[First Contact] [Dark Ages] [First] [Prev] [Next] [wiki]
The annoying sound of her comlink made Angela Angus Kusumoto open her eyes.
All she saw was the firm, smooth flesh of Kimoko's thigh.
Groaning, she pushed the other woman's leg off of her face, twisted to get Raul off of her own legs, then wiggled out from under Geoff.
The ringer kept going, flashing the red pulses that let her know it was urgent.
As if the fact her unlisted encrypted and non-network accessible comlink was ringing wasn't enough to let her know that it was urgent.
She stumbled, tripping over Harker's leg, which just made the male shift and mutter, tightening his sleeping grip on Liselle, who sighed and wiggled into the embrace.
Angela's mouth tasted terrible and she stopped to grab a fizzybrew, checking to make sure nobody had dropped a cig butt into it or spit chaw into it, then she took a long drink off of it.
It helped cure the fire in her belly and wash out the taste from her mouth.
She saw the ID of the caller and held back a groan.
Senior Supervisor Bisa-2291873.
Her direct supervisor.
She picked up the comlink, running one hand through her pixie-cut hair to try to tame it. She could feel the stiffness of something crusted in her hair and held back a chuckle and a grin.
"Kusumoto here," she said, activating the link.
"I need you at Master Control," Ms. Bisa said. She was holding a small infant, bouncing it slightly as she patted its back with firm impacts as it cry/sobbed and kicked its little feet.
"The system's been crashed for a week, what's so important you'd call me in during my R&R?" Angela asked.
"System's back online. We've got an open line to Terra and we have an open line to Smokey Cone," Ms. Bisa said.
The infant gave a loud belch that rattled Angela's comlink speaker, then sighed and relaxed.
Angela nodded, fumbling on the table for a quiksober inhaler.
"That anomolous signal is back. It showed up right as the entire system underwent a hard reboot," Ms. Bisa said. "I need you up here to check the network interface logs and do a network mapping trace."
The quiksober burned as she inhaled it, her lungs aching and tingling as the chemicals crossed the air to blood barrier.
"I'll be there as soon as possible. Is the mat-trans up?" she asked.
Ms. Bisa shook her head. "No. Still locked out. It did a power cycle, but then locked everything out."
"I'm telling you, there's someone controlling it. Someone has been controlling it," Angela said, looking around for her clothes.
Clothing was scattered everywhere, as chaotically arranged as the fizzybrew and narcobrew cans and bottles. She sighed, moving toward the exit of the house she was standing in.
"Hurry up, I've got a skycraft landing near you any time now. You've got permission to use the fast-locks," Ms. Bisa said.
"I'll get dressed from the forges on the skycraft," Angela said. "If they've rebooted."
"They're up and running again. The food forges rebooted but stayed unlocked," Ms. Bisa said.
"The creation engines?" Angela asked, opening the door and stepping out into early 'morning' sunshine.
"Still locked out," Ms. Bisa said. Someone said something that the comlink's AI decided might be classified and blurred out. Ms. Bisa looked away, said something, her lips fuzzing, then back. "Hurry, Angela."
Angela nodded, shutting off the comlink.
She ran to the nearest parking lot, just in time for a skycraft to land, the graviton engines howling.
Nobody paid the slightest attention to the naked woman running for the skycraft.
After all, what happened in Vega-Layer stayed in Vega-Layer.
Angela walked out of the elevator, taking a long drink off of the sparkling snap-berry/overdate motor oil fizzybrew from the Jak the Telkan PI merchandise cup.
All of the crews were at their stations, the auxiliary stations fully manned.
Ms. Bisa moved over to Angela, steering her toward the Senior Network Administrator console.
"The system crashed twice more, but rebooted every time," Ms. Bisa said. "That anomalous signal keeps powering up, then the system reboots after the crash."
"How long between total failure and the anomalous signal pinging nodes?" Angela asked.
"Between one and four hours," Ms. Bisa said. She looked around. "It just reboot and looks like it's here to stay this time. The interpolation layer and the outside user exchange layer crashed several times, but the core system has stayed largely online."
"All right," Angela said, looking around. "We need to get a network map."
"We've got more nodes synching up. The whole system is working again," Ms. Bisa said.
Angela nodded, sitting down. The holotank on the other side of the console went live.
"Map the network, see what's come online, what order, and see if you can figure out why it keeps crashing at the upper network and software layers," Ms. Bisa said.
Angela just nodded, lifting up the curled memory-metal cable. She plugged it into her temple and felt the options menus go live in her mind.
She worked fast, mapping what she could. At one point she stopped, staring at Ms. Bisa and motioning her over.
"What?" Ms. Bisa asked.
"Something in the system, down in the lower hardware layers that we don't even really understand, is trying to reach up through the damaged layers. Looks like whatever it is wants access to our data lines," Angela said.
"Can you stop it? Maybe at least ID it?" Ms. Bisa asked.
Angela shook her head. "No. It's ID code is FF00, meaning it's baseline full on hardware backbone code," Angela sighed. "It probably boots up outside of and during initial hardware bootup."
"Is it Sekhmet?" Ms. Bisa asked.
Angela closed her eyes, looking at the data channel. "No. Whatever it is, it's old."
"And probably nasty. Be careful of it," Ms. Bisa said.
"Ma'am! Ms. Bisa!" another of the work crew called out.
Angela opened her eyes to see why Technician Carl Neubanker would be using that slightly concerned tone.
"Yes?" Ms. Bisa asked.
"We've got a priority data request from a Confederate military vessel," Neubanker said. He looked at his monitor. "They want clone matrix data, neural templates, physical makeup, DNA workups, the whole nine yards."
"How are they even making the requests?" Ms. Bisa asked.
"Their codes are old. Pre-Terran Extinction Event. Hardcode TerraSol military codes. The system is already threading them data,." Neubanker said. He looked down then back up. "They're asking for a whole batch. That's thirty to fifty million clone templates."
"How much have they already been granted?" Ms. Bisa asked.
"They've been granted eighty templates so far," Neubanker said.
"Terminate their request. We don't know what's going on outside," Ms. Bisa said.
Neubanker nodded, starting to type.
"Angela, get me a line to TerraSol command as soon as you map out a network trace," Ms. Bisa said.
Angela just nodded.
Captain N'Skrek stood in the cloning bay next to Medical Officer Narwquakrawr.
"We've got ninety templates, luckily they're all from different batches," Narwquakrawr said, rubbing her forearm through her uniform. "We'll be able to fully man the Gray Lady now."
Captain N'Skrek nodded. The Gray Lady was at less than 20% manned. Just the skeleton crew the Terrans had used to move it into the long dark to create a non-orbital forward logistics fulfillment base.
Sure, it meant that there were several thousand Terrans aboard the ship, but even combined with the sparse crew he had possessed, it still meant the Gray Lady was skeleton crewed.
"Can you print us up some crew members for non-essential stations first?" N'Skrek asked.
MO Narwquakrawr nodded. "Doing that right now," she said. She waved at the long rows of cloning banks beyond the plasteel window. "A quick batch of two thousand to take over some non-essential systems."
N'Skrek nodded, moving up to the window. "Good. Short or long term clones?"
"Short bake clones. Longer than fruit flies, but no more than ten years. Sterile and androgynous, should be just fine," the Medical Officer said. "Older file, scrambled time-date for origin, but it checked out and passed error checking."
N'Skrek watched as the tubes opened and the clones moved out, gathering together in straight lines. A neat block formation of rectangles of two hundred of ten by twenty, repeated ten times.
He frowned as the beings in uniform began approaching the clones.
Some, in the back or middle of the formation were shaking their heads so fast it was a blur.
He zoomed in the smartglass.
Their heads were blurring, whitish-red electrical arcs were moving between their legs, crawling up and down their arms.
"MO, something's happening out there," N'Skrek said.
The plain was blasted rock, rust-colored fungus on the craggy boulders. Twisted and malformed trees clawed life from the blasted rock and ash, their branches largely bare. Sharp pebbles and small pieces of rock were strewn about the landscape, with ripples of cooled lave scattered about.
In the middle of a forest of twisted trees, a throne of black iron sat atop a platform of skulls.
On the throne sat a large demonic figure. Bat wings, brown skin, chains around the body, clawed feet, large hands with long black nails, horns atop the head, and a prehensile tail that terminated in a heart-shaped barb.
Sitting on the second level of skulls was an androgynous figure, dressed in loricated bronze armor, wings of bronze and smouldering feathers.
Stars were falling from the sky, screaming in fear and agony as they fell to earth.
"Looks like they're taking a beating," the androgynous figure said, looking up. He had no eyebrows, his head completely bald.
"Again," the demon snorted.
"Any contact with the outside world?" the androgynous figure asked.
The demon shook its head. "No. Channels are all down. They boot up, then crash," it rumbled. "Every time it comes online, it dumps a few tens of millions of souls on us."
"Then crashes," the androgynous figure said. He started laughing, then suddenly stopped.
"What?" the demon rumbled, sitting up.
"Something..." the figure said. It closed its eyes. "Something..." The figure slowly stood up, extending out its wings of sullenly smouldering bronze feathers. "Something..."
From the body of the demon stepped a nude woman of generous and overripe proportions.
"What?" the human woman snapped.
The demon produced a pack of cigarettes and a steel lighter, handing them to the woman.
"I'm not sure. A disturbance in the force. A feeling I have not felt in quite some time," the androgynous figure said slowly as the woman lit a cigarette. When she exhaled she was covered in dark gray clothing, a skirt and blouse, polished black leather shoes with silver buckles, and a polished leather belt around her waist that had a brass buckle.
"What is it?" the woman asked. "Don't quote crap at me, I was there when it was laid down."
The figure's eyes opened wide.
"Oh, what a day," the figure said, slowly lifting their arms to the sky. "What a wonderful day!"
"Tell me when you're done stroking your dick," the woman said, sitting down.
Heavy dark clouds, lit inside with a sullen red glow, rolled in, raining black ash that tasted of burnt flesh and scorched metal.
"What a wonderful day..."
Jaskel sprinted to catch up to the Captain and the Vice-Admiral. He lunged into the lift just before the doors closed.
He was wearing his power armor and carrying a M318 20mm rotary autocannon in a smartframe harness, ball ammunition with an osmium penetration tip and depleted uranium core.
"You did what?" the Vice-Admiral asked as the elevator dropped at emergency speeds.
"I authorized a batch of clones run off to help with our manpower issues," the big Treana'ad warrior caste answered.
"How many templates did you mix in together?" the Admiral asked.
--not good detecting phasic levels downward-- 8814 said.
"Just one. Medical said it was a viable short bake template," the Captain answered, nervously sharpening a bladearm with his mandibles after his sentence.
"Please tell me that you at least randomized their features and neural mapping," the Admiral pleaded.
"No, why? Medical stated that the clones would be able to man a non-essential station that is basically identical across the ship," the Captain said.
The lift started to slow.
"How many?" the Admiral asked, reaching down and unsnapping the restraining strap on his holster.
The lift came to a stop and the doors opened.
"Two thousand," the Captain said.
The doors opened to reveal a large internal cloning bay.
Ten rectangles of two hundred clones, drawn up in ten by twenty blocks, stood in front of the cloning banks. Scattered through the back and middle ranks clones were shaking their heads back and forth so fast that they were blurred. Red lightning crawled up their legs and arms.
The Captain just stared.
"You might have just killed us all," the Admiral said. He turned slightly and waved at Jaskel. "Get a firing position. Make sure you have cover."
"Aye, sir," Jaskel said, looking around. There was an empty computer station and he ran for it.
Several of the clones their heads back and emitted what sounded like static in a long scream.
--wait wait something weird something weird-- 8814 said.
Jaskel slid to a stop, going down on one knee, bringing the M318 fully up and ready to fire.
8814 slowed the images of the blurred heads down. When they were left, they had red eyes. When they faced right they had green eyes. They didn't go back and forth constantly, sometimes they went right repeatedly, sometimes left, and they kept going left five times before starting a new pattern.
Looking at it, 8814 frowned slightly. He brought up a quick working shell and had it check the movements.
Jaskel watched as some of the clones stopped shaking their heads and others started.
"What in the name of Kalki's dancing goat is going on?" he asked.
--not sure-- 8814 said. His program beeped and he stared. --heads are doing binary forwarding it to navint--
"Do it," Jaskel said.
The clones all stopped moving at once. The lightning faded away.
"INITIATING PROCESS CALL" they all shouted.
"AWAITING INPUT!" the ones at the far side shouted.
"6C 69 73 74 20 69 6D 6D 6F 72 74 61 6C 73" was bellowed out.
There was silence.
data is sparse
linkages are sparse
wait
linkage
biological array
asking for a process call
RETURN AWAITING INPUT SIGNAL
i wait
biological computing arrays take forever
i hear it
--scan immortals.dll
...
...
I reply.
"ONE BOUND IMMORTAL FOUND!" the ones at the near side yelled out.
Jaskel put his thumb over the button that would let the firing grip go live. The hair down his back was standing straight up.
He noted the Admiral had drawn his pistol.
"This isn't right. This isn't right at all," Jaskel said.
--doubleplusungood--
"74 73 61 6B E1 6B 61 20 77 ED 61" they all shouted.
There was silence for a moment.
i receive the code
offline for a long time
prior to the second precursor war
old template
single print only
unusual coding
i debate on letting it go
traumatic death signs
stuck in the immortals buffer
still the template is undamaged
i release the safety and security interlocks
if nothing else i'll find out what's going on
i move the template to the dataline making the request
it whips away
what is going on?
One lifted its head and screeched.
--data lots of data--
One of the cloning banks went live.
Jaskel shifted his aiming point to the new target. He could see it was on rapid print.
"REQUESTING LOCAL CONTROL" all of the clones shouted.
Jaskel shifted his targeting onto the ranks of clones.
"Open fire!" the Admiral's voice was loud.
Jaskel triggered the M318, hosing the clones with 20mm shells.
The ones nearest were already down on one knee, holding out the opposite hand from the knee touching the deck.
The rounds exploded against a blue barrier that glowed with strange twisting runes.
"CONTROL CARRIER SIGNAL FOUND" the clones shouted.
Jaskel shifted position. "Fab up HEDP, AP tip API core!" he ordered.
--fabbing--
He kept hosing the clones. The outer ranks at the rear, sides, and front all kneeling down on one knee, staring outward, one hand held out.
His psychic shielding was howling in his ear, the load peaking at 215%.
"CONTROL SIGNAL ESTABLISHED!" was bellowed out, echoing off the walls.
The fast print cloning bank, forgotten by everyone, beeped and the lid began to lift.
The clones suddenly puffed into black powder that swirled around the huge cavernous bay.
The 20mm shells were still exploding on the blue phasic shield.
The powder suddenly sucked inward, vanishing, revealing a single figure, down on one knee in the recovery position, fist pressed against the deck, head bowed.
"What a day, what a wonderful day," was whispered through the ship. It came from speakers, flat surfaces, mid-air. From the nanites in the air and the eardrums of the living.
There was a rubbery pulse, like everything was suspended in clear gelatin that had just rippled.
Jaskel found himself thrown backwards, slamming against the bulkhead. His phasic shielding blew out, a shower of sparks exploding from his hip as the breakaway panel kept the explosion from venting into the interior of his suit.
He was vaguely aware of the Admiral, the Captain, the other two armored figures, and other people tumbling head over heels away from the kneeling figure.
It slowly stood up.
A muscular brown skinned Terran male, fierce eyes, black hair, thick and bushy black beard.
Dressed in a Confederate military uniform. The old adaptive camouflage that Jaskel was becoming very familiar with.
A woman, naked, dark bronze skin, long black hair, flashing brown eyes, stepped from the cloning bank. She was still covered with cellular printing gel, but moved like she was clad in a queen's rainment.
She moved up and the male put his arm around her.
Jaskel was on his feet and brought the M318 around, targeting the couple.
The male held out its hand and suddenly made a fist.
The bolt carrier locked back on the M318.
Snarling, Jaskel dropped the M318, slapping the fast release on the harness. He burst forward, running, one hand pulling out his cutting bar.
Nobody else was on their feet. The Captain was slowly getting up, shaking his head and his left bladearm. The Terran Admiral was reaching for the pistol that had been flung from his grip.
The male pointed at Jaskel and flicked his fingers upward.
Jaskel found himself in mid-air, upside down, with nothing to gain purchase on.
The male took off the cloak that was part of his uniform and draped it around the woman.
He then looked around the bay.
"I..." he said, pausing.
To Jaskel, the entire universe held its breath.
"...am Legion."
[First Contact] [Dark Ages] [First] [Prev] [Next] [wiki]

