Buckle up buttercup, we're going on a wild ride following some campaign donation money intended to support a republican primary in the state of Ohio in 2018.
I originally intended on writing a post on my buddy Sean Cooksey, the crooked FEC chairman who is engaged in a conspiracy to allow any and all sorts of corruption involving campaign donations to republican candidates, in order to support yesterdays post I wrote involving creative uses of legalese to advance a pre planned determination.
Instead, I found a rabbit hole for your summer reading that is now intended to prove just how big of a fool it would take to donate to the republican party and how many hands are in the cookie jar before your hard earned dollars find their way to buy the TV ads that you thought you were buying.
The document I'm drawing from is the second General Counsels report regarding MUR 7464. Since this post is about the money trail itself, I won't get into too much about why this investigation was happening, how much money the players are dealing with outside of this narrow scope, or the results of the investigation.
So let's look at the original donations, all of which happened in 2018.
The first is a representative of assisted living communities which donated 50k on March 14
Then there is an individual directed directly by the candidate Ryan Smith to donate 100k on April 3rd.
The last is a 501c who donated 350k total, of which 150k was donated on March 27th. This company took in millions in donations from a power company called American Electric Power.
All of this money was transfered to another 501c called Ohio Works. For those playing at home, this is 300k total. Because of the murky transactions between AEP, the redacted 501c, and Ohio Works, the total disbursement is 352k
Now we move on to yet another 501c named IFN owned by a guy named Ray McVeigh. McVeigh had 2 guys working for him named Norris and Riter. On March 7th OhioWorks transferred 30k. March 28th, 200k, April 6th, 120k, and on May 5th, they transferred 2k for a total of 352k
Norris and Riter created an LLC named LZP which was treated as a disregarded entity to the IRS. You might say, hey, I create LLC's by accident all the time so why are we hassling these guys?
Well, it turns out that our boys also created the ironically named Honor PAC which is an "independent" expenditure only company. Must have had a good laugh at the independant part in that name. You should have read the assertions in the first report. The objective reader was misled by these 3 when they completely hoodwinked the investigation into thinking that IFN, LZP, and Honor PAC couldn't possibly be, in any way, related.
Ok, back to the money that now is transferred from IFN to LZP. On March 28th, 180k. On April 6th, 50k. On April 17th, 6k, and on October 17th, 35k. This is a total of 271k. Is it me, or is this pie getting smaller?
Now LZP to Honor PAC. On March 28th 175k. On April 6th, 50k. On April 18th 10k, and on October 19th, 35k, for a total of 270k. Hey, at least they only siphoned off a thousand bucks on this pass. Probably to pay for the filing fees of the company they accidentally created.
Then on finally, whew, to Target Enterprises LLC who you will find all over the republican FEC filing lists. Also SOM media LLC. The payments received from these entities were to pay for the ad campaigns, undoubtedly after, yet another round of administrative fees would be taken out of the kitty. The total amount paid to these entities was $227, 838
So there you have it. How to turn 352k into 227 and change, the republican way.
By the way, what's the dealio with our accidental LLC by McVeighs associates Norris and Riter? Well, it turns out that there are election laws in place which try to prevent obfuscation but all of this layering is effective at masking the siphoning and kick backs.
The redacted donors ponied up the 352k. They had no idea what Ohio works was doing. Ohio works had no idea what IFN was doing. IFN's McVeigh had no idea what his directors were doing when everything but his nice kickback went to their company LZP. Norris and Riter said LZP was just an oopsie when it came to reporting where their company named Honor PAC got the money. And Target doesn't care where Honor PAC got it because it appears they were the only ones actually doing any business with the money. The investigation was scuttled by the FEC because they said that this information shouldn't even be known because they were only supposed to look at the shell companies
See? Nobody knows nuffin and that's exactly how the game is played
But now you know

Let's face it, we've all been there. Standing in front of the mirror, wondering how that extra layer crept around my middle. I spent countless hours scouring the internet for "easy belly fat burning" hacks, only to end up more confused than ever.

Here's what I learned: a six-pack might seem like a fantasy, but a healthy, toned stomach is absolutely achievable. The key is understanding what truly works. Buckle up, because I'm about to debunk some myths and share the exercises that fired up my belly fat-burning journey.
There's no magic bullet for effortless belly fat loss, but there are strategies that make it manageable. Consistency is king – small, sustainable changes add up. I started by aiming for at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise most days of the week. I also incorporated whole foods into my diet and prioritized sleep. These simple tweaks whittled away at my belly fat and left me feeling energized. Remember, "easy" doesn't mean "effortless," but with the right approach, you can create a sustainable routine that delivers real results.
The "keto" diet was everywhere, promising rapid weight loss. It emphasizes high fat, moderate protein, and very low carb intake. While keto can be effective for overall weight loss, it doesn't target belly fat specifically. Spot reduction is a myth. Consistency with a healthy keto plan, combined with exercise, will lead to overall fat loss, including belly fat.
The internet is full of "quick fixes" like detox teas and weird wraps. Unfortunately, most lack scientific backing and can even be harmful. Building sustainable habits is key. Think long-term – would you rather have a temporary fix or a lifestyle that promotes overall health and well-being?
The allure of "lose weight fast with pills" is tempting. But the truth is, these pills often lead to disappointment and potential health risks. There's no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise. Your body is a finely tuned machine, and adding foreign substances can disrupt its balance. If you're considering weight loss supplements, consult a doctor or registered dietitian.
Similar to weight loss pills, fat-burning supplements often make exaggerated claims. While some ingredients might show promise in studies, the results are rarely as dramatic as advertised. A balanced diet rich in whole foods, combined with regular exercise, is the most effective way to burn fat and keep it off.
Now, let's get to the good stuff – the exercises that helped me torch belly fat for good!
Cardio is the foundation. I aimed for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio or 75 minutes of vigorous cardio per week. Brisk walking, running, swimming, or cycling all elevate your heart rate and burn calories.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) maximizes fat-burning potential in less time. It alternates between short bursts of intense activity and recovery periods. Think jumping jacks followed by walking lunges, with short rest periods in between.
Strength training is a secret weapon! Building muscle increases your metabolic rate, meaning you burn more calories at rest. This translates to a more efficient fat-burning machine, even when you're not actively working out. Squats, lunges, push-ups, and rows are excellent for building strength and toning your entire body.
Core workouts go beyond just abs. Exercises like planks, Russian twists, and side bridges engage your entire core, which improves posture and stabilizes your spine during other exercises. This translates to better overall performance and potentially reduced risk of injury.
Remember: Consistency is key. Aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week. Mix and match different workouts to keep things interesting and challenge your body.
While I found exercise and a healthy diet to be the cornerstones of my belly fat-burning journey, I also discovered a helpful supplement called Ikaria Lean Belly Juice. It contains a blend of natural ingredients like milk thistle, dandelion, and resveratrol, which are all known to support healthy digestion and metabolism. I started noticing a difference in my energy levels and bloating after incorporating a daily scoop into my routine.
It definitely wasn't a magic bullet, but it felt like it gave my body a little extra boost alongside my diet and exercise efforts. I found it online after reading positive reviews from people with similar goals to mine. It's important to do your own research before trying any supplement, but Ikaria Lean Belly Juice was a helpful addition to my routine.
Don't forget about diet! Exercise is crucial, but a healthy diet plays an equally important role. Focus on whole, unprocessed foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein. Limit processed foods, sugary drinks, and unhealthy fats. This combination is the key to a flatter stomach and a healthier you.
The takeaway? Ditch the quick fixes and unrealistic expectations. Embrace a healthy lifestyle that combines a balanced diet with a variety of exercises you enjoy. Consistency is key, so find a routine that fits your life and gradually increase the intensity as you get stronger. Remember, a toned stomach is a result of dedication and self-care, and the most effective "hack" is the one you can stick with in the long run. Now get out there and conquer your belly fat goals – in a healthy and sustainable way!
Affiliate Disclosure: This article includes affiliate links to products. If you decide to purchase through these links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

I've been severely depressed for about 2 years when I really discovered how little control people actually have over their lives. People get offended when I tell them how lucky they are to be in the position they are in, often responding by saying that they've worked hard to get where they are. In truth, they are lucky, because at any moment some outside unforeseen force could cut that down in an instant.
My life has been at a standstill, I work a job I hate, I only have online friends which sometimes don't even seen to truly care,I don't feel joy so no hobbies or activities make me feel anything. I often find myself thinking how if things that were entirely out of control in my childhood were different, I'd be in a much better position. Then I realized that for people to realize how great their lives are, there have to be predetermined losers in life, and I'm one of them. For awhile, as a teenager, I thought that I was set for great things and that I would live comfortably and be on par with my peers. As my mid-20s crept in, I realized how naive this was, thinking that just because you have the drive or thought process to make it, you would.
A couple of close suicides made me realize how worthless it all is. Two people who had more than me, who had fulfilling relationships and successful lives, decided to call it quits. I stopped talking to anyone outside of the people I have to for work or my parents, to at least give the facade of a functioning adult. My best friend, who would honestly do anything to help, is no longer close enough for that to be possible.
I honestly lay in bed, awake, at the thought that this is the life that was chosen for me. How cruel is that? To do everything in your power to fix your life, only for abuse and health problems that were completely out of your control to destroy it. I find myself fantasizing about waking up in an alternate universe where things are just normal, where my shitty weeks and days are just that... weeks and days. Where I could have had all those core human experiences instead of my grey-goo malaise life of nothingness.
Anytime things are bad, I just imagine my memories of this other life. Even if they aren't real, they're something. I'd much rather eat an impossible burger than no food at all, you know? It's much better to imagine that I'm watching a good horror film with someone, than the reality of me sitting alone in my room. If reality is supposedly subjective, than why can't I take the adage from the Mythbusters, "I reject your reality and substitute my own". I'm glad this whole game/simulation/cruel reality works for others, good on them, but it's not working for me.
I guess I wrote all this out in hopes shouting into the expanses of the internet will return some advice, or someone else going through the same thing. I imagine with 8 billion people on the planet, there's bound to be one person going through the same programming/events I am. I'm just wondering how to parse through all of this...

Hi all!! I just finished my first round with Strider Mode. I have run ToR 1e once for a group, and had the 2e books gathering dust; and since I have started solo'ing, I dusted them off and got down to business.
This post is longer than it probably needs to be, but I have lots of thoughts.
A quick side observation, my first rpg (aside from Lone Wolf and Choose your own Adventure books) was the Red Box DnD. I have read many rpg books in my numerous years. But ToR 2e (and I would included 1e) books seem far more obtuse than other games. Nothing is easy to find, the index is not worth flipping to and there is not really a distilled action summary. It is all written in a very verbose, long-winded prose. And maybe that was what they were going for, but it doesn't work on a game reference book.
So, when my Ranger went off on her quest from her patron, I hit my first "uhhhhh" moment. She needed to travel to remote village to see what the Shadow may have wanted from it. Here is how I did it:

• Never figured out how to name the town, took 10 minutes to find the name of a dwarf I met along the way, and never bothered to name the Elves I met along the way.
• Plot on the map how I plan on going, then go to the hex map to see what I will be facing.
• Roll travel to see how many hexs I go (core page 110)
• Take result on the feat die and compare to the travel chart for solo journey events (strider book pg 17)
• Roll on the corresponding table based on the solo journey events result
  • This result will frequently require a skill roll (like hunting, explore, etc)
• Anytime I got an Eye or Gandalf, in any roll (combat, journey, skill) I would go to those tables (strider pg 8)
• Do this until I make it to the town, fight some wraiths (I think I got that right, but this post is long enough, so I will not walk through what I did)

This is how I ran the whole session. I enjoyed it and it worked, I am just not sure I was correct.
All in all it was a good experience, and start to this character's story. I have been running a solo AD&D 1e game with 6 characters and struggling for it to feel organic or like I had a story going. Maybe it was because I am a avid reader of Tolkien (well beyond LoTR or Hobbit), or maybe it was because it was one character but it worked more like I have started a story.
I am still struggling with the random tables, to define the scenario (action, aspect, focus in this game, Mythic and such for others). I am not great at it. I seem to have a block when doing it solo, but can do it better on the fly when I GM...go figure.
I really wished they had a cohesive rules summary in the book. It is just all over and hard to figure out what should be done and when. For instance, even on the loremaster screen it doesn't tell you what weary mechanically does...(1,2,3 are 0) In the combat section of the book it doesn't cover that part, it is back at the beginning of the book.
I did read the rules, but found more than once I ended the section and missed something pertinent, which as a good reader is frustrating!
I also desperately need a table of names. Names are so important in Middle Earth, and having to find the culture, then look through the names is bothersome. I spent a lot of time trying to name a town! There is nothing in the core to help me. Looking online for Tolkien name generators, well that is a rabbit hole.
So, it was a good time, but the book leaves a lot to be desired and makes it very difficult to run a smooth game.

☄️HexArchon

HexArchon is a Custom MMO-Inspired SMP with several gameplay features such as unique Custom Mobs, Items, Enchants, Boss Fights, Abilities, Quests, Worlds, and other areas to explore such as the Skylands and Dungeons.
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🔗Links

• Server Trailer
• Discord Server
• Wiki

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📖Our Values

We are a group of people with the ambition of creating something new and unique. We are always committed to putting quality work into gameplay. We love listening to community feedback and creating something that people enjoy.
Here are some of the values that we have pledged to:

• Community voice & transparency
  • We are fully committed to creating an environment where the community is heard. Anyone is welcome to provide suggestions, discuss them, and vote on them. We give updates to pending suggestions and are fully transparent about decisions made on the development of the server, as well as the reasonings. If there are any major changes up for debate, they will be voted on by the whole community.
• Huge range of free-to-choose playstyles
  • There are so many different ways to play and progress on the server, thanks to the wide range and combinations of abilities, stats, and custom items. For instance, you are up to what path they take on abilities. They can focus on ranged abilities for the perfect mage build, abilities that empower melee attacks for the maximum melee damage output, healing and damage resistance for support potential, and so much more! There are also 7 different stats you can level up to help them progress on the server, including strength, dexterity, intelligence, health, stamina, resistance, and criticals. HexArchon also provides a massive catalog of custom items each with unique skills to choose from many different play styles and builds. There are different weapon types such as long swords and greatswords that provide slow but heavy hits, daggers for fast and high DPS, staffs and other magic items for mage capabilities, and many different bows for ranged play styles.
  • Does all of this seem too complicated? No problem! You are free to play casual survival, even with cosmetics such as custom-modeled furniture, pets, decorative heads, and a shop containing a huge category of building blocks and items to enhance your builds. What’s great is that these are all optional additions - there is nothing preventing you from enjoying Vanilla Minecraft.
• Trust & respect
  • We are committed to being transparent, honest, and a group that you can personally trust. We will help players out, enforce rules if needed, and even have casual discussions.
• Dedicated updates
  • We are always looking forward to adding new and fresh content to the server for an always-improving experience on HexArchon. This ranges from anything such as new items, mobs, boss fights, dungeons, and frequently, ideas from the community.

