SCHD is an ETF that tracks the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index, which consists of 100 high dividend yielding stocks in the U.S. market¹. According to Yahoo Finance, SCHD has a 3.64% dividend yield and a -5.97% YTD daily total return** as of May 26, 2023.
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According to Morningstar, SCHD has a 14.98% allocation to the financial services sector, which includes bank stocks. To remove bank stocks from SCHD, we would need to subtract their performance from the ETF's performance.
One way to do this is to use the Fidelity Stock Screener tool to filter out the bank stocks in the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index by selecting the financial services sector and the banks industry. This gives us a list of 11 bank stocks that are part of SCHD's holdings, such as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc.
Next, we can use the Fidelity Portfolio Analysis tool to create a custom portfolio with these 11 bank stocks and see their performance year to date. According to this tool, the custom portfolio has a -0.76% YTD total return as of May 26, 2023.
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To remove this performance from SCHD's performance, we can use a simple formula:
SCHD without bank stocks = SCHD - (SCHD x allocation to bank stocks) + (custom portfolio x allocation to bank stocks)
Plugging in the numbers, we get:
SCHD without bank stocks = -5.97% - (-5.97% x 14.98%) + (-0.76% x 14.98%)
SCHD without bank stocks = -5.97% + 0.89% - 0.11%
SCHD without bank stocks = -5.19%
Therefore, if we remove bank stocks from SCHD, its performance year to date would be -5.19%, which is slightly better than its actual performance of -5.97%.
Please note that this is an approximate calculation and does not account for other factors such as fees, dividends, rebalancing, etc.
SCHD is down year to date because it has been underperforming its category and benchmark. According to Yahoo Finance, SCHD has a -7.03% YTD daily total return as of May 26, 2023, while its category average is **10.90%** and its benchmark, the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index, is 11.01%.
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Some of the possible reasons for SCHD's underperformance are:
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Sector allocation
SCHD has a higher exposure to sectors that have been lagging behind the broader market, such as consumer defensive, utilities, and energy. These sectors tend to be more defensive and less sensitive to economic growth and inflation expectations. On the other hand, SCHD has a lower exposure to sectors that have been outperforming the market, such as technology, communication services, and consumer discretionary. These sectors tend to be more growth-oriented and benefit from innovation and digitalization trends².
Value tilt
SCHD has a value tilt, meaning it invests in stocks that are undervalued based on their fundamentals, such as earnings, dividends, and book value. Value stocks have been underperforming growth stocks for a long time, as growth stocks have been driven by strong earnings growth and high expectations. However, some analysts believe that value stocks may be poised for a comeback, as they offer attractive valuations and dividend yields in a low-interest-rate environment³.
Market volatility
SCHD is a dividend-focused ETF that aims to provide income and stability to investors. However, in times of high market volatility and uncertainty, dividend stocks may suffer from dividend cuts or suspensions, which can hurt their returns and attractiveness. Moreover, dividend stocks may also face competition from other income-generating assets, such as bonds or real estate investment trusts (REITs), which may offer higher yields or lower risks.

Hello, fellow students! As a curious advocate for education, I am eager to hear your thoughts and insights on the challenges you personally face or observe within the education system. Today, I invite you to share your experiences and perspectives on the issues affecting students like yourself, why you believe they exist, and your ideas for potential solutions. Your voices can play a vital role in shaping the future of education!

1. What struggles do you personally face or observe within the education system?

As students, you are at the heart of the educational experience. Whether it's heavy workloads, standardized testing pressures, lack of resources, or any other obstacles, your firsthand experiences provide valuable insights into the challenges you encounter or witness in your educational journey. Please take a moment to share your personal struggles or observations.

1. Why do you think these challenges exist within the education system?

Delving into the reasons behind these challenges is crucial for understanding their root causes. Do you believe these issues stem from outdated teaching methods, overcrowded classrooms, insufficient funding, or other factors? Your unique perspectives can help shed light on why these challenges persist within the education system.

1. How do these challenges impact your learning experience and well-being?

The challenges you face undoubtedly have a significant impact on your education and overall well-being. Do these issues hinder your ability to learn effectively, lead to stress or anxiety, or affect your motivation to pursue your educational goals? Sharing your personal experiences can illuminate the consequences these challenges have on your academic journey.

1. What ideas or suggestions do you have for addressing these challenges?

Now is the time for you to propose solutions! Your innovative ideas, fresh perspectives, and creative approaches can contribute to meaningful change within the education system. Whether it's advocating for revised curricula, promoting student-centered teaching methodologies, or fostering greater support networks, your suggestions can make a difference.
Remember, this is your chance to voice your concerns and actively participate in the conversation surrounding education reform. Your input is valuable, and by sharing your experiences and ideas, we can work together to create a better educational experience for all students.