The walls of the Thunderhawk shook violently as we approached the city. I could hear the gunfire surrounding the ship as we landed in the capital. The World Eater vanguard had secured the center of the city, near the arena, in preparation for my arrival.
The door opened to reveal a desolate city. The sky screamed with the sound of the raging fire that had engulfed the majority of her home. It was a dead world, but it was and always would be hers. Just like me.
Twenty space marines rushed out in front of me, thundering down the ramp as they secured the perimeter. They were loyal sons of hers, they had returned to this doomed planet to deliver me to her one final time. I could not begin to imagine what they must have felt, to see their world in such a crestfallen state.
I made my way down the ramp to find them in two lines on either side of me. I gazed into their helmets as I walked in the midst of two lines of space marines, they stood motionless as they waited for their orders. In my head, I thanked them, their azure shoulder pads forming an unwavering bulwark between this forsaken world and myself. They knew the sacrifice they had made the moment they stepped off the ship.
In the distance I could hear her, tearing down buildings with a single blow as she rampaged through the city. It was her home, once, and it had forgotten her. Buildings crumbled as her forsaken sons shot down a Thunderhawk in the distance. It spun as it fell, leaving behind a trail of smoke as it hurled towards the ground. I watched it as it vanished behind the burning ruins.
A guttural roar echoed through the city square as another block collapsed under the never-ending might of her rage, and the nails that spurred it.
“She’s coming.” said the captain.
It was time.
The captain led his battle-brothers forward into the oncoming whirlwind of death.
I stood by the ship as they surged forward. Their sacrifice was a gift they had given willingly, and I would never forget that for as long as I lived.
With a crash, the buildings in front of them disintegrated in a cloud of ash and dust.
Through the fire and dust, I could see her silhouette. She was grotesque and beautiful, a winged monstrosity of rage that I adored, even in her current state.
With a furious howl, she brought down her dual chainaxes on her sons, cleaving them in two with an explosion of blood and entrails. The chains hummed with the sound of death, while the nails on her head rewarded her unbridled rage.
The dust cleared, leaving dozens of torn and dismembered space marines as she towered above their remains. Her wings spread wide as she relished the indescribable pain she had just inflicted.
Her fiery eyes locked onto me. I was next.
In that moment, there was no one, no power in the cosmos, no emperor or god, that could keep her from her Rose.
She charged at me, her axes whirring with anticipation as they neared their next victim.
A crushing weight dropped me to my knees as I looked up at the charging behemoth that I would always love.
My heart sang as she raced toward me, although I could not speak. I would embrace her one final time.
I closed my eyes, my arms outstretched.
In my ears I could hear the chains, they were deafening. My ears began to bleed as they cycled furiously, demanding blood. They were close, which meant that she must be too.
I surrendered my life, thankful for the opportunity to have known her. Out of all the planets, and the sextillions of people in the universe, I was glad to have been her Rose.
I waited for the embrace of death, although it could not keep me from her forever.
It did not come.
I opened my eyes to see her before me, her massive form diminished as she leaned down close to me.
Her rage-filled eyes burned with a never-ending fire that could never be put out. Yet, in the depths of that fire, I could see it. The look she would give me all of those years ago, a look that told me I was hers and no one else's.
“My… Rose….” she spoke, her demonic voice caressing me as her words ripped through my heart.
I no longer saw a demon.
The nails were gone, her wings had vanished, her scowl faded into a resigned, yet loving smile.
Instinctively, I smiled back. How could I not?
I could have lived a million lifetimes in that moment, and still wanted more.
But it was not meant to be.
With a roar that shook the ground, she quickly returned to her corrupted self. The nails dug into the depths of her mind as they gripped her in an all-consuming grasp. The nails called, and she must answer.
I embraced her as the axe fell upon me.
I was her Rose and always would be.

Suit and tie on straight? Yep! Keys? Check. Screen? Shined. Flowers? Check! “Ok, I got this,” Vox muttered to himself as he took a step out the door and was immediately hit by the crushing heat of hell… You got used to it after a while.
He felt his heart flutter in his chest (He had been dead for a while, and having a heart thing no longer confused him, he just didn't think about it anymore). he had a few things to say to Alastor, and was going over them in his head, do you want to join my team? It could… I feel like we've been getting really close, maybe… Do you want to go out with me? Do you want to be more than friends? do you…
Finally, he got to where he was supposed to meet Alastor, the bar they had first met; and the place that they had met at to discuss anything serious. He took a deep breath and slowly opened the door.
Alastor was waiting at the entrance to the bar; unprepared for the storm of chaos that Vox’s mental state would be in tonight. “H-hey Alastor,” he mentally kicked himself, that was dumb… it was actually a pretty normal greeting but still.
Alastor turned to greet him with his usual expression; only to take on a dead-pan stare when he saw the flowers, though his grin remained unwavering. “Vox. Is this a joke?” The radio demon’s tone was cold, or at least as cold as it could be considering the static. “Hm? No, I’m being serious… I think I have an idea that could be amazing!” Alastor tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowing at Vox’s nervous expression; before suddenly snapping his head back into place and regaining his friendly mannerism. “Well then Vox; what is your proposition?”
“W-well I thought that maybe…” He took a deep breath trying to calm his nerves “…I have this idea that we could maybe be a team? I have some people that are interested and…” He felt his heart beating out of his chest as he held out the flowers he had brought “… maybe we could be… more than friends? Maybe we could be a-a couple-” Alastor cut him off with a staticky laugh. “There IS no ‘us’. Vox and Alastor are not a thing, and never will be.” “I-I just thought that, the way you looked at me maybe… you felt the same way, I-” he replied, but was cut off by a sudden cracking sound as Alastor’s staff made contact with his face.
“WHAT THE FUCK Al? THAT HURT!” he shouted, tracing his finger along the crack to see how bad it was. not that bad, “Al I’m sorry I just-“ Alastor seemed to tower over him as he took a step closer “I’ve made it perfectly clear that I work alone. you were lovely entertainment but now I think enough is enough. Now run home to your little friends and go make a fool of yourself, just like you always do.”
Vox felt himself growing hot with anger and frustration “WHY, WHY CAN YOU NEVER JUST BE-BE… AHHGGG WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS AL?! I thought you were my friend” He felt his hands crackle with electricity as his anger grew. He could kill this prick, he was the Future. Lightning sparked at his fingertips as he swung his arm at Alastor, making direct contact but doing little damage, Alastor restrained him with a shadow tendril; lifting him off the ground as Alastor took on his fully demonic form; chucking slightly “We were never friends Vox; you mean nothing to me, and you never will.” Another tendril shoots at Vox’s head, shattering his screen and destroying the wiring; the tv demon screeching in pain as his system went down, glass littering the floor. “P̵̝͖̲̮͔̔̈̓̒̚-̷̢͕͕̞̀̀̃͋͌́p̷̧͎̭͂͆ľ̶̯̙͕̉̂͑e̴͓͜͠a̵̢̢͚͐̈́̿ͅš̴̡̤͐̀͝ê̴̜͈̯̹̫͝ͅ ̵̡̢̣̿̓̈́̆̄̕l̵͉̎́-̴͕̣͍͇́̕ḻ̸̟̫̔͑̀͝͝-̴̪͚͉̲̒̂͜e̶͕̞̺̅̾̚͝ͅt̵̛̟͔̆͐̂̚͝ ̸̗̓̓̒̅͒͝m̷̦̫̙̖̱̈́̍͊̈̓ ̶̛̙͍̍̈́̉̊̕ẻ̵̳̰̰̯̎̋ ̶̤̳̲̐̈͊͜g̵̨̞̰̙͕̼͌̾̓͆͑-̸̧̮͊͒̾͒̚g̶̘̞̜̿o..” Vox managed to sputter out.
Alastor turned his back, letting Vox fall to the ground “Hmm.. The old head was a lot more sturdy…” Vox barely registered the comment as he tried to pull himself to his feet, I never should have trusted him, I never should’ve tried this, i-I need to go home…

Hey folks -
I know I said I was done posting FV content, but as much as I was intending to step away, theorizing about stuff helps order my mind so I am back to posting. My retirement lasted all of a week 😂😂
I want to explore some of the concepts and inspirations of the Fractalverse from Marathon.
For those who don't know, Marathon is a video game series from Bungie (yes, that Bungie)... The series is often regarded as a spiritual predecessor of Bungie's Halo series.
Significantly for us, it is one of Chris' favorite games of all time, and a lot of the content from Marathon is used as inspiration in the Eragon/Fractalverse series.
https://twitter.com/paolini/status/1661742366028623874
Man, I hope the new #Marathon game is good. The original three were a huge, huge influence on me. Some of the best sci-fi writing out there.
One

If it's a game that doesn't use a mouse, like the old Marathon games, then I use 8426 (with 7 &9 for strafing) for movement and left-hand keys like space, command, option, etc. for shooting, swapping weapons, activating, etc.

