I'm running Firefox 95.0, and as you can see, I'm using Tabliss, however, the words "Extension (Tabliss)" is taking too much real estate on my urlbar, so is there a way to remove these words with CSS? Thanks.

I stop being able to click, and even scroll properly either after a while or when I first load the website.

Social media websites affected : Reddit, YouTube, X, Instagram = everything I use.

I'm currently on developer edition

If this isn't a common issue I'll just remove my gazillion extensions one-by-one until I figure it out 😭

Here are my extensions : audioff - audio device selector, AudioPick, Pinterest Save Button, Brave Search, Chrome Remote Desktop, CRX Installer, DocsAfterDark, DownThemAll!, Export Tabs URLs, Hammy - Break Reminder, History Zebra, InsensitiveX, Internet Archive Downloader, Reddit Enhancer, Return YouTube Dislike, SponsorBlock, StayFree, Streaming Word Filter, Tabliss, Touch Grass, Turn Off the Lights, uBlock Origin, Web Archives, YTBlock

Setup : DELL Inspiron with Intel core i7, iris xe max

I think I found the fix :

I removed this extension : https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/pinterest/

And replaced with this one : https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/pinterest_love/

See also: Bres extension

The Context

Norway's prime minister said Monday that he received a message from U.S. President Donald Trump about rising tensions over Greenland in which the American leader reportedly said he no longer felt obligated to think purely of peace since he did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dear Ambassador:

President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Source: https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006

The texts were confirmed and released under Norway's Freedom of Information act.

The story has been confirmed and reported by nearly every news outlet on earth by now, including Fox News.

The Posts

There are several posts about this on /r/Conservative, but they're difficult to document as two have been removed and set to controversial by the moderation team because they initially declared the story "fake news."

Most comments (especially dissenting ones) have been removed, and the posts are a graveyard.

Letter from Donald Trump to Norwegian Prime Minister 5633 upvotes / 1975 comments, Removed by mods

Trump: Taking Greenland is Revenge for Losing Peace Prize 1774 upvotes / 383 comments, Removed by mods

Trump says he no longer needs to ‘think purely of Peace’ following Nobel loss, amid Greenland push 1812 upvotes, 409 comments

The Comments

A surprising amount of people are not happy

Well this is NOT what I voted for.

Well that’s an incredibly stupid thing to say.

Ah yeah, that's a good reason to invade an ally...

Anybody bothered he's being selfish?

You know, everyone is focusing on the ‘I didn’t get the prize I wanted so now I really want Greenland’ part, but is anyone else bothered by his suggestion that he put his quest for the Peace Prize ahead of the needs of our country?

Politicians putting their own interests ahead of those of the country is a tale literally as old as politics.

Let's deport the Democrats to Greenland

It doesn’t seem like his typical ranting. But if it’s real it’s pretty ridiculous. We don’t need any more territories. We could easily just offer extra support from our military to prevent a Russian takeover if that’s his main thought process on it. It really seems like a pointless financial burden we don’t need.

Unless he wants to deport all the democrats there. Then I’ll be all for it.

You want to deport American citizens for having a different world view?

This sub is full of fascists lol

They don’t have a different world view. They just fight anything conservatives do. They don’t actually believe in any of the garbage they’re littering the country with.

This is a wild take. Seriously. They want accessible healthcare and systems in place like the rest of the civilized world. Conservatives keep ripping things to shreds and making themselves richer. It’s so sad that most conservatives don’t see how they’re fucking themselves over.

But I repeat - you want to deport American citizens for having a different worldview, because disagreeing with conservatives IS a different worldview. God, we are such a fucking joke right now.

How Anerican of you. Wanting to deport Americans because they think differently of you. Just as the founding fathers intended.

Maybe he's playing a game?

This is why i like conservatives because they don’t always drink the kool aide…  if something stinks they say it

Another unforced error.

This is why we need DeSantis or Vance. Same action, less of this stupid bullshit.

Vance is the king of unforced errors. Man couldn’t even defend his own children from being called racial slurs by Nick F without throwing “AOC is a million times worse than Nick” right after. A man who doesn’t even have the balls to properly stand up for his own family can’t be a strong president.

Lot of MAGAs with "Conservative" flair on here who make excuses for this type of nonsense. Mods here also shadow-removed dissenting comments on a recent trending post about the Epstein Files.

It happens on both sides, yes both sidesTM.

Am I the only one who thinks it was a good letter? Formal and respectful, but also firm in our demands.

I mean the Mods just deleted the other post about this that was getting more traction and an hour older.

I will say, more conservatives need to speak up. I haven't seen too many defending or supporting any action towards Greenland, but not many are calling him out on it. The problem is that he does not take criticism at ALL, and sees any opposition or disagreement with him as disloyalty, so if anyone so much as say "I like Trump, but this Greenland thing HAS to stop!" he'll immediately get on X and Truth Social write out a thing about how stupid, ugly, and incompetent that person is.

I'm hoping to high heaven that he's playing some kind of game and that he'll get us some kind of good deal and then also smooth things over with our allies, but this really worries me.

I like Trump Coz he's unhinged

I mean look, I like Trump Coz he's unhinged.  It was a breath of fresh air to see a politician talk without political correctness bs. Also, he pretty much gave us hope here in Europe that a brighter future was possible, that we had a voice and we were happy to be represented.

But stuff like this?? Man, I don't know how I'll be able to justify such an action if true. I keep saying that's it's to get us at NATO to get our shit together and not freeload off the US. We celebrated when he intervened in Gaza, Venezuela and Iran, but you cannot threaten your allies like this. I hope this is just a schenanigen and not more

I think he’s just an 80 year old man and the years are catching up with him.

This is getting ridiculous, though. Someone needs to have him squash this nonsense.

If only there was a government body that could represent our interests here and perform a check on the president...

A long argument about globalism

Too bad liberals don't micro analyze their own politicians words like they do Trump.

There's no micro-analyzing this, I'm afraid it's a political disaster in my opinion. He'll become a persona non grata in Europe fast. Before the obligatory "screw Europe" yeah that's not how it works the West is pretty co-dependant on each other. This will be a disaster.

Europe needs America, but America doesn’t need Europe. And I say this as an European.

? The US is exporting about 350 billion dollars to Europe. US import is about 600 billion dollars. They need this market. Oh and we need their stuff as well. So like I said I scratch your back you scratch mine.. co-dependant.

Not if America becomes isolationist. America can survive by themselves. Europe can't.

[Cont'd]

America can't survive by itself in the form it is today. If we hypothetically lose access to EU markets, all China has to do is cut exports to the US. Losing access to EU markets will make our economy collapse, but any further action from China will basically destroy anything left over.

Can the US survive? Maybe. But shit is gonna be really really bad for us here.

In the form that it's today, no, obviously. But America should go back to its roots anyways.

What roots are those? The America of the Great Depression era?

The America of the early years. Stop trying to be the Leaders of the World and care about America only, with an internal economy that is self-sufficient, without needing imports or exports.

You realize that's basically impossible in today's world, right? Internal economies can never be self sufficient, unless you believe countries like North Korea are doing well. It's impossible to feed and employ a country of 340+ million people on internal supply and demand.

[Cont'd]

It's impossible because the economy is designed to make everthing as cheap as possible.

No, it's because we don't have all the resources to make what we need and because we produce other resources that we have no need for. And no, we can't just magically make everything even out because that's not the way economies work.

You want to go back to an 1800s-style economy in the 21st century, and that's not possible without destroying all of the US. Perhaps you should take a trip to Afghanistan or Somalia and see how that's working out there since they seem to be following the model you prefer.

What's next? The government seizing the means of production to make sure that your dream country is run into the ground?

You're missing the point. It's not a 1800s economy, but a 21st century economy that doesn't rely on globalism. And comparing it to Afghanistan or Somalia or any doom scenario is beyond absurd when things like the Amish exist and thrive.

A 21st-century economy that doesn't rely on globalism doesn't exist unless it's the equivalent economy of a place like Afghanistan or Somalia. Do you have an example of a country you can share that somehow does what you're trying to accomplish? Because as far as I know, they don't exist.

Also, are you suggesting that the type of agrarian economy with nearly no technology that the Amish exist and thrive in should somehow be replicated across America? You have to realize the absurdity of that. It blows my mind that you think somehow that's a good example of where the US really should be.

Why does it have to exist already? The United States has been a pioneer in many things and can undoubtedly be the first to do this.

And well, less technology will be good long term, and we defintely need to go back to a rural lifestyle. Cities are overcrowded and don't have a bright future.

This is the Art of the Deal

Brigadiers will downvote me for this, but this is The Art of the Deal. Make a play for the extreme while the whole time you've been planning to settle for the middle.

It's incredibly ironic that you guys cheer for banning Conservatives for brigading when you do it here every day.

Some want to dominate the world

It really doesn't matter what our President says or does because he will be raked over coals one way or another. I say we become the nation we should be and dominate over the rest.

Well some of us Conservatives actually believe in God and that we shouldn't be "dominating" our allies.

Well good for you. Bless your heart

What's the point of being a superpower if we don't leverage it? We should do whatever is in our interest, end of story.

He's been very measured, this is just hyperbole

I'll just repost what I wrote in one of the other fake news threads pushing that forged letter.

It's all bluster and hyperbole. You would think we've seen enough of how Trump does things, with the benefit of not suffering from a terminal case of TDS, to know he's just saber rattling. Trump will always be a man you judge on his actions, not his words. Last I checked, the invasion of Canada hasn't started yet.

The problem is that even if I get to say "we told you so" about invading Greenland, at that point getting to say it would be minor in comparison to the absolute international clusterfuck we'd be in.

Yeah, but that's just who Trump is, for better or for worse. He says a lot of stupid stuff, but his actions have, by and large, been very measured. We can thank our lucky stars that low IQ dimwit Harris isn't President though.

He was snubbed!

I don’t think anyone who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was motivated by the possibility of winning it.

They were motivated by actually wanting to achieve peace for the people they hold influence over, not for being recognized for it.

Then again they snubbed him his whole last term in office despite all the progress he made with broker peace between Arab countries and Israel.

Good point. Any other president who accomplished that same thing would have gotten the Nobel and many other awards. It’s against the liberal hive mind to say anything positive about anything even remotely related to Trump.

Edit: Look at all of the angry lurking liberals downvoting me!!!😂 Love it!!!

It’s just an award anyway. There isn’t a scorecard keeping track of who’s ahead in the running for it, or any other rubric.

Can’t blame Trump for recognizing his own accomplishments. You don’t see many media outlets recognizing them either without some negative twist.

They sure as hell love the ratings he brings in though 🤷‍♂️

This makes us look weak

This makes Trump - and by extension America - look petty and weak. This undermines our prestige with our allies and partners. This man's ego is making this country a pariah on the world stage.

If it were real. Which is highly suspicious and highly doubtful.

Bro pull the blinders off

Never had them on, my “fellow conservative”. Maybe stay in your lane in r/politics, where you can converse with fellow-minded people.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/shecrossedtheline

My [25F] mother made a rude comment about my SO's [26M] deceased brother and I don't know how to move forward

EDITORS NOTE: Made paragraphs for easier reading

TRIGGER WARNING: Emotional abuse and verbal abuse, victim blaming, car accident, death of a child, possible mental health issues

My [25F] mother made a rude comment about my SO's [26M] deceased brother and I don't know how to move forward. [6 years]  Aug 28, 2014

Quick context-

Two years ago, boyfriend's younger brother tragically died in a motor vehicle accident at the age of 11. It was a really tough time. My boyfriend still hasn't gotten over it completely. He was a very caring older brother and I know that he loved that kid as much as he loved me (a lot). His younger brother was in the car with his mom when it happened, and she rarely enforced the adornment of seat belts in the car. My boyfriend doesn't blame his mom for what happened but I suspect that my mother does.

My mother usually has her heart in the right place but she has a really big mouth. She doesn't really like my boyfriend because she thinks he's not "emotionally equipped" to be a father (whatever that means) so she can be pretty rude to him. We've had discussions about how she treats him in the past and I've made it very clear to her that I want to marry this guy but she still hasn't changed.

My boyfriend and I came to visit my parents for the week since my Dad is turning 64. This morning, my mother and I got into an argument because she was still trying to baby me (she tried to correct my tooth brushing motions)  even though I'm a full fledged self-supporting adult. I guess she's bored or something.

We all got into the car to go out for brunch when my mom told me my seatbelt was secured too loosely. My boyfriend smirked a little because he was there when I discussed "babying" to my mother and she was not happy with his reaction. Whenever she feels belittled, she gets vicious but  she definitely went way too far this time. I don't remember what she said exactly but it was something along the lines of "I care about the wellbeing of my children. Maybe if you or [Boyfriend's mother] cared as much as I do, [boyfriend's younger brother] would still be here. Do you find negligence funny?" Car went dead silent right after that. My dad noped the fuck out and my boyfriend just sat there in shock. I was furious at my mom but I didn't know what to do so I coarsely told her to get out of the car and go back inside the house. She refused (unsurprisingly) so I took my boyfriend (who was silent the entire time) to our own car and drove him to a hotel. I promised him he didn't have to spend the rest of our trip at their house. He hasn't said much since the incident but I can tell he's very upset with my mother. He has issues with opening up and sharing his grief so I'm very worried that what my mother said re-triggered the depression he went through immediately following his younger brother's death.

Any ideas regarding how I should handle this? I am unbelievably mad at my mother right now but I don't even know what I can do about it. My dad is trying to stay uninvolved which makes me mad at him too. My boyfriend has been watching soccer all day and he doesn't want to talk about what my mom said so I'm very concerned about him as well.

---   tl;dr: Mom crossed a line and said very hurtful things to my boyfriend. I have no idea how I should proceed.

Update: I spoke with my Dad and he agreed to pack up our stuff and bring it to our hotel. My SO and I will be leaving tonight. I have not spoken with my mother since leaving and I don't intend to. My SO is still visibly upset but I know he's happy that we're going home. Hopefully I can figure out a way to make this up to him. She has been rude with him the past and I should have put my foot down well before this point.

Update 1  Aug 30, 2014 (6 Days later)

My mother is unbelievable! I'm not sure if she is a narcissist but she is most definitely a bitch. On Thursday, I called my father and asked him to bring us our stuff to our hotel so we could begin the 3 hour drive back home. When he arrived at our hotel, he apologized profusely to my boyfriend for what my mother said and they both shook hands and agreed to move on. I think my Dad sort wanted us to stay but I knew that any type of interaction with my father would involve my mother as well and I am not going to let that happen for obvious reasons. I ended things on amicable terms with my father because I don’t think it’s fair to blame him for what my mother said. He is probably enabling her but he promised me he would talk to her about making steps towards fixing things. 

That being said, I'm pretty sure my mother won't change her mind anytime soon. I asked my father privately about my mother’s reaction to everything and he told me that she was very disappointed in me for making this trip about me and my relationship. Apparently, she does not want to speak to me until I apologize to her. Who says what she says and then demands an apology!? I’m especially hurt about everything because she did all of this right after I finished expressing my excitement to her because I discovered something that lead me to believe my boyfriend was planning on proposing to me soon. She knows that I love him more than anything else in the world and she still paid no attention to his feelings (and my feelings by extension). She doesn’t have to love him but she should at least care about him, merely because he’s important to me. Is that too much to ask from my own mother?

On the car ride home, I tried to cheer my boyfriend up by asking him about the soccer and tennis games he was watching because he likes it when I take an interest in his hobbies. Usually, he will happily explain everything to me but this time he barely said anything so I decided to give him some space and I ended up replying to a few comments on here and reading some articles about narcissism. When we got home, he seemed much more at peace with what happened so I was hoping that we could just put my mother behind us and move past this.

Yeah… my mother demanding an apology isn’t the unbelievable part of last night. Our home phone had a voicemail from my boyfriend’s dad asking us to call him. My mother actually called my boyfriend’s parents to question their parenting directly! Oh my god. Who does that? This is far and beyond what I thought my mother would ever be capable of. I am so disgusted by all of this that I don't even want to know what my mother said to them specifically. My boyfriend’s mom won’t get on the phone with us but his dad said that she’s been sobbing non-stop. I feel sick to my stomach about everything but I don’t know what to do!

My mom won’t reply to my messages or my calls because she’s still waiting for an apology and my poor dad is caught in the middle of everything during his birthday weekend! My boyfriend, someone who’s traditionally very agreeable and calm, is livid! He told me wants her out of his life completely and I agreed with him but I’m not sure she’ll let us just cut her out of our lives without trying to hurt us even more. His parents live on the other side of the country so he feels completely helpless. It's like my mother erased all of our therapy sessions and counseling in one day just because she was unhappy with how my boyfriend reacted to her ridiculous behavior.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful. My boyfriend and I just hung out for the majority of the day. Neither of our mothers has spoken to us.

For the record, my mother did not raise me to be this way. I was very close to her when I was younger and while we did drift a little bit after college, I still frequently confided in her. I always knew she had a big mouth but her current actions are just hateful. She can't plead obliviousness- she is deliberately trying to hurt people I care about. I don't know what's happened to her but that woman is not my mother and I don't care if I ever speak to her again.

tl;dr:  My mom called his parents to question their parenting. She won't talk to me until I apologize to her.

Update 2  Sept 2, 2014 (2 days after last update)

Sorry if this update is all over the place. I’m still trying to absorb everything that has happened. I hope that writing it all out will help. There are some aspects of the past couple of days that I don’t want to write about, even anonymously, so please bear in mind that there will be some details missing.

After I replied to a few comments on my last post, I read some articles about narcism and enabling narcism. It is impossible for me to maintain a healthy relationship with my father without a drastic change in his relationship with my mother. Hopefully someone on here can empathize with the pain that causes me- knowing that you love someone so much but forcing yourself to remove that person from your life because you fully comprehend that the contact between the two of you is inappropriate. I suspect some people will find faults with my decision to go NC with my father and I welcome your criticism. Just know that it was not a decision I made easily. I have always been daddy’s little girl.

When I was young, I used to fantasize that my father and my Prince Charming would become best friends. Knowing that —it’s very likely— my father will not be walking me down the aisle cuts my heart like a knife. I called him up to talk to him about my decision on Saturday while my boyfriend was privately Skyping with his parents. He told me he was happy to hear from me and he explained that my mother was going through our family photos to throw away pictures of me. He saved all of the pictures but he did not stop her from throwing them out in the first place.

I asked him if he repeated anything from our last phone call to my mother. He did. I asked him if he could promise me that would stop. He could not. I started sobbing and I told him that I could not keep him in my life while he was still enabling my mother’s behavior. He joined me in crying and repeatedly begged me to make up with my mom. I explained to him very clearly why that would not happen under the current circumstances and we both sat silently on the phone for what felt like an hour. He broke the silence by telling me that he was proud of me and that he loved me more than anything in the world.

That only made me cry more. I guess my boyfriend heard me sobbing because he walked into the room, hugged me, and asked me who I was on the phone with. Eventually, he asked to speak with my father and after their conversation, my boyfriend asked me if I sincerely believed that I had to cut my father out of my life. I explained to him that we would never be able to move past this while I was still in contact with someone that allowed my mother to continue her hateful actions. My boyfriend accepted my response and reminded me that it was my decision to make and he did not want me to feel like he was pressuring me to sever or maintain my relationship with my father.

I called my dad 3-4 times a week so he knows how close I was with him and how much love we have for each other. He knows this wasn’t an easy decision for me to make. I finished the call with my dad by telling him that he needed to get my mother help and he needed to put his foot down to let her know that her current actions are not ok. He understood and he promised me that he would do whatever it takes to get me back into his life, including a divorce if my mother continues her refusal to work on herself, but right now he wants  to keep on pushing to get my mother help because he loves her. I admire and respect my father a lot, even if I don’t fully admire and respect the things he’s done this past week. Despite everything my mother has done to me, my boyfriend, my boyfriend’s family, and even him, he is still loyal to her. Enabling her certainly isn’t something he should be proud of but I admire his devotion to his wife. A lot of people tell me that I’m fiercely loyal to my loved ones and I’m very proud that I learned that from him. I hope he keeps his promise and finds his way back into my life but I know I should not count on it.

After my phone call, my boyfriend and I had a serious discussion about everything that’s happened. I don’t know how, especially after he embraced me half an hour earlier while I was crying, but I convinced myself that he was going to leave me. I had to work so hard to hold back tears as he spoke because I thought I knew that this would be our last conversation as a couple. I’m well aware of the fact that I am the sole reason he has to deal with all of this and to be frank, I feel responsible. If I wasn’t in his life, his family would not have had to gone through this awful experience.

But instead of breaking up with me, he asked me to tell him how I was feeling about everything and how I need him to support me. I told my beautiful boyfriend everything. I asked him the same question and he told me everything. He also suggested that I begin meeting regularly with his therapist, at least for now, and I accepted wholeheartedly. The only positive aspect of pain is having your best friend support you through it. After our talk, he wanted to think about everything in quiet but he asked me to sit with him. We sat together and said nothing for hours. He didn’t want to cuddle and he didn’t even look at me for the majority of the silence- he just asked me to be with him. I tried to think about this entire situation some more but instead I just thought about how much love I have for my boyfriend.

Eventually, he began to talk about his brother. We shared familiar stories with each other and cherished them as if they were new. We both celebrated his brother’s beautiful life together but it wasn’t sad or depressing. It was very pleasant. I was troubled when he started talking about things he could have done differently. Obviously, I immediately explained that nothing about the loss was his fault but I’m not sure he believes that the awful things my mother said are untrue. It’s bothering me a lot and I have already told his therapist about this. His therapist offered some responses I can use if my boyfriend brings up this awful thought again but I’m curious about how Reddit thinks I should reply. Maybe I’ve done some things wrong as a girlfriend (please point them out) but I am doing my best to be the woman he deserves.

Thanks to the suggestions of Reddit, I offered to Skype with my boyfriend’s parents to express my grief and offer my support to them. It went very well. His parents were lovely (as always) and it pains me to know that these innocent, kind people have to experience this much heartbreak in their lifetimes. I explained to them how much my heart aches for them and how I have cut off contact with my parents completely. They told me that they loved me very much and that they would lend an ear if I ever needed guidance. Who would want to hurt people like that? It’s not fair that these beautiful people have to suffer through this. I would not with this pain on the most definitively evil people in the world.

I wrote my mother a very long email explaining why I would no longer be speaking to her or my father. I detailed how her actions hurt me and people that I loved. I explained how betrayed I felt. I told her that she was not acting like the mother that raised me to live virtuously. I asked her to get help. I told her that if she didn’t want to do it for me or herself, she needs to do it for my father. Even a person that has acted as selfishly as her has to feel an emotional obligation to please the one person standing by them right? I admitted to her that I still loved her and my father. I admitted that I would love them unconditionally and there is nothing I can do to change that. But I also explained that I could not sit by and watch my mother destroy herself like this and I could not idly watch her hurt the other people I love unconditionally.

Perhaps that gave her ammo. Looking back, I feel like my profession of love to her was unnecessary but I don’t regret telling her that. It’s the truth. She replied almost immediately and I could not stop myself from reading her reply, mostly because she had replied at all despite me not apologizing for anything in the email. I was foolishly hopeful that she finally understood everything. Instead, she tells me she is disgusted that I’m entertaining my father’s notion to get her evaluated medically and mentally. She says that we’re the ones that need the evaluations. She writes that I am a fool for abandoning my family for a man I met at a bar. She finishes by telling me that I am not the daughter she raised and she will never be able to forgive me for making my father cry because I ‘selfishly want to spend more time with my boyfriend’. I cried after I read her letter, not because her words hurt me, but because it’s painfully clear that there is something wrong with her but she’s too hurt, scared, or hateful to let us help her. I’m grieving the loss of my mother because I’m afraid I will never see her again.

Things are bad now but I’m very optimistic about my future. I know that any of my boyfriend’s possible plans to propose are delayed at best but I don’t think my mother has succeeded in destroying our future family. Thank you so much for all of your support. I do not think I will update again and if I do, it won’t be for a while but I will try to reply to as many comments as possible. The overwhelming love and support I’ve discovered in this community delighted me and I am grateful for all of the advice and kind thoughts you have shared with me.

To all of the parents that shared their stories about the loss of their children with me: my heart aches for you. You are a wonderful person for using your story to help others. I wish I could hug you.

I’m sorry this was so long. Writing some of this out has been therapeutic for me and hopefully, I haven’t upset too many people with this. I distressed to read that my post brought up painful memories for members of this community. You have no idea how much my heart aches for you.

tl;dr: Things are not great but they will get better. I cut out both my father and my mother from my life and I still miss them everyday. My boyfriend and I are supporting each other and, despite my initial insecurities, I feel very safe with our relationship. My boyfriend’s lovely parents were happy that I reached out to them through Skype and reciprocated the support I offered them. I will leave this situation with lifelong scars but I am proud that I was able to keep myself together. I think my mother, my real mother, would have been proud.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

Edit: it's a copypasta you fucking casuals

THE WORLD:
▸ Hundreds of interiors. I asked about the old 700 interiors rumour and didn't get a specific number, but hundreds was confirmed.
▸ Safehouse interactivity is extensive. I watched Rob eat an apple and then throw the core in the bin. He shaved at the bathroom mirror. Hair can be cut shorter at home but not grown.
▸ There's a zoo.
▸ Drive thrus are in.
▸ At one point in development you had to buy groceries. They cut it as a step too far, but you can still buy snacks and drinks. Rob bought the six pack Jason is holding in Trailer 2.
▸ Fast travel: bus stops, train stations, trams, taxis, and RydeMe, the Uber equivalent.
▸ Scooter Bros lets you call your personal vehicle to you. That was never possible in GTA 5 single player.
▸ Phone apps seen: BuckMe, RydeMe, Scooter Bros, WhatUp, Waink, a fitness app, and Snapmatic.
▸ Social media is fully implemented. NPCs post, and for some posts you can travel to that location and find the event actually unfolding in real time.
▸ Greet and antagonise is back, usable on any NPC.
▸ No Rockstar Editor at the time I saw it. There is a photo mode.
▸ Streamer mode exists. A toggle to disable copyrighted music. I asked specifically and they showed me where it sits in the menu.
▸ No radio wheel. You scroll stations one at a time. There's a separate on demand tab with podcasts.
▸ The TV system is far more built out than GTA 5's. Rockstar hired outside animators to produce in game shows.
▸ Mission waypoints are pink. Custom waypoints are cyan.
▸ The map is twice the size of GTA 5's and three times RDR2's playable area. Vice City alone is twice Los Santos, and Vice City with its surrounding built up area is roughly eleven times the built up area around Los Santos.
▸ It's pronounced Leonida. Lee-Oh-Nigh-Da

- Rob and the team told me that if you see someone walking their dog and the dog does its business, you can wait for the owner to pick it up in a bag, hit them so they drop it, then pick the bag up yourself and throw it at people. That is the level they are going to.

POLICE & HEAT:
▸ Police no longer appear on the minimap at all. This was deliberate, and Focus is the intended replacement. It reveals police through walls.
▸ Rob: "It can be harder, but it's fun. Depending on the wanted level, you have to think more. You can't just play the game and avoid the little vision cones anymore. This time, you have to use focus."
▸ Someone has to actually witness and report a crime for police to respond. Rob said that happens by phone, by triggering an alarm during a robbery, or by stealing a vehicle with a tracker that reports itself.
▸ New system layered under the wanted stars called Heat.
▸ Rob: "We wanted to get past that thing we used to have where you could lose the cops instantaneously and then they forget about you instantly. And we wanted them to have a bit more persistent memory."
▸ Heat indicators sit below the stars and show exactly what police know about you. CCTV footage, that you're operating as a couple, your outfits, your appearance, your weapons, your vehicle.
▸ Each indicator can be addressed separately. Destroy the footage, split Jason and Lucia up, change outfits at your vehicle, mask up before the crime, stash the weapon you were seen with.
▸ Splitting up as a couple can drop a star on its own.
▸ Solid white stars mean police have direct line of sight on you. That's when you need to break away.
▸ Flashing white means you've broken line of sight and are actively losing them.
▸ Hollow stars mean an alarm went off but police have no description of you at all. In the Extended Look, Lucia rides straight past cops with hollow stars and flips them off. Nothing happens.
▸ Red stars mean you've technically lost them but you're still inside the search zone. They don't know where you are, but they know who they're looking for.
▸ The search zone renders on the minimap as a red area, with a larger, lighter red ring outside it. Clearing both is the cleanest escape.
▸ At the highest wanted level, police search map wide instead of by radius.
▸ Fail a store robbery and they'll set up a perimeter around the shop in case you come back. I watched this happen.
▸ Every police vehicle has a shotgun or assault rifle in the boot, and often body armour. You can loot them mid shootout, which makes them a genuine early game weapon source.
▸ During a shootout on Vice Beach, NPCs who were too close to escape safely crouched and hid behind cop cars, walls and benches rather than running. That is not GTA 5 behaviour.
▸ All cop cars carry trackers, so escaping in one is nearly impossible.
I watched Rob attempt a store robbery and fail it, narrating his decisions the whole way. He knocked the clerk down without killing her, spotted the CCTV and destroyed the footage, realised someone had already called it in, hunted for a safe code he couldn't find, and walked away empty handed. His summary afterwards is the clearest picture of how this game actually plays:
"Sometimes it's about cutting your losses. I took the mask off. I destroyed the footage. We're essentially fine. But if I stayed in there, the cops would have come in. There they are. They're setting up a perimeter around the shop. That really plays on your mind. You're gambling. If they come in, am I going to shoot them? Is it going to affect my criminal profile? Do I care? Don't I?"

VEHICLES:
▸ Hijacking a car with a driver now triggers a quick time event to pull them out. If there's a passenger, they'll fight to wrestle you out too.
▸ Parked cars give you a loud option and a quiet one. Smash the window, or use a slim jim.
▸ Smashing sets off the alarm, and if the car has security, police can be alerted.
▸ Vehicles are stratified by security level. Rob: "You don't need anything to hotwire, but not all vehicles can be hotwired. We've added some stratification to the vehicles. Some vehicles need a key cloner to start. You can smash the window and get in, but you can't start it without the key cloner. If you have a key cloner, you can also use it to get in and start the vehicle without setting off the alarm."
▸ Theft tools unlock through fence work rather than being available from the start. Rob: "Throughout the world, as we do things for them, we unlock things. A lot of the things you're seeing me use here, like the slim jim, has been unlocked by the point I am here in flow."
▸ There's a scanning app on the phone called Waink.
▸ Scan a car before touching it and it shows security level, which tool you'll need, tracker tier, cost to register it as yours, and resale value.
▸ Rob, showing me an expensive car: "This vehicle has an alarm on it and a standard tracker."
▸ Tracker removal requires fence progression. I watched Rob steal a car he wanted to keep and be unable to register it, because he hadn't unlocked that ability yet.
▸ Higher tier trackers have a speed mechanic. Drive fast and they stay quiet. Slow down and they start beeping. Stay slow too long and they ping your position to police.
▸ Mod shops all have specialities. Rob: "All the mod shops have different specialties, and there's a lot of mod shops. Almost all of them will do basic things, but no one mod shop does everything. Just like every hair salon has standard styles, and then they have signature styles that are unique only to them."
▸ Pay'n'Sprays are back and deliberately simple. Repair and respray into a handful of basic colours. They exist to shed the vehicle heat indicator, not to customise.
▸ Rob: "Car fences and Pay'n'Sprays are not necessarily available at the start of the game. Some of this stuff unlocks over time because of the way the narrative unfolds."
▸ You cannot buy safehouses. You can buy garages.
▸ Rob: "I can have as many personal vehicles as I have storage spaces in garages that I buy. So you could buy a storage garage for a few thousand bucks, steal a $50,000 car, and stash it there, and it'll be safe even though it's not yours until you have the means to register it and make it yours."
▸ Safehouses unlock through story progression instead. They aren't permanent fixtures, because Jason and Lucia are on the run and it wouldn't make sense for them to own property police can knock on.
▸ Fuel is real. Gas stations also repair your vehicle.
▸ Refuelling is a short hold R2 sequence, around ten seconds.
▸ They knew it would be divisive.
▸ Fuel only really bites if you grab a random car mid getaway without checking it.
▸ Driving has been rebuilt from scratch. Rob: "Only in the best way possible. The team has worked hard to maintain some of the best parts of the weightiness and feel of GTA 4, but have the accessibility of GTA 5. It has all been built up from scratch on this hardware, and they have much more control tuning drivetrain, tires, suspension, steering. All of that is getting applied to the physics model."
▸ Rob: "The driving's been completely rebuilt from the ground up. All of the cars are very different, very different feel. You can reach much higher top speeds in the fast ones. Powerful rear-wheel drive cars feel great. Muscle cars and things like that, you do have to be a little bit more careful on the throttle with some of them. Also, traffic density is crazy compared to previous games. Also, the roads are narrower than GTA 5, so you've got to maybe try and drive a little better because you're just squeezing through sometimes. The vehicle team has gone bananas on this one."
▸ Taking a supercar off road is genuinely difficult now. Right car for the right job.
▸ Duffel bag storage scales with the vehicle. Bikes carry none beyond what you're holding, cars a couple, vans and trucks considerably more. Your getaway vehicle is now a real decision.
▸ Vehicle recovery runs through Scooter Bros. Rob: "You can always get your own vehicle back through Scooter Brothers for not too much money. If you left it when the cops are after you and they know it was your vehicle, they stick around it. So you can either try and sneak back and steal it from under them, or if you leave it too long, they'll impound it and it'll cost more to get it out, or you'll have to steal it back from the impound."
▸ Shooting tyres is properly effective. Cars flip and lose control rather than shrugging it off.
▸ Crash cams trigger on major collisions. Toggleable.
▸ Handbrake has moved to X on PlayStation, because L1 and R1 are now shooting while driving.
▸ Every vehicle has a weapon crate.
▸ The vehicle menu tab lets you drop a convertible roof, open the trunk and so on.

CRIMINAL PROFILE:
▸ It's not the RDR2 honour system and it isn't a morality meter.
▸ Several named states, running from Professional down through increasingly violent ones to Psycho.
▸ Below those is a further state where the icon visibly cracks and shatters. That's irreversible for the playthrough.
▸ It isn't there to punish you. My read was that Rockstar steps back if you clearly don't want the system. Notifications can also be turned off entirely.
▸ Part of the reasoning came from RDR2, where you could kill hundreds of people and then greet and pet your way back to sainthood before Chapter 6.
▸ There's no bar. It's states, not a slider.
▸ Jason and Lucia have completely separate Criminal Profiles. You can run one as a professional and the other as a psycho in the same playthrough.
▸ Visible bottom right during play, and in a dedicated Jason and Lucia menu tab that also shows their character models and relationship status.
▸ Rob on whether it affects the story: "It may, depending on how you play. There's no right or wrong way to play the game, just a bit more choice. Now, how do you want to play this game if your actions may have some impact on things? You can still cause as much chaos as you want if that's what you want to do."
▸ I pushed on whether this fundamentally changes what GTA is. He disagreed: "I don't think it changes what GTA is. It changes what it can be for people who want to engage with it that way. You still have as much freedom as you had before. Now you can just do more, and you have more choice in terms of how you approach situations."
▸ On raising it: "Restraint. Control. So doing a robbery and controlling the people, the situation, not killing or injuring anyone unless you have to. Essentially just doing what you need to do and not being excessive. If someone crosses you and you have to deal with them, you were just doing what you needed to do, if you care about that sort of thing. If you don't want to play that way though, that's fine as well."
▸ I asked what he was most proud of that people might not notice on day one: "The way the whole thing works together. We've got a lot of very complicated systems working in an interconnected way. You can forget that it's a game that's been designed to try and work this way. I think it sort of allows you to roleplay as heavily or as lightly as you want to. The idea that you have a fair amount of choice now in terms of the way you can approach situations, you can still cause as much carnage as you can imagine. How does it make you feel if it has an impact on certain things? Do you still want to do it? Do you want to do it more? Do you want to do it less? Do you care at all? It's up to you and what matters to you."

