This is my personal story of how I survived a narcissist “frenemy” and why it is important to know your boundaries and worth.
TW: mentions of self-harm and DV
When I was in my mid-20s, I was working at a Vietnamese restaurant and I met a young woman whom I shall call M. M seem like a very benevolent and sweet girl, she was very charming and most days she was a cheery person and she was also very giving. We bonded over our love for art and nature and I genuinely thought I had found a healthy friendship. How wrong I was, and now I am telling my story years later in hopes that it will inspire people in the situation like this that it’s OK to let people go when they are not healthy for you.
The red flags did not show up right away but eventually, they started to pop up. The first red flag was her behavior in my car. I would drive her around town to different places because she didn’t drive but something that started to bother me was her lack of concern for others’ lives including my own. She would either demand that we would run a red light or take an illegal turn or even cut people off at the last minute just because she hated to wait. I did not take these risks for her so she would throw a tantrum in my car and start insulting me and raising her voice in disapproval. I normally did not respond because at the time I chose to ignore her responses instead of turning it into an argument.
I really tried hard not to argue with this girl throughout the friendship, but I noticed that she would push arguments on me and other people in my circle. M and I were polar opposites in many of our core values and beliefs, and she knew that I did not stand in the same political field as her, but I overlooked this and I still chose to love her despite these differences. I tried to avoid conversations about these things with her, but she would bring them up and I had to try to steer the direction of the conversation every single time away from the topics we did not agree on. I just wasn’t going to go there with her. She started to create drama and problems for the people in my life through social media where she would single them out and pick fights with them over topics of politics and social issues. I didn’t care that she fought with strangers online because I was not involved in her battles but I didn’t want her bothering the people that I knew and cared about. It became a cycle where she would pick fights and harass my friends and family and then apologize to me, but then she would go and do it again later on. my friends were messaging me the stuff that she would send them or that she would be commenting on their pages and she started to look a little bit crazy in my eyes, Especially when she would be attacking the women that I knew if they did not succumb to her arguments.
Eventually, she moved onto attacking me and switching her attitudes with me, more red flags. She would attack me through social media if I posted anything she disagreed with and she would try to engage in comment arguments with me, but I still didn’t want to engage with her much at all because she was not the type of person you could have a conversation with like adults. Her words were often angry and filled with vitriol but in person, when I worked with her or saw her outside work, she acted like nothing ever happened. She would smile and speak kindly to me and offer me food or gifts, like a keychain and art supplies or something. I started to feel like I was dealing with Jekyll and Hyde.
The red flags kept popping up. One day, she asked me to go pick her up and take her to her boyfriend’s apartment because she was afraid that he was going to hurt himself. I asked her what happened, and she said that he was angry that she had been talking to a guy she knew through Snapchat. What gave me the creeps was that she said it so casually as if there was nothing wrong with it. She basically confessed to cheating on him. I felt very uncomfortable knowing this now. When we got to his place, they got into a massive fight and it went from inside the apartment all the way to outside in the parking lot and people were looking out their windows and peeking through curtains to see who is screaming and shouting in the middle of the evening. She denied cheating on him when he asked her, and I honestly just wanted to shrink into the background of the trees and disappear. The police ended up coming and he was arrested while she stood around crying and acting like the victim. Some military guy had opened his doors to his apartment and let us both inside because he was trying to keep us safe, but I no longer felt safe around her as a friend. After I dropped her off at her place, I went home and sat in my car and I thought about all the things that were going wrong with this friendship and why I no longer felt safe. I started to feel like it was just a matter of time before she would turn on me too. Later that week at work, she complained that the guy on Snapchat had deceived her by seeing another girl and she felt like she deserved an “open” relationship with him. I felt numb to her complaints. I wanted to find a way to end the friendship, but I did not know how. I felt sad about possibly stepping out of her life, and I was afraid of the empty space that would be there if I did do that, but I knew that eventually things would come to an end and it was just a matter of time.
I also found out that she was talking about me to a couple of my friends through social media and bad mouthing me behind my back. One of the girls I knew for years let me know what she had been saying and doing, and she warned me that M was not truly a friend. That was the last red flag I needed to see. I spoke to my counselor because I was seeing a counselor at the time for many other things and told her everything that I was dealing with with M and my counselor listened to everything and told me that I was dealing with a covert narcissist. She let me know that no matter how you end things with a narcissist you will always end up with backlash. My counselor told me that narcissists usually resort to aggressive smear campaigns, or they stalk and harass you, or they can become violent and very aggressive once they realize that you have taken yourself away from them. They need to paint you as the evil person so they can convince themselves that they are the martyr.
I found out that I was pregnant early in spring of 2019 and I needed to protect myself and my baby from the toxicity of some of the people that I had in my life. I decided to go full no-contact with M and a number of other people. My counselor had shown me that part of the reason why I was so stressed out all the time was because of some of the types of people that I had in my circle. I already had enough stress with work and balancing life and I did not need certain people to keep adding to it. My counselor also let me know that it’s OK to go no-contact with people when you know that you cannot have a healthy conversation with them, especially if they are prone to lashing out and not understanding what they’re doing to you. She told me that since I was pregnant I did not need to waste energy or risk raising my stress levels. I blocked M on my phone and my social media and some other people and decided to move on. I quit that job too. It was time to set boundaries and sever ties. Sure enough, M lashed out. She went on a smear campaign with some of the people we knew and worked with and she also found my new Facebook page through my husband’s page when she searched for it and she sent me a bunch of hate mail. She started calling me a coward and blaming me for the reasons why she was the way she was and why things ended. It was a bunch of projection, and as I read her message, I realized that she never cared about me as a person for who I was. She only cared about the support that she got from me. I woke up and realized that this whole time I had a frenemy.
I was relieved, but I was also melancholy. I was going to miss the good times that we had - the walks in the parks, our times doing art together, the adventures we had at work, and even some of the conversations we had about everything and nothing. I was going to miss the person I thought she was and there was an empty space that I had to come to terms with where she no longer stood. I didn’t realize that she still kept an eye on me even after I had cut things off with her. In 2022, she showed up with some of her goons one evening in January to slash the tires on one of our cars. It was her way of trying to get even with me. I found 100% proof of this some months later from somebody who knew us who was not exactly on her side. I’m honestly glad she did this because it proved why I was right in cutting her out of my life, but it also helped me to put to rest and end the mourning stage I had for us. I buried the memories that I had of her and smiled because I knew I was free from that kind of person.
To this day, I am thankful for the beautiful new friends that I have made through the incident with M and the car tires. My spouse and I received a lot of money to help us that week and we made connections and friendships and we still have those people today. As awful as M was back then, I am thankful that she served as a lesson of what to not allow into my life and what kind of person not to be. I am thankful that I learned to set healthy boundaries and not be afraid to let people go when they need to go because my mental health and my well-being are more important than anything else.

You never know what you're gonna get.
Hello, it's nice to meet you, whoever is reading this! I'm a 24M from California and I'm looking for something real and serious. Distance doesn't really matter to me - and while I would prefer someone closer as it makes eventually meeting much easier, I'm open to someone from anywhere, as long as there's intent to close the distance!
I'm 6'1, with long dark hair and dark brown eyes. I'm fine with exchanging photos after talking for a little while - not looking to do it right away as I believe that personality matters to me above everything else. A beautiful soul will always stay beautiful, after all! Some hobbies of mine include gaming on PC, cooking, reading, writing/the occasional drawing, and listening to almost every genre of music (ask me for a playlist). I'm pretty introverted and very much a homebody, and I'd prefer someone who is similar and shares some similar interests (you don't need to share all of them, as long as we have at least one in common).
My friends would describe me as very caring, fiercely loyal to a fault, considerate and sensitive, but also witty and dark. Communication is very important to me, and basically necessary as I am on the spectrum and I may miss cues or not pick up on things others might. I am very affectionate and will put 110% into someone I'm invested into - I enjoy making someone feel special! I can also be a bit clingy, and I am very much hopeful that you are too. I enjoy spending lots of quality time with someone, and it's one of my love languages (the other being physical touch, but that's a little harder to do online, haha!). I'm really hopeful that I can find my person on here and fall in love with a wonderful, beautiful soul inside and out.
So, what would my person be, might you ask? Well, I don't ask for a lot honestly. I'm pretty open to dating anyone who's between 20-30, but if you really resonate with my words and you don't fit in that band, please feel free to contact me anyway. Additionally, I ask that you share at least one of my hobbies/interests (gaming and music sending you to the top of the list). I don't mind if you drink/420, but please no smoking. Aside from that, the two things that are truly important for me are as follows - is that we communicate. If something doesn't sit right with you, or if things don't work out for whatever reason, let's both be adults about it and talk - and secondly, please be patient and compassionate with me, as sometimes I can struggle to process my emotions into words effectively (and may just go nonverbal at other times). In exchange, I am very understanding and sweet/caring and have been told I am great at comforting.
I know I have kept this post rather short, but I would rather organically learn about each other than reading some word vomit - experiencing the real deal is always so much better! Please include the word "grapefruit" somewhere in your message, and I will not be responding to anything low-effort. Please put some thought into your message (but it doesn't need to be super long either) - if you have anything else you want to know about me, just ask! I'm a pretty open book. Chats are preferred but PM's are completely fine too.
Anyway, thank you for reading this! I hope you have an amazing day and I'm looking forward to talking to some of you wonderful people!

So I've been a Larrie for about 1,5 years and throughout I've shown my bf evidence I find and I talk his head off about L and H together as well as individual human beings/musicians and he's been wonderful about it, letting me rant about everything Larry (he does believe they were together at one point).
Well, he just told me how I'm influencing him in daily things. Today he helped a friend move and our friends roommate told him they wanted to paint a wall green, next to a blue wall. The first thing my bf thought was "they are gonna be blue/greening".
I honestly love this so much. Do you have a partner that supports you being a Larrie? I really hope everyone does.

We had our second baby this last year. My birth with my first almost killed me and my first born so I was terrified when we had a surprise pregnancy. I was so scared I would die leaving my child or children without their mom. We decided while I was pregnant that my partner would get a vasectomy after our second child's birth so I wouldn't have to live in fear anymore.
Well our second baby's birth was easy, uncomplicated and filled with joy. I decided I really wanted more kids after that. My partner said more than once that he would like more kids, but that we really can't afford to have more. And we should focus on giving the children we have a better life. I told him that I would be really sad if we didn't have any more kids, but that I would also agree, and support his choice for his body. We talked the pros that it's easily reversible, I wouldn't have to go on birth control and that it would make sex more fun for us. He got the procedure when I was two months PP, so it was a lot that happened really fast.
His procedure wasn't great, and his healing was pretty rough. I had to watch our kids while he got it done, so I wasn't able to go with him when it happened. But afterwards he said they told him that there's a 50% chance it's reversible after a much more expensive and invasive surgery. I was gutted because that was so different than what we had read online, and what I was told. It was hard to look at him for a while after that. If I had known everything before the operation I would have asked him to reconsider. It really pushed me deeper into PPD.
Since the procedure we've only had sex a handful of times and it seems like it's harder for him to cum when we do. It's almost like there was no point to him getting it, we have sex so little. He says (this is about four months post operation now) that he still feels pain so maybe that's why his sex drive is so much lower than it was. We used to have a great sex life and I really miss that. He's told me a few times when we've talked about it that he regrets getting the snip, and wishes that he had had sperm frozen at least. I'm supportive of him when we've talked about it, but deep down I'm heartbroken. When my friends have gotten pregnant or had babies since it's hard not to burst into tears, and feel jealous. Even though I'm also happy for them. I try to dress cute for my husband, keep the house clean and be sweet/flirty to him. But nothing seems to excite him anymore. I really wish I had understood everything more clearly beforehand. AITAH for feeling so much regret about his vasectomy?

Hello fellow budget audiophiles,
A few weeks ago, I picked up a set of Paradigm Monitor 5 V1, along with a centre and two satellites, all Paradigm, for $300. Also included was a receiver I'll never use, and a pretty sweet carousel CD player.
They sounded great, but kind of veiled. I replaced the electrolitic capacitors in the crossovers with film caps, and they sound much better now, with more detailed highs and richer mids.
So far, they're the best tower speakers I think I've ever heard (I've thankfully never been to a hifi shop), but I've become addicted to browsing Marketplace for amazing speaker deals.
Recently a pair of PSB Image 5Ts showed up on Marketplace for $200. I've seen reviews for these things, they consistently score higher than the Paradigm Monitor 5s, with reviewers saying they're less bright, with a more relaxed midrange, and better quality bass.
I'm fairly happy with my setup, but I crave variety, and with all the great things I've heard about the 5Ts, I'm really tempted to go pick them up and decide which to keep later.
I know if I got the 5Ts, they wouldn't "match" my all-Paradigm setup, but I've heard that brand matching isn't all that important, and furthermore, PSB and Paradigm supposedly use(d?) the same tweeter technology, so they'd at least be partially matched.
Are the 5Ts meaningfully better than the Monitor 5s? There's also a set of Paradigm Monitor 9 v3 about an hour and a half away from me, for $400.
Should I just stop browsing Marketplace and try to be happy with what I've got? Is this yet another case of GAS that should be handled with mindfulness and meditation?
Thanks.
Edit: I realized after reading my post that I'm probably in the realm of diminishing returns. I'd probably have to spend about three times what I paid for my current setup in order to get perceptably better sound quality. Still, those 5Ts just look so cool.

Hey peeps! I'm a bi guy and new here. I've been dating this guy for some time now and really like him and am ready to take things to the next step of commitment, which we plan on talking about in the coming month. It absolutely crazy how well we get along and how easy it is to talk to him and we are always very open with each other. We like a lot of the same things but there are also differences to keep things interesting and of course we both are foodies. Plus we also spent so much time together that would be equivalent to several months for some people but we still are going strong and love having each other around.
So I'm very happy with how things been going and now have been considering what comes with the next step of commitment and what that means in my life. He has already shared with a lot of his friends and family that he is dating on his story posts on socials. I want to eventually do the same because we have so many great times and memories that I'd like to share too but the thing is most people don't know I'm bi outside of my parents, cousin and close friends. The rest of my family, friends and work have no clue I'm bi and sharing photos or what not with my future bf would reveal that.
So I was wondering what kind of experiences other people have had with this situation and whether any of you have guidance for me. Like I know at some point it's going to come out especially as our relationship grows but what can I do to make it easier? Do I just start telling people I'm bi, do I not bother like idk at all and seeing that the guy I'm seeing is fully out, I don't want to make him feel he's back tracking with me because I really do like him and see a happy future with him 😊

FYI this is a repost, edited for clarity (no answers on previous post) I have a romantic fiction newsletter with ~2000 subscribers. im thinking about opening it up as a blog monetised by affiliate links. Language is sexually explicit though, deeming it adult content, closing off many opportunities. I thought a way around this might be to include most of the story and affiliate links available to all comers (including search engines) and then put the adult stuff behind a wall. Would I need something like just cloak it or traffic armour to do this? Is there another technique for this? Or is this just a bad idea in general? would love suggestions

I've been playing Animal Well blind and I feel I've now hit a wall. I found all the eggs and I'm trying to get all the rabbits; I have 9 out of (I assume) 20. I have a couple ideas on how to solve the rabbit ears (12 and 8 both being multiples of 4 is kind of interesting) but I obviously can't try anything until I find all of them.

