This post will provide dialogues of NPCs who used sarcasm at least once.
"You head over to pay the barman a visit. Have a good drink and come back then. No use talking to you now - you look like a controller has rearranged your brain." - Lebedev (That dialogue, like few other dialogues can be unlocked if you won't complete "Talk to the barman" mission and will start talking to other NPCs before talking to Cold)
"Hello, O, Wonder of the Zone! I heard Lebedev wanted to get a piece of your invincible aura! Go see him." -Gray/Novikov (Can be unlocked if you'll start talking to Gray/Novikov before "Ask Lebedev about what happened" mission)
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/4v9wgN.jpg
"You look pretty good...for someone who survived the Emission anyhow. What you really want is to sit by the fireplace at Lebedev's..." - Suslov (Can be unlocked if you'll start talking to him before talking to Lebedev and completing "Talk to Lebedev" mission)
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/dqfXS6.jpg
"O welcome, guest from foreign lands! What come you with? A bursting purse or prized exotic wonders?" - Suslov
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/tyRGo6.jpg
"We can do away with blindfolds this time. If you step into some quicksand, dying is ever so much more fun with your eyes open...I'm just kidding! Keep your eyes peeled and remember the way across the Swamps - next time you'll have to make it on your own." - Dialogue of Clear Sky Guide that can lead you to Cordon (Name of that guide is randomly generated)
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/TQ19dK.jpg
"What's it to you, huh? One look at you tells me you've got your own problems. Around these parts knowing too much can help you kick the bucket long before you're due. By the way, your bucket looks mighty nice - wanna trade before you walk upon an anomaly? Ah c'mon, get your panties out of the bunch - I'm just putting you on." - Dialogue of Random Bandit
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/zCQJZw.jpg
"What are you, some kind of journalist? Gonna write about me in tomorrow's newspaper? Ha-ha-ha! All right, listen here, boyo. We're the knights of the road and we rule the Garbage. You cut us some juice and we mind our own business. You don't pay up - you're in deep shit. This is a gold rush of sorts. That's 'cause these Soviet trinkets buried in this dump are now worth their weight in gold. So if you get into debt with us or try to be a hero, we'll send your ass straight to the camp. Working down there is about as much fun as mining uranium, what with all the anomalies and radiation. But hey, the good news is that at least your troubles would soon be over... along with your life." - Another Bandit dialogue
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/tCTxZm.jpg
"Well, this here is the flea market, so I guess that makes us flea marketers. He-he, we're traders, buddy - we sell small stuff here and there...I'll be straight with you: our goods are crap, but hey, at least we're still in business, right? So, you come to trade or just to chat?" - Dialogue of Flea Market Trader
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/uiNAIa.jpg
"Well, it's a difficult concept for you to grasp but...I live here! I also work here as a stalker. And we have a base here. Maybe you've heard of a clan called Freedom? Well, the Dark Valley is our territory. What do you think a Freedom member is doing on Freedom territory?" - Dialogue of Random Dark Valley Freedomer
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/CANPuV.jpg
"Well, I do my best work in the kitchen with a fork! Hah! Kidding, buddy. I'm a sniper expert. I can shoot pretty good myself and I help others too. I can work your assault rifle real nice - it'll fire like a Spetsnaz SVD when I'm finished with it. And if you get a real sniper rifle, oh baby - your enemies are gonna be taking real long detours to stay out of your way, that's a promise. I can also patch up your armor if need be." - Dialogue of Yar
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/f8SkNG.jpg
"Trying to decide which beast to bring the Inquisitor. He runs a zoo at our base where he holds specimens of the local fauna. I'd love to stick a controller in there, but he'd probably make us all into zombies even if we could get our hands on one." - Dialogue of Random Agroprom Dutyer
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/aSg8jG.jpg
"Agroprom is a former research institute. Obviously, after the Zone appeared there ain't much research going on here no more. Ha-ha. Instead, we're using the building as our base to fight off the Zone's spawns. We're holding the line against the monsters that come out from underground. We fight to save the lives of other stalkers, sometimes at the cost of our own." - Another Dialogue of Random Duty NPC
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/ONEwh2.jpg
"Don't mind him, that's our local dumbass Mitay. As one professor would put it, he's "nothing but a vulgar swine!" No garden is without its weeds, and Mitay is the designated weed in ours. He'd be a perfect fit for the Inquisitor's zoo - would complete the collection as the top show freak. Sometimes I wish a pseudodog would adopt him... But really he's much better off as a trader. If he spent his days in the bar he'd spent more time getting his ass beat than actually drinking - or worse. Even considering that manhandling is a sure way to wind up in the cooler, that wouldn't stop most." - Dialogue of Major Zvyagintsev
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/RowziG.jpg
"I'm loving our scientists, man! They're funny guys, that's for damn sure! Usually they don't stick their nerdy little noses out of the bunker, but when they do, like the other day... all hell breaks loose! Troops everywhere, choppers, APCs! Next time, they might as well haul a battleship here, or at least an armored train..." - Dialogue of Random Yantar Stalker
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/51spyn.jpg
"We got a job for you. You see, we didn't exactly come to this forest to pick mushrooms. There's an anomalous zone nearby, with whole mountains of artifacts. I know how to get there, but the road goes through the forest - and you've heard all about the forest, I'm sure. It's a friggin' deathtrap. So, you escort us there, keep guard for a short while, and we'll reward you with a nice and juicy artifact for your troubles. Deal?" - Dialogue of Red Forest Stalker
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/haGgsJ.jpg
"We've arranged a little deal with the military. They take our bullets and we take their base. Sounds fair to me. Me and the boys are "negotiating" as best we can." - Dialogue of Army Warehouses Freedomers
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/0PgNJU.jpg
Not really a dialogue, but nonetheless it also should be mentioned. Description of Eye artifact:
"This artifact, which resembles the human eye, considerably increases the body's metabolism, helping wounds heal quicker. Experienced stalkers say that the Eye also brings luck. Right or wrong, it sure brings in money. Emits radiation."
Additional proof: https://snipboard.io/vVJh3c.jpg

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Hi. I don't know how i found this subreddit i just googled some stuff ended up here and read some posts. Just to clarify I dont have a diagnosed CPTSD? I'd just like to share how my life has been because I genuinely have my whole life been thinking either what the fuck is wrong with my life theres no way this is normal and then sometimes i just think that im overreacting and my life has been completely normal. I'd like to know if im just imagining it or not I guess. Also I'd like to add that im doing somewhat better and im not experiencing THOSE bad thoughts anymore so please don't like report my account for being a danger to myself (I think that's a feature on reddit?). Im still a bit messed up but like still MUCH better than I used to be.
Honestly I read this whole thing and im adding here that I rant a lot maybe im just ranting about all the bad things in my life... Just a warning I guess. Don't read this if that's not what you want to read, this ended up super long sorry. Also I dont know if this is even relevant anymore. Half of this rant is about my family and other half about other bad things that happened I think. I don't know if this sub is only about like family stuff im sorry if this is the wrong place. Also trigger warning I had some thoughts about ending it and some self harm.
The first 10 years of my life were semi normal from my memory. Its been a while since those times and I dont remember it that well. I remember my parent's fought semi often (which is normal?) and some of my earliest memories were them yelling, fighting at night, my mother going out at night and yelling that shes never coming back, and a few times my mother doing stuff like talking in a scary voice and i remember crying and saying it was scary I think but she just kept doing it (while it was night and I was probably trying to sleep/go to sleep). I was also the middlechild so my parents always treated my older and younger sibling better like them having better stuff to some amount but not like a ridiculous amount. I also remember being scolded a lot by everyone if I did anything slightly wrong even by accident and I remember my brothers not being scolded at all if they did anything similaworse. Anyways I still mostly remember being semi happy and my life being somewhat normal if not just completely normal and im just focusing too much on the bad stuff. I also remember having sleep paralysises and nightmares a lot around when i was like I'd assume up to 12 years old and a weird thing i realized some time ago is that a lot of time in those nightmares/sleep paralysises the monsteperson that was scaring me was either of my parents. Anyways maybe im just reading into things and its a normal dream. I genuinely don't know if im just being a weirdo and my life was normal and im reading too much into stuff I dont want to pretend like my life was bad if it wasn't im just wondering so please don't get angry at me if its not im just wondering. Oh also my family really never spent much time with me atleast I dont remember them being around and mostly working when I wanted to play. I also remember my mother avoiding me like when I asked to spend time with them they just said no and to do something else. I was really bored as a child but I had videogames atleast so I mostly spent my time around them. Oh also 1 person who I thought was my friend beat me up at school because I said something mild not even at them that their class was worse than ours? I also passed out at school and I dont remember why and I remember my big brother just walking by me without saying a word when I had awoken in the hallway (they saw me and just ignored me...)
Anyways. When I turned 11 or so we moved while I was still in middle of elementary school so I had to leave the few friends I had behind (but my brothers didnt as the other was just beginning elementary school and other was entering middle school). I didn't really make any friends within the school and the few I did dropped me out when they realized I wasn't exactly popular. The teacher and other kids made school hard and while I usually achieved perfect grades i started barely passing in school because of how much I hated it. I also started forgetting stuff too and the teacher scolded me a lot because of that. I started being bullied to some amount by the other kids and my teacher so I started stress eating a lot and got kinda fat. Then they started bullying me about me being fat. I also had really no friends or contacts. I remember being extremely stressed out and my big brother making fun of me because of that. Then I remember getting depressed. I started not really trying anything anymore. My family didn't help they made fun of me being fat. Also I remember not really being physically attacked much but im pretty sure I at some point complained about my big brother hitting me with a controller in my head. But I dont remember if that actually happened? Knowing them it might have. Anyways I remember crying every morning around this age until I didn't anymore. I cried almost every morning because I didnt want to wake up and go to school and my parents sent me there anyways. The kids there made fun of that too I remember one of them asking "why is (me) crying every day" and someone answered to them "that I must be so happy"? Anyways eventually I stopped crying. I just didn't feel anything anymore other than anxiety and sadness and anger rarely. Mind you, through this my family didn't give a fuck about how I went from a somewhat happy child to someone who stayed inside all the time, went from healthy to fat within like a year and didn't feel anything anymore. They just focused on their own things. I started getting suicidal thoughts. I remember when I was a child (even younger) and I learned what suicide ment. I remember wondering why the hell anyone would ever want to do that. And now I felt like I wanted to do that. That's how bad I felt. I remember thinking what my family would think/how they would react if I drowned myself in the river. I went outside often at random times and just thought about doing it. I walked by this like electricity thing and I thought if I touched it would it kill me. Mind you these were just thoughts. I never actually acted to the point that I tried to do anything and I dont think I was doing that bad. I didn't act on these thoughts. I remember once coming home from one of these walks hoping they would wonder where I had been since I was like 12 and my mother just smiled at me (almost like she knew I was trying to get attention from them and with like an evil smile rather than a good one?) and said I was just outside walking to the others. I remember even thought I was the one who played the most games in my family, we got a PS3 and the old PS2 went to my littlebrother along the old TV from my big brother. Even thought the other played only a little and the other didn't play at all ever. I don't know if I was just being a brat but it felt bad taken that videogames were the only thing that made me a bit happy in my home. I remember them doing other stuff too like my big brother often telling me to kill myself, doing stuff like pointing a toy gun at me and like pretending to shoot me and telling me to stop pretending like i was misunderstood (I was depressed and having suicidal thoughts... at 12). Other things I remember is a teacher calling me fat (made me feel a bit bad...) as a joke and my teacher sending me to a class for trouble children with bad grades (even thought I told her I got a bad grade on the exam because no one told me that we had an exam so I couldn't read for it. I was sick when they said we had one btw in school which is why I didnt know) and even thought I clearly didn't belong to that class since the other people seemed to actually not be able to get good grades, i started trying in school just a bit so they would see my grades are good and get me out of that class since I felt bad being there because the others made fun of me because of that too. The teacher there was an ass who constantly spoke to me and the others like we were braindead and i genuinely hated her. It was clear I didnt belong there but they just kept me there the rest of the year. I started sleeping like only 3 hours a night since I was 11 until highschool ended because I didn't want the next day to begin. I just stayed up all night playing games and doing other stuff. Pretty much always other than vacations and weekends I slept like 3-5 hours only. I think that made my grades even worse and I don't remember much from some years of my life where I slept the least im assuming because of the lack of sleep? Or depression idk.
Anyhow things stayed like this. I felt extremely bad and had no motivation but I just kept on living my life. Later on when I went to middleschool at 13 years old I found for the first time some friends. I felt somewhat better, like I belonged for the first time in my life. My depression went away somewhat. Other things stayed the same thought my family still acted the way they always did. Still with my friends I felt like I was okay. I forgot about how bad my life had been a few years. I still had a challenge getting that close to anyone and didnt have self confidence and didnt feel outright happy but I was somewhat okay. I remember at the middle of middle school I got depressed again. I didn't remember that it was a feeling I had always had the past few years because back then I was so out of it. I remember just feeling like there was a void in my heart like to the point it physically hurt every now and then. I guess I realized that more than half of the middle school was over and I knew my friends would leave me behind when it's over since I had a hard time getting too close to them. And that's what brought the depression. I remember some months after since I still felt depressed telling my mother I was depressed and she just kept on working and saying in a monotone voice that "oh really? that means you have to go to therapy". And it scared me I didnt know what that would be like so I just said never mind and walked back to my room. Anyways middle school ended none of my friends stayed in contact I got super depressed. Because of my lack of good grades other than the last half few months which is the only time period where I tried and got very good grades, my overall average in middle school almost prevented me from getting to high school. I remember my dad just saying that "sorry I guess you tried your best it wasn't enough" something along those lines. Like wtf I didnt try my best I was depressed and slept 3 hours and didnt study at all so I could spent all my time with videogames and my few friends so I could feel a little bit of happiness in my life. I didn't have the fucking motivation to study at all... Anyhow I got to highschool.
So highschool was the worst. But honestly im getting tired of writing. I had THOSE bad thoughts again, we have to go to army when we get out of highschool in my country so that scared the hell out of me, I didn't focus on school was bullied, family was just causing problems. No wait I do want to write a couple things here. When I was 17 i developed bad OCD. I didnt go out of my room anymore. I didnt want to touch anything that had been in my school and then anything that had touched those things I didnt want to touch either. Something called contamination OCD apparently? I spent at ages 17 to 18 probably 2-5 hours average daily on compulsions. I felt like a mindless puppet. I keep thinking how much better grades I'd have got if i spent that time on studying. Once my big brother really invaded my personal space and it upset me and made me so stressed because of OCD related stuff that I took a semi sharp object from my TV remote and slashed my leg a few times to a point that I still can see the scar. I also got angry and felt bad easily when I lost in a videogame or such and sometimes bit my hand in anger. My parents also wanted me to go to army instead of trying to not go there (theres a few alternatives). But at this point I stopped liking my family. So i knew I was not going to do that or what they want. I had dreamed since I was 15 of when I'd get to move away and never see these people...
Anyhow. Im 23 now. I worked through a lot of my issues. Not fat anymore. I go outside now. I sleep a normal amount. I exercise. My OCD i managed to best atleast to the point that im able to function mostly normally like I wouldn't even have it. Still depressed probably I don't remember what it felt like to feel to be honest so I don't know if I am depressed? Haven't had THOSE thoughts in many years. Haven't self harmed myself in years. Still have no friends because i have quite a bad social anxiety due to my life. Still thought for the first time in years... maybe since I was 11. I feel like my life is not going a steep downhill. I feel like it's getting better actually. And i've felt like that some time as of writing this as I began to fix my life and my issues.
The most annoying thing is... it's been so many years. My life has changed so much. The family I have im still in ties with to some amount even though I'd like to not be. They dont seem bad now? That bad? But I still want to get away from them completely and never see them. I just FEEL like I need to do that. But I dont know if they even were that bad. That's what I want to know here. Is my family normal. Is there something wrong with me and I imagine they are bad? I might end up deleting this post and my account. This is just a throwaway. I just want to know. I need outside input. I've been so alone that I never had that. I need to know if im imagining that I had a bad life or if it was not normal. I literally feel like I cant view my past objectively because I can't remember much. There were happy memories too in my childhood. A lot of them. Atleast some years of it. Im just picking the bad examples. I managed to enjoy some of my time back then. I just cant realize whether theres something wrong with other people especially my family and the bad people in school or if im the problem. If you actually read this, anyone, thank you. You probably know more about my life and existance than anyone else other than me since I've spent so much of my life alone.

TL;DR: BF (33M) and I (30F) said we were going to try to make it BF’s friend’s (35M) birthday party, but we ended up staying in my hometown longer to spend time with my mom for Mother’s Day weekend. Boyfriend’s friend was not happy we weren’t coming anymore to his birthday party because I wanted to spend more time with my mom and family.
My (30F) relationship with my bf (33M): Been dating for almost 2 years. Currently living together in a home he bought. He’s a great boyfriend and we fight maybe once a month.
So I’ve been seeing my boyfriend’s friends every weekend for over the past month including my own 30th birthday party a few weeks ago that they all attended.
It’s Mother’s Day weekend and his friend ‘Y’ (35M) threw a birthday party at his parents house over the weekend (Saturday) that Y and his parents paid for the day before Mother’s Day. My family lives 2 hours away and we said we were already planning to go see my family for early afternoon to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mom and bonus moms and that we would try to come to the pool party at night. It’s about 4PM and my family arrived late and I really wanted to spend more time with family since I don’t see them as much. I haven’t seen them since January so I asked my boyfriend to text Y that we won’t be able to make it to his party and that we’ll be happy to make it up to him. Y replied with “Wow. Don’t bother”.
We spent time at Y’s home for his Kentucky Derby get together last week (only 6 people were there, including my bf and I) where my boyfriend and I ended up spending the night at his home since he lives by himself now and isn’t in a relationship (hasn’t been in a relationship for 4 years since he broke up with his boyfriend so he’s rather lonely and gets drunk alone in his house), I didn’t want him to be alone since we’ve all been drinking and I knew he drinks alone often. After my boyfriend went to bed, I even stayed up to watch little shop of horrors with Y until 3AM and talked about life… it was honestly really nice.
I told my boyfriend all this and that if this is the case with his friends, that I would rather not be around them. That he’s welcome to still hangout with them, but that I may not be joining. My childhood friends would never say anything like that to me or my boyfriend so it’s just super surprising to see that someone would even say that. I guess I’m just not used to it and tbh I don’t want to be. Friendships outside a relationship are insanely important and for significant others to put in effort to get to know your partners loved ones, but I am having trouble with what to do and if I need to create a boundary.
I even booked an airbnb for the summer for us all to drive to for the weekend (10 people in the friend group) and contemplating cancelling it to not be around any of them. They’re not all bad and I honestly enjoy most of them, but I will say, the friend group is similar to an exhausting friend group I had in my early 20s and it’s tiring. His friend group in general is toxic to each other and a different friend was also rude to my childhood friends and even my older sister at last year’s Christmas party I hosted in my home.
I’ve reached out to Y to share how hurtful his comment was considering how much time we’ve spent together for the past month and that I simply wanted more time with my mom and family. Shortly after that the other 8 people started to blow up our group chat that I’m in with them sharing how amazing his parents were and how incredible his pool party was. Took Y a day to respond back while he was texting in the group chat still but he eventually in summary said that he understood I was celebrating Mother’s Day, but he doesn’t understand why that realization happened of us not being able to go happened an hour into his party starting. They all began to be extra chatty the day after his party. Y texting me a day later (yesterday) and said him and his parents spent a lot of money and time preparing for his birthday party - catering from a local store for subs and chicken tenders. I also shared with him that we would cover for loss costs for us not being able to be there.
Any advice on how to handle a significant other’s friend group like this? AITAH? Everyone is in their 30s and it feels toxic. I’m all for growing if I’m the asshole here and I have apologized to him for us not attending. I also have not received an apology from his end.
If I should cancel the airbnb since it’s under my name, how should I go about this with all my bf’s friends? I’m feeling pretty hurt on how all of this is unfolding with his friends all because I wanted to spend more time with my mom on Mother’s Day. I don’t want my boyfriend to resent me…

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The Great Depression had a significant and lasting impact on society, especially in the Dust Bowl states. Oklahoma suffered the worst and is still suffering from its effects. The stock market crashed in 1929. This was 11 years after the end of WWI when a lot of working age men were killed. My father was 19 years old. Children age 4 and older had to go to work in the fields harvesting and hoeing weeds. My maternal grandmother who was born in 1932 cut broomcorn and picked cotton by hand. The International Harvester for cotton was invented in 1940, but only came into widespread use by 1970. The broomcorn industry died out in 1980. Older boys age 11 and up went to work in sawmills and the trades. Watch the movie Walk the Line. Johnny Cash’s older brother of 14 was almost cut vertically in half when he slipped and was cut through the sternum by a large saw blade. Can you imagine being that young and handling dangerous machinery with no safety equipment? Safety equipment didn’t exist back then and neither did child labor laws. Those old Boomer children worked just as hard as adults to help feed their families. They were punished for playing. They had to suck it up and endure extreme hardship just to eat and they ate very little. Everyone was starving and filthy. There was as no indoor plumbing, no electricity and no air conditioning. I watched my grandmother work from sun up to exhaustion and she slept in her clothes. When she died, her bra strap hooks were rusted from sweat because she never removed it, meaning she hadn’t bathed in decades. She was 4-8” and wore a child size medium. She was conditioned to hard work and starvation. She and her family including my mother never overcame the effects of the Depression. She was functionally illiterate despite graduating high school in 1948.
Education stopped at third-fourth grade for the average child because parents were extremely poor and couldn’t afford to pay for schooling. School was different then. Teachers lived in a teacherage provided by the school district and earned a living stipend from the state to teach grades 1-4 how to read, write, sign their names, cipher, count money and read a watch. That was the extent of free education. Advanced learning after 4rth grade was taught by subscription very similar to private tutoring. Grades 5-7 were called grade school. Grades 7-12 were called high school. They didn’t have Junior High.
In 1935, the Second New Deal created the Works Progress / Projects Administration (WPA) to help people recover from the Depression. A lot of new schools were built during this period. Schools were funded with a combination of state aid and a tax levy called a mill collected from every resident in a school district. When Boomers say they shouldn’t have to pay a school tax because they don’t have children in school, this is what they’re referring to. They had the right to vote against a tax levy. These days, we call them temporary sales tax increases to fund things like new gym equipment. Everyone inside the school district votes on the increase and everyone inside and outside the district has to pay the sales tax if they shop at a store in the district. These no-voters will shop outside the district if the tax increase passes.
Fast forward to WWII (1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) and we see a significant decrease in school attendance that results in the closure of many rural schools. Many of this second generation of Boomers grew up in boarding schools and orphanages because their mothers couldn’t afford to feed them. This period resulted in a high population of youth being institutionalized. One of my grandmother’s sisters was raped by her uncle at age 14 and was sent to an asylum for the mentally ill. My mother (born 1952) and her sisters were taken by DHS (called CPS today) and sent to a girl’s state school after their father died of cirrhosis at the age of 42. He was a bootlegger who literally drank himself to death. Prohibition (1920-1933) was another result of the Depression. It lasted until 1952 in Oklahoma. Forced sterilization in mental institutions was outlawed in 1951 for the sake of medical study. The practice began in 1931 because the state believed that mental illness/retardation was genetic and caused by incest/inbreeding. It runs in my mother’s family so I can confirm the state was right. Mutations in the brain can be passed from mother to child.
The third generation of Boomers was born during the Vietnam War (1955-1975). I was born in 1973, so I’m technically Gen X with Boomer influences but not to the point that I’m a raging psycho. I consider those born in the 60s to be the third Boomer generation. My town lost its high school in 1968 and stopped at the eighth grade. All those who graduated from the 60s-1980 are the anti education gatekeepers of the workforce that I’m personally struggling with. These are the people who hate anyone with an education level above theirs. They’re offended by education unless you’re a doctor or a lawyer and they can use you. They are also anti-technology and refuse to use it. They are bullies who are socially enmeshed and always in your business. This generation of women married older men because men their age were fighting in a war. Or, they married wealthy men. Those women didn’t have to work and became bored housewives. I blame daytime soap operas for teaching these idiots their horrible social skills. They stayed home almost 24/7 except for when they were at the hair salon or shopping. They wore a lot of makeup too and nail polish contained formaldehyde. The amount of lead and toxic chemicals they were exposed to was very high. My mother was in this category from 1970-1980 when she divorced my father. Men who came home from the war were addicted to heroin and may have turned to cocaine, crack or meth. Many ended up homeless or hooked up with women for the welfare benefits. They were insanely abusive. Very few were able to adjust. Women who did not marry well, had to work cash jobs to support themselves and they might have qualified for USDA commodities and food stamps under Johnson’s War on Poverty (1964). We didn’t have welfare reform until 1996. My mother became an alcoholic and was addicted to amphetamines sold as diet pills in the 80s. We had pure meth from 1980 that my stepdad was addicted to and an explosion of brown meth from 1994 to the present. Almost this entire generation and my own Gen X either experimented or became addicted to meth. It affected Millennials too.
Child prostitution as a means of survival and CSA were common during the Depression because there was no law against it and it’s something society has difficulty grappling with. Oklahoma passed its first anti-child molestation law in 1945 after the end of WWII. I remember those old Boomer women saying that talk about sex was vulgar and those matters weren’t discussed. It was swept under the rug until 1990 when teens finally began to speak out. We had an explosion of violent rape and domestic violence in the 90s by Boomers and chauvinists who couldn’t bear to give up their right to sex on demand and beating women.
We got the Department of Education and mandatory attendance in 1980 so Gen X was the first generation to have a well rounded education since 1929. All the generations that came before us are jealous because we also got child labor laws and the statutory rape law. We’re the first generation that didn’t have to endure backbreaking work as children. We got easy jobs like paper routes, babysitting and mowing. As teenagers, farm kids hauled hay but that’s about as strenuous as it got. Many Gen Xers got pregnant young and had to drop out of school or couldn’t go to college. They had to get married and raise a family. I’m struggling with this portion of my generation being jealous as well.
I think Gen Z is the best generation because they are so far removed from the absolute hell that previous generations went through. They have the best education, the best social skills and are the most well adjusted of all the generations that came before them. Gen X just needs to teach ya’ll life skills and survival skills that you can hand down to Gen Alpha.