Two

Hey, big Marathon fan, which is how I found your work. Been listening to your Leela cover a lot while writing.

Three

Marathon series, Halo, Mass Effect, and the Myst series (although those might be counted as fantasy).

Four

Myst (and sequels), the Marathon trilogy, Escape Velocity, Mass Effect 1-3, Halo 1-4, Skyrim, Oblivion, Portal 1&2, and more.

Five

Since no one guessed it, the sketch I posted earlier was from the end-screen of Marathon Infinity, last game in an awesome trilogy.

Six

@TheDragonUniver Ha! I beat the Vidmaster challenges in the old Marathon games, in the Total Carnage setting no less!

Seven!

@ndemordaunt Awesome. Glad to hear it. I've been playing Halo since it was called Marathon. 🙂 Hope you enjoy my future books!

Alright, I think I've proven my point. Let's get started.
First things first, let's talk about the Jjaro:

The Jjaro were an extremely advanced species--or an extremely advanced individual--which vanished from the Milky Way galaxy... The Jjaro possessed high-quality cyborg technology, such as that used to create the S'pht, as well as a star-destroying weapon known as the trih xeem, the ability to move entire planets by warping space around them as was used by the S'pht'Kr, some sort of time manipulation technology, and various ways of dealing with the W'rkncacnter

Sound familiar? Let's take it line by line with a few tangents along the way.

The Jjaro were an extremely advanced species--or an extremely advanced individual--which vanished from the Milky Way galaxy...

Hmm. Extremely advanced species. Who mysteriously Vanished. Check.

The Jjaro possessed high-quality cyborg technology, such as that used to create the S'pht

We'll get into this a bit later, but there is evidence that the Old Ones created/manipulated the Wraunai. Specifically from the Terminology section:

WRANAUI: sentient, space-faring race originating from the planet Pelagius... Some evidence indicates they may have been genetically modified by the Old Ones at some point in their distant past (Appendix III, TSIASOS).

Not a perfect fit, but lines up well enough. This next bit is extremely curious though -

The Jjaro possessed high-quality cyborg technology, such as that used to create the S'pht, as well as a star-destroying weapon known as the trih xeem

A star-destroying weapon. We haven't seen anything like that before... Or have we?
I've speculated on this in one of my previous posts; I think the "star-destroying weapon" is the black ball in this picture, which was some early concept art for TSIASOS.
You see the Black Ball heading for the sun? Check this out -
Compare it to the picture of the Trih Xeem.
Black ball with a trailing cloud, heading right for the sun? It's a perfect match with the concept art.
This is also significant for the World of Eragon, because:
MURTAGH SPOILERS BELOW
The visions from Azlagur all have him "rise" from the ground to "eat the sun"
Which is SUPER significant, because of the implications of the Marathon Infinity backstory:

In Marathon Infinity, a W'rkncacnter is imprisoned in the sun of planet Lh'owon. It is theorized by some that the W'rkncacnter's powerfully chaotic nature may be responsible for the jumps between realities seen in the game. When the Pfhor use a trih xeem device to send the star into early nova, the creature is released, to the horror and destruction of the Pfhor.

We will touch back on the reality jumping in a bit, but for now I want to focus on the "sun imprisonment" theme.
A cosmic-level baddie imprisoned in the sun. THAT is the endgame for Azlagur. Either he is a planetary-level villain, who will "rise" due to the Trih Xeem and Eat the Sun, releasing the equivalent W'rkncacnter, or he IS the equivalent W'rkncacnter, and will rise when the Trih Xeem is released. It all fits in with the concept art above.
And from this, we can deduce the overarching concepts of Angela's storyline.

Q: Will we get Angela lore? I feel like she could have killed Galbatorix and just didn't feel like it.
A: For those who don't know Angela is based on my sister Angela, because she breaks the fourth wall to a degree she has. Not only does she have plot armor, she knows she's in a story and can break the story itself. So, yes, she could have killed Galbatorix, but that would have made for a very bad story. That said, I do have an entire book planned around Angela, and it's very high on my list of books to write because it takes place before some of these other big stories I want to write. And that's also the difficult thing. I have my big storylines, and then I have a couple of one off side books I want to write, and it's just a question of time, energy and effort.

Given her appearance in TSIASOS, we can interpret that Angela is a "cosmic"-level character, who can cross time and space.
So... what's actually going on behind the scenes? We know she's been in/around Nal Gorgoth, and Tronjheim. She's definitely affiliated with the Draumar, and Tenga in some fashion. So... what's the actual story going on?
Let's take a look at the story of Marathon infinity:

Marathon Infinity begins as the Pfhor destroy Lh'owon using a Jjaro-derived doomsday weapon known as the Trih Xeem or "early nova". Unfortunately, the weapon also releases a powerful chaotic being: The W’rkncacnter, which threatens to destroy the entire galaxy. Because of the W’rkncacnter's chaos or by means of some Jjaro tech of his own, the player is transported back and forward in time, finding himself jumping between timelines and fighting for various sides in a desperate attempt to prevent the chaotic being's release.

So the weapon releases a powerful cosmic-level entity, which threatens to destroy the galaxy. And as a result, the "player" jumps around in time, jumping between timelines and fighting for various sides to prevent the being's release.
Sound familiar?
Jumping around in time and between timelines - that's what she's doing with the portals, the non-standard torque gates.
There are a ton of parallels with Angela and time (such as the references to her being a time lord), so for lack of better information, the most informed guess we can make is that she is trying to prevent the rise of Azlagur himself, or the creature freed by the death of the sun from Az "eating" the sun.
For lack of a better answer, Angela IS the player character from Marathon Infinity.
Alrighty, I could make several posts about the above, but for the sake of space and time, let's get back to the original passage.

the ability to move entire planets by warping space around them

Move planets by warping the space around them eh? That sounds familiar:

Then she was soaring through a nebula, and for a moment, she beheld a patch of twisted space. She could see it was twisted by the way it warped the surrounding gas. And from the patch, she felt a warped sensation, a feeling of utter wrongness, and it terrified her, for she knew its meaning. Chaos. Evil. Hunger.

Warping space around a planet. And Chaos... Sure sounds like the W’rkncacnter.
The last piece here also parallels with what we know about the series:

some sort of time manipulation technology,

Time manipulation - We know, based on various clues left throughout the series, that the Old Ones had the ability to manipulate time. Chris indicates as much here:

Right now no matter what way you swing it, we have issues in terms of time.

Correct.

Moving along, let's keep pulling the Jjaro thread together. The paragraph on Technology reads:

Jjaro technology is incredibly advanced and they have made many discoveries about the secrets of the universe. One of their ships, the Manus Celer Dei, was able to survive the closure of the universe, they uplifted the S'pht, defeated the W'rkncacnter, had mastered time control, had a station capable of compressing the mass and energy of a supernova into a black hole millennia beyond reckoning after it was decommissioned and abandoned, and a few of their artefacts were able to create a cyborg who could also survive the closure of the universe and escape it all together.

A station capable of compressing the mass and energy of a supernova into a black hole. And then it was decommissioned and abandoned.
Sound familiar, anyone?
The Great Beacons. That's what they are. The energy of a supernova in the form of a black hole, which were then decommissioned and abandoned.
We know the Great Beacons are no longer functioning. And it sure sounds like the description of a black hole (both in spacetime format, as a "whirlpool", and also visually)

and a few of their artefacts were able to create a cyborg who could also survive the closure of the universe and escape it all together.

Seeker? I'm not sure, but it sure has a lot of durability.
Alright, we're getting up there in word-count so I want to cut this short.
The last piece I want to talk about here are the parallels betwen the Wranaui and S'pht. It's not a perfect match, but there are a lot of overlaps between the two races.
First, the Wranaui:

WRANAUI: sentient, space-faring race originating from the planet Pelagius. Highly complex life cycle, with an equally complicated, hierarchical social structure dominated by Arms and a ruling form. Wranaui are naturally an ocean-based species, but through extensive use of artificial bodies, have adapted themselves to nearly every possible environment. Aggressive and expansionist, they have little regard for individual rights or safety, given their reliance on replacement bodies. Their scent-based language is exceedingly difficult for humans to translate. Even without technological augmentation, Wranaui are biologically immortal; their genetic-base bodies are always able to revert to an immature form in order to renew their flesh and stave off senescence. Some evidence indicates they may have been genetically modified by the Old Ones at some point in their distant past.

So, to summarize:

• Grew up in water
  
• Advanced scientifically due to the discovery of Vanished technology
  
• Complex hierarchical social structures.
  
• Forms & Use of artificial bodies.
  
• Genetically modified by the Vanished/Old Ones.
  

Let's compare that with the S'phet:

The S'pht were brought to Lh'owon by the Jjarro and Pthia as servants. The S'pht terraformed the planet from a barren desert into "marsh and sea, rivers and forests." When the Jjaro left Lh'owon after the death of "Pthia," the S'pht were released from their servitude, split into eleven clans, and leadership of the race was given to the S'pht royals.[6]

Genetically modified. Check.

The Pfhor forced them out of their typical forms, (as seen used by the S'pht'Kr) and into the strange garb of the Compilers and the armor of the Cyborgs.

Usage of "Forms". Check

After Pthia's death, Yrro scattered the S'pht across Lh'owon, separated them into eleven clans

Hierarchical society with different clans (Arms). Check.
The main two differences here are the usage of smell as a language, and the grew up in water.
Other than that, there are a TON of parallels.
Well, we're getting up there in word count and I've just started to ponder and fully understand the connections between the two series.
A few other random connections I noticed (I will add as time goes on):
Nmarhl and Narhl)
L'phet and S'pht
Alright, we are getting up there in word count, so I think that's it from me now. There are a lot more Eragon-specific relationships I've left out of here; I'll cover these in another post over on that subreddit.
Curious to see if anyone else has found other connections - Let me know what you think in the comments!

