This isn't my child but just wanted to vent and get some insight. Not even sure if this is the right spot to post but please anything helps! Just want to vent.
Long story short, my girlfriend has a nephew who is living with her and he is 5 1/2 years old that we are around pretty often. I'm getting to the point where his actions and the way he acts and the lil man he is becoming into is starting to get to me. This kid is a little sh*thead! Starting to annoy me.
I've grown to love the kid and been around him the last 3 1/2 years but man!!! Testing the hell out of me. I've noticed that it's starting to annoy me the way he has been reacting/acting and I find his actions as a 5 year old not okay nor acceptable. It's tough cause I KNOW it isn't my place to say nothing or let alone tell someone how to parent .. I feel like there isn't enough discipline on the child. Is this normal to feel like this even though it isn't my kid or my partners kid? It's her sister's child.
I'm constantly around him and it kinda upsets me that nobody else sees that there is no discipline in this child's life. McDonald's EVERYDAY, drinks soda, eating candy, sweets, etc. you tell him no and he starts hitting and saying "no". Tells you "be quiet", starts becoming disrespectful and does not listen. Grandma is ALWAYS spoiling him even when he gets in trouble inside and outside of school and even in the house. He controls the parents life. What he eats, gets to do, even down to what time he goes to bed going to sleep between 10-11pm. I know it's typical toddler tendencies but it's bad. List goes on... A menace right now. Just feel like an asshole for feeling like this??
My MAIN issue is that he's been real touchy and especially with my girlfriend. He is constantly trying to grab her butt and boobs. She tells him to stop and he still continues and tries. Sometimes he'll even try to "lay" with her and randomly will put his face on her butt or slap her butt and grab her boobs. To me, it feels like she isn't stern enough and isn't "mean" enough to let him know that isn't okay and you don't touch anyone in those parts of the body. It turns into an argument for her and I cause I find it uncomfortable that this is STILL an ongoing issue for over a year now. He recently got introuble at school for saying "boobs and butt" in Spanish. My girlfriend lately has been making it seem like I'm "jealous" of a 5 year old when I'm not at all jealous. Almost as if she's excusing the action. Truly just feel uncomfortable. Just not okay with a 5 year old ALMOST 6 who is that touchy. Doesn't help the case that he's getting introuble for similar things at school.
Am I over reacting or anyone else would feel this way also?

Before u read, this will be bunch of informations that are barely connected, it's poorly written, I'm not claiming to have done nothing wrong I just need someone to share my situation with and maybe seek some advice.
Me (F20) have been dating my bf (M19) for almost two years. For background : we went to same school and I used to be his long-term hallway crush, but he seemed shy so I made a first move. In the beginning, like every relationship goes, I could brag about how perfectly he's treating me if anyone asked, and, having sh1tty situations in payt with ex and situationship I was over the moon to have someone treat me so gentle.
Before we started dating, he knew I have an ex of over two years, he knew I had two boys being my very dear friends and I told him, as he has no lady friends, that if he expects me to remove one guy especially it wont work and he agreed that he won't be expecting of me to cut off my friends for him with no hesitation. Guy friend in question is kinda boy who sees to opposite gender besties and if someone says they'd be cute couple he'd act as if it's actual inc3st and we never saw each other any other way then friends. At the prom, same guy friend cried for two hours because he thought I didn't have good time because my crush kissed another girl, but honestly I had the great time when i saw how much he cared for me.
My byofriend also, before dating me, without me asking or saying anything said "I'll remove all woman from my life when I have u" aka girls from school that are people he doesn't talk to enough to call them friends but there is some contact between them. I was confused because I didn't plan on asking him to as I have guy friends but i felt respected.
It all ended up the exact opposite, I did remove my friend who i still miss to this day because my boyfriend was overly jealous. On his side : girls from school started to pick up on him and when he told me about it, I sensed bullying and told him to block them because they're being pretty annoying and he, kidd u not, asked "do i have to?" so brought up him saying he'd remove anyone for me and he did after days of arguing and me crying because it's the opposite of our agreement before dating. It wasn't even jealousy on my side and he didn't want to block them because he thought they'd ask why and he'd be uncomfortable but... He made a promise that he didn't keep.
Year later he broke up with me partly because i wasn't "pure"/ I have an ex and partly because of how bad my mood swings were (I had 3 doctors diagnosing me with severe depression and was almost hospitalized at the time I was "moody" ).
That breakup had me getting even worse because he was the guy to say "I'm so scared you'll leave me" "if you stay I stay" "i hope we're forever" I didn't know forever meant one year but the breakup was only 2 weeks long, had me suffering for over a month before he actually broke up because he took it very very slow. I slept 15 minutes a day and i wish i was being metaphoric, waiting for him to decide weather he'll stay or not. I did everything I could, my ocd gets worse in stressful situations and my brain telling me "if you do this, that will happen, if you don't, that will happen" all day every day, but I obviously did everything it told me to do to keep him and he still left and ruined us for 2 weeks of separation.
Note : If someone tells you they have something going on and they can't change it, don't come in their life trying to force a change, weather it's friendship you might not like or mental disorder out of their control, please.
After we got back together : - I told him i spent time home in group chat with two of my girls and some of their friends and random boy we found where we played "guess what I drew" because i couldn't leave bed and couldn't sleep, he got jealous at that random boy and made me feel bad for doing something while not being in a relationship. (I didn't flirt, we didn't talk in private chat, we just played and he was also aroace.)
While we were on breakup I also reached out to my guy friend and he is doing amazing, enjoying life and was happy I contacted him but my boyfriend made me cut him off, again. Tho, his sister best friend (girl) is buying him gifts, sleeping over at their place in room him and his sister are sharing but why would I be jealous? In fact, I'm not, I like that girl more then I like his family.
Anyway, it was last summer, when he asked me to be his girlfriend again I told him that I'll need time to heal, prepared him for the fact that I will bring up stuff he did before we broke up because I'm still hurt, and he'll need to be extra patient and gentle and he agreed, but instead, every time I talked about pain breakup caused because I wasn't over it, he'd yell at me so i tried to bottle it all up.
In past few months, everything I tell him will hurt me he'll find a way to do it, even if it's something he didn't have in mind, if i told him fictionally it'll hurt me so he knows, he'll do it, and when I confront him about it he'd focus on my reaction saying "are u being fr?" (Like I didn't warn him.) or "stop making me angrier I'm stressed" ( Like I'm not, also, stressed.)
Every time he does something i asked him not to, if I had a reaction it would turn into hours long fight and after making me a bad guy for reacting, he'd play a victim saying I misunderstood, it's all in my head ect. Well i started to tell my friend about our fights or I'd ask AI making "story" to see situation from someone else's perspective because I was tired of being told it's all in my head and it's on daily basis.
He recently started to pick up on my traits of ocd or autism that I also have diagnosed and told him about before he asked me out.
This was my overreaction, I agree, but I'm aware and I didn't ask to be this way; He gave me his hoodie so I'll sit in bus ( it was so dirty and I'd rather be standing, but he wanted me to sit with him and offered a hoodie which was nice. ) when we got to my place laundry dryer fell and put his hoodie on my, just day before, washed rug so i can have free hands to pick up the laundry, he picked hoodie up, angry that i left it on a floor for hot minute, immediately and put it on my bed where I sleep. I threw it right away and started crying because I'm extremely germophobic and had flashbacks from how dirty the bus was, he wanted to go home because i was acting too crazy and I know it's too much of a reaction on my side but I'd rather be like that then like people with no basic hygiene. He started asking "are you going to be this way forever?" And pressuring me to answer, then he told me I'm the only person in whole world behaving like this, like I don't know it's too much, I know it, my ocd is taking over my time and my life, my rituals are anxiously long, my fear of being dirty makes me unable to function through out the day, I have it hard already without someone putting a pressure on it, my doctor refused to treat me even tho I told him it takes at least 2 hours after I go to bed to re-do all my rituals so I can sleep without feer and I still end up waking up few times in one night, I know it's not normal bruh that's why it's a disorder lol, I never claimed it was normal but how can I just get it out of my body, I feel like crazy disgusting creature with zero rights to live because of what he says every time I have a" moment ".
He also doesn't fail to make me feel guilty for not paying attention to my tone when speaking or my facial expressions or my sensory sensitivity like it's all my fault, asking when will I stop being like this and that it's just me being like this, that no one else is this hard to deal with.
I love him and he's making me hate my existence, my flaws, things I can't change about myself, what am I supposed to do about it? Therapy in this country isn't much of help. I feel so guilty oftenly for being the way I am and I didn't even list half of the things.
He also makes me feel guilty for him giving me his time, when we have plans for a day but we spend that day with him always being in rush to go back home and him complaining how he didn't have to do A B and C because he "had to see me" like he doesn't even want to see me. (Same boy who said, over year ago " I can't stand seeing you only four hours a day I wish to be around you all the time".
We're fighting every day and every day it's something I asked him not to do but he still did and it always ends up with me being just too angry all the time and him doing nothing wrong.
He doesn't communicate well, he's messages contains 2-3 words and when I understand what he wrote instead of what he "meant" it's my fault. I warned him more then year ago that if I keep trying to explain in 5 different ways my point of view while he doesn't even explains his with valid sentence I'll give up on talking.
He's "explanation" goes like this : If i ask for two plus two he'll say the fishes brethe air - not only is the explanation wrong in general but it never has anything to do with my question. Like dudes that cheat and excause is that his grandma died, you get it?
Now, I'm so tired that when I try to tell him what's wrong, when he starts to be self defensive I block him because I can't take it anymore, I now can't communicate because I know how it'll end up anyway and it lost it's meaning. I'm turning out toxic but I'm tired, my soul is tired while his soul is rotting.
It hurts watching my sweet boy turning into such an ignorant and pathetic person. I started to think he has npd.
It seems like only solution is for me to stop reacting and to bottle everything up, but that's not relationship I want. I don't want to pretend I'm fine when I'm not, I don't want to keep masking around my own partner just for the sake of his ego because that guy can't stand being told he did something wrong and it takes hours of justifying, self-defense and victim role for him to actually say sorry without even understanding why he should be apologizing for.
TLDR : I (20f) am dating my bf (19m) who's only ever focused on my reaction when he's mistreating me then the reason why I reacted.