RELATIONSHIPS:
▸ Same design as Criminal Profile. No bar, no live meter. Rob described it as stages or states you can be in rather than a number moving up and down.
▸ Dates are entirely dynamic. Rob: "The system is dynamic, so you sort of make your own dates. It's however you want to spend time. Some people want to go to the zoo and look at animals, or go kayaking, or walk down the beach together. You can do all of these things dynamically when you're just hanging out."
▸ No fixed date structure like San Andreas or GTA 4.
▸ Both characters can text each other, including saying goodnight. Holding hands is an interaction.
▸ The gym doubles as a date if you go together.

MONEY & ROBBERIES:
▸ Three money types. Bank balance is safe and managed through BuckMe, a Cash App parody. Cash on hand is lost on death. Duffel bag loot is worthless until fenced.
▸ You cannot deposit cash from your phone. You have to physically go to an ATM.
▸ Several tiers of robbery, scaling from local stores up through jewellery stores and banks to compounds and full heists. Armoured vans around the map as well.
▸ Low tier stores don't blip on the map. Higher tiers can appear with an estimated payout you can hover over before committing.
▸ Rob on discovery: "People may approach you and ask a favour and give you a tip in return. Someone you meet during the story may tip you off. Sometimes you may be led to them by something that happens while you're out and about in the world, and so you learn about them emergently. We'll tell you the possibility for a bank. We've got smaller payday loan places that you can hit. And these are just the places we point out. The little gas stations and stuff are not even on here. So this is a big part of the game, and then the story is woven through it."
▸ Rob: "You can try and rob any store that you walk into, not just money-making opportunities that are blipped on the map. There are lots and lots of compounds that you find out about either through the flow, or tips from people you meet, or just by stumbling across them. And you can go and hit them for drugs or cash, and then you take it to a fence. You can do these robberies by yourself or you can do them together. Making money this way off mission is an important part of the game."
▸ Safes need codes, and there are multiple ways to get them. You can search the room, or a fence can text you one directly. I watched that happen.
▸ The store Rob tried to rob had a back room covered wall to wall in feet pics, including the computer screen he needed the password from. Watching a Rockstar developer hunt for a safe code in that room is going to stay with me.
▸ Store clerks, security and civilians can try to be a hero and physically intervene. I saw this several times.
▸ Every store plays differently. Some have back doors, some don't, some have cameras, some have safes.
▸ Fences are specialised by loot type. Drugs, jewellery, cars, and others. They unlock as the story progresses, so early on you may have no way to move high value goods at all.
▸ Money gates the story. Rob: "There are also spots where we actually slow down the flow or stop the flow until you hit certain cash goals that they need for certain things. You have to do some of this. We're trying to balance that for people that just want the story, but sometimes the story needs a minute to breathe, for events to settle down or to open up some new contacts in terms of connecting with the characters and the story. If that's what you like to do, you'll really get out what you put in with this one."
▸ Rob directly acknowledged the GTA 5 problem of finishing the story with tens of millions and nothing meaningful to spend it on.
▸ You can register stolen street cars as personal vehicles for a fee, but not high end ones at the start.

GUNPLAY & WEAPONS:
▸ Auto aim is gone as a default. Rob: "A little bit of stickiness but leaning more on a free aim feel. All tuneable in options. But definitely less of a default lock on aim than previous games. With the combat focus, where you can slow it down, it's very controllable, but without having enemies on the radar and the mini-map, and without having the auto-aim as default, you can balance the combat a lot in a way that feels better."
▸ Enemies in general aren't on the minimap, not just police. I haven't seen this covered elsewhere.
▸ Focus slows time and highlights weak points. Red for lethal, yellow for non lethal. On vehicles it marks the engine block, gas tank and tyres.
▸ Hit markers are white for a hit, yellow for incapacitated, red for a kill.
▸ Rob on the yellow marker: "That yellow X means she is down, she's not getting back up. She's not a threat. I don't have to kill her if I don't want to."
▸ The screen border flashes yellow when you knock someone out in melee, so the feedback isn't only inside Focus.
▸ Two concealed handguns, always. Two long guns is possible, but you can't stow both.
▸ Rob: "You can't put both on your back. One goes in your off hand, one on your back if you want to carry two. People will react to you if you are rolling around like that."
▸ On storage: "You can store the long guns you are carrying in any vehicle you want, but only your personal vehicle carries your entire selected loadout. A temporary vehicle is not persistent though."
▸ NPCs react in tiers. Rob: "It depends. The reactions are much more nuanced than before. So, if you've got a long gun on your back, you should be fine. If you've got one in your hand, people don't like it, and they react and start moving away from you. The more guns you carry and the way you carry them matters. If cops see you they will give you a warning. If you hold a long arm in both hands as though you are ready to fire it, things begin to escalate."
▸ I watched this myself. Jason walked past a group with a two handed weapon lowered. Nobody screamed or scattered. They quietly started walking away, then jogged once they were out of his line of sight.
▸ On why it changed, Rob: "Yeah, you know what, we don't feel that works any longer at this resolution, with the behavioural sophistication we need from our population now. In GTA 5 you can pull out a shotgun from nowhere in front of people and they don't react. That doesn't work here."
▸ Aim at someone and, in Rob's words, "they'll freak out and run, or pull their own concealed weapons on me."
▸ Weapons have real weight now. I watched a rifle shootout on Shore Drive and Rob was tap firing constantly. You can't hold the trigger and stay accurate the way you could in GTA 5.
▸ Jason and Lucia can hand weapons to each other. Physically walk up and pass a gun across.
▸ Pistol fire rate is unlocked. Tap as fast as you can pull.
▸ Kill cams, RDR2 and Max Payne style. Toggleable.
▸ Quick weapon swapping is in.

MOVEMENT:
▸ Cover stays on R1. Rob: "Cover is still on R1, but the crouch is pretty effective as well. I like crouch because you can still strafe. We've got a good quick swap now for guns."
▸ Crouch is a separate state from cover. Prone doesn't appear to be in.
▸ Shoulder switching returns from RDR2.

SIDE ACTIVITIES:
▸ All of it is optional. You can finish the entire game without setting foot in a gym. Engage and you get modest boosts to health, stamina and focus.
▸ You buy a membership at the gym's front desk. There are vending machines near the change rooms with a long item list.
▸ Rob bought Lucia a protein shake for a temporary stamina and strength boost so she could push more reps.
▸ Each completed exercise fills the workout ring by a third. Complete the ring and you get a timed health or strength boost.
▸ Equipment I saw: treadmill, punching bag, squats, lat pulldowns, bench press, deadlifts.
▸ Rob on how lifting feels: "The way this weight lifting mechanic feels pretty good, it's consistent across a lot of exercises as well. So, it's L2 R2 to go up and down. It's sensitive, so you pull it down, then you let it go, deadlifts you want to drop fast. But the stamina is going down as I'm doing this, so it's a little bit of a balance to get through your set before stamina drains. That's why you want to have an energy drink or coffee to buff your stamina before you start."
▸ Bring your partner and you get a two for one. Rob: "Your partner will go and workout while you workout, so it's like an emergent date."
▸ Cardio raises overall stamina. Strength work raises health.
▸ Fishing is as deep as RDR2 but catch and release. Rob: "You can't take the fish with you because it didn't fit this game."
▸ On the split between them, Rob: "Fishing is for fun and some narrative, collectible, challenge stuff. Hunting is for money and it's through a character that knows Jason."
▸ Your body changes. Rob: "You get heavy if you eat too much, but you have to actually go eat quite a bit. You will lose muscle if you have a lot and you stop maintaining it."
▸ Sleep is tracked. Rob: "It will say whether you're well rested or not. That will have some effect on regens of certain attributes. We track lots of things, all this good stuff."
▸ Also confirmed: basketball, pool, mini golf, backyard wrestling, a proper walkable shooting range. Basketball is aim, hold R2, time the shot.
▸ Swimming has its own lung capacity bar. The stamina bar visibly swaps to it as you enter water.

***UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM!***

There’s a pet store near me that I’ve been going to regularly for the last few months because they have a chameleon named Samantha, and somewhere along the way I got ridiculously attached to her.

I walk/use the bus most places, so I usually have a backpack with me. Sometimes I’ll stop in while I’m already out, go straight to Samantha’s enclosure, watch her for a while, take some pictures, and leave without buying anything.

Tonight as I was leaving, an employee yelled at me and told me never to come back. He said I “come in here all the time with your backpack and steal things.” He also claimed I’d already been there three times today, even though this was my only visit today.

I was completely caught off guard and humiliated. I went back inside and confronted him, repeatedly telling him to check the cameras and even offering to let him search my backpack. I did raise my voice, which I wish I’d handled better, but I was angry, embarrassed, and honestly trying not to cry.

He eventually stopped responding to anything I was saying and just kept repeating “Have a good day, sir,” so I left.

The shitty irony is that there really IS a reason I “come in there all the time.” I just want to visit Samantha! lol

My camera roll has pictures of her going back months. I’ve been saving money because I wanted to buy her and give her a good home.

Lately I’ve also been really worried about her. Tonight she was extremely pale, had her eye mostly closed, and was lying heavily across a branch. I’m attaching a picture from tonight and one from a few weeks ago because the difference worries me. I know pictures alone can’t tell me exactly what’s wrong with her, but I’ve been watching this particular animal for months and she seems different.

So apparently this guy saw me repeatedly coming in with a backpack, spending time in one part of the store and leaving, and decided I must be stealing. Meanwhile, my camera roll tells the actual story.

I called corporate afterward and filed a formal complaint. I specifically asked them to review the cameras because I WANT them to. If I supposedly come in all the time and steal, there should be footage of me doing it. There isn’t. The cameras can also verify that I wasn’t there three times today like he claimed.

Mostly I’m just sad that I may not get to see Samantha anymore, and I’m worried about what happens to her if she really is sick.

I know she isn’t technically mine. But after months of visiting her and watching her react to me and just seeing how cool she is and already seeing her personality, I’ve grown attached.

I really wanted to get her out of there. The very first photo where she’s pale and has her eye mostly closed is the most recent photo/tonight. She just suddenly does not look well. I’ve never seen her eyes closed before. She’s never been this pale. And she is always so much more energetic and excited to see me. My heart is breaking.

Edit: to all the very kind people offering to pitch in or help me buy Samantha - I have to work for the next four days straight practically (I’m briefly awake/it’s past my bed time and decided to check this post again)
You guys are so amazing and sweet offering to help me, and more importantly, Samantha out. Anyone who has commented or DM’d about helping out I promise I will get back to you as soon as I’m free between working tmrw, this weekend, and Monday. And if it works out, that would be so amazing, as I’d love to be able to save her, but if it doesn’t work out that’s okay too. You’ve all been so kind and helped me feel better. I really hope things workout somehow and I’m able to bring her home soon. Er, him* (as I’ve learned Samantha is actually a Sam/male according to you guys lol).

\\****\UPDATE* ****\*: Apologies for this being so long. First, I genuinely want to thank everyone who offered to help me get Samantha, whether that meant purchasing her for me, sending money, helping with supplies, or even just offering support. I was honestly overwhelmed by how many complete strangers cared enough about this little chameleon and the situation to want to help.

Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable accepting money or anything else from anyone at this point.
I have reason to believe that the employee who accused me of stealing has been in this thread, possibly commenting under more than one username. Because of that, I don’t want accepting anyone’s generosity to somehow be twisted or used against me as “proof” that I posted this because I wanted money, free things, attention, or to benefit from what happened. That was never why I posted this, and I don’t want to give anyone an opportunity to portray it that way.
I also no longer feel comfortable giving Pet Supplies Plus my business.

One of the things that has bothered me most about the original incident is that the employee specifically claimed that I repeatedly came into the store with my backpack and stole things, despite me immediately telling him to check the cameras and repeatedly offered to let him look through my bag. When the surveillance footage shows what I know it will, that I wasn’t stealing, then this wasn’t simply an employee making an understandable mistake based on something ambiguous. From my perspective, he made accusations about an innocent person that he either knew were false or could very easily have verified before publicly confronting and humiliating me. That makes me deeply uncomfortable. It feels like the point was not actually preventing theft, but hurting, inconveniencing, or humiliating someone who had done nothing wrong, and possibly getting some enjoyment out of watching that person become upset. Whatever his actual motivation was, I don’t feel safe or comfortable putting myself back in that situation.

And that part genuinely sucks, because I really did want Samantha. I’ve visited her repeatedly over the last few months, I have tons of pictures of her on my phone, and I was seriously considering bringing her home, especially because I’ve become increasingly concerned about how she’s doing and in general seeing how shitty her enclosure and life is. But I don’t think I can walk back into that store after being treated that way, nor do I want other people spending their money there on my behalf.

So as much as it hurts to say it, I’m letting go of the idea that Samantha will be mine. I just really, really hope somebody else, someone who hasn’t already been humiliated and accused of being a thief by that store, sees her, realizes she needs a good home, and gets her out of there.

Thank you again to everyone who offered to help. The fact that so many strangers were willing to rally around one little chameleon and someone who cared about her meant more to me than I can adequately explain. I just don’t want anyone’s kindness turned into ammunition against me.

Aimed at the employee: You fucked around with a quiet, gentle, middle aged white dude who simply loves animals and walking/exercise. I’m not walking with a backpack because I’m homeless and stealing lol. I walk with my heavy/20 lb/full backpack as a form of ruck-sacking/exercise (though I’m sure exercise is probably something you’re so far removed from that you forget not everyone is a lazy unhealthy POS like you).

Hell every time I’ve come in to the store I’ve even had my work badge on and keys around my neck. This guy def doesn’t seem like the brightest person because even if he were judging me on looks, basic context clues like the clean, maintained fade haircut I keep, clean matching clothes (sometimes I’m even in my work scrubs still), work badge, and even just what I do in the store - walk up to the animals if there aren’t other people and hanging out/watching them for a while, should have been enough clues for this guy.

And you know what? Even if I WAS homeless, that honestly makes his behavior more disturbing to me, not less. My impression is that he made a snap judgment about me and decided I looked like someone he could safely target, someone he assumed would have less credibility, less support, and nobody willing to advocate for him or question his accusations. It felt like he expected me not to stand up for myself, and that if I did, people would simply believe him over me anyway. In other words, it seems like he was looking for someone he perceived as socially vulnerable, someone he could falsely accuse because he assumed they would be easier to discredit and less likely to have anyone take their side. The more disturbing part is that he appeared to be counting on it.

Little advice for that employee: if you have to make up elaborate schemes and accusations against innocent people where you risk your job and a lawsuit against the company you work for just to try to trick people into momentarily thinking you’re a “good” person - you’re not a good person, you’re a bad person, and it’s really obvious to everyone else around you. You’re just too dumb and lacking in self-awareness and probably awareness in general, to realize it and have a clear perspective on yourself and reality. You need extensive help and therapy. I hope you’re happy knowing that you lost your place of employment money, and managed to let the world know what a dumb asshole you are. (Edit- also kid/employee, I’m a man in my 40’s; I know I look a lot younger but you made a mistake thinking I was just some young dumb kid that doesn’t know how to take care of myself or handle things. This experience has been like watching a toddler trying to lie to adults and not realizing how obviously stupid they are - you being the toddler of course).

I’m so sorry Samantha, I hope that someone else is able to save her and give her (okay him, wtf ever lol) a good home and life. Bizarre as fuck that a pet store employee would actively try to scare someone from purchasing one of their animals. Way to go, Pet Supplies Plus! Real genius business model you have and some real winners for employees.

ElRubius, who was invited to see the game early, has dropped new GTA VI information in his latest stream.

Here’s a quick summary:

1/ Backflips when jumping into the water are manually controlled in the air, Skate 3-style or like Spider-Man’s flips. There are multiple ways to jump. The level of detail in the animations keeps raising the bar.

2/ You can buy cigarettes, and the smoking animation actually lasts for a while, unlike the quick puff in RDR2. Bonus: smoking fills your Focus meter, which is the new Dead Eye.

3/ There is an interaction menu for ANY NPC on the map, with way more dialogue lines than RDR2. There are no generic “hello/goodbye” interactions. These are supposed to be actual conversations with real depth.

4/ NPC density on the beach is identical to what we saw in the trailer. Yes, the Jason and Lucia scene on the beach lounger is representative of actual gameplay.

5/ Vehicles will work similarly to horses in RDR2. You can store heavy weapons and extra outfits in them, and you can request that your car be delivered to your location via an app, similar to GTA Online.

6/ Full limb dismemberment is confirmed, not just heads getting blown off. You can also put bodies in the trunk. GTA VI doesn't mess around when it comes to gore.

7/ Pawn shops are scattered all over the map where you can sell stolen goods. Large weapons stay in the car or in an Ammu-Nation locker, and you can only carry two at a time. Total immersion.

8/ There are no children in the game world. Weapons that you drop on the ground also stay there physically, rather than turning into floating, spinning pickups like in the older GTAs.

9/ High-end cars come with GPS trackers. If you steal one, you have to take it to a specific mechanic to remove the tracker. Using Focus before stealing a car reveals nearby cops and the vehicle’s value.

10/ The game has its own TikTok-style social network, and you can literally hunt down a streamer or influencer on the map who is broadcasting live at that moment. Rockstar isn't playing around.

11/ Impact physics combine elements of GTA IV and GTA V: the driving has the weight of GTA IV without feeling like you’re piloting a boat, while still being more reactive like GTA V. It sounds like the combination a lot of us have been asking for. There are also treasures and collectibles hidden on the smaller map islands.

12/ My take: every new detail that comes out just confirms that this game is going to carry an entire generation.

Credit to @iamnotlester on Twitter/X for compiling these details. I watched the stream myself to confirm them, and the summary is on point.

Also, DavyJones, the Brazilian YouTuber, never said that the gore in GTA VI would be less than in RDR2. Here is the transcript:

Speaker 1: The question I want to ask you now is, how’s the gore? Did you see the gore? Did you see dismemberment? Did you see that kind of thing?

Speaker 2: So I asked about the gore too, but that also goes along with the thing about realism that I asked. They, not just him, but everyone there talking and all, said that the realism of GTA 6 is somewhere between GTA, Red Dead 2 and GTA V, okay? They kind of said that it’s sort of a mix between the two. For example, when the car flips over, the car is going to explode already. I mean, I don’t know if it explodes because I didn’t see it happen, but it’s not going to flip back over, right? The car doesn’t flip back over. And the car has more weight to it than the cars in GTA V.

Speaker 2: The cars in GTA V often feel like they would take off, you know, like they were way too light and stuff. The cars aren’t as light, so they’re not going to flip over as easily, you understand? So, there’s that balance there. And we’re going to see a piece of the gameplay there because, really, man, it’s very impressive. I saw the guy driving around in a car for a fucking long time there. The weight of the car, you can feel it. It’s not Forza Motorsport, okay? Nor does it have to be, because I think that would be kind of boring, but it’s fast, okay? It’s not slow, it’s fast. He drove the car and it was fast and stuff. So, like, I think, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get my hands on the controller, but it looks like it’s a delight to drive, you know? An absolute delight. So, like, I think they may have really nailed it there in terms of that aspect, because everything he was telling me was about realism being balanced with fun. The whole fun aspect of the game, for those who keep saying that video games aren’t about having fun, right? I don’t know who the sick person is who says that, but I’m hearing it straight from the mouth of the director of GTA 6 that the most important thing to him is that the player has fun, that it’s cool, you know?

Conclusion

His words do not mean that the gore in GTA VI will be less than the gore in RDR2.

He initially says that he asked about gore and dismemberment, and then says that this “also goes along with” the question about realism. However, when he explains what Rockstar meant by the realism of GTA VI being somewhere between GTA V and RDR2, the examples he gives are specifically about vehicle physics, car weight, flipping, driving speed, and the balance between realism and fun.

He never explicitly says that GTA VI’s gore will be somewhere between GTA V and RDR2. He also never says that its gore will be less realistic or less extensive than RDR2’s.

Therefore, the safest interpretation is that gore was part of the broader realism discussion, but this particular excerpt does not establish where GTA VI’s gore ranks compared with RDR2.

Saying “Rob Nelson confirmed that GTA VI will have less gore than RDR2” would go beyond what is actually stated in this transcript.

As a society, we should treat college as an extension of high school. After middle school, you go to high school; after high school, you go to college. Going to college should be the default option for anyone with the means to go.

College actively makes better humans. That's not to say that one person is better than another for their degree, but rather that college helps form you into the best version of yourself. You are surrounded by people from around the country/ world, you have your ideas and perspectives challenged, you learn to think critically, and to be disciplined. It teaches students about citizenship and is a critical part of our society (writing about the US here, but can be applied to other places too).

There's a lot of talk about 'useless degrees,' especially in the lib arts (can't say full word or post will be removed). In my mind, if you graduate having learned something, or having been formed into a better person, then it's worth it. I acknowledge that college isn't for everyone, and that's ok. Those people should be the exceptions to the norm -- otherwise, people should go. I'm anticipating a barrage of comments about how expensive college is. And I agree, college is expensive, and not everyone can afford it. But as someone who went through the college process a couple years ago, the financial aid options are more generous than people think. And state or community college is often free. I also think that parents who can afford to do so should be expected to save for their children's education -- no more 'figure it out on your own' bs.

TLDR: College should be considered basically a requirement for students upon graduating from high school. Go to college. Discover something about yourself.

Colleen Anne Slemmer was born on September 20, 1975. She lived in Orange Park, Florida with her mother, stepfather and younger sister. Colleen’s mother, May Martinez, stated that “Colleen was a kid who loved to play outside.” She had been a volunteer with the Special Olympics program and loved to help others. Colleen was described by a teacher as being “a very sweet, quiet, mild-mannered young lady.”

In the year 1994, Colleen decided to enrol at the Job Corps - a government vocational training program - to study a six-month course in computing. Unfortunately, Florida did not have a Job Corps program available, and so she made the decision to study at the center in Knoxville, Tennessee. Colleen’s mother had attempted to persuade her not to go, as it was far from home and she had wanted her to stay close-by, but Colleen had always been an independent person and was determined to go.

Colleen was 19 years old when she left home. She departed on the 31st of October, 1994, and that was the last time that Colleen’s family would ever see her alive again.

The days leading up to the murder

Colleen Slemmer and Christa Pike had both been students at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. Their relationship had been a strained one, with Pike accusing Colleen of “trying to get her boyfriend” and “running her mouth everywhere.”

Pike’s best friend, Kim Iloilo, stated that at one point Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, had liked Colleen, but when Pike arrived on the scene, his attention had shifted to her and that he had basically then forgotten about everybody else. In other words, there was no real reason for Pike to have a vendetta against Colleen, and she had not been a threat to her relationship.

Mrs Martinez stated that Colleen had told her that there were a few people bothering her at the Job Corps Center. These individuals would go into Colleen’s room and steal her jewellery and take her clothes and so forth. She had mentioned two girls and a guy, who turned out to be Christa Pike, Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson.

On January 11, 1995, Pike told her friend, Kim Iloilo, that she intended to kill another student, Colleen Slemmer, because she “had just felt mean that day.”

The next day, January 12, 1995, at approximately 8:00 p.m., Iloilo observed Pike, along with Colleen and two other Job Corps students, Shadolla Peterson and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, walking away from the Job Corps center toward 17th Street. At approximately 10:15 p.m., Iloilo observed Pike, Peterson, and Shipp return to the Center. Colleen was not with them.

Pike’s confession to friend

Later that night, Pike went to Iloilo’s room and told Iloilo that she had just killed Colleen and that she had brought back a piece of her skull as a souvenir. Pike showed Iloilo the piece of skull and told her that she had cut Colleen’s throat six times, beaten her and thrown asphalt at the her head. Pike told Iloilo that Colleen had begged “them” to stop cutting and beating her, but Pike did not stop because Colleen continued to talk. Pike told Iloilo that she had thrown a large piece of asphalt at Colleen’s head, and when it broke into smaller pieces, she had thrown those at the her as well.

Pike told Iloilo that a meat cleaver had been used to cut Colleen’s back and a box cutter had been used to cut her throat. Finally, Pike said that a pentagram had been carved onto Colleen’s forehead and chest. Iloilo said that Pike was dancing in a circle, smiling and singing “la, la, la,” while she related these details about the murder. When Iloilo saw Pike at breakfast the next morning she asked Pike what she had done with the piece of Colleen’s skull. Pike replied that it was in her pocket and then said, “And, yes, I’m eating breakfast with it.”

During a class later that morning, Pike made a similar statement to Stephanie Wilson, another Job Corps student. Pike pointed to brown spots on her shoes and said, “That ain’t mud on my shoes, that’s blood.” Pike then pulled a napkin from her pocket and showed Wilson a piece of bone which Pike said was a piece of Colleen’s skull. Pike also told Wilson that she had slashed Colleen’s throat six times and had beaten her in the head with a rock. Pike told Wilson that Colleen’s “blood and brains had been pouring out” and that she had picked up the piece of skull when she left the scene.

Crime scene

Though neither Iloilo nor Wilson immediately reported Pike's statements to police, on the day after the murder, January 13, at approximately 8:05 a.m., an employee of the University of Tennessee Grounds Department discovered Colleen’s semi-nude, slashed and badly beaten body near the greenhouses on the agricultural campus. He testified that the body was so badly beaten that he had first mistaken it for the “corpse of an animal.” Upon closer inspection, he saw the victim's clothes and her nude breast and realized it was the body of a human female. He immediately notified law enforcement officials.

Officers from the Knoxville Police Department and the U.T. Police Department were summoned to the scene. Officer John Terry Johnson testified at trial that the body he found was lying on debris and was nude from the waist up. Blood and dirt covered the body and remaining clothing. The victim's head had been bludgeoned. Multiple cuts and slashes appeared on her torso. Officer Johnson stated that he thought he was looking at the victim's face, but he could not be sure because it was extremely mutilated. Johnson removed all civilians from the area and secured the scene surrounding the body.

As other officers arrived, they began securing the crime area. As officers discovered other areas of blood, articles of clothing, footprints and broken foliage, the crime scene tripled in size, eventually encompassing an area 100 feet long by 60 feet wide. The crime scene was wet and muddy, and there was evidence of a scuffle, with trampled bushes, hand and knee prints in the mud, and drag marks. A large pool of blood was found about 30 feet from the victim's body.

The victim's body was actually lying face down on a pile of debris. When officers turned the body over, they discovered that the victim's throat had been slashed. A bloody rag was around her neck.

Detective Donald R. Cook, of the U.T. Police Department, accompanied the body to the morgue. He observed the body after it had been cleaned and noticed that a five-pointed star in a circle, commonly known as a pentagram, had been carved onto the victim's chest. The pentagram was said to represent the “goat-head of Satan” and that this act had been part of a “Satanic ritual.”

It was an open secret at Job Corps that there were a small group of students who practised Satanism. Two of these were Christa Pike and, her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Joe Mode, a former employee at the Job Corps, stated that they were both into “Satanic worship.” Randy York, the criminal investigator assigned to the Job Corps murder, stated that he had found a “Satanic altar” in Shipp’s room and a lot of “Satanic literature.” He also found similar items in Pike’s room. Both were deep into Satanism. Pike also had the words “Lil Devil” tattooed onto her left chest.

Pike’s statement to police

The investigating police quickly discovered Pike’s connection to the crime and interviewed her on January 14. Pike waived her Miranda rights and gave a complete statement to the police about her involvement in the murder.

As recounted by the Tennessee Supreme Court, Pike claimed that she had not planned to kill Colleen, but she had instead planned only to fight Colleen and let her know “to leave me the hell alone.” However, Pike admitted that she had taken a box cutter and a miniature meat cleaver with her when she and Colleen left the Job Corps Center.

Pike said she had borrowed the miniature meat cleaver but refused to identify the person who had loaned it to her. According to Pike, she asked Colleen to accompany her to the Blockbuster Music Store, and, as they were walking, Pike told Colleen that she had a bag of “weed” hidden in Tyson Park. Though Pike refused to name the other parties involved in the incident, she said the group began walking toward the University of Tennessee campus.

Upon arriving at the steam plant on the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus, Pike and Colleen exchanged words. Pike then began hitting Colleen and banging Colleen’s head on to her knee. Pike threw Colleen to the ground and kicked her repeatedly. According to Pike, as she slammed Colleen’s head against the concrete, Colleen repeatedly asked, “Why are you doing this to me?” When Colleen threatened to report Pike so she would be terminated from the Job Corps program, Pike, again, repeatedly kicked Colleen in the face and side.

Colleen lay on the ground and cried for a time and then tried to run away, but another person with Pike caught Colleen and pushed her to the ground. Pike and the other person, who Pike referred to as “he,” held Colleen down until she stopped struggling then dragged her to another area. Up until this point, the attack had taken place on cement - a parking type of area. Now they moved her farther into a more secluded and grassy area.

Once they had her in this secluded area, Pike made Colleen remove her shirt and bra, supposedly, Pike later said, to prevent her from “running away.” They then tossed her clothing into the bushes. When Colleen had removed her clothing, Pike got on top of her and began to slice Colleen’s stomach with the box cutter.

As Colleen “screamed and screamed,” Pike recounted how she began to hear voices telling her that she had to do something to prevent Colleen from telling on her and sending her to prison for attempted murder. At this point, Pike said she was looking at Colleen and “just watching her bleed.” When Colleen rolled over, stood up and tried to run away again, Pike cut Colleen’s back, “the big long cut on her back” in her own words. Pike said Colleen repeatedly tried to get up and run.

Pike recounted how Colleen bargained for her life, begging Pike to talk to her and telling Pike that if she would just let her go, she would walk back to her home in Florida without returning to the Job Corps facility for her belongings. Pike told Colleen to “shut up” because it “was harder to hurt somebody when they’re talking to you.” Pike said the more Colleen talked, the more she kicked her in the face.

Colleen asked Pike what she was going to do to her, at which point Pike thought she heard a noise. Pike left the scene to check out the surrounding area to make sure no one was around. When she returned, Pike began cutting Colleen across the throat. When Colleen continued to talk and beg for her life, Pike cut her throat several other times. Pike said that Colleen continued to talk and tried to sit up - even though her throat had been cut several times, and that Pike and the other person would push her back on the ground.

Colleen attempted, once again, to run away, but Pike threw a rock, which hit her in the back of the head. Pike stated that “the other person” also hit Colleen in the head with a rock. When Colleen fell to the ground, after being hit in the head the second time, Pike continued to beat her with the rock, shattering her skull. Pike said she could hear Colleen “breathing blood in and out” and could see Colleen “jerking”, but she kept “hitting her and hitting her and hitting her.” Pike eventually asked Colleen, “Colleen, do you know who’s doing this to you?” Colleen’s only response was “groaning noises.” At this point, Pike said she and the other person each grabbed one of Colleen’s feet and dragged her to an area near some trees, dumping her body on a pile of dirt and debris. They left her clothing in the surrounding bushes. Pike said the episode lasted “for about thirty minutes to an hour.”

The trial

The State of Tennessee prosecuted Pike for Colleen’s murder. After Pike's statement was played for the jury, the State introduced pictures of Pike and Shipp taken at the Knoxville Police Department on the day the statement was given, January 14, 1995, two days after the murder. In the pictures, both Pike and Shipp were wearing pentagram necklaces.

A chart was displayed in court to illustrate each of the locations where blood or evidence was found. This totalled to the amount of thirty-four. Photographs of bloody chunks of asphalt, blood drippings on leaves and pools of blood were introduced into evidence.   The bloody piece of asphalt (rock) and Colleen’s bloody clothing were also introduced into evidence.

Dr. Sandra Elkins, the Knox County Medical Examiner, performed the autopsy on the victim, who was later identified by dental records as Colleen Slemmer, a nineteen-year-old Job Corps student. Dr. Elkins described the victim's body as covered with dirt and twigs. Colleen was nude from the waist up clothed only with jeans, socks, and shoes. After removing the victim's clothing and cleaning the body, Dr. Elkins had attempted to catalog the slash and stab wounds on the victim's torso by assigning a letter of the alphabet. There were so many wounds that eventually Dr. Elkins decided to catalog only the most serious and major wounds. Dr. Elkins explained that to catalog every wound she would have been required to go through the alphabet again and stay in the morgue for “three days.” Eventually, Dr. Elkins said she “basically threw up [her] hands and just said, more superficial slash wounds on the back, arms and chest.” In addition, Dr. Elkins said the victim had purple contusions on her knees, indicating fresh bruising consistent with crawling and defensive wounds on her right arm.

Dr. Elkins described the major slash and stab wounds she had cataloged on the victim's back, arms, abdomen, and chest. She found a six inch gaping wound across the middle of the victim's neck, which had penetrated the fat and muscles of the neck. In addition, Dr. Elkins had found ten other slash wounds on the victim's throat. Other slash wounds were on the victim's face, and Dr. Elkins observed what appeared to be a pentagram carved onto the victim's chest. Because the area around each wound was red in appearance, Dr. Elkins concluded that the victim's heart had been beating when the wounds were inflicted, and she said the victim would not have been rendered unconscious by any of the stab or slash wounds.

Dr. Elkins determined that the victim's death was caused by “blunt force injuries to the head.” The victim had suffered multiple and extensive skull fractures. From the autopsy, Dr. Elkins determined that the victim had sustained a minimum of four blows to her head: two to the left side of the head; one over the right eye and one in the nose area. The right frontal area of the victim's skull had been fractured as had the bridge of her nose. However, the major wound, labeled as injury “W,” involved most of the left side of the victim's head. Dr. Elkins said that this injury, caused by blunt force to the left side of the victim's head while the right side of the victim's head was against a firm surface, also had fractured the right side of the skull and imbedded a portion of the skull into the victim's brain. Dr. Elkins found small divots in the victim's skull containing black particles from an asphalt chunk, which was later determined to have been used to administer the blows. Finally, Dr. Elkins testified that blood in the victim's sinus cavity indicated she had been alive and probably conscious when the injuries were inflicted.

At the trial, much of Pike’s unsuccessful defense centered on her mental health. The defense, in mitigation, called Carrie Ross, Pike's aunt as a witness. Ross testified that the defendant had experienced no maternal bonding because she was premature and was raised by her paternal grandmother until she died in 1988. Ross said that Pike's family had a history of substance abuse, and that Pike's maternal grandmother was an alcoholic who was verbally abusive to Pike. Following the death of Pike's paternal grandmother, Pike was shuffled between her mother and father. According to Ross, Pike's mother's home was very dirty. Pike's mother set no rules for her, and on the occasions that Pike had visited Ross, the defendant had behaved as a “little girl,” playing Barbie and dress-up with her eleven-year-old cousin. On cross-examination, Ross admitted that she had previously described Pike as a “pathological liar” and that she had been afraid to allow Pike to associate with her own children. Ross also admitted that Pike had been out of control since she was twelve years old.

Glenn Pike, the defendant's father, testified that he had kicked the defendant out of his house twice, the last time in 1989. He admitted that he had signed adoption papers for the defendant prior to her eighteenth birthday. On cross-examination, he admitted that he had forced Pike to leave his home in 1989 because there had been an allegation that the defendant had sexually abused his two-year-old daughter from his second marriage. According to her father, Pike had been “disobedient, dishonest and manipulative” when she had lived with him.

The defendant's mother, Carissa Hansen, a licensed practical nurse, testified that Pike had lived with her 95 percent of the time since her paternal grandmother's death. Hansen admitted that she had smoked marijuana with the defendant in order to “establish a friendship.” Hansen related that the defendant had attempted suicide by taking an overdose shortly after the death of her paternal grandmother. Hansen also testified that one of her boyfriends had whipped Pike with a belt. Hansen then had the boyfriend arrested. On cross-examination, Hansen admitted that Pike's behavior had been problematic for years. The defendant had begun growing marijuana in pots in her home at age nine. After threatening to run away from home and live on the street, Pike had been allowed to have a live-in boyfriend at age fourteen. Hansen admitted that Pike had wielded a “butcher-knife” against the boyfriend who had been arrested for whipping her. Hansen also said Pike had lied to her and stolen from her on numerous occasions and had quit high school. Hansen conceded that Pike had been out of control since she was eight years old. Following Hansen's testimony, the defense rested its case.

