u/BagOfSmallerBags

For the first time ever in my life, I find myself craving the in-class-discussion that comes the day after assigned reading was finished in school, because I just want people's subjective take on this.

Is the ending supposed to be scary and ominous? Is it supposed to be hopeful and beautiful? Is it supposed to be both?

I'm really torn, because I was on board with the not-a-hivemind the entire time, rooting for them. But just the last segment where they decide to invade earth like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers... it just had me shivering.

>I say these words, and a part of me is screaming at them. The me from before, who was terrified of the frothing madness of Ylse Rasmussen, whose name is being encoded even now in the walls of the ruin. I am Arton Daghdev still, and I know that what we will bring to Earth is the second greatest monstrosity ever perpetuated upon the human species. But the thought of what we might become is irresistible. Presented with the means, how could we not?

Is this book a warning message about the dangers of group think, a treatise on the power of solidarity to and trust to overthrow tyranny, or something else?

What are your thoughts on the ending?

Okay, so I'm gonna try to be brief:

I've been told constantly throughout my life that I should go into radio, or voice acting, or singing, or audiobooks. Again and again. Every time I enter a new social environment that I spend more than a week in, be it a school, a job, a doctors office I have to go to a few times, etc, people start asking "do you do voice over work?" or "you should do radio," etc. I've gone on five cruises in my life, and by the end of each one I have people coming up to me going "oh you're that guy with the deep voice I heard at trivia" or whatever.

My voice is the first thing people notice about me, and many women I've dated (oddly not including my wife) have commented that they weren't sure if they wanted to go out with me until they heard my voice. At my current job, my boss regularly employs me to gather attention at all-staff meetings, because I can easily reach the volume and deep tone necessary to quiet a room of chatting people easier than anyone else there.

(Reading this all back I feel like it sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm truly just trying to give context - sorry).

Now, I've always appreciated these comments but never really gave them much thought. But I'm at a stage in my life where I'm reaching my last opportunity to switch careers without people interpreting it as a midlife crisis, so I've started to consider it more seriously.

Now I figure, realistically, getting into any kind of voice over work is likely very very very difficult. I abstractly like the idea of it, and in particular I've always LOVED reading novels out loud to anyone who will give me the opportunity. But I don't know whether it's realistic to think that the natural quality of my voice will be any kind of meaningful advantage.

So I guess my ultimate question is this: is it possible for someones natural, untrained voice, to be "good" enough that it warrants getting into voice acting on that alone? Or is it more that regardless of your natural voice quality, you'll be starting at the same place as everyone?

Basically, help me decide whether this is something worth pursuing, or if it's just another dream. Thanks for any help you can give.

Title, basically.

My trainer told me to do 5x10 of various dumbbell exercises, but it's awhile til my next session.

I find it easier to keep track of where I'm at when doing 20, then 15, then 10, then 5. It's the same total number of reps, but I don't ever forget which set of 10 I'm at.

Thanks for any help

TWILIGHT

I think the thing that this movie does well is yearning - really creating the feeling of having an intense crush on someone. The boring, dreary town, Bella's feeling of isolation, and the one bright spot in this dude who kind-of-sort-of wants to kill her. While I can't identify with wanting your significant other to feel dangerous, I've heard summaries of enough of my wife's favorite romance novels to appreciate it in the abstract. At a glance, this really seems like the reason this franchise lit the world on fire back in the day, and why middle-and-high-school-age me was so confused by why every girl I knew loved it.

The visual aesthetic where everything is pale and dark took some time to get used to, but I also appreciated it from the perspective of it being a vampire movie. Bella and the other humans are very pale from living in a constantly overcast town, so when vampires show up and they're like, literally wearing clown makeup, they simultaneously look like monsters while it stays plausible that people don't instantly think they're monsters.