The remaining mysteries

1. The Snail Room. This has seemingly no entrance and so my best bet is that you teleport inside of it somehow. The only clues seem to be a snail and a tree sprout/fern.
2. The Dolphin Dance. There seems to be no pattern to it whatsoever and perhaps it's just meant to fuck with you since that kind of fits with the character of dolphins being playful.
3. Grass Dog Room. There is a chest below the floor which is visible with the beacon but there seems to be no way to get to it. Possibly related to (4).
4. Three Dog Room. In the upper left there's an impassable wall which holds a teleporter (judging by the symbol) so there's likely some kind of code to get inside but I don't know what it could be.
5. The Bobcat Song and the Wheel of Inscrutable Glyphs. This one was a shocking discovery. I'm fairly certain I haven't seen any of the symbols anywhere else in the game and so their meaning remains a mystery. They could be directions since the half-squares look like diagonal arrows.
6. The Frog Tunnel. There is the frog graffiti down in the sewers but I don't know how that helps. I tried to interpret the statues as numbers based on their heights but I came up with nothing. It's interesting how the graffiti-frog's belly has the same symbol as the jellyfish (I know it's the Bigmode logo but I'm not sure that helps me).
7. >! The Numbered-Statues–Tunnel. Could just be the rabbit that I found here but its vicinity to the Frog Tunnel makes me think there could be more to it.!<
8. The Manticore Eyes. When the manticore is scared off by fireworks at the end its eyes show what seems to be a flute-code. My first thought was that it would let me teleport to outside the well but inputting the code does nothing (unless I got it wrong.)
9. The Pixel-Art Mural. Might just be a fun thing for the community to draw art on but could also be a puzzle of some kind, not sure. I tried drawing "kilroy was here" since that made the most sense to me but nothing happened.
10. Nibble, Crumb, Crumb??? I tried looking through the local files of the game but found nothing.
11. Clocks. Presumably just collectibles? I am 95% sure a sub 30 minute run is impossible and so I assume there are cheat codes I'm missing. It seems it should be possible to get the spinning top before getting 32 eggs since it unlocks some pointless shortcuts which would only be useful at the start of the game.
12. Telephone by the Deathless Chest. Why does it count your number of saves???
13. Various Graffiti. Cats? Dogs? Lynx hunting rabbit? Potion-brewing–bunny? Manticore hatchling surrounded by rats? Are they hints? Are they obtuse lore? I've no idea what to make of most of them.
14. The Name of the Flame. GVBP... Why? Seems possibly related to BDTP...
15. RGB lanterns. There are a lot of places with colored lanterns, red and blue being the most prominent but occasionally there is a green one (maybe only in the Breakout room?). I'm not sure how significant it is.

I think that's most of the major mysteries I still haven't solved. I don't think it adds up to 20 rabbits so there's definitely things I haven't discovered yet. The point of this post was mostly to consolidate my thoughts and perhaps to vent my frustration a bit since I really can't seem to make any more progress... Anyways, cool game!

With the inclusion of the POI draft in ALGS starting this split I have been interested in attempting to quantify the value of each POI throughout the split.
There have been 16 match days across all three regions and we are BEGINNING to have enough data to attempt to quantify a POI's value beyond simple points/per game.

RANKING THE POIs

POI	Times Picked	Avg Pick	POI Avg Z-Score
Jurassic	16	26.36	0.2623
Barometer South	13	24	0.2323
The Epicenter	12	34.5	0.2194
Coastal Camp	14	38.17	0.1968
Climatizer East	10	15.75	0.1848
Ceto Station	16	9.36	0.1771
Launch Site	16	18	0.1529
Cenote Cave	16	17.86	0.1278
Harvester	16	7.43	0.1142
Stacks	16	11.21	0.1076
Siphon West	5	25.6	0.0977
Lightning Rod	16	9.5	0.0906
Barometer North	2	34	0.0852
Downed Beast	16	19	0.0833
Skyhook East	16	26.36	0.0752
Trident	14	35.25	0.0661
Fragment	5	26.75	0.062
The Mill	16	8.64	0.0608
Command Center	16	17.93	0.0383
Big Maude	8	29.57	0.0353
The Tree	16	29.14	0.0345
Countdown	16	16.36	0.0302
Lift	4	36.5	0.0251
Storm Catcher	16	25.29	0.0094
Devastated Coast	16	36.57	-0.0096
Checkpoint North	16	27.43	-0.0162
Survey Camp	16	16.21	-0.0165
Overlook	16	12.93	-0.017
Monument	16	8.71	-0.0315
Siphon East	13	18.91	-0.0317
Mirage a Trois	13	31.18	-0.046
Skyhook West	16	2.21	-0.0518
The Dome	6	36	-0.0599
Geyser	16	31.36	-0.0686
Echo HQ	16	16.86	-0.0718
Lava Fissure	16	17.36	-0.0759
North Pad	15	25.85	-0.0762
Staging	16	20.36	-0.078
Thermal Station	16	7.36	-0.1435
Launch Pad	16	25.79	-0.1668
Zeus Station	16	18	-0.1685
The Pylon	16	12.93	-0.1692
Cascade Falls	16	22.79	-0.1888
The Wall	16	26.93	-0.1894
Landslide	16	23.07	-0.2142
Climatizer West	7	9.71	-0.2942
Checkpoint South	1	23	-0.4206
Cliff Side	1	40	-0.5753

So, what does a Avg Z-Score of .2623 mean? It means that teams landing at Jurassic throughout Split 2 have on average scored 1/4th of a standard deviation more points per game in those three games compared to their total split average.

METHODOLOGY

I want to be very specific about what I did to calculate these values so that 1. anyone can replicate them if they so choose and 2. because there are a few ways you could come to very similar data and if anyone think another methodology might be better, I can use that in the future.
Before we can really calculate a POI's strength we must attempt to control/remove as much variance attributable to the teams landing at the POI as possible. In order to achieve this, I first calculated every teams average score per game across all match days and the standard deviation of those same scores. Then I calculated the average points per game on a POI and created a z-score for that team's performance on that day (Note this is not the average z-score of the three matches, but the z-score of the average score of those three matches). Then we can estimate a POI's strength by averaging the z-scores of each team to play from that POI.
To get more specific and explain how a score is calculated, lets use Coastal Camp which was a POI that sparked a lot of discussion after week 1.

Team	Team Points Avg	Team Points Std	Coastal Pick	Coastal Points/g	Coastal Z-score
Cloud9	4.67	3.37	37	2.67	-0.59
cybercats	3.67	3.54	37	4	0.09
EVOS PREDATOR	4.78	6.03	40	10.67	0.98
Gaimin Gladiators	8.17	6.24	38	3	-0.83
HAO	8.83	6.69	40	10	0.17
Keep Going Gaming	5.72	5.45	37	11.33	1.03
MXF	2.61	3.92	38	3.67	0.27
NewJ	8.25	5.69	40	13	0.84
NOEZ FOXX	11.11	9.3	37	10.67	-0.05
NOEZ FOXX	11.11	9.3	--	4	-0.76
Outplayed	7.25	5.63	37	6.67	-0.1
Team Falcons	11.75	6.92	39	15.33	0.52
Team STYLE	4.94	4.9	--	6.33	0.28
The Edgers	3	1.83	38	4.67	0.91

Here you have each team's points per game for the entirety of the split so far, the standard deviation for those points, where they picked Coastal Camp in the draft, their point per game across three games played at the POI and the team's Z-score from coastal. As you can see, ([Coastal Points/g] - [Team Points Avg]) / [Team Points Std] is the Coastal Z-score for the team and the average of the Coastal Z-score column is Coastal Camp's score in the first table (with some rounding error).

CAN TEAMS DRAFT?

*Note - APACN Draft Data isn't in Liquipedia, so while I know a team played from a POI this week (e.g. NOEZ FOXX played from coastal a second time this past week) I do not know the order the POIs were drafted in.
Last week I showed the relationship between POI draft position and raw points per game. We can replicate the same chart and see that there is still no meaningful trend in the raw data (here). However it is possible that we would see a relationship if we used the POI Z-score average for a draft position instead of the raw score.
Unfortunately, even controlling for team strength these is virtually no relationship at the moment between POI draft position and a team's ability to score more points than their average

CAVEATS

We are only 3 match days into the split for NA and EMEA, and while both APAC regions are slightly over half way through the split, we still have a long way to go. As more match days are played the data will be more and more likely to representative of the truth, but I thought it would be interesting to take an early look. Not did I post this to share the data in general, but also because I want to be open to feedback about how I am controlling for team strength and estimating a POIs value. If you have thoughts or criticisms, I would love to hear them.
If you want to download a .csv of the data, click here.

Hi all.
I plan on vacationing with family and want to set up two SSIDs. One for my family to use just on the regular WAN and one for myself to use the VPN for work purposes. The VPN is a raspberry PI installed using pivpn if at all relevant.
This has been posted before - https://old.reddit.com/openwrt/comments/yyhm7i/one_router_one_wireguard_vpn_two_ssids/ and I've tried to configure using this thread but am running into a wall.
I've used a combination of that thread and this - https://www.reddit.com/openwrt/s/jFWajrbkBz and also added a policy based routing plug-in and at some point I do think it actually was working, but then after a reboot, it is once again broken. It's possible I didn't save the config and something changed.
Here is what I have succeeded in doing:
1) Creating two SSIDs with DHCP to different subnets that are both in LAN Zone, Lan - 192.168.8.0/24, VPNLAN - 192.168.11.0/24
2) Created Wireguard interface "vpnwan" and added it to it's own "VPN" zone. Configured firewall rules and the VPN works when I select the "route allowed IPs" under peers option and set to 0.0.0.0/0
Where I have failed:
1) I can really only get traffic from both Lan and vpnlan to go over the VPN or get vpnlan to go over the VPN and Lan to have no internet.
2) The config that I thought worked for a little bit was to allow all IPs over the VPN and then add a policy route for 192.168.8.0 to use WAN interface.
3) While I generally understand routing, I think my limited knowledge of OpenWRT is the problem; I've tried static routes but I'm pretty sure that I'm going them wrong and I also may be doing the policy routes incorrectly as well.
At the end of the day, just routing all traffic over the VPN isn't the end of the world since I'm sure the bottleneck will be hotel WiFi anyhow. I just liked the idea of doing it this way and I get kind of set on my ideas which I'm guessing a lot of you can relate to.
Furthermore, I want to eventually add an OpenVPN tunnel for backup which is probably just asking for trouble.
Any help is much appreciated.

I grew up pretty solidly middle class with parents who made some big sacrifices to send me to an expensive, private school. While there I managed to my friends had parents who made a ton (outside of their generational wealth): surgeons, a dentist and radiologist, a real estate mogul. I’m talking people who had multiple, million dollars houses across the country, two yachts, a private jet, etc.
I obviously didn’t have even close to the amount of things my peers had and never had any of the current “trends.” On top of that, in order to save money my parents bought a moderate-sized, old, fixer upper which I grew up in and remodeled it throughout my childhood. That meant walls were consistently demolished, wet paint, lights didn’t work and the entire outside of the house had peeling paint up until I entered college. It was embarrassing to bring friends over because they were clearly shocked by the state of the house and some people even made fun of me for it.
Due to this, I feel like I ended up with a pretty deep inferiority complex compared to my peers. I ended up getting into some pretty great colleges but wasn’t able to afford them and ended up going to a normal college and now make a good, middle class salary. I have a great boyfriend (M30) and we live in an older small, 70s starter home that we like and is very affordable.
The only issue is I can’t get rid of this inferiority complex I have when it comes to people who are wealthier than I am. I also seem to naturally attract them and am pretty much surrounded by them. All of my close friends and their spouses make 250k+, two just built new homes on land gifted to them by their families, one literally is on the payroll for their dad’s company just being their kid on top of what they make at their own job.
My boyfriend’s family is also wealthy, although not AS wealthy as those we’re surrounded by, but “have a vacation condo” wealthy. His friends are also more wealthy than him. His family is very social which means there’s a list of these fancy events filled with wealthy people we’re supposed to go to. His two ex-gfs also come from families of multi-millionaires, which is a dumb thing to feel insecure about but I still do. He says he is also very uncomfortable in these situations and a reason why he loves me so much is because I’m like him and he doesn’t feel a pressure to “perform” or “prove himself around me.”
I feel very content with my life outside of these people and events. I live comfortably and have the money and time to do things I like to do. It’s just when attending these events or while hanging out with these friends and immediately after I start feeling bad about myself and get dissatisfied with my life. The problem is nearly all of our friends and his family come from this wealthy, generational wealth lifestyle. My bf and I have talked about how they almost look at you like there’s something wrong with us for not “striving to do more/make more/get more.”
How can I stop letting this affect me so much?
TD:LR: I (F29) am surrounded my friends, family and peers who are significantly wealthier than I am. How do I stop feeling inferior to them because I make and have much less?