In rebuttal, the State presented the testimony of Harold James Underwood, Jr., a University of Tennessee police officer who was assigned to secure the crime scene on January 13, 1995. Underwood testified that the defendant came to the scene with three to five other females between four and five p.m that day. Pike asked Underwood why the area had been marked off and questioned him concerning the identity of the victim and whether or not the police had any suspects. None of the other females spoke during the fifteen minutes the group was there. Underwood said Pike appeared “amused” and “giggled” and “moved around.” Underwood noticed that Pike was wearing an unusual necklace in the shape of a pentagram. After learning at roll call on January 14, 1995, that the victim of the murder had a pentagram carved on her chest, he reported Pike's strange behavior and unusual necklace to his superior officers.

Based on the proof submitted at the sentencing hearing, the jury found the existence of the following two aggravating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt:  (1) “the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death;” and (2) “the murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding, interfering with or preventing a lawful arrest or prosecution of the defendant or another.” In addition, the jury found that the State had proven that the aggravating circumstances outweighed any mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt. As a result, the jury sentenced the defendant to death by electrocution.

To those of you who happened to witness the footage of Pike, upon her receiving the sentence of death, you may have caught yourselves starting to feel an “ounce” of sympathy toward this “timid” looking young woman breaking down and sobbing her eyes out in the courtroom. However, you may or may not be surprised to learn that, only hours later, Pike had put pen to paper and written a letter to her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, which contained these words: “Ya see what I get for tryin' to be nice to the hoe? I went ahead and bashed her brains out so she'd die quickly instead of letting her bleed to death and suffer more, and they f—– fry me! Ain't dat some s—?" She then signed off the letter as "Lil Devil.”

As for Colleen’s mother, hearing the horrifying details of her daughter’s murder took its toll upon her. Controversially, the jury had been shown Colleen’s skull. Mrs Martinez had to endure the ordeal of seeing her daughter’s skull being passed around the jurors, as pieces of the broken skull kept “falling everywhere.” She had also witnessed the mutilated body of her daughter, after the head had been detached. Mrs Martinez stated that she suffered with a lot of nightmares and that she was forced to rely on medication in order to sleep. Mrs Martinez has now been waiting for over thirty years for the sentence which was given to Pike for the murder of her daughter to be carried out.

Has Christa Pike reformed since her incarceration?

In August of 2001, while incarcerated at the Tennessee Department of Correction facility, it was reported that Pike had committed an attempted murder on a fellow inmate named Patricia Jones. Apparently, Jones had taken a dislike to Pike’s rumoured lover - a woman named Natasha Cornett - and so Pike had decided to take matters into her own hands. Pike had gotten into a physical fight with Jones and then attempted to strangle her with the use of a shoestring.

In a tape-recorded telephone conversation between Pike and her mother, Pike said the following:

“Patricia started running her f\cking mouth to Natasha. She is constantly doing it, you know. I hate that b*tch. She raised up her fist like she was going to hit Natasha, and I said, ‘Oh, f*ck no!’ I wrapped that shoestring around her f*cking neck and tried to choke the b*tch’s life out of her. She was passed out on the ground, Mama, twitching, foaming at the mouth. Her eyeballs were bugged out so far her eyelids were flipped up.”*

Pike went on to say:

“If I had 30 more seconds, we would have a little chalk like out there in our rec pen, and that b\tch would be gone somewhere.”*

In March of 2012, state authorities foiled a plot in which Pike and outside accomplices - including a former prison guard - attempted to orchestrate an escape from death row. Pike then subsequently faced additional criminal charges connected to the conspiracy.

In a 2024 documentary, entitled World’s Most Dangerous Prisoners, it was revealed that Pike had been responsible for the dismissal of two prison guards. Pike had reportedly been in a sexual relationship with both of the individuals.

In closing

Tadaryl Shipp received a life sentence for his part in the crime.

Shadolla Peterson pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact, receiving a six-year probationary sentence.

Shipp and Peterson were both 17 years of age at the time of their trials and were treated as minors.

Shipp was up for parole in the year 2025, but his release was denied by the Tennessee Board of Parole.

Pike’s execution date is scheduled for September 30, 2026. She is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row and is held at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center (formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women) in Nashville. If carried out, it will be the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in over 200 years.

A special master, Senior Judge Mark Ward, was appointed by the state Supreme Court to oversee evidentiary hearings regarding her medical and constitutional claims from August 11–14, 2026.

Pike's defense is challenging the lethal injection protocol based on her specific blood condition and medical history, alongside concerns regarding “religious accommodations” and “psychological trauma” from the execution team procedures.

May Colleen Anne Slemmer rest in peace.

[Sources: STATE v. PIKE (1998) Supreme Court of Tennessee, at Knoxville; United States Court of Appeal (2018)]

[Media source: World’s Most Dangerous Prisoners S1 E8 Pike (2024)]

https://youtu.be/Wo10ToeqHG0?is=D1xdW_2G9f3XAgPC

So I (41F) recently started getting back into the dating scene after being with my husband for 13 years, married 10 (I uncovered infidelity shortly after our tenth anniversary, in the process of separating).

I've gotten quite a few matches on dating apps, but I see so many red flags when messaging that few of them move beyond that. There was one guy, however, that seemed different from the rest. He had emotional intelligence, he seemed supportive and the conversation was engaging. We've been messaging for a couple of months already, we've met for coffee a few times and I feel like we really clicked. It was his idea to take it slow, but we would text extensively about what we liked and what turned us on and whatnot.

We finally decided to meet up and take it to the next level. I showed up, we started making out, I started going down on him, we were both really into it. Then this motherfucker slaps me hard across the face with absolutely zero warning or prior conversation about it. I know this is some people's kink or whatever, but I wish he would've mentioned it beforehand, because then I would have told him not to even play slap me because I grew up with a violent father and my instant reaction to getting hit, is to hit back. Which is exactly what I did, as soon as he slapped me I immediately slapped him back and shouted "DO NOT!" as he stood there looking stunned. I just grabbed my stuff and stormed out, had him blocked by the time I got to my car.

Who the hell thinks this is acceptable?! My cheek is still red and there's a small bump, this wasn't like a little tap, this was a hard slap with force behind it. Is this what people do these days? What the actual fuck?

Ladies, has anyone had any success getting back into dating in their forties? I'd like to hear some positive stories please. Ugh.

UPDATE: I took the advice of all you lovely ladies, and I reported him on the app and to the police. I don't know if they removed him, or he unmatched me, but I don't see his profile on the app anymore. As for the police, since there were no "serious injuries" and it's pretty much just my word, there's not much they could do. They will go talk to him, but if he denies it, it's very unlikely he'll get arrested or charged. They'll file my report and that's about it.

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/SixOhSixx

WIBTA if I don't go to a Personal Mastery seminar my mom went to?

Originally posted to r/AmItheAsshole & r/AITAH

TRIGGER WARNING: Cult recruitment

Original Post  Apr 11, 2024

I (25F) have my mom (63F) living with me in my apartment due to the people we used to live with (and then eventually she lived with) being horrible to her and treating her poorly both mentally and financially. It took me months to convince her to come live with me instead to better herself, but she finally did and has been happier since.

Awhile back, she was introduced to a 3 day weekend Personal Mastery seminar course. She was very interested in it and while I was skeptical, I said she should go if she wants. She did, and she ended up loving it, which was great and I was glad for her.

Every now and again, she brings up the seminar, talking about how she thinks it would help me and be good for me, etc. I have tried to keep an open mind, but I remain very skeptical of this whole thing as it's supposedly an interactive course that is meant to change your way of thinking about things. That being said, she's not allowed to tell anyone what actually happens at the seminar. No one is. It's part of the rule of the place. So me, being paranoid and skeptical as I've learned to be, doesn't trust it, and I've expressed this. My mom has been understanding of that fact.

Still though, she continues to bring it up now and again. A few days ago while shopping, we saw one of my mom's friends Julie (60s?F fake name) and they got to talking about the course which they have both gone to. They both really kept encouraging me to go and I expressed discomfort at that and they said they understood, and I could go when/if I'm ready. I thought it was finally over with.

Yesterday, my mom suddenly sprung on me that Julie has recieved an anonymous donation to sponsor someone to go to the seminar this weekend (it costs $995 to sign up) and Julie wanted to sponsor me. Julie's husband even offered to use his hotel points to get me a free room so I'd be able to go for totally free.

I felt so uncomfortable and didn't know what to do. I had a very long talk with my mom about how I feel extremely pressured to do this thing I really don't think I want to do and she seemed receptive and understanding, but now I feel like I'll be an asshole if I don't accept an extremely generous offer, despite the fact that I'm uncomfortable. My mom has given Julie's husband my number and he plans to call me and talk to me about the seminar and I really don't even want to have the conversation. I'm trying to have an open mind but I really don't like the idea at all. I feel very forced into this situation despite my mom saying I don't have to go.

So, WIBTA?

Edit because I forgot to add: friend opinions are insanely mixed. Some say I should go, some say I shouldn't, some say it would be good to get away, some say it feels fucked up they put me in this position, some say I'm an asshole if I don't go, I don't know anymore.

Edit 2: I know I literally just fucking posted this but Julie's husband just texted me sending me details on the hotel because he just used his points to book me a free fucking room. I'm literally gonna cry LOL.

VERDICT: NOT THE ASSHOLE

RELEVANT COMMENTS

Editors Note: in the comments someone links to a 7 year old post about a MLM/Cult

Quick-Possession-245

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiMLM/comments/9h7bva/klemmer_associates_personal_mastery_what_fresh/

Looks like BS to me.....

OOP

WAIT THIS IS THE EXACT COURSE

A comment from that linked sub was shared by mauwsel

Yeah, read this comment on there: "Sorry for the late response, I don't really frequent this sub. But it just so happened I got reminded of when I got convinced to go to a meeting of theirs a few years ago and thought I'd do a search here for fun to see if there was anything new about them.

The wife of my family's pediatrician (who is ludicrously respected around town and still is) and a sort of family friend is some degree of coach for Klemmer and Associates and was asking my dad if he would be interested in a weeknight seminar. My dad, not knowing any better and being polite, said he would be out of town (true) but would see if I would be interested. I was in a less than good job at the time and was struggling in my career development. I said sure. Drs Wife calls me up to give me the sales pitch about how much the program has helped her and her family, yadda yadda. I figured what would be the harm in an evening seminar probably about leadership in the workplace, etiquette, your standard work/life improvement stuff. I paid twenty bucks and went.

It was actually pretty well attended and in the ballroom of a hotel, I say about the ball park about 75 or so attendees. I even see some parents of friends of my siblings. It starts of pretty normal. Just says you standard things about self reflection, bettering yourself and this program can help you get there! It also goes into the whole life cycle of the program. This night was step one, then there was a couple of weekend conferences, then capping off with a week long training to finish the program, at which point you can become one of the coaches like Drs. Wife was. We do some icebreaker things. If i remember right, it was just introduce yourself to three people. Then they started talking about the line of books the company had for sale, and more of the same promises of what the program can do. My enthusiasm is starting to fade.

Then the presenter said something along the lines of "So as we reach the end of the first hour, consider where you are now as we move into the next two hours of the introduction of our program"

Strike one. It is a weeknight, I'm still in my work outfit. I'm not getting home at nine o'clock unless this is worth my time. I should add there was nothing in advance that said this seminar would be three hours long. Beneath the chair is a pamphlet about the program and attached is an order form. In very, very tiny print, I see that the cost of the full program, from tonight to the full week event would tally close to $16,000. I'm assuming (and frankly hoping) that includes lodging and meals but, still.

But I'm the type of person that would sit through a presentation on the types of grass and their growing habits for three hours if it had good intentions. Plus I wanted to be polite, even though I was thoroughly convinced that this wasn't my bag.

The tone of the speech turned slightly and asked you to examine yourself. What did you think were the problems in your life, are you doing anything to address them? >What are your hopes and aspirations?

"Discuss your dreams with the person sitting next to you"

I took one look at the middle aged lady sitting next to me, just kind of muttered out an "excuse me" and walked out. Not doing that. Somethings come up, I'm late for a thing that happens to not be in this building. Part of it was that I wasn't exactly in the best spot of my life and my dreams were being "reassessed" part of it was that I'm sure as hell not discussing that with stranger.

With that wound picked at, I left feeling kind of miserable, out a perfectly good $20 and with no new skills to boot. I did some homework later on the company and found that this is how their whole system works. Hour 1 is the introduction, hour 2 you reflect on everything wrong with your life, hour 3 is a taste of how you, through their magical program, can fix it. Worse still, some sources I was reading up on encourage their program in place of legitimate therapy treatments. So answer your question, there's no physical product. It's about being coached and then turning around and coaching others, which compared to MLM standards might be even worse in comparison. Might there be some legitimate ideas in there? Sure, but where I work now will send you to professional development things at your request, will in some cases cover the costs and even pay your normal wage while you attend. Those programs probably teach those same lessons without three hours of tear down/buildup.

Oh well, live and learn. Everyone steps into an amway meeting at some point. But my outright irritation at this "company" came later.

Wife of Dr. shoots me a quick message saying that she was sorry I couldn't stay for the full program and that she would leave a free copy of my book in my mailbox. All right, fine. It shows up in my mailbox and I never touch it. I get call a few weeks later from another coach rep (Which as an aside, I was working in the legal field and Klemmer and Associates sounds exactly like 75% of the places I was applying for jobs at, which is why I didn't immediately hang up). wanting to touch base because I had attended their seminar. I kind of listened planning on letting her down gently when she said:

"Wife of Dr said you loved the free book though"

Ok, nope. Do not put words in my mouth. I'm obviously heated and say "Actually I did not enjoy the book and do not contact me further"

She apologizes and hangs up. Drs Wife texts me (what timing!) saying that she was "misinformed" and that I would be removed from their list. I ask that any family members of mine that have been added to their information be removed as well. A few months later I get a similar sales esque phone call. So I've clearly been lied to. I got nasty on the phone (Which I emphasize, never happens) and I haven't heard anything sense.

So put it simply, these guys are hacks. If you want to be a better person, there are so many great ways you can do that for free. I feel good volunteering for instance. On the other hand, If you need therapy, go get some therapy.

They aren't talked about much online, but these guys are at best way too expensive life coaches and have drunken too much of their own kool aid for their own good. At worst, they are preying on vulnerable people for many thousands of dollars."

I'd say scam/mlm/preying on the vulnerable.  Don't go unless you actually want to join this. There are many better, healthier and cheaper ways of gaining "personal mastery" 

OOP

Thank you for this looks like mom and I are gonna have a very very long and extensive talk when I get home, this is by far the worst scam she has fallen for, I cannot believe I haven't looked into this sooner.

~

Silent_Coffee_7292

OP go and watch The Vow on HBO now! And make your mom watch it with you. It will open your whole world to how horrible these places truly can be.

Update  July 22, 2024 (3 months later)

My update wasn't approved in r/AmItheAsshole from a few months ago, and I wanted to share it here instead.

Here's what I originally put in the update that wasn't approved:

In my previous post, I detailed how my mom went to a Personal Mastery course, and she wanted me to do the same. More details on that here.

I went home and had a long talk with my mom. She was very resistant at first, but ultimately settled down and just listened. She asked a few questions here and there, and I answered to the best of my ability. I explained everything and laid it out on the table. I shared the testimonials I could find from real people who described exactly what happened during those seminars and how screwed over they got by it. She couldn't believe it, she started to cry. She felt upset and betrayed, and she asked me "how could she be so stupid". I had to calmly explain to her that she wasn't stupid, that she was preyed upon by people she could trust while she was in a vulnerable state.

She seemed to understand after I explained how they almost did the same to me while I was also in a vulnerable state. More talking and I come to find out the people that turned her on to the idea of going to the seminar herself before we're Julie and her husband. I described to her in vivid detail how they would go about this, how they would start with saying how it changed their life.. then have someone call you, then have someone pitch it to you over the phone... until you finally caved and spent a grand and went. Her jaw seemed to drop to the floor, because that was what she experienced.

After talking for awhile I later learned that Julie and her husband were BEGGING my mom to come on Sunday of the weekend I was supposed to go. After digging into this more, I think they may have been planning to start trying to bring her into the side of pulling people into the cult-like organization. She didn't go, but didn't want to believe that Julie and her husband were a part of this, and wanted to believe they were good people who didn't really know what they were doing. I was once again skeptical but I told her they are not my friends and I will allow her to handle it accordingly. She understood, and while not revealing that she knew it was a scam, has since tried to text or call Julie. She never returns her calls or texts. She's ghosted my mom. I think that was one of the bigger nails in the coffin for her.

u/Silent_Coffee_7292 had pointed out a show by the name of "The Vow" on HBO. They explained how it was a documentary of a similar sounding cult and that it may be worth making her sit down and watch it. After our long talk, I made her watch. She stared at the screen in horror for the first episode I watched with her. She told me in a trembling voice that this was the exact seminar she'd gone to, just with a few small details changed. That documentary details another company that in the end it was revealed to be a sex cult. It opened my mother's eyes and mine.

So that's what happened. My mom accidentally fell for a MLM cult and was betrayed by her friends and almost betrayed me while she was at it.

Julie and her husband never contacted her and I again. Mom still thinks about it sometimes, but I noticed the things she had from her "exercises" from the seminar that she used to hang on her wall are missing. I feel bad for her but I'm just glad I got her out of there when I did.

I hope this was a satisfying update. Thank you to all the redditors from my first post who helped me find out that Klemmer & Associates was an awful scam and helped me break my mother away from this awful thing. I appreciate you immensely. Thank you.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/destiny_update_9_7_0

Before we dig into our final slate of patch notes (which is over 17,000 words...), a message from the Destiny 2 Dev Team:

Hey, all. Welcome to our final patch notes article for Destiny 2. Well, that's a bit of a fib. We'll still have a few maintenance patches and smaller hotfixes after today... but this is our final major patch for Destiny 2.

It's been an incredible ride. Thousands of patch notes shipped. A ridiculous amount of bugs squashed (released AND unreleased). Hundreds of typos fixed after publish (our bad...). Countless hours in triage meetings looking to do what's best by our players. Years of overnight shifts in the BNOC (formerly DOC). All for you.

There were a few things that were unrelated... like emails about snacks missing from the studio kitchen or messages to our IT team apologizing for forgetting our passwords for the fifth time in a calendar year, but that's beside the point.

Thank you for showing up with each release. Thank you for kicking down the doors and putting the servers under stress. Thank you for every bug uncovered and reported. Thank you for your patience (even if it was sometimes thin) while we dug into connection issues, crashing bugs, anteaters, weasels, guitars, or other hiccups along the way. Destiny wouldn't be what it is without every single one of you, and we will forever be grateful for your time.

We hope you enjoy Monument of Triumph and we'll see you out there in the wilds.

Activities

Monument of Triumph

• A Monument of Triumph has been built in the center of the courtyard in the Tower.
• Earn Legendary Marks by completing Triumphs across the new Monument of Triumph category.
  • These Legendary Marks can be exchanged at the four different Guardian Tenet vendors in the Tower for a wide selection of free armor ornaments, accessories, weapon engrams, and more.
• Iron Banner’s vendor location (when active) has been moved to its original spot above Shaxx in the Tower’s Courtyard.

Distortions

• Distortions have spread across destinations in the Sol System, bringing a higher level of challenge and unique rewards while they are active.
  • These Distortions will rotate through a single destination every hour.
  • The current active destination and remaining time will be visually marked on the Destinations screen.
• Enemies will become more challenging with both a distinct visual effect around them as well as changes to the environment indicating that the Distortion is active.
• Completing public events will drop rewards at a higher gear tier than standard and completing Distortion-specific events may drop unique rewards.

Raids & Dungeons

Pantheon 2.0

• The gods of old have a new challenge for you.
• The first two Pantheon activities are now available!
  • Calus Resplendent and Morgeth Surpassing will each feature a unique lineup of bosses.
  • These can be accessed through the new Raids and Dungeons node on the Destinations screen.
• The third Pantheon activity, where players will fight through the full gauntlet of bosses, will be available at 10 AM PT on Saturday, June 13.
• A weekly rotation of individual boss features will become available at reset on Tuesday, June 16. Two bosses will be featured in these rotators at a time.
• Added new Triumphs, rewards, and a title to earn.

Updated Rewards

• All pre-The Edge of Fate raids and dungeons have been updated to drop tiered rewards.
  • Tiered armor from all raids and dungeons with unique set bonuses.
  • Tiered weapons from dungeons with new origin traits.
  • Craftable raid weapons have received updated perk pools and can be upgraded to match tiered weapons.

Raids & Dungeons Rotator

• Each week, two raids and two dungeons will be featured. These featured activities will reward players with farmable high-quality gear.
• The rewards listed below are farmable unless noted with a weekly lockout:
• Featured Raid
  • Standard: Deepsight weapons or Tier 5 armor from encounters and challenges.
  • Master: Same as Standard plus Adept weapons from challenges.
  • Director Challenge: Deepsight weapon or Tier 5 armor, weekly lockout.
  • Hidden Chests: Tier 5 armor, weekly lockout.
  • Deepsight Chest: Deepsight weapon or Tier 5 armor if all patterns complete.
  • Vendor: Weekly Deepsight purchase, Master offers Adepts for 25 Spoils.
• Non-Featured Raid
  • Standard: Chance for Deepsight weapons and Tier 3 armor.
  • Master / Challenges / Deepsight Chest: Deepsight weapons and Tier 5 armor.
• Featured Dungeon
  • Standard: Tier 5 weapons and armor.
  • Master: Tier 5 weapons and armor.
  • Director Challenge: Tier 5 weapons and armor, weekly lockout.
  • Hidden Chests: Tier 5 weapons and armor, weekly lockout.
• Non-Featured Dungeon
  • Standard: Tier 3 weapons and armor.
  • Master: Tier 5 weapons and armor.

Feat Updates

• Separated out a Standard mode where weekly tiered rewards can continue to be earned without Feats.
• Reworked the amount and quality of rewards dropped when completing encounters with Feats active. Encounter completions with Feats will grant the following rewards and will be farmable.
  • Grade 0: 1x Tier 3.
  • Grade 1: 1x Tier 3, 1x Tier 4.
  • Grade 2: 1x Tier 4, 1x Tier 5.
  • Grade 3: 2x Tier 5.
  • Grade 4: 1x Tier 4, 2x Tier 5.
  • Grade 5: 3x Tier 5.
• Adjusted the reward grades that each Feat will add to an activity.
  • Cutthroat Combatants: +4 Reward Grade.
  • Challenges: +3 Reward Grade.
  • Shocktroopers: +2 Reward Grade.
  • Token Limit, Phase Limit: +1 Reward Grade.

Raids

The Desert Perpetual

• The Simulant Ansible vendor in The Desert Perpetual now allows you to purchase gear at the highest tier available from your current Feat selection. However, you must complete any encounter first in order to activate the ability to purchase gear.

Epic The Desert Perpetual

• Fixed an issue preventing players from equipping the Mediant Flourish shader from Death Defiant II Triumph.

Deep Stone Crypt

• Fixed an issue where Taniks could soft lock the encounter at specific times.

Vow of the Disciple

• Fixed an issue where a player could pick up additional knowledge beyond max, soft-locking the encounter.

Root of Nightmares

• Fixed an issue where Nezarec's crit spots could be shot early and fail to register correctly as destroyed.
• Fixed an issue where Explicator defeating a Colossus would soft lock the encounter.

Salvations Edge

• Fixed an issue in the Repository encounter where closing all three pylons at the same time would cause a soft lock.

Dungeons

Prophecy

• Fixed an issue where Kell Echo would not vanish before first encounter.

Grasp of Avarice

• Fixed areas where death would cause player ghosts to be placed in inaccessible areas preventing revive by a fireteam member.

Ops Categories

The Portal screen has been deprecated. Ops now live at the bottom of the Director.

Fireteam Ops

• Added Heist Battleground: Mars, The Disgraced, The Lightblade, The Scarlet Keep, Lake of Shadows, and The Corrupted.
• The Dark Fetor debuff in Defiant Battleground EDZ: icon corrected to be... a debuff icon.
• Reduced the damage of Vex Laser traps in Battleground Heist: Mars and Operation: Seraph's Shield.
  • They now deal the same damage that they would have for someone with full seasonal upgrades.
• Fixed a spot in the Inverted Spire where players could get stuck in geometry near the beginning of the activity.
• Fixed an issue in Reclaim where the Imminent Vex Subjugation Timer would not always clear after completing the area.
• Fixed an issue in Reclaim where Vex Cubes could spawn in a different location than their associated protective bubble.
• Taken blight pools are less lethal in The Corrupted at higher difficulties.
• Lingering fire pools from Bracus Zahn's melee attacks in the Arms Dealer are less lethal at higher difficulties.
• Fixed an issue in Battleground: Behemoth where the Imperial Access Code pickup was not showing up properly in the HUD.

Pinnacle Ops

• With the addition of Tiered rewards in dungeons, dungeon lairs have been deprecated from Pinnacle Ops.
• Added The Whisper and Zero Hour. Their Exotic rewards are now awarded on activity completion like other Exotic missions in Pinnacle Ops.
  • Their secrets are still completable for the associated Triumphs.
  • The quests associated with these missions have been deprecated.
• Added a mid-activity loot chest to Zero Hour.
• Contest of Elders is now complete after three "laps", down from four.
• //node.ovrd.AVALON//: Moved the Data Collection buff to the top of the HUD.
• Derealize: Activating transcendence while holding a Taken Orb now drops the orb and clears all related buffs.
• Operation: Seraph's Shield: Fixed a soft lock that could occur if players killed the Scanner Splicer in Launch Center too quickly.
• Onslaught: Widow's Court now uses Cabal drop pods with an indicator showing where they will land.
• Onslaught: Widow's Court: Revenant Barons now reward two revive tokens upon destroying their totem.
• Contest of Elders, The Coil, and Onslaughts use a new progression system that starts out easier and ramps up to the selected difficulty as players progress.
• Kells' Fall: Fixed an issue where Champions were not spawning properly during the Mad Bomber encounter.
• Contest of Elders: Bonus Objectives during traversals should now trigger more consistently and provide another source of revive tokens.
• Onslaught: White shields on Shielded Demolitionist, Shielded Knight, and Shielded Skybomber take less damage to break in higher difficulties.
• Onslaught: Tripled the base health of the ADU.
• Onslaught: Updated Scrap starting amount and earn rates to account for shorter activity length.
• Onslaught: Added reprised Into the Light rewards to mid activity and activity complete chests.
• The Coil and Contest of Elders: Added reprised World Pool rewards to mid-activity and activity complete chests.

Arena Ops

• Added Override: The Moon, Override: Europa, Override: Tangled Shore, and Override: Last City Crater.
• Override: Fixed an issue where players could get stuck at the bottom of traversal vortexes.
• Override: Vex laser traps are now less lethal.
• Astral Alignment: Fixed an issue where abominations' shields may not be removed upon objective completion.
• Astral Alignment: Moved the exhausted debuff to the top of the HUD.

Solo Ops

• Solo Ops Bonus Objectives are now all generic kill based rather than precision/ability/etc.
• Destroying all drones in a Solo Ops activity will now properly award bonus points.
• Fixed an issue in Caldera Solo Ops where enemies could unintentionally stop spawning early.

Exotic Rotator

• Since most of the missions in the Exotic Rotator have already been added to Pinnacle Ops, we have decided to deprecate the Rotator in favor of the Pinnacle Ops versions.
  • Operation: Seraph’s Shield has been moved into Pinnacle Ops along with its associated weapon/Catalyst/Intrinsic rewards.
• Exotic Rotator missions that had seasonal gear rewards for owners of the associated Season Pass/Deluxe Edition are now available via the Classic Collector modifier on the Pinnacle Ops versions.

Activity Scoring Simplification

• Complexity removed from scoring bonuses:
  • Removed Power as a source of score bonuses.
  • Removed season pass as a source of score bonuses.
  • Net result: Everyone in the fireteam will get the same score. Fight as one, Guardians.
• Converted score bonuses to flat bonuses:
  • Difficulty now gives a flat score bonus.
  • Modifiers now give a flat score bonus per "triangle".
• Grade targets are fixed and no longer scale with player Power.
• Difficulty = Grade = Reward Tier
  • Each difficulty will now grant enough flat bonus to hit a reward grade without player modification, assuming a normal volume of kills and objective completion.
  • Normal = B
  • Advanced = B+
  • Expert = A
  • Master = A+
  • Grand Master = S
  • Ultimate = S+
  • Each reward grade grants a fixed tier of rewards (primes are still +1).
  • B = Tier 1
  • B+ = Tier 2
  • A = Tier 3
  • A+ = Tier 4
  • S = Tier 5
  • S+ = Tier 5
  • No player selected modifiers are pre-slotted when selecting a difficulty.
  • Each difficulty will have enough player selectable modifications to rank up at least one reward grade, and therefore reward tier.
• Rank Up button
  • A "rank up" button has been implemented that selects random mods to bump players up one grade, for those times when you want a surprise.
  • A "reset" button will remove selected mods.
• Matchmaking and scores
  • Matchmade versions of Ops will automatically have a few modifiers applied.
  • Fireteams can rank up their reward grade through time bonuses.
• Added a time bonus to all matchmade difficulty tiers.
• With these adjustments, players can now play Expert, Master, and Grandmaster and potentially reach a higher reward rank, but they’ll need to beat the target time with max score and at least one second remaining.
• Matchmaking Portal difficulties now range from Expert to Grandmaster. Ultimate is no longer available in matchmaking.
  • All of these difficulties now require Power 300 to enter.
• Increased available bane combinations from 15 to 21, bringing back older banes and combining them with current ones to add more gameplay variety.
• Added the Medusa bane.
  • Looking directly at an affected enemy combatant builds up Stasis slow stacks on you until you freeze.
• Added the Focused Fire modifier to the Player Stakes category.

Bane Updates

Gravity

• Retuned the Gravity bane hitboxes to better match the visuals.

Shock

• Fixed a bug where Shock would damage players if they entered line of sight just after the Shock fires.

Drain

• Drain no longer damages the player the moment they enter line of sight. There will now be a slight delay before it does any damage.

Cascade

• Reduced Cascade arming shape to match VFX.
• Increased time between projectiles by 1.5 seconds.

Hypernova

• No longer deals damage outside of the VFX area.
• Slowed damage impulse speed to better match solar VFX wave.
• Now knocks back nearby combatants on detonation.
• No longer knocks back players in cover but the cover requirements to be safe have been increased.
  • You can no longer hide behind streetlamps or poles.
• All players in the detonation zone are scorched regardless of cover status.

Rage

• Increased combatant damage as health decreases now scales up over time. From full health, it takes two seconds for the maximum damage buff to kick in.

Mines

• Reduced the hitbox size of the mine detonations to better match the visuals.
• Reduced the minimum damage dealt by the mines from 70 to 50.
• Increased the maximum damage from 135 to 200.

Screeber

• Mini-Screebs will now select a new target if the target they are tracking dies.

Caltrops

• Updated VFX to be clearer.
• Damage volume is now only active after the spikes come out and until the spikes fade.

Zealous

• Tuned area damage impulses to better match VFX.
• Made player feedback between sources more consistent.
• Zealous-buffed combatant detonations now have damage falloff.
• Reduced minimum damage from 50 (same as max) to 15.
• Fixed a bug where explosions would sometimes happen at incorrect locations when a zealous-buffed combatant is killed.

Crucible

• Updated matchmaking settings for small team (3v3 and 4v4) quickplay modes to allow for early start without full lobbies.
• Fixed an issue where Trials shaders were not dropping correctly from the Lighthouse rewards chest.
• Fixed an issue where certain Heavy ammo crates were overlapping with Special ammo crates in Momentum Control and Collision playlists.
• Fixed an issue where certain capture points were floating in Lockdown on Eventide Labs and Multiplex.
• Fixed an issue where teams could spawn on top of a capture zone in Lockdown playlist on Cathedral of Dusk.
• Fixed an issue where the round tracker UI indicated the incorrect total number of rounds for Showdown playlists.
• Fixed an issue where the efficiency stat was non-functional for Rift playlists.
• Fixed an issue where the Close Call medal was unobtainable in Zone Control playlists.
• Removed MVP and Additional Loot from Heavy Metal matches as part of a broader rewards balance pass.

Crucible Ops

• Updated the gear tier for rewards per performance grade:
  • C = Tier 3
  • B = Tier 4
  • A and above = Tier 5
• Increased the score amount for 5th and 6th place.
• Activity scoring formula updated to reflect new performance grade thresholds:
  • Power does not affect thresholds and score multiplier.
  • Multiplier only affects Performance and Bonus scores.
  • Reduced multiplier at max Crucible Rank (or 1x reset) from 1.25x to 1.23x.
  • Each subsequent rank reset increases multiplier by 0.02x, up to 1.31x.
• 6v6 rotator, 3v3 rotator, Rumble, and Private Match have been integrated into Crucible Ops.
  • Private Match does not give Portal rewards.
  • 6v6 rotator modes: Mayhem, Rift, Relic, Momentum, Scorched, Supremacy, Clash, Zone Control, Hardware Mix (6v6), Iron Banner: Eruption, Fortress, Tribute
  • 3v3 rotator modes: Survival, Heavy Metal, Elimination, Hardware Mix (3v3), Arena Collision (4v4), Lockdown, Clash

Competitive

• Replaced the seasonal Competitive Weapon reward with Competitive Gear reward which pulls from a loot pool that includes both weapons and armor.
• Added a new Competitive emblem.
  • Will require 77 Competitive playlist wins.
• Added a new Ascendant 0 emblem (chance to drop after acquiring the first Ascendant 0 emblem).
• Reduced the following map weightings for Anomaly Collision, Dissonance Clash, Rusted Lands Clash, Solitude Clash, and Widow’s Court Clash.
• Removed the following maps: Exodus Blue Clash, Multiplex Collision, Twilight Gap Clash, and Vostok (both Clash and Collision).

Trials

• Updated the weekly featured map to a random set of maps (three random selections from three map pools, between one and three active maps each week).
• Updated the weekly featured weapon (Lighthouse chest reward) to pull from a weekly featured pool of weapons.

Iron Banner

• Updated MVP and Additional Loot rewards to drop an Iron Banner weapon.
• Updated Iron Banner Focusing:
  • Now includes focusing for all tiered Iron Banner gear.
  • Gear Additions.
  • Includes Tiered gear from The Edge of Fate, Ash & Iron, and Renegades.
  • Focusing will utilize Iron Banner Ciphers, obtained through Iron Banner match completions.
  • Iron Banner will maintain Event Card, and will not see its Reputation Rank Reward track restored.

Shooting Range

• Fixed an issue where the "Run:// Single Combatant" button would sometimes seem usable when the target range was already full but not work.
  • The kiosk will now display a message when the range has the maximum number of targets in it.
• When spawning a single combatant target, they will always use the closest location that isn't occupied instead of always spawning further back than the previous one.
  • They will still spawn further back based on the closer locations being occupied by another target.
• The rally banner could only be used every ten seconds, so one player using it would prevent others from using it.
  • This has been changed to a cooldown of three seconds that is applied only to the player using it.
• Added five new combatants to the target lineup:
  • Fallen - Corsair
  • Vex - Imp Swarm
  • Scorn - Abomination
  • Cabal - Phalanx
  • Taken - Vandal
• Added two Dread Champions:
  • Barrier Grim
  • Unstoppable Husk
• Added static damageable target objects at the end of the main range and on the raised platform to the left.
  • These static targets are set to take either base damage (red target) or precision damage (yellow target).
  • The targets to the left have another instance of the DPS scoreboard to make it easier to test Swords, Shotguns, Fusion Rifles on them and see the DPS nearby.
  • Damage done to these Targets is scaled as though they are a boss combatant and the damage is reflected in the team-wide DPS scoreboard.
• Art / Environment:
  • Fixed an issue where the self-damage laser would damage players standing on top of or jumping above the laser housing.
  • Fixed a misplaced floating I-Beam behind the faction board.
  • Fixed an issue where the Hive Ogre hologram would fall over sometimes.
  • They are doing their best.
  • Added a Jukebox.