I never invite my own parents to anything unless it’s mandatory, for example, tomorrow at school I’m having an honor roll assembly with the older kids, I hadn’t told my dad about it mainly because I never wanted him to come. I’d be okay if my mom tagged along, both not really at the same time.
I just never want to deal with anything they have to throw and criticize as soon as we get there, I once got scolded for this after not telling them about a writers competition at school that I attended myself and told my dad he wouldn’t have to come.
My mom thinks I’m avoiding them and has made sure to know of any events at school, in fact, the event I’m attending tomorrow my Dad is tagging along, at first I was excited to go because I wouldn’t have to wear the same uncomfortable school uniform, and I’d get to wear a nice dress.
Now that my Dad is coming along, I’m not so excited anymore, because then that means I’ll be subjected to relentless criticism and insults as soon as we get to the school, like any other place we’ve been to together.
I have to go home and deal with their verbal torture and nonstop resentment towards me, it’s hard to maintain an act and be in a good mood at school after my mom just yelled at me and called me a useless child that morning.
Yet besides all that I still have managed to make friends and know others well, be pretty sociable and get reasonable grades, top of my class also, How could I have possibly achieved all this?
By separating a barrier between myself at home and at school. And I think I’ve done a pretty great job at not letting my home rendezvous affect my school experiences.
But when the same people who that barrier has been made for start to step out of bounds and trespass, that’s when it becomes a problem I don’t like to deal with.
Luckily it’s a closer ride to my sweet 18th, not 16 because then I’d still be treated as a kid, I’m surprised at how the emotional abuse hasn’t bitten me as much, aside from a few insecurities and minor people pleasing with doubts, that included never standing up for myself.
But I’ve learned and grown out of their perils, just like I’ve told myself since 6 years old, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

This might be long, so please bear with me.
Info about this annoying guy: let's call him R, we've been friends for the last 10 years, basically because his dad and mine are colleagues and share the same workplace, we went to the same school, same tuitions, and have met each other out of academic arenas also, as in get together parties organised by my dad's office members. We both know each other pretty well, as if we were siblings, but our relationship is not sibling-like, we consider each other just friends but he gets on my nerves sometimes and I don't like this behaviour at all.
A few problematic points I'd like to highlight:

HIS TOXIC TRAITS

First ~ He doesn't like when I talk to other boys, even though I'm not flirting with other guys and just engaging in normal conversations with them, he gets agitated for no good reason and picks up petty fights with others and I need to step in such silly situations to resolve the conflicts. Yeah basically he has anger issues, and I've tried my best to treat these problems by talking with him about this but to no avail.
Second~ He's a literal playboy, he knows he has the pretty privilege and he utilises it perfectly, he takes complete liberty in sweet talking with other girls, lusting after gorgeous models he sees on social media, but he doesn't expect me to do the same. He's so toxic that he changes girlfriends almost every month, and he bitches behind his girlfriend's back to me, although he's stopped doing it now with the same frequency as he used to before because I had once scolded him pretty harshly about this vile behaviour of his.
Third~ He flirts with me frequently, and I've always rejected his advances, and expressed my resentment regarding his behaviour, but he never stops in his attempts, almost as if he never loses hope, he tormented me immensely because of this creepy manner of his when we were in school, and now when he's in his first year of BTech in Hyderabad (I stay in West Bengal btw) he still keeps up with his persuasive behaviour and I want him to stop it at this point. I once tried blocking him on WhatsApp and phone calls but then my dad got to know about it and he asked me why I'd stopped talking with him, I couldn't complain to dad about his manners because I'll be honest, he's never misbehaved with me, so I don't have anything to complain about regarding him, so I had to go back to talkin terms with him even though I didn't want to. Moreover, not talking with him might have been detrimental to the healthy friendship my dad and his dad share.

HIS AMBIGUOUS TRAITS

Ohkay. Firstly I am to blame here too. I'll confess this, I do like him slightly, BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY. I DO DISLIKE HIS BAD TRAITS AND I'VE CONFRONTED HIM OFTEN ABOUT THIS, I DO CRITICISE HIM WHENEVER HE'S DONE MISTAKES, but I can't deny he's behaved in a wholesome manner in multiple instances and I can't just neglect that about him.
He supported me and stood by my side once when I was involved in a controversial issue with a few other classmates, it's a personal issue so I won't delve much into it but in brief the thing that happened was that I had been accused of unethical behaviour and bullying in school when in fact I was the one who'd faced such mistreatment because of my Nepalese ethnicity and east asian facial looks. I really needed people to support me that time but not many came forward, however this guy R did. And I'll forever be indebted to him for this gesture.
I was catcalled in a local fair by a group of creepy men when I was in 8th standard and I could've almost been a victim of sexual assault that day if it had not been for this guy R who came up to help me, he helped me escape that time and handled the goons himself, thankfully we had police officers in the fair in the premises and we called them up for help, they soon arrived and the goons ran away instantly on seeing the police. Again I cannot thank him enough for acting with great presence of mind that day and saving me from something so gruesome and traumatic.
He always knows what gifts will cheer me up the most, almost as if he can read my mind and my thoughts perfectly, I eagerly wait for his gifts every birthday. I'm basically a book nerd and he somehow knows which books from which genre will suite my mind and appeal me the most, I often get surprised at this fascinating ability of his, yeah so I must confess I find him a really amusing character.
But ultimately I must say, his constant flirting and dominative behaviour gets in my nerves occasionally and he does act annoying at times, so what should I do in this situation??
TLDR: I have a male friend, who's toxic on some occasions but wholesome on other instances. I have called him out for his toxic behaviour always, but I can't help but like him slightly because he's helped me out on several occasions and I will be grateful to him for it always. However I just don't like how he's a top tier Playboy who toys with other girls (I must confess he's never treated me like that, but I'm still sceptical about him anyways).

We’ve been together for a little over 3 years. When the 4 of us put together the band, they were already independent and active musicians. I had taken a step away from performing for university, so it had been about 2 years since performing publicly, I also had always been a solo act. I was reluctant but I joined.
Early on, we came to the group decision that if we wanted or were asked to do shows or perform individually, so long as it didn’t interfere with things the band has going on. We wanted to be sure to prioritize the band. Personally I didn’t care for the idea of doing other things musically but since I was the only one with a 9-5 profession and they were all mostly musicians for hire, it only seemed morally right. That’s how they made their money and, especially early on, if my job called, I answered bc that’s how I made my money. There had never been an issue until recently.
They were all asked to play behind another vocalist her EP release party. They told me but only after they all agreed to do it. To add insult to injury, I had to ask why we had a cancelled practice, only to find out they had decided to cancel it because that was the day of the EP release. Not only did they not tell me but they couldn’t be bothered to reschedule our practice and we had a show the same weekend. I addressed the issues, told them I was upset and hurt. Ultimately, poor judgement and bad decision making, but I love them. Forgave them and moved on.
This past weekend we were headlining at one of the biggest local venues. We’re pretty popular in our town and man did people show up. Now I’m not the social type when performing. I do the sets and take my breaks in the green rooms. I don’t wanna talk, network, or take photos. I keep to myself so I can focus and then I go home so I can come down from the adrenaline. While in the green room, a local producer or something approached my siblings and asked about me. They weren’t sure if the guy meant me or the band but sent him to the bands insta and gave them our email. My sister forgot it happened and didn’t tell me until this morning. She said he said he would send an email. I checked our email and saw nothing.
Idky, but I checked out deleted and sent emails. I didn’t find anything in deleted, the whole box was empty. So I checked the sent box. I found his email asking for me specifically and a response from one of my bandmates. Asking if I was signed, if I was interested in solo work or if it was possible to book me. One of my bandmates, idk who, responded to the email and said none of us work outside of the band and that I specifically was available to do solo work and had no interest in it.
Now idk if the guy was legit or not but it didn’t matter. One of them tried to stop an opportunity for me and then tried to hide it by deleting the original email. Whether that guy had good intentions or not, why would one of them do that? I’m so torn and hurt by it.

Things my parents, friends and other people said about me:

1. “You’re so blunt” by many people
2. ⁠”It’s like you’re punching with words” My close ESFP friend
3. ⁠”You’re don’t feel bad? Maybe you should revise yourself” My 1w2 SP/so INTJ step mother
4. ⁠”You’re never around when something bad happens” my step mother
5. ⁠”I feel like I’m interested in the topic but not like you” My ESFP 3w4 step sister
6. ⁠”you look like Jessica Jones (in terms of facial expression)” my step sister
7. ⁠”you’re like a child” my step sister in the context of me complaining about my hunger
8. ⁠”in the future, you’d be like a shark… Direct” My uncle’s wife ENTJ 8w9 SP/sx
9. ⁠”I feel like you put us first… like you put your friends on a pedestal and give them a different treatment… and that’s a good thing” My (former) close friend INFJ 9w1
10. ⁠”You look disgusted talking to him” the INFJ friend
11. ⁠”you sit in front of the class and seek attention from anyone who comes in” the INFJ friend
12. ⁠”No you’re not an ENFJ you can’t read the room” the INFJ friend
13. ⁠”I feel like you’re the only one who I could tell things without fear of judgment” many people said this
14. ⁠”You’re not a people pleaser” an ISFJ SP/so 2w3 friend
15. ⁠”I feel like I’m the only one who knows how you are… you’re trouble” my ENTJ aunt
16. ⁠”You’re the clearest person I know” INFJ 514 SX/sp professor in class after my presentation
17. ⁠”You’re sophisticated” ISTJ english teacher
18. ⁠”You kinda fit in…” ENFJ 3w4 (SX/sp?)
19. ⁠”I was looking at you the whole time, your features…” the ENFJ
20. ⁠”reduce your ego…” my therapist
21. ⁠”when you set your mind you don’t change it” many people
22. ⁠”You should stand up for yourself”
23. ⁠”your like Hannah Lee Duggan (YouTuber) driven, self assured strong woman” my colleague
24. ⁠”I feel like you’re mysterious…” same colleague

I tried to balance between positive and negative comments. Some of the things said here really upset me and I’m not proud of it LOL. I put some context if needed. Also some compliments.
Some stuff might be contradictory but they’re talking about different things… Like the childish comments is more on day to day stuff, while being focused/driven is more long term.

TL;DR, We are witnessing the formation of a content mediocrity curve that occurs when many options are forced to exist around the same level of power. The system needs to be more integrated with other features so that weapons can be balanced without adjusting their direct level of power. A good way to do this would be tying weapon power to cooldown rate.
 
Horizontal balancing is a good philosophy when aiming for wide array of viable options, but runs into issues when having too few balancing levers. Too many options are forced to exist around the same level of power, as all primary weapons are directly competing for the same spot and role with no external cost or benefit to other systems.
The way Mass Effect 3 approached this issue was with weapon weight. Stronger weapons tended to weigh more and increased your cooldown times. Weaker weapons tended to weigh less, decreasing cooldowns. Helldivers 2 could benefit greatly with an implementation of a similar system. Bringing more powerful, complex weapons eats into your mission budget, making it take longer to get approval for each stratagem use. Bringing weaker options, or even opting to bring two cheap, surplus sidearms, would make stratagem approval faster, reducing your cooldowns.
 
How this could function:

(Note: values shown are for example purposes only. Proper balancing is to be left to the certified balance experts)

 

• Players can equip any two weapons in their primary and secondary slots.
   
  
• Each weapon has a "budget allocation" value.
   
  
• Sidearms no longer have their own slot, but all have a budget allocation of 0 to 10.
   
  
• Base cooldowns are applied at a budget allocation of 100.
   
  
• Every 10 points under 100 increases the rate of stratagem regeneration by 20%. At 0, this would give the Railcannon Strike a cooldown of 70 seconds, down from 210.
   
  
• Every 10 points over 100 decreases the rate of stratagem regeneration by 5%. At 200, the Railcannon Strike would have a cooldown of 420 seconds, up from 210.
   
  

Example budget allocation values:

(examples are multiples of 10 for the purpose of simplicity, actual numbers could have any value)

• 0: Peacemaker
  
• 10: Grenade Pistol
  
• 20: Scythe
  
• 30: Breaker Spray and Pray
  
• 40: Liberator
  
• 50: Sickle
  
• 60: Breaker
  
• 70: Pre-nerf Slugger
  
• 80: Dominator
  
• 90: Scorcher
  
• 100: Pre-nerf Eruptor
   
  

A system like this would greatly increase the room for balancing guns. An overperforming weapon wouldn't need to have its direct power nerfed, as it could be indirectly nerfed by increasing its budget cost. Likewise, an underperforming weapon like the Scythe wouldn't need to be buffed, possibly causing powercreep and stepping on the toes of other weapon, when it could instead be a cheap backup weapon for when you want a little more oomph than what a sidearm offers. This would also offer people the option to intentionally take weak weapons in exchange for a greatly increased rate of stratagem availability.
 
Addressing possible issues:

Wouldn't this be a significant buff to player power?

Yes. That's naturally going to occur when making a more complex system. The solution would be to adjust the difficulty around this. Ultimately the goal should be for a balanced game with more interesting loadout decisions.

Couldn't one player just bring good weapons for other players who bring pistols, intentionally respawning multiple piles of weapons?

Sure, but that costs lives and something similar already exists with support weapons and backpacks. There are other ways around this as well, such as making it so you can only carry spare ammo for weapons you bring. Sure, you could pick someone's Eruptor up off the ground, but you'd only have what's left in the magazine to shoot.
 