Before u read, this will be bunch of informations that are barely connected, it's poorly written, I'm not claiming to have done nothing wrong I just need someone to share my situation with and maybe seek some advice.
Me (F20) have been dating my bf (M19) for almost two years. For background : we went to same school and I used to be his long-term hallway crush, but he seemed shy so I made a first move. In the beginning, like every relationship goes, I could brag about how perfectly he's treating me if anyone asked, and, having sh1tty situations in payt with ex and situationship I was over the moon to have someone treat me so gentle.
Before we started dating, he knew I have an ex of over two years, he knew I had two boys being my very dear friends and I told him, as he has no lady friends, that if he expects me to remove one guy especially it wont work and he agreed that he won't be expecting of me to cut off my friends for him with no hesitation. Guy friend in question is kinda boy who sees to opposite gender besties and if someone says they'd be cute couple he'd act as if it's actual inc3st and we never saw each other any other way then friends. At the prom, same guy friend cried for two hours because he thought I didn't have good time because my crush kissed another girl, but honestly I had the great time when i saw how much he cared for me.
My byofriend also, before dating me, without me asking or saying anything said "I'll remove all woman from my life when I have u" aka girls from school that are people he doesn't talk to enough to call them friends but there is some contact between them. I was confused because I didn't plan on asking him to as I have guy friends but i felt respected.
It all ended up the exact opposite, I did remove my friend who i still miss to this day because my boyfriend was overly jealous. On his side : girls from school started to pick up on him and when he told me about it, I sensed bullying and told him to block them because they're being pretty annoying and he, kidd u not, asked "do i have to?" so brought up him saying he'd remove anyone for me and he did after days of arguing and me crying because it's the opposite of our agreement before dating. It wasn't even jealousy on my side and he didn't want to block them because he thought they'd ask why and he'd be uncomfortable but... He made a promise that he didn't keep.
Year later he broke up with me partly because i wasn't "pure"/ I have an ex and partly because of how bad my mood swings were (I had 3 doctors diagnosing me with severe depression and was almost hospitalized at the time I was "moody" ).
That breakup had me getting even worse because he was the guy to say "I'm so scared you'll leave me" "if you stay I stay" "i hope we're forever" I didn't know forever meant one year but the breakup was only 2 weeks long, had me suffering for over a month before he actually broke up because he took it very very slow. I slept 15 minutes a day and i wish i was being metaphoric, waiting for him to decide weather he'll stay or not. I did everything I could, my ocd gets worse in stressful situations and my brain telling me "if you do this, that will happen, if you don't, that will happen" all day every day, but I obviously did everything it told me to do to keep him and he still left and ruined us for 2 weeks of separation.
Note : If someone tells you they have something going on and they can't change it, don't come in their life trying to force a change, weather it's friendship you might not like or mental disorder out of their control, please.
After we got back together : - I told him i spent time home in group chat with two of my girls and some of their friends and random boy we found where we played "guess what I drew" because i couldn't leave bed and couldn't sleep, he got jealous at that random boy and made me feel bad for doing something while not being in a relationship. (I didn't flirt, we didn't talk in private chat, we just played and he was also aroace.)
While we were on breakup I also reached out to my guy friend and he is doing amazing, enjoying life and was happy I contacted him but my boyfriend made me cut him off, again. Tho, his sister best friend (girl) is buying him gifts, sleeping over at their place in room him and his sister are sharing but why would I be jealous? In fact, I'm not, I like that girl more then I like his family.
Anyway, it was last summer, when he asked me to be his girlfriend again I told him that I'll need time to heal, prepared him for the fact that I will bring up stuff he did before we broke up because I'm still hurt, and he'll need to be extra patient and gentle and he agreed, but instead, every time I talked about pain breakup caused because I wasn't over it, he'd yell at me so i tried to bottle it all up.
In past few months, everything I tell him will hurt me he'll find a way to do it, even if it's something he didn't have in mind, if i told him fictionally it'll hurt me so he knows, he'll do it, and when I confront him about it he'd focus on my reaction saying "are u being fr?" (Like I didn't warn him.) or "stop making me angrier I'm stressed" ( Like I'm not, also, stressed.)
Every time he does something i asked him not to, if I had a reaction it would turn into hours long fight and after making me a bad guy for reacting, he'd play a victim saying I misunderstood, it's all in my head ect. Well i started to tell my friend about our fights or I'd ask AI making "story" to see situation from someone else's perspective because I was tired of being told it's all in my head and it's on daily basis.
He recently started to pick up on my traits of ocd or autism that I also have diagnosed and told him about before he asked me out.
This was my overreaction, I agree, but I'm aware and I didn't ask to be this way; He gave me his hoodie so I'll sit in bus ( it was so dirty and I'd rather be standing, but he wanted me to sit with him and offered a hoodie which was nice. ) when we got to my place laundry dryer fell and put his hoodie on my, just day before, washed rug so i can have free hands to pick up the laundry, he picked hoodie up, angry that i left it on a floor for hot minute, immediately and put it on my bed where I sleep. I threw it right away and started crying because I'm extremely germophobic and had flashbacks from how dirty the bus was, he wanted to go home because i was acting too crazy and I know it's too much of a reaction on my side but I'd rather be like that then like people with no basic hygiene. He started asking "are you going to be this way forever?" And pressuring me to answer, then he told me I'm the only person in whole world behaving like this, like I don't know it's too much, I know it, my ocd is taking over my time and my life, my rituals are anxiously long, my fear of being dirty makes me unable to function through out the day, I have it hard already without someone putting a pressure on it, my doctor refused to treat me even tho I told him it takes at least 2 hours after I go to bed to re-do all my rituals so I can sleep without feer and I still end up waking up few times in one night, I know it's not normal bruh that's why it's a disorder lol, I never claimed it was normal but how can I just get it out of my body, I feel like crazy disgusting creature with zero rights to live because of what he says every time I have a" moment ".
He also doesn't fail to make me feel guilty for not paying attention to my tone when speaking or my facial expressions or my sensory sensitivity like it's all my fault, asking when will I stop being like this and that it's just me being like this, that no one else is this hard to deal with.
I love him and he's making me hate my existence, my flaws, things I can't change about myself, what am I supposed to do about it? Therapy in this country isn't much of help. I feel so guilty oftenly for being the way I am and I didn't even list half of the things.
He also makes me feel guilty for him giving me his time, when we have plans for a day but we spend that day with him always being in rush to go back home and him complaining how he didn't have to do A B and C because he "had to see me" like he doesn't even want to see me. (Same boy who said, over year ago " I can't stand seeing you only four hours a day I wish to be around you all the time".
We're fighting every day and every day it's something I asked him not to do but he still did and it always ends up with me being just too angry all the time and him doing nothing wrong.
He doesn't communicate well, he's messages contains 2-3 words and when I understand what he wrote instead of what he "meant" it's my fault. I warned him more then year ago that if I keep trying to explain in 5 different ways my point of view while he doesn't even explains his with valid sentence I'll give up on talking.
He's "explanation" goes like this : If i ask for two plus two he'll say the fishes brethe air - not only is the explanation wrong in general but it never has anything to do with my question. Like dudes that cheat and excause is that his grandma died, you get it?
Now, I'm so tired that when I try to tell him what's wrong, when he starts to be self defensive I block him because I can't take it anymore, I now can't communicate because I know how it'll end up anyway and it lost it's meaning. I'm turning out toxic but I'm tired, my soul is tired while his soul is rotting.
It hurts watching my sweet boy turning into such an ignorant and pathetic person. I started to think he has npd.
It seems like only solution is for me to stop reacting and to bottle everything up, but that's not relationship I want. I don't want to pretend I'm fine when I'm not, I don't want to keep masking around my own partner just for the sake of his ego because that guy can't stand being told he did something wrong and it takes hours of justifying, self-defense and victim role for him to actually say sorry without even understanding why he should be apologizing for.
TLDR : I (20f) am dating my bf (19m) who's only ever focused on my reaction when he's mistreating me then the reason why I reacted.

My gf and i have been together for 5 months and things are pretty rocky right now. Especially now actually, because she said she wanted to go on a break until she returns from her trip in 2.5 weeks. The reason is because I did not blow up her phone at 12 AM last night saying happy birthday or say happy birthday to her in the early morning. Keep in mind this week I have finals and as an engineering major I have to make sure i focus really hard and pass my courses. Instead I said happy birthday at 2 PM (her time 4PM), when i woke up from a late night study sesh. She then texted me saying she was really really upset and that my effort did not match her idea of effort.
The kicker is because she left on her trip on Saturday, I celebrated her birthday with her on friday. I bought her a birthday tiara, then a gift she said she wanted from her “list” and set up a whole surprise thingy from my trunk with lots of balloons and decorations and some flowers. I tried my best because money for me is really tight right now. But I spent 1 week doing all that, and it was a lot of effort from me. I also brought her out to eat and had a outing with her. And as someone who never celebrated my birthday, i didn’t know what to put together and it was really out of my comfort zone but i really enjoyed putting it together and i thought she would really like it!
But apparently that was not good enough. Today she said to me she wished i put a note inside or made it more sentimental since i couldn’t afford what she really wanted. She said what she really wanted wasn’t what she mentioned in her “list” but something else. To put it simply, she thinks my gift was not birthday worthy because what i gave her was a regular gift you give when you think of someone when you’re out and about. Essentially this girl expects me to read her mind or in between the lines. But unfortunately i am not a psychic. There’s just so many rules to this relationship.
In addition to that she compared me to her friends and all the things they’ve done for her on her birthday, like order food to her hotel or spam her phone at 12 AM. Or someone who drove 3 hours to see her where she is right now. I just think it’s so unfair how she expects me to do all these things and compares me to her friends. I’m trying my best. I also already celebrated your birthday 3 days ago!!! Especially since she said her love language is acts of service, I try my best to fulfill that! I didn’t know it was gift giving too!
I am really upset and just so exhausted with this relationship. It feels like nothing i can do will be good enough. And if i try to defend myself, she says I invalidate her feelings. I’m almost at the point where i won’t even defend myself and explain my side and feelings anymore because she will just say i am making it all about me and invalidating her feelings. So, where do i go from here?

a list of things my mother has done. mostly a vent and tramadump

• thought i was faking being sick (tested positive for the flu that week)
• thought i was faking being transgender (have been on testosterone for five years with zero thoughts of detransing)
• told me my suicide attempt was "for attention" (my father died that year and i was being assaulted at school)
• told my boyfriend that i faked migraines (i never said they were migraines at all...)
• says her children are "too perfect" to have mental illnesses (see suicide attempt above, her first child is a heroin addict with PTSD and her other two children have extreme anxiety disorders)
• tells me i'm "too smart" to have autism (when the traits are easily identifiable and present. not to mention that plenty of autistic men and women are intelligent and having autism ≠ not smart)

whenever i began to cry as a child, she screamed. when i tried to argue in defense of myself, she put her hands on me. if i ever felt sick, tired, or upset, she would roll her eyes and "oh, whatever" me. i don't have meth to keep me working like a steamroller all day! i'm just a teenager.
all of her children have been beaten or sexually assaulted by men that she chose to date. she is a raging meth user and a POS, so i know i shouldn't take her insults to heart, but i feel so fucked up from the things my parents have done to me that i don't believe i will ever recover.
no relationship i have in my lifetime will ever feel whole or stable because of her. i'll never be able to hold down a job. i have no one to teach me to drive, or any other adult things. in fact, SHE made me do her taxes FOR her, then screamed and cried about the possibility of owing the government. my trauma response has been "fight" for so long, and when it stopped working, it became freeze.
i am always walking on eggshells. without a steady job or license, it feels like i will never move out, never escape her. i think sometimes that i should have died in 2018 when i attempted.
if i do dishes nine times a week, but the sink is full for two minutes, i'm lazy. if i sleep in an extra three hours, i'm basically worthless. if i haven't taken out the trash, the world is crashing and burning and she is on the verge of death and crying. if something goes wrong with the self-checkout at walmart, she is throwing groceries and jerking her head around like a fucking lunatic while screaming about every little thing that bothers her. it really makes me want to rip my nails off. she likely acts this way from the meth abuse, but my sisters recall her being overdramatic as early as the 1990s.
illness or weakness of ANY kind disgusts her. it's like she's projecting her hatred of herself onto me. when i was skinny and she was overweight, she rarely spoke about it. i suspect she was envious. now that she never eats and can fit into child's size clothing, my weight has ballooned from anti-anxiety medicines and repeated work injuries. she loves to point out that my clothes no longer fit, or that my face is getting puffier. it upset me-- i tried to brush it off as her being old-- but then i imagined a friend saying it to me, and it put everything into perspective.
i do feel like an idiot for ever expressing myself towards her, for crying on her bed and begging for comfort when i was truly anxious and devastated, or for asking her opinion on literally anything. comfort is never given, and her opinions waver on what will most benefit her in the moment, not what will help ME.
one last thing; she was nearly kicked out of the behavioral center i was admitted to for screaming in my face during visitation. feels like a little cherry on top.
i'm not sure what type of narcissism this is, if any. drop your thoughts below if you want, and times your parents have been in denial of things that happen to you.

(Repost from HousingUK)
TLDR: I own a share if freehold flat and the other freeholder lives abroad, is incapacitated and has no next of kin, just a legal representative appointed by a government organisation in the country she lives in. I need to sell my flat and extend the lease but two years in I have got nowhere in getting the deeds signed. What can I do?
Hi Housing UK readers,
I wanted to see if you had any fresh ideas on how to approach this situation I find myself in.
I purchased a flat in 2011. The flat is one of two in a Victorian conversion. Both flats are self-contained.
I am the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat B and have been living in the flat since 2011.
Miss X is the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat A, and has owned the flat since 2001. The flat is being rented as Miss X retired abroad in 2006.
Miss X and I also both own a share of the freehold, which is split 50/50.
I’m in contact with Miss X for a few years after I buy, but all admin relating to building management is dealt with by her estate agents and she defers any discussions to them.
Fast forward to September 2022. I need to sell my flat as I want to move to a different city, and have some debt I need to pay off. The flat is listed for sale in late October 2022.
There are 84 years left on the lease for both myself and Miss X. I reach out to Miss X to inform her of my plans and that I will need her signature for the various deeds, and that we should extend the lease. The email bounces back and her phone line is disconnected.
I contact the estate agents who manage flat A. They have also not heard from Miss X for a while, I can tell they know more, but they are unwilling to share any details. In a tactical move, I list my flat for sale with them too, to try and get their help with Miss X (a whole other hilarious side story). I am repeatedly assured by them that the situation with Miss X will not hinder the sale of the flat (a huge lie).
March 2023 I finally find some buyers (with another agent) and start the conveyancing process, including extending the lease and transferring the freehold.
May 2023. After chasing Miss X’s estate agents for weeks, I discover that Miss X is now incapacitated and hospitalised with dementia. Miss X has no partner or children, no next of kin and no legal representation in the UK. She is under the care of a government agency in the European country she resides in. A lawyer employed by the agency, let’s call him SP, has been appointed as her legal representative and is in contact with the UK estate agents. SP sends documents to verify his status to the agents, who confirm legitimacy via their lawyers. SP is very hard to reach, rarely answers emails or his phone.
I find a solicitor specialised in property law to help me navigate this situation. As Miss X is not deemed “absent”, the solicitor suggests that it’s best to try and resolve this with the appointed legal representative (SP), as any other legal routes available for absentee freeholders through UK courts wouldn’t apply (as we know where Miss X is). I explain the situation to SP, he talks to a judge and informs me he lacks capacity to make decisions about the leasehold and freehold matters without court / judicial approval in his country.
SP also asks for help with gaining access to Miss X’s UK bank account. All rental income from her flat in the UK is being transferred to a UK bank account via the estate agents. I share information on obtaining power of attorney in the UK and suggest it would be best to appoint a lawyer in the UK to help with all matters.
November 2023. After several months of backwards and forwards with SP to try and find out exactly what legal documents the judge wants to see in court, under his guidance my solicitor produces papers, documents and evidence, we get them translated, postilled and posted. SP is confident the judge will be happy and grant permission for signatures.
The documents make it clear that the authority being sought for SP to sign the leasehold extension and transfer of freehold are in no way prejudicial to Miss X and in fact extending the lease would add value to her property should she decide to sell in future.
A court date is set 3 months later. Sigh. More waiting.
I lose my buyers (understandably).
February 2024. The court date arrives. The judge rejects the request for permission for SP to sign papers on behalf of Miss X. It’s not fully clear why this is rejected. After speaking to SP it seems that the judge now wants SP to obtain access to Miss X’s bank account before moving forward. I am surprised that no progress has been made with that.
I go back to my solicitor. Now that we can show that steps have been taken to locate Miss X and get the deeds signed by her legal deputy without recourse, they suggest that we can apply to court in the UK to have another trustee appointed to sign the transfer and deed, and suggests appointing counsel to make the application to UK courts, which should be “run of the mill”. We choose a barrister, the situation is explained, documents shared, and I’m given a 3 week timeframe for papers to be produced for court.
In the meantime we connect SP to a solicitor in the UK who can help with obtaining PoA, as no progress has been made with that yet.
A few days later the barrister gets in touch, more bad news.
Under TLATA, there would be a breach of trust if all required consent from the current trustees was not obtained, so it is not sufficient to just add another trustee, Miss X would need to be replaced as outlined in the Trustee Act 36(1). However under the Trustee Act 36(9), where a trustee lacks the ability to perform their function, no new trustee can be appointed without consent from the Court of Protection. I am informed that making this application to the CoP is lengthy, costly and risky. The barrister says it would be faster and safer to wait for SP to obtain the relevant permissions.
We reach out to SP again to see what progress has been made. None. Some documents need to be translated and he is unwilling to pay for the translations (it seems their organisation has no money). We offer to pay now and be reimbursed once access to Miss X’s money is granted.
We are now almost half way through 2024 and coming up to 2 years into this situation.
Is it really possible that legally these are my only two options?

