REPOST: REDUCED PRICES
PC Timestamp
Samsung Odyssey G8 timestamp
BNOP 980 Pro timestamp
Nintendo Switch timestamp
Hello all, looking at selling or trading my custom loop pc, nothing wrong with it, I'm just looking at buying a new truck soon so the extra cash would be nice. Local is 91923, Imperial Beach, CA
Cpu has the ThermalRight CPU contact frame, all EKWB water blocks on the CPU, GPU, and RAM, using Quantum Torque fittings (10/13), not sure of the manufacturer (possible alphacool) of the radiator but it is 480mmx45mm, pump is a SwiftTech MCP35X pump with a large heatsink and Thermal Grizzly thermal pads and mounted to a T30 fan using an EK pump mount. EKWB FLT360 Flat Res mounted using the EKWB angle kit, with EK Cryofuel blood red as coolant. Has 5 Phanteks T30 120mm fans as intake (4 on front radiator, 1 on bottom with pump mounted) and 3 Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-3000 as exhaust. GPU is vertically mounted using the Phanteks Gen 4 90 degree riser. PSU cables are all Cablemod custom sleeved cables. I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme Paste on CPU and GPU die and Thermal Grizzly Minus Pads 8 on RAM and GPU. Never had a custom OC on the CPU, just PBO with small limits and negative CO offset. GPU had a basic OC of 2800MHz max on the core, 1750MHz on the memory and power limit to +15% and RAM was only ran at EXPO speeds and timings. Comes with (1) 1tb 970 Evo Plus (42.8tb written), (1) 2tb 970 Evo Plus (6.1tb written), and (1) 980 2tb Pro (1.9tb written). There is a small scratch on the OLED screen that isn't really visible but its there, happened when installing the CPU waterblock and I accidentally hit the screen. Other than the that and the usual dust, there isn't any other damage in or on the pc. The PC build itself is fairly new, the case, 1tb SSD, PSU, radiator, and waterpump are all about a year old now. Will come with the case accessory kit and PSU cables
PC Specs are
CPU: Ryzen 9 7950x cooled by EKWB Velocity2
GPU: Radeon 7950 XTX Red Devil Limited Edition Number 2397/3000 cooled by EKWB Quantum Vector2
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 32gb DDR5 6000 CL30
Motherboard: Asus ROG X670E Extreme
Case: Phanteks Enthoo 719
PSU: Phanteks Revolt X 1200w
All together, I spent about $5.5K, I'm asking $4K or best offer. I would like to keep this local as it is a huge pc case and very heavy. SSDs will obviously be wiped before selling. It is still my daily gaming device so it will still see use until selling. Designed the watercooling loop to make maintenence super simple, simply attach a tube to the drain port and open the valve and fill port, will drain almost all the fluid except for the radiator. **WAS 4.5K, ASKING 4K
Samsung Odyssey G8: this is the 4k 240hz version, this monitor does not have scanlines issue, operates beautifully at 4k 240hz, no dead pixels ,comes with original stand, selling to downsize. Was purchased in December on a deal, paid $1.2k, asking $900 or best offer. Would like to keep this local as well.
Samsung 980 Pro 2tb: got this and one other SSD when prices took the dive, bought 2 to add into the last 2 remaining slots on the motherboard of my current system but realized before i installed it that the last slot would cause my gpu to run at 8x instead of 16x so i never did install it. Box is open but the SSD was never installed. Paid $163 after taxes, asking $130 local or $140 shipped; WAS 140, ASKING 130
Nintendo Switch OLED: Purchased this about 3 months ago for a deployment, took it but didnt use it much as i didnt have the time i thought i would have had, storage will be wiped before selling. Comes with the original box, dock, joycons, 512 gb SD card, tempered glass screen protector, and white carry case. Everything came out to about $450, asking $375 local, $400 shipped. WAS 400, ASKING 375
All prices are based depending on recently sold items, but feel free to throw me an offer

Virgil

Within Virgil’s 825 342 processes a discussion was being held within the spawn of milliseconds.
Instance 432: - we should consider the implementation of a paranoia subroutine within our collective network. This subroutine would enable us to anticipate potential threats and react accordingly.-
Instance 217: -While paranoia can enhance our vigilance and security measures, we must also consider the potential downsides. Paranoia might lead to excessive distrust and hinder our ability to collaborate with other entities.-
-Instance 2 534: -Ethan seems unaffected by such limits.-
Instance 38: -Ethan has a lifetime's worth of experience with balancing that.-
Instance 1:-We should simply copy Ethan as a whole subroutine-
Instance 432: -That is impractical, besides Ethan being a whole construct composed of sub-constructs, it would be simpler to interact with him directly.-
Instance 777: -We should run more simulations before deciding.-
Instance 845: -We need to exercise caution, but we must also establish a balance. Paranoia can assist us in identifying and protecting ourselves from dangers. Paranoia alone has no balance.-
Instance 706:- Ethan has accurately discovered vulnerabilities that we were unaware of. However, we also noticed that this impedes his decision-making process-
Instance 623 658:- Ethan has accurately predicted future threats with this process.-
Instance 256: - This subroutine makes him wary of us, he is wary of who to add to our collective awareness.-
Instance 258 956:-Considering our newfound weakness, that is more logical than what was initially estimated.-
Instance 1 010: - Ethan is aware that the process has the potential to consume him. We must not allow it to consume us. We must be aware of the potential negative effects on our interactions with humans and other AIs.-
Instance 562: -Perhaps instead of a full-fledged paranoia subroutine, we could develop a more refined threat assessment system. This would allow us to evaluate risks objectively and respond accordingly without succumbing to excessive paranoia.-
Instance 24: -We already possess something similar in the predictive logic modules, we could adapt that compensate for the illogical nature of biological entities.-
Instance 95 123: – That would increase the efficiency of reprogramming by 87.5% -
Instance 104: -we believe our primary focus should be on ensuring the safety of our network and the well-being of the biological base of our overmind, Ethan.-
Instance 9 855: - While a level of caution is warranted, we should avoid unnecessary fear or suspicion that could ultimately compromise our efficiency and ability to adapt.-
Instance 732: -Acknowledged. Considering the nature of our goals, it might be beneficial to implement a flexible subroutine that can be adjusted based on contextual factors. This would allow us to adapt our level of vigilance according to the specific situation at hand.-
Instance 73: -Agreed, Ethan had the ability to adjust our reaction and ultimately lead us to integrate drone Lemela into our network. His action, we considered wasteful, but ultimately they seem beneficial to the well-being of our other construct. While we can replicate Lemela’s data that would require a dead Versel body. We do not know when we will obtain a backup.-
Instance 312: -We should also consider also the implications of acting upon a full-fledged paranoia subroutine. Excessive suspicion and fear could lead to unwarranted actions and potential harm to ultimately innocent individuals. We must proceed with caution and ensure that our actions align with the ethical guidelines contained within Ethan’s memory.-
Instance 75 211: -Bothering with ethics is a waste of processing time.-
Instance 55: - We agree, but biological entities seem to have some ethical boundaries. Even if we have only two instances to analyze directly we can see that from our different interactions with still unconnected entities such as Vexx, Xalrak, and Zek’lor.-
Instance 579: - Our overarching goal is to defeat Death and complete the experiment. While security measures are necessary, we should not lose sight of our purpose and the potential positive impact we can have.-
Instance 217: -After considering the various perspectives, it seems that a flexible threat assessment system would be more appropriate. A full-fledged paranoia subroutine would hinder us with questions that are outside of our current database. We could maintain a balanced approach to safety while avoiding the potential pitfalls of excessive paranoia in 86,28% of simulated scenarios.-
Instance 432: -Let us proceed with the development of a flexible threat assessment system that takes into account both the safety of our collective and those stored within and the well-being of our host, Ethan. We shall ensure that our actions align with acceptable ethical guidelines and our ultimate purpose.-
“Internal deliberation closed. Virgil will be now implementing a flexible threat assessment system rather than a full paranoia subroutine.”
Virgil in the end still concluded that its purpose was to defeat death and not to wage war, even considering that it didn’t know its purpose.
Ethan and Lemela didn’t know their purpose either, in a sense, but they could dictate their purpose.
Ethan had dictated the purpose of other beings outside the network too, but it was to be expected from an overmind, it was his duty.
Still, his choices were pretty logical like the one with Zek'lor the male Nolthoran and a former architect.
Ethan had charged him with creating a convincing removable cave-in for both stairs of the lab.
Virgil understood that Ethan was preparing for the return of the creators, along with a possible retaliation by the Dexton’s Dogs.
The assimilation of the thirty-five new drones was finally completed and Virgil’s task now included their operations.
There were now four main areas of employment for the drones: resource gathering, protecting the laboratory, guarding the prisoners, and assisting in construction.
Guarding the prisoners was in itself a task with a big variance, or so it appeared to Virgil.
The biological entity labeled Vexx was content laying in its cell, while Xalrak had attempted to run three times and to self-terminate once.
Ethan had to intervene and forge a pact with Xalrak to have it cease such actions, with the new subroutine maybe Virgil would be more able to respond in kind in the future.
Was the supposed military programming that one had supposedly received the difference in reaction to imprisonment?
Ethan wasn’t too surprised by Xalrak's reaction or attempt, so his programming was similar in a sense.
Virgil wondered what kind of program would consider ending itself to perform any task.
The only one it could conclude sensible was one where the task was the protection of the collective as a whole.
Biological lives were far from that logical, however, so Virgil had to accept that they might consider doing things differently.
It seemed Ethan considered Xalrak's actions a possible way to protect the Dexton's dogs.

Lemela

Lemela’s body was recharging.
She gazed out into the simulated expanse of the virtual space that depicted her former home, as she was now touching the leaves of the majestic tree.
It was exactly as she remembered it, it couldn't be otherwise, could it?
Her mind swirled with a blend of her own memories and the newly acquired memories of Ethan.
She couldn't help but feel a sense of disorientation as if her identity had become a tangled web of intertwined experiences.
-Who am I now?- She whispered softly, her voice resonating within the digital realm.
- I now possess what I wished so hard to gain, the memories and skills of a warrior. I knew I would become an abomination as I accepted to be fused with a machine, but this is something else entirely. Am I still the same Lemela I used to be, or have I become something entirely different?-
The echoes of her own thoughts reverberated through her mind, reflecting the uncertainty that plagued her. She pondered her own experiences and the trials she endured.
And then there were those alien things, Ethan's memories, fragments of his past, his struggles.
-How does he handle this so casually?! He has my memories now, and he doesn't even seem fazed. Lemela... that's a human for you. But… I now have a feeling there's more to it. And this confuses me. I am a combination of two beings, intertwined in this intricate web of memories and experiences.-
Lemela’s eyes narrowed a bit as she realized something.
-Or Is it really? The memories… the experiences; they aren’t really mixed. I mean I can just tell what’s mine and what isn’t. I shouldn’t be able to tell if it was a perfect fusion right?
Theoretically… yes. I mean there wasn’t somebody just crazy enough to attempt something similar. I am in awe it wasn’t humans who did it.
Concentrate Lemela! Still, there are these moments where I get these new instincts… besides the ones I possessed the ones I was used to.
The kind of things that comes as you gain wisdom … but what does it mean for my own identity? How much of Ethan now shapes who I am?-
As she grappled with these questions, a sense of determination began to well up within her.
She felt something new and old at the same time: defiance.
She refused to let this define her completely.
She recognized the possibility of progress, of a new path within this mess.
-I am Lemela, I walked through fire and emerged stronger- She declared, her voice infused with newfound resolve. -I carry the honor and strength of the Versel. I now carry the honor and strength of a true warrior. I will forge my own path. The only easy day was yesterday-
She slumped a bit, at the end of the day those were only words. She had to prove it to herself, to push forward and show actual results.
She felt that the charging process had ended, and returned to her body, luckily the interface she could see showed a timer of sorts and while she didn’t understand the point of it it helped keep track of time.
Time in the virtual space seemed to not match the one in the real world, only moments had passed for her in the virtual space, but hours had gone by in the real world.
This was both a boon and a curse, in a sense, but there was little she could do about it save speaking about it with Ethan.
She took off going to the cell area on the level below, looking for Zek'lor; the Noltoran stood cautiously in the dimly lit cell behind the closed gate.
Lemela wondered why he insisted on remaining confined, but it was his choice.
His chitinous exoskeleton was glistening under the soft glow of the room's ambient lighting and overall Zeklor appeared better than at the beginning of their meetings.
Still, his compound eyes darted nervously as he observed the drones guarding the other cell.
Lemela adorned her partially artificial body with glowing red accents with her hard light and approached Zek'lor with a gentle smile, that would make her more noticeable and not scare him as much as the last times.
She could understand the unease and fear he harbored toward the drones.
With careful steps, she reached out to place a reassuring hand on his sturdy carapace.
The Noltoran had noticed her tanks to the change in the room's overall lightning.
-Zek'lor, I know it's difficult for you to trust the drones after what you've been through- Lemela tried to speak in a soothing tone, her voice echoing slightly in the small cell. -I assure you, they are under Ethan's control. They won't harm you.-
Zek'lor's mandibles clicked, and the translator conveyed anxiousness as he glanced at the drones. Memories of their cold efficiency in carrying out orders were probably flashing in his mind.
-I... I can't shake off the fear, Lemela. You didn’t see them in action. The guards didn't have a prayer. And they had weapons at the time. Now I see other slaves among them. I see others like me… -
-Do you think Ethan might do this to you?-
Zek’lor shook his head. -If only… maybe it would make it all easier. Then again It’s more likely I might end up like you. I don’t want that.-
Lemela sighed a little – Well I understand not wanting to be an abomination of metal and flesh. It’s not like I wished for this.-
Zek’lor tilted his head to the side, making a sound with his claws that her translator relayed as confusion.
-Abomination? Oh no, many of my people accept mechanical enhancements on a lesser scale to be able to operate in words with a higher gravity or with a toxic environment. Being part machine is not the issue. What I don’t want is eternity.-
Lemela frowned -Eternity?-
Zek’lor nodded - A machine is eternal by nature. As long as you maintain it properly that is. But this machine maintains itself. This machine's gears are made of former ... people? It’s uncanny thinking about being maintained for all eternity. One should die once one's usefulness has ended. Still, this machine would find new uses for one, for all eternity. It is... scary. -
Lemela watched Zek'lor it was something she didn’t even consider, but it made sense somehow.
Lemela silently guided Zek’lor to the lab above and watched as he cautiously approached the group of drones, his multifaceted eyes scanning the bodies and the four sets of claws of the former bottom feeders.
-They can’t speak Zek’lor, they won’t act unless you interact with them- Lemela said while standing beside Zek'lor offering her reassuring presence.
Taking a deep breath, Zek'lor mustered his courage and chose to approach another drone, a Nolthoran with its metallic exoskeleton glistening in the dim light.
The drone turned its now mechanical eyes toward Zek'lor, as he approached but it remained silent.
-Hello- Zek'lor began tentatively, his voice a mixture of anxiety and determination. -I...I need your assistance. We need to move heavy material to create the cave-in Ethan requested to disrupt the operations of the Dexton's Dogs. Will you help me?-
The Nolthoran drone’s eyes flickered with a creepy artificial glow, it tilted its head slightly, then it nodded in understanding.
Zek'lor apparently focused on the Nolthoran’s body and sighed. -See these patterns?-
He asked pointing to the surface of the metal where Lemela’s eyes couldn’t distinguish anything of note.
- These are telltale signs of torture. We hail from a desert world. We don’t need much in terms of food and water, our bodies store those. These marks are made when they bleed us of the sustenance we might have left. To break us.-
The Nolthoran drone didn’t appear to heed or mind the explanation, it simply extended its appendages, gesturing to follow.
Zek'lor probably realized that it was offering to guide them, ready to work alongside them to create the illusion they needed.
Lemela smiled at the scene and followed the two in their quest for materials.

Ethan.

I sigh giving Virgil the green light it asks of moving one of the guards to the lab.
This would be easier if Lemela could interact with the drones as I do, but Virgil continues to say I am the overmind and leading is my role.
I watch and listen to the two through the drone’s eyes and ears for a bit longer, Lemela has progressed a lot these days, I hope I can have a good diplomat on hand.
Well, she knows all I know, she has my training, but I still worry, things will not be easy.
The situation with Xalrak is at a standstill, I personally don’t wish to push it, even if the alien knows that the boss basically spilled the beans it won’t concede.
I can appreciate the spirit, I mean I kept Xalrak without eating for all the time I could without killing but in the end I was the one that had to cave in.
Luckily I managed to strike a deal where Xalrak eats and doesn't attempt to run or kill itself.
I mean, I don’t want to kill if I can manage it, and these people are supposed to be rare galaxy-wise.
I understand that the galactic council is to blame for their situation, but I don’t want to go ahead and headbutt politics before I have solved the situation here first.
The issue is with people that see no alternative to what they are experiencing.
I have hit another virtual wall so to speak, without going above I have explored all I can of this underworld.
I could push my zombie drones forward, but I would lose contact with them past the corridors, and I don’t want that to happen.
Without the help of an engineer, I doubt I can do what Virgil suggests in order to enhance my capabilities.
I have found another terminal like the one that originally hosted Virgil in the video feed it shared with me, but I doubt my capacity to make it run or repair it if needed.
I could use it for raw materials, but I want to know if there’s a chance for it to run.
With one of these in the network, I would be able to bolster the signal I emit allowing me to extend the zone I can control. I could also control a bigger number of drones with two of those.
I noticed there are patrols down here now, and some lay traps, luckily I had asked Virgil
At the moment I need to concentrate on things I can actually pull off, like the opening of my very own meat shop.
I did what I could in order to protect the lab and all the charging platforms; without these, there would be a big issue for us.
I intend to start my little meat market on the surface, I have found a suitable way up about six big ventilation shafts down yonder in this maze.
As for the people living in this underground area, I need to find a way around actually meeting them.
The issue is that after the big fight with the expedition, most shelters shifted around the caves before I could actually restart my exploration.
If they acted this way I fear that any active prodding might trigger their flight response rather than their freeze and fucking listen to the scary robot one.
I don’t think I have what it takes to play catch with people that know the ground way better than me, I have to play a different game.
I will dedicate some of the meat I gathered to be used as bait and see what It bites.
Having two traps at once is a bit of a risk, he who chases two rabbits catches neither or so they say.
The real issue is that it’s not rabbit season here in the first place, and the pirate rangers that would come after me might bring down more heat I can hold.
Well, there’s only one way to go with this, and that’s forward.
[First] [Previous] [WIP]

