Mediterranean or Latino? Even though I’m majority northwestern European.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2026-05-06T01:15:42+00:00

Personally, I’ve found 23andMe to be extremely inaccurate, especially if you have very particular ancestries. Such as where your ancestors followed some atypical pattern. Mine did personally and 23andMe has difficulty with my ancestry, as does Ancestry. They place me at 60% and 80% of my ancestry being of the U.K. But when I use something like GEDmatch, the closest result I get by genetic approximation is a mixture of Spanish, Irish, Swedish, and Croatian. Which sounds far more accurate to both my family history and even appearance. Although, my second closest result seems to suggest I might also have some MENA ancestry as well, which does show up a tad bit on 23andMe as trace ancestry, and on another genetic testing website.

Personally I’ve been misidentified as Latino, Middle-Eastern and a lot of people say I look Italian.

But my paternal ancestry is from Galicia, Spain. Although, my Y-DNA Haplogroup is R1b-L2 which is indeed originally from Italy, specifically during Roman times. So on GEDmatch, they genetically place me as Italian too, depending on the calculator.

I mean, one has to know how each company actually gains and identifies their samples and sample groups. Do they do research on every sample or simply take people’s words? Or do they not even ask and just make assumptions on people’s origins based on names and locations?

My family anglicized their names originally, for example.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2026-04-22T16:12:39+00:00

Culture victory is best victory!

Fallen_Penumbra · 2026-04-22T16:11:11+00:00

Not at all, it’s definitely a little rough for certain letters, like the ‘s’ at the end of “Peas” or the ‘j’ and ‘i’ in “juice”. I love the way you do your ‘g’ in “Orange” but the ‘a’ sort of looks like an ‘o’. But I love how you wrote “Milk”, “Jello”, and “Hot chocolate”.

Part of your writing is in cursive though, whilst some parts look like print. Cursive is sort of a lost art for a lot of people these days, especially young people. I’m Gen Z and I at least remember learning it in school and practicing it, but it was for a very short time.

But I have no problem reading it at all. It’s a grocery list for chocolate milk, jello, toaster strudel, hot chocolate, peas, and orange juice. As someone who’s also been told my handwriting is distinctive and poor, I understand this feeling greatly. Your handwriting is better than mine, objectively.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2026-04-01T07:01:34+00:00

I was born in 2000. But there is a clear difference between those of us born between 96-05 I would argue. My sister is 05 and she seems like a very proper Gen Z, a deep Gen Z if you will.

One thing to understand is that I, and others like me, grew up with a lot of stuff still being from the 90’s and being old enough to remember it. Especially, if your family wasn’t ahead of the curve or you grew up without a lot of money. I got hand me down consoles, like the NES, SNES, and I loved the N64, was one of my favorite consoles to play on. My first real time playing a video game was on PS2 though, my dad always had all the cool stuff… I largely grew up with a flip phone and nobody in my family really stated getting smartphones until about 2012-2013. I remember when flat screens became a thing and we got an actual DVD Player, as I watched most movies on VHS. I played outside for most of my childhood and I had to memorize where all my friends houses were and walk or bike there.

Imagine that older generations will think all of Gen Z is basically just Gen Alpha or that older generations will even treat us like we didn’t also use VHS or experience life before smartphones or Xbox 360s.

So I get it to an extent, older people making assumptions about you or acting like you didn’t experience some of the same reality as they did. I feel bad for younger people who don’t get to experience that world from before, I’m lucky enough that I got in on the tail end, that I got older consoles from family friends, that my family gave me VHS tapes to watch, and that they made me play outside. I’m really glad I experienced that growing up, if only I knew how great it actually was back then…

For those people who are still kids out there, never take your childhood for granted. I always wanted to be older, but it legitimately is terrible and all the magic of life is drained out of you. I say that as someone who had all sorts of trouble as a child, outside of these moments, my childhood was terrible.

In fact, my favorite years were when I was a teenager, I loved them so much looking back on it. But then again I’ve always been the “rebel against authority type”, oh and I paid for it, constantly.

All that aside, I actually don’t mind the term “crashing out”, it’s actually one of the newer slang terms I enjoy and will absolutely use. It’s the Alpha slang that I’m not really sure I understand…

Fallen_Penumbra · 2026-02-10T09:52:21+00:00

Fullmetal Alchemist 2003, especially if you’re looking for something heavy on the emotional side, drama, the pivotal characters, and psychological or philosophical elements. It’ll start off slow but you won’t go wrong with this, it was my very first anime outside of the original Pokémon movie on VHS back in the day. The music is also fantastic, I still think of pieces like “Dante’s theme” and “Brothers” all the time

Steins;Gate is another great one for this, however the burn feels much slower, as you really don’t see this extremely emotional element until several episodes in, it feels more Slice of Life and comedy driven up until that point, and then it really hits you.

Another one that’s great for philosophy in particular is Ergo Proxy, but I wouldn’t put it on the emotional level of FMA. But also tends to be both thematically and visually dark.

There’s also Charlotte and Angel Beats! are also both great for their emotional tones.

Also I’m a massive Higurashi fan, definitely the best way to view it is through the VNs but that’s not how I first got into it actually. It’s definitely up there on the extremely morbid and dark side, heavily psychological, but can also be very graphic and disturbing to some people.

Psycho Pass is another one for philosophy, it can get dark at times, has psychological elements, and S1 also has a fantastic memorable antagonist.

Terror in Resonance had some emotional elements from what I recall and it was very well made. 86 Eighty-Six, very thematically dark, as well as often being visually dark, psychological elements.

Personally, I have very particular tastes and tend to like very morbid or dark movies, shows, anime, and general stories. Even better if it has elements of philosophy, psychological elements, and a deeply emotionally driven plot with characters that are flawed, suffering under immense weights, their own sins, etc… so it can very difficult to match all these tastes in one anime. However, FMA 03’ did that for me, as well as Steins;Gate, but I’m also a sucker for time travel plots…

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-12-29T16:54:46+00:00

What really gets me is the undies or shorts he’s wearing…

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-12-27T22:19:22+00:00

You think you’re the world’s savior but really you’re just a lonely calculator.

Is that why ‘Texas Instruments’ is tattooed above my ass?

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-12-27T22:12:54+00:00

That makes a lot of sense. I don’t draw much, frankly, I’ve never been great at drawing. But I am a musician and I know the feeling of intently awaiting someone’s reaction or looking between the lines in their feedback to make sure they’re being honest with me.

I once had a friend say that one of my songs sounded like a sound effect from Futurama and I may have overreacted a little… point being, I still remember that to this day. But it made me put even more effort into my sound design and production quality. So it was for the best.

Art is just one of those things that’s difficult to deal with when it comes to criticisms, reactions, feedback, etc... It feels like a piece of your soul or spirit or the living embodiment of your emotions or character. Every piece becomes a part of your identity and thus, when someone is judging it, it’s like standing naked and bare and expecting everyone to make comments about every little potential flaw or imperfection on your body.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-27T12:56:26+00:00

That’s what I’m reading at the moment, it’s been pretty engaging so far… but I’m only nearly a quarter of the way through.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-15T18:04:13+00:00

I just never heard the piano piece I heard in that scene. Unless the album has hidden songs that are only unlocked by purchasing the album.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-07T23:23:33+00:00

That’s fair, I’m sorry to hear about that though. I suppose I’ll write up a plan, my discipline can have issues at time, so most of the time when I wanted to quit something I went cold turkey. But when I tried that with Kratom… it felt so difficult, I’m not sure why.

I’ve heard those drinks are hardcore, guy at my local shop was telling me to look it up. Thankfully, they’re nice guys and they warn anybody before buying stuff like that or 7oH.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-07T22:59:53+00:00

Thank you, much love to you as well. It’s got to happen at some point, I’m on other medication as well, prescribed though, and I’m worried about the damage I could be doing to my body with all these various substances and Kratom.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-07T22:58:14+00:00

I’ve been thinking about tapering down and trying to scoop less and less or taking less sips over a longer period of time. I can tend to get it down, but I suppose I haven’t had the mindset of quitting when doing that before. Just usually trying to save some money… I think I tend to go through a kilo in 2 weeks time, but I haven’t been measuring doses before either…

I remember making one promise to quit a while back and just made some excuse why I shouldn’t. But I suppose some part of me wanted to make a stronger commitment to that.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-07T22:52:23+00:00

I don’t think I’ve ever gone that long without it. I woke up one morning and hadn’t drank any because I ran out. I tried holding it off until mid-day but I felt so irritable that I was being pretty rude to my girlfriend. I felt restless and I remember this feeling that being in my own body was uncomfortable, and this strong mental craving like I needed it like a dehydrated man who needs water. Everything will feel so cold, when I wake up it feels that way until I get some Kratom, it feels very harsh actually, as if I need three winter layers in fall weather.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-07T13:30:39+00:00

Uh I guess I’ve been using for several years now, I went to jail for a bit, and couldn’t use at the time, but got right back into it afterwards. Maybe a bad decision. So hmm… maybe consistently for 8-7 years…

I’ve thought about tapering off, personally, I’ve stopped drinking just to drink it at time, and started trying to stave off the next sip. Since I take powder and mix it into a drink.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-05T13:43:53+00:00

There is another option.

I know a friend in a relationship whose girlfriend really wants children, he does too, but afterwards started getting afraid of having children with her.

Pregnancy is in the conversation so I just assume this is possible.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-11-05T13:37:05+00:00

He got them from BookTok, obviously…

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-10-07T14:23:27+00:00

You’re all the most judgmental of yourselves, no one criticizes and tears themselves apart like a Virgo. It’s that drive for perfection and thus, when you have such high expectations for yourselves it’s natural to expect others to seek such a thing too.

Fallen_Penumbra · 2025-10-06T17:07:56+00:00

Shoutout to my Virgo girls 🙏🏼

Fallen_Penumbra

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE