How did padme die star wars

I was cheated on in 2019 and was able to get over it, I was able to be strong and didn't wanna hurt myself over a girl that cheated on me. In 2020 I got into a relationship with another girl and she broke up with me recently, there was other problems in her life that made her unhappy and unfortunately I was also part of it. I won't get into all that, I'm just feeling really shit right now. Every time I think about her the more it hurts. For her she left me on good terms, I held it all in and put up a strong front for her but deep down I am a fucking wreck, She threw me away like a piece of trash thats how it feels. My feelings are all fucked I can't trust another woman again in this life time. I know how stupid it is to feel this way but I can't shake it off. I feel like a ticking time bomb waiting to exploded. I don't drink or smoke but I want to do all of it. what ever kills me fastest I want them all. I'm a coward and I dont want to die a painful death I dont want my family or friends to feel sorry for me but I really really feel like just disappearing. It hurts so much thinking about how she will be with someone else and I won't be there. I loved her grandmas and siblings and they loved me. I loved her as much as any man could ever loved a woman yet I wasnt fucking enough. I want to die and not feel this way. I can try to move on but I did really loved her and waking up knowing she wont be there terrifies me. I want to beg her to come back. threaten her I will kill myself if she leaves me as pathetic as it sounds. but they are just thoughts that I lock away. I just felt betrayed again she said shes not leaving to go into another relationship or cus of another guy but I can't trust any of those she did cheat me by going back on her words. ahhhh fuck I don't even know what Im saying, I just want to jump of a bridge and exit this world. I want to fuck off and never care about any of this shit. I'm handling it well so far and I think but I dont know how long I can continue this.

The Rock House
I am a 28 year old female. The story I’m about to tell you happened back in 2016 with my best friend Chris
Now every since the day Chris and I met we have always got ourselves in the dumbest things ever. I mean Chris ran away once and had my nerves all messed up. But He came back because he had no money. We were not the smartest teens but we still enjoyed life.
So one summer night Chris and I were hanging and we were trying to think of a place to explore (like we always did). At the time I told him I’ve never been to the old Rock House In Greenwood South Carolina. ( Now before I get started let me give you a little History on the Rock house. A man named Thomas “Tom” Payne Tolbert built a “Fire Proof House” in 1926. The fireproof house was constructed entirely from stone, concrete, glass, and steel.After years of family homes burning down. Tolbert lived in the detached kitchen and used the large house to store family heirlooms. Tolbert lived his later years in isolation.) The now-crumbling fortress is accessible only by foot, and no one has ever lived inside its walls. You can look up way more about the History online if you like.
No back to my story. I’ve always been told the Rock House has many spirits in and around it but like I said at the time I’ve never been to it. So with that said. Chris and I took my cousins car and headed out to the Old Rock House. I’ve heard of people going in the day time but never heard people say they went at night. We being dumb went at night because why not. Ghost and spirits never bothered me to much being that I’ve seen them my whole life.
Once we pull up to the woods and park on the side of the road I get the bad feeling run all over my body. I sit there for a moment. I believe Chris sees this look on my face and ask if I still want to do this. Something is telling me not to get out but at the same time I want to see this place even at night.
“Yeah let’s go see how scary this place is” I told him. “Hell yeah let’s do it!” he replied. We get out and start walking threw the woods. As we are walking we have our phones out for light and we are making jokes acting silly like we always do. We can never take anything seriously no matter what. As we are walking we don’t realize how quite it is to be in the woods… at night… in the middle of summer…
We find our way to the front of the house. Chris is in front of me and we are looking at the house. No front door and no windows. All you can see is pure darkness. For some reason I just can’t move even though Chris is walking to what used to be the door. At this moment I realize we are in complete darkness and there are no sounds. No animals, no bugs no wind or anything. Just pure silence. Then out of the corner of my eye I see something in the top left window. But before I completely look I hear something to the left of me and I look over. But I see nothing. Only the darkness. A feeling of dread falls over me but nothing is there. Chris is now at the door of the house and looks inside. I look at the windows and there it is. Something is there in the window looking down at me. My body turns cold. Those eyes. I’ll never forget those eyes burning a hole in my soul. Bright yellow redish eyes like fire. All of a sudden I hear Chris say “Oh Hell No” He turns to run to me but my body is still frozen. He grabs my wrist and pulls me to run. He never lets me go. As we are running we are jumping over falling trees and everything on the ground that people have left over time. As we run I realize something is running beside us and I don’t dare to look back.
My body is now in pilot mood as Chris has the grip still on my wrist pulling me. My mind is blank and my heart is racing. At one point I feel like I can feel the breath of what ever is chasing us.
The moment we make it to the car everything comes back to me and I’m back in control of my mind and body. We jump In the car and Chris goes to start the car he has is face covered in the string wheel as he tries to start the car... but… it’s dead! THE CAR IS DEAD! We start freaking out with my head buried between my legs and Chris still hiding his face I yell out “THIS IS IT CHRIS THIS IS HOW WE DIE! THIS IS WHY US WHITE PEOPLE DIE IN MOVIES BECAUSE WE DO DUMB SHIT LIKE THIS!” Chris yells back at me “Shut up we are not going to die the car will start!” I can still feel this thing outside of the car. Its just there. Is this why there are so many spirits here? Does it take the souls of people who it has caught come here? I feel it looking at us. Something wants me to look at it but at the same times a voice in my head is telling me not to. I want to cry.
The car starts and Chris tries to speed off. We start going dowm the road but then… one of the ties blew. We are now on the side of the road again and we just sit there not wanting to get out. It’s quite again. The feeling of being watched is still there. Luckily for us a guy in a truck pulls up behind us. I feel safe right now. The guy pulls over and helps Chris change the tire. I hold my phone as a light with my back to the woods. I still have that feeling. I want to turn and see what is there but I dare not to. Something is telling me not to look.
After the tire gets fixed we head to the Huddle House close by to calm down. The poor lady working that night sees something is wrong and with what little money we have the lady helps us pay for a meal.
The next few days Strange things start happening around my house. For example I’m in the kitchen fixing something for lunch. My roommate and I are talking like normal and the cutting board goes flying across the kitchen. See gives me this looks and says. “See what you caused! Shit keeps happening for no reason all because you want to visit haunted places.” I pick up the cutting board. At this point I feel like I need to make things right. I've always been told that if you disturb the dead that you have to make things right. So with that being said. That weekend I go see some friends who doesn’t live for from the Rock House and tell them I need to go there so we do. This time it’s full daylight. Once we get there I still have this feeling but I don’t say a word. Once we get to the house my friends go in to look around. They explore the place. Inside and out. I look to the left of me and see nothing but the feeling is there. My body is weak. As I walk in I look in the direction that Chris saw something at. Then I look into the room to the left of me and see the room is full of designs in paint all over the room. The whole house is covered the same way. But there is something about this one room. I walk into the room. There is a Pentagram with all the markings around it. I walk over to it and examine it closely.
I walk around it seeing if it’s done right and to my eyes I see that it is. I yell out to my friends “Hey I think someone tried to summon a demon or something!” As soon as the words leave my mouth something comes crashing down. I nope the hell out of there and just start running out of the house sadly leaving my friends inside not meaning to. All I do is run through the woods yelling “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!” I don’t stop until I’m out of the woods.
My friends come after me wondering what is going on so I tell them about the other night and what just happened as well. At this point I just want to leave. We all get into the car. The friend driving goes to start the car… it’s dead… just like the other night but in a different car. My mind goes back to the other night this big dark creature comes to mind for some reason. I never seen it before. Was it the thing chasing us that night? Was it putting itself in my mind to scare me more? So many questions. I try my best not to freak out. I called my roommate to come pick us up. As we are waiting a car pulls up. He must live on this road and knows what happened. He says every time someone goes to the house their car is dead when they get back. He helps jump start the car and we go down the road. I see my roommate and I jump out of the car and jump into mine. I speed off as fast as I can wanting to get as far away from this place at possible. My friends meet me at my house and I made a promise to my self to never go back to the Rock House.
For some reason Chris and I stopped hanging out. We didn’t get in a fight or anything we just stopped being friends and we never spoke about what happened that night until a few weeks again. We both seemed to have forgotten that night. I called him and asked him what it was that he saw that night inside the house to make him do what he did. He doesn’t remember what he saw but he remembers that night. I thought I wouldnt forget but I did until a few weeks ago... Someone told me that a brain will block out something so traumatizing that you won’t remember what happened and live your life like normal. Maybe that’s what our brains did for us so we won’t live in fear forever.
Now its 2023 and now that I remember this I told this story recently to a few of my friends at work and one person told me they want to visit The Rock House. I told them no they don’t but they really want to not believing in Ghost and has never experienced anything Ghostly. So I said “Go if you want but I promise you I won’t be going back to that place ever again and once you do you won’t go back there either. The witch that used to live behind me didn’t scare my as much as what ever was in the woods that night.” Yes a witch used to live in the property behind my hosue.

