New Planets/Environments
Hey guys, I've been thinking a lot about the issues surrounding balance and I hope some of my ideas can give the dev team some fresh takes on how to combat this issue. One idea I had was creating a planet with some sort of underground cave system that is very dark so flashlights can finally be of use. I'm sure many of you remember the ewok hunt game mode from Battlefront 2, and I think Helldivers can create a similar sort of atmosphere and feeling by creating a dark environment where you are constantly turning around and checking your 6. Even in a relatively mid game, I remember being scared shitless of those tiny little Ewoks sprinting around in the darkness, but also having the time of life. Obviously Helldivers does not need to create such an extreme environment, there could be sources of light like bioluminescent bugs or water to create some light, but the point is that players would have to rely on their flashlight. Right now, it seems like the dev team increases difficulty by introducing environmental elements and the widely disliked stratagem modifiers which range from relatively tame and boring to just plain frustrating. Not only would environments like the cave be more challenging and unique compared to the current environmental factors (imo), but this could take some pressure off of the balancing issues because there is more incentive to give the player powerful weapons due to the added difficulty. These sort of environments would also provide opportunities to introduce new enemies, since right now new enemy additions are basically thrown into the horde and there's no real conceptual reason why they have appeared now.
For automatons, a new potential planet could be a dystopian city-like environment that is designed similar to the automaton factories, but much more expansive. The automaton's "cities" are probably closer to where they originate, but creating a more structured planet for them would be very interesting. Imagine laying down on a road or sniping from a window, I think that would be more fun than the bland landscapes we have now. This environment probably wouldn't make the game harder in a similar fashion to the cave system since there would be more cover, but automatons are significantly harder than bugs, and I will absolutely die on that hill.
Anyways, the point of these new ideas is to increase the game's difficulty so that the players enjoy a greater variety of gameplay and the devs can rely on changes like this instead of nerfing guns. After all, nerfing in a PvE game is always going to hurt the player's effectiveness no matter the scenario. Also, the Helldivers' enemies have totally lost their aura, at least in my eyes. Part of this is because obviously I'm going to react more strongly to a bile titan the first time rather than the 1000th time, but part of this is also because most planets are basically featureless expanses of plains. A bile titan is not scary or threatening if I can see it walking from a kilometer away, but seeing a stalker running up to you in a dark cave will probably always inject me with adrenaline (let players join a session and play as enemies? haha).
TLDR: Dark cave systems for bugs and a city-like planet for the automatons so that the increased difficulty of the game comes from the game presenting challenges rather than nerfs to weapons.
Some of my own thoughts
I also have some personal thoughts and opinions on the current state of the game, so take them with a grain of salt. I'm also going to make some assumptions, and I'll try to back them up with a little bit of reasoning. To me, it seems as though the Helldivers dev team lacks big data on their own game. I'm not sure if I'm totally correct, but I believe I heard that the balancing team makes changes based on what percentage of the playerbase uses a certain weapon. This is why I believe the eruptor was nerfed, not because it was overpowered but because a comparatively large portion of the playerbase was using it. Naturally, players will use a relatively strong weapon that is new and eventually the usage will drop once the novelty wears off. However, the eruptor was nerfed a week or two after it was released, which I believe is way too short of a time frame to judge properly how much the players like the weapon. And this is not just the eruptor specifically, many weapons seem to get changed very quickly after they have been buffed or added, and I think the dev team might be overreacting to surges in usage from the playerbase. In general, I hope that the dev team takes a little bit more time to consider their decisions, since right now major changes are being made basically weekly. Already the game is a totally different beast compared to launch, imagine what it would look like in a year.
Another reason why I believe dev team lacks proper analytical data is their inability to track basically any statistic within the game, or at least that's what it looks like to me. The most prevalent example is the 2 billion bug counter which was counted very incorrectly. I know very little about coding, only took one class in college, but creating a simple kill counter like this should be well within any game dev's abilities. They have also failed to track accuracy, kill count, damage, and basically every other statistic you can think of at some point in the game's lifetime. They claim to have fixed some of these issues, but I still have doubts. If they are unable to do create these basic data-tracking tools, then there is no wonder the playerbase reacts so strongly to the balancing changes, and in turn why some certain high-ups have in turn responded critically to the public response because in their eyes they are making the correct decision based on the data presented to them.
To summarize my thoughts, in my eyes the dev team is rushing changes before they have the proper analytical data, which might be corrupted in the first place anyways. They definitely do not properly test the higher difficulties, otherwise they would have known the patrol rate change is absolutely ludicrous. However, I want the dev team to have faith in the quality of their game and know that even if they do not touch the game at all, most of the playerbase will have a fun time. This only emphasizes the importance of changes; positive changes have a greater impact on a good game than a bad game, but the vice versa is also true. I know that Arrowhead was completely crushed last week because of Sony, and I can literally see the palpable stress in some of the higher-ups' messages. Please, take your time, and do not feel forced to make a change unless somehow a game-breaking feature was introduced.
TLDR: The dev team seems to be inundated probably do not have experience trying to manage such a large population, and because they are constantly being hammered by thousands of people and outside factors (Sony), they feel a sort of obligation to make the "perfect" changes which end up being too hasty. It seems to me they make these changes based on the limited data they can scrap during a week timeframe, which might be incorrect in the first place anyways (again I may be totally wrong on this take).

Tw: family death and emotional abuse/neglect
I hate venting online as it’s futile and embarrassing for me (no one has to feel this way. This is just my own personal view that is mine and only mine) So, I will probably delete this soon for I also hate showing weakness to strangers since it always leads to more abuse it seems and i am often weary of others. So, with this, I’ll try and open up even if it’s temporary.

A bit of backstory I guess. My mother died when I was 7 which left behind a hole that needed to be filled for dad and I. She, the step “mom”, came along to help us for she struggled with a divorce of an abusive ex husband. She had issues, as you would expect, yet here I thought of her as someone I could get along with, to play with, to be around when things got bad, and all the things a little kid would think. At first, everything was fine, I even had silly nicknames for her that she “enjoyed” she responded with kindness to these (one was care bear, another was pumpkin because it was fall and she liked the smell, the others I don’t remember) and I remember how happy I was when she liked the little nicknames. Since it was the beginning, I would want her over often as I wanted someone to become a person I could look for as a mom but not as a replacement to my actual mom who recently died during that time. I liked her. 

Alas these things don’t get a happy ending, as with time, dad got more ill. During this time she would be by his side more (which is totally understandable, I would too for my lover I didn’t show jealousy during this time but support as I got to spend more time with my “sister”) and it slowly evolved to hospital visits. I would slowly pick up being a “parent” for her disabled daughter when I was 9/10/11 (can’t remember exact age, sorry). This was because she would go out with dad to spend time with him, go to the other room to isolate from us (either needing alone time or to help him. Not my business), be with him for hospital stays, etc. I was used to this since I was accustomed to helping my dad with his medical issues and helped him get ready for “life” by the time I was late 7/early 8 due to his own health failing as well.
Hop years later. After problem and after problem I had gotten in with her and vice versa I realize my step mother never genuinely cared about me. I know it takes two to tango and it’s partly my fault, I get where I fell in my faults and I’ve accepted them as my lessons in day to day life. I’m not perfect. As I became more reclusive to her as she showed a lack of accountability (and to this day, she won’t admit and see why it was so wrong for her to do things that were heavily against me) I was then always the scapegoat as she showed love and gushed over her actual kids (this was always a issue, I just didn’t think about it as a little kid and I got “bratty” when I got older as i began to recognize the “unfairness”). My achievements were worthless and often met with a “you should’ve already been good at that”, “you should know better by now”, or “that should already have been done if it was something important to you”. The typical “you aren’t good enough” wearing different clothes.
The feelings of being useless had already creeped in by the time I was 10/11 so this was going on for a long time (along with many other issues that I’m not gonna get into). Even as I got nearly straight A’s in college I was never praised except by dad (who unfortunately died when I was early 19. I miss him to this day). I know I should not have sought out praise, especially if I was grown, but I would’ve loved a “good job” from her… I know that’s silly but it would’ve been nice to be seen as her actual kid worthy of love and being seen that way just a little. I know my pesky teen years didn’t help but I was still her kid in some capacity but I was treated like a punching bag. All because she had her own jealousy and hate for me. (Even her own kids called her out on how she treated me, nothing changed from her.)
Now with no family left except a few aunts, she tried everything she can to ensure I don’t become independent (I don’t wanna talk too much about it, I’m too tired plus this post is getting rather long as it is).
The parts that hurt the most were: She refused my safety from my childhood to adulthood. She never cared what truly happened to me it seems.
Never really paid attention to me unless to berate me which was done usually in the form of gossiping to others. Plus attempting to embarrass me in front of others so when my teenage self got upset she can use my reaction as “proof” and to “justify” herself, sometimes trying to attempt it to adult me as she smiled and snickered about it. Thankfully most adults who were older took pity and even commented on how arrogant and awful she seemed as a person (adult me, they never did anything about teenage me which I get, I fell for her tricks that made me look bad. Happy I learned that lesson young, at least there is that).
She snooped around my room and life to gossip to her kids about me on how much of a failure I was and how disgusting of a person I am. Then got mad when I isolated or kept my life very secretive.
She would find issues with me just to try to make my dad hate me which thankfully it failed. I’m unsure if this was a attempt to further isolate me because I wasn’t a part of her “actual kids”. I don’t know and I’m too tired to know, it’s done and over with I can vent about that in therapy. However she sadly was successful in getting him to yell at me. The worst part of the yelling is that she would watch me cry or go to the other room to listen rather than just leaving me alone. I now realize it was a way for her to “get off” I believe.
When she realized she couldn’t control my life she tried hiding food from me as I was early 20’s because she had “control issues with me” (her words not mine). I didn’t like things going to waste so I’d eat nearly expired foods often and she would get pissy that I was “stealing from her”.
She gossiped to strangers about how I never do anything with myself and suspected I was just a useless failure. (I was in college with a job, thanks.)
When I did finally snap from the times she would treat me poorly she held on to it. I guess to put it, think of me over reacting I get I did wrong and I learned my lesson but when she snapped with a over reaction or something really hurtful she expected to be forgiven.
She also would steal from me and blame me (but would expect me to keep my hands to myself when I was hungry and didn’t have the time or funds to get food… this one still bothers me but I will talk in detail of this to my therapist not here as I’m tired and the post is already long enough).
All I wanted was a mom to care but I guess I couldn’t get that because the one I got died when I barely got to know her. There is more to say but I think that is all of us here, too much to say about someone who was supposed to love us. My apologies if my post is in shambles I never really let anything out like this so I’m sure I kinda sound “childish” but like- I really hate Mother’s Day and I just wanted to let it out, even if I delete this later.

Let's face it, jeans and boots are a match made in fashion heaven. But with trends constantly evolving, it's natural to wonder if this classic combo is still rocking the style scene in 2024.
Fear not, fashionistas! The answer is a resounding YES. But there are a few nuances to consider to keep your look on-point.
So, are tall boots with jeans still a thing? Absolutely! This iconic pairing remains a wardrobe staple, offering endless versatility and timeless style.
Now, let's delve deeper and explore how to rock this trend like a fashion pro in 2024.
Choosing the Perfect Boots:
The knee-high boot world offers a wide variety, so finding the ideal pair to complement your jeans is key. Here's a quick rundown of some popular styles:

• Classic: The quintessential knee-high boot with a sleek silhouette never goes out of style. It pairs beautifully with skinny jeans for a streamlined look.
• Slouchy: For a more relaxed vibe, slouchy boots are perfect. They add a touch of edge and work well with straight-leg or boyfriend jeans.
• Combat: Channel your inner rockstar with a pair of combat boots. They add a cool factor to skinny jeans or ripped denim.
• Western-inspired: For a touch of country charm, consider western boots. They look fantastic with bootcut jeans or a flowy midi skirt.

Denim Duos:
When it comes to jeans, the options are endless! Here are some pairings that are particularly trendy in 2024:

• Skinny Jeans: The classic combo! Tuck your skinny jeans into knee-high boots for a timeless and polished look.
• Straight-Leg Jeans: A universally flattering option, straight-leg jeans create a balanced silhouette when paired with boots.
• Boyfriend Jeans: For a casual yet chic vibe, boyfriend jeans with cuffed hems and knee-high boots are a winning combination.
• Bootcut Jeans: This classic denim style makes a comeback! Pair it with knee-high boots for a retro-inspired look.

Styling Tips and Tricks:
Elevate your look with these simple styling tips:

• Accessorize: Belts, scarves, and statement jewelry can add personality to your outfit.
• Outerwear: Layer with a leather jacket, a cozy sweater, or a statement coat to complete your look.
• Proportions: Balance is key. If your boots are slouchy, opt for more fitted jeans, and vice versa.

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I love both of these, and so many amazing lines still hit me to this day. Shows like this make me wish stuff like the Sonic games actually started trying again. Here’s a list of lines that, after all this time, still absolutely break me, give me chills, or both:
“For all that fierce exterior, I’ve never met anyone who cared as deeply about his fellow man as Bruce Wayne, except maybe you.”
“I did what I thought was right then, and that’s what I’m doing now.”
“You grabbed power!” “And with that power, we’ve made a world where no 8-year-old boy will ever lose his parents…..because of some punk with a gun.”
“I’m not the man who killed President Luthor. Right now, I wish to Heaven that I were, but I’m not.”
“I got cheated out of my childhood.” “I know what that’s like.” “You do, don’t you?”
“One little scare, and you betray us?! You stole Kara’s DNA! Violated her trust! MY trust!”
“The creature knows only rage and seeks only oblivion. Your mace may be the one object on Earth that can grant him peace.”
“We don’t do that to our enemies.” “Speak for yourself.” “I’m trying to speak for Superman.”
“Time and again, I’ve beaten you. Humbled you. What makes you think today’s outcome will be any different?” “Because this time, I won’t stop until you’re just a greasy smear on my fist.”
“Gentlemen, it’s been an honor.”
“Tell me. How many of us do you have to kill to keep us safe?”
“We create our own purpose in life. Now go create yours.”
“If you’re quitting because it’s easier than continuing the fight, then you’re not the heroes we all thought you were. The world needs the Justice League, and the Justice League needs you, Superman.”

As the title states. I logged in and noticed first, that a settlement I built up had no walls. Secondly I noticed the 10,000 caps I spent on market stalls was gone, along with the stalls I spent the caps on. I can't say how much of my game I lost, but a significant enough amount to make me consider deleting the entire playthru. It feels like it deleted my auto save and I maybe didn't do a hard save, but with how much I've lost idk. It's weird tho. Like stuff I've built is gone. But the new gun I picked up yesterday isn't. And the character level is correct. How the hell did certain aspects of my save files get deleted? This is lunacy.

I (14f) and my crush (14m) have been friends since grade 7, i had a crush on him since i ever saw eyes on him. I hit him up with a text and that spiralled into us becoming close friends.
He became like my go-to person for advice and ect.. He asked if had a crush and who, i told him i had a crush on this other dude i had a crush on prior to him.
My favourite memory was the day i skipped HPE cause at this point i was getting bullied by a bunch of 'friends', he found me just sitting down and scrolling on my phone and stood in front of me, we basically just talked and he made fun of him and vice-versa. I got up and he followed me where we just stared at each-other, no words - just stared at each-other.
Later that year we shared air-pods, he didn't care if i cleaned it or not ( i did dont worry) and he put on a song he really liked, i couldn't hear it but i think it was a love song. I let him listen to the song.
This girl that i'll call Mia, anyways she also had a crush on him and i made the mistake of telling Mia i had a crush on him. She didn't tell anyone but she did act more touchy with him. Put mascara on him, and tried to braid his hair.
I kept talking with him, face-timed and played video games all the time.
Anyways i woke up to find people messaging me telling me that everybody knew i liked him, and he swore he didn't like me, i didn't go that day but our interactions were the same. I messed up and we didn't talk for a long time until i apologised.
We still talked, but no irl interactions. My fucking dumbass friend edited a pic of me 'talking shit' about him and sent it to him, and we just stopped talking, he brought up me having a crush on him and we stopped talking
That was in grade 7, im in grade 9 now.
The last interaction was him telling me that a guy in my class had a crush on me, which didn't seem likely because the guy instantly swore on god that he didn't
how do i talk to him without sounding/seeming like a weirdo.
(Also the girl who likes him - 'Mia', is a jealous bitch, she follows him everywhere, talks to him all the time and she slapped a girl really hard for COMPLIMENTING HIS HAIR as a joke, he got a buzzcut and she was making fun of him. Shes popular so nobody cares - plus shes pretty?)