The city of Caligo, capital of the magical kingdom Luminis Obscurum, sat nestled at the heart of a labyrinthine mountain range. Its ominous silhouette sprawled in every direction, its myriad structures draped in dark violet hues, gleaming under the eerie light of a moon perpetually shrouded by a veil of foreboding crimson clouds. The city was surrounded by an intricate lacework of floating islands, shrouded in perpetual twilight, held aloft by a blend of mystical forces and practical alchemy. Like a thousand demon eyes, the lights of Caligo blinked and twinkled in the perpetual night.
At the center of the city rose the Coliseum Arcanum, a gargantuan amphitheater that dominated the skyline. Its impossibly tall spires pierced the heavens, each adorned with statues and banners that howled in the ceaseless wind. Built from dark obsidian stone that seemed to drink in the light, the coliseum was the heart of the city, pulsating with the rhythm of the wild and brutal contests it hosted.
The air was thick with anticipation as the annual Grand Arcana Tournament was about to begin. Warriors from every corner of the kingdom and beyond had gathered to partake in a ruthless test of strength, endurance, and arcane mastery. The stakes were high, for the winner would be granted one wish — any request within the realm of possibility, as promised by the arcane potentates who ruled Luminis Obscurum.
And so, five extraordinary individuals found themselves on the cusp of the city, overlooking the sprawling urban expanse. The depth of their bond was reflected in the aura of resilience they radiated, a testament to the hardships they had weathered together.
Askari, the warrior monk, was the group's spiritual compass, guiding them through their trials with an unwavering determination reminiscent of his celestial forebear, Sun Wukong. His build was sinewy, every muscle carved from a lifetime of discipline and dedication. He carried the Ruyi Jingu Bang, an unyielding staff as flexible in combat as the very air, a symbol of his birthright and testament to his strength.
Skyblitz, an Aarakocra of intimidating stature, stood beside him. His feathers were as sharp as razors, their metallic sheen reflecting the enigmatic moonlight. He was a master of the turbulent winds, manipulating the very air around him into deadly weapons or sturdy shields. His eyes held a hint of wisdom that belied his avian wildness.
Next stood Redroot, the Goliath, towering over his companions. His skin bore the weathered marks of the mountain he hailed from, and the deep, unyielding roots that had fostered him. His magic was as much a part of him as the very rock he could command — sturdy, unwavering, and titanic in its ferocity.
Joneson, the Oathbreaker, was a stark contrast to the rest. A former Paladin who had turned his back on his sacred vows, he was a mystery, even to his closest friends. The void he mastered was as perplexing and enigmatic as the man himself. His aura was dark, pulsating with an energy that sent shivers down the spines of even the bravest.
Lastly, there was IraTater, the Poison Dragonborn, a creature of mischief and mayhem. His scales shimmered an iridescent green under the glow of the distant city, a signal of the deadly toxin that coursed through his veins. His crooked grin revealed rows of sharp teeth, a sign of his nonchalant attitude towards the world and its troubles.
Their gazes were collectively locked on the imposing structure at the heart of the city, an ominous sense of destiny pervading their silence.
"Y'all ready for this?" IraTater broke the silence, a playful grin spreading across his face.
Skyblitz responded with a solemn nod, his avian eyes reflecting a hardened resolve. "It's why we're here, isn't it?" His voice was calm, a lull in the storm.
Redroot's massive hand came to rest on the Aarakocra's shoulder, his deep voice rumbling like a landslide. "We face this together. As always."
Askari turned towards Joneson, his eyes searching the Paladin's shrouded countenance. "What of you, Joneson? Are you prepared to stand with us once again?"
The Oathbreaker turned his gaze away from the city, looking into the eyes of his comrades. His eyes held a profound sadness, but beneath it lay a flicker of defiance. "The void in my past may never be filled. But today, I fight for you, my brothers. For us."
A shared grin spread among them, and they extended their hands into a joint fist bump, their pact reaffirmed. They had faced challenges before, but the battles that lay ahead were unlike any they had experienced. The stakes were high, the odds were daunting, but the strength of their bond held firm.
As the first rays of false dawn cast their ethereal light on the city of Caligo, the friends stepped onto the path leading into the heart of Luminis Obscurum, their hearts aflame with determination and camaraderie. The Grand Arcana Tournament awaited, and the fate of five friends was about to intertwine with the destiny of an entire kingdom.
Having traversed the twisted maze of Caligo's cobblestone streets, the friends found themselves at the foot of the Coliseum Arcanum. Up close, its enormity was almost incomprehensible, the structure dwarfing everything around it.
The surrounding area was a riotous carnival, alive with an intoxicating mix of excitement and dread. Vibrant market stalls, whimsical parades, and arcane showcases adorned the streets, a tumultuous celebration of the upcoming bloodshed. Over the cacophony of jubilations, the friends could hear the roar of the crowd within the coliseum, their excitement a palpable force in the air.
As they entered the coliseum, a servile goblin ushered them to a preparation chamber. The room was dimly lit, the air saturated with the metallic tang of past battles and the musk of warriors preparing for combat.
"The matches will be one on one," the goblin's voice crackled, his eyes filled with a strange blend of fear and respect. "You'll be facing the Revenant Reapers. They're a brutal team—"
"No need to worry, friend," IraTater interrupted, flashing the goblin a toothy grin. "We can handle a bit of brutality."
The goblin nodded nervously, taking a few steps back before scurrying away.
"The Revenant Reapers, huh?" Skyblitz murmured, the name rolling off his tongue like a curse. "I've heard rumors. They're supposed to be ruthless."
"Most competitors here are," Redroot rumbled, his massive hands balling into fists. "But so are we."
Askari nodded, the warrior monk's eyes reflecting a deep-seated determination. "We will face this challenge as we have faced all others - together."
The air in the chamber vibrated with their shared resolve. The friends began to prepare for the upcoming fight, the sounds of their armor and weapons echoing in the chamber.
---
Meanwhile, in a similar chamber on the opposite side of the coliseum, a team of formidable warriors prepared for combat. The Revenant Reapers, a team as ruthless as their moniker suggested, were eager to engage in the deadly dance of the tournament.
There was Grimmhilt, a necromancer dwarf whose powers had brought him an unsettling semblance of immortality. Aridorn, an Elven sorcerer with the essence of elemental fire at his fingertips. Shifty Snigg, a halfling rogue with a penchant for bloodshed. Zul'Kur, an Orc shaman capable of summoning the wrath of the ancients. And finally, Galros, a tiefling warlock whose pact with a powerful demon endowed him with a frightening array of dark magic.
"Got our match-ups for the first round," Grimmhilt's gravelly voice resonated in the chamber, his hands holding a piece of parchment. "I've got Askari, the warrior monk. Aridorn, you're up against Skyblitz, the bird-man. Snigg, you'll take the Goliath, Redroot. Zul'Kur, you have the Oathbreaker, Joneson. And Galros, you get to play with the poison Dragonborn, IraTater."
A chorus of anticipatory laughter echoed through the chamber. These were fighters who lived for the thrill of the fight, the rush of blood, and the sweet taste of victory.
---
The time for the first match approached, and an electric tension filled the air. As the friends exited their preparation chamber, they stepped into the staggering expanse of the Coliseum Arcanum.
High above them, in a throne overlooking the entirety of the Coliseum, sat the announcer, an eccentric gnome by the name of Razzle Fizzlebop. With a voice amplified by magical means, he welcomed the crowd to the grand spectacle about to unfold.
"Welcome, one and all, to the Grand Arcana Tournament!" His voice boomed across the Coliseum, echoing off the obsidian walls. "In this corner, a team like no other, bonded by courage, a quintet of outstanding warriors: Askari, Skyblitz, Redroot, Joneson, and IraTater! And in the other corner, a ruthless band of hardened fighters, known for their merciless tactics: the Revenant Reapers!"
A deafening cheer erupted from the spectators as the two teams stepped into the arena, each fighter sizing up their respective opponent.
"May the best team prevail!" Razzle Fizzlebop's voice rang out, a signal of the brutal spectacle to come. "Let the Grand Arcana Tournament commence!"
The friends shared a final look of camaraderie, each promising the other that no matter what happened, they would face it together.
As the echoes of the crowd's cheers filled the air, the friends braced themselves. The stage was set. The dance of death was about to begin.
With the commencement of the tournament, the atmosphere within the Coliseum Arcanum transformed. The anticipation reached fever pitch, the audience holding their collective breath as the first combatants took center stage.
"IraTater of the Brotherhood!" Razzle Fizzlebop's voice resonated through the coliseum, his enthusiastic tone whipping the crowd into a frenzy. "Versus Galros of the Revenant Reapers! A venomous dance with the flames of the inferno!"
IraTater walked into the spotlight, his scales shimmering like deadly emeralds. He offered the crowd a cheeky wave, his usual levity on full display despite the high stakes.
Across the battlefield, Galros stood, a menacing figure swathed in a cloak of shadowy flames. His eyes glowed with a fiery intensity, a visual testament to the infernal pact that fueled his magic.
"As per the rules of the Grand Arcana Tournament," Razzle continued, "The fight will go on until one fighter yields, is incapacitated, or… worse."
IraTater couldn't help but roll his eyes at the gnome's dramatic flair. "Alright, big guy," he called to Galros, "Let's give 'em a show."
The tiefling merely smirked, his hands beginning to dance in the intricate patterns of arcane sigils, summoning the deadly magic of his infernal pact.
The match began in earnest, Galros opening with a volley of "Hellfire Bolts", flaming projectiles that exploded upon impact. IraTater nimbly evaded, his agile form a blur on the battlefield.
With a growl, IraTater retaliated with a "Venomous Torrent," a wave of toxic energy that radiated from his outstretched claws. Galros, however, was quick to erect an "Infernal Barrier," absorbing the brunt of the toxic assault.
The two continued to exchange blows, Galros utilizing destructive pyromancy, while IraTater countered with his unique blend of agility and venomous magic. Despite his playful demeanor, IraTater's prowess was undeniable, his movements punctuated by fluidity and precision.
However, as the battle progressed, it became apparent to IraTater that he was gradually being outmatched. Galros' infernal magic was relentless, and while IraTater's agility and venom-based attacks were formidable, they were not enough to keep up with Galros' fiery onslaught.
Spotting his opportunity, Galros decided to play dirty, casting a "Shadow Bind," an underhanded spell designed to immobilize his opponent by exploiting a moment of weakness. The crowd gasped as dark tendrils snaked from Galros' fingers, aiming to entrap IraTater.
But the Dragonborn was not so easily subdued. A deep, guttural growl escaped him as he looked into Galros' smirking face. "You want to play dirty?" He hissed, his scales standing on end as a surge of poisonous energy coursed through his veins.
Embracing his raw power, IraTater unleashed his "Basilisk Strike." His form became a blur, moving with such speed that it seemed to split into multiple images. In the blink of an eye, he closed the gap between him and Galros, his claw striking true. A potent burst of venomous energy erupted from his fingertips, the impact rocking the entire arena.
Galros' smirk was wiped clean off his face as he was thrown backward, crashing into the arena's boundary with an impact that left a crater in the obsidian. The tiefling's body was immobile, his defeat unmistakable.
"And the first round goes to IraTater!" Razzle Fizzlebop's voice echoed throughout the Coliseum Arcanum, the crowd erupting into cheers.
In the shadows of the entrance to the arena, Askari watched with a stormy expression. His fists clenched at his sides, his gaze fixed on the incapacitated form of Galros. He had always believed in the sanctity of honorable combat, and Galros' underhanded tactic had struck a nerve.
As Razzle Fizzlebop announced the next match - Askari versus Grimmhilt - the warrior monk stepped onto the battlefield, his gaze determined and unwavering. He had always held himself to a code of honor, and this fight would be no different. He would win for his friends, and he would do it with dignity.
And so, as the crowd's cheers echoed through the grand Coliseum, the stage was set for the next deadly dance in the Grand Arcana Tournament.
A tense hush fell over the spectators as the next combatants were announced. "Ladies and gentlemen, the next duel in the Grand Arcana Tournament," Razzle Fizzlebop's voice rang out, clear and resonant. "Askari of the Brotherhood versus Grimmhilt of the Revenant Reapers!"
Askari moved to center stage, his warrior monk training evident in his fluid grace. The crowd watched in anticipation as an ethereal golden aura shimmered around him, an echo of his inherent power. Even from a distance, the intensity of his aura was palpable, a testament to his descent from the legendary Sun Wukong.
Opposite him stood Grimmhilt, a dwarf necromancer shrouded in an aura of decay and death. His eyes glowed with an unnatural light as he prepared his formidable defenses.
"Hey, Grimmhilt," Askari called out, his voice carrying over the silence of the coliseum. "I hope you're prepared. Because I plan to end this quickly."
A sinister grin spread across Grimmhilt's face, his voice raspy with cruel amusement. "We'll see about that, monkey boy."
With a resounding gong, the duel began. As expected, Grimmhilt wasted no time in erecting his "Undead Bastion," a towering barrier of necrotic energy intended to shield him from Askari's attacks.
However, Askari was not deterred. With a deep breath, he centered himself, focusing his energy as he had been taught in the monasteries of his homeland. His aura shimmered and intensified, the spiritual energy forming a colossal image of a multi-armed deity, an embodiment of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion.
Grimmhilt's grin faltered as he beheld the spectacle. But before he could react, Askari launched his attack.
"Avalokiteshvara Strike!" Askari roared, the ethereal deity mimicking his movements as they launched a barrage of attacks. Each strike was a concentrated blast of his aura, a devastating assault that battered Grimmhilt's barrier.
The "Undead Bastion," despite its formidable defenses, crumbled under the onslaught. Grimmhilt, robbed of his protective shield, was at the mercy of Askari's barrage. The warrior monk's assault was relentless and in an instant, it was over.
Grimmhilt was left sprawled on the ground, his defenses shattered, his energy depleted. The crowd erupted into cheers as Razzle Fizzlebop announced Askari's victory. "Askari of the Brotherhood is the winner!"
As Askari made his way back to his friends, he was met with high fives and words of praise. The victory, however, brought him no joy. His face remained stern, his mind already on the upcoming battles.
As Skyblitz stepped forward to take the stage, Askari extended his fist to his oldest friend. Skyblitz bumped it with his own, a silent promise of the fight to come. Askari could only hope that the rest of their battles would be fought with honor, for the sake of their brotherhood and the sacred principles they upheld.
"Prepare yourselves, for the gust of competition is about to take flight!" Razzle Fizzlebop's enthusiastic proclamation echoed throughout the coliseum, whipping the spectators into a whirlwind of anticipation. "Skyblitz of the Brotherhood versus Aridorn of the Revenant Reapers!"
Skyblitz emerged onto the battlefield, the embodiment of avian majesty and power. His feathered form shimmered as a warm gust swirled around him, a tangible display of his command over wind magic.
His opponent, Aridorn, carried an imposing aura of his own. His silver hair seemed to flow like mercury, capturing the ominous sheen of his cold eyes. As an Elf warrior, he drew upon the arcane forces at his command, his body language exuding icy determination.
As the starting signal echoed across the coliseum, the tension morphed into a dazzling spectacle of magical prowess. Aridorn was swift, initiating the duel with a "Frost Edge" attack that transformed his longsword into a chilling blade of freezing energy.
Skyblitz, ever the master of the wind, reacted with perfect timing. His "Wind Blade" took form, a blade of compressed air that met Aridorn's icy onslaught head-on. The crowd erupted into cheers, the sheer display of magical mastery a feast for their eyes.
The battle raged on, morphing into an intense back-and-forth between the two combatants. Aridorn kept on the offensive, wielding his chilling magic to launch a series of potent attacks. His "Glacial Wall" forced Skyblitz to keep his distance, while his "Frost Spears" kept the Aarakocra on his talons.
Skyblitz was not to be outdone. His mastery over wind magic was a spectacle in itself. His agile movements, augmented by "Gale Dash," allowed him to evade Aridorn's icy attacks with an effortless grace that seemed almost choreographed. His "Tempest Cyclone" countered Aridorn's defenses, the swirling vortex of wind magic breaking through the icy wall Aridorn had erected.
This thrilling exchange of magic and martial prowess continued, each warrior holding his ground. The crowd watched, breathless, as the two powerhouses collided, each new clash raising the stakes.
Eventually, however, Skyblitz decided it was time to end the match. Channeling his wind magic, he executed his final move, an attack he had perfected over years of rigorous training. "Twister Throw!" he bellowed, the powerful shout resonating across the coliseum.
In a swift, fluid motion, Skyblitz seized Aridorn, his powerful wings carrying them high above the arena. The crowd watched in stunned silence as he summoned a powerful tornado around them, his wind magic swirling with an intensity that left everyone breathless.
The force of the wind spun them around, accelerating until Aridorn was a mere blur in the eye of the storm. With a final, powerful shout, Skyblitz threw Aridorn, propelling him with the force of the swirling wind.
Aridorn plummeted to the ground, his descent marked by a tailwind of force. The impact echoed throughout the coliseum, the ground quaking beneath the force. Dust and debris filled the air, obscuring the view as the crowd held its breath.
When the dust finally settled, Aridorn was revealed, unconscious and defeated, cradled in the heart of a massive crater. Skyblitz landed elegantly on the battlefield, his victory secured.
"Victory to Skyblitz of the Brotherhood!" Razzle Fizzlebop's voice echoed around the arena. The crowd erupted into cheers, their exhilaration shaking the coliseum.
Skyblitz, despite his victory, did not celebrate. His expression was serious, his gaze focused. His mind was already on the battles to come. The Grand Arcana Tournament was far from over, and the Brotherhood was ready to face whatever came next.
As the dust from the previous battle cleared, the Brotherhood gathered in a huddle. Their attention was fixated on Redroot, the Goliath, whose presence was as sturdy and intimidating as a fortress of stone.
"Redroot," Askari began, looking up at his towering friend. "We've seen you hold back, always opting to shield rather than strike. This time, let them witness your true power. Be the landslide, not just the mountain."
Skyblitz joined in, a spark of anticipation illuminating his avian eyes. "You've got this, Red. Make the ground tremble beneath your might."
Redroot nodded solemnly, acknowledging the encouraging words of his companions. "The earth shall quake in my honor."
The crowd's excited chatter fell silent as Razzle Fizzlebop made the next announcement. "Step forward, Redroot of the Brotherhood and Snigg of the Revenant Reapers!"
Snigg, a small yet wiry goblin, walked onto the battlefield, an air of dark magic surrounding him. Redroot followed, his imposing figure causing a wave of silence to sweep across the spectators. The air around him rippled with earth magic, projecting an image that was equal parts awe-inspiring and terrifying.
With a mighty roar, Redroot charged at Snigg, his fist colliding with Snigg's in a thunderous impact that sent shockwaves pulsing through the coliseum. It was a clash of raw strength against potent magic, and the crowd watched in awe as the battle unfolded.
Snigg was swift and cunning, employing his dark magic with a surprising finesse. His "Shadow Warp" allowed him to dodge Redroot's massive strikes and retaliate with "Abyssal Shards." However, Redroot was no easy target. His earth magic countered Snigg's attacks, his "Stone Fist" shattering Snigg's dark energy projectiles while his "Earth Shield" offered unyielding defense.
Despite Snigg's agility and cunning, Redroot stood firm, countering with powerful attacks of his own. He used his "Granite Grasp" to trap Snigg, while his "Boulder Bash" sent the goblin sprawling across the battlefield.
The back-and-forth continued, each fighter displaying their unique set of skills to the fullest. Snigg continued to exploit his nimbleness and dark magic, but Redroot remained a formidable opponent, his resolve as unshakeable as the earth he commanded.
As the battle reached a fever pitch, Redroot decided to end the duel. Gathering his earth magic, he channeled it into a final, devastating attack. With a roar that echoed throughout the coliseum, Redroot slammed his fists into the ground, calling out, "Tectonic Rupture!"
The ground beneath them trembled and shook, a wave of stone and earth erupting beneath Snigg. The goblin had no time to react as the force of the attack knocked him off his feet, sending him crashing onto the battlefield.
When the dust finally settled, Snigg lay unconscious, the aftermath of Redroot's attack evident in the crater surrounding him. Razzle Fizzlebop's announcement of Redroot's victory echoed across the coliseum, met with a deafening roar of approval from the crowd.
The Brotherhood cheered for their friend, their voices drowned out by the thunderous applause. Despite his victory, Redroot remained humble, a gentle smile playing on his lips. His victory wasn't for himself; it was for his friends and the bond they shared. For the Brotherhood, this was just the beginning, and they were ready for the challenges that lay ahead.
As the dust from Redroot's battle settled, the Brotherhood gathered once more. This time, their focus was on Joneson, the Paladin oathbreaker, a man whose past was filled with guilt and redemption, and whose power stemmed from the void itself.
His fellow warriors gave him a solid, reassuring clap on the shoulder. "You've got this, Joneson. You're a Paladin, through and through. Oathbreaker or not, you uphold honor and justice like no other," Skyblitz said, his avian eyes flicking with a hint of admiration.
The others nodded in agreement. Redroot’s gravelly voice echoed Skyblitz's sentiment. "You're not just a warrior, Joneson. You’re a protector. That's your strength."
The air filled with anticipation as Razzle Fizzlebop's voice once again echoed across the coliseum. "Ladies and gentlemen, the final bout of this round. Step forward, Joneson of the Brotherhood and Zul'Kur of the Revenant Reapers!"
Zul'Kur was a towering figure, adorned with intricate tribal tattoos glowing with an arcane energy. He was an orc shaman, known for his potent spirit magic. A formidable opponent, one who had won his previous battles with a ruthless and savage efficiency.
Joneson walked onto the battlefield, his aura of void energy cloaking him like a shadow. Despite the cheering crowd, a sense of stillness enveloped him. His expression was calm, his gaze steady, the air around him seeming to warp slightly as his void magic reacted to his focused state of mind.
The fight began with a massive clash of magic, Joneson's void energy colliding with Zul'Kur's spirit magic. The crowd gasped as the arena filled with a blinding light, both fighters' powers creating an awe-inspiring spectacle.
Joneson was adept with his void magic, utilizing "Void Shield" to block Zul'Kur's spirit attacks, retaliating with his own "Shadow Strike." Zul'Kur was equally skilled, his spirit magic taking the form of ancestral warriors through his "Spirit Summon," each one engaging Joneson with ruthless ferocity.
Back and forth they went, each clash more intense than the last. Zul'Kur’s spirit magic was relentless, but Joneson’s void manipulation allowed him to absorb and deflect the attacks with increasing ease.
However, as the battle wore on, Joneson's void energy started to dominate the field. His "Abyssal Chains" attack ensnared Zul'Kur's spirit warriors, dissolving them into nothingness. His "Black Hole Strike" pulled Zul'Kur off balance, allowing Joneson to land a decisive "Void Punch."
Just as it seemed that Joneson was gaining the upper hand, a commotion stirred from the sidelines. The previously defeated members of The Revenant Reapers rushed into the arena, their expressions desperate and wild.
The crowd gasped as Galros, Grimmhilt, Aridorn, and Snigg stood beside Zul'Kur, their powers radiating menacingly. The odds had abruptly shifted. Joneson, though strong, was now standing against the full force of The Revenant Reapers.
The anticipation was thick as the crowd watched in shocked silence. The Brotherhood stood at the sidelines, their expressions a mix of concern and determination. The stage was set for a showdown like no other, the true test of the Brotherhood's unity and strength yet to come.
The Revenant Reapers' aggressive entrance onto the stage was met with mixed reactions from the crowd, the Brotherhood, and most interestingly, from Joneson himself. The Reapers exuded a sinister, dark energy as they joined Zul'Kur in facing Joneson.
In the Brotherhood's corner, Skyblitz was already halfway into his takeoff, his wings ruffling in anticipation, ready to swoop down and help Joneson. Redroot had tightened his grip on his massive boulder hammer, his eyes reflecting a fierce determination.
But, it was Askari who raised his hand, signaling them to halt. His eyes were locked onto the scene unfolding before them, a calm yet intense look etched onto his face.
"This is his fight," Askari's voice cut through the rising tension. The words were met with immediate confusion and even protest.
"But they're outnumbering him, Askari," IraTater argued, his draconic eyes glaring towards the spectacle in the arena.
Askari, however, was resolute. "Joneson has a strength we've not yet seen. He's been holding back, for reasons only he knows," he continued, his gaze never leaving the center of the coliseum.
There was a pause before Askari recounted a tale, one of a Paladin who had broken his oath to protect those he loved. It was a tale of guilt and redemption, of strength and love. The tale of Joneson, their comrade, their brother in arms. The Brotherhood listened in silence, their eyes now understanding the depth of Joneson's power that lay dormant.
Back in the arena, Joneson stood steady, his gaze meeting Askari's. There was a silent communication, a nod of acknowledgement, and an understanding. It was time.
Without breaking his gaze from the Reapers, Joneson muttered an incantation under his breath. As the words left his lips, the air around him started to warp, and a cold chill swept across the coliseum. His eyes began to gleam with an ethereal light as the Oathbreaker's Seal began to break.
"Void Infinity," he whispered. The two words carried a weight, a promise, and a threat. The darkness swallowed the arena, blotting out the light and encasing the battleground in an impenetrable shroud. The Reapers, about to attack, found themselves in a sea of uncertainty.
Out of the engulfing void emerged figures, formless yet formidable, each a living embodiment of void energy. With every word of Joneson's continued incantation, they grew stronger, their presence more intimidating.
The Reapers tried to retaliate, but their attacks were swallowed by the void. The shadowy figures closed in, a relentless storm of dark energy that crushed their resistance and drowned their cries. The sheer force of the onslaught sent shockwaves through the arena, causing the crowd to gasp in awe.
When the darkness finally receded, the scene that emerged was one of utter devastation. The Reapers lay strewn across the battleground, their energies depleted, their pride shattered.
The crowd erupted into cheers, the echo of "Joneson" resonating throughout the arena. As the Brotherhood rushed to join their victorious comrade in the center, their smiles were as wide as they were proud.
With his friends surrounding him, Joneson looked at each one of them, his eyes softening. The void magic around him faded, replaced by a warm aura. This was more than just a victory. It was a testament of their friendship, their trust, and their unyielding brotherhood. They had emerged triumphant, and for the time being, they could bask in their victory.
It was a powerful conclusion to a stunning display of magic and camaraderie. The Grand Arcana Tournament was far from over, but the Brotherhood had made their mark, and they were ready for whatever came next.