Like, a lot to say! For context, Ateez and Stray Kids are the only two Kpop bands I can say I’m a fan of and not a casual listener, maybe with one or two songs on a playlist. But my friends sucked me in using those two bands 2 weeks ago and quite a journey it has been! I don’t expect anyone to read this beast of a post but I have annoyed my friends enough and I gotta get it out (also they’re not as deep into Ateez, they’re ult is BTS) so they don’t have much to say past the music videos and performances. This should honestly probably be multiple posts but I don’t want to spam the sub lmao 🙃
Music has always been a huge part of my life. I got into rock, rap, pop punk and metal in middle school. I’m also a sucker for a good show/performance (I’ve been involved with professional wrestling since a young age too, and have done theater, so I love entertainment/the stage).However, it’s rare I get into an artist/entertainer because I genuinely like their entire discography/filmography/etc, am willing to pay for it, and want to keep up with them. With music, most musicians I’m a casual listener who may have a few songs or an album in my collection. The last time I had a new favorite band was 2012/2013 (it’s Bastille). But these guys, on a musical level, and performance level, are actually pretty insane. I see a lot of conversations about their looks and personalities (which to be fair, I will get into that lol), but not much about their musical talent and ability (to be fair though I’ve only been here 2 weeks and algorithms show me what it wants lol).
The order I’ve gone with things is I watched all the music videos and listened to their albums first, then I read their Kpop profiles, now I’m getting into the performances and videos of them eating, drinking, playing games, and stuff. I legit didn’t see the Coachella performance until two days ago and that alone, boyyyy I have OPINIONS (none bad obvs!). And I am not even close to have seeing all their content lol When it comes to a bias, it went back and forth a couple times, there’s some ties, and I’ve even gotten confused about my own self more than once hahaha 🤣
The music. Well shit, every song is written to be catchy, and they are. Even if the style of the song isn’t a personal preference, the song is still catchy. It’s still a bop. And I think it comes down to the fact that each member has a genuine and natural talent, and they have embraced those talents and strengths as they’ve grown. Seeing/hearing the evolution of it was pretty incredible. In any type of music group of the boy/girl band style, no matter the country they’re from, each member has a role and you don’t often see them get to come out of it. In Ateez, you can tell that they wrote and produced their music to show the strengths of each voice in the band. So you get talent who put their passion into their voices and performances, all the time, and are happy doing it. They’re a breath of fresh air, especially in the context of Kpop (although with bands like them, BTS and Stray Kids I do see positive things happening and it’s really awesome).
By member, they all make it impossible to fade into the background. They all stand out in their own ways, and make an impression. If it’s not the first video, it will be the next one lol I’ll do a breakdown of my opinions on each member at the end.
Performance wise, they take it a step farther. They’re cooking and serving every time they’re on stage. It makes them an absolute joy to watch. They’re not only talented musically, but they can dance their asses off and their stage presence is captivating. You want to watch them, and when they’re done you don’t want them to stop. From their voices to their fashion to their personas, no matter which member you watch on stage, you’re getting a passionate performance. And at Coachella, they didn’t raise the bar, they broke it.
Listen, the work they put into their performances at Coachella was well worth the effort and they didn’t even HAVE TO GO THAT HARD. Those men pushed themselves, and I respect it, but goddamn boys, goddamn. It was essentially non stop, on a stage under the hottest lights, and while it is totally acceptable for musicians who do that much physical choreography to let the backing track do some of the work with the vocals sometimes and they didn’t do it at all! I’ve had to dance and sing at the same time on a hot stage before and it’s not easy and did I mention it’s freaking hot?? Hahaha And some of them did it with hand mics without one of them flying away and beaming someone in the head. AND Jongho hit his notes. And they went that hard for almost a full hour, through being out of breath and everything. That was wild. The energy. Incredible. What a freaking Coachella performance, I’ve never been upset I wasn’t there until I saw that video.
One side note about Coachella. I watched the second week first because it was the entire performance in one video. But I watched Bouncy from the first week. Guys. The pants. I’m starting to think they’re stylists tailor their clothes that tight down there on purpose. Maybe not I don’t freaking know. But those tight black pants were….TOIGHT. One of the musicals I did, my director put the guys in tight black pants, and during the choreo she had to stop them because the bright lights well, you know. So I told the director about compression shorts (wrestlers wear them under their fancy gear), and those worked wonders. Unfortunately I dropped out of the next musical and they put everyone in tight revealing basketball shorts pulled up to their belly buttons and I was in the audience horrified 😬 But really, nobody noticed before they went onstage?? LMFAAAOOO okay I’m done, anyways.
Now, the videos of them eating food and/or getting drunk, are some of the friggin funniest things I have ever seen. Seong Hwa sucking the life out of a Yoo-hoo, Mingi’s soul leaving his body when he ate the banana candy not knowing the texture (same bro same), their sour reaction faces from the same video, the fact San, Wooyoung and Yeosang are always shoving something in their mouth, Jongho chugging alcohol like a professional, Seong Hwa’s absolutely accurate reaction to Vegemite. The episode of Wanteez where they get endoscopies and get wrecked by the anesthesia was how I found that series of videos because I saw a clip of Mingi waking up immediately and not listening and lost my mind laughing because that happened to my dad! And I love videos of people being silly after surgery. But the entire three episodes are hysterical. Wooyoung omgggg. And I can’t not mention the one with the drinking games and the fake driving! This is when I realized they act like my friends and had to watch more. And now I realize they are mostly similar to my theater club friends, while also acting like my long time group of guy friends (my husband pointed this out too, and they’re his friends also so he’s part of that group lol). So they’re just a like the average friend group of low key goofy ass boys. And it’s endearing and charming. They also have the worst poker faces ever, all of them, so when they call each other out for acting/pretending it’s funny because they’re aware they don’t have poker faces but they still try 🤣🤣 They make me miss my friends from college too, because we did a lot of the games and trust exercises/ice breaker type things I’ve seen in some videos I’ve watched and i just genuinely enjoy watching them and how they vibe with each other (or sometimes don’t haha). I also absolutely LOVE seeing platonic affection and appreciate that they are that way with each other. I wasn’t raised to see affection itself as sexual, but something that can be between friends and family too. But it’s really common in the US for people to equate affection of any type with romantic or sexual interest, but being able to be close to your friends in a non sexual/romantic manner is real and it’s actually amazing. Hug your friends, kiss them on the forehead and tell them you love and appreciate them!! ♥️
I’m familiar with the Kpop machine and how it works, but I think the mix of talent that is now the team Ateez, is outstanding in ways that both matter and don’t matter. It sends my mind traveling amongst the stars thinking about where they could go with their skills, the potential these men in their 20s have. It’s RIDICULOUS. Stray Kids is also notable! I have not had the time to watch as much of their content, but probably at least half their songs are already on a playlist and a few of them are also on a different level for differing reasons. But this isn’t about them, just had to mention it because I’m also a Stay lol
After absorbing as much as I have, I do actually love all of the members. They all have things about them that make them lovable humans, on top of being talented musicians and entertainers. But I’d be a liar if I said I had no biases, and I’m a bad bad liar. So without further ado, my comprehensive thoughts on each member 😂
Jongho - I want to mention him first because, dude, this man’s voice is next level. I need people to understand how insane the pipes in that human body are. If he was in the US, maybe even the UK, he’d be another Adele, John Legend, Usher, Streisand, whoever you can think of who made a damn impression with their voice. He’d be on broadway. I hope his success in this industry continues to climb because his singing is insane. He is also very effortlessly funny. Jongho exists as himself and is charming. His random singing, the way he gets what he wants, his mannerisms. He’s the guy I’d want with a best friend because my friends deserve great partners, and even better if they’re someone I’d have fun drinking with hahaha
San- He has one of those angelic R&B crooner voices to me, a great dancer, somehow pulls off every hair style and color, and is both classically handsome and effortlessly sexy. I wasn’t expecting him to be so funny as well, and a low key softy. And that man cannot handle his alcohol and it has me laughing and also like “someone get him to bed!” He’s also the member I expected to be the most popular but from what I’ve seen, I believe I am incorrect? I dunno honestly lol He always be eating something though, our man loves food for reals.
Wooyoung- similar to San. He has the angelic voice, is a great dancer, and looks like the popular cute one in any boy band. Where Wooyoung really starts to shine, is when he lets his personality out in his performances, he knows how to work a crowd or camera. He is also the biggest pain in the ass. The definition of a sour patch kid, first he’s sour and then he’s sweet. The way he treats Mingi and Seong Hwa is how my partner and friends are to me, always giving me shit for things they shouldn’t be giving me shit for!! Lmfao
Yunho- let’s be real here, he’s got one of the best voices and is more versatile than we are led to believe (keep your eyes on this man), he’s a dancing ace, and he’s gorgeous. He’s “lead singelead guitarist” type and I’m waiting for his push. He was put in the front and center a lot at Coachella and it was a perfect choice. As a person, the dude reminds me of one of my best male friends. He’s respectful and nice to everyone, but will give some subtle jabs and occasionally a hard hitter, but he’s naturally humble. Also a hugger. Yunho is a top notch man.
Yeosang- hands down has one of my favorite singing voices in all of Kpop. And like Wooyoung he’s the cute charmer I expect to see in a boy band. He seems more reserved than the others, has an air of maturity of some sort, but can still be funny. And the food, my lord, he’s another one. He’s charming and I can’t help but be drawn to him more after seeing his off stage personality.
Seong Hwa - he is the most versatile in the group and I’ll die on this hill. His singing voice is what got him the role, but he can also stand out when he raps. His dancing skill is top notch. And when he is on stage he becomes his character and he serves the fans a full ass meal on a silver platter. He also has the most beautiful face I have ever seen on a man. Even his “ugly” reaction faces are gorgeous. It’s unreal. So imagine my surprise when it turns out this walking fireball is actually the most composed and fluffy personalities of the group. He is a marshmallow in dark chocolate clothing, and I’m eating every bite. And every time the guys give him shit I sympathize because I am also that friend in the group. I’m told it’s because I make it easy. But like Seong Hwa I’m only letting it be easy, while a tiny bit of steam starts building up inside and the only tell is the eyes and teeth clenching hahaha
Hongjoong - HJ stood out to me almost immediately. He goes so hard, with everything. He is unique in his game and a Diamond in the rough. This dude is a killer and I can’t wait to see how far he goes with his production and writing skills on top of his performance and fashion. We have the same personality type, and share a lot of behaviors and mannerisms, as well as opinions. Because of that, I have a vanity bias for him lol He is one of my best friends bias, and her personality type matches Seong Hwa, so I like their friendship even more because I think it’s a cute parallel to me and my friend (the same friend who got me into the band lol).
Mingi- I saved him for last because I have too much to say. First, he was the first person to stand out to me when my friends were showing me parts of Kpop music videos. I asked THREE times “who’s that?” With it being him every time. The hair and makeup changes had me confused for the first few videos lol His voice, his style, his energy (paired with Hongjoong and Seong Hwa) is all I needed to really delve into Ateez. I still think the power behind his voice when he performs is addictive, and it sets me off! I get hype. So I for sure was not expecting him to be a high key dork. Guys….it touches my heart when I see people loving on Mingi for who he is, but it is also so so confusing because no one loves on me for the SAME EXACT THINGS. Nope, just like Mingi in the group, I’m always getting shit for “not making sense”/“no pronouncing things right”/the joke not being “funny”. Listen y’all, please. What he does, it makes sense lmfao however, I think you have to understand what’s happening for it to make sense. Mingi just does and says what comes to him AS IT COMES. He is not rehearsing, or pre thinking about it, so it comes out like he pictured it in his head and it doesn’t transfer. If I had money for every time I’ve been in the same situation, blankly staring at my friends because they’re roasting me or ignoring me, I’d be loaded hahaha off the top of my head a couple examples, one time my friend called me laughing so hard she was crying while her partner was complaining in the background because they had just been taking a shower and out of nowhere she started laughing hysterically over the way I say a certain word, another was when I was in the car with three other people and I saw a billboard for a radio station and made a joke and no one laughed or spoke just totally ignored my ass and I’m STILL tight over it and it WAS a good joke. And him writing random notes on his phone all the time is 100% something writers do all the time, my notes are ridiculous and they extend outside the phone and litter my entire house. Mingi is a creative anxiety/adhd brain goofball in the body of a beautiful and talented man, and it makes me realize how much more charming people would find me if I was in the body of a beautiful talented person lmfaooo 🤣🤣🤣 All jokes aside though, I find a kindred spirit in Song Min Gi. Minnipples. It’s an experience being the one in a group with the soul of a 13 year old boy (and according to one friend that 13 year old turns into an overly sweet and creepy old man when I drink- I’m a woman btw), I would probably have a blast hanging out with this guy for a day. I don’t even consider him my bias but my friend who got me where I am now with Kpop, is ignoring that entirely 🙃
I cannot pick a single favorite song from Ateez, I genuinely like their music from debut to now. I do not know everything about them or their lore or the members, I don’t think I’ll ever see and read everything because Kpop puts out soooo much content and I just got into them. But they have my damn attention now.
They have the potential to keep breaking through like BTS internationally, and being absolutely huge. I mean, they already ARE. But they’re going to get bigger. We are going to see our boys as the faces of the biggest brands we are familiar with, doing songs with our favorite artists in other countries. It’s going to be beautiful and incredible and I am so happy to have gotten here when I did.
I was called just in time. 🥰
If you made it this far, I’m sending love and hugs out to all of you ATINY. Thank you for being so welcoming!!🫶🏼
Also disclaimer- this was for fun. I’m a writer so I’m super into people and their quirks and flaws and personalities in general, and a huge music/entertainment person, so I have a lot of appreciation. While the parasocial delulu thing is fun, that’s all it is to me- a fun game lol

Dear sweet redditors, I plan to go to Bukarest for the summer to write and spend some good times, but I am a student and do not have an excessive budget. So i was a bit hoping, that any of you would know a good email-list or fb-page, where people post that they are subletting their flats, when they themselves are travelling. Do you know of a place where these short term/summer rentals are posted, that is more informal than fx airbnb? Or where i could post my request? Could be feminist/punk friendly pages aswell, but not necissarily :)
I would be so grateful for any leads.

So, I stumbled on the article below through girliesandghouls on Ig (the source is a Linkedin post, citing the CNN article) and I just wanna say... oh, the taste of sweet revenge. I hope MGA is eating their hat right now, because we officially have confirmation that the data does NOT, in fact, support their idiotic marketing decisions. Per the article:
"Consumers 18 years of age and up spent $1.5 billion in toy-related purchases in the period from January through April, overtaking the three-to five-year-old demographic as the most important age group for the toy industry, according to a new report from market research firm Circana."
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/07/business/adults-preschoolers-toy-buying/index.html
Link to the Linkedin post for those who want to read it: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeremy-padawer-68a0a12_adults-are-now-the-most-powerful-demographic-activity-7204961454733619200-m4NG?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
What are your thoughts on this? Are there any chances MGA might backtrack now, or perhaps more realistically, in a couple months ?
Either way, all of us here mourning the loss of our beloved quality, articulated dolls can at least take comfort in knowing we were absolutely right, and if their consumers' behavior follows these trends, MGA will likely be facing *some* financial loss.

I like a lot of things in fragrances, except hay, coconut, and most things sweet. Also I tend to speak pretentiously, sorry about that.
Acqua di Parma Colonia - primarily fresh, lemon-y, and a bit soapy. Leans more masculine to me but that may just be because I am a man and I like it. I really enjoy this, it's very fresh and clean and classy.
Penhaligons Racquets - Lemon, leather, and wood. Opens with a delightful fizzy lemon, which is very fleeting unfortunately. Then dries down to wood and leather, like the eponymous racquets and their leather cases which sit in a Victorian country club with panelled wood walls. I really love this, it feels very unique. One of my favourites I own.
Halfeti - This is one of the first fragrances I ever bought so I'm biased. It's mostly warm spicy & woody to me. Leans quite dark and autumnal.
Burberry London for men - Also a favourite. It's very Christmas-y so not very versatile. It's very warm & cosy. I get tobacco, cinnamon, and a very subtle well-executed sweetness. Hence the Christmas comment.
Sauvage (edt) + Sauvage Elixir - Very potent. Really strong sillage and longevity. Elixir is more warm spicy than Sauvage. The edt is very peppery, in concept not very unique but it is well executed. As for Elixir, I don.t wear it that often because of its strength. However, it is an excellent fragrance. It's one of those that is popular because it is really good. I do prefer the edt overall.
Polo Blue - Really fresh, clean, and aquatic. Opens very fruity. I really like cucumber and basil so I like it a lot.
Coco Mademoiselle - Classy. The citrus in the opening is very delicate. It's feminine in a pleasant, demure way. I don't really wear it because I don't really wear feminine fragrances. I spray it around my room often.
Acqua di Parma Mandarino di Sicilia - I love citruses. This is one of my favourite citruses. The orange is very vivid. I love the spearmint in particular. It makes it stand out a lot more than other citrus dominant fragrances. It gives it some freshness too.
MFK L'Homme A La Rose - I like to ramble forever about this one. I love masculine florals, especially roses, and this is what began that obsession. It's a fresh green rose essentially. I really enjoy the grapefruit opening. It's lovely for those rare days where the sun actually comes out for more than 15 minutes.
Penhaligons The Impudent Cousin Matthew - I love oranges. This is a citrus that leans more green in my opinion, largely due to the petitgrain. It's not an overtly bright citrus. It's a melancholic, poetic and sad mandarin orange. What it reminds me of is Narcissus and Echo by John William Waterhouse. I doubt it's unique enough to warrant the £235 you pay for it though. The longevity isn't the best. In about 2 hours it is faint. Although I personally don't mind little longevity, others do so bear that in mind I suppose.
The Omniscient Mister Thompson - I adore this. This is my favourite fragrance I have. I primarily get iris and vanilla. The vanilla is very creamy without much sweetness. I'm very quickly running out of my 1ml sample.
Changing Constance - This is my exception to the no sweetness rule because it's well done and not saccharine or syrupy. I find it very caramel-y but a smooth, mature caramel. The warm spiciness balances out the caramel. This also reminds me of Christmas because of the combination of spices and sweetness.
The Blazing Mr Sam - Very very similar to Halfeti. It's a much more masculine version of Halfeti I think. I like it a lot because I love warm spicy accords.
The Tragedy of Lord George - Quite dark and woody. It's really sophisticated in like a classically masculine way. The image I get is a lord or a viscount or a baron sat drinking brandy by the fireplace in his stately home decorated with stag's heads and oil paintings of horses.
Penhaligons AlUla - Opens really fruity, particularly plum. And then gets more warm spicy. I love how it smells, I just don't know where I'd wear this.
Neroli Portofino - I love neroli a lot. A perfect summer fragrance in my opinion. Very unisex in my opinion. It's like a romanticised summer in Italy.
Penhaligons Sartorial - also one of my favourites from Penhaligons. What I primarily smell is lavender, quite a photorealistic lavender. It's really classic. Reminds me of an English professor who wears blazers with elbow patches and brown leather Oxfords.
Quercus - Citrus & white floral cologne with a repressed woodiness. Leans more masculine to me. It's very subtle and thereby classy in my opinion. It's very quiet, which is what I enjoy in a cologne. Being a cologne, it doesn't really last long. Overall, I like it a lot.
Blenheim Bouquet - Mostly lemon and pine. A really vivid, bright realistic lemon at first. I don't get any similarity to cleaning products. I like this for summer because I feel like it being more woody gives it more depth than just a bright summer fragrance.

