My partner was originally going to come with me but dropped out last minute due to funds. I had already signed on so I thought I'd keep up with the trip as I had signed to pay for it already, although I was hesitant.
I have ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, suspected ASD, suspected BPD, and definitely some brain damage from a number of concussions and drug use in the past, and because of that combo, I have a really really hard time communicating with others in person, processing speed, and misunderstanding what other people are trying to get at, while also seeming too out of pocket. I'm constantly nervous and either way too quiet or way too loud off medication with no in-between, but I've kept my distance here and stayed pretty quiet. When I do start conversations, I feel like people look at me like I'm insane, even when I am careful to start conversations in some of the same ways my classmates are doing, such as asking what their favorite parts of the trip have been.
I also have food allergies and often can't go out to eat with classmates. I think that in part this is why they just stopped telling me when they were going places. They must have an entirely separate groupchat without me in it to plan activities, and maybe the initial intention was to not make me feel bad about missing out on restaurants, but they definitely do a lot of stuff without me that I wasn't even aware of and wanted to do, so I think they've shifted a lot to this other group chat I'm not in. I've missed out on a lot of meals and have lost more weight during this short period of time than I thought possible.
I made some friends in the group who also have the ADHD/ASD combo and it's been pretty great but-
The meds for ADHD they both take are illegal here, but they usually take them back home, so they're not doing all that well not having them. They both sleep constantly when the class isn't doing something or an activity hasn't been lined up for them. They tend to forget to invite me/fall asleep when we are supposed to be doing things, but I've otherwise not had a mental breakdown simply because I have been able to hang out with them. I still miss out on some activities this smaller group of 2 does together, and don't mind because they're best friends and probably want to hang out just by themselves, but there was a time when I purchased tickets for something that they were going to, they knew I had bought tickets, I asked them when it was going to happen, and they were already there without me. They did go slowly on the self-guided tour so I could catch up, and given how they're doing off meds and how I am myself off medication, I really think they just forgot, but it still sucks to feel so alone. They told me we would go out to dinner tonight but have been ignoring me (probably sleeping) most of the evening. When I asked what plans were, they said they'd let me know later. It's 8:30 PM and I'm starving so I just told them I'd get myself food, got depressed and overwhelmed about it, and probably just won't eat anything tonight.
Whenever I suggest an activity, at best, nobody wants to go, or at worst, I literally get laughed at. It makes me feel like I don't belong in a group of people who are neurotypcial.
I feel like the other students on the trip see me as someone who should have been put in special Ed but wasn't. I feel like they pity me. I'm just trying to live my life with what I've got and I don't want the pity. I really can't stand it. At first I appreciated that people were talking to me, but now it really just seems like they're patronizing me and really don't want to have to put up with my existence, and I hate feeling this way. I just wish I could interact normally.
The professor said that nobody had ever told her they had regretted going on this trip in all the years she has done it, but after seeing how she has worked so hard to make this a good trip for everyone, I see why nobody has thought to tell her that, but the issue is mostly my interaction with other students, in which case she has talked about not leaving other students out extensively. I have spent a lot more time than anyone else with just the professor and it's getting so much harder every day to slap on a smile and keep up appearances. I finally just told her that my medication had built up in my system enough to help a little through the trip and now it's completely tapered off and gone, and that's why I seem like I'm struggling (which is also true, but not at all the largest reason). She worked so hard to make sure everyone was having a good time but I feel left out and like I'm overanalyzing things and don't want to hurt her by telling her I didn't enjoy myself.
My roommate, unbeknownst to me when we signed up to be roommates, has political views that are literally against my existence when it comes to something that is highly visible about me, and I'm in high stress mode when they're in our room. It's been relatively rare that I've had any time alone to recharge and try to just be calm. They are also incredibly loud and don't understand when I am trying to give them clear cues that I don't want to be talking to them and am just burnt out. I've told them that I'm burnt out and now it feels like they're giving me the cold shoulder in the group while talking my ear off when I'm just trying to deal with burnout. My roommate is IMO less socially adept than I am and seems to be included in everything, and I don't know how they don't notice/care that the class is patronizing them so much.
We've been going to museums and my mind is elsewhere, not just because of my ADHD, but also because I seriously hate this small portion of my existence - this last week and a half. I've struggled a lot with mental health in my life, and it hasn't been this bad in a long time, when I should be really enjoying myself.
I'm insanely burnt out. I have 4 days and a free day left here and need the credits and the grade I'm going to get, as the class was intentionally made to be very easy to get a good grade in and meant to be more of an experience than a classroom sort of thing. I feel like I've wasted my money. I'm not even sure I can handle it. I usually enjoy class but this is too much. I've been thinking about how these other people would react if they could experience life from my perspective for just a day, how they would cope and how they would handle it. They wouldn't do anywhere near as well as I've been because they haven't spent gruelling years working through things like I have and working so hard to pull myself up.
In talking to other people who have similar issues to myself, it seems that none of them are doing as well as I am. I'm a college student with one semester left with a TA position set up, which I am so proud of. I beat addiction with 2 different substances. I survived an incredible amount of abuse. Yet I can't handle the way I'm being treated on this trip. It's mostly subtle but it's so much stuff. I just wanna lie in bed in the hotel room for the rest of it but I need this degree.

Hello! Haven't cruised before, but interested for years. Can't convince friends/family to come so solo it is. I'm pretty social and in mid-30's. Looking for a 5-7 day cruise with lots of younger solo travelers on a bigger ship traveling in the Caribbean.
Huge ships fascinate me but Oasis class doesn't seem to be the best choice for hanging out with fellow solo travelers. I've looked at the Carnival solo cruises but they seem geared more towards 20 somethings on Spring Break. I like to go out but I'm not spry enough for that kind of chaos anymore.
Starlink would be great so I can work on sea-days and use less vacation.
What cruises y'all think I should look at?

one of my best friends is ftm. he knows i'm mtf, and i know he's ftm. i'm very supportive of him and we hang out a lot
however, for some reason something in my heart feels somewhat empty. back before we were both trans both of us asked each other out and denied each other at different times (lol), and we've still been close friends since, but for some reason, even though i tell myself i don't want a relationship right now, i don't think those feelings ever left my subconsciousness
the issue is, i think he's gay and despite me being bi i'm more attracted to femininity than masculinity. i have no issues continuing our friendship, but i feel quite lost and empty. what do i do?

Hi! Time to throw my hat into the ring. I have been fortunate enough to make some truly meaningful friendships online. I figured hey, if I could find them, why not look for a relationship this way too?
What I'm looking for:
End goal? A life partner, in every sense of the word. That person who will be there for you no matter what, and you for them. Someone who I can make hot cocoa for and spend all night with, huddled under blankets on the sofa watching movies and talking about life. :)
But of course, it takes time to foster a relationship that is at that point. I like to pace myself when getting to know someone for that very reason. I want to be sure that I can give my whole self to a person, you know? That is some vulnerable stuff. So to start, it'd probably just be chatting online before graduating to more and more stuff slowly.
Anyway, that’s the preamble. Now into a bit about me, I guess. I’m 25, as mentioned in the title. I’m from the northeast of the US. I love having deep conversations about life/philosophy/relationships, but also really enjoy video games, film, novels, comics, etc.
Before I go any farther, I might as well start with the "fundamentals" so I don't waste your time/vice-versa.
The fundamentals:

• Physically? I’m 6’2. Short brown hair, blue eyes, paaaaasty white.
  
• I’m from a Hispanic background. Still learning the language though. That’s been really fun and challenging.
  
• Career Goals: Currently still in undergrad. (Yeah, at 25… long story short, health issues are stupid. Happy to share if you want). I’m pretty driven and take school seriously. I imagine I’ll be at the same level of ambition with my career as well. I'm likely headed out to California after I get my degree, just so you're aware. The plan is still very nebulous, but it's on the table.
  
• I do envision having kids (faaaar) down the line when I can feasibly support them and am in a healthy relationship.
  
• I lean liberal on the social and political spectrums, but I'm not staunchly liberal. It's not a major part of my identity, but I know it can be important to people, so I'm just putting it out there.
  
• I do believe in God. I was raised Catholic, but I'm still figuring “belief” out. Though I don't ascribe to everything in Catholicism anymore, it's still a part of my background and of who I am. If you’re from a different or no faith background, that’s totally fine, but I don't think I'd be compatible with someone who is an atheist. If that's you, no worries, everyone has their own path, and I wish you the best. :)
  
• I don't do drugs or smoke. I'm okay if you're 420-friendly as long as it's in moderation. I do drink, but very rarely and mildly.
  
• Ideally, you'd be located in the US/Canada, but if you feel that we'd really jive and you're located elsewhere, feel free to reach out anyway. :)
  
• Looking for someone plus or minus ~3 years in age from me.
  

Random interests:

• Long drives by the sea or through the countryside
  
• Dogs. I have 2 little white floofs. Pets in general are awesome too. :)
  
• Classic movies (and film in general). These are my bread and butter.
  
• Anime - Not super well-versed, but I’m in love with Studio Ghibli and Your Name. I’ve sampled a lot of other stuff too.
  
• Star Wars... maybe a little too much.
  
• Video games - low-key games like Stardew Valley or The Sims but also stuff like Overwatch, Battlefront II, and some MMOs
  
• And more! (If you wanna get to know me)
  

If you read all this, thank you. I know I can tend to ramble, but I hope this gives you a good sense of me. Figured I’d put it all out there. Honesty begets honesty.
If you‘re interested, feel free to message me. If we hit it off, we can either switch to my real Reddit account or another platform like Discord. Just as a warning though, I don't have any social media outside of that.
If you’re not interested, no worries. Either way, I wish you the absolute best on this journey that is life. :)

Hi! Time to throw my hat into the ring. I have been fortunate enough to make some truly meaningful friendships online. I figured hey, if I could find them, why not look for a relationship this way too?
What I'm looking for:
End goal? A life partner, in every sense of the word. That person who will be there for you no matter what, and you for them. Someone who I can make hot cocoa for and spend all night with, huddled under blankets on the sofa watching movies and talking about life. :)
But of course, it takes time to foster a relationship that is at that point. I like to pace myself when getting to know someone for that very reason. I want to be sure that I can give my whole self to a person, you know? That is some vulnerable stuff. So to start, it'd probably just be chatting online before graduating to more and more stuff slowly.
Anyway, that’s the preamble. Now into a bit about me, I guess. I’m 25, as mentioned in the title. I’m from the northeast of the US. I love having deep conversations about life/philosophy/relationships, but also really enjoy video games, film, novels, comics, etc.
Before I go any farther, I might as well start with the "fundamentals" so I don't waste your time/vice-versa.
The fundamentals:

• Physically? I’m 6’2. Short brown hair, blue eyes, paaaaasty white.
  
• I’m from a Hispanic background. Still learning the language though. That’s been really fun and challenging.
  
• Career Goals: Currently still in undergrad. (Yeah, at 25… long story short, health issues are stupid. Happy to share if you want). I’m pretty driven and take school seriously. I imagine I’ll be at the same level of ambition with my career as well. I'm likely headed out to California after I get my degree, just so you're aware. The plan is still very nebulous, but it's on the table.
  
• I do envision having kids (faaaar) down the line when I can feasibly support them and am in a healthy relationship.
  
• I lean liberal on the social and political spectrums, but I'm not staunchly liberal. It's not a major part of my identity, but I know it can be important to people, so I'm just putting it out there.
  
• I do believe in God. I was raised Catholic, but I'm still figuring “belief” out. Though I don't ascribe to everything in Catholicism anymore, it's still a part of my background and of who I am. If you’re from a different or no faith background, that’s totally fine, but I don't think I'd be compatible with someone who is an atheist. If that's you, no worries, everyone has their own path, and I wish you the best. :)
  
• I don't do drugs or smoke. I'm okay if you're 420-friendly as long as it's in moderation. I do drink, but very rarely and mildly.
  
• Ideally, you'd be located in the US/Canada, but if you feel that we'd really jive and you're located elsewhere, feel free to reach out anyway. :)
  
• Looking for someone plus or minus ~3 years in age from me.
  

Random interests:

• Long drives by the sea or through the countryside
  
• Dogs. I have 2 little white floofs. Pets in general are awesome too. :)
  
• Classic movies (and film in general). These are my bread and butter.
  
• Anime - Not super well-versed, but I’m in love with Studio Ghibli and Your Name. I’ve sampled a lot of other stuff too.
  
• Star Wars... maybe a little too much.
  
• Video games - low-key games like Stardew Valley or The Sims but also stuff like Overwatch, Battlefront II, and some MMOs
  
• And more! (If you wanna get to know me)
  

If you read all this, thank you. I know I can tend to ramble, but I hope this gives you a good sense of me. Figured I’d put it all out there. Honesty begets honesty.
If you‘re interested, feel free to message me. If we hit it off, we can either switch to my real Reddit account or another platform like Discord. Just as a warning though, I don't have any social media outside of that.
If you’re not interested, no worries. Either way, I wish you the absolute best on this journey that is life. :)

This guy that I like has a tendency to put hats/hoods on me. The first time I met him, he took off his beanie and put it on my head. Since then, he’ll casually take my hood and put it on my head when it’s cold outside. The other day, we were hanging out with a group of friends and I was a little late to arrive. A few minutes in, he put on his hood then took my hood and tried to put it on me too. I think it’s really cute, but I was wondering why a man would consistently put on woman’s hood for her?

I’ll go first…
North of the Wall: Varamyr Sixskins - The man rides a bloody snow bear! Not to mention warging a shadow cat, three wolves and an eagle.
The Wall: Grenn - Takes the hand he’s dealt and rolls with it. Throughout the books we see him improving constantly. Well on his way to becoming one of the best rangers.
The North: Robb Stark - Still a boy when he was forced into rebellion against the crown. Had to win over the Northmen, fight in numerous battles and plan said battles too. If those Westerlings hadn’t got in the way, we’d still have The King in The North!
Iron Isles: Victarion Greyjoy - Second best commander in Westeros. Troubled character with a lot going on. Best of a bad bunch for me.
The Riverlands: Brynden Tully - The Blackfish himself! Responsible for a lot of The Young Wolf’s success, and has victories going back to The War of the Ninepenny Kings. Overall badass.
The Vale: Vardis Egen - Served as a loyal Captain of the Guard to Jon Arryn. During Tyrion’s trial by combat, unlike others, he was reluctant to plead the right to be Lysa’s champion, as it would be shameful to fight against a dwarf. After Bronn is proclaimed Tyrion’s champion, he takes Jon’s ceremonial sword at the behest of Lysa, and unfortunately falls to Bronn’s sellsword tactics.
Crownlands: Jacelyn Bywater - Overall a just and fair Commander of the City Watch, but most importantly of all, stood up against Cersei, the man’s hand and will is absolute iron.
Stormlands: Cortnay Penrose - Absolute legend this man is. As Castellan of Storms End he stood against Stannis Baratheon and his foreign God, all while delivering some of the best comebacks in ASOIAF, such as: ”Is it the justice of your cause you doubt, my lord, or the strength of your arm? Are you afraid I’ll piss on your burning sword and put it out?
The Westerlands: Tywin Lannister - I mean the guy just gets shit done, not always in the best way, but still, I can’t help but like him.
The Reach: Garlan Tyrell - Honestly a perfect knight from what we know. And despite the ‘there’s no POV so we can’t be sure’ arguments, I still choose to whole heartedly believe Garlan is perfect.
Dorne: Oberyn Martell - If only he was the elder sibling… As soon as Robert’s Rebellion was won, he was plotting another of his own. Would’ve beat The Mountain as well if he’d remained concentrated.
Honourable Mention: Weasel - Poor, poor girl. A true tragedy of war and I pray nightly that it’s confirmed she’s safe and sound and living out her best life.

Allhackgecko.com -------------------- There is a dream in every student’s mind that he wants the best result without doing the best study and doing the best in the exam. That’s why he thinks hacking the school website and changing grades will be the best way for that. But how to hack a school website and change grades?
How can I hack into my school system to change my grades
In this article, we will help you to know that from first to last. I will not explain to you the hacking steps because the different servers have different security systems. To break that security, hackers need different instant steps. Instead, I will give you basic instructions. So, let’s start.
What is Hacking?
Hacking is a workflow that breaks the security system and gets access to the database and all other controls of a website or platform. Sometimes people hack different websites, and sometimes they hack different social media accounts or other accounts. Hackings are two types. One is White-hat hacking, and another is Black hat hacking. White hat hackings are done for national security and also to warn the site owner.
Contact us at Allhackgecko.com for technical problems about your task or issue regarding hacking services.
If you want to know how to hack a school website to change your grade, it will be black hat hacking, and it is a crime. You may be punished by sending to jail. It would be best if you stopped here. But if you want to hack knowing it is a crime, then continue reading the article till the end.
How to Hack School Website and Change Grades?
Hacking is a vast thing, and there is no specific system or workflow to hack a website. So, it is one of the hardest things to do if you are not a professional hacker. There are two ways to hack your school website and alter the result.

• Hire a Professional Hacker

Here I am going to tell you about both the systems.
Hire a Professional Hacker
This is the best way to hack any website very fast. Because any new hacker will take more time than the professional one, you will have less time if you plan to hack the website and change your grade. You have to do a lot of things in that short time. So, you have no time to waste. That is why you should try a professional hacker. You will find a lot of hackers in different cyber security communities.
You can hire a hacker for change your grade, send a reach to Allhackgecko.com
Is it Good to Hack and Change Grades?
No, this is completely bad and very bad. This is a crime. You may get punished for such activity. That is not the end. Sometimes this will risk your study career. If you can not change the grade from the root, then the school authority will catch you easily. The change you are doing in your grade will create a warning for the authority, and they check your result condition, it will be easy for them to identify the hacker and his helper. So, avoid this and concentrate on your study. Stealing is not suitable for us. This is enough to destroy your future and career. This is not fact rather an ethical saying. But they are proven.
Conclusion
At the end of the article, I want to tell you that hacking is an art. People do this for many reasons. A small task like changing school grades may be disrespectful to these professional hackers. But I tried to give you a basic conception of How to Hack School Website and Change Grades. No deep idea has been given here as nobody knows what your school’s security system is and what the situation demands. I hope you get to benefit from this article. Thanks for reading from us.
For further information about How can I hack into my school system to change my grades and other related hacking services, reach us on Allhackgecko.com

I really don't want to be one of those people, but I really hate my parents.I've been struggling to take care of myself for my whole life really, and I only just recently found out I have a serious breathing issue, probably a sleep disorder as well. I've been kind of drifting throughout life with increasingly impaired cognition, and I thought it was all normal for years. Because my parents, who have very similar issues, also seem to think it's normal, and never got me help. For my entire life I've been unable to exercise because I can't breathe through my nose - I'm always gasping for breath after just a few steps - and I've been increasingly spaced out, unable to make friends, commit information to memory. . . you name it. It didn't used to be quite so bad, and it's been partly disguised by my excellent school performance bc I think I would have been gifted in another life and the remnants of that helps compensate for my deficits, but despite this I feel like I've lost 30 IQ points. I need adderall just to function minimally, and I can't think in complete sentences or even words without it. It's that bad. And it could have all been avoided if I had just been taken to a doctor for any one of the many little mental and physical issues I've been facing even since childhood.
So it goes without saying that just living is kinda hard. Couldn't hold down jobs, barely any friendships, getting out of bed in the morning is a Herculean task, et cetera. And I get the blame for it.
It's not that my parents don't care. But they seem to have many of the same issues I do to varying degrees, and when so much of your mental effort is devoted to just keeping up with life for years at a time, "look out for number one" becomes kinda your default policy. And some other things happened to them bc we have weird emotional issues that run in the family that made their home environments a bit rough, especially my mom's (my primary caretaker, unfortunately - I'm a dependent). These things have affected them in such weird ways, where they seem incapable of truly empathizing with or trusting us. It's like living with kids, except you have no choice but to indulge them because you're dependent on them.
Plus, life being hard is normal to them. So why can't I just suck it up? My mom almost says this outright. And she's been saying it a lot lately, trying to make me feel guilty for taking a break this summer when I have been pushed to my mental and physical limits in college for the last three years. I would love nothing more than to find a summer job, find somewhere else to live, and move forward in life, but I just can't. I try so hard every day just to barely break even if I'm lucky. And I try to tell her how hard I'm trying, but I can't confide the real issues to her because when I told her some of what I suspect about my medical issues, she does one of three things: accuses me of "making excuses" to get out of some kind of responsibility, go on about her own issues and avoid the issue of me doing something, or tell me life is hard and I need to be more diligent and take responsibility.
Thing is, I've gotten myself this far. I had to convince my parents I needed therapy junior year of high school, and fight them (verbally haha) to get antidepressant medication. This was when I was a zombie, just barely capable of advocating for myself, and through therapy came to realize how much of my life was abnormal. I had some hope for the first time of crawling out from under the cloud of depression that's been hanging over me for much of my life. It took a wonderful teacher in high school to suggest I may have ADHD, and regardless of whether or not I actually have it or a sleep disorder, getting myself started on Adderall - the reason I can write this now - was the best thing I have ever or will ever do for myself. I was awake for the first time in my life. I could see things, feel things, make plans and have ambition for the first time ever. I wasn't whole, but it was a start: I had real hope for the first time ever, and came to see how truly screwed up my family was. I paid for my Adderall myself, because I knew my parents wouldn't see it the way I did. I'm dragging myself through a biology degree with a 3.97 GPA, taking hours to do the simplest tasks because of my slow processing speed even on medication, with a combo of Long Covid and mono dragging me down for 2 years now. There were days I couldn't walk without my heart racing, when after "exercising" I was so drained I would lie on the floor for an hour, too weak to even change out of my clothes. This was the summer I was yelled at for being lazy, not long after which I was diagnosed with mono. I've cried more times than I can count: for bad, lonely day I've had, every time I fight with my parents over things I can't help, and every time I think about how much time and happiness I've lost. I'm only 21 and I'm drained.
And now that I apparently haven't been adequately breathing through my freaking nose my whole life, I'm getting myself an ENT appointment. What's my mom's primary concern? Not my breathing, not that of my little sister (who suffers so much too, and apparently has the same defect as far as I can tell), but how much the appointment will cost. I need to manage her stress on top of mine. I'd pay myself, but I have no job this summer (I've only gotten rejections for programs I applied to in December, and I'm struggling to find a temp job for when I go back on campus).
So. At the same time there is currently a national shortage of Adderall, the only drug that works for me (I've spend horrendous money trying and failing to find another), I have school, research duties, and no job. I need to pay for summer housing to get a job, really, because my house is in an inaccessible location and I can't drive, but my mom refuses to help (with money from a college fund, which isn't exactly depleted) unless I get a summer job that I'm struggling to find and which I'm scared I won't be able to hold down. I'm going to get blamed for it if I can't find one. My only escape is treatment, but my ENT appointment in July, and who knows how long I'll have to wait from there to get help. I can't afford to get my own CPAP/APAP, not when I'll need to pay for other things this summer. I'm isolated from most of my family members, and there's a limit to how much I can really ask of them because I don't want to just beg for things that might cost thousands of dollars, even though it might genuinely be my only options. I'm on my own. I'm so scared and I don't know what I'm going to do, it feels like nothing's going to be ok.

A little over ten years ago, I didn't consider myself a writer, I was an artist that loved to read... then a friend suggested I do a writing challenge* with her and I was hooked. I wrote a 50k first draft of a book, but despite years of working on it off and on, I couldn't edit it to a point where I felt comfortable moving forward.
Which was okay, because back then I'd taken the advice to set down that first draft and write something else before coming back to it with fresh eyes. This next book was a YA Space Opera, the first in a series, and it's the only book that I've ever managed to get from rough draft to polished, finished product ready for publishing.
Part of the reason this took so long was because of how much I loved this project and how much I wanted the series to work as a whole. It's the first of a five book arc with four in between books, plus multiple spin offs in the universe, so it's not like I've only been working solely on this one book the entire ten plus years. I just wanted to make sure the various blueprints were laid out properly before writing myself into a corner since everything would piggyback off this one starting point.
Six months ago, I was given the go ahead from betas that it's ready to send out into the world, but I'm paralyzed with fear on which direction to go for the following personal reasons:

1. I want this series to work as a whole, and I know that if I go with traditional publishing, that's not up to me.
2. But I also worry about how long it will take me to draft and edit the rest of the books in the series. It seems like most successful self published authors are fast and prolific, write in a different genre than me, and are good with social media and networking, which I'm not. (Like really, really not... I have terrible social anxiety that I'm trying to work through, but it prevents me from following the go out and find your tribe advice that indie authors advise on various platforms.)
3. I'd really like to make at least some money back on this. I don't expect to be the next JK Rowling or Sanderson or anything like that... but I have bills to pay down, and I want to give myself the best chance of doing so. It would break my heart if I got picked up by a publisher and the series got dropped before it was complete, but a few thousand dollars from an advance would be life changing right now.

It also doesn't help that I've been soaking up all the doom and gloom on various subs and podcasts about the state of traditional publishing, the worry of one company having so much control over self published books, and how hard it is to try to get books in front of readers who already have a glut of books available to them and make enough money to make it worth the effort whichever way you choose to go... so I'm not sure where to go.
TLDR: It's taken me over a decade to plot out a series and finish the first book, and I'm not sure which path to take (traditional or self publishing) because both come with their own pros and cons, which have paralyzed me with fear and caused me to sit on a finished book for six months.
So, can somebody talk me down, or at least tell me the reasons you chose or are choosing to go a certain route, especially given today's publishing climates?
Are there steps I can take to ease my own anxieties or lessen any vulnerabilities to things that could possibly go wrong either way?
Help me, Obi Reddit Kenobi, you're my only hope.
​
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* Apologies if this gets posted twice, but the automod auto-removed it for containing the name of a certain writing challenge that lasts a month in the winter times.

We’ve been broke up for seven months now and for the past seven months we would talk on the phone daily. He’s my best friend but we started to hang out together again last month. So I had loss all this weight (I have gained a lot out last two years) so I wore a sexy outfit to go to the movies lol. Just so he could see what he left behind. At that point I thought I was over him but when he randomly showed up to my place the next day after.. I had just gone throw something super dramatic and I didn’t even reach out to him because he’s not my person anymore he doesn’t need to know everything about me anymore but I was in tears and having a panic attack and as soon as I get to my place I see him parked there and like I had just pulled it together but when I saw him, I lost it. So we hung out again and it’s starting to look like we were going to get back together. We hung out with my family and everything but then my relapse ruined it again. Now it’s been three weeks of him not texting back or picking up my calls. Honestly I don’t know why vented so much because what I’m really trying to say is that I’m doing this alone for the most part. I’m im my feelings and it’s been three weeks and I can finally say I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I can finally say I think I’m getting over him sort of but what I’m really trying to say is even tho I’m finally feel like I’m doing better, I still fucken think about the turd. He’s far from perfect and maybe he was playing me this whole time or maybe that was just the fucked up thinking from trauma. Even tho it didn’t work out I’ll always love him and thank him for walking away when he did and going no contact when he did because even tho my life is shit right now because of my doing he’s helped me snap out of it because it can go to shit still because I sure do love digging myself a deeper hole. I’ve made so really stupid decisions left a new job(which is okay because it was too stressful aka what led to the relapse) burned some bridges, hella isolated and did I mention the poor decision making. Well it’s time to face this mess created. Sorry I’m sure this was hella messy and you probably could not understand me. Sorry not 100% sober yet lol.

Do a quick search on any internet shooting forum for “Tula Ammo” and you’ll quickly be regaled with stories of broken extractors, constant jams (failure to eject or FTE), and failure to fire (FTF) malfunctions due to bad primers.
But does Tula Ammo (also known as Tulammo) deserve this bad reputation or is it mostly overblown?
Although it might not be the most accurate or clean burning ammo on the market, in our experience Tula Ammo is an amazing choice for a weekend of plinking or stockpiling for a disaster scenario (SHTF) if you’re looking to save some cash.
But is Tula Ammo the right choice for your favorite Glock, Ruger, Beretta, Taurus, or Hi Point? In this Tulammo review, we will look at the ins and outs of the mercurial Tula cartridge and whether you should invest in some steel cased ammo or if brass ammo is a better choice for your shooting needs.

So, is Tula Ammo a good choice?

This is a hotly debated topic in the 2A community and many shooters have different opinions. If you’re looking for cheap ammo that you can train with on a regular basis and aren’t overly concerned about reloading or match-grade accuracy, then Tula Ammo is an excellent choice. This ammo is inexpensive, easy to buy in bulk, and great for plinking.
However, steel-cased ammo is notoriously hard on extractors and the inexpensive bimetal bullet used by Tula Ammo will wear out your barrel faster than traditional brass ammo especially in an AR-15.
Numerous torture tests that included thousands of rds of 223 Remington Tula Ammo have shown that continuous use of a bimetal bullet will wear out a barrel faster than traditional copper jacketed bullets. However, does a trop to the gunsmith for a barrel change warrant using cheap ammo?
In most cases, the answer is yes, as the ammo cost savings more than paid for a new barrel when accuracy degraded to the point of being unsafe. However, I’d not run Tula Ammo through my prized match-grade rifles or family heirloom handguns.

Where can I buy Tula Ammo?

Check out our entire selection of Tula Ammo for sale online!

Tula Ammo History and Important Information

The Tula Ammunition plant was established in 1880 by Czar Alexander II and is one of Europe’s oldest ammunition factories. The plant was contracted to deliver an impressive 210 million rounds of ammunition during its first seven years of production to meet the growing ammo needs of the Soviet Army.
Surprisingly, the Tula Ammo plant produced brass-cased ammo until the 1920’s when it switched to the more economical steel-cased ammo. Russia commands extensive iron deposits, however, it needed to repurpose its non-ferrous metal reserves towards industrial applications instead of ammunition.
Tula Ammo has since mastered the use of bimetal jacket material encapsulating the soft lead core of the bullet to produce staggering amounts of ammo that they sell to the Russian Army as well as hunters and shooters across North America and Europe.

Where is Tulammo Made?

The Tula Cartridge Works plant is located in the town of Tula, Russia approximately 100 miles south of Moscow.

Which Calibers are Available?

Tula offers a wide variety of steel-cased ammo in the following calibers:

• 380 ACP
• 9x18mm Makarov
• 9mm Luger
• 38 Special
• 357 Magnum
• 45 ACP/45 Automatic
• 5.45x18mm
• 30 Carbine
• 308 Winchester
• 7.62x39 Soviet
• 7.62x54R
• 223 Remington
• 5.6x39mm
• 5.45x39mm
• 50 BMG
• 12.7x108mm

FAQ’s

Is Tula Ammo corrosive?

No, Tulammo uses non-corrosive Berdan primers in all their current ammunition. However, older surplus Russian ammo (typically found in spam cans) typically utilized corrosive primers.

What is the downside to steel-cased ammo?

Steel cased ammo is often rough on extractors from free-floating firing pin rifles like the AR-15. Sometimes these light extracting rifles can experience failure to eject (FTE) malfunctions, while more aggressive extracting rifles like the AK-47 have no issues firing steel-cased ammo.

What are bimetal bullets?

Bimetal bullets are projectiles comprised of a soft lead core surrounded by a steel jacket that is then enclosed in a 100% copper jacket coating. Bimetal bullets are banned from some indoor ranges due to their ability to penetrate deeper than traditional full metal jacket bullets used by the United States and NATO.

What is the quality of Tula ammo?

On Tulammo’s website, they state they have strict quality controls on all their ammo products. However, in our experience Tula Ammunition burns a bit dirtier than traditional FMJ ammo from manufactures like Winchester, Remington, Federal, and PMC.

What primers does Tula Ammunition use?

Tula loads its ammo with non-corrosive Berdan primers.

Are Tula cases good for reloading?

No, steel cases can damage reloading dies and should not be used for reloading. Furthermore, Tula Ammunition uses Berdan primers, which are difficult to remove. If you reload, you should use brass cases that are Boxer primed.

Which Tula handgun ammunition works best in a Glock 17?

I found that the best Tulammo 9mm Luger for a Glock 17 is their 115 grain full metal jacket rounds with a muzzle velocity of approximately 350 – 390 m/s (1150-1280 fps).

Why does Tulammo steel cases have a polymer coating?

Steel lacks adequate surface lubricity to ensure reliable feeding and extraction. Initially, a lacquer coating was used but polymer-coated steel cases are now normal and ensure proper function for all Tula Ammunition.
Tula Ammo Review: Good Ammo for Any Budget originally appeared on Ammo.com

So I’ve been an RT for about 5 years. And I just started a new position this week at a local community hospital. It appears I’m going to be on orientation for several weeks… at the other 4 facilities I’ve worked at, I’ve maybe had 1-2 days of orientation then I’m thrown to the wolves with my own assignment, which is how I learn best and what I’m used to. This week, I was assigned a preceptor who has absolutely been nitpicking every damn thing I’m doing, especially charting wise. I’ve used their charting system at another facility but nonetheless, she’s been nitpicking down to the detail, like adjusting vent alarms to the “facility” standards and even gone back and corrected my charting. I’ve never been in an atmosphere like this and to have someone hovering over me constantly like I’m a new grad stresses me TF out. I made the director aware of this, and asked if I could finish out my orientation on nights and he said no, but that he’d try to put me with someone else and get me to nights in two weeks. Should I stick it out? Or try another facility? I tend to job hop but where I live there are plenty of options hospital wise. But I am pretty unhappy with how this week has gone. I’ve never had someone orientating me who is up my ass on everything and even tried to commandeer the intubation assist I performed. Never been treated like this in my 5 years.
Thanks for any advice!

Names are fake.
Ok, first some background. My wife Susan and I have been together since our early twenties. We both come from lower-class backgrounds but I always wanted to do better for myself and my kids (3F, 10F). I didn't go to college, but I managed to start my own business at a young age and slowly built it up throughout the past two decades. I met Susan soon after things started taking off, and she's always been incredibly supportive of everything I do and how much work I put into it, even when that meant I had to put in long hours and wasn't able to see the kids as much as I wanted to during difficult times. Thanks to that, I've been able to grow it into quite a successful business. We're not super rich, but we're doing very well, especially considering where we came from. I'm not sharing the details of the business for obvious reasons. My wife worked at first, but now stays at home. I don't imagine she'll ever go back to working, but if she does I would be fine with that. All in all, it's been very great. We have a wonderful marriage and I love her more than anything. However, we've had more and more issues since I hired my new secretary, Kate, a little less than a year ago.
First, some info about Kate: Last summer I decided that I needed to hire some sort of assistant since my workload was gradually increasing, and I wanted to be able to focus more on the important decisions while still knowing everything that was going on. So, I decided to hire someone for a personal assistant/secretary position. Kate applied straight out of college, and at first I was extremely hesitant to hire someone with very little relevant experience, but she went to a very good school, had excellent grades, and throughout the interview process it became clear that Kate was more than qualified for the position.I called her a secretary but that's definitely underselling what she does. She helps me with organization, finances, business events and trips, and countless other things that I couldn't even name. Like I said, Kate was more than qualified for the position. She's incredibly smart and competent, extremely hardworking, very good at dealing with people, and just very positive in general. She gets along with nearly everyone and has overall been a very positive force for the company. Hiring her was one of the best decisions I ever made for the company.
However, she is also incredibly attractive, and that is where many of the issues arise. I would never think about trying to do anything with her, because I love my wife and am 100% loyal to her, but I can't deny that Kate is an extremely attractive young woman—it's something that everyone notices about her almost immediately, and I've heard others in the company comment on it as well (in a respectful way; I don't tolerate any sort of sexual harassment here). It's simply a fact of life that she is one of those people who is very attractive, and puts a lot of outfit into her clothes, makeup, workouts, etc. I believe she even did some sort of modeling at some point, though I don't know the specifics.
Susan never expressed any reservations about my hiring a secretary, even knowing that it was a young woman, until she met her face to face at a company holiday party. I still remember that moment, she seemed almost stunned when she met Kate for the first time. Ever since then, the problems have started to pop up. It started with Susan making snide comments about Kate whenever I would mention her. Then she started to refuse going to any event if Kate would be there. Whenever I talk about anything at work or any social event, Susan will ask me if Kate was there (and she almost always is) and then will make some rude remark about her. Whenever I get home late, Susan seems mad at me, and distant. Recently I've started working late again because of some issues, and Susan keeps asking me questions about Kate then as well. I asked her if she thinks I'm cheating, and she said no.
Obviously, I'm not cheating and would never cheat. My relationship with Kate is 100% professional and neither of us has ever done or said anything inappropriate to the other. We have a very friendly relationship, and often talk about personal matters at work, but we never hang out outside work or company parties. Everything is 100% professional. However, even with my reassurances, Susan doesn't seem to be put at ease. The one company event that Susan did go to recently, she was extremely rude to Kate and almost made a scene. I think she's being totally unreasonable. We've been arguing A LOT more recently, and she's basically told me to fire Kate without saying it directly. She'll say stuff like "You care about Kate more than you care about me and the kids."
I don't know what to do. I can't prove to my wife that I'm not cheating, and she says she believes me anyway, but is still mad. And of course I can't fire Kate over this. I feel totally lost. What should I do? How can I fix this without being unfair to Kate?

It is said that wars are not necessarily won by the boots on the ground, but moreso the men behind their leader. The palm-greasers and rumour mongers, the flagbearers and back-stabbers; the them who do the moving and shaking from backrooms and smoking parlors. The ones with tongues that dangle heavily over others in office, like a proverbial sword of Damocles.
We'll be taking a look at four games that let you crawl into such skin; games where you're not winning by having more dudes or bigger guns, but where you're instead trying to outmanoeuvre the other players while silently (or publicly) trying to exert your influence over the winner. Let's get started!
So why these games? All these games have the players influence a central board on which units are represented and interacted with which do not belong to the players. That also usually means that players can interact with most of or all the pieces on the board, rather than only the pieces that belong to them as a player. They also all feature area control to some extent, where you are trying to determine the winning faction in specific areas in order to determine who wins overall.
The interesting thing for these games, to me at least, is that all of them (at least to some extent) necessitate players trying to figure out what the other player's plans are. They're a little abstract in that sense, as you see players move pieces around to work towards plans that often don't immediately reveal themselves. The key difference with something like chess though, besides not being a two-player head to head duel, is the fact that players can have overlapping goals. Determining to what degree you're more successfully accomplishing this shared incentive is key, as these games usually allow you to pivot in some sense - you need to be able to figure out if your plan of sticking with faction A is going to pan out, or if it's better to abandon ship and start working towards empowering faction B. This idea, the idea of factional alliances that can shift, is key to these games. It's what differentiates them from something like a social deduction game - your team usually isn't static until you've invested too deeply.
Now that we have set up that thematic and mechanical framework, let's take a look at the games!
Turncoats Turncoats is probably the lightest of these four games. Played on a cloth board that can be cinched shut into a bag of holding, Turncoats (by design) has something ancient to it, like it was recently rediscovered after having been played for hundreds of years. This game has quite a bit of similarities with The King is Dead, but there's enough differences (luckily) to consider them apart from each other.
You start the game with eight stones in your grippy little paw that represent your influence with the four factions on the board. Each turn, you can use those stones to do one of four actions, three of which affect the board by either introducing new pieces, removing pieces or by moving pieces from one space to another. The fourth space has you draw a stone from the bag, and returning one from your hand to the bag. Once all players consecutively draw and return a stone on their turn, the game ends and you score.
In a bit of genius (again, similarly to The King is Dead), empowering a faction's position on the board means you'll have to reduce your influence with that faction. Moving pieces to a stronger position costs you one of the srones in your hand, weakening your score at the end of the game. That means that you've theoretically got only eight chances to affect the board, although you've got fewer than that in practice. It turns the game into this tight little game of chicken where you're redrawing stones maybe a little earlier than you should in order to bait your opponent into investing resources that they can't really miss, hoping that instead they won't also be satisfied with the state of the board. It's a game where you've got to reflect and wonder how lucky this punk really feels.
Even if this game's presentation help make the game feel ancient, it's also made the game feel the most abstract. While the inclusion of specific symbology and the map geography help make the game approach feeling like a kind of war game, I can't help but occasionally zoom out and realize that I'm just shuffling glass beads on a piece of cloth rather than set in motion wheels within wheels from my Machiavellian ivory tower. Plus, the tie-breakers in this game are crushing. I've won more than one game because my opponent had mis-remembered one of the many tie-breakers, and that never feels good. For being the lightest and leanest of these four games, it somehow does not end up being the cleanest. That said, it is really great and I love supporting a small designer who puts these games together by hand.
Of these four games, Turncoats is the game I feel most comfortable springing on a group of people who play few or no games. Yes, the ties get a little messy sometimes, but it's easy enough to digest while being beautiful, tactile and direct. Plus, I've seen zero other games that look like this and that has to count for something.
The King is Dead, 2nd ed. The King is Dead is our next step up in rules weight from Turncoats. Still small, still pretty lean, but now we have eight small contests and a hand of cards rather than one big struggle and a hand of beads. And we've even got a narrative hook - we're trying to influence who gets to be the next king of England! Will it be a Briton, a Scot, a Welshman or a Frenchman?
You start a game of the King is Dead by giving each player an identical set of cards to play, along with two public cubes in one of the three colours in the game (red for Britons, blue for Scots and yellow for the Welsh). You then shuffle a set of eight cards and deal then along the board to see in what order you will be resolving the necessary power struggles to see who will be the king! On your turn, you can either play one of the cards in your hand (all but one of which will influence the distribution of cubes on the board, while the remaining one changes the order in which you resolve power struggles) or pass. When all players pass, you resolve the contested region by looking to see which of the three factions is most powerful. If there's a winner, you place a disk of that colour in that region - it's now locked and worth one point of influence for that colour at the end of the game. If there's a tie, you instead place a black foreign invasion disk in that region, indicating that the French are using the discord in that region to make inroads into conquering the island! When all power struggles are done, you either look to see who has the most cubes of the most powerful faction in front of them, or whoever has the most sets of cubes in all three colours in front of them if the French invaded. And there's a bunch of tie-breakers too, more on that later.
So right off the bat, this game touches on a lot of similar mechanics as Turncoats, especially when it comes to taking actions. Both games have you sacrificing your win potential in one way in order to ensure you'll be able to win at all. In this game it's because of a rule I haven't talked about yet - whenever you play a card, you also take a cube off the board and add it to your court. Being tied to played cards means that nobody will ever have more than ten, as you'll never play more than eight cards in a game (and you of course start with two in yourp court), making every choice in this game deliciously agonizing.
And that agony is where the game distinguishes itself. You only have eight chances to affect the game, and (except for one action) those will all be different. This means you'll want to pass as often as possible, but you also don't want to give the whole game over to your opponents as they will just sculpt the game to goozle you as badly as they can. This dynamic usually forces players into a position where they are biding their time for certain power struggles that look like they're never going to go their way while playing a flurry of cards on a struggle that looks like it's the key to their kingdom. This tension is exacerbated by the fact that each player's hand is identical (in the regular game), meaning that you would know exactly what they could do next if only you had paid more attention.
Compared to Turncoats, this game has a more clearly defined feel of politics. That's partially aided by the artwork and graphic design, and partially by the theme. The game feels historic in its presentation and execution, but immersion is aided by the fact that this conflict has shown up in popular culture as well; people who don't know the War of the Roses can just transpose Game of Thrones onto this game and get exactly the same feeling out of it. There's also more political manoeuvring here because your affiliations are public. True motives are secret and people pivot HARD when the faction they were secretly gunning for gets locked out of contention. It's a much more... I don't necessarily want to say stressful, but definitely more high-pressured experience. It's the rare type of game where you get given the choice to not act on your turn and even that feels awful.
That said, there is some criticism to be levied against it as well. The early turns of The King is Dead, while being consequential, don't always feel like they matter. It's much easier to watch the board develop early on and base your strategy on that, even if in practice you need to make every card count which leads to situations where people feel locked into the late game without really understanding what they could have done differently. This is also the most tactical of all the games on here. That's not a problem for me personally, but I've played with people who hated this game because things would always change too quickly for them to make any actual plans. And lastly - the tie-breakers. More than once has a player lost a game at my table because they misunderstood the tie-breaker, and I can't seem to find a way to teach it without ambiguity. It sucks to see someone play a blinder only for them to realize they were playing to a different set of rules from the rest of the players. For a game that's so svelt and clean otherwise, this particular bit of messiness sticks out like a sore thumb.
That said though, The King is Dead is a very easy recommendation. Not as accessible to true beginners as Turncoats, The King is Dead is still really accessible and filled with good, agonizing decisions. It's a classic in my eyes, very easy to recommend.
A War of Whispers Taking a step up in both difficulty and size, we arrive at A War of Whispers! Another game of political manipulation, this game explicitly casts you and your compatriots as the wormtongues in this fight for power. Five factions, a circular board, clever cardplay and plenty of intrigue to be found.
As stated, you'll be playing the role of advisors to five nations who are at war. At the start of each round, you all place two advisors on spaces that correspond to different actions you can take with each of the five factions. These can include rallying troops, combat, movement or some other action that comes with a unique spin put on it by each of the factions. The goal here is to influence the board in such a way that the factions you care about have a strong board presence while the ones you don't care about have a small one, seeing that each faction scores you points. These points range from four points for each area they control to minus one point for each area they control. Most points at the end of the game wins!
Truthfully I enjoy A War of Whispers the least of these four games, even if it does do some very clever things. The action selection mechanism is very clever and has a fun push-your-luck element to it. All the actions are resolved in a set order (as indicated on the boarder around the board), and each time you reach an action that has a player's marker on it they get to do that action. However, if there are unchosen actions to the left of their marker, they get to do those actions as well. This leads to some fun jockeying of positions when choosing actions, and blocking other players is a big part of this game. The asymmetric factions are cool, although they're a bit of a double-edged sword.
The cool thing about each of the factions is that they're all good at specific things. One faction is good at fighting or mobilizing, one is good at mustering and another has action cards that make them powerful at wrestling control of fortifications from a faction's greedy hands. The problem that I run into here is that factions that take their turn earlier in the resolution phase are inherently weaker than those who act later, as the factions that act later can see how the dust settles before having to act. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem of players get to place their own bets at the start of the game, but these are instead placed randomly. The thing I like about both Turncoats, The King is Dead and Pax Pamir (which we'll talk about next) is that you have a very high degree of control over who you're supporting, but this is not the case here. Players do have an opportunity to swap their faction tokens (controlling how they want to score those factions at the end of the game), but that isn't free - you can only swap tokens you haven't revealed, and you can only swap unrevealed tokens.
Thematically it makes a lot of sense to make swapping tokens (and therefore allegiances) be costly - the game of politics bears a heavy price. My problem is that this isn't fun. Putting it bluntly, this game is hard enough as is. It's difficult to suss out exactly what your opponents are doing (seeing that there's now five factions to contend with), and this system makes improvising very difficult. So, this makes it entirely possible that other players will just kneecap you for the entire game or for you to be dealt a set of tokens that will just never win. It's frustrating is what I'm saying. A War of Whispers does a lot of very cool things, but as a game of factional politics I don't like the fact that it just sometimes offers you setups that you can't win and then punishes you for trying to get out of it. But, to be fair, that could be the side of me that's much more tactically rather than strategically-minded speaking.
And that's probably important to say: I flourish much more in tactical games rather than purely (or primarily) strategic ones. And that important to note, because A War of Whispers does give you a lot to strategize with. You get to see the actions your opponents are taking before you take yours, and table-talk is actively encouraged. There's also no hidden info except for the limited number of cards that players have in their hands (most of which do the same things if they belong to a specific faction) and combat is deterministic. This means that players who are able to plan ahead and band together with other players will have a much better time with this than I've had so far. Plus, choosing the right moment to swap tokens is most definitely key to doing well - it can even provide some delicious drama when done especially timely. I just feel that this game isn't necessarily one that I will gravitate to in the future. I'd much rather play this next game if given the chance.
Pax Pamir - 2nd edition And we end on the heaviest and (in my opinion) prettiest of these four games, Pax Pamir. Although The King is Dead is arguably about real-world history, Pax Pamir is the only one of these games that genuinely feels historic. Based on The Great Game, Pax Pamir explicitly aims to model a real-life political conflict. With that comes a lot of baggage; historical, cultural and ludological all at once. Pax Pamir is the hardest game in this list by far, and will also be the most abstractly discussed by force of necessity.
In Pax Pamir, you play an Afghani tribe during the time of The Great Game, a time period where Afghanistan was thrown into a power struggle between Russia, England and itself. You publicly ally your tribe with one of these three factions at the start of the game, hoping to position yourself favourably when one of the game's dominance checks rolls around. Pamir has a card market that forms the engine that the game runs on - it is both its engine and its enigma. The core of the game is simple though; players get twicely buy a card from the market (a Pax-series staple) or play a card from their hand. Played cards come equipped with symbols that can trigger when the card is played or as an action on your turn. These actions tend to affect the board by placing your tribes on regions, neutral blocks that either represent roads or armies of the faction you support, or by giving you some much needed spending money. There's a lot more going on in this game, much more than I can really do justice in this paragraph, but suffice it to say that the cards are where the magic happens in Pax Pamir.
But what about the politics? Pax Pamir, like The King is Dead, has you wear your allegiance on your sleeve. It's emblazoned on your cards, it's smacked on your player wheel and it is pinned on the prizes you've killed to curry favour with local and foreign warlords alike. It's a game about politicking in slow motion, almost; there's a much bigger sense of audiences and of greasing palms than in the other games. Part of that is due to length, of course, but it's also because most big plays in Pax Pamir don't happen out of nowhere. They're stemming from parts being put into place until the moment where the jaws snap shut; it happens slowly then suddenly all at once.
That said, this game really is about politics. It's also the only one of the games on this list where politicking with your opponents is even somewhat of a viable option. Bribing other players is as much of a thing as waving a tax is an incentive to do what someone wants. A single coin really can make all the difference in an economy as tight as Pax Pamir, so talking to the table is essential. By the same token, pivoting is a real option here as well. Allegiances can be discarded like dirty laundry when the tides of war turn, with as much or as little drama as is necessary. It can be as simple as letting a new alliance join your court, or as dramatic as an assassination attempt on someone in your own court. Where switching allegiances felt utilitarian (or sometimes even futilistic) in the other games I've talked about, here it feels both frivolous and monumental. Frivolous because it's potentially both temporary and easy, and monumental because it warps the remaining landscape around it nonetheless. It's a fascinating look at what foreign bonds and geopolitics actually look like.
Having said that, Pax Pamir is genuinely not for everyone. It is the hardest sell on this list, I feel, both in terms of cost and rules weight. While I personally feel that the product is worth the price, it really isn't cheap. That's mostly important if you don't have a group that's willing to put in the muscle for something that's genuinely hard. The game can't fare on looks alone; if your gaming group gets glassy eyes at the notion of considering the consequences of shifts in political climates, this is not for you. Then there's the difficulty. I've played Pax Pamir about eight times, and I'm only sure I've played it correctly, like, twice. Most of those were solo, so it's not too bad, but that's still not great considering the time I'm asking other people to invest in this. Playing improperly is much less of a problem if what you're playing is quick; people are much less willing to forgive that when they just lost a three hour game because you forgot that losing your political cards in a region also means you remove all your tribes from that region. It's an investment is what I'm saying, and one I can't promise will pay off.
Having said that, Pax Pamir is great. It's not my favourite Pax game (that would currently be Pax Renaissance), but it is one of my favourite solo games and arguably the best of these four games if your group can deal with actual, genuine and tremendous weight.
So what would I like you to take away from this? If the idea of playing a party outside of a power struggle who influences the outcome appeals to you, there's a bunch of options for you to choose from! If you want something relatively light, portable, beautiful and unique, get Turncoats. If you want something quick, tense, more classical in design yet still accessible, get The King is Dead. If you want something medium-weight, strategic and are willing to ride the waves of outragious fortune, get A War of Whispers. And if you want something heavy, singular, beautiful and truly historic, get Pax Pamir.
That's my TED talk, thank you for reading.
Other notes I think it's only fair of me to state that I've played A War of Whispers the least of all these games. All the others I've played, like, at least seven times, but I've only played AWoW twice. I just don't really like it all that much, but I do want to be transparent in why that is.
Some of these games might be hard to find at retailers, but you can get them on the websites of either the publisher or the designer. Turncoats, as far as I know, is only really available on Milda Mathilda's website. She uses a Google Form to process orders, which seems insane to me but works for her, and I had to wait about six months for my copy. That said, I feel it was most definitely worth the wait.
If you have any titles of this ilk that you think I should try, let me know! I've obviously missed games, but I'm always interested in trying new things of this ilk.
Lastly, I make no apologies for the reference I used when talking about Pamir. They were the right words in the right place.

For context our moms are best friends and hang out often bringing us along to hang out. I was dating this guy for a few months before we broke up, but our moms are still friends and hang out regularly. After we broke up he tried to get back together with me but I said no. After three hours of persuading I agreed to be friend with benefits. After a few months of this I don’t really want to keep doing it. The issue is every time I try to stop or end it, it doesn’t work. I tried a few times, but he always managed to convince me and now he doesn’t even take me seriously anymore. Idk what to do because we still have to hang out because our moms are friends. What should I do?

Introduction

Curious what's new in managing software updates in the enterprise? I have gone through the WWDC 2023 video titled, "Explore advances in declarative device management." While many topics were covered in the video, I'm sure this community will appreciate a dedicated place to discuss a specific segment: Managing macOS updates. Here is my overview of what was covered. Some quotes are taken directly from the video, while other information is organized, presented, or described in my own way.

Refresher on Declarative Device Management

“Declarative device management is the new device management solution for all your Apple devices. It provides an autonomous and proactive management capability that allows devices to apply management logic without prompting from the server, and supports asynchronous status reporting, avoiding the need for servers to poll devices.”
Remember: Declarative device management was introduced at WWDC 2021. The best summary is that it's a proactive way of managing devices, reducing the need for things like an "inventory update" (polling) to get information about a device.
WWDC 22: “The focus of future protocol features will be declarative device management.”WWDC 23: “The focus of new protocol features is declarative device management.”

Software Update

Here are some highlights about what's new for software update management:

• Configurations can be used to define software update behavior. The device can proactively carry out those instructions, while keeping the user informed of the update process and giving them the opportunity to do the update themselves ahead of any deadline.
• Predicates can be used to power sophisticated logic to control the ordering of software updates as devices get upgraded to seed and GM builds or as rapid security responses become available.
• Asynchronous status reporting keeps the administrator up to date with the software update flow so that issues can be quickly resolved if they arise. The status reporting tells you details of the installation state and any failure reasons.

Let's dig in to the management aspect:
You could have a configuration that tells a supervised device to target (TargetOSVersion) macOS 14.0. You could also optionally target a specific build version (TargetBuildVersion). Lastly, the TargetLocalDateTime key defines a specific date time the update will be enforced.
As far as status reporting goes, you can see if the update was initiated by the declaration, the system, the user, or any combination of those. You can see which OS version the system is trying to install. You can see which state the computer is currently in (e.g, “downloading”).
From the user's perspective:
The user will clearly be able to see in System Settings which update is being enforced. Example: In System Settings > General > Software Update, a message will say: “Your organization has decided to update your device to macOS 14.0. You can choose to update now or it will update automatically on 6/6/23, 10:00 AM.” There would be buttons by the message like “Update Tonight” or “Update Now”. If they choose “Update Tonight” it’ll be downloaded and queued for installation at night. The update would occur when the device is sufficiently charged and inactive.
https://preview.redd.it/hemxtocden4b1.png?width=1580&format=png&auto=webp&s=166c34ffb11d58cb9acd13b90a27818a4c3e7446
There will be native macOS notifications telling the user when the update is scheduled for. They'll receive a notification everyday until the deadline. 24 hours before the deadline, the notification appears hourly, and ignores Do Not Disturb. One hour before the deadline, it appears every 30 mins, and then every 10 minutes.
https://preview.redd.it/vm3q458fen4b1.png?width=1090&format=png&auto=webp&s=dcf06b18aa4d519e5756e70352afca134a9b8f49
Let’s say they missed the deadline because they were on vacation. They come back to work, turn on their Mac, and get a notification that says, “An update to macOS 14.0 is past due. You can install it now or it will be installed automatically within the next hour.”
https://preview.redd.it/8ob1nxbjen4b1.png?width=1078&format=png&auto=webp&s=1318f63b15a9030a1193bf1b760551d4f4e24824
Similar functionality available in iOS and iPadOS.
Software update declarations and MDM commands and profiles can co-exist. However, software updates enforced by declarations will always take precedence over MDM commands/profiles.

Ending Thoughts

It will be up to each MDM vendor to implement the functionality of what Apple is offering. We have seen from vendors in the past that can be slow to implement new functionality. For example, at WWDC 2022, Apple announced the "High" priority key for the ScheduleOSUpdate command on macOS Ventura, and Jamf still has not implemented this. (See the Jamf Nation feature request for that here.)
My first reaction is that this answers almost every problem IT administrators have complained about for years, with respect software updating. Whether or not it will work well is another story (hint: we all know how well MDM update commands work 🙄).
The one piece that I'd really like to see is to have deadlines set automatically after an update is released. For example, I'd like some automatic logic that "whenever a security update is released by Apple, set an update deadline for 7 days from now." Maybe I missed it, but it doesn't sound like this functionality will exist, but at least we will have the tools to manually set deadlines. And hopefully MDM vendors will implement their own custom logic to do such a thing.
What are your thoughts?

I 23f have been with my partner 24m for about 6 months now. I love him dearly and I would do anything for him but I also don't seem to be enough for him. He told me from the very beginning that he's Polly which I have tried really hard to understand and be okay with but I don't think I can be okay with this. He's literally the best guy I have ever met. I've tried going on dates to other people to no avail. He is respectful and sweet and caring and I feel like we work well together but he still wants to see other people. He told me that he has plans this weekend to see another girl and make her dinner and even skip work for her. In return I made plans with a guy who liked one of my photos on my other account. He says I can go see other people too but I don't want to, I only want him. I Don't even know why I am seeing this other guy. I really just want to be with my BF but he wants more and I don't know how to be enough for him. Everybody says love isn't quantitative and you can't just run out. It's an endless spicket of love that doesn't stop but my love does stop. I like to use the Oreo analogy. He has a box of Oreos and he is just handing out plain old double stuffed Oreos to everybody. I have Oreos too but my Oreos come in all different flavors and mine come with a glass of milk and mine come with chocolate and sprinkles and icing to make cute decorated cookies. It feels wrong that I'm giving him so much to just receive one double stuffed Oreo with no milk and return. He says he likes me more than just sexually and that he wants to be together but he's not 100% there yet. I can't tell him I love him until he's 100% there which is killing me. I keep almost slipping up. I know I'm jealous, but aren't we all? Isn't that the point? He shows me he loves me in other ways But we have an amazing time together then he goes and hooks up with another girl and then I get really self-conscious and anxious and sad and I haven't urged to end everything. I feel like I'm being cheated on even though I know I agreed to this. Any thoughts questions comments or concerns? I'm sorry this is a lot I just kind of word vomited onto my phone screen. I hope this makes sense.

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“What?” came her whispered reply.
“Katira, I know way too much about all this for it to be a mere coincidence. Maybe that’s all clairsentience is. A reincarnated soul whose work wasn’t done, and they decided to come around again, only this time, with a little head-start. One of the two lives on in me, and I’d be willing to bet it was your former Master. Her partner died before you met her, and only you would know these things, correct?” Katira nodded her head, and I pressed on. “Okay. I’m also betting that this took place more than a hundred years ago, judging by the amount of earth and growth on this cairn, and due to the nature of societal acceptance of homosexuality. Them keeping their relationship a secret, way out here in the middle of nowhere, would be far easier than the two of them living together in a town. Am I right?” I asked
“Nearly one hundred fifty years, yes. As humans reckon these things, it was around 1875. Not long after your stupid civil war. My Master had lost her mother to typhoid, and her father to the war. She and her best friend decided to attempt to homestead not too far from here, and they eventually fell in love. They were only seventeen at the time, and most of the eligible young men in town had succumbed to the war or to injuries they sustained afterwards. My Master was a hardy, resilient woman. You would have liked her, Stu. She was built like me, and was bullheaded as a mule.” Katira laughed softly, wiping away tears. “Anyway, they built a cabin not terribly far from this spot, and lived for several years together, until the events you described. My Master was beside herself with grief, and nearly ended her time here on several occasions. Until one day, she chanced upon what looked like an old cellar out here in the fields.
“It was there that she found my little body and attempted to bury me. You should have seen her fright when, instead of a pile of bones that fell apart, she had a skeletal kitten bounding around her ankles. We bonded in a similar manner to Joaquin and Shutan. She fell onto the cellar, cut her arm, and the blood dripped onto me. She went on to become an amazing Necromancer in her own right. You two share the same essence type, as well. Huh. I wonder why I never made the connection before,” she concluded softly.
I walked over and wiped the tears from her soft, shimmery face. “Why would you even think to do so? You’ve dealt with all but the most rare of essences, right?” I asked, receiving a nod in turn. “There’s no shame in not recognizing an extremely old pattern. Especially when there’s no real reason to suspect anything. You had already explained away my knowledge, and that should’ve been the end of it.
“Let’s get the last of the reagents and head back. Now that we know where this is, we can come and pay our respects after my Growth. Any time you’re up for it. In the meantime, we say nothing and hint at nothing. My description of their last days could be chalked up to a lucky guess. A very lucky guess, but a guess nonetheless. Unless and until we have some concrete proof, we keep this to ourselves. Not a word even to the guild. Sound good to you?” I asked.
Katira nodded, and I turned and knelt by the old grave. I laid a hand on the topmost stone, and whispered “Not even the stars.” I took a small bouquet of the tiny blue flowers and stood, seeing a weeping dragoness behind me.
“It is you, Bethany. You’re in there, and I know it. I look different, but I’m still the same Katira. I still love you,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
“I’m sorry, what? Bethany? Is that your former Master’s name? What are you talking about?” I asked, concerned.
“What you said when you laid your hand on the grave. Do you recall?”
I nodded, “Yeah. I said ‘Not even the stars’. It just felt right. I dunno why,” I replied.
“That’s what Bethany used to tell her partner, Rose. ‘Not even the stars could shine as brightly as her eyes’, is what she told me. You hold her soul within you. It explains everything to me. Your apparent skill, your oddly specific knowledge, and your way with people. It doesn’t explain your intuition, but that could just be an amalgam of your spirits and your broad intellect. She always lamented her inability to be more creative,” she explained, taking my hand in hers.
“Well. That’s a thing, then. I’m still me, Katira. Even if I have Bethany’s soul, you’re still dealing with Stu. Remember that, please,” I told her.
“Absolutely, Master. This just brings new possibilities to light, is all,” Katira said, sniffling. “My Master, Bethany is gone. I know this. However, knowing that some part of her lives on is a great comfort. That’s all,” she said softly. Katira stepped forward and took my hands in hers. “I know you’re Stu. I know you’re my Master. I can’t forget it. You gave me this form, and I cherish it. Just like I cherish you. You’re going to be my final Master, and I can’t wait to spend an eternity with you,” she said, giving my hands a gentle squeeze.
“Alright, then. As long as we are clear. Are you ready to head back?” I asked gently.
Katira nodded, and we started back off towards the cave. It took us another three hours, but we made it back. The others had been there for a few hours by the time we returned. All three had begun the distillation process by the time we arrived, and had placed their squirrels in the appropriate locations.
“Excellent job, Initiates! I’m glad to see you have taken the initiative to begin your reanimations. Now, it isn’t a guarantee that you will be successful. Be prepared for a messy failure, otherwise. Upon a success, even a minor one, your squirrel will sit up and make vocalizations at you. In the event of a minor success, this is all that will happen. If it is anything more, you can give it a command. It might understand it and act. Just make sure it is a simple one. You can command it to simply die, if you wish. It is up to you. Now, who got here first?” she asked.
“I did, Instructor,” Robert said.
“Excellent. Good job, Initiate Grimes. How long after you got set up did the next one arrive?”
“About an hour, I think and Joaquin was a few minutes after her. That was three hours ago. I think mine is nearly done,” Robert explained.
“Good. While Initiate Merideth gets set up, we will discuss what comes after a successful reanimation,” Katira began.
I turned and began the process of removing the petals from the phlox, depositing them in the pot. I mostly tuned out the discussion they were having, my mind reeling from the events of the day.
If I didn’t hold a reincarnated soul, how else would I be able to do what I do without even thinking about it? How else would I know the stuff I know without having had the instruction? How did I know who was buried beneath that cairn of stones, and how she died? Was it even my soul that was reincarnated? Or, had Bethany’s spirit hung around waiting to impart knowledge upon one lonely Necromancer?
These questions and more rolled around my head, my body moving on autopilot. I was just about to reach into the bag containing the nettles when Katira grabbed my wrist, jerking me from my reverie.
“Initiate!”
“Huh? Wha?”
“Initiate, I’ve been trying to get your attention for a bit. You almost reached into the bag that has the nettles bare-handed. What’s gotten into you?” she asked, her concern evident.
I simply looked into her eyes, my own face a blank mask, and she sighed softly. “Okay. I understand. It’s about what we talked about before, isn’t it?” she asked softly. I nodded slowly. “I take it you’ve never handled nettles, have you?” I shook my head. “Let me show you. In fact, gather around, everyone. Nettles are a painful plant, and you may have to handle them at some point. Let me show you how to deal with them,” Katira announced.
The rest of the group came over and sat while Katira taught us how to handle the irritating plant. Once she demonstrated the process, I tried it once, and even though I’d succeeded, I figured I’d not like to attempt it again. Instead, I took my multitool and pocket knife, clamped onto the stem, and sliced the leaves into the pot. Then, for good measure, I sectioned up the stem and dropped it in, as well. In went the snake skin, water and three drops of my blood. I set the fire, and waited for something to happen.
As luck would have it something did happen. We all heard Robert’s fire go out with a pop, and turned to see the droplet of essence-infused oil spill onto the squirrel. As with our message stones, nothing was spilled, it all just absorbed into the squirrel, and we watched with bated breath.
At first, nothing happened. The squirrel sat motionless on the cold stone slab. After a few moments, however, we all saw the digits on the left forelimb twitch. Collectively, we moved back, as a crazed squirrel was as fearsome as it was small. It took a breath, then a second. Slowly, it sat up, turned its black, unblinking eyes towards Robert and began chittering.
“Try it, Initiate Grimes,” Katira whispered.
Robert cleared his throat and swallowed. “Go outside the cave, and dig a hole big enough for you to lie in beside the first tree you see,” he commanded.
We watched as the squirrel cocked its head to the side and hopped down. It bounded drunkenly out of the cave, and after a short search, began to dig a hole.
“Excellent job, Initiate. Why did you tell it to do that?” Katira asked.
“I felt terrible for it. I think it should be put to rest,” he said quietly.
“So it is digging its own grave? Interesting. Go and tend to it. It may not be able to finish,” Katira replied.
Robert got up and went outside to tend to his squirrel, and the rest of us sat back and chatted for a bit.
“Senpai? What took you so long to find your reagents?” Morita-san asked.
“Well, as our Instructor specified this morning, I require very specific reagents to even have a chance at making this work, and they weren’t easy to find. I had to have phlox, nettles and a shed skin. Phlox were those tiny blue flowers, and they weren’t easy to find. Especially as I had no idea what they looked like until I opened my Grimoire. I knew what nettles looked like, and everyone from around here knows what a shed skin looks like, I think. They just weren’t easy to get. However, after I found the nettles, the other two just kinda happened. The snake skin was tangled around some weeds in a field, and the phlox were growing by an outcropping of stone. We had to go something like five miles from the cave. Speaking of which, I’m gonna need to eat something soon. I just had a small snack around noon or so,” I explained.
“By the time your still finishes, it will be time for dinner, anyway. I’d suggest holding off, if you can,” Katira said.
“I’ll try, but if I start getting the sugar shakes or acting belligerent, I’ll need a small snack again. We really don’t want that,” I said.
Robert came back, looking somber and somewhat sad. “It’s done. I…I told it to die, and it closed its eyes and just stopped moving. It seemed happy,” he said, taking a seat.
“Initiate Grimes, I want you to understand that all you did was reanimate the body of a squirrel. It had no soul, and therefore wasn’t the same creature I killed three days ago. It was more or less a biological machine that used the energy of the reagents you selected and your essence as fuel. It would have eventually stopped moving on its own. You could re energize it with your essence, but that would serve to bond it tighter to you, which is not a situation we want here. You have done well thus far, and I’m proud of you. We all are,” she told the younger man.
“She is right, Master. You have grown in skill, and as a person. Rather quickly, I might add. As such, I would say that your own Growth is no more than a month away. Once we get home, you should alert your job to your upcoming illness,” Yin grumbled.
“I can’t do that, bud. I can’t plan to be sick. Instructor? Do the symptoms all come on at once, or are they in stages?” Robert asked.
“You will most likely get the headaches first. If you can function through them, I would call your job at that point, and tell them that you are sick, and it is unknown as to how long it will last. Hopefully, you will be able to maintain your job after you are done Growing,” Katira replied.
“I can form human arms and hands for the time it takes to send a message on your phone, Master. I could also call for any number of other familiars and Necromancers to help, should you need it,” Yin said reassuringly.
Robert seemed satisfied with this answer, and began to clean his equipment. He had just finished when, with twin pops, we heard both Joaquin and Morita-san’s fires go out. All heads turned to watch the reaction complete.
Both squirrels were doused with the oil/essence mixture, and we watched as it was absorbed into the bodies of the squirrels.
Both squirrels twitched and sat up, turning their heads towards their creators and began chittering.
Morita-san nodded at Joaquin, and he cleared his throat. “Venha aqui, esquilo,” he said.
The squirrel shakily stood and took two steps before collapsing. We all watched in horror as it continued to crawl forward, leaving its back half behind. Joaquin began to panic and scooted back.
“Release it, Initiate Madras!”
“Morra, esquilo! Morra!” the young man cried out. The squirrel shuddered and heaved out its remaining breath, one clawed paw outstretched towards Joaquin. As it did, the rest of its entrails oozed out from its body, coupled with a brown slime.
“I will explain in a moment, Initiate Madras. Initiate Morita-san, it is your turn,” Katira said.
Morita-san swallowed, staring at the halves of the squirrel on the cavern floor. “私に近づいて、リス。” she said, her eyes never leaving the squirrel.
Her squirrel never moved. It sat there, blinking. “Instructor? What do I do? It’s not moving. Just….blinking,” Morita-san said quietly.
“Try rewording what you just said.”
“ここに来て、リス。” Morita-san said. The squirrel bounded over to her, and began to inspect her shoes.
“Excellent job, Morita-san. It seems that your reagents harmonized rather well with both you and your subject. This is why it is acting more like a normal, living creature and not the automaton Initiate Grimes produced. There is nothing wrong with your results, Initiate Grimes. You’ll just need to try a different combination of reagents, is all. Initiate Morita-san happened to chance upon the right triad for her for this experiment.
“The squirrel is yours to do with as you wish, Initiate Morita-san. Congratulations to the three of you. You have successfully reanimated your squirrels,” Katira said happily.
The others smiled and seemed happy. Morita-san looked at her squirrel and cocked her head to the side. “Should I name him?” she asked aloud.
“There is nothing prohibiting that, Initiate.”
“I shall call you Daisuke,” she said to the squirrel. “この死んだリスを片付けて、ダイスケ。” she commanded, and the squirrel bounded over to Joaquin’s partial reanimation, and began to cart the remains outside.
“Now, as for your squirrel, Initiate Madras. It was apparently infected by a parasite which had been eating it from the inside. Some sort of intestinal worm, I would say. When you reanimated it, the parasite was immediately destroyed, and likely aided the decomposition. There is no shame in this, and none of us could have known it was there. It is the risk we take when we choose a creature for reanimation.
“This is why a skeleton was chosen for reanimation more often than not in the past. There was no risk of parasitic infection, little risk of a messy failure, and in the event the energies used ran out, it would simply fall to the ground in a pile, ready to be used again. However, one needs a distinct grasp of anatomy for it, because in the event you put it together wrong, it won’t move correctly,” Katira said.
“So, wait. We could potentially Frankenstein ourselves a servant together?” Robert asked.
“Where do you think Mary Shelley got the idea, Initiate Grimes?” Katira returned with an enigmatic smile.
Robert sat there, his mouth agape.
“Close your mouth, Initiate. You might catch a fly, otherwise.”
We all laughed as Robert closed his mouth with a click. He shook his head and sat beside his cubbyhole in thought. Morita-san and Joaquin were talking animatedly in their respective languages, aided by their familiars.
I sat beside my equipment, watching the oil collect in the reservoir. It looked a little different than the others’ did.
“Instructor?” I asked, waving her over.
“Yes?”
“My essence-infused oil looks different to theirs. Theirs was green, and mine is…well, it’s kind of an orangey-pink. Is something wrong?” I asked with concern.
“Hmm. I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a reanimation essence appear this color. Yin? Shutan? Oiwa? Would you three come here, please?” she called out.
The three familiars approached my station curiously. Katira turned to them, gesturing at my equipment. “Have any of you ever seen this color in a reanimation essence before?” she asked.
“Exactly once,” Shutan said, stroking his bony jaw. “Stu? Yours is a Multiplying essence, correct?” he asked, receiving a nod. “Then, I will reveal nothing, save this: This will be interesting.” He walked away, shaking his head, and I could swear I saw a smirk on his skeletal countenance.
“What? Interesting? I’m not sure I like interesting. Wait a minute! What do you mean, interesting?” I called after him, receiving no inkling of acknowledgement.
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Master List

“What?” came her whispered reply.
“Katira, I know way too much about all this for it to be a mere coincidence. Maybe that’s all clairsentience is. A reincarnated soul whose work wasn’t done, and they decided to come around again, only this time, with a little head-start. One of the two lives on in me, and I’d be willing to bet it was your former Master. Her partner died before you met her, and only you would know these things, correct?” Katira nodded her head, and I pressed on. “Okay. I’m also betting that this took place more than a hundred years ago, judging by the amount of earth and growth on this cairn, and due to the nature of societal acceptance of homosexuality. Them keeping their relationship a secret, way out here in the middle of nowhere, would be far easier than the two of them living together in a town. Am I right?” I asked
“Nearly one hundred fifty years, yes. As humans reckon these things, it was around 1875. Not long after your stupid civil war. My Master had lost her mother to typhoid, and her father to the war. She and her best friend decided to attempt to homestead not too far from here, and they eventually fell in love. They were only seventeen at the time, and most of the eligible young men in town had succumbed to the war or to injuries they sustained afterwards. My Master was a hardy, resilient woman. You would have liked her, Stu. She was built like me, and was bullheaded as a mule.” Katira laughed softly, wiping away tears. “Anyway, they built a cabin not terribly far from this spot, and lived for several years together, until the events you described. My Master was beside herself with grief, and nearly ended her time here on several occasions. Until one day, she chanced upon what looked like an old cellar out here in the fields.
“It was there that she found my little body and attempted to bury me. You should have seen her fright when, instead of a pile of bones that fell apart, she had a skeletal kitten bounding around her ankles. We bonded in a similar manner to Joaquin and Shutan. She fell onto the cellar, cut her arm, and the blood dripped onto me. She went on to become an amazing Necromancer in her own right. You two share the same essence type, as well. Huh. I wonder why I never made the connection before,” she concluded softly.
I walked over and wiped the tears from her soft, shimmery face. “Why would you even think to do so? You’ve dealt with all but the most rare of essences, right?” I asked, receiving a nod in turn. “There’s no shame in not recognizing an extremely old pattern. Especially when there’s no real reason to suspect anything. You had already explained away my knowledge, and that should’ve been the end of it.
“Let’s get the last of the reagents and head back. Now that we know where this is, we can come and pay our respects after my Growth. Any time you’re up for it. In the meantime, we say nothing and hint at nothing. My description of their last days could be chalked up to a lucky guess. A very lucky guess, but a guess nonetheless. Unless and until we have some concrete proof, we keep this to ourselves. Not a word even to the guild. Sound good to you?” I asked.
Katira nodded, and I turned and knelt by the old grave. I laid a hand on the topmost stone, and whispered “Not even the stars.” I took a small bouquet of the tiny blue flowers and stood, seeing a weeping dragoness behind me.
“It is you, Bethany. You’re in there, and I know it. I look different, but I’m still the same Katira. I still love you,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
“I’m sorry, what? Bethany? Is that your former Master’s name? What are you talking about?” I asked, concerned.
“What you said when you laid your hand on the grave. Do you recall?”
I nodded, “Yeah. I said ‘Not even the stars’. It just felt right. I dunno why,” I replied.
“That’s what Bethany used to tell her partner, Rose. ‘Not even the stars could shine as brightly as her eyes’, is what she told me. You hold her soul within you. It explains everything to me. Your apparent skill, your oddly specific knowledge, and your way with people. It doesn’t explain your intuition, but that could just be an amalgam of your spirits and your broad intellect. She always lamented her inability to be more creative,” she explained, taking my hand in hers.
“Well. That’s a thing, then. I’m still me, Katira. Even if I have Bethany’s soul, you’re still dealing with Stu. Remember that, please,” I told her.
“Absolutely, Master. This just brings new possibilities to light, is all,” Katira said, sniffling. “My Master, Bethany is gone. I know this. However, knowing that some part of her lives on is a great comfort. That’s all,” she said softly. Katira stepped forward and took my hands in hers. “I know you’re Stu. I know you’re my Master. I can’t forget it. You gave me this form, and I cherish it. Just like I cherish you. You’re going to be my final Master, and I can’t wait to spend an eternity with you,” she said, giving my hands a gentle squeeze.
“Alright, then. As long as we are clear. Are you ready to head back?” I asked gently.
Katira nodded, and we started back off towards the cave. It took us another three hours, but we made it back. The others had been there for a few hours by the time we returned. All three had begun the distillation process by the time we arrived, and had placed their squirrels in the appropriate locations.
“Excellent job, Initiates! I’m glad to see you have taken the initiative to begin your reanimations. Now, it isn’t a guarantee that you will be successful. Be prepared for a messy failure, otherwise. Upon a success, even a minor one, your squirrel will sit up and make vocalizations at you. In the event of a minor success, this is all that will happen. If it is anything more, you can give it a command. It might understand it and act. Just make sure it is a simple one. You can command it to simply die, if you wish. It is up to you. Now, who got here first?” she asked.
“I did, Instructor,” Robert said.
“Excellent. Good job, Initiate Grimes. How long after you got set up did the next one arrive?”
“About an hour, I think and Joaquin was a few minutes after her. That was three hours ago. I think mine is nearly done,” Robert explained.
“Good. While Initiate Merideth gets set up, we will discuss what comes after a successful reanimation,” Katira began.
I turned and began the process of removing the petals from the phlox, depositing them in the pot. I mostly tuned out the discussion they were having, my mind reeling from the events of the day.
If I didn’t hold a reincarnated soul, how else would I be able to do what I do without even thinking about it? How else would I know the stuff I know without having had the instruction? How did I know who was buried beneath that cairn of stones, and how she died? Was it even my soul that was reincarnated? Or, had Bethany’s spirit hung around waiting to impart knowledge upon one lonely Necromancer?
These questions and more rolled around my head, my body moving on autopilot. I was just about to reach into the bag containing the nettles when Katira grabbed my wrist, jerking me from my reverie.
“Initiate!”
“Huh? Wha?”
“Initiate, I’ve been trying to get your attention for a bit. You almost reached into the bag that has the nettles bare-handed. What’s gotten into you?” she asked, her concern evident.
I simply looked into her eyes, my own face a blank mask, and she sighed softly. “Okay. I understand. It’s about what we talked about before, isn’t it?” she asked softly. I nodded slowly. “I take it you’ve never handled nettles, have you?” I shook my head. “Let me show you. In fact, gather around, everyone. Nettles are a painful plant, and you may have to handle them at some point. Let me show you how to deal with them,” Katira announced.
The rest of the group came over and sat while Katira taught us how to handle the irritating plant. Once she demonstrated the process, I tried it once, and even though I’d succeeded, I figured I’d not like to attempt it again. Instead, I took my multitool and pocket knife, clamped onto the stem, and sliced the leaves into the pot. Then, for good measure, I sectioned up the stem and dropped it in, as well. In went the snake skin, water and three drops of my blood. I set the fire, and waited for something to happen.
As luck would have it something did happen. We all heard Robert’s fire go out with a pop, and turned to see the droplet of essence-infused oil spill onto the squirrel. As with our message stones, nothing was spilled, it all just absorbed into the squirrel, and we watched with bated breath.
At first, nothing happened. The squirrel sat motionless on the cold stone slab. After a few moments, however, we all saw the digits on the left forelimb twitch. Collectively, we moved back, as a crazed squirrel was as fearsome as it was small. It took a breath, then a second. Slowly, it sat up, turned its black, unblinking eyes towards Robert and began chittering.
“Try it, Initiate Grimes,” Katira whispered.
Robert cleared his throat and swallowed. “Go outside the cave, and dig a hole big enough for you to lie in beside the first tree you see,” he commanded.
We watched as the squirrel cocked its head to the side and hopped down. It bounded drunkenly out of the cave, and after a short search, began to dig a hole.
“Excellent job, Initiate. Why did you tell it to do that?” Katira asked.
“I felt terrible for it. I think it should be put to rest,” he said quietly.
“So it is digging its own grave? Interesting. Go and tend to it. It may not be able to finish,” Katira replied.
Robert got up and went outside to tend to his squirrel, and the rest of us sat back and chatted for a bit.
“Senpai? What took you so long to find your reagents?” Morita-san asked.
“Well, as our Instructor specified this morning, I require very specific reagents to even have a chance at making this work, and they weren’t easy to find. I had to have phlox, nettles and a shed skin. Phlox were those tiny blue flowers, and they weren’t easy to find. Especially as I had no idea what they looked like until I opened my Grimoire. I knew what nettles looked like, and everyone from around here knows what a shed skin looks like, I think. They just weren’t easy to get. However, after I found the nettles, the other two just kinda happened. The snake skin was tangled around some weeds in a field, and the phlox were growing by an outcropping of stone. We had to go something like five miles from the cave. Speaking of which, I’m gonna need to eat something soon. I just had a small snack around noon or so,” I explained.
“By the time your still finishes, it will be time for dinner, anyway. I’d suggest holding off, if you can,” Katira said.
“I’ll try, but if I start getting the sugar shakes or acting belligerent, I’ll need a small snack again. We really don’t want that,” I said.
Robert came back, looking somber and somewhat sad. “It’s done. I…I told it to die, and it closed its eyes and just stopped moving. It seemed happy,” he said, taking a seat.
“Initiate Grimes, I want you to understand that all you did was reanimate the body of a squirrel. It had no soul, and therefore wasn’t the same creature I killed three days ago. It was more or less a biological machine that used the energy of the reagents you selected and your essence as fuel. It would have eventually stopped moving on its own. You could re energize it with your essence, but that would serve to bond it tighter to you, which is not a situation we want here. You have done well thus far, and I’m proud of you. We all are,” she told the younger man.
“She is right, Master. You have grown in skill, and as a person. Rather quickly, I might add. As such, I would say that your own Growth is no more than a month away. Once we get home, you should alert your job to your upcoming illness,” Yin grumbled.
“I can’t do that, bud. I can’t plan to be sick. Instructor? Do the symptoms all come on at once, or are they in stages?” Robert asked.
“You will most likely get the headaches first. If you can function through them, I would call your job at that point, and tell them that you are sick, and it is unknown as to how long it will last. Hopefully, you will be able to maintain your job after you are done Growing,” Katira replied.
“I can form human arms and hands for the time it takes to send a message on your phone, Master. I could also call for any number of other familiars and Necromancers to help, should you need it,” Yin said reassuringly.
Robert seemed satisfied with this answer, and began to clean his equipment. He had just finished when, with twin pops, we heard both Joaquin and Morita-san’s fires go out. All heads turned to watch the reaction complete.
Both squirrels were doused with the oil/essence mixture, and we watched as it was absorbed into the bodies of the squirrels.
Both squirrels twitched and sat up, turning their heads towards their creators and began chittering.
Morita-san nodded at Joaquin, and he cleared his throat. “Venha aqui, esquilo,” he said.
The squirrel shakily stood and took two steps before collapsing. We all watched in horror as it continued to crawl forward, leaving its back half behind. Joaquin began to panic and scooted back.
“Release it, Initiate Madras!”
“Morra, esquilo! Morra!” the young man cried out. The squirrel shuddered and heaved out its remaining breath, one clawed paw outstretched towards Joaquin. As it did, the rest of its entrails oozed out from its body, coupled with a brown slime.
“I will explain in a moment, Initiate Madras. Initiate Morita-san, it is your turn,” Katira said.
Morita-san swallowed, staring at the halves of the squirrel on the cavern floor. “私に近づいて、リス。” she said, her eyes never leaving the squirrel.
Her squirrel never moved. It sat there, blinking. “Instructor? What do I do? It’s not moving. Just….blinking,” Morita-san said quietly.
“Try rewording what you just said.”
“ここに来て、リス。” Morita-san said. The squirrel bounded over to her, and began to inspect her shoes.
“Excellent job, Morita-san. It seems that your reagents harmonized rather well with both you and your subject. This is why it is acting more like a normal, living creature and not the automaton Initiate Grimes produced. There is nothing wrong with your results, Initiate Grimes. You’ll just need to try a different combination of reagents, is all. Initiate Morita-san happened to chance upon the right triad for her for this experiment.
“The squirrel is yours to do with as you wish, Initiate Morita-san. Congratulations to the three of you. You have successfully reanimated your squirrels,” Katira said happily.
The others smiled and seemed happy. Morita-san looked at her squirrel and cocked her head to the side. “Should I name him?” she asked aloud.
“There is nothing prohibiting that, Initiate.”
“I shall call you Daisuke,” she said to the squirrel. “この死んだリスを片付けて、ダイスケ。” she commanded, and the squirrel bounded over to Joaquin’s partial reanimation, and began to cart the remains outside.
“Now, as for your squirrel, Initiate Madras. It was apparently infected by a parasite which had been eating it from the inside. Some sort of intestinal worm, I would say. When you reanimated it, the parasite was immediately destroyed, and likely aided the decomposition. There is no shame in this, and none of us could have known it was there. It is the risk we take when we choose a creature for reanimation.
“This is why a skeleton was chosen for reanimation more often than not in the past. There was no risk of parasitic infection, little risk of a messy failure, and in the event the energies used ran out, it would simply fall to the ground in a pile, ready to be used again. However, one needs a distinct grasp of anatomy for it, because in the event you put it together wrong, it won’t move correctly,” Katira said.
“So, wait. We could potentially Frankenstein ourselves a servant together?” Robert asked.
“Where do you think Mary Shelley got the idea, Initiate Grimes?” Katira returned with an enigmatic smile.
Robert sat there, his mouth agape.
“Close your mouth, Initiate. You might catch a fly, otherwise.”
We all laughed as Robert closed his mouth with a click. He shook his head and sat beside his cubbyhole in thought. Morita-san and Joaquin were talking animatedly in their respective languages, aided by their familiars.
I sat beside my equipment, watching the oil collect in the reservoir. It looked a little different than the others’ did.
“Instructor?” I asked, waving her over.
“Yes?”
“My essence-infused oil looks different to theirs. Theirs was green, and mine is…well, it’s kind of an orangey-pink. Is something wrong?” I asked with concern.
“Hmm. I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a reanimation essence appear this color. Yin? Shutan? Oiwa? Would you three come here, please?” she called out.
The three familiars approached my station curiously. Katira turned to them, gesturing at my equipment. “Have any of you ever seen this color in a reanimation essence before?” she asked.
“Exactly once,” Shutan said, stroking his bony jaw. “Stu? Yours is a Multiplying essence, correct?” he asked, receiving a nod. “Then, I will reveal nothing, save this: This will be interesting.” He walked away, shaking his head, and I could swear I saw a smirk on his skeletal countenance.
“What? Interesting? I’m not sure I like interesting. Wait a minute! What do you mean, interesting?” I called after him, receiving no inkling of acknowledgement.

Okay I literally finished the book a few minutes ago after spending 2 days binge reading it. I am going to mis a hilarous amount of details and important story bits, but I gotta stick with the vibe.
Here is the Dreadgod one Reddit - Dive into anything
You ready? No? Neither am I!
**SPACE ADVENTURES PART ONE**
Okay so we start in space again, and suriel and ozriel are like "yep we are def gonna die" and then eithan is like "Okay but hear me out...what if only one of us dies?" And suriel is like "You better not be up to some main character bullshit" and eithan then proceeds to pull a gandalf and fight the main baddy on his own while suriel goes back and goes to pick up something from Makiel, who would really like eithan to die please.
Makiel is looking for the ultimate killing tool everywhere and hopes to get it to kill ozriel, the mad king, and basically anyone who would fuck up the system. Suriel comes and is like "YOUR VIBES ARE ATROCIOUS AND YOU ARE UNDER ARREST" and makiel, having been a villian for a VERY long time, is like "bet. That makes sense."
Suriel, being the goodest girl, and not a hound, is super confused. Makiel explains, "Look I've seen like a billion villian stories. I knew after my final villianous act, I have to die to the hero or get diposed or something so I Was just gonna give up after I murdered your friend." Suriel who likes having friends, decides thats not okay and activates her trap card: Reaper's Gift!!!
By activating reapers gift, she can tap infinite black lands so long as she has the artifact equip. She then is like "Look...you've been a villian for a while." She then transfers the item to HIS character sheet "Wouldn't you rather go out like an anti-hero????" Makiel wasn't expecting someone to be nice to him, which might be a huge theme in this book.
So he says "fuck it we ball" and they go back to find eithan, SOMEHOW NOT DEAD YET, even though he has no super weapon, lost his mantle of ultimate protagonist power, and is literally fighting the solo boss with no equipment besides his pajamas. Makiel is like "Fuck dude I hate you." and ozriel is like "Feelings mutual buddy~" and the mad king tries to kill them both.
And then they realise that they both hate the same thing: Losing. Suddenly, united by the pettiness icon, Makiel and Ozriel trade weapons, and start wombo combing the Mad king like they are bros. They are both upset about the fact that they are actually doing really well. That said, its still a lot, and they are basically in a stalemate until eithan realises how to break it in a way that only he can.
By taunting the enemy in his final moments of life with a meme attack. He bops him on the head with the GOD SWORD OF AIM HAX and is like "Lmao get rektd" and then mcfucking dies, and then makiel super crits the mad king with the +100 sycthe of ultimate murder, and suriel jsut deletes him for good measure.
Then suriel is like "We gotta fix him, but he got mcfucking murdered, which is way worst than normal murder. What can we do?" And then makiel gives her his magic jacket and is like "One life...for another..." and suriel is like "WAIT YOU HATE HIM??? WHY WOULD YOU-"
"Because...nothing would piss him off more...than me going out like a hero...." and then he mcfucking dies to undo eithands death who comes back smiling, but on the inside, is morning the loss of his bro, the most petty man in existence. Truly and honor. Also everything has gone to shit.
**BABY BOX ADVENTURES** Back on baby box, Lindon and co go into the definitely not hyberbolic time chamber to super not go to super saiyan. Lindon is like 1/4 dreadgod and is ridiclously buff, and after having stolen everyones shit, makes sure to set up super training plans for everyone. But first, we gotta fix mercy, who got her ass kicked by her mom, because she's toxic. This will also be a theme for the book.
Mercy gets revived and is like "Fuck my mom IS the worst" and everyone side eyes because yeah, but shes having her time. After that, its time to get used to the weird training everyone has to do.
Orthos has to do cannibalism but not get feral or racist about it. He is very old, so its kinda hard to stop both of those things from happening, but he manages. Mostly. Drops a H slurr in there once.
Little Blue has to become a person. She makes a great mascot, but she has to get more substance to become a full fledged character with autonomy and shit.
Mercy has to deal with her mommy issues. No for real. Not a joke. She just has to deal with her mommy issues and get her own personality, outside of her mommy issues. This is a legitmate struggle for her, due to being the princess of the gaslight/gatekeep/girlboss empire.
Ziel needs to learn that he both has depression, and also, is a very angry person. Also to maybe not be so bloodthirsty. Also how to do time math. Also how to deal with the insanity caused by experiencing eternity....he has to deal with a lot.
Yerin is supposed to learn how to sword from her ghost dad, which lindon summons from a definitely not engagement ring box. Yerin pouts about this. Sword ghost dad says that she could probably get the sword icon if she just vibed correctly, and red faith agrees. She doesn't know WHAT vibe she is supposed to have though, until she thinks about eithan, and beating the shit out of red faith, and realises she REALLY wants to kill people. Like really bad. This is somehow ALSO a theme in this book.
Lindon...has to kill more dreadgods, each being a CR40 encounter. Also every time he does he has to make a will save or jsut straight up stop being a PC. This is fine he says. At least he still has the loot from the last one, right?
No one agrees with him.
Outside, Reigan shen decides to annoy lindon. Lindon responds by firing a **Death** arrow at reigan shen. He then runs the fuck a way because HOLY SHIT THE MAIN CHARACTER HAS A PROTAGONIST WEAPON NOW???? WTF GUYS WE GOTTA GET THEM!!!!
Malice + northsider agree, and decide to also annoy lindon. The more they annoy him, the less time he can spend digivolving his friends, and also prepping for the WEEPING DRAGON who is COMING TO FUCK EVERYONE UP. It is QUITE CROSS that SOMEHONE (hi lindon) MCFUCKING KILLED THEIR BRO!
Lindon uses his ghost dad jutsu to summon everyone has a ghost to fight...3 monarchs, 2 sages, a bunch of annoyances, and potentialyl a dreadgod. It is not a good day for him. Its not going to get better. Still, he has his protagonist weapon! And thats scary! Unforunately, being a protagonist weapon, he can only use as many times as the story allows...
Which is still enough to scare the shit out of reigan shin who just wants to end this all. So instead of using his usually gilgamesh bullshit, he instead uses his fusion ultimate doom attack of enkuidu + Enuma Ellish + Tiberian's Super Storm Beam of Triple Death. He is absolutely sure this combination of super attacks will wipe the protagonist off the face of the earth!
Unforunately, in his rage, he forgot that he was a villian that had just pulled out an ultimate weapon, which meant the hero HAD to pull out a hax option for the plot to continue. Said hax option, is literally just ghost eithan, who is like "bro, you sweep like this? Lemme show you how to clean house." He then proceeds to beat up all 3 monarchs in one attack and a dodge just to be a dick and is like "Oh btw that wasn't even like half my power, summon me when you have more juice homie."
Lindon, being tired of this bs, was like "Okay hear me out. How about 1v1s? You win, I stop being an asshole. I win, you fuck off." The monarchs, who had a lot more experience being assholes, accept this, and northstrider then proceeds to kick lindons ass. So much. So hard. His oracle codex is like "*He is weak. And dumb. And smelly. And he doesn't even sacred arts bro.*" and nothstrider is fine with that for a bit but then squints and reads the script again, and notices most of the lines were written over with sharpie.
Getting a copy of the ACTUAL script, he see's that lindon is drinking him, like a LOT and even stealing his icon and then slams him into the ground and points at Malice like "You want next?" malice, not giving a shit about men, says "Uhh nah im good." and fucks off back to her goth milf castle. Lindon then sighs because damn that was a long day. It'd be nice if he could get 5 minutes of-
Oh look shen found your hyperbolic time chamber, and is really mad that he's gotten his ass kicked twice today is going to take it out on all of your friends! Go lindon go! He does and shen is like "even if I am erased from the plot I am going to get ONE W IN THIS GOD DAMNED STORY!!!!" and lindon is like "Pls stop" and then shen does...but only after blowing up the door to the time chamber. Lindon is surprised that he was being so nice until he looked behind him and saw the weeping dragon charging up his forward smash.
Shen, being an asshole, decided that would have to due, and he'd have to rely on plan Q. He was...running low on plans. But at least he had more of them! Surely they couldnt all fail.
Back inside of the hyperbolic time chamber, yerin and co realise the door broke. Yerin is like "okay I...cut it open?" Breaking the fourth wall, and then, a door opened. Unforunately, she hadn't been specific when she wrote that and walked all the way to the rosegold continent. OOps.
Ziel and mercy also want to help, but are kinda weak. Ziel digivolves by learning how to harness the power of time, tbe universe, and everything, and mercy digivolves be realising that she honestly just wants to be a nice person and do nice things. She realises this by having a pity party about how she sucks and ziel being like "STFU you are a fucking main character. Act like it." and she realises, sHE IS!!!
So they go out to help lindon and he says "Okay uh no **GTFO**" because they will absolutely get stomped if they help. And they land...in the rosegold continent! How convient! Hey is that yerin using the death murder kill technique????
Anyway house eithan is fighting house shen and house shen is busted, with a herald who is a pixie, and a sage who is crazy, on team weeping dragon, and can regenerate from nothing. Which is absurd. Team eithan just has cladia, who is the best, but also an old lady. She has a thousand eyes, but could use more hands. Oh look, youths!
Mercy, being a nice young lady, helps her elder cross the battle field and annihilate threats. Cladia was sceptical about the girl until it slowly dawns on her that this girl is DEFINITELY a main character. In the super fight, yerin is learning how to murder death kill more effectively, but still doesn't have it down perfect. Ziel is trying to also murder death kill but it just isnt working, and instead, he's getting trolled by the calling storm sage, who seems to just like to see people suffer.
Ziel see's all his friends getting their asses kicked and decides "fuck man...that isnt cool" and unlocks the shield icon, as it turns out, he ALSO wants to be a protagonist, he just forgot. Together with mercy being nice, cladia being the best, and yerin using the art of murder death kill, they defeat house shen with style....but are also v tired. Cladia thanks the newly minted main characters and gives them the coveted mid story power up they will need to face the next boss: Weeping Dragon!
What is this powerup? Well a HUD of course! Turns out, very helpful to have. Also some of the weeping dragons stats. Turns out, its very good at lying and its dragons breath is *reads notes* THE MOST POWERFUL STRIKER TECHNIQUE ON THE PLANET. JUST. THE STRONGEST ONE. EVER. IT **CANNOT** Be blocked. In fact, as they get back to lindons side, the attack misses them entirely, firing mostly into the air....AND STILL NEARLY KILLS THEM. BY PROXIMITY!
luckily lindon kept them from being hyper murdered. Unforunately, as per the rules of cradle, in exchange he had to be hyper murded. So he just kinda falls over. Team main character take exception to this, and decide to beat the shit out of the dragon. The eight man empire is here and are trying to help, potentially in exchange for that SWEET SWEET LOOT...but also to not fucking die.
Also Orthos and Little blue got out of the time chamber and are now archlords! They go to find lindon to help him after super dying, and he says "Hey...you guys...are main characters...now..." And boom instantly, orthos becomes the black dragon sage, and little blue becomes a herald because, yeah he got that move from eithan in book 2. So now they can help fight! Also now everyone has a dross in them because reasons!
So they arent doing GREAT on that front because most of them are like broken and half and relying solely on hax to keep fighting. Few more than Laran, who got to use the protagonist bow for a little while!!! It felt good...like being significant....
ANYWAY, now its mercys turn to use it and WOOF that was scary...but oops that used up her protag powers.
Yerin, time to attack with the murder death kill move...which is great! But OOF that used up all of HER protag powers.
And so ziel is left with the s trongest monster who has like one bar of health left but hits for all of your HP. Can he do it? Its kick or carry time and...whats this? Is that ziel getting on the top ropes? With the DEATH ARROW? AND LOADING IT INTO HIS ALAPHABET ARRAY? AND INFUSING IT WITH TIME MAGIC! YO WATCH OUT **WATCH OUT**
And then THE MAN HIMSELF smites THE ULTIAMTE SUPER DRAGON with the INSTANT DEATH NO SCOPE HEADSHOT AIMBOT attack that kills god. Or almost kills god. He's got like...3 anime seconds to live.
Seeing that the fight was over, malice returns to be toxic and player kill all the exhausted PCs. She seems really eager about the idea for some reason and then right as she is about to kill lindon, she hears the weeping dragons timer about to run out. Quickly, she erases her own attack, because she is VERY genre savvy when it comes to romance, and if she kills yerin, the main male protagonist will DEFINITELY kill her.
Which he almost does anyway, because as soon as weeping dragon dies, lindon digivolveS AGAIN and nearly nukes her. She escapes, but FUCK man that was close. PHew. Live to gatekeep another day.
lindon and co return to their training fortress, and everyone is tired and sad. Lindon tries to cheer them up in the way he knows how: Advancement and new toys! They all groan.
lindon tries to cheer ziel up most of all, because he got the killing blow, and ziel is like "Bro I JUST got the chill icon, please no." and lindon smiles because that meant moRE LOOT FOR HIMSELF. Woo!
Mercy is fighting more of her mommy issues and is terrified that when she levels up to herald, itll kick her ass , because her mom's remnant was SUPER toxic and just started pking people to fuck with her. mercy prepares for the fight of her life...only to see that her spirit is a sweet bean and literally just wants to give hugs and encouragement. Mercy is very surprised that its being nice to her and everything goes perfectly fine because mercy is actually a very helpful and kind person. This is a small moment of celebration.
Taht is until he is YOINKED! GASP????? By what???Only reigan shen of course! He had taken sleeping ghosts binding and used it to summon lindon. Turns out, each time the dreadgods die, the rest of them get stronger...and smarter...and get more personalities. Like the bleeding phoniex deciding to be a she/they waifu apparently just to fuck with shen. Shen tries to convince her that he is a very important antagonist, and she responds with "You were." And this frightens him, given the page count. He tells her that she should get revenge on lindon and she is like "I dunno...I think I have a better plan for my otouto. ISn't that right Onii-chan?" She says to the wandering titan who was listening in over space discord. He agrees and shen realises that he has caught YET ANOTHER L.
Also where is emiriss? Wasn't she supposed to be helping??? Well she would be she got captured by northstrider who wanted to make sure that the protagonists had NO MORE ELDER MENTOR FIGURES! THEY HAD TO MANY! He is convinced that he can handle anything that happens...Which is why he is totally chill when lindon++ shows up and tells him to calm the fuck down and gives back tree grandma. Northstrider says fuck off, and lindon says "okay, but we are going to talk about this."
Northstrider thinks this is a threat. It was actually a promise, as he is pulled into lindons house and lindon is like "...So...I've been reading your character sheet...and it says you were...neutral good? And wanted to like...be a hero?" And northstrider squints because no one is supposed to read his cringe backstory. He tries to destroy it but lindon says "Ah ah ah...read it first." And then he relents because fuck this guy was a main character. What was the worst that could happen?
So he reads his character sheet and realises that he's been playing the character all wrong the whole time and was like "Fuck...I am kinda a dick now I...ya know what, I'ma drop before I get worse." And lindon is relieved that at least SOMEONE cared about being a dick. He also tells them how to get emiriss, who was happy to see that she only had to wait 5 dragon ballz minutes to get rescued. That was pretty short for an arc in her opinion.
Now back in the present lindon is dealing with 2 dreadgods, and regan shen at the time. Bleeding Waifu says, "Hey bro, we could just SHARE the planet and its fine!" and lindon says "mmm no sorry, kinda would be a shit ending to just change plot motivations here." The dreadgods nod and then try to kick his ass. Luckily he used the loot from his last 2 wins to summon his new god weapon Wavesplitter++, whose power is to fucking command super god lightning swords, and its companion Silent King.exe, that let dross be a pain in the ass, letting lindon temporarily digivolve to Dreadgod++
Which was JUST enough to survive a fight with 2 dreadgods...for a while....like about.....5 dragon ball z minutes.
So elsewhere, team friendship to go talk to malice, hoping she will be chill, Mercy, having realised the power of being nice, tries to be nice to malice. She is straight up like "Mom I know you are trying to be a protagonist but you are straight up Lawful evil rn. It's really fucked."
This goes very poorly. MAlice figures that being nice is a trap and only idiots are nice and if she has to kill her favorite person in the whole world, who is literally the embodiment of a good bean, she would rather be THE ABSOLUTE WORST. So she tries to kill all of the other people with hax abilities, constructs, powers, you name it, she has it.
Everyone is on the verge of death when dross is like "hey yerin, uh...if we want to live this, you are going to have to game out of control." And she is like "eh what else is new?" and is then overloaded with strats from every single sword artist in the entire series. In seconds, she almost manifests the sword icon, but then that would mean being a monarch. That was bad right? Thats what they were trying to get rid of.
And then Malice calls her a bitch, and yerin remembers that she REALLY wants to kill something. Like super bad. And then remembers wait...she wAS the fighty character...and she DID have a sword...and she DID love killing bad guys. Holy shit she could be the queen of killing. And so she does.
and then malice is like "Wait no what-" and then mcfucking dies to Yerin, monarch of murder death kill, apprentice of Eithan murder death kill. Charity, and mercy are very sad about this.
Back on the ship. Everyone is freaking out become lindon got yoinked and decide, alright we should all probably digivolve. Yerin points to ziel, "Okay time to fight your depression." He asks, "With like...meditation?" and then is immediately mauled by himself. He eventually realises he has a lot of self destructive tendencies and decides to keep the scars as a reminder to work on that. Dealing with his depression, for real this time, lets him be a monarch
Emriss then points to mercy and is like "You are a good person even if you are sad, and everyone actually likes you a lot." and she realises that omg, she doesnt have to be a gatekeeping,gaslighting,girlboss in order to succeed in the world. She could just be like...a good person. That revelation gives her so much relief that she actually becomes a monarch.
That said, this all took a while...like....4 dragon ball z minutes and 59 seconds.
Which is just enough time to save lindon! Hurray! The team works together and defeats wandering titan with a team attack, beat the shit out of the tiger boi, get sha miara on their side, and blow the fuck out of the bleeding waifu. Here's the problem. The second they do, lindon is going to go 100% Dreadgod x5 and...well thats less than ideal. Also means he can't finish the story....not yet.
So the crew all say their goodbyes really quick and decide OKAY WE CANNOT STAY ON BABYBOX! And so the like 7 monarchs leave and go to space.
**Space Adventures Part 2**
All of team babybox goes to space, including the rainbow baby monarch, and tree grandma. They decide they are done being characters and would like to leave the plot peacefully. The story allows that. The main characters ask where eithan is. Eithan, being a protagonist, appears and is very excited to see his squad. He is also excited to immediately get them back into trouble.
The Abidan is in DIRE need of protagonists. Actual DIRE NEED. If they don't get some more protagonists out there RIGHT NOW so many settings are going to collapse. But unforunately, they dont have a protagonist division, because every time they tried to make one, they kept getting ANTAGONISTS out of it. Something about raging against systemic injustice??? Anyway the new team become team protagonist and go do protagonist things which are so funny, I'll just list them out.
Yerin defeats an evil lich king in like 5 minutes and then leaves but not before becoming a legend...with the wrong name.
Mercy solves an ages old racism dispute by saying "I have fixed both of your systemic issues and if you do any more hate crimes, I am sorry, but I will have to kill you, please do not do any more hate crimes...or like any big obviously villianous plans like making an infiinite army of evil or making another sun to set everyone on fire. Okay? Again I fixed everything so just...be nice. Or you die."
Ziel writes a tax code and bill of rights for a planet likely destroyed by elon musk.
**Baby Box: Lindon Saga**
Lindon wakes up on baby box and is very upset that he couldn't go with his friends. So he does what anyone would do and bides his time until he can get everything back together. Has to take it easy ya know? he's on the path to recovery from his hunger addiction. So in order to chill out he-
Bribes the eight man empire with god weapons
Creates more god weapons
Establishes his sect more
Gets another icon
eats Reigan Shen's ghost and takes back his inheritence
meets li maruth, the wind god who killed him in book 1, who has all of the powers of every protagonist system, and smites the fuck out of him for daring to appear in the post credits scene
and generally just preps to leave baby box. Which is very hard considering everything has gone to fuck in space due to...a lot of people dying and being replaced.
**Space adventures part 3!**
So lindon finally gets to space! Woo! Orthos and Little blue are hyped! But oops...he landed on the bad guy side. And OOPS he had to fight a super bad guy like 5 minutes in. If only he had friends!
Akura fury, being trained to be a protagonist, could sense a good entry like a wolf, and thus came in as soon as there was a fight scene he could join in space. He was so happy. He then escorts lindon back to team protag, where lindon gives lindon 3 things she thinks she deserves.
A god killing sword of unspeakable power.
A wedding ring made out of one of the most powerful artifacts on their planet
And a mom...she's probably needed one of those for a while.
And then lindon and eithan hug. Its so pure.

I'm not going to talk about the epilogue but FUCK I LOVE CRADLE! This is easily my favorite magic system and series and OMG ITS SO GOOD AGGGGGHHHHHH

I know it’s a touchy subject and a lot of people don’t like feral cats but this isn’t about that. So please keep your opinions to yourself when it comes to that. I am very aware that some people hate the cats and some love them. Either way, they are living beings who didn’t ask for the life they have and I just want to help.
That being said, my neighborhood has a strong grip on the feral colony situation when it comes to population control. We get city grants and trap, sterilize, and release them back. We have a handful of volunteers that jump in FAST when there are untipped (not fixed) cats spotted. So much so that we have only found ONE kitten this ENTIRE (and quite horrendous) kitten season. That’s almost unheard of. Seriously. When I moved in 7 years ago, we were swamped with kittens so I’m glad we have a grasp on it.
I love the ferals. They know I love them, they sleep in my air conditioned garage, they hang around my house (best pest control!) and they trust me. It kills me to see them suffering in the heat during the day. I try to provide shady spots, cold water, food, but I want to do more.
Does anyone recommend any type of air conditioned enclosure or sorts. Or is there anything I could do with my 10x10 pop up tent for them? I just want to help them not be so damn miserable. They didn’t ask for this shit life, they’re just trying to survive and I want to help make it easier.
Any ideas are welcome!