​
Ch. 1086 p1_2
The chapter starts with this color spread. Very colorful, very very clean. It's very readable. Every element, including water on the characters is easily understandable, the ground is beautiful and the puddles are even more beautiful. That's the good part.
I have three problems with the cover, though:

1. Mugiwara pirates again and again and again. We've had some similar color spreads in the past and it gets to a point where they feel repeated, even if they aren't. I'm convinced most readers would prefer more different characters making it to the color covers.
2. Franky's hairstyle. Because Franky wasn't horrible enough in last chapter's cover, Oda needed to find a new and even more silly hairstyle for Franky. I wonder if he's ever going to swallow his pride and go back to draw Franky either with his original hairstyle or the shaved style with which he came back after the time skip. Every single other hairstyle has been ridiculous and has only served to ridicule Franky.
3. The perspective is completely messed up. The flowers in the top right part of the cover show peprfectly where the vanishing point is (in the middle of the image very close to the top). The vanishing point is the point where the camera is "looking" to, even if Oda likes to put it outside the image sometimes for artistic reasons. The thing is, every character on the ground (not Luffy), and most notably Nami, is drawn with very short legs as though Oda was trying to do a very high angle shot. And that doesn't make any sense accounting for the perspective of the background, but also because he's really only shortened their legs and not the rest of their body and it's very very weird. Look at Nami's legs and the umbrella. The umbrella isn't distorted but the legs are. That defeats the purpose of distorting the legs and it simply feels like she's a dwarf now.

In any case, the work on the reflections of every character in the puddles are awesome.
Ch. 1086 p3
Last chapter ended with Wapol escaping from Pangaea castle with Vivi (and Kinderella?), and this one begins and they have already successfully left Mariejoise. Igaram, Pell and Chaka are searching for king Cobra and Vivi.
It isn't clear at all when is this happening:

• The same day as last chapter but later? Probably too soon since last chapter meetings were still held.
• Next day? Or the following?
• Many days since last chapter? Very unlikely that those three are still wandering at Mariejoise completely clueless. But later events will suggest this to be the case.

I find it very strange, regardless of time, that Igaram, Pell & Chaka haven't been dealt with by the nobles. It's not like they're hiding precisely. The way I see it, there are only 2 ways to proceed with them:

1. Tell them "the king is here, please come" and kill them.
2. Tell them about Cobra's death and frame Sabo as soon as possible in ortder to avoid suspicion.

If they aren't killed, and the nobles are not answering to their questions about the king either, anyone would connect the dots and imagine Cobra was murdered by the nobles.
Also, it's good that Igaram cares for Vivi, but what about caring a chapter or two earlier? What was more important for Igaram than protecting Vivi? What was he actually doing??
In fact, why was Vivi waiting for a Gondola to leave the Red Line when his father was just getting to a meeting with the Gorōsei??
Ch. 1086 p4
Wapol and Vivi are hiding in the Aegis' kingdom ship and arrange a way to go with Morgans. Good. That takes partial care of explaining how they ended up with Morgans. But the real question is how did left the Red Line? Did really no one go looking for them? It's ridiculous.
First the Revolutionaries show how anyone can infiltrate at Mariejoise and now multiple people show how anyone can escape as well. The humiliation is scandalous.
Wapol doesn't want to tell Vivi about Imu or his dead father because he's sure CP0 are trying to kill him. That doesn't make sense. If you're sure they're going to kill you you don't act in your future assassin's favor. If anything, trying to get as much attention as possible from the world is the way to go. It might fail, but there's a chance the attention could make Imu want to discredit Wapol rather than kill him and fuel the conspiracy theorists.
Ch. 1086 p5
With the recent announcement about Oda having eye surgery and him saying he couldn't see properly, it would be reasonable to consider how that could have affected his ability to draw.
Let me tell you the truth about two things:

1. People with astigmatism don't become functionally blind until they have surgery correct their vision. They wear glasses and that's the end of it. Surgery will make Oda not need glasses, but that's all. The astigmatism wasn't preventing him from drawing at all.
2. Look at the cover again. Oda can draw really well when he wants. Look now at this page. It's difficult to know whether it's king Stelly in the first panel or not because he's as much of a scribble as Sabo's picture, that might be a legit scribble.

Spandam, Gismonda ans some other agents are lookinig for Vivi and Sabo, but not the former CP9 members, who had Vivi in their custody and lost her. Also, where's Rob Lucci and what's he doing? Is he completely ignoring his duty as well?
Ch. 956 p9
So... Stelly was staring so hard at Vivi's poster that he didn't see Sabo's poster and couldn't listen to anything regarding the terrorist attack lead by his brother despite the whole Mariejoise was being searched for him. Interesting.
Ch. 1086 p6
The gorōsei pick up the ringing den den mushi. This is the only relevant thing happening in this whole page.
The narrator puts emphasis on Cobra's death and Vivi's disappearance but not on the clash between the Revolutionaries and the admirals. Why is that? It's to bolster the retcon'd timeline.
Ch. 925 p9 & 10_11
Remember that back in chapter 925, the highlight about the Reverie was the clash between the Revolutionary Army and the admirals. And it was said to happen during the 4th day of the Reverie. However, in this and the immediately previous chapters, events are happening during the 7th day (the last).
Another detail is that then the silhouettes indicated that the news included Sabo fighting the admirals, but during this recent flashback, Sabo didn't even met them.
Ch.. 956 p4
Then, in ch. 956 Garp explains that the incident with Cobra happens after the Reverie ended. That clearly separates the operation of the Revolutionary army (4th day) and Cobra's death (+7th day).
At the same time, Garp says that happened after they left, and that it was reported to him even later. And asks Neptune and his family not to fear humans because of it.
This and Shirahoshi's reaction make sense only if they had no better reasons to fear humans, like Shirahoshi being assaulted a second time by Charloss, and if Shirahoshi bid farewell to Vivi while everything was fine and now she's surprised to hear that.
But that's not what the recent flashback tells us.
Ch. 1086 p7
Contrary to last page, this one has mane things to consider.
Imu wants to "test" the "Mother Flame", a Vegapunk's invention, and the Saturn says they haven't had the chance to try it yet. Another gorōsei suggests a forest for the test but Imu wants "Lulucia" kingdom. The gorōsei show concern for the choice but at no point they question it.
We will see in the next page that they're talking about the weapon that destroyed Lulucia kingdom. And the first thing that calls for my attention is that the gorōsei look like complete amateurs here.
They've had a mass destruction weapon for "some" time, but haven't tested it yet. Can you imagine how many things could go wrong when trying new technology for the very first time? But don't be fooled, Imu doesn't want to "test" it. She wants to use it.
The gorōsei have been waiting with such a weapon in their power without testing it because...?? It's obvious that there must be a lot of places in the world were Imu, the gorōsei and the World Government in general should be perfectly fine with testing the Mother Flame, from certain uninhabited areas of the Red Line, to unaffiliated countries and from the top of my head, if anything else, Punk Hazard comes to mind. A government island they think is closed off because Akainu and Aokiji made it useless. It's the perfect place to test these kind of things. But they think they've had "no chance to try it yet". Sure.
In an attempt to defend Vegapunk from the undeniable increasing evidence of his evilness, I read some say the weapon is not "he Mother Flame" but "Uranus" and that the Mother Flame is only a power source.
That makes even less sense. First, because Imu clearly instructs to use the Mother Flame and not Uranus. And second because there's no way they can actually think they haven't had the chance to try a power source
Ch. 1086 p8_9
Imu answers about the reason to choose Lulucia and the five gorōsei are formally introduced. And three things stand out to me:

1. They're named after planets of the solar system (other than the ones already used lol) and at the same time, they're not. There's Saturn and Mars, but there's also Ju Peter and V. Nasjūrō, who read like Jupiter and Venus + japanese traditional name ending. And lastly there's Valcury, who by elimination and obvious similarity should reference Mercury, but this one is clearly different. And I wonder if this is Oda wanting to name the gorōsei after planets and at the same time being obsessed with being unpredictable.
2. With this names two middle names are introduced: "Ju" and "V.". So far, only "D." has been a thing. It was odd enough if you think about it, but the fact that now two more exist and that they do so in order to not write the name exactly like the planet feels quite odd to me as well.
3. What is this "warrior god" thing? What does that even mean for them? I mean, I understand what "warrior god" means, but what's an "agriculture warrior god" or a "finance warrior god"??

Has Jupiter ever waged war in the name of agriculture or something like that? I get it, it's something meant to assign specific roles to each of them despite they have acted like a council for 1086 chapters, but wouldn't it make more sense to be "finance god" and "justice god" instead without the "warrior" part?
Also, do they really have any authority over their "department"? Last page showed they are nothing but the butlers of Imu. It's difficult to imagine they have agency.
To me, this looks like the upteenth attempt at hyping us for nothing. First, people living in Mariejoise were titled "World Nobles". Then they were rebranded as "Celestial Dragons". And recently they've been rebranded again as "Gods". And for no reason and without explanation. Just the narrator coming up with new ways to extol them. But at the end of the day, words are just that and so far, even the gorōsei have only prooved (this chapter too) to be very incompetent.
Now that I think about it...

• Is V. Nasjūrō going to have problems because some countries are increasingly refusing to pay tribute? He's in charge of finances, right?
• Is Ju Peter going to be held responsible for the lack of food they're currently facing?
• Shouldn't Valcury have been the one to... Oh wait, we haven't gotten to that part, yet.

​
Imu says Lulucia has been chosen for proximity alone. So, officially, both the fact that Sabo had gone there and that the country had rebelled aren't the reason. I wonder whether Imu's answer is just a way of saying the gorōsei to not even ask for explanations and just obey or actually a whimsical and very plot convenient occurrence.
The gorōsei note the convenience of being able to use the Mother Flame "freely" and I'm sure they're not talking about authorization, because Imu rules the world, but about the cost. Certainly the Mother Flame must consume a lot of energy. If only they had some scientist trying to develop a troll-science self´-sustaining power source, right?
Well, they got one but they're very heeadstrong in killing him, for some reason.
Ch. 1086 p10
We get to see the seraphim we hadn't yet seen. I don't think there's anything relevant in this page, but I've read some people arguing S-Croc could be a girl, you know, the old theory about Crocodile being originally a woman since Ivankov said he made Croc a huge favor, even though it could actually be anything else.
Personally I don't think S-Croc has particularly female traits in this image, but it's true that he has the same starry eyes as S-Snake, while S-Shark and S-Hawk do not (the others haven't shown their eyes). But if I had to guess, I'd put my money in Oda has decided to always have at least one gender-ambiguous character to troll the readers with left and right.
Ch. 1086 p11
Sabo telling more of what we already knew and saw.
Ch. 1086 p12
And this page is again, dedicated to justify the retcon'd timeline as though it was not.
Back in chapter 1060 (that's the beginning of this very arc, do you still remember what this is arc was about?), Sabo was at Lulucia when the annihilation happened.
Ch. 1060 p13, 14_15 & 16
We saw him as we were only seeing Lulucia and its citizens being shot by the Mother Flame and also the call ending abruptly immediately after the shot.
Now, Sabo says he was near, but not exactly there. And tries to explain the ending call saying it was an indirect call that was "rerouted" through another den den mushi on Lulucia.
First I wonder how do you do that from a ship? It's true that the specifics about how den den mushi are operated have never been told, but regardless, if this "rerouting" were a thing, surely it would have come in handy to many characters through the story before.
Also, since when can Marines (or any third party) locate den den mushi? They have been able to intercept communications and listen to them, but not guess where was any of the snails making the call. And even if they could, given he himself says it was not an encrypted den den mushi, hence being vulnerable to interception, why wouldn't they locate the original signal from Sabo just like the one at Lulucia?
Ch. 1086 p13
I don't remember Lulucia's name being romanized before, but it can be read in the ship's sail. It's written with a C (until another assistant thinks otherwise at least).
Sabo rules out living thing and natural disaster as the cause for Lulucia's annihilation and Ivankov pretty much implies Imu is someone from the void century who has lived this long because she's immortal thanks to the Ope Ope no mi.
Regarding Sabo's claim, I think we've seen all sorts of surreal things in One Piece to agree his assumption is very bold. A shadow in the sky is no indicator of no living thing or natural disaster. In fact we've seen shadows in the sky caused no more and no less by living beings and natural phenomena.
Ch. 299 p12_13
On his part, Ivankov's assumption is also quite bold. Does a name really reference one single instance of a living being? There can only have ever been one Imu? What about one Oars?
There's also plenty of people known for their outstanding longevity like Kureha. (Interesting that this made me think of her...)
It's true that Ivankov accounts for the name being not truly a reason next page, but the fact that he implies it with this force under an argument he knows is very weak... This is just Oda telling us "this is this way because a character is saying it" or trolling us for fun.
Ch. 1086 p14
Also, as I said last chapter, anyone can know of Imu and it was completely unreasonable of Imu not to tell Cobra about her, considering they were going to kill him no matter what and she said she was going to address his questions.
Could anyone else than Imu from 800 years ago be the one commanding the gorōsei? Why not? What kind of reasoning is that?
Next Ivankov makes his best guess of the day and claims Vegapunk must have created the Mother Flame (confirmed some pages ago by Imu). And it's now of all assumptions that Dragon intervenes to stop jumping to conclusions. Really??
"Vegapunk would never intentionally design a dedicated killing machine". What kind of joke is this?

