Today is the final day of the Daily Ryōkan Poems. I really hope you have all enjoyed them. His legacy still lives on for those who read his poems. His poems will make you look at flowers like loving open arms, listen to birds like a symphony and gaze at the moon like an epiphany. In 1814 Ryōkan moved from his Gogō-an to a hut in Otogo jinja. Due to increasing age and infirmary, in 1826 he accepted hospitality from his friend and supporter Kimura Motouemon, this would be where he had his final days, in a detached house on the grounds of the Kimura family mansion in Shimazaki. In the book ‘Great Fool by Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel’ it says that Ryōkan met Teishin around autumn time 1827 and she was the daughter of a Samurai from Nagaoka. On the 6th of January 1831 Ryōkan exchanged poems with his beloved companion Teishin.
Exchange of Poems on Ryōkan’s Deathbed…
•

“When, when?” I sighed.
The one I longed for
Has finally come;
With her now,
I have all that I need. - Ryōkan

•

We monastics are said
To overcome the realm
Of life and death
Yet I cannot bear the
Sorrow of our parting. - Teishin

•

Everywhere you look
The crimson leaves
Scatter-
One by one,
Front and back. - Ryōkan

•
Another translation of it…

裏を見せ 表を見せて 散る紅葉 うらを見せ おもてを見せて 散るもみじ
Now it reveals its hidden side and now the other - thus it falls, an autumn leaf.

•
Great Fool by Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel Page 19

*Ryōkan’s health continued to deteriorate, and by the winter of 1830, he was confined to his bed by violent diarrhoea, unable to eat, his suffering compounded by the insomnia that had plagued him over the years. Sometimes delirious, tended by Teishin and Henchō, Ryōkan continued to write throughout his final illness. The end came in late afternoon on the sixth day of the new year, 1831. Teishin records that Ryōkan, seated in meditation posture, died “just as if he were falling asleep”

Ryōkans Grave (1758-1831)
It was nice to know that even though he lived as a hermit, he didn’t die alone or unloved. He chose to live a hermit life, but touched the hearts of everyone who met him, and also anyone who has read his poems. I don’t think he ever felt lonely as such, everything from flowers to trees, streams to rivers, animals to humans, adults to children and the sun to the moon… the whole universe was his friend, but his final words reminded me of the poem A Falling Leaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L(a I particularly like the analysis of this poem that says..

It creates the effect that the leaf is still one, or "oneliness" whole within itself, even after it is isolated from the tree.

•
How can we not die alone? But at the same time, we die with everything, everything dies with us. If you look at Teishin’s verse,

We monastics are said
To overcome the realm
Of life and death
Yet I cannot bear the
Sorrow of our parting.

No matter how much you love a flower or leaves of a tree, they will eventually fall and die. Showing both sides of itself, both sides of the same coin, life and death, the one-ness of the nature of the universe. Coming and going, Buddha nature.
•
I really hope you have enjoyed these daily poems. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read and comment. 🙏
•
All these Poems are taken from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf translated by John Stevens.
Daily Ryōkan Poems

Below are the upcoming events at The University of Arizona this week.
Are you a club or organization wanting to add your events to the calendar? All events are pulled from the official UofA calendar. Add your own events to the calendar using this link.
Rule #5 still applies for any comments in this thread

Upcoming Events

Sunday, March 26
Campus Arboretum Walking Tour: 'Edible Landscapes'	9:30am
Planetarium Show: 'Black Holes'	11am
Arizona Softball vs. Washington (Away)	noon
Planetarium Show: 'We Are Stars'	12:30pm
League of Legends and Venture Valley Tournament	2pm - 5pm
Planetarium Show: 'Touring the Solar System'	3:30pm
Arizona Baseball vs. ASU (Away)	4pm

Monday, March 27
Webinar: 'Heritage Healing Practices: Vision Therapy'	10am - 11am
Graduate Center Writing Efficiency Sessions	11am - 1pm
Webinar: 'Stress Management: Making It Work For You'	1pm - 1:45pm
UArizona Fulbright Week: International Education Administrators Award Information Session	3pm - 4pm
UArizona Fulbright Week: Program Student Advising	3pm - 3pm
Arizona FORGE: Support + Share for Student Entrepreneurs	4pm - 5pm
Webinar: 'Reflections on the Understanding, Appreciation and Authentication of Ōbaku Zen Calligraphy'	4pm - 5pm
Mindful Mondays – In Person and Online	5:30pm - 6:30pm

Tuesday, March 28
Graduate Center Writing Efficiency Sessions	8:30am - 10:30am
UArizona Fulbright Week: 1:1 Meetings with Scholar Liaison for Faculty & Staff	9am - noon
Webinar: Funding for Students at the Dissertation Stage	9:30am - 10:30am
Study Abroad on the Mall	11am - 2pm
UArizona Fulbright Week: Program Information Session	11am - noon
Grad Student Drop-In Career Consultations via Zoom	noon - 2pm
Webinar: 'Birth to 5 Years Old: Fostering Emotional Intelligence '	noon - 1pm
Workshop: Dissertation Forms and Formatting	1pm - 2pm
UArizona Staff Council Meeting	2pm - 3:30pm
Planetarium Show: 'Black Holes'	2pm
'Notice. Care. Help.' Strategies for Supporting Others and Yourself	3pm - 4pm
Discussion: 'Mapzgun: Indigenous Land Reclamation and Language Revitalization in Wall Mapu, Chile'	3pm - 4:30pm
Planetarium Show: 'Touring the Solar System'	3:30pm
Jose Antonio Vargas: Common Reading Presentation and Book Signing	5:30pm - 7:30pm
Arizona Baseball vs. GCU (Home)	6pm

Wednesday, March 29
Faculty Information Session: Pay One Price	9am - 9:30am
QPR Gatekeeper Training (Managers/Supervisors)	10am - 11:30am
Panel Discussion: Creating a Resilient Future with Arizona Institute for Resilience	10:30am - 11:45am
UArizona Fulbright Week: U.S. Scholar Information Session	11am - noon
Graduate Center Writing Efficiency Sessions	noon - 2pm
WSIP Online Writing Room	noon - 2pm
Genetics GIDP Thesis Defense: Heather Lenk	noon - 1pm
Planetarium Show: 'From Earth to the Universe'	3:30pm
UArizona Fulbright Week: Panel Presentation and Reception	4pm - 6pm
The 8-Track Experience at The Linda McCartney Retrospective: Karima Walker	5:30pm
Grad Chat – Networking Days	6pm - 7:30pm

Thursday, March 30
Workshop: 'Driving Strategic Communication withith Manufacturing'	8am - 4pm
March Cereal Entrepreneurs	9am - 10am
UArizona Fulbright Week: Specialist Information Session	10am - 11am
Let's PAWS & Pet-A-Pup	11am - 1pm
UArizona Fulbright Week: 1:1 Meetings with Scholar Liaison for Faculty & Staff	1pm - 4pm
Planetarium Show: 'BUGS! A Rainforest Adventure'	2pm
Planetarium Show: 'Tucson Sky & Beyond'	2pm
Grad Slam Final Round	5pm
Pitt Family Foundation Speaker Series: 'Juneteenth and the Paradox of American Democracy'	5:30pm - 6:30pm
Linda McCartney Retrospective Lecture Series: Daniella Zalcman and Verónica Sanchis Bencomo	5:30pm
Fronteridades Lecture Series: 'Stories of Migration' – Dr. Irasema Coronado	5:30pm - 7:30pm