• going to the UK courts at great expense in a process that has been called “risky and lengthy” by the barrister.
• Waiting for SP to sort out PoA with no guarantee that the judge will even grant permission for the deeds to be signed (again risky and lengthy)

I know I can try and sell my flat without the share if freehold and with a short lease, but this will affect its value and the short lease especially will be a problem with mortgage applications.
Any different ideas on how to approach this? Seems so absurd that currently I can’t sell something that is mine, due to a situation I didn’t create!
There are many more twists and turns to this story but I have left them out as this is long enough. Also I do not have a legal background or am a housing expert so apologies if some of the language I use is incorrect.
Thanks for reading!

I struggled to find current information beforehand and thought I would share my experience for others searching for an answer.
We wanted to end our recent transatlantic cruise a day early in Le Havre instead of South Hampton in order to continue our vacation throughout France and Italy without wasting a day travelling back to France.
I called in to NCL three times and was consistently told that it could not be done, early disembarkment was never possible, and was illegal due to the Jones Act.
However, once on the boat I talked to guest services, mentally prepared to try and argue and plead my case and was met with a simple "Sure, just stop by the day before" and they took down my room number. I checked again the next day and they confirmed.
The day before early disembarkment we stopped by guest services again, provided copies of our passports and were told we'd get a letter in our room. Our NCL app also updated to reflect the reduced itinerary and the last day of gratuities were refunded.
We got the letter saying to meet France immigration at 8:15 the next morning which we did along with about 20 other people also getting off early. A short wait in line later we were cleared to leave and the officer requested we leave the ship by 12.
While exiting the ship we got crossed off a list and that was it.
It was a total breeze and while I understand they likely don't want to encourage it to make their lives easiemilk more money out of guests I just wanted to share it is easy and possible in my experience despite what the call center might say.
*Experience may vary, check out Jones Act for USA cruises, but my dad also successfully early disembarked in Victoria on a Seattle - Seattle Alaskan cruise)

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I (28 F) am getting married soon, the guest list is creeping up there to be over 100+ people tons of family and friends, fancy venue, the works. My best friend (27 F) since 1st grade and maid of honor has been making a huge fuss for months about being able to bring a plus one to my wedding. Which would be fine if she was actually dating someone… She’s currently single… I love her but to be honest she “dates” the worst type of people and I desperately do not want an unpredictable stranger at my wedding thats just some guy my friend met a week ago. And also she has a track record of some pretty GRAPHIC PDA in front of me and other people. Like she gets off on doing public sexual acts and not getting caught when she goes out with these gross guys and I do not trust her to behave classy at my wedding when she’s with a “date”
So I gave her an ultimatum, no significant other, no plus one. She thought I was joking and when I said I wasn’t she called me a bitch and told me I wasn’t considering her feelings and that she won’t have a good time at my wedding without a date. And that because she’s the maid of honor that she has to have a date. I don’t think I’m in the wrong here I don’t want to be stressed out on my big day thinking about how a stranger will act. But she’s making me feel like I’m the asshole for telling her no. I do feel bad that we’re fighting over this. AITA?
Edit: For extra Info:
Only friends and family who I know are in serious long term relationships get a plus one. Names have to be on the invitation. I’ve met them all so I know who they are and what they’re like. So no nobody is getting a random plus one. She does not have a name or even a clue who she even wants to bring but still is fighting me to bring someone. She thinks I’ll wait till the very last minute to have her bring someone.
Yes she’s my very best friend and I love her very much. She’s perfectly fine by herself but becomes a totally different person around her “dates” I just really want her to be there for me and not make the day about getting laid by a stranger at my wedding lol but she feels like she has to for whatever reason.
Edit again: SHE WILL NOT BE ALONE. She knows my friends AND MY ENTIRE FAMILY also HER parents and both of her sisters will also be there.

The Purpose of Life for Man

One of the most direct verses on the subject of "the meaning (or purpose) of (human) life" in the Bible can be found in Revelation:

"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created."-Revelation 4:11

This, of course, should prompt us to ask what exactly does God take pleasure in?
Conversely, what doesn't He take pleasure in?

"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"-Micah 6:6-8

God does not take pleasure in mere outward religiosity and ritual, but rather finds honest acts of love towards Him and others as more important when pertaining to our fulfillment of what God expects from us as His creation. God takes great pleasure in us doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with Him. This is what He requires of us. In other words...

"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."-Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

The Book of Ecclesiastes is an existential treatise on the futility of finding any meaning or fulfillment in life apart from God. In it, "the Preacher" (or "Teacher" in some translations) explores the limits of human experiences which may provide meaning or fulfillment in this life before the author of the book inevitably concludes that the only thing we can do that has any kind of meaning or permanence in the end is fearing God and keeping His commandments. The reason for this is because the march of time and our own mortality effectively make most human endeavors hevel. The Hebrew word "hevel" is translated as vanity in the King James.
The following is taken from BibleProject:

In Hebrew, hevel literally refers to “vapor” or “smoke.” The teacher uses this word 38 times throughout the book of Ecclesiastes as a metaphor to describe how life is temporary and fleeting, like a wisp of smoke, but also how life is an enigma or paradox. Smoke appears solid, but when you try to grab it, it’s like nothing is there.

[...]

The author’s basic goal is to target all of the ways we try to build meaning and purpose in life apart from God and then let the teacher deconstruct them. The author thinks that people spend most of their time investing energy and emotion in things that ultimately have no lasting meaning or significance. And so he allows the teacher to give us a reality check.

The Preacher gives us a "reality check" by demonstrating how time and death effectively make things like scientific and artistic discovery (1:10-11), mirth (2:1), alcohol (2:3), architecture (2:4), amassing property (2:7-8), and luxury (2:8) all hevel. Materialism and hedonism fail to fulfill, and though wisdom and righteousness are acknowledged by the preacher to be advantageous, the righteous and wise are still often victims of injustice and unfairness in the world while the wicked get to prosper and have longevity at times (1:13-18). Generally, your life will probably be better by living in the wisdom given in Proverbs (Ecc. 7:11-12; 9:13-18), but it's no guarantee that you will have a good life as bad things still happen to good people, and good things still happen to bad people. This isn't entirely "hevel" but it's confusing and disorienting because things don't always work out the way we think they should in this life.
Again, from BibleProject:

So what’s the way forward in the midst of all this hevel? Paradoxically, the teacher discovers that the key to truly enjoying life is accepting hevel, acknowledging that everything in your life is totally out of your control. About six different times, at the bleakest moments in his dialogue, the teacher suddenly talks about “the gift of God,” which is the enjoyment of the simple, good things in life such as friendship, family, a good meal, or a sunny day.
You and I can’t control the most important things in our lives. Nothing is guaranteed, and, strangely, that’s the beauty of it. When I adopt a posture of complete trust in God, it frees me to simply enjoy life as I actually experience it and not as I think it ought to be. In the end, even my expectations about life, my hopes and dreams, are all “hevel, hevel. Everything under the sun is hevel.”
The teacher’s words come to an end, and the author takes over, bringing the book to a close. He says that it is very important to hear what the teacher has to say. He likens the teacher’s words to a shepherd’s staff with a goad, a pointy end that will hurt when it pokes you. But that pain can ultimately steer you in the right direction towards greater wisdom.
The author warns us not to take the teacher’s words too far. You can spend your entire life buried in books trying to answer the existential puzzles of human life. Don’t exhaust yourself, he says. You’ll never get there. Instead, the author offers his own conclusion that we should “fear God and keep his commands; this is the whole duty of humans. For God will bring every deed into judgment, every hidden thing, whether good or evil” (Ec. 12:13-14).

Fearing the Lord doesn’t guarantee success in this life, but it is the right thing to do, and ultimately God will clear the "hevel" and bring His justice on all we have done. Therefore, we ought to keep God's commandments.
Through Jesus, we see the Bible clearing the confusion many have, and still have, about God's commandments and what exactly they are (in essence, at least):

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."-Matthew 22:37-40

The apostle Paul puts it like this:

"For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."-Galatians 5:14

The apostle John, like this:

"And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."-1 John 4:16

In other words, the first and second greatest commandments can be seen as inextricably intertwined, as one cannot truly love God without loving their fellow man, and vice versa.
So, to put it bluntly, the meaning, or purpose, of (human) life according to the Bible is simply love.

"What Does It Mean to Love Biblically?"

But, what exactly is love anyway? We know that, according to the apostle John, God is love. But, what does that mean exactly?
The ancient Greeks had anywhere between four and eight different words for love (depending on the source):

• Storge: affection
  
• Philia or Phileo: friendship
  
• Eros: sexual, erotic
  
• Agape: unconditional, divine, selfless
  
• Ludus: flirtatious, playful, casual, uncommitted
  
• Pragma: committed, long-standing
  
• Philautia: self-love
  
• Mania: obsessive, possessive, addictive, dependent
  

The word translated as "charity" in the KJV's rendering of 1st Corinthians 13 is agape. A more accurate translation of the word would be "love," more specifically, the love of God. In this passage, Paul talks about the importance of having this kind of love for others compared to all the things we might typically obsess over concerning the things of God. Even things like charity to the poor itself, if not motivated by agape, does not impress God! Our motivations and heart matter to God just as much, if not more, than our actions themselves.
This is what the Bible defines as true love, or at least, is the kind of love it's most concerned about.
In order to demonstrate to another that we love them, we sacrifice something. For God, He sent His only begotten Son to die for our sins (John 3:16). For Jesus, he sacrificed himself to save us from our sins:

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."-John 15:13

In essence, true love is self-sacrifice. Putting others before ourselves is the greatest kind of sacrifice.
God didn't have to send His Son, but He did. Jesus didn't have to accept the mission, but he did.
God loves you, and Jesus loves you.
We demonstrate to others that we love them by sacrificing our wants and desires for them. These sacrifices can range from really small, to really big. Loving others is a daily practice of making greater and greater sacrifices.

“You can will to love people. Love is not a feeling. Love is a willing, and the Lord says to love people. He did not mean [to merely] feel love for them” — A.W. Tozer

A stumbling block for many in their walk with God is the inability to love one's enemies and to love unlovable people as Jesus did. It’s difficult for us to show love to people we don’t feel love for; to people we despise or dislike. We also tend to struggle with extending grace and mercy to those who’ve hurt us. I myself often wonder whether I am even capable of loving everyone the way Jesus does.
As I grow in my faith, I realize it’s not that I’m incapable of loving like Jesus; I’m just not always willing to. My unwillingness to love indicates that I am unwittingly adopting the worldly view of love, which is based on feelings and merit. I am choosing not to love people I feel are underserving of my love. The more I study Scripture, though, the more I realize Biblical love is not a feeling or an emotion; it’s a decision. It is an action, and it’s sacrificial. It’s not something you feel; it is, again, something you practice.

“Biblical love is a choice to do good for another person regardless of what we feel. It is a decision to compassionately and righteously pursue the betterment of another person. This is why you can even love your enemies according to Christ’s command.” — Tony Evans

Jesus commands us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30). He also said, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34). Since the Lord commands us to love, that means it is within our power to do so; therefore, love is a decision we make. Although feelings will accompany love, it’s not an emotion; it’s the decision to love regardless of how we feel.
As believers, we’re taught to love our enemies, and do good to those who hate us, and if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, "turn to him the other also" (Matt. 5:39). It’s not easy to do; hating our enemies comes naturally to us because of our evil nature. It is impossible to love our enemies on our own strength; we need the help of the Spirit of God.
The decision to love your enemies arises from the decision to obey the will of God and the desire to be Christlike. We choose to love our enemies because God said so and loved us first. Jesus said we are to love as he loved us.

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”-Romans 5:8

So Biblical love is sacrificial love. It is not a feeling but an act of will; the desire to put the welfare of others above your own. This type of love is not a love based on affection or emotion. Instead, it’s agape love, a love that is not concerned with self but is concerned more with the good of others.
We are not going to like everyone, nor are we called to; we are called to love everyone regardless of how we feel about them. It’s possible to love someone without feeling love for them when we decide to love everyone the way God loves us. The more we love through our actions, the decision to love will become a choice the heart is more willing to make.
Again, this doesn’t mean you will like or feel love for everyone, but when you put your trust in the Lord and pursue wisdom and holiness through prayer and Scripture, you will naturally develop a love for others.
To put it succinctly: Biblical love seeks the best interests of others, even our enemies, often to the detriment of ourselves. "Best interests" here doesn't necessarily mean what the other person thinks are their own best interests. It just means we do for them what we know or believe is best for them, and what we know or believe is best for them should be informed by an active participation with the Spirit of God and by His Word (the Bible) itself. Feelings may or may not accompany this, but how we feel towards the other is not what determines whether or not we're exhibiting the love of God, in the view of Jesus and the apostles. In their view, it's about whether or not we can still decide to seek the best interests of those who might harm us, or who we might not even like.