Shadow of the Erdtree is less than a month away now, and before it comes out I wanted to do a list of what are, in my opinion, the major lore questions that are still sorely in need of concrete answers out of the main game, and that we can be on the lookout in the DLC once it comes out and likely annihilates half of all current theories on the lore.
Some of the topics here are fairly infamously known at this point since everyone and their grandmas has been speculating endlessly about them, exactly because of how little concrete stuff we have with studying some of this stuff, so forgive the umpteenth topic on Melina and the Gloam-Eyed Queen's identities.

• Melina

What's so mysterious about Melina anyway? We actually have a pretty large amount of lore on her, and her story is very close to being complete and fairly well-understood if it wasn't for the wrench the game throws us at the end with the mystery of her sealed eye, connections with the Rune of Death, and some very ancient incantations she can use that possibly marks her as being much older than what she seems.
First, what do we know of Melina? Melina is a spirit, burned and bodiless. She has forgotten the purpose imparted on her by her mother, inside the Erdtree, long ago. By leading her back to Leyndell she regains this purpose and realizes her goal is to burn the Erdtree, by serving as kindling for the Flame of Ruin. This would allow us entry into the Erdtree in order to complete our journey to start a new age out of the collapse of Marika's old Order, and she also sends us to Farum in order to be able to free the Rune of Death still held by Maliketh and unleash Destined Death once again.
Melina's decision to burn the Erdtree isn't simply about following the purpose given to her by her mother, as she tells us in pretty strong terms that she has made up her mind regardless of what her mother originally wanted, and by her words before burning we can realize that she thinks burning the Erdtree is necessary to set things right in the world.
"There is something I'd like to say. My purpose was given to me by my mother. But now, I act of my own volition. I have set my heart upon the world that I would have. Regardless of my mother's designs. I won't allow anyone to speak ill of that. Not even you."
Melina thinks that "Death Indiscriminate" can fix the state of stagnancy and ruined life the world has fallen into, but she clearly means a kind of destruction that is creative, as opposed to the purely destructive Flame of Frenzy that she violently opposes. The destruction of the Erdtree must be conductive to new life, rather than ending life in the way the Three Fingers would have it. Also, there might be a hint here that Melina's mother and Melina's own motives diverge considerably at this point. Melina's mother wanted to burn the Erdtree, but for reasons potentially very different from Melina's.
Melina's mother is never explicitly named, but the most likely candidate is definitely Marika. Marika is the only person who could have realistically entered the Erdtree, the most sacred place in the world that was likely inaccessible even to the demigods before the Shattering, and Melina's name also follows the naming convention that most demigod children of Marika follow (in short, the Golden Lineage of Marika and Godfrey have names starting with "G", like Godwyn and Godrick, the sons of Radagon and Rennala start with "R", so Ranni, Rykard and Radahn, while the children of Marika and Radagon start with "M", so Miquella and Malenia. This leaves out Morgott and Mohg, who we know are Golden Lineage who thus break tradition, possibly because they're Omens, and Melina and Messmer, who have unknown parents but are likely children of Marika, with Messmer having suspicious red hair like Radagon and Malenia). If Marika is indeed Melina's mother this means that Marika openly plotted the burning of the Erdtree by the Tarnished as part of her grand plan (more on that kerfuffle later), and would also reveal how opposed the goddess had become to her own Order.
Aside from that, Melina wears the Traveller's set, who she shares with Millicent and whose description simply states that it's something that young women wear when going out in the world to confront their fates (fits both hers and Millicent's stories). She is armed with the Blade of Calling (that specifically talks about her purpose as kindling maiden given to her long ago, and repeats the theme of Flame and Destined Death), and she fights with the moveset of a Numen assassin mixed with unique Erdtree incantations that aren't available to us, one being a shower of golden rays and the other a healing phantasm tree. When used these incantations show the glyph of the Crucible, the same used for the Elden Stars, the Crucible incantations and other very ancient Erdtree incantations that go all the way back to at least Godfrey, strengthening Melina's connection with Marika and the Golden Order.
Spoiler for SotE stuff: remember that healing phantom Erdtree incantation? It turns out you can cast it, but it's DLC stuff. It apparently takes 70 Faith to cast, making it a Faith equivalent to Rennala's Full Moon, and it's described as a miracle coming directly from Marika. Apparently, it's a small version of the thing Melina can cast in battle and upon dying, so make of that information what you will. Melina knows that ancient incantation coming directly from Marika, somehow.
So, we already know a ton, and if it weren't for that sequence after the Flame of Frenzy ending it would be very easy to write her off as the spirit daughter made by Marika inside the Erdtree for the purpose of aiding the Tarnished in burning the Erdtree. Unfortunately, that ending sequence exists, and leaves Melina with an unfinished storyline: we can tell what she what was up to in the recent past, but we can't tell what special connection she does have with the Rune of Death and Destined Death, nor whether she's way more ancient than the Shattering. It's commonly speculated that Melina is the Gloam-Eyed Queen, the leader of the Godskins who wielded the godslaying flame powered by the Rune of Death, and the fact that the GEQ has no name and she was defeated by Maliketh has led to further speculation on that being the reason Melina is burned and bodiless and that the GEQ was a rebellious empyrean daughter of Marika. This is the speculation that kinda makes the most sense when trying to connect all the knowledge we have, and it's one I've never been satisfied with at all, Melina just doesn't seem the leader and nurturer of scary skin fanatics who also held that giant two-handed sword. It might also very well be that Melina and the GEQ are totally unrelated, and Melina's ties to Destined Death are independent. We don't know, we have no idea, and one of the main characters of Elden Ring kinda remains with her backstory completely unexplained.
Calling the Gloam-Eyed Queen into the Melina issue is a big problem too, because another major unclear part of the lore is...

• The Gloam-Eyed Queen and the Godskin Apostles

The Gloam-Eyed Queen herself and the Godskin Apostles, regardless of any connection they might or might not have to Melina, are a huge question mark in Elden Ring lore on their own.
The Gloam-Eyed Queen was an Empyrean selected by the Fingers (the Two Fingers, the lack of Frenzy elements makes it very unlikely that the Three Fingers were involved). She led the Godskin Apostles, seemingly controlling either their very birth or transformation through the Godskin Swaddling Cloth, and they all wielded the godslaying Black Flame powered by Destined Death. The Black Flame was once able to kill gods, who the godskins hunted for, well, their skin. Godskin Nobles were the first of the Apostles, and by accumulating skin it seems they drastically altered their own bodies to include inhuman traits, in a way that the game says resembles the original Crucible that once contained all life. Either way, they do have a reptilian tail.
In the end the Gloam-Eyed Queen was defeated by Maliketh, the Rune of Death was sealed marking the beginning of the Golden Order proper, and the Black Flame lost its original power. In spite of this defeat some Godskin Apostles still seem to roam the world to this day. One guards their queen's blade beneath Caelid's divine tower, one is outside of Liurnia's divine tower where Ranni's body lies, one is at the Dominula Village that's controlled by crazy dancing skinning grannies, one is in Volcano Manor in the church dedicated to the Great Serpent Eiglay, and everyone knows and loves the Godskin Duo and their cabaret show in Farum Azula.
... And that's all we know! The sealing of the Rune of Death is marked as the beginning of the Golden Order proper, Maliketh infused the Rune into his blade as it was removed from the Elden Ring by Marika, and Death as it was previously known was no more in the world, including the power of the godslaying blackflame. This means that the conflict between Maliketh and the Gloam-Eyed Queen was a pivotal moment in time, as important as the War against the Giants, and yet we barely have any information about the context of this battle. Who was the GEQ? A rebellious empyrean daughter of Marika? An unrelated upstart that tried to bring down the goddess and her dynasty with the blessing of the Two Fingers? Maybe the "Empyrean" moniker must be interpreted as meaning that the GEQ was a true goddess and it was Marika who usurped her and took the Elden Ring from her, starting her Golden Order? Is that "swaddling cloth" Marika shoves her hand into in the story trailer of the DLC related to the Godsking Swaddling Cloth? A piece of speculation I personally like tries to connect the GEQ with Placidusax's unnamed fled god. In this theory the GEQ was the goddess of Placidusax's reign, she contained the Elden Ring before Marika and Placidusax was her Elden Lord. Her time ended when Marika usurped the Elden Ring from her. This nicely connects the GEQ's lore with another obscure piece of lore which is the identity of Placidusax's god, who's not quite as important for the understanding of the whole story, but still suffers from the fact that this is basically all made up and not supported by anything in the actual game. It also rules out the ties between Melina and the GEQ, leaving her in a confusing place.
So, there's a lot we don't know, but we do know that the GEQ's defeat directly led to the sealing of the Rune of Death, which is the beginning of Marika's order and the cause for roughly the majority of things that happen and exist in the game. We know the Godskin "conflict" (was it even a conflict?) is supposed to be extremely important for the timeline, but details are so scant it's hard to even place it on a timeline, although it's likely it happened around the same time as the War against the Giants, either before or shortly after (which is still kind of a big deal since that decides whether the Erdtree was already Erdtree or was still Crucible when the GEQ was defeated). For what it's worth, the incantation "Black Blade" in the item icon shows that the glyph associated with it is that of the Ancient Crucible, placing it at the beginning of Marika's reign with Godfrey and the Crucible Knights.
At least, there's a very good chance the DLC will finally come to help us here, because with the DLC focused on the birth of the Golden Order and the sealing of blasphemous topics there's a chance for way more Godskin lore to show up and the identity of the GEQ to be finally revealed... Or maybe From will answer nothing and open three more questions that only make the Godskins ever harder to figure out, who knows?

• Marika's Plan

And speaking of Marika, what is up with her anyway? It seems like Marika must have had some sort of plan going on for a long time. The most explicit evidence of this is her imprisonment of Hewg into the illusory Roundhold Table, where she terrified him with her divine presence to the point he wouldn't think of leaving his duty even with the Erdtree burning and his shackles broken. Marika ordered Hewg at some unspecified point in the past to forge a weapon capable of slaying a god. Whether this god was Marika herself or the Elden Beast is up to whatever she was trying to do, which is the issue at hand.
Marika did a whole bunch of things before the Shattering. It was her who personally divested Godfrey and the Tarnished of Grace, leading to their banishment, and yet according to Melina's dialogues she also explained to them how they would one day return to brandish the Elden Ring. In other words, Marika banished the Tarnished and Godfrey with the expectation, the promise even, that they would come back for whatever she was planning to do, that likely also involved a god-slaying weapon. She also, as per Melina's dialogues, encouraged her own sons to fight each others to the death, that they were free to pursue whatever goal they wanted, to become lords or even gods (meaning, replacing her), and if they failed then they would have amounted to nothing but sacrifices (best mom in the Lands Between btw). In other words, Marika planted the seeds of the Shattering Wars by pitting the demigods against each others before the Shattering had even happened.
Also, if Marika is indeed Melina's mother that means that Marika also came to the decision of burning the Erdtree, which is... Something. It should be noted how it's clear that neither the Fingers, nor the Greater Will (assuming that thing is even doing anything by the time the game takes place), nor the thing inside the Erdtree would ever approve of burning the Erdtree, and yet Grace points us toward the Flame of Ruin and the burning of the Erdtree anyway. It's very likely that, as Marika divested the Tarnished of Grace and promised their return, she is also the one currently extending Grace to them so that they can complete her own plan, whatever it is, that evidently includes burning the Erdtree and taking control of the Elden Ring.
There's also the highly debated, and debatable, idea that Marika was part of the plot to kill Godwyn. I personally don't believe that's true, but if you choose to interpret Marika under a very negative lense it could fit her very well. The assassins are said to have had close ties to Marika, however it's unclear whether this just means that they were Numens like her with no further connection, or if there was something even shadier going on.
Finally, after that Godwyn had been killed and Marika was "driven to the brink", a psychological breaking point (a reaction that doesn't add up with the idea that she planned the murder, which is why I think she didn't take part to the plot), she went and smashed the Elden Ring, damaging the functioning of life itself and triggering the Shattering Wars. This would be followed much later on by the return of the Tarnished when the demigods failed to convincingly defeat each others, and then Hewg made the god-slaying weapon out of Placidusax's golden scales allowing us to kill the Elden Beast.
But what were Marika's intentions exactly? What was she thinking in all of this, and what was she trying to accomplish? Why did the Queen who led the war against the Giants, who proclaimed an age of life under the Erdtree, who condemned all those who resisted her order to be driven to the outskirts of society and the world, then turn against her own Order and started planning a deicide plot involving the Tarnished, her own demigod children and Master Hewg?
The Soreseal Talismans seem to suggest that the role of being a god weights upon the chosen like a curse, so maybe Marika grew tired of being a goddess and sought release, having realized her Order was irredeemably flawed from its foundations. Alternatively, the Sacred Relic Sword says that it is a sword forged from a god that was supposed to "live a life eternal", and that sword is forged from the body of Marika and Radagon and wielded by the Elden Beast in the final fight, so maybe Marika wanted to live forever and that's why she even removed the Rune of Death in the first place. Her plan then was more about getting rid of the Elden Beast and the Greater Will who could have still replaced her as goddess, since the vassal Fingers were still choosing new empyreans who were potential replacements for Marika. Truth is, we don't know at all, and we have many potential interpretations for Marika's actions that are completely opposite to each others, some imagining the Queen as a power-hungry schemer looking for eternal life and others as a tragic figure locked in the flawed Order she herself had created and led to the death (and undeath) of her favourite son all the same.
Well, we got a DLC that's apparently centered on Marika, seemingly and possibly more than on Miquella, so at least there's a real chance we'll get to know more of what the Queen was thinking, but looking at the trailer it might be a lot of girlbossing mixed with war crimes (it's fine because she's hot).