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

Heya!
i wanted to play a modded playthrough of fallout 4 with some mods that would,
A. Change the scenery of fallout 4 to a more lively one, kind of how fallout 76 looks!
B. Changed the animations for the guns, to make them smoother and less static,
Some optional Mods I'd like to have would be
C. Change pip-boy to a different colour and or a different shaped pip-boy entirely!
D. New guns
C. New Armor
E. More settlement building options.
And maybe some more suggestions? if anyone could help me that'd be appreciated! i know the recent update for FO4 messed up tons of mods and its left me confused on how to use any,

This weekend, Ajax Budokan invited Kodokan 9th dan and former head of the Tokyo Police dojo, Michio Fukushima Sensei, to conduct a 4 hour clinic for Kodokan Goshin Jutsu. It was open to yellow belt and higher, though the majority consisted of Yudansha. My senseis had the honour of demoing the kata, as Fukushima Sensei's health did not permit presenting each technique multiple times, though he did show some of the finer details, demo mechanics, and gave comments as to what was good and displayed what could be fixed. He also talked about older versions of the techniques and how/ why they have been changed. Regretfully, it totally slipped my mind to film during the seminar, as there was a lot of good information, translated (and left untranslated) by the interpreter.
Some General Notes on Fukushima Sensei Fukushima Sensei on multiple occasions mentioned how one should carry themselves and move, more specifically he talked about how he usually sees toris get away with bad shisei as uke's attacks are generally to kind or passive, and that if they genuinely attacked, most toris would be off balance. Additionally he mentioned that a lot of IFJ competition now is power judo, where the technical aspects are replaced for brute force and speed.
The main note he makes is to keep the knees alive (slightly bent and bouncy like a spring), and that most novices have a tendency to straight leg their kata. He also made it a great point to explain the logic of the waza in the kata and how the kuzushi is created. Other important details he talked about were that uke shouldn't be a limp noodle once his attack is over, that tori should keep good sabaki (unclear if sabaki was short hand for tai sabaki as he also stated tai sabaki on different occasions (the details were paraphrased by the translator)), and the usage of rotation from the hips to maintain proper balance (tai sabaki). Additionally, he talked about things relating to karada (the body) and some anecdotes (such as stories about judoka such as Michigami, Isao Okano, and Nagaoka if I was hearing correctly, though I don't speak Japanese, only somewhat familiar with it), which were left untranslated or paraphrased sadly.
Emphasised details in the kata (not explanations or descriptions of how to do a technique) and my experiences (FYI Sensei mostly used the Tomiki names for the waza Tori applied)
Attacks when held

1. Ryote dori - my partner and I (both new to this kata for the most part) went in on this one and struggled as we didn't see the detail of thumb in hand for the lock (blind leading the blind, though we later worked near a kind pair after this who helped check more closely as they were experienced in the kata)
   1. Yahazu (hook shape for hand) is very important to direct uke's arm
   2. You aren't pulling the arm away to free it, you are pushing your elbow forward which pressures uke's arm
   3. Te gatana to the uto (point between uke's eyes)
   4. When applying the lock (te gatame), make sure to rotate uke's hand such that the fingers are pointing up
   5. When applying the lock, take the uke's arm in the direction perpendicular to the line made by his feet
2. Hidari eri dori - I particularly liked this one, though my uke was confused the first few times as he kept trying to apply waki gatame.
   1. Tori must grab underneath uke's hand on the lapel when stepping back
   2. When grabbing uke's hand to break the grip and apply the lock (kote hineri), tori should have his thumb in between uke's thumb and fingers, and to take the uke's arm in the direction perpendicular to the line made by his feet
   3. Uke should try to maintain jigo tai rather than lean so the lock is applied cleanly
   4. Tori's hand should not be limp when delivering the strike
3. Migi eri dori - I couldn't get kote gaeshi to work properly, will have to practice and ask my sensei about it later, same with my partner
   1. Tori should maintain a upright posture as uke pulls him forward, and use the landing of his foot to drive his hand for the uppercut to uke
   2. Tori should try to keep uke's hand attached to his centerline as he makes tai sabaki
4. Kata ude dori - My uke was very stiff, so applying the initial lock to him proved difficult, though he claims he felt it. I found this kata easy to remember as the legs go left right left right (step, step, tai sabaki, kick, then lead with the right for the lock)
   1. You are kicking with the side of the foot
   2. The step before the kick pivot around so your feet are almost parallel
   3. For waki gatame, you should be standing inside his feet, near parallel to the line perpendicular to his feet
5. Ushiro eri dori - I had experience with this one as sensei had taught during some free time a while back
   1. The parry with the arm was stated to also be the preferred way to receive punches, though take that as you will (though it is a common method in karate as well)
   2. The strike should be to the suigetsu (solar plexus)
   3. Trap uke's hand with your head so that it can't wiggle all over the place when applying the lock
6. Ushiro jime - My partner and I both had a tendency to lift the shoulder off after spinning out, will have to work on that. I will be honest, had I known this escape, I probably would have come out of an incident a few years back (before I started Judo) rather unscathed as I was jumped and then kicked on the ground by a person who was quite a pain.
   1. The attack and initial defence are identical to that of katame no kata, following which tori rotates out
   2. Keep pressure with your shoulder until your grip has been changed
7. Kakae dori - We didn't have enough mat space to finish the throw without running into other groups, but the technique is surprisingly effective. Though I couldn't initially find out how to do the armlock and had to ask my sensei about it, now it's pretty easy.
   1. Rotate the arm away from you (clockwise from your perspective) and pull uke's arm into you
   2. During the initial stomp, straighten up and raise your arms to loosen uke's grip

Attacks when at a distance - I got less time to try these in general as I wanted my partner to get a feel for them as they are a bit more complicated and he is less experienced

1. Naname uchi - this was a fun situation, it shows how a little bit of atemi can be used to setup a randori waza, and Fukushima Sensei complimented my senseis' performance saying that it was better than the current text book
   1. Te gatana is used to redirect the strike
   2. Osoto otoshi is performed
   3. Pushing the arm through is important to create the kuzushi necessary for the waza
2. Ago tsuki - I didn't actually get a chance to try this one more than once as my partner struggled with it, he kept applying a shoulder lock by pushing on the elbow without the redirect with the thumb up (shoulder is still sore)
   1. when directing uke's attack up and away, do not lean back as then you are unstable
   2. Use yahazu to direct uke's elbow toward his ear
   3. As uke will not like this use the moment after releasing the elbow lock to throw him forward in the direction perpendicular to his feet.
3. Gammen Tsuki - My partner really liked this one, I can see the uses as I've used similar entries when messing around with strikes + judo with this partner as I have a bit of karate experience
   1. Uke is meant to do a break fall, thus tori needs to get out of the way after releasing the choke
   2. Uke should realistically be aiming for where tori's uto would be if he did not evade
4. Mae Geri - this was a relatively easy one to grasp, but quite a bit of practice is needed before a full force kick can be considered
   1. Rotate ukes foot outwards so that it is not easy for him to rotate in to escape
   2. In the original, tori would lift uke's leg high but many ukes ended up injured from hitting their heads, so now tori just pushes back
5. Yoko geri - My sensei has introduced this one at the dojo before as well, though he prefaced it with about a minute of just practicing a side kick. My partner (who suffers from light knee pain) couldn't kneel during the finish
   1. The use of the te gatana to redirect the kick in the direction it is going, very similar to karates low block
   2. During the finish tori creates a void for uke to be thrown but in real life tori would throw uke onto his knee

Attacks with weapons - I understand people dislike these (reasonably in some cases), but I've found them to be useful points to explore
Attacks with a knife - Sensei Fukushima mentioned how despite my senseis making it look easy
Both my partner and I have practiced these quite a lot (I was the only one who was taught it by sensei but we practiced it on our own time), so not as many personal notes. Though I don't have a good experience so my brain switches to serious and my heart rate increases despite the fact that I know these are fake weapons.

1. Tsukkake
   1. The elbow should be pushed forward (I've actually experimented with this in the past by asking uke to try to stab me as I applied the defence, and we've found after the initial push and strike, tori is in a relatively good position, be it to run away or finish the kata)
   2. Push the locked up arm up and towards uke, then guide him to the ground
2. Choku zuki - I struggled to apply the waki gatame, I'm guessing it was control of the wrist that was the problem, this form is relatively straight forward and makes sense
   1. The strike should not be a boxer style punch, but more like the first punch in szkt
   2. uke should not go limp
   3. when moving away from uke, take him perpendicular to the line between his feet
3. Naname Zuki - Personally I think this form is cutting it close in many regards, but the control tori has is quite surprising
   1. Don't grab the blade from the sharp edge

Attacks with a jo - PSA, no matter how much you trust your uke, mistakes happen (especially with such a solid weapon) so remain vigilant to mitigate damage

1. Furi age - this was a relatively easy technique to grasp as it is an application of O soto gari setup with a palm strike to the chind
   1. Tori should enter as soon as uke begins to raise his arm, almost a preemptive entry
   2. Tori strikes at the ago (chin) with a palm strike, then places his hand on the throat for the throw
2. Furi oroshi - My partner leant into the swing and wacked me on the forehead, it could've been worse but it just grazed the outer layer as I saw the jo come closer after my initial retreat and attempted to turn out of the way. Both a PSA for tori and uke. Tori do not keep your eyes off uke, and uke please don't lean into a swing, you are horribly off balance, and you make it harder for tori to read. Also uke don't speed up when you 2 are learning (I don't know why my partner chose too...)
   1. Do not hop back onto one leg and then towards uke with the other, it leads you to have bad posture
   2. Better to make a big retreat than get hit
   3. 2 strike, one ura ken (back fist), followed by knife hand push
   4. Uke's swing should be at a diagonal
3. Morote zuki - I didn't get to practice this one as my partner was taken a bit aback after the previous incident and couldn't get the steps right for this one. Fukushima Sensei mentioned something along the lines of how a judoka was faced with a juken and couldn't figure out what to do, and thus this form was created to address that.
   1. Tori shouldn't be rowing the jow away to shake throw uke
   2. The arm puts pressure on uke's arm forward
   3. Tori should be trying to angle the jo down towards himself after the initial grab