I do find the persistent connection between sex and Edward wanting to murder / exsanguinate Bella to be somewhat troublesome. But I guess in a franchise about a high-school romance aimed at tweens and teens you do need to have some kind of explanation for why they aren't having sex. Still, it feels weird to be watching media aimed at 13-15 year old girls where the fantasy is that a boy would like you, want you, and also constantly need to hold himself back from murdering you. But I can't even really talk: as a 13 year old boy, if there was an anime about a hot goth vampire chick fighting with herself over whether she wants to have sex with or eat the main character, I'd have been all over it.

The back half of the movie also took a bit of a turn for the boring. While the yearning aspect was nailed, awkward gasping in science class and all, neither Edward nor Bella ever seemed to ever do anything that should have actually been charming to the other. I can somewhat accept that from Bella since she's supposed to be the character you project onto, but Edward really needed to do anything that could be perceived as charming or at least cute. But instead he just vassilated between barely-containted-rage, barely-contained-lust, and brooding for the whole movie. After the sparkly skin reveal, the movie just seemed to take it as fact that they love each other for no particular reason. When we still had an hour to go and the entire plot revolved around their relationship, that seemed like an issue.

The obstacle they have to ultimately overcome also seemed kind of flimsy. There are three bad vampires, one of which is only kind-of bad. The other two decide they really wanna kill Bella for seemingly no reason. Now my first thought is "there are seven good vampires - why doesn't Bella just sleep over at the Cullen's house until they make a play and then they beat them up?" I was waiting for the blonde vampire to be particularly strong, but of course, once the Cullen's arrived to save Bella, it was over in like 20 seconds. So whatever.

Overall a pretty enjoyable watch, even if it dragged in the second half.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON

Yo Edward SUUUUUUCKS.

So, I have this issue with romance media, where I feel like after the two people get together, everything sort of starts falling apart. Once the will-they-or-won't-they tension is gone, you need to choose a new thing to focus on after all. Sometimes, they choose a physical, mechanical issue, like a blonde vampire that arbitrarily wants your girlfriend dead. But often, they decide to keep the focus on the romance, which means relationship drama, which usually means one of the two people in the relationship starts acting like a jerk.

This movie is that second option pushed to the extreme. Edward is so ridiculously cruel - dumping her while lying about his feelings while still spying on her with random ghost powers (which go away when he thinks she's dead?). He must have REALIZED she keeps risking her life to get to see him, but he KEPT popping in? What the hell man?!

(EDIT: No ghost powers! That was my mistake!)

I was straight up hollering at my television, hoping Edward would step into the sun just a *little* faster. As of yesterday, I believe I am the latest person to be solidified as a member of TEAM JACOB. Not because Bella necessarily needs a boyfriend, but Jesus, if it's one or the other, go with the one who is at minimum nice to you.

Now's the part where I moralize, skip if you want: I think that this movie, out of all five, really deserves to have a warning label on it for teenage girls. I understand that it's ultimately framed as a bad thing, but the depiction of a teenager repeatedly putting her life and body at risk to try to get attention from a boy that dumped her is just *really* hard to watch. And (despite my hollering at the TV), it goes the same for Edward. There's nothing romantic about suicide, and it's gross to see media aimed at teens framing it that way.

Okay, moralizing over. Some highlights of this movie, weirdly, was the comedy to me. I straight up cracked up at Ana Kendrick's zombie monologue, and the blonde kid being physically uncomfortable watching Face Punch (where's that spinoff by the way) was straight up hilarious. And while perhaps it was unintentional comedy, every time Taylor Lautner jogged away in his little jorts was a real treat.

I also wanna thrown out there that I would take a full TV show about Aro. I want a full, 10 season police procedural where that dude is just giggling and smiling and looking down on people while he solves crime with a wise cracking rookie detective.

And on the non-comedy end of the spectrum, I appreciate them exploring some of the complications possible in an immortal / non-immortal romance. The anxiety about aging and all. It the most dramatically interesting part of the movie.

Despite my issues with this movie, I do think I ultimately enjoyed it only slighly less than the first movie. Even rooting for Bella to dump Edward and run off with Jacob (or just like, go fishing with her dad and go to college), the drama and conflicts were more interesting and fun to watch. And the courtship section with Jacob actually seemed like a fun romantic comedy, interlaced with the drama of a potential boyfriend becoming a werewolf.

