 18th, she managed to climb her way all the way up to a peak position of 10th place before Carrot's campaign managed to dethrone her.
The rivalry between the two characters is an interesting subject with a lot of community context to dive into regarding their voting results, but in 2023 I think that the majority of the fanbase has moved on from these two and isn't as interested in the subject of pushing their storyline now that the potential behind them is no longer as open-ended.

Nami

Nami started off the poll at a respectable placement of 7th, one spot above her previous two poll placements of 8th, landing a decent gap below Robin and fighting in a densely packed area for her spot. She held onto her place at 7th all the way up until the midterm results, staying at a consistent level unable to take Robin but still holding onto her spot above others like Shanks and Sabo.
This all suddenly changed about 70% of the way through the voting process, at which point Nami suddenly jumped up to over four times Luffy's daily vote totals. She went from receiving an average of 5k votes per day to about 90k votes per day. This is over double Luffy and Zoro combined, when previously she was only a small fraction of daily votes compared to them.
Where did these votes come from? Did people start suddenly shifting their choices from other characters in order to push for her? In order to check this idea, we can look at another graph: Total votes per day of the top 15 characters compared to all others. These represent nearly 9 million of the reported 12 million total votes that took place in the poll, about 3/4ths of the full voting pool being dumped into this group.
In the relative lull periods independent of things like the early voting spike, we can see that the poll got a relatively expected approximate total of 10k votes per day across these characters. During the periods where Nami was experiencing her vote spike, this doubled to about 20k. All of the extra daily votes that took place during that period were seemingly being funneled straight and directly to her. They weren't coming from other characters in the top 15, such as voters deciding to shift their focus from other characters to her. They couldn't even be coming from other characters outside of the top 15, since the total outside of it is only about a third of the top 15 total yet the top 15 votes per day doubled with Nami's increases.
Nami in the final third of voting seemed to have gotten a peak of about 90k extra votes per day coming as extra votes into the system's totals for a long enough chunk to garner over 750k total outlier votes that don't seem to align with her previous trends. All of these votes seem to perfectly align with just being...extra votes from new users who weren't actually voting before, increasing the total votes per day by nearly the exact same amount, rather than being voters from other people switching to support Nami as a result of a social media campaign or something.
So where did this absolute insane spike in Nami votes come from? It's hard to say. The numbers surrounding her don't make a whole lot of sense when investigated and the sheer overwhelming shift with her going from a consistent 7th with 5k per day to suddenly making up nearly half of the total daily votes, far above Luffy with nearly twenty times her previous amount. Supposedly, while the trends of the entire rest of the poll stayed relatively constant with consistent vote ratios and totals across the board for literally everyone else, a horde of Nami voters came out in massive droves at one specific point in the poll with numbers enough to dwarf even the most popular character by entire orders of magnitude, before they slowed down right by the end and left her up in a whopping 3rd place for the first time ever, far above her previous polling history. It was her first time landing in the top 5 since Alabasta, breaking a long streak of 6ths to 8ths with this extremely impressive showcase of an unprecedented record placement for her.

Usopp

Usopp is the character who I voted for every single day and like every year you as a community have all collectively failed him again. One day we will reach a point where the One Piece fanbase manages to grow a sense of actual taste but for now we will continue to appreciate our favorite sniper boy for who he is and be proud of everything that he's accomplished.

Conclusion

So there you have it, a full showcase of the top 15 character voting and some of the stories that we can derive from the data! Feel free to take a more in-depth look at this yourselves and see if there's any other interesting conclusions you can draw about the pushes and campaigns that seem to take place, I'd love to hear more thoughts on the matter. Going through all of the stats is a ton of fun and it's super cool to finally get to see all of the numbers laid out like this in a manner that's so easy and clean to draw some interesting conclusions from.

This is my attempt to elaborate the strategy that I apply. The goal of this strategy is that I try to achieve subconscious fluency and put stuttering into remission.
Intro:

• After analyzing my stuttering, I experience that I block because of the unhelpful attitude: "I wait out executing articulation, because I first need to sense whether the air pressure against my lips, tongue and larynx have the perfect air pressure or tension". In other words, my timing to execute articulation is wrong because of said 'unhelpful timing method'. In other words, what I'm doing wrong is: "Timing/measuring the air pressure to decide whether to initiate speech movements or not". Another way to look at it, is that I rely on sensory feedback to delay articulation. Result: a speech block
• Non-stutterers use the helpful timing method: "I execute articulation immediately whenever I instruct/decide/desire this". Result: not a speech block
• In this post, let's refrain from using vague and ambiguous words such as 'stuttering' and 'fluency'. I find it easier to adopt more precise terminology. Because by distinguishing, we could start to perceive what we can and cannot control
• I have learned (from family, friends, SLPs, stutter community) that I should not have a desire to speak fluently. As explained before, let's refrain from ambiguous terms like fluency. Another way to look at this, is that I have learned to not instruct/decide/desire to immediately execute articulation (which made me sensitive to immediately instructing motor execution). In other words, I experience that the helpful timing method of non-stutterers is now a 'trigger' (to activate fight flight freeze fawn)
• So, in this strategy I will instruct my brain to immediately execute motor movements (to replace 'measuring air pressure'). I experience, that I am not applying this helpful timing method, because of the six triggers (shown at the bottom of the post)
• In my experience, the current 'articulatory starting position' is my trigger. For example, if I am about to pronounce the letter /B/ then my mouth position (that I start out with) starts with closed lips. This articulatory starting position then triggers me to "time or measure the perfect air pressure against my lips" which may result in a speech block

Strategy:

1. only rely on fluency laws that non-stutterers apply such as not relying on thoughts, feelings, sensations and stutter beliefs/attitudes to initiate speech movements
2. instruct/urge to immediately execute motor movements. But, always combine this with consciously fully closing the lips if I pronounce the letter /B/ (aka don't avoid articulatory starting positions. Note, I often avoided this during the unhelpful timing method 'measuring air pressure')
3. replace the unhelpful attitude: "measuring glottal air pressure against my speech muscles" with the helpful attitude: "instructing to execute motor movements"
4. interrupt pain/adrenaline program (from the brain). Note, it's not about the physical pain that I feel now, rather the sudden pain to-be. Label/associate this physical pain as 'I need to measure air pressure' (if this unhelpful attitude is truly my most root cause of speech blocks, then it makes sense that this causes the tension/pain)
5. interrupt the 'measuring air pressure'-program (in the brain)
6. Observe/accept my triggers (that activate the neurological pathway towards the program of "measuring air pressure"). My triggers are:
   1. articulatory starting position
   2. fear of interruption not working
   3. fear of 'instructing to execute articulation'
   4. feeling air pressure
   5. high voice
   6. feeling annoyed to not wait out air pressure (which makes sense, I have been using this unhelpful habitual attitude for years)

The goal of this strategy is to learn that I truly posses the skill to control each of above elements to manage the forward flow of speech and apply stress management.