Needless to say, all three Gems were speechless. They starred blankly at the kids’ smiling faces before Pearl finally spoke up. “Well…thank you, Steven,” she said awkwardly, “but…uh,” She turned. “Garnet, help me.” The leader Gem got up. “Thank you, Steven, but you were still right to be upset.“ “We promise not to keep stuff from you, dude,” Amethyst added. “And we will truly try and take some time off,” Pearl finished. The three leaned down and reached out, expecting a group hug, but Steven and Connie merely exchanged glances and giggled to themselves. “Okay, now I’m confused,” Garnet said as they stood back up. Steven looked up at his three guardians, hands on his hips. “We’re glad you guys are sorry for everything, but you’re not getting off that easy.” “Yep,” Connie added, “We’re still going to punish you.” “Punish us?!” Pearl said incredulously. “Yep,” Steven said, loving the control. “You can forget about any missions for the rest of the day,” “Or hiding out in the Temple,” Connie added. “Becaus you’re going to be spending the rest of your day here,” he handed them a flyer and they all looked at it. Beach City Ocean Breeze Spa! Wash off all the stresses of life! Book you appointment today. “Steven,” Pearl asked, “What is this?” “Only the greatest spa in Beach City,” Steven replied. “Connie told me about it.” “But what exactly is a spa?” The white Gem asked. “It’s a building that offers heath and beauty treatments,” Connie explained. “My mom’s a regular there.” It’s the only way she can recover from her long shifts at the hospital. Anyway, she took me a couple weeks ago and it was amazing! They have everything: manicures, pedicures, massages, mud baths-“ “Mud baths?!” Amethyst cried. “I’m in!” “Hold on there, Amethyst!” Pearl said. Looking back down at the flyer, she said, “Kids, this is incredibly generous of you, but I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be-“ “Around other humans?” Connie asked. “No, of course not,” Pearl said, “It’s just-it seems to involve a lot of…intimate contact and I-“ “Oh please!” Steven said, “You guys fuse all the time.” “Yes, but that’s with Gems.” “You danced with Dad in Empire City,” Steven pointed out, “You have no excuse.” “And it’s incredibly clean, Pearl,” Connie explained, “Everything’s super clean and spotless and they actually have you shower in between appointments. It’s actually very fancy. You’ve got nothing to worry about.” “And even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. We already booked appointments for all of you, starting at noon. Dad’s paying for everything.” Smiling smugly, the boy folded his arms. “No way out.” Pearl opened her mouth, possibly to argue again, but Garnet cupped a hand over it. “Pearl, you really should keep your mouth closed,” she advised. “Bugs could nest.” The Gem leader turned back to Steven and, to his delight, she was smiling. “Steven, we’d love to.” “Yeah we would!” Amethyst agreed. “But what about Beach City?” Pearl freed herself from Garnet. “We can’t just leave it unguarded.” “Leave that…to us.” The kids took each other’s hand and were instantly engulfed in a pink flash of light. In their place stood Stevonnie, sword at the ready. The fusion saluted the Gems. “Stevonnie, Beach City protector, reporting for duty! And look!” They whistled and Lion barged in and bowed before them. “We’ve got our own trusty stead.” “Well, that solves that,” Garnet stated. “Whoo-Hoo!” Amethyst cheered, “Mud baths, here we come!” Pearl stared, then opened and closed her mouth in thought before straightening up and giving a small sigh. “Well, I guess you do have everything covered,” She cupped her hands, even giving a small smile. “And I did say I would start trying out new things, didn’t I?” “Sure did,” the fusion said, “And the Pearl we know can handle anything a mere human could.” They shot her a sly grin. “You are a Crystal Gem, aren’t you?” “Well, OF COURSE, I am!” Pearl scoffed, acting as though she felt insulted. Putting her hands on her hips, she added. “And you know what? I’m actually lookin forward to this spa. I’ve got nothing better to do and frankly, all these missions have left me rather tarnished.” “Then, we better be on our way. Our appointments start in an hour,” Garnet said, leading them to the door. She stopped for a moment to address Stevonnie. “Good luck you two. Remember to keep the harmony.” Amethyst shot them a wink as she walked past. “Slick.”
Despite its name, Beach City Ocrean Breeze Spa wasn’t actually in Beach City, but on the outskirts. The road there took the Gems through a forested area and l, after about half an hour of walking, ended in a long grass plain where their location revealed itself.
There was a large while building that appeared to be made of glistening white marble. The road leading to end ended in a cup-de-sac, with statues and flowers on either side. In front of the spa stood a large elegant fountain. The three made their way up the road (Pearl taking a minute to admire the fountain) and entered the building. Inside was a massive, spacious lobby that appeared to be made of the same glittering marble as the outside. A stone walkway leading up to the front desk was flanked on both sides by, among even more rows of flowers, magnificent, stone basins that caught water pouring out of the ceiling. Behind the front desk was a massive stone mural of a mermaid on some rocks with the name of the spa written above. Off to the sides were seating areas with comfy couches and armchairs. The whole room sparkled in the sunlight streaming in from the skylight and there was an aroma of perfume in the air. “Wow,” Amethyst said, scratching her head. “Connie wasn’t kidding when she said it was fancy.” “Nice ambiance,” Pearl said, before taking a whiff. “And that smell is almost as good as mine in the Temple.” The three walked over to the front desk, where a blind woman in a white blouse and pants was typing at a computer. Hearing their footsteps, she looked up and smiled. “Hello, welcome to Beach City Ocean Breeze Spa. How can I help you?” “We have scheduled appointments,” Garnet explained. “They should be under Universe.” The woman turned back to her computer. “Universe, Universe, ah, there you are!” She tapped her headset. “Jolene, we have guests.” A door opened and another woman, wearing the same uniform as the receptionist, stepped into the room. “They have three noon sessions,” the receptionist explained. “Thank you, Celia. I’ll take it from here.” Turning to the Gems, she held out her hand. “Welcome. My name is Jolene.” Not wanting to appear rude, Pearl took her hand and shook it. “Hi Jolene, I’m Pearl and this is Garnet and Amethyst. I must say, your spa is very lovely.” “Thank you. I take it this is your first time here?” “It’s our first time at any spa period.” “Well, we’re delighted to have been chooses as your first.” “We really didn’t have a choice,” Garnet said. “Our little boy forced us to come.” “Yeah, said we were overworked and we had to come here as a punishment.” “Well, I assure you, this will be one of the finest punishments you’ll ever get,” Jolene laughed. “If you follow me, we can get started.” She lead the Gems down a hallway to a pair of shower rooms. “It’s required that all guests shower in between treatments,” Jolene explained, holding out three robes and pairs of slippers. “No argument there,” Pearl happily took one. “Just head in there, rinse off, and then we’ll escort you to your treatments.” Upon entering, the Gems were hit with a thick cloud of steam and the sight of twenty or so naked women occupying the various shower stalls. Garnet shifted her gaze, Pearl blushed, and Amethyst giggled. “Oh, you need to shower?” One of the women came out from her stall, wrapping a towel around herself. She pointed to three ones nearby. “These are empty.” Still feeling awkward, the Gens each got into a stall and turned the water on. The bather giggled. “Aren’t you going to undress first?” Pearl’s cheeks grew even more teal. “Well…uh-“ “No need to be shy,” the lady said, motioning to the other bathers. “We’re all girls here.” “It’s not that,” Garnet explained. “It’s just that our bodies are a bit…different from yours.” Pearl nodded. “Oh, we see all kinds in here,” the woman smiled. “Go on, take your clothes off.” The three Gems looked at each other. “Well, I guess she has a point,” Pearl said. Garnet nodded. “Let’s do it.” All three stalls filled with bright lights, forcing all the other bathers to cover their eyes. “Whoa!” the woman said, “What was with-AHHHHHHHHH!” “Wow, this actually does feel good,” Pearl smiled. She and the other Gems started to shower, only to pause at the horrified faces of everyone around them. “What?” Garnet asked, all three eyes uncovered. “O-oh, it’s nothing,” their friend forced a nervous smile. “You know…they let you wear bikinis in here too.”