What the Real Heavenly Treasure Is

Now, this all brings us to an important question that needs to be answered: Is it wrong to love God and others while making a reward the objective for doing so?
We must ask this question, because all throughout Scripture we are told that the faithful followers of God will be "rewarded" some day for everything they've done to merit this. Giving an exhaustive list of passages that proves this point would be endless, but here are some examples of just a few:

"Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just."-Luke 14:12-14
"I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."-Acts 20:35
"But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil."-Luke 6:35

The answer to this question depends on what we define as "rewards." Most will typically adopt some vague idea of material possesions that await the believer when they get to heaven as one's reward for faithfulness towards God, or that the reward is simply an escape from punishment for one's own sins, or perhaps even some combination of these things both.
However, none of these are the "rewards" the Lord is promising to those who obey the first and second commandments. If they were, our motivation to love God and others would ultimately be selfish. Think about it. Our motivation for rewards would inherently be me-centered, and not other-centered.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ gives the following command:

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."-Matthew 6:19-21

We know there are heavenly treasures, because Jesus says so, but what are they? The issue of heavenly treasures or eternal rewards is riddled with question marks. It’s a subject that has been abused by some (“Store up treasure by giving to my ministry”) and left in the too-hard basket by others.
But the answer here is simple, and two-fold. One of our rewards are God Himself:

"After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward."-Genesis 15:1
"But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."-Hevrews 11:6

What is the reward of the seeker but to find that which is sought? If you are searching for God, you will find Him and He will be your very great reward.
Now, if you are the newest believer or the eleventh-hour worker, you will be as richly blessed as the oldest, most faithful saint. Eternity will not be divided into the haves and have-nots, for we are all one in the New Jerusalem.
But we can distinguish God our reward from the heavenly treasure that Jesus said can be stored up. You cannot "store up" more of God, after all.
So what are heavenly treasures? The answer may surprise you, but it’s people.

"Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward."-Psalm 127:3

What is the only thing you can take with you? People, a.k.a. eternal friends, a.k.a. spiritual offspring. This Psalm is not just talking about biological children. God has bigger plans for you and they involve spiritual children. Lots of them. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. Don’t limit God.
So much time and effort is spent debating heavenly treasures as though they were some great mystery. What are they? Jesus makes it plain: it's people.

• Just as Abraham was called to be the father of many nations, so are you.
  
• Jesus said those who followed him would be fishers of men. What is a fisherman’s reward? It’s fish, or people in this case.
  
• What is the reward of the one who sows and waters the good seed? It’s a harvest of people.
  
• What is treasure that never wears out and cannot be stolen? It’s people.
  

God's heart cries, “I treasure children. The more, the better!” In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus introduces God as our heavenly Father. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus says God is a Father who rewards us. And what is a father’s reward?
It is children.
“Sounds great, but I am no evangelist.” You don’t need to be an evangelist to win eternal friends. Believers can live such godly lives that unbelievers will be won to the kingdom (1 Pet. 2:12; Matt. 5:16).
God's desire is to grow the world’s largest family and He treats people like treasure. This is obvious once you see it. Indeed, it’s a theme that runs throughout Scripture:

"For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth."-Deuteronomy 7:6
"For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth."-Deuteronomy 14:2
"And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments;"-Deuteronomy 26:18
"To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;"-1 Peter 2:4-9

Like Jesus, Paul eagerly gave to the poor (Gal. 2:10). He did not give out of religious duty or to put a shine on his reputation. He did it because he loved people and wanted to share the love of God with as many as possible (1 Cor. 13:3).
Life is a gift that is easily wasted. We can waste it running after inferior rewards that rust, or we can do what Jesus and Paul did and invest ourselves in the only reward that lasts: people.

God Is Faithful

Someone once asked me, "Why would God be concerned as to whether or not we 'have trust and confidence in him' when He's judging us and when He determines what our fate will be?"
Having trust and confidence in God, according to the Biblical authors, is required for us to fulfill His commandment that we love Him, and thus also love others. (See Hebrews 11.)
As with a spouse, you cannot truly love them if you do not have some level of trust or confidence in them, and vice versa. All relationships require trust, from both parties. God wants us to trust Him that He will keep His promises towards those of us who love and follow Him. He also wants to trust us that we will enter the kingdom of heaven with a righteous and loving character. He doesn't want another rebellion in paradise, so He's trying to see if we truly love righteousness for righteousness' sake. A truly righteous person wouldn't want to rebel against Him when the time comes that they enter the kingdom of God themselves, because a person with a righteous character wouldn't ever do such a thing.
As Open Theists, we believe we're being consistent in our belief that God, at times, puts trials before us to test whether or not we will remain trustworthy enough in our character to be deemed worthy of entrance into His kingdom. The Classical Theist doesn't have the luxury of being consistent if they have this same belief.
In the Book of Job, Satan makes an accusation towards someone God has deemed as truly righteous: Job.
Satan assails God’s wisdom and character in running the world by alleging that people only serve Him because of what they get out of it. God protects them from disaster and blesses them in other ways. Their obedience, he is suggesting, isn’t really a free choice. "There is no genuine virtue in the world," Satan is claiming. "There are only self-serving bargains, and obedience for the sake of being protected and blessed is one of them. Hence, true holiness and virtuous obedience are an illusion." "Take away a person’s protection," Satan insists, "and let me have my way with people, and they will stop living for God" (Job 1:9-11; 2:4-5).
God has so much faith in Job that he will not succumb to proving the false accusations being levied towards him and God's way of running things in general that He ends up accepting the challenge. For God, this is as much a test of His faith towards His servant as it is for Job for his Lord. The adversary, we see, was assailing God’s integrity and wisdom in overseeing the creation. Satan was, in effect, accusing God of being a Machiavellian ruler. In the context of this narrative, it was an assault that could only be refuted by being put to the test.
Had God simply forced Satan into silence, without proving him wrong, it would have simply confirmed the accuracy of Satan’s charge. It would have shown that there is no integrity or wisdom in how God runs the world after all. "There is only the exercise of power, used to manipulate beings into obeying Him. People serve God only as a bargain, not out of genuine love."
No, the challenge had to be answered by having it put to the test. The most righteous man on the earth was thus chosen to be tested. If Job failed, the narrative suggests, then Satan will have made his point. If he succeeded, however, then God’s wisdom and integrity in running the cosmos will have been vindicated. Hence, the protective fence around Job is removed and Satan is allowed to afflict him.
In the end, Job proves faithful to God and is even referenced in the New Testament as an example of the kind of faithfulness He expected of first century believers facing persecution and trials:

"Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy."-James 5:11

While most of us aren't dealing with the life-threatening kind of persecution that believers faced in the first century, for the very fact that the eschatological end of physical Israel and the Old Covenant system was fastly approaching for them (and already has approached), we still each face our own trials that God puts in our lives as individuals to see if we truly love Him. Job is simply the ultimate example of one who loved God because they chose to, not because God forced them to.
After all, you never know if your love is pure if it isn't tested...

So the day before Mother's Day, my husband (M34) tells me (F35) we are going to do a day trip with our toddler (age 4) to local city and I am so excited but I realize I am also so behind in house chores due to my stressful job and lack of consistent help from my husband.
So I tell him thank you but no trip and that we need to stay home and clean. He says he needs to leave that morning which I already know means he is going to go get flowers. So I offer to make breakfast because I woke up in a great mood.
He comes home with flowers in okay condition, some are wilted and gives me a sweater that he says I asked him to buy me for Mother's Day which I do love the sweater.
So I make pancakes for the family, pancakes with bananas, peanut butter drizzle and whipped cream and I don't have any due to dieting.
My husband asks me what the plans are today and I said I would love for us to get some things done around the house, he has had the ladder out for a couple days so I asked him to take down the Christmas decorations and pick up and also put ladder away and watch our toddler because I would be upstairs with the power tools dismantling our shelves to add in some different shelving and organizing the closet.
All the while I am talking he is working on a 3d print for his friends birthday in a few days.
I go upstairs and 30 minutes in, my toddler is climbing on me and I wait for my husband to collect him and... nothing
So I figure maybe he sent him because ladder plus toddler is not the best combo so I put the power tool away and just organize clothes and he never comes back up to get him, so I call him and he goes "oh yeah just send him down" and I ask if he can just come and get him and he does.
So two hours pass and I go downstairs to check on them and ask about lunch for them and they are watching TV and nothing is done, no dishes from this morning cleaned, no Xmas decorations taken down and I make my toddler a snack and go back upstairs to calm down before calling my husband and asked him why he hasn't cleaned. He said because he thought we stayed home so I could clean and not him. And alI I am doing is working on a room, we don't even use (It's a walk in closet in our bedroom)
I reminded him I said we and asked him to do several things this morning which he said "Oh, I thought that was something you asked me to do a couple weeks ago"
At this point I am just disappointed with the day and over it.
He does do the dishes, takes down the Xmas decorations and cleaned up and now we have to go see my family for dinner which I do not want to because they are very blunt and will want to know why I am such a sad state.
Luckily the toddler falls asleep in the car, so I have the great idea after we find out he is asleep to just give gifts since we are already hour late for dinner and leave and pick up food for the toddler after.
So I drop off the gifts, we leave to go another place to order food and I asked my husband if he can go in and get food and he says no and I ask him he wants anything and he says "No just go just go " I told him I rather not because it's very rude for him to rush me to leave and he says he was only doing that because he had to sneeze....okay....so I said "Just go home please, we can make something there"
So now he is pissy and accuses me of using him as a taxi driver and I just go off...
"This is supposed to be Mother's Day, the one day you treat me special and loved and show me you appreciate me. You got me some wilted flowers and a sweater. Thank you but it's Day, not two gifts Mother stuff"
Now he is pissed and saying I am ungrateful and he shouldn't have gotten me shit and I am the problem and I don't do shit for him. All day he watched our son and cleaned. He also said he didn't know how to make me feel special.
He normally does not curse at me so I said this not you talking. This your dad talking to your mother. (Not my best moment and I will admit it)
Welp that got him all riled up and we didn't talk the rest of the night or next day.
When I finally said I was still upset about yesterday, he goes "Of course, you are." and walks away.
When we finally do talk, he says that he was offended I would rather stay home then do his idea of a day trip to local city and I said the flowers were wilted and he got me a sweater and he cleaned after I told him too. He also said he felt ignored and like I didn't wanna hang out with him because I was organizing the closet. He said he felt unloved.
So am I the asshole?
Quick Q&A
Married for 12 years and together for 15 years
We have had issues with all holidays but even more since our son was born so couple years ago I gave him a list of my likes, links to things to do for your wife for birthday,and things you can do for free to make your spouse happy (he makes six figures but I think gifts can be acts of service as well) but he still says he doesn't know how
We are currently in couples therapy but he seems to try to manipulate the sessions?
Example, he wanted to go on a trip to buy video games stuff and we had already gone out of town the day before to buy video games stuff so I said Our grass at both houses need to be mowed, I think that needs our attention and if he isn't something he can do the he needs to hire help to which he replied That why can't I help him and I don't do anything to help him ever but to the therapist he goes oh I just didn't wanna do the lawn because it had rain the day before and the grass was wet and it was early. I asked him why he wasn't able to tell me that in the moment or revisit for the whole week and half after because I didn't know that and he was still able to mow later that day but only one house. He said he didn't know why he didn't tell me and it was dumb to argue about the lawn but I said the lawn is just a symptom of the greater issue which is lack of communication on both of our parts
Fathers Day and Birthday I used to go all out but I realized I wasn't getting the same energy so I stopped 1st Father Day I asked him what he wanted to do and he said spend the day together I got him and our son matching shirts, classic car pint glasses, socks with our son's face on them, a photo book of them of the photos during the year of them I had taken and I made this favorite foods all day 2nd Father's Day I asked him what he wanted to do and he was spend the day together but he had to work so when he got home from work, I had his favorite pizza, favorite pop, matching shirts with our son, pizza cutter and pizza pan because he had mentioned we didn't have one and photo album of pictures from the last year of him and our son
When I had another disappointing Mothers Day ( I had asked to have 3 hours alone and sent him a link to some earrings and I got no time alone and no earrings but he did get me beautiful flowers and chocolate covered strawberries. We went to the lunch with my family and I asked him to only pay for us and my mom and he ended up dropping like $275 on my whole family for brunch very nice but we had conversations about how he was able to do that but get me no gifts) I think his heart is the right place because he is a good guy
3rd Father's Day I got him a card, beer and a some jerky and he said he didn't feel loved because it wasn't as nice all the other Father's Days he had in the past and he doesn't know how to make sure I have a nice Mother's Day and I asked him he could use the list I gave him or just mimic what I do and customize it to fit his style. He said he would try and that led us to this Mother's Day.

(what do you even flair this. I have flared it as a guide but it is not really a guide. But anyway) Edit: since y'all want to whine a bit, let me spell it out. I am not saying whether or not you should use them. I only use my raise ones or a hello one now a days. People have been asking about them. Whether it is to see macros that have been around since 2.0 or want to see all the weird ones. Some ask because it is getting hard to type and what to have a quick hello one. Or, people like me where it is starting to get hard to use a controller or a keyboard/mouse to make it where they have less buttons to press. You guys need to stop and think for a moment. As I said originally, I don't use most of these anymore. But, you guys are acting like it is a sin to even have these. This was also in responsed to the fact that I have been seen post of people finding these in the wild, taking a screenshot and people asking in the comments for them.
Edit 2: Also, over time I am going to be adding macros I use the /echo command on. Like my rotation ones and maybe the crafting ones I find to put them in on place for people. This is going to be a lot of macros but with the xpac coming, I am not posting those as most will break soon. The only reason the raise ones are on there is they will not break because raise it not getting a upgrade. It is just take dead person, stand them up and send them back into the fight.
here: https://pastebin.comMimiAmaideach
I am putting macros on there that I have had for years. Do I use most of these? No. But, I know some people would like to use them to troll friends. I also know that the long ones are really good for when someone is being toxic chat. And when I say toxic, I mean in the 'they are calling people names and saying stuff that is way out of line' toxic.
Some I got in the early days of playing 2.0. Some are new. The raise macros do work, you might need to adjust the first wait time to account for your lag. I have a lot more and will post them when I have the time. The block text however did not work on some, so I left the text out.
Also, this is just for people who want them. I know a lot of people have been wanting some of these macros. I also know there are some who hate macros so much they will hate on others who use them. That is not here or there, however, as this is just for people to have fun with. I will add more later when I have more brain power to correct them and I have had coffee. And, if you have any that I may not have that you would like me to add to the list, send it to me and I will add it.