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🎮Gameplay Mechanics

• Custom Mobs - We take pride in the distinctive traits of each mob. Each of our custom mobs are drafted and developed from scratch, featuring their own unique skills and behaviors. There are over 200 different custom mobs in total.
  • Regular Mobs
  • There are plenty of custom mobs that spawn across the Overworld, Nether, and End, with unique traits including attacks and skills. Custom mobs can drop money, exp, ability points, and custom materials for crafting custom items!
  • World Bosses
  • You may also encounter mini-bosses when exploring. Mini bosses have a lot more health than regular mobs and have more challenging attacks than normal custom mobs. They also drop larger amounts of money, exp, ability points, and can drop custom materials and even exclusive items!
  • Mini Bosses
  • World bosses are bosses that can be summoned in the Overworld, Nether, and End. They may require teamwork to defeat as they have a lot of health and are more difficult than other bosses. World Bosses can drop custom materials used to craft exclusive, high-tier items.
  • Arena Bosses
  • Arena bosses can be challenged solo or with up to 4 players. You will encounter bosses of varying difficulties as you progress, so watch out! Defeat the arena bosses to unlock new regions to explore.
• Custom Items - There are many different types of custom items you can obtain. There are different weapon types for each category of weapons. Melee weapons include swords, katanas, daggers, long swords, greatswords, thrusting swords, spears, greatstaffs, hammers, and axes. All item types have varying attributes; for instance, daggers can sustain high DPS due to their fast attack speed, and greatswords have slow attack speeds but high damage per-hit. Magic weapons include staffs, catalysts, wands, and consumables. All custom items have unique abilities that you can use and even combo with other abilities. Custom items can also be upgraded and have runes applied to them to enhance them even further.
• Custom Enchants - There are more than 240 custom enchantments all geared toward unique builds and uses. There are a huge variety of ways to obtain custom enchantments. They can be obtained from the shop with in-game money, enchanting tables, villager trades, dungeon loot chests and completion rewards, crates, fishing, supply drops, daily rewards, and server events. Enchantments can be upgraded and stacked onto multiple armor pieces to grant even more power.
• Dungeons - Unlock and explore dungeons to discover ruins and obtain various exclusive loot! Complete various objectives and battle with gatekeepers, mini-bosses, and defeat the final boss to complete the dungeon! There are many hidden side objectives as well, so keep your eyes out!
• Quests - There are more than 180 quests of varying types and difficulties. There are three varying difficulty levels of daily quests that each include a full-completion bonus. There are repeatable quests that you can start and finish at any time. There are also hardcore quests that may take a lot of effort to accomplish, but pay out the most. Each quest may ask you to locate and slay certain mobs, mine ores, interact with mobs, defeat varying levels of bosses, and much more.
• Abilities - Obtain points from slaying custom mobs and bosses, and use them to unlock and upgrade abilities! Some abilities may contribute to a ranged mage build, a close-range melee build, or any build that you want!
• Stats - Use XP to upgrade 7 different stats of your character! Stats can grant boosters to your abilities and custom items, such as attack damage, cooldown reduction, health/mana regeneration, attack speed, and much more.
• Auto Farms - Auto farms can be bought and utilized to ease the management of your farms. They feature upgrades such as crop growth speed, radius, and collection bin size. Make sure to keep them fueled!
• Furnaces - Furnaces can be enchanted to grant them special attributes. This includes increased smelting speeds, smelting multipliers, fuel duration, and fuel conservation.
• Furniture - You can purchase many different furniture models to further decorate your builds! Some furniture can also be interacted with.
• Player Shops - Build and run your own shop to sell items to other players!
• Pets - You can purchase a variety of modeled pets to follow you around! You can also rename them, ride them, and showcase them around.
• Fishing - Fishing can be quite extraordinary on HexArchon! Try it and see… :) May involve some creatures and deaths.
• Quality-of-life Improvements -
  • Discord Link: Talk with in-game players from Discord!
  • Keep Inventory: Never lose your items. You will still lose a partial amount of money though, so watch out!
  • Rollbacks: Ability to track and roll back any griefs - just open a ticket!
  • Invisible Item Frames: Label your chests with invisible item frames that you can click through.
  • Custom Armor Stands: Tweak your armor stands to the perfect postures you want.

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🖥️Technicals

We strongly prioritize server performance and responsiveness. Not only do we put focus on resource utilization during development, but we also have powerful top-of-the-line hardware that the server runs on.
The server is run on dedicated hardware with the following specifications: * CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K * RAM: 4800MHz 16GB * Storage: 512GB x2 NVME SSD * Hosted on the US East Coast.
We guarantee strict, zero-lag gameplay. If you are having any issues with lag, open a ticket and we will gladly help you out - even if it’s not the server’s fault.
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🚪Joining

• Server IP: play.hexarchon.net
• Supports Bedrock (Port 19132).

Thanks for reading! We hope to see you on :)

I've been thinking a lot this week about my experiences with my (much loved) AtGames and A1U vpins. Custom machines are great, but ease of use and the ability to purchase licensed tables will always have a draw. I think the 4k, with a few missteps, is a good attempt to move the market forward, but here are the things I see as essential for a machine to truly dominate the market and make homebrew unnecessary.
1). This one is the hardest to achieve - licensing deals with all manufacturers for the rights to create digital representations of actual tables. Most consumer friendly would be if those deals were not exclusive, so there could be multiple options for software and hardware.
2). Closely related to #1, and likely equally hard. Permanent offline mode licensing. This is something AtGames got right. Part of the pinball appeal is the physicality and sense of ownership. I think even substantially upping the price to "own" a table would be meet favorably if it felt truly permanent (maybe physical media with some kind of HASP solution?)
3). Displays. Full size 4k backglass and playfield, 120hz playfield, DMD, and maybe even separate apron cards.
4). SSF, complete with solenoids, shakers, exciters, subs, etc.
5). Powerful processor to allow for...
6). Head tracking. This is the main missing piece. The demos on YouTube are incredible, and I have played some pinball in VR and it is absolutely a game changer to have the playfield respond as you move your head to really view all aspects of the field.
What else would you add?

TL;DR - I cannot summarize this post because I feel that it is necessary to read it entirely in order to fully understand the point I am trying to make. If you do not like this post that is ok, but if you decide to downvote it, please read it entirely before doing so. Thank you.

Call to Action

SuperStonk, since the beginning we have always strived to do everything in our power to protect our investments. We migrated subreddits multiple times, we established backup communication outlets, we moved brokerages and called them to demand our shares not be lent out, we backed up our DD, and eventually we learned about direct registration and DRSed our shares. If we take a step back in time to when we originally started to DRS our shares, there were two main reasons for it: the obvious one was to attempt at locking the float, but the other reason was to protect our shareholders rights. Now that we are in the end game, why should we stop now? I know there are a wide range of opinions on GameStop's recent corporate actions. The events that have occurred over the past few weeks have left thousands of shareholders with concerns. You may not agree with them, but the reality is that they are there, and they are real shareholders. I've read through their comments all over this subreddit, as well as everywhere else. My goal with this post is to remind everyone that we as shareholders have the right to let our voices be heard. We own billions in this company, and our voices are more powerful than some of you may think. This is the exact reason I created this petition, to express my concerns to GameStop. I also emailed GameStop investor relations.

Recent Events

A few weeks ago, Roaring Kitty returned and lit the internet on fire with a barrage of memes on X. Perhaps he knew something was coming. Around the same time, the volume and volatility of the stock came to life like it hasn't in years. It is clear as day that this increase in volume and volatility has nothing to do with Roaring Kitty, but rather there's something under hood occurring that is driving the price action. Whether its obligations from leaps, swaps, ETF rebalancing, or any of the other many possibilities, its clear something big is happening. During the week of May 13-17, the price of GME actually touched $80. By May 17, the price had fallen and was consolidating in the $30 range, when GameStop announced a 45 million share "at-the-market offering" and "first quarter preliminary results". On May 24, GameStop announced the completion of the share offering, having raised $933.4 million. The "acquisitions and investments" language in the filing led many to speculate that maybe GameStop needed to quickly raise capital for a merger deal that was already underway, perhaps to be announced the week of earnings and the annual shareholder's meeting.
After a brief silence, Roaring Kitty posted his absolutely insane position to SuperStonk for the world to see. At this point, the behavior of MSM and various actors on social media made it clear that whoever is on the other side of that bet is very, very scared. This past week, we saw the volume and volatility of the stock begin to churn again. By Thursday, June 6 we were seeing violent upward price action in the stock. After this price action had already begun, Roaring Kitty scheduled a livestream on his YouTube channel for the next day, July 7 at noon est. Again it was clear that something under the hood was driving the stock, as it began before Roaring Kitty posted his livestream. During after hours Thursday night, the price hit over $60. On Friday morning, GameStop announced another 75 million share "at-the-market offering" and disclosed their first quarter results, even though those had previously been scheduled to release on June 11.

The Downsides

Although GameStop adding a few billion dollars to the balance sheet is extremely bullish for the long-term outlook of the company, that doesn't mean it didn't come without downsides. Once the current share offering is completed, the result will be a combined 120 million new shares sold into the market, representing an almost 40% dilution. This obviously adds liquidity to the stock, which is upsetting to many because we spent 3 years DRSing at least 75 million shares, which had resulted in GME becoming very illiquid. In particular, I feel the need to call into question the timing of the second share offering, as that is what bothers me the most. Going into Friday, it really looked like that run had legs, and there was a ton of hype in anticipation of Roaring Kitty's stream. GameStop chose to announce the share offering before pre-market trading on Friday morning, and by market open the price of the stock had fallen dramatically. This resulted in a huge loss of call premium in GME, on a Friday, and the same day as Roaring Kitty's livestream no less. Call holders aside, I have to question this timing even from the perspective of the company's best interest. Could GameStop have raised more capital, with fewer shares, if they had waited until a later time/day? We can tell by the volume on Friday that something was still churning under the hood. Let's imagine the potential if they let the stock run, let Roaring Kitty do his thing, and let all of those calls expire in the money to drive the price action into next week. For me, and many of the comments I've seen, this timing is very troubling.

GameStop vs Roaring Kitty?

The interpretations of Roaring Kitty's ATM meme, his memes the morning of the first 45 million share offering (May 17), and his "Happy Birthday from GameStop" comment in his livestream yesterday are still being debated. To me, his memes the morning of May 17 seemed negative. He posted a crying meme face under the Kitty mask, and the first meme of that morning was the only one off-schedule that entire week. His birthday comment yesterday also seemed like blatant sarcasm to me "wrap it up in a gift or some shit". Thus, I personally think these offerings surprised him, but that is just my opinion, I could be completely wrong.
Is all of this part of some master plan that is yet to be revealed? Is each party simply acting in their own best interest? Or is there something more going on here? Unfortunately, I don't have those answers, but I feel like the question is important at this stage in the game, so I wanted to at least mention it.

MOASS

There's been some controversy lately between those that are more interested in the long-term potential of GameStop vs those who are here for MOASS. For me, it has always been about MOASS, and after MOASS of course a lot of those gains will go right back into GME. If you're in the MOASS camp with me, don't fret, I still think MOASS is very much on the table, it could even be right around the corner. There are a lot of possibilities that could play out over the next few weeks. We know something big is still churning in the stock, Roaring Kitty's 120,000 calls don't expire until June 21, and the shorts are terrified. It is very possible that the stock will start running hard as soon as GameStop lets us know that the share offering is complete.
Although it may seem that way, my main goal with this petition and post is not to criticize GameStop's recent corporate actions, as that won't really result in anything productive anyways. Instead, I want to focus on voicing my concerns about the possibility of similar actions moving forward, particularly the next few weeks. For this reason, I left all of my opinions from this post out of the petition. I tried to keep it to one simple statement that I hope most can agree with. We do not have a once in a lifetime in front of us, we have a once in history opportunity in front of us. Roaring Kitty is back, he holds 120,000, and the stock is alive. It is time for MOASS. It is time to let our voices be heard. Let the stock run.

The Petition

I created a petition through Change.org, here is the url: https://www.change.org/p/petition-to-the-gamestop-board-of-directors
Here are the contents of the petition:
Petition to the GameStop Board of Directors
I am a shareholder of GME stock, and I am petitioning the GameStop Board of Directors to not release another "at-the-market offering" or unscheduled negative press release at a pivotal moment of the next significant movement of the stock.
I want to be clear, I have no intention of seeking or taking any legal action with this petition. I will not be submitting it any court. It is simply a public, online petition that I created to let my voice be heard. I know that many shareholders have chosen to remain anonymous (myself included). If you'd like to sign it, you can sign it with your name or anonymously (I created and signed this petition with the name "Anonymous Shareholder").
If you want to sign it, but you have additional concerns, feel free to express that via the "Reasons for signing" comment section.
If you don't want to sign it, but you have your own concerns, know that you can always email GameStop's investor relations. I did.
If you do not agree with this petition and you don't want to sign it, that is perfectly ok. Please be respectful to those with concerns.

To the Longgggg crowd

I know that some of you have an investment thesis that is more interested in GameStop's long-term potential. You think GameStop will become GameShire Stopaway. I hope you're right, and you have every right to your own investment strategy. However, you have to understand that years ago many got involved in this play for MOASS. We should've been paid in January of 2021, but here we are. We still want see the shorts' demise, and we still want to be paid.

To the Master Plan / Merger Inbound crowd

I know many of you think everything is part of a master plan that has yet to be revealed. Some of you think GameStop is going to announce some kind of merger or acquisition very soon. Well, I hope you guys are right, as I would profit greatly if you are! My argument to you is that if there is already a deal that is done and yet to be announced, or a master plan already in motion, then this petition/post is not going to change that in any way. The goal of this is to simply voice concerns just in case we have fallen off the tracks. I know you're zen, but please don't just downvote this post to oblivion and scream FUD. There are other shareholders out there with concerns who may want to see it.
"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst."

My preemptive answers to the FUD accusations

I know the accusations are coming, but here's the deal, I've been here the whole time. I'm not telling anyone to sell. I'm not price anchoring. I'm not just upset because I lost money on calls. Full disclosure, I sold my call position at market open on Friday for a small profit (although I feel for any of you who didn't make it out ahead, I've been there and I feel your pain). I've held DRS shares for a long time, and I'm not leaving. Roaring Kitty's livestream was amazing. Roaring Kitty is not a market manipulator, he is the most legendary investor of all time and he simply posted his position online for the world to see. MOASS is inevitable. Ape no fight Ape. Wen Lambo.
This is not financial advice. Don't take advice or invest your money based on the speculation and ramblings of a dumb ape on the internet.