I am 32 year old female who is BRCa1 positive but otherwise active healthy, very active non smoker, very light drinker.
I had a preventive mastectomy with direct reconstruction exactly 6 weeks ago. Healing has gone super well. No complications and i feel really lucky.
But at around 4 weeks and continuing until today at 6 weeks I’ve noticed random things going on with my body and was wondering if its some like “post surgical” pendulum swing or “comedown” from whatever hormones or processes were going on in the initial healing phase.
Some symptoms I’ve noticed over the past two weeks

• sleep disturbances (mostly trouble falling and staying asleep)
• light headedness on standing (I’ve always had issues with low BP and low iron but more so of late)
• flaky skin which has mostly resolved but still flaky /itchy scalp
• along with scalp, probably have had some hair loss
• really hard stools—probably going once every other day and stools are really hard. I had the initial constipation with the narcotics for the first couple days but after day 3 was just on Tylenol and in combo with coláce seemed to resolve the problem. But last two weeks have just been hard dry stools—I eat lots of veggies and fruits, drink tons of water and after week one of recovery was walking long distances (5-6 miles) and have recently started reincorporating running

Is this kind of thing common? I know hair loss is common but other symptoms?

I rescued a poodle mix about 4 months ago, and he’s almost a year and a half old now.
We’ve made progress with a lot of training like simple commands, but it completely goes out the window with his separation anxiety. He’s incapable of being okay with being bored, despite the hour walks we go on twice a day. I’ve bought a ton of different toys and it still isn’t enough.
Yesterday, I broke down crying. I have online therapy for PTSD, and he had to be in the same room because my partner wasn’t home. For the entire hour-long call, he starts stealing things off counters again and jumping up on me. My arms are covered in scratches and bruises (fingers to shoulders) from trying to ignore him. I just can’t fucking handle him right now anymore because he did it again today when I got an important call from work. He chewed through his leash and a hat of mine when I stopped interacting with him for two minutes.
I’m at my wit’s end. I love him, but right now I absolutely cannot stand him.

ITake just a few minutes today to put together a small list of things you want or need to do this weekend - and avoid stumbling into the default option again: hours and hours of screen time.
For example you could:

• Buy a newspaper or magazine and draw faces on the people photographed
• Return something you borrowed
• Go to the zoo with a friend and and find each others sprit animals

Also: See the list of nosurf activities if you need inspiration.
Good luck & have a good time!

The sanctimonious bs on this sub surrounding turf recently is beyond belief. As someone who was born and raised in Dublin but have been living rural for a few years, I think ye all need to check yourselves.
Vast majority of turf/peat that used to be cut and burned in Ireland was brought to the cities etc for heat, in later years it was used to generate electricity. This a vastly different from what's going on these days. Most bord na mona large scale bogs have shut down and the lands allocated for rewetting. This caused massive unemployment in the areas over the years and you can still the effects on rural Ireland today.
Many of us who use turf as our primary heat source don't really have any other option. My home built in 60's, uses a solid fuel stove and back boiler to heat my rads. I get about €400 worth of turf, legally through traditional means and that does me for the winter. Even to get the equivalent in well seasoned, ''eco friendly'', timber would cost a lot more.
My current other options are to get an oil burner, that means I'm using imported oil, that costs about €800 a tank that MIGHT last me half a winter. Or I could retro fit my house, with solar and air to water heat, however I don't have €20,000 laying around and no grants don't come close to covering that cost.
The smaller private bogs have banks which are scraped out and layed on the ground. They are then usually hand stacked to dry and then drawn to local homes for storage for winter. For most of the year the environment on these private bogs is undisturbed. Most of the bog owners close to me have stopped spraying the ground with weedkiller before laying the rows out. Many who have stopped cutting have let their plots go wild to encourage wildlife in the area.
To see people on here and other places getting up their own holes telling others off about burning turf is annoying as fuck. Same cunts probably heating their homes off Russian gas, driving an electric car that some poor kid died extracting the cobalt for the battery and taking 2 or 3 foreign holidays a year because their lives are so miserable. Such ''eco friendly'' people wouldn't know biodiversity if it bit them on the arse
So yeah let him without sin cast the first stone and try to see things for others perspective.
Cheers

I just watched Hypnotic on VOD yesterday. Ben Affleck looks visibly older, weary and speaks with a much huskier voice (Bad ADR? Or an acting effect?) It's not a bad thriller, applying B-movie FX in the "Inception" movie style.
The movie's budget was an estimated $65 million and released May 12 in US cinemas, already on VOD. Online, it's claimed it made $6 million at the US box office. So isn't that a flop...? And I don't see it making a ton of money on VOD.
Are the producers and distributors banking on most of the profits coming from domestic and international pay-TV and cable TV rights?
Comparing this to his Paycheck movie from 2003, made by Paramount Pictures for $60 million ($98 million in 2023 money (!!!), I saw it at the cinema, the production standards did feel higher, he did promote it across the US and Europe and it got a wide release in the US and UK and most Western countries. Worldwide it brought in $117 million and I'm sure it sells well in action/thrillesci-fi packages sold by Paramount to cable TV channel worldwide.
Is this how it's been going the last 5, 10, 15 years?

There's this girl, the most amazing person I've met and for almost two years, she's been my lifeline. I was going through some tough times and the only reason I didn't unalive myself till now is her. Today she had to do overtime at work and left the office late. We were chatting during her journey back home, and me being a dumbass, told her to text me in a while if the public transport was packed. An hour went by and I text her back, no reply. I waited 30min and send in another text asking where she was, has she reached home. Again there was no reply. I waited for another few minutes and my stupid brain began its usual overthinking, all kinds of what if's. There was no reply for almost 2hours and I was ready to go to her place, even carry a knife, bcz I don't know! Maybe she's in danger!?
I was about to leave, with resolve to drop bodies if anyone even remotely hurt her, when she texts back "I'm home". I still can't get my heart to calm down, it's so loud that I can hear it beating. She's really my everything 😭❤️

Almost immediately after Glacier was established as a national park, Louis W. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway, began building a series of hotels, chalets and tent camps throughout the park. The buildings were modeled on traditional Swiss architecture, and were part of Hill's strategy to portray Glacier as the "American Alps" or "America's Switzerland." The accommodations would in-turn help the railway promote tourism to the new national park, while at the same time promote their rail line as the primary mode of travel to the park. This would also allow them to compete against their chief rivals; the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Northern Pacific Railway, who were already transporting tourists to Banff and Yellowstone by that time.
The Belton Chalet in West Glacier, and the Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier Park were the first two hotels to be constructed by Great Northern. Both acted as gateways from railroad depots to the interior of the park. Between 1910 and 1915 the railway also constructed eight Swiss-style backcountry chalet complexes, each connected by a network of trails. The complexes were strategically located at Two Medicine Lake, Cut Bank, St. Mary, Sun Point, Granite Park, Many Glacier, Gunsight Lake and Sperry Glacier. Tent camps were also established at Red Eagle Lake, Cosley Lake, Fifty Mountain and Goat Haunt. The chalet and tent camps were located roughly 10-18 miles apart. During their prime most of the chalet camps could host between 100 and 150 guests per night. Hill would explain to newspaper reporters that the “lodges would be located only far enough apart so that the man on foot even could make the trip and obtain sleeping accommodations,” and that “hotel accommodations of a more prestigious type or tents for the most modest could also be furnished.”
As construction on the new chalets progressed through the early 1910s, the railway also constructed the trails that would connect each of them by foot or horse travel. Because of a lack of federal funds, the Great Northern Railway assumed financial responsibility for all trail construction during this time period, but was eventually reimbursed as funding became available. Some of the earliest trails developed by the railway included Swiftcurrent Pass, Gunsight Pass, Mt. Henry, Red Gap Pass, Gable Pass, Triple Divide Pass, Piegan Pass, Pitamakan Pass and the St. Mary Lake trails. Many of these early trails were routed along Indian paths, prospector trails or old game trails. Great Northern would continue to improve or construct new trails within the park into the early 1920s. As the network of trails expanded, organized tours by horse concessionaires began to emerge. In 1915 the Park Saddle Horse Company became the sole concessionaire for the park, and began organizing a series of guided tours that utilized the existing network of chalets and trails. This included the North Circle, South Circle and Inside Trail trips, which encompassed roughly 163 miles of trails, each of which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The company also offered the Logan Pass Triangle Trail trip, which traversed across the heart of the park utilizing routes from the other tours, as well as the now abandoned Logan Pass Trail. The concessionaire offered a variety of options, from half-day excursions to extended trips lasting up to two weeks. Most of the so-called circle tours, however, lasted between three and five days. During the 1920 season the company charged roughly $4.00 per person, per day to take one of its saddle-horse tours.
The park visitors that took these tours were “guided by ‘cowboys,’ lunched near glacial lakes and then dined in comfort on Chinese linen and blue willow china”. Park rules dictated that the Park Saddle Horse Company had to furnish at least one guide for each ten tourists on a trip. Parties could reach as large as 180 people and 200 horses. It’s estimated that the concessionaire used more than 1000 horses during its peak, with at least one source estimating as many as 1500 head of horses. The 1922 park brochure bragged that there were "more saddle horses used in Glacier than in any other similar recreational area in the world". From everything I’ve read that record has never been surpassed.
The saddle-horse tours were the dominant method of seeing the park until the Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed in 1933. Although the tours continued for another ten seasons, they came to a permanent end after the 1942 season when America became fully involved in World War II.
** This article is an adaptation from my book, "Ramble On: How Hiking Became One of the Most Popular Outdoor Activities in the World", which chronicles the rich and compelling history of hiking.