TLDR: I own a share if freehold flat and the other freeholder lives abroad, is incapacitated and has no next of kin, just a legal representative appointed by a government organisation in the country she lives in. I need to sell my flat and extend the lease but two years in I have got nowhere in getting the deeds signed. What can I do?
Hi Housing UK readers,
I wanted to see if you had any fresh ideas on how to approach this situation I find myself in.
I purchased a flat in 2011. The flat is one of two in a Victorian conversion. Both flats are self-contained.
I am the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat B and have been living in the flat since 2011.
Miss X is the sole registered leasehold proprietor of flat A, and has owned the flat since 2001. The flat is being rented as Miss X retired abroad in 2006.
Miss X and I also both own a share of the freehold, which is split 50/50.
I’m in contact with Miss X for a few years after I buy, but all admin relating to building management is dealt with by her estate agents and she defers any discussions to them.
Fast forward to September 2022. I need to sell my flat as I want to move to a different city, and have some debt I need to pay off. The flat is listed for sale in late October 2022.
There are 84 years left on the lease for both myself and Miss X. I reach out to Miss X to inform her of my plans and that I will need her signature for the various deeds, and that we should extend the lease. The email bounces back and her phone line is disconnected.
I contact the estate agents who manage flat A. They have also not heard from Miss X for a while, I can tell they know more, but they are unwilling to share any details. In a tactical move, I list my flat for sale with them too, to try and get their help with Miss X (a whole other hilarious side story). I am repeatedly assured by them that the situation with Miss X will not hinder the sale of the flat (a huge lie).
March 2023 I finally find some buyers (with another agent) and start the conveyancing process, including extending the lease and transferring the freehold.
May 2023. After chasing Miss X’s estate agents for weeks, I discover that Miss X is now incapacitated and hospitalised with dementia. Miss X has no partner or children, no next of kin and no legal representation in the UK. She is under the care of a government agency in the European country she resides in. A lawyer employed by the agency, let’s call him SP, has been appointed as her legal representative and is in contact with the UK estate agents. SP sends documents to verify his status to the agents, who confirm legitimacy via their lawyers. SP is very hard to reach, rarely answers emails or his phone.
I find a solicitor specialised in property law to help me navigate this situation. As Miss X is not deemed “absent”, the solicitor suggests that it’s best to try and resolve this with the appointed legal representative (SP), as any other legal routes available for absentee freeholders through UK courts wouldn’t apply (as we know where Miss X is). I explain the situation to SP, he talks to a judge and informs me he lacks capacity to make decisions about the leasehold and freehold matters without court / judicial approval in his country.
SP also asks for help with gaining access to Miss X’s UK bank account. All rental income from her flat in the UK is being transferred to a UK bank account via the estate agents. I share information on obtaining power of attorney in the UK and suggest it would be best to appoint a lawyer in the UK to help with all matters.
November 2023. After several months of backwards and forwards with SP to try and find out exactly what legal documents the judge wants to see in court, under his guidance my solicitor produces papers, documents and evidence, we get them translated, postilled and posted. SP is confident the judge will be happy and grant permission for signatures.
The documents make it clear that the authority being sought for SP to sign the leasehold extension and transfer of freehold are in no way prejudicial to Miss X and in fact extending the lease would add value to her property should she decide to sell in future.
A court date is set 3 months later. Sigh. More waiting.
I lose my buyers (understandably).
February 2024. The court date arrives. The judge rejects the request for permission for SP to sign papers on behalf of Miss X. It’s not fully clear why this is rejected. After speaking to SP it seems that the judge now wants SP to obtain access to Miss X’s bank account before moving forward. I am surprised that no progress has been made with that.
I go back to my solicitor. Now that we can show that steps have been taken to locate Miss X and get the deeds signed by her legal deputy without recourse, they suggest that we can apply to court in the UK to have another trustee appointed to sign the transfer and deed, and suggests appointing counsel to make the application to UK courts, which should be “run of the mill”. We choose a barrister, the situation is explained, documents shared, and I’m given a 3 week timeframe for papers to be produced for court.
In the meantime we connect SP to a solicitor in the UK who can help with obtaining PoA, as no progress has been made with that yet.
A few days later the barrister gets in touch, more bad news.
Under TLATA, there would be a breach of trust if all required consent from the current trustees was not obtained, so it is not sufficient to just add another trustee, Miss X would need to be replaced as outlined in the Trustee Act 36(1). However under the Trustee Act 36(9), where a trustee lacks the ability to perform their function, no new trustee can be appointed without consent from the Court of Protection. I am informed that making this application to the CoP is lengthy, costly and risky. The barrister says it would be faster and safer to wait for SP to obtain the relevant permissions.
We reach out to SP again to see what progress has been made. None. Some documents need to be translated and he is unwilling to pay for the translations (it seems their organisation has no money). We offer to pay now and be reimbursed once access to Miss X’s money is granted.
We are now almost half way through 2024 and coming up to 2 years into this situation.
Is it really possible that legally these are my only two options?

• going to the UK courts at great expense in a process that has been called “risky and lengthy” by the barrister.
• Waiting for SP to sort out PoA with no guarantee that the judge will even grant permission for the deeds to be signed (again risky and lengthy)

I know I can try and sell my flat without the share if freehold and with a short lease, but this will affect its value and the short lease especially will be a problem with mortgage applications.
Any different ideas on how to approach this? Seems so absurd to me that currently I can’t sell something that is mine, due to a situation I didn’t create!
There are many more twists and turns to this story but I have left them out as this is long enough. Also I do not have a legal background or am a housing expert so apologies if some of the language I use is incorrect.
Reddit, help!