I'm so tired. I'm 41. Chronic bladder infections as a baby, one that almost killed me. Started having lower back spasms at 11. Doctors were like, huh, that's weird, kid. Welp, enjoy your life.
Got very active and fit, that kept it mosty at bay during my teenage years. Back pain returned in young adulthood. Cried on the way to work every day on the bus, because sitting hurt. Knelt on the floor to type at work. Got a part time job so I didn't have to sit as much. Did PT, got massages.
Migraines slowly started over the years. Recurrent UTI and yeast infection. My back would go out 3 to 4 times a year, regularly, but I was very active after the 2-week recovery period. Kept asking doctors why do I get so much back pain, infections? They were like "Iunno, some people are more prone to it. Welp, enjoy your life!"

1. I don't know what the fuck happened but my neck did something bad when I was lifting a chair and it was months and months of uncontrollable spasms and complete trauma. Barely able to sleep for months. Poorly controlled pain, pain medicine-related trauma from doctors who are so afraid to give me five fucking hydrocodone at a time when I was almost at suicidal levels of pain.

Interstitial cystitis appeared a few months later just for kicks. Gastrointestinal pain started. My nervous system seemed to be jacked up after that. Super reactive to everything.
I pulled myself heroically back to some decent functionality after a few years of painful and exhausting experimentation.
Was getting back into enjoying life. Then new knee pain (chondromalacia) took away roller skating which was my favorite activity in life and probably the main thing that kept me strong and together. I've been working on my knee since 2020 and I still haven't made progress with all the PT. No one knows what to do for it. It's so incredibly frustrating and it's responsible for my slide into deep conditioning. I try to keep active with walking and PT exercises, but nothing equals skating for joy and for strengthening.
I finally piece together my own diagnosis through years of my own reading, brought it to my doctors, who confirmed. (Wish I could get paid for doing My own research). Was enjoying life as much as possible.
Then, one day, my seemingly loving husband of 12 years abandoned with no warning (He actually secretly moved out while I was gone for the weekend and let me know by email that he wanted a divorce, saying that my recent diagnosis made me a ticking time bomb waiting to ruin our lives)
The shock and pain and fear.
Fast forward 2 years through the trauma of utter blindsided betrayal by someone I thought was my best friend, and the mental trauma of being forced to do a whole divorce and fight for my future needs with someone who had suddenly, nonsensically become angry with ME, saying didn't deserve any alimony at all because I created all this chronic pain in my head to manipulate care out of him (Yes, that was his point of view. He believed that my pain was real but that it was mentally-caused. I can't explain it. It's nuts. I think it's basically his twisted rationale to make this my fault and to make abandoning a loving wife with chronic pain acceptable to assuage the guilt)
I haven't worked in years. I don't qualify for disability because I stopped working gradually, before I had a diagnosis, and I trusted my husband. So now I don't have enough recent work credits for disability.
Ironically I was doing relatively well physically when he left. I actually had some hope. Then, out of the blue a year after he left, I developed chronic tailbone pain. I haven't been able to sit down without pain for over a year. It's really a hard condition to treat, no solution in sight but strengthening, which I'm used to and I'm ready to do...
... but my hips have started possibly subluxing in the last few months? I've never had trouble there before because I've historically been very active. I don't drive. I walk everywhere, so those muscles get a lot of exercise.
But I got more deconditioned because JUST gotten over an exhausting trial of LDN which backfired on me (It caused completely new peripheral neuropathy to appear in my hands and feet and then set my migraines to become chronic, every day, for over a month)
Now it hurts to lift my leg when I lay on my side, feels like it gets stuck, like I have to rotate my leg in order to properly lift it. Sometimes I get a sharp pain in the back part where the top of the thigh bone is. Aching today. I know I have a labral tear in that leg, got to get it checked out
I'm suspecting this gradual deconditioning has finally weakened my hip/butt area, allowing my hips to sublux for the first time?
It's literally been 3 days since the amitriptyline has finally kicked in and I've gone a day or two without migraine. I just started to be able to think again.
But today's hip pain is taking me down mentally. It feels like the last straw.
How can I exercise to get better when despite my best efforts, I keep adding injury after injury? They're stacking up. They don't have solutions. I feel like I can't climb my way out.
And all the emotional trauma. I'm just tired. I've been so strong getting through the past 2 years. I don't know how much I have left.
I'm terrified because I can't sit. I can't even use a wheelchair if my hips give out. How the fuck am I supposed to live? Am I going to be bed bound? Thus far in my life it has taken me working at peak functionality to get enough exercise to keep my body together. Functionality has taken a nose dive for years now, despite my best efforts.
How much more can I fucking take?
I'm probably just having a little emotional breakdown. I hope I can improve things.
But I'm just so goddamn fucking tired.
I've tried so hard. Is this how the story ends with me? Alone, disabled, poor, and in more pain?
Thanks for listening to my novel of a rant.