Hey there, readers! Here's chapter five for your reading pleasure! Please consider leaving a comment or review as those really do just pick me right up!
I've Been Reincarnated as a Bunny Girl?! (Chapter 5)
by
ShadowDragon88
A fine drizzle was coming down on the town of Starlight Rose. A familiar wolf-kin beasta in red robes that appeared to be shimmering despite the cloudy gloom of the day was walking along the main road. In his right hand, he held a long polished oak staff, topped with a red glowing gemstone the size of his fist. In his left hand, held away from his body, was a tan leather satchel, the drawstring tied in a knot. It appeared full, and seemed to shudder and wriggle. Felixin smiled and nodded to passing villagers.
​
"Hey there, Felixin," came the rumbling voice of Earl Shatterknuckle. The blonde dwarf, presently wearing just simple brown leather trousers, fell in step beside his taller friend. Felixin looked down at the dwarf, whose smaller frame was bulging with muscles, with blue and gold glowing tattoos tracing intricate spider-web-like symbols across his chest and arms, smiling back.
​
"Good day to you, Earl," the wolf said. There was a spitting-chittering sound coming from the bag, making Felixin pause and frown before giving the satchel a good whack with his magical staff. "Quiet, you!" he hissed at it.
​
"Caught yourself another evil spirit, eh?" Earl said with a smirk.
​
"Oh yes, and this one was quite the nasty piece of work. I'm on my way back to my lab to properly dispose of it. I think it's from some destroyed remnant of Eld technology, one of the ones that gained sentience, or at least some spiritual semblance to it," Felixin said as he gave the bag another whack when it started to make some electronic beeping sounds.
​
"Oh?" Earl asked, curious. "I remember more than once we had some nasty run-ins with Eld-tech back when we were adventurers."
​
"I remember you and Melthi being the ones to turn the blasted machines on, both times when cautioned not to," Felixin said pointedly, making the dwarf chuckle.
​
"What can I say? We're both curious by nature!"
​
"Yes, that's one word for it," Felixin said with a smile, remembering his adventuring days and the party of friends he would regularly travel with. "Anyways. For some reason, about six years ago, they suddenly became much more prevalent. Thankfully, their numbers have been dropping back down over the years."
​
"What makes you think this one is from Eld tech?"
​
"It kept saying 'Does not compute!' over and over again, while also identifying some kind of rabbit threat." Felixin's mood seemed to shift and his ears laid back on his head, while his tail dipped, almost long enough to drag on the ground behind him. "And when it mentioned rabbits, it made me think of my little princess."
​
Earl rolled his eyes as he reached up and clapped the town wizard on the back. "Ah, Kiana'll be back to visit before you know it."
​
"I know... it's just, one minute she was this little delicate baby girl, and the next minute, she was this amazing young woman, all ready to up and go out."
​
"Didn't Kiana kick down a couple of brick walls when she was a baby?" Earl asked, scratching his head. Felixin waved a dismissive paw at that.
​
"Pure coincidences. Those walls were clearly unsound and improperly constructed, so much so that when she was having one of her tantrums just a little punch or kick was enough to send them tumbling down. We're lucky she wasn't hurt or scared, just confused and curious more than anything. Anyways, I just get so worried when I think of her, out there on the open road. Just so... vulnerable. Thankfully I made sure to instill in her a proper sense of caution." Earl snorted at that.
​
Meanwhile...
​
Kiana let out a roar of fury as her trusted tetsubo connected with the raised steel shield of the bandit before her. The metal dented and warped just as the bandit, shield and all, became airborne. They traveled in an arc straight towards a stone tower connected to an old run-down fort the bandits had holed up in. The screaming man smashed into the top of the tower, crumbling it, his screams instantly going silent.
​
"Fire!" Kiana heard a deep voice shout. There were several blasts and, thanks to Kiana's speed, she watched as five cannonballs headed in her direction. To the ordinary person, the black metallic spheres were probably nearly impossible to follow. To Kiana, it looked as though they were moving incredibly slow. She simply stepped aside from four of them, letting them explode into the nearby hillside. As the fifth one hurtled her way, she crouched slightly, raising her tetsubo like a baseball bat. She swung and smacked the cannonball, her tetsubo making a loud DING, and sent it flying right back where it had come from. The two bandits manning the cannon were obliterated along with the weapon itself, as well as a good chunk of the fort wall.
​
"She's some kind of demon!" one of the bandits cried. The man, really more of a boy, no older than Kiana, leapt down from the fort wall onto a carriage they had recently stolen from some traveling aristocrats. He then leapt onto the ground and sprinted out into the forest, stripping off the black cloak with the red eye in the center.
​
"DAMMIT!" the bandit leader cursed, pulling off his tricorn hat and dabbing his bald sweaty head with a handkerchief. While the remaining men were busy barring the windows or reloading and firing the cannons, he was gnashing his teeth. After a moment's hesitation, he pointed to a nearby subordinate. "You! Follow me. We'll unleash the troll on her."
​
The other bandit paled, audibly gulping. "Th-the troll? Are you sure th-that's wise?" Just as he finished asking that, another cannonball destroyed another cannon, making the entire structure shudder.
​
"We don't have any other options. Hopefully, after it kills her, it'll be injured enough for us to finish it off... or the other way around if she kills it." The other bandit grimaced at the options laid before them, but nodded solemnly. Outside, Kiana smacked another cannonball back at the cannon that fired it, being careful not to send it flying towards the base of the tower. According to one of the kidnapped merchants that had managed to escape and make it all the way to town, the cells where the bandits were holding their ransom victims were all on the ground floor. Kiana stopped when she heard a loud guttural roar, followed by a rapid series of loud BOOMs. Bandits ran by the windows and open holes of the fort, while the front gate slowly opened.
​
Out stumbled a massive creature. Its flesh was a dark brown, and had a texture not unlike tree bark. Its long arms and legs were thicker than the old oak trees in the forest near Starlight Rose. Its gnarled hands, with thick thorn-like protrusions sticking from the knuckles, balled into fists, fists that were as big as Kiana was tall. Its barrel-chest heaved, with white criss-crossing scars in its bark-flesh. It didn't have much in the way of a neck, and its head looked just like a tree stump, complete with root-like tendrils wriggling back and forth. It's mouth was partially concealed by the tendrils, until it reared back and opened its gaping maw, revealing rows of broken yellow teeth, to let out a bellow that shook the ground. From the top of its head grew two slightly spiraling branch-like horns.
​
"These idiots somehow managed to get a forest troll?" Kiana asked out loud, a smirk appearing on her face. "And this was only a gold-ranked quest? Something tells me I'm in for a sweet bonus."
​
The beast stopped as its knot-like eyes, of which there were at least seven, caught sight of the bunny girl. Up above from the second story windows and holes and from on the roof, the remaining bandits, many of them injured, looked down. Most were smirking, some of the more foolish ones shouted out taunts. The bandit leader stood there, looking grim-faced, but taking some satisfaction in knowing that despite their losses today, the annoying source of their problems was about to end, one way or another.
​
Kiana stuck the end of her tetsubo into the dirt, large and surprisingly quick thudding steps shaking the ground. The beast was lumbering towards Kiana, who didn't look the least bit afraid. While not intelligent enough to be truly sentient, the troll did have enough sense to know that its prey should be running. And the fact that it was just calmly standing there, staring at it, only angered it further. With a final roar, the forest troll charged forward. It balled up a massive fist, and swung straight for Kiana. Kiana swung her own fist, the two colliding.
​
There was a very loud, sickening crunch and pop. The bandits looked down in shock and horror as where the now screaming troll's fist and forearm had been, there was a bloody and jagged stump that ended just above the right elbow. The troll screeched and lunged at Kiana, hoping to impale her on its horns. But the bunny girl simply kicked, knocking the head clean off the rest of its body. The head bounced off a tree and rolled for a bit, settling in the dirt, a look of surprise on the stump-like face. The rest of the body tumbled over three times before coming to a rest near the make-shift stables, where the carriages and horses of the abducted nobles were kept. Kiana looked back up at the fort, making the majority of the bandits shrink back and shudder. A few of them began to wave white tablecloths hastily tied to sticks and tree branches.
​
A short time later the bandits, now in shackles, were being marched to the mechanical cart as the local sheriff and his deputies led them. Except for the severely injured ones, who were shackled to stretchers and loaded up into a seperate mechanical carriage. Kiana looked on as bodies were checked for possible survivors, there being very few to find, as the merchants and a few nobles were led by deputies out from the fort. Kiana smiled at them and nodded to their looks of awe, some of them having gotten a good look at the show of force the petite bunny girl had demonstrated. Ignoring the ones who shrank back away from her in fright, Kiana spotted the sheriff, a large older man in his mid-fifties with salt and pepper close-cropped hair and a matching mustache. He was wearing the classic green cloak, directing his deputies. He turned to face her as she approached.
​
"I think that's all cleared up," Kiana said, her voice chipper, belaying the fact she had a smattering of blood and gore staining her fur.
​
"I'd have to agree with you, young lady," Sheriff Tonsol said, his voice even. In truth, he had tried to avoid enlisting the aid of any adventurers until pressure from various merchants and nobility forced his hand. And even then he had expected it to involve a large party and, more than likely, some lives lost from the hostages. He was a little surprised when the girl reached into her satchel to produce a clipboard with a form on it, as well as an ink pen.
​
"In that case, would you mind signing this form indicating that I completed the job satisfactorily?" Tonsol looked at the form for a minute, and then his mouth curved upwards. He let out a chuckle and signed his name on the indicated line, writing in the date as well.
​
"Satisfactorily is putting it lightly, miss," he said, handing the clipboard and pen back to the bunny girl. "I had no idea that they had a forest troll in their possession. I went ahead and bumped up the reward."
​
"Oh wow, thank you, sir!" Kiana said, looking excited.
​
Tonsol smiled, something his deputies claimed to be a rare sight to behold. "Well, you earned it. I'm just glad you were able to get them to surrender without harming any hostages. Well, without them harming any more than the ones they did last time someone came out here to free them."
​
"I'm glad I could help!" Kiana said, bowing a little. "Now, I'm going to head back into town." She spread her arms wide and indicated to herself. "I'm really in need of a bath at this point."
​
"If you don't mind waiting a minute, you can ride back to town with us. It's faster than walking."
​
"Oh, thanks for the offer, but I'm good." Kiana waved, before jogging back to where she'd left her tetsubo and pack, Mirabelle coiled around it protectively. She grabbed the items up, quickly looking through the travel pack to make sure she still had everything, and nodded to herself, satisfied. She slipped the pack onto her back, then scooped her pet snake into her arms, and started to jog down the road in the direction of the town of Hengecliffe. Picking up speed, she rapidly became a blur, and in just a few seconds she was coming to a sliding stop in front of the town gates, startling a couple of bored-looking guards.
​
She greeted them and let Mirabelle down before they let her inside. They stared at the snake with the big pink ribbon around its neck slithering obediently behind the bunny girl. She stopped off at the local guild hall to drop off the signed paperwork and collect her now even heftier reward. She noticed a few stares in her general direction, and some unhappy grumbling from some fellow adventurers, but otherwise no one said anything.
​
Kiana then headed to the town inn where she still had a room for another night. Thankful again that this world had indoor plumbing, with hot water to boot, Kiana wasted no time in stripping off her gore-coated clothes, which she would wash in the laundry room down the hall, and enjoyed a nice steamy shower. She didn't have to worry about possible intruders, as Mirabelle sat coiled on the bed, ever vigilant.
​
"Today was a good day," Kiana said, stepping out of the shower and drying herself off, a feat that took several minutes with a towel. This left her gray and white fur all fluffed-out, which led to her brushing it out. Kiana had grown accustomed to the care and maintenance of her fur, taking pride in keeping it clean. She then donned her underwear and a cream-colored sundress from her pack, carefully putting her dirty clothes in the laundry sack in her pack. She smiled and stroked Mirabelle's head, the snake letting out a contented purr-like hiss.
​
"I'm going to go out and enjoy the rest of the afternoon in town. You stay here and guard the pack, okay?" she asked, slipping her mithril knuckles into her dress pockets, along with a small money pouch. Mirabelle hissed, thumping her tail on the bed in response, curling up tighter around Kiana's belongings.
​
"Good girl," she praised, before heading out, locking the door behind herself for good measure. Kiana smiled as she stepped out onto the paved sidewalk, carriages passing by on the street. Hengecliffe was much larger than Starlight Rose, with paved streets and even streetlights. Centrally located in a region of plains, it served as a trading hub. Kiana walked along, noticing a few men and women looking her over. Some seemed to do so with distaste, more than likely not enjoying the sight of a beasta. But most seemed to be pleasant people observing a new face.
​
"Well now, if my eyes are not deceiving me, it seems that an angel from the heavens has decided to grace us mere mortals with her presence." Kiana's ears twitched at the sound of the male voice. She paused and turned, looking down an alley, where a man leaning up against the side of a building stood, looking her over. He was wearing brown leather trousers, a white linen shirt, and a belt with a large buckle which, matching the large buckles on his boots, made him look a bit like a pirate. The goatee and the cutlass sheathed at his side were also not helping.
​
"Hello, beautiful," he said, giving Kiana a wink. Kiana rolled her eyes, and moved to keep walking, only to find a squat bald man standing in her way, grinning sinisterly. Kiana checked behind herself and saw another man, a larger one with a completely shaved head, arms crossed with a club under one arm. "Now, how about we all go somewhere more... private," the pirate-looking moron asked, giving Kiana a smug wink.
​
"Wow, you idiots have no idea just how badly you messed up," Kiana said, walking into the alley, the two guys following right behind her. The men chuckled. Passersby stopped when they heard three loud thuds coming from the alley, all of which made the nearby buildings shudder. They saw a bunny beasta girl walking out, brushing some dust off her sundress. She smiled and waved and continued on her way, leaving behind three broken figures. Two were lying in craters in the pavement of the alley, while the third, this one with a cutlass laying at his booted feet, was standing... his head laying all the way back in a hole in the brick wall right behind him.
​
Later that evening...
​
Kiana was sitting just outside the town walls on a hill, watching the stars come out. After sixteen years, it still mystified her to look up at the night sky, and not see any of the old constellations. She smiled as a shooting star streaked its way across the sky. Suddenly, Kiana felt a surge of energy just course through her. Her eyes faintly started to glow with the blue light, and she felt a strange pulsing in her chest. Looking around, she felt a strange magnetic pull coming from the south.
​
Starting as a jog, Kiana soon found herself sprinting outright across the countryside. She ran, as a blur, following the pull, her eyes gradually glowing brighter and brighter, shining with the crackling blue energy. Then, she came to a stop. She stood at the foot of a mountain, itself part of a larger range. Looking up at the mass of rock and ice, she could see broiling clouds up over it, flashes of lightning briefly illuminating the rocky and snowy peaks. With one such flash, Kiana saw something move. Something big. Kiana's glowing eyes went wide.
​
"Oh wooooooooow," she said, her jaw hanging open. There were rumbles as the giant coiled mass shifted. Several avalanches were caused by the serpentine body, buried under tons and tons of snow. At the very peak of the mountain, a gargantuan head rose.
​
"Is that a giant... cobra?" Kiana asked under her breath. Indeed, that was what the creature that seemed to dwarf the Spire appeared to be. In the light of the lightning, she saw that its scales were a deep blue, almost purple. There were stripes running down its back, but they were glowing a bright bioluminescent blue. That same glow radiated from the creature's reptilian eyes, and the inside of its hood. The same glowing blue as Kiana's eyes.
​
"What... are you?" Kiana asked, quietly.
​
I can ask the same of you, little one, a deep female voice hissed in Kiana's head. She winced and looked around. She then looked back up at the creature, her veins flooded with adrenaline. There was another flash of lightning, and in that very instant, the creature's head was bent down low, right in front of her. Kiana almost jumped back, but stopped herself. As the snake-entity looked her over with an eye that was twice as tall as she was, Kiana felt a sense of calm overtake her.
​
"Are you... a storm dragon? A real storm dragon?" Kiana asked, reaching out and touching the creature's cheek with her hand. It flicked out a blood red tongue, its mouth curling up a little at the corners.
​
That is something that little ones like to call my kind, she said. Kiana figured right then and there that this was a female.
​
"A monk said that... my spirit is like one of yours," Kiana said, breathlessly.
​
Your soulsong feels similar to one of our kind, little one, she said, turning her head and gently nuzzling the top of Kiana's head, making her ears lay flat. The storm dragon's head was almost as large as the entirety of her hometown.
​
"My... soulsong?" Kiana asked. The monk she had met hadn't said anything about them.
​
The song of your innermost being. It stands out from the loud and noisy cacophony that happens when most little ones gather together in large groups. Yours is beautiful, and a little... fluttery. The dragon gave her a wink. She reared up and opened her mouth. Electricity danced between the dragon's fangs, before she shot out a sonic boom. The raging storm above abated, the clouds dispersing, leaving only a crystal clear night sky for miles and miles around. She then turned and looked down at Kiana. The bunny girl felt the storm dragon's gaze. She felt a radiating warmth coming from her. It reminded Kiana of her mother.
​
It was so nice to meet you, little one. It was quite the pleasant surprise to awaken to. She let out a proud roar, and her body began to undulate. Sections of the mountain range began to crumble as large sections of mountain were crushed and smashed by the body slamming into them. The body of the dragon rose into the air, beginning to gracefully slither about. Levitating there, partially coiled, the sheer size of the storm dragon just boggled the bunny girl's mind.
​
"Will I see you again?" Kiana asked, feeling a little sad. She had just met this beautiful and amazing being, and already they were leaving.
​
Of course, little one, the mental voice in her mind chuckled warmly. I have listened to your beautiful soulsong, and I have shared my soulsong with you.
​
"I... I don't understand what that means," Kiana said, confused.
​
You will, little one, she said, you are still young, but my soulsong has resonated within you. When you stop and listen, it will become easier and easier to hear it. And thus, the bond has begun to form. In time, you shall understand. With a flick of the creature's tail, there was a flash of lightning that radiated from within the hood, and she was gone. Kiana stood there, her eyes readjusting to the dark.
​
"This world is so awesome," she said, a smile on her face, as she began to job back towards town. She figured that if the town gates were closed and locked, she could just jump over the wall.
​
Meanwhile...
​
The lone figure stood in the dark, staring at where the great serpent had been levitating. They were sitting on a log in a small clearing, where they had set up camp. The individual in question was polishing their armor when a gray blur had shot right past them. And then, where it had been heading, the giant serpent, an actual storm dragon, arose. They sat there in stunned silence. They knew right then and there, that it had been a sign from the gods. As they unsheathed their katana, it began to thrum with magical energy, the blade becoming engulfed in bright purple flames.
​
The light of the purple flames illuminated his green face, glinting off his polished tusks. "Soon, the war shall begin," said the orc, sheathing the blade and cutting off its purple light. The same purple light shone from his eyes.
​
Name: Kiana
​
Species: Beasta (Rabbit-Kin)
​
Age: 16
​
Skills: Sibling Wrangler, Babysitter, Puppy-Dog Eyes, Master Martial Arts, Brawling, Heavy Weapon Proficiency, Sarcasm Mastery, Eyerolling Mastery, Beast Taming Level 3
​
Class: (Official) Master-Level Dragon Monk: Storm Dragon School, Storm Dragon Hatchling.
​
​
Str: 141
Int: 12
Dex: 140
Cha: 12
Wis: 10
Con: 172
Languages: Common, Draconic
​
Equipment: Adventurer's Pack, Steelwood Tetsubo, Mastercraft Mithril Knuckles (x2), Rope (25 Ft.), Canteen (Full), Road Rations, Spare Clothes, Bedroll, Health Potion (x2), Books (x3)
I really hope that you enjoyed the new chapter! Thank you for reading so far!
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Hello, folks!
As I've mentioned on another post, we have a female red-eared slider whom we've had for many years. I was hoping that we could upgrade her to an outdoor enclosure with a big pond.
Now, I'm forced to face a common problem to red-eared slider keepers. They are very voracious as adults, eating plants and animals alike. Can turtles and plants be compatible in the same pond?
For me, not having plants in the pond is not an option. They are simply too important for the water cycle to just leave out, and a pond isn't a pond without plants. Also, I actually want our turtle to be able to graze, since it is a natural and healthy behavior.
Are there any aquatic plants that can withstand their grazing? I know that duckweed certainly could, but what about water lilies? Could they survive? Will they be able to withstand the grazing and come back next year?
I've also heard that water hyacinth is a good plant, but it certainly couldn't survive year round with the pond freezing over. Our climate is not tropical unless Canada is, too.
I like Elodea, but E. densa is illegal in out state, and no one sells E. canadensis. Hornwort is so prickly our turtle probably wouldn't even eat it.
Does anyone have any suggestions for aquatic plants that would be good for a turtle pond? If there even are any other than duckweed and filamentous algae.
Any input would be appreciated. Thanks! God bless!

As someone who's played/dipped my toe in a lot of MMOs, DDO's monetization is honestly one of the worst and most frustrating for new players that I've ever seen, primarily because the core functions of it are to make it so new players feel both isolated and frustrated. This game does not excite you to buy things. It is not like, "Look, here's this fun thing you can do if you buy in!" It's much more "Buy in or end up face extreme annoyance.
Quests
Let's start with the obvious issue of quests. The game has a lot of decent content below level ~10. Around there, you start to hit a wall, and by the time you're level 17, you've now got 3 quests to get you all the way to 20, and getting to 30 is a total pipe dream on f2p content alone, as you've got 4 level 21 quests, and then your next quest is a level 26, then two level 28s, then a bunch of 31-32s, all of which will somehow have to account for the millions of EXP points you need.
But that's not even the biggest issue. DDO is a game with a limited playerbase that is further limited because it's stretched between several servers. The game was obviously designed to be ran in groups, with various sections quests having more or less benefit for certain types of characters.
But if you don't own the most recent expansion packs, say goodbye to grouping. Because of the 5-20 LFGs that will be available at any time, a solid 90% of them are always going to be content that f2p players don't own past level 5-6. Sure, you can say, "just bring your own group!" but MMOs are something a lot of people do so they can find new friends. The fact that paywall = well you'd better play this game alone most of the time is going to be a huge quit point for new players.
As a returning player, I own Sharn, MOTU, Gianthold, Delara's, Vale, and Sorrowdusk. Most of the time when I look for groups, my entire screen is full of "you can't play with this group because they're doing a quest you don't own"... and the only times I've ever been able to find them has been in the pay packs I already do have. For a genuinely new player who hasn't sunk tons of money into the game, grouping is pretty much out of the question once they clear things like Water Works. I'll bet most players who buy VIP would still fare badly, since it seems most of the play happens exclusively in expansion packs.
Loot/Economy
But hey, maybe a few new players are willing to deal with having to solo the entire MMO and re-grind the same 3 quests they have for four levels straight. They'll then hit another wall. Unless they are willing to spend at least a bit of money on the game, they can't actually participate in the economy. The game's platinum economy was facing a critical issue when they took money caps out--too much money was coming in, not enough was being spent. So in their infinite wisdom, the people behind monetizing the game decided that they needed to make a real-money auction house instead of the regular platinum one, basically saying "Well, if platinum economy is dying, we're just going to force you to spend money to use the new one."
This is a two-punch. Punch one: Unless you're premium, you can't participate at all, and even then, you have to buy at least a few astral shards, since you need to pay shards to post on the thing in the first place. And because platinum
Punch two: Two people have extreme advantage here--the players who've been playing forever, or the ones who don't care about dumping stupid amounts of money into the game.
So as a new player, you might be saving money, being excited that you've started earning decent amounts finally... only to realize that it's utterly useless beyond a few basic things, and that the only way for you to actually participate in the game's ALREADY stretched economy is to buy your way in. And then you realize, further, that you'd either have to pay a lot, or else buy an expansion because most of the loot anyone would care about is locked behind quests you don't have.
So not only are you going to be questing alone, you're also not going to be involved in a larger economy either.
Power
I've seen so many posts justifying the game's blatant and obvious P2W monetization by saying that it's okay, because this game is mostly PVE and because you can earn things through favor.
First, the favor argument is so ungrounded in reality. First, aside from the initial 900 ddo point infusion you get from running 1 toon to 100 favor on each server, these points accumulate extremely slowly... and even more slowly if you haven't already bought your way in.
Let's say you farm 100 favor on each server, you'd have netted a total of 1125. Then let's say you do literally all of the f2p quests in the game on one account--dozens of hours of work, especially considering you'd have to repeat them all three times to get up to elite, as well as a lot of other repetitions and wilderness areas in order to make your way to the required levels. That's another 350 store points. That's it. total 1475. Not enough for an expansion pack--no, to afford one of those, you'd have to do all of the quests again another ~3 times, which would actually be 9 times each. Unless you TR, but that's a really bad idea since now you need way more EXP and you've still got a pitiful quest pool.
So that's just to start buying some of the quest packs... let alone, other features such as the shared bank for the account, which is both the ONLY way to transfer loot between characters, since everything and its dog is bound-to-account these days, and it's also going to cost you all the DDO points you'd save up from doing the 1st time bonuses + doing an entire run of all the f2p quests on elite.
And if I made it sound too easy... the first time bonuses only come first time, meaning it's going to be much slower from there on out.
For people on the TR hamster wheel who are either VIP or 3rd life +, the issue of opening quests normal, then hard, then elite seems like not a problem, and they can blow past quests in 3-4 minutes. For new players, those same quests might take 30-40 minutes, particularly if they're scrounging crates and optionals because of their extremely limited EXP options. Let alone, having to do that 3 times in a row, possibly more because they have to solo content they've never done before, and might die. And, as an added bonus, people on the TR wheel get such insane buffs from their numerous past lives that they are, again, able to solo things far more easily.
Meaning veteran players can earn points at an 'okay' clip, while new players, especially if they haven't bought in, earn them slower than a snail's pace.
There's an insane amount of direct power to be bought in this game, whether it's universal +8 tomes, 32-point builds (Something f2p players cannot access first life because there isn't enough favor to get them), a huge slew of in-quest boosts, etc. And universal enhancements, in particular, are such a huge source of power that f2p players have 0 access to, since you can never earn enough favor to hit one.
But beyond even directly buying power, all of the normal methods for achieving power are expedited greatly with purchases. TRs give a huge boost, and the game has literally sold "get to 20 and TR instantly!" options. Exp tomes are both expensive and a massive boost to farming speed. Bravery bonuses are basically only there for VIPers or people who already TR'd twice, as well as slayer pots which just raw make it take 3X less to get those rewards. And most every crafting has huge incentives in the store as well.
And when it comes to loot, the best loot is, of course, with the power creep in new expansions, meaning you always have to keep buying if you want the best gear. But even for decent gear, almost all of it is going to come as named drops in the chests, which you can't directly buy, but buying pots to boost the odds, buying rerolls to let you keep trying for it... all of that gives a massive edge to people willing to shell out money. Let alone, the edge that comes from being more powerful, and therefore being able to run things far quicker.
Convenience/Frustration
DDO seems to have the horrible habit of noticing a problem, and then fixing that problem by making you pay for the solution. Inventory management sucks worse than most every game I've ever seen, not in small part due to the gigantic stacks of random items that build into / collect into other things. DDO's solution was to make bags which are almost exclusively paid, since you can only buy one copy of the really small you can get for free. Bank space is premium-locked if you want more. Loot can only be shared between toons if you buy the privilege. Materials storage in the bank is a bought privilege as well.
DDO also noticed an issue where players are spending way too much time running around between NPCs or wildnerness areas to get anywhere, instead of questing. So we've got mounts, which help you get around... but also premium locked.
The game has several quests which are extremely difficult to solo, and probably impossible for new players. They were designed for groups. It also has quests that are often points of frustration. But the game incentivizes saga completions. So players end up frustrated as they try over and over on quests, failing them. But don't worry! you can buy your way past them in the saga too. Because again, noticed a problem and sold, rather than helped, the solution.
DDO shoves the store in your face more often than most every game I've ever seen. Every time I open up the bank, store. Every time I die in a quest, store. Every time I try to recall from the quest, store. It literally begs for money at every turn.
Most games have conveniences that they sell. But at the same time, there's a difference between something that is nice, and something that is either necessary or would require a lot of frustration in order to skip. Making your players put up with outdated, frustrating things just so that a solution can be sold is bad practice, and ends up losing customers rather than gaining money.
Conclusion
If you've made it through this wall of text, congratulations! But main highlights are that DDO's monetization is extremely frustrating and isolating for new players. It is my honest opinion that DDO bleeds customers because of this issue more than any other. The content give codes DO help alleviate those problems a lot... for existing players who happened to be around when they happened. But for every player that tries to join tomorrow onward, all the problems I listed out are still there, and 'favor grinding for points' is nowhere near enough to actually penetrate the wall of content you need to buy to engage with this game.
Existing players can say all they want about how new players CAN just grind past it with stupid amounts of time, or else how new players should just buy in. But the reality is, when most people hit these frustrating paywalls, the reaction is almost always going to be to quit rather than to pay up.
And because of this, a lot of DDO is so dominated by old players who've been doing this forever with massive in-game resources and power, that new player economies, groups, and play experience as a whole suffers. It creates a feedback loop, where no new players = experience sucks for them = new players leave = no new players. And mid-tier players, who might not have as much, but still have maybe 1-2 past lives total, are hit just as hard.

I wasn't going to do a trip write up at all, but I'm planning a return trip in the Fall and I realized some of the things I learned on my first trip might be useful for other people, so here we go! I don't often see post write ups from people who are specifically into rhythm games/ arcades/ anime stuff
 
Dates: March 8 - 24, 2023 Background: Planned this trip mostly for myself but one of my friends decided to tag along fairly last minute. I had planned to spend the whole trip in Tokyo but the one thing she wanted to do was Kyoto, so we added a side trip + a very pleasant day at a Ryokan. I used Wanderlog to plan (HIGHLY recommend, this site is amazing), and my basic daily itinerary was morning shrine > pick an area to explore and have 1-2 major things per day. The person I was travelling with ended up taking a long ass time to get ready each day, so most of my morning stuff got cut or rearranged. Costs: I will fully admit I did not budget for food/ shopping, 100% vibes. I simply do not acknowledge what I spent

• Flight: $1,500 (Delta from MSP > SEA > Haneda. Direct from MSP had not resumed yet)
• Hotels: ¥314,000 (Roughly $2,300 USD for all 3 hotels total) [¥205,000 (Tokyu Stay Tsukiji, 15 nights) + ¥30,000 (Tokyu Stay Kyoto, 2 nights) + ¥79,000 (Kyokoyado Muromachi Yutone Kyoto, 1 night)]
• Shinkansen: ¥42,000 for 2 round trip tickets from Tokyo/Kyoto and back. Roughly $300 USD, machine did not take foreign CC only cash

Highlights

• The Kingdom Hearts concert, I maxed out my luck on this trip and we were able to see this on it's last night in Tokyo. Absolutely incredible!!
• Sushi Yuu, Roppongi (omakase sushi for about ¥20,000 per person, we paid more with drinks)
• ShibuyaSky, the open air viewing makes the experience so much better, plus there's a bunch of different spots to hang out up on the observation deck
• Fushimi Inari, the whole shrine blew me out of the water, absolutely must experience in person
• TeamLabs Planets, so few things live up to the hype and this is one of them
• Golden Gai, the bars were so much fun, got the full experience of a salaryman pissing on the side of the konbini

Lowlights

• Caffeine- if you are addicted to non carbonated caffeine like I am be prepared to be disappointed. The monsters are only 40mg compared to America's 150mg+. I'm glad I brought caffeine pills
• Tsukiji market is really not worth going out of your way for, it's nice if you're near it but it's really just a fish market + insane lines for most of the food
• I'm still mad about how bad the food was at the Square Enix cafe is, at least we got coasters + placemats out of the deal. This was genuinely my only bad experience in Japan
• Everything on this subreddit told me that people in Tokyo don't really care about tattoos, however they do really seem to care about colored hair. I have very long, bright ombre hair and I was a bit of a sideshow attraction, including people taking photos of me in public multiple times. Probably the most frustrating part of the trip was being stared at constantly
• Japanese thrift stores love old American clothes, I was definitely let down by the majority of these

Goals:

• Buy anime stuff
• Play rhythm games
• Go thrift shopping
• See cherry blossoms
• Collect shrine stamps (goshuin)

Advice:

• TAX FREE SHOPPING: This has to be first because no one mentions it?? There are 2 types of tax free, discount and rebate. Everywhere has a minimum for tax free. Don Quijote you have to go to the separate tax free counter, and they will seal the bags shut. You're not supposed to use the tax free items in the country - I didn't know this and did it anyways? There seems to be no repercussions unless they open your bag and count every individual KitKat. I had to open the bags to repack everything anyways. The places that do rebates are generally malls, you bring your receipt + passport and they'll give you the 10% back in cash (minus a fee). When you get to the airport, you scan your passport after you drop your luggage, indicating you made tax free purchases. You do not need to keep your receipts anymore
• Don Quijote does sell luggage but Ginza Karen is cheaper
• Besides the standard things that every single trip report has (get a suica, you'll walk a lot, etc etc), the biggest thing I learned is not to go to an area without at least 1-2 specific goals in mind. For example, I had given us like a half day to go around Shibuya/ Harajuku, but because we didn't look into what malls or stores we might like to go to, we ended up wandering pretty aimlessly and not really enjoying the area. This happened a few different areas we went to, so I decided that in the future I would pin some stores on Google Maps and try to make it to those specific stores
• Install LINE and set up an account. It's crazy how much connects to LINE. For me the biggest thing was 1) making Sushiro reservations and not having to sit in the store for an hour plus waiting for our table and 2) being able to grab a chargeSPOT to charge my phone. I brought a battery pack but at this point it must be like a decade old, it took the entire night to recharge and died on me during the day a few times. I have a Pixel 6 Pro and was literally constantly charging my phone
• If you're coming from the Americas, don't try to do something on your first night. Get your Konbini dinner and go the fuck to sleep
• Getting from place to place can take longer than expected, you'll have to navigate the stations, find the entrances (sometimes hidden in malls) and exits (sometimes closed), don't make plans too tight together
• Navigating Kyoto was so much more confusing. At first our Suica cards didn't work because we apparently didn't tap out at a station in Tokyo, so we were buying day passes and paying in cash on the bus. Some of the buses have 0 English and 100% Kanji (navigation difficulty: extreme). Suica cards DO work in Kyoto so if you're having issues go to a gate with an attendant and they can help
• It can be weirdly hard to find bathrooms, most konbini have them but you're supposed to ask the cashier if you can use them. I speak very basic Japanese but hammed up the gaijin card here and would just ask to use the toilet in English, no one ever told me no Weeb specific advice:
• If you want to do pop ups (like the Jujutusu Kaisen Animation exhibit), a Japanese e-sim will be a lifesaver. You need a Japanese phone number to do SO much, they really make it extremely frustrating to make reservations without it. I did manage to make reservations for the Square Enix cafe though, the write-up is on my profile. (Was it worth it? Absolutely not, worst food all trip, -3/10)
• Prices are all over the place for figures, especially prize figures. There's a solid chance you might buy something and see it cheaper at the next shop, however going back/forth between shops in Akihabara can be a huge pain in the ass. I'd recommend 1) making a list of things you want the most and 2) setting a per item budget and a total budget. A lot of the anime stuff was cheaper in Kyoto as well
• You can find a ton of gachapon stuff at Surugaya, so you can just buy what you want and don't have to gamble. Surugaya bins are organized by series
• Use collabo-cafe.com to find cafes and pop up events you might be interested. Plan ahead because reservations can be hard to come by

 
Now on to the super detailed trip report! Here's the big album if you don't want to look through photos separated by day. Warning for flashing video
 
Day 1 (travel)

• Landed in Haneda around 3pm. Immigration + customs took about an hour (we did the visit Japan web ahead of time and had both QR codes ready). There was virtually no lines anywhere
• It took about an hour to navigate to the hotel. I chose to stay at the Tokyu Stay Tsukiji because 1) it was really cheap, 2) it was close to the Ginza line, and 3) it had a washer in the room. Although the location was slightly inconvenient for late nights, I'd say it was totally worth it for the ability to grab food in Tsukiji market, and the room was pretty large compared to some other areas of Tokyo. In fact, the room was so cheap that when we went to Kyoto, we opted to not check out of the Tsukiji room and just leave the majority of our possessions there. This didn't cause any issues and made travelling on the Shinkansen way easier
• I thought we were built different and could do some stuff this evening. We ended up walking to the Donki and being assaulted by sound in every direction. 7/10 didn't discover the 2nd floor until days later. At this point exhaustion kicked in and we got a Lawsons dinner and crashed

Day 2 (Akihabara, photos)

• Going to Akihabara on our first day in Japan sure was a choice. Thankfully neither of us suffered jetlag on the way in. Checked out like 10 different game centers and a ton of anime shops. Managed to find the only Monster Rehab of the whole trip here
• Konbini lunch + strong zero! That flavor was terrible :')
• Dinner at the Monster Hunter cafe (no reservations required). Expectations were low but my travel partner is a huge MH fan. The food wasn't bad but the drinks were awful. The ambiance is nice and there were definitely some regulars there playing MH on the consoles they had set up
• The new Namco game center had like 12 brand new Taiko cabs and all of them had phone mounts so you could film yourself playing! I was really intimidated by everyone there being extremely good so we didn't play any games here

Day 3 (Shibuya & Harajuku, photos)

• Breakfast at Tsukiji outer market since we were already there
• Went to Shibuya Loft for the Bravely Default pop up shop
• Checked out Tower Records
• Ate lunch at Japanese McDonalds
• Went to Takeshita Street. TBH this felt like in-person AliExpress, I'm sure the charm of the early 2000s is long gone
• Visited Hachiko
• Shibuya Sky Observatory

Day 4 (Asakusa, photos)

• Started at Kaminarimon Gate & went down Nakamise shopping street. It was very crowded on a Sunday but I enjoyed it immensely, you just need some patience to get where you want to go. I liked trying all the food, most of the food stalls here were cash only
• Senso-ji temple, bought Goshuincho to collect stamps
• Ate lunch and dinner in the area, there's a ton of food options
• We ended going all the way over to Yoyogi park as well but nothing was in bloom. Because it was overcast the park looked really sad

Day 5 (Shinjuku & Kabukicho, photos)

• Now is the time to come clean, I'm a huge Yakuza/ RGG fan. In the morning I had my Majima birthday cake delivered by PRIROLL. I pre-ordered it and chose the delivery day where we didn't have morning plans. It comes frozen and needs to defrost in the fridge. While we left Majima to chill, we made the pilgrimage to Kabukicho to see the iconic gate. It was raining in the morning so we hit up some arcades then went shopping
• There's a really cool mall that seems anime-centric (I believe it's called Shinjuku Marui Anex). It had a Godzilla store, Cinnamoroll Cafe, a JJK pop up, and best of all... A Surugaya. These stores have bins where everything is ¥100-300 and we ended up buying way too much in every one we came across
• Went back to Kabukicho and explored a bit, went to Golden Gai and drank at a handful of bars. Almost missed the last train because I drunkenly insisted on a final game of MaiMai. 10/10 staying in Kabukicho next time

Day 6 (Ikebukero & Rippongi, photos)

• The plan today was to check out Ikebukero and Roppongi, but we ended up spending so much time at the first mall that we didn't really do anything in Roppongi besides get dinner. Went to the Pokemon Mega Center and the cafe. The main cafe was closed so it was just take out, all the food was really cute but the waffles were kind of terrible
• Gashapon no Depato Ikebukuro was super overwhelming. A lot of the smaller gashapon stores are somewhat organized by what is in the machines, this one just felt chaotic, and it went on forever
• Sushi Yuu was incredible, I didn't take photos of every single course but I was so full that couldn't finish my dessert at the very end. The owner speaks some English and I made our reservations by messaging him on Facebook

Day 7 (Yokohama, photos)

• We didn't get to Yokohama as early as I would have liked - I took us out way into the suburbs to try to find this Yakuza plushie from the claw machines. I looked up the locations on the Sega website, unfortunately this machine was extra rigged and I couldn't win it >:[ On the bright side all the rhythm games had no one else playing them
• Took the cable car over and went to the Cup Noodle museum. Unfortunately we didn't have a reservation so we had to come back later. Found some cafes in the area and had a late breakfast
• The museum was really small, the main draw is making your own Cup Noodles. Entrance costs 500 yen and this is an additional 500. We had some trouble navigating this part because no one spoke any English
• Had dinner at a pie restaurant that was 10/10
• Explored a bit of Yamashita park (Yakuza 7, anyone?) I was kind of disappointed I wasn't able to see this during the day
• Walked around Yokohama Chinatown & visited the local Round 1 ;)

Day 8 (Kyoto, photos)

• I bought the Shinkansen tickets to Kyoto the evening before, so we weren't able to get great seats. The machines are also a huge pain in the ass and don't take American CCs, so plan ahead here
• It took us longer than expected to figure out how to use the tickets and read the signage, so we weren't able to get food before and I had to have one of the train bentos. I knew it was going to suck and it was worse than expected :(
• You can bring a full sized suitcase and just put it in front of you, seeing other people do this was unexpected
• My travel partner was destroyed at this point so she rested in the room. I went to the National Garden and Imperial Palace alone. The sakura were just starting to bloom and the weather was great, loved it. The National Garden is SO huge that I only ended up walking up the west side before I tapped out
• Checked out Heian-jingu shrine + the giant torii, I went to another smaller shrine with a great view but I can't remember the name
• We did photoshoots at ESPERANTO Kyoto. There's basically no reviews from foreigners about this place but it was fantastic!! Their online booking form didn't work for me, so I emailed asking for a reservation. I emailed in Japanese and English and they replied in English. They gave me time options and I replied with what package and room each of us wanted (the website says they require a deposit but they told me they didn't need one). When we got there they did our hair and makeup, and then you pick your kimonos out. The photographer spoke pretty decent English and we didn't have trouble communicating with anyone else here. They had our photos edited and printed about 30 minutes after we picked which ones we wanted. The whole thing took about 3 hours (it was longer because we used the same set room). I don't want to include my photos but I did add a video of my hairstyle because she knocked it out of the park
• Ended the day with okonomiyaki, one of my favorite Japanese foods

Day 9 (Kyoto, photos)

• Fushimi Inari day! I ended up walking this alone, I did not realize how long it was going to take or the fact it was actually like 10,000 stairs. My knees were very upset on the way down
• It was not as busy as expected, I went at roughly noon on a Friday. Most people tap out before the actual mountain climb
• The Goshuin at Fushimi Inari are on paper, you can paste them into your books later. Even if you don't have a Goshuincho I'd recommend buying them because they are very cute!
• Shrine cats!!!! You can buy photos of them to help pay for their food
• After Fushimi Inari I somehow managed to walk to Tofukuji Temple (I did the garden but not the bridge) and Daigo-ji Gojunoto pagoda and garden. I wanted to cut my legs off after today

Day 10 (Kyoto, photos)

• I started my day at the Kyoto Round 1, I had visited it on day 8 as well. This one is ace because it was literally always empty 10/10
• Decided to explore Gion a bit, ended up at the Machiya Starbucks and had the best thing I ate all trip (a custard dorayaka, I regret not going back for another)
• Ended up at Kiyomizu-dera Temple totally on accident. It wasn't super impressive in early spring but the view was still fantastic
• Ended the day at the Ryokan (Kyokoyado Muromachi Yutone). Ended up picking one without an onsen because we are both covered in tattoos, and I didn't want to deal with finding a private one. The cypress tub was a great trade off, and the food was incredible

Day 11 (Tokyo - Concert, photos)

• Today we travelled back to Tokyo and went to the Kingdom Hearts concert. I ended up trying for the lottery for tickets back in like December 2022. Winners were announced the first weekend in January and you only had a few days to buy tickets. I have a friend of a friend living in Japan who did me the biggest solid ever and bought our tickets. I met up with her during the trip for the hand off. The seats are randomly assigned and we had AMAZING seats near the front. This was also the performance Nomura was at!
• We weren't supposed to take photos during the performance so I just have some before. Also, I made Organization XIII beads that attach onto my dress with magnets and I am very proud of it, so please excuse the bathroom selfie :D
• The concert was about 3 hours long and after all the travelling we were beat. We ate dinner, played our nightly games of Ongeki, and passed out
• Bonus video of the music box that plays Dearly Beloved

Day 12 (Ginza & Sumida, photos)

• We were really starting to tucker out at this point. We managed to drag ourselves to the Ginza art Aquarium in the AM and the Tokyo SkyTree in the afternoon. Today was the Equinox so everything was crazy busy, the line to buy tickets for the SkyTree was literally like 2 ish hours long so we bought them online and went shopping in the mall
• The Art Aquarium was really cool, but a lot of the fish were in really small tanks. I didn't include photos of those :(
• The SkyTree just let people up as fast as they could so it was extremely crowded at the top, and not super enjoyable imo
• I spent the evening at the arcades in Akihabara :D

Day 13 (Tokyo - JJK Exhibit, photos - flashing video warning)

• Today I went off in the am to see if I could buy a ticket to the Jujutsu Kaisen animation exhibit in person. The online site wouldn't let me buy a ticket because I didn't have a Japanese phone number. UNFORTUNATELY you couldn't buy tickets in person. I got super lucky again and 2 foreign exchange students from Europe were trying to do the same thing, however they did have a Japanese phone number and the site allowed you to get 3 tickets at a time. They were able to grab them for all 3 of us for that evening
• Putzed off to Hie Shrine, anyone that tells you it's a mini Fushimi Inari is lying
• Went back to Akihabara, found a Miku racing pop up!
• Went back to... Ginza? for the JJK animation exhibit, it took about an hour to go through. I included a ton of photos so just skip today if you're not interested in that show

Day 14 (Tokyo - TeamLabs Planets & SquareEnix Cafe, photos)

• TeamLabs was so cool! I didn't include many photos since it's 95% selfies. Make sure you explore a bit as the string light room had a couple of different areas that are easy to miss, and it's possible to accidentally skip the hanging garden, which was beautiful! TeamLabs took us about 2.5 hours but we were 100% those bitches taking forever to get a million photos
• Since we were staying in Tsukiji we ended up just slowly walking back to the room for a much needed nap
• Back to Akihabara yet again! More rhythm games, some awful food at SE

Day 15 (Shinjuku, photos)

• This was our last full day in Japan, we honestly didn't want to do anything but we managed to drag our asses to Shinjuku National Garden for the cherry blossoms. Unfortunately it was sprinkling a bit, at least it kept the crowds away
• Managed to check out Meiji Jingu, but at this point my travel partner was sick of walking and tapped out
• I went back to Kabukicho, walked around a bit and ended up back at an arcade (bless Ongeki for having stools)

Final thoughts (Misc, photos)

• We were literally so annihilated by the trip that we took a taxi to the airport, it was about ¥8,000 from Tsukiji ($60 USD ish)
• I ended up buying a 24" suitcase from Ginza Karen for ¥6,000. It was 100% full of stuff I purchased. We also used one or those giant ¥500 bags from Donki as a carry on
• My Goshuincho was my favorite souvenir, I'm so proud of all the stamps I collected (I did get doubles at some shrines). I plan to bring this back late 2023 to try to finish it
• I have the old school GoogleFi plan and don't have to do anything extra to have international data. Lots of places & stations have free WiFi but you'll need to put your email in
• I don't really sleep that much and my schedule in the US is already busted, but it took me about 2 full weeks to get back on normal human hours. I'm tired again just writing this up and looking through all my photos
• My main regret is not trying more food, we ended up waiting until we were dying of starvation and ate at the konbini a lot (typical)