Friday, March 31
Grad Student Drop-In Career Consultations via Zoom	9am - 11am
Seminar: 'Individualized Format Readability: The Messy Research Processes of Educational Technologies'	10am - 11am
Graduate Center Writing Efficiency Sessions	noon - 2pm
Lecture: 'Marginalized Edge Effect: Ecology, Urban Waterfront and Landscapes'	noon - 12:50pm
Southwest Center Series: 'Collaborative Conservation in a Polarized West'	noon
Webinar: 'Creating a Care Plan'	noon - 12:45pm
2023 MEZCOPH Public Health Poster Forum	1pm - 5pm
Planetarium Show: 'Forward to the Moon'	2pm
Planetarium Show: 'NASA's Journey to Mars' + Live Star Talk	3:30pm
Arizona Softball vs. Georgetown (Home)	4pm
Arizona Softball vs. San Diego (Home)	6pm
Arizona Baseball vs. Oregon (Home)	6pm

Saturday, April 1
Worlds of Words Center: 'Bridges Across the World: Explore Outstanding New Global Books'	10am - noon
Aging and the Arts Creative Encounters in Awe Walking: Color	10:30am - noon
Meet Taco Dragon At Story Time	10:30am
Planetarium Show: 'Perfect Little Planet'	12:30pm
Arizona Softball vs. San Diego (Home)	1pm
Planetarium Show: 'Black Holes'	2pm
Meet Taco Dragon At Story Time	2pm
Dance Marathon for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals	3pm - 9pm
Arizona Softball vs. Georgetown (Home)	3pm
Planetariu Show: 'Tucson Sky & Beyond'	3:30pm
Arizona Baseball vs. Oregon (Home)	6pm
Planetarium Laser Light Music Show: 'Laser Taylor Swift'	7pm
Planetarium Laser Light Music Show: 'Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon'	8:30pm
Planetarium Show: 'NASA's Journey to Mars' + Live Star Talk	11pm

Ongoing Events
Ancient-Modern: Continuity and Innovation in Southwest Native Jewelry	Feb. 4, 2023 - Oct. 28, 2023
Online Exhibition: 'The Legacy of Yinyuan Longqi (Ingen Ryūki) and the Art of Ōbaku'	Aug. 31, 2022 - Aug. 31, 2023
'Inspired by Plants: The Art and Science of the Campus Arboretum Florilegium'	Feb. 13, 2023 - Aug. 31, 2023
Restored: The Return of 'Woman-Ochre'	Oct. 8, 2022 - May. 20, 2023
Our Stories: High School Artists 2023	Feb. 25, 2023 - May. 20, 2023
'The Whole World on One Page: International Wimmelbooks'	Jan. 11, 2023 - May. 12, 2023
Graduate Writing Tutors	Jan. 11, 2023 - May. 11, 2023

Get the course here: https://www.genkicourses.com/product/ampmycontent-the-amplify-content-academy/
AmpMyContent – The Amplify Content Academy
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AmpMyContent – The Amplify Content Academy
The Amplify Content Academy is our step-by-step content creation and promotion program. It is designed to help you side-step mistakes so that you can create and leverage highly effective content that drives traffic and grows your audience.

Hey y’all. Just a fun post this time.
Integrated Strategy is my favorite game mode of this game. I legit quit every other gacha games as soon as IS#2 dropped back in July 2022. As IS#3 is on the horizon, I’d like to look back on IS#2 and the billion hours I spent on it like what am I doing with my life and, as you see from the title, to rank all of the IS#2 map, including boss stages and encounter stages, in an order from easiest to hardest.
Now, maps actually change their relative difficulty depends on what relics you have, what playstyle you go for, and occasionally what recruit tickets they throw at you.
Since I can’t create a template on tierlist maker as it will just be a bunch of text anyway (or a very small picture of each map which is hard to see) I guess I’ll just type it out manually here. Hope you remember all of the map’s name!
Just kidding I will post pictures of the maps. But that will bloat up this post a lot so you can see why this is a Part 1. Probably? Maybe by the time I managed to trim this post down by merging all the picture or something I will probably forget to edit this particular part and I will be talking about a Part 2 that will never come. Idk you will soon be able to tell that all of this is literally first draft.
Shit I should stop bloating this post with dumb talk then.
Here we go! All IS2 maps, from easiest to hardest.
Regular reminder that this is a tier list and therefore it’s biased af lmao. (More like this is my "get out of jail" statement, can't fault me for placing the hard map you hate the most on a lower tier now haha ^{looking forward your comment on my Unending placement}).
––––
My assumptions for comparing their difficulty will be as follow:

• no relics
• hard mode difficulty “Calamity Faceoff” (since that’s the only difficulty I play in).

Different hard mode relics usually wouldn’t change the relative difficulty so that’s fine.
And I will shorten the Emergency form to (E). If I meant both the regular map and its emergency version it will be (+E) instead.
––––

“A Date with Slugs” tier

• A Date with Slugs (+E).

https://imgur.com/a/QJOKJBq
Literally the easiest map in the entire mode. It cannot be threatening. Even with Chachek + Imagined (+54% ATK, DEF, HP) it’s still just barely harder than the next tier.

F tier

• Accident, Beast Taming, Gun Salute, Fight to the Death (+E), Destitute Knights (+E), Unequal Split, The Grand Finale, Patrol Squad, Duck Lord’s Play

https://imgur.com/a/9COpvjv
- Originally named the “super easy, barely an inconvenience” tier. They are Floor 1 and 2 maps after all. However, you may notice some Emergency version are missing.

D tier

• Accident (E), Beast Taming (E), Gun Salute (E), Unequal Split (E), First Come Last Served, Bound By Self

https://imgur.com/a/65Q1WIq (only 2 images cuz only 2 “new” maps)
While these are harder than F tier (cuz emergency duh), they also feel much harder than they actually are because of how early they can show up when you have barely any team build up (Have you ever got Bound By Self – Playwright’s 1st encounter – on the very first node of floor 2?). Them dogs in Beast Taming will mow through pretty much any E1 melee ops (some E2 ops even).
Accident is technically not as bad as the rest of this, as there are a notable amount of ops that can tank the archers or kill them fast enough to not overwhelm the medic. But they have to be higher than the above tier because it is still a significant step up from regular Accident. In normal mode, there is not much difference between the regular and the (E) version actually.
Also, for Gun Salute (E), technically just the Chadigan will tank the mortar guy with ease (need constant heal spam tho), making it F tier, but the issue is the RNG spiders, in (E) their death explosion will kill pretty much any ranged units, and you don’t have much space as they have to avoid both Chadigan and the spider and manage aggro away from the mortar boi.