1. Kuma
2. Mass-produced Pacifista model 1
3. Mass-produced Pacifista model 2
4. Mass-produced Pacifista model 3
5. Seraphim

And after this and out of absolutely nowhere, they speak of ancient weapons. This page and the previous one is some of the most forced text I've seen in One Piece.
Ch. 1086 p15
For the final page of the chapter (yes, 15 pages only again, 2 of them cover), a new character makes his debut by sentencing to death Saint Donquixote Mjosgard.
He's named Saint Figarland Garling and is said to have been king of God Valley. Unlike everyone else, apparently, I'm not going to theorize about his relationship with Shanks, I want to talk to you about two other characters.
First, Dr. Kureha.
Ch. 154 p8
She looks just like she was Garling's twin sister. It's interesting, because a couple of pages back the matter of longevity was brought up and now we see a world noble said to have been king of a land outside Mariejoise and outside the Red Line. As we've been told in a number of occasions (last one being last chapter), only the Nefertari family were founders of the World Government who stayed at their homeland. This means if Garling was actually king of God Valley and not just a descendant of the last king, he's from the void century. Not as an hypothesis like with Imu, but confirmed. Thus, the simmilarities with Dr. Kureha aren't just physical. Both have incredible longevity and I think it was worth noting.
Last, I want to talk about Garling's predecessor: Crescent moon Gally.
https://preview.redd.it/pst3taqyc85b1.png?width=548&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd252883d36d4c0c3ae546f045bb46fead21c52e
He's the villain in the first version of the Romance Dawn oneshot that would later become One Piece. As you can see, The crescent moon motive in the hair is there just like with Garling (and the nose too). If you take the crescent moon out of the hat and apply it to the hair together with the beard, and change the mustache stretching to the sides for more hair to make it more exaggerated, you get Garling. Even the pose and facial expression is pretty much the one in this image.
Also, in his original name written in japanese, there's no indication of whether his name is "GaRling" or just "Galling".
And that would be... Oh! I almost forgot! Yeah... given Garling sentenced Mjosgard, where does this leave Saint Topman Valcury? Wasn't he the "Justice warrior god"? Why isn't he the one handing out justice? What other affairs regarding justice does he manage if not judging disputes among celestial dragons?

I've been lurking on this sub for a bit and haven't seen one of these in a while, but I gotta admit I'm a sucker for reading everyone's thoughts. 👀 Apologies if this is no bueno.
I have a couple of opinions that may or may not be actually unpopular, but here goes:

1. I have never seen any of the AVPMs, nor will I ever. The little snippets I have seen, I simply did not like. I don't get the hype.
   
2. I actually love Firebringer. Maybe it's not the snappiest or most clever show they've done, but I adore the cast and the songs, and I love that it was majority-female.
   
3. Jeff Blim is my least favorite StarKid. I like him for physical comedy (especially that weird jaw thingy he does) but I don't particularly care for his vocals or his writing. The only real exception to this is TTO, but even then I feel like he was the weakest member of the cast.
   

How about y'all? Any fresh unpopular opinions to share?
Note: please put stuff about NPMD in spoiler tags; I haven't seen it yet. 😭

Okay, so I had just this idea, based on a scene of a story I'm reading. Not sure how I got from that scene to my idea, but that's not important.
Anyway, like the title says, the statute of secrecy failed. Hogwarts exists, but it never became a thing. The ministry isn't as as organized, as it is in the books. In fact, the ministry would be more of a bunch of families trying to keep order somewhat.
- random scene of what the story might have- (note, I'm terrible at Hagrid's accent, so I didn't bother and just wrote him normally.)
Harry stared at the man, who had gone from your ordinary "Joe Bloggs" into a man, who could probably punch Arnold Schwarzenegger's light out without even trying. The man was huge, he had a beast of a beard and if it weren't for the fact Harry was certain he wouldn't hurt a fly, he would probably be very wary of him.
"...Could you please repeat what you just said?" Harry asked.
"You're a wizard." The man, Hagrid repeated.
"That's what I thought you said." Harry muttered. "So, what, I can pull rabbits out of my hat?" Harry asked sarcastically.
"Nope. Nothing as elaborate as that." Hagrid said, either ignoring or not catching on to Harry's sarcasm. "I can conjure birds though, that means that I can make them appear out of nothing. Though, they're just constructs and will disappear after a few minutes. But that's all you need, really."
"And I'm supposed to go to this... What was it again?" Harry asked.
"Hogwarts." Hagrid repeated. "It's a small school, and it was founded a couple of centuries ago. It never became as popular as the founders had hoped, but it does have enough families that it can keep going."
"And my parents went there as well?" Harry asked.
"Yup." Hagrid nodded. "From the moment your mum knew she was pregnant with you, she registered your name. And once you were born, you summoned your bottle to you, when I was visiting once, when your dad wasn't quick enough to your liking."
"Does that mean you knew my mum and dad well?" Harry asked.
"I sure did." Hagrid nodded. "Taught them how to defend them against dangerous animals myself."
- other scene different from above, goes into detail about how the statute of secrecy may have failed-
"There were many tries and attempts to get families to agree to talk about a statute of secrecy. And of all those tries, only once did it get far enough that it might be approved." Professor Albus Dumbledore, headmaster and the one who taught history lectured.
"My very own ancestor, Arthur Dumbledore, argued that in favor of it, because of the prejudice mundanes had against us. Many unfortunate women were accused of witchcraft and while few of them were actual witches, the ones who were, were with very few exceptions, always young children."
"In the end, it failed and any attempts that followed never gained enough support to make it a possibility since. And given today's technology, it is very much impossible to truly hide or make people forget we exist." The professor continued with his lecture.
"Wizards and witches have fought openly and subtly in wars as recent as the first and second world war. In fact, if it wasn't for them, Hitler may have won the war. Today though, we have witches and wizards who work openly and secretly in just about every job you care to name. It could be argued that our world could be much more terrible than how we have it today. We have truth serum, which is available in the most terrible cases, such as where someone is accused of murder." Here the professor paused before continuing.
"It is however, not all bright and positive. The church," and the man was barely able to keep himself from sneering, "is still very much our enemy. They have brainwashed witches and wizards to infiltrate our settlements, before betraying them. They are put on trial, and while even the church can't get away with outright murdering them, their re-education camps are a fate I wouldn't wish on even my most terrible enemy."
--
And here I ran out of steam. I would envision smaller magical settlements throughout the world, each claiming independence but also connected to their muggle government. Some are left alone, leaving them to do as they please, whilst others are kept on a tight leash.
Thoughts?

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

Playing a master of arms barb and I'm having the HARDEST time with Duriel on tier 2. 8 deaths in and I got him between 1 and 15% each time but die on the third phase regardless.
I love playing iron maelstrom, but I can't move for a second or so in one of the hits. In phase 3 duriel just rolls me there as his attack speed increases dramatically. Not to mention the craters throughout the fight, which if you're unlucky get you stuck.
Anyway it feels like I'm being forced to spec call of the ancients for this fight.
I'll get him eventually as I almost did 5 times over, but this is frustrating - I also don't see why only certain specs are much better for this fight than others. How do people on hardcore even manage here?