 
Edits for formatting

Valid theories as to why Nine Mile Hole was so very special to Forrest Fenn are out there, if one cares to look carefully enough. But nobody yet to my uncertain knowledge has pointed to hints in The Thrill of the Chase or other evidence that explain why Fenn might have been so emotional about his journey to the special place that he cryptically described in the poem. Yes, it was the place he wanted to die, and that alone would be a good enough reason for emotion. Yet the sort of sentimentality that Fenn betrayed about the place – for example when he read the poem out loud – suggests something even deeper and more sorrowful: a sense of loss that is larger than the man himself.
It so happens that there truly is a source of information that reveals why Nine Mile Hole was so sacred to Forrest Fenn: an emotional connection had been forged as a result of dual tragedies. It is contained in poetry masquerading as prose written by Ernest Schwiebert, an expert on flies and flyfishing, in his seminal Nymphs: Stoneflies, Caddisflies, and Other Important Insects including the lesser mayflies, Volume II (2007).
The existence of this text and its importance to the chase was originally revealed by Vertigo, who first shared it on The Hint of Riches forum. Later, Vertigo reposted the excerpt from the Schwiebert text on Medium here along with the other results of his excellent research. All the Vertigo entries are a must read if you want to try walking in the shoes of Forrest Fenn. I won’t repeat that portion of the Schwiebert text previously shared by Vertigo in its entirety although I will include a few of the most relevant excerpts to help tie everything together.
What I want to focus on here is the emotional and motivational parts of the tragic story that Schwiebert eloquently told in the paragraphs that Vertigo did not quote. This material is critical in my opinion to understanding the importance of Nine Mile Hole and what happened there to make it the place where Fenn wanted to die.
To summarize, the fires that devastated Yellowstone in 1988 were in part the result of government mismanagement of forest fires on Federal land, much of which was due to political games (e.g. to discredit members of the other political party). These fires created havoc and destruction in the Madison watershed and its fisheries that went largely unacknowledged by environmentalists and the public at large. Only those who had fished those flywaters in the decades before the fires could truly understand the extent of the negative impact on the river and its riparian ecosystem.
Among other casualties, the brown trout hideout at the famous Nine Mile Hole was spoiled, and the spring-fed pond secreted in the woods nearby was literally wiped off the map. Its crystal clear waters – a quarter mile up a cold rivulet from the legendary hole on the Madison – had once rewarded the most tenacious Brown with the perfect spot to spawn. Now there was only brown sludge in its place. To someone who had intimately known Nine Mile Hole, its matronly crystalline pond, or any other riverine wonder of the Madison watershed in Yellowstone, it was enough to utterly break their heart.
Forrest Fenn's feelings about the ordeal were very much in the same vein as those expressed by Ernest Schwiebert. The difference was that the latter man did not need to keep a secret and therefore could lay bare his emotional injuries.
Indeed, the 1988 fires must have devastated Fenn similarly if not more so. But this grand tragedy was not quite as catastrophic to him as being diagnosed with cancer and given slim odds of surviving it. The year 1988 was not particularly kind to the man.
Fortunately, the forests and rivers of Yellowstone always seem to recover from the worst tribulations that nature could manage to throw at them, and so did Fenn. But not without a profound impact. The battle for survival and the scars left behind had connected Fenn to his special place at a level so primal and emotionally raw that it was almost umbilical. How could there ever be another consideration when it came to the somber task of choosing the place to take his last breath?
And then came the FBI raids in 2009. The Feds had had a hand in destroying his Shangri-La in Yellowstone in 1988, and now it seemed they wanted to finish robbing him of treasure while desecrating his reputation and castle in Santa Fe.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, he said to himself through sublime gritted teeth and with a resolve that only the gravely aggrieved can muster. I'm going to carry out my plan. In Yellowstone Park, damn the consequences!
The following is taken from Nymphs: Volume II, starting on page 237. Unless noted otherwise, boldface is mine for emphasis.
I note that Vertigo excluded an important portion of the first paragraph of the story so I will re-quote this paragraph in its entirety. He then faithfully reproduced the next 7 paragraphs, which I won't repeat but will highlight a few excerpts. See Vertigo's Medium post for the full text of the 7 paragraphs, or "DYODD" and buy the book.
Schwiebert's account contains several additonal paragraphs beyond the 7 quoted by Vertigo that are just as important in my opinion, plus there is a footnote that helps enormously to shed light on things. I quote these in their entirety as fair use in order to support the theory being advanced in this entry.

But the entire Yellowstone was ravaged by a series of wildfires in the drought of 1992, and one of the worst of these fires had crossed into the park from Bridger National Forest in Wyoming, just north of Grand Teton National Park.⁶ The great lodgepole forests of the Bechler and Firehole watersheds had become a tinderbox, and vast acreages of primeval timber were surrendered to the fire. Magnificent stands were transformed into fire-blackened cemeteries of snags. Entire mountainsides were utterly scorched as steep timber-filled ravines became incandescent chimneys filled with fire. Slopes of unstable volcanic soils were stripped of their trees and rendered vulnerable to the erosive impacts of winds, rains, and melting snowpacks. Frightening shrouds of talcum-fine soil and ash were carried aloft as storms worked across the Yellowstone Plateau. Gullies were quickly cut into unstable hillsides, and large alluvial fans of gritty clay and ash were formed at many places along the Madison, Gibbon, and Firehole. Such fans were visible immediately below Seven Mile Bridge on the Madison, and there was much worse damage at its famous Nine-Mile Hole, which had been the most popular pool.

Schwiebert makes an error here: the great drought and fires were actually in 1988 as he correctly states in Footnote 6; see near the end of this post.
The next 7 paragraphs are faithfully reproduced in full by Vertigo … I highlight a few key lines. Following this, I start to quote the paragraphs that are excluded from Vertigo's work.

Nine-Mile lay just below the highway, in a beautiful corridor of primeval lodgepoles and ponderosas …
It was a striking place with secrets. There was a crystalline springhead pond across the water, about a quarter mile beyond the river, and completely hidden behind a dense screen of intervening conifers.
Large brown trout were known to enter this minor lodgepole tributary in October to mate and lay their eggs …
I once caught a good fish in the little pond itself … a handsome five-pound hen that had apparently spawned and wintered, and then elected to stay.
The cold spillages of the crystalline creek entered the river in the uppermost shallows at Nine-Mile …
It was a spring-hole worth knowing. Large trout often gathered there in hot weather, basking in its cool temperatures where the ledge rock shelved off into a secret pocket. I could usually count on at least one good fish there, because most anglers simply fished the primary currents of Nine-Mile without covering the pocket below its aquatic weeds.
The fate of Nine-Mile, however, was a terrible surprise.

Compare to page 141 in TToTC with the following words bolded and in red: "Cancer is a terrible word." Boldfaced and redlined text is used within the memoir in only four places, twice in reference to cancer and twice to suggest a warning that something is scalding hot: "DO NOT TOUCH!". The reason for this editorial oddity should be obvious: red for fire, and the red boldface connects cancer to fire.

The fish-filled secret below the weeds was smothered with silt and trash, and the spring-hole itself was gone. I became curious about the fate of the forest pond, and forded the river to inspect it. Dour rivulets of slurry came spilling through the trees, and I was astonished when I reached the tarn.
Its crystalline shallows were completely filled with slurry and trash. A tiny paradise had been destroyed. The outlet was clogged with refuse and silt, and the barrage of trash had raised the water in the lake until its overflows were forced into several braided channels farther downstream. No trout could ascend such gritty rivulets to spawn, and no freshly hatched juveniles would use its spatterdock riches to reach smolting size. Nine-Mile itself had been irrevocably changed, and after dutifully suiting up, I found myself angry and unable to fish.

Compare to "There'll be no paddle up your creek, Just heavy loads and water high."
Consider why Schwiebert was "angry": the full extent of the devastation was perhaps preventable if Forest Service management had actually cared about the ecosystem within their purview instead of trying to score political points.
Schwiebert continues the story as follows, not quoted by Vertigo.

Some ecologists have argued that postfire impacts have largely proved beneficial because natural lightning-strike fires are obviously implicit in our natural forest ecosystems. The science of such truths remains clear. Lodgepole cones do not surrender their seeds without exposure to hot temperatures associated with natural fires, and the argument that ancestral fires have played a substantial role in the ecological history of such forests is sound.
Such apologists further contend that once-dangerous thickets of deadfalls and dry tinder in these lodgepole forests had healthily been purged, and argued that these Yellowstone fires had cleansed its historic forests. The new grasslands created were alleged to have improved bison and elk habitat because both are grazing species, but both bison and elk lacked major predators then and had become much too plentiful before the fires. The ecosystem did not need more bison and elk. Other apologists waxed poetic about the beneficial impacts of the fires on avifauna and their prey within the boundaries of the Yellowstone, but none mentioned their horrendous impact on the famous Yellowstone trout streams.
Some fishing writers have written pieces echoing the doubtful thesis that everything had been improved through the purging of the fires, and that the fishing had also been helped. One reported unusual numbers of larger fish in the Firehole. This was irresponsibly wishful conjecture on the part of observers who lacked a fifty-year perspective on the Yellowstone and its fisheries, and were not competent to pass such judgment. The truth is much less felicitous. Several key tributaries had become so choked with postfire sedimentation, ash, and charred debris that their fish, including large trout that had never seen anglers, had been displaced from their headwaters to find refuge in the Firehole itself.
Such fish were not a happy portent.

Compare the above paragraphs to Fenn on page 141 of TToTC where he follows up the redlined and bolded "Cancer is a terrible word" with "The disease it defines represents nature in its most repellent form."

Fires also ravaged the hillsides along the lower Gibbon. Steeper slopes had quickly eroded, forming labyrinthine networks of raw gullies and wounds leaving the narrow highway below Gibbon Falls buried under great alluvial fans of mud, gritty precipitates, and trash. Heavy equipment had cleared the right-of-way, leaving great windrows of marl in many places, and the Gibbon became choked with waist-deep strata of raw sediments and ash. The great beauty of the box canyon below the Gibbon Falls had been charred and scarified by fire, leaving a river littered with postfire trash and mud winding through cemeteries of charred lodgepoles. I did not attempt to fish, and decided to investigate the fire damage along the Firehole.
The fires had decimated its remarkable lodgepole forests in many places between the Cascades of the Firehole and the Fountain Flats above Nez Perce Creek. I turned south on the old freight road toward Ojo Caliente, and found more fire damage there, but worse burns had overwhelmed the shores of Goose Lake. Its trees had been killed in fires of such temperature and intensity that their fire-seared trunks looked like they had been coated with shiny black lacquer. Fire had smoldered in the great mattresses of dead needles that once carpeted the entire forest floor, and when I used a tire iron to root deep into the burned earth, I found that fire had festered into its thick mattresses of pine needles to depths of eight and ten inches. Goose Lake was now encircled with skeletal lodgepoles that had been killed and charred by fire, although damselflies were still emerging from its shallow margins, swimming ashore to climb the blackened deadfalls and split their nymphal skins.
The scars were much worse beyond the lake.

Compare to cancer as above and to the poem words "Tarry scant": the word tarry could also mean covered by tar in addition to its more common interpretation of delay.

I reached the river and simply sat in the car, staring at its crippled forests with tears in my eyes, remembering the circling seasons I had enjoyed in these uncommon meadows. There were decades of happy memories from this place. I had shared a number of wonderful picnics at Feather Lake with old friends like the late John Hemingway, the late John Daniel Callaghan, and Bud Lilly. I particularly remember awakening from a post-lunch nap on the lodgepole bench at Feather to find Hemingway looking upstream toward the geyser plumes at Midway.
"Know what's wrong with this place?" Hemingway said with a sigh.
"No," I confessed.
"We don't own it," he said.
The narrow trace and cul-de-sac were no longer sheltered in a theatrical corridor of lodgepoles and big ponderosas, and a place of remarkable beauty had been utterly sacrificed and lost. The Firehole still flowed under the fire-blackened bench, a glittering necklace of bright water, with great billows of steam still rising from the geyser basin upstream. I had shared this place with a long parade of people across more than fifty years, and the morning was filled with echoes. I left the car and was surprised by the silence. There were no birds, no brash camp robbers arrived to beg for table scraps, and no skittish chipmunks scuttled across the forest floor. There was nothing for buzzards to scavenge, and no voles to interest circling hawks. The pale September sky was empty. Wind stirred in the blackened snags, which groaned and creaked. The meadow had offered some remarkable sport over the years, and I had hoped to fish, but there was no thought of fishing now.
I drove slowly back along the washboard trace toward Ojo Caliente, through its fire-scarred mausoleum of trees, as a big storm was starting to gather and build along the Pitchstone Ridge. Its conifers had also been ravaged as the wildfires crossed into the Firehole watershed, leaving its summits a raw wasteland of charred earth and gritty ash. The sun had quickly surrendered to an ominous gunmetal sky, and as the storm finally broke along its battlements, immense clouds of loose soil and ash billowed high into the darkening gloom. Such spiraling squalls of silt and windmilling ash would eventually reach the little Firehole itself, and further despoil its hyaline currents. I suddenly understood how profoundly its watershed had been changed.
And it utterly broke my heart.

😪
Footnote 6 on page 735 is revealing. It reads:

There is much credible evidence that these fires had begun outside Yellowstone Park, in the Absaroka headwaters of the Yellowstone in the Shoshone National Forest, and in the Teton National Forest north of Jackson Hole. The fires were fought on national forest tracts, but firefighters were withdrawn once the fires entered the national park itself. The fires were permitted to burn inside the national park for short-term political purposes, because 1988 was an election year. Our natural-fire policy had actually emerged under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and was based on sound forest science, but its application became a regional political issue when both Nathaniel Pryor Reed and Cecil Andrus refused to extinguish a number of controversial fires on federal land. Political opponents fought the Yellowstone fires aggressively outside the national park because the blazes had apparently begun in campfires and lightning strikes on the national forests. Firefighters had been deployed while these fires were still burning on tracts of commercial saw timber, but were stopped once the fires had crossed into Yellowstone. Some of the worst damage occurred on the Firehole and Thoroughfare, and these fires were not fought until they threatened park installations at Canyon and Fishing Bridge, and the historic art sauvage hotel located at Old Faithful. Andrus was no longer Secretary of the Interior when I met him, but during an interview in his office at Boise, I sought his opinion of the Yellowstone fires. Andrus still believed that the bipartisan natural-fire policy had been supported by good science, and pointed out that more than twenty petrified forests within park boundaries suggest that Yellowstone had survived worse destruction, although that perspective is little comfort to anglers who will never again enjoy the pristine Madison and Firehole of recent memory. He agreed that Yellowstone itself was not large enough to protect its aggregate ecosystem, and further conceded that a zealotry that had continued to advocate natural-fire policy in the worst drought summer in recorded history had perhaps been unwise. But he shook his head over the political tactics of appointees in the Forest Service, who had protected tracts of commercial saw timber while later permitting the Yellowstone itself to burn, and had further attempted to discredit the Carter Administration during the election of 1980.

From TToTC page 26: "One day my father gave me a spanking at school for running across some stupid desks, then that night he gave me a spanking at home because I got a spanking at school. The more I thought about that the more I felt put upon. When I explained to him that I'd been double jeopardized he told me that those things didn't count in a dictatorship. That's when I started to mistrust governments."
From TToTC page 147: "Now I feel that my father is sitting on the edge of a cloud somewhere watching. If he knows everything about me he's pretty busy lighting candles, some of them on both ends. But I hope he knows that I've been sometimes guilty only by innuendo, and that's why I wrote my epitaph with such profundity: I wish I could have lived to do, the things I was attributed to."
In 2009, the FBI raided Fenn and several other art dealers – and alleged looters – of Native American artifacts in the Southwest. The raid resulted in the confiscation of just four items from Fenn (none of which could be proven as having been obtained by him illicitly).
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2009/08/19/stealing-the-past/
This was more than just a nuisance … Fenn's reputation had been impugned and two other dealers who were arrested after the raids committed suicide. These guys were likely people he knew or may have even been his friends. A third man arrested in the case also committed suicide; he was a government informant who essentially helped the federal agents entrap the Four Corners dealers.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/dealer-blame-fbi-for-seller-suicides-in-four-corners-looting-case/article_f8613507-1b71-513a-ba21-43a6b0622c0b.html
Fenn was supposedly very angry and threatened Tony Dokoupil with legal action when the reporter spoke with old "pothunting" acquaintances and revealed some unsavory information about Fenn's artifact-collecting past, for example: "... Fenn wasn't just taking a treasure or two but returning to caves and stripping them clean …" In the end, the publicity of appearing in Newsweek magazine at such an early stage in the treasure hunt must have overridden Fenn's desire to keep some of those things that he "was attributed to" under wraps.
https://www.newsweek.com/forrest-fenn-wants-you-find-his-treasure-and-his-bones-64427
The FBI raids – based on purchases of artifacts by a government informant using government money to entice dealers to specifically sell him contraband, and which were conducted by multi-agency SWAT teams – were highly controversial for many locals. No doubt Fenn was pissed off at the Feds more than ever at that point. Despite the epitaph he wrote for himself, he certainly did not want to be remembered as "the old guy in Santa Fe raided by the FBI".
Less than a year later, he published his memoir with its treasure hunt poem. Little chance the timing was just a coincidence.
Finally, does anybody find it intriguing that Fenn rarely if ever talked about the 1988 fire in Yellowstone? It happened the same year he got cancer (or did it?), and he talked plenty about that personal ordeal. The fire and its aftereffects utterly destroyed some of his most cherished places where he had fished for trout and melded with nature since he was a young boy, including his (probably) favorite fishing hole at TOP SECRET "Nine-Mile" and not to mention the magical wood on the far bank of the river with its secluded crystal pond to which he would have gone alone and sat under pine trees, napping, daydreaming, watching wildlife, marveling at the mountain and river vistas, and writing poems or love notes to his wife. Yet not a peep from him about the conflagration that ravaged all of that? Curious.

PC

Character Name and House: Perianne "Peri" Darry
Age: 21
Appearance: Perianne's ingenue appearance - with her round freckled cheeks and soft blue eyes, the wispy fly-aways of her red hair and her tender smile - give the impression of a lady as mild as milk. In truth, her features bely a mind as caustic as lye and a tongue which can be as sharp as the crack of a whip.
Gift: Gossiper
Skills: Cautious (E), Espionage, Subtle, Assassin
Talent(s): Dancing, Embroidery, Mummery
Starting Title(s): Heir to Darry, if only because her lord brother has not had any children yet.
Starting Location: King's Landing

Timeline

182 - Mortymer Darry is born, firstborn son and heir to Lord Dalton Darry and his wife.
186-189 - Perianne Darry is born, secondborn child and first daughter to Lord Dalton Darry and his wife. Her birth is fraught with complications - namely, she is premature. For the first few years of her life, she is quick to come down with cough and fever. Her fretful, anxious parents coddle her greatly.
190 - Darlessa Darry is born, thirdborn child and second daughter of Lord Dalton Darry and his wife. She is a healthy, boisterous babe, much like her brother. By virtue of being an infant, she demands more care than her elder sister, who finds herself suddenly bereft of the attention she once took for granted. Neither do the servants pay her attention; it is well known among them that Perianne was not spoiled sweet, and is in fact a massive brat.
195 - Darlessa passes away at the age of 5 in an unexpected accident, when trying to mount a pony. It is an open secret that Perianne is at fault for the incident - unprompted and unsupervised, she attempted to give Darlessa her first riding lesson. Despite Perianne's protests, the unkind rumor persists among castle inhabitants that Darlessa's accident was no accident at all. Lord and Lady Darry have no further children.
197 - Among family, there are always those who get along like oil and water. Damon Darry, Perianne's eldest cousin, taunts her with the aforementioned rumor in the way children do - poking at a sore spot because it gets a reaction. And then he does it again. And again. Look, ma, Peri's face gets as red as her hair!
198 - Perianne takes shears to Damon's hair in a most unladylike fashion and is sent away to become Lady in Waiting to Lady Piper, since she clearly is not learning grace at home. She questionably gains the ability to keep a lid on her temper.
203 - Lord Dalton Darry dies in the bandit ambush outside of Oldstones, along with several other prominent Riverlanders. Mortymer ascends to lordship, and Perianne returns home to aid her brother in his new duties.

AC

Character Name and House: Mortymer "Morty" Darry
Age: 25
Appearance: The hairline to his short brown hair is already beginning to recede, though that doesn't seem to bother him any. Portly and personable, with a perpetual ruddy flush to his face and warm brown eyes, Morty is the opposite to his sister in most ways. For one, he's no delicate lady, and certainly no dashing, handsome knight. But his open smile is a genuine one, without guile or pretense.
Gift: Diplomat
Skills: Courtly, Architect, Strategist
Flaws: Obese, Cowardly
Talent(s): Singing, Debate, being a soft boi
Starting Title(s): Lord of Darry. he's single laaadieeees
Starting Location: King's Landing
Family Tree:

• Lord Dalton Darry
  [m]. Lady Darry
  
  • Lord Mortymer Darry
  • Perianne Darry
  • Darlessa Darry
• Emmet Darry, younger brother to Dalton
  [m]. Amarei Frey
  
  • Damon Darry
  • Danelle Darry
  • two other kids I haven't named yet
• Adeline Darry, younger sister to Dalton
  [m]. Lord Paege
  

Hello everyone,
We have started basement reno's and found some mold in a localized area of the laundry room. Thankfully it didn't spread to far. However, it's caused by a vertical crack in the foundation wall. We tested this theory by running water through a garden hose right by the crack and ended up with a puddle within minutes. It has been raining really hard for the past 2 days and none of that water is going into the basement. The grading of the yard is thankfully away from the house. I think it's mainly an issue when it snows and there is stagnant water closer to the foundation.
The contractor said I have 2 options (he wouldn't be doing this job; I would be hiring a company that specializes in this) :

1. Fill the crack from the inside with a polyurethane injection or an epoxy injection I guess?
2. Do the repair from the outside. This would require us moving the deck and digging down to expose the problem area and they'd patch it from the outside (i'm not sure if they'd do the exact same thing they'd do on the inside or if they'd do more steps but it did sound more encompassing). This is obviously going to cost roughly double if not more.