Session 0 "Intake": https://www.reddit.com/DeltaGreenRPG/comments/1d0l92x/impossible_landscapes_session_0/
Session 1 "The Apartment": https://www.reddit.com/DeltaGreenRPG/comments/1d2sjua/impossible_landscapes_session_1_the_apartment/
Operation ALICE, New York, 1995
The Roster (Player/Character)
Lea (she/her): Jules Gradkowska - Agent MIRANDA. Journalist - research and human intelligence.
Iain (he/him): Ralph Bevis - Agent MILHOUSE. Academic - history and occult specialist.
Quinn (he/him): Richard Delapore - Agent MAVERICK. FBI Special Agent - criminal and forensic expert and the official 'face' of the investigation.
Phil (he/him): Jean Duvall - Agent MAIN. US Navy Master Chief Petty Officer - operational security specialist.
Duncan (he/him): Jake Little - Agent MALATESTA. Civilian contractor - computer and electronic specialist with a side line in hacking.
Rob_sothoth (he/him) - Handler. The arbiter of the world: the good, the bad and that which cannot and should not be named.
Background: The Agents of M-Cell are tasked with investigating the apartment of Abigail Wright. Missing since June, Delta Green has reason to suspect para-natural involvement. Their orders are simple: catalogue the apartment and remove anything deemed suspect for destruction.
Despite heavy changes made, full spoiler warning for Impossible Landscapes.

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Session 2 "Futures Past" (June 7th, 2024)
New York: Wednesday, August 9th, 1995
05:00am - 2:30pm, EST
Following the first day of investigation, Agent MAIN is the first to wake. An early-riser after years in the military, he leaves a note for Marsha. The two will meet again, of course. Arriving at work, he gets chatting to some Navy mechanics about the little weird diagram on the napkin. About the best answer he gets (after a successful check), is that one of them remembers seeing something like a clockwork giraffe as an attraction in South America. Studying it on that basis, MAIN concludes it's an artist's attempt at design because he can't see a way for this to work or even what it might really be for. He also checks in with USN and asks a friend to track down some vintage US Arms gear (he noted the serial numbers on the radio and dud-grenade). Not being from the same branch of service (and a failed check), it will take somewhere between 24-48 hours. (I decided US Armed Forces would probably be better at digitizing records, he'll get something either way).
MAVERICK isn't far behind MAIN, starting his day as usual being one of the first into the FBI NYC Field Office. As far as the FBI is concerned, he's on the Wright case now it's in their jurisdiction. Unprepared to wait for the prints to be matched (failed check on Bureaucracy), he instead does it himself (successful Forensics check). Abigail was never arrested, but her father handed in a hairbrush she kept at his and his wife's home. The prints match. It took MAVERICK a little time (it was a close pass), because part of a second, unidentified print obscured one of Abigail's, He can discount himself and the team, and likely anyone in law enforcement as he assumed they would've gone gloved.
Next, he follows up on Art Life and makes a call. He gets on the phone with Cynthia LeChance and in the course of their conversation is able to intuit there's something she's unsure or hesitant about. Being the honest-to-goodness, earnest Agent Cooper type, MAVERICK is able to organise a lunch meeting with her as part of follow up. He doesn't have many questions, he assures Cynthia and it'll be on the FBI's dime. She agrees to meet at 12pm.
(It's worth mentioning I ruled there was no reason MARCUS (Case Officer, M-Cell) or the Agents themselves wouldn't have or be able to obtain pagers they could use to stay in contact. Definitely an incidental expense as far as I am concerned.)
MILHOUSE, after his morning run to campus, follows up on his research from the previous day. He identifies the Ars Goetia and learns there's an 18th century copy in the special collections. Luckily for him, he's able to get about an hour with the book. The book contains the names of some 72 demons, their associated heraldry and symbols which they must "pay allegiance to." The book also contains the supposed means of summoning said entities, but MILHOUSE's time is over before he can get much further into it.
He's the first to arrive at the apartment, late morning/early afternoon (roughly around MAVERICK's planned lunch interview). At the coffeeshop, he's treated to a free beverage by Marsha, who thanks him for bringing his friend in the other day. Sadly, by the time MAIN arrives, her shift is over.
MIRANDA lies awake, watching the minutes tick by until about five minutes before she'd usually be walking into the Village Voice's office before making a call. She's really sorry, but she'll have to take a personal day, but does her best to reassure her editor she's still on for the grill party on Saturday. Of more immediate concern is the missing demonic symbol she is unable to locate. The polaroid she snapped is still in her possession, but she can find no trace of the symbol drawn on its piece of brown wrapping paper anywhere in her apartment. Nor can she find any evidence her home was broken into (she has the right skills to determine that for...reasons).
She makes a quick call to her criminal contact, Hugo. It's been less than 24 hours, but she wants to just follow up to perhaps create a sense of urgency. Hugo says he might have a couple of people on the hook, but it would help if he had more to work with than just "weird and esoteric." MIRANDA will be in touch. Before heading to Kips Bay, she decides to follow up on trying to locate the cab and its driver she photographed the other day; the driver looking down the barrel of the camera at her.
It takes her most of the morning, but MIRANDA locates the garage and office. Mostly making calls asking about a cab outside Abigail's address the previous day. She knows the time, more or less. She finds a schlubby office manager who stonewalls her until money changes hands. MIRANDA gets a name and the cabbie's usual pick up and route. Guy likes to work around the Port Authority Terminal most days, she can probably find him there. She doesn't want to go alone and makes her way to the Macallistar where she expects to find the others.
A night owl and late to wake by nature, MALATESTA hits snooze on his alarm maybe only twice today. Packing up the weird crystal in a ziplock bag stowed in his backpack, he takes himself to the Mercury Gallery. He's got an angle he wants to try and it works, if not quite in the way he perhaps expected.
The gallery owner, Santiago, isn't sure what to make of the skater-grunge kid who rolls into his gallery, but he's not exactly out of place and to be truthful, his story is almost too outlandish not to be true. Through a combination of good roleplay and an opposed check, MALATESTA explains a "dude he's working for" heard about Abigail's exhibition and wanted to know if there were any paintings of hers left unsold.
As it turns out, there are. Santiago explains they're not the cream of the crop: "Most of the others were more abstract and, I would say, exemplary. She did well, especially for an artist in New York. The one or two I have left are a bit more...prosaic."
At about this time, MAVERICK makes his meeting with Cynthia. He's not hard to miss; there is no reality in which he was not a Federal Agent and Cynthia easily marks him across the street. She takes him to a small Italian bistro where she usually has lunch and begins talking. This is what MAVERICK is good at; getting people to talk. Everyone wants to, after all; it's about letting them and knowing where to push and where not.
Cynthia explains how weird the Macallistar has been for her to manage. The building has never been filled to capacity as far she can recall and those units which were occupied never remained so for very long.
MAVERICK: "Did you know Abigail?"
Cynthia: "Not really. I met her once or twice. Went with her and her dad to view the apartment." She smiles. "He was worried about her having a ground floor unit in the city, but it was the one she wanted. Never any complaints from her or from other tenants about her. Then...the rent stopped."
MAVERICK: "Yeah, we saw that."
Cynthia: "No. You don't understand. The rent stopped. No one in the building has been paying rent since March this year."
MAVERICK: "What does that mean?"
Cynthia is nervous. MAVERICK picks up she's worried she might be in trouble and he reassures her she isn't. Far from it, in fact.
Across town, MALATESTA is shown one of Abigail's unsold paintings. Santiago unveils it; a landscape, the frame longer than it is tall. A park, with a city-skyline in the background. In the centre, a statue. There are people. Some gathered in a crowd, others walking in various directions. MALATESTA feels uneasy. Then he sees them: five figures gathered in the shadows of the statue around a sixth, seated on a bench. Merely brushstrokes, details and faces indistinct. One may be a woman. Another appears to be holding a skateboard.
Santiago, distant as MALATESTA gave the painting his full attention, becomes clear again.
"See what I mean? Like something you'd see in a doctor's office."
"Yeah." MALATESTA passes a SAN check, but still takes one.
He was there just yesterday.
This was exhibited in November of last year (1994).
He tries and fails to argue Santiago down on the price and is very unaware that the gallery owner is hitting on him. Wrapping the painting, MALATESTA asks if Santiago can check on where some of the other paintings might have ended up or ask around about Abigail in general. Since it means they will meet again, Santiago is all too happy to oblige and hands MALATESTA a business card, writing his own number on the back.
MALATESTA: "Cool, man. I'll be in touch with the deets."
Santiago: "Sure...the deets." (I think it pained him to say that word)
Before leaving, he lets go something Abigail mentioned during the exhibition. While unable to recall the name, he thinks she said she got her inspiration from a book of some sort. He thinks the name might have been something French.
Across their lunch table, Cynthia explains she thinks Art Life upper management are content to wait for eviction notices to be served to the remaining tenants.
Cynthia: "I think even if everyone paid what they owe and next month's, management wouldn't change their mind."
MAVERICK: "Why?"
Cynthia: "I think they want to renovate the building. Getting everyone out lets them do that. Spruce it up, hike the rent...I lie awake at night wondering if that's legal. I've never evicted a whole building."
MAVERICK: "One of my colleagues bumped into one of Abigail's neighbours. Mr. Post, Lewis Post I think. Same story with him?"
Cynthia: "Yeah, same as the rest. More or less."
MAVERICK: "More or less?"
Cynthia: "He called me the end of March this year, said he'd be late on the rent, but not to worry and then he started asking me about the building."
MAVERICK: "And you did?"
Cynthia: "Yeah, but I wish I hadn't."
She names a few books she picked up, as Lewis wanted more than just what Art Life had on the Macallistar. MAVERICK wonders why, but she explains Lewis was nice and she was curious herself.
"It's a weird building. Always made me feel...off, being there. I can't remember the last time I went in person."
MAVERICK: "What did you learn? I have the architect's name. Daribondi."
Cynthia: "Asa. Asa Daribondi. The Macallistar was built in 1921. He designed it. He...there was a fire at his office on Mott Street in 1950 and he disappeared. He...he was a murderer, Agent Delapore. They found a child's body on the premises. After that, I stopped looking into it."
There's a long silence. The MAVERICK asks her for keys to the unoccupied apartments. He tells her a story about how when he started out in the Bureau, he was involved in a missing person's case. A little girl and in the end, they found her hiding in her treehouse.
Cynthia: "You think Abigail's still in the building? In one of the empty units?"
MAVERICK: "I don't know, but I can't discount it. I don't think she was in a normative state of mind before she disappeared."
Cynthia considers things. The plates are cleared and the coffee served.
Cynthia reaches into her handbag and removes something. "If management don't care about the building, I don't see why I should either." She hands him a master key. "Don't lose this and borrow it for...give it back to me when you're done."
True to his word, MAVERICK pays the bill.
"I hope you find her, her find something to maybe help. She was nice."
MAVERICK and Cynthia say their goodbyes and he heads to Kips Bay.
In the interim, MIRANDA has joined MILHOUSE and MAIN in the coffeeshop, with MALATESTA arriving with weird painting in tow not long before MAVERICK's arrival.
Unable to contain his excitement, MALATESTA nearly unveils the painting right then and there.
MALATESTA: "You won't believe-"
MIRANDA: "Let's not talk about this here."
MALATESTA: "No, I know, but-"
Coffeeshop patrons are giving the table weird looks.
MIRANDA: "Let's not talk about this here."
MALATESTA: "I was jus-"
MIRANDA: "Let's not talk about this here."
Some of the people are frowning, scowling almost.
MILHOUSE (to the other patrons): "Sorry. Sorry."
MAVERICK arrives not long after and the team reconvenes in the apartment to share what they've learned and determine any plans.
Unable to contain himself, MALATESTA reveals the painting. Everyone except MAIN passes the SAN check for the realisation of what it depicts. MAIN takes 4 SAN loss and does not project. Closing in on his breaking point, MAIN is confused and unable to fully process what's going on and throws himself into another search of the apartment.
MIRANDA is concerned about further exposure to the para-natural and wonders if there is anything they can do to take care. All they can do is be cautious.
MAVERICK wants to make a sweep of the empty apartments in the building. MILHOUSE agrees to partner up with him on that front.
MALATESTA and MIRANDA remain with MAIN in Abigail's apartment to conduct a further search. The three who remain received a +20% bonus to their search rolls and all pass as MAVERICK & MILHOUSE leave to check the building (They can make rolls in the apartment on their return).
They exit the apartment at 2:30pm.
Within, MALATESTA, MAIN & MAVERICK find the following:
A rent receipt with Abigail's name, undated and signature unreadable.
A page of typed script which appears to be a play Abigail was writing. Several names are mentioned: Michelle, Mark & Thomas. Michelle is the first name of one of Abigail's neighbours, right?
A plane ticket in the name of Michael Witwer from Las Vegas to Boston, dated June 6th, 2015.

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Dorchester House, 2015
Dr. Dallon: "Must've been a fake? What with the date and all."
MAVERICK: "Must have been."

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Post-Mortem
Five players going in different directions was a little tough to juggle, but they were happy with the pace of play and I made sure everyone had something to do.
I knew we weren't going to get through an entire in-game day about an hour in and I should've taken a bit more time to line up what everyone wanted to do at the end of the previous session, but everyone still had fun. Lea put it well: it feels like there's a dam with information gathering against it and it's going to burst.
With four out of the five players having children, I took a short aside during MAVERICK's rp with Cynthia to do a table check. I know the players and they know me and I handled it in the right way as far as they were concerned.
Two sessions in and MAIN is the first character to close on his BP, being 3 or 4 (one bad roll) away from his first disorder. I appreciate this and his reasons for not projecting make sense, in-character. We'll see how that pans out.
Our next session is TBD due to life stuff and until then, be seeing you.

Vikings were known to be quite violent, vulgar, and morally loose. What happens when a Viking develops a conscience based on his natural instinct to be “good”? And what happens when that Viking happens to have quite a bit of influence, and power? Follow Odger on his adventure to achieving life's most complicated goal: being good. Philosophical discussions and fun character arcs with a violent and interesting storyline. How does Odger navigate through the tall weeds of war to his destination of a "good man"? How does he carve out new possibilities for his people, and his culture? How does he pave the way for a new life as a Viking?
The feedback I’m looking for is anything from complicated opinions on the direction of the story to simple grammar. I would especially like input on the character development, who needs work and who is well written? Are there any characters missing anything? Should this guy you were just introduced to have an eyepatch or a brutal scar across his forehead? Should I write more about any specific characters? What about the plot? Is it missing anything important? Is there more description needed anywhere? Imagery? Is there anything that should be explained further? Is there ever a time where you feel totally lost? Any and all feedback. thanks.
My goal with this book is not to be super historically accurate but to take pieces of history of things that did actually happen and make them more interesting and my own. Some things may have technically “happened” but not really the way I explained it… at all. I would rather dive deeper into the philosophical element than the historical element. This is my 4th book but I’m hoping for this one to actually make it to the pre-publishing stages, even if I have to publish it myself!
I’m willing to beta for you too, up to 50k words. I hope to develop a more permanent relationship with a fellow writer, invest ourselves in each other’s stories and help each other create immersive fiction.
I have this available on betareader.io if you are interested I can email you an invite and we can go from there. The site can be difficult to navigate but once you figure it out it’s really nice because I can see your comments and suggestions a lot more easily.
Sidenote: I do have copyright information so if you’re thinking you can take my content and play it off as your own I have a way of dealing with your kind :)
Drop your email and a comment if you’re interested.