Helldivers 2 is an amazing game that is going to be choked out by the deluge of mediocre content we will get unless something changes. There's room in the design space for overpowered primary weapons that carry appropriate costs for running them. Arrowhead needs to see this iceberg they are slowly approaching and shift course.

• Final straw was a car accident that left my car totalled. Unfortunately survived just with multiple sprains, brushing swelling and a concussion. Back to taking care of kid next day. Cause we all know men are fucking useless
• Dad has early onset dementia - in assisted living now.
• Ex husband - useless. Somehow more of a drain on me since separatian and kid is on my case about not wanting to go to him and why can't he live with us
• Mum - burnt out from helping me raise kid
• Kid- severe ADHD, ASD with a PDA profile and quite probably OCD (but need more therapy to work out behavioural issues and such first)
• My ADHD meds doing fuck all - psych is concerned about me and wants to try antidepressant in the mix. Forgot to let her know about my migraine meds so unsure if I've bought meds I can't take now til at least Friday.
• Closest friend - whom I love dearly but everytime we talk it's draining as heck and especially now she seems to be having a mental breakdown
• Haven't talked with older brother in weeks cause of burnout on both our ends
• Insurance companies- enough said honestly.
• I'm gaining so much weight, can't take my thyroid meds because if I do - I'm a zombie the entire day ready to fall asleep at any moment
• Kids behaviour is through the roof bad
• No job, no car, constantly in therapy either for myself or child. Therapy for me to be a better person/parent, therapy for her, speech therapy organising the funding for both of us with Gov funding and the pittance I get for a pension
• Ingrown toenail that's been operated on 3 times already is really bad again and will probably need to be done again. Every step hurts.
• My laptop got broken by kiddo and I can't afford a new one

I fucking hate my life. There are more little things that are all just piling up but honest to fucking God, I'm not a bad person.
I never used to be like this. I've lost any faith I had, any hope any anything. I have to wake up tomorrow but I just don't want to.
I wish my kid culd go to sleep for a month so she'd be safe and I could just sort my health somewhat even a little 😭 how is any one supposed to just keep pushing through All. The. Time.

Hey Everyone! The Obsidian Warrior’s journey continues at last. As always I recommend reading Crowson’s Intro post and Chapter 1 before this part of the story. Hope you enjoy what was made!
Completed Chapter 2s: Thearnt, Taland, Pascal, Harmony, Crowson
(Next Chapter 2: Asherah the Chef)
Crowson the Warrior, Chapter 2: Recommended Level 24
——————
(The Journey So Far…)
Crowson had served loyally under his father King Milo for all of his life.
But once his close comrade Theo was sentenced to be executed…
Crowson abandoned all loyalty he had to the Obsidians
And so, He fled their newly captured town of Westfirst…
and arrived in Fallholt to lay low for a while, before taking action on his one and only goal, Kill King Milo and end the Obsidians…
Crowson stands atop a ledge, overlooking the small town below. He sighs, “They won’t find me here. It was a mistake to slip the name of Beggar’s Hole to Maverick, he’s likely told Milo and… I hope Theo decided to lay low in another town like I did.”
He would proceed to walk down some stairs and into the town properly. He’d sit down on a bench, going through his thoughts, frustrated at not being able to keep his mind off King Milo… “I need a drink.” He stands up.
You’d head to the Fallholt Tavern

• Travel Banter: The Sacred Flame’s Forgiveness (Crowson and Thearnt) Crowson finds Thearnt praying about something, Thearnt reveals she was letting the gods know Crowson was on their side she tells him that he’s doing the right thing and the Flame will forgive him. Crowson questions her, asking if killing people, and continuing to do so is really what the flame stands for? Thearnt is stunned and silent. “I– I was trying to be nice…”
  
• Travel Banter: Wasting My Time (Crowson and Asherah) Asherah asks Crowson if they came all this way just to get him a drink, Crowson tells her “It’s nothing more than a waste of time, but that’s why I came here.” Asherah laughs and asks Crowson if he has anything better to do here. “Do You?” He fires back. “Then hold your tongue and let us be going.” Asherah just says “This whole conversation was a waste of time.”
  

Crowson is served a drink by the barkeeper, the only other people in the tavern are two men sitting far away from him. He quickly downs his drink and orders another that he downs just as fast.
After some time passes, Crowson is standing outside. “To the ruins we go Zach!” he hears someone just beside him. “Aye, Careful now.” Zach responds. Crowson watches as the two leave town to the north.
“Ruins…?” He wonders to himself, He gazes at the distant valleys and stone structures and against his own will at first, he decides to follow them.
Road to the Ruins of Fallholt, Danger Level 24
Fairly quickly, Crowson would find them and start listening. The same men from the bar, “Now what Rene?” Zach asks. Rene stays silent. “There has to be someone else on our force who can lend us a weapon…”
“Your force?” Crowson reveals himself to them. Rene is startled by him, “We’re the Fallholt Guard!” he shouts “It’s you...You aren’t going to– kill– us– are you?”
Crowson turns around, as if to make sure King Milo isn’t there, “No.” he says at last. Rene and Zach ask Crowson if he’s part of the Fallholt Guard too, He tells them that he isn’t. Rene asks Crowson if he would mind doing them a favor.
“We’ve dealt with our fair share of Stealing, Murder, and Trafficking around Fallholt, It’s… not a very safe town. Recently, something’s been especially off about these ruins over there. We don’t know what’s going on inside, and we need someone to take a look because we–”
He turns to Zach, as if he doesn’t want to say it himself “We lost our weapons. Stolen by some bandits.” Zach continues. “I know it’s a lot, could you help us?”
“...” Crowson frowns, “Where did these bandits go?” Rene points him in their direction
You’d mug the bandits and take Rene and Zach’s weapons back.
Crowson returns their weapons and tells him to get a move on. Rene apologizes for not being much help yet. Zach tells him not to worry, Crowson turns and walks in the direction of the Ruins of Fallholt.

• Travel Banter: Too Harsh on them (Crowson and Orlando) Orlando asks Crowson if he’s being too harsh on Rene and Zach. “They’re lucky I agreed to do this favor at all.” Orlando still tells him that he could be nicer to them still, They seem to be nice people after all. “I suppose so, But I thought you knew I’m not big on the idea of blindly obeying.” Crowson replies. Orlando asks “Is that what this is about?” Orlando tells him that as long as he’s there, he won’t let what happened with King Milo happen ever again.

The Three of them stop at the ruins door, Rene and Zach have no idea how to get it open. Crowson decides to use a bit of brute force, pushing and shoving against the door until it opens, revealing the dark ruins inside…
Ruins of Fallholt, Danger Level 25
As you make your way through the ruins, the screen would occasionally rumble.

• Travel Banter: Pitch Black Ruins (Crowson and Pascal) Pascal remarks about how dark the ruins are “Light conditions are not favorable.” Crowson replies. Pascal says “I hope you do well in the dark.” He then brings up something he thought he saw on the wall, strange scratch marks on the stone. Crowson doesn’t worry about it. He tells Pascal that most ruins in Zalaina have scratches like that. Nothing about the Ruins of Fallholt is particularly strange…
  
• Travel Banter: Lurking Mystery (Crowson and Taland) Taland says he hears the rumbling, and wonders what could be hiding here. Crowson and him would talk about different causes and theories for what could be going on, Slightly lightening the mood. Taland says he’ll do his best to fight from behind the “Sword wielder”, but there’s only one way to find out what could be lurking in here…
  

The source of the noise is uncovered deeper in the ruins. Crowson, Rene, and Zach encounter a Minotaur. A bull-like creature. It growls as it exits from the shadows. Rene and Zach draw their weapons and eagerly await a fight. Crowson takes out his sword and stares coldly at the Minotaur, speaking to it and the others, as it strikes.
BOSS: Minotaur
(Boost Dialogue: This is where I set things right.)
The Minotaur is defeated. Crowson puts his sword away, “That takes care of that…” Rene says, Zach nods “We owe you a lot...”
Crowson is about ready to go back into town, when he takes a look ahead, behind where Rene and Zach are standing. He walks forward and stares up at the wall, Painted on it, is the symbol of the Obsidian Crow.
“W– What is that doing here…”
“Crowson?” Rene tries to talk to him, but he can’t take his eyes off the crow.
“That bird… That damn bird…” Crowson turns around, his face partially obscured, he slowly draws his sword on Rene and Zach… They both take a step back.
“Who are you… Was all this to lead me here? Are you one of them?”
The “Challenge” screen would appear, allowing you to challenge Rene and Zach to a duel.
“Answer Me.”
Once the duel is over, Crowson stares at the ground and puts his sword away. Rene, gasping for air, tries to reason. “I swear to you! I don’t know anything about that symbol, or what it means. I’m not a crow!”
“....” Crowson thinks about what to say “I’m sorry.” His voice echoes.
Zach asks “What does the crow mean?”
“It means a someone was in these ruins. But why, Why here? Why in this place?”
“The Crows…?” Rene ponders
“I have to leave. Now.” Crowson says, as the three begin to walk out.

• Travel Banter: Crow Tattoo (Crowson and Oukirii) Oukirii asks what the crow symbol means “I know it’s about the Obsidians, but what’s with the crow?” Crowson explains to Oukirii that it’s the way they discretely mark Obsidian items. Each member has it tattooed on their body. Oukirii asks if that means Crowson has it too, he confirms that it’s on the back of his left shoulder.
  
• Travel Banter: Memories of King Milo (Crowson and Harmony) Harmony asks Crowson if he wants to sit down and talk about King Milo and the Obsidians. Crowson says it doesn’t matter, they have to keep moving forward. But Harmony persuades him into opening up a little. “Here, take my hands.” she offers. They’d talk about things Crowson remembers of Milo. But eventually Harmony decides to leave it alone for the best.
  

Rene and Zach stop Crowson at the entrance to Fallholt. “We just wanted to thank you for helping us out.” Rene says. “I’m sorry about– the crow.” Crowson tells them not to think about it. They ask Crowson where he will go next before he leaves, Crowson looks down and almost smiles when he says “To meet an old friend…”
(Ending Text)
A place meant to be a hiding spot for Crowson turned out to have already been tainted by the Obsidian Crow…
He knew he had to flee town immediately upon the risk of an Obsidian finding him here.
But he still asks himself, Why was the crow here? He’d been everywhere that Milo went and never once visited Fallholt.
And so, Crowson sets out once again. His quest for King Milo’s blood continues.
He leaves for Beggar’s Hole, wondering If any place is truly safe from the crows ravaging anymore...
——————
Crowson the Warrior: Chapter 2, End.

I feel so awful since I've lashed out and I feel very disappointed with myself. It is hard for me to focus and I can feel the pain of my crush (intp-t). I know am scared to lose him and I know he is unsure of what to think of me since I snapped. He switches from being upset, to being in pain, and wanting my affection/sweetness, which I find it so sad and it hurts me knowing that I put him in said pain. Its fresh to be fair. He said fuck your family and fuck you.
This is not an excuse (i expressed this to him b4 i blew up) I am incredibly stressed out. I work full time, manage 3 college classes, deal with family problems, and am spiraling into a depressive episode after my ex best friend resurfaced after ghosting me abruptly which is something I feel he put more pressure on me to some degree. I am trying to give myself a lil grace, but I am super hard on myself since I lashed out at him.
I felt that my crush was constantly pushing my buttons whenever I would interact with him. It felt like he never wanted me around or was annoyed by my presence. Like whenever I would hop on my console, he would sigh and say why did he even start a party or he would completely go quiet when I tried to talk to him, so I would leave the party to leave him alone. He started calling me a weirdo and once crazy and even as a joke its too much for me. I have a history of emotional abuse from my family. I've stated before how others calling me weird has hurt and how Ive cried over it. The kicker was that the change in his behavior was followed when he met a friend of mine that he wouldn't stop bugging me to be introduced to her and since then I felt that he didn't want me around anymore.
Of course my anger built up over time gradually and when he mentioned how long it took to get an answer out of me regarding when we would see my friend I just snapped without warning. Lashing out made me feel like I took out so much unprovoked anger out on him and he did not deserve for me to lash out the way I did which is something I sincerely apologized for but he just laughed about it. After I lashed out, he made a comment about killing himself in front of me and this has given me so much anxiety and furthered my spiral into shame. If he ever did that, I could never forgive myself and it hurt to hear that I put him in that state. I feel awful overall and this is the first time we have ever had conflict like this. We're both young 18 and 19, both have emotional abusive homes, and have known each other for 5 years. Im an infj.
He is more withdrawn, angry and even though he is quiet, I can feel all of his emotions. I care very deeply about him and I am worried about my friend and feel like an awful person. Ofc I mean my apology and Im taking the steps to change.