As our journey comes closer to the end, I just wanted to share some thoughts with those who, unfortunately, have just embarked/ are going through the first rounds of chemo and radiation.
To patients and caregivers: Live with no regrets.
Do what you love to do. Want to go hiking? Go for it. Eat unhealthy food which your doctor would probably frown upon? Do it (with moderation though).
Say what you've always wanted to say. Felt that you've done something dumb and always wanted to seek forgiveness? Say it now. Felt like you've always been too reserved to express your love for them? Say it.
While we wish upon the stars for more quality time, always remember to cherish whatever you have right now. If your loved one doesn't feel like going for their planned beach trip, it's alright, find some other alternatives, like watching TV or playing board games. Do whatever makes your loved one feel loved and appreciated. Your loved one will definitely find comfort in your small, but meaningful acts.
Most importantly, don't wait. Life only gets as uncertain as it can get with each passing day. Show your loved one how much you appreciate them every possible moment. Think through what you might want to do with them, and go for it. Make memories where you can smile when you look back.
Sorry if it's slightly incoherent and negative, things move way too fast with this disease, and it's hard to catch up with things. Please share if you have advices for the newly diagnosed, so that they don't have to live through the regrets like I did.

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

I woke up in the morning to the smell of something cooking.
That was definitely off. I stretched out in my bed, “I’m finally going to be done with all that bothersome ‘work’.” I told myself with a smile on my face as I eased myself out of bed and rose to my feet.
A quick burning hot shower, and I was content, all was right with the world again.
I threw on my ‘outside clothes’ and emerged to find the cause of the odorous disturbance in my domicile…Celia was standing at an oven I’d never touched in my entire life.
“G’morning.” She said. She was still in her child sized shape, and dressed in something akin to pajamas… no, they ‘were’ pajamas. Ones covered in little animal patterns.
“Uh… yeah… it is, I guess, considering that I’m awake instead of asleep, I guess it’s fine but…” I yawned and rubbed the back of my head, “Why are you up so early, and what’s with…?” I looked her up and down.
“What’s with what?” She looked over her shoulder at me with a little smug expression on her face.
“This?!” I said and waved my other hand up and down in front of her.
“Oh.” Celia’s expression never wavered.
“Well, I did a little research on Earth after my last visit, not much, but I figured I should know how to dress at least.” She pinched the soft cloth of the yellow pajamas and gave them a little tug, “These really are comfortable, by the way, you were not wrong about humans being good at comfort.”
“And your… tiny self?” I asked, and she chuckled.
“Oh, well you are the one who said I was your niece, after all. So now I suppose I should play the part. Besides, you are a lot older than I am, by what, a few hundred years?” She asked. She spun around with spatula in hand and held it up at her side like a soldier’s sabre and struck a stiff pose. “As my senpai, I think that is the word, I must look to you for guidance and instruction, and rely on you to take care of me while I am unfamiliar with everything…”
She was not sounding like a normal swapper. Then it hit me, she was much younger than I am. Young swappers are often prone to adopting the characteristics of what they imitate, we all are, really, but the younger they are the more true this is.
Another sneaky suspicion struck me, “How long have you been awake for?” I asked.
“About six hours.” She said, “I’ve been binge watching a lot!” A giant grin came over her face. “I was watching this one thing about a boy who lived with two girls, one of whom was his sister and he didn’t know which one… all the shenanigans!”
“Oh.” I dragged my hand down over my face, “Celia, how long do you usually take on the forms of other races for?” I asked.
She tapped the tip of the spatula against her cheek, “Um, I don’t know, a few hours, just long enough to do a job, I don’t do my own scouting, I’m too new for that so… maybe a tenth of this time, why?”
“Oh my… um… can you… do something for me?” I asked.
“Like make breakfast? I’m already on it, aunt Kayobi!” She laughed and spun back around and began stirring something up in whatever pan was on the stovetop over the oven. “I saw this thing where a dragon girl kept making omletts and they were too big, so I decided to try my hand at making them. Thankfully you had some stuff I could sort of improvise… I don’t know much about taste but-” She was rambling, I had to cut her off.
“That’s fine.” I interjected, “But… hasn’t anyone ever told you that you shouldn’t ‘swap’ for this long without going back or at least going to something else?”
“Yes, but it’s no problem, this is a human body after all and humans are super easy. It’ll barely be an inconvenience to shift to anything else. After all, they’re sort of shaped like us, who knows, maybe they’ll evolve into swappers too one day, if that healing factor of theirs keeps improving at least.” Celia said, she didn’t see the concerned expression on my face.
‘This is not good. No, this is definitely not good. She took on the characteristics of a child, a human child, and those are reckless, negligent, have horrible survival instincts, and routinely dismiss danger or problems to an absurd degree. It would be exactly like a human child to neglect the obvious in favor of just doing nothing…plus she’s young so she’s even more vulnerable to these things…’ I had to suppress my groan.
If she couldn’t swap back, she couldn’t go back. Not in the ‘oh no she’ll die’ sense. Not in the ‘she’s violated a law sense and will be harshly punished’ sense either.
No… no. If word of this got back to the others, she would be absolutely disgraced and shamed beyond all reason. It’s not as embarrassing as say, waving back at someone who wasn’t waving at you. It’s a thousand times worst.
It’s more like… if a human lost control of their bowels at their job where friends and family worked. At that point you might as well quit, change your name, and start your life over in a whole new place in the world.
Celia would never be able to look at the rest of her coworkers again without a sense of disgrace… and I know Celia. She’s a nice one, sort of sensitive about even asking for help, kind of insecure, really. She wouldn’t be able to handle it, she’d have to quit.
I sat down at the table. “Celia, I want you to do something for me, and I don’t want you to panic.”
“I know, I know, you want some red peppers added on top of your omlett, don’t worry, I saw you didn’t have any, but I saved some from the pizza last night, they included a couple of packets. I didn’t throw them out, so I’ll just add those real quick to your omlet and…”
I cleared my throat. “No, no, that’s fine.” I said.
“Oh, then here you go.” She said and slid the omlet onto a paper plate and handed it to me along with one of my many plastic forks.
“I want…” I started to say, and she leaned forward, her dark hair tumbled down behind her, she was waiting for me to try her food.
I stopped. I looked down at the dish. It actually smelled really good. I usually cooked bacon in the microwave, it seemed she’d chosen to use the oven, and that paid off. I could smell the bacon inside, and my mouth began to water.
I cut into the yellow goodness and then raised a bite to my mouth, the cheese within stretched into tiny strings and I put the morsel onto my tongue.
Flavor exploded. “This is amazing!” I shouted.
She grinned ear to ear and waited for me to take a second bite. I stopped myself, I set the fork down and set my palms flat on the table. “No, no Kayobi, don’t get distracted.”
“What?” Celia asked, “You said it was good, right?” She asked.
“Yes… and it is. But I need you to do something else… something not food related.” I said, and her mouth closed before she could ask whatever was on her mind.
“Try to swap back to your natural form.” I said.
“But that’s-” She started to object.
“Just do it.” I said.
She shrugged. “Fine.” She breathed out the annoyed sigh of every teenager in the history of humanity.
I waited.
She looked down at her hand. Her feet. She looked at her reflection in the glass window on the wall. She gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw and began to grunt and groan.
“I…what…” Celia’s eyes went very wide, she kept trying.
But she also kept failing.
“I’m… stuck.” She whispered.
“Yup. Looks like.” I said, and she looked at me with an expression of horrified shame as if she’d shat herself in front of me.
I held up a hand to stop the horrified apologies or bawling or whatever.
“Relax, nobody else knows, I won’t tell anyone, and I’ll help you get back to normal.” I promised.
A few minutes later, I knew what tears of relief on a human looked like when she was asking…
“You’re really not going to tell anyone… you’re going to help me get back to normal and never say a thing, you promise?” She asked.
“Yes.” I answered.
“Thank you…” Celia whispered and began to wipe her nose, I shrugged off her thanks and took another bite of the omlet.
“Don’t worry about it but… can I have another one of these before we get to work?” I asked, and a smile slowly came back to her face as she got up to make another.
“Do you know how to fix this?” She asked.
“Nope. But I have a clue.” I said as she opened the fridge to get out more eggs, cheese, and bacon.
“How?” She asked tentatively, looking over her shoulder at me while she rummaged.
“We wing it.” I said, and for good measure, brought wings out of my back in the hopes of making her laugh.
It got a little one, and that was a start, at least.