Attacks with a gun - I struggled with all of these, but I think the principles are relatively sound. Though in real life, I'd most likely give up my valuables. Fukushima Sensei emphasised hip rotation in these movements, as he says that you want to direct the gun away without moving your feet, which is what uke would be seeing when looking at your pocket.
Always make sure to begin your defence after uke is clearly focused on checking your pockets, never when his focus is directly on you

1. Shomen Zuke
   1. Grab the barrel of the gun thumb up
   2. During the disarm, push the gun's muzzle to face towards him
2. Koshi Gamae - I kept getting the second hand wrong and thus the barallel was pointed towards me in the final attack, will need to work on that
   1. Grab the barrel of gun initially with the thumb down with your right hand, and push the gun so that it is horizontal after turning left, then grab the gun from below with your right
   2. make sure to not point the gun at yourself when hitting with the butt
3. Haimen Zuke - this is quite a dangerous move in theory, but also one of the more likely ones
   1. Wrap uke's arm with your arm, but make sure to direct the muzzle up with the free arm
   2. [uke] should let go of gun, as this is a hard breakfall

Overarching and repeated themes in the kata

• The use of yahazu to direct the arm rather than grips
• Keeping uke's hand connected to your centerline when applying kansetsu waza
• te gatana is a useful tool to redirect and or strike the opponent quickly
• During the gun portion, always rotate the gun off your centerline, so that even if it does fire, it doesn't penetrate too deep
• Control the gun by the muzzle
• most finishes are done by guiding uke perpendicular to the line in between his feet
• Do not directly oppose an opponents force
• Maintanence of balance at all times and moving from the hips is key
• Uke should attack meaningfully
• Action reaction is used quite a lot to first lock uke up towards his face, so that when he pushes back he is easily lead away

Overall, it was quite a good event, and I learned a lot. This kata isn't the most realistic with the attacks (though apparently a few people I know have used the ryote dori attack shockingly), but what I've learned so far is relatively sound, hopefully some time soon I can convince my partner to do some live resistance sparring with some gear on (which I have done with the knife portion with a plastic knife). Fukushima Sensei had a lot to say, as he was actively discussing his experiences and koshiki no kata after the seminar with another Japanese speaker, and I hope to be able to attend another one of his classes again someday.
Here are some videos featuring Michio Fukushima from a few years back, both where he was actively demoing, and where he had a slightly more corrective position.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1253474818155243
https://youtu.be/VKgdMJS9eck?si=bGMemLfG9aquAHr1

Mostly just need to vent.
So my table has one large mission as the main arc, but currently focused on an integral smaller mission within the larger mission. Main mission cannot be completed without this second one.
My table got a bit derailed tonight when a PC forgot about the mini mission (despite that being the whole previous hour….a bio break and short rest for for the in game characters made them whoosh forget that & they showed up at our next location super aggro and demanding my npc lead them to character needed for the main mission.
I tried to get them back on track, mentioning that that character wasn’t there. Why were they at this building (hint hint) and one poor PC tried to speak up but no one was listening.
I knew my npc had a hook to make him instant friends with a PC, so when they finally asked about a character involved with the mini mission I started my 3 sentence paragraph to give needed information. I wasn’t 6 words into my statement & this PC interrupted me and shoved my npc and yelled at him for being sexist (he was calling the 3rd character a rude teachers pet, which is probably the nicest adjectives you could use for this character) I pivoted and tried to have my npc mention the reason they were there and this 3rd character being involved…nope a 2nd pc PICKS UP MY NPC AND STARTED THREATENING THEM IN THEIR OWN HOME
I had to stop the table and remind them everyone was a good aligned character. They just walked into someone’s home, were welcomed nicely, the npc introduced themselves but they didn’t introduce themselves, they started demanding stuff and the got rightful defensive and now he’s being attacked….well my 2 PCs said I made a very unlikable npc and said they wouldn’t change anything.
Okay. Who am I to show horn them into a path. They then guns blazing go into the room with the actual bad guy…no planning or plan…per my module she’s to instantly cast fireball. I stopped the session before she cast anything. I ran the damage and the two PCs closest if they didn’t pass their saving throw would be on death saves…..I don’t want to do that, but I am mad they are being so aggressive.
This is only session 2 and they weren’t this aggressive the first session. Our previous campaign I wasn’t the DM and this group was really murder hobo-y but everyone was on board (it was Shrahd) and the setting more lent itself to that. But even then our DM then would complain we didn’t ask questions or talk to NPCs or try anything other than hit first and go oops we needed that person later.
Frustratingly the main aggro PC is our former DM.
I have talked to him already. He apologized. And promised to let me finish speaking when characters are talking. Especially when it’s obvious I’m reading something prepared (probably important if I wrote it down)…but his advice was to have us “reset” back to when they came inside, but I don’t want to do that.
As sorta frustrated as I am, that’s part of dnd. Having your characters go their path. I’m just not sure how to get them back on track. I want to punish them for going so fast into this, but I know if attack them with this 3rd character then they’ll attack back and probably not hold back and leave the campaign if their character died start of session 3. (I’ve invested $300 into this module and really want to see atleast some of it through) I did metagame warn them that they’re level 3 and they need to start thinking about that before they go attacking everyone they meet. (The npc they shoved and nearly fought was a level 13 wizard…they weren’t going to win that fight).
Guess I’m also frustrated that I’m the only female in the group and they attributed alot of negative female connotations to the one sentence my npc said (called him catty, b**chy, rude, annoying, petty) when they knew the person they were meeting was a part of a known evil organization. But no how dare my nice, welcoming npc not like the evil organization character….when I asked that in the session debrief I was told it was “how I presented him” with my one sentence…I think next time I would stop them and say “let me finish what he was saying before you take that action” but I’m not sure that would have changed anything.
Just sad that I don’t think this group is the right group for this campaign and I’m so invested in the story.

So, the Ripper is a weird weapon. In Duke3D its sprites were repurposed and remade from the earlier builds' plasma cannon (first person, and pickup). Both versions have two handles: one on the weapon's left side, and another, as a "tail". The tail has the trigger button. Originally I had assumed that it was a configuration similar to this, but actually, *this is how Duke holds the Ripper. This doesn't feel at all comfortable, as the weight of the weapon isn't distributed in a reasonable way. Yes, Duke is pretty strong, but strength or not, it's just not a viable configuration. Now, if the gun had a belt to distribute its weight in a more reasonable way, it would have made sense, as the second handle would then be used to stabilize the weapon, as the kickback would probably cause all sorts of swaying, affecting accuracy (does an LMG even need to worry about accuracy?).
Now, apparently the guys at Gearbox realized this, and tried to alleviate the issue by redesigning the weapon. As we can see, the gun still has two handles, but the "tail" is now a (seemingly extendable) stock, and instead there's a pistol-handle on the "belly" of the gun. This is how it is held. Now one would think that it's a good resign, except that it still doesn't explain why it needs the second handle on the side, since the trigger is still on the second handle, and holding it by the second handle does nothing to distribute the weapon's weight. Again, there's no belt to alleviate the weight distribution, and the stock, at least as shown in the screenshot (and factually in-game), doesn't even feel necessary. We can assume that in-universe it's actually extended to accommodate for the kickback and stabilize the weapon, but in-game, nobody actually uses it, so it's purely cosmetic. Now, while the handle underneath the gun makes it a bit more stable, it still makes the gun feel too heavy for most people to carry and use (Duke is a roided-up maniac, what's the EDF dudes' excuse?): Your arm would just get tired way too quickly, since all of the gun's weight effectively rests upon it. The second handle, as mentioned, does nothing for weight distribution. Best case scenario, it just "kinda" stabilizes the gun during shooting, but it still feels like a very odd design. Having a handle on the top of the weapon (something more like this), or even a second handle on the bottom (like so) would have made much more sense for both weight distribution and shooting stability.
*Art by Cybopath at DeviantArt.

I went on a walk earlier today and was having a conversation that turned to the facets of success that the Zen tradition has over, well, everyone else. Here's me putting some organization to aspects of the conversation that we touched upon.

1000 Years of Recorded Conversation

This number is not an exageration or hyperbole, but a reasonable approximation of the longevity of the Zen conversation.
The earliest records of Zen conversation aka. Dharma combat aka. koans aka public cases we have come from Dunhuang and involve an heir to Bodhidharma named "Yuan" which places them sometime around the middle of the 6th century. Here's an excerpt:

6th Century

Dharma Master Chih saw Dharma Master Yuan on the street of butchers.
Dharma Master Chih asked, "Do you see the butchers slaughtering the sheep?
Dharma master Yuan said, "My eyes are not blind. How could I not see them?"
Dharma master Chih said, "Master Yuan, you are saying you see it!"
Master Yuan said, "You are seeing it on top of seeing it!"