If you took the adrenaline-junky stuff, removed Edward being the motivation, and just repurposed this movie as a rom-com between Bella and Jacob where they got together in the end, this would be a much improved movie. It could be it's own thing, totally disconnected from the franchise. If it had, it would have been my favorite. Oh, well.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA : ECLIPSE

Filler episode?

This movie didn't feel necessary to me. At the end of New Moon, the status quo is thus; Bella isn't into Jacob that way, Jacob wants Bella and hates Edward, Edward is protective of Bella and wants to marry her. At the end of Eclipse, virtually nothing has changed. I guess TECHNICALLY Bella hadn't given a yes or no before the credits rolled in New Moon, but did ANYONE, book reader or not, really believe she would say no?

This entire movie, for all it mattered to the ongoing story of Bella's love life and conflict with the Vultori, could have happened in about 15 minutes. We needed "yes, I will marry you, Edward," the one scene where Edward and Jacob kind of start to get along in the tent (and even that is questionable), and to have Bryce Dallas Howard killed (by the way what a damn waste of a casting that was).

I'm honestly struggling to think of anything else to say about this thing because the entire movie seemed so inconsequential. I suppose one thing worth commenting on is that it's lame that the visual aesthetic of the first movie is just kind of gone. Everything is now brightly and softly lit, all the vampires' sparkly skin has gone away, and everyone is looking a lot less pale. It's a pity - the original movie was very unique looking compared to this.

Least favorite, moving on.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1

No idea whether this opinion is popular or not, but I'm gonna come out swinging and say that this was my favorite movie in the franchise. I think once the first hour of the first movie was over, the main real interesting thing left for them to dig into was just the inherent complexities involved in dating a superhuman immortal. And this movie DELIVERED on that premise.

Nightmare about your wedding causing everyone you love to die due to your oncoming turning? Check. The dude-bro vampire making an awkward wedding speech about you "not getting any sleep?" Check. Crashout from your werewolf friend over your husband's vampire-loving being potentially lethal? Begging for your vampire husbands schlong? Check and check. CREEPY VAMPIRE BABY DRAMA? OH BOY CHECK.

This is the thing - a romance movie should focus on the relationship. If it isn't the courtship phase (which again, was over after an hour), it should be about the two people being together. New Moon was about a break up. Eclipse was about stopping Bryce Dallas Howard from killing someone. THIS movie is actually ABOUT dating a vampire. We're finally back on task after five hours of content.

It is, again, a pity that the visual aesthetic is gone. But I'll give props to the CGI department for some of the scenes involving blood, seeing inside of Bella's body, and particularly the werewolves for looking better than they ever had. I will however, also say WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BABY. WHY DID THEY NOT JUST GET A BABY WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE CGI.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2

I... don't really even know where to start with this one.

This movie ranges from some of the best action and special effects we've gotten, to the absolute worst CGI work I've ever seen in a movie released post-2000. It ranges from good, to boring, to bad, to downright offensive.

I'll start with the good, I suppose. Everything about Bella figuring out how to be a vampire was fun. Her enhanced senses, her hunting in the spectacularly impractical outfit, learning to fake breathing... it was all great. And the prolonged fight scene with the big team against the Vultori was awesome (even if it turning out to be fake was a ridiculous decision). Aro is as beautiful as the day I lost him.

Now, the boring. While I like the idea of gathering a bunch of vampires with weird powers to help fight the Vultori, the execution was just kind of dull. We had like one interesting recruitment scene where we got to see a vampire doing vampire stuff, and after that it was just a parade of people with new accents coming in and being like "my power is this, and my one personality trait is this." For how much of the movie this seemed to take up, that's a problem.

The bad. WHAT THE FUCK is with Renesme? Why did she still look CGI as a kid? Why did they go with a CGI baby to begin with? Why is this entire movie not about the complications of new parenthood with the added drama of vampirism and a kid who ages a year a day? Why is she seemingly just an agreeable prop with no personality? Has either Stephanie Meyer or the director EVER met a kid?