Previous part: 8.99.
​
One thing that I'm not getting here is why Vanessa is even a part of Vanny or Glitchtrap's situation since Double-V is true. When I originally thought up Double-V, I was originally thinking that Vanessa and Vanny were two different people and/or were sharing the role of "Vanny".
It's just one of them was more willing than the other to be a part of Glitcthtrap's machinations than the other. I didn't put too much thought into it, but it was something I wanted to look for until that Security Team revelation came about.
But now I'm left with this puzzle piece called Vanessa that I'm not quite sure what to do with now that I know that Vanny is an entirely separate person from her.
She has to be involved with Vanny and Gltichtrap somehow. Maybe the therapy tapes will help.

• CD 1-Therapist: — but a routine check of your online history has revealed that you spend quite a bit of time with someone in an encrypted conversation. We have transcripts, and I’ve read them, but it’s not clear what you’re talking about in these conversations. I can’t make sense of it. You must be getting something from these that I’m not getting. Right? Who are you talking to in these?

These are all things that would've pointed toward Glitchtrap if I didn't know better. So it's someone else doing this? Why and why her?

• CD 5-Therapist: — Apparently, the IT department has put together a pretty lengthy report chronicling non-job-related communications that have been coming to your computer. — what bothers me about what I read is that the messages you're getting seem very manipulative in nature. —You know who I'm talking about. What you might not know is that this person who's been sending you messages has been hacking into your personal files too.
• CD 5-Vanessa: Lots of people know more than I do. Sometimes I need to listen.

So Vanessa knows who's doing this to her. But she's been refusing to listen to them before and is now being worn down by the spamming messages sent to her. But the fact that she doesn't react to the news that they are digging into her personal life is very concerning!
Also, after going through Vanny's secret dialogue in Help Wanted, Vanessa's overall demeanor in both Security Breach and the Retro Cds clashes hard with Vanny's in both games. Where Vanny sounds and reads eager and nervous, Vanessa is defiant and reluctant with depressed undertones.
Is Vanessa really infected with Glitchtrap?
Yet now that I'm thinking about it, Glitchtrap has no need to do this as him sitting through Vanessa's therapy session with her would give him this info if she was infected. Who's ever doing this doesn't much about her, but would very much like to. Is it Vanny or Gregory...
Wait, hold on. Vanessa's first therapist mentioned that messages were encrypted and couldn't make out what the conversation was about. But the second therapist can understand these messages to know that they're manipulative in nature. Are these two different messengers?!
" I’ve read them, but it’s not clear what you’re talking about in these conversations**.** I can’t make sense of it. You must be getting something from these that I’m not getting." - The first Therapist
"but what bothers me about what I read is that the messages you're getting seem very manipulative in nature." - The second Therapist
What changed? Hmm... What exactly is an encrypted conversation? Maybe explaining that will help.
Encrypted text messaging is a method of secure communication that converts your messages into code. This means that only the recipient with the correct decryption key can read it. - Google
That sounds like what the first Therapist is referring to, but she mentions that they got the transcripts for it. Does that mean that got the code or the decryption key to read it? No, she says transcripts, which means the code itself.
But whatever the first Therapist saw in that transcript was legible enough to read and comprehend. This means the conversation wasn't in computer coding that would require someone in the tech field to decipher it, but just ordinary talk that's hard to understand what it's about.
Okay, that clears things up, they're still the same messenger.

• CD 11-Therapist: So, on your breaks, it looks like you were shopping for a costume. you purchased some fake fur material.
• CD 11- Vanessa: I can't talk about this. He said he would always be watching. He could be here or there or anywhere in between.
• CD 11-Therapist: No, that's not what I mean. You can't just ignore an issue. You have to face your memory of the experiences and process them so you can let it go. So you don't get triggered anymore. you can use this sort of self-dialogue to release these things
• CD 11-Vanessa: I don't like doing that.

This one conversation right here throws everything about Double-V out of whack. Why is Vanessa buying fake fur material? And for the very first time, we know the gender of who's messaging her along that he said that he would always be watching her.
Again the "he" here, and the "he will always be watching" part allude to Glitchtrap at first glance. And again, it can't be him because he should be within Vanessa since they merged in Help Wanted! Even if you dismissed the ending I proposed for Vanny and went with the ending where she gets locked up by Glitchtrap, it still wouldn't be him messaging her about watching here because he would be in her body!
And like I already said before, Vanessa has shown no memory problems or bodily control problems, which would've suggested Glitchtrap's control. No, this means that Gregory is doing all of this.
But why is he going after Vanessa? Geez, It's been a while since I even thought about his past before Security Breach. I forgot how much of a black hole of questions he is, regarding the lore. I'll give my updated thoughts about him after the Double-V revelation later.
For now, after going through all of Gregory's dialogue in Security Breach. It looks like he's not quite aware of the ongoings within the Pizzaplex and is shocked by the level of security can employ later in the night. There may actually be a hint of his hacker background in his dialogue if you squint. And Gregory has absolutely no idea what the rabbit laddy's name is until he gets to Fazerblast.
As for Gregory's involvement with Vanessa... Huh, that's weird. Gregory doesn't say Vanessa's name even once in Security Breach. Matter of fact, after the beginning sequence where Vanessa confronts Freddy about him, Gregory just stops talking about or even mentioning her for the rest of the game. This includes the confrontation that leads to her locking him up in Lost and Found and after it...
No matter how you slice it, Gregory's silence about her is super loud with alarm bells. Sure, he dismisses her as working with Vanny in the beginning, but it shouldn't mean that she should be an afterthought to him! Like, Gregory only talks about or mentions "the rabbit lady" after the beginning of the game.
In fact, if we were to rank every important character that Gregory talks about or mentions in his dialogue for Security Breach from most to least, it would look like this.

1. Freddy - 33 times
2. Vanny - 6 times
3. Chica - 6 times
4. Roxy - 4 times
5. Monty - 3 times
6. Moon - 3 times
7. Vanessa - 3 times
8. Burntrap - 1 time

That's absurd! Especially since she's the only other human worker in the Pizzaplex, besides Vanny, who encounters and confronts him. Like, he doesn't even try to communicate with her at all during the entire game!
Even when discovering Vanny's hideout in Fazerblast and Freddy suggests that Vanny is Vanessa due to deduceing Vanny's name being a combination of Vanessa + Bunny, Gregory remains silent about it! No, "Oh maybe you're right." or "That sounds too simple to be right", but instead there's no response to what might be the identity of your pursuer!
It's like he doesn't want to talk about her...
He knows her, he has to know Vanessa! Yet, he said, "I don't know who she is, but she's trying to get me!" to Freddy. Is he lying? No, he just knows about her.

• CD 14-Therapist: —They report that they've caught you on camera, or at least it appears to be you. — Well the techs are convinced that you've hacked into their system many times. — the electronics you like? I saw in your file that you have developed software programs that talk to you and repeat phrases, right? The program asks you questions and prompts you for responses. It's kind of like your own self therapy, isn't it? Another way of talking to yourself to work things out, right? When I saw some of your recent encrypted conversation logs, that's what I thought I was looking at. It felt like I was watching someone go back and forth in their own head, but the text found something that's different than that. When I read what they found, at first I thought I was looking at more examples of you just talking with yourself. Then I realized it was different. When I study this, it sounds like there is someone else responding to you. Who is it?

This is either hinting towards Gregory talking directly to Vanessa or Glitchtrap. But something that confuses me is why the therapist has or even be able to see Gregory's encrypted conversation logs?
I'll admit that I'm ignorant about therapy, but should your therapist have access to stuff you created outside of therapy? Unless Gregory created the program on a computer in therapy. It could explain how he's gotten access to Vanessa's files. But I'll drop that talk for now.
Something that's being made clear to me now is that Vanessa is not as connected to the villains as Gregory is, as she's more surprised by the changing of therapist than he is. In fact, Gregory knows why the therapists are disappearing, knows exactly when the therapists do something that would cause them to disappear, and doesn't seem upset when they show up mangled and dead.
But more than anything, Gregory knew Vanny long before Security Breach started. There's no reason why Gregory would know Vanny has enough control over the Pizzaplex to cut off Freddy from the network, in just one encounter. If anything, he should have assumed she was some weirdo stranger in the Pizzaplex that the security and the police needed to take care of.
But he already knew that Vanny had power in the Pizzaplex, maybe not the full scope, but enough to know that if she and he ever came into conflict with one another that ended with her wanting to hurt him then he needed to get out of the Pizzaplex.
Funnily enough, this actually lines up with the first-ever trailer for Security Breach, where Vanny says: "Gregory, I may have lost my temper earlier. But it was just a glitch!" Which implies they talking neutrally before whatever made Vanny lose her temper." Again, I'm not using this as evidence as it's been cut, instead, I'm suggesting that the idea might have merit.

• CD-Therapist: — I have this still shot the techs pulled from the security footage that recorded you in the pizzaplex. That's you, isn't it? I know this image is distorted but I think it looks like you. And you're not alone here. You're talking to someone, or something. it's hard to tell. What are those things? They almost look like rabbit ears. What? You find that amusing? Well I guess it is.

I had always flipped-flopped between the mysterious person being either Glamrock Bonnie or Vanny. Both are connected to Glitchtrap, so either would fit here as Glitchtrap wouldn't be captured by a camera. But with the new evidence I've discovered, Vanny fits as Gregory's mysterious rabbit correspondent in the Pizzaplex.
But what about Vanessa? Is Gregory hacking into her files or is it Vanny and Glitchtrap? Or perhaps Gregory is hacking into her files on behalf of Glitchtrap and Vanny. Either way, Vanessa is getting dragged into Gregory and the Villian's group chat.
Speaking of the therapy, if we take into account the Retro-CD's numbering system the first two numbers are the patient ID number, and the last two numbers are the number of times both Gregory and Vanessa have been to therapy, then we can uncover some invaluable information.
Gregory has been in therapy longer than Vanessa and he was also in therapy before her too. But combining this CD's numbering system with a theory from the Talesbook story, GGY, that Gregory only goes to therapy on Sunday. Then Gregory has been going to therapy for a year and a half.
And if Vanessa is following the weekly therapy session pattern, then she's only been going to it for a little more than half a year. This means she started her therapy just about after Gregory hit his half-year mark for therapy. In addition to all that, Vanessa stopped going to therapy once she was transferred to a new location and never met the fourth and final therapist of the CDs.
Just something you all should keep in mind.
But Gregory definitely knows about her at the very least. That knowledge, I guess, is the reason why he's so shocked to see her face under Vanny's mask in the "To The Rooftop" ending. He knows that Vanessa and Vanny are two different people, but doesn't know that they look alike because he never encountered Vanny before Security Breach without her mask or costume.
On the subject of costumes, I still got no answer for Vanessa's purchase of fake animal fur or what's even happening with her now.
To be honest, this would be so simple and easy if Vanessa was just Vanny. But like as I have shown many times before in both this series and the previous one, simple and easy answers are not always the correct ones.
So, instead of looking for signs of the villain's goal with Vanessa in the lore. Let's look at the similarities and differences between the double Vs.
Vanessa's characteristics are.

• Depressed
• Has anxiety issues
• Tired (It's something that has been mentioned by the first and third therapists in CD-1 and CD-10. But seems to have more to do with the messages she's getting than how she usually is.)
• Likes the blue sky
• Likes to sit outside and read
• Watchful about her calorie intake
• Likes flowers or at least the sweet smell of them
• Doesn't like dark basements
• Oh, and hates kids

Vanny's characteristics are.

• Loves Pizza, especially pepperoni (Huh, no wonder she likes Chica)
• Absolutely, does not care about her calorie intake or a healthy diet (Seriously, Girl has gone full gamer mode with the amount of Fizzy Faz, straw drinks, and pizza boxes in areas with her presence in them)
• Hobbies in painting or graffiti
• Likes or used to like Glitchtrap or maybe William Afton (I talk about this in the secret ending)
• Loves Fazbear Entertainment (Vanny uses red spray paint in Ruin and has drawn two hearts on the FAZ ENT. Logo in the main Lobby)
• Likes Toy Chica
• Likes the Daycare Attendant (She seems to be fond of Moon more)
• Likes to read, or at least, read about the World History of Fazbear Entertainment
• Likes Flowers, a specific species of them(that I can't determine right now)
• Likes summer
• Is a mechanic or roboticist or both (She making something in Ruin Fazerblast and has turned Ruin Monty into her lapdog among other things)
• Super lazy (This one may or may not be true, but unless there's a good reason why she refuses to clean up her room in Fazer Blast, this is staying right here as far as I'm concerned)