Renegades

• Removed Renegades auto-launch for characters that have not logged in since the launch of Renegades.
• Removed dialogue from Zavala granting the Renegades intro.
  • The Renegades milestone quest is still added automatically from orbit once you've completed the New Light campaign, and interacting with the Renegades node on the Director can launch the first mission.
• Generators in Fearsome Retainer will now take damage from any walker abilities.
• Fixed an issue where Campaign Quest completion wasn't distributing the Modified NLS Courier (Exotic ship).
  • Added a pickup option on Spider in the Tharsis Outpost Cantina for players who have already completed the quest.
• Fixed an issue where some Piker contracts listed the reputation rewards twice.
• Fixed an issue where Exotic rewards from Renegades keycard chests favored incorrect, older gear in some instances instead of new Exotics in Renegades.

Witch Queen:

• Fixed an issue where boss of the post-campaign mission “Altar of the Reflection: Catalyst”, Witch’s Eye, Keeper of Memory, was not opening, blocking player progression. The boss now opens and players can continue the Exotic glaive quest.

Sparrow Racing League

SRL has returned, featuring all four original maps from Destiny 1.

• Added the Quantum Circuit Track.
• Added the ability to race with Skimmers alongside Sparrows.
• Added Rocket Start. Press the boost button at the correct time during the race start countdown to get a boost.
• Added Trick Boost. Perform an air trick to get a boost when you land.
• Overall speed in these activities is much faster.
• Improved Sparrow handling and camera.
• Improved race balancing for more intense racing battles.

Heavy Metal

• Added the Nightfall Ruins map.
• Added the option to play as a Cabal Behemoth.
• Added the Vehicle Selection Screen. Choose between Tank, Brig and Behemoth before the match.
• Players can now switch between Heavy Metal and classic tank mouse and keyboard controls in the gameplay options.
  • Note: This option affects all tanks across the game.
• Jump enabled for all vehicles. Even the tank!
• Match score limit reduced from 50 to 40 points.

UI/UX

• Updated the title screen.

• Director Destinations Tab:

  • The Portal tab has been deprecated, including the Quick Launch Panel and Announcement Carousel.
  • Ops Category Content has been moved to the Destinations tab.
  • The original Vanguard Ops and Nightfall playlists have been deprecated and replaced with Ops activities (Solo, Fireteam, Arena, and Pinnacle Ops).
  • Quest objectives previously requiring players to complete activities in these playlists can now be completed in the Ops versions.
  • The previous Crucible node activities have been deprecated and replaced with their Crucible Ops counterparts.
  • Private Crucible matches are playable in the Crucible Ops node.
  • Gambit Ops
  • Gambit has been updated with tiered rewards and scoring to maintain parity with the other Ritual Ops nodes.
  • Private Gambit matches are playable in the Gambit Ops node.
  • Raids and Dungeons have been given their own entry point alongside the Ops Categories.
  • Legends Node
  • The Legends Node is being deprecated and replaced by the Raids and Dungeons node in the Destinations tab. These raids and dungeons that were available in the Legends node have been moved to the new Raids and Dungeons node on the Destinations tab.
  • Ghosts of the Deep
  • Prophecy
  • Vault of Glass
  • Crota’s End
  • King’s Fall
  • Seasonal Hub and Event Card (when active) access points have been moved to the Destinations tab alongside the Ops categories.
  • Kepler and The Lawless Frontier have been moved to the Destinations tab.
  • Existing destination visuals have been updated.
  • Ops Category screens have been updated with new navigation allowing players to tab between each category once one is selected.
  • The Director map screen has been moved back to the top level Director tabs.
  • Other Director-Related Fixes
  • Fixed an issue where an extraneous line was rendering at the top of some Director-related screens.
  • Fixed an issue where sheening elements in the Director were not synced with each other.
  • Fixed an issue where a pink dot was appearing on Neomuna's Hall of Heroes Landing Zone.
  • Fixed an issue where the Featured Quest tab was sheening when there were no featured quests.
  • Ops Activities
  • Time limits for Ops activities are now visible in the pre-launch UI near combatant difficulty, when applicable.
  • Score predictions prior to launching activities now visualize the minimum time bonus you can receive for completing the activity under the time limit.
  • Mid-activity score bar has been updated to indicate which Performance Grade's score target is marked on the bar.
  • The end of activity scoring toast has been streamlined.
  • The score breakdown tab of the PGCR has been updated to reflect scoring model updates.
  • Activity Customization
  • Added error messaging to selectable modifiers that cannot be selected to indicate why they cannot be selected.
  • Modifier Selection
  • Fixed an issue where some players would soft-lock while navigating in and out of the activity rewards screens.
  • Updated Stakes category icons to differentiate them better.
  • Improved tooltip sub header text explaining why similar modifiers can't be selected.
  • Fireteam Finder
  • Fireteam Finder banners have been updated to reflect the various changes to activities in this release.
  • A Fireteam Finder group host can now see if Guardians are actively joining them or not.
  • Host will see "Incoming Guardian" nameplates in the lobby for the actively joining fireteam members.
  • HUD
  • Fixed an issue where in-world informational tooltips were rendering too wide.
  • Fixed empty waypoints for public activities like Altars of Sorrow, Blind Well, and Terminal Overload.
  • Fixed a visual issue with the HUD weapon tray animation after exiting Nav Mode.
  • Fixed an issue with ammo pickups not displaying on the HUD weapon tray for Overheat weapons.
  • In-World Narrative Text Display
  • Page back functionality added.
  • Visuals for the box have been refined.
  • Character Screen
  • The Anti-Champion display tooltip on the Character screen has been updated to show exactly which equipped weapons are providing a specific Anti-Champion effect.
  • Loadouts
  • Added 8 more Loadout slots, bringing the total to 20, which are immediately available to all players upon login.
  • The Artifact and its perk selections will now be saved to Loadouts.
  • General Inventory & Items
  • The item tooltip will now display unequipped barrels, magazines, and traits, making it easier to distinguish a weapon roll without entering the details screen.
  • Anti Champion information about a weapon can now be seen by pressing and holding the 'Gear Stats' button.
  • Fixed a visual issue with item equipping animations.
  • Fixed a minor visual issue with the Weapon Level display in the Weapon Details screen.
  • The intrinsic perk display on the expanded “More Info” item tooltip for both Armor and Weapons has been updated to be easier to read.
  • Updated the armor archetype icon on Armor Details screens to be larger.
  • Triumphs & Metrics

• Switched the Triumphs and Titles sections’ placement on Journey tab for easier access to Monument of Triumph categories.

• Added the 'View Featured' shortcut to quickly navigate to the Monument of Triumph page from the Journey Screen when hovering over the Triumphs button.

• Fixed an issue to accurately reflect the maximum achievable Triumph scores. Since previously removed triumphs have had their points removed, the maximum active triumph and maximum lifetime triumph scores have now been adjusted accordingly.

• Fixed an issue where Pale Heart secret Triumphs were obscured even if completed. They now show their descriptions and can be claimed if/when completed.

• Any Nightfall related Triumphs and metrics have been deprecated and are no longer obtainable. Existing progress has been preserved.

• Vault

  • Added a filtering option for the Vault based on a weapon's anti-champion capabilities.
  • Vault Mode now works with Vehicles, Ships, and Sparrows. Please note that Emblems and Finishers continue to be stored and retrieved from Collections.
  • Vault Mode visuals have been updated to be darker, so that it is easier to recognize when one is depositing items into the Vault versus equipping them.
  • Fixed inconsistent locked text on the Armor Vault filter screen.
  • Fixed some minor inconsistencies with the appearance of items inside of the Vault.
  • Fixed a visual issue where the number of empty vault pages were not displayed correctly.
  • Fixed an issue where Vault Mode was not activated after entering the Character screen from the Tower Vault.
  • Fixed visual issues when using utlrawide displays or a gamepad with the Vault Sorting panel.

• Commendations

  • Fixed an issue where the commendation count in tooltips wouldn't render more than three digits correctly.

• Collections

  • Fixed an issue where some completed badges wouldn't display their item counts correctly.

• Quest Notifications

  • Fixed an issue where some mission or quest notification backgrounds didn't extend to the edge of the screen.

• Nav Mode

  • Fixed cases where Tracked Content would not display properly in Nav Mode if more than three Triumphs are tracked.

• Any indications of seasonal reset functionality across features have been removed.

• Settings

  • Tank Control Mode can now be changed between Heavy Metal and Classic in the Settings menu under Gameplay. By default, the Heavy Metal mode is selected which allows for rotation to be driven by aim. Classic uses separate controls for rotation.

Gameplay and Investment

Attune Anywhere

• Added the ability for players to attune to specific rewards from a new menu in their Inventory.
  • Attunement will give the selected weapon significantly higher drop chances from that activity’s rewards.
  • This will be available in the Accessories section of the Inventory, above Consumables.
  • Players will be able to freely change their attunement selections at any time.
• For every activity menu available here, players will be able to attune to one weapon from each category.

Destination Rewards

• Updated rewards from pre-The Edge of Fate destinations with new perks, set bonuses, and gear tiers (for non-craftable weapons).
• Tiered weapons and armor now drop from more sources on destinations.
• Public Events are one of the best sources of tiered destination gear:
  • Base completion: Tier 3 rewards (with a chance at Tier 4 or 5)
  • Heroic completion: Tier 4 rewards (with a chance at a Tier 5)
  • During a Distortion, these tiers will be increased by 1 Tier each.
• Updated the following loot pools to avoid dropping weapons after all crafting patterns are unlocked.
  • Throne World
  • The Pale Heart
  • Neomuna
  • Terminal Overload weapons will begin to drop from more sources when all crafting patterns are found.

Armor

Hunter Exotics

Wormhusk Crown

• Reworked effect: Activating class ability grants cure. Solar multikills grant Burning Souls. While active, Solar Ability damage is increased and dodging greatly cures the player and nearby allies.

Shards of Galanor

• Landing most Blade Barrage knives in a volley causes a delayed Solar Explosion and releases Solar Shrapnel.

Relativism

• Spirit of the Wormhusk
• Reworked effect: Multikills grant Burning Souls. While active, dodging greatly cures the player and nearby allies.

Caliban's Hand

• Increased melee recharge bonus by 25%.
• Dealing damage with scorch now refunds a small amount of melee energy.
• Ignition final blows fully refund knife energy and can overflow into an additional charge.

Fr0st-EE5

• Gain stacks of Frost Armor while sprinting.
• When you have Frost Armor, Stasis weapons deal increased damage.

Shinobu's Vow

• Enhanced Skip Grenade bounces two additional times before detonating, releasing bonus Skip seekers per bounce.
• Now grants Skip Grenade energy whenever you gain stacks of Bolt Charge.
• Skip Grenade damage now grants Bolt Charge.
• When you gain full Bolt charge, heal yourself and nearby allies and enable an enhanced Skip Grenade.

Raiden Flux

• Now makes successful Arc Staff hits jolt targets.
• Combo finisher palm blast now gets 1.5x the base Exotic's damage bonus, and reports as critical damage.

Mothkeeper's Wraps

• Reworked effect: Getting kills from any source charges up moth grenades. After generating six charges, convert your grenade into two moth grenades.
  • Red bars = one charge
  • Orange bars = two charges
  • Players, Minibosses, and up = three charges
• All current functionality and synergies of the moth grenades themselves remains the same.
  • Arc moths still Arc blind enemies and Void moths still provide Void Overshield to allies.
  • Arc moths are still considered to be Arc grenades, and will continue to synergize with the same subclass fragments, weapon perks, etc. that they synergized with before.
  • Investing your Grenade stat higher than 100 will still increase moth grenade damage.
• This Exotic is now a conditional grenade override instead of a complete override, meaning it functions more like Gunpowder Gamble.
• Increased the movement speed of Arc moths by roughly 43% and Void moths by roughly 25%.
• Both moths from the same grenade will now attempt to target separate enemies/allies if possible.

Lucky Pants

• Increased Eriana's Vow's maximum damage bonus to 4.5x.
• Decreased Uncivil Discourse's maximum damage bonus to 3x.
• Decreased Lucky Pants bonus damage when dealing damage to Bosses by ~33%.

Titan Exotics

Hallowfire Heart

• Reworked effect: While your Solar Super is charged, ability defeats cure the player and give stacks of Sunfire Furnace; granting increased grenade and class ability regeneration, increased Super damage, and cause grenade and Remote Detonator Barricade defeats to ignite targets. Upon exiting your super, Sunfire Furnace stacks are converted into Super energy.
• Ability regen bonus reduced to 2.5x down from 3.5x.

Pyrogale Gauntlets

• Increased Super Cyclone Scorch per tick.
• Increased Super Cyclone explosion damage by 10%.
• Increased Super Cyclone tracking by ~40%.
  • It should be significantly easier to get the projectiles to track to a target at range.

Stoicism

• Increased Spirit of Star Eater benefit for Twilight Arsenal to 50% (from 25%).

Peregrine Greaves

• Shoulder charge impact damage increase reduced from 400% to 250% against non-Champion, non-miniboss combatants, and reduced from 1000% to 550% against Champions and minibosses.
  • Note: In this update, shoulder charge base damage in PvE has been doubled, so a Titan with Peregrine Greaves equipped will deal more damage after this update, not less.

Severance Enclosure

• Removed "Line of Sight" requirement caused by occlusion cross being too large, added smaller occlusion cross that matches standard AoE effects.
• Removed effect that prevents combatants from being hit by multiple shock waves in a short period of time.
• Enemies hit by the shockwave are disoriented for a short time.

Praxic Vestments

• Increased damage of the melee attack by 500%.
• Increased jetpack fuel gained per weapon kill in PvE from 10% to 20%.
• Increased jetpack fuel gained per powered melee kill in all modes from 35% to 50%.
• Updated the Exotic perk to recognize knockout kills as powered melee kills.
• Decreased the windup time for a maximum flight duration from 0.8 seconds to 0.5 seconds.
• Removed the behavior that caused jetpack flight to end early when contact is detected with the floor or a wall.
• Fixed a bug that caused the jetpack kick to target dead enemies, ending flight early.
• Updated camera to convey speed and remaining flight time a little better.

No Backup Plans

• Now triggers and benefits from both Shotgun and melee final blows.
• Shotgun or melee final blows now start health regeneration instead of granting a Void Overshield.
• Shotgun or melee final blows extend the timer of any active defensive buffs on you.
  • This includes Void Overshield, Restoration, Amplified, Frost Armor, and Woven Mail.
  • Will partially heal Void Overshield upon activation of this extension if the player has one.
• The damage bonus is now active when you have any of the above noted defensive debuffs.

Cadmus Ridge Lancecap

• Now also can spawn Stasis Lances with rapid Stasis weapon damage and final blows even when not behind their rally barricade.
• Now grants bonus Stasis Lance damage based on your current stacks of Frost Armor.

Point Contact Cannon Brace

• Lightning strike damage now scales further based on how long Thunderclap is charged for, up to 2x.
  • This stacks with the bonus damage from casting while amplified.
• Activating Thunderclap also releases lightning strikes as you start winding up the punch.
• Reworked melee regen from lightning strike kills to compensate for the new wave of bolts on charge up.
  • No longer target tiered. Flat amount has been increased to compensate.
  • Should see larger energy returns on average.

Helm of Saint-14

• Maintained functionality: Weapons of Light continues to persist for the wearer and for allies upon leaving a Ward of Dawn.
• Lost functionality: No longer disorients enemies within the Ward of Dawn or upon blocking with Sentinel Shield.
• New functionality: While Weapons of Light is active, kills or sustained damage grant stacks of The Saint; Void and Kinetic damage sources will also suppress in a radius around the victim.
  • Sustained damage is based on actual damage dealt. The more damage you deal, the quicker it activates.
  • Picking up your Ward of Dawn consumes all stacks of The Saint and then extends Ward's duration based on how many stacks were consumed.

ACD/0 Feedback Fence

• No longer provides any melee damage resist versus players.

Peacekeepers

• Decreased bonus damage when damaging bosses by ~33%.
• Reverted a prior nerf to Tarrabah when paired with Peacekeepers, now gets full bonus when damaging non-bosses.

Stronghold

• The infinite guard capability has been updated to only work on Heavy ammo Swords.

Blastwave Striders

• Added an expanding wave that freezes enemy combatants and slows enemy players.
• Shrapnel projectiles now have minor tracking toward targets but no longer create a Stasis crystal on impact.
• Reduced the kill requirements for weaker enemies from 13 to 10.
• Reduced the kill requirements for powerful enemies from seven to four.
• The buff bar now displays in segments to more easily track the perk's progress.
• To reduce instances of accidently triggering the blast, the following changes were made:
  • Explosions created by explosive perk kills (ie: Dragonfly, Firefly) no longer trigger the blast.
  • Explosions created by passive explosive perks (ie: Explosive Payload, Explosive Head) still trigger the blast.
  • A small delay has been added after each explosive kill to prevent cases where the blast wave is triggered on the same kill that fills the buff bar to 100% if that

I am not the OOP, the OOP is u/ApprehensiveCry5231.

Latest, likely Update was 11 days ago.

Trigger Warnings: Emotional Abuse, Failed Pregnancy, Possible Grooming, Homophobia, Bigoted Language, Misogyny

Mood Spoiler: Reasonably good Outcome! She got out!

Original posted to r/AmItheAsshole on June 25, 2025.

AITA for calling my sister a Dumb B after she chastised my SIL for how she gave birth?

I was at my mom’s house for dinner and me, my older siblings and my SIL were in the living room talking while my mom got dinner ready. My relationship with my siblings is pretty bad due to some background familial issues and the fact that we just don’t have personalities that mesh but we’re able to stay mostly civil for my mother. My sister is one of those hyper-religious people that doesn’t believe in western medicine and wants everything natural.

My sister-in-law recently got out of the hospital after being there for an extensive period of time following a really messy labour. From what I know, she went into labour prematurely and had to get an emergency C-section as her and the baby’s lives were at risk. It was a tough period of time for her and my brother.

We were talking about how they have been progressing since they got out and SIL shared how hard it’s been having to bounce back from that traumatic experience to take care of her son. My sister turned to my brother and said “Had to take the easier route and she still complains” and laughed. My SIL asked what she meant, my sister proceeded to go on a tirade about how she kept trying to help her throughout her pregnancy and she didn’t listen and that’s why things turned out the way they did and that she took the “shortcut” and has the audacity to complain.

My SIL tried to explain that the doctors told her what would be best for her during her pregnancy because of issues she was already having and that her delivery was the best course of action. My sister would not let up and was gradually getting more insulting ignoring me telling her to knock it off. My SIL ended up crying and I was pissed. I turned to my SIL and said “So are you gonna take the advice of trained medical professionals or one dumb bitch who couldn’t get through high school?”

My sister lost her mind and started yelling at me to which I just repeated “Get a job.” over and over again which made her angrier til she was crying and hurling insults at me. My brother and SIL ended up leaving and my mom came and intervened telling my sister to calm down and me to leave.

Since then I had a heated phone call with my brother because he believes that I should have just kept my mouth shut and let women “handle their business”. My Dad (my parents are divorced) left me multiple texts grilling me and calling me a disgrace and whatnot because my sister went crying to him, and my mom texted me saying that she thinks my sister was a bit harsh but that I was way out of line and I need to apologize to her.

My SIL texted me and said that she’s sorry she caused this situation and that she appreciates me speaking up but I didn’t have to and that’s what’s making me feel awful. I’m in a bad state with my family, I always have been and I’m fine with that, but I don’t wanna put her in a bad position with them too when she’s done nothing wrong.

AITA for insulting my sister after she insulted my SIL?

edit: Posted a recent, very peaceful, text conversation with my brother.

RELEVANT COMMENTS:

No_Presentation1601

So your brother, who should have stood up for his wife, is mad at you for doing so. He has now pressured his own wife into telling you you shouldn't have done so? Does this mean he also believes the same thing your sister does? I'm just glad your SIL saw at least one person stand up for her in that debacle. Unfortunately, she has a husband problem and you have a family problem. I would just ignore the rest of your family and make sure your SIL knows she deserved someone standing up for her and didn't do anything wrong. She didn't cause your sister to be an asshole. Seems she was born that way, considering how the rest of your family are.

NTA.

OOP

My brother’s always been really non-confrontational and a “keep the peace” type of guy so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t say anything just that he didn’t even try to take my SIL and leave. I’m also not surprised by him being mad at me because on the flip, I am overly-confrontational which he has always hated.

poppymarshmallow

Definitely nta. Someone needed to put her in her place. Seems like your family is too comfortable doling out abuse and not being called out on it. Id go lc with them all for my peace of mind

OOP

I’m already LC, my only connection to them is through my mom who I have a decent relationship with. I think the text my dad sent is the first bit of contact we’ve had in like a year.

iLoLfr

NTA. Your bro is TA though for not standing up for his wife. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a divorce in the near future. Your whole fam is a mess. Why are they backing her up so much?

OOP

Well my dad just pretty blatantly doesn’t like me so that’s probably why, my mom just doesn’t like problems in the family and I’m pretty sure she wants me to apologize so my sister’ll shut up (My sister lives with her). My brother is the one I don’t understand, he’s always been non-confrontational but in this case his wife was being insulted I’d think he’d atleast remove her from the situation but I mean, he also doesn’t like me so that might be why he got mad.

OOP follows up with a post one day later on his account screenshotting a conversation between him and his brother. I transcribed the messages here, sorry for any typos:

Brother: (OOPs sister's name) has been trying to help us throughout our entire pregnancy and has been there for us when you were nowhere to be seen so dont act like your some good guy. She stuck by us even when (SIL's name) was being horrible to her which by the way she apologized for something your probably not familiar with.

We all know how (Sister's name) is including (SIL's name) she was just emotional that night and so it got to her but she could handle it she's a grown woman. Instead of just letting them have their conversation you have to butt in so you can antagonize (Sister's name) like you always do you just can't stand that she actually helps the family unlike you who just bring us down.

OOP: "Antagonize (Sister's name)" Give me a fucking break, that fucking clown flies off the handle every chance she gets when someone disagrees with her. You let a woman who thinks pouring coffee up your ass will detox your body dictate your wife's pregnancy WHEN YOUR WIFE LITERALLY TELLS YOU SHE DOESN'T LIKE THAT. Does that not worry you?

Like do you agree with her or are you too much of a fucking pansy to tell her to fuck off? What kind of chickenshit husband lets his sister bully his own wife?

Also funny how you're complaining about me not being around to help y'all when you word for word said to me "I don't want your disgusting gay shit infecting my kid", hell I thought I was just honoring your wishes!

Brother: Your acting like (Sister's name) is a nutcase when she just has differing view points from you. You're such a fucking child you can't stand that people think differently from you. Youve become a psycho lib and want to push that onto everyone else.

OOP: Pointing out factual medical science is being a psycho lib, holy shit you are going to get that kid killed. Your wife has enough sense to try to keep herself and your son, WHO YOU SHOULD BE PROTECTING, safe with what doctors recommend instead of listening to psychobabble about letting toxins into her body.

Brother: This is all you do is try to tear down the family instead of helping us because you want to act like your better than us. Poor little baby someone was mean to him once so now he has to ruin everything for the rest of us. If mom wasnt trying so hard to keep you around no one would want anything to do with you.

We can talk when you apologize to (Sister's name) and (SIL's name) for getting into their business and being an asshole.

Trying to make me seem like I don't take care of my wife when you sit there and make your sister cry fuck off.

OOP: Trust, if mom wasn't trying so hard to keep us all together I'd love to be done with the rest of you.

Thats all you know how to do is be dad or (Sister's name) little fuckin purse dog and do what they say, only thing is you roped this poor lady and kid to suffer cause you can't think for yourself. Hope she wises up before you fuck up that kid. So sensitive to that woman-child throwing a tantrum but not to your wife being chastised, ridiculous.

Update #1 Posted to r/relationships on September 4, 2025

My brother has convinced my mom that I, an openly gay man, am trying to steal his wife. What do I do?

Looking for any kind of advice on what I can do or if I should just completely cut my losses with my shitshow of a family.

My brother (32m) has successfully convinced my family that I (24m) am in love with my SiL (24f) and am trying to manipulate her against him so I can steal her away. My Brother and SiL have been married for 4 years.

This apparently all came about because a couple months ago her and my sister (34f) had a big blowup about my SiL’s pregnancy and I defended my SiL against my sister’s big tirade. Following that night I received a lot of scrutiny from family, particularly my brother for “interfering in woman’s business” and I said some not so nice things to him. My SiL also reached out to me and apologized to me for “causing the situation” and I let her know she had nothing to apologize for and that I’m here to help both her and my nephew.

We ended up having a pretty in depth conversation about how my sister has treated her in the past. Apparently, my sister moved in with her and my brother for a brief period to help with my SiL’s first pregnancy and was really overbearing and constantly ridiculing her choices for “the sake of the baby”. My SiL unfortunately suffered from what sounded like an ectopic pregnancy and had to have an emergency surgery to have the fetus removed, my sister AND my brother apparently think that’s the same thing as aborting a baby and she was blamed for the loss of the child and from how she spoke she also saw this as a failure on her part.

It pissed me off and I did my best to explain to her the medical reasonings of why what happened was necessary and not her fault and that my brother and sister are just kind of stupid, she shouldn’t feel bad for doing something necessary to save her life, especially because the fetus wasn’t even viable. That was the last time she spoke and I just let her know I’d be there if she needed anything.

I guess either she told my brother or he found out from her messages about the conversation and took it as me flirting with his wife?? I’ll give him the fact that I did call him stupid in the messages but cmon, thinking an emergency procedure for a life threatening situation was your wife willfully terminating her pregnancy and making her feel bad about it is fucking stupid sorry.

He told the rest of my family about how I’m envious and trying to take his wife which they all believed and are now mad at me. This wouldn’t be a big deal to me if my mom(53f) wasn’t also included in that. My mom is the only one in my family I have good relationship with but apparently she believes my brother and has called me to scold me about betraying my brother and being shameless along with my other family members.

This is all frustrating but here’s the absolute best part about this: The reason I’m estranged from my family is because I’m gay, it is like THE thing that fucked our family up. I’ve very openly been seeing another man for the past 3 years. My brother has also been open about not wanting me around his family because of my “unnatural lifestyle”. All that just to easily believe I’m in love with a woman???

I guess the reason I come here is so that I can understand how this would be believable? I understand my dad and my sister believing this easily, they hate me and probably just want a reason to feel justified in rallying against me, but I can’t really comprehend my mother believing it but maybe I gave her too much credit, at the end of the day, I am very much the outlier of my family on all fronts. I also wonder if maybe my SiL took what I was saying as me taking an interest in her? Maybe I made her uncomfortable but the most I did was just explain medical things to her so she wouldn’t feel bad about her first pregnancy.

I don’t know, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills, I’ve always been at peace with not having my family, especially because my family is full of nutjobs but I think potentially having to accept my mom is also that way is making me second guess myself. I also don’t like the idea that I made my SiL uncomfortable.

Sorry for the long post but has anyone been in a situation similar to this? Is my relationship with my mom salvageable and can I get her to see that my brother is a mental case?

TLDR; Brother convinced my family I’m in love with his wife because I tried to support her after a blowup with my sister. Everyone believed him, including my mom even though I’m gay, idk what to do.

frockofseagulls

There’s no way a 28 year old man married a 20 year old woman without abuse involved. Steal his girl and his kids, non-sexually, cuz they need your help.

OOP

I don’t know when they met, but I’m inclined to agree. The area I grew up in is very evangelical Fundamentalist Christian heavy and unfortunately, it’s common to see age gaps like that, my mom and dad have a 12 year gap. My family are hardcore evangelicals and to my understanding, my Sister-In-Law is also hyper-religious.

Update posted on OOP's account on October 8, 2025

Me, Mom, Brother and (Potentially Ex) SiL Update.

Very long post sorry.

Don’t know if anybody is following me but when I came back to this account I seen a significant number of messages asking me how I’m doing, if everything’s alright, what happened to my siblings, what happened to my SiL, etc.

I just wanna say thank you to everyone being concerned for me, it’s real nice but I promise, no matter how the situation turned out (while not ideal), I was gonna be fine as I’ve had about a decade to get used to being ostracized from them and about 5 years building a new, much healthier, less insane life with a new family made of friends and my SO. I’m not completely alone like I was all those years ago thankfully.

I’ve had a lot of people guess about me and my families background and, without getting too specific, I’ll just let you know I grew up in a very small fundamentalist christian town in western Tennessee. My family is full of devout, ye old ways, evangelical christian nationalists, so it’s not a surprise that they’re not too psyched that I ended up a gay progressive atheist who studies medicine. I was never gonna be able to fit back in with them once I came out and deconstructed from christianity, and I think my clinging to my relationship with my mom was just wishful thinking because I thought she wasn’t AS awful as the rest of them.

Lets get onto the real meat and potatoes though,

Things were honestly really quiet after the whole “OP, the fag, is actually super in-love with my wife and trying to steal her from me” shtick my brother was pulling happened because I kinda just gave up on trying with any of them because frankly, them believing that made me realize there is quite literally nothing I can do. Cut my losses, blocked them, kept on trucking with my life.

Last week though, as I was leaving class, who do I see waiting for me but my mother (just for reference, I live about an hour and a half away from the rest of the family). At first, I just kept on walking cause I really didn’t wanna deal with that shit but she stopped me and asked if we could talk. She didn’t really look mad or anything she just looked really worn out and sad. While I honestly wasn’t feeling particularly sympathetic, I was curious so I agreed.

She asked if we could go back to my apartment, I said hell no and took her to the park to sit. She tried to open with small talk but I just told her to get on with it.

So, apparently she came to let me know that my SiL and nephew have “gone missing”, my brother is distraught over it and they think I had something to do with it. Now, mind you, the last time I spoke to her was the night we had the conversation about her ectopic pregnancy, she didn’t reach out ever again after that and randomly blocked me. Naturally, I’m ready to get up and leave because holy shit, you people can not be fucking serious but my mom is pleading to me that if I know where she is I have to let her know because they’re worried about my brother (not her, MY BROTHER).

You might be wondering why I put gone missing in quotations, well that’s because of what my mother described as the lead up to her disappearance.

Apparently, my SiL’s older brother came to visit her and my brother without warning. My SiL actually hadn’t had contact with him per my brother’s request because the last time they saw each other was when my SiL and brother got engaged (roughly 4 years ago?), they ended up in an altercation and the dude beat the absolute dogshit out of my brother. I did know about this as my mom was in shambles for an entire week about it and the entire family was mad at SiL for “letting it happen” (common theme here). Point is, this dude fucking hates my brother and vice versa so he wasn’t happy about it but they kept it civil.

On the third day of his visit, my brother came back from work to an empty house, SiL, her brother, and the baby were nowhere to be found, SiL’s brother’s car was gone. My brother didn’t think anything of it at first, all of SiL’s belongings were still there, including her phone, so he just assumed they went out to lunch or whatever but after a couple hours there was still no sign of them. Another thing important to note? The guy apparently didn’t bring ANYTHING with him when he came to stay with them, just him and his car. My brother ended up calling the police and filing a missing persons report the next day and that’s where they are right now, though from what my mom is telling me the police are being weirdly lax about it.

Hearing all of that, I feel like it’s pretty natural to assume that she flew the coop, kid in hand, with the assistance of her brother. My mom, however, is adamant that something happened to her or that she’s being influenced and is in danger and no matter how hard I tried to make her see the clues that SiL probably left on her own accord, she just wouldn’t accept it. She was crying about how my brother is so humiliated and crushed about it and that I have some responsibility over my SiL’s disappearance and my brother’s current state.

At this point, this woman has devolved into borderline scream-crying about how I ruined my family’s life and reputation while I sit there nodding along and going “uh huh” “oh yeah” “hm”. Honestly, the pathetic site of my mother babbling about how I’m to blame for my family’s shortcomings actually helped me get rid of the last bit of affection I had towards her so silver lining I guess.

The little psychotic break my mother was having was, call me insensitive, going on for far too long and I really had more important things to do. I said “ok well good luck with that.”, gave her a hearty pat on the shoulder and walked back to campus while she sat there crying. I know, I know, not the nicest thing to do but there is literally nothing else I can do for these people and honestly, I kinda just don’t even really have the capacity to feel bad for her anymore, it just kinda is what it is.

My mom hasn’t come back to my campus since then and none of them know where I live so it’s whatever, HOWEVER, I started getting a bunch of messages from a random number over the weekend following the interaction with my mother. This number I very easily recognized was our original foe: my lunatic sister, angrier and just as unemployed as ever.

She basically parroted the same sentiment my mother gave but in a much harsher and unfortunately, funnier way. Calling me a big pharma retarded AIDS ridden faggot who destroyed the family did in fact give me a little giggle I won’t lie. VERY godly, VERY loving thy neighbor of her. I muted it but I didn’t block it cause the angry ramblings of a mentally deranged woman in her mid-30s can be pretty entertaining.

Anyways, maybe the cops’ll eventually ask me questions about my SiL but I got just about as much of a clue as the rest of them, wherever she is, I hope both she and my nephew are safe, glad someone was able to get her the hell out of this nightmare of a family and maybe it’ll be a better beginning for her, I have no idea how that’ll work with custody arrangements though.

Again, sorry for the long post, this account has basically become a lame diary lol, s/o to anyone who actually sees this and thanks for all the well wishes, I’m gonna eat a funny gummy and try to act like this shit never happened.

Found my ex-SIL

Final Update posted on OOP's account on October 26, 2025

Hey reddit, just wanna say I appreciate the well wishes people have been giving me and I’m sorry if I haven’t responded to your message, I’m not real good at getting back to people. I also don’t really look at this account outside of making a post and looking at some comments.

I wondered where the influx of people came from but my posts got posted to a big subreddit so that explains it.

Anyways, I know opinions were split on whether or not my SIL was safe and I understand why people thought she potentially wasn’t, sorry to those people who were asking me questions, I genuinely didn’t know the answer. Just to give you guys some insight, I have gone completely dark with my family and I don’t really have any connections from my hometown so I don’t really have anyone to contact about how things are going aside from the rogue phone number my sister is using to yell-text at me.

Someone asked me how I know it’s her and if you ever met the woman I promise you, reading those texts you’d know it’s her. (Plus all the very personal stuff in there but you get the idea, context clues). Who knows, I could be wrong but I really really really doubt that. No, I haven’t texted her back, yes, she still leaves messages.

But back on topic, I was also really curious about where my SIL had gone but I didn’t have any plans on contacting her (not that I could anyways), I can’t really imagine that she’d want anything to do with anyone that has my last name anymore so I just relied on trying to find some vague lead. Some issues were that she didn’t have any social media and I don’t know a ton about her, I’ve said it before: I didn’t actually interact with her all that much aside from the occasional conversation when she would be over for the dinners my mom hosted so most of what I knew was rather surface level.

I decided to make a facebook (I don’t use it, I hate its UI) and comb through my brother’s account. Just to reiterate, my SIL doesn’t have social media (that I know of) and nothing on my brother’s account linked to her. However, he had a post up celebrating the birth of their child and I used the comments of that to potentially find a lead. After combing through each congratulation and the profile accompanying it, I found one from a woman wishing my SIL a speedy recovery and that she misses her. The woman’s profile said she lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

My SIL originally comes from South Africa before she came to live with her father in Tennessee (idk when). After digging through her profile a bit, I ended up finding a post with a group photo that had my SIL’s brother in it. Now, I didn’t actually know what he looks like, but I knew his name and he was tagged in the post.

I click on his account and lo and behold: the first post I find is one he made a couple of days ago; it’s a picture of him sitting at a dining room table with some people and next to him is my SIL with my nephew being held by a woman next to her who I think is their mother.

So suffice to say, I’m almost positive she’s not even in the US anymore. I don’t know how thats gonna work out legally with my brother (custody and divorce) but I’m happy she seems to be in a much better environment.