The offensive. I won't harp on this over-long, since I assume this is something this fandom has gotta hear a lot, but... "Should I start calling you dad?" So, to be clear, Jacob IS planning on dating Renesme. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? Why would someone ever choose to write that, and if you were adapting it and already took the time to establish that it wasn't romantic earlier in the movie, WHY would you not change it???

This movie was kind of a disaster, but I'd more readily rewatch it than Eclipse. This was at least a sort of beautiful disaster - one with highlights and lowlights far enough apart to give you whiplash.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Despite some of my criticisms, I did find my overall viewing experience very enjoyable. When it wasn't unironically enjoyable, it was silly and light enough that it made for a good casual viewing, and yes, a few so-bad-its-hilarious bits. And while I firmly believe Edward sucks, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief to appreciate Bella's crush and wish fulfillment.

I'd overall rank them as follows:

Breaking Dawn 1 > Twilight > New Moon > Breaking Dawn 2 > Eclipse

Twilight had a big background presence in my teenager-hood, and being a guy I didn't feel like I was "allowed" to engage with it or like it. I even spent some ill-advised time hating on the franchise simply because others told me I should. So it was vindicating finally seeing what the deal was, and it was very fun watching with my wife, who was returning to the franchise after a long time.

And despite my moralizing, I do think it's overall probably a harmless franchise. It's not as if the media I was consuming as a teenager set good examples about relationships either - Vegeta and Bulma in Dragonball Z are ten times as toxic as anything in Twilight.

There's a world where I rewatch one of these on a rainy day in the future. Me and my wife try to watch spooky movies every day in October, and I expect the first movie to start being a regular inclusion in that lineup.

Thanks for reading if you did!

TLDR: The Game Awards has a overabundance of categories that praise games for being like movies, and not enough categories that are focused on specific qualities of videogames as an art form. This puts an over-emphasis on discussion and praise of specific types of games and sidelines contemporary titles that don't imitate movies or have conventional narratives.

So, for the last few Game Awards, I picked up on a trend: it seemed to me that every year, the game that got the most nominations was always a **story-rich, cutscene-heavy, and/or dialogue-heavy game.** Basically, games that borrow heavily from another medium: movies.

Let's just run through each year and look at the trends:

*2025: Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has 13 nominations and 9 wins, including GOTY*

*2024: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has 7 nominations, tied with Astro Bot. FF7R ultimately has 1 win behind Astro Bot's 4.*

*2023: Baldur's Gate 3 bas 9 nominations and 6 wins, including GOTY.*

*2022: God of War Ragnarok has 11 nominations and 6 wins, loses GOTY to Elden Ring.*

*2021: Deathloop has 9 nominations. It Takes Two ties for most wins with Forza Horizon 5.*

*2020: The Last of Us Part II has 11 nominations and 7 wins, including GOTY.*

*2019: Death Stranding has 10 nominations, Disco Elysium has the most wins with 4, including GOTY.*

*2018: God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 have 8 nominations each, RDR2 has the most wins with 4, including GOTY.*

*2017: Horizon Zero Dawn ties for most nominations (6) with BotW, Mario Odyssey, and Destiny 2. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice ties for most wins (3) with Cuphead and BotW.*

*2016: Uncharted 4 has 8 nominations.*

*2015: The Witcher 3 has 6 nominations and 3 wins, including GOTY.*

*2014: The first year of the Game Awards and the only major exception to the rule, as several games tied for most nominations with 3, and no one game won more than 2. Dragon Age: Inquisition is among those that win 2, including GOTY.*

So again, it's cinematic, or as I like to call them, "movie-like" games that tend to get the most nominations and wins. There are exceptions here and there: Deathloop is definitely a very videogamey videogame (while still being story heavy), and Elden Ring and Astro-Bot winning GOTY over their competition with more nominations is certainly notable. But the trend is there.