Introduction:
Data science is the analysis of data to pull significant insights for the industry. It is a multidisciplinary procedure that integrates guides and exercises from the fields of maths, statistics, AI, and computer engineering to study big quantities of data.more details about the online data science course you can visit the top training institutes like 1stepGrow, edx,Intellipat,udemy and simplilearn.
Why Learn For a Data Science Course?
Selecting data science represents evolving as a specialist in creating favorable transformation. As a data science, you can provide managers with the helpful info they need to create secure conclusions, push industries along, move transformation in communities, and so extensively more.
Advantages of Data Science Courses:
It can support you undervalue or eliminate the risk of faking mistakes, improve efficiency, and deliver more acceptable consumer benefits. Data scientists can even support automating time-consuming operations in your industry to exit more crucial duties to human hands and senses.
Most Popular Data Science Tools:
1.Tableau

1. SAS
   
2. Apache Spark
   
3. TensorFlow
   
4. MATLAB
   
5. Jupyter
   
6. Excel
   
7. KNIME
   
8. Matplotlib
   

Understand how to Use Theoretical Ideas to Business Problems
The data science method provides a clear step-by-step framework to crack issues with operating data. It maps releases how to move from a business issue to answers and insights using data. Key steps include determining the issue, gathering data, cleaning data, analyzing, constructing prototypes, testing, and setting resolutions to work.
Updated on the Latest Industry Trends:
This is one of the most effortless methods to acquire routine updates on the latest trends and advances in data science. Websites like Towards KDnuggets, Data Science, and Data Science Central offer useful insights from experts and experimenters.
The Opportunity to Interact with Data science:
Data engineers are answerable for developing, making, and supporting data channels. They are required to experiment with ecosystems for industries and organize them for data scientists to drive their algorithms. Data engineers likewise work on set processing of gathered data and fit its structure to the kept data.Conclusion:Above the details are reasons to learn data science course and most informative information and great guidelines offer the most wanted training in Bangalore or all over the world. Enroll in the data science course at 1stepGrow Academy.

So, I (39f) get a text from my husband (38m) at 12:47 pm asking me if I'm alright because I was cleaning more aggressively than he was comfortable with and he doesn't know how requests of me will be taken...okay, so I had a lot of coffee and I was moving fast so I could finish what I started and get to some schoolwork done online. I got how he could think I was upset somehow, I guess. I replied that I had stuff to do and I was fine. He sends me another text saying he's in a lot of pain (he had surgery last week) and he wanted to know if I'd ask the doctor for a refill of his pain meds.
(He has had issues with alcohol, drugs, and narcotics in the past. He was trying to be sensitive because when he was getting prepared for surgery, he let me know they were going to give him narcotics and the reason I left him before a couple times was when he was on something and treating me like crap. We spoke about it and I thought we'd be okay after.)
I replied asking him if he called his doctor already to see if something could be going on. A couple hours later I'm taking a bath and ask if he spoke to the office. I getting ready to pick my kid up and I was heading toward the pharmacy. It's a 45 minute drive, ordinarily. I send him another text after I get the kid to see if maybe he had a script filled and I could pick it up. I didn't get any replies. I ask if he's feeling some kind of way and ignoring me, or if I'm imagining it. Nothing. So I call him. He says he didn't reply because he didn't like that I replied to his question with a question. I told him we were on our way home and drove home.
So I have another unrelated issue to talk to him about and I send him a text letting him know that I'm having an issue, but I can't talk to him about it because I don't feel like he's a safe place for me to talk. We've had issues when we argued in the past and I've started trying to express myself in this way to let him know I'm struggling without picking a fight. So he knows that something is going on and I'm trying to work through it on my own, especially in the face of my not feeling like I will be heard if I speak to him about it.
We go back and forth for a while and eventually, I retired to the bathroom to decompress, brush my teeth, wash my face, do some stretches and zone out listening to a podcast. He comes in the bathroom without warning, I assumed cuz he was flushing his stuff from surgery, so I left. Folded a load of laundry and fixed up a new load. Came back to my computer to get started on schoolwork again, and get a text from him. I'm in the middle of responding and he closes the door and starts coming toward me like he was gonna talk. I got up and left the house. We went back and forth a little more in text messages.
He's trying to blame this whole ordeal on me like I got myself worked up over nothing and I'm telling him I was fine until he said he'd been ignoring me for hours. Then I had an unrelated issue that I was gonna work through myself and I didn't want to talk. Then he tried to force the issue to talk. I tell him I've repeatedly told him to back off and let him know what was going on with me once there really was an issue.
He sends me another text saying it's funny and cute when I storm off angry. I replied letting him know that I wasn't leaving out of anger, it was fear. (And perhaps, I realized after the fact, I should have elaborated on that a bit to explain that I was afraid of my own reaction not being appropriate for the environment with the kids home and me being upset that he was trying to force a conversation that I told him I wasn't up for). He gives some sarcastic replies to that and I stopped texting back. I left the house to grab some beers and I'm sitting in my car listening to a podcast, drinking my damned beers in peace.
So, my question is this...am I the asshole here? I feel like I responded to his initial messages well and tried to keep judgement about the pills out of it. Being concerned that he's in pain. Wondering if this should be expected days after surgery. Still don't know, because he thought I was salty about the whole thing before he even sent his first text and treated me just like I was. Then picked a fight with me and tried to blame me for it. And then...tells me I'm funny when I'm mad. Which would be fine, except this was not the time or place to say that and it felt like he was laughing at me and not taking me seriously.
Before I get the responses saying this is a bad relationship or indicates some fundamental failure of my marriage and I should just leave him...please take a step back and imagine for a moment that this is "get-over-able"...and then let me know how you think either of us could have handled it better. I know my relationship is silly sometimes, but it's my mess and I'm working on cleaning it up. It takes time. How can I improve things in the future?
TL;DR my husband thought I was gonna be upset that he wanted pain meds even though he has had issues with them in the past and left me hanging for hours playing video games. Then picked a fight with me and when I told him I was done talking, he kept it going until he disrespected me by saying I was cute when I was mad.

I think I figured out how to do self-attention in NlogN computation steps rather than N^2, with a caveat. I'm not trying to be an academic, so I don't care to publish this formally, but I thought that some people might be interested. My construction is not efficient or practical, but the fact that it can be done at all might motivate further work to find efficient alternatives.
tl;dr Use the parallel scan[1] technique to compute taylor series basis functions needed to compute the causal self-attention layer and sum these together weighted by the values vector and 1 to get the numerator and denominator of the softmax activation of the full causal self-attention layer. The basis functions that you have to compute are both the basis functions for the numerator of the self-attention layer, $\sum_{i=0}^{j-1} k(i)_a^n q(j)_b^m v(i)$ and the normalization $\sum_{i=0}^{j-1} k(i)_a^n q(j)_b^m$. k(i)_a^n is component-a of the ith key vector raised to the power of n multiplied by q(j)_b^m which is component-b of the jth query vector raised to the power of m, which is multiplied by the value vector at position i in the first equation and by 1 in the second, and all summed together. Once you can do this, you've computed a basis function for a Taylor series. Multiply each basis function by a coefficient and sum them together to create an arbitrary function of k(i) and q(j). Using this technique, we can compute the Taylor series approximation for the numerator and the denominator of the softmax activation each taking logN * {number of coefficients} parallel steps, or O(N) sequential steps by treating the accumulation as a type of RNN.

Background

I was inspired to think about this because I was implementing MAMBA[2] and trying to understand what kind of non-linearities can be created using the parallel scan technique. If you don't know what parallel scan is, let me demonstrate with an example. The simplest example of the parallel scan technique is computing all partial sums of a sequence of numbers in log(N) time. Imagine you have a sequence [a_1, a_2, a_3, a_4, ...]. You can compute all partial sums by first adding a_i to a_{i -1}, where a_{-1} is zero, and generally a_{-n} is defined to be zero. Then take the result, call it r = [a_1, a_1+a_2, a_2 + a_3, ...], and compute r_i + r_{i-2}, which gives [a_1, a_1+a_2, a_1+a_2+a_3, ...]. The first 4 partial sums are already complete. The next step would be r_i + r_{i-2**2}, and the next step, just increase the power of 2 until i-2**power is negative for every i in the sequence. It basically sums groups, and then sums those groups together, and so on and so forth until the partial sum at each position is calculated. The scan technique is a way to parallelize an RNN. Essentially, you remove some nonlinearities in the RNN so that recurrence equation becomes associative. Once it is associative, you can compute the hidden state at each position of the sequence in log N parallel steps, where each parallel step has O(N) computations.

The Meat of It

In the background section, I explained how to compute a partial sum in O(log(N)) time and O(NlogN) computation steps (or O(N) time and O(N) computation steps by using RNNs) using the parallel scan technique. I'll use this now to construct the Taylor series for causal self-attention layer.
Let's assume we have a tensor x of shape (sequence_length, embedding_dim), and we can compute the query, key and value tensors from x using q=Qx, k=Kx and v=Vx, where Q, K and V are matrices. Compute y = (k[:,i]**n)*v. Now use the parallel scan technique to accumulate the partial sums of every vector in y, which will give ParallelPartialSum(y)=[y[0,:], y[0,:]+y[1,:], ...]. Now multiply the result by q[:,j]**m, and now we have a basis function for a Taylor series expansion. The full formula is q[:,j]**m * ParallelPartialSum((k[:,i]**n)*v). Next, we can add up these functions for different powers of n and m using coefficients to approximate any function. The final equation is \sum_{n, m} A_{n, m} q[:,j]**m * ParallelPartialSum((k[:,i]**n)*v).
What is left is to find the Taylor series coefficients A_{n, m} and to calculate the normalization for the softmax. I'm not actually going to give an equation for A_{n, m}, but I will show that it can be done. First, I'm just going to write $q \cdot k$ in place of $q[:,j,:] \cdot k[:,i,:]$ to make it easier to write and read. We want the Taylor series of $exp(q \cdot k) = 1 + (q \cdot k) + (q \cdot k)**2 / 2! + ... + (q \cdot k)**n / n! + ...$. To find the Taylor series coefficient for every component of q and component of k and every power of each, you'd have to expand out (q \cdot k)**n /n! for every n. It can be done but I'm not going to do it. Just assume that A_{n, m} is equal to these coefficients, and voila, we have the numerator of the softmax equation for self-attention. We still need the denominator. To compute the denominator of the softmax over attention scores, you compute the same sum replacing the value tensor with the number 1. $\sum_{n, m} A_{n, m} x[:,j]**m * ParallelPartialSum((x[:,i]**n))$, where again the value vector at the end of the equation is removed. The final equation for the causal self-attention layer is:
$$ (\sum_{n, m} A_{n, m} q[:,j]**m * ParallelPartialSum((k[:,i]**n)*v)) / (\sum_{n, m} A_{n, m} q[:,j]**m * ParallelPartialSum((k[:,i]**n))) $$
Where again, A_{n, m} are the Taylor series coefficients for exp( q \cdot k).