Wade took a breath as he picked up his old duffel bag, now loaded with his DD uniform and a few other items from the Ceres mines as he slotted it to his side, with the large band handle around his neck. Having gathered his belongings, he joined Tina, who was waiting near the ship's open bay door as he walked over to her. The couple watched several of the other troopers inside marching out as well, some carrying crates of supplies and items out of the craft as they departed for the base outside. Kelly was one of the last ones still on board, checking on a section of the cargo bay as she did what Wade presumed was some maintenance work.
With the way now clear, Wade and Tina stepped off the transport, glancing at the massive base around them as they touched the roughened pavement. Throughout the large landing port were several more chameleon dropships, their crews disembarking with similar items and loads of rescued drones aboard. Beyond the ships were several hangar bays and fighter craft, mostly A-20s and their space-borne cousins docked in lines going across the pad. And beyond the landing zone, towering over several buildings at the base, were the few cruisers docked to the large clamps holding them in place.
Walking ahead with Tina, Wade observed some of the departing Coalition troops as they neared one of several tents stationed near an inactive group of planes, the military personnel interacting and exchanging the crates with the Coalition officers upon reaching each other. Hearing a low roar of engines from afar, the lover drones looked upward to see the large USN warship that was present at the factory earlier, having followed the transport convoy home and now was beginning to descend for landing. Wade gave a silent gasp as he caught a glimpse of the ship's name and SIC number at the side, remembering it from the ship he and Ron saw while returning to Earth.
"Always a wondrous thing to see, isn't it Wade?" Tina said as she and her boyfriend watched the ship slowly come lower to the unoccupied dockyard clamps below it.
"Sure is, wonder how they built those babies?" Wade replied as the two looked upon the landing starship, the former worker drone smirking as he added, "I could've swore I saw that same exact ship over Henderson when Ron and I came back, before we got mugged earlier."
Tina glanced to Wade with surprise as she spoke up on his claim. "Really? Well, that had to be the one that helped our friends here back at the factory. I think I saw the same name on it too!"
"Wouldn't surprise me, seeing all that's happened today." Wade replied as he chortled a bit, Tina doing the same as the former spoke further. "I wonder, what kind of ship is the... Vickers again? You know?"
"Autumn class, dear. A heavy destroyer variant, not as strong as those enormous Yamato dreadnoughts or Adelaide battlecruisers, but she'll put up a good fight for whatever comes at her." Tina explained as she held back another chuckle, thinking of her education on various USN craft as she teased Wade lightly. "You know, I may just have to grab one of those ship roster tabs when we get in the base. I'd love to show you all they got in their arsenal."
Wade chortled again as he gave his thoughts on the idea. "Well, it wouldn't be bad to have a little more knowledge in ship-story."
Tina almost burst out laughing at his crude pun, Wade smiling at her as F and Nathan jogged over to the two, the latter carrying his own backpack behind him as he spoke. "Well, not a bad place, huh? You guys heading to the clearance station?"
"Oh yes, we were just admiring the ships around us while we walked." Tina said with a stifled laugh, easing herself as she chatted with her new friends. Wade, however, was quickly overcome with panic as he remembered something. Checking his pockets, his fears were confirmed as he failed to find one of his key possessions: his ID card. Wade felt he must have lost it when he was stripped of his old clothing while in the factory.
Oh no, guys? I don't think I can pass through." Wade said with greenish-yellow circles for eyes as Tina and the others looked to him in concern, the drone feeling through his pockets once more before stating his issue. "My ID, they must've taken it off me when they turned me into a disassembly drone!" Wade began to hyperventilate lightly as he grew fearful of the potential outcomes when they reached the security gate ahead. "Oouuugghh, if I don't have my ID, they'll have to keep me lo-"
"Wade, Wade... it's okay. I'll have them make a pass for you, surely we can get them to after getting them to understand what's happened." Tina stated as she put her hand to Wade's chest, who eased his panic as he looked to his girlfriend.
"Yeah, and besides Wade, those people over there went around gathering what ever items the company stole from the drones during their conversion. I'm sure that once they find it, they'll have it sent off to be given back to you!" Nathan said as F nodded in agreement, shunting Wade's panic out of him with their words as he replied to the hopeful responses.
"Right, yeah, they should do that. Sorry." Holding Tina's hand, Wade spoke to her once more. "Lead the way."
Tina nodded to Wade before the two began to walk over to the security gate nearby, several people, drones and humans alike, already in the line as they checked themselves in to the base to relax after the hard-fought battle. Once they reached the line, the four stood together as they waited for the line to slowly go up, more troops and rescued drones coming over to add to the long line. During the wait, a loud, mechanical 'SLAM' erupted through the air, prompting Wade and Tina to glance over to the direction of the noise. The two felt at ease once more as they saw the Vickers finally landed at the base, the loud clang being the docking clamps attaching to the ships hull just moments ago.
As the line moved up further to the gate, Wade and Tina caught sight of a pair of A-20 aircraft passing over them, the two watching as the planes slowed down while descending onto the runway nearby. The four drones' collective viewing of the fighters landing ceased as they caught sight of J, who took flight as she departed the transport nearby before flying over to the tents near the hangar bays.
"Huh, wonder what she's over there for?" Nathan said as he observed J landing onto the ground in front of one of the tents.
"Probably checking on the drones we got back, or meeting up with one of those commanders there." F said as she motioned an arm towards the tents, J walking under one as she made her way to one of the soldiers coming over to her. "Seems like the latter, from the looks of it."
Wade shrugged as he responded to the group's pondering over J's actions. "Well, she'll be here with us if we need her, right? Shouldn't be much to worry about."
Returning their focus to the line ahead, Wade and his team waited as the line moved up over the next few minutes, moving impressively fast as the people in front cleared themselves in one at a time. Eventually, the four of them were up, Tina stepping up to show her ID for clearance. "Hello, it's been a busy day, hasn't it?"
The security agent smirked at Tina's small-talk. "Hah, not too busy here until you all showed up."
As the guard finished scanning Tina's ID, she handed the card back to her as she raised a finger to begin her request. "Oh, um, there's a little issue we need to resolve." Putting a hand to Wade's arm, Tina explained her boyfriend. "This is my dear friend Wade, Wade Carter. We both managed to escape that blasted factory with the help of those Coalition folks there." Wade gave a pleading look as Tina continued. "Unfortunately, Wade was converted into a disassembly drone before he was rescued, and it seems those people at the company took all his belongings he had on him, including his ID. Do you think there's... anyway you could write up something to let him by?"
Stepping forward, F gave her end of the story. "I can vouch for him, Ma'am. Wade and I we're among the teams helping in getting the worker drones out of the factory during the operation." The disassembly drone pulled out a pair of cards as she finished her explanation, one of them being her company-issued Disassembly Service Passcard, which resembled a normal civilian ID in appearance, save for the 'JCJenson (In Spaaace!) Logo on the top left and hazard markings around the rim of the card. As for the other card, it was a well worn, still legitimate ID card, showing F as how she appeared when she was a worker drone. At the side of her picture was a name with an initial. "FELICITY A LEE"
Taking the two cards in her hand, she looked them over and scanned them as Nathan tried to back Wade up as well. "So can I, Ma'am! I helped there too, when he was under the company's control. We all got him out of the factory so we could get him back in order." Pulling out his own ID, Nathan handed it out as the guard returned F's IDs to her.
The guard accepted Nathan's ID as she spoke over what to do with Wade. "Well, normally it takes clearance from higher ranked personnel here to allow someone inside without a legitimate form of identification. We can't just take someone's word on things like this, after all." Tina seemed to frown in disappointment as the guard explained her protocols, Wade looking down at the ground as he felt his worries were about to be proven correct. Going over Nathan's ID further, she gave an intrigued expression at the card before continuing. "Huh, interesting. Got two veteran folks here, I see?" She glanced to Nathan and F as she said that, taking into account their former military background as the former spoke up.
"Three, actually. My pal Kurtis is somewhere back there, I think. He should be heading down here later this evening." The guard glanced back at Nathan's ID as she took in the veteran drone's reply, sighing as she decided to make a slight amendment to the issue put before her and the four friends.
"Well, seeing you two here, I believe I can write something up. The Major won't be happy with me for this, but I think I can trust you with appropriate behavior." Taking a small sticky name-tag, the woman pulled out a pen before starting to write on it. Initially, she glanced to Wade, who stated his name again before she began to write his name on the tag. Once she was finished, the guard gave the tag to Wade, who slapped it onto his jacket before she spoke to him. "You should be fine to enter for the most part, just stick close to your friends and don't cause any trouble. Understood?"
Wade gave a stern salute to the security officer, who held back a chuckle at the honest, yet amusing effort the disassembly drone showed to her. Giving a simple nod and a flick of her hand, she permitted Wade and his friends entrance to the base, the four walking past the walkway barricades as they made their way past the gate.
Wade let out a heavy sigh of relief as he thanked his allies. "I owe you both so much for this, thanks!"
"Don't mention it, Wade." F said warmly as she and Nathan laughed at his joyful face.
"Yeah, just doing what any good friend should." Nathan said as Tina wrapped an arm around Wade, holding him tightly as the two walked together.
Looking to his girlfriend, Wade spoke to Tina about what to do next. "Well, since we're in, you wanna go fi-" He ceased his words as he remembered that there was someone else they needed to find amongst the base. "Oh, I almost forgot about her,"
"Jasmine!" Tina and Wade said aloud together as the former remembered her sister, Wade's words snapping her mind to Jasmine in an instant. "We should look for her, you think she might be here somewhere?"
"Probably. If they got Ron after they captured me, they have to 've picked her up too." Wade stated, Nathan raising a hand as he offered to help.
"I could go looking for her! You know what she looks like?" Readying a holo-projector, he tried to display an image of Jasmine from one of his many memories of her. The picture was, while pixelated and under a blue hue, incredibly well-detailed. And for Nathan, that was all he needed to see to note Jasmine's appearance in his memory. Nodding, he spoke again to his friends. "Got it! I'll see if she's around!" Then, turning to run down one of the paths leading to a nearby base facility, he stopped as he asked one more question. "Oh! One more thing, you got a smartcomm on ya, Wade?"
Readying one from his holo-projector hand, he nodded as he spoke into it. "Seems so, though I don't seem to have all my contacts added in."
Running back over, Nathan pulled out his own smartcomm before putting it up against Wade's hand one, allowing the two devices to exchange information. Upon the devices beeping, Wade and Nathan nodded to each other, the former ignoring a pop-up that stated, "New Contact Added" while the latter spoke once more. "Okay, I'll call you once I spot her!" With that, he began running down the path once more, intent on finding Tina's sister at the base, wherever she could be.
"Fowley! Her last name's Fowley!" Tina said aloud to the departing Nathan, hoping he heard her words before turning away from the miner drone and facing Wade and F again.
As Tina sighed in partial relief, Wade put his own arm around her before asking the question he tried to ask before. "So, uh, with that out of the way for now... You wanna go look for one of those ship tabs?"
Putting a hand to Wade's chest, Tina smiled as she replied. "Oh, certainly." Then, as the three began walking down a different path that Nathan hadn't taken, the pilot drone continued with a chuckle. "I hear they have a place here that sells model kits too!"
...
Jasmine sat in silent sorrow as she took another gulp of her glass of Proxi-Vodka, a tasty, but heavy alcoholic beverage produced at the colony of Proxima 2... and one of Jasmine's preferred drinks to have when she wasn't in a good mood. When she awoke after being stunned by the station guards, she found that she was just recovered by a group that called themselves the 'United Earth Coalition', and that her drone friend, Tina, was unfortunately taken by the JCJenson corporation to be turned into one of their horrid disassembly drones. While the people that saved her offered to help her find Tina, so far there had been no luck in doing so. No successful calls, no response from Wade nor Ron, nothing.
The whole situation widdled at her like scrapes to her form, slowly draining any bit of hope that she had in finding her sister. And once the mission at that factory was over, the ship began heading back to the Nellis Base to escort the recovered drones back to a safe area. Unfortunately for Jasmine, Tina's presence was not given confirmation. Alone, she walked off to one of the bars down at the base, specifically Drexler's Cantina, one of the more popular bars down at the military starport. Thankfully, though she didn't openly exhibit feelings of wanting to be alone in her wallowing, she was glad the place was nearly barren of patrons, with only a few at a couple of tables within the bar.
The stage at the back of the bar also had a few singer drones performing aloud, the lead singer girl reciting the words of a quiet, yet exciting song that, instrumentally, consisted of a strange mix of bass, techno, and a hint of opera. The song itself was one Jasmine had heard a good many times before in her life, known as, 'You Complete My World' by a decades old Earth band by the name of HeartStar. The song, as Jasmine and many others who'd heard it interpreted it, was about someone who described their world like a puzzle, and that the one whom the main singer cared for beyond all was the only thing that could keep their world from shattering into ruin before them.
An oddly fitting tune, given what had just happened on the JCJ Central earlier. For all Jasmine knew, Tina was either alive beyond her knowledge, hopefully searching for her wherever she could, or, the answer Jasmine feared... Dead.
Not wanting to even consider the thought, the human pilot took another swig of the colonial Vodka, relishing in its taste before forcing herself to swallow, almost gagging from the strength of the drink. Easing herself, she glanced out to one of the windows of the bar, taking the faint glimpse of night into her eyes. Then, looking to the clock at the wall ahead of her, she saw the time was about a little over an hour to 10 pm. Jasmine gave a sigh to herself, certain she would be alone for the rest of the night.
Unbeknownst to her, however, Jasmine had been spied upon a little while ago. Nathan, in his search for the woman Tina called Jasmine Fowley, had spotted a woman matching the physical appearance of the target. Knowing Jasmine wouldn't know who he was if he tried to talk to her himself, Nathan immediately went looking for Wade, easing his return to his team by calling the former worker drone and signaling him about his findings.
Deciding to check on the news, Jasmine slowly pulled out her smartcomm, resisting her urge to press the contacts button as she tapped the news app. Looking through it, she spotted a recent story that was posted just over an hour ago, titled, "JCJenson 'Recall' effort sabotaged by joint Government/Militia forces! The Truth Exposed!" Above the article was a video, a play button in front of it teasing Jasmine. Curious over this sudden development, she pressed the button, her attention in complete focus on the video as it began to play.
After the news station's logo appeared on-screen for a short few seconds, the current host for the story, Mrs. Tiffany Joy, appeared at her seat before beginning the story. "Good evening, this is Nevada-78, I'm your host, Tiffany Joy. Tonight, we start with a rapid development for the 'drone recall' incidents propagated by the business conglomerate JCJenson In Space. Throughout the afternoon up to now, several advanced factories under the ownership of the corporation have fallen under violent assault by various militarized forces, ranging from official United Nations operatives to private militia groups with varying goals." The small screen to Joy's left shifted to show the state of Nevada, zooming into it to show a portion of the Mojave desert as Joy continued her story.
"Among these facilities, one such factory based right here in southern Nevada has recently succumbed to the successful efforts of the USN Defense Force and a group by the name of the United Earth Coalition, an alliance consisting of humans and automatons working to create a unified world for both species." The screen shifted again to show the logo for the UEC, which appeared as one half of a human head outline and another of a drone's, along with two arms behind the heads belonging to both beings pictured. "With the attack having concluded just hours ago, we have reporters gathering at the New Nellis Staryards near Henderson City to bring you the aftermath of the conflict. We go to Mr. Jelico, on the scene in five."
The camera shifted after the countdown of five to show Mr. Jelico in front of the camera, the cameraman filming a large tent housing several worker drones being tended to by the base soldiers. "Alright, Jelico here, we're on station at New Nellis. What you're all seeing here are some of the recovered worker drones, many of them were pretty spooked by the events that unfolded in that factory earlier." As the camera panned over the lot of drones, some of them looked to the camera, curious at the news crew filming them as Jelico continued. "A few of them are real glad to be here, Joy. Seems like they feel safe here, as far as I can tell."
As the camera moved to show Jelico again, a plane could be seen taking off as he spoke. "Yeah, these people did them quite a service. The staff here are working to find their original owners and families, it'll probably be a little bit before they can get them all home." The camera switched once again to another view of the base, the lights of various buildings illuminating the night as the news story continued.
At the entrance, Nathan pushed open the door to the bar, the chime failing to catch anyone's attention as he, Wade, F and Tina stepped inside. Carefully pointing at Jasmine, he whispered to Tina, "That's her, from the looks of it. She's been here for a good minute!"
Taking another drink of the Proxi-Vodka, Jasmine listened further to the story. "The authorities didn't just recover a majority of the worker drones taken into the factory, however. A recent update provided by Mrs. Yuka, shows her interviewing a disassembly drone who claims to be among the unfortunate drones the assault force failed to save before their conversion."
"Jasmine!" Tina called out, the voice instantly grabbing the woman's attention as she paused the news story. Swiftly turning her head, her heart began pounding with immense excitement as she saw her drone sister, who grinned upon seeing her face.
"Tina!" Jasmine said aloud, somewhat weakly from her previous wallowing as she tried to run over to her sister, landing on her knees as the two embraced in a flush of emotions. Wade and his friends stood behind the two girls as they hugged each other, clinging onto one another as tightly as they could give. Jasmine seemed to erupt with a pained cough as she allowed some of her sorrow out of her heart, Tina carressing her back in a comforting manner as she held back her own tears. The sisters held the hug for a long moment, not daring to let go of one another for fear of losing each other again. Eventually, however, they did, the two sisters taking heavy breaths as Jasmine spoke up while wiping her face. "I thought I'd lost you."
"Can't say I didn't feel the same way, love." Tina replied as she broke out in light laughter, glancing to Wade before continuing. "But, fortunately, those Coalition boys helped out quite a bit. Though, not as much as my knight in his new armor."
Standing herself up, Jasmine took Tina's helping hand as she looked to the one her sister spoke of. A grateful smile formed on Jasmine's face as she saw Wade, standing in front of her and Tina as he returned the expression. Looking upon her family friend, Jasmine noticed something... different about Wade. He was taller now, his arms were shaped like white cones rather than the silver bendy tubes he and Tina normally had. As for his face, his pure green eyes were replaced with a set of greenish-yellow ones, and above his forehead was a band holding five yellow bulbs that she didn't know the function of.
While the pieces started to click together in her head, Jasmine took Wade's held out hand as she spoke to him. "Wade, I'm so glad to see you! You look different, too. Did something... happen to you?" She already guessed it by this point, but feigned confusion as she opted to hear Wade's take on the matter.
"Yeah, I hope you don't mind your sister dating a vampire from now on." Tina chortled in amusement at Wade's comment at himself, Jasmine raising an eyebrow in confusion at the former worker drone as he returned his expression to a more sincere smile. "The company got me too, and unlike the workers we got out... they managed to turn me into a disassembly drone. From now on, I'm gonna need to take in more oil than I usually did before I was turned. My cooling system's not as good as it should be, from what I've heard." Pulling out his two full canteens, Wade finished his partial explanation. "Don't worry, though. I've got some to keep me down."
Jasmine took in the news with immense surprise, noticing the hazard stripes at the rims of Wade's arms as she replied to her friend. "Oh... Well, if Tina's fine with it, then I see no problem with that, Wade." Admittedly, she was a bit unnerved by the change, concerned for both him and Tina's safety due to this supposed oil coolant issue. Trying to sound as nice as she could on the matter, Jasmine hesitantly asked Wade, "Though... I am a bit concerned with that bad cooling problem you mention. You... don't think you would-"
"Hurt Tina?!" Wade assumed, understanding Jasmine's concern as he gave a horrified glance to the two sisters. Standing with his fists to his hips, he gave his answer to Jasmine's presumed question. "Don't even say such a thing, Jasmine. I'd rather overheat than dare strike her."
Admittedly amused as well as concerned for Wade's selflessness, Tina chuckled at him before speaking up on the matter. "Now now, Wade. It won't be so bad. We'll manage."
Jasmine nodded as she agreed with her sister's optimistic view on the problem. "Indeed we will, we always do." Then, taking notice of the other two drones in the room, Jasmine smiled at them before speaking again. "Ah, I see you brought some friends too."
Wade and Tina glanced over to Nathan and F upon Jasmine's statement, the two friends smiling pleasantly as Wade spoke up. "Oh, yeah. These are some of my work buddies from Ceres, Jasmine. This is Nathan, I first met him when Ron and I came to the mines, showed us around a bit too." Putting a hand on F's shoulder, Wade introduced her too. "And this is Serial Designation F, or, just F. She was one of the guards keeping watch on the place while we worked."
F seemed to blush out of embarrassment as she remembered her and Wade's first meeting. "I... did come off a little rough on them when they first came in, though. Stopped Nathan's touring run too. Just following colony protocol."
Nathan patted F's back as he tried to ease F's guilt. "Oh, it's nothing F. We had to start work in a few minutes anyway. Besides, it's a bit more fun exploring the place yourself without a guide." He winked at the others as he finished his praise. "Trust me, it really is."
Wade, Tina and Jasmine all chuckled at their friend's amusing words, F joining in as she replied to Nathan's encouragement. "Alright, alright."
Walking up to the two, Tina put her hand onto Nathan's as she gave her own praises. "And they may not look like it, dear, but Nathan and F were both formerly in the military, from what Wade's told me."
Jasmine gave a proud smirk at the two as she responded to her sister's claim. "Well, that's quite something. Did she tell you we used to fly for them some years back?"
"Oh, she did, Mrs. Fowley." Nathan replied as he chuckled lightly, F giving a smile of her own as she added her own part to the story.
"Yeah, and given what's happening now, maybe they might call you back for service again. Wade told me you two were excellent pilots."
It was now Jasmine's turn to blush as she chuckled from the compliment, knowing Wade's high praise for her and her sister's flying as she replied. "Well, I can't say that's wrong, Tina saved the day during the flight back here. We ran into an asteroid cluster while in the middle of a jump."
Wade patted Tina on her back as he quietly cheered his love on. "That's what I'm talking about, she's a wonder among the stars, I'm telling you!"
The group fell into an excited fit of laughter at the conversation, a few of the bar patrons taking notice of the bunch as they eventually ceased their joyful moment.
As everyone calmed down, Jasmine spoke up, intending to bring the discussion to another place. "Well, with all that said, it feels great to see you all here. It was such a terrible day after all those company folk showed up." Then, as she scanned the group of friends around her, she noticed someone else missing from this puzzle. "Hey, uh... is Ron here? Did he head off somewhere?"
The mood was quickly put down to a mournful aura as Wade and Tina glanced to the floor in sadness, Nathan and F giving uncomfortable postures as they awaited for someone to speak up on the matter.
Eventually, Wade was the one to open his mouth, breathing steadily as he tried to speak to Jasmine. "Um, Jasmine? Things, uh... really took a nose dive after we got captured. You think we could find a place to sit? It's a lot to talk about."
Looking to the four drones with concern, Jasmine eased her returning fear as she nodded to Wade in agreement. "...Sure, there's plenty of space at the table here." Pointing her arm to the table, which was surrounded by a U-shaped seating bench, Wade and his friends began to move to the table as Tina spoke up.
"I can get us some drinks for the talk, you all want anything?"
"Just some oil, thanks. "Wade answered as F and Nathan gave their own nods to Tina, the drone girl walking over to the bartender near the stage as she went to purchase some beverages.
Sitting down, Jasmine picked up her smartcomm from the table, glancing to it as she spoke up on her half-finished drink. "Heh, and to think I was drowning myself in this drag of a drink before. Probably have to find a different glass."
"Proxi-Vodka? Haven't seen you touch that since we lost Aunt Susan." Wade said solemnly as he examined Jasmine's drink, sighing as he reluctantly continued. "Well, maybe it can go for a few more sips."
Looking to the vodka, Jasmine nodded as she put her smartcomm in her pocket. "I figured, I didn't think this was gonna sound good."
"I wish it did." Wade replied as Tina walked back to the table, a plate of three oil glasses resting on her careful hand as she set it down.
After delivering the drinks, Tina took a seat next to Wade, holding his hand as Jasmine spoke up. "So, where do we start this terrible story?"
Wade gulped a bit as he began to recount the events that transpired today. "Well, it all started when Ron and I came back from the mining colony."