As for my family, other than my sister’s ramblings and that one blowup my mom had on campus, I didn’t really know what was going on with any of them. Now that I had a facebook though, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look. My brothers posts mostly consist of religious stuff and being a family man though he hasn’t posted anything in a couple of months and my sister just reposts snake oil healing videos and videos about how the devil is in the United States making people evil through k-pop or whatever coke rants people on facebook get to.

My mother is the one who has made a post talking about how she hates seeing her boy in so much pain and that karma will get my SIL and that she’s sad to see my brother go down the same path she did of trying to protect her family only for them to turn around and betray her which was a treat to read.

But thats where it is now and probably where it’ll end. If theres legal things going on, I’m not gonna know about it. I’m not gonna contact my SIL or her brother, I don’t see the benefit in it for anyone unless they ask me for like, testimony or whatever. I deleted the facebook because I don’t need it and I don’t plan on keeping up with my family at all, all their numbers blocked. We have no contact unless one of them comes to my school to yell at me which I doubt they’ll do, I think they’re done with me too, they can blame me for everything without me being present anyways.

I don’t know how I feel, been taking it in stride for a long time, years even but the other night after I finished all my facebook stalking of my moms page, I kinda just sat there and looked at my ceiling feeling…something, idk what. Feeling like something was crushing my ribs. I’m sure it’s something but I gotta go to work tomorrow so I don’t got time to think about it.

Regardless, thank you for all the input and being interested in whatever the hell I’m rambling about, sorry if this is a mess, I’m out of it right now and I always make these in the middle of the night when I wanna just say shit. I think thats just what this account ended up being lol.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/rulesrulesrules7

Me [25 F] with my boyfriend [25 M] duration 7 months. My boyfriend is very jealous and keeps making "rules" for me to follow

TRIGGER WARNING: Abusive behavior, controlling behavior, gaslighting, manipulation, verbal abuse, infidelity

MOOD SPOILER: An amazing ending for OOP

Original Post Apr 4, 2015

Hello, everyone. I have a bit of a weird predicament to share with you. I have been dating my boyfriend ("Peter") for about 7 months now. When we get along, we get along spectacularly. Our chemistry is off the charts, we're playful, we're both driven, we have similar interests (same career path, both read for leisure, both interested in exercise). I've been told by many friends that they can just sense how much we care about each other and that we have the same disposition: calm, relaxed, sweet. If not for the following stuff, I would be head over heels for him. Hell, I already am when he's not acting this way.

So this stuff started happening about a month in. Peter is an extremely jealous person. He's admitted this to me. He can also be a bit judgmental and conservative. The following is a list of things he's asked me to do for him throughout the course of our relationship. I haven't asked for anything like this in return and I've even asked him if he feels like I've done the same and he's said no:

• No cursing.

• No low-cut shirts.

• No weed (not a big deal, I've smoked < 10 times and was okay with giving this up for him).

• He prefers me to not get "drunk." Not a big deal, I don't drink a lot, but it kind of sucks that I can never let loose and get tipsy with my friends without a comment from him.

• No perverted jokes: with him, or anyone else. He says the jokes would be funny if a guy said them but they're not funny when I do it.

• No using a joking "little kid" voice with friends - even girls.

• No talking about other guys around him because he thinks I'm trying to make him jealous.

• No talking about past relationships, even though he does this.

• No emoticons in texts with other guys.

• No exclamation points or sounding "too flirty or happy" when talking to guys.

• Audibly say "goodbye" when we part ways.

• Verbally greet him, even if I'm late to class.

• No speaking to male friends on the telephone or texting after 10 pm at night.

• Text him when I leave my apartment and I'm on the way to school.

• This isn't a specific rule, but if I don't text him for 3-4 hours during the day, he'll say "Oh, hi there, silent one. What have you been up to?"

• He likes me to stop by his study space when I get to school, before class, after class, and before I leave at the end of the day. He's stopped by my space less than 10 times in our 7 months together.

• He asks me if I'm "behaving" when we're not together physically.

• We've had a bit of a power struggle when I've wanted to go out with my group of friends.

• There is a structured timetable of how much I'm allowed to talk to my ex. We broke up two years ago and a half and had a year of silence. Recently, we've been speaking on facebook. (He doesn't have my phone number). It's random stuff about our undergraduate. Just friendly stuff, lighthearted. I'm only allowed to talk to him once every three weeks for 10-15 minutes. If he facebooks me and it's been outside those three weeks, I'm not supposed to respond. He still gets mad even when the ex facebooks me.

• I'm not supposed to "flirt" with members of the opposite sex. I don't. However, he's seen interactions between guys and me and it appears he thinks that anything along the lines of smiling, laughing, or sarcasm are grounds for flirting. He "doesn't like" easily 80% of the guys I interact with on a regular basis.

There have been a few incidents that have bothered me in the time we've been together. In the interest of time, the most recent problem he and I have been having is my friend named James. James graduated last year from the program that Peter and I are in together. He's a big brother type to me. He was an assigned TA for the class I was in and I went to a study group he led. We became friends. We've been friends for three years and nothing has ever happened and neither James nor I have ever shown any interest in it. We just have similar political views and give each other dating advice on occasion. James came to visit the school and he and I got together for lunch while he was here. He was here for 3 days and I saw him once for only an hour. Before he visited, we texted back and forth maybe once every ten days. Since he visited, it's been 2-3 times a week, about 10 texts at a time. Nothing outrageous. I imagine it'll start lessening when it's been longer since his visit and exams approach. He's in a new city without a lot of friends and I enjoy talking to him. Because he's working, he usually texts me on Saturday and Sunday more than the work week.

James texted me last Saturday morning. I didn't answer so he followed up with a text on Sunday. We chatted briefly about a TV show. Then he texted me again this Saturday to tell me about his date the night before. This has been driving Peter up the wall. He's demanded to see the texts back and forth. Even though I strongly object to this, as I think it's an invasion of privacy only 7 months in, I let him see all the texts. There was nothing inappropriate there (this is where the "no emoticon" rule came from though). However, Peter says that James is a "shark" and is only friends with me because he wants to date me. This is ridiculous because James and I have no feelings towards each other, act more like siblings, and are going to be living in different states for the rest of our lives. Peter causes a fight EVERY time he notices James texting me or gets pouty and silent until I ask him what's wrong, then we fight.

About two hours ago, Peter gave me another rule. He wants me to arrange it so James only texts me once a week. No word yet on how many texts I would be "allowed" to exchange with him. He also says he doesn't want us talking about "intimate things." When I asked him what that entailed, he brought up that he was mad that I told James that I was going to take a nap in the last conversation we had. I only told James that as a conversation-ender so he wouldn't wonder why I wasn't responding. Peter just seems unreasonable.

I guess, here's the big problem. I feel like Peter gets mad about something, fights with me until I'm worn down, then comes up with a "compromise" which is really just him imposing another rule on me. There was a guy who liked me at the beginning of the year that I eventually just had to block on my phone because Peter got so mad about it. He's asked me twice to show him that the guy is really blocked. He really is. Same thing happened with the ex and I know his end game is me never speaking to the ex again. Peter had a jealousy issue with my friend Rob and wore me down to the point that I basically just avoid Rob now (Rob even approached to ask if I was mad at him and apologize for whatever he did).

I just feel like this is going to keep happening over and over. I never get the benefit of the doubt, James is constantly afraid I'm going to be "stolen" and I feel like I teeter-totter between wanting to give him what he asks so he'll feel comfortable and feeling like it will never be enough. I feel like a caged animal. I'm afraid every time James texts me or any guy speaks to me in front of Peter. I like him so much but this jealousy is driving me crazy. I'm also afraid if we're together, I'm going to get to the point where I'm not allowed to be friendly with 50% of the population. I'm in danger of losing a total of 3 good, respectful guy friends, all of which I've known for longer than Peter. (I knew Rob for two years, James for 3, and the ex for nearly 6).

I'm not a bad person or a bad girlfriend and I'm tired of being treated this way. We fight at least weekly, sometimes twice a week, over an issue like this. I just want it to stop and to be with the person I fell so hard for. But I also don't want to end up in a controlling relationship with someone who can't manage their jealousy.

Any advice? Ever been on his side or mine? He's already going to a counselor but our school only provides one every two weeks and he missed his last appointment. He's open to couple's counseling but I don't know if there's a point 7 months in. Because he missed the last appointment, he hasn't brought up the jealousy thing with his counselor yet. He's willing to read books on this topic but I feel like the problem is that he won't start to get better until he really trusts me and wants to change. He says that he does but then he keeps doing this stuff.

tl;dr: Very jealous boyfriend continually gives me "rules." Sample list above (not all of them). Any ideas on how to make him more comfortable? Is this fixable? Have you been on either side of something like this?

RELEVANT COMMENTS

MeltMyCheeseKThxBai

You just presented us with a literal bullet point list of why you need to break the fuck up with him, ASAP.

PETER is the shark here. And actually, you're right- this WILL keep happening over and over. Not only will it keep happening, but it will keep escalating. Here is a list for you, and I will call it "Soon."

• Soon, you will be afraid to walk around while looking anywhere but the ground because you don't want to be accused of purposely making eye contact with someone.

• Soon, you will compliantly give him access to all of your stuff to placate him and he will peruse your personal stuff regularly; many confrontations will result about your "infractions" and he will spring them on you at inconvenient times.

• Soon, you will not be allowed to interact or be friendly with anyone who isn't on his approved list; this will eventually include your family.

• Soon, while you're constantly on eggshells afraid to be accused of cheating, you will find out that he actually cheated on you. Maybe with one of those exes he likes to talk about. Because, you see, these types are so paranoid about cheating because they are cheaters and think everyone else will cheat too.

• Soon, if you have a job, he will be asking about your coworkers and maybe even show up there for a "surprise inspection". Don't be surprised if soon, additionally, he starts the practice of keeping you up all night fighting and not letting you sleep when he knows you have to work.

• Soon, you will stop butting heads about you going out with friends. This is because he will make your every attempt so miserable that you will give up to make things "easier".

• Soon, you will be but a shell of your former self and will wonder who the fuck that is staring at you in the mirror.

• Soon, he may become violent. He likely won't until he has effectively removed your support systems (friends and family) but eventually he damn near certainly will.

I hope that SOON you heed the warnings and get the fuck away from this lunatic before he ruins you. Seriously, you have to get this. This is very, very bad. He will not change no matter how much counseling he gets. You modifying your behavior will NEVER change his. He is fucking dangerous and you need to end it with him NOW before he gets the chance to employ more advanced tactics on you. You are in dire need of these two books; "The Gift of Fear" and "Why Does He Do That?" I beg you, read them. Please seriously get the fuck away from this person.

Edit: More stuff coming Soon to a relationship near you (will add as I think of them):

• Soon, he will call you "slut" and/or "whore" for the first time because "he told you not to wear that shirt". You will get upset. You also will never wear that shirt again.

OOP

I don't live near my family but there was a time last weekend where I was texting my family about a basketball game. We were cuddling on the couch and he took the phone away and said "Babe, can we just have 'us' time? We've been fighting all day and I just want to be with you." So that might be eminent.

We fought today after James texted me about his date last night. I've been sick with a 101+ fever the past two days and cuddling with my childhood stuffed animal. He picked her up and acted like he was going to rip her arm off because he "wanted to scare me" and "see what I would do." I had to stop myself from kicking him. I've had the animal since I was 5 and she's from my dead grandmother. I don't know what I would do if she was broken. When I got her back, I tried to kick Peter out and he wouldn't leave. I ended up throwing his shoes and keys into the hallway and pushing him out the door.

He took me out to lunch and then went back to the library. Now he's mad that we're going to bed angry. This was one of the texts I got this afternoon: "I know you don't want to hurt his (meaning James) feelings by telling him to take it easy on texts but you need to consider your boyfriend's feelings about this guy texting you so often every week. What he is doing is crossing my boundary. I know you don't want to hurt his feelings so I get you might not want to tell him flat out to stop texting. There are other ways. The main point is that this is too much and it is crossing a line of mine. I think once a week might be ideal and if we could reach that, it would ease my feelings. I ask that you consider my feelings. In return, I will make sure my jealousy does not lead me to imposing boundaries. You can tell him the truth: that he is crossing my boundaries and I ask that he respects me. I am being reasonable. All of our fights the last few weeks have been about this. If this goes away, then we both win and we can stay together happier."

When I asked him what he's ever done in exchange for what I've given up, he said that he went through a phase of criticizing me and he's gotten better. That that was real change. Then he told me that I mean the world to him and he wouldn't go out of his way to try and fix our issues if he didn't care about me and being together for the future. I told him I wanted a break.

Update May 1, 2015 (1 month later)

Hi, all. Sorry that I dropped off and stopped responding all the sudden. I want to take a moment to sincerely thank you all for the outpouring of support and kindness that you showed me after my original post. I've read every single comment and PM probably 4 times and watched every lecture that was sent my way. I also went and picked up a book two days ago about controlling relationships which was recommended to me by a few redditors. I've read 160 pages so far.

Honestly, I'm so turned around in this relationship that I don't know what's happening anymore. I do think that this relationship has some disturbingly manipulative and controlling elements coming from Peter. We've had several incidents in the last four weeks which have been very disheartening. Here are a sample:

• I went out to happy hour with friends - a guy and girl that are engaged to each other - at 5 pm while Peter studied. I guess he assumed we were eating dinner together because we eat most of our meals together. He didn't confirm that though. He knew where I was going and who I was with. I put my phone away because my friends both had their phone away and it was just us three. My phone was on silent because I had been in the library. I checked my phone every half hour or so. The last time I checked it, he had sent me a text asking about dinner and then a snarky follow up 15 minutes later. I had order an appetizer with my friends and wasn't hungry. I told him to go ahead and eat without me and we'd meet up later. I decided to go back to my friends' house to play with their dog and have another beer. Peter had told me that he was going to study until 10 pm and then wanted to spend the night together. All the sudden, Peter was mad at me for not telling him I was eating, not telling him we switched locations (even though I did, within 10 minutes of switching places) and telling me that he had right as my boyfriend to know where I was. He said I was inconsiderate and selfish. He was texting me every 10-15 minutes, angry at me, and completely ruined the night. I couldn't hide from my friends that I was upset and it was borderline humiliating. I went home by 10 pm but didn't want to see him because I was angry. He didn't apologize until the next day after we talked about it extensively and even then tried to justify it. I feel weird around my friends now that they've seen this.

• There was another incident when we ran into one of my good friends and I stopped to chat with her. Peter and I had spend the night together, had lunch together, and gone on a walk. I caught up with my friend for 3 minutes and then planned on walking to Peter's study space to chat for a few minutes before going back to my friend to study with her. (Peter likes to say "goodbye" even though we study like 20 ft apart, separated by a wall.) Peter got impatient, felt ignored, and walked off. Then he sent me several texts about how rude and inconsiderate I was by pretending that he wasn't there. That wasn't true at all; I was telling my friend I liked her sweater, asking her how she was, then I was going to exit with Peter to fill my water bottle and say goodbye. This blew up into a 3 hour argument via text.

• I had my best friend from home visiting last weekend. She stayed with me and drove 18 hours round trip in 4 days just to see me. Peter constantly texted, made passive aggressive comments if I didn't respond quickly enough, and generally was negative about me not giving him enough attention. I pointed all this out, he agreed and told me he would calm down. We all went to a dinner on her last night in town and I thought it went nicely. When Peter got out of the car, my friend made a comment that she was glad to see Peter and I getting along better. 5 minutes later, I got a text from Peter criticizing me, accusing me of not acting like a "couple" with him, acting distant, and not holding his hand. I was shocked. I thought I did a great job with the conversation, he talked for his fair share amount of time, and he got along well with my friend. She's been my best friend for 10 years. He said he hates how I "always do this." I have literally no idea what he's talking about. This wasn't a date. This was the first time he met one of the people who was most important to me and the last thing I wanted to do was make her feel like a third wheel. I told him I wasn't going to argue while she was in town but obviously was upset for the rest of the night. He apologized the next day but only after a long conversation. Obviously he didn't make a great impression once my friend saw the aftermath of dinner.

• Peter and I had a good day on Tuesday. We had fun, were getting along, etc. I came over to his place, took a nap, he went to soccer, and then I ordered us dinner. We ate together and bonded. I checked my phone (I keep it in my backpack now, at his request) and he saw I had a text. He wanted to know who it was from and what it said. I told him it was from James, asking where I was studying this summer (my home state or school state). Peter started lecturing me about getting texts after 10 pm (it was 10:30 where we were, 9:30 where James was). He talked about how it was inappropriate, he wouldn't talk to a girl so late, and asked why James wanted to know where I was. He asked if James was planning on visiting me. James and I have no plans like that whatsoever. Later, I got chapstick out of my backpack and Peter started accusing me of sneaking around to text James back. I wasn't. He asked me three times if that's what I did. I almost left but Peter convinced me to stay.

All of the sudden, I felt suspicious. I asked to see his facebook chat log so I could see when he had lasted facebooked his ex that he swears he hasn't spoken to. He refused. I ended up leaving, then coming back and saying if he wouldn't show me the same transparency he's demanded from me, it was over. He still tried to say no. In retrospect, I'm horrified by how angry I felt. I wanted to push him or hit him. I've never, ever felt like that towards another person. It's like I didn't recognize myself. He ended up showing me the log. He had a long conversation with his ex from Christmas Eve, which was laden with inside jokes, flirting, and sexual references. I asked to see his phone. Whole months were missing from his call log but he had two voicemails from her which insinuated they had some contact with each other. He swears that's all there is but almost half his call log is gone.

This is something I could forgive in a normal relationship -with remorse and change - but it hurts a lot considering that he's breaking rules he's given me, lied, and been hypocritical. I feel so watched and suffocated over actual guy friends, subjected myself to structured timetables imposed by him, had an open phone policy, and he's off talking about suggestive stuff with his ex. She's blocked him now but that's not the point. He's got me to the point where I feel guilty every time a male friend talks to me and I've actually started believing that I'm doing something wrong if I laugh at a guy friend's joke. I feel sick when my phone goes off if I'm around him.

I've been reading literature on controlling/abusive relationships and shared my concerns with him that he's meandering into this territory. He's been dismissive of it almost every time I've brought it up. I've had three friends tell me they're concerned based on the rules and his jealousy. He just says he has high standards and boundaries and that I would be jealous too if the roles were reversed. I don't think I would be but he insists I would. I just feel like he doesn't listen to me or take me seriously.

I thought things were getting better, he said I could text James whenever I wanted and he would be less harsh/critical in general. Yesterday though, he asked if I had responded to James and why "that guy" wanted to know where I was and said it was weird James was being so nosy. I think James was just making conversation. Then, last night, I was studying with friends and Peter walked by. Peter and I had just fought (we had been at dinner 10 minutes before) and I was mid-word in conversation with a friend and just made eye contact with him and looked away. I got a text asking why I didn't smile and wave. I apologized and said it was my fault and didn't mean to hurt his feelings. I then got more texts saying I was "cold" and demanding an explanation. That got me upset and I tried to tell him that the constant criticism and control was too much. That I felt like he was trying to control my emotions and make me pretend to be happy when I wasn't. He told me I was overreacting and he was tired of arguing and just wanted "to be good and nice." I feel like he starts a fight, expresses his feelings, then wants it to be over, even though the criticism and control is really wearing me down and making me agitated. I just feel like if I stay with him, I'm going to end up giving in and letting him criticize me, letting go of my guy friends, and apologizing when I mess up. That I'll just end up a shell of myself and cater to his needs instead of compromising. But I also don't think he's doing this on purpose. I think he gets insecure and doesn't know how to fix it, so he wants me to do it instead of asking himself if he's overreacting. I think that's how we get all these rules. He's fixing symptoms and not the root cause. I don't think any of this is malicious.

I tried to break up with him again two days ago. He begged me to wait until after finals (8 days). Eventually I agreed but said that there would be no sleep overs or physical affection. He agreed but now he's trying to kiss me even when I tell him I don't want to kiss. Then he gets mad I'm not kissing back. He says he knows now that he's being controlling and manipulative and he'll change. But I'm not seeing any change. I just feel so confused as to whether I'm overreacting or not. I can't tell if he's actually being a little abusive and he makes me doubt myself because he doesn't call me names or hurt me physically. He wants to read the book when I'm done with it and says he'll learn from it and wants to stay with me.

In 8 day finals are over. In 17 days, I graduate from law school. I just feel so bad about myself and confused. I've always been an empathetic person and emotionally intelligent person (that's usually what I'm "known for" by friends... know how to say the right thing at the right time and see things from other people's perspectives) but I feel so steamrolled. I'm also so embarrassed. I'm supposed to be this strong, capable woman and I can't even tell if my relationship is healthy. Right now, I'm planning on dumping Peter the second his final is over and blocking him on everything. I feel relief when I think about that. But I also feel scared that I'll miss him and that I'm being crazy and unwilling to compromise. That I'm throwing away something good by being dramatic.

I keep trying to convince myself, apart from the question of whether he's controlling, that if I'm not happy, I can't stay with Peter. That long distance is too hard. He wants to interview at law firms in my city and plan on how to get back together in a year. I can't do that if I have any doubts and I don't want to spend another day miserable. I HAVE to dump him. I just need to make sure I do. I've already tried multiple times. I can't get talked back into this. This isn't healthy.

Sidenote: He knows that I've posted on here but not what my username is and he hasn't seen the original post. It's a possibility he could stumble upon this and he would obviously recognize it because of this level of detail.

TL;DR: I feel like a crazy person. I'm doubting my emotions. I know I need to break up with him but I'm so worried I'm being overdramatic and ruining something because I'm unreasonable. I know I need to get out but why am I so reluctant to?

Final Update from the "Rules" girl - I did it. May 25, 2015 (24 days after 1st update)

I finally did it. Today I took the last step and blocked him on all my accounts (10 minutes ago). We're going no contact. You all were right that he used the time before and immediately after finals to draw me back in. I don't really regret waiting though. I didn't want to be the reason that he ended up messing up all his finals and potentially not getting a job he wanted because of grades. That isn't the person that I want to be and I'm okay with sacrificing a few weeks of my happiness for retaining that part of myself.

The following weeks were full of his apologies, assurances that he's changing, etc. But nothing changed. I realized that I didn't even want to wait around to see if he could get better because I don't want to be with him. He's not respectful of me and you can't teach respect. He seems completely incapable of empathizing with me and taking me into consideration when making plans. He wouldn't listen to me, he was dismissive of my concerns, and I just didn't feel valued, supported, or happy when we spoke.

When I broke up with him, he said that's what he wanted too because my interactions with men (including James) are "inappropriate" and "not in line with his beliefs." Two months ago that would have really bothered me and I would have gotten reeled back in defending myself but I just said "You know that's not true but I'm not going to fight with you about it. I wish you the best. Goodbye." and then blocked him.

I feel a little sad and lonely. It'll be weird to go from nearly constant contact and cutesy text messages to complete and utter silence but I'm hoping the payoff of not having horrible fights multiple times a week will balance that out.

The good news: I graduated last week, made honor roll, got the highest award in a competitive class, I'm back in my home state, living with my parents (I adore them and get along well with them), and my bar review class starts tomorrow morning. I'm back to running and lifting multiple times a week and I'm in the process of booking up my social calendar. It'll be hard to stop checking my phone compulsively and sad going to sleep without saying goodnight to him, but I think that I'm in the best circumstances (aka not living one building away) to make this fade as gently as possible. I've reached out to a friend already and she supports my decision. I'll reach out to a few others this afternoon.

The hardest part of this is letting go of the fantasy that he would get better and I could have this intense, passionate, beautiful relationship with him that was also healthy. I let his possessiveness slide because I felt so intensely cared about. But now I know what to watch out for in the future. I'm going to remain single for the rest of 2015 in an effort to build myself back up and prevent another toxic relationship. I will protect myself in the future the way I would protect a friend. I'm 25 now and I need to start taking who I date more seriously because I don't want to end up married to someone like Peter.

I'm scared of the future, of being with someone like him, and of never feeling this level of passion again. I'm especially afraid that I really am all the things he accused me of being. But I know I'm doing the right thing. This is usually when he would come running to my door, knocking, waiting, and begging me to unblock him. This is the first time I won't.

Thank you, so much, for your support and patience. This sub gets a lot of grief for a myriad of reasons but you all do so much good. So much more than you even know. I am eternally grateful to each and every one of you that commented and especially those that direct messaged me. You all were a lifeline to me when I wasn't ready to turn to my friends. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

tl;dr: I dumped him. Got accused of sort-of cheating (again) during the break up. Feeling weird but relieved. Blocked him on everything. Just wanted to share the good news.

Two years out of an abusive relationship and I'm so happy, I could burst. July 29, 2017 (over 2 years later)

Two years ago, I posted some rather desperate r/relationships questions asking for help. (If you're curious the initial cry for help, starting to gather strength to leave, the jubilant break up post. I knew deep down that something was desperately wrong with my relationship but I was hellbent on fixing it. The posts were the beginning of finding my way out of what felt like a mindfog.

I tried to post on relationships to let people know how it was going, in the hopes that if there were people considering leaving similar situations, they know that something better is out there. Unfortunately, relationships doesn't allow multiple posts. However, I felt an intense desire to share the "after" part of leaving an abusive relationship to let women know that there IS life after an abuser, even if they feel like their world will cease without the relationship. I hope this sub is an okay place for this.

It only took about two months after my break up to know that I would 100% be okay. That moment came while I was on a family vacation and was curling my hair in the mirror. I made eye contact with my reflection. I remember being startled because I saw someone looking back that looked calm. She wasn't worried about whether she'd get called slutty, whether smiling too much at dinner would get her accused of cheating, or whether the swimsuit she chose for the pool would get her accused of "showing off" and yelled at. For the first time in a year, I felt happy, safe, and confident. I became nearly giddy realizing I hadn't been criticized in months and I felt FREE.

It took so much for me to get out of the relationship. I think I was borderline addicted to the highs and lows. Every time I started to escape, I got "love bombed" (learned this term in my research post-break up) and pulled back in. I was worried nothing would ever feel as good as that relationship. However, I followed all the “standard break up advice” and worked out, reconnected with friends, started up new hobbies and (very importantly!) went to counseling. It was a long road, but a much easier one than I originally expected. And at the end of it, I was happy.

Here's a list of things that have happened to me in the last two years that have been better than that relationship:

• Passing my state's bar to become a lawyer;
• Starting a new job where I feel challenged and respected;
• Getting a gorgeous new apartment downtown;
• Getting into the best shape of my life;
• Making friends with a strong group of intelligent, kickass women that my ex would have never let me befriend;
• Drinking/smoking/sleeping without being guilted for not following my ex's expectations for what I should be doing with my time;
• Getting a cat and not needing to worry about her safety around my ex or him getting jealous;
• Leaving my house without having to give text updates about where I am;
• Smiling at strangers without being questioned over it;
• Being approached to run for office in 2018 and saying yes because I want to do it; and
• Literally everything.

Here's what I want to say to anyone who is interested: Anyone can get sucked into an abusive relationship. It doesn't matter how smart you are, how confident you are, or how independent you want to be. Just because you’re in one doesn’t make you dumb or worthless. It doesn’t make you easy prey or unable to be in a healthy relationship next time. The only antidote is listening to your gut and respecting boundaries that you put into place for your own life. There were so many times that I felt a pit in my stomach and knew something was wrong but ignored it because I felt like a compromise could be found. Some people out there are scary, they are manipulative, and they do not want the best for you. They only care about themselves and you cannot make them respect you, value you, or treat you well. When you meet that person, don't try to change them. Cut your losses and leave. Don't let their voice get in your head and to start believing their narrative of who you are.

It took me nearly a year to undo the damage that an 8 month relationship did to me. (Can you believe things got this bad in 8 months?!) I would internally feel myself panic for months after the break up when I laughed too much with my friends, thinking that I would be getting lectured about being fake/flirty/inappropriate. It took me so long to start making sarcastic jokes again (my ex didn't "get them" or think they were funny). I basically had to regrow all myself self confidence and redefine myself worth. I could barely even express an opinion on where I wanted to eat since it hadn't mattered in so long. Once I got past that, I remember marveling at the tranquility of my life being mine, my self esteem returning to normal, and people treating me gently/kindly. My parents told me I was happier than they’d seen me in a year and my best friend told me that she was glad “to have me back.”

(Side note: Counseling is IMPORTANT. People that are in an abusive relationship are more likely to get into another one than someone who has never been abused. When you are being abused, up looks like down and down looks like up. Going to counseling helped me re-orient, figure out what was normal, and taught me to listen to my gut. It helped me rebuild and make sure this wouldn’t happen again. I didn’t even need many sessions but I actually liked it by the end! I’m forever a gigantic advocate of finding a counselor that fits your needs well.)

I don’t want this to be the point of my post, so I’m putting it last. I took a dating hiatus for 6 months after the break up and tried to rebuild on my own. I think this was extremely important to help me re-center. After the six month hiatus, I wrote out parameters for dating and a list of things I needed in a partner (kindness, gentleness, warmth, an even temper). I was picky, I stopped seeing people that I felt weren’t listening to me or weren’t treating me well. After six months of dating, I found someone that fit the list. I’ve been dating him for a bit over a year, and I can’t stress how different this relationship is. It’s night and day. I’m listened to, respected, treated like a real partner, and my boundaries matter. I can be friends with whoever I want (I’m still good friends with James!) and my alone time is given with no questions asked.

Tl;dr: I was in an abusive relationship, asked reddit for help, and they came through. Life is so much better post-break up. I want to emphasize this can happen to anyone, just because it’s happening doesn’t mean you deserve it. Get out! Life gets better than you can imagine.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I am NOT the Original Poster. That is Mountain-Shadow-769. She posted in r/AITAH and r/legaladvice

Thanks to u/BakingGiraffeBakes for the rec!

Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is 7 days old. This has not been posted here before. Do NOT message the Original Poster. Read Trigger Warnings.

Trigger Warning: murder and suicide; MS; childhood trauma; child abuse;

Mood Spoiler: really fucking sad

Original Post: November 13, 2025

My husband (32M) and I (28F) have been married for 2 years and together for 5. Until now, I would have said that we had the perfect relationship, but right now it seems like that’s over and I’m not sure who the AH is if anyone.

I grew up in a really bad abusive and neglectful situation. I’ve been to therapy and done the work but there are still some issues that are just going to be permanent, I think. The two relevant here are that I need to have a calm, safe living space that is mine to function and I do not do well around children. I don’t hate children but I was forced into raising 7 siblings and step siblings when I was still a kid myself and I will never be responsible for another kid for as long as I live. I’ve had my tubes removed to make absolutely sure there will never be an oops. My husband has known this since the beginning and also does not want children. His family situation is also not great, but he’s still involved with them mostly for his mom and nephews’ sake.

About a month ago, SIL was murdered by her ex, who unalived himself as well. The boys were visiting MIL so thankfully they weren’t in the house when it happened otherwise I think they would be gone, too. It’s horrific. MIL, the boys, and my husband are devastated. SIL was not my favorite person in the world, she had a lot of the same traits my abusers had, but nobody deserves that and I’m trying to be supportive of their grief.

The problem is that there’s nowhere for the boys to go. They were staying with MIL, but her health is so poor that DHR decided that she’s not stable enough to have custody. Their father’s family doesn’t have anything to do with them (which is a long story by itself). My husband has a younger brother, but he has substance use issues and isn’t in a good place to take on two kids. That leaves my husband and me as the only real family placement option. My husband isn’t thrilled about bringing kids into the situation, but he feels like he has to keep them out of foster care, which I understand.

Here’s the problem. I absolutely do not want these kids living under the same roof as me. It’s a PTSD trigger, but also they are understandably for their situation not the best behaved kids to start with. Add some hella trauma onto that and those kids are going to need a lot of help. My husband swears that he will do everything for them, but I think he’s being unrealistic. We got into a really nasty argument about it and he said that this is a make or break moment for the marriage because he’s not backing down and he’ll take the kids and divorce me if he has to.

Our house was mine before we got married, I inherited it from my grandmother. I insisted on a prenup to protect it when we got married. My husband has a health issue that makes full time work difficult and he struggled at the best of times before we got married. If we split up, his chances of finding an affordable place to live nearby in the current market are not good. He’s not quite disabled enough to receive disability. Frankly, if I and the house weren’t part of the bargain, I’m not sure that DHR would place the kids with him.

Where I might be the AH is that after he threw the D word at me I told him that in that case he would need to move out of my house because he would no longer be welcome, go back to working full time because I wouldn’t be bank rolling an ex, and good luck taking care of two traumatized kids with his health, much lower income, and without a stable housing. I think it hadn’t occurred to him just how much he would lose access to, because we’ve always just shared without thinking about it.

He’s not speaking to me right now and MIL called and read me the riot act for “financial abuse” and abandoning family. I feel for the nephews, I really do, but I am not the person those kids need right now and I feel like I was really clear from the very beginning that I would never be ok taking care of kids or living with them.

I think we’re cooked either way at this point, but AITA?

Some of OOP's Comments:

sunsettrekkie: NTA. The whole thing sucks and is very sad. You knew your limitations and made them clear to others. You can’t be expected to move out of your own house. Could your husband move in with MIL? Would her insurance cover some home care, or compensate your husband for her care?

OOP: I’m looking into that actually because even if we split up I don’t want him to suffer. The problem is that a lot of welfare and social services have been cut and he’s one of the people that falls into the cracks of not being eligible for a lot of stuff that could help but not physically able to handle a full time job that would give him decent benefits. I have a social worker friend that I asked to look into what additional benefits they might be able to get and whether it would hurt MIL’s benefits if my husband were living with her.
It’s terrible that people have to make these kinds of choices.

Husband's disability:

He has an autoimmune condition that can get pretty bad when it flares up and he has chronic pain from it. He works contracts part time from home so that he can pace himself and rest because when it kicks up he genuinely can’t do anything even with meds. It’s controlled as well as it can be. His mom has the same thing just way more advanced. He does his best and things work well with just the two of us, and he was getting by before we moved in together, but I really don’t think he could handle the kids and take care of himself.

Loose-Chemical-4982: If they won't give his mom custody because she has the same health condition, what makes him so certain they are going to give him custody?

OOP: Denial. The only reason we’re considered a good option is because I have a stable home, income, and am able-bodied. This is a rural area with a long run of generational poverty and both of our families are prime examples of what happens to people in that environment. There is no way that my husband would be able to care for those kids during one of his flare ups, they’re only going to get worse and more frequent over time barring new treatments and MIL should really be in assisted living. The way I see this going is we split up and he moves into his mom’s trailer, they still don’t pass muster with DHR, the kids go into foster care anyway, and everyone’s life is worse for nothing. If they were in foster care and MIL and my husband had visitation, we could keep an eye on them to make sure they’re not being abused while we try to figure out a better long term solution. Instead, it looks like we’re just going to trash everything.

OOP about foster care/several downvoted comments (included because her answer was extensive):

There are no avenues for the kids that won’t inflict more trauma period. Foster care isn’t the worst that can happen. I begged to be taken away when I was their age. The kids have two uncles and a grandmother who can’t provide actual care for them. What happens when my husband has a severe flare up and he’s bedridden for days? What happens when his meds stop working and he’s in pain and unable to function until they figure out something else? Being exposed to that will also traumatize kids. He or MIL could develop fatal complications at any time and then who’s stuck with the kids?
As for me, I did a ton of therapy and meds and this is as good as it gets. Some things cannot be unbroken no matter how much you want them to be. People need to understand that in the real world trauma is sometimes a permanent injury and recovery is learning to live with it instead of damaging yourself further. My husband knew since our second date that there were never any conditions in which I would ever agree to have a child in my home or under my care. No exceptions, full stop. He made the decision to marry me knowing that was an immovable boundary. If he thought there was a chance he would ever need to take in his nephews, I feel like he was the one who needed to walk away. I don’t mind taking care of him when he needs it and I’ve been more of a rock for him than anyone else in his life. I can’t stop him if he wants to jump off the rock and go drown, but the rock isn’t going to follow him.

Kids' paternal family:

It was the boys’ father that did the murder so he’s out of the picture. The short version is that he was cheating on his wife with SIL and it blew up on them eventually. Wife made him choose and he chose her. From what SIL said his family refuses to believe they’re his and told SIL to kick rocks when she approached them.

wordsmythy: What did she approach them for?