I just watched Hypnotic on VOD yesterday. Ben Affleck looks visibly older, weary and speaks with a much huskier voice (Bad ADR? Or an acting effect?) It's not a bad thriller, applying B-movie FX in the "Inception" movie style.
The movie's budget was an estimated $65 million and released May 12 in US cinemas, already on VOD. Online, it's claimed it made $6 million at the US box office. So isn't that a flop...? And I don't see it making a ton of money on VOD.
Are the producers and distributors banking on most of the profits coming from domestic and international pay-TV and cable TV rights?
Comparing this to his Paycheck movie from 2003, made by Paramount Pictures for $60 million ($98 million in 2023 money (!!!), I saw it at the cinema, the production standards did feel higher, he did promote it across the US and Europe and it got a wide release in the US and UK and most Western countries. Worldwide it brought in $117 million and I'm sure it sells well in action/thrillesci-fi packages sold by Paramount to cable TV channel worldwide.
Is this how it's been going the last 5, 10, 15 years?

Hi guys! I’m in my third day rn and my emotions are all over the place. I have a family event today and tomorrow and zero weed. I just had a massive breakdown about having to go in front of my mom and screamed, cried and yeah.
Does anyone have any advice on keeping it together for the wedding day tomorrow? I’m already planning to tell people I’m not well but any advice on controlling the anxiety and crying would be super helpful. Thanks

Chapter 1 Prev Next
I act quickly. There are puddles of color rising all around us into oozing monsters — it's almost disorienting. They're the only sources of color all around me. There's a heavy, thickset ooze-creature a few steps ahead made of a deep, mauve sort of purple, the same purple that tints the wood of the Hestian trees; there are whip-thin creatures that are barely humanoid, with stringlike arms and legs made of all the different shades of fall. The forest detritus combines into a muddy brown, creating bloblike creatures on the ground that stretch themselves to move forward, leaving flickering trails of brown Firmament that fade into nothing.
And that's only a small fraction of the creatures that are starting to appear. Fighting all of them almost seems like a pointless task, one that will tire me out needlessly, but I remind myself that I need to fight. If beating one of them grants me credits...
"We should find out if Naru is still here," Ahkelios says. He's noticed the way my fists have clenched. "Don't touch them directly. You'll need a weapon."
I don't have one — I didn't bring the scythe with me this loop. I glance around and pluck a small branch off the ground, sending a burst of Firmament into it to reinforce it; it's a minor imbuement with no anchor or enhancement, but that doesn't matter. I only need it to last as long as I'm in the Hotspot.
"Just checking," I say. "What's going to happen to me if they touch me directly?"
Ahkelios shudders a bit. "They eat your color," he says. "It's not fun, trust me."
That's vague, but considering that I've seen what happens when I use Color Drain, I'm willing to take that at face value.
Short term plan: Go straight for the obelisk. Kill any of the color-oozes in my way. If Naru's still here, we deal with him; if not, we use the translation stone on the obelisk, and see if these oozes are worth killing. If I get enough credits for killing them...
"Ready?" I ask Ahkelios, and he nods.
Triplestep. Firestep.
I'm still not used to how fast that combination of skills makes me. Mental Acceleration makes it easy to handle, but it's still so much faster than I've ever been able to run. The ground flies beneath my feet, and in no time at all I'm in front of my first target.
Crystallized Strength.
The sharp pain of crystallization runs all the way up along my arm as I concentrate the Firmament there. This time, I don't bother with a Barrier — I have the stick I'm holding to take the brunt of the blow. I swing the stick as I dart past the thick purple ooze, injecting another spike of Firmament into it to make sure it doesn't shatter—
—the ooze takes damage. I can feel it; the Firmament within it gets jumbled up for a fraction of a second, and it flinches, its entire body shuddering.
And then the ooze grips the stick I'm using, its flesh clinging on like glue, and yanks it out of my hand.
I don't waste time. I let go of the stick before the ooze can cover my hand and grab a handful of dirt off the ground, haphazardly forcing Firmament into it before lobbing it as hard as I can. Crystallized Strength together with that brief reinforcement keeps the clump of dirt together as it rockets towards the ooze.
It thunks into the center of its chest, and the whole thing staggers back, leaving chunks of purple behind on the ground. Strings of purple lash out from its fingertips, arcing through the air towards me, and I twist out of the way of them just in time. They're sharper than they look, considering how they pierce straight through the trees behind me.
Mental Acceleration is working overtime. As large as this monster is, it's fast and flexible, and it doesn't bother following any of the laws of physics. It's freely able to change its shape, so it isn't limited the way most humanoid fighters are...
...Wait. I'm an idiot.
Color Drain.
I know exactly what color to drain from it, too, because the whole ooze is composed of just the one color. I feel it resist the effects of the skill — it's good at resisting it, too, and it forces Color Drain to consume far more Firmament than it would otherwise just to leech all of that purple out of it — but it does work.
The purple is dragged out, and unlike most of my other enemies, this time, the ooze simply collapses.
[ You have defeated a Forest Slime (Rank D)! +7 Strength. +3 Reflex. +3 Speed. +2 Firmament. ]
The confirmation that they give me credits is a joy. I grin fiercely.
I'm going to have to fight my way to the obelisk, but at least it's going to be fun.
—
Losing myself in combat is a pastime that never gets old.
Not that I do it all that often, of course. It's not every day that an apocalypse is visited on Earth. But there's a small part of me that revels in fighting like this, in having to battle it out for my life; there's a part of the experience that's almost meditative.
Drop the translation stone. Swing. Dodge. Pick up a bunch of rocks off the ground, and imbue them with Firmament; toss them with enough force to make a bunch of holes in the slime you're fighting.
[ You have defeated a Forest Slime (Rank D)! +3 Strength credits. +3 Reflex credits. + 2 Firmament credits. ]
The credit rewards get lower the more of them I beat, but there's enough of them that that doesn't matter.
"Behind you!" Ahkelios calls. He darts away from me as a distraction, a bright source of light and Firmament, and I use the moment of distraction to enact another Color Drain.
[ You have defeated a Forest Slime (Rank D)! +4 Strength credits. +1 Durability credits. +2 Speed credits. + 2 Firmament credits. ]
A Barrier blocks off a blob of slime that gets lobbed at me — I notice it too late to dodge, so I react the only way I can. The liquid slime splashes onto the Firmament barrier and smears itself across it, then starts to eat into the Firmament.
Something about the sight creeps me out. I shudder slightly, and turn my attention to the slime that threw it at me.
It's a bright neon-green. I don't know where it got its color from — I've never seen this particular color in the Hestian forest. The monster itself is a spiderlike slime, with eight spindly legs emerging from a central, wobbly body; on top of its head is a horn it seems to be using to launch the slime balls at me. I dart towards it, and this time I don't bother grabbing a stick.
Barrier.
I shape the Barrier as it forms, using Firmament Manipulation and my natural ability to control my Firmament to guide it into the vague shape of a knife. I keep a protective film around my hand so none of that ooze gets on me, and I swipe it straight through its head, even as it tries to dodge.
[ You have defeated a Forest Slime (Rank D)! +1 Strength credits. +5 Reflex credits. +2 Speed credits. +2 Firmament credits. ]
It's nice that the number of Firmament credits I'm getting isn't going down. I'm making good progress, too — the obelisk is almost in sight, and most of the slimes aren't actively targeting me. I have to get within a few meters of them for them to even notice me, which makes avoiding them... not easy, exactly, but doable.
The problems mostly happen when I have to maneuver a lot to fight one of them and inevitably end up drawing more. Barrier is my friend in those cases, though. Barrier and Color Drain.
[ You have defeated a Forest Slime (Rank D)! +5 Durability credits. +2 Reflex credits. +2 Firmament credits. ]
[ You have defeated a Forest Slime (Rank D)! +2 Durability credits. +1 Reflex credit. +2 Firmament credits. ]
And then the obelisk is in sight. The translation stone is back under my arm, still emitting those waves of Firmament that make this Hotspot so much more dangerous — but I suppose that's the point. I wonder how Ahkelios ever found out that he needed the stone for this Hotspot in particular. Was it just luck? Had he just been carrying the stone around because it interested him?
I could see him doing that, somehow.
There's no sign of Naru. I'm almost surprised by how relieved that makes me feel, although I know I'm not exactly out of the woods — Naru might very well only appear after the Hotspot is activated by someone entering it. Given that I haven't sensed him so far and I've been fighting for a solid half-hour, though, I imagine it's unlikely that he'll show up.
Now to time myself carefully.
The Firmament pulses are coming in thirty seconds apart. I can dart in with plenty of time to spare, but I need to leave the translation stone there to start the translation process; I have to assume the stone will be undamaged by the Firmament waves emitted by the obelisk, unless the process takes less than thirty seconds.
...Or maybe I should test it first. Just in case.
I let the corner of the stone brush against one of the Firmament pulses from the obelisk. Thankfully, it seems entirely undamaged, and I breathe a sigh of relief, then steady myself and prepare to run.
Twenty-nine... thirty!
I activate both Triplestep and Firestep, leaving a trail of Firmament flame in my wake as I dash towards the obelisk. As I get closer, I can make out the runic inscriptions that must be the so-called 'ancient language'. I don't waste time trying to decipher it myself — instead, I touch the translation stone to one of the runes, pausing just long enough to make sure the Firmament circle has begun to fill out. Then I leave it there, still touching the obelisk, and dart back as fast as possible.
And now... to wait.
While fighting off more of these Forest Slimes, because they're back, and they're back in full force.
Chapter 1 Prev Next
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Author's Note: A bit of a bridge chapter, but a lot of stuff is coming up soon. Consider this a cooldown, but like, with a bunch of punching.
Writing is going a lot more smoothly now that I'm doing it full-time. My back is still giving me issues and it's a little scary financially, but I'm pretty sure I've got this. Still really appreciate everyone for reading and commenting (I am very slow at checking them because anxiety, but I do check them, and usually fix things, even if I forget to directly respond).
Here's the standard Patreon and RoyalRoad links. Patreon is up to chapter 48, and should hit 51 by the end of the weekend.
Also a friend of mine debuted her novel on RR - The Roads Unseen. It's a story about twins who fuck around with magic and very rapidly find out. Very cool and vaguely existentially terrifying. If you're interested, check it out - I'm trying to help her out since she's not very confident in her writing (she is in fact very good).