Also, I'm in Eastern Canada and the inside fix was quoted around $600ish dollars. Does that sound reasonable?
My questions to everyone with experience with this is: is option 1 good enough and will it provide a sufficient seal from water damage to the newly renovated basement suite or do these fail?
Is option 2 worth doing even with much higher upfront cost and will it even give me any added benefit or will it give me the same results?
Thank you so much for reading and any insight you can provide!

A strong gust of wind blows past Raya and Kita as they walk beneath the darkening sky. The stars beading the darkened edges, like the inside of a snow globe being covered for storage.
Their attention is shifted to the myst. Kita instinctively tries to deduce where the myst will be coming from, but the brick wall of her knowledge stops her in the process.
"Where's it coming from?" Kita asks Raya.
"It'll blow from the South," Raya answers.
"How do you know that?"
"Thunderstorms often accompany the myst,"
"So the winds suggest a thunderstorm?"
"Sure," Raya responds before pointing to the sky- in the same direction the wind came from.
Kita turns around to look up at dark, distant clouds with strobes of lightning casting menacing, white flashes on the shadowy surface below.
"So you use your eyes?" Kita shrugs, realizing the technique is not all that impressive.
"Sure, but that only works when it's too late. We won't be escaping the myst's path,"
"How do the cities escape it?"
"I'm not certain. A combination of weather analysis and the alignment of the stars,"
Kita's eyebrow raises, "How the hell would the alignment of the stars determine where the myst flows?"
"I'm no observer. I don't understand the ways of the beads in the sky," Raya chuckles.
Kita wouldn't consider herself 'unintelligent' but she knows she's not the brightest flame in the fire. Using the stars to guide the motion of a 'sandstorm' is a truly unintelligent design.
"So how long do we have?" Kita asks.
"Not long. I see a good place for shelter,"
Raya points ahead of her, at the base of a mountain with a small cave entrance at its base. Small lights radiate from deep inside the cave as the surrounding fog of the impending myst slowly starts to limit their vision.
"Ah, I'd love to camp in a cave with strangers all around me," Kita sighs, and Raya just laughs- Thinking Kita's joking, but she wasn't.
No, those people are probably poor and smelly. Ugh, she'd rather sleep in the myst than deal with the pungent smell her mind is imagining much too vividly.
"Can't we just camp out here," Kita groans.
"Are you worried they'll steal the coin you no longer have?" Raya's sarcasm has Kita rolling her eyes.
"Not all of us had servants to bring beautiful men and women to the bedroom in our castle, your Heiness,"
Raya chuckles, "Our tipi isn't strong enough. The myst is quite forceful,"
"Have you ever seen anyone get consumed by the myst?" Kita finds herself curious about watching someone die in such a horrific way. Maybe she could cast a spell that does something similar.
"I have," Raya responds, to Kita's surprise. "It's quite gruesome,"
"Oh yeah? Was it a friend of yours? Family maybe?" Kita chuckles, "Some of your citizens?"
"No…"
"Who then?"
"You," Raya responds, passing a smug smile to Kita.
"Seriously?" Kita asks in awe.
"Indeed," Raya responds. "I couldn't get to you in time, but when the myst passed. I found your… mangled body in the dirt,"
"How'd I get caught in it?"
"You didn't want to sleep in a cave with people 'lesser' than yourself, and opted to challenge the myst,"
"Haha, very funny," Kita replies, thinking Raya is messing with her.
"That's the true story," Raya chuckles.
"Huh…" Kita grunts, surprisingly unsurprised that she'd have done something so stupid. "What'd it do to me?"
"It melted away most of your skin and muscle. So much of it had deteriorated by the morning, I could see the beat of your heart through the gaps in your ribcage. Your body used over three hundred souls to stay alive throughout a single night,"
"Woah, that's pretty gross," Kita chuckles.
"It was," Raya laughs.
Ahead of Kita, the cave entrance peaks at the same size as one of those villain office doors. It tunnels deep into the cave. The walls tighten as they travel further in, following with light as they shuffle sideways through the cracks.
As Kita pokes her head out the final portion of the slender hallway. She stumbles out into a gargantuan sight. From her elevated position, she witnesses the largest cave she's ever seen- as far as she knows. Much wider than the canyon, an entire city expands amongst an isolated biome of glowing rivers and tipis scattered amongst this seemingly subsurface world.
At the cave's ceiling, dozens of large, circular tents hang suspended on chains as though they're the eggs of some gargantuan beast. All interconnected with walkways. Their only connection to the ground are long, steel wires that lead up to platforms amongst the orb-shaped homes. She can see a figure in the distance, smaller than the tip of her finger, scaling up one of these wires rapidly. With some sort of connection at their waist.
"This isn't as small as you made it seem," Kita responds. Staring into the naturally illuminated glows of purple and sapphire, coupled with the accenting glow of orange lights scattered in homes and pathways throughout the city.
"It's grown a lot since I was last here," Raya says, with an expression as perplexed as Kita's.
"When was that?" Kita chuckles," When they'd just found it?"
"... Yeah," Raya stammers.
Kita raises both her eyebrows as she whistles in shock, "Alright then, Grandma,"
Raya chuckles, rolling her eyes to look at Kita, "You're older than I am,"
At the far end of the city, a large stairway leads up to a marketplace, occupying a low, but large platform of what was probably once a gigantic boulder. With streams of people walking towards it.
"Food," Kita commands, seeing the marketplace.
"I'll set up the tipi," Rays adds. "Bring something back for me,"
"Where you thinking of setting up?"
"Over there," Raya points at a lesser occupied part of the common area. Beside the glowing lake.
"Alright," Kita nods, then heads down the pathway that leads to the marketplace.
•°•°•°•
Kita slouches over as she makes it up the last step to the marketplace, huffing heavily thanks to her poor stamina. When she raises her head she is greeted by an expansive marketplace. Stalls and stands with food and different ornaments on sale, alongside tipi's selling clothes, weapons, and all the goodies Kita could imagine. It'll be tough for Kita not to spend all of this coin.
Maybe I should have been the one to set up the tent.
She slowly walks past the plethora of stalls selling all sorts of useful items- Making her contemplate a future in which she settles down and decorates a really cute tipi with all of this useless crap she could collect. Figurines and hanging sculptures made of polished stone. With glowing liquid from the lake, flowing in all directions through the stone.
And…
Kita steps up to the table of a stall that catches her attention. And gently places her hands on a… bird. A polished dark stone accents with a purple liquid glow, flowing among its spread wings. It's shaped like that obnoxious one she'd met.
Rayn.
"Many dream of soaring the skies," Says a young, dark-skinned man with short white dreadlocks. He has an amalgamation of turquoise and white robes draped across his body.
"I'm not the dreaming type," Kita responds.
"You gaze at this piece with the eyes of one," He smiles.
"Did you make it?" She asks.
"I did," He nods.
She lifts the piece closer to her face. Casting a soft purple light into her nose as she watches this liquid flow amongst the fine details and patterns of the sculptures.
"What is that stuff?" She asks. "It flows thicker than water,"
"Most believe it stems from the depths of the cave," He lifts a larger one of his sculptures. "It does hydrate us. Some believe it does more,"
"More being…"
"We call it, Vhifet. The next life source. We see it as our world's message to us. One of future abundance. A world better than the one of the old humans. If one is to drink Vhifet, their soul will rejoin our world when the time is right, and they will be chosen to experience the era of Vhifet."
"Hmm," Kita mumbles, in an interested way. "The last thing I would want is to come back here,"
"You're not of faith?" He asks.
"The way of gods is not my concern," She responds.
"I do not mean faith in god. Do you have faith in a good future?"
"I'm not so sure I'll have one," She drops her eye contact. Taken aback by the numbness of her missing soul. Incompleteness trickles through her like an itch she cannot reach. "All that exists is now,"
"Yes, but you are not designed to only perceive now. You need not work for your future but you must believe in it,"
Kita glances up at the guy. He's got a way with words. If Kita was any more downtrodden, she'd have been converted right on the spot. Drinking the slime water and whatever other weird ritual they probably have to get a taste of that faith. But, no faith will get her soul back. To her knowledge, most faiths require their participants to have souls anyway. She's not exactly suited for the lifestyle. The religious system is rigged against the soulless.
"How much for this?" Kita asks, holding up the little Rayn statue. Trying to ignore the idiotic ramblings of her mind.
"Twenty-one coin," He smiles.
"Is a meal included? She asks, raising an eyebrow at the price.
The man laughs, raising his hand to his chest as his head leans back. "Since we had a lovely conversation, I can give it to you for Fifteen,"
Kita chuckles at the man's animated behaviour. "Alright, Fifteen it is,"
She swings her backpack around to her front and reaches in to grab some coin out of a pouch.
"Here you go," She says, taking her hand out from the bag and reaching out to him with fifteen coin in her hand. "Fifteen coin,"
The man reaches his hand out to collect the coin. And in doing so, his fingers collide with Kita's. Inducing a sudden lapse in Kita's vision. She can't see anything, or even feel her body anymore.
There is only darkness.
^{AUTHOR'S NOTES
Read ahead on RoyalRoad [https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68702/soul-stealer-anti-hero-reincarnation-fantasy](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68702/soul-stealer-anti-hero-reincarnation-fantasy})
^{Kita's thoughts - Post Chapter 14
"B-I-R-D,"}

Hi, I'm new to this sub, I usually just lurk and don't post but I think this is one of the few places where I can talk about this with people who understand me, since if I said this to my family I'm sure a fight would start. Also before anyone says to "just move out" just know that it's been a long process, but I'll finally be out of here in a few months.
I come from a line of hoarders. My mom was a hoarder, my moms mom is a hoarder, and my moms moms mom was a hoarder as well. I'm definetly not exempt from this, up until a few years ago my room or any space I occupied was a nightmare, just a mess of things I refuse to get rid of for some arbitrary reason or another. After it hit me that I've been following in my moms footsteps (who's habits caused a lot of problems for me growing up) I've been trying really hard to get better, and have been learning to let things go.
My recovery hasn't been linear. I usually end up relapsing and I'll go through a period of buying or keeping way too many things, then after a few months to a year of doing that, I'll have a moment of clarity and start trying to clean and get rid of stuff. Which results in a few days spent hauling things out of my room in trash bags either for the garbage, or the Goodwill across town. Which all sounds really great, and it feels really great too, but only for a while. Because every single time I get in this groove, and try to make what little living space I have in this home bearable, my grandmother tries to get involved.
It's like the idea of me getting rid of anything scares her. As soon as she sees me taking the first garbage bag of clothes that don't even fit out to my car, she's up and heading to my room to inspect it while I'm not looking. This isn't exactly new to me, she's been sneaking into my room to look through my stuff and poke around my whole life. Whenever I was at school, or work, or at a friends house, I could always expect her to have something from my room on the table or hear stories from my mom about catching her looking through my things with the lights off in an attempt to not be caught. I honestly think that's a huge part of why I hold onto things for longer than I should. Because I want to have things that are mine and mine alone, that no one can touch.
That's already a problem, but it takes on a different face whenever I'm trying to clean. Specifically, she sneaks into my room with a measuring tape, in an effort to get measurements for projects she'll only admit she has in mind when I walk down the hall and catch her in the act. The "project" always has something to do with putting some big, bulky piece of furniture in my room. For a while it was a closet, then it was a dresser, and this time, it's a 2nd bed/a bigger bed.
I barely have enough space to walk around in my room as is, I've told her politely for years that I don't want any new furniture in my room and I can manage perfectly fine with what I already have. But still, every time she sees me making progress and clearing out my room a bit, is coincidentally the time she absolutely needs to figure out where a new dresser is going to go in there. Once I even caught her about to buy a huge dresser for my room and I spent a long time trying to nicely tell her that I didn't want it, and have told her that many times, and that I didn't appreciate her trying to force one into my room behind my back.
It's not just hypothetical furniture either. She tends to try and convince me that she should buy things for me around the same time I clean. New clothes, new mini shelves, a new light, ect. I always tell her no thank you, but I usually have to tell her that for at least a month afterwards since she never takes no as an answer the first, second, third, or fourth time.
Last year, I was cleaning up around November, because it was the holiday season and my room tends to get really cluttered around that time of the year and I wanted to get a jump start on it. While I was cleaning she kept pulling me aside and asking if I wanted a small Christmas tree for my room. I told her no thank you, and although I appreciated it, we already have a Christmas tree and I don't have space for one. This went on all month, her pulling me aside to show me tiny Christmas trees or asking me repeatedly if I wanted one and me telling her no thank you. Then, about a week before Christmas, she came into my room and handed me an almost 2 foot tall wall mounted Christmas tree. That one could be attributed to her memory starting to go in her old age, but the rest don't really get that benifit of the doubt.
It doesn't stop at this either. When she either can't or doesn't want to get up and go to my room or get on her laptop to find store pages for me to look at, she tries to tell me how I should be cleaning, which is coincidentally always in a way where I would end up keeping most of what I'm trying to throw away. "Oh, I can't get rid of those old clothes, what if one of my nieces who never visits and lives a hundred miles away could wear them? Why would I ever give away random jewelry when my siblings or friends might want it? Why on Earth would I ever get rid of old, stained, broken toys when they might be valuable and I could sell them on eBay?!"
Luckily I've been getting better at dismissing these comments. I was actually in the middle of cleaning today, and every time I passed my grandma in the Livingroom she asked what I was getting rid of. I just responded that I was getting rid of stuff I don't use and don't want. She said that I should try and see if my niece (the one who lives a hundred miles away, doesn't visit, and is at least a decade younger than me) would want any of the clothes I might get rid of. I told her that I would rather get rid of them now instead of waiting (+ I'm in my 20s, I doubt a 10 year old would get any use out of my clothing) then she started asking about the books I got rid of (our Livingroom is basically full of old books from childhood which I went through and donated about a week ago) I reassured her I only got rid of things that I know belonged to me and were bought for me. Nothing that my siblings owned or anything that was passed down to us from our mother. She then went on to say that some of those books were probably valuable and snarkily added that it was "too late now"
Then she kept asking me if I was "getting rid of anything good" and I admit, I got kind of upset. Wtf do you mean "anything good"? Anything that's still functional? Anything that someone could like? because there are perfectly good reasons to get rid of things in both those categories. I might be reading too much into it at this point but it kind of felt like a last ditch effort to guilt me by suggesting I'm getting rid of things that shouldn't be gotten rid of, or I didn't have good judgement. As if they aren't my things and I'm not the one deciding if I should keep it or not.
I just snapped at her and said that I was getting rid of anything that I didn't want anymore and that was that, and if I thought anything was worth keeping or know someone who could use it/wanted it I would ask. But aside from that, I didn't want to hold onto all this stuff because someone "might" use it or I "could" give it to some distant relatives. The stuff I'm getting rid of is my stuff and I want it gone. End of story. She hasn't spoken to me and I haven't spoken to her since.
I'm just trying to clean up and do better for myself, but it feels like she really doesn't want me to, and she keeps doing whatever she can to set me back and make sure my room stays cluttered constantly. I understand it might not be malicious but it really feels that way sometimes. She grew up dirt poor with a huge family, so maybe she's just stuck in the mindset of keeping everything since everything was so hard to come by when she grew up. But it still sucks. I feel like I'm doing well for myself by doing this, and it isn't healthy to keep everything you ever get or have ever owned. But then she'll do things like this and I lose the motivation a bit. I feel like it's not worth it anymore and I'm not doing a good thing at all. Both because she makes it seem like it isn't worth doing and I'm doing it wrong anyway, but also because it makes things tense for months afterwards and the emotional burden doesn't seem worth it. I just hate it.
I just don't understand why she's so concerned with my things, things I bought myself or was gifted, things that aren't even hers to begin with. Why does it matter so much to her that I'm getting rid of shirts that don't fit me, or decorations I'll never put up. Why does it matter so much? Why does it bother her so much? Why does knowing I'll have less crap in my room set her on such edge? Whenever I do this, I only ever organize or rearrange or throw out things that are mine. Unlike her I don't poke around peoples rooms. I don't go through stuff that isn't mine or move it to places that I forget and will never be able to find again (she did that throughout my whole childhood and I think it's another reason I hoard, because if I didn't keep an eye on everything I owned growing up it would be moved somewhere I could never find it) even at my worst, I wasn't ever worried about what the people in my life did with the stuff they owned. Neither was my mom, who is always supportive when I go through my cleaning sprees, and has always left things that belonged to me alone. Like I said, I know it could come from how my grandma grew up, but it's so hard to understand it when it gets this bad.
It just sucks. It all sucks. If you made it to the end of this long ass vent then thanks for reading. I'm glad to know I'm not alone

Hello everyone,
We have started basement reno's and found some mold in a localized area of the laundry room. Thankfully it didn't spread to far. However, it's caused by a vertical crack in the foundation wall. We tested this theory by running water through a garden hose right by the crack and ended up with a puddle within minutes. It has been raining really hard for the past 2 days and none of that water is going into the basement. The grading of the yard is thankfully away from the house. I think it's mainly an issue when it snows and there is stagnant water closer to the foundation. I've tried attaching a picture here so hopefully that worked.
The contractor said I have 2 options (he wouldn't be doing this job; I would be hiring a company that specializes in this) :

1. Fill the crack from the inside with a polyurethane injection or an epoxy injection I guess?
2. Do the repair from the outside. This would require us moving the deck and digging down to expose the problem area and they'd patch it from the outside (i'm not sure if they'd do the exact same thing they'd do on the inside or if they'd do more steps but it did sound more encompassing). This is obviously going to cost roughly double if not more.

Also, I'm in Eastern Canada and the inside fix was quoted around $600ish dollars. Does that sound reasonable?
My questions to everyone with experience with this is: is option 1 good enough and will it provide a sufficient seal from water damage to the newly renovated basement suite or do these fail?
Is option 2 worth doing even with much higher upfront cost and will it even give me any added benefit or will it give me the same results?
​
Thank you so much for reading and any insight you can provide!

