Thank you for the tip with Inside Out, I’ll check it out! It was on our watchlist anyway and gets promoted to top rank now.

With the kids’ media that’s the thing - there is still always a sibling. We’ve always read a lot to our four year old daughter and every longer story with an only child ends up with a sibling being born. It breaks me because I actually would love to have more children and every time that I felt safe with a story and it finally was ok, a happy family of three, they add a sibling. My daughter won’t go through that. I won’t go through that. Unless, of course, the parents are divorced, one is dead, it’s an adoptive family, or a queer family. All of these are great and depict amazing, valid family structures, and I like these books too, but they still don’t represent our dynamic.

Funnily enough my daughter caught me reading Sailor Moon mangas once and at least there the protagonist has an only child. (If you do not count parallel universe stories which I don’t for my sanity.) Sailor Moon makes me cope the most currently.

To me it is the number of children. All the happy family movies had families with multiple children, and it feels like only child families are portrayed overwhelmingly as dysfunctional and tragic.

I’m trying to work through this mindset because we only have one child, but it is hard because subconsciously, I feel like a failure, like I cannot live up to this expectation and my child is doomed to this gloomy, sad existence.

If anyone is reading this, I beg you, prove me wrong. This isn’t a challenge, I just desperately need picture perfect single child family portrayals.

I was in NYC back in early 2020 and downloaded the Uber app for that, there was no Uber in my country at that point. I’ve never used it since then. I still get emails every fucking month that my Uber account is about to expire and be deleted unless I log in. For 3 years now. JUST FUCKING DELETE IT FFS

I love pure cranberry juice actually. I mean I live in Germany so I cannot drink pure juice anyway, that would be insanity, it has to be at least 50% mixed with sparkling water. And cranberry juice is ideal for a lower juice content spritz when it is hot outside and you’re sick of drinking Apfelschorle.

Wait they planned on getting pregnant? Edit: ok I saw your other comment, this is bonkers

My daughter is 4 too. While I get the worries, and I absolutely don’t want to encourage or downplay teenage pregnancies, I’ve thought about it a lot, and if she ever became pregnant at a young age, I decided that my first reaction needs to be one of joy and congratulations. Because if she ends up keeping the kid, it’s gonna be loved, and I want them to know that people were happy about them existing and being chosen to exist, and not just looked at as a burden and accident. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel if the first reaction from everyone is shock, disgust, “fafo”, anger. That being said, the next thing is I would make sure I’d support her no matter what decision she takes. Abortion, adoption, raising the kid, I’m on board because it is her life, her body, her decision.

Isn’t it the German town with the highest suicide rate?

Absolutely yes.

I’ve dreamt of making movies and theater plays. I got into internships after finishing school and it was going good, I just started hating it. I hated movies, I couldn’t see them without thinking of all the misery behind the scenes. I hated TV. I hated theater.

I stopped after a year and went to university. It ruined something else for me, but at least, after a while, I was able to enjoy movies again.

Oh I see! Yes, going from a father daughter relationship to love interest is icky. As I’ve mentioned before, I kind of knew what would happen in the sequel while watching the original series, so I paid extra attention to the “ick factor” (also I don’t really see Yashahime as canon, so if there were an ick, I’d just have more reason to denounce the sequel lol).

The thing is, their relationship doesn’t really have a father daughter dynamic. He is not educating or parenting her, he doesn’t explain how the world works to her. He doesn’t console her when she is crying, he doesn’t give her affirmation, affection, or approval. He doesn’t provide for her (directly telling her to fend for herself if she needs human food). He doesn’t tell her what to do but lets her choose whether she wants to follow (or not). Their dynamic is much closer to Kagome and Inuyasha, with Sesshomaru protecting Rin from danger and running to her rescue whenever she is in trouble, and at times even pushing her away in the belief that a different kind of life might be better for her, safer, more normal. He’s not a father, nor an uncle, nor a mentor to her. He just… has her around. I’ve tried to find at least one episode where there would be an ick, an obvious “oh God that’s so weird that they will end up together” but it just never came.

As a side note, they only travelled together for some months before she started living in a human village again. So it is not like he raised her (long term) and watched her grow up from day to day.

Still, I agree it is weird, and it is weird to see this progression of their relationship, but in all fairness, it’s not as icky, weird, incestuous, or out of the blue, as I had initially assumed. I think it is more of a memory thing, when I thought back of the story, I also imagined them being in a family like relationship. But I think I just assumed that because of the straightforward (assumption of) power structures.

I’ll join you in talking to the void about inuyasha since I am rewatching it for the first time since I was a teen (and it is the first time I actually have an order): I see what you mean with Kagura. But some poetic bittersweet death does the story good. Sess being there when she died and comforting her was a huge character development.

I’ve seen some clips from Yashahime and I doubt I’ll be able to watch it. I think the idea of the main conflict is compelling, but it’s already the language (“dad” instead of “father” is already off putting) and the character design (the tomboy daughter looks like she is wearing a suit and I somehow dislike that they had to make a tomboy character to begin with instead of a boy) that makes me unlikely to watch it.

I’ve spoiled myself the whole Rin thing though while I was in the middle of my rewatch and I have to admit I can see it. And I like it, and I prefer it. There is nothing romantic between Kagura and Sess, she only gives small indications, apart from the final declaration in the final act. (Not there yet in the manga, might scream into the void later.) He clearly only has compassion towards the end but no romantic or emotional attachment.

Honestly I can see it. While he is thankfully not grooming Rin when she is a child or showing any kind of romantic feelings towards her, it’s obvious she has a very unique position for a reason. The whole thing where he jumped into the Meido to save her from the netherworld (?) was a crazy episode. She’s the only person who makes him feel emotions like fear, sadness, regret, despair, and yes, love. Love for her, Jaken, life, his brother, the quest, people and beings. Hell even Sess’s mom was like “tf” and somehow found it in herself to revive a “human being” that is beneath her like an ant.

Afaik, even in Yashahime Sess is not being too present with Rin and never was, and their relationship isn’t all too lovey dovey. Their relationship, even when a romantic one, will be very… discrete. People point out that he is hundreds of years old anyway, so there will always be a difference in age/maturity when he finds a human partner. But I think this is almost making it too complicated. He is a demon. She is a human. The ick that we perceive stems from seeing it as a human-human coupling, when he is a demon and cannot be assessed this way. Apart from that, Japan in the feudal era and such. Him giving her choices en masse is already quite the luxury. Him not aging also. He is still a spoilt teenage/tween brat at the beginning of the series, despite being hundreds of years old.

Also I think Rin has a crush on Sess all along. I still have 4 episodes to go from the final act and idk what happens to Kohaku, maybe that would have been a more satisfying match for the audience, but I think for the characters SessRin makes more sense than SessKag and KohRin. I can absolutely imagine Rin being the pushier one to get together with Sess.

To be fair, the manga is much better in that regard. Tuxedo mask is actually very useful and might have a better character arc than Usagi herself, being that he starts out as a guy who just dresses up to someone with some powers who still feels inferior to his super badass gf whom he feels he is only holding back, to actually having a crystal of his own and some deep shit crazy powers. I’m not so sure it was supposed to be about empowerment as much as we want to read onto it. Same with all the sapphic views on it, claiming everyone there is gay or at least bi. Have it your way and read into it what you want, but I don’t think it was the actual intention of the creators, neither Naoko nor the anime studio.

I mean they literally give the girls manicures in their transformations, although they wear gloves - simply because the executives planned to market nail polish.

Both the seshi and tuxedo mask have episodes where they are vital though. I hate when he is called a damsel in distress as much as when the senshi are reduced to bystanders. Within the format and with the target audience, with the ease of production goals, I honestly think it is ok to not have them all kick ass every episode.

Sincerely, a huge Sailor Moon fan who is currently rewatching with their daughter. (The pegasus storyline is awful in the anime so far but it might be the best one in the manga.)

I didn’t notice the picture but I spent a solid 5 minutes in existential grammar crisis about “Erdnüsse gegen Zigarettenstümmel eintauschen”. Because to me it reads like they gave peanuts to get cigarette buds.

How on earth are you reading while lying on your stomach??

Anecdotally, I had a quenching desire to lie on my stomach after giving birth. Like, I was exhausted and sleep deprived and you could have told me that this would kill me and I’d still sleep on my stomach in the hospital. I later looked it up and apparently lying on your stomach helps with the back formation of the uterus.

That got deep really fast xD

Anyway, I’ll be happy to share results once I’ll get to it!

As a frequent pee-er myself I think I should talk to my doctor

Just want to say I love comments like yours. I love when people know their stuff about the bible (or other holy texts) and can put it into a reflected context. Thank you

it was started by a guy on his blog with an explicit statement at the start that it wasn’t true and his intent was to demonstrate how easy it was to create a conspiracy theory…

This reminds me of the guy who faked a study that supposedly claimed chocolate could help to lose weight, he put a lot of red flags in it, and it was still not only turned into headlines of numerous magazines, but was actually even published in a scientific journal that claims it does extensive peer review.

Unfortunately, this study is still referred to as of today. People still find claims that chocolate with high cocoa content can work as a weight-loss accelerator.

I am very intrigued

I’ve studied nutrition science and we talked about what you described and yes, the blunt “truth” is that liposuction is the only reliable way to really get rid of “emptied fat cells”. There are a lot of things playing into the dreaded yo yo effect but the fact that it is much easier to refill emptied cells than to make new cells via division is definitely a big factor.

(“Truth” is in “” because I dislike this term in a scientific context but english is my third language and it’s pretty late over here so I am struggling to find a better suited word)

Good luck on your weight loss journey. It is an incredibly hard and brave one to take and I admire that you are trying.

Kudos to your friend going through with a reduction to pursue her passion!

In my case, I have a very small band width, so I cannot shop in regular stores. (In my city, there is exactly one shop that has my size.) As a teen and young woman, I simply didn’t have the money to even consider a 50€ sports bra, let alone a 100€+ one. And since the selection is super limited, I didn’t even find one in my size that would - no matter the money - give enough support for comfort.

Funnily enough, regular wired bras with cups still ended up giving better support than any sports bra I could find. But they still only work so well. (And I, by far, wasn’t as passionate about sports as to get a reduction, or spend my limited bra money on a semi working, ugly sports bra.)