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Everything Everywhere All At Once: The Citadel Big 3 and how Citadel’s sphere of influence has its fingers stuck not just in the stock market, but the municipal/bond market and sovereign debt/sovereign debt credit default swaps to dangerous degree
2023.03.21 21:23 throwawaylurker012 Everything Everywhere All At Once: The Citadel Big 3 and how Citadel’s sphere of influence has its fingers stuck not just in the stock market, but the municipal/bond market and sovereign debt/sovereign debt credit default swaps to dangerous degree
 | TL;DR: Citadel doesn't just have a major outsized influence in the US stock market via its market making firm/hedge fund, but also a major indirect influence via Headlands (biggest municipal bond trading firm made of 3 ex-Citadel employees), and direct influence on sovereign debt (can decide when sovereign credit default swaps pay out) with its seat on the CDDC (Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee). submitted by throwawaylurker012 to Superstonk [link] [comments] Hi y’all. Been some while since have been able to post regularly here, so I’m returning alongside my recent post on FHLB with a bit of a “DD". Partial rush job, so all errors are mine and mine alone (obviously) 0. Sphere of InfluenceOver the past 84 years (/s), you lovely apes at Superstonk have been able to fish out many of the finer points of corruption crystallized into pure, unadulterated financial terrorism and financial terrorist-level crime undertaken by Steve Cohen (Point 72), Jeff Yass (Susquehanna), Doug Cifu & Vincent Viola (Virtu), as well as Wolverine Trading, Jane Street, TwoSigma, and more. But, of course, much of it has centered on our Mayo-artist-in-residence and his firm, that of none other but Ken Griffin and Citadel. One of the biggest finds that has come to light has been the complete and utter bullshit of having (1) a hedge fund and (2) owning a market making firm that most DEFINITELY does not use that non-public information to its benefit? I mean, it would be easy for us to check except that we need 5 swipes to even access that level of inner sanctum at Citadel, which–per DLauer’s words–is more than the fucking Pentagon. But despite Ken Griffin’s reach into every aspect of the most influential stock market in the world, that is not his ONLY level of influence. For we, dear apes, can step back and revisit this idea that Citadel’s power duo (its market making firm and hedge fund) is more like a single part of a Big 3. 1. Meet the Big 3Citadel’s sphere of influence includes not JUST (1) the stock market business, but directly or indirectly, the (2) U.S. municipal and bond markets, plus (3) the sovereign debt/sovereign debt credit default swap markets. Yes, you heard that right. Citadel not only has some sufficient level of influence to tank your favorite stock–and, in turn–retirement fund, but can also effectively drive your city into the fucking ground, or even your country. I’ve written about each of these at length, and wanted to revisit some pieces in the wake of our recent dick twitchings of the coming financial crash. 2. Meet the Municipal Bond MarketCitadel has an indirect grip tickling the taint of the municipal bond market, believe it or not. I first wrote about the municipal bond market here (“Headlands: How ex-Mayo mercenaries copy pasted Citadel’s model in the muni bond market”): https://www.reddit.com/Superstonk/comments/sy6ubj/headlands_how_exmayo_mercenaries_copy_pasted/. For those unfamiliar with municipal bonds, I’ll reiterate what they are and why many push them as a safe investment: “Municipal bonds (or "munis" for short) help towns/cities raise money for projects like building schools, parks, and fixing highways. Many retail investors--admittedly, on the wealthier side--invest in munis for tax incentives like not paying federal tax on bond returns. In certain cases, certain muni buys also mean no state taxes are paid…Just like what had happened to stocks, the old-school market for buying and selling muni bonds is going electronic. This is mainly done through an ATS, or "alternative trading system" known also as a dark pool. This speeds up the process of buying and selling munis, making it closer to a "house auction".In the wake of the SVB (Silicon Valley Bank), there have already been rumblings of its effect on the municipal bond market (Bloomberg “Bank Woes Create Bond Bargain in Obscure Corner of Muni Market”): “Investor concerns over the crises within the financial industry are bleeding into a corner of the $4 trillion municipal-bond market where major investment banks guarantee energy for public utilities…. 3. San Jose, Revisited That part about “large institutional banks” acting as facilitators of the transactions is what we saw in part in this post by [redacted]. https://preview.redd.it/5pp1500xi5pa1.png?width=1128&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4f48ce1f6d11fff15d44cc47b2174882e34eb03 A commenter spoke about this, and how it wasn’t Wells Fargo in doo doo but the city of San Jose. “I believe in theses cases it’s not Wells Fargo that has a problem but the city of San José. „Because presentments are currently processed automatically at DTC, IPAs have the option to refuse to pay (“RTP”) for maturing MMI Obligations to protect against the possibility that an IPA may not be able to fund settlement because it has not received funds from the relevant issuer. „ -> Wells Fargo didn’t receive the money from San José city. In this case, we might be seeing one of the first of MANY issues of cities up shit’s creek over this. 4. The Municipal Bond Market Time BombThe size of the municipal market is A SHIT TON BIGGER than the corporate bond market, which will already show even more signs of being turbo fucked due to borrowing at low interest rates for years. Here’s the size of the municipal bond market for scale, sans banana: https://preview.redd.it/9pcmm2c9j5pa1.png?width=760&format=png&auto=webp&s=869c0863c6ecc788c29d6dbe37da76521a700d1e Unfortunately, just like retirement funds, many muni investors are “buy and hold”: they buy a muni expecting a safe, long-term return with no federal income tax and then, welp, shit hits the fan. The market is heavily illiquid too, meaning if shit needs to move, then you might be fucked. Only about 1% of municipal securities trade any given day, in auctions that often take HOURS: “Now, the primary method of trading on this doesn't look like the New York Stock Exchange or like Nasdaq. It looks like an auction. It takes about 4 hours. An auction is initiated. Participants who come in can bid on this, and it is a competitive auction that yields a very good price.” Now to my understanding you can’t short these bonds, but the long time frame means its hard to sell these illiquid assets. Not only that, THERE IS NO NATIONAL NBBO (National Best Bid Offer)...you’re flying blind while this shit happens. Now if you’re wondering what magnanimous souls are helping municipal bonds be sold or fixed in a timely manner for cities like San Jose, well have I got news for you. 5. Meet Headlands, U.S. Municipal/Bond Market Making Firm…Run by 3 Ex-Citadel EmployeesTwo months after the sneeze (March 2021), TD Ameritrade bought municipal bond market maker Headlands. Yes, that’s right…an electronic market maker just like Citadel, this time for bonds for cities and towns vs. stocks. Now let’s check the fine fellows that run this: https://preview.redd.it/i1jnj88bj5pa1.png?width=1886&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6ea375e929a247f0b9618fed703ef519561a6a2
Of note, Matthew Andresen founded Island, one of the 1st dark pools EVER and 2nd only to “Instinet” (who also got an even bigger wave of funds during the sneeze, info courtesy of Ringing Bells) and was featured heavily in the Scott Patterson book “Dark Pools”. https://preview.redd.it/ibr2d9xcj5pa1.png?width=200&format=png&auto=webp&s=ea86240da04d87d28dd9561b4afdb13d600de764 Ol Matty told us that Headlands is completely automated, and where some muni traders make 75-100 muni bond sales a day (sometimes over the phone), Headlands currently bids on 10,000+ bond auctions a day with its algo. Matty Boi even said if that number ever 10x’d “we wouldn’t notice.” Even more sus, Headlands has been growing its own “holdings” of muni bonds on its books. 6. In Bros We Trust So remember, this branch of 3 ex-Citadel bros is front and center to the issues already rearing their head. In my previous post, these were just SOME of the already teetering municipal bond issues:
https://preview.redd.it/s8wqbdtej5pa1.png?width=1217&format=png&auto=webp&s=d2ee309462354293b1a4907d0966889bd841089f
7. HurricaneWhat began this rabbit hole was the one and only welp 0 0 7, who caught wind of some fuckery in the municipal bond market: https://preview.redd.it/rsul8xsmj5pa1.png?width=1324&format=png&auto=webp&s=f593d8b9d18e962df50609ba114d0b7093c0cdaf In the post, he mentioned how "American Thinker" 's Joseph Lawler mentioned the SEC has been giving fucking STIFF Heismans nonstop (or per [redacted] the ol' Dustin Martin "don't argues" for you Aussie apes!) on FOIA requests (Freedom of Information Act) related to the municipal bond default in Puerto Rico, the BIGGEST bond default in America's history EVER. https://preview.redd.it/te7m9b5pj5pa1.png?width=782&format=png&auto=webp&s=72fccaee202099011c280636e1501bd570544a2c You see, because this level of municipal bond includes fuckery includes not just cities and towns, but U.S. TERRITORIES. In my post about Hurricane Maria’s effect on Puerto Rico, I talked about how UBS and others loaded up Puerto Rico with debt because of what’s called a “Treasury Put” guarantee that was even called “an exit strategy” for banks (“They describe the "treasury put" as "...the implicit guarantee -- as perceived by investors -- from a government agency to provide support in the event of financial distress by the issuer of Puerto Rican bonds."”). Puerto Rico’s default was the largest in US history, EVER. And all this the same while guess who was holding the bag? Let’s see what W S O P tells us: “The reality is that a large percentage of Puerto Rico’s debt is held in tax-free municipal bonds and municipal bond mutual funds, owned not by Wall Street banks or tycoons, but by mom and pop investors seeking tax-free income.” https://preview.redd.it/1a2vz6brj5pa1.png?width=730&format=png&auto=webp&s=529db6c15522fd84560746523f76bc180207a496 So once again, whether its retirement funds or municipal bonds, its retail caught holding the bag. And this hasn't changed for years. We’ve seen similar fuckery with bonds for NYC in the 70s, and more recently in the 00s for Detroit. One astute wrinkle by the name of [redacted] posted this on that original post trying to dig into how it could all be related: …how the MMLF fund that expanded money/credit to towns/cities started including commercial paper…but also leveraged near the 15 to 1 ratio perhaps under the Net Capital Requirement limit: 8. Don't Bet Against America...Says the Banks and Hedge Funds That Already DidCommercial Paper? Municipals related? Now where does that sound familiar? Ah, yes…the city of San Jose got its call-out by Wells Fargo over COMMERCIAL PAPER. This comes as the push for ppl into municipal bond markets continues, trying to sell it as a “safe haven” to retail investors. Vanguard just recently launched its first ETF–surprise, its first US-listed ETF in 2 years– for municipal bonds (selling point: “hey everyone it’s tax-exempt! Give us money plz!”) for example: https://preview.redd.it/1v8qrfctj5pa1.png?width=1780&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e15ea68094ecdc212a18677fa1966158e362134 Many of us can see all of it for what it is. Bullshit. In the wake of the SVB collapse, there is still a strong push that these regional banks–many of which lend to municipalities–will be fine. This “safe haven” theory continues, even as articles try to have them appeal abroad (such as a few days ago, “ ESG Factors of Munis May Attract Non-US Investors” “https://www.marketsmedia.com/esg-factors-of-munis-may-attract-non-us-investors/”) Even further, one last find is that . I mean it’s not like credit default swaps can be taken on cities and towns in theory right? FWIW also I found an interesting research paper talking about hedge funds buying up credit default swaps, and how they could potentially bankrupt towns/municipalities through some of these moves if they wanted: https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/8264/MingJieWangCreditDefaultS.pdf?sequence=2 This is all while we have 3 ex-Citadel heads in charge of just how the municipal bond market moves, like that of San Jose. So is this where Citadel’s reach stops? Clearly, no. It doesn’t stop at the US border, just like how Mayo Force One doesn’t. 10. ELI5: What’s a Soverign Credit Default Swap?That’s right, mofos. You read that sub-header right. In case you’re wondering, not only can you take out credit default swaps on a failing Swiss bank like CS, but you can do so ON ENTIRE FUCKING COUNTRIES.In one of my old posts “Sovereign Debts & Ransom Notes: Pt. 1 The Importance of Being Non-Linearly Destabilized through Sovereign Credit Default Swaps” (“https://www.reddit.com/Superstonk/comments/t35rdi/sovereign_debts_ransom_notes_pt_1_the_importance/”), I talked a little more about the insanity of these things even existing. Sovereign credit default swaps exist. Long story short: sovereign credit default swaps are insurance policies that if a country defaults (usually on its debt)then you get paid! Like many other shit that we’ve seen in the GME saga, they are a form of financial derivative (a bet that something goes up, a bet that something goes down) on an underlying (the thing you’re betting on)....They can be used to insure government debt for a country in case that country is unable to pay its debt, for example. However, just like other instruments, naked sovereign credit default swaps also exist.📷 Naked sovereign credit default swaps are used to bet that a country or a country's debt will fail without you owning that country's debt. In part, they were destabilising during the Euro-crisis immediately after the 2008 financial crash. Greece was one of the countries that got naked shorted in 2008. In fact, the country got shorted so bad they were worried about fucking SHORT SQUEEZES on Greek debt and the sovereign CDSs!In 2012, the EU put a ban on naked sovereign credit default swaps. However, workarounds include the fact that a country can effectively change its mind on it within 24 hours and all the regulatory agency can do is offer an opinion. There were a tons of perhaps “we will see soon” if relevant additional points in that old research, including: –The VIX affects sovereign credit default swaps A LOT –The Big Bang Protocol: ISDA helped formulate a set of rules that decides when a country “defaults” –You can “short” a sovereign bond if you find a locate (sound familiar?: “Short sales of shares and short sales of sovereign debt will be permitted only where the seller has “located” the share or debt instrument prior to entering into the agreement and has a “reasonable expectation” of being able to borrow the shares.”) Crazy shit. So you might say, now this post is meant to be about Citadel’s sphere of influence you might say? “Where does Citadel fit into all this? ” 11. Meet the CDDC (Credit Derivatives Determination Committee)...Where Citadel Sit and Helps Decide Which Countries Default on their DebtOne of the biggest GFC 2008 scenarios of sovereign credit default swaps being misused was against Greece. Afterwards, one of its biggest cases of misuse was by Elliot Management (ran by Paul Singer) who was using their position on the Credit Derivatives Determination Committee, or CDDC, to help decide when their sovereign credit default swaps against Argentina would pay out.Wait, Eliot Management doesn’t sound big enough. Who else is on this committee?📷 Oh wait, so Citadel is ALSO on this committee? Alongside our favorite fucksticks like Chase, Goldman, Deutsche, and BNP? It’s not lost on me with seeing now that Credit Suisse has been sucked up into UBS, maybe its position on the CDDC has been absorbed further by UBS. Back then, I wrote about the fact is we know next to nothing about the sovereign credit default swaps that might be opened up against countries (be it Russia, Sri Lanka, or otherwise): Here's one such example of a swap dealer: Swiss financial terrorist aficionados UBS AG, who registered to be a swaps dealer with the US at the end of 2012. (UBS had also been a member of the CDDC through the Greek crisis in early 2012, alongside Citadel. In Mar. 2012, they were also one of the members pressing to ask whether Greece had defaulted already.) Not only that, but the CDDC even can say when CORPORATE BONDS even shit the bed: late last year, they were the ones who were deciding to let everyone know whether Sunac (an Evergrande-relate company) went tits up. 12. We Say WhenFor months, there has been talk of a looming debt crisis (alongside all the other ones) in the sovereign debt world. And shit continues to hit the proverbial fan. Apart from Russia, Sri Lanka and others, emerging markets like Ghana and Zambia are beginning to feel the hits from their sovereign debt (oftentimes, trying to restructure it with creditors like China). https://preview.redd.it/gd0ocjuyi5pa1.png?width=2458&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb1fe0ade2f3401b2e081f8d0b55ef55cfb95ae2 Even further, now that Credit Suisse has gone under. We may have another thing to worry about: what banks and prime brokers are housing these opaque sovereign debt structures, loans, and swaps? Even worse, what happens when they go under? Roll that less than beautiful bean footage: https://preview.redd.it/wt5v7uu0j5pa1.png?width=1134&format=png&auto=webp&s=df9cf3379be7ce881d7704013f4e6d92e287f08c https://www.livemint.com/news/world/before-collapse-credit-suisse-quietly-conquered-an-obscure-debt-market-11679395660932.html “Before collapse, Credit Suisse quietly conquered an obscure debt market A lot of poorer, especially emerging market countries were already in dire straits. Now as opaque deals meant to help these countries might not come to light (are these some of the Level 3 assets that UBS was talking about?), we can ask ourselves wtf will happen when the same banks looking to save their own ass while holding these sovereign, are the same fuckers that sit on the same board that can decide when they are worthless (while I’m sure being positioned net short). All in all, these banks and holders of sovereign debt credit default swaps, who decide when a country goes boom, are sitting arm in arm alongside Citadel, who themselves potentially hover their greasy mayo-covered finger over the button that decides just when and how the US stock market will eventually implode. 13. Everything Everywhere All at Once To recap, we then have Citadel with (1) the biggest market maker and arguably one of the most influential hedge fund able to decide which stocks rise and which fall as the US stock market teeters on the brink of collapse… …with having (2) three of its ex-employees in charge of (not even counting other Citadel employees working there) operating at Headlands ready to help position themselves when the municipal bond market gets nuked, whether as a continued result of regional bank failure or in spite of it… …while (3) sitting on the board that determines when ENTIRE COUNTRIES FAIL, in such a way that their hedge fund and associated pals can be ready to short and profit off failing nations that they and their fuckstick friends help cause. Did I miss anything? Because remember, Citadel is not just Citadel, the market-maker that we all love to hate; Citadel’s sphere of influence via the Big 3 means the grip that it holds over the US and world economy is even greater than we think…and as such, far far more dangerous. |
2023.03.21 21:22 Adomanzius We encountered something in the ocean that defies explanation.
We had been checking weather reports tirelessly for two weeks, until we finally found our spot. The following week should be nothing but sun and smooth winds, so we tentatively decided that to be our slot. Our small crew consisted of me and my friends Josie and Frank. Josie’s dad owned the boat (and he still needed to sign off on our plan), so we had to reserve it ahead of time, and make sure that we got it back in pristine condition, on the dot, and preferably with a nice coating of wax or whatever they use to make boats shine like candied apples.
Monday arrived and the weather was still solid, and Josie’s dad had reluctantly signed off on our plan, so we decided not to wait any longer and take it out the next day. The idea was to have a two day mini-cruise; just us hanging out on the boat and maybe docking it for the night at a nearby town. Although Josie’s dad was a hardass, he had taught her how to drive and maintain the boat since she was a kid, so really, the worst thing that could happen is that we wouldn’t have enough snacks.
Me and Frank met at the parking lot, and saw Josie standing on the boat at the end of the dock. Her dad was with her, lecturing her about some winch or other, Josie rolling her eyes next to him, barely maintaining her attention.
“He really can’t leave her alone even for a couple days, can he?” Frank asked, keeping his voice low as we stepped on the long dock.
“Josie or the boat?”
Frank chuckled, then quickly returned his resting poker face as we reached the boat, Josie’s dad turning around as he heard the planks creaking under our feet.
Before he could say anything, Josie ran up from behind him and said “Hi boys! You brought the food and snacks and the five gallons of vodka, I assume?”
“Aye aye, Captain!” we replied in unison. It was Josie’s dad’s turn to roll his eyes.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he said to Josie, starting to walk down the small ramp down to the dock. “And remember, two days, no more. I expect you to bring her back in one piece.”
“Sure thing, dad!” That was Josie’s way of saying yes, yes, yes, I get it already.
Josie’s dad gave us a stern look followed by a slight nod as he walked past us. He never really liked me or Frankie, a bunch of hooligans, as he’d once called us when we were kids. For the record, me and Frankie didn’t like the guy either, so at least the feeling was mutual.
After her dad was out of earshot, Josie yelled “Are you ready kids?!” putting on her damndest pirate voice.
“Aye Aye Cap-TAIN!” we screamed and sprinted up the ramp and into the boat.
After an exchange of hugs we unloaded our groceries into the mini-fridge below deck, then met up with Josie, who was already sitting inside the helm. “Ready to leave, crew?” she asked. “Let’s rock this boat,” Frank replied. The amount of bad jokes this early in the morning was surely a great indication for what the rest of the day held.
It wasn’t long until the shore behind us was gone, the tranquil open sea spreading out in all directions. Josie seemed to know where we were going, but at that point I could no longer discern what direction we had even come from.
Me and Frank sunbathed and joked around on the deck until Josie emerged from her cocoon-like cockpit. “Sorry to interrupt your hi-LARIOUS hijinks, but I’d propose we have some lunch soon.”
Like destiny, the word lunch produced a unified grumble from both me and Frank’s stomachs - the universal horn of yes please, food please, now please.
“We can stay here for a while, then we could start heading towards the town,” Josie said.
Feeling bad that she was doing all the heavy lifting, I asked her “You need any help? It’s your boat, and us your honored guests, so don’t be afraid to command us, cap’n!”
“Please,” Josie replied, “when I get a chance to drive this boat, I take it. Dad’s been hogging it like crazy all summer. Besides, it’s not like you guys even know what half of the things on this boat are called, let alone what they’re used for.”
“Well, that’s the driver’s seat,” Frank said, pointing at the helm.
“That’s called a helm, my dear. Frank - you just earned yourself the honorary job of heating up our lunch.”
“This ain’t no Ford Prius, I see,” he replied as he got up and started to take lazy strides towards below deck.
“Toyota,” I said.
“What?”
“Prius is Toyota. Not Ford. Come one, let’s go make lunch for the captain.” I got up to follow Frank, nodding approvingly to Josie.
We had cheap microwave meals for lunch, seeing as the boat didn’t have a stovetop or an oven. For some reason - maybe it was the soothing sounds of the ocean lazily slapping the boat, or the warm afternoon sun - the food defied its low expectations and tasted great.
Afterwards we had a little siesta where I almost fell asleep until Josie said “Shall I take course towards the town, then?”
Through a straw hat laid across his face, Frank mumbled “Aye aye.”
“You sure you don’t need any help?” I asked Josie one again, but she was already jumping into the helm, excited to get back at it. “You guys just take a chill, I’ll get us where we need to.”
As the motor’s soothing hum returned, I got myself a bag of chips and sat on the deck, watching the horizon. Frank still had the hat on his face, which either meant that he didn’t want to be bothered, or that he’d fallen asleep. Either way, I was happy to just sit under the sun as the boat slowly rolled towards our destination, cutting a line into the flaccid water behind us.
“Shit, Shit SHIT!” Josie screamed. I must’ve fallen asleep, and as I got up the half eaten bag of chips crushed under my foot.
“What, Josie? What’s wrong?”
“What’s going on?” Frank parroted as he stood up, the hat falling beside him.
“There’s a fucking storm coming,” Josie said as she frantically pressed buttons, her eyes darting across the dashboard of the helm.
I turned around and looked at the horizon. Dread filled me as I saw an infinitely wide wall of dark clouds spread across the sky, making contact with the water in a misty gray curtain. I noticed that the ocean was no longer level, for it was rippled with small waves that thumped the sides of the boat in eager anticipation.
“I thought it was supposed to be nothing but clear skies,” Frank said. He’d walked beside me, taking in the horror beyond the horizon.
“Ex-fucking-actly, Sherlock. It came out of fucking nowhere,” Josie snapped, holding the wheel tightly in her right hand as she fiddled something with her left.
“Okay, Josie, I know this might sound stupid, but bear with. Why are we going towards the storm?” I asked, trying to not seem disingenuous as I turned around to face her.
She gave a sigh, stopping what she was doing and looked me in the eyes. “That’s where the town is. It’s the closest place to dock right now, and the storm’s moving faster than any I’ve ever seen. If we go back it’ll catch up to us and we’re fucked. If we go through it, we’ll spend the least amount of time inside it, giving us at least a chance.”
“A chance at what?” Frankie asked.
“A chance at getting out of here.”
“Any port in a storm, I guess,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, to which Frank gave me a concerned look.
The air had turned cool, so I went and changed to warmer clothing, Frank doing the same. Coming back up to the deck, I saw that the storm had moved closer. A lot closer. Josie instructed us to put on life jackets and to stay below deck, not to come out unless she asked us to. We put on the puffy orange jackets and promptly hunkered down below deck. The increasing waves were already rocking the boat uneasily.
“Are we gonna die?” Frank asked, his voice whimpering as he looked up at me from the opposite bench.
Although the question had already burrowed itself into my mind as well, I replied “No, NO, man, we’re not gonna die. Like Josie said, it’s just a quick ride through and then we’re back on dry land,” hoping that my words held even a sliver of truth.
In a matter of minutes, the sky turned dark and the boat started jumping on waves, like a rollercoaster rapidly going up and down and up and down. The rain tore into the boat like a machine gun as thunder sounded from across the way, lightning flashing the sky white erratically. Frank’s lunch quickly escaped his stomach, coming out in an arc of brownish green vomit that splattered across my legs and the floor. I was too scared to care, and he was too frightened to apologize.
The storm kept getting worse, the waves becoming larger as evidenced by the deeper dives and longer ascensions. Water was constantly slamming the deck, some of it trickling down to our feet. Through the two small windows the cabin had, it was near impossible to know whether we were on top of the water or under it, or which way was up or down. Although the storm was loud, I could still hear Josie cursing and screaming as she battled the waves and tried to keep us afloat, which was the only indication that she hadn’t been swallowed into the depths below. Frank was sweating bullets, his face a pale white. I wasn’t doing much better either, the words it’s gonna be ok it’s gonna be ok repeating in my mind.
Slowly the storm started to ease up, the waves thinning out and the rain becoming only a slight patter. Neither Frank or me said anything, though, not wanting to jinx it before we were safely back on land. Soon, the boat’s rocking lessened severely, and I could see sunshine coming through the windows.
“Hey guys, you okay? You can come up now,” Josie yelled, her inflection hesitant but calm.
Frankie apologized for the vomit as we got up and made our way up the steps. Josie was standing at the front of the deck, tumbling through her soaking wet hair with her fingers.
“Ho-lee shit, did we just survive the fucking apocalypse?” Frank asked rhetorically, his eyes darting between me and Josie.
“Josie! You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah… I’m fine,” she replied, waving her hand like nothing abnormal had happened at all.
I walked up next to her and said “We got through it, didn’t we? Now just let’s get ourselves back on land, eh?”
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look,” she said, holding her hand out at the pale horizon, like she was presenting it on an invisible platter. “Where’s the town?”
“What do you mean where’s the town? We got through the storm, so shouldn’t we be able to get through to it now?”
“That’s the thing. It should be right in front of us.”
“Where’s the storm?” Frankie yelled from the back of the boat.
“What do you mean ‘where’s the storm?’ We just went through it” Josie yelled in annoyance, still peering at the horizon.
“For fuck’s sake, come here,” Frank replied.
Josie looked at me and rolled her eyes, then started walking towards Frank as she gave a long sigh. I followed tepidly behind her.
As we reached the back of the boat, I realized what Frank had meant. There was no storm, nor clouds, or even residual waves. “What the fuck,” I exclaimed under my breath, right as Josie started sprinting around the boat, looking in all directions, her head swiveling in frantic motions, her hair throwing beads of water around like a dog drying up after a swim. A minute later she joined us, panting, and said “It’s all just water. There’s nothing on any side. We’re in the middle of the fucking ocean, the storm’s gone, there’s nothing.”
“Shit, shit, shit…” Frank muttered as he started to tap his foot on the deck, holding himself in a tight hug as he shivered in his wet clothes.
I turned to Josie. “Well we shouldn’t be far off from something, right? It’s still day, and even with the storm we couldn’t have gone too far.”
I could see that Josie was tired. She looked like she had aged about ten years in the last twenty minutes. “Okay, okay, you’re right. Let me just check some things and figure out where to go.”
Josie left for the helm, leaving me and Frank to stare in silent horror at the lazy, blue ocean that seemed to stretch infinitely in all directions.
After a long minute Josie called to us “Guys… you better come check this out.”
She was staring intensely at the dashboard of the helm as we arrived.
“Okay, so good and bad news. Which first?”
“Good, please.” Frank replied, recovered from the worst of the shivers.
“Okay, so the good news is, uhh,” she began, still fiddling with controls as if to double check her suspicions “the boat seems to be in running condition. There’s no damage to anything that would prevent us from going forward.”
“So what’s the problem then?” I asked.
“Check your phones.”
“What?” me and Frank said in unison.
“Check if you have a signal, internet, anything.”
“Shit,” Frank said. “Yeah, mine too,” I replied as I looked at my phone and saw that there was absolutely no signal or internet.
“Yeah, I don’t have a signal either - just had to check. And it doesn’t stop there,” Josie said, “compasses, readings, all of that - it’s shot. I can’t navigate us anywhere, and I have no idea where we are.”
Frank started to freak out and walked towards the front of the boat, his wet shoes squishing as he stomped angrily. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK. What the fuck do we do?”
“Well, as I said, we can still move. The only question is where. I have a faint idea of where the sun was when we first headed out, and I suggest we try to mimic its movement back to the dock,” Josie said to me while keeping her eye on Frank.
Frank was now squatting on the deck, his hands gripping his neck as he stared down at his feet.
“That sounds smart. Then if we see the storm again, we can recalibrate. We should probably be hitting land at some point, right?” I said to Josie.
“That’s my logic, at least.”
“You with us Frank?” I asked, turning to him.
“Yeah, yeah. I guess that sounds smart,” he replied in a solemn voice under his breath.
“Need any help?” I asked Josie.
“Take care of Frank,” she said quietly. “The best thing we can do is stay calm.”
Josie revved up the engine and turned the boat around carefully as she mapped out our approximate direction, and then we left towards a horizon that was no different from the others, guided only by the sun’s approximate movements.
As Josie manned the wheel, me and Frank cleaned up below deck and dried our clothes. As we were finishing up, he said he’d stay below deck, as he needed some time to think.
Looking at the sun, the day was slowly turning to evening. It was summer, so we still had daylight for a few more hours. I went up to Josie to see how she was doing.
“Frank’s below. Said he needed some time to think. I don’t blame him - this is indeed a bit fucked up, isn’t it?”
“Logically, we should hit land at some point,” she replied, her eyes fixed on the horizon, her presence distant.
“How are you doing, Josie? You just pulled us through hell. I know you don’t need help with the boat, but I’m just saying -- I’m here if you wanna talk.”
Josie sighed and turned to me. “Thanks. I think right now what I need is to get us safely back home. Once we’re back you can buy me a beer and then we can talk.”
I nodded, and then turned my head to look at the horizon. Noticing something in the distance, I said “Josie, uhh, what’s that?”
She turned her head back to survey the ocean.
In the distance there were small, dark peaks rising from the ocean, like the tips of underwater mountains rising above the water. They’d appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
“I -- I don’t know. But I think we’re gonna see soon enough.”
I stayed with Josie as we approached the peaks. As we got closer, it was obvious that there was no land between them. Instead, they shot up from the water in thick spirals that tapered off the higher they reached. As we got closer we could finally realize their true size. Although some were smaller than others, most were the equivalent of tall office buildings, some reaching even higher. They spiraled and twisted in the air, arcing like blades of grass in the wind, and it seemed like they could fall down at any moment, but they did not move or shake in the slightest. There must have been twenty or so, and they all looked similar despite their differences in size; dark, mostly smooth yet also scratched, like charred meat on a grill.
“You have any idea what these are? They look like… trees or something, except they don’t have leaves or branches,” I said to Josie.
“Never seen anything like it. Must be some rock formations or something. Maybe there’s an underwater volcano that bursted lava out and it solidified -- I really don’t know. But those should only happen deeper in the ocean, far away from land.”
I heard Frank coming up the stairs. He looked better than he had before, his step lighter. Although I’d been afraid he’d been brooding, I guess having some time to think really did help.
As he saw the spiraling towers, his face turned into a twisted and confused half-frown as he said “What the fuck are those?”
“We don’t know,” I replied, “but it’s the only thing we’ve seen so far.”
Soon the closest spiral towered just a mere two hundred yards away, its wide shade casting upon the boat. From a distance it had been hard to decipher the dark structures, but upon closer inspection, it was clear that their anatomy was… abnormal. Stretches of surface material were mostly smooth, but all of the spirals seemed to have slight craters that were formed above the rest of the exterior. It looked like they had been bombarded by meteors of differing sizes, although even if this had been the case, how had they not been immediately broken, I do not know. They were beyond any logic I could muster.
“So, anyone know what we’re looking at?” Josie askied, surprising both me and Frank - she was usually the one to know things, us just tagging along for the ride.
“No clue, captain,” replied Frank as he stared upwards in dismay at the towering spiral.
“Still no,” I said.
Suddenly the boat’s end shot up, followed by the front, ascending us a good ten yards in mere seconds. Frank and I were knocked down on the deck, but Josie managed to hold onto the walls surrounding the helm. The boat kept rocking as waves hit us from behind. I slowly stood up with my knees bent for support, and went to help out Frank who was still laying on the deck, his eyes wide in panic.
Once I’d gotten Frank up, Josie had already managed to make her way to the back of the boat. We held onto the railings along the boat’s edge and walked as fast as we could through the oceanic turbulence to catch up with her. Once I saw what had produced those waves, I wanted to get back to land more than I ever had before.
In the distance tens more of the spirals had emerged from the ocean, some even larger than the ones we’d seen. They dripped with water, and some were covered in green algae. Somehow they’d been quiet, merely disturbing the water as they’d shot up.
“We need to move! One of those things could shoot up under the boat and sink the whole fucking thing!” Josie screamed, running back inside the helm as the waves slowly calmed down and became smaller. I leaned on the railing to see if there was something underneath us - not that there was much I could do, even if I saw a gigantic spiral shooting up from the depths.
The water beneath the surface was unmoving, holding an abyssal darkness. It seemed as if the light penetrated less than it had before, and what was deep below was nothing but pitch black shadowlands.
Just as I was about to disembark and head towards Josie, something moved in the water. I craned my neck farther over the railing to get a better look. It looked like two large masses were separating from each other, unearthing a ravine.
Josie had gotten the boat moving, and we were starting to turn towards an opening between two of the spirals. As the boat circled, I got a better view of what lay below. The ravine widened, and inside it I could see a dark, whitish yellow mass peeking through. As Josie cranked us up to speed the yellow mass had opened up into a large, oval shape that seemed to span across the ocean floor. Its center held a deep, dark circle that sucked in light as if it were a black hole, twisting all things inside of it.
Then it closed up again. I sighed in relief, hoping that no more spirals would emerge.
Suddenly it opened up again in a furious motion, wider than before, into a perfect circle. Then it hit me - it was an eye, larger than anything I could think of. Although we were moving at full speed, it was so gargantuan that we weren’t making any headway.
It had blinked.
“Josie? Frank?” I screamed as I turned around and saw Frank on the opposite railing looking down at the water, witnessing the same thing I was seeing.
Frank turned to me, his face a washed white, and his mouth slightly agape. “They’re tentacles. They’re fucking tentacles, look!” he pointed at one of the bigger spirals. “They have fucking suction cups and all! Shit, SHIT!”
As if on cue, the tentacles started to return to the water, splashing as they did so, producing strong currents in the water. The boat was immediately caught up in the chaos, going up and around huge waves and being dragged by the water’s shifting volume. Frank sprang below deck, and I followed him. From the small round windows I could see one of the gargantuan tentacles dropping back into the water, the boat just barely missing its tip and almost sunk by the shifting ocean.
Josie ran inside with us and exclaimed “The storm is back! It’s fucking back! I can’t maneuver the boat worth shit!”
As she closed the door behind her, we were flung to the side, my ribs hitting one of the cabinets, producing a painful crack. I could hear the rain start to scratch at the boat, and soon we were engulfed in darkness, the rain gunning down on us through the waves. The boat rocked and swayed worse than it had before, and at some points I was sure we’d gone under, buried into the deep sea, never to see the sun again. We held on to whatever we could as water trickled through the sealed door and started pooling up on the floor.
Slowly, but steadily, the storm started to pass, the boat regaining its level status along the water. The darkness outside faded into a dark red. Once it was possible to stand with relative ease, we emerged from the cabin and walked up to the deck.
“Everyone okay?” Josie asked.
“I think I’m gonna --,” Frank replied, and promptly ran to grab the edge of the railing and vomited yellow bile into the water, his stomach empty of food from before.
“My ribs got a beating, but I don’t think anything’s broken, “ I said. “What about you?”
“I’m fine. Just some bruises. Look,” Josie said, walking to the other side of the boat.
On the horizon, we saw the evening sun illuminating a crimson glow behind a small town some 500 yards away.
“Frank?” Josie called out.
“Yeah?” he replied through thick phlegm that sounded like it was stuck to his throat and running down his nostrils.
“We made it.”
We docked at the unfamiliar town and found a small hotel - probably the only one there - just a quick walking distance away. Once we got our phones dried off, Josie’s seemed to be the only one that still worked. As she looked up our location she nearly dropped the phone on the ground.
“I -- I don’t know how, but we’re quite far from home,” she said, her voice produced in quick breaths.
“How far?” Frank asked.
“Some 480 miles away.”
We checked and double checked her phone, but she was right: somehow we’d ended up nearly 500 miles down the coast into a small fishing town.
We were so tired that we decided to get some sleep before giving the bad news to Josie’s dad. The next morning Josie called him up and explained the situation, giving him the simple version: a storm had hit us, and after we got out we’d arrived here. I could hear the screams he gave her through the phone - apparently he was sure we’d driven the boat all the way to this ghost town in the middle of nowhere and docked it here, just to spite him. Josie didn’t respond to him much, only apologizing and telling him to come pick us up.
A day later he arrived, furious with us - and especially Josie. Once we showed him the boat I thought he was going to burst into a thousand tiny pieces, for I’d never seen a man so angry before. Although I think he overreacted, it was true that the boat was in shambles. There was water damage throughout the interiors, most of the equipment was shot, and large scratches were present along the exterior’s white paint.
Josie begged him not to drive the boat back home, but he insisted, not hearing a word her daughter was saying. We drove his car and arrived home that night.
As promised, me and Josie went out for a beer a few weeks later after her dad had settled down enough to let her out of the house. We went through the events of the trip in great detail, confirming to each other that it really did happen - although we disagreed on one thing.
Josie still thought that the spirals were just magma turned rock, and the whole thing was just extremely bad luck. According to her, we got held up by a superstorm or hurricane that moved our boat on top of an active underwater volcano, and then got hit by that same storm later as it moved across the ocean at miraculous speeds. Her theory was that the storm moved us along with it, making it possible to traverse such tremendous lengths with ease.
But Josie didn’t see what had been underneath us. Her theory was that the ‘eye’ I saw was simply lava cooling down as it emerged from the ocean bed. But she hadn’t seen it blink.
Frank of course seen it as well, but I haven’t heard from him much after the incident. According to his mom, he’s been cooped up in his room, drawing yellow circles on black pages. He’d told her that he needed some time to think.
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Monday arrived and the weather was still solid, and Josie’s dad had reluctantly signed off on our plan, so we decided not to wait any longer and take it out the next day. The idea was to have a two day mini-cruise; just us hanging out on the boat and maybe docking it for the night at a nearby town. Although Josie’s dad was a hardass, he had taught her how to drive and maintain the boat since she was a kid, so really, the worst thing that could happen is that we wouldn’t have enough snacks.
Me and Frank met at the parking lot, and saw Josie standing on the boat at the end of the dock. Her dad was with her, lecturing her about some winch or other, Josie rolling her eyes next to him, barely maintaining her attention.
“He really can’t leave her alone even for a couple days, can he?” Frank asked, keeping his voice low as we stepped on the long dock.
“Josie or the boat?”
Frank chuckled, then quickly returned his resting poker face as we reached the boat, Josie’s dad turning around as he heard the planks creaking under our feet.
Before he could say anything, Josie ran up from behind him and said “Hi boys! You brought the food and snacks and the five gallons of vodka, I assume?”
“Aye aye, Captain!” we replied in unison. It was Josie’s dad’s turn to roll his eyes.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he said to Josie, starting to walk down the small ramp down to the dock. “And remember, two days, no more. I expect you to bring her back in one piece.”
“Sure thing, dad!” That was Josie’s way of saying yes, yes, yes, I get it already.
Josie’s dad gave us a stern look followed by a slight nod as he walked past us. He never really liked me or Frankie, a bunch of hooligans, as he’d once called us when we were kids. For the record, me and Frankie didn’t like the guy either, so at least the feeling was mutual.
After her dad was out of earshot, Josie yelled “Are you ready kids?!” putting on her damndest pirate voice.
“Aye Aye Cap-TAIN!” we screamed and sprinted up the ramp and into the boat.
After an exchange of hugs we unloaded our groceries into the mini-fridge below deck, then met up with Josie, who was already sitting inside the helm. “Ready to leave, crew?” she asked. “Let’s rock this boat,” Frank replied. The amount of bad jokes this early in the morning was surely a great indication for what the rest of the day held.
It wasn’t long until the shore behind us was gone, the tranquil open sea spreading out in all directions. Josie seemed to know where we were going, but at that point I could no longer discern what direction we had even come from.
Me and Frank sunbathed and joked around on the deck until Josie emerged from her cocoon-like cockpit. “Sorry to interrupt your hi-LARIOUS hijinks, but I’d propose we have some lunch soon.”
Like destiny, the word lunch produced a unified grumble from both me and Frank’s stomachs - the universal horn of yes please, food please, now please.
“We can stay here for a while, then we could start heading towards the town,” Josie said.
Feeling bad that she was doing all the heavy lifting, I asked her “You need any help? It’s your boat, and us your honored guests, so don’t be afraid to command us, cap’n!”
“Please,” Josie replied, “when I get a chance to drive this boat, I take it. Dad’s been hogging it like crazy all summer. Besides, it’s not like you guys even know what half of the things on this boat are called, let alone what they’re used for.”
“Well, that’s the driver’s seat,” Frank said, pointing at the helm.
“That’s called a helm, my dear. Frank - you just earned yourself the honorary job of heating up our lunch.”
“This ain’t no Ford Prius, I see,” he replied as he got up and started to take lazy strides towards below deck.
“Toyota,” I said.
“What?”
“Prius is Toyota. Not Ford. Come one, let’s go make lunch for the captain.” I got up to follow Frank, nodding approvingly to Josie.
We had cheap microwave meals for lunch, seeing as the boat didn’t have a stovetop or an oven. For some reason - maybe it was the soothing sounds of the ocean lazily slapping the boat, or the warm afternoon sun - the food defied its low expectations and tasted great.
Afterwards we had a little siesta where I almost fell asleep until Josie said “Shall I take course towards the town, then?”
Through a straw hat laid across his face, Frank mumbled “Aye aye.”
“You sure you don’t need any help?” I asked Josie one again, but she was already jumping into the helm, excited to get back at it. “You guys just take a chill, I’ll get us where we need to.”
As the motor’s soothing hum returned, I got myself a bag of chips and sat on the deck, watching the horizon. Frank still had the hat on his face, which either meant that he didn’t want to be bothered, or that he’d fallen asleep. Either way, I was happy to just sit under the sun as the boat slowly rolled towards our destination, cutting a line into the flaccid water behind us.
“Shit, Shit SHIT!” Josie screamed. I must’ve fallen asleep, and as I got up the half eaten bag of chips crushed under my foot.
“What, Josie? What’s wrong?”
“What’s going on?” Frank parroted as he stood up, the hat falling beside him.
“There’s a fucking storm coming,” Josie said as she frantically pressed buttons, her eyes darting across the dashboard of the helm.
I turned around and looked at the horizon. Dread filled me as I saw an infinitely wide wall of dark clouds spread across the sky, making contact with the water in a misty gray curtain. I noticed that the ocean was no longer level, for it was rippled with small waves that thumped the sides of the boat in eager anticipation.
“I thought it was supposed to be nothing but clear skies,” Frank said. He’d walked beside me, taking in the horror beyond the horizon.
“Ex-fucking-actly, Sherlock. It came out of fucking nowhere,” Josie snapped, holding the wheel tightly in her right hand as she fiddled something with her left.
“Okay, Josie, I know this might sound stupid, but bear with. Why are we going towards the storm?” I asked, trying to not seem disingenuous as I turned around to face her.
She gave a sigh, stopping what she was doing and looked me in the eyes. “That’s where the town is. It’s the closest place to dock right now, and the storm’s moving faster than any I’ve ever seen. If we go back it’ll catch up to us and we’re fucked. If we go through it, we’ll spend the least amount of time inside it, giving us at least a chance.”
“A chance at what?” Frankie asked.
“A chance at getting out of here.”
“Any port in a storm, I guess,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, to which Frank gave me a concerned look.
The air had turned cool, so I went and changed to warmer clothing, Frank doing the same. Coming back up to the deck, I saw that the storm had moved closer. A lot closer. Josie instructed us to put on life jackets and to stay below deck, not to come out unless she asked us to. We put on the puffy orange jackets and promptly hunkered down below deck. The increasing waves were already rocking the boat uneasily.
“Are we gonna die?” Frank asked, his voice whimpering as he looked up at me from the opposite bench.
Although the question had already burrowed itself into my mind as well, I replied “No, NO, man, we’re not gonna die. Like Josie said, it’s just a quick ride through and then we’re back on dry land,” hoping that my words held even a sliver of truth.
In a matter of minutes, the sky turned dark and the boat started jumping on waves, like a rollercoaster rapidly going up and down and up and down. The rain tore into the boat like a machine gun as thunder sounded from across the way, lightning flashing the sky white erratically. Frank’s lunch quickly escaped his stomach, coming out in an arc of brownish green vomit that splattered across my legs and the floor. I was too scared to care, and he was too frightened to apologize.
The storm kept getting worse, the waves becoming larger as evidenced by the deeper dives and longer ascensions. Water was constantly slamming the deck, some of it trickling down to our feet. Through the two small windows the cabin had, it was near impossible to know whether we were on top of the water or under it, or which way was up or down. Although the storm was loud, I could still hear Josie cursing and screaming as she battled the waves and tried to keep us afloat, which was the only indication that she hadn’t been swallowed into the depths below. Frank was sweating bullets, his face a pale white. I wasn’t doing much better either, the words it’s gonna be ok it’s gonna be ok repeating in my mind.
Slowly the storm started to ease up, the waves thinning out and the rain becoming only a slight patter. Neither Frank or me said anything, though, not wanting to jinx it before we were safely back on land. Soon, the boat’s rocking lessened severely, and I could see sunshine coming through the windows.
“Hey guys, you okay? You can come up now,” Josie yelled, her inflection hesitant but calm.
Frankie apologized for the vomit as we got up and made our way up the steps. Josie was standing at the front of the deck, tumbling through her soaking wet hair with her fingers.
“Ho-lee shit, did we just survive the fucking apocalypse?” Frank asked rhetorically, his eyes darting between me and Josie.
“Josie! You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah… I’m fine,” she replied, waving her hand like nothing abnormal had happened at all.
I walked up next to her and said “We got through it, didn’t we? Now just let’s get ourselves back on land, eh?”
“Yeah, well, that’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look,” she said, holding her hand out at the pale horizon, like she was presenting it on an invisible platter. “Where’s the town?”
“What do you mean where’s the town? We got through the storm, so shouldn’t we be able to get through to it now?”
“That’s the thing. It should be right in front of us.”
“Where’s the storm?” Frankie yelled from the back of the boat.
“What do you mean ‘where’s the storm?’ We just went through it” Josie yelled in annoyance, still peering at the horizon.
“For fuck’s sake, come here,” Frank replied.
Josie looked at me and rolled her eyes, then started walking towards Frank as she gave a long sigh. I followed tepidly behind her.
As we reached the back of the boat, I realized what Frank had meant. There was no storm, nor clouds, or even residual waves. “What the fuck,” I exclaimed under my breath, right as Josie started sprinting around the boat, looking in all directions, her head swiveling in frantic motions, her hair throwing beads of water around like a dog drying up after a swim. A minute later she joined us, panting, and said “It’s all just water. There’s nothing on any side. We’re in the middle of the fucking ocean, the storm’s gone, there’s nothing.”
“Shit, shit, shit…” Frank muttered as he started to tap his foot on the deck, holding himself in a tight hug as he shivered in his wet clothes.
I turned to Josie. “Well we shouldn’t be far off from something, right? It’s still day, and even with the storm we couldn’t have gone too far.”
I could see that Josie was tired. She looked like she had aged about ten years in the last twenty minutes. “Okay, okay, you’re right. Let me just check some things and figure out where to go.”
Josie left for the helm, leaving me and Frank to stare in silent horror at the lazy, blue ocean that seemed to stretch infinitely in all directions.
After a long minute Josie called to us “Guys… you better come check this out.”
She was staring intensely at the dashboard of the helm as we arrived.
“Okay, so good and bad news. Which first?”
“Good, please.” Frank replied, recovered from the worst of the shivers.
“Okay, so the good news is, uhh,” she began, still fiddling with controls as if to double check her suspicions “the boat seems to be in running condition. There’s no damage to anything that would prevent us from going forward.”
“So what’s the problem then?” I asked.
“Check your phones.”
“What?” me and Frank said in unison.
“Check if you have a signal, internet, anything.”
“Shit,” Frank said. “Yeah, mine too,” I replied as I looked at my phone and saw that there was absolutely no signal or internet.
“Yeah, I don’t have a signal either - just had to check. And it doesn’t stop there,” Josie said, “compasses, readings, all of that - it’s shot. I can’t navigate us anywhere, and I have no idea where we are.”
Frank started to freak out and walked towards the front of the boat, his wet shoes squishing as he stomped angrily. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK. What the fuck do we do?”
“Well, as I said, we can still move. The only question is where. I have a faint idea of where the sun was when we first headed out, and I suggest we try to mimic its movement back to the dock,” Josie said to me while keeping her eye on Frank.
Frank was now squatting on the deck, his hands gripping his neck as he stared down at his feet.
“That sounds smart. Then if we see the storm again, we can recalibrate. We should probably be hitting land at some point, right?” I said to Josie.
“That’s my logic, at least.”
“You with us Frank?” I asked, turning to him.
“Yeah, yeah. I guess that sounds smart,” he replied in a solemn voice under his breath.
“Need any help?” I asked Josie.
“Take care of Frank,” she said quietly. “The best thing we can do is stay calm.”
Josie revved up the engine and turned the boat around carefully as she mapped out our approximate direction, and then we left towards a horizon that was no different from the others, guided only by the sun’s approximate movements.
As Josie manned the wheel, me and Frank cleaned up below deck and dried our clothes. As we were finishing up, he said he’d stay below deck, as he needed some time to think.
Looking at the sun, the day was slowly turning to evening. It was summer, so we still had daylight for a few more hours. I went up to Josie to see how she was doing.
“Frank’s below. Said he needed some time to think. I don’t blame him - this is indeed a bit fucked up, isn’t it?”
“Logically, we should hit land at some point,” she replied, her eyes fixed on the horizon, her presence distant.
“How are you doing, Josie? You just pulled us through hell. I know you don’t need help with the boat, but I’m just saying -- I’m here if you wanna talk.”
Josie sighed and turned to me. “Thanks. I think right now what I need is to get us safely back home. Once we’re back you can buy me a beer and then we can talk.”
I nodded, and then turned my head to look at the horizon. Noticing something in the distance, I said “Josie, uhh, what’s that?”
She turned her head back to survey the ocean.
In the distance there were small, dark peaks rising from the ocean, like the tips of underwater mountains rising above the water. They’d appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
“I -- I don’t know. But I think we’re gonna see soon enough.”
I stayed with Josie as we approached the peaks. As we got closer, it was obvious that there was no land between them. Instead, they shot up from the water in thick spirals that tapered off the higher they reached. As we got closer we could finally realize their true size. Although some were smaller than others, most were the equivalent of tall office buildings, some reaching even higher. They spiraled and twisted in the air, arcing like blades of grass in the wind, and it seemed like they could fall down at any moment, but they did not move or shake in the slightest. There must have been twenty or so, and they all looked similar despite their differences in size; dark, mostly smooth yet also scratched, like charred meat on a grill.
“You have any idea what these are? They look like… trees or something, except they don’t have leaves or branches,” I said to Josie.
“Never seen anything like it. Must be some rock formations or something. Maybe there’s an underwater volcano that bursted lava out and it solidified -- I really don’t know. But those should only happen deeper in the ocean, far away from land.”
I heard Frank coming up the stairs. He looked better than he had before, his step lighter. Although I’d been afraid he’d been brooding, I guess having some time to think really did help.
As he saw the spiraling towers, his face turned into a twisted and confused half-frown as he said “What the fuck are those?”
“We don’t know,” I replied, “but it’s the only thing we’ve seen so far.”
Soon the closest spiral towered just a mere two hundred yards away, its wide shade casting upon the boat. From a distance it had been hard to decipher the dark structures, but upon closer inspection, it was clear that their anatomy was… abnormal. Stretches of surface material were mostly smooth, but all of the spirals seemed to have slight craters that were formed above the rest of the exterior. It looked like they had been bombarded by meteors of differing sizes, although even if this had been the case, how had they not been immediately broken, I do not know. They were beyond any logic I could muster.
“So, anyone know what we’re looking at?” Josie askied, surprising both me and Frank - she was usually the one to know things, us just tagging along for the ride.
“No clue, captain,” replied Frank as he stared upwards in dismay at the towering spiral.
“Still no,” I said.
Suddenly the boat’s end shot up, followed by the front, ascending us a good ten yards in mere seconds. Frank and I were knocked down on the deck, but Josie managed to hold onto the walls surrounding the helm. The boat kept rocking as waves hit us from behind. I slowly stood up with my knees bent for support, and went to help out Frank who was still laying on the deck, his eyes wide in panic.
Once I’d gotten Frank up, Josie had already managed to make her way to the back of the boat. We held onto the railings along the boat’s edge and walked as fast as we could through the oceanic turbulence to catch up with her. Once I saw what had produced those waves, I wanted to get back to land more than I ever had before.
In the distance tens more of the spirals had emerged from the ocean, some even larger than the ones we’d seen. They dripped with water, and some were covered in green algae. Somehow they’d been quiet, merely disturbing the water as they’d shot up.
“We need to move! One of those things could shoot up under the boat and sink the whole fucking thing!” Josie screamed, running back inside the helm as the waves slowly calmed down and became smaller. I leaned on the railing to see if there was something underneath us - not that there was much I could do, even if I saw a gigantic spiral shooting up from the depths.
The water beneath the surface was unmoving, holding an abyssal darkness. It seemed as if the light penetrated less than it had before, and what was deep below was nothing but pitch black shadowlands.
Just as I was about to disembark and head towards Josie, something moved in the water. I craned my neck farther over the railing to get a better look. It looked like two large masses were separating from each other, unearthing a ravine.
Josie had gotten the boat moving, and we were starting to turn towards an opening between two of the spirals. As the boat circled, I got a better view of what lay below. The ravine widened, and inside it I could see a dark, whitish yellow mass peeking through. As Josie cranked us up to speed the yellow mass had opened up into a large, oval shape that seemed to span across the ocean floor. Its center held a deep, dark circle that sucked in light as if it were a black hole, twisting all things inside of it.
Then it closed up again. I sighed in relief, hoping that no more spirals would emerge.
Suddenly it opened up again in a furious motion, wider than before, into a perfect circle. Then it hit me - it was an eye, larger than anything I could think of. Although we were moving at full speed, it was so gargantuan that we weren’t making any headway.
It had blinked.
“Josie? Frank?” I screamed as I turned around and saw Frank on the opposite railing looking down at the water, witnessing the same thing I was seeing.
Frank turned to me, his face a washed white, and his mouth slightly agape. “They’re tentacles. They’re fucking tentacles, look!” he pointed at one of the bigger spirals. “They have fucking suction cups and all! Shit, SHIT!”
As if on cue, the tentacles started to return to the water, splashing as they did so, producing strong currents in the water. The boat was immediately caught up in the chaos, going up and around huge waves and being dragged by the water’s shifting volume. Frank sprang below deck, and I followed him. From the small round windows I could see one of the gargantuan tentacles dropping back into the water, the boat just barely missing its tip and almost sunk by the shifting ocean.
Josie ran inside with us and exclaimed “The storm is back! It’s fucking back! I can’t maneuver the boat worth shit!”
As she closed the door behind her, we were flung to the side, my ribs hitting one of the cabinets, producing a painful crack. I could hear the rain start to scratch at the boat, and soon we were engulfed in darkness, the rain gunning down on us through the waves. The boat rocked and swayed worse than it had before, and at some points I was sure we’d gone under, buried into the deep sea, never to see the sun again. We held on to whatever we could as water trickled through the sealed door and started pooling up on the floor.
Slowly, but steadily, the storm started to pass, the boat regaining its level status along the water. The darkness outside faded into a dark red. Once it was possible to stand with relative ease, we emerged from the cabin and walked up to the deck.
“Everyone okay?” Josie asked.
“I think I’m gonna --,” Frank replied, and promptly ran to grab the edge of the railing and vomited yellow bile into the water, his stomach empty of food from before.
“My ribs got a beating, but I don’t think anything’s broken, “ I said. “What about you?”
“I’m fine. Just some bruises. Look,” Josie said, walking to the other side of the boat.
On the horizon, we saw the evening sun illuminating a crimson glow behind a small town some 500 yards away.
“Frank?” Josie called out.
“Yeah?” he replied through thick phlegm that sounded like it was stuck to his throat and running down his nostrils.
“We made it.”
We docked at the unfamiliar town and found a small hotel - probably the only one there - just a quick walking distance away. Once we got our phones dried off, Josie’s seemed to be the only one that still worked. As she looked up our location she nearly dropped the phone on the ground.
“I -- I don’t know how, but we’re quite far from home,” she said, her voice produced in quick breaths.
“How far?” Frank asked.
“Some 480 miles away.”
We checked and double checked her phone, but she was right: somehow we’d ended up nearly 500 miles down the coast into a small fishing town.
We were so tired that we decided to get some sleep before giving the bad news to Josie’s dad. The next morning Josie called him up and explained the situation, giving him the simple version: a storm had hit us, and after we got out we’d arrived here. I could hear the screams he gave her through the phone - apparently he was sure we’d driven the boat all the way to this ghost town in the middle of nowhere and docked it here, just to spite him. Josie didn’t respond to him much, only apologizing and telling him to come pick us up.
A day later he arrived, furious with us - and especially Josie. Once we showed him the boat I thought he was going to burst into a thousand tiny pieces, for I’d never seen a man so angry before. Although I think he overreacted, it was true that the boat was in shambles. There was water damage throughout the interiors, most of the equipment was shot, and large scratches were present along the exterior’s white paint.
Josie begged him not to drive the boat back home, but he insisted, not hearing a word her daughter was saying. We drove his car and arrived home that night.
As promised, me and Josie went out for a beer a few weeks later after her dad had settled down enough to let her out of the house. We went through the events of the trip in great detail, confirming to each other that it really did happen - although we disagreed on one thing.
Josie still thought that the spirals were just magma turned rock, and the whole thing was just extremely bad luck. According to her, we got held up by a superstorm or hurricane that moved our boat on top of an active underwater volcano, and then got hit by that same storm later as it moved across the ocean at miraculous speeds. Her theory was that the storm moved us along with it, making it possible to traverse such tremendous lengths with ease.
But Josie didn’t see what had been underneath us. Her theory was that the ‘eye’ I saw was simply lava cooling down as it emerged from the ocean bed. But she hadn’t seen it blink.
Frank of course seen it as well, but I haven’t heard from him much after the incident. According to his mom, he’s been cooped up in his room, drawing yellow circles on black pages. He’d told her that he needed some time to think.
2023.03.21 21:11 TheAmazingButtcrack Advance review of Nightborn: Coldfire Rising by C. S. Friedman
This advance review of Nightborn: Coldfire Rising has just been posted on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist:
When C. S. Friedman got in touch with me to see if I'd like an early read of the forthcoming Coldfire prequel Nightborn: Coldire Rising, needless to say I was extremely excited. Not only would we get the story of the founding of Erna, but the book would also include a revised edition of the novella Dominion, which I read and reviewed back in 2012. It's been a while, that's for sure. Crown of Shadows, final installment in the original series, was published in 1995. Since then, the Coldfire trilogy has remained in print and very few SFF works can boast of such longevity unless they're quite good.
Friedman has always been adamant that there would never be a sequel to the Coldfire series. And nearly three decades down the line, it doesn't look like she will change her mind. However, the market for shorter works, especially novellas, has been expanding in recent years. So much so that she realized that the time could be ripe to explore ideas and concepts that, while they lacked enough material to warrant a novel-length project, could be turned into books that couldn't have been published just a few years back. Dominion was the first such project and it turned out to be a wonderful read.
Nightborn: Coldire Rising focuses on the Founding of Erna and what led to the First Sacrifice. Fans might recall that it's a tale hinted at in the prologue of When True Night Falls. Dominion recounts the story of how Gerald Tarrant mastered the Forest and became the Hunter. This novella takes place 613 years following the settlement of the colony on Erna and about six centuries prior to the events of the Coldfire trilogy. Friedman realized that Erna has a rich history that is hinted at in the series and that there was a wealth of material for potential prequels. Mapping out such story arcs, the author envisioned a set of novellas that would also explore the Age of the False Messiahs, the Neo-Gothic Revival and its Unification Wars, the great Rakhene Genocide, the transformation of the Forbidden Forest into Tarrant’s private hunting ground, and the Church’s doomed war against him and his minions. All of which has this Coldfire fan pretty excited!
Some readers unfamiliar with the original trilogy will wonder if Nightborn: Coldire Rising makes a good starting point for newbies. Yes, it is a prequel and efforts were made by the author to make this book a somewhat stand-alone work that can be read and understood without having read the Coldfire trilogy. And yet, why would you want to do that? The Coldfire series is a seminal work of dark fantasy that has withstood the test of time, so why would you want to pick up this one before reading the original material? Though Nightborn: Coldire Rising can be read on its own, without the context provided by the original trilogy you'd be missing out on lots of things and not just a few nuances. You might enjoy Dominion without having prior knowledge of Gerald Tarrant, but if you actually know the story of this fascinating badass character you'll be ecstatic. This new one is slated to be released in July, so there is ample time for you to find out for yourself just how brillant the Coldfire trilogy truly is by starting with Black Sun Rising. Follow this Amazon Associate link to learn more about this title and its sequels. Believe you me: You'll love them! And you'll be up-to-date when this prequel hits the shelves this summer.
Here's the blurb:
A prequel to the lauded Coldfire trilogy, Friedman's latest novel mixes the best of dark fantasy and chilling sci-fi.
A ship full of colonists arrive on a seemingly hospitable planet, only to discover that it harbors a terrifying secret. Soon the settlers find themselves caught up in a desperate battle for survival against the fae, a natural force with the power to prey upon the human mind itself, bringing a person’s greatest fears and darkest nightmares to life.
As Colony Commander Leon Case and Chief Medic Lise Perez struggle to find a way to control the fae before more people die, other settlers have ideas of their own…and they may prove more of a threat to colony than the fae itself.
Nightborn: Coldfire Rising is a tale that blends sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, suspenseful and emotionally intense, as a handful of humans struggle to survive on an alien world that seems determined to kill them. In the end they will have to draw upon both scientific knowledge and mystical traditions to save themselves.
Whether you're just discovering the Coldfire universe through this prequel or returning to it as a classic favorite, Nightborn: Coldfire Rising is the perfect entry point to this unique, genre-blending space fantasy epic.
As mentioned, Nightborn: Coldire Rising is the story of the Founding of Erna. It focuses on the horrors that the colonists had to face when they first encountered the mysterious and all-encompassing force they'll come to know as the fae. Coming out of cryogenic sleep after decades spent searching for an habitable planet, the leading faction of the settlers discover that their ship has been observing Erna for ninety years before waking them up. There are obviously some anomalies that prevented the ship from approving the planet as an acceptable settlement for their colony, but they can't find anything concrete as to why the process took this long. In an essay she wrote for her Patreon, Friedman says that one of the most interesting facets of the Coldfire Trilogy is its science fiction background. The people who landed on Erna were rational, scientifically minded people, from a culture not unlike our own. Yet a thousand years later they would have lost all their technology, mastered the fae (as much as anyone could), and adopted terminology and trappings from mysticism and sorcery. How did they get from point A to point B, changing not only their technology but the very tenor of their society? This is the question that she tried to answer with this newest work. How did the colonists figure out what the fae was in the first place? Fans of the trilogy will know that there were no adepts when the colonists landed on Erna. Hence, nobody could see it without Working their sight, but human beings hadn’t learned to Work yet. According to Friedman, this was the biggest challenge to address. If the colonists couldn’t see the fae, didn’t even know it was there to begin with, and had never encountered anything like it to make them suspect it even existed, how did they figure out how to See it, much less control it? That ended up being the main theme of Nightborn: Coldire Rising: a group of colonists trapped on a planet where a seemingly supernatural force was manifesting their darkest instincts and wildest nightmares, who were struggling to figure out what the hell it was and how to gain a measure of control over it before it killed them all.
And time is running out. When I started reading the book, I believed that the tale would cover the span of several months. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Nightborn: Coldire Rising only covers a period of about twenty days. Less than three weeks, that's how long it took for everything to go down the crapper. This lends a tense and suspenseful atmosphere to the story and forces characters to make questionable decisions as their lives and their chances of survival continue to unravel with each passing day. Though I would have liked for the story to cover a bit more ground and give us more than a glimpse of the colonists' early days on Erna, there's no denying that it is self-contained and ends with the aftermath of the First Sacrifice. You reach the ending wanting more, but this new Coldfire tale does what it set out to do. Understandably, it's more scifi than fantasy, and might feel a little discordant with the original material, at least stylistically. Yet a settlement story couldn't be anything else, and I'm sure that fans will enjoy discovering how it all began.
As for Dominion, well it was a doozy! Even though I read the original version a decade ago, like all Coldfire fans I relished the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite SFF characters of all time: Gerald Tarrant. And even though this one occurs more than six centuries into the pass, Friedman recaptured the feel of the Coldfire books. This makes this one impossible to put down and you'll likely finish it in a single sitting. As I mentioned in my first review, Friedman sets the mood perfectly. The narrative grabs hold of you and won't let go. The prose is evocative and the Forest almost becomes a character in its own right. Sure, some will say that hardcore fans are already won over. But it's no secret that the author knows how to draw readers into her tales and Dominion is no different.
The novella features the POVs of two protagonists. The first is that of Gerald Tarrant, first Neocount of Merentha. Although the thirty pages or so don't provide enough of an opportunity to fully appreciate this chance to see Tarrant in action and witness events unfold through his eyes, I loved every single moment of it. Hot damn, I want more! The second perspective is that of Faith, last survivor of a band of knights of the Church hunting faeborn creatures in the Forest. She possesses a special gift known as the Earth's blessing; the fae does not respond to her. Both characters find themselves in the heart of the Forest; one trying to escape, while the other means to best it. I think Friedman created a good balance between the two POV sections throughout the novella. I also enjoyed how the author introduced Amoril and how he became part of Tarrant's entourage.You reach the end too quickly for my taste, but again this tale is as long as it needs to be.
If all goes according to plan, Friedman says that the next novella will be a tale from the Neo-Gothic era, when a young idealist named Gerald Tarrant brings faith to his world, even as darkness begins to take root within his own soul. The author believes that fans of Gerald Tarrant will love to watch that corruption unfold, as well as seeing parts of his personal history that he hinted at in the original trilogy. So Coldfire fans unite! Unless Nightborn: Coldire Rising is a success, we might never get to read that new story. And I for one cannot countenance such a thing! I also want to read every other planned Coldfire novella, so we need to make it happen!
Original link: https://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2023/03/nightborn-coldfire-rising.html
I'm so excited to read this one!:)
submitted by TheAmazingButtcrack to Fantasy [link] [comments]
When C. S. Friedman got in touch with me to see if I'd like an early read of the forthcoming Coldfire prequel Nightborn: Coldire Rising, needless to say I was extremely excited. Not only would we get the story of the founding of Erna, but the book would also include a revised edition of the novella Dominion, which I read and reviewed back in 2012. It's been a while, that's for sure. Crown of Shadows, final installment in the original series, was published in 1995. Since then, the Coldfire trilogy has remained in print and very few SFF works can boast of such longevity unless they're quite good.
Friedman has always been adamant that there would never be a sequel to the Coldfire series. And nearly three decades down the line, it doesn't look like she will change her mind. However, the market for shorter works, especially novellas, has been expanding in recent years. So much so that she realized that the time could be ripe to explore ideas and concepts that, while they lacked enough material to warrant a novel-length project, could be turned into books that couldn't have been published just a few years back. Dominion was the first such project and it turned out to be a wonderful read.
Nightborn: Coldire Rising focuses on the Founding of Erna and what led to the First Sacrifice. Fans might recall that it's a tale hinted at in the prologue of When True Night Falls. Dominion recounts the story of how Gerald Tarrant mastered the Forest and became the Hunter. This novella takes place 613 years following the settlement of the colony on Erna and about six centuries prior to the events of the Coldfire trilogy. Friedman realized that Erna has a rich history that is hinted at in the series and that there was a wealth of material for potential prequels. Mapping out such story arcs, the author envisioned a set of novellas that would also explore the Age of the False Messiahs, the Neo-Gothic Revival and its Unification Wars, the great Rakhene Genocide, the transformation of the Forbidden Forest into Tarrant’s private hunting ground, and the Church’s doomed war against him and his minions. All of which has this Coldfire fan pretty excited!
Some readers unfamiliar with the original trilogy will wonder if Nightborn: Coldire Rising makes a good starting point for newbies. Yes, it is a prequel and efforts were made by the author to make this book a somewhat stand-alone work that can be read and understood without having read the Coldfire trilogy. And yet, why would you want to do that? The Coldfire series is a seminal work of dark fantasy that has withstood the test of time, so why would you want to pick up this one before reading the original material? Though Nightborn: Coldire Rising can be read on its own, without the context provided by the original trilogy you'd be missing out on lots of things and not just a few nuances. You might enjoy Dominion without having prior knowledge of Gerald Tarrant, but if you actually know the story of this fascinating badass character you'll be ecstatic. This new one is slated to be released in July, so there is ample time for you to find out for yourself just how brillant the Coldfire trilogy truly is by starting with Black Sun Rising. Follow this Amazon Associate link to learn more about this title and its sequels. Believe you me: You'll love them! And you'll be up-to-date when this prequel hits the shelves this summer.
Here's the blurb:
A prequel to the lauded Coldfire trilogy, Friedman's latest novel mixes the best of dark fantasy and chilling sci-fi.
A ship full of colonists arrive on a seemingly hospitable planet, only to discover that it harbors a terrifying secret. Soon the settlers find themselves caught up in a desperate battle for survival against the fae, a natural force with the power to prey upon the human mind itself, bringing a person’s greatest fears and darkest nightmares to life.
As Colony Commander Leon Case and Chief Medic Lise Perez struggle to find a way to control the fae before more people die, other settlers have ideas of their own…and they may prove more of a threat to colony than the fae itself.
Nightborn: Coldfire Rising is a tale that blends sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, suspenseful and emotionally intense, as a handful of humans struggle to survive on an alien world that seems determined to kill them. In the end they will have to draw upon both scientific knowledge and mystical traditions to save themselves.
Whether you're just discovering the Coldfire universe through this prequel or returning to it as a classic favorite, Nightborn: Coldfire Rising is the perfect entry point to this unique, genre-blending space fantasy epic.
As mentioned, Nightborn: Coldire Rising is the story of the Founding of Erna. It focuses on the horrors that the colonists had to face when they first encountered the mysterious and all-encompassing force they'll come to know as the fae. Coming out of cryogenic sleep after decades spent searching for an habitable planet, the leading faction of the settlers discover that their ship has been observing Erna for ninety years before waking them up. There are obviously some anomalies that prevented the ship from approving the planet as an acceptable settlement for their colony, but they can't find anything concrete as to why the process took this long. In an essay she wrote for her Patreon, Friedman says that one of the most interesting facets of the Coldfire Trilogy is its science fiction background. The people who landed on Erna were rational, scientifically minded people, from a culture not unlike our own. Yet a thousand years later they would have lost all their technology, mastered the fae (as much as anyone could), and adopted terminology and trappings from mysticism and sorcery. How did they get from point A to point B, changing not only their technology but the very tenor of their society? This is the question that she tried to answer with this newest work. How did the colonists figure out what the fae was in the first place? Fans of the trilogy will know that there were no adepts when the colonists landed on Erna. Hence, nobody could see it without Working their sight, but human beings hadn’t learned to Work yet. According to Friedman, this was the biggest challenge to address. If the colonists couldn’t see the fae, didn’t even know it was there to begin with, and had never encountered anything like it to make them suspect it even existed, how did they figure out how to See it, much less control it? That ended up being the main theme of Nightborn: Coldire Rising: a group of colonists trapped on a planet where a seemingly supernatural force was manifesting their darkest instincts and wildest nightmares, who were struggling to figure out what the hell it was and how to gain a measure of control over it before it killed them all.
And time is running out. When I started reading the book, I believed that the tale would cover the span of several months. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Nightborn: Coldire Rising only covers a period of about twenty days. Less than three weeks, that's how long it took for everything to go down the crapper. This lends a tense and suspenseful atmosphere to the story and forces characters to make questionable decisions as their lives and their chances of survival continue to unravel with each passing day. Though I would have liked for the story to cover a bit more ground and give us more than a glimpse of the colonists' early days on Erna, there's no denying that it is self-contained and ends with the aftermath of the First Sacrifice. You reach the ending wanting more, but this new Coldfire tale does what it set out to do. Understandably, it's more scifi than fantasy, and might feel a little discordant with the original material, at least stylistically. Yet a settlement story couldn't be anything else, and I'm sure that fans will enjoy discovering how it all began.
As for Dominion, well it was a doozy! Even though I read the original version a decade ago, like all Coldfire fans I relished the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite SFF characters of all time: Gerald Tarrant. And even though this one occurs more than six centuries into the pass, Friedman recaptured the feel of the Coldfire books. This makes this one impossible to put down and you'll likely finish it in a single sitting. As I mentioned in my first review, Friedman sets the mood perfectly. The narrative grabs hold of you and won't let go. The prose is evocative and the Forest almost becomes a character in its own right. Sure, some will say that hardcore fans are already won over. But it's no secret that the author knows how to draw readers into her tales and Dominion is no different.
The novella features the POVs of two protagonists. The first is that of Gerald Tarrant, first Neocount of Merentha. Although the thirty pages or so don't provide enough of an opportunity to fully appreciate this chance to see Tarrant in action and witness events unfold through his eyes, I loved every single moment of it. Hot damn, I want more! The second perspective is that of Faith, last survivor of a band of knights of the Church hunting faeborn creatures in the Forest. She possesses a special gift known as the Earth's blessing; the fae does not respond to her. Both characters find themselves in the heart of the Forest; one trying to escape, while the other means to best it. I think Friedman created a good balance between the two POV sections throughout the novella. I also enjoyed how the author introduced Amoril and how he became part of Tarrant's entourage.You reach the end too quickly for my taste, but again this tale is as long as it needs to be.
If all goes according to plan, Friedman says that the next novella will be a tale from the Neo-Gothic era, when a young idealist named Gerald Tarrant brings faith to his world, even as darkness begins to take root within his own soul. The author believes that fans of Gerald Tarrant will love to watch that corruption unfold, as well as seeing parts of his personal history that he hinted at in the original trilogy. So Coldfire fans unite! Unless Nightborn: Coldire Rising is a success, we might never get to read that new story. And I for one cannot countenance such a thing! I also want to read every other planned Coldfire novella, so we need to make it happen!
Original link: https://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2023/03/nightborn-coldfire-rising.html
I'm so excited to read this one!:)
2023.03.21 20:58 InterestingHope2222 39 [M4F] #Harrisonburg, VA - Seeking petite to average girl (at least 18) about to/recently finished HS that wants a deep, romantic relationship w/ a guy that wants to know&understand the real you! Dates/cuddles/movies/gaming/explore&enjoy life! Shy welcome too! All < 3hr drive/poss all U.S.
TL:DR Slim, mature, responsible, and intellectual guy seeking a petite to average size (as in, not overweight, not that you have to be short haha) younger girl (18 or older) that's going to graduate HS this year, or did recently (i.e. the last few years or so) that wants the build the deepest, most romantic and loving relationship with someone that genuinely wants to get to know and understand them on a deep level! Also, someone that will DEEPLY appreciate them, on a level most boys her age could only dream of. Someone that will THOROUGHLY enjoy spending TONS of time with you, savoring every second, loving the memories you're making together, and the things you learn about each other as you get to know and understand each other that much better! A girl that wants to experience a "young love" style of romance, and by that I mean going on all sorts of dates, including some cheesy ones, holding hands a lot while we walk around in parks, at the mall, even at the supermarket if you wish (if you're super shy we can hold off on the PDA such as hand holding until you're more comfortable). By "young love" I also mean just being very romantic, excited to see and spend time with each other, and also lots of hugs and cuddles and kisses (only in private is fine at first if you're shy). Do all sorts of things in life together, cuddle, travel, explore, and just in general enjoy life together and spending time together. Also trying lots of new things together and really appreciating the memories we're making together! Basically just going all-in on the romance / relationship and giving it our all, and just thoroughly enjoying the ride as we get to know each other better and better, and hopefully we click well enough to stay together forever! <3
So that gives you a decent idea of who and what I'm looking for, but there's still more details I'd like to go into, as well as telling some more about myself, so you can better understand who I am.
Ideally I'm looking for a girl that just graduated HS (or did in the last few years), but anyone up to ~25 or so is welcome. If you're shy, even extremely shy, or have strict parents [those aren't requirements either], this could be a great opportunity for you, as I used to be extremely shy when I was younger too (and also had strict / controlling parents, so I understand how that can be too). If you're outgoing, and/or just want to explore new things and places in life, that's cool and fine too! Size wise, as I'm a relatively slim guy myself, I'm attracted to girls that are petite to average weight. I want to be able to do some athletic things together like walking/jogging/perhaps some sports (and/or other things, depending on what you're into). So it's not just an attraction thing that I'm not interested in people overweight, it's a matter of lifestyle / mentality / and being able to do certain things together. Of course I expect my partner to have the same expectations of me, that I don't get fat either.
Anyways, moving on, so thanks for reading my post so far, and if you're looking for what I'd described, hopefully you'll read on and find me interesting, and if so, PLEASE send me a message! It's fine if you are just curious and want to ask some questions and learn more first, before making any decisions / jumping into anything! With that in mind, let me describe myself a bit. I'm a slim, intellectual guy, often been called cute, and I'm pretty upbeat and optimistic, but I've been a bit lonely lately and would LOVE to find a girl that wants a deep, loving, emotionally and mentally close relationship, and is willing to put in the time and effort to build that - assuming of course we click well enough. That doesn't mean we need to rush into things, and I'm not looking to - I'm just saying that should be our end goal. If we date for a while and then decide we're not a close enough match, well, it happens sometimes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try! So, to address the elephant in the room, yes, I would be a good bit older than you, so obviously you need to be OK with dating a middle aged guy, and I realize that's not for everyone - and that's fine. I'm not looking to pressure anyone into anything. But I also know that there most definitely ARE some girls out there that are open to that, as well as some that specifically prefer that. There's advantages to dating someone a bit older than you, such as them being a lot more mature, responsible, considerate, respectful, and, perhaps most importantly, appreciate life and a deep relationship sooooo much more. Someone whom knows when they have someone special with them, and can appreciate and enjoy that on a level that someone your age can't. Anyways, as long as you're genuinely open to a deep, serious relationship with someone my age, hopefully someday leading to a serious LTR and kids, that's fine. Like I said, I'm not looking to rush into anything, I want to spend some time chatting and getting to know each other first, so we can get comfortable with each other before meeting. So if you're shy, even extremely shy, don't worry, it's OK! I actually used to be EXTREMELY shy when I was young, so I totally understand how that can be, and I usually can get along well with shy people because I've been there and understand where they're coming from. Also, if needed I can carry the conversation until you start getting more comfortable and more talkative. ;) If you've been too shy to talk to guys you like (or possibly you do like older guys but are WAY too shy to approach one) - but genuinely DO want a relationship and would love to find someone willing to spend the time to get to know and truly understand you, this could be the opportunity you're looking for! On the other hand, if you're outgoing and love to chat [and looking for a relationship], that's totally fine too! haha Both sides of that coin can be fun, so I'm cool with either way you are. ;)
Alternatively, maybe you had a bad time at prom (or some other romantic event you were looking forward to), or didn't go, or didn't have anyone to go with, or maybe it was OK but didn't nearly live up to your expectations, and would love to get to have some romantic evenings and memories. Or maybe you just didn't get out much (or had super strict parents that didn't let you) and want to get out into the world and explore new places and new things, etc. and would love to have a romantic partner to share all those experiences and memories together with!
...or maybe you had suuuuper strict parents and want to finally get out from under the rock you were living under and finally get to see and do many of the things you've wanted to for a long time! (I would totally understand this one as I had very strict parents)
Maybe you've had a few relationships before but you never clicked very deeply with any of them (and/or they were just too immature), and you're looking for a relationship that's much deeper and more meaningful than that. Or maybe you've never had anyone that you've connected well enough to to feel that they really understand you. ...while I can't promise that we'll click well enough for that to happen, I'd like that to be the goal, and there's certainly a non-zero chance of it happening haha.
Perhaps you're REALLY wanting to be able to fully dive into a relationship as soon as you graduate, and are looking forward to, not necessarily Prom [although possibly that too], but also/mostly just would love to be able to take a long romantic vacation / visit once you're done with school and have some freedom. An opportunity to be yourself and learn about both yourself and your romantic partner.
Or, lastly, maybe you're just single and would love to have someone to cuddle with, talk to, share everything with, watch movies or shows together with, play games together, and travel or explore together!
Anyways, whatever the case is for you, if you think I'm interesting and would like to explore some or all of those things, I'd love to hear from you! Before I get too far ahead of myself, let you tell you a little about me. I'm 39 (but I look a bit younger), white, 5'11" and relatively slim at 165 lbs. I enjoy walking and jogging in the park, as well as exploring new parks / seeing new places and new scenery. Although it's 100 times better when I have someone to enjoy that with and talk to meanwhile! <3 Anyways, I do have a number of nerdy interests - games, movies, anime, computers, science stuff, etc., but I can also enjoy long conversations with a date, walks in the park - or on the beach, playing board, card, or video games together, or sports, etc. Plus I'm open to learning some interests of yours - I can't promise I'll be interested in all of your interests, but it's extremely likely that I'd at least enjoy hearing you talk about them, and some of them I may be happy to join you in (this is very likely). We don't need to share ALL of the same interests, as long as we share a few haha. As far as games go, I'm primarily (almost entirely) a PC gamer, but I occasionally play some console games (primarily older consoles). My favorite thing to do is to cuddle up and watch something fun or interesting, such as movies, YouTube (I watch a lot of YouTube), Anime, Netflix, or Kdramas (occasionally). So you need to at minimum be someone whom would enjoy cuddling up and watching things together with me haha ... but then, almost everyone enjoys doing that. Oh, and I also have a relatively newfound love for Theme Parks and water parks since I recently started going back to them for the first time as an adult recently, and there's many more I'd love to go to - as well as re-visit the ones I've been to with someone special going with me to share the experience with. <3 I'm also curious to try out some amusement parks now that I'm getting more comfortable on rollercoasters.
Anyways, that's a bit about me, I'd love to hear some about you and what your interests are! And maybe note some shared interests that we have! Of course I do have some additional interests, I haven't listed EVERYTHING haha, nor do you need to in a first message haha. Just because my post is long doesn't mean your messages have to be haha. ;)
As for requirements for you, I'm pretty open minded on most things, so I'll try to keep the requirements pretty minimal. Ideally I'm looking for someone that's white or Asian, or some mix thereof (i.e. if you're 50/50, or 50/50 white or Asian and something else, that's fine). I'd consider making exceptions to this for the right person, if we really clicked otherwise. ;) Age wise, while it would be nice to find someone about to graduate HS (and is excited to use their newfound freedom to explore so many new things in life and the world), I'm willing to consider someone a bit older, up to early to mid 20s, as long as we share a number of interests and you feel like you're looking for something similar to what I've described. It's more that I'm looking for someone with a certain mindset and/or at a certain point in their life, not necessarily that they're SUPER young. My main requirement is, as someone that's slim (and sometimes athletic, when I have time to get more exercise), I need you to also BE [as opposed "working on it"] average weight or below, and plan to stay there (but also to expect me to as well - I don't expect anything from a partner that I don't have at LEAST as high expectations of myself about). I find petite girls super cute, but average size girls are fun and cute as well! Both sizes have their fun and interesting points haha, so I'm fine if you're either one.
Anyways, I think I've talked long enough for now haha, but that gives you a decent idea what I'm looking for plus some basics about me. As the title says, while ideally I'd love to find someone within 3 hours of Harrisonburg, VA, I'm willing to consider someone anywhere in the US (probably just the lower 48 states). Drives longer than 3 hours are definitely still very plausible, possibly even 8 or 10 hours perhaps, and flying is an option if you live significantly further away (plus points if you live anywhere remotely near a major airport, but that's not a requirement). Anyways, my point is, if you're further away than a few hours drive, I'd need you to be willing to travel / work with the distance when the time comes - particularly with the drastically increased costs of gas/travel these days. For example, if you're pretty far away, then after the first visit or two, we'd probably need to be planning longer visits when one of us travels to the other. Anyways, I'm not looking to rush into meeting, but I'm also NOT INTERESTED in an online only relationship. We need to start meeting in person in the relatively near future (i.e. a few weeks or so (possibly several weeks if you're far), assuming we talk a good bit during those few weeks). Also, I'm willing to come to you the first visit (or perhaps more) if you're far, but after the first visit or two you'd need to be willing to visit me (I might be willing to pay for your flight if you can't, we'll see), as that's going to be a LOT cheaper than me flying out somewhere, getting a hotel, and renting a car. On the other hand, if you're much closer, within a reasonably driving range, if needed I could pick you up in my car once you're ready to visit (and I can just drive to you for the first few visits). And if you're within 3 hours or so drive, I'm happy to drive to you for several visits at first, until you're ready to visit me. Regardless of the timing, I'm not going to pressure you do visit me before you're comfortable doing so, and it's something we can play by ear. For example, if you're someone that's super shy I understand if it takes a few extra times of me visiting you before you're ready to visit me, or perhaps we need to chat some extra time first, etc.
Well, thanks for reading my rather long post haha, hopefully I've piqued your interest, and if so, I'd love to hear from you! Certainly feel free to ask me any questions you may have, either if you're interested, or if you're curious but need to know some more before you know if you're interested haha. Also, I'm happy to exchange some (clean!) pictures of each other after a few messages. On that note, when you message me, please tell me at least a little about you (i.e. age, race, height/weight, and a little about you and what you're looking for). Thanks again, and hopefully this can be a great opportunity for both of us, and the start of something amazing!
P.S. To the SUPER shy and lurkers out there - yes, you, you know who you are - if you've been looking and wanting a relationship for a while, but have been too shy to ever post yourself or respond to a post, but you find me / what I'm looking for interesting, THIS is the post for you, THE one you've been waiting for. I've talked to a few VERY shy girls occasionally, and it was such an amazing experience for some of them to talk to someone that understands them and is willing to take the time to get to know them, and give them time to get comfortable before meeting. Someone that can help them slowly come out of their shell, gently nudging them to try new things and slowly be more outgoing, but without being pushy. So if that's you, you fit what I described that I'm looking for, and you're THAT shy but really DO want to be in a relationship, THIS is the post that's the opportunity for you. You've found the person that's willing to spend the time to get to know you and let you get comfortable, and also the guy that's going to enjoy and appreciate spending time with you in person if/when we get to that point (hopefully, that's the objective). I understand that shy girls, if you can get to know them well enough that they get comfortable with you, can often build some of the deepest emotional connections, because they appreciate the few close friends they do have SO much moreso than average people. So, if that's you, and you've been wanting a relationship for a while but been too shy to message anyone, PLEASE do this time! <3 I can carry the conversation if needed, but you need to at least say "hi" so that I know you're interested! [If you're too shy to say much, just say "Hi, I'm shy but I'd love to chat" or something like that]. :) Romance doesn't have to be just something you read about in books or watch in movies, YOU CAN experience it yourself! <3
submitted by InterestingHope2222 to AgeGapPersonals [link] [comments]
Ideally I'm looking for a girl that just graduated HS (or did in the last few years), but anyone up to ~25 or so is welcome. If you're shy, even extremely shy, or have strict parents [those aren't requirements either], this could be a great opportunity for you, as I used to be extremely shy when I was younger too (and also had strict / controlling parents, so I understand how that can be too). If you're outgoing, and/or just want to explore new things and places in life, that's cool and fine too! Size wise, as I'm a relatively slim guy myself, I'm attracted to girls that are petite to average weight. I want to be able to do some athletic things together like walking/jogging/perhaps some sports (and/or other things, depending on what you're into). So it's not just an attraction thing that I'm not interested in people overweight, it's a matter of lifestyle / mentality / and being able to do certain things together. Of course I expect my partner to have the same expectations of me, that I don't get fat either.
Anyways, moving on, so thanks for reading my post so far, and if you're looking for what I'd described, hopefully you'll read on and find me interesting, and if so, PLEASE send me a message! It's fine if you are just curious and want to ask some questions and learn more first, before making any decisions / jumping into anything! With that in mind, let me describe myself a bit. I'm a slim, intellectual guy, often been called cute, and I'm pretty upbeat and optimistic, but I've been a bit lonely lately and would LOVE to find a girl that wants a deep, loving, emotionally and mentally close relationship, and is willing to put in the time and effort to build that - assuming of course we click well enough. That doesn't mean we need to rush into things, and I'm not looking to - I'm just saying that should be our end goal. If we date for a while and then decide we're not a close enough match, well, it happens sometimes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try! So, to address the elephant in the room, yes, I would be a good bit older than you, so obviously you need to be OK with dating a middle aged guy, and I realize that's not for everyone - and that's fine. I'm not looking to pressure anyone into anything. But I also know that there most definitely ARE some girls out there that are open to that, as well as some that specifically prefer that. There's advantages to dating someone a bit older than you, such as them being a lot more mature, responsible, considerate, respectful, and, perhaps most importantly, appreciate life and a deep relationship sooooo much more. Someone whom knows when they have someone special with them, and can appreciate and enjoy that on a level that someone your age can't. Anyways, as long as you're genuinely open to a deep, serious relationship with someone my age, hopefully someday leading to a serious LTR and kids, that's fine. Like I said, I'm not looking to rush into anything, I want to spend some time chatting and getting to know each other first, so we can get comfortable with each other before meeting. So if you're shy, even extremely shy, don't worry, it's OK! I actually used to be EXTREMELY shy when I was young, so I totally understand how that can be, and I usually can get along well with shy people because I've been there and understand where they're coming from. Also, if needed I can carry the conversation until you start getting more comfortable and more talkative. ;) If you've been too shy to talk to guys you like (or possibly you do like older guys but are WAY too shy to approach one) - but genuinely DO want a relationship and would love to find someone willing to spend the time to get to know and truly understand you, this could be the opportunity you're looking for! On the other hand, if you're outgoing and love to chat [and looking for a relationship], that's totally fine too! haha Both sides of that coin can be fun, so I'm cool with either way you are. ;)
Alternatively, maybe you had a bad time at prom (or some other romantic event you were looking forward to), or didn't go, or didn't have anyone to go with, or maybe it was OK but didn't nearly live up to your expectations, and would love to get to have some romantic evenings and memories. Or maybe you just didn't get out much (or had super strict parents that didn't let you) and want to get out into the world and explore new places and new things, etc. and would love to have a romantic partner to share all those experiences and memories together with!
...or maybe you had suuuuper strict parents and want to finally get out from under the rock you were living under and finally get to see and do many of the things you've wanted to for a long time! (I would totally understand this one as I had very strict parents)
Maybe you've had a few relationships before but you never clicked very deeply with any of them (and/or they were just too immature), and you're looking for a relationship that's much deeper and more meaningful than that. Or maybe you've never had anyone that you've connected well enough to to feel that they really understand you. ...while I can't promise that we'll click well enough for that to happen, I'd like that to be the goal, and there's certainly a non-zero chance of it happening haha.
Perhaps you're REALLY wanting to be able to fully dive into a relationship as soon as you graduate, and are looking forward to, not necessarily Prom [although possibly that too], but also/mostly just would love to be able to take a long romantic vacation / visit once you're done with school and have some freedom. An opportunity to be yourself and learn about both yourself and your romantic partner.
Or, lastly, maybe you're just single and would love to have someone to cuddle with, talk to, share everything with, watch movies or shows together with, play games together, and travel or explore together!
Anyways, whatever the case is for you, if you think I'm interesting and would like to explore some or all of those things, I'd love to hear from you! Before I get too far ahead of myself, let you tell you a little about me. I'm 39 (but I look a bit younger), white, 5'11" and relatively slim at 165 lbs. I enjoy walking and jogging in the park, as well as exploring new parks / seeing new places and new scenery. Although it's 100 times better when I have someone to enjoy that with and talk to meanwhile! <3 Anyways, I do have a number of nerdy interests - games, movies, anime, computers, science stuff, etc., but I can also enjoy long conversations with a date, walks in the park - or on the beach, playing board, card, or video games together, or sports, etc. Plus I'm open to learning some interests of yours - I can't promise I'll be interested in all of your interests, but it's extremely likely that I'd at least enjoy hearing you talk about them, and some of them I may be happy to join you in (this is very likely). We don't need to share ALL of the same interests, as long as we share a few haha. As far as games go, I'm primarily (almost entirely) a PC gamer, but I occasionally play some console games (primarily older consoles). My favorite thing to do is to cuddle up and watch something fun or interesting, such as movies, YouTube (I watch a lot of YouTube), Anime, Netflix, or Kdramas (occasionally). So you need to at minimum be someone whom would enjoy cuddling up and watching things together with me haha ... but then, almost everyone enjoys doing that. Oh, and I also have a relatively newfound love for Theme Parks and water parks since I recently started going back to them for the first time as an adult recently, and there's many more I'd love to go to - as well as re-visit the ones I've been to with someone special going with me to share the experience with. <3 I'm also curious to try out some amusement parks now that I'm getting more comfortable on rollercoasters.
Anyways, that's a bit about me, I'd love to hear some about you and what your interests are! And maybe note some shared interests that we have! Of course I do have some additional interests, I haven't listed EVERYTHING haha, nor do you need to in a first message haha. Just because my post is long doesn't mean your messages have to be haha. ;)
As for requirements for you, I'm pretty open minded on most things, so I'll try to keep the requirements pretty minimal. Ideally I'm looking for someone that's white or Asian, or some mix thereof (i.e. if you're 50/50, or 50/50 white or Asian and something else, that's fine). I'd consider making exceptions to this for the right person, if we really clicked otherwise. ;) Age wise, while it would be nice to find someone about to graduate HS (and is excited to use their newfound freedom to explore so many new things in life and the world), I'm willing to consider someone a bit older, up to early to mid 20s, as long as we share a number of interests and you feel like you're looking for something similar to what I've described. It's more that I'm looking for someone with a certain mindset and/or at a certain point in their life, not necessarily that they're SUPER young. My main requirement is, as someone that's slim (and sometimes athletic, when I have time to get more exercise), I need you to also BE [as opposed "working on it"] average weight or below, and plan to stay there (but also to expect me to as well - I don't expect anything from a partner that I don't have at LEAST as high expectations of myself about). I find petite girls super cute, but average size girls are fun and cute as well! Both sizes have their fun and interesting points haha, so I'm fine if you're either one.
Anyways, I think I've talked long enough for now haha, but that gives you a decent idea what I'm looking for plus some basics about me. As the title says, while ideally I'd love to find someone within 3 hours of Harrisonburg, VA, I'm willing to consider someone anywhere in the US (probably just the lower 48 states). Drives longer than 3 hours are definitely still very plausible, possibly even 8 or 10 hours perhaps, and flying is an option if you live significantly further away (plus points if you live anywhere remotely near a major airport, but that's not a requirement). Anyways, my point is, if you're further away than a few hours drive, I'd need you to be willing to travel / work with the distance when the time comes - particularly with the drastically increased costs of gas/travel these days. For example, if you're pretty far away, then after the first visit or two, we'd probably need to be planning longer visits when one of us travels to the other. Anyways, I'm not looking to rush into meeting, but I'm also NOT INTERESTED in an online only relationship. We need to start meeting in person in the relatively near future (i.e. a few weeks or so (possibly several weeks if you're far), assuming we talk a good bit during those few weeks). Also, I'm willing to come to you the first visit (or perhaps more) if you're far, but after the first visit or two you'd need to be willing to visit me (I might be willing to pay for your flight if you can't, we'll see), as that's going to be a LOT cheaper than me flying out somewhere, getting a hotel, and renting a car. On the other hand, if you're much closer, within a reasonably driving range, if needed I could pick you up in my car once you're ready to visit (and I can just drive to you for the first few visits). And if you're within 3 hours or so drive, I'm happy to drive to you for several visits at first, until you're ready to visit me. Regardless of the timing, I'm not going to pressure you do visit me before you're comfortable doing so, and it's something we can play by ear. For example, if you're someone that's super shy I understand if it takes a few extra times of me visiting you before you're ready to visit me, or perhaps we need to chat some extra time first, etc.
Well, thanks for reading my rather long post haha, hopefully I've piqued your interest, and if so, I'd love to hear from you! Certainly feel free to ask me any questions you may have, either if you're interested, or if you're curious but need to know some more before you know if you're interested haha. Also, I'm happy to exchange some (clean!) pictures of each other after a few messages. On that note, when you message me, please tell me at least a little about you (i.e. age, race, height/weight, and a little about you and what you're looking for). Thanks again, and hopefully this can be a great opportunity for both of us, and the start of something amazing!
P.S. To the SUPER shy and lurkers out there - yes, you, you know who you are - if you've been looking and wanting a relationship for a while, but have been too shy to ever post yourself or respond to a post, but you find me / what I'm looking for interesting, THIS is the post for you, THE one you've been waiting for. I've talked to a few VERY shy girls occasionally, and it was such an amazing experience for some of them to talk to someone that understands them and is willing to take the time to get to know them, and give them time to get comfortable before meeting. Someone that can help them slowly come out of their shell, gently nudging them to try new things and slowly be more outgoing, but without being pushy. So if that's you, you fit what I described that I'm looking for, and you're THAT shy but really DO want to be in a relationship, THIS is the post that's the opportunity for you. You've found the person that's willing to spend the time to get to know you and let you get comfortable, and also the guy that's going to enjoy and appreciate spending time with you in person if/when we get to that point (hopefully, that's the objective). I understand that shy girls, if you can get to know them well enough that they get comfortable with you, can often build some of the deepest emotional connections, because they appreciate the few close friends they do have SO much moreso than average people. So, if that's you, and you've been wanting a relationship for a while but been too shy to message anyone, PLEASE do this time! <3 I can carry the conversation if needed, but you need to at least say "hi" so that I know you're interested! [If you're too shy to say much, just say "Hi, I'm shy but I'd love to chat" or something like that]. :) Romance doesn't have to be just something you read about in books or watch in movies, YOU CAN experience it yourself! <3
2023.03.21 20:58 InterestingHope2222 39 [M4F] #Harrisonburg, VA - Seeking petite to average girl (at least 18) about to/recently finished HS that wants a deep, romantic relationship w/ a guy that wants to know&understand the real you! Dates/cuddles/movies/gaming/explore&enjoy life! Shy welcome too! All < 3hr drive/poss all U.S.