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

I am told I have schizophrenia. I think crazyness just runs in my family. When I was really crazy I did not know if 'the freeze' mentioned in Touch of Grey was the west coast 'cutting the lights' on small towns elsewhere in the country like the Metallica song 'cut the lights' or something and letting small towns freeze in the winter then the Raiders raiding their land. (I was crazy and did not know if Tupac was still alive.) I just thought if everybody was watching each other on satellite on the west coast and it was overcrowded and the midwest did not have satellite I did not know what would go on.
I have a mental disability. For a while I thought my parents had been killed and I was living with people stealing their identities. I got in the habit of calling and writing to the F.B.I. to report that my parents were killed. I got an email from a girl who flusters people out of nowhere and wrote a rant to the F.B.I. I was not trying to get anybody in trouble for drugs, I was saying they were associated with people shaped by the people on television doing unnatural things instead of just mushrooms and coca tea and then trying to get more land and more people to sound like them, I thought something like the holocaust was going on. (it was a weird theory I had when I was crazy. I feel all drugs should be legal.). I realize I sound crazy (I like gay people by the way.), I just had no socialization to tell me I was crazy.
Update. I wrote to the government today to update them and let them know my family is still alive and specify that I do not know anybody who does drugs and was talking about the people on tv.
"Hello. I used to write to the government a lot thinking that my family was dead and something like World War II was going on in the U.S.A. I wanted to let you know that my family is still alive and there are not a lot of people dying like voices I heard tried to make me think. I also wrote something about nonbreeders who I feel are fine and saying I did not know if people were influenced by people (I feel like specifying I was talking about the people on television not the people I wrote about. I do not know anybody who does drugs.) like the people on television doing drugs that were not straight from the earth because I thought maybe they thought they did not sound as good as the people that only used things that come naturally from the earth so maybe they tried to get more people to sound like them and more land (I really thought something like World War II was going on.). Now that I know something like World War II is not going on in the U.S.A. I feel like saying the people on television and their lifestyle is fine with me."
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In general it's just way too fast for its own good. Our introduction to the world is really good. We spend the first 8 chapters, or 3 episodes, hyping up this amazing hole in the ground. We are shown this big beautiful map that is still only described as a 'rough map of the Netherworld,' implying that there is much more to discover than what is shown. We are told of all the amazing treasures that are contained within. There are so many of these, in fact, that even after 1900 years of exploration there are still artifacts being discovered in the first 1000m, right on the edge of the abyss. After all this build up, when Riko and Reg set out on their one way journey into the Abyss, what do they do? Race to the bottom as fast as possible, taking no time for exploration or sight seeing. Seriously, what the heck?! I know Riko wants to reach her mother right away, but, come on! Riko herself even at one point says that "this journey in the abyss is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, after all!" (in justification for eating something that is probably going to give her food poisoning.)
Volume 1 was entirely Orth. 1/3 of the way into volume 4 and the team is already moving into the 5th layer, and roughly half that page count was spent at either the Seeker Camp or Nanachi's Hideout. At this point Riko has descended through over half of the Abyss in roughly twice the page count as was spent in Orth. Seriously, what was the point of all the hype if we weren't actually going to spend any time exploring the abyss. The worst part is that we can't ever go back and fill in those details later because of the premise of the Abyss. Once we've moved past an area, that's it. It's done. It's not the kind of story where Team Riko could find themselves needing to return to layer 3 for some reason to flesh it out a bit more. I suppose Tsukushi could write a side story involving new characters, making a more careful and thoughtful descent, but he really doesn't seem interested in that. So we end up with the fact that, despite the tremendous build up, the Abyss comes across as feeling rather small and uninteresting.
Ok, but I can hear the responses already: "Tsukushi had to rush down to Nanachi because the manga was in danger of being cancelled." and "He's only one guy doing all the art and story by himself, if he spent a volume or more exploring each layer it'd take him 30 years to finish the story!" Well, answer me this: What is one thing that anime adaptations have been traditionally known for, even to their own detriment? Filler! Made in Abyss was crying out for episodes and episodes of filler content to flesh out this world, and yet what we got was one of the most bare bones adaptations they could manage. I really don't understand why they did it this way, other than MIA maybe wasn't popular enough to justify more than 14 episodes.
There's something else I want to take a moment to briefly address before returning to the pacing issues in layer 5 and 6. Namely I want to talk about artifacts for a moment. There aren't any! After setting out into the Abyss Team Riko doesn't find a single artifact in 60 chapters! (end of season 2) What even is this? Every artifact that we see Riko use (sun stones, scaled umbrella) was something she had found on the first layer before even starting her adventure. This is one of the major pillars that the premise rests upon: namely that this is an amazing pit full of treasure. She doesn't even need to find anything super amazing that'll make her OP, just something. Anything! Just to show that the stuff actually exists in the world and isn't just conjured into being when you don your stylish white whistle armor. The first volume really gives you the impression that this is going to be a journey of exploration and discovery, almost archaological in nature based on some of Riko's stated goals, but the story completely refuses to deliver on this promise.
Anyway, to return to the issue of pacing, in layer 5 the pacing really starts to affect the plot, in addition to the previously stated issues. Namely, the problem is with Prushka. She and Riko spend about 2 hours together, in which they apparently form a bond so deep that when Prushka turns herself into a white whistle she attunes to Riko rather than the father that she is utterly and completely devoted to. It's just a bit of a stretch. Imagine this, though. Rather than meeting Team Riko at the doors of Ido Front, she meets them at near the start of layer 5, just after Nanachi has finished snacking on slimey stew. Her accompanying umbra hands conveniently die (Bondrewed being the fiendish and calculating genius that he is), and Prushka is left alone to guide Team Riko back to Ido Front, the widest of the layers. Give us a goodly few chapters spent developing both Prushka and the wonders of layer 5, then continue the story as normal at Ido Front, and Prushka's inevitable sacrifice will feel a lot more meaningful and Riko's reaction more natural. After seeing how much fun adventuring with Team Riko is first hand, it's more understandable for her to turn into a white whistle to continue the adventure, rather than after just having heard a couple stories.
In layer 6, things really turn around and we starting hitting pacing issues from the other end. This is the longest arc by far. A full 5 volumes are not only spent within a single layer, but almost entirely within a single village. This arc gets as much time devoted to it as everything before it combined. And none of it matters. Nearly every character, place, and thing introduced is dead or destroyed by the end. Large sections of the story are dominated by these new characters, with our protagonists simply acting as spectators, or even unconscious. Almost the entirety of volume 8 is a flashback to the story of these new characters. Even the anime director recognized how dire this was to the pacing and attempted to break it up a bit by interspersing it throughout the season. I really get the sense that by this point Tsukushi was pretty burned out on the initial premise he set up for MIA and wanted to tell a different story, with different characters, and was simply obligated to drag our trio along for the ride. The problems with Iruburu arc are many, and as I'm planning to write another post focusing exclusively on it, I'll suffice it to say for now that this part of the story drags. It drags hard. And they still don't spend much time actually exploring the Abyss itself, just this one village.
So that's the problems with the pacing in Made in Abyss. In general, it's too fast to deliver on the sense of wonder and discovery that was promised in the opening chapters.

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

Methodology

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

The raw data and its errors

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

Fixed data

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

Cumulative votes

Votes per day

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

The first 5 days

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

Luffy vs. Zoro

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

Sanji

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

Law

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

Ace

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

Robin

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

Hancock

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

Carrot

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

Sabo

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

Yamato

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

Nami

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

Usopp

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

Conclusion

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

This week, the SEC filed a suit against Binance, accusing that many of the tokens that are traded on Binance are unregistered securities.
The SEC explicitly names these cryptocurrencies as being unregistered securities: Solana, Cardano, Polygon, Filecoin, Cosmos, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Algorand, Axie Infinity, and Coti.
It would be beneficial to go over what exactly is a security and how something being a security is determined. And what cryptocurrencies the SEC will target as securities and what, if any, is safe in this space.
The Howey Test
The Howey test is a legal test used in the United States to determine whether a transaction qualifies as an investment contract and, thus, is considered a security under federal law. The test was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. (1946), and it has since been applied in numerous cases to determine whether various financial arrangements and offerings constitute securities.
Three criteria for something to be a security
The first criterion is a financial investment. The participants in the transaction must be risking their own money. This comprises both financial and in-kind investments.
The second requirement is a shared enterprise. The financial success of the investors is somehow connected. This can be proven by providing evidence of the investors' resource pooling or reliance on a third party to manage their investments.
The third criterion is an expectation of profits solely from the efforts of others. The investors are relying on someone else to generate a return on their investment. This could include, for example, profits generated by a third- party manager or profits generated by the efforts of a particular group or organization
Now with this background, let’s see what would or wouldn’t qualify as a security in the crypto space:
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is not considered a security because its anonymous and open-source origins mean investor profits are not dependent on the efforts of developers or managers, said Carol Goforth, a law professor at the University of Arkansas. More on this
Ethereum (Uncertain, may/may not be a security)
With Ethereum, it’s complicated. It’s up in the air on whether or not it’s seen as a security by the government. Genslar has said everything but bitcoin is a security. But the SEC in its filings against a number of well known and established cryptocurrencies (Solana, Cardano, Polygon, Filecoin, Cosmos, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Algorand, Axie Infinity, and Coti), decidedly did not include Ethereum.
CryptoSlate (May 2023)

Gensler has previously suggested that “everything other than Bitcoin” in the crypto space could be seen as a security, but has notably refused to clearly state as much about Ethereum. When pressed to say the words, “I believe Ethereum is a security,” the Hon. Chair just will not do it. Gensler’s reluctance to classify Ether is curious when his SEC is so eager to claim as much for others. Why?
Ethereum could potentially fall under the purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regards Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether as commodities, not securities. Not only do the two categories differ wildly from one another, this overlap could create a regulatory tug-of-war that would Gensler’s public stance on Ethereum while trying to avoid the appearance of infighting within the federal government.
Another analysis from Protos, argues that Gensler’s evasion on the matter may be a consequence of the SEC’s earlier inaction following the infamous DAO hack, which saw the blockchain fork into Ethereum Classic and put the entire ecosystem at risk. However, at the time the SEC did nothing, and now Gensler finds himself in the unenviable position of making up for his predecessors’ oversights. Now that the Ethereum ecosystem has spent years recovering and building credibility, retroactively declaring it an unregistered security would have unforeseen, but no doubt disastrous, consequences for investors.
In other words, protecting investors in this case would mean protecting them from the protector.

For now, Genslar is not going after Ethereum. Whether that’s to protect his investor friends who have lots invested in Ethereum, or has enough on his plate for now with his battle against Binance, for whatever reason, he currently has no appetite to go after Ethereum. That may change in the future.
All other cryptocurrencies not Bitcoin or Ethereum

Those rulings said developers' statements tying the value of their digital assets to efforts to grow or maintain the associated blockchain systems showed that investor profits depended on the "efforts of others." Source

All others not named Bitcoin or Ethereum are securities. Why? Because the same thing that’s keeping them alive is the same thing that’s killing them. All of these promises to “believe in the tech” and “wait until we introduce X”, “here’s our roadmap and how this project will progress”, all these promises, although exciting also hints that the price of the cryptocurrency may be higher tomorrow because of the work the team is doing.
This is what differentiates Bitcoin from all other coins in this space. Bitcoin makes no such promises.

Follow me down the Spider-Rabbit hole, Spider-Friends!
Miguel O'Hara injects himself with spider venom, right? Yep, sure does. And he worked out how to safely traverse the Spider-verse without glitching? Mmmm-hmmm. Sure did. He's worked out how to send people back to their home universe? Yup. Thuper thmart, that guy. He's also convened a conclave of Spider-people and even if not all of them are as brilliant as he is, you're still going to have an endless number who are just as brilliant, if not more so? YESH. And he says he'll do what must be done? He's strong enough to make the tough decisions? ...exactly what are you getting at, Shannon?
Well, why didn't Miguel just inject Earth-42 Miles himself and mentor him so he could be Spider-Man?
That makes no sen--!
Oh, but it does! It makes all the sense! In fact, I would argue that this is precisely what Migual O'Hara was supposed to have done but did not, possibly because he was off living in another Miguel O'Hara's reality.
That would mean that 1610 Miles Morales is a living reminder of how he messed up. He can choose to ignore the Miles G. Morales of Earth-42 because that exists beyond the Spider-verse and he can try to forget the reality which was destroyed because it's gone. But Miles of 1610 is known to other Spider-folk. He's got friends and he makes Earth-1610 better.
Not only that but Miguel is very invested in this system he's devised. But if Miles Morales of 1610 was never supposed to be bitten by a radioactive spider, then he shouldn't have a canon event where his father dies. That happened to Earth-42's Miles G. Morales. For 1610 Miles, the canon event seems that it would have been his uncle Aaron dying. In any case, if he's an anomaly, he shouldn't have these canon events which would destabilize reality. When Miles G. Morales wasn't bitten by that Earth-42 spider, his reality didn't implode. Earth-1610 didn't implode which Peter Parker died nor did it implode when Aaron Davis died. Earth-42 didn't implode when Aaron Davis didn't die and Jeff Davis did. It's obviously pretty awful but it continued. So why is 1610 Miles supposed to lose both Uncle Aaron and his dad? It would seem to be more of a punishment inflicted by a cruel man playing Spider-God than a real canon event.
At the end of the day, Miguel knows that Earth-42 doesn't have a Spider-man, he knows why and he knows who it should have been: Miles G. Morales. Yet he hasn't made efforts to "fix" that reality. Despite showing himself perfectly capable of feats far less complicated. He just lets it be. That's his underlying failure: not only did he cause a reality to destabilize but his negligence also affect another continuing reality.