• The Nox

And speaking of obscure motivations: the Nox. The Nox are really a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. We know a bunch of stuff about them, but never enough to clarify who they are exactly (Humans? Numen? Something else?), when on the timeline their actions take place (when did the Nox first appear? And when exactly where they banished underground?), whether they have some connections with Marika or not, and what they're trying to achieve, even though they have far reaching connections with basically more than half of the Elden Ring's world.
The Nox are a people who worship the Night, in particular their "Black Moon", now apparently lost. At some point in the unspecified past they angered the Greater Will and were banished underground, or alternatively they fled underground voluntarily out of fear of punishment. Their homes are the Eternal Cities, which seem to have been built underground rather than sunk, since they have buildings hanging from the ceiling and dams over the underground rivers, so a whole bunch of architecture made specifically to fit their new environment. Compared to their neighbours of the Ancient Dynasty the Nox seem more recent, as they built on top and next to the Dynastic ruins, and their cities are also the only ones still inhabited. Now in exile, the Nox have made for themselves fake Night skies in the underground, and are constantly plotting new ways to create a "Lord of Night" through many means.
Currently only three Nox cities are known to exist, and only two are inhabited: Nokron and Nokstella. The third unnamed Nox city that stands below Leyndell was destroyed and its fake Night stolen by Astel, a deformed star, possibly after having been accidentally summoned through the lost sorcery Eternal Darkness. It's unclear whether the loss of the Black Moon is connected or not to Astel's rampage.
The Nox are famous for their experiments. They created the shapeshifting Silver Tears out of Larval Tears for the sake of creating a Lord for themselves (and also use the same liquid metal technology for their weapons), and also made the Dragonkin Soldiers, pale imitations of real Ancient Dragons that never quite worked out. There also exist some "Nightfolks", humans with silver skin who are said to have bled silver long ago. It's unclear whether these are Nox descendants or offshoots of the Silver Tears. The Nightmaiden & Swordstress Puppets description also describes the Nox as a "cold-blooded race", but I can't quite tell if the description is being literal or if it's talking figuratively about the Nox's ruthlessness. These Nox apparently chose to become puppets voluntarily. Cut content also explicitly point them out as the original creators of the Albinaurics, something that probably is still true in the current version of the game, considering that Celestial Dew is described as something originating from the Eternal Cities and the Albinaurics are stated to have been generated from an original drop of dew. This dew must have had no relation to the Erdtree, since the Albinaurics are discriminated precisely due to their unique "humors" (body fluids, blood) that bare no lineage to the Erdtree, and also possess innate arcane power that allows them to cast spells without Glintstone (so, they're star-related in nature).
Celestial Dew also plays an important role for the ritual of Absolution that was once carried on by the Carians of Liurnia, the same ritual Radagon himself took part in. Indeed, the Nox seem related to the Carians and Raya Lucaria somehow, with Nox statues showing up in the Church of Absolution, the sorcerers of Raya Lucaria and the Nox sharing the same worship of celestial bodies, and then there's Sellia. Sellia is basically a mixed polity that combines Nox, Raya Lucarian and Erdtree architecture, a true architectural melting pot that is inhabited by shady mages who engage in assassination and stealth sorceries. Sellia's sorceries are the same as the Nox's Night sorceries, with the Nox Night Maiden's Mist sharing the same glyph as Sellian Night sorceries. Interestingly, the few bubble sorceries of the claymen belonging to the Ancient Dynasty also share the same glyph with the Nox and the Sellians, but with a brighter color. To make Nox influence in Sellia blindingly obvious, there's even two Nox people hidden in the city guarding an empty Chair-Crypt, the giant chairs where the Nox hang their giant maidens underground (and that have absolutely no descriptions to help us figuring out what the hell they are), not too far from the big statue of an Erdtree Knight that is also present in Sellia, humorously enough.
The Nox and the entire category of the sorcerers are thus connected, possibly very closely connected by looking at Sellia, but the nature of this connection is never explained outside of vague visual storytelling. But to make things worse, the Nox aren't just connected with all sorcerous things, but also with Marika and the Numen. In fact, the Numen assassins who killed Godwyn, the ones with unspecified links to Marika, originally hailed from the Eternal Cities. Were the Nox part of the plot to kill Godwyn? Were they trying to attack Marika somehow? Or maybe it's simply that the Nox are part of the Numen people, and that's where these assassins originally came from? So, is Marika herself connected to the Eternal Cities, even though the Nox are in hiding from the Fingers and the Greater Will while Marika is thee goddess in charge of the entire Order? In the game's code Nox related enemies are defined as "Marika lineage", which might not mean anything at all like Radagon's old connection with the Misbegotten, but could also mean something for the current lore.
None of these questions have an answer, which is problematic since it potentially ties to Marika's origins and her people, Godwyn's assassination, and other major parts of Elden Ring lore. Similarly, all Nox descriptions lack historical context and it's hard to pin them down on a timeline, it's hard to figure out when their exile took place even though we know that by the time of Godwyn's death the nameless Eternal City had probably already been destroyed. We don't know what the Black Moon of the Nox was, nor how they were related to Rennala and Ranni's Moons. We also don't quite know what the Nox did to piss off the Greater Will itself, although it's probably the Fingerslayer Blade itself the reason: the Nox made a weapon capable of killing the Two Fingers, the envoys of the Greater Will, and this was considered an act of treason that forced them underground. In the modern day Iji wears the same mirrorhelm as those made by the Nox back in the day, probably because they're in the same business: they're waging war on the Two Fingers, and wear these helms out of fear of some kind of "intervention". It's definitely not just the fantasy version of a tinfoil hat, I'm sure.
The Fingerslayer Blade is its own big mystery on its own: it's a blade made out of a corpse, which makes sense because it resembles the Sacred Relic Sword which is the sword used by the Elden Beast that he made out of the body of Marika/Radagon. ... So, how the hell did the Nox manage to create a relic like that? Where did they find the corpse of a god, which in Elden Ring usually means the container for the Elden Ring, to make a knife out of it, for the purpose of killing the Fingers? Did the Nox kill a god themselves?
The more you look into the Nox the more weird and unexplainable they get. They have connections reaching all over the game and have taken part in events extremely important, yet there's very little to explain those. Nox influence can be seen also as far as Ordina and possibly lower Leyndell, and the wandering mausoleums are also built in Nox architecture (although, maybe it was just the Golden Order pillaging Nox buildings from their fallen city to build mausoleums for the demigods killed in the Night of the Black Knives, but I'm kinda making this stuff up). With the DLC focusing on pre-Erdtree civilizations, and Marika's past among the Numens, it might be possible that finally some more information can be given on what was going on with the Nox, particularly with how they relate to the Astrologers and the sorcerous schools of Raya Lucaria, how they managed to make the Fingerslayer Blade and why.

• The Eclipse and "the Seat of the Sun"

The last major lore question that's been left completely vague involves Miquella and its dealing with Castle Sol and the "Eclipse". As the two spirits in that castle tells us:
"Ohh great sun! Frigid sun of Sol! Surrender yourself to the eclipse! Grant life to the soulless bones!"
"Lord Miquella, forgive me. The sun has not been swallowed. Our prayers were lacking. Your comrade remains soulless... I will never set my eyes upon it now... Your divine Haligtree..."
Miquella, who was clearly displeased by the fate suffered by his older brother Godwyn, had once wished upon him "a true death" according to the Golden Epitaph. The failed ritual of the Eclipse seems to have been an attempt by Miquella to either give Godwyn a true death or somehow resurrect his soul from death. But what is the Eclipse?
The Eclipse is referenced a few times in the game, always in relation to the wandering mausoleums containing the soulless demigods. These soulless demigods are never directly described, but are possibly demigods who had been slayed alongside Godwyn in the Night of the Black Knives: promotional material from before the game came out explained how many demigods died that night, and they shouldn't have suffered the same fate as Godwyn of turning into undead abominations, because the only reason Godwyn died in soul alone and not in body was due to Ranni splitting the effect of the Rune of Death between Godwyn and herself.
The Eclipse is apparently the "protective star of soulless demigods", and it helps the beheaded knights who chose to follow their lords even in death "by keeping Destined Death at bay". The Eclipse depicts the sun drained of its color, and it also seems to resemble the Mending Rune of the Death-Prince, the one that is made up of two Cursemarks of Death arranged in order to make a full circle, which is to say, the shape that should have formed on Godwyn's body resulting in his full death in body and soul had Ranni not interfered and caused the Deathmark to split instead. ... But this still kinda doesn't explain what the Eclipse is about exactly, nor what the ritual was trying to accomplish.
To make things more complicated there's the nature of the Sun in Elden Ring, which is a poorly explained phenomenon, only referenced a few times. The Sun Realm Shield talks about "the Seat of the Sun", either an ancient city or a metaphor for the sun itself, long faded away. Aside from this inscrutable "Seat of the Sun" thing, it seems that the Erdtree has replaced the Sun as main source of warmth and light in the Lands Between. The Warming Stone description explains how in the past the Erdtree not only shined of light, but would also warm up and heal those bathed in its rays, like Warming Stones do today.
So, the ritual Miquella was trying to do remains completely opaque. The symbolism of the Eclipse is also somewhat confusing, because it's used as both a ward against Destined Death, the symbol for Fia's Order of Undeath codified within the Elden Ring, and the symbol that should have formed on Godwyn representing a complete death had Ranni not interfered. The whole topic of the Sun remains mysterious, as are Miquella's projects for Godwyn, because in one instance he wished for Godwyn to die a true death, and according to the ghosts at Castle Sol the ritual was apparently about restoring Godwyn's soul.
This is somewhat of a less important topic compared to the others, but it still ties with Miquella's motivations, Godwyn's assassination and the nature of the Sun and Death in Elden Ring, which would be pretty important to understand better, especially with the DLC focusing on Miquella.
____________________________________________________
Finally, to close the post, there are also a few minor topics that are similarly obscure but aren't quite as central to Elden Ring's plot that it would be nice if the DLC explored. These include:

• Ranni & Miquella's Great Runes. Ranni and Miquella divested themselves of their Great Runes, and these have gone missing by the main game's time. It'd be interesting if these Runes were to become available somehow, and while Ranni's Great Rune seems pretty unlikely, Miquella's is definitely a possibility with him being the main focus of the DLC.
• Pre-Erdtree cultures. Several cultures are described as having originated in the distant past, before the Erdtree existed (although, it's likely there was still a tree and it still the same tree as the modern Erdtree, just known with its original name of the Crucible, before Marika enforced her order). All of these cultures are fairly obscure, but they include the Ancient Dynasty, the people who built the Graeco-Roman style buildings in the underground that are usually inhabited by Claymen (also their creation) and Ancestral Followers; the Lords of Rot, who were great lords said to serve the Scarlet Rot in the ancient past; the Death Birds, who apparently controlled and regulated Death through their Outer God in the time before Marika sealed Death and forced their existence outside what was allowed by the Elden Ring's Order; the Alabaster and Onyx Lords, who are aliens who originated from meteorite impacts and were known to be terrifying figures of power, being the likely origin for all meteoric sorceries; and the Golems, machines built by an unspecified civilization possibly related to the Crystalians (due to the Crystal darts being able to make these Golems go haywire). Not much information is available for any of these people, with the Ancient Dynasty and the Golems' architects being particularly mysterious and interesting, because the Golem's architecture resembles somewhat the architecture of the Divine Towers (another topic of its own) and the Ancient Dynasty's only piece of lore is related to the Claymen, their bubbles and their search for "Oracles", the round-shaped trumpet guys who only show up when a new era or a new god is about to be born, which opens the possibility to the Ancient Dynasty being connected to one of these "new god/era" events. The DLC definitely has a big opportunity to drop more new lore on these civilizations being set in a land where a lot of these pre-Erdtree people were banished after Marika's triumph.
• The Wormfaces. What are the Wormfaces? I mean, really, that's it. They're deformed humanoids infested with worms and deathblight, but some show up in Altus and others in Farum Azula, with the two of them wearing completely different clothing as if to depict how they came from different local cultures. So, were these people transformed by something? Is it related to the presence of deathroot in Farum, which might have been brought there by Maliketh? Is it something else? Wormfaces are really mysterious creatures, and it'd be lovely to learn more about these unique enemies if some of them end up in the DLC.
• Who built the Divine Towers, and why? The Divine Towers are definitely extremely old (we know for absolute certain that, at the very least, they predate the construction of Stormveil Castle, but I'd bet they're way older than even that), and they honestly resemble none of the architecture present elsewhere in the game. There are some superficial similarities with the stone buildings that show up a little all over and at the Forge of the Giants, but it's not a proper match, and the Divine Towers present weird magic shadows inside them and also meteorites inserted in their walls that look nothing like anything else in the game. There are really no descriptions that talk about the Divine Towers, so we're kinda left guessing that they are related to cosmic events (the meteorites), to the Fingers (their corpses are there), and that's it. I like to speculate that these buildings are the oldest that ever existed and were made before the Age of the Dragons, shortly after the arrival of the Golden Comet, to house the Two Fingers who were the Greater Will's vassals and would go on selecting Empyreans to rule as gods over their Order with the Elden Ring, but I'm basically forced to make this up without a lot of solid support in the game.

There are also a couple minor question that have already been partially answered by the promotional material for the DLC, which is pretty juicy stuff:

• Who was Torrent's former master? It was Miquella, apparently. The first image about the expansion showed Miquella riding Torrent in the Land of Shadow, revealing a connection between Miquella and Torrent we couldn't have known before. This is very interesting, because we know that Ranni was tasked by Torrent's former master to give us the Spirit Calling Bell we use to call summons, meaning that a lot of people were carried through the game by the Mimic Tear only thanks to Miquella's secret influence. Apparently Torrent chooses his own master, and Miquella might have wanted to entrust this bell to whoever Torrent deemed worthy, maybe because he is looking for a Lord and whoever Torrent chooses is a potential Lord in Miquella's mind. This reveals that Miquella has been an influential force in our playthrough long before we could notice, and also that he has ties to Ranni. Finally, there's the issue of how Melina came in possession of Torrent, which in turn opens another interesting scenario where Miquella could have some connection with Melina as well. One can only hope that the DLC will expand on these loose ends.
• Marika's ascension to godhood. In order for Marika to be a god, she needed the Elden Ring inside herself. But Marika wasn't always a god, and in Placidusax's time there was a different god, possibly the one depicted surrounded by wolves in Maliketh's arena, under a depiction of a different-looking, ancient Elden Ring. This poses the question: how did Marika manage to gain control of the Elden Ring for herself? Was it, like, granted to her by the Fingers, or something more ominous took place, like a violent usurpation? The DLC was confirmed to talk about Marika's origins, and the recent story trailer might be depicting just the moment when she ascended to godhood, by grasping some golden threads from the bloody remains of someone else. The story trailer and the references to betrayal as the "affair" that gave birth to the Golden Order are currently pointing toward the idea that Marika might have just usurped the Elden Ring from the previous deity, either Placidusax's or whoever was in charge at the time, and this might potentially even tie nicely in a few odd things about the Nox and, hopefully, whatever Marika has been planning from the very beginning.

I am NOT the Original Poster. This is an interesting one- I originally posted a BORU here. That original poster was u/Cute_Classic_2954. She posted in relationship_advice.