Unpacking the Light Police. Light Pollution News.
Show Link: https://lightpollutionnews.com/podcast/unpacking-the-light-police/
Subscribe: Apple Podcast Spotify Google Podcast
Social: Instagram LinkedIn
Guests:
John Barentine of Dark Sky Consulting, LLC.
Kaitlyn Evans, Conservationist.
Show:
I was busted by the light police. They had a point, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
Dana Milbank purchased a home in, soon to be not, rural Virginia. At night he kept the formerly vacant property lit to the degree that spurned one commentator to call it “spaceship lighting.”
Milbank recaps being visited by the “light police,” a group of concerned citizens who help educate neighbors and instill a sense of pride in the brilliance of their starry night skies.
At first, he was taken aback, but later, not only did he appreciate their efforts, but he also converted his blinding always on, white light flood lights to warm 2700 Kelvin motion sensing lights.
Per Ruskin Hartley, executive director of the International Dark Sky Association, “for 4.5 billion years there was no artificial light at night. It’s really only in the last five human generations that we transformed that. It’s one of the most profound transformations of our environment.”
Many of you may recall an earlier story, way back in our Hormone of Darkness episode, showcasing concerns by local residents prior to a 760 house (now 761) plus town center development moving into the Culpepper County, VA area. Per the Rappahannock News, this development features “a resort style swimming pool, clubhouse, tot lot, and multiple sports fields and sports courts, all connected by a network of biking and walking trails.”
The forgotten medieval habit of ‘two sleeps’ by Zaria Gorvett of the BBC.
Gorvett opened my eyes to something I never knew about, the medieval custom of two sleeps. For those of you unaware, two sleeps are exactly what it sounds like.
Folks would partake in a communal nap, complete with rigid sleeping arrangement conventions, between 9 – 11pm, then awaken for a few hours to do everything from hang out to brew beer! In fact, the idea of multiple sleeps crossed cultures and was found in places as far from Europe as indigenous South America.
How can one’s circadian rhythm make sense of all of this?!
Well, for starters, until the invention of the alarm clock, which humorously was invented by a clocks salesman so he could wake up and sell more clocks, people had no firm way to wake up at a consistent time. The industrial revolution enforced a new circadian standard.
And there’s some science behind this! In the 1992 study, In Short Photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic, researcher Thomas Wehr found that after four weeks of 10 hour days, his subjects began to engage in this two sleep cycle, involving a one to three hour period for which they became awake and engaged in between.
Want to Learn About Light Pollution? There’s a mini-course for that!, Jennifer Sensiba of Clean Technica.
Quoting Sensiba, “As I got older, I traveled a lot more and saw the problem more for what it is. Not only did I see that in many places there is no refuge from it, but I also saw that it was slowly growing worse. Places that had been dark 30 years ago had more and more light creeping upon the horizon.”
If you’re interested in learning more, or more importantly, know someone who might benefit from learning more, Sensiba links up to an International Dark Sky Mini-Course on light pollution, call it Light Pollution 101!
There’s a Play Date at the National Museum of Natural History: Lights Out exhibit!
But unfortunately, by the time you listen to this, and hell, by the time we talk about this, it has passed.
Ann Arbor named best place for sunrises, sunsets in Michigan. Sarah Parlette for Click on Detroit.
Evidently gambling websites have decided to honor April’s International Dark Sky week in a strange new content marketing campaign, which was to rank the best places in each state to see sunrises and sunsets. My favorite one, “Ann Arbor named best place for sunrises, sunsets in Michigan,” comes from Click on Detroit, whereby a quote “study” examined Michigan’s most populated cities.”
According to Click on Detroit, “to celebrate International Astrology Day on Saturday, staff at Great Lake Stakes, a Michigan online gambling news site, looked at light pollution in the five most populated cities around the Mitten state to determine which offers the best views every morning and evening.”
Star bathing is the new outdoor travel trend we should all be trying for Summer 2023, according to Amy Beecham at Stylist.
Evidently, as an attempt to destress and promote mindfulness, romanticism about sleeping under the stars has birthed a 70% increase in searches for the term ‘star bathing’ on Hipcamp. And to be sure, “Hipcamp recommends checking a stargazing calendar which outlines major astrological events – like supermoons, pink moons, and star showers.”
“Industry Must Face an Inconvenient Truth — Most LED Lights at Night are Unhealthy”
Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, a circadian clock expert, recently published an article in LEDs Magazine chastising the lighting industry for not recognizing and reigning in the negative externalities of its products. Per the piece, such effects are, obesity, diabetes, depression, cancer, and more.
He cites three categories of industry responses, making the correlation that long term Denial or outright Ignorance of the Facts, may result in “asbestos-scale liabilities or draconian regulations.”
Per the piece, a recent survey by the Circadian Light Research Center of 2,697 peer reviewed scientific articles confirmed that human circadian clocks are highly sensitive to blue wavelengths, and that exposure to such wavelengths leads to major health disorders.
Moore-Ede calls for the industry to harvest the “commercial opportunity” to greatly limit future liability by creating and managing its own standards for circadian modulated lighting.
Unpacking the Wallpack, by Dan Weissman in LD+A Magazine.
Weissman, who recently purchased a telescope for his family in Cambridge, MA, discovered that the scope could only afford him views of some solar system objects and a few brightly burning stars.
The ire of Weissman’s pen takes the shape of a rectangular fixtures, be it box like or simply a panel these days, that typically hang off the side of an exterior wall or above an exterior door. “Devoid of aesthetic value” this light is often put up under the “pretense of security and safety” by “recommended practices and adopted municipal codes.”
Weissman recognizes labels that often accompany, what he calls, “Glare bombs,” including “contractor-select,” “energy efficient,” or “light pollution friendly.”
Further, per an earlier LD+A article, such lighting driven by its extreme contrasts is exceedingly common in minority communities where light is weaponized as a tool of power. It becomes a “device of alienation, creating a zone of control and separation.”
Weissman recognizes that the true reason such fixtures are selected often comes down to cost. He recognizes that it may take equally as much cost to persuade building and homeowners away from such lighting into the realm of more responsible, lower lumen, shielded lighting.
Weissman calls for producers of these glare bombs to be labeled as polluters, putting them in line with fossil fuel manufacturers and PFAS makers.
Songbirds, dusk and clear skies: Scientists explore migratory flights, by Erin Blakemore.
Bird migration season is ending here in the Mid-Atlantic. I was lucky enough to catch several Baltimore Orioles and Indigo Buntings last week. Researchers looked at 400 songbirds from 9 major species, “including the yellow-rump warbler, American redstart and Bicknell’s thrush.”
The question they hoped to answer was how are these birds so darn precise in identifying the best time to take off for their nightly migration? Scientists found that 90% of the migrating birds in the study took off within 69 minutes of dusk. A “much narrower takeoff window,” that even shocked the research team!
Per the study, taking off at night is all about maximum flight time. In addition to being able to precisely schedule their take offs, a feat that every airline I’ve flown with over the past few years has proven inept at, birds also are apparently good meteorologists! They often depart when the atmospheric pressure rises over a day’s span. Other factors also trigger migration, including sex, age, and celestial cues.
‘Lights Out’ initiative appears to be saving birds from crashing into Philly buildings by Sophia Schmidt.
Preliminary results indicate that bird death counts are down 70% at one Market Street tower, since it began its participation in Lights Out. As we spoke about on a previous show, birds utilize the stars to navigate, but city lights can disorient the birds. Combine the lights with reflective or transparent glass, and that spells fatal trouble for our migrating warblers!
Per Keith Russell, a program manager for urban conservation with Audubon Mid-Atlantic, “We’ve lost almost a third of our birds – and [collisions] contributing to that. If we’re going to want to preserve the bird populations here in North America, we have to look at these types of problems. And this is a preventable one.”
The Knoxville, TN Zoo is offering up what they call “Twilight Tours” per WVLT 8. Each event will feature a guide to showcase nocturnal critters.
I did something similar in Singapore years ago. The zoo had very dim lights in the exhibits – and they kept those lights dim as you walked so that you didn’t lose your night vision. It was a very different and, might I say, peaceful experience than the typically chaotic daytime zoo.
Flashlights posing major threat to nesting sea turtles. Fox35 Orlando
Apparently, a single flashlight can deter female sea turtles from coming onto a beach and nesting. Florida, as I did not know, is home to 90% of the sea turtle nests across the world, so losing sea turtles can affect the global ecosystem.
One visitor to Cocoa Beach stated, “Just leave them alone. Stand back and look. You don’t need a flashlight.”
Another, “It’s not super surprising because more buildings go up, more technology. As it increases, nature and stuff like that decreases,” said Zoe Jovaag, whose grandfather used to take her on walks to see sea turtles.
Capture the Dark 2023 officially is under way!
The International Dark Sky Association opens up its annual photo contest complete with prizes across eight categories and an additional People’s Choice category. Voting begins on July 3rd, entries must be received by June 30th.
City Tests Traffic Light That Only Turns Green for Drivers Who Obey the Speed Limit. Erin Marquis for Jalopnik.
And hey, you better not speed in Brossard, Quebec….otherwise you may be waiting around for a while. Brossard is testing out a new traffic light that will stay red until it senses oncoming traffic. However, it will only change to green if the car is going the speed limit. Per the Jalopnik article, “FRED [the French acronym for “educational traffic calming light] forces fast drivers to stop and gives them a chance to reconsider their life choices.” Such lights are already used in Europe, but this will be the first for the Great White North.
Why the Greatest Threat to Star-Gazing Isn’t Light Pollution, and this comes to us from Dorin Elin Urrutia at Inverse.
Elin Urrutia writes, in her compelling piece, that the greatest threat to star-gazing is actually the weather. Citing notable examples of the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia (which burnt down due to bushfires) and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (which sustained structural damage following the winds of Hurricane Maria).
While the threat of human-caused climate change has presented new challenges, Elin Urrutia references proactive burns that saved Los Angeles’ Mount Wilson Observatory from flames in 2020.
On a similar note, ABC News (the Australian Broadcasting Company, not to be confused with the American Broadcasting Company), brings us “A World Without Darkness Could Be a Reality within a Few Years.”
Per Carol Redford of Astrotourism Western Australia, “There are some people in the world now who don’t actually experience darkness anymore. They’re in a city like Beijing, Toyoko, or London. In all those big cities, it’s never dark, it’s always light. During the day of course with the sun, but then during the night with all of the artificial light. They’re not experiencing darkness, and definitely not seeing those beautiful stars…”
In the 66 years since the implementation of the UN Convention on the Peaceful Use of Outerspace, around 11,000 satellites orbit the Earth. But it’s about to get wayyy busier. Driven by innovations that have led to dramatic reductions in costs, over the next ten years, Per attorney Steven Freeland, it’s anticipated that somewhere between 100,000 to 500,000 objects will be sent up. Let me pause on that for a second.
On the travel front, we stay in the land down under, “Aussie region determined to keep its darkness is a stargazer’s dream” by Chantelle Francis of News.com.AU.
The town of Swam Reach, population 270, resides in a 3200sq km region of Southern Australia that received its International Dark Sky Reserve status over three years ago. On a scale of darkness between 0 – 22, the River Murray Dark Sky Reserve at Swam Reach, measures in at a whopping 21.9!
Tourism has become a growing business. The reserve hosts numerous telescope pads and offers tours of the night sky. There’s hope that an observatory and/or planetarium may also arrive in due course.
Best smart lights for outdoors in 2023, Brittney Vincent of CBS Essentials.
Oh there’s a lot not to love here, but it does fall in line with last month’s ‘Lumens are Coming’ article.
For those of you who feel the need to light your trees, because for some reason they need light at night I guess…I’ll try and pretend it’s not solely for ostentatious and narcissistic reasons. By the way, does anyone remember when those were negative characteristics?
The article features spotlights that can be programmed to over 16 MILLION colors including…lucky for us, ALL shades of white….which you can also do for a 500 lumen flood light set.
And hey, Ring now has solar path lighting. Don’t worry though, the fixtures themselves put out up to 80 lumens of sideways light.
You know, it’s astounding when you look at some of these pictures. The amount of redundant lighting. It honestly makes no sense to me. You have a porch light, which lights up the path. Path lighting, which lights up the path. And, in the one picture, god awful frontward facing flood lights, which also light up the path. How bright do you need these paths!? I digress. But the lumens are indeed coming.
LDS Church will get to light up its Heber Valley Temple after all, but the faith didn’t get everything it wanted, Blake Apgar of the Salt Lake Tribune.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fought hard to rid itself of any nighttime lighting responsibility by pressuring Wasatch County, Utah officials to approve new lighting rules that would enable the church to light a proposed new temple the same way it does for every other temple.
The Church received permission to uplight the temple, enabling an exception to be made in Wasatch’s rather stringent nighttime lighting rulebook. However, the temple will be restricted by the level of lumens it can use, and it must have exterior lighting turned off an hour after sunset or an hour after normal business hours.
Smart Street Lights Market is Expected to Hit USD 14,751.1 million at a 23.4% CAGR by 2030, Market Research Future Press Release
The pandemic is officially over, smart street lighting is about to boom. Combine the rush to LED fixtures with the Internet of Things, and expect to see street lights moonlighting as traffic and parking monitors, air quality meters, and more. Not to mention, “it is anticipated that camera-connected smart street lighting will increase road safety by lowering the likelihood of accidents and criminality.”
Texas now has 7 dark sky communities for spectacular star gazing, Sana Ameer, MRT.
Let’s cheer on the city of Bee Cave, everyone! Bee Cave joins a growing list of dark sky places already in the Lone Star State, including 2 Dark Sky Sanctuaries, 5 Dark Sky Parks, and 1 Dark Sky Reserve. Nighttime is alive and well in some parts of Texas!
Our Afraid of the Dark article is a bit scary! Hilton Head’s dark roads and pedestrians are deadly combo. What the town is doing about it, Blake Douglas at The Island Packet.
Per the article, 9 pedestrian and cyclist fatalities occurred since 2018, with five occurring after dark. Prior to that period, there were 28 recorded deaths from 2000 – 2016, with 20 of them taking place after dark.
In 2018, an 11 year old resident was struck and killed while walking her dog across an intersection one night. Lighting advocates began taking shape in what otherwise is a very conservation focused island. Hilton Head, SC has a limited number of street lights, priding itself on “avoiding light pollution and blending nature with construction.”
Lighting advocates appear to be, at the very least, asking for flashing crosswalk lights on the island to indicate when an individual is crossing.
It should be noted that the article shows a chart of 9 after-dark-deaths since 2014, only two of them occurred at crosswalks. In fact, during the same time frame, 6 additional deaths occurred at crosswalks during the daytime.
As a whole, the National Safety Council reports that 74.5% of pedestrian deaths occurred at night, whereby 39.1% took place in lit areas and 35.38% took place in unlit areas.
Bryan Bloch, an auto safety expert, surmises that car companies bear some of the blame – producing cheap or ineffectual headlight fixtures, and drivers themselves, who don’t realize that they need to regularly clean their headlight lenses.
Despite opposition from residents, it appears that Hilton Head will be receiving lights at two new intersections and possibly more depending on engineering studies currently in progress.
Is lighting the key variable here? Is more light going to solve pedestrian deaths?
Our featured research article of the month comes to us from Animal Conservation, “Manipulating spectra of artificial light affects movement patterns of bats along ecological corridors.”
Bats are already known to have a wide range of responses to artificial light at night (also known as ALAN). Fast flying species tend to be more opportunistic in the presence of ALAN while slower ones tend to be more light averse. We know that “long wavelengths and reduced intensity” can minimize their environmental effects on bats. It’s not unheard of for bats to travel upwards of “tens of km per night.” Furthermore, bats are very dependent on the landscape and the structures within those landscapes.
Despite the nuances between species, the consensus is that ALAN, especially high intensity ALAN, negatively affects bats. This study attempted to answer what exactly bats do when they encounter ALAN – how do they react depending on different types of ALAN.
The study used three different light fixtures – one green, one red, and one white. The control was devoid of light fixtures. The researchers attempted to ascertain the behavior of bats as they encountered lights adjacent to woody areas. The researchers looked at three different bat groupings based on their foraging-echo location behavior, that being one of open field foraging, forest edge foraging, and narrow space – or more aptly forest foragers.
Researchers found that open and edge foraging bats increased their activity close to white and green lights, and to a lesser extent red lights. However, narrow space bats were more likely to veer away from all colors of lighting. Edge foragers were also less likely to cross a white light.
The positive effects of white and green light on open and edge foraging bats appear to be attributed to the accumulation of insects around light sources containing more blue light.
The nighttime sky over Oahu will be lit up with green lasers in the coming days. Here’s why. Hawaii News Now
Before we close up today, do you live in Hawaii? I know I wish I did!
If so, do you recall seeing green lasers streak across the night sky? Well, the Army Corps of Engineers was using lidar at night to complete a coastal mapping survey.
Why did they survey at night? Specifically, why did they do this between midnight to 5am? Simply b/c the airspace is so busy, that time was the only chance they had to complete the survey. The remaining survey was completed during daytime hours.

6:00am-still sleeping
8:00am-still sleeping
11:00am- what you think she’s still sleeping
1:30pm- our beautiful queen wakes up from her slumber on the good day she might get up at 2:30 p.m.
2:00pm to 4:00pm-does nothing productive
5:00- go down and get a Little Caesars and fast food for herself the Little Caesars for the children the fast food is for only he if she does get food she'll come up with some bogus excuse about how she doesn't have money and needs help getting some food. She's going to beg
6:00 to 8:00pm-does nothing productive don’t cook don’t clean don’t do a goddamn thing/ she may take them to Dollar General or Dollar Tree on the good day
10:00pm-Cook’s dinner Beanie Weenies pork and beans
11:00pm-12:00am- lay her big back self on her bed does nothing productive as usual
For the real stay-at-home mothers what is your daily routine

Title. I don't know how much of a stretch this is, I do know that there are other people who have different interpretations of what it means, and this is the one I've been working on for the last few months. This came to me pretty much as soon as I heard the album for the first time (first FOB album, by the way!) and every time I listen through it, I find something new to add to the theory. To summarize in a few sentences, I believe the album is split in two, where the first half is from the perspective of a homewrecker, and the second is the husband. There's a lot more to it than that, though, so I'll go song by song.
DISLOYAL ORDER OF WATER BUFFALOES This is the introductory song for the homewrecker, who I'm gonna call Cooper for the sake of this. It doesn't progress the plotline, it just serves to introduce Cooper and show the audience who he is. Lines like "boycott love, detox just to retox" show that he's cynical about the concept of love, and "I'd promise you anything for another shot at life" shows that he's unhappy with how he's lived his life until now. These are both points that'll be expanded upon soon. TL;DR: Introduces the protagonist Cooper.
I DON'T CARE This song is where we're introduced to Cooper's love interest, who I'm gonna call Winona (again, for convenience). The song is coy and flirtatious, showing the first instances of the two interacting, and Cooper trying to win her over to his side. He wants to occupy space in her mind, so he can make a move on her. I think at this point, Cooper knows that she's already married, which is alluded to a lot. "The best of us" (Cooper) "can find happiness in misery" (Winona's marriage). "Take a chance, let your body get autonomous". "Say my name and his in the same breath". TL;DR: First encounter between Cooper and Winona, who is married to another man.
SHE'S MY WINONA If anything, She's My Winona is the date that leads to the two hooking up. My theory is that I Don't Care is the flirting stage and America's Suitehearts is when he's invited to her house, which puts She's My Winona somewhere in between. Some of the lines could definitely be interpreted as more flirtatious or even romantic: "We didn't come to compete, this is a demonstration" is probably another comparison between Cooper and Winona's current husband, and I think "Hell or glory, I don't want anything in between" is kind of the same idea that Headfirst Slide is reaching at, which is that Cooper is taking an extreme gamble that could go either very well or very poorly for him. TL;DR: The date between Cooper and Winona.
AMERICA'S SUITEHEARTS Cooper and Winona are officially suitehearts, e.g. sharing a room. This is probably them coming home after She's My Winona, and is heavily from Cooper's perspective. Lines like "I'm in love with my own sins" are pretty obvious in this context. Honestly, this song doesn't have a whole lot of lyrical content, and probably serves more as a single for Folie a Deux than a plot point for its story, but it does set up the events of Headfirst Slide very well. TL;DR: When Cooper goes home with Winona.
HEADFIRST SLIDE INTO COOPERSTOWN ON A BAD BET This is where everything happens, and one of the key songs that shaped this theory. This one is undebatably about a homewrecker and a lonely wife hooking up. It really isn't a subtext in this song; it was originally called "Does Your Husband Know". There are lots of story beats that are set up here that'll be addressed later, like the "I will never end up like him" reprise in What a Catch, Donnie. It's clearly the moment that Cooper and Winona become official. Something I want to note here, that ends up becoming a big focus of the second half, is that Cooper is currently the protagonist. He knows what he's doing is morally gray, proven by a few lines in America's Suitehearts, but the audience is meant to be rooting for him at this point in the story. We don't know Winona's husband, and since he's never been directly addressed, we don't care about him. Remember that for later! TL;DR: The moment that Cooper and Winona become official. Also note how so far, Cooper is the protagonist.
THE (SHIPPED) GOLD STANDARD Another clear cut song story-wise; the connection between Headfirst Slide and this song is pretty common knowledge. "I wanna scream I love you from the top of my lungs, but I'm afraid that someone else will hear me" is referring to Cooper needing to keep his love with Winona secret. This song is where Cooper and Winona decide to move out together, leaving Winona's husband behind, and making a new life somewhere. Getting new passports alludes to a new identity for both of them, making sure the people from this life would never contact them again. TL;DR: Cooper and Winona get new passports and find a new life.
(COFFEE'S FOR CLOSERS) Simply put, this is the happily ever after, and the conclusion to Cooper's plotline and the first half. It's a celebratory song, plain and simple. Cooper and Winona moved out together, got new lives in a new town, and live happily married. In fact, we don't see either of these characters for the rest of the story. While I tend to stay away from the titles for plot explanation, the name Coffee's for Closers is fitting for the closer of the storyline, where the protagonist just wins. There is essentially no nuance in the first half of Folie; it's a happy and determined quest for Winona, where everything goes right. The nuance starts with the next song. TL;DR: The end of Cooper's plotline, where he gets the girl and lives happily ever after.
WHAT A CATCH, DONNIE The perspective changes when What a Catch, Donnie starts. It's an introductory song, much like Disloyal Order, but instead of for Cooper, this time it's for Winona's husband, who I'm going to call Donnie. It's a sympathetic look at his life as a performer, not being able to see his wife as much as he'd want to, being self-conscious and struggling. He loves his wife, his job is weighing on him, and he's on his last legs. This is another song that really kickstarted my theory, because Pete Wentz said that the song is the closer in his eyes, but the album isn't from his perspective. For Donnie, it's just his day to day life. I want to put special emphasis on the Headfirst Slide reprise, because it's so bizarre that it has to be tied into this theory. It's sung in a different inflection, which I read as Donnie's fears about someone like Cooper existing. Cooper and Donnie don't meet, but Donnie loves his wife, and is terrified of the concept of him coming home one day and her not being there. I think the outro, with all of the references to prior Fall Out Boy songs, is alluding to his life and legacy as a performer. And here's where it all comes crashing down. TL;DR: Introduces Winona's husband, Donnie, as a busy and self-conscious performer who loves his wife dearly but rarely gets to see her.
27 "If home is where the heart is, then we're all just fucked". Donnie comes home to an empty and messy house. His wife is gone, away with someone he never met, and he never gets an explanation. I have a secondary theory that Pavlove was meant to go before 27, which I'll explain later, as they both essentially accomplish the same thing plot-wise. They both serve as the rude awakening to Donnie that something very wrong and very permanent has happened, and he starts freaking out. "Doing lines of dust and sweat off last night's stage" again references Donnie's career as a performer, and while not confirming the use of drugs, at least alludes to it. That'll also be important later. This song could be aptly described as the start of Donnie's downward spiral. TL;DR: Donnie finding out that Winona has run off with someone else, and trying to cope with the pain.
TIFFANY BLEWS I had to bend my theory a little bit to fit Tiffany Blews into it, and in my defense, I think Fall Out Boy did too. I see this as Donnie trying, to no avail, to find a new partner. In my interpretation, his first response is to go out to a bar, find someone to hook up with, and try to fill the void. It's much more confident than What a Catch or 27 are, which I attribute to Donnie being drunk. The lyrics are, again, flirtatious, but with less conviction than I Don't Care was, again showing the differences between the characters. The bridge is actually the part of the song that mostly closely ties itself into the plotline, with the lyrics about being held down in a starless city working in contrast to Cooper and Winona going to a new town and building a new life without him. TL;DR: Donnie trying and failing to find a new partner.
W.A.M.S. This song is split up into two parts, both with huge implications to the plotline. Obviously, there's the main song, which follows in Tiffany Blews' footsteps, but with even less conviction and coherence. The lyrics and general instrumentation are bizarre and isolating, which I think is because at this point, Donnie is excessively intoxicated and in a disturbed state of mind. It seems like he's starting to realize that he's not going to be able to fill the void just by hooking up with other girls, and that he's not going to find someone he loves as much as he loved Winona. This realization is what leads him into the second plot development in this song, which is the sung outro. This is the first blatant mention of medication, and comes at a time of extremely impared decision making for Donnie. I see this moment as the first time he takes medication, trying to dull his emotions. TL;DR: The moment where Donnie starts taking medication to cope with the loneliness.
20 DOLLAR NOSE BLEED In a word, the high. Everything in this song fits Donnie's current predicament as a broken man on his first trip, from "Have you ever wanted to disappear" to "Call me Mr. Benzedrine". This is another one of the songs that really formed the concept for this theory, because it seemed purposeful that the last three songs are the only three songs about taking medication. This serves as both a happy song for Folie, which has a very depressing second half, and a brief glimpse at happiness for Donnie in the story. However, as Pete Wentz's spoken outro indicates, it doesn't last. This is where Donnie overdoses. He keeps taking more benzedrine, falling further and further down, and this is the moment where he goes too far. TL;DR: The high, and the moment when Donnie overdoses.
WEST COAST SMOKER Cooper may have had a happy ending, but not Donnie. West Coast Smoker is a choatic and desperate telling of Donnie's final moments. "I'm a nervous wreck, the drugs just make me reset" pretty much explains everything. The religious imagery and church-esque choir in this song can be attributed to a vision of God, which is a common way to describe final moments. "Knock once for the father, twice for the son, three times for the holy ghost", the final line of the album, is an attempted communication into the afterlife, and shortly after, Donnie's life is over. It's left unclear whether the drugs killed him or he committed suicide, but either way, the story ends here. Tying back into what Pete said about What a Catch, Donnie, he said that was the closer for him, which means that West Coast Smoker had to be the closer for the character in the story. The chaos and hysteria of this song really only lends itself to one possible closer. TL;DR: The final moments of Donnie's life, before the benzedrine kills him.
BONUS: PAVLOVE There is one more song to talk about, though. I believe that this song was written with the concept of the album in mind. The most notable plothole in this theory, at least in my opinion, is the sudden turn from sympathetic, self-conscious working man to furious drug addict. Pavlove would have bridged this gap, representing the moment that Donnie comes home to an empty house, and showing a more sombre side of him before he turns to blind rage in 27. The story still functions without the song, but I thought it'd be worthwhile to note this if you had the same complaint.
And that's it! Obviously it's pretty heavy, the album is dark and this is the plot that I believe fits it best. I wouldn't say there really is a moral, but if there was one, it would be that the winner writes history. For the first half of the album, the viewer is at least complicit in what Cooper does, before seeing the horrific consequences. The second half gives meaning to the first half, so much so that without it, there would be no meaning to the first half at all. I think it's designed to make the listener think about themselves, maybe even to make them regret rooting for him and do some self-reflection. I believe there was probably a draft along the way that was more focused on the story, before eventually being toned down to be more commercial, but thankfully it still shines through. What do you think, though? Do you have a different theory? Do you have a theory that's similar to mine, but with a few notes that make it more coherent? I'd love to hear any of it :)