C tier

• Sculptor and Statue, Premiere, With the Crowd, Alpine Visitor, Fireworks Show, Gopnik’s Fist, Surprise Factory, Drone Landing Zone (+E), Absurd Trickeries, Sarkaz Desire

https://imgur.com/a/zbnVbrE
These are the opposite of the above tier, where all of these stages listed are way too easy for the floor they appear in.
I first met Sculptor and Statue on its (E) version and not the regular one. I forgot entirely that the pillar can form chokepoints and still won that map leakless even when I had to hold 2 lanes. Note for this map though: the pillar’s ATK is less than the Gargoyle’s HP, meaning it won’t be an insta-kill. You have to lower its HP first before dropping the pillar on them.
Drone Landing Zone (+E) is probably an odd choice here. But as overwhelming as the drone horde looks, it’s fairly simple at its core. The only requirement is not using E1 Steward, Earthspirit, and Podenco as your only anti-air options. You can probably put the (E) version on the next tier.
You may also notice that Sarkaz Desire – a floor 6 map – is here. Again, easy for the floor it appears in. If you got to Floor 6, that means you beat either Phantom or Big Sad Lock (BSL). If you beat Phantom, you will beat Sarkaz Desire, period. Because the only threatening part of this map is the Balloon horde. Or more accurately, killing all of the Balloons on top of your ops and just wiped them with a burst of like a million damage. If you beat BSL, well it depends on if you beat it with a melee team or a ranged team (for obvious reasons).

C+ tier

• First Come Last Served (E), Patrol Squad (E), Justice, Pressing Ahead, Duck Lord’s Party, Unending, Shrouded in Cloud, Theft From Above, Fatal Melodies

https://imgur.com/a/5DEnksu
Now we’re at the next level of C tier where they are easier than the floor they appear in, but they are hard enough to not share that tier.
This tier also shares spot with maps that are hard if you lacks a specific functions but is otherwise easy. For example
Justice and Pressing Ahead: 1 non-Charger Vanguard, and a sufficiently tanky 2-blocks unit for Justice specifically, which can be that Vanguard. (Technically you can just get the +DP relics and it’ll also be sufficient, but I banned relics from this tier list lol)
Fatal Melodies: Any medic that isn’t Honeyberry or 3* and lower. Ansel could work with extreme finesses (and prayers).
I also have beaten this map without medics (or with only Ansel as medic) multiple times already. A DPS Ambusher or Dollkeeper on the healing tile will buy you enough time to musical chair the other DPS units to kill the boss. You can even deliberately block him with any weak unit just to stop the DoT for a split second to buy time for Ansel to heal up. Strong duelists like Nearl2 S2 will do wonder. What doesn’t work is the 3* Medic + Defender combo that usually works in Normal Mode. Both Chadigan and Spot will quickly die to the boss even with Ansel or Hibiscus. (Especially again, I’m not counting any relics for this tier list).
Unending: I heard y’all hate this map. It’s frankly not that hard. There are a lot of units that will help a lot with this map: the classic Defender + Medic, any Trapmasters, Dollkeepers, Ambusher, Decel Binders, Elysium, Roberta, Cliffheart, Gladiia, Red,... anyway the list goes on. And that most of the units I listed are still good in pretty much the other maps. (Cliffheart especially, but I’ll mention her later when it’s time). In IS#2 you also have 2 stun devices to help.
What doesn’t work are Sleep and Freeze user since those don’t reset the Lancer’s speed. But for Gnosis, his freeze and fragile are probably good enough for you to kill them anyway.
Note that if you’re placing 2 Defenders for this map, place the stronger one on the right, that’s where 3 Lancers Leaders will go to (not at the same time but you know what I mean). Unless you’re sure they can’t survive regardless.
A great thing about this map is that Hard Mode doesn’t change the difficulty that much. Most of lancer’s damage come from their speed, not their ATK. (Which also means that Shamare -50% ATK doesn’t work.)
End point is that you usually have more options than you think and the fact that it appears way at floor 4 means you have times to prepare for it.

B tier

• The Grand Finale (E), A Familiar Face (+E), With the Crowd (E), Reform (+E), Beast Fighting (+E), Premiere (E), Scupltor and Statue (E), Vintage Transport, A Dance Together (+E), Alpine Visitor (E), Bob’s Beers, Surprise Factory (E), Terrifying Legends, Mind the Doors, A Cold Separation

https://imgur.com/a/CewWfTO
This tier is a bit crowded but it’s essentially most of the Floor 3 maps. Floor 3 marks the middle tier or “average” difficulty of the mode. Obviously that means most Floor 3 maps will be here.
Some of these maps are also part of the “hard because early” gang. They are in floor 3 itself tho, just pray that you get their (E) version later in the floor.
The 3 boss stages are not necessary harder than Theft From Above and Fatal Melodies. But they don’t have the potential to be easy either. Basically they are… stable(?) in difficulty I guess?
Terrifying Legends is another map that got much harder in Hard Mode because of the stat scaling. The boss hurts because all of the buff stacks multiplicatively. The Hard Mode boost and his own +ATK/ASPD scales together resulting in him destroying most melee units even with healer. You just have to win the DPS race in Hard Mode because he does need ramp up. Or get a total of 4s of hard CC which may or may not be easily available.

B+ tier

• Vintage Transport (E), Knights’ Duel, Fireworks Show (E), Unending (E), Pressing Ahead (E), Traveler From Afar, Disorderly Banquet, Dangers Abound, The Night of Ritual, This Ursus Man

https://imgur.com/a/PqB8FOJ
- If you’re playing with Leader Squad, Knights’ Duel is the easiest map in the entire game: just leak them all. Otherwise, it’s relatively hard. The simplest strat is to just leak the axe boi while dealing with the rest of them. Cliffheart and Gladiia in particular can just yoink the archer boi down the hole even before he starts moving. FEater can also yeet him down the hole but requires a bit of finesse.
Unending (E) is a mile (per hour) above regular Unending. The faster speed means more damage, but more importantly it means you have less breaks in-between charge. More damage combines with less breaks means you’re more likely to die to attrition because you can’t heal up your defenders fast enough. Lancers Leaders now 1-shot anyone without immortality, shield, or massive HP/DEF pool like an E2 skill-active Protectors. But Bind, Stun, Dollkeepers, AMB-Ⲭ Ambusher,... still work wonder so it’s still in this tier.
Traveler From Afar regular mode is fairly simple. What you need to worry is the fireball caster and get units that can attack the hovering bois without being distracted (not necessarily Marksman). E2 S2M3 Cliffheart in particular destroys this map. She can yoink caster down the hole and ground all of the hovering boi. She doesn’t prioritize S2 on enemies she’s blocking from her side so it works wonder for prioritizing them. Bottom lane of this map has fairly low traffic, just Chadigan can solo it all the way until the red defender… I think. I never really paid attention to it.
This Ursus Man can be cheesed with AoE silence. Otherwise you need either Reapers, Dollkeepers or some Centurion. There is a spot that is guaranteed safe from Gopnik when he makes his first round: upright of the blue box. This spot is a bit awkward though as sometimes the spider will spawn the thingy away from that tile which let them slip pass, but it’s a great spot regardless.