Itching for a clan where you feel at home? Have an intense feeling of wanting to be a part of something big? Do you want to crush wars and build an empire? Well, then we want YOU.
Hardcore B2B war clan! Started with my alt accounts and a couple buddies and we've been building a strong team. We are a level eleven clan, seeking war monger family types interested in being a part of our family, ideally those who value putting in the work, donating and chatting to overall improve the clan. We focus as a team on strong communication and consistent donations as well as participation. Winning wars is our main goal, so hopefully you enjoy war! We have a mini clan for your multiple accounts if need be where we do cwl for lower town halls.
Participation in capital raids each weekend is highly encouraged as we want to continue our strong and quick capital hall growth. Currently at capital hall 8.
For those interested, we do have a discord for communication, updated and full of features. We expect you to war consistently and have a decent understanding of how to execute effective attacks. Prefer if you have 600+ war stars. Hope to see you there!
https://link.clashofclans.com/en?action=OpenClanProfile&tag=2YP298JQU

--------KCD--------
Will there be a book on KCD? Alexandra: I'm still busy, maybe someone will write it for me. I don't know.
Was Amala pregnant when Amrit killed her? Alexandra: Yes.
Will Amala and Ratan have a child? Alexandra: On the "Rage" path - yes. On the path of "Kindness" - no.
Writing which ending touched you the most? Alexandra: The first one is the death of Lima. There was also a scene with Kieran that made me very sad. Initially Kieran was supposed to die in one of the endings, but then I realized that I could not do this to him. In general, I was touched by all the deaths of the characters.
--------SOTCN--------
Can we pair up other characters? Alexandra: Yes.
Will there be more female branches? Alexandra: I have one character, but I'll see how it fits in. Or it will turn out like with Gabriel.
"There will be a new branch in the next update."
When will the branches close? Alexandra: Not soon.
Do stats affect relationship? Alexandra: Yes, but not the character stats.
Will Chaos and Loyalty appear in the next update? Alexandra: No, they will be added a little later.
“There is no way to balance stats in SOTCN."
Should we snitch on Dia? Alexandra: In the story code, you can see the name "NewLakshman" - this code indicates whether you snitched on Dia or not. It will not be like with Lakshman in KCD. You will find out the consequences later.
Has Eva had a sexual experience? Alexandra: She's a virgin.
Is Eva's virginity related to childhood harassment? Alexandra: Yes, it is.
What else can you say about Agnia? Alexandra: She has an interesting background. You will get to know it regardless of whether you have a branch with her or not. You can be friends with Agnia, and you can also become enemies.
Is Eva really that bad at writing? Alexandra: I think she writes shitty) Instead of drinking beer, she should have studied!
Has Ramesses began to like Eva long before? Or starting with the scene with the letter? Alexandra: He didn't feel feelings for her before. Previously, for him, she was a pest, they were almost competitors. Later, Ramesses began to pay attention to her as a girl. It started with the first diamond choice with him.
What are the zodiac signs of the characters? Alexandra: In general, Egypt had a different zodiac system. They compared it to the gods. For example, September is the month of goddess Bastet. I can’t answer yet, I’m thinking of asking my friend Egyptologist.
Did you expect such fandom attention to Ramesses and Remmao? Alexandra: I didn't expect that. Of course, this often happens with players - asking for a branch with those with whom there is not; but to ask so seriously... With whom it was possible, I made branches.
About Theonoah's dream: in a dream, Livius seemed aggressive, but in reality he was more friendly and approachable. What do you think? Alexandra: We see him not aggressive, but passionate about his work. He says that his job is his top priority. Therefore, with Theonoah in a dream, he is not very soft. You can see it in the scene with Eva when she hides from the crocodile behind him. When she asked Livius for help, he had a "click" in his mind - to help, since it's his job.
Can you describe the relationship between Eva and Amen? Alexandra: There are some characters who have chemistry from the very beginning. Eva and Amen have exactly this situation. There is a spark between them. Their misunderstanding evokes anticipation.
Will the animals affect the story? Alexandra: Everything will.
"As for the pair of Eva and Livius: they were not easy to write right away. It was still easy to write their mutual stares on the shore, but then it was hard. The scene where she hides behind him, I rewrote several times. Now it's easier. I like their connection and the way they communicate."
Did Amen use black magician's help to find shesmu? Alexandra: He is an experienced hunter. He used different methods for his work.
--------General--------
Is work in the RC team the main one or more like a side job? Alexandra: More like a full-time job.
Are the LIs in SOTCN and KCD similar on purpose? Alexandra: For me they are not similar, so no, not on purpose.
Do you want to write a story from a man's point of view? Alexandra: I would like to, but the demand is more for female MCs. Maybe one day.
Who is closer to you: Amala or Eva? Alexandra: Eva, I like her a lot. I don't feel such connection with Amala.
Is it difficult to write female branches? Alexandra: It's not hard for me. Everything went fast with Lima. With Agnia, everything is also not bad, although it happens that I rewrite scenes with her. It seems to me that everything will turn out interesting with Agnia. I want to add a twist.
“The setting of witches has been given to another author. I'm sure you'll enjoy this story."

Hey, what’s up I’m Cameron. I’m just looking for some chill people to have conversations with and maybe game a little. I have an Xbox series X and a Nintendo Switch OLED. I’ve been playing mostly Microsoft flight simulator and Mario kart. if you have anything else we can compromise I have many other games.
I believe we should start as friends but if it turns into a relationship then that would be my end goal. I hope that happens because long distance doesn’t bother me. I’m a firm believer you should both become best friends before you date that’s just a better way to do things and it will be more natural.
Honesty is also a big part you should always be honest about your feelings and tell me straight up how you’re doing.
I like to talk cuz I rarely get a chance to so if I get comfortable around you be prepared lmao.
I’m someone who tries their best to get by and try to make people feel better about themselves. I’m usually down to earth and chill and I always love talking about random stuff that pops in my head lmao. Idk if any of you care but I’m an INFP and a Pisces so make with that Info as you will. I love voice chatting and talking into the night hours if you so choose. I got some pretty bad depression and I try to make new friends with whoever I find. Maybe it turns into a relationship? Idk. Hopefully. I’m nice in the beginning but as I get comfortable with you I’m more sarcastic and playful. Sometimes a straight teaser lmao. I’m really into dark humor but if it’s not your thing that that’s cool we can compromise on that. I’m extremely loyal to a fault and I’ll be there for you 100% of the time with anything. Be it work, career, or mental illness. I just like helping people feel better cuz I can’t make myself feel better on my own lmao.
Idk what I’m looking for. I guess I could say I’m looking for someone who matches my vibe and we talk a lot. Hopefully, we share some interests, and also maybe we are at the same stage in life. Whichever works. Idk we will see once we talk, won’t we?
A little about myself:
I like talking about history including ww1, ww2, the Cold War, etc.
I really like aviation and all types of planes and flying. Ask me about it and I won’t shut up lmao.
I’m really into Star Wars and I probably know way too much about the lore.
I’m normally quiet but once you get me to start talking I don’t stfu.
I’m someone who likes edgy and dark humor but if that’s not your thing I’ll compromise.
I’ve got some pretty bad depression and I try my best to get by.
Most of my vocabulary has a least one swear word in a sentence.
I like animals dogs especially.
My favorite types of music are 90’s to 2000’s alt-rock, metal and heavy metal, and metalcore. But I also like oldies from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
And yeah that’s all I can think of off the top of my head if you wanna know more things you just gotta get to know me better there’s a whole lot of things that I’d like to talk about.
Feel free to message me I try to get back as soon as I can.
Looking forward to talking to you and I hope we can form a connection