This is a LONG post. Do NOT comment on Original Posts. See Rule 7.

A few days ago, u/Throwmeawayfortoday9 reached out to me via DM to share her side of the story. (That post is marked with ****\*)
Here is her DM:

Hi LucyAriaRose, you made a BORU post about a saga related to me. It was the “professor trying to befriend my BF” one. I ended up finding it basically 2 hours after it was posted. It’s quite jarring to find a post about yourself. I showed a mutual, Maria, at the time and we discussed it since she was also a part of every major in person interaction as well. Someone ended up identifying me from the post and so me and Maria discussed making a follow up so that anyone who is able to do so in the future can be redirected to my side without us having to rehash it again. You may view it here. (link)
I understand that all her view points are still valid but I wanted to add context I thought would be relevant to how everything is portrayed. I was offended that she kept characterizing me as a drunk and stated I was attention seeking.

Original Post: September 3, 2023
My bf (24M) became friends with his former professor (25F), sometime last year - I don't know what to make of it. They seem to be friendly and talk consistently every week, and from what he tells me, it's usually very surface level. Sometime last year after the course ended, my bf, his professor, and some of his male classmates went somewhere to eat together. My bf brought up that he was going to be attending an event (plastic modeling show), and his professsor showed interest and invited herself to the event and asked if she could stay at his airbnb with his friends. My bf and his friends were all OK with it.
I unfortunately couldn't attend the event, but from what my bf told me, he and a few of his friends met up at their airbnb. That same day, his professor comes to my bf's airbnb and tagged a few of her girl friends along (I believe they all stayed in the same place). The next day, they go to the event, went to a bar afterwards and got drinks. A lot of them (except my bf) got pretty drunk and my bf took the liberty of being the designated driver for his professor and her friends. His professor won some model kit from the event, and even in her drunken state, asked my bf if he could stay up with her to work on the kit together. From what my bf tells me, nothing else happened that night.
After the event, everyone from that group created a group chat and they continue to plan and talk about future events together. Since then, my bf and his friends had met up with his professor and got to meet his professor's fiance at an anime convention and it sounded like they all got along well. His professor continues to express interest in other events and it sounds like she may be attending another event with my bf and his friends in the near future.
I trust my boyfriend and don't think he is hiding anything from me. Honestly speaking, I think it's hard for me to understand their friendship as it is his professor. I've had a conversation with him on this, and he's let me know that I have nothing to worry about. I would like to hear other's opinions and see what ya'll think of this friendship? Is this something I need to be concerned about or is it really nothing?
Thank you all!
*Edit: the professor was my bf's former professor. She is classified as an adjunct faculty and works as an accountant as her full time job (which explains why she is a young professor).
*My bf has not graduated college yet and is still a student at his university.
Relevant Comments:
You should go to one of the events with him:

I do struggle with social anxiety so it makes me uncomfortable to be sharing a space with a lot of unknown people. I am hoping to go to the next event though since it's local.

Her relationship with students is grossly unprofessional:

I'm totally with you - I am also quite confused of her choice of "friends". I am not sure why of all places, does she choose to share an airbnb with her former student and to be drunk with them. She is classified as an adjunct faculty, so she is a professor but is part time (she works full time as an accountant). The whole situation feels weird to me.

Commenter: You say “his professor” what is their specific academic connection? She taught him once years ago and now they’re roughly equals and friends? Or she’s his primary support for a PhD? Or what?

OOP: The first option - she taught him last year and now are now friends. He is no longer in a course with her. I totally understand how it's possible for students and their professors to be friendly, but i've never heard or seen of a friendship where you consistently talk and hang out together so casually.

So she's no longer his professor- they are two adults of the same age and power level:

It kind of gives me the same vibes like if a student graduated HS and is friends with their young teacher (obv not the same thing, but a student-teacher relationship is there). I think as a teacher, you should still uphold that level of professionalism and mentorship, even if you are no longer the student's teacher.
I also want to note that they are technically not "equals" since they're both in relationships. She can't be acting however she wants with former students.

Update Post: October 12, 2023 (1 month, 1 week later)
Update: my boyfriend and I had a more heart-to-heart talk regarding his teacher and he recognizes that it crossed some of my boundaries. He believes that she may be behaving the way she does because when she hangs out with her fiance's friends, she gets bored with them (and may possibly be seeking attention from other people?). Several weeks later, my boyfriend had a conversation with his college instructor regarding their friendship and told her how I didn't feel comfortable of their friendship and how he thinks they should keep communication at a minimum. She brought up how she understands because her fiance also had an issue with how she chose to share an airbnb with my bf. She mentions to my boyfriend that she sees him as a brother and that's why she feels really comfortable with him, but that she will try to respect my boyfriend's wishes of keeping conversations at a minimum.
Well, even after that talk, she continues to still message my boyfriend weekly on random life updates. And because she is also part of my bf's chat in discord, one of his friends invited her to attend another plastic modeling show (it occurred recently) and dinner. Since she accepted the invitations, I chose to attend as well so that I could personally meet her. The dinner occurred first and it was very uncomfortable because she practically ignored me the entire night. When she joined us at the table, she greeted my bf but didn't say anything to me (even my bf noticed and got annoyed, but then introduced us). She got increasingly drunk throughout the night and was saying random stuff about my bf to his friends like "he could've been the best student in my class but it's cause he missed some assignments" and "[bf's name] gave me a 5 star review on rate my professor!". She ended up not going to the show, but my bf had a chat with his guys and they told him that they want to respect my feelings too and make it a guys' night next time.
I would like to hear other's opinions and see if you also think she is acting suspicious?
Relevant Comment:
She wants to have sex with your boyfriend. She's crossing major boundaries. Has he stopped conversation with her?

I wouldn't be surprised if that is her intention cause there's def some shady people out there. I agree, she is crossing some professional and personal boundaries, and I think it's quite unusual behavior for any teacher to act like that. Yes, he has stopped communicating with her. She was consistently messaging him until last week...so hopefully she got the memo.

OOP Comments on the Original BORU:
Clarifying what she meant by "not equals:"

hey there! I'll try my best to clarify and elaborate more on what I am trying to say. I understand that some may argue that because she's no longer his teacher and also them both being the same age means it is fair game for them to have this dynamic. But, at the end of the day, they're both in relationships and have to consider the personal boundaries that come with it. Their overall dynamic is not fair to her fiance or myself, because she is interacting with my boyfriend as if he is single (and she is single) and not a current student at the institution. There are still personal and professional lines that exist in this friendship, and she's crossed them regardless. I hope that makes sense.

The hobby:

Haha yes, it's a very niche hobby and I didn't know much about that world until I met him. For further context, my boyfriend and his friends like to build and paint "gundams" (they are similar looking to Transformers).

*****The "Professor's" Side:****\*
Clarifying Post: June 2, 2024 (almost 8 months later)
Title: Why am I (25F) always portrayed as a drunk? Maria (25F) was drunk!
I am the aforementioned “professor” in a BORU post about me related to posts in subreddit. I decided to post a response after this event was brought up again with a mutual, Maria. We’re both hanging out as I type this. She and I have both hung out with “boyfriend” (Bob) in group settings and think there are definitely two sides to this story. My main gripe is being portrayed as a drunk and a man-stealer. Below is the original BORU post that I found while browsing one day. Also, someone did find me after reading this post due to how specific it is. I am responding paragraph by paragraph so you do not need to read the original post, feel free to.
The title in BORU is below as I cannot link other subreddits. (Was able to link, after the fact)

Do I (28F) need to worry about my boyfriend's (24M) friendship with his professor (25F)?

https://www.reddit.com/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/7mIcJp6t7n

My bf (24M) became friends with his former professor (25F), sometime last year - I don't know what to make of it. They seem to be friendly and talk consistently every week, and from what he tells me, it's usually very surface level. Sometime last year after the course ended, my bf, his professor, and some of his male classmates went somewhere to eat together. My bf brought up that he was going to be attending an event (plastic modeling show), and his professsor showed interest and invited herself to the event and asked if she could stay at his airbnb with his friends. My bf and his friends were all OK with it.

I was an instructor for one class/semester that BF (Bob) attended. I have no say or sway at the school and have not taught since then. I taught a class related to my profession. I did not get to know Bob personally until after the class was over. On the last day, he expressed that I was a great instructor and gave me a miniature he built as a show of gratitude. I also made miniatures (a different type though) and was intrigued that someone else was into this hobby. We stayed in touch.
Later, I invited a few students for a meal (girls and guys) and the boy students were the only ones who RSVP’d yes. Bob did mention an event. I did not invite myself, I said me and my friend Linda were interested and may go too. Later on, Bob invited me to join their group’s airbnb because I was looking at hotels. A previous event trip fell through for my and Linda’s friend group and I felt bad she couldn’t go on a trip in the USA before she had to go back to her home country. This trip was to replace that experience. Bob invited us to the airbnb and Linda and I shared a room with 2 beds, Maria ended up coming on this trip as well, which the group was also okay with, and stayed in the same room with me and Linda

I unfortunately couldn't attend the event, but from what my bf told me, he and a few of his friends met up at their airbnb. That same day, his professor comes to my bf's airbnb and tagged a few of her girl friends along (I believe they all stayed in the same place). The next day, they go to the event, went to a bar afterwards and got drinks. A lot of them (except my bf) got pretty drunk and my bf took the liberty of being the designated driver for his professor and her friends. His professor won some model kit from the event, and even in her drunken state, asked my bf if he could stay up with her to work on the kit together. From what my bf tells me, nothing else happened that night.

Respectfully, I had one cocktail and then his friend bought everyone a shot. That was the extent of my drinking. I wasn’t drunk, Linda wasn’t drunk, and no one else in the group ended up being drunk., Maria was though. Maria underestimated how strong the drinks were and she was the DD and we did not have enough time to sober up once she felt the alcohol hit her. She couldn’t drive, I didn’t want to drive her dad’s car, and Linda doesn’t have a US driver's license. Bob offered to drive the car with me, Linda, and Maria back to the airbnb. The other car was driven back by his friend who was not drunk and drove sober.
At the airbnb, Bob asked what i would do with the model kit I won, I said i am not familiar with this type of miniature and so I would sell it on facebook marketplace. He said it was actually easy to build, he had built that one before, and he could help me build it right then as all their tools for building were still out on the table. I said he didn’t have to but he insisted and I accepted his help. I was also still not drunk. Next to us in the living room, Maria and 2 of the guys were watching Ouran High Scool Host Club and Cowboy bebop. We all stayed up until 2AM building or watching anime. For half of the trip, me and the girls split off and did our own thing. We did not stay with the group the entire tip because our intent was to piggy back a small girls weekend while also seeing the event.

After the event, everyone from that group created a group chat and they continue to plan and talk about future events together. Since then, my bf and his friends had met up with his professor and got to meet his professor's fiance at an anime convention and it sounded like they all got along well. His professor continues to express interest in other events and it sounds like she may be attending another event with my bf and his friends in the near future.
I trust my boyfriend and don't think he is hiding anything from me. Honestly speaking, I think it's hard for me to understand their friendship as it is his professor. I've had a conversation with him on this, and he's let me know that I have nothing to worry about. I would like to hear other's opinions and see what ya'll think of this friendship? Is this something I need to be concerned about or is it really nothing?
Thank you all!
\Edit: the professor was my bf's former professor. She is classified as an adjunct faculty and works as an accountant as her full time job (which explains why she is a young professor).*
\My bf has not graduated college yet and is still a student at his university.*

Bob and his group went to an anime convention. I and my friend group also went because I was not aware there was one near me until Bob mentioned it. My friend group, I thought, got along well with his friends and it was a great first con experience. I and a few of my friends expressed interest in future events. I think she is hung up on this professor titleship but I was an instructor whom students called professor but I was very clear this was a side gig and I was had a career. I was never in any position of power at the school, I was a contract employee used to fill an open course section at an undesirable time. For the majority of the time I knew Bob, we were equals who were only 1 year apart in age and shared a similar hobby.

Relevant Comments:
You should go to one of the events with him:
"I do struggle with social anxiety so it makes me uncomfortable to be sharing a space with a lot of unknown people. I am hoping to go to the next event though since it's local."
Her relationship with students is grossly unprofessional:
"I'm totally with you - I am also quite confused of her choice of "friends". I am not sure why of all places, does she choose to share an airbnb with her former student and to be drunk with them. She is classified as an adjunct faculty, so she is a professor but is part time (she works full time as an accountant). The whole situation feels weird to me."
Clarification:
Commenter: You say “his professor” what is their specific academic connection? She taught him once years ago and now they’re roughly equals and friends? Or she’s his primary support for a PhD? Or what?
OOP: The first option - she taught him last year and now are now friends. He is no longer in a course with her. I totally understand how it's possible for students and their professors to be friendly, but i've never heard or seen of a friendship where you consistently talk and hang out together so casually.
So she's no longer his professor- they are two adults of the same age and power level:
"It kind of gives me the same vibes like if a student graduated HS and is friends with their young teacher (obv not the same thing, but a student-teacher relationship is there). I think as a teacher, you should still uphold that level of professionalism and mentorship, even if you are no longer the student's teacher.
I also want to note that they are technically not "equals" since they're both in relationships. She can't be acting however she wants with former students."

I respect that they view my actions unprofessionally. I did not view it as such since I was no longer an instructor and have not been since. I taught a 4 month course one day a week. I would not be friends with an 18-22 year old I had nothing in common with.

Update: my boyfriend and I had a more heart-to-heart talk regarding his teacher and he recognizes that it crossed some of my boundaries. He believes that she may be behaving the way she does because when she hangs out with her fiance's friends, she gets bored with them (and may possibly be seeking attention from other people?). Several weeks later, my boyfriend had a conversation with his college instructor regarding their friendship and told her how I didn't feel comfortable of their friendship and how he thinks they should keep communication at a minimum. She brought up how she understands because her fiance also had an issue with how she chose to share an airbnb with my bf. She mentions to my boyfriend that she sees him as a brother and that's why she feels really comfortable with him, but that she will try to respect my boyfriend's wishes of keeping conversations at a minimum.

I did not know it had crossed any of their boundaries at the time until the phone call. I treated Bob the same way I treated all of my friends but I do understand and respect that not everyone has the same view of friendship. My friend group went through a period where we would talk about going to stuff and then no one does any work to follow through. The event Linda and our friends were going to attend that never happened is a good example. I didn’t want lazy friends being the reason why I did not experience things. Bob did follow through on going to things.
My husband’s concern was that it was a group of guys we had not met yet in person and we were all girls. I told him that if I thought any one of them was giving off weird vibes, we would immediately leave and get a hotel.
As for the phone call, he did call to tell me basically the same and my understanding was that we should talk less because she does not like the closeness. At the time, we were messaging every day and I did make an attempt to reduce the frequency to once a week.

Well, even after that talk, she continues to still message my boyfriend weekly on random life updates. And because she is also part of my bf's chat in discord, one of his friends invited her to attend another plastic modeling show (it occurred recently) and dinner. Since she accepted the invitations, I chose to attend as well so that I could personally meet her. The dinner occurred first and it was very uncomfortable because she practically ignored me the entire night. When she joined us at the table, she greeted my bf but didn't say anything to me (even my bf noticed and got annoyed, but then introduced us). She got increasingly drunk throughout the night and was saying random stuff about my bf to his friends like "he could've been the best student in my class but it's cause he missed some assignments" and "[bf's name] gave me a 5 star review on rate my professor!". She ended up not going to the show, but my bf had a chat with his guys and they told him that they want to respect my feelings too and make it a guys' night next time.
I would like to hear other's opinions and see if you also think she is acting suspicious?