**BUT OP, those are all good games that deserve the awards they got. What's the issue?**

The issue is not that any of these games are necessarily undeserving of awards. It's that the categories THEMSELVES favor *qualities you can assign to movies* over *qualities you can only assign to video games.*

Let me show you what I mean by looking closer at 2025. Clair Obscur was nominated for 13 awards. Of those 13, eight of them have obvious parallels with awards given out at the Oscar's. Three acting nominations, one for sound design, one for music, one for visuals, one for the narrative, and one for direction. In Oscar terms, that's Best Actor/Actress, Best Sound, Best Original Score, your choice of Best Visual Effects or Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. Their five other nominations each broadly praise game quality within a subset of games without calling out any specific trait: GOTY, Best Indie and Debut Indie, Best RPG, and Player Voice.

Does it not strike anyone else as odd that in the run of the most nominated and awarded game in TGA history, their isn't even a mention of GAMEPLAY? And yes, you can make the argument that any GOTY win *should* have good gameplay... but it doesn't *have to*, and that is weird.

I think the overall reason for the awards being like this is clear; they based the format of show off of the Oscar's and other big name award shows. Ones that celebrate non-games. And it was a decent starting point, but after more than 10 years, shouldn't we be in a place where there are more awards to praise specific GAME aspects than genre-awards?

Like, let's put it out there: there is no award for best gameplay, best level design, best world (open or otherwise), best enemy AI, best boss fight, best controls or hardware implementation, best optimization, best feedback loop or in-game system, smoothest difficulty curve, innovation in genre, most immersive, innovation in player freedom, best puzzle...

It just goes on and on. There are innate qualities and enough common aspects to games that you could populate the awards with almost all categories unique to videogames, but they just *aren't there.*

This creates narratives within the Awards themselves and the gaming community that these story heavy, movie-like games are the most important games, and by extension, the ones with the most value. As the Game Awards grow in popularity, this is going to be detrimental to gaming discourse as a whole. I'll put it to you - Baldur's Gate 3 deserved to win Best Narrative, for sure. But I kind of don't care about the narrative. I care that you can put 100 barrels on top of each other and cast feather fall to skip whole scripted levels, and the game doesn't break. I care that they made a turn based combat system that let's you incorporate adventure game style verb and noun based commands. Where are the awards for that? I want to talk about THAT.

Meanwhile, games that don't fit the movie-like genre get left out of the discussion despite being brilliant in their own right. Blue Prince was nominated for a mere two awards, despite being one of the most innovative games of the year with a wholly unique procedurally generated puzzle system. 2024s Balatro was hailed as the best designed game since TETRIS, and it walked away with a mere five nominations and three wins. One just for it being playable on phones. Doom (2016) won Best Action game, but where is the win for creating glory kills, and with it Best Innovation in Gameplay Loops? Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor created the Nemesis System, one of the coolest emergent narrative and gameplay systems ever, but it's sole win was Action/Adventure.

Would Tetris, what is often cited as the best designed game of all time, if it released today, even swing a nomination?

Other major gaming award shows also feature more diverse and game-centric categories. The BAFTA game awards feature Best Game Design. DICE has awards for character animation in gameplay and technical achievements. The Golden Joystick Awards has categories for remasters and DLC. But frankly, none of that is enough, and as the industry leader for Game Awards shows, it's TGAs' responsibility to issue more awards for qualities **SPECIFIC TO VIDEOGAMES.**

Thank you for your time if you read all of this.

Explanation:

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I read a lot of books, and I purchase nearly all of them from Barnes and Nobles or other independent bookstores in my city.

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I'm not concerned with the cost compared to just checking books out of the library, and I enjoy gifting books I've read and don't want to keep to people, and the freedom of accidentally dropping a book in the bathtub and not being stressed about it.

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A friend of mine recently told me I should stop buying books and try to exclusively read books by checking them out from the library because (their words) "it's good to support libraries."

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I told them that's dumb because my having a FREE library card and checking books out for FREE can't actually be helping them in any real way. They insisted that it does help, though they don't understand the mechanisms by which it does.

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Is my friend dumb?

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To be clear, I would like to support libraries if I can, and have donated to fundraisers and attended book clearance sales, but I don't really see how me borrowing their books actually helps them as an organization. I *do* see how my buying books from B&N and indie stores help the book industry from sliding into the complete control of Jeff Bezos.

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So what's the deal?

So, I've kind of hit a wall with my build knowledge, to where it's now fairly trivial for me to brew something that can one or two shot most early to midgame bosses, and if I do a lot of content and level up a lot, I can do the same to almost every boss in the game save ones where I need Scadutree fragments.

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And if it isn't oneshotting, it's wearing a ton of armor and using endure to where I can just trade out with literally everything, or it's spamming one spell, or using one ash of war...

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Like, I'm at the point where when I feel like playing Elden Ring, half the time, I'm just loading up Dark Souls 3 instead since in that game the most broken builds get is "I put a weapon buffs on sellsword twinblades." Builds are too good in this game - I feel like I barely have to engage with boss movesets to kill them.

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And I'm not even a particularly good player - just a knowledgeable one. I'm not landing parries and I'm rollspamming and getting caught in frame traps. It's just that I know how to stack buffs and where all the best Talismans and weapons are.

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So I'm coming to you to ask: what did you guys do when you hit this point? The point where it feels like you're inputting a spreadsheet via a controller and then killing every boss in the game with one charged heavy attack. What is there left to do? How do I recapture the magic?

TLDR: Read a book that made me think about the nature of the universe, started picturing me and my wife as abstract clouds of energy in outerspace a million years from now still playing out our same dynamic. What the fuck is my new kink?

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Okay, so weird thing-

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I read a really good sci-fi book today. It, like good sci-fi should, left me thinking about the nature of the universe, existence, my place in it, etc etc. All that good shit that good science fiction will do to you.

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And I had the thought "the time I feel the most like I'm in my correct place in the universe is when I'm playing with my wife."

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And I got really turned on at the thought of like, my dominating her being in some way fundamental to my existence. That the universe came together so that we could have this dynamic. And I started thinking like, "when I'm gone, this is the energy I want to leave behind - I want to be the force that dominates, controls, and takes care of whatever force she becomes." I was picturing both of becoming like, clouds of space dust, me overtaking her, and transcending until we're concepts.

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(Rereading this, I will now clarify that I'm not high while writing this and I wasn't high while this was going on. Also, I'm not religious or spiritual - this was the first time in my life I seriously had a thought about being something after death).

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I went to grab her, and we went wild. Probably the best sex of my life. And I was thinking about this stuff the whole time, like "we are the universe, when we're gone there will still be the energy and spirit of you getting dominated and railed by me." I felt like we could live forever on the feeling we each get from the way we play.

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We didn't even really do anything different (maybe my dirty talk was a little more... weird), but just the mindset changed everything about it for me.

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Anyway...

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Is this a thing? Transcending-our-physical-bodies-to-become-concepts-fundamental-to-the-universe-kink? Space-dust kink? What-will-we-be-when-we're-gone kink?

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I basically wanna know since if it is a thing I wanna... like, research it, I guess. I'm not vanilla by vanilla standards, but I don't have a lot of OUT THERE kinks in the BDSM world. Like, rope, impact play, dirty talk is my bread and butter. So the fact that I found something weird that turns me on is just a really unique experience for me.

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Anyway, thanks for any help you can give!

Plan is to do edibles at 4pm, enter Mercer labs, and leave at 6. We will likely be very hungry. What's the best option for gorging on junk food around either location?

Got a $220 Amazon giftcard and wanna spend it on steak.

If relevant, I'm cooking on a cast iron.

DO NOT carefully study enemy movement and attack patterns to figure out when it is ideal to go in for a hit

DO NOT explore the environment beyond the critical path - extra rooms with helpful items are a scam

DO NOT use burrowing in any fight, ever

DO NOT go back to town to buy things after you've died once (the fact that you only lose your bones after two deaths is NOT meant to be an opening for you to mitigate risk)

DO NOT buy health, vial, or defense upgrades

DO NOT bone-up, ever.

DO NOT lower the difficulty with Modifiers if you're feeling frustrated; meaningless digital trophies/achievements are worth INFINITELY MORE than you having an enjoyable time with a videogame

Instead of the above, please do the sensible thing and post a negative Steam review. Thank you for your time.

I'm in "PAST 2: Land of Milk and Honey"

I took like two weeks off of reading in between Present 1 and Past 2, and I keep seeing references to a "viral weapon" that I don't remember anything about from Past 1. I don't wanna google it for risk of spoilers.

What is the viral weapon?

I'm running a build with Sandevistan (so no deck) and 3 Intelligence. I've been able to max out every other skill by just dedicating myself to using their weapon type for long enough, but I don't really relish the thought of playing a no-quickhacks-no-perks Smart Weapon setup for long enough to get to 60.

Would it be viable to just craft a zillion quickhacks?

Basically, I went from 284 lbs to 240 lbs with pretty sloppy keto. It'd probably be more accurate to call it "low carb" because I would usually end up eating something carby on the weekends once or twice. But other than that it was eggs for breakfast, sardines for lunch, meat and a vegetable for dinner, and cheese for snacks.

But in an effort to get my belly to go away quicker, I've started doing an exercise routine five days a week. And OH MY GOD. My cravings have gone absolutely through the roof.

Since I've gone from almost-never-exercise to exercising every weekday, I've been trying to listen to my body just to see what would happen. And surprisingly, it *is* working out. While my general, work energy level is definitely higher on days I don't eat carbs, I find that if I don't have *something* I often crap out in the middle of my workout. Whereas if I have something like a handful of potato chips or rice with dinner, I can always push through.

Has anyone had an experience like this? Does this mean it's time to stop keto? Is there some secret way to push through and have energy to workout I don't know? I know the obvious answer would be "eat a sausage" or something, but it doesn't really work for me.

For context, if needed: Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays I do a 30 minute weightlifting workout where I'm cycling between sets for 8 minutes at a time, and I accompany that with 5 sets of 10 pushups, situps, and squats. On Tuesday and Thursdays I just do the 5 sets of 10.

I have a four year degree in teaching first through sixth grade, but all my work experience is in teaching or camps for 2-4 year olds, half a year of kindergarten, and ~7 years of working an after-school for kids aged 6 to 14.

I love my job - right now, I'm an assistant teacher for a pre-k class. But it's not enough money. And there's free pre-k coming to the city I live in soon, so I don't necessarily even have job security unless I apply to work for the government pre-k, which could be even worse money.

The only career I've ever seriously considered other than teaching and child care is something in making video games, but that was back when I was a dumb high schooler. I DO NOT want to be an elementary school teacher - I did student teaching in a well-regarded school in my city, and it was the most miserable experience of my life.

I have no real marketable skills other than working with kids. I'm willing to go back to school or do training, but obviously, I'd prefer not to.

I don't know what to do. What would you do in my shoes?

Prepping my first playthrough and going for Draconian and no objective markers. For folks who are experienced playing on Draconian, just wanted to have you check my work and tell me if I'm missing anything.

All female, all vamp

-Hero

-Monster Wrangler until I learn Wild Side, then change to Martial Artist

-Priest and swap to Sage at earliest opportunity

-Thief until I learn Nose for Treasure, then swap to Sage with book

My thought process is that I basically want (other than the Hero), one character that goes all in on physical damage, and two versatile characters that can do a lot of magic. In the early game, focusing mostly on damage with a Priest to keep us alive, then adding in offensive spells via Sage once we have all the most important utility stuff.

I've heard that certain Merchant Skills are also really good, so I'm wondering whether I shouldn't replace one of the options above with a Merchant until I learn service call, then swapping to Sage. Is three Sages good, or will I miss physical damage?

Let me know your thoughts!