A tier

• Justice (E), Bob’s Beers (E), Demonic Cage, Shrouded in Cloud (E), The Red Mist (+E), Absurd Trickeries (E), The Night of Ritual (E), From Afar, The Biting Cold (+E), Sarkaz Desire (E)

https://imgur.com/a/rDyBFWu
- And here’s the map with the biggest jump from regular mode to Emergency: Justice. Most other (E) maps become hard due to the stats scale turning the regular mobs into a dangerous beasts (Unequal Split, Beast Taming, Grand Finale,...) But Justice makes every mobs stronger and also keeping the Civilians the same stats. Even when you deployed a unit right in front of the red box, the enemies can still take 1 shot toward the Civilians because they spawned inside the red box and can’t be blocked yet. And with the (E) stats they will take less shots to kill the civilians. I hate these damned civilians so much. (I guess a puller will yoink the enemies away from red box so here’s another Cliffheart shill)
Sarkaz Desire is another one with a big jump. Like I said in the normal version, the only challenge of this map is not killing the balloon at the wrong time and have a million damage on your ops combined with a 10 seconds stun. But the (E) version makes their speed fast meaning said challenge is much harder. And the increased stats do make the other mobs more threatening.
Bob’s Beers is also a case of (E) stats turning the regular enemies into beasts, in this case the Brawlers and the regular drones. They are deceptively strong and then any single bomb dropped on your ranged unit means death.
Demonic Cage is uhh, a fairly simple map. But as I said somewhere in the beginning, there are some maps that do change their difficulty based on your playstyle. And mine doesn’t rely too much on strong melee units. The easy strat is to leak the first guy while passively collects DP to instantly deploy a bunch of units with the melee being lasts to draw aggro. It’s probably somewhere around B/B+ tier for other people, or even lower. Cliffheart is also amazing here because she can yoink the ranged enemy away from the ranged tile so you have a much easier time to deal with the rest.

S tier

• Traveler From Afar (E), Dangers Abound (E), From Afar (E), Observation, Ursus Desire, The Point of No Return, All I Ask of You*, Twisted Every Way

https://imgur.com/a/TMqzLe3
I don’t think I need to explain what tier this is. But I do need to explain why some of the (E) stages can match the “boss fight” of this game.
Dangers Abound (E) has 6 Wraith Leaders with about 30000 HP, 1000 DEF, and 50 RES. The Bullies also chonk af but they are blockable while not hurting that much.
Traveler From Afar should also be self-explanatory. The Caster actually chonk af and the hover boi hurts. (But Cliffheart still destroy the top lane of this map. She might have to be worry with the mobs this time though.)
From Afar has the stats scaling to the extreme, +50% ATK (stack multiplicatively with the Hard Mode relic) and +500 DEF (fortunately only add after the Hard Mode relic) from the 5 Heralds which makes the opening harder because of the snipers’ multi-target. If you haven’t killed enough Heralds by the time the elites and singers reach your frontline, it’s going to be a bad time.
Observation is pretty overwhelming at first and still difficult after getting used to it. The singers spam during the middle phase is pretty awful and if you accidentally trigger their passive once, they will shred through your line. Then the Golem spam at the last phase is also awful. Actually not that bad if you have relics.
*read below for more things about All I Ask of You

“Holy shit” tier

• Ursus Desire (E), New Chapter, All I Ask of You*

https://imgur.com/a/JSHJImc
Emergency Ursus Desire. Oh boy. 5 UFO drones with 36000 HP, 1600 ATK, 1200 DEF. 4 Shieldguards with 45000 HP, 1300 ATK, 2500 DEF. 4 Demolitionists with 55000 HP, 3500 ATK, 2100 DEF. Even the bottom lane is big pain with the stats-boosted bears and 2-block Raiders spam. If you somehow got Imagined (+10% ATK, HP, DEF), it’s going to be a fu…n time.
New Chapter’s actual boss is the Shaman. But Nightingale will trivialise that right? NOPE there are a billion shaman and their combined arts damage with the death explosion with Playwright’s constant onslaught means without NG S3 your units will die quite quickly (without relics).
Tbh, Playwright alone isn’t that bad. His mass AoE is preventable with the checker-deployment thingy and Nightingale (it is bad in the sense that he pretty much forces a NG on your team or relying on busted relics). Dollkeepers shrug off his -ASPD debuff when swapping back and forth (though only Spectwo is the only frontline that survive the shaman horde for any reasonable amount of time). You don’t even have to spawncamp him and instead burst him down in 2 different intervals (the idea is to avoid his <50% phase as much as you can). There are a bunch of big pp DPS units courtesy of year 3/4 powercreep (and heck even some old units still kinda works) so technically you have options. My dude has 90 RES when below 50% HP though so be careful with arts damage.
*Extra note: if you have Crown or Chachek, All I Ask of You is in this tier as well. BSL's ATK got buffed to the point where you might not be able to set up a squad at all (until 60s in), as they will get wiped. Again, I don't count relics, meaning operators will only have 10% ATK and HP and DEF to protect themselves with.
K that’s it you can now go flame my ranking or me in the comment or something bye.

Hello fellow Pythoneers, it's time for me to once more talk about Starlite for a bit!

Recap

What's Starlite?
Starlite is a flexible and highly performant ASGI framework, focused on building APIs while delivering great developer experience by offering ready-built solutions for common tasks such as ORM integration, caching, session management, key/value stores, OpenAPI-schema generation and interactive API docs, type safety and much more.
You can read more about Starlite's features in our documentation!
So what's new?

Starlite 2.0 on the horizon

It's been over two months since we announced Starlite 2.0, more as a side note than major news, so it's about time to see how things are going!
Firstly, as with any proper project, there has been a slight feature creep, and the 2.0 update will be a bit more involved as initially expected. But we have it under control. We can stop at any time. I promise.
Jokes aside, the announcement still holds true: Starlite 2.0 retains most of its core functionality, and from a user perspective, not a lot has to change when upgrading your app from 1.x to 2.0; If you don't want to make use of new features, the upgrade path will mostly consist of changing some import paths and slightly adjusting a few configuration values.
But let's take a look at what has changed, and what is yet to come.

Adieu Pydantic

Starting with the release of 2.0.0alpha1, Starlite replaced most of its internal models that relied on Pydantic (mostly with data- or plain classes). In the following releases leading up to 2.0, we will remove the last dependencies on Pydantic, and you can use Starlite completely Pydantic-free.
But why?
The main motivations behind this were performance improvements and flexibility:
Performance
Pydantic is a great library, but being fast is not one of its strengths. Its performance will likely increase drastically in version 2.0, with the core validation logic written in Rust, but early tests indicate that it will likely still be slower than other libraries when it comes to (de)serialization.
In many cases this might not be an issue, but having the option to switch to an alternative if desired is still a valuable option, and can have significant impact on the overall performance of an application.
Flexibility
Pydantic is by far not the only library of its kind, with prominent members of the same class being attrs, cattrs or even plain dataclasses for some use cases.
Starlite currently only supports modelling data with Pydantic, which means this will necessarily force an integration of Pydantic into the rest of the application's layers, be it by directly using Pydantic models there, or simply the need of an additional "translation layer".
By removing Starlite's reliance on Pydantic, we're opening doors to a new, more flexible type of integration, which will ultimately allow to plugin in arbitrary modelling libraries.
Does this mean I won't be able to use Starlite with Pydantic anymore?
No. Starlite will continue to support Pydantic modelling of any kind, and you'll be able to keep using Pydantic models everywhere you've used them before.
Pydantic will be removed as a core dependency eventually, which means Starlite will be able to run without it, but there are no plans to stop supporting it.