Wow, I did not realize we already knew this much about Vanny just from the environment storytelling of the games until I listed them!
Anyway, as you can see, there are some very similar likes between the two and very stark differences in traits as well. I'm not about to list them to save word space, but instead, I want to answer a question. Could Vanessa still be Vanny despite their differences? This isn't so much for me, but for the people who believe Vanny = Vanessa despite my Double-V evidence.
At first, I thought there might've been a chance for that as they both like flowers, to read, and enjoy the outside, or at least the summer in Vanny's case. But now, after listing everything out they're just too different to say they're the same.
Even if we say that Vanny's love of pizza, general bad diet, and trashy room is the result of Vanessa coping with her depression and her situation with Glitchtrap and that her graffiti is the by-product of therapy, along with her interest in growing flowers. That doesn't negate the fact that in Ruin when given the chance to express her anxiety, Vanny doesn't take it.
If you don't know, on the wall where Vanny drew her face next to a slice of pizza in the main lobby near the Superstar Daycare entrance, there is a painted graph. The artist who made the graph also wrote on the right side of it; "TAG YOURSELF".
On all four sides of the graph, the artist made the furthest sides of them represent something. The top Y-axis is Wizard, the bottom Y-axis is Cedar the left X-axis is Filled with a word that ends in a y, and the right X-axis is Filled with anxiety.
What this graph is showing, or what the artist trying to convey with it, is that each of the four points represents not quite the opposite thing but the furthest thing from each other. Of which, Vanny decided to tag herself on the furthest left X-axis, not the right.
This tells us that Vanny feels the furthest thing from anxiety. Something Vanessa, no matter if she's under Glitchtrap's control or not, would be constantly feeling as she suffers from it.
As for what she's feeling, I don't know, the word on the left graph is unreadable and covered by Vanny's face to make it almost impossible to decipher. But what I do know without a doubt, is that Vanny and Vanessa are indeed, two different people with some common likes and polar opposite traits.
So after everything I've talked about in the last three? four? However many parts I've been going over Double-V, what is the best possible answer for the "To The Rooftop" ending stinger. Why do Vanny and Vanessa look alike?
I tried, I really did. I looked for as much possible evidence for anything that doesn't just make me give up and say "She's a Fazgoo clone!" or "She's a robot!"
If Vanny was a stranger who mimicked Vanessa's face, then that's cool and horrifying, but only where it concerns Vanessa herself. (The horrifying part, not the cool part.) It doesn't give us reasons why she would do it in the first place or a way to connect it to the greater lore and Glitchtrap, besides she's a human Mimic. Basically, it lacks motivation from everyone in the Villian party.
So it leaves me with no other conclusion except for one.
Back when the marketing for Security Breach was building up to its release. Steel Wool released four old Freddy cartoon episodes on their YouTube channel. Each episode hides a teaser image for the lore, including a character from the games with words, along with a character stinger at the end.
The last carton, which is the most distorted one, just so happened to include Vanessa as the hidden teaser, and Vanny as the character stinger at the end. And before you all jump the gun, previous episodes have already established that the hidden character teasers have no correlation to the ending Character stinger.
Now, the words in the Vanessa teaser image are quite interesting. It includes "Test and Rat" in the upper right corner, "Pool" in the bottom left corner, and "Bleak Reactant".
Test and Rat could be Test rat or Laboratory rat (Lab rat) as in the species of rat that are bred and kept for scientific research. Lab rat here can also be referring to Vanessa being a lab rat for the villain's experiment for something.
Using that explanation, "Pool" would then mean group or pool of people, which means number of people available for an organization or group to use. So Pool would mean that Vanessa was chosen out of all the Fazbear employees or people in general to be used for the experiment.
This leaves us with Bleak Reactant, which the definition of reactant is a substance that takes part in and experiences change during a reaction, while the definition of bleak could mean lacking vegetation (an area of land), dreary (a room), miserable(the weather), or unfavorable (outcome.)
All of this together means that Vanessa was chosen by the villains out of a group of people to be used for an experiment. An experiment of a change in Vanessa that predicted an unfavorable outcome for the villains.
Vanessa was going to be the next Vanny or maybe something else.
That gives a reason why the villains were so interested in her, why she would be shopping for a costume, why she would be at the Pizzaplex, and why she would be still connected to the villains when someone else is Vanny.
But the reason she was chosen in the first place, why her out of a group of people that might've included Gregory in it too, is because the one who chose her was her own twin sister.
If anyone remembers my only Ruin theory then you would remember my mentioning of Glitchtrap's and Vanny's conversation from Scott's website from a Security Breach poster.
Glitchtrap: "Stay the course."
Vanny: "I will."
Glitchtrap: "Focus on my voice."
Vanny: "I will."
Glitchtrap: "Don't let anyone lead you astray."
Vanny: “I won't.”
Glitchtrap: "Have you selected one?"
Vanny: "I have."
In my theory, I proposed that Gregory was the one that Vanny mentioned selecting here. But now, with all the revelations and new information gained, I believe Vanessa works better here. Vanny would've chosen someone for an experiment that she personally knew of or gotten to know, and who better than her own sibling that she grew up with.
Remember, Vanny is just starting out in her following of Glitchtrap. So would be new to the whole evil thing. And most of the time, the people close to you are the ones that would most likely commit a crime against you.
As for the twin sister thing, it actually didn't come from the "To The Rooftop" ending, but a discussion from the GTlive stream where Mat hosted a little get-together with some of the FNAF YouTuber theorists after Security Breach. There, John Fuhnaff suggested the idea for it from the VR Sisters boss from the Security Breach game Scott made when Security Breach got delayed again.
It's something that I saw some merit in after I discovered the Vanny ≠ Vanessa and after disproving in my head that Vanny wasn't Tape Girl either. The best part of the twin sister thing is that there's no need to throw out all that we know from Vanessa's therapy sessions as they both share the divorced parent's backstory.
As for which is the order twin between the two, I believe Vanessa is the oldest since it makes sense that her father would use the oldest to testify against their mother as she would better understand his instructions. Plus it provides a potential grudge from Vanny to Vanessa for what happened to their mother and a misguided parental affection for Glitchtrap. Unless Vanny's just a fangirl of William Afton, which could be the case.
Also, this means that the reason Vanessa looks the way she does in "To The Rooftop" end credits is because she looking at her dead sister. Oof, I realized that this also means she would've been the one who finds what's left of her in the "Disassemble Vanny" ending too. No wonder Faz Ent. is temporarily closed if they find that one employee is disassembled and the other one is having a mental breakdown from it in the morning.
But what about the "Redemption" ending? We know that by beating PQ3 both Glitchtrap and Vanny are defeated in it. What happens to her then? Where did she go? Hmm... I'm not sure.
What happens when someone is unmerged after being merged for a long time? Unlike Vanessa, we know that Vanny lives in the Pizzaplex. Even by Ruin and Help Wanted 2, she's still living in the building despite its condition so she probably needs time to think and process what happened to her and what's she done. Oh, and therapy. And a house.
But I think that just about wraps everything up for— Wait, HW2's Candy Cadet story! I forgot all about it! I know some people mentioned that the second story had to do with Vanessa, Gregory, and Gltichtrap. Let me skim through that real quick for clues.
Oh. Oh, that's really interesting... But it along with the Jeremy and the Memory dolls can wait until after next time. Sorry for the little to no pictures, I needed space to fit everything in one post and wanted to get everything about Double-V out of the way before I go on hiatus.
Don't worry it has nothing to do with burnout. It won't be too long either, though knowing my track record when saying that, you probably don't believe me.
Truth is, I've been severely neglecting my YouTube channel, and should really start catching up the YouTube version of my series with the online version. Plus, I've got more "Prove it!" to work on.
But most important of all, my birthday is coming up, and I don't want to work, think, or have anything to do with my FNAF stuff on that day. So! Feel free to read and become full with these last few Parts until I come back with more.

Wall of text + massive spoilers here. Don't read on unless you've completed Returnal.
--
Have you ever scrolled reddit in an attempt to understand Returnal's lore?
Have you ever watched a YouTuber break down their interpretation of the nuances? Maybe you crawled the scout logs, audio files, xenoglyphs and Helios logs looking for your own answers to understand Selene's experience?
In your search, did you ever find concrete story fragments - or read them in the comments - that directly contradicted what you thought was an otherwise sound, logical and thoughtful interpretation of the game?
You're not alone my friend!
Returnal is a game full of paradoxes. How are you ever going to make sense of a single one of them when the paradoxical nature of Returnal is the whole point?
--
Within Returnal lies a series of paradoxes, contradictions and oxymorons within a larger paradox.
Spend a few minutes digging into the narrative breadcrumbs and you're bound to find something that doesn't add up, or is just proper-unsatisfying.
I'll start with smaller examples; these feel more poetic than outright contradictory in any way that would harm the story's cohesion, yet they set the stage for something larger to be built on top of them -

• "My end is waiting at the beginning..." (AST-AL-002)
• "...on the edge of my sight I see a black sunrise beneath the ocean, when will it break through the surface?" (AST-AL-046)
• "Myriad eyes beholding in the longing dark sunlight as it rains like pitch... (AST-AX-002)
• "I've had... visions? And headaches that fracture into future events I've already experienced..." (AST-AL-044)
• The CreatoDestroyer
  • The simple presence in the Sentient lore of a CreatoDestroyer creates a contradiction due to the opposing natures of both descriptors. Is this person a protagonist or an antagonist? How can they be both at the same time?

These are contradictory, but maybe not outright paradoxical if you want to be really particular. Let's go a little deeper then, because it isn't just text and collectibles that conflict with themselves, it's much larger strokes of the game's story.
We also see that...

• Selene is alive, yet finds her own dead corpses throughout the game
• Selene must first ascend the mountain in the desert in order to descend into the depths. Her descent into the depths is what's required for her to mentally ascend beyond her trauma.
• Theia is the Astronaut. Selene is the Astronaut.
• The more Selene descends into madness & insanity during her time on Atropos, the more she truly unravels the truth of what's happening to her and gains an understanding of why she is there
• Selene is at the heart of Sentient culture despite her arriving on Atropos long, long after Sentient civilization collapsed
  • She is the CreatoDestroyer and is depicted in their Xeno-Archives

What does all this contradiction do to those of us trying to piece together the game's narrative?
--
It makes it impossible to do.
If you've delved into the lore, I bet you came out with a great interpretation of Returnal... that almost worked. It almost clicked, almost tied up all all loose ends, and was almost good enough to warrant a Reddit post, if not for that one indisputable thing.
Maybe it was...

• Are there two car crashes in Selene's life, or one?
• Is Helios Selene's brother, or son? Or both?
• In the cutscene at the end of Act I, do we seen Selene driving Helios, or Theia driving Selene?
• Is Atropos real? Or does it only exist in Selene's head?
• Is the Astronaut Theia or Selene?
• Was Theia pregnant? Did Selene have a brother? Was Helios abused? Did Selene have an abortion? Did Selene kill her mother?

Pick one of the above to fit your interpretation of Returnal and you're bound to find another that contradicts it. You'll always find one logical leap you have to take or one plot point you have to omit to make the story make sense.
If Atropos is real, then you're going to have a hard time explaining how Selene is at the center of the Sentient's culture or why Selene shot down her own spaceship. If Atropos is in Selene's head, those things can now make sense, but instead you have to contend with her escape from the planet after defeating Nemesis or the suggestions the game gives that Selene was found mentally unstable and not permitted to join Astra.
If Theia is driving the car and Selene is in the backseat, then why is Selene wearing the same wristwatch that Helios wears in House segment 5? If Selene is driving the car and Helios is in the backseat, then why does the news broadcast in House segment 3 name Theia as the driver and mention her spinal injuries (which are corroborated by the hospital visions)?
And so on, and so forth.
Returnal's story is a puzzle that no matter how hard you work to assemble it, there's always going to be one piece that doesn't fit. Explain Returnal one way, and you're bound to hit a roadblock that sends you derailing into a lake.
--
Don't misunderstand me, though! The building blocks that make up Returnal's narrative are beautifully layered and intricately weaved throughout our experience with the game; they ebb and flow with Selene's own confusion, they crescendo as Selene's madness does - it's all so expertly done.
But they're also just a series of impossible paradoxes that should serve to snap the story's cohesiveness in half.
And yet they don't. But why's that?
--
If you aren't aware, Returnal's developers have outright stated that there never was an agreed upon narrative for the game.
Big shoutout to u/RepulsiveWeather4592, whose countless copy/pasted comments I encountered on various threads while diving into this sub's lore posts (you have a vendetta, dude, and I respect it).
Here's Game Director Harry Krueger on the topic in this video:

Harry Krueger: I would often get asked, so you know what's really the mystery of Atropos? Is this all in Selene's head? Is she really there? Did this happen? And I'm like, those are exactly the kind of questions we want players to be asking. Mikael Haveri: So the answer would be yes. Harry Krueger: So the answer would be all of the above, yes.

And here's Senior Narrative Designer, Eevi Korhonen admitting there was no agreed upon version of the story - even internally.

One thing Harry was adamant about was there would be no agreed upon story even internally... When I talk with my team sometimes internally we still find [that we all have different understandings of Selene's actions and the story as a whole]. We are still internally at-odds sometimes about what the story means.

Remember the bullet points from above? All the paradoxes, contradictions and contrasts we outlined earlier? They're all impossible to be true at the same time.
And yet, from the mouths of the game's very creators, they are all true at the same time.
--
I think one reasonably valid reaction to the above would be frustration in the direction of the developers for just mindlessly throwing some paint splatters at the wall and calling it art.
One could read those statements and apply them to Returnal and see it as a careless, unfinished and pointless mess with no ability to teach, show, or tell us anything due to its creators offhanded attitude towards crafting a connected narrative.
While I believe one can react in that manner, I worry it would be fairly reductive.
You see, Returnal leaves its narrative disconnected and bewilders its player with paradox on purpose. The game makes use of its vague and ambiguous storytelling and world to create an effect on the player and it is this very effect that ratchets up the experience of playing Returnal at all.
I’d argue that you can reconcile Returnal’s incoherent story fragments and paradoxes by squaring your own experience as a player with that of Selene’s. Let’s look.
This game’s narrative and its paradoxes are a mindfuck. Players must face all of the above discussed paradoxes as well as plenty more confounding, impossible situations, drip-fed to them slowly over time incoherently, erratically and seemingly randomly. Returnal’s story is in part difficult to consume and understand because of the nature of its diffusion to the player; flashbacks are short and lacking context, clues are presented outside of chronological order (consider the audio logs) and discoveries that would link everything together are not made until deep into the game. When the player does receive story bits, they come in the form of paradoxes, or as the musings of a madwoman.
As our Selene speaks more and more worried nonsense in the game’s second act, so too does our confusion compound based on what we are finding around us. Returnal’s worldbuilding and setting enhance the experience of confusion and uncertainty by creating paradoxical and impossible situations — What is this music and why is Selene obsessed with it? The Crimson Wastes have somehow become frozen? Atropos’ moon is repaired? How can the Sentients know about The Astronaut?
From the get-go, our experience playing Returnal is much like Selene’s living in it — a constant state of disarray, of confusion, of uncertainty. What’s happening to us? What is real and what is not?
Returnal layers paradox on top of ambiguity in its worldbuilding and narrative diffusion to simulate a mirrored experience between the player and Selene in which both are stuck in a cycle of constantly questioning reality.
This, in a sense, syncs the player and Selene. Both are confused. Both want answers. Both feel a need to plunge themselves deeper into the endless, unknown abyss.
The player, now more connected and able to easily identify with their avatar in this manner, must at the game’s conclusion take part in a form of moral gymnastics upon discovering that their avatar — someone they grew to understand, trust and relate to — was likely an abusive, selfish killer.
When the player understands this, the experience of engaging with Returnal shifts powerfully. Players now have additional context with which to grapple with Atropos, its inhabitants, Selene’s past and her mental or physical fate.
We can see now how the paradoxical nature of Returnal brought us here and how it was the point all along.
With a new lens to peer through, Returnal takes on new shapes and forms. It almost begs for a second playthrough to view the game’s previous experiences through this newly earned understanding.
Good thing Act III exists.
--
So, Returnal’s narrative isn’t concrete on purpose.
It’s completely against my usual nature to say this, but I love that about this game. The blurriness of the story dovetails brilliantly with the ambiguity of Selene’s mental health and the confusion of the player.
The story does not need a concreteness to it because the narrative and worldbuilding themselves have have used paradox and impossibility to establish a confusion & uncertainty, even hinting that it is a confusion and uncertainty that is unsolvable.
Somehow, understanding that — for me — ended up solving it.
Huh. What a paradox.
--
You can't answer Returnal's narrative non-continuities because the game's story creates a paradox. It's disparate cues, incidents and plot points are all true at the same time, even though they cannot be.
In the swirling, disorienting whirlpool of Returnal's lore, the fates of The Severed, The CreatoDestroyer and The Astronaut disconnect, unravel and spiral into one tapestry..." (AST-AX-017)
And it's beautiful.