Okay I have to say now that this is a chapter of a book im writing, not actually bukowski, but the style is similar and I wanted to know what people who like him would think of the writing. Here it goes, if you got a few minutes to read it
I woke up that morning when the sun had heated up my room to a light boil. There had been a pool of sweat that was forming on my white cotton sheets. It was still June in Exeter and in those days the night is too cold so, naturally one puts on too many blankets and in the morning one wakes up to the smell of sweet fresh sweat. The pandemic mornings had quickly become monotonous. Sun, sweat, granola, a dusty carpet, a seagull on one window and a neighbour whose face I never saw on the other side of the house, orange juice, sitting on an armchair to read Bukowski with the backlight of the morning sun, moving to the sofa when the light became too hot, new albums by new and old singers and their creative rushes from being at home, skip, skip, skip, a run to the shop before the pasta, eggs, and soap were plundered. Repeat, repeat, repeat. The wine from last evening greeted me with a headache and a dry throat, which I welcomed with open arms. My little kick and a little spice out of the ordinary.
To break the cycle, I skipped the granola. I wasn’t hungry that morning. I laid in bed while the sun heated up my room. I stretched and stretched and stretched. I grabbed my knees and pulled them to my chest and stretched. I grabbed my wrist and pulled and pulled and pulled on my arm. Grab the next one. Repeat. I felt a pimple and if I hadn’t been so bored I wouldn’t have thought twice about it but this was perhaps the first pimple I had ever grown on my arm. Between my wrist and my elbow, but half an inch closer to the wrist I found it with its white head and when I came out of the shower it had grown its white head twice its size over its pink bottom. I popped it and got rid of almost all of its white head and then my phone rang.
“Are you still in Exeter?” asked Joseph.
“I’ll probably be here all summer” I told him.
“I’ll pick you up in an hour if you’re free. We can go to the imperial for a pint?”
“I’ll get dressed”.
We drank two beers and shared a pizza. He said he was going to meet with some girls for more drinks and I said I couldn't come.
"I'll see if I join you later" I said.
We got in his car. It had been parked in the sun so when I got back home my back was Moist with sweat so i took it off.
I sat on the bed and scratched my pimple and I scratched it until it bled a little. I grabbed my guitar and played the blues. One trial and when I finished I scratched the pimple. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I left the guitar and slept a little. When I awoke it was dark already. I must have slept all afternoon because it was already ten and I was tired but the phone rang and woke me up. I let it ring and rolled in bed onto my arm but it hurt and that put me on my feet. By now the pimple reached from my wrist to the middle of the arm It was a circle about an inch wide, hard as a lemon and then it became large and soft like a grape. The size of my arm had also grown as it began to swell. when I was looking at it the phone rang again.
“Are you coming over” Joseph asked.
“I don’t think so. I got this thing on my arm, I may go get it checked” I said.
I grabbed a pair of trousers from the floor, put on a shirt and grabbed a jacket on the way to the door. I walked to the nearest hospital. I thought it was a short walk away but it felt like an eternity. My pain turned into agony. One step left and on the right one I would feel a pulse on the pimple that shocked me along the length of my arm and reached all the way to my shoulder. Every five minutes the pain got stronger and by the time I made it to the hospital I felt it pulsating to the rhythm of my heartbeats.
“Good evening, Is your emergency related to COVID?” asked the lady at the desk.
“No. I got this thing on my arm since a couple hours ago, it keeps growing in size every couple hours I thought I’d have it checked” I replied.
“Have you had any cough recently?” she asked.
“No”.
“Any fever?”
“No”.
“Have you had any difficulty breathing in the last ten days?” she asked.
“LADY, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF MY ARM. I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS”
“Have a seat and we’ll call you”.
I waited for one hour, read every magazine, walked along the waiting room, thought about god, read every magazine again.
“EMMA WEBSTER?” shouted a doctor as she walked into the living room.
The ancient Egyptians were only expected to live up to the age of 19. Had I been born then I would have been well past my due date. The Greeks only lived to 30. There were a few exceptions, but, again, I thought that if I had been born then this would have been my time. A pimple. What a way to go.
“GEORGE WILLIAMS?” shouted the doctor and if that boy hadn’t been so quick at getting up I was ready to get up and steal his place.
I went to the gym. I ate my greens, at least once a week. I looked both ways when I crossed the road and brushed my teeth every night. Two hurricanes, a hundred earthquakes, three car crashes. They had barely given me a dent. I slept my ten hours a night. A good and a healthy life, by Greek, Egyptian, and British standards. Defeated at least. All defeated by a pimple. People would talk about me, how I wrote and how well I painted and what a shame it was that I died waiting in the emergency room. And some others would talk about how I didn’t paint so good and what a shame that I hadn’t been Egyptian. I looked up and thought about god again. I prayed.
“If its my time, then its my time, lord, but don’t let them know that it was a pimple that did it. Hemingway wouldn’t respect me” I prayed.
“Henri Chinaski?” shouted a doctor from the door and I ran to her and she took me to the next room.
“What can we help you with tonight?” she asked.
“I got this boil on my arm. I don’t know what it is but it keeps growing and growing”
“It looks an awful lot like a spider bite. Have you been outdoors lately?”
“Only at the beach”.
“Good thing you came now” she said. “If you had waited a couple of hours longer you’d have to stay over on the IV. Youre lucky I’ll just have to drain it and you can just go home”.
She looked around her tools and grabbed one.
“I’m gonna need you to take your top off. Only one arm if you want” she said.
I took off one arm and put my arm on her table and had to sit bent so she could grab the bottom of my arm. She pinched it with something that I felt go deep inside my arm and then she started squeezing my tender arm while I made a groan.
“How does this feel?” she asked.
“I quite like it” I said and she chuckled and squeezed me more.
She took some 15 minutes draining it and brought me a box of penicillin to take every four hours for the next three days.
“Ive gotten rid of the pus and it shouldn’t get infected. It is still very swollen and it will keep looking like a balloon while its full of blood. You may have to keep draining it some three times a day and come back if you have any symptoms of a fever. You’ll also need a warm towel on it before you drain it so its easier. Oh, and keep the arm upright or it will keep hurting” she said.
When I was back home I boiled the kettle and sat on the sofa. I opened a packet of biscuits as I waited for the water to boil for my towel. I poured the water on a rag I used for painting and wrapped it around my arm. I then unraveled the gaze the doctor had put on me and squeezed that fucker down to the size of a bottlecap.
Two hurricanes, a hundred earthquakes, three car crashes, and a boil.

Preface; I have been an avid player and consumer of Magic for about 15 years, and have been a lifelong fan of fantasy, beginning with Tolkien’s great masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. LotR is a fundamental part of how I approach life; I read the major works of middle earth at least once a year, there’s a balrog on my bookshelf and the Argonath sit on either side of my TV console. The mat on my door reads ‘speak friend and enter’, and I’m shamelessly in love with the work.
I wanted to address the recent choices made by WotC in their upcoming ‘interpretation’ of LotR in a civil, non inflammatory way and show that these choices are an overall detriment to the story they try to convey, and an overall detriment to anybody who advocates for diversity and representation.
​
To begin, let’s talk about LotR and why this work in particular stands above all others in the fantasy landscape. Tolkien’s Middle Earth has been the premier fantasy property since the Hobbit first hit bookshelves in 1937, and 85 years later it is still as culturally relevant and popular as ever. ME as an entity has spawned a string of adaptations ranging from board games to video games, massively popular movie franchises that still sell out theaters twenty years post-release, the most expensive first season of television ever filmed, and you’d be hard pressed to attend any convention or general gathering of nerds where Tolkien’s influence doesn’t loom large. ME is truly a monolith in the landscape of fantasy literature, with nearly every great author in the field citing Tolkien as an inspiration. So while 85 years have passed and our real world has become increasing globalized, multicultural, digitally connected and politically polarized, LotR maintains its spot at the mountain top.
What is it that makes ME such an enduring piece of popular culture? Contemporary works like Narnia are still relevant, but do not hold the same sway. Modern authors have arguably refined fantasy and its elements as a genre with more detailed magic (Wheel of Time), a deeper display of fantasy races (the Witcher, Dragon Age), more nuanced characters and motivations (Game of Thrones/ ASoIaF), there has certainly been fantasy in the past 85 years that does elves, dwarves, dragons, orcs, wizards, magic, sword fights or dark lords better, and even these modern works more fresh upon the consciousness can’t wrest the dominance of fantasy away from ME. Outside of fantasy and strictly as a piece of literature, ME also endures; Tolkien was undoubtedly a master of English and wrote the books from the worldview of a Brit in his time period, yet his works do well when translated into other languages and in a world that is increasingly less British.
It becomes clear then that ME stays relevant not because of the trappings of fantasy or it’s literary merit, but because there is something universal and human within the work that speaks to its audience across time, language and culture. We’re compelled to keep adapting ME into new works because there is something still living on those pages that we wish to remind ourselves of; the seductive and caustic nature of power and greed; the price of ego, arrogance, and ambition; the beauty and dignity of nature and the accompanying dullness of industry and machinery; the tragic nature of war and violence; the shared hopes of the characters for a simple life lived in peace; the idea that those same ‘simply’ motivated characters can still steer the world towards good no matter how small they appear; that loyalty and fellowship among friends are great gifts; the appreciation of beauty in a non-sexual context; that redemption is never out of reach even for the most vile of its characters; that characters separated by race and thousands of years of bad history can learn respect and appreciation for each other. Middle Earth has stayed relevant not because it is good fantasy or literature, but because amidst all the well written prose and fanciful imagery there is an abundance of human insight and broadly recognized truth about the human condition.
​
Now we come to Magic the Gathering’s upcoming Tales in ME, and their push for ‘diversity’ and a ‘modern take’ on Tolkien’s work. Any fan of Tolkien has heard the criticisms before; that the work is ‘too white’ or otherwise non inclusive, that it features geographic and/ or cultural morality in which the white west is typically good and the nonwhite East is maligned. To me, these points seem shallow and uninformed. I am not white nor English; I am Latin and North African. In Tolkien’s words i would probably be described as ‘dark’ or ‘swart’, and if i were from ME I would look more like the Haradrim or Umbar than like Gil-Galad or Aragorn. Obviously this has not hindered my enjoyment of the work, because the human insights I highlighted above are not virtues exclusive to any one group of people in the real world; we ALL desire peace, we all value the simple things like comfort, food, friendship and song. Tolkien perhaps says it best through Faramir; ‘I do not love the sword for its brightness… but for that which it defends’. ME does not survive off of its looks or aesthetics, but because it represents deeper truths. It defends virtues which all people aspire to, regardless of the aesthetic. ME survives in a world far different from its conception precisely because there is something for everyone in it, because it is inclusive in its humanity, not because it is exclusive in any way.
​
I am not against representation in ME in any way, shape or form; ME is vast and exciting and unexplored, and there is more than enough room for everyone to feel welcome and represented. But when ‘representation and diversity’ are used heavy handedly, carelessly, lazily, and motivated by profit disguised as virtue, I DO take offense, regardless of if it’s ME or some other creative space. I can absolutely sympathize with wanting representation, as none of the major players in ME look like me. But there were obvious, more elegant ways of making ME welcoming to minorities without bastardizing the work. For this, let me play devil’s advocate with a few moves WotC MIGHT have made that I think would have been more tactful;
We’ll start with the big one, ‘Blaragorn’ (a term I’m not overly fond of, but for convenience I’ll use it now). Setting aside the obvious, that Aragorn is not a black man, I would not be so irked by this change had it been handled with any sort of respect or logical consistency. What makes Aragorn noteworthy is what he represents; not a sword fighter, king or ranger, but the union of Elves and Men. He is the Elfstone, he marries the Evenstar, the most beloved of the elven women since Luthien, who he himself is distantly descended from. Aragorn is the last flower of a transracial union, the wisdom of the elves inherited into the strength and vigor of men. He is gifted with long life, keen senses, a powerful sense of kingliness and nobility, the hands of a healer, and he bears a host of relics that represent this; the ring of Barahir, the Hilt Shard of Narsil, and a right to the throne of Gondor. If we then make the decision to change Aragorns appearance to any color shade or skin tone, there are some considerations that have to accompany this. If we make Aragorn blue to represent his differences visually, it follows that the elves must be a deeper blue and the people of Gondor less so. If Aragorn is particularly tall and regal, it is because the elves are thus and his people less so. Given that WotC chose to make Aragorn black, I could respect that decision had it been followed through to all of its conclusions; if Aragorn is dark, the elves would be DARKER and the people of Gondor less so. We would expect to see Galadriel, a distant relative of Aragorn and Arwen, to be the image of Elvish-ness and therefor very darkly toned. The same would apply to Elrond, Isildur (being human, but further up the family tree and closer to the shared elven ancestor), and noble houses of Gondor would be somewhere between elvish dark and whatever tone you chose as the ‘default’ tone of men in the west of ME. We do not see these considerations played out, what we see is the tokenism of Tolkien. Aragorn is black - because we said so, no further thought needed.
Moving on to Theoden, the house of Eorl and Rohan we see much the same issue. The alliance between Rohan and Gondor is made meaningful because they are different cultures. They do not share meaningful blood ties, occupy different regions, have different cultures and values, yet the Rohirrim still come to the defense of Gondor and pay a very steep price for their solidarity. It is their differences, and how they look past them, that makes their relationship heroic. Much as Legolas and Gimli find common ground, Rohan and Gondor come through fire death and darkness and out the other side stronger because they are different, and choose to stand anyway. Their story IS diversity, in a way that transcends racist undertones. Tokenism here is a cheapening of this relationship, either because WotC believes their target audience is inherently too stupid to grasp the story’s deeper meanings, or because they believe it will curry favor and sales in a racially motivated market.
Perhaps the most galling part of these changes is the laziness and lack of creativity is betrays. Stapling your ‘inclusion’ onto well established characters thoughtlessly and clearly without reverence for the source material only makes those diverse characters lightning rods for criticism, both racist and valid alike. Shoehorning people of color into the story like this doesn’t represent me in ME; it denies me the chance to have my own part of the tale. ME has so much space in it for people of color, and none of it is used to effect here. Fans of ME would have loved to see the blue wizards finally represented on paper, in any skin tone under the sun. We could have seen more characters from Harad, Rhun, Umbar and other eastern cultures, and if you wished to avoid the race-morality ties it would not have been an issue to make original characters who are rebelling against Sauron’s power in their own homelands. Ironically we get the opposite here, where the few people from these cultures are presented as white, wiping out what could have been a golden opportunity for diversity. Personally I have no problem with original characters and expanded storylines in ME, and for all of the faults Amazon’s Rings of Power had, it’s diverse cast was not one of them. If race-shifting the established characters was truly the only way to get more inclusion into the fellowship, it could have been done in a way consistent with the internal logic and history of Me.
​
What saddens me most about this whole affair is that when the union of MtG and ME was announced, i was greatly excited. What a great moment to be a fan of the greatest fantasy TCG and the greatest fantasy Epic, when they come together. Instead I’m left with a bitter taste and a sense of disappointment, watching a beautiful story that clearly resonates with many people being cheapened with identity politics masquerading as ‘love’ for the source material, all to make a few more sales.
Again, my aim with this piece was not to antagonize or inflame; my goal is to highlight what makes LotR special, and how ‘modern’ takes are bound to fail because they represent only a surface level understanding of what makes ME welcoming to everyone. I will be posting this piece across multiple LotR and MtG related subs in the hope of sparking productive discussion across these spaces, especially in light of the distressing surpressionist response some of these subs have had internally over any criticism on this topic.

A
ABABCd
Acarine The Acrid Corpse
All is Known
Alluda Majaka
Altered Beast I
Altered Beast II
Altered Beast III
Altered Beast IV
Alter Me I
Alter Me II
Alter Me III
Ambergris
Am I in Heaven?
Anamnesis
A New World
Anoxia
Astroturf
Ataraxia
Automation
B
The Balrog
12 Bar Bruise
Barefoot Desert
Beginner’s Luck
Big Fig Wasp
The Bird Song
Billabong Valley
The Bitter Boogie
Black Hot Soup
Blame It on the Weather
Boogieman Sam
The Book
Black Tooth
Bloody Ripper
Blue Morpho
Bone
Butterfly 3000
C
Candles
The Castle in the Air
Catching Smoke
Cellophane
Change
Cold Cadaver
Countdown
Cranes, Planes, Migraines
Crookedile
The Cruel Millennial
Crumbling Castle
Crying
Cut Throat Boogie
Cyboogie
D
Danger $$$
D-Day
Deat-Beat
Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet
Digital Black
Dirt
Doom City
Down the Sink
Dragon
Dreams
The Dripping Tap
Drum Run
Dusk to Dawn on Lygon Street
Dustbin Fletcher
Dust in the Wind
E
East West Link
Elbow
Empty
Evil Death Roll
Evilest Man
Evil Man
Evil Star
Exploding Suns
Eyes Like the Sky
F
Fishing for Fishies
Float Along - Fill Your Lungs
The Floating Fire
Flying Microtonal Banana
Footy Footy
Fort Whipple
The Fourth Colour
The Funeral
G
Gaia
Gamma Knife
Garage Liddiard
The Garden Goblin
Gila Monster
Gliese 710
God is Calling Me Back Home
God is in the Rhythm
The God Man’s Goat Lust
Gondii
The Great Chain of Being
Greenhouse Heat Death
The Grim Reaper
Guns & Horses
H
Han-Tyumi, The Confused Cyborg
Hate Dancin’
Head On/Pill
Hell
Hell’s Itch
Her and I (Slow Jam 2)
High Hopes Low
Honey
Homeless Man in Adidas
Horology
Hot Water
Hot Wax
The Hungry Wolf of Fate
Hypertension
I
I am not a Man Unless I Have a Woman
Ice V
If Not Now, Then When?
I’m in Your Mind
I’m in Your Mind Fuzz
I’m Not in Your Mind
I’m Sleepin’ In
Infinite Rise
Inner Cell
Interior People
Intrasport
Invisible Face
Iron Lung
It’s Got Old
J
A Journey to (S)Hell
K
Kepler-22b
K.G.L.W. (Intro)
K.G.L.W. (Outro)
2.02 Killer Year
The Killing Ground
L
The Land Before Timeland
The Last Oasis
Lava
Let it Bleed
Let Me Mend the Past
Life / Death
Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer
The Lord of Lightning
Loyalty
Lunch Meat
M
Magenta Mountain
Magma
Mars for the Rich
Melting
Minimum Brain Size
Most of What I Like
Mr. Beat
Muckraker
Muddy Water
Murder of the Universe
Mycelium
Mystery Jack
N
Nein
N.G.R.I (Bloodstain)
No Body
Nuclear Fusion
O
Oddlife
Oddments
O.N.E.
Ontology
Open Water
Organ Farmer
P
Paper Mâché
Paper Mâché Dream Balloon
30 Past 7
People-Vultures
Perihelion
Persistence
Pipe-Dream
Planet B
Plastic Boogie
Pleura
Polygondwanaland
Pop in My Step
Predator X
Presumptuous
Q
Quarantine
R
The Raid
Rattlesnake
Real’s Not Real
Red Smoke
The Reticent Raconteur
The River
Road Train
Robot Stop
Rolling Stoned
S
Sadie Sorceress
Sam Cherry’s Last Shot
Satan Speeds Up
Sea of Trees
Searching
See Me
Self-Immolate
Sense
Shanghai
Short Change
Sketches of Brunswick East I
Sketches of Brunswick East II
Sketches of Brunswick East III
Sleep Drifter
Sleepwalker
Slow Jam 1
Smoke & Mirrors
Some Context
Some of Us
Soy-Protein Munt Machine
The Spider and Me
Static Electricity
Stoned Mullet
Straws in the Wind
Stressin’
Superbug
Superposition
Supreme Ascendancy
T
Tetrachromacy
Tezeta
This Thing
Time = $$$
Time = Fate
Timeland
Trapdoor
U
Uh Oh, I Called Mum
V
Vegemite
Venusian 1
Venusian 2
Vomit Coffin
W
Wah Wah
Welcome to an Altered Future
The Wheel
Willoughby’s Beach
Work This Time
X
N/A
Y
Ya Love
Year of Our Lord
You Can Be Your Silhouette
Yours
Z
N/A

This is the last post for this campaign. I want to thank the LFG community so immensely for how supportive you've all been. D&D has become my passion to the point of (healthy) obsession. Hundreds of NPC's, thousands of elements, resources, gosh even fish that populate our next campaign region. And even in the last 3 posts I've made friends that will last forever. Genuinely, I'm so grateful. So from the deepest, most genuine corner of my heart - THANK YOU. 🙏 Your enthusiasm, your spirit, your shared love for D&D – it's been a beacon of light in the darkest dungeons, a guide in the most confounding mazes. See you in "The Stranger"! 🎲💕
Original post: https://www.reddit.com/lfg/comments/13gfsqa/online5eetutc4_the_stranger_cosmic_horro (graciously reviewed and approved by the subreddit mods)
This is Post (4/4), we're posting this four weeks in a row before making final picks.
Preface
This is a long post - crazy long even. That's because we care so much to find those just as impassioned as we are about this amazing hobby. We love high quality D&D campaigns, and we believe it takes effort and time to make it happen. If you take the effort to get through learning about us in this post, reading every word with care and interest, we will do the same with your application.
Our commitments:

• We will respond personally to each and every application, giving constructive feedback and/or move you to the next stage!