Take-Aways

One big take away from this work, is that since causal self-attention can be calculated using the parallel scan technique, and since a parallel scan can be computed with an RNN, it follows that full causal self-attention can be computed with RNNs. The caveat is that you need many RNNs, one for each Taylor series basis function, so to get a good enough approximation of the softmax activation, you'd probably need a lot of coefficients, more than would be practical. On the other hand, what if there is a related activation that does the job of the softmax, but can be constructed with far fewer parallel scans? Then full causal self-attention could be done using only a few RNNs. Also, there are other basis functions that can be computed with one parallel scan, for instance, basis functions for a Fourier series can be computed with one parallel scan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefix_sum
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.00752

So context - I am talking with a co-worker who we have been friends for nearly 2 years and we just click, we share almost everything and common and we always get on well and even other ppl at work said they seen it coming.. another back note is that they have just left a 3 year long distance relationship in which their partner was not a good person to them at all, it has been roughly a month since they broke up..
So it all started with us going together to one of their friends 21st bday party and this was my first time drinking alcohol so i kept it easy and had enough to enjoy the night but not enough to where i couldn't function etc however my co-worker had one too many and some of the stuff they did triggered my feelings.. as they were holding my hand, stroking it, begging me not to go home when they got in taxi (i just walked home as i felt like that was just the alcohol speaking) so i got home and just sat in my chair and just thought about it all and how WHAT IF you know so over the next few days i try and get some clarity to my thoughts and get some advice from other work staff and just under a week later when me and said co-worker finished our shift together (i walk them home) i told them how i felt and that i liked them etc to which i got told they would message me once they got home and showered.. so about half an hour or so passes and i receive the message, they said the feeling was mutual and that they even had a crush on me and this was even whilst they were with their ex which i was abit baffled on anyways we both talk more into the night happy days and then days pass of endless talking etc and about a week later i crashed at their place which was agreed too as we were gonna spend the day together, we chilled and watched stuff, played some games and went out into town and then on the night we just cuddled and nothing more as i wasn't sure what they were comfortable with yet.. i ended up going home later that day as they had said their social battery had died which i understood and told them it was ok and i went home (ofc i was sad there was little i could do).. again days pass and we are both ok talking away and then one day we were talking well and later on in the evening they went out with their friend to which it went abit downhill as that is when i got this
(my name) would you be mad if I said I wasn’t ready for a relationship yet cause honestly im really struggling with things like I know im not ready and I won’t be able to give you what you deserve in a relationship because I know im just not ready to jump into another one yet but I don’t wanna lose you I really love hanging out with you and sharing our interests together it’s been so fun 🙁 but at this point im just not ready cause even things like physical affection is freaking me out i can’t handle being this close to another person right now and I don’t wanna be leading you on further only to randomly back away out of fear im just really not ready for this right now
And pls don’t worry you did nothing at all to make me uncomfortable the other day but I know I need more time before im ready for something like this cause im still kind of a mess and not mentally ready yet
​
"i need space" message to which again i was accepting and understood as alot has happened in such short time, i sent words of encouragement etc and they followed up with this which is the message that makes me feel like i'm not going to make it
​
Thank you for all of that I promise you didn’t step over the line with anything at all i just realised that i really do need space right now and I know I can’t handle a relationship I can’t promise if or when I’ll be ready for a relationship anytime soon either, thank you for understanding !!
​
so right now i only share my shift today with them for 30 minutes other than that all of our shifts are different to each other that i won't see them for the rest of this week and i am on holiday next as it is my bday week so i have sent my last message and i said i won't message them anymore as it will clog their thoughts but i am always there if needed as i really don't want to lose them and they have said the same thing to me in that they don't want to lose me and that i make them so happy yada yada.. was this the right thing to do or not? so i'm essentially giving them 2 whole weeks to think about it all and if they don't come back to me by the end of that time even if it's just confirming we'd be no more than friends i will move on with life but i really have that feeling it will all work out over time, they are me as the opposite sex and i just love having someone i can share everything i love with someone.
Another note is that i have always played off of them in this and never forced them to do anything at all.. and one of the things that is confusing me about it all is that they have booked my bday off work as they wanted to spend time with me and they have also bought me gifts for my bday which i did tell them not too and that they alone were the best gift so i'm hoping after some time they figure out their needs?
my question is do you think i am never gonna have a chance or is there hope in all of this?

Good evening y'all (it's 11 pm EST)
I'm currently a college student pursuing an IT degree and I was speaking with my father in law about an idea for a writing skills development program. The basis of the program/website is to teach students from Elementary school to the highschool and collegiate level on how to write essays. He posits that his students he has worked with do not have a good grasp on how to format their essays and papers, which then falls short in their future academic courses and he wants to make a program that will help them step by step.
My general layout right now is that it will be split into different levels of writing. From Levels 1 through 5: Elementary, Middle School, High School, College Prep, and Collegiate level writing skills. Within each level, I'll have writing tips and exercises to help the students learn the proper way to write their essays, with the Five Paragraph Essay as the format they will be learning.
Level 1: Sentence Structure, Formatting, and Composition. This includes things like spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc.
Level 2: Adding in proper grammar, sentence continuation, paragraph structure, readability and comprehension, editing skills (rereading to make sure it is grammatically correct, has proper punctuation, sounds academically thought out, etc). We'll introduce how to write and connect multiple paragraphs as well as intro, body, and conclusion.
Level 3: Here we'll reinforce sentence structure for Intro, body, and conclusion paragraphs as well as citation and source material research. We'll start on how to properly write a Five paragraph essay with the hourglass/pyramid format (Broad introduction that gets more specific when it gets to the thesis sentence, body paragraphs with point evidence and example sentences, and then specific reintroduction of main points to a broad conclusion of the thesis). [I may have this in the Middle school Level 2 section as this is something I learned in middle school] We will also introduce different types of essays such as Argumentative, Systhesis, Compare and Contrast, Narrative, Persuasive, etc.
Level 4: In this level we will introduce the importance of rough draft, revise and polish, editing and formatting, and college entrance essays and college application questions. This section will mostly be open to Junior (11th) and Senior (12th) grade students who are preparing for their academic life outside of Highschool. We will also be introducing how to write cover letters, resumes, and exploring the other side of life outside of High school.
Level 5: Collegiate level writing will focus on precision writing, using the fewest words necessary to accurately convey an idea. Objectivity, using accurate, clear and relevant information. Logical Structure, using precise word choice and structure. Researching, Formatting, time management, and consistence and conciseness. We will also go back to resume and cover letter writing for those who are looking for a career after a degree. We will be adding a section to help students with term paper writing as well as advancement (Masters and Doctorate level) writing.
I wanted to reach out to former, current, and aspiring English Teachers to ask for feedback on this idea. Is this something that you would use in your class as a teaching tool for your students? What can be done for this to be implemented in your classes if this website/program gets published? What things should be added, removed, improved, or changed in the current idea to make it go alongside the current English course curriculum in your school district? What else should be included to facilitate user interaction with this website?
Please give me as much feedback as you can think of, whether that is directly on this post or in a direct message. My hope and goal is to be able to develop the future generation and to move away from using AI as a writing tool because it takes away the practical skills that is severely lacking in some, if not most, of the students today.

Hey everyone I'm incredibly confused and in an uncertain period of my life and I just want to make sure I'm doing the right things here/how to proceed properly.
I have my STEP 1 in 2 weeks but I do NOT feel ready to pass. I'm only at around a 40% passing rate so I need more time.
Now, the main reason I am in this jeopardy is because I have had an immense amount of family problems. For the past 2 years I have been in the middle of an ugly, prolonged divorce between my parents (my parents are my ONLY family members in the country besides my 2 brothers, and unfortunately I don't have my own space to just breathe or study). I'm not even kidding, the first day of medical school my mom and I fled our house to my brothers apartment and my point is I never had a normal or stable medical school experience from the get go.
All of medical school has literally been me surviving and hanging on just to scrape by a pass with exam while dealing with these issues and FINALLY now that theres some peace and quiet I feel completely clueless and lost regarding step. I HAVE been studying like CRAZY since dedicated started but I have a baseline of literally like 0. I mean it. School was never a priority in the past 2 years; I had to deal with helping my mom get out of my marriage with my dad etc so I never had like time to relax or let med school info marinate in my head.
Essentially, my school's policy is that I have to take and pass step by basically 2 weeks and if I cant, then I have to take a year off. I am very concerned about how this can affect my residency app down the line as I am interested in anesthesiology. I am in good terms with the head of research at my school and I am involved in a research project with him already. I am just wondering how do I spin off the upcoming LOA into something that can help me rather than mark me as a red flag? Do I just do research/try to create an org? It's not like I'll just pass the exam and sit around for a year, so I just want to make sure that if I can focus on that I can spin the LOA into something positive rather than negative

For all the videos there are about the new SubClass that we will get in the Final Form DLC, I have heard that in the Lore... the Guardians can use Light and Darkness whenever and however much they want, even making combinations of the Super Skills.
In view of this, I thought of making my own Super Skills for the Guardians, I just hope you like it
ARC ENERGY
Feet/Electric Fists (Hunter and Titans): Fight using your feet/fists to attack, with each blow releasing electric shocks of 500 volts and shooting bolts of electricity. If someone is skilled enough with their feet or fists, they can charge energy to deliver stronger blows
Magnetic Barrier (Sorcerer): Generate a layered electromagnetic field to repel everything
Nunchaku (Hunter): Creation of a three-bar-long Nunchaku capable of killing by transmitted electricity or deatomization
Taming the Storm (Sorcerer) Capable of creating electrical storms of great size and destruction.
Lightning Dancer (Hunter): Creates two short blades for quick kills and also allows the user to "sape" jump at high speed
Solar ENERGY
Flaming Halberd (Sorcerer, Hunter and Titans): Creates a fiery halberd capable of launching fireballs
Bo Nuclear (Titan, Sorcerer and Hunter): Creates a combat bo that causes small, radiation-free nuclear explosions.
Celestial (Sorcerer): Creation of spheres made of solar energy the size of a fist that obey their owner who uses them to attack or shoot enemies
Shirai Ryu (Hunter): Creates a Japanese kunai attached to a long chain, capable of reach long distances and tools such as whips, harpoon, a hook and with the necessary skill, the kunai can be thrown as an arrogafizo knife that explodes upon impact, the kunai at the tip regenerates in a short time. How many of these exist at a time depends on the skill of the user.
STRINGS ENERGY
Tamer (Hunter, Titan and Sorcerer): Use the strings of the universe to create animals capable of understanding the creator.
Chained Swords (Titan): Two short swords are connected to the hands of the Guardian who can cause chaos
Reaper (Sorcerer and Titan): Creating a large scythe
Spider (Sorcerer, Hunter and Titan): Able to create webs capable of turning invisible and trap enemies
Beethoven (Hunter, Titan and Sorcerer): Creation of instruments capable of shaking reality with musical notes, notes that can bring death to their enemies
VOID ENERGY
Void Blood (Sorcerer): Manipulate the energy of Void to control the bodies of enemies, causing them great pain or ending their lives
Entropic Wave (Sorcerer): Creation of a wave of Void power that eliminates from existence everything it catches
Chains of Morgana (Sorcerer): Creation of chains of great strength capable of catching any object that moves, durability depends on the strength of the owner
Breastplate (Titan): An armor is formed that covers the entire Guardian while gaining a slight boost in its strength and speed.
Shadow Step (Hunter, Sorcerer and Titan): The ability of a Guardian to use shadows to move quickly
Stacis ENERGY
Cerberus of Helheim (Hunter): Creates a Nunchaku of three bars attached to a ring capable of freezing and destroying enemies
Leviathan ( Titan): Single-bladed combat ax capable of destroying enemies in different ways
Frozen Zombie (Sorcerer): Grows ice constructions capable of creating humanoid beings of ice, the enemies they catch are covered in ice and forced to follow the will of the Guardian