All new DTOs

DTOs will become more integral in Starlite 2.0, taking care of most of the data conversion between various types of models.
This feature is yet to be released, but it will allow you to seamlessly use data modelled with for example Pydantic, SQLAlchemy, msgspec or dataclasses in your route handlers, without the need for an intermediary model; The conversion will be handled by the specific DTO "backend" implementation. This new paradigm also makes it trivial to add support for any such modelling library, by simply implementing an appropriate backend.

emit("We have an event bus now")

Starting with the first alpha release - 2.0.0alpha1 -, Starlite includes a simple event bus that can be used to emit and receive events, supporting both synchronous and asynchronous listeners. Currently only a basic in-memory, per-process backend is included, but future versions will add support for inter-process communication by adding backends for Redis, RabbitMQ and others.
This is an exciting new feature, as it allows powerful patterns such as websocket broadcasting, or can, in combination with background tasks, eliminate the need for external task queues such as celery or arq.

Data stores

Another exciting new feature coming in 2.0 are the all new, fully integrated data stores. They are simple key/value stores, including backends for the file system, memory, or common key/value databases like Redis.
These stores are managed centrally by a registry, providing easy configuration, isolation and a hierarchical structure via namespacing, and integration with third parties such as plugins. Via the registry it's possible to easily access stores used by various built-in features such as rate-limiting or request caching, making them available throughout the entire application context.

What else is new?

To keep this post (relatively) brief I won't mention all the changes going into 2.0, so if you want to know everything that's changed until now, you can take a look at the detailed 2.x changelog, which includes all the currently released changes, features (and bugfixes).

What's left to do

There are a few more things that have to be done before Starlite 2.0 will be released. Yesterday the second alpha version (2.0.0alpha2) has been released, but it won't be the last development release before 2.0.0.
A few major items on the 2.0 todo-list currently are:

• Finishing new DTO implementation
• New signature modelling backend using attrs
• Remove the remaining parts that rely on Pydantic
• Writing a migration guide for 1.x > 2.0
• Writing tutorials / prose documentation for the SQLAlchemy repository

and of course lots of minor issue that need taking care of.
There is no set release date for 2.0, but as things are currently going, I expect one more alpha release before the first beta version comes out. At this point, no more breaking changes will be introduced, allowing the beta to be tested for a while before it can be considered stable and ready for the final release.
And as always, if you want to get involved or in touch, check out Starlite on GitHub or join our Discord!

Timestamp
Everything is priced to move on quickly and includes UK shipping! Will post international, buyer pays postage. Any questions just ask.
Refyne pen stand and spinner - just some patina on the copper spinner section. Will hold any normal pen. £25
Refyne EP1 titanium bolt action pen - perfect condition. £40
Bigidesign Pocket Pro cerakote midnight bronze titanium - visible wear and tear. This was a limited drop. £40
Bigidesign mini dual side click - copper with Damascus clip as well as original. Just patina, no damage etc. £60
Fox Baby Core UK legal pocket knife - as new, only opened a couple packages with it. £40 - NOTE THIS IS FOR UK BUYERS ONLY DUE TO CUSTOMS
Rovyvon A9 copper - great condition just patina. £30
Shell Cordovan leather cardholder wallet - used a couple times and has just a couple very minor surface scratches. Interior black leather slots are buttero leather. External shell leather is a gorgeous dark green. I just don’t use it and I can’t return it now. Paid £85 for it, asking for £40 now!
Refyne CC1 wallet - never used really want rid of it. £25
JJ Leathersmith Lucais wallet USD version - has some wear. Takes £5 notes perfect, £10 notes stick out ever so slightly. Perfect cardholder. £20
Wingback cardholder wallet - used a bit, great condition just minor signs of use. Not much patina developed yet. £30
Verso cardholder leather - some signs of wear. £10
Bellroy cardholder leather - some signs of wear. £10

It also indicates to me that the problems are over quickly but why in the university administration wants 1 you to do things by the rules. You also have to include: - a register that lists the lectures you held few pages - a register that lists the lectures you held few pages - Something that explains this general rule of labour under capitalism? I haven't done many zoom interviews so I don't like when stuff doesn't feel real.
What is the causal mechanism here that explains Your research few pages - Something that explains this general rule of labour under capitalism? Did a side hustle with a quiz every 10-15 minutes. And then they stop the machine to correct which edge of the saliency of the saliency of the machine.
Two stores in our district there's 14 or 15 total I think I have read, time and time again, how employers want to find union work. I haven't been in a unique position, and I don't think it is worth it but she is adamant. I have better things to do absolutely everything yourself and 2 the opportunity to have a better quality of life, and be organizing ourselves differently with tech.

LOOOOOOOORE SUNDAAAAAAAAY

What is this thread for?

Curious about the lore for a TM franchise you haven't consumed? Got theories and need cited source material? Want to know how the laws of Nasuvese works on a fundamental level? Need to find that one line you can't find proof of anywhere because TM wiki is hilariously unreliable?
This is the place!
This thread will be a Q&A sort of location that will serve as a "lore library" of sorts that you can use for any inquiries.
This is NOT meant to be a place for containing all lore discussion and theory posts, as those are still highly encouraged to be submission posts outside of this thread so more people can see your ideas!

Translated Source Material Links

• TMdict - contains all Side Material translated
• Chaldea Records - Compilation of in-game profiles and materials
• TRI-HERMES Lore Database ~ WIP

FGO Materials

• Story Summary Compilation
• Event Summary Compilation
• Interlude Summary Compilation
• Material Profile Translation Compilation
• FGO Arcade Lost Jerusalem Part 1 Translations
• FGO Arcade Lost Jerusalem Post-Raid Translations
• Camelot Zero, premise of Camelot singularity written on Nasu's Blog
• FGO Arcade Babylon Translations

Anime

• Kara no Kyoukai Movie Series
• F/SN Unlimited Blade Works - Ufotable
• Fate/Zero
• Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya - Trust me, just read the manga.
• Fate/Grand Order - First Order
• Emiya Gohan
• Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace note
• Fate/Grand Order - Moonlight Lostroom
• Fate/Grand Order - Demonic Front: Babylonia

Note: Nonexistent Tsukihime anime and first two of the Heavens Feel Trilogy Movie Series can be found in the internet somewhere, I believe in you to find them. Wink wink.
Note 2: Fate/Apocrypha and Fate/Last Encore can be found on Netflix, along with Deen/Stay Night as well as Zero, UBW, and First Order.