Wall of text + massive spoilers here. Don't read on unless you've completed Returnal.
--
Have you ever scrolled reddit in an attempt to understand Returnal's lore?
Have you ever watched a YouTuber break down their interpretation of the nuances? Maybe you crawled the scout logs, audio files, xenoglyphs and Helios logs looking for your own answers to understand Selene's experience?
In your search, did you ever find concrete story fragments - or read them in the comments - that directly contradicted what you thought was an otherwise sound, logical and thoughtful interpretation of the game?
You're not alone my friend!
Returnal is a game full of paradoxes. How are you ever going to make sense of a single one of them when the paradoxical nature of Returnal is the whole point?
--
Within Returnal lies a series of paradoxes, contradictions and oxymorons within a larger paradox.
Spend a few minutes digging into the narrative breadcrumbs and you're bound to find something that doesn't add up, or is just proper-unsatisfying.
I'll start with smaller examples; these feel more poetic than outright contradictory in any way that would harm the story's cohesion, yet they set the stage for something larger to be built on top of them -

• "My end is waiting at the beginning..." (AST-AL-002)
• "...on the edge of my sight I see a black sunrise beneath the ocean, when will it break through the surface?" (AST-AL-046)
• "Myriad eyes beholding in the longing dark sunlight as it rains like pitch... (AST-AX-002)
• "I've had... visions? And headaches that fracture into future events I've already experienced..." (AST-AL-044)
• The CreatoDestroyer
  • The simple presence in the Sentient lore of a CreatoDestroyer creates a contradiction due to the opposing natures of both descriptors. Is this person a protagonist or an antagonist? How can they be both at the same time?

These are contradictory, but maybe not outright paradoxical if you want to be really particular. Let's go a little deeper then, because it isn't just text and collectibles that conflict with themselves, it's much larger strokes of the game's story.
We also see that...

• Selene is alive, yet finds her own dead corpses throughout the game
• Selene must first ascend the mountain in the desert in order to descend into the depths. Her descent into the depths is what's required for her to mentally ascend beyond her trauma.
• Theia is the Astronaut. Selene is the Astronaut.
• The more Selene descends into madness & insanity during her time on Atropos, the more she truly unravels the truth of what's happening to her and gains an understanding of why she is there
• Selene is at the heart of Sentient culture despite her arriving on Atropos long, long after Sentient civilization collapsed
  • She is the CreatoDestroyer and is depicted in their Xeno-Archives

What does all this contradiction do to those of us trying to piece together the game's narrative?
--
It makes it impossible to do.
If you've delved into the lore, I bet you came out with a great interpretation of Returnal... that almost worked. It almost clicked, almost tied up all all loose ends, and was almost good enough to warrant a Reddit post, if not for that one indisputable thing.
Maybe it was...

• Are there two car crashes in Selene's life, or one?
• Is Helios Selene's brother, or son? Or both?
• In the cutscene at the end of Act I, do we seen Selene driving Helios, or Theia driving Selene?
• Is Atropos real? Or does it only exist in Selene's head?
• Is the Astronaut Theia or Selene?
• Was Theia pregnant? Did Selene have a brother? Was Helios abused? Did Selene have an abortion? Did Selene kill her mother?

Pick one of the above to fit your interpretation of Returnal and you're bound to find another that contradicts it. You'll always find one logical leap you have to take or one plot point you have to omit to make the story make sense.
If Atropos is real, then you're going to have a hard time explaining how Selene is at the center of the Sentient's culture or why Selene shot down her own spaceship. If Atropos is in Selene's head, those things can now make sense, but instead you have to contend with her escape from the planet after defeating Nemesis or the suggestions the game gives that Selene was found mentally unstable and not permitted to join Astra.
If Theia is driving the car and Selene is in the backseat, then why is Selene wearing the same wristwatch that Helios wears in House segment 5? If Selene is driving the car and Helios is in the backseat, then why does the news broadcast in House segment 3 name Theia as the driver and mention her spinal injuries (which are corroborated by the hospital visions)?
And so on, and so forth.
Returnal's story is a puzzle that no matter how hard you work to assemble it, there's always going to be one piece that doesn't fit. Explain Returnal one way, and you're bound to hit a roadblock that sends you derailing into a lake.
--
Don't misunderstand me, though! The building blocks that make up Returnal's narrative are beautifully layered and intricately weaved throughout our experience with the game; they ebb and flow with Selene's own confusion, they crescendo as Selene's madness does - it's all so expertly done.
But they're also just a series of impossible paradoxes that should serve to snap the story's cohesiveness in half.
And yet they don't. But why's that?
--
If you aren't aware, Returnal's developers have outright stated that there never was an agreed upon narrative for the game.
Big shoutout to u/RepulsiveWeather4592, whose countless copy/pasted comments I encountered on various threads while diving into this sub's lore posts (you have a vendetta, dude, and I respect it).
Here's Game Director Harry Krueger on the topic in this video:

Harry Krueger: I would often get asked, so you know what's really the mystery of Atropos? Is this all in Selene's head? Is she really there? Did this happen? And I'm like, those are exactly the kind of questions we want players to be asking. Mikael Haveri: So the answer would be yes. Harry Krueger: So the answer would be all of the above, yes.

And here's Senior Narrative Designer, Eevi Korhonen admitting there was no agreed upon version of the story - even internally.

One thing Harry was adamant about was there would be no agreed upon story even internally... When I talk with my team sometimes internally we still find [that we all have different understandings of Selene's actions and the story as a whole]. We are still internally at-odds sometimes about what the story means.

Remember the bullet points from above? All the paradoxes, contradictions and contrasts we outlined earlier? They're all impossible to be true at the same time.
And yet, from the mouths of the game's very creators, they are all true at the same time.
--
I think one reasonably valid reaction to the above would be frustration in the direction of the developers for just mindlessly throwing some paint splatters at the wall and calling it art.
One could read those statements and apply them to Returnal and see it as a careless, unfinished and pointless mess with no ability to teach, show, or tell us anything due to its creators offhanded attitude towards crafting a connected narrative.
While I believe one can react in that manner, I worry it would be fairly reductive.
You see, Returnal leaves its narrative disconnected and bewilders its player with paradox on purpose. The game makes use of its vague and ambiguous storytelling and world to create an effect on the player and it is this very effect that ratchets up the experience of playing Returnal at all.
I’d argue that you can reconcile Returnal’s incoherent story fragments and paradoxes by squaring your own experience as a player with that of Selene’s. Let’s look.
This game’s narrative and its paradoxes are a mindfuck. Players must face all of the above discussed paradoxes as well as plenty more confounding, impossible situations, drip-fed to them slowly over time incoherently, erratically and seemingly randomly. Returnal’s story is in part difficult to consume and understand because of the nature of its diffusion to the player; flashbacks are short and lacking context, clues are presented outside of chronological order (consider the audio logs) and discoveries that would link everything together are not made until deep into the game. When the player does receive story bits, they come in the form of paradoxes, or as the musings of a madwoman.
As our Selene speaks more and more worried nonsense in the game’s second act, so too does our confusion compound based on what we are finding around us. Returnal’s worldbuilding and setting enhance the experience of confusion and uncertainty by creating paradoxical and impossible situations — What is this music and why is Selene obsessed with it? The Crimson Wastes have somehow become frozen? Atropos’ moon is repaired? How can the Sentients know about The Astronaut?
From the get-go, our experience playing Returnal is much like Selene’s living in it — a constant state of disarray, of confusion, of uncertainty. What’s happening to us? What is real and what is not?
Returnal layers paradox on top of ambiguity in its worldbuilding and narrative diffusion to simulate a mirrored experience between the player and Selene in which both are stuck in a cycle of constantly questioning reality.
This, in a sense, syncs the player and Selene. Both are confused. Both want answers. Both feel a need to plunge themselves deeper into the endless, unknown abyss.
The player, now more connected and able to easily identify with their avatar in this manner, must at the game’s conclusion take part in a form of moral gymnastics upon discovering that their avatar — someone they grew to understand, trust and relate to — was likely an abusive, selfish killer.
When the player understands this, the experience of engaging with Returnal shifts powerfully. Players now have additional context with which to grapple with Atropos, its inhabitants, Selene’s past and her mental or physical fate.
We can see now how the paradoxical nature of Returnal brought us here and how it was the point all along.
With a new lens to peer through, Returnal takes on new shapes and forms. It almost begs for a second playthrough to view the game’s previous experiences through this newly earned understanding.
Good thing Act III exists.
--
So, Returnal’s narrative isn’t concrete on purpose.
It’s completely against my usual nature to say this, but I love that about this game. The blurriness of the story dovetails brilliantly with the ambiguity of Selene’s mental health and the confusion of the player.
The story does not need a concreteness to it because the narrative and worldbuilding themselves have have used paradox and impossibility to establish a confusion & uncertainty, even hinting that it is a confusion and uncertainty that is unsolvable.
Somehow, understanding that — for me — ended up solving it.
Huh. What a paradox.
--
You can't answer Returnal's narrative non-continuities because the game's story creates a paradox. It's disparate cues, incidents and plot points are all true at the same time, even though they cannot be.
In the swirling, disorienting whirlpool of Returnal's lore, the fates of The Severed, The CreatoDestroyer and The Astronaut disconnect, unravel and spiral into one tapestry..." (AST-AX-017)
And it's beautiful.

Pre-Disclaimer: I have mainly been learning Japanese via Dictionary Diving, Anime and Manga "Diving", and Native Material "Diving", so if some or all of these issues are already addressed via Textbooks, it may not be applicable there (although Textbooks have their own "quirks", from the reading I've done)

For a Summary (Tl;dr): Jump to Section 8

Disclaimer 1: I would like to preface this by saying that I have only been studying Japanese for less than 6 months, so I am not claiming to be an expert who has unlocked the "true secrets" of the Language, but this has been an issue that has been on my mind for a while, and I haven't seen anyone else addressing it
Disclaimer 2: This is not an attack on Dictionaries, Formal Japanese Textbooks, or any of the individuals involved in creating them. Even with the concerns that I am about to address, Dictionary Diving has been my main means of learning Japanese, and the fact that so much work was put into these resources for the sake of providing us with all of these example sentences, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. If you are--or have been a contributor to bringing these Dictionaries and Resources to life, you have my genuine and heartfelt appreciation. My intentions are completely and exclusively designed to be constructive in nature
Disclaimer 3: Although this applies--in varying degrees to all Japanese Learners, the main demographic that I am deeply concerned for, are the entry-level to intermediate-level learners who are still figuring things out. With the proper time investment and erudition, it may start to become easier to understand exactly what is being said, but understanding a Translation of your Target Language should not have to be a separate "skill" that requires cultivation

• Section 1: Introduction

Typically, when you go on to a Dictionary to discover the meaning of a word, you will usually find example sentences that are worded like this:

風が柔らかく木立に触れた。
The wind gently kissed the trees.

or

私のフランスケーキ好きは小学校の時からです。
I've loved French cakes since elementary school.

These Translations certainly look pretty at first glance, but if you are an absolute beginner in learning Japanese and you encounter one of these sentences, you will have left them learning little about how the Japanese Language or its syntax actually works. They are well written and pleasant to look at, but are so heavily processed as to have lost any semblance of nutritional (i.e. educational) value

• Section 2: Disambiguation

Let's try going through these Example Sentences:
In this example, let's say that you searched for the word "柔らかい" in the Dictionary. For now, you have no idea what "木立" or "触れる" mean, but you are willing to learn.

風が柔らかく木立に触れた。
The wind gently kissed the trees.

This is probably the best one of the three (I have one that I'm saving for later)
Since I am no longer a complete beginner, I unfortunately cannot tell you how I would have tried to interpret this Sentence during my first month learning, but being a few months in, I could at least make a few inferences

風が

is establishing the Wind for the rest of the sentence. It is going to be important moving forward

柔らかく

conjugated form of an い-Adjective, going by the Translation. 柔らかい must mean "Gentle", and "く" allows it to modify other actions (therefore: "Gently")
I know that this sounds incredibly boring and redundant, but bear with me, this is going somewhere

木立に触れた
(Kissed the Trees)

This is where I'd say the first problem appears. Remember that for this exercise, you still have no idea what any of these words mean, and are just starting to learn "柔らかい", and, indirectly, "木立".
From what I could find, this figurative usage of the word "kiss" does not seem to exist in Japanese like it does it English. Perhaps 触れる is a literary term, which is why the word "Kiss" is being used in this translation, however the problem with trying to "embellish" these words without any context as to why they're being translated this way, is that in this case, the figurative and literal use of "Kiss" are both embodied in the same word. Imagine hearing this sentence in the wild, being given this translation, then--following the logic that they've established, saying to your Love Interest beneath the Moonlit Sky "触れてもいい？"...
Let's try another one:

私のフランスケーキ好きは小学校の時からです。
I've loved French cakes since elementary school.

This one's probably one of the simpler examples, and while I will admit that it becomes easier to understand the "logic" of the Translation with time, it almost feels like I'm reading two sentences that vaguely related, but aren't quite the same. The English version, in this case, feels like the long-lost Twin Brother of the original Japanese, and while it's certainly a good Translation, it looks like the type of thing you'd see in the English Captions of a Japanese Show, not like a resource that actually helps one to better understand the inner workings of the Language, itself. It is concerning, not for what it does do, but what it doesn't
The Translation is "correct", yes, but in prioritizing flavor over substance, the result is a fun confection that melts on the tongue, but provides nearly no nutritional value
For those particularly avid readers out there, you might recall that I mentioned the presence of three sentences. Yes, that's right, there was one card in my sleeve that I was saving 'til the end, and it is by far the most egregious of the three:

ママはその事については触れなかった。
Mom didn't mention it.

え？
How did that massive wall of Japanese Text produce this? I am not joking when I say that I have studied all of those words (to varying degrees), and still have virtually no idea what this sentence is saying.

• Section 3: The Problem

With all three of the aforementioned sentences being assessed, I would like to address the greatest fundamental issue that permeates, not only through these sentences, but nearly all of the example sentences in the common Dictionaries:

Who are these (Translations) even for?

I highly doubt that the your average casual English-Speaking Japanese Media watcher is diligently combing through the Dictionary on a daily basis, let alone your average English-Speaker in general (the same would also apply if Dictionaries that translate Japanese into other Languages follow these same patterns)
I will readily confess that all of these Translations are certainly poetic--beautiful, even, however, while they may explain what the Japanese is "saying", they do not explain what is actually happening, how it is, or why. They are certainly informational, but they are not educational, thus causing them to feel more like Anime Subtitles, than a means of actually coming to understand the Language.

• Section 4: Potential Solutions

I will take this opportunity to restate the thread that has been running through this entire thesis: I am not claiming to be an expert in Japanese. As someone who has only been studying for a few months, I am not claiming that my opinions are absolute, or that my interpretations are correct.
With that aside, here's how I would attempt to rework some of these Translations to better assist those trying to improve their Japanese:
Sentence 1

風が柔らかく木立に触れた。

Original

The wind gently kissed the trees.

Revision

Wind: Gently: (Cluster of) Trees, to: Touched (upon)
The wind gently kissed the trees.
Explanation: 触れる generally refers to a lighter, gentler touch compared to 触る, and can also be used figuratively, thus, in this context, it can be interpreted to be similar to the figurative usage of "to kiss"

Sentence 2

私のフランスケーキ好きは小学校の時からです。

Original

I've loved French cakes since elementary school.

Revision

My French Cake Love: Elementary School - Time: From
My love for French Cakes: Since Elementary School (i.e. I've loved French cakes since elementary school.) / My love for French Cakes goes back to Elementary School / I've loved French cakes since elementary school.
Explanation: In this sentence, the speaker's love for French Cakes is the subject. "の" subjugates B to A (Imagine Noun + の as a transparent Box, and what follows, being a related set of contents inside the Box), and 時 allows non-Time related words to be changed into moments or spans of time. In this example, "から" indicates progenitorship, thus "小学校の時から" means "From the Time of Elementary School".