To start off with I live in a house share of 3 individuals and a dog, we are previous childhood friends. One flatmate is extremely antisocial and I am trying to figure out if I have been gaslit.
To give some context I’ve been living with my flatmates partner against my will since September 2023. Both me and my other flatmate tried to make clear we were uncomfortable about this months ago. He is extremely messy and had previously punched other men whilst drunk on more than one occasion. We gave these as reasons for us not wanting to be left alone with him in the house. Instead he was given a house key and it took months for this to be readdressed, any discussions we had were forgotten and messages we would send were ignored. In April 2024 we have been told his housing situation was “tricky” and that the flatmate in question needed him here as he was her only support system. She did not give the option of him moving out but instead told us he might be moving out in May 2024. In those 6 months we have been forced to pay his food bill for weeks (we previously had a communal food supply and had to separate and label our food because she kept feeding him without any contribution ) We have had to clean up continually for them both (both of them are very messy and often left spaces needing to be cleaned before being used.) We are told that because food is now separate bringing this up as an example of her disrespect is unacceptable. I have brought up that it is still extra labor in having to clean more often, and spend more money for cleaning products and was told that isn’t true and that they contribute fairly ( Since discussions of us feeling extremely used he has occasionally replaced coffee and toilet paper, paid bills once as of April 2024, does the dishes and occasionally does the bins) we are the ones doing most of the cleaning and always have done so this is an unfair split of labour in my opinion (the dog is also hers so we are cleaning up after 2 adults and a dog)
Neither of them have attempted to communicate over anything, my flatmates partner turned up one day with his dad and moved his things, when I told my flatmate this was not cool they laughed in my face and made a dismissive joke. Neither of them communicated to us that he had been thrown out of his previous house and would be living here. We would just find him in the house when we were under the impression we were home alone.
I realise I could have spoken to him directly, but for some reason was convinced that it would be snakey towards my flatmate to confront him and ask him why he felt so comfortable to dump his labour onto myself and my other flatmate as a 28yr old grown man, so instead everybody in the house just avoided each other with a very passive aggressive environment, in which we all participated in silent treatment. At its peak myself and the flatmate in question would be shoulder barging each other, which is very toxic and sad.
So far the reason given for him not ever cleaning up after himself was that he did not think it would be appropriate and we created a passive aggressive environment. ( We were very angry in this period, I myself even snapped on occasions where I raised my voice at my flatmate saying cruel things which I am ashamed of. This was in response to me feeling as though I was being used as a personal maid)
To give some more context to my own shitty behaviour spaces in the house were regularly left to a point of being unusable, unless we did it ourselves. This involved a months long flea infestation that was so severe you could not be in the house without being jumped on, we repeatedly tried to address this until the point we just dealt with it ourselves. I have had my TV broken when my flatmate was partying with friends which took months to even be acknowledged and not be told that it was not the right time to ask about it. Myself and my other flatmate have had to buy a separate fridge as we literally could not get our food into the houses shared fridge because we were left little space and were still having to regularly clean out others mouldy food. The dog is extremely reactive, he has anxiety and is often only given 2 or 3 short walks a week and spends the majority of his time in one bedroom, so being in the house with him means constant barking and he has been quite destructive. For months she would leave her dog whilst out partying and ignored all messages trying to bring up this forced labour.
Around this time something in me just broke, I actively tried to be petty and use a tit for tat mentality in how I treated her. This involved a lack of care for her items, refusing to do any labour for her, separating every single little thing, giving each other silent treatment. My OCD had been badly triggered after living in a flea infested house, this caused me to go into overdrive with cleaning where I would snap at any little mess. This was too much from me and it was a little controlling, but the situation was then reframed as me being “controlling” and not allowing my flatmate to ever relax in their house, rather than ever returning to the original upset of forced labour.
(I am going to give an example of a game she enjoyed playing with me here to try and explain what I feel has been done to me. She used to come over and start playfully hitting me, she would then ignore me saying no or stop, then when I blew up she would say don’t talk to me like that and frame it as me being angry and shouting at her inappropriately. I have had to address this with her and she has not played this game with me again, but I’ve seen her do it to someone else since and laugh in their face whilst visibly upsetting them, so I know they still enjoy doing it to others. Though just a silly game, this comfortability with ignoring a no and their ability to genuinely convince herself she hasn’t been given a boundary is one that bleeds into real life. )
On one occasion during an argument regarding labour I shouted at her to ‘fuck off back to neglecting your dog’ and I’m sure there were other things I probably said in an attempt to hurt her as much as I was hurting. I take zero pride in this and am deeply ashamed that I lowered myself to that behaviour. She herself belittled me in front of shared friends telling me “you never do anything for me you only do things for others you do nothing for me” over and over until I left the room. We had a huge row where she came down mid shower (as the hot water goes if multiple taps are on) whilst I was doing her dishes as the kitchen was a complete shit hole. I then told her no I’m not going to stop because i need to use my kitchen, and she told me i was disgusting for banning her from showering I told her she was disgusting for leaving the house as she did (I’m not exactly sure my exact words) she then told me “‘theres no room talking to you when ur like this”. Neither of us were right in this but I am giving it as an example of how toxic it is in the house.
A few days following this I said that if she refuses to discuss anything when she is leaving the house unusable for others and her partner is freeloading that I would report her to the landlord (I am not working on logic at this time but because I have been in fight or flight for months) she then told me it was disgusting to threaten her with homelessness and that she would never do something like that to me. I did not mean it as an intimidation tactic or maybe I did I’m not sure, it’s hard to think logically after being ignored over months.
After the threat I made to contact the landlord we discussed all of this, some of which she acknowledged, we both made an effort to apologise. However she tried to diminish the labour her and her partner purposefully used us for, would not give specifics about him moving out, and refused to apologise for belittling telling me she did not remember and it is not something she would ever say so she doesn’t know what I expect her to do. They told me I was not paying extra or doing more labour with an additional person living here. They have since cleaned the garden of bags of shit and dirty underwear that were left out for months, and made small efforts to be cleaner. However most of the house labour still falls onto us. (Some more context they very recently were injured and no longer can clean right now. This I understand completely however I would be lying if I didn’t feel burdened and obligated to now have to do that labour, or to help them with basic tasks when I can barely look at them without feeling sick, also I am still doing labour for her partner).
We have tried to meet her on every level for a very long time, previously we have had discussions about asking her when she is free rather than just dropping things on her, using a house chat, using a cleaning chart. We have tried to compromise and she has ignored all of these after agreeing to them. When I have gone to ask if she is free I have had her snap ‘what now’ I have seen her roll her eyes to others regarding a cleaning chart she agreed to because others were tired of cleaning for her, ignored all messages in the house chat.
My property has been repeatedly damaged or not taken care of as has others. I’ve had to spend over £100 easily. I am so tired of being ignored, laughed at or given no response at all to continual lack of consideration for others and their boundaries. My reactivity does need to be worked on, yes. However theres only so far people can be pushed before they snap, and I’m terrified that I’m going to break again.
When I’ve discussed this with others who have lived with her to see if they noticed this pattern of behaviour they knew exactly what I was talking about, which worries me.
To sum up I do not feel safe in this house, my back is permanently against the wall as I am just waiting for the next boundary violation at this point. This has already happened in truth as we recently received a letter saying we were overdue for council tax which threatened court if not paid off, I paid off mine and I didn’t bother to ask my flatmate to send over the remaining owed money as I am fed up of having all communication ignored and did not want to wait for her to be bothered to send me the money. If there is something that needs her attention you often need to ask for it to be done over and over which again is labour in the first place. As far as I’m aware this bill is still overdue as I have been completely ignored regarding it.
I do not think she truly realises that she has deeply traumatised myself and my flatmate through giving us no autonomy over who lives in this house or leaving us to care for her dog. My OCD is still pretty bad and being in this house or around her makes my skin crawl. So I guess I am wondering if I have been gaslit? Taking my own toxic behaviour into account I do not know whether I can criticise her or if I am being hypocritical in labelling her as toxic. My memory is too foggy to remember a lot of what has actually happened, but I have this of strong feeling of disillusionment that will not leave. I am stuck in this house until October 2024, and I am trying to just get on with it, but I can’t stop obsessing over what has happened, sometimes it’s all I can think about. I feel too guilty or snakey to contact the landlord as she is a longtime friend and I am afraid she will badmouth me to others if I do so. She is my childhood friend and everything in me is telling me that this isn’t how a friend should treat you. I am desperate to be free of this situation but we have been friends since childhood and she is currently injured and also experiencing a bereavement so I feel obligated to just leave her be. Should I still be trying to meet her needs or do I need to be selfish and remove this person from my life?

