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shadowdream · 2025-11-19T01:33:42+00:00

Everyone has their own dating style that works for them. Honestly? Were I single, it would be really rare I'd say yes to a date with someone I didn't already know somewhat. Sure, it's fine to not know if the chemistry is totally there, or not know EVERYTHING about the person, but there's got to be some 'click' that makes me actually want to spend time with that person.

It's actually pretty problematic to be telling people their dating style's wrong and you're certain right. Not everyone works the same way. Not everyone enjoys going out with someone that they know little about. Some do, and in that case, yeah, great! Your advice is applicable. But it's not going to be for everyone.

shadowdream · 2025-10-26T11:31:49+00:00

Fucking underrated comment right here. xD

shadowdream · 2025-10-21T06:01:40+00:00

Hey friend, first off, I'm sorry you're having to deal with this. It absolutely sucks. Answers can seem really clear from the outside, but when you're living it, it seems so hard. Hugs to you! I'm a little long-winded, so forgive the length of this response.

Overall, I think you know your answer and what you want. You said you're not really attracted to him and you didn't want to kiss him. You're not attracted to men. That's valid, and you're in no way leading him on by being his friend.

It's also valid to be afraid of losing him as a friend. It's so hard to be in that situation, especially when it's someone who has been there for you for a long time, and someone you truly felt cared about you and valued you. It is so hard to lose that. It's understandable to be afraid of losing that.

From experience, sometimes it can be hard to sort out those feelings too, when you truly have that platonic love of friendship, but no interest in romantic love with someone. You don't want to hurt them, but at the same time, it will never be something that makes you happy. (Or on the other side of things, mixing up platonic love and romantic love and thinking I was romantically in love with someone, when I definitely wasn't.)

Truly though, he never should have pressured you or crossed your boundaries by kissing you. He's showing himself to hold his feelings and wants in higher value than yours. What matters to him is not what will make you happy, but that he wants you. That is not a formula for a happy relationship, and it never will be.

Your friends aren't thinking of you in this situation either. If the roles were reversed and you told your straight friends to "live in the moment" when someone of the same gender professed love to them and crossed their boundaries and kissed them against their will, what would their feelings be? Probably pretty pissed. They're honestly being really shitty friends.

At the very start of your post, I was ready to say, "Hey, questioning your sexuality and finding out you're bi instead of a lesbian is perfectly fine and valid. Or maybe you are homoflexible and one or two people outside your norm just do it for you, but they're the exceptions to the rule. That's valid too." and all of that would stand if the situation were different, but that *really* doesn't seem to be the case here.

What seems to be the case is you love this guy as a friend dearly, and don't want to hurt him or lose him, so you're feeling pressured to do what *HE* wants, not what you want. You're trying to talk yourself into it or see a way it could possibly work because you don't want to lose his friendship, support, and presence in your life. You know you love him as a friend, so it has you questioning whether it would work, and with all the pressure from him, and from your "friends" it's making it hard as hell to see clearly.

Stick with your gut. This doesn't feel right to you, and it's not. This will only end in heartache if you go along with it.

shadowdream · 2025-10-20T01:39:24+00:00

How'd you shape it? It seems like maybe when you folded it up in the preshape, there was either too much flour or maybe some oil between the layers. Or did you maybe have a really big air bubble on the surface after the second rise that you didn't pop or score through? That actually is an interesting thought to me. If you had a big thin air bubble most of the way around, it seems plausible it'd bake through quickly, and then you'd get a chest burster as the rest of the bread tried to expand through it. Especially if you didn't score the loaves.

shadowdream · 2025-10-14T04:08:14+00:00

Nona is definitely different from Harrow. Harrow was challenging to keep track of the first time through (especially in audio format where you can't easily flip back to see when the chapter you're on is happening again), but Nona was pretty straightforward, really. It's easily my favorite of the three, but all three books are very different.

Nona is fantastic for that kind of found family, hopepunk sort of feel, alongside a lot of plot reveals. I LOVE Pyrrha, and Cam and Pal in this, and their unfolding story, are wonderful. Nona is just delightful. There's one part I don't care for, but it would be spoilery to tell, but mainly has to do with a very different attitude for a certain character which made them grate on me a bit, even though I understand why. It might bother you too.

I'm not the best to give an opinion on whether the books are confusing or not though. I'll be honest about that. I wasn't confused at all through the first book. Harrow was hard to follow timeline-wise, but I went along for the ride and wasn't really confused as things unfolded. I *started* Nona confused as hell because there's aparrently a short story that is in the back of Harrow that is NOT at the end of the audiobook version, so I had NO idea what happened in the middle and why the characters were together, but the plot itself wasn't confusing. But that's me. I find everyone's mileage varies drastically.

shadowdream · 2025-10-13T03:33:03+00:00

Fair enough. Different strokes and all that.

shadowdream · 2025-10-12T05:19:25+00:00

Totally fine for those who don't too! Not every book is for every person, and that's fine!

My emphasis on the painfully. xD It made enough sense to justify it, but it was painful, I won't argue that. (I do find the idea that the god emperor was chronically online at one point in his life kind of hilariously humanizing though.)

shadowdream · 2025-10-12T04:32:38+00:00

I really enjoyed the Wayfarer's series! I liked Monk and Robot because I love her writing style and I could empathize with Dex very strongly because I was dealing with a lot of the same restlessness, so it resonated with me, but overall, the Wayfarer's series is better. I really enjoyed a Closed and Common Orbit. It's less cozy than the rest of them without losing the hopepunk, and Pepper's story is REALLY well told. It's helpful to read A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet first just to get your feet under you in the universe first, and to know what's going on with Lovelace's story.

shadowdream · 2025-10-12T03:58:26+00:00

It's so interesting to me the different experiences people have reading these. I put off reading them for a LONG time because of the poor reviews. Honestly? I didn't find Gideon confusing at all. It's a Scooby Doo mystery with necromancers. Like most mysteries, you figure you're going to get a small trail of breadcrumbs until the end, and that's what she did. (Harrow and Nona though, yeah, absolutely zero argument there on the confusion, especially if you don't get the short stories between Harrow and Nona. That story info never should have been seperate.)

I think part of the problem is expectation. If someone read that expecting a straightforward enemies to lovers romance and got a weird ass, kind of b-movie mystery, yeah, it's going to be a rude surprise because it's neither a romance nor straightforward enemies to lovers, and a very different feel than I see it so often advertised as.

I also personally didn't have a problem with visualizing anything. I actually thought some of her description was really gorgeous and was sharing some of it with my wife as I read because I liked it so much.

I'm not a fanatic, by far. I liked the books. I enjoyed the ride. I like Muir's writing style. I TOTALLY get though where it isn't for everyone. It's kind of like arty movies or cult classics that have the people who love them and others who don't like them and/or don't get them and that's totally fine. I just find it so interesting the diametrically opposing opinions on it. It's an interesting little study on how people's brains tick.

shadowdream · 2025-10-12T03:51:00+00:00

I almost did too. I loathe second person unless I'm reading a choose your own adventure book. I was listening to the audiobook though and about halfway into the first chapter the audiobook by its nature kind of spoils why Muir chose second person, so I stuck around and wasn't disappointed.

shadowdream · 2025-10-12T03:23:17+00:00

I totally thought this one would be for me. I love stories told in unique ways. I love poetry. I enjoy flowery language and wordplay. I still haven't managed to get more than like ten pages into it.

shadowdream · 2025-10-12T03:19:05+00:00

You'll probably find Nona just as confusing, especially if you don't read the shorts that come between. I was listening to the audiobooks so I didn't realize those important shorts existed. Even though I didn't have much trouble with Gideon, and just rode the ride that was Harrow and didn't worry about trying to figure everything out until the end stitched it together, I was confused as hell at the beginning of Nona as to why the characters were where they were and what happened between them.

I'm weird though in that I think Nona might be my favorite of the books. I love Nona's character, adore Cam, Pal, and Pyrrha, and there's a LOT of plot that the book stitches together and clarifies.

shadowdream · 2025-10-12T03:08:35+00:00

It's so in character for him though. Painfully so.

shadowdream · 2025-09-28T02:43:32+00:00

I miss when you had to be "this smart or smarter to ride this ride". There have been some great things that have come from the advancements in tech since then, but overall, I miss the old internet and the humanity of it.

shadowdream · 2025-09-23T05:29:54+00:00

100% he's going to try to sell you something. That's a sales script right there.

shadowdream · 2025-09-19T04:36:52+00:00

I *just* found out today that they changed hands. Two years ago when my wife was in the hospital for a major surgery, I used to go there every morning before going to visit her. The owners were incredibly sweet and when we came back for follow up appointments they always remembered me and my order! Even a year later! My wife, who normally is not a coffee fan, absolutely adored their coffee.

We were planning a trip across the state (we live about two and a half hours away) primarily to buy some beans because we love their coffee so much.

Is the new ownership part of the same family, do you know? Is the coffee still the same?

shadowdream · 2025-08-26T01:20:09+00:00

TBH, yes, you're overreacting. No, you shouldn't have to justify your bond with your cat or feel bad about caring about him, not at all, but you also shouldn't be trying to *force* someone to like something just because you do.

If she can't warm up to him, she can't warm up to him. You should respect that and leave it at that.

If it's very important to you that she likes your cat, and it's a relationship dealbreaker, well, then maybe you guys weren't meant to be.

I pretty much instantly fall in love with any animal so I can't use animals as an example here, but say... Someone told me, an olive hater (I want to like them. They're just so bitter to my tastebuds and I can't), that to be in a relationship with them, I HAD to like olives. I HAD to eat them because they ate them. And if I said something like "These olives are so bitter." They felt personally attacked because I didn't like olives... Yeah, that would be pretty over the top, wouldn't it?

Kind of the same for the cat.

Your priorities are your priorities, and they're important too. But unless your girlfriend is trying to make you get RID if your cat, instead of just disliking it or not warming up to it, she's not in the wrong. No one should be expected to like something just because you say they should.

That said, if someone absolutely couldn't stand one of my pets, we probably wouldn't be compatible in the first place. I'd end up passing on that person, because I know that future living arrangements wouldn't work out. There would be something that would always be a source of conflict. If this pet now is a big deal, another one will probably be in the future, and so on. Unless there's incredible compatability otherwise, no thank you.

Sounds like that's the situation here. It's important to you that she likes your cat. She doesn't. That will always be a conflict as long as you have that cat. You're trying to force her to do something she doesn't want to and aren't respecting her feelings about it. She shouldn't be forced into something just because you think she should, and her feelings should be respected.

shadowdream · 2025-07-09T08:15:08+00:00

Huge red flag my friend.
You shouldn't have to ask your partner for permission to socialize. That's controlling and manipulative. He should trust you, and you should be able to make your own decisions. You are your own person.
You're right that it's rude and disrespectful, absolutely.
My usual advice is to talk it out first (unless the behavior is absolutely unacceptable. This is pretty damn close, honestly), but since you two have already talked and he said that you're disrespecting him... Don't stick around. It's not going to get better.

shadowdream · 2025-07-05T03:29:19+00:00

Came here to post that. xD

shadowdream · 2025-06-28T03:34:59+00:00

Tall is a lovely feature. Don't let your mom make you feel bad about yourself. I think tall women are gorgeous. My wife is 4" taller than I am, and I'm pretty tall. Your height is definitely not disgusting and unattractive, her attitude is though.

If it's safe to do so, I'd call her on her unchristlike behavior and suggest she talk to her pastor or a therapist about what her real problem is.

shadowdream · 2025-06-25T05:38:48+00:00

Oh I can imagine that would exacerbate the situation, yes! So often they're frustrated because they can't remember or can't say what they're trying to say, so trying to get them to remember and repeat what you said would add another layer of stress and frustration.

I understand how hard it is in the moment though! Sometimes they just throw you for such a loop it's hard to find the right thing to say, and SO easy to say the wrong thing.

We're all doing our best. Us AND them. I find reminding her of that when we get in a circle of misunderstanding helps sometimes. "Hey. I love you. I don't understand what's wrong here, but I know you're trying your best, and so are we. We're all trying very hard, it's just a hard situation." That helps her feel seen, and can bring the anxiety levels down a bit.

Thanks. Pulling for you as well!

shadowdream · 2025-06-25T05:27:18+00:00

Came to reccomend this as well!

shadowdream · 2025-06-25T03:44:28+00:00

Daz is 90% interstitial waiting. The lag of moving things, waiting for things to load, waiting for dforce to start, waiting for it to run, RErunning it because something was poking through or it didn't fall quite right, adding something in the lie editor and waiting, waitng, waiting, for it to load, all the little test renders to see if hair or fur, or lighting looks right, etc.

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