TL:DR Slim, mature, responsible, and intellectual guy seeking a petite to average size (as in, not overweight, not that you have to be short haha) younger girl (18 or older) that's going to graduate HS this year, or did recently (i.e. the last few years or so) that wants the build the deepest, most romantic and loving relationship with someone that genuinely wants to get to know and understand them on a deep level! Also, someone that will DEEPLY appreciate them, on a level most boys her age could only dream of. Someone that will THOROUGHLY enjoy spending TONS of time with you, savoring every second, loving the memories you're making together, and the things you learn about each other as you get to know and understand each other that much better! A girl that wants to experience a "young love" style of romance, and by that I mean going on all sorts of dates, including some cheesy ones, holding hands a lot while we walk around in parks, at the mall, even at the supermarket if you wish (if you're super shy we can hold off on the PDA such as hand holding until you're more comfortable). By "young love" I also mean just being very romantic, excited to see and spend time with each other, and also lots of hugs and cuddles and kisses (only in private is fine at first if you're shy). Do all sorts of things in life together, cuddle, travel, explore, and just in general enjoy life together and spending time together. Also trying lots of new things together and really appreciating the memories we're making together! Basically just going all-in on the romance / relationship and giving it our all, and just thoroughly enjoying the ride as we get to know each other better and better, and hopefully we click well enough to stay together forever! <3
So that gives you a decent idea of who and what I'm looking for, but there's still more details I'd like to go into, as well as telling some more about myself, so you can better understand who I am.
Ideally I'm looking for a girl that just graduated HS (or did in the last few years), but anyone up to ~25 or so is welcome. If you're shy, even extremely shy, or have strict parents [those aren't requirements either], this could be a great opportunity for you, as I used to be extremely shy when I was younger too (and also had strict / controlling parents, so I understand how that can be too). If you're outgoing, and/or just want to explore new things and places in life, that's cool and fine too! Size wise, as I'm a relatively slim guy myself, I'm attracted to girls that are petite to average weight. I want to be able to do some athletic things together like walking/jogging/perhaps some sports (and/or other things, depending on what you're into). So it's not just an attraction thing that I'm not interested in people overweight, it's a matter of lifestyle / mentality / and being able to do certain things together. Of course I expect my partner to have the same expectations of me, that I don't get fat either.
Anyways, moving on, so thanks for reading my post so far, and if you're looking for what I'd described, hopefully you'll read on and find me interesting, and if so, PLEASE send me a message! It's fine if you are just curious and want to ask some questions and learn more first, before making any decisions / jumping into anything! With that in mind, let me describe myself a bit. I'm a slim, intellectual guy, often been called cute, and I'm pretty upbeat and optimistic, but I've been a bit lonely lately and would LOVE to find a girl that wants a deep, loving, emotionally and mentally close relationship, and is willing to put in the time and effort to build that - assuming of course we click well enough. That doesn't mean we need to rush into things, and I'm not looking to - I'm just saying that should be our end goal. If we date for a while and then decide we're not a close enough match, well, it happens sometimes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try! So, to address the elephant in the room, yes, I would be a good bit older than you, so obviously you need to be OK with dating a middle aged guy, and I realize that's not for everyone - and that's fine. I'm not looking to pressure anyone into anything. But I also know that there most definitely ARE some girls out there that are open to that, as well as some that specifically prefer that. There's advantages to dating someone a bit older than you, such as them being a lot more mature, responsible, considerate, respectful, and, perhaps most importantly, appreciate life and a deep relationship sooooo much more. Someone whom knows when they have someone special with them, and can appreciate and enjoy that on a level that someone your age can't. Anyways, as long as you're genuinely open to a deep, serious relationship with someone my age, hopefully someday leading to a serious LTR and kids, that's fine. Like I said, I'm not looking to rush into anything, I want to spend some time chatting and getting to know each other first, so we can get comfortable with each other before meeting. So if you're shy, even extremely shy, don't worry, it's OK! I actually used to be EXTREMELY shy when I was young, so I totally understand how that can be, and I usually can get along well with shy people because I've been there and understand where they're coming from. Also, if needed I can carry the conversation until you start getting more comfortable and more talkative. ;) If you've been too shy to talk to guys you like (or possibly you do like older guys but are WAY too shy to approach one) - but genuinely DO want a relationship and would love to find someone willing to spend the time to get to know and truly understand you, this could be the opportunity you're looking for! On the other hand, if you're outgoing and love to chat [and looking for a relationship], that's totally fine too! haha Both sides of that coin can be fun, so I'm cool with either way you are. ;)
Alternatively, maybe you had a bad time at prom (or some other romantic event you were looking forward to), or didn't go, or didn't have anyone to go with, or maybe it was OK but didn't nearly live up to your expectations, and would love to get to have some romantic evenings and memories. Or maybe you just didn't get out much (or had super strict parents that didn't let you) and want to get out into the world and explore new places and new things, etc. and would love to have a romantic partner to share all those experiences and memories together with!
...or maybe you had suuuuper strict parents and want to finally get out from under the rock you were living under and finally get to see and do many of the things you've wanted to for a long time! (I would totally understand this one as I had very strict parents)
Maybe you've had a few relationships before but you never clicked very deeply with any of them (and/or they were just too immature), and you're looking for a relationship that's much deeper and more meaningful than that. Or maybe you've never had anyone that you've connected well enough to to feel that they really understand you. ...while I can't promise that we'll click well enough for that to happen, I'd like that to be the goal, and there's certainly a non-zero chance of it happening haha.
Perhaps you're REALLY wanting to be able to fully dive into a relationship as soon as you graduate, and are looking forward to, not necessarily Prom [although possibly that too], but also/mostly just would love to be able to take a long romantic vacation / visit once you're done with school and have some freedom. An opportunity to be yourself and learn about both yourself and your romantic partner.
Or, lastly, maybe you're just single and would love to have someone to cuddle with, talk to, share everything with, watch movies or shows together with, play games together, and travel or explore together!
Anyways, whatever the case is for you, if you think I'm interesting and would like to explore some or all of those things, I'd love to hear from you! Before I get too far ahead of myself, let you tell you a little about me. I'm 39 (but I look a bit younger), white, 5'11" and relatively slim at 165 lbs. I enjoy walking and jogging in the park, as well as exploring new parks / seeing new places and new scenery. Although it's 100 times better when I have someone to enjoy that with and talk to meanwhile! <3 Anyways, I do have a number of nerdy interests - games, movies, anime, computers, science stuff, etc., but I can also enjoy long conversations with a date, walks in the park - or on the beach, playing board, card, or video games together, or sports, etc. Plus I'm open to learning some interests of yours - I can't promise I'll be interested in all of your interests, but it's extremely likely that I'd at least enjoy hearing you talk about them, and some of them I may be happy to join you in (this is very likely). We don't need to share ALL of the same interests, as long as we share a few haha. As far as games go, I'm primarily (almost entirely) a PC gamer, but I occasionally play some console games (primarily older consoles). My favorite thing to do is to cuddle up and watch something fun or interesting, such as movies, YouTube (I watch a lot of YouTube), Anime, Netflix, or Kdramas (occasionally). So you need to at minimum be someone whom would enjoy cuddling up and watching things together with me haha ... but then, almost everyone enjoys doing that. Oh, and I also have a relatively newfound love for Theme Parks and water parks since I recently started going back to them for the first time as an adult recently, and there's many more I'd love to go to - as well as re-visit the ones I've been to with someone special going with me to share the experience with. <3 I'm also curious to try out some amusement parks now that I'm getting more comfortable on rollercoasters.
Anyways, that's a bit about me, I'd love to hear some about you and what your interests are! And maybe note some shared interests that we have! Of course I do have some additional interests, I haven't listed EVERYTHING haha, nor do you need to in a first message haha. Just because my post is long doesn't mean your messages have to be haha. ;)
As for requirements for you, I'm pretty open minded on most things, so I'll try to keep the requirements pretty minimal. Ideally I'm looking for someone that's white or Asian, or some mix thereof (i.e. if you're 50/50, or 50/50 white or Asian and something else, that's fine). I'd consider making exceptions to this for the right person, if we really clicked otherwise. ;) Age wise, while it would be nice to find someone about to graduate HS (and is excited to use their newfound freedom to explore so many new things in life and the world), I'm willing to consider someone a bit older, up to early to mid 20s, as long as we share a number of interests and you feel like you're looking for something similar to what I've described. It's more that I'm looking for someone with a certain mindset and/or at a certain point in their life, not necessarily that they're SUPER young. My main requirement is, as someone that's slim (and sometimes athletic, when I have time to get more exercise), I need you to also BE [as opposed "working on it"] average weight or below, and plan to stay there (but also to expect me to as well - I don't expect anything from a partner that I don't have at LEAST as high expectations of myself about). I find petite girls super cute, but average size girls are fun and cute as well! Both sizes have their fun and interesting points haha, so I'm fine if you're either one.
Anyways, I think I've talked long enough for now haha, but that gives you a decent idea what I'm looking for plus some basics about me. As the title says, while ideally I'd love to find someone within 3 hours of Harrisonburg, VA, I'm willing to consider someone anywhere in the US (probably just the lower 48 states). Drives longer than 3 hours are definitely still very plausible, possibly even 8 or 10 hours perhaps, and flying is an option if you live significantly further away (plus points if you live anywhere remotely near a major airport, but that's not a requirement). Anyways, my point is, if you're further away than a few hours drive, I'd need you to be willing to travel / work with the distance when the time comes - particularly with the drastically increased costs of gas/travel these days. For example, if you're pretty far away, then after the first visit or two, we'd probably need to be planning longer visits when one of us travels to the other. Anyways, I'm not looking to rush into meeting, but I'm also NOT INTERESTED in an online only relationship. We need to start meeting in person in the relatively near future (i.e. a few weeks or so (possibly several weeks if you're far), assuming we talk a good bit during those few weeks). Also, I'm willing to come to you the first visit (or perhaps more) if you're far, but after the first visit or two you'd need to be willing to visit me (I might be willing to pay for your flight if you can't, we'll see), as that's going to be a LOT cheaper than me flying out somewhere, getting a hotel, and renting a car. On the other hand, if you're much closer, within a reasonably driving range, if needed I could pick you up in my car once you're ready to visit (and I can just drive to you for the first few visits). And if you're within 3 hours or so drive, I'm happy to drive to you for several visits at first, until you're ready to visit me. Regardless of the timing, I'm not going to pressure you do visit me before you're comfortable doing so, and it's something we can play by ear. For example, if you're someone that's super shy I understand if it takes a few extra times of me visiting you before you're ready to visit me, or perhaps we need to chat some extra time first, etc.
Well, thanks for reading my rather long post haha, hopefully I've piqued your interest, and if so, I'd love to hear from you! Certainly feel free to ask me any questions you may have, either if you're interested, or if you're curious but need to know some more before you know if you're interested haha. Also, I'm happy to exchange some (clean!) pictures of each other after a few messages. On that note, when you message me, please tell me at least a little about you (i.e. age, race, height/weight, and a little about you and what you're looking for). Thanks again, and hopefully this can be a great opportunity for both of us, and the start of something amazing!
P.S. To the SUPER shy and lurkers out there - yes, you, you know who you are - if you've been looking and wanting a relationship for a while, but have been too shy to ever post yourself or respond to a post, but you find me / what I'm looking for interesting, THIS is the post for you, THE one you've been waiting for. I've talked to a few VERY shy girls occasionally, and it was such an amazing experience for some of them to talk to someone that understands them and is willing to take the time to get to know them, and give them time to get comfortable before meeting. Someone that can help them slowly come out of their shell, gently nudging them to try new things and slowly be more outgoing, but without being pushy. So if that's you, you fit what I described that I'm looking for, and you're THAT shy but really DO want to be in a relationship, THIS is the post that's the opportunity for you. You've found the person that's willing to spend the time to get to know you and let you get comfortable, and also the guy that's going to enjoy and appreciate spending time with you in person if/when we get to that point (hopefully, that's the objective). I understand that shy girls, if you can get to know them well enough that they get comfortable with you, can often build some of the deepest emotional connections, because they appreciate the few close friends they do have SO much moreso than average people. So, if that's you, and you've been wanting a relationship for a while but been too shy to message anyone, PLEASE do this time! <3 I can carry the conversation if needed, but you need to at least say "hi" so that I know you're interested! [If you're too shy to say much, just say "Hi, I'm shy but I'd love to chat" or something like that]. :) Romance doesn't have to be just something you read about in books or watch in movies, YOU CAN experience it yourself! <3
submitted by InterestingHope2222 to AgeGapRomance [link] [comments]
Ideally I'm looking for a girl that just graduated HS (or did in the last few years), but anyone up to ~25 or so is welcome. If you're shy, even extremely shy, or have strict parents [those aren't requirements either], this could be a great opportunity for you, as I used to be extremely shy when I was younger too (and also had strict / controlling parents, so I understand how that can be too). If you're outgoing, and/or just want to explore new things and places in life, that's cool and fine too! Size wise, as I'm a relatively slim guy myself, I'm attracted to girls that are petite to average weight. I want to be able to do some athletic things together like walking/jogging/perhaps some sports (and/or other things, depending on what you're into). So it's not just an attraction thing that I'm not interested in people overweight, it's a matter of lifestyle / mentality / and being able to do certain things together. Of course I expect my partner to have the same expectations of me, that I don't get fat either.
Anyways, moving on, so thanks for reading my post so far, and if you're looking for what I'd described, hopefully you'll read on and find me interesting, and if so, PLEASE send me a message! It's fine if you are just curious and want to ask some questions and learn more first, before making any decisions / jumping into anything! With that in mind, let me describe myself a bit. I'm a slim, intellectual guy, often been called cute, and I'm pretty upbeat and optimistic, but I've been a bit lonely lately and would LOVE to find a girl that wants a deep, loving, emotionally and mentally close relationship, and is willing to put in the time and effort to build that - assuming of course we click well enough. That doesn't mean we need to rush into things, and I'm not looking to - I'm just saying that should be our end goal. If we date for a while and then decide we're not a close enough match, well, it happens sometimes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try! So, to address the elephant in the room, yes, I would be a good bit older than you, so obviously you need to be OK with dating a middle aged guy, and I realize that's not for everyone - and that's fine. I'm not looking to pressure anyone into anything. But I also know that there most definitely ARE some girls out there that are open to that, as well as some that specifically prefer that. There's advantages to dating someone a bit older than you, such as them being a lot more mature, responsible, considerate, respectful, and, perhaps most importantly, appreciate life and a deep relationship sooooo much more. Someone whom knows when they have someone special with them, and can appreciate and enjoy that on a level that someone your age can't. Anyways, as long as you're genuinely open to a deep, serious relationship with someone my age, hopefully someday leading to a serious LTR and kids, that's fine. Like I said, I'm not looking to rush into anything, I want to spend some time chatting and getting to know each other first, so we can get comfortable with each other before meeting. So if you're shy, even extremely shy, don't worry, it's OK! I actually used to be EXTREMELY shy when I was young, so I totally understand how that can be, and I usually can get along well with shy people because I've been there and understand where they're coming from. Also, if needed I can carry the conversation until you start getting more comfortable and more talkative. ;) If you've been too shy to talk to guys you like (or possibly you do like older guys but are WAY too shy to approach one) - but genuinely DO want a relationship and would love to find someone willing to spend the time to get to know and truly understand you, this could be the opportunity you're looking for! On the other hand, if you're outgoing and love to chat [and looking for a relationship], that's totally fine too! haha Both sides of that coin can be fun, so I'm cool with either way you are. ;)
Alternatively, maybe you had a bad time at prom (or some other romantic event you were looking forward to), or didn't go, or didn't have anyone to go with, or maybe it was OK but didn't nearly live up to your expectations, and would love to get to have some romantic evenings and memories. Or maybe you just didn't get out much (or had super strict parents that didn't let you) and want to get out into the world and explore new places and new things, etc. and would love to have a romantic partner to share all those experiences and memories together with!
...or maybe you had suuuuper strict parents and want to finally get out from under the rock you were living under and finally get to see and do many of the things you've wanted to for a long time! (I would totally understand this one as I had very strict parents)
Maybe you've had a few relationships before but you never clicked very deeply with any of them (and/or they were just too immature), and you're looking for a relationship that's much deeper and more meaningful than that. Or maybe you've never had anyone that you've connected well enough to to feel that they really understand you. ...while I can't promise that we'll click well enough for that to happen, I'd like that to be the goal, and there's certainly a non-zero chance of it happening haha.
Perhaps you're REALLY wanting to be able to fully dive into a relationship as soon as you graduate, and are looking forward to, not necessarily Prom [although possibly that too], but also/mostly just would love to be able to take a long romantic vacation / visit once you're done with school and have some freedom. An opportunity to be yourself and learn about both yourself and your romantic partner.
Or, lastly, maybe you're just single and would love to have someone to cuddle with, talk to, share everything with, watch movies or shows together with, play games together, and travel or explore together!
Anyways, whatever the case is for you, if you think I'm interesting and would like to explore some or all of those things, I'd love to hear from you! Before I get too far ahead of myself, let you tell you a little about me. I'm 39 (but I look a bit younger), white, 5'11" and relatively slim at 165 lbs. I enjoy walking and jogging in the park, as well as exploring new parks / seeing new places and new scenery. Although it's 100 times better when I have someone to enjoy that with and talk to meanwhile! <3 Anyways, I do have a number of nerdy interests - games, movies, anime, computers, science stuff, etc., but I can also enjoy long conversations with a date, walks in the park - or on the beach, playing board, card, or video games together, or sports, etc. Plus I'm open to learning some interests of yours - I can't promise I'll be interested in all of your interests, but it's extremely likely that I'd at least enjoy hearing you talk about them, and some of them I may be happy to join you in (this is very likely). We don't need to share ALL of the same interests, as long as we share a few haha. As far as games go, I'm primarily (almost entirely) a PC gamer, but I occasionally play some console games (primarily older consoles). My favorite thing to do is to cuddle up and watch something fun or interesting, such as movies, YouTube (I watch a lot of YouTube), Anime, Netflix, or Kdramas (occasionally). So you need to at minimum be someone whom would enjoy cuddling up and watching things together with me haha ... but then, almost everyone enjoys doing that. Oh, and I also have a relatively newfound love for Theme Parks and water parks since I recently started going back to them for the first time as an adult recently, and there's many more I'd love to go to - as well as re-visit the ones I've been to with someone special going with me to share the experience with. <3 I'm also curious to try out some amusement parks now that I'm getting more comfortable on rollercoasters.
Anyways, that's a bit about me, I'd love to hear some about you and what your interests are! And maybe note some shared interests that we have! Of course I do have some additional interests, I haven't listed EVERYTHING haha, nor do you need to in a first message haha. Just because my post is long doesn't mean your messages have to be haha. ;)
As for requirements for you, I'm pretty open minded on most things, so I'll try to keep the requirements pretty minimal. Ideally I'm looking for someone that's white or Asian, or some mix thereof (i.e. if you're 50/50, or 50/50 white or Asian and something else, that's fine). I'd consider making exceptions to this for the right person, if we really clicked otherwise. ;) Age wise, while it would be nice to find someone about to graduate HS (and is excited to use their newfound freedom to explore so many new things in life and the world), I'm willing to consider someone a bit older, up to early to mid 20s, as long as we share a number of interests and you feel like you're looking for something similar to what I've described. It's more that I'm looking for someone with a certain mindset and/or at a certain point in their life, not necessarily that they're SUPER young. My main requirement is, as someone that's slim (and sometimes athletic, when I have time to get more exercise), I need you to also BE [as opposed "working on it"] average weight or below, and plan to stay there (but also to expect me to as well - I don't expect anything from a partner that I don't have at LEAST as high expectations of myself about). I find petite girls super cute, but average size girls are fun and cute as well! Both sizes have their fun and interesting points haha, so I'm fine if you're either one.
Anyways, I think I've talked long enough for now haha, but that gives you a decent idea what I'm looking for plus some basics about me. As the title says, while ideally I'd love to find someone within 3 hours of Harrisonburg, VA, I'm willing to consider someone anywhere in the US (probably just the lower 48 states). Drives longer than 3 hours are definitely still very plausible, possibly even 8 or 10 hours perhaps, and flying is an option if you live significantly further away (plus points if you live anywhere remotely near a major airport, but that's not a requirement). Anyways, my point is, if you're further away than a few hours drive, I'd need you to be willing to travel / work with the distance when the time comes - particularly with the drastically increased costs of gas/travel these days. For example, if you're pretty far away, then after the first visit or two, we'd probably need to be planning longer visits when one of us travels to the other. Anyways, I'm not looking to rush into meeting, but I'm also NOT INTERESTED in an online only relationship. We need to start meeting in person in the relatively near future (i.e. a few weeks or so (possibly several weeks if you're far), assuming we talk a good bit during those few weeks). Also, I'm willing to come to you the first visit (or perhaps more) if you're far, but after the first visit or two you'd need to be willing to visit me (I might be willing to pay for your flight if you can't, we'll see), as that's going to be a LOT cheaper than me flying out somewhere, getting a hotel, and renting a car. On the other hand, if you're much closer, within a reasonably driving range, if needed I could pick you up in my car once you're ready to visit (and I can just drive to you for the first few visits). And if you're within 3 hours or so drive, I'm happy to drive to you for several visits at first, until you're ready to visit me. Regardless of the timing, I'm not going to pressure you do visit me before you're comfortable doing so, and it's something we can play by ear. For example, if you're someone that's super shy I understand if it takes a few extra times of me visiting you before you're ready to visit me, or perhaps we need to chat some extra time first, etc.
Well, thanks for reading my rather long post haha, hopefully I've piqued your interest, and if so, I'd love to hear from you! Certainly feel free to ask me any questions you may have, either if you're interested, or if you're curious but need to know some more before you know if you're interested haha. Also, I'm happy to exchange some (clean!) pictures of each other after a few messages. On that note, when you message me, please tell me at least a little about you (i.e. age, race, height/weight, and a little about you and what you're looking for). Thanks again, and hopefully this can be a great opportunity for both of us, and the start of something amazing!
P.S. To the SUPER shy and lurkers out there - yes, you, you know who you are - if you've been looking and wanting a relationship for a while, but have been too shy to ever post yourself or respond to a post, but you find me / what I'm looking for interesting, THIS is the post for you, THE one you've been waiting for. I've talked to a few VERY shy girls occasionally, and it was such an amazing experience for some of them to talk to someone that understands them and is willing to take the time to get to know them, and give them time to get comfortable before meeting. Someone that can help them slowly come out of their shell, gently nudging them to try new things and slowly be more outgoing, but without being pushy. So if that's you, you fit what I described that I'm looking for, and you're THAT shy but really DO want to be in a relationship, THIS is the post that's the opportunity for you. You've found the person that's willing to spend the time to get to know you and let you get comfortable, and also the guy that's going to enjoy and appreciate spending time with you in person if/when we get to that point (hopefully, that's the objective). I understand that shy girls, if you can get to know them well enough that they get comfortable with you, can often build some of the deepest emotional connections, because they appreciate the few close friends they do have SO much moreso than average people. So, if that's you, and you've been wanting a relationship for a while but been too shy to message anyone, PLEASE do this time! <3 I can carry the conversation if needed, but you need to at least say "hi" so that I know you're interested! [If you're too shy to say much, just say "Hi, I'm shy but I'd love to chat" or something like that]. :) Romance doesn't have to be just something you read about in books or watch in movies, YOU CAN experience it yourself! <3
2023.03.21 20:20 Strength-InThe-Loins 20 Years Later: Green Zone
Twenty years ago this week, the United States began its blatantly criminal invasion of an unthreatening sovereign state that inevitably turned into a hideous quagmire.
I had joined the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 2001. I was still in boot camp on 9/11, which made for an interesting couple of days. In early 2002 I obtained a two-year leave of absence to ‘serve’ a Mormon mission, and by March of 2003 I was more than a year into being a full-time religious propagandist in Mexico.
The war was big news in Mexico, with public opinion generally running pretty strong against it. Given my history of relentless indoctrination, and my current assignment of telling everyone I saw that they were immorally wrong about everything that mattered, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to consume any kind of non-religious media material of any kind, I of course took the opposite position.
But I improved with time. I came home in early 2004, and quickly discovered that the war was, at best, very badly managed. But I was back into military service (as a reservist), so I fully expected to end up being deployed to Iraq at some point.
The miserable shitshow that played out across Iraq throughout 2005 and especially 2006 convinced me that the war wasn’t just badly executed but a hopelessly terrible idea from its very beginning, supported by blatant lies and unconscionable manipulation.
When my turn to deploy finally came, in 2009, I was rather conflicted. On the one hand, I clearly understood that the war was immoral and dangerous and I should avoid it at all cost. On the other hand, I was four years into attending college and making no discernible progress towards any of the goals I had set for myself: graduating, choosing a career, getting married, existing as a functional adult. So the choice (and it was a choice: contrary to the contract I thought I’d signed, I was set to be released from service in mid-2008, and so this deployment was entirely optional for me) was fraught. I didn’t want to kill or die for a mistake; but I also didn’t want to dodge what I was sure would be the challenge of a lifetime for a second time; and I also could not say with a straight face that I had anything better to do.
So I went. It didn’t go well , but it went at least as well as I had any right to expect. I never saw anything like combat (shooting flares at a few civilian vehicles was as close as I ever got), was never in danger, and so on. But it was no picnic, either: severe and extended boredom can be just as damaging as actual trauma, and the psychological abuse inherent in military life was constant. And things weren’t entirely safe: my unit had two suicides during the work-up, and given the state of my mental health, I was never all that unlikely to have joined them.
The whole experience did me no immediate good, but as an experience with disillusionment with and escaping from an all-consuming self-admiring institution, it was a pretty decent dry run for my exit from Mormonism a few years later. And, as I had expected, it got me a year’s salary (which was probably the majority of the money I’d made in my life up to that point), and a lifetime of monthly disability payments and free health insurance. So I really can’t say I completely regret it.
The movie I’ve chosen to commemorate this anniversary is Green Zone, because it came out shortly after I came back, and I’d always wanted to see it, and I’d heard that it took an interesting angle on the whole mess, and I’d heard that it was pretty good (which is a rare quality among Iraq War movies, which have, shall we say, a mixed record ). And it’s pretty good, though of course it has some issues.
The best thing about it is how it nails the look and feel of the military occupation. The movie abounds with details large and small that just look exactly right, from US troops driving green Humvees with no doors and unprotected gun turrets* to piles of Pizza-Hut-labeled shipping containers at the airport to one of them carrying around a bottle of chewing-tobacco spit to the use of the then-new Blue Force Tracker technology. Greg Kinnear as the villain of the piece looks exactly like he should, a completely nondescript bureaucrat that would never get a second look at any white-collar office in America, incongruously transplanted into a blood-soaked conflict in an environment where only fools and the extraordinarily pampered (he is both, of course) dress like that. And I didn’t know I needed to see exactly what the Google homepage looked like in 2003, but I did, and the movie delivered.
It’s also a very good look at the culture of the US military; the briefing with Colonel Bethel is pretty spot-on (except for the one guy interrupting to speak the truth; that pretty much never happens). It’s a bit optimistic to assume that a random US military unit would have even one Arabic speaker in it, but the movie makes up for it by having him only know a dialect that’s completely useless in Iraq. The soldier who argues with Damon and tells him that the reasons for going to war don’t matter to him struck me as a perfect distillation of the me-first attitude that the US military explicitly teaches its members: the “My only job is to get home safe” dogma was basically a part of the official training materials, very much to the detriment of accomplishing any particular mission beyond that (and of course no one ever wants to talk about how obviously cowardly and selfish such an attitude is).
The movie also does well with points of view from outside of the US military, namely the absolute terror of being an Iraqi unfortunate enough to fall into US hands during the occupation, and the possibly greater terror of being on the ground when the Americans started bombing or disbanded the Iraqi army and purged the civil service, which this movie treats as an irrefutable sign of the apocalypse. Not that any of that took any great insight to determine in 2010, years after it became clear what US detention was like and how foolish it was to send thousands of unhappy armed men out into the streets with nothing to do, but it’s still good to see it stated so plainly.
One aspect that does not look so good is the trademark Paul Greengrass shaky-cam technique; it’s tolerable in the actual action scenes, which are supposed to be stressful and chaotic, but in the opening scene, in which the ‘action’ mostly involves men walking quickly down crowded hallways,** it really doesn’t work. I do wonder how Greengrass does it; does he plan and rehearse the camera movements, or just have the actors do their thing while someone waves the camera around randomly? One analysis of one of Greengrass’s Bourne movies pointed out that it seems that the camera can’t predict the characters’ movements, which adds to the sense of uncertainty and danger; I wonder how closely Greengrass controls the camera’s ‘random’ movements, and what he thinks he’s saying with them.
There are other moments that fall short of the movie’s best moments of authenticity: Damon’s first scene, in which he explains (over the radio, no less!) where his team is going and what they’ll be doing there is pure Hollywood bullshit; any such explanation would be given (likely multiple times) well before the mission actually started, and the team will try to minimize radio use while out in the field. And that’s not the only moment of clumsy exposition; once that mission fails to find anything of use, Damon laments “That’s the third one in a row,” to a roomful of guys who’ve been on all the same missions and all presumably know exactly how many of them there have been. On that same mission, someone, for some reason, uses a Geiger counter to analyze a suspected chemical weapons site, which…what?
The movie’s second-strongest sympathetic character is a CIA ‘Middle-East expert’ that knows everything he needs to know and that no one listens to. While I don’t doubt that no one important listened to anyone who knew what was going on, the thing-knower being a CIA agent that the CIA chose to send to Baghdad seems unlikely; were there any such thing-knowers left in the CIA in 2003? If so, why would leadership (which was fully behind the WMD hoax) send such an ‘unreliable’ person to such a sensitive post? Surely they knew there was a risk of him doing exactly what he ended up doing, and would have kept him as far from the action as possible.***
And how and why does he have such detailed information at his fingertips about the movements of people that don’t officially concern him? That information would be a closely guarded secret that he has no plausible official need to know. And why the hell does he dare take a very important phone call, which concerns a blatantly illegal operation he’s running off the books, on speaker in a room that’s crowded with god knows who that he very obviously can’t necessarily trust?
Once he makes contact with Damon, he sets up a meeting in the most secure part of the infamous Green Zone, which Damon is somehow able to access with minimal trouble. That strikes me as outrageously implausible; the highest security I ever experienced in Iraq was about 37 levels lower than the Green Zone (where American civilians could expect to live and work in pretty much complete safety), and even there I had to show my dog tags and scan my ID to enter the gym or the chow hall. Green Zone security would emphatically not just wave through any random US military vehicle or personnel that showed up at the gate. Damon would have to show some kind of proof that he belongs there, and since he’s going to an unauthorized meeting with a civilian far outside his chain of command, he just wouldn’t have that, and the gate guards would turn him away.
At that meeting, the CIA guy instructs Damon to get out of uniform, which is wise, but we never find out where Damon gets the civilian clothes and the civilian body armor we see him wearing right after. (I doubt he would have brought civvies with him for his invasion deployment, and even military body armor was pretty hard to come by in Iraq in 2003.) But also I understand why the movie felt it didn’t have time for a deep dive into this question. What it leads to is egregious, though; in the movie’s climactic scene, Damon, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying a clearly non-American weapon he stole from a local, runs through a combat situation involving US troops who spot him from a helicopter…and they somehow assume that he’s an American who’s on their side. What makes them think that? Did all US troops in Iraq in 2003 have implanted RFID chips that all US night-vision scopes could pick out from a distance? (No. No they did not.) Nothing at all that they can see indicates that Damon is American, but even if they knew he was American, he’s actually working against those particular US troops (who are very explicitly there to kill the man that Damon is trying to contact and rescue), and so there’s still no reason to identify him as a ‘friendly.’ This is a most unfortunate misstep, because doing it more realistically (having the US troops not know who Damon is, assume he’s their enemy, and act accordingly) would actually better serve the movie’s general theme of disunity and confusion.
Those same US troops are first seen arriving in a helicopter that suddenly arrives from below the not-very-high high ground that Damon is standing on, which means they must have been flying very low indeed (like, below rooftop level) over a very urban area, which is ridiculous; and without anyone hearing them approach from miles away, which is even more ridiculous.**** But those same US troops also drive around in Humvees at night with their headlights blazing, which is just dumb enough to be real. But what’s way too smart to be real is the timing of that helicopter arrival; Damon apprehends an important individual, and those troops (who are also looking for that person for unrelated reasons) somehow know about that and are able to arrive instantly, which…rather stretches the bounds of plausibility.
There are also some timeline issues, which are bad to have in a movie that is so closely tied to historical events on very specific dates. The invasion began on March 19, as seen in the first scene. Then we skip forward to ‘four weeks later,’ around April 16. The rest of the movie seems to take place over only a few days, and yet prominent plot points include George W. Bush’s (spit) Mission Accomplished speech (which happened on May 1), and the CPA’s dissolution of the Iraqi state apparatus (which happened on May 23). In the movie, those 22 days seem to pass in a matter of hours.
Also, and this is unbelievably petty of me, somewhere in the Green Zone, sometime at least as late as April 16, we catch a glimpse of someone watching a college basketball game (UCLA vs. Oregon, if I’m not mistaken) on TV. The final game of the 2003 NCAA tournament was played on April 7, and didn’t involve either team: Oregon lost to Utah in the first round, and UCLA didn’t even make the tournament, so that game is misplaced in time by at least a month.
Around the time it came out, I heard that this movie was a kind of Inglourious Basterds treatment of the Iraq War. While it’s certainly not NOT that (in that it’s an optimistic fantasy that revises well-known historical events about which there is little cause for optimism), it’s also different in that it doesn’t depart from the historical events nearly as much. There really was a ‘Magellan’ figure in real life, but he was called ‘Curveball,’ and, despite being pretty different from the version in the movie, he had precisely the same effect of being cited in favor of the invasion. In the movie, Magellan is an Iraqi Army officer who secretly meets with Americans to tell them that Iraq has no WMD programs. The Americans then falsely report that he’s told them Iraq has WMDs, and the war machine’s gears start to turn and the Americans plot to kill Magellan so he won’t reveal what he actually told them. In reality, Curveball was an Iraqi exile who actually told the Germans (not the Americans) what the Americans wanted to hear, because he figured it would make his asylum application (he’d fled Iraq after embezzling money from his government employer) easier. I’m not sure why the movie felt the need to change these details; an Iraqi who lies for his own gain is at least as interesting a character as an Iraqi who tells a truth that certain people are determined to disbelieve, and what US intelligence did with Curveball’s obviously flawed reports was hardly any more honest than blatantly telling the world he’d said something he never said.
The movie isn’t really clear what it thinks Damon’s heroism amounts to. He leaks his final report to every news outlet he can think of. Perhaps one of them will publish, but perhaps not. News outlets strive to scoop each other, but sometimes, as the real-life Iraq War amply shows, they collude to cover things up, especially when it’s something as explosive and ‘unpatriotic’ as “The whole reason for this very popular war was a complete lie.” Furthermore, how credible is Damon’s information? It’s based entirely on conversations he says he had with an enemy general who is now dead. No one has any reason to believe these conversations took place, or if they did that the general said what Damon says he said, or if he did that he wasn’t mistaken or lying.
But even if someone does publish, it will make no difference. US troops are already in Baghdad, and the CPA has already taken the plunge that made civil war inevitable. A report (even one whose credibility is bulletproof, which this one very much is not) that the whole war was based on a lie will not change anything, any more than it did in real life when the lack of WMDs and the falsity of the pre-war intelligence became similarly clear on a similar timeline.
In any case, Damon’s Army career is over. He leaked a very sensitive internal document, using an email account under his own name. He might not be guaranteed to go to prison, but he has to be in a shitload of trouble. The Army quietly booting him out and never speaking of this again is the absolute best-case scenario for him.
The movie’s two main sympathetic characters take turns reminding each other to not be naïve, but the movie itself is pretty naïve if it thinks that what we see is a happy ending. Or maybe it’s not meant to be a happy ending, and I’m the one being naïve.
In any case, I was expecting the SF team led by Jason Isaacs to kill Damon and then, upon realizing who he was, hype him up as a hero who gave his life for his country, thus completely obscuring the very unpatriotic truth about what he died doing and why. You know, a slightly worse version of exactly what the real-life Army actually did with the actual case of Pat Tillman.
The movie also runs into trouble upon consideration of its moral perspective; movies love the idea of someone going rogue, breaking whatever rules get in the way of ‘doing the right thing,’ as Damon does throughout the movie. But that’s the whole problem with the Iraq War, isn’t it? Government officials decided that brutalizing Iraq was ‘the right thing,’ and they broke any number of rules of humanity and decency (not to mention actual laws) to make it happen. They went rogue exactly as Damon does, so who can really say that he’s right and they’re wrong?
His confrontation with Amy Ryan’s reporter character also struck me as backwards; the movie wants us to see it as Damon, the heroic teller of inconvenient truths, heroically confronting the corrupt and decadent and much more powerful peddler of lies. But it’s really not that at all; she got lied to just as hard as he did, and he’s a heavily armed agent of the state security apparatus upon which her life and safety directly depend. It’s pretty ridiculous to see him as any kind of underdog in that situation.
Some stray observations:
It’s pretty funny that the early scene at the airport shows the blown-up remains of a large cargo plane, given the famous fate of the An-225 in that other, more recent, blatantly criminal invasion of an unthreatening sovereign state that inevitably turns into a hideous quagmire.
I was surprised by how much of the spoken Arabic I understood; I ‘studied’ Arabic for two years in college, and didn’t really get anywhere with it, but there were multiple instances where seeing the English word in the subtitles brought to mind a particular Arabic word that the characters promptly said. (These include ‘ichwan’ for ‘brothers,’ ‘kul il balad’ for ‘the entire country,’ ‘bernamaj’ for ‘program,’ and some others.)
Ben Sliney is in the cast as a random bureaucrat in the background of one of the Green Zone scenes. This is the air-traffic-control official who gave the ground-all-flights order on 9/11, and then legendarily played himself in the movie United 93. This is his only other non-documentary film credit, so I hope he kept his day job.
*By the time I got to Iraq, the Humvees had all been painted desert-tan and heavily armored, but my understanding is that this change did not take hold until like 2007.
**In a manner unfortunately reminiscent of George Bluth Senior ‘running with great intensity.’ Yes, this is foreshadowing. It is inevitable, because despite its ambitions, this movie proves that the definitive Hollywood treatment of the Iraq War is still selected episodes of Arrested Development. (And Generation Kill, which I considered revisiting for this anniversary post.)
***I do enjoy how Kinnear frames the idea of people who know things: they’re ‘dinosaurs’ with heads full of ‘old ideas,’ which sounds like he’s being boldly innovative and courageously resisting hidebound bureaucracies that have outlived their usefulness. But of course the ‘old ideas’ are things like ‘Know what the hell is going on’ and ‘Don’t assume you can simply kill anyone you don’t like,’ and Kinnear’s ‘bold innovations’ are just clueless wishful thinking.
****Movies very often miss this detail, but helicopters are really loud. Almost as loud as gunfire, though of course movies also very often fail to convey how loud gunfire is. It is impossible for a low-flying helicopter to sneak up like that on anyone with functional ears. They’d be drowning out any attempt at conversation before they got within hundreds of yards.
submitted by Strength-InThe-Loins to LookBackInAnger [link] [comments]
I had joined the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 2001. I was still in boot camp on 9/11, which made for an interesting couple of days. In early 2002 I obtained a two-year leave of absence to ‘serve’ a Mormon mission, and by March of 2003 I was more than a year into being a full-time religious propagandist in Mexico.
The war was big news in Mexico, with public opinion generally running pretty strong against it. Given my history of relentless indoctrination, and my current assignment of telling everyone I saw that they were immorally wrong about everything that mattered, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to consume any kind of non-religious media material of any kind, I of course took the opposite position.
But I improved with time. I came home in early 2004, and quickly discovered that the war was, at best, very badly managed. But I was back into military service (as a reservist), so I fully expected to end up being deployed to Iraq at some point.
The miserable shitshow that played out across Iraq throughout 2005 and especially 2006 convinced me that the war wasn’t just badly executed but a hopelessly terrible idea from its very beginning, supported by blatant lies and unconscionable manipulation.
When my turn to deploy finally came, in 2009, I was rather conflicted. On the one hand, I clearly understood that the war was immoral and dangerous and I should avoid it at all cost. On the other hand, I was four years into attending college and making no discernible progress towards any of the goals I had set for myself: graduating, choosing a career, getting married, existing as a functional adult. So the choice (and it was a choice: contrary to the contract I thought I’d signed, I was set to be released from service in mid-2008, and so this deployment was entirely optional for me) was fraught. I didn’t want to kill or die for a mistake; but I also didn’t want to dodge what I was sure would be the challenge of a lifetime for a second time; and I also could not say with a straight face that I had anything better to do.
So I went. It didn’t go well , but it went at least as well as I had any right to expect. I never saw anything like combat (shooting flares at a few civilian vehicles was as close as I ever got), was never in danger, and so on. But it was no picnic, either: severe and extended boredom can be just as damaging as actual trauma, and the psychological abuse inherent in military life was constant. And things weren’t entirely safe: my unit had two suicides during the work-up, and given the state of my mental health, I was never all that unlikely to have joined them.
The whole experience did me no immediate good, but as an experience with disillusionment with and escaping from an all-consuming self-admiring institution, it was a pretty decent dry run for my exit from Mormonism a few years later. And, as I had expected, it got me a year’s salary (which was probably the majority of the money I’d made in my life up to that point), and a lifetime of monthly disability payments and free health insurance. So I really can’t say I completely regret it.
The movie I’ve chosen to commemorate this anniversary is Green Zone, because it came out shortly after I came back, and I’d always wanted to see it, and I’d heard that it took an interesting angle on the whole mess, and I’d heard that it was pretty good (which is a rare quality among Iraq War movies, which have, shall we say, a mixed record ). And it’s pretty good, though of course it has some issues.
The best thing about it is how it nails the look and feel of the military occupation. The movie abounds with details large and small that just look exactly right, from US troops driving green Humvees with no doors and unprotected gun turrets* to piles of Pizza-Hut-labeled shipping containers at the airport to one of them carrying around a bottle of chewing-tobacco spit to the use of the then-new Blue Force Tracker technology. Greg Kinnear as the villain of the piece looks exactly like he should, a completely nondescript bureaucrat that would never get a second look at any white-collar office in America, incongruously transplanted into a blood-soaked conflict in an environment where only fools and the extraordinarily pampered (he is both, of course) dress like that. And I didn’t know I needed to see exactly what the Google homepage looked like in 2003, but I did, and the movie delivered.
It’s also a very good look at the culture of the US military; the briefing with Colonel Bethel is pretty spot-on (except for the one guy interrupting to speak the truth; that pretty much never happens). It’s a bit optimistic to assume that a random US military unit would have even one Arabic speaker in it, but the movie makes up for it by having him only know a dialect that’s completely useless in Iraq. The soldier who argues with Damon and tells him that the reasons for going to war don’t matter to him struck me as a perfect distillation of the me-first attitude that the US military explicitly teaches its members: the “My only job is to get home safe” dogma was basically a part of the official training materials, very much to the detriment of accomplishing any particular mission beyond that (and of course no one ever wants to talk about how obviously cowardly and selfish such an attitude is).
The movie also does well with points of view from outside of the US military, namely the absolute terror of being an Iraqi unfortunate enough to fall into US hands during the occupation, and the possibly greater terror of being on the ground when the Americans started bombing or disbanded the Iraqi army and purged the civil service, which this movie treats as an irrefutable sign of the apocalypse. Not that any of that took any great insight to determine in 2010, years after it became clear what US detention was like and how foolish it was to send thousands of unhappy armed men out into the streets with nothing to do, but it’s still good to see it stated so plainly.
One aspect that does not look so good is the trademark Paul Greengrass shaky-cam technique; it’s tolerable in the actual action scenes, which are supposed to be stressful and chaotic, but in the opening scene, in which the ‘action’ mostly involves men walking quickly down crowded hallways,** it really doesn’t work. I do wonder how Greengrass does it; does he plan and rehearse the camera movements, or just have the actors do their thing while someone waves the camera around randomly? One analysis of one of Greengrass’s Bourne movies pointed out that it seems that the camera can’t predict the characters’ movements, which adds to the sense of uncertainty and danger; I wonder how closely Greengrass controls the camera’s ‘random’ movements, and what he thinks he’s saying with them.
There are other moments that fall short of the movie’s best moments of authenticity: Damon’s first scene, in which he explains (over the radio, no less!) where his team is going and what they’ll be doing there is pure Hollywood bullshit; any such explanation would be given (likely multiple times) well before the mission actually started, and the team will try to minimize radio use while out in the field. And that’s not the only moment of clumsy exposition; once that mission fails to find anything of use, Damon laments “That’s the third one in a row,” to a roomful of guys who’ve been on all the same missions and all presumably know exactly how many of them there have been. On that same mission, someone, for some reason, uses a Geiger counter to analyze a suspected chemical weapons site, which…what?
The movie’s second-strongest sympathetic character is a CIA ‘Middle-East expert’ that knows everything he needs to know and that no one listens to. While I don’t doubt that no one important listened to anyone who knew what was going on, the thing-knower being a CIA agent that the CIA chose to send to Baghdad seems unlikely; were there any such thing-knowers left in the CIA in 2003? If so, why would leadership (which was fully behind the WMD hoax) send such an ‘unreliable’ person to such a sensitive post? Surely they knew there was a risk of him doing exactly what he ended up doing, and would have kept him as far from the action as possible.***
And how and why does he have such detailed information at his fingertips about the movements of people that don’t officially concern him? That information would be a closely guarded secret that he has no plausible official need to know. And why the hell does he dare take a very important phone call, which concerns a blatantly illegal operation he’s running off the books, on speaker in a room that’s crowded with god knows who that he very obviously can’t necessarily trust?
Once he makes contact with Damon, he sets up a meeting in the most secure part of the infamous Green Zone, which Damon is somehow able to access with minimal trouble. That strikes me as outrageously implausible; the highest security I ever experienced in Iraq was about 37 levels lower than the Green Zone (where American civilians could expect to live and work in pretty much complete safety), and even there I had to show my dog tags and scan my ID to enter the gym or the chow hall. Green Zone security would emphatically not just wave through any random US military vehicle or personnel that showed up at the gate. Damon would have to show some kind of proof that he belongs there, and since he’s going to an unauthorized meeting with a civilian far outside his chain of command, he just wouldn’t have that, and the gate guards would turn him away.
At that meeting, the CIA guy instructs Damon to get out of uniform, which is wise, but we never find out where Damon gets the civilian clothes and the civilian body armor we see him wearing right after. (I doubt he would have brought civvies with him for his invasion deployment, and even military body armor was pretty hard to come by in Iraq in 2003.) But also I understand why the movie felt it didn’t have time for a deep dive into this question. What it leads to is egregious, though; in the movie’s climactic scene, Damon, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying a clearly non-American weapon he stole from a local, runs through a combat situation involving US troops who spot him from a helicopter…and they somehow assume that he’s an American who’s on their side. What makes them think that? Did all US troops in Iraq in 2003 have implanted RFID chips that all US night-vision scopes could pick out from a distance? (No. No they did not.) Nothing at all that they can see indicates that Damon is American, but even if they knew he was American, he’s actually working against those particular US troops (who are very explicitly there to kill the man that Damon is trying to contact and rescue), and so there’s still no reason to identify him as a ‘friendly.’ This is a most unfortunate misstep, because doing it more realistically (having the US troops not know who Damon is, assume he’s their enemy, and act accordingly) would actually better serve the movie’s general theme of disunity and confusion.
Those same US troops are first seen arriving in a helicopter that suddenly arrives from below the not-very-high high ground that Damon is standing on, which means they must have been flying very low indeed (like, below rooftop level) over a very urban area, which is ridiculous; and without anyone hearing them approach from miles away, which is even more ridiculous.**** But those same US troops also drive around in Humvees at night with their headlights blazing, which is just dumb enough to be real. But what’s way too smart to be real is the timing of that helicopter arrival; Damon apprehends an important individual, and those troops (who are also looking for that person for unrelated reasons) somehow know about that and are able to arrive instantly, which…rather stretches the bounds of plausibility.
There are also some timeline issues, which are bad to have in a movie that is so closely tied to historical events on very specific dates. The invasion began on March 19, as seen in the first scene. Then we skip forward to ‘four weeks later,’ around April 16. The rest of the movie seems to take place over only a few days, and yet prominent plot points include George W. Bush’s (spit) Mission Accomplished speech (which happened on May 1), and the CPA’s dissolution of the Iraqi state apparatus (which happened on May 23). In the movie, those 22 days seem to pass in a matter of hours.
Also, and this is unbelievably petty of me, somewhere in the Green Zone, sometime at least as late as April 16, we catch a glimpse of someone watching a college basketball game (UCLA vs. Oregon, if I’m not mistaken) on TV. The final game of the 2003 NCAA tournament was played on April 7, and didn’t involve either team: Oregon lost to Utah in the first round, and UCLA didn’t even make the tournament, so that game is misplaced in time by at least a month.
Around the time it came out, I heard that this movie was a kind of Inglourious Basterds treatment of the Iraq War. While it’s certainly not NOT that (in that it’s an optimistic fantasy that revises well-known historical events about which there is little cause for optimism), it’s also different in that it doesn’t depart from the historical events nearly as much. There really was a ‘Magellan’ figure in real life, but he was called ‘Curveball,’ and, despite being pretty different from the version in the movie, he had precisely the same effect of being cited in favor of the invasion. In the movie, Magellan is an Iraqi Army officer who secretly meets with Americans to tell them that Iraq has no WMD programs. The Americans then falsely report that he’s told them Iraq has WMDs, and the war machine’s gears start to turn and the Americans plot to kill Magellan so he won’t reveal what he actually told them. In reality, Curveball was an Iraqi exile who actually told the Germans (not the Americans) what the Americans wanted to hear, because he figured it would make his asylum application (he’d fled Iraq after embezzling money from his government employer) easier. I’m not sure why the movie felt the need to change these details; an Iraqi who lies for his own gain is at least as interesting a character as an Iraqi who tells a truth that certain people are determined to disbelieve, and what US intelligence did with Curveball’s obviously flawed reports was hardly any more honest than blatantly telling the world he’d said something he never said.
The movie isn’t really clear what it thinks Damon’s heroism amounts to. He leaks his final report to every news outlet he can think of. Perhaps one of them will publish, but perhaps not. News outlets strive to scoop each other, but sometimes, as the real-life Iraq War amply shows, they collude to cover things up, especially when it’s something as explosive and ‘unpatriotic’ as “The whole reason for this very popular war was a complete lie.” Furthermore, how credible is Damon’s information? It’s based entirely on conversations he says he had with an enemy general who is now dead. No one has any reason to believe these conversations took place, or if they did that the general said what Damon says he said, or if he did that he wasn’t mistaken or lying.
But even if someone does publish, it will make no difference. US troops are already in Baghdad, and the CPA has already taken the plunge that made civil war inevitable. A report (even one whose credibility is bulletproof, which this one very much is not) that the whole war was based on a lie will not change anything, any more than it did in real life when the lack of WMDs and the falsity of the pre-war intelligence became similarly clear on a similar timeline.
In any case, Damon’s Army career is over. He leaked a very sensitive internal document, using an email account under his own name. He might not be guaranteed to go to prison, but he has to be in a shitload of trouble. The Army quietly booting him out and never speaking of this again is the absolute best-case scenario for him.
The movie’s two main sympathetic characters take turns reminding each other to not be naïve, but the movie itself is pretty naïve if it thinks that what we see is a happy ending. Or maybe it’s not meant to be a happy ending, and I’m the one being naïve.
In any case, I was expecting the SF team led by Jason Isaacs to kill Damon and then, upon realizing who he was, hype him up as a hero who gave his life for his country, thus completely obscuring the very unpatriotic truth about what he died doing and why. You know, a slightly worse version of exactly what the real-life Army actually did with the actual case of Pat Tillman.
The movie also runs into trouble upon consideration of its moral perspective; movies love the idea of someone going rogue, breaking whatever rules get in the way of ‘doing the right thing,’ as Damon does throughout the movie. But that’s the whole problem with the Iraq War, isn’t it? Government officials decided that brutalizing Iraq was ‘the right thing,’ and they broke any number of rules of humanity and decency (not to mention actual laws) to make it happen. They went rogue exactly as Damon does, so who can really say that he’s right and they’re wrong?
His confrontation with Amy Ryan’s reporter character also struck me as backwards; the movie wants us to see it as Damon, the heroic teller of inconvenient truths, heroically confronting the corrupt and decadent and much more powerful peddler of lies. But it’s really not that at all; she got lied to just as hard as he did, and he’s a heavily armed agent of the state security apparatus upon which her life and safety directly depend. It’s pretty ridiculous to see him as any kind of underdog in that situation.
Some stray observations:
It’s pretty funny that the early scene at the airport shows the blown-up remains of a large cargo plane, given the famous fate of the An-225 in that other, more recent, blatantly criminal invasion of an unthreatening sovereign state that inevitably turns into a hideous quagmire.
I was surprised by how much of the spoken Arabic I understood; I ‘studied’ Arabic for two years in college, and didn’t really get anywhere with it, but there were multiple instances where seeing the English word in the subtitles brought to mind a particular Arabic word that the characters promptly said. (These include ‘ichwan’ for ‘brothers,’ ‘kul il balad’ for ‘the entire country,’ ‘bernamaj’ for ‘program,’ and some others.)
Ben Sliney is in the cast as a random bureaucrat in the background of one of the Green Zone scenes. This is the air-traffic-control official who gave the ground-all-flights order on 9/11, and then legendarily played himself in the movie United 93. This is his only other non-documentary film credit, so I hope he kept his day job.
*By the time I got to Iraq, the Humvees had all been painted desert-tan and heavily armored, but my understanding is that this change did not take hold until like 2007.
**In a manner unfortunately reminiscent of George Bluth Senior ‘running with great intensity.’ Yes, this is foreshadowing. It is inevitable, because despite its ambitions, this movie proves that the definitive Hollywood treatment of the Iraq War is still selected episodes of Arrested Development. (And Generation Kill, which I considered revisiting for this anniversary post.)
***I do enjoy how Kinnear frames the idea of people who know things: they’re ‘dinosaurs’ with heads full of ‘old ideas,’ which sounds like he’s being boldly innovative and courageously resisting hidebound bureaucracies that have outlived their usefulness. But of course the ‘old ideas’ are things like ‘Know what the hell is going on’ and ‘Don’t assume you can simply kill anyone you don’t like,’ and Kinnear’s ‘bold innovations’ are just clueless wishful thinking.
****Movies very often miss this detail, but helicopters are really loud. Almost as loud as gunfire, though of course movies also very often fail to convey how loud gunfire is. It is impossible for a low-flying helicopter to sneak up like that on anyone with functional ears. They’d be drowning out any attempt at conversation before they got within hundreds of yards.
2023.03.21 20:18 Sethhann Ashamed of my past behaviour and don't know how to move forward - BPD traits?
TL;DR:
I’m almost certain after my behaviour over the past two years that I have BPD but have only a diagnosis of ADHD despite telling mental health team.
I had a very upsetting and painful relationship with someone that made me feel really bad about myself. I hit out and had a mental breakdown, no I don’t feel like I can live my life because of who the person is and what they have made up about me on top of my already (true) crazy… I don’t really know what to do because I have really good friends in the city I live in but know that anything I do can and will be cancelled by this person.
oh goddddd, so I have a diagnosis of ADHD and not BPD but I did some crazy shit to someone I dated - so I reckon I do have BPD/ I was suffering from psychosis/ super low self esteem + trauma.
Context:Me - 26F Her 32F (I’ll use R to refer to hr)
I was living in my van at the time, really down and out - low sel esteem felt like i had nothing to offer.
She has a fancy salon on the main st in the area where kinda everyone i know in the city is/ DJs at the radio station across the st from r’s salon. To get anywhere you need to walk past her salon or try to avoid it. She knows all the big names etc and is like semi -famous.
Basically I was going through a bit of a rough time - had been struggling with homelessness for a while and that had gotten me into tricky situations which I didn't realise were probably leaving a mark on me. I hadn't been back in the UK for that long, having lived in Greece working in the camps for a while until covid happened and i experienced burnout and got back into drugs when trying to make new friends since i'd been abroad for so long. I sobered up and sorted myself out a bit and went and lived in my van tree-planting and having a nice time.
Anyways, I wasn't really into dating at that point but had dating apps and got talking to someone. Straight away she was really telling me loads about herself and so I opened up to over messages etc, she'd voice note and send pictures asking me to identify mushrooms she'd picked and asked me my opinions/ knowledge about intellectual topics etc, and basically seemed to have a lot in common with me/ wanted similar things.
We don't meet for a while because I'm flaky and always on the move. We finally meet, she comes to a friends house where i sometimes went when I was in the city (i lived in my van remember) and we take some mushrooms, laugh loads and then go to the club together, as soon as i get there she ignores me completely- but i bump into a friend so spend the night dancing with him.. i tell r I'm going to leave and we chat for a bit and then go outside, I ask if she's attracted to me because I'm confused by our interaction, i like r from our chats and how much we laughed together but then i think that she thinks I'm weird hence why she ignored me in the club- we end up circling each other and then kissing for a while, I go to leave and she grabs me an throws me to the wall and kisses me more (HOT). In the morning she messages me 'you're on my mind this morning'- I find it kinda wild, but like flattering and hot.
Anyways I'm away again and she tries to get me to drive back to the city to fuck a few times when she's drunk/ messages me in the night and gets annoyed when i don't reply 'I want you to talk to me' is what she'd say. I've never experienced anyone being so forward so i find it a bit unnerving but nice.
When we finally have sex it's wild, she strangles me without asking but it just works, she's so intense the most intense lover I've ever had, staring at me like she's going to swallow me whole. she says it's the best sex she's ever had - i don't know how to reply, but it is good. We continue seeing each other and she tells me all about her exes who are badddd, like crazy - 3 turn up at r’s flat over the time we are seeing each other... (and she tells me how she has gotten people cancelled).. We hang out a LOT she keeps telling me she's going to fall in love with me but she can't- can't have a relationship, we chat about what we want and she seems to want everything i want? Land, community.. She comes for a drink with me and my friend and storms out half way through i follow her and she's like I'm sorry and goes to dinner, i wake up to 9minutes worth of voice notes telling me all of these nice things about me but that I'm like damaged goods so maybe we should be friends because she knows she'll fall in love with me and she can't do that.. I'm so confused i message back telling her that everything is telling me to run away but for some reason i can't..
everytime i stay r tells me she's going to fall in love with me over and over again, but that she can't do that and it hurts me so i often stay in the spare room, always awaking to her coming in and clinging to me in the night, the way she holds me feels so good.. it really confuses me, so i become unsure if i should see her, everything feels wierdly dramatic all the time and the sex is crazy, she sends me constant nudes and desires me all the time, asks me to come to her work just to kiss her. Does not stop going on about my appearance and body (I'm like SUPER underweight at that point - sick looking- but i guess muscly from all the manual labour? idk weird she was so into it). But we do have the best times when we're together and i feel so special she covets me in public and invites me to cool fancy events and i feel accepted by like the beautiful people? But then she's also seeing other people, (none like me though, she loves me and it's different...) and makes fun of me for not (ENM) so i try and date other people but she stops me each time. She gets a bit calmer and things feel okay between us, i stay most nights she still pushes and pull but i put it down to her trauma and she tell me she's in love with me. I tell r i need time but she demands that i fuck her hard and lover her during sex. R corners me all the time over the next few weeks and tells me i must feel the same way as it's between two people. I'm obsessed, I love her back, I tell R this but that it feels painful and that shouldn't be what love is. We continue hanging out and it seems okay but it's like I'm waiting for her to do something again, it's incredible in so many ways the way we talk constantly about everything and all the amazing things she says to me.. But I'll catch r out on lies/ she'll do things/ say things that are really mean both to me and to strangers etc.
But then things get hard she has some family stuff and says she can't date me, i of course say that's fine but she messages me every day - i get really sick from living in the van during winter with no heating and end up at my mums (alcoholic) after not seeing her for years, she ghosts me over random stuff then rings me crying saying she loves me and would be with me if stuff was not happening in her life.
I get a bit better and come back to the city in my van sleeping near parks etc, the night i get back i meet my friend (an ex, I'm a lesbian what can i say) who sees my phone flashing and her texts to me, she can't believe that that's how she speaks to me. I ask r if I'll see her tonight, she messages me as I'm parked up a while out the city demanding i come fuck her and leave my dog alone in the van. I feel like shit but then do what she wants the following night after not having slept, our relationship becomes me coming over and cooking for her and fucking her on demand.. At this point I'm barely sleeping each night, waiting for her to message me or up from the cold. one night i say no and that she has no respect for me, the next day I say we need to chat- she's mean over text and is all about what just tell me over text, so i tell her i think she has zero respect for me and it hurts. she brushes it off but later sees me walk past her salon and then ends up coming into the shop where i go with my friend and grabs my hand. Later she sees me again whilst djing (across the road from her salon) and messages me and asks if i like her croptop i tell her ofc she looks amazing, she says she'll come chat to me later. She doesn't so i sleep until she turns up at my van at midnight wrecked. I come out and ask her wtf she is doing but she just grabs me and kisses me and throws me against the park railings and tells me to come to hers so i follow her, we start having sex and i freak out and she tells me she loves me to which i only reply 'sure'. she jumps out of the bed and starts screaming at me to get out if i don't think she loves me, i move to get up but then she presses me down and doesn't let me leave nor does she let me sleep and shakes me trying to get me to talk but I've shut down.
The next day I wake having had one hour sleep feeling terrible. i go down on r and bring her to orgasm she bucks into my nose and i bleed everywhere, a sad trail of red leading to the bathroom.. she sits me on the edge of the bath and cleans me up, we shower together and i watch my blood mix with the water. Later in r’s kitchen she picks me up and sits me on her counter (I'm p tall 5'8 but tinnyyy 47kg and she's 6ft curvy af and strong) and strokes my hair tries to speak to me but i can't hear anything i feel so done and hurt and terrified to lose her, it's like my self worth has become reliant on her because idk she's so powerful in the area i live and is so mean about everyone and if she's not mean about me then maybe I'm not so bad right? I know - bpd right?
Anyways i go to my van and change and r comes in and gives me my stuff that i had at hers i tell her i don't want it and throw it out… I was feeling rejected I guess?.. she's laughing at me an I'm so embarrassed i throw my clothes into the street I'm crazy, feel ridiculous and small and sick and ashamed i want her not to see me like that. She storms off and tells me I'll never see her again if I do that again so I follow her (she wants to go a walk) and she screams at me in public all around the park and i try to calm her. By the time we get back to hers I'm apologising telling her it woulave completely lost my d be a shame to waste our connection and i love her. I have completely lost myself, I'm a different person from when she met me. I have no where to go but go to my friends who tells me she's worried about me and that someone shouldn't be treating me that way. The woman just sends me romantic songs and i tell her i think the other night was inappropriate, she admits that it was and says we can never talk about it again.
I start going crazy- messaging weirdly when she doesn't reply, clingy like, r tells me she doesn't think about me doesn't care about me. I'm not sleeping still and in the morning i tell her that i think she needs therapy etc if she thinks that this is love because it should feel good and it should be an action not just some intense feeling she has and that i am so confused because she treats her friends so nicely and yet the person she is in love with like a dog or an enemy and i think she's amazing but maybe we should be friends if her behaviour doesn't change cause i don't want to lose her.. She is obviously mad with me and tells me she completely fell for me but can't have a relationship (not my point). We were meant to have a date that night as r was going to Mexico the next day but she cancels because of my behaviour.. i ask to go and get my records then so i go to the salon- with her favourite chocz (ikr I'm full psycho at this point) and she's angry but we make out loads in the back street.. she says she'll meet me later, I'm a mess getting ready and think I'll be late so don't get fuel for my van (so no heating), i turn up and she's still working but invites me in i try and wait but my mum keeps ringing saying she's suicidal.. she finally finishes cutting the persons hair 2 hours after i turn up... and we make out loads in the salon, but shes mean, shes hungry so i take her for food she holds my hand down the street and leans her head on my shoulder as she eats i walk her to her car and she tells me that's it i kiss her loads and ask her to drive me back and she agrees I'm trying not to cry as she drops me off and she asks me why do i care so much about it. i kiss her and she drives off. i try and sleep on my friends couch but it's so cold. I message her and joke how she's going to go through all my texts laughing with her business partner - she's like wtf.. (she told me she'd done that with ex partners texts and I'm so paranoid all the time at this point), she tells me something has happened and she has to stop texting i apologise and say i;ll message in the morning...
She's so mad with me still in the morning and the communication is fucked, she's mad i just want to be friends and everything else, but of course, i want to be with her and not just be friends, i'd really do anything. I ask if i can leave her a letter because everything i text is misconstrued. She says yes so i write her a letter telling her how i feel and apologising, i feel like i really love her, she's such a strong character and so interesting and so fierce with so many idiosyncrasies and mad music knowledge and that i want to be in her life in any capacity that i can, i mean it but I'm so so fucked up at this point and i'd had a long term relationship but like it wasn't like this.. the intensity, it was really nice and so loving, but it was very different from this, despite the pain of it no one had ever said such amazing things to me and i'd never had sex like that / so much in common musically etc.... I'm so hurt and just think i should try move on, i go and sleep with someone straight away. the next day she messages me whilst on her way to to the airport, telling me the letter made her cry - because it's sad and that all she wants to do is be in my arms, i tell r i love her and r says she feels the same, but I'm stupid i try and date other people whilst she's in mexico. The stupidest idea, I’m so so mentally ill at this point, not sleeping and pushing my body to the absolute limits at work and to nail the coffin.. start taking street valium to try and sleep.. i tell r about going on dates, i always told her before because i want to be open about that and she encouraged my dating other people (but i have like sexual trauma so it's difficult for me, but i don't mind her dating) she gets jealous of one person i date (a)… A instantly clings on to me and by then myself esteem is so done i think everyone can just take what they want from me and I give it despite a year ago knowing full well I would have ran a million miles from someone like a.. and this is really horrible.. but i wasn't even really attracted to a and i missed and loved the r so badly, but a kept demanding me to come fuck her very similar to the way r did, but obvs I loved r, so I did go an fuck a even when I didn’t want to. Whilst a is in Mexico she sends me highly sexual messages again and of course I'm so hooked, i wake up to voice notes from r telling me she loves me that she wants to do everything with me, to read to her to go travelling, to do all these mad adventurous things etc and that when she gets back she needs to see me straight away and it'll be different this time we'll do sober things etc etc. at this point I'm flat sitting a friends flat so i finally have somewhere to stay - although only for a bit..
R arrives back and I'm so excited to see her, i don't want to fuck up this time and i want to be good for her, she also has regular lovers so maybe it's good that i now have someone else as well.. when r finally gets to the place I'm staying she's two hours late and she's full of mezcal telling me about a half a million property she's going to buy (what about wanting to get land like me). I'm cooking for her and we're making small talk but she just jumps on me and tells me to get into the bedroom so i do. she pushes me on the bed and tries to fuck me (again something i can have problems with cause past trauma) she hurts me so i tell her and she laughs and stops rather than asking what i want. I've never seen her so turned on, like, her clit is SWOLLEN anyways we have a LOT of sex for hours and hours can't stop touching each other telling each other how much we love each other, and i talk about the woman I'm dating and the sex... because i found it interesting because i struggle with casual sex / not having feelings for people who i sleep with but managing to have good sex with that person sometimes without having feelings (fucking for pleasure, as noted smth I struggle wi cause of trauma), i don't really remember chatting about it (she tells me the next day how inappropriate that is).. anyways it feels p fucking magical to be back with r and the next day she sees me running my errands whilst she's in her salon and asks me to get her for her lunch so i do and she comes up to the flat i'm staying in and we make out but then she becomes nasty to me - making fun of my clothes and then asking if i only like her for sex (very confusing as she always jumps on me when i'd much rather go and fucking do smth fun...). She tells me off for talking about a (very fair what a twat I am) and i'm mortified, i apologise so much and tell r maybe i was trying to show off or smth but i don't remember too well because i would never want to hurt her, i'm so desperate to make it work this time.. I move in with my close friend and I stop fawning over her so much, confused by the hot and cold.. I go and stay with people and I text her the same as always but I just seem to annoy her…
R sleeps with someone I know she doesn’t even like and I’m upset - what are we doing to each other!? I try to communicate this but everything I do annoys her, when I’m invited to a cottage with an and her friends I go, just for a night. Whilst there r starts phoning me manically asking to come over and that she needs to sleep next to me, but I tell her I’m out, not where, I should’ve said where I know.. been honest.. r sends loads of messages, I should just go and ring her but for some reason I don’t because I’m so anxious, I just text her I’m so sorry I’m away id love to be with her but we need to start arranging things rather than her expecting me to just drop everything there and then all the time - I honestly thought about driving my big van 2 hours back just to be there for her and I wish I had.. I say I’ll see her as soon as I’m back but it goes on at this place, I hate it I want to be with her.
When I get back the next day I cook r a massive meal and we try and watch a film.. I have no tv and no laptop just a shite iPad. I obviously can’t concentrate on it and it annoys r.. we have sex and she tells me she loves me but I don’t reply, I just stare confused… she says she needs to go and stay in her own bed, I ask if she wants company but she says no, so she goes. But she tells me to come in to the salon on valentines day to get my hair done..
I’m pretty ill at this point again and food isn’t going well with me and just super mentally unstable with everything going on and staking street valium each night.. it’s my pals birthday and I’m so anxious around everyone I get completely black out, take loads of drugs. My dog runs away and she is texting me maniacally I’m on the st tripping balls looking for my dog , I run to the park (past her salon) she sees me and runs out and grabs me I immediately have a panic attack and collapse, her staff bring me water and she comes out and calls my friends who come and get me, she messages me asking if I’m okay. I apologise not realising the gravity of the situation. Later she (rightfully) doesn’t want to talk to me when I try.. I lose my shit, she isn’t going to cut my hair, I accuse her of manipulating me, lying (she was always lying tbh and I knew it but just turned a blind eye) and not loving me, just using me for sex, complete psychotic drool. I don’t remember any of it, I was FULL of Xanax and everything else. I fall asleep and when I wake up I’m sick realising what I did, I ring her trying to apologise, of course she won’t speak to me, so I apologise profusely. She won’t see me again. I get it I’m awful, so awful, but I’m so full of panic.
I accept that she doesn’t want to see me but I get covid and keep filling with panic and sending her apologies ( I think on two occasions) and getting really cruel responses. I then pour my heart out, all romantic, the way she used to talk to me (I know I’m mortified) and she calls me disgusting and to focus on someone else (which hurt because my problem is I struggle with focus on someone because I’m so damn scatty/ avoidant a lot of the time, probs why I fell so hard for her because I couldn’t NOT focus on he be drawn and obsessed with her). I’m terrified of walking my dog certain ways and passing her salon worried she’ll accuse me of stalking because I messaged so many times to apologise.. if I do pass with friends she stares out at me..
But then she comes and talks to me on the street and says she will see me soon (she’d always say this when she sort of ended smth, to tell me it wasn’t really over in her code) so I thought it would be like all the other times she’s be annoyed and mess with other people then call me in crying again. So I message r and suggest a walk - she blocks me. I’m so mentally ill now, can’t go down the street and have panic attacks daily that my life is ruined, hurting someone like that and being so mean and also what she will be saying to people, people look at me differently like I’m mad (she got her ex barred from an art studios, another is seen as an abuser and has called other stalkers/ crazy). It was also (pure vanity) horrifying knowing everyone would think I was this evil crazy person.. so I’d try and stay out of her way but sadly struggle as her salon is on the main Street and I couldn’t keep making my friends walk a different way (they thought I was mad too). I continue seeing a for a 2 weeks but its too much so I ask for space but she then tells me she loves me and it feels too much like what I’d just been through (why am I now creating a new pattern)… I’m so lonely and fucked up and mad and weird that A continually gets back in because my boundaries are so poor and I’m so mentally ill and probably confusing her a lot :(. I go in and out of utter panic and trying to quit the st valium and relapsing. R sees me at gigs and sometimes tries to come up but I always freak out and have a panic attack, she comes out the salon when I walk by and goes smiles and tries to talk to my friends whilst ignoring me..
I go through homelessness again and a puts me up in her big flat she lives in alone (as a friend), but it’s such an odd situation because she keeps trying to initiate sex.. I see the salon shut for ages and get a weird feeling this is months later… July?… Just before R’s birthday.. I decide to message if she’s okay, the message goes through on iMessage so maybe I’m just blocked on WhatsApp idk? No answer.. I’m so manic not sleeping I take loads and loads of valium to try and shut my brain off and down gin, I’m on my own as A has gone away in the massive flat a st away from r’s and a st away from the salon everything is so fucking close.. anyways I go crazy from all the Valiums and somehow convince myself that if I just talk to r and tell her I mean no harm she will stop saying stuff about me and just be normal to me when we bump into each other. I go crazy ring loads. When she answers she goes hysterical screaming at me and laughing hysterically and calling me all these things. She hangs up and I ring and ring and leave nonsense drugged up voice notes like ‘does it make u feel powerful being so mean..’ Etc. I’m such an idiot I feel so bad for acting so odd and traumatised I decide to write to her and give her my favourite book I think about putting it in the post but she lives down the st so I think it’s an acceptable thing to leave it outside. When I get there she’s sat outside with her pals… she sees me and is like ‘hi.. what do you want’ I say I have something for her she just replies ‘sound’ so I give her the book and letters and she bursts out laughing..
I meet someone later (o) and then it turns out r was also trying to fuck them whilst with me and told a bunch of lies.. I go to a gay club with O and as soon as I walk in R is there, she just waves at me and I jump out of my skin. Fuck. I go over and I apologise profusely saying I’m having a manic episode and it’s no excuse (it really is no excuse - I’m aware my behaviour is fucked) but I say can I have a hug and she holds me, when I pull away she grabs me and puts her hand under my top whilst telling me she needs ‘space’ from me tonight and to leave, but that the letter was ‘sweet’. The letter was also like.. asking what the protocol was because I didn’t want to be accused of doing other disrespectful things - I’d been a prick and really shat on her boundaries apologising when she didn’t want to hear from me then going fuckin’ nuts and ringing her months later, but it was also cause I didn’t know if it was bad walking past the salon and how to avoid it or whether I was allowed/ should say hello - we WERE in love? I’ve never had to like idk police myself after being so entwined with someone, them knowing everything about me… and I just felt so ashamed of my actions and selfishly wanted to make up for it even though I knew that the only way to make up for it is to not apologise.. but ye I guess its also my life. R is involved in everything music, fashion, writing.. so I really wanted to be on like semi okay terms, but it was just completely fucked up of me trying to force that on a person and I truly am ashamed and have just been doing so much therapy since.
I did just about get myself on my feet, I got a council flat, got in to do my post grad, was playing music and had a gig lined up (smth I was nervous about again because r is friends with the gig organisers and other musicians involved) and then I had a serious rock climbing accident - smashed my left arm up pretty bad, had a lush two week stay in the hospital, two operations and a bunch of metal plates put in - it was a hard recovery as I’m so active usually and my council flat is like a st away from r’s salon and everyone who knows her in the queer scene and ye I walk out my flat and just get funny looks now because of it.. R did come and talk to me on the st one day after my accident I went to turn away but there was nowhere to go, so, idk it probably looked mental as but I put on my big grin and tried to just feel love and no animosity for her and just tried to chat normally and made a bunch of jokes and also apologised again, said I feel guilty and I think about what I did all the time, she told me to ‘let it go’ and made fun of my cast and chaos, kind of infantilising and kinda treated me like I was gross and bring up stuff that she knew would make me feel awful…
I pulled through my accident and even got a modelling contract with a pretty big agency, got funded to work on a film and started my postgrad.. but then things still happen all the time, a photographer blocks me, guess what, they’re friends with r. Two people working on the film, friends with R and I just feel weird around them, my friends ask me to go to events… r is djing. my best friend starts djing at the radio station r dis at and wants me to get involved but I know I can’t even though I’m friends with the person that runs the radio station. If I were to, r would get me banned and say it was to get to them or smth, which is not true, at this point I wish I could be as far away from them as possible. I’m scared to go and see my favourite musicians play as I always suspect r will be there as we have the same taste… scared to go to certain pubs I always went to.. before I met r I would spend days off at a cafe right by her salon and just read/ catch up on admin.. I’m too nervous now as she’ll again say it’s stalking/ her friends will think that too. My favourite food place was also next to her salon. I literally love the days it’s shut and I can just go down the main st like a normal person, funny thing is that’s the only time I ever see her other ex who is also too scared to go down the main st… it’s been so long now but I’m still crippled with anxiety, I know that she now has a partner so I thought maybe she might idk be full of love and evened out a bit, but she’s still trying to like talk to my friends.. and I know for a fact going around telling people I’m crazy, I tell myself it’s in my head that she’s doing this but then something happens.
I’m so young I just want to be happy, i make new friends and then if they make a move on me I freak out, can’t have sex at all, can’t be intimate. I don’t know when I’ll stop feeling like this. I guess I’m scared I’ll be awful to someone else like I was to R. And I know that my low self-esteem isn’t all due to R at all, if anything she built me up more than anyone else ever had… but I keep putting it on her in my mind and it’s obsessive and fucked up. I own a bit of land with a group of anarchist, working class queers now and we’re building huts to make a community - I’m on disability for my arm and the severity of my ‘ADHD’ and have so much opportunity to just write and try and make something of myself but I’m still so full of panic by the proximity. One of my other best friends good friend is close friends with R and so we can’t hang out together. They are creating a pop up poety/ wine night (I write poetry) so my pal wants me to be there desperately but I know r will be there and her friends who all think I’m an evil crazy bitch from hell. Which, I guess I am, but I’m trying not to be and treating me like shit forever and spreading things on top of the crazy shit I did which are fundamentally not true is just so difficult and makes me feel like I have to move away… I’m pretty sure after all this and my mind letting it continue that I definitely have BPD, all the symptoms are there but my mental health team just think it’s severe ADHD and possibly CPTSD and I just need to stick to my medication regimen (yay stimulants) and stay off of valium - I am!! But idk, everytime I think I’m doing something good I get scared that r will find out and tear it down.. it sucks, I have a lot of love and respect for her and wish I hadn’t done what I did but I did and I can’t change it.. so I guess I deserve it completely. But still, it’s difficult to make something of myself even though I deserve this..
Has anyone had a similar situation? any advice?
submitted by Sethhann to AnxiousAttachment [link] [comments]
I’m almost certain after my behaviour over the past two years that I have BPD but have only a diagnosis of ADHD despite telling mental health team.
I had a very upsetting and painful relationship with someone that made me feel really bad about myself. I hit out and had a mental breakdown, no I don’t feel like I can live my life because of who the person is and what they have made up about me on top of my already (true) crazy… I don’t really know what to do because I have really good friends in the city I live in but know that anything I do can and will be cancelled by this person.
oh goddddd, so I have a diagnosis of ADHD and not BPD but I did some crazy shit to someone I dated - so I reckon I do have BPD/ I was suffering from psychosis/ super low self esteem + trauma.
Context:Me - 26F Her 32F (I’ll use R to refer to hr)
I was living in my van at the time, really down and out - low sel esteem felt like i had nothing to offer.
She has a fancy salon on the main st in the area where kinda everyone i know in the city is/ DJs at the radio station across the st from r’s salon. To get anywhere you need to walk past her salon or try to avoid it. She knows all the big names etc and is like semi -famous.
Basically I was going through a bit of a rough time - had been struggling with homelessness for a while and that had gotten me into tricky situations which I didn't realise were probably leaving a mark on me. I hadn't been back in the UK for that long, having lived in Greece working in the camps for a while until covid happened and i experienced burnout and got back into drugs when trying to make new friends since i'd been abroad for so long. I sobered up and sorted myself out a bit and went and lived in my van tree-planting and having a nice time.
Anyways, I wasn't really into dating at that point but had dating apps and got talking to someone. Straight away she was really telling me loads about herself and so I opened up to over messages etc, she'd voice note and send pictures asking me to identify mushrooms she'd picked and asked me my opinions/ knowledge about intellectual topics etc, and basically seemed to have a lot in common with me/ wanted similar things.
We don't meet for a while because I'm flaky and always on the move. We finally meet, she comes to a friends house where i sometimes went when I was in the city (i lived in my van remember) and we take some mushrooms, laugh loads and then go to the club together, as soon as i get there she ignores me completely- but i bump into a friend so spend the night dancing with him.. i tell r I'm going to leave and we chat for a bit and then go outside, I ask if she's attracted to me because I'm confused by our interaction, i like r from our chats and how much we laughed together but then i think that she thinks I'm weird hence why she ignored me in the club- we end up circling each other and then kissing for a while, I go to leave and she grabs me an throws me to the wall and kisses me more (HOT). In the morning she messages me 'you're on my mind this morning'- I find it kinda wild, but like flattering and hot.
Anyways I'm away again and she tries to get me to drive back to the city to fuck a few times when she's drunk/ messages me in the night and gets annoyed when i don't reply 'I want you to talk to me' is what she'd say. I've never experienced anyone being so forward so i find it a bit unnerving but nice.
When we finally have sex it's wild, she strangles me without asking but it just works, she's so intense the most intense lover I've ever had, staring at me like she's going to swallow me whole. she says it's the best sex she's ever had - i don't know how to reply, but it is good. We continue seeing each other and she tells me all about her exes who are badddd, like crazy - 3 turn up at r’s flat over the time we are seeing each other... (and she tells me how she has gotten people cancelled).. We hang out a LOT she keeps telling me she's going to fall in love with me but she can't- can't have a relationship, we chat about what we want and she seems to want everything i want? Land, community.. She comes for a drink with me and my friend and storms out half way through i follow her and she's like I'm sorry and goes to dinner, i wake up to 9minutes worth of voice notes telling me all of these nice things about me but that I'm like damaged goods so maybe we should be friends because she knows she'll fall in love with me and she can't do that.. I'm so confused i message back telling her that everything is telling me to run away but for some reason i can't..
everytime i stay r tells me she's going to fall in love with me over and over again, but that she can't do that and it hurts me so i often stay in the spare room, always awaking to her coming in and clinging to me in the night, the way she holds me feels so good.. it really confuses me, so i become unsure if i should see her, everything feels wierdly dramatic all the time and the sex is crazy, she sends me constant nudes and desires me all the time, asks me to come to her work just to kiss her. Does not stop going on about my appearance and body (I'm like SUPER underweight at that point - sick looking- but i guess muscly from all the manual labour? idk weird she was so into it). But we do have the best times when we're together and i feel so special she covets me in public and invites me to cool fancy events and i feel accepted by like the beautiful people? But then she's also seeing other people, (none like me though, she loves me and it's different...) and makes fun of me for not (ENM) so i try and date other people but she stops me each time. She gets a bit calmer and things feel okay between us, i stay most nights she still pushes and pull but i put it down to her trauma and she tell me she's in love with me. I tell r i need time but she demands that i fuck her hard and lover her during sex. R corners me all the time over the next few weeks and tells me i must feel the same way as it's between two people. I'm obsessed, I love her back, I tell R this but that it feels painful and that shouldn't be what love is. We continue hanging out and it seems okay but it's like I'm waiting for her to do something again, it's incredible in so many ways the way we talk constantly about everything and all the amazing things she says to me.. But I'll catch r out on lies/ she'll do things/ say things that are really mean both to me and to strangers etc.
But then things get hard she has some family stuff and says she can't date me, i of course say that's fine but she messages me every day - i get really sick from living in the van during winter with no heating and end up at my mums (alcoholic) after not seeing her for years, she ghosts me over random stuff then rings me crying saying she loves me and would be with me if stuff was not happening in her life.
I get a bit better and come back to the city in my van sleeping near parks etc, the night i get back i meet my friend (an ex, I'm a lesbian what can i say) who sees my phone flashing and her texts to me, she can't believe that that's how she speaks to me. I ask r if I'll see her tonight, she messages me as I'm parked up a while out the city demanding i come fuck her and leave my dog alone in the van. I feel like shit but then do what she wants the following night after not having slept, our relationship becomes me coming over and cooking for her and fucking her on demand.. At this point I'm barely sleeping each night, waiting for her to message me or up from the cold. one night i say no and that she has no respect for me, the next day I say we need to chat- she's mean over text and is all about what just tell me over text, so i tell her i think she has zero respect for me and it hurts. she brushes it off but later sees me walk past her salon and then ends up coming into the shop where i go with my friend and grabs my hand. Later she sees me again whilst djing (across the road from her salon) and messages me and asks if i like her croptop i tell her ofc she looks amazing, she says she'll come chat to me later. She doesn't so i sleep until she turns up at my van at midnight wrecked. I come out and ask her wtf she is doing but she just grabs me and kisses me and throws me against the park railings and tells me to come to hers so i follow her, we start having sex and i freak out and she tells me she loves me to which i only reply 'sure'. she jumps out of the bed and starts screaming at me to get out if i don't think she loves me, i move to get up but then she presses me down and doesn't let me leave nor does she let me sleep and shakes me trying to get me to talk but I've shut down.
The next day I wake having had one hour sleep feeling terrible. i go down on r and bring her to orgasm she bucks into my nose and i bleed everywhere, a sad trail of red leading to the bathroom.. she sits me on the edge of the bath and cleans me up, we shower together and i watch my blood mix with the water. Later in r’s kitchen she picks me up and sits me on her counter (I'm p tall 5'8 but tinnyyy 47kg and she's 6ft curvy af and strong) and strokes my hair tries to speak to me but i can't hear anything i feel so done and hurt and terrified to lose her, it's like my self worth has become reliant on her because idk she's so powerful in the area i live and is so mean about everyone and if she's not mean about me then maybe I'm not so bad right? I know - bpd right?
Anyways i go to my van and change and r comes in and gives me my stuff that i had at hers i tell her i don't want it and throw it out… I was feeling rejected I guess?.. she's laughing at me an I'm so embarrassed i throw my clothes into the street I'm crazy, feel ridiculous and small and sick and ashamed i want her not to see me like that. She storms off and tells me I'll never see her again if I do that again so I follow her (she wants to go a walk) and she screams at me in public all around the park and i try to calm her. By the time we get back to hers I'm apologising telling her it woulave completely lost my d be a shame to waste our connection and i love her. I have completely lost myself, I'm a different person from when she met me. I have no where to go but go to my friends who tells me she's worried about me and that someone shouldn't be treating me that way. The woman just sends me romantic songs and i tell her i think the other night was inappropriate, she admits that it was and says we can never talk about it again.
I start going crazy- messaging weirdly when she doesn't reply, clingy like, r tells me she doesn't think about me doesn't care about me. I'm not sleeping still and in the morning i tell her that i think she needs therapy etc if she thinks that this is love because it should feel good and it should be an action not just some intense feeling she has and that i am so confused because she treats her friends so nicely and yet the person she is in love with like a dog or an enemy and i think she's amazing but maybe we should be friends if her behaviour doesn't change cause i don't want to lose her.. She is obviously mad with me and tells me she completely fell for me but can't have a relationship (not my point). We were meant to have a date that night as r was going to Mexico the next day but she cancels because of my behaviour.. i ask to go and get my records then so i go to the salon- with her favourite chocz (ikr I'm full psycho at this point) and she's angry but we make out loads in the back street.. she says she'll meet me later, I'm a mess getting ready and think I'll be late so don't get fuel for my van (so no heating), i turn up and she's still working but invites me in i try and wait but my mum keeps ringing saying she's suicidal.. she finally finishes cutting the persons hair 2 hours after i turn up... and we make out loads in the salon, but shes mean, shes hungry so i take her for food she holds my hand down the street and leans her head on my shoulder as she eats i walk her to her car and she tells me that's it i kiss her loads and ask her to drive me back and she agrees I'm trying not to cry as she drops me off and she asks me why do i care so much about it. i kiss her and she drives off. i try and sleep on my friends couch but it's so cold. I message her and joke how she's going to go through all my texts laughing with her business partner - she's like wtf.. (she told me she'd done that with ex partners texts and I'm so paranoid all the time at this point), she tells me something has happened and she has to stop texting i apologise and say i;ll message in the morning...
She's so mad with me still in the morning and the communication is fucked, she's mad i just want to be friends and everything else, but of course, i want to be with her and not just be friends, i'd really do anything. I ask if i can leave her a letter because everything i text is misconstrued. She says yes so i write her a letter telling her how i feel and apologising, i feel like i really love her, she's such a strong character and so interesting and so fierce with so many idiosyncrasies and mad music knowledge and that i want to be in her life in any capacity that i can, i mean it but I'm so so fucked up at this point and i'd had a long term relationship but like it wasn't like this.. the intensity, it was really nice and so loving, but it was very different from this, despite the pain of it no one had ever said such amazing things to me and i'd never had sex like that / so much in common musically etc.... I'm so hurt and just think i should try move on, i go and sleep with someone straight away. the next day she messages me whilst on her way to to the airport, telling me the letter made her cry - because it's sad and that all she wants to do is be in my arms, i tell r i love her and r says she feels the same, but I'm stupid i try and date other people whilst she's in mexico. The stupidest idea, I’m so so mentally ill at this point, not sleeping and pushing my body to the absolute limits at work and to nail the coffin.. start taking street valium to try and sleep.. i tell r about going on dates, i always told her before because i want to be open about that and she encouraged my dating other people (but i have like sexual trauma so it's difficult for me, but i don't mind her dating) she gets jealous of one person i date (a)… A instantly clings on to me and by then myself esteem is so done i think everyone can just take what they want from me and I give it despite a year ago knowing full well I would have ran a million miles from someone like a.. and this is really horrible.. but i wasn't even really attracted to a and i missed and loved the r so badly, but a kept demanding me to come fuck her very similar to the way r did, but obvs I loved r, so I did go an fuck a even when I didn’t want to. Whilst a is in Mexico she sends me highly sexual messages again and of course I'm so hooked, i wake up to voice notes from r telling me she loves me that she wants to do everything with me, to read to her to go travelling, to do all these mad adventurous things etc and that when she gets back she needs to see me straight away and it'll be different this time we'll do sober things etc etc. at this point I'm flat sitting a friends flat so i finally have somewhere to stay - although only for a bit..
R arrives back and I'm so excited to see her, i don't want to fuck up this time and i want to be good for her, she also has regular lovers so maybe it's good that i now have someone else as well.. when r finally gets to the place I'm staying she's two hours late and she's full of mezcal telling me about a half a million property she's going to buy (what about wanting to get land like me). I'm cooking for her and we're making small talk but she just jumps on me and tells me to get into the bedroom so i do. she pushes me on the bed and tries to fuck me (again something i can have problems with cause past trauma) she hurts me so i tell her and she laughs and stops rather than asking what i want. I've never seen her so turned on, like, her clit is SWOLLEN anyways we have a LOT of sex for hours and hours can't stop touching each other telling each other how much we love each other, and i talk about the woman I'm dating and the sex... because i found it interesting because i struggle with casual sex / not having feelings for people who i sleep with but managing to have good sex with that person sometimes without having feelings (fucking for pleasure, as noted smth I struggle wi cause of trauma), i don't really remember chatting about it (she tells me the next day how inappropriate that is).. anyways it feels p fucking magical to be back with r and the next day she sees me running my errands whilst she's in her salon and asks me to get her for her lunch so i do and she comes up to the flat i'm staying in and we make out but then she becomes nasty to me - making fun of my clothes and then asking if i only like her for sex (very confusing as she always jumps on me when i'd much rather go and fucking do smth fun...). She tells me off for talking about a (very fair what a twat I am) and i'm mortified, i apologise so much and tell r maybe i was trying to show off or smth but i don't remember too well because i would never want to hurt her, i'm so desperate to make it work this time.. I move in with my close friend and I stop fawning over her so much, confused by the hot and cold.. I go and stay with people and I text her the same as always but I just seem to annoy her…
R sleeps with someone I know she doesn’t even like and I’m upset - what are we doing to each other!? I try to communicate this but everything I do annoys her, when I’m invited to a cottage with an and her friends I go, just for a night. Whilst there r starts phoning me manically asking to come over and that she needs to sleep next to me, but I tell her I’m out, not where, I should’ve said where I know.. been honest.. r sends loads of messages, I should just go and ring her but for some reason I don’t because I’m so anxious, I just text her I’m so sorry I’m away id love to be with her but we need to start arranging things rather than her expecting me to just drop everything there and then all the time - I honestly thought about driving my big van 2 hours back just to be there for her and I wish I had.. I say I’ll see her as soon as I’m back but it goes on at this place, I hate it I want to be with her.
When I get back the next day I cook r a massive meal and we try and watch a film.. I have no tv and no laptop just a shite iPad. I obviously can’t concentrate on it and it annoys r.. we have sex and she tells me she loves me but I don’t reply, I just stare confused… she says she needs to go and stay in her own bed, I ask if she wants company but she says no, so she goes. But she tells me to come in to the salon on valentines day to get my hair done..
I’m pretty ill at this point again and food isn’t going well with me and just super mentally unstable with everything going on and staking street valium each night.. it’s my pals birthday and I’m so anxious around everyone I get completely black out, take loads of drugs. My dog runs away and she is texting me maniacally I’m on the st tripping balls looking for my dog , I run to the park (past her salon) she sees me and runs out and grabs me I immediately have a panic attack and collapse, her staff bring me water and she comes out and calls my friends who come and get me, she messages me asking if I’m okay. I apologise not realising the gravity of the situation. Later she (rightfully) doesn’t want to talk to me when I try.. I lose my shit, she isn’t going to cut my hair, I accuse her of manipulating me, lying (she was always lying tbh and I knew it but just turned a blind eye) and not loving me, just using me for sex, complete psychotic drool. I don’t remember any of it, I was FULL of Xanax and everything else. I fall asleep and when I wake up I’m sick realising what I did, I ring her trying to apologise, of course she won’t speak to me, so I apologise profusely. She won’t see me again. I get it I’m awful, so awful, but I’m so full of panic.
I accept that she doesn’t want to see me but I get covid and keep filling with panic and sending her apologies ( I think on two occasions) and getting really cruel responses. I then pour my heart out, all romantic, the way she used to talk to me (I know I’m mortified) and she calls me disgusting and to focus on someone else (which hurt because my problem is I struggle with focus on someone because I’m so damn scatty/ avoidant a lot of the time, probs why I fell so hard for her because I couldn’t NOT focus on he be drawn and obsessed with her). I’m terrified of walking my dog certain ways and passing her salon worried she’ll accuse me of stalking because I messaged so many times to apologise.. if I do pass with friends she stares out at me..
But then she comes and talks to me on the street and says she will see me soon (she’d always say this when she sort of ended smth, to tell me it wasn’t really over in her code) so I thought it would be like all the other times she’s be annoyed and mess with other people then call me in crying again. So I message r and suggest a walk - she blocks me. I’m so mentally ill now, can’t go down the street and have panic attacks daily that my life is ruined, hurting someone like that and being so mean and also what she will be saying to people, people look at me differently like I’m mad (she got her ex barred from an art studios, another is seen as an abuser and has called other stalkers/ crazy). It was also (pure vanity) horrifying knowing everyone would think I was this evil crazy person.. so I’d try and stay out of her way but sadly struggle as her salon is on the main Street and I couldn’t keep making my friends walk a different way (they thought I was mad too). I continue seeing a for a 2 weeks but its too much so I ask for space but she then tells me she loves me and it feels too much like what I’d just been through (why am I now creating a new pattern)… I’m so lonely and fucked up and mad and weird that A continually gets back in because my boundaries are so poor and I’m so mentally ill and probably confusing her a lot :(. I go in and out of utter panic and trying to quit the st valium and relapsing. R sees me at gigs and sometimes tries to come up but I always freak out and have a panic attack, she comes out the salon when I walk by and goes smiles and tries to talk to my friends whilst ignoring me..
I go through homelessness again and a puts me up in her big flat she lives in alone (as a friend), but it’s such an odd situation because she keeps trying to initiate sex.. I see the salon shut for ages and get a weird feeling this is months later… July?… Just before R’s birthday.. I decide to message if she’s okay, the message goes through on iMessage so maybe I’m just blocked on WhatsApp idk? No answer.. I’m so manic not sleeping I take loads and loads of valium to try and shut my brain off and down gin, I’m on my own as A has gone away in the massive flat a st away from r’s and a st away from the salon everything is so fucking close.. anyways I go crazy from all the Valiums and somehow convince myself that if I just talk to r and tell her I mean no harm she will stop saying stuff about me and just be normal to me when we bump into each other. I go crazy ring loads. When she answers she goes hysterical screaming at me and laughing hysterically and calling me all these things. She hangs up and I ring and ring and leave nonsense drugged up voice notes like ‘does it make u feel powerful being so mean..’ Etc. I’m such an idiot I feel so bad for acting so odd and traumatised I decide to write to her and give her my favourite book I think about putting it in the post but she lives down the st so I think it’s an acceptable thing to leave it outside. When I get there she’s sat outside with her pals… she sees me and is like ‘hi.. what do you want’ I say I have something for her she just replies ‘sound’ so I give her the book and letters and she bursts out laughing..
I meet someone later (o) and then it turns out r was also trying to fuck them whilst with me and told a bunch of lies.. I go to a gay club with O and as soon as I walk in R is there, she just waves at me and I jump out of my skin. Fuck. I go over and I apologise profusely saying I’m having a manic episode and it’s no excuse (it really is no excuse - I’m aware my behaviour is fucked) but I say can I have a hug and she holds me, when I pull away she grabs me and puts her hand under my top whilst telling me she needs ‘space’ from me tonight and to leave, but that the letter was ‘sweet’. The letter was also like.. asking what the protocol was because I didn’t want to be accused of doing other disrespectful things - I’d been a prick and really shat on her boundaries apologising when she didn’t want to hear from me then going fuckin’ nuts and ringing her months later, but it was also cause I didn’t know if it was bad walking past the salon and how to avoid it or whether I was allowed/ should say hello - we WERE in love? I’ve never had to like idk police myself after being so entwined with someone, them knowing everything about me… and I just felt so ashamed of my actions and selfishly wanted to make up for it even though I knew that the only way to make up for it is to not apologise.. but ye I guess its also my life. R is involved in everything music, fashion, writing.. so I really wanted to be on like semi okay terms, but it was just completely fucked up of me trying to force that on a person and I truly am ashamed and have just been doing so much therapy since.