The thread of Zen conversation continues on in these records. Some of these texts come from the conversations that dedicated record-keepers transcribed or unnamed Preceptors copied down and were later compiled. These records of Zen conversation were themselves annotated and conversed with by Zen Masters in subsequent generations thereby producing monumental books of instruction and practical guidance like Wansong's Book of Serenity, Wumen's Gateless Checkpoint, or Linquan's Empty Valley Collection.
Following the desolation and plunder wrought on by the Mongol invasion, the restrictive religious policies imposed by the Buddhists, and the subsequent rise of milleniarian cults with their own quasi-theocratic social agenda, the Zen conversation starts to fade in China.
We have records in China extending to around 1400. The aptly named translation by Cleary entitled "Zen Under the Gun" is evidence of this. The following is an excerpt from a Zen Master that came from Korea to study under a Chinese Zen Master and would carry on the tradition of preaching the Zen dharma to Emperor's.

14th Century

In 1347, on the sixth day of the third month, the emperor of the Great Yuan invited T'aego to Fengen, serving the Imperial Benevolance Zen Temple. After salutations to his majesty, T'aego went up to the teaching hall, pointed to the main temple gate, and said:
"The Great Path has no gate: where do all of you people intend to enter it? Bah! The universal gate of perfect penetration is wide open."
At the buddha shrine T'aego said: "Two thousand years ago, I was you. Two thousand years later, you are me. It has almost leaked out."
Then he bowed three times.

Almost.

1000 Years of Agro-Academe Egalitarian Communes

Agro-Academe

The Zen records are famous for taking place almost entirely on large agricultural complexes where agricultural as well as scholarly work were the lifeblood of maintaing the communities self-sufficiency. While this aspect of the Zen tradition had gone almost entirely unremarked upon in the Zen records due to its sheer normalcy it very much stands in contrast to the economic and social systems of organization that have risen (and fallen) throughout the rest of the world such as Manorialism, Serfdom, Capitalism, and Communism.
The agricultural aspects of the Zen communes are evidenced in the countless cases that take place in the context of the community engaged in performing agricultural work and the academic aspects of the communes are evidenced both in the cases involving someone reading something, referencing something they read, asking about something they read, as well as the countless literary and historical references that Zen Masters weave into the books of instruction.
The academic-LITERATE aspect of Zen communities has been deliberately misrepresented by Dogenists that cannot handle writing at a high school level about anything Zen Masters said despite claiming affiliation. It's a really sore subject for them.

Egalitarian

Zen Masters: No sexism. No racism. No special authorities in funny hats.
Foyan:

If one says, “I understand, you do not,” this is not [Zen]. If one says, “You understand, I do not, “ This is not [Zen] either. In the Teachings it says, “This truth is universally equal, without high or low—this is called unexcelled enlightenment.” My perception is equal to yours, and your perception is equal to mine.

Unlike religious traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam (to name a few...) there is no tradition in Zen of affirming a belief in the "spiritual inferiority" of women or asserting that they should conform themselves to any fixed role in social relations with men.
The dharma-interviews involving women Zen Masters are some of the most intense and edge-of-your-seat one's out there. The one's we have translated records of are:

• Iron Grinder Liu
  
• Miaozong
  
• Mrs. Pang
  
• [Unnamed old women]
  

The failure of women's Zen voices to be preserved in equal proportion to their male counterparts they were engaged with is almost entirely due to the larger social mileau of sexism and erasure of women in non-subserviant roles from the public records that an extremely patriarchial society like China pursued with zeal at the time.

Commune

Unlike the phony kind of "work" of repeating religious apologetics, playing dress-up, or saying a few words over corpses that Priests while charging money from the faithful day-in, day-out--everyone in the Zen communities labored alongside everyone else and Zen Masters made a point of it to not exempt themselves from that.
The famous "No work, no eat" comes from Baizhang. It's nothing revolutionary in the context of Zen, but it sets the world on fire for just about everybody else.

Baizhang, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds, and pruning the trees. The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their advice to stop, so they hid away his tools.
That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. "He may be angry because we have hidden his tools," the pupils surmised. "We had better put them back."
The day they did, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them: "No work, no food."

1000 Years of Stability

As an undercurrent to the Zen conversation are certain...lifestyle choices...that everyone has to observe before they can meaningfully participate. They're choices that everyone already recognizes are necessary in certain contexts and lifestyles that are overwhelmingly associated with healthy outcomes in those observing them consistently. The undercurrent to conversation in Zen is known as the "Lay" Precepts.
Lay Precepts:

1. No lying
   
2. No stealing
   
3. No murder
   
4. No abuse of sex.
   
5. No intoxicating.
   

Observing this stuff won't neccesarily make anyone rich, famous, sexy, or funny. But that isn't anything Zen promises anyone to begin with anyway.
In their tradition, observing these kept the conversation flowing for a thousand years.
Why would anyone come to /Zen just to avoid talking about Zen?