Reddit Account: u/Thenn_Applicant
Discord Tag: Garin
Name and House: Dorian Merryweather
Age: 49
Cultural Group: Reachman
Appearance: Dorian's chestnut brown hair has been greying for quite a while, however is short beard retains more color, including a few stray red hairs peppered throughout it. While his features have softened and gained some pudge as he aged past his prime, he remains in overall good shape. This is partly due to his great love of gardening and crop cultivation, which have left his hands and nails rather rough.
Trait: Numerate
Skills: Avaricious (e), Architect, Administrator, Investor
Talents: Language (High Valyrian) Cooking, Gardening
Negative Trait: N/A
Starting Title: Lord of Longtable
Starting Location: Opening Event
Biography:
It has been said; men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war. As such, it begs the question, what does a man have left when he finally tires of war? In pursuit of an answer, of any answer, one half of Dorian Merryweather’s life was spent. He was the second son of Lord Arthor Merryweather of Longtable. Like many others born in a place of natural abundance, he longed for more, for something greater than a mere provincial estate. The tourneys of Highgarden, the hunts of Horn Hill and the books of Oldtown all called to him, and so he could never ride past his father’s mild and verdant fields fast enough. Dorian counted himself lucky not to be the heir, for that meant he could pick where his future lay, unchained from the uninspiring home of his childhood. Instead it was his older brother, Bennard, who envied his free-flying lifestyle, contriving any excuse to join him on his escapades and agurk lessons and ceremonies he ought to have attended.
Lord Arthor was fairly permissive of this deriliction of duties, as the friendships forced on such journeys were worth more than lessons that could be repeated later, or tasks that could be handed off to lowborn stewards. The boys attended tourneys, balls, hunts and feasts, living the life the bards extolled as the height of reachman’s chivalry. The one time they did not shirk their duties was when their father had the honor of hosting King Mern and his court for a tourney on the Warrior’s day. The Merryweather sons would present the king and his family with silver bowls of dilligrout, a most exquisite stew of capons, white wine and almond milk. They had the joy of tasting it once the Gardeners had their fill, a taste they would never forget. On the tournament field three days later, Mern knighted them both, though Dorian was only sixteen at the time, green as a knight could ever be.
Five years later, as news of Aegon Targaryen and his early conquests spread, the lords of the Reach were summoned to Goldengrove, where they found a veritable forest of Westermen’s banners being planted beside their own. The fall of the Storm Kings had led to a whirlwind of diplomacy between the houses of Gardener and Lannister. The plan was presented to the lords with the two kings sitting beside one another on the dais as though they were brothers. They held up Aegon’s letter of demands, scornfully reading it aloud and then proceeded to tear it up to a roaring acclamation from the hall. Standing there before the hall, Mern could hardly be called the Warrior incarnate. There stood a man well past his prime, old enough to be a grandfather and with no great victories to his name, in battle or on the tourney field. All the same, this man, whom they called their king, always seemed to know exactly what to say to win someone over. If he’d declared war on hell itself that evening, the Merryweather brothers would probably still have marched off with him when the next morning dawned. Bennard and Dorian shouted as loud as anyone, death to the foreign upstart. That evening were betrothed to westerwomen they’d never met before, made plans for a real battle, which they had never fought in before, and drank, ate and sang as though the night would last forever. House Merryweather was not able to secure a command, yet King Mern remembered his stay at Longtable fondly. He gave Bennard and Dorian a place in the vanguard, and even adorned Bennard with a brooch of the order of the green hand the morning before the army Goldengrove, a momentous honor which Bennard would cherish for the remainder of his days. He did not have many left, as it turned out. The Field of Fire began like a dream, as the two brothers rode off at the break of dawn, two out of five thousand sets of gleaming armor atop proud warhorses. By the end of the day it had become a nightmare. Caught up in the maelstrom of battle, Dorian did not see the moment when their loss was assured, but the Gods know he could hear it, the creeping, hungry flames that descended on the reachmen like an army of its own. As hundreds were broiled inside their steel plate and thousands more choked on the inferno’s horrible vanguard of black smoke, Bennard and Dorian broke and fled. They were not far behind the retreating Loren Lannister in their escape, but half a minute made all the difference. The lines of fire fanned out, hunting more living things to devour, and engulfed the two brothers. Dorian could feel how the flames spread from his surcoat to his undershirt, all the way down to the hairs on his chest, beginning to sear his skin. In a desperate act he threw himself in the Blackwater, and would have perished if not for the shoddy work of his squire that morning, which left him able to tear off his plate before he could sink. With bloodied, burn-marked fingers, he clung to the roots of a tree by the riverside, water up to his chest. He was retrieved after some time, how long he could not say. For the next two moons his mind was adrift, distracted from his pains by milk of the poppy. The next two were far worse, as he grew more lucid and realized the extent of the damage. A burn-mark stretched from his right thigh, all the way up his chest and left bicep to the apple of his neck. Many times over, flakes of dead or dying skin had to be peeled off by the maester as the scabs kept bursting with blood and clear liquid. By the end of that year he was able to walk again, though the burn mark would leave a feverish red mark across the front of his body, his new skin settling into twisted lines.
Bennard was far worse for wear, alive yet burned all the way to his face and crippled from a fall off his horse. His nose and ear-lobes had to be cut off, too burned to save, and even his eyelids were permanently scarred, unable to sprout new lashes. The more lucid Bennard became, the deeper his sorrow. Eventually he began refusing food. The new lord of Longtable would not eat anything his cooks set in front of him. In spite of his ever present pains, Dorian began going to the kitchens, reprimanding the cooks for their failings. He knew his brother well and knew his palette, and began ordering them to make his brother’s favorites. When he felt they were making mistakes, he interrupted their work himself. He was a stranger to the kitchen, yet would criticize how things were cut too roughly, spiced too little or too much. He was a terror to the cooks, yet they could not refuse him.
His attempts to intervene were however hampered by a newfound aversion to heat. The sound of the hearth, of boiling and searing, the general sense of warmth around him made him nauseous and caused his movements to seize up. Still, he went to his brother’s bedside every day, and afterwards he forced himself back to the kitchens. His sister, Lydia, tried to stop him at first, but soon found her protes fell on deaf ears, and so joined him, if only to leash him in when he went too far. Finally, there was only one dish they hadn’t tried; the dilligrout they’d once served to the late King Mern. Every time it was made, it came out wrong. It soon turned out the cook who had served them that evening six years ago had since retired, and his exact method had never been recorded or taught to anyone else. Dorian would first invite the man to Longtable, then summon him with armed knights when invitations were refused.
Theomar, the man who appeared before him, was a sorry sight, looking frightened and confused as he was taken to his old workplace. It was explained by his sons that he’d been growing senile even six years ago, often snapping at the kitchen maids under him when his memory failed him. Since then he’d gotten worse, seldom eating, let alone cooking. Something in the old man’s eyes did seem to brighten for a moment when the sounds and smells of his old kitchen surrounded him, and Dorian ordered him to make dilligrout. Before long that faint spark had been drowned out by tears. He would start boiling capon or crushing almonds, only to leave the job half-done whenever he had to fetch something new. Serving maids were put at his disposal to bring him ingredients, yet an ingredient ordered would be met with a reprimand as he seemed to forget which dish he was making every few minutes. Finally Dorian snapped at the man, grabbing him by his collar and shouting accusations of treason against House Merryweather. By the time Lydia could restrain him and try to apologize, the man was a wreck on the floor. After watching it for a while, waiting for the man to get up and continue his work, even Dorian was overcome by pity and shame for what he’d done. The old cook was praying to the gods, begging forgiveness for his failings. Dorian began to realize he’d broken a great man down and would himself beg forgiveness. He offered the man his old cook’s quarters back for the rest of his life, and promised his sons that his maester would tend to the man in his old age, that he would be fed from Longtable’s stores.
At this point, he resolved to make the dilligrout himself. Through it all, Bennard was barely clinging to life, or rather being tethered to it by the will of others. He could only be fed when drugged down by the milk of the poppy, and the more often it was used, the less effective it became. Every day Dorian braved the kitchens, yet he could not recreate the flavor of that wonderful night. It was by the grace of the gods, perhaps with Theomar as their vessel, that Dorian would even come close. The old man could no longer cook, but over time he began to wander into the kitchens and sit down on a chair. At first Dorian thought the man only sought the warmth of the hearth for his weary bones, yet he discovered it to be more than that. Theomar’s eyes were like clouded glass, yet they brightened every now and then, hearing almonds being ground, smelling capons searing in fat, as though it was stirring the kitchenmaster of yore back to life. Eventually Dorian began to walk up to the old cook with his ingredients, bidding him to smell or taste small portions. Sometimes he got simple instructions out of it, ‘too coarse’, ‘too sour’, ‘underdone’. Som times a mere nod or frown was all Theomar managed. Over the course of a couple of days, Dorian put together one final attempt to get the dish made rightWhen he arrived in Bennard’s chamber, he was met with a look which brought forth discomfort that no flame could produce in Dorian. Plainly, raspingly, his brother asked him why he wouldn’t let him die. It was easy, Bennard reasoned. All Dorian needed to do was wait and become lord. The words almost made Dorian throw the dilligrout on the floor. Almost. He placed two bowls on Bennard’s table, the dilligrout and one brimming with milk of the poppy. Dorian told his brother to make his choice. If he sought death, Dorian would let him, but he would not hear that it was an easy thing, watching his brother die. That evening, the milk of the poppy was carried away by the maester, the empty bowl of stew taken to be washed in the kitchens. From then on, Bennard ate what his brother brought him without complaint. He lasted just into the new year, dying on its tenth day. In the predawn gloom of the twelfth, Theomar died in his sleep
Dorian took up his lordly task joylessly. His old wanderlust returned, spurred by the horrible memories that now stained Longtable and the reach itself in his mind. The final straw came when their new Tyrell overlords, insisted on him marrying a lady from a dornish house. His previous betrothal had fallen through, as the parents of his western bride had not wished to draw the ire of the Targaryens by maintaining an old alliance meant to oppose them. Instead of obliging, he boarded a ship from Oldtown going east. It stopped only briefly in Planky Town before going to Tyrosh. Noting him to be a nobleman, a few of the city’s wealthy men would host him for a while, though they quickly lost interest when his lack of knowledge of trade became apparent. After that, he spent time in the markets and squares where the common people lived. His old curiosity was piqued, and he decided to embark on a quest of learning, fashioning himself another Lomas Longstrider. He moved on to Myr, and the experience was much the same in broad strokes, a few rich men showed interest and quickly lost it. As he’d visited the dye markets he went to see the city’s famous artisans at work. One thing was notably different, he met a Tyroshi woman with green-dyed hair, going by the name Maryah. She was a trader, and the two had taken the same ship to Myr. She had been to Myr before and showed him many of its secrets. They spent an entire day in one of the vast delicacy markets so she could show him the many tastes of the city. Having no plans in advance, he asked where she was headed next.
Without a second thought he would join her on a journey to Lys. He soon understood it to be a test. It was not long before she teased him, speculating he’d only joined her for a chance to see the famous pleasure houses. Evening after evening they stayed in the city and Maryah would tease and test him over the matter. Finally he told her he’d renounce his betrothal for her, that there was no one else in his eye. She laughed, replying he would not have to. The next morning, Dorian awoke to find that she was already up, the green washed from her black curls. Maryah had in fact been Joanna Dayne, his dornish bride to be, having traveled the same route as him ever since his ship stopped at Planky Town to refill its food and water. She was already quite familiar with the three closest free cities, having served as a dornish envoy on behalf of its spice traders. As they planned their return to Westeros, Joanna asked him what else in the world he wanted to see. Within a few moons of being wed, they left Westeros, not to return for three years.The journey was what his mind needed, away from the Reach, its knights and tapestries, hunts and tourneys. Ultimately, the lords and knights of his homeland, for all their songs and poetry, lived every day in preparation for war, frivolous though the preparations were. Joanna showed him a different world, the remnants of Old Valyria. War was to be sure inescapable. Wherever they went, there were soldiers, tapestries, contests of arms, and yet the cities housed something else as well, a boundless potential for creation, commerce and growth.
Thanks to Joanna Dayne’s knowledge their stays became far better planned, and they could enjoy the hospitality of wealthy locals far longer. She knew how to talk about the spice trade and similar matters, and Dorian began to pick up on it. On their second stay in Myr, he procured a great deal of fine parchment and began taking notes, everything from negotiation tactics and the prices of cloves or red peppers to court customs, as well as more eclectic pieces of knowledge, details of running an eastern estate, descriptions of technological marvels he had never seen in Westeros, and ingredients in the local food. By the time they neared Qarth he had quite the list of recipes, among other things. There he was even able to learn a few all the way from Yi Ti, as some local cooks catered to merchants from the Golden Empire. On their journey home they’d end up taking the opportunity to see the newly made port of King’s Landing. By that time, a third member had joined their journey, their infant daughter Florys. Having left Longtable in the care of his sister and steward for three years, Dorian finally accepted the responsibility of running his ancestral home.
Longtable was considered to rule over some of the best lands in the Reach, ideally situated along the river with abundant soil which could provide two grain harvests in a year. Having seen the estates which supplied the great cities of the east, Dorian was all too aware of its comparative shortcomings. He found that the abundance of the land had a counterproductive effect, breeding complacency and carelessness. From his grandiose tour of the east, he went on a painstaking tour of his own lands, trying to get an overview of everything he ruled over. He paid the citadel a fee to send him half a dozen maesters in training for a season. These young men, literate and numerate, would serve his own maester in conducting a survey of the land, giving Dorian account of all resources at his disposal as lord. The results were quite varied.
Some peasants were found to have remarkable agricultural insights which they had no way of writing down, entirely reliant on passing the knowledge to their children. Knowing the risks of such a method of transferring knowledge, Dorian ordered such insights recorded. In other places there were farmers and communities who were unwittingly exhausting their soil. Instances of lack of fallow land, excessive grazing by cows and lack of crop rotation were also made note of, followed by edicts against such heedless practices. Septons, sheriffs and tax collectors were given written copies and were obliged to read them to the peasantry wherever it was deemed necessary. It also became part of the obligations of farmers to plant a set amount of clover in their fields and pastures, a practice some had taken up on their own but which had already become a standardized law among the estates belonging to Myr and Volantis. Irrigation was expanded and land inheritance was reformed to prevent the splitting of fields past a certain threshold.
Lord Dorian was not always successful. Some eastern ideas had been useful innovations which improved conditions across the board. In time he learned that the peculiarities of the westerosi system were sometimes necessary for the sake of stability, not merely the misshapen fruits of ignorance. His attempt to enclose part of the common lands proved abortive, as it nearly caused a peasant rebellion. A procession of aggrieved smallfolk headed for Longtable had to be dispersed by knights, armed with wooden clubs to prevent needless bloodshed.Two men were hanged and five sent to the wall, but the reform was thereafter abandoned, leading the populace to calm down. Dorian was not much of a military leader and had not wielded weapons since the Field of Fire. He became aware of his need to bolster his forces, a notion reinforced by the establishment of the Black Roses not long after his return, and again with the Kingswood Catastrophe
In the meantime, he and Joanna raised a family together. Three more daughters would be born healthy, with a couple of miscarriages and a stillbirth in between, also a daughter. Their travels did not entirely come to an end. In 13 AC they would tour the northern free cities of Norvos, Qohor, Pentos, Braavos and Lorath, which they had missed on their original journey. The lion’s share of 17 AC was spent on a journey to the Summer Islands. At other times they would make shorter journeys around the Seven Kingdoms, where they felt more secure in bringing their older children along. Whether it was visiting Joanna’s family in Dorne, tourneys and feasts in the Reach and West or even one trip to see the wall, a nameday wish by Florys, they were often on the move. Like most of their peers, they frequented Oldtown and Highgarden
The growing rift between the two queens and their children was a situation Dorian would watch with dread in his heart, remembering keenly how a generation of young men had been brought to the field of fire. To his mind, the Targaryen rule ought not go to waste. Like Valyria of old, it had begun with fire and blood, yet similarly peace and prosperity had followed in its wake. If only the dragons could stand united, perhaps another long peace like the one the Freehold once enjoyed could again be established. If not, another century of blood was upon them. Under Dorian, Longtable became a place where he sought to bring together people from across the kingdoms and forge unity over the dinner table, an attitude which somewhat vexed and confounded his more militaristic daughter and heiress, Lady Florys. Even amid her questioning of the viability of his peaceful ways when surrounded by those who would make war, a terrible sight would steel his resolve, watching the Mander burning green, every bit as terrible as the flames from twenty one years prior. That night he made a simple vow, never again.
The League of the Cornucopia, he would name his little group, a gallery of lords and ladies whose acquaintances he’d made over the years. With these fellow gourmets he would share the culinary knowledge he’d gleaned from his journeys in the east and west. Most unusual for a lord of his rank, Dorian came to spend a great deal of time in his kitchens, testing out recipes himself. On occasion, the dishes he served to his guests for these small, intimate gatherings would be the work of his own hands. The membership did vary from time to time, both based on who could make it and who he sought to bring together. Rather than a fully closed circle, the League is more like a form of feasting, only it’s done for a much smaller crowd, without the public spectacle. Such occasions allowed for more refined foods which did not need to be served to hundreds and kept constantly warm over the course of hours like some common tavern stew. It also opened up an arena of more intimate diplomacy and negotiation for those who sought it, hosted on neutral ground by a lordly mediator, free from prying eyes.
Timeline:
25BC: Dorian is born, second in line to Longtable
24BC: His sister Lydia is born
9BC: House Merryweather hosts House Gardener for a tourney and feast. Dorian and his older brother Bennard serve the dish of honor to King Mern Gardener and his family. During the subsequent tourney, Mern knights both boys, despite their inexperience and lack of victory in the tourney
9BC-2BC: Dorian spends much time travelling the reach, attending events
1BC: Dorian and Bennard fight in the vanguard at the Field of Fire. Both are burned, Bennard far more severely than Dorian. Lord Merryweather is killed. Traumatized by the battle and his new maimed body, Bennard starts refusing food. Dorian desperately tries to re-create the dish they served King Mern eight years ago. The cook who made it has since gone senile, but eventually manages to help Dorian re-create it. He is given a place at court as apology for his mistreatment at Dorian's hands before this occurred.
1AC: Lord Bennard dies at the beginning of the year, leaving Dorian as lord of Longtable. His sister Lydia fulfills her betrothal to House Tarly, becoming lady of Horn Hill. At the prospect of marrying a Dornishwoman on the King's orders, Dorian decides to leave Westeros to put off his marriage. In Myr, he meets a woman calling herself Maryah, claiming to be a Tyroshi merchant. They fall in love and travel to Lys together. There Dorian promises to set aside his betrothal for her, whereupon she reveals herself as Joanna Dayne, his dornish betrothed.
1AC-4AC: Dorian and Joanna wed at Longtable, then depart on a new journey of the east. They reach as far as Qarth before turning back home. In 3AC, on the way back, their first child, Florys, is born while the couple are in Volantis, on the way home. They return via the newly built port of King's Landing.
4AC-8AC: Using knowledge from the east, Lord Dorian embarks on a project of rationalizing the agriculture of Longtable
5AC: Dorian and Joanna have their second child, a girl named Ellyn
8AC: Their third daughter, Desmera, is born
13AC: Dorian and Joanna spend a year travelling the northern free cities
14AC: Their fourth and final daughter, Gwin, is born
17AC: Dorian and Joanna undertake a journey to the Summer Islands with their children
23AC: The aftermath of the battle of Stonebridge brings back memories of the Field of Fire, as the Merryweathers watch burning slag run down the Mander
25AC: The Merryweathers travel to the celebration of the maturity of Aegon's sons
Family Tree:
Arthor Merryweather (father, d.1BC)
Cerelle Merryweather (pending family connection) (mother, d.20AC)
Bennard Merryweather (brother, d.1AC)
Lydia Merryweather (sister, b.24BC)
Glendon Merryweather (uncle, d.1BC)
Myrcella Pommingham (aunt, d.22AC)
Leo Merryweather (cousin, b.13AC)
Joanna Dayne (wife, b.26AC)
Florys Merryweather (daughter, b.3AC)
Ellyn Merryweather (daughter, b.5AC)
Desmera Merryweather (daughter, b.8AC)
Gwin Merryweather (daughter, b.13AC)
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Auxiliary Character:
Name and House: Florys Merryweather
Age: 23
Cultural Group: Reachman
Appearance: [A short, muscular woman with wavy black hair, normally worn in a bun. She has high cheekbones and a proud demeanor. Her rigid strength stands in contrast to the more relaxed nature of the Merryweather court, one she finds overly lax and casual](0_0.png (896×1344) (discordapp.com))
Trait: Hale
Skills: Swords (e), Essosi Blademaster
Talents: Dancing, Fishing, Cooking
Negative Traits: N/A
Starting Title: Heir to Longtable
Starting Location: Opening Event
Timeline:
3AC: Florys is born in Volantis, while her parents are on their way home from Essos
10AC: Florys starts training under Saathos Trevelyan, her father's Master at Arms
13 AC: She joins her parents on a tour of Pentos, Braavos, Norvos and Qohor
17AC: She travels with her parents to the Summer Islands
19AC-23AC: As she comes of age, Florys becomes more critical of her father's desire for peace, viewing it as increasingly far-fetched amid the increasingly controversial regency and the impending succession dispute. She resolves to make the kinds of connections her father seems unwilling to, in case of war
25AC: She accompanies her family to the celebrations
NPCS:
Ser Leo Merryweather (Age: 37, Archetype: Magnate) Lord Merryweather's first cousin, he has become an indispensable agent in the daily running of Longtable. Despite his foppish demeanor and aparent laziness, he is highly capable and loyal in his task of increasing his family's fortune. He remains happily unwed
Saathos Tevelyan: (Age:48, Archetype: Master at Arms) The son of a Lysene father and a Myrish mother, Saathos initially sought a career in amongst Myr's military officers, however his family's relatively low status proved an impediment to further promotion, later compounded by a dispute with a superior. He met Lord Merryweather in 3AC and eventually travelled West to offer his services five years later, finding his career progress stonewalled in his home city. Well into middle age, he still looks firm and imposing as profesisonal a soldier ought to