I did just about get myself on my feet, I got a council flat, got in to do my post grad, was playing music and had a gig lined up (smth I was nervous about again because r is friends with the gig organisers and other musicians involved) and then I had a serious rock climbing accident - smashed my left arm up pretty bad, had a lush two week stay in the hospital, two operations and a bunch of metal plates put in - it was a hard recovery as I’m so active usually and my council flat is like a st away from r’s salon and everyone who knows her in the queer scene and ye I walk out my flat and just get funny looks now because of it.. R did come and talk to me on the st one day after my accident I went to turn away but there was nowhere to go, so, idk it probably looked mental as but I put on my big grin and tried to just feel love and no animosity for her and just tried to chat normally and made a bunch of jokes and also apologised again, said I feel guilty and I think about what I did all the time, she told me to ‘let it go’ and made fun of my cast and chaos, kind of infantilising and kinda treated me like I was gross and bring up stuff that she knew would make me feel awful…
I pulled through my accident and even got a modelling contract with a pretty big agency, got funded to work on a film and started my postgrad.. but then things still happen all the time, a photographer blocks me, guess what, they’re friends with r. Two people working on the film, friends with R and I just feel weird around them, my friends ask me to go to events… r is djing. my best friend starts djing at the radio station r dis at and wants me to get involved but I know I can’t even though I’m friends with the person that runs the radio station. If I were to, r would get me banned and say it was to get to them or smth, which is not true, at this point I wish I could be as far away from them as possible. I’m scared to go and see my favourite musicians play as I always suspect r will be there as we have the same taste… scared to go to certain pubs I always went to.. before I met r I would spend days off at a cafe right by her salon and just read/ catch up on admin.. I’m too nervous now as she’ll again say it’s stalking/ her friends will think that too. My favourite food place was also next to her salon. I literally love the days it’s shut and I can just go down the main st like a normal person, funny thing is that’s the only time I ever see her other ex who is also too scared to go down the main st… it’s been so long now but I’m still crippled with anxiety, I know that she now has a partner so I thought maybe she might idk be full of love and evened out a bit, but she’s still trying to like talk to my friends.. and I know for a fact going around telling people I’m crazy, I tell myself it’s in my head that she’s doing this but then something happens.
I’m so young I just want to be happy, i make new friends and then if they make a move on me I freak out, can’t have sex at all, can’t be intimate. I don’t know when I’ll stop feeling like this. I guess I’m scared I’ll be awful to someone else like I was to R. And I know that my low self-esteem isn’t all due to R at all, if anything she built me up more than anyone else ever had… but I keep putting it on her in my mind and it’s obsessive and fucked up. I own a bit of land with a group of anarchist, working class queers now and we’re building huts to make a community - I’m on disability for my arm and the severity of my ‘ADHD’ and have so much opportunity to just write and try and make something of myself but I’m still so full of panic by the proximity. One of my other best friends good friend is close friends with R and so we can’t hang out together. They are creating a pop up poety/ wine night (I write poetry) so my pal wants me to be there desperately but I know r will be there and her friends who all think I’m an evil crazy bitch from hell. Which, I guess I am, but I’m trying not to be and treating me like shit forever and spreading things on top of the crazy shit I did which are fundamentally not true is just so difficult and makes me feel like I have to move away… I’m pretty sure after all this and my mind letting it continue that I definitely have BPD, all the symptoms are there but my mental health team just think it’s severe ADHD and possibly CPTSD and I just need to stick to my medication regimen (yay stimulants) and stay off of valium - I am!! But idk, everytime I think I’m doing something good I get scared that r will find out and tear it down.. it sucks, I have a lot of love and respect for her and wish I hadn’t done what I did but I did and I can’t change it.. so I guess I deserve it completely. But still, it’s difficult to make something of myself even though I deserve this..
Has anyone had a similar situation? any advice?
2023.03.21 20:06 dogglesnake ChocoPro 301 🍫 Season 18 begins: KOJIO returns, Chie takes on SAKI for the first time, Mei Suruga & Hagane Shinno VS Choun Shiryu & Shin Suzuki! Live & Free on YouTube, Tomorrow at 6 am EDT!
ChocoPro 301: New Season, New Era We’re beyond the Episode 300 Two Day Special, Back from Break, and diving into Season 18 of ChocoPro! Return to Ichigaya with a healthy breakfast of Prowrestling: Tomorrow’s Special Start Time episode features GPD teaming up to battle some monsters, Chie facing SAKI solo for the first time, and a main event with last season’s MVP and the new Super Asia Champ teaming up! Let’s Go, ChocoPro!
🍫 CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK! Guruguru Punch Drunkers (Masa Takanashi & Kaori Yoneyama) VS Sayaka Obihiro & KOJIO, Chie Koishikawa VS SAKI, Mei Suruga & Hagane Shinno VS Choun Shiryu & Shin Suzuki! It airs TOMORROW at 6 am EDT / 3 am PDT / 10 am GMT / 7 pm JST). Live and Free on YouTube!
This link will be updated with a direct one when available
Sayaka Obihiro is a joy to watch due to her deep sense of humor and lightning quick striking & pinning techniques...but she is a bit...different...when she teams with Monsters. After a bizarre series of events, Obi has aligned with what she fought against (for ten years)! Normally, when Obi isn't chopping the life out of someone so hard that it sounds like a car door slamming (ask Tae Honma), she is pulling off some of the best feats of nimbleness you've ever seen. The charismatic full time chef has got a great set of flame gear and an intense style. Even if she’s gone feral, you'll find yourself enchanted by her brash nature and wild antics! Strange and occult happenings are somewhat common in Ichigaya, and the mysterious organization known as UMA features many monsters that just so happen to wrestle. Monsters from across the world are attracted to ChocoPro due to their influence...(You should see what is happening over at SETUP!) Speaking of which, a cold wind brings a shadow over Ichigaya once again! Hailing from Parts Unknown and trained at the Nightmare Factory (which makes even more sense given that sinister look!), kojio’s frightening presence made him fit right in with the other Monsters of UMA. With brawling brutality, vicious submissions, and an absolutely wicked set of gear that makes him look like a character straight from a graphic novel, kojio scares his opponents and impresses the audience with his relentless nature and bone chilling aura. He was nearly invincible in his last appearance! What sort of destruction will this crimson and black clad visitor unleash this time? He has awakened. Welcome to kojio’s World!
Kawaild & Powerful SAKI is an amazing technician, she adapts to any match style with ease. While she now represents the Freelance Unit COLOR’S, the chaotic energy of Gatoh Move still runs wild in her blood. With a swagger of pride, a constantly changing killer set of gear, and her own animal magnetism that can't be put into words, SAKI tends to easily captivate new fans. She is an incredibly ferocious fighter anywhere...especially inside Ichigaya! Her intensity is usually off the charts, but in the Square she is almost unstoppable. Don't try to beat her in a strength contest! If you do, you'll find yourself swinging in a Campana or Vader bombed into oblivion. While SAKI has a long standing rivalry with Mei Suruga, this will be the first time she faces Chie Koishikawa in singles. What sort of lesson will the vibrant & vicious SAKI give the Frantic Fencer? Buckle up for Speed VS Power!
“So what!?” Choun Shiryu is here! The Dragon of ChocoPro is a Wuxia hero (having done some of the most spectacular acts in Ichigaya) with his own fantastic flair! He is one of the most legitimate forces in the promotion. This Kung Fu master boasts a truly unique fighting style, pulling off action movie stunts you’ll not find elsewhere. While his usual partner is taking some time away from wrestling, (though Ninja Sayuri is still behind the scenes, as is tradition!) this time his partner is fellow utility player Shin Suzuki! Shin is always ready to go! His warm personality and intense athleticism fit well with the general vibe of Ichigaya...and honestly, his knack for dealing with kids (as a proud father) comes in handy in this den of goblins and monsters! Shin & Choun both mesh well with just about any pairing, so expect these two to sync together with machine precision once again. Both are no stranger to the Super Asia Title scene, so they’ll probably be gunning for the Cold Killer Champion. Prepare for a cold day in Ichigaya with some hot action!
Congratulations to Emi Sakura’s student & former ChocoPro guest, Mizuki, on winning TJPW’s PoP Championship!
Come and see the wild creativity that produced Two of the Seven AEW Women's World Champions! (Both of which have appeared on ChocoPro!) You'll be wondering if you're seeing future champs, as well. ChocoPro is the Frontier of Pro Wrestling! Match after match of hard hitting, chaotic, fun bouts with a friendly online audience. We're quickly growing, and you're welcome to come along!
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions:
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me on here or on Twitter, where I’m surprised the season changed too! ChocoPro is Seasonal!
Season Tracker: We're 1/18 into Season 18! (Each Season is usually around 18 episodes)
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🍫 CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK! Guruguru Punch Drunkers (Masa Takanashi & Kaori Yoneyama) VS Sayaka Obihiro & KOJIO, Chie Koishikawa VS SAKI, Mei Suruga & Hagane Shinno VS Choun Shiryu & Shin Suzuki! It airs TOMORROW at 6 am EDT / 3 am PDT / 10 am GMT / 7 pm JST). Live and Free on YouTube!
This link will be updated with a direct one when available
Don't forget to Adjust Your Volume, Wrestling is Loud!
Change the stage, escape the normal! ChocoPro is built different. Find out why wrestlers like it so much: Find a new home on the bleeding edge. (This is not your regular wrestling show.) Join us for this episode, or check out the back catalog of 17 wonderful Seasons on the Gatoh Move ChocoPro YouTube channel...260+ episodes with stories and pro-wrestling like you've never seen. New to the promotion? It features a roster of skilled veterans, rising stars, and wonderful guests fighting in the ChocoPro Arena: Ichigaya Chocolate Square. Subscribe for more content than just the live matches! (AEW Watch Alongs, Discussions, Interviews, Food Challenges, etc) Even if you can't catch it live, don't sweat it! It will still be available on the channel.Guruguru Punch Drunkers (Masa Takanashi 🍶 & Kaori Yoneyama 🍚)
VS
Sayaka Obihiro 💙 & KOJIO 💀
KOJIO Returns
Kaori Yoneyama's usually known for her shenanigans (whether or not she is dressed like a surly clown), but pairing her up with the scoundrel Masa Takanashi means that there will be plenty of bonkers team attacks and even more ridiculous counters. (Definitely check out her promotion, YMZ, if you are looking for even more fun!) Both of these veterans have more than proved themselves in the ring...and both are former Asia Dream Tag Champions with Emi Sakura. While they may or may not be named “Guruguru Punch Drunkers” (according to Kaori), this team is a great one! Yoneyama brings some of the best Sentons out there, a love of slapstick violence, and a level of unpredictability that even surpasses Antonio Honda. Masa brings wonderful chain wrestling, a growing collection of championships, shockingly great timing, and a silky smooth quickness that cannot be overstated. Will Kaori steal the camera for some PoV beatings? Will Masa reverse signature moves into fluid pinning techniques (or simply do some nose based offense? Between the two of them, they actually have a chance to defeat the scary foes they’re facing! Be careful, Punch Drunkers: here there be monsters!Sayaka Obihiro is a joy to watch due to her deep sense of humor and lightning quick striking & pinning techniques...but she is a bit...different...when she teams with Monsters. After a bizarre series of events, Obi has aligned with what she fought against (for ten years)! Normally, when Obi isn't chopping the life out of someone so hard that it sounds like a car door slamming (ask Tae Honma), she is pulling off some of the best feats of nimbleness you've ever seen. The charismatic full time chef has got a great set of flame gear and an intense style. Even if she’s gone feral, you'll find yourself enchanted by her brash nature and wild antics! Strange and occult happenings are somewhat common in Ichigaya, and the mysterious organization known as UMA features many monsters that just so happen to wrestle. Monsters from across the world are attracted to ChocoPro due to their influence...(You should see what is happening over at SETUP!) Speaking of which, a cold wind brings a shadow over Ichigaya once again! Hailing from Parts Unknown and trained at the Nightmare Factory (which makes even more sense given that sinister look!), kojio’s frightening presence made him fit right in with the other Monsters of UMA. With brawling brutality, vicious submissions, and an absolutely wicked set of gear that makes him look like a character straight from a graphic novel, kojio scares his opponents and impresses the audience with his relentless nature and bone chilling aura. He was nearly invincible in his last appearance! What sort of destruction will this crimson and black clad visitor unleash this time? He has awakened. Welcome to kojio’s World!
Chie Koishikawa 🏵️
VS
SAKI 🦁
Wild Energy
Say “Hellooooooo!” “Too Much Energy” Chie Koishikawa is an incredibly fierce competitor with a burning ambition. She is basically the fabric of ChocoPro itself: Clever, Cheerful, and completely Chaotic! The future of Gatoh Move is bright and Chie is the one carrying the torch to lead the way. She is out to prove that the wrestling world isn't ready for her brand of extreme speed! Expect a lot of backhanded fencing chops and crisp, creative technique. The Standard-bearer of the Fourth Generation wears orange, tends to cry easily, and impresses even more. Fresh off facing the ERUPTION Unit at DDT (due to her Janken based grudge toward Yukio Sakaguchi), Chie looks to pick a fight with the COLOR’S Unit figurehead. Can her endless energy overcome SAKI’s primal power?Kawaild & Powerful SAKI is an amazing technician, she adapts to any match style with ease. While she now represents the Freelance Unit COLOR’S, the chaotic energy of Gatoh Move still runs wild in her blood. With a swagger of pride, a constantly changing killer set of gear, and her own animal magnetism that can't be put into words, SAKI tends to easily captivate new fans. She is an incredibly ferocious fighter anywhere...especially inside Ichigaya! Her intensity is usually off the charts, but in the Square she is almost unstoppable. Don't try to beat her in a strength contest! If you do, you'll find yourself swinging in a Campana or Vader bombed into oblivion. While SAKI has a long standing rivalry with Mei Suruga, this will be the first time she faces Chie Koishikawa in singles. What sort of lesson will the vibrant & vicious SAKI give the Frantic Fencer? Buckle up for Speed VS Power!
Mei Suruga 🍎 & Hagane Shinno ⚔️
VS
Choun Shiryu 🐉 & Shin Suzuki 🍙
New Season, New Era
Wait...Apple Tarts is back!? While EGG TART (Chie Koishikawa & Hagane Shinno) are one of the most popular teams in the promotion, Apple Prodigy & Season 17 MVP Mei Suruga tends to usually be Shinno’s gobliny antagonist. Hagane is the Cold Killer, a brutal heavy striker and fierce technician (he innovated the Ranhei, which is used by a ton of people now!) that will certainly make the opposing veterans fear the winter. Very few have brought Hagane down in ChocoPro (he is undefeated in Singles...and now the Super Asia Champion!), and his intense aura will be on full display in this bout...also those low kicks, which Mei absolutely hates! It will be interesting to see how the Handsome Devil works with the other Devil of Ichigaya: Known goblin, Pin Specialist, and Submission wizard Mei Suruga! (Mei tends to team with Super Asia Champs!) She will be giving him a run for his money in the cruelty department. The whiny tiny Red Devil is super talented beyond her years and will show the world her potential in this one...just like all the others! Expect the Ace of Gatoh Move to be very extra in this one, to the point she might give her partner hell (especially since he has that Big Blue Belt!). Can the two rivals work together against the utility pairing? Will Hagane kick is own partner into oblivion?“So what!?” Choun Shiryu is here! The Dragon of ChocoPro is a Wuxia hero (having done some of the most spectacular acts in Ichigaya) with his own fantastic flair! He is one of the most legitimate forces in the promotion. This Kung Fu master boasts a truly unique fighting style, pulling off action movie stunts you’ll not find elsewhere. While his usual partner is taking some time away from wrestling, (though Ninja Sayuri is still behind the scenes, as is tradition!) this time his partner is fellow utility player Shin Suzuki! Shin is always ready to go! His warm personality and intense athleticism fit well with the general vibe of Ichigaya...and honestly, his knack for dealing with kids (as a proud father) comes in handy in this den of goblins and monsters! Shin & Choun both mesh well with just about any pairing, so expect these two to sync together with machine precision once again. Both are no stranger to the Super Asia Title scene, so they’ll probably be gunning for the Cold Killer Champion. Prepare for a cold day in Ichigaya with some hot action!
Congratulations to Emi Sakura’s student & former ChocoPro guest, Mizuki, on winning TJPW’s PoP Championship!
Come and see the wild creativity that produced Two of the Seven AEW Women's World Champions! (Both of which have appeared on ChocoPro!) You'll be wondering if you're seeing future champs, as well. ChocoPro is the Frontier of Pro Wrestling! Match after match of hard hitting, chaotic, fun bouts with a friendly online audience. We're quickly growing, and you're welcome to come along!
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions:
“What is this?”
ChocoPro is a free online promotion run by AEW's Emi Sakura, that takes place in the legendary Ichigaya Chocolate Square! It features a steady pace of live Episode releases, fan interaction, season long story arcs, and much more! A place where the turnbuckles are replaced with 14th floor windows, the ropes are often replaced with fans, unforgiving walls provide creative avenues for skills otherwise unthinkable, and you can take solace in knowing that the referees usually do nothing. While it might be a shocking change at first, the intensity and storytelling will leave you wanting more.“Why are they fighting in ____?”
Short answer is that it is a cost effective, unique venue with a better availability schedule and allows the roster access for training. Emi Sakura has been using this place for a long time, and you might be surprised at some of the names that have used it (even outside of ChocoPro!). There are a few in-ring Episodes and Gatoh Move has in ring shows with crowds on the YouTube channel. Think of it like the Hart Dungeon but as a promotion, if that helps!”What are the rules?”
While special match stipulations will usually be explained before the respective matches, the general rules of ChocoPro are simple. Pins only count on the Chocolate Mat and are not broken by the edge or Wall. Submissions usually only count on the Chocolate Mat, and ARE broken by reaching the edge or wall (sometimes ceiling...). Double pins and Double submissions are legal (and encouraged) in ChocoPro Tag matches, meaning cohesive teams will always have the advantage! Count Outs only exist if specified, since many matches stray from the comfort of the Chocolate Square into the streets (and the rest of the building itself!) There is a Time Limit for each bout (based on card placement and importance) and the Referee has discretion (even if they tend to do nothing most of the time!). Every Ref is different, some have different levels of bias and speed.“How can I support them?”
Watch the show! Even if you can't see it live, the views matter! Like & Subscribe! You can join the Channel's membership for different tiers of perks...but also, you can buy single episode Sponsorship, Digital autographed photos, and more on their shop site as well as purchase shirts from PWTees (which features some great options!) If you'd like to donate or purchase a main wall sponsorship, you can via Paypal or Patreon...and don't forget to cheer for your favorites! (especially if you want to do a superchat!)”How come there aren’t a lot of comments on the threads?”
ChocoPro is a YouTube show, meaning the discourse happens live...in the chat! Those that comment in the threads on here tend to do so in order to help new viewers that might be intimidated by the fast moving chat. Don’t be afraid to just dive in though, the community is friendly.“Why are you posting this here? / Are you paid for this?”
This is a wrestling forum, and I'm trying to broaden the horizons of others! There is a lot of good wrestling out there...Plus growing the fan base means more people for me to joke around with! I honestly do believe this is what a lot of fans are looking for, even if it is too different for some! But different tastes are good. Variety is the spice of life. This is a labor of love (it really doesn't take that long) considering how much work they do to put on so many shows...for free!If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me on here or on Twitter, where I’m surprised the season changed too! ChocoPro is Seasonal!
Season Tracker: We're 1/18 into Season 18! (Each Season is usually around 18 episodes)
2023.03.21 19:30 Consistent-Rice-8117 How the Fed and banks are losing trust step by step with a forecasted 25 basis point rate hike
Let's think about why the Fed started bailing out banks and even opened the floodgates, but people kept taking money out of banks, a dozen banks on Wall Street started bailing out First Republic Bank, but last night First Republic Bank's stock price still fell nearly 50%, UBS sold itself to UBS at a 4% valuation, but UBS's acquisition was not as painful as these events What is the reason behind this? One is that the Fed said in 2021 that inflation was only temporary, and then inflation suddenly became the biggest problem in front of people all over the world, so in 2022 there was the strongest wave of interest rate hikes in history, and global financial markets fell through their pants, and if we want accountability, it was actually the Fed's error in judgment, but we bore the consequences, so we don't trust the Fed.
From Powell's point of view he definitely wants to raise interest rates, after all, the fight against inflation is his main task, but now the banking crisis, the Biden administration and other countries in the world that have a lot of U.S. debt. The pressure of debt to Powell is infinite, which is the reason there is a choice to stop raising interest rates, but I think tomorrow night will still raise rates as usual 25 basis points, the reason is that the Bank of England also did so, raise rates + QE will also Another point is that if March does not raise rates, inflation really can not hold. April is no rate hike resolution, can only wait until May to add, so the risk is greater, so this time to add 25, even if After the market panic, the Fed can also use other means to appease the market, the big deal is to say in advance of the May rate cut chant, so think about the fact that it is not so The market will be in a state of panic.
This is my personal opinion, if you have any good comments welcome to leave a message.
Translated with DeepL
submitted by Consistent-Rice-8117 to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]
From Powell's point of view he definitely wants to raise interest rates, after all, the fight against inflation is his main task, but now the banking crisis, the Biden administration and other countries in the world that have a lot of U.S. debt. The pressure of debt to Powell is infinite, which is the reason there is a choice to stop raising interest rates, but I think tomorrow night will still raise rates as usual 25 basis points, the reason is that the Bank of England also did so, raise rates + QE will also Another point is that if March does not raise rates, inflation really can not hold. April is no rate hike resolution, can only wait until May to add, so the risk is greater, so this time to add 25, even if After the market panic, the Fed can also use other means to appease the market, the big deal is to say in advance of the May rate cut chant, so think about the fact that it is not so The market will be in a state of panic.
This is my personal opinion, if you have any good comments welcome to leave a message.
Translated with DeepL
2023.03.21 19:29 MirkWorks City & Soul by James Hillman
5
From Mirror to Window: Curing Psychoanalysis of its Narcissism
The apparently individual conflict of the patient is revealed as a universal conflict of his environment and epoch. Neurosis is thus nothing less than an individual attempt, however unsuccessful, to solve a universal problem. - C.G. Jung (1912)
Narcissism is now the rage, the universal diagnosis. In Freud's world, the new attention was on conversion hysteria; in Bleuler's, on dementia praecox. Earlier we find all ills attributed to the English malady, to the spleen, to hypochondriasis, to melancholia, to chlorosis; in Paris, a myriad of phobies and délires. Different time and places, different syndromes.
Narcissism has its theoreticians - Kohut, Kernberg, Lacan - and modern Jungians are following the rage. The collective consciousness of psychology makes us collectively unconscious, much as Jung said when writing about the collective ideas in his day. Being "with it" also means being in it. The epidemic diagnosis Narcissism states that the condition is already endemic to the psychology that makes the diagnosis. It sees narcissism because it sees narcissistically. So let us not take this diagnosis so literally, but place it within the historical parade of Western diagnoses.
Eminent cultural critics - Karl Krauss, Thomas Szasz, Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch, Paul Zweig, and the notorious Dr. Jeffrey Masson - have each seen that psychoanalysis breeds a narcissistic subjectivism inflicting on the culture an iatrogenic disorder, that is, a disease brought by the methods of the doctors who would cure it.
I shall continue their line of thought, but I shall use a method that Wolfgang Giegerich has so brilliantly exposed in many of his papers. If depth psychology itself suffers from a narcissistic disorder, then what we analysts need first to probe is the unconscious narcissism in analysis itself. Our first patient is neither the patient nor ourselves, but the phenomenon called "analysis" that has brought us both to the consulting room.
The term "Narcissism" is probably British. Havelock Ellis is credited with its invention, though Freud gave us its psychoanalytic meaning. What did Freud say? As I go through some of his descriptions, let us hear them narcissistically, as self-referents, descriptive of psychology and of ourselves in psychology.
1917: "We employ the term narcissism in relation to little children and it is to excessive narcissism of primitive man that we ascribe his belief in the omnipotence of his thoughts and consequent attempts to influence the course of events in the other world by magical practices." Does not analysis have this primitive omnipotence fantasy of influencing events in the outer world by its magical practices? The omnipotence of subjective reflection is attested to by many classic Jungians like Harding, Bernard, Meier, von Franz, Baumann, etc. As Jung himself says, we are each "the makeweight that tips the scales" that determine the outcome of world history." The rituals of self-engagement remove projections from the world so that, supposedly, the world itself is transformed by psychoanalysis.
1922: "... narcissistic disorders are characterized by a withdrawal of the libido from objects." The withdrawal of the libido from from objects - I ask you to remember this statement. We shall come back to it.
1925: Freud describes three historic blows to humankind's narcissism. These, he says, are the cosmological blow of Copernicus, the blow of Darwinian evolutionary theory, and the psychoanalytic blow (of Freud) which wounded the omnipotence fantasy, or narcissism, of the ego as sole self-willed ruler. Here, psychoanalysis becomes itself a giant omnipotence fantasy, a creation myth of our culture equivalent with astronomy and biology, promulgating itself with narcissistic grandeur.
This pronouncement appears in Freud's discussion on resistance to psychoanalysis. By means of this idea resistance, analysis brilliantly maintains its invulnerability to criticism. Questioning the validity of analysis is impugned as resistance to it. Even more: the very attacks demonstrate resistance and therefore help to validate analytical theory. As Freud says, "The triumph of narcissism, the ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability. It refuses to be hurt by the arrows of reality ... It insists that it is impervious to wounds dealt by the outside world."
Later Freud considered narcissism not to be rooted in love at all, i.e., as self-love, but to be rather a defense against aggressive impulses. Let us consider for a moment the value of "aggressive impulses," at least and at best they take the object, the world out there, into account: I feel enraged about societal injustice, nuclear danger, media crap, industrial callousness, the corporate mind, political ideologues, hideous architecture, etc. But, owing to my narcissistic defenses against the involving call of aggression, I go to the spa, work out, meditate, jog, diet, reduce stress, relax my body armor, improve my orgasms, get a new hairstyle, and take a vacation. And see my therapist: very expensive, very good for me, because he or she devotes complete attention to my problems, especially our transferential frame. Instead of the world and my outrage, I work on my analysis, myself, the Self. This Self, too, fits a narcissistic definition: "the incorporation of grandiose object images as defense against anxiety and guilt" or, as Fenichel puts it, one feels oneself in "reunion with an omnipotent force, be that force an archetype, a god or goddess, the unus mundus, or the numinosity of analysis itself.
Freud's paper "On Narcissism" states that both introspection and conscience or "being watched" derive from and serve narcissism. Yet, psychotherapy practices self-scrutiny as the principal method in its treatment and "being watched" or supervision as the principal component of its training. A candidate goes to hour after hour of institutionalized narcissism of watching and being watched.
The institutionalization of narcissism in our profession - the idea of resistance, the idealization of the Self, the practices of introspection and supervision, the omnipotence fantasies about its own importance in world history, its technique of referring all events back to itself as the vessel, the mirror, the temenos, the frame - bears immediately upon that central obsession of analysis today, transference.
*
By transference, here, I mean that self-gratifying analytical habit which refers the emotions of life to the analysis. Transference habitually deflects object libido, that is, love for anything outside analysis, into a narcissistic reflection upon analysis. We feed analysis with life. The mirror that walks down the road of life (Flaubert) replaces the actual road, and the mirror no longer reflects the world, only the walking companions. They may as well have stayed indoors, less distracted by the trees and the traffic.
The principal content of analytical reflection as transference is the child we once were, a fact which accords with Freud's observation that the object choice of the narcissist is "someone he once was.” This helps account for the faddish popularity of Alice Miller’s writings. Her idealized children exhibit what Freud said: the narcissist is “not willing to forego his narcissistic perfection in his childhood” and “seeks to recover the early perfection.” The focus on childhood traps the libido only further into subjectivity, and therefore we must recognize that erotic compulsions in analysis are produced primarily by the analysis, rather than by the persons. Analysis acts itself out through them quite impersonally so that they often feel betrayed and ashamed by the impersonality of the emotions they undergo and are unable to recognize that what they are suffering is the object libido trying to find a way out of analysis. Instead, the narcissistic viciousness of our theory says that transference emotions are compelling the persons to go deeper into analysis.
Let us recognize that the other person - patient or analyst - embodies the only possibility within an analysis to whom object libido can flow. The person in the other chair represents cure of analytical narcissism simply by being there as an Other. Moreover, the patient for the analyst and the analyst for the patient become such numinous objects because they have also been tabooed as libidinal possibilities. Analyst and patient may not act their desire for each other. The narcissism of the situation makes them absolutely necessary to each other, while the taboo sets them absolutely outside of each other. This outside object however, is also inside the analysis. So, patient for doctor and doctor for patient become the symbolic mode of ending analysis by means of love.
Of course, the persons are often torn by what Freud calls the love dilemma of the narcissistic patient: “the cure by love,” which he generally refers to as cure by analysis. We must ask whether this neurotic choice, as Freud calls it, arises from the narcissisms of the patient or from the narcissism of the analytical system in which the patient is situated. After all, the fantasy of an opposition between love and analysis occurs within the prior fantasy of cure which has brought the persons together in the first place.
By elaborating ethical codes, malpractice insurance, investigations, and expulsions that blame the participants, analysis protects itself from wounding insights about its own narcissism. The vulnerability of analysis - that its effectiveness is always in question, that it is neither science nor medicine, that it is aging into professional mediocrity and may have lost its soul to power years ago despite its idealized language by growth and creativity (a language by the way, never used by its founders) - this vulnerability is overcome by idealizing the transference.
As well as transference love, there is also hatred. Perhaps the client’s hatred of the analyst and the hatred of the analyst for the client are also not personal. Perhaps, these intense oppressive feelings against each other arise in both to present both with the fact that they are in a hateful situation: the object libido hates the attachment of transference. Analysis hates itself in order to break the narcissistic vessel imprisoning the libido that would go out into the soul in the world.
The horned dilemmas of transference, including the analyst’s stare into the mirror of his own counter-transference, the feelings of love and hatred, this agony and ecstasy and romantic torture convince the participants that what is going on is of intense importance: first, because these phenomena are expected by the theory and provide proof of it, and second, because these phenomena re-enact what analysis once was in its own childhood in Vienna and Zurich, analysis in primary fusion with its origins in Breuer and Freud and Jung, in Dora and Anna and Sabina. The feelings are cast in therapeutic guise because this is the healing fiction of the analytic situation. In other words, transference is less necessary to the doctor and the patient than it is to analysis by means of which it intensifies its narcissistic idealization, staying in love with itself. We therapists do not sit in our chambers so many hours a day only for the money, or the power, but because we are addicted to analytical narcissism. Our individual narcissism is both obscured and reinforced by the approved narcissism of the analytical profession.
When one partner imagines a tryst or the other imagines resisting a seduction, or when either imagines that love is a solution to misery, then they are framed in the romantic conflicts of Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, and Anna Karenina, reconstituting the Romanticisms of the nineteenth century and the origins of psychoanalysis, not in your or my personal childhoods, but in its own cultural childhood. This means we have to locate the narcissism of contemporary analysis within a much wider narcissism: the Romantic movement.
*
Literary tradition differentiates at least four principal traits of this genre. We have already spoken of one, “idealization of the love object.” And indeed analysis idealizes the patient as an “interesting case,” “difficult patient,” “good patient,” “borderline personality.” Or consider all the literary fabulations that have made patients into eternal literary figures - Dora, Ellen West, Babette, Miss Miller, Wolfman, Ratman, Little Hands, all the way to Freud and Jung themselves in the novels The White Hotel and The House of Glass. Think of the Romanticism of our theoretical constructs: Love and Death, Empathy, Transformation, Growth, The Child, The Great Mother, The Mirror, Desire and Jouissance, and the Transitional Object. In the patient there takes place such idealized events as a hieros gamos, a quest for self-discovery and a journey into wholeness. Synchronicities outside of causal laws, transcendent functions, integration of the shadow and the realization of the Self on whom the future of civilization depends. We record our idealization of the love object, i.e., analysis, in taped and filmed analytic sessions, paying meticulous and expensive attention to trivial conversations and gestures. Analysis is in love with its idealized image.
A second essential trait of Romanticism is said to be the opposition between bourgeois society and the inner self that, with its dreams, desires and inspirations, tends to oppose, even contradict, the outer world of usual things. Psychoanalysis from its beginnings imagines itself fundamentally opposed to the civilization and its institutions of religion, family, medicine, and the political community disdained as “the collective.” Freud’s emphasis on himself as Jew and hence marginal, as well as Jung’s favorite position as heretical old hermit (despite the bourgeois lives they led and values they held) still shapes the imagination of the profession and distorts its relation to the ordinary world.
Third, imprisonment another basic theme in Romanticism, especially French and Russian. In Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, Maria’s song says: “This tiny cell suffices me, there I will dwell my soul to save.” The consulting room provides the confining physical place for the psychic imprisonment of analysis as such its devotion to the secret nooks and crannies of the private world, decorating with reconstructive rococo (i.e., psycho-dynamic intricacies) the narcissistic cell of personality.
Fourth, the Romantic genre has been defined as one that simultaneously seeks and postpones a particular end. This fits therapy. Its entire procedure seeks to restore the person to the world, yet postpones this return indefinitely. (Meanwhile, do not make major changes in your actual life. Don’t act out. The cure of analysis becomes more analysis-another analyst, another school - and the improvement of training becomes ever more hours.) The simultaneity of seeking and postponing an end occurs in the basic conundrum of every analysis, its contradictory two commandments: encourage the desires of the unconscious (Thou Shall Not Repress) and forbid gratification (Thou Shall Not Act Out). Our work is with the libidinous and our method is by way of abstention. The end is unforeseeable; there is no completion. Analysis interminable, as Freud said. This is the Romanticism of eternal longing.
There is no way out of Romanticism’s consulting room and the subjectivism of its eros, unless we turn to what is beyond its purview, turn to what narcissism and romanticism leave out: the objects, the unidealized, immediately given, actual world of dull and urban things. By turning psychological attention from the mirror of self-reflection to the world through the window, we release “object libido” to seek its goal beyond narcissistic confinement in analysis. For “object libido” is but a psychoanalytic name for the drive which loves the world, the erotic desire for Anima Mundi, for Soul in the World.
Perhaps it becomes clearer why I have been emphasizing John Keats’s remarkable phrase; “Call the world … The vale of Soul-making. Then you will find out the use of the world.” Also, you will understand why I have held myself back from that side of Jung which expounds upon meaning, Self, individuation, unus mundus, wholeness, mandalas, etc. . These large and introverted ideas envelop me and usually my patients with a grandiose, invulnerable aura. As well, I keep a distance from the current Kohut craze and Lacanian mystique. Although recognizing narcissism as the syndrome of the times (even if the groundwork for this was prepared long ago in the metaphysical catastrophe of Augustinian and Cartesian subjectivism); yet, Kohut attempts its cure by the same means of narcissistic obsession: an ever more detailed observation of subjectivity. And a subjectivity within the oppressive confines of a negatively reconstructed childhood. The child archetype dominates contemporary therapy, keeping patients (and analysts) safe from the world. For this archetype feels always endangered by the actual world, lives not in the present but in futurity, and is addicted to its own powerless infantilism. By so focusing on the child, analysis disenfranchises itself from wider realm of soul-making in the adult community of polis.
Nevertheless I must confess to a serious long-standing error on my part regarding Keats’s phrase. I always considered the world out there to be useful for making one’s own soul. Narcissism again. My soul, your soul - not its soul. For the Romantics, however, ensouling the world was a crucial part of their program. They recognized the traps of narcissistic subjectivity in their vision. Hence, they sought the spirit in physical nature, the brotherhood of all mankind or Gemeinschaftsgefühl, political revolution, and a return to the classic gods and goddesses, attempting to revivify the soul of the world with pantheism.
We must therefore read Keats as saying we go through the world for the sake of its soul-making, thereby our own. This reading suggests a true object libido, beyond narcissism, in keeping with Otto Fenichel’s definition of love. Love can only be called such when “one’s own satisfaction is impossible without satisfying the object too. If the world is not satisfied by our going through it, no matter how much beauty and pleasure our souls may receive from it, then we live in its vale without love.
There is a way out, or I wouldn’t be standing here. For my specific style of narcissism, my pose before the mirror, today is heroic. My style insists on resolution of the issues raised. The method I shall be using here follows the method which I usually empty for resolving issues. First, we look back into the history of psychoanalysis for a model; second, we turn to some peculiar bit of pathologizing for a clue; and third, we resolve problems by dissolving them into images and metaphors.
So, let us turn back to the first psychoanalytic case, Anna O., and her doctor, Josef Breuer, who, with Freud, wrote Studies in Hysteria. As you recall, after a year of almost daily sessions often of several hours, he suddenly terminated. You recall also the intensity of her transference, that she developed a hysterical pregnancy and childbirth, after Breuer tried to end the treatment. He, according to Jones, after a final visit to her “fled the house in a cold sweat. The next day he and his wife left for Venice to spend a second honeymoon which resulted in the conception of a daughter.” Whether fact or not, and Ellenberger says not, the fantasy shows a founding patron of our work escaping both cure by analysis and cure by love for the beauty of Venice and the conception of a daughter. His object libido returns from the oppressive narcissism of psychoanalysis to the Romanticism of the wider world.
This wide world remains merely that, merely a place of escape or acting out, so long as the world “out the window” is imagined only in the Cartesian model as sheer res extensa, only dead matter. To show more vividly how that world is, as Keats said, a place of soul, let us go straight through the window into the world. Let us take a walk in a Japanese garden, in particular the strolling garden, the one with water, hills, trees, and stones. While we walk, let us imagine the garden as an emblem for the peripatetic teacher or the therapeutic guide (psychopompos), the world itself as psychoanalyst showing us soul, showing us how to be in it soulfully.
I turn to the garden and to Japan because of insights given while in Kyoto gardens several years ago, and also because the garden as metaphor expresses some of the deepest longings - from Hesperides, to Eden’s paradise, and Maria’s hortus inclusus - for the world as home of the soul. So by entering into the Japanese garden now we shall be stepping through the window into the anima mundi.
First we notice that the garden has no central place to stand and view it all. We can but scrutinize a part at a time. Instead of overview and wholeness, there is perspective and eachness. The world changes as we move. Here a clump of iris, there a mossy rock. Instead of a center (with its etymological roots in the Greek kentron, “goad” or “prick,” and being compelled toward a goal by means of abstract geometric distancing), there are shifts of focus relative to the body’s location and attitude.
Second: as one strolls, each vista is seen again from a different perspective. The maple branching down to the pond edge, the floating leaves appear less melancholic after the path bends. These shifts of seeing again are precisely what the word “respect” means. To look again is to “respect.” Each time we look at the same thing again, we gain respect for it and add respect to it, curiously discovering the innate relation of “looks” - of regarding and being regarded, words in English that refer to dignity.
Third: when the garden, rather than the dream or the symptom or the unconscious, becomes the via regia of psyche, then we are forced to think anew about the word “in.” “In” is the dominant preposition of all psychoanalysis - not with, not from, not for, but “in.” We look in our souls, we look in a mirror. "In” has been utterly literally, as an invisible, spacelesss psychic stuff inside our skins, or meanings inside our dreams and symptoms, or the memories locked in the past. Interiority of the garden, however, is wholly present and wholly displayed. “In” holds the meanings of included, engaged, involved, embraced. Or, as Jung said, the psyche is not in us; we are in the psyche. This feeling of being in the psyche becomes most palpable when inside the ruins of a Greek temple, in an Egyptian tomb of a king, in a dance or a ritual, and in a Japanese garden. Jung’s phrase “esse in anima” takes on concreteness then, as it does in a clear-cut forest, a bombed city, a cancer ward, a cemetery. Ecology, architecture, interior design are other modes of feeling the anima mundi. Instead of the usual notion of psyche in body, the body strolling through the garden is in the psyche. The world itself is a psychic body; and our bodies as we move, stand, look, pause, turn, and sit are performing an activity of psychic reflection, an activity we formerly considered only mentally possible in the mirror of introspection.
Fourth: the idea of individuality also changes, for in the Japanese garden trees are trimmed at the top and encouraged to grow sideways. Rather than an individuality of the lone tree, towering (and Jung said the single tree is a major symbol of the individuating Self), these trees stretch their branches toward others. Individuality is within community and, takes its definition from community. Furthermore, each tuft in the soft branches of the pine trees is plucked by gardeners. They pull out needles, allowing emptiness to individualize the shape of each twig. It is as if nothing can be individualized unless it is surrounded by emptiness and yet also very, very close to what it is most like. Individuality is therefore more visible within the estrange separateness and close similarity, for instance, of family than in trying to be “different” from family.
Fifth: not only are aged trees supported with crutches and encouraged to flower - blossoming belonging therefore not only to youth - but also the garden includes dead trees. What more wounds our narcissism than these images of old age, these crutched, dependent, twisted and dead trees? < “At least Aurora didn’t reject Tithonus, old, didn’t allow him to lie there lonely in the House of Dawn. She often fondled him, descending into her waters, before she bathed her yoked horses with care. She, when she rested in his arms, by neighbouring India, lamented that day returned too soon.”>
Sixth: the Karesanui gardens, or Zen-inspired gardens, present mainly white sand and found stones, rarely trees. In this bare place the mind watches itself making interpretations. The nine rocks in the raked sand are a tiger family swimming through the sea; the nine rocks are mountain tops peaking through white mist and clouds; the nine rocks are simply rocks, aesthetically placed with genius. One legend after another, one philosophy, theory or literary criticism, or psychological interpretation rises to the mind and falls back into the white sand. The garden becomes wholly metaphor, both what it is and what it is not, presence and absence at once. The concrete koan of the rock garden transforms the mind itself into metaphor, its thought transient while image endures, so that the mind cannot identify with its own subjectivism - narcissism overcome.
‘“Hegel introduces this notion of ‘oppositional determination” in his logic of essence, when he discusses the relationship between identity and difference; his point there is not only that identity is always the identity of identity and difference, but that difference itself is also always the difference between itself and identity; in the same way, it is not only necessity that encompasses both itself and contingency, but also - and more fundamentally - it is contingency itself which encompasses both itself and necessity. Or, with regard to the tension between essence and appearance, the fact that essence has to appear within the domain of appearances, as a hint that “appearances are not all” but are “merely appearances.”’ - Zizek, Less than Nothing>
*
Finally, I shall insist that the garden is not natural; nor is psyche natural. The garden was designed and is tended to maintain an artificiality that imitates nature. In Fort Worth, Texas, a large and marvelous Japanese garden was constructed years ago. But since adequate funds were not set aside for gardeners from Japan, nature slowly destroys that garden. Without the pruners’ perverted twist to each inch of nature, the garden declines into merely another part of the forest. A garden’s elaborate display of soul-in-the-world is an opus contra naturam, like alchemy. Like alchemy, the garden is a work of intense culture. Unlike alchemy, its matter, its body, is out there, rather than inside the glass vessel.
Because the garden is artificial, as the alchemist was called artifex, all conceptions of soul must be plucked of naturalistic fallacies. The soul as opus contra naturam will not be served adequately by fallacious comparisons with organic growth, cyclical process, and myths of nature goddesses. Nor does the garden shelter the child from which grows the creative person as psychotherapy is found to believe. By insisting upon the artificiality of our work with soul, I am trying to keep us from the Romantic error of confusing the ideal (Eden and the Elysian fields; Horaiko, in Japanese) with the natural. The garden as metaphor offers a romantic vision that saves us from Naturalistic Romanticism by twisting and sophisticating nature through art.
This twist to nature that wounds idealizations of garden is presented in our culture, as in Roman culture, by our ancient god of gardens and gardeners, Priapus. Priapus is neither young nor beautiful. Unlike lovely Narcissus, unlike the semi-divine figures of Adam and Eve, Priapus is mature, bald and paunchy, and so distorted that his mother, Venus, deserted him at birth. His very presence repels romantic idealizations and the gaze into the mirror of Venusian vanity as well as Narcissus’s rapt reflection. Priapic reflection starts the other way around; his preposterous swollen condition reflects the vitality of the world. The same force displays in him as in the buds and germinating pods. By means of distortion which deceptively seems “only natural,” Priapus invites the grotesque pathologized disproportions of imagination - and imagination, says Bachelard, works by deformation.
So, when I invoke Priapus, I am not speaking of priapismus; I am not speaking of machismo; and I am not anti-feminine. Let me be quite clear. I am speaking of the generative artificiality that is the essence of the garden and of the psyche. Each dream, each fantasy, and each symptomatic complication of natural health and normative humanity bears witness to the psyche’s libidinal pleasure in exaggeration, its fertile genius for imaginative distortion. If this god of gardens is also a god of psychoanalysis - and from Charcot through Lacan the priapic has been invoked - he brings to its work an archaic reflex beyond the romantic or baroque, a rousing urgency forward and outward. (Priapus was not permitted indoors in Hestia’s closed rooms where his presence becomes only violent and obscene.)
Moreover, this god needs no mirror to know himself, for his self is wholly displayed. His nature cannot be concealed within, so he is quite free of hidden meanings and subtle innuendos that keep psychoanalysis hopefully addicted to one more revelation, one more transformation, interminable. Priapus knows no metamorphosis, no transfigurations. Priapus is without ambiguity; metaphor is forbidden to him; he displays all, reveals nothing. Like the garden, all there. The rocks are the rocks.
<"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." - Matthew 16:18>
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From Mirror to Window: Curing Psychoanalysis of its Narcissism
The apparently individual conflict of the patient is revealed as a universal conflict of his environment and epoch. Neurosis is thus nothing less than an individual attempt, however unsuccessful, to solve a universal problem. - C.G. Jung (1912)
Narcissism is now the rage, the universal diagnosis. In Freud's world, the new attention was on conversion hysteria; in Bleuler's, on dementia praecox. Earlier we find all ills attributed to the English malady, to the spleen, to hypochondriasis, to melancholia, to chlorosis; in Paris, a myriad of phobies and délires. Different time and places, different syndromes.
Narcissism has its theoreticians - Kohut, Kernberg, Lacan - and modern Jungians are following the rage. The collective consciousness of psychology makes us collectively unconscious, much as Jung said when writing about the collective ideas in his day. Being "with it" also means being in it. The epidemic diagnosis Narcissism states that the condition is already endemic to the psychology that makes the diagnosis. It sees narcissism because it sees narcissistically. So let us not take this diagnosis so literally, but place it within the historical parade of Western diagnoses.
Eminent cultural critics - Karl Krauss, Thomas Szasz, Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch, Paul Zweig, and the notorious Dr. Jeffrey Masson - have each seen that psychoanalysis breeds a narcissistic subjectivism inflicting on the culture an iatrogenic disorder, that is, a disease brought by the methods of the doctors who would cure it.
I shall continue their line of thought, but I shall use a method that Wolfgang Giegerich has so brilliantly exposed in many of his papers. If depth psychology itself suffers from a narcissistic disorder, then what we analysts need first to probe is the unconscious narcissism in analysis itself. Our first patient is neither the patient nor ourselves, but the phenomenon called "analysis" that has brought us both to the consulting room.
The term "Narcissism" is probably British
1917: "We employ the term narcissism in relation to little children and it is to excessive narcissism of primitive man that we ascribe his belief in the omnipotence of his thoughts and consequent attempts to influence the course of events in the other world by magical practices." Does not analysis have this primitive omnipotence fantasy of influencing events in the outer world by its magical practices? The omnipotence of subjective reflection is attested to by many classic Jungians like Harding, Bernard, Meier, von Franz, Baumann, etc. As Jung himself says, we are each "the makeweight that tips the scales" that determine the outcome of world history." The rituals of self-engagement remove projections from the world so that, supposedly, the world itself is transformed by psychoanalysis.
1922: "... narcissistic disorders are characterized by a withdrawal of the libido from objects." The withdrawal of the libido from from objects - I ask you to remember this statement. We shall come back to it.
1925: Freud describes three historic blows to humankind's narcissism. These, he says, are the cosmological blow of Copernicus, the blow of Darwinian evolutionary theory, and the psychoanalytic blow (of Freud) which wounded the omnipotence fantasy, or narcissism, of the ego as sole self-willed ruler. Here, psychoanalysis becomes itself a giant omnipotence fantasy, a creation myth of our culture equivalent with astronomy and biology, promulgating itself with narcissistic grandeur.
This pronouncement appears in Freud's discussion on resistance to psychoanalysis. By means of this idea resistance, analysis brilliantly maintains its invulnerability to criticism. Questioning the validity of analysis is impugned as resistance to it. Even more: the very attacks demonstrate resistance and therefore help to validate analytical theory. As Freud says, "The triumph of narcissism, the ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability. It refuses to be hurt by the arrows of reality ... It insists that it is impervious to wounds dealt by the outside world."
Later Freud considered narcissism not to be rooted in love at all, i.e., as self-love, but to be rather a defense against aggressive impulses. Let us consider for a moment the value of "aggressive impulses," at least and at best they take the object, the world out there, into account: I feel enraged about societal injustice, nuclear danger, media crap, industrial callousness, the corporate mind, political ideologues, hideous architecture, etc. But, owing to my narcissistic defenses against the involving call of aggression, I go to the spa, work out, meditate, jog, diet, reduce stress, relax my body armor, improve my orgasms, get a new hairstyle, and take a vacation. And see my therapist: very expensive, very good for me, because he or she devotes complete attention to my problems, especially our transferential frame. Instead of the world and my outrage, I work on my analysis, myself, the Self. This Self, too, fits a narcissistic definition: "the incorporation of grandiose object images as defense against anxiety and guilt" or, as Fenichel puts it, one feels oneself in "reunion with an omnipotent force, be that force an archetype, a god or goddess, the unus mundus, or the numinosity of analysis itself.
Freud's paper "On Narcissism" states that both introspection and conscience or "being watched" derive from and serve narcissism. Yet, psychotherapy practices self-scrutiny as the principal method in its treatment and "being watched" or supervision as the principal component of its training. A candidate goes to hour after hour of institutionalized narcissism of watching and being watched.
The institutionalization of narcissism in our profession - the idea of resistance, the idealization of the Self, the practices of introspection and supervision, the omnipotence fantasies about its own importance in world history, its technique of referring all events back to itself as the vessel, the mirror, the temenos, the frame - bears immediately upon that central obsession of analysis today, transference.
*
By transference, here, I mean that self-gratifying analytical habit which refers the emotions of life to the analysis. Transference habitually deflects object libido, that is, love for anything outside analysis, into a narcissistic reflection upon analysis. We feed analysis with life. The mirror that walks down the road of life (Flaubert) replaces the actual road, and the mirror no longer reflects the world, only the walking companions. They may as well have stayed indoors, less distracted by the trees and the traffic.
The principal content of analytical reflection as transference is the child we once were, a fact which accords with Freud's observation that the object choice of the narcissist is "someone he once was.” This helps account for the faddish popularity of Alice Miller’s writings. Her idealized children exhibit what Freud said: the narcissist is “not willing to forego his narcissistic perfection in his childhood” and “seeks to recover the early perfection.” The focus on childhood traps the libido only further into subjectivity, and therefore we must recognize that erotic compulsions in analysis are produced primarily by the analysis, rather than by the persons. Analysis acts itself out through them quite impersonally so that they often feel betrayed and ashamed by the impersonality of the emotions they undergo and are unable to recognize that what they are suffering is the object libido trying to find a way out of analysis. Instead, the narcissistic viciousness of our theory says that transference emotions are compelling the persons to go deeper into analysis.
Let us recognize that the other person - patient or analyst - embodies the only possibility within an analysis to whom object libido can flow. The person in the other chair represents cure of analytical narcissism simply by being there as an Other. Moreover, the patient for the analyst and the analyst for the patient become such numinous objects because they have also been tabooed as libidinal possibilities. Analyst and patient may not act their desire for each other. The narcissism of the situation makes them absolutely necessary to each other, while the taboo sets them absolutely outside of each other. This outside object however, is also inside the analysis. So, patient for doctor and doctor for patient become the symbolic mode of ending analysis by means of love.
Of course, the persons are often torn by what Freud calls the love dilemma of the narcissistic patient: “the cure by love,” which he generally refers to as cure by analysis. We must ask whether this neurotic choice, as Freud calls it, arises from the narcissisms of the patient or from the narcissism of the analytical system in which the patient is situated. After all, the fantasy of an opposition between love and analysis occurs within the prior fantasy of cure which has brought the persons together in the first place.
By elaborating ethical codes, malpractice insurance, investigations, and expulsions that blame the participants, analysis protects itself from wounding insights about its own narcissism. The vulnerability of analysis - that its effectiveness is always in question, that it is neither science nor medicine, that it is aging into professional mediocrity and may have lost its soul to power years ago despite its idealized language by growth and creativity (a language by the way, never used by its founders) - this vulnerability is overcome by idealizing the transference.
As well as transference love, there is also hatred. Perhaps the client’s hatred of the analyst and the hatred of the analyst for the client are also not personal. Perhaps, these intense oppressive feelings against each other arise in both to present both with the fact that they are in a hateful situation: the object libido hates the attachment of transference. Analysis hates itself in order to break the narcissistic vessel imprisoning the libido that would go out into the soul in the world.
The horned dilemmas of transference, including the analyst’s stare into the mirror of his own counter-transference, the feelings of love and hatred, this agony and ecstasy and romantic torture convince the participants that what is going on is of intense importance: first, because these phenomena are expected by the theory and provide proof of it, and second, because these phenomena re-enact what analysis once was in its own childhood in Vienna and Zurich, analysis in primary fusion with its origins in Breuer and Freud and Jung, in Dora and Anna and Sabina. The feelings are cast in therapeutic guise because this is the healing fiction of the analytic situation. In other words, transference is less necessary to the doctor and the patient than it is to analysis by means of which it intensifies its narcissistic idealization, staying in love with itself. We therapists do not sit in our chambers so many hours a day only for the money, or the power, but because we are addicted to analytical narcissism. Our individual narcissism is both obscured and reinforced by the approved narcissism of the analytical profession.
When one partner imagines a tryst or the other imagines resisting a seduction, or when either imagines that love is a solution to misery, then they are framed in the romantic conflicts of Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, and Anna Karenina, reconstituting the Romanticisms of the nineteenth century and the origins of psychoanalysis, not in your or my personal childhoods, but in its own cultural childhood. This means we have to locate the narcissism of contemporary analysis within a much wider narcissism: the Romantic movement.
*
Literary tradition differentiates at least four principal traits of this genre. We have already spoken of one, “idealization of the love object.” And indeed analysis idealizes the patient as an “interesting case,” “difficult patient,” “good patient,” “borderline personality.” Or consider all the literary fabulations that have made patients into eternal literary figures - Dora, Ellen West, Babette, Miss Miller, Wolfman, Ratman, Little Hands, all the way to Freud and Jung themselves in the novels The White Hotel and The House of Glass. Think of the Romanticism of our theoretical constructs: Love and Death, Empathy, Transformation, Growth, The Child, The Great Mother, The Mirror, Desire and Jouissance, and the Transitional Object. In the patient there takes place such idealized events as a hieros gamos, a quest for self-discovery and a journey into wholeness. Synchronicities outside of causal laws, transcendent functions, integration of the shadow and the realization of the Self on whom the future of civilization depends. We record our idealization of the love object, i.e., analysis, in taped and filmed analytic sessions, paying meticulous and expensive attention to trivial conversations and gestures. Analysis is in love with its idealized image.
A second essential trait of Romanticism is said to be the opposition between bourgeois society and the inner self that, with its dreams, desires and inspirations, tends to oppose, even contradict, the outer world of usual things. Psychoanalysis from its beginnings imagines itself fundamentally opposed to the civilization and its institutions of religion, family, medicine, and the political community disdained as “the collective.”
Third, imprisonment another basic theme in Romanticism, especially French and Russian. In Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, Maria’s song says: “This tiny cell suffices me, there I will dwell my soul to save.” The consulting room provides the confining physical place for the psychic imprisonment of analysis as such its devotion to the secret nooks and crannies of the private world, decorating with reconstructive rococo (i.e., psycho-dynamic intricacies) the narcissistic cell of personality.
Fourth, the Romantic genre has been defined as one that simultaneously seeks and postpones a particular end. This fits therapy. Its entire procedure seeks to restore the person to the world, yet postpones this return indefinitely. (Meanwhile, do not make major changes in your actual life. Don’t act out. The cure of analysis becomes more analysis-another analyst, another school - and the improvement of training becomes ever more hours.) The simultaneity of seeking and postponing an end occurs in the basic conundrum of every analysis, its contradictory two commandments: encourage the desires of the unconscious (Thou Shall Not Repress) and forbid gratification (Thou Shall Not Act Out). Our work is with the libidinous and our method is by way of abstention. The end is unforeseeable; there is no completion. Analysis interminable, as Freud said. This is the Romanticism of eternal longing.
There is no way out of Romanticism’s consulting room and the subjectivism of its eros, unless we turn to what is beyond its purview, turn to what narcissism and romanticism leave out: the objects, the unidealized, immediately given, actual world of dull and urban things
Perhaps it becomes clearer why I have been emphasizing John Keats’s remarkable phrase; “Call the world … The vale of Soul-making. Then you will find out the use of the world.” Also, you will understand why I have held myself back from that side of Jung which expounds upon meaning, Self, individuation, unus mundus, wholeness, mandalas, etc. . These large and introverted ideas envelop me and usually my patients with a grandiose, invulnerable aura. As well, I keep a distance from the current Kohut craze and Lacanian mystique. Although recognizing narcissism as the syndrome of the times (even if the groundwork for this was prepared long ago in the metaphysical catastrophe of Augustinian and Cartesian subjectivism); yet, Kohut attempts its cure by the same means of narcissistic obsession: an ever more detailed observation of subjectivity. And a subjectivity within the oppressive confines of a negatively reconstructed childhood. The child archetype dominates contemporary therapy, keeping patients (and analysts) safe from the world. For this archetype feels always endangered by the actual world, lives not in the present but in futurity, and is addicted to its own powerless infantilism. By so focusing on the child, analysis disenfranchises itself from wider realm of soul-making in the adult community of polis.
Nevertheless I must confess to a serious long-standing error on my part regarding Keats’s phrase. I always considered the world out there to be useful for making one’s own soul. Narcissism again. My soul, your soul - not its soul. For the Romantics, however, ensouling the world was a crucial part of their program. They recognized the traps of narcissistic subjectivity in their vision. Hence, they sought the spirit in physical nature, the brotherhood of all mankind or Gemeinschaftsgefühl, political revolution, and a return to the classic gods and goddesses, attempting to revivify the soul of the world with pantheism.
We must therefore read Keats as saying we go through the world for the sake of its soul-making, thereby our own. This reading suggests a true object libido, beyond narcissism, in keeping with Otto Fenichel’s definition of love. Love can only be called such when “one’s own satisfaction is impossible without satisfying the object too. If the world is not satisfied by our going through it, no matter how much beauty and pleasure our souls may receive from it, then we live in its vale without love.
There is a way out, or I wouldn’t be standing here. For my specific style of narcissism, my pose before the mirror, today is heroic. My style insists on resolution of the issues raised. The method I shall be using here follows the method which I usually empty for resolving issues. First, we look back into the history of psychoanalysis for a model; second, we turn to some peculiar bit of pathologizing for a clue; and third, we resolve problems by dissolving them into images and metaphors.
So, let us turn back to the first psychoanalytic case, Anna O., and her doctor, Josef Breuer, who, with Freud, wrote Studies in Hysteria. As you recall, after a year of almost daily sessions often of several hours, he suddenly terminated. You recall also the intensity of her transference, that she developed a hysterical pregnancy and childbirth, after Breuer tried to end the treatment. He, according to Jones, after a final visit to her “fled the house in a cold sweat. The next day he and his wife left for Venice to spend a second honeymoon which resulted in the conception of a daughter.” Whether fact or not, and Ellenberger says not, the fantasy shows a founding patron of our work escaping both cure by analysis and cure by love for the beauty of Venice and the conception of a daughter. His object libido returns from the oppressive narcissism of psychoanalysis to the Romanticism of the wider world.
This wide world remains merely that, merely a place of escape or acting out, so long as the world “out the window” is imagined only in the Cartesian model as sheer res extensa, only dead matter. To show more vividly how that world is, as Keats said, a place of soul, let us go straight through the window into the world. Let us take a walk in a Japanese garden, in particular the strolling garden, the one with water, hills, trees, and stones. While we walk, let us imagine the garden as an emblem for the peripatetic teacher or the therapeutic guide (psychopompos), the world itself as psychoanalyst showing us soul, showing us how to be in it soulfully.
I turn to the garden and to Japan because of insights given while in Kyoto gardens several years ago, and also because the garden as metaphor expresses some of the deepest longings - from Hesperides, to Eden’s paradise, and Maria’s hortus inclusus - for the world as home of the soul. So by entering into the Japanese garden now we shall be stepping through the window into the anima mundi.
First we notice that the garden has no central place to stand and view it all. We can but scrutinize a part at a time. Instead of overview and wholeness, there is perspective and eachness. The world changes as we move. Here a clump of iris, there a mossy rock. Instead of a center (with its etymological roots in the Greek kentron, “goad” or “prick,” and being compelled toward a goal by means of abstract geometric distancing), there are shifts of focus relative to the body’s location and attitude.
Second: as one strolls, each vista is seen again from a different perspective. The maple branching down to the pond edge, the floating leaves appear less melancholic after the path bends. These shifts of seeing again are precisely what the word “respect” means. To look again is to “respect.” Each time we look at the same thing again, we gain respect for it and add respect to it, curiously discovering the innate relation of “looks” - of regarding and being regarded, words in English that refer to dignity.
Third: when the garden, rather than the dream or the symptom or the unconscious, becomes the via regia of psyche, then we are forced to think anew about the word “in.” “In” is the dominant preposition of all psychoanalysis - not with, not from, not for, but “in.” We look in our souls, we look in a mirror. "In” has been utterly literally, as an invisible, spacelesss psychic stuff inside our skins, or meanings inside our dreams and symptoms, or the memories locked in the past. Interiority of the garden, however, is wholly present and wholly displayed. “In” holds the meanings of included, engaged, involved, embraced. Or, as Jung said, the psyche is not in us; we are in the psyche. This feeling of being in the psyche becomes most palpable when inside the ruins of a Greek temple, in an Egyptian tomb of a king, in a dance or a ritual, and in a Japanese garden. Jung’s phrase “esse in anima” takes on concreteness then, as it does in a clear-cut forest, a bombed city, a cancer ward, a cemetery. Ecology, architecture, interior design are other modes of feeling the anima mundi. Instead of the usual notion of psyche in body, the body strolling through the garden is in the psyche. The world itself is a psychic body; and our bodies as we move, stand, look, pause, turn, and sit are performing an activity of psychic reflection, an activity we formerly considered only mentally possible in the mirror of introspection.
Fourth: the idea of individuality also changes, for in the Japanese garden trees are trimmed at the top and encouraged to grow sideways. Rather than an individuality of the lone tree, towering (and Jung said the single tree is a major symbol of the individuating Self), these trees stretch their branches toward others. Individuality is within community and, takes its definition from community. Furthermore, each tuft in the soft branches of the pine trees is plucked by gardeners. They pull out needles, allowing emptiness to individualize the shape of each twig. It is as if nothing can be individualized unless it is surrounded by emptiness and yet also very, very close to what it is most like. Individuality is therefore more visible within the estrange separateness and close similarity, for instance, of family than in trying to be “different” from family.
Fifth: not only are aged trees supported with crutches and encouraged to flower - blossoming belonging therefore not only to youth - but also the garden includes dead trees. What more wounds our narcissism than these images of old age, these crutched, dependent, twisted and dead trees? < “At least Aurora didn’t reject Tithonus, old, didn’t allow him to lie there lonely in the House of Dawn. She often fondled him, descending into her waters, before she bathed her yoked horses with care. She, when she rested in his arms, by neighbouring India, lamented that day returned too soon.”>
Sixth: the Karesanui gardens, or Zen-inspired gardens, present mainly white sand and found stones, rarely trees. In this bare place the mind watches itself making interpretations. The nine rocks in the raked sand are a tiger family swimming through the sea; the nine rocks are mountain tops peaking through white mist and clouds; the nine rocks are simply rocks, aesthetically placed with genius. One legend after another, one philosophy, theory or literary criticism, or psychological interpretation rises to the mind and falls back into the white sand. The garden becomes wholly metaphor, both what it is and what it is not, presence and absence at once. The concrete koan of the rock garden transforms the mind itself into metaphor, its thought transient while image endures, so that the mind cannot identify with its own subjectivism - narcissism overcome.
‘“Hegel introduces this notion of ‘oppositional determination” in his logic of essence, when he discusses the relationship between identity and difference; his point there is not only that identity is always the identity of identity and difference, but that difference itself is also always the difference between itself and identity; in the same way, it is not only necessity that encompasses both itself and contingency, but also - and more fundamentally - it is contingency itself which encompasses both itself and necessity. Or, with regard to the tension between essence and appearance, the fact that essence has to appear within the domain of appearances, as a hint that “appearances are not all” but are “merely appearances.”’ - Zizek, Less than Nothing>
*
Finally, I shall insist that the garden is not natural; nor is psyche natural. The garden was designed and is tended to maintain an artificiality that imitates nature
Because the garden is artificial, as the alchemist was called artifex, all conceptions of soul must be plucked of naturalistic fallacies. The soul as opus contra naturam will not be served adequately by fallacious comparisons with organic growth, cyclical process, and myths of nature goddesses. Nor does the garden shelter the child from which grows the creative person as psychotherapy is found to believe. By insisting upon the artificiality of our work with soul, I am trying to keep us from the Romantic error of confusing the ideal (Eden and the Elysian fields; Horaiko, in Japanese) with the natural. The garden as metaphor offers a romantic vision that saves us from Naturalistic Romanticism by twisting and sophisticating nature through art.
This twist to nature that wounds idealizations of garden is presented in our culture, as in Roman culture, by our ancient god of gardens and gardeners, Priapus. Priapus is neither young nor beautiful. Unlike lovely Narcissus, unlike the semi-divine figures of Adam and Eve, Priapus is mature, bald and paunchy, and so distorted that his mother, Venus, deserted him at birth. His very presence repels romantic idealizations and the gaze into the mirror of Venusian vanity as well as Narcissus’s rapt reflection. Priapic reflection starts the other way around; his preposterous swollen condition reflects the vitality of the world. The same force displays in him as in the buds and germinating pods. By means of distortion which deceptively seems “only natural,” Priapus invites the grotesque pathologized disproportions of imagination - and imagination, says Bachelard, works by deformation.
So, when I invoke Priapus, I am not speaking of priapismus; I am not speaking of machismo; and I am not anti-feminine. Let me be quite clear. I am speaking of the generative artificiality that is the essence of the garden and of the psyche. Each dream, each fantasy, and each symptomatic complication of natural health and normative humanity bears witness to the psyche’s libidinal pleasure in exaggeration, its fertile genius for imaginative distortion. If this god of gardens is also a god of psychoanalysis - and from Charcot through Lacan the priapic has been invoked - he brings to its work an archaic reflex beyond the romantic or baroque, a rousing urgency forward and outward. (Priapus was not permitted indoors in Hestia’s closed rooms where his presence becomes only violent and obscene.)
Moreover, this god needs no mirror to know himself, for his self is wholly displayed. His nature cannot be concealed within, so he is quite free of hidden meanings and subtle innuendos that keep psychoanalysis hopefully addicted to one more revelation, one more transformation, interminable. Priapus knows no metamorphosis, no transfigurations. Priapus is without ambiguity; metaphor is forbidden to him; he displays all, reveals nothing. Like the garden, all there. The rocks are the rocks.
<"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." - Matthew 16:18>
2023.03.21 18:56 2bornot2b_a2brute [JP] "Blue Reflection Sun" - an in-depth review, one month after release
Blue Reflection Sun was released one month ago and after playing religiously every day (this includes waking up in the middle of the night to consume stamina, something I'll get to later on in my review), here are my thoughts. First of all, this review will not touch on the controversy regarding including the first male character in a series that features only female characters. Just let me say that after playing through the story to the latest chapter, many of the interactions/scenarios between the girls and the protagonist completely excludes the protagonist from being female. So that possibility is off the books for foreign releases or future patches. Now that that's over with, I will be reviewing the game as a standard gacha game developed and published by large companies (Koei Tecmo and DMM Games).
As a disclaimer, I have been playing gacha games for over 10 years but rarely have I played in any language other than Japanese. So while I am translating to English to the best of my ability, some terms may be wrong, though hopefully decipherable.
Gacha
I'll start off with the crux of gacha games: the gacha. There are essentially 2 types of gacha: character and fragcard gacha. Character is self-explanatory, but fragcard is the `card` system found in some gacha - each includes a skill, which can be upgraded, and stats, which can be levelled. Characters range from 1-3 stars (can be limit broken to a maximum of 5) and fragcards which go from R→SR→UR. Each gacha can drop the other type except for at the highest rank. In other words, the character gacha can drop R and SR cards but not UR, while the fragcard gacha can drop 1-2 star characters but not 3 star.
The rates in order of ascending rarity is 77%→20%→3%. The tenth pull is 97%→3%, so in other words, at the tenth pull you are guaranteed 2★/SR or higher. There is a pity system for each gacha that does not carry over, besides the standard gacha. 200 pulls for 200 tickets will let you exchange for the featured item - this number cannot be reached without major saving or else spending money. Each event period gives you an estimated 50 pulls (this is a very rough estimate since it's still service start).
Regarding the limited gacha, So far, characters and cards have been truly limited, in that there is no plan to add them to the standard pool after the run, though the fine print states that there may be reruns (par for the course). This is great as it makes things black and white: you either pull if you want it or save if you're waiting for something else. No grey area where you want the item but you might as well wait since it will be added to the pool later.
You'll also receive a plethora of gacha tickets, but unfortunately, these can only be used one at a time (probably in order to bypass the ten pull system). Combined with the slow loading screens, using 30 or so tickets took me almost an hour...
Finally, even 1 star characters can be easily limit broken to 5 stars, which makes it so that there are no useless characters. Of course, a 3→5★ will be stronger than a 1→5★, though at the very least this means that you'll still have viable characters even if you get horrible pulls.
All this to say that, the rates don't feel unfair, and even when you pull a card instead of a character, Kishida's art is so pretty that it doesn't even feel all that bad. Also, just as there are no useless characters, all cards can be sufficiently powerful once limit broken and levelled up.
Cash Shop
There is no cheap monthly pass unfortunately. Only a simple money to gem system. The most expensive item is 10,000 yen for 16,000 gems which equates to 53 pulls. This goes down to the cheapest item, 160 yen for 160 gems, which is about half a pull. One pull is 300 gems.
Mechanics
Standard turn-based rpg with no time-delay system found in the original series. 4 elements with none of that dark/light crap (sorry, I'm just not a fan of elements that do increased damage to one another) and in rare cases, non-elemental. Each character has her own powerful skill and 2 other skills that can be equipped and switched via fragcards. This means that a character of one element can equip skills of a completely different element.
Elements do increased damage and receive less damage to/from the element that they are good against. So much so that a party strong against an element can take down enemies of twice the power rating (in my case, my party of 60,000 could take down enemies of 120,000).
Standard attacks charge SP, which is counted separately for each skill. So you can freely use each skill as soon as it is charged, without worrying about saving the SP for another skill. This is where the auto battle fails. Auto makes the characters randomly choose attack or a skill, without prioritizing fully charged skills. So that means your character may use a standard attack even when you don't need the SP. Management has said that they are planning to improve the auto system in the near future, so this may be subject to change. On the plus side, characters will focus fire enemies from right to left in auto.
Finally, characters can be `borrowed` from friends/strangers, which lets you use her skill once per battle at any time, without losing your turn. This will not activate during auto. All in all, this is to say that if there is a powerful enemy that you cannot defeat in Auto, often Manual will often enable you do so.
Stamina
At player level 1, you start off with 51 stamina (if I remember correctly), which recovers at a rate of once every 3 minutes. Doing the math, you can see that initially 2.5 hours will give you a full charge; hardly enough to let you rest during work (let alone sleep). You'll receive a ton of stamina refill items, which is in your best to use as soon as possible to level up and increase your maximum stamina. After a month of playing, I am currently at 100 stamina - the highest leveled players I've seen are 10 levels higher, i.e. 110 stamina, which equates to 5.5 hours for a full charge - still hardly enough for a full night's sleep.
All this to say, for those of us that are very stoic about consuming stamina to never let it go full, the stamina system in this game is the most stressful I have ever experienced. It seems as if not much thought was given into either lowering the recovery rate (along with the cost of stages) or else increasing the maximum increased per level.
PVP
There is a ranked battle system, but it's almost impossible to lose. Firstly, while the enemy team will attack randomly, your team will focus fire. Secondly, each enemy has a break meter, which when full will make them lose one turn (normal enemies also have this). This, combined with weaknesses can easily let you win fights with differences in power levels of 20,000 (or potentially higher, though I don't want to try my luck).
There is a maximum of 3 battle points, which are not refreshed daily as in most games, but gradually (1 every few hours, I haven't bothered to time how many hours). Basically you can fight much more than thrice a day. There is also a consecutive win bonus, which keeps increasing to the point that the consecutive bonus is higher than the standard win bonus. At high ranks and high consecutive wins, you will receive way more points than you need for the limited items in the battle shop.
One month in, and I along with most player I imagine, have never lost a match.
Story and Characters
The story is not Shakespeare, nor is it Twilight. The voice acting is excellent as usual, and the story is interesting enough to keep you immersed. Each character has her own personality, motivations, and desires, which are much more rounded than the standard flat female characters born of a male mind found in most fiction. While most works feature simple anime tropes that perpetuate sexist stereotypes, the characters of brs have a certain nuanced depth, i.e. they exist as entities independent of male characters (and not as mere supports to a well-rounded male). All this to say, while there are some cringey moments, most of the characters have a certain human charm separate from a mere sexualization of the character.
The main character is also not annoyingly smart/strong or dumb/weak, i.e. he has the same attractive qualities that the girls have as well. There is a good balance in terms of character relations, though I wish they reversed the females-dependent-on-male trope more (they almost did in the beginning, but then it swung to the standard MAN DO EVERYTHING AND WOMAN LIKE STRONG MAN caveman mindset...).
In terms of character design, Kishida's design is top notch as always, showing that not only is he talented in bishoujo design, but even his bishounen are pretty as hell. Personally, I cringe at the hairstyles/fashion/makeup/design of most anime because you can tell these were men creating women, 10 years behind the current fashion. Kishida, however, I always imagine him spending hours every day on Instagram absorbing all the latest trends. His characters' hairstyles and fashion really show this and adds a certain believability (most other works of fiction make me groan "no woman would be caught dead in such a mismatched setup" etc.).
The 3D models are also very similar to the 2D art, so thankfully there is no huge gap between the concept design and implementation. Also, most of the limited gacha outfits are so pretty, it never feels bad to pull.
User Interface
There are certain aspects of UI that show of outdated design or a lack of knowledge of gacha design. For example, you cannot see details of a character's skill in the Training menu (where all of your owned characters are listed). Instead, you have to go to Formation, change character, and then view from there - very unintuitive, not to mention unecessary. Another is that upcoming maintenances are not announced in-game in an in-your-face sort of way. You have to check the once-a-day announcement or else follow their Twitter closely. Very frustrating, which I'll go into more detail in the next section.
Besides a few grave errors, most of the UI design is non-problematic, and likely to improve as hinted in an upcoming update. Much of the UI design (along with the sound and music) from the main series is brought over to the gacha game as well, which fans will enjoy.
Management/Operations
This is the most frustrating thing about this game. Luckily, if there is an English release, you might not have to deal with this if you end up with a better English team. To sum up why, basically the 運営 (I think this translates to management or operations in English) of KT/DMM does not feel like part of a company with decades of experience; they feel like a small indie developeself-publisher that has no experience handling sudden errors.
In the first week especially, there were lots of server crashes and emergency maintenances to fix a lot of the problems. Server crashes are unexpected, but I have never seen a company handle maintenances so poorly. Apart from the lack of in-game announcement interface mentioned in the previous section, there were times when the Twitter announcement was only a few minutes in advance. Completely unacceptable in Japanese society, especially so in customer-service relations. To add to this, stamina fills up fast, which only adds to the frustration. Such that you have to constantly log in because you're never sure when the next maintenance will come.
As a side note, post-mortem of the server crashes found that they were due to high access traffic "overseas." Obviously we all knew this meant China bots once again ruining a party that they weren't invited to. Perhaps future games would do well to always cordon off a China server for the safety of Japan, but that's another story for another day.
Final Thoughts
I am a big fan of DMM/Exnoa published games; they often publish many obscure developers, most of which are terrible, but every once in a while, there is a hidden gem. So it pains me to be so critical of their handling of this game, because I know they can do better. On the other hand, Koei Tecmo did an alright job of bringing a console/PC game to mobile, and if they are as willing to improve based on feedback as promised, then there may yet be hope for this game.
Regardless, after one month, I am still highly enjoying this game. The sounds, visuals, gameplay loop just hit all the right places for me, so I am looking forward to future updates and improvements. Those that have more free time than me may find that there is not enough to do in-game, but for relatively busy adults, this may just be the game for you.
P.S. Thank you for making it to the end of this long review. If you wish to comment, please refrain from bashing the game, developers, publishers, etc. for introducing a male character. You can gripe about that in a different thread, but this is not the place for that. Productive comments regarding gameplay or similar are welcome.
submitted by 2bornot2b_a2brute to gachagaming [link] [comments]
As a disclaimer, I have been playing gacha games for over 10 years but rarely have I played in any language other than Japanese. So while I am translating to English to the best of my ability, some terms may be wrong, though hopefully decipherable.
Gacha
I'll start off with the crux of gacha games: the gacha. There are essentially 2 types of gacha: character and fragcard gacha. Character is self-explanatory, but fragcard is the `card` system found in some gacha - each includes a skill, which can be upgraded, and stats, which can be levelled. Characters range from 1-3 stars (can be limit broken to a maximum of 5) and fragcards which go from R→SR→UR. Each gacha can drop the other type except for at the highest rank. In other words, the character gacha can drop R and SR cards but not UR, while the fragcard gacha can drop 1-2 star characters but not 3 star.
The rates in order of ascending rarity is 77%→20%→3%. The tenth pull is 97%→3%, so in other words, at the tenth pull you are guaranteed 2★/SR or higher. There is a pity system for each gacha that does not carry over, besides the standard gacha. 200 pulls for 200 tickets will let you exchange for the featured item - this number cannot be reached without major saving or else spending money. Each event period gives you an estimated 50 pulls (this is a very rough estimate since it's still service start).
Regarding the limited gacha, So far, characters and cards have been truly limited, in that there is no plan to add them to the standard pool after the run, though the fine print states that there may be reruns (par for the course). This is great as it makes things black and white: you either pull if you want it or save if you're waiting for something else. No grey area where you want the item but you might as well wait since it will be added to the pool later.
You'll also receive a plethora of gacha tickets, but unfortunately, these can only be used one at a time (probably in order to bypass the ten pull system). Combined with the slow loading screens, using 30 or so tickets took me almost an hour...
Finally, even 1 star characters can be easily limit broken to 5 stars, which makes it so that there are no useless characters. Of course, a 3→5★ will be stronger than a 1→5★, though at the very least this means that you'll still have viable characters even if you get horrible pulls.
All this to say that, the rates don't feel unfair, and even when you pull a card instead of a character, Kishida's art is so pretty that it doesn't even feel all that bad. Also, just as there are no useless characters, all cards can be sufficiently powerful once limit broken and levelled up.
Cash Shop
There is no cheap monthly pass unfortunately. Only a simple money to gem system. The most expensive item is 10,000 yen for 16,000 gems which equates to 53 pulls. This goes down to the cheapest item, 160 yen for 160 gems, which is about half a pull. One pull is 300 gems.
Mechanics
Standard turn-based rpg with no time-delay system found in the original series. 4 elements with none of that dark/light crap (sorry, I'm just not a fan of elements that do increased damage to one another) and in rare cases, non-elemental. Each character has her own powerful skill and 2 other skills that can be equipped and switched via fragcards. This means that a character of one element can equip skills of a completely different element.
Elements do increased damage and receive less damage to/from the element that they are good against. So much so that a party strong against an element can take down enemies of twice the power rating (in my case, my party of 60,000 could take down enemies of 120,000).
Standard attacks charge SP, which is counted separately for each skill. So you can freely use each skill as soon as it is charged, without worrying about saving the SP for another skill. This is where the auto battle fails. Auto makes the characters randomly choose attack or a skill, without prioritizing fully charged skills. So that means your character may use a standard attack even when you don't need the SP. Management has said that they are planning to improve the auto system in the near future, so this may be subject to change. On the plus side, characters will focus fire enemies from right to left in auto.
Finally, characters can be `borrowed` from friends/strangers, which lets you use her skill once per battle at any time, without losing your turn. This will not activate during auto. All in all, this is to say that if there is a powerful enemy that you cannot defeat in Auto, often Manual will often enable you do so.
Stamina
At player level 1, you start off with 51 stamina (if I remember correctly), which recovers at a rate of once every 3 minutes. Doing the math, you can see that initially 2.5 hours will give you a full charge; hardly enough to let you rest during work (let alone sleep). You'll receive a ton of stamina refill items, which is in your best to use as soon as possible to level up and increase your maximum stamina. After a month of playing, I am currently at 100 stamina - the highest leveled players I've seen are 10 levels higher, i.e. 110 stamina, which equates to 5.5 hours for a full charge - still hardly enough for a full night's sleep.
All this to say, for those of us that are very stoic about consuming stamina to never let it go full, the stamina system in this game is the most stressful I have ever experienced. It seems as if not much thought was given into either lowering the recovery rate (along with the cost of stages) or else increasing the maximum increased per level.
PVP
There is a ranked battle system, but it's almost impossible to lose. Firstly, while the enemy team will attack randomly, your team will focus fire. Secondly, each enemy has a break meter, which when full will make them lose one turn (normal enemies also have this). This, combined with weaknesses can easily let you win fights with differences in power levels of 20,000 (or potentially higher, though I don't want to try my luck).
There is a maximum of 3 battle points, which are not refreshed daily as in most games, but gradually (1 every few hours, I haven't bothered to time how many hours). Basically you can fight much more than thrice a day. There is also a consecutive win bonus, which keeps increasing to the point that the consecutive bonus is higher than the standard win bonus. At high ranks and high consecutive wins, you will receive way more points than you need for the limited items in the battle shop.
One month in, and I along with most player I imagine, have never lost a match.
Story and Characters
The story is not Shakespeare, nor is it Twilight. The voice acting is excellent as usual, and the story is interesting enough to keep you immersed. Each character has her own personality, motivations, and desires, which are much more rounded than the standard flat female characters born of a male mind found in most fiction. While most works feature simple anime tropes that perpetuate sexist stereotypes, the characters of brs have a certain nuanced depth, i.e. they exist as entities independent of male characters (and not as mere supports to a well-rounded male). All this to say, while there are some cringey moments, most of the characters have a certain human charm separate from a mere sexualization of the character.
The main character is also not annoyingly smart/strong or dumb/weak, i.e. he has the same attractive qualities that the girls have as well. There is a good balance in terms of character relations, though I wish they reversed the females-dependent-on-male trope more (they almost did in the beginning, but then it swung to the standard MAN DO EVERYTHING AND WOMAN LIKE STRONG MAN caveman mindset...).
In terms of character design, Kishida's design is top notch as always, showing that not only is he talented in bishoujo design, but even his bishounen are pretty as hell. Personally, I cringe at the hairstyles/fashion/makeup/design of most anime because you can tell these were men creating women, 10 years behind the current fashion. Kishida, however, I always imagine him spending hours every day on Instagram absorbing all the latest trends. His characters' hairstyles and fashion really show this and adds a certain believability (most other works of fiction make me groan "no woman would be caught dead in such a mismatched setup" etc.).
The 3D models are also very similar to the 2D art, so thankfully there is no huge gap between the concept design and implementation. Also, most of the limited gacha outfits are so pretty, it never feels bad to pull.
User Interface
There are certain aspects of UI that show of outdated design or a lack of knowledge of gacha design. For example, you cannot see details of a character's skill in the Training menu (where all of your owned characters are listed). Instead, you have to go to Formation, change character, and then view from there - very unintuitive, not to mention unecessary. Another is that upcoming maintenances are not announced in-game in an in-your-face sort of way. You have to check the once-a-day announcement or else follow their Twitter closely. Very frustrating, which I'll go into more detail in the next section.
Besides a few grave errors, most of the UI design is non-problematic, and likely to improve as hinted in an upcoming update. Much of the UI design (along with the sound and music) from the main series is brought over to the gacha game as well, which fans will enjoy.
Management/Operations
This is the most frustrating thing about this game. Luckily, if there is an English release, you might not have to deal with this if you end up with a better English team. To sum up why, basically the 運営 (I think this translates to management or operations in English) of KT/DMM does not feel like part of a company with decades of experience; they feel like a small indie developeself-publisher that has no experience handling sudden errors.
In the first week especially, there were lots of server crashes and emergency maintenances to fix a lot of the problems. Server crashes are unexpected, but I have never seen a company handle maintenances so poorly. Apart from the lack of in-game announcement interface mentioned in the previous section, there were times when the Twitter announcement was only a few minutes in advance. Completely unacceptable in Japanese society, especially so in customer-service relations. To add to this, stamina fills up fast, which only adds to the frustration. Such that you have to constantly log in because you're never sure when the next maintenance will come.
As a side note, post-mortem of the server crashes found that they were due to high access traffic "overseas." Obviously we all knew this meant China bots once again ruining a party that they weren't invited to. Perhaps future games would do well to always cordon off a China server for the safety of Japan, but that's another story for another day.
Final Thoughts
I am a big fan of DMM/Exnoa published games; they often publish many obscure developers, most of which are terrible, but every once in a while, there is a hidden gem. So it pains me to be so critical of their handling of this game, because I know they can do better. On the other hand, Koei Tecmo did an alright job of bringing a console/PC game to mobile, and if they are as willing to improve based on feedback as promised, then there may yet be hope for this game.
Regardless, after one month, I am still highly enjoying this game. The sounds, visuals, gameplay loop just hit all the right places for me, so I am looking forward to future updates and improvements. Those that have more free time than me may find that there is not enough to do in-game, but for relatively busy adults, this may just be the game for you.
P.S. Thank you for making it to the end of this long review. If you wish to comment, please refrain from bashing the game, developers, publishers, etc. for introducing a male character. You can gripe about that in a different thread, but this is not the place for that. Productive comments regarding gameplay or similar are welcome.
2023.03.21 18:47 Colt_Leasure I stayed at the Cecil Hotel.
The Stay On Main hotel, referred to by its former title of the Cecil, stood tall before me. Its brown brick front loomed. I walked through the main entranceway with my suitcase in hand.
I made my way into the empty lobby and approached the front desk. The inside had glossy black and white tile flooring. Stanchions with red ropes led to the check-in counter.
The clerk looked up at me from his phone with a side-eyed glance. He had wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. He resembled a surfer more than he did a night manager.
“I’m looking to stay here for a week,” I said as I handed him a wad of cash.
“This is an affordable housing unit for the homeless,” he said. “You’re well dressed and have an Irish accent. I’m guessing you’re a journalist or documentary filmmaker. Either way, it wouldn’t feel right to let you stay here when you can afford somewhere else. You’d be taking up space someone of greater need could use.”
“This should erase guilt,” I said as I handed him another stack of hundreds.
The man accepted the bribe and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He then slid a room key over to me after I gave him a false name and a credit card that did not belong to me. He mentioned the complimentary breakfast available in the morning.
“I’m Scottish by the way,” I corrected him as I made my way onto the elevator.
There were fifteen floors and my room was on the fifth. I pressed the button. The sounds of the creaking wires holding the platform stable reverberated above.
It dinged and let me off. I went down the hallway, which had wooden ground and drab white-painted walls.
I entered my room and saw it was not much better than the corridor. There were a few places I had stayed at with my wife around Loch Lomond far above such a decrepit den as this.
The first thing I saw was the view of skid row outside. Its wandering figures resembled the madhouse painting by Goya. Street lights, neon, and litter were everywhere.
The desk drawer had the to-be-expected Bible. Shock coursed through me as I saw the completed works of Alfred Tennyson next to it. A highlighted passage got my attention:
‘and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge
like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’
It was well-known that Tennyson was a part of my agency when the organization was first founded.
I laid my piece of luggage on the bed and opened it. I took out a leather-bound journal, an EVP recorder, external microphones, and a few mini cameras. I placed the items in each corner.
I waited and retrieved my ledger. I scribbled about my findings later in the morning.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 16th AT 0439 HOURS:
There is a streak of blood underneath my mattress. It is faint, very old, and would not even be noticeable to the average eye due to its faded quality. I would not have found it had I not spotted and attempted to kill a roach that scurried across the carpet. The insect has disappeared. I presume it to have fallen between the cracks into another dreary unit below. I have not observed strange or unusual sounds within my space in particular. I have not seen any visions, ethereal or cerebral, which would sound any alarms. Screaming, honking horns, and drunken babbling seep through the boundaries. The wind seemed to flow through the rafters at an unusual pace around those noises. By that, I mean it whistles a song of its own in perfect rhythm.
*
I awoke the next day to the sound of my phone. It was the landline in the room. I answered it and pressed the receiver to my ear in a groggy state, entangling my neck in the wire.
“Meet me at the Civilization Cafe,” a familiar woman’s voice said. My response would have been irrelevant since it was an order and not a question. I placed it back on the hook and managed to get out of bed.
I showered, dressed, and made the walk to the coffee shop.
Dani sat outside with a steaming mug in hand. She did not acknowledge me with anything more than a quick nod as I took a seat across from her. She scanned her surroundings to make sure no one was within earshot.
“Why did you rent the place for a week?” Dani asked between sips. “We agreed on one night.”
“You know why,” I said. I tried to remind myself to remain assertive without being hot-tempered. I did not want a write-up for insubordination.
“We need you to find out what’s wrong with this place," she said. "Report your findings soon. Otherwise, what happened to the last occupants could very well occur to the next civilian.”
“Please don’t put pressure on me like that,” I said. “Catching a poltergeist in a place with so much suffering is almost impossible. It's like summoning the ancients and asking them about the order of their calamities.”
“Could you at least streamline it by sending us emails instead of relying on a pen and notebook?” Dani’s voice became an aggressive whisper. “We’re getting tired of hiring an administrator to sort out your papers. Keeping your intelligence on point is a full-time job.”
“Writing it out by hand gives me a closer connection to the source material. I have to trust my way, or I’ll make mistakes by breaking my habits. You wouldn’t want that.”
She looked down the road. She finished her drink, slung her purse over her shoulder, stood, and pushed her chair in.
“Stay safe,” she said as she walked to a black cherry-painted Honda parked near the sidewalk. "Take care, Graham."
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 17th AT 0345 HOURS:
There has been one odd synchronicity after another. My window, accumulated so much mist that I reasoned it must have been pouring. Of course, it was bright out. Some of my filming devices have readjusted without me having touched them since set up. The towel rack in my restroom bent at its center. I guarantee it was not that way beforehand. I have taken this as a lesson to take photographs of every square inch of the place. This is for future reference in my studies. After observing these anomalies, my body fell into a lethargic sensation. I was reading a book titled The Origins of the World’s mythologies by EJ Michael Witzel before it fell out of my hands. As sleep enveloped me, something tendril-like moved in my periphery. It disappeared when I tried to stare at the illusions. I fell off of my mattress after having a nightmare of a lion chasing me through the Serengeti. I hit the floor. I looked to the side and saw a fog creep through the small crack at the bottom of my door. I went to investigate where this was coming from. I did not see anything as the remnants of the precipitation evaporated completely. In the hallway was an orange feline. She scampered away into a grimy stairwell.
*
I walked outside after I finished the report. I stepped into my rented vehicle and drove to a liquor store to pick out a bottle of whiskey. There were so many evenings when I was comfortable in my sobriety. This was no longer one of them. I had an uncontrollable urge to drown myself in the brown liquid that had been a scar on my life for so long.
I passed by a few markets that were teeming with too many suspicious people outside to risk going in. It took a while until I found one that was quiet and clean.
I went across the parking lot and saw a mural of Venice beach on the wall. It brought back memories of walking along the sands of Prestwick, with Lynsey.
Her eyes were emerald and her hair was darker than any cave I had explored in my youth. We had met at the Old College Bar in Glasgow at an age we kept secret from the bartenders with our fake IDs. We had a competition to see whose fraudulent driver's license was the most convincing.
I do not remember if I fell in love with her at first sight. I do recall being in disbelief that she even bothered to give me the time of her day. I can remember kissing her for the first time. The scent of her blossom honey perfume lit my body up.
I snapped out of my reminiscences and purchased a bottle of Glennmorangie blue label.
I was back at the Cecil in minutes. I imbibed two highballs and passed out. My tolerance level had weakened compared to the binging of my younger days. When I awoke, I analyzed what had occurred in the room during my sleep.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 18th AT 0116 HOURS:
I am feeling hungover but alert. My 450-milliliter friend is half gone, but I am seeing straight right now without any problems. In other words, I am sober with a grudge. I hope my Supervisors at the Providence agency will forgive my conduct on the job. I do not believe they will blame me. A cobalt-hued smoke emanated from one of the corners. Jazz music is playing around me, whereas it never has before for the duration of my stay. It sounds so old and improvised. The notes are as unfamiliar to me as they would be to a new listener in the Flapper era. Worst of all is how out-of-tune it sounds. My tub has overfilled itself with brackish water. I have not even bathed yet, so I know that was not by my hand. A piece of the footage shows a silhouette moving across the room. Before it reaches my sleeping body, the camera lens shattered.
*
I ran out of pages and my hand cramped. I wrote new entries within the margins. I also started to hear things other than old tunes from a bygone era.
Human wails seeped in, each one more agonized than the last. Within a few minutes, I differentiated how there were two different voices. One male, the other a woman. I attempted to record them, but it was useless. All my mics picked up were static and the hum of the air conditioner, despite how they plagued my ears like tinnitus.
I lit a circle of candles and created a makeshift altar in the center of the room. I drew the circle with salt. I sat in the lotus position, closed my eyes, and endeavored to remain open to any visions. Seances were always my last resort.
I fell into a dream. I saw a couple, both from the decade of prohibition. They were lounging in the same room as me. The man had a copy of the completed work of Alfred Tennyson in his hands.
It all seemed like a peaceful scene until an argument commenced between the two. The man retrieved a blade from his vest and advanced toward her. He stabbed her. She turned the knife on him by gripping the sharp edge in her palms and hoisting it towards his midsection. He tried to claw towards the door, but failed and instead made his way under the bed.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 19th AT 0026 HOURS:
I now realize I have not met my intended goal. I was hoping to receive some answers why my wife took her own life in this place. Instead, I came in contact with a murdered couple from the 1920s. They killed one another, but the woman acted in self-defense. Following research, I have learned the female is an ancestor of my departed wife, Lynsey. They share the same name. Her family immigrated here in the 1850s. She had mentioned this to me over dinner on more than one occasion. I never knew they had made their way here, to the exact spot I am sitting.
I am grateful to these organizations for allowing me to make an effort at settling this matter. I hope I have completed my duties with integrity. Unfortunately, I was unable to contact her. I will revisit this place one day soon since I have no intention of giving up.
submitted by Colt_Leasure to u/Colt_Leasure [link] [comments]
I made my way into the empty lobby and approached the front desk. The inside had glossy black and white tile flooring. Stanchions with red ropes led to the check-in counter.
The clerk looked up at me from his phone with a side-eyed glance. He had wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. He resembled a surfer more than he did a night manager.
“I’m looking to stay here for a week,” I said as I handed him a wad of cash.
“This is an affordable housing unit for the homeless,” he said. “You’re well dressed and have an Irish accent. I’m guessing you’re a journalist or documentary filmmaker. Either way, it wouldn’t feel right to let you stay here when you can afford somewhere else. You’d be taking up space someone of greater need could use.”
“This should erase guilt,” I said as I handed him another stack of hundreds.
The man accepted the bribe and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He then slid a room key over to me after I gave him a false name and a credit card that did not belong to me. He mentioned the complimentary breakfast available in the morning.
“I’m Scottish by the way,” I corrected him as I made my way onto the elevator.
There were fifteen floors and my room was on the fifth. I pressed the button. The sounds of the creaking wires holding the platform stable reverberated above.
It dinged and let me off. I went down the hallway, which had wooden ground and drab white-painted walls.
I entered my room and saw it was not much better than the corridor. There were a few places I had stayed at with my wife around Loch Lomond far above such a decrepit den as this.
The first thing I saw was the view of skid row outside. Its wandering figures resembled the madhouse painting by Goya. Street lights, neon, and litter were everywhere.
The desk drawer had the to-be-expected Bible. Shock coursed through me as I saw the completed works of Alfred Tennyson next to it. A highlighted passage got my attention:
‘and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge
like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.’
It was well-known that Tennyson was a part of my agency when the organization was first founded.
I laid my piece of luggage on the bed and opened it. I took out a leather-bound journal, an EVP recorder, external microphones, and a few mini cameras. I placed the items in each corner.
I waited and retrieved my ledger. I scribbled about my findings later in the morning.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 16th AT 0439 HOURS:
There is a streak of blood underneath my mattress. It is faint, very old, and would not even be noticeable to the average eye due to its faded quality. I would not have found it had I not spotted and attempted to kill a roach that scurried across the carpet. The insect has disappeared. I presume it to have fallen between the cracks into another dreary unit below. I have not observed strange or unusual sounds within my space in particular. I have not seen any visions, ethereal or cerebral, which would sound any alarms. Screaming, honking horns, and drunken babbling seep through the boundaries. The wind seemed to flow through the rafters at an unusual pace around those noises. By that, I mean it whistles a song of its own in perfect rhythm.
*
I awoke the next day to the sound of my phone. It was the landline in the room. I answered it and pressed the receiver to my ear in a groggy state, entangling my neck in the wire.
“Meet me at the Civilization Cafe,” a familiar woman’s voice said. My response would have been irrelevant since it was an order and not a question. I placed it back on the hook and managed to get out of bed.
I showered, dressed, and made the walk to the coffee shop.
Dani sat outside with a steaming mug in hand. She did not acknowledge me with anything more than a quick nod as I took a seat across from her. She scanned her surroundings to make sure no one was within earshot.
“Why did you rent the place for a week?” Dani asked between sips. “We agreed on one night.”
“You know why,” I said. I tried to remind myself to remain assertive without being hot-tempered. I did not want a write-up for insubordination.
“We need you to find out what’s wrong with this place," she said. "Report your findings soon. Otherwise, what happened to the last occupants could very well occur to the next civilian.”