I am NOT OOP. OOP is u/justathrowaway282641
Originally posted to TwoHotTakes + her own page
Previous BoRU #1, BoRU #2, BoRU #3, BoRU #4, BoRU #5, BoRU 6
Editor’s Note: removed all relevant comments from older posts to make space for new updates. To see all older relevant comments, check out the previous BoRUs above
NEW UPDATE MARKED WITH ----
[New Update]: My family forgot to invite me to my grandparents funeral, but they are convinced I was there.
Trigger Warnings: death of loved ones, emotional manipulation, gaslighting, harassment
RECAP
Original Post: November 14, 2023**
I’m 30s F and caused a major blowup in my family and now none of them are talking to me. For background, my hometown is tiny (500pop) and when I went 2 hrs away to “the city” (15,000pop) for college, I loved it. I ended up staying after graduation, got married, and am happy here for a decade. I visit my home town every few weeks or so, call/text my family near daily, and thought we were all good. My family’s pretty small. Just my brother, mom, step dad, dad, step mom, and an aunt and uncle (mom’s siblings, never married, no kids). My mother's grandparents moved to my home town when I was in high school and were just down the street from us. My family has always been pretty drama free (aside from my parent’s divorce when I was a kid) and we’ve been happy. The step-parents were blended in perfectly and we share holidays and celebrations together. We’re all super close and just the perfect little group.
Ever since I moved away, the topic of “when am I moving back?” is constant, and I’ve always laughed it off. My home town has nothing. You have to drive 30 minutes for milk and bread. 60-90 minute one-way commutes to work. And floods shut down the main road every Easter. I love the town, but I love here more. I have parks, stores, community events, a library! The “city” is great. My family grumbles that I need to move back, but I refuse. I've been trying to encourage them to come here, especially since it's not an hour drive to the nearest medical facility.
Now to the meat and potatoes: both my grandparents passed over COVID times. They were both old and their health had been failing for a while so it was only a matter of time. Thankfully they didn’t catch it, but it made visiting them impossible and we survived mostly through FaceTime. They both passed in their sleep months apart. Both were cremated and kept securely under the kitchen sink for safe keeping while the pandemic blew over. That was 2021.
Well, I just found out my family held a funeral for them and scattered the ashes in my uncle’s maple grove over the summer. No one said a word to me about it. I’ve visited numerous times before and after and not one word. I only found out because my great uncle from California posted on Facebook a few weeks ago that he is entering hospice and was so thankful his health stayed strong enough for him to see his little sister (my grandma) to her final resting place. I was confused and called my mom. She was all “Yeah, the funeral we had in July, remember?” Ya’ll, I visited them for the 4th of July. They did the funeral the 8th. Not a word about it to me. They had planned this for months. Long enough to arrange for my infirm great uncle to be brought over from the other side of the country. Apparently, they talked about it “all the time”.
Everyone is convinced I was at the funeral. They SWEAR I was there. I can prove I wasn’t because Google’s got my location history. My hubby is baffled because he was supposedly there, too, but he had to work every weekend in June and July. Time clock doesn’t lie. My family straight up forgot about me. I’m hurt. I’m sad. And they’re pissed at me “for lying”. They think I’m causing drama over nothing. Nothing I say can convince them I wasn’t there. My family is united in this. And they’ve all put me “on read” until I admit I’m wrong. They think I’ve gone nuts. Either there’s a doppelganger of me attending events, or my family doesn’t want to admit they screwed up. I’m not backing down.
Thanksgiving is coming up, and my family’s been vague posting on Facebook about “forgetful kids” and mental health. It’s so freaking weird and I don’t know if I’m in bizzaro world or what’s going on. My mom’s best friend reached out and said I should just admit I was wrong and apologize, that I’m causing my mom so much unnecessary stress. I asked her if she’s checked everyone’s home for CO2. She hung up on me. (We checked our CO2, and our testers are running just fine.) I have reached out to a few people in my home town to check in on my folks, and they all say they're fine. I even spoke with the local volunteer fire fighter group to see if they could check for gas leaks. Not sure if they were able to.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve shown them the proof I wasn’t there, but they know I’m tech savvy and just assume I’ve Photoshopped it. Hubby says we need a break, and we’re going to be staying home this holiday season.
Edit: I don't know the update rules, so I'll post updates to my profile should anyone want them.  
Update #1: November 27, 2023
Not sure how to do updates on posts, so figured I'd post anything on my profile. Folks have private messaged me and this will be easier I think?
It's 11/27 and Thanksgiving just happened. Hubby and I stayed home. We got a small turkey and made our own little thanksgiving. It was nice. We ate around noon, then watched a movie, and later sat outside with a bottle of wine to watch the sun set behind the trees and neighbor houses.
We usually take the day before off, drive to my folks, stay the night, and help with the Thanksgiving Day cooking. So it wasn't until Wednesday night that my mom broke the silence. Mom called and asked when I was showing up, and I told her we were staying home this year, but for them to have a happy Thanksgiving, and to give the rest of the family my love. She was quiet for a long time after I said that, and I think she eventually mumbled an "okay", or something, and hung up. It wasn't an angry hang up. Just a hang up. On Thanksgiving day, I sent a group "Happy Thanksgiving!" gif to our family group chat. I received a few "happy Thanksgiving"'s back. No one's said anything else. There's been no posts on Facebook.  
Update #2: December 12, 2023
So, I think I mentioned in one of my comments that my dad and I usually talk on the phone every Sunday morning. We're both early risers so we'd chat over our morning coffees and watch the sunrise. Him and I haven't really spoken since this all went down and it's been tough. I'm used to talking to him, you know?
Well, I was sitting outside in my usual spot, watching the sun rise and freezing my butt off, and he called me. I'm not entirely sure how to describe the emotions I felt. It was a mix of panic, hope, terror, happiness, and dread. I ended up answering because I just had to know what he wanted. It was an awkward conversation. He didn't address the current "drama", but instead tiptoed around the situation with all the grace of an cow on stilts. For instance, a simple "How are you doing?" Type question was answered with a "Not good." And the whole conversation would stall out for a bit because he knew why I wasn't doing well. So we ended up talking about the weather, the various winter birds we'd seen in our feeders, and the Christmas decorations around town. Things like that.
Eventually he asked if we were coming out for Christmas, and sounded sad when I told him we weren't. He asked if him and step mom could come visit us instead, and I told him it wasn't a good idea this year. That hubby and I were going to spend a quiet holiday together. I let him know he should be receiving some gifts at his PO Box any day now, so to please pick them up from the post office and put them under the family tree for everyone. He said he'd ship ours to us as well.
And that was pretty much it. No crazy drama to report. The only posts on Facebook have been the usual Christmas excitement ones, countdowns, photos of Santa, silly gift ideas, photos of company Christmas parties.
On a personal note: Hubby and I are doing alright. Our health is good, our spirits high, and we're as solid as ever. We each got Christmas bonus' at our jobs, so we're excited about that. They're not large, but we're happy to have them. We have also done advent calendars for the first time ever. I got him a Lego one, and he got me a hot chocolate one. We're going to do the calendars again next year. Maybe make a tradition out of it.
Everyone please have a safe and happy holidays.  
Inheritance: December 16, 2023
I've received a lot - A LOT - of messages and private DMs urging me to check into inheritance and such. I'm really touched a lot of Internet strangers are worried about me and I wanted to ensure everyone that inheritance is most likely not an issue here. I'd almost be relieved if it was, because then it would at least make some sense. Money does weird things to people, you know?
No one in my family is wealthy by any means. After my grandparents' passed, their small estate was used to pay for their end of life expenses and remaining assets split up. Everyone directly related got an equal split (so excluded my dad and the step parents). I don't remember the exact amount I received, but it was around $5k if I recall. My brother gave me his share, too, so I could finish paying off my college debt while the interest freeze was active.
The great uncle from California has kids and grand kids, and great grandkids of his own, and also isn't wealthy. I think one of his kids makes good money doing something in finance, but I'm not entirely sure. I can't imagine he left us anything, as we hardly knew him. My mom, aunt, and uncle only met him a few times in their lives, and my brother and I even less. Grandma and him were close, but I don't think he liked my grandpa much.  
Christmas: December 25, 2023
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I've received a lot of support through my posts and I'm really grateful. Writing these updates have had a therapeutic effect.
Yesterday was Sunday, but I didn't answer my dad when he called. I just really didn't feel up to a pointless chat, so let it go to voicemail. He tried to reach me a few times throughout the day, but I didn't answer.
Our bestie last minute invited us over to his house for Christmas day lunch (today), so husband and I were busy all Christmas Eve making cookies, peanut brittle, and homemade suckers/hard candies for his kids. Mom tried to reach out as well, but I also ignored her calls.
We had a BLAST at lunch! Our friend's kids are a lot of fun to be around. They got some techy presents from their grandparents (Quest vr headset and steam decks, lucky little rascals) Friend and his wife aren't good with tech, while hubby and I are, so we helped get them set up while our friend played a good host to his folks and inlaws. The grandparents didn't realize that a Steam deck required a Steam account, so we got the kids all their own accounts set up, added them to our steam friends lists, and gifted them some games. We also bought them a few VR games for their headset, and they were off to the races with Beat Saber in no time.
As for my folks: My brother texted and asked if we could talk sometime tomorrow. I think me ignoring mom and dad has caused some kind of upset. Which they deserve.  
Brother’s call: December 26, 2023
Spoke with my brother over the phone this morning.
For starters, he apologized for everything. Him and I are good (for now). For a bit of background, my brother and I are only 2 years apart. There weren't a lot of kids around growing up, so the two of us were often stuck doing stuff together. So we have a lot of shared interests and passions. He's been pretty silent on this whole matter, but still "part of the group", if you know what I mean. I think the thought of losing him out of my life was probably the most painful, because he's always been there. He was my rock until I met my husband. He's definitely a Mama's boy, though, so anything mom wanted, he made sure she got. I'm happy to have him back.