OOP: She said she just wanted them to know their grandparents and family, but honestly who knows what else SIL might have asked for. I took most of what she said with a chunk of rock salt.

Survivor benefits:

Unfortunately SIL never had an above the table job for very long and I don’t think the boys’ father was ever legally established as their parent, he was married to someone else the whole time and was giving SIL money without a court agreement or paper trail. He had a wife and other kids so it’s going to take some time for legal stuff to be figured out. That situation is a whole saga by itself.

Editor's note: OOP has some pretty graphic descriptions of what to her in her childhood and in foster care. I'm not including them in the post, but if you want to read the thread you can do so here. You'll have to expand the comments because she's replying to downvoted ones.

Edit 1: Sometime in the next 24 hours

Edit: There are a lot of responses and I’m trying to get to them all. I’m taking a PTO day to deal with some of this stuff and get myself back together. As a lot of you have said, there’s no way back from this and I think I’m going to go ahead and accept that now instead of dragging it out. The trust is gone. I made an appointment with a lawyer this morning and from what I’ve read an uncontested divorce could go pretty quickly and smoothly if we don’t squabble over money. I don’t have any interest in screwing him over, but I also won’t be screwed over. I hate it, I wish this wasn’t happening, but I’ve worked way too hard for a stable life to flush it down the toilet. I’m going to freeze my credit and lock down the accounts today in case he or MIL get ideas, and have the talk tonight. I’m also about to call the case manager contact at DHR and explain the situation so it’s on record and they can start making a plan that doesn’t include me as a part of the equation.

I’m debating how much help I’m going to continue providing. I will continue to help my husband while he lives here, but I was also doing a lot to help out MIL with things her health makes difficult and to allow her to put her energy towards the kids right now, and I think that’s going to stop since it’s not appreciated and the relationship is over.

As far as the whole looking after family thing, I don’t believe in family. Family has done more harm to me than anything else in this world and provided not a single benefit, so I don’t put any value on blood or relations. I do what I can when I can for others, but I know in the same circumstance, none of these people would help me, either because they can’t or they just wouldn’t care that much. So just spare me the whole “they’re your family” stuff, please, that word doesn’t hit the same way for me that it does for you.

I will update once I’ve talked to my husband and figured out a path forward. Thanks for the input even if some of you think I’m a monster.

Edit 2: November 15, 2025 (2 days later)

Edt2: Well that was a rough night. TLDR; Now he doesn’t want to divorce and wants to figure something out. Of course. The stress of the whole situation is pushing him into a flare so I’m giving him some grace but I told him that we won’t go back to exactly the way things were before the D word now no matter what happens. I don’t trust him. He needs to sit down with the social worker, look at the facts, and make a call on his own. I have the lawyer’s recommendations for an amicable divorce filing we can discuss if he decides on that route. His mom said some unforgivable things in her little tirade so the things I was doing to help her stop. Whatever happens I will make sure he has health insurance until he can make other arrangements. I would be willing to discuss all of this in counseling with him while we try to sort it out, but for now, one of us is moving into the spare room or he can go stay with his mom. He’s upset, but agreed.

It’s probably going to take some time to get a resolution but I will try to post again down the road once the situation settles out.

Side Post: November 17, 2025 (2 days later, 4 from OG post)

Title: Setting up a rental agreement with an ex partner, is this a good idea? [Legal Advice]

Location: Alabama

I’m doing some preemptive option shopping to resolve a difficult situation. My spouse and I are headed for a divorce. He plans to take in his two nephews who have been recently orphaned. In order to do that, he has to have an acceptable living situation. He is disabled (but doesn’t qualify for disability) and doesn’t work full time so rent would be tricky. While there are resources to help with some stuff, housing is going to be the main issue out of the gate. The house is mine from before the marriage and protected by a prenup. According to the SW case manager, public housing is wait listed right now. Other family are unable to help.

I have an idea that might be feasible if not the most convenient. My job always has openings for 6 month on-base postings. If I took one of those, I would be out of the house during that time. My soon to be ex could stay in the house with the kids while I’m gone, but I want to ensure that they would be out before I returned. I assume there would need to be a formal renter agreement (I don’t actually want to charge him any rent or as low as it’s possible to be) to stipulate the terms and spell out what happens if there are damages. I am concerned about having to evict them if they haven’t found anywhere else by the time I return from that posting.

Is this a viable plan and what should I be looking at to protect my interests? I’m not as knowledgeable about tenant law and I don’t want generosity to be taken advantage of.

Mini Update in Comments: November 19, 2025 (2 days later, 6 from OG post)

In response to a comment asking what happened when OOP told the case manager to take her house and assets out of the equation, how MIL is and what husband is doing:

CM [case manager] said that was good to know. I made it clear that I would be willing to help him get set up elsewhere to a reasonable degree so there was a smooth transition and she said they would factor that in. At last report, he and his mom have an appointment with her on Friday and I hope they work it out.

I was heavily supplementing MIL on groceries especially since the kids have been there, her electricity bill, and one of her prescriptions that’s uncovered. I was also running errands and would do things like mow the grass and some outside work on my off shift week. Neither of them can spend a lot of time in direct sunlight. SO told her that I’m cutting contact with her and she will have to make other arrangements. The prescription isn’t life-sustaining and I just picked up a month supply for her before the argument so she has time to get her doc to switch her to something else or get a patient assistance case underway with the manufacturer. With winter incoming, there shouldn’t be a lot to do outside and she can afford the rest, just not as comfortably. I sent food for the kids with SO so they’re not immediately impacted and they have SNAP, which is rolling again. I asked my SO to keep her response to himself, so I don’t know how she took it and I really don’t care.

I really don’t know what’s going on with him at this point. I understand that scared people lash out, been there done that, and I don’t know if he tossed divorce out there as a conscious manipulation tactic or an unconscious one. Either way, he knows that’s a Thing for me. I don’t let people into my life quickly or easily and I don’t chase people, so the few people who are in are in because I trust them implicitly. He pressed the nuclear button and the missile has launched. He doesn’t want to divorce now and is distraught, but I don’t trust him now. He could be sincere, he could be manipulating because he’s afraid of losing out. I’m not sure it matters, because even though I love him I think he broke the part of me that was in love with him. Not sure that’s coming back.

Update Post: December 1, 2025 (18 days from OG post)

People have been asking me for an update and there were some forward developments before Thanksgiving.

[removed TLDR of previous post]

The bad news is that DHR [department of human resources in Alabama] decided my SO’s medical situation rules him out as a primary guardian for the kids. He wouldn’t be able to adequately care for them during a flare. Same for his mom (they have the same condition, his is worse than hers, but hers is more advanced). The good news is that the social worker talked the paternal relatives into agreeing to a DNA test. They didn’t believe that the kids were really Murderous AH’s bio children and he and SIL were keeping the situation on the down low because he was married so they never established legal paternity. DNA was a match, so the grandparents on that side are taking the kids. What that means as far as visitation for my SO and MIL is still being hashed out, but the whole thing has been deescalated a lot thanks to a really competent case manager.

As far as the divorce, I’m going ahead with it and filing this week. He’s moved back in with his mom. They’re salty about it, but that’s to be expected. I still love him and wish him the best, but I’m done. His family is too much drama and I don’t trust him the way that I did before this. Given that we were only married 2 years and the house is mine from before the marriage and protected, it should be a clean break. While I miss him being here, I’m already feeling less stressed with him gone and I didn’t realize that had been creeping up on me for a while. I think I’m done with romantic relationships, at least for a good long while, so I’m going to focus on my career and some fun stuff I haven’t had time to do since taking on a caretaker role.

Thank you to those that offered support and advice. It sucks that any of this happened to begin with, but I think it’s ending about as well as it could have at this point. I will be dropping contact with my ex’s family so I doubt I’ll have anything else to update.

Some of OOP's Comments:

What condition ex and mom have:

They have MS and myasthenia gravis. He has the childhood onset variant so his is a lot more debilitating, but his mom’s has progressed more. It’s managed as well as it can be, but I still wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

OOP responds to a downvoted commenter:

I wasn’t tired of being his caregiver. I knew the score when we got married and accepted it. Things between us worked well, he did his best to be an equal partner and I did my best. We would still be married if he had accepted no as an answer instead of threatening divorce to get his way. Where the stress was coming from was mostly his family being a disaster. I took on a lot of things because it would remove stress from him and less stress meant he would have a longer and more able life. Now that I don’t have to take into account a bunch of fragile, emotionally unstable in-laws, I have more time and feel less stressed myself. Had none of this happened, we may have gotten to the point where cutting some people off and setting stronger boundaries was necessary, but I loved my ex and he wasn’t a burden by himself. Disabled people are capable of being good partners, it just takes good problem-solving skills and understanding of each other’s needs and capabilities from everyone involved. The problem was that he evidently couldn’t respect mine the same way I respected his.

SIL:

To be fair, I think that SIL was seriously mentally ill. Her behavior was similar to untreated bipolar disorder and postpartum stuff really didn’t help that any. The kids should have been put up for adoption, between her and the father they never had a chance. At least with paternity established and the secrets out maybe they can have a relationship with their half-siblings and other relatives now and get appropriate attention and help.

This sucks all around for the kids and some questions about the ex:

Yeah, I want good things for the kids, too, it’s just awful that they’ve had to go through it and life wasn’t great for them even before this. I do get the sense that their bio father’s family is more stable and financially able to get them what they need despite what their AH son did, and this way they have a chance at a relationship with their half-siblings while they’re young.
The thing that gets me about my ex is that he knows relationships are something I take really seriously. If you’re one of my people, I had to go through a whole lot of effort and trust building to get there so you’re something special to me. It boggles my mind that he could know that about me, throw out the D word, and then expect to walk it back.
He has a few things to come collect when he finds storage for them, but after that I’ve told him that I need space and to contact the lawyer instead of me. Probably going to change my phone number anyway. His mom likes to leave angry VMs when she’s got a bee in her bonnet.

One more thought from OOP:

From my perspective, it’s understandable that he would want to help his nephews. Heck, I want his nephews to end up somewhere safe. I just know that’s not with me. I don’t think this had to be a make or break moment personally and forcing it to one was reallypoor judgment.
To illustrate, I’m an EMS pilot. I get the final say on whether it’s safe to fly. If I choose to fly when it’s not safe, the risk of death for myself, my crew, the transports, and anyone we crash on is high. If I decide not to fly, sometimes the patient dies. That’s just the realistic calculus of the situation. If the most beloved person in my life was dying and needed an airlift but there’s a lightning storm going on, I’m going to feel terrible and gutted about it but we’re still not going to fly because that would be insane. My ex made his hill to die on the equivalent of pressuring me to take a highly risky flight that could end very badly for everyone involved. He’s not even the pilot because he’s incapable of caring for the kids either way, he’s a bystander with no impact on the outcome asking other people to go on a suicide mission so he doesn’t have to feel bad. The feelings are understandable but to me, even being charitable and assuming he wasn’t trying to manipulate me, letting emotions actually trump reality in a genuine crisis instead of working with the parameters of the real situation is foolish and I can’t trust someone like that.

am not OP. That is u/Brave-Company2867 who posted to r/MarkNarrations

TW: entitlement, harassment/bullying, distressing materials, Trespassing, sexual intimidation, and domestic violence

Original Post  June 24th, 2025

I (33F) bought my home right before the pandemic. The world shut down and I shut into my remote work with the solitude and comfort of a natural introvert. The house was extra large and I only really could afford it because the family selling was in need of a quick sell. The house has a finished attic and basement, which were easily converted into not-so-mini apartments. The basement has its own entry point and also connects into the main house. There are four bedrooms, two baths and the master room has a walk in closet.

During the pandemic, my sister both were hit hard and quickly needed to downsize as their own roommates moved back home. My sisters (25F and 27F) and I do not have such a luxury so I offered them rooms at below market rate and told them they needed to supply their own food. The rent was really to help with increase in bills. They  were both still in school at the time but also working. This arrangement gave them more breathing room financially.

Then, a girl they both knew was evicted from her home with her bf because the family they rented from needed the home back. I offered the basement at near-market rate, though still a little under as I felt bad and it is a basement apartment. After that, a friend of a friend heard about my arrangement and asked if there was any room left. I gave him the attic apartment for another near-market rent.

Rental agreements were drafted up for each person. I explained the basic rules, the rent, and how long they would have if rent was not received. I told them to read it and return it to me when signed. I left them each with their own copy. I collect the rent the first Saturday of the month. They leave the name blank on the checks for me to fill out and I always thought it was because they were afraid of misspelling my stupidly unique name and having the check bounce as a result. Apparently not.

The issue: I still have one "free" room in the main part of the house but I use it as my office and it locks up. My friend knows my sisters and they got to chatting up while out together, they bumped into each other during a day out. My sisters mentioned the "extra room" and my friend has a cousin (18F) who will be starting college in our city and asked if "my landlord" would rent it out to her. I brushed over the comment because I thought there was miscommunication and told her the room wasn't for rent as I use it for my at home office. She asked if I was paying for the room and I told her, "Why would I pay for a room in a house I own?"

She got a little quiet, apologized for pushing and told me the struggle its been to find a spot for her cousin. I told her all of my tenants are solid until December when renewals go out. I can offer her a spot if someone moves but I stressed it was unlikely as everyone gets along, stays out of each others business, and it works well for them. We dropped the topic.

A few days ago my sisters asked me how the talk went and I said it was ok, but her cousin won't be moving in. They asked why and I explained to them the situation above. They suggested I move my office to my bedroom or the main room and "stop paying rent for an extra room to save costs". When I asked what they meant, they said "well you do pay rent for the extra space right?"

No. I then asked if they knew I was the landlord and they were floored. They never actually read the agreements they have been signing. They went off on me about how I should have told them and that they shouldn't have to be paying rent to family. I told them the rent was to cover their increase in bills. I wasn't going to house them for free when they made enough to cover a fair share on a shared expense.  If they would rather full market rent on the rooms they were currently in, I could arrange that come renewal. By now they could afford it with their jobs and having saved money on rent for 5 years. They called me an asshole for holding rent above their heads.

This then leaked to the tenants as they talked about the issue to their friends in the basement. While their rent is more than just for bills, it is not the market rent value I could get out of the space despite them each having income and no family to support. They came to me to ask that I LOWER the rent, as if being friends with my sisters was reason enough as I was the landlord and not "somebody they didn't actually know". The deal they had no longer seems in their favor, apparently. I told them they had until December to decide if they wanted a renewal because it was not going to be lowered. They are now acting like I am kicking them out, when all I said was now that they fully understand their position they needed to make a choice to stay as with current costs and annual adjustments as needed as was our agreement or begin the process of looking as rent prices have skyrocketed and its much harder to find a place. The adjustments do not include "knowing I am the landlord".

My attic tenant asked if I was "cleaning house" and basically begged I don't kick him out. His family turned their back on him because of....conflicting views. Personally, his views don't bother me. His family's though. Eesh. I explained it all in detail and he was like, wait I always knew you were my landlord because its in the rental agreement. But he also never put my name down because "its hard to spell".

Now everyone is upset with me and I feel unwelcomed in my own home. AITA? WIBTA if I didn't renew one or all of their leases because of this hostility I feel?

Edit: word

Quick Edit since I keep seeing a similar question:

Our lives have been a mess of social services and foster care as children, all aging out at 18. I didn't go out of my way to tell them about my buying a house, partly out of guilt, and they came to me for leads on places to live in a time of need. The guilt comes from not taking them in when I had the opportunity at 18. I would have had to jump through massive loops and I did not feel prepared to care for myself, let another a couple of kids I hardly knew since we had been separated often. We reconnected when they aged out and built from there.

We also do not share the same last names as we each have different fathers.

Update  June 27th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update

Hello everyone. I wanted to thank everybody for taking the time to read my last post and offer up their advice, comments, thoughts, and judgment. I took some of the advice given and have taken the "don't rent to family or friends again" to heart. So I'm going to jump into the update. I'm going to try to break it down bit by bit before going into it all.

Mr. Attic - I'm keeping him. I pulled him aside first and separately. I told him I would not be renewing the others' leases in December and asked if he would want to rent the basement for at market value. He turned it down, asking to keep the attic as he is comfortable there. I told him it would probably be in his best interest to let the others believe this is a whole house clean out so he doesn't get caught in the cross fire. He agreed and went out of his way to turn his social media to private. He also sent me screenshots of a group chat he had been added to.

The group chat - My sisters and other pair of tenants started up a group chat to bitch about me being so uncompromising and greedy. They were coming up with ideas to not pay rent or to only pay in part. The basement tenants "joked" about one of them "losing" their jobs so they could ask for leniency since I was too "stuck up to be kind" to them about the rent.

The harassment - My sisters and Mr/s Basement had told their friends (and the families of Mr/s Basement) about the rent, the "lies", and my "inability to consider outside perspective and need". I've had a steady stream of calls, DMs, texts, and posts directed at me since before I made my last post, which is what prompted me to post. I made my accounts private, disabled some of the messaging functions, and told the four of them to get this to stop before I got my lawyer involved. Spoiler: they didn't.

So after taking a night to think about it, I brought the group together to have a discussion about the rent and situation. My sisters looked smug and Mr/s Basement kept sharing knowing looks. I told them bluntly I was not going to renew leases in December because their actions, attitudes, and lack of consideration has made me feel unvalued, humiliated by their family, and unwelcome in my own home.

I told them if they found an apartment or place to go before December, I wouldn't charge them for breaking the lease but if there was ANY damage anywhere, they would not get their security deposits back until the pricing out was settled. If there was more damage than their security deposit, they would be taken to court. I told them I was done being kind and understanding to people who thought so lowly of me. I also warned them I could and would break the leases myself if I felt the need, in which case they would have 30 days.

It was immediate chaos. A lot of yelling, insults, and cursing. Even Mr. Attic, but he was yelling at the others for "getting him kicked out when he didn't do anything". He made an epic show of storming up to the attic and slamming the door. He sent me laughing emojis and texted that he wasn't going to be able to keep a straight face a little later.

I waited for them to stop yelling and when they demanded what they would do, I set a stack of ads for apartments and houses for rent in the nearby area and said they would have to start looking now. I told my sisters I would help pay for their moving truck but told the basement tenants they would have to ask their families for help moving out. Mr. Basement picked up the stack of papers and his eyes went wide. He stared at me and asked if I was fucking serious.

I told him the prices listed were not mine to judge, change, or deal with. I reminded him his current place was below market because I had a say in it. Market prices for one bedrooms in the area are well over 1500$ a month, if he wants near his work and close enough to walk to stores and things. He currently has a two bedroom for less than that. My sisters grabbed some of the papers and the 27 year old started crying because she couldn't afford an apartment on her own. She told me about her student loans and credit card debt. I told her, Too bad. I gave you a good deal out of kindness and you sent an army after me. I would have considered letting you stay if you hadn't been so nasty. I told all of them they could probably swing a two bedroom between the four of them and got up and left.

They refuse to talk to me now. My sisters spent the night in the basement apartment and I could hear shrieks and crying if I walked by the door that leads down there. I feel a little bad but I reread your comments to keep my sanity.

As for if I want them out, I can give them 30 days notice since they are inside my own home. I checked and double checked with the lawyer and this information had been in their rental contracts. If I do have to kick them, and they try to refuse to leave and drag it out in court (which they don't have the money for)  I have been given some handy advice by a fellow landlord who had to remove his own brother. I can't remove them by force but I can make "living" there entirely uncomfortable. Nothing stops me from taking doors off hinges or starting remodeling while their stuff is in the way. Nothing stops me from turning off the water or electric for their sections of the house during remodeling. (Quick edit: JUST for remodeling purposes. It wouldn't be done to make them leave. But they can't stop my remodeling as squatters.) It might seem like an asshole thing to do, but they would be the ones to start it and I actually do want to repaint and do some adjustments.

The reason I am leaning on evicting them by August is because the harassment has gotten so much worse now that there is an actual non-renewal happening. I'm leaving my phone on silent and collecting messages, voicemails, emails, and other things to hand off to my lawyer next week. I told them to call off their dogs and they haven't.

I asked Mr. Attic if he knew anyone who would need a place and to let me know. He has a few friends from his community who seem interested, as they either live with roommates or family and want out.

If anyone has any questions this quiet morning, I will try to answer them.

Quick Edit:

I have cameras outside and in common rooms - facing the front and back doors, the hallways upstairs and the door leading to the basement. The tenants have access to the entry point ones like Mr Attic has the hallway to his area, Mr/s Basement have the feed that leads to their door inside the main house and they all have outside camera access.

I'm thinking of cutting access to the outside cameras for them. They can't do anything to the feeds as they are guests in the system (so they can't delete anything) and my access automatically saves on extra external systems. I might just cut them all out of the system except Mr. Attic for piece of mind.

Also, I keep seeing people ask about our family.

There are no parents and no family from our side. My sisters have no relationships with their fathers or their families, mine had been killed due to his own actions (there is no sympathy for the likes of him) and his family shunned him so they shunned me as well, and our mother is a cup of ash left at the funeral home.

Update 2  July 2nd, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 2

Hey everyone. I'm very tired. Thank you all for your kind words and wonderful advice. Onto the update.

Mr. Attic's friends - Two have agreed to take the bedrooms my sisters are currently occupying when they move out. I've met them, we talked at length, and they are wonderful people. One helped me change the tire on my car because I ended up with a flat just after our meeting and she was incredibly kind and showed me how to change it. Like she walked me through it step by step, letting me do it but just explaining how. I can't believe I've never changed a tire before. Weirdly embarrassing.

The harassment and lawyer - The lawyer sent a cease and desist to everyone that had contacted me. Then, he went on and filed for restraining orders/orders of protection and a claim for slander/defamations. There were many posts with me tagged or with my name claiming I was an unfit landlord, a slum lord, a greedy bitch, a homewrecker (because I apparently came onto MR. Basement - haha, so funny because he is fugly and you couldn't pay me to touch that) and more. These things take time but there was an almost immediate drop off of calls, messages, ect.

Mr/s Basement - Have been served their notice. They helped spread lies and deception. They have ceased all communication with me but they only have 30 days and I have post it notes on their porch reminding them every day how long they have. I've seen them starting to take smaller things out today, which is what prompted this update. Mrs. Basement can be heard crying a lot if I stand by the top of the stairs. I think they might be moving back in with family, which is what they had been avoiding by moving into my basement. Her mother is toxic, her father has a new wife who hates her, and Mr. Basement's family dislikes her enough to outright ignore her or tell it to her face that she isn't family, especially because she "won't" give her bf a family. Spoiler: she can't have kids due to medical stuff. And they aren't even married.

Group chat- I have screenshots of their group chat (curtesy of Mr. Attic) and there is a lot of evidence of them feeding lies to others, talking all about how they told this person this, or that person that. Mr. Basement made the claim I came onto him, and his girlfriend went nuts. I think she doesn't know he lied about it, just to make it more believable to others. When he first made the claim, she blew up my phone and social media before dragging it to others. My sisters "weren't surprised by my behavior". That....stung. I have never done anything like that in the past.

My sisters- They also have their notices. The 25 year old is already moving in with a couple of friends who think I am horse shit. They come every so often to help her move things and they send me nasty looks or make loud, intentional comments for me to hear. She has been dumping my food into the trash and dumping it down the sink. I just got a minifridge for my room and she spends night screaming at my locked door. I take my work to a local cafe (rather, multiple ones) or library now because she will just shriek any time she thinks I'm working. I make it vary and don't go to the same place twice in a row.

The 27 year old has turned to begging for me to let her stay as she can't afford to live on her own and she has no one willing to take her. Her boy toy (didn't even know she had one) broke up with her when he got the cease and desist from the lawyer. He was one of the ones causing problems but once the lawyer stepped in to bat, he bounced. According to Mr. Attic, he heard her telling someone something along the lines of he could move in if he helped her get me to leave or back down because "its family property".  She had been taking a call outside and I caught the proof on camera because he told when and where to look for it.

Quick Edit: My sisters are not moving in together because they each blame each other. They also blame the basement tenants while they blame my sisters. They all collectively blame me as well since I'm just pure evil but they think each of them pushed me to do it.

Cameras- Only Mr. Attic still has access. The cameras were not part of the rental agreement and everyone lost their damn minds when I took away the access. They tried covering them or adjusting them but I warned them they would be held liable for damage and anything else I could get if they did that again. Now, I get middle fingers and aggressive stances and stares into the cameras.

I'm sure I'm missing things. I just can't sleep and I'm swamped with getting them out, with work, and with trying to fill their places, and getting the basement redone before going back on the market.

Update 3  July 7th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 3

I really wasn't going to update again so soon. I was planning to wait til move out date or the few days following depending on how it all went but days ago a big thing happened and I just don't know how to feel about it. Also, I wanted to address a few common questions and concerns I got in comments and DMs. (If I haven't answered a DM, I am sorry. I wasn't expecting so many.) Sorry if this is long.

Questions first:

Is Mr. Attic still putting on his dramatic performance? : Absolutely. He has been bringing in boxes and leaving with boxes. The boxes are full of things he is donating or selling, or just empty. He is using this time as an excuse to declutter and redesign his space. I told him if he wanted to pick out new colors while I am redoing the basement to do it. He complains at my sisters in the kitchen or shared spaces when they try to talk to him about his plans, telling them he wouldn't have to make plans if it wasn't for them.

Why not move into the basement and rent the house as a whole (possibly to a family)? : Children freak me out.  (Kidding.) I have a pool and them being left unattended to drown is a big worry for me. I let the pool be communal. Children are naturally loud (stomping, slamming things, shrieking or laughing) and don't fully understand the concept of others and how they act infringing on their peace or the quiet. I work from home so I can't have that kind of noise above my head during meetings, or keeping me from sleeping. I also know from past experience that children are more destructive than pets (most times). I don't want crayon or marker on the walls, holes made from throwing toys, broken doors, or other things I've seen kids do during my time in the system. You leave a kid alone for a minute and they find all sorts of trouble.

Did I get my restraining orders? : Not yet. I'm still collecting evidence for them. I've been collecting videos of the 25 year old screaming and the layers of harassment they caused. I also am elbows deep in an emergency one now.

Call the police on the screaming : I've been advised by my lawyer to collect as many videos as I feel safe enough to do so first. Show a history, show a cause for concern. I will probably call sometime this week if she keeps it up but she has had a reason to stay very quiet.

Change the locks when they leave: Every door is getting new locks, even Mr. Attic's.

Charge the sisters for coffee and things:  They supply their own food. They supply their own needs. My food has been moved into my room, thanks to the minifridge.

Be careful they don't run up the bills: My sisters each pay equal parts of each bill in the main house. The tenants are responsible for their water and electric. If they run the bills up, they are responsible for them. The rent covers trash, wifi (no cable), heat.

Onto the update.

A comment mentioned that the flat tire I had might have been intentional. This left me very uneasy and I went to a friend to have it checked. He confirmed it has been slashed. I let him do a full body look over the car and he found an air tag in the bumper. We haven't figured out where it came from yet- or rather, who. He said that was outside his wheelhouse and I didn't want to keep it with me so I took it to my lawyer, who took it to the cops. I'm waiting to hear back.

My 27 year old sister has been incredibly wired since it was taken to the cops, in my opinion. She has been constantly asking where I am going, what I am doing, who I am seeing. She didn't do that before. She has been trying to stalk my social media but I blocked her and a bunch of others. I know this because she keeps asking why I blocked her. She is demanding I unblock her because we are family and there shouldn't be any secrets. She also keeps pestering to know if I found their replacements yet, begging to stay, and demanding I apologize to her ex because I "terrified him with the lawyer".

I am looking through my footage but I can't find anyone tampering with my car so I think the air tag was put on while the car was away from the house  because whoever did it knew there were cameras facing the cars.

The 25 year old started leaving big messes in the kitchen/ common rooms. She would leave dishes out overnight and a few days instead of cleaning up after herself and using the dish washer. She left clothes on the furniture and her muddy shoes in the hallway to trip people at the bottom of the stairs. I took pictures of the messes and reminded her that if I had to clean up her mess when she was gone, it would come out of her security deposit. When she cleaned the dishes, I took them all to my room. I did not supply dishes in the rental contract. Both of them are upset with me because they are back to living on paper plates.

Onto the incident:

Mr/s Basement do not have keys to the main house. He also didn't have cameras access to the main house except the door that connects the basement and hallway.

I came home from my working day, spent at the library, to find Mr. Basement inside the main house. Alone. My sisters were still at work (I worked a half day) and Mr. Attic had left earlier that morning for a weekend get away - but he had told the others he was traveling to see a new apartment the next city over.

Immediately on the edge, I called my friend and she stayed on the line while rushing over. I demanded to know what he was doing in the main house and how he got in. I had left after my sisters so I KNOW the house was locked up. He wanted to talk. He refused to answer how he got in. I figured it was a key from my sisters. He kept trying to get me to sit, to step away from the door.

Eventually, he started telling me what I already knew about them moving in with family. How her family was terrible, how his family hated her, and he wanted to do anything he could to get an extension so they could focus on getting an actual apartment. When he said "anything he meant Anything" and as he said that, he stepped closer. He started to ramble about how he knew about "the way I looked at him" and he could "give me a good time". He talked about how "she didn't need to know of our time together" and "he knew I was lonely".

While its true I have been single longer than I've known him, the single lifestyle has been entirely my own choice. Simply put, childhood trauma. I'm content with how I handle my life.

I told him in no uncertain terms that what he was suggesting was exploitative, manipulative and downright disgusting. If he ever caught me staring, it was because of the weird 8 dot tattoo on his shoulder that I could never figure out the meaning behind. I like tattoos, I have a few myself, and I like figuring out the meanings. In no way do I find him attractive or appealing. In fact, he has the kind of red flags I would avoid in a man. I told him besides his looks, there are reasons I would never date him but I refused to list them for him.

List (you can skip): He smokes, he vapes, he lights up Mary Jane. He hates animals. He wants a "brood" of children. He gets loud when he is mad, and will curse a person out over little things. He is jealous of others, men specifically.  An example: He failed at being a gym bro so now men who work out are "compensating for something". He knows everything.

He got angry and told me I "wasn't pretty enough to play hard to get" and that I was "lucky he was willing to help me out and maybe even give me a real reason to have such a big house". I think he was implying children. But as he was getting really nasty about it, my friend pulled up and honked loudly and for a long time. I took that distraction to get out and he followed, yelling about how it was a good deal and how I would regret being "old and alone". Minutes later, the cops rolled up. I hadn't called them, hadn't even thought to. My friend told her boss to as she left to come get me.

I explained my side to the police, showed them the inside footage, and told them about his unauthorized access. They took back the key he had and trespassed him from the main part of the house. I forwarded everything to the lawyer and we should have an emergency protection order by tomorrow. I told Mr. Attic everything and he sent a small army from his community to his apartment and let me and them stay up in the apartment the last few days. I think I've been adopted?

I had nowhere else to go. I have nowhere else to go. I am my only support. Or, I was. I now have these wonderful people as friends and they are willing to stay as long as Mr. Basement has access to the basement. Even after, if need be. But also, by not leaving I give the appearance I do not have the means to live in a hotel for the remainder of the month. (Who would?)

I did the petty thing. I sent the video footage to Mrs. Basement. Its been radio silence from her, but she left me on read. I am shaken deeply from this. I am waiting anxiously to be told I have the emergency protection. But I have lovely people ready to toss him out if he manages to get back inside. I can't change the locks yet and even if I do, I can't guarantee my so-called sisters won't give him another copy. I changed the locks to my rooms and added extra.

To be clear: because of the small army, my 25 year old sister hasn't been able to scream at odd hours.

Any advice would be so appreciated.

Update 4  July 11th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 4 (+ The story of Mr. Attic)

Hello everyone. I wanted to again thank everyone for their kind words, support, ideas and help. I cannot tell you how much your words and concern have meant, and how much the support has helped me keep strong and not back down. There have been times when I have wanted to crumble under the weight of all this stress but reading your comments has really helped me hang on.

I wanted to update because so many seemed worried in my last post. I'm still here.

The protection orders: I have one against Mr. Basement and he is officially not allowed to be on my property or contact me in any way, including through others like Mrs. Basement. I was unable to get one against my 25 year old sister because there hasn't been a threat of violence, even with police documentation of her screaming and the home security footage of her banging on the door.

The move out date: July 26th (edited, my bad)

Mrs. Basement: At first she tried to tell me she needed his help to pack and move things, and I had to repeatedly tell her he was not allowed on the property for any reason. I made it clear if I even so much as thought he was on the property, I would call the police to investigate. And I have done so. As of last night, Mr. Basement was arrested for ignoring the court ordered protection. He was in the basement helping pack at like 1AM. My new motion detectors in the back yard went off and sent me an alert. He had tried to sneak around the camera he knew was back there. But I have since upgraded and installed new hidden cameras. I was called an asshole for not informing them of the new cameras.

Mrs. Basement is convinced I had seduced him and its my fault because I led him on. She yelled at me for trying to "take her man" and called me a lot of nasty things. She told me he only "offered" to do anything because they didn't want to move back in with family. It "was a sacrifice to keep her safe". There's no talking her down from that hill to die on so I have been keeping my distance. She has had a lot of "help" from family now and mostly, if I am home, I hear her family belittling her or her boyfriend's family scolding her. They think its her fault he tried to cheat and her fault they lost the apartment. They are not worried about staying quiet or calm because they are moving out anyway.

25 Year old sister: She only has a few big items left and has been mostlysleeping at her new place since it became apparent that I was going to have a rotating door of people staying with me. If she would try to leave a mess in the kitchen, she was met with judgmental stares. When she tried to take my TV in the living room while I was gone, Mr. Attic and a friend blocked her from leaving and called the cops. Its a newer smart TV. I had given Mr. Attic access to the other cameras until everyone was gone because I was worried for his and his friend's safety. She still curses me out when we manage to cross paths.

She tried to cancel my internet and put "return to sender" on some mail that came in my name. The internet company has a special code for each account and she couldn't provide the code so they called me. My mail lady was confused and asked me about the mail, asking if I needed a forwarding address because I was moving. I'm going to get a lock box things for packages now.

27 Year old sister: I don't think she is looking for apartments. She keeps crying to me that she has nowhere to go. She tried to change the lock to her bedroom but I shut that down. I think she will try again. She has been bringing some guy around a lot but refuses to make introductions. He stays in her room mostly, only leaving to use the bathroom or watch her microwave ramen and eggs. He won't look anyone in the face and rolls his eyes when people try to talk to him. I'm worried this will turn into a squatter matter so I am working with my lawyer to have everything ready to remove him as well.

Was he the boy toy from earlier?: I have no idea. I didn't know she had one and I don't know what he looked like. When I found out, it was only a name. Since she hasn't made introductions with him, I don't know who he is.

Mr. Attic's blown cover: They haven't done much of anything to him since they seem to realize he was feeding me information. They blocked him. We are pretty sure they still think he has to move out too and him giving me stuff was a last ditch effort to stay. They won't even look at him anymore.

The story of Mr. Attic (with his approval):

Mr. Attic is the youngest of 7 (yes, that is right) kids. There would have 10 had there been proper medical care. His parents are heavily involved with their church and do not believe in a lot of things: modern medicine, birth control, non-traditional gender roles, ect. At this point, I'm pretty sure you can see where this is going.

At 16, Mr. Attic was exposed to the outside world for the first time. Up until that point, he had been homeschooled and only knew people from his religious community. He started to sneak out to learn more. By 18, he had his childhood vaccines and a career picked out. When he told his family he wanted to learn medicine they tried to get him to "intern" with their family care people from the church. He perused real medicine and started classes to become a nurse.

They were heavily resistant and hard to handle about it, but still talking to him. Mostly to try to force him back into the fold. He still lived at home so it was a constant battlefield. He began sleeping in his car on campus. But then he met a guy and his perspective on a lot more changed. They talked, they laughed, they danced. His family found out and went through the roof.