“Please don’t put pressure on me like that,” I said. “Catching a poltergeist in a place with so much suffering is almost impossible. It's like summoning the ancients and asking them about the order of their calamities.”
“Could you at least streamline it by sending us emails instead of relying on a pen and notebook?” Dani’s voice became an aggressive whisper. “We’re getting tired of hiring an administrator to sort out your papers. Keeping your intelligence on point is a full-time job.”
“Writing it out by hand gives me a closer connection to the source material. I have to trust my way, or I’ll make mistakes by breaking my habits. You wouldn’t want that.”
She looked down the road. She finished her drink, slung her purse over her shoulder, stood, and pushed her chair in.
“Stay safe,” she said as she walked to a black cherry-painted Honda parked near the sidewalk. "Take care, Graham."
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 17th AT 0345 HOURS:
There has been one odd synchronicity after another. My window, accumulated so much mist that I reasoned it must have been pouring. Of course, it was bright out. Some of my filming devices have readjusted without me having touched them since set up. The towel rack in my restroom bent at its center. I guarantee it was not that way beforehand. I have taken this as a lesson to take photographs of every square inch of the place. This is for future reference in my studies. After observing these anomalies, my body fell into a lethargic sensation. I was reading a book titled The Origins of the World’s mythologies by EJ Michael Witzel before it fell out of my hands. As sleep enveloped me, something tendril-like moved in my periphery. It disappeared when I tried to stare at the illusions. I fell off of my mattress after having a nightmare of a lion chasing me through the Serengeti. I hit the floor. I looked to the side and saw a fog creep through the small crack at the bottom of my door. I went to investigate where this was coming from. I did not see anything as the remnants of the precipitation evaporated completely. In the hallway was an orange feline. She scampered away into a grimy stairwell.
*
I walked outside after I finished the report. I stepped into my rented vehicle and drove to a liquor store to pick out a bottle of whiskey. There were so many evenings when I was comfortable in my sobriety. This was no longer one of them. I had an uncontrollable urge to drown myself in the brown liquid that had been a scar on my life for so long.
I passed by a few markets that were teeming with too many suspicious people outside to risk going in. It took a while until I found one that was quiet and clean.
I went across the parking lot and saw a mural of Venice beach on the wall. It brought back memories of walking along the sands of Prestwick, with Lynsey.
Her eyes were emerald and her hair was darker than any cave I had explored in my youth. We had met at the Old College Bar in Glasgow at an age we kept secret from the bartenders with our fake IDs. We had a competition to see whose fraudulent driver's license was the most convincing.
I do not remember if I fell in love with her at first sight. I do recall being in disbelief that she even bothered to give me the time of her day. I can remember kissing her for the first time. The scent of her blossom honey perfume lit my body up.
I snapped out of my reminiscences and purchased a bottle of Glennmorangie blue label.
I was back at the Cecil in minutes. I imbibed two highballs and passed out. My tolerance level had weakened compared to the binging of my younger days. When I awoke, I analyzed what had occurred in the room during my sleep.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 18th AT 0116 HOURS:
I am feeling hungover but alert. My 450-milliliter friend is half gone, but I am seeing straight right now without any problems. In other words, I am sober with a grudge. I hope my Supervisors at the Providence agency will forgive my conduct on the job. I do not believe they will blame me. A cobalt-hued smoke emanated from one of the corners. Jazz music is playing around me, whereas it never has before for the duration of my stay. It sounds so old and improvised. The notes are as unfamiliar to me as they would be to a new listener in the Flapper era. Worst of all is how out-of-tune it sounds. My tub has overfilled itself with brackish water. I have not even bathed yet, so I know that was not by my hand. A piece of the footage shows a silhouette moving across the room. Before it reaches my sleeping body, the camera lens shattered.
*
I ran out of pages and my hand cramped. I wrote new entries within the margins. I also started to hear things other than old tunes from a bygone era.
Human wails seeped in, each one more agonized than the last. Within a few minutes, I differentiated how there were two different voices. One male, the other a woman. I attempted to record them, but it was useless. All my mics picked up were static and the hum of the air conditioner, despite how they plagued my ears like tinnitus.
I lit a circle of candles and created a makeshift altar in the center of the room. I drew the circle with salt. I sat in the lotus position, closed my eyes, and endeavored to remain open to any visions. Seances were always my last resort.
I fell into a dream. I saw a couple, both from the decade of prohibition. They were lounging in the same room as me. The man had a copy of the completed work of Alfred Tennyson in his hands.
It all seemed like a peaceful scene until an argument commenced between the two. The man retrieved a blade from his vest and advanced toward her. He stabbed her. She turned the knife on him by gripping the sharp edge in her palms and hoisting it towards his midsection. He tried to claw towards the door, but failed and instead made his way under the bed.
EXCERPTS FROM FIELD NOTES/SURVEILLANCE MONITORING, FEBRUARY 19th AT 0026 HOURS:
I now realize I have not met my intended goal. I was hoping to receive some answers why my wife took her own life in this place. Instead, I came in contact with a murdered couple from the 1920s. They killed one another, but the woman acted in self-defense. Following research, I have learned the female is an ancestor of my departed wife, Lynsey. They share the same name. Her family immigrated here in the 1850s. She had mentioned this to me over dinner on more than one occasion. I never knew they had made their way here, to the exact spot I am sitting.
I am grateful to these organizations for allowing me to make an effort at settling this matter. I hope I have completed my duties with integrity. Unfortunately, I was unable to contact her. I will revisit this place one day soon since I have no intention of giving up.
2023.03.21 18:28 Seulgussy [F4A] The Transfer Student and the Frat Boys. A tale of Opposites and Triumph.
It’s odd. Being the only female on your sports team, no? Is it really a team? Even though the group consists of five players, it’s more so just a game with yourself at the end of the day. Hitting balls around a green field all day. Maybe some sand, dips and curves along the way. But what was it really? Golf. That boring sport? The one you associate with the rich and old people who are retired. Well for some, many actually, it’s their life. Like a Football player. Or a baseball player. It’s a sport that takes time, knowledge and tons of patience to master. Many try, but often never reach the goal they want to, due to the pressure of the idea. It is only you. Any mistake is on you. Everyone’s watching you.
This is that pressure this young woman felt. A top scholar, a bit of a quiet soul, and the only female on her school’s Division 1 Golf team. Now why was she here? Why did they allow a woman into the group? Simple. The team’s highest praised player was out due to injury, and despite the fact this young woman was nothing more than a reserve, she was called up to the main squad for an upcoming tournament. Four grueling days of play, early mornings, tons of walking, and not to mention, eighteen holes of hell. Perform badly enough and you’d be cut, the board getting smaller and smaller every day. Make it to Sunday, that was the goal. Now this wasn’t a problem for most of the team, being one of the best ranked groups in the country, it was sure enough that they’d make it in. The only one they didn’t think who could of course was this young, foreign woman. Foreign? Yep. She was a transfer student from overseas. The team being made up of mostly ‘Frat-Like’ players, it was hard to fit in. English wasn’t her first language, she looked nothing like them, and not to mention there was barely anything in common besides the love of the game.
The team would be posted up in a house, just on the eighteenth hole of the course. It was beautiful, much better than any hotel room. This is where they’d stay the weekend, as there were houses all over the course that would provide shelter for the other teams competing in the tournament. The whole bus ride over, she didn’t say a peep. Headphones on, simply in another world. She was soft looking, but had a hard interior. She was polite, but chose not to speak. The coach was aware of this, but didn’t make any sort of intervention, as everyone was their own person at the end of the day.
The night before the tournament, they all laid up in the house, the boys in the living room having a few drinks before their big day tomorrow, talking about all the girls on campus, their own lives, school, typical college talk. Except for one. Her. Locked away in her room for the night, she stared out at the sunset over the lake on the last hole. She thought to herself that she shouldn’t belong here. That she should just leave. But.. she knew she was here for a reason. Clearly she was good enough to be called up from the other reserves. Or was it just for headlines? She’d be the only female in the tournament, something already breaking Sports News outlets everywhere. It was nerve racking. She’d be interviewed for sure throughout the tournament as it was a televised event. Sure, not as big as the PGA Tour, or some major Golf Tourney, but still, it was exposure. Her parents would be watching, her trainer from when she was younger back home. But that was the thrill of playing at the collegiate level no? Finally getting to experience that national exposure. Unlike the rest, she didn’t care so much about that. She wanted to just play the game. Do as best as she could, prove something of herself. But being surrounded by the best college players around the country didn’t help. Only time and patience would tell if she could prevail and seek a good result, hoping to land a spot on the main squad.
—---
So! This is a little bit of an idea I’ve hatched in my head lately, as it’s more of a Sports, Slice of Life themed story! Now with that being said, I do want to add other elements such as Romance and Drama specifically as we dive further into this story. Just a few things I wanted to go over before you message me so we don’t have to revisit them later!
Who are you?
So what I mean by this is, who will you be playing in the story? I’ve compiled a few ideas in my head, but if you think of something else feel free to suggest them.
Do you have to know anything about Golf?
The answer is No! Simply put, there will be a lot more involved in this story besides just that, so I don’t expect you to know anything. Though if you do, surely you’ll be able to provide more in those specific scenes though again, It’s not required! I want this story to be open to anyone who comes across it.
—---
Now just some basic rules and regulations to go over!
Be yourself! I love more down to earth people, don’t feel like you have to overdue your intro or try to please me!
See some of you soon! <3
submitted by Seulgussy to RoleplayPartnerSearch [link] [comments]
This is that pressure this young woman felt. A top scholar, a bit of a quiet soul, and the only female on her school’s Division 1 Golf team. Now why was she here? Why did they allow a woman into the group? Simple. The team’s highest praised player was out due to injury, and despite the fact this young woman was nothing more than a reserve, she was called up to the main squad for an upcoming tournament. Four grueling days of play, early mornings, tons of walking, and not to mention, eighteen holes of hell. Perform badly enough and you’d be cut, the board getting smaller and smaller every day. Make it to Sunday, that was the goal. Now this wasn’t a problem for most of the team, being one of the best ranked groups in the country, it was sure enough that they’d make it in. The only one they didn’t think who could of course was this young, foreign woman. Foreign? Yep. She was a transfer student from overseas. The team being made up of mostly ‘Frat-Like’ players, it was hard to fit in. English wasn’t her first language, she looked nothing like them, and not to mention there was barely anything in common besides the love of the game.
The team would be posted up in a house, just on the eighteenth hole of the course. It was beautiful, much better than any hotel room. This is where they’d stay the weekend, as there were houses all over the course that would provide shelter for the other teams competing in the tournament. The whole bus ride over, she didn’t say a peep. Headphones on, simply in another world. She was soft looking, but had a hard interior. She was polite, but chose not to speak. The coach was aware of this, but didn’t make any sort of intervention, as everyone was their own person at the end of the day.
The night before the tournament, they all laid up in the house, the boys in the living room having a few drinks before their big day tomorrow, talking about all the girls on campus, their own lives, school, typical college talk. Except for one. Her. Locked away in her room for the night, she stared out at the sunset over the lake on the last hole. She thought to herself that she shouldn’t belong here. That she should just leave. But.. she knew she was here for a reason. Clearly she was good enough to be called up from the other reserves. Or was it just for headlines? She’d be the only female in the tournament, something already breaking Sports News outlets everywhere. It was nerve racking. She’d be interviewed for sure throughout the tournament as it was a televised event. Sure, not as big as the PGA Tour, or some major Golf Tourney, but still, it was exposure. Her parents would be watching, her trainer from when she was younger back home. But that was the thrill of playing at the collegiate level no? Finally getting to experience that national exposure. Unlike the rest, she didn’t care so much about that. She wanted to just play the game. Do as best as she could, prove something of herself. But being surrounded by the best college players around the country didn’t help. Only time and patience would tell if she could prevail and seek a good result, hoping to land a spot on the main squad.
—---
So! This is a little bit of an idea I’ve hatched in my head lately, as it’s more of a Sports, Slice of Life themed story! Now with that being said, I do want to add other elements such as Romance and Drama specifically as we dive further into this story. Just a few things I wanted to go over before you message me so we don’t have to revisit them later!
Who are you?
So what I mean by this is, who will you be playing in the story? I’ve compiled a few ideas in my head, but if you think of something else feel free to suggest them.
- One of the players on her team.
- One of the players on another team.
- Her Caddy! Basically guiding her through the tourney.
Do you have to know anything about Golf?
The answer is No! Simply put, there will be a lot more involved in this story besides just that, so I don’t expect you to know anything. Though if you do, surely you’ll be able to provide more in those specific scenes though again, It’s not required! I want this story to be open to anyone who comes across it.
—---
Now just some basic rules and regulations to go over!
Be yourself! I love more down to earth people, don’t feel like you have to overdue your intro or try to please me!
- I will go more over my character as we get into planning, a bio, refs, all that sort of thing. I just want to make sure we match up before all that!
- Please try and reach out to me over chat first! If you cannot, PM is more than ok!
- Any questions you may have I will be willing to answer, there are no stupid questions!
- Please don’t just say “Hey” in your intro! Introduce yourself a little, but again you don’t have to go over the top! I just want to make sure you’re serious about this idea!
- This plot is open to any gender!
See some of you soon! <3
2023.03.21 18:06 Seulgussy [F4A] The Transfer Student and the Frat Boys. A tale of opposites and triumph.
It’s odd. Being the only female on your sports team, no? Is it really a team? Even though the group consists of five players, it’s more so just a game with yourself at the end of the day. Hitting balls around a green field all day. Maybe some sand, dips and curves along the way. But what was it really? Golf. That boring sport? The one you associate with the rich and old people who are retired. Well for some, many actually, it’s their life. Like a Football player. Or a baseball player. It’s a sport that takes time, knowledge and tons of patience to master. Many try, but often never reach the goal they want to, due to the pressure of the idea. It is only you. Any mistake is on you. Everyone’s watching you.
This is that pressure this young woman felt. A top scholar, a bit of a quiet soul, and the only female on her school’s Division 1 Golf team. Now why was she here? Why did they allow a woman into the group? Simple. The team’s highest praised player was out due to injury, and despite the fact this young woman was nothing more than a reserve, she was called up to the main squad for an upcoming tournament. Four grueling days of play, early mornings, tons of walking, and not to mention, eighteen holes of hell. Perform badly enough and you’d be cut, the board getting smaller and smaller every day. Make it to Sunday, that was the goal. Now this wasn’t a problem for most of the team, being one of the best ranked groups in the country, it was sure enough that they’d make it in. The only one they didn’t think who could of course was this young, foreign woman. Foreign? Yep. She was a transfer student from overseas. The team being made up of mostly ‘Frat-Like’ players, it was hard to fit in. English wasn’t her first language, she looked nothing like them, and not to mention there was barely anything in common besides the love of the game.
The team would be posted up in a house, just on the eighteenth hole of the course. It was beautiful, much better than any hotel room. This is where they’d stay the weekend, as there were houses all over the course that would provide shelter for the other teams competing in the tournament. The whole bus ride over, she didn’t say a peep. Headphones on, simply in another world. She was soft looking, but had a hard interior. She was polite, but chose not to speak. The coach was aware of this, but didn’t make any sort of intervention, as everyone was their own person at the end of the day.The night before the tournament, they all laid up in the house, the boys in the living room having a few drinks before their big day tomorrow, talking about all the girls on campus, their own lives, school, typical college talk. Except for one. Her. Locked away in her room for the night, she stared out at the sunset over the lake on the last hole. She thought to herself that she shouldn’t belong here. That she should just leave. But.. she knew she was here for a reason. Clearly she was good enough to be called up from the other reserves. Or was it just for headlines? She’d be the only female in the tournament, something already breaking Sports News outlets everywhere. It was nerve racking. She’d be interviewed for sure throughout the tournament as it was a televised event. Sure, not as big as the PGA Tour, or some major Golf Tourney, but still, it was exposure. Her parents would be watching, her trainer from when she was younger back home. But that was the thrill of playing at the collegiate level no? Finally getting to experience that national exposure. Unlike the rest, she didn’t care so much about that. She wanted to just play the game. Do as best as she could, prove something of herself. But being surrounded by the best college players around the country didn’t help. Only time and patience would tell if she could prevail and seek a good result, hoping to land a spot on the main squad.
—---
So! This is a little bit of an idea I’ve hatched in my head lately, as it’s more of a Sports, Slice of Life themed story! Now with that being said, I do want to add other elements such as Romance and Drama specifically as we dive further into this story. Just a few things I wanted to go over before you message me so we don’t have to revisit them later!Who are you?So what I mean by this is, who will you be playing in the story? I’ve compiled a few ideas in my head, but if you think of something else feel free to suggest them.
“Do I have to know anything about Golf?”
The answer is No! Simply put, there will be a lot more involved in this story besides just that, so I don’t expect you to know anything. Though if you do, surely you’ll be able to provide more in those specific scenes though again, It’s not required! I want this story to be open to anyone who comes across it.
—---
Now just some basic rules and regulations to go over!
Be yourself! I love more down to earth people, don’t feel like you have to overdue your intro or try to please me!
See some of you soon! <3
submitted by Seulgussy to roleplaying [link] [comments]
This is that pressure this young woman felt. A top scholar, a bit of a quiet soul, and the only female on her school’s Division 1 Golf team. Now why was she here? Why did they allow a woman into the group? Simple. The team’s highest praised player was out due to injury, and despite the fact this young woman was nothing more than a reserve, she was called up to the main squad for an upcoming tournament. Four grueling days of play, early mornings, tons of walking, and not to mention, eighteen holes of hell. Perform badly enough and you’d be cut, the board getting smaller and smaller every day. Make it to Sunday, that was the goal. Now this wasn’t a problem for most of the team, being one of the best ranked groups in the country, it was sure enough that they’d make it in. The only one they didn’t think who could of course was this young, foreign woman. Foreign? Yep. She was a transfer student from overseas. The team being made up of mostly ‘Frat-Like’ players, it was hard to fit in. English wasn’t her first language, she looked nothing like them, and not to mention there was barely anything in common besides the love of the game.
The team would be posted up in a house, just on the eighteenth hole of the course. It was beautiful, much better than any hotel room. This is where they’d stay the weekend, as there were houses all over the course that would provide shelter for the other teams competing in the tournament. The whole bus ride over, she didn’t say a peep. Headphones on, simply in another world. She was soft looking, but had a hard interior. She was polite, but chose not to speak. The coach was aware of this, but didn’t make any sort of intervention, as everyone was their own person at the end of the day.The night before the tournament, they all laid up in the house, the boys in the living room having a few drinks before their big day tomorrow, talking about all the girls on campus, their own lives, school, typical college talk. Except for one. Her. Locked away in her room for the night, she stared out at the sunset over the lake on the last hole. She thought to herself that she shouldn’t belong here. That she should just leave. But.. she knew she was here for a reason. Clearly she was good enough to be called up from the other reserves. Or was it just for headlines? She’d be the only female in the tournament, something already breaking Sports News outlets everywhere. It was nerve racking. She’d be interviewed for sure throughout the tournament as it was a televised event. Sure, not as big as the PGA Tour, or some major Golf Tourney, but still, it was exposure. Her parents would be watching, her trainer from when she was younger back home. But that was the thrill of playing at the collegiate level no? Finally getting to experience that national exposure. Unlike the rest, she didn’t care so much about that. She wanted to just play the game. Do as best as she could, prove something of herself. But being surrounded by the best college players around the country didn’t help. Only time and patience would tell if she could prevail and seek a good result, hoping to land a spot on the main squad.
—---
So! This is a little bit of an idea I’ve hatched in my head lately, as it’s more of a Sports, Slice of Life themed story! Now with that being said, I do want to add other elements such as Romance and Drama specifically as we dive further into this story. Just a few things I wanted to go over before you message me so we don’t have to revisit them later!Who are you?So what I mean by this is, who will you be playing in the story? I’ve compiled a few ideas in my head, but if you think of something else feel free to suggest them.
- One of the players on her team.
- One of the players on another team.
- Her Caddy! Basically guiding her through the tourney.
“Do I have to know anything about Golf?”
The answer is No! Simply put, there will be a lot more involved in this story besides just that, so I don’t expect you to know anything. Though if you do, surely you’ll be able to provide more in those specific scenes though again, It’s not required! I want this story to be open to anyone who comes across it.
—---
Now just some basic rules and regulations to go over!
Be yourself! I love more down to earth people, don’t feel like you have to overdue your intro or try to please me!
- I will go more over my character as we get into planning, a bio, refs, all that sort of thing. I just want to make sure we match up before all that!
- Please try and reach out to me over chat first! If you cannot, PM is more than ok!
- Any questions you may have I will be willing to answer, there are no stupid questions!
- Please don’t just say “Hey” in your intro! Introduce yourself a little, but again you don’t have to go over the top! I just want to make sure you’re serious about this idea!
- This plot is open to any gender! :)
See some of you soon! <3
2023.03.21 17:56 Bulky-Restaurant-469 [OFFLINE, Memphis TN] [Pf2e] Looking for four players
Looking for: Players (18+)
Player spaces: 4
DM spaces: N/A
Version: Pathfinder 2e
Continent: North America
Location: Memphis TN
Timezone: CST
Game dates: Saturdays / Sundays
Platform: In real life
Game description: Hello, I am a DM who has several games implode on me, but was wanting to try again. To me, I see this as my main way to socialize, so I’d prefer for an in person versus online.
If you’re interested, shoot me a dm on here or on my discord UltraShiko#7167. Where we meet is TBD so I’m fairly flexible as long as we don’t stray too far from Bartlett.
Cheers!
submitted by Bulky-Restaurant-469 to lfg [link] [comments]
Player spaces: 4
DM spaces: N/A
Version: Pathfinder 2e
Continent: North America
Location: Memphis TN
Timezone: CST
Game dates: Saturdays / Sundays
Platform: In real life
Game description: Hello, I am a DM who has several games implode on me, but was wanting to try again. To me, I see this as my main way to socialize, so I’d prefer for an in person versus online.
If you’re interested, shoot me a dm on here or on my discord UltraShiko#7167. Where we meet is TBD so I’m fairly flexible as long as we don’t stray too far from Bartlett.
Cheers!
2023.03.21 16:57 HowIPlowedYourMother Why Cody Rhodes needs to win at WrestleMania
It's becoming a more prevailing sentiment that Roman Reigns will retain at WrestleMania, and to me that would be a mistake. I am going to avoid the cliché "mark" take that it's Cody's time to shine and this is his moment to "finish the story," and establish himself as one of the top guys in the industry, because I think that speaks for itself and frankly isn't that important. No one person is above the business, so the question is, would Roman winning be best for business? To me it would not.
Before I get into why, I also want to dispel the notion that there is no one left for Roman after Cody. Roman has still never beaten Seth Rollins at a PPV. Gunther has been just as dominant as Roman, albeit over a shorter stretch. Returns from Randy Orton and Big E would make for excellent feuds, and I'd relish seeing Drew, Sami, or even Jey run it back with Roman. There are plenty of young stars who would benefit from stepping in the ring with the Tribal Chief, and a few who could be candidates to dethrone him. Roman is not running out of challengers any time soon.
So why shouldn't Roman win? If Roman beats Cody, to me he would solidify his reign as the greatest in history. He probably has this distinction already but a win over Cody would add to it significantly. The statistics speak for themselves: 3 consecutive WrestleMania title defenses, 1000 days as champion, 2 year+ long title reigns. But more so than that, it's what Cody represents. In the combat sports world, the true greats always have a rival who simply can't beat them. Guys who had their time and were more than good enough to be champion but were unlucky enough to compete in the same era as this generation defining talent. Chael Sonnen always comes to mind for me; he never won a championship because of Anderson Silva. Guys like Daniel Cormier and Deontay Wilder fit the bill as well with their championship reigns coming while the true GOATs of the division was away. If Roman beats Cody, he will have achieved that (arguably twice over if you count Drew).
So why is this a bad thing? This seems like the path WWE has been on for 10 years now. Roman is their GOAT. Once Roman beats Cody, the championship reign becomes the countdown clock on the meaningful part of his career. Yes, he can beat Cody and become this undisputed GOAT on paper, and he will continue right along until someone comes around and beats him, and that moment will be incredible. But once that happens, then what? He'll have a rematch with that person somewhere down the line, but win or lose that won't really matter to Roman; he'd have nothing left to prove. Wrestlers and big stars always need that proverbial carrot dangled in front of them, and the way this WrestleMania could end sets Roman up perfectly for the next phase of his career.
Which brings me to my second reason, this match is about a lot more than Roman & Cody. Everybody's fates are tied into this match. Sami Zayn became the company's most over star through his story with The Bloodline. Kevin Owens has been fighting The Bloodline since it's inception nearly 3 years ago, and that is not to mention the years of history Kevin and Sami have with each other going back to the indies and KO's debut at Takeover R-Evolution 9 years ago. And then of course there is Jey Uso who's story with Roman has been simmering since the first days of Roman's historic title reign back in 2020. All of these story threads converge in the main event of WrestleMania. Without a Cody Rhodes win at Mania, none of these stories can have a satisfying conclusion. Sure, there will be drama in The Bloodline if the Usos lose but Roman wins, but for the most part it will be back to the status quo. And a tag title win for the Canadian Duo would be for naught if The Bloodline remains intact. It reminds me of the anime protagonist who defeats the villain with the combined hopes and dreams of his friends and allies by bringing some spark of light out of his foe. Cody has already shined a light on Roman's insecurities; he stands to lose everything if he loses his titles.
There will never be a more satisfying ending to Roman's run with the championship than the one presented right here. Cody needs to win. If you stuck with me and read this post I really appreciate it. I love to write and wrestling is one of my favorite things. I am glad I could get some of these thoughts out.
submitted by HowIPlowedYourMother to WWE [link] [comments]
Before I get into why, I also want to dispel the notion that there is no one left for Roman after Cody. Roman has still never beaten Seth Rollins at a PPV. Gunther has been just as dominant as Roman, albeit over a shorter stretch. Returns from Randy Orton and Big E would make for excellent feuds, and I'd relish seeing Drew, Sami, or even Jey run it back with Roman. There are plenty of young stars who would benefit from stepping in the ring with the Tribal Chief, and a few who could be candidates to dethrone him. Roman is not running out of challengers any time soon.
So why shouldn't Roman win? If Roman beats Cody, to me he would solidify his reign as the greatest in history. He probably has this distinction already but a win over Cody would add to it significantly. The statistics speak for themselves: 3 consecutive WrestleMania title defenses, 1000 days as champion, 2 year+ long title reigns. But more so than that, it's what Cody represents. In the combat sports world, the true greats always have a rival who simply can't beat them. Guys who had their time and were more than good enough to be champion but were unlucky enough to compete in the same era as this generation defining talent. Chael Sonnen always comes to mind for me; he never won a championship because of Anderson Silva. Guys like Daniel Cormier and Deontay Wilder fit the bill as well with their championship reigns coming while the true GOATs of the division was away. If Roman beats Cody, he will have achieved that (arguably twice over if you count Drew).
So why is this a bad thing? This seems like the path WWE has been on for 10 years now. Roman is their GOAT. Once Roman beats Cody, the championship reign becomes the countdown clock on the meaningful part of his career. Yes, he can beat Cody and become this undisputed GOAT on paper, and he will continue right along until someone comes around and beats him, and that moment will be incredible. But once that happens, then what? He'll have a rematch with that person somewhere down the line, but win or lose that won't really matter to Roman; he'd have nothing left to prove. Wrestlers and big stars always need that proverbial carrot dangled in front of them, and the way this WrestleMania could end sets Roman up perfectly for the next phase of his career.
Which brings me to my second reason, this match is about a lot more than Roman & Cody. Everybody's fates are tied into this match. Sami Zayn became the company's most over star through his story with The Bloodline. Kevin Owens has been fighting The Bloodline since it's inception nearly 3 years ago, and that is not to mention the years of history Kevin and Sami have with each other going back to the indies and KO's debut at Takeover R-Evolution 9 years ago. And then of course there is Jey Uso who's story with Roman has been simmering since the first days of Roman's historic title reign back in 2020. All of these story threads converge in the main event of WrestleMania. Without a Cody Rhodes win at Mania, none of these stories can have a satisfying conclusion. Sure, there will be drama in The Bloodline if the Usos lose but Roman wins, but for the most part it will be back to the status quo. And a tag title win for the Canadian Duo would be for naught if The Bloodline remains intact. It reminds me of the anime protagonist who defeats the villain with the combined hopes and dreams of his friends and allies by bringing some spark of light out of his foe. Cody has already shined a light on Roman's insecurities; he stands to lose everything if he loses his titles.
There will never be a more satisfying ending to Roman's run with the championship than the one presented right here. Cody needs to win. If you stuck with me and read this post I really appreciate it. I love to write and wrestling is one of my favorite things. I am glad I could get some of these thoughts out.
2023.03.21 16:30 jfish26101 April Itinerary - Suggestions Welcome
I've been watching a couple local subs for a few weeks now piecing together a short trip and was hoping to get some feedback and/or suggestions on filling in the gaps.
Some background:
We are typically up early and will stay out late if there is something we want to do. We like pretty much all cuisines and do drink, enjoy live music, visit a lot of museums/art galleries, big sports fans, etc. I thought we would try to catch a show but she didn't want to do that this trip.
April 19
Depending on weather our morning and afternoon plans could completely change and we end up looking for things to do inside. We enjoy museums and art galleries, but if there is anything else we should prioritize in the event the weather is poor would appreciate those suggestions as well. We will be heading out of town to the next stop via train from Penn Station April 22nd, but I think it is shaping up to be a nice quick trip. Any feedback and suggestions you have to make it better would be much appreciated. Thanks!
submitted by jfish26101 to AskNYC [link] [comments]
Some background:
We are typically up early and will stay out late if there is something we want to do. We like pretty much all cuisines and do drink, enjoy live music, visit a lot of museums/art galleries, big sports fans, etc. I thought we would try to catch a show but she didn't want to do that this trip.
April 19
- Arrive via train into Penn Station, check into the Warwick (W 54th St)
- Late afternoon/early evening free, probably just walk around the area.
- Suggestions on things to see or places to go? We may do a little shopping but may not have time to go back to hotel before dinner so not sure.
- Dinner at Le Bernardin (booked)
- Weather permitting was thinking about taking a walk down to Bryant Park
- Suggestions on breakfast/lunch near hotel and park? I had read about Xi'an Famous Foods a while back in a thread about chains people wished would open in their city but think the most convenient one to where we will be closed. Read about L’Adresse which sounds good. Dinner could be heavy so something on the lighter side that doesn't take us far from the D line may be ideal.
- Angels @ Yankees - Looks like D line is right by Bryant Park so should be convenient correct? Should be able to take same line to 7th Ave then walk back to the hotel as well.
- Dinner likely inside the park, but could grab something outside if there is something worth prioritizing over convenience.
- Suggestions on food? We are sitting in section 420 but will probably walk around a little bit. Read about Lobel's steak sandwiches. Also read about the bucket of chicken but unless it is great feel like we would want to try something else. The Halal Guys might work as well. Anything we are missing? Anything outside that we should prioritize over the convenience of the park? Saw Sam's Soul Food but seems a bit far so leaning towards just sticking with something in the stadium unless there is something very close.
- I was planning to check out the Orchid/Cherry Blossoms at Brooklyn, but little worried the warm temps may make this a bust by the time we are there. Now I'm thinking weather permitting walk to High Line Park in the morning then Chelsea Market in the afternoon.
- Suggestions on food and shops? I read about Friedmans which seems safe bet but if it isn't too hard to find a spot at one of the smaller spots probably prefer that. Saw several places serving noodles, tacos, pizza...street food type stuff that sounds interesting. Anything we should prioritize?
- Late afternoon/early evening free, probably just walk around the area.
- Suggestions on things to see or places to go? We may do a little shopping but again may not have time to go back to hotel before dinner so not sure.
- She was hoping to book dinner at Tatiana's but I've been watching how quickly it books and I'm worried it is a little too new to count on.
- Suggestions on other options for dinner? Prefer to stay relatively close to the hotel but can grab a Lyft/Uber easily enough. Saw several people saying Per Se was better than Le Bernardin and I suppose we could do both but seems a bit expensive. :D There look to be a couple good sushi places close by which may be nice.
Depending on weather our morning and afternoon plans could completely change and we end up looking for things to do inside. We enjoy museums and art galleries, but if there is anything else we should prioritize in the event the weather is poor would appreciate those suggestions as well. We will be heading out of town to the next stop via train from Penn Station April 22nd, but I think it is shaping up to be a nice quick trip. Any feedback and suggestions you have to make it better would be much appreciated. Thanks!
2023.03.21 16:21 bestchange_pr The expert said that in the next two weeks, Bitcoin could test the $35,000 level
The price of the main crypto coin has updated its historical maximum since June last year. Ethereum is also near its highs since September 2022. The growth of cryptocurrencies occurs amid fluctuations in the European and American financial markets.
According to CoinMarketCap, on March 20, the BTC exchange rate crossed the $28,400 level. Weekly growth exceeded 18%, and capitalization amounted to about $540 billion. This is the second wave of growth in the last 12 months.
Attention to digital assets remains despite the banking crisis, in particular, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The American authorities intend to sell these financial institutions on the condition that in the future the organizations will not interact with crypto assets.
However, market participants believe that problems in the banking sector do not particularly affect the industry. According to Alexander Mamasidikov, co-founder of Mineplex Digital Banking, the crisis has become a prerequisite for investors to transfer their capital from banks to other assets.
“Under such conditions, some investors directed their capital to buy bitcoins as one of the alternative means of savings,” the expert notes.
Market participants consider the threat of a ban on crypto assets to be quite low. Roman Kaufman, co-founder of Berezka DAO and Weezi, notes that “on July 1, 2023, Hong Kong will become the first jurisdiction where everyone can officially buy cryptocurrency.”
Analyzing the prospects of bitcoin, a number of factors must be taken into account, says Roman Nekrasov, co-founder of the ENCRY Foundation. We are talking about the future actions of the Fed, whose policies affect the state of the stock market, with which the crypto market is largely connected. Another factor is the proximity of halving. The event is expected only in the spring of next year, but it “traditionally launches new coin growth cycles.”
Looking back at previous years, just before the halving, BTC quotes update the local minimum. According to Roman Nekrasov, the main crypto coin has already overcome this level against the backdrop of the bankruptcy of FTX in November last year.
Participants in the digital currency market are confident that the crypto industry will continue to grow in the near future. Alexander Mamasidikov believes that in the next two weeks, Bitcoin can test the $35,000 level.
submitted by bestchange_pr to bestchange [link] [comments]
According to CoinMarketCap, on March 20, the BTC exchange rate crossed the $28,400 level. Weekly growth exceeded 18%, and capitalization amounted to about $540 billion. This is the second wave of growth in the last 12 months.
Attention to digital assets remains despite the banking crisis, in particular, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The American authorities intend to sell these financial institutions on the condition that in the future the organizations will not interact with crypto assets.
However, market participants believe that problems in the banking sector do not particularly affect the industry. According to Alexander Mamasidikov, co-founder of Mineplex Digital Banking, the crisis has become a prerequisite for investors to transfer their capital from banks to other assets.
“Under such conditions, some investors directed their capital to buy bitcoins as one of the alternative means of savings,” the expert notes.
Market participants consider the threat of a ban on crypto assets to be quite low. Roman Kaufman, co-founder of Berezka DAO and Weezi, notes that “on July 1, 2023, Hong Kong will become the first jurisdiction where everyone can officially buy cryptocurrency.”
Analyzing the prospects of bitcoin, a number of factors must be taken into account, says Roman Nekrasov, co-founder of the ENCRY Foundation. We are talking about the future actions of the Fed, whose policies affect the state of the stock market, with which the crypto market is largely connected. Another factor is the proximity of halving. The event is expected only in the spring of next year, but it “traditionally launches new coin growth cycles.”
Looking back at previous years, just before the halving, BTC quotes update the local minimum. According to Roman Nekrasov, the main crypto coin has already overcome this level against the backdrop of the bankruptcy of FTX in November last year.
Participants in the digital currency market are confident that the crypto industry will continue to grow in the near future. Alexander Mamasidikov believes that in the next two weeks, Bitcoin can test the $35,000 level.
2023.03.21 16:16 drachiryu OriginClear Spotlights World Water Day in New York $OCLN #News
CLEARWATER, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OriginClear Inc. (OTC Pink: OCLN), the Clean Water Innovation Hub™, announces that its top team will help New To The Street celebrate World Water Day with a debate on how to fix growing water problems in America and the world.
OriginClear CEO Riggs Eckelberry, Executive VP Ken Berenger and Brand Ambassador, top model Estrella Nouri, will conduct a panel, “A Trillion-Dollar Deficit: How Our Failing Water Infrastructure Is Harming Americans”.
Attendance is by invitation only. Event Media contact: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
On the 23rd, the OriginClear team will be interviewed at the New York Stock Exchange on the sponsored New To The Street platform, with distribution on Bloomberg, Fox Business and Newsmax television channels.
OriginClear recently launched a limited preview crowdfunding on the Castle Placement platform of its signature Water On Demand™ initiative, which helps businesses “get off the grid” so cities can serve consumers better. The first phase of this crowdfunding ends on 30 April.
For the first time, any investor can acquire shares in the privately-held Water On Demand with a minimum investment of just $1,000. To invest, click here: www.oc.gold/blue. (Review the Offering Circular at www.oc.gold/offering.)
About World Water Day
Every year, World Water Day (March 22nd) raises awareness and inspires action to tackle the water and sanitation crisis. It is a United Nations observance, coordinated by UN-Water and led by one or more UN-Water Members and Partners with a related mandate. This World Water Day is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unite around water and accelerate progress together. These promises will form the Water Action Agenda, to be launched at the UN 2023 Water Conference (March 22nd – 24th) – the first event of its kind for nearly 50 years.
https://www.worldwaterday.org/
About Castle:
Founded in 2009, Castle Placement raises private equity and debt capital for its clients. Over 600,000 accredited investors and 64,500 institutional, private equity, venture capital and strategic investors, family offices, pension funds, foundations, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and lenders. Experienced investment bankers with significant personal relationships. Robust, data driven, technology platform. Innovative features that enhance the overall experience for investors - delivering transparent, quicker and easier access to relevant investment information. Castle Placement is a broker-dealer and a member of FINRA and SIPC.
About OriginClear Inc.
Once a government monopoly, clean water is going private. Local industries and communities are now treating and recycling their own water, helping to reduce the burden on municipal systems and save on fast-rising water rates while also responding to the challenge of climate change. That’s good for business and good for sustainability, and now the innovative fintech, Water On Demand™, is fueling this movement. For the first time, Clean Water is becoming an investable asset, open to Main Street investors, with the potential for generational royalties. OriginClear® is the Clean Water Innovation Hub™ for both Water On Demand™ and Modular Water Systems™ – a leader in onsite, prefabricated systems made with sophisticated materials that can last decades. Get live weekly updates every Thursday by signing up at www.originclear.com/ceo.
For more information, visit the company’s website: https://www.originclear.com/
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on LinkedIn
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to us on YouTube
Signup for our Newsletter
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230321005548/en/OriginClear-Spotlights-World-Water-Day-in-New-York
submitted by drachiryu to Pennystock [link] [comments]
“A Trillion-Dollar Deficit: How Our Failing Water Infrastructure Is Harming Americans” Tweet thisThe World Water Day event will take place at NeueHouse located at 110 East 25th Street, New York from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on March 22nd, 2023. Sustainable Green Team $SGTM CEO Tony Raynor, Hempacco $HPCO CEO Sandro Piancone and John Lai CEO PetVivo $PETV will join OriginClear at the event.
OriginClear CEO Riggs Eckelberry, Executive VP Ken Berenger and Brand Ambassador, top model Estrella Nouri, will conduct a panel, “A Trillion-Dollar Deficit: How Our Failing Water Infrastructure Is Harming Americans”.
Attendance is by invitation only. Event Media contact: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
On the 23rd, the OriginClear team will be interviewed at the New York Stock Exchange on the sponsored New To The Street platform, with distribution on Bloomberg, Fox Business and Newsmax television channels.
OriginClear recently launched a limited preview crowdfunding on the Castle Placement platform of its signature Water On Demand™ initiative, which helps businesses “get off the grid” so cities can serve consumers better. The first phase of this crowdfunding ends on 30 April.
For the first time, any investor can acquire shares in the privately-held Water On Demand with a minimum investment of just $1,000. To invest, click here: www.oc.gold/blue. (Review the Offering Circular at www.oc.gold/offering.)
About World Water Day
Every year, World Water Day (March 22nd) raises awareness and inspires action to tackle the water and sanitation crisis. It is a United Nations observance, coordinated by UN-Water and led by one or more UN-Water Members and Partners with a related mandate. This World Water Day is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unite around water and accelerate progress together. These promises will form the Water Action Agenda, to be launched at the UN 2023 Water Conference (March 22nd – 24th) – the first event of its kind for nearly 50 years.
https://www.worldwaterday.org/
About Castle:
Founded in 2009, Castle Placement raises private equity and debt capital for its clients. Over 600,000 accredited investors and 64,500 institutional, private equity, venture capital and strategic investors, family offices, pension funds, foundations, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and lenders. Experienced investment bankers with significant personal relationships. Robust, data driven, technology platform. Innovative features that enhance the overall experience for investors - delivering transparent, quicker and easier access to relevant investment information. Castle Placement is a broker-dealer and a member of FINRA and SIPC.
About OriginClear Inc.
Once a government monopoly, clean water is going private. Local industries and communities are now treating and recycling their own water, helping to reduce the burden on municipal systems and save on fast-rising water rates while also responding to the challenge of climate change. That’s good for business and good for sustainability, and now the innovative fintech, Water On Demand™, is fueling this movement. For the first time, Clean Water is becoming an investable asset, open to Main Street investors, with the potential for generational royalties. OriginClear® is the Clean Water Innovation Hub™ for both Water On Demand™ and Modular Water Systems™ – a leader in onsite, prefabricated systems made with sophisticated materials that can last decades. Get live weekly updates every Thursday by signing up at www.originclear.com/ceo.
For more information, visit the company’s website: https://www.originclear.com/
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on LinkedIn
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to us on YouTube
Signup for our Newsletter
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230321005548/en/OriginClear-Spotlights-World-Water-Day-in-New-York
2023.03.21 16:08 FlyWithSeedyL Release Notes - Sim Update 12 [1.31.22.0] Available Now
RELEASE NOTES 1.31.22.0
If you are playing on PC, outdated packages in your community folder may have an unexpected impact on the title’s performance and behavior.If you suffer from stability issues or long loading times, move your community package(s) to another folder before relaunching the title.
[All Versions] How to Install a New Update Safely
NEW CONTENT/FEATURES
- Optimized the “Checking for updates” phase to reduce the booting time of the simulator; improved the download speed in the installation manager; improved loading time before booting to the main menu
- Added a new assistance option to customize the intensity of turbulence experienced during flight (based on current altitude, environment, and weather conditions).
- Turkish and Korean languages have been added into the sim
- Added an input key to toggle Flight Assistant Panel
- Spotlight Event Pack: a pack of activities is now available in the Marketplace, which contains a curated selection of 13 Spotlight Events from the past. Please note: completing these activities will not count towards Spotlight Event related achievements.
General Bug Fixes
- Several crashes have been fixed across the title
- Fixed a bug in the purchase flow of MSFS Marketplace
- Keyboard shortcut to toggle Screen Narrator on/off has been added
- Control Options menu stops reset to top when assigning a button.
- “Set Departure”, “Set arrival” & “Zoom to Details” are now appearing when Airport Icon is clicked
- Fixed aircraft visibility issues with their interior and exterior model
- Corrected an issue that caused some multiplayer planes to display a purple texture on their Glass cockpits.
- Fixed Engine Governor being incorrectly labeled
- Fixed game freeze during boot
- Added parameter to cfg that allows to fix the legacy flight model integration of the accelerations that was causing wrong accelerations and g-force calculations in the legacy flight model. Integrated collision constraint response into the force calculation for g force estimation when on ground. This allows to have 1.0 when still on ground even with some suspension systems that don’t have enough force to counter gravity.
- Fixed issues in the building generation that could caused crashes
- Various localization improvements
Menu
- Fixed airport considered as water if runways have undefined surface type
- Added Weight & Balance visualization for rotorcraft.
Navigation/Traffic
- [Partially Fixed] Glass cockpit externalization has been reworked. There’s no intermediate window anymore; each glass cockpit opens a distinct window with the glass cockpit name. Window position and size is saved when ending a flight.
- With multi-layout screens cockpits, mouse collision for glass cockpit externalization is now received only by the current active glass cockpit.
- Navlog timer no longer resets when user closes and reopens it
- Fixed SimConnect injected traffic planes not following the assigned flight plan
- Fixed live traffic planes incorrectly following departure procedures
- Fixed live traffic planes staying stuck at hold short in some airports
- Fixed live traffic planes staying at low altitude after takeoff
- Fixed SimConnect injected traffic being often unable to depart from the departure gate
- Fixed traffic planes causing performance issue in the world map
- Fixed live traffic planes sometimes not showing nameplate
- Fixed live traffic planes sometimes spawning at an incorrect location and unable to move
- Fixed live traffic planes staying at low altitude during go around
- Fixed a crash where ATC uses an invalid runway number
- Glass cockpit: Waypoint with no associated city now show an empty city field instead of random characters.
- Glass cockpit: NavigationData expiration year is now properly displayed when date range extends over two years.
Weather
- [Partially Fixed] Heat only thermals are limited in height up to the cloud base (except under clouds)
- Limited and tuned negative thermals around clouds and hot ground.
- Reduced thermals close to ground.
- [Partially Fixed] Improved thermal slanting and cloud alignment.
- Reduced “blue” hot ground thermals in rain, with altitude and with high winds
- Reduced mountain turbulence with altitude
- Maximum vertical wind speed in storm clouds / TCU has been increased
- Fixed a cloud popping issue when updating Live Weather data
- Fixed a problem where in water presets, water would be iced for the physics but displayed as water in the rendering.
- General Live Weather improvements
- Live Weather now uses server time instead of local time to avoid inconsistent or no live weather
- Date of METAR files is now checked before ingesting the data to avoid replacing current METARs with out-of-date METARs in case of CDN issues; this also reduces bandwidth usage
- Fixed an issue that would potentially stop the game from retrieving clouds
- Fixed an issue where incorrect weather was injected while retrieving new data, potentially causing abrupt wind and pressure changes as well as cloud popping
- Fixed a Rendering issue where clouds were ghosting into the sky at horizon
Activity
- Fixed various issues on leg start in bushtrips
- Training activities are now recorded in logbook
- Fixed an issue that caused the P-51 to run out of fuel too early in Reno races
- Fixed an issue that could cause the engines to shut down when first starting a mission.
- In Bushtrips, the Description Box displays incorrect values for the Flight Length, Flight Duration, and Number of Legs
Glass Cockpits
Garmin G3000 / G5000
- Fixed incorrectly rendered lists when the number of items in the list was very large.
- Fixed various instances where FMS would not automatically tune the primary approach frequency when loading or activating ILS/LOC/LDA/SDF/VOR approaches.
- The GTC Airport Information page will now display the primary approach frequencies for all ILS/LOC/LDA/SDF approaches at the airport in the Freq tab.
- The PFD traffic inset map’s range labels are now always displayed in the bottom left to avoid conflicts with other map elements.
- Fixed long approach names from overflowing the approach button on the GTC Select Approach page.
- Miscellaneous map memory optimizations.
- Fixed a bug where on-route direct-tos incorrectly inherited the turn direction of their target legs.
- Fixed a bug where the initial course of an on-route direct-to was set in true degrees instead of the expected magnetic degrees.
- Fixed a bug where the flight plan would become corrupted when syncing a world map flight plan with an approach and at least one enroute waypoint but no departure or arrival.
- Advanced VNAV no longer tries to capture descent altitude constraints during climb phase.
- Added aural alerts for TIS/TAS/TCAS traffic and resolution advisories.
- Added support for choosing aural alert voice type (male/female).
- Enabled the Direct-To buttons in the GTC Waypoint Information and NRST pages.
- Most aural alerts that trigger at the same time will now be played back in a queue instead of overlapping each other. Note that some alerts are still allowed to overlap others.
- New CAS warning and caution messages are now accompanied by an aural chime.
- The active NAV source is now reset to FMS when the system is power cycled.
- Fixed a bug where the VSR navigation data bar field always displayed dashes (‘––––’).
- Selecting a waypoint in the GTC Direct-To page (either via the keyboard or the Nearest tab) that matches the current Direct-To target will now load the appropriate existing Direct-To information.
- Selecting a waypoint in the GTC Direct-To page (either via the keyboard or the Nearest tab) that is in the primary flight plan will now cause an on-route direct-to to be created when the Activate button is pressed.
G1000 Nxi
- Fixed an issue that caused the G1000Nxi to pan very slowly in Legacy interaction mode
Garmin GNS430W / GNS530W
- Fixed some page navigation issues where the right knob push would not close dialogs
VFR Map
- Fixed an issue where the plane’s CDI source would change when opening the VFR Map
- Optimizations for reducing memory usage
- Added support for VR in-game panel zoom axis
Aircraft
General
- FLO mode transition now takes into account density altitude
- Fixed Load % to display the correct individual engine power.
- Fixed a bug on WASM & TS glass cockpits using the zero pitch line of the PFD. The line now represents the 0° of the aircraft
- Fixed contrail effects on some planes
- Corrected an issue that caused the P-51 Bunny to display a white screen instead of the radio.