Chapter 2: A Feeling For Home
​
After a few hours and weighing a few more of my options I found a suitable place for my core, on top of a shelf!
To be a bit more specific a shelf resting in the furthest room of my dungeon, the room itself had no windows and only one door making it the most defensible option. Moving it seems simple enough now that I had Tama. She seems to listen to orders more directly than the cats that the spawner continuously makes.
The graceful scion drops from the old stool she had been napping on and carefully took the core delicately between her teeth and set off to the designated room.
I did not that as Tama padded through the hallway a number of other cats took formation behind her, despite not having been ordered to. It quickly became clear Tama herself was directing them, as with a few muffled meows and a firm stomp of her paw the cats quickly set to work dragging a few bits of old cloth and ruined cotton into onto the shelf. Once the improvised bed was finished Tama leapt onto my new perch and gently laid my core in the center of the bedding.
"Excellent work Tama!" I praised towards her. Even if I wasn't sure she heard me word for word, I could tell she felt the praise as she took a second to pose.
​
The next order of business was categorizing what information I had, and prioritizing my next few steps for expanding my 'facilities.'
My cats and slugs have tags that list them as denizens, the frogs and beetles are labeled as invaders. Their interactions are my source of major income, with mana being drawn in whenever my units defeat theirs. An important note however is that nothing seems to be lost when my units are killed, but it was pretty clear to see in a more fast paced situation when all hands are needed, the cost of rapidly fielding replacement units would add up quickly.
I also have access to a few traps that can be scattered around my controlled zones.
-
Bile Sack
Detectability - High
Activation Chance - Moderate
When an intruder approaches, the sack will expand and burst after a short moment. Intruders will be covered in sticky bile and slowed.
-
The idea of covering some poor sap who blunders into this place with sticky bile didn't exactly sit right with me, but my sense of self preservation and long ingrained RTS tactics told me adding a few of these would be necessary. For just a small trickle of mana each I put a few of the grotesque pods around the door to my core, as well as a few in the hallway for good measure.
My next trap I would do without, security be damned.
-
Vile Ichor
Detectability - Low
Passive Presence
An opaque purple ichor will ooze from nearby walls and crevices and coat the ground. This ichor is highly flammable and slippery.
-
I want this place to eventually become a library or study of some kind, not a death trap! So for now I snub the rather malicious trap and return my focus back to my dungeon.
Having watched the cats deal with frog infestation in my upper floors, I felt a bit guilty when I looked back down to the slugs. The gooey little mollusk soldiers, keeping the seemingly growing swarms of beetles at bay.
The cost for a Slug Scion was still rather high, but the actual cost to upgrade the spawner was just a little less so. But seeing the little things try so hard, I bite the bullet and make the purchase. The reaction was a bit more volatile than just spawning Tama however. The coral like hive of the slugs snapped and crackled as it grew slightly, the slugs it began to produce were also quite a bit bigger than before, now about the size of a soda can.
The new slugs were also a little bit faster and they surged into the line of beetles with a vigor. Were before there was a rickety stalemate, now the slugs were driving back the chitinous swarms with ease! The large slugs water jets just splatter even the large beetles in one shot now, their smaller kin following in close groups around them and pick off the stragglers.
The small counter attack made for an excellent show as the slugs manage to push the swarms back out of the borders of my dungeon. I can still sense them actively swarming just outside my bounds, but they seem notably more hesitant to enter now.
While I don't have a scion to praise just yet, I instead make sure to give the little guys a bit of extra attention for a while.
​
With my borders now guarded and my core secured, I could finally take a breath. Up until this point I've been too distracted with all of my new functions and responsibilities, I hadn't taken enough time to fully get a good idea as to where I am or what I am.
I understand I am now a dungeon and that it's my duty to maintain and protect my controlled territory. But apart from some old ruined furniture and my denizens, I have no idea what else is in store for me in the place. The angel had said that I couldn't go back to Earth, so I doubt I'm anywhere familiar, but at the same time this building looks like it was made by people for people. The chairs and tables look to be about right for humans proportions, I can even see old faded tapestries and paintings but their details are too far gone to make out what may have been on them.
I want to turn this place into a library or similar institution, but I have no idea if the natives of this world can even read any languages I know! I've been browsing through my options and I can see that I have the ability to designate a room to a specific function, but none of them are for a library or study.
Workshop and Abbey
I don't see any point in having a workshop, as I doubt my cats and slugs would be very efficient on the assembly line.
But the idea of having an abbey doesn't seem so bad. I wasn't the most devout person back on earth, but I always did enjoy reading various books on religion, philosophy, and any sort of theistic concept really.
Tossing the idea around in my mind I thought about where I would even assign said abbey. Most of the rooms I had access to were about the size of a medium or smaller bedroom. My cores 'Sanctum' as it had been labeled was only about 4 feet on all sides.
As I drifted room to room, trying to pick one out for the abbey, I noticed that at each of the majors ends of my borders I had unique options.
I could expand myself?
Sure enough, as I felt along the walls of my dungeon I was given 3 options. The first was the option to expand outward and into the open expanse of this new world, the cost was rather high but it would be within my range after a few more days of bug stomping.
Next I had the option to take a new wing of the complex I was already apart of. I could afford this option right now, but it would leave me a bit light in the pockets. I also didn't know if this was the entire remaining space of the complex or just another wing. But it was more tempting than expanding outside, as I needed actual rooms for my library to eventually come to life after all.
The last option did not appeal to me at all however, down and also outside. I had to check to make sure it was a separate choice from the first but sure enough it was. I could feel that choosing this path would grant me a very large space, at a very high cost, and that it would not automatically conjoin with the first exterior expansion.
Filing the three options away for later, I also held off on purchasing the Abbey room as well. This seemed like a bit much for me. Even if I had the frogs and beetles managed, I had no idea what was waiting past my current borders. Would I get new denizens or invaders, and given my current financial situation, would I be able to afford them.
No, I needed to be careful and keep pace with myself, this wasn't a race. I still have a scion I need to get, as well as upgrade both spawners a few levels each.
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ALERT - INTRUDERS APPROACHING
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I was grateful I no longer had to worry about my asthma, or I would have been in a lot of trouble.
From next to, what was the closest approximation to my front door, Tama stood with her fur on end. Nearly every cat, save for Tama, darted into a hiding space. My brace scion stood ready to face whatever was approaching the old wooden door from the other side.
I ordered what few slugs weren't needed to hold the line, to move to protect the core. By now I could hear the muted sound of voices from the other side of the door. I couldn't make out anything being said, but I could tell there were multiple people just outside.
I eyed my mana again, I was so close but so far from being able to spawn my other scion!
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This story is a personal project and any criticism and advice is welcomed and appreciated, hope you enjoyed!