My 16F have been single since i was 10 or something for the past couple of years my dad kept asking when will i get a boyfriend and keep asking about my private life, i gently told him not to ask and when it’s the right time i will.
Despite the fact i told him not to ask multiple times, yesterday we had a family gathering for dinner ( that included my aunts and our relatives & friends).
And during the dinner when they ran out of conversations, he looked at me and said oh X when you will bring a boyfriend to the table? I got extreme mad and said well if i didn’t inherit your ugly ass genes he would be with us right now also i can’t believe how desperate my mom was when she accepted to marry you like is the bar this low?
Our friends gasped and my aunt tried to cool it down by saying anyone wants desert?
Couple of hours later my mom talked to me and said i was an asshole and i should never ever talk like this.
Aita given that i told him before not to ask?

I loive in a state when there's only two cities where uber is a big deal. We have an airport where our surges pop up, and it's a set price cap for 24 hours. My husband is a diamond driver with over 3k rides and a near perfect rating/acceptance rate/ cancelation rate. I however have blue status, and I have not done as many rides, maybe half. As it turns out in our city, multiple drivers have a different surge price cap, say I could have $8 and my husband will have $6. We also have talked to other drivers in town and it happens to them as well. It has been like this for months and uber support has basically said oh well...
Is anyone else experiencing this?

Embarrassing Moment! Help
So I occasionally go on a gay chat app. I'm very careful who I talk to or send pics to as I don't really "consider" myself gay but i like to talk to guys occasionally and find new friends. I think someone I know had a clue who I was as they were at a beach in my area(very small area). I went to the store in town an someone passed yelling my name. I couldn't see who it was in time. About hour later on the app I got a message asking " Is this (my name) so I responded about 40 min later after actually seeing the message asking "who"? Then I said my name is Dan with the local opera crew hanging out with a bunch of people , do you wanna come chill? We live in a tourist area with a opera right down the road also and every spring/summer it gets busy an all the people from around the country come here to be a part of the opera show and set. So anyway, next morning I got to work and my buddy pulled up next to me as we always park next to eacother. He said " how's it going (my name)? Then quickly he followed with it was him, his gf, his sister an her friend all on their way BK from the beach and seen me pulling into the store and yelled my name. They live like 35mim away. So I played it off like ooh shit I had no idea who it was cause I couldn't turn my head around fast enough. It was at that moment I knew/had a feeling it was him an his weird sister and her weird girlfriend probably on the gay chat app . My profile pic wasn't anything direct that it was me other then of my upper chest and some of my chin along with my left arm an no visable tattoo. I think they strictly knew they were within couple miles of where I live and it just happened I don't know. All I had was an approx height an 15 lb over my actual weight nothing more on my discription. I added a few pics of some opera stuff that goes on locally and also made my profile info about after opera rehersal how we go to the lake out on the boat with the crew(I don't own a boat or.go to the lake). Then yesterday on the app I made it look like I had to go BK to Massachusetts for few days untill Saturday so that way they would see why I'm off the chart now for few days till I either keep playing the opera role when "he" returns an slowly delete the account shortly after that or just not sign BK in after everyone thinks i went BK to mass for few days? I'm pretty sure I have my buddy like 60% convinced it wasn't me by the way I talked about what I did over the weekend an so on. he wasn't really asking toto many more detailed questions through out the day but I felt like I had some hints. Or I was gonna just put on Facebook, visable only to him an few others to make it look good , that my info was stolen an compromised online WHICH I did mention to him earlier in the week my bank was being weird not taking my auto payments for some reason for most my bills(true story) then once I see him at work I'll elaborate more that someone must of jacked my photo off only fans an was trying to use it to make money themselves on a bunch of weird apps or something ? Then he'll ask " you had an only fans " an I'll just play it off like yeah I messed around on there not knowing I had to put no one has the right to use or promote my photos without my permission an just kinda go that route with it?

I just got my first Apple Watch. It's an SE. I am digging into the sleep tracker and the heart tracker and have downloaded a few apps. I'm trying to get on top of fitness and health this year and am efforting to lose weight.
I just purchased a package deal where I will be going to a clinic to get a DEXA scan, to get my Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) measured, and to test my VO2 Max. I am wondering if there's anyway that I can use these results to improve the accuracy of the watch's calculations for these same measurements.
I also just bought a smart scale that measures body fat and muscle and a few other items and that is sharing data with the watch/Iphone. I'm not sure if I can use the data to improve the accuracy of the scale, although my hope is that the DEXA scan just confirms that the scale is measuring these things accurately or within a couple percentage points as that seems close enough for me.
I am primarily interested in getting the caloric estimates accurate as I've heard that these tend to be way off on most fitness trackers so if there's any chance that I could use the RMR to get my watch to accurately update calorie burn throughout the day that would be ideal.
Also, if you have any favorite apps please do share. I'll be going through the wiki page and recommendations today as well.

So, we already discussed what DC was doing to match the tenor of the early years of the War on Terror: A grim, smarter-than-it-thinks miniseries full of gratuitous rape that was meant to take the shine off the Silver Age by showing the darker side of its greatest heroes. Marvel, on the other hand, was trying to find a way to capture the zeitgeist of a post-9/11 era of existential threats, constant government surveillance, and the idea that if you weren’t with America, you were against it. A Captain America storyline saw Cap wrestle with the very concept of Guantanamo Bay; like any story arc that involves Cap doubting whether America lives up to its ideals, this made certain conservatives pissy, to the point that bad movie cataloguer Michael Medved wrote an entire article asking if Cap was a traitor. Avengers Disassembled briefly saw the Avengers face down their demons, as the Scarlet Witch goes crazy (again) and starts killing team members, her reality manipulations causing fault lines to form among Marvel’s greatest superteam. But there hadn’t yet been a storyline that would tie the entire Marvel Universe together with the burning question, “Which side are you on?”
Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with the Sokovia Accords. We’d be a lot better off if it did.
Part 1: Mark Millar’s March to the C-Word
Content Warning: Sexual assault. None of this is germane to the topic of the drama, so feel free to skip ahead to Part 1.5 if you don’t want to deal with this. Tl;dr: Mark Millar, the writer of the event, has a near pathological need to be a 3edgy5u contrarian.
Every comics crossover is ultimately a chance for one creative in the stable to shine or falter. The editors pick a writer who has turned out dependable work and give them a chance to try to alter the status quo but good. And for Civil War, Marvel’s EiC Joe Quesada decided the best person to lead the charge was Ultimates writer Mark Millar.
But who is Millar? Well, we could say “edgelord” and leave it at that, but we’re trying to dig deeper. Millar came up in comics alongside fellow Scot Grant Morrison, long before Morrison said the only time they want to bump into Millar on the streets of Glasgow is while going at 100 miles per hour. This antipathy is alleged to have stemmed from Millar copping several ideas from Morrison that went into Superman: Red Son. But after getting a start on Superman Adventures and as a cowriter on parts of Morrison’s JLA run, Millar soon branched out to WildStorm, where he took over The Authority from departing creatowritesex pest Warren Ellis.
The reason I bring up Red Son (for those non-geeks, an alternative universe comic premised on “What if Superman’s rocket had landed in Soviet Russia?”) is to frame a constant refrain about Mark Millar. He has good high-concept ideas… which often get trammeled up in an almost Pavlovian urge to shock, disturb, and/or titillate the reader. For instance, in The Authority, Ellis had introduced Apollo and Midnighter, two close companions who just happened to share the rough power sets and demeanors of Superman and Batman, with a few tweaks. Then he revealed they were boyfriends, which was a pretty bold move for a late Nineties comic book full of widescreen action and lovingly-rendered eviscerations.
In Millar’s first arc on the title, centered on a villainous Jack Kirby clone sending out a team of baddies who totally aren’t the Avengers, Apollo is subdued and is strongly implied to have been raped by someone who’s not Captain America. Apollo gets revenge by destroying EvilCap’s spinal column with his laser vision, then leaving him to the tender mercies of Midnighter, who is strongly implied to have sodomized him with a jackhammer.
In case you can’t tell, Millar loved him some rape. And it kept showing up in his creator-owned titles as well, all of which were basically written as Hollywood pitch docs. Wanted asks the question, “What if the supervillains won and secretly ruled the world from behind the scenes?” Well, an Eminem clone would take the opportunity to step into his dead villainous dad’s shoes and commit a lot of rape (yeah, there’s a reason the movie version replaced this with basically the Euthanatos from Mage: the Ascension getting orders from a magic loom). Chosen asks the question, “What if Jesus were born today?” Well, in a blatantly obvious twist, it turns out he’s actually the Antichrist, and part of his journey into realizing his evil nature involves being raped by all the demons of Hell.
It’s not that Millar can’t write innocent or restrained; he got started on the Superman: the Animated Series comic spin-off, and some of his titles such as Huck and Starlight have been praised for being relatively wholesome (keep in mind Huck is basically “What if Superman was Forrest Gump?” when I say “relatively”). And, as mentioned above, his works are made for high-concept log lines. You might recognize some of his various pitch docs: Kick-Ass, The Secret Service (source for the Kingsman movies), and, as mentioned above, Wanted. It’s just there’s this unctuous contrarian streak to a lot of his titles, a tendency to focus on venality, grotesquerie, and sodomy, with an air of pop culture edge. This also leaked into his image outside of his writing, with comments like “Games are for pedos” and ventures like the creator-owned comics periodical CLiNT (yes, the kerning is intentional). This streak continues to this day, as The Magic Order, a title that emerged from his deal with Netflix, features a magical escapologist who, she feels it very important to tell the reader in a direct monologue, escaped her own abortion. Bottom line, Millar has a sense of vision, but it’s betrayed at times by this reflexive desire to prove he’s smarter than the reader, to rub your face in the contradictions and make you a party to the artifice of it all. Usually with a dash of rape.
But at Marvel, Millar was riding the lightning of the Ultimate Universe. His Ultimates title was drawing on the wide-screen action image of JLA and The Authority, creating the cinematic language that would come to define the MCU. The choice to fantasy cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury is why we have Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. He also painted the Hulk as a cannibalistic monster, cemented Hank Pym’s reputation as a wifebeater, and gave us Captain America yelling “Surrender? Do you think this A on my head stands for France?”, so let’s just keep that in perspective.
But the Ultimate Universe was its own pocket universe. Millar was being tapped to write a story for Earth-616, the main Marvel Universe. And he had a vision:

“I opted instead for making the superhero dilemma something a little different. People thought they were dangerous, but they did not want a ban. What they wanted was superheroes paid by the federal government like cops and open to the same kind of scrutiny. It was the perfect solution and nobody, as far as I'm aware, has done this before.”