- [Partially Fixed] an issue that caused some lights on the B747 and A320 to incorrectly react to interaction with their controls.
- Corrected an issue that caused LEFT/RIGHT_AXIS_BRAKE_SET to incorrectly affect both brakes.
- [P-51 Mrs Virginia] Landing gear doors animations are now working correctly
- External HUD : Variometer is no longer displayed on external HUD when not relevant to the aircraft.
- [Checklists] Fixed inconsistent XML parsing behavior between PC and consoles
- [Known Issue] LS8 can be pushed towards the ground when using winch launch method
Helicopters
- Engine power jump was reduced during the governor activation.
- Added an engine trimmer. If the helicopter has this feature, it is now possible to slightly change the nominal engine/rotor RPM that a governor is trying to maintain. Please, refer to the new input commands in the Control Options menu: “ENGINE TRIM RPM INCREASE” and “ENGINE TRIM RPM DECREASE”
- The throttle control logic for multi-engine helicopters has become more consistent.
- Fixed Tail rotor increment for better controllability with gamepad Helicopter profile (without tail rotor assistance)
Airbus 310-300
- Significant sound improvements in all areas of the aircraft (numerous reports are covered in this).
- External lights adjusted for a more realistic experience.
- Pressure system bug resolved.
- Improvements to T/D logic.
- Flight deck door resolution improved on Base version.
- FMS symbol tweaked to be more realistic.
- VOR* to VOR transition in capture bug resolved.
- Landing weight calculations on FMC for imperial fixed.
- Sliders added in EFB.
- VOR1 RMI disappears when overlapping VOR 2 needle bug fixed.
- SPD LIM mode premature bug fixed.
- Galley latches repositioned to closed position.
- Console unit flood light moveable.
- Trim wheel integral light now added.
- Glass added on outstanding cockpit gauges.
- Added magnetic variation to navaids.
- Autobrake commands added for hardware.
- INIT B & LW bugs fixed.
- RSK a waypoint to VERT REV bug fixed.
- Loading co-route character removal bug fixed.
- Custom PBD can now be added on new waypoint page and entering directly into F-PLN.
- When selecting INHG in options, perf calc bug fixed.
- Negative temperatures in EFB, now inserting correctly.
- vPilot COM 2 bug fixed.
- Sticker on door bug fixed.
- Cargo doors now use brake accumulator.
- Chrono bug fixed.
- SEC FPLN crashes fixed.
- CG prompt in FUEL PRED adjusted to ZFWCG.
- Some light leaking fixed.
- ATC/AI audio bug fixed.
- Triggering secondary approach more than once crash fixed.
- VHF2 and 3 now audible in cockpit.
- Volume knob pull to mute working in A310.
- Players voice now heard when talking to ATC.
- Fuel page line amber when it should be green.
- EFB checklist upon scrolling bug fixed.
- Brake accumulator logic improved.
- LBS when over 100,000 clipping fixed.
- Extra fuel/time now gets calculated when an ALTN is selected.
- EMER LTs state in Cold and Dark bug fixed.
- ATHR to GA keybind bug fixed.
- INIT B selecting values bug fixed.
- Stab trim movement during different HYD pressure bug fixed.
- Overall hardware compatibility improved with HoneyComb Bravo, Saitek panels.
- APU fire test conditions logic improved.
- Ailerons position bug fixed in 15/0 state.
- VONavaid Identifier Sound not working fixed.
- Unable to query sim waypoint database from REF page fixed.
- Fixed HSI changes on selector in flight deck.
- Wiper no longer moves with no power.
- Fixed loudspeaker not making sound.
- Fixed issue where aircraft systems freeze mid-flight.
- Entered temps not appearing on weather page of f-plan fixed.
- Expose current altimeter reference value fixed.
- Fire Loop lights on switched to AC ESS instead of AC EMER bus.
- ADF needles now point to true bearing not magnetic.
- Fixed abnormal behavior when choosing NONE STAR approach and transition.
- WASM API nav data waypoint structure adjusted.
- Updated translation files.
Bell 407
- Engine performance increased to match more closely the real-world behavior.
- Now it is easier to overstress the rotor RPM and torque under heavy load.
- The helicopter is easier to stabilize now in cruise flight with trim and assistances turned off.
- Low rotor warning sound now sounds when the battery is switched on.
- Annunciators illumination is stronger now in DIM mode.
- Altimeter barometric scale values now match up with the simulator values.
- Gauge illumination is toned down preventing it to being overblown on maximum brightness settings.
- Auto-trim switch has been removed.
- Force trim switch has been removed.
- Pedal stop functionality added (limits left pedal movement during flight) above 50 kts.
- Rotor rotation animation in multiplayer is now functioning.
- Rotor brake is functional again.
- Used fuel type in the weight and balance settings is JET fuel.
- Added Turkish language translation.
- Added Korean language translation.
- Pedal animation on the connecting rod is fixed.
- Interior collider adjustments. The camera doesn’t clip into the main panel anymore.
- VR support adjustments. Full VR support.
- Reference cruise speed now shows the correct value on the aircraft selection screen.
Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental
- Fixed an issue that could prevent part of the speed brakes from properly triggering on the 747.
Guimbal Cabri G2
- START mode behavior improved on EPM
- Better synchronization between engine RPM and rotor RPM
- In Direct To Page, magnetic bearing is displayed instead of true bearing
- Throttle handle animation is now working correctly
- Fixed miro drift on ground contact with helicopters. Fixed Cabri skid suspension settings; Cabri now stable on ground.
Cessna 172 Skyhawk G1000
- Fixed ground steering during takeoff to compensate for crosswind
Cessna Citation CJ4
- MFD: Fixed battery electrical indications always showing 0
- AP: Fixed altitude capture not engaging in TO vertical mode
- Disabled unused COM3 radio receiver
- Adjusted brightness of Standby Indicator
- Fixed the AoA indexer not indicating the correct AoA
- Fixed sim checklist stuck in After Starting Engines checklist
- Fixed wrong state indication on APPR button tooltip
- FMC: Fixed ARRIVALS page not working when airport features approaches not tied to a specific runway
- FMC: Fixed discontinuities piling up when editing procedures
- YD/AP DISC Bar now disables the Yaw Damper
- Fixed Overspeed Warning audio not always working
- Fixed an issue with the Direct To initial Course being incorrect
- Fixed an issue where the FMA would always show LOC1/VOR1 even when nav source is NAV2
- TOGA button on the Thrust Lever is now active
- Added automatic VOR tuning functionality
- Added the FLT LOG page to the FMC and flight tracking
- The FLT LOG page will show on the FMC after landing based on the setting in DEFAULTS
- Added ability to ident the transponder on the FMC ATC CONTROL page
- Fixed an issue where fuel used tracking on FUEL MGMT page 2 was not correct
- Reduced pitch instability and adjusted elevator authority, tweaked roll rates at various speeds to keep light control feel but reduce excess performance
- Adjusted flaps to achieve a better compromise between approach angle and flaps pitch/lift moments, reduced flaps drag at both flaps levels
- Slightly increased top end engine thrust to address a few reports of insufficient climb power
- Increased gear down drag
- Increased gyro stability to reduce excessive turbulence impact
- Adjusted load stations to be more in line with real loadout
- Added additional groundwheel friction to avoid skidding during moderate crosswind landings
- ILS data is now loaded from the approach FAF origin facility to allow for nav-to-nav and auto-tune even when scenery runway data does not have the appropriate ILS reference information
- Fixed bugs related to visual approach loading and visual approach vnav guidance
- Fixed missing basic aural alerts
- COM input now allows to enter 136.xxx frequencies
- Limit types of airports displayed on the map to show only suitable ones
Cessna Citation Longitude
- Fixed incorrect pitot heat logic.
- Fixed the AILERON(S)_LEFT/RIGHT key events commanding ailerons in the opposite direction as intended.
- The engine auto-start and auto-shutdown procedures (Ctrl-E and Ctrl-Shift-E) now function correctly.
- The standby instrument now automatically adjusts its backlight levels.
- Autothrottle no longer requires gear and flaps to be retracted to change from TO mode to SPD/CLIMB/DESC modes.
- Taxi auto-tests now require engines running to begin evaluating.
- Fixed broken external animations for non-default liveries.
- Fixed incorrect load station count in cfg, and adjusted passenger load positions to match standard 8-seat configuration.
- Increased ND elevator trim limit to prevent AP from running out of trim authority at low altitudes and high speeds.
- Fixed AFCS control panel APR button tooltip.
- Added BRAKE FAIL and GENS OFF aural alerts.
- The G5000’s active NAV source now defaults to FMS when starting a flight.
- The AFCS control panel UP/DN wheel now changes pitch reference when the AP is in PIT mode.
- Fixed broken rotate animations on the CRS knobs.
- The 500-foot touchdown callout will now sound as appropriate. Also added other touchdown callouts from 450 to 50 feet.
Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny”
- Fixed in VR elevator not moving.
- Fixed engine audio from nearby Jenny aircraft can be heard within cockpit.
- Added Phone EFB with Compass, Indicated Air Speed, Radio and XPDR functionality tied to core sim.
- Added electrical system for the EFB.
- Added EFB section to the Flight Manual.
- Added right bracket in cockpit to Show/Hide EFB.
Daher TBM 930
- Increased maximum nose wheel steering angle to 28 degrees, and increased speed at which nose wheel steering starts becoming less effective to 10 knots.
- [Partially Fixed Increased brightness of taxi and landing lights.
- Pulse lights no longer draw additional power when landing lights are on.
- Fixed broken door animations for non-default liveries
- Fixed handling of electrical battery key events.
- Improved compatibility with hardware that send electrical battery and external power key events every frame.
- Fixed AFCS control panel APR button tooltip.
- The overspeed, stall, and landing gear aural alerts will now sound as appropriate.
- The G3000’s active NAV source now defaults to FMS when starting a flight.
- Fixed broken rotate animations on the CRS knobs.
Darkstar
- Fixed several issues related to entering a frequency on the transponder of the Darkstar
- External Camera display now rotates without stretching the view.
DG-1001E
- Improved adverse yaw, balance, handling qualities and spoiler drag
- Improved stall to match stalling characteristics as described in the flight manual (wing drop)
- Winch launch now requires the technique as described in the DG-1001E flight manual: "During ground roll and initial take-off push the control stick to a forward position to prevent excessive nose-up pitching rotation during initial take-off. After reaching safety altitude gradually pull back on the stick, so that the glider will not pick up excessive speed. Don’t pull too hard. After reaching release altitude pull the tow release knob. Recommended winch launch airspeed 110-130 km/h (60-70 kts.).
Douglas DC-3
- Upside down illegible writing on rear door stairs in Blue stripe Livery.
- Landing light switches are no longer reversed.
- Underside beacon light illuminates correctly.
- Multiple items can now be manually completed with evaluation mode.
- Landing gear text decal is no longer obstructed by open passenger door switch.
- DC-3 Aux tanks correctly feed the engine.
- HUD correctly indicates state of flaps.
- DC-3 cockpit model - Nose rivets remade.
- With the propellers feathered moving the prop control affects all the propellers.
- DC-3 cockpit model - Screws no longer clip through window frame.
- Beacon Light switch is targetable.
- Instrument texture no longer disappears when zooming out in external/showcase view.
- The user can’t hear the wind on takeoff even if all audio is turned off.
- Red yellow cargo image in liveries selection is consistent with livery in free flight.
- Blue stripe image in liveries selection is consistent with livery in free flight.
- Image for ole dusty livery in selection screen does match the livery in free flight.
- Mesh switch turns off and now the state of the switch correctly indicates it is off.
- Carb Air temperature correctly matches sim.
- Beacon light underneath fuselage can now be turned on.
- There is now a switch in cockpit to toggle on/off beacon light.
- Quickview 3 in cockpit camera is positioned correctly.
- Tooltip indicates correct state of Master Ignition switch.
- Off position on the right fuel selector now fixed.
- Cold dark switch use failing to show fuel pressure is fixed.
- Checklist for starting engine now says to wait 2 seconds.
- Scroll wheel issue with Desired Heading knob has been recoded.
- Spawning at night on runway, Cockpit lights now are on.
- Typo present in Hangar Description has been rectified.
- DC-3 Thumbnails now match the model.
- AUX Fuel gauge needles are fixed.
- Incorrect string on AUX fuel weight and balance fixed.
- Hole in cargo doors from inside cargo bay hold fixed.
- Various light leaks fixed.
- Texture improvements throughout the model(s).
Grumman G-21 Goose
- Fixed duplicate key name errors.
- Fixed cockpit camera clipping through floor.
- Fixed typo in cockpit placard.
- Fixed typo in loading screen trivia.
- Fixed engine audio from nearby Goose aircraft can be heard within cockpit.
- Added Phone EFB with Radio and XPDR functionality tied to core sim.
- Added Switches to Show/Hide EFB and Turn ON/OFF Avionics (including switch audio and decals).
- Added EFB section to the Flight Manual.
- Updated translation files.
H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose”
- Yoke interaction with VR controllers simulate a yoke instead of a flight stick.
- Weight and Balance screen no longer contains debug text.
- Flying very far past Vne now triggers a crash.
- Modern avionics added.
- Clipboard updated with new features.
- Auto-pilot added.
- Green navigation light orientation.
- ATC/ICAO params.
- Prop animation issue on one side.
- Clipboard items missing check once clicked.
- CHT, Oil, Radiator temperatures have been adjusted.
- The blurred propellers no longer cast shadows.
LS8
- Improved adverse yaw, stall and spoiler drag
Ryan NYP “Spirit of St. Louis”
- VR controller interaction influence fixed.
- Multiplayer Art issue fixed (the front was hidden on other Ryan).
Wright Flyer
- VR users can launch the aircraft properly now, the throttle is automatically set to 100% once the catapult is triggered.
- Cockpit collision added.
World
- Fixed Statue of Liberty standing in water
Airport
- Fix terraforming issue on taxiway at HECA
- [Partially Fixed] Fix taxiway bridge issue at RJTT causing aircraft crashes
- Fixed Queenstown airport not updated with World Update 12
- Fix taxiway bridge issue at SBGL causing aircraft crashes
- [Partially Fixed] Fix taxiway bridge issue at LFPG causing aircraft crashes
- Fixed wrong airport names in Australia (Coober Pedy)
- Fixed terraforming issues include the crack on runway 26 at ESSA
- Fixed the possibility to set a seaplane base as departure without a seaplane
World Update 1 – Japan
* POIs:
- Fixed Rainbow Bridge night texture.
- Nagasaki Airport RJFU:
- Fixed Control Tower LOD transition.
- Added collisions for few missing objects.
- Hachijojima Airport RJTH:
- Fixed windsock direction behavior.
- Fixed multiple objects LOD transition.
- Added collisions for few missing objects.
World Update 2 – USA
* POIs:
- Fixed Alcatraz Water Tower LOD transition.
- Fixed the satellite imagery cab be seen on the terrain below New River Gorge Bridge.
- Added marker to Lowry Avenue Bridge.
- Fixed Rainbow Bridge Niagara Falls texture.
- Fixed Haystack Rock position over terrain.
- Fixed US Grant Bridge textures and blend with the aerial imagery.
- Fixed Yosemite El Capitan terraforming clipping.
- Fixed terrain and imagery blending of the Lewis and Clark Bridge.
- Fixed Navajo Bridge terrain blending.
- Fixed collisions size of the Monument Valley.
- Fixed Rainbow Bridge Niagara Falls LODs transition.
- Added collisions to the US Air Force planes on the Airport Graveyard.
- Fixed United States National Arboretum is missing textures near the top of the pillars.
- Fixed Glen Canyon Dam ground textures clipping through the Dam.
- Added missing building to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
- Added collision to Bixby Creek Bridge.
- Fixed United States Capitol LOD transition.
- the Las Vegas Strip is now searchable by name.
- The Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls.
- Fixed Fort Knox LOD popping.
- Added collisions to Sunshine Skyway Bridge buildings.
- Fixed missing texture on Lowry Avenue Bridge.
- Atlanta Airport KTAL:
- Fixed the Ground services clipping at parking RAMP 312 CARGO, parking spot N ramp 312 and airliners gate H-4.
- Fixed flipped textures of Delta hangar and Atlanta Fire Rescue buildings.
- Added collisions to all buildings.
- Fixed Bridge on a taxiway.
- Fixed night lighting disappears at short distances.
- Friday Harbor Airport KFHR:
- Fixed few terraforming issues.
World Update 3 – UK & Ireland
* POIs:
- Fixed Goodison Park LOD popping.
- Added and improved collisions for the following POIs: 100 Bishopsgate, Wembley Stadium, Blackpool Tower, Durham Cathedral, Floors Castle, The Blair Castle, Blenheim Palace, The Royal Botanical Gardens, Goodison Park, The Eden Project.
- Fixed St James Park missing texture.
- Fixed Emirates Stadium model and textures (include misspelling billboards).
- Fixed Eilean Donan Castle Vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Canterbury Cathedral LOD pops.
- Fixed Stamford Bridge LOD 1 and LOD 2 switched.
- Fixed Blackpool Tower texture clipping.
- Fixed Kew Garden floating bespoke building.
- Removed TIN spikes around St. James Park stadium.
- Fixed Windsor Castle LOD popping.
- Fixed Pontcysyllte Aqueduct LOD popping.
- Fixed Glass Pod on British Airways I360 position popping at different distances.
- Fixed Goodison Park missing textures under Sunroofs.
- Fixed Floors Castle texture and Added missing texture.
- Fixed Scotland flag display on Edinburgh Castle.
- Fixed Archbishop’s Palace Maidstone texture and LOD popping.
- Fixed Villa Park Stadium LOD popping.
- Fixed Kew Garden alignment with the satellite imagery footprint.
- Fixed Anfield Stadium LOD popping.
- Fixed Glamis Castle Grass vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Caernarfon Castle displaying.
- Fixed Wales Millennium Centre LOD transition.
- Fixed Forth Rail Bridge’s Northside pillar missing textures.
- Fixed Forth Rail Bridge displays Cars climbing.
- Fixed Twickenham Stadium and York Minster LOD popping.
- Liverpool John Lennon Airport EGGP:
- Removed Light pole in middle of a taxiway.
- Added missing collisions to multiple buildings.
- Barra Airport EGPR:
- Fixed few taxi path issues.
World Update 4 – France &Benelux
* POIs
- Fixed the Mont Aiguille collision. It is now possible to land at its top.
- Fixed Stade Jean-Bouin collision.
- Fixed Stade Vélodrome LOD transition.
- Nice Cote Airport LFMN
- Fixed runways center lines missing in both runways.
- Fixed waypoints and nav procedures issues occurred.
- Added collision to multiple buildings.
World Update 5 – Nordics
* POIs:
- Fixed Viking Stadion / SR-Bank LOD popping.
- Fixed Road traffic driving underneath Storseisundet Bridge and Svinesund Bridge.
- Fixed Petäjävesi Old Church and Uddevalla Bridge displays double markings.
- Fixed Cars driving through Copenhagen Opera House.
- Fixed Copenhagen Opera House LOD popping.
- Added collisions to the Tjörn Bridge.
- Fixed Kullen Lighthouse vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Øresund Bridge terraforming issue.
- Fixed Brøndby Stadium spawning.
- Fixed the Bolt Arena missing collision.
- Fixed Roskilde Cathedral Cars driving up the building.
- Fixed Helsinki Ice Hall LOD popping.
- Fixed Blue Water Arena missing collision.
- Fixed Arctic Cathedral LOD popping.
- Fixed Aalborg Stadium missing collision.
- Fixed Tromsø Bridge Road traffic under and beside the Bridge.
- Fixed floating TIN artifacts/crane near Helsinki Olympic stadium.
- Fixed Hallgrímskirkja Church missing collision.
- Fixed Eleda Stadion LOD popping.
- Fixed Ullevaal Stadion LOD transition.
- Added collisions to the Ylisto Bridge beams.
- Fixed Sparebanken Sør Arena LOD popping.
- Fixed Sölvesborg Bridge vegetation clipping.
- Stockholm Arlanda Airport ESSA:
- improved LOD transition of several buildings.
- Added collisions to all buildings.
- Fixed terraforming issues include the crack on runway 26.
- Fixed big crack in runway 26.
- Svalbard Airport ENSB:
- Added missing collision to Airport hangar.
World Update 7 – Australia
* POIs:
- Fixed occasional displacement of dynamic flags on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
- Fixed vegetation clipping and placement issues at Anzac Bridge, Sydney.
- Fixed vegetation clipping at Mooney Mooney Bridge.
- Fixed flashing geometry on Tasman Bridge, Hobart.
- Adjusted photogrammetry exclusions at 568 Collins Street, Melbourne.
- Minor enhancements at several other locations, e.g., clipping vegetation or water exclusions.
- YSHL Shellharbour Airport:
- Minimized visible LOD changes of hangars and other buildings.
World Update 8 – Iberia
* POIs:
- Fixed location of Fort of Sao Joao Baptista and Covão dos Conchos.
- Fixed or adding collisions:
- Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Centre.
- Royal Palace of Madrid.
- the Museu Nacional d Art de Catalunya.
- the Estádio Algarve.
- Bom Jesus do Monte.
- Alqueva Dam.
- Aldeadavila Dam.
- the Museum of Art Architecture and Technology.
- Estadio Jose Alvalade.
- Fixed LOD popping:
- Montjuic Castle.
- Estadio Da Luz.
- Episcopal Palace of Astorga.
- Covão dos Conchos.
- San Pablo Bridge.
- Torre Mapfre.
- Basilica de La Sagrada Familia.
- Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Centre.
- Puente Nuevo.
- Fort of Sao Joao Baptista.
- Estádio Municipal de Aveiro.
- Estádio do Dragão.
- Hotel Arts.
- Observatorio Roque de los Muchachos.
- El Monumento Natural de los Mallos de Riglos.
- Palacio de Deportes de Santander.
- Catedral de Leon.
- the Alamillo Bridge.
- Fixed Montjuic Castle vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Z-fighting in front of the Museum of Art Architecture and Technology.
- Fixed Estádio Cidade de Coimbra double markers.
- Fixed Puente Nuevo Cars path.
- Fixed Guadiana International Bridge 2D footprints over the satellite imagery.
- Fixed Freixo Bridge- car traffic driving up below the Bridge.
- Fixed Third Millennium Bridge Cars traffic issue.
- Fixed Maria Pia Bridge- Cars climbing up to top of Bridge.
- Fixed Luís I Bridge displays Cars traffic path.
- Fixed Santiago Bernabeu Stadium seats texture.
- Fixed Castillo de Santa Barbara texture gaps.
- Fixed the animation of the Gondola on the Vizcaya Bridge.
- Fixed Bom Jesus do Monte trees clipping into the building.
- Fixed Alqueva Dam texture.
- Fixed Alcázar de Segovia terrain clipping.
- Fixed Pena Palace trees clipping into the POI.
- Fixed El Flysch Zumaya and El Capricho Villa POIs name spelling.
- Fixed Rande Bridge Cars path and trees clipping into the POI.
- Fixed Aldeadvila Dam vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Alcázar de Segovia trees clipping into the POI.
- Fixed El Monasterio de El Escorial Z-fighting.
- Fixed Monumento a Alfonso XII Z-fighting.
- Fixed 516 Arouca bridge vegetation clipping.
- Pico Airport LPPI:
- Fixed double windsocks.
World Update 9 – Italy & Malta
* POIs
- Fixed Duomo Di Orvieto LOD popping.
- Added missing collisions to Basilica San Francesco.
- Fixed Torri Di San Marino LOD popping.
- Fixed Diga Di Santa Giustina terrain LOD popping.
- Added missing collision to Torri Di San Marino.
- Fixed Faro Di Capo Caccia cliffs collision.
- Fixed Castle of Corigliano Calabro vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Fort Manoel collision.
- Fixed Castello Di Graines collision.
- Fixed Caserta Royal Palace collision.
- Fixed Place Moulin Dam vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Fénis Castle textures issues.
- Fixed Potola Palace bridges terrain blending.
- Fixed Fort St Angelo vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Castelsardo invisible terrain issues.
- Fixed Palazzo Pitti Z-fighting and LOD popping.
- Fixed Fort St Angelo vegetation clipping.
- Fixed National Stadium Ta’Qali collisions.
- Fixed Fénis Castle vegetation clipping and Added collisions.
- Fixed Parish Church of Mellieha missing textures.
- Fixed Mi.Co. Gate 2 vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Basilica San Francesco vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Maxxi the National Museum collisions.
- Fixed Lighthouse Of Genoa powerlines, DEM and generic buildings clipping.
- Fixed Allianz Stadium vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Viadotto Sfalassa vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Basilica Di San Pietro vegetation and TIN clipping.
- Fixed Basilica Di San Petronio TIN clipping.
- Added missing collisions to Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi.
- Fixed Castelsardo Z-fighting and vegetation clipping.
- Fixed Grotta Di Nettuno vegetation clipping.
- Marina Di Campo Airport LIRJ:
- Fixed double windsocks.
World Update 10 – USA
* POIs:
- Fixed Mount Washington Hotel terraforming.
- Fixed National Park of American Samoa’s Marker position.
- Fixed textures stretched in Royal Gorge Bridge & Park’s Rock.
- Fixed Z-fighting on the roof of the Getty Museum.
- Fixed the Smithsonian National Museum of American History display name.
- Fixed the Cabo Rojo Lighthouse marker position and windows textures issues.
- Fixed the vegetation clipping into the Independence Temple.
- Fixed the New Orleans bridges collisions.
- Fixed the US flag in Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
- Fixed the Longaberger Company headquarters and Fort Massachusetts collision.
- Fixed LODs transitions for the following POIs:
- Split Rock Lighthouse.
- Kentucky State Capitol.
- Indian River Inlet Bridge.
- World War II Memorial.
- Cabo Rojo Lighthouse.
- Yerkes Observatory.
- Montana State.
- Mount Washington.
- Theodore Roosevelt Dam.
- the Independence Temple.
- Fort Massachusetts.
- National Gallery of Art.
- Lake Tahoe Airport KTVL:
- Added collisions for few missing buildings.
- Block Island Airport KBID:
- Added collisions for few missing buildings.
- Dallas Forth Worth Airport KDFW:
- Fixed few terraforming issues in the airport.
- Runways types are now defined.
- Others:
- Fixed the Water cracks present at Seven Seas Lagoon near.
World Update 11 – Canada
* POIs:
- Fixed TIN buildings exclusion near Hatley Park National Historic Site.
- Fixed blend of Samuel de Champlain Bridge surrounding terrain.
- Fixed the double markers of the One on the World map.
- Fixed Cars floating above Pierre-Laporte Bridge.
- Fixed Cars flow over Jacques Cartier Bridge and Angus L. Macdonald Bridge.
- Fixed big Nickel POI name.
- Fixed the vegetation clipping through Burrard Street Bridge.
- Fixed Z fighting on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
- Fixed LOD popping of Cape Bonavista Lighthouse cliffs and Cape Spear Lighthouse National Historic cliffs.
- Fixed the vegetation clipping into the zipline at the Cape Enrage Lighthouse.
- Fixes Pierre-Laporte Bridge terrain alignment.
- Fixed the vegetation clipping into the A. Murray MacKay Bridge and Thousand Islands Bridge.
- Fixed Lions Gate Bridge alignment with tterrain and road.
- Fixed terrain spikes going through Jacques Cartier Bridge.
- Fixed Holes in terrain all around Citadel Hill (Fort George).
- Fixed terrain LOD popping around Parliament of Canada.
- Fixed terraforming at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
- Fixed TIN data displays next to Fisgard Lighthouse.
- Added missing building on the Canadian High Arctic Research Station.
- Added missing building for the Cambridge Bay Radar Station.
- Fixed collisions of Jacques Cartier Bridge, The Lions Gate Bridge and The Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
40th Anniversary Edition / Sim Update 11
- Meigs Field KCGX:
- Fixed Z-fighting in runway and tarmac.
- Fixed taxi to parking after landing.
- Starting in KCGX helipad while helicopter is selected is now available.
- ATIS is now available.
- Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport VHHX:
- Added collisions to multiple buildings.
- Fixed the too low glideslope.
- Fixed the ILS range for runway 13.
- ATIS is now available.
- Princess Juliana Airport TNCM:
- Added collisions to few missing buildings.
- Fixed the LOD transitions.
- First Flight Airport KFFA:
- Fixed Z fighting on pathway.
- Helipads/Heliports:
- Lingotto Building LIBH:
- Fixed the too High collision preventing smooth landing.
- Fixed Z- fighting on the roof of the building.
- NYC Heliport KJRB – Added collisions for few missing items.
- Tokyo Heliport – Added collisions for few buildings.
- US Bank Tower Helipad:
- marker is now centered over the helipad.
- Fixed LOD transition.
- Heliponto Mirante Dona Marta SMDH:
- Heliport collisions has been fixed.
- Fixed LOD transition.
- Menara Telekom Tower Helipad:
- marker is now centered over the helipad.
- Fixed Z-fighting on Water near the tower.
- Bitexco Financial Tower – Fixed LOD transition.
- London Heliport EGLW – Removed building appeared inside the Airport perimeter while photogrammetry is off.
- Needles Lighthouse – Lighthouse Light is now spinning.
- Issy-Les-Moulineaux Heliport:
- marker is now centered over the helipad.
- Lingotto Building LIBH:
- Glider Airports:
- Itakura Gliderport RJT1 – Fixed ground and runway textures.
Game of the Year Edition
- Voloport:
- All Voloports are now possible to use as helipads.
- Issy-Les-Moulineaux Heliport- Voloport is now available as helipad.
- La Defense Voloport is is now available as helipad.
- Fixed LOD transition for all Voloports.
- Fixed Le Bourget Voloport name spelling.
- Lugano Airport LSZA:
- Collision has been Added to multiple objects.
- Fixed floating lights around the airport.
- Fixed Z-fighting on airports’ tennis courts.
Top Gun Maverick
- Fixed the clipping through the rocks at Seneca Rocks Peak.
- Fixed Haines Knob collision is size.
- Fixed collisions in Germany Valley Quarry.
- Fixed French Gulf Marina has LOD transition.
- Fixed LOD popping in Riffle Lake Dam.
2023.03.21 15:02 Advanced-Adagio-945 Taiwan work culture
I have recently have an argument with my manager. Which led me to throw in the towel and hand in my resignation.
February 14 we had a chef from Japan who flew in to cook up some new recipes and say hello to the guests. Before he left to go back to his hotel room he asked me to open a bottle of champagne to have a toast with his kitchen team.
Around midnight I get news the my FNB manager and The Executive chef of the hotel I work in is pissed. Because no one gave them a call. and they wanted to join in on the celebrations
HR spoke to me a few days later and told me that I'm at fault for not calling them. And asked me to go up to his office and give an apology. I refused instead I gave my resignation.
Taiwan work culture in this part is so sad.they care so much about face and being invited in small social events.
The same Fnb manager who is 47 years old gets furious whenever he saw a bunch of young female staff (20-24 years old) having bubble tea together at the back. He said it is customary to at least ask the manager if he wants to drink something.
Imagine a near 50 year old man, having bubble milk tea with female staff at that age...
submitted by Advanced-Adagio-945 to taiwan [link] [comments]
February 14 we had a chef from Japan who flew in to cook up some new recipes and say hello to the guests. Before he left to go back to his hotel room he asked me to open a bottle of champagne to have a toast with his kitchen team.
Around midnight I get news the my FNB manager and The Executive chef of the hotel I work in is pissed. Because no one gave them a call. and they wanted to join in on the celebrations
HR spoke to me a few days later and told me that I'm at fault for not calling them. And asked me to go up to his office and give an apology. I refused instead I gave my resignation.
Taiwan work culture in this part is so sad.they care so much about face and being invited in small social events.
The same Fnb manager who is 47 years old gets furious whenever he saw a bunch of young female staff (20-24 years old) having bubble tea together at the back. He said it is customary to at least ask the manager if he wants to drink something.
Imagine a near 50 year old man, having bubble milk tea with female staff at that age...
2023.03.21 14:58 Konstance-Kay [God of Discovery] Arc 2, Chap 7 - Civil unrest, part 1
[Arc 1 first chapter] [Previous chapter]
-------------------------
After returning home for the first time in centuries, D'Argen is sent off to explore the truth behind a rumour that demons have returned. Fortunately, no demons were found, but something even more dangerous was. D'Argen has confirmed that there is something strange happening with the magic in Trace. Now, he just has to convince the others and figure out what it really is. Unfortunately, returning to the gods' main city with the exiled god Thar in tow is proving to be too distracting.
When the prospect of new lands in the coldest reaches of Trace calls for him, he learns just how dangerous this new magic can be. Despite Thar's powers over the cold, going where no mortal or god has ever been before is dangerous. Even more so when that strange magic influences both him and his companions. But despite Thar's growing powers and Lilian's diminishing interests, D'Argen pushes forward into the unknown and into a relationship that could threaten the future of the gods as they exist.
-------------------------
D’Argen did not drink nearly enough to feel the effects of the alcohol so he only nudged the plate in front of him away instead of throwing it. It was not the staff’s fault. Since D’Argen had returned to the city, he had not gone anywhere near the kitchens and this was the first time the serving or kitchen staff probably saw him. So it was not the mortal’s fault that D’Argen wanted to gag just at the sight of the fried chicken in front of him.
D’Argen was one of a few Never Born that did not need to consume any food or drink for his body to function. He was, however, the only one dramatic enough to outright refuse to put anything in his mouth that was once alive. Honey. He liked honey, though it was usually too sweet for more than a single spoonful, and mead.
When the second staff member passed behind him holding a large silver pitcher, D’Argen placed a hand on top of his glass to prevent them from pouring the wine. The woman moved on without a word and topped off Cana’s glass right beside him.
Cana, like D’Argen, did not need to consume food or drink. She, however, enjoyed it.
D’Argen was a little peeved to note that the plate in front of her was piled with intricately cut and perfectly seasoned vegetables rather than the meat on all other plates.
It was not the staff’s fault that Cana’s dislike for meat was better known than D’Argen’s dislike of all food in general. Acela probably remembered Cana’s tastes but not D’Argen’s. When D’Argen chanced a look at the queen, he caught her eyes for barely a moment before she broke contact first. And he caught something else. It was strange. There was something on her face, her expression, that he did not recognize at all. He was either more intoxicated than he thought, or she had never once made that face before him.
Once all the plates were set and both the white and red wine had gone along the long table, D’Argen flagged one of the staff to ask for mead.
He did not have nearly enough alcohol in him to survive this dinner without snapping. Not when Lilian was sitting diagonally from him, their jacket covering only one arm and the other bare to the room. The skin was smooth and unblemished as Lilian wrapped that arm around Abbot with a wide grin and whispered something into his ear. The artist stifled a laugh. D’Argen held back a grimace.
The entire time they had been drinking earlier, D’Argen felt a tension in his body that he could not explain. Not when Lilian was joking and laughing with both Abbot and Yaling as if nothing had happened. Not when he remembered seeing Acela leave their rooms.
D’Argen downed the entire glass of mead as soon as it was poured and the man, who had barely taken a step back, topped it up. He hesitated, waiting, but D’Argen stopped himself from downing the second glass. It would not do to lose sense of himself completely.
Then one set of the dining hall doors opened and no matter how little or how much he had drank, nothing would have been able to keep his mouth from dropping open in shock.
Olov, God of Passage, apologized for being late before he had even stepped fully into the large dining hall. The silence from his entrance was awkward not because he was late but because of his appearance. He ignored it as he passed one of the staff and then pointed to an empty seat at the long table.
D’Argen snapped his mouth closed when the two met eyes and chanced a quick look around the table. He was glad to note he was not the only one surprised.
Olov’s long silvery hair, a shimmering cascade of straight lines, was almost completely gone. The man looked like he had taken a dull spoon to his scalp and had cut most of it off and shaved the rest. It left half of his head completely bare and the rest were strands so short they barely reached his chin.
D’Argen had never seen one of them with such short hair.
There were others that shaved parts of their head, but the length always remained. It was an unspoken rule: Never Born kept their hair long. It was a symbol of who they were and their status.
Acela had only once made a direct comment to that when she was addressing a visiting delegation of mortals whose staff were completely bald. The mortal king had said it was a way to easily recognize their slaves. Acela could not hide her displeasure at the time. The day the delegation left, she signed a trading agreement with one of the villages near the coast and had a steady supply of hair oils and accessories for all of Evadia.
Olov took a seat further down the table, as far as possible from Acela. There were almost two dozen of them sitting in the giant dining hall on the long table. There were enough bodies between him and Acela’s glare for the man to ignore it. He thanked the staff once they put a plate in front of him and he chose white wine.
Acela cleared her throat and all eyes fell on her at the head of the table. “Your delay?” she asked, obviously wanting to reprimand him otherwise, visible by the way her eyes could not stay focused on a single point on his face.
“That was my fault,” Cana spoke up from right beside D’Argen. “I had asked Olov to do something for me and that must have delayed him in getting dressed.”
Acele was glaring at Cana now and D’Argen leaned back in his seat to avoid being in her direct sight. Her eyes jumped to him for just a moment, squinted back into that unreadable expression, then turned to Olov.
“I am glad you are here,” she said. “I did not know you had even arrived.”
D’Argen downed half his glass to steady his nerves.
“I just arrived a few hours prior. We have been talking with Cana about changes to the summer harvest for the life crops when she told me about the dinner. I know I am without an invitation—”
“Invitations are only a formality,” Acela interrupted with a wave of her hand but her eyes turned back to Cana. “Now that you mentioned it though, that is one topic I wished for us to discuss. We heard that there was unrest in your region?” Somehow, she was able to make the statement sound like a question.
Zetha, sitting on her right at the head of the table, hid his expression behind a glass as he drank. D’Argen was not sure if he was trying to hide discomfort or a grin. He did, however, know that the glass was a good excuse and sitting beside Cana, he needed the excuse. He drank from his glass to hide his grimace and leaned back, trying to become one with the soft backing of his chair. A glance in front of him revealed Lilian trying to hide a grin behind their hand. He noticed the pale, unmarked skin of their arm and quickly looked away.
Twenty of them were sitting there and though D’Argen had seen most of them over the last few weeks, there was one familiar face that was missing.
Thar was not invited to the dinner. And even if the invitations were only a formality, he had either not known about it at all or had refused to come. D’Argen wished he followed the man’s example and avoided this event altogether. He was not needed here.
“—a misunderstanding. It has been cleared.”
D’Argen tuned into Cana’s words only to catch the end as she cut up one of the browned stems of broccoli on her plate and then took the bite. She was slow and deliberate about it and the crunch was loud in the silent hall. D’Argen tried to search his subconscious for what she said even though he had not been paying attention. A scrape distracted him and he looked down the table. Acela was using her knife and fork with force to cut chunks of moist meat off the bone. D’Argen looked away when he felt the alcohol in his stomach churn and try to rise at the small ooze of blood and juices on her plate.
The silence stretched on as the queen chewed her bite. Finally, she swallowed and said, “Please, explain more about this misunderstanding.”
“The people did not see the benefit of harvesting the Rainbow Forest in winter, especially with the spring reaping still scheduled as usual. I reached out to Kenin, he intervened, and all was resolved.” Cana’s answers were prompt as if she did not want to discuss the topic at all.
“And Olov?”
“As one of the other two sentries of life crops in Trace, I thought it would be beneficial to learn from him how he deals with it.”
“But the situation is quite different,” Olov added in, looking up from his plate to face Acela. “The citizens of Tormdale are rarely involved and my city only serves as a border. I suggested she ask Darania for advice since the Rainbow Forest is more alike to the Reefs she watches over.”
“Then we both thought maybe Kiri would be a good option to ask as well, since he is the one that takes care of organizing the spring and autumn reapings of the Rainbow Fields.”
Acela hummed and made a show of looking down both sides of the long table. Neither Darania nor Kiri was there. She returned to looking at Olov.
“I was drafting a letter to Darania while the staff looked for something appropriate for me to wear.”
“A letter?” Someone at the table asked as if writing it down on paper and sending it off was so archaic that it deserved disbelief.
“I was unaware that D’Argen was back,” Olov replied, looking right at the runner rather than the person who had asked. “It is good to see you.”
“And you,” D’Argen replied out of habit and raised his glass in a greeting toast. Olov returned the gesture and D’Argen finished off the rest of his drink. He looked down the table over the rim of his glass and noticed that Acela was now glaring at him.
“It is good to have D’Argen back. We will definitely be needing his help in the coming months,” Zetha finally joined the conversation and raised his own glass towards D’Argen. The runner already finished his drink but mirrored the motion and faked a sip. “And you too, Olov. It has been a while since you have been back. After dinner, come to my study. We have new spells for all aspects of the mahee, focused on long-distance communication.”
“Of course, my king,” Olov replied and raised his chin high in the air.
D’Argen motioned to the mortal staff member that had poured him the mead and the man quickly refilled his glass.
submitted by Konstance-Kay to redditserials [link] [comments]
-------------------------
After returning home for the first time in centuries, D'Argen is sent off to explore the truth behind a rumour that demons have returned. Fortunately, no demons were found, but something even more dangerous was. D'Argen has confirmed that there is something strange happening with the magic in Trace. Now, he just has to convince the others and figure out what it really is. Unfortunately, returning to the gods' main city with the exiled god Thar in tow is proving to be too distracting.
When the prospect of new lands in the coldest reaches of Trace calls for him, he learns just how dangerous this new magic can be. Despite Thar's powers over the cold, going where no mortal or god has ever been before is dangerous. Even more so when that strange magic influences both him and his companions. But despite Thar's growing powers and Lilian's diminishing interests, D'Argen pushes forward into the unknown and into a relationship that could threaten the future of the gods as they exist.
-------------------------
D’Argen did not drink nearly enough to feel the effects of the alcohol so he only nudged the plate in front of him away instead of throwing it. It was not the staff’s fault. Since D’Argen had returned to the city, he had not gone anywhere near the kitchens and this was the first time the serving or kitchen staff probably saw him. So it was not the mortal’s fault that D’Argen wanted to gag just at the sight of the fried chicken in front of him.
D’Argen was one of a few Never Born that did not need to consume any food or drink for his body to function. He was, however, the only one dramatic enough to outright refuse to put anything in his mouth that was once alive. Honey. He liked honey, though it was usually too sweet for more than a single spoonful, and mead.
When the second staff member passed behind him holding a large silver pitcher, D’Argen placed a hand on top of his glass to prevent them from pouring the wine. The woman moved on without a word and topped off Cana’s glass right beside him.
Cana, like D’Argen, did not need to consume food or drink. She, however, enjoyed it.
D’Argen was a little peeved to note that the plate in front of her was piled with intricately cut and perfectly seasoned vegetables rather than the meat on all other plates.
It was not the staff’s fault that Cana’s dislike for meat was better known than D’Argen’s dislike of all food in general. Acela probably remembered Cana’s tastes but not D’Argen’s. When D’Argen chanced a look at the queen, he caught her eyes for barely a moment before she broke contact first. And he caught something else. It was strange. There was something on her face, her expression, that he did not recognize at all. He was either more intoxicated than he thought, or she had never once made that face before him.
Once all the plates were set and both the white and red wine had gone along the long table, D’Argen flagged one of the staff to ask for mead.
He did not have nearly enough alcohol in him to survive this dinner without snapping. Not when Lilian was sitting diagonally from him, their jacket covering only one arm and the other bare to the room. The skin was smooth and unblemished as Lilian wrapped that arm around Abbot with a wide grin and whispered something into his ear. The artist stifled a laugh. D’Argen held back a grimace.
The entire time they had been drinking earlier, D’Argen felt a tension in his body that he could not explain. Not when Lilian was joking and laughing with both Abbot and Yaling as if nothing had happened. Not when he remembered seeing Acela leave their rooms.
D’Argen downed the entire glass of mead as soon as it was poured and the man, who had barely taken a step back, topped it up. He hesitated, waiting, but D’Argen stopped himself from downing the second glass. It would not do to lose sense of himself completely.
Then one set of the dining hall doors opened and no matter how little or how much he had drank, nothing would have been able to keep his mouth from dropping open in shock.
Olov, God of Passage, apologized for being late before he had even stepped fully into the large dining hall. The silence from his entrance was awkward not because he was late but because of his appearance. He ignored it as he passed one of the staff and then pointed to an empty seat at the long table.
D’Argen snapped his mouth closed when the two met eyes and chanced a quick look around the table. He was glad to note he was not the only one surprised.
Olov’s long silvery hair, a shimmering cascade of straight lines, was almost completely gone. The man looked like he had taken a dull spoon to his scalp and had cut most of it off and shaved the rest. It left half of his head completely bare and the rest were strands so short they barely reached his chin.
D’Argen had never seen one of them with such short hair.
There were others that shaved parts of their head, but the length always remained. It was an unspoken rule: Never Born kept their hair long. It was a symbol of who they were and their status.
Acela had only once made a direct comment to that when she was addressing a visiting delegation of mortals whose staff were completely bald. The mortal king had said it was a way to easily recognize their slaves. Acela could not hide her displeasure at the time. The day the delegation left, she signed a trading agreement with one of the villages near the coast and had a steady supply of hair oils and accessories for all of Evadia.
Olov took a seat further down the table, as far as possible from Acela. There were almost two dozen of them sitting in the giant dining hall on the long table. There were enough bodies between him and Acela’s glare for the man to ignore it. He thanked the staff once they put a plate in front of him and he chose white wine.
Acela cleared her throat and all eyes fell on her at the head of the table. “Your delay?” she asked, obviously wanting to reprimand him otherwise, visible by the way her eyes could not stay focused on a single point on his face.
“That was my fault,” Cana spoke up from right beside D’Argen. “I had asked Olov to do something for me and that must have delayed him in getting dressed.”
Acele was glaring at Cana now and D’Argen leaned back in his seat to avoid being in her direct sight. Her eyes jumped to him for just a moment, squinted back into that unreadable expression, then turned to Olov.
“I am glad you are here,” she said. “I did not know you had even arrived.”
D’Argen downed half his glass to steady his nerves.
“I just arrived a few hours prior. We have been talking with Cana about changes to the summer harvest for the life crops when she told me about the dinner. I know I am without an invitation—”
“Invitations are only a formality,” Acela interrupted with a wave of her hand but her eyes turned back to Cana. “Now that you mentioned it though, that is one topic I wished for us to discuss. We heard that there was unrest in your region?” Somehow, she was able to make the statement sound like a question.
Zetha, sitting on her right at the head of the table, hid his expression behind a glass as he drank. D’Argen was not sure if he was trying to hide discomfort or a grin. He did, however, know that the glass was a good excuse and sitting beside Cana, he needed the excuse. He drank from his glass to hide his grimace and leaned back, trying to become one with the soft backing of his chair. A glance in front of him revealed Lilian trying to hide a grin behind their hand. He noticed the pale, unmarked skin of their arm and quickly looked away.
Twenty of them were sitting there and though D’Argen had seen most of them over the last few weeks, there was one familiar face that was missing.
Thar was not invited to the dinner. And even if the invitations were only a formality, he had either not known about it at all or had refused to come. D’Argen wished he followed the man’s example and avoided this event altogether. He was not needed here.
“—a misunderstanding. It has been cleared.”
D’Argen tuned into Cana’s words only to catch the end as she cut up one of the browned stems of broccoli on her plate and then took the bite. She was slow and deliberate about it and the crunch was loud in the silent hall. D’Argen tried to search his subconscious for what she said even though he had not been paying attention. A scrape distracted him and he looked down the table. Acela was using her knife and fork with force to cut chunks of moist meat off the bone. D’Argen looked away when he felt the alcohol in his stomach churn and try to rise at the small ooze of blood and juices on her plate.
The silence stretched on as the queen chewed her bite. Finally, she swallowed and said, “Please, explain more about this misunderstanding.”
“The people did not see the benefit of harvesting the Rainbow Forest in winter, especially with the spring reaping still scheduled as usual. I reached out to Kenin, he intervened, and all was resolved.” Cana’s answers were prompt as if she did not want to discuss the topic at all.
“And Olov?”
“As one of the other two sentries of life crops in Trace, I thought it would be beneficial to learn from him how he deals with it.”
“But the situation is quite different,” Olov added in, looking up from his plate to face Acela. “The citizens of Tormdale are rarely involved and my city only serves as a border. I suggested she ask Darania for advice since the Rainbow Forest is more alike to the Reefs she watches over.”
“Then we both thought maybe Kiri would be a good option to ask as well, since he is the one that takes care of organizing the spring and autumn reapings of the Rainbow Fields.”
Acela hummed and made a show of looking down both sides of the long table. Neither Darania nor Kiri was there. She returned to looking at Olov.
“I was drafting a letter to Darania while the staff looked for something appropriate for me to wear.”
“A letter?” Someone at the table asked as if writing it down on paper and sending it off was so archaic that it deserved disbelief.
“I was unaware that D’Argen was back,” Olov replied, looking right at the runner rather than the person who had asked. “It is good to see you.”
“And you,” D’Argen replied out of habit and raised his glass in a greeting toast. Olov returned the gesture and D’Argen finished off the rest of his drink. He looked down the table over the rim of his glass and noticed that Acela was now glaring at him.
“It is good to have D’Argen back. We will definitely be needing his help in the coming months,” Zetha finally joined the conversation and raised his own glass towards D’Argen. The runner already finished his drink but mirrored the motion and faked a sip. “And you too, Olov. It has been a while since you have been back. After dinner, come to my study. We have new spells for all aspects of the mahee, focused on long-distance communication.”
“Of course, my king,” Olov replied and raised his chin high in the air.
D’Argen motioned to the mortal staff member that had poured him the mead and the man quickly refilled his glass.