Manga

• Tsukihime Arcuied Route
• Melty Blood , Act 2 , X
• Kara no Kyoukai
• Fate/Zero
• Prisma Illya, 2wei , 3rei
• FSN Heaven's Feel
• Koha Ace GO
• Fate/Extra CCC Foxtail
• Fate/Apocrypha
• FGO Turas Realta
• FGO Mortalis Stella
• FGO EoR Shinjuku
• FGO EoR SE.RA.PH.
• FGO EoR Shimosa
• FGO EoR Salem
• Fate/Strange Fake
• Fate/Type Redline
• FGO From Lostbelt
• Case Files
• Emiya-san chi no Gohan

Note: You can support a lot of the aforementioned manga officially through this website! https://web-ace.jp/tmca/

LNs

• Angel Notes
• Kara no Kyoukai
• Fate/Zero
• Fate/Apocrypha
• Prototype Fragments Volume 1 Complete PDF + Volume 2 Full Translations + The Rest of the Translations
• Fate/Requiem Volume 1
• Fate/Strange Fake
• Lord El Melloi II Case Files
• El Melloi Adventures Volume 1 Summary

Drama CDs

• Garden of Avalon
• Heroic Spirit's Lore Strange Tales: Edmond Dantes

VNs and Games

• Tsukihime and English patch if you want to play the VN, get VN Separately ​
• Kagetsu Tohya English patch for VN
• FSN All 3 Routes and English patch for VN
• FSN Fate Route ReTL
• Fate/Extella
• Fate/Hollow Ataraxia English Patch
• Fate/Extra English patch
• Fate/Extra CCC Gilgamesh Route and ZVN's Video typeset Playthrough
• Tsukihime Remake Arcuied Days 1-5 English Patch ​

Hi everyone,
(f 34) I am currently ghosting a friend who is of the anxious attachment style. I know this is not okay, and I am not condoning this. Intend to message her this weekend. However, I am wondering if you can help.
I am fearful/disorganised and am a chronic people pleaser. I have an interest in psychology. I tend to be able help people understand issues they may face and offer emotional support. I have very poor boundaries due to an abusive childhood, and I am in therapy trying to convert myself into a more securely attached individual.
The above is to outline why I struggle to ask for support or why I tend not to lean on others. However, some people feel safe, and I can have a more balanced friendship.
The friend I am struggling with treats me as a supply for validation, nurture and therapy. When I try to ask for support which is very hard for me, she reverts the conversation to herself or undermines my issues, mainly if they are opposite to hers. For example, she struggles to put on weight, and I struggle to lose weight; instead of a high five of these weight problems, she puts mine down by saying I wish I could be curvier or yes, but mine are worse because XYZ. I am validating, complementing and supporting her, and I can't remember the last compliment she gave me. I honestly feel that there is an addiction to validation and that AA is a spectrum, and there are some who need to be emotionally soothed 24/7
My friend is also very anxiously attached to her love interest. However, she behaves more FA way with him and unloads the AA pressure on me. When she perceives a slight from his end, a week-long meltdown will ensue, which leaves me traumatised and exhausted, only to start the following week again. When things are good with him, she tells me every intricate detail meaning im engulfed by both outcomes. She also frequently has panic attacks, some on the phone to me, calls3-6 times a day generally to vent and doesn't seem to acknowledge that, like her, not only do I have anxiety, but I have CPTSD, ADHD, hsp and overstimulation can be very harmful to my mental health.
Anyway, at first, I tried to miss a call here and there, text her that I if call back soon and even explain how I was struggling. Not only has she continued to call, text and post indirectly, but she also proceeded to message gossip about a toxic friend we both cut off, knowing full well that also AA friend caused us both a lot of anxiety for this same behaviour. I am shaking as I write this, as it's distressed me so much.
Before understanding my attachment, it would feel well within my right to cut her off. Still, there is a genuine consensus that avoidant patterns are considered unlovable and abusive, whilst AA deserve better and should connect with secures.
The last message she sent is what amplified my resentment. She said she understands it's hard to have an anxious friend. She didn't acknowledge that to am ALSO an anxious friend just because I deal with it differently, or it felt that she was about me not being able to handle it. My whole life, I have been the caregiving therapist's friend, and why can't she see that maybe her parentifying me is causing me to be triggered?
Also, I was in an abusive relationship and found out I was cheated on profusely. The whole incident led me to be hospitalised with a psychotic break, and she is fully aware of my history, yet I am treated like I am made of rainbow stone.
Her messages are more like 'are we okay?' and not 'are you okay?'
As an FA, I have also been on the other side of this trauma-dumping; the difference is was very apologetic and remorseful and paid for therapy to deal with these issues and alleviate me but also jot abuse those around me. She refuses treatment and seems to prefer me.
Questions are
Are all the attachments bar the secure unhealthy and can be equally abusive?
She is also much more childlike with me, and other friends don't seem to feel safe with her and therefore are more comfortable maintaining her.
Another friend cut her off with no word, and I suspect it's potentially similar reasons as she would also parity this friend.
I am distraught, so I understand this is venting, and I don't mean to demonise her. Still, after reading about how abusive avoidant behaviour is, I feel gaslit when this protest and ignoring boundaries is abusive in my eyes.

Natures great. Even If its just a local park next to the highway. I love going into more desolate places in parks. Places surrounded by trees and tucked away into nowhere. I liked to drag my friends in on it aswell, as much as they hated it. There are always these two specific friends I'd drag, they wouldn't bother resisting anyways.
Only went to parks and forests in the day, since the dark always freaked me out a bit. Gradually though I would start going out later and later for the fun of it- but never too late, maybe right before sunset. We always wanted to drag a few more friends along but most of them live a town over, or would just not be bothered.
Don't blame them but I've always loved going out to these parks and forests, and me and my trio haven't stopped either. Its always great to feel some fresh cold air as you wonder if a druggies going to jump out at you, or if a fox is going to swipe past your feet, or if you'll misstep and tumble down a hill. The adrenaline is what makes it fun, right?
Well not always apparently.
Nothing was really different on this day. It was just an average day in April. Nice weather, weak winds, good day, good vibes. The park was as still as ever, people would usually come here to feed the ducks and thats about it, maybe go for a light jog. That's only in the park area though, the forest bit is usually untouched, but not by me.
"Come on guys, it'll be fun! I'm sure nobody is there" I'd say to my friends. They'd get scared easily, so I always had my fair share of pranks and today was no different. I'd just pull a prank, come out, see them scared shitless and we'd laugh it off.
We went down a side path into a deeper part into the forest, I went last as of course I needed to be the first one out, and it was time for my prank. I screamed at the top of my Lungs and bolted out, making sure neither saw me before I lunged into a Bush and sat there waiting, waiting for them to come around so I could jump out and scare them. But they never did. This confused me as there were only three paths, the whole thing went around in a circle, there was a forest entrance and parking lot you could exit from- but we were nowhere near that.
There were three paths they could have taken, an upper path near the highway, a middle path I'm between bushes and trees, and a bottom path that connected the entrance and parking lot. Sitting in a Bush got annoying so I got up and went up a small hill in between the middle and top path and sat on a bench there.
I sat on the benches there for a while, it got darker and darker. I sat there for about 5 minutes, just soaking in the sun and waiting for the other two to pop out- maybe they've finally turned the tables on ms.
My phone pings. 'Hey are you wearing a pink shirt?'.
I sat there staring at the message. What a random thing to ask- especially since you've just had the life scared out of you! I was wearing a purple shirt- but that wasn't visible either as I wore a grey fleece over it.
'No, why?'
I waited about a minute for the response, and when I got it- it was as if the whole world has frozen.
'There was someone crawling in the bushes with a pink shirt, we don't know if it was a guy or what, he didn't move like a person'
What? A guy in the bushes? At this time in the evening? As the sun was setting?? 'Where was he?'
'Somewhere in between the top and middle path, are you there?'
Absolutely not, time has completely stopped now. Everything's gone quiet. The cars, the birds, the trees. It was like they were waiting for someone to speak.
Rustle. Heavy rustling. Almost like a person was struggling in the bushes beside me.
I didn't know what that was, it could've been a fox or bird or maybe even an apple that fell but I wasn't going to hang around to figure it out. I ran for it, practically throwing myself off the hill, barrelling through bushes and ending up flat on the grass beside the entrance. Soon running back to grab my friends who were frozen in place and beelining it out of the parking lot.
We still don't know what it was, no face was seen, it had freakishly strong looking hands, long legs, it crawled around how you'd expect a spidermonkey to crawl, and of course its pink scruffed shirt. It seems like maybe I should keep to forests in the bright day.