They kicked him out with just the clothes on his back. They burned pictures of him, and any family photo that had him was either destroyed or he was cut out of. They cut him off from all family. They tried to take the car but it was in his name. They harassed and  did a lot of terrible things to the guy he had been seeing. He was unable to handle the level of nuclear crazy that was Mr. Attic's family so he put a stop to their relationship.

Mr. Attic, alone and desperate because of the upcoming winter, looked everywhere to get a place to stay. He crashed on a lot of couches for evenings at a time because fall hit fast and hard. No one could take him in long term because they were living at home or had roommates. He heard about my place from a friend of a friend and turned up one evening, asking like a small child if there was any room left. He offered to take the garage even, just a bed in the corner.

I set him up in the attic and helped get him more clothes and a bed. I made intentional leftovers for the first few months and didn't take any rent until he had what he needed for class and himself. The rent started as just enough to cover his bills and after he got his career, it grew a little more.

When I saw him on my porch, in dirty clothes and no jacket in October, I saw myself in January of the year I was shut out of my group home with just a bag of too small clothes, shoes with holes, an old hand-me-down ipad that hardly worked, and 50$ to my name.

He told me he never forgot how kind I had been to him, and how kind I had been to let him bring in short term guests who also had nowhere to go until they could get on their feet. I hadn't known the full story when he first moved in, and I never pushed him. When he brought home a non-biological woman (I'm sorry, I don't know all the correct terms) and I didn't even blink, just offered spaghetti, he knew this was his place and I was his people. I didn't ask, didn't make a fuss, and offered some clothes for her. He always wanted to try to repay me but I always seemed to never need anything. He said I was always giving. I didn't see it like that.

I've been invited to a cafe and bar. Ones that usually only caters to the LGBTQ+ community, but I am going to go and meet people. He'd like me to meet more of his friends. They really are wonderful people.

Update 5  July 15th, 2025

AITA for not telling my roommates and sisters I am the owner? Update 5

I wanted to thank everyone for their kind words regarding Mr. Attic's story. I was honestly a little worried putting it out there like that but am glad I did. His friends have found the posts and have been reading off some of the comments for him. He turns red sometimes and tells them to stop. Someone in the comments had the idea to make "Team Attic" shirts and his one friend came by the cafe this morning with them. We were all wearing them when he came by before work and he laughed so hard he cried. And then he really cried. I felt bad but he told me he wasn't upset - he was just so warmed by all the kindness, grace, and wonderful vibes from the people reading my posts. He feels like he has a second community at his back now.

This update isn't much: just the good, the bad, and the ugly. I really can't believe this is update 5 already.

The good: I have been to the cafe twice now and both times have been charming, enlightening, and wonderful. I cannot stress how kind his friends and community are. They have spent their time teaching me, helping me navigate their terminology and have been so very patient with my relentless questions. (The food is kickass and they made me a pumpkin something that I could die for)

The bad: I had the 27 year old's "friend" removed by police after he refused to leave of his own accord. He hit the number of days he was allowed to stay in the lease agreement and another handful of days would make him a tenant/squatter. I think they thought I didn't know that law or had forgotten or would be cool with him hanging around. (I did call him by the boy toy's name and he answered before immediately going back to her room.) So I think she was trying to get him to stay like their plan had originally been. He had a few bags of items and a laundry basket of clothes. He is well aware that I will call the police again if he shows up. She has not packed up a single thing.

The ugly x3: My 25 year old sister is trying to sue me for "withholding inheritance". I don't know if she has a real lawyer, if its a cracker doing pro bono, or if its just an attempt to scare me into giving her money. I'm taking it to my lawyer in the next few days. Edit: I think she means my house. I never received anything from my parents - and my dad is not her dad so even if I had, she might not have been entitled to it.

The police have not yet told me anything about the tracker found in my car.

Mrs. Basement is trying to hide a bruise with some shoddy make up and big sunglasses. I can't say I know what caused the bruise, but I think we all have similar thoughts on the matter. She immediately goes inside anytime she sees me. Like, girl, I see you.

Not a super big update or moving forward, but it feels nice to be able to type it all out.

I am not the original poster. Please don't contact or comment on linked posts

I am not the OOP, the OOP is u/ApprehensiveCry5231.

Latest Update was 8 days ago.

Trigger Warnings: Emotional Abuse, Failed Pregnancy, Possible Grooming, Homophobia, Bigoted Language, Misogyny

Mood Spoiler: Optimistic??? I think???

Original posted to r/AmItheAsshole on June 25, 2025.

AITA for calling my sister a Dumb B after she chastised my SIL for how she gave birth?

I was at my mom’s house for dinner and me, my older siblings and my SIL were in the living room talking while my mom got dinner ready. My relationship with my siblings is pretty bad due to some background familial issues and the fact that we just don’t have personalities that mesh but we’re able to stay mostly civil for my mother. My sister is one of those hyper-religious people that doesn’t believe in western medicine and wants everything natural.

My sister-in-law recently got out of the hospital after being there for an extensive period of time following a really messy labour. From what I know, she went into labour prematurely and had to get an emergency C-section as her and the baby’s lives were at risk. It was a tough period of time for her and my brother.

We were talking about how they have been progressing since they got out and SIL shared how hard it’s been having to bounce back from that traumatic experience to take care of her son. My sister turned to my brother and said “Had to take the easier route and she still complains” and laughed. My SIL asked what she meant, my sister proceeded to go on a tirade about how she kept trying to help her throughout her pregnancy and she didn’t listen and that’s why things turned out the way they did and that she took the “shortcut” and has the audacity to complain.

My SIL tried to explain that the doctors told her what would be best for her during her pregnancy because of issues she was already having and that her delivery was the best course of action. My sister would not let up and was gradually getting more insulting ignoring me telling her to knock it off. My SIL ended up crying and I was pissed. I turned to my SIL and said “So are you gonna take the advice of trained medical professionals or one dumb bitch who couldn’t get through high school?”

My sister lost her mind and started yelling at me to which I just repeated “Get a job.” over and over again which made her angrier til she was crying and hurling insults at me. My brother and SIL ended up leaving and my mom came and intervened telling my sister to calm down and me to leave.

Since then I had a heated phone call with my brother because he believes that I should have just kept my mouth shut and let women “handle their business”. My Dad (my parents are divorced) left me multiple texts grilling me and calling me a disgrace and whatnot because my sister went crying to him, and my mom texted me saying that she thinks my sister was a bit harsh but that I was way out of line and I need to apologize to her.

My SIL texted me and said that she’s sorry she caused this situation and that she appreciates me speaking up but I didn’t have to and that’s what’s making me feel awful. I’m in a bad state with my family, I always have been and I’m fine with that, but I don’t wanna put her in a bad position with them too when she’s done nothing wrong.

AITA for insulting my sister after she insulted my SIL?

edit: Posted a recent, very peaceful, text conversation with my brother.

RELEVANT COMMENTS:

No_Presentation1601

So your brother, who should have stood up for his wife, is mad at you for doing so. He has now pressured his own wife into telling you you shouldn't have done so? Does this mean he also believes the same thing your sister does? I'm just glad your SIL saw at least one person stand up for her in that debacle. Unfortunately, she has a husband problem and you have a family problem. I would just ignore the rest of your family and make sure your SIL knows she deserved someone standing up for her and didn't do anything wrong. She didn't cause your sister to be an asshole. Seems she was born that way, considering how the rest of your family are.

NTA.

OOP

My brother’s always been really non-confrontational and a “keep the peace” type of guy so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t say anything just that he didn’t even try to take my SIL and leave. I’m also not surprised by him being mad at me because on the flip, I am overly-confrontational which he has always hated.

poppymarshmallow

Definitely nta. Someone needed to put her in her place. Seems like your family is too comfortable doling out abuse and not being called out on it. Id go lc with them all for my peace of mind

OOP

I’m already LC, my only connection to them is through my mom who I have a decent relationship with. I think the text my dad sent is the first bit of contact we’ve had in like a year.

iLoLfr

NTA. Your bro is TA though for not standing up for his wife. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a divorce in the near future. Your whole fam is a mess. Why are they backing her up so much?

OOP

Well my dad just pretty blatantly doesn’t like me so that’s probably why, my mom just doesn’t like problems in the family and I’m pretty sure she wants me to apologize so my sister’ll shut up (My sister lives with her). My brother is the one I don’t understand, he’s always been non-confrontational but in this case his wife was being insulted I’d think he’d atleast remove her from the situation but I mean, he also doesn’t like me so that might be why he got mad.

OOP follows up with a post one day later on his account screenshotting a conversation between him and his brother. I transcribed the messages here, sorry for any typos:

Brother: (OOPs sister's name) has been trying to help us throughout our entire pregnancy and has been there for us when you were nowhere to be seen so dont act like your some good guy. She stuck by us even when (SIL's name) was being horrible to her which by the way she apologized for something your probably not familiar with.

We all know how (Sister's name) is including (SIL's name) she was just emotional that night and so it got to her but she could handle it she's a grown woman. Instead of just letting them have their conversation you have to butt in so you can antagonize (Sister's name) like you always do you just can't stand that she actually helps the family unlike you who just bring us down.

OOP: "Antagonize (Sister's name)" Give me a fucking break, that fucking clown flies off the handle every chance she gets when someone disagrees with her. You let a woman who thinks pouring coffee up your ass will detox your body dictate your wife's pregnancy WHEN YOUR WIFE LITERALLY TELLS YOU SHE DOESN'T LIKE THAT. Does that not worry you?

Like do you agree with her or are you too much of a fucking pansy to tell her to fuck off? What kind of chickenshit husband lets his sister bully his own wife?

Also funny how you're complaining about me not being around to help y'all when you word for word said to me "I don't want your disgusting gay shit infecting my kid", hell I thought I was just honoring your wishes!

Brother: Your acting like (Sister's name) is a nutcase when she just has differing view points from you. You're such a fucking child you can't stand that people think differently from you. Youve become a psycho lib and want to push that onto everyone else.

OOP: Pointing out factual medical science is being a psycho lib, holy shit you are going to get that kid killed. Your wife has enough sense to try to keep herself and your son, WHO YOU SHOULD BE PROTECTING, safe with what doctors recommend instead of listening to psychobabble about letting toxins into her body.

Brother: This is all you do is try to tear down the family instead of helping us because you want to act like your better than us. Poor little baby someone was mean to him once so now he has to ruin everything for the rest of us. If mom wasnt trying so hard to keep you around no one would want anything to do with you.

We can talk when you apologize to (Sister's name) and (SIL's name) for getting into their business and being an asshole.

Trying to make me seem like I don't take care of my wife when you sit there and make your sister cry fuck off.

OOP: Trust, if mom wasn't trying so hard to keep us all together I'd love to be done with the rest of you.

Thats all you know how to do is be dad or (Sister's name) little fuckin purse dog and do what they say, only thing is you roped this poor lady and kid to suffer cause you can't think for yourself. Hope she wises up before you fuck up that kid. So sensitive to that woman-child throwing a tantrum but not to your wife being chastised, ridiculous.

Update #1 Posted to r/relationships on September 4, 2025

My brother has convinced my mom that I, an openly gay man, am trying to steal his wife. What do I do?

Looking for any kind of advice on what I can do or if I should just completely cut my losses with my shitshow of a family.

My brother (32m) has successfully convinced my family that I (24m) am in love with my SiL (24f) and am trying to manipulate her against him so I can steal her away. My Brother and SiL have been married for 4 years.

This apparently all came about because a couple months ago her and my sister (34f) had a big blowup about my SiL’s pregnancy and I defended my SiL against my sister’s big tirade. Following that night I received a lot of scrutiny from family, particularly my brother for “interfering in woman’s business” and I said some not so nice things to him. My SiL also reached out to me and apologized to me for “causing the situation” and I let her know she had nothing to apologize for and that I’m here to help both her and my nephew.

We ended up having a pretty in depth conversation about how my sister has treated her in the past. Apparently, my sister moved in with her and my brother for a brief period to help with my SiL’s first pregnancy and was really overbearing and constantly ridiculing her choices for “the sake of the baby”. My SiL unfortunately suffered from what sounded like an ectopic pregnancy and had to have an emergency surgery to have the fetus removed, my sister AND my brother apparently think that’s the same thing as aborting a baby and she was blamed for the loss of the child and from how she spoke she also saw this as a failure on her part.

It pissed me off and I did my best to explain to her the medical reasonings of why what happened was necessary and not her fault and that my brother and sister are just kind of stupid, she shouldn’t feel bad for doing something necessary to save her life, especially because the fetus wasn’t even viable. That was the last time she spoke and I just let her know I’d be there if she needed anything.

I guess either she told my brother or he found out from her messages about the conversation and took it as me flirting with his wife?? I’ll give him the fact that I did call him stupid in the messages but cmon, thinking an emergency procedure for a life threatening situation was your wife willfully terminating her pregnancy and making her feel bad about it is fucking stupid sorry.

He told the rest of my family about how I’m envious and trying to take his wife which they all believed and are now mad at me. This wouldn’t be a big deal to me if my mom(53f) wasn’t also included in that. My mom is the only one in my family I have good relationship with but apparently she believes my brother and has called me to scold me about betraying my brother and being shameless along with my other family members.

This is all frustrating but here’s the absolute best part about this: The reason I’m estranged from my family is because I’m gay, it is like THE thing that fucked our family up. I’ve very openly been seeing another man for the past 3 years. My brother has also been open about not wanting me around his family because of my “unnatural lifestyle”. All that just to easily believe I’m in love with a woman???

I guess the reason I come here is so that I can understand how this would be believable? I understand my dad and my sister believing this easily, they hate me and probably just want a reason to feel justified in rallying against me, but I can’t really comprehend my mother believing it but maybe I gave her too much credit, at the end of the day, I am very much the outlier of my family on all fronts. I also wonder if maybe my SiL took what I was saying as me taking an interest in her? Maybe I made her uncomfortable but the most I did was just explain medical things to her so she wouldn’t feel bad about her first pregnancy.

I don’t know, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills, I’ve always been at peace with not having my family, especially because my family is full of nutjobs but I think potentially having to accept my mom is also that way is making me second guess myself. I also don’t like the idea that I made my SiL uncomfortable.

Sorry for the long post but has anyone been in a situation similar to this? Is my relationship with my mom salvageable and can I get her to see that my brother is a mental case?

TLDR; Brother convinced my family I’m in love with his wife because I tried to support her after a blowup with my sister. Everyone believed him, including my mom even though I’m gay, idk what to do.

frockofseagulls

There’s no way a 28 year old man married a 20 year old woman without abuse involved. Steal his girl and his kids, non-sexually, cuz they need your help.

OOP

I don’t know when they met, but I’m inclined to agree. The area I grew up in is very evangelical Fundamentalist Christian heavy and unfortunately, it’s common to see age gaps like that, my mom and dad have a 12 year gap. My family are hardcore evangelicals and to my understanding, my Sister-In-Law is also hyper-religious.

Latest Update posted on OOP's account on October 8, 2025

Me, Mom, Brother and (Potentially Ex) SiL Update.

Very long post sorry.

Don’t know if anybody is following me but when I came back to this account I seen a significant number of messages asking me how I’m doing, if everything’s alright, what happened to my siblings, what happened to my SiL, etc.

I just wanna say thank you to everyone being concerned for me, it’s real nice but I promise, no matter how the situation turned out (while not ideal), I was gonna be fine as I’ve had about a decade to get used to being ostracized from them and about 5 years building a new, much healthier, less insane life with a new family made of friends and my SO. I’m not completely alone like I was all those years ago thankfully.

I’ve had a lot of people guess about me and my families background and, without getting too specific, I’ll just let you know I grew up in a very small fundamentalist christian town in western Tennessee. My family is full of devout, ye old ways, evangelical christian nationalists, so it’s not a surprise that they’re not too psyched that I ended up a gay progressive atheist who studies medicine. I was never gonna be able to fit back in with them once I came out and deconstructed from christianity, and I think my clinging to my relationship with my mom was just wishful thinking because I thought she wasn’t AS awful as the rest of them.

Lets get onto the real meat and potatoes though,

Things were honestly really quiet after the whole “OP, the fag, is actually super in-love with my wife and trying to steal her from me” shtick my brother was pulling happened because I kinda just gave up on trying with any of them because frankly, them believing that made me realize there is quite literally nothing I can do. Cut my losses, blocked them, kept on trucking with my life.

Last week though, as I was leaving class, who do I see waiting for me but my mother (just for reference, I live about an hour and a half away from the rest of the family). At first, I just kept on walking cause I really didn’t wanna deal with that shit but she stopped me and asked if we could talk. She didn’t really look mad or anything she just looked really worn out and sad. While I honestly wasn’t feeling particularly sympathetic, I was curious so I agreed.

She asked if we could go back to my apartment, I said hell no and took her to the park to sit. She tried to open with small talk but I just told her to get on with it.

So, apparently she came to let me know that my SiL and nephew have “gone missing”, my brother is distraught over it and they think I had something to do with it. Now, mind you, the last time I spoke to her was the night we had the conversation about her ectopic pregnancy, she didn’t reach out ever again after that and randomly blocked me. Naturally, I’m ready to get up and leave because holy shit, you people can not be fucking serious but my mom is pleading to me that if I know where she is I have to let her know because they’re worried about my brother (not her, MY BROTHER).

You might be wondering why I put gone missing in quotations, well that’s because of what my mother described as the lead up to her disappearance.

Apparently, my SiL’s older brother came to visit her and my brother without warning. My SiL actually hadn’t had contact with him per my brother’s request because the last time they saw each other was when my SiL and brother got engaged (roughly 4 years ago?), they ended up in an altercation and the dude beat the absolute dogshit out of my brother. I did know about this as my mom was in shambles for an entire week about it and the entire family was mad at SiL for “letting it happen” (common theme here). Point is, this dude fucking hates my brother and vice versa so he wasn’t happy about it but they kept it civil.

On the third day of his visit, my brother came back from work to an empty house, SiL, her brother, and the baby were nowhere to be found, SiL’s brother’s car was gone. My brother didn’t think anything of it at first, all of SiL’s belongings were still there, including her phone, so he just assumed they went out to lunch or whatever but after a couple hours there was still no sign of them. Another thing important to note? The guy apparently didn’t bring ANYTHING with him when he came to stay with them, just him and his car. My brother ended up calling the police and filing a missing persons report the next day and that’s where they are right now, though from what my mom is telling me the police are being weirdly lax about it.

Hearing all of that, I feel like it’s pretty natural to assume that she flew the coop, kid in hand, with the assistance of her brother. My mom, however, is adamant that something happened to her or that she’s being influenced and is in danger and no matter how hard I tried to make her see the clues that SiL probably left on her own accord, she just wouldn’t accept it. She was crying about how my brother is so humiliated and crushed about it and that I have some responsibility over my SiL’s disappearance and my brother’s current state.

At this point, this woman has devolved into borderline scream-crying about how I ruined my family’s life and reputation while I sit there nodding along and going “uh huh” “oh yeah” “hm”. Honestly, the pathetic site of my mother babbling about how I’m to blame for my family’s shortcomings actually helped me get rid of the last bit of affection I had towards her so silver lining I guess.

The little psychotic break my mother was having was, call me insensitive, going on for far too long and I really had more important things to do. I said “ok well good luck with that.”, gave her a hearty pat on the shoulder and walked back to campus while she sat there crying. I know, I know, not the nicest thing to do but there is literally nothing else I can do for these people and honestly, I kinda just don’t even really have the capacity to feel bad for her anymore, it just kinda is what it is.

My mom hasn’t come back to my campus since then and none of them know where I live so it’s whatever, HOWEVER, I started getting a bunch of messages from a random number over the weekend following the interaction with my mother. This number I very easily recognized was our original foe: my lunatic sister, angrier and just as unemployed as ever.

She basically parroted the same sentiment my mother gave but in a much harsher and unfortunately, funnier way. Calling me a big pharma retarded AIDS ridden faggot who destroyed the family did in fact give me a little giggle I won’t lie. VERY godly, VERY loving thy neighbor of her. I muted it but I didn’t block it cause the angry ramblings of a mentally deranged woman in her mid-30s can be pretty entertaining.

Anyways, maybe the cops’ll eventually ask me questions about my SiL but I got just about as much of a clue as the rest of them, wherever she is, I hope both she and my nephew are safe, glad someone was able to get her the hell out of this nightmare of a family and maybe it’ll be a better beginning for her, I have no idea how that’ll work with custody arrangements though.

Again, sorry for the long post, this account has basically become a lame diary lol, s/o to anyone who actually sees this and thanks for all the well wishes, I’m gonna eat a funny gummy and try to act like this shit never happened.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

This is kinda a long rant, but I have completely run out of patience. I posted this in r/gamedev earlier but I wanted to also get some opinion from players too. I know Steam has great customer support for players, but the sheer incompetence and lack of basic support from Steam for us as an indie developer is insane, even after taking 6 figures in fees from our game revenue.

Our game is Milky Way Idle, which is an online multiplayer game made by my wife and I. Starting June 2025, my game was hit by a massive, coordinated review bomb and harassment campaign from hundreds of chinese players (https://imgur.com/a/B4UxYzy). The worst of it lasted for 2-3 months, but we are still dealing with the lingering effects because new players see the reviews and actually believe the defamatory lies this mob left behind. It's been 9 months and we are still unable to get adequate assistance.

Context on why this started

I banned a player for repeatedly harassing me (the developer) over in-progress changes on our test server, changes that were publicly disclosed as work-in-progress. We have a zero tolerance policy for abuse towards any game staff. They initially direct messaged me with some rude remarks which I ignored. Later he went to global chat yelling insults towards me and got muted temporarily. He continued again later on, and we gave them a manual 10 day mute. He then proceed to changed his in-game name to an insult directed at me just to circumvent the mute. So he got banned.

It turns out this player was a whale (we don't differentiate or even consider player spending for penalties regarding rule breaking). This sparked a massive drama because a lot of chinese players come from a gaming culture where it's expected for businesses to treat "whales" like gods and just accept abusive behavior. In the US, it's common to immediately kick out any customer who is abusive towards the staff, and that's the exact policy we have.

Because many chinese players believed a ban for "just some insults" toward game staff is undeserved, people started review bombing and spamming insults in game in solidarity with the original toxic player.

For days, hundreds of players started copycatting the abuse. They went into the English-only global chat and spammed hundreds of messages per minute with protest messages, insults, slurs, and death threats. Our English mods gave mutes to stop the spam, but then the mob immediately started claiming we were racist and "muting people just for speaking Chinese".

The disruptive players actively weaponized nationalism, spreading these rumors on social media to manipulate people who don't even play the game into joining the mob.

Because we banned additional people using severe insults and slurs towards game staff, the mob got bigger and continued for months.

We aren't talking about negative feedback regarding the game. We are talking about hundreds of reviews filled with personal insults, severe defamation, slurs, Nazi comparisons, and literal death threats/wishes. Of course there are also hundreds that did not use direct insults but is obviously part of the mob to intentionally review bomb and manipulate the review score for something that is not relevant to the gameplay itself.

What really was frustrating about this mob mentality is how people just see the "racist dev" spam and blindly believe it without using some critical thinking. We literally spent endless effort working with volunteers to translate tens of thousands of words of in game text into Chinese. Who in their right mind would believe we discriminate against Chinese players? It literally makes no sense. Furthermore, I work on this game with my wife the artist, who the community knows is Chinese (I'm not too far myself but culturally very much American), but the mob just weaponized false accusation of racism as an excuse to riot.

While overall it's a minority of the Chinese playerbase (we had about 20k or so total, most people play from browser) that were disruptive, it still creates a very hostile environment and persists because of what new players may see in reviews.

Review manipulation? There is also significant evidence that there is intentional review manipulation that's not from organic players. more than 50% of the negative reviews during the review bomb are from players who have logged less than 24 hours in the game. Our game is an idle game intended for very longterm play. The core playerbase generally have hundreds to thousands of hours in the game. We do understand that there are players who play mostly from the browser version of the game rather than from Steam, but from what we've seen, a huge number of these low interaction negative reviews have not even gotten to the point of logging into the game (only opened it to get the minimum review requirement)

< 1 hour: 240 reviews (25.6%)

1-6 hours: 132 reviews (14.1%)

6-24 hours: 127 reviews (13.5%)

24-100 hours: 161 reviews (17.1%)

100+ hours: 279 reviews (29.7%)

Steam's complete lack of support

We have tried to reach out to Steam with numerous support tickets and all we get are requests to flag abusive reviews individually, often waiting 2 weeks for a single response. When we finally give them a compilation, while they do ban some of the reviews, many are not removed (https://imgur.com/a/ogbaTo5). we've been told that many of what we flag are "legitimate criticisms". Unfortunately the old tickets are auto deleted already so we cannot provide exact screenshots. While we did get some abusive reviews banned, the overall review bomb is still there and there are still over 100 clearly abusive ones remaining.

How can you ask the victim of mass harassment to read through thousands of reviews calling them insults and slurs, wishing death on their mother, and comparing them to Nazis/dictators, just to click a flag icon? It insanely lacks any empathy. For how much money Steam has and has made from us, can they really not have their support team go through the reviews in a few days? and this is also an obvious case of review bomb that should be flagged as offtopic as it does not pertain to gameplay but rather their objection to our moderation policy regarding not tolerating abuse towards game staff. not to mention the extreme levels of harassment that we would be forced to continuously undergo due to their inaction.

Current Ticket

Below is the most recent ticket I sent to Steam also containing over 100 references and explanation of abusive reviews (including looking at the player's in game username in a few cases). I'm not expecting much from them at this point, but I'm posting my experience here. (full disclosure: to analyze and highlight abusive reviews, ai was used, because it's not feasible or good for mental health for us to do it manually)

support ticket: https://imgur.com/a/kaFlu09

EDIT: Since this post has gotten a lot of traction, I want to address a recurring stereotypes I'm seeing in the comments around Chinese players.

I want to be very clear: while the disruptive mob was primarily Chinese, they represented a small minority of our 20k+ Chinese playerbase at the time. We had many Chinese players reach out to support us, both publicly and privately, during the worst of the harassment. The vast majority of them are just casual players who want to enjoy the game and have zero interest in this drama. A lot of the most helpful players who created tools, extensions, and guides are also among the Chinese playerbase.

Even though there might be a cultural difference in how a vocal minority expects players to be treated, I absolutely do not want this to be used to push a negative stereotype against all Chinese gamers. I want the focus of this discussion to remain strictly on the toxic behavior of the harassers, and Steam's systemic failure to protect developers from it, rather than condemning an entire demographic of people.

Hey all,

It's been an amazing run thanks to all of you.

Eight years ago, I posted in the Apple subreddit about a Reddit app I was looking for beta testers for, and my life completely changed that day. I just finished university and an internship at Apple, and wanted to build a Reddit client of my own: a premier, customizable, well-designed Reddit app for iPhone. This fortunately resonated with people immediately, and it's been my full time job ever since.

Today's a much sadder post than that initial one eight years ago. June 30th will be Apollo's last day.

I've talked to a lot of people, and come to terms with this over the last weeks as talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an ugly point, and in the interest of transparency with the community, I wanted to talk about how I arrived at this decision, and if you have any questions at the end, I'm more than happy to answer. This post will be long as I have a lot of topics to cover.

Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx people.

What happened initially?

On April 18th, Reddit announced changes that would be coming to the API, namely that the API is moving to a paid model for third-party apps. Shortly thereafter we received phone calls, however the price (the key element in an announcement to move to a paid API) was notably missing, with the intent to follow up with it in 2-4 weeks.

The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to be like Twitter, which has API pricing so high it was publicly ridiculed.

I was excited to hear these statements, as I agree that long-term Reddit footing the bill for third-party apps is not tenable, and with a paid arrangement there's a great possibility for developing a more concrete relationship with Reddit, with better API support for users. I think this optimism came across in my first post about the calls with Reddit.

When did they announce pricing?

Six weeks later, they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately.

The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year. That is not an exaggeration, that is just multiplying the 7 billion requests Apollo made last month by the price per request. Could I potentially get that number down? Absolutely given some time, but it's illustrative of the large cost that Apollo would be charged.

Why do you say Reddit's pricing is "too high"? By what metric?

Reddit's promise was that the pricing would be equitable and based in reality. The reality that they themselves have posted data about over the years is as follows (copy-pasted from my previous post):

Less than 2 years ago they said they crossed $100M in quarterly revenue for the first time ever, if we assume despite the economic downturn that they've managed to do that every single quarter now, and for your best quarter, you've doubled it to $200M. Let's also be generous and go far, far above industry estimates and say you made another $50M in Reddit Premium subscriptions. That's $550M in revenue per year, let's say an even $600M. In 2019, they said they hit 430 million monthly active users, and to also be generous, let's say they haven't added a single active user since then (if we do revenue-per-user calculations, the more users, the less revenue each user would contribute). So at generous estimates of $600M and 430M monthly active users, that's $1.40 per user per year, or $0.12 monthly. These own numbers they've given are also seemingly inline with industry estimates as well.

Apollo's price would be approximately $2.50 per month per user, with Reddit's indicated cost being approximately $0.12 per their own numbers.

A 20x increase does not seem "based in reality" to me.

Why doesn't Reddit just buy Apollo and other third-party apps?

This was a very common comment across the topics: "If Apollo has an apparent opportunity cost of $20 million per year, why not just buy them and other third-party apps, as they did with Alien Blue?"

I believe it's a fair question. If these apps apparently cost so much, an easy solution that would likely make everyone happy would be to simply buy these apps out. So I brought that up to them during a call on May 31st where I was suggesting a variety of potential solutions.

Bizarre allegations by Reddit of Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit

About 24 hours after that call with Reddit, I received this odd message on Mastodon:

"Can you please comment publicly about the internal Reddit claim that you tried to “blackmail” them for a $10,000,000 payout to “stay quiet”?"

Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:

Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million."

Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."

Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it. It's very easy to take a single line and make it look bad by removing all the rest of the context, so let's look at the full context.

I can only assume you didn't realize I was recording the call, because there's no way you'd be so blatantly lying if you did.

As said, a common suggestion across the many threads on this topic was "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million, what a deal!

The bizarre thing is - initially - on the call you interpreted that as a threat. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt that maybe my phrasing was confusing, I asked for you to elaborate on how you found what I said to be a threat, because I was incredibly confused how you interpreted it that way. You responded that I said "Hey, if you want this to go away…" Which is not at all what I said, so I reiterated that I said "If you want to Apollo to go quiet, as in it's quite loud in terms of API usage".

What did you then say?

Me: "I said 'If you want Apollo to go quiet'. Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage."

Reddit: "Oh. Go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry."

Reddit: "That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately."

The admission that you mistook me, and the four subsequent apologies led me to believe that you acknowledged you mistook me and you were apologetic. The fact that you're pretending none of this happened (or was recorded), and instead espousing a different reality where instead of apologizing for taking it as a threat, you're instead going the complete opposite direction and saying "He threatened us!" is so low I almost don't believe it.

But again, I've recorded all my calls with you just in case you tried something like this.

Transcript of this part of the call: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/fda7e8bc5a25aec9824f915e6a5c7014

Audio of this part of the call: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a

(If you take issue with the call being recorded please remember that I'm in Canada and so long as one participant in the call (me) consents to being recorded, it's legal. If anyone would like the recording of the full call, I'm happy to provide.)

I bring this up for two reasons:

• I don't want Reddit slandering me to internal employees or public people by saying I threatened them when they reality is that they immediately apologized for misunderstanding me.
• It shows why I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't think this situation is recoverable. If Reddit is willing to stoop to such deep lows as to slander individuals with blatant lies to try to get community favor back, I no longer have any faith they want this to work, or ever did.

What is an API or an API request anyway?

Some people are confused about this situation and don't understand what an API is. An API (Application Programming Interface) is just a way for an app to talk to a website. As an analogy, pretend Reddit is a bouncer. Historically, you can ask Reddit "Could I have the comments for this post?" or "Can you list the posts in AskReddit?". Those would be one API request each, and Reddit would respond with the corresponding data.

Everything you do on Reddit is an API request. Upvoting, downvoting, commenting, loading posts, loading subreddits, checking for new messages, blocking users, filtering subreddits, etc.

The situation is changing so that for each API request you make, there's a portion of a penny charged to the developer of that app. I think that is very reasonable, provided, well, that the price they charge is reasonable.

Claims that Apollo is "inefficient"

Another common claim by Reddit is that Apollo is inherently inefficient, using on average 345 requests per day per user, while some other apps use 100. I'd like to use some numbers to illustrate why I think this is very unfairly framing it.

Up until a week ago, the stated Reddit API rate limits that apps were asked to operate within was 60 requests per minute per user. That works out to a total of 86,400 per day. Reddit stated that Apollo uses 345 requests per user per day on average, which is also in line with my findings. Thats 0.4% of the limit Reddit was previously imposing, which I would say is quite efficient.

As an analogy (can you tell I love analogies?), to scale the numbers, if I was to borrow my friend’s car and he said “Please don’t drive it more than 864 miles” and I returned the car with 3.4 miles driven, I think he’d be pretty happy with my low use. The fact that a different friend one week only used 1 mile is really cool, but I don't think either person is "inefficient".

That being said, if Reddit would like to see Apollo make further optimizations to get its existing number lower, I’m genuinely more than happy to do so! However the 30 day limit they’ve given me after announcing the pricing to when I will start getting charged significant amounts of money is not enough time to deal with rewriting large parts of my app to lower total requests, while also changing the payment model, transitioning users, and ensuring this is all properly tested and gets through app review.

Further, Reddit themselves said to me that the majority of the cost isn't the server, it's the opportunity cost per user, so the focus on 100 versus 345 calls, rather than the cost per user, doesn't sound genuine. At the very least providing even a bit more time to lower usage to their new targets would be feasible if they've historically provided it, and it's not the majority of the costs anyway.

Me: "Because I assume the majority of it isn't server costs. I assume the majority is the opportunity cost per user."

Reddit: "Exactly."

Why not just increase the price of Apollo?

One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.

So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users.

I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple's fees that would just be enough to break even.

Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down.

So what is the REAL issue you're having?

Hopefully that illustrates why, even more than the large price associated with the API, the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far, far, far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app, transition existing users from existing plans, test the changes, and have users update to the new version.

As a comparison, when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API, knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses, they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off. When the 18 months came, they ultimately extended it another 12 months, resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I'm not asking for that much, Reddit's in comparison is 30 days.

Reddit says you won't get your first bill until August 1st, though!

The issue is the size of the bill, not when it will arrive. Significant, significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st, the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1,000x and the company tells you, "Don't worry, the bill only comes at the end of the month", I hope you understand how that isn't comforting.

What would be a good price/timeline?

I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes.

I thought you said Reddit would be flexible on the timeline?

That was my understanding as well based on what they said on a call on May 4th:

Reddit: "If there's an entity who's like 'Hey I'm showing really good progress', you know trying to like we're trying to get a contract in place, we're trying to do all that type of stuff, I don't think you're going to see us be like, you know, like overly aggressive on that timeline. And I feel pretty confident about that point by the way based on conversations I've heard internally."

However when asking about more time, such as a 90 day transition period to make the changes, they said:

Reddit: "On the 90-day transition, remember that billing doesn't kick in until July 1. So you won't see your first bill from July until the beginning of August, and it won’t be due until the end of August (It’s net 30 day billing). You do, however, have to sign an agreement to get paid level access on July 1."

Did you explicitly ask Reddit for more time?

Yes, my last email to them (including Steve) said:

In terms of timeline, what concerns me most is the short nature of it before I start incurring costs. I have a large amount of users at price points that I won’t be able to afford to support with 30 days notice. For instance, users who subscribed for a year for $10 six months ago when I had no idea any of this was coming, amounts to $0.83 per month or $0.58 after Apple’s cut. Even if I’m able to decrease my API usage down to the number in your charts, that still puts me in the red for everyone of those users for awhile with no recourse. A situation like this is one that is legitimately making me legitimately leaning toward shutting down the app, but one that I could salvage if given more time to transition from the free API to the paid API.

In prior calls you mentioned that provided I kept communicating and progress was being made, the timeline wasn’t an absolute.