Yeah. About that.
Part 1.5: What Has Come Before
Ultimately, the crux of Civil War is something that has been explored lightly in the past at Marvel: The idea that, instead of being unlicensed vigilantes who decide the best solution of societal issues is to beat up assholes in spandex, superheroes become licensed government officers that register their true identities with Uncle Sam and solve societal issues by beating up assholes in spandex. In Marvel’s history, it hasn’t gone well. The reality of government liaisons to superhero bodies has ranged from Valerie Cooper, who worked with government mutant team X-Factor but still found herself backing the genocidal Sentinel program as a big “Yeah, but what if…?”, to Henry Peter Gyrich, an inflamed obstructionist asshole who had to be held back from flipping a switch that would depower every superhuman individual on Earth. The idea of heroes themselves bristling against a government they disagreed with had a long history, as there was a period where Steve Rogers quit being Captain America, and the government had to find a replacement while he rode around on a motorcycle in a surprisingly slutty costume. But the idea of registering with the government has usually ended up on the “No” side due to one big cohort at Marvel: Mutants.
Ever since the days of Chris Claremont, a general conceit of the Marvel Universe is that mutants are a stand-in for your minority group of choice. Hated and feared, born different and feeling alienated, painted as an existential menace and threat to the status quo. Of course, it’s long been pointed out that the metaphor breaks down on the general grounds that, say, gays can’t shoot laser beams out of their eyes. I have my thoughts on that which I might share in the comments if someone pokes me hard enough, but it’s been general editorial consensus that people with powers, especially those of persecuted minorities, being compelled to share their true names, addresses, and natures with the federal government is a “That train’s never late!” move. Not only that, it’s a slippery slope. The classic X-Men story “Days of Future Past” is entirely premised on the idea that a government program of genocidal robots built to wipe out mutants will eventually run out of mutants… and then start turning on humans who could give birth to mutants, and then it’s Skynet all over again.
Another running meme in the Marvel Universe is that the X-Men usually exist in a Schrodinger’s cat situation with the rest of the superhero universe, both coexisting and in their own worlds. Yes, mutants have served on the Avengers, and yes, Thor intervened when the Morlocks were nearly wiped out in the sewers under New York. But Captain America, for all his proud statements of living up to America’s ideals, has a habit of missing the plot whenever the US government (or Canada, seat of all the Marvel Universe’s governmental evils - no, really) decides it’s Genocide O’Clock. And when the mutant nation of Genosha was completely wiped out by said murder robots, the Avengers seemed to be all “New phone who dis?” But when the two do intersect, there’s usually support for the mutants. One story in Fantastic Four had Reed Richards - Mr. Fantastic, stretchy man, greatest genius in the Marvel Universe, guy who’s probably being cucked by a fish-man - get tapped by the US government to make a device that detects mutants and other people with powers. He does… and then uses it to show why the government probably doesn’t want it, as it pings several members of Congress as having just enough genetic variation to qualify as “mutants,” even if they don’t have powers.
All in all, while the argument has some merit, for years, Marvel has come down on the position that asking people with powers to reveal their identities to the federal government is something that could go really bad if somebody with a hate-on for superheroes ends up in power. Something that would never happen oh yeah it totally did. But before it all went to Hell, Civil War at least gave an opportunity to reexamine the concept and see if it had merit.
It might have. But not with this argument.
Part 1.75: What Else Has Happened Before?
And now, some things that will ultimately give context for what happens next:

• In the pages of Thor, all of Asgard eventually runs headlong into Ragnarok. Thor and the rest of the Asgardians give their lives to save the earth, taking Thor off the board… for now.
• As mentioned above, the Avengers experience a critical fault due to Wanda going batshit (a common lament). With Avengers Mansion destroyed and the team at odds, it is eventually reunited under Tony Stark, who put the Avengers up in a tower he built.
• Nick Fury has vanished due to doing some skullduggery in the pages of the miniseries Secret War (no, not Secret Wars, this is different). Acting head of SHIELD, the all-purpose super spy squad of Marvel, is Maria Hill, who can’t seem to draw her pistol without shooting herself in the foot.
• Due to Wanda continuing to go batshit, the House of M crossover event ends with her casting a spell: “No more mutants.” While the damage is staunched, Earth-616’s population of mutants (which was recently established to be somewhere around 16 million) is reduced to 200, the rest being depowered or dying as a result of being depowered. This was because, as Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said, the idea of mutants being everywhere made them “boring.” The fact that mutants were starting to be written less as a minority stand-in and more as an actual minority group with fashion, culture, music, and neighborhoods might have had something to do with that. From the wake of this event emerges Sally Floyd, a journalist whose own mutant daughter died before the mass depowering due to having a power that was more curse than blessing. The series Generation M follows her as the viewpoint character as she investigates the stories of former mutants.

Part 2: Connecticut Can’t Catch a Break
The big kick-off for Civil War involves the New Warriors, a team of teen heroes who have, as of a recently canceled series, been trying to make it big as reality TV stars. They get in a fight with a bunch of villains in the small town of Stamford, CT, when exploding villain Nitro goes positively nuclear, resulting in a blast much bigger than any he’s generated. [1] Not only does this mostly wipe out the New Warriors (save for kinetic energy-absorbing goofball Speedball), but it also happens to hit a nearby school. In the end, 612 people are dead, many of them children, and the nation wants answers.
With public opinion turning against the New Warriors, former member Hindsight starts leaking secret identities to get the heat off his back. This only makes things worse. Secret identities have only recently stopped being a thing for some heroes: Captain America only came out a few years ago, it was only recently that Tony Stark stopped pretending Iron Man was his bodyguard, and Daredevil was almost outed in the pages of his book. But something needs to be done, so Tony helps work with Congress to pass the Super Human Registration Act, which requires that all people with powers or working as vigilantes register their identities with the government to receive training and oversight. If you don’t? Believe it or not, jail, right away.
Fault lines quickly develop in the superhero community. While Tony is leading the “pro” side, alongside Reed Richards (yeah, we’ll get to that), Captain America, usually painted as the embodiment of the dream of America despite its compromised history and many sins, is against it. He’s lived through Richard Nixon being a secret fascist and shooting himself in the head after being fingered as mastermind of a vast criminal conspiracy ([yes, that happened](SE02.jpg) ); he knows how badly this could go in the wrong hands. Needless to say, Maria Hill and SHIELD hear his concerns, understand his problems with it, and are willing to iron out the kinks through reasoned debate.
Just kidding. Before the law has even been signed, Maria sics SHIELD’s elite Cape-Killers squad on Cap with the intent of getting him behind bars. Cap swiftly goes underground and starts his own group of anti-registration superheroes.
The fight continues for the next few issues. Spider-Man, caught in the middle, reveals himself to be Peter Parker at a press conference, declaring his support for the SHRA. Doctor Strange is so powerful that he tells the government to fuck off, and somehow, Maria Hill doesn’t decide to go charging up his asshole. Ben Grimm, the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing, is so sick of all the conflict he goes to France. But things are still at a stalemate, and while SHIELD may be acting like a bunch of merry assholes, it seems like there’s a debate to be had that could still be resolved reasonably… except for one key factor.
Part 3: I Fought the Law, and the Law… Huh?
No one ever really defined what the Super Human Registration Act, the legislation that tore the Marvel Universe’s superhero community asunder, did. Every book that had an issue that touched on the event seemed to have a different understanding of its principles, as well as just how fascist it might be in the long run. In the pages of She-Hulk, attorney Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk argues the law is a net good, as it gives heroes the backing and resources they need to not have to go it alone, while also having some measure of government oversight. In the pages of Civil War Frontline (oh, and we’ll get back to Civil War Frontline, don’t you worry), Wonder Man is told by the government that he needs to do a job for them, and if he refuses, well, one thousand years dungeon.
Which then leads into the other issue behind the SHRA. Namely, that everyone in favor was either starting to swing towards fascism or embracing bootlicking as a lifestyle, not a kink. In the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, Peter asks Reed Richards, who has always bucked authority and once stopped the US government from doing something just like this with mutants, why he’s pro-registration. Reed then reveals that an uncle who has never been mentioned before was called before HUAC; he refused to name names, his career was ruined, and he killed himself. From this, Reed - the man who stole a rocketship because the government said “no” to his planned space voyage - has learned that the government is always right, especially when they could step on your neck (this was received so badly that a later comic revealed he’d actually borrowed the concept of psychohistory from Asimov’s Foundation, he’d made it work somehow, and his calculations showed that this was the only way to avoid a greater disaster). This comic also revealed that people who were in violation of the SHRA were sent to a literal extradimensional Gitmo, a prison in the Negative Zone that later comics would reveal was overseen by… Captain Marvel. No, not that one. No, not that one. The Kree superhero Captain Mar-Vell, who had famously died of cancer decades before. How did he come back from the dead? Fuck if we know.
This “the law says what you want it to say” approach spread across various books and miniseries meant to cross over into the event. In the pages of a crossover mini between the Runaways and the Young Avengers, this meant SHIELD Cape-Killer squads were using lethal force against teenagers. The second-to-last issue of the mini ends with several members of both teams in extradimensional Gitmo, about to be dissected by a guy who’s horny for torture. The fact that all the captive heroes were the queer members of both teams? Total coincidence. Honestly.
So, it quickly becomes clear that the editorial control on this event is less than cohesive. There are different ideas all over as to what the SHRA does, and some of those ideas are tacking pretty fashy. But if the law is being painted as that bad, then clearly, there must be some greater statement of freedom vs. security. Maybe Millar’s really painting a subversive picture of what happens when you trade liberty for control, right?
Part 4: Why Do You Hate the Good Thing?
After the publication of Civil War #3, Millar would say in an interview he was actually pro-registration. I can’t find that interview, but here’s a similar sentiment shared years later:

“Weirdly, some of the other writers would often make Tony the bad guy, which I thought was a strange choice because I was actually on Tony’s side... In the real world, if somebody had superpowers, I’d like them to be registered in the same way that somebody who has a gun has to carry a license. But a gun can kill several people while a superhero can kill several thousands of people, so on a pragmatic level I’m 100% on Tony’s side. Maybe on a romantic level, Cap’s position makes sense but I don’t think anybody in the real world would really want that."”

And again, here’s the thing: He’s not entirely wrong. As said above, the idea of civil liberties for all and “free to me you and me” falls down a little when one of your neighbors can blow up a city block by thinking real hard. But Millar is fighting against years of ideological inertia in the Marvel Universe, as well as painting Captain America, the guy who has always embodied the ideal of a righteous, just America, as in the wrong. He needs to make one hell of an argument.
So here’s what happens in the pages of Civil War #3 to sell the audience on the SHRA:

• Thor comes back from the dead… and he’s on Tony’s side! Well, not really. Tony and Reed both realized that having one of the most beloved gods of the Marvel Universe come out on their side would be a big win… if only he wasn’t dead. So, they cloned him. Or rather, they T-800’d him, putting cloned divine flesh on a robot skeleton. But I’m sure he’s perfectly under control, and - oh, he just killed Goliath. In the next issue, one of Marvel’s black male heroes, frozen at the size of a small townhouse in death, will be buried in a gigantic ditch, wrapped in a tarp and chains. You’d think Hank Pym could grow a large enough coffin, at least.
• With Cap and the anti-registration side escaping once again, Tony decides he needs a dedicated team that can track down fugitive superhumans. To do so, he creates a new version of the Thunderbolts, a concept long associated with “villains acting like heroes.” And who does he put on this team? Venom, the Spider-Man villain who eats people’s brains; Bullseye, the Daredevil villain who will kill anyone for the lulz; and Norman Osborn, a.k.a. The Green Goblin, who famously murdered Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