^{you may have noticed that "My love for French Cakes: Since Elementary School" is not how English speakers typically talk (unless they are imitating a machine}) ^{, however this is not an Anime; Having a "natural translation"--either in the forefront or the background, is definitely a good idea, however, unlike with Subtitles, the English should serve the Japanese, not the other way around}
Sentence 3

ママはその事については触れなかった。

Original

Mom didn't mention it.

Revised

Mom...: That Matter (Concerning)...: Did not touch (upon)
Mom did not touch upon that matter (Mom didn't mention it.)
Explanation: "ママは" sets the scene for the topic, while "その事" is subsumed into the first subject (So keep "ママ" in your mind as you continue to learn about what is going on with "その事"). "について" in this case, means "concerning" or "regarding", and is transformed into a secondary topic through the use of another "は". "触れる" means "to touch" with the nuance of the touch being light, passing or brief, and can be used both literally and figuratively (in this case, meaning, "to touch upon" the matter).

With just those simple changes (i.e. including a "Fundamental Translation", and an Explanation segment to supplement the "standard" Translation), the Translations have now been modified to interact with the original Sentences, rather than overriding them.
Yes, translating "あらゆる犬、しゅきだよ！" as

"(Implicit Pronoun + は): All/Every Dog (+ Unspoken Particle): Liked (Slang, with よ added for emphasis in a manner that directly engages the interlocutor)"
All Dogs, liked
I wuw all Dogs!

doesn't sound as mellifluous as

"I wuw ALL dogs, yo!"

by itself*
But we are not using Japanese Dictionaries to have our eyes and ears tickled, we are using them to Learn Japanese
Not only do the revisions preserve either exact copies, or moderate revisions to the "anglicized" translations, but they also manage to solve the big three aforementioned questions of "What", "How", and "Why".

• Section 5: Pieces on the Board

Going back to Sentence 2 for a moment:

私のフランスケーキ好きは小学校の時からです。
I've loved French cakes since elementary school.

If you're an entry-level Japanese Learner with only a few trusty words in your quiver, and you see this daunting wall of Japanese Text, juxtaposed against an equally ambiguous English Translation that's your sole, dim light in this expansive labyrinth of darkness: Depending on the word that you searched up to get you there, it could take you months before you're able to actually begin to understand sentences like these.
Meanwhile, if all of the components are already laid out before you, you're immediately able to begin "playing" with the pieces, and accelerate the process of acquisition.
For instance, if I purchased a French Cake for a Party, and someone asked me:

"フランスケーキ（が）好きですか。"

could I then, with my new knowledge, reply:

"(実は)小学校の時から好き(です)！"

???
Perhaps I could trim even more and simply respond:

"小学校の時からです！"

since the "フランスケーキ", and "好き" "pieces" have already been laid out on the "board"??? ^{(In this case, I'm genuinely asking; I could very well be wrong})

• Section 6: Benefits to the Fundamental Translation Method

I will take this moment to iterate that the ideal solution would be to have both the Fundamental Translations, and "Traditional" Translations, as they are both complimentary to each other. On its own, a "Fundamental" Translation may be too abstract, while the Traditional ones tend to be processed beyond the point of recognizability. Blending them together allows for one to absorb as much Japanese as possible, while also having being able to see a tangible Translation as a safety net
With that said, there are various benefits to adding these Fundamental Translations

• Dissolves the walls of Japanese Text into smaller, comprehensible pieces
  
• Explains not only what the Japanese is saying, but how they are saying it. For example, one could theoretically translate "日本語喋れますか" as "Do you speak Japanese?", but doing so removes the nuance that what is actually being asked, which is "If you can speak Japanese". The conclusions are similar, but the method of getting there is slightly different.
  
• Rendering the Japanese into English at all, helps the Second Language to become comprehensible, however the utilization of these formulaic and unnatural syntax could potentially force one to draw new conclusions regarding the information that were not present in their Native Language, helping the aspiring learner to begin viewing Japanese on its own terms, and hopefully, acquiring it.
  

In addition to those aforementioned points: dissolving the Sentences gives one a starting point to begin building their own sentences.
For instance, with the principles established from dissolving Sentence 1
For a refresher:

風が柔らかく木立に触れた。
Wind: Gently: (Cluster of) Trees, to: Touched (upon)
The wind gently kissed the trees.

I am now able to begin switching the pieces around and experimenting with "new" sentences, such as
Experiment 1

波が激しく船に衝突した
なみが、はげしく、ふねに、しょうとつした
Waves: Violently: to Ship: Crashed
The Waves violently crashed against the Ship

Experment 2

できるだけ速くまゆちゃん家へと走始めた
できるだけ、はやく、まゆちゃん、いえ、へと、はしはじめた
(Implicit Personal Pronoun + Particle): [To be able + To the extent of] (Collectively: To the extent to which I am able): [Quickly]: [Mayu-Chan (implicit の) House]; [toward] (with へ for directionality, and と added to emphasize what precedes the Particle): [Run + Started]
To the extent that (I) am able, quickly, toward Mayu-Chan's House, I started to run
I started running to Mayu-Chan's House as fast as I could

Disclaimer: I am not claiming that these sentences are grammatically natural or even "correct". Please let me know what errors are present, so I can improve them. The point is to illustrate how a beginner could start to experiment, once they understand the mechanics of a sentence, not to make a statement on my own particular Japanese level
It is still your prototypical "Subject + Adverb + Object + Action" (or SOV) sentence, but now that the actual alignment of the sentence's components have been made clear, the writing process goes from being an insurmountable hurdle that takes months to even attempt, to being immediately accessible.

• Section 7: Using Fundamental Translations to compose Japanese

For reference, this is one of the first sentences that I tried composing during my first Month of learning Japanese

日本語を大好きけど漢字が楽しい無いと思う

Aside from the fact that there are blatant grammatical errors that even a beginner such as myself can now see: As one of the individuals who critiqued my sentence acutely stated, I was simply "Speaking Japanese with English Syntax" What I had intended to say: "Although I love Japanese, Kanji is not fun" would probably make for a nifty example Translation, however when you try working backwards (as a beginner), and rendering it into Japanese, the result is an incomprehensible mess
If I were to impersonate my Month 1 self for a moment, and attempt to render the Translation for Sentence 1 back into Japanese without seeing the original text, I probably would have come up with something along the lines of:

風が木達を柔らかいキスした
(Please forgive me for this abomination!)

Granted, some of the simulated mistakes simply come down to my own terrible Japanese, however I would honestly not blame someone who was only armed with years of Anime, and a few Videos, for making a similar set of miscalculations during their initial periods of study.
Going back to my aforementioned sentence: At my current level, I would likely attempt to render it as:

日本語が大好きだけど漢字は。。。(ちょっと難しいな？)
Japanese (Subject); Liked (However); Kanji... (with the unspoken implication that Kanji is not regarded with the same warmth)
I like Japanese, but Kanji...

If the unspoken part was rendered aloud, I would likely interpret it as

日本語が大好きだけど漢字はちょっと難しいな？
Japanese (Subject); Liked (However); Kanji: Somewhat + Difficult (with な being used to make to turn the statement in a matter of rumination that engages the Listener, in such a manner as to suggest that Kanji is an aspect of the Language that is disliked)
I like Japanese, but Kanji is pretty difficult, eh?

For my final sentence (and another Month 1 excerpt), I incorrectly wrote:

実は人間に変身前に余は天使だった

in an attempt to say:

In truth, before being changed into a Human, I used to be an Angel

Thankfully, someone was kind enough to try salvaging my terrible Japanese, and produced:

実は人間に変身する前に余は天使だった
In truth, before transforming into a Human, I was an Angel

Even still, though there's a discrepancy between what was initially intended, and what could be salvaged by combing through my clutter
If we were to assume that someone knew all of the requisite Vocabulary, however, and was given the Fundamental Translation as a guide for what was intended for the Japanese, perhaps one could turn:

[Truth (Subject)]: [Mortal (into)] + [Transform (Passive Present Verb)] + [Before (with に to subjugate the following portion of the sentence to the concept of "Before")]: [Pronoun suggesting one's status as a supernatural being of a higher order (Subject)]: Angel (Literary Past Tense form of "だ", used to fix something's place in a sentence as "being")

One could hopefully begin to "insert" the Japanese into the English spaces--like a Puzzle, and create something along the lines of:

実は人間に変身される前に我は天使であった
Truth: Human/Mortal, before I was changed/transformed into: Angel, was.
In truth, before I was transformed into a Human, I used to be an Angel

Disclaimer: I am not claiming that this sentence is necessarily correct, however, hopefully, I was able to demonstrate how synthesizing Natural Japanese with a Fundamental-Based Interpretation System can at least help one to construct something better than what I was writing on Month 1

• Section 8: Conclusion

One of the most prevalent issues that can be seen across many Learners of all levels in Japanese, is that, even if one's Vocabulary manages to reach astronomical levels, they may still have difficulty actually producing anything in Japanese. There have even been many cases of rather high-level learners who could tear through a Manga or translate something into English rather quickly, but still openly confess to struggling with their output into Japanese, and I believe that the current manner that Dictionaries and Textbooks are formatted, is responsible for this
The current state of English Translations are optimized to be convenient, however convenience is a privilege.
Perhaps if one is studying a Target Language that resides in a similar Language Family, one can afford to adapt the Translations to the Learner's "ear", however, one cannot afford to take these same liberties when the Languages are as distant as English and Japanese

• Since English and Japanese are irretrievably difference on a fundamental level, a good educational Translation should not prioritize appearing "natural"
  
• Yes, "English is a SVO Language, and Japanese is SOV", however it is not enough to just say it, then go on producing Translations as though it is not true. Not only are Japanese Sentences constructed differently, but the terminology, conjugations, expressions, cultural nuances, and implications are all distinct from those of the Anglosphere
  
• Rather than trying to interpret Japanese through the lens of one's Native Language, the Native Language should merely be used as a visual aid to help us understand the Japanese
  
• This means that the first priority with an Educational Translation should be to state what is literally happening, and why, and only after this, should it use an adapted English-centric Sentence to help solidify the enumerated concepts into the Learner's mind.
  
• Since English and Japanese have no "natural" connection, the "proper" manner of creating an Educational Translation should be [Natural Japanese -> Unnatural English], because [Unnatural English] (i.e. when handled correctly) = [Natural Japanese]
  
• If you attempt to translate [Natural Japanese -> Natural English] you usually end up with "Anime Subtitles" that communicate the "point", but are so heavily processed, as to be completely stripped of their educational substance or nuance.
  
• Likewise, if your only input is [Natural Japanese -> Natural English], this is how many learners end up with an output of [Natural English -> Unnatural Japanese]. My experience is comparatively limited on this one, but from what I have observed, this seems to be the cause of the infamous "Textbook" Japanese, which overuses Pronouns, Particles, "です", specifically, and leads to one producing sentences like "このリンゴは赤いだ" (日本語上手ですね！)
  
• I do not think that Fundamental English Translations should replace the adapted ones, but they should be included alongside them to help one better understand the Japanese
  
• To see how the Fundamental Approach works on one's own Native Language: Take this sentence
  

"The Weather is humid today".

You could also dissolve this English Sentence following the same principles

[The Weather (Establishes the subject; Since "The" is used, "Weather" is being referred to in a general sense, with no emphasis toward the particular Weather--as would be signified by "this")]: [is (indicates that the condition still applies) + Humid (the condition, itself)] + [Today (indicating the position that this sentence is occurring, which happen to be in a temporal one, namely, the current Day)]

and shuffle the pieces to create:

Today, the Weather is humid
[Today (establishes the position, which shapes the rest of the sentence)]: [The Weather (Subject, being referred to generally, rather than particularly)]: [is (indicates that the condition still applies) Humid (the condition, itself)]

Which, at least to my ears, carries a more literary flair
or you could substitute some pieces to say

The Weather was humid Yesterday

Which follows the same (Subject) + (Condition) + (Position) Pattern

• Following this logic, one could argue that Fundamental Translations for Japanese are merely Fundamental Japanese being expressed through the medium of one's Native Language, as it makes the otherwise unknown Target Language easier to visualize and experiment with.
  
• In this way, even without fully understanding the Source Code of one's Target Language, they are nonetheless able to "hack" it, by using their Native Language as a remote controller.
  

As far as implementation goes, unless there are legal prohibitions that prevent Dictionaries from modifying their example sentences, the best method (at least for Online Dictionaries) would be to introduce an expandable "Tab" next to some of the given Sentences that provides the Fundamental Translation, and the logic behind it (or some variant of this)
Because, once again "Informational" does not mean "Educational", and unlike Subtitles, the purpose of these Translations is not Entertain, but to Educate.

Disclaimer: Please note that, as I am only a few months into studying Japanese, one or more of the arguments, explanations, or assertions that I have proposed could be inaccurate or incomplete.
Since I am also learning, and desire to learn: If there are any genuine mistakes, either in my arguments, or in my Japanese, please feel free to provide me with any corrections, so that we can all continue to grow our Language skills, together.
This Write-Up took over 15 Hours to compose, and I tried my hardest to make it as thorough and informative as possible for the benefit of the Japanese Learning Community, so please be kind.
May we all eat heartily, rest well, and Learn Japanese.