One thing left out is that during the phone call between Bob and I, I asked Bob if his GF would want to ever talk to or get to know me, or all 3 of us hang out, and he said he asked her and she said she did not want to do that and she was uncomfortable at the thought of meeting me.
I did stop messaging him frequently and only did so once a week to ask how his job search was going and to let him know the status of a big event in my life. I thought that was what was requested, less interaction, not no interaction.
Maria and I went to this dinner because everyone from the airbnb trip was going to be there (Linda did not go). What is not mentioned is that Bob and the GF arrived 40 minutes into eating. They arrived when I was away from the table.
When I saw them after I returned, I nodded and said “hi”, not specifically at Bob or her. I did not address the hi to either specifically because (1) GF does not like me and him talking and I didn’t want to disrespect that by talking to Bob in front of her (2) she said she did not want to talk to me or get to know me previously and I thought she still felt that way. I learned Bob and GF thought I only said hey to Bob but I didn’t direct it to anyone and I was trying to play it safe. At that point, I knew she had social anxiety and was against meeting with me to get to know me previously, so I thought I was respecting her boundary by not talking to her. Had I known she came to personally meet me, I would have tried to talk to her. After learning why she came, I was surprised she did not try to start a conversation with me or Maria.
As for the alcohol, except for them, since they arrived late, everyone had 2-3 drinks already because it was happy hour. Me and Maria made friends with the bartender who gave us discounted cocktails. I ended up buying a drink for GF so she could get the discount and then pay me back. It is true I said those jokes but I was not the one to bring them up, they were said in jest, and these were jokes already made in previous interactions. Later that week, Maria called me to catch up and mentioned the dinner. She commented that GF made no effort to get to know us and thought GF went to monitor him and me. In essence, she ignored me and Maria and Maria and I ignored her. I did not go to the show because I had a prior commitment.

Relevant Comment:
She wants to have sex with your boyfriend. She's crossing major boundaries. Has he stopped conversation with her?
"I wouldn't be surprised if that is her intention cause there's def some shady people out there. I agree, she is crossing some professional and personal boundaries, and I think it's quite unusual behavior for any teacher to act like that. Yes, he has stopped communicating with her. She was consistently messaging him until last week...so hopefully she got the memo.

As mentioned in her post, I did view Bob as a brother. He lived similar experiences to me but I felt like he was where I would have been had I not moved out from my parents when I did. I wanted to see him professionally thrive and accomplish his goals of getting a car and moving out as those were things I strived for but had already attained.
As for the 5-6 times we met up, it was in group settings and he met all of my friends and my husband as well. This post, to me, makes it seem like I was always hanging on to Bob but there were many instances of me and my friends breaking off to do our own thing. My husband and Linda’s husband were both okay with us going to the airbnb at the time and later on met and got to know Bob too.
Each time we met, if I drank, I had 2 drinks and one time I had 3. I am not sure how Bob told these events to his GF so it may just be lost in translation but the only person who ever got drunk at a meet up was Maria and it was once. I do not agree with her stating that I was constantly drunk for each meet up or always asking/inviting myself to things.
He invited me and Linda to join his airbnb group (i asked if Maria could also join us), I did ask to join his group for another event until my friend group arrived (which included my husband, Linda, and Maria), and his friend invited me to the group dinner (Maria attended).
To this day, his GF has never said a word to me or Maria (she did not say hi, only waved to us), nor us her. When I offered to order and bring her cocktail from the bar, I believe Bob was the one who responded to my offer. I only found out about what she was thinking via this BORU post. Linda, Maria, and I haven’t talked to Bob since, this was a cathartic write with Maria as it is very jarring to randomly find a post about yourself and then also have someone find you from that post.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: There is always 2 sides to these stories: The jealous SO and the other person.

OOP: I think it was just bad communication but it seems that I was expected to somehow know she came to the final dinner to get to know me but all I knew was that (1) she rejected getting to know me in the past, citing she was uncomfortable, and (2) she did not try to talk to me or my friend at the dinner for the entire 3 hours we were all present together.

Commenter: Personally, I'd drop all communication with him and forget both of them even exist. Not worth the trouble they bring to your life.

OOP: That is what ended up happening. Bob was angry that I ignored his GF at the dinner but I thought it was a unspoken agreement to mutually ignore each other to avoid any awkwardness.

Commenter: For me, it was Bob agreeing that you were being inappropriate to the point that he called you and directly asked you to limit your contact with him.
You then rudely don't say hi to either of them at a dinner when everyone else does? Until you decide to tease Bob about the period you were his teacher?
I'm not shocked the gf and Bob were super uncomfortable with this situation

OOP: Sure that is a fair assessment. I said hi in both their directions because I did not want to address either one individually just in case it made them uncomfortable. I left the table to go to the bathroom and when I came back, they were there. Hindsight is 2020 and I can say that I should have talked to them since it is now clear she attended the dinner to meet me. I had thought not talking to them after Bob asked me to limit contact with him and not talk to his girlfriend was respecting their boundary. I am going to update my post though to note that I did not initiate those jokes. A guy at the table mentioned it first and I confirmed/ribbed his bit.

Commenter: May I ask your age and how long you've been married?
Do you think the drinks emboldened you to engage the other persons ribbing of Bob after you blatantly ignored him? Or was it your in to talk to Bob after he asked you to chill?

OOP: Not sure why you are downvoted but we were 26 at that time and I was engaged then. I refer to my husband as such because it seemed natural.
Like I explained in a separate comment, Bob and his girlfriend did not talk to me or Maria and we did not talk to them either. His girlfriend stayed by his side the entire time, and I wasn’t about to walk up to both of them and try to have a friendly conversation after knowing they are both uncomfortable with me. I thought it was a mutual unspoken ignoring of each other. They seemed to have a good time, and me and Maria had a good time. I didn’t know that they were offended
I didn’t talk to them until after I found the original Reddit post. As for engaging in the ribbing, that was a vibe the entire night. Just a good time with friends, sometimes poking fun at each other, but not seriously. Even at that point I still didn’t directly talk to Bob. I just acknowledged the joke, gesture towards Bob as I was speaking, and confirmed the joke a different person at the table made, and that was it.

​

I was friends with a girl in my dormitory and we hung out all the time. I am normally an introvert and prefer to do things on my own but I have never connected with someone as I connected with her. So we did stuff together all the time. One day we went out to a bar with a friend (21F) of hers and we all started dancing together. We were all drunk drunk. My close friend started to touching me while we were all dancing. I normally do not like being touched but I let it slide because she was my close friend. But then she started stroking my arm and back and before i knew it she was rubbing up against my privates with her hand. I pushed her arm away from me but minute later she was doing it again. I felt uncomfortable because not only did I just view her as a close friend, but she had a boyfriend (21M) who she is still with to this day. Not sure what to do I played along and we danced together the whole night. Later on in the night, I decided to drink more shots with my close friend's friend. I became very dizzy and while dancing with my close friend, I attempted to grab hold of her shoulder to tell her a funny joke. But I accidentally grabbed on to her left breast and I was squeezing it for a solid minute wondering why her shoulder was squishy. When I realized what i accidentally grabbed onto I immediately stopped and corrected my hand position to grab her shoulder. I felt very embarrassed but my close friend looked like she was having a good time and did not even bother to correct my hand position when I accidentally grabbed her breast. Not sure if she even noticed or not but it was clear that she was more sober than me at this time.
By the end of the night, my close friend's friend went back to her dorm and my close friend and I went back to my dorm. When we went back to my dorm I tried to confront her about what she did to me while she was drunk. I started off by showing her some pictures of us together and she commented saying she does not remember the first half of the night there. Realizing there is a possibility that she might not have remember toughing me, I decided to let it go. My reason being is because I did not want to make our friendship awkward and I did not want to make things awkward for her relationship with her boyfriend. But I did tell her that if she ever wanted to talk about stuff that she can trust me.
So for the next few weeks we started to become even closer and started to share personal information. However, one day I disclosed to her about a disability I have and she looked disgusted and left my dorm room before I finished my sentence. I was really shocked and upset by this so i decided to give her some time. But a couple days later I reached out to her again and I shared with her I felt like ending it all because I felt like shit and that was when she told me that she did not want to be friends anymore. I asked her if it was because we started to share personal stuff and she told me no and that she was grateful that I trusted her. But when I asked her if it was because of the disability she shoved me aside and walked away without answering.
I was upset by this and a few weeks go by before she showed up at my work, a dining hall. She bumped into me while I was at the utensil station and I decided to confront her because her behavior was odd. She got mad at me and walked away. Her bf then texted me to tell me to leave her alone forever and said that if I felt like ending myself and he and his girlfriend would not care. Hours later a police officer showed up to my class and did a wellness check. Apparently my ex close friend called the cops and told them I planned on ending myself after what her bf texted me. I then told the officer to check up on my ex close friend because something was off with her.
Later that night, that same officer came to my dorm room and told me that i should leave my ex close friend alone. I told him I did not plan on being her friend anymore after the way she treated me. But the next day I get notification from the school that put in place a no contact order (NCD) between my ex close friend and I. The NCD specifically stated that my ex close friend and I were not allowed to talk or touch each other and that was it. A NCD is only issued by a school and is not a real legal document so they cannot legally restrict anything else between us. And it only applies to the school. Apparently the day in which I approached her at my job loosely connected to stalking and my ex close friend reported me for it. The school offered to do an investigation to see if I was actually stalking her but she declined to do the investigation. But by rules the school has to offer a NCD solution if they suspect stalking, even if it does not fully meet the legal definition of stalking. My ex close friend accepted this offer which is why the mutual NCD was put into place.
A few weeks later I was packing my stuff and was going in and out of my dorm room to go to the trash. my ex close friend being only 5 dorms down from me reported me for violating the NCD. The RA's without questioned believed her and they took me into the office. They brought me into the office by approaching me and telling me that they were going to do a wellness check on me. But when I got to the office they told me that they we not actually doing a wellness check but instead were going to call the police for violating a supposed restraining order. I immediately got my mom on the phone to help me out and she threatened legal action against the RA's and hall directors that were there if they did not let me go. They then let me go back to my dorm room.
The next day I received a call from the school and they apologized for how the RA's and Hall Directors treated me unfairly and incorrectly. The school told me that they were all reprimanded and all had to be retrained on how to deal with situations like that. The school also told me that they were informed that it was a NCD and not an actual restraining order as my ex close friend told them.
Summer goes by and by the time fall semester begins, I realize that my ex close friend and I were in the same dormitory rooms again. I was shocked because I told my ex close friend while we were still friends that I was going to dorm in the same dormitory. I was able to pick my dormitory a month before anyone else due to my accommodation. Normally dormitory picks opened up after the NCD was issued between by ex close friend and I. Hence my shock as to why she decided to pick the same dormitory knowing very well that I was going to be there.
Early on in the fall semester I get an email from the new hall directory about me violating a restraining order. So I forward the email to the community standards so they can fill him in on what the NCD actually means. I was also informed by community standards that they were going to have a meeting with my ex close friend so they can inform her what the NCD actually means and what is and isn't appropriate to report. They also told me hat they were going to reprimand the RA again and the new hall directory and suggest that I report that RA to the head residential life because they believed he was being biased towards me for some reason. So I did just that.
A couple weeks go by and I thought everything was chill between us. But one day when I was at work I received an email stating that the whole dormitory smelled of skunk and that they recommended all students to open their windows to let the stink air out. I did not think much of it until my shift ended and i got back to my dorm room to open my window. Moments after I arrived back at my dorm a police officer arrived at my dorm and asked me if I caused the skunk smell. He told me that someone accused me of causing the smell I told him no and that I was at work the whole day he left. I immediately called my mom and she got so worried that it was my ex close friend's dirty tricks again that she called the cops and the officer told me that I had to come down to the station for questioning. Not sure what to do I hung up on him and contacted my uncle for help because he was good at talking with people and my mom was on a verge of having a panic attack. He was able to get the whole thing sorted out and told me that I did not have to go to the station.
The next day I went to the RA to ask him for more information. He told me that someone accused me of breaking into their dorm room in the middle of the night and planted a stink bomb. He did not tell me who the person was but we both already knew that it was my ex close friend. I left the RA office but that was when my ex close friend went to him. I found out about this interaction a week later, but apparently she started to tell him that I was in violation of a 100 feet rule of a restraining order and that was when he called the police. The police questioned her and they found no restraining order on file.
The next day after that I called community standards and told them everything that happened with the stink bomb allegation. They told me that they planned on doing an investigation into her for intentionally falsifying University information to get me in trouble. That was when I got myself an attorney to help me out.
The investigation lated over a month and in between the investigation called the cops on me agian and told them that I was not allowed to be in the dining hall the same time she was suppose to be there and that I was in violation of a restraining order. The officer then went into old complaints between us and saw that this is not the first time she had falsified information like this. The officer then told her that she cannot do that and went to my dorm room to inform me that she called the cops on me again. Let me remind you all again that she lived 5 rooms down form me and she was offered multiple times by residential life to move and she refused.
So next spring semester in order to reduce the amount of times the cops are called, they decided to put more restrictions between us so now we were only allowed to exit the building in the same exit and we also were not allowed to be in the dining hall together. And that if either one of us violated the NCD we would be forced to move to a different dormitory. Two days later I spotted her in my dining hall time slot. I immediately reported her to community standards for violating the NCD and they had a meeting with her the next day. They reprimanded her but they did not move her because she emailed them to tell them she would be dining during my dining hall time slot but she failed to give them enough time to look at the email to get back to her on if they would accept it or not. So as a result she was not moved.
More happened during the next few months but they did not amount to anything so I will skip towards the end.
Towards the end of the school I went to the communal restroom to get towels to clean up a spill. My ex close friend's bf was there on the phone. That was when he approached me and started to ask me a question on if I texted him or not. He showed me his phone and the text message was about someone accusing my ex close friend with sleeping with someone else. I told him no and I walked away and I reported him and my ex close friend to community standards. I forgot to mention that since he was dating my ex close friend, the NCD rules apply to him as well. Community standards met with them back and found my ex close friend guilty of violating the NCD. But they did not move her out because they said that it was too close to the end of the year to move her out and that they did not want to cause her any stress with finals approaching. This made me really upset because i finally thought the harassment would finally stop and that she would get what she deserved.
A few days goes by and I am at a concert that the school was hosting. During the concert I saw a foot swipped underneath me causing me to fall. When I fell, I twisted my ankle. That was when i looked up and saw that it was the bf of my ex close friend who had tripped me. My ex close friend was standing next to him. I got myself up and limped back to my dorm room. The next morning I went to the doctors and they determined I suffered a sprained ankle and foot. I reported my ex close friend and her bf to community standards and they launched an investigation.
However, they were unable to recover video footage from the concert and as a result, they were unable to determine if the bf had tripped me accidentally or not.
The next days after I went to the doctors, I got word from the hall directory that my ex close friend was accusing me of running around the whole dormatory and ripping off flyers she posted about an event she was hosting. I denied these accusaations and reported them to community standards. The hall directory was reprimended because there was no proof I had done that. I ended up going to the event that my ex close friend was hosting because they were handing out free food. I got up to the chocolate station and I started to grab a hand full of chocolate. That was when my ex close friend approached be and yelled at me to stop. I reported this to community standards but they found that she was not in violation of the NCD because even though she talked to me, she did as her role as a club president. Apparently the rule was you were only allowed to take one chocolate bar at a time, not a hand full.
A few weeks after this we both graduated and the NCD was lifted. I am disappointed that they did not move her out of the dormitory. Not going to go into new specifics but stuff is not over between me and my school because i was disappointed on how they handled the situation. In total I had the police called on me 8 times and was reported over 40 times to the school for stuff I did not do. But fortunately I was able to graduate with a clean record.
However even though my ex close friend was reprimanded for violating the NCD and it is now on her permanent record, I feel as if justice was not served.
What should I do? Was this whole situation my fault? Any opinions are much appreciated. I started to attend group therapy because of this experience. Also sorry for not writing every single situation that happened because it would have turned this post into a novel if I had and I do not have that energy lol.