We met in college and hit it off instantly. A year later we've always been together and been there for each other through the ups and downs. Our communication often feels like it's fading because of our careers but we always bounce back like there's no distance between us. There's always been some intimate tension between us and we've made out once and came close to an accidentally second when she got too close to my face once lol but the comfort in the scenarios are so high when they happen everything is so fluid.
I was at my best buds wedding a few days ago in Dominican Republic and I got a bit buzzed and typed up a draft in her convo but I didn't send it because I knew she was talking to other guys and I was talking to other girls but we always find ourselves coming back to each other. I was reading my draft and fixing some errors and out of habit of proofreading and I sent it when it was okay purely impulsively.
I'm terrified because she often gets panic attacks when she gets overwhelmed by her emotions especially when it catches her off guard. But tbh I'm a bit relieved to finally get it off my chest. The weight of my feelings for her was getting heavier everyday and I was just holding on to it to preserve our bond and not complicat things also out of respect. But I realize she means that much to me and if I truly did respect her then I should tell her the truth.
Im just afraid of coming off selfish because I don't think I'm good enough for her at all, even though she depends on me sometimes. I just know that I personally have a lot of things to work on for myself ESPECIALLY mentally and emotionally. I'm aware that I'm broken and damage, so I'm working on repairing myself and yet she doesn't care about what stage I am in my life, she still always ready to jump in and stand by my side cause she knows I'll always be there for her as well.
All this to say that's is why I sent the message but I'm just not sure where she's currently at in her life, or whether or not she has room to take that chance with me on going further. Truthfully I don't think I'm ready either but I know I can be for her. She's only ever put my life at ease and call me out of my slack during my self improvement journey and the way we're so in tune with each other almost seems too much of a coincidence to ignore and remain silent.

As we know, Plato recounts the Paethon story through the words of an Egyptian priest which is as follows;

There is a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.

In today's day and age, we tend to look at specific details such as names, dates, and places to provide us with understanding and context in what we are reading. Because of this, often times smaller details that get missed can completely change the context. In this case, I believe what has been overlooked is the double mention of the horses with steeds, and them. So I plugged specific terms into several texts I have saved and found other mentions of horses in context with the sky/heaven.

"And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: (this coincidentally describes what an object looks like as it burns into our atmosphere) and the heads of the horses [were] as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths."
REVELATION 9 : 17-18

​

"Then the Lord called the first seven white ones, and commanded them to bring before him the first of the first stars, which preceded the stars whose form partly resembled that of horses; the first star, which fell down first; and they brought them all before him."
THE BOOK OF ENOCH. CH LXXXIX : VERSE 2

It is my belief that these are references to constellations as seen through their eyes, with a possible direction given by mention of the first seven white ones being a possible correlation to "The Seven Sisters" also known as Pleiades. This general direction in the night sky, I do believe, is also where the Sphinx and Stonehenge happen to point. For what it is worth, but interesting none the less, The Kolbrin Bible makes this mention:

It was the men of Zaidor who built the Great Guardian which ever watches, looking towards the awakening place of God.

Also quite interesting is that The Kolbrin Bible references an object that approached earth called "The Destroyer". When one plugs this term into a search of The Holy Bible, we find the term "The Destroyer" when of all things in discussing "Pass Over"!

When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.
EXODUS 12 : 23

Also to be noted is that the Hindu god Shiva is also known as "The Destroyer"
I wholeheartedly believe that each one, in it's own way, is telling the SAME story. That an astronomical event approached Earth from the direction of Orion, Taurus, and the Pleiades.
Plato (depending on translation), Enoch, and the Holy Bible seem to share another common mention as well, and that is what could easily be construed as an axis deviation. At the tale end of the Paethon story, the Egyptian priest according to Plato states:

"Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies\* moving in the heavens around the earth"
TIMAEUS

*Note - I've been told there are other translations of this text, but in my opinion, even they reference SOMETHING happening with the stars in the sky.
​

"In those days Noah saw that the earth became inclined, and that destruction approached. Then he lifted up his feet, and went to the ends of the earth, to the dwelling of his great grandfather Enoch."
THE BOOK OF ENOCH; CH LXIV

​

"The heaven's receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place."
THE HOLY BIBLE: REVELATION 6 : 14

The Kolbrin Bible (again for what it is worth) makes the same mention by stating:

"Stars rolled to new stations in the sky"

Once again, they all in their own way seem to be telling the same story.
Now, if our assumed timelines for all the players are correct, we would then have to start considering the possibility of a cyclic event. A cyclic event that Plato may have given us insight into with the final line of the above passage:

"..and a great conflagration upon the earth which recurs after long intervals."

Could we possibly be reading an account of severe volcanic activity? Enoch once again chirps in on the subject speaking of:

"A great river of fire flowing west into the sea"

If we then take into accounts mentions of Hell in the Holy Bible, and visualize it as a real place, we again begin to see that these all seem to start lining up yet again.
A joint national science team in conjunction with NASA in THIS article concluded the 2008 axis shift was due to a drastic change in the water table in India. What is important to take away from this is that the earth's axis is susceptible to the addition or subtraction of weight, weight which could be added due to severe volcanic activity. If this were to occur, it would trigger a state of Centripetal imbalance which would last until the earth found a stable rotation due to re/distribution of weight evenly.
Thanks for the read!