Days Gone: A 2024 Retrospective Review
If someone was asked to describe Days Gone they would generally say that at its core it is a zombie survival horror game mixing elements of Sons of Anarchy with The Walking Dead. However, scratch away that basic description and you will find a much deeper game. Taking control of Deacon St. John, a former soldier, now biker with just his bike and his friend Boozer to keep him company in a post apocalyptic world. At the beginning of the game we see that he puts his injured wife on a Nero helicopter to get medical aid, only to still two years later not be able to find her, but despite the general consensus that she is dead, Deacon refuses to believe this. On a chance encounter with O’Brien, the Nero agent who helped his wife escape two years prior, Deacon finds the hope and clue he needs to possibly find his wife.
The post-apocalyptic world is crawling with what are described as ‘Freakers’, not Zombies, more akin to the vampire-like creatures from I Am Legend. These creatures roam in swarms or Hordes as you later find them to be described numbering a few dozen to a few hundred later in the game. If you encounter any of these, you only have two options: Run or Kill. As the game progresses you find more advanced versions of the Freaks such as Screamers who (as you can imagine) scream in a Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers way to alert all Freaks in the areas and Breakers who are Freaks literally on steroids. Deacon must travel around the map, visiting camps to carry out jobs, destroy the nests where the Freaks live and generally stay alive.
Released in 2019, it sits unfairly between the releases of The Last of Us Parts 1 (2013) and 2 (2020) and so comparisons to these games can be unfair, though understandable. In 2019, the game sold fairly well, hitting sales of six million units, but was savaged by critics for its stale and repetitive gameplay and buggy aesthetics garnering middling reviews throughout. Due to this, the game has been denied a sequel by Sony and fans of the game (myself included) have spent the good part of nearly five years trying to figure out why.
So let’s look at the game with fresh, critical eyes, the way a game would be looked at if it was re-released.
Story
The game’s story has been pulled apart as male chauvinism or egotism and this could not be further from what the game is. The game is about loss, about recovery, trusting people, fear, mental health, staying alive and not giving up hope. Through the sixty hours of gameplay you encounter a number of brilliantly crafted characters from the Truth-Nut Conspiracy theorist Copeland, complete with scary (and unexplained) scarred face, the utterly despicable Tucker and the father-like Iron Mike. Deacon St. John interacts with all the characters with a level of sarcasm, stoicism and also warmth that it is hard to read him, but when you discover his back story, you can understand why. The whole world is falling apart following the outbreak of the virus and it truly is kill or be killed. Deacon will wander around muttering to himself like a madman, but you can truly understand why he would be like this. His relationship with other characters such as Boozer and Rikki is just perfect and you will be forgiven for watching these cutscenes as if they were parts of a real TV show or Movie. It is true that a lot of the scenes are essentially the same one over and over, but it is presented in such a way that I can’t deny that I do love it. My one gripe is that cutscenes can be overlong and so you may find you are watching itching for the point where the ‘Skip’ log will appear.
9/10
Graphics.
On the surface, Days Gone is a beautiful looking game. It is understandable why companies have optioned the story for a theatrical or television adaptation. The environments look and feel real. The character models for many of the main characters look life-like without crossing into uncanny valley territory. Though the number of palette-swap faces for Ambush Camp members or Freaks feels a little lazy. Despite how amazing the game looks it is also, even now, a buggy mess with too many instances of the game just crashing. We have moments Deacon would enter a building only for the building to have lost its texture and you have to figure out how to move around or leave, cars outside that look like they haven’t been finished and Freaks just caught in mid motion or have disappeared. Deacon himself when he crashes his bike is launched with his body being more akin to Woody from Toy Story. Now, this doesn’t happen all the time and a quick restart generally solves it, but for a Triple A game this is not acceptable at all.
7/10
Sound
This game has possibly one of the best soundscapes of any I have ever heard. If you have not played this game with headphones I would recommend it as the overall audio quality of the game from the bikes, guns, Freaks and general background is beautiful. The score by Nathan Whitehead is atmospheric to the point where it makes every time I hear it mean something. His music for The Hordes is as tense and gripping as any horror or suspense film ever created and ranks up there with the Theme from Jaws. The songs used throughout, including a camp singer who will play a song at certain points is again excellent and well worth searching out.
Vocal work by everyone is just amazing and Sam Witwer as Deacon and Jim Pirri as Boozer are perfect in the roles as you would expect. The voice acting is such that I could (if there was an option, more on that later) sit and watch all the cutscenes, if I could.
10/10
Gameplay
The gameplay in Days Gone could be described as shallow, but that would be an insult to shallow things. If you had to list the things you do in the game it’s not much. You drive around, killing Freaks, destroying their nests and later the Hordes of Freaks that are dotted around the map. Some camps give you jobs which are either search missions or search and kill missions, rinse and repeat. At times you have to stealth listen to one of the people from Nero which is essentially just a stealth and don’t get caught mission. The rest of the game is just rinse and repeat of all of this. That’s it. Now, that’s not to say the gameplay isn’t fun and once you get used to playing you will find much to enjoy, but in regard to variety there really isn’t any. There are also far too many ‘escort missions’ that could simply be a cutscene and are so boring to the point where all the fun is drained out of the game. By the end of the game you have also gained so much XP or advantage from Nero injectors which increase you health and stamina or new more powerful weapons that the game becomes too easy and thus no fun anymore.
6/10
Online
There is no online gameplay. There is a Challenge Mode which has a ‘World Rankings’, but this is the only online gaming element that the game offers. This is a shame as there are times when the game would be ideal for a group campaign to take on a Horde or a Camp, but not to be.
0/10
Longevity
This all really depends on how much you love this game. At around sixty hours of gameplay it is hard to say that there isn’t a lengthy game on offer here. But once the game finishes there is very little to actually do. Even an option to watch the cutscenes again would be nice, though they at least let you listen to some of the crazy Copeland Radio Free Oregon rants which is something, I suppose. There are a number of additional options such as New Game+ to play the game again with all your existing XP, Weapons and so on. This is really only for those who want to finish all the additional Hordes with the overpowered weapons to make the game easier. This can backfire by making it too easy. Once you have gone through the difficulty modes, you can also go on to the Challenge Mode which is a number of additional Challenges which you will either love or (like me) be incredibly bad at and not bother with. One of the benefits of this is that you can play these challenges as a number of characters from the game, so if you have grown attached to Boozer, Rikki you can do this. However, by doing this Bend shot themselves in the foot, by making all these characters fully playable it does call into question why more is not done with them? Even if the option was just to be able to play some of the camp missions with these characters it would at least extend the longevity somewhat. As it is, with no daily/weekly/monthly challenges like a lot of games, there really is no reason to come back to this game and maybe with just a few of these it would mean you would come back to the world of Days Gone even more.
4/10
Overall
Days Gone is a game that fans (like myself) love. I have played a full run of this game on every difficulty level, given myself my own restrictions to try and make the game harder or increase the challenge, but overall I can’t help but admit that there is very little reason to play this game more than once. It cannot be defended on a longevity, online and to some extent in regards to the gameplay or graphics and really it is only the sound and story that is keeping the game from being declared awful. It’s not. It’s really not. Those who have played it are begging for a sequel and though Bend could have gauged the popularity of the game with a DLC with more camps and missions, it feels as though the game has been completely abandoned which is a shame. Days Gone is not a game that will be in everyone’s Top Ten, but it is definitely a game that I recommend everyone playing.
7/10
I want to give it more, I truly do, but I just cannot justify it.

Gifters turned evil

This was going to be part 8 of my series but seeing as how relevant it is today, I’ve decided to move it up instead of posting part 3: Ekow. Let’s dig right in.

Wolf

• Wolf is nsecure, dumb, and has an extremely fragile ego.
• Bro will bend over backwards to get any sort of attention from any team. He craves praise n recognition in a way that no other gifter does.
• First class glazer and a narcissist.
• Had the potential to be compared to Vitamin of Dubai ranks but self destructed and smeared a great legacy.
• Went from TikTok hero, to TikTok zero overnight.
• Also definitely mentally unstable as shown clearly in this LONG crazy exchange with Reddit user Still-heroin in this post a while back. This long ass conversation between them is very revealing and mind boggling. This man is bizarre.

LC

• Same as wolf, except this one is an absolute mind boggler. Goes from hero to villain over night for no apparent reason.
• Antagonized and threw consisten shade at the two of the biggest teams on TT the 💜and the 💛, destroying one of the most beautiful creatogifter relationships in the process with both creators.
• The hypothetical question and answer were cringe, distasteful, and pre-meditated. I believe LC 100% knew what he was going to ask her and she encouraged him to ask. Maybe even dared. If you’re not familiar with it, I suggest you get to scrolling n dig it up.
• Like the great Vitamin said in his bio: “Words, once spoken, cannot be recalled, like an arrow from a bow”. Powerful.

Now let’s talk about today

OkaySatisfaction4953

Talk about cosmic karma! This LC woman created a fake account to post, comment from, and live among us as a completely different character. As someone else. What’s so sickening about this woman is the account was created to self glaze 😫 She called herself the goat lmao and said “loved among all platforms”. It’s a glimpse into her psyche and inner thoughts of what she really craves. Well, when you’re conniving, narcissistic, rotten to core human, god has a way of showing you and teaching you a lesson. Her punishment came in the form of #Self Doxing. She exposed her ass all on her own. Thanks to an OG Redditor u/admirable_advisor197 they caught the blunder and broke the news in this post And to make matters worse, she most likely shared the account with Wolf n the comments they were saying about Ali, his father, and the Empire were outrageous to say the least. Self glazing is crazy and I can’t get over it. God doesn’t like ugly and that’s why, LC, that’s why you got exposed by yourself. Now go think about what you’ve done in the past 6 months while you’re wallowing in self pity in the corner.

Mook.

Mook come here, listen. You sit there nodding your head, visibly cringing, heart pounding with every word that comes out of LC’s and her friend’s mouths. Beady eyed and Powerless. While I don’t understand why you’d subject yourself to this, I do understand riding for friends. For her defense, she never said anything out of pocket to anyone, never did anything shady but failed to condemn her friend’s actions. She’s a ridder and guilty by association. You’re the only grown up on the ☕️ Do better.

Jefa

• Went from gifter to creator but still wants to gift. Can’t pick one. One of the most hated on Reddit as of now. Toxic and wierd behavior. Will not last in the TT streets, she’s not made for it.
• The hate she gets on here though, is one thing I don’t understand. She’s so irrelevant that she shouldn’t have this many people pressed. But boy does she have Reddit pressed.

Shauna W

Same as Jefa see above 👆
Next, we continue our regularly scheduled series.

Part 3: The Rise And Fall of Ekow.

I'll send it again with a different title 🤦 because I really want to know what y'all think.
Little backstory: We are in game friends, we only know eachother online. And we've been playing a pay to win game together for around 200 days. Meaning we know quite a few things about eachother. But not as much as real life people know about eachother.
The game is fun and based a lot around events, you play in server events and crosses against other servers (crosses are way more expensive). The price for 1st place in both is a title, which helps you grow. (The crosses title has a higher level, hence is generally more expensive) You also have alliances in the servers, with our server being quite old, we have 3-4 strong alliances. I and my friends are a part of the strongest one (that has almost triple the power of the second and third one combined). So we win crosses quite a bit. (You have crosses that are based on alliance cooperation [meaning you win as an alliance and decide who gets the title through MVP vote], and single player crosses, where your performance determines your position.)
The crosses also depend on server cooperation, we wouldn't win many of the events without the help of the less strong alliances. Problem is, the people in my alliance expect help from the alliances, while never giving help to them, or rotating the inserver titles. (Or even the cross one's, in a few events there's a opportunity to do so). There are a few people in my alliance, who always overshoot the points in server events (we have a rule, that no person should have more than 1 title, since hoarding them is useless, and doesn't help you). Which results in the less strong people having to spend a lot of money just to catch up in the points (which is just unreasonable, when they could get it easily, if the titled players held back like they should, and have more strength (and money 😂), to help in crosses later on) It also creates useless drama with the server, and arguments are quite frequent, and generally unreasonable. (My alliance always thinks they're in the right, and the leader demands respect just because he spends a lot of money on the game.) Basically the people in my alliance think they're the best and it's their right to bully the rest of the server into submission. And when we lose a cross they blame the other alliances saying: you didn't help us enough! (Sometimes I'm surprised they help at all 🙄)
They're also very quick to take anything a person says personally (especially the leader). Which in turn results in more and more useless drama. (Sometimes I feel like they can't think from the other point of view at all.) I always try to calm the situation down, but I get called a traitor and that I'm "always" against them. (Even though I just try to explain to them the other side of the argument.) The people there are also very quick to explode, and elevate a small argument into huge proportions. (Basically they use the approach of: talk first and then maybe think later.) This all got me really frustrated, I am also a person that has a few accounts on different servers (for spying purposes 😂).
So when we lost an event to a server I'm friendly with, I was surprised by my alliance reaction. The other server biggest alliance got merged with a different alliance, in the middle of the event. (A merge in the game takes 48 hours, and the event takes 3 days. The other server alliance got merged at the end of day one, meaning it was a coincidence. Since we don't know the events beforehand.) The merge was enough to boost the alliance into 1st place though. And my alliance was very mad and gave up on 1st place almost right after. We came second, but our members were salty anyway saying: it would have been a nice fight if it was fair. And that the other alliance plays dirty. (The merger only boosted them above us a small amount. But since we gave up, they won by a lot more points.) I understand being sad that we lost, but insulting the other server for cheating and playing dirty was too much for me. Basically my alliance behaved a little bit like sore losers, that can't comprehend that we lost an event we almost always win. I logged in to my account on the other server, and apologized for the behaviour of my alliance. And congratulated them on the win (in my point of view they won fair and square, since the merge was a genuine coincidence and not some evil scheme.) And since I was also frustrated with my alliance behaviour of the past few months I decided to vent a little and called them a bullheads who don't believe in coincidences. And that I'm genuinely tired of their childish behaviour. Problem came in, when one person from my alliance, who also has a spy account on the server, saw my messages, and shared them with our alliance. I got called names, lynched, demoted and almost kicked out. I understand their anger, since I basically talked badly about them behind their back. From my point of view it wasn't that big of a deal though, since the other server didn't really care about them... (They're not the centre of universe damnit) So AITA?

Every person has a psychic ability, and there are many examples for this psychic test: when you meet someone that you recently thought about, or had strange dream at night which turned to be real in the morning, or just an unexplained mystery. The little psychic events happen all the time even without our notice.
Would you like to chat with online psychics? check this reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/freepsychicreadings4u/comments/1d1tkzo/need_answers_now_chat_with_online_psychics_247/
Further more, there are no random coincidences everything happens from a reason and it is the result from out past actions and our future destiny that always changes. A psychic test will help you to discover if you have these tendencies and if not you can always practice and improve your skill and intuition. In order to do so, you have to decide what you are good in, what attracts you the most. It can be dream interpretation, tarot reading, remote viewing, healing, Ouija boards and many other forms that will help you to see from beyond.

Through the years scientists invented many psychic tests, the basic assumption was that gifted human beings will perform better that the average person in predicting the future. The results have to be more than just guesses and convince that they can keep on doing so consistently for long time with minimum errors. As you know spiritualism is not an accurate science but still when it comes to the numbers and probabilities it can prove to be right in some cases when the results are unambiguous. A famous experiment is the Zener cards test. The cards have different and simple pictures on them and you have to guess what the pictures are without seeing them.

There are other psychic tests which try to discover if you can change things with the power of the mind – Telekinesis. A subject of this experiment sits in front of a machine that dropping ping pong balls from a tunnel to the ground. In the end of this device there is a funnel with intersection so the ball can fall to the right basket or the left one. Now, by the law of nature half of them should reach to the left side and the other half to the right side. It doesn’t have to be exactly fifty- fifty percentages but a number that coming close to this. Someone with psychic power can change these result by concentrating that the majority of the balls will fall to a certain basket, something like 70% or even 80%. In the end only few people managed to do it successfully. But you can try similar test too.

You can also write a psychic journal, a notebook with all the details about what occurs in your daily life; it should be very detailed and encompass everything. This will help you to remember but also to see things that you are not aware of them in the exact moment they happen. It is like having a dream journal that helps you to interpret your thoughts from your deeper mind. Sometimes mystery phenomena come across us and we don’t always feel it and even if we do, we can forget about very fast. So it is a great tool to test and analyze the way you interact with the energies of the universe.

Developing your psychic perception is not easy but it can really be done. You can do it on your own, learn about it from the internet and books. You can also have special training and join few courses, lectures and programs that will connect you much better to the spark of your mystery life.

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
​

• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
​

• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.