TL:DR A quick suggestion / tips and tricks for each stratagem for new players to speed up how fast they get used to all the weapons.

It seems to me that many weapons get some lack-luster first impressions as people need time to find the right playstyle for a weapon. Opening a new warbonds can be a mess the first day but can be much more loved by end of the week as players sort them out. But we have many to buy at this point already. For new players here is a guide for the existing weapons prior to the Viper Commando Warbond.

Primary Weapons
Assault Rifles: Use through level 4 to your hearts content. After that, trade up. Unless you are showing off your skills at running basic kit at high levels. (Don’t do that please)
- Liberator Penetrator – First time you run into armor? Go ahead and shoot the armor.
- Liberator Concussive – You think it was explosive, it isn’t. Move on.
- Adjudicator – Aim and clear bugs and small bots while your team sprays and prays everywhere. Use short bursts.
Submachine Guns: Use with the ballistic shield. Seriously, they are made to pair and you are a boss with that shield until level 7 or so.
- Defender – Don’t hold fire unless you are good at aiming. Keep a bead on your target.
- Pummeler – Assist teammates, stun the trouble target, let them kill things, you keep stunning that trouble thing in short bursts.
Shotguns: This is the way. Take these into Bugs at any level, into Bots until later levels.
- Punisher – You want to feel methodical and choose to kill what you kill. Guard dog Rover kills the small guys, you are picking off warriors and limbs from brood commanders.
- Slugger – You want to snipe, but you don’t like keeping distance. Aim for bot heads.
- Breaker – You already switched to this on bugs long ago. Keep spraying everything. Try to hit the same area on your target. Spreading damage means more ammo spent to kill, especially on berserkers.
- Breaker Incendiary – Bugs, all levels. DON’T use like Breaker. Hit wide, one shot then swing to next part of group. Let the fire do damage over time. Shoot from farther away so bugs don’t get to you before they burn to death. You can coat whole major bugs nests with one mag and kill most bugs this way.
- Breaker Spray and Pray – You already do this, you shouldn’t be doing this with the other breakers but you do. Use on 6 or lower bug levels to clear the small guys, especially the tiny hunter babies. Don’t let their cuteness trick you.
Marksman rifles: You don’t have the AMR yet. Or you want to take too many other strategems on low level bots.
- Diligence – Shoot things at a distance. Aim for the head of bots.
- Diligence Counter Sniper – You don’t want to shoot so many times at the same target. Aim for the head of bots.
Energy Weapons : Some of the best in the game if you maintain your calm and situational awareness.
- Scythe – The future of cheese knives is amazing. There isn’t a lot of brie on the battlefield though.
- Sickle – You loved assault rifles but always ran low on ammo. Aim for the heads, keep near cover so you can cool down, plan for bursts of fire. You are not holding the line like a turret. Have a handy secondary and grenade.
- Scorcher – You finally got the best all purpose bot primary. You then blew yourself up a dozen times. Don’t spam, take your quarter second to aim and clear out the bots. Striders in two shots to the top. Tanks to the heat sinks. Also hulks, cannons, etc. Stud grenade and you are a hulk killing machin- hulk killing human. In a pinch even gunships, but you’ll need a bunch of ammo.
- Punisher Plasma – You hated it at first, hard to aim and didn’t kill the devastators like the grenade launcher would. Then you learn it’s a team game. One shot can stagger an entire patrol. Kills all the little bots and gives 2 seconds for teammates to open fire. Time your shots to keep the enemy literally off balance. Go practice on a lower level for a bit.
- Blitzer – You want a mini-gun. There isn’t one yet. Load up the shield, heavy armor and save your teammates from bug breaches. Get some high ground and aim a little above the enemies. This keeps your line of sight clear of things that block the arcs. Other that that just keep blasting and slowly retreat as needed. You are a one-diver army, until a spewer sneaks up behind you. Coordinate with teammate to have your back.
Explosive: Because Eagle-1 is overworked and you need more BOOM!
- Dominator – This is explosive? You’ll like it against bots at lower levels. Aim for the head.
- Eruptor – Completely changes the dynamic of the game. Now your support needs to be your primary. Stalwart and Machine Gun pair amazingly. Was truly a great weapon to mix up the game. Shame it isn’t as strong anymore. Still fun at < 7.
- Exploding Crossbow – You want to play a skyrim game. If they release a melee weapon then you can make your role playing build. Until then, just don’t.

Secondary Weapons
- Peacemaker – It’s good. You just haven’t gotten a better one yet. Use when only two hunters are left and you don’t have time to reload your primary.
- Redeemer – Stalkers are coming and you want to kill them in one clip. One of the most powerful weapons in terms of dps to low armor things. But you don’t get to shoot for long.
- Grenade Pistol – Great for bug holes and Bot factories. Once you have good primaries use this. No need to waste your regular grenades.
- Verdict – You wanted a better Peacemaker. You found it. Good back up if using slow primary and slow support. But why are you doing that unless you have a good team?
- Senator – If you are a boss then this is the gun for you. Go all Dirty Harry on the bots. Pairs well with ballistic shield. Take the time to aim.
- There’s another? Naa, I don’t think so.


Strategem
Support: The key to taking on the big ones, the tough ones and the important ones.
- Stalwart – If your primary is slow and explodes then you need a Stalwart for the massive fire times.
- Machine Gun – You got this at the start. It was great until things walk up and kill you while reloading. If you are good with your primary then this is fun to use on the surprise big patrols. Then finish what’s left with primary, then reload.
- Heavy Machine Gun – Lower the fire rate, aim in first person, and toss a stun grenade to take out all the bots with short bursts. You’ll have far more bot killing power than anything else, if you get good. Otherwise you’re out of ammo and dead and don’t seem to have killed much.
- Anti-Materiel Rifle – The jet pack is your friend to find high ground. Stay 100m from your team and cover them. Mark all the targets, pick off the rocket devastators to protect your team right as they get spotted. Or use screen crosshairs and 3^rd person fire it to WAY too much effect close up. What do I know.
- Railgun – You want to join in but are months late. You do you though.
- Expendable Anti-Tank – Best all purpose anti-heavy. Share with team. Call in constantly in advance. You should be calling more in. You should be calling one in RIGHT NOW!
- Recoilless rifle – If you can play Bullfighter with Chargers then go with Quasar. If you want to bash them in the face the moment you see them then go Recoilless. Hang slightly back in a fight, use cover to reload, make sure nothing is aggro on you. If by some crazy chance there are two of you (or you get someone to carry a spare backpack called in) you can pump out insane destruction against big bugs on later levels with team assist.
- Quasar Cannon – You don’t want to stop running around but want to kill big things. Thanks to infinite ammo, the Quasar is the most generally useful weapon for big things (structures included). As long as you have the time. Insult the abdomen of a charger’s mother and then jump sideways at the last second. Immediately start charging the weapon and you should need to shoot right as they face you. Everything else, stand back and shoot the weak points.
- Autocannon – Best for bots, still great for bugs. Take a quarter second to re-aim after each shot. Clears groups, crushes medium enemies, staggers everything. Takes out cannons, gun ships, tanks; just hit the weak points with a few shots. Never use the tenth shot, just reload at 9, fire one at more enemies, then reload again. If you have someone reloading you then full auto and take down a hillside of spewers before they reach your Evac.
- Spear – You are good at drawing lines of sight. Keep distance, get high ground and lay waste to targets from far outside their range. Most likely you’ll be too close, unable to lock on and need to simply have a good primary to kill the horde while your teammate kills the Bile Titan with a quasar or recoilless.
- Airburst Rocket Launcher – You still find accidentally wiping out your team hilarious. Only aim far away. Good for removing most of a patrol before they know you exist, then kill the rest with your shotgun. Aim just above the enemy so it BURSTS IN THE AIR.
- Grenade Launcher – It will blow your socks off, a few times. Bring the supply pack to reload yourself and go crazy. Extremely powerful when you can spam like this. Practice aiming at lower levels first.
- Flamerthrower – Bugs only. Stop walking forward or wear the shield. Get a little high ground or level at least and sweep the street. Let burn damage kill the small things while you spray the bigger guys in the face. Target the leg of the charger, not the face.
- Laser Cannon – “Stay on target. Stay On Target!” Once you learn to hold on target it is very powerful against bots weak points.
- Arc Thrower – Best weapon to kill your team with accidentally. Once you learn to aim you can kill so many enemies. Then you realize you just sit there slow firing and it’s boring. Stand on high ground, aim above the enemy a little, avoid having teammates in a 45degree arc in front of you.

Orbital Strategems: Generally feel slower and less useful than the eagle early on. Once you get good at NOT fighting every enemy then they become much better.
- Precision Strike – You want to call in a magic death spell. If you get good leading your target, or baiting Titans into spewing then you can kill most anything.
- Air Burst – Suppress bug holes so you can reload and regroup.
- 120MM HE Barrage – Use to wipe out bases when you sneak up on Bot Factories or objectives. Not for use in the field generally.
- 380 MM HE Barrage – You wanted to add more Boom to someones 120MM. It’s pretty, but not going to get everything and not enough in the time you need to be shot dead. Stealth base bombardment only.
- Walking Barrage – Great for bases. You don’t have to get as close as you don’t need to center your barrage on the base. Great for stealth base missions.
- Laser – Get out of Jail Free Card. It’s an objective assistance stratagem. Good for clearing a base, or clearing the field when you get over your head. Save one for Evac.
- Railcannon Strike – If you know how to shoot the Bile Titan sacs first then this will finish them off. And takes out most everything else. Throw towards the big thing and don’t look back.
- Gattling Barrage – You want it to clear everything out. It doesn’t. Throw at bug breaches and bot drops to rough them up first.
- Gas Strike – The sweet smell of Democracy. Toss on bug breaches, or narrow paths. Don’t walk in. You’ll never see the death it causes, and that’s the point.
- EMS Strike – A long lasting stun grenade. Use the +2 grenade armor instead.
- Smoke Strike – If you have 3 friends with headsets, and are way too high difficulty for your level then use this to escape when the bots are pinning you all down because you keep shooting at every enemy.
Eagle Strategems: Easier and faster than Orbital strikes. Great when you are fighting everything and need lots of constant firepower.
- Strafing Run – You want to shoot thing but need a bigger gun. Your angel in the sky will let you know what it feels like.
- Airstrike – This is good at everything. Hard on titan and charger, but great all-around destruction. Watch where your allies are.
- Cluster bomb – When you want to kill everything small. (Note, you are small). Get out ahead with it. Hit those bugs before they charge at you.
- Napalm Strike – Because you want to watch alien worlds burn. Great for bug suppression, if you are good with airstrike aim and flames.
- Smoke Strike – Just, just move along.
- 110MM Rocket Pods – If you can beat up a heavy a little your angel will finish them off.
- 500kg bomb – Bait a Bile Titan into spewing, make sure to drop the bomb just before to time it right as the titan stands up. Also, have destroyed the sacs while spewing. Any other use, just drop it on the things head.

Supply Packs: Not the ones that come with weapons.
- Guard Dog Rover – Your happy drone friend. It has your back and keeps those mosquitoes away. Don’t let yourself or an ally ever be between it and a bug. Move accordingly in advance.
- Guard Dog – There is a reason the other one gets mentioned first. Forget this one, everyone else does.
- Jump Pack – Use with AMR to get great sniping positions. Use with Flamethrower to retreat to reload. Use for cinematic moments. Be aware you will fail to make a jump to a ledge most the time, hang out in air awkwardly then drop down. General Brasch recommends refiling your C-01 permit afterwards as you will need to be found deserving again.
- Supply Pack – Great when your team still sprays ammo everywhere. Be the buddy helping everyone else. Or just refill your grenade launcher and machine gun WAY past intended capacity.
- Shield Generator Pack – The “Get Good” pack. New difficulties need practice, use it to get the hang of things. Once you do you can take it off and use another stratagem.
- Ballistic Shield Backpack – Walk up to bots and shoot them in the face. Pair with Senator / submachine guns on missions where you need to run SSHDs to places.

Vehicles: Mech Suits for the Decerning Lady and Gentleman.
- Mech suits are OBJECTIVE ASSISTANCE strategems. They provide overwhelming fire support for short term. Great when you just open up and lay waste to an objective. Don’t plan to use it the whole mission.
- Patriot – For bug clearing, the missile aim is borked at present, unless it’s level and farther away.
- Emancipator – Great for Bugs and Bots. Target the legs of chargers, and the sacs then foreheads of Titans. Anything else, stager your fire to save ammo, or double fire to hit heavies.
Defense: Turrets are great when placed properly. They are NOT BOMBS that go into the enemies.
- Tesla Tower – Fun at lower levels to kill your friends that don’t realize how far to stand back. Otherwise, great as clearing weaker bugs while you target bigger bugs with something powerful.
- Mortar – Kill your friends and yourself when enemies get near you. Great if dropped on a hill 70m away from targets and you are able to keep them at bay.
- EMS Mortar – Safer, allows you to disable enemies to pick them off. Still place 70m from targets ideally.
- Machine Gun Sentry – Weak and slow. You’ll get better ones.
- Gatling – Drop ahead of you when running from hordes. Lands right as you walk by and keeps your back safe. Against bugs, throw 50m to the side and don’t get between it and them.
- Anti-personnel Minefield – Your team are the only “persons” on the battlefield. Why are you trying to take yourselves out?
- Incendiary Mines – Okay, at least it’s fun burning some bugs with you as you die.
o In both minefield cases place far enough way towards direction of enemy spawns to be safe, and to fill narrow paths. An okay use around Evac.
- Shield Generator Relay – No one expects the shield. Great when you need a little cover to reload in open spaces. Don’t use energy weapons inside it. Don’t plan on having the whole fight in it either. Use it for a moment, then run and use it as a wall to find new cover.
- HMG Emplacement – This is the gun you wanted all along. When your team runs in, you run sideways to find a hilltop. Drop it while facing the enemy to save turning time. Then slaughter everything. Bots will hit you with missiles eventually. Best on spewer maps.
- Autocannon Sentry – When you have one quasar user but still need to kill many heavies. If placed 70m out, and you burn all the small things, then this will lay waste to chargers and even titans. Throw napalm at bugs, drop this behind you, act to distract anything from charging the turret.
- Rocket Sentry – Nice straight line shots. Some at the air. Otherwise use autocannon sentry.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk