Altharis

Hi, thanks for doing this AMA. How did your family respond to this? And you said you wouldn't know how to help someone else, but is there something you really missed from family/friends when you first found out that could've helped, or something that helped you recover or make progress towards it?

Do you have any significant memories that you'd like to share, from the children you've taught? Something very positive, or sad, etc.?

Has you being male led to suspicion / questioning from parents / employers, and if so do you have any tips for dealing with that? (Here it seems pretty difficult for guys to have any kind of job that involves children because of two pedophiles that were on the news for a long time)

Sorry to hear about the shitty medical care :( I hope you're much better now.

Like you I have to use hormones every day too or I get the same effects, but I use testosterone instead of estrogen!

I'm not OP, but I live in the Netherlands. Several newspapers have continuously changed the story with the New Year's in Köln, but out of 60~ suspects, 3 were refugees. There's also quite a few white suspects, so it's definitely not a refugee-immigrant only problem. Same goes for the sexual harassment with carnaval.

It's mostly North-African people (Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan) part of criminal gangs who do it. They have no intention of becoming a recognized refugee, but because of the massive amount of people in the asylum procedure, it takes long to kick them out. They are purely there to steal money and valuable items before being kicked out.

In the Netherlands, most crimes related to refugees happen within the temporary refugee centers (where asylum seekers stay if they're not recognized as refugee yet). These are mostly theft and fights between people from different countries. There sometimes is sexual harassment, I think about 10 refugees were arrested for that so far. The latter makes people inside those centers feel very unsafe because they're all stuck together and have no privacy. Recently, two Dutch men were arrested for sexually abusing underage girls that they took with them from one refugee center :/

I think the media is exaggerating the role of immigrants and massively downplaying the role of nationals and Western immigrants, because most protests against immigrants have been done by very violent people (throwing bombs, fights) and men who threatened women with violence and rape if the woman had another opinion. It's an illusion to think that only immigrant men are rapists (yes, they can be sexual abusers and rapists) and by focusing on immigrants only, the part of nationals is conveniently ignored.

I played Neopets so much as a kid. English is my second language and I picked it up and wrote my first stories in English thanks to what you made!

Did any of you read the Neopian Times, and do you remember any favourite stories or authors?

And are you working on a new project together? :)