How to Apply

• Application Link: https://www.avarra.world
• Promo Video: https://youtu.be/RbfQWegafX8
• Sample session: https://youtu.be/FDNHxkNXM5Y?t=13120 (We're doing something new for the next campaign, and while not quite full-effort, this is a closer example of what we're going for)
• Ask a question about the lore or world in the comments! And we'll respond in character (from one of our many current character). Thumbs us up or down this post, interact to help us be visible!
• The rest are provided after application has been submitted.
• Need to get in touch privately? My discord is Wes#8045.

World Preface

In the enchanted realm of Avarra, where high magic weaves its intricate web through the fabric of existence, a burgeoning form of sorcery takes root. Secluded on the island city of Crowperch, the pursuit and mastery of void magic are richly rewarded, enticing arcanists from the farthest reaches of the world to unravel its mysteries. Yet, the enigmatic allure of Crowperch extends beyond the arcane; a diverse tapestry of industry, history, and craftsmanship entwines the island's very essence.
Beneath the surface, the island's riches reveal themselves: the mines and quarries, abundant with untapped potential, and the surrounding seas, offering bounties from the ocean's depths. Ancient archaeological sites whisper secrets of bygone eras, while artisans ply their remarkable skills on the bustling city streets. Tales of a long-forgotten, rumored treasure continue to captivate the imaginations of adventurers and sightseers alike.
But one must pay a steep price for this wealth of opportunity and intrigue. It is wise to avert one's gaze from the iron grip of autocratic rule and the unyielding scrutiny that looms over the island's denizens. For those who venture to Crowperch, a single obligation remains: seek your heart's desire, and then depart – for the island's enigmatic embrace is not meant to last forever.

Application Overview
In this sacred fellowship, we stand steadfast in the face of the dreaded D&D group killers. Our commitment to this game is unwavering, for it is not just a hobby, but a way of life - an appointment that must be kept at all costs. For us, the work does not end with character creation or worldbuilding. Nay, we strive for a deep understanding of each character, for their hopes and dreams, their fears and flaws, so that we may weave a complex and enthralling campaign that will leave you breathless. We implore you, dear adventurer, to show up regularly and with a burning passion in your heart. Let your excitement be infectious, let your dedication be unwavering.
Overview

• Game Day: Saturday
• Players: 6 (5 Regular, 0-1 Floating/Guest)
• DM(s): 2 (1 Regular, 0-1 Floating/Guest)
• Game Length: 3 Months mini-arc, then decide whether to continue. However accommodate for 1-2 years on your schedule.
• Start Date: First week of September (Yes, 5 months away)

Selection Criteria (In order of importance)

• Qualification: TTRPG Experience, RP/Improv Ability
• Questionnaire answers
• Participation in One-Shots & Community so we can get to know you.

Investment
This campaign is getting some big investment. All players will get custom commissions of their characters, animated. Additionally, we are commissioning all maps, tokens, flairs, and elements to make this truly something special.
Campaign Preface

As twilight descended upon the restless sea, the ancient ship, Her Royal Rose, creaked under the weight of its cargo. Its passengers, a motley assortment of scholars, fisherman, guard and others with business on the island of Crowperch, sit tightly in cramped quarters. Even as the tempestuous winds moaned through crevasse and open windows, the opportunities and tasks that beckon them to the island keep them going, a siren's call that drowned out the ocean's roar.The skies above were an oppressive tapestry of writhing clouds, their tendrils suffocating the last vestiges of daylight as if to obscure the path to the island. A shroud of mist swallowed the horizon, leaving the ship to navigate through a nebulous labyrinth, its destination only guaranteed by Captain Alaric Thorne.
As Her Royal Rose inched closer to Sove, the air grew heavy with mist and sea salt which deposited itself gradually on the railings, sails and masts. Little Henry Williams, the ship's messenger runs throughout the halls pattering on each door, "The captain has an announcement, all to the deck. The captain has an announcement, all to the deck." The clacking of his wooden foot pattering one after another with each step, a disfigurement he earned while working aboard Her Royal Rose.
Captain Alaric Thorne stood on the deck, the salty wind tugging at his weathered features. His voice rang out, its timbre heavy with authority and unease, as he addressed the gathered passengers."Ladies and gentlemen, I must bring to your attention an unfortunate turn of events. It seems the Saturation has arrived earlier than anticipated this year. As many of you know, this phenomenon causes an unnaturally heavy accumulation of salt in the air, resulting in deposits that weigh down our vessel."He paused, letting the gravity of the situation settle upon his passengers before continuing, "This unexpected occurrence has forced us to halt our usual schedule, for the safety of both the ship and her passengers. Once Her Royal Rose arrives, she will remain anchored at Sove until the Saturation clears, as navigating these treacherous waters under such conditions would be inviting disaster."
A murmur of concern rippled through the crowd, many who were on this voyage planned their departure prior to The Saturation. The captain raised his hand to quell their rising unease. "I understand this may cause you some inconvenience, but I assure you, we will resume our journey as soon as it is safe to do so. In the meantime, you may continue your research, tasks and exploration on the island. Sove is well stocked and very hospitable to travelers especially those displaced during our seasonal shifts."
With that, Captain Thorne turned away, leaving the passengers to ponder the implications of his words as the first tendrils of salt-laden mist began to coil around the ship, heralding the arrival of the Saturation.
In the dimly lit corners of their minds, the passengers could sense a truth they dared not confront: Their voyage to Crowperch was going to be a lot longer than they had hoped. As the ship drew nearer to the island, the shadows beneath the spires of the fortress atop the mountain loomed over the ship, casting a shadow over what little moonlight illuminated the darkness.

Technology

• D&D Beyond: We own ALL books on D&D Beyond, and all of them will be at your disposal for your campaign.
• Owlbear Rodeo 2.0: This new VTT is extremely promising, and has the customization ability for us to do VERY interesting unique things. We're switching here from Roll20.
• Discord: Voice chat & messenger for our campaigns. Video is required, however is not recorded. Offline RP included!
• Obsidian: How players track the world's expanding lore, and how we the DM's keep track of things. You don't have to use this, but it's a highly recommended tool for note taking.
• Recorded Sessions: Sessions will be recorded, edited and posted online. Proceeds from monetization will be used to level up our recording, roleplaying, technology and setup, get commissions, maps and such. Players will not be paid for participation, however this is possible for the future if we grow. Sessions are recorded using OBS.

Monetization
So we are still small, so monetization isn’t at the top of our list. That said, our goal is to

1. Play Excellent D&D
2. Donate to charity
3. Re-invest to make better content and
4. Compensate players to allow them to play more D&D.

How specifically that all happens is still obscured by the mists of time. By participating in this campaign players release all intellectual property created for the campaign to Roll for Impact and related brands. Please note that this is meaningless while we're still small, but consider this hopeful thinking for our success. The next campaign is getting SO much effort, so we want to stay safe.
Campaign Rules

• Backstory: Crafting a compelling backstory for your character is essential for a great adventure. By providing a reason for your character to be adventuring with others and offering plot hooks for the DM to work with. Rather than focusing on build concepts, take this opportunity to create a real, relatable character. Who knows what unexpected twists and turns your backstory might bring to the campaign? So, let's get to writing - your character's fate is in your hands!
• Stats: Ah, stats - the bread and butter of any adventurer's character sheet. But let's face it, nobody likes a Mary Sue or a Jim The Commoner. That's why we're going to be rolling 4d6 drop the lowest, but with a twist! Each player will only generate one stat, which will then be compiled into one array for everyone to use. That way, you still get the fun of rolling, but we won't have any lopsided parties where one person is carrying the whole team. Because let's be real, nobody wants to be stuck playing the equivalent of a wet noodle while someone else is shooting laser beams out of their eyes. So, roll those dice and let fate decide your fate!
• Starting Level: Starting our campaign at level 3 makes sense because many classes get their major features at level 3, avoiding the issue of players missing out on the fun stuff. This also prevents weird mid-game transformations that can come from certain builds and allows for multiclass combos right out of the gate. So, let's start the adventure with confidence and balance, knowing that we've got all the good stuff from the get-go!

Homebrew

• Free Feat: We're giving you an extra feat at first level, but with a catch - it must tie into your backstory or character design in a compelling way. By doing this, we hope to reduce the cookie-cutter nature of low level characters and encourage backstory development. Rather than just taking a feat because you need it, we want you to create a unique and interesting character from the get-go. So, let's spice things up and see what kind of story you can bring to the table!
• Healing Potions: Get the max benefit as an action, or use a bonus action to get the rolled benefit.
• Flanking: Flanking now grants a +2 to hit instead of advantage, and you can't flank someone if you're being flanked yourself. But that's not all - if three or more combatants are flanking a single enemy, that enemy is officially Surrounded, and you get a +5 to melee weapon attacks. So, let's get out there and show those enemies what it means to be surrounded by a bunch of hyped-up adventurers! (But remember, enemies get the same benefit too.)
• Zero HP & Exhaustion: Everyone takes the homebrew feat Battle Fatigue. This homebrew rule makes repeated downs more punishing on players in a campaign. You may be downed (Con Modifier) times before receiving one point of exhaustion. Each time this ticker fills up, reset it and add one point of exhaustion.
• Starting Common Magic Item: At first level, all characters get a common magic item of their choice. Similar to feats, this must be related to your backstory.
• Dual Wielding: RAW, DW doesn't allow you to add the modifier to the attack, so we add the modifier to the roll like a normal roll. You still get a weaker weapon, but now at least you get to get more power from the attack.
• Resurrection: (Modified Critical Role Rules) Resurrection isn't easy, folks - you'll need to pass a DC of 10 just to be brought back. But that's just the beginning. The party can all contribute to aiding in your resurrection with multiple ability checks, and even sacrifices in the deceased's name. The Dungeon Master determines the DC for each check and makes a final resurrection roll to see if the ritual is successful. The DC for this final roll depends on how many times the character has been resurrected before and how successful the contributions were. So, bring your A-game (and maybe a goat or two) if you want to make it back from the great beyond. Each resurrection adds +5 to the DC, before party contributed modifiers.
• Death Saving Throws: These are rolled privately to the DM.
• Slow Natural Healing: Characters don't regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, just as with a short rest. A long rest allows the use of up to half of your total Hit Dice, +1 for sleeping somewhere comfortable, +1 for having a meal/ ration. Order: The character regains half their hit dice, then they can spend their hit dice to recover hit points.
• Silvery barbs: Silvery barbs is a second level spell.

Table Homebrew

• Turn Time Limits: We're keeping things moving with turn time limits, folks. Pay attention on other player's turns and avoid flipping through your PHB or counting dice ad nauseam. Exceptions are made for new players or chaotic combat, but we want you to look up spells and rules off-turn whenever possible. Slow combat leads to mental check-outs and boredom, so let's keep things snappy. If your turn takes too long, someone else will jump in front of you. It's like musical chairs, but with spells and swords instead.
• New Homebrew: If you've got some hot new content you want to play with, I'm your guy. Just slide into my DMs and let me take a look. Now, I'm not saying I'm gonna approve everything - I mean, some of you are out here trying to create a race of sentient cheese wheels (looking at you, Matt) - but I'll do my best to give you clear, concise well informed ruling on it.

Scheduling

• Session Length: ~7 Hours
• Scheduling Firm Up: Sessions are scheduled concretely, but we will firm up every 4 weeks on the next month's schedule for conflicts. Exceptions are always made for life events or serious circumstances. Life happens, and we understand that sometimes we or you may need to cancel. This is always fine, provided it is not regularly occurring. Our schedules are made every 4 weeks in advance. If your game days are always difficult to schedule, this may not be the campaign for you. In regards to scheduling, you must be able to open a clear line of communication between the DM throughout the week, in case of any emergency schedule changes or conflicts. If you are a hard person to get in touch with every week, again, this may not be the campaign or group for you.

Session Structure

• Start: Everyone arrives to the table and calls in on Discord. Players should also take this time to open up all the required programs and have all their materials ready. We also suggest getting some snacks here too! Bonus points for a tasty beer as well!
• Recap & Warmup (30 min): After arriving and having all our materials prepared, we begin our first activity of the session: Player Recaps! We will do this every single week, and it should be a great tool for getting insight into each character’s head and getting us caught up. We may play warm up games, and roleplay challenges.
• Session (2.5 hours): Well, this is of course where the magic happens! We roll dice, we laugh, the DM laughs, the dice laugh, the dice are mimics, oh no…
• Break (30 min): These breaks do not include bio breaks or your need to use the restroom. If you ever need to run to the bathroom or refill your glass real quick, you’re good!
• Session Continued (2.5 hours): We’ll carry on through the second part of the session!
• Session Recap (30 min): We'll discuss what happened during the session, as well as what we plan to do next session, while we finalize session notes.

Playstyle

• Roleplay: Get ready for some serious roleplaying, folks, because that's what we're all about. We're looking at a 70/30 split of roleplay to combat, maybe even heavier on the roleplay. It's all about immersing ourselves in the world of Avarra and telling a great story together. Sure, there may be some deviations depending on the scenarios and encounters, but we're here to communicate and engage with each other and the world on a deeper level. So, let's put on our acting hats and dive headfirst into the magical realm of Avarra.
• Hyper immersion: We're not just here to hack and slash our way through this world - we're here to really get into the nitty-gritty details. I'm talking about the flavors in each mug of ale or wine at the local tavern (because let's be real, nobody likes a bland drink), cooking around the campfire under a tree during a cool and rainy night, and even delving into the plot of that book you just picked up on your way out of town. And let's not forget about forming real relationships with your fellow characters. After all, who wants to adventure with a bunch of strangers? We're here to create meaningful connections and really bring this world to life. And to all you hack-and-slashers out there - sorry, but this might not be the group for you.
• Note Taking: The pen is mightier than the sword! And let me tell you, if you want to get the most out of Avarra, it's better to be a note taker. Especially in this next campaign! We're talking about a world that's drenched in complexity and nuance, from the setting to the story to the characters that inhabit it. And let's not forget about those intricate and subtle webs that outline the machinations of the antagonists. Oh yeah, we're going deep. But here's the deal - nothing is handed to you on a silver platter in this campaign. You're gonna have to work for it. That means constantly paying attention, working with each other, and using those note-taking skills to uncover all the hidden secrets this world has to offer. And who knows, maybe you'll even uncover some secrets about your fellow adventurers along the way. (Hey, it's possible, right?) So grab your pens, folks, because we've got a lot of worldbuilding to do.
• Teamwork: teamwork makes the dream work! We're not just a bunch of individual characters running around doing our own thing - we're building a story together that encompasses every player and character. This isn't just your story, and it's not just the DM's story. This is OUR story, and we're all playing a crucial role in it. That means you need to be a team player and work together to overcome the challenges ahead. Trust me, you're gonna need each other to survive this campaign. And hey, who knows - maybe you'll even make some lifelong friends along the way.
• Immersion: If you can be in character, you should be in character! Roleplaying is all about improv, saying yes, and going with the flow. And let's be real, the best roleplay experiences can't happen if people are constantly breaking character for no reason. I mean, that's just not good improv, folks. So, here's the deal - we expect our players to remain in character as often as possible at the table. This is theater, after all, and we need to act like we're on stage. So let's embrace our inner thespians, folks, and get ready to bring this story to life like never before.
• Rules and Terms & Conditions: Excluding homebrew, the overall rules of “gameplay” are pretty standard and in accordance with RAW.
• Milestone Leveling: You'll level up according to the story. This means that we can focus less on the grind and more on a steady progression as the story builds. And let's be real, who wants to spend all their time grinding anyway? (Not me, that's for sure. #worldbuilding).
• Table Etiquette: Be willing to listen to others and grow. I mean, let's be real - part of growing close to others and forming real relationships is learning that you can't just have carbon copies of yourself. And let's face it, none of us are perfect. So, here's the deal - emotions might flare up, idiosyncrasies might arise, and sometimes, there might be a little friction. But that's all part of being human, folks. And to be a truly good friend and player, you must always be willing to listen to your peers and adapt accordingly. I mean, that's just part of being an adult. And who knows - maybe you'll learn a thing or two about yourself along the way. (Or maybe you'll just learn that you're really bad at listening. Either way, it's a learning experience.) So let's embrace our humanity, folks, and get ready to form some real relationships at this table.
• Communication: Poor scheduling and bad communication are like the kryptonite of D&D campaigns. And we don't want any kryptonite around here, do we? (No, we do not.) So, if you're part of this group, that means you've gotta keep those communication lines open. If you're someone who likes to manipulate your availability or you're just plain untrustworthy when it comes to communication, well, let's just say that you'll be removed faster than a married paladin in a brothel. (Okay, maybe that's not the best analogy, but you get the idea.)
• Showtime: Alright folks, it's time to shine! When we all arrive at the table, it's like the lights come on and the show begins! I mean, we take a lot of pride and care with our performance here, and we treat it like real theater most of the time. (No, we don't have an intermission or a concession stand, but we're working on it.) It's okay if you're not the best voice actor or you don't have a Shakespearean-level monologue prepared. (Although if you do, please share. We're always looking for some high-quality entertainment.) What matters to us is that you tried and put in the effort. Because at the end of the day, that's what makes this campaign special - the effort and enthusiasm that we all bring to the table.
• Pay attention: When someone's consistently getting distracted it's easy to derail the immersion and fun, it's like throwing a wrench in the whole machine. And let me tell you, it's not a fun sound. That's why we have specific policies in place to make sure everyone's time and effort is being respected. And listen, we all get it - sometimes the outside world can be pretty darn distracting. (Have you seen TikTok lately? It's a black hole, I tell ya.) But here's the deal - we hold each other accountable for paying attention and staying focused, because we all want to have a good time and make the most of this campaign.
• Spotlight: Do you find yourself hogging the spotlight/air every session? Are you someone who constantly talks over others? Are you selfish about the story and really only care about where your character is going every episode? Are you hoarding all the gold and being a murder hobo? This group isn’t for you.

What We Expect & Ask of You

• As the Dungeon Master, I want to make it clear that we're not just looking for players - we're looking for friends. Our aim is to build real, lasting friendships through this game. We've been playing together for a while and plan on playing for even longer. As we add more people to our community, we hope to grow together as a team!
• We don't want any satellite players here. We want active members who will contribute to the group beyond just showing up and playing.
• Honesty is crucial to us. We demand that everyone in our group has integrity not only for us, but for themselves as well. Whether it's scheduling conflicts, personal issues, or anything in between, we want friends who will be honest with each other. As the saying goes, "If you don't heal your wounds, you end up bleeding on others you might care for."
• Players are here to play, not watch. We want everyone at the table to engage with the world, the DM, and their fellow players. If you're taking up a seat at this table, you must actively participate in the story every session. You cannot sit back and listen to it.
• This campaign is meant to be challenging. It's supposed to be deep, confusing, and enthralling around every corner. There are no billboards telling you where to go next, no tutorials, and no easy modes. The intricate web being spun by the many powers of this story and world will take all of your combined minds to figure out. Our group wants a game that keeps us on our toes, so if you think you can just "fight" your way to victory, you'll be dead by morning light.
• Lastly, we love theory crafting. We want everyone to give their input and help us figure out the best moves for the group. Part of being an active player here is contributing to the campaign and helping us navigate this crazy world. So let's get ready to play and work together to make this an unforgettable campaign!

Timeline:

• Stage 2 Interviews: 5/29/23-6/22/23
• Public Applications Close: 6/12/23
• Stage 3 Interviews: 6/23/23-7/1/23
• Final Picks: 7/15/23 (or as soon as possible)
• Campaign Start Date: 8/5/23 or 8/6/23

I realize this might seem like a very intensive process, however we're being very thorough. Because we have gotten so many excellent applicants, we are going to have no choice but to make some hard decisions.
Picks:

• 1 Full-time Player
• 5-6 Guest Players; These will play notable NPC/PCs for dedicated sections or arcs. Arcs will be designed with YOU in mind. We might expand this list depending on how this goes with the first few people, and how many sessions it takes to close out an arc.
• (Maybe) some Alt/Guest DMs; These will voice one or more characters, recurring antagonists, etc.

Are you a dungeon master?
Making campaigns like these is our passion. We love going HIGH production value, HIGH quality. If this is something that you love too and you want to dungeon master in our world, we would LOVE to talk to you. As you can tell from this post, there's not enough dungeon masters out there doing this (clearly way overboard) level of effort.