i like Warhammer 40k, but 40k doesnt afford you the abilty to let you play your own custom character or faction if it isnt up to certain specs in tournaments(lore strict rules). and running an army battle in dungeons and dragons is overly complicated unless you ignore a bunch of rolls and rules.
i propose a blend of both. who's cannon takes place in the cosmos of perspective.
(you make your own faction cannon. )
each unit type has user generated has one data sheet, each named character you have would have their own data sheet.
the models can be 3-D printed or kitbashed, but they must be at 1/36 scale. essentially one infantry= one of those cheap plastic army men standing at 5 cm tall.
from here, this was typed up before today, by a few months. there is no campaign.
but i would imagine a new fandom in table top roleplay would be born regardless
___________________________________________________________________________________________
WELCOME TO BATTLEPOSTINGS T.T.R.P.G.
A tabletop rpg for diy, model painting, kit bashing, 3-DPrinting, and plastic army battling enthusiasts.
all parts of this game are user generated, with the exception of the rules. Though u/Khorde__the__Husk sent this to a bunch of redditors for help in balancing the game and setting up basic play structure.
Things to note:
· You must have one “advisor” per two warlords in the session. Advisors, act as the game master to make sure no one is cheating. If there is confusion on what kind of weapon a unit has in their hands or equipped to their armor, the Advisor has final say. The advisor is supposed to keep the game fair.
· In theory you could have as many players as you want, but no more than four is recommended because turns consist of multiple phases that are meant to organize the battle strategy for each player.
· Players are encouraged to kit bash, 3-D print, or purchase traditional plastic army men. For the sake of scaling, follow the scaling of the image below. But you must have your own general. It is recommended that your general be unique, make it yours. Have fun.
· Players can make their own campaigns and lore. Such attempts are encouraged. For the purposes of release, you can follow the campaign I have written.
· For any session, you will need a handwritten or typed general’s reference stats Dossier, 1D20, tape measure, and an army of which you will fight with. (painted)
· When rolling on a check, higher is always better. 20 is always a success
· Your armies stats are fixed and defined in this document. Your general’s stats are dictated by the roll of a 1d20. These stats are:
o morale
o Movement speed
o Accuracy
o Health points
o Punch
· Turns are split into phases.
o bombardment
o Movement
o Attack/counter attack
· The different types of units are:
o Infantry
o Armor
o Airborne
o B.A.M.(BIG ASS MACHINES)

· We play at a 1/36 scale. All models are at that scale.

• TERRAIN AND COVER

make your own terrain and cover. kitbashing, 3-D printing encouraged. terrain is the battleground, the floor the pieces and obstacles stand on. obsticles can be anything. debris, nature, etc. obstacles are cover. if an attacking piece can see the defending piece in its entirety, the defending piece is in the open. if the defending piece is partially seen by the attacking
· Ability checks logic below:
20=crit hit/sucsess
1=jam(gun)/woopsie(melee)/crit fail
To succeed , a unit must roll their combined ability score. This is their base ability +general ability. Debuffs such as kickback only are applied to whatever you rolled when you roll for an ability check.
Regardless, the fundamental rules of this game will apply to your creations. these are an assortment of rules designed to keep the game fair and guard against unfair players(referred to as God-Emperors or God-empresses) and hopefully combat power creep.
Now lets expand upon these ideas so you can have fun kit-bashing and army smashing quicker.
GENERAL’S (named character) STAT DOSSIER
Your army’s stats are based on your general’s stat Dossier. The leader of a nation is oft a good indication of how high of a quality their army’s going to be.
The first thing you should write is your general’s name, then write their bio. Their bio includes their background, their homeland, what politics are involved (if any). It is not recommended that you write a novel, you have a game to play. What are the weapons that your general will have on their person? What are their character traits? How will those traits affect how the game is played?
The next thing to do is to make a picture of your General that resembles the piece you kit-bashed for your general to be. It can be menacing, wholesome, serious or whacky. As long as the design choices resemble what your army has for their design and your general’s character traits. It doesn’t have to be hand drawn. A photo of your piece will suffice. no general may have a skill number higher than 16.
ARMY STAT DOSSIER:
what good is a king without a kingdom?
terrible.
each type of unit gets one ARMY STAT DOSSIER. you can have as many scout infantry you want, but you need a dossier on how they are deployed, what weapons they use, and most importantly, THEIR STATS. make sure your unit type description is comprehensive including what styles of combat they are trained for. this could influence your decisions on how you play. give them lore for shits and giggles. no unit may have a skill number higher than 15.
WEAPON STAT DOSSIER
this is the list of weapon types and their ability modifiers.
when attacking bare handed, you go by your unmodified stats.
STATS EXPLAINED AND BORING SHIT
Now comes the part with the dice. You only need 1d20. This is to reduce the confusion.
· Morale
Rolled by 1d20, checked by 1d20 per unit.
Morale is basically moral law. How far will your troops go to follow your orders? If your morale over a given unit is 1, the unit in question is shell shocked for one whole turn, to be marked with a yellow slip. If your unit is shell shocked, it is traumatized to where it cant follow any orders on the next turn. If for some reason the morale hits 0, that unit defects and must be marked with a red token. Units that defect are now under control of your enemy. If defected units hit 0 authority again, it simply dies. Suicide. Cowards way out.
The Morale that your general has over friendly units is base unit morale +the general’s modifier. Your general’s base Morale is the number you rolled the 1d20 for. If for any reason your general’s morale score goes below 0, the general must rally all nearby troops (within 30cm) to protect the general for one turn on the next turn. If your general’s morale hits zero, you get shell shocked, and your general cannot take action for one turn and if your general was within line of sight of any other allied unit, the observing unit cannot take action either.
· Movement Speed
Rolled by 1d20, measured by cm on a measuring tape or meter stick because inches suck.
Movement speed is how much ground a given unit can cover. Unless your object has a punch score higher than the hp of an obstacle, or can fly, you will have to go around the obstacle. There are exceptions. If the obstacle is below the knee of an infantry unit, the infantry or whatever can climb over at the cost of the individual unit climbing modifier.
The base movement speed of your general influences the movement speed of your troops. To find a troops total movement speed:
Your unit’s base movement speed + your general’s base movement speed = total troop movement speed. See army stat dossier or named character stat dossier.

· Accuracy
Rolled by a 1d20, checked by 1d20 per unit
Accuracy must be rolled every time a unit attacks an enemy unit.
Accuracy is basically the chance of your selected troop hitting their targets. Different weapons and vehicles have different accuracy modifiers(aka kickback or x-range), and different types of troops have different base accuracies. Accuracy can affect enemy/friendly Health points or morale. If a shot hits near enough to a troop, or makes a kill close enough to another troop, the troops affected must undergo a morale check with the exception to nearby friendlies of any troop who gets an enemy kill.
Explosives and artillery have an area of effect. any troop within the inner blast radius (with the exception of troops behind sufficient cover) is dead. Any in sufficient cover, or within the outer blast radius must make a morale check. Sufficient cover is a piece of the environment which has an assigned hp that is higher than the punch of an explosion.

Small arms fire requires line of sight for targeting. The path of bullets is a straight line, keep this in mind when deciding collateral damage. Friendly fire is a thing and it is a war-crime. If you want to play nightmare mode, your general gets summoned to a military court tribunal and executed if three friendly troops or more die as a result of friendly fire that occurred by your command.

Melee combat can only be conducted during movement phases. If its melee vs gun there is the variable of line of sight. If the melee unit is within line of sight, the gun unit has advantage. If the melee unit is outside of line of sight of the gun unit, the melee unit has advantage.
To find your troop’s accuracy:
general’s base accuracy+ troop base accuracy- kickback. The higher the accuracy the better.

· Punch
Punch is how much damage a unit causes to another unit or object should they pass their accuracy check. Different weapons pack a different punch. Remember to add their bonus to the punch check roll.
When attacking an obstacle or object, units must roll against the hp of the object. If the roll lands on a number that meets or beats the hp, the object or obstacle is destroyed.(marked with red sticky note and can be traversed as if the object was destroyed. Bullets pass thru within reasonable trajectories, no ricochet)
When attacking units, whatever is rolled is subtracted from the victim’s hp. The victim can only move at half of their normal movement speed afterward.(treaded, wheeled, and airborne vehicles excluded from the debuff even if they are hit. They are treated as obstacles with the addition of the passed accuracy check requirement.)
· Health points(hp)
Health points are what determines how close your units or general is to kicking the bucket. In any game mode, If your general kicks the bucket, you lose. If you have no units other than your general, you lose and your general must go into hiding. each unit and general may have no more than 10hp. powercreep is bad
UNIT CLASSES
Unit Classes are determined by how big the individual unit is, and how it traverses the battlefield. The smallest and most common all the way to the biggest and most intimidating of units are all fit into several categories by what they look like. To solve disagreements on what class your unit is, the advisor has final say. Disagreements should be easy to avoid if you design your units properly. It would be useful to stick to a theme. Candy punk, steampunk, horror, medieval, sci-fi, and historical designs are all fine, you could even come up with your own. A theme will be better for discerning friendlies from you enemies. At the same time, make your units discernable enough that players and especially advisors can easily determine what classes your units are.
· Your general/warlord, whatchacallit
Your general is the most valuable unit because it is what you have to control your forces. Without a wise and strategic leader, your forces will fall into disarray and you will lose the war. You can only have one general, and you made it yours. Kitbashing and 3D printing would likely be your most common means of gaining a general. They must take resemblance of the general on your general stat dossier they can swim in water terrain for two turns before they drown.
· Infantry
The easiest to acquire and kit bash. This allows for vast hordes of infantry, or small fireteams, or something in between. Find your play style. Your infantry should be as tall as the plastic green army men in the image below. These men and women are the bravest of them all.
they can swim in water terrain for two turns before they drown.
· Armor
Mainly made up of vehicles and smaller mechanical suits, must be land based. Expect tanks, jeeps ,Humvees, calvary mounted animals etc. here is an image I ripped for scale as to the largest example of armor you can have. Not my drawing. Its basically the largest tank ever built replace the man in the image with one infantry and you have your scale. Or 0.283333333 m* 0.283333333 m *0.5m
these machines will break down in water terrain.
· Airborne
Airborne units can only fly. They can drop bombs, airdrop armotroops, and attack up to one target per gun that the aircraft is equipped with(within range) as they move. Their biggest weakness is anti-aircraft weaponry and enemy aircraft weapons. How big can an aircraft be?
2.44 meters. X 2.44 meters by 0.60 meters is your maximum for all airborne units.
any airborne that fly like a plane have a +4 to their movement stat but can only bomb ground units 15 cm in front and attack any unit that is in front of it
anything that flies like a helicopter does not have this buff or debuff, they can shoot at any target, but can only use missiles for up to 15 cm on ground units.
NAVAL VEHICLES
Naval vehicles can be big or small, but they can only operate in the designated water terrain area. they can carry troops, they can fire artillery, depth charges, missiles, torpedoes, and submarines can hide below water for three turns before air runs out. but they can be spotted by sonar. if a submerged vessel is within 10 cm of an enemy surface or submarine vessel, the enemy vessel can act as if they know where the submerged vessel is even if the submerged vessel is still submerged.
· B.A.M. ‘s
Big Ass Machines are basically giant robots and massive land ships. These can be Game breaking depending on how you build them and how big you build them. They can fire upon one target per weapon. how big Can these be? They cannot be more than 1.5 meters tall or take up a ground area larger than 4 meters. Players are not allowed to use functioning motor vehicles including, but not limited to cars, trucks, busses, etc. rule of thumb, if you can ride it, you can’t play it. It might as well be just fan art. The maximum distance these can move at any time is 2000cm. to move these, they must make a special movement check. War machines of that size can get stuck easily, so subtract your general’s movement speed from your final roll on each check. If they are larger than the specified limits, you’ve built a giant immobilized obstacle for one turn.
Mobile terrain essentially is a whole battlefield or obstacle of its own. The biggest difference is that anything other than B.A.M. compatible units that are attached to the B.A.M'S can’t be removed from the B.A.M.'S. Artillery such as main guns can’t move, only rotate. same with S.A.M.S. , C.R.A.M.S., and anti aircraft weaponry.