Intro

It’s not much of a stretch to say that violence is the primary form of interaction in video games. With a handful of exceptions, most video games involve guys whacking other guys, with varying degrees of brutality. Even chill games fall into this - Stardew Valley has sections with combat in them! Considering the pervasiveness of violence in video games, there has been a ton of amateur and academic commentary on the topic. However, while this is a well-established school of thought, I haven’t seen people try to apply this to Fire Emblem specifically.
So, let’s do that now! In this post, I’ll be exploring how violence in Fire Emblem is implemented - what limitations are placed on violence, how it warps wider game and narrative design, and what it implicitly says and does not say. I hope this post doesn’t come off as too early-2010s “makes you think”-y, but I do think there are multiple interesting things worth talking about here!
Despite the length of this post, "a brief discussion" is an appropriate title, as we won't be able to go into depth on everything. After all, video games are holistic works, so the attitude towards violence is relevant to every aspect of their design. However, I have managed to wrangle some of these threads into the following structure: first a discussion on the fundamental mode of interaction in Fire Emblem, then how stories are constructed with regards to violence, and ending with the aesthetics of violence and how they relate to characters. Also, as FE is a huge series, be aware that I am gonna be making some broad statements which may not apply to each individual plot point of every game. I actually planned to write 3 case studies around Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses (which have the most interesting attitudes to violence in the series IMO) which point out these deviations, but this post is way too long and full of tangents already. If people are interested, I’ll make a followup to this post which goes into them in more detail. Also also, because of the nature of this post, I’ll actually give a useful TL;DR for once:
TL;DR: Nintendo games must be fun mechanically, and they can’t be too uncomfortable narratively. If you try to provide a counterpoint by saying “oh this Kirby final boss is super dark it eats 100 morbillion galaxies”, you do not deserve rights. IntSys has to keep to this as a 2nd party publisher, but they also have to deal with the fact that their games are at least nominally about ‘war’ (or at least they put their toes into that particular thematic pool). This conflict between making a fun video game for children/teens and the wider framing of the narrative leads to interesting narrative and aesthetic tensions. also fun is cringe, misery is based

“Do you like hurting other people?” (or The Fundamental Mode of Interaction)

OK LISTEN I KNOW I LITERALLY JUST SAID THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO COME ACROSS AS A EARLY 2010s “VIOLENCE IN VIDYA BAD :O????” PERSON BUT I SWEAR I’M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS
The best place to start when talking about violence in video games is to think about the primary form of interaction in said game. In the case of Fire Emblem, this is in the in-chapter gameplay. Sure, in objective terms the player moves arbitrary objects across a 2D grid which perform subtraction on arbitrary objects controlled by the computer, but this is always framed as controlling a squad of soldiers to engage in (typically lethal) combat with enemies (who are normally also soldiers). When you’re not doing this in-chapter gameplay, you are preparing for the next chapter of combat. This involves surveying the area of combat, preparing weapon loadouts, etc, however more recent entries also include light life-sim-esque elements. To summarize, Fire Emblem’s interactivity involves ordering violence as well as the preparations to order said violence.
For players, this strategic thinking is extremely fun and is the primary draw of the series! You have all these tier lists of who’s better at killing, discussion of the maps where you do the killing, complaints about the length of gameplay sections where you don’t do killing, etc. This is by design, as while I don’t know the core brand tenets of Nintendo, I imagine the Reggie quote “If it isn’t fun, why bother?” is carved into a solid gold statue of Mario in the office lobby. This then is enforced on all associated studios, including IntSys and so Fire Emblem. While I would disagree with that Reggie quote (especially the bit where he says “If it’s not a battle, where’s the fun?” which is a wild statement to make about an entire medium), this approach to making games is ultimately fine, and so IntSys tailored the strategic gameplay to be satisfying to your dopamine receptors. You could analyse what the normalisation of violence even in ‘just for fun’ games says about wider gaming culture, but I won’t get into that here. In any case, let’s dig into a few specifics of FE’s interactivity.
One thing that’s interesting with regard to strategy games is the detached perspective of the player. You order units and observe the resulting violence, but it’s not tactile, you don’t directly swing the sword or shoot the bow or cast the spell like with action games. This adds a layer of separation between the player and what fundamentally happens, at least within the framing that the game provides. It’s not like Call of Duty, where your relationship to the violence is very visceral, where you view everything down the barrel of a gun. OK, I probably shouldn’t use a series that I have very little personal experience with (I only listen to the supplementary lore material, so let’s talk about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While you’re not directly in the driver’s seat, John Sekiro reacts to your every input with extreme responsiveness, so overcoming the game’s challenges i.e. stabbing people is incredibly visceral and satisfying. While this violence is fantastical in nature, there is sufficient blood and explicit sword-action to clearly say “oh yeah you are violently killing all of those bozos with a katana”. Coming back to FE, not only are you far more detached from the violence, it is presented in an extremely cartoony manner… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, we’ll get to the aesthetics later. Point is, Fire Emblem gives the viewpoint of a stoic commander, who Does What Needs To Be Done™, and not the viewpoint of an actual soldier who has to do the actual killing.
Now let’s view the player’s perspective on violence from a different angle. Fire Emblem intends for its combat to be relatively relaxed on the player side of things - the turn-based nature allows the player to calmly think through all of their moves, and you typically have perfect information on the enemies. The only exceptions to this are Fog of WaSame Turn Reinforcements, which are rare and typically unpopular amongst the fanbase. This leans into ‘combat as sport’, where (going back to the Reggie quote) you have a fun time picking apart a puzzle with the tools you have, and we all collectively enjoy this! This is a valid way of designing strategy games, and I like what IntSys has done. However, it’s not the only way of making these games - for example, in Total War you have to juggle all your battalions in real time whilst the enemy is bearing down on you, and the XCOM games always have Fog of War and limited information on the enemies, with you never knowing what kind of awful new monster is going to suddenly charge at you. Don’t get me wrong, neither of these follow ‘combat as war’, the principle that violence should properly mimic the stress, tension and unfairness of actual conflict. Hell, neither of them are particularly mature either - Total War is the strategy game equivalent of smashing action figures together, and XCOM emulates a pulp sci-fi alien invasion story. However, the additional pressures these games have make them hew slightly closer to actual conflict, putting you more in that mindset in a way that the clean fun Fire Emblem doesn’t really do. Again, I want to say FE’s approach to violence in in-map gameplay is fine, but when all three of these franchises have an explicit narrative framing of ‘warfare’, it does make Fire Emblem’s narrative a little more… stretched.
Finally, I want to briefly mention the maps. To steal from a brilliant Jacob Geller video, these are Worlds Designed For Violence. At least outside of the Kaga games, the maps you fight on are primarily designed around how the player interacts with them, i.e. fights on them. While I imagine the narrative designers and artists at IntSys are involved throughout the map design process, the gameplay flow probably takes precedence most of the time. Maps are not designed to resemble realistic places that you have to fight through, they are instead designed primarily to provide fun gameplay experiences before being dressed up by the artists to look realistic/fit the specific story beat. This is a more consistently entertaining approach to map design - heaven knows we have a lot of Kaga castle assault maps which are as fun as actually assaulting an entrenched position IRL - but this lack of friction could potentially take the bite out of the intended vibe, neuter any commentary on violence throughout the story.
You may have noticed that we’ve only talked about the “in-map” gameplay for now, when there’s an entire second half of these games, i.e. all the gameplay between the maps. Don’t worry, we’ll get to all of that, but this may fit better in:

Something something “ludonarrative” something something (or Narrative Implications)

(To clarify, here I’m going to talk about the wider plots and narrative structure as opposed to characterisation, as that fits more into the aesthetics of the series)
It’s not bold to say that the narratives of games have to warp around the core gameplay structure. Especially in AAA video game production, the narrative designers usually have to take a back seat to the systems and level designers, at least outside of the initial rough outline they provide in the original game pitch. In this case, the job of the writer is to form vaguely coherent connective tissue between individual levels, setpieces and expensive pre-rendered cutscenes. This must be a very difficult job, and is probably the reason why most video game stories are the way they are. I am not privy to IntSys internal meetings, but I imagine they abide by this paradigm, trying to give a reason for why you fight 20 battles which roughly align with plot beats that were decided years ago.
Put another way, the writers of Fire Emblem must contrive a reason why the characters fight a vast number of violent battles in a strategic manner. This has a pretty easy solution - war! We have found something it’s good for, as whenever the gameplay designers decide that an extra map is required, the writers can just insert “oh no there’s a blockade of enemy soldiers in the way, guess you gotta kill them all”. This is the case for almost all the games and is a fair enough narrative choice, as it’s frankly one of the few scenarios where you could reasonably contrive so many battles, but it’s worth examining this in a bit more detail.
Even in the framing of warfare, there are still a lot of skirmishes, which sometimes the narrative or tone fails to support - or at least, their presence means that violence isn’t taken that seriously. Let’s take an example from early in Awakening: Emmeryn sends the Shepherds to negotiate an alliance with Regna Ferox. On the way, they are ambushed by Risen on the Northroad (1), have to fight the border guards who think Chrom is a bandit I think??? (2), and then after arriving they need to take part in Regna Ferox’s ritual combat to secure their alliance (3). These beats aren’t necessarily bad, and I actually think Awakening uses these opportunities quite well: the Risen are established as a constant threat to the world (except not really in the main story but that’s a whole other thing), “Marth'' gets more development, we set up Regna Ferox as fighty people who like to fight, and while the middle encounter is very tenuous it does set up a funny joke in Cynthia’s paralogue. However, I want to communicate that if the map/encounter designers need X maps between plot points A and B - in this case, needing low-stakes trials in the tutorial period - then there’s gonna be a fair bit of narrative filler. That is to say, there must be multiple combat encounters that kinda just happen, which makes violence a lot more casual in the narrative. See also the myriad examples of “oh shit random bandits attack!”, used to have a lower stakes map, with bandits appearing and vanishing as needed. This works fine enough in the context of ‘combat as sport’, allowing your favourite scrunglo to build up a triple-digit body count, but this casual attitude circumvents potentially interesting ideas with regards violence. Taking the example further, banditry and its causes are never seriously explored, as bandits are just treated as a filler enemy (except in Based As Hell Thracia 776).
Another narrative consequence of needing so many fights is that… you need to fight. That is to say, any anti-war sentiment or appeal to diplomacy in the series is fundamentally undercut by a) strategic combat being a core appeal of the series and b) narrative beats needing to be structured around fighting enemies. It’s a struggle to have moments of diplomacy and reconciliation when you had a fight within 3 minutes of said moment, lest some people start screaming that things are getting boring. This also makes any appeals to pacifism kinda moot. Xander’s quote about “war bad” in Conquest is utter bullshit, as a huge part of the marketing around that route focuses on the coolness of the tactical combat and its challenge. Eirika and Ephraim can never be equal, because Ephraim’s “fighting is fucken awesome” is encouraged by the gameplay, and Eirika can NEVER save 11037 because we need a final boss and no-one else fits the bill.
Speaking of, in video games it’s best practice to have a big bad guy you fight at the end of the story, the toughest mechanical challenge coinciding with the narrative climax. In Fire Emblem, you have one grand final battle which decides the fate of the war and/or world, before cutting to a brief wrap-up and then credits. This is an attempt to make these games satisfying, which is fine, but this is at odds with an anti-war message (which FE often gestures towards) - that is, actual wars tend to be deeply unsatisfying in a narrative sense! Oftentimes, after a decisive battle, things just kinda keep going for a little while afterwards with casualties continuing to pile up until peace terms are agreed. In the few cases where there is a final battle, it’s more of a formality as the decisive moment occurred months ago. See World War 1 and… World War 2 for examples of each, not to mention a whole host of war-related books and films. The problem with doing this in a video game is that it would require having multiple one-sided fights past the most climatic fight, which would be unfun, and we return to that fucking Reggie quote again. While video games can effectively explore this anti-war narrative space - This War of Mine is a fantastic example - it just doesn’t gel with the fun games that IntSys wants to make. I bring this up in the context of FE because Fire Emblem has such an aesthetic focus on warfare compared to other video games, so it sticks out even further. Even in FE6/FE9 where the war is effectively over in the final few maps, the enemies still remain extremely challenging, because if they didn’t things would be boring.
A few minor things that didn’t fit in above before we wrap up this section. First of all, in making an action packed story, Fire Emblem neglects an important aspect of army life in warfare - the “hurrying up and waiting”. In the majority of cases, the breaks between fights is under 10 minutes, it’s just glossed over. Fire Emblem Three Houses is the exception to this, but there it’s more framed as school life. Some people may say “what’s the point in having large amounts of timewasting where nothing happens in my game about war” and to that I would say fuck you, I want to play Jarhead Emblem. Next, Fire Emblem involves fighting people AND monsters, but these targets are typically given equal narrative weight, outside of maybe a funny line of dialogue about someone being afraid of monsters. In 99% of cases, enemy soldiers you fight have no more humanity than literal monsters. The death of any of your beloved soldiers is a tragedy with big sad death quotes, the death of those poor fuckers is quite literally a statistic which is proudly used to rank how well your guys have done at the end of the game. Finally, the limited scope of the violence the series can show limits the potential impact of scenes. In some cases, this is good as the implication is enough, e.g. the ‘Monica’ scene in Sacred Stones is wonderfully grim and would be weakened by anything explicit. However, a number of other scenes are neutered by the limitations on violence. This fundamentally relates to the aesthetics of the series:

insert prozd tweet/skit here (or Aesthetics, Tone, and Characters)

I’ve been talking a lot about ‘the violence committed’, and this might have seemed a bit weird to you. It’s a true statement, but because the violence is mostly cartoony and abstracted - bad guys disappear into nothingness, there’s no blood, etc - it’s hard to think of it in that way. It’s basically impossible to place Fire Emblem in the same artistic sphere as, say, All Quiet on the Western Front. This aesthetic sense was partially tech-limited in the early NES and SNES games, which was grandfathered into the more graphically complex titles, but it’s also related to how the aesthetics unavoidably warp the tone of the work. IntSys needs their games to be relatively lighthearted and unconcerned with the consequences of its violence, as one of the core appeals of these games is the charming cast of characters. As you would expect, it would be a lot harder to appreciate your goofy blorbos and their lighthearted chats about nothing if you could see the brutal consequences of their triple digit body counts. If violence was more realistic, there would be a lot less “ooh I like training and/or this one hyperspecific food” or “I like peace, but I guess violence may be possibly needed sometimes” and there would have to be a lot more trauma and dourness. There are also age rating concerns, as you can’t exactly sell Come And See Emblem to pre-teens. And once more, to clarify: Fire Emblem as it exists now is fine! I like the lighthearted tone of this series, and I like the characters that reside within it. However, a few problems do arise from IntSys’s approach to violence, as occasionally they brush up against darker ideas but (due to similar reasons to the above) they can never commit to them, which neuters their potential impact. This is especially troublesome with regards to characterisation, as the little dudes are a core appeal, so if something is off that could cause problems. In a sense, at points we have severe aesthetic tension.
A fairly useful case study to see how this affects characterisation is with Mozu in Fire Emblem Fates. Mozu is a charming character, a genial country bumpkin with a bit of an edge at times, who has fond memories of her hometown. This lines up with the lighthearted tone of her recruitment paralogue, where (checks notes) her entire village gets massacred by inhuman monsters, with her mother literally being murdered right in front of her, and she joins up with Corrin’s party because there is literally nothing left of her old life. I understand that people who experience extreme trauma do still manage to live meaningful lives, and that IntSys wouldn’t want to have a character who is a barely functional traumatised mess for 90% of the campaign. However, this doesn’t explain the sheer dissonance between the relatively normal and well-adjusted Mozu who quietly remembers her lost loved ones, and the fact that her village got My Lai’d a handful of weeks ago in the game’s timeline. IMO this would work a lot better if there were a few survivors (instead of literally everyone else dying), with Mozu actively choosing to leave her old life to help others instead of being forced to leave by circumstance. This reduction in scope would mitigate the dissonance between the character and what actually happens to her. This is by far the most extreme example in the series, however I’m sure you can think of others. My issue here is not with having ‘normal’ characters, or with them suffering tragedies, my issue is the dissonance between the two when viewing the scope of said tragedies. This is just one way the series wants to get into darker territory, then swiftly backing off instead of delving into the consequences.
This aesthetic restriction also affects the potential impact of dramatic scenes in the main story, limiting what the focus of these scenes can actually be. This little bit will involve heavy spoilers for Genealogy of the Holy War and Spec Ops: The Line (I KNOW THESE GAMES ARE VERY DIFFERENT WITH VERY DIFFERENT INTENDED DEMOGRAPHICS IN VERY DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS, SHUT UP). Both have a very important narrative moment around their midpoints, involving fire magic/white phosphorus respectively. In each game, the deaths that occur are utterly horrific when you think about them. In FE4 the focus is on the drama of the plot twist and effects on the characters, with the actual effects of the violence being left to implication. We don’t know if this was the original intent of Kaga and the team, or if this was enforced by various tech- and publisher-related restrictions, but in either case we do not see anything explicit. In any case, in Spec Ops: The Line, the horror and graphic nature of the violence is completely inescapable, and therefore forms the core of the turning point of the story. The specifics of the violence itself are crucial - the game does not work if you don’t see the consequences of the white phosphorus - and it leads beautifully to the complete descent of its endgame. You may be saying “of course you couldn’t show that violence in FE, it’s a kids game” which is true, and in any case the scene in Genealogy is very good, even without showing the violence. I imagine if we get a remake in the year 202X we wouldn’t see anything explicit anyway, partially due to the publisher but also because the scene doesn’t necessarily need it. The point I am trying to make is that the aesthetics form a limitation on what Fire Emblem can explore, narrative space that the series fundamentally cannot reach.
One more thing, and this isn’t really about the games themselves but the impressions leading into them, and how the aesthetics can affect that. Do you guys remember when the intro cutscene of Three Houses was released a few weeks before release? I do, and I also remember the collective shock of the community when seeing the early previews. It was so drastically different to everything that had come before, and consequently was really intriguing - you can see a lot of speculation in the above comments. To clarify, I don’t want to pretend that 3H is some kind of super mature ultra gritty war story, or that blood = good game, but that beginning cutscene gave one hell of a first impression. Even though the game isn’t that much darker than any other FE game, the sheer unexpectedness put people off-kilter in a kinda awesome way. Does the game actually deliver? YMMV, but I think this (and some of the later cutscenes, such as the mid-game Dimitri one) work quite well. Sometimes, a little injection of harsher violence can go a long way.