Without further ado, here's the story from the horse's mouth:
Mom apparently had a cancer scare late last year (which no one told me about, go figure), and dad had a stint put in his heart back in January (which I did know about). This "sense of mortality" has apparently lit a fire under Mom's ass to get me back home. But since I wasn't reacting to her passive aggressive hinting, she and step mom decided to go full crazy. My great uncle's health was bad, and he'd been asking about funeral arrangements for his sister (my grandma) for a while, so the moms decided to plan it. And use the event as a giant middle finger to me. They kept all the planning pretty hush-hush between the two of them, so no one on our side of the family actually knew about the funeral until like 2 weeks before. The moms said they'd invited hubby and I. No one thought anything about it. No one thought to mention, confirm, or check with me.
The plan was to scatter the ashes, say a few words, and maybe head to town for lunch. It was a small affair. The mom's didn't even tell the family that our great uncle was coming for it. Like I said, it was a small thing. Barely a footnote. No one thought it was odd because we're pretty chill people.
4th of July happens. Hubby and I are out. No one thought to mention it, as we were all busy celebrating and having a great time. Any time the topic of "this weekend" would start, the conversation would be quickly shifted by one of the moms. We went back home.
8th of July happens. Great uncle rolls into town with a few of his kids, grandkids, and great grandkids, and it's a surprise to everyone (but the moms). Everyone drives to the maple grove and the moms have brought a ton of food and stuff. It's a full blown party. No one on my side noticed I wasn't there, because there were so many extra faces outside the usual group. They did the spreading of the ashes, they said their words, they ate, they had a great time. It wasn't until our great uncle left, and all his side left with him, that they realized I wasn't there. And hadn't been there.
And this is where the crazy went up a notch. My brother says the moms were happy no one noticed I wasn't there. And that this was proof to everyone that I needed to move back because I was so easily forgotten about. Because none of them thought to reach out, right? They basically did a ton of guilt tripping manipulation bullshit and it made everyone upset at me for not showing up. Somehow it was my fault for being excluded. So suddenly everyone was on their side with "sticking it to me".
But then a few months went by, and tempers cooled, and then I guess the horror of it set in. Followed by the shame, but by then they were "in too deep". How do you undo something like this? And since I hadn't brought it up, I guess they figured they would all just stay quiet about it and hope I never asked about a funeral.
That's when I discovered the situation from my great uncle's Facebook and called my mom, who panicked and went with the stupidest solution. Claiming I was there. Don't I remember?
I ended up talking with a few friends from high school, mentioning the situation, and word got back to those in town. So suddenly town gossip and little old church ladies got involved. Was I, or wasn't I at the funeral? Did my family forget to invite me to the funeral of the only grandparents I'd ever know? Or am I just causing a ruckus? My brother said they all just went with mom's answer. Of course they wouldn't forget me. Of course I was there. Of course they're good people. And it just snowballed.
The family expected me to eventually fold. I'm usually a nonconfrontational person, so me sticking to my guns was unexpected. And then I missed Thanksgiving. And now Christmas. With no sign of backing down. And I guess the realization that I could just stop being part of their lives is setting in and my parents are panicking. He's tried just getting them to apologize and explain, but stubbornness prevails. They want to rug sweep, but I'm not letting them.
My brother is upset with everything that's happened. He's realized just how crappy it all has been and he wants nothing to do with it anymore. But since he lives with my mom, he can't "get away from it".
He has asked if he can come stay with us for a little bit. I spoke with hubby, and he's in agreement with me that my brother can come crash in our spare bedroom for as long as he wants. Brother works remotely, so it's no trouble for him to pick up and go. I believe he's making the trip today or tomorrow. Not entirely sure, but I expect crap to hit the fan when he arrives.
On a side note, hubby's stoked that my brother and I made up. The two usually game together, but haven't due to "the situation". He's downstairs right now setting up his man cave in preparation for my brother's arrival. I'm happy to see him so excited.  
Brother's Here: December 27, 2023
My brother rolled in late last night. He'd obviously been crying and when I opened the door, he just held me and sobbed. I'd never seen him like that before and soon both of us were just standing in the doorway crying into one another. He kept apologizing. Over and over again. Said he wasn't sure why he went with it. Just kept saying sorry. Hubby got him all set up in the spare bedroom while brother and I talked. My brother's a wreck. He's always been a big guy, but he's lost a lot of weight and his clothes just hang off him. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was on drugs. We talked for a little bit before bed and he re-explained everything for my husband. I'd told hubby the story, but it was just so weird that hearing it again helped.
This morning my brother was up at dawn making some coffee and getting his work day going. Hubby's off all week (lucky) so hubby made us working folk some pancakes and bacon. So far everything's peaceful. We've decided not to answer any calls from our family. They've been made aware that he arrived safely, and that we are going to spend the New Years together, and that we're not answering any calls until January 1st. They may text if they wish. I'm sure they're losing their minds. Serves them right.
Everyone, have a safe and happy new years! Don't drink and drive!  
Happy 2024!: January 2, 2024
I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable holidays, and may the new year be full of joy and happiness!
Not too much of an update. Things here have been quiet. My brother's settled in nicely and he's a great housemate. Our place isn't very big, but we have full basement and a nice outside patio/porch area so it doesn't feel crowded at all with the extra addition. He's a quiet and clean guy. No hassle at all. He got some fresh clothes from the Walmart, a haircut, and trimmed his beard, so he's more "presentable" now. He's a lady killer when he gets cleaned up. He's made nice with the (very nosy, but kind) retired couple next door and is adapting to "city living" nicely.
Folks back home have been mostly well behaved. There's been a few texts back and forth, as we're not answering calls. Mom mainly wants to know when brother's coming back, but he's keen on staying here for a while. Mom said I can't "keep him" and I told her he's a grown ass man and can do what he wants. Brother says he has her blocked after she ORDERED him to return home.
Brother has tentatively asked if he could stay long term, should he decide to, or at least longer than a usual visitor would stay. Which we're fine with. He has a good paying job and could afford an apartment, but he's never lived on his own and I would guess he has some anxiety about it. Should that be the case, he'll start paying us some rent and we'd probably adjust to give him the basement as his own space.  
Had to change the locks: January 17, 2024
My brother is officially staying with us for the long haul. Hubby and him spent all Sunday organizing the basement and shifting things around so he now has his own area to be comfortable in. He's pretty handy and has also started fixing little things around our house. Our windows and doors have never closed and locked/unlocked smoother. He even fixed one of the closets we never use because we can never get the darn door open. Sadly, he also had to change the locks on our house and get us all new keys.
This is because while hubby and I were out this Saturday, the moms showed up. They'd been calling and texting us all week, but we weren't really answering them, so I guess the two decided to drive over and hash it out in person. They have emergency keys to my place, and just let themselves in. Brother told them to leave, they argued, and my nosy (but kind) neighbors called the police when they noticed the commotion. So, we get a call from neighbor's wife, return home to some cops in our yard, all the neighbors out "vacuuming their trees", and my nosy (but kind) neighbors standing on my porch with my brother behind them, doing their best Gandalf "You shall not pass" impression.
Had to talk with the cops, explain that we were having a family dispute and word vomited. I don't really remember what all I said, and was shaking a lot. Our local cops are really great. Fantastic guys and gals in blue, and took it all in stride. It's really cold here, so one had me join him in his cruiser with the heat on, and gave me a bottle of water to calm down while we talked. They asked if we wanted the moms trespassed but I wasn't sure if that counted as a criminal charge so just asked the cops if they could just make them leave, which the cops did with no fuss. I think the moms were shocked we were taking this so seriously. They didn't fight or scream at us. Just left quietly.
My dad promised me he'd make sure his wife left us alone. "Or else". He said he'd also have a stern talk with my mom. Him and I talked Sunday morning, and he seemed absolutely at the end of his rope. Husband jokingly told my dad he could move in, too. To which he declined.
Not sure where to go from here, but we're getting some ring cameras installed once they arrive. And everyone but my dad is blocked. Hopefully they all just leave us alone.  
Nothing New To Report: February 2, 2024
Had a lot of DMs for updates, but don't have much anything to report on. The moms are behaving themselves. All's quiet on the western front. Felt weird ignoring or copy/pasting "no updates" to everyone, so here's what we've been doing, should anyone care.
Dad got a new bird/squirrel feeder from Amazon (looks like a little picnic table for a child's dolly but has a mesh top for the bird seed. I think it's supposed to be for chickens?) It's totes adorbs. To his horror, it also works as a Cooper hawk feeder, so now he's "fortifying his defenses" and putting up some trellises around it. He'll have to wait till warmer weather before planting anything to grow on them.
We had some ring cameras installed and put in a motion-activated camera that double functions as a light bulb. It goes in the light fixture outside the front door and is pretty cool. Video quality isn't all that great, but it's a nice addition I guess. It does overlook the bird feeders, so I've been watching it on my lunch breaks on the days I have to go into the office.
Hubby and brother are feuding. They started a coop farm in Stardew Valley a few days ago and they both want to romance Leah. My husband confided in me that he's also been romancing Sebastian as a backup. I'm not sure why he's keeping this a secret, but he's pretty smug about it.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
fractal_frog I hope your dad can outsmart the hawks!

OOP: He'll be able to, I just know it. He's used to dealing with the wildlife and having hawks about, but he just wasn't expecting one to snag a meal right from his new feeder.
I told him it was "technically" still a bird feeder. Just....for bigger birds. Which he thought was funny. He said he might make a little "no hawks allowed" sign to put up next to it.

MissOP: keep the updates coming. the moms are so close to folding it's just a little bit more. LMAO also, the bro mance between your husband and brother is so cute. lol Honestly, I think your husband making sure he has a side piece of Sebastian is absolutely the play.

OOP: So far still no word from the moms, but I hope you're right. I would love an apology and for us to begin moving past this. But I NEED that apology. I feel selfish saying that, but I refuse to "be the bigger person" on this. I just won't.
As for my brother and husband, yeah, they're basically soul mates. The two hit it off immediately when they first met, and they've been thick as thieves for years.  

Update: February 27, 2024
My dad came out for a visit over the weekend. We had a good time and the weather was lovely for some grilling and beers. It was really nice to see him again and he seemed healthy and in good spirits.
Here's his report from back home: Step mom (dad's wife) has started to realize she's screwed up. I credit her change of mindset to the fact that my dad sat her down and laid it out for her: she leaves his kids alone, or she's getting divorce papers. That apparently shut her up right quick, because they had a prenup done when they married and I'm not sure the details of it, but it wouldn't end favorably for her. She hasn't worked in years, so I imagine she'd be eligible for alimony? But I'm not versed in any of that legal mumbojumbo. Dad didn't seem too worried about it, so I'm not gonna worry about it.
Step dad was pissed the police were involved in the last "mom visit" (despite no one getting arrested or anything) and was in a "the kids are out of control and need to be reigned back in" mindset. When my dad pointed out that "the kids" in question were all in their mid-30s, it took some of the steam out of stepdad's sails. According to my dad, even my mom looked a little surprised when he said that. So, part of me is wondering if a good chunk of this whole thing is my mom not truly realizing that her kids were grown, and no longer children she could make demands of. Both of the moms have left us alone. I expected my mom to continue to kick up a fuss, but I think the cops spooked her.
There was a wonderful suggestion by a comment or to get their pastor involved, which I passed along to my dad. Dad has since spoken to their pastor about everything. He's a young guy, relatively new to their church, and joked that his first month on the job he had to do 3 funerals in a row and his new "flock" were just dying to get away from him, so he's got a sense of humor which is nice. The new pastor agreed to sit down with everyone and help the family hash it all out in a true "Come to Jesus" type moment next month, so that maybe we could celebrate Easter together as our first holiday as a family. Dad said the pastor was aware our family was having some troubles, but unsure of exactly what was going on, and since he was new, the pastor didn't want to pry. He has also agreed to do a small service down at my uncle's maple grove later in the summer, as it usually floods and is a muddy mess all spring. According to my dad, my aunt and uncle are so over all the drama and just ready to move on, so I expect hugs and apologies from them when we next meet.
Stardew Valley Update: My brother was victorious in the grand fight for Leah. It was a hard battle. Well fought. When my husband exposed his plans to woo Sebastian all this time, it was quite the betrayal. Dramatics aside, their farm is really cute and I'm so happy they're enjoying the game!  
Update 4/1 - Final one I think - April 1, 2024
Happy April Fools everyone! I hope you all check your caramel apples for stray onions before taking a bite! I also hope your Easter weekend was a delightful one.
It is with great joy that I tell you all about our most recent update! Possibly even a conclusion to this whole ordeal.
The entire family (aunt, uncle, moms, dads, brother, me, husband) and pastor met at my dad's house and we all sat down to hash the situation out. As expected from what my dad said, my aunt and uncle greeted us all with apologies and hugs, which was nice. My uncle usually helps host the Easter egg hunts with the church and he brought our Easter baskets to give to us in case us kids weren't sticking around the for the weekend. I'm not sure why but seeing it made me tear up and feel stupid, because it was just a basket of candy but it meant a lot to me for some reason.
The pastor led us in a prayer and talked about forgiveness and such. He then asked us all to talk one at a time about how we're feeling and what we want the end result of today to be. No one was allowed to interrupt so everyone got to talk. It was nice. The consensus for the group was that most everyone wanted things to go back to "normal". The only ones who had any variance off this was my mom and step dad. They both wanted all us kids to move back to the area.
The pastor asked them why they wanted us back, and neither could give a good reason other than "because family", and the pastor asked us if we were thriving where we were. And we said we were. He asked if we were happy there. Which we were. He then asked my mom and step dad if they wanted us to give up our happiness to make them happy.
And Mom broke down and said no. We all had a good cry. The pastor then asked about the funeral and lies that led up to it and followed it and how it made us all feel and what we wished we'd done differently if we had the chance. It was all very emotional, but in a good way, you know? Everyone apologized and admitted they f-ed up and did a really crappy thing.
We all talked for a long, long time and the pastor was a great mediator. Eventually we all reached some sort of resolution and I think we're good now. Emotions are still high and a little raw in areas, but we stayed for Easter weekend and had a nice time. We're going to keep moving forward slowly and try to repair the relationship, but I believe we're well and truly out of the woods.
As for my brother, he's still staying with us, and mom will stop trying to guilt trip him back home. He's thinking about renting a small apartment in our area but we're not pushing him to make a decision. He knows he's welcome to stay as long as he wants. I think he wants to try dating (he's had a few girlfriends but never anything serious) and is embarrassed to bring any girls around our place, lol. He's been going to a few random classes/bookclubs at the local library for something free to do and hitting it off with all the little old ladies who attend, and they keep trying to hook him up with girls his age who they know. He has been on a few lunches/coffee dates with a couple girls, but I think he's too embarrassed by the attention to give it a real try at "dating" any of them. He's happy, though, which is all I could ask for.
I'm not sure if there will be any more updates, as I think it's all be resolved about as much as it can be at the moment. I wanted to thank you all for your words of advice and giving me a place to vent and scream into the void. Please be kind to one another and to yourselves. Thank you.
Relevant Comments
emjkr: What a nice and hopeful update, I’m really glad you stuck to your guns when everyone threw sanity out the window!
But, could your mother explain how she thought this would work out in her favour?

OOP: I don't think mom thought too far ahead. I believe she assumed it would all just magically work out the way she wanted it to. She said she wasn't sure what she was expecting to happen (which I think was a lie, but I wasn't going to push it).

mak_zaddy: This was a great update! But ummmmmm no stardew valley update? What gives? Has Sebastian been woo’ed? How’s Leah? What’s happening?

OOP: Sebastian has indeed been wooed (and whoohooed) There's kids and cows and chickens. The two are still having a wonderful time at the game. They're working on completing the community center but it's slow going as they aren't trying to speedrun and just doing things as they want. I believe they're thinking about going into the desert mines once they complete that bundle, but they're both super chicken shit about it!

-my-cabbages: I don't really understand what you had to apologize for ... but I'm glad you're happy and the situation seems to be settling down

OOP: There wasn't much of an apology on my end, as everyone agreed I had done nothing wrong. Mine was more of a "I'm sorry you didn't feel as though I would listen." Type apology, which I don't really believe is a proper apology because apologies like that push the blame back on another. I mostly expressed my feelings and the shock of it all, and how betrayed I felt.  

----NEW UPDATE----

Small, happy update: May 7, 2024 (1 month later)
Things as wonderful as the moment. Still doing baby steps with The Moms. We're texting and talking on the phones more, which is nice. Very civil.
Dad "accidentally" bought a bunch of hand crafted bird feeders at a craft fair. By accidentally, I mean: he had a little too much fun in the beer tent, went for a stroll while step mom wasn't looking, and stumbled upon a guy's booth and bought "one of each". He wouldn't tell me how MANY "one of each" was, but he cackled like a witch when I asked. Step mom said she's forcing him to give a few to me, so I'm expecting a delivery or a Dad-visit any day now.
My brother is officially "going steady" with a girl. We've met her a few times and she seems like a real sweetheart. She's our age and has a little boy (5-6 years old, I haven't asked) from a previous relationship (The dad's not in the picture from what I can gather). She's the granddaughter of one of his Book Club members, so the old ladies made good match makers in the end. The relationship is still very new and I'm routing for them.
No new Stardew Valley updates. Work has been a little crazy lately and I haven't been able to play much of anything, and brother has been distracted by his new lady friend. So, husband finally started Baldur's Gate 3, and fell for Gale's "magic trick" so now those two are a thing. I expect him to be sufficiently distracted from reality for the next few weeks.
 

DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP

there has been allot of complaints about game balance as of late, however it would seem as though no one is willing to provide what changes/additions they want. It feels as though there has not been enough discussion around how to fix game balance, or what people want to see in game. I want to see what ideas the community can come up with so, I put it to you fellow helldivers what changes, buffs, additions would you like to see in the near future? I'll go first...
I want to focus on stratagems first as it seems as though primaries have been receiving most of the attention lately, and some stratagems seem to be falling behind
Machine Gun Sentry:
the M.G.S is in every way inferior to the gatling sentry thus leaving us no reason to use it so let's change that
-multiply the ammo in the mag x4
-add a blast shield to the front making it semi-immune to frontal explosive and mele dmg
-slightly increase hp
-increase agro draw (not Shure how else to Frase that)
these changes would add a large amount of sustainability to the M.G.S allowing it to be more of a nuisance/ distraction to the enemy filling a kind of small add clear and tanking roll in the sentry lineup
Rocket sentry:
as of right now the R.S is somewhat redundant with the autocannon sentry doing effectively the same thing but better in every way, so let's change its roll
-increase fire rate 10x
-decrease cooldown time to 100s down from 180s
-change targeting so it only fires at heavily armored targets and prioritizes by health
this would hopefully change the R.S to fill a somewhat similar roll as the E.A.T, that being you call it in to delete one or two targets quickly before it has the chance to delete you

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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."
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My father had a stroke in November, i was the one who drove him to the hospital , got him a social security lawyer. My siblings (6 of us) started giving them 50$ each week to help out. Yeasterday i drove an hour to give my mom some flowers for mothers day . She just said thank you in an unhappy way and asked me for the money . Took my little sister to church, and she tells me how they are going on a trip to Florida,
I went home and cried , im 8k in debt with my own bills paying them to go to Florida? Today, i told my sister about it and a minute later my mom was blowing up my phone . Started the conversation with i heard you have a problem with me and i was like hey mom , hope your doing great im doing well. I asked her how she can afford Florida when we are paying her weekly for bills ?And she went on saying that if i hate them so much i can cut me off and my little sister is trying to kill herself because of me and two of my sisters are depressed because of me . And then said im a prostitute and no wonder my boyfriend doesn’t want to marry me . Threw my teenage years against me ( i was a troubled teen who would run away to get away from them) .
She then began telling me how expensive her 13 year old daughter’s psychiatrist bills are. As if i gave birth to that child . My sister has to be on xanax at the age of 13, because she made comments at school that she knows where my dads guns are and shes going to shoot up the school./ (BTW i am blamed for this. Behavior) even tho i told my mom the signs she wasnt okay.
I told my boyfriend about it after she blocked me she blew his phone up while he was at work . 6 calls he called after work and she switched to victim mode saying she doesnt know why i hate her and basically telling him i dont know why she wont marry you , your a great guy . In a way that makes me seem like im using him. He read right through her and basically he told her that im processing trauma thats happen to me and they just need to love me through it and she went on basically saying its me who cut her off and if i dont want to be part of the family its on me not them .
Today was also my one year anniversary with my boyfriend he posted a picture of me on our date saying happy anniversary in the family group chat and no one cared to congratulate us. I honestly feel like my family hates me . The love is fake im in an internal crisis right now . My siblings fake like me . They honestly wanted me to fail in life , seeing that im doing welll doesnt sit right with them . I can tell because they never happy for me just point whats wrong with me . Its sad . My inner child is sad . I just wish my mom loved me for me not what she can benefit off me .

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.