EQUIPMENT AND ARMAMENT
Guns and RE’S(ranged explosives)Require a reload period(one full turn) every so often. Dual wield is an ability that is only applicable to infantry equipment . dual wield only applies when two identical weapons are in both hands of a single unit. Range is how far a weapon can fire before a debuff is added to your accuracy roll. For every 10 cm beyond the stated range, an x-range debuff of -1 is added.
Overheat can only occur on weapons that are labeled with overheat. Every time a gun with overheat is about to fire , a coin must be tossed. If the coin lands on heads, the gun overheats. Overheating will cause the unit to explode. The explosion will deal 1d20 damage to anyone/anything within a 6 cm radius. You only need to roll once.
Cone is a special debuff. Weapons with cone Can only fire at sequential targets within 25 degrees of original target.
im having trouble with deciding the individual weapon stats. so ive decided that i am going to leave those up to you. (the moment i hear people are getting into fights IRL, i will be putting in an elaboration which will settle all disputes regarding equipment and artillery... and i wont be happy about it.)
players are encouraged to record their battles in battle reports and post it online in their relevant subreddits. if they win/lose, then the player is encouraged to come up with a lore reason for any change in tactics, named characters(generals), or stats.
an army is considered overpowered if they can take out all opponents in as little as 10 turns. they must be nerfed if this happens. dont forget to add a lore reason for this occurrence in the battle report.
unlike overpowered, underpowered armies can be taken out in 10 turns. they must be buffed if this happens. dont forget to add a lore reason for this occurrence in the battle report.
this is sci-fantasy/high fantasy, battles are supposed to be epic and economically exaggerated.
write the name of the weapon, the type of weapon.(melee or gun) and its accuracy and punch modifiers.(bare hands is melee and equal to. magic is gun)
spells must be vetted in good faith by advisors prior to the game to prevent game breakage. spells may not kill units or generals in one blow. spells effects can only last one turn unless its a healing spell. healing spells cannot heal more than 5 health points at a time per unit. write out the spells you have for your units and have them vetted by an advisor, advisor will determine gamebreakability of the spell. if spell is determined to be game breaking, mid game, the advisor will have the offending spell removed and the turn undone. at wich point the offending player effectively must alter their strategy in the spirit of good sportsmanship.) There are three approved arcane focuses, wands, staves, and hand casting, (one must not make them look like the caster is going to punch something, have them hold an orb or something.)
(the moment i hear that people get into IRL fights over spells, i will make a list of approved spells and a LONG LIST of forbidden spells. and no one will be happy. )
THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE
Dont be a dick, be a good sport, and have fun.breaking thegame intentionally is a dick move. advisors are encouraged to post their reports of game breaking spells so it may help me in the event Khorde__the__Husk has to revise the rules.

TRIGGER WARNING: MENTION OF ABUSE, CHILD S*XUAL ABUSE, S*ICIDE
tl;dr: I'm trying to figure out if my husband could be a narcissist, or emotionally immature, or some mashup of both. Could someone explain this to me like I'm five?
(If this isn’t the right group, please point me in the right direction)
I tried my best to condense, but it’s a really long one. I’m sorry.
A breakdown of the pertinent info:

Me: F, mid-fifties, just returned to PT work outside of home Husband: M, mid-fifties, always worked a regular job, main wage earner Married: 30+ years w/adult kids (no longer at home)

For a while, I've thought my husband has definitely shown signs of narcissistic behavior. I won't list everything, but a few things are that he is definitely argumentative (over seemingly insignificant issues), jealous, needy for my attention and flies off the handle if he feels ignored, his only "love language" seems to be sex (and any lack of it means I don't love him), he loves the silent treatment which is always followed by a huge blowup and then love-bombing, he always one-ups me (he works harder, he feels worse, he is more tired, etc). There's more, but I'm trying to keep this short. I will say that he has never physically hurt me, but he has spent a lot of energy being emotionally abusive.
I would say that is his main thing; constantly saying how much I don't love him and how much I don't care about him if he feels the least little bit ignored or has to spend any time alone. My going back to work at a PT job has just turned that fire into an inferno because I've gone from a SAHM/SAHW to working PT, and sometimes just by necessity he is by himself (I want to say that, in the thirty years he has worked his job, I have been by myself more times than I can count because he has worked scheduled/unscheduled/spur-of-the-moment overtime, and I just rolled with it because, really, what other choice was there? Unemployment for the main breadwinner?). He absolutely cannot handle being alone, while I find being alone refreshing and rejuvenating. In fact, I'm the opposite; I'm like, "Do you love me? Then go away and leave me alone for a while!"
But here's where I have been doing some thinking. I know that many of you are going to say that there is no way, but I do believe he loves me. I've seen the man behind all that. And I do love him, despite all of the problems and issues, and I believe as much as he understands it, he loves me too. I am determined to work on this marriage. It occurred to me the other day, when he was mad and throwing a fit about something; I thought; "He's acting like a toddler who needs a snack and a nap." And so my mind started wandering along those lines for a bit.
You see, my husband has had a hard life. Both of us grew up in dysfunctional families with abusive parents. His father was definitely a narcissist, and physically abusive to his wife and at least to my husband (the GC sibling seems to have escaped most of it) and I've heard was sexually abusive to family members as well. He put his wife in the hospital more than once because of severe beatings. He threatened to drive off a bridge with the whole family in the car. He threatened all of them with a gun and a family friend had to come over and save them. He regularly beat my husband for the crime of not eating his vegetables at dinner. When my husband was 22, and I was pregnant, his father tried to hit him over the head with a huge wrench. (My husband is a strong man; that was a dumb idea.) There’s apparently a lot more my husband won’t talk about and/or doesn't remember.
But his mother wasn't an angel, either (let's be clear, SHE DID NOT DESERVE SPOUSAL ABUSE OF ANY KIND. NO PERSON DESERVES ABUSE. However, you can not deserve abuse and, at the same time, not be a nice person). She believed the world revolved around her, she was never wrong and the smartest person in the room, and my husband was expected to be at her beck and call whenever she wanted him for whatever reason. She abused him in her own way. Hurting people hurt people. When I came along, he was nineteen, and I treated him like an adult; that went over like a lead balloon because she treated him like a child.
Shortly after we got married and had our first child, she purposefully ceased to live, which threw my husband into a deep, deep depression for a few years. It was rough. I tried to get him to go to therapy, but he flat refused. We worked through it and eventually had another child, and he can finally talk about it now, thirty-some years later. But he rarely visits her grave, and I’ve never forced him to go if he doesn’t want to.
At very significant points in his emotional development, my husband had some major life crises happen:

He had to retake first grade because his mother was put in the hospital by his father's abuse; he shut down to the point he wouldn't do his homework and had to be held back (which is hard enough); he would have been around 7 years old He spent his childhood dealing with an abusive father and wondering if he was going to literally not be alive His parents finally divorced when he was around 14 years old After that, he and his mother and sibling were constantly financially insecure His mother purposefully ceased to live when he was twenty-three, after we had just had our first child He has told me that he doesn’t remember large chunks of his childhood (which I understand is a trauma response)

As he was being 'constructed', there was built a severely flawed frame structure around these emotionally damaged areas; the ability in his ‘frame’ to withstand a structural state of stress is severely defective. He never really learned how to regulate his emotions, how to work through them or deal with them in a healthy way. His mother never got him therapy for the abuse he had endured since birth; if anything, she compounded it (that’s a whole post in itself because, wait for it, she was a counselor). The only relationship he had modeled on a consistent basis was a dysfunctional, abusive, unhealthy one. (He did have maternal grandparents who were loving and kind, but they couldn't be there 24/7.) His aunts and uncles were all also in dysfunctional marriages/divorces, so no help or escape there. As a result, he has nothing to draw from when he feels stress, irritation, anger, sadness, irritation, loneliness; he struggles to even identify the differences between all of those emotions. He is extremely simplistic in his thought processes when it comes to emotions: He feels good/bad, energetic/tired, loved/unloved, happy/sad, full/starving; sometimes he’s capable of mildly annoyed if he's in a really good mood, but mostly his emotions are one extreme or the other (they do not change wildly; he picks one and usually sticks with it for a while).
If he feels stressed in one area of his life, then EVERY area of his life, in his mind, sucks. Very black/white. No grey at all. I’m not sure he knows grey exists. He thinks life should ALWAYS be a happy feeling, and if there is any bad/sad/stress/negative emotion, then that ruins it all and he can only concentrate on that, like a pebble in his shoe.
It’s like if someone gave each of us an oatmeal raisin cookie (mine has my allergens/intolerances removed):
Neither of us are big fans of raisins, but we both like oatmeal cookies. I will just eat around the raisins, or I will pick them out. If that is impossible, I’ll just eat the raisins, even though they aren’t my favorites, because I like oatmeal cookies and I try to look at the positive. “A minute ago I didn’t have a cookie, but now I do have a cookie, even though it has raisins that I don’t like, so life is pretty okay at this moment.” (I try to find something positive, even if it’s just a little thing, and focus on that.)
He will spend his time bitching that his cookie has raisins. He doesn’t like raisins. Don’t they know he doesn’t like raisins? How is he supposed to eat this cookie with raisins? And if I point out that he can make the best of it and just try to pick out the raisins, then he gets all upset. “But I should have got a cookie with no raisins. I shouldn’t have to pick out the raisins. Even if I pick them out, I can still taste them. Life sucks all the time.” (He finds something negative in everything, even if it’s a little thing, and builds it up to overshadow all the good things.)
So, I’m thinking that he has probably inherited some narcissistic tendencies from his father (and some not-so-pleasant stuff from his mother as well), and then he’s added emotional trauma to this, which makes me think emotional immaturity has been stirred into this particular pie (or cookie, if you will). Could this be so?
Here’s a very recent case in point. He works nights. I mostly work days, but my job is such that I sometimes need to be ‘on-call’, and so occasionally I need to go in at weird hours/times. It’s a great job and I love it, and it’s a perfect fit for me and my skill-set, but he’s having a hard time adjusting to me not always being around like I have been for most of our marriage. (Remember, to him not being around=not loving him.) He feels like he’s not the center of attention any more, even though I’ve tried to make up for it.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are temporarily sharing a car. We're making the best of it, but it’s a hassle and we are both tired of it (using public transportation is not an option in our rural area and neither of us have coworkers who live close to us). His shifts can be 8-12 hours, depending. Well, on certain days of the month, he works mandatory 12-hour shifts. They are always on specific days. I made work plans based on that schedule, which never changes. But yep, you guessed it…this past Saturday, it changed. He told me that I didn’t need to take him to work that night since he was only working 8 hours, and I was all, “What? No, I really need the car because I already told my boss I would work tonight because I know you always work 12 hours on this day.”
Just how I was supposed to know the schedule changed, I’m not sure, but he completely lost the plot. He started yelling at me while we were still home and it didn’t stop until I dropped him off at work an hour later. I just shut down. He covered every subject; I didn’t love him, I didn’t care about his feelings, nobody EVER cares about his feelings, I always leave him alone, I never have sex with him so that PROVES I don’t love him (I have sat him down and told him, repeatedly, about some physical issues I am having at the moment that really don’t make sex much fun for me which I am under a doctor’s care for, and I have reassured him that I love him very much and I want to have sex with him but I need to get these physical things under control; to his credit, he has never forced me to have sex), I work too much, I shouldn’t have taken the stupid job anyway (he is the one who told me I should probably get a PT job), I don’t get paid enough (I make the going rate for what I do), I don’t clean the house enough, the dishes need washed, I don’t feed him properly, I’ll probably spend all day Sunday running errands for my mother (who is eighty, a manipulative narcissist herself, has health issues, I’m an only child, I have had to step up and help her) and not be home with him, and why am I so upset, what am I starting to cry about now???
Then Sunday, Mother’s Day, he must have felt guilty because he helped me carry in groceries and was nice to me all day. Not in a love-bombing way, not over-the-top or weird, just nice. He’s been nice to me today as well. He did mention in passing that on these scheduled 12-hour shifts that the crew on the other shift always leaves extra work for him to do, and then denies it, and he knows he’s going in to a mess and a ton of extra work (he has a hard, physically demanding job), so that puts him in a bad mood. I don’t know if that was his round-about way of apologizing or what. Yes, he probably was stressed out about going in to a mess at work, and my taking the car didn’t help, and he didn’t handle the stress/anger in a healthy way (to put it mildly). We both could have communicated better about work schedules, but I was just basing my decision to work on his never-changing schedule. It was frustrating, but it wasn’t the end of the world, and it all worked out. His reaction was totally out of proportion to the event.
So is that narcissistic behavior or immature behavior? It’s like he gets mad, he blows up, he comes to himself, he apologizes/acts sorry, loves on me, treats me good, sloooowly builds up anger again, gets silent silenter silentest…blows up again and the whole thing starts over. Why is this still happening? Shouldn’t we be past this by now? It’s hard to explain, and I know some of you won’t understand (and nor should you, based on what you have been through, which is truly horrific, and I am so sorry), but it’s like he comes to himself and realizes how he is acting, but later the hurt and anger take over again. And the cyclic pattern in his life continues.
Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about whether he might be more emotionally immature than narcissistic, or more narcissistic than emotionally immature, or some combo of both, and what I could do to help him and strategies to deal with it myself. NGL, it is really taking a toll on me emotionally. I feel like I have been run through the wringer every day. Some days I cry and cry (when I’m alone, never when he is here, he gets mad when I cry because he can’t handle negative emotions and he would never acknowledge he caused the negative emotion), some days I just shut down and sleep for 12 hours. I have a couple of mental health apps on my phone that I use.
We are at a time in our marriage when I feel like we should be enjoying ourselves (our adult children have moved out and we are a little more financially stable than we were the last time we had no kids at home), but it feels like everything is just falling apart. I feel like we shouldn’t be arguing about this same stuff after thirty-plus years, but here we are, still arguing about whether I love him or not.
Thank you for reading my long and boring post. Just typing it all out helped.