Conclusion

Frankly I don’t really have a conclusion, sorry. As you can see, there are so many disparate strands, I can’t possibly make one grand thesis statement. Maybe the inherent contradictions of having warfare in a family friendly video game weakens the potential end result? I guess, but I don’t want to imply that what we have now is bad, as it is pretty good tbh. So, uhh…
…
OK, if I had to say something, it’s more about the process of making this. Having to try and think about how violence intersects with a video game you like takes you in a number of different directions. Ultimately, this process was really fulfilling for me, and I would recommend that you do the same (for FE or anything else)! Trying to analyse something you enjoy from a perspective not usually applied is pretty neat. If you guys have any thoughts (on the points above or your own), I’d be very interested to hear them!
Also, if people are interested, I’ll try to make a few case studies. I would focus on Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses, as (when thinking on this topic) I found that these games were consistently the most intriguing, with the most interesting relationships to violence. This would probably take a while though, as I am gonna be very busy in June, and I probably won’t have time this month either.

Stay away, wilted rose, there has never been a place for you here.
My intuition told me about you. Your ego verified. I knew you only for months and knew the truth, yet you still had a whole family, blinded by manipulation for over a decade.
Unfortunately, for you, your unwillingness to humble yourself has now left you utterly alone. Exactly where you deserve to be.
Life handed you two choices. And both choices valued priceless. Yet you couldn't choose, because in some fucked up world, you believe you were warranted both. Despite how illelogical it really was.
I revealed your truth because it hurt me, too. Your secrets were burdening my soul. Even before actual validation. You have done the most unforgiving things one person can do, and I conveyed your wretchedness without hesitation. Selfish selflessness.
You had your great love. Your supposed soul mate. The love you bragged about. But at the same time, you had the love of their brother. A love you never earned. The love you had to keep secret. The one you SHOULD have married, huh?
It just doesn't seem like manipulation when you're benefitting with no repurcussion. But to have felt accomplished, manipulating a child for years, is unspeakable. And to think that child thought it was love, is saddening.
J was only twelve years old when your atrocious grooming began. You were a grown woman, and despite your naive nature, had years to realize what you were doing was wrong and actually disgusting.
This brother grew into a wonderful, fully conscious man. He took his abuse and planned to go to the grave with it. How terrible it must have felt to be in love, at so young, and never able to share it.
To think it was acceptable to be second choice to your brother. To cater to a woman whom already made her vows. To go so many years accepting a false love and encouragement. So brainwashed, all of this impulsively seemed right.
For years, you wove a deceitful web. Managed to hide your adultery from your spouse, secretly having an affair with his younger brother. But little did you know, I would soon come and rip your perfect vile world apart.
I was summoned to tell your lie. You were too cowardly to do it yourself. You didn't deserve half the love you received. You cannot take something that special for granted.
I was blessed with a beautiful, but broken, man. These are wounds that you inflicted. And somehow, unbeknownst to me, you think your choices were justified. Your pathological lies make up for predatory choices. But we see through those, now.
I'm sorry for the hearts that may have broken while I uncovered this affliction. I know I didn't create this pain, but it hurts ME knowing the person who caused this, sees no fault of their own. I'm embarrassed for you.
I am happy, however, you could not make a choice for yourself. I would possibly be without him now, if you, chose your steps correctly. But you need to see that he gives his love to me, openly. He does not have to hide anymore. He no longer has to carry this lie.
I know it hurts you to watch someone you 'love' become someone you don't know (your actual FB status). I'm overjoyed with what you left behind, and preferred to never have completely. I'll never hurt him like you did. I'm only here to love him correctly, honestly, and happily.
The love this man provides is nothing short of magical. The love we make is raw and real, and never something he's taught to hide. I am here for just him, vulnerable, and honest. I'm strong enough to live with the outcome of your delusions. I'll fight again to demonstrate.
Your shameless cycle here is complete. You wanted too much. You broke the golden rule, and thought you got away with it. My name, that day, was karma. And now you've lost it all. All the love you chose to ignore x2.
Don't pride yourself in having to do with the extraordinary man J has become. I know you like to claim credit for your immaculate significance in who he is today. Or whatever situation you put your sticky little hands on.
You have falsely idolized yourself for way too long. Carelessly led by your own immaturity for the better part of ten years. This disposition shows how stupid you really are.
You even tried to take credit for MY homecoming in J's life; once you realized he was no longer yours to control. You really pathologically think you had enough competence in you to make that happen?
Continue to blame others for your terrible actions. I honestly don't think anyone is listening anymore. Your premise is visible like a disease we all know to stay far away from.
You aren't a rose. You're a defective human and a pedophile.
-Madison

Hi everyone. A trigger warning as I mention SA. 💕
For those that have read my previous posts, I just wanted to say a huge huge thank you for all of your kind words. This has been a battle I’m trying to fight on my own, but knowing I have the support of a genuine group of people makes that weight easier to carry. I don’t feel so alone now.
For those who are new to my story, I discovered after 7 years of being with my partner that he had a hidden PA that stemmed from early childhood neglect and peers that SA’d him. I knew vaguely about his past, but did not know about the internal trauma that he carried into his adulthood (I’m 24F, partner 22M).
I’d recommend reading my previous post on here for more context, but my partner still feels as his duty that he needs to show his face to his family every now and then. (We live with my parents at the moment). He recently confessed to his mum, the inner turmoil he’s been dealing with as a result of neglectful parenting to which he didn’t really get the whole-hearted response he was expecting, and his mum also invalidated my feelings.
A few weeks ago, he arranged for us to go over to theirs this Saturday for a games evening. But I’ve found myself breaking out in nervous sweat at the thought now. How am I supposed to be able to look at his parents knowing what I know now? Knowing his feelings were never validated and they are a massive reason his PA/SA started? How am I supposed to look at his mum and joke and laugh despite her thinking that all of this upset about my partner’s PA is stupid? That my feelings are stupid?
It’s too soon. I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t owe his parents this visit. I’ve told him this. Maybe I’ll just drop him off and come back home. But I don’t want to create drama, and my absence would raise questions. My partner fully understands why I don’t want to go, and I know how much bravery it takes for him to face them, especially with his recent realisations.
But how do I get out of this? Or do I just see it through? What would you do in my situation?
As always, thank you all in advance. 💕

Chapter thirteen ~Kayara~
They had to ride through grass fields so tall and unruly that even their ponies, easily twelve hands high, were struggling. Only an hour or two more and they would be back in the Elven territories.
Anataya led. Flanked by her guard and her lady in waiting. The kid took up the rear and Kayara had to fight to not look behind her to make sure he was ok and still there. She could hear his pony trying to feast on the grass and the glorious wildflowers, and that would have to be enough. She knew it would only cause upset if she were to bruise his ego as such.
They had seen glorious sunsets and pitch black nights, steep grass-slick hills and uneven forests. The others seemed quite up to the task and readily familiar with camping. With killing their meal. With sleeping on the hard ground.
She had spent the night in a jail cell before, but there had been fresh straw and a blanket. She was indeed glad that it was a warmer season or she surely would have frozen to death thanks to the princesses scheme!
“What’s with that face?” Asked Tyren, a wolfish grin at the ready. She rode her gelding with the proficiency of a soldier. Hers was the only pony that could keep its head up when riding through the tall grasses. The rest of them had to keep their calm and keep a stern, short rein.
“I’m hungry.” Kayara said simply. “You didn’t want the hare that I caught for you!” The boy chirped up behind them. It had looked like a much meaner version of the pet she had kept as a child. Its eyes were so the same as the fluffy piebald bunny she had once adored. She thought back to the now vacant cage in her room. The hand painted river rock that had been made upon her death. Seventeen year old Kayara had horrid penmanship but hadn't been bad with a paintbrush.
She had buried the bunny in the family's pet cemetery just off the main garden, right below her window. The rock was painted with various pinks and purples and yellows. The colors of energy that floated over the bunny when she pet it. Like static on a blanket.
“We should be nearing the city by tomorrow afternoon. If that helps.” Tyren offered. Her eyes were so cold. As if no emotion flickered behind them, so at odds with the olive branch she voiced.
“Thank you Tyren.”
Houses and farms began popping up in clusters, like the fungus on the trees in the woods. They were built in the style of elven homes. Three stories high and dome shaped. Elven country homes were more like live-in garden centers. Massive living walls of braided living cedar formed the exterior and wildflowers grew out of the cracks. Some of the bigger homes had towers protruding, miniature tree castles amongst the most luscious gardens.
“For the last time, we are not going to steal from my people.” Ana said with a voice that threatened violence. No bullshit, no stealing, she wouldn't have it.
“Ana, they'd likely offer you their food if we rode closer to their homes. Close enough that they could see who you are.”
“I said no. If you don’t drop it I will have you whipped when we return.” Anataya said slowly, anger burning in each word spat. Then suddenly kicked her pony into a faster pace. Then faster again and again; grass and dirt from the road flying into Kayara and Tyrens faces and nearly spooking their own equestrians out of control.
They gave chase and found the princess heading towards the fields below a wealthy man's mini palace. You could tell he was an old wealth by the way they grew their fields in circles with trees and flowers that had specific old timey jobs in the garden.
Anataya ran into a corn and bean field. Sunflowers, growing in bunches, stood tall and bright against the cobalt blue skies. Onion flowers were blooming in the underbrush. Likely other crops could be found in the field but Ana was racing ahead into the center where the tangles of beans and such grew the thickest. Then she stopped.
She hopped off her pony and stood for a moment in the center of the now partially trampled field. Then she collapsed to her knees. Tyren rolled her eyes hard as she banked her pony to a stop near the now hysterical princess. Ana wept and screamed and dug at the dirt. Kayara jumped down from her pony in sync with Tyren, and the two of them tried to hoist the princess to her feet. To no avail, Anataya was too far gone into madness to register their words.
A Violet Corona of light began to bleed into sight before Kayaras eyes. It wrapped around the princesses crown as if it was such. Illuminating the man who appeared in the corn and vines, flashlights and shotgun at the ready. Dogs were being held back by another man. Both were Elves, old and wealthy looking. “The Princess- Braeden the Crowned Princess is in our garden!” “Yes Olh K see that.” The one with the gun, lowered the weapon and nodded at his partner to make the dogs stand down. A whistle and the barking ceased. A stray yap came from the tiny brown dog carried by the third man that came into view with another source of truly very bright light. He was clearly the one in charge. He wore a simple pair of baggy trousers and a tight fitting top. An army issued long sleeves meant to endure cold temperatures. Kayara recognized it because her fathers eldest son had been issued the same one.
His silver chain, a bear head pendant, violet eyes. This was a high ranking officer in Antayas dead brother's army. Fucking hells.
Ana stopped crying at the sight of the necklace. On the back of the head would be the officer's information, although it wasn’t really needed. That pendent was named in stories and songs. Kayara had once seen an opera about the living hero, the mantatur slayer and peace keeper of his own kind. The Great Grizzly of Craephen— and this man before them was one of his main commanders. Maybe an advisor!
“Geraeld!” Ana said as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Antay?” Getaeld seemed to be at a loss for words.
Kayara had no idea what to do or where to look as the princess rushed to embrace the man. He held her awkwardly as the dog in his one hand tried to wiggle free. “It has been so long!”
“Not long enough princess.”
“Geri, you know her?” The one holding four big dogs on fine leather leashes, he held them with a farmers grip but his hair and his robes spoke only of wealth.
The other man, the one with the gun now uncocked and limp in his arms; he said “what are you doing here?”
Maybe he was in charge. His unbuttoned trousers and puffed up boxers told Kayara he was the first to be up and alert that there was something going on in his backyard. The one with the little dog passed it to the shotgun guy and strode forward to assess the damage to his property. “You’ve terrorized my boyfriend's property and terrified our dogs. What do you have to say for this, your majesty?”
“I am so terribly sorry Geri… Geri, please forgive me Geri.” The princess dropped to her knees and widened her eyes at him, hands clasping together at her chin.
“You are a child, Majesty.” He glared but yanked her to her feet, hauling her away to his boyfriend’s house. “I shall take you home. Follow me.” The princess began stumbling and pushing him or tripping him up and so, with a heavy and exhausted sigh, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. Like a sack of potatoes! The princess proceeded to prop herself up on her elbows and smirk at the amassed crowd. She looked directly at Kayara and winked! Kayara could have sworn the woman's back arched up a notch…

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)
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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