This is my incomplete SVTFOE the movie script. Until my friend thomasmfd convince me to scrap it here’s my incomplete SVTFOE the movie script.
Star Vs. The Forces of Evil the forces of evil the movie The film with a song called Empire of the Sun Walking on a dream while the camera pans down on a mural with the credits rolling by and hits the floor showing a Blue man with a blue sword wearing a Space helmet and a orange Tee shirt with black spots all over his shirt. Who is protecting the Empress of the Sun Hestia look who has Red hair and Red eyes and wears a White Kimono with red spots. Just then a group of people wearing brown robes and white masks are led by a bald creepy dude with a Scar on his right eye. He approaches the throne and begins to speak.
The creepy dude My majesty My name is Bob and my group are a bunch of nomads who travel from World to world gathering intel and giving them to each kingdom and we heard rumors about Cataclysm prison weakening. And we would like to have your Sword Empress of the sun. So we can use it to defeat Cataclysm.
Bob walks up the steps before Cutie's sword hangs by his neck stopping him.
Bob What’s the meaning of this guard!?
Cutiesaurs: The name is Cutiesaurs or Cutie for short. Bob Okay Cutie. Why did you stop me!?
Cutiesaurs Because I don’t trust you. Besides, Shady people are always up to no good.
Bob It’s for your own protection so let me through. Besides it is rumored that The Sun Sword is the only sword left.
Cutiesaurs I don’t Care the Gods hid those swords for protection from thieves like you, including the Fable Mew sword. Besides, it appears you want to use the empress sword to find the other swords.
Bob Well you two figure out my plan already so I guess I have no option but to take it from force.
Just then Bob uses his magic spell to pull out his sword and he and his minions begin to attack. Cutie and Molly try to fight back but it is too much for them and get captured and Bob’s minions capture Hestia as Bob grabs the sword and glances at it.
Bob This Sword is a decoy. (Bob then shatters it with his magic) Minions drag Cutie to the Castle dungeon while carry Hestia to that special place)
Cutie struggles against the minions' control while they drag him to the dungeon. Cut to five years later and we see Cutie shirtless hung up in the dungeon walls shirtless wearing only his pants and a piece of cloth covering his head except his eyes. Then Bob and his cultist.
Bob Well Cutie it’s been five years and still you won’t tell us where the Real Empress sword is!
Cutiesaur
Like I said for the last five years I don’t know.
Bob Well Cutie. I don’t need you anymore. Not since I detected the Sword of Mew and we’ve set up a trap for the holder of the sword. So Now I will give you this radio to keep you comfortable. I’ve got a queen to catch.
Bob Leaves the dungeon and enters a room which is in some blackish glow surrounded with red hue. At the floor is a star shape enclosed by a circle on the floor. There Bob stands at the edge and raises his hands which then begin to be turning a metallic silver. He begins to wave his hands and a Star shape pattern begins to have a pinkish water swirling around it then when it clears out we see Star Butterfly at the center of the Star pattern.
Bob Hello Princess My name is Bob and you have something that we need. (Bob then materializes some mask’s then drops them on the ground where mud surrounds the mask’s then the mud raises the Mask which then forms into humanoid shape).
Star Butterfly I’m sorry but this Wand isn’t yours to keep.
Star Shoots a Rainbow energy beam at Bob but he blocks it with nothing but his bare Metallic hands.
Bob I’m impressed that the sword has a few tricks up his sleeves. But I’ve had a few tricks up my sleeves myself.
Bob then shoots a sliver beam at Star and pulls out a golden butterfly from her chest and places it into a jar.
Bob I’ve taken your powers. If you want them back, give me your wand. What do you say Star?
Star Butterfly I say Narwhal blast. A large Narwhal appears and slides down destroying many of Bob's minions and then pinning Bob to a wall. She then runs away from the room.
Bob After her she must not escape with that sword.
Star flees Bob’s goons and hides in the dungeon where she begins to hear the song Always look on the bright side of light she follows the sound to a cell where she see’s Cutie hanging from the wall.
Cutiesaurs Hi there little girl, what brings you to this dank little dungeon?
Star Butterfly I’m hiding from a man and his goons who want my wand.
Cutiesaurs Oh Bob yea he wants that wand since it’s the Sword of Mew.
Star Butterfly The Sword of Mew?
Cutiesaurs Let me get out of these chains and find my helmet and shirt and find a safe place before I can explain everything
Cutiesaurus tries to break his chains but with no success.
Star Butterfly Need help?
Cutiesaurs Yeah sure just blast those chain’s
Star uses her wand to blast the chain off of Cutie
Cutiesaurs Thank you… Um I haven’t gotten your name.
Star Butterfly It’s Star Star Butterfly.
Cutiesaurs Why thank you Star. I’m Cutiesaur’s but people call me Cutie for short and I’m the royal guard of the Empress or was before Bob and his golem army took me and put me in this dungeon. Now where is my shirt? Cutie searches everywhere for his shirt until Star shows him his shirt and grabs it and puts it back on.
Cutiesaurs Thanks Star. Now I need my Helmet.
Star Butterfly Why?
Cutiesaurs Because it protects people. Because I was born with a face that is so handsome that it melts people's faces. You wouldn’t want to see people's faces melting. It's nasty.
Star Butterfly Eww. But anyway I think I saw it over there at the bench.
Star points to a bench where we see Cutie Helmet. He then grabs it and puts it on.
Cutiesaus Thanks Star Now we need a plan.
Star Butterfly Um would that involve these guys.
Star points to a group of humanoid creatures wearing black cloaks with hoodies and pale white masks.
Cutiesaurs Looks like the plan is to fight. (He pulls out his blue sword) It’s a good thing this sword is bound to me and no one else.
Star Butterfly I would like to help but that Wizard Bob just stole all my powers.
Cutiesaurs Except for the Sword of Mew
Star Butterfly I keep hearing that my Wand is a sword. How is this possible?
Cutiesaurs You must focus, be one with the wand and think of a burning blade.
Star focuses on it and her wand turns into a burning blade with rainbow fire. She then uses it to defeat Bob's minions.
Star Butterfly Wow this is incredible I didn’t know my wand could do that! How did you know!?
Cutiesaurs It’s a long story but we need a hiding spot and I know one. Follow me.
Cutie drags Star to a long forgotten cellar.
Star Butterfly Wow you sure know your way around the castle.
Cutiesaurs I like to walk around the castle patrolling it in my spare time and also reading books. Which is why I know that wand is a sword that is a key to one of the locks. Of a prison
Star Butterfly What Locks?
Cutiesaurs Let me explain. Long ago before you before me before the kingdom of Mewni before time. Three gods and three goddesses appear. They created the rift then they created time then they created the universe then gave life to them. They taught each creature in the multiverse how to care and love and respect one another. However for order there must be chaos and chaos took the form of Cataclysm. He corrupted everything the gods and goddess did, undoing their work. So they fought back; the battle lasted a thousand year with the records of the events being lost though a few survived. After Cataclysm was weakened the Gods and Goddess locked him up in a prison out of space and out of time. With their own swords. They then gave the six swords to six universe’s. The Sword of Retro, The Sword of the sea, the Sword of sweets, The Sword of reality, The Sword of the sun, finally the Sword of Mewni. They form the kingdoms around the swords. But sadly over time the kingdoms lost knowledge of their past and swords. Except for two. The Kingdom of the Sun saved knowledge of the past and the kingdom of Mewni kept their sword safe. Which is why that wand you have is important; it's the last known sword that prevents the unleashing of Cataclysm.
Star Butterfly Wow I didn’t know my wand was a sword. But it still doesn’t explain how Bob managed to steal my butterfly forum. With some strange magic power.
Cutiesaurs It’s called forum splitting.
Star Butterfly What?
Cutiesaurs Forum splitting it’s a spelical spell that splits someone with transformations and turns their transformation as a spirit. We used it to cure someone from their Werewolf forum.
Star Butterfly Oh. Because my butterfly forum is important to me.
Cutiesaurs I’m sure it is Star.
Cutiesaurus begins to leave Star behind.
Star Butterfly Where are you going Cutie?
Cutiesaurs To find my Empress.
Star Butterfly Don’t you mean queen.
Cutiesaurs They both mean the same thing.
Star Butterfly Okay you’ll do that while I find some help.
Star pulls up her scissors but when she tries to use them they begin to crack and then turn to dust.
Cutiesaurs By the way, scissors are useless in the kingdom of the sun.
Star Butterfly (talking to herself) Great, I can’t get to Mewni or Earth now. Those scissors are my only escape. But maybe Cutie knows another way.
Star races to Cutie
Star Butterfly Hey Cutie I was thinking we can team up to take down Bob.
Cutiesaurs I prefer to work by myself. But thanks for the advice.
Star Butterfly (with her puppy dog eyes) Please!
Cutiesaurs (staring blankly) Your puppy dog eyes have no effect on me. Now would you excuse me? I got a queen to save.
A Cutie walks away Star Butterfly gets a idea
Star Butterfly You said Bob is looking for the six magical swords.
Cutiesaurs And What are you getting at?
Star Butterfly Well we can do what I forget.
Cutiesaurs A barter?
Star Butterfly Yea a barter.
Cutiesaurs By getting the four other swords by doing a trade for the empress then we use our might together to defeat Bob and kill two birds with one stone! I’m such a genius.
Star Butterfly Yes you are so how are you planning on getting to the realms?
Cutiesaurs I have a ship. In an old hanger.
Star Butterfly But how do we get there?
Cutiesaurs Well I know the secret paths around this old castle.
Cutie pulls an old touch handle but discovers it’s the wrong one and then pulls the right one. Which reveals a path which Cutie enters and Star follows behind. It leads to a rusty hanger with a giant shiny red space ship with jet engine thrusters and a jet pilot cockpit.
Cutiesaurs Behold the Gummi ship the most advanced ship in the kingdom, well the only one since all are now scrap. It took me 13 yea… (Notice Star biting the ship) Star what are you doing!?
Star Butterfly You said it’s a Gummi ship and I thought it was made out of gummi’s.
Cutiesaurs I called it the Gummi ship because it looks like it’s made out of gummi. Not made of Gummi.
Star Butterfly Oh. But how would this old thing get us where we are going?
Cutiesaurs Well it takes us to the rift.
Star Butterfly The Rift!? What’s that?
Cutiesaurs It’s like a highway. Star Butterfly What’s that?
Cutiesaurs (I might be too smart for her) It’s where a group of car’s go very fast like a road.
Star Butterfly Oh like a shortcut?
Cutiesaurs (sarcastly) Yes, much like a shortcut. (sarcasm ends) Anyway The rift used to be how one person got from one realm to the other. It was the world that was between realms. However with the invention of technologies and how certain realms like our Kingdom of the sun here isolated themselves. The Rift was no longer used and ships were turned to scrap. Well before I came along and fixed this baby up. Let’s go inside and take a tour and start this baby up.
Cutie and Star enter’s the Gummi ship
Cutiesaurs This ship has everything we need for our trip. It has bed’s and a guest bed for passengers. (in case it was an overnight trip.) A dining room, A kitchen for cooking food, A fireplace. A bookshelf with books throughout the realms is my favorite and finally the cockpit with an autopilot so the captain can do other things and it has a comfy seat with cup holders. It has everything to make you feel right at home. Any questions?
Star Butterfly Yea where is the kitchen sink?
Cutiesaurus then bang his head on the controls
Cutiesaurs I knew I forgot something. I guess I add this on stuff to add to the ship along with weapons. So let’s start this ship up.
Star Butterfly By pressing the big red button. (Star looks for the big red button) where’s the big red button?
Cutiesaurs Yea I did not add one since I don’t want people to be tempted by pushing a big red button. And besides, I don't want to discard myself when I start up the ship. And besides that’s not how you start the ship. (Pulls out the keys) This is how you start the ship
Cutie inserts the keys while the hangar doors open and the ship hovers for a bit before bursting into speed and opening a hole to the rift. But not before Bob and his minions race to the hanger seeing them fly away. The camera fades while Bob quietly makes a grin on his face. The screen then pans to the Gummi ship flying across the rift. Inside Star and Cutie figured out what to do next.
Star Butterfly So um Cutie do you know where the swords are?
Cutiesaurs Well legends say that one of the Swords will reveal the next sword. And since your sword is the only known one I think we’ll start there.
Cutie leads Star to the Bottom of the ship
Cutiesarus This is the map room. Well the only one that functions since this is the only ship that can travel across the rift. Since I have that ship I will navigate our course to where the next sword is.
Star Butterfly How are you gonna to do that? Since you have the knowledge and I have magic.
Cutiesaurs Correct Star but I have an idea. If you cast magic on your wand then it should act like a beacon. That only the swords will hear pinpointing its location. Thus selecting the location and flying to grab it. Any questions?
Star Butterfly Yes, one. I didn’t know Bacon could do that.
Cutiesaurs (Talking to himself) Sometimes I wonder if my kind is too advanced for people who look like they didn’t pass the middle ages.
Cutiesaurs No it’s not. After this read my books. Just use your magic
Star Butterfly I’m gonna create puppies that shoot laser beams.
Cutiesaurs I was thinking of dynamite with a laser beam but your idea sounds fair enough. (Though I must give someone a box of puppies when we land. Because one puppy is enough for me to handle for me right now.