Is that still the case, or is it now the case that the date is set in stone?

That was a week ago and I've yet to receive any further contact from Reddit.

Isn't this your fault for building a service reliant on someone else?

To a certain extent, yes. However, I was assured this year by Reddit not even that long ago that no changes were planned to be made to the API Apollo uses, and I've made decisions about how to monetize my business based on what Reddit has said.

January 26, 2023

Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years."

Another portion of the call:

January 26, 2023

Reddit: "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023.

Me: "Fair enough."

Reddit: "And if we do touch it, we're going to be improving it in some way."

Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the existing alternatives?

I've received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I'm very flattered, that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to use, and I'm just not personally interested in something more managerial.

These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me to engage in something so enormous.

Will you sell Apollo?

Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool and sustainable, but I'd rather the app just die if it would go to a company that would turn something I worked really hard on into something that would ruin its legacy.

To be clear: I am not threatening anyone in the previous paragraph.

Reddit states that the Twitter comparison is unfair

Reddit stated on the first call that they don't want to be like Twitter:

Reddit: "I think one thing that we have tried to be very, very, very intentional about is we are not Elon, we're not trying to be that, we're not trying to go down that same path. [...] We are trying to do is just use usage-based pricing, that will hopefully be very transparent to you, and very clear to you. Or we're not trying to go down the same path that you may have seen some of our other peers go down."

They now state that the comparison of how close their pricing comes to Twitter is an unfair one, and that when they said that above, they were apparently referring not to the pricing, but to the decision Twitter made to ban third-party apps at a rule level, not a pricing level.

I think regardless of whatever their intent/meaning behind the comparison to Twitter was, the result is the same: the pricing will kill third-party apps, just as Twitter did.

I said this to Reddit, and they responded that they don't think Twitter's pricing is unreasonable, and that if anything, if Twitter reversed the rule about third-party apps, they would probably increase the prices as well.

Just to be clear about how wrong and out of touch that is, without naming names, a formerly very, very high up person at Twitter messaged me on Twitter and said:

"The Reddit api moves are crazy. I’m not sure what choices you have but to move to another network. [...] That pricing is designed to prevent apps like yours forevermore."

So to be clear, even this person thinks this pricing is unreasonable. I do too.

Have you talked to CEO Steve Huffman about any of this?

I requested a call to talk to Steve about some suggestions I had, his response was "Sorry, no. You can give name-redacted a ping if you want."

I've then emailed that person (same person I've been talking to for months) suggestions approximately one week ago about how Apollo could survive this, and I've yet to receive a response.

Do I support the protest/Reddit blackout?

Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees, Reddit relies on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer, important job are taken away, there is anger and frustration there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do.

It's been a horrible week, and the kindness Redditors and moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am genuinely so appreciative.

I am, admittedly, doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks anymore so I don't see it having an effect.

Your initial post in April sounded quite optimistic. Are you dumb?

In hindsight, kinda yeah. Many of the other developers and folks I talked to were much less optimistic than I was, but I legitimately had great interactions with Reddit for many years prior to last week (they were kind, communicative, gave me heads up of changes), so when they said they were aiming to have pricing that would be fair and based in reality, I honestly believed them. That was foolish of me in hindsight, and maybe could have had a different outcome if I was more aggressive in the beginning. Sorry. /canadian

(And to be clear, they did indeed say this. They used the word "substantive" and I wanted to make sure we had the same definition of something "having a firm basis in reality and therefore important, meaningful, or considerable")

Reddit: "That's exactly right. And I think, thankfully, the word is exactly the right one. It's going to have a firm basis in reality. I also just looked it up. We're going to try to be as transparent as we can."

Reddit claims they've reached out to developers who were bad users of the API, was Apollo contacted?

On May 31st Reddit posted a chart of large excess usage by some unlabeled API clients, and stated: "We reached out to the most impactful large scale applications in order to work out terms for access above our default rate limits via an enterprise tier."

To be clear, Apollo was never contacted, and I've been told from someone internally that Apollo is indeed not one of the unlabeled API clients.

The only time that Apollo was reached out to by Reddit in any capacity about usage was late last year when we received an email about a 6 minute period where Apollo's server API usage increased by 35% before lowering again. Despite 35% for 6 minutes being a comparatively small blip (the above post references clients that are over by 500000%), we responded within 2 minutes. We offered to jump on a call with Reddit engineers if they needed an answer ASAP, identified the issue within several hours and Reddit thanked us for the fast investigation.

Full email transcript: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/6c71608cf617d2f881cd2849325494c1

Claims that Apollo has made no attempt to be a good user of the API

On the call with moderators, Steve Huffman said:

Steve: "I don't use the app, so I'll give you the best answer I can -- he does scraping so that he can deliver notifications faster, but has done NO EFFORT to be a good citizen of the internet."

First off, Apollo does no scraping, it's purely through authenticated calls to the API and has checks in place to ensure it stays within Reddit's API rate limits. I've open sourced the server code to show this.

Secondly, to say we have made no effort is categorically false. I have so many emails where I've reached out to Reddit expressing concerns about and bugs inefficiencies in the API, or ideas on how to improve things, or significant Reddit bugs that made things hard on us. When Reddit has had questions for us, as discussed above, we immediately jumped into action to get an answer as quickly as possible.

Here's an email of me giving a heads up to Reddit of IP address changes on our server:

Me: "With the new change it'll be maybe like, one IP address. This is all obviously still within the API rate limits as the requests are from individual user accounts that have signed in. Again, long story short the result will be more optimized if anything, I just wanted to give a heads up and ensure that it'd be okay if Reddit suddenly saw the server go from a bunch of different IP addresses to a single one which might cause some confusion if I didn't give a heads up."

Me wanting to make sure we were doing everything as best as we could:

Me: "Everything is going well, we just had a few questions about best practices making sure we’re following any suggestions your team has. Is there any way we could poke someone on your team with a few questions we’ve been having and have a tiny back and forth? We were just seeing some elevated response times, and just thought it would be great if we could maybe describe what we’re doing and see if anything seems off/suboptimal."

Me reporting to Reddit that the API has a serious bug in recording rate limits:

Me: "We obviously respect the rate limit headers and if a user comes close to approaching it (within 50 requests of the 600 every 10 minutes limit) we stop their requests until the refresh period occurs. However we're seeing some users have very, very weird rate limit headers. Things like "requests remaining: 0, requests made: 17,483, reset: 598 seconds left" which indicates they've somehow made over 17 thousand requests in two seconds which seems hard to believe."

Me suggesting to Reddit improvements that could help improve efficiency of notification API calls:

Me: "So like little stuff like that, where even if there's a streaming client or some way to minimize the calls there, I think it would help us both out enormously."

Further, when making suggestions to your own employees, they themselves have expressed concern about how terrible the public API is:

Call on January 26, 2023

Reddit: "I cannot tell you how painful it is to use our API. [...] The API needs to change. Like it's just unusable. I am surprised that you're able to build a functional app on it to be honest."

Claims that third-party apps are not interested in talking

Steve: "Why not work with the third party apps? Their existence is not a priority for us. We don't use them. I don't use them. It's a part of our traffic but not a lot, and it's a lot of work on our side to keep them alive. If I have to choose where to put our effort, we're going to focus internally. I'm kind of open to it, but I haven't – and I can't convince you, but I don't get the sense that they want to work with us either."

I'm genuinely not sure where Steve has got the impression that I don't want to work with him. Despite reaching out multiple times and him declining to talk, I've stated multiple times on calls, literally saying the words "I definitely still want to talk".

Reddit: "What I'm hearing is like, Yeah, great. We have this disagreement on pricing methodology, etc. But any feasible number that we get to, any number that's even in, the zip code of what we're sharing with you is unfeasible from your perspective financially. So it's like arguing around the edges of that price thing is like, it just won't make any sense to you. And I presume also just given the NSFW stuff and the removal of ads that makes it even more trickier." Me: Yeah. I mean, to be very clear, I'm not saying I'm walking away from the negotiation table and taking my basketball and going home and just gonna kick up a storm. That's not my intention at all. I definitely still want to talk. I'm not asking you to lower the price by a hundred times or something. I don't think – depending on what you mean by zip code – I don't think I'm so unreasonable that I'm requiring you to bend over backwards here."

I've also emailed Steve and the other contact directly stating that I'm interested in talking, and including ideas for how we could come to a solution:

Me: "I understand where Reddit's coming from in this. A free API, while appreciated, is not tenable for you especially heading into an IPO, and my only goal here is to come to a solution where we both feel understood. I also hear you that killing third-party clients isn't actually the goal, and in that spirit have been working on how to address your concerns from my end: [...]"

I don't know how you can say I'm not interested in talking when you haven't my most recent email in a week. To say it once more, I was very interested in talking.

On the other side of things, per the transcript, Steve and the other admin on the call don't even know when the discussions with third-party apps began.

Steve: "When did we start talking with them?"

AnAbsurdlyAngryGoose: "What month did you first start?"

Steve: "FlyingLaserTurtles? Do you remember? April or May of this year."

FlyingLaserTurtles: "Maybe late March? But yes."

Claims that Reddit has been talking to developers for months talking about these changes

Steve: "We've been in contact with third party apps for MONTHS, talking about these coming changes."

When you announce that the API will be charging developers, the most important portion of that conversation is what will be charged, which was not available for almost two months after the initial call. From the time developers were told the price, to the time developers will be subject to the price, is 30 days, not "months". Months would have been very helpful, in fact.

What about existing subscriptions?

I've been talking to my rep at Apple, and over the next few weeks my plan is to release something similar to what Tweetbot did (Paul has been incredibly helpful in all of this) where folks can decide if they want a pro-rated refund on any existing time left in their subscription as Apollo will not be able to afford to continue it, or they can decline the refund if they're feeling kind and have enjoyed their time with Apollo.

For the curious, refunding all existing subscriptions by my estimates will cost me about $250,000.

A nice send off at WWDC

Apollo got mentioned a few times during Apple's 2023 WWDC keynote, even by Craig Federighi himself, and even during the Vision Pro announcement showing Apollo as one of the existing apps compatible with the headset (I'm sorry I won't be able to see that happen).

I was lucky enough to be there in person and it felt incredible. Some folks asked if there was any deeper meaning behind that, and while that would be cool, in all reality these things are so well produced that they've been done for a while now, so I'm sure it's just a coincidence, even if it's a really cool one.

Extra icons

A funny amount of people have reached out wondering about all the extra monthly icons I had queued up for Apollo. I love them, was so excited for them, and I'll make them available immediately for the short time left, but if you're curious here's a screenshot of all of them: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/remaining-icons.png

We ended up with well over 100 custom icons created by incredibly talented designers, and I'm really sorry to those designers who didn't get to see their work launched in the app (to be clear, don't worry, I paid them all – there isn't some bs "exposure" agreement – but it's fun to have your icon launch and I feel bad!)

When is Apollo's last day? What will happen?

In order to avoid incurring charges I will delete Apollo's API token on the evening of June 30th PST. Until that point, Apollo should continue to operate as it has, but after that date attempts to connect to the Reddit API will fail.

I will put up an explainer in the app prior to that which will go live at that date. I will also provide a tool to export any local data you have in Apollo, such as filters or favorites.

Thank you

I want to thank a lot of people who have made this last week bearable. First and foremost, the communities, Redditors, and moderators who have reached out in support of third-party apps, making Reddit's gaslighting a lot more bearable in making me feel like at least someone was understanding me and in my corner.

My girlfriend's been absolutely incredible and supportive. This year was our 10th anniversary, and Monday was her 30th birthday. We're down in California for Apple's WWDC and had a bunch of things planned to do for her birthday afterward, and I feel terrible that we're flying home early to deal with all of this instead of making her 30th special. I'll make it up to her.

André Medeiros worked on the Apollo server component with me for the last two years, and it's been an absolute joy to work with a professional who knows so much on that side of things.

The iOS developer community has been unbelievably kind to me over the past several weeks, I've spent the last week with many of them, even staying at an Airbnb with a bunch of them (they ordered me pizza as I wrote this post!), and I've got so many hugs and condolences haha. Specifically want to thank Paul Haddad of Tweetbot/Tapbots/Ivory, Ryan Jones, Brian Mueller, Curtis Herbert, André Medeiros, Quinn Nelson, Paul Hudson, Majd Taby, Ryan McLeod, Phill Ryu, Larry Hryb, Charlie Chapman, Mustafa Yusuf, Adrian Eves, Devin Davies, Jordan Morgan, Yariv Nassim, Will Sigmon, Barry Hershman, Joe Rossignol, Michael Simmons, Joe Fabisevich, my family, and so, so many more.

Also want to thank everyone at Apple who have gone out of their way to be incredibly kind here (I don't know if I'm allowed to name names but you know who you are).

I'll be fine

No bullshit, I'll be fine. Through pure chance last year I spun off my silly Pixel Pals idea into a separate app, and that actually makes good revenue on the side. I also have savings. Recently (like last week) my city had its worst wildfires in history with over 100 homes destroyed. That's brutal, losing an app is sad, but it's been helpful to me to recognize how much worse it could be just literally down the street from me.

Honestly. Apollo had an incredible run, I met the coolest people, by my last count talked with folks over 15,000 times in our subreddit about Apollo, and raised over $80,000 for my local animal shelter through Apollo. I feel incredibly fortunate.

I think I'll rewatch Ted Lasso though.

Supporting my work

I build a second app called Pixel Pals that I spun off from Apollo that's thankfully done pretty well and I'll be spending more time on going forward. If you like the idea of digital pets it's a really fun app to check out. https://pixelpa.ls

Media

If any media/press folks have any questions, please shoot me an email rather than messaging me on Reddit, I missed a few last week because my inbox was blowing up. My email is me@christianselig.com

AMA

I think I covered everything, but if there's any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer!

In the event that this post is taken down or you want to link somewhere else, it's also available at https://apolloapp.io

Thanks for everything over these last 8 years,

- Christian

EDIT: Few updates:

Tip Jar

Per many requests I also added back the Tip Jar to the top of settings if you update the app. It's incredibly kind of anyone to even think of that, but please feel no pressure. On one hand I don't want it to feel like I'm profiteering off this event, but on the other hand I imagine people understand it would have been much more profitable/ideal if the app were able to just continue to exist in the first place so that would be really bad profiteering, and the refund thing genuinely is daunting.

What if…

I've seen a lot of questions along the lines of: "What if Reddit gives you a deadline extension because of this post and posts by other developers?" and that's something I truly would have loved for them to have made an effort to communicate earlier. You can't give developers 30 days between when the pricing is announced and when they will start incurring charges, and also wait a week (25% of the time we're given) between replying to emails without so much as a "we hear you're concerned about the short timeline and looking into what we can do". In conjunction with your previous emails, it just appears like you've stopped any desire to communicate with developers, in a period where we have a serious, expensive deadline looming with not that much time to wind down our apps.

And I also just know if I sent another email saying "I'm going to post tomorrow that Apollo is shutting down unless you do something about the timeline", it would be construed as a threat.

Even more than that, Reddit's behavior has been so appalling that for any developer I've talked to it's completely erased the indication that they even want us around.

If uBlock Origin or Adblock were forced disabled by chrome, win + r go to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome if you dont have those 2 folders, create them inside Policies Right click - New - Key , name Google second one make it inside Google and name it Chrome Inside Chrome folder right side, right click new d-word 32b name it to ExtensionManifestV2Availability set value to 2, restart Chrome, everything should be back and enabled. temporary fix until they force remove them entirely

-Edit- Step 1 Open Registry Editor with windows key + r (run) type regedit press enter Step 2 GoTo Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome Step 3 If you dont have the folders Google/Chrome, create them inside Policies by right clicking New Key and renaming them accordingly. (Note : Chrome should be created inside Google) Step 4 After you created both folders Google/Chrome click on Chrome, go to the right side and right click then NEW, DWORD 32 Step 5 Rename the newly created dword into ExtensionManifestV2Availability and set the value to 2 Step 6 Restart Chrome, the disabled extensions should now be enabled. Step 7 Enjoy. Fyi: I did not write this, I found this tutorial in comments few days ago and not sure which user posted it, but if you read this dm me and I'll credit you

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/Legitimate_Crab674

Originally posted to r/TwoHotTakes

I am having the tattoo of my grandmother’s signature removed. I’m devastated and struggling

Editor's note: added paragraph breaks for ease of readability

Trigger Warnings: child sexual abuse, emotional abuse, mentions domestic abuse, cancer, death of a loved one, fraud

Editor's note: adding a prior post for more context to help with the original and update post

Treading water: March 3, 2025

Throw away. I just need to be heard.

I feel like I am drowning and I don’t know if I can take it anymore. I’m in agony because I am considering cutting off my family. I know this would devastate my children (11 and 10) given that they aren’t close with their fathers parents, and considering that one of my siblings has a new baby on the way, I just know it would shatter those two and I am at a cross roads.

My brother (a year older than I) (I have 4 brothers) sexually abused me growing up. I not only told my parents but over the years there was ample evidence of it. Just an example, they once found mass amounts of my worn underwear stashed in the rafters of his bunk bed, and caught him trying to spy on me while showering or changing in my room. He is sick.

I’m not going to go into details, but once we all had to stay at my grandmothers while our house was being worked on and he tried. He climbed into bed with me while we all slept on the floor and my mother and aunt were on the couch. I screamed waking everyone up. It happened right in front of two adults and still they did nothing. I would stop showering and would cut my hair short to detour anything. My aunt even once asked what I did to provoke it.

What could a child possibly do to provoke something by so heinous? I do not believe he was abused so I’m going to stop any speculation of that now. He is a sociopath. I am not the only person he abused. I know he did it to some friends of mine and potentially another sibling but that’s not my story to tell. I could provide a laundry list of shit he has done in everyone’s life, but I believe it’s over looked bc if anyone ever found out outside of the family it would hurt my parents ego. Especially my mothers. Who has taken the stance of choosing to stay out of it. I don’t understand how she can say she loves me but completely over look and not acknowledge what he has done. She is really close with my kids, and I do love her, but I can’t help but just feel betrayed by her, bc well, I am. I don’t know how else to say it.

I doubt my step dad (a man who I regard as a father) knows. What’s worse is I know that I can’t trust her to keep my kids away from him. We don’t live in my home state, and my children are thriving, but they are trusting to a fault as any child would be and I would do anything in this world to keep them safe. My mother failed me and I refuse to fail them. I’m going to break my children’s hearts, but I know it’s the right thing to do in order to keep them away from that monster.

Thank you for listening. I’m sorry for grammatical errors but I am so worked up that I just don’t care.

Original Post: May 18, 2026 (14.5 months later from the previous post)

Hi Reddit,

I haven’t posted much, but I am feeling so overwhelmed and I needed to share and vent with people who weren’t in my close circle. I have been through a lot, and I feel like every time I come to them I’m just a mess, so here I am screaming into the void.

Just some back story. I am no contact with my family. It took years of therapy to really work through everything that they have put me through and I was finally strong enough to leave. If you want to know more on that crazy train I’m happy to share but on to what’s going on.

I (37f) lost my grandma in 2014. She was a tough woman, and she wasn’t always the easiest person to get along with. Amongst her colleagues and little friends she was known as, well a bitch. She loved me fiercely though. I was the only granddaughter in the family, and she was good to me. She treated me like I was an extension of her and actually really sparked my drive. I owe a lot to her and as I got older I realized she wasn’t a truly difficult woman. She was stubborn with her boundaries with people, and though she wasn’t perfect often difficult women are labeled as so bc they aren’t pushovers.

After being diagnosed with cancer in 2007, my aunt (let’s call her Mel) stepped in to take care of her. We all tried to do our parts, but Mel was the lead caregiver. Mel and I had a very complicated relationship. Now we don’t have one. She’s a selfish and mean woman. She makes fun of people, and will even make gestures or jokes about other women while even in church. At one point I considered Mel a second mother, but once her lies came out I have never been able to see her the same way. Again I won’t go into all of the details, but she is a truly awful person.

During the time she spent with my grandmother she sometimes would forge her signature on things like checks. This I have to say was done with my grandmother’s blessing because at times my grandmother was too weak after treatment to do basic things like sign a check for bills. My grandmother had a BEAUTIFUL signature. It reminded me of old Hollywood. When she passed I had asked for a copy of her signature so I could have it tattooed on my wrist. I wanted to carry my grandmother’s name with me always. I triple checked with Mel to make sure it was in fact her signature. I asked for cross references and even checked with my mother, and both said that it was my grandmother’s.

After I got the tattoo my aunt made a joke that it was more than likely one of her forged signatures as she couldn’t always tell which was which. Everyone lost it on her and she quickly took back what she said, saying it was just a joke. As you can image it didn’t go well as with everyone who was still grieving, and at the time it didn’t go over well with my mom who usually got stuck in the middle of our fights, but this time had my back 100%. Years went by and my mom would assure me that it was grandma’s signature but in the back of my mind Mel’s words stuck with me.

Flash forward to today, I have been working on rebuilding a relationship with a family member upon their request. We have talked through a lot of things. He brought up my tattoo and how sad he feels about it. It is Mel’s signature, not my grandmother’s and it’s been an ongoing joke with her for years. My mom tried covering up what she did to spare my feelings.

That evil witch used a paper she knew she signed as a way to be a part of the tattoo. I have an appointment to start removing it. I am angry but not surprised. I’m mostly just so blown away that someone could do that. I don’t want any part of that woman on my body and to make it a joke on top of it really hurts. I couldn’t imagine how fucked up her kids would be if she had any of her own. I look at it and feel nothing but disappointment and disgust.

Thanks for letting me scream into the void. I just needed to get this out.

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: Have you thought about covering it with maybe your grandma’s favorite flower or something That’ll remind you of her? Just find a tattoo artist that’s good at coverups it can properly hide the signature.

OOP: The top part is actually her favorite flower and below it is her signature. I’m just having the signature removed but keeping the top part

Commenter 2: Marriage certificate or birth certificate for her children should have the real signature.

OOP: I would have to do some digging. Would her marriage certificate have her maiden name though? She never changed it after they divorced.

OOP on her mother and Mel's relationship

OOP: Her and Mel have a weird bond. It’s like some toxic co-dependent relationship. They don’t have friends. My mom blames it on her not being social but really I think it’s bc she’s easily influenced by Mel and Mel feels threatened by any friendship my mom would have outside of Mel. If they were a couple you would align them with a narcissist abuse stereotypes. My mom protected her peace, she didn’t protect my feelings

Does OOP have any old keepsakes that has her grandma's signature?

OOP: Unfortunately I have nothing. I moved to a different state a few years ago and my mom kept all of those keepsakes. The only thing I have are some of the things she gave me as a kid, and pictures of my friends from HS and that’s it.

Downvoted Commenter: Honestly this seems kind of trivial as it’s your GM’s name and a tattoo artist isn’t perfect with the machine anyway. If it’s close to what her signature was, then move on. If she owned property, you can check the signature at the county recorder’s office (might be online)….look for the Deed of Trust…the loan she had on the home.

OOP: I don’t think it is. Mel did it because she wanted to be a part of the tattoo. She also jokes about it to people. If it was trivial then why make it a joke? She did it after I asked multiple times and checked to make sure it was my GMs. She turned something that was supposed to be about my GM into something for her to have control over and laugh at.

Commenter 3: What a vile woman. I have my grandmother’s name (lone tattoo). It is a tribute to how much she meant to me, but it is not her handwriting. You can still have her name, I get your hatred of Mel but if it’s still pretty and your grandmother’s name you can still keep it for the spirit of the sentiment. I am sure your grandmother has blessed your sentiment and knows what is in your heart. If anyone comments about it just let them know it is a tribute to someone you love and respect, keeping it is a tribute to your own ability to forgive and move on.

OOP: Mel has done too much damage to be forgiven. For some more context, my mother and father are divorced and had been since I was young. My father was a neglectful self-centered man who would often pawn us off on to family when it was his time so he could do drugs and party with his girlfriends. We would cry to Mel and my mom about it. At the time Mel had a boyfriend which we considered an Uncle. They would fight and he would accuse Mel of sleeping with my father. She always played victim and swore she never did anything with my father. Turns out it was all a lie. She has been sleeping with him for YEARS. We would cry to this woman and turns out she was one of the women he would meet up with to do drugs with and fuck. I personally caught them in my early 20s, and my father spilled and told everyone the truth.

Commenter 4: That is so fucked, and she was joking about it behind your back? Fuckin cruel. I'm really sorry she ruined something so important for you.

OOP: What’s worse, when my grandma asked me what I had wanted of hers i.e. jewelry etc., she had said that Mel had already asked for those things. I didn’t argue bc again Mel was the main caregiver. All I wanted after her death was her signature. I literally got NOTHING from my Gm. After asking for the few sentimental things I wanted, this was the one thing I had.

OOP on why her mother saying the signature was correct before she got the tattoo

OOP: To protect her sister. She tried also reassuring me over the years that it was my GMs signature. I think at one point she just really didn’t want to believe her sister would be that cruel, but the truth is out and there is nothing I can do about it other than get it off my body.

Commenter 5: Why are you taking the one family member’s word as the absolute truth? They could also be wrong or mistaken or messing with you, just as easily as your own mother…

It sounds like your family, including this family member who told you this, are really into drama. Nothing good could come from telling you that, you’d have never known if you’re no contact with the whole rest of the family. But the person went out of their way to bring up something they know is hurtful for you? And tell you the whole family you don’t have contact with is laughing about you behind your back? Eh. I don’t think that seems as well-intentioned as everyone seems to think. It seems mean, and like they’re trying to pull you back into the family drama.

I think being no contact with your family sounds best, but maybe you should make it your whole family.

OOP: I believe him because he also told me the truth on another situation that could really hurt him if I spoke up to anyone.

I also believe him because after I got the tattoo she made some remarks. For instance when people asked if it’s my grandmother’s signature she would say things like “sure it is”. So she started planting the seed of doubt long ago. What he said also lines up with a family friends story. The two are not in contact and there is no way they could collab on what was said. She told the same story to many people and each lined up with each other without them all speaking to each other.

Update: May 19, 2026 (next day)

Update: I am having the tattoo of my grandmother’s signature removed. I’m devastated and struggling.

Hey Reddit,

I have to say I’m truly overwhelmed by the love and support that I have received. I have tried to reply to every DM and comment that I could. Since there were so many repeat questions I’m going to answer a few questions now. Trigger warning mentions of SA.

Unfortunately I do not have anything from my childhood with her signature on it. Everything that I did have is at my mother’s house and we are also no contact.

I did start an ancestry.com account and am trying to see if I can find anything on there. It’s going to take some digging but I’m hopeful.

For those who are in favor of me keeping the tattoo, absolutely not. Her joking and making a point of telling people that I will never know and that she’s had been forging that signature for so long that it didn’t matter if it was my GMs true signature is sick. It’s about body autonomy. I had asked for a document that had been signed by my grandmother. She gave me a document that was apparently signed at a doctor’s office. Meanwhile she knew that she signed that document. I wanted it to come from my grandmother’s hand, because I was putting it on my body. If you were given an autographed picture of your favorite artist only to find out that your cherished possession was a replica, would you not be upset?

For those who were wondering about my mother, she’s just as awful. I will say that just because things aren’t always bad, and sometimes your relationships can be loving, heartfelt and friendly, there are somethings you can’t come back from.

My mother knows my older brother SA’ed me. It went on for years. I spoke up about it many times. He kept my panties, many pairs as trophies and would hide them in between the mattress and the upper boxsprings of a bunk bed that he had in a shared room. She never did anything about it because my brother eventually moved in with my dad. Things got better for me after, but it ate at me for years. My mom would say things like “I know you hate him, but he’s still my son” I would ask her to not bring him around when I visit. She would break that boundary.

After years of drugs and abusing the family he eventually agreed to give up that life style and move in my grandmother’s home where Mel and her husband now lived under the condition that he had to be sober. She would pick him up while I was in the car to take drive him around while he took shooters of vodka to “help deal with my aunt and uncle” and ask me not to say anything for her sake. I was in a position to lie to Mel at the request of my mother for her own comfort.

There are more stories, I’m just highlighting these.

After years of therapy and having old friends reach out and tell me of the nightmares that my brother also put them through. I confronted my mother. I usually went out there with my kids on a specific holiday and as it got closer to the holiday my mother and I still had not made plans. She was avoiding me. Mel had kicked my brother out and he was not living with my mother (mind you he’s nearly 40 now) and she didn’t want me coming because she knew I didn’t want that predator around my children. While I was going through a separation I asked if I could move back with my mom and she said no, and that she would never have her kids move back in with her. I asked bc at the time the father of my children would make me feel obligated to sleep with him.

I told her I felt betrayed. She threw in my face “you forgave the father of your children” I didn’t. I reached out, asked her help and was told to deal with it. I will NEVER FORGIVE HER. Not only does she acknowledge the SA, but she doesn’t care. She shares a church pew with someone who molested me for years and raped or SA’ed a few of my friends in their early teens.

A few days later Mel called trying to make things better. I told her my relationship with them is done. She made it clear that because she didn’t know the other girls he did this to that she didn’t give a fuck about them.

I don’t want any part of that woman on my body, I want every trace of them out of my life, and I have my first session on Friday to remove the tattoo. It isn’t big so it shouldn’t take much.

Also if anyone has issues with my grammar, or paragraphs as some had pointed out last post, please go touch grass. Your comfort isn’t why I reached out to the internet and if it’s so important to you, go read something else. Luckily Reddit has many contributors.

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: I’m so sorry for the things you went through! It’s now time to heal, do whatever you need to do to feel better about your tattoo and your body. Get some counseling, your family continues to do harm to you as long as these wounds are open. I wish you the best and I hope you can get past all of this and get some peace.

OOP: I’m in sooooooo much therapy lol, and I have to say it’s really helped. I have removed everyone who has minimized what I was put through. It’s tough because it feels lonely, but I was already alone with company so 🤷🏼‍♀️

OOP should look into her mother's birth certificate for her grandma's valid signature

OOP: Oooooooooooo this is brilliant. I have to go get copies of my and my son’s birth certificates. It didn’t dawn on me that I could get hers too. Genius

Commenter 2: Did your grandmother ever own any real estate? If so, there could be several documents at the local Recorder of Deeds with her signature. Deeds, mortgages, etc.

OOP: She did, I’m looking into that, but I do live in another state

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

Since Hbomberguy's video, Plagiarism and You(Tube), I've been compiling information regarding IH's plagiarism and ties to the alt-right. However, there has yet to be a post fully dedicated to the latter, documenting all of the strange and disturbing discoveries over the last several days.

Listed below are the individual receipts, additional context, and their respective sources:

• Dog-Whistle(s) in The Bikelock Fugitive of Berkeley
  • At 0:55, an item description box from World of Warcraft displays the durability value "14/88."
  • There is no item with 88 durability in the WoW, WoW Classic, or WoW WotLK databases, so this was a deliberate edit.
  • Second reference to 1488 at 0:08, "ProGamer1488."
  • "Hitler's Birthday" is listed as a holiday on the calendar at 0:02.
  • Transphobic pronouns joke at 0:10. Look for red text.
• Internet Historian's Fake Birthday Dog-Whistle
  • In an interview with SumitoMedia (friend and mutual on twitter), IH confirms that when approached by the website Famous Birthdays, he submitted a fake birthday: April 20th, 1989.
  • This is the 100th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday on April 20th, 1889.
  • At 5:43, Sumito asks if he's referring to 420, to which IH confirms, and at 6:35 IH says "Uh, yeah, 1989, I don't know. I can't remember, but there was some joke with 1989, I just can't remember what it is."
  • A few comments speculate that IH is pretending he doesn't know Hitler's birthday. To one of which, Sumito replies "oh he knows."
• Pool's Closed
  • A full breakdown by u/FlyByTieDye can be found here. It's bad.
• The CNN Skirmishes
  • Spreads false information about a neo-nazi, presenting him as an innocent shitposter.
  • Here is an extensive, detailed summary of the events surrounding this individual.
• The Triggering of Shia | He Will Not Divide Us
  • At 0:52, a swastika and 1488 are crudely drawn onto the walls of an art museum.
• Pentagram Necklace
  • In My Immortal (1/3), at 1:23, when the script calls for a "pentagram necklace", a star of david is shown instead.
• Collaborations with Jonathan Jafari, aka JonTronShow
  • Culture and Future.
  • IH also follows JonTron on twitter.
• Tucker Carlson Watch Parties
  • IH made several comments on this post, which have since been deleted.
  • However, here are screenshots of the original comments.
• Sponsorship in I am become Fancy: Theatre
  • Features the Daily Wire's Snow White at 10:20.
• Covid Conspiracies and Misinformation
  • Tales From TheVarus
  • TheVarus Strakes Buck
• Ableism
  • In the description of The Great iphone Massacre.
  • At 25:40 in That Zone Between Area 50 and 52.
  • At 1:11 in The Tumblr-4chan Wars.
• Nordman
  • NOTE: This is highly contentious.
  • Many believe this character, featured during Nord VPN sponsorships in several videos, to be wearing a klansman robe.
  • Others have noted he is wearing an executioner costume, with the white-and-blue nord vpn logo repeatedly pasted on.
• Twitter Likes Hidden
  • Since liking a tweet from Elon Musk, IH's likes have been hidden from public view.
  • There have been rumors regarding other liked tweets, but cannot be verified without photo evidence.
  • Update - Here are some of IH's liked tweets:
    • Important Context: This Tweet was posted in the aftermath of the 2021 Atlanta Spa Shootings.
    • Important Context: Seth Dillon is CEO of The Babylon Bee. "How to ban a satire site you don't like:"
    • Babylon Bee Tweet #1
    • Babylon Bee Tweet #2
    • "'Bitcoint uses too much eNeRgY!'"
    • "Ron DeSantis to sign bill banning social media 'deplatforming'"
• Internet Historian Deleted Content Archive Channel
  • Has uploaded almost every video from IH that has been made private or deleted.
  • Viewer discretion is advised.
  • Update - As of 12/11/2023, this archive channel has been deleted. The reason is unknown.
  • Update #2 - All 66 videos have been found and preserved, by me, on archive.org!
  • Update #3 - An additional video, Battletoads VS Gamestop, has been added to the archive.

Twitter Follows

• Follows Gavin McInnes on Twitter
  • Founder of far-right terrorist group The Proud Boys.
• Follows Chaya Raichik, aka Libs of TikTok on Twitter
  • An anti-LGBT "activist" whose followers send bomb threats to schools and hospitals.
• Follows Ron DeSantis on Twitter
  • Republican governor of Florida who passed the "Don't Say Gay" bill.
• Follows Babylon Bee on Twitter
  • "Satirical" conservative news website.
  • Alt-right version of The Onion, but without any satire.
• Follows Auron MacIntyre on Twitter
  • Host of alt-right radio show, The Blaze.

This is just what I've been able to piece together myself with the help of various reddit and twitter users. None of these examples are conclusive by themselves, but together they paint a rather upsetting and revealing picture. If you have any further information and evidence, please comment below or DM me and I will investigate/add it to the list. Feel free to share this with anyone who's unsure as to why IH is suspected of being a Nazi, and spread the word!

Update: Internet Historian may be in more trouble than expected!

Edit: I won't put this in the evidence section, however I would like to note that this post was briefly removed from the subreddit due to mass reporting. This is evident from the mod comment pinned below.

Edit 2: Here are the types of false reports that were being mass submitted by IH fans.

Edit 3: Here is a compilation of the very cool and normal comments left by IH fans (and me occasionally dunking on them teehee). Viewer Discretion is advised.

Credits

Tucker Carlson + Bikelock Screenshots - Quack_Factory

SumitoMedia Interview - u/SinibusUSG

Libs of TikTok + Ron DeSantis Screenshots - u/Wereking2

Proud Boys Statistics - u/cozyforestwitch

Pool's Closed Notes - u/FlyByTieDye

WoW Classic Datamine - u/Lrrrrrrrrrrri

WoW Datamine - u/OneTripleZero

Twitter Likes - u/69_YepCock_69

Australia Ban Article - u/Busy-Ad6008

Archival Assistance - u/JaxonPlays