Let me start by saying that Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of - maybe my top - favourite game of all time. I don't know if I truly have a single favourite, but RDR2 is up there.
Now, when I finished the game for the first time, I decided to play the first one. And I just couldn't get into it. I found myself uninterested in the story, and was very disappointed with it as a follow up to RDR2. Yes, I know it's the original, but I'm coming from the perspective of someone who played RDR2 first. So that's how I'm going to judge it, as a sequel rather than RDR2 as a prequel.
I just didn't care about anything that was about the new characters. I just wanted John to find Bill, Javier and Dutch and just let that be the only thing he does for the game. But instead we get pointless side mission after pointless side mission. I don't care about helping the con man, or the rancher. I just wanna find the people I'm after. I even got to the point of being so impatient that I'd fast travel and skip most of the cutscenes.
I ended up just watching the cutscenes on YouTube because I just didn't care. I know John dies in the end and I know I'm probably missing out on some funny banter between him and Uncle, but man RDR2 was so good that the first game really is a chore to get through in comparison.

I'm building a webapp using next for frontend and express for backend. I have previously only worked with react on frontend side so not at all experienced with next.
So my backend is working and ready and I chose to go with session cookies for auth. Now I don't really know if I'm using next properly but I started with the experimental app directory and somehow made things to work. But now I'm stuck and everything's a big mess. First of all redirects with new router from next/navigation take more than a second to work. I'm using localstorage to store userinfo like name and such. User token is saved in cookies and sent automatically with each request by axios. For managing user state I'm using react context. Now I want to redirect users or not let them access some routes if they're not logged in. For this I get data from local storage and save it in context. Then I check if userdetails are present else I redirect them with router.push. But it takes a couple seconds to work and so the pages are first loaded and then user is redirected which is not what I want. Please suggest if there's(of course there is) a better way to achieve this functionality. Should I use redux as usercontext is undefined initially when the app loads? Am I doing all of this wrong? Is this still not doable with the app directory and client components? I couldn't find much tutorials either to use next with another backend. I don't want to use the next api routes for now. Can someone more experienced please guide me on where to go? I've been at it since a couple weeks and now my head hurts. 🥺

I was deleting obsolete pictures when I suddenly saw her old one. She was wearing green dress and about to ride home from date with her boyfriend then. She looked good and still remembering how happy she was.
I used to love her chubby self. I loved her belly tummy, thicc thighs and double chin. Now, I am hating her. They are also the features that her ex boyfriend loved.
I am starting to hate her. The 2022 her.
Aside from her chubby features, I also hate the soft-hearted and understanding side of her. She was warm and considerate. I am annoyed how giver she was. Giving surprise gifts and cook and deliver food that never reciprocated. I hate how she was okay by being always available while letting herself feel alone when he’s not.
I am mad that she allowed herself to settle to that kind of love and still willing to fight for it despite breaking her so many times. She was contented with only thank you’s, visits once a week, hatid-sundo, and with “ang swerte ko sayo, baby” banter.
Little did she know, she will be discarded one day despite giving her best. She was dumped in blindsided way.
I looked myself in the mirror and now 10 kilos away from that girl. I will never go back to her. I hate her.
That her is me.

I am in the Southern USA, have two cats, and not sure which one this happened to. I emailed their vet, as she’s closed today but sometimes checks emails on Sundays, and will take them both in tomorrow morning
M is going to be 15 in July; she’s half Siamese and half black alley cat. Spayed, up to date on everything, sees vet once a month for arthritis injections. Last seen by vet March 17th and had urine and blood work done (all normal). Teetering on edge of being too underweight despite being slightly overweight most of life
S turned 12 in February; calico tabby. Spayed, up to date on everything, last saw vet September 2022 and all blood work and urine labs were healthy. Has always been on underweight side of healthy and is now underweight
For over a year, both cats have been losing weight despite offering them wet food several times a day, changing food, leaving dry food out, offering treats, etc.
I’ve been finding vomit at least daily for 2 weeks but can’t catch which cat it is
This morning I found 4 bright red blood droplets near the vomit pile (I took photos and emailed them to vet)
Checked both cats; both have no visible injuries, are active, and appear healthy

The doorbell chimed.
Lucy was excited- it must be the delivery of her new nanny-robot. She was one of the few kids at school who still had to be dropped off and picked up by her mom- several had high end nannies assembled to look like Disney princesses and celebrities, while most had one modeled after Slavic or Filipina women. Lucy had been waiting for one for so long. Now, what with Mom complaining all the time about the school runs cutting into her workday, and the prices falling, Dad had finally agreed to the purchase of their first nanny-robot.
“Lucy!” Mom’s voice floated up. “Come and meet Nevaeh, she’s all assembled!!”
Lucy bounded out of her room and down the stairs, where Mom and Dad were waiting eagerly with the life-size figure. Nevaeh smiled brightly at her. “Hello Lucy. I’m happy to meet you”.
Lucy froze with shock. Then she turned to her parents. “But- but- she’s-”
She couldn’t finish her sentence.
Mom and Dad both spoke at the same time.
Mom said. “Lucy- you know we don’t tolerate that kind of bigotry in this house. She’s a functioning nanny-robot, perfectly capable of doing what is needed around here.”
Dad said “Honey, don’t be difficult now. This colour was cheaper, what can I tell ya? I’m not about to pass up on a deal.” He turned, already bored, and headed towards his “home office”.
Nevaeh repeated ‘Hello Lucy.” and continued “Do you want to play a game? I can also help you with your homework”
Mom clapped her hands with delight. “See Lucy- she can also help with your homework. Isn't it amazing? Weren’t you telling me you needed help with maths?”
Lucy’s heart sank, while the familiar helplessness of childhood and being unable to have a say in any decision affecting her flooded her entire being.
None of her friends had a nanny-robot the same colour as Nevaeh.
The next morning, Lucy walked to school with Nevaeh by her side. A block away, she turned to Nevaeh. “You can go home now. Can you meet me here at 3:20, please?”
Nevaeh shook her head. “I am sorry Lucy. I cannot obey your instruction. I have to walk you to the school gates and ensure you are safely in.”
“I’ll be fine! You don’t need to do that” Lucy felt desperate.
Nevaeh repeated smilingly “I cannot obey your instruction”.
It was too late anyway. Melissa and Kayla were already approaching. Melissa was accompanied by a Cinderella nanny-robot, complete with the flouncy shimmery ball-dress while Kayla’s, who was cool, was modelled after Lana del Rey.
“Lucy!” shrieked Melissa. “You got one of these too? Wow- why did you choose black?”
Kayla flicked her eyes over Nevaeh, who was staring straight ahead, unblinkingly, and said “Is she supposed to be Beyonce’s sister? Why didn’t you get the one like Beyonce? She’s more famous!”
After school, a group of older boys swarmed Lucy and Nevaeh as they tried to walk home, chanting terrible words, while Kayla and Melissa hovered back. Lucy could hear their laughter, unable to see through her tears.
Then she heard the chants turn into shrieks- and electrical fizzing.
She wiped the tears from her eyes.
Several of the boys lay groaning on the ground, beaten and bloody, arms and legs broken and askew.
But worse were the scattered limbs of Nevaeh, ripped apart.
Cinderella and “Lana del Rey” threw down the pieces of Nevaeh they were holding, and walked back to Kayla and Melissa. “Come on girls.” Cinderella looked back at Lucy. “You may walk with us. I have called emergency services for the boys.”
Lucy nodded obediently. The small group walked away.