Again. Tony’s in the right. The SHRA is good.
Part 5: Yadda, Yadda, Yadda
The next few issues of Civil War might best be described as “They fight, and fight, and fight and fight and fight.” The anti-registration side picks up The Punisher, Marvel’s most avowed murderer of criminals - and Cap is somewhat shocked but not entirely surprised when two minor villains join the anti-registration side and Frank promptly kills them on sight. Spider-Man starts realizing things are weird on the pro-reg side and defects, after he has set his entire life on fire. The X-Men have continued to stay out of this whole mess. In the lead-up, Emma Frost called Tony out on the Avengers’ complete absence when Genosha got nuked. Later, Carol Danvers (then Ms. Marvel, now Captain Marvel) will show up at the Xavier School to pitch the SHRA just after a massive terrorist attack kills dozens of students. Emma responds by telepathically dogwalking her.
By the final issue of the miniseries, the SHRA has expanded out into the Fifty States Initiative, wherein each state gets its own superteam. There’s a big final battle, Hercules kills Robo-Thor, and Cap nearly takes out Tony, only to be stopped by… the heroes of 9/11. No shit, Captain America is subdued by cops, firefighters, and paramedics. And when that happens, Cap finally takes a look around, realizes their big ideological street brawl has resulted in collateral damage, and surrenders. The SHRA wins, though Tony feels a little bad about it. Cap is ready to stand trial and to argue that, while he may have done something wrong, he did it for the right reasons.
Once again: Yeah. About that.
Part 6: MySpace Tom Didn’t Die For This
Running alongside Civil War is Civil War Frontline, a street-level book written by Paul Jenkins that managed to capture this world-breaking conflict through the eyes of people on the street. Though it has side stories, its main leads are Ben Urich, Peter Parker’s journalist buddy at The Daily Bugle, and the aforementioned Sally Floyd. Throughout the series, they start to realize there’s a story underneath the SHRA, as if somebody is playing the angles.
Before we talk about that conclusion, let’s talk about a side story. Remember how we said part of the comics community saw Identity Crisis as a driven effort to make things less “wacky” and intentionally darken the DCU? Well, that same tonal approach led to one of the more laughable moments of a pretty laughable arc. See, despite the fact that, as established, it was Nitro who blew up Stamford, it’s Speedball, the only survivor of the New Warriors, that views himself as responsible and is held up as a scapegoat by the general public. In addition, the blast screwed up his powers. Now, he doesn’t absorb and reflect kinetic energy; rather, he generates energy based on pain. So, he builds himself a new, extreme outfit lined with 612 spikes, one for each person who died in Stamford. This will drive his crusade to make things right - not as Speedball… but as Penance.
It was so laughably DeviantArt “OC do not steal” that no one could take it seriously. Look what you did, you took a perfectly good goofball and gave him an emo streak. The turn is swiftly mocked in other Marvel books, and it’s eventually revealed that Speedball still had his original powerset and always intended to put Nitro in the Goofy Suit of Dark Inner Torment as punishment for his crimes. But this turn gives you a sense of the tone and heft Jenkins was bringing to the proceedings.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Ben and Sally follow the thread as Namor, as he is wont to do, declares war on the surface world after an Atlantean diplomat is shot. But it turns out the assassination was arranged by Norman Osborn, who decided it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission and manipulated Atlantis into war so that Tony could have another piece of evidence for getting superhumans on a leash. And the two journalists deduce that, on some level, Tony had to know this would be an inevitable outcome of giving state backing to an unhinged mogul who dresses like a Power Rangers villain. Weighing what to do with this information, Ben and Sally, who are kind of sick of the collateral damage by this point, sit on it while they go in for an interview with Captain America, now in custody and willing to tell his side of the story.
And then. And then. The monologue. If you want a lesson in how to assassinate a character in 30 seconds or less, this monologue is a great example. Sally Floyd calls Captain America out as completely divorced from American values. Now, again, Captain America has long served as the beating liberal heart of the Marvel Universe. He has always represented an America that reckons with its legacy of things like internment camps, Manifest Destiny, and Jim Crow, in order to transcend these scars and embody the promise offered by Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus, carved on the side of the Statue of Liberty. Why is he out of touch with Americans at the dawn of the 21st century?
Well, he’s never heard of MySpace. [2] He doesn’t watch NASCAR. He doesn’t follow American Idol. There are pop culture moments that have aged like milk; this one had all the permanence of an ice cream cone in a blast furnace. But despite the inanity of Floyd’s argument - and trust me, there are fan edits dedicated to Cap pointing out how full of shit this argument is - it’s clear it represents something else. This is a post-9/11 world. Fuck civil liberties, we have a no-fly list and Gitmo, and if the American people really cared, they’d do something other than watch Simon Cowell read aspiring singers to filth. What does Captain America stand for in this moment of crisis?
Nothing. Because he just looks away from Sally Floyd. No doubt thinking, “Oh my God this bitch.” But to underline the argument in question, Sally storms out of the interview, Ben in tow. She still has that information on Norman Osborn’s false flag operation… and while she and Ben confront Tony on everything that went down, they decide the story should never see the light of day. Because they wouldn’t dare jeopardize the SHRA, because security is more important than the truth.
Oh. And then Cap gets shot. And dies. He totally dies (except he doesn’t but we’ll get to that). If ever there was an unintentional thesis statement for this event, running in the late stages of the Bush era, it would be this: “It’s better to trust that the powers that be who oversee the new America will keep you safe, even when they stage false flag operations, stick you in a gulag, and put their trust in monsters. All that civil liberty stuff was the old America. And the old America was hopeless. It wasn’t even on MySpace.”
Epilogue: Consequences Keep Consequencing
As you can tell from that last paragraph, a lot of the fan reception to Civil War likely had a lot to do with the period. This was the Bush era, a time where you were for America or against it. We were in the shadow of the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and widespread wiretaps, paranoid about what civil liberty we’d be asked to put on the pyre next in the name of Freedom. A story all about the warm, clenching fist of government control that tells you to ignore the collateral damage… well, it wasn’t great for the cultural moment.
The ideas of Civil War aren’t necessarily bad ones. I frame Cap as the liberal dream of what America could be, but there are good arguments to be made that America has never been that and Cap is just copium for liberals. His most recent title, Sentinel of Liberty, opens with Steve saying he is out of touch with the average American - not because he doesn’t watch NASCAR, but because he’s a WWII veteran who looks maybe 30 years old at most and whose best friends are all superheroes or spies. A narrative that has him on the wrong side of the issue and detonates his beliefs isn’t impossible, but it probably shouldn’t be one where people who got powers due to a fluke of birth or a radiation accident are told by the government, “Join with us or we’ll send supervillains after you.” Hell, as the Civil War movie proves, there is a way to tell a story about a superhero community torn in half by the idea of mandatory registration as government-controlled actors, and just why people would think that could be a bad idea (“Hey, remember when a good chunk of our intelligence apparatus turned out to be Nazi stay behinds?”).
But in the context of the era, and coupled with the execution, Civil War felt like a hard sell, and you could feel the thumb pressing on the scale every second while reading it. The moral center of the Marvel Universe is wrong, the winning side employs sadistic murderers and has an extradimensional Gitmo, and the writer is telling you that any sane individual would be on Team Green Goblin Employer.
So how did that all work out? Well…

• With Cap seemingly dead, shot by his brainwashed love interest Sharon Carter as part of a plot by the Red Skull, Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier becomes the new Cap. Only it turns out Steve wasn’t killed, but shot with a time bullet that Billy Pilgrims his ass. He eventually comes back.
• Thor comes back, finds out what Tony did, and beats his ass all the way across post-Katrina New Orleans.
• The Secret Invasion event happens next, which leads to Skrull infiltrators hitting everything (this is also the explanation for Captain Mar-Vell’s miraculous resurrection: He was a Skrull all along). With Tony caught with his pants down and Norman Osborn seeming to save the day, Norman - who has been losing his shit for some time - takes over the Initiative and forms his own fascist cabal, HAMMER. To try and stop Norman from learning everything on every hero ever, Tony goes on the run and actually starts deleting his own brain, which he then reassembles with a backup from before anyone even thought of the SHRA. The fact that getting rid of Tony’s “Oops I did a fascism” period came out alongside Iron Man hitting theaters is a coincidence, I’m sure.

As for Spider-Man? It might not shock you, but having a hero without the resources of Tony Stark out himself to the world carries liabilities. An assassin who tries to kill Peter instead hits Aunt May, and it appears she’ll die of her injuries. All this leads to One More Day… and if you thought the fans hated Civil War? Oh, BABY.
[1] This is eventually explored in the pages of Wolverine, of all books, as Wolverine decides maybe somebody should track down the person who actually killed hundreds of children. It’s revealed that Nitro was given power-boosting drugs by the CEO of Damage Control, Marvel’s designated “clean up after the super-battle” corporation, as a way of generating business. In a sign of how little this matters, Wolverine tells Maria Hill to her face that the person responsible for a mass casualty event is the pawn of a powerful conspiracy, and she basically says, “Not my problem.” Cobie Smulders must thank the gods that her Maria Hill is written as somebody with basic human decency.
[2] Hilariously, when Sally Floyd was brought back during Nick Spencer’s Captain America run because no one had piled enough dung on her corpse, this line was retconned to her asking him about Twitter. Given everything Elon’s been doing lately, we’ll see if that ages just as poorly.

Feature mix in the link below:
https://on.soundcloud.com/PJBRW
What does "Arhlo" mean and how'd you come up with it?
Arhlo: My oldest child's name is Thomas Arlo. There are a lot of Arlo's in the producer hemisphere so I doubled down and threw in the "h" to help make my name unique.
So speaking on that is it true you produced lullabies for your son during his infancy?
Arhlo: Yes. I felt creative enough and alert enough to do this. I knew what lullabies were. Very simple melodies. The point of a lullaby is to make someone sleep, no? I did that and made a soundtrack to my (then) infants life to help them go to sleep. I actually made 5 more lullabies when my second was born. I played them once for him and deleted them forever. I am weird about keeping my songs out in the open. I don't like attention.
Now digging a little deeper into YOU, you went through the Icon Collective course, ultimately do you feel it was a worthy experience, would you recomend it to other producers who are on the fence about it?
Arhlo: YES. 100%. Granted, I didn't physically attend Icon, but my experience has made me who I am today. Icon will throw out ideas you thought to be canon, and then shake up your life more. I was able to nuture and grow my strength as a producer through their curriculum. Icon was the difference between wanting to do something, and doing the f*cking thing.
You also went to school for jazz as well, yeah?
Arhlo: Correct. I spent almost 3 years going to college for Jazz performance. That was my major when I left. I grew up in Connecticut, and subsequently went to school in the state as well. I used to sit through jazz history classes, then take the train into NYC to go to jazz clubs like 55 Bar and Smalls and hear some of the greatest players in the world. Unfortunately 55 is now closed but I have fond memories of taking $50 to take the MTA into Grand Central, walking an hour down to the village, and going to one of the aforementioned clubs to spend my last dollar to hear these cats play. It is still the Mecca for musicians. No doubt about it.
I heard a rumor you had an ep mixed and mastered by Mayhem?
Arhlo: Yes the EP is on my private soundcloud. I just didn't feel it was right to release it at that time. Maybe now might be the time. I don't know. My barometer for music culture is so out of touch I didn't even know Alison Wonderland was pregnant until a week ago
So now that we have our more basic questions out of the way; we are gonna get a little personal, because we know you personally.
Arhlo: Understood. Cue the Shaq meme.
We have been to A LOT of shows together, that night at tabernacle, was waiting with me an hour and a half worth it?(you bought those tickets)
Arhlo: Yes. We saw an amazing show. Rickyxsan and NGHTMRE? Are you kidding me? Then we waited in the pouring rain. Luckily we caught Tyler coming out of the venue with Ricky and got to chat with them. Between Tyler blowing up and Ricky holding it down for the underground, we had an awesome time picking brains and taking names. (NGHTMRE) is an outlier in terms of mainstream artists, he is a consummate professional. He told us that he gave away the majority of his profits to increase the value of the show for the audience, something that is not done today at all by artists at his level. He would use his profit and throw it into the production, so the lights, sound, and overall experience were pieces that were curated and amplified due to his hard work and what he contributed to the production.
So when we talk about great djs, what seperates, a good dj from a bad dj?
Arhlo: A bad DJ plays what people want to hear; a good DJ plays what they want to hear. If the two sync up in some sort of serendipitous way, that's a great dj.
If you could have a conversation with yourself on the day you started pursuing music, what would you say?
Arhlo: I would tell myself to make music that makes myself happy. Don't try to be someone you're not, be the creative that you organically are. That's how one gets a unique sound and it's how you develop and evolve as a producer.
Whats a piece of advice you were never given, but try to pass on to other DJs?
Arhlo: The piece of advice that I try to pass on is that you're going to be faced with a lot of rejection. A musician I admire once told me you will fail 9/10 times, but that 1 time will make all the difference. Just brush off the rejection and move on. There's no time to dwell on rejection.
Who has helped you the most or supported you the most, this is the time to shoutout and thank your folks!
Arhlo: First off I want to thank YOU. You have supported me since the day we met. You're a true friend and fan and will always be there to support and give advice. You're honest and extremely helpful when it comes to bouncing ideas around and showing you WIP's. Other "mentors" I've had that have helped me get to where I am as a producer and DJ today include Protohype, my first mentor at Icon, Mayhem, for being the premier Atlanta producer and DJ, Pryzms, who has had an amazing journey here in Atlanta, and Blvk Sheep. I've taken several lessons from Blvk Sheep over the years and he has great knowledge when it comes to not only the craft, but the industry as well.